Yes, yes, yes, I'm already behind on the Ship Weeks on Week 2- I know, I know. I'm perfectly aware. I was at camp, volunteering with small children as I do, and unable to publish this for you guys. Sorry not sorry, but I hope you like this one! I've had the idea for a bit and I tossed it around a lot, and a lot of thought has gone into this. I wanted to explore the monstrous side of Tyson and Ella as opposed to the fluffy and adorable one, because one is easy and one is not. So enjoy!
Disclaimer: I don't own the characters showed below.
Dedication: Not a dedication, but a shout-out to the anon who went on the Week 1 Story and told me to get moving on my Tysella. I got a laugh out of that.
A Thousand Years
I have died every day waiting for you
Darling, don't be afraid I have loved you
For a thousand years
I'll love you for a thousand more
-A Thousand Years, Christina Perri
2009
Ella wasn't as traumatised as everybody else.
Percy was inconsolable. He shook like a leaf and refused to eat when a few girls from Cabin 4 passed around with trays of sandwiches and two liter bottles of coke, just in time to save the crashing adrenaline of half-bloods everywhere. Annabeth didn't know how to help him when she couldn't trust herself to keep a straight face.
Hazel hadn't stopped silently crying since the war had ended, and she wasn't anywhere close to stopping. She was only 13, after all, and had seen so much pain and torture and death even before today. Her tears were slowly bringing down Piper.
Jason hadn't actually talked to anyone in the last few hours, he just found things to do- find firewood, evaluate damage, count whatever was left of the artillery, wash bandages, patrol the shaky borders of Camp Half-Blood… Frank had adopted a similar system but with a lot more checking in on friends (like Hazel) and other legionnaires (like Hazel) and the injured (Hazel).
"Ella, are you okay?" Percy finally asked, raising his head from between his knees.
Ella nodded.
"You don't have to be. We know how much he meant to you," Piper said softly.
"Meant- m-e-a-n-t, pronounced meant m-e-n-t, the past and past principle of mean, as in to mean, as in-"
"I'm sorry, I didn't check the times," Piper winced. "I shouldn't have switched to past right away…"
"No need to, it is not necessary, nécéssaire, nécessario. Popular Americain saying: if it ain't broke don't fix it," Ella said.
The demigods looked at each other worried. Nico di Angelo chose that moment to shadow travel back into camp.
"I got it, Ella," he said breathlessly. "I got it straight from my father. He says that the date is January-"
"The date for what?" Percy asked.
"Date for Tyson," Ella said. "Teutonic male name meaning 'son of a German', also has French, English and-"
"The date for Tyson?" Percy asked.
Ella was chanting baby name statistics from old US censuses rather avidly, so Nico explained.
"Tyson isn't like us," he said. "He's a monster. You can't kill a monster, you can just send them to Tartarus. But they always come back."
"So wait- Tyson isn't dead? He will come back?" Annabeth said hopefully.
Nico nodded. "Yes. Yes, and I got the date."
"Date. Give me the date. Date for Tyson. Nico di Angelo the ghost king must give me the date for Tyson," Ella said.
Nico nodded and looked at the palm of his hand, where he'd scribbled it.
"January 1st," he said. And then he frowned.
"January 1st is only a few months away," Percy said running a hand through his hair. "We can wait that long. We can find him."
"Ella has an idea. Eureka! Interjection used to celebrate an idea, a discovery or an invention attributed to Archimedes. An idea to find him. Equation to use…" the harpy muttered. "Yes. Yes, yes, yes, a good equation. Ella will call it the Spot Equation. Spot- S-p-o-t- seventh most popular name for dogs in 19-"
"No, no, no," Nico said. "Tyson's death on the battlefield was much too violent for only a few months of recovery and reformation."
The demigods winced. Nobody wanted to remember the details.
"So wait. You're talking January 1st of what year?" Frank was finally brave enough to ask.
"January 1st 3009," Nico said.
"What?" Percy said.
Hazel buried her face in her hands again. Frank looked sheepish for asking and he wrapped an arm around her shoulders.
"January 1st 3009," Nico said. "In a thousand years, Tyson will be reformed. And then he'll come back into our world."
Percy swore and excused himself. Even Annabeth didn't follow. Piper wrapped her arm around Ella. Eventually Hazel started stroking Ella's feathers too. Calmingly. Soothingly. It helped Ella think. It helped Ella make the decision she had already made.
"Ella is also not like you," Ella said. "Ella won't die unless Ella is killed. Ella will survive, and Ella will wait."
"Whoa, Ella," Piper said. "Slow down sweetie. Take a breath. Sleep on it. That's a long time to…"
"Ella will wait," she said firmly.
Nobody questioned her farther as Ella conjugated wait in every tense imaginable, and then did the same thing in French, Spanish and Dutch.
2010
Since Paul is already handing out awards and scholarships, Percy has an extra ticket to his graduation. He would have wanted Tyson to go. Ella knows this. But she is sitting next to a beaming and emotionally compromised Sally Jackson instead.
2013
Ella, after following many online high school courses, graduated from NYU with a degree in classic literature with a minor in education in one hand, and a teaching certificate in the other. She figures that if there can be a good monster in the school system, that's good. She teaches eleventh and twelfth grade English on her first year at Goode high school, under Paul Blofis' supervision. The next, she teaches a class of ninth graders with learning disabilities. She moves down in age groups until she teaches a first grade class, and then decides that that's what she likes. She likes teaching reading.
2016
Jason is hurt. Very hurt. The rest of the Seven rushed to camp as soon as they hear, expecting him to never wake up again and to watch him die. He is in a coma. His legs were never recovered. Reyna saved his life for now, but there's only so much she can do and there's only so much the medics can do. There is only so much that anyone can do, but Ella decides that she can pray when she sees Piper crying.
Please, she thinks –although which god listens to monsters praying? Ella thinks nobody because nobody ever seems to think that monsters need to pray. But Ella does, and so she prays. Jason isn't like Tyson. He won't come back. Piper wouldn't even have anything to wait for. Please don't take him.
2020
Hazel and Frank take their first dance as a new couple. She looks stunning, in a clingy vintage dress with drooping sleeves like angel wings and fabric crossed over her chest. She's beautiful enough to pull the simple dress off. Frank can barely take his eyes off of her, and the smile isn't leaving their faces anytime soon. The Seven are there. Jason and Piper dancing though he's in a wheelchair, Annabeth kicking off her heels and telling Ella to never wear heals when pregnant, Percy making animal puns throughout his best man speech, Leo in a fireproof suit. It's a good night. A sad one for Ella (and maybe for everyone else since they just learned that Frank is going to be deployed to Germany at an army hospital). But a good one. Life is better now that Ella knows that things can be sad and good at the same time.
2024
Piper is elected President of the United States. She is the first woman, as well as the first individual of Native American decent, to hold the position.
She will also be the first woman to have children during her term- Alice Emilia and Eleanor Aurelia, born 27 minutes apart.
2029
Ella can't believe how many babies humans can have. Christmas has become ridiculous. Three Zhang children –Cai, Tian and Katherine- showing off frog tongues or tiger eyes or whiskers to make the others laugh. There's Callisto Chase-Jackson, playing with the little ones and keeping her cousins (mostly) out of their parents' legs, transforming from complete introvert to babysitter at every "family reunion". The Grace girls are beating all of them at cards and pulling each other in and out of trouble and pranks and waiting for it to be dark so that they can go catch fireflies. Raquel and Emilia Valdez, building looming towers out of tinker toys, lego, K-nex and any combinations thereof under the direction of Callisto as their younger siblings, Teresa and Jaime, try to wreck them down. Ella can barely keep up with the hugs she has to give and stories she has to tell. But they all remember her every time she visits. It's a bit like the family that Ella won't form just yet.
2059
The mist can only make Ella look older for so long. She has to move away from New York after a certain time spent teaching there. But it's okay. Even baby Jaime Valdez is old enough to be okay without her now. She replaced the demigods as parents when they started dropping like flies under the burden of age and scent, but now nobody needs to be replaced. Callisto is a neurological surgeon. Raquel is an engineer, Emilia's an architect, Jaime went down the medicine route like their mother. Teresa runs a day care. Eleanor is a historian, Alice a zoologist. Tian is in the army, Cai died young, and Katherine does the lights for a theater company. They're all okay. They're all settled. So now she lives in Pennsylvania.
2109
World War III errupts. Despite the looming threat of chemical weapons being engaged, Elias, Quentin and Perseus Jackson II all enroll, with their siblings Kathleen and Lyall in the medical teams. Their mother loses two children, and a part of the other three forever. Ella will hold her hand and help her keep her fingers shut around the medals she receives.
2159
Ella volunteers at the Veteran's Center twice a week. They're an aging population. That and the baby boom that followed WWIII make Ella realise that history repeats itself. She supposes that she should have noticed earlier, but she didn't see history as more than words last time. Funny how now she is a part of it.
2276
One of her students' father asks Ella if she would like to go out for supper.
They've been talking for a long time. He's a very nice man. He's strong and in shape. He has nice features, nice brown hair, soft eyes, a nice smile. He's funny and caring. But she can't do it without feeling like she's betraying Tyson, though Tyson is nowhere near where Ella is, not even in the same world, not even conscient at this point.
Ella tells him that she lost her first husband and is still getting over with, so no. She pushes back a perfectly nice man. Chiron doesn't say it, but he's a bit dissapointed with her. Not because he has anything against Tyson, but because he says that if Ella's going to breathe and if her heart is going to pump the blood through her veins and if her cells with breathe and synthesize protein, she may as well live. Ella doesn't want to hear a word about it. She moves to Detroit.
2209
The name Tyson is one of the three most popular names for boys in the United States. In six years, Ella will have four of them in her class of 21 first graders. On some days, she will have a soft spot for all of them. On others, she will ignore them and let the teacher's aid handle them.
2259
Ella moves to the South of the United States. There is no harpy population there. The loneliness drives her insane at first, but then she becomes more human than she could ever expect. She stops muttering. She now stomachs the most complex human foods easily and has caught up to their etiquette. Walking becomes as easy as flying. She makes friends with humans who don't know who she is. At first it's all fun and games and Christmas parties. Then she realises that she is betraying herself. She needs a rock to remind her of who she is, and right now she doesn't have it. She doesn't have that. But if she can't stay harpy, how can she stay Ella? She doesn't care to find out and moves to Atlanta.
2309
Ella witnesses the creation of MeNo, a virtual library of immense proportions accessible in even the most remote locations. It will revolutionise the way humans know, understand and learn by downloading information onto the blank pages of a book. The information can be either professional or amateur. Soon, stories are transferred to MeNo as well. Ella hoards paperbacks to save them and coats her small apartment in them.
2359
The Norse gods are discovered by the Greeks during one fateful frost giant inspired storm. Ella knew this before of course. She knew that there was no demigod population for the Norse, but rather rejects and lost creatures rummaging around earth. But as a party of demigods, Norse creatures and Egyptian magicians (nine of them; one for each world of Norse myth) and set off to stop Ragnarök, she has shivers. One of the questers, an illegitimate half-Valkyrie who grew up as a blonde tennis player with a bubbly and optimistic temperament and haemophilia, is nothing like Annabeth at all, but the blonde strands are enough to make Ella shiver. She spots these differences for most of the kids.
They're not all going off, but they all make Ella nostalgic. The girl who descends from Sigurd Dragonslayer lived in Alaska, like Hazel. The boy from Montana is a ulfhéðinn , a werewolf, who can change like Frank. The elf girl is naturally beautiful and pretty without trying, she smiles better when nobody's watching her and is at her best when she's angry, like Piper. The sorceress, Mathilda, wears her hair like Reyna did- always the intricate and tight braids. The tiny dwarf who blinks at the light tinkers without thinking like Leo. The poet makes her think of Percy, strangely enough, not because Percy ever spoke a poetic word but because of the way he snaps from fun and games to business, from the way he carries his realm so close to his heart.
She sees her demigods in others, and is scared to death that she'll see them die. She waits out the Norse apocalypse in Oceania.
2409
Ella watches a documentary about the early 2000's and the impact of the Internet. Doctorate theses have been written about his historic phenomenon that, to Ella's oldest friends, was just a daily routine. She debates whether or not she is simply too deplaced in this era.
2457
Ella cries for three hours after running into a panicked demigod making their way to camp with gorgons on his heels. He nearly kills Ella. It's scary enough that she nearly actually died, but the idea that she would deform for a thousand years, fall off sync with Tyson's life cycle and miss his reinsertation? That was scary enough to have her up at 3:00 AM curled up in blankets and breathing heavily and crying like she'd never cried before.
2459
Ella is now living in Maine. She calls a little cottage by the sea her own for a few months before deciding that the smell of sea salt stirs too many memories, and then quits her job to go back to New York.
2509
Lila Mahony loses her newborn son Cedric when he dies in his craddle one night. She kills herself. There are no more living descendants of Percy Jackson.
2559
The borders of the world are rearranged in economical and civil distrust. Tyson wouldn't recognise it. Ella hopes that she hasn't changed. Though she's seen pain and suffering, she's seen children beaten and unloved, she's seen sick children and injured children, she's seen them live and die. Though she's seen war and peace; development and regression in this rocky millennium. She naively hopes that she will be the same Ella that Tyson left when he comes back. She hopes even harder that Tyson won't be dissapointed with the world that he is brought back into, and that Ella will be enough of his old home to make it okay.
2578
Police checks are starting to be complicated. Ella's been alive too long for the paperwork to make sense. She calls Chiron and he gives her some tips.
2609
Ella goes back to camp. Chiron recognises her straight away. He smiles at first, but then stops. He says she looks horrible. He says that she looks thin. She looks serious. Her eyes looked like curtains have been drawn over them. Ella tells him that the children she teaches always say that her eyes have lights in them. Chiron tells her that it's how you are on your own that shows how you are. Ella doesn't stay at camp long before finding a position in New Jersey.
2659
Ella adopts a puppy. His name is Peanut. He has a nice life as a dog, but he does die eventually. Ella, for the first time, has someone to mourn and she doesn't like it one bit. It makes her even more thankful that even though time stretches like putty, one day she'll have Tyson back. As sick as it is and as much as she cried when Peanut died of age, she suddenly has a boost of strength and energy and patience.
2709
Humans have invented weapons which send out radio waves that can damage the nerve endings of any humanoid creature within a 50 km range. To prevent the usage of these weapons, they engage themselves in WWIV which presses the inventive nation into deploying them. Four children in Ella's class lose uncles, six lost fathers, seven lost brothers, Ella doesn't bother keeping track of neighbours. They don't understand. After all this time Ella doesn't either.
2759
Ella is disgusted by the American government's treatment of Veterans. If Jason had lived now, he would never have gotten his prosthetic legs. He would never have walked.
France and Canada open their borders to outraged Americans. Ella goes to the former and teaches English and history and Latin for a while, before transferring back in once the United States is put under the authority of another.
2809
The Grand World Library was destroyed by religious extremists. In retaliation the governments shut down the Internet. Millions of pages of knowledge and ideas are lost. Though the people are fighting back, Ella relapses. She quits her job and starts memorising bits of paper again.
2859
Athena finds Ella alone in a nest of used romance novels. She doesn't understand love quite the way that Ella feels it, but she knows that Ella needs it now, that the lack of it is why she cracked. When Tyson disappeared, her friends kept her going; when her friends died, her love of knowledge propped her up. And now that so much of it is destroyed as well, she takes Ella in as an attendant on Olympus. It doesn't complete the circle and bring her back to something as strong as Tyson's big golden heart, but the harpy has a ball learning and reading and seeing and discovering everything Athena's personal library contains. But not the time of her life. Ella has confided to Athena that her life will start when Tyson gets back.
2909
Ella finally perfects the Spot Equation- the one that she hypothesized about right at the moment that Tyson was dead. will use his places of birth and death, age, weight, monster breed and longevity to calculate where in the world Tyson will be when he comes back, and if he'll be anything like the Tyson she knows when he'll be back- because after all this time, Ella still doesn't know if he'll be who she's waiting for.
She's too afraid to use it.
2959
Ella starts looking. Just in case he's early.
3009
Ella is in a bar on New Year's. Not because she likes drinking, but because there are demigods there and it's not far from Tyson's spot. If he comes back sour, the scent of the sons of Hermes will attract him here. If not, then at least Ella's close to him.
Ella goes back to camp. She doesn't know if Chiron thinks she looks better because she doesn't ask him. She just tells him to bring her the counsellor for Cabin 3. At her request, the boy, Marius, tells her that he'll keep her alerted to any new Cyclops worker at his father's forges. Chiron makes her stay at camp though she's frantic to leave and look for him. He reasons that if Marius has any news, he'll have to know where to reach Ella. Besides, when is the last time she's eaten?
Marius has no news. Ella stayed at camp for nothing, but now she reasons that New York was the best home Tyson knew- the refrigerator box, Sally Jackson's apartment, camp… Ella knows Tyson. He likes peanut butter because it's soft and creamy and filling, the sea because it smells like the forges, the colour orange because it reminds him of Percy and Annabeth's t-shirts, bright lights because it's the opposite of subways and dark alleys in which he grew up, the smell and taste of vanilla because it smells like Sally's baking. He always redirects himself to what feels safe and like home. He will come back to New York, if anywhere. Ella drives into town with Argus whenever there are strawberries to deliver or errands to run, and keeps an eye out for him. A chain of monsters in New York has organised itself- knowing that any new Cyclops in the city should be asked about Ella and that Ella should be told about him. There are a ton of new monsters in town regularly of course, as New York goes. But none of them are Tyson.
Outraged. Ella feels like pulling Nico di Angelo's bones from his grave and rattling them until the son of Hades- wherever he in and in whatever form- wakes up so she can tell him he was wrong.
Chiron is trying to get Ella out again, but she won't leave camp. And if she does, she won't leave New York. He tries using Camp Jupiter as a Segway. It's a bit like Camp Half-Blood… and it's near a major city that Tyson once went to… It doesn't work. However Chiron is a patient man with more than enough experience in heartbreak.
The installation of a Cyclops' Only Bar in 'Frisco can't taunt Ella into a visit when Chiron shares she news. She sends a Cyclops friend named Luca there to investigate, but Luca finds nothing but a nice girl who wrote her phone number on his palace.
Where is he?
A museum of praetors past has opened in San Francisco. Chiron talks about it at supper with Mr D, who sometimes lies and tells Chiron that Zeus send him down for a meal as punishment for a petty offence. Percy Jackson, Jason Grace, Frank Zhang are all in it. As are Camilla Grace and Joseph Pewter-Zhang, descendants of. Chiron tells her he has tickets. Ella tells him to pass the peas.
Ella can barely choke down cinnamon buns once summer has passed. If Sally Jackson were still around to make her cinnamon buns for Ella, even that may not work- but the thought just makes her homesick for an era in which the world could be home. As long as Tyson was coming back, she didn't miss Sally's baking or watching Frank transform and reading with Annabeth and Malcolm and talking with Hazel. But it's been so long. You can only be rogue for so long.
Why would the fates make a thousand years into a thousand and one? In a world of carefully calculated orbits and balance, where is her justice?
Ella is finally sent to Camp Jupiter with a group of half-bloods that she is to mentor- all children of Athena. Ella likes Athena. That was why only they could pry her out of camp and into New Rome. It's not like she remembers it, not like the first place where she had a clean bed after Percy killed Phineas.
New Rome looks a lot more like San Francisco than it used to. Rome has gotten older, but so has America. Only Ella knows. Only Ella hasn't. Ella and Chiron and the gods. She keeps it to herself as she shadows the hyperactive teenagers in the Museum of Praetors, all of whom are seeking typos in the exposition descriptions and looking at things that are a thousand years old, as Ella sees something else that's a thousand years old.
Tyson.
He was in the museum because he was homesick.
He tells Ella that he was in New Rome because that was her first camp, he thought it was the home she would have returned to and stayed in for a thousand years if she was still waiting.
Ella tells him that she was waiting for him to come back to Camp Half-Blood because that was his home.
Tyson says it wasn't her job to wait for him so long, much less to find him.
Tyson says he found her.
Ella makes the point that she was the one in New Rome.
Tyson says that he saw her first.
A truce is reached.
They decide that it doesn't matter.
They found each other.
And all along I believed I would find you
Time has brought your heart to me
I have loved you for a thousand years
I'll love you for a thousand more
-A Thousand Years, Christina Perri
Upcoming Ship Weeks
July
29 - 06 - Sally and Poseidon or Sally and Paul- Now That I Know
July
07 - 12 - Tyson and Ella- A Thousand Years
13 -19 - Grover and Juniper
20 - 26 - Charlie and Silena
27 - 02 - Thalia and Luke
August
03 -09 - Free Week (author's pick)
10 - 16 - Free slash week (author's pick of a same-sex story)
17 - 23 - Free friendship week
24 - 30 - Chris and Clarisse
31 - 06 - Jason and Reyna
September
07- 13 - Jason and Piper
14 -20 - Frank and Hazel
21 - 27 - Calypso and Leo
28 - October 4 - Percy and Annabeth