A/N: I just made a typo and referred to Jack and Adrianna as Jack and Gina. This is the beginning of the end, my friends.
Rose POV
Jack and Adrianna looked like they were going to faint or something, but Bunny ignored them.
Except for Bunny's chattering, though, everything was dead silent. I was staring at Freddy, and I could tell my eyes were huge and tear-filled.
I get a second chance. He gets a second chance.
Next thing I knew, I had my arms around him and I was bawling like a baby into his chest. And I'd never even liked Freddy all that much. He was just another guy willing to beg for a night to talk to me.
"Oh my gods, you're back," I sobbed. "I didn't ruin something forever."
Jack snapped out of whatever he'd snapped into. "Yeah you did," he snarled. "If you hadn't killed him, he would've been the only one of us smart enough to keep Ker out of the prophecy, and she wouldn't have died."
Freddy and Gina's faces fell at the exact same time.
"What?" Freddy said, horrified.
"Jack Chase, what did you just say?" Gina growled, her voice dangerous and low.
"I take it back," the blond half-titan whispered to the brown-haired boy next her. "We're not insensitive. They are."
"Um, well… I, uh…" Jack stuttered.
Gina's eyes and temper burned equally. "Did you forget to mention that over the phone? 'The battle, went, um, fine, Gina.'"
"Oh, you're screwed, Jack," Anthony whispered.
"That was just stupid," Nina agreed quietly. The Aphrodite twins – as Maia and Myrtle were known, even though they had different fathers – were still stony-faced and silent.
"I died too," Bunny said cheerfully. Then she sneered. "And the two of you are lucky I don't kick your asses right now."
Gina opened her mouth to snap something at Bunny, but Freddy was faster.
"Bunny, you knew she was dead, didn't you?"
Bunny flushed. "Um, sort of."
"Bunny," Adrianna said quietly. "I know you, and you're not stupid. You knew Ker shouldn't have gone to the battle."
"Like you didn't?" Freddy sounded broken. He and Ker had kind of been like a closet Jack-and-Gina, except Ker was a hell of a lot more subtle than Gina, and Freddy was way smarter than Jack, but neither of them had really thought of each other as a romantic interest, really. Until one or the other was dead.
Actually, Freddy was a lot like Jack in that he was misguided into thinking he was head-over-heels in love with me. That gave me an idea.
"Come on, Jack," Freddy protested weakly. He still had his arms around me, and I seemed to be the only thing holding him upright. He was shaking like a little dog in the rain. "You knew her. You knew her worst fear, didn't you? She knew yours. She knew you better than she knew Nick, we all do. She protected you at every chance she could, and how did you protect her? Come on, I die for six months and I come back and you've managed to get Ker killed, of all people?" His voice started to rise. "Ker Cabot, of all people! You let her die! Ker Cabot, daughter of Hades, you let her die. You know what you guys did? You sent her straight to her own personal hell," he spat.
"She died a hero," I assured him. "She's in Elysium, no doubt."
"Elysium? What does it matter to her? It's the Underworld. It's her father's kingdom. There was nothing more terrifying for her, and now she's there, and you guys shoved her along." He stared at the sea of blank faces. "Did none of you know this?"
"I need to go read a myth," Adrianna said suddenly.
Bunny's eyes fixed on her, full of malice. Weird. "See you around, Adrianna."
Freddy seemed annoyed that he was being ignored, but he sighed heavily, defeated.
Gina POV
I hadn't been back at camp ten minutes before a distressed Katy grabbed my arm and silently dragged me halfway across camp to the Aphrodite cabin, then locked the door behind us.
Katy looked awful. Her eyes were red, and she looked like she hadn't gotten a wink of sleep in two weeks. Her makeup was as bad as an Aphrodite girl's makeup ever got – nearly nonexistent. She was shaking, and her black hair was frizzy and, well, basically, she looked like she needed a therapist, and fast.
"Gina," she said. Her voice was no better. It was haunted and shaky. "Gina, Eric didn't kill Bunny."
Had that been speculated? Not surprising. When you live with someone for seven years or so, you get to know how they are, what they're like. My guess was Eric had slunk away before the battle and Bunny had "mysteriously" disappeared.
"That's nice," I said flatly, still aggravated and hurt that Jack hadn't mentioned anything about Ker's death, and that Adrianna's only reaction to Freddy's reaction was "I need to read a myth." Sorry Ker's dead and all. So sorry. Please excuse me while I go read which, um, you don't have the patience to do because I'm Dyslexic Superwoman and somehow I find it super-easy to be a bookworm. (Adrianna's reading habit was frustrating.)
I hadn't even been all that close to Ker. It was just something that really needed to be mentioned. And Bunny? Adrianna and Jack had found a woman dead in the woods and he had "forgotten" to mention that?
Katy pulled me from my anger back into reality. "No, Gina, you don't get it."
"What don't I get?" Clearly Katy was facing the brunt of my touchy irritation.
Katy shifted awkwardly, like she didn't know how to explain it without looking stupid. "Okay, well, here's how Jack told it to me. Bunny went unseen at the battle in Montana. By the way, did you ever figure out how Bunny knew the Titan camp was in Montana?"
Well, she needed a therapist, but she was still the absent-minded Katy. "Focus, Kate."
"Okay, so. Bunny was MIA for the whole thing – Nina confirmed it."
"And MIA means…?"
"Missing in action. Try to keep up here, Gina," she said impatiently. "So anyway, someone said something like 'hey, where are Bunny and Eric' after, you know, Ker was stabbed by her only close friend who isn't a son of Zeus or Poseidon, no big deal and all-"
"Your sarcasm is delightful."
"Thank you, so is yours. Anyway, Jack ran off to go find Bunny, and of course Adrianna went with him, and-"
"Katherine Venus Pierce, open this door right now or I will slay you and everyone you know, including your beautiful step-sister."
"Oh, we're playing the middle name card, are we, Polymnia?" Katy shouted back.
"Shut up and let me in," Adrianna's voice grumbled.
Katy reluctantly unlocked the door and opened it. Adrianna stepped in, and Katy shut and locked the door again.
"Adrianna Powers has joined the party," Adrianna said, for once not laughing hysterically at her own clever remark (which wasn't all that clever anyway.)
When neither Katy nor I responded, Adrianna cleared her throat. "Jack told me he told you, which – don't worry – I will kill him for."
"You killed your sister," Katy said coldly. "Why should we trust you with anything?"
Wait, what? Where was I when this happened? Oh, that's right. New England.
Adrianna groaned. "That kid is such an idiot. Is that how he told it to you? No. Eric killed my sister. We just let her die."
"And there's a difference!" muttered a voice from outside.
"Oh, what now?" Katy snapped, exasperated. She tore open the door, and a very sheepish Anthony and Nina stood in the doorway.
Nina grinned brightly. "It gets dramatic around here, doesn't it?"
"I don't get it," Anthony said, having no qualms with being caught spying on us. "You let Bunny die? How so?"
Well, at least she didn't kill Devon or Daphne. I liked them. Bunny, not so much. And clearly Bunny's death had not lasted long.
"Well, technically there was nothing we could do," Adrianna said. "So we couldn't have helped her even if we'd tried, but we didn't try."
"And now you regret that horribly…?" Nina, cringing, made an attempt to make this whole situation a little bit less awful and overdramatic.
"Nope," Adrianna replied brightly. "Jack does, but I'm smarter than that."
"Well, back up here," I put in. "You could do something, Adrianna. You're a daughter of Apollo. Super healing powers, remember?"
Adrianna stared at anything but the four of us.
"I don't," she finally admitted, and that was all she would say on the topic.
It wasn't impossible. Adrianna had been compared to me in godly powers – one of the reasons I resented her, yes. She was a great musician – played three instruments, not including being able to play Ode to Joy on the piano and her amazing voice that even I had to admire. I'd never seen her miss a bulls-eye with an arrow, and because of her long-ranged skills, she was the only camper my age who'd ever beat me more than one out of three times. Except Jack, but he knew my weaknesses too well – he didn't count.
I had to confirm something. "Adrianna, this was… your idea, right?"
Adrianna looked shocked that I even implied that Jack would ever think of something so horrible. "Yes. Aiko and I had had a long talk, and she said Ankita was totally on to Bunny's little game. She was waiting. She wasn't sure what she was going to do yet, but she had some ideas, and they were bad."
At the time, I had no idea how bad "bad" could be.
Rose POV
Anthony was the last to come back from dinner on Saturday, with the increasingly ever-present Nina by his side. The rest of us were hanging around as usual, with Adrianna chattering to her mom over the phone and Jack talking quietly with Katy. Aiko was finishing up Romeo and Juliet, which Jack picked up on.
"I read that book," he said cheerfully. It's widely agreed that Jack's cheery disposition is his best quality. "I only remembered one quote."
Aiko looked at Jack with remote interest for the first time in her life. "Which quote is that?"
Jack furrowed his brow and thought for a second. "Um… it's Juliet's line, I think. 'What's in a name? That which we call a rose by any word would smell as sweet.'"
"Or foul," said a grinning Gina from her place in the doorway.
Jack smirked – an expression we hadn't seen in a while. "You could say that."
I felt my face heat up. It was unusual that Jack wasn't glancing back at me apologetically, but that just went to show how absorbed he was in Gina's return.
Anthony was thrilled. "Someone with a Y chromosome who remembers Shakespeare! Dude, I love you!"
Gina glared at Jack before he could open his mouth. "Don't you be changing teams on me, Jacky."
Anthony very casually put an arm around Nina, who smiled, cast her eyes heavenward, and shook her head in a gesture saying, Can you believe these guys?
Jack bristled. "I thought you were with Matt."
Gina stared into the distance and bit her lip. "I haven't quite made up my mind yet."
Jack Chase, you have officially met your match.
A/N: Today, I asked my friend (who is an a-may-zing artist, seriously, looking at stuff she draws makes me feel unworthy to breathe the same air as her) to draw Rose – no advice from me, just her interpretation. Keep in mind, ladies and gents, that this is the girl who had thought Rose was twelve until recently. (Also keep in mind that she's hitting on Reed, and he's seventeen. I'm pretty sure that's illegal.) I looked back at her notebook a few minutes later and saw a shirt so slutty that even I wouldn't wear it, and I wear some pretty slutty shirts, kids.
Just to clarify- Rose is fifteen. Her birthday's in November. JUST TO CLARIFY.
Clarification #2: Jack and Anthony are not meant to be together, and if I receive a video of Sim-Anthony and Sim-Jack's wedding, I will kill a puppy.
