Author's Note: Well, it's time I started my annual summer story. This time, I've decided to pursue a story line in one of my favorite fandoms: The Heroes of Olympus. Clearly, this is all complete fabrication from my own mind, but I have a lot of interesting ideas about the way the war would would end and how they would all feel at it's close. Let me know what you think!

Disclaimer: Dammit. Still not mine.

All Things Considered

It was a strange place to find Leo really. A child of fire was so rarely seen near the water that it was almost comically symbolic, watching him sit from the jutting bluff of a rock with his toe plopping ripples into the cold seawater as he sent little puffs of flames up from his fingertips rhythmically. Leo had a terrible habit of puffing up a bit of fire and rolling it over his knuckles, watching the flames lick and kiss the air, the smell of it soothing his fried nerves.

The war was over. It had not ended without heavy losses, and Leo still had images of the dead and the dying impressed in his mind. He remembered Piper charmspeaking at Jason's bedside as they had waited in silence for him to wake up after taking a sword's blunt edge to his head for Leo. Perhaps that's when it had started. Perhaps that was when he felt like he lost a bit of himself.

Fighting was nothing new to Leo, and in all truth, neither was losing people. But for some reason, he had never thought that over the course of this war, he would potentially lose his best friend. He and Jason needed one another. It was that simple. And the emptiness of watching Piper hold back tears and whisper soothing words of a future and a life hollowed him from the laughter that Jason so often encouraged.

Groaning, Leo ran a hand through his curls, brushing them off his forehead. He wanted to see the sun, see a hope that flowed over the horizon, but the clouds still obscured the eastern skyline and the beacon of light that rose in its graces. He checked his watch. 6:30. He'd been out all night, and now the morning was encroaching.

"Strange to find you up this early, Leo." Percy pushed himself up onto the rock, shaking water from his hair and slicking it back off his forehead, shivering slightly in the brisk chill of morning. "Mind if I join you?"

Leo appraised Percy for a moment, a frown sitting on his face. The cracked ribs and broken mentality that had haunted Percy from Tartarus were long since healed, but the fresh wounds of the war still marred his body. Leo could not help but notice a rather large gash across the arc of Percy's chest and several similar lacerations detailing his arms. Leo felt a fraternal sting in his own wounds.

"Kind of early for you too, bro. Shouldn't you be celebrating?" They both should have been. They should have been celebrating by sleeping, a luxury that had been robbed of them for so long that it felt like a foreign concept.

Percy smirked as he played with a tide pool to the left of the rock, shifting the water's ripples in it with the waggle of a finger. "I dunno, man. The water's soothing this time of morning. It helps me clear my head so I can keep this lovable disposition of mine."

Leo knew what he was trying to do. He was trying to make him smile. It was no secret that the war had deeply affected Leo. It felt easier for the others. They had someone to lean on, someone to love them and clean their wounds and whisper sweet words of hope as they clung to life on the battle field, clinching hands and swords alike. Leo had cleaned his own wounds.

Percy could tell that his jokes weren't helping. He lifted a hand and placed it gently on Leo's shoulder. "You can't hold on to the pain, Leo. You've got to let it go. Listen, Chiron said Jason's doing a little better every day; I've seen it myself. He's going to be alright. We're all okay." Percy seemed so confident. He always did. It must have been a gift from his father.

And Leo knew what he said was right. Percy was always right about those sorts of things. But deep inside, Leo couldn't help the haunting that Jason might not wake up, or worse, that Leo would never have anyone to help him fix the gashes the war had left.

There was silence as the young man thought silently on what he should say. There were a thousand things he wanted to say to Percy, a thousand apologies the man deserved. How many times had Percy saved his life during that battle? How many times had he saved one of his siblings?

Finally, Leo decided on, "I never apologized for Tartarus."

A whisper of pain snuck across Percy's face like a breeze of wind. "Dude, you don't have anything to apologize."

But Leo did. He had to. He had to apologize. He had to lift those fears off his chest and away from his mind. "Yeah, I do Percy. I do. I watched you and Annabeth fall down to Hell itself and couldn't do a thing about it. Gods, I would have done anything to help you. I would have done anything. I tried."

Percy nodded and wrapped a pained arm around Leo's shoulders. They shook imperceptably. "I know, man, I know. It was never your fault. And we're okay. Annabeth and I… We're perfectly okay. The war's over."

Leo sighed, flicking flames back over his knuckles nervously. Percy watched him for a slow moment, and knew that there was nothing more he could do but be there for him. He gave him a stern pat on the back, murmured something about making sure he wasn't late to breakfast, and diving back into the water, swimming away toward the shore.

Leo took a deep breath and dug deep down into himself, hoping to recover the part of him that had died. But he couldn't find it. He let the breath go and followed Percy to the shoreline.

Annabeth and Hazel walked side by side, carrying bits of breakfast into the infirmary. Piper spent the vast majority of her spare time there, and since she had begin considering meal times as "free time," Hazel and Annabeth had been happy to deliver her food.

"How is she?" Hazel's voice was soft as she walked beside the older girl, the wind brushing their curls off their shoulders.

Annabeth shrugged meekly. What was there to say? She was torn to pieces. Jason was a terrible excuse for conscious and had been for a week now, ever since the final blow was struck in the battle. His recovery was slow and tough, but Aphrodite's children had always been known to be patient in the name of love.

"You know Piper. She's devastated. Trying to maintain her cabin and brush away the tears of the younger kids while watching Jason struggle just to keep breathing… It's tough for her." Hazel nodded in response. Piper had always been rough and tough that way. She envied her.

"I can understand. If it had been Frank…" Hazel shuttered. It had been enough that Frank had broken his leg at the shin. She had watched him fall. She had watched blood stream down his body, even as he reached for his quiver to launch another arrow into the air. It had been enough to make her think she was dead again.

Annabeth nodded in silence, thinking of the tears she had shed against Percy's chest in the night it had all ended, grasping onto him and making sure he was completely and wholly alive.

They continued quietly, two girls thinking on the losses they had sustained and the pain that wallowed in their hearts. When they reached the infirmary, they found Piper just where they thought that they might. Her eyes seemed to sparkle even more intensely than usual as unshed tears glistened in the light. She would not cry. She was better than that.

"Piper," Hazel was always better at being gentle when it came to Piper. Annabeth, empathetic though she was to Piper's struggle, was always overwhelmed with logic and felt terribly inadequate in the occupation of consolation. "Piper, its us. We brought you your favorite."

Piper smiled weakly. It was funny, Annabeth couldn't help but notice, how strong Piper seemed to be. She couldn't help but remember the emptiness that had filled her at her loss of Percy.

The girl with the kaleidoscope eyes reached out for a bit of toast and nibbled at a corner, squeezing Jason's limp hand as she did so.

"How is he, Pipes?" Annabeth was shocked at how quiet her voice was.

"He's getting better, you know. He moved his hand a full two inches yesterday." Piper looked down, sighing, "I mean, it isn't much. But it's something to find strength in, yeah?"

Hazel nodded. "Of course, dear."

Piper cleared her throat, blinking away tears and raising her hand to Jason's bicep, tracing his Camp Jupiter tattoo. "Remind me later that I have to have a talk with the cabin. I think it's all starting to sink in… Drew told me their nigthmares are getting worse."

"Sure thing, Piper. But you know, you don't have to do that. You don't have to be all of these things at once." Annabeth knelt down beside Piper and put a hand over her own. "You can wait here with Jason."

Piper sighed, her shoulders shaking. She couldn't confess what she was really feeling. She couldn't find it in herself to admit how broken and empty she felt watching Jason cling to life, or watching her siblings, as different as they were from her, feel what it was to fight a war. But worse of all was the haunting memory of what the Romans had whispered in passing.

No child of Venus is a real hero.

What if she wasn't? What if her worst fears were being realized? What if she was no better than a whining, weak, childish little thing who clung to her friends and their success? Perhaps that was the reason she was fighting so hard to protect her siblings and stay with Jason as well.

So Piper swallowed her fear and her confessions and replied in the only way she knew she could. "I belong in both places, Annabeth. With him and with them. So I'll keep fulfilling my duty."

Annabeth left it at that, knowing there was nothing she or Hazel could do. They hugged their friend and promised to see her later. As the two parted to take care of their individual duties, they shared a look that conveyed the same thought: was it always going to be like this?

Reyna could not bring herself to leave the tent that had been set up for her as praetor. She stood alone in front of the papers and maps, her sword on the table and her hounds lazing at the entryway.

A question weighed darkly on her heart, dragging down her consciousness at every moment of the day. She could not eat with the others, watching their bonds strengthen, Roman and Greek becoming one people. She could not watch them sparing together, playing Greek games and telling Roman stories, laughing at jokes all their own. She could not watch them merge.

She knew they would have to leave the Greek camp. They didn't belong her. New Rome was their home, their center. They belonged across the sea, isolated from these demigods of war and ravage.

And yet, even Reyna could not stop herself from seeing the friendship between her people and the Greeks. She watched her legions flirt and play and laugh with these people who suddenly did not seem so different from them at all. She herself felt a drawing attachment to them, to Percy and Annabeth and their friends.

In a rushed fury, Reyna slammed her fist down onto the table, the pens and tools shaking with her anger. A muffled crash blundered through the air across the table, and she picked up her head, walking silently over to the place the sound had come from. In a heap of papers lay a picture frame, and the picture she found there haunted her down to her core.

She and Jason had gotten ice cream. She had been entirely stressed over a series of decisions needing to be made about the expansion of the western gate, to which Jason had responded by buying her a mint chocolate chip cone. It wasn't her favorite, but the day had been simple and easy. In that particular picture, she had taken the cone and squashed it into his nose, laughing unabashedly.

He had been her best friend. And yeah, of course she had had a crush on him; who wouldn't? He was damn gorgeous. But more than anything, she missed those days. She missed having fun with him.

He was still her best friend. He always had been and likely always would be. And he remembered her, wasn't that enough? If she cared for him as much as she did, how could she pull him away from Piper?

The conflict bubbled up in her throat, the one she had been fighting away for the past week. Jason loved Piper, and it was something Reyna had come to terms with. But she knew whatever decision she made, when they would finally have to sail back across the sea… She would be the one responsible for ruining them and breaking his heart.

Reyna felt the shadows of lonely power arching over her as she stared down at the forgotten glass memory, shattered on the floor.

Author's Note: God Reyna is such a badass. Suuuuch a badass. Let's hear what you guys have to say! As always, you all have my love.