Wild ― Piper McLean

―xxi. a bittersweet homecoming

THE ARGO II WAS BUILT, its crew selected and interior furnished, ready to fly to Camp Jupiter.

And Verona didn't want to go. 

She thought she would. She knew she was supposed to. All throughout the construction, she'd been practically excited to go back to camp, to see how it had changed and how it was the same as she remembered. It had been thirty years since she set foot in Camp Jupiter. 

It had been her home for years—she should have been ecstatic to be going back. 

But then she thought of the arena, where Jordan would train for hours on end; of the forges, where Lawrence would make weapons and gush about Auggie; of the city she'd called home and all the people she'd known. 

She'd thought returning would be good, until she realized she'd be doing it without them. 

Everyone she'd known would have aged thirty years, if they hadn't died between 1986 and now. Teenagers she'd grown up with would be in their forties by now, probably with kids and mortgages and fond memories of their adolescence. 

But Verona was still sixteen years old, and her memories were far from fond. 

She'd made Jason tell her everything he remembered about the ill-fated expedition, which wasn't much. Apparently, no one liked to talk about the "Massacre of '86," like just mentioning the year or their names would bring them bad luck. Her cohort had been reduced to a cohort of outcasts, cursed because of one liar's narcissism. 

She didn't care if they never mention Michael Varus ever again—she'd be glad for it, even. But Jordan, Lawrence, Stacy, Logan, Isaiah, Auggie—they didn't deserve to be forgotten. 

Except—Auggie hadn't been forgotten, not really. 

He'd survived. 

Verona hadn't believed Jason the first time he told her that. It seemed impossible to imagine anyone surviving the carnage. The last she'd seen of him, his face was coated in his own blood, and he'd been praying to gods who didn't seem to hear him. 

But it seems they had.

There had been other survivors, too, but Jason didn't know their names. Only that it was less than a dozen—less than twelve out of the fifty-something teenagers Michael led into a slaughter. The legion's eagle was lost in Alaska, and no demigod had set foot in the state since. It was the land beyond the gods, cursed and soaked in the blood of their predecessors. 

Verona knew none of the other False Eight could have survived, not like Auggie. She'd seen the rest of them die. 

But Auggie—slightly awkward, infinitely optimistic Auggie—was alive. 

And she didn't think she could face him. 

He'd lived with what happened to them in Alaska for thirty years, and she'd only remembered it four months ago. Those thirty years were blank for her. Maybe she'd spent them in Asphodel, or if the gods really were merciful, Elysium, but either way, she hadn't been alive to live with the trauma, to remember the horrors of that awful day. 

The day they were set to leave for the Bay Area, Piper found her up in the branches of one of the dryad-less trees (they didn't appreciate being climbed on, which was understandable) of Camp Half-Blood's forest, avoiding everything and everyone. 

Piper climbed up the tree to sit next to her on the thick oak branch.

"Leo said we should be good to leave within the hour," she said. "Are you packed?" 

Verona nodded absently. "I loaded my stuff up this morning, during breakfast." 

"So you didn't eat anything?" Piper asked, but Verona had a feeling it was rhetorical.