Ethan And I (Ethan Nakamura)
I never asked to be kidnapped.
Of course, no one at camp seemed to notice but my cabin, Demeter, but that's not the point.
To be taken from camp before I got there that summer, to work for Kronos, was never on my to do list. Of course, no one really listens to you when you never get the spotlight. I never pledged my supposed allegiance, either. I was just some stupid prisoner girl, not worth anyone's time but to beat.
Ethan was probably the only thing I liked there.
On the Princess Andromeda, he was funny, and sort of a beta to Luke (Kronos), but that didn't really matter to him. For us newcomers, he tried to explain everything that happened, but it was kind of complicated, so sometimes he had to explain two or three times for us to actually get it. I didn't mind. Ethan tried to convince Kronos to stop beating me, telling him that I wouldn't be any good as a battlefield medic if I couldn't think right. It worked.
The day the two from camp came, and the one tried to save us half-bloods, he took me quickly to a lower deck balcony, and, as the ship blew up, jumped off the ship with me. He put his back to the water so he would take all the impact. I guess that's when I noticed we'd fallen for each other.
There wasn't time to tell him no. We landed with a splash. I treaded water with difficulty, holding Ethan close to me so he wouldn't drown. I had to beg the seaweed to get them to help me to shore. I could feel the swelling the whole way there. The seaweed left us in a small, unkempt grove where I could grow plants to heal him in private. I was never one to use nectar and ambrosia unless I had to. I was lucky my small emergency canteen of nectar was okay.
I dribbled the little canteen into his slightly open mouth, praying for him to be okay. I rolled him onto one side as he coughed up what looked like several litres of water. I carefully sat him up, checking his back.
"I'm not some delicate little flower, you know, Lia," Ethan told me. I smiled lightly, still assessing his back. Now I was glad the cabin voted me Cabin Healer, and that under Kronos I was trained as a battlefield medic.
"That was a fifty-foot drop, Ethan," I whispered. "That's like slamming into concrete." I grew a little cotton plant next to me as I started swabbing his back, where some newer scars had re-opened. Whenever I did something Kronos didn't like, he would beat Ethan, who volunteered to take the beating for me, every time. He grimaced with every pat. I gave him a hand to squeeze- standard procedure back in Dem, where I used it as a gauge of how well a certain herb was working, or whether someone needed a bit of ambrosia or nectar. Lucky for me, my mini-First-aid-kit had survived the drop (mostly full of alcohol wipes) so I started opening one with mu teeth.
"Ethan, I'm going to swab off your back now," I whispered. He grimaced, knowing what was coming. "This is going to hurt." He hissed as I barely wiped over the smallest cut. I rubbed a little harder at the dirt and seawater in it, while Ethan tried his best not to cry. "Ethan?" I mumbled.
"Yeah?" He replied through a mouthful of clenched teeth.
"You can cry, if you need to," I mumbled, mostly to myself. Ethan looked at me with a look that asked me what kind of drugs I was on, but the first tear from the uncovered eye rolled down his cheek silently. "It's okay. I won't judge you." He nodded to himself as I wiped the tear away with my fingers. His hand clutched at mine like he was holding a lifeline, and I worked at his back with the lightest touch I could manage. He started to sob. I sang gently for him. I couldn't feel the hand he was holding anymore. I gave him a little more nectar to sip after I had cleaned all the cuts, and he relaxed a little bit, but kept crying.
I didn't care that we were both still sopping wet, I didn't care that Kronos could be watching us at that very second, all I cared about was that he was crying. So, I did what came to mind first. I climbed onto his lap and hugged him. His arms went around me carefully, like I wasn't quite real, and that this was all just a dream. I lay my cheek on his shoulder, pulling my arms around his neck, and he finally closed his arms around me.
"You're so pretty," Ethan murmured stupidly. I giggled into his shoulder, closing my eyes. It had started to rain somewhere in his sob-fest, and I had used up my entire store of dinosaur band-aids on his back.
"Thanks." I whisper back.
From then we were really close. We managed to find the army again, with me picking up more bandages for my first aid kit. Kronos pushed me harder than ever, having me build the strongest wall of plants I could, only to tear it down. Ethan was by my side a lot, egging me on, teaching me to fight, and he showed me why he wore the eye patch: he had a lazy eye that embarrassed him. That was when we started dating, a little before though, prbably. We started doing the same guard shift, and I helped him work with his eye. With a lot of work, his eye began functioning better, and I got faster, stronger at swordfight and tearing down my walls. Before we knew it,