ANTI-HERO, j.grace

SIX

    Sleep was a fickle thing. It was beautiful when it flowed easily, a landscape of soft visions or a dreamless ecstasy. When it fought you, it was ugly - a heinous array of nightmares, an unnerving cycle of dry eyes.

Only recently had Klein Maddox been able to quell her mind to sleep at night, for so long having been haunted by the memories of what she saw on the Manhattan battlefield. She supposed she could have had it worse - but she had always been a light sleeper, now she was just more often waken up by what lied inside her mind than what happened around her.

Night time was when her leg would act up. Her right leg was now a prosthetic, but that didn't stop the way she could swear she felt it itch. And then there were the phantom pains, practically unbearable as they startled her awake.

The phantom pains were what woke Klein that night, the feeling of the sword plunging through the back of her thigh almost leaving her gasping as she flinched awake. Immediately her hand reached down to meet  where her leg ended, pushing at the skin as if to press the pain away, much like when you have pins and needles in your foot and try to stand on it. Waking up like this had almost become routine, but she must have been louder than intended as she shifted to shit up because Kayla stirred awake from her bunk towards the center of the room.

"Klein? Are you okay?"

"'m fine." Klein muffled, the pain beginning to dim but the back of her head buzzing with the memory, her ears ringing with the sound of the sword as it cut through her skin, "Go back to sleep."

Kayla leaned over on her forearms, head sticking out from her bunch and green strands of her sticking up rather ungraciously, "Is it your leg again?"

"Yeah, but it's okay." Klein shook her head as if the girl could see her through the darkness of the room, "Sorry I woke you."

The Knowles girl hummed something that she couldn't exactly hear. What the Maddox girl could make out, however, was the words 'pain in the ass' and 'goodnight', before Kayla flopped back over.

Klein gave it a few moments before finally pushing herself out of the bed, feet hitting the floor with a light thud as she rushed to pull on a jacket from the hooks beside the bunk. She was quick to make her way out of the cabin, specifically eying Kayla to make sure she didn't wake her up again before she quietly shut the shining door behind her.

Cleaning harpies were a bitch to deal with, but they rotated on a constant enough schedule that Klein knew how to manage around them. The hardest part was actually making her way out of the grouping of cabin's without gaining any attention - especially since the Ares cabin was still pressed about the flying chariot ordeal and had booby-trapped the front yard of Cabin Seven.

Yeah, it was all fun and games until 'fake' landmines were blowing up if you weren't too careful.

Still, Klein had memorized the safe enough path around all the obstacles, and eventually her legs led her up the stone pathway to the training arena. Not to train, because Klein hadn't so much as touched a weapon since August, but the girl knew she would at least be able to sit there in the silence without having to worry about waking anyone, or worry about any prying eyes.

She knew the campers of Cabin Seven were grateful that Klein had been so adamant about not permitting any of them to join the quest, but they also knew it wasn't that easy. They were also much better people than she was, and they were almost as baffled as Annabeth that she had so quickly shut the notion down. Klein could feel their stares as they bustled around the cabin after the campfire, everyone holding a questioning look, everyone surprised, but no one wanting to actually ask about what had happened. The Maddox girl would even go so far as to say that Will Solace was absolutely pissed at her.