Chapter Text
It goes something like this; there's a girl born with laughter that sounds like waves crashing down on shore.
There's a girl who is shoved into the arms of a man who's in over his head. The man was pretty once, with dreams and wide crooked grins and tanned hands weaving through his favorite horse's mane on his parents' farm.
There's nothing wrong with the girl at first glance (they don't look a second time and isn't that a shame)
Now he's in the big city, crumbling under expectations and debt and little girls he never wanted.
One will look at him and wonder what could have possibly drawn the usually picky goddess of love and desire to him. They won't see his wide crooked grins and tanned hands treating everything he comes in touch with care.
He's a good man, but only that.
One who tries, and ultimately fails, to love her.
He's gone a lot for jobs that don't last and she doesn't remember the shade of his eyes because her own are that of her mother's. The girl grows up skipping rope on cracked concrete and watching that one Disney movie her dad got her for her fifth birthday on a tiny, grainy tv screen.
(where the sun sets over the horizon, where the sky meets the sea like a love story)
There's not a song of Cinderella that she does not know by heart.
She learns how to cook when the neighbor comes to check on her and realizes there's nothing in the kitchen. Goodness! When's the last time you've eaten anything hon?
Another thing she learns is how to slip your hands into the pockets of strangers.
When the girl is nine (almost ten!) and she hasn't seen her father for four months, she bumps into him at the apartment, the one that he pays for but doesn't live in.
She bumps into his slightly swinging body hanging from the ceiling, already a memory in the process of being forgotten.
(oh, my dad? she will tell Percy Jackson years later, he owns a chocolate store, humble little thing on the edge of town)
i. she's six, the first time she falls in love
He's an old stray dog that lives in the alley next to her apartment block. He's quite ugly, with fur that curls, that tangles, and an ear that's missing a piece.
She loves him from the moment she lays eyes on him.
He yips happily when she lets her bread fall to the ground, wide brown eyes meeting her own with glee. She doesn't remember anyone ever being so happy to just see her and she starts going down there every day before and after school.
After a few weeks, she manages to sneak him inside. There are no parents to tell her no and so Bruno is her only friend for the next few years.
She has to empty a lot of pockets and even ask her father for help to get him some real dog food and a leash.
She takes him out on walks, secretly laughing at those looking at the tiny girl with the imposing dog, unaware that it's of her they should be scared of and not her adorable Bruno, suckers.
There's never a time where the girl is happier, despite the dog drool landing on her face and the pet hair on her clothes, she takes care of him all on her own and he's hers.
Happiness doesn't last,
(the lesson follows her ten years down the line when she's safely tucked in a pretty pink cabin and the only one not surprised when war erupts)
The sky nearly splits when she's told she cannot take Bruno with her to foster care and the scream that escapes her is nothing less than monstrous, than inhuman.
They drag her away screaming with fat ugly tears running down her face as they promise that her dog will be put in a good household and honey it's fine. Let the adults take care of it.
She learns that love hurts that day.
The girl grows up, a gap between her two front teeth and her pretty dress turning to rags in a home that is not her own.
Foster care is weird, she finds out. The girl bides her time, keeps quiet about what is growing beneath her skin. Such is the world we live in, still and painfully quiet.
(there's a boy years later, with eyes like murky waters and crooked grins ; he's like her in the worst of ways)
There are no gifts for her birthday that year, but something in her veins sings that night, it sings and she knows it is time.
She is gone before morning.
The girl's name is not Silena, but it will be.
ii. the second person she learns to love is Silena Beauregard, the girl (does not exist, not really) who is a creation of her own making
It is a known fact in Camp half-blood, that Silena Beauregard belongs in meadows, silently basking in the sunlight among her chatting sisters.
Lips sealed tight despite her soft expression, eyes crinkling with a glint of knowledge.
It's funny, Silena thinks with a laziness that only girls as beautiful as her can manage, how even in a safe haven for demigods, many forget how their own parents came to be.
ink seeps into paper, bleeds just slightly out of the intended lines
She rose from the foam, heavens parting at her appearance as the sea sang in her veins.
Uranus' genitals or not, Aphrodite was not born. A creation that has no maker, no mother's womb to come from, nor a man's genetic contribution.
She is no woman, with hair like waves twisting to the wind's whims and skin that is not skin but a human shell made of pearl.
She is no maiden, for she is the raging sea in all of its glorious beauty.
Who gave the idea that beauty meant polished edges, that it meant soft and contained? she wonders at times, looking at her children from above. The wind picks up, the ocean trashes with her wrath.
Not beauty herself, that's for sure.
"Silena?" there's a young girl, one who's unclaimed, but Silena knows deep down is her sister.
There's a book in Silena's hands, one that Clarisse La rue mocked her for earlier because oh wow, Aphrodite girls do know how to read, when this tiny, breakable girl approaches her, "You, um, you stay all year at camp right?"
"I do," Silena softly pats the grass next to her, an invitation to sit, "Do you have somewhere to go back to when summer's over?"
There's a slow, hesitant nod, "Yeah...but I'd rather not, I like it here."
Don't make me go back there, Silena hears the plea for what it is, "Well that does it then, we'll have to notice Chiron as to what grade you're in. There's no escaping school, even here."
The other girl giggles, wide green eyes sparkling like jewels. It's charming and so Silena sweeps down to peck the girl's forehead.
Sister, the voice who always follows her sings, my little sister.
(the girl, Valentina, is claimed the next day)
iii. the third is a girl, with hair like wheat shining in the sun and tiny, crescent-shaped scars along her arms
(Valentina's stepmom...isn't a nice person)
Silena loves all of her sisters, but this one is different somehow.
(this one is hers) (Aphrodite can claim whichever of her children she wants, but Valentina is Silena's ; more so than she is Aphrodite's)
When Silena is twelve, she punches Clarisse La Rue in the face.
There's not a flinch in her step as she walks back towards her assigned table, a tray full of food in her hands.
She makes no move to avoid Clarisse's bulky form standing in front of her seat, their arms brush briefly as Silena delicately puts her breakfast down. She does spare a look for Valentina's tear-strained face, however.
There's no abrupt movement even as Clarisse snarls, Silena's expression as serene as ever. Someone screams and a plate from the Apollo table clatters to the ground when Clarisse's head snaps back with a resounding snap.
There's an ugly, angry discoloration blossoming on the other girl's jaw and Silena's clenched fist drops to her side.
The bruise is ugly and angry in the way that Silena Beauregard is not. After all, she's spent just over twenty months as a claimed daughter of Aphrodite, and twenty-nine months in camp overall.
(alternatively : she has long learned to keep quiet and smile prettily)
Thing is, Aphrodite's girls aren't supposed to punch anyone, aren't supposed to know how to punch so well. Silena's previous housemates in foster care weren't always nice, she had to learn.
"That's...not a bad punch," when Clarisse's clenched fist pulls back, Silena is ready.
iv. her fourth love resides in words, in pen stroking paper
There's no seeing this one coming.
Because Silena's education always came second to a lot of things. From gathering money in streets that were always busier during the day, to her father's suicide, the mess that was foster care, the whole demigod thing.
(she arrives at camp with trouble making complete sentences and not knowing who the fuck found America - wasn't it just always there?)
Silena knows she's far from the sharpest tool in the box, despite Chiron's diligent teachings and her best efforts to fight off the dyslexia.
So imagine her surprise when she found herself enthralled, utterly captivated by a book of all things - when Chiron had said she might like it, she hadn't believed him for a second, but well the man had insisted that year-rounders read at least two books a year other than the mandatory ones for his classes.
Her nose had wrinkled, the thing was worlds apart from the magazines typical to the Aphrodite cabin.
With a thick cover and seemingly endless amount of pages - she skips lunch and stays up all night to finish the whole thing. To get it over with, she tells another girl, the paper's grainy texture rolling between two of her fingers.
Truth is, from the second chapter where the story truly took off, Silena had been unable to let go of the damned book. All of her previous encounters with literature were long-suffering and boring, this one sucks her into the depths of exploration and words she has to ask older campers about or even the occasional dictionary.
It has her feet twitching impatiently not in the way they do in class when her ADHD acts up, more of an annoyance her mind cannot comprehend the words faster - an unsettling need to know more.
What happens next? What do those two words she has never seen next to each other mean? Why-?
Chiron nearly has a heart attack when she shows up into his office the next morning right after breakfast, dark circles around haunted yet irredeemably focused eyes, "Could you lend me another one?"
(Silena's mind whirls, it twists like waves that crash onto shore)
While camp half-blood holds no library, Chiron has an impressive collection that he allows campers to read. After that first Austen book comes Dickens who is followed by Homer who leads to Sophocles and John Grisham who she appreciates greatly and then -
Agatha Christie, who will be her favorite even as she lays there dying, is her downfall and Silena is better for it.
v. the fifth is easy for her to fall in love with, Silena never learned how to let go
He has sandy-blond hair and crooked grins and eyes like murky waters.
Luke is like her in the worst ways, a storm in the making (a ticking time bomb).
Oh how she knows he'll go off beautifully, one day, eventually. She wonders when, if she'll be amongst the collateral damage, who will set him off. Silena has a few ideas.
But well, pretty, dumb girls like her can't have good ideas anyways.
Years down the line, the world will assume he charmed her, that he seduced her the poor naive Aphrodite girl to do his bidding. And well, they're right, he did seduce her - just not in the way most would assume.
At fourteen, the girl Silena once was is fading away. There is no more gap between her teeth and no brittle, lackluster hair now that her older sisters taught her how to take care of it.
Silena is every last bit of her mother, drop-dead gorgeous. From her growing hips to her pimple-free face and perfect tan, she hates it. Hates how her hair curls into dark chocolate waves made of silk and how her lips fall into a seducing pout without her consent or knowledge.
Mostly, she hates how people notice.
(those who were so content with keeping their eyes closed)
She never says and just keeps being that quiet, slightly weird daughter of Aphrodite. Silena drinks her first beer at the first Campfire of the season, a few months before the elusive Percy Jackson rolls into camp.
The same night, she's dancing with Valentina like the children they should be (it grows beneath her skin, sings in her only half-mortal veins)
An older boy, son of Demeter she's pretty sure, wraps an arm around her casually. He whispers something in her ear, something she does not hear because of the loud chatter around them.
She raises a haughty brow in answer, lips quirking down when his arm drifts lower around her hips. Valentina's face darkens considerably, rightful anger taking the form of so very mean words fitting of their mother. The older sister feels fondness churning low in her stomach - that's her girl.
(sistermysister)
Silena shrugs out of the boy's hold, looking around for some older siblings of hers to go and talk to - she absentmindedly remembers that she's now the oldest Aphrodite child around.
Lila left for university, Ann disappeared into the night and no one knows for sure what happened to Adam.
Silena doesn't want the cabin counselor position, but now she has little siblings to take care of and cannot be anything other than responsible.
She loses 'Tina into the crowd of either singing or drunk campers, the boy does not lose sight of her and manages to snag her mid-turn as she goes to approach that nice, older boy from the Hephaestus cabin who she gets horseshoes for the pegasi from, the one she knows would serve as a good insect repeller.
"Come on Silena, don't be shy-"
This time, there is no trace of quiet, peaceful, loving Silena when she hisses, "You will let go of me right this instance," the boy's face twists into something ugly, something that speaks of tease and snobby Aphrodite girls.
She's half a breath away from clocking the boy when somebody beats her to it, grabbing the boy by the shirt and dragging him off her, "Okay that's enough, go back to your cabin to cool off, and don't think Katie won't hear about this."
Silena raises a brow, eyes looking up from the muscular chest she's faced with to an angular face she immediately recognizes. How could she not?
"Boys, am I right?" the grin Luke sends her speaks of boyish charm that hides razor-sharp edges.
She is the raging sea trapped in a bottle and he is the storm not yet to have hit.
Silena smiles prettily, secrets hiding in the corners of her mouth, "You don't say," the world will never know that for that one, terrible second, she was the one to charm him.
That there were no thoughts of accomplice and fellow traitor having been whispered to him by the Titan king. Just those of the pretty girl with her lips shut tight and glass-like eyes that speak for her.
Silena's mind whirls as she looks at the disaster Luke Castellan will become, she looks and she knows.
(they are the same)
She takes his hand and lets him drag her to a clearing north of Canoe Lake, "Head counselor staying up past curfew? Oh, what will people say?" She's no stranger to the way his stormy eyes drag themselves to the flimsy strap sliding down her shoulder. The top, the one previously hiding underneath her camp shirt, was once Lila's, and Silena loves it to bits.
She's not the only one it seems.
"Nothing that's not been said before," oh the joys of being a boy. To not have words etched onto your skin forever like knives planted into your flesh.
(Silena loves all of her sisters, slut and heartbreaker and tease and dumb, even when her sisters do not love themselves)
Silena's eyes soften when Luke's eyes catch sight of a pine tree as they walk back towards the cabins, words getting lost to his thoughts. "Frustrating isn't it? To see cruelty being rewarded by glory, while we are walking tragedies?"
His silence is telling, but not as much as the striking light that comes to his eyes, "Get some sleep Luke, I think you've been needing some for a while now." Peace, is what she means and he hears her loud and clear.
"You're a strange girl Silena Beauregard," he says it like a compliment, voice low and raspy. Oh, she thinks, oh isn't that just positively charming?
Whimsical girl she is, Silena smiles, "Or maybe the world has gone mad and I'm the only one normal around."
She's young(er) and not quite as naive as people make her out to be, letting him kiss her fingers like the prince that he is not and knowing that he will be her downfall.
(then again, when has love ever stopped on account of something as simple as common sense?)
He is not nearly as bad as what they believe - not yet at least, and maybe the world should be more scared of girls who sneak their hands up his arms, around his neck securely and kiss the corner of his lips without warning than they should be scared of him.
(pathetic, optimistic boy that he is)
But well, the world is free to believe what it wants.
Something like three (four?) months later, a boy shows up at camp, a boy whose soul sings of the ocean's deepest secrets and of change.
It's not Percy's fault, she knows, but it's at the same moment that she loses Luke. Worse, it's at that moment that Luke loses himself completely to the monster that haunts his nights.
She can feel it when he kisses her, how exhausted he is.
How the resentment, the one she knew was always there, bubbles up to the surface when they lay next to each other in their clearing, talking until the sun comes up.
How cruel must it be, to have the one place where one should be able to rest, to get a break, tainted and taken from you.
It's a slow change, one that she had seen coming - no matter how she tried to convince herself otherwise, that camp, that she would be enough, by the end of the summer he is gone.
(Silena is gone also, for she has never learned to let go)