Chapter Four
As if this life is a parody of her last, the train is red. A journey to a boarding school-esque place that will be the center of the rest of her childhood, the place where she will learn and grow and discover and, probably most familiar, potentially die. A place where she will fight against the current that is fate just to see the summer again.
As if she’d be belong anywhere else.
She doesn’t sleep, not with the constant threat of monsters stalking her scent. So she spends three plus hours stewing in paranoia, while her ADHD has her jumping and fidgeting.
It’s not like she can clean her weapons in clear view of the humans around her. They’d see something crazy like a gun or what she actually is, a young girl with a bunch of blades and as is normal in modern society, that is not allowed on the train and will get her kicked off.
Then she would be stranded miles from Montauk and it could take days to get to camp with all the monsters she’ll likely have to wade through to get there. Not to mention they might try to confiscate her weapons and that would open another whole can of worms.
So no weapon cleaning and her blades stay wrapped in the duffel bag while she turns the mist warped flashlight on and off and on again.
That occupied her for all of twenty minutes.
Just great.
•
Two hours into the ride, she goes on her first and only trip the the bathroom and isn’t it just typical that everything goes to shit then.
Well, the last time she was on a train she was dead, so maybe it’s just her track record with them.
It always starts like this, goosebumps. The hair on the back of her biceps and neck stand on end, her skin goes cold, and it spreads, wraps around her like her cloak had. Her forearms, her shoulders, her neck. She goes cold like the very life is being sucked from her.
The train lurches to a stop, throwing Poppy against the counter and getting water everywhere from the faucet. Then the lights flicker, on and off and then stuttering on again.
Everything is silent, for a moment, then the screaming starts, then the fire alarms, and the sprinklers start. Then the goosebumps come, and her self awareness is being spread. She likens it to echolocation, like she knows death, she is born from death, and her every breath is a sound off to Death, it travels and travels and then travels back. Like recognizing like, and it responds, it echos back.
She clicks on her flashlight, without turning it to the sword, and opens the door.
In the hall it’s dark and deserted, eerily empty. The windows will start fogging in only minutes, no doubt. Poppy tries her hardest to ignore the water on her skin and steps out.
And Death blooms in her mind, her sense of it practically going ding ding ding in her ears. Monsters, and old ones too. Death drips off of them like magic did Voldemort.
They have been the cause of hundreds of deaths, hundreds apon hundreds, and they just plan on causing more. They revel in it, they enjoy it.
Well then, they don’t deserve the chance to reform, do they?
[Sometimes, She wonders where Tom Riddle is now.]
She makes her way slowly to her seat, only in the next carriage. Not quite a ding ding ding but close to it as it blares where only she can hear. She keeps walking, feet not making a sound. She clicks off the flashlight and sinks deep into the shadows, presses up against them until they are almost one and the same. It feels like silk spun warmth, and it is nothing like the cold unforgiving sea.
The carriage door is open and covered in raging flames, the water is doing nothing to stop it. The list for monsters with fire is long and tedious and she doesn’t have the time to think of them all, because she goes jumping out of the frying pan and into the fire.
The screaming hasn’t stopped, but Poppy can feel the mass of people moving downward through the train and only a few stragglers on the same side of the train as her.
Death is inevitable, yes, but it is also a thing of circumstance, a thing of chance.
Like many things it has many chances of happening, and chances of just coming and going. It is inevitable yes, but how it comes about is not predestined, it is not fate. She can feel the impending doom of the other humans fleeing from the train, but she can change it.
Poppy has never been one for sitting around and letting people die. Death still saturates the air, so it’s easy to follow that bizarre sense to the monsters. They have her scent but she has the deaths they have caused, the lives they have taken, the souls they cut from mortal bodies.
She gets to her seat without trouble, she grabs her bags and wraps them tight around her body, and then she pulls the Kusarigama from her bag. The black metal still sings with the River Styx, bellowing to all with it rippling edges and oppressive aura that it is a creator of endings.
Wielded only by those born from the Underworld. She whispers a prayer to Styx before unsheathing it, and it gleams against the backdrop of dark and fire and mayhem.
It will be the first time she uses it, first time it will kill and take a monster instead of turning them into golden dust and her father won’t even be there to see it, to see her take two parts of something different and make it new.
She moves around the fire as best she can, dipping around flaming seats, carpets and baggage. As she goes she chants in her head I am a demigod, I am a demigod, I am a demigod. No doubt that the monsters will smell it. The few people just a few train cars from her have a better chance this way.
Then the fire parts, splits down the middle and gives way to three lithe forms with shining bronze legs.
“Well well well, look what we have here,” one empousa croons, blonde haired that’s flaming and blue eyes dark with hunger.
“A demigod,” the red haired one exclaims, excitement dripping off of her like the human blood dripping from her lips. She’s the youngest of the trio.
“We’ve searching for you, demigod. Our fellow Tartarus dwellers have been whispering about the traveling Demigod who slays all that cross her blade.” She can guess that this one is the elder Empousa, she feels older, wears the death she’s caused like a king wears a crown.
They guard roads and devour travelers and though Poppy has been traveling for years now, she’s never come across them.
Poppy braces herself, right foot forward, left foot back and blade brandished just inches from her chest. The arrowhead dangles between the loose fingers of her left hand, ready to go flying at her command. Ready to spin at the slightest pressure of air and burrow in.
“My my,” the elder hums, “Was Hades the first to break the oath?” She wondered aloud even as Red hurriedly take a few steps back. If there was enough room, she’s sure they would be circling each other.
“Mmm, no, You smell of the underworld, but not of the Ruler of the underworld,” the elder also steps back but not because of fear, but because the blonde jumps forward, slender arms now clawed, with long blades of her bone arched like fins from her elbows.
The only part of her that looks human now is her face, and even that is gone when she bares bloody fangs. Poppy can’t save the ones they have already eaten, that they have already killed, but she sure as hell isn’t going to let them touch another human again.
This will be their end.
•
The first she kills is the blonde controlling the fire, her hand burns as she grips her hair and drags her scythe right across the Empousa’s neck and feels her crumble away. Poppy doesn’t have time to watch what the Stygian iron does to it because the red head and elder on her.
A few minutes later has her winded, jumping away and lunging up, her arrowhead is looping around the redhead’s neck and Poppy pulls with all her body weight. Then the barbs are sinking into her jugular, twisting tight and sure. She tries to scream but all that comes out is a gurgle. The jugular has low pressure so it doesn’t squirt, it seeps. Red tries to rip the chain from around her neck with shaky hands. Her fingers just start to bleed.
Poppy’s done it to near countless monsters before, it’s a lot more disturbing to do to something a lot more human-like.
Should she feel regret? Poppy isn’t sure.
Did they feel regret? She severely doubts it.
Her back meets glass and then it shatters from the force of her body, the elder empousa having heaved her straight through it. It doesn’t save the redhead, who begins to choke on her own blood as the chain is pulled taut and tight. She crumples and falls apart, just like the blonde one did and the feeling, oh gods the feeling, until there is nothing left behind.
Nothing. Not even golden dust to be lost in the wind. There is nothing and her scythe shines with the darkness of a pit, of a river, that never ends.
There is nothing left of her, no ash to reform, no dust to gather. She no longer exists. The laughter that bubbles from Poppy’s throat is nonhuman. The monster is dead and something like magic caresses up her spine, like a long lost lover finally returning home, like a war finally won, like familiar arms finally welcomed.
It feels like a drug.
[Harry had been but the other side of Tom Riddle’s coin. Two halves of one soul. There is no Tom Riddle here to be darker half. Just her. A different life for a different world and soul that is all her own.]
The elder screeches, something that isn’t quite fear watching like Poppy watches as the blade of her scythe soaks the golden dust in and devours the very soul of the Empusae.
There is no doubting Poppy is of the underworld now. She’s just severed the soul of a monster from the depths of Tartarus. There will never be another reformation.
The elder lunges for her, sharp black talons gleaming in the moon light and aiming for her throat. Angry and fearful and vengeful, all things to make her unpredictable, suicidal, her trio brought down to one.
Poppy jumps back, but her scythe and chain don’t come free from the inside of the train. She pulls but it stays tangled amongst the burning seat and she is forced back as the monster goes to sink her talons into her stomach.
Poppy’s hands and knees scrap against the track ballast, the sound of it against the copper leg of the elder is all she can hear when her talons miss her midsection and bury into her calf and yank.
Someone is screaming, either her or the monster or both still. Poppy twists herself around as the monster tries to rip her leg clean off. She slams her other heel into the underside of the Empusae‘s chin and cracks her head back with every bit of her strength. The feel of her claws tearing from her leg is more painful than anything she has felt for months now.
The flashlight is warm against her wrist, Poppy throws herself backwards and turns the dial and the weight of her first sword is as familiar as air in her lungs.
Poppy thinks she’s finally on her way to teaching these monsters to fear, to regret, to die truly and finally. To know death like demigods and humans always have.
They’ll know they picked the wrong train. She’ll let this one live, to suffer and reform, to tell the tale of a demigod that devours souls.
They’ll fear her just as the demigods have feared them for centuries.
•
The sirens come closer just minutes after she watches the golden dust fades with the wind, watches and wishes to feel the cold-dark-fire-death drag up her spine again, to have it settling into her skin like it belongs there and knows she will chase this to the ends of the earth, as it is the closest she has come to feeling magic again.
She climbs back through the train and pulls her scythe from the warped seats and then up the cars in search of a first aid kit. She shakes like she is seizing, can feel the adrenaline drain from her blood at the abrupt end of fight-or-flight, she aches and she throbs and can feel the tiny pieces of rock and glass digging into her back. Her hands are perhaps they only untouched piece of her, covered by the leather gloves her father gave her.
Fuck, her leg hurts. She makes it just past the tree line when her leg gives out and her eyesight goes fuzzy. Blood loss no doubt, she drops to the muddy ground and digs a small ziplock bag of Ambrosia and nibbles the smallest of bites.
That first treacle tart at the Gryffindor table, her mother’s homemade curry and miso soup, Remus’ favorite chocolate. Sirius’ whisky, Molly Weasley’s homemade fudge. Home.
She almost hates eating this, has made sure not to eat it too often because of the memories is drags up and the nightmare-dreams it gives her and the things it makes her feel even all these years and an entire life later.
She takes another bite, then just one more, feels the warmth of people and times long passed and then puts it away before it kills her. Before the warmth becomes a fire that will consume her like those memories always do.
The taste will linger for hours, and her sleep that night will be restless.
•
It’s still hours from dawn when she makes it to the very last train station and into the small seaside town that will lead to Camp Half-Blood. She contemplates finding a place to stay and waiting to continue the journey in the morning but realizes that no one will give a room to a child without some serious questions and just leaves it be.
The sooner she gets there the safer she will be anyway.
The stars are bright in the sky, the moon full and bright, giving her light to see the long stretch of desolate road. The crickets and toads are filling the night with consistent background noise that lulls alongside her steps, not so quiet that it makes her uneasy, owls and various other animal noises occasionally join her in her walk, passing the night alongside her. She knows if any of them go quiet then the monsters have come. She is safe as long as they feel safe, so she doesn’t really mind the sheer breadth of the crickets filling the night, but the thought of the number makes her skin squirm and cringe.
Overall it’s soothing, just her and the air, the bugs and the earth, a long walk like Harry used to enjoy when the chaos of his life made him want to peel himself out of his skin and just scream until everything juststopped.
After awhile the sky begins the brighten and the stars stowed away in the sunlight, the sounds stop and day comes and she finally comes to a place her father has been preparing her for years.
The sign swishes and swirls, the words bleeding into each other and then out, like the blue from lined paper runs through the red when water spills across them, distorts and warps them. Lines that run together and bleed apart and leek away together.
Delphi Strawberry Service into Στρατόπεδο Ημίαιμος.
Camp Half-Blood.
She made it.
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Her light up sneakers squeak as she walks down the linoleum tiles, the light reflects at her feet, bright against the bleached shine on the tiles. The lemon scented cleaner comforts her as she wanders alone down the hall. She doesn’t really like hospitals, no matter how many times her mother brings her to work with her. The feeling of this place is oppressive.
Her mother is currently working with a small family who had just lost their youngest child to cancer, and her kaa-chan had sent her away, when the mother started crying at the sight of Penelope.
Her steps echo strangely up and down the hall, but she keeps walking. The elevator waiting to take her up to the seniors ward where the few overnighters like to tell her stories or to ask about what’s going on outside of the hospital.
She walks, and keeps walking, and keeps…walking.
She stops and the footsteps stop, but the hair on her neck does not lower, the goosebumps on her skin do not disappear. Quick, she turns, but the hallway behind her is just as empty as the one infront of her.
“Kaa-chan?” She says, and her voice is bounces just as her steps had. “Hello?”
She starts running back the way she came, to the door with her mother and small crying family, but no matter how many steps she takes, the end of the hall never gets closer, the corner where the room is does not get closer.
She stops and the footsteps stop just a second too late, she spins but there still isn’t a soul in sight.
“Kaa-chan? Tou-san?” She shouts, but gets no answer except for the sound of her own voice. She’s alone.
But she’s never alone, no matter how uncomfortable her mother’s clients get, she always waited for a nurse to walk with her to the station or one of the senior’s rooms.
Why is she alone? Where is her mother? She starts running, her shoes pounding against the floor, no longer squeaking… but splashing.
Splashing? She looks down at her feet, dark dirty water up to her ankles, cold in way she hasn’t experienced before, freezing like a place that has never seen sun. Dread settles in her stomach, panic makes her hands shake, why would the hospital be flooded? Just a few minutes ago she was peacefully walking towards the elevator.
The elevator! She turns, but it’s not a bleach white hallway that greets her but dark massive bridge with the backdrop of a starless sky, a night with no light but the headlights shining from the passing cars.
She does not like this place.
“Kaa-chan?” She screams out into the darkness, and it does not echo but linger. “Mama!? Where are you?” She reverts back to her very first language. She starts running, and the puddles splash through her clothes, leaving pinpricks of ice on her skin. A humid breath on the back of her neck has her twisting around and tripping right into the water, but nothing is there but the long stretch of empty bridge and night without light.
She scrambles up and away, towards the lone car ahead of her, red and small but still big enough to hold their small family. It’s their car, the customized plate on the back reading her name, the stickers on the back window of her and her parents and their plants.
The entire right side is caved in, the red paint scratched and the metal warped. You can tell at first glance that the person driving would not survive. The blinker blinking in the only noise in the night, and it haunts her.
She can remember now, how they had been changing lanes to take the turn home when the roars had come out of no where, how the dividers had crumpled like sand, and the chunks of concrete had scattered along the road.
“Kaa-san?” She asks futility, knowing that the women will not answer, will never answer again. Through the destroyed door, a corpse of a once beautiful woman lays in pieces, her chest torn apart, her legs crushed, her hair matted and blood dried.
Empty, unseeing eyes turn towards her, no longer bright and amber, a beautiful color of caramel long gone, now foggy with death and decay.
Her mother, a corpse. Her mother, the one who gave her life, dead, gone forever, dead dead dead. Her mother, who opens her mouth and says-…
-…Poppy wakes with a scream being stifled behind her teeth, a sob trying to work its way up her throat.
There are hands holding her down, on her shoulders and her ankles. Her heart beat kicks up a notch, her panic alongside of it. Someone is holding her down and she can not fight.
The world is a blur of white and brown, and the voice in her head sounds distorted and warped, as if it’s underwater. Her head pounds and her vision continues to swim. She can’t breathe, she knows she panicking.
“…s okay, it’s okay, calm down,” someone somewhere says, “…camp half-blood, no monsters, just a dream,”
Just a dream, just a fucking dream, her mother haunting her in her fucking head, behind her eyes, her brain trying to tell her something, searching for something. Just a dream.
A bed is beneath her, warm with the heat from her body, the blanket around her keeps her trapped, not water, not the Potomac.
A blanket, a bed, the voice of a boy. She’s safe, she’s at the camp, she’s safe. A few repeats of that has her breathe coming easier and her vision clears.
The first thing she sees is blonde hair and blue eyes and tanned skin. A child of Apollo, no doubt, probably around 14. She’s safe, she made it to camp.
The nightmare fades and reality digs its way under her skin again. She is alive, her mother is dead, her father is god and it could be a lifetime before sees him again.
Perhaps it’s all a nightmare, all the time. She really wouldn’t doubt it.
“Hello,” Poppy croaks and she was definitely screaming. Damn, she hadn’t had the nightmare since before the casino. The boy gently takes away his hands and then graps a glass of water from the bedside table to hand to her.
“Thanks,” she says after she downs half the glass. The boy takes it back and grins saying, “No problem, it’s what I’m here for.”
“Sorry about the screaming and…” she waves her hand over herself.
The boy just waves her off with another smile, “You’re fine, we’ve all got cause for nightmares. I’m just glad I didn’t get another broken nose from a flying fist,”
She laughs and his grin just gets wider.
“How long was I out?” She can’t quite remember what happened after the door to the big blue house opened to reveal a centaur.
A centaur, Gods it’s been so long now.
“About a day, you’ve just gotten up in time for breakfast,” He says and her stomach rumbles at the prospect of food, and wow it’s been almost two days since she ate lunch with her father just before the train left Pennsylvania station.
“Your bags are just there, you can grab them and I’ll show you the infirmary showers, do you need anything?” He points to the chest at the foot of her bed.
She shakes her head. “No, I brought my own stuff,”
“Cool,”
She stands on wobbly feet and her calf aches, she’s still tired and healing, probably from the nightmares but also the Ambrosia, it does use up quite a bit of energy so they’ll heal faster. For Gods it uses divinity, or perhaps belief, but demigods have to sleep it off to rejuvenate or they’ll collapse from exhaustion. Just like she had yesterday morning, apparently.
She grabs her bag and follows the taller boy through a sliding door at the back of the large open room. It actually looks a lot like Hogwarts infirmary. The walls aren’t white but brown wood planks with windows that lead out to the ocean, there a probably over a dozen hospital beds with white curtains separating them with a few cabinets and tables between a few. A few chairs and another door that is likely a supply closet.
Behind the sliding door is a bathroom, with a few toilet stalls on the left wall, three bathtubs across from the door each with a table beside them, a stool, and a curtains. Then three shower stalls opposite of the toilets. The floor and wall are tiled, there is a large mirror over the sinks on the same wall as the door.
“This is the infirmary bathroom and the only bathtubs camp has.” He smiles mischievously. “You can use the showers to clean up. You can unwrap your leg to shower and we’ll wrap it back when your done. Your mostly healed but still be careful. Oh and Chiron will be waiting when your done to give a tour and take you to the pavilion,” The boy says as he leans against the door way.
“Okay, thanks,” she says back and he slides the door closed.
She takes a moment to breathe before limping over to the shower closest to the door and dropping her bags underneath a sink. She digs out the clear, waterproof bag with her soap and stuff and strips before closing herself behind the curtains. Her leg is pink and scarred, still throbbing a bit and quite bruised but looking much better than it did when she first ate the ambrosia.
She turns the hot water all the way up and only a little bit of cold and then rushes through the shower. She really does not like getting in the water, even though showers are easier, it had been raining that night on the bridge.
She wonders how long it’ll haunt her, crippleher. She really hopes she’ll never have need to use those bathtubs.
•
She dresses in clean jeans, a t-shirt and hoodie and another pair of hiking books. Her sneakers most likely ended up in the trash from all the blood and water that had ruined them. She attaches her Kusarigama to her belt with the chain looped on a hook, and then puts on her duffel bag and backpack and her flashlight into her hoodie pocket.
She brushes her hair and French braids it wet. She digs out another pair of gloves and then puts her another knife in her boot and then she’s ready to confront the place that will be her home for many years to come.
When she walks back into the infirmary, the boy is gone and the centaur is waiting at the desk across from the door. He looks up when she walks out, and she is struck by how different he is from the centaurs Harry had known. His hair is straight and stops at his shoulders, he beard isn’t as wild as Firenze’s had been and he’s wearing clothes. None of the centaurs she’s seen from the forbidden forest wore clothes. Though the quiver and bow is familiar.
He stands from the pillows his legs were folded on and smiles softly at her. “Ah, child, It’s good to see you awake.” He holds a hand down to her and she shakes firmly. His hands are calloused “We didn’t quite get around to introductions when you arrived, I am Chiron and I’m the activities Director here at camp half-blood.”
“I’m Penelopeia Kimura, nice to meet you,”
“And you as well Ms Kimura, now, do you have everything?” He asks as he starts for the door.
“Yes, though I haven’t seen my other pair of shoes,” she says as she follows,
“Ah, those could not be saved.”
“I figured,”
He leads her to a large open room with a fire place and bookshelves, “This is the big house common room, where we hold camp meetings and plan trips to the city, upstairs we have another library, a few rooms, the attic, and then my office and Mr. D’s rooms. Please don’t enter those without permission,” He points up the stairs.
“And through that door it the laundry room and that one is the kitchen,” he points to the doors framing the fire place. They walk out of the front doors she had stumbled through the night she arrived.
She follows on still tired aching feet after Chiron, the house looks different during the day, much more inviting then it was when it was dark and all the lights had been out. It’s two stories tall and both long and wide, bright blue. On the porch sits a few chess sets and rocking chairs.
She’s not looking where she’s going and it sends her into the ribs of the centaur. She runs her palm over her nose and quickly apologizes but it gets stuck in her throat when she catches sight of camp.
They stand on top of a hill overlooking the ocean, the sand and shore, the large sprawling space that makes up the home of half-bloods. The forest looms just a deep and dark as the sea, large houses - cabins, sit in a half circle around a large Pavilion and a large fire pit surrounded by logs and tables.
“Wow,” she breathes as she catches sight of dozens of orange clad kids roaming around, the large sprawling strawberry fields, the tall large circular arena, the miniature volcano. “I didn’t think it would be beautiful,”
The centaur chuckles, “Welcome to Camp Half-blood, Ms. Kimura.”
•
•
•
(Her mother who opens her mouth and says,
“You’re not…my daughter,”)