"I told you not to take left" [BoO spoilers]

Yea, sure they could act like one of them was wounded. If they wanted to be tossed out when the people realized they were not actually injured and were just wasting their gas or some other lame excuse the driver came up with. Sure, he knew there were actually some good people out there who would stop and help them out but those kinds of people really didn’t exist anymore and if they did they were so few and far between that Darren and Tiberia would be lucky if they found even one person who was willing to help them out. Enough of that though, let’s focus on walking. Specifically the difference between Darren’s and Tiberia’s. They were so different. While Tiberia’s walk was all orderly and stoic and militaristic, Darren’s was laughably odd and all over the place. Zigzagging this way and that way, looking at every little thing that caught his attention.

When she stopped them again Darren halted himself behind her, looking over her shoulder as if he too was attempting to read the sign. “Cool five miles? That’s not too bad right? We can totally make it there. How’s your shoulder holding up by the way?” It wasn’t that he was concerned, he wasn’t right? No, it was just that she took a pretty nasty claw from that mountain lion and he didn’t exactly want her to die of infection or something before they made it back to the camp. That would be a terrible way to end this fun little story. Darren wasn’t sure the Gods would exactly appreciate that he was unable to protect another person. He also knew damn well that the Romans would of course blame him if anything remotely bad happened to her. So, not only was it the right thing to do it was also in his best interest to return her home safe and sound. Not like anyone would miss him if he didn’t make it. Except maybe one or two of his half-siblings, he didn’t have many.

OOC: I meant the wounded part as in, they pretend they're wounded so that someone pulls up, then they steal the car :p

BIC: "My shoulder's fine, don't worry about it," she said, keeping up her march. Another lesson of the Legion: never show weakness. Sure Tiberia's shoulder wasn't fine, but it was healing and it'd be okay with time. She just had to put up with the pain and pull through.

It took them about fifty minutes to reach the small town. Unfortunately no shops were open at this late (or rather, early) hour, so they searched for shelter instead and squeezed under the porch of an old abandoned house. Tiberia re-counted her money and rummaged through her backpack in case there were dollars laying around. However Fortuna wasn't with her and she didn't find anything.

"You can resume sleeping if you want, it's gonna be one or two hours till daybreak," Tiberia told Darren, breathing into her hands to warm them up. "Then we'll find some food and maybe even some kind of bus to San Francisco."

“Right sure, your shoulder is perfectly fine after getting attacked by a mountain lion with the only thing to defend you being a stick that had previously been on fire. I totally believe you. Also that was pretty awesome what you did back there.” It was too, Darren wouldn’t lie about something like that. Sure, when he told the story to his cabin mates, friends, or anyone that would listen he’d probably leave out the part that he had been asleep for the beginning of the ‘fight’ and just barely getting up and rushing to the fire before it was all over. Mainly because that would be a terrible story and had no place in the awesomeness that was the death of a mountain lion. It also had nothing to do with the fact that it made him look like a loser.

A little while later, which to Darren felt like forever because oh my gods there is only so much you can do while walking along the side of a rode for five miles with someone who won’t even look at you let alone have a normal conversation with you. Which actually now that he thought about it, as they were walking up the steps to the abandoned house, he and Tiberia have never actually had a normal conversation. They’ve talked about swimming, competing, sword fighting, there was the whole singing duel thing, something about popcorn, and well now. “Sleep? Nah, too energized now couldn’t sleep if I wanted to. Slept on less before so I’ll be good. Least I think I will, you know they say getting four hours of sleep or less is actually worse than getting none. I think, maybe.... You could if you want to though. Although if you don’t want to we could just talk? I dunno, just dawned on me that we’ve never actually had a normal conversation before what with you hating me and all.”

She did hate him right? Darren may have been the most oblivious person in the world but he was pretty sure she couldn’t stand him. Which he didn’t blame her, or maybe he just couldn’t understand why. He wasn’t the worst person in the world, hell he thought he was pretty alright. He was a good person, talked a tad bit too much he was told but that was nothing to complain about really was it? There could also be the fact that he was Greek and she was Roman, because oh my god that was still apparently a thing. Like could people just accept the fact that yes they were both different in the fact that they named their Gods, who were the same people by the way, something else but besides that they were almost exactly the same? Oh well…wait what was he thinking about again? Meh, probably wasn’t anything important.

Was he really that annoying? Nah, there was absolutely no way in Hades he was that annoying. He was quite possibly the least annoying person in the world. Cute, cuddly, totally hilarious, and the best swordsman alive? Heck yea! But annoying? That was certainly debatable and obviously she only thought he was annoying because she didn’t know him that well. He was totally prepared to go off on a tangent or whatever on her concerning this topic but in the end he got distracted because hello ADHD. There were just so many interesting things going on at whatever the fudge time in the morning it was out on that abandoned street. Like who puts dim lights so far apart from each other than you can’t see anything that’s going on next to them and then bright lights right on top of each other, it totally defeats the purpose.

Anyway! None of that really mattered because she was actually going to talk to him. Sure, it was about the other people who were obviously fine. The bus was gone when they left pointing to the fact that everyone else had gotten away, and pretty quickly too sense obviously they hadn’t taken role. Which he stated to Tiberia “I bet the others are fine, the bus was gone when we left the hotel which means everyone got away, and apparently they got away pretty quickly because they didn’t seem to notice we weren’t on the bus meaning they didn’t take role or anything.” He was about to comment that they were probably freaking out about the two of them until he remembered she had a family and that would not have been the best thing to say. No need for her to worry even more about things she couldn’t control. Except of course she herself brought up her own family. “I’m sure they think you’re fine, don’t worry about it.” Like he knew anything about that.

Which she had to bring up. Darren honestly didn’t respond for a couple of seconds. “What family?” It was the simplest thing he could think of. “Well…I mean I have like three or four half-siblings back at camp but that’s it. I may be the cabin leader but I doubt anyone is really worried…I don’t think you want to hear my tragic backstory though. So, yea let’s just leave it at that. I don’t have a family.” Most people would have brushed it off, gone away, sulked or something like that. Darren didn’t, he wasn’t most people. “What about you though? Bet you have a pretty great family. Your brother seemed pretty protective.” Okay so maybe he brushed it off, but hey could you blame him?

She wanted to hear about his backstory? Really? Well it was her fault when she didn’t like what she heard. “Just to put this on record you totally asked for it.” Rubbing the back of his head he sighed wondering where he was supposed to start. Darren wasn’t one to reminisce about things that happened in the past, and was better at forgetting and moving on. “Okay, so I never knew my dad or mom, until recently obviously, my records at the Orphanage back in Sydney say I was dropped off at the steps at less than three weeks old. Yea, I know sounds like a movie.” There he goes, making it into a joke once more. “Lived there for a little while never actually getting adopted, then at like ten, yea I think nine or ten me and a girl from the orphanage ran off together.”

From here he continued to tell her all about his ‘backstory’ from the year on their own trying to make life work to joining a street gang run by other kids like them. To sticking with the gang until they were fourteen, steeling to survive and living in the worst of places where they would be lucky to have a box to sleep in when it rained. Even choking through the story of how Lauren was…well okay so maybe he wasn’t fully able to force the words out without getting sad and angry at the same time. This was also where he gained the scars as he foolishly confronted the gang with only a rusty knife and was carved up with it and sent crawling back to his ‘family’. But hey this was also when he was claimed by Nike and boy was that an interesting tale involving him getting struck by lightning.

For the next year he focused on training himself learning each and every style of sword fighting he could. As he had stolen a sword from a shop somewhere and was apparently a very quick learner. By the time his fifteenth birthday rolled around he and Lauren had become much closer, practically together he explained, he figured he was strong enough and went to take on the gang where he found the ‘Caveman’ already there doing the job. Dude was totally his idol or something by the way. Happy and filled with joy he returned to go tell Lauren the good news only to find all of his brothers and sisters riddled with bullet holes, and Lauren herself barely gasping for life. It was here he fled vowing to become some sort of hero so things like this would never happen again.

Life obviously had a different plan because after hitchhiking on a boat he made it to America and upon stepping onto the docks he was greeted by a group of monsters, saved by a Saytr because his sword didn’t work, and taken to camp. “That was two years ago…now I’m the eighteen year old you see here now. I still haven’t kept my promise about making this world a safer place but I’m just not strong enough yet… the camp psychiatrist says I use jokes and humor to ‘mask my pain’ I dunno makes me sound like some crappy super-hero or something. But yea that’s my life. Sorry its not Oscar winning or anything.”

Tiberia stayed silent for a long time.

There simply was nothing for her to say. Everything she thought of just sounded stupid and overused, and the more she played the options around in her head, the more they sounded like the type of colorless naive uplifting things you heard in movies.  

This explained so much about Darren.. the sudden change in the arena, when they were singing and she mocked his scars. What an idiot! If only she could take that back! This boy had gone through so much pain and lacked all those things she had taken for granted over the years: two parents, siblings, a family, a home to go to.. a childhood. A childhood without any type of scars. Darren barely had had any of that yet here he was with his dumb crooked grin and his carefree attitude, as if nothing had ever happened to him, though now she knew what he hid underneath that. Tiberia used to think he was a naive idiot, with his way of walking around shirtless all the time and talking nonstop without thinking. Turns out, he is far from naive. And probably far from an idiot too.
She may have experienced horrors, but so had Darren, in different ways. She had been dumb to judge him so quickly.

The silence was slowly getting unbearable. Tiberia sighed quietly, breathing into her hands to warm her numb fingertips, then turned her head to the side to look at Darren.

"Hey. What did the ocean say to the other ocean?"

She was quiet. Like really quiet, but then again so was he. Which, if he was being honest was probably weirder than her being quiet. Both of them awkwardly sitting there being all quiet and boring was in no way fun. Especially for Darren who not only just spilled his entire life story to the girl sitting next to him but because of the way his mind worked. To Darren the world was always seemingly moving in slow motion, it wasn’t that he saw things before they happened or anything like that. Even though he thought that would be awesome. No, it was just because his body was already naturally enhanced to react to things faster because of his Demi-Godness but then you added in the fact he had some serious case of ADHD? Well…he couldn’t sit still.

Saying something ran through his mind about a hundred times but he honestly didn’t know what to say. Honestly, what could someone say after everything he just said? All he could do was sit there, twiddle his thumbs, and whatever else his fingers decided to do while he waited for Aqualady to say something and hope it wasn’t something comforting or in any way ‘helpful’. Sure, he hadn’t told very many people the story he just told her but of the few people he had, he’d heard it all. Nothing she could say would make him feel any better about it all, or would make him not want to roll his eyes, forget about it even more and throw back on his happy go lucky attitude. He quite liked that attitude anyway thank you very much.

Okay so he lied. “Whaaaa?” He blinked looking at her caught a little bit off guard. Did she just make a joke? No, definitely not Aqualady. Not big bad serious Roman Officer Tiberia, granddaughter of Neptune? “Was…was that a joke? You can do that?” He laughed a smile etching its way onto his face before shaking his head. “Something about waiving? I dunno, what did the ocean say to the other ocean Miss granddaughter of the Oceans?” Because he actually wanted to know, this wasn’t a joke he had heard before and there was the fact that he wasn’t even aware she could tell jokes. This needed scientific observation and what not to see if she messes up a punch-line or something…because you know science and stuff.

Darren saw what she did there alright and he was sad to admit, at least to himself, that he was laughing too. They were both terrible puns but puns aren’t supposed to be clever or good anyway. They were just funny by themselves and to make it better she was the granddaughter of the Sea. “I do, I do Sea what you did there. Didn’t know Miss Big Bad Roman had a funny side though. Thought you guys were like Russians though. If you smiled you got shot and all that.” Sure, Darren may have been Australian but you didn’t live in the United States and the cabin of the children of the Goddess of Victory for that matter for two years without seeing Miracle on Ice. Or Miracle, whatever you wanted to call it.

((I am not happy with this post but I needed to get one out for you))

"Nah, you know, we Romans can be koi pun-wise but every now and then we come out of our shell," she continued. She could go like this for hours, Decimus and her tended to have pun battles like that one and she hated giving up. "So, water you thinking?"

OOC: Meh short xD