Kassandra tracked the path of the sun overhead as they passed through the desert, following the imaginary trail that it left through the sky. She played with the shadows that the beams cast, twisting her hand this way and that to watch the shapes from.

She caught the heat in her palm, letting her skin warm knowing that it would never burn under the sun.

"It should have been me," Percy mutters from next to her in the bed of the truck. "I should have gone into the back into it."

"No!" Grover protest quickly, voice cracking. "It's bad enough that Annabeth and Bianca are gone. Do you think I could lose you too? Who else would be my best friend?"

Percy shakes his head. "Ah, Grover..."

The satyr sniffles. "I'm fine. I'm fine."

She could hear the lie though, the ugly untruth of his fragile statement. She couldn't blame him for his thin attempt to hide his feelings, even if it was pretty bad.

(When Kassandra had held Ariel as she died, clinging her best friend close to her chest in a desperate hope that she could squeeze life back into the girl, her first instinct, before anything else, was to place the blame upon herself.

How could she not when the blow was meant for her? When the monster was tracking her? Ariel wasn't powerful enough to attract anything, not enough to interest a dracaena. No, Kassandra had blamed herself as she sobbed desperately to the police about an unbelievable story because she was hardly capable of making up anything with the inability to lie. She had said a thing had stabbed her friend and the mist had swirled around to make it look like a mugging gone wrong.

She had sobbed until she finally washed the blood from her hands, too exhausted to lift her head, and she knew -- she just knew that he healing had been working, had been slowly taking hold, but it had been her father, Apollo that never wanted her before that had turned away in her time of need.

There had been rumours around camp that the Apollo kids could draw power from the sun when he allowed and she just knew that he had turned her away. She knew then that the gods were to blame. That they never cared about any of them.)

(If she didn't blame him, she would then have only herself to blame and Kassandra had been thirteen doing the best that she could with a tiny dagger. It wasn't her fault.)

"Guys, guys," she says softly. "It's no one's fault. Bianca made the choice to save everyone. Don't dishonour her by feeling guilty."

(At least it wasn't you, part of her whispers possessively, if I had lost another friend I would have torn apart all of Hades to get you back.)

"If I had just gone--"

"It wasn't. If we all thought like that..." she thinks back to the kids that she had dropped at Westover Hall and how she should technically feel guilty for what she did. She didn't. "If you didn't force her to go, then it can't be your fault. Knowing you, you probably planned on going yourself."

"Kass is right," Grover says. "You couldn't have done anything differently."

Percy sighs heavily, dropping his head back. "I don't know what I'm going to say to Nico."

She twists her lips. "I can tell him?" she offers. "It can't be much different than being told that Oriana wasn't coming back."

Grover winces, dropping his gaze. A lot of people missed having Oriana around. She was the heart of the Ares cabin, literally. They were so much meaner with her gone -- the sister that was more protector, that was a caring defender.

"No, I have to tell him," Percy says in determination.

"Then just tell him the truth. That's what I always found was best. I hate it when people try to lie to me."

"That's because you know when they lie to you," he says.

"Yeah, but so do a lot of other people. Just because I've always been able to know with certainty doesn't mean that other people are incapable of knowing when they're being deceived," she says, shrugging.

(The first time that Kassandra knew that she was being lied to with absolute certainty was when she was three. It was a distant memory, one that should have faded but she clung to desperately so she would always know the feeling of when her parents had looked her in the eye and sworn that she had lost her sunshine yellow dolphin stuffy at the park when she knew that she didn't.

At three, she had been struck with just how absolutely wrong that statement was. She had called them liars to their faces and had gotten reprimanded for it.)

(Turned out, they had dropped it on the subway on the way home. They had seen it as the train doors had closed and been unable to go back for it.)

(Sometimes, when she was feeling childish, she would bring it up just to tease them with it. Her dad always swore that if she brought it up one more time he would go and buy out the nearest toy store and fill her room with ridiculous stuffed animals. He never did.)

The truck came to a stop as the gas ran out. Luckily it happened just as they reached a dead end.

Hopping out, she stretched out her legs and whispered another hymn over her leg, hopefully healing up the last bit -- Kassandra couldn't be sure, though, not when she was terrible at this healing thing and couldn't help adding a different impromptu curse at the end of each little song as a special treat.

(She always hoped Apollo heard, that he would give her a sign even if it was in anger.)

"Great," Thalia scoffed, slamming the door closed. "What do we do now?"

"There's a path ahead," Grover says. "We can go to the river."

She made her way to the edge of the drop, eyeing the side and the perceived path. "It's not that bad if we're careful."

"Kass, that's a goat path," Percy says.

"So?" Grover asks.

Percy looks them over slowly. "The rest of us aren't part goat."

She shakes her head. "I wasn't talking about the goat path anyway," Kassandra says. "It's not that hard a climb down."

The boy only shakes his head, amused this time. "Not all of us have your insane upper body strength either."

Laughing, she steps away from the cliff. "I'm not stronger than you. Just strong enough to carry my own weight perfectly fine, maybe even a bit more, but fine," she says. "What do you suggest?"

"We keep walking a little further," he says. "A walk wouldn't hurt anyone."

So they end up walking until they can make their way to the river carefully, stealing two canoes. Percy left a note, Kassandra let a few bills when he tried to only put down a handful of drachma.

They split into two canoes. She climbed in with Thalia and Grover, sharing with them a protein bar each as they were carried along by a couple of naiads that playfully shot water at them.

Kassandra dipped her hand into the water, swishing it around with a soft smile that had the spirits giggling. She ignored the way Thalia rolled her eyes at her. It's not her fault the water spirits were pretty and nice.

Eventually, they made their way to the end of the river, blocked by a dam the size of a football stadium.

They climb onto the shore, the canoes swirled and began to float their way back up the river as they stared up at the concrete slope that towered above them.

"The Hoover Dam," Thalia says in awe. "It's huge."

Above, she could spot people moving at the top edge, like tiny little specks.

"Seven hundred feet tall," Percy says. "Built in the 1930s."

"Five million cubic acres of water," Thalia says.

Graver sighs. "Largest construction project in the United States."

"Generating enough power for three states," Kassandra adds softly.

Zoe looks at them strangely. "How do you know all that?"

"Annabeth," Percy says. "She liked architecture."

"She was nuts about monuments," Thalia says.

"Spouted facts all the time." Grover sniffles. "So annoying."

"I wish she were here," Percy says.

Kassandra looked up at the damn that was more than just a grey slab of concrete. Her heart clenched, squeezing so tightly in her chest she felt she might be sick. "We should go up there," she says. "They probably have a gift shop where we can get her something."

"For her sake," Percy ass. "Just to say that we've been."

"You're mad," Zoe says, sighing regardless. "But that's where the road is."

"Let's go sightseeing," Kassandra says with faux brightness, starting up the road to the structure.

(Annabeth should have been here, she should have been with them, and since she couldn't be, she was going to buy her everything that she could afford from the gift shop for when she next saw her.)

(And then she was going to come back to this giant cement place dragging Annabeth along just to make sure she got to see one of her personal favourite places.)

The walk to the road then up to the dam was more than an hour, at least. Kassandra didn't think to time it as her heart started to race the closer that they got to the monument. She couldn't help being excited by the prospect of sightseeing -- especially when it was in honour of Annabeth.

There was a cold breeze at the top of the dam. On one side a dangerous drop like a giant deadly slide, the other a big lake spread surrounded by desert mountains. It was a pretty lake, though, even in winter where the water was likely freezing.

"There's a snack bar in the visitor center," Thalia says.

"You've been here before?" Percy asks.

"Once. To see the guardians." She pointed to the far end of the dam. Carved into the side of the cliff was a little plaza with two big bronze statues. They looked kind of like Oscar statues with wings.

"They were dedicated to Zeus when the dam was built," Thalia says. "A gift from Athena."

Tourists surround the statues feet in large crowds.

"What are they doing?" Percy asks.

Thalia rolls her eyes. "It's a mortal thing. They seem to think that rubbing the toes is good luck."

Kassandra chuckles lightly. "Like rubbing the buddha belly?" she asks. "You think it's any true?"

"The statues are sacred to Zeus but I don't think there's anything special about them."

"When you were here last, did they talk to you or anything?"

Thalia's expression darkened. "No. They don't do anything. They're just big metal statues."

She sighs and shakes her head. It was typical that the gods would have their children go out of their way to see something connected to them, sacred to them, and then not respond in the slightest.

"Let us find the dam snack bar," Zoe says. "We should eat while we can."

Grover cracked a smile. "The dam snack bar?"

Zoe blinks. "Yes. What is funny?"

"Nothing," Grover says, trying to keep a straight face. "I could use some dam french fries."

Even Thalia smiled at that. "And I need to use the dam restroom."

Kassandra rolled her eyes at them, smiling beaming and soft laughter bubbling from her throat. "Well, I'm going to rub the dam toes and then hit the dam gift shop."

Percy snorted, laughing brightly.

"Oh," Thalia snickers. "I want to buy a dam t-shirt."

"I'll grab you all a dam souvenir if you want?" she offers, grinning to herself as Zoe looks between them in bewilderment.

"I do not understand."

She snorts unattractively, gasping as she clutched her side. Thalia was with her, the daughter of Zeus putting a hand to her shoulder as she leans back, facing the sky as she laughs.

Percy stops laughing, sobering quickly as he looks to the water. Grover made a face, saying, "Did I just hear a cow?"

"A dam cow?" Thalia asks.

"No," Grover says. "I'm serious."

Kassandra slowly leans back up, catching her breath as she listens carefully. "I don't hear anything," she says. "Are you okay, Percy?"

He nods. "Yeah, you guys go on ahead."

"What's wrong?" Grover asks.

"Nothing," he says. "I... I just need a minute. To think."

She hesitates even after the others start to go, watching him a moment longer as he looked between her and the water below. Her hand flits at her side, hovering at her flute as if it could give her some kind of answer.

"You good, Perce?" she asks him again, searching him carefully.

"Yeah, Kass, it's nothing to worry about," he says, and she believes him, even if she can hear the lie.

"Great. I'll go rub some toes and head to the gift shop," she tells him.

Making her way to the front of the tightly packed crowd, Kassandra faces the looming statues and pokes at the shiny toes -- rubbing them with the tips of her fingers.

(It felt very silly and very cathartic at the same time. Toes were no measure of luck or good graces to the gods. It was all a very mortal feeling, a very humbling feeling as she brushed the shine and let herself have the mortal hope that the statues, regardless of their importance to a god, would bless her with the luck that only a mortal could seek.)

(Another part of her whispered that it was a nice strike against her father, after shattering a bust of his face, she was here sucking up to something sacred to Zeus, to the father that wasn't too great to any of his children.)

Keep an eye on us, or something, I guess, Kassandra asks, offering it up in a haphazard prayer. She didn't put much stock in it, not when she already knew she was going to at least make it to the end of the quest.

Pushing her way out of the small crowd, she searches for Percy of any of the others. Not finding them, Kassandra heads inside to the museum entrance, following the signs to the shop with little difficulty -- only stopping once to ask a nice tour guide with long black hair and tinted glasses for help when the words got a bit too jumbled up on the sign for her.

(Kassandra could read, okay, she wasn't an idiot, but she was just better at reading music than anything else. Words on signs were always the worst somehow. They had strange fonts and were often different colours that she struggled with a bit more.)

(And really, she was in too much of a hurry to try and figure it out on her own. She just wanted to buy her stuff, do a quick look around, and then get out of here.)

The others weren't far from where she was, she could hear the chatter of people and the smell of the food. She didn't need to look to know that they were there. She just knew that when she was done, she would be able to find the snack bar easily.

As soon as she was surrounded by Hoover dam merchandise, she dug out her wallet from the depths of her bag and reassured herself of how much money she had before she began to grab an assortment of memorabilia off the shelves -- something for everyone, her parents, Sally, a few for her siblings, and a ton for Annabeth. She had enough to saved to buy whatever she wanted. It was almost Christmas anyway.

With everything secured safely in her bag, with nothing in there that could actually break, Kassandra, took extra care to wrap everything in her extra clothes and stuffing it to the bottom.

The same tour guide from before was near the exit of the gift shop when she came out, watching her from behind tinted glasses.

"You bought a lot of things for yourself," she notes.

She eyes the lady as she nods. There wasn't anything that felt off about her. She didn't get the sense that she was some monster. "They're for my friends and family," she says.

"That's very kind, Kassandra," the woman says, nodding slightly. "I am certain that they will appreciate it."

Freezing, she looks at the woman closely, searching her face as she grabs at her flute, unclasping it from her hip and holding it like a baton to wield. "Who..." she trails off, finding the familiarity once she looked close enough. "I'm sorry."

The goddess's smile is small, rueful, and full of regality that strikes her to the core with her beauty. She looked a little like Aphrodite did and a lot like Annabeth, but somehow much more beautiful.

"Your choice in weapon is quite unique," Athena says.

"The flute was made from a mixture of celestial bronze and mortal metal," she tells honestly. "A child of Hephaestus made it for me with great care. Balanced with enough trace mortal metal that it'll be effective to hit them if I should ever need to, but never enough to hurt them as it does monsters if I need it. It does work on stunning mortals, however, but that is more the use of the sound."

"It is very interesting a choice," she replies as if she already knew and was just humouring her.

(She probably was and wasn't that a wonderful tick to her reason to hate the gods. Why lure her into a conversation just so that she could be treated as a child? It wasn't her fault that she hadn't lived thousands of years or was the gods damned goddess of wisdom.)

(Kassandra decided right then that she didn't like Annabeth's mom. She didn't like any of the gods, but that wasn't the point.)

"Well, I should probably get back to my friends."

"She'll like the t-shirt," the goddess says, stood still as she watches Kassandra begin to walk away.

Kassandra looks back, eyeing Athena. "I know she will."

She makes her way to the snack bar.

Her friends were nowhere to be seen. Her brow furrows with disbelief. She glanced around, only finding the abandoned bits of fries, burritos and a food fight.

Jumping on the ball of her feet, she took in the mess of food, heart racing as she spotted the pile bones that were already starting to reform. She cursed and grabbed the nearest person by the front of their shirt.

It was a girl with fiery curly orange hair and a smattering of freckles across her cheeks. She was sorta cute.

"Have you seen a group of four teens? They'd have started the food fight?"

The girl quickly shakes her head, pushing Kassandra away. "No, I haven't seen them, but I think they went down those stairs."

"You think?" she demands.

"That's where the skeletons were heading."

Pausing for a moment, she does a once over of the mortal. "You saw the skeletons?"

"Of course I did. I don't know how no one else hasn't seen them," the girl says.

Kassandra scoffs. "Because mortals are blind and stupid. You aren't, apparently. Thanks, though," she says.

She runs, not giving the girl the chance to answer, she bats the reforming skeletons with her flute as she passes, shoving people out of the way as she skips down the stairs.

Coming out onto the dam from before, she skids to a stop at the open, wide space that had been cleared as mortals ran from the shooting skeletons that fired at the two rising bronze angel statues.

They were flying up, the shadow being cast over her. Her friends were held by the angels as they ascended.

Gripping her flute tighter in hand, she squares her shoulders as she holds it in front her and forced air into her lungs steadily. The skeletons were beginning to turn, focusing on her now that the others were no longer targets.

She steps forward, foot planting in the side of a ribcage that cracks under the force and knocks the spartoi away from her. She snaps her flute out in an arc, smacking clear into a skull.

"Kassandra!"

Head tilting, she focuses on the sound of Percy calling her growing closer, not yet looking away from the monsters.

"Kass! Jump!" she snaps her head up, searching for him as she backs away, dodging between the few tourists that were stupid enough to stay and using them as shields.

"Are you crazy?" She shrieks, her fist landing clear into where a nose would be. The head creaks and breaks off from the force, the body dropping as it bent to search for its skull.

"Trust me!" he yells. "We'll catch you!"

Looking down the deadly drop, she swallows thickly. She would go splat if he missed her.

But the spartoi couldn't be killed and maybe, just maybe, this is what Athena had been playing at when she tried to keep her from joining her friends for no reason.

Drawing in a deep breath, Kassandra pushed forward in a sprint and launched over the edge.

For a moment there was a burst of air and a swooping feeling in her stomach as it dropped, a terrifying moment where she free fell as if she was simply skydiving.

Then she realized that the river wasn't anywhere close, even if she could manage to survive that fall, and that the concrete was impossibly close and curved and was coming at her fast.

Hands caught her with a grunt, gripping her wrist in a bruising grip as more grabbed her by the back of her shirt. She wrapped her legs around Percy's like she was a monkey and clung to him as if he would drop her at any moment.

"Told you we would catch you," he says breathlessly.

"This isn't what I thought you meant!" She cries, eyes squeezed tight. "You're going to drop me for sure!"

"Get onto my feet girl, and try to hold on for yourself," someone else says and she had no choice but to assume that it was the bronze angel that was much less of a statue now that it flew.

Kassandra resisted the urge to pinch Percy for his stupid idea just in case he dropped her. "Oh, great. At least if I fall, it's my own fault now."

"Just don't let go on purpose," Percy teased with a groan, slowly beginning to lower her arms so she could maneuver herself to latched on.

"Yeah, we'll see how I feel when I get to the feet."

☼ ☼ ☼

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right,,, so again,,, athena might be ooc but also sorta not? the way i see it is that gods act dif with each person especially depending on their motives. the way i see it it makes sense.

on the other hand,,, kassandra felt ooc so idk?? we'll see how things go

unedited

written: 2021-02-19

posted: 2021-04-19