'It has been four years.
Four years of hard work, misunderstanding, trials and errors. Four years of broken trusts, mended faith, and newfound allies.
Everything has changed. People, places, the sky, the earth, everything. It seemed only a matter of time before the people who refused to change were going to have to.
But I swore I will never change.'
"Hey! Cupcake!" Elisabeth looked up from her notebook, a towel wrapped around her neck and her long, honey brown hair tied back in a messy bun. Sweat was glistening off her skin as she tried not show how hard she was breathing. "Breaks over! You going to keep writing or we going to get back to learning?"
Elisabeth grinned wide and brightly at who had spoken at her, flicking the towel onto the rest area ground like an old rag. Her father's old friend, who also turned out to be a daughter of Ares, was standing in the middle of the boxing arena. She was just as sweaty and twice as strong as Elisabeth was, but it didn't really matter. They always trained together, the wiser and older demigod teaching the younger everything she ever knew. Every dirty trick, every defensive counter, anything she could think of that would save the Aphrodite girl in the future. "Ok ok! I'll be right there, Mrs. Rodriguez!" The woman groaned and pointed a tapped up hand at her.
"I told you to calm me Clarisse, Cupcake!" She bellowed, punching her fists together. "Do I got to punch your lights out again to make you remember that?" Elisabeth laughed as she put down her notebook and mechanical pencil replacing them with a roll of sports tape that she started wrapping her left hand in as she made her way to the area Clarisse was at.
Clarisse and her we the only two people in the gym, due to how early in the morning it was and the fact that the gym wasn't even open yet. Both of them were wearing just their sports bras and some spandex shorts, Clarisse in her usual red and black ensemble, and Elisabeth in her black and white one. They had been practicing for hours, before the sun had even started rising into the sky. First with stretching for a half hour, then with weigh room reps for two hours on all the machines, then a cool down jog around New York as the sun started to peak up over the horizon. It was 6:30 am now.
Elisabeth slipped through the bars and stepped into the arena, tape already covering her one hand. She started putting some on her other hand when Clarisse started the lesson. Elisabeth dodged a left hook and a jumped back, out of her reach as she horridly finished with her other hand and threw the tap over the bars and onto the cement ground. She dodged another left hook, jumping as she saw Clarisse's legs go in to sweep out her legs from under her. There, just a split second, was an opening in her defenses, and Elisabeth took advantage. Still in midair, she kicked forward, pushing into Clarisse's exposed shoulder, and the teacher fell backwards onto the ground.
"Not bad, Cupcake." She mused as she got up, a evil grin on her face. "You've been practicing."
Elisabeth didn't take it as a complement, not at this moment. In the past, the minute she let her guard down, she would end up on the ground with the wind knocked out of her. She made that mistake three times, and the third time was the charm. Instead, she moved forward and kicked at her trainer's kneecap. The daughter of Ares easily dodged the attempt, but found a fist in her side. Elisabeth punched her again, aiming for the other side. But she bent out of the way as a fist almost hit her in the face, and she ducked low when a roundhouse kick came at her.
"Good! Good!"
Elisabeth, not focused on her words, took a second to breath while leaving her guard up. There was another opening in her defense, but Elisabeth knew it was a trap. How? It was in the same place as the last one. She jumped over Clarisse, landing and delivering a kick to her side as she turned to face the daughter of Aphrodite. They went on for hours, Elisabeth not letting her guard down, and Clarisse taking the beating. But Elisabeth learned too late that that was the trick today. And she learned it the hard way.
Elisabeth was breathing hard, the sweat clouding her vision as it started dripping into her amber eyes. "Well done, Cupcake." Clarisse said, whipping the blood off her lip from a well placed punch. She spit more blood onto the ground and smirked, not as tired as Elisabeth was. "But now you are wide open." She ran at her, Elisabeth's aching body not able to move to a safer location in time, and pegged her in the stomach like a linebacker on a football team. It felt like Elisabeth got hit by a train at high speed. She collapsed onto the ground, her body sliding a little from all the sweat that had collected on her. Clarisse stood over her, a smirk on her face. "Lesson of the day: Let your opponent do all the work. It wears them down, giving you the advantage. Understand?" Elisabeth nodded, gasping for air as she felt the mat burns on her back start to sting.
Clarisse offered her a hand to help her up. "Come on, training a over. Lets hit the showers." Elisabeth nodded and took her hand, pulling herself to her aching feet, almost falling over onto the ground again. "Oh great, I overworked you again Cupcake?" Clarisse said in a concerned tone as she sling her arm under her and helped her to the breakout area. Elisabeth shook her head.
"No, no Im fine."
Clarisse rolled her eyes. "Lier. Come on, sit down. I'll get you some water."
Elisabeth did as she was told, her shoulders hunching over as she felt the exhaustion hit her, sort of like a tax collector hounding someone on due day. Only, that was mentally stressing. Clarisse came back a few minutes later with three bottles of water, opened one, and handed it to Elisabeth.
"Here kid." Elisabeth didn't say a word, just grabbed it and started chugging it down. She had not realized how dehydrated she was. Clarisse sat down next to her and opened another, taking sips of it. "Need another?" She asked when Elisabeth finished the first bottle. She nodded, and the older demigod handed her the other unopened bottle. "So, you gunna tell me why your trying to kill yourself?"
Elisabeth arched an eyebrow, taking a sip of the water before answering. "I'm not."
"I call bullshit." Elisabeth sighed. Clarisse was like a mother, and honestly, it was annoying when she knew things like when you lie.
"Fine. I'm just a little stressed." The daughter of Aphrodite confessed, taking another sip of water before the inevitable happened.
"At what? You already graduated High School with flying colors. All you have to worry about is camp." Clarisse raised an eyebrow. "Speaking of, don't you leave tomorrow for it?" Elisabeth nodded. "Then why the hell are you here!? You should be packing!" Elisabeth groaned.
"I packed yesterday." She said, her breath and heartbeat slowly turning back to their normal rhythms, as well as her body starting to feel a little like led. "I'm giving Percy and Nico some time to themselves before we leave. I'm just going to hang around the malls or something."
"Ah." Clarisse said, leaning back against the wall a little. "How are Seaweed Brain and Dead Weight?" Elisabeth chuckled. She only learned about four years ago that Clarisse knew her adopted fathers from when they went to camp together. It was quite a funny reunion.
"They are fine." Elisabeth replied politely, rolling her sore shoulder slowly backwards to see if it was dislocated. Fortunately, it wasn't. "Percy and Nico have started fussing about collage and what I'm gunna be when I grow up." Clarisse nodded.
"Your real dad would be freaking out too, you know." Elisabeth sighed sadly, nodding. This was her father's last gift to her. And now that she was 18, it was hers. But she still let Clarisse own it. She needed time to get through her last year of camp till she could make any claims to this place. To her sanctuary.
"I know." Clarisse looked at her, patting her shoulder softly. It took Elisabeth off guard, cause she wasn't used to her personal trainer slash family friend being this nice to anyone.
"It's Nick and Henry, isn't it." It wasn't phrased as a question, but she nodded anyway. "Spill."
"Ok, so I like Nick a lot, sure." Elisabeth started.
"But?"
"But he keeps on trying to leash me! It's like, well, say I wanted to come here every day."
"Uh hu?"
"And then he says I can't just cause its not right for a Daughter of Aphrodite to be training like a Ares kid."
"So basically he's telling you you can't. Like Dead Weight tried to."
"Exactly! And if I do it anyway, he doesn't talk to me for a week!"
Clarisse looked at her, her eyebrow raised in utter confusion. "And your still dating him after four years of this bull crap?" Elisabeth nodded again, sighing and taking a sip of water. She was starting to feel like normal now, minus her whole body feeling like jello and led. "How the hell haven't you moved on?"
"I don't think he'll let me. If I got kidnapped, he would run after me. If I ran away, he would hunt me down. It's the Aphrodite and Hephaestus effect! I swear, if he starts setting traps when he gets suspicious of me cheating, which I don't, I'll bash his brains out with my bare hands!"
"You got the strength for it." Clarisse mused. Elisabeth chuckled a little. "And Henry?"
"He is still the best friend a girl can ask for." Elisabeth said, leaning her elbows on her legs and placing her head in her hands, smiling a little as if the mentioning of him made her day brighter. "We can talk about anything, and he understands. We like the same exact things, we understand each others pasts, and better yet I feel comfortable to be myself around him!" Clarisse chuckled a little, patting Elisabeth on the back.
"Sounds like your dating the wrong brother."
"Hu?"
"Ok, story time, Cupcake." Clarisse said as she cleared her throat. "You know my husband, Chris Rodriguez, right?"
"Hermes demigod son, right?"
"Yeah." Clarisse said, smiling a little. "He used to be a bad guy, when Luke was awakening Kronos." Elisabeth bolted upright.
"Really?!"
"Yeah. Everyone wanted him dead, and they didn't trust him after he pulled that stunt." The daughter of the god of war continued, her tone taking on that of reminiscing. "But I fell in love with him none the less."
Elisabeth listened, interested in this now. Her fathers only told her some of the story, but never much about some of the other people in it. It was mostly just from Percy's perspective, too. Nico didn't like talking about those times at all. "How did you two manage to stay together?" Clarisse chuckled lightly to herself. Her eyes reflected a sadness that ran as deep as a undersea trench.
"It's tough... The memories of the war keep me up sometimes... And Chris... Well... He still has nightmares about what happened in the Labyrinth." Elisabeth nodded. "But we stay strong because we love each other... We excepted each other. So," Clarisse turned her dark drown eyes on Elisabeth, catching her amber stare and holding it firmly, like a snake handler would hold the head to keep it from biting him or her. "moral is: find someone who loves you for you and won't try and change you. Understand?"
Elisabeth nodded. "Understood, ma'am." Clarisse smiled a rare smile and ruffled her shoulder, handing her a clean towel.
"Hit the showers. You got a long day ahead of you."
Elisabeth washed herself down in the shower room, the dull lighting creating a horror movie atmosphere. She was used to this, even loved that feeling. But she knew something was off today. As she turned off the hot water, she heard a 'clank' noise from the other side of the room. Normally, if it were any other time, she would think it was someone coming out of a stall. But she was the only one in here, as far as she knew.
Slowly drying off, she wrapped herself in the towel and slowly pulled out a set of bronze rings. Twisting them lightly on her fingers, they grew into Celestial Bronze brass knuckles, encasing her bruised hand in its bronze plating. She heard footsteps lightly tread across the tile floor, and she pressed herself to the shower stall wall, ready to take the jump on whoever was in here. But when the light footsteps stopped, she waited. And waited. It was ten minutes before she decided to peak around the doorway, even if it was a trap, to see if whoever it was was still there.
But no one was.
She sighed, holding her chest as her heart tried to pounding its way out of her ears. 'Your getting just as paranoid as dads.' She thought to herself as she made her way to her locker and opened it. Slipping out of the towel, she started changing into her normal street cloths. As always, it was something girly and flattering, and pink. Pink shirt that showed off her cleavage, bleached out skinny jeans that felt like she had to be poured into, her black Converse that were worn, faded, and ready to fall apart at any second, and a black bandana around her head like a headband. The only thing she liked about the outfit was the Converse and the bandana. everything else can go to deepest depth of Tartarus for all she cared
She looked around the locker room one last time, having the strangest feeling she was being watched. 'Your just paranoid.' She thought, shaking her head and pulling her drawstring bag out of the locker, containing her sketchpad. 'Its all in your imagination.' But she still kept her bronze knuckles out, just in case, as she made her way towards the exit door. She held the handle in her hand, when she heard hissing.
"Oh great."