Qia

Camp Athens - Closed

"Thank the Gods it’s just you."

Anissa blinked at him, and for a split second, she honestly wasn't sure she'd heard correctly. Her gaze flicked over her shoulder, checking if someone else had followed her over—another camper, another question, another interruption meant for River instead. But the space behind her remained empty, the distant noise of the few remaining campers muffled enough to make the moment feel oddly private, almost cocooned.

Her brows knit together faintly as she turned back, and she held the bag out a little further, though her arm had begun to tremble slightly from the weight. But it was hard to get her mouth moving right after something like that.

River, for his part, appeared to realize what he'd just said. His eyes widened with the particular horror of someone hearing their own words after they've left their mouth.

"I didn’t mean it like that." The words came out rushed and a bit pleading. "There’s just been a lot of people asking questions I don’t have answers to… and a sister I didn’t know I had… and some Aphrodite girl who needs therapy and—"

He snapped his mouth shut. Then his eyes, as though following some internal command to cease all function immediately. His hands ran along his thighs until they rested on his knees, elbows locking as he exhaled something that was half a sigh, half a groan.

Anissa's confusion lingered for a moment longer as his words tumbled out in uneven fragments, each one arriving slightly ahead of the next, like stones skipping across water before sinking. She caught them as they landed, turning each one over in her mind.

Questions. A sister. Aphrodite girl.

Ah.

Understanding arrived slowly, the way light creeps across a floor at dawn—incremental, then suddenly everywhere at once. She quietly assembled meaning from the pieces he'd scattered between apology and obvious frustration. The pieces of an early afternoon that had clearly gone nowhere close to as he'd thought they might.

His clarifying words then—"I’m just thankful it’s you and not… literally anyone else." —caused a warmth that was unwelcome, unbidden, and absolutely indifferent to her attempts to extinguish it. Because it meant the other girl had not, in fact, charmed or comforted him the way Anissa had briefly and very unwillingly imagined. It meant that whatever had happened between them, whatever had left him sitting there with his hands pressed to the back of his neck like he was holding himself together, it hadn't been like that.

Thank the Gods.

Then, just as quickly, embarrassment followed this relief.

Really? Really? It was ridiculous to feel relieved! Nothing had changed between them because of this. Nothing should change if her dream had anything to say about it. River was free to speak to whoever he wished, respond however he wished. The logic of it was obvious, orderly, and sensible.

And yet.

And yet the warmth remained, stubborn and viscous, pooling somewhere beneath her ribs despite her best efforts to ignore it. Anissa felt an inexplicable urge to smile, a ridiculous impulse that she quickly suppressed. Instead, she busied herself with arranging the contents of the bag, her hands fussing over containers she'd already organized twice, acutely aware of River's gaze tracking her movements with an attention that felt almost tangible.

When she finally moved to hand it to him, her mouth opening to explain what was inside, his hand reached out first. The motion was unhesitating, as though accepting something from her required no consideration at all. But it was his fingers brushing her own that caused her breath to stall. She waited. Reflexively, instinctively, she waited for the correction. That micro-flinch and subtle recoil made when someone realized they were touching her, the girl who always had her hands covered.

It never came.

Of course it didn't. He didn't know about that side of her. To him, she was just Anissa. Someone who brought food, who asked questions, who stood beside him without incident. This was simply... comfortable for him. Natural. Unremarkable. And in a way, despite knowing what she knew about herself, Anissa felt the same.

Still, she explained what his meal consisted of as neutrally as she could manage, her voice carefully modulated to reveal nothing of the warmth still flickering stubbornly beneath her skin. When River's finger tapped lightly against hers with a word of thanks and his honest confession about having forgotten to eat, Anissa felt something strange catch in her throat again. Not quite the same choking as before, but close.

She cleared her throat, the sound quiet and almost apologetic, as though correcting something only she could hear.

“It’s… nothing fancy,” she added, unnecessarily, her attention dropping briefly to the container in his hands instead of his face. “Just something warm.”

The low, unmistakable growl of his stomach broke the moment before it could linger too long.

Anissa's eyes flicked up despite herself, surprise softening her expression as River laughed it off, bashful in a way that felt oddly disarming on someone who so often carried himself like an immovable structure. It drew the faintest curve at the corner of her mouth before she could stop it.

"Guess you were onto something," he said with a soft chuckle, one hand pressing briefly against his stomach as though to silence further traitorous noises.

“Well, what can I say?” she murmured, lowering her gaze again before an expression could fully form. “Starvation seemed unlikely to improve morale.” It was easier to frame her concern as practicality. Easier to let him think she'd simply applied logic to the situation rather than any particular thought of him.

Anissa watched, peripheral and careful, as he shifted his clipboard and jacket aside, clearing space on the bench without comment. After a moment's hesitation, she sat beside him, placing hers and Blair's lunch on the opposite side. She angled herself carefully so that her arm didn't brush against his, even as the bench's limited dimensions forced them into proximity. Then she watched him examine the meat with open curiosity, something about the seriousness with which he regarded it almost endearing despite her best efforts to remain unmoved.

"I’ve never had lamb," he confessed, looking up and over at her with an expression that held no embarrassment, only honest admission. "It was kind of out of my mom’s budget growing up." An amused laugh accompanied the words, self-deprecating but not wounded."We had a lot of pork… and fish, obviously."

Anissa’s brows lifted faintly at that, surprise flickering across her features before she could smooth it away. It hadn’t even occurred to her that it might be unfamiliar. Lamb had appeared often enough at home as just one of those occasional indulgences for her and her mother. She hesitated a second, suddenly aware of the invisible lines between their upbringings, and chose her words carefully.

“It’s… softer than it looks,” she offered instead, her voice taking on an oddly pedagogical tone that she immediately regretted.“Less intimidating once you commit to it.”

Her gaze dropped briefly to the container as River mentioned pork and fish, the amused emphasis on the latter earning the faintest twitch at the corner of her mouth. The opportunity to deflect from her own momentary awkwardness presented itself, and she took it.

“You know…I did consider fish,” she said slowly. “But…I wasn’t really sure if that could count as like…cannibalism or something. Didn’t want lunch to be some weird moral dilemma for you, you know, eating your fish friends.” She shrugged. “What can I say? I’m thoughtful like that. You’re welcome.”

She paused, as if realizing she might actually want the answer to the joke she'd just made. Curiosity, it seemed, was harder to suppress than embarrassment.

“I mean genuinely,” Anissa added, tilting her head slightly, the teasing giving way to something more earnest. “Do you actually consider fish your friends? Or is it more of a distant-relative situation where it’s fine as long as you don’t make eye contact?”

River’s smile was soft then. Almost warm in the way it sparked something behind his eyes that had been absent when he'd been sitting with his hands pressed to the back of his neck like he was holding himself together. He looked back down at the meat and, without any ceremony or show, picked up one piece by the bone and took a bite. Then another.

Then, with the same unhesitating naturalness he'd shown when reaching for the container, he held the remaining piece out toward her.

The lamb hung between them, still faintly steaming with beads of fat glistening on its surface. Anissa stared at it, caught somewhere between surprise at the offering and the absurdity of being handed food like some kind of primal sharing ritual. River's face, however, remained open and expectant, as if this were the most normal thing in the world. As if handing half-eaten food to someone you'd only known for about a day required no thought at all.

Anissa looked from the proffered piece to his face, then back again. Her own utensils were still in the bag beside her, untouched. But she could take it. She could just reach forward and—

Her cheeks warmed at the thought.

It shouldn't have felt like a big deal. Ignoring what she couldn’t remember, she'd done far worse, far bolder, with him already, except instead of lamb it had, of course, been a cherry. That version of herself, the one from the party, had leaned forward without hesitation, turning closeness into something playful and untouchable by consequence. It had been easy. Effortless. The kind of boldness that arrived with a buzz and departed just as quickly, leaving nothing behind but memory.

This, however, existed in daylight with no alcohol and not much of an audience, and no convenient excuse waiting afterward. This was just her, and him, and a piece of meat suspended between them like a question she hadn't prepared to answer.

Her gloved hand moved before she'd fully decided to lift it, fingers closing around the bone he held out. It was warm from his own grip, slick with grease, and impossibly ordinary and intimate all at once. She pulled it toward her anyway, teeth closing around the meat with deliberate slowness. The flavour hit her immediately: rich and savoury, deepened by salt and something smokier than simple roasting. Anissa had to stop herself from making a sound, some small hum of satisfaction that would have revealed too much.

“Really glad now I didn’t go for something boring like…sandwiches.” She paused mid-bite, brow faintly knitting. “This is pretty good.”

It was more than pretty good, actually. Either she was hungrier than she'd thought, or divine catering came with some frankly unfair advantages. She turned the thought over as she chewed, considering the peculiar logistics of it all. If the gods could manipulate reality but chose to apply it to lamb seasoning, why didn't they do it for anything that actually mattered? Why not direct that power toward something useful, like world hunger, political stability, or the rising cost of rent? But no. Instead, there were children of gods worrying about budgets and groceries and whether they'd make it through winter while their divine parents ruled oceans and skies and underworlds with what appeared to be very selective generosity. The whole setup was so bullshit.

She chewed on that thought along with the lamb, watching River busily work on the small roasted potatoes in his container. The silence between them felt different now—less weighted, more companionable. The kind of quiet that didn't demand filling. It was only after a minute or so of this had passed that Anissa reached into the bag for her own container, pulling it out along with a few napkins, a fork for her poutine, and one of the full bottles of juice. She handed his bottle over without looking at him after wiping her mouth with a napkin. Then, finally, she opened her container.

The scent that rose from it was immediate and unequivocal: golden fries, squeaky cheese curds, rich brown gravy thick enough to cling to everything it touched. The portion was heaping, obscene in its generosity—sorry, not sorry—and for a moment she simply looked at it with something approaching reverence. It was to the point that she almost forgot River was next to her. Almost. It was still far too early for him to see her drooling over food like she’d been starved and hadn’t eaten anything substantial since, well, now (which, mind you…she hadn’t).

She speared a fry with her fork, studied it briefly as if assessing its structural integrity, then held it out toward him.

“For balance,” Anissa said solemnly. “You’ve had protein. Now you need something with absolutely no nutritional value whatsoever.”

Whether he accepted the fry or not, Anissa herself couldn't wait much longer to dig into her food, given that River had just about reduced his lamb to little more than small lacertiform strips of meat by this point. Using the same fork, she scooped up a generous portion and ate, savouring the salt and the way the cheese stretched just slightly before breaking each time she did. The gravy clung to everything it touched, a perfect counterpoint to the crispness of the fries beneath.

Gods, it was better than any fish or lamb hoped to ever be. This was comfort manifest. This was the culinary equivalent of a warm blanket and a cozy movie. This was, she thought with something approaching religious fervour, exactly what she'd needed without knowing she needed it.

"I don’t think I’m going to be a liked leader," River confessed plainly then.

Anissa paused with her fork halfway to her mouth, her attention torn from the transcendent experience of poutine to the unexpected admission. She chewed thoughtfully, giving herself a moment to process both the words and the vulnerability behind them, her brows raised in curiosity.

“Why do you say that?” she asked after swallowing, her tone casual but genuinely interested. “Because you don’t have all the answers?”

Whatever his reply, the warmth of gravy lingered on her tongue as she considered the field rather than him.

“Wanna know what I think?” She didn't wait for confirmation. “I don’t really think people were asking you for the right answers just to know them. I think they were asking you to make them feel secure.” A small pause, during which she finally turned to look at him directly. “Besides…I think people confuse discomfort with dislike.”

The words came out quieter than she'd intended.

“You make them…uncomfortable.”

She saw something flicker across his face as though she'd merely confirmed what he already suspected. Anissa's fork hovered uselessly over her container as she searched for the right words to explain, puffing out her cheeks in light frustration. The poutine sat forgotten, its gravy beginning to cool.

“Not in a bad way,” Anissa added quickly, the clarification slipping out before she could stop it. “I watched people come up to you today after training and…they didn’t really approach you like you’re a person, did they? It’s more like…” She stopped, humming in thought, her brow furrowing as she worked through the realization even as she spoke it. “More like they approached you like you're a solution. Like you're supposed to have all the answers because of who your father is or whatever. And when you don't immediately solve something for them, especially in the way they want... they don't quite know what to do with that, I think.”

That was probably why, she realized, so many of them—including Blair—had walked away looking frustrated rather than angry. Not after failing, but after being told to try again. After being met not with a magic fix but with the uncomfortable truth that they'd have to do the work themselves. It was easier to be angry at someone who denied you a solution than at yourself for not finding one.

“Anyway, River, I…” Anissa hesitated, suddenly aware that she'd been talking for what felt like a long time, that she'd laid out observations she hadn't fully examined herself until this moment. “I don’t think you’re disliked. I think you’re just new. Unknown. Different. And sometimes that’s enough to make people unsure. Doesn't mean they won't come around. Just means they haven't figured out where you fit yet.”

She picked up another fry, more to have something to do with her hands than because she wanted it. The gravy had cooled slightly, but she ate it anyway, chewing slowly as she gave him space to respond.

Or not respond and change the subject, if that's what he needed.

---

_{Location: Arena
Interactions: River
Mentions: Blair and Colton (indirectly), Rae and Zelia (indirectly), Maylisse (indirectly), Veronica}

^{#5a3e85...|...outfit}

Fashionably Late: A Crime Thriller Roleplay

---

_{LOCATION:. new york city - marquee skydeck}

016:. still rolling

---

_{INTERACTIONS: . officer jones}

MENTIONS:. hayden

Margot didn’t notice the message at first. Her phone lay face down beside her glass, vibrating faintly against the lacquered wood, the sound swallowed by the low swell of conversations tangling with the dull, visceral throb of bass that still seemed to pulse in the air, even though the music had stopped who knows how long ago. She only became aware of it when the vibration came again, longer this time, insistent enough to pierce through the pleasant, alcohol-soft haze that blurred the edges of her perception.

She picked it up absently, expecting a notification, a tagged photo, maybe a flood of late-night messages from collaborators still riding the midnight high, posting their obligatory “new year, same me” selfies or whatever.

Instead, she saw Eli’s name. Four messages. Sent in rapid succession.

Her thumb hovered for a moment before opening them, a faint smile tugging at the corner of her mouth out of habit. When Eli texted during an event, it was usually about scheduling adjustments or brand reminders. Given that this wasn’t that sort of thing, however, she imagined it was at best a gentle “don't forget to post something before midnight” nudge since he wasn’t exactly the type to message her for no good reason.

The smile vanished almost immediately.

The warmth that had settled pleasantly in her cheeks cooled to something clammy, replaced by a thin, creeping alertness that didn't fully cut through the alcohol but instead curdled it into something queasy and unwelcome.

Police? Why would the police be here?

Her gaze lifted, scanning the area with new eyes. Her brow furrowed in confusion rather than fear at first. The guests, far less than before, had reconfigured themselves into tighter clusters, holding their phones at chest level now, a furtive posture that suggested documentation rather than celebration. The staff moved differently, too; gone was their polished drift through the crowd, replaced by quick, purposeful strides and smiles that had been wiped clean from their faces.

A uniform near the bar. Another near the bathrooms.

Oh. Right.

She blinked, and memory returned in a jigsaw of sensory snapshots that included the scream that had cut through the countdown's aftermath like broken glass; music stopping mid-beat, leaving only the echo of feedback; and light rising too bright and too sudden, exposing the confusion on every face. People whispering. Someone saying “bathroom”. Someone else saying “ambulance”. She even remembered texting Eli earlier, her observations half-coherent and lubricated by the extra alcohol she’d drunk. Something vague about the police arriving and the party taking a strange turn.

Margot hadn't thought anything of it at the time. Why would she? Parties got weird all the time to the point it was practically a law of nature. Crowds spilled over, emotions ran high, and someone always said something reckless or made a scene. That was why she hadn't left when the commotion first started. It had felt like background noise; something happening adjacent to her evening rather than inside it.

But a bathroom being cordoned off with that yellow tape wasn't nothing.

People being redirected away from one side of the venue, their questions met with tight smiles and vague assurances. That wasn't nothing either.

And guests attempting to leave only to be politely intercepted by uniformed officers? Definitely not nothing.

Margot exhaled slowly, trying to steady herself. She mentally rehearsed neutral expressions the way she might before going live—calm, pleasant, unremarkable. Just another guest waiting things out. Just someone who happened to be here, nothing more.

She was so focused on composing her features that she barely registered the approaching footsteps. Only when a shadow fell across the table beside her did she startle.

“Miss?”

Margot looked up.

A uniformed officer stood at a polite distance, posture straight but not aggressive, hands resting lightly on her belt. She offered Margot a professional smile that didn’t quite reach her eyes.

“Officer Jones,” she said, producing a small notebook as identification rather than a badge flash. “Sorry to interrupt your evening.”

“Oh,” Margot said automatically, straightening without meaning to. “Hi.”

“We’re speaking with everyone still present,” Jones continued gently, her tone measured and reassuring in that specific way that suggested the speaker had delivered these exact words many times before. “Just trying to establish a timeline for the evening. It shouldn’t take long.”

Margot nodded slowly—a fraction too slow to feel natural even to herself. The officer's words reached her clearly enough, but they seemed to arrive with a slight delay, as though travelling through water before settling into meaning. A timeline. The phrase echoed once, then twice, and then Eli's messages came roaring back into her awareness with sudden, electric clarity.

Do NOT talk to police without representation.

Her stomach dropped.

Oh. Oh shit. This was exactly what he’d meant, hadn’t he?

For a brief, irrational second, she considered pretending she hadn't seen the messages at all. That if she ignored them hard enough, the situation might revert to something harmless and administrative. A misunderstanding. A formality. But the officer was still standing there, patient as furniture, pen poised above her notebook like a question mark given form.

Margot lifted her glass slightly between them, offering a small, apologetic smile that leaned hard into sheepish charm. The ice had mostly melted, diluting whatever remained of her drink into something pale and unappealing, but the gesture still served its purpose and should easily be understood.

“I mean…” she began, her voice pitching light as if they were sharing an obvious truth rather than circling something she desperately wanted to avoid. “I don't actually know how much help I'd be.” She gave the glass a tiny, illustrative tilt, the amber liquid catching the overhead light and throwing a weak gleam across the table. “I've had a bit to drink, so my memory might not be… legally impressive.” The joke landed softly, and she felt irrationally hopeful that this might be enough. That the officer might smile, wave it off, move on to someone soberer and far more useful.

No such luck.

Officer Jones's smile thinned, the kind of adjustment you only noticed if you were looking for it. And Margot was definitely looking.

“That's okay,” she said, her tone still even but now threaded with something firmer beneath the reassurance. Persistence, maybe. Or the particular patience of someone who'd heard every deflection before. “Even impressions can be helpful. Did you notice anything unusual tonight? Before things quieted down?”

The question hung there, open and innocuous. It was the kind of question you were supposed to answer, designed to make cooperation feel like the natural response. Margot felt words rising in her throat before she could stop them, that reflexive urge to be agreeable and to smooth over awkwardness with narration. She'd practically built a brand on that instinct, on the ability to keep talking until everything felt comfortable and curated.

Do not answer questions beyond name + ID.

She clamped down on the impulse, swallowing the half-formed response that had already begun assembling itself on her tongue.

“Well…” Margot began slowly, buying time more than offering an answer. Her gaze drifted past Officer Jones's shoulder toward the crowd, as if the memory might physically exist somewhere out there, waiting to be retrieved from the air. “I mean, it was a party. Loud. Busy. Hard to notice much else.” She heard herself speaking and hated how easily she could slip into pleasant narration mode, smoothing uncertainty into coherence. That was the danger, wasn't it? Offering an impression that became a statement that became evidence.

Her thumb brushed unconsciously against the edge of her phone, finding the cool metal of its frame like a worry stone.

“I remember the music stopping,” she added carefully. “And… someone screaming. I didn’t actually see what happened, though. Just heard people talking.” She paused, feeling the urge to prove she was helpful and good and not the kind of person who needed to worry about messages like Eli's. Instead, Margot drew a small breath and forced herself to stop.

Officer Jones nodded as she wrote, pen moving in small, efficient strokes across the page, loops and lines that Margot couldn't read but felt compelled to watch from where she sat anyway.

“And roughly where were you before the countdown?” she asked, tone conversational as if the answer were a minor logistical detail rather than something being carefully slotted into a larger structure Margot couldn't yet see. Her pen hovered, waiting.

“Uh… near the bar, I think,” Margot replied.

The pen scratched again.

“Were you alone?”

The question landed with apparent simplicity, and Margot almost laughed because the answer felt impossibly complicated now in retrospect. Alone how? Physically? Socially? Existentially? She tamped down the impulse toward spiralling and focused on the literal.

“No, I mean, there were people around me, of course. It was packed. But I wasn’t talking to anyone, if that’s what you mean, so I was alone by the time everything… stopped.” The word felt inadequate for what had happened. Stopped. As if someone had simply pressed pause on the evening rather than whatever had actually occurred behind that yellow tape.

Officer Jones nodded again, accepting that without comment, her face remaining a careful blank. Margot found herself searching it for clues anyway, some indication of whether her answers were landing as normal or suspicious or somewhere in between.

“And you heard the scream from there?”

“Yes.” The word came easier this time. “I didn’t see anything. Just… heard it. Everyone did, I think.”

Jones paused her writing.

“Did you go toward the bathrooms after that?”

The question landed lightly, but Margot felt her shoulders tense anyway.

“No,” she said quickly, then softened it so it didn't sound defensive. The last thing she needed was to seem like she was hiding something. “No, I stayed where I was. People were already crowding that direction.” Which was true. She remembered the surge of bodies, the way the crowd had seemed to contract toward the back hallway like a single organism responding to stimulus. She'd watched it happen from her spot by the bar, frozen in place while others moved. “I figured whoever was handling it would handle it. You know? I didn't want to be in the way.”

The pen scratched again. Margot watched it move, trying to read meaning into the shapes it left behind. Then, Officer Jones nodded once, apparently satisfied, though Margot noticed she didn't immediately move on. Instead, the officer adjusted her stance slightly, weight shifting onto one leg as she reviewed what she'd written. The gesture suggested settling in, not moving away, a subtle indication that this conversation wasn't as close to ending as Margot had hoped.

“You said you were alone by the bar when everything stopped,” Jones began, her tone still conversational. “Can you describe who you were talking to before that? Just in case we need to verify some of the timelines.”

Margot hesitated.

“Um…”

She’d already answered so many questions, way more than she honestly should have. Each response felt small on its own, harmless, but together they formed something larger she could no longer see the edges of. Additionally…

Her gaze drifted briefly toward the crowd, as if Hayden might still be visible somewhere among the shifting bodies, the uniforms, the watchful conversations that had replaced the night's earlier carelessness. She didn't see him, but the search gave her a moment to think and to weigh something she hadn't expected to feel: the strange urge to protect a stranger. To return the favour. To prevent his name from ending up in a notebook, especially because of her.

“Just… someone I met tonight,” Margot said finally, carefully neutral. “We were just talking. Nothing important.”

Officer Jones' pen paused mid-stroke, her gaze lifting from her notebook to meet her own.

“Just talking, huh?” she echoed mildly. “That's good. It's always nice to meet new people at parties, isn't it?”

The pen moved again.

“And you said you don't remember his name? That's okay. Can you describe him? Height, build, what he was wearing? Anything like that would help jog the memory.”

Margot blinked. The question slid past her at first—normal, procedural, the kind of follow-up that made sense in context—until something in it snagged. Caught. Refused to move forward.

She replayed the last thirty seconds in her head, searching for the moment she'd said it aloud. She'd said “someone.” She'd said “we.” She'd been careful, she thought, to keep it vague.

A faint crease formed between her brows.

“…I didn’t say it was a guy,” she said slowly, the realization arriving even as the words left her mouth.

Jones froze. It was the barest hiccup in her professional composure, but it was long enough for Margot to see it.

“Right,” she said, closing her notebook halfway. “Okay. I should probably explain. I’m still pretty new at this, and I think I skipped a step trying to be efficient.”

She reached into her pocket and withdrew a small digital recorder. The overhead lights glanced off its surface as she held it up, and Margot felt her stomach drop before she consciously understood why.

“We recovered this from the victim involved in the incident tonight,” Jones continued. “She appears to have been interviewing guests throughout the evening.”

A small click. Static crackled softly, that hiss of empty tape giving way to recording. And then voices emerged, one in particular at first, a woman's voice, warm and professionally curious.

 

"I don’t mean to put you on the spot, but I think your perspective would be interesting. You’ve been streaming for… what, a few years now? And you’ve seen the industry change pretty dramatically."

"I… I don’t really have one yet and…"

Jones stopped the playback.

“Your name came up on this recording,” Jones said. “I, uh… googled it. Just so I knew who I was talking to.” She offered a small shrug.

Officer Jones tilted her head slightly, studying her with what seemed like renewed interest now that the cat was out of the bag. The earlier professional distance had shrunk, replaced by something more focused and much more personal. “So you're Rosie, the streamer, right?” she said, pulling her notebook fully open again to flip to an earlier page. She scanned whatever she'd written there, then looked up. “I saw her near the bathroom live-streaming from her phone.” A pause. “Looks like someone here recognized you before I did.”

Margot stared at the recorder a moment longer than was comfortable, her own voice still echoing faintly in her memory even after the playback had stopped. It sounded smaller than she remembered. Unsure. Almost apologetic. She'd been caught off guard by the questions, hadn't she?

But that wasn't what mattered now. What mattered was the word Jones had used. The word that had slid past in the explanation but now lodged itself in Margot's consciousness like a splinter.

Victim.

Not guest. Not reporter. Not the woman from earlier, the one with the recorder and the curious smile and the seemingly endless supply of questions.

Victim.

Something cold slid down her spine, cutting cleanly through what remained of the alcohol warmth in her system. The scream. The lights coming up. The music dying mid-beat. The bathroom cordoned off.

Someone hadn’t just gotten sick.

Someone hadn't just had too much to drink or fallen or needed medical attention.

Someone had died.

The woman with the recorder. The woman who'd interviewed her, who'd asked about streaming and the industry and what it was like to build a career online. That woman was now a victim, and her recorder had been recovered, and Margot's voice was on it, and Officer Jones had googled her, and none of this was casual or coincidental or anything close to the ordinary evening she'd been pretending this was.

Say you want counsel present.

Eli's message blazed through her mind with renewed urgency, the words practically incandescent against the darkness of her panic. She'd already said so much. Already answered so many questions. Already offered details and descriptions and timelines that she had no business offering without someone there to tell her what was safe and what wasn't.

Margot swallowed. Her throat felt dry, constricted, as if the words she needed to say were physically difficult to produce.

“I…” she started, then stopped, forcing herself to slow down. To breathe. To think instead of react. Her voice was on that recorder. Her words. Her unguarded responses to a woman who was now dead. “Officer Jones, I…I think I’d feel more comfortable having representation present before I answer anything else.”

Jones's expression shifted to something that looked like respect. Or acknowledgment, at least. The recognition that the dynamic had changed.

“Of course,” she said, and her voice carried none of the pressure Margot had braced for. No sigh of frustration, no pointed glance suggesting this was unnecessary. Just simple, straightforward acceptance. “That's absolutely your right. I should have mentioned it during my questioning, honestly.” She reached into her pocket again, this time producing a card—crisp white, professionally printed, bearing the official seal of the police department. “This is the direct line to the precinct. When you have representation, have them call this number. We'll coordinate statements properly.”

Margot took the card. Her fingers trembled slightly, but she hoped Jones didn't notice.

Jones tucked her notebook away, the recorder following into her pocket. “You’ll likely be cleared to leave shortly,” she added, her tone matter-of-fact. “Either way, we’ll be in touch.”

And then she was gone before Margot could respond. If there was even a response to give.

Margot sat alone at the table once more, the card now clutched in her hand, its edges digging slightly into her palm. Her phone lay dark and silent beside her, an inert slab of glass and metal that suddenly seemed incapable of the connection she desperately needed. She reached for it anyway, and the word victim echoed again in her mind as she unlocked the screen, a single syllable that had somehow multiplied, filling every available space in her consciousness.

Her thumb found Eli's name through muscle memory alone.

They have a recording of me talking to the victim. I asked for a lawyer. Call me now, please.

She sent it before she could second-guess herself, then set the phone face-up on the table and watched it like it might explode, like it might save her, like it might do something other than sit there, dark and silent. At the same time, everything she thought she understood about tonight rearranged itself into something she didn't recognize at all.

Camp Athens - Closed

^{#ebceed ....|..... outfit .....|..... #3b9ae1 ....|..... outfit .....|..... arena}

Rae’s gaze slid forward to the next obstacle, landing squarely on the rope swing. She groaned her complaint but stepped up to the edge anyway, her toes curling into the sand as she reached for the heavy rope. It was damp and heavy in her hands, the fibres stiff with use. She tested its weight, gave it a small experimental tug, watching how it moved, how far it arced, where gravity pulled it back. Her mind shifted gears automatically, panic giving way to calculation.

Pendulum. Momentum. Timing. That was all she needed to be concerned about.

She planted her feet, squared her shoulders, and took one final breath. Then she ran three quick, committed steps and jumped. The rope yanked her arms taut as her full weight hit it, a jolting force that rattled her teeth. She held on, her grip vice-like as wind rushed past her ears in a sudden roar that drowned out all other sound. The swing carried her forward in a smooth, sweeping arc, and for a breathtaking moment, there was nothing beneath her but air and the water's reflective surface. Then, she reached the apex of the swing and let go.

Her shoes hit the far edge hard, knees bending on instinct as she stumbled forward and barely caught herself before momentum could pitch her into the water anyway. She windmilled once, cursed under her breath, then straightened with a breathless laugh as the realization hit.

She was across.

Rae slowed to a stop before her legs could decide to betray her out of sheer spite. She stood there for a beat, chest rising and falling hard, then finally looked down at her hands. Angry, scarlet lines were already rising against the skin, a stark topography of effort and friction.

Yeah…that explained the stinging.

Zelia watched Rae size up the rope the way some people studied storm clouds, quietly, intensely, as if the answer to survival might be written in the angle of its sway. She stood a few paces back, hands clasped together at her waist, rocking once on her heels. The bridge had taken something out of Rae, Zelia could see it in the careful set of her shoulders, in the way she rolled her wrists like fragile machinery. Still, she stepped forward. Still, she chose motion.

When Rae ran and leapt, Zelia’s breath caught hard in her chest. For a heartbeat, the world narrowed to that single arc of motion, Rae suspended between earth and water, red hair flaring like a struck match, limbs taut with effort and will. Zelia’s hands lifted without her permission, fingers curling as if she could pull Rae through the air by wanting it badly enough.

Then Rae landed. Stumbled. Stayed upright.

Zelia laughed, bright and unguarded, the sound bursting out of her like sunlight through torn clouds. She clapped once, sharp and delighted, then lifted both hands to her mouth and called across the space between them, voice ringing with pure, fierce pride.

“Great job, winter fire!”

The rope came swinging back toward her, heavy and damp, whispering through the air like a serpent waiting to sink its fangs into the next victim. Zelia stepped forward and caught it with both hands, feet digging into the sand as its momentum tugged at her arms. The cold, damp fibers bit into her palms, and instantly her thoughts narrowed to timing and distance and breath. Water below meant no mistakes. No playful bounce. No drifting. She drew the motion into herself, counted its rhythm in her bones, back, forward, back— then ran.

Her feet struck the sand in quick, light beats, body folding cleanly into the jump. The rope snapped taut, shoulders singing with the sudden weight of her, wind tearing a quiet gasp from her throat as the arc carried her out over the water’s dark glass. She did not look down. She looked only forward, to the solid promise of ground, to Rae waiting there.

At the height of the swing, she let go. Her landing was firm, knees bending deep to drink the shock, shoes skidding only a fraction before she steadied herself. The burn in her hands bloomed hot and bright, and she rubbed her palms against her pants, hissing softly through her teeth, curls bouncing as she straightened.

"Show-off," Rae shot back fondly, shaking her head as Zelia landed beside her. Her gaze took notice of the way the other girl rubbed her palms, the mirrored sting unmistakable, and something pleased and communal curled low in Rae’s chest. Rope does not discriminate.

Zelia’s grin returned instantly, wide, radiant, a little breathless, when she turned toward Rae. “You’re doing amazing,” she said, voice warm and certain, as if it were the simplest fact in the world. “Want to take a breather? We aren’t in a rush; it’s okay to rest.” Her voice was kind, gentle in a way that showed there was no perceived judgment or weakness in choosing a moment of reprieve, rather that it was simply a good idea to be shared.

At the offer of a break, Rae didn’t hesitate this time. "Yeah, a breather sounds like the extremely correct choice here."

She moved to the sidelines, out of the way of other runners, and dropped down to sit in the sand with a groan. Stretching her legs out in front of her, she leaned back on her hands—only to immediately hiss and jerk upright again. A perfunctory glance at her stinging palms explained why. She shifted, settling onto her elbows instead, the granular sand shifting beneath her forearms. For a few minutes, there was only the sound of distant voices and her own slowing breath. The adrenaline rush of the latest obstacle began to subside, leaving a deep, satisfying feeling in its wake.

"Okay," Rae said after a while, her tone drifting from joking into something more pensive and quiet. "Real question, while we’re…recovering." She tipped her head back, studying the cloud-laden sky for a second as if searching for the right words. Then, she turned her gaze back to Zelia, one knee bending slightly as she drew it up, a gesture that felt both casual and self-conscious.

"What do you think of all this?" she asked, gesturing loosely with her hand at everything around them. "Like… the assessment. River. The way he’s running things."

Zelia followed Rae to the edge of the course and folded down beside her in the sand, movements careful, knees sinking softly into the warm grit. Her eyes went first to Rae’s hands, raw and reddening, lines of effort written plainly across her skin, and her mouth tilted into a small, worried frown before she could stop it. She almost said something about the infirmary, about ointment and bandages and the little white building she’d memorized on the map like a promise of mercy. Almost. Instead, she tucked the thought away like a note in her pocket for later and turned her face upward, mirroring Rae’s posture, studying the wide, overcast sky.

The clouds were thick and slow, great bruised swells of grey drifting over one another as if the world were breathing in its sleep. Zelia hummed quietly, a thoughtful sound, letting the question settle into her bones.

“There’s this guy—Simon Sinek,” she said after a moment, voice gentle, as if she were reciting something fragile. “He said, ‘Leadership is not about being in charge. It’s about taking care of those in your charge.’”

She shifted slightly, brushing sand from her fingers, then added softly, “And Jack Welch… he said, ‘When you become a leader, success is all about growing others.’”

Her gaze drifted back to the arena, the scattered demigods, the towering obstacles, the sea-sent boy with the clipboard who looked far too young to be responsible for keeping anyone alive.

“I don’t think we can really know yet,” she continued, slow and sincere. “If he’s good at it. Or kind about it. Or just… trying his best.” A small breath left her. “And maybe it’s unfair to measure him by human standards anyway. If the gods put him here, then… I don’t know. Maybe they saw something we can’t yet, maybe they want something from all of us we don’t fully understand.”

She smiled faintly, a little crooked.

“From what he said earlier, it sounds like he just wants us to survive.” Her shoulders lifted in a soft shrug. “Training might suck.” A pause. “But I think dying would probably suck more.”

Finally, she turned back to Rae, really looking at her, sweaty and scraped and stubborn and glowing with that quiet, ferocious persistence Zelia had already learned to recognize. “What about you?” she asked gently. “What do you think of him?”

Rae fell silent, her thoughts coalescing slowly as she dragged a hand through her sweat-damp hair, feeling the gritty persistence of sand caught in the strands. She didn’t bother to shake it out. Her gaze followed Zelia’s once more, finally landing on River, where he stood apart, rubbing a hand down his face as if trying to physically erase the accumulated strain of the last few hours.

"I think," Rae began then paused. She let out a short breath. "Now, this could just be me projecting and all, but… I think he's scared shitless. ‘Cus I mean… look at him."

She tipped her head in River’s direction. "When he first walked out there? He looked exactly like the kind of person who should be running a place like this, and also like someone who desperately did not want what might as well be a hundred demigods staring holes through him." She chewed the inside of her cheek, searching for the right words. "Like… you can kinda tell he’s not a natural performer. He’s got that whole ‘lumbering monolith’ vibe, not a ‘charismatic leader’ one. I guess it helps that he’s physically strong and stuff ‘cus people listen to that, right?"

Rae shrugged, a gesture that was half acquiescence, half uncertainty. "He's trying, though. And that counts for something, I guess? Even if the words don't come easy, he's putting himself out there. Trying to keep us all in line and ready for things like whatever... well, whatever the fuck a ‘Pandora’s Box’ actually is."

Zelia tilted her head, gaze still tracking where River stood apart from the others, broad shoulders bowed beneath an invisible weight. For a long moment she didn’t speak. She watched the way he rubbed his face, the way his posture sagged when he thought no one was really looking, like a mountain briefly remembering it had once been something softer before time hardened it into stone. The arena hummed around him, restless and loud, but he looked strangely alone in the middle of it.

“Yeah…” she murmured at last, voice quiet, thoughtful. “I think you’re right.”

She shifted her weight in the sand, knees drawn closer, arms loosely wrapped around them. Her gaze lingered on River, not unkind. “People do listen more when someone looks like the leader they expect,” she said softly. “Tall. Strong. Unshakeable. It makes everyone feel safer, even if the person inside is shaking just as much as the rest of us.” A faint, rueful smile touched her mouth.

Her eyes drifted then, away from River and toward the campers scattered across the arena, some laughing with leftover adrenaline, some slumped in exhaustion, some watching with tight mouths and folded arms, most already having left. The discontent was subtle, but it was there, threaded through the air like cold seeping under a door.

“Not everyone’s going to be patient with him, though,” she admitted. “You can see it on their faces. Some of them already decided what kind of leader they wanted before he ever opened his mouth.” Her fingers curled lightly in the sand. “Grace is… easier to offer when you’re not scared. Or angry. Or tired of surviving.” Then her attention returned to Rae, brows knitting faintly as another thought surfaced, heavier and sharper.

“I do wish he’d said more about the Pandora’s Box thing,” she confessed. “I know the story. At least the myth version.” A small, uneasy breath slipped out. “But myths never come with instructions. Or timelines. Or casualty estimates.” She gave a tiny, crooked smile. “If it’s common enough that we’re training for it… I’d really like to know what ‘it’ actually looks like.” Her gaze softened as it settled on Rae again.

Rae fell quiet for a moment, her gaze turning inward as she sifted through her own fragmentary understanding. The sand beneath her was a tactile reminder of the present, even as her thoughts wandered into the realm of the little myth she’d read.

"I don’t actually know what Pandora’s Box is," Rae admitted, her tone more thoughtful than embarrassed. She lifted one shoulder in a shrug. "I mean, I know it’s bad obviously, with a Capital-B, ‘things-you-don’t-open-unless-you-want-everything-to-go-wrong’ bad." One corner of her mouth twitched. "But that’s about where all my knowledge ends."

Zelia let out a soft giggle at that, the sound light as wind through chimes, her smile blooming warm and easy as she turned toward Rae. There was something endearing in the way Rae admitted what she didn’t know, not defensive, not flustered, just honest in a way that made her feel like she could trust the other girl with anything. “Well,” she said, voice bright with a deliberate lilt, “Seems like we missed the very-bad-not-good-time, then.” Her eyes sparkled as she tilted her head, looking back up at the sky again. Her expression could pass for thoughtful, but there was an air of playfulness about her now. “I guess it’s kind of nice that we only showed up for the boot-camp aftermath, in hindsight.”

She wiggled her eyebrows in exaggerated mirth, then leaned in to give Rae a gentle poke at the side, careful of sore muscles but playful all the same. The gesture was small, familiar in the way of someone trying to coax laughter without demanding it. “You know,” she added softly, “Apocalyptic chaos first, character-building later. We really timed our entrance well.” Her smile lingered, patient and kind, hoping that twitch at the corner of Rae’s mouth might finally give in and turn into something fuller.

Zelia’s poke landed just above Rae’s hip bone, her fingers gentle but insistent. The touch sent a ripple of awareness through her, bright and immediate against the dull, corresponding ache in her palms where the rope had etched its story. She didn’t pull away. Instead, she let the moment resonate, allowed the warmth to register, felt her mouth curve in a response that was purely instinctual, bypassing her usual circuitry of thought.

The smile that followed was small and lopsided, tired at the edges but unmistakably real.

"Character building," Rae echoed, rolling the phrase around as if testing its structural integrity. She huffed a breathless laugh. "Is that what this is?" Her gaze flicked briefly to her hands, watching the myriad of red lines shift as she flexed her fingers, feeling the sting flare and then subside. "Feels more like muscle-destroying. Or maybe character-revealing. Like, surprise, here’s exactly where all your weak points live." She shook her head, a strand of sand-dusted hair falling across her brow.

A short, thoughtful silence settled between them, filled only by the distant sounds of the course. Rae’s expression grew more pensive, her earlier humour softening into something quieter and more vulnerable. Her eyes met Zelia’s, the observation leaving her almost as soon as it formed.

"Except… that would mean you don’t really have any. Weak points, I mean." She paused, her voice dropping, the words tentative. "Except maybe…me?" It was less a conclusion and more a question offered up, hanging in the air with a strange mix of self-deprecation and startling honesty. The idea seemed to surprise even her, as if she’d stumbled upon an unexpected and slightly discomfiting piece of information.

"Except, of course, that only makes sense within this current context and not, you know, in general."

Zelia’s smile softened at the sound of Rae’s laugh, small as it was, as if it loosened something tight inside her chest. Relief warmed her expression in a quiet, steady way, the kind that didn’t demand anything but simply existed, thankful that Rae was still here, still joking, still breathing through it. She let her shoulders drop a fraction, the tension ebbing like a tide receding from shore. For a moment, it felt almost easy to sit beside her in the churned sand and pretend the world wasn’t quite so sharp-edged.

But then Rae spoke again, and Zelia’s brows knit with gentle disbelief, her head tipping as if she could physically nudge the thought back into place. “Rae,” she said softly, the name carrying a kind of fond firmness, “I have weaknesses.” She gave a quiet little huff of a laugh, not mocking, just honest. “I’m terrified of water, remember? And I get tired like everyone else. I’m just… better at this part.” Her fingers brushed absently at the sand beneath her, grounding herself in something simple.

She shifted into a small shrug, the motion loose and unassuming. “Being good at one thing but bad at another doesn’t make you weak,” she added, voice steady as a hand at Rae’s back. “It just means you’re… human, even if we’re only half.” Her eyes held Rae’s, bright with sincerity, as if she wanted the truth to sink in deeper than the sting of rope burn ever could.

And then her smile turned a little more playful again, a spark returning. “Honestly?” she murmured, “I think you’re smarter than me.” The admission came without bitterness, only warmth. “You think your way through things. You figure them out. So… we balance.” She let the words settle between them like something solid and real, as if that was the simplest answer in the world, two different strengths, side by side, making something steadier together.

Rae’s gaze drifted downward, catching on the absentminded patterns Zelia’s fingers had traced in the sand—loops and half-lines drawn without intention, like thoughts idling while something more important processed beneath the surface. Human, she thought, even if we’re only half.

The phrase lodged itself in her chest, warm and uncomfortable in equal measure.

It struck her then how myopic her own thinking had been. Strength, to Rae, had always existed in a state of binary simplicity: functional or not, adequate or insufficient. You either possessed the capacity to complete the task or you didn’t. You climbed the rope, or you remained on the ground and learned to acquiesce to that reality. That framework had been her compass for most of her life. It was efficient. Clean. Predictable.

But it was also, she realized with a slow unfurling of discomfort, the same rigid system she’d just applied to River. She’d looked at him—at the hesitation in his speech, the tension in his posture, the way his discomfort was palpable—and decided he could still lead because his visible fear didn’t negate his underlying competence. Because shaking hands didn’t erase resolve. She’d extended him a grace rooted in the understanding that strength and struggle weren’t mutually exclusive. And yet, moments later, here she was, measuring herself against a rope and tallying her own perceived inadequacies as if they were permanent failures of her character.

Rae exhaled slowly through her nose, her lips pressing into a thin line as she sat with the incongruity. She’d been willing to see complexity in him because it made logical sense. She recognized the signs. She understood that particular flavour of fear. But when it came to herself, she reverted instantly to the old, brutal equation: fail the task, fail the metric, fail the test. Perhaps that was the real character-revealing part, this ingrained tendency to intellectualize compassion for others while withholding it from herself.

The thought didn’t resolve neatly. Rae wasn’t suddenly at peace with her limitations nor miraculously cured of the instinct to systematize her worth into pass/fail metrics. But something did shift like a hairline fracture in the rigid structure she’d always relied upon.

If River could be terrified and still lead, and if Zelia could be formidable and yet afraid of water, then perhaps Rae could be capable without needing to be complete. The idea sat there, tentative and unfinished, but for once, she didn’t immediately dismantle it with logic.

"You say that I’m smarter than you," Rae began, then stopped, her eyes lifting to find Zelia beside her. She wasn’t accustomed to revisiting compliments. Typically, she deflected them, archived them somewhere inaccessible, or quietly assumed they’d been issued in error.

Her brow furrowed slightly, the familiar machinery of analysis turning inward.

"I don’t think it feels like that from the inside," she admitted. "It just feels like… compensation. Like if I can’t do something physically, then I have to figure it out another way. Optimize it. Reverse-engineer it. Cheat, basically."

Her mouth twitched faintly at that.

"But that’s kind of the only way I know how to exist," she added, her gaze dropping back to the sand. "I’ve never been the strongest person in the room. Or the fastest. Or the most naturally… aligned with what my body’s supposed to do."

She paused, gathering her thoughts, then glanced back at Zelia, more direct this time.

"But you are," Rae said simply."And I think…" She hesitated again, the admission leaving her strangely exposed in a way the physical challenge had not. "Since you value my thoughts so much, I think maybe that’s why this works. You make things feel possible in ways I wouldn’t attempt on my own, and I make things make sense when they don’t. So. Yeah…balance."

Zelia listened without interrupting, her attention fixed not just on Rae’s words but on the spaces between them, the pauses where breath caught, the slight tightening at the corners of her mouth, the way her gaze dipped whenever something felt too close to the surface. She hummed softly under her breath, a thoughtful, almost absent sound, like she was turning the ideas over in her palms the way Rae might turn over a schematic. There was no rush in her posture, no urge to correct or contradict. Just presence.

When Rae finished, Zelia’s smile returned, gentler now, smaller, something tentative and sincere. The kind of smile that didn’t try to brighten the moment, but only sit with it.

“Life gives us a bunch of obstacles because everything is a matter of perception,” she said softly, almost musing. “Where some see light, others see darkness. Where some feel openness and expectation, others feel fear and danger. Where some are influenced by yin, others are dominated by yang. Where some are guided by trust, others are confined to suspicion.”

She let out a quiet laugh, sheepish and warm. “I read that somewhere,” she admitted with a small shrug, brushing sand from her knee. “It stuck with me.”

Her fingers traced a loose circle in the sand between them. “I like balance,” she continued, voice steady but soft. “Because I know I can’t do everything alone. Yin and yang make a full circle in the end—they hold each other in place. So it’s only fair that…” She glanced up at Rae then, a shy flicker of nervousness passing through her like a quicksilver current. “…we do too?”

The vulnerability startled her enough that she rose to her feet almost on instinct, brushing sand from her palms and turning in a small, restless spin before facing Rae again. There was a brightness to her now, but it wasn’t the playful kind; it was earnest, almost fragile.

“I’m sure there are better analogies,” she said with a breathless little laugh. “But I’m glad. That I make you feel like things are possible.” Her smile softened impossibly further. “You make me feel like my feet are actually on the ground. Most of the time, I feel like I’m just drifting through clouds.” She extended her hand toward Rae, open, unassuming, warm. Not demanding. Just offering. “Maybe you’re the yin to my yang.”

Rae’s gaze dropped to the circle Zelia had traced in the sand, following its wavering, imperfect line. Yin and yang. Balance. Normally, she would have filed an idea like that under “nice but impractical”, an abstract philosophy with no real bearing on anything. But after everything they’d just done, it didn't feel theoretical anymore. It felt... observable. Tested. Almost tangible. She still hesitated out of habit before reaching for Zelia’s outstretched hand. When she took it, the grip was warm, Zelia’s palm slightly rough with the unmistakable friction of rope burn. The contact was solid as Zelia pulled her fully upright, a point of connection that felt more anchoring than any cable or platform had all day.

"If I'm supposed to be the grounding force in this metaphor," Rae said, brushing sand from her pants, "that feels deeply ironic given I nearly fell off about three structures today." Her words came out dry, self-deprecating, but the warmth in her eyes undercut the tone entirely. She didn't let go immediately. Instead, she gave Zelia's hand a light, acknowledging squeeze before finally releasing it.

"Speaking of falling…" Rae muttered, turning to what came next. "This one feels aggressively symbolic." Mainly because she had fallen at the end of this one spectacularly, if she remembered correctly, which she did with painful clarity. Still, at least it wasn’t more rope, she supposed.

She stepped forward, though her pace slowed as she approached the first beam. Unlike earlier, she didn't rush headlong into it. She paused at the edge, studying it, her brain automatically mapping angles and weight distribution. Then she glanced sideways at Zelia, a small, genuine smile tugging at the corner of her mouth.

"Alright," Rae said. "If yin falls off the beam, yang is legally obligated to pretend it didn't happen. Okay?"

Without waiting for an answer, she lifted one foot and stepped onto the wood. Her arms extended instinctively, fingers splayed for counterbalance. This time, she didn't look down at the ground below. This time, she didn't try to rush ahead to the finish. She simply moved forward, one step at a time, hyperaware of Zelia behind her as they crossed together—two imperfect halves of a circle, moving in tandem.

End of Part 3 of 4

^{interactions ....|.... none ............... mentions ....|.... river ............... collabs ....|.... @Sleepy Tani}

Qia's Stuff

^{............ #fcb04d ....|..... outfit .....|..... pine ridge saloon ..............}

Words

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Fashionably Late: A Crime Thriller Roleplay

AAAAH everyone's on the board and everyone's bringing pure fire I love it thanks so much everybody! Now I'm going to kill Josie!

@Roman

Omg??? Yay!

Camp Athens - Closed

The plastic bag rustled softly against her sweater, a small, persistent sound keeping time with her steps as Anissa wound her way back toward the arena. Two plastic bottles were nested inside the bag, insulated by layers of plastic, while a third—the one meant for her—she held separately, the straw already settled between her lips. She sipped absently, the fruity liquid cold enough to leave a faint sting on her tongue. It was, she knew, the sort of thing that would have horrified anyone with a working sense of self-preservation, given the winter air biting at every inch of exposed skin. But she had grown up in a country where iced drinks in subzero temperatures were simply not questioned, and some instincts, it seemed, survived distance.

The arena emerged slowly as she approached, first as a skeletal outline against the grey-white sky, then gradually resolving into something more substantial. Inside, the earlier frenzy of training had softened into something quieter, the sharp edges worn down into pockets of lingering activity. Figures clustered in loose groups near the exits, some preparing to leave, others orbiting those who hadn't yet escaped the course's indifferent demands. She must have looked strange to them, she thought, actually returning to this place of torment, bottle in hand, as though she expected anyone left to join her for some kind of weird picnic. But whatever. It wasn’t like she was here for any of them, unless they were a pissed-off girl in a purple outfit named Blair.

Her gaze found said girl before she meant it to, and Anissa’s pace slowed without conscious decision, the straw falling idle between her lips. A boy stood beside her friend—someone Anissa didn't recognize—close enough to offer assistance without quite presuming to touch. He held himself with careful attention, focused on Blair in a way that wasn't possessive but present, like he understood that proximity alone could feel like overstepping. She couldn't hear what they were saying from this distance, but she could tell enough from Blair's posture that whatever it was, it had improved her mood considerably. Thank goodness for that. Anissa hadn't realized how worried she'd actually been until this exact moment, watching her friend exist in someone's company without the weight of everything else pressing down. If Blair could find some small pocket of happiness in all this, maybe it meant Anissa wouldn't have to mediate some disaster later between her and River.

Her attention drifted then, almost involuntarily, scanning the arena with quiet intent. Searching for a single, specific absence she had already begun to feel before she'd even registered its presence.

The space where River had stood—where he had been a fixed point since the results were announced—was still occupied. But this time, instead of possibly meeting the cold demeanour of his half-sister, his company was someone else entirely. A girl Anissa didn't recognize. One who was, without her really trying to notice it, extraordinarily beautiful, and not in the familiar taxonomy of symmetry and proportion that Anissa had been trained since childhood to catalogue and replicate either. This was something else. Something that resisted clean classification, that defied the neat categories she'd learned to sort people into before she was old enough to understand why anyone would bother. The girl's skin glistened faintly with sweat beneath the winter light, her hair imperfect in a way that only amplified her appeal, lending her an immediacy that was almost aggressive in its vitality. She existed in the space between categories, between definitions, and the effect was disorienting in a way Anissa couldn't quite parse.

She realized she was staring. The plastic bag swayed once in her grip, then settled, forgotten. Even the cold that had been gnawing at her cheeks moments ago receded into irrelevance, replaced by a strange and pervasive warmth that had nothing to do with the season and everything to do with the inexplicable pull of watching someone exist so fully, so viscerally, without any apparent awareness of the effect they were having.

The sound inside the arena seemed to dull, the movement of others slowing to something distant and unimportant.

There was only her.

And the girl.

It was difficult to pinpoint exactly when observation had become fixation. The girl wasn't wearing anything particularly eye-catching (nothing like Blair's party outfit from the night before). Still, the transition was seamless, unmarked by any clean boundary Anissa could identify. One moment, she had been looking, and the next, she was no longer certain she had the authority to stop. And if she was being honest with herself, a rare and uncomfortable thing, she found she didn't really want to.

She had always liked beautiful things.

Not in the shallow, acquisitive way people so often assumed of her. Her admiration was more...reverent, in a sense. Beauty had been one of the few constants in her life, something observable and predictable, governed by rules she could learn, replicate, and on her best and worst days, embody. She knew symmetry. Understood proportion. Knew how light favoured certain angles and forgave others. She had spent years studying those principles with the diligence of a disciple, memorizing the architecture of a perfectly composed face the way others memorized poetry. But most importantly, she knew exactly where she stood within that hierarchy. At least, she had always believed she did.

But this?

This was something else entirely.

The girl's beauty did not feel constructed. It did not announce the effort behind it, did not bear the telltale traces of curation that Anissa had been trained to detect. It did not invite analysis or comparison, because it existed outside the framework that made comparison possible. It was not a matter of increment—not better skin, or softer hair, or more harmonious features. Overall, it was not prettier in the way Anissa was accustomed to measuring. It was something more ineffable, something that resisted the taxonomy she had spent her life perfecting.

Frankly, if she had to put a word to it, it was presence.

It was the unbearable certainty of someone who did not need to wonder how they were being perceived because perception itself bent willingly toward them. Anissa felt the recognition of it like a physical sensation, and a small part of her understood, instantly and without protest, that this was something she could never replicate. No amount of discipline or refinement could manufacture whatever invisible gravity the girl possessed so effortlessly.

And strangely, that realization did not offend her. It humbled her.

Anissa resumed sipping her drink, the straw finding its way back between lips that had gone slightly numb from cold, and wondered, distantly, what it must be like to move through the world with that kind of unchallenged authority over attention. To be looked at without needing to earn it. To simply be. She found herself wanting to remain exactly where she was, suspended in that observation, as though proximity alone might allow her to understand it. Or perhaps, selfishly, to borrow some infinitesimal fraction of it for herself.

The girl leaned forward then, closing the distance between herself and River with an ease that made the movement feel inevitable rather than chosen. Her hand rose, graceful, and—

—touched him.

A soft, almost playful tap to the center of his nose.

Anissa turned away before she could understand why her chest suddenly felt too small to contain her lungs.

The motion was so abrupt, so instinctive, that she choked on her drink, an involuntary sputter that sent cold liquid burning down the wrong pipe. Her hand flew to her mouth, eyes watering as she coughed. She swallowed hard, forcing her throat to cooperate, and it was only then—mid-recovery, mid-wheeze—that she noticed something important.

Her hands were completely bare.

She stared at them.

For a moment, the sight registered as nothing more than absence. Pale fingers, mottled faintly from exposure to the cold. Nail beds still carrying traces of dirt from her obstacle course run. Damp at the knuckles where condensation from the bottle had gathered. Ordinary. Unremarkable. The same hands she'd had her entire life.

Too ordinary.

Memory returned in fragments. The empty hall. The quiet. The borrowed illusion of safety that had convinced her, briefly, that she did not need the barrier she so carefully maintained everywhere else. She had left them behind. Not physically, she realized after a second's panic. They were still in her pocket, a soft woollen weight against her hip. But she had walked back like this. Exposed. Unshielded. Forgetting.

The realization did not frighten her. It shamed her.

She hadn’t endangered anyone. There was no one close enough for accidental contact. No brush of skin against unwitting skin. So, no harm done, not really. But still she understood, with humiliating clarity, why the absence of the gloves suddenly mattered now when it had not mattered five minutes ago.
 

I can’t do that.

Her fingers curled slowly, as if she could will the wool back into existence through muscle memory alone. But that, like the other girl's natural, mesmerizing beauty, was not something Anissa could manifest through wanting. Not without becoming the one thing that ruined the beautiful things she liked simply by reaching for them. Not without leaving marks where she only meant to leave admiration.

She walked to a nearby bench and set her almost empty bottle into the plastic bag after placing it down with exaggerated care, the crinkle of it obscenely loud in the hollow space inside her chest. Her free hand slipped into her pocket, retrieving the gloves she had so thoughtlessly abandoned earlier. For a moment, she simply held them, the weight of them suddenly heavier than it should have been. Heavier than wool had any right to be.

They were ordinary gloves. Unremarkable. The kind anyone might wear against winter cold.

Anyone who didn't know what skin could do when it forgot itself.

She pulled them on slowly, watching the last visible trace of herself disappear beneath the barrier she had trusted for years. The wool settled against her palms, and something in her chest eased slightly even as something else squeezed.

Only then did she allow herself to look back.

The girl was gone, but River remained exactly where she had last seen him. Exactly as expected, and yet not. Something about him had shifted in her brief moment of retreat, some quality of bearing or expression that she couldn't immediately name. His mouth hung slightly open, brows drawn together in open bewilderment, and his hands had come to rest behind his neck, rubbing at unseen tension there. Whatever had transpired between the two of them, whatever exchange of words had rearranged the air around him, Anissa had, fortunately or unfortunately, missed entirely.

Who was to say which it was? Fortune or its opposite?

She didn't know. Couldn't decide. Could only stand where she was, watching someone she thought she understood become suddenly a little illegible. But only for a moment. Only long enough to confirm he was still someone she could approach without crossing the invisible boundary she had only just finished reassembling around herself. Long enough to verify that the ground between them remained safe, remained ordinary.

Anissa exhaled softly, the plastic bag rustling as she bent to retrieve it from the bench, her fingers curling around the handles after a brief adjustment of her grip. She straightened, rolled her shoulders once, and began to walk toward him. And by the time she reached him, she had managed the faintest trace of a smile. Not her best work, but serviceable.

“Hungry?” she asked, lifting the bag slightly in demonstration.

Up close, River still looked unsettled. Confused in a way that did not suit him, that sat awkwardly on features more accustomed to composure. It made him seem younger somehow. Less like the immovable force he had been at the center of the arena despite whatever nerves she knew he must have carried, and more like someone still learning where exactly he was allowed to stand. Still learning that the ground beneath him would hold.

Anissa did not comment on any of it. She simply reached into the bag and withdrew the container meant for him, holding it out like an offering.

“I wasn’t sure what you liked,” she added, her voice carefully neutral, “So I chose something that seemed… okay. It’s lamb. But if you’d rather the chicken, that’s in the other one.”

A small pause. Then, softer, almost as an afterthought:

“Or, you know, you can mix it up, have a bit of both? I just figured…” She hesitated, the words tangling slightly before she forced them out. “You might not have had anything this morning.”

---

_{Location: Arena
Interactions: River @Mjolnir
Mentions: Blair, Colton, Maylisse, Veronica}

^{#5a3e85...|...outfit}

Fashionably Late: A Crime Thriller Roleplay

Thank you for the collab @Qia! So great to write with you 🩷

@Stormyx

Anytime 😊 happy I had the chance to this time.

Fashionably Late: A Crime Thriller Roleplay

_{LOCATION:. new york city - marquee skydeck}

009:. i'll be gone by next year

---

_{INTERACTIONS: . hayden @Stormyx, josie}

Margot lingered at the glass wall longer than intended. The champagne flute was empty now, holding nothing but the ghost of its former effervescence—a faint, sugary film clinging to the crystal. She turned it absently in her fingers, watching the city lights fracture and reform, before finally setting it aside. Freeing her hands felt symbolic, an attempt to unshackle herself from distraction and become more present, as she'd originally planned.

But then…

"Oh shit, I think that’s fucking Bobby Rifo."

The name carried weight, demanded recognition. Phones lifted. Someone laughed in disbelief. Someone else swore.

Margot didn't turn. Instead, she pivoted deliberately away from the gathering commotion. The reason was simple: despite the room's collective agreement that this Bobby Rifo mattered, the name meant absolutely fuck all to her. More importantly, the last thing she wanted was to be pulled into someone else's spotlight after just having escaped her own.

She plucked a fresh glass of champagne from a passing waiter, the exchange smooth and wordless. With the cool stem in hand, she scanned the sky deck for another stretch of wall, another pocket of space not yet claimed by the night's hungry eyes.

Hayden, for his part, was still standing with his elbow braced against the railing, lazily watching the commotion and listening to the music himself. That was until his attention was drawn to a woman walking away from it instead. His glass was empty, and the same waiter who she had grabbed from handed him champagne too. It wasn’t his usual tipple, but this wasn’t his usual place. Besides, bubbles could be nice. He held it politely and nodded as the waiter walked away. He glanced again at the woman and inclined his head. "Bit of a snore this really isn’t it?" he laughed. "And the view is awful up here, too."

The champagne flute nearly slipped from Margot's fingers. Her reflexes snapped into place before conscious thought could catch up, fingers tightening just in time to save the glass from shattering. The near-miss sent a small, electric jolt up her arm. She steadied the flute and turned toward him, the gold sequins of her dress shifting softly, catching and refracting the ambient light in fractured flashes.

Up close, he wasn’t part of her usual orbit at all. Not a fellow creator. Not a brand-adjacent hanger-on. Not someone already performing for her attention.

Which meant this moment wasn't pre-written. Unscripted. And that, more than anything, made Margot pause, her professional facade rendered momentarily obsolete.

A small, uncertain laugh escaped her before she could smooth it away—a reflexive sound while she scrambled internally to decide which version of herself to deploy. She glanced past him for half a second, her gaze sweeping over the skyline, then back to his face. Her brows lifted in cautious disbelief.

"Is…that a joke?" she asked, the pause built right into the question. "I mean, we’re on a skydeck in New York City, on New Year’s Eve, surrounded by the likes of…" Margot faltered briefly, lips pressing together as she gestured vaguely over his shoulder with the rim of her glass. "That guy. Bobby Rifo. Which, from the crowd reaction, I'm gathering is a very big deal." Her own voice sounded strange in her ears, too much like the upbeat tone she reserved for her streams. The realization brought a flush of warmth to her cheeks, and she took a quick sip of champagne to cover it.

"It was a poor attempt at one, yeah," Hayden answered with a smile as he scratched the back of his neck; British sarcasm having flown over her head, or his intonation had been off. Probably both.

Margot found herself smiling. "Oh, good, that’s reassuring."

"Bobby Rifo is a pretty massive deal," Hayden added. "I… I saw him once, actually, back in the UK. Festival circuit, great night. He’d forgive you for not knowing him, though I reckon," he said, trying to be reassuring. "He’s definitely a bigger deal than me, at least on this turf." That was true, that he probably was, and Hayden then wondered how many people in the crowd kept a hierarchy of status in mind as they walked and passed through the crowds, imagining their own star power and chances as they did. Was he weighing up his own too? Somehow all the lights and distance were dawning on him and he took a sip from his own flute, shifting along the railing to make more room beside himself.

"Well, I appreciate his forgiveness," Margot replied, her tone dry as bone. She lifted her champagne in a mock toast toward the absent Bobby Rifo, possibly aggrieved. "Last thing I’d want is for his disappointment to follow me into the new year." She took a sip to punctuate the joke, letting the crisp acidity settle on her tongue.

But the motion of lowering her glass stalled halfway, his words finally registering in full. Her eyes flicked back to him, lingering this time with a scrutiny that surpassed mere politeness. He didn’t carry himself like someone who needed to introduce himself. In fact, there seemed to her to be an unselfconscious ownership of space in his posture, something she’d come to recognize in people who were accustomed to being observed, whether they wanted the attention or not. Her gaze dropped, taking in the faint roughness of his knuckles, then travelled back up to meet his eyes as she searched her memory—the endless scroll of faces from events, collabs, and industry feeds—for a foothold that refused to materialize.

It was only after some time that Margot realized, with a flush of embarrassment, that she was staring. Heat touched her cheek again, and she covered it with a flustered wave of her glass and her ditziest inflection.

"Soo…should I know who you are?" she asked, automatically taking up the space he’d made along the railing.

"I’ll forgive you if you don’t," he answered quickly with another easy smile; he’d caught the way her grip had tightened and the colour rising on her cheeks. He let that moment pass for her, shifting his weight against the railing subtly so. Lifting the drink to his own lips. "You enjoying yourself though?" He thought he’d noticed her earlier speaking into the screen of her phone; to a relative or friend perhaps.

"It’s…" Margot began, then paused. The automatic answer—Yes, it’s amazing, so grateful to be here, best night ever—stalled somewhere behind her teeth, stopped by a sudden desire for honesty. "It’s…okay? Parts of it are breathtaking, like being up here and all. And other parts are…I don’t know. Unknown? A lot so far? It’s not exactly my usual night out." Her shoulders lifted in a small shrug, as if the gesture could explain what her somewhat vague words could not.

Hayden tilted his head as he listened to her, nodding at her words. "I don’t think it’s anyone’s usual night out," he said with a smile, adjusting his grip on the glass as he let his eyes trail the strange skyline. "It’s nice to be here, but… I don’t know if you’ve noticed but I’m canny far from home." He breathed out softly, turning his gaze back to Margot. "So probably more unusual for me. Not that I’m making it a competition."

"I’m Hayden by the way. So now you know me." He held out his hand to her.

She looked at his offered hand, a sudden, unbidden awareness washing over her. Her own hands felt conspicuous in comparison, with her nails too lacquered and too perfectly manicured. Still, after a heartbeat’s hesitation, Margot shifted the champagne flute to her left hand and placed her right in his. The contact was firm, brief, and startlingly warm against the chill seeping from the towering glass walls.

"Margot," she said. "It's… unusual for me, too. The being here part, not the being far from home part." She withdrew her hand, her fingers curling back around the cool stem of her glass. "I actually came down from Canada, which sounds kinda like a big deal until you remember it’s basically just…upstairs."

A small, self-aware smile touched her lips, softening the blithe remark.

"Where’s home for you?"

"It’s good to meet you Margot," he said earnestly, bringing his hand back to relax against the railing. "I’m from across the pond," he answered. He’d noticed the careful hesitation; spared a short moment to wonder where that came from but let it flee again, nervousness was normal. "England that is," he gave another easy smile.

"So I feel far away in a few senses. Been to America a few times. Parties like this, yeah. Industry specific ones usually. You know what," he paused and took a breath before laughing. "I’ll call them for what they are, rowdy after parties. Chuck a load of fighters in a club with no limit to drinks. I’ll say no more. Everything is a lot bigger in America." He drank the last of his champagne. "This might actually be demure by comparison."

Margot’s smile deepened, becoming something less performative and more genuine. Something in his delivery was unsettlingly disarming. Across the pond. The phrase sounded impossibly distant and charmingly anachronistic all at once, like a line borrowed from a black-and-white film rather than spoken by someone right in front of her.

"I’ve actually never been. Never really left North America, if I’m being honest," she admitted, "I’ve always wanted to go to England though. It feels like one of those must-see places, at least for one visit."

"Oh it is, some of it like. Not all of it. Same as anywhere, but yeah. London? Sure. The real magic is up north though." Hayden’s smile changed then; more boyish and confident in his words as if he’d just told a secret.

Her expression softened, beckoned by vicarious nostalgia for cobblestone streets and ancient stone, images assembled entirely from period dramas and other people's photos. But then the final part of his reply fully registered. Her brows knit, her mental portrait of him realigning swiftly.

"Fighters?" she repeated, tilting her head as she studied him anew. The broadness of his shoulders. The easy physical confidence. The roughness in his hands she'd noticed earlier but hadn't fully interrogated. "Like…boxing?"She waved her glass, liquid sloshing gently. "Or am I, like, wildly off base here?"

"You’re not far off. We went out with the boxers a lot. But no, I was– I was MMA for a minute." His delivery was underplayed and the fingers of his free hand flexed instinctively with an awkwardness. "Which is to say it’s a mash up of a lot of things. Muay Thai, kickboxing…" He rolled his shoulder back slightly. "Same goal though, sure. Tap out, knock out. Show the best technique."

Margot’s smile faded into quiet absorption. "MMA," she echoed softly, testing the acronym as if it might reconfigure itself into something familiar on her tongue. It did not. "That sounds…" she hesitated, mentally sifting through adjectives that wouldn’t immediately betray the chasm between his world and hers. "...intense." The word felt ludicrously insufficient the moment she said it, but she let it stand. Understatement, she had learned, was often safer than feigned expertise.

Her gaze drifted past Hayden's shoulder, pulled by a shift in the party's energy. The same Bobby Rifo from earlier appeared to have reached the absolute limit of his patience with a woman trailing him, his body language coiling into something unmistakably final. With a dismissive flick, he sent something small and rectangular spinning from her grasp. The brunette—dressed in black—fumbled, snatching the object from the air and clutching it to her chest with fierce desperation. In the next breath, Rifo dissolved into the crowd, leaving her alone in the sudden vacuum of his departure.

For a moment, Margot simply watched her, a spectator to this notable drama. Then, as if guided by a primordial instinct, the woman’s eyes lifted—and landed directly on her.

Margot froze. A polite smile felt grotesque. A wave, absurd. She had no script for the aftermath of a public, bitter exchange between strangers.

And then, the woman’s focus shifted.

Past Margot.

To Hayden.

The woman’s eyes narrowed almost imperceptibly, her attention sharpening as if bringing a hidden detail into devastating focus.

I know you. That much Margot could parse before the look was veiled.

Her fingers tightened reflexively around the stem of her flute as the woman held Hayden's gaze for a beat longer than chance would allow. Then, with seamless poise, she looked away and began moving, cutting a direct path toward them. Her approach was a study in contrived nonchalance, but her eyes had already betrayed her purpose.

Margot glanced at Hayden. He had gone very still, his body watchful as he tracked the woman's progress.

The brunette stopped a polite distance away, her posture relaxed but her grip still viselike around the rectangular object—a phone, Margot saw now, or perhaps a small digital recorder, which would explain the conflict she'd just witnessed. The woman offered a smile, a professional gesture that never touched her preternaturally calm eyes.

"Well, this is a face I didn’t expect to see up here," the woman said to Hayden first, the greeting given in a way that wasn’t quite friendly, nor was it overly hostile. His brow quirked upward in response; curiosity perhaps. It was…neutral in a way that felt intentionally matter-of-fact. Then, she turned to Margot. "Happy New Year's Eve."

Margot blinked, caught off guard by the bald normalcy of the words.

"Oh, um, you too," she replied automatically. She became suddenly acutely aware of her own posture, of her perhaps too-tight grip on the glass, and of the way her sequined dress seemed to capture and refract every stray photon in the vicinity. Her eyes darted towards Hayden, a silent check-in, before snapping back. But at that point, the woman merely gave a perfunctory nod, acknowledging the pleasantry while already dismissing it.

"Josie Tatl," she stated, introducing herself without flourish. "Tatl-Tales." The name was delivered as a statement of fact, imbued with an unspoken weight that suggested it should resonate, even when it didn’t.

Josie’s attention then pivoted, settling more fully on Hayden.

"Do you mind if I ask you a quick question?" Josie continued, her thumb now resting lightly on the face of the small recorder, a hair’s breadth from activation.

His eyes tracked the device in her hand first; all hazel and soft and giving nothing away as he caught the held anticipation in her finger hovering over the button. He tilted his head only slightly and let his posture remain cool and calm, as it had been. It hadn’t slid past him how efficiently she’d already managed to piss off Bobby Rifo, and he’d noticed the shift in Margot beside him too. His guard was now up, and it hadn’t needed to be before. "You can ask," he said. "Don’t know if I’ll answer, but go ahead." His relationship with the press was complicated at best and more so on the foreign soil he was now planted in. It was an altogether different machine here.

The button was pressed, and the device clicked into activation. "You’re Hayden Fenwick, ex-UFC Champion, retired five years ago. What’s got you attending this New Year’s party? Looking to start your career up again?"

He blinked once and the corner of his mouth twitched despite himself with a flicker of surprise that he didn’t quite manage to suppress. He smoothed it away just as quickly, his shoulders settling. “I’ve got a good publicist,” he said lightly. “No plans to get back in the ring just now, no.”

"Ahh, so just more reality television stints then? Masked Singer maybe? Seems like a natural progression." Josie asked with a smirk.

Hayden gave a polite smile, the kind that didn’t invite anything further. “Nah, I’ve already done that one actually. I was the toaster. Came ninth,” he said. He remained relaxed in his posture - though, his hands felt suddenly very empty of some kind of drink that would provide assistance in the situation. His jaw tightened almost imperceptibly, betraying the flicker of surprise she hadn’t earned from him. “So you’ll have to think of something more embarrassing than that, and I’ll consider it,” he punctuated it with a wink; he wouldn’t rise to annoyance, if that was what she was looking for.

Josie gave little more than a polite smile back. "Thanks for that Hayden," she said, her smirk fading before she turned her attention then to Margot, The Streamer, as she recognised her. Her own notifications had pinged just earlier with an alert. "So, Cosy Rosie – have you given any more thought to just what your resolution will be for the New Year?"

Margot's heart performed a strange, lurching syncopation against her ribs. Josie's eyes remained fixed on her, and the recorder was still active, its tiny red light glowing like a malevolent asterisk between them. She could feel her mouth go dry and was acutely aware of Hayden's presence beside her, though he didn't intervene. This, inexplicably, was hers to navigate.

She opened her mouth. Nothing came out. Her mind, usually so facile with banter for her chat, was a perfect, humming blank. It wasn't the recognition itself that unmoored her; that was an occasional, statistical inevitability, even at an event like this. It was the timing. The way Josie had let the question hang until after engaging Hayden, as if Margot herself had been bookmarked for later like some kind of postscript to the main event.

Josie’s smile appeared to widen a fraction, her thumb making a slight, adjusting movement on the recorder.

"I don’t mean to put you on the spot," she said, though the statement carried a distinct hollowness. "But I think your perspective would be interesting. You’ve been streaming for… what, a few years now? And you’ve seen the industry change pretty dramatically."

Margot swallowed, the sound loud in her own ears.

"I…" Her voice sounded too foreign. Too small. Too uncertain. "I don’t really have one yet and…" She trailed off, the sentence dissolving somewhere between thought and speech.

Josie didn’t interrupt. She didn’t offer encouraging nods or rush to fill the silence as most people would. She simply waited, patient and unnervingly still, the recorder held aloft like an offertory vessel waiting to be filled.

Margot became acutely aware of her own breathing.

Of Hayden beside her.

Of the glittering indifferent city beyond the glass.

She wet her lips.

“It changes fast,” she continued. “Faster than people realize from the outside. What works one year doesn’t work the next. People’s expectations shift. Attention shifts. You have to… adapt.”

Margot took a deliberate sip of champagne, the motion granting her a second’s respite. The glass trembled almost imperceptibly before she willed it still.

“I’ve been lucky,” she added, the phrase instinctive. “I’ve had people who’ve stuck with me through it, and that’s not something I take for granted.”

It was a safe, complimentary answer. The kind of answer Eli would have commended for its diplomatic verisimilitude, no doubt.

Josie’s gaze, however, did not soften. "Of course. People don’t usually stick around that long without a reason." She tilted her head, a gesture of feigned curiosity, as if considering Margot anew. "You’ve always been notably private, though, especially for someone whose life is so… publicly accessible."

Margot felt the words land like a series of small, precise taps against her composure, but where they might lead, she couldn’t yet see.

"There’s been some speculation," Josie continued, " about whether that support system you mentioned is purely professional. Or whether there’s…" Her eyes flicked sideways, an unmistakable glance toward Hayden this time, stripping away any semblance of subtlety. "...someone more personal in the picture."

The silence that followed was deafening, a vacuum that seemed to swallow the party’s roar.

Margot’s pulse thrummed in her ears, a frantic counter-rhythm to the distant bass. Heat suffused her neck and cheeks, a tell-tale flush that felt as bright as a spotlight against the cool exhalation of air from the glass walls. She became hyper-aware of proximity—of the scant inches separating her from Hayden, how any slight turn, any unconscious look, could be construed as confirmation of a narrative she had not written.

"I mean," Josie added, her voice dipping into a tone of false concern, " people are always so interested in the idea of a secret. Especially when it involves someone who doesn’t quite fit the usual… influencer mould."

Margot’s thumb, wrapped around the stem of her flute, was a pale, bloodless thing. Her mind didn’t race; it stalled, seized by a paralytic wave of dread. She saw the headline emblazoned across her mind’s eye before she could form a coherent thought: Cozy Rosie’s Secret MMA Fighter?or Margot Sterling’s Mysterious New Year’s Date Revealed. It was a story crafted from implication and proximity, one her audience would devour with a voracious mix of delight and malice. The algorithm would love it. Eli would be livid. And the unscripted connection beside her would be reduced to a piece of public conjecture, a footnote in her brand’s ongoing saga.

The sheer, crushing inevitability of it left her breathless and unable to respond.

Hayden’s eyes flicked to Margot and he caught the tightness in her grip; the way colour rose to her cheeks again. If the silence went on for too much longer Josie would have ammunition from that alone and then an idea was already sparking and before he could think it through–

"Secrets are good business." he began with a casual light shrug. "I’d hate for people to find out I’m setting up a fight in the New Year–" He stopped abruptly then and brought his hand to his mouth. "Shit," he muttered.
Josie blinked and immediately pivoted back to him and lifted her recorder closer as Hayden took a step back, his posture casual but defensive. "So you are here for that then?" she pressed, wasting no time on a potential scoop.

"No. No," he said quickly, more animated than he had been all night; his brows knit with a mock worry. "I should not have said that. That’s off the record. Don’t… don’t publish that." His hand went to his forehead and he let out a faint, but dramatic sigh through his teeth and began to turn away from the recorder, quickly enough to wink at Margot; an unspoken tell through his feigned regret. As he finished his 360, he met Josie’s eyes with his own; the soft hazel of them pleading with her.

"Oh of course," she purred out, almost happily. Her finger clicked the button and the light went out. "Totally our secret."

Margot watched the recorder's red light extinguish, and the relief was so immediate, so visceral, that it left her momentarily lightheaded. She kept her expression free of any real feeling, arranged into something that might pass for polite attentiveness. Inside, however, her thoughts scrambled to catch up. Hayden's deflection had been… inelegant. A touch too theatrical, its seams visible if you knew where to look. It would almost certainly resurface later as a clipped, decontextualized soundbite if Josie decided to be punitive. But it had worked. Josie's attention had pivoted like a weather vane catching a stronger wind, and Margot was no longer standing in the direct line of fire. A reprieve. She would fucking take it.

“I’m just going to….” she began lightly, lifting her now-nearly-empty flute as if the glass itself were sufficient explanation, “...grab something else.”

A socially acceptable exit line, delivered without waiting for permission. Margot stepped back, angling her body away from the pair, offering Josie a polite nod that stopped just short of invitation. The reporter was already half-turned toward Hayden again, her expression sharp with fresh calculation. Good.

Before she fully withdrew, with Josie's back now a screen between them, Margot caught Hayden's gaze. Her lips curved into something small and sincere, unguarded in a way she rarely permitted on camera. She lifted her hand just slightly, fingers brushing the rim of her empty glass in a gesture that was almost a salute, and mouthed the words silently:

Thank you

Then she turned away.

As Margot threaded herself into the thinning edge of the crowd, her shoulders finally dropped a full inch. The din of the party swelled again, reclaiming her in flashes of light and sound and bodies in perpetual motion. Her pulse still beat a little too rapidly against her throat; her hands, she noticed, were faintly unsteady.

Something stronger. That’ll help, she decided—no more champagne.

And then there were two, and even then, Josie had what she wanted: a scoop to take away with her, and barely a word to offer Hayden in exchange. He sighed, leaning back over the railing again. There wasn’t much time to think of his idle, drinkless hands before another waiter handed him more champagne. It really wasn’t his drink, but it really wasn’t his city, either.

He drew in a breath through his teeth. "Zara’s going to be fucking pissed," he muttered, almost laughing at himself.

Camp Athens - Closed

Maylisse did not look back. The arena had yielded all it would for now; River’s petulant display had been instructive but only to a point. What remained needed time to settle, to crystallize into something more valuable than mere reaction, and distance would be sure to provide that necessary clarity.

As she stepped beyond the perimeter, the clamour of the arena softened into a distant, inconsequential murmur. The outside air held a keen, winter bite, a sharp reminder of physical fallibility that her own disciplined form had long learned to disregard. With a motion born of habit, she drew her coat snugly around her, fastening its toggles. Her course was already decided. Upon her arrival, she had accepted one of the proffered maps, its design revealing, perhaps unintentionally, a tacit hierarchy through placement alone. Centres of authority and utility clustered near the entrance: administration, the infirmary, and, most notably, the main hall. With adamantine focus, Maylisse had committed the entire layout to memory in a single, comprehensive glance.

Now, she followed that mental cartography, the path curving along the dormant activities field, its broad expanse lying subdued and emptied of any earlier activities, like the bonfire that Anissa had mentioned. Behind her to the east, the arena’s hulking silhouette already began to recede into oblivion, and ahead, emerging from a stand of mature oaks and pines, was the main hall. The building’s proximity to the entrance only seemed to reinforce its purpose as it was the first structure encountered upon arrival and, therefore, the first to impose the camp’s illusion of order. She reached the doors and paused only long enough to register the faint vibrations of movement within. Then, her hand closed around the handle before turning it.

Warmth greeted her first—a dry, enveloping heat that emanated from radiators tucked beneath the high windows. It was not oppressive but the insistent kind that coaxes tension from bodies spent by exertion. The air also hung thick with layered fragrances: the savoury richness of roasted meats, the caramelized sweetness of glazed vegetables, the tang of preserved fruits. This all coalesced into a tantalizing vapour that drifted from the long buffet along the far wall, sustenance in excess of mere necessity.

Maylisse stepped fully inside, allowing the door to sigh shut behind her. A few eyes flicked toward her as she did so before sliding away, too fatigued or too indifferent to sustain their attention. The hall itself seemed designed less as a utilitarian mess and more as a grand social chamber. Vaulted wooden ceilings absorbed the murmur of conversation and the clatter of cutlery into a soft, ambient drone. Tables lay scattered without strict regimentation, forming islands of socialization across the wide floor. Campers occupied them in a tableau of post-arena weariness. Some sat alone, like a red-haired man slowly eating his food, their focus turned entirely inward, while others leaned into hushed dialogues, the detritus of their meals in varying half-finished states before them. Some held themselves with stoic composure, eating with measured restraint; others had surrendered completely, consuming their food with a fervid, almost beggar-like hunger.

With a dispassionate eye, Maylisse took it all in before moving toward the buffet. Her gaze passed over the sugared pastries—glazed buns and fruit tarts glistening under the lights—registering their presence with a bit of distaste. Their appeal was unimaginative, their gratification immediate and unsophisticated. She dismissed them as one would dismiss a gaudy ornament unworthy of further consideration. Instead, her attention settled on the fish, specifically the smoked salmon laid in overlapping slices of deep coral and pale cream. She paused, her hand hovering for a fraction of a second longer than necessary.

There was, she supposed, a certain rich irony in it.

Daughter of Poseidon or not, she had been raised eating fish. Frequently. Almost ritually. The sea was not some sentimentalized kin; it was a resource, a dominion, a source of power as much as sustenance. Abstaining out of some nebulous reverence struck her as not just absurd but weak.

She served herself a generous portion of the salmon without ceremony, the slices cool and firm to the touch. She added two thick slabs of dark, seeded bread, then selected a wedge of cheese, something aged and striated with blue veins, unapologetic in its pungency. Her selections were rounded out with fruit: a scatter of plump blueberries, followed by precisely sliced apple and pear, arranged with an unconscious symmetry on her plate. Her full arrangement, by the end, was an exercise in considered abundance, full but not messy and ample without being indulgent.

Only then did she turn to the drinks. She bypassed the carafes of pulpy juice, her hand moving, purely by instinct, toward the large ceramic pot steaming gently at the station’s end. Tea. The motion was so deeply ingrained she scarcely registered it until the heat of the porcelain cup seeped into her palm. She poured carefully, watching the dark amber liquid bloom in the white cup, a fragrant, earthy steam curling upward in a filmy veil.

Of course, Maylisse thought, the ghost of a smirk touching her lips. The one truly civilized comfort in this entire rustic pantomime. Even here.

She added milk without hesitation; sugar, she ignored it entirely. The very idea was antithetical to the point. Why ruin the complex notes of a proper tea with a blunt, one-note sweetness? It made no sense. So, with cup and saucer in one hand and plate balanced deftly in the other, Maylisse turned from the buffet. Her gaze drifted once more across the hall, this time with intention rather than idle appraisal.

The center tables were, of course, the worst possible choice. A locus of noise and overlapping conversation, they promised maximum visibility and the high probability of unwelcome interruption. So, to sit there was to offer oneself up as a participant in the general clamour, a notion she dismissed with contempt.

At the opposite extreme were the fully isolated tables, tucked into corners or pressed against chilly windows. These were occupied by lone figures, people who had either claimed their seclusion purposefully or been stranded by it. Regardless, this, too, carried a distinct risk, for in a place like this, isolation was a statement. It invited interpretation. People would wonder why she sat alone, inventing narratives of loneliness, arrogance, or alienation. And that kind of speculation, Maylisse had learned, had a pernicious habit of spreading faster and sticking longer than truth.

No. Neither the center nor exile would do. So, Maylisse sought a tertium quid, her eyes alighting on a table for two, partially shielded by a stout wooden pillar. It was close enough to the room’s currents to appear unremarkable, yet sufficiently offset to afford a buffer. Perfect.

She moved towards it, the floorboards beneath her shoes absorbing the sound of her movement. A few glances trailed her progress, but they fell away quickly, their interest extinguished by what could only be her uninviting demeanour. Reaching the table, Maylisse set her plate down first, then her cup and saucer with a soft click of porcelain on wood. She drew the chair back smoothly and sat, her posture erect but not rigid, and only then did she lift the cup to her lips for the first sip, allowing the heat to bloom gently across her tongue.

Ah. yes. A near-perfect cuppa.

She let the cup lower back to its saucer, and only then did Maylisse pick up her fork, turning her attention at last to the food. The salmon yielded cleanly beneath the tines, cool, rich, and impeccably cured, and she ate without hurry, alternating measured bites with quiet sips of her tea. As she settled into the cadence of her old habit, her thoughts drifted backward to the moment before any of the things with Rosalia had unfurled.

To the silence.

To the way River had stayed seated beside her after her, admittedly, less-than-pleasant introduction.

He had not shifted away. He had not manufactured some flimsy pretext to leave under the guise of duty. He had not surrendered to the obvious pressure of her scrutiny by putting physical distance between them. Instead, he had remained, muscles coiled like springs, his attention fractured but his presence unwavering. He had endured her proximity with a stubborn, recusant stillness that had, she could admit privately, surprised her.

Most people would have just left.

Maylisse could be honest about that, even if the acknowledgment carried some discomfort. She was not unaware of her effect on people like Goldilocks, for instance. Few were inclined to linger beneath a gaze that was neither casual nor warm but dissecting. They invented errands. They remembered urgent appointments. Distance was the instinctive defence against a perceived threat, and understandably so.

But River had chosen the opposite.

She took another bite, chewing slowly, and allowed the thought to solidify. He had known exactly what she was doing. She was certain of it. Yet, he had not demanded she stop. He had not tried to dominate the space with bluster or noise. He had simply… endured. That required a particular kind of fortitude. It wasn’t courage, precisely—courage implied a positive thrust toward confrontation. This was more passive, more stubborn. A refusal to be maneuvered by discomfort alone. He had stayed, perhaps because leaving would have felt like conceding a point he was not prepared to relinquish. A semblance of control. Or maybe it had been a fundamental, unassailable dignity.

She lifted her tea again, the warmth of a soft press against her lips, and considered exactly how rare that was.

Even Anissa had stayed back in the stable when flight would have been easier. Maylisse had recognized then, as she did now, that the girl’s reasons were complex, of course, and more than likely rooted in her own internal pressures. But River’s choice felt different. It had been directed outward—a response to her, to the moment, to the silent challenge her presence had given.

She exhaled softly, a barely perceptible release of breath through her nose, and set the cup down.

It was all… terribly inconvenient.

She knew, of course, that she did not make things easy. Her manner alone was a frequent point of friction for many. People consistently mistook articulation for condescension, however, or her precision for cruelty. Still, she had been raised to speak this way—to value exactness over comfort, to favour clarity even when it cut. Words, to her, were implements. You selected the correct one for the task, and you did not blunt its edge to spare feelings because sparing feelings rarely spared anything of consequence in the end. It was a practical, unsentimental philosophy, calcified by a lifetime of observing how soft words so often led to hard consequences.
 

Still. No wonder they flinched.

The salmon was nearly gone. Maylisse speared the last, perfect bite.

---

_{Location: Arena -> Main Hall
Interactions: N/A
Mentions: River, Anissa, Iliana (indirectly lol), everyone in the main hall (indirectly),}

^{#a9c9eb...|...outfit}

Qia's Stuff

^{............ #94260e ....|..... outfit .....|..... rafael's place-> pine ridge sheriff's station ..............}

Words

^{interactions ....|.... gibbons (npc) ............... mentions ....|.... harper, dev ............... collabs ....|.... none}