Chapter Text
Things were looking up for the Apollo Cabin.
Wow, that’s a sentence you don’t hear often.
But, as Willow looked around at her siblings, all snuggled together in their cabin as they bickered over what to watch on Disney+ (gods bless Leo Valdez for figuring out how to get it to camp), she knew it was true. They’d all come so far, been through so much loss, had to deal with everything from two-thirds of their number dying in the wars, to their dad turning mortal (and in Willow’s case, going to the literal actual depths of hell). And yet, here they were, still alive in spite of it all, and doing their best to live life to the fullest.
“Willowwww,” whined Jerry, snapping her out of her thoughts, “tell Gracie that we’re not watching Hamilton for the fifth time.”
From her spot in between Jerry and Austin, Gracie giggled, saying “Boo hoo, Jelly. You’re just salty because you can’t rap.”
“Am not! And stop calling me Jelly!”
“Admit you’re just bitter!”
“Admit you don’t have taste beyond Hamilton!”
“Take. That. Back.”
Sensing an impending fistfight, Willow cut in, “Alright, both of you, enough. Jerry, there’s no need to be mean.” At her little sister’s triumphant snicker, she continued, “You either, Gracie. Besides, we have watched Hamilton a lot lately, we should pick something new.”
Gracie pouted a little, but relented. “Alright, fine. Do you guys have any other ideas?”
Silence. Looking around at her siblings, Willow could see a blank expression on every single one of their faces. On second thought, she should have expected this. They all tended to be pretty indecisive when it came to things outside of their expertise, even she wasn’t immune. She was actually pretty sure it was a demigod thing, since quite a few of her friends had the same problem.
Alright, Willow, looks like it’s up to you. “Ok, guess I’ll look through here for something, and we go by voting. Sound fair?”
Somewhat to Willow’s surprise, it was Yan who spoke up. “Wait a second, why does Willow get a say in the movie? She’s going to be over in the Hades Cabin making kissy faces at Nia tonight!”
“Hey, I do not just “make kissy faces” at her! We do other things!” Willow said, probably a little louder than necessary, but she didn’t particularly care, as she almost immediately realized what she’d walked into.
Sure enough, Kayla snickered, stage-whispering “Sure, other things.” With an absolutely shit-eating grin on her face, she continued, “Do those “other things” possibly involve removing one’s clo-”
“Kayla Ilene Knowles, don’t you dare finish that sentence, there are small children here.”
To her credit, Kayla shut her mouth, if with another snicker, until Austin whispered “Ooh, middle name”, at which she shot him a glare.
“Anyway,” Willow continued, somewhat exasperated, “I don’t head over to her cabin for another two-and-a-half hours, so I’ll be here long enough to watch whatever we pick out.” With everyone seeming to accept this, she focused on looking through Disney+ for a good movie.
After a few rounds of trial and error (and Willow having to stop yet another fight over whether or not Brave was overrated), the siblings finally settled on Anastasia. For once, everyone watched peacefully, finally giving Willow a breather, until about halfway through “Once Upon A December”.
“Oh my gods, this is so Nia-coded,” whispered Kayla, turning to her, “like, tell me you don’t hear this and think of her.”
Now that she thought about it, Willow could honestly see it. The thought of her beautiful girlfriend dancing with ghosts in a long-abandoned ballroom gave her major butterflies, and she was glad they’d turned off the lights so that it was just dark enough to hide her blush.
Austin nodded thoughtfully, adding “Hang on, this whole movie is actually pretty Nia-coded.” When his siblings turned to him, a bit confused, he continued, “ Anya was eight in the beginning when her family died and she lost her memory, and Nia was only two years older than that when she went to the Lotus Hotel, right?” Willow nodded, and Austin went on. “Then, years later, Anya gets reunited with her grandmother, and Nia met Hazel. She’s literally this movie come to life.”
While everyone was thinking about this, Yan quietly interrupted with “Ok, this is nice, but this is my favorite song in the movie, and you just talked through my favorite part, so can we please rewind it?”
“Oh, yeah, sorry Yan,” Kayla said apologetically as she grabbed the remote and hit rewind.
The rest of the movie surprisingly went off without a hitch. As Anya and Dimitri danced together and the movie ended, it was just about time for Willow to head over to Cabin 13. Just as she got the last of her stuff ready, Jerry suddenly asked “Do you think Nia knows they found the Romanovs’ bodies?”
“Wait, that’s actually a good point,” Gracie chimed in, “‘cause wasn’t that still a pretty big deal in the 30’s and 40’s? She’d probably lose her mind if she doesn’t already know!”
“I’m not sure, I’ll have to ask her sometime tonight,” Willow said simply as she stepped through the cabin door. Shutting it with a quick “See y’all in the morning”, she took a breath and made her way over to the Hades Cabin, glad to get a break for a little while. Don’t get her wrong, she loved all her siblings dearly, but they could just be a lot sometimes. She needed the occasional breather, and Nia had a way of getting her to relax when she couldn’t bring herself to.
Such as in that moment, when she was already standing in the doorway to greet her girlfriend, hands clasped behind her back. As Willow came to the door, she smirked and said, “Well, fancy seeing you here, Angel.”
Nia snickered and crossed her arms. “She says, as if I don’t live here, and this wasn’t her idea.”
“Doesn’t mean I don’t fancy seeing you here, darlin’”, Willow said with a wink, internally giggling as Nia tried and failed to hide her blush. “Let’s head in, shall we?”
Regaining her composure, Nia stepped to the side and motioned for her to come in. “After you, m’lady,” she said, Willow lightly rolling her eyes as the two of them headed in.
The first thing she noticed was the sounds. Namely, the cacophony of screaming, crashing, and general chaos that felt like it was coming from everywhere all at once, and yet sounded oddly distant, like a memory of an echo.
The second thing she noticed was that there was nothing around her that could reasonably be making any of those sounds.
Glancing around, Willow appeared to be standing in a field of small, daisy-like yellow flowers under a dark indigo sky, in what her instincts told her were the hours right before sunrise. Looking closer at the flowers, she recognized them: Curse of Delos, Apollo’s other sacred flower, apart from hyacinths. Was this one of Dad’s random check-ins?
No, that didn’t quite make sense. If that was it, why would it be dark, and why would the screaming and chaos still be echoing in her ears and godsdammit what was making those sounds?
Looking around again, she noticed something that she hadn’t before, or perhaps it simply hadn’t been there before. In the middle of the field was what looked from her vantage point like a long, narrow table, with six arrows loosely embedded in the wood on one end, sticking upward like leafless pines.
Willow suddenly felt very uneasy as she approached the table, almost like something deep in her subconscious knew exactly what was about to happen.
That didn’t stop her from violently startling backwards when, out of nowhere, a shining blade brutally struck down towards the table, slicing five of the arrows in half and dislodging the sixth, Willow watching as it fell to the grass and flowers below, somehow still intact.
For some reason, she couldn’t tear her eyes away from the remaining arrow, laying still as a corpse just a few feet away from her, even as the cacophony in her ears shifted and one noise seemed to rise above the rest. She strained her ears, trying to focus on and identify it, but no luck. The sound faded as quickly as it rose, leaving Willow standing there, oddly shaken, with a cracked table, five broken arrows, and the echoes of chaos in her ears.
Not for long though, as seconds later, a new sound caught her attention, drowning out everything else. Literally; as Willow sharply turned around, she saw the rushing water just before it smashed into her, knocking over both her and the table and sweeping the last intact arrow away.
The last thing she heard before the water filled her ears was a hissing, guttural screech.
Then nothing.
Willow’s eyes snapped open, a sharp breath catching in her throat as she jolted awake. Not that it made much difference, as the room was quite a bit darker than usual. Wait a minute, the cabin is never this dark, Dad’s the sun god, it wouldn’t be this dark even at midnight, what’s-
A faint shift beside her pulled Willow from her mild freak-out.
“You ok, Sunshine?”
Oh, right. Nia. She was sleeping in the Hades Cabin again. She was fine, no need to panic.
Those dreams tended to mess with her head a bit.
Turning to her girlfriend and exhaling, she quietly replied, “Yeah, I’m fine, Angel. Just…” She paused, running her fingers through her short blonde curls, a habit she’s pretty sure she got from her mother. “Weird dream.”
Nia’s face softened at that, her expression morphing into one of concern, and Willow realized what was probably going through her head. “Oh, no, not about there, darlin’. It wasn’t really bad, it was just… weird.”
Nia relaxed, and they sat in silence for a bit, until she softly asked, “Do you wanna talk about it?”
Willow paused.
Did she want to talk about it? What would she even say? It’s not like she could ever make out what was even happening in these particular dreams, even despite a nagging feeling of familiarity that always stayed for hours after she woke up. How would describing random vague bullshit to someone who hadn’t even seen it themselves make it seem any less like random vague bullshit?
Well, only one way to find out, she supposed.
“I’m… not exactly sure what it even was,” she began, “it didn’t really make a whole lot of sense. Like, I’ve had ones like it before, but they’re never quite the same, and I can never really fit them together.”
“Like, demigod dreams?” Nia asked, taking Willow’s hands in hers and looking in her eyes. “Willow, if you’ve had similar demigod dreams more than once, it’s probably important. Should we tell somebody?”
“I don’t know, Nia. It doesn’t happen very often, and nothing’s ever come of it before. Besides, it’s not like it’ll be much help if we can’t even describe what’s going on in the dream, right?” Yeah, that was partially true, but another part of Willow just didn’t want anything to come of it. Last time someone around her had concerning recurring dreams, she and Nia ended up literally going to hell; 0/10 experience, would not recommend. Couldn’t they go just a few more months without another mythological catastrophe? Please?
Nia, gods bless her, seemed to sense her thoughts, and seemed to decide to drop it for the night, nodding and pulling Willow closer. After a minute or so of blissful silence, the next thing Willow heard was “Do you wanna try and go back to sleep now, or do you wanna focus on something else for a bit? It’s still hours before we have to get up, we have time to find something else to do.”
“Well… that reminds me,” Willow said, meeting Nia’s eyes with a Cheshire cat grin, “Jerry did want me to ask you something…”
And as she laid there in the Hades Cabin, giggling lovingly at her girlfriend’s bewildered “They found the Romanovs’ bodies?! When?! Where?!”, she could almost forget about the echoes of her dreams.
Almost.