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they say your whole life flashes before your eyes before you die.
i. ethan's childhood reeks of alcohol and negligence.
It's four in the afternoon on a temperate spring day, right after school has been let out, and Ethan walks home alone, scuffing his shoes against the uneven concrete. Pebbles in his way are mercilessly kicked aside, and he starts a kind of game with himself- how many times can he kick the stone before it flies off into the road? He's gotten up to thirteen kicks before it hits the cold and unforgiving wall of his childhood home. His jovial grin, characteristic of a ten-year old, slips off his face and shatters on the cold porch of his house while he reaches out for the bronze knob. He jostles it and pushes, worried creases marring the smooth surface of his youthful face. The door doesn't give in, and he's stuck on the porch.
Somewhere in the house, he hears something crashing to the floor, and he curls up, hugging his knees to his chest. Tears streak their way down his face, a burst of warmth before a light breeze brushes them off and makes his face numb.
He falls asleep, curled up in a small ball against the door of his house. His dad opens the door after several hours and he crashes to the floor, the support of the door gone, and the sweet spring air turns putrid and sour, tainted by the sour stench of rotting beer and vomit.
"Where have you been," his dad slurs. "You're supposed to come home right after school." Ethan doesn't bother responding, just slips into his room and closes the door, staring at the lock thoughtfully. Deciding he'd rather get yelled at through the door rather than fight with his drunk mess of a father ( they share nothing but the slanted eyes and the black hair ), he flips the lock and bars the outside world away from himself.
He still hasn't picked up the shattered remains of his smile. They'll remain outside, and pieces of it will be blown away during the night. By the time he reaches adolescence, there will be no pieces of his youthful smile remaining.
He sits down on his bed and curls up in his ratty blanket, eyes closed, hands clasped, sending the deep desires of a young boy up to heaven.
( it'll continue for two more years before ethan realizes that there's no one up there and that there's not a single being that cares about him. )
ii. ethan's adolescence drips with pain and barely scraping by.
It doesn't help change his miserable life when he starts seeing them. They're grotesquely modeled, some of them possessing multiple heads, others with jagged teeth and twisted grins. They used to scare him, used to make him flee and hide away. But he's not the tender soul he once was, and he stares them down, eyes endless pits of black, burning fury.
His father still drowns himself in alcohol, but then again, it's not like he's ever known his father sober. He finds himself in the dumpy back alleys of Los Angeles, flicking a switchblade, looking older than a thirteen year old should look. He's been forced to grow up faster than any child should have been.
When his father finally gets sacked and they barely can afford housing and food, Ethan turns to drug dealing. He's really nothing but the middle man, dishing out the merchandise. ( but it doesn't mean he doesn't sample some of the merchandise ) He presses a much harder bargain than the other boys and pockets the extra money.
He doesn't manage to sell all the merch one day, and he's left with a large, painful gash running from his left shoulder-blade to his right hip. He barely crawls out of the ordeal alive. But the thought of revenge, the thought of slitting the throat of the gang leader ( his name was like louis or andy or something. not that ethan cared. ) keeps him alive, barely.
He's out of the hospital, bandaged and in debt but not dead. That's all that matters, anyway. He sticks to the shadows, melds into them, pressing his lean, wiry frame against the shadowy walls of Los Angeles, ignoring the burning pain shooting through his body. He sneaks into Andy's room and with the same knife used to split his own skin, he slits the throat of the ex-leader. He pockets the knife, and takes as many drugs as possible.
The death of Andy is on the news, but passed off as gang violence.
iii. ethan's later half of his teenage life revolves around piecing together the puzzle of his existence.
He's found by some goat-human hybrid and shunted into an overcrowded cabin where he is immediately forgotten about. He's told that his mother is a god and they never talk to him again. Granted, he's always slinking around in the dark shadows. Eventually, he gains enough prowess as a swordsman and he leaves and never looks back. He's fifteen when he's on his own- but he's always been on his own anyway. The sun crashes to the ground and the moon usurps its throne in the sky, and Ethan finally meets his mother.
Nemesis.
She offers him power. Power to tip the scales. Power to balance them. ( he just wants to be remembered ) All she wants in return is an eye. He blinks with both eyes for the last time and suddenly everything burns, and his eye's in the process of being torn out and the scar on his back screams in agony and oh god everything hurts.
The next day he wakes and the sun is back on its throne, burning furiously. ( a black eye patch waves in the breeze ) He ties it around his eye- or rather, missing eye- and never looks back.
He wanders around for a long time ( he's sixteen now, or at least he thinks he is ) before he's in the darkness of the labyrinth.
How is this the power his mother promised him? Bitterness and resentment boil and churn in his gut and he strikes out blindly, rushes everywhere in a blind rage until he finds himself facing Perseus Jackson in an arena.
He's fucking good. ( and ethan's good as dead )
But the boy plays hero and lets him go, and Luke lets him in the army. He's the last piece to the puzzle- he's the keystone that will allow Kronos to rise and gods ( that never fucking did anything for him ) to fall. He thinks he's finally solved it.
He's in debt though, and he loathes being in debt. ( and in debt he is, to one perseus jackson )
So he pays it off with the only thing he has left in that moment- his life. And in those moments, he's foolish enough to think that with the one fateful stroke of his sword, he'll never be forgotten. But the moment ends and he's impaled by a treacherous shard of his own sword, and then he's falling.
.
and while he's falling, he realizes that he's already halfway to being forgotten.
he thinks that, maybe, his whole life hasn't been a total
.