Welcome to the Masquerade [Cyn]

[Jack Travidi]

<sub>After having his brother find him unexpectedly and demand he stop pretending to be someone he's not, Myles first fear had been that Joe would find and tell someone. Especially Cyn. It was Myles' responsibility to tell her, after all, so he'd left the Hermes Cabin as soon as he was sure Joe was definitely gone. Of course, he'd left as an eleven year old, but he wasn't sure how to explain the situation to Cyn. He at least hoped he'd come up with something other than "I was just pretending to be my own son". That lacked a certain tact, and Myles was sure Cyn was going to be pissed as it was.

So he'd nervously approached the Ares Cabin, hoping against the odds that Cyn would be there. Alone. He was currently wearing a t-shirt that was too large for him, as well as jeans that were too large. He had been distracted at the time, but the small clothes had been extremely uncomfortable when he'd talked to Joe. He was grateful that they were a bit on the large side, as he hadn't stretched anything or hurt himself, but he didn't wish to repeat the event. He'd briefly snuck into the Aphy Cabin, stealing his own clothes, which were hidden in a corner, long forgotten. And mostly untouched, aside from their unceremonious dumping in said corner. Assuming they thought he was dead, they'd apparently wanted so little to do with him they wouldn't even throw out his stuff. Jerks.

Myles turned the knob and entered, looking around for her. Finding exactly what he'd hoped to find, Myles-as-Benjamin cleared his throat. "Uh, Cynthia? Can I... can I talk to you about something?" It was really stupid for the son of Aphrodite to ask, especially since 'no' wasn't an acceptable answer. Myles wasn't thinking straight, maybe, or he would have just started saying what he needed to say. He wasn't good with confrontations, least of all unhappy ones, and this would be his second in one day. Looking around the cabin nervously, he let his gaze settle on her once more.

"I'm not really the son of Myles Vengeance," he started, feeling his mouth get dry. Oh yeah, that was much better than "I was just pretending to be my own son". Of course.

"I'm sorry for lying." It seemed like a really good thing to follow up with, given Joe's reaction. If Cyn was going to be pissed, he didn't want it to be because he'd lied. Or at least because he hadn't apologized. That just wouldn't do. He felt guilty enough about lying to Joe. Adding Cyn to that was much much worse.</sub>

[Cynthia Wood]

<sup>Cynthia sat cross-legged on her bunk, for once contemplating what it meant when she had absolutely nothing to do with her life if not in the arena or with Joe and Sable. The discarded remains of an attempt to make a scabbard with one of Sable’s bras and a sock lay off to the side. The dagger just kept stabbing right through the sock. On reflection, Cynthia should have seen that coming. She could have cut up Joe’s leather jacket and glued it to the toe of the sock. Sometimes, when you wanted to get something done, you had to work through a lot of tears.

Most of the new arrivals were supposed to be told that there was absolutely no admittance into the Ares cabin without Cynthia’s stated approval. Not even the other children of Ares had Cynthia’s stated approval. She did, however, allow them to loiter outside the cabin, unlike most of the other demigods, in case she felt like letting them in for the night. Cynthia was not just a wonderful and caring sister; she was the reason for turning Hermes Cabin into an overspill facility. She opened her mouth to tell Benjamin exactly what she told everyone else who tried to get access to their dressers before they spent the night in the Hermes cabin (“no. Get out of my face.”), but Cyn hadn’t been prepared for what would happen if she actually looked up before sending Benjamin back to Hermes.

“What do you think you’re wearing?” She choked out, too startled to be mean. There were no restrictions in the Aphrodite cabin. Cynthia dressed exclusively in Joe’s clothes because she hadn’t been bothered to buy any of her own since she was thirteen, and belly shirts were not Cyn’s style. Not that Cynthia really cared about what her style was when she went through Joe’s clothes, but at least they fit. It meant that normally Cynthia was dressed like a prepster who had accidentally fallen in a puddle of mud. However, occasionally gems like a black velvet blazer, white ruffle blouse (which no boy should honestly own, even Joe), and high-waisted black formal pants would appear in that exact combination, just as they had today. It was really just Cynthia’s bad luck.

Actually, there had been a restriction in regards to Myles’s bunk. She hadn’t let Joe throw out his clothes despite Joe’s enthusiastic willingness, and she wouldn’t have let Joe even look through his stuff if he didn’t make such an excellent argument (“what if he has press-on tattoos or something in there? You don’t know what sort of mysteries lie around his bunk.”). There had been no press-on tattoos, Joseph was sad to see. He had felt fairly stupid after a little while once he realized that Myles had even told him everything was just an illusion.

So Cynthia felt the need to reiterate the fact that she didn’t recognize Myles’s clothes at a glance because she was obsessed with his smell or something weird like that. Joe needed a chaperone for invading Myles’s space, and Cynthia had been willing to be the chaperone. This meant that she was not nearly as sick (or gay) as some little kid who was just playing dress-up in his father’s clothes.

Maybe not his father’s clothes.

Cyn swung her legs around over the side of her bunk and jumped down onto the floor. She could almost feel her knees ram together because of her refusal to actually bend down when she landed and become shorter than an eleven-year-old, just for a second. Pride was more important than her knees. “So how do you know about him, then?” Benjamin had said that he knew Myles was fine. He had said Myles had talked to him about her. She had no problems with the second part being a lie, but she should have known better than to be relieved by what some little kid said about him. “Are you just a little freak who goes and plays dress-up in a dead guy’s clothes? You should go find Joe to talk about those issues with. Not me.”

At this point everything should have started making sense to Cynthia. Unfortunately for her, and probably Myles, because it was just dragging the whole thing out that much longer, while some people had a room temperature IQ, Cynthia’s had been stuck in a freezer. Being angry made it that much worse. “I don’t even understand why you’d want to lie about something like that in the first place.”</sup>

[Jack Travidi]

<sub>Myles had in fact forgotten about Cyn's freezer level IQ. It was something he wished he'd remembered beforehand, as he might have just come out and said it. It would have been a lot easier than the comments about him being a freak and how he should talk to Joe about his issues. "I already dealt with Joe this morning..." he growled angrily to himself, though it was almost as non-threatening as when Joe tried it. Almost.

Looking at her curiously, something in Myles brain clicked. She recognizes my clothes. He would have been creeped out if it weren't for the fact that she'd probably been one of the people who'd gone through his stuff. Of course, he had a comment of his own to make. "What am I wearing? What the fuck are you wearing? Are those... Those are Joe's clothes!" It was the only logical leap Myles could make, given Joe and Cyn were about the same size and the clothes were so preppy he wasn't sure anyone else would own them.

"Why would I lie about something like that? Obviously it's because I'm a coward." Joe's words from earlier were echoing in his mind, making Myles slightly uncomfortable, except that he was already slightly uncomfortable, so now he was extremely uncomfortable. "I was scared, that's why. I still am, though the person I'm most afraid of already had it out with me."

He looked her in the eyes for a moment, trying to get his mouth to work. He had to do it eventually, right? And today. That's what Joe said. Myles hadn't even thought about disobeying Joe despite the fact that he easily could. "Which just leaves the person I'm second most afraid of dealing with, though it's my own damn fault." He once more cursed Joe's annoying timing at showing up when Myles had returned. "Wow. I'm scared of Joe. That's... embarrassing. Otherwise things might have turned out differently." Maybe the trait of procrastinating ran in all the children of Aphrodite. Joe was good at babbling and going off on random tangents and Myles was good at avoiding important questions by focusing on unimportant ones.

He'd forgotten where he was going with his ramblings, and Myles tried to focus and regain his train of thought. "Right! So. You. I have to tell you..." He trailed off, the right words escaping him. "Please don't kill me." That was his number one fear at the moment. Joe was allowed to push Myles off a cliff. Cyn though? Only if he had a chance of survival. A good chance. Like, 60% and up. Regardless, Dying at the hands of Cynthia Wood was not in Myles Vengeance's future. Hopefully.

That being said, Myles focused once more, hoping to get this in one try. Luck was with him, at least for one part of this day, and Myles quickly aged to seventeen, something his was grateful for. At eleven, he may have been in his own skin, but it was anything but comfortable. It was just... weird. The son of Aphrodite stared at the floor, not wanting to see Cyn's reaction.</sub>

[Cynthia Wood]

<sup>Cynthia almost blurted out something defensive about Benjamin having “dealt with Joe” when the poor little sissy had already been punched once already by an eleven year old. There was only so much Joe’s ego could take before he did something stupid like shaving his head. Deep down, everyone knew that if Joe were going to have a breakdown, he could do it Britney Spears style. She did catch herself just in time, however. Even Cynthia could predict how it would look if she tried to protect Joe while borrowing all her clothes from him. It technically wasn’t all from Joe, if we were counting underwear and the belt. Joseph chose to view the belt as one of the many unfortunate and unchangeable pieces of Cynthia’s appearance, and everyone else just took no notice of it. “What’s wrong with Joe’s clothes? No, wait, don’t answer that. It will just hurt his feelings.” Cynthia would tell Joe whatever Benjamin said, if only to hurt Joe’s feelings. “What’s wrong with me wearing Joe’s clothes? They were bought for a girl anyway!”

She raised an eyebrow. “How would you even know if this is Joe’s or not? He’s obviously a unique little boy, but you’ve been here, what? A week?” Cynthia was more than slightly confused by everything Benjamin was saying. It was like she had arrived ten minutes late for a movie and now had to piece together everything that she missed without the actors stopping to explain it all. Cyn could absorb enough to understand that Benjamin ranked Cynthia after Joe in the list of people he was scared of, and Cynthia made a mental note to correct that later on. Little kids were supposed to be more scared of her than the Boogey Man. That was her only goal in life. Cynthia was one of those people who had so many “only goals in life” that she completely forgot what she was attempting to do with her life.

Cyn nodded encouragingly, hoping Benjamin could get this over with and leave. He was worse at getting off-topic and forgetting what to do than Joe was. If Benjamin was going to change his mind and tell Cynthia he was Joe’s son, she was not going to believe it. Even Cynthia could do the basic math to figure out that Joe was six at the time of Benjamin’s birth.

It was a bit like someone had shook up a bottle of soda and then stuck the cap on it. Cynthia sucked in her breath quickly, and then it just got caught somewhere back in her throat until it fizzled out. “Oh,” Cynthia stated dully. “It’s you.” All her reflexes had gone to the physical. Getting messages to her brain was not a top priority in the way Cynthia’s body was run. “Hello. When did you get back?”

The bottle had been shaken too much. Air was starting to drift out from under the cap, but it wasn’t fast enough under all the pressure. “I guess I know when you got back, don’t I? I was there for it.” If Cynthia had stopped there, Myles might have been able to stop the bottle from exploding. Unfortunately, the extended metaphor just got longer and more tedious. “But maybe that wasn’t me there. You certainly didn’t think so. Whoever you- Benjamin- whatever met was way too bitter to be me, wasn’t it?”

Her vocal chords felt like they were curling and uncurling. They were counting down the seconds until Cynthia would fully realize the extent of everything that had happened these past few weeks – and everything that happened for two years before it – and twist it all into something that she could blame very loudly on Myles. “What would I be if I wasn’t bitter? Maybe I would be someone who had never met Myles Vengeance. If you didn’t want me to be bitter, you should have stopped right when I came to camp. Instead, you decided to keep pushing me, and pushing me, because it’s always fun to torture someone that you know will give you the reaction you want, right? That’s definitely gratifying.” Her words were speeding up now, but each one was enunciated sharply. Cynthia’s voice could cut through rock. “But what wasn’t the point of no return, was it? Because when that was over, and you were bored with it, you could have let everything drop and found someone else. Instead you just moved on to a new game where you tried to pretend that everything was not a game, and I gave you the reaction you wanted once again. That was much harder for you, wasn’t it? It was even less truthful than the past seven years had been.”

“ARE YOU SORRY FOR LYING?” Her vocal chords were finally getting what they had asked for. “THEN GO AHEAD AND APOLOGIZE FOR THE LAST THREE YEARS, MYLES. SEE IF YOU CAN TAKE ALL OF THAT BACK, AND THEN I MIGHT AT LEAST CONSIDER FORGIVING YOU.” Cynthia was not done. She had two years of bottled frustration to get out now that the source of it all was finally going to listen to her. She struggled to catch her breath, “the most honest thing you have ever done to me was when you decided to make it obvious that it was just another game that you really didn’t care about losing.” Unlike Joe, she backed away from Myles like he was sucking all the oxygen out of the room. And, even more like Joe, her voice climbed octave after octave in bounding leaps. “Excuse me for being bitter when you were what pushed me into this!”</sup>

[Jack Travidi]

<sub>Myles shifted uncomfortably where he stood, his gaze moving upward as Cynthia slowly put the pieces together. "I'm sorry I said that," he said, though he doubted she heard as she had continued on making Myles feel more and more like the stupid eleven year old he had just been. He felt a bit like a little kid getting yelled at by a parent, except that Cyn was much more violent and much much scarier. Given the circumstances, Myles was well aware that Cyn was way scarier than Joe. As if that thought was helpful in the least.

Once she was finished, Myles was staring at her with a look that suggested she had just slapped him in the face, though Cyn was standing so far away from him it was physically impossible. He took a step toward her, and prepared to take another before thinking better of it. He ran a hand through his hair, realizing distance between them would be safer with her violent tendencies and her anger inducing powers. He wasn't sure if it was her powers or his own frustration with everything, but he felt his anger rising. "You think it was a game? Do you honestly think I wanted any of that to happen? All I wanted was to get out! For some reason I didn't and it cost me. Because, of course, the uncaring Cynthia Wood couldn't possibly admit to wanting or needing help, nor could she admit to being vulnerable. I had no reason to worry! So sure, I should have walked off into the fucking sunset and never shown my face again, worrying all the while! Instead I stayed and knew you were fine and pushed my limits. I regret that choice now," he said bitterly.

Myles couldn't believe it. Well, he could, but for some reason his mind wasn't wrapping around it. He had known Cyn was going to be pissed, but it hadn't occurred to him what exactly that meant. "If it was a game, I lost, and that's all I can think about. All I think about is why I left and why I came back and none of it makes any god damned sense!" he growled, anger taking over his expression. All he knew anymore was who he was and what he wanted. And his past from two years ago back. Everything else was missing. How he had felt upon leaving, why, who had encouraged his going, what had made him return, whether or not it was his own choice... it was all a mystery to him, one he didn't like.

And now Myles was getting yelled at by the only person who really mattered. He had made the mistake of thinking Joe would be harder to talk to or more important. Joe was firm in his resentment of Myles, and he had no problem showing it. He was easy to read, especially on this subject. Cyn was much different though. She had a hard time with emotions besides anger and hatred, so reading her was often difficult, even on a good day. The only thing Myles could be grateful for was that two years ago seemed like just yesterday. He thought he could still guess fairly well what she was thinking, though it was still extremely difficult. At the very least, Myles found nothing except her bottled up anger, though he didn't know if that was the depth of her emotions or not.

Realizing he was holding back, Myles let out his anger. If anything, Cyn wanted him to yell back. Arguing was her strong suit. Maybe not arguing intelligently, but arguing nonetheless. And Myles hadn't yelled in two years for all he knew. His voice could use the exercise. "I'M SORRY. I FUCKED UP. I GET IT ALRIGHT? ALL I DO IS WONDER WHAT THE HELL I DID WRONG. I KNOW IT'S MY FAULT YOU'RE BITTER AND I KNOW I SHOULD HAVE JUST RAN LIKE THE COWARD I AM BEFORE THINGS GOT OUT OF HAND," he yelled, much louder than he originally intended. He didn't care though. "I'm sorry," he repeated, much quieter as he lost steam.

"I really am sorry, Cyn. All I wanted was to figure out where we stand before deciding what to do. Joe was right, though. I should have just left. Coming back was obviously a mistake, and staying seems to have made it worse." A dark expression passed over his face, and Myles was suddenly very tired. He looked at her, hoping she would yell again. He wanted her to yell and scream at him; it made him feel less guilty about wanting to yell and scream back. "...if this is a game, it really sucks. How do you stop playing?" he murmured to himself, her words getting to him more than he'd care to admit.

The only way Myles could see out was suicide. ...or hoping he lost his memory outside the borders of Camp-Half Blood. As much as he'd let Joe or Cyn push him off of a cliff (his priorities shifted slightly, sue me) he didn't have a death wish.

So he'd leave and make himself a new life, right? He'd eventually forget everything that happened here. With these thoughts, which were just lies to himself, Myles wanted to turn around and walk away. He couldn't seem to move though, feeling like his feet were rooted to the ground. He couldn't just walk out with so much unsaid between them. He may be a coward, but he wouldn't run away when he still had a chance, no matter how small, at something he truly wanted.</sub>