Archive of Our Own ^beta

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.

Chapter Text

In the days after Willow’s latest concerning demigod dream, things had mostly returned to normal. Or, about as normal as life can be for the daughter of a Greek god, anyway. 

Which, of course, meant that she was currently gathering the supplies she needed to reattach Paolo’s latest severed limb. After an accident in arts and crafts, of all things. So, yeah, “normal” was a subjective term.

“So, walk me through how this happened again?”, Willow asked as she tapped into her powers, the procedure so routine to her at this point that she could focus almost entirely on the conversation without worrying about messing it up.

Paolo began to respond in Portuguese, his brother translating, “Well, I was sitting there, working on my potholder, when Cecil and Chiara started messing with the scissors.” Dammit, Willow really needed to talk to Chiara about how just because she can play with the odds a little doesn’t mean everyone around her can. “And then they started throwing them at each other, and, well… Cecil eventually misjudged his aim.”

“And sliced your foot off? Phoebus Apollon, how hard was he throwing those scissors?!” Paolo shrugged, and Willow resisted the urge to facepalm. Ok, Chiara and Cecil apparently both needed lecturing. She’d say they should know better, but she’d known Cecil since before the Master Bolt was stolen. He did know better, he was just also a professional Little Shit. Normally she enjoyed this about him, but if it was going to hurt people, Willow would have to step in.

Sighing to herself, she finished up the last bit of healing on Paolo’s foot. “Alright Paolo, you know the drill at this point,” she turned to him with a faint smile, “Keep off that leg, avoid caffeine, take your ambrosia twice a day, and please try not to lose another limb; any issues, and you know where to find me.” Just as Paolo and his brother thanked her and were about to leave, Willow added “Oh, and could y’all get the word to Cecil and Chiara that I need to talk to them? That’d be great!” At their affirmation and exit, she slid down into one of the bedside chairs and let out another sigh. These guys were gonna be the death of her someday. But, someone needed to be there to make sure they weren’t the death of themselves first, so here she was.

Willow was suddenly pulled from her thoughts by the familiar sound of the lunch bell. Was it lunchtime already? She could have sworn breakfast was just a minute ago. Although… reattaching a limb did take a while. She just tended to lose track of just how long it took.

Oh, well. Looks like lecturing her idiot friends would have to wait.

Stepping out into the fresh air, Willow briefly glanced to the bright midday sky, silently greeting her father’s chariot, before making her way to the dining pavilion. Once she got to the Apollo table, though, the conversation she walked into nearly made her drop her fruit salad.

“So, what’s the difference between skibidi rizz and Ohio rizz?” Oh no. Not Nia. Her siblings were not about to corrupt her sweet, brilliant Angel with brainrot. “The terms kind of start blending together after a while.”

Except clearly, they were, because Yan responded with “As far as I can tell, ”skibidi” can mean basically anything in terms of adjectives, and I think “Ohio” just means weird, so I don’t think there really is any difference at the end of the day. It’s just for the lols, if you will.” Dammit, why couldn’t Yan use their talents in linguistics for good? 

Nia nodded thoughtfully, glancing down to write in – was that a notepad? Was she taking notes on this shit? – before looking back up and finally noticing Willow standing there, probably looking like she was about to have an aneurysm. 

“Oh, hey Honeybee, I was wondering where you were!”

Ignoring the table’s worth of snickering at the nickname, Willow sat down next to Nia with her food. “Yeah, Paolo lost another limb, and I apparently need to yell at Cecil and Chiara later over it. Anyway,” she turned to her siblings, “any of y’all wanna explain why I just heard the words “Ohio rizz” out of Nia’s mouth?”

Kayla, the little shit, laughed a bit louder at that, while Nia just sat there with an equally shit-eating grin on her face, obsidian eyes glittering with amusement.

“Come on, amore, don’t you think I should, as you all say, “get with the times”?” she said, voice dripping in faux innocence.

“Yeah, Willow, we don’t want Nia to keep talking like a boomer, right?”

Aaaand chaos.

“Kayla, I will give you laryngitis, I swear to Dad-”

“I will have you know I am not a boomer!”

“Yeah, you’re even older than a boomer! You need this even more!”

“WE MUST CHANNEL THE ALPHA SIGMA ENERGY TO EMPOWER THE ELDERS!”

“What-”

“Oh my gods yes, we should start chanting!”

“Let the skibidi aura flow through you, o’ Ancient One!”

Yeah, nope, nevermind. Willow scooted away from that madness and towards her youngest brother, who was fiddling with his tarot cards, blissfully unaware of his siblings’ insanity. “Fuck that, y’all, Jerry’s my new favorite sibling,” she announced, a startled Jerry finally glancing up from his cards to give his sister a “What the heck?” look. “What? You’re the only one who’s not currently trying to teach my girlfriend brainrot.”

“Swear jar,” Gracie chimed in, as she always did when any of them swore. Maybe it was a mistake to implement that thing, her little sister was getting a little too into it.

Jerry seemed to bluescreen for a moment, not that Willow could judge, before shaking it off and turning to the rest of the horde. “Y’know what, that checks,” he muttered, shaking his head, “Can you at least try not to interrupt me? I’m trying to practice my channeling.”

”Oh, sorry Jerry, we forgot you were working on that,” Austin said apologetically, glancing curiously at the cards surrounding his brother.

Out of all of Apollo’s domains, prophecy was one of the rarest for his children to inherit abilities from, and those that did tended to meet… unfortunate fates (to put it nicely) more often than most. Over the years, Apollo had noticed that this tended to result from their efforts to share their visions with others. So, he’d started showing them how to channel their visions through some sort of conduit, to make them easier for others around them to understand and heed, without them being deemed “crazy”. In Jerry’s case, that was the tarot deck that had appeared in his bunk not long after Apollo had returned to godhood. Willow could still remember how excited he’d been that day, especially because the deck was ocean-themed. The whole cabin had ended up learning a lot of bizarre (and in some cases, rather creepy) trivia about several obscure sea creatures that day, but it was worth it to see her brother so happy.

Plus, it certainly came in handy to redirect the attention of their mildly deranged siblings, as proven when the whole table turned towards the thirteen-year-old, brainrot talk all but forgotten, to watch him continue shuffling his cards. 

After a few moments, Jerry looked back up at them. “Okay, I’m bored. Anyone want a reading?”

Curious, Willow decided, “I could go for one.” Couldn’t hurt, right?

“Awesome!” Regathering his cards to shuffle them once more, he continued, “Anything in particular you want to focus on? The results tend to be clearer and more accurate when you’re focused on something specific.”

Willow had to think for a minute. She briefly entertained the idea of asking about her dream, but not only would that require telling her siblings about those, but also acknowledging them as a real issue. Which they weren’t. She just had weird dreams from time to time. Everyone did! It wasn’t like her demigod status meant her dreams usually were important, right?

So, that was out. But then what should she ask about?

Luckily, Austin came to her rescue. “Hey, aren’t you going to Texas next week? Why don’t you ask about that?”

Oh, right! Willow had admittedly partially forgotten about that. It was true, she was going to visit her mom next week. She was honestly surprised it’d slipped her mind, it was something she was really looking forward to.

“Y’know what, why not?”, she decided. “Anything interesting happening there?”

Jerry nodded, and once again began shuffling the cards. This time, though, his hazel eyes began to faintly glaze over with a sparkling turquoise green, not unlike the way Rachel’s did when giving a prophecy.

The table remained quiet as they waited in hushed anticipation. For just a moment, all was calm.

Then…

“Sooo, we just gonna ignore Willow threatening me with bioterrorism earlier?”

“That’s not very sigma gyatt of you, Sunshine.”

The rest of the Apollo Cabin turned to stare at the daughter of Hades with expressions ranging from pride (in Yan’s case) to unashamed amusement (in Kayla’s) to abject horror (in Willow’s), as did literally everyone else within earshot, and Nia hadn’t exactly said it quietly. Only Jerry seemed unfazed, too entranced by his own power to have even heard her.

“Put that thing back where it came from or so help me!” came the sing-song yell from the Ares table, from Sherman Yang, of all people, at which all of both their tables burst out laughing, and Nia completely doubled over cackling as Willow attempted to hold her upright and make sure she wasn’t going to pass out. Out of the corner of her eye, she could just make out Chiron burying his face in his palm, no doubt pondering how he’d gotten here over the three thousand years he’d been alive. 

The Fates must have a sense of humor, because it was at that exact moment that Jerry’s eyes stopped glowing and he began to look around, confused. “Uhh, mind telling me what everyone’s laughing at?”

The Apollo table turned back to him somewhat sheepishly. “Oh, Nia just said something really funny is all,” Yan explained. “Have the cards revealed thy fate?” they asked, theatrically putting a hand to their chest.

Jerry rolled his eyes. “If you mean “am I done?”, then yes.” Motioning to Willow, he continued, “You ready?”

Willow nodded, giving her brother as close to undivided attention as she reasonably could.

In the time it had taken her girlfriend and siblings to set the dining pavilion into chaos, Jerry had selected and laid out nine cards, each currently turned over, into three columns of three cards each. “Alright, so this is a pretty simple spread,” Jerry began, “it’s meant to give you an idea of what exactly is affecting you in a situation. This column is the Waves,” he gestured to the column on his left, “it represents what’s going on on a surface level. It’s also meant to tell you what you should focus on to help you move forward. So, we’re going to look at this one first.” With that, he turned the cards in that column over to reveal them.

Willow may not know much about tarot, but it was pretty easy to recognize the first card, what with the clear depiction of some kind of large fish weaving in between two ornate, battle-worn swords. “Ok, so the Two of Swords usually represents the need to make some sort of choice, but it also highlights teamwork,” Jerry explained. “So, there could be a situation where you have to choose to let others help you. Funny thing about that is that Greenland sharks are usually loners, oh, and did you know they can live for over 250 years? Some of the older ones are even-”

“Um, Jer, not to be rude, but could the infodump wait until we’re done? We’ve only got so much time until lunch is over.”

Jerry cut himself off with a sheepish grin. “That’s fair, I’ll try. Although, sometimes the illustration is actually useful for interpreting the card, so sometimes it’s just gonna happen.”

“Alright, fair enough.”

They continued to the Six of Cups, which, according to Jerry, symbolized nostalgia and old friends (as he cheerfully explained was illustrated by the symbiotic relationship between goby fish and pistol shrimp), which made sense considering Willow would be returning to her hometown, But then Jerry paused for a moment at the next card, the Seven of Cups.

“So, reversed cards are kind of tricky,” he said, putting a finger on the card, which was indeed upside down. “They can be interpreted a lot of ways, but it usually comes down to the card’s meaning being twisted in some way. For example, the Seven of Cups represents a lot of choices, daydreams and illusions, so it could be something like there only being one real choice to make, which would be supported by the Two of Swords, or maybe a daydream crossing over into reality.”

A lightbulb went off in Willow’s mind.

Dreams become reality… a choice to let others in… only one real choice to make…

Shit.

She took a deep breath and glanced around, hoping her face hadn’t betrayed her thoughts. Luckily, her siblings (minus Jerry) were all engaged in some other tomfoolery, and weren’t paying attention. Nia, however, was giving her her patented “we’re talking later” look, so she probably hadn’t been that successful.

Ok. Ok. Let’s just listen to the rest of the reading, it might not even be about your dreams. Dad always says that prophecies have the worst outcomes when one doesn’t listen to the whole thing, after all. Ok, Willow, poker face.

If her little brother had noticed anything, he’d chosen not to comment, much to Willow’s gratitude, and moved on to the next column. “Alright, this column is the Depths. It’s basically what’s going on under the Waves. Maybe underlying causes, hidden factors, stuff like that.”

Well, if her dreams had anything to do with this, this would probably be the column that let her know. Willow nodded, making sure to pay even closer attention than she already was.

The first Depths card, the Ten of Cups, didn’t particularly catch her attention, apparently representing security and a promise of safety, which she again supposed made sense when she was going to visit family. However, the other two cards did.

“Ooh, and the Major Arcana finally shows up,” Jerry mused. “Interesting place for these two particular cards to be, too.”

“What do you mean?”

”Well, the Depths is all about underlying things, and what may not be obvious. Meanwhile, the Major Arcana tend to signify, well, major themes and concepts. It could mean that there’s something bigger going on that you’re not seeing.”

Well that didn’t sound ominous at all. But, she stayed quiet and let her brother continue.

“Ok, so, The Tower doesn’t have a great reputation, and tends to be portrayed as being an omen of disaster-”

“Gee, I wonder why,” Willow snarked, gesturing to the illustration of a burning lighthouse in a storm. Jerry rolled his eyes.

“-But that’s not necessarily always true,” he said slyly. “It really just signifies a major, unexpected change, albeit for better or worse in the long run. You may have to reevaluate what you think you know to adapt, but you can come out stronger than before. And maybe, once you do,” he continued to Judgement, “we’ve got this. Judgement symbolizes liberation, release, and healing, so at the very least, there’ll be a silver lining to all the craziness”, he said with a small smile.

Okay. See, Willow, that’s not so bad. You’re worried about nothing! Maybe Kay was right about how much I catastrophize-

Jerry once again cut her off as he revealed the final column, and Willow had to bite back a giggle when she saw the first card out of the corner of her eye. Of course. She was an Apollo kid, The Sun was practically required to show up. Her brother seemed to notice this too, as he briefly smirked before speaking once more. 

“The last column is the Ship,” he explained. “Where the Waves and Depths are about what’s going on, the Ship is all about what will get you through it. It might be a relationship, a skill, stuff like that. Which, honestly, kinda makes it weird that The Sun is here, because The Sun already represents contentment and confidence; although that could just mean that you need to have more confidence, but I digress.” The next two cards, though, were both reversed, and Jerry took a deep breath before continuing. 

“Ok, so more reversed cards… yeah, you might want to be ready for some serious curveballs, leaf.” Dear gods, what on earth could possibly be happening on this one trip-

Wait.

“... What did you just call me?” In her peripheral vision, she could see that Kayla and Austin had briefly stilled, knowingly glancing at each other and then back to their siblings.

“Leaf? Y’know, because your name is a tr…”

“ee, my name’s a tree, we’re like a little club!”

“…omething wrong with that nickname?”

“Not exactly,” Kayla’s voice, “it’s just… you’re not the first pers…”

“…son to call me that, but joke’s on you, little leaf, I wear the title of “little shit” like a badge of honor”

”Oh, oh my gosh, I’m so sorry, I just thought it was a fun lit…”

“…tle leaf, we need you to stay back, you’re our head medic, we’ll need your-”

“Uhh, Willow, you okay?”

Willow didn’t register Gracie’s voice at first, but once she did, she opened her eyes (when had they closed?) to Jerry gazing at her, guilt and concern etched into his face, Kayla’s gentle hand on his shoulder. Suddenly, she realized Nia had moved from her spot to Willow’s side and was lightly squeezing her hand.

Gods, it’d been ages since this had last happened. She’d figured it would’ve stopped completely, since hardly anyone even knew that old nickname anymore (more like barely anyone was left to), and the few who did knew better than to use it.

“I…” She leaned against her girlfriend, focusing on the feeling of Nia’s scar against her own face and the soft reassurances she was whispering. “I just… haven’t heard anyone call me that in a while.” After a moment, she sighed and said “I think I need to go lie down for a bit. Kayla’s in charge, don’t set anything or anyone on fire.” 

With that, she turned and headed back towards the cabin, leaving the Knight of Pentacles and Five of Cups forgotten on the table.

This time, it starts with pitch blackness.

Pitch blackness and a strange sort of buzzing; not quite like static, but more like a tape or cord being mechanically rewound.

After an agonizingly slow minute of that and nothing else, Willow was about to try and smack herself awake when suddenly the empty space around her flared to life.

It took a moment for her to be able to get a sense of her new surroundings, but when she did, she was greeted with a hazy vision of some sort of crowded train station, people milling about everywhere and the screech of slowing train wheels filling her ears. It was… bizarrely normal, and she wondered why she was seeing this.

That is, until the monotony was as shattered as the glass door as it was forced open by a familiar-looking black-furred beast, snarling as its massive body parted the crowd. Behind it, two figures emerged from the shattered doorway, and though she couldn’t make out either of their appearances through the blur of her vision, Willow could hear a distinct “go go go go shit shit shit” from one of them as they bolted into a more open area. The hellhound followed, and as the two figures ducked back into the crowd towards the stopped train, her sight once again began to fade out, leaving her with nothing but darkness and the echoes of the screaming crowd and barking hellhound, but that too quickly died out.

Just as she took a breath, the blackness shifted again, this time revealing what looked to be the sunset on a populated beach. Willow could see something in the sand, and upon closer inspection, she realized it was a pair of large clam shells. They didn’t look to be from the same clam, and both were cracked and weathered by the tide, with sizable pieces missing, but they were here, just sitting together, seemingly intentionally placed. 

The sight once again faded out, but this time, it was replaced with a different sort of darkness, much more oppressive than before. The air felt thick and hostile, and she could once again hear a distorted, guttural hissing noise echoing from every corner of the space. Suddenly, the presence seemed to coalesce behind her, and she whirled around to be met with a massive pair of glowing, sickly yellow eyes. Something about staring into them… she couldn’t help but feel a desperate, primal terror, as though this creature’s entire essence was composed of pure hatred for her existence, and her subconscious, recognizing that, screamed for her to run. However, her body wasn’t cooperating, and she could only stand there in that void, facing down the unknown monster, until once more the vision disappeared.

When the static settled this time, she was again greeted to the sight of trains, this time from an aerial view. Two of them, on parallel tracks, to be precise, moving at about the same speed alongside one another. Then, she felt it.

Snap.

Bang.

N o .

W  h  y  ?

The tracks diverged, and thus, so did the trains.

Everything went black once more.

The static abruptly stopped.

Willow startled awake, hazily glancing around the still-empty cabin, before being jolted back to reality by a familiar pattern of knocks on the cabin door. Shakily getting up, she carefully stepped over her siblings’ clutter and did her best to school her expression into a neutral smile as she made her way to open the door, where, just as she’d expected, Nia was waiting with eyes full of concern.

“Hey, darlin’, you have great timing! I just so happen to have just woken up! What’s shakin’?”

“… You are,” Nia pointed out, gently reaching over and taking the hand Willow wasn’t using to lean against the doorframe in her own. Sure enough, it was lightly trembling, only barely more so than the rest of her body, but enough for Nia’s ever-observant eyes to catch. 

“Well, no one could ever say I don’t wear my heart on my sleeve, huh?”, she tried, with a laugh that sounded faker than it was supposed to. 

“Nope, nope, we’re not playing the deflection game today. Something’s bothering you, has been bothering you if your reaction to Jerry’s tarot thing is anything to go by-”

“Ok, in my defense, that was a whole separate thing.”

“I’m not talking about the leaf thing, Sunshine,” Nia gently corrected, “I’m talking about how you totally blanked for a second when Jerry brought up dreams. I know you’re worried about the weird one you had last week and…” She paused for a moment, once again taking in Willow’s current state. “You just had another one, didn’t you?”

Shit. “What gave it away?”

“Probably the way you just froze again when I said it.”

Welp. No getting out of it now. Gods, why did her girlfriend have to be able to read her like a magazine?

“… Yeah, I had another one. It was kinda… intense,” she admitted, stepping out from the doorway and sinking into one of the chairs on the patio. Nia took the seat beside her, sitting in silence for a moment before she spoke again.

“Are you sure we shouldn’t tell somebody about this? I thought you said it doesn’t happen often, what if that’s changing?” That was true, they didn’t usually happen so close together. But…

“I don’t know,” she said, turning her gaze towards the late afternoon sun and tugging at her hair, “I don’t wanna cause a fuss about it only for it to just be nothing.”

“… I think we both know it’s never nothing, Willow.”

“And that’s the problem!” she cried, tugging harder at her hair. “We finally got a damn break, and I just don’t want that to get ruined again! It’s just been nonstop for six years now, for crying out loud, we just went to literal superhell, why can’t it all just stop for five damn minutes?!”

The silence felt heavy, but breaking it felt heavier. So, they sat there with their thoughts for a long moment, before Willow brought her knees up to rest her forehead against them. “It’s just not fair,” she whispered.

Nia was silent for another moment, lightly biting at her lips, before quietly sighing, “No, it’s really not, is it?” with a broken chuckle. “But,” she continued, “I know from experience that ignoring that doesn’t make it go away. Trust me, I tried, and we still ended up going to hell.” She gave another chuckle, one Willow lightly echoed, before continuing again. 

“The point is, I’ve been there, and I just don’t want to see you go through that. Not if there’s anything we can do to make it easier to deal with, y’know?” She leaned forward, trying to meet her girlfriend’s gaze, and Willow obliged, letting herself just stare into Nia’s eyes. 

She’d once heard that it was technically genetically impossible for humans to have truly black eyes, at least in the way Nia’s were. Not just a very dark brown, or even just a flat black, practically indistinguishable from the pupil. No, there was depth to these shadows, in such a way that you could make out the pupil while still seeing the stretching abyss behind it, and dear gods, her siblings were right, she was a simp. … Aaanyway, yeah, it shouldn’t be genetically possible, and yet here she was. Although, she supposed that when half of one’s DNA was entirely composed of pure divine essence, genetics kind of got tossed to the wind. After all, she was also pretty sure no one’s eyes should be quite as bright and vibrant a blue as her own were.

Her musings were suddenly cut off by Nia relaxing back into her chair, sighing, and Willow remembered the topic at hand. Right. Not the time to ponder demigod biology or how pretty her girlfriend was.

“… Tell you what,” Nia started once more, “twice could be a coincidence. Three times is a pattern.” Willow glanced back to her, and she explained, “We leave it for now… but if it happens again within the next week, we will be telling someone. Deal?”

Y’know what, that sounded fair. “Okay,” she whispered, and Nia took her hand and brought it up against her chest.

“We’ll figure this out, Care Bear. We always do.”

Willow rolled her eyes and sighed in faux annoyance, albeit with a snicker on her lips. As much as she pretended to hate that nickname, it was admittedly growing on her. “And maybe I’ll figure out your nicknaming habits, Morticia.” She stood up and lightly flicked Nia’s arm as she made to leave the patio.

“Hey, don’t make me bring out the skibidi rizz again.”

“Don’t even think about it.” With another melodramatic sigh, she motioned for Nia to follow as she began heading out towards the archery range, where she knew her siblings would be about now. “C’mon, let’s go make sure they really didn’t start any fires.”

“What do you take me for, an enabler?”

Both giggling now, they made their way across the grass, and Willow could relax once more. Nia was right, they could totally handle whatever came of this. And who knows? Maybe she was right, and this was just a coincidence. Maybe there would be no third time to make it a pattern.

… She never was good at lying, even to herself.