Hello! Here's your story of the day! I had a snow day today, so I got to spend an extra amount of time on this, so I hope you enjoy it!
Disclaimer: I don't own the characters and events and settings in here!
Day: 3
Situation: Person A has an assessment coming up and needs to revise
Fluff: Sleepy
Angst: Faint
Four Times I Should Have Lost You
i
Lacy held an icepack against Nyssa's cheek and tried not to cringe when her girlfriend cringed.
She'd gotten Nyssa's text at 2:00 AM, probably when Nyssa had assumed that Lacy would be sleeping. But Lacy couldn't sleep, not until she'd gotten a good-night text from Nyssa, especially since Nyssa hadn't been at school… After getting a 'i'm okay' test, she'd tracked Nyssa down- which wasn't as big of an exploit as it sounded considering the size of the town, though Nyssa had picked a particularly crummy bridge to hide under. She'd brought everything Nyssa might need- a ham and cheese and tomato sandwich with just a bit of mustard, ice water, hot tea, a hoody Lacy had stolen, a blanket, a flashlight, some dry socks… and yes. A first aid kit. She'd seen this coming.
"Tell me again what happened," Lacy said.
"It's nothing," Nyssa said, in her harsh way of using tone to compensate for bad answers.
"Nothing. Right, of course," Lacy said, babbling nervously. "Nothing leaves you with three broken ribs, two black eyes and a bruise the size of my hand. Of course. Oh, don't act surprised. I saw it when you stretched, your shirt rode up. It's too small. It's your bad shirt, you only wear it to sleep, never outside. How long have you been out here?"
"Lacy, leave it alone babe…"
"How long?" Lacy snapped. Nyssa winced. Lacy bit her lip. "I'm sorry."
But now she knew. Whenever Nyssa got jumpy and hunched in on herself, Lacy knew.
"How bad was he?" Lacy asked.
"I don't want to talk about Ken," Nyssa said.
"Then talk to me about you," Lacy said. "I mean, why was he so pissed? You're in such bad shape, this isn't right Nyssa, it never was, but this…"
"You," Nyssa said. "He found out about you."
Lacy's jaw dropped.
"Nyssa…"
"I don't want to talk about it, Lacy."
"I'm sorry."
"I'm not," Nyssa said.
"What did I do?" Lacy said. "How did he..?"
Nyssa looked at the ground before taking Lacy's hand.
"Bobby pins," Nyssa said. "He found sparkly bobby pins on my bedside table and..."
"And only I wear the sparkly bobby pins... Oh my gosh," Lacy said. Everything in her chest felt tight. "Oh my gosh, I'm sorry Nyssa, I'm sorry…"
"It's okay, Lacy, it's okay," Nyssa said. "Like I said it's… it's okay."
"You shouldn't be comforting me, that's not right," Lacy said. "You're the one who just got beat up and… oh God, do you think he kicked you out for good this time? Where was your mom?"
"Late shift at the hospital," Nyssa said. "Of course. But it doesn't matter, she'll agree with him on… on this. She may have even watched, this time around."
"Nyssa…" Lacy said. "We'll figure something out, okay? After all this time, now you have to let me help you."
"Look, I wouldn't have texted you, but this is really bad," Nyssa said. "Ken saw the bobby pins when he woke me up this morning. He recognised them as yours because he always checks out my friends, wondered why they were on my nightstand, found your shirt in my drawer. He figured out that we were together. He beat me up for being gay, which made him late to work, which explains why he stayed out late tonight. But I think that by tomorrow he'll have called your grandparents."
"Oh God…" Lacy said. "They're going to…"
"I know," Nyssa said. "So fair warning, don't help me. We're both screwed."
"Where do we go?" Lacy asked. "I mean, no one in town would help, in town they would just freak out..."
"Right," Nyssa said. "But you do know that your grandparents are going to try to pray the gay away, right? They'll send you to that camp that Marty Webber's family shipped him off to…"
"Oh God," Lacy said. "Oh God, they're going to seperate us…"
"They will," Nyssa said.
"They're going to try, anyways," Lacy said.
"Try? What do you mean try? Lacy, this is hopeless. I didn't text you here for help," Nyssa said. "I texted you to say goodbye."
"No!" Lacy said. "No, no, no! I will not be seperated from you. Do you hear that, Nyssa Torres? We will figure something out."
"You're so cute when you get stubborn and your chin toughens up like that…" Nyssa said putting a hand against her cheek.
"Quit it," Lacy said, swatting Nyssa's hand away. "We work together on everything, we've been able to make everything work for this long… we'll figure something out."
"I've been sitting here all day trying to figure something out, Lace," Nyssa said.
"Well then we have to leave," Lacy said. "Do you remember… Oh yeah! Daisy Meadows!"
"What about her?" Nyssa said.
"Before she left last year, remember all that crazy stuff she talked about?" Lacy asked. "About our parents having a place for us out in New York?"
"Daisy Meadows was psychotic," Nyssa said. "She was deformed from birth, she didn't walk or talk or think right- that's what they said."
"Yes, and they will also say things about us," Lacy said. "Daisy was different and yeah sometimes she was stalking us, but what if she was on to something? What if she was right? What if she did know my mom and your dad and they really had a place for us? I mean, they abandoned us, right? They would owe us a big favour, like, taking us in right now… That's the only favour I'd ever need from them. I mean, if we can get to New York or Long Island- yeah, it was Long Island that she said, right? That's near New York, there are tons of ways to get to New York, I still have the address she gave us in my phone, something about a strawberry farm…"
Lacy took a deep breath.
"Tell me I'm crazy," she said.
"I would," Nyssa said. "But I don't want to lose you. So crazy is what I need right now."
ii
Nyssa rapped her knuckles against the helm of Lacy's helmet, which was a good luck sign that campers had used for years, if the Ancient Greeks hadn't used it beforehand. It was popular on Capture-the-Flag nights, but Nyssa figured that they needed even more help now.
Then she kissed Lacy, which was a bit less traditional but kind of their thing.
"It'll be fine," Nyssa said. "The quest party gave us a good heads up about Luke and his army, our defences are pretty good."
Lacy nodded. "We'll be okay."
Nyssa nodded.
"I mean," Lacy said, "there hasn't been an attack on Camp soil in hundreds of years and this is the very first and there's this rumour that Kampê is in their army, but you know… fine. We'll be fine."
"Of course we will be," Nyssa said. "And you know why?"
Lacy smiled. "Why?"
"Because I-"
At that moment Zeus' Fist exploded, and monsters poured into the forest. All hell broke loose, and then it was war.
iii
Lacy was on a stretcher, sobbing in absolute agony when Nyssa stumbled into the hotel, and her heart broke.
"Lacy!" Nyssa said before weaving around a mob of children of Hermes to grab her hand.
"Nyssa," Lacy said. Her voice was faint. "Nyssa, you're alive…"
"Lacy, what… what…"
"Clubbed by a giant," Will Solace, the healer on call, said dismissively as he pressed more gauze against Lacy's face. "She mostly ducked it, thank the gods…."
"I…" Lacy said.
"Lacy stop talking, you've got a broken jaw," Will said.
"A broken jaw?" Nyssa echoed.
"And a skull fracture, shrapnel everywhere, a broken nose, a collapsed cheekbone, a broken collarbone, a snapped arm, a sliced ear with some damage to the inner- sorry," Will said after Nyssa shot him a look. "It comes out on its- Lacy whoa, whoa, whoa, don't fall asleep…"
"Lacy!" Nyssa said. "Lacy!"
"She's lost too much blood," Will said. "She's lost too much blood, crap, crap…"
"I'm O negative!" Nyssa said. "I'm O negative, you told me that's the universal donour, right Solace? Do battlefield transfusions, go now!"
"You're O negative!" Will said. "FUCKING GODS Nyssa, you're gonna make my life so much easier! Bowman, go get me a fresh kit! Lacy, stay awake, check this out, your girl's got your back and you're going to have her blood… Lacy… Lacy!"
Nyssa took Lacy's hand. "Look, I know that you're scared and that tons of people are supposed to die today, but you won't die today okay? This isn't how our story happens, or how we're going to end it. Understood?"
"Understood," Lacy said quietly. She fainted for sure after that, but Nyssa knew that she'd come back. She'd understood.
iv
Winning a battle never stopped at the cheering. Lacy remembered it from the Titan War, but it was even more real this time. The War with Gaia, the battle for Camp, had left even more carnage- and it was foreign carnage too. Demigods and legacies that Lacy didn't know, big war machines and animals she'd never seen before...
Camp Half-Blood's war machines were fried, the main control system had been strategically buried in the geographical center of Half-Blood hill to give out signals and energy that all the machines could sense without the enemy's tracking. Except the enemy was supposed to be the Romans, not Mother Earth. About half of Camp's catapults functioned electronically (like uber-intelligence droids) in a desperate attempt to make up for their numbers once they'd face the legion, and those were all toast. And not to mention all the automatons…
The automatons. What a great idea, they'd been. What a mess they were now...
Not too far from where Lacy was, one of the gigantic machines had collapsed. Lacy rushed to it with a few Roman soldiers and used her emergency knife's handle to smash a window and a Roman boy named Thomas (who had the same face shape and weirdly distinctive blue eyes as Lacy- a brother maybe?) pull Christopher out of the wreckage. He was yelling for Shane and that's when Lacy saw that Christopher was only the co-pilot. From the pilot's seat, two Roman legionnaires had pulled out Shane, who had two smashed legs and a piece of shrapnel through his chest and a lifeless look in his eyes.
The little anxious voice in the back of Lacy's mind mercilessly reminded her that Nyssa was piloting an automaton.
She couldn't run straight to where she thought she'd seen Automaton IV (the one Nyssa always practised in and tinkered with) there were plenty of people who needed help on the way. Lacy didn't –couldn't- stop everywhere, but she closed a Roman soldier's eyes, found a severed arm for a healer (ewe ewe ewe ewe ewe), helped a daughter of Ares named Chloe limp to the nearest healer pop-up station and helped Connor Stoll stomp out a small fire.
She found Automaton IV in ruins.
"Let's move quickly people!" A Roman centurion was crying out. "The gas tank leaked and if the engine wasn't shut properly, we may get a spark and where there's spark there's flame!"
"No," Lacy whispered. "Nyssa… Nyssa!"
"Lacy, stay back," Jake said. He had blood and oil and soot on his face, and he wore a dog tag on his throat reading JAKE MASON AUTOMATON III. Lacy's blood chilled. She'd overheard the children of Hephaestus talk about this, about wearing dog tags in case something went so wrong that the bodies would be impossible to identify...
"She's still in there? Jake, tell me she's not in there! Tell me she's okay!"
Jake wrapped his arms around Lacy from behind to keep her still. To keep her away.
"They wouldn't be working so quickly if the cockpit was empty," Jake said. "Keep it together, Lacy... If she's still conscious in there, if she hears you scream…"
"If she's still conscious?" Lacy said. It had been too long of a day for this to happen. No, it had been too long of a day for Nyssa to be maybe conscious and maybe alright…
"Centurion, I see smoke!" A legionnaire said.
"Crap, crap, crap- work faster!"
"Don't move too fast!" Will said. "There's some serious injuries in there, I can feel it, don't move them!"
"How serious?" Lacy asked Jake.
Jake shook his head and just held onto Lacy tighter. Maybe someone should be holding him too.
"I need the Vulcan Saw!" The centurion cried.
"Feels like Greek fire!"
"Vulcan Saw damnit, who has the saw?"
Eventually they managed to saw open the top of the cockpit and Jake let go of Lacy and bounded to his siblings.
"It's a four pilot craft!" Jake said. "If this thing was still moving, it's because it has four people in it- two male, two female, pilot is high risk…"
Nyssa's was the first body they pulled out and Lacy cried when she saw her girlfriend emerge. Someone put a cloth drenched in nectar over her face to clear her lungs of the Greek fire as they dragged her away. Her arm was broken and her ankle looked twisted and there were gashes everywhere, but she was out of there.
"I've got her!" Lacy said. "Oh, thank gods, thank gods, thank gods…" She looked up at the soldier who had Nyssa. "I've got her, I'll bring her to the healers, you go help them with the three others!"
They had three of the automaton's crew out of the machine by the time it exploded. Lacy was babysitting a little row of wounded demigods at the time, and she fell to her knees next to Automaton IV's crew when the blast came.
"Calliope was still in there," Hank Thatcher said from where he lay.
"Hank, you need to put the cloth back over your face," Lacy said. "It's clearing your lungs, you-"
"Calliope Benito, you know her?"
"Of course I know her Hank, please, you're injured, put the cloth…"
"What's wrong with Calli?" A weak, weak voice said.
Lacy turned around and saw Nyssa herself, sitting up groggily and looking around her as if she'd woken up in a brand new world. In Wonderland. In a way she had, but Lacy choked a sob and threw her arms around her and kissed her senseless.
It was a brand new world. One in which there was no more war because they'd won this one, for better or for worst. A world in which they would finally be okay.
"Can you pass me wrench 2B?" Nyssa said. "Sorry, the one with three ends."
Lacy turned the page of her book, unhooked the tool from the wall and handed it to Nyssa. Just as Nyssa's fingertips reached for the wrench, Lacy dropped it. Her book tumbled too.
"Sorry," Lacy said.
"It's okay," Nyssa said. "Just be careful, we've got some sharp stuff in here."
Lacy nodded. She hopped off the work table she'd perched on and picked up her book. She dropped it again.
"Damnit," Lacy said.
"Butterfingers, much?" Nyssa said. Lacy didn't laugh. Nyssa picked up the book, gave it back to her and helped her sit back down.
"Is it a good book?" Nyssa asked.
"I don't know," Lacy said. "I've been starting the same page for an hour."
Nyssa took Lacy's hand and squeezed. Lacy squeezed back but her grip was... it was faint.
"You okay, babe?" Nyssa asked.
"Of course," Lacy said. "Why not?"
"I'm not hungry."
"Lacy, everyone's feeling like shit since the battles," Nyssa said. "But you need to eat."
"I've eaten," Lacy said. "I just don't feel good. Like, sick, sick. Like nausea and headache sick."
"Like, sit in bed and eat chicken noodle soup mortal-type of sick?"
"Exactly," Lacy said. She smiled. "Mortal-type sick."
Then she threw up. Nyssa held her hair and offered an arm to help Lacy stand up when she was done, and thank the gods she did because Lacy collapsed.
"The vomiting won't stop, even if we were here yesterday," Nyssa said. "And since she's not eating she's still fainting lefft and right and it's really, really weird. I know there are still plenty of injured from the war, but I figured that since the Romans took their injured home, you guys must have time."
"We always have time," Will said softly. He propped the door of the infirmary open a bit wider. "Come here Lacy, let's have a look..."
"She's fainting, Will," Nyssa said hysterically. Lacy heard that even before she came around. "Fainting. This is the third time in three days."
"Two days," Lacy said quietly.
"Oh, babe, you're awake," Nyssa said. "Thank the gods..."
"Hey Lacy," Will said. "You're in the Big House infirmary, okay? Chiron and I will try to take care of you. What's going on?"
"My head hurts," Lacy said softly. "I'm dizzy."
"Could be dehydration," Will said. "From the puking and the loss of appetite."
"Could be," Chiron said.
Will approached Lacy and tried to help her sit up, but when she groaned in pain and whimpered, he froze. His fingers pressed against her abdomen, he checked her heartbeat with a celestial bronze stethoscope, checked her temperature, ran his fingertips around her head...
"Nyssa, if you could just step out with Chiron I'd like to run a psychoscan on her," Will said.
"A psychoscan?" Nyssa asked.
"It's a complicated diagnostic imaging system that children of Apollo perform," Chiron said. "It takes a lot of energy and the correct prayers out of them. Come Nyssa, I can tell you more about it..."
"I'm sorry," Nyssa said. "I'm the kind of person who needs to understand how things work and human bodies are new to me, so can you just… run that by me one more time?"
Will nodded. "Lacy has something called a subdural hematoma."
"What does that mean?" Lacy said.
"Think of your brain as your body's hard-drive, but instead of wires carrying current you have arteries and veins carrying blood around. When you smash a computer and then deal with a broken wire, there's a chance that you can get electrocuted, right? Well, the blood vessels inside the brain, and the ones between the brain and the inside of your skull- they're breakable. But when they bleed, that blood takes up room inside your skyll, which squeezes against the brain itself and creates pressure which can be damaging and..."
"My brain is bleeding," Lacy said.
"I'm afraid so," Chiron said. "You must have hit your head during the war, you may not remember it because of the adrenaline or because it wasn't too bad at the time, but it's highly probable. The hematoma developed slowly considering how it took more than ten days for symptoms to manifest. It's rare but possible. Especially in demigods."
"So what now?" Nyssa said. "Surgery? Do we have to bring her to New York for surgery? Or- or are there just meds you can give her?"
Will and Chiron looked at each other.
"No," Nyssa said. "No, you have got to have a plan. You need to know how to fix this."
"We do," Will said. "Or at least we would if we'd have caught this earlier."
"What William is trying to say," Chiron said, "is that Lacy's brain bled too slowly for too long, and it's too fragile to be treated. Lacy wouldn't survive surgery. She may not even survive the move there. If she weren't a child of Aphrodite who had her loved one near, she wouldn't be surviving at all."
"No," Lacy said. "No…"
"I'm sorry, Lacy," Will said. "You shouldn't be alive right now, and there's nothing we can do to change that but keep you comfortable until your brain dies."
"I don't get it," Lacy said. "We were… we survived everything. We survived our childhoods. All the wars. All the fights. After all that, you're supposed to be okay. We survived all the things, why… why now…"
"Stay calm Lacy, you could make it worst," Nyssa said.
"It doesn't matter, does it?" Lacy said. "Nyssa, we worked so hard to survive… and I had to go and hit my head…"
"It's not your fault, babe," Nyssa said. She crawled into bed with Lacy and put an arm around Lacy's body. "It's not your fault."
"But something had to go wrong somewhere," Lacy said quietly.
"Lacy, my dear…" Chiron said.
"Shut up, okay?" Nyssa said. "Shut up! She's just scared. And when we got scared as kids, all the bedtime stories said that after the battle, if you were still standing, you got the magic flying horse or the treasure or the fleece or the kingdom or the princess. And we weren't even asking for much, we just wanted each other. That's all we ever asked for, damnit, and everyone's always tried to take that from us... Chiron with all due respect, don't try to reason with her right now, because nothing makes sense- none of your old stories make sense. We were supposed to be okay. She's just scared."
"I'm scared," Lacy said.
"I'm scared too, babe. But I'm right here, okay?"
"Okay," Lacy said. "But I think... I think I'm more sad than scared, Nyssa."
Will tried to take Nyssa's arm as she walked into Lacy's private room. He even asked her if she'd had supper yet, or lunch for that matter. But Nyssa ripped her arm away and hissed I'm fine like nobody who's actually fine ever does to their best friends.
"What?" Nyssa asked when Lacy looked at her. "I'm fine.
"I want to be too," Lacy said. "I wanted to stay for you. And live for you. I fought for you. And now we're going to lose each other anyways. After all that, why don't we get to be okay?"
Nyssa crawled into bed with her and held her from behind, with Lacy's head pressed against her chest and tucked under Nyssa's chin. "I thought I was going to lose you years ago. I got a whole seven extra years with you. Four extra miracles after I met you, I mean… Lacy, don't cry. Maybe we got our okay a long time ago. Maybe we've had our run."
"It is," Lacy said. "I wish I could give you more time. A better life, the kind of life we always wanted, you know? When we thought that we'd be okay later..."
"Lacy Allan," Nyssa said. "Don't talk that way. You were the greatest thing that ever happened to me. The worst thing that could have happened to you won't change that, okay?"
"Okay," Lacy said.
"I hate the infirmary," Lacy said quietly. "I like the pain meds, but I... I don't feel good, Nyssa."
"I'm going to hold you for as long as I can," Nyssa said kissing the back of Lacy's neck. "We'll just… we'll hang out here, okay? I'll bring your quilt and your bedside lamp, and we'll make Will bring us food, and we'll get all the scoop on him and di Angelo…"
Lacy smiled.
"And we'll play I Spy and watch old movies and maybe we can play checkers or something," Nyssa said. "And I'll paint your toenails and we'll listen to the radio and we'll… I don't know, Lacy. We'll make it work. We always made everything work, even this will be okay. You'll see."
Lacy smiled again, her eyelids fluttering. "It'll be an awesome place to bleed out. An awesome place to fall asleep. It'll all be okay."
"We'll be okay," Nyssa said kissing her cheek. "After all of this, we'll be okay."