Bandages and Salt (PJO X BSD AU)

Chapter sixty-eight

I reached up to my throat and touched the choker there, the translation piece that Dazai had given me at his camp when we were younger. I didn't know if it would work here, so far away from the gods that the bandage waste had none of the powers that he had wielded then, but when I touched it twice the words started to make sense.

"-Hazel, Leo. Where are you?" The demigod called out, his voice carrying through the woods and accented in a way that it hadn't been the last time that I had heard him speak English like this. There was a Japanese tint to it, and something else that I didn't exactly know.

Silence stretched out for a long moment, and even though we knew that they were here, had seen the proof of it ourselves on the ground only moments before, I almost thought that we were alone in the woods. That it would be foolish to think otherwise. But then Arahabaki began to rage in my mind and when I blinked and looked once more there was a girl standing before us with a golden sword in her hand. She couldn't have been older than nineteen and yet her eyes seemed ageless.

"Wha-?" The girl questioned, confusion clear in her gaze. It was the sort that someone had when they knew the answer, but couldn't identify what it was in another form.

"Come on cuz," Dazai said with a smile that was unmistakably soft and genuine, so unlike the false ones that he gave away as easily as breathing. I knew then that he actually cared for the girl before us, unlike when we were at his camp. He'd never looked at any of them like this, only di Angelo had come close. "I know that I changed my hair but I can't be that easy to forget."

I watched as Hazel's eyes flickered over Dazai's form before settling on the bandages lining his skin and the green of his eyes that never failed to remind me of the sea the few times that I had seen them.

"Percy?" The young girl asked, her voice unsure but hopeful in a way that almost hurt to hear. Only Ane - San ever sounded anything like this when I returned from a mission later than I should have, even then her composure never let it last long. But then I thought about the fact that the girl - the entirety of the camp that he had come from - had probably thought that he was dead these past two years, or just never coming back. It was a feeling that I understood too well to remain bitter. "Is that you?"

"In the flesh," Dazai answered, as easy as a summer breeze.

The girl moved as quickly as a spirit, wrapping her arms around Dazai's middle before I even had the chance to pull the bandage waste away. But to my surprise, the false brunette only wrapped an arm around her as well, whispering something too soft for me to hear. Though their appearances couldn't be more dissimilar - Dazai tall and too thin, his skin sporting none of the healthy tan that I remembered from the demigods at his camp, and Hazel young in a way that I doubt Dazai ever got a chance to be, her skin holding an earthy tone to it that seemed perfect for someone who could draw cursed jewels from the ground - there was something about them that screamed family in the same way that he and Nico had, a connection that the three only held with one another and none of the other campers.

Hazel pulled away first, maybe because she felt how tense Dazai was slowly becoming, unwilling to pull away even as I was sure that his skin had begun to crawl as it always did when someone touched him for too long, or maybe just because she knew she needed to. Eyes that shined like cursed gold fell upon mine as she turned her attention to me, something like recognition filling them after a moment.

"You must be Chuuya," the girl said, her voice filled with an accent that reminded me of old American movies as she spoke in a way that wasn't a question at all.

I turned quickly to Dazai, ignoring the girl before me for a moment. Self control really never had been something that I had sought to practice even as the surprise had to be clear on my face.