Goodnight Moon ↣ P. Jackson + A. Chase

1.06

The water was cold. Freezing like ice being siphoned directly into her veins, injected like a drug because it was impossible for it to still be so cold. Kassandra figured that she was in shock, that the blast of exploding engine tossed her up and away, threw her down into the sea below to sink with the wreckage with only her bow to hold -- because that was all she could think when she went flying, that she did not want to be the Apollo child to lose the bow that had been passed between them. 

Breath held, she shook herself into a state of wakefulness, kicking her legs as she secured the bow around her torso. She moved upward, trying to keep her distance from the cliffs and where the explosion was. 

They had cleared Charybdis before things had gone to shit, but she wasn't sure how far Scylla would venture from the cave in the cliff and she wasn't about to face the sea monster alone. 

It was difficult to tell at first when she breached the surface when she still couldn't hear a thing. It was the ability to breathe and the pressure that left her years that clued her in right away, and she gasped greedily for air, feeding her lungs as she tried to silently tread water. 

Her head was pounding, from either a concussion or the perforated eardrums. She had what she needed to heal herself in her bag but she didn't know how well it would work for such an injury. Kassandra hadn't prayed to her father in years, she didn't even know if singing hymns to him would even, but regardless, she silently wished that he could see her now -- injured and alone and afraid in the middle of the sea of monsters with one of her most attuned senses cut from her but still unwilling to ask for his help. 

It wasn't spiteful, it was bitter and angry, and she was perfectly aware that she went too far at times, but it was too late for it now that she had sunk so deeply into the feelings. 

So instead of praying to her father to ask for help or singing him a hymn to repair her hearing, she called out to Athena and Poseidon asking for guidance and the ability to not drown as before she could get her shit together. 

She swam out a little, using the floating pieces to guide herself. 

As luck would have it, Poseidon must have heard her because she came upon him floating just below the surface, lifeless and passed out. Kassandra used the nearest pieces of scrapped metal as a support as she reached under and pulled -- trusting more in her upper body strength than her ability to swim (and she swore to Poseidon that if they got back to camp then she would let his son turn her into a bonafide Olympic swimmer) -- to drag him out of the water. He was heavy, but not so much that she couldn't manage. It was like holding Lee in a deadweight, not too difficult, but not exactly pleasant. 

Her brother would be thrilled to hear that his ridiculous activities disguised as training in the art of carrying wounded off a battlefield had come into use.  

Propping so that he leaned against her chest, head above water, as she held tight, Kassandra knew it wasn't as though he would drown, she knew, but it gave her peace of mind to see that he wasn't underwater anymore. Though, if the water was any reprieve from the sun, then she might let him stay beneath the surface to protect him from the unrepentant glaring and heat that rolled over them, seeking out every sliver of skin. 

It didn't hurt, not as she knew it could, but it didn't feel right, didn't give her the familiar presence that it always did as it was the only way that she knew her father. The sun was one with Apollo, but Apollo wasn't anywhere near here and she wasn't sure she could reach him there even if she wanted to. 

She guessed it was in the same way that Percy didn't drown but wasn't able to fully control the waves, as if they were out of Poseidon's reach and she supposed they truly were within the Sea of Monsters.