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The Winter Solstice was the same as any other. Clarisse had to corral a gaggle of her younger siblings around Olympus, as they gawked at the sights around them, the enormity enough to make most campers stop and stare.
They had long since stopped being interesting for Clarisse. She had seen them so many times that the architecture had become background noise, the grandiosity of it all had curdled into a feeling of anger towards the Gods.
They had all of this power, all of these abilities, as showcased in the elaborate architecture all over Olympus, statues of the Gods and their achievements around every corner.
They had all of these things, and yet the most of them couldn't spare a second for their children.
Even tonight, one of the few days that demigods were allowed on Olympus, the gods seemed to not event have the time for them.
Anywhere that Clarisse looked, she saw a demigod trying to have a conversation with their parent, desperately trying to get a few words from them before the god waved them off like they were some annoyance.
She tried not to think about her own father, and how he would do the exact same thing to her, if she even bothered to try and speak to him tonight. She wouldn't, though. She had long since decided that trying to get the smallest bit of attention from her father would never be worth the grief.
Clarisse was following around a group of her siblings, the youngest ones, to make sure that they didn't get lost. She would have never assumed that her siblings would be dumb enough to wander off and get lost, but after the nightmare that was the previous year, she wouldn't put it past them.
She tapped her youngest sibling, a girl no older than eight years old, on the shin with her cane.
"C'mon. Let's get moving, Elaine, we can't just stand in the middle of the path and gawk. You're gonna get fucking trampled. So, let's get a move on,"
She said, exasperated. Yes, she did care about her siblings, but sometimes she wanted to beat them with her cane.
Although she didn't like watching her younger siblings, that meant that she had an excuse to not participate in all of the formal, stuck up conversations with the gods.
Olympians and minor gods alike wanted to talk with the "drakon slayer", to commend her for her bravery. Unfortunately, it was considered quite rude to tell a god to go fuck themselves.
Clarisse believed that many problems could have been averted if people weren't afraid to tell a god or goddess to go to hell.
She followed her siblings over to her father, and she let out a sigh. She knew that most of them hadn't realized yet that their dad would never actually care about him in the way that they wanted him to, no matter what heroic feats they accomplished.
So all of these kids would go up to Ares with such godsdamned hope in their eyes, and get struck down the instant that they tried to start a conversation, or, worse, they would get betrayed by Ares.
Clarisse had seen it more times than she ever should have, her father telling them that they needed to more if they wanted to be worthy of his care, despite the fact that so many of them weren't even ten years old.
In the same voice that he used to use when telling her that she was pathetic, a failure, an insult to his bloodline.
The cruel words he used to describe her siblings made her fists clench with rage.
She knew that she would probably spend the rest of the evening consoling her siblings, and trying to reinforce to them that they would never be enough for him and his unachievable ideals, and that they would be better off if they stopped trying now.
That they should stop idolizing them before they put themselves in a situation that would get them killed.
She stared off into space, one hand clenched angrily around her cane, as she tried to tune out her father's voice.
Nothing would change between this year and the last, so there was no reason to hear the same degrading speeches again.
Suddenly, her face exploded with burning hot agony as she was slapped.
Clarisse instinctually cowered, a hand instinctually flying up to shield herself.
All at once, the world sharpened back into focus, and she was met with the sight of her father looming over her, his expression full of rage (as usual).
"Clarisse La Rue!" He shouted. His voice made Clarisse's ears hurt. "Get it together. I've been trying to get your fucking attention for more than a minute now. You should respond when spoken to, not stare off into space like some invalid."
Clarisse flinched, and her gaze dropped to her boots.
"Yes, Ares. I'm sorry, Ares."
In a shrill voice, Ares mocked, "Yes Ares, I'm sorry Ares," He gripped her chin with a bruising grip, forcing her to look up at him. "You're not a child anymore, so stop acting like one."
All the fight and anger that flowed through Clarisse's veins as naturally as breathing was stamped out. She felt her legs going weak beneath her, so she leant extra hard on her cane.
"I- I promise to do better, Ares."
Her voice trembled like she was fourteen again, trembling in a ship on the middle of the ocean, as she stared at an iris message of her father in front of her.
Ares kicked her cane out from under her, causing her to collapse onto the marble floor
"You promise? Your pathetic little promises don't mean anything when you're being all weak with your useless, good for nothing siblings, walking around with a goddamn cane like some pathetic bitch. What is wrong with you? I thought that you were finally worth being called my daughter, but now you're acting ridiculous. You're being a fucking disgrace."
Clarisse let him continue on his tirade. Anything more that she said would just lead to him getting angrier at her. Sometimes silence would get her further than any additional comment would.
"What, you went from a drakon slayer to this. I'm ashamed to have ever called you my child, at this point. What even is that cane for? I didn't know you were so pathetic that you needed something like that. Its not like you're disabled."
Ares's voice was filled with venom as he spat the words at her. Clarisse couldn't bring herself to respond. Her tongue felt like it was made of lead, and she had stepped foot into Olympus expecting her younger siblings to bear the brunt of her father's anger, and somehow she was the one at the end of his cruelty.
He kicked her in the side.
"Answer me, you brat!"
"Lord Ares, Father," she laid the titles on thick, as if it would save her from his ire. "It's to help me walk…and stay stable when fighting. It's because-"
She was swiftly struck across the face again.
"No child of mine should need something like a cane. You aren't some cripple, Clarisse. You should be fighting wars in my name, not limping around with some dumb stick like the daughter of a lesser god. And if you can't fight, then you are not my daughter. You're a failure of a daughter, and a waste of my time."
Clarisse watched in horror as her cane was snapped clean in half by her father. He stomped away from her, leaving her laying on the floor.
It took her several moments to catch her breath. By the time she was able to sit up, still clutching her side, her siblings had long since scattered.
Oh, great.
She knew that it would be her responsibility to find them all by the end of the night.
The festivities kept on going around her, like a god beating one of his children was a normal or expected occurrence. For Ares, Clarisse bitterly supposed that it was.
She stood up, shakily. Her legs could barely support her, part nerve pain and part unadulterated fear.
She surveyed the wreckage of her cane and she saw that it was far past the point of being usable or fixable. She abandoned it on the floor. There was no use carrying something like that around at this point.
She marked it down in her head as one of the many "gifts" that her father had given to her.
She stumbled through the party, leaning on walls or statues wherever she could, looking for either Silena or Will.
They would know what to do, and Clarisse wasn't sure how much longer she could keep walking like this. She had spent enough months with her cane, using it regularly, that she had almost forgotten how horrible it felt to not be able to use it.
She felt herself growing steadily dizzier, her body unable to continue to function like it should have without the support her cane provided.
She found an unnocupied bench, slumped down into it, and promptly passed out.
…
She woke up to the comforting sight of Silena's sky blue eyes.
"Oh, Clarisse! You're alright? What happened?"
Clarisse's face felt swollen, most likely from getting slapped across the face with godly strength more than once.
"Dad…"
Was all that she was able to choke out.
Silena's eyes darkened with concern. She was one of the few people who Clarisse had told about her abuse from her father, and she was quickly able to extrapolate what had happened.
"I swear, one day I'm going to find a way to kill a god…" she muttered under her breath.
Will's voice called out from just outside of her field of view,
"Clarisse, do I need to look you over or can it wait until we get back to the infirmary later tonight?"
"Tonight's fine, Will."
All the fight had been beaten out of Clarisse, and it was evident in her voice.
"Where's your cane, Clarisse?"
Silena asked. She intentionally kept her voice lowered, knowing that Clarisse probably wasn't up for loud voices.
"He broke it."
Silena's silence was enough proof of her rage. She didn't need to say anything for Clarisse to know how she felt. Her face was impassive to an average observer, but Clarisse could notice the subtle tells that she was angry. Livid, even.
"Well, then I guess we can spend the rest of the night here, and Will can support you when we go to leave. He's got your siblings, under control, by the way. They're worried about you."
"They should stop doing that. It doesn't fucking help anyone to be worried about me."
Silena rolled her eyes, not in the mood to sustain the conversation about showing weakness and emotions that she had experienced a million times before with Clarisse.
Clarisse carefully sat up. Her body ached as bad as it tended to do on the worst of her pain days, but this time it was like her body was just one big bruise.
She leant against her girlfriend, and watched all the other demigods and gods mingle.
Eventually, she said,
"He told me that I was a disgrace. That no child of his should be disabled…. That I'm not a worthwhile daughter if I can't fight."
Silena hand fed her a piece of ambrosia, which Clarisse begrudgingly accepted, and replied,
"Well that's absolutely bullshit. But that's not new. It's not like he's the god of intelligent comments, is he? His opinion of you shouldn't matter. You're his child, for better or for worse, and no amount of his ridiculous claims can change that. You're disabled, and you're his kid, and both things can coexist."
"Sometimes I wonder if he's right. And I'm terrified that he is. What if all I'm worth is my fighting?"
"Well, you're obviously worth more than that, darling. You're a good big sister to your siblings, despite all the circumstances that surround your dad, and you're such a good friend to Will and Percy, and you're the most passionate person I've ever met. And I love you for all of that, not just the fact that you're strong enough to bench press me twice over."
Clarisse let out a painful smile.
"With such smart comments like that, I'm surprised you're not some daughter of Athena."
"Well, we're not supposed to be like our parents, are we? What's the point of being a demigod if not to challenge what our parents think we should be."