Prompt #006 - Hours

Prompt # 006 – Hours

Final Hour

Time Frame: The Last Olympian: Chapter Seventeen

Pairing: None

POV: Clarisse

**

“All the hours wound you—the last one kills you.”

-Latin Proverb

**

She’s lying in my arms and I can’t believe it.

I hated her, I hated her so much. Shallow little girl who could barely take care of herself in a fight. Gah, I wanted to ring her skinny tanned neck.

I hated her for being pretty, I hated her for being happy all the time, I hated her for stealing my chariot and cabin to come here today.

But I know her now. I know how nice she is, how she is emotional when I am too proud to be, how she knew Chris and I were meant for each other. She is my foil and my friend. And now it is her final hour.

And I am crying, actually crying. I don’t cry. I never cry. I’m a daughter of Ares. We don’t cry. But now, as I see her there, I want to punch her, to shake her.

Don’t die, you idiot! I want to scream it at her. She was never cut out for war, why did she come here?

But I know the answer. I know why. Because I was selfish, because I was vain. She wanted to make up for her mistakes, and now it had cost her.

Every little decision she has made, and one big one I have are now why she is laying in my arms instead of on a tanning bed. It’s why she has drakon poison filmed on her face instead of moisturizer. It’s why she’s wearing my armor instead of her Abercrombie jeans. It’s why she’s slowing drawing her fifth to last breath, fourth to last breath…

The clock keeps ticking for her. The final moments of her final hour.

“You’re not dying!” I insist, staring into her once beautiful features. She was my enemy—now my friend, like so many others. They are out there dying too. I need to help them!

“Charlie…” she whispers, and her face swims before my eyes with frustration and anger and hopelessness. So many we have lost. “See…Charlie…”

I feel the tightness leave her body, and the pain fade from her crumpled brow. Now Silena is in a different pair of arms far below me, without pain, without heartache.

“She was a hero, understand?” I spit at the campers standing around me as I stand up. I wipe all evidence of saltwater-weakness from my eyes, and I feel Chris’s comforting, steady hand on my shoulder. “A hero.”

She’s left me here to finish what she started.

No more will die.

I pick up a sword from another of our dead…and run screaming into battle.

~fin~