part 12
Fitz heads toward the arena, grimacing every time he puts weight on his left foot. It had been a long session with Jemma and May this morning, and mostly what he wants to do is curl up in his bed for the rest of the day. But Ward had asked him to spar before lunch, so he limps across camp, convinced he can feel the distinct lines of bruises left by the tight loops of vine that May had wrapped around his shoes but determined not to blow his friend off.
Since Garrett had left camp, Ward had thrown himself into training with an intensity that made his former habits seem positively tame. Skye had become his regular training partner, but the new head camper for Aphrodite, Mason, keeps organizing bonding days for the cabin, and she must not have been able to get out of this one.
As he approaches the front of the arena, he’s surprised to see someone with Ward, a large man wearing camouflage cargo pants and a leather vest. Ward stands in front of him, shoulders straight and chin up, and it’s only after Fitz gets closer that he can see the white knuckle grip his friend has on the spear he’s holding in front of him.
“What sort of cabin leader let’s seven of his siblings defect in a month? Seven! And all this after you missed your favorite brother consorting to release a Titan from Tartarus and overthrow Olympus.” The man bends down to make sure his face is level with Ward’s.
“My sons are supposed to be leaders and warriors. What are you?”
Ares, Fitz realizes, even as he starts forward, feeling his hands start to heat up.
“It’s not his fault!” he says, and Ares turns from Ward with raised eyebrows.
“Fitz, don’t-” Ward tries, but his father holds up a hand and he falls silent, jaw clenched.
“He’s doing his best to hold your cabin together. Nothing Garrett did was his fault. If you want to yell at someone, why haven’t you tracked him down?” Fitz asks, and the god looks him up and down, smiling when he spots the fire flickering in his palms. He leans around Fitz to speak to Ward, like he can’t be bothered to actually address him.
“This is the kid they picked?” he laughs, considering Fitz again, “Well, he’s got spunk, at least.”
“Did you need anything else, Dad?” Ward asks, his voice sharp.
“Nope, kid. Just came to tell you that you’re going to need to sharpen up if you or your siblings are going to get through what’s coming intact. Your brother has won these first few battles, and you’ve got to step up if you want to win the war. Say hi to the others for me,” Ares says, reaching out to slap Ward’s back, jolting him forward. He strides out of the arena and there is the sound of a motorcycle starting up and revving for a few seconds before it fades.
“Is he always that friendly?” Fitz asks, turning to Ward with a slight smile, but it drops when he sees the look on the other boy’s face.
“You didn’t need to do that. I didn’t ask you to do that.”
“I know. I just thought-”
“I doesn’t matter what you thought! I can take care of myself and my cabin, especially when it comes to my own father. I don’t need you or anyone else to stick up for me. You don’t know anything about anything!” he shouts, and storms out of the arena before Fitz can say anything, leaving him standing there alone.
He doesn’t see Ward again until dinner, when he sits at the far end of the table from Fitz and refuses to look at him. Skye is doing plenty of that for both of them, glaring at him every time Fitz lifts his eyes from his plate, and he supposes Ward had filled her in on what had happened earlier. He focuses on his food, not really paying attention to what the others are saying until raised voices catch his attention. Trip and Ward are glaring at each other across the table, Trip’s jaw tight as Ward speaks.
“You can’t understand. Sure your dad has about a million kids, but he claims every single one of them quickly, and brings you guys presents like that boombox he gave you a couple years ago. I can’t remember my dad giving any of my siblings a present that wasn’t a weapon, and that’s usually only after he’s yelled at us for half an hour about losing Capture the Flag or the chariot races.
“You don’t understand what it’s like to have your godly parent only care about whether you’re embarrassing them or not, or to wait weeks for your mom to claim you because she just couldn’t be bothered, or any of the stuff that the kids of the minor gods deal with from the gods or the other campers.”
“So you’re saying it’s fine that those kids have deserted camp? That they’re siding with a Titan, trying to take down Olympus and everything it stands for? Everything this camp stands for?” Trip shoots back, and Ward’s shoulders straighten for a moment like he’s going to continue the fight, but then he softens with a sigh.
“No. I’m just saying you can’t understand,” he says, pushing his plate away from him and standing with another sigh. He’s gone before any of them can say a word, and Skye’s glare is trained on Trip now.
“Seriously? It’s like you guys can’t help yourselves today!” The glare returns to Fitz before bouncing back to Trip. “Have you got any brilliant ideas about how to stop kids from leaving? Had a lot of chances to try them out in your cabin?”
Then she’s gone too, leaving Jemma, Trip and Fitz sitting at the unclaimed table in silence.
Nineteen kids have left camp since Garrett and Raina disappeared after Victoria Hand’s murder a month ago, eight from Ares and five from Aphrodite among them, leaving little doubt in anyone’s mind about whether the two of them had left camp willingly. Four of the Aphrodite defectors have been boys, and now Mason and Seth are the only guys left in that cabin. The other six have disappeared from various non-Olympian cabins, and the number is big enough now that the absences are starting to be really noticeable, empty spaces where there used to be campers. Everyone is just waiting for the next space to appear.
Over the next few days, Ward avoids pretty much everyone except Skye and his siblings; he sits at the Ares table and spends any time that he’s not at the arena in their cabin. It’s not as though he’s exactly been a social butterfly in the past, particularly lately, but this is a new level, even for him. So Fitz is surprised when he hears someone clears their throat behind him at the climbing wall and looks down from his spot halfway up to see Ward standing there. He barely avoids the lava dripping down towards him and scrambles for the top, the older boy following him up without breaking a sweat. They sit for a long time, staring out over camp as the sun sets before Ward speaks.
“My mom had an affair with Ares,” he starts, not looking as Fitz, “I don’t know if my mortal dad ever knew for sure that I wasn’t actually his, but he suspected, that much is certain. I have a little brother and a little sister who aren’t demigods, but I guess he just assumed that if I wasn’t really his son, they probably weren’t either. And my older brother, well, I guess he sided with Dad and decided that we weren’t really his siblings. My mom couldn’t really do anything, and things were pretty bad for the three of us in that house.
“I tried, you know, to protect them, but I was just a little kid myself, and I had all sorts of problems that I didn’t know were because I was a demigod. But I knew I was different, that there was something about me, and I kept waiting for someone to come rescue us, to punish my mortal dad and my older brother, to help my mom stand up for us. I prayed for it, even though I didn’t know who I was really praying to, and nothing ever happened. So I ran away from home when I was six. I left my brother and my sister, because somehow I knew that they wouldn’t be able to come wherever I was going to end up, and I ran away.
“Things were better, at camp. I had answers, and Garrett was the real big brother I had never gotten to have. He looked out for me, even before he was in charge of the cabin. But I’d found out that my real dad was a god, the god of war, and he couldn’t fight for me, couldn’t stand up for me. He wouldn’t. I asked him about it one time, and you know what he did? He laughed and said I don’t fight my kids’ battles for them. Like helping a seven-year-old kid against his abusive mortal father while he’s just trying to keep himself and his younger siblings safe would somehow make me soft.
“So I promised myself then and there that I wouldn’t ever ask for his help again, or for anyone to help me deal with him.”
Fitz is pretty sure he’s never heard Ward say that much at one time before, and he waits a minute to make sure he’s finished before he says anything.
“And then I charged in without knowing what I was talking about.”
“I don’t think I’ve ever seen anybody talk to Dad like that and not have him at least threaten to turn them into something unpleasant.” He sighs. “I just- the kids in my cabin don’t deserve everyone just assuming they’re going to leave camp. Most of them are good kids, and Ares coming down here to yell at us doesn’t help anything.”
“Maybe nothing will happen,” Fitz says, and Ward looks at him in disbelief, “Maybe we’ll track down Garrett and the others before they can help Hyperion escape, and nothing big will end up happening.”
“When in the history of Greek heroes has ‘nothing big’ ever happened?”
“First time for everything?” That gets a laugh from Ward, even if it’s small, and Fitz grins.
“Where are the others?”
“Jemma’s still sparring with May and Apollo’s working on their chariot, so I assume that’s where Trip is. I don’t know where Skye is, since she hasn’t really talked to me in a couple days.”
“She’s in her cabin. She’s actually the one that told me I should come talk to you. Got tired of not talking to the three of you, I think, although she said that it was just that she was bored with only playing ping pong against me, especially since I was ‘grumpy,’ in her words.”
“Maybe we could go find them and see if we can remind her how much she hates losing to Trip?” Ward laughs and Fitz is pretty sure it’s the first time he’s done so in a month.
“Before we can do that, we’ve got to work to work on your form going up the wall. It’s awful, Fitz. Plus, I believe you owe me a sparring session.” Fitz groans, but follows Ward down the ladder at the back of the climbing wall.
————
A lot of campers had been surprised when Chiron had announced that the annual chariot races would still be taking place, but he had made it clear that he wanted to try to keep things in camp as normal as possible despite everything going on, at least for a while. So the cabins had gotten to work on their building their chariots and forming alliances; Athena and Hephaestus had teamed up almost immediately, and with two days to go until the races, Fitz and Jemma were at the forge late, working on the mechanical horses that would pull their chariot.
Fitz is up in the guts of one of them, making adjustments to the mechanisms that turn the front legs, when he hears Jemma speak.
“Hello, Donnie. Did you come to help with the chariot?”
“I actually, um, just came to grab some tools. I’ve got a project back in the cabin I’m working on, forgot to get them while I was up here earlier. Think anybody will mind if I borrow them as long as I have them back by tomorrow?”
Jemma shakes her head, “The rest of the cabins headed toward the bonfire, so they’re probably done working for the evening, and we’ve got all the stuff we need.”
“Plus, everybody else does it,” Fitz inserts, “As long as you don’t break them or lose them, I’m sure you’ll be fine.”
“Thanks, Fitz. You guys drew chariot duty for the night?”
“We volunteered,” Jemma says, and Fitz nods as he stands back up into the belly of the horse.
Earlier, Jemma had been standing up with him, making observations on how the mechanics could be changed to more closely resemble an actual flesh and blood horse, but when he’d started to light his hands and arms to heat the metal enough to bend it the way he needed it too, it had gotten too hot for her. He had barely noticed, of course, but now he ducks down to sit with her every few minutes and discuss ideas for a while so the metal can cool down.
The Hephaestus cabin had done most of the design work on the horses and the chariot, letting the Athena kids worry about the weaponry, but Jemma had been as involved as anyone. Between her biological research and Fitz’s engineering, they’d been able to take the blueprints that Hephaestus siblings had been passing down for years and maximize the efficiency of the horses and improve their connection with the chariot. Plus, the experiments they’d done with Greek fire during the school year meant that they could replace the collection of glass jars they normally used with what were basically two flamethrowers spurting green flame off the back of the chariot. Anne will drive and one of the Athena kids, probably Nate, will run the weapons.
Jemma tugs on his jeans and he bends down to see that Donnie is still standing in the entrance to the forge, shifting his weight from foot to foot, the tools he’d just gathered up clanking in his backpack.
“Sorry, Donnie. Did you need something we’ve got? There should be at least doubles of everything, if not more.”
“No, I’ve got all the stuff I need. I just wanted to say thanks for everything the past few months, since I got to camp. Chiron said you’d be a good big brother, and he was right.”
Fitz ducks his head, wishing he could blame the blush on his cheeks on the heat of the metal over his head.
“You’re welcome. That’s what family’s for, you know?”
Donnie nods, although his smile looks forced, “Yeah. I just- I couldn’t remember if I had ever said thanks, and I wanted to. I should get back to the cabin if I want to get any work done before everyone gets back from the bonfire and wants to go to sleep. Thanks again, Fitz. Jemma,” he says, nodding to each of them, and Fitz watches him retreat down the torchlit path before returning to his work on the bronze horses.
They work until nearly midnight, Fitz fashioning extra torches from spare bits of metal and rags to give them enough light to see by. Eventually though, both of them are having trouble keeping their eyes open for long enough stretches to actually get any work done, and they retire to their cabins for the night, Fitz making sure Jemma gets to hers without getting in trouble with the harpies. He has a feeling that they would ignore her in the same way they do him, but he’s never actually gotten to test that theory and doesn’t want to try it tonight. Plus, worrying about her being punished for breaking curfew is only part of the reason he likes to walk her home.
He’s sure that Jemma gets up at whatever ridiculous hour she normally does, but Fitz uses the work he’d done on the chariot the previous night and the three or four nights before that as an excuse to sleep in. The cabin is deserted by the time he rolls out of bed, so he gets dressed and heads toward the forge, since it’s late enough that he’s missed breakfast. It’s Saturday and he won’t be the only one exchanging a meal for a few extra hours of sleep, so he doesn’t think anything of it beyond the fact that he’s hungry and looking forward to lunch.
Bailey is elbow deep in one of the horses when he gets there, and Nate is up in the chariot, getting a feel for the weapons. As he settles down next to the bronze animal Bailey isn’t working on, he notices absently that the tools Donnie borrowed last night are still missing, then pops open the panel on the horse’s stomach to gain access to the mechanisms inside.
He’s been working for maybe five minutes when the sound of multiple sets of running feet approaching the forge attract his attention, and he looks up in time to see Jemma, May and Anne arrive in the entrance. Anne and May look as worried as he’s ever seen them, and the second Jemma spots him, she rushes towards him, throwing her arms around his shoulders as soon as she reaches where he’s kneeling next to the chariot. The force with which she collides with him causes him to lose his balance, and he has to catch himself with one hand, wrapping the other arm around her waist.
“I told them you wouldn’t leave. I told them. But then we couldn’t find you and I thought maybe something had happened and I told them you wouldn’t have left,” she says, her arms almost painfully tight around him.
“What’s going on?” he asks, but Jemma has pressed her face in against his shoulder and he turns to May and Anne.
“You weren’t at breakfast, and we couldn’t find you anywhere else.”
“I slept in, because we were up so late last night working on the chariot. You guys were worried about me because I missed one meal? I know everybody jokes that I’m always hungry, but it’s not exactly the first meal I’ve ever skipped,” he tries to joke, but it falls flat in the face of their expressions.
“Two more kids have disappeared. We think they left last night, and when we couldn’t find you, we panicked.”
“Who left?”
“Seth Dormer, from Aphrodite,” Anne says, then sighs, and somehow Fitz knows what she’s going to say before she speaks. Jemma’s arms manage to wrap even tighter around him, and he returns the embrace.
“And Donnie. Donnie’s gone.”
————-
There’s a list posted on the door of the Big House, with the names of the twenty-four kids who have left camp printed neatly down it. Three days after Donnie and Seth disappeared, two Apollo girls and a Hermes boy were gone as well, making it pretty clear that no cabin could be sure in feeling immune to it.
For two days, Donnie’s empty bed had haunted the Hephaestus cabin, until by silent agreement the five remaining campers had started to pile whatever extra stuff they had on it, including the cabin flag they’d managed to hold onto through the three games of Capture the Flag the camp had held before Victoria Hand’s death. It’s a fairly hollow gesture and doesn’t really fill up the space left by their missing sibling, but even just the act of doing it together as a cabin seems to help. Fitz wonders how Mason, now the only Aphrodite boy left in camp, and the rest of his cabin are coping, if it’s any easier because they’ve gone through it six times over now. He suspects it isn’t.
Chiron had pushed the chariot races back when Seth and Donnie had left, and again when the next three had followed, but he refuses to cancel them, so Anne, Nate, Jemma and Fitz are at the forge, figuring out any last minute adjustments and making sure their chariot runs smoothly for the next day. The Hephaestus campers have shifted the tools around to cover the blank spaces left by the ones Donnie had apparently decided to take with him when he left camp.
After almost two hours of adjustments, Anne declares the chariot ready, and she and Nate climb aboard to take it down to the track painted around the outside edge of the arena for final tests. Jemma and Fitz follow at a slower pace, admiring the way the metal horses move across the grass. At the entrance to the arena, Fitz is distracted by the sight of a lone figure sitting near the creek where it ends as it comes towards the camp buildings.
“Callie Hannigan,” Jemma whispers, nodding in that direction, and Fitz looks toward where their cabin leaders are lining the chariot up properly with the starting line.
“Can you guys handle that for a while? I’m just going to- I’ll be right back,” he says, and Jemma nods again as he heads toward the creek.
Callie looks up when he sits next to her, and he doesn’t know why he thought she would be crying, but she’s not. For the past week and a half, he knows she’s been getting crap of all sorts from a few campers, between being a member of the cabin with the most defectors and Donnie and Seth’s closest friend. Even her remaining siblings had pulled away from her somewhat after the two boys had disappeared, despite Ward’s best efforts.
They don’t talk for a few long minutes, and in the quiet of camp in the late evening, Fitz can hear the rattle of the chariot’s wheels and the whoosh sounds of the flamethrowers spouting their Greek fire, mixing with the soft sounds of chatter coming from the direction of the cabins and the amphitheater. He waits for Callie to say something first, which she eventually does, staring down at the water of the creek.
“He was always going to go with Seth, you know? There was nothing any of us could have done to talk him out of that one. And Seth has been mad at his mom for months even before he even knew who she was. His brothers kept telling him that there was nothing to be ashamed of, that they had all gone through the same thing, but it turns out that they all wanted the same chance to exact some revenge on Aphrodite. Except for Mason, I suppose.”
“Donnie didn’t want revenge?” Fitz asks, trying not to let his voice reveal how betrayed he’d been when Anne had told him.
“Donnie wanted what Seth wanted. And, I don’t know, he’s kind of a tenderheart, and it always bugged him that it took such a long time for other people to get claimed, people that he thought so highly of. Seth, and you. In the end, it was Seth,” she says with a sigh, then repeats, “It was Seth.”
Another silence. Fitz thinks maybe she’s done talking, or at least done talking to him, and is just about to say that he should probably get back to the arena when she speaks again.
“They asked me to go with them, right before they left. Like I was just going to pick up and run away with them.”
“You weren’t tempted?”
Callie’s eyes flash as she looks at him for the first time.
“I’ve picked my side.”
It sounds so simple when she says it like that, and Fitz isn’t sure how to respond. She doesn’t say anything else, and after a few minutes he pushes himself up from the ground, offering Callie a hand that she takes.
“You should probably get back to your cabin soon. Extra chores during the chariot races don’t sound like fun.”
She nods and sets off toward the cabins with a small wave, and Fitz heads back toward the arena with his hands shoved into the pockets of his jeans, turning what she had said over in his head. Choosing sides. Like they were dividing up for Capture the Flag, and he thinks about the Hephaestus flag, posted on Donnie’s bed in an attempt to chase away the empty space.
Choosing sides.