Death and Water

The next day was my first day of sword fighting with Chiron, and you guessed it, Nico. Along with other people in the camp, everyone was watching me as I stepped up, and Chiron carefully instructed me on how to hold and wield the sword. If I had just had those few pointers before the sword fight with nico a few days ago, I would have totally won. Or at least, that’s what I thought. Chiron pulled Nico over form his partner to give me a few pointers because apparently the son of hades was really good with a sword.
“So it appears I’m your personal tutor” he says as he walks over, a smirk on his face. I resist the urge to smack it off him and just continue practicing how to hold it and stab the dummy. “Bend your elbow, your losing all the strength in your arm just trying to keep it straight” he says, lightly placing a finger on my elbow. His fingers, even form that light touch, were freezing cold, sending Goosebumps over my entire body. I try not to react and do as he says, and it turn out it was lot easier holding the sword that way.
We went over a few spars, different moves, and defenses, but by the end we were both breathing hard and sweating. Chiron excuses us to leave and eat lunch, at which I straighten out and thank nico. He just nods, and I walk away before he could say anything else. I know I should talk to him about the prophecy, which we were set to leave for on Friday, two days, but I couldn’t bring myself to be friendly to him. He was so guarded, he reminded me too much of myself.
I began to get worried when Percy didn’t show up to lunch. He usually at least let me know ahead of time if he was going to miss a meal. As soon as I finish my meal, I stand up, make a sacrifice, and hurry over to our cabin. When he's not there, I figure I should look over at the Athena cabin.
“Have you seen my brother?” I ask jenny, a daughter of Athena who was uncharacteristically sweet and helpful.
“No, I’m sorry, but he might be with Annabeth, she woke up with a fever and she’s been puking all night. I’m pretty sure she has the stomach flu” jenny says. And since the kid is a genius, I was almost positive she had the stomach flu, and that Percy was with her.
I rush over to the big house, and sure it was, Annabeth was laying on the bed, her face red and beaded with sweat, while Percy truggled to get her to drink water, and layer a wash cloth over her forehead. I walk forward and take annabeths hand, and she visably relaxes. “hey jade” she says weakly, her voice strained. Maybe when jenny had seen her, she thought it was the stomach flu, but this was a lot worse. The color had been drained out of annabeths face and eyes, and the veins all over her body began to turn an icy blue. It looked bad.
“hey annabeth” I say, grabbing a cup of water, heating it up in my hand, and lightly pouring it over her chest so it woudlt get her wet, but that her body will take it in, and hopefully put it to good use. It worked, the skin around her chest became a normal tone again, and there was some color in her cheeks, but almost as sson as Percy and I could breath out, the pale sickly color cam beack, and she started coughing so loud I was afraid she was going to spit out a lung.
“how did you do that” Percy whispers in my ear, squeezing ananbthes hand and patting her back while she doubled over coughing. I look at him questioningly.
“cant you?” I ask, pouring some more water the same way on her back, which got her to stop coughing at least and to lay back down. Percy simply shakes his head, a tint of pain in his eyes, but I don’t completely understand why.
“Percy you have to go” annabeth insists, and very quickly grimaces at the pain.
“go where? He's not leaving you” I say before he can. Annabeth smiles weakly and squeezes my hand back.
“on the quest with you and nico on Friday” she says, not chastising me as if im a dumb child. The truth was, that hadn’t even crossed my mind. But thinking about it, I freeze up imagining Percy not being there, but I tried my best to hide it and smile encouragingly. Thank the gods ive had a lot of practice with hiding what I was thinking.
“of course he cant go, he has to make sure you're ok, don’t worry annabeth, we’ll find someone else to come with us, or we could always just go us to, I mean, that is what the quest says.” I say. She seems a little worried, but to sick to think about it much.
“ok, if you says so” she says, turning on her side and falling asleep. Percy lets out a gust of wind when she begisn snoring.
“she hasn’t slept since last night” eh says.
“how long has this been going on?” I ask, pouring some more water in the same way on her neck, but the action was exhausting me, so I reduced myself to just pouring it on her and trying to bring down the fever.
“early last night, jenny woke me up to find me and bring me here, haven’t left since. By the way, while I was stumbling around the cabin, trying to pull pants on, I noticed you weren’t in your bed” he says, eyeing me. I bite my cheeck to try to keep from blushing. The truth was, I had snuck out and spent the night sleeping by the ocean. It seemd almost as if the sound of the waves kept back the nightmares.
“um, sleepover at fiona’s” I said quickly, fiona was good friend and daughter of Apollo. She was gorgeous and had the voice of an angel.
“right” he says, but seemd to tired to continue fighting. “im sorry jade but I cant really leave her like this” he says, worry crowding his sea green eyes as he looked at his girlfriend. I smiled sadly and squeezed his shoulder. He put a hand over mine and squeezed it back, then rested his head on my forearm.
“don’t worry about it percy, ill talk to nico and chiron, and figure out what to do, its not your responsibility.”
“but you’re my responsibitly! You're my little sister!” he argues.
“don’t worry percy, its not like im gogin to kill her” nico says, scaring the crap out of both of us. I was usually really good at noting when people were trying to sneak up on me, a skill ive had to learn the hard way, but him, its like not even his breathing made a noise. He walks up to us, takes one sad look at annabeth and completely ignores us. That was surprisingly the first emotion ive seen him portray besides anger. He really did seem to care about percy and annabeth.
“how is she?” he asks, walking over to her and laying a hand on her forehead, her skin instantly becomes covered with goosebumps.
“nico?” she mutters, deliriously. He just chuckles, bends over and plants a kiss on her forehead, her whole body shivers once before becoming slack.
“to help her sleep better” he says turning his back on her and facing us. I have faced a lot of powerful demi gods, but nico had powers I never could have imagined. This kid might be too much for me to handle, and I did not want to go on a quest with him to my personel hell. I couldn’t trust him enough to save my butt if I needed it. Especially if he could make powerful demigods like annabeth lose conciosuness with a single touch.
“thanks nico” percy says, clearly grateful, why, I didn’t know. He just knocked out his girlfriend, but apparently that was good. Maybe the thick inkiness of unconciuosness kept the nightmares away and the body relaxed just like the waves did for me.
“if you're wondering whether we should find another person to go with us, and who that should be, don’t” he says turning to me, without even greeting me first. “I asked Kelly if she would like to come with us, and she graciously agreed” he says, throwing me way back, percy also seemed to tense.
“Kelly, as in your current girlfriend?” I made sure to put venom in the words. “its bad enough I have to go on this stupid quest with you, even worse that’s it without my brother, but now you have to bring the most annoying girl in the camp with us! You're fucking kidding me. no! not going to happen!” I say, outraged. Nico clearly finds this amusing, because this is the first time I had ever seen him smile, his shoudlers lifted up and down as if he were laughing softly, but I couldn’t hear him. “why is this so funny to you?” I ask angry.
He shakes his head softly, “nevermind. Its not like you have a choice, chiron actually assigned her with us, or more like she asked to come, I didn’t ask her. Guess she doesn’t trust me alone with a week with you” he retorts. I smirk at him.
“im going to have a little talk with chiron” I say and storm out, making sure to push my way past nico, and storm up to chiron, where he was instructing a class.
“chiron!” I say, trying to hold my voice back, but the anger in my head was making my run boil, an di could hear the ocean a half mile away start to thrash violently along with my mood.
“yes jade?” he asks, turning to face me with all the patience of a trainer of demigods.
“I was jus wondering why you assigened Kelly to go on my quest with nico?” I ask.
“well, first off, it’s not your quest, it’s the gods quest” I roll my eyes at this, “and second of, she asked to go, and I didn’t see problem with it. You know Jade, no matter how talented and powerful you may be, you will not amount to anything if you don’t learn to play nice with people. Part of being a hero is being sympathetic”
“who says I want to be a hero! Why does everyone want me to be a hero! I will be completely fine if I live out the rest of my life in this camp or something like that”
“and well be honored to have you, but you must learn how to get along with people” he says.
“I have friends” I say crossing my arms. Four actually, my brother, my brothers girlfriend, jenny and Fiona. I guess you could count chris and Robert since they have been nice to me.
“with people you don’t like” he says, ending he conversation. I let out an angry huff and storm away towars my cabin, the ground beginning to shake under my fett. Besides being go of the sea, Poseidon was laso god of earthquakes, and apparently I had inherited some of that power. This concenred me, I couldn’t have the earth shaking and the oceans thrashing every time I get upset. I would need to learn how to control my powers.

Notes