Author's Note: Hey, there! Soooo, this is the first story that I have written about ChrisxClarisse, actually one of the first stories that I have ever written so please be nice! And if there are any mistakes do tell me, because English isn`t my mother language, I`ll correct them right away! Anyway I hope you enjoy!
P.S.: There is a liiitle violence in this chapter (and is mentioned a few times), but let`s admit it, Clarisse`s middle name is violence :D If anybody has a problem with it I`ve marked it with WW so you can skip it if it bothers you.
P.S.S.: I would recommend "Greg Laswell - And Then You". I spend almost half of the story listening to it.
Clarisse was kicking and maiming all the dummies in sight, pretending that they were those annoying little twats from the Apollo cabin. She cut a head, slashed chests and a few stomachs until there was almost nothing whole left from the dummies.
For a few moments she just stood there and stared at them, contemplating on weither she should cut them apart even more than they were or to leave some for her relatives. She grabbed one of the spare spears, tossed it in the air a few times to feel the weight of it, then threw it at the dummie in center whose head was barely attached to the torso and hit it square in the heart. WW Were it a real person he/she would have stared blankly and would have fallen backwards to never move again. Clarisse pretended that it was Lee Fletcher, the little runt who she despised the most of them all. If she lacked self-control his tongue would have gone missing the first time he dared insult her. WW
She sighted and decided that her brothers and sisters deserved to get their anger out on the dummies too, so she left the arena and went running. The forest was the only place where there were less demigods to annoy the hell out of her. Her feet took her there and she increased her speed as if she were on the Olympics or something.
Clarisse felt the burn in her muscles after half an hour of running around like a crazy shit all over the forest. She met only two campers, one of them being a son of Athena, who wisely made way for her to pass and the other one was her half-brother Sherman. The moment they saw each other, big grins formed on their faces. They sprinted towards each other, jumped just before they collided and grabbed the other`s shoulders , literally switching the places in which they were standing a second ago, only they did that in the air and landed on all fours.
"Sis." Sherman`s grin grew even bigger if that was possible.
"Bro." Clarisse said, grin turning into a smirk. As much as the other campers thought they knew the Ares cabin, they were so wrong. The children of Ares were more like a pack, a family, than like a bunch of boys and girls that were just way too violent than anybody wanted them to be. When in public they solely communicated with each other through their eyes and body language, one or two insult thrown at a brother or a sister, but that was just to keep the reputation going.
They were protective of one another, especially the older ones. They were the only cabin that wasn`t lead by the oldest member, but by Clarisse, a girl at that, that was able to unite a whole bunch of hyperactive killing machines. The girl part does sound unusual, because the Ares cabin hasn`t been lead by a girl for more than half a century.
"Usually you`re beating the shit outta dummies. Soooo, why are you running?" Sherman knew her way too well and was one of the oldest, only a few years older than Clarisse herself. He raised an eyebrow.
"If I continued, there wouldn`t have been anything left for you and the others when you went later, now would it?"
"Touché." they both got up and cleaned the pine needles from their jogging pants. "I should be used to it by now, but it`s still annoying me." he shook his head, both knowing very well what he was talking about.
"Yeah… sucks big time. And people wonder why we train all the freakin` time or why we`re all growly." right, they were talking about that thing that every Ares kid got a lotta bit extra than the other demigods - anger. Sure, it sounds stupid when you hear it, but it`s way more serious, because if they don`t train the anger out, every moving thing in camp would be beat to a bloody pulp, then Mr. D. will turn them into plants or something, it`s going to depend on the mood that he`ll be in, and it won`t end good for anybody.
That`s why most of the time the arena is unavailable for other campers than Ares`s children. The anger is like a burning ball of energy inside of them and the ADHD isn`t helping one bit. It`s a frenzy growing inside of you and if you don`t take care of it… well, let`s just say that it won`t be pretty.
WW
A few years back, one of their brothers beat a Hermes kid, just because he wanted to say something and the other punk didn`t let him. That was only at the age of 8. After that incident nobody dared to stand near them in fear of getting the same beating. Sure, their brother had to do the dishes for five months, feed the Pegassi and clean after them for the same period of time and nobody ventured to make a joke out of it, even behind his back, but the Hermes kid didn`t get out of it that easily too – the one month stay in the infirmary wasn`t pleasant at all, because the ambrosia and nectar couldn`t mend that many broken bones, even the children of Apollo had a hard time healing him.
WW
"I gotta go, see ya. " her brother flew past her, taking her out of her thoughts. She moved her head to the right and the left, then continued running for another hour.
After that Clarisse hit the showers, but on her walk back to her cabin, she was stopped by Chiron. Typically. There was a new kid and Chase wasn`t around, due the fact that blah, blah, blah, so she had to do It instead. Good thing it wasn`t summer, because she`d be more pissed from the heat. November was nice, but the wind was cold and she felt chills going down her spine. There was a towel on her shoulders, with one hand roaming through her wet hair, in a poor attempt to dry it.
Clarisse was wearing an oversized "You and whose army?" red hoodie and camouflage pants with her favorite knee high combat boots. She was still trying to dry her hair when she entered the Big House with a sigh. In front of the fire place there was a tall hispanic boy who didn`t lack muscle mass unlike the rest of the stuck up idiots there. He was probably two or three years older than Clarisse when she was 11 at the time.
The boy didn`t even seem to hear them come in and Mr. D was nowhere in sight. He was just staring at the fire with clenched fists.
"Chris." Chiron murmured softly and slowly went next to the boy, bringing a hand on his shoulder. The boy did not react. The centaur turned him, so he faced her. "Clarisse, this is Chris Rodriguez. Chris, this is Clarisse La Rue, she will show you around."
Clarisse momentarily stopped moving and gave Chiron her "are you kidding me?" look. Then she gestured at the door in the left, that leaded to another room. He followed her with a sigh.
"How am I supposed to show the place around to a kid that depressed, Chiron? I`m not good with emotions or with chick flick stuff and you know that." her right eye twitched.
"Child, right now he needs company, and I don`t think that anyone else of your siblings will be better at this. And do not mention the Hermes cabin for a last resort. The poor boy just lost his mother. Be gentle with him, Clarisse." he turned around and left the room, leaving a pissed off Clarisse behind him, with her hands raised up in the air in a "What the hell, man?" gesture. She gripped the towel around her neck and growled, not even acknowledging the fact that the hispanic boy had lost his mother. She had stopped listening after the "right now he needs your company".
When she stepped out of the room, the boy, Chris, was still in the same place where they left him. Something in her clicked and she stopped scowling. For the first time in her life she didn`t know what to do. When she broke her arm for the first time, she knew that she had to find her mother. Years later, when her mum told her that she had to go to Camp Half-Blood, because it was too dangerous for a little kid on her own and that she wasn`t able to protect her own daughter, Clarisse knew that she had to hug her, to comfort her, even though hugs weren`t her thing, but the tears in the older woman`s eyes made her do it. When her brother lashed out on the Hermes kid, she knew that they all had to be there for him, to tell him that it was okay, to do other cheesy stuff, so the pood kid doesn`t feel that bad, because he was their little brother, he was family.
"So..uh, Chris." he blinked and actually looked at her. His hair was all spiky and black, his eyes were brown, but from the fire to his right it looked like they were gold-ish. The dark circles under them made them look darker. He was in a disheveled green shirt with long sleeves and dark jeans that were too loose for him. The sneakers he was wearing were already good for nothing and winter was less than a month away. He had the longest lashes Clarisse had seen in her life. Even the Aphrodite peasants couldn`t match them with all the tons of mascara they usually wore.
"Clarisa." he said quetly, abrely above a whisper, as if to reply to her when she said his name. This was getting a lot like Tarzan and Clarisse had no intention of being Jane (yes, she had watched Tarzan, but that was solely because of her mother).
"Nuh-uh. CLAH-REES. With an "S". Like a snake that`s about to bite the death outta you. Or starngle you ." she corrected him and started drying her hair again.
"Clarisse." he said, but this time with a stronger voice that had already mutated.
"That`s right, punk. Now, follow me." Clarisse turned halfway on her heels and shook her head a few times, but wasn't satisfied, because the hair was still wet.
"I`m older than you." Chris said, but followed her anyway with his hands now in his pockets. Clarisse had the feeling that those jeans were about to fall from his hips, which were making Aphrodite`s children look fat. Heck, he made them look like the little shits they were, but nobody saw, because of all the make up.
"I don`t care. Wanna hear it in spanish? No me importa." she didn`t turn around to see his reaction, but the the atmosphere between them changed to something that was a little better than the depression that leaked out of the kid.
"Aren`t you going to get sick with that wet hair and that biting wind?" he sounded genuinely concerned.
"Been there, done that, nothing new." of course she had done it thousands of times before. There was one time she had pneumonia, because she jumped in the Lake in the middle of winter, on behalf of her stubborness and the fact that she didn`t want to lose to an Apollo runt.
She gestured at the srawberry fields.
"I take you know what those are." he nodded she showed him around, did a good and loooong walk and by the end of it she barely resrained her yawns.
"What`s in the forest?" Clarisse raised an eyebrow - only the Demer kids and her sublings were interested in it (and ocasionally some of the Hermes kids that were hiding after a prank of fear for their lives). She showed him Thomas`s cave and Zeus`s fist. On the way back, he stopped in the middle of the forest. And just stood there for ten minutes. Whitout moving an inch.
Clarisse`s right eye twitched again and her hands folded in the towel so she didn`t strangle Rodriguez. She took a deep breath and turned around.
"What is it?" she didn`t keep the venom out of her voice. Then again, why would she? He was just another demigod that will end up hating and fearing her, why should she treat him like a human being when they all end up loathing the Ares cabin? So what if he`s traumatized, almost everybody in this camp has had some sort of a trauma, mommy issues or daddy issues (though the mommy issues were a rarity).
Clarisse herself has had a trauma and do you see her being all depressed and shit? Nope. Is she looking like her mother has died in a fire or-
Oh.
Shit.
Chiron`s words came back in her head.
"The poor boy just lost his mother."
She looked up at the sky and growled softly.
Why coulnd`t have she been born without any emotions or compassion or understanding for that matter?
By the way he looked at the fire in the Big House, like it was responsible for every shit in life, and like he was thinking :"Prometheus, you little shit, I`m gonna hunt you down and make you suffer more than you have ever suffered in your whole life. And considering the fact that you are probably one of the most tortured bastards in existence, it will be profoundly terrifying." ...
"Nothing." he drew past her, didn`t even have a problem getting them out of the forest when everybody almost got lost if they hadn`t been here more than a few times.
When he didn`t stop the moment he got out of it, Clarisse gritted her teeth, cought up with him and hit the back of his right knee. When he fell to ground, he turned towards her with a glare matching hers.
"What the hell is your problem?" he hissed poisonously.
"You, you little prick! What, you think that after you have lost-" she stopped herself and balled her hands in fists.
"What?" he stood up and towered over her. "When I have lost what? Do you even know what it`s like to lose your mother, the only family you have ever had? Huh? Do you KNOW WHAT IT`S LIKE?" he screamed at her and she took it. "Do you know what it`s like to see her dying, to see her taking her last breath in front of you, IN YOUR ARMS? DO YOU KNOW, HUH?!" their noses were almost touching and if he were somebody else Clarisse wouldn`t have left an unbroken bone in his body. She knew how he felt, besides she had used her siblings for punching bags after "the incident". But if he dared touch her she wasn`t going to restrain herself.
He took a deep breath and a horrified expression covered his face. He took a step back, his legs gave out and he fell right afterwords. The boy started hyperventilating, hands coming to his throat as if he could actually open it and let the oxygen in.
Clarisse realized he was having a panic attack and crouched in front of him. She tried shaking him, but that didn`t help.
"CHIRON!" she yelled, the centaur knew how to deal with this. But she didn`t.
"Hey! Hey, yo, look at me, man!" she tried, knowing that she sounded as stupid as Apollo`s kids. "Rodriguez! Chris! Look at me, dammit!" nope, nothing. This was bad. And Chrion was nowhere in sight.
"CHIRON, COME ON! HE`S GONNA DIE HERE!" she yelled again and slapped him.
Chris had covered his ears, still hyperventilating the tan skin getting pale, his whole body shivering. That made Clarisse panic. And a panicked Clarisse was something you did not want to experience.
She did the best thing she could – punched him. He fell backwards with a hiss. She extended her hands as if he was a metal piece and she was Magneto and could make him sit again. No such luck.
"Clarisse!" Chiron was going towards them with a frown.
Then Chris snapped out of his panic attack and growled.
"What is your problem?" he shouted every word slowly and lunged at her.
WW
He had her wrists on each side of her head, his mouth a big snarl. Clarisse hit him in the stomach with her knee, then smashed her head against his and a second time, until he let her go. She got up, Chris right after her, again trying to corner the girl. She hit his collarbone with her elbow, brought her left fist first in the middle of his chest, then she stricked his stomach. When he hunched over she grabbed his head and hit it in her knee thrise. By the time she tried to do it a fourth time Chiron was five feet from them.
"Clarisse." his voice calm and at the same time angry, honestly she didn`t know anybody except him who can manage that. She let him go, but he hit her in the face. "Chris Rodriguez! Clarisse La Rue!" both of them froze with their fist in the air and ready to hit once again.
Chris had blood dripping from his not ususally croocked nose, which meant that it was broken, a bruise was already forming under his left eye and temple. Clarisse spat out blood like it was a daily thing, which for her was.
"You hit like a five year old." she smirked evily at him, daring him to charge her again. In reply Chris fixed his broken nose in place, not even flinching and cracked his neck.
WW
"Just because you`re a girl doesn`t mean that I won`t-"
"Enough!" Clarisse`s smirk grew bigger. "Both of you!" he added. "I don`t know who started it, but I know how it will end. " the centaur`s voice boomed. "Clarisse, take him to the infirmary. And no more fighting or you know the consequenses, child!" Clarisse made a face at the last sentence.
"But, Chiron, the little prick-"
"Watch you tongue, young lady."
"The little drama queen here thinks that just because he`s had a trauma means that he knows everything of everything, and during the whole "Do you know how it feels?!" speech he had a panic attack. I punched him, so he could snap out of it, then when I saved his life he charged me and I fought back."
"Ooooooh, and how did you save my life? By punching me in the face? Wow. I`m so gratefull. It was heroic." the boy`s voice was dripping with sarcasm. He bowed down, mocking her.
"Yes, you were going to die, you little idiot! You were hyperventilating and it was a matter of time untill you died from lack of air or a heart attck." she growled.
"You know such a hard word? I`m impressed!" Clarisse just stared at him and pursed her lips a little bit.
"Fine. Drown and wallow in your self-pity. See if I care." she solely turned around, no fists, no punches, no threats, no nothing. Just her hands in her pockets and a gait so untroubled and relaxed, that it looked like she wasn`t at his throat just a moment ago.
And Chris stared after her, his eyes wide open and mouth set in an "o" shape. He felt something in him shift, he… didn`t know what to feel, how to feel right now or if he did all this so he can feel again.
One month later she still avoided him, more like acted like he didn`t exist and he didn`t even see her anymore anywhere. His old habbits stirred again. He barely talked, ate just enough for his body to function without big problems, he slept almost all day and with his actions he made the kids in the Hermes cabin worry a lot, thus getting Chiron called.
Chris told him the same thing he was telling everybody.
"I`m fine." he answered the centaur tiredly, turning so he faced the wall and his back was towards the elder. He felt fine, just didn`t want socialize with anybody. What was the point anyway? Even if he was a… how did they put it? Ah… demigod, they`ll kick him out sooner or later. He preffered not having any ties towards anybody. And might as well get his body prepared for all the hungry days to come afterwards. Yeaaaah…. He had a strange logic, but he was ususally right. And for all he knew these kids might as well be serial killers or he was just hallucinating and any moment now he would wake up in a ditch, his limbs frozen from the cold. Yep, hallucinating suited him better.
He heard a sigh. The centaur murmured something to the others, but Chris couldn`t hear it properly. He fell asleep shortly after that.
Chris woke up to the sound of voices that were near him.
"So you`re saying that he hasn`t moved from that bed for three days?" it was a girl and it was familiar.
"Y-yeah." somebody squeaked the answer out.
"What about the bathroom? He can`t pee in bed. Or -yeah, TMI." she sighted. "Maybe his bladder isn`t working well or something. Does he talk?"
The other kid probably shook his head, because she continued talking.
"Ah, so Sleeping Idiot desided to wake up."
"How the hell?" thought Chris.
"Everybody out. NOW!" there were fast footsteps and the sound of a door closing. She grabbed his shoulder and turned him so he was on his back. "What the fucking hell do you want to prove, Ramirez?"
"Rodriguez." he hissed at the light that tried to make him blind.
"Whatever." she held out a bowl for him. He frowned and sat up slowly, but his sight blurred for a second and when he looked in the bowl he saw that it fas full of mushrooms and carrots. He raised an eyebrow.
"They`re high in proteins and we don`t know for how many days you haven`t eaten." she glared at him when he opened his mouth. "The day Chiron found you you didn`t eat, the shrimps here say that you haven`t eaten properly sinse you came here and Gods know how starved you look. You could have not eaten before you came here too. So." she gave him the big bowl. "eat."
"If you are soooo afraid that I haven`t eaten for five days, why mushrooms and carrots and not... meat for example? " he could see her jaw and lips clench when he said "five days".
"Your stomach has shrunk and if you eat a big amount of food you`ll throw it up." she said in a "duuuuuuuh" tone. "And these here are like you chew on something, but you swallow nothig, so – I`m not repeating the protein stuff again."
"What if I don`t like mushrooms?"
"Then I`m gonna shove them down your throat and watch you make funny and agonized faces while you swallow them." the glint in her eyes told him that she wasn`t kidding even one bit.
"Good point."
That same day he went to dinner. He ate a little, as much as he wanted to attack the meat and leave nothing for the others, he didn`t know if he`ll actually throw up. He felt Clarisse`s gaze on him and when he looked at the girl, her eyes were narrowed like she was wondering weither she should strangle him or cut him in half. Or maybe something including much more blood and pain. Then her face changed to "What the hell are you doing?". He realised that his eyes were widened, but at the same time he was frowning and his mouth was downwards probably like in the animations.
He noticed that every single one of Ares` kid was looking at him with the same expression as Clarisse`s. It was kinda funny because even those whose backs were turned to him were gazing at him and some of them had their forks halfway to their mouths. It was hilarious and he wanted to laugh in their faces, but from all the horror stories he had heard he decided not to do so.
"Dude, I don`t know what you did, but that`s the quietest I`ve ever heard them." said Connor, one of the twins, which everybody had a hard time telling apart, told him in an amazed voice. Just as he said that Ares`s children returned to their normal behaviour.
Though he caught Clarisse`s eyes for a moment, but she looked away, because her brother asked her something. He realized that her eyes weren`t actually brown. They were a mix of colours and depending on her mood a color dominated more than the others. From here he couldn`t quite see the exact one at the moment.
He was brought our of his thoughts when people around him started leaving.
You know, ADHD is a bitch. He had spent twenty minutes thinking about Clarisse`s eyes. TWENTY MINUTES. So he took the big piece of bread that was close to him and brought the hand with bread close to his leg. He made sure that that part of him was in the dark so nobody would see the food in the darkness. It seemed that everybody was headed somewhere, because every camper went right. They were headed to a big building – the Amphitheater.
He stood there for a moment and crouched, waited for them to get away and his feet took him in the forest. Chris breathed in the fresh air with a big inhale. He continued until he was deep in it and sat on a big root while resting his back on the three. He could see a few stars shining in the dark sky, but the rest remained unseen, because of the branches.
The bread was freshly baked and the crusts were crunchy. It melted in his mouth and he fought the urge to moan like a prostitute. There were foods that he loved more than any human being. And bread was one of them. He could eat bread and never get tired of it, like EVER. He`s tried. But everybody got very worried when two months passed so he started eating other things than bread. Good days, good days.
Aaaaaaaaand since he was thinking like that it meant that he wasn`t going to get any sleep tonight. Way too hyperactive for that. Besides the last two days he was probably awake only for an hour or something. He was so caught up in his thoughts that he didn`t hear the light footsteps.
"That`s my tree, dumdass." Clarisse said. Her hands were crossed in front of her chest.
Great. He and his luck. Of course.
"I don`t see your name on it." he shot back.
"Actually, it`s right behind you." Chris`s left eye twitched and he looked at the tree behind him with lightning speed, cracking his neck in the process. And indeed there, right where his head rested was the name"Clarisse La Rue". He had to admit that he was way more pissed at her now than when he met her. It was like she triggered something in him and she was well aware of that.
He tried standing up, but her hand on his chest bone stopped him.
"Sit."
"I`m not a dog." he fought the urge to reply with something offensive.
"No, you`re a guinea pig. " she sat right next to him, elbows on her knees, hand clutching the other. She was staring right ahead with furrowed brows, lips tight. Clarisse paid him no attention.
So Chris took the chance to take a good look at her.
She was skinny, her cheekbones with the hollow under them, her jaw was well prominent and sharp. The hoodie she was wearing was like a bag over her body and her collarbones stood out, if he looked closer he could see her sternum. Her wrists were delicate, but he remembered the forse and power she punched him with. What he wondered was how she wsn`t freezing only in the big hoodie without a jacket.
But if he thought about it she wasn`t this bony when he first met her. And when he actually went outside or to dinner she wasn`t there during the past month. Maybe she went somewhere? Or on some sort of a mission? What could possibly make her change so drastically like that?
"If you don`t stop staring at me, I`ll take your eyes out and serve them to you for dinner."
She wasn`t even looking at him!
"Soup or Lasagnia? Although I haven`t tried either of them with eyes, there`s a first thing for everything, right?" her eyes widened a bit and her head turned so she could lock her brown pools with his darker ones. She looked… amazed.
"What? Hasn`t anybody ever talked back to you?" he laughed.
Her expression didn`t change. Then she laughed too.
And to be honest Chris thought that if she laughed it would be from the misery and agony of poor and lost souls. But this was… this was charming, cute actually. Her neck and collarbones bared even more due the fact that her face was facing the sky.
Yeah, well, okay, maybe he had a thing for necks and collarbones. And even if he did she was way too young, just a little pipsqueak. Beisdes she hated his guts.
"How old are you?" he heard his own voice and wished he hadn`t said it out loud. A filter between the brain and mouth was all he wanted sometimes.
She stopped laughing as if she realized what she had done. Her face became the stoic mask like before while her eyes narrowed.
"Eleven." she swallowed. "You?"
"Thirteen."
For a few minutes silence took over.
"What happened? To you I mean." the shocked look appeared on her face again. She swallowed and looked at the ground.
"My mother."
"Your—" Chris stopped himself and shivered. The fatal night came back to him, but he shook his head and willed it to go away. "What—Is she okay?"
Clarisse sat back and looked at the branches of all the trees around them.
"It`s none of your buisness." she clenched her mouth and stood up abruptly. Then her head turned to the left and she ran.
"Hey!" Chris ran after her, but the girl was faster than him. He lost her after a few minutes. "Clarisse!" he had heard that there were monsters lurking here, the Hermes cabin constantly wondering weither they should go in the forest, but the fear almost always stopped them. He didn`t know how they looked, how strong they were and Clarisse was on her own, an eleven year old that was controlled by her emotions.
"Clarisse!" he heard a loud snarl that made him stop. "CLARISSE!"