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Silena waits outside the Ares Cabin, nimble feet having danced around the landmines that surround it.
“I’m not taking you with me,” Clarisse says gruffly as soon as she steps through the door. Silena is not surprised, “You still don’t have to do this alone,” she points out quietly.
“Leave it, Silena,” Clarisse bites, but Silena has known her and has known her moods for a long time,
“Take Charlie,” she suggests, undeterred, no matter how much the thought of both of them being in danger makes her stomach do a little uncomfortable twist.
Clarisse snorts, “two senior counselors gone and probably dead? How would that do for morale, ‘Lena?”
“Chase, then,” Silena proposes, “Hades, take Jackson.”
The scowl she gets could have killed a hundred Spartan warriors, “I am not taking fucking Jackson.”
Silena sighs, “Fletcher,” but it sounds weak even to her own ears. They both know they need Fletcher around, what with the barrier dying. Monster attacks are only going to get more frequent and deadlier, and Camp needs all the help it can get.
“Leave it, Silena,” Clarisse repeats. Her jaw has been set stubbornly in the way that means she’s made up her mind. Silena doesn’t feel helpless often. She knows that if she really wanted to, she could charmspeak the other girl into taking her or anyone else with. She also knows that Clarisse would never forgive her.
Still, Silena wishes she could change her mind. She wants to beg Clarisse to reconsider. She doesn’t want her to die, and she’d voice this if she doesn’t think the daughter of war would take it as an insult to her honor as a competent warrior. The gods know Clarisse gets enough doubt from her own father. She doesn’t need Silena’s too.
That doesn’t mean she doesn’t worry.
“Just…” she chews on her lip for a moment, debates saying it, and sighs, “come back.”
Clarisse doesn’t respond, simply turns and marches over towards the shore. Silena watches her until her ship has disappeared into the horizon, and then she simply watches the water. It drifts, eats up the sands and the rocky beach, and then draws back, shy, recoiling. The moon skims the waves, and she stares at it with a tight chest before bowing her head. Lady Artemis, she thinks, hesitates, twists her lips, and grips her shirt hem, please, watch over her….
She curses herself at the lapse in judgment as soon as she’s finished the prayer, laying her head back against the Greek column. The gods don’t care for them, they never have. But, perhaps it makes her feel better, that someone else is there with her to witness seeing her friend off to her death. Her loneliness, and her love, and her loyalty, sit steadily thrumming under her ribs, and she tries to find a way to honor them all with each way she turns.
She sighs again, a slow breath that flutters the hair from her face, before leaving the Ares Cabin. She doesn’t stop by Aphrodite, having given up on sleep a while ago. Her eyebags will simply have to suffer a little. Her mother would be scandalized, but her mother is a goddess. She does not know what it is like to struggle, and she does not care that that is all her children understand. That is probably what Silena resents the most.
Sometimes, seeing Charlie in the morning before he sets off towards the forges, or talking with Clarisse between weapons training, her heart clenches and her chest aches and she wonders if she’s doing the right thing. But then there are her dreams for a better world for them, and then there is Luke . And Silena just wants the people she loves to be safe, to be happy. That’s all there is, all she wants. If the gods can’t- refuse to provide that, she will find a way to it herself. She just wants a way to end this suffering. She refuses to believe that's too much to wish for.