Chapter Text
In his dreams, Will saw Lee.
When he had first been claimed, Lee welcomed him with open arms. He was the youngest camper at the time, having just turned ten years old, and it was his first time going more than a few days without his mother.
That night, Will had left dinner early to cry in his bunk alone. Lee had followed, holding him as he sobbed. It was the first time he had ever heard one of Apollo's hymns, hummed softly as Lee rocked him back and forth.
"If this is what having siblings is like," Will remembered thinking. "I think I'll be fine here."
He let the hymn lead him deeper, pulling him further into the warmth of the memory.
Abruptly, his heart skipped a beat.
He remembered this hymn. Not just from his first ever night as an Apollo kid, but another one too. One where Lee had crept into the cabin late, tears streaking down his face.
He hadn't just been crying. He'd been humming.
Will had never said anything. He had kept still, pretending to sleep as Lee hummed the same hymn to himself in the dark, a quiet tremble in his voice.
Oh.
"I'm sorry," A voice whispered. "I'm sorry it happened again. I'm sorry I couldn't protect you."
Will bolted upright and promptly dry heaved over the side of his bed.
The cabin was still, lit only by the pale orange of the sun yet to breach the horizon. It was too early for the usual movement of the Apollo cabin to pick up. Any moment now, the first of his siblings would stir awake, and the rhythm of the cabin would resume as if nothing had changed.
But Will hadn't moved. He stayed hunched over, hand clenched on the wooden bed frame, trembling. His shirt clung to his skin, damp with sweat. His stomach churned, pushing bile up this throat like he had anything left to expel.
The weight of what happened settled onto his shoulders, cold and suffocating, as the memory pressed against his ribs until he felt like he might break open from the inside.
Will couldn't be seen like this. Not by his siblings. Not by anyone.
He threw the covers off his legs, rummaged through his belongings to find a clean set of clothes, and left for the bathroom.
It was still quiet when he slipped in. Just enough time to pull himself together then.
Will stared at his reflection for a long time. His face was pale, eyes distant. His hair was matted to his forehead with sweat. Mechanically, he tilted his head and tried for a soft smile. It didn't quite reach his eyes. He smoothed out the lines in his brow, pulled his shoulders back, practiced the expression people expected to see. The healer. The counselor. The one who held everything together.
It held, just barely. Good enough to fool someone who didn't look too close.
Will peeled off his clothes and stepped into the shower. The water was scalding, but he didn't so much as flinch. The burn felt nice. It helped as he scrubbed at his skin with a ferocity bordering on desperation, over and over again, until it was red and raw and tears pricked at the corners of his eyes.
It didn't feel like enough. It didn't feel like anything. Will could scrape away every outer layer of himself, but it wouldn't matter. He would never be clean again. Not really. Not after this.
But he stayed under the water anyway, hoping the burn on his skin would maybe, just maybe, carry something away with it.
By the time will returned to the cabin, Kayla and Austin were up, though the younger three seemed to be much slower at rising.
"Morning, you two!" Will exclaimed, forcing his tone lighter and slapping a smile onto his face so quickly it made his jaw ache.
Austin looked up from where he was struggling to pull out a pair of shorts. "Morning Will! how was the closing shift yesterday?"
Will didn't miss a beat. He chuckled, too loud and sharp.
"Not awful. Couldn't finish the paperwork since Alana fractured her leg and some other kids got in over their heads during a spar." He rolled his eyes, waving a hand around. "Nothing I couldn't handle."
The not-quite truth slid out to easily. Inside, his skin still burned from the shower, his chest still ached from holding back sobs, and every part of him screamed not to be here. To run, leave, anything in order to stop talking like last night hadn't gutted him.
He chose to laugh again, brighter this time. "Sorry Austin. I guess I'll have to leave the paperwork to you."
And when Kayla smiled sympathetically, and Austin whined about Will using his seniority for once, he just nodded along. He would rather die than tell them the truth.
The rest of the morning passed quickly. After getting his three younger siblings up and ready, the six of them ate breakfast at the Dining Pavilion. Austin then started the morning shift, while Kayla took Yan and Jerry for archery lessons.
That left Will with Gracie, his youngest sibling. She was just six years old, all buck-teeth and glitter, with skinned knees and a laugh like wind chimes. When he held her in his arms, she clung like a monkey.
If he held her tighter, allowing himself just one moment of comfort, she didn't question it. Gracie simply squeezed back, nuzzling her face into his shoulder with the kind of trust only kids could offer. Will knew that she truly believed that her older brother could protect her from anything.
And gods, did he wish he could. He wished he could be the kind of person she saw when she looked at him; invincible, steady, unbreakable.
"You're fine." His mind said, and the thoughts were promptly shoved away.
After helping Gracie tie her shoes, they set off on a short hike along the gentler trails near the edge of the woods. It was shaded, breezy, and nowhere near the deeper thickets and the places that made Will's chest seize up with memory.
Gracie skipped ahead, swinging a long stick like a sword, while he followed behind, keeping a watchful eye on her and the woods alike. In the late summer heat, the cicadas hummed lazily, the trees whispering overhead. It almost felt peaceful.
They stopped at a patch of low-growing plants with serrated leaves and tiny white flowers. Will crouched beside them and called Gracie over.
"All right, lesson time," he said, pointing to the plant. "This is wood sorrel. You can eat the leaves. But don't go around eating random stuff unless you're with me, Kayla, or Austin, got it?"
Gracie nodded, plucking leaves off the stem and shoving them into her mouth.
"Weird," she muttered. "I like it!"
Will laughed, quiet but real. "Weird is good sometimes."
As they continued walking, he pointed out more plants; blackberries, safe to eat; pokeweed, absolutely not; cattails near the lake, edible for the most part. Gracie soaked it all up with wide eyes and endless questions, interrupting herself constantly with "Wait, what's that?", "Can I touch it?", and "If I eat this, will I get superpowers?"
They never strayed far. Will didn't let them His smile faltered when the trees got to thick, when the shadows stretched a little too long, or the the wind shift just enough to bring back the wrong kind of silence.
He hadn't been deep into the woods since the Labyrinth.
Will remembered the blood. The smile. The crack, a sound he would never forget, as the giant's club came down and the ground shook beneath his feet.
Lee's body, so fast and bright and warm just a second before, suddenly nothing but broken limbs, blood, and stillness.
He had dropped to his knees, breath caught somewhere between a prayer to Apollo and a sob. Nothing but a strangled gasp escaped past his lips. The hymn Lee used to hum echoed in his head as if it might call him back.
It never did.
"Will? Willllll?" Gracie's voice pierced through the memory.
He blinked, vision swimming. The sun was filtering through the trees again, and he realized he'd been staring into nothing.
"Sorry," he said quickly, plastering a smile on his face. "Just thinking."
Gracie reached up and slipped her small hand into his.
"You think a lot," she said simply. "But that's okay. I still love you."
That knocked the wind out of him more than any club could. He squeezed her hand and managed a soft smile.
"Thanks bug. I love you too."
They turned back soon after. Will didn't want to risk the shadows getting too long. Not today and not ever.
As they walked, Gracie hummed to herself, something tuneless and light that briefly drove Lee's haunting hymn away. Will let it fill the space between them. It wasn't peace, not really. But it was enough to keep the forest quite and the ghosts at bay, at least for a little while.
They reached the hear of camp just as Kayla, Yan, and Jerry were returning from the archery range. Jerry had an unstrung bow slung across his back and was laughing so hard he nearly tripped over his own feet. Yan was animatedly recounting something with wild gestures, while Kayla just shook her head, grinning like she'd given up trying to keep them under control.
"Kayla! Yan! Jerry! Look what I got!" she shouted, yanking her hand out of Will's grip and sprinting toward them. She held out a handful of small, dark berries cupped delicately in her palms like treasure. "Will said these are safe! You can eat them!"
"Whoa," Jerry gasped with exaggerated wonder. "The forest provides!"
He reached for one, but Kayla intercepted his hand mid-air with a look.
"Did you actually check them, or are we trusting Jerry's 'if it's round and shiny, it's fine' method again?" she asked.
Will chuckled, rubbing the back of his neck.
"They're wood berries from a few bushes close to the lake. Definitely safe, I made sure."
Kayla gave a mock-stern nod.
"Good, because if my little siblings start glowing or grow antlers, I will file a complaint."
"You can’t file a complaint for that!" Will defended, his lips twitching upward despite himself.
"Yet," Kayla shot back, matching with a wide smile of her own.
Yan plucked a berry from Gracie's hand and popped it into their mouth.
"They're too sweet," they said, before reaching for another.
Gracie giggled, delighted by her own success, and for a moment, the weight in Will's chest lightened. The laughter, the teasing, the berry-stained fingers. It was ordinary. Normal.
After last night, normal felt out of his grasp.
Still, even as he smiled and payed along, something hollow ached quietly inside him.
"I'm fine."
Will pushed it down, tucking it neatly behind the mask he had tested in the mirror that morning. He couldn't let it show. Not when they were finally safe.
He had to keep it together.