#lizzy white

[tsarisfanfiction]

Butterfly Effect

Fandom: Trials of Apollo Rating: Gen Genre: Family/Angst Characters: Apollo, Lee, Michael, Will Being the god of prophecy, Apollo saw many things, including the futures that could never come to pass. TOApril day 18 - In The Next Lifetime, although I misremembered it as In Another Lifetime, so that's actually what I went with. Close enough, right?

The thing with being the god of prophecy was that Apollo saw things.  Many things, many futures, all delicately tangled together and fragile enough to be altered beyond recognition by the smallest, most insignificant-seeming thing.  Mortals called it the Butterfly Effect, the concept that even the simple flutter of a butterfly’s wings could escalate into something so extreme it was unrecognisable from its original form.

The rise of Kronos was infinitely more disruptive than a single butterfly could ever hope to be, and yes, Apollo had seen plenty of futures to do with that, too, possibilities where Kronos had rose and won, where he’d risen and lost, where exactly what had happened had come to pass.  Still, it had been a shift in the Fates’ strings that was easily trackable and even more easily curseable.

Apollo had seen many futures that would never happen, and some of those came with relief, while others he grieved with every molecule of his essence, because they had been good futures, so much better than the way the future had evolved so far.  It hurt to think about them, but he also revelled in them, tearing his heart apart as his perfect recall showed them to him again and again – the what could have beens.  The what should have beens, if Kronos hadn’t risen, if a thousand butterflies hadn’t flapped their wings in those exact spots and collided into a hurricane that attempted to destroy the world.

Just because it had failed in that didn’t mean it hadn’t failed in destroying many, many other things in the process.  Worse futures, yes, but also better ones, and there were times when Apollo couldn’t help but wallow, just for a while.

“No, no, you’re not stupid.”  Lee smiled at the young child sitting the other side of the desk.  His suit jacket fit him perfectly, or would have done if he’d been wearing it, but instead it was thrown carelessly over the back of a chair, and the tie that was supposed to be snug in the hollow of his throat was loose and floating down somewhere near the second button of his shirt.  “It’s the letters that are stupid.  They never stay still for me – do they keep moving for you, too?”

The child – seven or eight years old, perhaps, and looking like they were a single wrong word away from either bursting into tears or storming out of the room in a screaming fit – visibly faltered, looking up at Lee with wide, startled eyes.

“They move for you, too?” they asked, and there was wonder in their voice; they were too young to have worked out how to try and hide their emotions, and Apollo was glad for that, because young children shouldn’t know how to hide emotions.

Nor should older children, but life always collected its dues eventually.

“They do,” Lee confirmed.  “How about we try a few tricks to get them to behave a bit?  It won’t be easy, but I bet you’re more stubborn than the letters are.”

Clearly, those were the magic words, because the rest of the hostility drained away from the child, to be replaced with determination.  Lee had always been good with children, had always known exactly what to say to make them feel like he was with them, that they weren’t stupid for whatever emotions they were feeling at the time.

He made a good teacher.

He would have made a good teacher, if he hadn’t died when butterflies created hurricanes and the result was a giant’s club caving in the skull of Apollo’s son, sending him straight to the Underworld for the rest of his existence.

That was the future-that-had-happened that Apollo didn’t like to dwell on, if he could help it.  Not when there were what-ifs that were so, so much better, for all that they hurt in their impossibility.

“Get back here, you little shit!” a man snarled, stalking towards a slightly run-down, clearly low-funded building.  A preteen, or perhaps a growth-stunted young teenager, darted inside ahead of them, breathing hard with tears running down their face and a stuffed bag on their back.  Probably not homeless, but desperate nonetheless, if they were fleeing towards child services.

The child got in just fine, running straight to a desk and gasping out pleas for help even as they nervously looked back over their shoulder.  Lizzie stood up immediately, ushering them deeper inside the building and sending a single, poisonous look over her shoulder at the angry man that was so clearly a threat.  “You’re not welcome here,” she said.  “Leave.”

“Don’t you know who I am?” the man roared, but Lizzy didn’t give him any more of her attention, completely blanking the intruder as she coaxed the scared child into an office, out of sight.  She didn’t need to.

“We don’t give a shit,” Michael said, initially overlooked in the presence of his taller, more colourful sister but dragging the man’s attention to him with ease.  “You could be the fucking king of England for all I care.  You’re not fucking welcome here.”  Lizzy had been dressed for comfort, oozing vibes of big sister or cool aunt.  Michael was dressed for fighting.

A mortal wouldn’t recognise it, straight away, although if they were paying attention they might have noticed that he was carrying.  He wasn’t dressed like a typical security guard, but despite being barely taller than the child they were protecting, he carried himself with all the confidence of someone who knew who was going to win in a fight – and that it wasn’t their opponent.  To someone familiar with demigods, though, the clothing was clearly an outfit that wouldn’t get in his way if he had to move quickly, or agilely.

The man getting offended at his attitude was predictable.  So was Michael’s escalation, when the man got aggressive and started to storm towards him.

“Fuckers like you make me sick,” he spat, drawing a weapon.  Not a bow – concessions had to be made for the mortal world – but any ranged weapon was putty in the hands of an Apollo kid, and Michael was old enough to know which one was the best in any given situation.  Clearly, it wasn’t a gun situation, but tasers were just as effective at stopping abusers in their tracks.

Maybe if Michael had had a taser on the bridge, he could have one day reached that future, the one where he helped to protect children trying to escape their abusers the same way he’d once needed (and hadn’t got).  Maybe that would have caused another butterfly, and spared his life.  Maybe Lizzy would have survived that night, too, if she’d been closer to her younger siblings, if they’d worked together rather than apart.

Too many what-ifs.  Too many brighter futures where his children were still alive that hadn’t happened, because Kronos had risen and his children had paid the price.  Even the ones that were still alive struggled in ways they wouldn’t have done, in a different lifetime.  Apollo had seen Will sitting calmly in a paediatric ward, changing bandages and applying band-aids with children’s favourite fictional characters to insignificant boo-boos, in another future that would never happen, now.  Not with too much war trauma, too much reliance on his healing powers rather than skills to be able to sit in a mortal hospital.

Will wasn’t dead, not yet – and Apollo hoped he would live for many, many more years, that the futures where he dies a teenager wouldn’t come true – but the wars took from him, too.  He’d never be free of the demigod world, even if Apollo was still partial to the future where Will established himself as a permanent supervisory adult at Camp Half-Blood to help keep the children there alive.

Any future where the children – his, and the other demigods, and all children, actually – survived to adulthood and thrived was a good one, in Apollo’s books.

If only it actually came to pass more often.

[snjhp]

[cantmakeitonmyown]

we r all bffs tumblr girls

[kittiestarr33]

[cutiealls]

[elainiisms]

she may not be a lesbian in canon, but she is a lesbian in my heart

[repsgirlfriend]

[sofiisx]

True

[v1rginsu1cidal]

if you hold me without hurting me

You'll be the first who ever did‧₊˚ ⋅* ‧₊‧₊˚ ⋅* ‧₊

[t4rg4ry3n]

[y00v1]

3/6 for my AU story 😇😇😇

(Spoiler: it will be about Charming and Apple, also Kitty and Lizzie in background.)

[tsarisfanfiction]

Carnage

Fandom: Percy Jackson and the Olympians Rating: Teen Genre: Hurt/Comfort/Family Characters: Lee Fletcher, Lizzy White (OC), Kim Ha-Yoon (OC) "Three deaths and twenty-six mutilations," or the immediate aftermath of the chariot race from hell, as experienced by one of the youngest kids in camp. Whumptober day 3, “Make it stop". Pre-canon this time; that throwaway line in Sea of Monsters about why the chariot races were discontinued has always intrigued me, so I figured why not try and explore it in a fic?

Lee was shaking.  There were screams in his ears, some echoes from earlier that wouldn’t go away, the terror as everything went horrifically wrong, and some still shrieking now.  Pain, grief, horror.

There was blood on his hands, splattered across his face and his mouth tasted of metal and it was disgusting but worse was the knowledge that it wasn’t his.  It was someone else’s, and no amount of spitting could get rid of the taste.

Chiron was shouting orders, and Ha-Yoon, too.  Lee tried to listen, but there was so much noise and his spine kept tingling because people kept promising that things were going to be okay, that things would be alright, but no-one was believing them.

Even without the tingle of a lie, Lee wouldn’t believe them.  How could he, when there was so much blood, so much pain?

He could see the crushed head of Berta, the head counsellor of cabin six, long blond hair matted with blood and skull completely caved in.  The one grey eye visible was glassy and sightless.  She hadn’t even been in a chariot, but she’d been in the wrong place when the Ares chariot had careened into the stands and something had gone boom.

Lee was pretty certain Ramona and Xander were dead, too.  The Ares chariot had been red already, but now it was liquid-red, and there was a single limp hand visible from the wreckage.  It wasn’t attached to a wrist.

“Lee!”  Hands grabbed him and spun him around so fast he almost lost his balance.  “Lee, are you hurt?”  It was Lizzy’s voice, and Lizzy’s tell-tale splash of dark pink bangs, but all Lee could focus on were the rest of the campers moving around, and the ones that weren’t, covered in blood and too still.

Ha-Yoon was shouting in English, he realised numbly.  That felt wrong.  His head counsellor never spoke in English.

“Lee,” Lizzy said again, and her hands cupped his face, forcing her to look at him.  Her hands cupped his ears, muffling the screaming.

There was so much screaming.

He blinked up at his sister as her thumb started wiping at his face.  “Are you hurt?” she repeated.  Lee shook his head.  No, he wasn’t hurt, just his ears ringing from all the screaming.

Lizzy’s orange camp t-shirt had red on the shoulder.

“Okay, good,” she said.  “Let’s get away from here.”

She didn’t give Lee a choice, tugging on his arm until he followed her, stumbling across the wreckage of the stands.

There was so much blood.  Lee saw Gabriel kneeling down next to Marisa from cabin five, his hand faintly glowing as he sang a hymn.  The words were drowned out by her screaming, her one remaining hand struggling to free itself from Gabriel’s firm hold while the mangled remains of her right arm slowly knitted up.

Lizzy pulled him past.  “Don’t look,” she ordered.  “Look at me, Lee.  Just me.”

That was easier said than done.  Everything was carnage and Lee tripped over one of the new Aphrodite kids where she was cowering behind her head counsellor as the pink-haired girl called out to the rest of her cabin.  It sounded like a roll call.

The Aphrodite chariot had been one of the first to flip, careening into the Hephaestus chariot which had then tangled with the Hermes chariot.  Lee didn’t know what had happened to the kids in it.

He wasn’t sure he wanted to know.

The Hephaestus and Hermes chariots had exploded.

He didn’t know what had happened to those kids, either.

Under his feet, blood-splattered stone turned to red stained grass instead, and he felt Lizzy pull him against her side, burying his face in her dark pink-purple dungarees.  “Don’t look,” she repeated, but not looking meant he could just hear more.

Ha-Yoon was still yelling, sending runners to fetch ambrosia and nectar and anything else they could carry from the infirmary.  Hooves squelched into the ground, and Lee know if that was the horses or Chiron kicking and tugging at the wreckage of the chariots.

The screaming still hadn’t stopped, even though the voices were turning hoarse.

Make it stop, he begged, but he couldn’t find his voice and Lizzy was still pulling him away.  Please, someone, make it stop.

“Lizzy!” Lee heard Ha-Yoon shout.  “I need Lee over here!”  She was still speaking in English, and it sounded wrong.

Lizzy muttered something that didn’t sound happy, but Lee felt her change direction, tugging them towards their head counsellor.

“Lee’s too young for this!” she argued back as they stumbled forwards, and part of Lee wanted to rebel at that – he was nine, now! – but the world was still screaming and he just wanted it all to stop.

“Do you think I don’t know that?” Ha-Yoon snapped back.  “Give him to me.  I’ve sent Lauren and Michelle to the infirmary and I need you to go after them and make sure everything’s prepped.”

“Why don’t I take Lee-”

“I need Lee here,” Ha-Yoon cut Lizzy off.  “Lee, come here.”  Her words were short and abrupt, but she’d just switched back to Ancient Greek, and Ha-Yoon always spoke in Ancient Greek rather than English and that comforted Lee enough to peel away from Lizzy’s side and stumble across the short distance to his Korean sister.

She let him burrow against her jacket, even though the fabric was damp in places.  It wasn’t as comfortable as Lizzy.  Ha-Yoon was shorter than their sister, and Lee’s head was pressed against her shoulder rather than under her arm.  “Lee, I know this is loud and scary, but I need your help,” she said, and he tilted his chin up until he could see her face.

“Mine?” he asked, wondering what he could possibly do in the face of so much blood.  He wasn’t a healer like Mitch or Gil or Gabriel.

Ha-Yoon nodded.  “We’ve got a triage system set up and I need someone to look after the people that are hurt but not badly,” she said.  “You’re good at healing, so I need that to be you, okay?”

Lee swallowed but nodded his head.  “Okay,” he whispered.

“Thank you,” Ha-Yoon replied, her voice softening a bit.  “Wait here, okay?  I’ll send the patients over to you.”

He whimpered as she pulled away, and felt her hand squeeze his shoulder lightly.  He didn’t want to be left alone, but he knew Ha-Yoon wouldn’t leave him alone if she had a choice.

He also knew that Mitch and Gil had been in their chariot, caught in the backlash of the explosion, and that they hadn’t got up from where they’d crumpled.

Mitch and Gil were the best healers in camp.

His first patient was the new Aphrodite kid, barely injured but shaking just as much as Lee had been.  Still was.  He was pretty sure her name was Silena, and that the two of them were the youngest kids in camp.  Her head counsellor, Belinda, was with her, and had a nasty cut on her arm that Lee hadn’t seen earlier.

It was something Lee knew how to treat – kids came into the infirmary with cuts all the time, usually after sparring with Ares kids – and Belinda obediently stayed still while he dabbed at it and wrapped it up with supplies Lauren had appeared with just after Ha-Yoon left him.  Other campers came up to him, white-faced and red-stained but never with anything worse than deep cuts, and every so often Ha-Yoon came by to make sure his patients were listening to him.

Anyone who didn’t listen to Lee definitely listened to Ha-Yoon.

Eventually, the screaming died down.  There was shouting, instead, and sobbing, but it was easier to listen, and to look, when he didn’t have patients to treat.

Looking was a mistake, but Lee couldn’t help it.  Marisa’s mangled arm looked horrible even after Gabriel’s healing, and at one point he saw Gil being run up the hill towards the big house on a stretcher, leg twisted the wrong way around and white poking up out of all the red.  Mitch had stayed where he’d fallen for some time, even after Gabriel ran to him after finishing with Marisa.  When he’d finally been stretchered away, Lee had seen something dark sticking out of his chest.

Slowly, things turned less chaotic.  Most of Lee’s patients left him once he’d bandaged them up, heading for where most of the head counsellors were starting to organise clean-up.  The ones that stayed tried to help him, or comforted each other.

But things were still bad.  The lack of screaming didn’t stop the blood from being everywhere.  The less injured campers moving around while the worse patients were transported to the infirmary didn’t stop others being dead.

Lizzy didn’t come back from the infirmary, but Ha-Yoon’s brief stops got longer and longer, until he had no patients left and just her for company, wrapping an arm around his shoulders lightly.

“Time to get cleaned up,” she told him.  “And to get away from here.”  She shooed him on ahead of her, towards their cabin, and didn’t let him stop until he was in the shower, a pile of clean clothes folded outside and waiting for him.

At the sight of the faint red swirling down the drain with the water and soap bubbles, Lee sat down heavily, wrapping his arms around his knees and cried, because there had been so much noise, so much blood, and he was only nine and people were dead.

He didn’t know how long he spent in the shower when there was a knock on the door, only that at some point the hot water had turned freezing.  “Lee?”

He’d used up all the hot water.  Lee sniffled.  “Coming.”

Lizzy was waiting for him when he stumbled out, dressed in fresh clothes but unable to stop himself from snivelling.  Her top was still stained red, but her hands were so clean they almost shone.

She was holding his headphones, the ones his dad had given him in a dream a few months ago and had been on his head when he woke up.  “Do you need these?” she asked him.  Lee snivelled again and reached for them, letting them close over his ears with a satisfying snap.

The bubble of silence they wrapped him in made him wish he’d had them earlier, when everyone had been screaming and everything had been too loud.

Lizzy tapped him on the shoulder, and he turned to look at her.  She pointed at herself, and then the bathroom, then at him and his bunk, ending her pantomime with a shrug.

Lee curled in on himself a little more and nodded.  “I used up all the hot water,” he admitted, his voice the only sound that ever got past his headphones and sounding a little tinny in the silence.  “Sorry.”

Her laugh was silent, but the way she waved her hand told him she was telling him not to worry about it.  She pointed at his bunk again, and Lee did as he was told, slinking over to it and curling up under the covers, even though it was the middle of the afternoon and he knew he wouldn’t sleep.

It was quiet, and there was no blood here.

In the safe cocoon of silence and blankets, Lee could almost pretend the chariot race hadn’t happened.

Almost.

[speedyhannah]

black swan 🦢

[yungluv16]

I wish I could skinny dip inside ur mind

[vicjames555]

me too Lana, i wanna be sitting on the street n vape with someone who loves me

[earlymorninglow]

if i saw a white rabbit with a waistcoat and pocket watch running late, i'd follow him too ☁︎.𖥔 ݁ ˖