AN: I don't own anything. Review and fav and follow! Encourages more updates! And FYI Ginger is not an OOC (out of character) Hazel, she is an entirely different person who replaced Hazel. This takes place once they get to the Pax. Disclaimer: Again... I don't own anything. Except maybe my OC(s).
The threadbare lavender strap of my backpack itched on the bare skin of my shoulder, as I found myself staring out at the edge of sight. Watching the distance, the ever-lasting waving roll of a blue sea. Listening with a grimace to the creaks beneath the soles of my Converse on the wooden boards of the only Roman Navy ship, the Pax. A rowboat. Side by side with Zhang on a decomposing bench, and Percy in front, who's arms were out to his side like he was showing the world what he was made of with some awesome Thai Chi. The boat, something that could fit inside a small, middle of nowhere Micky D's bathroom, rocked in the aquatic vastness.
"You alright, Jaques?" Frank asked, calling me by a lost last name. "You look like your going be sick."
"I'm fine, just distracted thats all." I frowned at the floor with intense gold eyes, a color like sheets of metal when mad, or distant, like now. But as they fell upon his warm brown eyes, I softened, I could imagine they became a light bronze shade nearly matching his. Some think the change of my eyes is a curse by a god or minor deity. But thats just something I let them believe, like so many other things. Thats what they have to do for a girl shrouded in mystery, oh so more like Nico then I have them believe.
"Your thinking about him, your brother I mean." his rough eyebrows slightly knit.
"I'm just worried, he left as soon as I crossed the border, I knew he wouldn't stay with Reyna, but..." I let the slips of words from my tongue roll off, and then they didn't. I didn't find it easy to open up, in any way, about what I thought. I was well too guarded for that.
"You think he might do something. What did he say?" Frank knew me better, so consistent against the stubbornness I gave, and he was the best at connecting the dots.
"He said he might know something, which is him, and he's trying to save everything as alway." I was resisting the strange urge to lay up against him. I shook it outta my head. What was that about? He was a friend. And just a friend. I knew people thought we were cute, but there was no way he'd crush on me. I don't think he saw me that way.
"Sounds normal. But your his sister, you know him best. You probably have some crazy 6th sense about him yet to be discovered by Romankind, knowing you." Frank shrugged to make me feel better. Yes, he was skilled in the art of Ginger. Is it me, or did he scotch closer? Did I scotch over? "What do you thinking is going on in Nicoville?"
It was me. It was me who got closer, but he didn't move away.
"I don't know. Something that will almost get him killed. Something that will end him up nearly dead at my feet, and I'll have to revive the life in him, before he sends off." I half laughed half huffed. I could see his smile in my mind. We both came close, till we were touching, when he rest one his large gentle arms around me, with this obvious awkward tension, that was sorta cute...
"We gotta pull in for the day here people." Percy stepped back, and before he turned around, with what I would imagine to be shocked aqua blue eyes, but it went scarce. On an instinct we ended up on opposite side of the bench, Frank almost falling over the splintered edge. Percy raised an eyebrow at us, then wiped his forehead with the palm of his dripping hand, giving me a breath of relief. He looked like a legionnaire who'd spent guard duty as punishment for the past 6 hours in extremely sticky temperatures, and I'd seen plenty of those. Beads of sweat glistening in the fading daylight, small beads of perspiration in the sun.
On land, the air was taught in a humid nervousness, like there was something horrid, which was far beyond totally possible. Shimmering of heat in the field of wheat, seemingly going on for miles. It all mimicked some pleasantly boring farm state. With the gap where geography intellect should've been, I wondered where the Pluto we'd landed. California still? Or maybe even Oregon.
To follow the keen sense borne in us of danger, we took our stuff and walked on, preceded by the familiarized blast of the sounds of a bastille blaring. The normality of the sound back where we were from was displaced in the area between us and home, so I knew we weren't at all in welcome territory.