CHAPTER ELEVEN
—stupid pirate ships

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—"OI, Barnacle Breath, could you move any slower?" Judith jabbed him between his shoulder blades making him recoil and speed up. She didn't blame him for admiring the destruction that the unruly pirates were bestowing upon the spa workers ( it was beautiful ), but they really didn't have the time.

The three of them had made a detour across the lido and to the spa so as to snatch up their backpacks because Judith absolutely refused to leave the island without her regular clothes ( and she supposed the ambrosia and nectar were important too ). The quick trip had cost them precious minutes in escaping the place so now they were tailed by a horde of both spa people and pirates.

Percy turned his head around to look at her, but otherwise continued running. "Oh, I'm sorry, Judy Moody."

Judith looked about ready to pound his face in with the nickname. She never got to hurt him for saying it the first time, so now he deserved double the pain. "Ooh, if you ever say that name again —"

"What? Judy Moody?" She could see the gods-forsaken smirk take over his face without even having to look at him. He jumped a bit as he felt the toes Judith's sneakers step on the heel of his.

"Would you two stop?!" Annabeth called from behind Judith. "We're kinda in a hurry."

The daughter of Ares huffed, grumbling, "That's what I said before, wasn't it, Barnacle Boy?"

Percy just rolled his eyes exaggeratedly.

"Which ship?" Annabeth asked as they ran up to the docks, their breaths heaving together.

"I think that one will do just fine," Judith said as she looked at all the old wooden boats with disgust before finally pointing out the single yacht.

"I was asking Percy, you know, son of the Sea God." Annabeth smiled alongside her quip.

Judith rolled her eyes. "Oh, well yeah, I guess he knows what he's doing." She shrugged and gestured the boy forward to choose one with exasperation. Put on the spot, he analyzed each boat nervously, gnawing on his lip. That was, until he spotted an old sailing vessel.

"There." He pointed at it with a determined expression.

Judith and Annabeth frowned. "But —"

"I can make it work." He nodded confidently.

Queen Anne's Revenge. The ship didn't even have its sails set up correctly. "Yeah, we're no longer trusting you to make decisions," Judith said and shook her head. "Let's trade an old Confederate ship for a dingy old pirate ship, of course."

"Those scalawags are a-boarding me vessel! Get 'em, lads!" They heard Blackbeard shout as they ran up the gangplank.

Percy glared at the approaching sailors for a moment before getting to work on moving the boat away from the docks. He concentrated to the point of squeezing his eyes tightly. "Mizzenmast!" He shouted, his arms outstretched. Judith couldn't help but watch him comically focus on certain things, his hands twitching ever so slightly. But her snide smile fell when ropes began to tie themselves in knots, the sails unfurled, and the wooden masts moved about with purpose. Judith had to jump to avoid being tripped by flying nets.

"Hey, watch it!" She yelled at the boy who didn't even acknowledge her shout.

As they sailed off into the open waters, Percy looked rather proud of himself, almost too proud and Judith refused to make eye contact with him; because if she did, he would know that she was impressed, and that was the last thing she wanted him to know. She instead looked back at Blackbeard, waving his fist in the air.

  Judith cupped her hands around her mouth. "Think of this as a hand-me-down for your younger sister!"

Apparently, pirates didn't believe in that kind of thing. He growled in frustration and kicked a barrel off the docks and into the water. Judith chuckled as she watched him do a walk of shame back onto the island.

After they'd made it a few knots out, the daughter of Ares went below deck to change out of her feminine attire. She bundled it up and brought it back up to the top deck in order to get rid of it the fun way. Judith moved to stand at the hull of the ship, facing the salty wind head on. She chucked the dress overboard and watched it flutter down to the foamy waves below, eventually disappearing to the depths. Good riddance.

  Thankfully, as she stood there, the mist slowly started to wear away at the blush on her cheeks, thankfully ( she had been afraid that it would be caked on her forever ). Percy stood adjacent to her, still grinning over what he was pulling off with the ship. Judith had gotten over her surprise and was now just thankful to be away from the island and its clutches, though she didn't like that Percy hadn't gone for the yacht when he had the chance. She expressed this with resentment.

Yachts have a mind of their own, he had said.

Yeah, a luxurious mind filled with nice furniture and food.

Unfortunately, going for the decrepit ship also meant more seasickness. While Judith was acclimatized to the steam engine's rocking, Annabeth was not. The girl's stomach did not sit well with the back and forth sway of the ship, leading her to puke twice before diving below the ship to try and sleep the journey away. This left Judith on lookout, the top half of her body leaned up against the bow of the ship. More than once, she spotted a dark green tail or fin and tensed.

"Monster at one o'clock," Judith shouted back to the helm where Percy stood. She could feel the pull of the boat to the left, away from whatever she'd seen in the water. Hopefully they wouldn't have to encounter those scaly fins up close and personal — water may be Percy's element, but it wasn't exactly an ideal battleground for her.

Judith stared at the Nereids beneath the waves who kept jumping above the surface like they were dolphins in need of an audience. Percy soon walked over to join her and tried to wave at the blue haired, water dwellers but got no reaction in return. "They probably don't see me." He tried to play it off, coughing as he put his hand down.

"I wouldn't wave at you either," Judith told him honestly.

"Rude," he scolded with a slight laugh before turning back to the front. "You'd think they'd be a little courteous with the son of the Sea God."

"You think that just because Poseidon is your dad that you deserve respect?" Judith asked, genuinely interested in this answer. He had already made the assumption that she would be murderous like her father and Clarisse, so she wouldn't be surprised if he thought he was better just because of his father.

"Well, I was joking," Percy quickly said to clear up her preconceived notions about him. "I don't want anyone to treat me differently for being his son, but it just happens anyway. Sometimes it's out of respect, and sometimes they just want to kill me."

"That's what you get for your 'Big Three' status," she retorted. "I've got the opposite problem: people look down on the children of Ares for being the way they are — aggressive, short tempered, hotheaded — and then we give out the death threats because of it."

"Yeah, you tend to deal those out a lot," he mused. "Especially to me. But it's okay, because I've gotten used to people actively trying to kill me, so your empty threats aren't all that bad."

Judith smirked and turned to him. "Who said they were empty?"

He tapped his fingers on the wooden bow in front of them, his Adam's apple bobbing as he blanched. "Just a guess."

"Well, they're not empty; if anything, they're overflowing with all the ways I could do it — all the ways I want to kill you."

Percy turned his back to the sea to look straight at her, a lazy smile taking over. "Let's hear 'em."

Judith blinked, having expected him to be a little hurt over her blatant bullying, but she should know by now that Percy never did anything expected of him. "You want to hear how I would ... kill you?"

"Just the creative ones," he prompted. "Running me through with a sword is old and boring, anyone can do that."

Judith's mouth open and closed a few times, trying to guess at what game he was playing at. But as she looked over at his awaiting grin, she knew there was no game. He just wanted to know what went through her head when she threatened him so ferociously. "Uh — the top of the list would be to make it ironic," she began.

"Ironic, how?" He asked, his head lolling on one shoulder so he entered her peripheral vision.

"Like drowning," she replied.

"I ... don't think I can," he muttered curiously. He looked down at the waves below him with newfound interest and hummed.

  "Wanna test that theory?" Judith taunted.

  He leaned back to his original position. "Maybe another time. You were saying, if I can't drown?"

"Well, if you can't then I'd find something like drowning, there's plenty of methods. Suffocation, quicksand, I could bring you to the top of the highest mountain where there's barely any oxygen and leave you."

"Hmm," he thought about it, "and what comes after an ironic death?"

"Just the ones that are more enjoyable for me, like a fight to the death. Could be any weapon, doesn't have to be a plain old sword," Judith added quickly as a joke.

He laughed. "You could make that one ironic, too. You could make a trident and use that."

Judith's eyes sparkled in enlightenment. "Added to the list."

"Glad I could help," Percy said. "What's next?"

Suddenly, Judith was coming up short. Truly, she hadn't thought of seriously killing Percy at any point so there weren't that many on the tip of her tongue. She cleared her throat as he waited for an answer eagerly. "Just all the boring ones, you know? But you wanna know what's at the bottom of the list?" He nodded his head in curiosity. "Stung by a scorpion."

Despite the haunting memory he was sure to get, Percy cracked out a laugh and shook his head as he bit his tongue. He turned back to face the water alongside her, gently brushing shoulders. "Pretty dumb way to die, that's for sure."

  His hands drummed on the deck's rails, hitting out a musical pattern that Judith vaguely recognized as an old rock song.

"Not at all suitable for a son of the Sea God," Judith agreed sarcastically.

"I refuse to be taken down by some bug," the boy declared. "I'll take drowning over that any day."

Those last words drifted out to sea, leaving the atmosphere a little quieter than before. Even the ripple of the wind in the sails and Percy's nervous tapping faded away to background noise. Their morbid conversation had taken a sharp turn into darker matters, despite their intentions to keep it light. Judith breathed in a gulp of air and looked below them in consideration.

"Do you think he suffered?" She broke the silence, her voice only a whisper.

"I think ... that the only thing we can do is hope that he didn't," Percy said honestly, equally as quiet. She could feel his eyes on her and forced herself to stay as still as possible.

"I could have gotten to him, I know I could have." Judith's hands clenched at her sides. "I left him this morning; I woke up and left him to sleep in."

"There was no way you could have known," Percy tried to console, his hand stopping its rhythm to reach out for her, but he thought better of it and clasped his hands in front of him. Judith was thankful for his second-guess, because she wouldn't have had the stubbornness within her to nudge him off as she normally would have.

"He only came on the quest because he wanted to be a hero. It would have been the first time a child of Hermes had gone on a quest since Luke went on his."

Heroes died all the time, that's what Demigods were told. It was almost a motto at this point. The best thing one could do was hope for a hero's death in the end.

  It had always just been at the back of Judith's mind, not really seeming real or possible, just a scare tactic that everyone just accepted as truth. And now, the first death she'd ever witnessed has shot it the forefront for reconsideration. She'd been the last person to see him, last person to talk to him, and it would haunt her endlessly, she was sure of it. Death was the ultimate form of closure; and yet, Judith felt there were too many unknowns, too many doors left open, and now they'd never close.

Percy refrained from speaking and Judith just savored the quiet lull between them, appreciating this side of the boy a little more than she thought she would.

NOTES;

OH? YOU GUYS HAVEN'T HAD A DEEP CONVERSATION WITH YOUR SOULMATE ABOUT HOW YOU WOULD KILL THEM??

edited : 06 / 30 / 2020