part 8
Fitz lands hard on his back and rolls over with a groan, feeling the little roots May had used to upend him twist around his ankles for a moment before retreating into the ground. There’s a scorched mark in the dirt where his flaming left arm had slammed into the ground, and he stares at it for a few seconds before May’s hand appears in his vision and she helps him to his feet.
“That was better,” she says, stooping to retrieve his sword to hand back to him. Fitz takes it with a nod and a smile that’s probably closer to a grimace; that’s his fifth hard landing in the last hour or so, and his muscles are starting to seriously protest the treatment.
He’d always felt more comfortable fighting with his flames than with his sword and was pretty sure he always would, but the months of training with Jemma and May meant he felt much more comfortable with Pyrrhos. May had decided he was comfortable enough to start working on using his powers and his weapon at the same time, and they’d been working on it for a few weeks now with mixed results. Fitz had found that pushing the fire up from his right hand along the sword meant that he was far more aware of where his blade was and how it was moving, but he still had a long way to go when it came to using Pyrrhos with one hand and his flames in the other. That usually ended with the flat of May’s blade against his armor and a quick crash into the ground, or tiny roots and vines wrapped around his feet and an equally hard trip down to the dirt.
“I think that’s probably enough for today,” May says, and Fitz grits his teeth against an embarrassing noise of gratitude. His back already feels better just knowing it can have the rest of the day off, and more of the soreness eases when Jemma comes over from her spot leaning against the arena wall to hand him half a square of ambrosia, which he downs in two bites. She opens her mouth to scold him for eating too fast but is interrupted by Trip, who jogs over from the entrance to the ring with a smile on his face.
“Coulson says Mike and Ace are a few minutes out, thinks we should go welcome them back up at Peggy’s tree.”
“Anyone with them?” May asks, and Trip nods.
“Coulson said he thought there were at least two, but his binoculars are only so good.”
Mike had left about three weeks ago to go searching for new demigods to bring back to camp, and his younger brother Ace had accompanied him for his first trip away from Camp Half-Blood; a satyr’s first trip was always a big deal, and the Peterson brothers popularity with the campers meant that everyone had been excited to see them off, and were even more excited to see them returning, especially if they’d found demigods. No one new had come to camp since Fitz, Jemma and Skye had arrived early in the summer, more than seven months ago.
A small crowd had gathered around the big pine at the top of Half-Blood Hill, and the four of them arrived just in time to see Mike and Ace make the final climb, pan pipes out and trailed by three kids, two boys and a girl, none of whom look older than fourteen, if that.
“Nice to see you could make it back without attracting an escort of monsters this time, Mike,” Trip says as the five of them cross the border into camp, “Probably Ace’s doing.”
“You’re very funny, Antoine. Probably the funniest guy I know,” Mike responds, slipping his pipes into the pocket of his hoodie, “Meet Seth, Callie and Donnie. Guys, this is camp. Feel free to take a couple seconds to be amazed, then Ace and I will take you down to the Big House for orientation before dinner.”
Fitz isn’t sure any of the kids are listening, too busy staring down at camp. After a few minutes, the two satyrs lead them down the hill to talk to Chiron, and the crowd disperses, calling out congratulations to Ace on his successful mission. Most of them head down to the dining pavilion, although it’s a little early for dinner. Nobody wants to miss their first chance to get a real look at the new kids. Mike joins Fitz and the others at the unclaimed table after walking Ace to report on their trip to the Council of Cloven Elders.
“Isn’t it kind of mean, to make Ace basically do the paperwork for your mission?” Skye teases, and Mike just shrugs.
“He’s going to have to deal with them eventually. The practice will be good for him.”
“So what’s the scoop on the new kids? Figured out who will claim them yet?”
Another shrug, “They’re good kids, smart, especially the younger guy, Donnie. The older two, Seth and Callie, have been friends for a while, met a couple years ago in a class for kids with dyslexia. When Donnie moved to their school, Seth kind of took him under his wing. They’re pretty close, figured out that the weird things they’d been dealing with were something they had in common.”
“You found them at school?”
Mike nods, “Ace went in undercover, figured out that they were demigods in about two days once he got himself into the dyslexia class. Spent about a day convincing them to come with us, though it wasn’t particularly hard, especially not in Donnie’s case. They were all pretty excited about coming.”
“Fitz will probably have to finally give up the unclaimed table, since there are actual unclaimed kids now and he’s been claimed by by not one but two Olympians,” says Ward, earning a laugh from the rest of the table while Fitz blushes.
“Coulson’s a soft heart. Without his siblings here, I bet he lets them sit at the Hermes table with him and May for the week or so until they’re claimed,” Mike says.
“It’s not like anyone is really respects the usual seating chart right now anyway, with so much of the camp gone,” Jemma adds, and Fitz nods in agreement, although his face is still red. He opens his mouth to say something but cuts himself off when he notices the three new arrivals standing at the entrance, Coulson, May and Chiron behind them. Fitz looks down at his food, waiting to see if Coulson or Chiron would say something to the six of them sitting at the unclaimed table, but the older boy says nothing, letting Callie, Seth and Donnie sit with him at the Hermes table, at least for the evening.
There’s a bonfire that night, and Fitz is listening to Trip talk about how glad he is that he’s not on sing along duty when Jemma tugs on his sleeves. He’s turning to see what she wants when he notices the reddish light that has filled the amphitheater and the fact that everyone has gone silent. There’s a glowing red hammer floating above the head of the smaller new boy, who is staring up at it in shock from where he’s standing next to May, Coulson and his friends.
“Hail, Donnie Gill, son of Hephaestus,” says Chiron, and Skye turns to Fitz with a grin.
“Congratulations, big brother.”
———–
Donnie hasn’t stopped talking since they left the bonfire, when Coulson had introduced him to Fitz. He’s following him to the Hephaestus cabin now, tugging his heavy suitcase behind him while Fitz carries his backpack, which feels like it’s full of books. The younger boy is only struck silent when Fitz opens the door to the cabin.
“We get to live here?” he asks, jumping up on one of the beds to inspect the machinery lining the top of the cabin.
“Yeah. There’ll be more people here during the summer, but it’s just the two of us for now. You can take one of the beds near the back, nobody’s claimed those yet. Means you won’t have to move when the rest get back,” Fitz says, dropping Donnie’s backpack onto the bed across from his.
He got ready for bed while the younger boy looked around the building, answering questions when Donnie asked them. Fitz doesn’t want to leave him alone in the cabin on his first night, especially since both his friends are still in Hermes, but he misses Jemma’s presence by his side pretty much immediately as he settles for the night. Still, he’s almost asleep when Donnie says his name and he looks over to see him curled up on his new bed, blanket pulled up to his ears, staring at Fitz with wide eyes.
“Coulson said that you- that you’ve got a power that nobody else in camp has, like a superpower.”
Fitz blushes, but there’s a swell of pride in his chest at the idea that Coulson was bragging about him, at the awe in Donnie’s voice. “It’s not really a superpower.”
“But you do have fire powers, right? You can make it and control it, right?”
“Yeah.”
“And you don’t think that’s a superpower?” Donnie asks, and Fitz can hear excitement breaking through the nervousness in his voice.
“Just wait until you see what some of the other people in camp can do. I won’t seem nearly as impressive then.”
The other boy laughs before lapsing into silence and after a few minutes, Fitz glances over to see that his eyes have closed and his breathing has evened out. He dims the fire slowly, watches the orange glow of it shrink until it disappears, then rolls over, drifting off himself.
———–
That night, for the first time in months, Fitz’s dream changes.
The huge man in the gold armor is still there, but he’s not screaming or laughing, like he usually is. He’s silent, tugging on the chain holding him, which is glowing white hot in the darkness; a long spurt of flame jets from the man’s massive palms, and the links give a heart-wrenching groan that steals Fitz’s breath even in the dream. He can sense just how powerful the armored man is, even before he watches as another flame hits the chain and the links give, just slightly.
Fitz wakes up to someone shaking his shoulder. Donnie is standing next to his bed, looking worried.
“Sorry. I couldn’t get to sleep and you were- you sounded like something was wrong. Plus, um, there’s a girl here,” Donnie says, pointing to where Jemma is standing near the cabin’s door. Fitz sits up, rubbing at his eyes.
“It was just a bad dream, Donnie, but thanks. You should try and get some sleep. The first few days at camp can be kind of crazy, lots of stuff to learn,” Fitz says around a yawn, and Donnie nods, climbing back into his bed and curling up under the blankets facing the wall. Jemma waits a few seconds, leaning against the wall by the door, before crawling in next to Fitz.
“Hestia came and got me. She said you were having a nightmare.”
“Yeah.”
“You want to talk about it?”
Fitz shook his head, “Not right now. I just want to sleep right now.”
Jemma nods, curling up with her head on his shoulder. Even with her there, he has a hard time falling back asleep, drifting in and out, the sound of the weakening chain being pulled echoing in his head.
He’s exhausted the next morning, something Donnie doesn’t seem to pick up on as he asks questions on their way to breakfast. Eventually, Fitz tells him that Coulson is probably better suited to answer most of them and that there’s orientation stuff he needs to do anyway, so he’ll meet him later and give him a tour of the forge, if he wants it. The younger boy’s face lights up, and he sprints off to find his friends.
During his training session with May and Jemma, he can’t concentrate, and his ankles and back pay the price. He can tell May is disappointed in his effort, and he considers telling her about how badly he slept, about his dream, but he doesn’t want to make excuses, which he’s pretty sure she wouldn’t appreciate. Fitz limps off to the forge, hoping that work will distract him and make him feel better, like it usually does. He’s pretty sure May would follow him, except he knows she has class.
Chiron teaches classes for the kids who stay over the school year, but he’d been quick to realize that there wasn’t much he could teach Jemma and Fitz in science, especially not while trying to teach any of the other kids at camp. So he had decided early on to let them have what amounted to a free study period, which they usually spent at the forge working on projects. Lately, Jemma has been working on improving the camp’s supply of Greek fire, and Fitz has been working on creating a better way of storing and using it.
“Maybe if I were able to stabilize it sufficiently, you could create some sort of dispersion device, almost like a fire extinguisher,” Jemma says, and Fitz looks up from the armory sword he’d been working on.
“Huh?”
Jemma shakes her head, “You weren’t listening to me.”
“Sorry. I’m no match for May on a good day, much less today.”
“Maybe if you got yourself a decent weapon you’d have a better chance,” says Garrett, and Fitz and Jemma turn to see him standing in the entrance to the forge, leaning against the wall, Ward hovering behind him. “Can’t believe a son of Hephaestus would use such a mangy looking sword, spike sticking out the side and whatnot.”
Garrett teases everyone, particularly the campers younger than him, and this isn’t at all outside of his normal joking, but it bothers Fitz more than it should for the older boy to give him a hard time about Pyrrhos. He forces himself to keep his eyes on his work, rather than looking at his sword where he’s propped it against the bench behind him, or at the older boy.
“Did you need something, Garrett?” Jemma asks.
“Was wondering if the new kids were up here. Apparently Pops just claimed the new girl-”
“Callie,” Jemma inserts, and Garrett nods.
“And I’m supposed to find her to welcome her to the family. Fitz’s new little brother seemed pretty taken with him, and I thought he and his friends might be up here.”
“They went with Coulson, to finish orientation and figure out their schedules,” Jemma tells him, and Garrett tips a lazy salute before turning to head back towards the rest of camp, Ward giving the two of them a smile before he follows his brother.
Jemma waits for them to disappear before turning to Fitz. “I’m sure he didn’t mean anything by it.”
Fitz rubs at his eyes, shaking his head, “It’s fine. I just- I think I just need to- If Donnie comes by, can you show him around? I can give him a tour tomorrow, I just-”
“Of course,” Jemma says, but catches his elbow as he moves past her, “Come here.” She wraps her arms around Fitz’s neck, pressing her face into his shoulder. He sighs, feeling his muscles relax almost immediately as he wraps his arms around Jemma’s waist in return.
“Thanks, Jem,” he breathes into her hair, and she nods against his chest.
Once they finally release each other, Jemma returns to her project and Fitz exits the forge, heading away from the rest of camp. He walks along the edge of the forest, not close enough to attract any monsters but near enough that he’s pretty sure none of the other campers will be around. Eventually he finds a rock that’s large enough for him to sit on comfortably, and toes off his shoes and socks to examine his ankles, which are ringed in thin bruises from the roots May often uses to pull him off his feet when they spar now. The stiffness and pain that shoot down the long muscles of his back whenever he shifts his shoulders or bends even slightly makes it seem more than likely that there’s significant bruising there as well.
Fitz lets one of his fingers catch before rolling the little flame around each hand, easing the soreness there from gripping his sword or trying to catch himself when May toppled him. An idea occurs to him, and he moves the fire back up to the tip of one finger, carefully tracing along one of the bruises ringing his ankle. Jemma would probably scold him for holding heat near a place that’s bruised and swelling, but the fire licking at his skin almost immediately makes it feel better, and when he pulled his hand away, he’s stunned to see that the bruises have faded almost completely and the swelling is gone.
He transfers the fire over to the other ankle, tracing along it for a moment before he concentrates, letting the flame move from his hand onto his skin, moving it around his ankle with a laugh. Once he’s finished with his legs, Fitz hesitates for a second before stripping off his shirt, not wanting to have to prevent it from burning, then grips one shoulder and spreads flames down his back. The heat eases the stiffness and the pain decreases immensely, and Fitz laughs as he moves the flames across his skin, moving it down the lengths of his arm to cup it in his palms.
“I wondered when you would figure that bit out,” says a familiar voice behind him, and Fitz lets the flames die as he turns toward Hestia, her usual small campfire in front of her, “It’s not perfect, but it’s a bit like your very own version of nectar and ambrosia.”
“It’s better than a heating pad,” Fitz says, slipping down from his rock to sit cross-legged on the opposite side of Hestia’s fire. The goddess studies him for a while, and Fitz tugs at his ear, waiting for her to speak.
“You’re doing well, you know? I know it doesn’t feel like it, but you are.”
Fitz scoffs, “Tell that to my back. Or to May.”
“May thinks you’re doing well without my having to tell her anything. You’ve always been good with your flames, a natural, and you’ve made significant improvement with Pyrrhos. You need to trust yourself, Leopold.”
“I do,” he responds quickly, then shrugs, “Since I stopped setting fire to the curtains, at least. This,” he jumps a bit of flame from the campfire up to his hand, “I can count on. It’s everything else I’m worried about.” Hestia remains silent, and Fitz looks over her shoulder at the large trees of the dark forest behind her. He remembers the sound of the chain being pulled, the spurts of fire from the man’s enormous hands.
“I’m scared,” he says, though it’s more breath than actual words. Hestia still hears him, and nods. “That’s the first time I’ve said that out loud.”
“You had another nightmare?” Fitz nods, “The same as usual?”
“Almost. The man in the golden armor was there, pulling on his chains, but he’d heated them up, incredibly hot. I could sense how hot it was, and I could feel it too, in the dream. They were starting to give. Not much, but enough.” The fire in front of him cracks and flares. “When I first started having the dreams, I thought that maybe he was my father, you know, the man in the golden armor.”
“He’s much older than your father.”
“You know who he is?”
“The gods have their suspicions, and I tend to agree with them,” she says, then smiles when Fitz looks at her expectantly, “Names have power, Leopold, especially restorative power. If what you’re saying is true, then I don’t wish to give our enemy any more power than he’s already gathering. We’re going to have to face him sooner or later, and I would much rather have it be later.”
“Is that why you call me Leopold? Because names have power?”
Hestia smiles, the fire in her eyes burning brighter, “It’s mostly because you let me get away with it. But yes, there is power in the name your mother gave you, when you are connected to your mother in the way that you are. There’s love in it, and home, and those are powerful forces.”
“Even in a name like Leopold,” Fitz says, and Hestia laughs, tilting her head to consider him.
“It’s alright that you’re scared.”
“What kind of hero is scared before anything even happens? What kind of hero is scared by the idea of maybe having to do something?”
“Almost all of them.”
Fitz is silent for a long time, watching the fire in front of him, before he forces himself to his feet, groaning at the lingering stiffness in his back.
“I should go back. I promised to show Donnie around the forge and then kind of bailed on him,” he sighs, “I’m not sure I’m cut out to be a big brother.”
Hestia smiles, “I think you’re capable of much more than you think you are, Leopold.”
Fitz blushes and nods, waving good-bye as he turns back towards the camp buildings. He heads towards the forge, figuring that Donnie might still be there, and it’s the best place to start his search. His guess proves good when he gets there, where Donnie is inspecting one of the larger anvils and talking very quickly to Jemma and his friend, Seth, but he turns his attention to Fitz when he notices him standing in the doorway.
“Fitz! Jemma was showing us around, she said you wouldn’t be here until tomorrow. This is my friend Seth, I thought he might want to come look at stuff. He hasn’t been claimed yet, but Coulson says it shouldn’t take very long, especially since Callie- that’s our other friend- she just got claimed a little bit ago, and-” Donnie keeps talking, rapid fire, as Fitz looks over his shoulder at Jemma, who is trying not to smile.
“You want to take a crack at working on some stuff? I can show how most of this works, if you want,” he says, after letting Donnie carry on for a while longer. He figures the only way to get the younger boy to stop his rapid stream of words for any amount of time is to distract him with something shiny, for lack of a better term. It works, as he nods enthusiastically as Fitz leads him over to the store of weapons that need repairing.
—————
“Seth’s mom still hasn’t claimed him,” Donnie says, and Fitz looks up from his food. They’d had an early session with May that morning, and Jemma had stayed behind to work for a little while longer; he’d tried to wait, but she’d told him to go ahead when his stomach had rumbled audibly. He hasn’t sat at the Hephaestus cabin since the first day after he’d been claimed, but no one else was up this early, and he’d felt bad about Donnie eating alone this morning; it was strange to see him without Seth and Callie, especially since nobody really kept to their tables outside of the summer.
“It can take a long time, sometimes.”
“Coulson said that it would take a couple of weeks. It’s been more than three. And Callie and I were claimed within a day.”
“Dad didn’t claim me for a month,” he says, and he can feel Donnie’s surprise without looking up from his food, “Waited until I’d shown off my pyrokinesis to the whole camp on accident. Maybe his mom is just waiting for… something, you know. One of the older campers, Coulson or Garrett, they might have a better idea.”
Donnie’s face lights up at that, “You mean Seth might have powers like yours?”
“Um, well, things like mine are really rare, but I guess, maybe. Again, one of the older kids might have a better idea,” Fitz says, and Donnie shovels the last few forkfuls of his breakfast into his mouth before standing.
“Garrett should be up training, right?” he asks, but doesn’t wait for an answer before taking off, presumably towards the arena.
Fitz wishes he would talk to Coulson instead, or May, but just then the girl herself sits down opposite him with her plate of food.
“You could tell him that his friend’s mother is Aphrodite, though I’m not sure it would make either of them feel better to know it while he’s still unclaimed.”
“How do you know?”
“I’ve been here a long time. For most people, it’s not that hard if you pay attention. Aphrodite is never good about claiming her sons.”
Fitz considers this for a few moments.
“Did you know about me? Who my dad was?”
She nods, “After about three days. You were pretty easy, after seeing you work at the forge, and all the little gadgets you had in your bag when you got here.”
“Was Jemma more difficult? Because she doesn’t look like her siblings?”
May rolls her eyes, “Anyone who knows anything about it and talks to Jemma Simmons for more than a few minutes can tell she’s a daughter of Athena. I actually need to talk to the two of you about something.”
“What?”
“We should wait until she gets here. She went back to her cabin to change after we got done,” she says, picking at her food before looking up to study him. Fitz shifts under the scrutiny. “Your powers are different than mine, you know.”
“Well, mine involves a lot more fire, that’s for sure,” he replies, but May shakes her head.
“It’s more than that. The things my siblings and I can do, it’s all outside of us, separate. But it’s not like that for you. For you, your fire is a part of you. And I’ve seen you fight with it when you don’t have your sword, when you’re not thinking about it so much, and you’re not nearly as frustrated, not nearly as nervous. But as soon as you step into training with your sword, you start to overthink, and you lose the ease you have with your fire because you’re trying so hard.”
Fitz stays silent, waiting for May to make her point.
She sighs, “I know you’re a genius, but you’ve got to stop thinking so much and just get your hands dirty.”
“It’s not- I’m not-” He rubs at his face. “I’m an engineer, not a soldier. If the Fates or whoever really picked me for this, they did a poor job of it.”
May’s expression is stormy, and Fitz almost takes it back, or explains himself better, but before either of them can speak, Jemma slides onto the bench next to him, stealing a piece of bacon off his plate.
“Hey.”
“Hush,” she says, grabbing her own plate, “May has something she needs to talk to us about.”
“Yeah, she told me,” he answers, and they both turn to look at the older girl, who smiles at them.
“We’ve got a quest.”