I hope those of you who celebrate Christmas are having a wonderful holiday, and I hope anyone who isn't celebrating it had a wonderful day anyways. Here's chapter 1. :)

Please review! I appreciate it so much.

Chapter 1

Sometimes they broke curfew, so Silena could get away from the other Aphrodite kids. Every single one of them was so obsessed with fitting in, looking beautiful, and attractive movie stars. By the time Silena was ten and fairly grown up for a demigod, they expected her to join in, but she simply wasn't interested. The only boy she had ever loved was Charlie, a boy who never met the conventional standards of beauty but whose soul more than made up for it. He'd been raised by a beautiful mother with a broken heart, who taught him to always treat others right, regardless of their past and how they treated him.

He was only five when she was diagnosed with lung cancer, from years of smoking to distract herself from all the pain. He was only six when the cancer began taking over her entire being, and her entire life just became a time bomb. She was going to die eventually, but no one knew when. He was only six when he stayed up until three AM with his grandparents, hoping that maybe his mom would make it through. The sorrow-filled eyes of the doctor said all he needed to know. The night just got weirder when a centaur came to take him to Camp Half-Blood, and his grandparents were all too willing to let him leave. They didn't really want to raise another child, so soon after his mother passed away.

Likewise, Silena was only six when her father decided he was an unfit parent and left her on the steps of the Big House in the middle of the afternoon to indulge in a few beers. It was that very day that she met Chiron and Beckendorf, who had only been there for two days. It was then that she met the boy who she would swear in less than ten years was the only completely perfect hero. She swore up and down that he was the only boy she had ever met who truly knew how to treat a girl right. The boy with the chocolate brown skin was the only one who could make her feel completely loved and whose actions truly measured up to his words. He never lied to her even once, and he never broke a single promise.

Even at age ten, Silena wasn't able to say that she hadn't lied or broken some promises. All she could say was that Charlie never found out. She could also say that she still loved him, despite the fact that she had made some stupid mistakes.

One night, when Silena's siblings were getting particularly difficult, the two agreed to meet outside the sword-fighting arena at camp. The two kids were already particularly close, having known each other for four years, and they were quiet for almost half an hour until Silena spoke up.

"Sometimes I hate them."

"Who?" It was questionable that the word "hate" was even a word Charlie understood, as he showed only compassion to everyone he had ever met. The innocence and curiosity in his eyes after Silena's remark was almost proof.

"Our parents, the divine ones, I mean. They drove both our parents to the edge, and they probably don't even care. They were just little worthless humans the gods had affairs with, and Aphrodite and Hephaestus probably couldn't have cared less about our mortal parents. They never even visited us. They never even cared about us." A single tear fell from her eye, and she looked simply miserable. She had clearly put a lot of thought into the subject, and it had become an emotionally-charged one.

Beckendorf wrapped a comforting arm around her and said, "I don't hate them, but sometimes I wonder how they could ever do that, especially to someone as amazing as my mother. I'm scared that all our lives have become are trying to please our parents, which might not be right. Maybe we should just work on making ourselves and our friends happy, the people who we actually know and can love. Maybe getting into Elysium really doesn't matter."

The two sat together talking for hours, until they decided to sneak back into their cabins. Both of their counselors honestly couldn't have cared less about young kids being missing. Eventually, spending long nights together became routine.

They were safe.

Silena hated it.