A/N: My entry for the Fanfiction ImagiNation Frosty Winter Exchange thingie. It's a Silena-centric, and I used the All the Little Lights, Even death has a heart, burning snowflakes, and that quoteabout misery and happiness that I can't remember…
The story's for SydneyLouWho, by the way. Hope you enjoy, and review.
Her daddy was a preacher.
Now, she loved her daddy.
He was a good man.
He was tough, and he was hard, and he just didn't get why she needed those new jeans.
But he was caring and wonderful and the best daddy she could ever imagine having.
There were times, when she just couldn't understand why he did the things that he did.
There were the days when his footing was unsteady, and the next morning he would ask for a wet cloth and his eyes were streaked with red.
Those were the worst.
But he was still a good daddy.
When she was sad, he would comfort her.
When she was mad, he would let her yell at him.
When she wanted to be alone, he stayed.
He was a good daddy.
And she loved him.
When she was eight, and that mean little Roger kid had pushed her off the slide and she had skinned her knees, she pushed him back.
He tattled to the teacher and she got sent to the Principal's office.
The Principal was a big man, with folds in his face and thinning silver hair.
He was a scary person to her, back then.
She cried, and cried, and repeated her story about how it was all his fault, because he had pushed her first, over and over again.
The folds in his face did not shift.
In the end, her daddy was called.
She was scared of what he might say, what he might do, and her heart beat echoed in her ears.
Tha-dump
Tha-dump
Tha-dump
When her daddy finally came, he took her out in the hall and made her stand in front of the board with all the kindergartner's essays.
He looked her in the eyes, with those serious gray-green eyes of his, and said, "Sweetheart, I hope you know that what you did was wrong."
She nervously bobbed her head up and down.
"But everyone makes mistakes. It's alright. It makes us all human. But remember. Inside your heart there are little lights, glowing bright inside your chest. When you do something wrong, one of them blinks and goes out. But when you do something right, another one lights up. So no matter what you do, nothing is so bad that you can't get forgiven for it. Remember that."
His eyes turned a little bit misty and his vision was unfocused.
She didn't really understand what he meant, but afterward, she hugged Roger and said a quick little apology.
She thinks she can feel her heart light up.
It has been four years since that day, and Daddy's not able to recognize her when she rings the doorbell after school.
His eyes are more white than green, and he wanders about as if he can't quite tell where everything is.
She is a bit worried, but her daddy is made of sterner stuff than that, and tells her to go to her room and do her homework, and not to worry about him at all, because he's fine.
{He isn't.}
A few weeks later, he falls down the stairs and has to be taken to the hospital.
He has intraocular melanoma. She had to search that up.
But she is not at the hospital, by his bedside, while the heart monitor beeps, she is at camp, and being claimed by the campfire.
One of the oddball kids at one of the lunch tables at her school had taken her there.
Turns out he was a satyr.
Who would've thought?
But that's not an excuse.
She wasn't there when her father was taken to the hospital.
What excuse is there for that?
She's seen a boy at camp.
There's been tons of rumours swirling around about what happened about his arrival.
There was a tree, or something.
And a child of the big three.
She's not entirely sure.
But the boy is handsome, and she watches him from afar.
They tell her that she's a daughter of Aphrodite and that she shouldn't have to watch from the shadows.
She just nods quietly, but eventually, she gets over him.
That's what she tells herself, at least.
{She can still see blonde hair and blue eyes out of the corner of her eye}
She is fourteen and foolish when he changes her life.
She is so, so happy when he asks to talk to her, and it is so, so sad that it ends in tragedy and misery and general unhappiness.
After all, don't all bad things start with happiness?
And don't all good things end in tragedy?
{too good to be true}
In her joy, she doesn't see the letter slipped onto her bed.
It ends up in the trash.
It has been a week, and she has gotten one more letter.
She has found out her father has died.
She wasn't there while her father passed on.
She wasn't there.
She visits his grave the next day, because Chiron only allowed her until after she had begged and pleaded and cried.
The weather is freezing, and it is snowing and raining at the same time.
{you couldn't tell that from camp.}
{you can't tell anything from camp.}
She tips her face to the sky and watches the snow fall.
The tiny snowflakes that look so pretty burn her skin like coals.
{she thinks she deserves it.}
It is snowing fire the day she first sees his grave.
It is simple and beautiful and imperfect, just like he was.
Her tears freeze to her face, and it stings like fire.
{While it was snowing embers, she was crying liquid fire.}
Don't you hate oxy morons?
The one meeting with the boy with the scar leads to another, and another, and she looks forward to them like water in a desert.
He makes her feel normal.
He makes her forget.
She would do anything to forget.
{Would you, would you really?}
When he gives her the necklace, she thinks it's beautiful, and that it will match perfectly with the dress she was going to wear to the fireworks.
When he asks if she'll wear it every day, she says yes in a heartbeat.
Tha-dump
Tha-dump
Tha-dump
When he asks her to spill the secrets of her camp, her home, her sisters, her family – she says yes in a second.
{would you do anything to forget?}
{yes, yes you would.}
{can you feel you heart grow darker?}
And then she meets Charlie working in the forges.
And he doesn't make her forget.
But he makes her better, he makes her good, and that will do, while Luke isn't around.
He is wonderful, and special, and he makes her feel whole.
He is almost enough to make her stop selling secrets.
Almost.
The day comes when she is happy with Charlie, and can make do without forgetting.
So she tells him.
Luke, that is.
He just smiles, all teeth.
"What made you change your mind?"
Charlie.
"Nothing, I just decided I didn't want to betray my home."
He laughs and lists violent ways in which to kill her wonderful, real, Charlie.
Her eyes widen in horror, and her hands go to the charm that has been her salvation and destruction. There is nothing she can do but agree.
And he smiles, all teeth, his eyes bright with something.
Apparently, he still has some light left.
Do you?
When it is time to battle, she fights with camp, still telling Luke – Kronos – the happenings at camp.
She doesn't understand why.
After all Charlie's dead.
{why did she ever think forgetting was worth more than him?}
And the rest of them don't really matter much to her anyways.
{oh really? Is that why when Luke threatened your sisters and Percy and you agreed?}
{because they don't matter to you?}
She's never been much of a fighter.
And she doesn't have enough good will left.
But still, she fights, and she kills the drakon.
But she has to borrow Clarisse's strength.
{after all, she is not brave, she is not strong, and she is not even good.}
And still she dies.
{but she can feel her heart grow lighter.}
Her soul flees the battlefield, and she can see Hades battling the armies of Kronos.
He looks right at her, as if he can see her, and his gaze pierces her soul.
He is the god of the dead, after all.
She can see a glimmer of empathy in his eyes, black as they are.
An empathy she may not find in her own clear, blue ones.
After all, even death has a heart.
How sad that an immortal being, the god of the underworld, has more of a heart than she does.
{well that's not entirely true, now is it?}
When she is judged, she is allowed Elysium, and Charlie is there, and she hugs him and kisses him, and says all the things she never had time to say.
{and for once, there is no flash of blue and blonde in the corner of her eye.}
Her soul glows brighter than the sun.