I Don't Want To Die
…just to breathe in…

The one very prominent memory I have of my mother is her holding me to her chest and singing a lullaby while I pretended to be asleep at three years old. I adored her voice back then, loved to hear her loving tones overlap each other and make me drift off into slumber. She had never hesitated in hugging me or giving me all the care and compassion she could muster. I had never felt sorry for myself for not having my dad around, even when she would always talk about him wistfully and give me looks of sorrowful guilt, as if it were her fault that he wasn't around.

Just in case you were wondering, it wasn't her fault as far as I'm concerned. It was mine.

Ha! You think I'm going to spit out why in the world I think it was my fault? Well, that would ruin the surprise, so no. You'll have to wait, darlings.

My name is Aeron Fenwick and both my mother and I are petite. We have long curly black hair and brown skin, darker-than-our-complexion freckles splattered across our cheeks and noses and huge golden orange eyes that seem to really throw people off every time. Our neighbors used to tell us that, when they looked at us, it was as if they were staring into the middle of the sun. I actually had life pretty good. No one hated me, I didn't have to go to school because I was too young, and I got to hang around with my mom all day while she told me stories and sang and cooked for me.

The only bad thing? My mom was insane. Yeah, I can see what you're thinking. 'Insane? Ha! Yeah right.' No, seriously. She was. I always had to hide from the social workers when they came because they – and I quote – 'wanted to check on my well-being'. It was a bit annoying, to be honest. Besides the fact that I had to squish myself under the sink (my usual hiding place) while she tried to convince them not to send her to the loony bin, I also had to listen to their idiotic reasons to search the house. I always had a bad feeling when these so called 'social workers' would visit. They gave off this weird vibe and a lot of them looked incredibly weird. Once, I saw a girl that only had one eye in the middle of her forehead. Her partner had three heads.

Anyway, even if the supposed social workers hadn't been out-of-this-world-freaky, I still would've hated them. Why? My mother was the nicest person on the planet and she didn't deserve to be harassed by people who knew nothing about her.

Did you catch that? I said she was the nicest person on the planet.

She's dead.

Yep, that sucks, but it's true. She died – no, wait, let me rephrase that in a way that is not politically correct (whatever that means). She was murdered. Murdered by monsters, in fact. I'm sure you can guess that that didn't go over well with the police when they came to pick me up when I was five. After carting off my mother's body, they asked me question after question, and I answered them as truthfully as I could. They determined, in the end, that my mother wasn't right in the head and must've just killed herself accidentally or something equally as stupid. My mother wasn't selfish enough to commit suicide and leave me all alone in the world. I told them that the person who had killed my mom had had three heads and ugly faces, but they did not, unfortunately, have any intention of believing me. Still, I was only five years old, so I can kind of give them the benefit of the doubt.

Actually, I forgave the police and the social workers a long time ago, because they stuck me in a foster home with Leo Valdez. It was by far the best six years of my life, living with him. He was funny, exciting, adventurous, and always helped me to look up when I was undoubtedly looking down. Then again, all good things seem to come to an end sooner rather than later in my life. It was only a matter of time before I found out that he was planning on leaving.

It was kind of depressing to walk in on him in the middle of his packing and see him try to come up with an excuse as to why he was about to skip out and not say goodbye to me, his only friend and little-sister-figure.

"I'm coming with you!"

I can remember saying those words clearly, even when I was only five years old. He had given me a definite frown and told me that there was no way he was about to let me follow him. I didn't understand at the time that he had only been trying to protect me from living on the streets, a decidedly bad place for a five year old to grow up in. Still, he was only two years older than me, so it wasn't as if he belonged on the streets either.

Finally, I managed to convince him to let me come. He was totally against it, but there really wasn't much he could do. I had some strong lungs and wouldn't hesitate to go tattle if he wouldn't let me accompany him. Leo grabbed my bag and his and hoisted them over one shoulder, while holding my small hand in his free one. We walked straight through the front door in the middle of the night and the police walked us straight back in twenty three minutes later.

We had to move foster homes after that, since the people who took us in were angry that we would even think of being 'ungrateful.' That was the start of a very deep friendship. We understood each other. We understood why the other had wanted to leave. From that moment on, we knew we had to stay together.

And we succeeded… almost.

A/N: Hi everyone! So, here's my latest story on this account. This chapter definitely happened before the Heroes of Olympus series, but the next time she sees Leo, all that stuff is already going to have happened and been done with. I'm just going to say that Jason came and lived at Camp Half Blood with Percy Jackson and Annabeth and Piper and Leo and blah blah blah after they all met up at the Roman Camp and that there was some big battle that went on but won't be discussed much because it isn't the focus of the story. So, there you have it. My explanation. Of course, Aeron won't have been around for any of the events that Leo experienced at Camp Half Blood or Camp Jupiter or anywhere else. He'll be at least eighteen by the time she sees him for real again.

Oh! If you want to see an image that looks really close to what I envisioned Aeron to look like, just go here: www dot imgur dot /EXwgi

The original picture was found on alicexz's deviantart page right here: . www dot deviantart dot com /?qh=§ion=&q=Tiana+#/d39zjsr

All I did was make the pic a bit brighter and add freckles to her face. I credit the work to the awesome alicexz!