a/n: hey guys, I'm super sleep-deprived but here ya go ;)

_

Irene couldn’t look Nana in the eyes when she entered their cabin and saw the head counselor sitting up on her bunk.

“Morning,” she muttered as she sat on the edge of her bed.

Nana glumly stared at her for a while, noting the small bruises and dirt on her face and arms. “I thought we’re already clear that no major rules should be broken if I let you do your own thing? You just broke a major one, Bae.”

“I know,” Irene couldn’t be more apologetic if she tried. “I’m really sorry, I overestimated myself. I thought I could do it.”

“You’ve put yourself in danger, not just once if I may add,” Nana’s scowl deepened and she appeared much older than she actually was, maybe it was the stress. “We are very close friends, and everyone knows I’m supportive than most head counselors here but if I don’t put an end to whatever you’re doing, all of us will be at risk, not just you.”

“I’m sorry,” Irene bowed her head, fully accepting Nana’s decision. “It’s never gonna happen again.”

“Make sure of it, I trust you to learn from your mistakes,” Nana finally stood up and took a clipboard and a pen.

“There are scheduled physical training activities in the camp if you still want to join them,” she pitched Irene a sharp look. “Normal training activities, no tree climbing included. Anyways, swords and shields, I’d advise you to learn under the Athena’s cabin, they have way more patience than Ares’. Archery, of course, Apollo’s cabin. Armors and chariots, the kids of Hephaestus have a knack for them.”

“About Apollo’s cabin…” Irene asked. “Why is Wendy always seem to be following me around? I mean, it can’t be a coincidence. She’s literally everywhere.”

“Oh, I asked her to look after you,” Nana revealed casually. “And be glad that she did.”

Irene was baffled, opened and closed for a couple of times before she found her voice. “But why would you ask her that?”

Nana shot her a pointed look, as if the answer should be so obvious. “I was worried about you, and honestly after everything that happened, I was right to worry.”

Irene pursed her lips and crossed her arms. “You could’ve asked someone else.”

“Who?” Nana raised one perfectly-shaped eyebrow. “Joy? Hayoung? Not those two unless I’m asking for a lot more trouble than I can handle.”

“I don’t know, someone else…” Irene’s eyes surveyed the section of their cabin that was allotted for the girls’ bunks. “Also, where’s Joy and Hayoung?”

Nana waved her hand vaguely. “They found out that they liked gardening and growing flowers so I guess they’re spending some time either in Dionysus’ cabin or Demeter’s.”

“Why would Wendy say yes though,” Irene wondered aloud. “It’s not like she owed you anything.”

Nana shrugged nonchalantly. “Her reasons are her own,” she then scribbled on her clipboard. “If you want to start training today, I’ll send a note to Athena’s head counselor so you could join them. Meanwhile, change clothes and drop by the infirmary, you have bruises.”

“You know that payback plan that we did,” Irene said, having decided to tell her about what really happened that night at the lake. “I found out that charmspeaks don’t work on Wendy.”

Nana just stared at her in silence.

“She kissed me,” Irene elaborated, thinking that Nana didn’t understand what she just said. “On purpose.”

“Interesting…” her head counselor murmured, still staring at her.

“Why?”

“Because you didn’t complain about it,” Nana stated matter-of-factly.

Well, yeah.

“Do you think Wendy likes you?” Nana asked her, her tone was as serious as it could get. “You think that’s the reason why she agreed to look after you?”

Irene met her friend’s gaze. “I honestly don’t know. We were never really close before, even prior to the pranks.”

Nana’s eyes narrowed and pierced her deeper, cutting through flesh and bones, through her façade.

“Do you like her?”

“I don’t know…”

Yet, at least.

“Even a little bit?”

“She saved me-”

“You’re evading the question.”

Irene threw her hands up in the air. “I really don’t know what to tell you.”

“Remember,” Nana smiled and patted her shoulders soothingly. “There’s a difference between not knowing and pretending not to know.”

_

No.

“Please don’t, Irene, no… wake up, please…”

Wendy could see herself sobbing over Irene’s body; the girl was lying on the dry ground, unmoving, eyes glassy and lifeless. A dark stain of blood on her shirt was rapidly spreading over her chest and stomach.

She was so pale, and so beautiful.

Impossibly beautiful.

Wendy could hear the cries and screams and uproars of the battle happening around them, she could smell the blood and the smoke, could taste death on her lips, could feel the madness in the air.

Her grief flowed freely like a dam broken, and yet somehow in the back of her mind she knew it was inevitable. The Fates have decided.

No.

Irene. I beg you. Don’t leave me.

“Wendy?

Wendy blinked and was transported back to reality.

“Are you okay?”

The Cabin 7’s head counselor cautiously looked around her at the steps outside of their cabin, searching for the signs of the battlefield she saw earlier. No smoke, no fires, no deaths. Just the regular old Camp Half-Blood that she adored, more or less the same from when she first came here.

“I’m fine,” she forced a smile to give her younger cabinmate. “Let’s go get those first aid supplies.”

As they took the path to the infirmary, Wendy tried to shake away the ominous vision she had. Or was it a premonition? Or a warning, maybe? As a daughter of Apollo who is the god of prophecies, and a legacy of Hecate who is also known to be able to predict the future, life can be very confusing to Wendy.

Sometimes, dreams can be just dreams. And sometimes, they’re not.

What if this one wasn’t just a dream?

Her chest tightened at the thought of a future where Irene died and-

Hecate once told Wendy that the future was the accumulation of all the decisions you’ve made in the present. That your future was ever-changing. That you have the power to change it, demigod or not.

Then to avoid that future, she just needed to change something in her present.

But what?

_

“Customer!” an Apollo kid on duty in the infirmary called when Irene entered the room, having swapped her soiled shirt for a clean one.

“I’ll take her,” another voice answered, and Wendy appeared from the back, lugging a box full of first aid kits. Another kid took the box from her and went out, leaving her to tend to Irene.

She is everywhere, Irene thought.

“Sit down,” Wendy led her to one of the vacant beds in the corner of the infirmary. There wasn’t a lot of patients then; there was one sleeping in a cot and another one getting his arm out of a cast.

Irene dutifully sat down, her eyes following Wendy’s movements as she prepared the various things she had to use.

“Don’t move,” Wendy ordered her when she finally sat down across Irene on the bed and pinched between her fingers was a ball of cotton dabbed in some alcohol.

Irene tried not to but a slight pain seared through her flesh when the cotton touched the cut on her cheek, she flinched.

“I told you not to move,” Wendy scolded, her eyes squinted in annoyance but she kept on with her work. “Stop it, you’re fidgeting so much.”

“It hurts!”

“And whose fault is that?”

Irene rolled her eyes in retort but didn’t answer.

“I take it your counselor gave you a dressing down?” Wendy asked quietly, careful to keep the conversation just between them.

“In not a lot of words,” Irene sighed, still feeling the guilt of breaking Nana’s trust. “She told me about your deal.”

Wendy just grunted as she spread some wound ointment on Irene’s cut.

“Why did you take it?” Irene tried to catch Wendy’s eyes but the latter clearly didn’t want to meet hers. “I mean, the task to look after me?”

“You know, when a fellow head counselor asked you to do something-” Wendy started to tell her some mediocre bull explanation about honor and favors and whatnots that Irene couldn’t give a damn about at the moment.

She decided to play an insistent game of Why’s instead.

“Wendy,” Irene gripped the wrist of the girl fixing her wounds and leaned closer. “Why did you agree to look after me?”

Wendy’s eyes flicked to her, and for a second, Irene forgot to breath.

“Why did you pretend that you drowned?” the girl asked back.

“Because I wanted to know if you’ll save me,” Irene answered without even blinking. “Why did you agree?”

“Because I wanted to see you reach your full potential as a person and not just as a daughter of some goddess,” Wendy replied, holding her stare with the same intensity. “Does that satisfy you?”

“Fine,” Irene halfheartedly dropped the topic. “If charmspeaks don’t work on you, then why did you kiss me?”

Wendy’s reaction to that question was carefully guarded and Irene wished she had more practice in reading people. “Because I thought it’d be the perfect prank. Why did you wanna know?”

“Maybe I just wanted to know what motivates you to do the things that you do,” Irene shrugged.

“Hmm,” Wendy resumed patching her up. “I wasn’t aware that Aphrodite’s