Chapter Text
Rachel closes her eyes, smiling. She’s got a warm feeling from the top of her head to the tips of her toes, like she’s drank a hot cup of chocolate on a cold day.
She’d gotten a bunch of hair stuff at the mall while also grabbing anything that Hazel looked at just a little too long. It’s been far too long since she’s had someone she could spoil, and Hazel has good taste. Then, once they’d gotten back, one of the girls from the Hephaestus cabin had spotted all their stuff and offered to help them.
Holly, the girl, is really, really good at braids so she’s been teaching Hazel how to do them on Rachel’s hair, and then one thing led to another and now there’s a whole braid-train sitting by the pool. She feels like she’s at a sleepover, back when nobody really knew or cared about what their parents did.
Clarisse and Chris are curled up on one deck chair together, and they almost look like one being, four arms and four legs. Sally’s talking to Thalia, discussing something, and Paul’s looking up from where he was testing out his new pens to just watch his wife. Other demigods are chilling by the pool, like Joe, kid of Hermes, and Charlie, son of Athena, who are flirting back-and-forth, much to the annoyance of Charlie’s little sister, making her look up from her book. She wrinkles her nose in playful disgust, then dives right back into the pages.
And Rachel has an awful headache. And her throat hurts.
An image, a glimpse of the future keeps coming to her; but it vanishes before she can look. Like something’s messing with the frequency, waving a hand through her green smoke before she can read the signals in it.
Rachel hates it.
A trio of friends, basking in the summer sun, heads on each other’s stomachs to make a triangle in the grass. There, then it’s gone.
Snatches of a conversation, whispered loyalty, promised fealty. There, then it’s gone.
The sweet taste of sugar on her lips, stickiness on her fingers, a full stomach. There, then it’s gone.
Her hands have stopped, halfway through the fishtail braid she’s doing on an older Hunter, about 14, Madolyn.
“Alright?” Madolyn asks while she’s wrangling Georgia into a pair of twin braids
“Yeah, fine.” Rachel smiles, as the dregs of that future conversation slips away from her. Her throat aches, her green smoke pushing against the vice grip around her neck.
She goes back to her work on Madolyn’s hair, thick and soft. Hazel’s hands are still in her hair, practising by braiding and un-braiding the same piece of hair. Once she’s finally satisfied, she curls the braid around one finger to make it stick.
There’s a splash, someone’s fallen in the pool.
“Britney!” The girl in the pool yells. “You fool of a leper’s daughter! You could hunt for one hundred more years and never find an ounce of sense to fill your head!”
Correction, someone was thrown into the pool.
There’s another splash, Britney diving in and almost landing on the other Hunter. They begin wrestling, screeching at each other.
Madolyn sighs heavily at the scene, Georgia giggles.
“Eight hundred years together and they still fight like bleeding cats.” Madolyn doesn’t even look up from her work.
“That’s a very long time to hold a grudge,” Rachel says instead of trying to wrap her head around the idea of eight hundred years. Georgia snorts.
“Brits and Tiffs don’t have any grudges,” the little Hunter intones.
Rachel points to the girls scrapping in the pool.
Madolyn takes one hand away from Georgia’s hair to make a so-so motion. “They’ve always been like this, even before they joined apparently. No-one’s been able to find out if they’re best friends or mortal enemies, not even Our Lady.”
“When did they join?” The girls have stopped beating each other up and are now attempting to pull other people into the pool, like off-brand sirens.
“1200-ish? A few decades before me, I remember that much. Emmie always called them the Terrible Two, and if you pissed Zoë off enough she’d send you on hunts with them. And, since I was the new girl, I’d always be sent off with them.”
Georgia giggles a bit more. “I’ve never been sent on a hunt with them,” she brags.
“That’s because you’re enough of a menace all on your own.” Madolyn chuckles fondly, going back to Georgia’s braids. “You three would raze the whole earth if I left you alone with them for five minutes.”
Georgia goes suspiciously silent.
“That wasn’t a suggestion.” The growl is playful, Madolyn playing with her pup. “You’re not allowed to team up with Brits and Tiffs, not while I’m still around.”
Georgia gives a playful huff in return. “Not even one little hunt?”
“Over my dead body.”
Rachel shivers, the leather grip of a handle in her hand instead of Madolyn’s silken locks. The tremble in her arms reaching the sharp tip of the silver knife, but she can’t shake now, this has to be a clean shot.
It’ll hurt less, that way.
Rachel blinks as the smoke distorts, stopping her from looking further.
The sun is setting by the time Nico returns, and Rachel’s hair has been thoroughly styled by Hazel’s no-longer inexperienced hands. The boy looks over to the group of girls and smiles at his sister. He waves Hazel over, and she walks over.
They have a quiet discussion for a few moments and Holly shuffles forward to take over braiding Rachel’s hair.
“Her hair looks very nice,” Rachel tells Holly. Hazel’s hair is in tight braids around her head, decorated with elegant gold cuffs, and tied back into a big poof. “I like the gold.”
“She bought so much gold; it’s such a good colour on her,” Holly agrees. “Some people were just born to be covered in jewels and gems; I should make her a necklace or something. Maybe something in silver, this time.”
Holly mutters a little more to herself as she continues to braid the back of Rachel’s hair. Hazel looks a little uneasy, but she rolls her shoulders back and nods, just once. Nico reaches out and squeezes her hand, smiling faintly. He turns to face the assembled demigods, letting go of her hand to clap once, loudly.
“I have news,” he announces. “May I have everyone’s attention?”
There’re a few moments of shuffling, a few people running off to grab friends that had fallen asleep in their rooms. Soon enough, all of them were around the pool, hanging on to Nico’s every yet-unspoken word.
He takes a breath, and begins.
“I have managed to locate the promised safe haven.” He holds up a hand for silence as some cheers break out. “However, there is something you ought to know.”
He pauses, hesitation halting his words.
“I told you that I received the location of the safe haven from my father. This was only partly true. I received it from Pluto, the Roman King of the Underworld.”
Whispers burst across camp, and Rachel sees Thalia take in a shuddering breath.
It’s Hazel that speaks this time. “Yes, Pluto. My father. He asked Nico to find me and bring me here.”
Nico nods to his sister. “The safe haven is known as New Rome. It isn’t far from here, and it’s well-defended. I, and my sister, intend to travel there in the morning, to announce our presence and request sanctuary.”
Rachel feels a churning in her gut and her head spins. The green smoke is clamouring, pushing, pushing, pushing, and she coughs.
“You’re not going alone, right?” Clarisse insists, rising to her feet. Chris is close behind.
“That… was my initial plan,” Nico hedges.
“Absolutely not.” Thalia moves forward.
Rachel agrees, pulling herself up. The green smoke dances around in her mind. She should speak.
“Me, Clarisse, a handful of Hunters,” Thalia continues.
“Chris comes with me,” Clarisse asserts.
“That’s a fucking invasion force! They’ll shoot first and ask questions later!” Hazel speaks up. “Me and Nico.”
“Stop.” Rachel hacks up. Nobody listens. “Stop!”
Green smoke is at the edges of her vision. People stop to look at her. She pants. She’s supposed to know this, and she pushes herself into that smoke. She screws her eyes shut.
The crackle of thunder, the smell of ozone, lighting dancing across a spear, a sword. Warmth on her fingers, sweet nothings in her ear. It’s not quite right, the words she says, a song in the wrong key, but it’s close enough.
“Thalia comes with us.”
“Rachel?” someone asks, but she can’t hear it.
Waves crash in her ears. She puts her hands over them, but the waves roar louder. She grabs her hair, the loose curls not-yet tied back, nails scrapping her scalp.
No, no more.
Rain batters against her skull, colder than ice, freezing her to the bone. She shivers.
No more!
Water curls around her feet, tugging her out to sea. The salt makes her jeans heavy, tries to pull her under.
No, no, no! He’s gone, I can’t-
The riptides get more insistent, the rain gets colder, the waves threaten to tip her over.
I’m sorry.
The water recedes.
I’m sorry.
“Rachel?” the someone asks again.
The smoke still smells like the sea, the first trace of saltwater that greets you as you drive to the ocean. It is coffee, it is paper, it is sugar. Her heart aches, and her vision is clear.
She points blindly.
“With us.”
She opens her eyes at last.
Sally is staring back at her; the finger pointed at her chest. The woman’s mouth is open in a perfect ‘o’ and Rachel’s still shaking. But it’s not Sally, not just Sally. A young woman, a crown on her head, an earned fierceness in her eyes. Danaë. A proud nereid, hair floating around her like a halo, a stern look on her face. Thetis. There’s more, more women overlaid over Sally’s image like a flipbook, but Rachel can’t see them.
Nico clears his throat.
“The Oracle has spoken. I, Nico di Angelo, Hazel Levesque, Rachel Dare, Thalia Grace and Sally Jackson will go to New Rome.”