Day Nine Hundred And Seventy-Seven

Dear Diary,

I...

I got lucky, back in the day. Yeah, I know, dead mom, missing dad, living alone, trauma piled onto my head like the fates were playing 'stack the states', only with painfully debilitating life experiences. ADHD, chronic depression, maybe some bipolar disorder, even before all that fuckin' trauma my head wasn't what you'd call a pleasant residence. In case me bitching for almost a thousand days about this shit hasn't made it painfully clear, my life sucked.

I still got lucky.

I was one of the thirty three percent. Yeah, my sex life sucked. Most of it was self-service, and half of the dudes I let join me in my bedroom wound up abusing me. Which is still only one dude, but that's still half. Yeah, I got into a couple situations where I got out in one piece because I swallowed my pride and their spooge, or got a complementary tablespoon of high protein edible hand cream, but some part of my brain always saw all of those as my choice. Fuck, maybe from some technical or legal perspective I was one of the two thirds of women that got raped, but my brain didn't register that. There was no part of my brain that told me 'I am a sexual assault victim'.

I dunno, maybe I was in denial, but even now I still don't feel like that kind of victim. Lots of other kinds, yeah, but not that kind. Maybe I drew too big of a line between 'sex I only participated in because it was the easiest way out of a situation' and 'rape'. Maybe my denial was too strong to let me be traumatized that way. Fuck, maybe the trauma of my mom dying and my sister being the world's biggest bitch about it and the hottest dude I bagged back in the day being a violent self-absorbed asshole left me so traumatized that shit that other women would have clocked as rape just got sorted under 'shitty sex'.

But I got lucky, because I don't have any of the PTSD symptoms from that shit. Lots of other things, sure, but not once have I looked at a cock and shuddered at the sight of it. Laughed now and then, sure. Got some butterflies south of my stomach when it reacted to my dubious allure, yeah. Maybe retched a little if there were unpleasant funks associated with it, but as the saying goes, I'm not afraid of dogshit on my floor, just disgusted and want it gone.

I'm talking this through because I'm realizing that some part of that, some bit of either being in that thirty-three percent, or being in the sixty-seven percent and not admitting to it, something in one of those is very likely the reason the thought of rape makes me want to push that fucking red button just to spite every fuckin' rapist on the planet. It makes me want to ask Conrad for a wood chipper just to lower them in slowly. I think if I could work out a way to make a Filtration Ward that would filter for rapists, I'd put that shit around the planet and squeeze. Or maybe start underground and push outward.

Yeah, probably squeeze, because Hephaestus isn't a dude here, and if I can survive the vacuum of space, Zeus probably can too.

But yeah, the thought of someone getting raped makes me leap immediately to the kind of response that would traumatize me to implement. Shit, probably traumatize everybody watching, although if they were one of the two thirds, it might be that kind of 'rebreaking a limb so it can heal straight' kind of trauma. Thing is, while I would traumatize myself in an instant to help somebody else, and I am in fact a Goddess of Justified Homicide and Vengeance, I don't think traumatizing myself for some cathartic violence is really the best option.

No, seriously, it's bad enough for somebody like Celeste to burn herself up getting Vengeance against the Oranges. She had nobody left relying on her, so the only person she was hurting directly was her, but still the idea of someone leaving themselves a burnt out shell of a human being just to get something cosplaying as Justice does not sit right with me. I really hope she's managed to at least find some kind of semblance of peace. I'm gonna try to remember to follow up on that after I'm done dealing with the fuckin' Spartans.

On second thought, Karen?

Yes, Goddess?

Could you please look in on Celeste for me, make sure she's recovering?

After a brief pause, Karen thought, I can, but... Would it be acceptable to ask High Priestess Aetos-Diaz... Marie, that is, to do so?

Uh... Why?

Because New Amsterdam is her congregation, and while we all support one another whenever needed, it might be for the best if her congregation there sees her as something other than your wife?

That took me by surprise, but I realized immediately that she wasn't wrong. Sure. Just one of you keep me posted about Celeste, okay?

Let it be so, Goddess.

So yeah, I am close to 'push the big red button' angry with the Spartans, and while I definitely want to do things that would make lifelong purveyors of war crimes blanch, I don't think that would be a good thing. Me as a burned out traumatized shell would hurt more than just me. Don't get me wrong, I would absolutely burn myself to the ground to save my family, my people, but this situation isn't that. I don't think the Spartans have that kind of juice in them, to actually force me to damage myself killing them. But they definitely could push me to the point where I traumatize myself killing them, and that might be worse. When I'm physically injured I lie there and exchange dopamine and serotonin with my ladies a lot. When I'm traumatized I do dumb shit like hiding at the bottom of the M-Space ocean for days.

So yeah, after yesterday with the new kids, Saffron brought home a properly insulated electromagnet for cleaning the Bath with. I had one of me up in the bath room doing that while another of me played booster seat for Saffron and Siobhan. Not like I needed the food, with my Revel coming up tomorrow. I mean, I still ate bits they fed me, and I still kept half an eye on the new kids, but somehow they seemed more comfortable around the girls and the kits than they did around me. Even with most of the kids and half of the girls avoiding physical contact.

When we got up to the Bath, after letting them vent their latest discharge of bloody excretions and replacing their little absorbent panties, everybody herded them toward the showers, then the Bath. When they stopped just shy of stepping into the steaming hot water, I stepped over.

"It's okay, kids. Look." I stepped in, waved the others forward. Way more calmly than normal, even the boisterous kits like Anise and Felicia stepped into the tub, then slipped down to optimum soaking depth.

Both kids just stood there. They'd gone in before, but now they just stood there, obviously wanting, but refusing to step in.

"Whas wrong?" Menace asked.

I almost didn't hear the girl whisper, "dirty."

I shook my head, maintaining my friendly smile. "Nah, I cleaned it up. It's fine!"

The boy shook his head, a single jerk, as if terrified to even disagree with me that much. "Us."

I closed my eyes. Sighed. Then very gently wrapped my tentacles around them, picked them up, and lowered them into the Bath. They didn't struggle in the slightest, and even through the pain of touching them, I felt them relax as the hot water soaked into their muscles.

"That's part of what a bath is for, kids." I crouched down so I could look them in the eyes without looking down on them. That putting me almost entirely beneath the surface of the Bath had nothing to do with it, although it did kinda help me keep my cool, ironically enough. "Whatever those assholes put in you, we're gonna help you get it out. Help you get clean from it. Help you get back to what you should be."

I almost didn't catch what the kids said. If they hadn't both whispered it under their breath in unison, I might not have realized they'd said anything. If I hadn't had Blend to translate their barely said words into something I understood, I wouldn't have known what they said.

That's when I realized. Realized what the kids had said, why the Spartans referred to them as numbers rather than as names. I pulled my tentacles away from them, outside the Mortal Realm entirely. I almost couldn't trust myself not to fly into a rage, because right now the only thing I could do without the Spartans to vent on would be to vandalize Olympus, and...

At that point I might have twisted myself around the bend into corkscrew thinking, but fuck it. Dad?

Yes, Daughter?

Did J ever shed any big venom fangs? Like, big tree sized ones?

J? Oh, your brother. I'm uncertain, but if he did they'd be at the bottom of the ocean where he lay for so long. You could ask him.

I'd have to take the time to fly to him, and find him. I'll check the seafloor though. Thanks, Dad. You're the best.

I know.

So yeah, stepped to where I'd found Jormungandr at the base of Yggdrasil, found an appropriately sized fang lying there, scooped it up and Translocated to Olympus, reopened that mini-volcano I'd labelled 'Ares Asshole', rammed that fang in hard enough to lodge it so bits of magma spurted out through the venom channel, then jotted the words 'moar real with butt-plug' underneath 'Ares Asshole' before hopping back home. No, my grafitti is not grammatically correct. Yes, that is an intentional part of its charm.

Yeah, vandalism might be petty, but it bleeds off excess rage at Ares' chosen people, the Heroes of Sparta, who not only made two little kids terrified of admitting they even had names, convinced two little kids that they were somehow inherently 'dirty', when the only dirty things I could see about them were what the fuckin' Spartans had done. Fuck, I'm not even gonna say 'dirty'. Fuckin' abominations unto me. At that moment I wouldn't have ripped the Spartans apart, but only because I didn't want to dirty anything I cared about even as much as my own hands by touching the filthy bastards. I just wanted them gone. Out of my Alliance. Off of my Atlantis. No longer on my Mortal Realm. Just... Gone.

Because I finally realized why the Spartans had referred to them by numbers. Because when I talked about what they 'should be', the words that slipped out of their mouths like they'd been abused until they responded without thinking...

"Holes."