True Blue ✷ Leo Valdez.

01: Camp's Weirdo.

    THE FIRST TIME Blaire Sullivan watched someone die, she was only six years old. She was six years old and terrified of her own shadow, so of course, the blood staining her small hands did more than frighten her. The final quivering breaths her father took petrified her beyond measures.

The second time Blaire watched someone die she was fifteen and less afraid of the horrors taunting the earth's cruel soil. Still, the dead boy lying in her lap had a detrimental effect on the way she viewed the world.

      The third and final time she watched someone die, she was still fifteen, considering it happened mere minutes after she cradled her dying best friend's broken figure. When the third person she once loved perished in her presence, all the good she saw in the world faded into nothing. The vibrant hues that previously painted her surroundings dimmed by a tenfold, leaving her with permanently monotone lenses.

Although in person, she had only witnessed death three times: in her dreams the terrible fate haunted her each time she dozed off. To her, the night terrors felt so incredibly real, that she often mistook them for reality. If one were to ask her about the amount of deaths she had the displeasure of witnessing firsthand, Blaire might hesitate for a second before offering up a meek shrug.

The thin line between dream and reality seemed to vanish upon the familiar weight of Sunny's limp head in her lap. She would forget about time and the impossibility of being stuck in it, and she would feel young again.

"I love you," he would mutter and her heart would shatter. Again. And again, the next night. It was an endless cycle, one that couldn't be broken by any amount of prayers.

That night— the night before her life changed for both the better and the worse, she witnessed Sunny Garfeild die. She cupped her trembling hands over his wound, attempting to lessen the outrageous blood flow. She cursed at the darkened sky with a thick, unsteady voice. And then she woke up.

"Yo, Miss Mute," A shrill, youthful voice jolted Blaire Sullivan from her land of dreams. "Wake up."

Upon being awoken from her much-needed slumber, Blaire shot up so hastily she nearly smacked her head on the top bunk of her bed. A thin sliver of drool had escaped her open mouth overnight and gradually dried on the freckled surface of her chin. Wayward brown waves were cascading down the striped material of her T-shirt: they'd fallen loose from her hastily done updo.

"You sleep through everything," Marlowe Mason, a young Hecate camper told the girl, tugging on her rumpled purple bedsheets. "You missed breakfast."

Blaire didn't offer up any sort of verbal response, she just pulled her knees close to her chest, resting her chin on the tartan plane. She'd hoped the position would provide some sort of shelter from the frigid temperatures invading the cabin.

"We've got sparring in five," Marlowe continued, fidgeting with the end of her brunette braid. She carelessly collapsed onto the older girl's bed, ignoring the odd glare Blaire aimed at her. "So, like, hurry. I should've woken you up earlier, I know. But you just looked sooo peaceful."

Once again, Blaire didn't say anything. Marlowe said enough to make up for her lack of words anyway.

She didn't really care about being late for training—she rarely went anyways— but still, she hurried to the bathroom. The last thing she wanted to deal with after enduring a trauma-ridden nightmare was her thirteen-year-old half-sister and her rapidly moving mouth. And if readying herself for sword practice was the only way out of that, then so be it.

She tried to spend as little time in the bathroom as physically possible, for she yearned to avoid the mirror. The sight of her own disheveled reflection always made Blaire cringe.