Disclaimer: I don't own PJO and never will.

Warning: A bit of cursing, it is Clarisse after all.

#1

Insignificant

Chapter Summary: If nothing else, she can protect her conscience.

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What was she doing? This was practically Pandora's Box, hell, the door might as well have a huge sign on the front, supporting big bold blaring letters that said, "Don't open, just turn around and let universe get back on track."

Because, that would be the easy thing, 'easy thing' being the 'straight line', the straight line was comfortable, no vertical, and no horizontal. No maze. You knew who you were and what you were doing.

Truth be told she hated the straight line. What was life without living on the edge? Who are you if all you do is follow the rules of the world?

She was exhausted, not the physical, eye-droopy, can-barely-stand-on-her-feet kind. It was the emotional, can't-take-anymore-angst type, the stuff the burrows into her very core and makes her want to shut down from the world for a moment and breathe. And nobody can blame her for that, because she's seen enough bull to last her a lifetime.

But that not her, she's Clarisse La Rue, the strongest girl in camp, she can take any punches that are thrown her way and deal them back ten times harder, both literally and figuratively.

But hey, crap happens. Clarisse wasn't the type of girl that shuts down just because a few bad things have happened. Not that she wants anyone to cut her slack. Just like the old saying goes, 'can't handle the heat, get out of the kitchen,' or something like that.

Fortunately, she was born to handle the heat. Hell, she was born to handle a whole friggin' volcano.

So why?

Why does she insist on taking the maze?

"The maze" right now was a very bright room with a harsh layer of sunlight filtering through an open window. Clarisse supposes this should be comforting, the soft light was meant to fill you with warmth. Then again, Clarisse supposes the sorted vase of freshly picked and trimmed flowers in the corner was meant to be calming, filled with love and promise. To be honest Clarisse hated roses . . . she made a point to stay as far away from them as possible after she heard the rumor that if a rose was picked, or given to a person out of love, a daughter of Aphrodite would shriek to the world a soulful melody, filled with passion, accented with birds screeching for mercy. (You know, something a brainless bimbo would sing)

Her boots almost felt like granite as she left the door behind her, and moved towards her destination across the room.

Her barely-there fingernails tapped against the cold end of the bed relentlessly, as an intense bundle of nerves sent shivers down her spine. She hated to admit it, but it was rather harsh seeing her mother like this. Not painful, just . . . different. She was used to a light and airy figure, mindless of the world and what it holds. If she wasn't positive this was the right room she would never have recognized the gaunt blonde woman in the room.

And she knows what her mom is supposed to mean to her, love, protection, someone she could trust with all her life, the person who knows her better than she knows herself. There should be a voice in her head prompting her with fond memories, causing her to cry her eyes out in misery, but there is just dead silence. Just the soft whooshing sound coming from the oxygen tank in the corner.

Clarisse wasn't much of a thinker, not that she was dumb or anything - but she always relied on her ability to come up with something to say the moment she was supposed to say it. And there was so much she should say, yell at her mom for being an awful mother was the first to come to mind. Well, not awful, just extremely ditsy.

Clarisse was basically the result of two drunken hormonal teenagers. In her mother's case that was very true - her dad just acted like one.

Her mom was stupid - not dumb-stupid, just careless, and that was pretty much a fact. Clarisse wasn't even sure of her mother's history. All Clarisse knew was she ran away when she realized she was pregnant because she was to terrified to admit anything to anyone. Let alone that she got knocked up by the God of War. Pfft, coward.

So Clarisse was raised on microwave meals, and sushi. She didn't even realize anything was different about her life until she finally went to school, and the principle told her Slim Fast was not an acceptable lunch for a Kindergartner.

Alright, maybe her mom was a clueless, and sucky parent. Clarisse didn't really mind, they had a good relationship going. Her mom had an alright, albeit dead-end job, and Clarisse never felt particularly neglected, aside from a few incidents where she needed new clothes, or her mom forgot to feed her that night.

There were a lot of times Clarisse wondered who she even was in her mother's eyes. She knew her mother always wanted a little dress up buddy, someone to put make-up on, and brush the hair of. Sure, she used the toy pots and pans set she had received for her fourth birthday as armor, and one of the spatulas as a sword. And maybe she ripped the heads off her Barbie dolls and used them as pretend grenades (oh, come on, everyone did that at some point or another) and yes, maybe the pretty little necklaces her mother gave her weren't meant to be whips, or garrotes which strangled the life out of her "evil" teddy bear. . . "Mr. Ripped-head Mc. Evil". . .

Come on, she was a violent kid in general! Who wasn't?

She still dubbed one of the best days of her life as the day her mother's rich boyfriend of the week found her fighting spirit to be adorable and gave her a toy gun.

When she came to Camp Half-Blood for the first time it was amazing: suddenly she had a hot meal three times a day, all the toy (and real!) swords and shields she could handle, fitting clothes whenever she needed them, and more than anything, friends, who were more than willing to roughhouse whenever she wanted, and use her as a human shield during the annual Camp Half-Blood food fight.

And when the time finally came for her to go home, she just. . . sort of decided to stay. For as long as she could anyways, until her mother hightailed down there to get her daughter back. She didn't let anybody refer to her as a year-rounder, she was just staying a little extra time.

You never came.

She was having so much fun, she barely realized when a whole school year passed, and before she knew it, summer had come again.

She was claimed right before campers started arriving. Suddenly she was a daughter of Ares. Which, shocked a lot of people, sure, she had the brown hair, and the build, but she didn't act like one. She was loud and naive, sometimes rowdy. She was a demigod. She didn't care, suddenly she had family.

It was that year everything changed.

Clarisse glanced towards the woman in the bed again, scowling, she cracked her knuckles.

Her mother was supposed to come get her, she was supposed to hug Clarisse tightly and tell her never to do anything like that again. She was supposed to go home, and have to beg her mom to let her return the following summer.

What happened? Clarisse almost spouted out, in a voice so angry and spiteful she would have been happy to recognize herself again. Did you realize you had a pocketbook full of cash, and no kid to spend it on? Did you forget me that easily? She should have said that out loud, it might have made her feel better.

Clarisse wasn't about to sprout out some crap about how suddenly she realized she wasn't wanted in the world, and the transition from naïve nine-year-old to Daughter of Ares happened overnight. No. That was gradual, a mix of trying to find herself, and following the growing pattern of her hyper and rude siblings, not that she doesn't love them. In fact, out of all the cabins in camp they have the strongest bond. But that might just be from them being the only cabin where over half of the inhabitants are year-rounder's.

Clarisse is just barely the typical bully everyone thinks she is, she would never admit it to anything but her own thoughts, but she doesn't fight because she had a hard childhood and needs to take it out on someone else. She's quite literally the Daughter of War, it was her genes, nature not nurture.

She knows how hard it must have been. Gods, she's twenty, four years older than her mother was when she got pregnant, and Clarisse knows she's not even close to being ready for kids. Maybe that didn't particularly justify some of the crap her mother pulled, but it certainly helped.

She lifts her hand up, only for a second, reaching out to wipe her mother's sweating forehead. Before realizing what she was doing, and hurriedly lowering it.

There was so much she wants to say, so many questions, so much crap that had stuck with her ever since the day she realized she wasn't going back home.

It didn't matter, what she said now, what she did, if she screamed, or walked away. It just – it didn't matter.

If there was one thing, one thing in the entire world her mother did right, it was this right here, the ability to walk away when she knew if she didn't - the recoil would bite her back ten times worse.

So she goes with a simple, "Goodbye." Because, really, that's all she needs.

Clarisse leaves after a small sigh and another glance backwards. She moves down the hospital hall briskly, still trying to keep up the sad facade that she was anything but confident. Because, wasn't that what she was supposed to be doing?

Damn that straight line.

Hello, again!

So the prompt for this round was to write a departing piece of two or more characters and then a reunion piece, I wrote two chapters.

And this first chapter was the toughest thing I think I've ever written, who knew Clarisse was such a hard character to write? I honestly switched it around five times, and unfortunately I still believe she's OOC:( Oh well.

So I hope this was what you guys were looking for, and you like it:D

Reviews are wonderful, and read multiple times!

-Ash