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Will Solace is an only child.
The thought of having siblings has never crossed his mind.
It has only ever been him and mama in the ever changing walls around them.
Most days his mama is only bright enough to feed him and read him a book before she falls asleep. Many of the grown ups Will knows are like that. Very dim, even if they smile when he asks them if they’re okay. Will’s own light isn’t like that.
“Tired” is the feeling that comes to mind. He knows better than to say that out loud though.
Mama says it’s because she has to work to make sure Will can be happy.
Will doesn’t understand that.
He’s happiest when she’s around. He tells her so, many times. She only ever kisses him on the forehead and calls him her little light.
Will understands that. It’s how he sees the world; as big lights and small lights that always glow. They dim, illuminate, pulse, and flicker in ways that Will can’t figure out the meaning to. Not yet, but he knows he will get it one day.
He is a light. But so is everyone else.
His mama’s light is small– no, that’s not right – it’s thin and colored a soft white, like most grown ups. Very different from Will’s own golden light. When he tells her so, she tells him it’s because his is a special light that will grow big one day.
The biggest light Will has ever seen is the one in the sky. Will wants to be that big one day too but for now he’s just a little light. His mama’s little light.
On the days that his mama’s light is too dim, Will lets her be. He doesn’t even ask her to read him a bedtime story because he doesn’t want her glow to go away. He knows that would be bad. Some of those nights there would be music in his dreams to make up for it so everything is okay.
Born to a single mother trying to make it in the music industry and no dad, Will learned quickly to be there for himself. He can brush his own teeth, eat fruits and veggies, even when they taste weird and too crunchy, and knows to change his clothes when they are dirty. It keeps his light bright. He’s great at playing by himself and his mama made sure he knew how to use the microwave and to make sure there was no metal inside cause then it would go boom!
Will is quick to make friends. He loves people and playing with anyone who’s bright enough. Sometimes he notices that he makes them brighter.
He’s made a lot of friends at parks nearby even if he never sees most of them again. They traveled a lot and he wasn’t sure if they even had a house like the ones families lived in on cartoons. But sometimes they would go to the same playground and he could know his friends longer.
He remembers a girl, not her name though. He remembered that her brother was named Aiden ‘cause he was mean to frogs and always wanted to play fight even though Will said no he didn’t want to fight. But the girl was nice to frogs so she was his friend. She could also read her ABC’s and tried to teach him even when the letters were swimming.
The last time he saw her, she fell off the monkey bars and dislocated her shoulder but it was a simple fix. She didn’t fix it herself. Will didn’t know why so he did it for her. He helped along the swelling too. Will knew it was uncomfortable to play like that. He didn’t know what was so wrong but there had been screaming and mama had not taken him back to that park again.
Will spent most of the daylight hours inside while his mama worked. She had wanted him to go to school, telling him that it was like the park with the girl who was nice to frogs. And Will had wanted to go too but it was so hard to stay bright there.
Everyone wanted him to sit still in his chair but his leg kept bouncing and the words never stopped swimming. And no he didn’t want a nap time when he was mad, he wanted to go outside in the sun to feel better but no one ever let him. Plus the teachers’ lights were always flickering and so Will didn’t like them so he didn’t listen to them.
It was all too much after two weeks when all his classmates started getting sick and Will felt like his light was going to go out and he was gonna die–
His mama pulled him out of school saying he could try again next year. It would all work out, but for now he’d have to stay inside while everyone else was still going.
Will didn’t understand but he agreed to behave.
She made sure to keep the window open for the sunlight to come in and brought him a few books to learn from while she was busy. He liked the ones with numbers more than the words. One of the books had pictures of how people work and he liked those the most even with the swimming. He liked sleeping in the warm sunlight, it was like a hug, and sometimes when he would wake up there would be more books he liked beside him. The words didn’t even swim in them.
Will doesn’t mind spending his days like that, it’s all he knows.
His mama checks on him whenever she can before she goes back to work. Sometimes she has time for a little game or to read him one of the word books. Other times she’ll show him her hands with blisters, first degree burns, and shallow cuts. When Will reaches out with his own hands he can feel the swelling in her knuckles and the tenderness in her skin. Will’s light is usually enough to fix most of it even if his mama’s light stays the same.
Nothing’s new but everything is okay, so he stays bright.
Only when the sun starts to go away again and his mama isn’t back yet, does he ever get lonely.
Will is six when he becomes the youngest child.
He was right to think that it would cost him his mama, but after first grade in public school is also deemed a fail, his mama decides that sending him to a camp for kids like him would be for the best.
Will wasn’t quite sure what she meant by that. It sounded like she had enough of him and wanted to get rid of him. (She never realizes that misunderstanding before he leaves. It will take her a couple of years of apologizing and bargaining with his soon to be very protective older siblings for their relationship to mend). But her light never flickered when she told him, so he didn’t put up a fuss.
Camp Half-Blood is less of a shock then the centaur, Chiron, was making it out to be.
Will did not know he was a demigod before being told so by the camp director but it also wasn’t like he had ever been told he was completely human either so his only reaction to the information was a “okay”.
Later he’ll be told that ambivalent acceptance - big words - was a pretty common reaction of Apollo kids at being told the news, and it just means he’s probably somewhere under their father’s knowledge domain. Knowing is just a part of him.
But in the moment, it was an odd reaction for a kid his age and it was not what the director was expecting. Will was a bit subdued, but excited, yes, but he wasn’t in any way skeptical or jumping with questions.
Will was a demigod and now he knew that, thank you mister horse man sir.
As was routine for camp, Will was quickly handed off to an older Hermes camper to be given a tour before being settled into the cabin until he was claimed.
Their light was like nothing Will had ever seen before. It looked like it’s going every which way in sharp turns while still being wispy.
He had arrived at camp in the afternoon right after lunch so they had time to waste and it was probably a smart move to go find the little boy a place to sleep before the night rush.
The Hermes cabin was already at capacity, most of the beds were double booked and the floor was already a tripping hazard of bodies and belongings.
Hannah, the teen Chiron had put in charge of him, had no clue where to place him where he wasn’t guaranteed to get trampled.
Noticing that they were about to get another addition to the cabin most of the campers were already groaning. At least no one was making threats considering Will was six.
Will had never seen so many kids crammed in a room and he wasn’t sure he liked it. He had only ever had to share a room with his mama before so this many people was overwhelming.
Most of them were older than him too, all with unfamiliar and yet bright lights within them. Some of their lights looked like Hannah’s, but none of them looked like his and mama told him there would be kids like him. Will liked making friends but this was not–
Luckily before Hannah had decided on who would be forced to give up their spot, someone else took over, which was good because the kid looked like he was about to burst into tears.
Maria, a daughter of Apollo, one of the more peculiar ones at that, came stomping over.
Not so good actually, Maria is the definition of the word “hysteria” and Hannah isn’t even trying to be insensitive, that’s a quote from one of Maria’s own brothers. The other girl terrifies her and if she terrifies her, she’ll probably traumatize the six-year-old.
But before Hannah is able to tell the other girl to get lost Maria is already grabbing Will by the shoulders.
She looks Will over from head to toe, and back to head before stopping at the boy's blue eyes and just staring.
Hannah has no idea what she’s watching.
–Their lights are the same is the first thing Will thinks. They're not exact, he doesn’t think that’s possible, but the girl is familiar and that's all he wished for.
Maria nods, and Will nods back.
“You are my brother.”
There’s a look in her golden eyes that Will will eventually learn to equate with being infallible. That is all she tells him and that’s probably all Will needs to know to willingly follow her to a group of kids, all older than him with familiar lights.
By the time dinner rolls around, Will has already been claimed by Apollo with a golden Lyre above his head.
Suddenly he has siblings, and a lot of them too.
The oldest is a sixteen-year-old Estella who was only recently made their head counselor at the end of last summer.
Will is now the youngest.
He’s nearly seven but the average child of Apollo arrives at camp when they are nearing the double digits. With a good mortal home, some can make it till their teens before the number of monsters forces dad to get them to camp.
Estella says that most summers they are the second largest cabin; dad is good about claiming them quickly. She says it with a smile on her freckled face, completely different to the way Hannah said that Hermes was the largest cabin. She says it like it could never be a bad thing, that yes, there are a lot of them but that’s not a flaw.
Her smile says we are here and that’s how it’s supposed to be.
The rest of the year it’s only two thirds of them that stay year round. Will tells her that he will stay all year too.
The certainty in his eyes makes her lips purse. Her light dims at that but it quickly flares again as she tells him with a toothy grin that he’d better enjoy the festive celebrations for her then.
It makes him giggle.
She continues her explanation of the cabin. Estella doesn’t speak to him in the high-pitch voice his teachers used to nor does she stop using big words but Will understands her just the same.
She tells him that as children of Apollo, it’s their duty to run the infirmary as they get older. Every cabin has something similar. As the Demeter cabin grow their produce, Hephaestus make their weapons, and Ares and Athena prepare them for the dangers to come, they will come, they as Apollo’s children make sure everyone is healthy enough to continue.
It’s the only constant they have; play healers or nurses, even if it isn’t their domain. Will knows it is his, even though he doesn’t say that out loud.
That their father has many domains that his children can fall under; archery, healing and diseases, music, literature, prophecy, light, protector of youths, knowledge, and more. That he’ll have a dominant domain and it’s likely that he’ll have access to more.
They have several millennia of history of what different archetypes they can embody, all unique in their own ways, and it’s now their jobs as his older siblings to help him figure out where he stands on the ability spectrum.
Estella has her music but she can also shoot a bow, and she has never been wrong on a guess.
She is also the first person to say it out loud. That they are siblings, no shared DNA, but still a family. She expects them, like every counselor before her, to be there for one another, even in the moments they can't stand one another. She makes it sound easy, like his life hadn’t just shifted on his head that day. Like everything will be okay because she is there.
His big sister.
His new cabin is still a full house but unlike the cabin from earlier, there are enough beds for all of them to have their own and the space surrounding it. Will is placed in the bunk underneath Maria’s and next to a boy with a perpetual scowl. It is the farthest bed from both the front door and the only window with a latch.
Will only came with one backpack that he quickly unpacks while Estella speaks. She doesn’t mind his split attention. His only belongings are two changes of clothes, no socks, a mickey mouse toothbrush, his favorite book, and the board game, Operation. Will packed it himself.
It’s not a lot. It’s definitely not enough for a kid of Will's age. Not for a summer stay and definitely not a year’s stay. The only one of them who had come to camp with less was Micheal and he had been homeless and halfway feral.
Unless Will had been actively pursued by monsters, there was no reason for Will to have so little. His mother had dropped him off at the fields herself, so he wasn’t haphazardly abandoned, just regularly abandoned.
There isn’t even a note. No information on allergies or other personal information.
Will is the cabin’s youngest member by a substantial gap, and after everyone comes to the conclusion that Will’s mother isn’t going to be staying in touch, it’s now all of their shared job to raise him instead.
And that’s what they do.
Will is never left alone after arriving at camp.
His new siblings are always busy. As a whole, they rise with the sun and stay active until it sets, never wasting a day.
A sunrise is like having three energy drinks every single day, from the moment dad can actually interact with them without risking their safety. They have to work it off or they would never sleep. They still need to sleep.
There’s always something for everyone to be doing; taking lessons, practicing skills to stay alive, playing games, helping out in their infirmary. There’s no reason for idleness in cabin seven. Estella assures it for all of them.
The days will go on after all.
Adding him to the routine doesn’t change that, they just bring him along.
Every cabin has their own similar yet vastly different ways to manage their days. They are technically grouped by power attributes, so necessities vary. The camp and its cabins are old, rules and routines have long been set in place.
Maybe not the Hermes cabin; they can house the children of other gods, but they can’t dictate their lives if said godly parent doesn’t agree. It’s generally why they're so chaotic.
He’s a bit too small for most camp activities. They can’t teach him to hold a sword or run the obstacle course when he’s still tripping over his own feet while walking. It’s not like the Ares campers will be picking on him just yet nor will the Hermes campers. Will’s not a threat to anyone.
But it’s best to keep the new campers close, even when they are older, so he’s told to stay close to whoever is doing the safest activity. He’s stuck with Estella and Lee a lot. They are outside though so Will is usually content to sit in the sunlight even though he is bored.
They rapidly learn to keep him in arms reach. Will’s a runner.
It was always in the same direction too.
The forest.
The forest rampaging with monsters out for their blood, Will knew they were there, at least three of them had told him so, and he always makes a break for the trees the moment they look away even for a second.
Maria is always around to thwart his more successful attempts. She jumps down from trees and rooftops to drag him back to whoever was minding him just to mock them for losing him. He’s easy to spot with his golden hair and glowing aura, how could they lose him?
She never offers to do it herself. No one asks it of her either.
It becomes a problem fast. They need to find a solution before it gets him killed.
Michael Yew was the last runner the Apollo cabin had. Going from being deaf and homeless to getting dragged into camp by a creature similar to the ones trying to kill him had left some scars. The counselor before Estella had gotten him a pair of hearing aids and a bow, the bow was what did it, and he stopped with the escape attempts.
They just need to divert Will’s attention to something else. He seems like the type of kid to hyperfocus. They’ll just find something he’ll enjoy and bank on the ADHD to keep him there.
The hunt began.
Arts & crafts isn’t it. Will stared at a blank page for twenty minutes and did nothing. The encouragement to just draw whatever he likes just stresses him out more and the page is left blank.
New options of making bracelets or paper mache figures have him completely overwhelmed to the point they just set glitter in front of him. The stuff is typically off limits; it always starts a fight that is hard to clean up, but it’s glitter. Kids love glitter.
Will did not. He was enraptured by the colors, sure, but he refuses to touch it. It looks like it would be itchy. No thank you, and he gives it to a girl from the Aphrodite group and watches the bloodshed start.
He did not mean to do that.
In the end, he finds a stick and uses it to draw a very lopsided anatomically-correct heart in the damp dirt as he toons out the screams behind him.
One of the younger Athena campers looked it over, called it lopsided, and poured her water out on his work. It was the first time Will considered fighting someone. He had a stick.
Maria took his stick before he could go through with his desire.
At some point Michael tries to teach him to shoot a bow. It’s what got him to stop trying to run away and there’s a chance it will come easy for Will, son of Apollo and all. Will was happy to try.
It is made clear that it’s not one of his talents and it would be safer for everyone involved to try again once he’s older. Or maybe never.
Michael was removed from the list of his approved minders after that. Maria was never on the list to begin with. It bums Will out, Michael is one of his favorites to spend time with because he had no idea what to do with him, and it’s funny.
Ricky, the eldest boy, gives him a toy piano for his first birthday at camp. Will uses it for three agonizing days before he forgets about its existence and he’s running for the woods once more. It was a new record but no one wanted to give him another instrument after that display.
They don’t want him in the infirmary at first.
He’s young enough to not have to learn first aid. Not yet. And most campers might be accustomed to being treated by kids their age, but it would still be a bit off-putting to be treated by a now seven-year-old.
Yes, Will will have to learn eventually, that’s being an Apollo kid, but he doesn’t have to start now.
Maria is the only one to ever let him into the building the rest of them go into. Will likes it in there even if he can’t touch anything. The rest of his siblings tell him to run along and play in the tone his mama had used once upon a time. He does so.
It’s only after the last capture the flag game of the summer that they finally give up on keeping him out.
An incident involving the newest Hermes brothers and Hephaestus cabin-made landmines leaves the Apollo cabin no choice but to treat the injured campers on the field. With the camp empty of campers, Will has to be brought along.
He’s handed off to an Aphrodite teen who got out of the carnage with just minor scrapes. After his brother's back is turned, Will gives it a second before running off into the direction of the waning lights.
He can only really fix small cuts and burns, and he knows that doing something wrong can do more harm so he sticks to what he is good at. Most of the campers humor him after the Aphrodite camper catches back up to him and doesn’t put a stop to it.
It’s cute how enthusiastic he is about wanting to help.
Lee finds him like that, helping to heal the least injured after he’s done with the major ones. He says something about Will finding his domain even though Will already knew and ruffles his hair when he’s done with the last one.
Will’s light feels very tired and his hands burn a bit but the sight of all the steady lights heading back to camp make it so that it doesn’t matter.
After a small discussion between Estella, Lee, and Maria, Will starts his training to become a healer.
He picks up the techniques fast; his practice stitches are neat by the fourth attempt, he knows when it’s better to use ambrosia instead of nectar, and he quickly memorizes their common medications and how to make them. There is only one issue and it doesn’t have to do with his skills as a healer.
Will can’t read.
He can write his own name and that's about it. Most people still read outloud to him on reflex, so he never mentions it. And his mama never had time to teach him more. He can count though.
Evelyn, the oldest when Estella isn’t around, nearly slaps herself for the oversight. They’re now half way through winter and Will, who refuses to wear a coat, should’ve been put in classes for that. Will was learning everything else in Ancient Greek but he needs English too.
Will does not like his English classes.
It’s to the point where he goes on strike against English as a whole and only speaks in Ancient Greek for the rest of the year. Evelyn has to threaten him with music lessons, Will is so bad at them, no thank you, to get him to still complete his assignments.
His siblings let him continue with his strike outside of school work though.
Will only returns to English when Estella returns for the next summer and promptly forgets he was ever on strike.
The Apollo cabin gets a new addition most summers. The moment one bunk becomes empty, though he doesn’t know why a bed is suddenly empty, no he won’t learn that till next year, there is usually someone new. It’s usually a teen who can sing, play instruments, or shoot a bow from the start.
Will is an outlier in that regard, but so is Maria who recently picked up a spear as her weapon of choice. She used to have a sword, but never a bow and her musical ability is only Opera. She actually enjoys Chiron’s music.
Michael calls her a disgrace for it, and he’s deaf and only wears his aids, his Hephaestus friend made for him, on a rare blue moon. Those two bicker often.
They reason that Will’s powers just lay on the immaterial side of the godly spectrum, and change his learning material towards that goal instead.
When he fails to pick up a weapon, Kacey teaches him how to bless their bows. When his musical skills never improve, River redirects his attention back to his healing. They don’t allow anyone to mock him for things out of his control, and he isn’t going to be made to feel bad about it.
Not on their watch.
Will is enough because he is there, a child of Apollo like the rest of them, regardless of his strengths or lack thereof. He’s their little brother and that’s what matters.
He is still the cabin’s youngest, and his new siblings baby him more than not, even though he’s been there longer. They’re annoying, he starts to try and flee them once more, someone always finds him again, but they’re familiar from the start, unlike other campers who try to baby him, so he learns to let it slide.
It’s just the way family is.
He bites the other campers though, he doesn't have to put up with them.
Will is eleven when he becomes a middle child.
The realization hits him when he’s staring at a nine-year-old Kayla and Declan as they ask him to critique their stitching practice.
It wasn’t like Will wasn’t aware that some of his siblings were younger than him now, they nagged him the most afterall, the Apollo cabin was constantly getting new members. But before now, a majority of his newer siblings had still been older than him on arrival. Will had been an outlier when he arrived at six.
He wasn’t the youngest ever though. There had been an actual baby at some point. He found it in their records.
Now he has four younger brothers and sisters.
Dad, why?
And they were starting to look up to him for guidance and he had no clue what to do. Micheal must be laughing at him right about now.
Will wishes it was a requirement for all campers to learn first aid but alas, Chiron doesn’t think it necessary and Will has no power outside of his own cabin. It’s really only the smart campers who go out of their way to learn.
He has often been approached by those campers for tips as he has some of the neatest handiwork while also being approachable even though he has no clue how to teach a skill he was probably born knowing. It has just been awkward answers of please ask Lee.
Lee’s not here now and he can’t send his siblings away as he’s pretty sure he is their minder at the moment. It also comes to mind that he does actually have to learn how to teach these skills eventually and it’s better if he starts with kids who can be corrected by a voice in their head saying “that’s not right. Tell the idiot so”.
Neither of these two are natural healers but all Apollo kids have to learn first aid at some point, and with the war coming, it is going to be bloody, they all know it, so they are going to learn now regardless of what Chiron wants.
The real reason Will hadn’t realized before that he was a middle child now was because that meant accepting the fact that more of his older siblings were now gone.
He wishes that meant they were off to college or something, but that wasn’t the case at all. Everyone plans for their futures outside of camp — there’s always a chance, and what then?—, but It’s a rare demigod that actually makes it to adulthood. And that’s only in times of peace.
Will has made peace with it. He wants to be a doctor. A real one with the degree and all, and he’s working toward it. His inevitable early death isn’t going to change that. It’s not quite optimism, but it is what life is.
Estella never made it back for her final summer. She had called. That’s the thing; she had called for some reason to tell them she was going to come back. They had waited for her, she was supposed to lead the first campfire sing-along of the summer.
She never made it. It probably had something to do with the increased monster activity before anyone realized it had meant war. Will had already been put under more supervision when leaving the campgrounds.
His fighting skills weren’t the best; he knew the basics around a knife, and everyone was pretty sure flight or fight would do the rest if he had to fight a monster out to kill him, but they weren’t going to test it, not with his life on the line.
The Apollo cabin had waited a week for her to show up before Lee was given her role. It wasn’t the first time their counselor had to be replaced on short notice, there were protocols in place for the eventuality.
The days will go on after all.
Lee was already the head medic, but Estella had wanted him to secede her as head counselor so he was put in charge. It was in her will, and so they deferred to her wish.
They continued the summer as normal, everyone's lights a little dimmer but no one spoke about the elephant in the room. Another call never came but prayers for her return continued nonetheless.
A week before that summer was over, they finally burned her shroud. One more light for her, just in case her’s was snuffed.
They had wanted to give her as much of a chance but they weren’t going to deny her her last rites. It would’ve been cruel, and she had deserved their compassion regardless of their denial.
It was the fourth shroud burning Will had been to for one of his siblings, but hers, hers had felt like the start of something.
Maria tells him that’s just part of being a demigod; just a steep uphill trek, where a boulder can crush you at any moment without care for the grief it's bound to leave in its wake, and that without the camp, they’d all be dead.
She only flickers slightly.
Michael yells at her for her insensitivity.
She reminds him that the only one of them who can lie here is him, and Will can tell when he does. Michael tells her that’s not what he meant and she knows it.
With every one of his siblings who dies, more responsibilities fall on his shoulders to take their places. Will tries not to be resentful at any of them, and does his duties to his younger siblings without complaint. They are what he has left and eventually, they will be his legacy.
Will is the legacy of all his siblings who came before him in camp.
Mortals have their own kids, businesses, even pets for legacies. As demigods, they only have each other. His older siblings had lived for him, and now he has to live for them. He is what they left behind and he plans to make them proud.
It’s the Demigod way.
He takes care of his younger siblings when the older ones can’t, and they reciprocate.
He takes them to their activities, stays on top of their schooling, and makes sure they all have clean clothes to wear. He fixes cuts and scrapes and blesses their health the moment he notices something is wrong.
Will makes sure Jessica’s epilepsy is monitored and treated, and she makes him art to hang in his bunk. He teaches Declan how to pleat his hair, and he teaches Will the wonders of hair care products. When Kayla’s bow string snaps, he shows her how to restring it, and blesses that too for good measure. She shoots the next kid to mess with him.
They are a family and that means everyone contributes. It’s the mark they will leave one day that counts.
Things started to shift after Estella’s burning.
After a quick discussion with Maria and River, Lee started to increase Will's work load in the infirmary. Someone else should be in charge of the infirmary, Lee has enough on his plate with the cabin proper.
There are enough of them for the workload to be better divided, but even then it’s clear he was grooming him to take over as head medic, even though River was older.
River had actually pulled him aside to have a heart-to-heart when she realized Will was feeling guilty for taking her spot.
She told him that it was better for important things like the infirmary to have stability. That yes, she was a great healer but so was Will. But she could do more outside of healing and wanted to. The infirmary was better off with someone like him who preferred it over everything else. If anything his age was a bonus, he would be there for longer.
It had made him feel better, and he had promised to make her proud.
They got more new siblings, few of them questioned why Lee chose him, but when they did, there was always someone there to make sure Will didn’t take it to heart. His skills spoke for themselves.
Even if one of them always had to be around to make sure the other campers weren’t asking too much of him.
Michael and Maria have the most fun putting the fear of their pointy weapons in anyone who tries to undermine him in his own infirmary, especially the Ares campers. It’s always one of them who complains the loudest when they are the ones there most often.
Will starts to work on more difficult injuries, only partly because he’s being trained to take over. Most of it is due to the greater threats outside.
Now when summer campers start arriving Will is waiting on the other side of the border everyday ready to treat the numerous injured campers. It's a recent change to protocol.
Will wishes it was never needed.
He always tries his best to heal whatever is put in front of him. From bites to impalements, he tries his best, but sometimes that’s not enough.
It always dims his light when he fails, he has one job and he messes it up, but no one lets him mope too long about the occasions.
Kayla and Maria will at least make sure he’s too busy to beat himself down for longer than necessary. Even if it means they destroy half the camp in the process.
At some point, Kacey has Luke from the Hermes cabin declared persona non grata right after he comes back from his failed quest.
The timing was awfully bad, they had burnt the shrouds earlier that evening, but it hadn’t come out of nowhere. Luke had at first asked Maria to join him in his quest. It sent her into a fit so bad she was still coming down from it when he had made it back.
Why? Will had no clue, Maria didn’t interact with anyone outside of the Apollo cabin and he was pretty sure she hadn’t even known Luke’s name, she was that self-isolating. Lee was the one Luke was friends with.
Neither of his quest mates survived. He asked someone from Demeter and Ares instead when it was clear Maria was in no place to join him.
Will had tried his best not to feel guilty for being glad that it hadn’t been Maria who had gone. None of them had been healers, they had definitely needed one, but Maria hadn’t been there so she got to live.
There’s a chance Luke saw that too. He doesn’t seem like the type to hold it against a sick girl though.
Kacey’s declaration caused a big blow up argument between them and Lee as Luke was a close friend of his, and he didn't like Kacey’s implication. Kacey hadn’t cared about implications, they didn’t want Luke anywhere near the cabin’s youngests. It was a gut feeling and they couldn’t give any other reason than it was they’re job to keep the younger ones safe. Safe from what, they did not know and it had pissed Lee off more.
The fight never left the cabin walls, Will had made sure to explain to the newer siblings that some things were for forever families’ ears only. Like how Maria was sick.
It had been how Estella had explained secrets to a younger Will. Someone who was going to stay in your life forever, even if you didn’t like them. You just had to trust them.
Kacey and Lee weren’t ones to yell but the fight had lasted a tense few weeks. They were only civil with each other when Will was around. Their lights were constantly dim and wavering at each other and it was upsetting to him so they stopped.
Kacey didn’t bother trying to get Lee away from Luke but he made sure that the rest of them were never alone with the other boy. It was the only time Lee didn’t count as approved supervision in the time Will had known him.
Kacey was the one with the sight, so the rest of them followed their lead, even if Lee was their leader.
Lee had been saddened by their choice.
Will wasn’t sure if any of the other cabins caught on to the tension at the Apollo table. Kacey tried their best to make sure it wasn’t noticeable to the Hermes cabin at the very least. They had no issue letting Will play with Cecil who was from that cabin, it was just Luke who was a problem to them. It was that kind of distrust.
In the end, Lee had acquiesced that vulnerable Apollo members would not be left alone with Luke if it made Kacey less tense. It was the best middle ground they were going to get.
Will hadn’t liked the phrasing Lee had used. “Vulnerable” and not “youngest”, had been used to include him in the group. Jessica was younger than him but she didn’t fall under “vulnerable”.
Kacey had tried to appease him by saying that Maria was also “vulnerable” and it didn’t mean he was burdensome, it just meant that he was a priority to keep safe. That did not make him feel better actually and he told Kacey so.
Will got laughed off by the older teen, but he didn’t actually feel like arguing the decision, no, not right after it finally got resolved.
The cabin was back to their usual levels of tranquility, not quiet, there were too many of them for it to ever be quiet, and he hated when it was quiet, but it was rowdy again, that was better and how it was supposed to be.
His new siblings get claimed very quickly after that though.
Luke had been made Hermes’ head counselor when his brother never showed back up to camp after going home for the winter break.
It was like dad was on Kacey’s side so they were all claimed promptly after arriving at camp. Maria never had to go get them the way she did him, but most if not all of them never had to spend a night in the Hermes cabin before there were golden lyres over their heads.
When Kayla had arrived at camp claiming that her mortal father was an archery coach, Michael, who actually had his aids in for once, had overheard and brought her to the archery arena before she could even finish her camp tour. She was claimed with her first bullseye of the session.
She’s been like a limpet to Michael ever since.
It wasn’t until Luke had gone full traitor, taking people with him, did Will feel appreciative that he was never left alone with the older boy. Thoughts of the few times Luke had tried to talk to him privately come to the forethought of his memory but no, he had never succeeded.
Will never understood Kacey's concern so he had remained willing to talk to him. Only Lee’s rules stopped him from seeking him out and he wasn’t the strongest of enforcers.
Kacey was though.
Luke had tried to congratulate Will after Lee had gone on gushing to half the camp that Will could now heal off his own power.
Will couldn’t do much outside of healing, unlike the rest of his siblings. Everyone had their unique skills and it weighed on him. So learning to heal without his dad’s help? That wasn’t something anyone else could do and they were all excited for him.
No one had thought of keeping it a secret. It was useful in a camp of accident prone demigods and there was no reason to think it would put him in danger inside the camp.
Maybe they should have kept it quiet.
Kept it as something for their forever family and no one else. It’s not like it looked different than healing with dad’s help did, still just as warm and bright. But they decided to spread the news, and Luke had approached him afterwards.
He hadn’t paid much attention to Will before that.
Luke had been at camp before Will, but he had never had to mind him. Will hadn’t spent a day in his cabin and Luke had called him a lost cause with a sword after a single session. Clarisse had taken over his training after that dejection.
She had also called him hopeless but since she was usually gruff, it had stung less coming out of her mouth.
Lee made true on his promise to Kacey and distanced their cabin to the point that it had impacted their friendship, and Luke hadn’t noticed. There was no reason for Luke to have sought him out.
But going against The Olympians means losing their protection. A child of Apollo would not be the most useful of allies then.
Their cabin's most useful skill is the magical healing. Hum a bit, and what was previously a major stab wound is now a small laceration. Truly a miracle.
Anyone could do the rest with enough practice, there were other ways to divine, magic was by all means common, and they taught archery, but actual healing? That needed their dad’s blessing to work.
Technically any demigod could heal that way, get a large group and start singing and hope nobody messes it up, but it’s harder for individuals to get Apollo’s attention when they weren’t his children. He’d have to be looking that way, and then judge the attempt worthy of his power.
Will’s singing is awful, it just is, but he is Apollo’s son so he heeds his prayers regardless. But If any of his siblings turn their backs on dad, Will doesn’t think he would continue to answer.
You need medics when you want to start a war and Will had just figured out how to take out the middleman. It’s not like he would be able to resist someone who was injured. Micheal once called him the Hippocratic Oath in living form and Will doesn’t think he was wrong.
Luke wouldn’t even have needed to try and persuade him when he could use brute force. Will can’t fight back against other demigods, it’s why Kacey and Lee had declared him “vulnerable” in the first place.
Luke knew that Will wouldn’t have fought him, even if he couldn’t persuade him, he’d just need an opening to take him.
But there was always someone to call him away.
The last time Luke had tried to have a chat with Will was the day before he fled after trying to kill Percy.
Maria had come to get him like always. She always came to get him just in time. And Luke insisted that it was important. Maria hadn’t been swayed in any way. She had faked a fit then and there. Will knew it was fake; she didn’t go blinding to look at like she normally did in a real fit. No one can manipulate their lights like that.
It had scared Luke off.
The next day, after the reveal, Will had told Lee what happened. That Luke had wanted to tell him something right before he had attempted to murder someone. Will didn’t think whatever it was was harmless.
Kacey hadn’t even been smug to learn that their gut feeling was right. Not when it meant harm had almost come to their little siblings.
Lee had still been in shock and slightly in denial that his friend, he knew Luke for years and nothing, would betray the camp but Will was scared. His little brother was terrified and Lee couldn’t fail him now. He couldn’t fix what happened but that did not matter when there was still tomorrow to get through.
When Lee looks at the other little faces in the cabin he does his best to put himself together and play the big brother.
Soon Will gets confined to camp.
It’s part of a new cabin rule that only really seems to apply to him. Will found it highly unfair and when he complained about it, Kacey tells him that fairness didn’t matter in war, his safety did.
It was awful to hear.
And Will knows that Jessica would like it if the rule applied to her, and he wishes it did too but that is not what happened.
Nothing has even happened quite yet, and the Apollo cabin is already preparing for the war to be ugly. They are medics first and foremost, preparing for the worst is part of the job, but still it shouldn’t have had to come to this.
They decide on Will.
Will is going to see the war till the end, even if they don’t win. It won’t be his choice. His siblings will insure it, even if it’s just Will who remains.
He hates the idea of it, and he wishes he didn’t know why.
It isn’t fair.
The rule technically gets set in place right after Luke disappears but the wording goes through a few changes before it is the Rule it is now that they know exactly what kind of war it’s going to be.
It’s not quite a civil war but it's damn near close; the enemy gods and monsters didn’t matter, someone else has the job to take care of them, not them, they were the healers, and archers were for backup and support, but they were going to end up fighting each other, demigods, and they’re going to need their healers and–
The fact that Luke had wanted to get to Will before he even left camp makes his siblings paranoid that he will try the same out of camp. No one is willing to give that traitor the chance.
In Maria’s words, Will was the best healer they had and he was close to defenseless.
Will tried not to be too offended at his sister’s choice of words, it was the truth.
Healers like him are born for a purpose. A warning from the Fates to prepare. They were the children of the god of Prophecy; they understood more than most when the signs were there. They weren’t going to pretend like they didn’t see it.
It did mean that his mama’s “court approved visitation”, there was no court, only Michael and Kacey, time was canceled for the foreseeable future. There hadn’t been a discussion, Michael had just called up his mama to inform her. He hadn’t given her an explanation, citing that “it wasn’t something a mortal needed to know and it’s not like she was that active in Will’s life anyways”.
Like usual the call ended with both of them screaming into the phone.
Will hadn’t even threatened to punch his brother. His light felt like it was near to going out already to keep up the usual pretense.
Seeing that his antics weren’t receiving the usual joking threats, Michael ended the call without saying goodbye. His attempts to cheer Will up were heartwarming but sometimes lights had to be dim in the moment.
Will just needed time.
Lee and Michael had only considered sending him to his mama when the borders started failing due to Thalia’s tree being poisoned. There were so many monsters coming for the buffet of demigods and Will was “basically a sitting duck” in Michael’s words. But even then, they had decided against it.
They needed Will to act as head medic since the rest of them had joined Clarisse’s patrol. Will gets left with most of the camp’s younger kids, not just his own younger siblings acting as medical assistants. It makes him feel useful even if Clarisse had to spare some of her better fighters to guard them at all times.
It had been her own idea. Too many campers were being injured even inside of the borders, most of them were her own siblings, and if Will was the only person between them and Thanatos, she’d make sure he stayed alive.
Will basically lived in the infirmary for those few months after one too many baby Dracaenas tried to invade his cabin. He wasn’t even willing to go back inside of it to sleep. None of them were.
It was safer to barricade themselves in one of the private rooms, and sleep in a puppy pile while someone stood guard against the horrid creatures.
Adversity really did bring people closer.
Good thing for sunrise energy boosts. It was the only thing keeping them running at this point.
After Thalia’s tree was healed, their borders were back and they could finally take breaks again.
James agreed to take him to visit his mama during his winter break. Michael had wanted to take him as the one with the free time, James had an actual mortal life, but he had a habit of starting yelling matches with her, and Will hadn’t been able to see her in nearly a year.
Will rarely went to live with his mama and even then he only went for a few days at a time. Their relationship was slowly repairing from Will thinking she had abandoned him, but that didn’t solve the issues that brought him to camp in the first place. With the way his powers were growing, he could only really do short visits but he enjoyed the time he got to spend with her.
James was only supposed to be there as a precaution. He was good at both short and long range combat and he had a song that could knock people out in seconds. Will hadn’t thought he’d be necessary for a three day stay with his mama but it was the only way the rest of his siblings had agreed to let him go.
They made it all three days without incident. Will hadn’t wanted to admit to the reason his last visit was canceled, nor why he now had a bodyguard, even though his mama liked James much more than she did Michael. But once she stopped trying to pry, it was time well spent.
It was hard to tell her that he couldn’t stay for longer and he couldn’t promise another visit anytime soon. It was clear his mama didn’t want him to go but Will had to return. It was the only time that he felt grateful for the rule.
If the camp won, he would come back.
The attack came on their way back to camp. A son and daughter of Hecate had ambushed them on the last leg of the train ride. It was clear that the boy hadn’t been expecting Will to have company, which was dumb since Will hadn’t been left alone in years at that point. The girl was around his age and it was clear she had no clue what was happening.
James’ forced sleep song did the job on the boy who had made a grab for Will. He had to sing it on a loop as the demigod kept fighting it for the whole hour they had left to go.
The girl, Lou Ellen she introduced herself as, didn't put up a fight after her brother went down. Her light wasn’t bright enough for her to have been an aware demigod for long.
She was terrified but not mad and Will could work with that.
She told him he had no idea what her brother was doing; she had met him a few months ago, he was just all the family she had. Her brother would just leave her alone in motel rooms to practice the magic he told her she had, while he did whatever he had to do outside, and Will could relate to that.
She just wanted a straight answer from someone.
Will knows she isn’t lying so he tells her the truth. How there is going to be a war and what side her brother is on, and what side he is on. When She asks him about camp, Will tells her that it’s a place demigods can live without having to keep moving for safety because he knows that is what is going to appeal to her.
Will liked camp at first because of the familiarity, but that has never made sense for anyone else.
Will tells her that he too used to live alone in motel rooms until his mama told him about camp. About how she loved him and that’s why she had to let him go to somewhere he can actually live.
Lou Ellen listens as he tells her about how he lives with James and the rest of their siblings in a cramped cabin because there are a lot of them. The number never goes down, they’re stuck like that.
She laughs as he bemoans the fact that he’s never left alone now but that’s just because they love him, and it isn’t actually that bad ‘cause it just saved him.
When she asks him why she never got to go to camp before, the only answer Will can give her is to ask her if she wants to go now, even if her brother wouldn’t follow.
Will knows that if his siblings had decided to follow Luke all together, he would have wanted to join, even if he didn’t think they were right.
By the time the train had stopped at their destination, James’ voice was raspy and nearly gone. They had to move quickly from there just in case. His brother had wacked the sleeping demigod over the head to knock him out the mortal way before they left the compartment, Lou Ellen in tow.
They left her brother alive. They were both too much of healers for killing him to have crossed their minds, and Will wouldn’t have even if it did. His new friend didn’t deserve that.
Either way they had been attacked, so Will would have to stay on campgrounds from now on, and since the borders weren’t failproof, if they had nearly fallen once, they could again, he would have to train to survive.
No one bothers with the weapons, if Will hadn’t learnt to use one before with the years he has had already, it’s probably not meant to be, and they don’t have the time to waste. There were other ways to survive, ways that would be helpful for a field medic in the long run too, so they would focus on those.
James and Michael shove him toward the obstacle courses and climbing wall every single day, and they don’t let him leave till he’s dead on his feet and threatening to hex them.
Will has never slept so well.
Michael gets a cold for the first time in his life.
They only lay off him once he starts setting records.
River and Kayla start shooting at him instead. Just in his vague direction at first, and the arrows are always dull, but they slowly start to increase their accuracy and Will has to learn to dodge.
They never tell him when they’re going to do it, they only make sure Chiron isn’t around, Mr D does not care, and Will is free game.
It might actually be a competition for them. One point for every shot he does not dodge in time. Will doesn’t ask, he just moves.
Declan and Jessica do the same but with swords.
Neither of them prefer them as weapons, but they had at least learned to use them.
Will doesn’t do them the disservice of flinching when they run at him pointy ends first, Maria has taught him how some signs of fear can hurt feelings, and they don’t want to hurt him, so he just scolds them afterwards, when they are done failing to impale him that is.
It was still a dangerous thing to do, for themselves too, even if he does trust them.
It doesn’t stop them from trying again.
It makes him jumpy for a few weeks, they do it in the bathrooms too –why? –, Cecil and Lou Ellen just laugh at him when he starts hitting the ground at the glimpse of shining metal, but eventually his awareness improves.
Even sweet little Noel tries to teach him to hide. It’s the boy’s best skill, get behind someone or something and just blend in. It's great in capture the flag, he just has to wait and aim, and no one ever sees him coming.
The only issue is that Will glows. Not actually, take a picture of it and it’s not there, but the moment there’s a light on him, even just a reflection of one, he gets spotted. It’s how Maria always found him.
Will thanks his little brother for the effort, he appreciates it dude, but it’s not going to happen.
Kacey and Lee, mostly Kacey, Lee’s a pushover, teach him how to lead and direct. Will has never been the most outspoken demigod out there, he’s too self conscious to try and order others around, that gets people irritated, and he has a tendency to self correct way too much in the other direction when he notices people are upset with him, and that has to change.
River is still helping him manage the infirmary, but he is going to take over sooner rather than later, that’s a certainty, and Will is going to have to learn to take charge.
They leave him to the wolves.
The Hephaestus cabin.
They are the worst patients. Not the Ares kids, no they at least learn from their many injuries, and they understand why recovery takes time, even if they try to hide their injuries in the name of hubris and not losing face.
The Hephaestus kids just don’t care about recovery. They could be missing a limb and they would still say that they have to get back to whatever half brain idea got them sent into the infirmary in the first place, no their workspace was not cleaned any time recently, and hey can you bless a bow for me?, no, infections don’t matter to them, they’ll be fine, and why is it taking him so long? They have to go.
If that doesn’t get Will to start screaming in rage and grow a backbone, nothing will.
Especially now that they are making the camp’s weapons for what's to come. There’s always at least one of them in the infirmary at any given moment.
After he starts threatening to tie people down to cots if they can’t follow medical advice, Lee decides it’s time, and gives Will the title of head medic.
It comes with a new orange shirt and a very old handwritten certificate. It’s a very muddy yellow color piece of ripped up parchment being held together by scotch tape, a piece of floppy cardboard for support after the tape failed to do the job, a couple of forgotten diseases, and a prayer; it’s that old.
Will puts on gloves before he takes it, and shoves it somewhere never to see the light again, or until its next recipient.
Seriously he has no idea what some of those diseases were.
Even with the borders, it felt like Will was constantly on duty now, no wonder Lee had wanted to quit, but he has a duty to the camp and so he doesn’t complain.
He’s the youngest head of anything the camp has had in a while, but like River said it’s better to have a stable head instead of just leaving it to the oldest. He was more than capable of the role.
The days will go on
The newest kid at camp is the same age as Kayla. His light is unlike anything Will has ever seen at camp.
When Michael asks him to explain it, he says that it’s dark in hue but it’s bright and looks like it can get so much brighter. It’s wispy like Hermes' children's but it’s more like thin hands reaching out to get you.
Michael says that it sounds creepy and Will tells him that it’s more comforting than anything and Will likes it. Maria laughs behind him, and Michael shouts a horrified “absolutely not!”.
That marks the start of a whole new silent fight between those two. Will doesn’t question it even when it’s clear it has something to do with him.
Maria keeps pushing him to make friends with the new boy whenever he’s not in the infirmary, while Michael seethes behind her.
Will knows his brother doesn’t really mind, there would have been threats if he did, so he does.
Nico is a lot. Not in a bad way, Will considers Kayla to be a lot and he loves her regardless, it's just what she is.
Will sees Nico in the infirmary quite often. It is never more than small cuts from shaking sword work, and it’s not like Will can judge.
Nico is brimming with questions at any given time, and it’s clear that the war hasn’t sunk in yet as anything other than a game.
Will tries not to get upset when he says something insensitive, he’s not trying to be mean, he’s just naive.
Most of the younger campers are the same even if they like to pretend otherwise.
It’s a good thing.
The boy is really interested in getting his hands on an actual sword and when he asks Will about them, Will tells him that he never learned to use one.
Nico doesn’t even judge him for it, he’s that nice, he’s more excited about the fact that Will has healing powers and how cool that is. The fact that the rest of his siblings also have healing powers doesn’t diminish his energetic babble.
He’s a bit upset that he hasn’t figured out any of his own powers, and Will tries to give him suggestions with what he sees of his light.
It’s wispy, so it’s probably something to do with the underworld, no, no, that’s not a bad thing, it just is, and Will hasn’t seen a pattern like his before so it’s not one of the common ones like Hermes or Hecate, and it’s somewhat clouded, maybe Morpheus? Will has no idea how to test those ideas though, try asking Clovis.
It’s clear that Nico is lonely without his sister. He’s surrounded by people but they’re not the same as the people he’s familiar with, and it’s overwhelming. Will can relate to that.
If Will knows he’s likely to spend the night in the infirmary, he lets the boy take up a bed for the night. The Hermes’ cabin might not be overflowing any more, too many people are gone, not even just because they became traitors, most of them are just dead, but it’s still cramped.
He eventually ends up showing Nico the infirmary rotation schedule and telling him which days to avoid it, some of his siblings are more anal about who they allow to stay, and that if he ever needs a break from the bustle he’s welcome to just ask for him.
Nico does come by a couple more times before the questers return.
The last time he stopped by, it was on a day he told him to avoid, Michael was on duty. He was let in, but Michael kicked him out after a couple hours when he snapped at Will one time too many.
His brother had told Nico that it wasn’t Will's job to take his abuse, and if he couldn’t be nice he wasn’t welcome back without an actual injury.
Will just wanted to know why he was so upset, he hadn’t wanted the night to end like that.
He had been livid at Michael.
Healers weren’t supposed to send people away when they needed help, and it was clear Nico hadn’t been in a good headspace.
He had dismissed his brother from duty then and there since he couldn’t hold his temper.
It was the first time Will had ever made that call for one of his siblings. He had every right to do so and Michael had listened.
Michael had apologized to Will that night before they went to bed, and he had forgiven him.
Nico never shows up again.
Will had tried to find him on multiple occasions to apologize, but he hadn’t wanted to be found, and at some point Will realised he had to focus back on his actual duties instead.
By the next week, Nico wasn’t at camp at all.
Lee tries to make it clear that it wasn’t his fault.
When Chiron brings them a crazed Chris Rodriguez, Will just knows he cannot help him.
They’ve never seen anything like it. It wasn't physical, that would have been easy, and it was not a chemical imbalance, there’s something they can do to treat that, it’s just trauma.
He still does try, they all do, except Maria, they don’t let her close enough to see him, there’s no point of subjecting her to that if Will couldn’t—, but it’s their job to at the very least try, but they all knew if Will could do nothing for him—
Will cannot heal mental afflictions. Maria wouldn’t be sick if he could.
They didn’t want to call him a lost cause.
Lee handles his care until Dionysus returns.
The next summer, Lee is dead.
It hits Will hard.
He’s there when it happens. Because of course he had to be the one to see him die.
Most of them were in the trees, the rest of them were on the ground, Lee was on the ground for some idiotic reason, Will was too, but he couldn’t shoot, Lee could shoot.
One moment Will is running through the enemy filled forest, looking for dimming lights, trying his best to evade grabby hands and claws, just looking for demigods he can help, ignoring all the bodies without glows, he can’t help those, and there’s Lee protecting a camper, and the next moment a club is coming down and Lee’s light is gone.
Snuffed out, just like that.
It was instant.
Will had frozen then and there. It lasted barely a second. Maria snapped at him from somewhere above to keep moving, his job wasn’t done yet.
He did.
When the battle is over, the enemy long fled, when everyone is stable and looking like they will stay like that, Will finally gets a moment to think.
He pukes.
It’s the first and only time Will ever does so. He’s never been sick a day in his life, but it felt necessary.
His big brother is gone. He’s not the first one to die but he’s the first one Will can’t pretend didn’t, not even for a second. It wasn’t like Estella’s death where they had been able to go on like she could arrive any day now. They could reminisce about her before the grief set in. They had weeks to come to terms with the fact that she wasn’t coming back.
Will saw Lee’s light go out. He wasn’t coming back. It was time to grieve.
And that’s what the camp did. Not only for Lee, others had died too, Will had seen to all their bodies since they didn’t have a morgue, but also for the lost innocence many campers still had left.
It was weird to realize that this was a lot of campers' first real loss of loved ones.
Apollo cabin had been gaining empty bunks yearly since the day Will arrived at camp. Their cabin numbers rarely ever dwindled, but the faces were constantly changing.
Will will grieve them forever in the back of his head, they are the reason he is who he is today after all, they had left their marks, but more will come after them.
Someone is going to show up to fill their beds and that is a fact of life.
But it isn’t like that for all cabins. Some of their now empty beds won’t be replaced anytime soon, and they grieve like it.
One of the Demeter campers had nearly punched him for running past her Ares girlfriend in the battle. Her light had been gone by the time Will had seen her, and he couldn’t stop for a corpse.
Michael, the new head counselor, Lee had wanted it to be him, had stopped her before her hand could connect, and kicked her out of the infirmary with a yell of “YOUR misplaced anger is not OUR problem!”.
He shot the next camper who tried to get handsy with one of his siblings in the foot. It was the only warning he was going to give. No one scolded him for it.
No one else tried.
They burned the shrouds as a camp. The next few weeks were full of tears but the war wasn’t over yet. No matter how Lee’s death had felt like an end for him.
Will had looked up to him the most. They had been the most alike, both near copies of their father. He had been the one to teach him how to stitch up a wound the mortal way and he never made him feel bad when Will couldn’t pick up a weapon. Lee had given him his role, taken up another one for him, and Will loved him.
He had been lazy and a pushover in the worst ways but he had been his big brother, and nothing would fix the hole he left behind. But The days will go on.
Austin showed up a month later and they gave him Lee’s bed.
The days move on as they get closer to the hopeful end of the war.
When Michael starts a fight against the Ares cabin, Will couldn’t be more tired, he doesn't even bother to try to talk him out of it at first. Yes, interfighting between one another is the last thing they need but it had seemed harmless in the start.
Clarisse could be spiteful but so could the Apollo cabin and Micheal needed an outlet for his temper before he ended up destroying the archery arena. Will had already taken him off of all infirmary rotations.
The anger had been real for both parties but Will hadn’t thought Clarisse would have actually backed her whole cabin out of joining the final battle.
They were Ares kids.
Before that day, they had been talking about it as a great honor. The healer in him had hated it, but like he was necessary in war, fighters were also needed.
Will had screamed at Michael that night. Michael had taken off his aids to avoid him and Will had signed his frustration out on him instead. Kacey had taken the younger kids out of the cabin when Will had brought out the cusses.
It was the first time the Apollo cabin had ever been in the outs with the rest of the camp in Will’s memory. You can’t hate on the people who fix your broken bones after all. But a Hermes kid had shoved his tray out of his hands at dinner, and Will hadn’t taken part in their stupid fight.
They couldn’t afford the alienation right now, they were the doctors.
In a few days Will was going to need the camp’s goodwill if he wanted to save as many of them as possible, and Michael knew that.
It shouldn’t have to be his job to calm him down.
He was the older brother, not Will.
It had ended with the both of them in tears.
He had been too late to do crowd control; not even strong-arming his big brother into apologizing had solved it before they had to leave for battle.
Will had tried to talk some sense into Clarisse. He was angry with her too, but she wasn’t his responsibility, but his siblings were, and she was the best chance they had to survive, so he had to try and get her to see reason.
The things she had said to his brother about their cabin had been awful but she had always had a soft spot for Will.
She had screamed at him to get lost.
Clarisse had always been willing to break bones to get a point across and Will didn’t have the energy to spare for his own so he left her be.
At the last war council meeting, Will had been there, he was the head medic, he had to be there to see what he had to prepare for, Clarisse had reinstated that she and her siblings would not be joining all because of their hurt pride.
Michael had relented to her ultimatum, but she wasn’t willing to reconsider, and so their cabin plans had to be changed.
The entire Apollo cabin went to the final battle. Will would be the only one acting solely as a medic. The rest of them had gone to be fighters even if they all would be stocked with medical supplies. He tried not to be angry at Michael for it.
Some cabins had been allowed to leave the really young members behind, but they needed the numbers with the Ares cabin refusing to budge, so all of Will's siblings went.
Will was thirteen when he became the oldest child.
Had been for a couple of days without taking it in.
He had taken up talking for the Apollo cabin in the war meetings after Michael fell, but there was still Maria, Kacey, and James and River who could have stepped up as the cabin’s counselor. There just hadn’t been enough time to regroup and appoint someone new in the mess that was having to be both fighters and medics at the same time.
Will was already head medic and he had the leadership training that came with that so he just went in their stead. It shouldn’t have meant anything afterwards.
It wasn’t a certainty that Michael was dead, they only saw him fall, and he had the best self healing powers out of all of them.
He had still had a light in the last glimpse Will got of him.
He could have still come back, even if Maria had watched and immediately placed Will in charge with the same look on her face that she had when they met and she declared him her brother.
Will went to every meeting, no one questioned his standing after the first meeting and the announcement of Michael's fate.
No one asked if it was permanent and Will never said he was the new counselor. He refused to. It should have been someone else.
There were options that weren’t him.
He debated when he didn’t agree with his cabin's orders– maybe that’s why they were dead–, gave his remaining siblings their assignments, and tried his best to not feel like a coward for staying with the injured even though he knew it was where he was needed.
It was so hard to stay put as fewer and fewer of his siblings managed to come back to check in.
Alive that was.
Declan and River’s bodies had made it back, eventually, and already cold. Will had wanted to run out and find the rest of them himself at that moment.
He didn’t, and kept working.
The fact that he felt relief when Austin was taken out of the battle after he was poisoned was almost vomit inducing. He was Will’s newest little brother and he shouldn’t have to lose him so soon after meeting him.
Will hadn’t seen any of his own older siblings in too long.
Will had managed to stop the poison from reaching his heart like he had with Annabeth. It was a close call but he had done it and Austin was going to live.
He made the call to take him off the field as a fighter and help him with the injured instead.
Austin had been glad too.
He hadn’t discussed his decision with anyone, definitely not Clarisse who had been tricked into joining the battle.
They had probably still needed the fighters, and Austin could shoot if nothing else, but he was Will’s little brother and Will was already close to the edge with whom he could watch die.
Austin stayed with him.
Maria was the last of his older siblings Will had seen alive.
They had been given the orders to retreat into Olympus proper and the injured had already been moved.
Will had been double checking that no one had left any of their dwindling supplies behind when Maria had come in with a spear still in hand.
She had deserted her post to be there.
She was covered in drying blood and golden dust, but she hadn’t been injured, not enough for it to have been his concern at least.
Her eyes were full of unshed tears, but she was grinning. It was clear she was going into a manic state, if she wasn’t manic already.
He hadn’t been scared of her then, she hadn’t ever hurt him before and she wasn’t going to now, and Will knew that to be fact.
No, she had hugged him. Hugged him tight and told him she was proud. So proud of him and so so sorry before there was a glint of something metal and she lunged.
She shoved him into the elevators and made sure that the four enemy demigods could not get to him before the doors were shut.
After the battle, someone would have found the four assailants dead in a heap underneath Maria’s own cooling body, a spear wound in her abdomen, the same grin still on her face.
The next time Will saw her, she was already under her decorated shroud alongside the rest of his older siblings. Maria, Kacey, James, River. No one could find Michael’s body so they would just have to burn his bow for him.
Will decided not to wait.
Will wonders if Maria had known. Maybe that’s why she had put him in charge from the get go. She could have chosen anyone else, the rest of them would have listened to whoever she had chosen, Hades she could have taken charge herself.
She had been older than Michael and fought him on everything. Most things were already being run past her and when she had said his name, he had followed.
Most of his younger siblings were dead too. Declan, Jessica, Noel. Eleven of them had been on the bus to Manhattan and only he, Kayla, and Austin would be returning to camp.
It wasn’t fair.
It wasn’t fair.
It wasn’t fair—
But fairness didn’t matter, his siblings' safety did.
It was his turn to be the big brother now, and he had to keep it together.
The cabin has never been so quiet.
Since all the surviving demigods had been welcomed back to camp, even if they were traitors, they now have to accommodate a new swarm of campers.
New cabins will be built, but they can’t all stay in the Hermes cabin in the meantime.
Chiron asks some of the smaller cabins to house their new campers. They’re not forced to of course, most have to check with their parents to make a call like that. Cabins are temples and non-family usually aren’t allowed in without blood ties.
Will doubts any of the new campers are children of Apollo.
The Apollo cabin is included in that request. They used to be the second largest and now they were the smallest outside of the big three.
Will doesn’t want to have people that had tried to kill them anywhere near his siblings.
He was willing to heal everyone who survived regardless if they had been the enemy but that doesn’t mean he has to trust or like them. But after a quick prayer to dad who also seemed reluctant, Will relents and offers up the now free beds.
For once division of inheritance will be simple. Song books and personal instruments with nowhere to return will go to Austin, art supplies will go to Kayla. There’s nothing left of Michael’s arrow collection, of anyone’s really. He’ll have to commission the Hephaestus cabin for more.
There’s so much he has to stay on top of now. They used to be able to divide tasks between at least five of them so no one got swamped, and now it’s only him. He’s going to mess it up, and Kayla and Austin don’t deserve that–
Clothes will be divided up between the three of them by size. There isn’t going to be fighting over anything for once. The thought doesn’t make him happy. Will had once yanked Jessica by the hair to get to Lee’s flannel. He misses her.
He and his two siblings go around the cabin packing up their late siblings belongings. Some of it will be sent to their mortal families, most of it will be put in storage. They find Maria’s belongings already there. There was only a letter on her premade bed, nothing but “If you ever meet my mom, tell her she’s a —”
Will hadn’t let Kayla finish that letter but it had made them all laugh for the first time since the battle. It had made the cabin a bit lighter as they finished up the cleaning they hadn’t wanted to do in the first place.
It’s protocol, but they should have had time to do it on their own terms.
He has Kayla and Austin move to bunks he can defend. They roll their eyes at him when they realise that was the reason, Will had yet to kill, but comply with his request.
If any of their unwanted guests try anything with his siblings, Will doesn’t think he’ll have a problem in snuffing out their unfamiliar lights.
There are new people in their cabin that night. All of them are older than him, Hermes kept the younger ones, and Chiron hadn’t wanted to give Will even more responsibilities, but kids are harder to be mad at, even if they mean more work, and he thinks he would have preferred that actually, but most of these have never been to camp in the first place and that makes it easier to look them in the eyes and not feel resentment after a few days.
He sets down ground rules. Most of them are rules he’s been following since he arrived at camp so when someone complains, Will shows them where they were scratched into the walls by someone Will has never met. The cabin used to average a dozen kids at a time, all the time, if the rules weren’t in place, someone would have died.
Will still makes it clear that they shouldn’t get comfortable and covers up the anger in his words by saying that soon they will have their own cabins.
With his siblings sleeping behind him, the bed under him stays unused, and he doesn’t offer it up.
He doesn’t make their stay easy. He doubts most once full cabins do.
This is the cabin for the children of Apollo and they live like it.
Will and his siblings wake up with the sun and don’t bother staying quiet afterwards. Whenever they are asked to keep it down by their guests, Will gives them a “rise and shine!” before he’s opening up the curtain to let his dad’s light in.
They were raised to use up as much of the day as they can. There is always something to do even fresh out of the battlefield, archery practice, the infirmary, even if they stay inside, they will find something to do.
Like now.
Will has to find a way to clean Austin’s locks from the dust, blood, and debris that undoubtedly got stuck in there. His brother isn’t going to stay like that for longer than necessary. Not on his watch.
Will also has to figure out what to do about the camp's archery lessons now that he thinks about it. Michael led those.
He’s dead now.
Will is now the oldest, and every job should be handled by the eldests of them first. There used to be enough of them to assure that their youngests could live before anything else. It’s in their rules, but no one had ever expected him to do it, they would have made sure he knew more than just the basics, and there used to be enough of them to assure someone else would, not him, and-
He asks Kayla to take it over the next time she steps foot in the arena and she bursts into tears. He hates himself for it, but she’s the best they have and they both know it. He tries his best to recreate the conversation River had with him once upon a time, but it’s not the same scenario.
Will had been upset because they had options.
They don’t now.
They have one healer, one archer, and one musician. They have to do their parts.
He gives her the time she needs. Will knows the basics of how to shoot a bow, enough to teach others even if he’s never hit a bullseye.
After a couple of days, Kayla comes back in and tells him he’s doing it wrong and takes over.
He does the same with Austin and getting him to lead the sing-alongs. It only takes a minute of Will’s awful singing before his brother is taking the guitar out of his hands and telling him never to do that again.
Will obliges.
Anyone who tries to linger inside the cabin during the day are herded out to help with building efforts. Will does not give them the choice. He doesn’t want them staying for longer than they have to.
In the night, Will can sleep past the screaming of nightmares. Nightlife in the infirmary has already desensitized him. It’s only when it’s his own siblings screaming does he wake up to attempt to console them.
The older teens aren’t his problem and he’s not going to make them his problem. Plus, he doesn’t think any of them really want the comfort of a thirteen-year-old even if he wasn’t clearly itching for a fight.
They spend the rest of their stay like that.
Kayla and Austin have stable mortal families so he sends them home at the first opportunity to recover.
Having to explain to their parents what happened brings him to tears, it’s his first time having to say that everyone else is gone to someone who did not know.
They both offer to let him stay with them if he wants to, but Will declines. He has work to do.
It doesn’t cross Will's mind to call his mama up, he’s never done so before, that was Michael’s job, and she’d hadn’t known about the war in the first place. No, Will stays at camp to watch over the cabin.
The infirmary too but mainly the cabin.
It must have been visibly obvious that he’s less tense with his charges gone. They are safe even if he doesn’t think he is quite yet.
Will has always had someone to worry about his safety before and it will take him time to figure out that he has to do it himself now. But either way he let his guard down and someone struck.
Not physically and it probably wasn’t meant as an attack but Will took it as one anyways.
One of the older girls staying in his cabin, a daughter of some minor god, Will hadn’t bothered to pay attention as to which, had tried to tease him.
“Aren’t ya a tad too young to be playin’ at a dad?”
She had meant it in jest but It had rubbed Will the wrong way. First of all he wasn’t a dad. He was fourteen, he was a big brother. They had a dad, two in Kayla’s case, and Will wasn’t a dad. Good chance he would never be.
But that had opened up the floodgates and everyone had something to say. How he didn’t have to be a rabid guard dog all the time and how he had to live and be a kid. It shouldn’t be his job to raise his siblings. He had too much responsibility on his shoulders and there should be someone there to help him.
He had nearly jumped the boy who had said that last one. He was James’ age.
There had been someone there to help him. There had been many people there to help him in fact, and they were the reason they were gone.
It was their fault.
He hadn’t said any of that though. He had tried his best to laugh the comments off as his light dimmed the lowest it could go and a few days later everyone else’s light did too.
The flu hits the camp.
Everyone blames it on the gods being too busy getting their bearings back to keep up the wards against sickness, and they only have one medic now, there’s no way he could have predicted it beforehand.
It misses Will of course; he has never been sick a day in his life, and no one thinks twice about it.
Will blesses anyone who manages to avoid the first wave. Sicknesses like that always have multiple waves when dealing with small children. He learned that in school.
The strangers in his cabin call him lucky as he nurses them back to health.
Will doesn’t hurt people. Can’t really, not without losing everything he stands for; he just knows deep in his bones that if he goes down that route, he will never come back from it, and it’s not like he enjoys the idea of violence. Plus his siblings are no longer there with him for the cost to be worth it, but Will refuses to let anyone undermine him in his own home.
He’s not powerless.
His older siblings made sure of that if nothing else.
After that, he’s still not outright mean. He’s never been.
Will just makes comments too.
Most of them would be off-putting if he didn’t say them with a smile. He might be full of rage now, everyone can tell, he hasn’t tried to hide it, but he’s grieving, grieving for a lot of people, and he can’t be blamed for that, and that doesn’t change the fact that he has a long established reputation of being the least threatening person at camp.
Anyone who says otherwise isn't taken seriously.
Are you kidding? Their eight-year-olds can sword fight better than him. Will’s harmless.
By the time Kayla and Austin are back with him, the cabin is empty of all guests.
Those still without cabins are forced to move back into the now less crowded Hermes cabin after he tells them his dad has rescinded his blessing.
Will can’t lie, he breaks out in hives.
They go.
It’s the last they hear from dad for a while.
Will calms down after his guests are gone. He starts to make peace with his grief and befriends most of them; he still likes making friends whenever he can.
Some of them stay wery but that’s okay with him, it actually stops him from becoming a target for bullies, Will was going to be a target, he just knows that, half the camp is full of hurt wanting to go somewhere else, now that his old protectors are gone.
They are gone, and he misses them.
He buries the hatchet with Clarisse and the Ares cabin.
She’s been avoiding him since they came back. Good, Will would have done something he would have come to regret, and she would have deserved it, if she had not been a coward and actually approached him at anypoint that first month.
He blames her for the lives he lost. He can’t blame Michael, not anymore, he’s gone and you shouldn’t think bad on the dead, but he can blame her.
He blames Selina too. Hypocritical, he knows, but she hadn’t been his sister, so he does not care. Apollo suffered from her selling them out up until the final moment.
But If Clarisse had been there from the start, some of his now dead siblings could have stayed with him instead of being sent off to fight.
But they needed the soldiers.
No one had ever considered making Will one. “Defenseless” Maria called him.
It was lucky he was such a skilled healer, Michael had a good argument to keep him off the worst of the battlefield, or he would’ve been forced to be cannon fodder, no matter his siblings thoughts on it.
He feels so ashamed of it.
It hadn’t been fair to Jessica, Declan, or Noel. They had been younger than him; he should’ve been the one fighting to protect them, not the other way around.
They had needed their big brother, his skills as a healer in Noel’s case, the other two went quickly, there was nothing he could have done for them, but if he had gotten to Noel sooner –-he had hid, it’s what he did but Will had always been able to find him before–, and he hadn’t been there.
If there had been any way he could have kept them out of the fight, he would have taken it. Will would’ve gladly died if it had meant just one more of his younger siblings had survived.
His older siblings would not have let him do it for them, that was their vow towards him, and he wasn’t going to minimize or disparage what that oath meant for them.
Michael had done it for him, after all, for all of them later on that bridge, so Will gets it, he really does, Clarisse had been scared to lose her own siblings too, but all of his older and three of his younger siblings are now gone, and so he hates her for it.
She still lost some of them in the fight, every cabin lost someone, he would know, and Ares is now the second largest cabin.
He doesn’t think his anger will ever go away, and she knows that. It’s in his eyes, they glow now, he’s always been a bit illuminated at first glance, like the cabin he’s a part of, “a trick of the light” most people used to say, but he is a light, and he has only grown brighter, and now they glow and no one misses it.
But he doesn’t want his grudges to affect his cabin, not again, so he offers peace. As healers, they need the good will from the fighters they protect, even if there's now a chance they won’t protect them in return.
That’s what hurts the most.
The Apollo children had, and will continue to, –Will’s not dense, they need the Ares children, everyone has a part to play, Estella had taught him that–, spend their lives protecting Clarisse’s and her siblings, even if just passively, with the unspoken pledge that they would return the favor when they could, and they hadn’t wanted to.
She had to be tricked.
Kayla screams at him for it. Austin doesn’t, but he’s never one to get riled up even when he’s mad, so Will doesn’t know if he’s upset with him either.
Kayla glows bright for days, not visibly, Will’s the only one he’s known to be able to do that, –James had called it new for them–, but her light becomes hard for him to look at even if he refuses to look away. She’s angry at Clarisse too and it wasn’t fair that he made the decision for them.
He can sympathize with Kacey. Will wants to tell them that he’s sorry for every time he yelled at them for trying to dictate his life, he understands why they did it now, and he misses them, and he’s sorry.
Will lets her yell it out.
Kayla is allowed to show her anger. It’s Will's job to make sure she can show whatever emotions she needs to, be they good or bad, even if she never understands why he makes the decisions he does.
Anger is just the price of love sometimes, but that doesn’t mean he’s wrong, even if he’s not sure he’s right either.
After a month she tackles him in a hug one night, and cries her rage out on his shoulder. She doesn’t apologise, he doesn’t expect her to, she hadn’t done anything wrong in his eyes. Austin joins her too and they fall asleep like that.
They grieve together and days move forward.
At some point their dad suddenly vanishes. He’s still there, Will can feel him in the sunlight but he’s not present. No dreams or wakeup calls, birthdays go by with no presents, Austin even gets a cold, and it's concerning.
It’s the same for most cabins, but Apollo was known for being weirdly present in their lives despite the fact Will has only ever met him a handful of times. The only time he doesn’t feel him around is at night, and he makes up for that at sunrise but now it’s like he was never there to begin with.
There’s no one there to give them a warning, not anymore.
He has yet to get another sibling despite the fact that he knows there are more of them out there. It’s just a fact of life, but they have so many open bunks, and no one has arrived to fill them. He’s at an age where they are going to be younger than him, but that doesn't mean they wouldn’t be able to see something he’s missing.
Will knows but he does not see.
Not like Kacey and Maria once had. And he doubts that his meaning hadn’t been realized after the war against Kronos. Will hopes it was at least.
And yet more still came.
The moment the second prophecy was out, Will started preparations for things to go south. He doesn’t delude himself for a second that things will be resolved without violence when given the option.
There is always going to be someone who is going to choose violence. He’s not going to just wait and hope for it not to come to pass.
Michael taught him better than that.
His siblings deserve better than that, Will has to protect them.
He can’t tell them not to fight. They would have gone behind his back the first second he turned his back on them, and Will was going to have to be on the field, even if he had tried to keep them back, so he prepares them instead.
He has them on the training fields any moment they aren’t in the infirmary being tested. His siblings are used to pact days and still they grumble about his stint as a dictator. Will does not care as long as it keeps them alive when the time comes.
It is going to come.
When the Romans arrive and the fight against Gaia is soon to commence, Will blesses his siblings' bows, the only thing he can do for them now, give each of them a hug –hopefully not their last ones–, Maria would have done the same even if, and lets them join the fray.
He hopes Michael would’ve been proud of them. Kayla and Austin for fighting, and Will for seeing he had to let them.
The days will go on.
Will isn’t in a good mindstate when meeting Octavian, he doesn’t think there’s such a thing.
The other boy was irritating at first glance, and Will had just been made to deliver a baby, –no training could’ve prepared him for the horrors of birth–, and he was glad to see that Nico was still kicking, even if his light was so dim Will had thought it had already gone out for a second there, but no he’s still very much a spark and angry at the world, but that’s good, means he’s still fighting, and the legacy of Apollo would not shut up with his egotistical drivel.
As if he wasn’t threatening his family for no reason other than glory from a god that was not there.
He might not be around anymore, but Dad wouldn’t have–
It was clear Octavian was seeking to cause bloodshed, and Will wondered if he could cause some too.
He had actually considered the justifications of ending lives himself; full on made a pros and cons list in his head then and there.
It’s just there were so many of them.
The Romans had an army of over a hundred, he didn’t know the skills or powers of half of them, they had different gods, nor if them being “legacies” meant something different from camp half-bloods' demigods, and they were made up of less than half of their numbers.
Will only has two siblings left.
He debated placing a hex on the other blonde and his lackeys, one of them had his brother’s name– Michael would’ve wanted him to do it–. It wouldn’t have stopped the fighting, no they took a while to set in, but afterwards?
Afterwards it would’ve been devastating.
It would have taken Will out of commission, of course it would have, if it didn’t kill him outright that is, but it would have been vengeance.
If they had gone through with slaughtering any of them, no matter how few of them, there would have been vengeance for them to be at peace.
If the Romans had come just to cull the Greeks, they would have made it fair for the Greeks to cull the Romans in return, and Will could insure that.
When Octavian has the, thankfully, redirected onagers fired –good job Cecil–, he made up his mind and started to scan the surroundings for anyone to stop him, none of their lights were similar to his, –not even Octavian’s, weird–, good, they wouldn’t be predicting this, and to make sure he wasn’t getting anyone he cared about in the crossfires.
His accuracy has never been great, even in this, so it’s best to make sure he’s not getting his own side.
He started to dim his own light, Nico noticed, he would have, Will was about to die, but he wouldn’t have been able to stop him from going through with it, before he was stopped by a sight in the sky.
That’s a sign.
Will takes it.
Gaia had arrived and they all turned to face her instead. Will worried the entire battle. He ran around the entire field, dodging monsters, killing a few of them, helping the injured regardless of pantheon, and kept an eye on his two familiar lights.
Every time he would lose sight of one, he felt like he was about to puke until he saw them again. They had fought well, back to back, like he had asked them to, Kayla shooting and Austin playing his saxophone to boost the other fighters.
It felt like days when it had only taken hours before they were all in the infirmary treating the wounded.
It was the first time his cabin hadn’t had shrouds to burn after a battle. Despite how it sounded, it was not a warm thought. He had cried himself to sleep that night.
The next morning he pretends he hadn’t.
He spends the next few days healing whoever comes to him, barely leaving the infirmary to check on the Romans who snuff at his offers of medical aid.
The really young ones don’t, they take his help with smiles, but the rest of them, it’s like they’re incapable of taking the olive branch.
The only reason he even continues to offer is because he’s the only person who can heal right now. Austin can’t anymore at least, Kayla was never able to in the first place, and Will hasn’t seen a single one of them who has been able to heal, and his dad is still not answering prayers so he doesn’t know what they might be doing when their strange unicorn elixir fails.
Nectar and Ambrosia are not actually heal alls, even for the Greeks. They have too much humanity in them, and the Romans have more.
Most of them seem close to mortal and Will has no idea why they joined the battlefield of demigods. They would have been easily slaughtered by Ares' children.
It was easier to fear the Romans when they called themselves legacies than to see what that word actually meant in the moment–
Will had been taught to consider himself a legacy of the Children of Apollo that came before him. To take his grief for them and use it as a spark to keep living, even with how much it doesn’t seem worth it.
They had known they were going to die, all demigods know that they are going to die, so they had left their marks.
They had raised him; taught him to read, to heal, to care, to live through a war. They had built up cabin seven, with its rules and routines, to fortify whoever came after.
He is going to die one day. Soon if what he has known is telling him anything, but he is alive right now and it is what his late siblings had wanted; for him to be alive, live, and make sure his siblings do too.
They won’t be forgotten if he does so, and if he does die, he will have left his own mark. The days will go on after all.
But when the Romans say “Legacy”, it’s just a claim of power with nothing but blood to back it. They have to prove themselves to whoever came before them.
He’s now disgusted with himself for almost cursing them like that, Octavian had been sick, somewhat like Maria, and he would feel bad about how he had insulted him, as if he were crazy, if Maria wouldn’t have done the same.
When she knew she was starting to slip, she told them so and removed herself from any situation they could have come to harm.
Octavian had chosen to plan a genocide. Will had too– ,but that doesn’t mean they wouldn’t have deserved his anger.
Will still hates the Romans.
Not the individuals per say, Reyna had seemed fine enough, but he hated the Romans.
They had still threatened to march on their camp. Their camp that was made up only of children, mind you. Them not actually being full demigods doesn’t change the fact that they could have killed some of them.
They would have done it too, happily even. They aren’t apologetic in the slightest even now that they are trying for peace.
They would have marched on Will’s safe haven, weapons in hand, and tried to slaughter all of them. Austin and Kayla would have fought back. Shit, Will would have fought them too, if it meant keeping his siblings safe.
Just because he had accepted the fact that Gaia could have killed them all that day didn’t mean he was going to let some Romans high off of their own self superiority end any of them.
Will wonders how many of his fellow Greeks had internalized the fact that all these strangers that were trying to be nice to them, who were still being patronizing, had been completely willing to kill them for no given reason just a few days ago.
At least he isn’t sure if they would have won anymore. The number of them had seemed daunting, lines and lines of child soldiers out for their blood. But when Will had checked the youngest of them over, some of them were younger than Harley even, he knew the fight would have killed them if it had come to pass.
They were so young.
Someone mentioned they had adults somewhere, why were they so young?
Camp half-blood had fewer in numbers but they were all what they said they were, Half Bloods. Godly in some shape or form. Even Will was capable of more devastation than some of the Roman formations.
He almost did it.
It would have been ugly.
Uglier than their war against Kronos. Luke, that hypocrite, had still kept it as demigods only. Will didn’t know why that fact made it seem better, many had died, but it did.
Regardless, the Romans were around and trying to negotiate for peace like it was their idea. The Greeks had offered it before but the Romans had to come off as the ones with the moral high ground.
They couldn’t be like them.
Graecus
They throw it around constantly. As if it were something Will should be ashamed of being.
Greek was what Will was. It was how he was raised to be by all his siblings. It was how he was raising his own younger siblings to be. He was proud of it and he wasn’t going to change.
But they kept making remarks. How they are uncivilized and disorderly and that is why they were dying. Clearly the Romans were superior because they actually made it to adulthood.
As if their ancestors hadn’t built their sanctuary on the back of their children, instead of the other way around.
The Romans did their best to separate themselves from their camp, but couldn’t even give them the courtesy of calling their parents by their names. Camp half-blood was for the Greek gods, and their children are Greek too and wanted to be referred to as such.
Apollo’s Roman counterpart isn’t even that different from his dad and Will still hated the fact Romans expected him to fall in line with the way they thought he should be.
No wonder Clarisse was threatening to cave some skulls in.
They aren’t family.
They make that clear early on, they don’t even see their fellow roman brethren as families, not really, not how he calls all his siblings family even if he never got to meet them, and the fact that Will had tried to do so at first had incensed them.
Will had found two legacies with similar enough lights to him and his siblings, the medics he guessed, and they had been pissed that Will had still been able to heal.
The fact that he had taken care of their youngest had just enraged them more.
Will might be bitter now, but he’s not “let the kids suffer” levels of bitter. Yeesh.
When the alliance discussions are over and the treaty is in place, the Romans leave with the offer that the Greeks can visit their settlement.
Will won’t be taking that offer anytime soon, he would rather suffer through a mortal college than take the Roman’s handouts, grow mad at the disrespect of what legacy should mean, and have to consider the hex again.
His self control is not unbreakable, and he has an obligation to his siblings. He has survived this long, and he can make it longer. For them.
Will is now sixteen and he is the oldest child.
He has five younger siblings. Kayla, Austin, Gracie, Jerry, Yan.
He’s had two of them for a while now, and they knew what life was like before he was all they had left.
They remember all the older siblings and what it was like to not have to go without someone always there to protect them.
The laughter at a day well spent; playing games, learning to shoot a bow, playing tricks on the older kids ‘cause they don’t get mad at kids just living, running the infirmary, doing their part for the camp as a whole.
The bad parts too; having to go to classes ‘cause you’re going to need that skill, the fights for what’s best, fights because the cabin is small and there are so many of them, grief because they die and that’s just life for a demigod.
It may not be fair, but The days will go on, so they will not waste it.
Will takes Cecil and Lou Ellen to pick up Jerry when Kayla has one too many dreams of MacArthur Airport.
He’s still not comfortable leaving the camp alone, a lifetime of paranoia will do that to you, but he has a duty to his little sister, so he goes in case it means trouble.
He’s not expecting to find a new younger brother.
When the little boy spots his glow, it’s clear he was in fact expected, despite never receiving even a call himself.
The boy runs up and hugs him before pulling back and reaching in his pocket for a pad of paper with multiple pre written dialogues. Phrases like “My name is Jerry”, “Yes I can hear”, and “Where is the bathroom” are written down.
Jerry finds the one he was looking for and shows him “looking for you” and then “Mom”.
He doesn’t speak, deformity not injury, it’s permanent, he got it from the hug, and Will does not care. He’s his little brother and that’s what matters.
Will exchanges information with his mom so she can stay in touch, and she promises to pick him up for the school year. Will decides to still prepare in case she falls through.
He brings him back to camp and straight into their cabin to settle in; dad is still not around again to actually claim him, but Will can see Jerry’s light, familiar to his own, so they are brothers.
Chiron can fight him on it.
The three of them already knew sign, Michael had relied on it more than his aids, and they made sure that they didn’t get rusty. Jerry was not going to be made to feel like a burden.
His mom hadn’t taught Jerry any ASL, not even BSL which was strange, but it was easy to refer to his word book and teach him themselves.
When Yan arrives, she’s already in her double digits. She has light coming out of her fingertips and music in her soul. The only hatred she knows is the hatred for the monsters that have her sent to camp and away from her mom.
They have to help her with her English, she speaks it, but reading is a whole different matter. The effort of doing so makes her so frustrated she cries, but she gets the hang of it eventually.
She’s quick to help out with the sing-alongs to grant Austin some much needed breaks so he can focus on his other interests.
Will leaves Austin in charge of their infirmary, and finally goes to pay his mama a visit like he said he would before the worst happened.
He doesn’t have an older sibling to take him anymore, not like before, no screaming phone calls of who had more say of his life, and no “fine, you get three days, take it or leave it,”. It will just be him and her, like when he was young, and lonely without her.
Life has changed for him, it hadn’t been kind or fair, but it had been worth it to know all the people who loved him just because he was there and that’s what mattered for them.
He stays for two weeks in her new house, catching up and making memories before oh yeah, that’s why I had to leave, sorry, and he’s already missing camp.
He gets attacked by two empousas, but no demigods, on the way back. He dodges one, and kills the other with a simple hex.
He gets back to camp just in time for a new arrival.
A four-year-old Gracie is dropped off with no note, just a too light bag with the expectation that someone else will raise her.
They do.
She’s angry about it. It’s clear she wasn’t from a good, or even a kind home; she’s constantly flinching when Kayla gets a tad too loud, but she won’t let Will near her.
Will tries not to think too deeply as to why, and gives her the space she needs without losing sight of her.
After watching him eat dirt when losing a sword fight to Jerry, she laughs for the first time, and decides he’s probably not a threat anymore and starts to mess with him.
She’s a biter.
He tells Kayla to wait until Gracie is at the very least six before she teaches her how to shoot. He doesn't need to be target practice again, please and thank you.
Will goes to bed most nights having to heal his skin from teeth marks but Gracie goes to bed without crying, and so he takes that as a win.
The cabin is still too quiet for Will’s liking, but he tries not to let them notice, and make up for those who are no longer there.
He has Kayla and Austin there to help him maintain the routine, even if it’s still too much work for so little of them, and it would have made Estella proud that they weren’t wasting their days just in mourning.
Death comes for them all but that doesn’t mean they can’t live their lives and leave their marks.
When Will leaves for his quest with Nico, he leaves having prepared not to come back.
He is going to try his best to make it back, he still has his duty, but just in case, his will is on Kayla’s bed.
She’ll know what she has to do, and she will make him proud if the worst does happen.
The days will go on.