WPOV

Listen. I know this may come as a surprise to you, but I resent the Camp Half Blood campfires. Not all children of Apollo get the amazing singing genetics, and while I can appreciate listening to my sibling's talent, I dread the days when the cabin asks me to actually participate. It doesn't make any sense—my voice is horrible, and I think my siblings are aware. When they need me to pitch in, they usually send Austin or Kayla to soften the blow, and even they wince a little when they ask me. That's not even subtle! Get some talented kid from another cabin to lead the songs.

I usually find a way to weasel my way out of responsibility. I've only attended the bare minimum number of campfires since arriving at camp, and the rest of the time I make some comment about the infirmary being understaffed, and they happily let me go work on that so they can find someone else to fill my spot, saving their ears from my horrible screeching.

Unfortunately, today I seem to be feeling extra irrational; something in my gut is telling me that maybe today, the campfire could be fun. If I sneak in, maybe no one will notice I'm there, and I can experience the fire without being expected to sing. I'm not sure why I suddenly want to go, but I haven't been able to keep my mind off the fire all day.

Even my patients are starting to notice that I'm distracted.

"Uh, Will?" says Percy. I startle and glance over at him, and he nods his head at the bandages in my hands. "Why do you have bandages?"

I blink at the bandages in my hands. I had been moving on autopilot as I considered the risks (my dignity) and benefits (nothing...?) of going to the bonfire tonight. Because I hadn't been paying attention, I had grabbed bandages instead of ambrosia. My cheeks heat up a little bit from embarrassment. "Sorry. I'll, uh, be right back."

I turn on my heel to grab the ambrosia from the storage room in the back of the infirmary and to return the bandages. Percy had been complaining about migraines recently, and eventually Annabeth got tired of it and sent him here to get treated.

I wander down the hall of the infirmary. It's not quite so busy right now, so the halls are empty—after battles, we fill the halls with makeshift beds, and walking down the hall means passing people who are barely cleaning to the final strings of life. But in times like this, when it's quiet, the hallway in the middle of the infirmary is a quiet reprieve from the intensity of the patients' rooms.

I get to the storage room and grab the ambrosia this time. I set the bandages back on the shelf, cursing myself for embarrassing myself, and then I head back to Percy. He doesn't need a large dose, so I give him only a small piece to help his head. He gives me one last confused look on his way out—I've never made a mistake in front of him before.

When it's time for the bonfire, I find a hoodie and put it on. I'm not sure exactly what color it is because I'm still searching for my soulmate, but it looks pretty dark, so I'm hoping it'll help me remain somewhat unnoticed at the fire.

I have to assign infirmary duties to someone else if I'm going to sneak out. I wander the halls of the infirmary, peaking my head into patient rooms to try to find someone who might be willing to take on a little bit more responsibility tonight.

I find Kayla sitting with a young girl from the Demeter cabin, holding her hand as the girl tells an animated story about winning Capture the Flag last week. I knock on the doorframe, and both girls look up.

"Oh, hey," greets Kayla. "If this is about the patient in room six, I told Charon—"

"Actually, it's not about a patient," I say, though now I'm suspicious that the patient in room six hasn't been taking her medication like I'd ordered. I'll have to—

No. Not tonight. Tonight I am on a mission.

"Oh?"

I swallow and try to think of an excuse. I really don't give up my shifts at the infirmary very often—that's why I'm in charge. She won't believe me if I try telling her I'm tired; usually, people have to physically drag me away from this place before I finally concede.

"I have, uh, a personal thing to take care of," I comment vaguely, praying to every god I've ever heard of that she won't ask for details. "Would you mind taking my shift?"

She blinks at me. "A personal thing?"

I don't think she believes it—but I can't go back now or she'll know I'm lying.

"Yeah, a personal thing. I don't want to really talk about it more because it's...uh...personal."

She raises an eyebrow. "...Right. Well, luckily for you, I was planning to stay here for a while anyway today. Feel free to go take care of your...personal thing. I'll let you know if anything happens."

I grin, and then I'm hurrying out of the infirmary to make it to the bonfire in time. I run behind the cabins in the hopes that there is a smaller chance of people seeing me, and I keep my hood up. When I get close to the fire, I tug on my hood again and catch my breath by hiding behind the Apollo cabin, which is one of the closest to the fire. I can hear my siblings setting up the blaze while other campers chatter and laugh and tell stories. I take one last breath and prepare myself to try to stay as hidden as possible when—

"Um, hello? What are you doing here?"

I swivel, and there's a dude from the Hades cabin giving me a look that says "I just found a guy hiding behind a cabin and I might call the police." I swallow and put my hands up. I don't fail to notice how attractive he is—his hair is dark enough that I'm pretty sure it's black, though I can't be certain. His face is made of sharp angles, but his shoulders are a gentle curve down to muscular biceps. My heart stutters a little, and I don't think I'll be able to have a successful conversation when I'm talking to a person who looks like that.

"Oh, uh, hello! I'm, uh, just about to go into this cabin. Back home. Through the back—" I cut off and glance at the cabin, realizing the rest of that sentence doesn't make sense because there is no back door. "Uh, through the back window. Because that's what Apollo kids do. It's...a tradition. Sacred."

He stares at me. I know he doesn't believe me.

But then he rolls his eyes and mutters, "I don't have enough hours in a day to spend time dealing with this."

He doesn't leave yet though, but he looks like he's thinking about it. He's behind the Hephaestus cabin, peaking at the fire. "Do you go to a lot of these? How does it...work?"

"You're asking the worst person," I tell him. And then I remember I'm supposed to be going through the window right now, according to my story. "Anyway. I guess, I'll, uh. Well, I'll just be going." I point at the window, but that's useless because the guy isn't looking at me—he's still watching the bonfire, a little nervous.

"Yeah, yeah. Uh huh. Goodbye," he says, waving me off with one hand while his eyes are still glued to the fire.

"Right," I mutter, and turn to face one of the back windows of the Apollo cabin. I get on my tiptoes and peak in to make sure nobody is in the cabin to see me embarrass myself. I'm looking into one of the bedrooms, but it's empty right now—this is a busy time of day for Apollo kids, and anyone who isn't working is probably at the campfire enjoying themselves.

I reach up and try to open the window.

It's locked.

"Huh," I mutter. "Well, I guess I'll have to break the tradition. The window is locked."

The Hades kid, who still hasn't moved despite staring at the fire this whole time, finally looks in my direction. "Oh, the camp windows' locks can be picked. Want help?"

...Of course I'm hiding behind the cabins with the one person in camp who apparently knows how to pick locks. I'm trying to think of a way to tell him that it's alright, I don't really need help, when he moves toward me and I'm rendered incapable of speaking at all because I'm only really thinking of how hot he is.

He gestures for me to get out of the way, and I don't have the clarity of mind to do anything but do what he tells me. He sticks his hand out, and the ground trembles a bit before shooting a tiny white needle into his hand.

And then I remember he's a Hades kid, and that's not a needle—it's an animal bone.

He reaches up to the window's lock and sticks the bone in like a key. He jostles with it for a solid minute, and I can't stop staring at his shoulders. When he finally hears a click, he nods with satisfaction and tries to open the window again—and this time it works.

"Great. Now you don't have to admit you lied about planning to climb through this window. You have fun with that—I'm going to the fire." With an air of determination, he marches off to the campfire, leaving me with an open window and a lie to protect.

"Right," I mutter. "Thanks."

I awkwardly heft myself over the windowsill and nearly fall into the room on the other side, but I steady myself at the last second and drop down somewhat gracefully instead. I shut the window behind me.

Just now it hits me that I should have interrogated him about what he was doing behind the cabins. He's not even from the Hephaestus cabin! Surely, it was weirder for him to be there than it was for me to be there.

It also just hits me that I could have waited for him to go back to the fire and then just walked around the cabin since he wouldn't be there to see me go through the window anyway. I'm an idiot.

I go through the cabin and finally reach the front door. This was going to be difficult—if any of my siblings saw me leave the front door of the Apollo cabin, they would call me over to help lead the fire.

I ease the door open and peek out. My siblings are everywhere around the fire, helping people find seats and tuning guitars and discussing which songs should be played today. There's no way I'll be able to make it all the way to the fire without one of them noticing me.

The Hades kid nervously joins Piper, a girl from the Aphrodite cabin. She cheers when he sits down, and for a moment I wonder if they're soulmates. I try to remember if he gave any indication that he can see colors when we spoke, but I can't think of anything that might give me an answer. I don't really know why I care whether or not some random hot guy has found his soulmate yet. What, just because he can pick a lock means I have to sit here and start planning out a future with him? This is ridiculous. I'm being stupid.

I am about to give up on the whole campfire idea because of how impossible it will be to get over there without a sibling noticing when the Hades guy looks back over at me. He looks me up and down with an unimpressed expression, rolls his eyes, and then shouts, "Woah, what's that over there!"

He points across the campfire in the opposite direction as me—is this his attempt to help me? It's stupid, there's no way it will actually—

It...works?

The group hushes and looks where the Hades guy is pointing, but they struggle to see anything in the darkness, so the distraction lasts longer than it would have in the daytime.

Face burning, I hurry over to the campfire when everyone is distracted. I keep my hood up, trying very hard not to let anyone get a good look at my face, and take a seat on the far side of the fire, away from the Hades guy.

When the group decides that whatever the Hades guy saw must have been harmless, Austin grabs a guitar and cheers loudly, "Who's ready for some campfire songs!"

While many campers cheered, I couldn't help but notice that the Hades kid frowns and throws a twig into the fire. My heart pounds—he really is nice to look at. Piper bumps her shoulder against his and tries to coax him into singing with her, but he waves her off and stares into the gray fire, and I can't help but wonder why he went through the trouble of coming here if he doesn't enjoy singing.

I guess that's hypocritical of me.

A/N: Hello everyone!

This fic began as a collaborative story where the WPOV chapters were written by TheNerdyAuthor13, and the NPOV chapters were written by me. However, about six years have passed since we originally wrote this story. I am now revamping my account, editing every story that has ever been published here, and generally trying to make this account into something that matches how I have grown as a person.

For this reason, the story has undergone a lot of editing. The plot points are still the same, but content has been added and everything has been rewritten in a more mature way than the way we wrote this when we were 12. My co-author still deserves half the credit for this story because they wrote half of the inspiring story, but the text itself is going to look a lot different from what they wrote. For example, this chapter used to be 406 words; it is now 2422 words.

If you decide you liked the original version better, it can be found on TheNerdyAuthor13's account. But I warn you: I was literally 12 years old when I wrote the original version of this story, so prepare yourself; my parts of this story were pretty ugly.

Have a nice day everyone!

Word count: 2422 words.