Warning: suggested eating disorder character death
~Lightning Thief~
"Awww! Look at them! They're definitely going to end up together!" Silena said, grinning to her cabin mates.
Percy and Annabeth had just exited the Hermes cabin, and were standing by the lake together. Silena and a few of her friends were peeking at them from behind the doorframe.
"What?! How can you tell, they've only just met!" An Aphrodite kid stated incredulously.
"I just know, okay? They are so going to fall in love..."
"Ha. Fat chance. Wanna bet?"
"How much?" Silena challenged.
"Ten drachmas" the camper said, cocking a perfect brown eyebrow at her cabin counsellor.
"Hey! Me too! Ten drachmas they won't end up together. Their parents are enemies!" Another piped up.
"Even better! Enemies to lovers are so exciting!" Silena was adamant.
And so the most of the Aphrodite cabin ended up betting against Silena on the topic. If this didn't work out, she was going to be in a lot of debt.
~1 year later, post Sea of Monsters~
"They still don't like each other."
"I dunno... they've been on two quests together. They get along pretty great." Said a black haired beauty doubtfully from her bunk.
"The bet still stands! No backing out now! You'll see, and then I'll be swimming in drachmas." Silena claimed smugly.
~
"Have you eaten anything, Marcus?" Silena suddenly asked. Casually, as if she just remembered.
The bony brunette with pallor skin shrugged. "Wasn't hungry."
They all knew. The quiet-as-possible sounds from the bathroom, the constant exercise, the mysterious and sudden disappearance of food from a plate though it's owner wasn't seen taking a bite. It was a plague, of sorts, that infected a fair few of the campers in that particular cabin.
"Well... if you want anything, I'm right here."
I'm here for you.
~post Titan's Curse~
"Did you hear? There's a rumour around that Percy carried the sky for Annabeth" squealed a particularly gossipy girl, coming out of the Aphrodite cabin bathroom.
"Did you hear that form the naiads?" Another camper said, arching a painstakingly plucked eyebrow.
"The naiads are so pretty... I wish I was like that..." a young camper, Lacy, murmured.
Selina's radar ears picked up on that, of course, and she rushed to reassure, as usual. "We're all beautiful in our own way, there's no need to compare ourselves to the naiads, or anyone else." She said it in a way that was directed at all the people in the cabin. She understood. The pressure to be effortlessly beautiful, the stereotype of the girls being gossipy airheads; even how the boys of the cabin were so often overlooked, and had to work and claw their way to any recognition. The more she got older, the more she saw. Maybe a few years ago, she was just being supportive, but now she made it a point to see and understand anyone. Understanding the workings of love is not so different from understanding the often dark thoughts of the mind, after all.
"You're such a mother hen, Selena." A camper sighed fondly.
It was quiet after that, each camper's mind a little too crowded with the thoughts they didn't dare say.
"By the way, Lacy, your lashes are stunning"
You can guess who said that.
~post Battle of the Labyrinth~
They cabin was quiet, mourning. Suddenly the cheerful, bright, pink hues of the cabin seemed to be a disrespect to all that its inhabitants had lost. It felt dispassionate, pretentious even, for it to be so unchanged by it all even if it was just a cabin. The sun shouldn't be so bright, the grass offended with t's vibrance. No one spoke of the now coined 'Percy and Annabeth' situation that had become a ritual of sorts every other week to discuss.
It just wasn't right.
~Post The Last Olympian~
Gray. Colourless. A thousand whirlwind thoughts and a sea of silent tears muffled any words. Some called her friend. Some called her spy. A beautiful pink silk shroud covered the mangled face of the girl who left the world too young. Even the fire caressed almost gently the body of the lost friend. The girl might've been unable to be lain to rest with the lover she had gushed to her sisters so much about, as the sent pf perfume magically produced from the shroud mingled with the ashy smoke of the fire: the two found their way back to each other, in another form.
And in the dead hand of the beauty with an even more beautiful heart, was ten golden, glinting drachma, shining like angel tears.
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At the campfire a few days later, as Drew triumphantly claimed her place as the new head of the cabin, there was one though on each child of Aphrodite's mind. Maybe it was the way shadows stretched shattered-glass patterns among on the dark soil, or how the flickering fire struck a match in the dark irises of Drew's eyes, but they knew:
An age of tyranny had just begun.