Fire and Ice (A Leo Valdez fanfic) [2017]

Chapter 2: Hazel 💎

HAZEL MISSED LEO. He'd been gone for exactly a month now. It was September first. In a few days, she would start eighth grade, Frank would start tenth, and Percy and Annabeth would go to college. The camp was horribly quiet with Leo gone. She missed his mischievous grin, his stupid jokes. She knew Jason and Piper missed him even more.

She was sitting in the Hades cabin, sketching in her notebook. Nico was across the room, listening to modern music through his headphones on his MP3 player, and singing along. Loudly. Since the war, Nico had jumped into the world of modern technology, and his favorite discovery had been music by a band called Imagine Dragons. Right now she was listening to Nico yelling, "It's where my demons hide!" over and over. She was getting tired of the song.

"Nico, can you-- what is it?-- move it down a notch?" Hazel asked.

"Turn," Nico corrected. "And no."

Hazel sighed. "I figured."

There was a knock on the door. Nico immediately ran to get it, probably thinking (or hoping) it was Will Solace. It wasn't.

"Hey, Frank," Hazel heard Nico say.

"Can I see Hazel?" Frank said immediately. Hazel jumped up, tossing her sketchbook onto the bed.

"Hi, Hazel!" Frank said, smiling down at her. It was a little awkward, since Frank was almost a foot taller than her. She stood on her tiptoes and kissed him on the cheek. Nico stood awkwardly to the side, his black headphones dangling on the floor.

Hazel stepped away from Frank, aware that she was making Nico uncomfortable. "Sorry. Frank, come on in."

Frank followed her into her side of the room. The beds didn't look like coffins anymore, thank the gods. She sat on her bed. Frank pulled the curtains separating Nico's room from hers closed. Then he noticed the open sketchbook. "What's that?"

Hazel wordlessly held up her most recent drawing. It was a half-finished sketch of Leo holding a hammer and grinning like the maniac he was.

"Wow," Frank breathed. "Hazel...that's..."

"I miss him," she blurted. "A lot. You know it's been a whole month, right?"

He nodded. Hazel felt her eyes fill with tears and immediately blinked them back.

"Want to go outside?" she asked.

"Yeah, sure." He followed her outside. The day was bright and sunny, and Hazel had to squint, blinded by the bright light after leaving the shadowy Hades cabin. She sat cross-legged on the grass near Thalia's pine tree. The Twelfth Legion had returned to Camp Half Blood after being attacked by monsters who had survived the battle with Gaea. They decided that for now, Camp Half-Blood was safer. They would soon go back to California, where Hazel would attend eighth grade in New Rome. But they'd stayed for a while, so that the Vulcan kids could work with the Athena and Hephaestus cabins to make repairs after the battle with Gaea. Frank was going to go to school in New Rome too, so that he and Reyna could run the camp as the Roman praetors. Percy was catching Hazel up on modern movies and technology.

Frank sat next to Hazel and smiled at her. She smiled back and stared up at the sky. She loved being able to relax. On the Argo II, there had always been tension between Frank and Leo, not to mention the fact that they knew one of them was going to die. Before that, when she was at Camp Jupiter, she had to train and participate in the war games, and everyone was nervous about her because she was a daughter of Pluto. Camp Half-Blood was more relaxing-- sure, you had to train, but you could hang out with friends and stuff. Hazel couldn't get away with that at Camp Jupiter.

She fingered her new necklace. It was a simple leather cord with a single bead. The bead was made of clay. It was painted half orange and half purple, to symbolize the union of the Greeks and the Romans. In the center was a gold ship with a dragon figurehead. Hazel had no idea how they had made the beads so detailed, but now she felt like a part of the camp with her own Camp Half-Blood necklace. The ceremony where they gave everyone the beads had been a few days before. Now Hazel, Frank, Jason, Piper, and Nico had one bead, Percy had five beads, and Annabeth had ten.

Hazel suddenly jerked up. She could feel a strange sensation, as if some invisible force were pulling her upward. She was used to the sensation of being pulled downward, but it was never this strong, and it never pulled her up. She stood immediately.

"Hazel, are you okay? What's wrong?" Frank asked when she jumped to her feet.

"I-- I can sense metal," she said. "Celestial bronze. A lot of it."

Frank stared at her. "We. Are. In. A. Greek. Demigod. Camp. You seriously expect there to be no Celestial bronze here?"

Hazel rolled her eyes. "No, dummy! I sense Celestial bronze, multiple tons of it, coming from..." She pointed straight up. "There."

Frank turned his gaze to the sky. For a moment, they both stared at the sky in silence. Then Hazel felt the pull increase, and both of them gasped as Festus the dragon swooped out of the clouds.