References to chapters: 7, 26

Cabin 10 — Gods

OC (14) - Travis (7) - Connor (6)

Early May 2001

Runty, but unbending.

Healthy, but scarred.

Childlike, but wary.

Her heart hurts at the unfairness of it all. How can they be so cruel? How can they let this happen? Where did their mother go? How could their father leave them be? Especially when they're so young? How old are they even?

Two tiny hands shaking her arm and a small body crashing into her back snaps her out of her thoughts.

"Hey, hey, Karen," says the boy draping himself over her back.

"Are you angry?" says the boy holding her wrist in his hands.

Forcing herself to smile, bright as she could, as unworried as she could, as serene and casual as it can be, she says, "Of course not. Why would I be angry?"

"Because Luke dumped us on you while he goes to have fun," says the one on her back.

"Because you're glaring at us like you want us gone," says the one at her front.

"Connor! Don't say it like that!"

"Why not? It's true, isn't it?"

"No, it's not! Karen, you like us, right?"

"You don't have to stick with us. We can take care of ourselves."

"You don't hate us, do you?"

"Why are you even doing this? Don't you have something better to do?"

The questions came at her one after the other, fast and hard to understand but the gist of it gets through to her. So she smiles and says earnestly, honestly, whole-heartedly, "I'm not angry."

And that appeases them, the duo going back to making mud pies and drawing sketches in the dirt and laughing about pranks.

Travis and Connor Stoll. Luke's two newest half-brothers. More often than not, Luke asks her to watch over them so he can go hang out with Lee and Rowling. Mikaela and Lilly tell her to stand up for herself, to stop being pushed around. But she's more than happy to do so. She likes playing with children and entertaining them. If she lives long enough to graduate high school, then she supposes that's what she would like to do in life. For however long she has left to live.

She sees it more in the younger one. The one jaded and blase to the gods' whelms. In the way he rolls his eyes whenever his Mr. D is around. In the way he doesn't toss any offering into the fire pit. In the way he questions Chiron in their mythology lessons, whether their father really did this, whether their father actually did that, whether the gods actually did any of it.

Openly defiant and critical. It's basically a walking death flag.

She debates for a long time if she should be the one to bring it up. Annabeth is closer to them. But Annabeth is enamored with her mom. Luke is also a good choice. But apparently Connor is still wary around him. Lee could work. He gets along with everybody, but he and the Stoll brothers are in a feud. Something about a trumpet and a lake?

So that leaves her.

She needs to at least try. If something happened because she hadn't said anything, then she can never live with herself.

"Hey, Connor. Want to know what the gods are to me?"

Luke tells her she's lucky. Connor rarely leaves Travis's side. Her asking for Connor and just Connor without Travis and Connor actually agreeing was a miracle in of itself.

It's so unfair. I still have to watch out for the taser, Luke complains.

You can use my tuba as a shield, Lee suggests.

You can just take the taser, Rowling says, Come on. It can't hurt that bad. I bet it's just a toy.

Travis follows after the trio. Right before the door close to the cabin, she catches Travis with the taser in his hand and a mischievous smile.

With just the two of them in Cabin 11's cramped, sleeping bag-strewn, and paraphernalia-littered grounds, Karen's getting chicken feet. So she forces herself to sit down, her back against the frame of the bunk bed.

"We're kinda similar, Connor. So I'm going to tell you a secret. Something only my best friends and Chiron know," she begins slowly, "I actually have a twin sister."

"Really?" Connor perks up. "Then where is she? Why haven't I seen her?"

"She died about two years ago," she says deadbeat. Her voice didn't crack like it usually does. But her chest hurts and clenches. The familiar rage, dulled and beaten by time, comes crawling back like coals added to sparks. She hugs her knees to her chest and bites her cheeks hard. Stamp it out. It's not the time. It's not about her. Don't cry. Don't cry.

When she's positive the next words out won't be a sob, she looks down at the child of Hermes and asks, "Do you want to know how?"

And Connor, with morbid curiosity, hesitates before nodding.

"A cyclops showed up when we were ten. It was looking for another demigod, but it freaked my dad out enough that he gave us the pamphlet to Camp Half Blood. He told us who we really are. He even told us who our mom was too, said her name and all that. He had a picture of her when they went on a date years ago. So he pulled it out and showed it to me and my sister. And do you want to know what I said? What I, a ten year old girl with braces and a ugly bob cut because my twin sister blotched my haircut and two missing front teeth, said?

I said, 'That's our mom? You could have done better, dad.'

And apparently me — a random ten year old girl — was a big enough threat to a literal goddess because she popped into my life for the first time ever.

With a snap of her finger, my mom turned my sister into a tarantula and left without a single word to me or dad.

I looked for ways to contact her, to apologize and to turn my sister back. I looked to the other gods. I looked at other religions. I prayed and prayed and prayed to my mom, apologizing and promising I'll devote myself to her and that I'll be a good daughter. But none of my prayers were answered. No other gods answered my pleads. Dad couldn't get a hold of mom. I went to camp and begged Chiron to help my sister but he couldn't do anything. So I started looking into undoing the curse myself. It took a while, but I almost had it figured out.

Then when I was twelve, a dove got into our locked enclosure and ate my sister.

It was the prettiest bird I had ever seen. A white body with gold and pink tipped feathers. The air literally sparkled and shimmered around it. It looked me straight in the eye with a leg hanging from its beak. And it laughed at me in a human voice.

Do you know what I learned that day? What the gods are to me now?

I learned they're incapable of love. Even the few children they like and show favor towards, they're just pawns to them. There's no genuine love there. No unconditional love. Not like how I love my sister and my dad. Not like how you love your brother.

But that's why you need to pretend. Travis likes his dad for some reason. So everything your brother does, every act he does, follow it. His smiles, his words, his behavior. Replicate it. Just even one slight and you'll face their wrath. They don't care that we are children, their children, their nieces and nephews and grandchildren.

Our lives mean nothing to them. But to us, they're everything."

"You get what I'm saying, right?" Her voice remains surprisingly even throughout the whole story. Not a single crack or a single tear. "Tell me you understand. Promise me you won't act out. Not in front of them."

And Connor nods with bright, sharp eyes too wise for his age.

"I understand."

The years pass. Her bottled up hatred flourished and grew with every single summer, watching bright-eyed children ready to meet their parents become solemn and depressed as the days become weeks that become months then become years and the years become never. Some days are harder to pretend she gives a single fuck for Aphrodite as a head counselor. Some days, the lies she sprouts about the gods' benevolence comes easy. It never became harder to pretend. She wants to throw up when her half-siblings idolize their mother. She wants to gouge her eyes out when she has to lie to her newest half-sibling what she loves best about their mother.

When Karen turned 19, Luke handed her a solution. A revolution. A coup d'etat. What the gods did to the titans, they'll do to them.

After the initial panic and she had time to calm down — a lot of time to calm down — she… considered it. She really did. Actually pictured her mother under her feet as she sliced off little itty bitty body parts to feed to hellhounds. But then she pictures the next oldest, the next to take her spot if she leaves. Silena is just barely turning 12. Drew is going to be 11 soon. Chiron said it will be them fighting.

If she leaves, then…then…

The same night Luke deflected, he personally comes to her in a dream and asks her to join him, to help him recruit an army, that she'll actually survive if she sides with him.

And when she asked who's going to be fighting, Luke said it will be them.

Them and their siblings.

Their little baby siblings.

"If you're going to make children your soldiers, Luke, then count me out."

Karen feels like she should have figured out Silena's secret a lot sooner. She saw Silena sneak away to the horse stables so many times. She saw her sister cry herself to sleep almost every night. And when asked about it, if she wanted to talk, Silena shuts it down with a quick 'I'm fine. Don't worry about me.'

Why hadn't she questioned it more?

Why did she believe there was no spy?

What was it Rowling had yelled at her once upon a time? Your optimism is going to get us all killed.

"Silena? This has to be a joke… right? A prank?" she asks with a shaky smile where she stands outside the daycare she works in.

And Silena — 12, so small and tiny beside the 3 hellhounds — turns around, buries her face in her hands, and cries.

Oh.

Her hands shake. The key she has for closing up the center falls and clatters on the cobblestone.

She's going to die, isn't she? That's their plan? She dies and Silena takes her place as head counselor? She needs to warn Lee and the others then. She needs to call them… she needs to iris message them… she pats her empty pockets. No drachmas. But there's a phone inside the office. Then she just needs to survive long enough to call them. But it's her against 3 hellhounds. There's no way she's going to make it. She's not a fighter. She can barely win against her poodle in a tug of war. Even so.

"I'm not going down without a fight, Silena," she tells her half-sister, readying her crossbow with the celestial arrows. "Don't worry. If I somehow live, I promise I won't be too mad. Luke can be a manipulative piece of shit."

Silena wails into her hands, apologizing over and over, as the hellhounds pounce.

She didn't even get to the office. She didn't even make it halfway there. In a matter of minutes, she has her arms ripped off. Her left knee is gone. She can see her liver and spleen. She got one of the hellhounds before her crossbow is knocked out of her hand. She stabs the second one with a loose arrow, reveling at her small victory as she's torn apart.

Like expected, she's not going to make it. Her friends won't know about the spy. She's going to die without accomplishing anything. Well if she's going to die, then she might as well get it all out. She laughs on blood-filled lungs. She laughs as loud as she can and screams the words she always wanted to say.

"Hey, Aphrodite? Are you listening? I want to say, I want you to know, Dad definitely deserved better than a stupid, vengeful bitch like you."

Her soul floats over the pool of blood and bones on the ground that used to be her. Waiting for Hermes, Karen wonders where her twin sister ended up. Asphodel? Probably not Elysium, huh? The gods promised them a spot in Elysium for their service. Can she ask Hades if she can bring her sister along? Can they be that kind?

No matter. If it means being with her again, she'll gladly give up heaven. Who knows. Maybe they both can try for rebirth and be reborn as sisters again.

Author's Notes:

I have ideas but they're all for OCs right now lol

I am really into Blue Lock guys. He's the best. I have a new obsession to cling to. Speaking of new obsessions, I finally played the Hades game by Supergiant. It took a while because for the longest time, I only liked Riordan's portrayal of the gods but holy cow. I have 70 hours right now and I love everybody in the game. Meg. Than. Persephone especially. But Dionysus most of all. I never thought I would love a god more than Hermes but Hades!Dionysus is the best and on the same tier as Hermes now. Dionysus has that true homie vibe, you know?

Anyway thanks so much for reading!