Percy Jackson starts fighting at twelve. He starts with a smile on his face and hope in his eyes.

Ten years later, after two wars and hell, he ends with a box of cigarettes in his back pocket.

Annabeth Chase finds her real family in a twelve-year-old girl and a fourteen-year-old boy when she is seven. She promises herself that she will never let them go. But promises are, always, meant to be broken, and one disappears and one slowly lets go. She goes on, of course—but it's not the same without them by her side.

When she is seventeen she finally, deep inside of her, lets go of that promise, and while the others expect her to finally feel free without the burden the disease over her mind slowly drives her mad.

When she is nineteen Annabeth Chase loses her mind. It doesn't end for her till long after that, of course, but it feels like it does.

Jason Grace doesn't know when it begins. When he's two his training formally starts, but his spirit doesn't set until after that.

At seven he is introduced to war. He finally understands what the marks on his arm mean, who his father is. He tries to wash the black lines off in the shower but they stay where they are, strong, gleaming against the bruised background of his once-pale skin.

At twelve he and Reyna go on their first quest. He almost dies. He wishes that he does.

At fifteen he kills Krios with his bare hands and rage. Over a decade of hate is released in that fight. He is celebrated for a brief period of time, but only a brief period, because then he is taken to play another game with fate.

At sixteen Jason Grace wins a war.

At sixteen he drinks his first sip of alcohol.

At twenty-one he gives up.

Piper starts stealing at twelve. It's an easy way to find attention, and it's not exactly a challenge.

Alive at fifteen she receives punishment for her actions. The same year she fights for her life, fights for survival. She almost dies but she makes it.

Alive at sixteen she still steals, still looks for attention from her father. She is still a minor so nothing can be said.

Alive at eighteen she loses it and kills a shop owner in broad sunlight. She is arrested.

Dead at twenty-two she wishes she had regrets. Maybe they would make her a better person.

When he's eight Leo Valdez kills his mother.

When he's fourteen Leo Valdez kills his dragon.

When he's fifteen Leo Valdez kills a Primordial.

When he's eighteen Leo Valdez kills Michael Kahale.

When he's twenty Leo Valdez kills himself.

Hazel Levesque falls in love at twelve.

She moves to Alaska and destroys Gaea for the first time at thirteen. She is the same age over seventy years later when her brother brings her back to life. She is the same age when she helps in the Giant War. She helps kill Gaea again.

She is accepted as alive at fourteen.

She lives. But the dreams plague her for much longer, through many more lives.

At fifteen Frank Zhang isn't accepted, not really, and even less when he realizes he can be anything.

At sixteen, he realizes that he can be anything, he can fit in.

At seventeen it is a bit too much. The job, the responsibilities, his own worries . . .

Frank Zhang lives on, too, but depression destroys him, slowly.

not all were survivors

Reyna Avila Ramírez-Arellano starts as a leader and ends there all the same, but with a knife in her back and blood leaking from her body.

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Nico Di Angelo begins as a young, carefree boy, and ends with secrets weighing him down into his grave.

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Thalia Grace lives until two thousand years later, when she descends into Hades with pictures of two blond boys and one blonde girl in her pocket.

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Will Solace is light at first and dark at end.

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Clarisse La Rue wishes to live and then wishes to die.

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The Stolls are killed in battle.

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Grover and Juniper join the Earth again.

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Chiron and Lupa wait until they are gone, them and the rest too, and then fade away.

this is for Kat [LittlePineCone] because she is absolutely wonderful and just amazing