Hearts Crossed - Kayla Knowles (2)

Clarisse I (TLH)

Chapter Title: An Old Friend Returns

(A/N: I'm just going to preface what occurs in this chapter here by saying that this chapter will mark the re-entry of Caeli, an OC Apollo camper created by AO3 User laurellins for their fanfic "Tales Of Camp Half Blood", and her Heart Pierced canon boyfriend - former head counselor to the Ares Cabin Austin Maxwell back into the story. Other than that, this chapter is one of a few chapters added to this part of Heroes Of Olympus that is all original content, created in order to flesh out more of the expanded story.)

For what seemed like the third major time in only three years, Clarisse La Rue was once more a woman under a severe amount of anxiety.

The fact that one of her siblings, let alone her favorite sibling at that as well as the most powerful member of the Ares Cabin exceeding even her, was out there missing and they hadn't found him yet — really nagged on her constantly. The fact that the guy she hated for betraying all of him who only recently started on his road to redemption (Luke), the guy who she had feuded over a chariot with who she had made up with after the final battle in Manhattan (Michael), and the guy who had defeated her father which had played a factor in the long-running rivalry between himself and her favorite sibling (Percy) were also missing — it increased the anxiety that she was feeling tenfold.

She tried to keep herself stable, even with the help of her boyfriend Chris Rodriguez, but it showed. It didn't exactly help matters for her that Chris had his hands full too. Between having to manage the Kronos Cabin in Luke's absence to making sure Ethan didn't fly off the handle and possibly hurt someone, Chris was having to deal with responsibilities he usually did not have to handle.

He wasn't alone in that boat to be honest. There was also Will Solace, who stepped into the role of head counselor for the cabin Clarisse's favorite sibling's girlfriend was from following the disappearance of Michael. Will also had his hands full in a different, yet a little bit similar regard to Chris.

The only good thing about it all was that they had the rest of camp to help keep them all stable as best as they could. But, even they suffered too. To pluck one of their greatest heroes from their ranks hurt them a good deal. To remove four of them — among them a former hero who had fallen to the dark side only to now be a path to redemption — hurt even more massively. That much was evident in camp.

So how did Clarisse try to deal with it all?

Simple.

Like Colton had done following the battle with Porphyrion and his rogue giants, Clarisse had simply thrown herself into training, trying to get stronger.

It was virtually all she probably could do in such a situation, being from the Ares Cabin and all. When things got stressful, what did Ares Cabin kids do? They simply just trained to deal with the stress. Even though Colton had Kayla and Clarisse had Chris, they still did this from time to time since that was how they had originally been taught in the cabin when it came to dealing with stress. There was nothing else to it other than that really.

So that was why she was where she was currently - training in and around the armory, stabbing dummies with her spear. Even as Piper had passed out and Jason and the others had their weird encounter with who seemed to be Hera in the Big House, Clarisse had gone here after the whole drama at the lake. To be fair, deep down inside, she was a good bit pissed off at Leo for having the gall to ask her favorite sibling's girlfriend out when she was grieving and looking for Colton. She thought that was an absolute dick thing to do. But, she also knew that when it came to Kayla, Colton preferred to punish anyone who even hurt her or tried to take her away from him by his own hand. He had even said that much to her once.

"I love her so much that god damn it, if anyone hurts her or tries to take her away from him, I will fucking rip the offender limb from bloody limb with my own bare hands."

That was why despite her anger and frustration, she had suggested leaving Leo's fate to Colton, provided that he either didn't do any other stupid things on that level or happened to prove some worth that would make Colton have to be a bit more lenient on punishing Leo. She knew full well that he would have wanted it that way.

She now took a moment, pausing from training to think about the other newcomers. Jason - he looked like a person similar to what a certain someone else had said of her little sibling who had died. She knew Thalia had lost her brother Jason back when she was a kid - Luke had told her all that, but this Jason here.. he looked all too similar to that person. Either she was seeing things or..

She didn't really want to complete that thought honestly.

Then, there was Bryce. She'll admit, something about him was unnerving for anyone who looked at him, even her. She won't lie, she felt uneasy looking at Bryce herself. He seemed like a dead ringer for someone she had heard of. She couldn't figure out exactly who it was though.

Clara, to be honest - Clarisse had her suspicions that Clara was an Ares kid. How she had survived beyond the age of 13 - for Clara honestly looked like she was 16 - was beyond Clarisse's ability to even comprehend at this point.

Piper and Alyssa were.. also interesting. While Clarisse would say she had her suspicions about whose cabin they both belonged to, she wouldn't really go too much into what she thought about it - mainly because it brought back some memories that even though she had forgiven the cause of those memories, they still brought her pain whenever she thought about them.

Overall, these newcomers were definitely interesting in more ways than one, that was for sure in Clarisse's mind. She snapped out of her thoughts, and had just picked up her spear, intending to go back to training, when she heard the sound of a very familiar voice.

"I thought I might find you here."

Clarisse turned around, and the sight of two very familiar people rose her spirits greatly. Their hair may been have dyed red and green respectively this time around, but there was no mistaking the duo of Caeli Edwards, former Apollo camper, and her boyfriend Austin Maxwell, former head counselor to the Ares Cabin. Clarisse got a warm smile on her face now.

"Austin! Caeli!" she exclaimed.

"Hey there sis.." Austin said, still smiling for now but turning a bit serious. "Heard about what happened from Chiron. We're here to help."

Clarisse wasn't one for emotions, but at this point, her emotions for her missing younger brother overcame her now. She dropped her spear, ran towards the two of them, and hugged them, the head counselor of the Ares Cabin currently crying her eyes out into the shoulder of the former head counselor.

"There, there.." Austin said, patting her shoulder with one of his hands, while his other arm simply hugged her.

Eventually though, Clarisse stopped crying. "Glad you are back bro, we could definitely use your help around here.. since it seems like the war is progressing now.." she muttered. Caeli and Austin didn't have to really think hard to know exactly what Clarisse was talking about. They knew full well what she had meant.

The War of Succession over the power of the Monster King raging between Colton and Porphyrion.

With the disappearances, it seemed clear in Clarisse's mind at least that the war had entered a new phase. It was why she was grateful that at least for Winter Break, Austin and Caeli had decided to come back to camp to help out — for fundamentally the same reasons for the most part as to why Beckendorf and Silena had come back to camp too.

They needed all the help they could get.

(A/N: Apologies for the chapter being shorter than normal, but it's more of a filler sort of chapter than anything else. The return of characters from the past to the storyline, much the same as Lee's chapter brought back the OC's of -JASONSGRACE , Galatea-Green-31 , goddessofwisdom- , and Az56796743 among others to the story. Next chapter is longer, due to it being canon material.. then another set of original chapters will follow that — as we explore Alyssa, Bryce, and Clara adjusting to their new lives at Camp Half Blood during the night before they, Piper, Leo, and Jason go off on the quest to save Hera. Little spoiler here in saying that, but it's not much of a spoiler when you all know that the Roman gets sent on the quest anyway.)