Chapter Text
The thing is Clarisse Roxanne La Rue might just have dropped a bomb into the room when she doesn’t say Silena Amora Beauregard’s name but Chris Rodriguez.
To many in the camp was a simple choice, albeit a surprising one, yet a choice. But to half of Ares cabin, and the whole of Aphrodite’s cabin who stopped, almost literally freezing was another story, to tell you something had happened. If that hadn’t Annabeth’s eyes would tell you some more.
And then if that wasn’t enough the almost perfectly calm, to a degree eerie, look on Silena’s face should.
It lingers in the air of the big house, like something just… locked.
Not loud outrage. Not even whispers at first or gossip, and it’s not completely because it’s a deadly quest to the ever so stormy waters of the Sea of Monsters, to find the famed Golden Fleece to heal Thalia’s Tree and save camp. No. Soothing else lingers.
Clarisse doesn’t look at anyone after she says his name, and Silena simply sits there. That serene smile on her face. The kind of smile that is a polite, delicate thing, almost too perfectly placed.
Her fingers remain folded in her lap like she hasn’t just been publicly passed over for something that, by all expectations — including pretty much every single camper — should have been hers.
That’s what makes it worse, not even accounting what she is actually feeling in the moment.
But Silena doesn’t falter. She doesn’t react, she knows if she did the whole of Cabin Ten would have exploded. Because a little something about Aphrodite’s children? They can and will get their hands dirty for their siblings.
If she’d flinched, Cabin Ten would have exploded. If she’d looked angry, it would’ve been clean — sharp, understandable.
So instead she merely allows herself to remain composed, and that composure is surgical.
Annabeth’s voice eyes sharpen as she looks between Clarisse and Silena. Head slowly tilting, almost owlish-like in movement as she accesses, calculates. This isn’t random. Clarisse doesn’t do random, she’s impulsive, yes. But she doesn’t do random when things are serious, not when miscalculations can be catastrophic.
Chris Rodriguez, looks like he half-expects someone to tell him this is a joke, but he straightens.
Half of the Ares cabin is looking between themselves. They would have assumed no, known that Clarisse would have chosen Silena. They’ve watched they orbiting one another, watched Clarisse soften un ways she pretends she doesn’t, they have seen them training together how smooth and clean their fightings styles compliment one another. The normal assumption would be that Clarisse would chose Silena to join her.
And now this…
And Clarisse isn't looking at Silena, which might be the loudest thing happening in the room, because Clarisse LaRue never backed down from a fight
And suddenly, this quest isn't just about whatever’s lurking in those cursed waters, whatever is lurking between those who are to go on the quest and the fleece.
It’s about something that’s been simmering.
And Clarisse just set it on fire.
“Well you lot leave at dawn, have a good quest yada yada yada,” Mr. D says rolling his eyes sipping from his Diet Coke.
It’s final. The room erupts into noise, whispers, talking, arguments.
Annabeth’s eyes move back towards Silena when Percy leaves, leaves looking at her with hurt and betrayal in his eyes and that’s a whole another can of worms.
But Silena… the daughter of Aphrodite feels too calm. And Annabeth isn’t too keen on silent variables on a good day, and in the current situation, she knows that the quiet reactions, are the ones that do most damage.
Silena does not rush.
That would be unbecoming, brash, impolite. Many adjectives she doesn’t wish attached to how she behaves herself.
Instead, she rises with that same effortless grace Cabin Ten is famous for smoothing her dungaree pant legs, offering a small reassuring smile to the younger girls who are staring at her like something fragile has just cracked.
“Eat your dinner,” she tells them gently. “You’ll need the energy for training tomorrow.”
Her voice is warm, light, unbothered. It screams normal Silena.
One of the younger campers, her youngest sister, little five-year-old, Paloma, tugs at her sleeve. “But you were supposed to—”
Silena kneels so that their eyes are level.
“Plans change, Little One,” she says softly. “It doesn’t mean anything is wrong.”
It’s such a careful sentence.
Across the pavilion, Clarisse pretends she isn’t watching, and Annabeth notices that too.
Silena rises again, brushing invisible dust from her hands. She doesn’t look toward Cabin Five, or towards Chris, or towards Clarisse. And such action, somehow, feels like it says more than if she had.
The path from to Cabin Ten feels longer tonight.
Camp Half-Blood is loud behind her, metal clashing in the arena, laughter near the strawberry fields, the distant rush of Long Island Sound beyond the trees, but it feels muffled. As if she’s walking underwater.
A breeze lifts her hair.
Cabin Ten comes into view — pink and grey marble gleaming in the evening light, lace curtains catching the wind, perfume and roses drifting faintly from the open doorway. Home.
She steps inside.
The noise from camp fades instantly, the tiny little trick that is oh so needed for children who always feel like the world is loud because of the emotions or waves of emotions they can sense.
The interior glows warm — gold light reflecting off mirrors, plush cushions scattered artfully, the air scented with peonies and expensive perfume.
Only when the door closes behind her does her expression change.
It isn’t dramatic, or tears. It’s smaller. A tightening around her mouth, a flicker in her eyes and expression. It isn’t hurt, not exactly. It’s something… sharper. Outside, Camp Half-Blood continues buzzing.
Inside Cabin Ten, Silena walks toward where her bed is. And then almost unconsciously, she moves pulling a linen scarf from her bed headboard, placing it loosely over her hair. She then lights a candle by her bedside table, the flame catches slowly. It wavers once, then steadies.
It curls upward in soft gold, reflected a hundred times in the mirrors lining Cabin Ten. The light makes the marble glow warmer, softer, almost alive.
Silena kneels before it, and her voice does not tremble as she speaks. It carries, soft and melodic, yet threaded with something ancient. It is not the sweet coaxing tone she uses with younger campers, not the polite diplomacy she uses in the pavilion.
This is prayer, inheritance.
“Mother, O, Golden Lady Aphrodite. Areia, Nikephorus, Pandemos, patroness of Cyprus, Sea-borne, daughter of Ouranos and the ocean’s foam…”
Areia, warlike.
Nikephorus, bringer of victory.
Pandemos, of all people.
Sea-borne.
Daughter of foam.
The air shifts, and it isn’t wind. The curtains do not stir, the door does not move. But the candle flame lengthens, brightening — not violently, just attentively.
“…Goddess who blurs the lines of battle and love, of armor and devotion. Do not let her know despair. Let her navigate waters forth and back.”
Her. Not me, not us. Her.
Silena lowers her head, and there for a moment, only a split moment, the calmness fractures. Her fingers tighten in the linen of the veil.
She isnt praying for victory, for glory, to be chosen for something. She’s praying for Clarisse.
For a moment, the scent in the cabin changes. The peonies grow stronger, sweeter, almost intoxicating, layered with something sharper, that she recognizes immediately: saltwater.
A presence. Soft, terrifying, beautiful. One that lasts less than a heartbeat, but Silena feels it the same way. Not words, never words, but a warmth against her sternum: fierce and steady.
Love, but not gentle, love with teeth.
Love that marches beside soldiers and does not blink. Love that has ended more wars than swords ever did, and started just as many.
The flame bends sideways, though there is no breeze, before settling.
Silena opens her eyes and exhales as the cabin returns to quietness. She moves her hand, pressing a kiss to her fingers before she presses them to the base of the candle, sealing the prayer.
“Bring her back,” she murmurs, softer now, sounding far more like the teenage girl she is, “even if she does not look at me when she does. Even if she ends up not being someone I get to call mine.”
It’s about an hour later when Silena sits in the porch of the Aphrodite Cabin.
Camp has quieted. The arena is empty now. The sound of the ocean beyond the trees rolls steady and distant.
Silena exhales, rolling her head as she looks upon the night sky. Because if she knows Clarisse LaRue, and she does, pride will hold for about an hour. Maybe less. Clarisse will pretend she doesn’t care, and she will tell herself she can do her own hair, she will last until she has to untangle them.
Footsteps crunch on the gravel path. Heavy, deliberate, frustrated even, if she was to be really detailed on perceiving it. But Silena? She doesn’t move at all. Not immediately at least, she lets the footsteps reach the bottom of the steps.
“Don’t start,” Clarisse says.
Silena’s lips curve just slightly, eyes only then moving from the sky, “I haven’t said anything.”
Clarisse stands there in the camp shirt, and what Silena knows are pijama pants. Her hair is loose around her shoulders, still damp.
Defiant, and vulnerable in the smallest, most infuriating way.
“I don’t need—” Clarisse begins.
Silena finally looks up at her, calm, steady, warm, serene. “Oh, I know.”
A pause.
The ocean crashes faintly in the distance.
Clarisse exhales sharply through her nose. “Just do it right.”
“Of course,” Silena replies.
Clarisse turns with the reluctance of someone pretending this is inconvenient, and props herself on the floor in front of where Silena is sitting. And Silena’s fingers slide into Clarisse’s hair.
Gentle, certain, careful. She moves, divides the strands with practiced precision.
“Paloma, honey, can you get me the basket on my nook, so I can do Clary’s hair, please,” Silena says, when she sees the five year old looking between her and Clarisse a bit confused from inside the cabin.
Paloma blinks once.
Twice.
Then she scurries off, tiny feet padding softly across the cabin floor, and returns almost immediately with a the basket that Silena has with hair things, such as comb, brush, jar of gel and a curl cream tube. She sets it down carefully beside Silena. Paloma then moves sitting in Clarisse’s lap, eyes wide, watching the ritual with a mixture of awe and curiosity.
Silena smiles down at Paloma for a moment, the kind of smile that tells a child the world is still safe, even when it’s complicated. While Clarisse stiffens on instinct when the small weight settles in her lap.
She looks down at Paloma like she’s unsure what to do with the five-year-old Aphrodite camper who has decided she’s furniture.
“…What?” Clarisse mutters.
Paloma tilts her head up at her, solemn. “You look mad.”
“I’m not mad.”
“You look mad,” Paloma repeats, as if stating an undeniable scientific fact.
Silena’s fingers continue their careful work, separating sections, smoothing product through damp strands.
“She always looks like that,” Silena says lightly. “It’s her thinking face.”
Clarisse huffs. “It is not.”
Silena hums in quiet disagreement.
The gel is cool between her fingers. She works it through slowly, methodical, the way she always does — not rushed, not hesitant. Each movement deliberate. Each touch steady.
Paloma watches like this is sacred, and maybe it is.
Clarisse stares forward into the dark yard, jaw tight. The porch lantern casts soft gold over her shoulders. She smells faintly like soap and iron and campfire smoke.
“You’re not going to say it?” Clarisse finally asks.
Silena pauses only a fraction of a second before continuing to braid.
“Say what?”
“That I should’ve picked you.”
Silena’s fingers slide under a section of hair, cross it cleanly over another, without missing a beat, “You already made your choice.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“It is.”
Clarisse shifts, uncomfortable in a way that has nothing to do with the child in her lap.
“You think I did it to hurt you,” Clarisse says, voice low.
Silena’s hands slow — not stopping, just slowing.
“No,” she says honestly.
Clarisse goes still.
Silena leans slightly, calmly adjusting the braid’s tension so it doesn’t result in a headache for the daughter of Ares, before adding in a quiet voice, “you do not do things to hurt me.”
Clarisse swallows. The sound is almost inaudible. “Then why aren’t you angry?”
There it is. The real question. Silena secures one section and reaches for the curl cream, smoothing a small amount over her palms before working it in.
“Because,” she says carefully, “you would have looked directly at me.”
Clarisse’s breath catches, and Paloma looks between them again, confused, not quite grasping what is being said, but fascinated.
Silena’s fingers resume their steady rhythm.
“You didn’t look at me,” she continues. “So whatever this is, it’s not about disrespect.”
Clarisse’s hands curl against her knees.
“It’s about something else,” Silena finishes softly.
Silence stretches.
Clarisse’s voice comes out rougher than usual. “You’re not safer because you’re not going.”
That makes Silena’s hands stop, only for a split second. “I know. And you chose who you thought you needed.”
Clarisse finally turns her head slightly — not enough to look at Silena fully, but enough that her profile catches the light.
“And if I needed you?”
There’s the fracture, a small one. Sharp and honest, Silena feels her throat tighten, and yet when she speaks her voice is even. “Then you would have said my name.”
The porch goes very, very quiet, even the wind seems to respect the quietness.
Paloma frowns, before she looks at Silena. “Why didn’t you say her name?”
Clarisse closes her eyes briefly.
“Because,” she says, after a long moment, “sometimes what you want and what’s smart aren’t the same thing.”
Silena calmly weaves the braids. Braids only going back till the crown of her head that way Clarisse can put her hair up in a ponytail, bun or gave it loose. Firm, structured, battle-ready. Functional. She smooths the final section. Her fingers linger for half a heartbeat longer than necessary.
“Have you seen the oracle, yet?” Silena asks.
Clarisse stares out at the darkening camp. “Not yet, I’m going there soon.”
Silena nods, “whatever is told, remember prophecies are tricky, they are not always direct or what they seem.”
“I’m aware,” Clarisse says.
Paloma looks between them and nods, like this has been resolved properly.
Clarisse carefully lifts Paloma from her lap and sets her on the porch beside them, before she stands.
For a moment, she hesitates — pride and something softer warring visibly in her posture. Clarisse studies her face like she’s trying to memorize it and punish herself for it at the same time.
“I leave at dawn,” she says.
“I know.”
A beat of silence sizzles between them.
“Don’t come to the beach.”
Silena considers that, then shakes her head gently. “No promises.”
Clarisse almost smiles.
“Stubborn.”
“Some would call it strategic,” Silena corrects.
Clarisse snorts softly — the closest thing to a laugh she’s offered all night, before she turns walking down the steps.
She’s about five steps away when she stops. She doesn’t look back but speaks all the same.
“I didn’t say your name because if something happens, I need you here. Everyone needs you here.” Silena freezes. Clarisse continues, voice rough.“Cabin Ten listens to you. The younger ones. They’d lose it if you were gone too.”
There it is.
Not rejection, protection, strategy, caution.
Clarisse resumes walking before Silena can answer.
Paloma climbs into Silena’s lap quietly, hugging her.
Silena lets out a slow breath, and rests her chin on top of Paloma’s head.
She watches the dark path long after Clarisse disappears, and for the first time tonight, the calm melts into something softer.
Not despair. Not anger.
Just love.
The kind with teeth, the kind that waits.
She closes her eyes for a moment, letting the tension roll off her shoulders.
Because she knows Clarisse La Rue better than most. Knows how she shields herself with defiance. Knows how pride can be a mask, and courage a burden. Knows that in the Sea of Monsters, Annabeth will be tested, that Chris Rodriguez may face storms, but Clarisse has her own battles to navigate — battles Silena can only pray to soften.
She rises slowly with a now sleeping Paloma in her arms. The night is still. The cabin behind her sleeps as she enters it.
May she return safe. She thinks, May the waves be gentle. And may pride bend, if needed, only a little, for the sake of those who care.