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Unlike a lot of the campers, Silena thought, Camp had never been her home. A home-from-home, maybe. Somewhere she went in summers and had fairly fond memories of and feelings about, yes, but it was never the place that when she said home, she thought about resting her head on the pillow of her bed in Cabin Ten.
To Silena, home was a mid-sized apartment in Greenwich Village, two blocks from her dad’s store. She supposed that made them rich, but all the money going into the apartment and the store meant that they weren’t exactly liquid like… ever. But it was home. When she closed her eyes she could picture perfectly the shabby floorboards and the smooth concrete pavings outside. She could hear the chitter of the rats and call of the birds of prey that had swapped their cliff side homes for skyscrapers.
She was doing that a lot recently. Particularly since it felt, more than ever, that Camp would never be anything close to her home again.
It was her own fault. But since she’d woken up in the infirmary, miraculously not dead, her head wrapped in bandages that she’d only had taken off that week, it was like she was dead to them anyway.
Will wouldn’t make eye contact with her and she felt that his hymns to Apollo to heal her were more than a little half-hearted but she’d noticed that Michael hadn’t appeared, not even to shout at her or call her a traitor and she didn’t need to be told why she’d been assigned the position his least favourite patient.
In a way, it was preferable to be avoided. Being ignored was one thing, where she could make all the assumptions in the world but never quite know if it was a deliberate snubbing or just that Will was tired from being the chief healer among a cabin that seemed to have been completely decimated… partially due to her actions. She swallowed. She’d wanted to make things better for demigods when she’d gone with Luke. She’d wanted to cut down on their deaths, stop sacrificing themselves to the gods. But if she had known that this was the result… Silena would have never looked twice at Luke Castellan in that case.
But Drew had come to see her. Just once, but she’d made her displeasure with her more than clear. On recollection, Silena couldn’t even remember what she’d said, only that it was what she deserved; all of it was true. She had betrayed them, people were dead because of her, Charlie’s death was her fault.
She also remembered lashing out, screaming at her to get out at that part. She remembered Drew refusing to leave, her continuing to shout. She remembered someone pulling Drew out, someone else pushing her down on her bed, forcing her to stay there or stopping her from hurting herself, she wasn’t sure which.
She remembered someone giving her something. She remembered falling asleep.
“She shouldn’t have said that to you,” Clarisse said, her face a wreck. Most people wouldn’t have been able to see that but Silena had learned how to read her over this many years.
“It’s fine,” she said. “She was taken out.”
“Yeah, and she’s not the easiest to handle.” This seemed to be said with the cadence of a joke but Silena wasn’t in the mood to laugh at the minute. “Sorry,” she added. “That Will sedated you, I mean, we tried to calm you down first.”
“I didn’t mean to kill Charlie,” she said listlessly. “Or anyone else.” Why was swallowing so hard right now? “I didn’t want anyone to die.”
She was glad that Clarisse didn’t tell her that it was alright. She was glad she didn’t tell her that she forgave her anyway.
“I shouldn’t have stopped the Ares Cabin coming in,” she said instead, her throat working. “If I had, then I don’t know what would have happened. I never got to say— well I was never going to apologise to Yew,” she rolled her eyes but they were red-rimmed and shining. “But you know, nod at him and drop the whole thing.”
“I probably would have done something else,” she said. “Told Luke a different way to sabotage you all.” She wasn’t including herself in that count. She’d done enough to make sure that she wasn’t a part of Camp anymore. She wasn’t sure what she’d do once she was no longer in this hospital bed but she knew that she’d be leaving Camp and never returning. She knew that she couldn’t take advantage of its borders and protections after what she’d done.
Clarisse didn’t say anything to that. It was fair enough, Silena thought. She wouldn’t know how to respond either. Her hand found Clarisse’s rubbing her thumb over the webbing between her index finger and thumb. “How’s Chris?” she found herself asking, wanting to cling to some sense of normalcy when she and Clarisse could just talk about the people in their lives and not the people whose deaths they might be responsible for. They were seventeen for gods’ sake, they shouldn’t be living like this.
“Ah,” she flinched. “I broke up with him.”
“Oh.” Her forehead wrinkled up in a way that Drew would tell her off for if she still cared about her. “Sorry.”
She sighed, “Not your fault. But nearly dying a whole bunch yesterday… I realised I didn’t want to be with him as much as—” she made a face. “Just I didn’t want to be with him.”
Silena nodded, pretending she didn’t understand the subtext of what was being said. She didn’t deserve Clarisse, and when she’d left Camp, when she’d put some distance between them, Clarisse would see that too and be glad she didn’t trap her in anything when they were so young and vulnerable and desperate to cling to anything to keep themselves feeling good or safe.
“I feel fine,” Clarisse added quickly. “Probably a sign I should have done it, I guess. How are you?”
“Oh you know,” Silena dropped her hand and settled back into bed. “Just dandy.”