goldandjewels (goldandjewels) wrote in valarlogs, @ 2016-09-19 19:47:00 |
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Entry tags: | caleb rivers, hazel levesque |
Who: Hazel Levesque & Caleb Rivers
What: Random run-in
When: September, post plot
Where: Neal's ranch
Rating/Warning: Low/Mentions of the dream sick and bad parenting experiences
Status: Complete
The last time Caleb was at the ranch he ended up extremely sick. He knew it wasn’t Murphy’s fault, or the ranches but he had avoided it for a few days once he was well. Now he wanted to check in, make sure everyone was alright.
He brought Techno today. Might as well kill two birds with one stone and walk his dog while he was checking up on everything. Caleb walked along one of the paths with Techno’s leash in hand when his dog sped up dragging Caleb along with him. It took Caleb a minute to figure out why but then he saw the girl Techno had made a beeline for. “Techno heel,” Caleb called out. Luckily his pit bull slowed down until Caleb caught up. Not exactly what he wanted but close enough. “Sorry,” Caleb said to the girl once the pair got closer to her. “He gets excited.”
Hazel was used to animals. Really, she was surprised so many of them didn’t instantly hate her. She was also surprised that she wasn’t dead right now after losing so much blood. She felt awful, but the idea of staying inside was just too much. She was doing better now anyway. A little ambrosia and nectar helped keep her from going too far. She was rationing it. She didn’t want it to run out in case she really needed it. But today was less of a heavy work sort of volunteer day. She was doing a few easy tasks and most of it was brushing the horses and bringing them food.
She looked up when she heard something coming toward her, surprised to see a dog when most of the animals she’d run into seemed a little hesitant. Outside of the horses. It took her a moment to notice the person attached to the dog and she gave a small shake of her head. “No, it’s fine. Cerberus is the same. Cesare, too, if I’m being honest.” She waited a moment before saying, “Hi. I’m Hazel. I’d shake your hand, but I don’t have a sink to wash my hands off with first, so I’ll skip that for now.” But she squatted next to the dog, scratching behind his ears. “Hello, Techno.” A pause. “I hope it’s okay for me to pet him. I didn’t think to ask first. Sorry.”
“Don’t worry about it,” Caleb replied. He didn’t mind the whole no handshake thing. He wasn’t the biggest on formalities anyway. “Caleb,” he added as way of introducing himself. He also didn’t mind that Hazel had squatted down to pet Techno. “It’s fine,” he gave her a small smile. “Techno loves pets,” probably why he ran up to every stranger he saw. Caleb really needed to work on that with him. But time, there wasn’t enough. “Especially if you scratch behind his ears.”
Hazel was used to formalities and being polite. Most of it was a way to get around the looks that she’d get just being her mother’s daughter. It was normal for her to have to apologize if her mother did or said something that she shouldn’t have. Then again, if the other people were the ones to start things, Hazel had no qualms turning her head away from them and dropping her politeness. “Caleb.” She smiled then. “I like that name.” A beat. “Not that I come across names I don’t like or that I’d tell people I didn’t like their names.” Not if they were strangers. Certainly not seriously. She had to resist the urge to fan at her face, feeling suddenly embarrassed.
“I think most dogs do. There are a few that don’t, but then again, I’m kind of used to animals being weird around me these days, so it’s nice when they aren’t.” She shrugged. “Probably something to do with...uh...I don’t know, really. Horse smell?” It wasn’t horse smell. It was just at the last minute she reminded herself that people might not know about the Network. She couldn’t just say being a child of Pluto made a lot of animals uneasy. Apparently. She was glad it didn’t seem to cause all of them to give her a wide berth and some pretty serious side eye.
“Thanks. I didn’t choose it but I’m sure my mom would be proud.” That was a lie. Caleb had no clue how his mom would feel. The last time he saw her he was five years old. Now she had some shiny new family with two step kids who she obviously cared about more than Caleb, but that wasn’t the point. He wasn’t going to dump all his baggage on this girl he just met. Hell, he didn’t dump his baggage on anyone.
Caleb squatted down beside Hazel to give his pup some pets as well. “I don’t know,” he replied honestly. “I’ve only had him for a few months,” not to mention it was Caleb’s first time actually owning a pet. How he had gotten so domestic he had no idea. “But obviously Techno doesn’t mind the horse smell.”
“Yeah. Moms usually are about those sorts of things.” Hazel was pretty sure that her mom wouldn’t be proud about a name, but it seemed like the response that she ought to give. She didn’t know what her mom felt at the moment, but that was all because she’d asked for help when things got...worse and now she didn’t see her. Sometimes they talked on the phone, but it wasn’t really the same. She wasn’t sure they’d ever be the same again. Not after everything.
“Really? We’ve only had Cerberus for a little while, but I know Cesare has been with us for a while. Mom and I never really did pets, but…” She shrugged. Her dad, Nico, and Bianca seemed to do pets. She just didn’t have one of her own. She quietly wished she had a horse, but horses were expensive and then the cost to keep them fed and housed was even more money. She couldn’t ask her dad for that. Not even knowing he probably had the money. “That’s lucky for me, then. Because Techno is pretty cute.”
“I’m gonna guess those are dogs?” It was the second time she had mentioned them and she was petting a dog so the comparison seemed logical. “Those are some unique names,” he commented and was about to ask if she named them herself when she mentioned that she and her mother didn’t do pets. “Ah, so they’re your dads? Or foster care?” Hell if Caleb knew. She was at the ranch so it was possible she didn’t have a home. A foster home also wasn’t a stretch for Caleb to jump to, considering he had spent most of his life in them.
Hazel nodded. “Yes. They are both dogs.” She glanced down at Techno, thinking over her words carefully. “Yeah. They are. Well, Cerberus is Dad’s. Cesare is Nico’s. Nico is my brother. I’ve been here for going on three years. Dad has a thing for the Underworld. Hades and all that.” She shrugged. It sounded like something that someone might say if they were normal. Greek and Roman mythology was a popular conversation topic for some people. “But naturally, Cerberus is a little less three-headed and a little more...one-headed.” She smiled. “Nico and Bianca were born in Italy. Which I think explains Cesare, but I don’t actually know. I just know when they are angry because they get very Italian.”
Caleb quirked a brow. Hades had a dog name Cerberus? It all just sounded like a dream thing to him. In fact he was pretty sure he saw a Hades on valarnet once. But that didn’t mean that Hazel was. “Fitting, I guess,” Caleb finally said giving Techno one last pat on the head before fully standing back up. “I’ve never been to Italy.” Or out to the country for that matter. “Do you ever get to go?”
“Oh. No. Never gotten to go to Italy. Nico and Bianca’s mom went back there, though. Dad’s...not the best at monogamy.” She frowned for a moment. “And I’m a kid from a different woman, so.” She cleared her throat and shook her head. “It doesn’t really matter, though. Just one of those awkward family things I deal with. Also allows for fake surprise when people tell us we don’t look alike.” Which was normally because she got annoyed with people for mentioning it. “I used to live in New Orleans with my mom. She did a lot with talking to spirits? I’m not sure if it was real or fake most of the time. Then we ended up in Alaska. Now I’m here. That’s about the extent of my traveling.”
Caleb nodded as she explained the situation. He wasn’t one to judge. His mom had other kids now and who the hell knew how many kids his dad had. Caleb didn’t even know who his dad was. Probably the same guy as in the dreams but he hadn’t been able to find anything on the guy. Before he could comment on any of that though Hazel mentioned spirits which of course caught Caleb’s attention more. He could actually see and talk to spirits. They had to seek him out but still. “Spirits huh? You never know, she could really have been. You believe in that sort of thing?”
“I think mostly she didn’t believe in it. I’ve never really discredited the truth of it. I can’t talk to spirits, but...things of late sort of give me another way of looking at things.” Being a dead girl come back to life was a bit of an eye opener. And she’d already witnessed a girl die and come back to life during War Games. The Doors of Death were open and Thanatos was chained somewhere. “It’s hard to say what was real and what wasn’t with my mom, though. Who was running the show, you know?” She shook her head, waving it off. “But that’s...you probably don’t want to hear about all of that. Sorry. I just got really sick recently and I think it’s affecting my ability to filter information properly.”
Again Caleb raised a brow. The way she was talking it seemed like she might just be a dreamer. “This place has a way of making you see things differently,” Caleb commented. Because in his mind it was all thanks to Orange County. Sure Hanna had lived here her whole life and didn’t start dreaming until about a year ago. But the dreams started for Caleb as soon as he moved to the area.
“It’s fine, I don’t mind. It’s a relief to know I don’t come from the only fucked up family.” Or basically non existent in Caleb’s case. But then the next thing she said caught his attention. “Me too actually. There was something going around I think. Bleeding eyes?”
“Yeah. And here I thought it was mostly normal when I first moved here.” Outside of the complete awkwardness that came with trying to adjust to living with a family as the outsider that was the result of an affair. She tried not to think about it too much, but it was difficult most of the time because she was always thinking about how she fit in and where her place in her family was. She knew it was ridiculous, but she couldn’t help herself.
“I definitely don’t think you are.” Every demigod she’d talked to had a fucked up family. She didn’t know anyone that didn’t. I mean, Percy’s mom sounded really great and Hazel was curious about her after hearing about her. She hadn’t heard about her in the dreams, though. Which she thought was a little odd. “Yes. You had that, too? It was terrible.”
“Yeah. Thank God it only lasted twenty-four hours.” It was certainly something Caleb hoped to never experience again. Poor Murphy. Caleb would hate to have those dreams. “I think I caught it here actually.” Well he knew he did since he got it straight from Murphy and he had seen him here that day.
“It felt like so much longer.” She was pretty sure it had been at least three days, but she knew that it hadn’t been. She just was pretty out of it for most of the time, so she hadn’t been completely aware of time passing after a while. She was just happy it was done. “I went to some beach party and suddenly I was dying. Well, not suddenly. The next day, though. I felt awful.”
“The one Caroline threw?” He was pretty sure some other people were involved as well, but he only knew of Caroline, Hanna’s friend. Oh and Anna, the not-innocent one. “I was supposed to go to that, but I got sick ahead of time,” he frowned at the memory but oh well. All in that past. “I’m just glad it’s all over with now.”
“I...didn’t know that many people...or their names. Some people from school told me to come and I took my friend to keep from not knowing people. He didn’t get sick, though.” She shrugged slightly. “I’m still in high school, so I don’t really know a ton of the non-high school people except for Regina and Killian and my brother Nico and Sans and Will...who is my brother’s boyfriend.” But she liked them and she didn’t mind having a very small circle of friends. She wasn’t sure if Killian and Regina were friends or not, though. They were adults. Maybe they were, though. “But it definitely was not fun after. I had to tell my dad where I was and then I got in trouble for going to a party without permission, which was super great.” Sweet, sweet sarcasm.
“I heard it was a huge party,” Caleb was kind of sad he missed it. But made sense that Hazel didn’t personally know who was throwing it. Hell Caleb barely even did. “Ah, overprotective parents. Never had to deal with that,” he shrugged. “But it was nice meeting you. I should get back to walking Techno. I’m sure I’ll see you around.”
Hazel nodded. “Probably something to do with things from before.” Like her mom leaving her to do things and getting mixed up in things she shouldn’t. “It’s not that bad. If you ever want to borrow him for a bit. Just for the experience.” She shrugged, offering him a smile. “It was really nice meeting you, Caleb. I hope you and Techno have a really good rest of your day...and week. And that you don’t get sick again.”