#Halfblood AU | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

m0ther-of-p3arl · 8 months

Text

across the great divide (there is a glorious sunrise)

chapter two: home, can we go?

hiya and WELCOME BACK to the next chapter of my lovely little au for the niche-est audiences ever :DD if you're into owengejuicetv, charlie slimecicle, and camp halfblood aus, this fic is defo for you!! enjoy the second chapter <3

(also its my birthday so wish me a happy birthday :P)

Owen steps cautiously into the room, trying with little success to curb the quivering of his knees, biting at the inside of his cheek to stop from nervously jabbering away; as was a common tendency of his. Madeline is waiting at her desk, ball gown splayed out around the edges of her chair (why the heck is she even wearing a ball gown anyway- honestly just not at all acceptable teacher behavior from this person all around.). The mottled brown bulldog continues to look up at Owen from its perch under the desk, and if not for its intense and unnerving stare, Owen would have easily thought the animal to be dead.

“Hey, Ms Pemberton,” Owen greets, attempting to swallow down some of his worry (this is just a normal student-teacher conversation anyway, no reason to be scared), “Any reason why I’m being kept inside? Did I do something wrong?”

“No, darling, nothing wrong, nothing wrong at all!” She seems like she’s telling the truth, but as Owen listens a little closer, replays her sentence in his mind, he can hear the grating edge of her voice, the way it lilts higher at the end, crescendoing to an almost squeaking tone.

“Then why am I here?” He tries to keep his voice calm, he really does.

“Well, we’ll just have to figure that out together, won’t we?” She stands from her desk, leaning on it with her hands, the bulldog growling long and low beneath her.

“But… you can’t keep me inside without a reason.” Owen glances backwards at the door, swallowing quickly and resisting the urge to run out the exit as fast as he can. But Charlie told him to stay, and he trusts his best friend above all else.

“I’m the teacher. I have authority here. I can do whatever I want, honey.” Her words are somehow clipped and sloppy at the same time, a slithering quality that's masked by sharp enunciation and crisp syllables.

(The bad vibes Owen’s getting from this situation are ridiculous. He has to admit he’s never felt anything like it before, and that scares him. Usually when he’s around a dangerous or at least unsavory person, he’ll be able to tell what they want from him, and how best to go about handling the situation. That, or he has Charlie with him, and everyone knows that something bad is much less likely to happen if you’re not on your own. Plus, Charlie has the added benefit that he'll cuss out anyone who even tries to harm them, which usually scares most people away.

This, however, is different. Owen doesn’t know what to do, and worse than that, he can’t even tell what the problem is. Why has he been kept inside? Why him, why not any of the other students? Why only him? It feels like an isolation tactic, a way to get him alone so Ms Pemberton can strike. The thing is, if that’s the case, then the original query returns: Why him? Why not Charlie, or Bill, or anyone else in the class? As far as Owen can remember, he’s never met this woman before in his life. So why does she seem so intent on, presumably, harming him?

Owen doesn’t know, and that’s the part that scares him.)

“But I want to go spend time with my friend, and if there’s no reason to keep me here, then- is there?” Owen voices his question with a blanket of confusion masking simple caution, every instinct in his body screaming at him now, more than quiet chatter, to run, straight out that door, and never come back.

But Charlie said he had to “deal with… that,” and, again, Owen trusts his friend. So no matter how much he wants to, no matter how many longing glances he'll throw towards the direction of the exit, no matter how his hair stands on end, his skin prickling with nerves, Owen knows he will not leave the room- because Charlie told him, Charlie promised, that Owen would be okay.

“Oh, trust me, there’s a reason. We’ve been looking for you for a very long time. You’re quite powerful for one of your kind- born from a lesser power, though, unfortunately. Athena is nothing when you compare what she can do to Hades or Demeter- those are the ones to watch out for. I’m just here to take you out real easy, a nice meal before things really start going down,” Madeline says, her tone absolutely pleasant, only the faintest hint of hatred poking through the facade. Why is she so against him? Again, Owen can’t remember ever meeting, or even seeing, this person before in his life. So why is she suddenly acting as if he personally has wronged her in unimaginable ways? The whole situation screams unsafe, and it's so uncomfortable he can almost feel the wrongness of it in the air.

Then the implications of the other things she’s said finally reach his mind.

“Did you say a meal?” Owen asks, backing slowly away. He's not sure if she's alluding to cannibalism, or what- though, thinking about it some more, that does seem extraordinarily unlikely.

(If Owen didn’t know it was completely impossible, he would have sworn he could see Madeline's mouth lengthening, tongue splitting in two and forking at the end like a snake’s- he could’ve sworn as her shoes were kicked off her feet that he could see legs fusing together under the dress to form a silvery snake’s tail. But such things are impossible, and he chalks it up to simple hallucinations from stress. A much easier, more consumable explanation for the horrors taking place before his very eyes.)

“Yes, young halfblood,” Madeline hisses, delight written plainly across her now-hideous face, the skin bloodily crackling at the edges of her unnatural smile, “I am Lamia, and in my heyday, I destroyed countless men just like you, who thought that they were superior to everyone else. Idiot! You will be no different, little one- it has been far too long since I properly feasted. And what better time than now to satiate my appetite? You’re not much, but you’ll simply have to do. It's not like I have another option.”

And with that, she discards her dress, cackling like a witch- and Owen gasps, not so much from fear as from simple surprise. Her body is completely covered, save for her face and hands, with brutally scuffed silver scales. Some are even peeling off, hints of raw, irritated skin peering out from beneath. Her eyes have widened and eyelids thickened, snake-like vertical pupils gracing the centers of eerily yellow irises. Madeline is bleeding from her face, a continuous torrent from cracks and cuts, formed due to the stress that must be caused on her facial tissues whenever she smiles. Her nails have elongated into borderline claws, chipped and bloody, her own finger tissue still visible from where it is stuck underneath the talons.

Owen’s eyes go wide, breath becoming shaky, erratic- he is witnessing a marvel, a scientific phenomenon. He's afraid, of course he's afraid- but fear is eclipsed by wonder and interest as his eyes graze over Madeline- no, Lamia's body, and he almost wants to reach out a hand and run it along the scales, to see if they're as rough and jagged as they appear or if that's simply an intimidation tactic. She sneers at him, and his nails dig into the orange still clutched in his hand instinctively, some of the skin peeling away and sticking under his nails.

Until all of a sudden, he's no longer clutching a molded orange in his fist. Instead, a gorgeous antique pistol is how gripped lightly in his hand, and it feels as though he's held the gun a million times before, it feels as if everything has suddenly just clicked into place. Owen barely has time to register his astonishment before Lamia pounces at him (insofar as a creature with a snake tail can pounce), and before he realizes what he’s doing, he’s slid under her, winding up behind the creature as she hisses in frustration.

"Stay still, idiot!" Lamia screeches, blood streaming from the cracks in her cheeks, from cuts formed by every broken scale, her mouth pulled into a hideous sneer. She reaches out one clawed hand, her fingers too long, claws far too sharp to be anything of this world- at least anything Owen knows of. He flinches back, heart beating too fast to be healthy.

After this little aggression, Owen doesn’t have time to think. He lets instinct take over, cocking the pistol as his pointer finger pulls deftly on the trigger, the world flashing into slow motion as the bullet rips straight through the monster’s chest. Owen’s sure that the gunshot, along with her subsequent scream, are loud enough that his parents back home in England can hear it- the deafening thunder crack of the bullet, a scream more enraged than terrified sounding from her too-wide mouth as blood-

No, wait, Owen realizes. That’s not blood. He’d expected it to be, but- somehow- it’s not. Owen doesn’t know how it’s possible, but all of a sudden, Lamia has exploded into soft, golden dust- the woman, the creature, is gone, and all that’s left in her stead is a meager pile of shimmering sand that coats the room, and, subsequently, Owen.

(He doesn’t think he’ll ever be able to get the taste of her scream out of her mouth, the memory of the bitter flavor grating at his tongue and irritating his eyes. It’s all up in his hair, and he writhes at the thought that the remnants of- of whatever that was- are still upon him even in its death. It’s an unwelcome realization, and with it, he gets the strong and sudden urge to shower as soon as humanly possible.)

Owen handles the pistol almost reverently, releasing it from his rock-solid grip and turning it over in his fingers, admiring the lacy metalwork and brightly varnished wood that adorn the beautiful, almost ceremonial-looking, weapon. The metal appears to be some kind of bronze, though certainly it is like no bronze Owen's ever set eyes upon before. It shines with an almost unnatural glow, although in all honesty it should have been varnished and scuffed beyond recognition.

(At least he assumes so, as given the state that the orange was in, and if the orange was the gun… he’s kind of accepted at this point that weird things are at work here and if moldy oranges are going to turn into guns, there’s not much he can do about that other than roll with it.)

Owen’s attention is lifted from the firearm laying in his hands by the screeching sound of tennis shoes skidding along the linoleum floor, followed quickly after by Charlie, doubled over and wheezing, hands planted on his knees, appearing in the doorway. He must have run all the way here, Owen realizes, though what he doesn’t understand is from where.

It seems to take Charlie a minute to realize what he’s looking at, to take in the pistol clutched in Owen's hands, the sand-like material blanketing the classroom in a carpet of gold- but when he finally does, his eyes widen in something resembling shock, with a heavy tinge of pride mixed in. “You- you did it!”

“No need to sound so surprised,” Owen mutters, the pistol hanging awkwardly from one hand. “So, uh, was I supposed to do that? What- what happened to her, Charlie? Why did she, like, turn into a snake person, and then I shot her and it was so loud, and now she’s just- just this, just dust, and it’s everywhere- How am I going to explain this to my parents, and the school- what have I done? Where do I go from here?”

“Well,” Charlie suggests, a happy tint to his voice that Owen does not think fits well with the situation, “you could come to my summer camp!”

Owen stares at him, the suggestion so ridiculous on so many levels that he feels it's only best to voice the most obvious concern first; lest Charlie's mental state be somehow compromised due to the way he's acting. “School’s just started, it’s not summer anymore. Plus, I don’t really think that they’d be willing to harbor a literal murderer-”

“You’d be really surprised, actually,” Charlie interrupts, beginning to walk casually down the hall. Owen has no choice but to follow, body still quite literally shaking with adrenaline. “And I may have lied about that bit. Only a little, though! Only a little bitty lie. They do a year-round thing too, for kids like you-”

“Criminals, you mean? Juvenile delinquents? Because that’s what I am now- Mom and Dad are going to be so disappointed, I’m not going to be able to finish my education and become a lawyer like they’ve- like I’ve always wanted. Charlie, why the heck did you make me do that?”

“Okay, um- well. First things first, I need to- I need to fucking- to explain some things. What that was, what you killed- Lamia. That wasn’t a human, dude, it's not murder- I promise you're not a murderer. That was a full-ass fucking monster. Monsters are what we call them, by the way-” Charlie is cut off abruptly by Owen, pushing in with his own two cents.

“But Lamia is from Greek mythology, Char! Those things aren’t supposed to exist! And why- no, the question here is how- how did you give me a moldy orange that turned into a literal gun?!” Owen accepts what’s happened, yes, but that doesn’t mean he understands what’s going on. Not by a long shot.

“Okay, stop interrupting, stop interrupting! X will explain everything when we get to camp, until then, you really just need to stick by me. Now that you’ve slain your first monster, your scent is already so much more strong, even I can smell it and with a nose like mine-”

“Scent?” Owen lifts his arms, sniffing his armpits expectantly. “I don’t smell any worse than usual.”

“No, no no no, not that kind of scent, the other one, the one that smells like- like fucking buttered bread or some shit-

(Charlie’s brow is wrinkled up in annoyance- it doesn’t seem like it’s directed at Owen, but instead at the fact that Charlie knows all of these things that he doesn’t. Usually Owen can catch onto a concept really quick, and he supposes it must be really bothersome for Charlie that he’s not exercising that ability to its fullest extent here- but honestly, what does the guy expect him to do? Greek myths and- and the monsters from Greek myths just are. Not. Real. Things like- like whatever’s just occurred- things like aren't real things that happen real to people. That’s not how the world works.)

“Okay, okay, I’ll just lay off until someone better at explaining can tell me what in the world is going on," Owen placates, hands raised up in surrender and the ghost of a grin reappearing on his face, dimples pulling inwards.

Charlie shoots him a glare (albeit not a super angry one, but Owen still instinctively flinches back) and continues to lead him down the hallway, their two sets of steps on cold linoleum the only sound permeating a silence that hangs in the air like molasses slowly dripping down the edges of its barrel. It’s only when Charlie throws open the doors of the school and gestures to a taxicab waiting outside that Owen balks, stopping in his tracks as his eyebrows raise up into his bangs in incredulity.

“We can’t just leave the school in the middle of the day. You know that, right?” Owen asks, a hint of pleading in his voice, a giggle of discomfort breaking his voice in two. His parents, still living back in England, receive daily reports from the aunt he’s currently living with, and if she finds that he’s skipped school, he’s in for the angriest phone call of the month- no, his entire life, even.

“Dude, you don’t really have a leg to- Owen, you honestly just don't have a choice at this point.” Charlie half-laughs the words out, decidedly shaking but still firm in his decision.

“I just- I-” Owen pauses, thinking over his options. He trusts Charlie with his life, that’s simply a fact. That is the only indisputable truth in his life full of uncertainty. And just knowing that, he knows he’s already made the decision. He would follow Charlie to the ends of the earth.

“Fine,” Owen relents, sighing deeply, “Fine, I’ll go with you. But just- What about my parents? My aunt?”

Charlie cringes and scuffs his shoe against the pavement, one foot on linoleum, the other on warm concrete. He’s in between two worlds right now- the thought comes to Owen’s mind, and though he’s never realized it before, he realizes it’s true. There’s something that Charlie’s not telling him, something he’s hiding- not just about this mysterious summer camp, not just about what it actually is, no. Charlie is hiding something about himself.

“You- we’ll notify them that you’re fine. Your dad will understand, he’ll know where you are. And your mom… she’ll probably also be fine. She married your dad after you were born, right?”

Owen affirms Charlie’s statement with a sulking nod of his head.

“Okay, good. We need to hurry the fuck up, though, if we’re going to get back in time for me to check in with X. I would just call the sisters, but I don’t have a drachma- of course I don’t.” Charlie shakes his head and walks forward, gesturing for Owen to follow. He does, but not without another boatload of questions.

“Who’s this ‘X’ guy, by the way? You keep talking about him and I have no idea who he is.” Owen fiddles with his fingers, the worry having seeped out of his chest and into the appendages.

“Camp director,” Charlie answers, pulling open the back door of the taxi and climbing in, handing a wad of cash to the driver. Where did he get that? “You’ll like X, he’s really smart, just like you. He’s also a super good teacher and mentor, you two will get on great.”

Owen nods, and as he slides into the backseat beside Charlie, no idea where they’re headed and no clue if it’s safe, following his best friend into what for all he knows could be oblivion, or death, or sadness. But he follows Charlie, because he always follows Charlie and always will.

Owen trusts him. And that’s the only thing he knows for certain anymore.

25 notes · View notes