Will — Injury Prone

Will (12) - Travis (14) - Connor (13)

Sometime during Book 3: The Titan's Curse


The Stoll brothers aren't bad people.

They really aren't.

The time he spent in the Hermes cabin had been fun and enjoyable. (If you exclude the hours he spent watching his back for pranks.)

Travis and Connor are friendly for the average demigod (up to a certain degree) and lenient compared to the other counselors (again up to a certain degree). They work hard to make sure their cabin actually seems like a home. It feels like you been there since forever and known everyone since forever.

Will had actually been a bit sad when he got claimed.

The Stoll Brothers aren't bad people.

They really aren't.

But they're scarily vengeful.

Phoebe's burns from that centaurian blood coated shirt are proof of that.

She's seething in his infirmary right now as he treats her hives.

There are some very detailed threats flying from her mouth that is making Will very, very fearful for the brothers' lives. He nods along quietly but from the back of his hand, he tosses two drachmas into his fountain and whispers "to Connor and Travis" as he passes by to get some bandages.

He looks back to make sure that the message is getting through — it is, he sees their twin faces — and hopes they're taking precautions in case Phoebe follows through with her threats.

She did a day later.

He heard the stories — ' did you hear? That hunter got into a fight with one of the Stolls.' 'Who?' 'It doesn't matter. The other one tried to break up the fight and got an arrow in the thigh.' 'Oh dude. Which brother was it?' — long before he sees him in the infirmary.

He should have expected it.

It's always Travis who gets hurt in their wacky shenanigans.

Travis is grimacing and whimpering quietly to himself, but wipes it all away when Will enters the empty infirmary. He laid the supplies — a foot stack of gauze, wrapping tape, a bag of ambrosia — down on the table beside the bed.

Will looks at the wound. A thick arrow is lodged four inches deep in the upper thigh, just medial of the femur. A camp shirt is wrapped around the wound and kept in place with a well-binded gauze tape.

It's Lee's handiwork. Lee's the only one who can tie something so well.

Will set about unwrapping the bindings. He says dully, "I warned you."

Travis grins—but it's lace with pain rather than his usual light-heartedness—and tries to slug him on the arm playfully. Tries. Fails halfway because it jostles his leg. So Travis just shrugs and the pained grin tries to play itself off as nonchalant.

"And I listened like a good camper."

At least Travis still has the mind to joke around, Will noted. That's a good sign.

Will throws the ruined shirt and tape in their biohazard bin and lines up his supplies beside the leg.

"Then what happened?" he asks as he slips on his gloves, snapping it over his wrist.

Travis chuckles, looking away and rubbing the back of his neck. "Phoebe made a comment about our cabin. I can't blame her. You lived there so you know what a mess it is. Connor didn't like that and they got into a fight. No weapons or anything. It was all verbal. I could barely understand half of what Bees was saying."

Bees...Phoebe...He wonders if Phoebe will appreciate that nickname.

Will snaps the ambrosia in thirds and press two pieces into Travis's hand. "Don't eat it yet. What happened after?"

"I…" Travis is eyeing the ambrosia, throat gulping. The pain must be imaginable and Will readies himself in case he does need to rip the ambrosia from his hands. "I tried to stop their fight, but I guess I forgot the memo where you should never approach a hunter from behind. Those hunting instincts, man. Someone needs to train it out of them if they ever want to make friends. She shot me out of surprise and luckily Lee was nearby to take care of me."

"You're lying."

Travis laughs. Years of Will treating his injuries and demanding a reason why he's hurt lead them to this point. It sort of became a tradition.

"Yeah. I guess nothing can be hidden from you, huh?"

"Tell me the truth."

"But you'll rat me out to Chiron."

Will's about to argue. He knows Travis will give after a few more pushing, but the way Travis winces and whimpers hold him back.

Later he'll ask. When he isn't in pain, then he'll start the interrogation.

"Does the arrow have barbs?"

Travis looks clueless.

"Does the arrow have pointy things sticking out on the side or was is straight?"

"I don't remember. I wasn't looking at the tip. Why? Does it matter?"

"No, no. It doesn't matter." And Will feels that twinge of guilt from lying. It'll just be more painful if it has barbs. It'll tear everything on its way out once I pull.

Will holds the gauze in his left hand. He looks at Travis, sympathetically. "I'm gonna have to pull the arrow out so you can eat the ambrosia. It's going to hurt."

Travis nods. His face was already pale so it couldn't become any paler, but Will could feel the breathing comes heavier.

Travis' right hand grips the bed's metal railing tightly, while his left bunches his shirt together.

Will grips the body of the arrow with his right hand and readies the gauze.

"One, two, three." Travis flinch, but Will continued on.

"Four, five, six." Will doesn't even have to look to know Travis is staring at him. He can already hear his whining. ' Why are you like this, Will?' he'll probably say.

"Seven, eight, nine." Travis is still tense.

"Ten, eleven, twelve." He's still taut.

"Thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, sixteen."

"Will, if you don't hurry and get a move on, I'm going to—"

The muscles become lax and Will pulls it out, slapping the gauze over the gushing wound.

Travis hisses behind closed teeth. He rocks back, knee nearly colliding with Will's temple as Will fights to keep his hand on the wound.

"Eat the ambrosia," Will orders, grunting as he pushes Travis down, his writhing almost uncontainable.

The ambrosia flies into Travis's mouth, so fast Will thought he would eat the hand too.

The gauze soaks with blood and Will press a new gauze on top of the old.

"It hurts," he whimpers with clenched eyes.

Tears are streaming down his cheeks as he swallows the crumbs, a low whine in the back of his throat.

"I know, I know," Will soothes, throat clenching as he could only watch. "I'm sorry I can't do anything for the pain. It'll go away soon, Travis. Just hold on for a little bit longer."

Eventually, the wound closes with the divine food. When Will no longer have to slap on new gauze, he leans up on the pressure, just barely. "Does it still hurt?" he asks.

Travis looks a bit better. There's color returning to his cheeks as he squints and rocks his leg side to side. Travis shakes his head.

And Will ease up on his death hold.

"Try moving your leg to see if anything is wrong," Will says, repeating the camp's procedure for embedment injuries. The ambrosia should heal any muscle damage that occurs and if not, it's nothing a little more ambrosia can't fix.

It's a rather sucky procedure in Will's opinion. He wishes Chiron can get the infirmary some anesthetic agent.

He hates having to hear his friends in pain.

Maybe there's a hymn he can learn.

When Travis shakes his head again, Will removes the blood-soaked gauze, throwing it in the biohazard. The wound site is still a mess of blood and bits of tissue which Will is quick to clean up. He doesn't remember who, but one of the brothers is queasy with blood.

He rather not have the recently healed camper become violently sick in his infirmary. Smells linger that not even Febreze is capable of covering up.

Travis groans, leaning back on the bed's pillow. "This is the worse day of my life. I hate being shot at."

"I think nobody likes being shot at," Will quips back with a smile, half at Travis's words and half at the satisfaction the wound is indeed closed, as he finishes wiping. He checks Travis's forehead, frowning slightly at the heated skin. Too much ambrosia leads to fever, but the amount he gives him should be his baseline. Did he have some ambrosia earlier today?

Travis cracks open an eye. "Really? I would never have guessed."

Before Will could retort, the door to the infirmary creaks and Connor peeks behind the partially open door. He's shaking, eyes teary, and definitely not looking fine.

Oh, gods, did Phoebe do something to him too?

But Connor only asks, "Is he okay now?"

"Yeah, but I was going to get Chiron to make su—"

Without a glance at Will, Connor pushes the door open all the way, marches in, grabs the neighboring pillow, and tries to kill his brother.

The way he whacks Travis with that pillow seems absolutely deadly.

Will definitely does not want to get in between that.

"You." Whack. "Fucking." Whack. "Idiot." Whack. "I didn't ask for your help." Whack. "Why do you butt in everything?" Whack. "I'm going to kill you." Whack. "And Will is going to relieve you." Whack. "So I can kill you again." Whack. Whack. Whack.

"Will, save me!" Travis wails, arms up in defense from the raining blows.

And Will did try.

"Ahh, C-Connor? As the camp's medic, I don't advise hitting a recently treated patient with…"

But then Connor turns his raging eyes to him and Will stops trying. He packs his supplies up, waving goodbye on his way out.

"I'll come back later with Chiron, Travis."

"Wait, Will, no. No! Will, come back, please. You can't leave me. Help me! What kind of friend are you! Will, you donkey hole, come back here!"


Author's note: I'm not a doctor or a nurse as you can tell by my butchered first aid help. All I know is that if you're ever impaled by an object, it needs to be wrapped so it can't move around as you go to the hospital. I know pulling the object out is a big no-no because of the quick blood loss.

Do you think camp have any sort of general anesthetics? And do you think they'll give it to the kids to use if they do happen to be injured, even though there isn't a trained anesthetist there? Or do you think with ambrosia and nectar all healing nature, the campers just endure the pain?

ON A SIDE NOTE: I FOUND MY NEW FAVORITE ANIME! HOUSEKI NO KUNI. (Land of the Lustrous) It's so beautiful. All the gems are beautiful. I would die for them. I would sell my soul for them. They're absolutely adorable. I need to protect them all. (No spoilers! I only watched the anime. But depending on how obsessed I am I may seek out the manga. What am I saying, I will seek out the manga).