Warning: As the rating suggests, this fic is adult-themed. Adult content includes: language, sex, incest, alcoholism, physical abuse, and suicide.

This fic is far different from anything I've ever written, so it may be shit. This story was inspired by a fic called and few return by Incendiarist. It will be 8 short chapters with each chapter told from a different character's pov.

Let me know what you guys think, good or bad.

Disclaimer: I do not own PJO.

-dmac

Setting: Camp Half-Blood post-TLO with the Titans winning the war. (AU)

Annabeth

It's been three years, three long, miserable years since everything went to Hades. When the Titans won the war, everything changed, the world changed, I changed. Most would say I'm lucky to be alive considering all but about a dozen demigods were killed in the war, but I don't feel lucky at all. Often, I wish I'd just died with them, died with Percy. But I didn't die, I survived, and now it's all I can do to cope with the situation we've been left with.

The gods are imprisoned, Chiron's dead, and camp's a wreck. The mystical barriers surrounding camp are barely holding, and it's only a matter of time before they fail completely. It's often chaos here. The surviving demigods are struggling with this world that's been flipped upside down just as I am. We've all had difficulty coping. We do what we can to get by. We take comfort where we can find it, and I found comfort in the most likely of places, in the most unlikely of ways.

The first year after the war was the hardest by far. I had nightmares every single night, and I cried every single day. I hate crying; it's futile and doesn't fix any problems. It's pathetic, just like it's pathetic to wish for something that's impossible. I wished that Percy was still here. I needed him to still be here, but he was gone, and he wasn't coming back. And so I cried.

Thalia and I tried to support each other. She was devastated by the loss of all of her Hunters, and she dealt with her pain through violence. She was a wrecking ball that first year. She destroyed everything she touched, that is, until Pollux introduced her to her current coping mechanism: alcohol. Now, she uses booze to dull her pain, well, booze and Nico. So, by year two, I was looking for a new support system. I went with the logical choice.

Malcolm was the only other child of Athena to survive. We'd spent quite a bit of time together being roommates in cabin six, so we'd gotten to know each other well. Of course, we were a lot alike, and we both struggled with the loss of wisdom and logic in the world. It began as simple friendship, simple companionship. We trained together, we worked on projects together, we tried to bring order to chaos together, and it was a good fit. He took my mind off the pain and the loss. He even took my mind off Percy, which I would've never thought possible, but after two years, Percy began to slip from my thoughts, though, never from my dreams. There were nights I'd wake up screaming, and Malcolm would hold me in his arms as I cried. He would tell me it was just a dream and that everything was okay. He was lying, of course. Nothing was okay. His compassion was sweet, but there was something else there, something that was far from sweet. It was something daring, something magnetic, something…tempting. There were times he made me want to throw all logic and rational thought out the window, and I must've done the same to him, because eventually, that's exactly what happened.

It has been three years since the war, and I'm a completely different person; I'm hardened inside and out. I've lost pieces of my soul that I will never get back, so I've built up walls, impenetrable walls that no one can ever break down. Though scaling those walls, I've found, isn't impossible, and the day he made it over is a day I'll never forget, no matter how badly I might want to.

My heart was pounding in my chest, and I was covered in sweat and dirt, but so was he. We'd been training for hours with no end in sight. The arena was empty except for us. The clanging of our blades, the grunts from our throats, and our heavy breathing were the only sounds echoing off the stone arena walls. We'd sparred without a word to one another, which wasn't uncommon. We were there for training not small talk; talk is a distraction. He had become a skilled swordsman and a tough opponent, but I held my own against him, for the most part, anyway. I'm still not sure how it happened, but as I raised my dagger to block his strike, he used a maneuver I'd never seen before to disarm me. The next thing I knew, he had me pinned against the arena wall with his sword pressing against my throat. I was impressed, angry that he'd kicked my ass, but impressed nonetheless. He didn't smile. He didn't speak. He just held his blade to my throat as we both tried to catch our breath. His eyes were intense and full of pride, like a storm brewing in his soul. It was like looking into a mirror. He was so close that I could feel the heat from his breath on my face. We were trapped in a stare down, his gray eyes against mine, and when he lowered his sword, I knew I'd won that battle…or so I thought. Without warning, his lips were pressed against mine. I'd like to say I was surprised that he was kissing me, but I wasn't, because this had been a long time coming. I pushed him away. This was wrong on so many levels. But these days, everything was wrong. We were living in a world of chaos with no rules and no consequences. My brain was telling me to run away, but something else inside me was telling me to run to him. He was standing only a few feet away, his eyes boring into me, pressing me to make my decision. At that moment, my logic left me. I let go. I gave in. I kissed him with a need and a passion that was both powerful and satisfying. For the first time since the war, I'd found my escape from the world around me, a way to truly dull the pain, a way to make all the hurt disappear. All I felt at that moment was a tingling in my core and the pounding of his heart. The touch of his rough hand gliding up my bare back beneath my shirt was enough to swiftly erase the chaos, and the feel of his moist lips trailing down my neck was enough to fuel a new kind of chaos, a chaos within myself. I wanted him…no, I needed him. As our clothes hit the arena floor piece by piece, and as he pushed me down on his lap on that same arena floor, I'd long forgotten that what we were doing was wrong. I'd forgotten that the world was wrong. I'd forgotten everything, and finally remembered what contentment was.

That was the first time I had sex with my brother, the first time I let him take my pain away, but it certainly wouldn't be the last.