Work Text:
Hazel doesn't think she's doing too badly, adjusting to the modern day.
Nico doesn't think so either. He says she's doing pretty well, considering. Hazel watches Nico hold hands with his boyfriend and thinks that Nico's doing pretty well too, considering.
Hazel walks down the streets of New Rome. Hazel doesn't flinch when someone yells her name. Only sometimes, very rarely, does Hazel say something that sounds so old-fashioned at the people around her blink.
She's almost a hundred years out of time. She's doing pretty well, considering.
Frank gets it, a bit. He knows a bit about people not knowing how to act around him, about people being cruel and mean. The racism they face in some cities, Frank knows that. He can hold her hand and squeeze it once and she knows what he's saying, that he's there and he knows and that it's awful but that they're wrong and she's okay and strong and going to make it through.
And this is true.
Hazel always does make it through. She made it though her childhood, made it through all the curses that came to others around her, survived Alaska. Survived Alaska twice. Survived Gaea.
Sometimes, though, she wakes up and she still thinks she's in Alaska. It's a unique type of dread, one Frank can never fully understand, before she looks out the window and sees New Rome.
Hazel likes New Rome. She's been a part of things before. She's built things before. But here, here, she is building with her hands and her mind and not her curse. Here she is not building a son of her enemy, here she is not building something that will kill her, here she is alive, alive, alive, and so is the city, with laughter and shouts.
The horses wicker in the stable, when Hazel ends up there. Arion never deigns to stay, but Hazel still comes here anyway, just to groom them, to feed them, to muck out the stalls. She probably shouldn't, not as a praetor, but no one has said that. So it's just her, the horses and their soft noises, the smell of golden hay, the deposit of silver three hundred feet below her boots. She leaves it there, even though it's not cursed. She has no need for it. She has all the treasure she needs already.
That's the thing about her treasures, too. They endure. Gold does not tarnish. The silver will still be there in two years, in twenty. Hazel will be here too.