Thanks for all the reviews! I figured I couldn't let you guys wait for a new chapter any longer, so here it is! Enjoy!
Has anyone started to notice the pattern of this story yet? Hint: It's in the chapter titles... ;)
Disclaimer: Rick Riordan is not me, I am not he, If you still think I am, There must be something seriously wrong with thee.
Her journey:
Katie blinked slowly. "You're Travis. Travis Stoll? Son of Hermes?"
Travis just stared at her. She could see in his eyes that he didn't know what she was talking about. "I… I don't know what you're talking about." (See?) "I'm Travis? Why don't I remember…?"
"You were hit on the head," Katie said quietly, realizing the truth. "…Really, really hard. You've been out for a few hours. I guess… I guess you have amnesia."
"Oh…" he said, trying to take it all in, she guessed. "Then… who are you?"
Katie bit her lip, trying to decide how to answer. She'd never dreamed that Travis Conrad Stoll, son of Hermes, would ever have to ask who she was. It was a nightmare. No, it was her worst nightmare. "I'm Katie Gardner," she said finally. "Your… friend." She couldn't bring herself to say more than that. It just didn't seem right.
"Oh…" he said again. "Then… who hit me on the head?"
Should she tell him about monsters? She wondered. She hesitated again, not knowing how much to say. But she decided he needed to know that, at least. After all, with her luck, they'd be attacked several more times before they got back to camp. Slowly, she answered, "So, there are these Greek myths, right? And everyone thinks that they're just myths, old and made up by random ancient people. Well, the thing is…"
"They're real?" Travis said in surprise. "And so all the monsters and gods are real, too? And some Greek monster was the one who knocked me out? And… gods, how in Hades did you get me out of that?" She saw his expression grow even more confused as he realized that he'd just said 'gods' and 'Hades' as naturally as breathing. Normally, she'd have thought that he was just pulling a prank, pretending to lose his memory to freak her out, and soon he'd say, "Just kidding. I remember everything, Katie." After all, he was a son of Hermes. It was the kind of twisted joke she'd have expected him to pull a month ago. But now, she just didn't think he would do that to her. And the way he looked, so innocent, so lost… she got the feeling he really couldn't remember. She wanted to cry, but he didn't need crying right now, he needed explanations. And if there was one thing Kathryn Alyssa Gardner knew how to do, it was to help people. So she did. She helped him. She told him about getting trapped by an army of monsters (although she didn't explain how they'd gotten into that situation… that was a little hard for her to talk about, even now that it was over…) and fighting their way through it, and how he'd saved her from getting chopped in half by an ax maniac, but a monster had knocked him down while he'd been distracted. Then she talked about pretending to be a god, almost smiling as she did, and how she'd dragged him here and helped him get better.
"…And we need to get back to New York, in Long Island, where we live," she finished. "We, er, go to camp there."
"All year?" Travis said in surprise.
"Yeah, pretty much," Katie answered. "Um, we should get there as soon as we can, but right now it's pretty late so instead, it'd probably be a good idea to get some rest before starting out. We've got a ways to go. Um… I can take first watch."
"No, I'll do it," Travis said firmly. "If what you say is true – and I get this weird feeling that it is – then I've been out for a couple hours, and you've been awake a long time and are probably exhausted. Don't worry. If a monster comes, I'll shout like crazy and wake you up, and you can go all ninja-goddess on it." He grinned at her, and, startled, she grinned back. For a moment, it almost seemed like the old Travis was back, being strong, looking out for her (and maybe even being almost too overprotective), and cracking jokes. Then his grin was gone, he looked at her sadly, and the moment was over. Old Travis never looked that sad. "You seem really nice, Katie. I wish I could remember knowing you."
She looked away, hoping he'd mistaken her tears for rain. "Yeah… I do too."
They sat there quietly, the minutes ticking by. Then Travis cleared his throat awkwardly. "Well… good night."
"Good night," she answered, still not meeting his eyes. She left him her waterproof jacket, in case he got cold, and fell asleep a few feet off, still crying silent tears.
When she woke up, she was wrapped up in her coat, the rain had stopped, and Travis was still up, staring out at the rising sun. "It's dawn?" she said, sitting up. Travis started and looked at her guiltily.
"Yeah. I wasn't tired, so…"
"You should've woken me up and gotten some sleep yourself," she scolded. "First watch doesn't mean only watch."
"I wasn't tired!" Travis insisted. "Besides, you were really exhausted, I could tell, you didn't even wake up when it started thundering…" He added in a rush.
"And my jacket?" she said, raising an eyebrow.
He shrugged. "You were shivering, and I didn't want you to get frostbite or something."
"So you should've woken me up!"
"You were exhausted!" he shot back. "I told you! If I had woken you up, you would've just fallen asleep during your watch. So I let you sleep. Besides, I wanted to think about… stuff." She let up instantly, knowing exactly what Travis meant by "stuff". If she'd just lost her memory, she'd want to think about "stuff" too.
"…I probably would've snapped at you if you'd woken me up, actually," she admitted slowly. "So I should really be thanking you."
Travis rolled his eyes. "That's more like it." Once again, she saw the old Travis in this memory-blank Travis, and she could almost pretend that everything was fine and normal and great. Well, maybe not great – after all, they were still rather close to Gaea's monster camp and rather far from their demigod one – but at least fine and normal. But of course, memory-blank Travis just didn't… remember… things… about their relationship – er, situation. And, far more important, (or so Katie told herself), memory-blank Travis did not know how to defend himself from monsters. She was worried about what would happen if they were attacked in large numbers. Travis had always been a better fighter – she admitted that freely – but now, she just didn't know. And that scared her.
Solution: Stay on the move constantly – don't get bogged down in one place for more than a night. Keep going, and maybe the monsters won't find you. (It wasn't true… but a girl can dream, right?) So instead of fretting over memory-blank Travis's… memory-blankness, she started packing their things up. "Time to get moving," she told him as she worked. "We've got a lot of miles to go, and even if we hitchhike… well, it'll take a while."
"Okay," Travis said, surprised at her sudden change of subject but deciding not to comment. Katie just knew him that well – she could tell what he was thinking, even now. "Here, I'll help you." He pressed his right hand against the ground to help support him as he stood up… and promptly collapsed. "…Ow."
"Travis!" Katie cried, already moving towards him. "What did you do now?"
He looked down at his arm, which was now twisted into a strange angle that Katie really didn't want to look at for too long. "I think this is broken."
Kneeling down at his side, Katie bit her lip. She'd thought she'd heard a crack when that Laistrygonian had taken a hammer to Travis… "Didn't you notice last night?"
"In case you didn't notice, there were other things on my mind," he shrugged. "And then when I was moving it a little while settling in and it hurt like Hades…" he paused again at his strange choice of words, but then surged forward and finished in a rush, "Ifigureditwasjustsorefromfallingonit-weirdorsomet hingandIdidn'twanttoworryyouandpleasedon'tbemad!"
"Why would I be mad?" she said in surprise. "It's not your fault some monster idiot broke your arm."
"It's just… now I can't help pack, really, so we'll slow down and get a late start and I know you wanted to get moving…"
"Do you really think that's what I'm worrying about right now?" Katie asked, softening. "Well, I'm not. I'm worrying about you, genius. You need a sling or something for that arm…" she rummaged through his backpack, "but all your spare clothes were burned to ashes by those cannonballs." She turned and saw her coat lying untouched where she'd left it to go pack. A light went on upstairs. Travis saw it.
"No way. You are not making me a sling out of your only jacket. It's like thirty degrees right now!"
"Forty-two," Katie interrupted, waving off the cold like it was nothing, "and you need a sling."
"Then make it out of my jacket; I don't need it. And it's my sling anyway."
"Gods, you're being even more overprotective than usual," Katie laughed. "But fine, I'll use your jacket. Come over here." Happy to oblige, Travis stood up, very careful not to use his bad arm… and collapsed again, cursing.
"Stupid ankle… I freaking can't put wait on it without it turning to freaking fire." She knew what he meant by the metaphor – she'd had her share of sprained ankles.
"Seriously? Travis Conrad Stoll, if you continue in this fashion I shall have to consider the possibility of you becoming even more accident-prone than I am!" Katie laughed, forgetting for a moment that he wouldn't get it.
But somehow, someway, he did. "All demigods are accident-prone, Kathryn Alyssa Gardner," he grinned back. Then his eyebrows furrowed in confusion. "Kathryn Alyssa? Demigods? Where did that come from?"
Katie bit her lip, totally frustrated by the fact that she had to explain an inside joke to the person who had come up with the inside joke with her! It was ridiculous. Their whole situation was ridiculous. "Er… it's an old joke I shared with… well, with you, actually, because we were both always getting in trouble. Kathryn Alyssa Gardner is my full name. And demigods – that's us. Half-mortal, half-"
"God. Yeah, I think I know that, weirdly enough. Okay. I'm half-god. That's not strange at all," Travis said, the last part mostly to himself. He was taking it awfully well, Katie thought. Then again, he had already learned the truth a long time ago…
"Okay, that's good," she said slowly, "but now the real question is, what do we do now? I can't tear that jacket up to make a sling for your arm and a wrap for your foot – I could maybe use my knife, but it's not really the right material for a wrap, and anyway, it should really be a splint, not just a wrap…"
"So, you walk/hitchhike to the nearest drugstore – it can't be that far – and you buy a splint and sling. I'll wait here; don't worry, I promise not to get involved in any monster-related shenanigans." He said it with a completely straight face.
Katie, on the other hand, let out a noise that was halfway between a laugh and a snort. "Shenanigans? And you promise? Oh yes, Travis, just because you promise, the monsters definitely won't come looking for you."
"Hey, do you have a better idea?"
"Sadly, no," she admitted. "I mean, I could risk giving you more nectar – this magical god-drink with healing properties – but I gave you a lot already when you were bleeding and unconscious… guess it wasn't enough to fix your arm and ankle, though… and if you drink too much you could burn to ashes."
He paused for a while, thinking hard… but eventually, the only thing he said was, "I think I'll pass on the magical god-drink with healing properties."
"Smart choice," she said in amusement. "Well… I guess I'd better get going… only problem is, I don't have any cash… the cannonballs destroyed all of that too."
"Luckily, that's one problem I can solve," Travis smiled happily. He reached into his back pocket with his good arm and pulled out a stack of bills that raised her eyebrows rather high. "Part of Cabin Eleven's rainy day stash. Er… I guess. I don't know. That's what I think… it could be… maybe?" It was clear to Katie that the phrase had popped into his head without him really understanding what it meant. She decided to help him out a little.
"Cabin Eleven is where you stay, as a son of Hermes. As the children of the god of thieves, you are complete kleptomaniacs and probably took that from other campers and said that they'd simply 'contributed' with
'donations' to your 'rainy day stash', which you guys probably use to buy illegal canned Cokes." She grinned and took the money. "For once, I guess that those poor robbery victims are actually going to 'donate' to some useful cause. I guess I should go spend this stuff now."
"I guess you should," Travis agreed, obviously not surprised by his family's lack of morals. After all, he was the one who had really probably come up with the idea of the rainy day stash.
"Promise not to get involved in any monster-related shenanigans?" She still could not manage to keep a total straight face when she said that.
"Of course, Kathryn Alyssa Gardner," Travis said solemnly.
She rolled her eyes at the full name, but said nothing. Instead, she waved and jogged off.
Her physical journey was short – only about a mile-and-a-half, surprisingly enough – and quite easy – she jogged the whole way. But her mental journey twisted and turned in all different directions and was hard to process. At first, she'd thought about her conversations with memory-blank Travis and realized how similar they really were to her conversations with memory-laden Travis (minus the parts where she was explaining the Greek mythological world to him), and she'd told herself constantly that things would be okay, things would work out. It became the rhythm of her jog for the first half-mile. Things would be okay, things would work out, things would be okay, things would work out. His personality was still the same. With a few years of restoring their relationship – er, situation – to its previous condition, things could get back to how they'd been just before Travis's sudden amnesia.
As Katie thought this, a hole began to develop in her mantra. A few years? In two years (what she imagined 'a few' to mean), she'd be nineteen. A legal adult, and old. Gods, that was way too long to wait. The thought scared her, and she bit her lip to keep from crying (so that she could still see where she was going). For the next half-mile, her rhythm was, It's not okay, it won't work out. It's not okay, it won't work out. She was having a bipolar kind of day.
But soon, her having a pretty optimistic nature and all, she'd had a new train of thought. Who said that amnesia had to be permanent? After all, it wasn't like he'd been dipped in the Lethe or anything. She could find Hypnos and ask him for help, or she could try to jog Travis's memory with stimuli from his past (like showing him Connor, his constant partner in crime… or maybe she'd sic a hellhound on him… she entertained that idea for a while before admitting that she liked him way too much to use that particular stimulus on him…), or… Really, there were so many options. She could fix Travis. She could bring his memory back. After all, she was Katie Gardner, and if Katie Gardner ever had a strength, it was helping people. So she'd help Travis. And, through that, she'd help herself. By the time she reached the drugstore, Katie had a new rhythm to jog by. She liked this one. You help people, you'll help Travis. You fix people, you'll fix Travis. You help people, you'll help Travis. You fix people, you'll fix Travis.
She just prayed that this mantra would come true.