#this was supposed to be about depersonalization and i accidentally turned it into a mixed kid metaphor 😑

[happyk44]

The air was quiet for once. No monsters, no boulders hurtling their way. No vicious winds. Nothing. Smooth sailing.

Frank knew it wouldn't last but he drank it in as much as he could. The temperature this high was was low, not yet freezing, but like the fresh burst of cold signalling the end of fall and the onslaught of winter. Everyone had taken to wearing jackets when they were on deck, especially at night, when the sun wasn't there to give them some faint reprieve of warmth.

Well, everyone except Frank. And Jason.

Nobody bothered them about it. But sometimes, when they moved higher up, where the air waa too thin and freezing, they would side-eye him. Hazel's look was always curious behind her scarf. The others though... they looked confused, concerned. Staring like something was wrong with him.

He tried to shrug it off the way Jason did. But Jason didn't get that look as much as Frank did. Jason was a child for the sky. Of course, thin breathless air wouldn't bother him as much. Of course, freezing winds did nothing to him. He could probably survive at the edge of the atmosphere, where sky and space meet. Floating there like an untethered astronaut, yet happy nonetheless. Perfectly fine.

It didn't work on Frank the same way. Mars was orderly bloodlust and head-on battles. Sturdy feet pounding sturdier ground.

What wars were fought in the air back in the ancient days? Even now, fighter pilots wore oxygen masks to beat the thinness, had shielding to keep them safe from the enemy and the cold. Nico even wore an old leather jacket - the same one they wore in their jets back in the day. Because who wanted to emergency eject into the frozen clouds without one?

Frank was still made of war. But he also had the lungs of a bird, and the heated blood of grizzly. He didn't freeze. And he breathed easy.

It was a bittersweet thing. He hadn't even considered it until Hazel came out on deck one night with a jacket for him to wear and he had realized he wasn't cold. When her voice had gone heavy with the effort to speak and he realized he wasn't struggling with the altitude the way he was supposed to.

His abilities just kicked in naturally. The same way they did when he went to sleep and woke up curled into a wolfish ball.

Some days he dreamed about walking with Hazel in a meadow of flowers and horses and he'd look up at her, paws muddy, drool escaping down his teeth and she'd teasingly chastise him for wanting to chase the horses around. Some days he dreamed about blood dripping from his maw and down his claws. And he'd wake up, animal in form, and worry about why he was losing his humanity in his dreams.

Because you're losing it in reality, he thought.

He tightens his fists and hopes for a fight to come soon. He couldn't be here alone in silence with his thoughts, with the knowledge that he was becoming something other. He wasn't unfamiliar with being othered by the world - Chinese to the white kids in school, Canadian to the Americans at Camp Jupiter. Fatherless. Raised by his grandmother. Fat, awkward, shy. He didn't have ADHD or dyslexia - not like every other demigod. He was othered a lot through pure existence.

That didn't mean he wanted to add inhuman to the list.

"Don't let it get to you."

Frank startled.

Jason sat on the railing, staring up at the stars. His legs swung off into the dark. He was wearing a black tank top, and cargo shorts, without socks or shoes. He relaxed, soaking in the frozen air. It puffed white with every exhale.

"What are you talking about?" Frank asked with an instinctual cock of his head. Like a dog. He righted his head up and straight, gritting his teeth. His nails cut into his palm.

Jason snorted and swung around. There was a strange delicacy in Jason when he was in the air. Leo called him Superman, but that wasn't it. Yeah, he was bulky like the hero, and flew like the hero. But any delicacy in Superman came from Clark Kent. Not from his powers.

Jason was like a dancer. Weightless, and gentle. Even harsh and forceful movements looked graceful on him. It was when he was on the ground he became a pounding unnatural force. Like a tank.

In the air, he was a ballerina, swift and full of motion, captivating. On the ground, he was a war machine, destructive and explosive.

It made sense in a way. Lightning cut the air with nothing more than a burning sizzle. But it exploded the earth when it hits. Shattered trees and destroyed houses. A storm was nothing when it bustled around in the empty air. Speeding wind and flooding rains. They meant nothing to the sky. But when it hit the ocean, hit the earth - everything broke.

Jason hopped off the railing. He landed without sound. "I see you, Frank. Sometimes you look at yourself in the mirror or the glass of a window, and you look confused. Like you don't know what you're looking at."

He approached, slow. Like a human nearing a stray cat. Frank felt almost feral. It was under his skin, prickling. Raw. He didn't like that Jason could see him.

But he didn't like that he thought human and not person. That he was comparing himself to the feral cats he used to help capture with the SPCA for the volunteer hours.

That Jason was right.

It scared him. He couldn't see his face. He knew it was his. Nothing had changed. But when he looked in the mirror, he felt like he was looking at a stranger.

He knew what it is. Once, when his mother came home from deployment, he caught her staring empty at her reflection. When she spotted him, she'd asked him, offhand but knowing, what he saw when he looked at her.

My mom, he said.

She'd grinned, just a bit too small. So I still look like myself then?

Of course, he'd said with a frown. Why wouldn't you?

She explained it to him later, gently, over cookies and tea. Depersonalization. A subsect of dissociation. She had explained it away, like it was just the result of seeing herself covered in mud so much she couldn't remember what she looked like clean. Acting like it wasn't the result of trauma, depression, PTSD.

It doesn't hurt, she'd assured him. And I know it's still me. I just can't tell.

You should go to a doctor, Frank has said, tucked under her arm even though he was too big for that anymore.

She had laughed and kissed the top of his head. I will, she promised. When I'm finished with this one.

And then she left, again, and then she died.

It wasn't until now that he wondered if it was really the trauma of war that made her unable to see herself in the mirror. Or if it was a combination of that and her own shapeshifting ability. Did she turn a lot? To save her fellow soldiers? To protect herself?

He knew she did it in her final moments. That she was brave. But did she do it a lot before then? Did she lose herself the way he was?

He didn't look in the mirror and wonder why his eyes were brown or his teeth were flat. Didn't look at his hands and wonder why his nails weren't claws or why his skin was so hairless. Didn't think he needed to be on all fours, or find speech difficult. But he did feel that otherness in his reflection. A sense of that isn't me when he stared back at himself.

He knew it was. That his brain was lying to him.

But he still couldn't see himself.

Sometimes his skin felt wrong. The world seemed a little warped. Like he was looking at it from the wrong angle. But no matter how much he moved around, it wouldn't go back to normal.

He felt satiated by Hazel's presence. The sensation of "everything is wrong" fell mostly to the background with her.

But he couldn't cling to her like a koala with separation anxiety. That wasn't fair to her. She wasn't required to fix his problems. And she was already holding onto his lifeline, keeping it safe, just for him.

He couldn't ask more of her. To help him reangle a world that had never changed.

Jason crossed his arms. His smile looked like Frank's mom's that night - just a bit too small. Then he glanced away. "I can't see myself either."

Breath caught in Frank's throat.

"I don't think it's a fixable thing for me," Jason went on. "And it might not be for you either. I was raised by wolves. I don't..." He laughed quietly and ducked his head. "I don't think of myself as human. Not consciously anyway. My mother was a wolf, my siblings were wolves. I feel more like a puppy plucked out of the bin and handed off than a human person."

Frank exhaled shakily. "So what do you do about it?"

Jason was quiet. His eyes were focused on the ground, brows furrowed. Then, "Nothing." He looked up to Frank. Blue eyes bore back at him. "There's nothing I can do. I am a wild child." He shrugged. "You can't scrub it out of me."

"So... I'm just gonna be stuck like this?" His nails bore deeper into his skin. Conscious effort rang out to keep them from becoming claws. "Feeling like the world is wrong because my brain can't decide if I'm a human or an animal?"

"I don't know what I am either," Jason said. "Even with the wolves, I knew I wasn't one of them. Not really. I didn't have fur. I didn't have claws or full rows of fangs. I knew how to be a wolf, but no one is ever going to look and think I'm one." His arms dropped to sides. He drew in closer. "But I just don't let it get to me."

He leaned against one of the mast poles and tilted his head up to the stars.

"That's kind of the nice thing about being part-animal." He grinned ruefully. "Well, animal animal, anyway."

"What do you mean?"

Jason looked back at Frank, for just a second before his eyes scanted away. He'd never noticed it before. He didn't get to Camp Jupiter until after Jason disappeared and they hadn't hung out enough once he camp back until just now. But Jason never really met someone's eyes. Only in battle, when the goal was dominance.

He looked all over, but eyes were a fraction of a second. Never landing purposely.

"Animals don't really care what you are. Wolves will adopt a human child and raise him. Ducks adopt chicks. Cats will take in kittens from another litter." He closed his eyes. "Because it doesn't matter in the end. We live, we hunt, we eat, we die. Who cares if your child is hairless and stands on two legs? Do they follow you? Do they represent what it means to be a wolf? To be a duck, or a cat, or a monkey? Do they accept your nature as much as their own?" He gestured upwards to the sky. "Do they understand nature as it is?"

Frank tilted his head back to stare up at the stars. They glistened and glittered in the black. It was a cloudless night. Everything was so clear. He felt almost as though he could reach out and touch one.

"People say there's no evolutionary benefit to animal adoption. Adopting a newborn, especially when you haven't lost any of your own, expends more energy." Jason sank down to a sit. His eyes were still closed. "Adopting a newborn outside your species doesn't carry on your genes. Doesn't keep your species running."

Frank thought of his bird lungs and grizzly blood. Sitting down next to Jason, he said, "It's symbiotic."

"Sometimes," Jason agreed. "Sometimes it's beneficial on both ends. Sometimes mothers are just nurturing. And sometimes it's just help." He spread his legs. "I brought the elder wolves their food when they could no longer hunt. My sister nursed our nieces because her mother died. Lupa brought me and they cared because I needed it. Can you help? Would it hurt you or the pack to help? Sometimes those are the only questions that matter."

He gestured loosely. "Animals aren't perfect. Brood parasitism for one thing. Fish and insects and rabbits eat their young. Some animals attack others for fun. But humans aren't perfect either, so what does it matter why animals adopt?"

A gentle breeze slid through their hair. Jason looked utterly at ease. Frank felt... Not serene. No. But. Calmer, almost. It sank inside him like a heavy fog. Foreign and strange, but ultimately fine. The fog wasn't too dense. Visibility was decent. Right now, it was okay.

He looked down to his hairless clawless hands. "No one ever asks why humans adopt."

Jason grinned, flashed all his teeth. "No. They don't." He looked away. "No one ever says so, but when I came to camp..." He shook his head. "People think the wolves took care of me because of Juno and my father. But they took care of me because I was their pup. If I wasn't, I would've been trained like everyone else. Not immersed in what it means to be a wolf." He gave a soft smile. "I used to call Lupa 'Mom'. She made me stop a couple months before I had to leave, but.."

His smile dipped and he looked up to the stars. His bright blue eyes seemed to glow.

"The wolves were my family. I didn't know anything else."

Frank pressed a hand to his chest. "I'm not like you. You're... mixed." He snorted. "Human-passing, but raised in an all wolf household. That's your... culture. Your world. Even if people don't believe it when you say so. But I'm..."

"The opposite." He nodded. Jason nudged him with his shoulder. "That doesn't mean you can't learn. Wolf. Bird. Bear. You can find what it means to be them."

The wind whistled. Far below the deck, he could hear the faint sounds of snoring. He rubbed at his ear, wishing away whatever animal hearing chose to ignite itself. "What if I forget how to be human?"

Jason sighed. "Frank. The only way you could stay fully human is to give up being an animal. You'd have to stop shapeshifting."

Stop being himself.

Frank never considered himself a mixed child. He didn't even know what his father looked like until recently. And that was ambiguous at best. Gods could look however they chose. Who was to say he didn't look Chinese when he met his mom?

But the parallels remained. He knew other kids who were mixed. Kids who were out of touch with their Chinese side. Kids who were jealous he could speak Cantonese, even if limited, because their family wouldn't teach them. Or their Chinese parent didn't know it at all.

His grandmother was strict about maintaining their culture even so far away from where they came from. But he knew other immigrants weren't the same way. That they did away with it all to assimilate. Not just Chinese families, but all kinds of ethnicities and cultures. Even some white families. Dropping away their heritage so they could mask in with the Canadians. So they could pick up the new customs and social order faster. So their kids wouldn't get bullied. So life could be easier.

And now, in the modern hustle and bustle of cultural appreciation, there were people who knew nothing about the place their families came from. They could walk into those countries and blend in physically, but never verbally, never emotionally, never culturally.

Did Frank want that for himself? To match with the other birds on the branch but never have a clue about how to act other than to fly and tweet? To blend in with the wolves, but know that Jason, with his furless skin and flat teeth, was more wolf than him?

Did it matter? He wasn't really part-animal. Not like Jason. Shapeshifting was a power. But it wasn't separate from him. When he held too long in a form, he could feel himself start to sink in. He was still Frank, but more Frank the bear, angered that someone threatened his cub, than Frank the human, angered that someone threatened Hazel.

And shapeshifting...

It was culture, wasn't it? His mom used it. His grandmother used it. All the great, great, greats used it if they had it. It was part of his family. Like a tradition passed down.

So if he stopped, wouldn't he be abandoning part of his culture?

Animals believed in survival - for their species or one they plucked from the whorls of loneliness. They nurtured the young, cared for the old, visited graves. Died and let their descendants consume the grass they grew. They fought to protect, to live.

His grizzly blood quickened in veins. Hotter. Warmer, against the cold. Shapeshifting was Frank's survival, as bitter lightning was Jason's, as deadly gold was Hazel's, and a sudden hurricane was Percy's.

He couldn't throw it away.

"I'm never going to recognize myself in the mirror, am I?"

Jason sighed. It was a quiet sad thing and it made Frank's bird lungs stutter.

"No," Jason said. "You won't. You won't feel wholly human either. Or wholly like an animal. Whichever one you choose. Bear, bird, wolf. Or everything, all of them." He turned and caught Frank's eyes. "But you'll know who you are." He looked away. "I've found that's the thing that really matters."

They weren't mixed kids. Finding solace in both worlds - human and animal - was never going to put the world right again. And Frank doubted that every child of an immigrant and every mixed kid who discovered and immersed themselves in forgotten traditions and customs would suddenly feel 100% in place either.

But they would know who they were. Who all the people who came before them were. How life was lived before migration.

Maybe he wasn't part animal, the way Jason was, or the way other feral children were, raised by wolves and monkeys and bears. Any animal that came across a miserable child and decided to help.

But grizzly bear warmth coursed through his skin and kept him hot despite the cold. Bird lungs kept him breathing easy in the thin air. Wolf teeth protected his friends. Ram horns shoved back monsters. Goldfish gills and scales kept him alive in the water. Dragonfly wings let him buzz quickly through the air.

His mother fed stray cats and dogs. She encouraged Frank to be kind to animals that passed by. His grandmother put out bird feed and spoke loudly to them when they came to eat. Cats brought birds to their owners. Crows came back with shiny things for people who helped them.

No, he wasn't part-animal. But animals kept him alive. Who was he to not show respect to the ones that helped him? Even if it made him unrecognizable to himself.

Was that why his grandmother was so strict about their culture? Did she lose her humanity too? Unable to see herself in the mirror and deciding she wasn't going to lose her ancestry along with it?

"Nice teeth," Jason murmured.

Frank ran his tongue along sharp fangs. Even his tongue felt different - wider, longer. His mouth hadn't changed, not externally anyway. But he could feel his tongue start farther in his throat to accommodate the new length. His uvula wasn't where it should've been. Of course it wasn't. It was probably further down, somewhere in throat. Or just gone. If it stayed where it was in a normal human, the thickness of his tongue and its new starting place would've immediately gagged him.

"It just happens sometimes," Frank said, focusing mentally on flat teeth, a human tongue, his uvula at the top of his mouth. "I don't know why."

"Let it." Jason stretched his arms up over his head. "Animals don't deny their instincts, why should you? We have them for a reason."

Frank considered that. Thought of his grandmother, sick, frail, and a bird flying out of the house before it came crumbling down. Thought of her speaking loudly to the birds that came to eat. How similar the two looked.

He let his wolven fangs rest where they formed, but kept his human tongue. The other felt too strange to have in a human head.

Jason reached out and traced his nail over one. Then pulled back and turned back to the stars. "I can teach you what it means to be a wolf, if you want," he said.

Frank traced his fangs once more. Then smiled. "I'd like that."

#this was supposed to be about depersonalization and i accidentally turned it into a mixed kid metaphor 😑 #am i mad about it? no. but am i kinda annoyed it deviated from the intended plan? yeah #frank zhang #wolf!jason #jason grace #my writing #my fanfic #happy talks pjo #anyway idc if this doesn't make sense i havent eaten all day so im gonna go do that now okay bye 👍