pjo | i wanna tell you but i don't know how ✓

part ii; This tired white flag.

Annabeth jogs down the sand, tennis shoes thumping and muffled against the gray, wet sand. The ocean curls at the edge of the shore, inviting itself where welcome, the transparent blue washing up seashells and old underwater things. She doesn’t linger at the Sound, ignores the red stain on the dock she passes. Running through camp feels like a curse –  everywhere she looks is a reminder of last night.

She keeps going until she gets to the amphitheater. 

She doesn’t grab weapons like she usually would. Instead, she reaches for the boxing bag –  complete with gloves, shoes, hand wraps, headgear, and a mouth guard, Annabeth used to beg the other campers when she was younger to teach her. Hand-to-hand combat isn’t something they usually hone in on, mostly because it’s infinitely less effective and more dangerous when you're face-to-face with a Cyclops. Still, as a general self-defense method, it’s useful to know. She hasn’t practiced in a while and she has a feeling she’s a bit rusty.

As she pulls out the bag, she notices something odd. There are twelve boxing sets, Annabeth knows because there were only five when she first arrived at camp and she begged Chiron for more. In a camp where they had about 300-500 kids on a good summer, sufficient supplies were important. She’d also gone anal organizing and reorganizing the storage closet the summer she turned eleven since they’d also gotten extra supplies for other things –  swords, shields, and training equipment –  because of her successful pleading. Annabeth didn’t know if they had secret connections with a demigod supplier or if maybe they enchanted normal mortal items, but if she was being honest, she didn’t really care. She was more concerned with the logistics of actually having them. All this to say, there are twelve boxing sets, and right now she’s only seeing ten. Eleven, including one in her hand.

“Want to go?” Annabeth hears behind her and she turns and sees the person who took the twelfth set. 

Silena Beauregard stands in the amphitheater's center, hair pulled back with a blue hijab, skin effortlessly beautiful as usual. It’s unfair, how beautiful she is, and Annabeth blushes unwillingly when she smiles at her.

She doesn’t ask why she’s up this early. She doesn’t have to. It’s obvious. Instead, she puts on her gloves and accepts the challenge.

It's like a complicated dance. Silena blocks her strikes with an efficiency that comes naturally for a child of Aphrodite. Whoever thought the too pretty to fight stereotype actually existed was dead wrong –  the Aphrodite cabin had some of their best fighters, not to mention useful powers like charm speak and aura reading. Annabeth had even heard of a son of hers that had been from a different epithet entirely, blessed with water powers slightly dissimilar to Poseidon's. 

Annabeth aims for Silena's elbow and then feigns and hooks her leg around her knee when she falls for the trick. She stumbles a little but doesn't lose her footing. Annabeth, expecting otherwise, takes a half-second to be caught off-guard –  just long enough for Silena to take a swing with her forearm at Annabeth's gut and sweep her feet from under her.

It's not a hard fall, but as Annabeth lands on the rough mat, she can feel the soreness already beginning to settle. She flexes her fingers, sweat gathering at her back, and then stands back up. 

"Again?" She asks.

This time, Annabeth doesn't hold back. She throws punch after punch, left, right, left, right, mostly in defensive places to keep Silena busy. She doesn't have time to attack her, but that unfortunately means Annabeth can't either. It's more a tactic than a technique –  when Silena seems to be to getting into a rhythm to block them is when Annabeth goes for a real attack, swinging her leg up and around to try and kick Silena in the helmet. She falters at the second, and remembers, annoyingly, unfairly, teaching Percy the move in the summer when she was thirteen. She used to kick his ass every time, and he never stood a chance, but now he's almost matched her, and he wins nearly every time she does. At this rate, she thinks he might end up better than her.