Goodnight Moon ↣ P. Jackson + A. Chase

2.05

Do you know the feeling that is somewhere between disbelief and anger, the one that felt like a cross of fear and denial? Well, Kassandra was sure that she felt it somewhere beneath desperation that grew more and more prominent to get away the longer that she sat waiting for dawn to arrive with their lift back to camp.

They had told her eventually, right after the point that she could have slipped away unnoticed by most, and now she was stuck here waiting for her father to show up in his stupid chariot to give them a ride home.

She would have walked back to camp had she been given the chance, would have called a Gray Sister's taxi for a ride, but no one would let her. Zoe had, rather unceremoniously, taken her bag in an attempt to hold her hostage with them.

The joke was that she would have just left regardless, would have expected her bag to turn up at some point because Zoe had too much honour to accidentally steal her things.

(And she had taken care of her when she was nine, had looked after her just as much as lady Artemis did when it came to the young hunters. It had only been a week that she was allowed to be with them, but it was long enough to get to know them.)

This was a meeting that was fifteen years too late, a meeting that was long overdue, and Kassandra had never been more nervous in her life. It was the first time that she was going to see Apollo in person, the first time that he would be right there, and she wasn't sure if she wanted to stab him or herself more.

Thalia and Grover huddled around Percy, and her by proxy because he had come to stick to her side the moment that she left her discussion with Artemis. She imagined that he was just as distraught about Annabeth as she was he was clinging to someone and Kassandra had gone relatively close to him since last summer.

The older girl gave her a small nod, a quirk of her lips with a mumbled apology as she settled close. She tilted her head in acknowledgement, bumping their shoulders as she apologized herself.

Then it was only a matter of waiting for the sun to rise as they stood on the silent hill, Percy long since having shared everything that he had spoken about with the goddess.

Having them around her made her feel very trapped, however, with Thalia's grip on her wrist that prevented her from running. At least she could hide behind Percy, his height would keep her well out of sight until she could slip away from him.

(She wasn't being petty or dramatic this time. She was sure that this was going to have a terrible outcome and that she just wasn't ready to see him at all, ever, and it wasn't fair that she be forced to see him now when she was perfectly capable of finding her own way home.)

(Or to find her way to Annabeth because her friend needed their help wherever she was regardless of Lady Artemis' promise to find her.)

"Hey, Kass, what was it that you did to that helicopter?" Thalia asks suddenly.

She blinks, croaking, "What?"

"Oh, yeah, the helicopter sort of blew up when you started screaming," Percy tells her. "I figure it was like that thing you did with the sirens last summer."

"I didn't do anything to the helicopter. Lady Artemis turned it into ravens," she whispered hoarsely.

"She did that after it exploded, right after, but still after," Grover says.

She wrinkles her nose and shakes her head. "Well, it wasn't me. I didn't do anything."

"Kass, you blew up the helicopter. It had to be you. You were the only one doing anything," Thalia stressed. "You started screaming and then boom."