Author's Note: Ah, angst, melodrama and irony. You've got to love the combination. :D

I'm not used to writing angst in this (ie, PJO) section. So comments will be hugged to death and appreciated even more so than usual. Also, sorry for the torturing-of-your-eyes-with-italics thing. Flashbacks can be a pain.

In the Shadows

Her ears hurt.

She gritted her teeth and held on to the rung of the ladder, determined not to let go. Around her, metal clashed and her friends screamed, terror and rage vying for position in their voices. Bronze creaked with rust and disuse, and somewhere outside, things smashed into pieces with considerable force.

The leg jerked, and the rung she was holding onto broke. She managed to scramble onto another, but not before her toes scraped along the ground. Pain flooded her already overloaded senses.

Her breath hitched as she studied the resulting bloody mess.

My god, she thought, her heartbeats losing rhythm, it's real. I could die.

A second rung shattered in her hands, and she clawed at the air, somehow managing to find another rusted bronze handle. Another wild scream managed to cut through the clashing metal, jolting her out of her terror.

My fault, an insistent voice said from somewhere inside her. My responsibility.

Bianca di Angelo steeled herself and started to climb.

The teacher snapped her name, obviously irritated.

Bianca raised her head slightly, just enough to stop the teacher from thinking she was being rude. It had been about four months since she'd enrolled at Westhover Hall, and about equally as much time since her world had been reduced into an endless cycle of misery.

After weeks at the Lotus Hotel, the whole wake-up-at-five-and-start-drilling scenario had made her want to go sit in a corner and look morose. The food was presumably meant for hardened soldiers on their fifth tour or so, from the taste and texture. The teachers were gleefully sadistic. The vice-principal was often compared to a primeval monster. About half her class consisted of wannabe delinquents, and the idea that personal possessions were in any way personal was laughable.

At least those things applied to everyone. The last thing she wanted to be was self-pitying, but there was no ignoring facts.

She had disorders, apparently. The idea that her brain didn't function enough to make sense of letters had stunned her into sitting down the first time she heard it. Was that even possible? How come her earlier schools never mentioned something like it? Actually, how come her earlier schools never taught her anything in particular? Things like World War Two had come as a surprise to her, for heaven's sake.

She didn't belong anywhere. She was almost painfully shy, and she had a habit of mumbling her way through potential conversations. Her clothes for the first week or so had been so horribly outdated, people still made snide remarks on occasion. She could not make sense of what anyone was talking about, and people stared at her when she admitted she didn't know much about books or movies or music or celebrities…

It was like she'd been on a different planet, or a different era.

Most of the things in her textbooks were built upon a base she couldn't remember learning, and the teachers glared at her when she managed to stutter that out. She'd been educated in perfectly decent schools, according to her records; and this ploy for attention was not tolerated in a Westhover student. There had been detentions, and worse, chastisements. Throughout that, she'd been visited by a sense of despair about how much she didn't know…

She'd wanted to scream, wanted to shake someone and tell them that something was just wrong here. She wanted to burst into tears and succumb to hysterics till someone was forced to comfort her. What she didn't want to do was sit there and just take it all.

She hated living like that, ignored and ignorant and miserable and pitied and above all apathetic…

But she had Nico to think about. Her annoyingly perky little brother who worshipped the very ground she walked on. Who followed her around whenever he had the chance. Who could talk a couple of miles a minute and never, ever seemed to run out of topics. Who'd taken his academical ignorance cheerfully in his stride. Who'd managed to somehow talk his fellow geeks into being his ever-patient, very helpful friends. Who nevertheless ran up to her with undisguised glee whenever they were in the hallways. Who trusted her absolutely and implicitly. Who was pretty much all she had in the entire godforsaken world. Who she was responsible for.

So she kept her head down, mercilessly squashed her irritation, and tried to mentor her little brother with a minimum amount of snark. It wasn't very easy, but she persisted. She endured, because she knew she had him depending on her, never mind that what she really wanted was someone to depend on. She was Bianca, big-sis extraordinaire, who was caring and dependable and efficient and calm, and that was that.

Sometimes, when it all became too much, she crept out of the dormitory and huddled herself into the smallest, darkest corner she could find. She let the shadows close in on her, and let all her masks fall. It let her feel small and insignificant and alone; and so much more like herself.

Away from the maintenance hatch, the rungs started to get progressively less rusty, and it didn't take her long to work out why.

It was hard for things to rust without air.

Being an immortal handmaiden didn't make you immune to having to breathe, and the fact that she was climbing a monstrosity didn't help. Her breath was staring to come in gasps, and her grips on the rungs had turned her knuckles white.

You'd think a statue this size would have more air in it, she thought savagely.

For a moment, she felt lightheaded and almost lost her grip. Her mangled toes, slick with blood, slid on the celestial bronze. She still had what looked like an endless way to go, and everything was so hot and so loud and-

She thought she heard another hoarse battle cry from outside. My fault.

She shook her head violently and moved on.

She didn't know why she'd even bothered to hope, but she'd clung onto the thought that things had to get better before they got worse.

For a moment there, it had all seemed so perfect. There was a way she could be herself without betraying her little brother to do it. The Hunters accepted her weirdness and anachronisms with an almost casual disregard. When you were a couple of centuries old, things like the current popular bands ceased to really matter.

She felt… more alive than she could ever remember feeling. She was an actual somebody. She was part of a group where everyone had accepted her, cheerfully and without second thoughts. She could actually do all the things Huntresses had to do without making a fool of herself. And all the while, she knew Nico was perfectly safe in what qualified as a hyperactive boy's dream theme park, with selfless, sensible (well, after a fashion, anyway) people to look after him.

Life was starting to look up.

Then Lady Artemis disappeared the Oracle delivered it's damning prophecy, and she was reminded that there were monsters.

For a moment her overprotective big sister instincts had clamored for attention, but the look of undisguised glee on Nico's face had been effective in squashing them. He was loving his new life too, apparently. The way he tended to seek her out sometimes and just babble at her seemed to indicate so, anyway.

Until she was chosen for the quest, and he started to get worried. Bianca was torn between feeling touched and being embarrassed. Nico had actually picked up the courage to face down Zoe and demand she be exempted from the quest (in a quavering voice, but still- this was Zoe we talking about here, after all), and wouldn't calm down until she'd taken him to a corner and talked to him about it.

"You're scared too," he'd argued back, his hands waving around restlessly.

"Of course I am. I'd be an idiot not to," she'd told him, realizing the truth of that statement. "Besides, I can't let anyone down now. Lady Artemis needs me."

"But what about me?" he'd asked miserably.

"You'll be fine, Nico," she'd replied, sighing at her brother's dramatic tendencies, "It's just a week. I'll be back before you know it."

He'd been unconvinced and worried. She'd dismissed it as him being over-imaginative, as usual.

Finally, somehow, she managed to make it to the top. She caught a glimpse of a platform and about a dozen or so levers before her legs gave out under her and the dizziness took over.

Lady Artemis, goddess of the hunt, help me finish this, please.

She thought she felt a slim surge of energy flood through her, and used it to crawl towards the levers. The way everything was shaking, trying to walk her way over would have been a bad idea.

To her side, heat blazed in strangely-shaped furnaces, presumably helping to power the metal monster. Steam hissed, heat poured out in uncomfortable waves, and it cast an eerie red glow encompassing the entire head of the statue. Shadows flickered in time with the flames.

She reached the levers, and pulled.

As they walked through the Junkyard of the Gods, Bianca tried to ignore things.

It should have been easy, in theory. The junkyard was a veritable treasure trove, both literally and figuratively, and even in her state of stunned disbelief, there were things which she had to pick up and admire. To not do so would have been to not have a soul.

It had been her fascinated exploration if a silver tiara which had earned another curt order from Zoe, prompting her to reluctantly drop it and join the lieutenant at her side.

"You were told not to touch anything," Zoe had said without looking at her, "I did not take thee for one with a wish to join the Dark Lord in his domain."

Bianca had been too distracted by a realization to pay attention to her words.

"How old are you?" she wondered.

Zoe looked at her, her expression pained.

"Zoe, please," she said, the all too familiar feeling of hysteria under tight control creeping over her, "Is this… time thing normal?"

Zoe sighed and rubbed her eyes, "I have rarely heard of any such thing, at least not one where someone escaped," she said, "Count yourself and your brother fortunate."

"Seventy years," Bianca said, voice subdued, "Why? And how?"

"The fates have their ways," Zoe glanced up at the skies again, seeming to draw strength from them, "Not even the gods know how they weave their threads. And for mortals, all we can do is live our lives and hope what they have planned for us is not in full a tragedy."

"You talk like it's already been decided."

"Hmm?"

"The tragedy. You don't think life can be, I don't know, at least a little happy?"

"Oh, yes," Zoe had said, "Always. Happiness is not a scarce quantity. But that doesn't change facts that for most people living, life has already been written as a tragedy."

Bianca had refrained from saying anything, but Zoe just looked at her, smiled, and continued.

"Death comes for all beings," she said, "And most of them live their lives in a cycle of endless frustration. Lives today have as little meaning as they did centuries ago, and as one who has seen many, I do not think it is something that will change.

"I have lived better than two thousand years, and I have still not managed to see all the world has to offer. It keeps… changing. Reviving. Being destroyed. I come back after a century to see a place changed beyond recognition.

Now think about those with a mortal lifespan. Think of how little time they have. And how much to see. There is nothing to it but to die unfulfilled. It is the ultimate tragedy, and it is what is woven for most."

"I… I don't think I ever thought about it like that."

"People usually don't. If they did, they would not perhaps, be able to live."

Bianca swallowed. Nico.

"Maybe…" she said hesitantly, "maybe they don't want to see things. Maybe they are happy where they are."

Zoe shrugged, "A small comfort, but I suppose they must take what they can get. Consider thyself lucky. Death comes for all, but some live a life richer than others," a small smile lit up her lips again, slightly sad, "Some may die fulfilled."

Bianca decided to move away from Zoe before she was treated to more philosophy. She didn't think she could take it.

Oh gods, Nico. If what she said was true (and it made so much sense, put that way), she'd effectively abandoned her brother to a lifetime of nothingness and danger while she blazed around with an immortal all-girl's club. She'd abandoned him, effectively. Thrown the person she'd been trapped with for seventy years to the mercy of the fates; which was, when you thought about it, not much of a mercy after all.

But she knew that when she chose this, didn't she? She knew she would live, and that Nico would essentially die; and it made her feel so guilty. For a moment, she wondered if it was upto her to reverse their positions. Or to somehow make it up to him…

At her feet, amidst the junk, something caught the moonlight. She bent down and absently picked it up, almost like her body was doing it of it's own free will.

The twinkle had come from a figurine.

Once she'd figured out how to move the statue (it was vaguely like puppetry, and besides, whoever built it had helpfully cast a little bronze metal man for controls demonstration), she had to use all her strength not to get jolted around. One misplaced hand had sent her too close to the fires, effectively burning her arm, and that experience was entirely enough.

She jerked one of the levers gain, as far as it would go, and the tiny metal statuette near the levers punched it self in the face. A moment later, a corresponding punch shook the entire structure she was in.

This was starting to be kinda fun, actually.

She moved another lever, making the automaton take a couple of steps, and thought she heard Percy's voice shouting out something from outside…

Then there was a moment of clarity where she knew, beyond doubt or explanation, that she was going to die.

The lawyer was not the cheeriest camper in town. Nico didn't like him.

"I don't like him," he whispered to her, "He's creepy."

She would have loved to agree, but she was supposed to be the stable one here.

"He's a lawyer, not our mother. He doesn't have to be nice," she told him, "And stop being rude."

"What if he- I don't know, puts you in an all-girls' school or something? Or… or, you know, he separates us so he can kidnap us or-"

Bianca prayed the lawyer wasn't listening. He might have been tempted to do just that.

"Nico. None of that is going to happen."

"But-"

"We are going to be fine."

"But just suppose. What if he, I don't know, separates us or something," he tried bravado, "Not that I'm worried about that or anything, but just suppose- what if he-"

"No."

"He's-"

"He's not going to kidnap, murder or separate," she emphasized the last word slightly, "us. He is going to take us to our new school. The same. Co-ed. School."

Nico sat back down, a little disappointed. The little creep had been enjoying his tirade. Bianca tried not to bang her head against the car windows.

"Bianca?" Nico asked.

"What?" she muttered, praying for patience.

"You sure he's not going to split us up, right?"

"God, yes! I'm sure! No one is going to split us up, okay? Because as annoying as you are, you're my brother. Now shut up for a while, please!"

"Well. Good," Nico decided, and managed to promptly fall asleep. Bianca rolled her eyes.

The kid was so paranoid.

Pain hit her body, white-hot and intense. She tried to scream, but the most she could manage was a strangled whimper.

Moments passed, and the pain only intensified. Through it's haze, she thought she could hear the statue collapsing, and for a moment she was visited by a sense of grim satisfaction.

I've done it. They're safe.

Somehow, she felt the life starting to leave her body, and just as inexplicably, she felt shadows envelop her. There was a moment of blissful, painless roaring in her ears, and she touched cold ground.

Before she could wonder about what just happened, Bianca di Angelo died.

Finite