A/N: Second chapter has also been reworked! It had been a little too Mary Sue, so I fixed that, and also gave Jade a slightly different background. Hope you'll enjoy, and please tell me what you think!
Chapter 2:
11 July ~ Camp Half-Blood
She awoke slowly. Instinctively, she knew she wasn't in her own bed, so instead of bolting upright and announcing her current state of wakefulness to the world, she took a deep breath and listened to her other senses.
She was lying on something soft, most likely a bed or a bunk or something, and the room smelled fresh, like she'd imagine summer smelled like: strawberries and salt water, and that particular tang that announces rain. She heard all sorts of things, too. She could hear buzzing; a fly or a bee that was trying to get out of the room, distantly, there was laughter and a sort of… clanging? She couldn't imagine what that was, though. Closer by, she heard someone sigh, probably more out of boredom than actual malcontent, but it still set her on edge. Who was this person who was watching over her while she slept?
Jade thought back to the last she could remember but found her memories strangely fragmented. She recalled running away from home, remembered the first monster she'd come across, though not how she'd gotten away from it. She remembered getting cornered at a fountain in Central Park by four gruesome creatures. She'd fought them off as best as she could with no weapons but a stick, but she'd been hopelessly outnumbered and outgunned. Vaguely, she remembered a pulling sensation in her gut, and then one of the creatures had attacked, but then… Did she remember that right? She could've sworn a boy had jumped in the way and killed it with a single stroke of his sword. Who the hell carried around a sword anyway?
Things only got vaguer after that.
So someone had saved her. Presumably, this was the person who was now in the room with her, or maybe it was an adult. God, she hoped she wasn't in a hospital of some kind, they'd only call them, and she refused to go back to them. Realizing that she couldn't do much else about her situation right now, Jade decided to make a show of waking up, and groaned.
She moved and the groan turned into a wince and a quiet yelp. Her leg and head throbbed like hell, and her eyes, though still closed, felt like someone had taken a hot poker to them. And that wasn't even mentioning the general soreness of the rest of her body.
Footsteps hurried closer and the cool rim of a glass was pressed against her lips. "Drink, you'll feel better," a voice said. She didn't really pay attention to it, but vaguely catalogued it as a boy's voice.
The liquid tasted like nothing she'd ever had before. It was like Ben & Jerry's cookie dough ice cream, but at the same time, it was pancakes from her favorite diner, and it was also diet Dr Pepper and that fizzy raspberry cider she'd tasted once. It brought to mind the best memories she had, memories of a time before…
She finally opened her eyes, despite the lingering pain – though most of it had lessened to a dull throb – and came face-to-face with a cute blonde boy.
Jade blinked a few times to get the fog out of her eyes, but, apparently, it couldn't be helped. "Hi," she croaked. She cleared my throat and tried again. "Hi."
The boy grinned. "Welcome back to the land of the living."
"What happened? How long was I out?" she asked, struggling to sit up. The boy helped her by putting an arm around her shoulders and pulling her up. The contact made her a bit uncomfortable, but she bit my tongue. He was only trying to help.
"You slept for about three days. We were worried that you might not wake up anymore," he said, sitting back down into a chair next to the bed. Jade took a minute to look around the room. It was a lot more spacious than she'd thought it would be, though her eyes were still annoyingly foggy. It held three beds on one side of the room – one of which she occupied – and four on the other, with those little curtains that you could close for privacy. We were in an infirmary. "Would've been a shame too, all that trouble we went through to get you here," the boy went on.
She frowned at him. "Where is here?"
The boy grinned and was just about to answer when a dark-haired boy walked in. Jade stared. He looked strangely familiar, like he was an old friend she hadn't seen in a few years, but, at the same time, she was certain she didn't know him.
"You're up," he said with a smile. "Good, we were beginning to worry." A blonde girl followed behind him. She seemed a lot less open than either of the boys, and she was looking at me with a calculating stare.
"Who are you? Any of you?" she asked suspiciously, looking from one to the other. If she'd been hurt, she should have been taken to a hospital, that's what any normal person would do. But – though this looked like some kind of infirmary – this was no hospital. And where were the adults?
The blonde boy looked sheepish. "Oops, should have started with that, shouldn't I? I'm Will, Will Solace, I've been making sure you've been healing."
"So you're like a nurse," she deadpanned. The dark-haired boy snorted in amusement, and even the blonde girl cracked a small smile.
The blond – Will – spluttered. "What? No! I'm- I'm… more like a medical student," he said eventually.
"So I was treated by a student? Now I feel so much better," she said sarcastically, unable to keep a slight grin off my face. Seeing this guy flounder was pretty funny. Looking at him, though, he wasn't nearly old enough to be a student, he looked to be about Jade's age, maybe a year or so older. Where the hell had she ended up? And, more importantly, how was she going to get out?
"Well, I'm Percy and this is Annabeth. We got you out of that scrape back in Central Park," the black-haired boy said. Maybe that's why he looked familiar, then, she mused. She'd remembered someone crashing onto the scene before she'd blacked out.
"I guess I owe you thanks," she said distractedly, rubbing the bridge of her nose. A headache was building behind her eyes and it was splitting her head open. She wished they'd draw the curtains or something…
"Are you alright?" the blonde boy – Will – asked, concern replacing the mock-affronted face he'd put on earlier.
"I'm fine," she lied. "Just tired. So, where are we?" she asked, hoping to distract the teenagers. From the way none of them could sit quietly, she guessed they wanted to change the subject as much as she did.
"New York," Percy said, smiling.
"I'm guessing you mean the state and not the city?" she replied dryly. This didn't look, smell or sound anything like the Big Apple. She'd know, she'd spent the last… she didn't even know how long, on its streets.
The blonde girl – Anna something? – rolled her eyes, and Jade got the feeling she did this a lot around Percy. She noticed that she couldn't make out her eye color, though she was standing more than close enough. She remembered Percy's were green, but she could barely tell the difference between his and Annabeth's – that was her name! – anymore. What was going on?
Jade realized that Annabeth had said something, and felt pretty stupid to have to ask her to repeat herself. "I'm sorry, what?"
Luckily, the blonde seemed to think Jade had just heard wrong. "It's a camp for people like us, half-bloods, hence the name," she said, sounding like she'd made this speech a few thousand times already.
"Half-blood?" Jade repeated, perhaps a little cynically. It was getting harder and harder to concentrate on the conversation, though, and she rubbed her forehead again, hoping the headache would just go away. And her eyes were really stinging now. The pain was starting to reach excruciating levels, even blotting out the soreness in the rest of my body. Jade closed her eyes to protect them from the light, but it only made her feel marginally better.
"If you're tired-" Will started, interrupting whatever it was that Annabeth had been about to say.
Jade waved a hand, even though she couldn't see their faces anymore. "It's fine, the light just bothers me a little," she managed to say.
Will hummed. "Must be from the venom you got in your eyes. We're still not sure what it was. I'll tell Chiron," he said, and must've headed out, judging from the hurried footsteps she heard. And who the hell was Chiron?
"Anyway," Annabeth continued. "Camp Half-Blood is for people who are only half mortal."
Jade peeked through her eyes to see if the other girl was serious. She was. "Half mortal, half what?" she asked cautiously.
Percy took over. "Let me just take a wild guess and say that you're probably ADHD and dyslectic, you've never really fit in anywhere, and you've been kicked out of a lot of schools. How am I doing so far?"
Jade opened my eyes all the way to frown at him, even though that was mostly because of the light. "How do you know that?" she whispered. All those things were reasons they hated her, the reasons she'd ran away.
"We've all been through the same things," Annabeth said kindly 'I doubt any of you have been through what I've had to live through,' she thought bitterly. 'No one knows…' "You probably have one parent you've never met. Your remaining parent told you that they'd left or that they'd died," Annabeth continued.
Now Jade frowned in confusion. "I know both of my parents, they both raised me," she said.
Jade had to close her eyes against the lights again, but she could almost feel the confusion radiating off of them. A silence followed. She wondered if they were silently conversing like my parents used to do.
"I hate to break it to you, Jade, but one or both of them aren't your parents…" Percy said carefully.
Once again opening her eyes, Jade looked at them. She couldn't tell what she was feeling through the tangle of emotions that burst into my chest. Betrayal, confusion, anger… hope.
But how could it be true? Her parents were dead. They'd died years ago in a boating accident. But… she was confused. Were they telling her that her parents – or at least one of them – was still alive? But no, they'd said that her parents weren't her parents at all, but… well, there had been that discrepancy with her birth certificate…
Her breath came in gasps as realization set in. She didn't care if these two kids were right, she could choose to believe what they were telling her. If she still had a parent out there… she wouldn't have to go back. Not ever!
She suddenly realized that she'd started crying at some point, and that Annabeth had put a comforting arm around her shoulder, but she was happy. She laughed through her tears, and was vaguely aware of the other teens in the room looking at her like she was crazy. Nothing new there.
She wiped away some of the tears – though her eyes burned – and accepted the tissue Annabeth offered. "I'm-" she started, but had to stop and take a breath before she could go on. "I live in foster care, and I hate my foster dad. To think that I won't ever have to go back there, is… well, it's comforting," she admitted, sniffing.
"Foster care? What happened to your real parent?" Percy asked hesitantly.
Jade sniffed again, but managed to keep any more tears from falling. Her eyes were stinging enough as it was. Better close them for the time being. "My parents died in a boating accident when I was little. I always thought they were my real parents, but after they died, they found out that my birth certificate had been forged. My aunt and uncle refuse to take me in, so I ended up in foster care," she explained. It was still a bit of a sore subject, since it had only happened 6 years ago, and getting rejected by family was never fun. "Anyway, I've been in 3 foster families, and this last one… let's just say I didn't like it there." Understatement of the century, but they didn't need to know that.
Before they could keep asking about it, though, Jade decided to change the subject. "So you said we were half-bloods, right?" she asked, leaning back against her pillows. Man, she was exhausted. "Half what, exactly?"
The two teens paused for a moment. "This camp was built for people like us, people who are half-mortal…" Annabeth said. "And half god."
"That's what you meant? Half god? I can't be half-god, I'm not anything special, I'm just… me," she trailed off, peering at them with eyes half-open. Seriously though, how could anyone be half god? How did that even work? And which god were they even talking about?
Percy sat on the edge of my bed. "Your ADHD is your battle reflexes, and your dyslexia is because your brain is hard-wired for ancient Greek. Once you're here a while, it'll start to make sense, I promise," he said with a grin.
"Greek? Like Zeus and stuff?" she asked.
"Well, you're probably not Zeus's kid, but yeah," Annabeth said.
Light hit her eyes, and she blinked, moaning at the increase of her headache. All this new information was frying her brain. Jade massaged her forehead again, but it didn't help one bit.
"Jade, are you alright?" Percy asked.
She opened my mouth to answer when a feeling like a hot poker being pushed through my eye sockets overwhelmed her. She heard someone screaming, and felt hands pushing me back onto the bed. It took me a minute to realize that she'd been the one who'd screamed.
She was so glad when the darkness finally claimed her, that she never even wondered how they knew her name.
A/N: I deliberately haven't let Thalia come in, but you'll figure out why in later chapters. For now, I really hope you liked it, and please leave a review to tell me what you thought!
