The Half Blood Magician, Part 2, ch. 3: I See an Old Not-So-Friend

After Hazel left, I went over to Camp Half-Blood. I couldn't bring myself to just go back to Lotus and wait this out- especially since according to Gaia, even the Hotel was in danger.

Instead of a friendly or helpful face, though, the first person I ran into on arrival was one I hadn't seen in what felt like a long time.

"You!" The girl I now knew as Drew Tanaka pointed at me with malice in her eyes.

"Aw, you found new clothes?" I shrugged my neon-clad shoulders. "I guess you guys can't pull off the orange like I can."

"What are you doing here?" she demanded. "Why are you allowed to be here after the destruction you caused?"

I was ready to quip back that I didn't destroy a single thread of any of their clothes, but stopped and remembered the ensuing fight. I felt really strange. At the time, the ensuing calamity had just been fun- and I'd stayed to help rebuild after, too!- but I felt... different about it now? It seemed...

I shivered. No. I was about to say 'childish'. Never. I wasn't... growing up. Never.

But still. Looking back on the incident with a certain... maturity retrospect, I had to say:

"I am genuinely sorry for getting your cabin burned down." I looked at her. "I thought we were all having a good time in that fight, but I shouldn't have brought fire into it."

Drew blinked, taken aback by my sudden apology. She recovered soon. "Well, you should say the same to the Ares and Demeter Cabins," she said.

The thing was, I already had, as I was helping deal with the aftermath. I'd even apologized to the Apollo campers when the fire damage to their cabin was much more minor in comparison to the others, barely worth noting. Ha, I thought, ''See! I haven't 'matured'! I was always able to apologize!''

''...Just not to the people I disliked. But, I am now.'' I bit the inside of my cheek to stop the train of thought.

"Whatever. There's a war effort on if you bothered to notice," she said and gestured up the hill. "Are you gonna help?"

I blanched. Those were-

"Camp Jupiter soldiers?" I asked incredulously.

"Trying to take over Camp Half Blood," she said, then muttered under her breath: "Once an imperialist state, always an imperialist state..."

I blinked at her. I'd heard people mention offhand, in my many sort-of-decades rubbing elbows with all kinds of creatures from various pantheons, that 'Western Civilization' was maybe more of a violent force than the monolith of art and culture some made it out to be. They often used that word. My respect for Drew grew. Which was more impressive considering it didn't exist at all before this conversation.

But wait. "I was just there! How could they have moved out so quickly? Hazel leaves for a few hours and the entire place goes mad?"

Drew blinked at me like I was the one going mad. "Hazel... Levesque? She and the rest of the seven heroes left the country, like, weeks ago."

I opened my mouth to argue and then remembered I... did stop in Lotus for a few hours before coming here, didn't I? I facepalmed. I've been spending so much more time in the outside world these last... how long has it been out here? Since I let Percy out, or... since I let Nico and Bianca out? I... forgot which came first.

Five years, I thought really hard. It's been about five years out here. How much time has it been for me? How. Old was I? I had been ten when I first came to Lotus. How much time have I spent in the outside world since then, most of it in the last half-decade of my... nearly ten now. Decades. Point being, I was getting used to being in the outside, time passing normally. I had forgotten the hours I spent in my bedroom would turn into days or weeks.

"Hey, how old do I look to you?"

She gave me a look. "Are you setting yourself up for an insult?"

I looked back at her, unamused. She pursed her lips when she realized I was serious.

"Uh... 14?"

My stomach lurched. I'd been ten when I first came to Lotus. I knew Lotus more intimately than anyone besides the Lotus Eaters themselves, and so I knew that though we lived unstuck from time, we did experience a certain amount of time inside. I could've aged, at most, two years on the inside for the ninety-plus I'd been sheltered from. But, not twelve. Fourteen.

I'd managed to spend two whole years outside of Lotus. I'd managed to double the amount I aged in my time. The thought made me want to curl up in my room and blast Avril Lavigne until another ninety years passed in the outside world and I could forget all of this, but that thought was immediately met with terror at the idea of everyone I knew dying before I knew what hit them. The mess of feelings evened out into something like dread. Would I outlive everyone I loved, except for the Lotus Eaters? Wait, were there people I loved out here?

I thought about it, and yeah, there were. Nico was my best friend in the whole world, and I'd thought I'd had a crush on him for a brief time before realizing he was just really important to me as a friend. Hazel was close behind on the best friend scale. Anna Hyde of the Hunters wouldn't age out of this life while I wasn't looking, and I took some comfort in that, but... even thinking about Drew, still standing in front of me, old and gray and in the ground made a pit in my stomach.

But I couldn't leave Lotus. I didn't want to die. And even if they didn't need me (which they did), I loved it there. It was my home.

"Hey, highlighter." Drew snapped her fingers in front of my face. "Are you going to help defend the Camp or not?"

"I..." I gulped. I knew my answer. I wasn't proud of it, but I had lost the gumption that made me not want to hide, made me want to come here and do something. All I could see was an invisible clock, ticking on my still-mortal body.

And so instead of an answer Drew got temporarily blinded with bright orange light, and I sat on m bed and turned up Here's To Never Growing Up.

It didn't fill me with the energy it usually did.

The Half Blood Magician, Part 2, ch. 4: I Get a Promotion