CHAPTER FOUR / VOL. I, AM I MISSED

HERE IT IS: the repeated image of a girl on fire, burning so hot that her skin starts to swelter and even in the dreamlike state her mouth goes dry. Orange and gold swallows the scene, specks of white dotting her vision like looking at the sun for too long or holding your eyes shut so tight that you see unimaginable colors in the darkness. The fire is unlike any she's seen before—golden like ichor but just as radiant and consuming, not like the violent flames that burned everything she was to the ground. Will can feel the heat swallowing her, burning against her skin, but this time it doesn't just dance around her, leaving her skin untainted. She feels every excruciating moment, unable to fight against the fire that laps at her body.

All she does is burn.

The ground shifts and thunder sounds just above her. It takes every ounce of power in her body to look up at the stormy sky, dark and foreboding, hanging over her head like a ghost that haunts her. And then a deafening crack fills her ears, not from the sky, but from the earth beneath her, splitting in two and creating a great divide like the one that exists inside of her. Will's body is not her own and as she falls beneath the earth, seeing the dark sky disappear, she can do nothing. Nothing but watch as the world slips away.

The last thing she hears are these words echoing in her head, feeling as grim as an epitaph: free me.

Will wakes in a cold sweat, shooting up like a bullet and examining the exposed skin that looks burned, red and inflamed by the fire from her dreams. It still burns. The rest of the cabin is silent, only the sound of snoring and Will's ragged breathing fill the nothingness. Her sweat-soaked clothes cling to her in a way that makes her squirm with revulsion as she pushes herself up from the bed, lacing up her shoes before exiting the cabin like it's on fire. She can't breath—stifling and suffocating, Ares' cabin watches her leave with haunting glass eyes and a gaunt frame that looks more like a consequence of war than war itself. Will doesn't look back, instead looking at the other cabins that are deathly silent, a slow decay that surrounds us. The cool night air is a welcomed feeling against her burning skin and as soon as she's outside her flesh returns to flesh and all signs of redness dissipates, leaving only a tint to her cheeks from the cold. There's only one place that Will wants to be right now—somewhere that felt like home, where chaos and violence reign. She longs for the comfort of disarray.

When she reaches the sword fighting arena her mind is still elsewhere—somewhere between the bitter earth and the unforgiving sky—a prophetic dream where no one gets out unscathed. Will knows that lying is a bad habit. Will Solace is constantly reminding her, and Annabeth always makes sure to point out the hypocrisy of her words, because Will can't stand being lied to but she lies all the time. So really, she should have told someone by now about the dreams that plagued her every night and the earth that came alive to swallow her whole. But Will doesn't mind being a hypocrite, she doesn't mind having bad habits or being a bad person. It wasn't just because she was a child of Ares—even her siblings maintained their humanity. It was because something was wrong with her. Some vital piece of her brain malfunctioned and left her this remorseless, unfeeling thing, monstrous in every way.

She wastes no time in hacking a particularly provoking straw dummy to pieces, imagining it's her father so she can finally cut a god down to size. She can't help that she's angry all the time, that every inch of her burns with ire. Will disregards the mangled dummy and moves onto her next victim. She points her sword and the vacant spot where a face should be before striking swiftly and violently, ripping the sword from its shoulder and leaving a trail of straw. She jumps backward as if her opponent has just swung their own weapon, spinning quickly and plunging her sword into the abdomen. If her enemy were a real, breathing thing, this is the part where she would taunt them—circle them slowly and let them know that their life is coming to an end, meaningless and slow. One cut on the forearm, a blow to the achilles, a hit just above the eye. But the pattern is volatile just like her and subject to change at any time. Today she is merciful, or rather short-tempered, and with a prompt swing the dummy's head drops to the ground, rolling a short distance before thumping against something.

She doesn't have to turn around to know who it is. She can sense it like the air before a storm, something stifling and suffocating. She feels like she can't breathe around him. Unbeknownst to her, he feels the same. To him, Will is smoke from a fire, stifling and suffocating all the same.

Jason picks the dummy's head up from beside his feet, holding it in two hands before glancing back at the source of its untimely death. Her back is to him. "What'd it ever do to you?" he asks humorously.

Will spares a glance at him, not caring for his weak attempts to lay the first stone. "Started an unwanted conversation," she retorts.

Jason purses his lips. He knows that his presence is unwelcome—Will has no problem with letting him know that—but still, some part of him yearns to be near her. As cruel and callous as she may seem, something tells him to dig deeper. Against his better judgement he makes his way over to where she sits against the arena's wall, legs sprawled out in front of her. She rolls her eyes as he hesitantly sits next to her, grabbing the pack of cigarettes from her back pocket. She doesn't ask if he minds, instead pulling one out and lighting it up, shielding the flame from the wind.

She stole them from an Aphrodite kid a few weeks back, expertly nicking the pack of cigarettes with artistry that would put Hermes to shame. They were too sweet, tasting of artificial cherries and nicotine. It reminds her of the Aphrodite cabin and the sickly sweet perfume that seeps from the cracks in the windows and penetrates her senses. But this time she does it to herself. Even though she doesn't smoke too much—bad habits and all that—Will needs the relief that it brings as she sucks in the cherry fumes. She finds irony in it.

"Earlier at the campfire," Jason begins after working up the courage, inhaling the sugary sweet scent that wafts towards him. "You didn't want me to choose you for the quest. Why?"

          Will raises a brow, sending him a scathing look. She takes another drag. "No beating around the bush with you, huh?" He falters. "Don't worry. I hate small talk anyways. It's tedious and insignificant. I can learn more about a person just by watching them. You can't trust what anyone says anyhow. People always lie."

          The golden haired boy soaks in her words, before furrowing his brow, an amused smile sliding across his lips. "You're not answering the question."

          She tilts her head, regarding him with something other than scorn for once. "You caught me. In case you couldn't tell, I'm not a big fan of the gods. Suffice to say that if Olympus burns, I'll be the one holding the flame."

          "Oh..." Jason mutters because he doesn't know what else to say. Nothing seems right.

          "Don't act like you don't have your own grudges," Will scoffs. "Hera stole all of your memories and dropped on a school bus full of miscreants. You have to be pissed. How could you not be?"

          "Well, I'm not happy about it," Jason admits. Will rolls her eyes—no shit. He continues, "But she's the queen of the gods and she needs help. And the only way for me to get my memories back and find some sense of normalcy is to save her."

          "See, you have a whole life that you don't even know about. Your memories are on the line, but me... I've got nothing to gain from this." As cynical as it might be, this is the way that Will sees the world. The things you do should benefit you, otherwise they're a waste of your time. It's the way of the world—everyone always has something to gain. Selflessness is nonexistent. "Why should I risk my life for someone who only sees me as a tool. That's all we are to the gods... pawns."

          "That's bleak," he says, phased by her words as a storm brews in his eyes.

          "It's the truth," Will asserts, taking another drag of the sickly sweet cigarette. It burns.

          Jason is deep in thought. No one else seemed to resent the gods as much as Will—not even Annabeth who Jason noticed despises Hera for reasons that are unknown to him. But Will was full of spite and even so, her words held certain truth. He starts to think that she might be right. "Maybe it is..." he mutters.

A moment passes. Jason spends this time looking at Will, thinking it strange that her charm is so unconventional yet so obtrusive. The years of intense combat training that Will enforced on herself has left her arms and legs toned, and Jason just knows she could snuff him out without hesitation or difficulty. He feels almost clever as he tries to piece things together—things that she won't tell him so he's left to guess. Her skin is tan so she must spend a lot of time in the sun, training in the heat, day or night. Her shoes are scuffed and spotted with blood, falling apart at the seams. She doesn't have another pair. Her body is riddled with tiny scars from incisions that she must have acquired in training or battle. But then he wonders about the large, glaring scar across the right side of her face. Time has left scar tissue slightly darker than her skin in a curved line down through her eye. The cut is clean and Jason surmises that the blow must have been swift and violent, one swipe that left her seeing red and tasting iron and ire. This piece of the puzzle doesn't fall into place as easily.

          "Why are you awake?" Will asks abruptly.

          Jason notices that it's the only time she's initiated conversation. He shrugs. "Zeus' cabin is too big and empty. It doesn't feel like home... not that I even know what home is. But I couldn't sleep with the storm. I know I should be comforted by it but with everything that happened I just don't know what to make of it."

          Will pauses, pulling the shrinking cigarette from her lips and looking up to the clear sky whose lurid stars wink down at her. "Storm?"

          "The one in the cabin. It's like the roof is just one big storm cloud. I don't think you'd like it much."

          "Why's that?"

          He looks up in surprise at the tone of her voice. He didn't mean to offend her but the sharpness in her voice cause him to falter. "Its just that you don't like storms. I could tell at the campfire. The thunder scared you." What he wants to say is, I scared you.

          Will thinks back to how her skin crawled at the sound of a storm. Shame picks at every vulnerable part of her. "I wasn't afraid," she denies. "I just don't like storms. They're bad omens."

          Jason frowns, thinking, then what does that make me?

          Instead, he asks, "Why are you awake?"

Will stops to think for a moment. Instinct tells her to lie. Lying is easy; it comes naturally, but the other part of her says that it doesn't matter. She's already signed her life away (i.e. agreed to this quest) so none of this has any consequence. The only thing that might happen is that Jason might hear about her dream and call it fate or something like that, but she just really hopes that he isn't the kind of person who believes in stars aligning. The Fates might disagree with her, but Will would light their mother thread of life on fire if given the chance.

          She finally decides. "I had a dream."

          "About what?"

          "Hera, I think. I was on fire—"

          "Like the prophecy?"

          Will frowns. "What?"

          "Didn't you listen to the prophecy? It said: from the flames, the boar shall rise," Jason recites.

Her skin crawls. It felt almost like retribution. If the prophecy was right (which it always was) and if her dream meant anything then Will would be consumed by the same fire that took her mother—the same one that was rooted inside of her. She should be afraid. Like the way her mother feared storms or the way that a believer fears their god. But Will feels nothing. Her reckoning will come and she will deserve every excruciating moment of it. Like Sisyphus and his eternal punishment, Will's suffering will be deathless.

All she does is burn.

THE FIRST THING WILL SEES WHEN SHE WAKES IS SHERMAN. His sharp face holds an irritated expression, his jaw clenching slightly. She blinks, examining the way his mahogany eyes fixate on something out the window then fall back on Will, raising a brow when he sees her looking back at him. Just like the night before he looks unimpressed. "Do you know how long it took me to wake you up?" he asks, but the question is rhetorical. "Ten minutes! You're lucky you woke up. I was just about to get the stun grenades out."

          She wipes the sleep from her eyes with the back of her hand, forcing Sherman back so she can sit up properly. "Remind me why we have stun grenades again?"

          Sherman scoffs, shoving her sheathed sword into her arms along with her other assortment of weapons. "You weren't complaining at the last game of capture the flag when you threw one at Drew."

          Will's lips tilt upwards, a sleepy smile spreading across her face. "That was nice. You really do make lasting memories at summer camp."

          Sherman rolls his eyes fondly. "Shut up," he says but there's nothing close to venom in his voice. "Get up now. That new Hephaestus kid brought the dragon into camp. I thought we were under attack again. How'd you manage to sleep through that?"

She shrugs, pushing off the bed and discarding her pajamas as Sherman faces away from her. She assumes most everyone else is wielding their weapons at the bronze dragon, preparing to take it down as the impish boy on top of it trembles like a leaf. That's what Will imagines anyways. She pulls on a pair of jeans and another orange Camp Half-Blood shirt (seeing as that's the only clothing she has access to, save for the Aphrodite summer campers who bring in clothes to sell like an underground market). Finally, Will straps on the holsters, securing her daggers and sword in their designated spots.

          "You know they're all waiting on you, right?"

          Will rolls her eyes, glancing out the window at the large, evident dragon by the woods. "Let them wait."

          Sherman shakes his head. "I never did thank you for last night."

          "For what?"

          "Volunteering for the quest."

          "It had to be me," Will admits. "Clarisse isn't here right now and I've been her the longest after her. Besides, it couldn't be you. We wouldn't want Miranda to worry. She's pretty soft," she muses. "Sensitive even."

          "She's compassionate," Sherman defends. "She just worries. And being soft and sensitive isn't bad, Will. It's just different than what you're used to. Different isn't always bad."

          Will isn't buying it. "It seriously baffles me how you two are together. Miranda's basically a sworn pacifist and you..." she trails off. "You're a child of Ares. Violence is bred into you."

          Sherman's disappointed in her—she can tell. "Just because our father is the god of war, doesn't mean that we have to practice senseless violence. We can choose to be good. You don't have to be like him," he says.

It's a lie. Will knows it. We all end up just like our parents, collecting the worst parts of them like figurines until it becomes you. She was born to seed war and chaos like her father before her. The cycle would begin anew and ruthlessness would always find a home inside of girls like Will Capote.

          "We don't have a choice. Call it fate."

          "You don't believe in fate," Sherman rebutes. "What happened to free will?"

          "Maybe I was wrong," Will shrugs though it's mostly just to irk Sherman and he knows it. "Maybe free will is an illusion."

          "It's not," Sherman insists. "Now come on." He ushers her towards the door but before she can exit he stops her, his hand grasping her forearm gently. "Be careful."

          Will doesn't give away any emotion. "I don't even know the meaning of the word." He hits her on the arm in response, a smile emerging just as she exits. "Don't do anything stupid," she orders.

          "How can I? You're taking all the stupid with you," he jokes but there's a hidden sadness that Ares would scorn.

          "Don't start getting soft on me now," Will says though what she really wants to say is I'll miss you, and what she really wants to hear is I'll miss you, too.

          "I won't," Sherman agrees.

Will only shakes her head, heading toward the garish dragon and the large crowd that surrounds it. Most of the campers were still looking at the beast wearily, hands holding any kind of weaponry that would put their minds at ease. And then there was Leo Valdez who looked too happy to be perched on top of a colossal dragon that Will would liken to scrap metal. She scowls.

          "Go," Annabeth says once she sees Will arrive. "Just... come back in one piece." Her hair is messily pulled into a ponytail and truthfully she looks nervous for the group, despite the fact that she had just reassured Jason that it would be fine. She'd told him that he had a good group, which wasn't a lie—she trusted that Will was skilled enough in combat to make up for their lack thereof, but the Capote girl had never been a team player, anyone could tell you that. It was rare for Annabeth to be so disheveled, and in an uncharacteristic act of affection, Will pulls Annabeth into a short but firm hug. Before the blonde can even react Will is clambering up the side of the dragon, ignoring the hand that Jason offers her, instead choosing to grapple up the dragon by using Éleos to hook onto the jutting metal.

Leo looks pained as he watches her do so but he says nothing, only winces as she scrapes against the metal with her knife. Once she's up, Festus stretches his wings out with a few creaks and groans, lifting up into the sky and leaving the safety of Camp Half-Blood behind. Annabeth's worried face dissolves and all that is left is specks, looking inconsequential from such great heights. Everything looks perfect from far away, but Will knows the little things that no one else does. Somewhere down there she might be missed, and maybe even mourned.

          Am I waste or am I missed?

SOMETHING ABOUT BEING SO HIGH UP UNSETTLES WILL—not for a fear of heights or rather a fear of falling, but because the sky never held anything but negative connotations. This is Zeus' domain and consequently Jason's but with it comes thunder and lightening and disaster that is beyond Will's control. But she supposed that this is better than being swallowed by the earth like her dream had warned, so whatever it was, being airborne seemed like the best option, or the one that's least likely to end with death. Regardless, Will just hoped that Jason would keep any storms at bay.

          Leo grins, turning to look back at his companions who hold mixed reactions. Piper looks to be in awe, pink lips parted as she takes in the scenery around her. She looks beautiful with tinted pink cheeks and a light in her eyes that won't be dimmed—even Will felt enthralled by her, though maybe that was still the side effects of Aphrodite's power. Will on the other hand is grimacing, something that doesn't go unnoticed by her companions. She looks up at the cloudy sky and then Jason who sends her a reassuring smile. She scowls as Leo says, "Cool, right?"

          "Not really," Will mutters but her voice is swallowed by the wind.

          "What if we get spotted?" Piper asks, looking back at Will and Jason who are the most knowledgeable, though the latter's memory was mostly a blank canvas and the former was just entirely unwilling to be helpful.

          "The Mist," Jason supplies. "It keeps mortals from seeing magic things. If they spot us, they'll probably mistake us for a small plane or something."

          Piper glances over her shoulder. "You sure about that?"

          "No," he admits, though from the hollowness of his voice it was clear that he was fairly distracted. There's a photo clutched in his hand of an unfamiliar girl with short, raven locks and cold features. Piper looks at it with furrowed brows, not certain how she should be feeling or if she should feel anything at all. Another moment passes but as Will's finally pulls her eyes from Piper's reaction, Jason was already tucking it away. However, Will doesn't need to see the photo to understand. The blurry glimpse of Thalia Grace's photo is enough for Will to recognize her. She softens, thinking how alone Jason must feel in this new and unfamiliar world.

          "We're making good time. Probably get there by tonight."

          Piper speaks up hesitantly. To Will's trained mind it was clear that she was still racking her brain over who the girl in the photograph could be, though jealousy seems lost on her and instead there is only curiosity and confusion. "Where are we heading?"

          "To find the god of the North Wind," Jason says. "And chase some storm spirits."

Silence blankets them with the only sounds coming from Festus and the roaring wind. The group already lulls with fatigue and Jason offers to stay up while the rest of them sleep, ever valiant and self-sacrificing, but Will is the only one who disagrees. She doesn't trust any one of her companions given their lack of training which in her eyes is incompetence, so her and Jason sit in silence, watching the still sky to fill the void. Only Jason is thinking of how nice Will looks with the sunlight against her skin and Will is thinking that anything could be out there.

          Jason knows this to be a mistake but the words fall from his lips before he can stop them. "Who's Luke?" Annabeth had already told him that Luke was dead with a forlorn waver to her voice, leaving a sour taste in her mouth that Jason suspects Will shares.

          Will stiffens, not turning back to look at the golden boy, but still she seethes. "How do you know that name?" There's a dangerous edge to her voice like a sharpened blade or something equally as lethal.

          "Annabeth mentioned him earlier," he says quietly, though he leaves out how he heard them talking about it at the campfire, something akin to nerves lacing his words.

There's a lot that Will feels right now. As much as she wishes it was simply pure, unadulterated rage, the truth is much more complex and she is filled with so much more than just fury. More than anything it hurts. She misses him endlessly and maybe that's what separates her from her father. Maybe this is what Luke was talking about all those years ago. He told her she was good, but he lied. He was the good one, despite his shortcomings and betrayals. Will knew enough about monstrous people to know that he wasn't one, even if he'd done monstrous things. Now she just feels tired and the thought of Luke just makes her heart feel heavy, riddled with emotions that Ares couldn't possibly comprehend.

          Jason asks again, though maybe he's pressing his luck, "Who was he?"

          Will can't find the resolve to be brutal now, so instead she says sadly, "He was... he was my friend. And he was good. I don't care what anyone else has to say about him or what he did." As much is pains her, Will has to admit that some part of her feels less burdened when she talks about him—like just thinking about him soothes her pain. "Luke went through a lot. And it's hard to be that young and that hurt and not come out unscathed. The gods aren't good, you know..." she trails off, looking away though she can feel Jason's gaze on her and only on her. "They don't know how to be parents or maybe they just don't want to, but Luke couldn't stand his father for what he'd done. He left Luke and his mother when they were most vulnerable, and he never forgave him for that. He grew to resent his father and the rest of the gods. Eventually, he turned against them..."

          "During the Second Titan War?" Jason guesses.

          "Before that too," Will says but she doesn't offer up anything else.

Jason, thinking it's not his place but desperate to know the answer, asks, "Did you love him?" He doesn't know why he does it. It shouldn't matter to him who Will has loved or anything that happened in her past—how many times she lied to save face or did things that would have her called a monster. But it does matter to him, though he can't pinpoint why. Really it's because he wants to know her and that means all of the grief and heartache that came before him.

          "In what way?" Will asks, though her mind is elsewhere, still stuck on Luke Castellan who was golden in every way. It killed her to hear the whispers about his treachery. And maybe it was because she almost wanted to join him, but Will always defended him before anyone else. She understood what it meant to be raised with spite and ire in your blood, to hate the gods that granted you life and left you alone in a world that was too unforgiving.

          "In any way," he says, wondering if a girl like Will Capote is even capable of love.

          "Yes," she mutters, wanting to say: yes, of course. How could I not? But the words don't come out in the way that she want. After a moment she continues. "I did," she says, feeling vulnerable for the words that leave her mouth, but the solitude whittles the words from her lips and she's comforted by the reassurance that her words will be lost to the wind. "I do. He was my friend." Will looks to Jason who doesn't look at her with pity for once. He looks at her with something akin to understanding, so she looks away and swallows thickly. "I told you that I was claimed before I arrived at Camp Half-Blood—"

Jason nods.

          "But when I finally arrived no one new who my father was. And I was... ashamed, so I told everyone that I was unclaimed, because I couldn't stand the thought of Ares being my father. Because of that, I was put into Hermes cabin where the rest of the unclaimed campers go. And that's where I met Luke. He was the one that convinced me that I shouldn't be ashamed of who I am, that just because my father is a monster, doesn't mean that I have to be. He was my friend," Will repeats, still stuck between nostalgia and a war that's still seared into her mind, like a mark to remind her of her own emptiness.

          "He was good..." she insists. "And he thought I was good too."

note: haha not me using an aubreys lyric in my writing and the title. it really do be like that. anyways we are now getting into the quest which i can't wait to write more of!! also i know luke is kind of a controversial character but you know i personally hold some amount of sympathy for him. yes he was manipulative and cruel in many many ways, but keep in mind these were all children dealing with lots of trauma and fucked up stuff that kids shouldn't have to experience. he was full of anger towards the gods and that's exactly how will is. a lot of people might not like him and how i'm writing his and will's relationship, but the reason she still thinks he's good is because in her eyes he is. will thinks she's a bad person and as one of the only people that she opened up to, she still considers luke to be her friend. i'm not coming after anyone who hates luke but i don't think it's always so black and white. people are complex, morality is fluid. sometimes it's hard to draw the line between good and bad. and this is in no way me trying to defend his actions, but i think we have to be understanding of people's trauma and understand that sometimes it can lead people astray but that doesn't always make them irredeemable.

also unrelated to my huge rant, i low key forgot about the cleaning harpies so let's just say that jason and will got around them ig