Red Skies at Morning | Clarisse La Rue x OC | Percy Jackson AU

Harness the Turbine

Just a content warning for this one, there's a few depictions of what I think are intrusive thoughts? Then there's a brief nightmare sequence that's basically just graphic descriptions of various types of violence including self-harm. If you're not comfortable with that then I'll have a bolded warning before that scene begins and a bolded indicator after it ends. 

And don't worry about missing important stuff, they're mostly there as a view into Wren's wreck of a state of mind at this point and the details are not vital to understand anything else. 

Captain Classy had finally yielded.

Only after an hour of various attempts to kick me off the boat, though. Including but not limited to:
Wrestling me off of the gangplank, an attempt to tie me to a tree, scattering the contents of my backpack on the shoreline, and trying to leave while I recollected my stuff. Multiple times. She'd resorted to bargaining towards the end. After that didn't work, she tried throwing me overboard.

But finally, long after the sun had set Clarisse gave up all hope of getting me off the ship.

She was visibly exhausted, her hair was plastered to her face and neck and she leaned against the railing. She squinted at the horizon where the sun had disappeared into the ocean. I sat next to her on the deck. We were both catching our breath. She looked at me, looked back at the horizon, and huffed.

Clarisse got up and marched towards the below-deck entrance. I scrambled up to follow her. I'd expected her to go straight to the Captain's Quarters and lock me out, but we went a deck lower. After a minute or two we wound up in a room crowded with hammocks.

Clarisse turned to leave and I nearly followed.

"Uh, g'night?" I wasn't sure what else to say.

She didn't respond, but I could see her jaw clench even with her back turned to me. With a sigh, I found an empty hammock and climbed in. It was a few hours before I managed to fall asleep.

Surprisingly, the next morning I did not wake up in a lifeboat. Nor was I beat up by a skeleton. I didn't even fall out of my hammock due to a nightmare. In fact, I didn't even remember any of my dreams if I'd had any. Granted, I'd barely slept, but I still took it as a good sign.

It was somehow the most peaceful morning I'd had in at least a week. Maybe even the best morning I'd had in months. I honestly couldn't remember.

Only Annabeth and Tyson were up for breakfast in the captain's quarters with Clarisse. Luckily, Annabeth knew better than to restart the argument about helping Clarisse, and Tyson was too preoccupied with his cereal to pose any problems. Percy had slept in and none of us felt it was necessary to wake him.

My hand found its way to Copper's clip as I ate my cereal. I couldn't stop myself from staring at the one-eyed boy. Sure he was small for a cyclops, and from what I'd seen there was no reason to think he was a threat, but I still had mixed feelings about him.

I didn't like monsters. It didn't take a genius to figure that out, but my stomach churned from more than fear and unease around him.

My thumb pressed down on the clip's trigger I glanced at Tyson again, who had been loudly slurping the milk from his bowl and now had a big goofy grin. My stomach dropped as I caught myself thinking about turning Tyson into a cloud of dust. I stared at the Cyclops, his behavior reminding me of some of the younger campers in Cabin 11.

I stood up, my chair legs raking across the floor with a loud screech, almost toppling over. I could feel the blood draining from my face as I struggled to swallow the mouthful of cereal that suddenly tasted like sand.