Very filler-y, I'm sorry! If you have any requests/ suggestions / comments you know where to leave them.

Title from In My Veins by Andrew Belle

"If it makes you feel any better..." He broke the silence, shattered it as easily as punching a hole through paper whilst wearing brass knuckles. (hope your resolve is adamantine and not as easily broken)

Nothing could make me feel better runs through my head. I try it out, decide it is too sharp, silence softer. Truth is too harsh for everyone, least of all me, the girl who is so broken that acknowledging the reality of it will break me forever, make me unable to be put together ever again.

"I like girls too," and that does make me feel better, then nausea again, because I am here revealing in the sadness of someone she should be killing, and I wish I'd just pushed him off that damned cliff in the first place so I wouldn't be here, dealing with emotions.

There is more silence, this time one I wish I could fill, because seen any good movies lately or kill any good monsters lately or even so this weather we're having just won't cut it.

"I should be getting back, " I say, and we both act like something I have to get back to. Like he does, too.

Nico

"I need more time." And it always seems to come back to this, him wanting more time. More everything.

But right now, all he really wants is more Thalia, less Hades glaring down his nose at him. He can still feel her gaze on his skin like a touch, and he imagines it would feel soft, her fingertips calloused from bow holding, and if he closes his eyes he can feel it. She is the only one he thinks might have a chance of accepting him the way his dead sister did. Because she didn't run, didn't give him a pitying look or a comforting word, instead bearing the silence with him, the tremendous secret and the words like they are nothing. And they are, aren't they, if he never speaks of it. But then she left, and now his heart is hardened again, too quickly for it to break.

"I'll give you a month." The words of his father are for once sweet to the ear, and he leaves, satisfied because he doesn't think of the future, the deadline...

Thalia

I paced around the tent. I wanted to take down a deer, punch someone and hear the crunch of their nose breaking, stab a monster and see it bleed... Anything to keep me from thinking about secrets not mine, boys not mine, things I couldn't have... Yet whose secrets I had to keep.

I really wished I'd just pushed him off the dratted-cliff.

"Thalia." An Iris-Message, the image wavy and indistinct, showed my father, looking both stern and disappointed. The former was probably due to the latter.

"Yes, Father?" I kept my voice down, not wanting anyone to hear me. I was back at the campsite where the huntresses were staying.

"This shouldn't be so hard," he snapped."It isn't your first time, so why isn't he dead yet?"

"There's no point. I'm sick of your petty little rivalry, and your dragging me into it isn't going to solve anything."

"How dare you speak to me that way-"

Just then, Artemis entered the tent, and I cut a hand through the mist, effectively shutting him up.

If only thoughts were that easy to tune out.