Author's Note: Yeah, I was completely not kidding about the size of this chapter.

Three

by

Icy Roses

Part Two

"En ma fin gît mon commencement." – Mary Queen of Scots

...

The alarm clock rings loud – once, twice, three times – until a hand comes down on it with crushing force and it falls silent abruptly. The red digits on the screen read 2:30 am. Half-asleep still, a thin figure crawls out of the crisp, bleached hotel sheets and stumbles into the shower on a typical morning. She turns the knob all the way to the right, and the water blasts freezing cold. She curses and shivers under the steady stream. She learned a long time ago that this was the only surefire way to fully wake herself up in the morning.

By the time she steps out and wraps a towel around herself, her numb fingers fumble around uselessly with the tiny bottle of lotion on the counter and goose bumps have risen on her arms and legs. She towels off quickly, efficiently, and throws her few possessions into one carpetbag. She buttons up her navy blue uniform with blue and red double "u" pin perched neatly on the left side and slips into the matching business skirt that falls just above the knee with neat slits on the side.

By 2:50, she's checked out of the hotel, has hailed a taxi and is sitting in the backseat, applying mandatory makeup with a pocket mirror and heading to LaGuardia Airport in New York City.

There is nothing glamorous about this life, but Rose Parker was never one for glamour to begin with. That is why – she supposes – she has ended up in this dump of a job, always in limbo between day and night and between one continent and another. For Rose suspects she spends more time over the Atlantic than she does on solid ground.

It was never in her life plan to be a flight attendant. Her father wanted to be a poet and always harbored dreams of being the next T.S. Eliot. Those dreams were the ones that first attracted Rose's mother, Marie. They had a whirlwind romance of two years that produced a trip around the world (because they had nowhere to live, so better to have adventure, right?) and a girl named Rose Florence Parker, her middle name a remembrance of their favorite city. But those dreams of her father, those fickle, teasing dreams, never put a roof over their heads or food on the table. And eventually, those dreams drove away Marie, who learned to be a practical-minded woman – she married a French millionaire and left the life of dreaming and poverty behind. She left Rose behind too. So Rose grew up with her father, who never knew quite how to be a father or a provider.

She was young and foolish, and she thought if she fell in love (like her mother) it would solve all of her problems. But all it did was leave her pregnant at twenty-three with a broken heart and no money. She hadn't learned Marie's most important trick, and that was not to fall in love with a man, but to fall in love with riches. Her boyfriend, Ricky, was poor anyway, and never provided any child support checks, so then it was three mouths to feed (including her father) and no one with a job to do it.

So pretty blonde Rose, who had gone to college on hefty student loans for a sophisticated double-major in Italian and French, whose dream it was to be an ambassador or a translator, shoved all of those dreams in a box along with her sophisticated degree, and trained to be a flight attendant. Those extra languages bought her a stipend and the chance to be an international stewardess instead of a domestic one. More money – all for more money. All for her five-year-old daughter Allie, who attends kindergarten in Seattle and lives in her father's shoddy apartment. Rose pays the rent. Rose pays for school. Rose pays for shots and groceries. Her salary, at about $40,000 a year, scrapes by. She scrapes here and there and tries to save, and by and by, it gets them along. But she holds no delusions about the future. There is no government job on the horizon. This is not a rut. This is real life. And her real life involves keeping a roof over Allie and her father's heads and food in their bellies.

As she steps into the airplane and greets her fellow flight attendants for the morning, all of them faking bright eyes and cheery smiles, she sees similar stories and knows most of them did not choose this life either. Nobody holds stupid, romantic sentiments about traveling the skies.

As for the passengers who stop her and gush about how exciting her job must be, Rose considers them half-wits. Nobody likes getting up at 2:30 am and pretending to be chipper to rude-ass customers who are too stupid to figure out what row is clearly printed on their ticket. Rose hates holding cranky babies while airsick mothers barf into the paper bags provided. She hates it when people mill about the aisles when the "please put on your seatbelts" light is clearly on, and she has a hard time believing everyone is having a bladder emergency specifically at that time. She especially hates when sleepy old men take forever to order between the menu options – dammit, there's only two choices, chicken or beef, so just make your fucking decision already!

But what she hates the most is catering to the first-class passengers, whose lives of wealth and privilege, she can only imagine. She can't help but wonder what her life would be like if she were in their place. She hates herself for letting her mind wander where it can never go, but she can't help it. And besides, there are enough first-class passengers who are complete dicks that the flight attendants secretly term them "rich little shits" behind the curtain.

And today, it is Rose Parker's (bad) luck that the senior flight attendant, Shondra, pulls her aside with cocked eyebrow, "Rotation's come around, honey. It's your turn with the rich little shits for the duration of the flight," she says in her best service voice.

"Fuck," Rose pronounces, and Shondra is too sympathetic to tell her to curb her tongue.

..o..

Eric Sorenson is running horribly late. It's absolutely not his fault that the hotel screwed up his morning wake-up call, and he ended up arriving at the airport forty-five minutes later than he meant to.

After baggage check detains him for having an over-heavy suitcase, and he pays the required fee because he's not about to throw any of his possessions away – not after having a bit of a spat with the smart-mouthed forty-year-old lady over the counter; entitled plebians – of course, there's something that makes the metal detector go off. In his haste, he had forgotten about the metal plate in his skull they had just put in three months ago. He hopes the metal detector hasn't fucked up his brain, but there's no time for that. The security guards are skeptical, but they let him through. By that time, it's already 5:44 am by his expensive Rolex watch, and the time for boarding is about to pass in exactly one minute.

"Shit!" he mutters as he elbows through the crowd. How can the airport possibly be so crowded this early in the morning? LaGuardia Airport – it has to be one of his least favorite in the world, and he has been to many an airport in his line of work.

He rushes up to the desk, where a middle-aged, slightly balding man is waiting to see his ticket. He pulls it out of his pocket, a bit wrinkled but otherwise undamaged and hands it over.

"I'm sorry, sir, but boarding time is over and the tunnel has closed. Now we can give you a half-refund or set you on the next flight but it will probably be in the economy cabin—"

Eric brings a crushing fist down on the desk. "No! I need to get on this flight. Now. If you will kindly let me through the door, I will be seated and the plane can be on its way."

The ticket man adjusts his spectacles as if Eric's outburst has disturbed his face. "I'm sorry, sir," he repeats. "Rules are rules. I cannot open—"

"I knew it," Eric snaps, running a hand through his disheveled black hair. "United has the worst service anywhere. Do you have any idea how much hassle I have gone through to get to this point?"

"I apologize if the airport has been of inconvenience to you, but United Airlines has nothing to do with the procedures prior to entering the terminal area."

"Whatever. That's not going to stop me from buying Delta next time. I'm going to drag this entire corporation to court. Seriously, if you don't let me in right now, I'm going to hire the biggest lawyer in the country – and trust me, I can afford it – and I am going to file the biggest fucking lawsuit against your ass that—"

One of the crew cabin members from the plane emerges from the tunnel and whispers something into the ticket man's ear. The ticket man nods, completely unfazed. "Well, it seems like the flight has been delayed for an hour due to last minute check-ups, so in this case, I will allow you to board late." He examines the ticket and hands it back to Eric, who is slightly taken aback by this quick turn in fortunes, but snaps his mouth shut and shoves the ticket into his back pocket, marching into the plane without a second glance. Damn airport personnel. He hates every last one of them and if they get paid a quarter of what he makes, it would be way too much for the kind of service they offer.

..o..

Luckily, the first-class cabin is small this time around, so Rose only has to cater to sixteen rich little shits instead of twenty or thirty. At worst, she has wobbled through the aisles with two bottles of wine, four sandwiches, a shrimp cocktail, and a martini.

Shondra mouths I'm sorry from the front of the plane, where she is having a serious conversation with the captain. Rose helps the passengers settle and load their suitcases into the correct overhead compartments. She overhears a couple squabbling about who gets the window seats, and she discreetly rolls her eyes. It only matters if you can see the ground falling away for ten minutes if you're under ten years old. Full grown adults can really amaze her with their childish behavior sometimes.

Since the flight is delayed for an hour, when it finally takes to the runway and lifts off, people are bitching up and down the place. So it's snack time to appease the masses, and she wheels the cart down the spacious first-class aisles and asks the oily businessmen what they want. Nine times out of ten, it's someone dressed to the tee, with a permanent expression of smelling something awful etched on their face. The other time, it's the person with an ear-to-ear grin who has gotten an unexpected upgrade or spent their savings on the only time he'll ever ride first class, and he has a billion questions to ask – how does this work? – and orders everything on the menu.

So it gives her a bit of a pause when she stops in front of a man in the second row. His black hair is sticking up in the back, and it seriously looks like he has just rolled out of bed. His suit is wrinkled and his white collar isn't turned out properly. He doesn't even bother to look at her when he says, "Well? What are you staring at?"

Before she can stop herself, she blurts out, "Your tie is in your shirt." Because it is – the tail end stuck in the space between two buttons. Honestly, it's pretty dumb-looking and completely unfitting for a person of first-class.

He turns to her, scowling. "Is that what they pay stewardesses to do these days, criticize passengers' clothing?"

His eyes are a startling green, and for some reason, it sends a shiver down her spine. Not like she hasn't ever met anyone with green eyes before – Ricky had green eyes, for instance – but something about these. She shakes it off. "The proper term is 'flight attendant,'" she hears herself saying.

"Yeah, whatever you're called." He fixes his tie. "Say, have I seen you somewhere before?"

Privately, she thinks that people like him are a dime a dozen, and she certainly does not go out of her way to meet douchebags. Obviously, she voices none of this aloud and only shakes her head. "I don't think so."

"Huh."

"Can I get you something?" she asks him, trying not to get derailed by his attitude. It's one of the first lessons new flight attendants learn: don't let the passengers get to you. Nobody wants to see a flight attendant lose her cool on the plane.

"Um, yeah," he says, checking his pager. It's basically like talking on a cell phone while checking out, and it drives her nuts. How can he not at least have the courtesy to look at her while asking her to bring him stuff? "Can I get a bottle of Grey Goose vodka, please?"

"Of course." In the beginning, she used to tell people how much it would cost. Now, she realizes the first-class passengers don't glare at her because they already know, but because they don't care. She wonders what it would be like to order whatever the hell she wanted and get piss-drunk on a plane. Gods, she hopes he doesn't get drunk on this flight. She hates dealing with wasted passengers.

She wheels off and finishes the aisle. Going behind the curtain, she catches Shondra, who winks at her. "How's it going so far?"

"Well, that guy over there is a real ass," she says, glancing over. Second thing you learn: never point at passengers while you're talking shit about them.

"Surprise, surprise," Shondra says. "Best of luck. At least the boy's cute." She nudges Rose.

"Oh, please," Rose replies. "It's been a long time since I've ever looked at some boy, and I promise you, that one is not my type. Besides, he's probably married to some eighteen-year-old sorority girl with huge implants who asks for a new car each week. Those guys. They always have trophy wives."

Shondra chuckles warmly. "All right, sweetie. Aren't you Little Miss Practical? Well, I'll leave you to your hot catch then." She returns to the main cabins with her cart of water, orange juice, and soda pop.

Rose gets the bottle of Grey Goose with a glass and a sandwich for someone else. She gives the sandwich to an older man and puts the glass on the mini table in front of Mr. Messed-Up Tie. She unscrews the cap and pours some for him. He actually looks up this time. "Thanks, um"—he checks her nametag—"Rose." She gets the impression that he has noticed she is kind of attractive for the first time – or that her rack is kind of attractive – and is about to hit on her in the leery way that bored, rich passengers do. She doesn't buy this bullshit.

"You're welcome, sir," she says primly. "Let me know if you need anything else."

Propping himself up in the chair and taking a sip of vodka, he puts a hand on her arm before she can go. "Actually, I do," he says.

"Yes?" She pulls her arm away. She is not a fan of touchy-feely people.

He doesn't seem to notice. "How long is this flight going to be?"

"Seventeen hours until we land in Venice."

"Oh, excellent," he grumbles, putting his feet up. "I hate these damn long flights. Maybe you can entertain me on the way there."

She can't help but be offended by this, and even though Rose Parker is a very sensible, tongue-biting kind of human being, she says, "Sir, I am not paid to be your fool. I am paid to give you drinks and move your luggage and get you food. You have movies for that, all right? Also, the correct way to hit on women? Not act like a whiny bitch." Immediately after she says what she does, she regrets it. Casting a hasty glance around for supervising personnel and noticing none, she collects herself.

Luckily for her, Mr. Vodka-Drinking Messed-Up Tie cocks an eyebrow and hides a smile. "Well, then. I could have you reported for that, you know."

He's goading her! She attempts to hide the icy finger of fear sliding down her spine. She cannot lose her job. If he reports her for misconduct, she is done for. But she also can't seem to keep her big, fat mouth shut against this guy. Between flirty, rude customers and getting three hours of sleep, civility is the last thing on her mind. "Fine. I hope that makes you feel better as a human being."

"Now, see here, Rose"—and she detests that they are on a first-name basis now—"I come onto this plane minding my own business, you insult my clothes, and then you accuse me of trying to hit on you. I don't know where all of this hostility is coming from, but it's certainly not because I am being a, uh, 'whiny bitch,'" he says, making air quotes. "Besides, I am entitled be that way if I so choose. I paid for a ticket."

She stands there dumbly. "Okay."

"Okay," he says, finishing the glass and pouring himself another. "I'm glad we got that all settled, then." He smiles at her. "You have to be one of the most interesting flight attendants I've ever met. And if I weren't afraid of getting reported for sexual harassment – since you seem to think I'm assaulting you or something – I would tell you that you're quite pretty."

What a jerk. She stiffens and stands straighter. Right now, she is thinking two things. One – he's probably not going to report her for misconduct, which is good. And two – he's also having way too much fun with messing with her, and she'll be damned if she spends the rest of this flight exchanging verbal spars with a tipsy, horny businessman. She decides to quit while she's ahead.

"Well, if you need anything, don't hesitate to ask," she says formally, ending the conversation. She is tempted to do a little mock curtsy but thankfully manages to hold her snarky side back.

"Oh, I will," he says with a grin. He keeps his word too. Throughout the seventeen-hour flight, every time he needs anything at all, he makes a point to ask for Rose and none of the other eleven flight attendants on board. She is so, so tempted to poison his second bottle of vodka but figures that would be going over the top. So instead, she settles for spitting in his steak, which makes her feel better long enough to not accidentally taser him for the entire trip.

..o..

And besides complaining endlessly to Shondra for the next few flights and laughing about what a great story it makes, that's supposed to be the end of it.

But things rarely go according to plan in Rose's little world, as evidenced by two months later, when she spots him boarding the same flight from LaGuardia to Marco Polo Airport and still on first-class. "Shit!" she says, hiding behind Kelly. "It's Mr. Vodka-Drinking Messed-Up Tie!"

Shondra shambles over with her knuckles perched on her hip. "Girl, what are you doing?"

"It's him," she hisses. "The guy I told you about!"

"Oh, the one you secretly have a crush on?" Shondra teases.

"Okay, really, Shondra? The only reason I would ever sleep with him is so I can smother him with a pillow when he's asleep. Please, please don't make me do first-class this time. I swear, if he sees me again, he's going to be just as much of an ass as he was last time, and this time I might actually hurt him. And get fired." She's still hiding behind Kelly, who gives her a bemused look and sweeps off, leaving her naked to the world and completely open to Mr. Vodka-Tie, as she has abbreviated him in her head.

"Be an adult, Rose," Shondra says, emphasizing the first syllable. "He probably doesn't remember what you look like anyway. You're just some blonde flight attendant he tried to get a chance with. He probably does it with every waitress and every cashier."

"Please?"

Shondra gives her a lingering, considering look. "All right. You can do the back cabins today, but you owe me. I hate dealing with those rich little shits too."

Rose is so relieved that she almost kisses the ground where Shondra stands. "Thank you," she says, rushing off breathlessly toward the back. "I won't forget this!"

"Yeah, you better not," Shondra says after her.

This plan works fairly well for half of the flight. After the first meal, most of the passengers pass out for a couple of hours because there's nothing better to do on a plane besides sleep – Rose wishes at times that she were allowed to crash in the aisles, but she does her check-ups like a walking zombie because she can't. Merely because the main booth is up front near the cockpit, she is forced to walk through first-class. Except, it seems as if Mr. Vodka-Tie is asleep, so she snatches this opportunity to whip through.

No such luck, though. "Hey, you!" he whispers. The lights are dimmed, and everyone else is slumbering. Why can't he slumber too?

With dread, she turns around. "Yes, sir?" she says blandly, trying not to betray any hint of familiarity, but he obviously remembers her. It's not that strange. Some of the more frequent fliers between the US and Italy know her, but most of them are not that obnoxious about it.

"You're here. Rose, right?"

"Yeah," she says. "It's kind of my job to be here. On this flight."

"Well, I'll be damned," he says. "Never thought I'd see you again."

"Ditto," she replies, and not entirely in a nice way.

He beckons her closer, and she considers telling him that he should ask another flight attendant if he wants a bottle of Grey Goose again. But she approaches him anyway. It's her job. He extends his hand. "Eric Sorenson," he says. "I feel weird with you calling me 'sir' all of the time. It sounds like a derogatory term coming out of your mouth anyway."

Slowly, resentfully, she shakes his hand. She really couldn't give a damn what his name is.

"And of course, you are Rose Parker, the flight attendant. Look, you can calm down. I'm not going to report you for misconduct, seriously. I just want to get to know you better."

"Why?"

"You seem like a nice girl."

"I called you a whiny bitch!"

He wrinkles his nose. "Do we really want to revisit that? Come on, let's start over."

Okay, she thinks at this point, you're not my ex-boyfriend, so there is absolutely no need to use those three words, "Let's start over." She sighs. "Really, sir – Eric – it's not part of my job description to be friends with you."

"Can't we be friends for the sake of being friends?"

She can't understand him, and she really can't understand why he's so hell-bent on being her friend. Well, she has an inkling, and it has something to do with the fact that he wants to ask her out on a date, but she decides to give him the benefit of the doubt for the time being, if only for the sake of her own sanity. "Yeah, sure," she mutters.

He kicks back in his seat, settling into a more comfortable position. "So, Rose, why don't you tell me why you decided to become a flight attendant?"

"Um, why don't you tell me why you're on this flight again? Are you stalking me?"

He laughs, and it actually doesn't sound horrible. He has a pretty nice laugh. So maybe he's improved since he stomped onto the plane with a tucked-in collar and bed head. "No," he says emphatically, "I work for the communications department of an auto company, so I have to fly to Italy a lot for meetings with the Italian branch. And I have frequent flier miles. They always pay for me to fly first-class. We made the switch to United Airlines for cost reasons, I think."

"Oh," she says. She was right about him being a businessman.

"You haven't answered my question. I answered yours."

"It's a job," she shrugs. "It pays the bills. And I am fluent in Italian and French, so I get a stipend for doing international European flights," she can't help but add. She has few things in her life to be proud of, and she feels crass for boasting, but she is pretty proud of this aspect. She is not some bimbo without an education.

"Impressive." He scratches his head. "See, that wasn't so painful, was it?"

She doesn't answer.

"You've only worked for United, am I right?"

She nods, wondering where this is going.

"Yeah, so I guess I can't have met you before then," he says, sounding puzzled. "You must have one of those faces."

"Excuse me?"

He holds up his hands. "Relax. I meant one of those faces that are common. Wait, no, that still didn't come out right."

She bristles. "Goodbye, Eric. Nice to meet you," she says, without meaning a word of it. "I'm not catering to first-class this time, so please talk to Shondra if you need anything."

As she walks off angrily, he says, "I still think you're pretty. I think you would look nice with long hair!"

It's a comment that strikes her oddly even as he goes out of sight. She did have long hair once, back when she was young and dating Ricky. But then, when he left, she decided to cut all of it off, so it now hangs in short pin curls around her face. When she got hired as a flight attendant, they told her they preferred her to grow it out. Rose refused. She had control over her hair like she had control over nothing else in her life. Besides, having short hair makes her look more professional and less like a college kid. Having short hair causes fewer guys to whistle at her when she walked down the street, something that irritates her to no end. She's a young mother and hasn't thought about dating for years – it's just weird.

She swears that the next time Eric Sorenson shows up in her life, she will have nothing to do with him. If he talks to her, she'll ignore him. How many times can he take the flight to Italy anyway? Perhaps the thing that bothers her most about him is how he thinks she looks familiar. Because if she were to be honest with herself – which she is not going to be – she would admit that he looks familiar too. It leaves an unsettling feeling in the pit of her stomach, as if they had this whole history together that she can't remember. Even alone in her hotel room, she thinks about it, tries to recall something, even scraps, but there's just nothing there.

She's just deluding herself. She lays her cheek gently against the pillow and shuts her eyes. He's just a crazy man, and she's just being crazy with him.

..o..

The next time she sees him on the plane – because of course there's a next time – it's four months later, and she's almost forgotten about him. Almost, but not quite. There he is, sitting smugly in his first-class seat, talking on his cell-phone before the plane takes off. While checking the overhead bins, she passes him, and he hangs up just in time to say conversationally, "My wife, Nigella." He points on the phone.

"That's nice," she says. It only makes her think he is even sleazier than she thought, because he's got a wife. What's he doing flirting with her? His wife would probably not be happy about it. Then again, his wife's probably the busty fake platinum blonde she imagined, so she – Nigella – is most likely in it for the money anyway. Not to say that Eric isn't attractive, but – gods, she's going to stop that thought in its tracks right now before it meanders somewhere she doesn't want it to go. "Nigella," she says instead. "That's an interesting name."

"She's British. Met her on one of my business trips."

So now he's looking for a new collection to his harem on his trips to Italy, she thinks snidely. She's not going to fall for this trap. "Okay, Eric?"

"Yeah?"

"We can't talk anymore."

He sets his computer bag down by his customary seat. "Why not? I thought we were having a grand old time."

"You're married. You're annoying beyond all reason. You're totally intrusive. And this is not my job. Now, if you need another bottle of vodka or a sandwich or something, I'm completely happy"—and obligated, she thinks—"to get it for you. I'll get you an extra pillow. I'll sing you a fucking lullaby if you need it to fall asleep, but please, please, do not pretend like we are anything more than that. Just to make this clear."

Surprisingly, he looks way more downcast than he should have a right to. "Okay. If that's what you want, I'll leave you alone."

It is much less painful than she expected. She is pleasantly happy about this. "Thank you. Really. You're a nice guy, Eric"—lie—"but I would rather maintain a strictly professional relationship."

"I understand," he says rather coldly as he opens a newspaper and begins to read.

As if trying to make a point, he doesn't talk to her or even look at her again. Which is fine with her, really. She should have set him straight a long time ago.

The flight goes seamlessly, except halfway through, she notices a strange hissing that goes on in the fourth row of the second economy cabin. She can't shake it off. There's a slim woman in loose track pants and a sweatshirt with her frizzy red hair tied up. She looks like any other passenger, except Rose is fairly sure that the hissing is coming from her. Either her or her purse, and she is wildly tempted to ask the woman to display the contents of her Gucci bag. As a flight attendant, she is technically allowed to do that. But how stupid would it be if the red-haired woman opens the bag and nothing is in it? Rose is allowed to check suspicious items, but she's not allowed to harass passengers. After just getting disentangled from the whole Eric business, she decides it would be better if she keeps her curiosity to herself.

Of course, she tells herself this, and then goes on to stare at the woman every time she walks by. On the seventh run, the woman gives Rose the evil eye back. "Is there a problem?"

"No," Rose says, embarrassed. "Sorry, ma'am." The woman goes back to reading her novel – The Time Traveler's Wife. Still, she can't shake the feeling that something is wrong. It curls inside of her and gives her insides a squeeze every time she hears the hissing. She gets the impression the woman knows she can hear something but chooses to pretend like nothing is going on.

There is a slight ripple of unease in her head. Could it be – no. It can't. She hasn't seen a peep of the mythological world since she saw a Hyperborean giant on her sixth grade trip to Vancouver with her father. She and the Greek gods have cohabited peacefully for the most part, and she likes to ignore them. It's not like they have any reason to attack her – she's not even a real demigod. Her mother is a daughter of Aphrodite, whose only real power manifested in her idiotic romance with her father, a son of Apollo. Her father, on the other hand, only inherited the power of horrible poetry and false belief in his poetic skill. Rose hasn't inherited a single thing, not one little thing. And she likes it that way. It's not like the Greek gods ever helped her out, so why should she even pretend like she owes them anything?

The hissing is muted throughout the landing, and Rose thinks she might be in the clear. Eric is ignoring her skillfully, either burying his head in the New York Times or his pager. She thinks maybe she went overboard when she vocalized the "annoying beyond all reason" part. She could've gone easier. But it's a bit late for that now.

Between a woman who has an extreme phobia of plane descents – why is she on a plane without some kind of medication? – and a non-English-speaking man getting the lock stuck in the bathroom, Rose is kept busy, so she doesn't have time to worry about pouting first-class passengers.

She is frazzled by the time the plane finally rolls onto the unloading dock in Marco Polo Airport. Venice, at last. She could use a nap.

She is about to down a couple of pills on the sly before everyone gets off so she can fall asleep when she gets to the hotel when the hissing gets louder again. This time, there's no mistaking it. Nobody else seems to notice, or if they do, they're too polite to bring it up. The woman in the track pants has gotten up, tucked her earphones into the side pocket of her Gucci bag, and begun to meander down the aisle toward the aisle. The other disembarking passengers have a kind of weary, dulled out look in their eyes. But her gold irises are sharp and bright, as if she is searching for something. Her knuckles are white around the bag. If she didn't know better, Rose would think the woman has the expression of a terrorist.

Quickly, she pushes past a couple with three children and a cantankerous old man who gives her the finger, trying to press closer to the hissing woman. She's getting closer and closer to the front. Rose pushes aside the curtain frantically and sees that the woman has paused in first-class. Eric straightens, grabbing his computer bag from under the seat. The woman offers him a sharp smile and in a throaty Italian voice begins to introduce herself. He looks confused but shakes her hand. His lips form his name. And right then, the woman catches Rose's eye from the corner. There is a glint of red.

And even though Rose has almost zero experience with Greek monsters, she knows solidly in her gut that this woman is a monster. No question about it. For some reason, she's going after Eric, which means he is a demigod. She hears herself whispering the word like it is foreign.

Right before her eyes, the woman and Eric get off the plane together, disappearing from the plane. Eric is talking animatedly, and Rose knows he hasn't got a clue who – or what – this woman is. If she doesn't do anything, he's going to die. He won't ever get on a plane back to the US. And his stinking British wife, Nigella, will get a phone call about how her husband has mysteriously been the victim of a random vicious crime spree in Italy, if she even gets a call at all. This is how these kinds of things happen. She may have never attended Camp Half-Blood, but her demigod father taught her enough to keep up her guard. She fingers the bronze dagger she has strapped inside her arm, underneath her uniform. She keeps it there, just in case. Never in her life has she had to use it. Nobody knows she carries it. It is her secret.

And now, she is faced with this horrible dilemma as Eric descends the steps of the plane. She watches through the small, oval window as the woman touches his arm. Rose shivers. She is watching a man walking to his death. She shakes her head. This isn't her concern. She should mind her own business. If he's a demigod, then he knows how to take care of himself.

Right?

Right.

She turns away and fiddles with the cuff of her sleeve – for about three seconds – before sprinting down the aisle and running down the steps of the plane in pumps. Shondra is calling after her, "What the hell do you think you're doing?" but her voice blurred in the background. She is rushing through the crowd, brushing aside the strange looks cast in her direction, searching only for a man with mussed up black hair. For a fearful moment, she thinks she has lost him, but then he is there, several feet in front of her, and still conversing with the woman.

From behind, she grabs his arm. She should probably count herself lucky that he doesn't yell or elbow her in the face. He turns, startled. "Rose?" he asks, amazed. "Uh, what are you doing?"

The red-haired woman is glaring, and her features become distinctly more snakelike for a split second before reverting back to normal. Eric has missed it, of course, but Rose doesn't need any more confirmation that this woman is bad news. Thinking fast on her feet, she says, "I – you forgot something on the plane."

He fishes around in his pockets and checks his bags. "Are you sure? Because I don't think—"

She pulls insistently. "I'm sure. You need to come with me right now." She is praying, for the first time in her life, to any god she can think of – Zeus, Apollo, Aphrodite, anyone – to keep the monster at bay and keep them from making a scene in the main terminal of the airport. "Please," she says, looking straight into his strange green eyes, trying to send him a silent message.

He considers her for a moment. "All right."

"I'm sorry, Carmella. It was nice meeting you."

She bares her teeth in a scary smile. "Oh, yes. I agree." The tip of a shockingly red tongue darts out of her mouth and licks her lips lightly. She holds the "s" in her words for just a moment too long.

Rose drags Eric to a more private area – as private as is possible in a bustling international airport. It's where the vending machines are, and it's under a staircase, so the reception is bad. There is no one here and only few people walking by. Unfortunately, it's also rather cramped. She pushes off a wave of claustrophobia and lets out a pent up sigh of relief. "Good. This is good."

"Hey, there," he says. "Are you okay? Because just, I don't know, ten hours ago, you said I was obnoxious and you never wanted to talk to me again. Then, you chase after me in an airport and drag me away from a girl I was about to get a number from? You are seriously starting to get annoying."

"Are you an idiot?" she snaps, angry that this is what she gets for saving his life. "That Italian woman you were about to have a one-night stand with – by the way, you're married, douchebag – is a monster."

For a full minute, he stares at her. "Do you know her?"

"Never seen her before in my life."

"Then how do you know she's a horrible person?"

When he says this, it gives her a bit of pause, and it's her turn to be confused. He doesn't know? It's clear that not only did not know the woman is a monster, but he doesn't know about his heritage either. Well, how is she supposed to explain that? "No," she says slowly. "Like a bonafide, eat-your-heart-out monster. Greek mythology? Heard of it?"

"Yes," he says, bemused. "That stuff they force us to learn in high school, about Zeus and Juno and stuff."

"Zeus and Hera," she corrects, even more irritated that he has mixed up the Greek and Roman names.

"Whatever. Is this supposed to be important?"

"Yeah, I would say so," she says.

But before she can explain further, Carmella appears in front of them, her red hair let down and moving on its own. Then, her face pales as if she is about to faint (except she keeps smiling like she is pleased about it) and two-inch long fangs extend past her lip like a vampire. Her eyes turn from gold to red. And she takes a step toward them, all the time with her arms out. "Oh, Eric," she sighs with her pretty accent, "we didn't get a chance to really know each other. This estupida girl got in our way. Why don't we try again, after I finish her off?"

"Uhhh," Rose says, pushing Eric behind her and taking a step back herself. Her brain goes crazy trying to figure out scenarios in which she might not die.

Meanwhile, the empousa – she recognizes it for what it is now – purrs. "Eric," she lulls softly. "Come with me."

Behind her, Eric makes some kind of weird gurgling noise. "You just stay back there," she says cautiously. "Do not – I repeat – do not listen to her. She's going to suck your blood."

"Like a vampire?" he asks faintly.

"Yeah, like that," she whispers back. "Don't make eye contact. Just shut up and do what I say."

He doesn't have a problem complying with the "shut up" part. The empousa hisses at her, red hair flaming like a live fire, and lunges forward. With a scream, Rose kicks her in the gut – she is honestly surprised that her foot makes contact at all – and grabbing Eric, they slide away. Eric bangs his head on the wall and makes a groaning sound. Luckily, Rose only bangs her head on his chest, so she is okay. Knife, knife, she thinks desperately, grasping for it under her uniform. The sleeve is too tight and her clumsy, frenzied fingers can't unbutton, so she grabs the cuff and rips as hard as she can. The fabric tears easily, and the first thing that comes to mind is how much she's going to have to pay for the ruined uniform. Maybe she can stitch it together later.

The dagger gleams against her pale underside of her arm.

Eric notices it and makes it adamantly known to the world. "Holy shit, woman! What the fucking hell is that? You carry concealed weapons all over the place? On a plane? How do you even get past a metal detector? Isn't that illegal in like, five billion ways?" He scoots away from her nervously. "You're off your goddamn rocker."

She pulls it out from the sheath without nicking the delicate skin of her wrist. "Okay, focus! If I didn't have this on me, I'd be dead and you'd be vampire food," she snarls at him.

Brandishing the dagger in front of her, she waves it as a warning. "Don't come closer," she tells the empousa. "I will slice your mother-fucking head off, and don't think I won't."

The empousa laughs and the sound makes Rose's skin crawl. She doesn't know what the mortals in the airport are seeing, but for once, she wishes the Mist wasn't doing such a damn good job of keeping everything hidden. A police force attacking with guns blazing would be really nice right about now. Her fingers grip the hilt tighter. She will not lose. Eric has fallen silent behind her, and she doesn't have time to look back and see if he's died of fright or simply lost his voice.

"Don't," she warns again, her voice strangled.

The empousa – whose name may or may not actually be Carmella – sniffs the air like a dog. "You," she says, pointing one perfectly sharp, red-painted fingernail at Rose. "You are not a god's brat. Or if you are, something is covering your scent." She cocks her head to one side, considering. "No, you are something different altogether. But," she says with an elegant pause, "that will not prevent me from gutting you like a fish. It'll teach you not to get in the way of my projects."

She is not, not going to die at the hands of a demon with a donkey's leg. She's not going to get killed because she felt like being a Good Samaritan to a useless, womanizing, clueless demigod. No, she's not going to let Eric be the reason she dies alone in Marco Polo Airport. Her determination courses through her veins like new fire and in a savage voice, she spits, "Yeah, I'm the daughter of two demigods. But my genetic makeup isn't going to be your primary concern when you find my dagger shoved through your intestines."

Leaning forward, she takes a step, lunges, and the golden blade is sure in its target, disappearing cleanly, perfectly into the empousa's midsection. Rose is put off-balance by the ease of which the blade cuts through flesh. Her feet lose contact with the ground, and her forehead barrels into the demon's shoulder, sending the blade even deeper. There is no blood, nothing. Only warm body and beating heart and licks of hair rubbing against Rose's cheek, and all of a sudden, she feels sick. The empousa screams – Rose is sure the entire airport, maybe the entire world, hears it – and disintegrates. Without the support, she falls hard on her knees and pain shoots up her entire body. Her muscles give out, and she collapses onto the cold, tile floor – the hilt of the dagger sliding against her sweaty palm.

It's about half a minute later when she realizes what an awkward position she's in. She's lying on her stomach, legs slightly bent, and her cheek is pressed into the ground. Dimly, she wonders where Eric has gone, but he answers the question for her when he coughs in the background. Footsteps, and then, he's helping her up and brushing the disheveled curls away from her face. He is pale, almost paler than the empousa, and she can't help but feel indignant about this – isn't she the one who almost got, what was it, "gutted like a fish?" At least, the empousa was only going to suck his blood. Then, she realizes how irrational her thinking is at this moment, and she blinks – once, twice – to return herself to reality.

He smiles shakily and a little bit of color goes back into his ivory cheeks. "There's a tile-mark on your face," he says.

She slaps his approaching hand away and his smile abruptly disappears, replaced by a look of confusion and horror. He shrinks away, shaking his head. "No, no," he mutters. "She – she's crazy, out of her mind." Rose knows he's talking about her, except the way he's saying it makes it seem like he's the one who's crazy. She crawls toward him, her kneecaps protesting, and he puts his hand out. "No," he says louder. And then, almost too quietly, "Murderer."

She stops in her tracks. "What did you say?"

"You're a murderer. You killed that woman – Carmella. I saw it. I saw it with my own eyes, I did, you killed her, and ohmygod you're insane, insane," he babbles, eyes wide. He's terrified.

And she's pissed. "You saw me kill her. Did you also see that she had fangs? Did you miss that detail?"

He's still shaking his head, but she's pretty sure it has nothing to do with her questions. He's just in shock. In the tiny part of her head that isn't in pain or angry or frustrated or relieved, she is amazed that any demigod could make it to the age of – twenty-eight, twenty-nine? – without having any previous contact with monsters. She's not even a full demigod, and she's seen them before. Perhaps she was wrong about him. Maybe he really isn't a demigod. But then, how can he see through the Mist?

Eric gets up, his legs shaking and lips trembling, grabs his computer bag and slings it over his shoulder. "I'm going to baggage claim," he says with a tremor. "I'm going there to get my suitcases, and I don't ever want to see you again, get it? I'm not ever taking United, and if you try to follow me, I'm calling the authorities. You're psycho." He pushes past her, which isn't hard because she's still on the ground in disbelief.

Savagely, she wishes she had let him go and the empousa had dragged him to some off-brand motel and sucked every last drop out of his veins. She watches him walk off, and something inside her makes her shout after him, "You're a demigod, Eric. You are."

He doesn't look back even though she knows he can hear her.

"Are you dyslexic?" she yells.

He stops cold and turns around. "What?"

"I asked you if you are dyslexic," she says evenly. "And diagnosed with ADHD."

He stares at her. "Don't ever talk to me. Again." He disappears into the crowd, leaving her sitting alone in a nook of Marco Polo Airport.

..o..

Eric lies in bed, eyes open. The ceiling is full of dark shadows, and he can't sleep. He feels like he's seven again after accidentally having watched Bride of Chucky on TV. Every little noise makes him jump. Uneasily, he pulls the covers up to his chin. How is he supposed to sleep after being attacked by a real live vampire? What was that? He may not remember much of the Greek mythology crap they shoved down his throat in high school, but he's pretty sure that vampires are not part of mythology-canon.

Doesn't matter. The thing was about to eat him. The red eyes haunt his memory. It's not just that either.

How does Rose know that he has ADHD and is dyslexic? She might be strange and unhinged, but she couldn't have gone through his medical records. It's not very common, is it? To have both? He definitely remembers struggling through books in elementary school and being put on a special program. Who is Rose, anyway? Maybe she's some kind of governmental secret agent, and she's his bodyguard – no, not a girl bodyguard – or maybe she's an assassin! But she protected him. And – his head spins in so many different directions that he actually begins to feel nauseous. He almost, almost believes what she said about the Greek gods.

It would make a heck of a lot of things that happened as a kid more reasonable. Right now, it's too late, and he can't decide what to think. So he gets out of bed, turns on the light, downs a couple of sleeping pills, and crawls back.

Starting from that night, the dreams – or nightmares – begin to come. They start slowly, reassuring him with their gentleness, before turning into something fierce and unknown. He dreams of the vampires and remembers from a time before memory that they are called empousai. He dreams of a camp somewhere near Manhattan where people like him use swords and other medieval-like weapons. He dreams of his mother, who disappeared long before he had consciously known people were supposed to have mothers. But he dreams of her sweet, sweet smile and her black hair that smells of midnight rain, and he sighs in his sleep. Once upon a time, she loved him. Perhaps she does not remember him now, but once, she did. He is too old to cling to regrets, so he just drinks in visions of her, imagines what to say if he ever met her – he is fairly sure he won't.

The most recurring dream is the one of Rose. Or is it Rose? It looks like Rose, sounds like her, but something tells him that this blonde girl with the exact shade of gray eyes is not the flight attendant he knows. But he knew her once, even though he cannot recall her name. He feels a deep connection to her, and some nights, she talks to him. She tells him things that he promptly forgets in the morning, but they seem to be important at the time. She is beautiful, and she makes his heart ache. He wants to hold her, for his fingers and arms to remember her; he wants to curl up inside her bones and find the missing parts of their history, but she never lets him get that close. She is so, so far away. And some mornings, he wakes up and finds that his cheeks are damp.

The girl who is and isn't Rose fades away by the time he slips on his clothes, and all he has left is her sad smile.

Eric is not a superstitious man. He doesn't believe in tarot cards or palm reading or crystal balls. Dreams aren't supposed to have a "deeper meaning." He's a businessman. He's more sensible than that. But these dreams – they're something else. He can't ignore them, and he certainly can't dismiss them. Whatever they mean, whatever they are, he knows two things. One, monsters are real. If they are real, then it is a natural and necessary assumption that the gods are real as well. How could one exist without the other? And two, despite the multiple times Rose has told him that she hates his guts and the times he has told Rose that he thinks she should be committed, he is going to see her again. It just depends on when he summons up the courage to step back onto the 747 of United Airlines –

..o..

It's by the grace of the gods – perhaps because she saved Eric's pitiful, ungrateful ass – and Shondra's leniency that Rose doesn't get sacked. When she showed back up at the plane, everyone searching frantically (apparently, they called in an emergency notice in the airport too, but she had been too busy to hear it), sleeve torn, and a bruise on her cheek, the immediate reaction was fire her. But perhaps because Shondra sees her on the verge of tears, is her friend and conveniently the senior flight attendant, Rose gets off with a warning and the instruction to get her uniform patched up.

Shondra gives her the look of death, and Rose knows if she even sticks a toenail over the line, she is done for. So for the next few flights, she serves with stiff formality. She hardly dares utter a single curse word behind the curtain – that's quite a feat for her – and she is polite. Nice. Perfect. She does her job flawlessly. And she is glad, glad because she will never see Eric again – good riddance. Hopefully, he has a great life, and just maybe, the empousa taught him that sleeping with unknown women can bring worse things than chlamydia. In which case, she shouldn't feel bad at all. Why should she? She saved his life, and she taught him about the wonders of death by demon. Truly, he should be grateful.

Asshole.

Rose can't wait for her break, which comes in two weeks. She'll go home, kiss Allie hello, and for a couple nights, she might sleep in Allie's bed too, just to imprint the smell of her baby girl in her head, so she'll have something to cling to the next time she flies halfway around the world. She'll say hello to her father. Maybe she'll even tell him about how she killed an empousa. Maybe he'll write a poem about it.

So maybe she won't tell him.

But it's a delicious little secret she keeps to herself. She is proud of herself. And why shouldn't she be? Things have gone back to normal, the way they're supposed to be. The gods can forget about her, and she can forget about them. It is tiring, letting her life bounce back and forth between the times Eric is on board and the times in between. So she is glad that everything is right again.

At least, everything is right until one day, she stands in the front, greeting the passengers as they board and he shows up again. He has no computer bag this time. He's come empty-handed, and that is enough to put her on guard. What's he doing without his work stuff? He looks pensive, so lost in his own thoughts, that he doesn't see her until he leaves the tunnel. "Rose," Eric says, without preamble.

She's so stunned that she can't even offer a response, her usual cheery, "Welcome aboard!" She just stares at him and at that moment, he looks so archaically familiar that it scares her. There is nothing, nothing at all, in that speck of time that would convince her they hadn't known each other before. The memory teases her, dusts past her consciousness and out of sight, like a wispy butterfly.

"Hello," he says. His hands are in his pockets, thumbs sticking out, and his shirtsleeves are rolled up.

The first thing she thinks is how nice his forearms look, but her conscious quickly shuts that down. No, she thinks. Bad.

"Can we talk?" he asks softly. He sounds sincere. Rose has since learned that there are two Eric modes. One is as a typical rich little shit who acts like a jerk to her and who she hates. The other is the gentler, quieter version of him, the one whose laugh she likes and who is buried most of the time under the other version. But it proves that he isn't always an asshole. Just some of the time.

She can't think properly, so what she ends up saying is, "So you finally came around, huh? Crawled out of the pit of denial you dug for yourself?" She is immediately sorry for her sarcasm when a spasm of guilt flashes across his face. Since when did he begin caring about what insults she had to throw at him? And since when did she begin caring about him caring?

Someone behind Eric coughs loudly. "Excuse me, but you two are holding up the line." Rose looks beyond Eric and sees a gathering trail of angry people, some of them hauling heavy baggage and tapping their feet, waiting to get on the plane.

She colors up. "Sorry," she says, letting him pass. He gives her a lingering look before slipping past without a word.

He sits in first class, as usual, but without the suit and tie. She knows while the plane lifts off that he is waiting to speak to her, and the thought sends her into a nervous frenzy. She drops the seatbelt she is supposed to demonstrate safety with. But that wasn't as bad as when she drops a half-full pot of coffee on the carpet and has to babble apologies while she attempts to sponge it out of the carpet with paper towels. Shondra raises her eyebrow, but says nothing. The implication is clear. Why don't you stop carrying breakable or spillable objects for a while, hon? Face aflame, she quarantines herself to handing out plastic packages of peanuts and delivering extra blankets.

When the first round of meals is doled out, she makes her way through the sleeping rows of people, the blinds on the windows pulled down, and to Eric. It is inevitable that she speak to him. For some reason, she dreads it. Or maybe she looks forward to it. She can't really separate out the feelings anymore. From behind, he looks like Eric. She breathes. He doesn't look like this mysterious someone from her past that she can't put her finger on.

He turns.

"You rang?" she says, a hand on her hip.

"Yeah," he replies eventually after a long pause. "I think – I think I believe you."

"About what?" she asks, momentarily confused.

"About me. Being a semi-god or whatever you called it. I think you're telling the truth."

"Demigod," she corrects. "Gods, you're hopeless." She considers him briefly, looking lonely, looking lost, and decides to be gentle with him. It's not every day one discovers divine parentage. It's probably a jarring thing to most people. Rose was an exception because for her, it had been too natural, just part of growing up and finding out that – whoops! – she'd never get to see Grandma and Grandpa because they were actually Aphrodite and Apollo. It hadn't seemed like such a big deal at the time. But who knows? Maybe Eric's mortal parent lied about it, so he thought his stepmother or father was his real one. That would be quite a surprise, wouldn't it? She clears her throat. "Look, sorry. I didn't mean to dump it all on you like that. It wasn't very nice."

"It's not your fault," he tells her. "Carmella – the empousa, I mean – started it."

He doesn't blame her. For some reason, it makes her feel a little bit lighter. He's still looking at her strangely, and it raises goose bumps on her skin, even though she doesn't know why. She resists the urge to run away. "So," she says in an effort to fill the silence. She can't remember the last time an encounter between the two of them was punctured by awkward silences. "Why are you going to Italy this time?"

Eric shrugs, as if he could care less. "I'm not."

"What do you mean 'you're not?' You're on the plane to Venice, in case you missed the sign in the terminal. We can't fly you back," she says. Maybe the encounter tipped him over the deep end. Maybe she's cosseting a crazy man.

"I mean," he clarifies, shifting in his seat, "I took the plane because I wanted to talk to you, not because I had to go to Italy. I don't have your phone number or anything. It's not like I had any other way of contacting you."

She backs up. "Whoa, whoa. I thought you said you never wanted me to talk to you again."

He gives her a small, crooked smile. "I changed my mind."

Carefully, she sits on his armrest and perches precariously close to him. She is daring today. "What made you do that? You're usually so set and stubborn on everything you do."

"Me? I think you're the stubborn one." He quiets, regarding her for a while.

..o..

He wonders if it would be stupid if he told her he had dreams about her. Would that make him sound like a pervert? She already thinks he's a pervert anyway, so maybe that wouldn't matter. She certainly wouldn't believe him if he told her they were completely innocent dreams. If indeed it is her in the dreams, she was quite a prude in a past life, apparently. She won't even let him get close enough to touch her arm, her cheek. But this is Rose, he remembers, startled. This is Rose.

This is not the nameless gray-eyed girl who knows him.

This is Rose.

Is it all the same?

He looks deeply into those identical gray eyes and feels a stirring in his belly. This is –

..o..

"Um, hello?" Rose says, wagging a few fingers in front of his face. "Are you alive in there?"

He blinks. "Yes."

Vaguely, and completely unrelated to the current topic, Rose thinks about how absurd it is to buy a plane ticket just to talk to a flight attendant. Nobody normal does that kind of thing. Eric must be obscenely rich. She finds herself wandering again to the land of dreams where how great would it be if there was enough money to pay for Allie's tuition in twelve years? She wonders if Eric has any children. Her guess is no. Eric is too light and insubstantial to know the weightiness of parenthood. She wonders if his wife ever wanted children. All things too private for the casual observer to think about, and why is she contemplating them now?

She shifts from the armrest, feeling flushed and embarrassed without knowing quite why. "So are you just going to stare at me like a baboon the entire time or do you actually have something substantive to say?"

"Oh, yes," he says. "Why don't you bring me a bottle of Grey Goose and we'll talk?"

And she finds, surprisingly – that's okay with her. Perhaps there is something about saving someone's life in an Italian airport that makes it impossible to harbor feelings of dislike anymore. She pours him the customary glass, and he solicitously offers her a sip first. She says something like, "I don't think I'm supposed to be drinking on the job," and he hastily retracts.

There is a lot for him to catch up on. He has as million questions, about the gods, about their world, and about how science fits into all of it. She tries her best, but honestly, she doesn't really think about how science fits into Greek mythology – she just kind of ignores the incongruities and hopes that the mutual exclusiveness of the two aren't currently tearing a hole in the fabric of the time-space continuum. Eric finds her general lack of curiosity amazing and shoots out another twenty questions for her. She provides them, patiently, realizing that it's kind of nice to know another person who believes in all of the craziness. For so long, she thought she was going mad with secrets.

"Do you know who my parent is, then?" Eric asks.

"If you don't, then I don't either. Your mother or father?"

He takes another swig. Half of the bottle is gone. "My mother," he says quietly. "I don't have a single memory of her. She didn't leave anything when she left. Well, she left my dad, I guess. He never married. Still a bachelor. I think, when I was young, the claiming thing you talked about happened to me. There was a sign, but I didn't understand it at the time or I just thought it was freaky and ignored it. I probably shouldn't have. I probably should've gone to that Camp Half-Blood thing. Sure would've been a change. My life's not that interesting, you know."

Rose shakes her head. "Firstly, if you're still alive, your mother is most likely just a minor goddess. You don't draw too much attention, and that's a good thing. Being a demigod is not the kind of 'interesting' you want to have in your life. Besides, there's nothing more interesting in life than learning to live it with passion and joy." Even as she says the words out loud, they amaze her. Since when did she become good at giving out advice? She certainly never took any of it herself. Or maybe it's because she has no passion for being a flight attendant, nor does she have any joy in living the way she does now, always worrying about next month's bills. And gods, if tax season isn't the worst.

The flight is almost too short. Eric doesn't have anything to pack up, so he twiddles his thumbs as the other people are gathering their belongings, the plane slowly rumbling to a stop.

"What are you going to do in Italy?" Rose asks. He has no reason to be there, after all. And no matter how great their conversation was, sleep is more important. She's about to pass out. There is absolutely no reason under the sun to use the fourteen hours between landing and taking off again for anything other than sleep. She's going to check into her hotel room and crash.

He shrugs. "I dunno. Do some sightseeing, I guess. I never thought about it."

"You never thought about what you were going to do after reaching the destination?" She is incredulous. "You suck at planning. And living. Seriously, how do you get by?" With a lot, a lot of money, her brain supplies helpfully.

His devil-may-care attitude shines through in his grin. "Rose – you need to learn to live a little. Be spontaneous."

"Poor people can't afford to be spontaneous," she shoots back.

"Can poor people also not afford a sense of humor?"

"Hey!" she says indignantly. "I do too have a sense of humor!"

But he has slipped out of his row and is moving steadily forward with the crowd, being pushed out of first-class cabin and into the tunnel, out of the plane. "See you next time, Rose!" he shouts brightly.

She stands there with his empty bottle of vodka for a long time and wonders when he became a permanent fixture in her joyless, passionless life.

..o..

In his free time, Eric peruses old, worn books in the library about Greek mythology. He reads about how the world was created, the ancient myths of Heracles and Jason, Theseus and Perseus. He feels strange about it, as if he has slipped into another skin of himself, when he runs his fingers over the pictures of titans and gorgons. He feels erudite and scholarly and remembers way back when in college when he shunned the humanities. He used to say he majored in learning how to make money. That is, he majored in economics and finance. Mythology was stupid and old. Technology, stocks, the rise and fall of the economy – that was today and tomorrow. That was new.

Now, he pages restlessly through The Iliad and The Odyssey and finds a new thrill of learning what he was. His past, perhaps. It reads familiar. It reads like home. And that both exhilarates and terrifies him.

(He misses Rose.)

He doesn't tell Nigella. She would think it was stupid, although Nigella's obsession with shopping at high-end stores is stupid too. He finds he can no longer connect with her. Who is this woman he has married? Who are they? One day, she walks into his study with a book he bought from one of those independent bookstores. The cover is bare and cold; the title rests on the spine alone. She holds the book between her forefinger and her thumb, as if touching it with more might dirty her manicured hands. "This," she says.

Eric looks up from another one of the myths he is reading, tucks it under some business files quickly. "What?"

"Since when did you become a philosophy professor?" She shakes down her wavy, dark brown hair.

"It's mythology," he tells her. "And it's a new hobby." Get over it, he thinks.

(He misses Rose.)

"Who cares what it's called? You've been totally distracted for the past weeks. And you're leaving these things all over the place. What's your problem? Look, I've been trying to plan out our yearly vacation to Fiji, and you haven't been pitching in at all. I can't do all of the work around here."

You don't work, he thinks. You sit at home and watch the Real Housewives of Orange County on TV. But it's a bit of a defense mechanism in reality. He had forgotten about the trip to Fiji. He also finds, now that he has remembered, he doesn't really care about it. "How much planning can it take? We go to the same resort." He pulls out the book and begins reading again. He doesn't care if Nigella sees.

She stamps her foot. "It's the principle of the thing! If you don't care about it, then why don't we just skip it this year?"

She's saying it as a threat, but suddenly, Eric is tired of this argument. He doesn't want to go to Fiji anyway. "Fine," he says. "Let's skip it."

He can tell immediately – that wasn't the answer she wanted. She is stunned into silence. "I'm throwing this away," she says about the book she holds. "I don't want the ratty thing sitting on our coffee table. You always waste money on the dumbest of things." She stands there, pouting ferociously.

He half-turns. "Don't. It's mine."

Nigella is pissed. She tosses the book onto the ground, where it lands open and face down. Without another word, she flounces out, slamming the door shut behind her, and Eric knows she's not going to talk to him for days. She is really, really good at holding grudges. Carefully, he picks the book up by the spine, and the pages fall into place with a gentle rustle. He brushes off the cover. And he tucks it into his bookshelf. Whether it was yesterday or a week ago, a month ago, perhaps today – he has changed.

(He misses Rose.)

The tidal wave has gathered, and he is waiting for it to crest.

..o..

In the middle of the night, Rose stares at the shadows on her ceiling and thinks about Ricky. She was nineteen when she met him, a freshman in college, her whole life ahead of her. She loved linguistics, the turn of a foreign phrase sounded like poetry in her ears. She felt, like everyone else in college, that she was going to go far. He was a philosophy major, brown-haired and green-eyed – intelligent. He was an agnostic; he cared about politics. He argued with professors about the meaning of Hobbes and Locke – they loved him. He was bright. He was the star of the classroom.

She liked him too. On a snowy winter day, they met. She was too poor to afford a good pair of snow boots, so she trudged through the knee-deep snowdrifts, powdery white clinging to her jeans. She had too many books. Ricky walked out of Smith Hall – he was in her World Religions class – offered his scarf and carried her books back to her dorm. They started dating and kept at it all through college. Everyone thought they were going to get married. Everyone thought he would propose before graduation.

Instead, she got pregnant, and he got scared away. He was going into the Peace Corps – he didn't have time for a poor girlfriend and child.

And the rest of the story played out, as everyone knew. Rose hasn't attended any reunion of any kind – high school or college. Those are for the people who make a difference, who have something to show off. She has nothing except the bills waiting for her on the dining table. Sometimes, her father calls to make sure she is doing all right. He is a good man, her father, and he means well. She just can't help feeling bitter that he left nothing for her.

She turns onto her side and flips over her pillow for the colder side. Since then, she hasn't ever dated anyone. Allie doesn't need a stepfather, and Rose doesn't need another man to leech off of her savings. She doesn't want to leech off anyone else either. She likes being independent. It probably looks strange to anyone on the outside, but Rose stopped caring about other people's perceptions of her when she swallowed her pride and became a flight attendant. She's kept her degree, but only for her to look at. A promise, a hope of what could have been. She doesn't look at it too often, though. Nobody can make a living off of promises and hopes.

There are times, though, when she thinks there is something more that life had in store for her. Her life doesn't suck, not really. She has Allie. That makes everything worthwhile. But sometimes – a secret she doesn't tell anybody – she wonders if the gods didn't have something special in store for her. She believes it because, well, she can't ever feel happy with what she has. She always thinks that maybe tomorrow is the day her life will turn around. Maybe tomorrow is the day she will discover what she is truly meant to be. Maybe tomorrow is the day she finds herself.

The thing that scares her is, when she sees Eric, she feels the future come crashing in through her window, a quiet roar.

She will either swim in it – or drown.

..o..

With red-rimmed eyes from lack of sleep, Rose dully greets the passengers as they board the plane. She stifles a yawn. It's probably around 5:30 am. She ran out of Ambien, so here she is. She hopes desperately that she doesn't slump over snoring on the cart when she serves breakfast. After this, she thinks, I am taking a period of sick leave. She has enough days for about a week off. It's close to Christmas, anyway. Time for a break before she works herself to exhaustion.

It's a cloudy morning with light flurries in LaGuardia. The airplane takes off without a hitch, and her ears do their usual popping. When she started working, her ears used to take forever to pop, and they would hurt until she was prostrate on the ground with pain. She did everything, chew gum, hold her breath, blow up her cheeks – none of it worked. Eventually, her ears got accustomed to making the switch, and she barely notices it now.

She casts a wistful gaze at first-class, wondering when the next time Eric shows up will be. There's a man who looks a bit like him from behind, sitting in the fourth row. He has black hair. It's kind of pathetic how she looks for him now. Except – oh! He looks over his shoulder, and it is him. He breaks into a grin and for some reason, it roots her to the spot. When she finally gets up the courage to come closer, she notices yet again he does not have any carry-on items, not even a copy of the newspaper. What was he doing? Just staring at the back of the seat behind him?

"Hey," he says.

"Hi there."

He pauses as if he is drinking in the sight of her. Or maybe that's just her, drinking in the sight of him, being stupidly and foolishly hopeful – of what? "Business trip?" she asks.

"Nope."

"You came to see me," she says. It's not a question.

"Well, since you seem so set on that, then sure. Yeah, I came to see you."

She twists her mouth. Even in the best of times, he still has that jerk side to him. But he's laughing now. "It's a joke. Calm down. Of course I came to see you." He touches her hand.

In amazement, she looks down where his fingers have taken a hold of hers. What is he doing? He's – her lips are dry and she licks them. She looks up, and he really is staring at her this time. All of the laughter has died. He pulls her slightly closer. "Eric," she mumbles.

Abruptly, he gets up. Starts walking down the aisle and pulls her with him. She's so stunned that her feet trip over themselves as she follows him. It doesn't occur to her to pull away. He's sure, determined, wherever he's going. He pushes aside the curtain, and then – it's the bathroom, and it's unoccupied, and suddenly, Rose knows exactly what he plans on doing. There is a huge lump in her throat and her heart has started fluttering around, unsure of whether to slow down or speed up. Her fingers tingle where he holds them. The next thing she knows, he's stepping into the bathroom and pulling her in too. He shuts the door, locks it.

The space is small – there's barely any room to move. Her back presses into the metal sink, and his is against the door. She blinks. "Eric – what are you – no!"

Except, she does the exact wrong thing and looks into his eyes, those green, green eyes, that were so familiar from the beginning, and the words catch in her throat. He leans down and his breath washes over her – his lips are on hers.

Her body catches on fire. This – she knows this. Then, she is kissing back; his hands cup her face, and hers snake into his hair. He leans into her, and the edge of the sink cuts almost painfully into her back – if she could bring herself to care about it – and his hand comes down on the metal lip, trapping her. She is dying. She is dying together with him, and she has been waiting her whole life for this. Her hands trail slowly down to his shoulders while his hot mouth moves down to her exposed neck and then, her fingers find their way to the shallow dip at the small of his back –

– you drool when you sleep, because you're my friend, Seaweed Brain, stupid son of Poseidon, Riptide, my team in Capture the Flag, the gods are real, princess curls, Kronos, pine tree, the Golden Fleece, you made a good guinea pig, see you next summer, so you owe me what else is new, stop thinking so hard, Wise Girl, I am never going to make things easy for you, I love –

..o..

"Because you and I, we're meant to be. We just – have to remember to find each other next time."

..o..

"—Percy," she gasps.

He has stopped. "I know you," he says. She is sitting on the sink, and his face is inches away. "Annabeth." He wipes a tear away from her cheek. "I know you."

Someone knocks sharply on the door. "Hello? This is cabin crew personnel. Please open the door."

Slowly, Rose gets off the sink and the happiness that had been steadily expanding inside her chest deflates, leaving her feeling old and empty. Eric removes his hands from her, and he opens the door. Shondra stands there, looking stern. The expression slides off of her face when she sees who it is. Her hands go flying up to her mouth.

"R-Rose?"

"I'm sorry," she whispers.

Shondra is trembling, either with fury or sadness or shock, Rose isn't sure. "Y-you're fired," she says. "When we return to LaGuardia, we'll file the paperwork. For now, please just – sit behind the curtain and – keep to yourself."

"Shondra—"

"Please, Rose." She turns to Eric. "Sir, I ask that you return to your seat. I'm going to have to ban you from future United Airline flights."

"I understand," he mumbles.

Shondra leads Rose to the seat behind the curtain, where she is to sit, like a child in time out. They are silent as the grave, until Shondra says, "I gave you all of the chances I could. I can't believe you would do this." And she paces away, Eric behind her. Rose locks eyes with Eric for a brief moment, and he mouths, I'll find you, Wise Girl. Like I promised.

Rose has the dignity to sit there, composed, for the entire way there and the entire way back – nearly twenty-seven hours, but when she reaches her hotel room in New York City, there is nothing that keeps her from screaming and crying until her throat bleeds.

Percy, she thinks.

I know you.

..o..

She returns to Seattle, where Allie is waiting with open arms. She picks up the pieces of her life. She doesn't know where Eric lives, doesn't have his phone number. It doesn't matter anyway. He is married to Nigella. She should feel ashamed for going after a married man like that, having feelings for a married man like that. She should feel ashamed – but she can't. Because he belonged to her first, after all. Does that count? She's going to pretend like it does.

She falls asleep at night dreaming of the life they might've had if she met him earlier.

She goes over the fragmented memories of them every day, because she is afraid that one day, she will wake up and forget them again. She needs to know they were real. She needs to know that he is Percy and that she is Annabeth.

She needs to know that she isn't crazy.

Because taxes and bills still have to be paid, she finds a job as a waitress at a local restaurant, and another part-time as a barista at Starbucks. It's an even lower step than she was as a flight attendant. Ironically, she probably should've appreciated her first job more, even if it wasn't everything she wanted it to be. But in a way, this is better. She likes being able to tuck Allie into bed at night. She likes being able to go to parent-teacher conferences.

She finds that she has forgotten how much she likes being a mother. So perhaps it was a good thing she was fired. It still hurts to say – fired.

Her father stays at home, and he never asks why she has returned to Seattle. She doesn't tell him.

Every few nights, she gets a new dream, a new memory of things that were. They come in such fast progression now, like that one split-second in time opened up the floodgates to another separate lifetime. She looks forward to the new memories, and she dreads them too. Because they already happened, but she is here. What can she do about that?

A year passes. Allie goes to first grade. She has no dyslexia and no ADHD. Lucky that Ricky was a mortal. She is glad Allie doesn't have the same problems she did. This also means Allie will never get attacked by an empousa in an airport. She smiles a little at the memory and is startled that she is smiling. For a while, she thought she had forgotten how. But Allie – Allie can always make her smile.

So everything goes back to normal, except for the shadow life Rose keeps to herself. Sometimes, the nighttime memories make her laugh – like the time he thought hubris was hummus. Other times, she wakes up sobbing – like the time she thought he had died after Mt. Saint Helens. She gets to know him little by little each day. It is almost enough.

One day, she goes home to find that Allie has checked the mail already and put it on the dining room table. There's a letter addressed to her in a messy scrawl – she can barely read it. It's a thin letter with no name, but the return address reads from New York City. It's not professional mail. It's personal. She can't find the letter-opener, so she just rips it open on the side, fingers trembling. Carefully, she slides out a single-paged letter and unfolds the elegant, monogrammed paper. The ink is heavy and dark, obviously written with a good fountain pen. The words jump out at her.

Dear Rose,

I found you.

Heart stuttering to a stop, her hand drops limply to her side. She takes a deep breath to steady herself. She never thought – never dreamed – that this would happen. The curiosity is too much to bear, so she continues reading, but she sits down. Just in case.

One year and two months later. It wasn't easy. I don't want you to think I just forgot for all this time. You would not believe how many Rose Parkers there are living in the continental U.S. alone. I never would've guessed you lived in Seattle. It took a lot of searching – and probably not all of it was legal, either. But you won't report me for stalking, right?

She smiles a little.

A promise is a promise. I promised I'd find you. And now, finally, I have. I'm sorry. For everything. I'm sorry I got you fired. That was really irresponsible of me, and I take full credit. I am terrified that I ruined your life. I hope I can make up for it. By the way, I take Delta Airlines now. United wouldn't be the same without you anyway. So I guess we have a lot to catch up on.

It would've been idiotic to say this before – on the plane, I mean – but I dream about you all of the time. It drives me crazy. I should get a therapist, but I don't want to get sent an asylum. I dream about us. About the time – before. I think I know what it means now. I remember when I met you at Camp Half-Blood however long ago. I told you that you would look pretty with long hair.

She touches one of her curls and realizes that her hair has grown out past her shoulders. She just forgot about getting a haircut in between working two jobs. But maybe she'll keep it this way.

The memories come all of the time. Sometimes when I'm getting my morning coffee. Or in the middle of a business meeting (ask me about that sometime; it really sucked). But I keep feeling like the story isn't complete. There's a whole life there – I think it was amazing, but I can't remember the whole thing. And I think that's because you have the other half. Is this making any sense? Anyway, this is all in a desperate attempt for you to write to me, to tell me what you remember, and maybe –

Well, maybe we can piece together that something that I always felt I was missing.

I miss you.

I don't need to tell you that I love you because you already know that.

-Eric.

P.S. Because I have caused irreparable monetary damage, I sent you a check. You can keep the change. Just, don't write your name when you send me the next letter because my wife might flip her shit. But don't worry about the money. I'll square with her on that one.

Rose shakes the envelope, and true to his word, a check flutters out. She catches it before it reaches the floor. She blinks and her heart does another ungraceful thunk. Printed neatly on the monetary value line: fifteen thousand dollars.

Fifteen thousand dollars! Rose feels faint. Reads it again. There it is, plain as day. And when she puts it into the bank, the teller doesn't say anything different. She cannot believe he can write fifteen thousand dollar checks. But it sure makes her happy. When Allie comes home that day, Rose is grinning from ear to ear, takes her little girl in her arms and takes them all out for a meal on the town.

Then, when everyone has gone to bed, and she is sitting under the light of her lamp, she writes.

..o..

Dear Eric,

I can't – I don't know what to say about the money. Thank you. It has made everything better. I am – truly in your debt.

There is so much that cannot be expressed. It is a secret. And I am glad that I can share that secret with you. I'm not sure I will say it in the right way, but here, I will try.

Remember the time you rode with me on the back of an animal transport van and we shared Double-Stuf Oreos? I was feeling tired and miserable, but I think that was the first moment I realized if we were either going to be the best of friends, or we were going to fall madly in love with each other and have way too many children. It was both. It was both.

Remember the time you told me you wouldn't rather have anyone reattach your head but me? That was the summer of the fireworks we went to together. You got so red when you said it – it was hilarious, actually – but I think it was the most romantic thing you ever said to me. Honestly. Better than anything in The Notebook or Moulin Rouge. But that's probably just because it was me. I mean, nobody else would think that. You weren't really suave – before, I mean. You've gotten a bit better since then, but still no cigar.

Remember the time you danced with me on Olympus after we got out of Mount Othrys? I wasn't an idiot. I knew Athena had said something to you that made you all shy, but I didn't bring it up. You should know, though, that I never was more annoyed at my mother than at that moment.

Remember those, and it will be better than before.

-Rose.

..o..

Dear Rose,

Nigella and I are going through marriage counseling. Or – she's making me go through marriage counseling, but it's not going to work. I wish I could be honest with her about you, but she would never believe me. We signed a pre-nup, and she doesn't get any money if we divorce, so she is hell-bent on staying with me. I don't know. I think I loved her, once. I remember that. But something fell out of place, and you know the rest. If I had met you a long time ago, everything would be perfect, wouldn't it?

It can still be perfect. I'm going to leave her. We can start over, just like we intended last time. I'm sorry I ruined it. I'm sorry I didn't remember sooner.

Remember the time you first taught me Greek? I was twelve, and I felt like the biggest idiot ever. And you were all accomplished and smart, and you kept rolling your eyes at me. Not that I blame you, because I obviously had no idea what was going on. But gods, it was humiliating to be shown up by a girl. I'll admit though, I thought you were the coolest thing. Totally gave up on trying to impress you. Guess I succeeded anyway, in the end.

Remember the time I came back from the failed mission with Beckendorf? You ran onto the beach, and I think I almost kissed you right there and then. I was so afraid of losing you. If I could've, I would've made you stay behind so that you wouldn't get hurt. But then you dislocated your shoulder and broke you arm, so I guess I didn't do a great job there, did I? Still, you wouldn't have listened to me even if I tried. You are stubborn. That's not so bad.

I am coming for you. Wait for me.

-Eric.

..o..

Dear Eric,

Don't.

Her pen stops in midair, quaking. In that one word, she has undone every dream. In that one word, she might not only break his heart, but hers too.

I don't know about your history with Nigella. You say you loved her. I believe you. You say you don't love her now. I don't. Even if I did, I don't want to be the reason you break up your marriage. I'm not going to be the other woman. That's not me. You know I won't agree to that, and I swear to you, if you come to my doorstep with a proposal, I will close it in your face.

I'm sorry. I can't.

Maybe this is wrong, because we are living on memories instead of in the present. I don't want you to forget me, but I don't want you to live in the past. We can never return to it anyway. In the past, I wasn't a flight attendant for United Airlines. In the past, I was a daughter of Athena. In the past, I had only you.

Now I have a daughter and you have a wife, and I am Rose and you are Eric. There are a million things I would've wanted to do and say if it weren't so. But it seems, here is where it all ends for us.

Please do not make this harder than it is. So this is the last time I will say this, but I will say it once, so I can let it go. There is always next time.

If you believe in the Fates – as I do. Love is eternal. So are you and I. In the grand scheme of things, even though we are thousands of miles away, even though our second chance has happened, I hope you realize in that one instance where we met each other on a flight to Italy has changed everything.

Remember the time I taught you the constellations? (Or tried to, at least.) You said all you saw was a bunch of glowing dots in the sky, no lines connecting them. I told you that only an idiot like you wouldn't be able to understand something as basic as constellations. They'd been around since ancient times. How could I admit to you then that I couldn't see the lines either? I only knew them because I had practiced looking hard for so long. I think if we were all honest with each other, nobody really gets constellations. Some old farts created random lines between stars to draw pictures of things that don't really even look like what they're called. But you see, that is the trick. You might not see them and I might not see them, but the important thing is – they are there. The lines are there. You just have to have faith in them. Do you understand?

I love you, Seaweed Brain.

She ruins two sheets of paper crying over this letter. She thinks about not sending it. But there's no choice. It's not exactly the truth, the letter. She is not only Rose anymore. It's as if she has another soul entwined around her current one, and they have mixed and mixed and mixed until she can hardly tell one from the other. She is Rose, but somewhere inside, she is Annabeth too. But she is Allie's mother, and Eric is Nigella's husband.

It's not fair.

Nothing is fair. But Rose learned that lesson long before, and she is not apt to forget it. She is stubborn, like he said. So she puts the letter into an envelope, along with part of her heart, and seals it away. She sticks on the stamp. She methodically, painstakingly, writes his address on the front, and she drops it into the mailbox. Rain begins to pitter-patter on the sidewalks, and another rainy day in Seattle has begun.

As she walks back to her new flat – with the consistent fifteen thousand dollar checks, she was able to afford a new house – she has this overwhelming feeling that everything is over. Wasn't the reason she picked to come back to find him?

But then, she realizes, she did find him. By some unthinkable twist, their paths intersected, a girl from Washington and a boy from New York (again), and they remembered. And she is no longer unhappy about Ricky.

And she is no longer unhappy about her job.

And she is no longer unhappy about her life.

So the rain falls over Seattle, falls on her rooftops in light clinks. It falls over all of the city and the surrounding countryside. Clouds darken and gather over the mountains. The outside air smells like the ocean, and it filters into her house. Rose sits on her couch and watches the gentle summer storm roll on by. There are children outside her window, splashing in puddles, and one of them is Allie. She leans back with her cup of coffee and remembers some more.

..o..

In New York City, it is raining too. The rain darkens the cement on the streets, and it causes cursing while people try to hail for taxis. Somewhere, in a penthouse, Eric is sitting, reading the letter. He is looking out the window and trying to see all the way across the country. Nigella is in the kitchen, watching Food Network and making dinner.

He leans back in his leather chair with his book of Greek mythology propped open on his lap, the letter on his desk, and he remembers some more. He can learn to be happy one day at a time.

Happy, at least, that he found her and kept his promise.

..o..

They are glad.

And they are waiting to connect the dots.

Author's Note: Translation of the quote at the beginning of the chapter is traditionally, "In my end is my beginning," the phrase embroidered on Mary Queen of Scots' cloth of estate and attributed to her, although historically, it was used previously by her mother, Mary de Guise. (I'm a history major. Had to share.)

There are three parts left to this fic. How is this possible, you ask? Next is the Interlude (can't give too much away), then Part Three, and the epilogue (probably). Leave a review, if you can!