in which a wild girl manages to fall in love in the midst of a war―and the odd bout of amnesia.
[piper mclean x femme oc]
[the lost hero ― the blood of olympus]
As far as Verona could tell, the gods didn't answer.
She couldn't remember the last time they had.
She wanted her mom. She wanted her papa.
She wanted to live.
She stumbled again, trying to reach—Isaiah. Isaiah was on the ground, in the red snow. His shirt was in tatters, his mouth stained with his own blood.
Verona collapsed to her knees at his side. With what strength he had left, he reached for her hand with his own.
It trembled as she took it. They were hardly friends, more allies than anything—but she was here, and he was dying, and he was just a kid.
"Verona," he gasped.
"I'm here," she whispered. "I'm right here. It's okay."
It wasn't okay. He was dying, she was probably close behind. Their leader, the boy they'd trusted with their lives, had led them into a slaughter, and now he was nowhere to be seen.
But Isaiah was dying, so she didn't say that. She only gripped his hand with the strength she had left.
"I'm scared," he whimpered.
Verona couldn't see through her tears. "I know," she said. "But I'm here. I'm right here."
"My brother—" he gasped. "Is he—?"
"He's okay," she lied.
She never knew if he believed her, because his breaths stopped in that moment. His chest stilled, his hand went limp. He was gone.
He was three days away from turning fourteen, and he was dead.
Verona looked around the icy battlefield, her heart a crumbling stone in her chest.
They were all dead.
She forced herself to her feet, as unsteady and weak as they were. And when they were all dead or dying, when the shades had begun to leave because their job was done, what more carnage could they wrought on these corpses?—only then did she see Michael, his sword clean, his body clear.
A coward to the fucking last.
Verona gripped her sword, the sword Lawrence had gifted her, and staggered toward him. She wondered, in the distant part of her mind that still clung to rationality, if she would see Elysium with his blood on her sword.
She found that she didn't care anymore.
"You fucking liar," she spit, her voice like gravel. "You fucking coward!"
"I didn't know," he babbled, as if that mattered. "I didn't know."
"You killed them!" she shouted. It didn't matter that his sword was clean—his hands were the deepest shade of red, coated in his soldiers' blood. He'd walked them to their deaths, he'd brought them to its doorstep and held the fucking door for them, waving them right inside. "You're a murderer."
"It—it was supposed to be easy," Michael said, as if he had any right to speak when his soldiers, his people, his friends were dead because of him. When his girlfriend had died screaming, when Verona's friends died trying to fix his mistakes. "There weren't supposed to be any forces to fight."
A laugh like an avalanche shook the world—the laugh of a giant who hadn't had to lift a finger, who'd watched the carnage and delighted in the bloodshed.
Verona curled her fingers around the hilt of her sword. "You killed us," she whispered.
"I—I didn't know," he whispered back, his eyes wide with horror at the massacre he'd brought them to.
Wide with shock at the blade in his gut.
Verona fell to her knees with him, her legs giving out.
Mors was calling, his voice like the cry of a raven overhead.
"I hope your punishment is long," Verona croaked as Michael died, twisting her sword in him until he choked with pain. "I hope there is no respite from it. I hope you suffer a thousand lifetimes for every soldier you sentenced to death today."
She ripped her sword from his gut, because he wasn't worthy of dying with it in him.
Michael fell, and she fell, and the world crumbled.
And then, she saw her mother kneel at her side—an angel of death, touching her cheek with a tenderness Verona had somehow forgotten.
She didn't know if Feronia was really there, or if her dying mind was kind enough to give her this—her mother's final goodbye.
Verona closed her eyes and heard the voices of newborn ghosts, calling her home.
🌿
this is probably one of my favorite oc backstories i've come up with. it's canon (mentioned in son of neptune) that michael varus tried to make the prophecy come true in the 80s and got most of the fifth cohort killed, so it felt like the perfect chance for me to make some new oc's (one of my favorite hobbies) and give verona some good old trauma <3
(also 80s demigods are a CONCEPT and i love the false 8 (minus michael) with all my heart)
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