Nico smiled wryly.
"Nice to see you too, Andrea. Mikeal. And….who's this?" He said, gesturing to Gabby.
"This is Gabby." Andrea said through clenched teeth, and Nico seemed to take pleasure in the fact that Andrea was obviously seething with irritation at Nico's appearance.
"You didn't tell me you were inviting him," she spat to Sasha, jutting her chin towards Nico in disgust, as if he were a dead roach.
"And I doubt you told Sasha about your invitation to Gabby, am I correct? In fact, I doubt you even told her Mikeal was coming." Nico said, his tone relaxed, as he took a sip of his drink. Sasha struggled to contain the smile threatening to form. 'But why is he being so nice?' She wondered, taking a sip of the chocolate drink Nico had brought her. 'And, more importantly, why is he even here?' The hot beverage warmed her up instantly, making her nerves tingle. She watched silently, just as Mikeal and Gabby did, as Andrea and Nico continued to bicker.
"That isn't even any of your business, you're just an annoying freak who can't seem to leave us alone. And besides, Mikeal's my boyfriend, and Gabby's a girl bud. You, on the other hand, have no right to be here." Andrea argued, and Nico leaned back in his chair, casually throwing an arm around Sasha.
"Actually, I'm Sasha's boyfriend," Nico said, his tone even. Sasha choked on her drink and broke out into a mad coughing fit. Nico leaned into her ear and whispered "Play along, trust me." Sasha turned to glare at him but said nothing as he continued on, "but not that I'd expect you to know that, since all you ever talk about to Sasha is yourself and she probably never has the chance to get a word in edgewise." Nico said, and Mikeal stifled a laugh. Andrea's eyes were tinged red, and Sasha sensed an explosion erupting quite soon. The other girl turned to look at Sasha, her eyes doubtful.
"You're dating?" She asked, her tone soft. Sasha, still feeling numb from what Nico had just claimed, simply nodded and looked down at her clasped, gloved hands, in a desperate attempt to keep the red in her cheeks hidden. Gabby stood.
"Well, this was…..fun. I guess I'll see you guys around." She said, and she began to walk away.
"Gabby—" Andrea began, but the other girl turned to smile slightly at her.
"I'll talk to you later Andy, seems like you guys have a lot to talk about." With that Gabby was lost in the crowd of people, and Sasha wasn't all too disappointed to see her go.
Andrea whirled to glare murderously at Nico.
"You've got some nerve." She spat at him, and he burst into laughter.
"Why? 'Cause I'm not blind?"
Mikeal raised an eyebrow. "What the hell does he mean?" He asked, turned to Sasha. She shrugged.
"I've absolutely no idea."
Nico sneered. "Please. Think about it. She brought Mikeal and Gabby without even telling Sasha to piss her off. She's trying to rub it in her face, though I don't know why she thinks Sasha would care. She's totally been neglecting Sasha this entire time, and she could so see Sasha was miserable. She's not that dense. Oh and really, that whole hot chocolate thing was just a bit too much. Okay, you wanted to piss her off, but this hot chocolate is really good." Nico said, sipping his drink.
Andrea just continued to glare murderously at Nico.
"Well, she invited you."
"Ha! Like Sasha would have ever invited me. It was quite the opposite, really. I was following her, and I saw how you acted to her, and I decided to join the party and switch things up a bit. It was quite fun. That look on your face? Priceless." He smiled gleefully, and Sasha sighed.
"Okay, I'm sick of sitting here and having you two talk about me as if I can't speak for myself, which I can, thank you very much." She said, looking pointedly at Nico, who shrugged his shoulders in surrender, leaning further back into his chair to watch what happened next. Sasha took a deep breath and turned to Andrea. Her best friend was still glaring at Nico, and Sasha knew that what he'd suspected had been right. She sighed.
"Why?" She asked simply, and Andrea turned to face her, her expression softening momentarily before hardening with anger.
"Well why do you think? This guy shows up and you suddenly disappear? Then you finally come back, just to disappear again?! What gives? And everywhere you go he follows you now, like some stupid little lapdog," Nico opened his mouth to protest, but Sasha shot him a warning look and he shut his mouth.
"and I'm supposed to just sit on stand-by? For whenever you feel like gracing me with your presence?! And your messages are so short, like you're keeping something from me, something huge, and you don't even tell me? And I'm supposed to take it all? How is that really being a best friend?" Andrea continued.
Sasha looked down, guilty. 'But what am I supposed to do?! It's not like I can just tell her 'Well hey, you know, my dad's like the Greek God of the ocean, so I go to this camp and train to kill monsters who want me roasted on a stake!' Yeah, right. Pfft, what am I thinking? Even if I did tell her they would just use the mist to control her mind so she'd forget. And she'd just be upset all over again. Gods, what do I do?'
She sighed. "I'm sorry…" She knew it was lame, but what else was she supposed to say? Andrea stood, taking her jacket up from the back of her seat.
"Yeah? Well I'm sorry too." And she and Mikeal were gone, leaving Sasha to stare dejectedly at her empty cup with Nico awkwardly shifting in his seat.
-
"Gods, I hate mortals." Sasha said for what seemed like the thousandth time in just the car ride back to camp. Nico sighed, his breath fogging up the window. He turned to look at her, his face emotionless. "You get used to them eventually. It's not their fault they're so dense." He turned back to his window, and Sasha sighed in the uncomfortable silence, fully aware of what she had to say to him to patch things up, but not truly wanting to.
"I'm sorry, you know, for what I said to you before." She said awkwardly, playing with her gloves nervously. He turned to look at her, and out of the corner of her eyes Sasha could see he was startled. He opened his mouth to speak, but she cut him off.
"And thank you. For standing up for me. I mean, I know I should be mad because you were like following me, but….thanks."
She said it all quickly so all the words were strung together and sounded like one big, mega word. She winced at how stupid she sounded and turned to gaze out the opposite window, where she noticed it had begun to rain outside. For a few minutes Nico was silent, then Sasha heard him chuckle.
"I figured I should've apologized, but I guess you just excused me from having to, so I'm just gonna let it go."
Sasha's mouth cracked into a smile. "You can still apologize." She said, and she turned to see him shrug. "Naw, I'm good."
She rolled her eyes. "So there's no chance that you've matured at all in this time frame when we didn't talk?" She asked, and he laughed and shook his head. Suppressing a smile, she turned to look at the rain.
"Aren't you curious as to why I've been away from camp?" He asked cockily, and Sasha turned to him, eyebrow raised.
"I dunno. Am I?" She challenged, and he nodded.
"Well duh." He said, like it was an obvious fact. Laughing, Sasha nodded her head, motioning for him to tell her why he had been absent.
"I needed to get away from camp. There are some very annoying girls there, did you know?" He said jokingly, and Sasha was shocked momentarily, but quickly recovered and smirked.
"They must have been very happy you were gone" she said, and he nodded sincerely, turning to look out the window.
"I'm sure they were."
Confused, and slightly irritated that he'd just called her annoying to her face, Sasha shrugged and turned to look down at her phone. She knew it was stupid, but she kept hoping Andrea would message her back; forgive her. But she knew it was a hopeless request-after all, Sasha couldn't really say she blamed Andrea for her behavior. The girl had always been headstrong and independent, and she hated feeling neglected or unimportant, which was exactly how Sasha knew she was probably making her feel. She glanced wistfully at her phone before sighing and tossing it on the empty set between her and Nico. It hit the seat with a soft 'thump' and Nico turned to pick it up, making a gesture as if to ask Sasha if he could see it. She shrugged and watched as he unlocked the phone and began to tap the screen at random intervals. Once he was obviously pleased, he placed the phone back on the chair where it had been before. Not wanting to make it seem like she really cared what he did, she neglected the urge to pick it up and simply turned to once again gaze out the window as the rain tapped against it softly.
-
Sasha was sitting at a restaurant, across from a boy with brown hair and golden eyes. He wasn't what Sasha would define as 'cute'; he was too buff, as if he'd wrestled a killer whale and won. In fact, he was slightly intimidating, and Sasha shifted in her seat nervously.
"What are you going to have to drink?" He asked her, smiling, and she realized with a horrified shock that she was on a date. Her mouth felt incredibly dry, but she didn't want to drink anything that this person offered her. A waitress came up to their small little booth, and Sasha's eyes widened at the sight of her. She had yellow slits for eyes, like cats do, and her mouth was a thin line like a snake's. her hair was straight and jet black and fell down her back all the way to her knees. She was dressed in a black sequined cocktail dress and seven inch black pumps. The most horrifying part if her appearance, however, was her skin itself. It was a bright red, the same shade as blood. The boy and the waitress turned to Sasha expectantly and she shivered under their predatory gazes.
"Let's see your friends find you here, little niece." The boy said, and Sasha barely processed what he was saying. Her attention was turned down to her hands, where her nails were elongating and the color began to change until her fingernails were long, golden claws. The boy smiled, as if pleased by her horrific new change. He smiled at her, his laughter making Sasha shudder. That laughter, she knew that laughter. With a terrifying jolt, her eyes widened with realization.
"Kronos" she hissed, the name rolling off her mouth like lava, it's pronunciation making Sasha's voice sound somewhat evil. The boy just raised an eyebrow at her in confusion.
"Beg your pardon?" He asked, his voice suddenly different, less imposing. His eyes changes color too. The gold slowly turned to hazel, from hazel to a light caramel, then a light brown. He stared at her in confusion, and Sasha didn't know what to tell him. It's not like you can just go around telling people 'oh yeah, you were just possessed by Kronos, the evil Titan! Want some pie?' She thought, but she no longer worried of answering the boy. In one fluid movement, the waitress had her teeth bared to show off fangs Sasha hadn't been able to notice before and with a startled scream from Sasha, the demon lunged.
-
Sasha awoke with a start, clenching her bedcovers around her into tight fists and breathing heavily. She looked around to see her cabin empty and sighed, falling back on her bed, exhausted.
"Hey" a voice said from across the room, and Sasha sat up. Nico stood in the now open doorway, his mouth turned up into a half smile.
"You weren't there a second ago."
"You weren't awake a second ago, and it's two in the afternoon." He pointed out, most unhelpfully, and Sasha moaned.
"Wouldn't kill you to knock"
"Hey I heard screaming. How should I have known you were just having nightmares about that stupid mortal at two p.m.?"
Sasha slid out of bed, yawning.
"I wasn't dreaming about Andrea" she said, irritated, and Nico held his hands up in surrender.
"So what do you have now?" He asked, and her eyebrows furrowed thoughtfully.
"What's today?" She asked, as every day of the week had its own different schedule. Nico laughed.
"Still asleep? It's Saturday, bed head."
"Okay, well, I don't have a set schedule on Saturdays, so I can do whatever I want."
"How about heading over to etiquette?"
Sasha laughed bitterly. "With the Aphrodite cabin? Pass, thanks." 'You wanna go flirt with your girlfriend, go on your own, dude.' she thought, slightly irritated with the son of Hades' request. It wasn't like he didn't know she hated his girlfriend-it was common knowledge.
"Come on, you owe me."
Sasha, who was rummaging through her shirt drawer, balled one up and tossed it at him.
"I do not," she said, smiling. "You defending me yesterday was your own choice. And it was a choice you wouldn't have had to make had you not followed me in the first place." He rolled his eyes and tossed the shirt back at her, laughing.
"It's not like I regret it." He said, and she quickly turned to make it seem as if she had continued to search for a shirt as her cheeks reddened. She eventually decided on a red long sleeve shirt and a navy blue hoodie with her old school's emblem embroidered on the front. She turned around to see Nico still occupying the cabin, but he had migrated from the doorway to Percy's bed. With an eye roll, she made her way to the bathroom and quickly changed, emerging to find Nico slowly sifting through her photos, a slightly amused expression on his face. She suddenly thought of finding the picture of her and Andrea hidden in his drawer but shrugged it off immediately. She walked over to sit beside him on the bed and he held a picture up to her. She took it quizzically and was shocked by what she saw. This was a picture of when Sasha and Ryan had gone to the movies with Nico; when she had first been attacked. She was horribly bruised; she had a blood pouring down one side of her head, her arm had an ugly, deep cut running along its length, and her clothes were burnt and torn. 'That's so weird. I don't remember there being fire. Actually, I barely remember anything from that afternoon.' She continued to study the picture—Ryan stood off to the side of the shot, blood pooling around him, his skin a sickly pallor in the dim lighting of the theatre. Or maybe just from the blood loss. The she-demon was directly face-to-face with Sasha, teeth bared, hair aflame, and irises licks of orange. Finally, Sasha truly focused on herself. On a regular day, before Sasha discovered that she and her brother were both half Greek God, she would have taken one look at the girl in this picture and immediately dismissed it as not herself. Now, looking at the picture, she just felt a strange sense of swelling emotions. She couldn't describe it if she tried—there were too many, all jumbled and mixed to the point where there was no making any sense of any of it. Most were foreign to her: pride, for instance. In the photo Sasha stood only a few inches from the demon, Nico's black sword gripped so firmly in her hand her knuckles were white. Her face betrayed an odd mix of emotions she'd never assumed would be plastered to her face. Anger, bravery, pride; and then some she was totally expecting to see: vulnerability, fear, and inferiority. And the one that shocked Sasha the most—a determined, protective look, as if she would die for what she believed in. And she realized that in that moment, she had been very close to death. She turned to look over at Nico—he was studying her expression intently, and she wondered why he seemed so worried about what she would say. Out of all the questions swimming through her mind, the one she chose to ask was:
"You seriously had the time to take this picture while we were being attacked?"