A/N: So here we are. My first actual attempt at a fanfic. I don't expect it to be anything special, nor do I expect it to do well, but I still want to try my hand at writing. I can't make any promises on update schedules, but we'll see how things go. For clarity's sake, everything is going to be from Percy's perspective.

As for a disclaimer: I only claim ownership of the idea and execution of this fanfiction, everything else belongs to Rick Riordan.

Chapter 0: Request

Finding out Nico had had a crush on me was… surprising. I stood next to Annabeth in confused and surprised silence, watching him walk back over to the Apollo cabin where Will Solace was waiting for him. I had a thought.

"Hey, Annabeth, um, do you think they're...?" When I looked at her face, she seemed amused.

"I think that would be a safe assumption, Seaweed Head." I looked back across the camp. Nico seemed happier now. Relaxed. As I got over the initial shock, I realized I was happy, too. Happy that he was finally staring to be the cheerful Nico I met all those years ago. "Well, good for them, then. Nico deserves some good in his life."

"Yeah, he does. Now come on, let's go. We've got a lot of Romans here who need help settling in. And someone has to stop the Hermes kids from meeting the Mercury kids or they'll somehow manage to steal a whole cabin."

Annabeth sounded exasperated, but her eyes were smiling. We're going to be busy these next few days until the Romans head back to Camp Jupiter. No, that's not right. We're going to be busy for a long, long time, setting up all the programs between the camps and coordinating quests. I couldn't wait.

Unfortunately, there's always something or someone who thinks I could wait.

That night I went to bed exhausted, happy to finally get some sleep. Usually it takes at least a few minutes to fall asleep, but as soon as my head hit my pillow, I was out. If I could have groaned, I would have; it was clear I wasn't about to have a peaceful night.

I opened my eyes and found myself standing in my cabin. Then my eyes focused and I realized it wasn't my cabin, but the Hypnos cabin, only it was bright and empty of campers despite it being the middle of the night, which probably meant that this was a dream and that I had been summoned here. The question was, who would summon me?

"Welcome to my cabin, Perseus Jackson."

This time, I did groan. At the back of the cabin now stood a blonde guy with fair skin and white wings. I may not be Annabeth, but I can put two and two together.

"You must be Hypnos," I said. I wasn't particularly surprised to meet another god, I had met more than I would have liked in the past month alone. But, even though I've never met this guy, something about him was very familiar, like I had met him before, but he looked all wrong.

"I 'look all wrong'," Hypnos explained with an amused tone, "because you met my twin brother Thanatos. You've met godly twins before, Perseus, surely you realize by now that we don't have to look like mirror images of each other."

I felt my cheeks flush with embarrassment. It slipped my mind that some gods are able to read your thoughts, and it made sense that the god of dreams would have a direct line into my head in a dream like this. "Sorry, Lord Hypnos. Uh, if you don't mind me asking, why am I here?" I didn't want to insult a god in his own domain, but it hadn't even been three days since we beat Gaia and her Giants. I was kind of looking forward to having some time off from the gods and their end-of-the-world drama.

"Don't worry, I'm not here to drag you back into our drama, Perseus."

Whoops.

"I come with a request. I'd like for you to help me save the campers we've lost over the years."

That shook me out of my embarrassment. "Save them? What do you mean?"

It was one thing for a god or goddess to appear before a demigod and ask them to save a living demigod from their impending fate, like Hermes did for Luke, but none of them ever asked about saving those who had already passed. Hades wouldn't let them, for one. For another, I don't think the Fates would like it very much if we tried to circumvent their whole "cut the string" thing.

"While you're right that Hades is rather obstinate about letting souls leave the Underworld, I wouldn't presume too much about the three Fates, child. You know they work in strange ways, " Hypnos said, his voice quieter than it had been.

And he was right, I did know. Back when I had my first encounter with Alecto, I had seen the three Fates at a fruit stand knitting an enormous pair of socks. They had cut a strand of yarn in front of me, and Grover had taken that to mean they had cut my own lifeline. It wasn't until much later that I realized they were showing me the fate of Luke, someone I hadn't even met yet.

I nodded.

"You've met my son, Clovis. He's able to intercept peoples' dreams and see their memories while they sleep. I can do quite a bit more." Hypnos' eyes were sparkling with humor, but I couldn't tell if the look was playful or mean. "You demigods often dream of your quests, do you not? Of events that are happening, of events that happened in the past, and sometimes of events that are to come. This is how I interfere; I coordinate with various gods to give you demigods glimpses of things I think will help you, and in turn, help us."

I thought over what he was saying, and I supposed it made sense that he was the one sending the dreams to us. If he was aware of the dreams and they didn't come from him, the other gods would probably throw him into Tartarus for not warning them about how bad things would be getting. Actually, if he's actively sending them to us, then wouldn't the gods still give him a hard time?

"Sometimes they do, yes, or at least try to. If you all didn't have such a good track record for handling the situations thrown at you, I feel I would have long since been punished for my actions. Let us thank our lucky stars for that, eh?" He smiled at me, and this time I could see rebelliousness in his eyes, and a hint of fear, too, probably from all the close calls he's had.

"It's not as if we have much of a choice, though. Either we solve your problems or everyone we love dies. It gets tiring after a while. So, again, what's your plan?" I let some sarcasm bleed out, but can you blame me? I finally find the guy responsible for all of our nightmares, and now he's asking me for help.

"I know I asked you for your help, Perseus, but I'm afraid that's not quite accurate. I'm not asking for your help so much as I am asking for a different you to help me. A younger you." This time his eyes were set and his face was hard. I swallowed.

"What do you mean, a 'younger me'?"

"I haven't tried it before, not on this scale, but I believe I might be able to take all the memories you've accumulated over the years, package them up into one big dream, and shove them into your younger self. From there, he, you, would be aware, in some capacity, of the events to come and would be able to act for the sake of preventing the loss of those who can be saved. In theory it's not all that different from showing you the events from next Tuesday, but as I said, the scale is a bit larger."

I took a second to process what he was saying.

"Let me get this straight. You want to tell the me in the past about everything that's going to happen in the future, er, everything up until now? Why? When in the past are you talking about? How long ago?" More importantly, why me? Annabeth is the brains between the two of us, and probably the smartest between the two camps. Surely she'd be more suited to figuring out how to get through everything while also saving people.

"To answer your questions in order, let's start with 'why'. To put it bluntly, a lot of gods and goddesses are rather upset with Hera for making the two camps meet. They lost a lot of children. The more clever ones are mad at Apollo since he's the one who fed that Octavian child more and more prophecies that set our paths in stone. I can't say I'm particularly fond of Hera myself, but I work with Apollo often, and I'd like to ease his conscience a bit, and maybe even help lessen his punishment. 'When' is a simpler question: everything really started getting bad around the time Zeus' master bolt was stolen by Luke Castellan, just as Kronos was waking. So, in my opinion, the ideal time to send your memories back to you would be right as you're getting involved in things, just before you made your way into camp all those years ago. The Yancy field trip seems like the right moment," he seemed thoughtful at the last statement, as if he were looking through a book for a specific passage, and I guess that's exactly what he was doing if I'm the book. "And as for why you and not Annabeth? She was another candidate for this plan, yes. Her mother's gifts would certainly help, but if you'll recall, her flaw was pride. Do you think showing her all her future successes, or worse, all her future failures, would really be a good idea?"

To be honest, no, I really didn't, but I would never tell her that. I was starting to understand his point, annoyingly. Luke died a hero, the son of Hermes who scattered Kronos' essence so thin he may never rouse again. He was also the traitor who betrayed Annabeth and Thalia, who betrayed his father, who tried to take away everything in my life. Even knowing his fate, I don't think that would stop me from trying to fight him and stop him from hurting people I care about. But for Annabeth…

I looked Hypnos in the eyes. "What would happen to everyone here? To this time? If this goes how you want it to, the past would be changed. What does that mean for us? As much as I would like to keep as many people alive as possible, I also don't want to lose what I have here now. I worked really hard for this."

Hypnos regarded me with a serious expression. "That's the question, isn't it? How much of an impact will all of this have? Would Gaia still rise? Would the Seven still be called upon? Probably, yes. Prophecies are not so fickle, I think. And besides, if it was anything too dangerous, I think the Fates would do something. However, part of me suspects that they knew this would happen, too, that I would try and fix things. It's hard to tell what those three are thinking. So, tell me, Perseus Jackson, will you help me? Would you help me?"

I wanted to say yes, to have a chance to save my friends who were lost over the years, but I couldn't help but hesitate. Could I give up everything that we had built along the way? Annabeth and I finally had a future away from quests and gods and monsters. We could go to college in New Rome, get a degree, get jobs, start a family. If this went well, we could still have all of that, we'd just have more friends there alongside us. But if not? If things change too drastically? Can I risk everything for that chance?

I made my decision.

"Lord Hypnos, I'll help. What do you need me to do?"

Suddenly, the cabin started getting blurry, like the magic of the place was starting to affect me even in the dream. "You, Perseus? Nothing. I just need to sort through your head a bit and package up all your memories of the past several years. You won't feel a thing. From here, everything relies on how the 12-year-old you handles his new memories." His words were starting to slur, and I couldn't focus on his face that well. "Ah, you may feel a bit drowsy. The human brain tends to get overloaded when I dig around a bit too deeply. You should be fine, probably, but if the past really does change, I suppose it won't matter what happens to you, will it?."

I could hardly hear him, but he kept talking to me, his hands moving around like he was sifting through some boxes or something. I sat down on one of the beds to keep my balance.

"Okay, that should just about do it. I'll enchant these memories so that they don't fade like normal dreams, so you don't have to worry about that. There's no telling how his brain will handle 5 years of memories suddenly appearing, though, so let's hope for the best, eh?" I vaguely registered Hypnos moving towards the bed I was on and I looked up in what I hoped was the direction of his face.

"Good luck, Perseus Jackson, and let us hope you are able to make use of this gift."

For some reason, that last sentence sounded perfectly clear, but I didn't register the words. As soon as he stopped talking, I lost consciousness.

A/N: And that concludes the prologue. I hope I got Percy's general personality down. From here on, we'll be in the past.