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HAZEL, PART TWO

Hazel leapt, slashing her spatha through the air and intending to at least bruise her opponent, who was fiercely unrelenting and had been since the start of the fight.

"Yah!" she yelled—which made her sound very manly—and lunged to slide her blade across her opponent's throat. He parried, but the sword almost slipped out of his grip at the last moment. Hazel, panting and dripping with sweat, saw her opportunity, stabbing downwards and twisting in one fluid motion. A thread of relief filled her as the opposing sword clattered to the ground.

"You're good, Hazel," Jason said lightly, reaching for the sword he'd borrowed from Chiron. He retrieved it from the dirt and wiped both his hands and the blade against his jeans.

"No, I'm not. You're just off your game a bit, that's all." The unfamiliar modern expression felt awkward on the way out; Hazel was so used to 1990's slang that she still found herself using it sometimes.

"Yes, you are." Jason tossed his sword up in the air, frowning as he caught it and spun it around with deft hands. "This feels a bit off, that's true. I'm too used to my sword. I really need to start practicing with other types of swords. What if I'm in the middle of a battle, I drop my sword, and there's only this kind of sword left for me to use? I'd be in so much—"

"Jason, stop!" Hazel held up a hand to stop her friend's rambling. "Look, you're a brilliant swordsman. I'm sure you can adapt to the Greeks' swords really well. Besides, I've only been at Camp Half-Blood for a few weeks, and I can already see that you're better than most of them. You'll do amazing in any battle. Everything will be fine."

Jason's frown didn't leave his face, though, and Hazel understood why.

The last sentence wasn't true. Nothing was fine. Would anything ever be fine again?

Ever since Percy and Annabeth's deaths, no one had been the same. Even the new campers, who stumbled into either camp and had never known either the son of Poseidon or the daughter of Athena, revered them. The stories told around the campfire at night in Camp Half-Blood painted them in the best possible light, and Hazel didn't agree with them sometimes. She had known Annabeth as one of her best friends, and Percy as a sweet, fun guy who'd loved to sass and was always willing to hang out with his friends or lay down his life for them—whichever was required at the time. The stories didn't always encompass those parts of their nature.

Hazel was pulled out of her reminiscing by Jason. "Do you mind sparring by yourself for a while? I'm going to find Piper," he said with an apologetic shrug.

"Go ahead. I'll see you tomorrow," Hazel said, offering him the warmest smile she could muster. Jason smiled back and headed for Cabin Nine, leaving Hazel alone with her thoughts.

Oh, Percy, she thought with a sad smile. Oh, Annabeth. The thrilling need for vengeance that had struck her after Gaea's fall still smoldered inside of her; in fact, it was the reason she had even been sparring with Jason in the first place. Better to be prepared, Hazel thought grimly. Whatever life was going to throw at her—well, she wanted to be ready for it.

She decided that standing around moping would do her no good, so she set out for her cabin—the Hades cabin. She'd began calling it her cabin, even though she was a daughter of Pluto. She shared it with Nico, and he was her half-brother and a true son of Hades. That made it her cabin as much as anyone else's.

"Hazel?" It was Nico himself, appearing beside her as if the very thought of his name had summoned him. "Are you okay?"

Hazel wondered if her feelings were that easy to deduce. She didn't want everyone to see the grief she felt. It was private, and it was hers. None of the others really understood the Seven's feelings, except the rest of the Seven. They had been there, and they were the only ones who got it, to use another modern term.

"No," she said truthfully in answer to Nico's question.

"Come on. Let's go back to the cabin. It's almost lights-out anyway."

"It is?" Hazel looked up at the sky; the sun was blazing on the tip of the horizon like an orange version of the green fires that were lit on the Hades cabin's exterior. She couldn't believe that her spar with Jason, meant to be something quick to pass the time between dinner and curfew, had lasted so long. "Oh. Alright."

Nico led the way to the cabin, then pushed open the door. He bowed to Hazel, who smiled and walked inside, breathing in the air that smelled like…death. It was a strangely comforting smell, despite its horribleness. She had spent so long in the Underworld that it was, for all intents and purposes, her home. A dismal, ugly home, but a home nonetheless.

Nico made a beeline for his bed, which was in one corner, and Hazel headed for her own, which was opposite her brother's. It felt good to rest her sore legs and arms after her sparring, and it gave her time to organize her whirling thoughts and feelings.

"Goodnight, Hazel," Nico yawned, so quietly that Hazel barely heard it.

"Goodnight, Nico. See you in the morning." Hazel half-leaned, half-fell back onto her pillow, and lay there staring at the plain black ceiling, trying to sleep and miserably failing.

Every time she closed her eyes, she saw Percy and Annabeth's dead bodies lying on the ground, and she knew that when she finally fell into a fitful sleep, she would either be plagued by the couple's dying screams—even though she hadn't really heard them—or by some vision of them wandering about the mortal world, reincarnated and separated from each other, in the nightmarish landscape of her dreams. She always woke up either screaming or on the floor, as she had every night for the past three weeks and six days.

Ever since the fall of Gaea, and the fall of Percy and Annabeth.

Hazel had always been in the spotlight growing up, being as teased and bullied as she'd been. As a member of the Seven, it had always been Percy and Annabeth in the spotlight, not her, and most people overlooked her. She was sure that if asked, most of the Greeks would stare blankly and say, "Who's Hazel? Do Percy and Annabeth know her?"

But she'd been as close to the pair as anyone had been, and she missed them more deeply than she'd ever missed anyone else. Sammy had died, her mother had died, and all the people she'd known in her past life were dead, and she missed some of them, but not as badly as she missed Percy and Annabeth. It hurt, so much, to have them gone. Just like that.

Hazel knew that she'd never see them at camp, or anywhere on Earth, again.

The thought was unbearable. She turned and buried her face in her unicorn-down pillow, muffling her quiet sobs.

Not so much a sad one as it is a reflective one. They all are. Review, follow and fav!

Question of the day/chapter: Do you think I'm a boy or a girl? I'm curious. KitKatWei, you are exempt from answering for obvious reasons.