#i tentatively pull up to the function with a little flag that says eleven in tiny lettering

[jflashandclash]

Attrition of Peace

Thirty-Nine: Ajax

Important Questions for Ethics and How the Universe Works

  “So, do you think Reyna is deflowering Axel or do you think she’s giving him a fast pass to visit Luke?” Jack asked when one of the Romans took Connor into their barracks.

Pax wanted to follow after Connor, but the look the Roman gave him was clear: come near me or mine and I’ll scoop your eyes out with a ½ teaspoon. At least, that’s the specific fraction for the cooking utensil that Pax interpreted through his skilled glare-reading.

And, despite all the wanting-Axel-to-bang-his-not-girlfriend going on, Pax was still terrified of her overtly dedicated followers that wanted to kill him.

Calex and Kahale were stationed a few yards away, outside the tent, to make sure no one bothered Axel and Reyna. They gave each other a worried glance at a clatter and snarl from inside. The light inside dimmed and twisted turquoise; Pax knew Axel was using magic. Fear magic: good for mood lighting. 

Calex and Kahale looked really nervous about their decision.

If Pax was closer, he would have assured them, it’s okay. They just flirt weird.    

Alabaster sighed as he and Lou Ellen walked over from the caution tape. He’d been dragging the dead from the strawberry field while Kally helped fix up the wounds Phobetor had given Lou Ellen in prior bouts.

“Your interest in everyone’s sex life is disturbing,” Alabaster told Jack, wiping the blood off his hands with a Wet One sanitizer wipe.

Alabaster was pale—well, he always looked like he took tanning advice from an empousa—but he was paler than normal. Pax could tell from the way Alabaster’s fingers shook that he was taking this as well as a blender to the face. None of the Romans were jeering at them anymore, but their wariness and suspicion were noticeable. And Pax was waiting for someone to make a comment to Alabaster that would lead Pax and Kally to kicking the Tartarus out of that person.

Pax wanted to give Alabaster a hug; he could tell the child of magic needed encouragement. But he also knew how much a hug would humiliate Alabaster. He would never want to show weakness in front of the Romans.

Unlike Pax, who had been sobbing over Connor. Now that his friend from Cabin Eleven was gone, he turned his attention to Matthias. The Nord was muttering in his sleep, his teeth chattering. Pax took the Peace, Love, and Reese’s Sticks flag they’d made and draped it over the mechanic’s body. He couldn’t read lettering, but Kally had assured him that’s what she wrote after all his pestering and guilting.

As Lou Ellen came even with them, her green eyes widened with glee. “Wooh—a talking head. How did you guys pull this one off? A combo of using a healer of Apollo and some good ol’ fashion necromancy?”

           Alabaster went to shake his head, but paused. He glanced over to where Kally was putting Clovis’ arm in a sling. The child of Hynos was out cold in a sleeping bag, probably high-fiving his dad in the dream world.

           Kally noticed them, blushed, and gave a tiny wave. Then her brow furrowed in confusion, probably because of the uncomfortable curiosity in Alabaster’s gaze. After seeing a few of his obsessive experiments, Pax figured she’d get used to his absent-minded mania.

           Though, Pax wasn’t sure if Alabaster’s interest involved the desire to replicate Jack’s condition—was that considered a condition? Or more a change in life style?—or if Alabaster wanted to end it, for the good of humanity and to end the irritation of being the caretaker of a virile and incessantly talking head.

           “Ah, children of Hecate,” Jack cooed, “Never bothered by the severed limbs of necromancy. Just my interest in their sex life.”

           Probably the latter.

           Pax, for one, was happy to have Jack back.

           He glanced over to Lou Ellen. When Pax had first gotten to camp, he’d been so busy terrorizing people with Cabin Eleven and gathering supplies to defeat Santiago (and doing Eris’ evil bidding) that he didn’t pay much attention to the Hecate cabin counselor. She had curling brunette hair and green eyes, as stunning as Alabaster’s and Lamia’s.

           Then, something clicked. “Didn’t you say something about Hecate’s babes up there?” Pax asked.

           “Yea,” she said, bending her middle and ring finger to her thumb to make the rock on symbol. “Bitches and witches.”

           A sharp pain shot through Pax’s forehead.

           He, Jack, Alabaster, and Lou Ellen all cried in pain.

           “Someone altered our memories,” Alabaster hissed, clutching his head.

           “Are you okay?!”

           When Pax managed to blink away his tears, he found Kally touching his shoulder in concern. There were blood flecks on her glasses and the sweater he and Axel loaned her was stained red at the cuff. It looked like Kally had given him permission to draw on her face, between the red-rims around her eyes, and the dark circles surrounding them. Though, Pax would have added a sunflower drawing to balance out the darkness.

           There was a Roman with Kally, one with lighter, leather armor, and a white packet with a caduceus symbol.

           Were these the only two healers here other than Jack? Did that mean… did that mean Kally was sorting through fifty percent of the dead and injured campers?

           Pax thought about the little factory line of corpses that Alabaster and Lou Ellen dragged over. Sure. They’d been on adventures and she watched Joey get incinerated in flames, but…

           “Have you seen a dead body before? Or had to pronounce someone no-longer-functional?” Pax asked. She hadn’t been on the side of the house with Will or… “This doesn’t count.” Pax gestured to where he’d pinned Jack’s hair to his utility belt.

           Kally tightened her grip on his shoulder.

           Pax had so many people he needed to give hugs to today.

           Before he could wrap his arms around her, the Roman medic took a step towards them. Kally released Pax’s arm and moved away to give the Roman room.

           “I can’t believe they let you heal the head of the Hermes barracks,” he snapped at Pax’s beltline.

           “Cabin,” Kally corrected softly.

           “Kleptocracy,” Pax suggested.[1]

           Despite his clear irritation with the Roman, Alabaster glanced at Pax in surprise.

           Pax waggled his eyebrows at Alabaster in the best I-know-smart-words-too-and-I-know-you-find-smart-words-hot expression he could make.

           “This is Ric Bardking—” Kally started to introduce.

           Jack rolled his eyes. “Pft, better than you could have healed him. Ajax explained the severity of the situation and why it was dire—that Connor Stoll needed to live.”

           Pax nodded. “He needs to take care of my chinchilla.”

           “You don’t belong here, abomination,” the Roman hissed at Pax’s beltline.

           Pax needed a way to remind himself that people were talking to Jack and not Pax’s family jewels, especially since “abomination” was definitely not one of his nicknames for them. Maybe he should hold Jack up for people to talk to him? Would that seem too… threatening? What if Jack started making faces that Pax couldn’t see?

           “What’s the matter, Ol’ Sissy? Are we too dark for your rating system?” Jack’s gargling, metal-clank of a cackle screeched their ears. “Does the honesty of our situations and character make you uncomfortable?” If Jack had hands or a heart, Pax knew Jack would put a hand to his heart and stare off in the distance. “Are we not a good enough conduit for social justice? Are—are you one of my siblings?”

           The influx in Jack’s voice changed. It trembled with eerie excitement.

           Kally went pale.

           Pax’s eyes glanced down to the Roman’s tattoo. Bardking’s sleeves were rolled up, to avoid a full blood soaking. From what Pax could tell, above the medical gloves, there was a symbol of a harp above two bars.

           He felt a knot tie in his stomach.

           “Tell me,” Jack sang softly, “Little brother—”

           “Flash,” Alabaster snarled, hovering his fingers over the collar rune on his sleeve. But the matching tattoo around Jack’s neck was only half there—the circle had been broken where his skin had been hacked. And a broken magic circle—as any fantasy nerd should know—wouldn’t work.

           Jack started to sing, “Have you ever danced with the devil—MMPH!”

           Pax pulled his sleeve over his fist and shoved it into Jack’s mouth.

           Jack grunted and gave muffled, indignant wails.

           There was a collective sigh from everyone except Lou Ellen. “You know, Alabaster and I could have just convinced him there was a gag in his mouth,” she said.

           “Do you wanna try and do that now?” Kally asked, looking disgusted by Pax’s predicament. After this, Pax would really need to get Jack to brush his—Pax would really need to brush Jack’s teeth for him. No one should have to have Pax’s hand in their mouth.

           “No,” Lou Ellen said cheerfully, “I’d rather see Ajax try to sanitize his hand later. I’m going to go check on Miranda and steal her nose before she wakes up.”

           Pax almost went to wave Lou Ellen off, but had to reremember his dominate hand was in Jack’s mouth. By the time he was ready to wave, she had already skipped away.

           Kally nudged Bardking’s shoulder. “Hey,” she said. Despite blushing in her attempt to be authoritarian, she tried to sound firm. “These guys are good guys.” She nodded to Alabaster and Pax. Merry would have been proud—Kally was sounding less like a doormat each day.

           “Aw, you didn’t even hesitate to nod at me, Cyclops!” Pax cheered.

           “I’m sorry,” Bardking grumbled. He took a deep breath in, like it was painful, and turned his full attention to Alabaster. “What you did for us was—”

           “I didn’t do it for you,” Alabaster cut him off. There was a hint of panic in his voice. Pax could tell Alabaster still didn’t know what to think of helping: if he should feel disgusted with himself for aiding who he did or relieved he’d saved lives.

           Either way, Bardking scowled at his response. “Regardless of your intention—”

           “Alabaster,” Kally cut into Bardking’s exquisite use of tact. She sounded rushed and nervous. “Would you be willing to go back in with Lou Ellen to pull out more campers? No one else can go in yet, and we were discussing the campers might be safer out here, under the Romans’ protection—”

           Pax could see Alabaster’s fingers go white as he clenched his Cloven Terror helm. It was one thing when Alabaster went in there out of instinct—to stop a thug from forcing his will onto others—but another when he had to make a conscious decision, especially when being asked by a hot Greek like Kally.

           Before this could degrade into a fight about gods, justice, the universe, and other boring, unimportant stuff, Pax removed his hand from Jack’s mouth, grabbed the ends of Alabaster’s sleeve, and dragged him further along the caution tape, away from Kally and Bardking.

           “Ajax!” Kally started to call.

           “Wait—I have vital intel about Phobetor that I need to give Alabaster before he goes in there—it could be the difference between the safety or destruction of the camp and its cute bunnies!” Pax called over his shoulder.

           Alabaster stumbled along without resistance. When they were a few yards from the others and it became apparent Kally and Bardking weren’t going to follow them, Alabaster reached a hand forward. Pax assumed Alabaster was going to scold Pax, so was stunned when Alabaster squeezed Pax’s hand and whispered, “Thank you, Ajax.”

           Pax felt his heart do back-flip, pull out a giant foam finger, and sprint around his ribcage in a victory lap.  

           Just as quick, Alabaster pulled his hand away.

           “He really likes monologues,” Pax blurted.

           “Excuse me?” Alabaster slowed their walking pace and raised an exhausted eyebrow at Pax. From the way his shoulders sagged, Pax could tell who needed to curl up with the weasels and Harvey after this.

           “That’s an important piece of intel about Phobetor. You can’t get that intel everywhere, you know,” Pax said. His legs were shaking. Maybe they both needed to curl up with the weasels. Pax could feel his cheeks redden, but remembered how angry Alabaster had been when Pax snuck into his room.

           “Is that why you brought me out here?” Alabaster asked. In the glare of the floodlights, those emerald Hecate eyes seemed to glow.

           Pax glanced around them. Most of the Romans were further back in the strawberry field, attending to the bodies Alabaster and Lou Ellen had pulled over. Lou Ellen was running back through the strawberry fields, presumably to retrieve more people. Ahead of them, Pax was pleased to spot an easy excuse.

           Thalia, Euna, and some blonde huntress were talking ahead. Judging from their posture, they must have just met up. It looked like the blonde huntress was giving a report. Euna waited patiently to the side, staring into the strawberry fields.

           “No,” Pax said definitively. He reached back over to take Alabaster’s sleeve again, wishing it was his hand. “I wanted to eavesdrop on Euna and Thalia’s conversation and make it look casual. Pretend we’re talking about battles or how hot Kally is or something.”

           Alabaster smiled softly and Pax felt his insides melt, like the times Pax forgot his Reese’s Sticks in the Paxmobile over summers and Axel clobbered him for the mess afterwards. He hadn’t seen Alabaster smile like that in so long.

           Pax couldn’t help Alabaster with his smart-person ethical problems with Camp Half-Blood… but… “Where’s Claymore?” he asked.

           “In my pocket—No, he’s not an action figure.”

           Pax had been about to gasp in excitement. Now, Pax’s hopes for a grumpy, middle-aged action figure (with motion-activated scathing remarks) were dashed before they could fully form. “Should you talk to Claymore about this?”

           They slowed to a shuffle, and Pax remembered following Alabaster around Camp Othrys when they were collecting samples off of monsters for Alabaster’s hexes. Pax had crafted many carrying bags so he could always keep one hand free to hold Alabaster’s sleeve. Alabaster’s freckled face would crunch with calculation, the same way it did now, as he used his spare hand to review a list of ingredients he needed.

           “Probably. He hates being locked away as a Mist card for too long anyway,” Alabaster mused.

           Despite their slow pace, they were almost to the two huntresses and the daughter of Demeter.  

           Pax puffed up and popped his cheeks. He was normally so good at blurting stuff he wasn’t supposed to. Now that he really needed to, all he could think about was that time Morpheus decided to teach everyone how to disco and was sad half the dancers were asleep by the end.

           All he wanted to do was explain Lamia. To tell Alabaster about the time he’d accidentally—for once actually accidentally—eavesdropped on Jack and Luke’s conversation when he went to ask Jack for advice.

           “She’ll try to kill Alabaster when Ajax tells her that he didn’t mean this as some creepy courtship.”

           “We can’t have the two most powerful children of Hecate fighting over a Mayan brat, Jack.”

           “My boys will only dally for whom their hearts and loins yearn. Ajax is thirteen. He’s too young for that crazy monster bitch. And, Alabaster is a big kid. He can take care of himself.”

           “Not if any children of Hecate side with Lamia. Besides, have you forgotten Ajax’s current situation? Starting a war between two useful resources certainly sounds like something a double crossing spy would do.”

           Pax had hated it. He hated it when Lamia dressed him in children’s clothing that were four thousand years out of mode and when she called him Demetrius or Altheia. The names of her dead children. Something… something about it reminded him of Santiago shoving him into that horrible burgundy dress shirt and slicking back his hair.

           He’d especially hated the look on Alabaster’s face when Alabaster blasted him out of the laboratory on hearing everything. Well, he hated being blasted. Being blasted hurt.

           Maybe, had he told Alabaster then, Alabaster would have stayed. Maybe the Battle of Mount Othrys wouldn’t have been such a disaster. Maybe Alabaster wouldn’t have let Flynn—

           “Do you remember that time Morpheus tried to teach Axel how to disco?” Pax blurted. More than his legs were shaking now. He could imagine the next iteration of man that the gods would make. Not out of wood or clay. Jell-O people.

           “What?” Alabaster asked with a quiet laugh. “I’m not sure water from the Lethe River could cleanse that from my mind, but that’s not what you were going to say.”

           Pax puffed up his cheeks and popped them again. Alabaster ought to write a Care Guide for the Annoying Pax for Kally with how well this boy could read him. Not that it would matter soon.

They’d stopped walking.

           Pax enlaced his fingers with Alabaster’s. “We’re still friends, right?” Pax asked.

           Alabaster pinched the bridge of his nose with his free hand. “You’re as annoying, ill-timed, and tactless as ever,” he muttered. Alabaster sidestepped closer to him, so the Romans couldn’t see their hands. Pax held his breath, thinking maybe he could find some loop in the laws of physics to keep Alabaster’s arm pressed against his shoulder forever.

He could feel Alabaster’s reluctance to speak. “Jack told me everything when I found him.” He nodded to Pax’s belt.

           By now, Pax could tune out Jack’s humming and had completely forgotten there was another person with them. Considering how loud Jack usually was, his surrogate father’s tune was quiet; Pax almost couldn’t recognize Can You Feel the Love Tonight?

           “But, Jack’s mind was also even worse after Tartarus. And he’d say or do anything for you and Axel…”

           Jack made a, “Mm-hm,” of affirmation before continuing to hum.

           “Ah,” was all Pax could say.

           “I didn’t know if what he said was true until I saw you. And even then… I’m still pissed at you for not telling me.” Alabaster’s grip became uncomfortably tight on Pax’s hand. “I would have never thought you were Rome’s spy had you told me. It made me think—if you could keep Lamia from me—what else could you lie about.”[2]

           Pax wanted to give Jack a hug, though that might be kinda… gross currently. He’d made stuff way easier for the two of them. Pax felt his eyes water when Alabaster relaxed his grip. What he really wanted to do was give Alabaster a hug. He didn’t hate him! That fact alone was enough to warrant a party, complete with moon bounce.

           “But yea, we’re still friends.” Alabaster’s gaze narrowed as he clarified, “Just friends… Now let go of my hand.”

           Pax grinned at him. “No.”

           Alabaster touched the fire rune on his sleeve.

           “You never had time to recharge it,” Pax teased, “I checked.”

           Alabaster’s eyes widened, staring over Pax’s shoulder. “Ajax.”

           “Witch Boy, I’m the master of diversion. Do you really think I’ll fall for—”

           “Phobetor is back.”

           And, judging by the way Alabaster gestured, was standing right behind Pax.

           “Cho…” Pax grumbled.

 Thank you for reading! :D I hope everyone is having an awesome winter break and fantastic holidays if you’re celebrating!

Footnotes:

[1] Rule by thieves.

[2] Ajax made a natural scapegoat for Rome’s actual spy, since he pretty much lives to act dodgy. More about this and why people suspected him in book 5! Shameless plug! Stay tuned!