[open & closed] and when that day comes

[thereneverwas]

WHO: Barrow & friends
WHAT: ye olde lyrium detox in its various stages
WHEN: vaguely Wintermarch
WHERE: the infirmary
NOTES: I'll be adding a few starters at a time since I want later developments to feel organic and make sense. please feel free to request something if you don't see it here!

Comments

[armd]

Abby nods.

She doesn't feel bad for Clarisse or feel the need to argue about it, she feels heavy knowing this has happened to both of them, how much it weighs on you. It's something you have to lug around.

She looks at Clarisse, follows the line of her neck to her face and the expression there. She's probably thought about this a million times before and now she's resigned to the facts: Silena died; they were seventeen, and best friends; it was her fault.

"... What happened?"

Abby should probably give her an out. She say something like 'you don't have to tell me if you don't want to' but... part of her feels like she deserves to hear about this, after the nightmares she's had in front of Clarisse and the things that she's said. Clarisse knew it would be better if she spoke about it then. Abby thinks it will be better if she speaks about it now.

cw gross injuries mention

[laruetheday]

Clarisse takes a deep breath. She hadn't expected Abby to give her an out, so when it doesn't happen it's not upsetting. It almost feels good, finally saying it all out loud. Like lancing an infection.

"We'd all been prepping for this fucking huge battle we knew was coming at the end of summer. I was pissed off because we'd just come back from a raid a few days before, the Ares and Apollo cabins. I'd been leading the raid but the Apollo kids took a flying chariot as a war prize and I... felt like it should have gone to me."

It's a very Clarisse move, to get fixated and prideful over something that ultimately doesn't matter. But war was her only thing, the one duty she'd been tasked with that she could do better than anybody else. Apollo kids could be medics or musicians or archers and Apollo kids had a dad who sucked because he forgot about them but not because when he remembered he'd threaten their lives. She'd felt owed for the shitty hand she'd been dealt, not just that day but every day.

"No one backed me, so I said, fine, Ares isn't fighting anymore until we get the respect we deserve. I told everyone to have fun dying without us. And after I said it in front of everybody I couldn't go back on my word, you know? I couldn't change my mind. Would have been weak." She gives Abby a sideways glance, gauging her reaction. Up to now everything's been classic Clarisse bullshit, but now...

"After the battle started, Silena came back to camp while I was busy and put on my armor. Helmet and everything, so you couldn't see her face. And she ordered my siblings into battle, pretending to be me." She shakes her head, wincing. "I don't know if they really believed it was me or if they just wanted to go so bad that they ignored the lie. There was this monster on the enemy side, this drakon, it was huge—had a prophecy attached to it that said it was fated to be killed by a child of Ares. So she had to go after it. Everybody would have expected me to, and she was being me."

Was Silena scared? Did she know that was it, that her life was over? How soon did she know? When she went up against the drakon, or when she picked Clarisse's helmet up and put it over her own face? Clarisse wonders these things more often than she should.

"I followed her as soon as I realized what she did, but... you know." She was too late, of course. "My helmet was melted into her face with acid. There was no way she could have gotten better. But it wasn't instant. I held her when she died."

cw gross injuries mention

[armd]

When Abby stares ahead of them both she can picture it, she can feel the heat of the injustice that must have surged through the younger, wilder version of Clarisse stuck underneath the thumb of her father. Backed into a corner. What else could she do but call their bluff? Double down?

It's classic Clarisse bullshit in the same way that relentlessly training for five years to be in peak physical condition for the day you run into your father's murderer is classic Abby bullshit, so she finds she can't comment on it, or really give Clarisse some excellent facial expression when she looks her way. She looks back, hand steady on Clarisse's leg. She waits for more.

And winces.

She's seen the same of people that failed to bring down a bloater back home — or did, within close range, unable to get far enough away before the inevitable explosion outward of gas and acid. She's heard people die from those burns. Smelled it. Human misery; clothing fusing into skin. Clarisse is right. It isn't quick.

"Shit," she says and rubs her thumb into Clarisse's muscle, needing to be firm. To press this sentiment into her just to make sure she takes it. "I'm sorry."

[laruetheday]

Clarisse blinks, glancing over in a way that feels too-jerky and too-slow simultaneously, like ripping herself out of a daydream. Whatever the bad version of a daydream is.

"Yeah," she says, knowing that Abby means it. She's more or less lived it, so that's no surprise. "Thanks."

She chews at her bottom lip, thinking, before adding: "Afterward I was so fucking angry that I picked up my spear and killed the drakon in one hit. It fulfilled the prophecy." Fate came through, again, the ultimate excuse, the ultimate trap.

"Exploded my spear, though," she adds, sort of wistful. But that's par for the course with her. The most important things, the most important people, those are the ones she always ends up breaking by accident. Probably something to unpack later when she's not concussed.

[armd]

Abby shakes her head and looks down at their knees, touching, her hand on Clarisse's leg. Well thank god for that, is what she wants to say and doesn't, because levelling criticism against something that Clarisse believes in will only wound her pride — but it's so stupid that the prophecies are made at all. That they're allowed to exist unchallenged, and hang like a weight on a fraying rope over the heads of teenagers; Silena was only seventeen when she was killed.

She's not angry at Clarisse but angry for her. It isn't fair. It swells in Abby until she reminds herself to exhale and unclench her jaw.

Unrelated to the drakon, the spear or the prophecy she says, "I wish I could meet her."