CHAPTER EIGHT / VOL. I, BAD FRIEND

IT STARTS LIKE THIS: a boy with golden skin and blue eyes that should be haunting, but hold hold nothing but warmth for the young girl next to him. Luke is every bit his father's son—freckles from the sunlight scattered on the bridge of his nose and his petal lips that twist into a coy smile like he always knows something that you don't. One hand is flat against the roof to support him while the other is rested on his knee, toying with edge of his shorts. His eyes are on the setting sun, watching as Apollo sinks further into the sky and Artemis rises higher, darkening the night with her presence. But Will is watching him—only him, and thinking that it shouldn't be this easy to form attachments to people who could just as easily disappoint you.

          Luke pulls his eyes from the sunset, letting his gaze rest on Will who furrows her brow at his sudden attention. "I don't think I mentioned it earlier, but happy birthday."

          Will looks up in surprise before a sour expression crosses her youthful face. This causes Luke to smile. "How'd you know?" she grumbles.

          "Well, you always hate when campers celebrate their birthdays and you seemed particularly moody today—especially when you threw that smoke grenade in the Aphrodite cabin. Normally I'd have to reprimand you for that but it was pretty funny," he admits. "Besides, the Stolls probably would have done it if you hadn't. Anyways, I added two and two, and came to the conclusion that you," Luke sings, pointing an obnoxious finger towards her. "Are eight years old today."

          Will feigns annoyance but there's nothing akin to resentment in her heart. She's pleased that Luke figured it out and that it's just the two of them who know. "It's not a big deal."

          "It is a big deal," he insists. "Plus, it's been six months since you arrived at Camp Half-Blood. Six months since we met," he says with a soft smile.

She returns it.

          "Now that it's been so long," Luke continues, "I figured that maybe it was time for you to move on from the Hermes cabin."

          "What?" Will asks, but the boy next to her says nothing, only looks at her expectantly. "It's not like I get to choose where I go. I haven't been claimed."

          Luke's eyes soften and he looks at her with a kind of gentleness that she hasn't seen in a long time. "We both know that's not true."

          "It is," Will insists petulantly, crossing her arms and scowling. She doesn't look so threatening, but Luke knows that she will grow into her anger eventually.

          "Why are you ashamed of it," Luke asks, but some amount of him can understand enmity towards the gods. His bitterness has yet to consume him, but it still sits dormant inside of him. For now he will try to save someone else before he saves himself.

          With a defeated sigh, Will looks to the row of cabins or anywhere that isn't Luke and his softness that has no place with a child of Ares. "Before I got here my father visited me. He told me where to find Camp Half-Blood at."

          "Well, that's good," Luke says. "It's more than most of the gods would do."

          Will looks to him with too much sorrow and heartache for a girl her age. "He's the reason I'm like this." A shaky hand reaches up to scar across her childish features. It's a sharp contrast to her cherub cheeks and soft eyes that harden more and more each day. "Ares did this to me."

Luke's heart drops and no words come to him.

          "I don't want to be like him," Will admits. "He scares me. He's hurt me. And I don't want to be like that, but I think... I think I might be. Sometimes I get so angry that I feel like I might explode—like all of his badness is mine now."

Again, Luke doesn't know what to say. What does one say to a little girl who's already lost so much?

          "Do you think I'm like him?"

          He doesn't have to think before he responds. "Of course not, Will. There's good in you," he insists. "Now, are you ready to move in with your siblings?"

          "No," she says quickly. "Not yet."

          "OK," Luke replies with a smile, his hand now holding Will's gently. "We can stay up here as long as you like."

She smiles though it doesn't reach her eyes. Looking down at their hands, Will doesn't think she'll ever find someone who understands her as much as Luke does. It's the same way that her own mother had once loved her—unconditionally and without bounds, because sometimes love didn't need to be more than two people who understands what it means to be alone. They were cut from the same cloth, seeded with bitterness and wrath that would consume them.

Then Luke's lips start to move, but Will doesn't need to hear his words to know what he says.

The scene is different now. They're in the throne room at the foot of the hearth with blood seeping from Luke's side and pooling onto the floor beneath him, creating a crater of crimson fluid that seeps into every crevice. Will's knees are soaked with his blood, but her hands have already been stained with the blood of others. He looks gaunt and withered, a shell of the golden boy he once was. He's nothing like the glorious fifteen year old boy who held her hand and gave her comfort even when she didn't deserve it. He is a ghost and Will is already haunted by him.

"Will," he croaks. There's tears in her eyes and she's choking back sobs but she scrambles forward anyways, clutching his hand in her own. She looks at him with so much love that he knows he doesn't deserve. "Your light could burn entire cities, but there would always be us..."

SHE WAKES TO THE SOUND OF HUSHED WHISPERS, still disoriented from the dream-like memories she'd just seen play out. It all seemed so far away but Will has to remind herself that the Battle of Manhattan only happened in August. The memories were still fresh and she was still reeling from the loss that came as a consequence of war. The destruction has made itself a home in her mind, constantly replaying the moments she wanted to forget, the ones where she can't deny the monster that she is.

She hears Piper before she sees her, soft voice ringing in her ear with worry. "Will," Piper calls with a small smile. "You're awake." Then she looks pointedly at Leo who glances back at the two girls with frown. They're not as discrete as they think and Will notices the exchange easily. Then Piper asks the question that's been on her mind since Will first muttered the name in her sleep. "Who's Luke?"

"No one," Will says sharply, suddenly more awake at the familiar name that still tugs at her heartstrings.

Leo scoffs, sounding uncharacteristically cruel. "Yeah, right. He must've been someone if you're talking about him in your sleep."

"Leo," Piper chastises.

"I overheard some people at Camp Half-Blood talking about him," Leo says. "They said he was a traitor." He spits the word traitor like it's acid. Any of the hesitance he'd had from before is gone and all that is left is acrimony for the girl who had left them to die.

"You don't know what you're talking about," Will sneers, a cold look crossing her face like an angry god whose potency had yet to be tested.

"OK, fine," Leo admits. "I don't really know what I'm talking about. But I do know that we can't trust you!"

          "That's enough," Piper says definitively, but Leo can't stop now.

          He turns around with a look of betrayal on his face that shouldn't be there. "You left Piper to die!"

          "I came back!" Will shouts lividly though she knows her anger isn't justified. She came back in the end, but some part of her knew that it could never redeem her for leaving in the first place. It was that shred of humanity that left her riddled with guilt—growing and palpitating beneath the surface.

          "Only 'cause you felt guilty—not because it was the right thing to do. Not because you cared," Leo says, not bothering to mask the bitterness. Will stills. His words strike a chord with her and she thinks that Leo might understand her more than she will ever know. He knows the monster that lives inside of her. He continues, "We all know you didn't even want to come on this quest. You don't want to be here and we don't want you here," he shouts. "You're a bad friend!"

          "Leo," Piper cries out once again, but it's too late. There's nothing he can do to take back the words he said.

          Something shifts, Will's expression warping into something dark. "You see, Valdez. You misunderstand what this is." Her voice is cold and foreign, making Leo's spine go rigid at the acidity of it. "I am not your friend. I owe you nothing, and if any one of you were to die, it would be easing my burden." She doesn't have to finish what she means—the message carries. You mean nothing to me.

          Leo turns in his seat, thinking monster, monster, monster. With the blood still painted on her face like a mask and the apathy in her dark eyes, there really isn't anything human about her at all.

But Piper's sadness shows. Her lips twist into a frown and she watches the back of Will's head, hoping that she will turn around and say, oh, but not you. She doesn't though and Piper understands that her warmth is misplaced. The fondness is one sided and Will really is too inhuman to have a heart—just a hollow cavity of nothing where there should be something.

What they'd only just realized about Will is that she is not the princess, or the hero, or the dragon. She is something much, much worse. Cut from chaos and burdened with a thirst for blood, Will Capote is the spitting image of her father as though she had been carved from his own flesh and molded into this ruinously brutal thing. But some pieces of her had always been missing—the vital pieces that make her human had never been there. She was parts of a whole that would never come to together. Women bred from war and pain were only meant for destruction.

And Will would always ruin everything she touched.

THE AIR IS STIFLING IN ITS STILLNESS, so rigid that it's suffocating. Leo is sitting in the front, still feeling an unbridled amount of anger at Will's cruelty, while Piper just seems disappointed—not even in Will, but the situation they find themselves in. She still has hope. But Will sits between the two, one hand gripping Jason's windbreaker, though this is the extent of her concern and she doesn't let Leo or Piper know that she cares enough to keep him on the dragon. After all, she's a bad friend.

His eyes snap open abruptly, jolting in his seat and it's a good thing Will kept her grip on his jacket. "Cyclops!"

"Easy, Flyboy," Will says from behind him, releasing her hand from the bundle of fabric at his side. He doesn't look back to respond, only looks ahead at Leo who seems oddly irritated. His shoulders are tense but he throws Jason a friendly smile.

"D-Detroit," Jason stammers. "Didn't we crash-land? I thought—"

"It's okay," Leo says. "We got away, but you got a nasty concussion. How you feeling?"

Bringing a hand to his throbbing head, he winces. "How did you—the Cyclops—"

"Leo ripped them apart," Piper interjects proudly. "He was amazing. He can summon fire—"

"It was nothing," Leo says quickly, ducking his head bashfully. The moments leading up to this almost go forgotten as he shrugs off his heroism, allowing Will's betrayal to slip into the back of his mind.

Piper just laughs. "Shut up, Valdez. I'm going to tell him. Get over it."

Then she told him of how Leo saved the day—heroically killing two Cyclopses in order to save the lives of his friends. She spares no detail—all except for the part where Will left them to die, only returning because of the guilt weighing heavy on her mind. Piper is cautious around these parts, wording the story carefully to leave out any details that incriminate Will. It's a nice gesture—well-intentioned at least—but Will still thinks bitterly that she is a coward and now they know it too.

"What happened to the third Cyclops?" Jason asks.

"Oh," Piper says, stumbling over her words. "Uh... Will got him when he left on his own. It was smart to take them out while they were separated."

Leo rolls his eyes much to Jason's confusion. The bitterness from before comes flooding back in tidal waves. "Was that before or after she left you to die?"

"What?" Jason asks.

At the same time Piper says, "Stop saying that!"

"I overheard one of the Cyclopses saying that she ran away like a coward," Leo accuses.

The word coward fills her with acrimony. It pierces at the vulnerable parts of her flesh like needles, making a home in her bones and reminding her exactly what she is.

"But she's here," Jason defends. "She came back."

Leo scoffs at the familiar response, thinking how foolish and misguided his friends are. He sees the most visceral parts of Will for what they are. Cruel, cold, calloused Will Capote and all the chaos that comes with her.

Jason turns back to look at her. She was uncharacteristically quiet considering the fact that Leo was accusing her of being a coward. Jason didn't know her all that well but he figured she wouldn't take kindly to that word—and normally she wouldn't, but it stings because it's the truth so she says nothing. His face goes as pale as the snow when he finally sees her—face still coated in a thick layer of blood and eyes lit with kerosene. She looks like something out of a horror film, haunting and petrifying in ways that suggest a monster. He can smell the metallic scent of blood so strong that it makes his head go dizzy.

"Whose blood is that?"

"Mine," she answers coldly, not meeting his eyes.

"You're hurt?" His eyes trail down to her bloody hand. Before he can contemplate his actions, his hand is grabbing hers and drawing it closer to examine it. It's just dry blood caked on her palm but there's nothing there—not even residual scarring from the cuts.

She rips her hand away. "It's fine."

"The nectar healed it," Piper supplies. She watches the interaction closely.

"What about that?" Jason asks, gesturing towards Will's arm that has been a piece of orange fabric tied around it. He notices that the bottom of her t-shirt has been ripped off sloppily to serve as a wound dressing for the burn.

"I'm not immune to fire," Will retorts. "Most people aren't."

"Oh... but—"

Piper interrupts, seeing Will's frustration and thinking it'd be best to change the subject. "Hey, one of the Cyclopses mentioned eating a kid with a purple shirt. They said he spoke Latin and that he was a son of..."

"Mercury," Leo supplies.

"Yeah, that's what he said."

Will stills, thinking back to her conversation with Chiron and the words he told her—they are not your enemy. Her mind is working overtime, sifting through any stories she might have heard of strange, Latin speaking demigods or just anyone who still worships Roman deities. She thinks of nothing—only Jason who knows nothing but seems to be the key to everything.

"I'm not alone, then," he says finally after a long moment of silence. "There are others like me."

"Jason," Piper says softy, "you were never alone. You've got us."

"I—I know... but something Hera said. I was having a dream..."

While Jason retells the events of his dream, Will is thinking churlishly that the gods will never make sense to her. Her bitterness grows like a weed and something in the earth can feel her heart grow darker.

"An exchange?" Piper asks. "What does that mean?"

Jason shakes his head, a silent message of his cluelessness. "But Hera's gamble is me. Just by sending me to Camp Half-Blood, I have a feeling she broke some kind of rule, something that could blow up in a big way—"

"Or save us," Piper says hopefully. "That bit about the sleeping enemy—that sounds like the lady Leo told us about."

"What lady?" Will questions. She has an inkling but she has to be sure.

"Dirt Woman," Piper supplies. "Or that's what Leo called her at least."

Will doesn't have to be told twice. She couldn't not know the mother of Titans—the mother of all. Her head spins.

"Do you know something about her?" Leo asks. He sees the way her eyes light up with recognition. He doesn't understand it yet but he notices it all the same.

"No," she denies, but his words still echo in her head.

Bad friend.

"Well, anyways," Leo clears his throat, though his eyes still watch Will with suspicion. "About that... she kind of appeared to me back in Detroit, in a pool of Porta-Potty sludge."

"Did you say... Porta-Potty?"

He tells them about the austere face that appeared in the factory yard, bubbling from the earth itself and forming into soft but stoney features. "I don't know if she's completely unkillable," he says, "but she cannot be defeated by toilet seats. I can vouch for that. She wanted me to betray you guys, and I was like, 'Yeah, right, like I'm gonna listen to a face in the potty sludge.'"

The familiarity of his words make Will grimace. You will betray them again, she hears. And this time, Will doesn't know if she would or wouldn't. What she does know is that Leo is better than her in every way that matters. She knows what it means to be good, but the problem is that she doesn't quite remember how to get there.

"She's trying to divide us." Piper says tensely. Will can feel her go rigid behind her.

"What's wrong?"

"I just..." she falters. "Why are they toying with us? Who is this lady, and how is she connected to Enceladus?"

"Enceladus?" Jason asks and Will shares this sentiment.

"I mean..." Piper's voice wavers. "That's one of the giants. Just one of the names I could remember."

Will narrows her eyes. She hates being lied to.

Leo scratches his head. "Well, I dunno about Enchiladas—"

"Enceladus," Piper corrects.

"Whatever. But Old Potty Face mentioned another name. Porpoise Fear, or something?"

"Porphyrion," Will says. Her companions look to her. "He was king of the giants. The bane of Zeus..." She looks to Jason.

He pauses for a moment, not entirely sure what bane means in this context, but understanding that it's nothing good. "In the old stories, Porphyrion kidnapped Hera. That was the first shot in the war between the giants and the gods."

"I think so," Piper agrees. "But those myths are really garbled and conflicted. It's almost like nobody wanted that story to survive. I just remember there was a war, and the giants were almost impossible to kill."

"Heroes and gods had to work together," Jason says. "That's what Hera told me."

"In the Giant War it was Zeus and Hercules who destroyed him," Will offers.

"That's kind of hard to do," Leo grumbles, "if the gods won't even talk to us."

Will would agree but she's still stuck on Gaea's words. She knows she's a bad person—she's never tried to hide it, but the only reason she didn't turn against the gods before was because she wouldn't betray her friends. And yes, they were her friends. Annabeth who held Will as she wept over Luke's body—even though Annabeth's thoughts about him had changed, she said nothing and only held her friend like she might crumble at any moment. And Will Solace who patched up her leg after a snarling hellhound had ripped the flesh from her calf. He saw the blood on her hands and knew that not all of it was her own, but he didn't think her a monster. This was war. They had all done things they weren't proud of. And then there was Sherman who woke her from every nightmare and didn't have to ask to know. He understood well enough the toll that it had on her. War takes from everyone.

AFTER UNSUCCESSFULLY HUNTING DOWN TWO STORM SPIRITS, Jason suggests that they seek shelter in the sewers which is fine with Will. She'd had to sleep in worse places when she was seven and had nowhere else to go, and also she was kind of spiraling right now so it didn't even matter anyways. It wasn't that unusual for her to be quiet but it was the kind of silence that carried foreboding and dread. Will Capote kept secrets like they were currency. But of course, hers were the only ones that really mattered. Selfishness is inherent.

She knows that Leo is still watching her like she's the villain of this story, and in many ways she probably is. But Will can't help what she is. No one has ever asked her to change or even expected her to. Sometimes the hard part of acceptance is allowing for stagnancy even when growth is needed. But whatever ideas he had about a connection between them is gone. No matter how similar their origins might be—they are not the same. Leo's flames were meant to protect his mother. Will's are the very thing that killed hers.

          As soon as they started walking through the sewer, Piper stumbles, falling gracelessly into Jason's arm as she curses. "Stupid ankle."

          "Let's rest," Jason decides, stabilizing the girl as she glares holes into her ankle. "We could all use it. We've been going nonstop for over a day. Leo, can you pull any food from that tool belt besides breath mints?"

          "Thought you'd never ask. Chef Leo is on it!"

Piper and Jason take a seat on a brick ledge while Will leans against the wall a couple feet away, looking around at the cavernous tunnels and trying to peer through the darkness. Leo shuffles through his pack as Jason fiddles with his gold coin. He looks deep in thought, troubled by something that Hera had said to him. He looks burdened.

          "It wasn't your fault," Piper says.

          "What?"

          "Getting jumped by the Cyclopses," she responds. "It wasn't your fault."

          He looks down at Ivlivs, feeling a wave of guilt overcome him, and Will knows that he must be good. His guilt lingers whiles hers is gone because she came back—and isn't that enough? "I was stupid. I left you guys alone and walked into a trap. I should've known..." He felt incomplete in every way. Nothing about him was whole and everything that he experienced in the past few days should not have been so unfamiliar. He knows these things—he has to. But Hera has stolen everything from him. Maybe Will was right. He should be angry with the gods.

          "Hey." Piper nudges his arm, sympathy coating her voice. "Cut yourself some slack. Just because you're the son of Zeus doesn't mean you're a one-man army."

A few feet away, Leo has lit up a small cooking fire. He's humming and pulling out supplies from his tool belt and pack. Will watches him, still listening to Jason and Piper's quiet conversation that probably isn't for her ears. She carves into the brick wall with her dagger, chipping away at the concrete like bark from a tree.

          "I know this must suck for you," he sympathizes. "Not just the quest, I mean. The way I appeared on the bus, the Mist messing with your mind, and making you think I was... you know. I'm sorry for that." He glances to Will and nothing more has to be said.

          Piper knows that Jason's heart leaps in his chest when he sees Will. She can't blame him for not blindly following the lies that Hera fed him. He doesn't feel for her like he should, and maybe that's alright. Piper isn't really sure what she should be feeling anyways. "Yeah, well. None of us asked for this. It's not your fault." She tugs at the little braids on each side of her head, sparing a glance at Will whose bulky dagger gleams in the light. She can't find it in herself to be mad at Will for leaving her behind. Leo holds enough resentment for the two of them, but Piper just hurts. She thought that there was something human in Will. It was a fatal mistake.

          "Back in the factory," Jason says, "you were you going to say something about your dad."

She traces her finger over the bricks like writing out a scream that won't ever cross her lips. "Was I?"

"Piper," he said, "he's in some kind of trouble, isn't he?"

Over by the fire, Leo stirs something in his pan, though Will can't quite make out what it is. "Almost done."

Piper looks like she's about to start crying, not meeting his eyes and instead settling on a crack in the tunnel wall, almost as if hoping that she could slip into that crevice and never be heard from again. "Jason... I can't talk about it."

"We're your friends. Let us help."

Piper shakes her head solemnly, taking a shaky breath. "I wish I could, but—"

"And bingo!" Leo announces.
He walks over with three plates stacked on his arm, handing two off to Piper and Jason. Will looks out at the dark tunnel. She knows what Leo thinks of her—but once again Will expects the worst from everyone. When she looks back there's a plate being held in front of her. He won't look at her, only hands it off to her and grabs another plate for himself. She can't hide the surprise that graces her features, but her stomach tightens and grumbles so she doesn't dwell on it.

"Leo," Piper says in awe. "How did you—?"

"Chef Leo's Taco Garage is fixing you up!" he states proudly, suddenly in a better mood than before. "And by the way, it's tofu, not beef, so don't freak. Just dig in!"

Will stays quiet while the others talk—Leo making lousy jokes and Piper scoffing at his antics. Even Jason looks right at home with these people that fell into his life out of nowhere. Perhaps he was just better at adapting than Will was. She never did like change after all. The atmosphere is a lot less tense than before and Will figures that it's because Leo has momentarily forgotten about his resentment, but she trusts that as soon as he remembers her presence it'll return. Nothing about Will's powers seemed like a blessing. It usually just meant a lot of anger and a lot of tragedy—both of which Will had enough of to last her a lifetime.

By now Piper had fallen asleep using Jason's legs as a pillow. She was hesitant to do so at first but the fatigue won and Jason didn't really seem to mind. Until he looked at Will that is. But she wasn't paying attention to him. She was staring out at the darkness again, looking too much like she could slip into the shadows and never be seen again. He almost feels the need to hold onto her in fear that she might really dissolve into the darkness. It wouldn't seem that unlikely.

"I'm gonna go get some air," Will says, pushing herself off the wall. It's a weak excuse admittedly, but she has too much on her mind and she can't stand to look at the flickering flames anymore. Too much company never does her good anyways. It only reminds her of things she can't have.

Leo scrunches his nose up. "We're in the sewers."

At the same time Jason says, "There's air here."

She scowls before reminding herself that this is just concern. Other people don't think like her; they aren't always spiteful and conniving. Jason is not like her—he is long-suffering and wholly good—nothing like her in the slightest. Hesitantly, she turns to Leo. "Do you have a flashlight?"

"Don't you have it covered?" he asks bluntly, earning a curious look from Jason, but Will understands his meaning. But what he doesn't know is that she hasn't used her powers since that day. Fire is too violent and volatile—a little too much like her to find comfort in it.

She crosses her arms and turns to walk away. "Whatever."

And then there it is: the flicker of humanity that separates them. Leo softens, calling out, "Wait." He digs around in his pack for a moment before pulling a flashlight out and handing it to Will. He thinks back to how her hands shook and the morose look that fell across her face. He remembers her as human and it's enough for now.

She nods as a thank you and then she's gone, slipping into the shadows just as Jason had feared she would. Some part of his heart aches when the darkness consumes her, but he stays painfully still as to not wake Piper. Leo watches him.

"Why do you like her?"

"What?" Jason asks incredulously.

"How can you like her?" Leo asks. He shakes his head. "Seriously."

"But you like Piper. She's our friend."

"No, not Piper," Leo says. "Will."

Jason frowns. "She's our friend too," he repeats but this time he doesn't sound too sure either.

"No she's not. She made that perfectly clear," Leo scoffs, bitterness apparent in his voice. "So why do you like her?"

"Why do you hate her?" Jason counters.

Leo raises a brow. "Where do I begin? Back in Detroit, she ran and left Piper to be captured by man-eating Cyclopses."

"But she came back," Jason defends weakly.

Leo throws his hands up. "What's with you guys and defending her? You know, even Piper used that excuse. You're both so desperate to believe that she's a good person, but the truth is that she's not. She doesn't care if we live or die, Jason. She doesn't care about you." He regrets the words as soon as they leave his mouth, even if there's truth to them. The way that Jason withers fills him with guilt and he quickly stumbles to save the conversation. "I mean—it's just... it's not like I didn't want to think that too. You know, she's like me and I thought: well, that's cool. Now I don't feel like my powers are such a curse after all."

"You mean that fire stuff that you do?" Jason asks. "You can really do that?"

Leo's smile falters. "Yeah, well..." He opens his hand, letting a small ball of flame burst to life and dance across his palm.

Jason then pauses, reflecting on Leo's previous comment. "What does that have to do with Will?"

"Nothing," he says quickly. "Can we talk about something else?"

There it is again. That harrowing sense of humanity that draws the divide between man and monster. The thing about other people that Will has noticed again and again is that they are nothing like her at all. Because she is a monster full of spite and weaned on poison. She is a boneyard of human emotions while everyone else is filled to the brim with them—so much emotion that it's suffocating. Even with someone as monstrous as Will Capote who would snuff him out like a candle, Leo is a good friend.

But Will is a bad friend—a title she should be used to by now. It just never occurred to her before that maybe it was true.

BURNING. It's all that Will ever thinks of—burning skies, burning flesh, burning cities. Even with a cigarette held between her lips and the small flame from her lighter, all Will can think about is the burning of her lungs, wondering if each time she presses a too sweet cigarette to her lips, her viscera slowly starts to burn up like a form of steady retribution. It's what she'd deserve. Leo's words still hang over her head—bad friend. It's worse because they're true. She thinks about Luke and his rapid descent into depravity. But what more could have been done when she was almost unraveling herself. What would her friends have thought if they knew how close she had been to joining him? They would see her for what she was.

Will can see the dim light from the fire on the wall of the tunnel, tracing outlines of her companions on the brick. She can hear footsteps coming closer. Instinct tells her to grab Éleos and plunge it into whatever shape emerges from the shadows, but she doesn't. She can't find it in herself to. Instead she sits and waits as the shadow takes the form of a boy, shining the flashlight in his face briefly before lowering it once more.

Jason blinks the specks from his vision, rubbing at his eyes until they're sore. He slides down the wall next to her. There's silence that Will can't stand, but of course, she does nothing.

"Annabeth said something to me before we left," Jason begins, a slight waver to his voice. He's nervous and rightfully so. He knows he keeps pushing his luck with her, but he wants to know—has to know. These are the most important parts of her. "She said that after the war you weren't the same."

Will bristles. "Don't do that."

"What?"

"Try to understand me."

"I don't need to understand you," he says. "I just want to know you."

Will shakes her head at his naivety. "If you knew me, you wouldn't like me so much."

"I like you a normal amount," Jason says defensively.

Will ignores his inelegant response. "You should listen to Valdez. I'm not a good person."

"I think you are," Jason asserts. He looks far to sure of himself, brow furrowed and lips pursed in a look of determination that reminds her of Annabeth. Headstrong in the worst ways.

"And I think," Will drawls, "that you're still holding onto hope. You want to think I'm a good person for whatever reason." The truth is that Will does know why. "But if you knew what I've done then you wouldn't."

Jason knows that he's not going to get anywhere with tenderness. "Why don't you just tell me then, so I can judge for myself. Tell me what happened at the Battle of Manhattan."

There's a moment of silence—quiet contemplation on Will's part and mind-numbing nerves on Jason's part. He's worried she might just sever his head from his body and send him splashing in the sewer waters to never be heard from again. The thought does cross her mind for a minute. But then she comes to a decision. Who cares if he sees the ugliest parts of her. Unlike Leo, Will doesn't need to know that she isn't alone. She doesn't need validation to tell her that she is not a monster. Will knows what she is and what she's capable of. And now Jason will too.

"What am I supposed to say?"

Jason is quiet for a moment. "It must have been hard."

"No," she denies. "It wasn't. It was easy." Looking down at her hands, there is blood splattered on her palms, reminiscent of stains that are left behind. She clenches her eyes shut but when she looks back the blood still remains. "It was so easy. Everything just felt like second nature."

Jason can believe that. He'd seen her fight and knew well enough that Will thrived in the midst of chaos. It had become her home.

"In the moment, I didn't even think of anything else. I just remember wanting to kill." Jason pales at her words, and Will feels the familiar bubble of guilt rise up. "It wasn't just titans and monsters either, you know. There were demigods—people like us, people I knew. But I didn't think twice about it. I remembered a lot of them from Camp. Hecate had turned against the gods and so did most of her children. At the time, minor gods were all in Hermes cabin..."

He understands what she means. She lived with these people, shared a home with them. She knew them well enough to see their faces and have a flicker of recognition before the light left their eyes. "It was war," Jason finally says. She hates the softness in his eyes, wanting nothing more than to carve them from their sockets. "Everyone does things they're not proud of."

"But it shouldn't have been so easy," Will stresses. As monstrous as she is, even Will knows that taking someone's life should not come so naturally. It's an abhorrant thing to admit when murder is second nature. She's still thinking of Luke and the bloodshed—lost fragments of her soul still stuck on the battlefield, scattered around with each corpse that she made like death itself. Her mind goes to dark places that she never wants to see again. "I've seen enough bad people to know what one looks like."

"Hey," Jason says quickly with a kind of sharpness that isn't like him. "Everyone said that Luke was bad, but not you. You told me he was good."

"He was."

"And he thought you were good."

"Well, he was wrong," she mutters.

"Then maybe you were wrong about him," Jason shrugs.

Her expression goes stoney. There's something dangerously god-like about the kind of power that she possesses. "I wasn't, because... because he knew about all of the bad that I had done. He'd seen all the worst parts of me, and he accepted me. More than that... he understood."

There's another lapse of silence. Jason isn't sure how to fill the void. Nothing seems right.

          Then suddenly and quietly, Will says, "I wanted to join him. He knew how much I resented my father and he used it against me." Something in her expression turns forlorn, pain burning in her dark eyes. "I almost did it too—turned against everyone, all of my friends and family, just for him. He did a lot of bad things—things that even I can't forgive him for. But I want to remember him how he was..."

The fifteen year old boy made entirely of light whose hand was laced with Will's under the setting sun. The one who told her that there was good in her—told her that she was more than her father would ever be. That was Luke. Not any other distorted version of him.

          "I think," Jason breathes, heart pounding against his ribcage violently like it's screaming at him to do it already. "I think I'm going to hold your hand now."

          Will frowns, pulling her eyes away from the dancing shadows on the wall to look at the boy beside her. He isn't looking at her like she's a monster and he isn't looking at her with pity. His stormy grey eyes are full of understanding, gentle in every way and too good for the likes of her. He doesn't run from the ugly parts of her. Instead, he waits. She doesn't understand why until she finally says, OK. And then he laces his cold fingers between hers, feeling a warmth radiating from her palm and noticing the callouses that linger on her fingertips. Will won't look him in the eyes, but for once she finds comfort in a storm.

note: so there's a lot happening in this chapter. tons of dialogue though i will admit it is not my favorite chapter:( but there was a nice moment between will and jason there!! there's like no good ship name for will and jason though. tell me if you guys have a good one!!!!