Chapter Text
it’s a mess, really. there’s always a clambering jumble of people, too tired to form coherent sentences but too awake to keep from practically bouncing off the walls. the high stress is normal and it will be gone by breakfast, anyway. by then, everyone will be fine.
she finds herself liking the early mornings. keeping quiet, she'll peel off her blanket and step carefully between shoes and clothes and just . . . whatever was there (she learns to have constant vigilance after almost stepping on a knife) and make it to the bathroom with a bundle of clothes under her arm.
drew used to get ready with the rest of the cabin — she used to find the chaos and high volume comforting. they were a family. but she fucked it up. numerous times. so it’s early mornings and late nights and an awful temper.
she brushes out her hair, taking her time. no matter what she does overnight — pinning it back in varying ways, even going so far as to use one of sarah’s damned potions — it always ends up being a rats nest in the morning.
she loosens her grip on the brush, not wanting the imprint of the handle on her palm for the next hour or so. she has a tendency to do that; clutch whatever she’s holding when she gets lost in her thoughts.
drew doesn’t like getting lost in her thoughts. they’re never very good.
even if the memory of silena carefully going through her hair one section at a time during the hectic frenzy called mornings is comforting like a warm fire on a cold winter day or a blanket wrapped around her shoulders late at night, it has no place in her mind or her heart. she is done with silena, and that is that.
the girl had been a traitor all along. had she really meant it when she told drew she could be anything she wanted to be? when she said that it was all going to be okay and everyone was safe and — no, she wasn't just saying that — and they'd all be there in the morning and the apollo cabin was doing amazing and—
silena was the reason it wasn’t all okay. she was the reason no one was safe. she was the reason the apollo cabin had to work that much.
and drew had been tricked like she was going to pet a tired cat who only scratched in response.
and drew . . . she has a nasty habit of biting back. silena should've known better than to fuck up like that. her younger sister certainly does now, by any consolation.
her younger sister. drew feels it’s almost like a secret no one knows but her, even though everyone does.
no one showed sympathy when drew was thrust into silena’s role, right after learning what she had done and, gods, what happened to her—
there’s no one there to cradle her after a bad dream, no one there to hold her close and tell her it’s all going to be alright, okay? it's just a dream, drew. you're safe.
drew won’t admit it — she can’t admit it. but she misses her. she misses her older sister. she misses the girl with bright eyes that gave warm hugs. she misses the girl who was the best at providing comfort. she misses the fucking traitor.
it’s early mornings like these where she gets lost in these horrendous thoughts.
thank fucking god for music.
she untangles her earbuds strategically with a practiced method. she shouldn't really bunch them up like that in a pocket or bag whenever she doesn’t use them — they’re bound to break, definitely, and being more than five years old certainly doesn't help with that.
she used to have another pair — one silena got her from the camp store after her others broke. she stuffed them under a box beneath her bed after the war.
so she went back to the originals. sure, the right side is quieter than the left and it pisses her off so incredibly much, but she isn’t really on friendly terms with the hephaestus cabin (or any cabin at all), so she can’t ask them to fix up her earbuds.
drew deals with the annoyance and others like it in the dignified way — curled fists, sneers, and most certainly swears. she doesn’t really engage in the last activity around younger campers.
her dad used to tell her she swore like a sailor. maybe he shouldn't have let her watch deadpool at age eleven, then, if he was so against swearing. it’s such a stupid thing to care about, too. after drew was taken to camp one summer, away from camp sycamore and to camp half-blood, he had worried. but then he got used to the fact that monsters are real and drew isn’t even completely human and her mother certainly isn’t.
he had worried while she was labeled as missing and then for a few weeks after until she came home from camp half-blood. of course he worried when he knew the danger of her going to school, even outside, and when she came back summer after summer with injuries or scars. he almost lost it when she came back and mentioned a war. he couldn't handle it when he learned she fought in it. (more or less, anyway.)
maybe the excuse that she was just exaggerating as he liked to put it was to save himself from worrying too much.
but, besides worrying, he’s never really there. she has siblings, both younger, who also have to be cared and paid for. so when he spends all his time at work and her stepmother does, too; she doesn’t get much time with either.
it's not that her family is full of awful people — no, they’re rather nice. it’s just that the house is sometimes so empty. ethan is always at soccer practice or art club or some type of activity after school, and maggie spends her afternoons at play dates and dance lessons. sometimes drew babysat her, but when she was sent off to boarding school for her safety (allegedly), she couldn't really do that anymore.
drew brushes away the memories from the forefront of her mind (she knows that if she keeps them there, gods know what she would do), and focuses on putting on her clothes and makeup.
when she first started showing interest in makeup at thirteen, silena had provided her with blush, eyeliner, lip gloss, and more, along with lessons. those mornings and afternoons were spent in the bathroom, giggling and chewing on lips while focusing as silena expertly told drew what she could do with each little thing.
for drew’s fourteenth birthday, a year and a month before the war and about two years after silena had decided to betray the camp, she presented her with pink eyeliner. drew has used it ever since then, of course — even after the war. she’s allowed to have this one thing that reminds her of better times before everything went to shit — right?
even if that one thing came from a traitor who hurt so many of drew’s friends and siblings and just . . . everyone.
everyone seems so attached to the idea that silena was a hero, after all, and if they can cling on to that deranged notion, drew can cling on to her pink eyeliner.
the earbuds always make a crackling sound when she starts playing music, and then again intermittently while she listens. scrolling through her phone with the cracked screen protector she doesn’t care enough about to take off, drew scrutinizes the songs on one of her playlists. she doesn’t make that many — she doesn’t need over four — and one of them has accumulated over a thousand songs. she gives up and just shuffles, too tired to care at this point.
demigods aren’t supposed to have phones, but listening to music doesn’t send a signal out to monsters, so she’s safe until she makes a call or texts someone.
money, money, money (the movie version, not the actual track recorded by abba) starts playing quietly in her ears. she turns up the volume by a few notches, letting it drown out the sound of faulty air conditioning. (she needs to ask the hephaestus cabin to fix that.) it’s a good song, but for some reason it feels so sterile as she applies her lipstick in the cold, empty bathroom.
the bathroom isn't made of tile and concrete — it’s pink walls and lace and roses and soft towels and ornate decor. but it’s summer, the tail end of it, and it’s warm. so, overnight, the air conditioning, with all its clattering, keeps the occupants of cabin ten cool and awake.
it’s almost amusing, really. the ice queen herself is uncomfortable with the lack of warmth. piper could have a field day with that, if she were still at camp.
drew still can’t figure out what her deal is; not really, anyway. she knows piper is foolish and naïve, something dangerous at camp, but she can’t figure out why she had cared so much about being head counselor only to ditch and leave drew with the reins again. after considering what piper could have possibly wanted, she figures it was just to prove a point.
but that isn’t her place. piper hadn't been there during the titan war, she hadn't even known she was a demigod yet at the time. not only that, but she went on one quest and was at camp for maybe a few weeks total, and she thought she was fit to be head counselor? especially when the only time before then, while she was at camp, she had shown nothing but hatred at being in cabin ten?
and, of course, all of their siblings ate it up. but drew knows better. she has to because no one else seems to. if her siblings distance themselves from aphrodite, from her power, they can survive. they don’t have to learn to fight — they can lead normal lives without having to look over their shoulders to make sure no monsters are behind them.
drew knows she isn’t as lucky as them. she had, somehow, gotten the ability to charmspeak and she’s good at it. she remembers working in the infirmary, during one of the many battles, sitting or standing beside an injured camper and telling them in that soothing, honeyed voice that they’re okay. they’re okay and they can’t feel the pain. there isn’t pain — it’s all gone now and they can lay still so one of the apollo campers or other volunteers can patch them up.
even after watching all those movies as a kid, drew isn’t sure she could ever be prepared for all the injuries at camp and in the war. they were deadly and gross and it meant that someone was hurt, that they weren't kept safe, and drew . . . did nothing. all she could do was trick them into thinking they were okay.
a lot of times they weren't.
a lot of times they died.
a lot of times they forgot drew even helped them, not like she can blame them for it. they were delirious, usually, when she came over to help. of course they would forget.
but piper wasn't there for that. she wasn't there for silena’s betrayal — she took all the bullshit about her being a hero as true. and maybe she was at some point, maybe, but certainly not during the war. she smuggled information to fucking luke, not only endangering the lives of so many campers — so many kids, but also killing them. they got killed because of her shitty decision.
and maybe if drew was able to get anywhere near silena on the battlefield when she laid on the ground with poison burning away her skin and eyes and hair, maybe if she heard what she had to say in her dying breath and maybe if she hadn't been blocked off by people who didn't love silena like she did, maybe her opinion would be different.
but drew was pushed away in a jumble of people, held back and sent to the infirmary even though she was screaming and crying and yelling please, silena! let me fucking over there — silena— she couldn't get close. she couldn't hear what she had to say. but she did see the fucking bracelet with a scythe.
the fucking monstrosity.
she remembers sobbing and hiccuping as she knelt down next to injured campers, as she mowed down monsters as best she could and was eventually pulled back because no, drew, you can’t fight! you’re just an aphrodite kid, no go back to the infirmary, they need you there! you're holding them back out there.
fuck them and fuck silena and fuck the fucking gods and fuck the titans and fuck luke and fuck—
and maybe fuck herself.
definitely fuck herself.
making sure not to send anything clattering off the sink, drew packs up her makeup supplies in her bag and bundles up her pajamas, setting them aside for now. she washes her hands, using one of the soft pink towels hanging from a rack. the towels are pretty much always clean and neatly put away, at least in the mornings and nights. she isn’t sure if they’re vintage, vintage styled, or just old. they could probably have been made in the fifties for all she knows.
once out of the bathroom, she throws the pajamas in her chest, closes the lid slowly to not make a sound, and puts the makeup bag on the shelf behind her bed.
drew checks the time. her siblings will be pissed, but it won’t be any different than their other mornings.
she figured out that waking up to music was better than a sudden noise, like the clapping she did every morning. when piper first came to be in charge, she did the same thing drew used to do to wake everyone up. but drew hated it, and hated waking up at the same time, so she set a quiet alarm for herself around thirty minutes before piper woke up.
besides, the music was much better than the clapping, so she started waking up the rest of her cabin the same way.
drew also learned that if she plays music that everyone likes, they'll be less pissed about waking up so early. so she yanks out her earbuds from the jack (she hasn’t gotten a new phone since the iphone 8 and at this point is pretty sure the only way the earbuds will break is if they’re thrown directly into a volcano), connected to her speaker, turned the volume down, and pressed shuffle.
she slowly raised the volume, holding the speaker out to the middle of the cabin. soon enough, dolly parton’s southern drawl was ringing throughout the cabin.
tumble outta bed and stumble to the kitchen
pour myself a cup of ambition
yawnin’ and stretchin’ and try to come to life
met with groaning and blearily blinking eyes, she walks up to the front, and switches the lights on. well, more like flicks the switch and moves the dimmer up to about halfway, and then slowly up to max after that. (she also learned the sudden transition to full brightness isn’t exactly pleasant.)
jump in the shower and the blood starts pumpin’
“wake up, everyone!” she calls. “the cabin isn't going to clean itself!”
(sometimes there are a few arguments against that — after all, when the first person makes it to the bathroom, they always notice it’s cleaner than the night before. for a little bit, josephine was able to convince lacy there was a ghost haunting them.)
out on the streets, the traffic starts jumpin’
the campers start to slowly climb out of bed; some changing in the middle of the cabin, others forming a line in the bathroom.
with folks like me on the job from 9 to 5
sounds of clattering toothbrushes on the counter with hair products and makeup make it through the bathroom door, which swings open and close with each person passing through.
working 9 to 5, what a way to make a living
barely gettin’ by, it's all taking and no giving
drew sets the speaker on her bed, overseeing the cabin.
they just use your mind and they never give you credit
valentina trips over a slipper.
it’s enough to drive you crazy if you let it
mitchell almost starts using winston’s toothbrush on accident.
9 to 5, for service and devotion
“WHAT THE FUCK IS THAT?”
you would think that i would deserve a fair promotion
“language, mitchell!”
want to move ahead but the boss won’t seem to let me
“Oh, gods, it’s on me!”
i swear sometimes that man is out to get me
everett screams, rachel laughs, and mitchell cowers in a corner of the bathroom.
“just kill it!”
“it has fucking wingsthey let you dream just to watch them shatter
you’re just a step on the boss man’s ladder
“here — just let me—”
but you got dreams he’ll never take away
“thank you, drew!”
“yeah, thank you, drew.”
in the same boat with a lot of your friends
“yeah, yeah, now finish up so we can get to breakfast.”
waiting for the day your ship will come in
and the tide’s gonna turn an’ it's all gonna roll your way
more clambering to make beds, get to the bathroom, and changing outfits again and again to find something that they actually want to wear.
working 9 to 5, what a way to make a living
barely gettin’ by it's all taking and no giving
drew watches her siblings get ready; some of them delaying getting dressed and brushing their teeth to fix up their area. she knows georgie (otherwise known as geo or georgette or georgiana) is taking a shower, ulyesses is changing in one of the stalls, lacy will be brushing her hair for the next few minutes, and everett is helping rachel braid her hair (again, after it got messy overnight).
mitchell fusses with their hair, making sure it has volume and a good shape. sometimes he regrets dying it and laments about it to the rest of the cabin. josephine is right beside him, flossing and all the while teasing them for being so uptight about his appearance. winston sweeps around the cabin, making a pile of dust to push into a dustpan.
valentina stands on her bed, uprighting the flag that hangs over it which falls down once a week. drew ordered gorilla tape from connor yesterday, but he had run out and the next trip to town won’t be until next week, so the cabin is forced to hope the flag won’t fall down in the middle of the night and suffocate valentina.
there are a lot of flags in the cabin; multiple rainbow pride flags, a progress flag, two trans flags, drew’s pretty sure there are two large bi flags and a smaller one under everett’s books, a lesbian flag, a pan flag, a gender fluid flag, a non-binary flag, and then the welsh flag. (she can’t really explain the last one very well; the summer before, ulysses sent a letter to their mom asking for it because they thought it looked cool. they are not welsh. and their mom delivered. quite literally.)
9 to 5, yeah, they got you where they want you
there's a better life and you think about it don't you
it's a rich man's game no matter what they call it
and you spend your life putting money in his wallet
as the song fades out and the next one plays (i want you back by the jackson 5), the chaos slowly mellows out and drew is able to actually stop watching her siblings for a second and not worry about anyone getting hurt by accident.
at 7:55, the cabin is stumbling out the door after drew threatens to leave them behind if they aren’t finished getting ready. they’re already chattering; mitchell explaining to valentina that no, i’m not all dressed up for fucking malcolm and connor, okay? i have standards, i hope you know— and everett telling josephine about a new camper who’s apparently a hermes kid’s mother’s friend’s cousin.
drew does a quick head count, and they’re off. breakfast is served as usual, and all the normal conversations are taking place.
“you're not fooling anyone, mitchell,” valentina snorts. “stop staring at them!”
“i am not staring, i am simply admiring,” he protests, slinking back in their seat and staring at his plate after proving his innocence to their sister.
everett laughs loudly at mitchell’s claim, her voice ringing in the pavilion.
“yeah, sure,” he snorts. “and i’m the fucking grinch.”
mitchell groans, drawing out the sound and leaning back before slumping forward. “i hate all of you,” they seeth.
“mhm,” ulysses says, rolling their eyes. “i’m sure you do. now eat your waffles. we have canoe racing next.”
“oh, shit—” mitchell swears, cutting off his sentence when drew shoots him a quick look to stop swearing. “i forgot we have canoe racing first,” he mumbles, falling to their left onto valentina’s shoulder.
“don’t flip it like last time, and you'll be fine,” she says, reaching over for the syrup. “well,” she pauses, considering something else, “maybe if you flip it by malcolm’s, he’ll jump into the water to save you.”
“you're the worst — you're my least favorite sibling now,” he declares, but he still leans on her shoulder.
josephine shoots up at their words. “do i get to be your favorite now?” she asks hopefully, mouth still full of food.
“no, lacy is,” mitchell replies, winking to her. she laughs and happily goes on eating her food, ponytails bouncing as she bobs her head up and down to chase after her fork. josephine looks away dejectedly, trying to stop a grin from appearing on her face.
geo just sighs. “i don't get how any of you are children of the goddess of lovewill slap you,” winston threatens, pointing his fork across the table at his sibling, the food still pinned on it.
drew raises a hand and points at her sibling. “nobody’s going to be slapping anyone, winston.”
“party killer,” he mumbles, but considering the way he sank into himself, drew doesn’t care to give a reply as she knows there will be no violence any time soon. there’s never much play fighting in cabin ten, even though they can all by rowdy or at each other’s throats. it’s mostly confined to facial expressions and words with double meanings.
it wasn't always like that, there was a time when they actually talked about their feelings, but drew remembers what came from that. she remembers making the burial shrouds and burning them, sometimes when there wasn't even a body left to burn, or when what was left was less than half the size of what they were before they died.
she remembers lots of things nobody else seems to. they all focus on the positives, getting lost in fantasies torn from the whole picture, the whole past. everyone else remembers the laughter and the hugs. drew remembers the gleaming of the sickle charm and the dismissal of what happened during the war in favor of fake joy.