CHAPTER TWENTY
sacrificial lamb
——— VERONA!
( PHOENIX, ARIZONA, MID MARCH )
THE HEAT WAS GOING to scorch Verona to death before Clarisse did, she was sure of it. Even in March, the heat of the Arizona dessert was blistering from the moment Verona stepped foot into the state, up until the very moment she was currently in as she stood on Clarisse La Rue's living room, overlooking a sleeping Chris Rodriguez. He looked completely worn out with a bandage over his head and eyes distraught even when they were closed in his sleep, whispering things over and over in his mind. His olive skin was tinted with sweat from the Arizona heat even in his sleep, and he shared the same pointed elf like ears as Connor and Travis, though his eyes once primed with mischief now seemed only haunted and lost.
"Are you sure I can't get you anything else, Verona?" Clarisse is mother, was surprisingly, not as scary as her. She was a tall woman with dark hair and stern eyes that seemed to soften in the presence of her daughter, but nonetheless very, very kind and patient. Verona learned that she had been in the Navy during her early twenties, which is how she had met Ares. After she had left the Navy, she had gotten her nursing degree and had been working at a local hospital in Phoenix ever since — it was how she'd known how to treat and help Chris for the last month and a half he'd been in Arizona at the La Rue house.
Verona smiled at her lightly, trying to ease her tension. She looked worried for Chris — it was clear to Verona that if her daughter thought someone was important, then so would she. Verona could feel the ends of her hair curling against her back in the heat but she didn't have a hair tie at the current moment. "No thank you, Miss La Rue. The lemonade was more than enough."
"It's ready," Clarisse burst through the door all of a sudden. Unlike Verona, she seemed to be more dressed for the weather and her short hair was actually tied up, and not sticking to her face out of sweat. She glanced at Verona, laughing teasingly despite the situation, and tossed her a hair tie. She nodded thankfully, tying up her hair — with Silena and Elska's help, the three girls had dyed it something off a mix between blonde and brown this past week before she left for Phoenix, and it now fell just below her collarbones in small waves rather than her normal length. Verona thought she liked it much better than before.
Thanking Clarisse is mother, who promised her daughter quickly that she'd watch over Chris while the two were gone, they hopped into her mother's car together, Clarisse cranking up the air conditioning as they pulled out of the driveway. "So how big is this thing anyways?"
"Big," Her answer was short momentarily as she focused on the road. "It's enough to blow up the entire camp, if you have the right sort of ammo."
In any other situation, Verona thinks that Clarisse would have been more than excited for the destruction of things and places, but this was different. She seemed to care for Chris more than Verona had seen her care for anybody else. Maybe the girl wasn't quite ready to admit it yet, but Clarisse obviously felt something beyond inconspicuous hate for what Luke had done to Chris when she looked at the son of Hermes. "So it'll destroy it then?"
Clarisse was turning into a rouge area a bit far away from her house — she lived far out in the suburbs. She had explained it was harder for monsters to find her out there, especially when she came back to see her mom, and especially with Chris also currently staying at their house.
"Annabeth thinks it might," She answered, but their was hesitation in her voice. "But she's not sure. We don't really know how Daedalus programmed this thing—"
"—So we don't know if it'll blow up, or blow us up."
"Let's hope it doesn't blow us up, punk." Clarisse muttered, hopping out of the car and jogging towards where a large wrecking ball was hanging waiting for the destruction of times. The two were the only people there, Chiron having bought Verona to Arizona and interviewed Chris earlier in the week before leaving. The two had then been tasked with bringing Chris back to camp now, Clarisse knowing full and well that he would have a better chance of healing there than here in Phoenix with only her around.
The entrance to the Labyrinth looked almost normal. It was a small tunnel leading down to a underground shed of an abandoned farmhouse. The most distinct thing about it that had fared Clarisse to come to the conclusion of it's magical abilities was the fact that there was a large Greek delta sign engraved on the front of the tunnel. Clarisse had taken a picture of it using a disposable camera, not wanting to attract any monsters to Phoenix, and Iris messaged Annabeth in San Francisco the other month, showing her the photo. It was her who had confirmed that it was indeed an entrance to the Labyrinth, and after months of planning and thinking of a dozen ways to get the wrecking ball here, it had finally arrived and with it had come Verona, who had told her siblings she was going to visit her father for the week.
(Her father, who for all intents and purposes was still in prison until the summer).
Clarisse hopped into the machine that controlled the wrecking ball, grabbing onto the controls and sending a last prayer out to whichever god would listen. "Guide me, all right, Blaze?" She called out to Verona. The girl in question stuck her thumbs up, running over to as far as she could from the demolition sight where she wouldn't die when the wrecking ball hit, and slowly guiding Clarisse until she got into the right position.
With a bang, the wrecking ball hit quick and loud, demolishing down the entire farmhouse and causing it to completely fall over, pieces of wood flying and splintering in every so direction. Verona could see Clarisse throw her hands up in surprise that it had actually worked, and Verona cheered, throwing her hands up in a what'd—you—know gesture at Clarisse. The daughter of Ares seemed to be genuinely smiling for the first time in a while, holding a large distaste for the maze that had caused Chris to essentially go insane.
Then, with a start, Clarisse screamed her name loudly, the smile falling off her face. Verona turned around, her eyes wide as she watched the shrapnel from the wrecking ball come straight at her. She pulled the new ring off her finger, the shield denoting and saving her as the silver shrapnel hit in and around her, creating a few minor injuries and setting things on fire around her. It tossed a last piece of heavy shrapnel at her just as she let go of her shield, and she dove to avoid it, the piece of
metal scratching against her cheek and causing her lip to bleed before it landed on the floor.
She wiped some blood off her lip, tucking away her shield and moving as far from the area as she could, back towards Clarisse, her face and arm bleeding and tasting metal in her mouth, the feeling of iron being poured down her throat.
"What the fuck was—"
She paused, staring at the scene before her as Clarisse did — wide eyed and irritated, with more than just one hint of surprise.
Where the Labyrinth's entrance through the farmhouse had been was now demolished to pieces, but a few feet away, a new farmhouse identical to the first one had been created, the Delta symbol haunting them even from where it had shifted the feet away.
( CAMP HALF BLOOD, EARLY JUNE )
VERONA FOUND THAT when she woke up the morning following whatever lurid competition Chiron and Quintus had attempted to put on for the campers, her entire body was aching and refused to get up. Everything from her ankles to the muscles of her abdomen and her arms refused to move, and she fell off her bed with a small thump, laying on the floor with a groan. The floor was immaculate thankfully, all thanks to Silena's neat obsessed cabin inspections.
"Chiron wants to see you in the Big House," Silena didn't even waver a reaction as she saw her sister laying on the floor, her face towards the sealing and her eyes still closed to protect her from the light when she came in. She simply began to wake up the rest of the people in the cabin, already dressed, and stepped over Verona when it was time to wake Drew up.
"Ouch — what the fuck, Drew?" Verona complained, still having not gotten up when Drew landed from the top bunk straight on top of her hand.
The aforementioned girl rolled her eyes, her dark hair shifting off her shoulders in a silky manor when she glanced back at Verona, on her way to the bathrooms. "You were in the way, darling."
"And you could have stepped over me, sweetheart," Verona feigned a nasty smile back at her, finally getting up off the floor and grabbing her things. Her hair was half dry from her shower by the time she'd gotten fully ready, and she stepped out into the basking heat of the Camp, making her way slowly towards the big blue house in the middle of the Camp.
She entered through the front, finding Chiron already sitting there, this time in his wheelchair. He was playing a game of some type with a guy who Verona instantly recognized from the back of his head as Connor, and when she came up front she found that they were playing a game of chess — Connor was sorely losing by a lot, but he didn't seem to know it. He seemed confused at how you even played the game, at best. Verona couldn't help him there, she had little knowledge on it either. Annabeth played chess best, her battle strategy and wisdom seemingly shining through whenever she played with Chiron.
Connor glanced at her with something between an uneasy and tired look as she sat down. He had been ignoring her ever since they're conversation yesterday (Verona didn't want to call it a conversation so much as a warning. It would have been one thing if he had wanted to kiss her and had a reason to but he just seemed confused on why he had even kissed her in the first place, and that confused her, and she didn't like being confused, and she certainly didn't want him to start catching feelings for her now. Because that would be a disaster of epic proportions).
Aphrodite kids weren't meant to fall in love, only watch other people. The Aphrodite cabin had always had a rite of passage up until Silena became head counsellor of Cabin Ten, wherein they broke the hearts of somebody who had fallen in love with them. It was stupid and childish and downright petty and pathetic, but some Aphrodite kids like Drew and Caterina solely believed in it, and so they (Drew, especially) had shunned away those who didn't go by it even after Silena got rid of it. Nonetheless, the campers of Cabin Ten did indeed often shy away from relationships, knowing the consequences of falling in love and preferring meaningless flings to dealing with the tangled web of love that their mother would bring onto whoever they fell in love with. Aphrodite may have been the goddess of love, but she enjoyed tragic love and heartbreaking love just as much as the regular, cookie cutter kind.
Her mother pissed Verona off, often and on multiple occasions.
"Ah, Verona, good," Chiron called out. "Do come join us. There's something I'd like to talk to you two about."
She took a seat uneasily next to Connor and across from Chiron, watching as the game progressed slowly — if Chiron knew what he was doing, his poker face showed nothing of the fact that he was probably winning. "Now, I'll start with this. I did not want to initially send you two out anywhere, considering that you Connor have only been back six months from a quest, and Verona you've been back six months and working in between since then on the Labyrinth."
Verona shivered at the mention of the maze. If the metal wasn't a good enough reminder, Chris Rodriguez certainly was a very good reminder that Daedalus's invention was deadly and mind breaking. "But...unfortunately, earlier today one of the satyrs who was supposed to be bringing a new camper back Iris messaged me. He was called before the Council of Elders and they pulled him out because he took too long to bring the half blood here — he's almost fifteen now..."
"No offence, Chiron, that sucks. But what does it have to do with us?" Connor questioned.
"Right...Getting on with the story, I need two half bloods to go as an extraction team and watch over the demigod for a little while before picking him up." Chiron explained.
Verona grimaced. "Does he still not know he's a half blood?"
"Unfortunately not," Chiron sighed tiredly, placing another piece forward on the chess board. "The satyr, River, was breaching towards the topic when the Council pulled him out. It would have been okay to leave him alone for a little while until we could get the Council to reinstate River, but unfortunately the monsters have begun to come after him in rapid rates now. He is untrusting and needs to open up, so you two will pose as two students at Redwood High until a time where you can gain his trust and bring him to Camp without forcing him to run."
"Redwood High...Isn't that..." Connor trailed off, his eyebrows furrowing as Chiron glanced at him knowingly. Verona looked at him curiously.
"Yes, it's the one by your mother's apartment. Travis has already cleared it with your mother and she's more than happy to have the two of you stay with her for a duration of time," Chiron explained to Connor. He nodded, not objecting but Verona thought he looked like he wanted to. He looked worried for his mother — with two half bloods living in her house for a prolonged period of time, she would be worried too.
Thankfully, somehow (and Verona never questioned why or how) when Hermes had rescued both demigods from the Washington DC police precinct last December, he had managed to erase all files and everybody's memory of both of them, what they had done, and somehow, of Verona's past. All that was left was a file indicating that she had been placed in the foster system before being sent to boarding school somewhere in New York, and nothing seemed suspicious or out of the ordinary. To any New York high school, it would now simply look like Verona and Connor were both transferring from a boarding school over.
She still wasn't sure why the messengers of the gods had done that for them, as most didn't like handing out favours without expecting anything in return.
"You'll be leaving tomorrow morning," Chiron ended, declaring checkmate to Connor. "Connor's mother will be picking the two of you up just off the farm road — Travis will take you there to meet her, he said he wanted to see her. She has all the information about your school, and River said he'd stop by one of your cabins and deliver the rest about the demigod tonight, before the Council ships him away to whatever demeaning post they please."
"He doesn't deserve that," Verona frowned.
"No, but unfortunately there is nothing we can do for him right now, dear," Chiron shook his head. "You two must prepare — high school will be much different than anything you learn here."
Verona almost groaned, sinking down in her chair.
One slight problem — she hadn't been to a mortal school in almost ten years.
( PHOENIX, ARIZONA, MID MARCH )
VERONA COULD HAVE sworn that by the time the two of them (Clarisse and herself) got back to the La Rue house in Phoenix, Clarisse had fumed and cursed so much that beyond what was left of her cheek and lip bleeding even after the ambrosia and nectar Clarisse had stashed in her mom's car, her ears would start bleeding soon from the annoyance and loudness of the daughter of Ares' voice.
"And playing sacrificial little lamb like that?" She pointedly looked at Verona, her eyebrows creating a clench between them in a way that if Verona didn't know better, she'd say that the older girl was worried about the daughter of Aphrodite. "It was dumb and stupid...and idiotic!"
Verona threw her hands up as they got out of the car and began to walk down the small path to Clarisse is house. "It's not like I asked to play sacrificial lamb," She fired back. "How was I supposed to know the entrance would fire the wrecking ball right back at me?"
"I don't know...You're the smart one here," Clarisse rubbed her eyes.
"No," Verona objected. "I'm the pretty one. Annabeth's the smart one, and she's not here...Why the hell isn't she here?"
"She is here."
The two jumped the second they stepped into the house and found Annabeth staring at them through an Iris message, her curly blonde hair tied in a ponytail away from her face. In the background Verona could spot the Sam Francisco sky through the window. Annabeth had gone there not only to reconnect with her father and stepmother after years of feeling as though she was hated by them, but also in order to watch Mount Tam following the events that had occurred the previous winter. She had been coordinating with the two girls from there, returning to New York once or twice when needed, especially when they thought they had found the entrance to the Labyrinth at Camp (it had turned out to be a trap door the Hermes kids had installed years ago that had started out a full out riot by Clarisse) and when Clarisse had found Chris and she had met Verona back at Camp, hoping to search for a way into the Labyrinth through Camp even quicker.
"—What happened to you two?"
Verona glared at her, though not angrily or irritated but more out of tiredness. "It didn't work."
"I though you'd be able to use a wrecking ball, Clarisse," Annabeth said, not teasingly but genuinely.
"I am," Clarisse snarked. "The stupid thing destroyed itself—"
"—And almost destroyed me in the process!"
"—Yes, and almost destroyed Blaze in the process," Clarisse added, rolling her eyes. "Only for it to reappear not even ten feet away, as if it hadn't been just blown then and there to smithereens."
"It just replicated itself back into existence?" Annabeth looked kind of excited, but she tried to tone it down for both girls' sake. Verona knew she had a giant affinity for Architecture, and beyond the fact that Daedalus is maze had basically driven Chris to insanity, she had thought it was an amazing creation and a lasting magical piece of architecture. Verona would have thought it was cool, had it not driven a guy so crazy he had no idea what he was doing or who he was...now she was just plain scared of it.
"No warning, nothing," Clarisse muttered. "Just reappeared."
"And the Delta was still there?"
"Bright and shiny and eternally mocking us," Verona mumbled back this time, running a hand through the pieces of her hair that had begun falling out of her up-do. The heat had begun to make what was left of the cut on her cheek sting, and she tried hard to ignore it, having had worse before.
"Okay," Annabeth sighed. In the background she could hear voices in another room, probably of Annabeth's family which also included two younger stepbrothers she had slowly began to become closer with. "I'll let Chiron know and see what I can find. You two get Chris back to Camp as fast as you can — he'll have a better chance of healing there."
"Don't we know it, blondie," Clarisse grumbled before swiping a hand through the message, disconnecting it.
"No, no, Mary!"
Verona and Clarisse both jumped at the sound of Chris's voice screaming and the clattering of a mug, making their way towards the room he was staying in as fast as they could, Clarisse running with a purpose. They both burst in one after the other, finding Ms La Rue trying to calm Chris down as she stared at the shattered mug, slowly backing away and looking absolutely terrified. His hands were around his head and he the blinds were closed in the room, with him being extremely afraid of sunlight, and he was muttering to himself over and over again.
"It's Clarisse, Chris. Not Mary, Clarisse," The daughter of Ares tried to soothe him, rubbing his back when he'd let her near him and reminding him of where he was and who she was until he was able to calm down enough to stare into space emptily — that was better that the condition he'd been in before, at least.
She sighed at last, exiting the room so he was left in the dark a bit calmer than before and turning to Verona, whispering. "Now you see my problem?"
And she finally did. Verona hadn't fully understood why Clarisse was having such a big problem getting Chris all the way from Phoenix to Camp until she came to visit her for the first time, and found Chris would barely move let alone go out in the sun. "Yeah, yeah, I do."
"So, what do we do?" She looked completely and utterly tired, something Verona had never, ever seen on the daughter of Ares before. She had seen her lose a fight, sacrifice herself for the sake of the gods, even throw herself face first at a Colchis bull. But never had she seen her so lost and helpless in the face of love, throwing caution out the window in an effort to help Chris.
"I think I may have an idea," Verona bit into her lip, her eyes squinting as she started formulating a plan already in her head.
And so that night and the next day, they sat side by side talking and planning it out, every detail and aspect of the plan until it was perfect and precise and bound to go off without a hitch — and when they left with Chris for Camp Half Blood as dusk neared and the sun set the next night, Clarisse and Verona had come to understand one another more than they ever had before.
NOTE ——————— clarisse and silena's friendship was literally one of absolute favorite in the percy jackson series, it was so precious, so like obviously her friendship had to extend to verona bc the clarisse-verona-annabeth friendship is gonna be the most powerful thing ever come the last olympian.