Midnight Star
by Lady Dawson
Chapter One: Moving to Forks
Look, I never asked to be a hero. I never asked to have my life be one battle after another and have to fight monsters practically every day of my life. I mean, seriously, who wants their life to be like that? It's only kids that are bored out of their mind that actually want to be a hero and for their lives to be extraordinary. But for me, I didn't really get a choice in the matter. Because of my unique heritage, I was give a special destiny, a destiny that few people are granted and a destiny that would guarantee me heartache, loneliness, anguish, and torment the likes of which few could ever imagine.
Now, don't get me wrong. When I look back on everything, now that it's all over, I know that if I had to make the choice between living a normal, everyday, average life and a dangerous, perilous one, if I had to choose between being a hero and being the normal girl that my mother so desperately wanted, I would have to choose to lead the extraordinary life that I was blessed with, because while it did grant me more dangers than I could ever have imagined, it also gave me friends that I never could have dreamed of and it would also lead me to the love of my life.
Even though I'm probably not going to make it to the age of twenty, I'm not sorry for anything that happened. I'm not sorry that the war erupted around me from the time I was twelve because everything that I went through pushed me to finding the only happiness that my life would grant me.
My name is Susan Dawson, demigod daughter of Poseidon, god of the seas. Technically, I wasn't supposed to be born. None of us were. The children of the Big Three, that is. Right after World War II, Zeus, Poseidon, and Hades made an agreement not to sire any more children with mortal women, but . . . well, sometimes gods fall off the wagon. And I wasn't the first child born to my father after he made the agreement; I was the second. And Dad wasn't the first of his brothers to break his promise.
Back then, when he fell in love with my mother, Mom was apparently very beautiful and compassionate and sweet. Dad says that she was one of the finest women that he had ever seen, rivalling my brother Percy's mother.
But that was a long time ago and to be honest, not a trace of what drew Poseidon to my mother remains in her. I guess she got tired of having a half-human daughter who was diagnosed with dyslexia and ADHD. By the time that I was twelve years old, she had completely forgotten about me, forgot about my dad. All she cared about anymore was parties and having fun, not caring about me anymore.
It didn't bother me so badly until she married this rich artist. After she married him, she never had to worry about anything. He provided her with everything and anything that she could have wanted. I was twelve years old when my little sister Vanessa was born.
I remember when I saw her for the first time, when I poked my head around the door in the hospital and saw my mother with Vanessa in her arms. She looked happier than I had ever seen her, with her husband next to her and her daughter in her arms. It was the image of the perfect family. Mother, father, daughter . . . but not me.
No, I was the one on the outside, looking in at the one joy that I had been banned from by the one person who should have taken me in and protected me from getting hurt. Mom was supposed to keep me safe from harm, yet here she was hurting me by her own rejection.
That was the night that I ran away. When Jarrod took me home and told me that he was going back to the hospital to spend the night with my mother, I packed up the few items that I wanted to take with me: a couple of changes of clothes, a few of my favourite books—being dyslexic, it was hard for me to read, but I still loved it—a couple of CDs, my headphones, and the golden seashell necklace that had been a present from my father.
I'd gotten it on my last birthday, when Mom proclaimed right when she was cutting up the cake that she was going to have a baby. There was a package amongst the other presents. On the brown wrapping, in unfamiliar handwritten, was written: To Susan. May this give you the courage to find your way through the darkness. From your father.
Needless to say, I was more than a little shocked, because my mother had told me that my father had died before I was born, but she hadn't even noticed the package, too busy with the guests congratulating her to worry about some little package from my absent father.
So I quickly pushed the package into my pocket to be opened later, when I was alone. It was small enough so that I could put it in my pocket, feeling like a jewellery box as I touched it.
Later, I found out that's exactly what it was and inside was the prettiest necklace I had ever seen. It was a pure white seashell hanging upon a golden chain and as I touched it, I felt stronger, somehow. Bolder, more confident.
But somehow, I knew that if my mother found out that I had it, she wouldn't hesitate to throw it in the garbage, so I kept it to myself, only wearing it to school or when she wasn't around. Every time I wore it, though, I felt safe and warm and protected, as though my father were watching over me, keeping me safe from harm.
When I had those few things packed, I hoisted my backpack onto my shoulder, shrugging my jean jacket on before I left our house and disappeared into the dark New York streets.
It didn't take them long to find me. First, I got attacked by a Fury and that's when I found out that the necklace that Dad had sent me wasn't a necklace at all, but a sword made of celestial bronze. I managed to decapitate her and get to safety, but then, I got tracked down by a satyr named Eli.
He managed to convince me to come with him and he took me to Camp Half-Blood, where all of the demigod children go. Some of us are runaways, others just spend the summer holidays there, and then there are some who just have too strong aromas to go into the outside world. If we would, then we would be attacked by monsters galore.
After I got to camp, somebody decided to be funny and invite a hellhound into the camp and I managed to kill it and that was when Dad claimed me as his daughter.
Needless to say, everybody was shocked that Poseidon had sired another child. After Percy had been claimed the year before, nobody had expected that another child of the Big Three would arrive, since it was forbidden. Yet here I was, claimed by the Sea God, and I moved into Cabin Three with my older half-brother Percy.
I spent the next couple of years training to be a hero—learning how to use a sword, bows and arrows, etc.—and going on quests to preserve Olympus, but eventually, I discovered the real reason why the Big Three agreed not to have any more demigod children. Turns out that there was this prophecy that said that the next one of us that would reach sixteen would either destroy Olympus or save it.
I freaked out when I discovered this, because there weren't very many choices as to who the hero of the prophecy could be.
Thalia, daughter of Zeus.
There was Percy and me, the son and daughter of Poseidon.
And there was Bianca and Nico di Angelo, the children of Hades.
When she was twelve years old, Bianca joined the Hunters of Artemis, thus ensuring that she would cease to age, unless she disobeyed her vows to the goddess and then she would be stripped of her immortality. But she was killed only a few weeks later, during a quest to save Artemis. I wasn't there, but I got the details from Percy. It was only later that we discovered that she and Nico were Hades' children.
Now, Thalia has a complicated story. Technically, she's seven years older than I am, but when she was twelve years old, she was turned into a tree as she lay dying after saving her friends from a Cyclops, but seven years later, she was released from the tree, appearing to be fourteen or fifteen years old instead of the nineteen that she should have been. Everyone thought that the prophecy was referring to her, but she chose to join the Hunters of Artemis as well, the night before her sixteenth birthday, thus retaining her fifteen year old status for all time. And all eyes turned to Percy, Nico, and me.
Since Percy was the oldest of us, I naturally assumed that he was the one of the prophecy. And when the final battle settled down upon us, it turned out that I was both right and wrong, because while the prophecy did refer to my brother, none of us were the hero.
It turned out to be Luke, son of Hermes, and our enemy for the past four years and who was being possessed by Kronos. At the very last second, Luke chose to destroy his invulnerability—long story—and in so doing, he saved Olympus and fulfilled the prophecy, destroying Kronos in the process. But he's not dead, though. Try as you might, you can never destroy a Titan.
After the final battle, I went to go see my mother, to make an attempt to settle things between us. But I only made it as far as the front door. Through the window, I saw two little girls playing in the living room, smiling and laughing as they played with their dolls. One was blonde, like Jarrod, and there was a lot of him in her face, but she had my mother's chocolate brown eyes. The other had dark brown hair, like my mother's, like mine, and she was a carbon copy of my mother, with the same chocolate brown eyes as Mom and her sister.
I needed no more confirmation as to the identity of the little girls. My younger half-sisters. The blonde was Vanessa, but the younger of the two I didn't know. She was born after I had left.
Mom came into the living room then and she saw me standing by the front door, looking in. Her gaze hardened and her mouth turned very thin as she walked over to the window.
For one moment, our eyes met and the hurt that I had kept buried underneath came rising to the surface.
And then, my mother broke the gaze, reaching for the cord and she snapped the blinds shut, blocking me from seeing into the house and turning her back on me, never to look back. I turned around and walked back down to where Percy was waiting for me, my constant supporter. He took me back to camp and I never went back.
I had tried to make peace with my mother. No one could say that I didn't try, but she wouldn't even let me in the front door. She didn't want me around her normal family, to put them in constant danger. And while part of me was angry at her for turning her back on me, the other part of me, the good girl part, understood where she was coming from.
The war against the Titans took a greater toll on me than I never would have thought possible. Some of my best and oldest friends died right in front of me, some of them killed in such destructive and horrible ways that they were barely even recognisable when they were found.
Valentine, daughter of Aphrodite, was killed with her boyfriend Brandon, son of Apollo, fighting off some hellhounds. This struck me harder than the others, because Val was one of my first friends here. Peter, son of Hephaestus, was killed by a renegade demigod, leaving his girlfriend Aria, daughter of Hermes, to mourn him.
And then there was Stefan Dalloway, son of Athena.
He was my first friend at camp, a fact I always found ironic since our parents don't get along. Poseidon and Athena are bitter rivals. (But then again, Percy's girlfriend Annabeth is a daughter of Athena.) Stefan took me under his wing, showed me around camp, taught me swordplay and helped me to make friends after everyone started looking at me like I had three heads after Dad claimed me. For a time, I thought we'd become something more, but . . .
But then everything changed. When I turned fourteen, when it became clear that we were heading into war, I discovered the truth behind Stefan's friendship with me. I found him sending a message to Luke and confronted him. Very reluctantly, he confirmed what I had suspected: that he was a spy for Luke and had only become friends with me so he could sway me to their side.
He begged me to come with him, to side with Luke and Kronos, promising me that we would stay together. And when I refused, he taunted me about all of the things that had hurt me: my mother's betrayal, the rejection of the other kids when they found out that I was Poseidon's daughter . . . the fact that I'd only seen my father twice and only for very brief occasions.
When I still refused to side with him, he attacked. We battled our way through Camp Half-Blood, confusing people as they scrambled away from us, watching as we fought ferociously.
Eventually, I disarmed him, knocking his sword out of his hand, landing a few feet away.
I probably should have killed him. Maybe if I had then some of my friends would still be alive. In fact, I know Peter would be, because Stefan was the demigod who had killed him. But at the time, all I could think of was that he was my friend and I couldn't just kill him out of cold blood while he was defenceless.
So I let him go. Many people thought that was stupid of me and Aria blamed me for not killing him when I had the chance, saying that Peter would still be alive if I had. And in that sense, I guess she's right, but I just couldn't kill somebody that couldn't defend themselves. She couldn't accept that decision, so that's why we're not talking anymore.
Only a few of my friends survived the war, including one of my other best friends Briar Moss, son of Demeter. He, Valentine, Stefan, and I were friends from the very beginning and he and Val stood by me when Stefan betrayed us. Then Valentine was killed. I was so relieved when I found out that he was still alive. I didn't know what would've happened if I lost the only best friend that I had left.
Stefan survived, too, and was put on trial for his crimes against Olympus. I thought that he would show some remorse for what he had done, thought that he might be sorry for everything that had happened, but the only thing he was sorry for, apparently, was that Luke had turned the tables in the end. And so, he was banished. Forbidden from every having contact with half-bloods, unwelcome at camp, doomed to walk the earth alone. It was the same decree that many other renegade demigods were given. The few that showed remorse for what they had done were allowed back at camp, but under probation. They weren't allowed to go on quests and they were to be watched by their counsellors at all times.
I wish that I could say that his betrayal didn't hurt me, didn't cut me to the core, but it did. He was the first friend that I ever had and he had turned his back on me. If I never saw him again, that would be fine with me.
After the war and after I went to go see my mother, I went back to camp and tried to resume my normal life there, but it just got to be too much. For the first time in my life, Camp Half-Blood felt like a prison and everything began taking its toll on me. Losing all of my friends, my best friend's betrayal . . . the war itself . . . it just got to be too much. I had to get out of there and Percy and Briar teamed up against me, telling me that I needed to get out of camp for a bit.
And I knew that they were right. I needed to get out of there, at least just for a little bit. My dreams were plagued with nightmares that caused me to wake up screaming, I was barely even eating, and I wasn't even smiling anymore. But where could I go? Mom wouldn't let me go home and it wasn't like I had anywhere else to go.
Chiron solved the problem for me. He had found out years before that I had an uncle living in Washington, just in case I ever wanted to leave camp and try my hand at a normal life. And understanding the need to clear my head, he contacted my uncle Charlie Swan.
Charlie was my mother's older half-brother, the result of my grandmother's first marriage whereas my mom had been by her second. He lived in Forks, Washington, working as the Chief of Police there. But my mom hadn't had contact with her brother in years, even when I lived with her, so he didn't even know that she had another daughter from a previous relationship. At least, he didn't until Chiron contacted him. But he was more than willing to take me in, especially after he learned that my mother had rejected me and I had fled the house.
He asked for no explanations, no details about why Mom had rejected me or why I had run away, simply offered me an invitation to come and live with him and with much pushing from Briar and Percy, I accepted it, packing up my bags and at the end of the summer, I took a bus to Washington.
It probably would've been a lot faster just to take a plane, but that's not exactly the best idea for Poseidon's children. Zeus doesn't like Percy and me flying through his realm, so I've never flown before, except on Pegasus. If I got on a plane, there's a good chance that I wouldn't come down alive.
I was a bit nervous when I left camp, since outside of quests, I hadn't left camp since I was twelve years old. And I was really nervous about going to high school, because I hadn't been to school since I ran away. But I knew that I had to get away. I had to get away from camp. My mind needed time to recover. I needed time to recover.
And so, I said goodbye to Percy and Briar, both of whom were going home to their parents' houses for the school year, which was an unusual for Briar, because his dad travels a lot, and climbed on the bus that would take me to Port Angeles, a couple of hours drive from Forks, waving goodbye to them as I left New York.
As the bus pulled out of the station, a feeling settled over me, something that I wasn't expecting. I wasn't just leaving New York, but I was leaving behind the girl that I had always been and moving towards the young woman that I was slowly becoming. I was leaving everything that I'd ever known behind and moving towards the beginning of something new.
Charlie was waiting for me the second that I disembarked, easy to spot thanks to his resemblance to my mother. It was easy to spot the similarity between them. Both of them were tall and dark-haired, though my mother's was a few shades lighter than his was. His was almost black while hers had been a neat shade of dark brown, which I had inherited from her. But a lot of the same features were in his face and even his eyes, the same chocolate brown that both my sisters had, were the same.
"You must be Susan," he said as I nervously walked up to him. He looked just as nervous as I felt, but his smile was friendly and welcoming as I nodded. "I'm Charlie."
He surprised me by pulling me into a hug, but I didn't pull away, allowing him to hug me before stepping away, looking at me up and down, studying my profile carefully. Uneasiness swept through me and I stepped away from his examination. A wry smile made its way across his face as he noticed my awkwardness.
"Sorry," he apologised. "You look a lot like your mom."
I was surprised to hear that, mostly because I know for a fact that I don't look anything like my mom, save for the dark brown hair that I wear long. I generally keep it in a ponytail, but thanks to spending forty-something straight hours on a bus, it had fallen out of its neat ponytail, making it a mess. Rather than being tall, I was short and despite many hours of training at camp, I'm petite and slender. The biggest difference between us were my eyes: instead of her brown ones, I had my dad's, a strange mixture of blue and green and just as temperamental as the sea. Sometimes, they would appear to be green and other times they would look more blue.
But rather than argue with my uncle since I had literally just met him, I smiled and said, "Really? That's weird. Most people say that I look like my dad."
"Well . . . I wouldn't know, since I've never met your dad," Charlie said, shrugging as we headed over to collect my suitcase. "But there's a little bit of your mom in there, trust me."
Honestly, I didn't know what to think of this, considering the way that she's treated me, but I just nodded as I hoisted my carry-on bag higher onto my shoulder, grabbing my turquoise blue suitcase, which wasn't really that heavy. It didn't have that much stuff in it, just my clothes and books and CDs and stuff. Not a whole lot. I didn't own that much.
I had debated whether or not to bring my archery stuff with me, since I was going to be living with a mortal, but in the end, decided against it. My necklace was one thing: Charlie wouldn't be able to see it, but my archery stuff was another thing entirely. While they could see my archery stuff, my necklace could be hidden in plain sight, except for the very few that have clear sight.
There are a handful of people in the world who possess the ability to see through the Mist, the magical force that shields mortals' eyes from supernatural activity. Generally, that's what attracts the attention of one of the gods. Most of the mortal parents of demigods have clear sight, able to see their partner for what they really are.
Charlie isn't one of those people, though his sister was. Mom was able to see through the Mist and sometimes, she saw things better than I did. But her brother didn't possess clear sight.
Rain was pouring as we packed up my suitcase into the back of Charlie's cop car and began the long drive from Port Angeles to the little town of Forks. Of course it was raining; it's always raining in Forks. It's the wettest part of the continental U.S., so it's only sunny about once a month. At most. But I didn't mind; I'm the daughter of the Sea God, so rain doesn't bother me. On the contrary, I felt perfectly at ease as buckets of water doused around the car.
Charlie didn't talk a whole lot on the way to his house—our house, I mentally corrected myself. It was my home now, too. I was going to be living there now, too. That made it my home.
Anyway, Charlie wasn't a really verbose guy. He talked a little bit, mostly about Forks and that he had enrolled me in the local high school and that he was sure that I would make plenty of friends, but being a divorcee and only visiting his daughter a few times during the summer, he had basically been living alone ever since he and his ex-wife Renee broke up and she fled Forks with my cousin Bella, who was a year my elder. They now live in Phoenix and according to Charlie, Bella hates Forks with a passion, so after years of her putting up a fuss whenever she had to come here for the summer holidays, he finally gave in and whenever he wants to see her, he has to go visit her, thus ensuring that no one else lives in the house. So after living alone for so many years, I guess it's no wonder that he didn't talk a whole lot. That and guys don't gabber on the way that girls do. I've noticed that being around Percy and Briar. They don't talk nearly as much as Valentine did.
I'm the exception, I guess. I don't really talk a whole lot, preferring to keep my nose in a book and I generally keep my guard up whenever I meet people and it's only after I know them after awhile that I let them in. And even then, I don't talk that much.
Charlie did have a surprise, though; he bought this old Chevy off of his friend Billy Black from the reservation for me to drive around in, since he guessed that I wouldn't want to be chauffeured around in a cop car. I was surprised by the gesture, but not displeased. I had been planning on buying my own car, getting a job here and saving up, but I wasn't sure about a truck. After all, I had just gotten my license a few weeks ago and didn't really know how to drive a stick yet.
When I expressed that particular concern, Charlie promised to show me how to work it. Also, Billy's son Jacob had fixed up the truck, so it ran really great, and he could probably show me how to drive a stick, if I preferred.
Forks was beautiful, I thought as we began to enter the small little town. It was always amazing to me that people could live spread out like this, but then again, I'm from New York. I've only been outside of it when I've been on quests and it's always amazing to me how different it is from Manhattan. Beautiful, green, and mossy.
The house that Charlie pulled up to was a small and quiet with two bedrooms and only one bathroom. My cousin's former bedroom was going to be my new bedroom and I took a peek inside of it as I climbed up the stairs, pushing open the door.
It was small, but nice and had a homey feel to it. The bedspread was green and the sheets the same pale blue as the walls. There was a pretty good bookstand that would fill all of the books that I had brought with me and then some, plus all of my CDs. The desk would be perfect for homework and letters back home and stuff.
"I cleaned out all of the stuff that you had in here. Your teacher Mr. Brunner said that you liked blue and green, so the saleslady helped me pick out some stuff in those colours," Charlie explained. Mr. Brunner is Chiron's pseudonym, the name he uses when he poses as a teacher or something. "But if you don't like them, then you can always exchange them."
"No, they're cool," I said, smiling as I set my backpack down on it, feeling the smooth feel of the new comforter. "Thanks."
"Sure," Charlie said, nodding. "Um . . . I was gonna order some pizza tonight, what kind do you like?"
"Um . . . cheese," I said, shrugging.
"All right, that's easy. So . . . I'll leave you to get settled in and uh . . . Susan?" he added. I looked at him. "Welcome home."
"Thanks," I said softly. He headed out the door, closing it behind me and leaving me alone. I sighed, sitting down next to my backpack on the bed, falling backwards onto it. That was nice; at least Charlie didn't hover. That would have been annoying.
But this wasn't so bad, I thought, sitting up on one elbow to look around at the room again. Granted, it was a lot smaller than I was used to, but I usually had a whole cabin to myself, save for the summer holidays when Percy came to camp, so maybe it was only small to me. Still, it was nice and had a warm feeling to it and Forks was pretty. It was nice to be somewhere outside of a big city.
Maybe it would take a little bit time adjusting, but somehow, it was all going to work out. It had to. I knew that I had to get away from camp to heal from the war. I'd made the right choice—well, not really a choice since my brother and best had practically forced me to come here—I needed to get away, to allow myself to recover.
And who knows? Maybe I would actually be able to get some normalcy in my life for a change. It was doubtful, but it could happen.
In this small town of Forks, population 3,120, under constant clouds pouring rain, maybe I would actually find happiness.
If only I could have known . . . I would find so much more.
