Chapter Text
He probably wouldn’t have recognized the corpse on the ground as Lee if it hadn’t been for the bow still gripped in his hand.
His curly blond hair is soaked in blood and gray matter, and his face is just… gone. Will drops to his knees beside the body, gently picks up Lee’s hand, and checks his vitals.
‘His quiver must have been knocked off in the attack,’ Will thinks absently, glancing at the arrows scattered around, taking note of the complex patterns of feathers that Lee had spent hours fletching.
Will could never make his look as nice.
‘No pulse.’ His brain finally reminds him. He blinks down at the still-warm hand he was holding and drops it. Reality finally came screeching back in, the ground was shaking under his legs, the air was hot and heavy and Will needed to back to fucking work.
“Medic!” A voice calls through the trees, Will readjusts his shoulder bag and takes off towards the sound. And he doesn’t look back at his brother’s body. He doesn’t.
It won’t be the last body he sees today anyway.
He lets instinct take over as he starts treating his fellow campers; wrapping Ares’ kids in bandages before they go running back into the fray, pouring nectar and ambrosia down throats, recruiting passersby to run the more severely injured back to the infirmary, closing the eyes on a couple campers that could not be saved. His voice is strained from singing the same hymns over and over again.
He can barely keep track of what monsters are attacking around him as he pops a Hermes kid's dislocated shoulder back in, Malcolm Pace was hovering around whacking down anything that tried to get too close, Will could swear he saw a skeleton or two pass by at some point.
“Okay, that’s back in now, be careful and head over to the infirmary once this is over,” He finishes tying off the sling and taps the kid on his non-dislocated shoulder, Will had already learned there was no stopping the campers with non-fatal injuries from rejoining the fight.
Will took stock of his supplies as he made his way over to the next person, a slight buzzing in his ear directing him to the nearest injured person, he was out of godly food, and the bandages and gauze were almost gone as well.
Malcolm suddenly yanks him backward, just in time for a sword to slice through the space Will had just been occupying. Will stumbles back further as Malcolm’s sword clashes with the demigod that just attempted to take his head off.
Maybe that buzzing was his limited precog abilities trying to warn him of something else.
“Hey, he’s a healer, off limits!” Malcolm yells at the boy. Will knew that demigods were fighting in the Titans Army, Luke had not left Camp with just himself, but this was the first time he had even noticed that the Half-Blood campers weren’t the only children of gods on the battlefield that day.
Malcolm and the boy exchanged a few more blows before a loud ‘BOOOOOM!’ echoed through the trees, followed by cheering. Malcolm recovered from the shock of the noise faster than the other boy and took his chance to run him through. Both Malcolm and the boy seemed surprised by this. He pulled his sword out and the boy fell to the ground, Will quickly dropped next to him, pulling out gauze and applying pressure. He tried to sing but it didn't do anything, the gauze was quickly soaked through, the red spreading across the forest floor.
“I-I-I don’t,” The boy choked on his own blood, “P-please, please, I’m, I-I’m, please.”
And then he was gone.
Will looked up at Malcolm who was staring down at them with wide eyes. Will wipes his bloody hands on his already bloodied shirt, there was no use trying to keep things sterile out here, and inflection could be cured with a bit of nectar anyway.
Just as he tried to stand up another sound blasted, a horrific sound like a brass trumpet magnified a thousand times, Will feared his ears might start bleeding. This was followed by dozens of monsters and enemy half-bloods sprinting past them, no longer attacking, but Malcolm kept his sword up defensively and a hand on Will’s shoulder.
After a few minutes, the forest was quiet except for the burning fires and the cries of the wounded.
The infirmary is packed to the brim, even busier than after Capture the Flag, with demigods spilling into the rec room and his siblings running back and forth, with his older sister Hannah out of the deck taking care of Chrion’s broken back leg.
Will is stitching up a gash on Tom from Hermes' arm as the kid excitedly tries to give Will a play-by-play of the battle. He keeps forgetting about his wound and starts waving his arm around, Will is tempted to tie him down as the needle nearly slips from his fingers for the fourth time.
“And then and then like a hundred of dracaena tried running towards the camp-”
Tom is interrupted by Tris from Aphrodite in the bed next to them, “It was like ten, don’t exaggerate.”
“Whatever,” Tom brushed her off, “and then this really cool kid with this like wicked black sword like raised an army of zombies from the ground and they fought the monsters off and and and they were riding around on these like skeleton horses-”
“Wait,” Will finished tying off the last stitch, Tom’s words sinking in, “there really were skeletons running around?” He thought that might of been some weird trick of the Mist somehow.
“I know right! How cool!”
“What do you mean, how cool?” Tris jumped in again, “Don’t you know who raised them, that was a son of Hades, that's a bad omen,”
“Hades? But he's not supposed to have any kids,” Will was surprised, he wouldn't have thought the Lord of the Underworld would break an oath.
“Well, neither was Zeus or Poseidon and look what happened there,” Tris flipped her hair over her shoulder, the effect somewhat dampened by the blood crusted in it, “But all I know is my sister died after he showed up.”
“That-that’s not really his fault,” Will could still feel Lee’s limp hand in his, his cooling skin, “It was a battle, I can’t save, I-I mean we can’t save everyone.”
He hoped no one caught his slip of the tongue, Will knew he wasn't the best archer, that he couldn't fight and shoot and defend as well as his siblings, he had entered this battle with only his armband declaring himself as medic to protect him after all. But he was meant to be a better healer, that was meant to be the trade right?
But Will knew of at least three campers that he had failed in that regard today, and the sister of one was sitting right next to him.
“Whatever, but I wouldn’t want to be sharing my cabin with the son of the god of death and I’m sure little Tommy here doesn’t either, he’ll curse us all.”
“Tom?” Will is taken aback by the bitterness in the tone of her voice, hadn't this random Hades kid just helped save the Camp? Hadn't he prevented more deaths? Hadn't he accomplished more than Will had that day? Will turns to the younger boy, he almost can’t believe they are debating this.
“Um, I don’t wanna lose any more siblings,” Tom was staring at the ground, swinging his legs off the side of the bed. Of course, the Hermes cabin had taken one of the largest population hits since Luke’s revelation, a not small number of both unclaimed and claimed campers had not come back to Camp in the years since, “Can I go now?”
Will could only sigh, “Yeah,” he gave him a small square of ambrosia, “Just don’t get the stitches wet and come back in a couple of days.”
The words were barely out of his mouth before Tom shoved the ambrosia in and took off towards the door, and another camper slid into the now vacant spot.
And, well, Will was too busy and tired to try and continue that debate anyway.
Only a few of his siblings were able to break away from the infirmary for a short time to attend the funerals.
Four shrouds were lined up next to each other in pyres in the amphitheater; Jonathan from Ares was wrapped in a dark gray fabric with his father's shield emblazoned on it, Elizabeth from Aphrodite was wrapped in a dark pink fabric embroidered with sequins that resembled a rose, Castor from Dionysus was wrapped in a deep purple embroidered with grapevines, and then there was Lee.
Their cabin hadn’t had time to finish his shroud, they had all been too busy looking after the wounded. They didn't think to prepare anything before the battle either, they didn't expect the archers and healers to be hit.
Pollux stepped up to the row first, never taking his eyes off his dead twin, “My b-brother was-” He choked up and a single heartbreaking sob left his throat, he grabbed the torch and lit the funeral pyre. In moments the row of shrouds was engulfed in fire, sending smoke and sparks up to the stars.
Will stares into the fire as Lee’s golden shroud burns, this morning WIll had 16 siblings at camp, and now he has 15. His eyes flicker down to the blood stuck under his nails, he wonders if any of it belongs to Lee.
Michael is standing by him, their shoulders touching, Will is nearly taller than him despite the two-year age difference, “I think,” Michael’s voice breaks slightly, “I think you looked the most like him.”
Michael would sometimes joke that when Will got tall enough, Will and Lee might be mistaken as twins, that they were the two siblings that looked the most like their father. When Will would try to sing along at campfires, Lee would sometimes poke him in the cheek and say, "You might look like him but you don't sound like our dad at all," and his siblings would laugh along, and Will didn't mind, he really didn't. Because he had never met his father, so he didn't actually know what he looked like, but if he looked like his father, and his father looked like Lee, then there were worse people in the world to look like. He just wished he could be a bit more like Lee as well, a better archer, a better singer, a better healer.
Will can’t recall Lee’s face at that moment, the memory of it fuzzy, like his brain was trying to forget the mess that had been that day. The mess that had become of his brother. His little sister Kayla slips her hand into his and all Will can do is choke down a sob and nod just once.
They can only stay for a few moments before they are needed back in the infirmary. They climb as a group up and out of the amphitheater, at the top of the stairs Will takes his last chance to stare at the fires below, and out of the corner of his eye, he spots someone.
A boy in an oversized jacket, a sword blacker than night strapped to his hip, dark, messy hair, and skin that was an almost unhealthy pale colour. They lock eyes for just a moment and the boy takes a step back into the shadows and then he is gone, like a ghost.