Three

by icy roses

One life is not enough for love; Percy and Annabeth try for the Isles of the Blest, but it seems that fate is not always kind to them.

6. Part Three, 3rd

Author's note: The conclusion to Part Three. For you.

Three

by

Icy Roses

Part Three (3)

The underworld is just what she expected in some areas, and absolutely not in others. For instance, it's dark and gloomy and looks exactly like the place where deceased people would go. Stalactites drip from the ceiling precariously, dripping cold drops of mineral cave water like an unfortunate roof leak. The path is paved with jet-black stones, which is better than nothing because the path itself is edged with moist brown dirt that looks like it could house a variety of long, many-legged insects. Privately, Liza thinks that this is the best incentive ever to stay healthy, because she wants to delay her trip down here for as long as possible – assuming, of course, that they make it out and she doesn't die down here. Her stomach does a bit of a turn.

But when the tunnel finally widens to the main portal of the underworld, her fingers flutter to shield her eyes, and she can't help but gasp. She blinks against the glare of fluorescent bar lighting hung in long, endless lines from the ceiling, illuminating everything in its harsh, unforgiving glow. It sucks the glow out of the brightest complexion. Under the bluish-white light, James is washed out, pale as a corpse, and the hollows under his eyes stand out more. The lighting strips away secrets and lays him bare. And Liza's mind wanders to – something about him, unsettling, strangely known, like she had seen him like this before – before she wonders just what she might look like under this light, which makes her embarrassed. "So this is the underworld?" she quips, lowering her hand from her brow. "It's, uh, charmingly lifeless; no pun intended. Reminds me of a Wal-Mart."

And to be sure, it does resemble a Wal-Mart, right down to the endless lines filing through, and the garish bright yellow smile on a billboard on the left side that says, Save time; E-Z Death line to the right! "What happened to the gloom and doom underworld of mythology I remember?" she asks, surveying the landscape.

James runs a hand through his hair. "They had to remodel sometime. The world's population is always growing, you know, which means longer lines, more congestion, and a crabbier Hades. So Daedalus – he's the architect who designs all of the stuff down here – decided to modernize it. Make it less antiquated. See there?" He points at the River Styx, which is, to her surprise, down below. It sits in a valley; "sits" being the proper word because if she didn't know better, she'd think it was frozen. It doesn't flow at all. "Pollution," James tells her. "Now, Charon doesn't have to operate a river ferry. They have the Sky Train, and he's the conductor who takes tickets."

"The Sky Train," she repeats.

"Yeah. High-speed railway that travels over the river and loads ten times as many souls than the old ferry did. Plus, it's way faster and more energy efficient." He grins.

They walk to the edge of the cliff and peer down at the carved valley below where the River Styx is but a shallower, paler memory of itself. Liza pulls her toes back, just slightly. "I wasn't aware that Greek mythology updated itself every couple hundred years."

"With everything you've seen so far," Thalia says, "are you really surprised?"

Liza shakes her head slowly. "No matter how many times I think I won't be surprised – I will still be surprised. I think I'm going to wake up every morning for the rest of my life wondering if this is some kind of LSD-induced nightmare."

The Sky Train zooms back from the other side of the crevice, sleek silver and clattering against the track.

"Do we need to take the train across?" Liza asks, suddenly struck with apprehension at the idea of meeting Charon. Charon! He was the guy who in all the Greek myths was portrayed as a skeletal figure shrouded in a black cowl that didn't completely conceal his skull-like face. But now, he's apparently the conductor of a high-tech, subterranean train. Liza imagines an archaic, pole-wielding guardian of the River Styx clipping holes in tickets and directing people to their seats. She giggles.

"What's so funny?" Thalia says.

"Oh, nothing." Her amusement diminishes in an instant like a helium balloon pricked by a needle. It's just her nervousness manifesting itself in macabre humor. Not funny at all. Pretty sad actually. She shifts on her toes and notices a faint blue glow along the path. It starts at her feet and swerves to the right, meandering along the stony path until it's lost beyond a turn. She almost imagines an arrow pointing her way along the glow. Straining forward slightly, she follows it with her eyes, squinting. "D'you see that?"

"See what?" James and Thalia say together.

"The path. It glows." Liza gestures at the ground. It's pale, but it's there.

Blankly, the other two shake their heads.

Hesitantly, as if she is testing the path with her toes, she takes a few steps along the marked glowing line. "I think," she says, half-turning, "that we are supposed to follow it."

"Um," Thalia says.

"I know it sounds ridiculous," Liza replies quickly, "but I just have this feeling, you know?" She tries her best not to rush her words, but she is a little freaked out herself. After all, she had thought that she was pretty normal as far as people a part of the Olympian world could be, but now she's seeing things that even the demigods can't see, so it's reached the point where she surpasses even them at weirdness. This is not good. Still, she's almost positive that –

"It's the Sight," James interrupts. "She can see the path." He sweeps his gaze over to her. "Can't you?"

Liza feels self-conscious. "Um." She would hardly call seeing a faint blue line in the ground as "the Sight," unless this "Sight" everyone keeps talking about is a very unimpressive thing. Besides, she's not even sure if she's right or not, so to go ahead and proclaim, yes, in fact, I know exactly where we're going, is the slightest bit pretentious.

But James can't hear her internal monologue, and it's probably all for the best. "Like Ariadne. She could See, and she was mortal just like Liza."

The train whistles back toward the other side of the underworld, and Thalia is watching, but it seems like her vision is turned inward at something neither of them can see. "Like Rachel," she says. Or so Liza thinks, because it's said so quietly that she's afraid she may have only heard it in her head. In a moment, Thalia snaps out of her deep, silent thoughts – out of the past, perhaps, Liza wonders – and says, "Yes, you're right, of course. Let's go."

With the purpose of a practiced schoolteacher, Thalia marches in the direction Liza faces and only pauses to throw back a "Are you coming or not?"

James and Liza exchange looks. He shrugs, and they follow fast on her heels.

It doesn't take long to reach their destination. The faint blue light never falters in its glow, leading them straight and true to the base of an underground mountain, only the side of which could be seen. The peak stretches through the ceiling and crests in the land above. Liza wonders where they are relative to the map. Have they traveled to the Appalachians already? It doesn't seem possible, but James assures her that time and space are different in the underworld.

The tunnel, when they reach it, stops them in their tracks. "Are you kidding me?" Liza says inanely. "Are you joking?" She feels the insane urge to laugh, which seems to grab her at the most inappropriate of times when she is in the underworld. Roughly, she suppresses it.

The questions aren't directed at anyone in particular but more at the fluorescent-lighted tunnel, which presumably leads to Hypnos' lair. Except, this isn't a normal tunnel.

"At least we don't have to walk?" James offers, with the same kind of deadpan optimism one uses when looking on the bright side of being shot in the leg.

The floor of the tunnel is a four-meter wide conveyor belt, moving inward at a meandering pace of three miles per hour. There's no conveyer belt heading outward, and everyone can catch the drift of what that means. Thalia takes a step forward, but Liza stops her. "Wait. This looks like it's inviting us in. That's kind of suspicious, isn't it? Who would make it so easy for us to get there? It's even lighted." She peers inside, and it's straight and endless. "This has to be a trap."

"Of course it is," Thalia says. "You learn eventually that everything is a trap. You just kind of walk in and hope you can figure it out before you actually get trapped." For a few seconds, Liza thinks she is being sarcastic, but then realizes she's not.

"No plans? That seems pretty irresponsible." She tries not to sound horribly appalled but isn't very successful.

James chuckles and unsheathes his sword. "I invented irresponsible."

Eyes rolled toward the ceiling, Liza shakes her head. "How are you people still alive, seriously?"

"A whole lot of dumb shit luck," he tells her. "So are you feeling lucky today?" He flashes her a feral grin.

She scowls at him heavily enough to let him know quite roundly that she doesn't appreciate his nonchalant attitude, before lifting her chin and brushing past both of them to step onto the conveyor belt, which rumbles and creaks briefly as if unused to human weight. The movement under her feet makes her balance sway for a split second. "We'll see if your luck holds up."

..o..

The conveyor belt carries them into the cave. The hanging fluorescent lights on the ceiling are badly battered, as if everyone in the world has forgotten about them. They dangle on the low ceiling, low enough that if James weren't careful, he would bump his head on one of them. If Liza stood on her tiptoes, she would too.

He is just beginning to think that, yes, she's right, this is far too easy. Where are the monsters? In the eerie quiet, he can almost imagine the gods watching from high above, waiting with bated breath. The gods, always watching. He feels a flash of annoyance. He wonders what they're waiting for now, if they're waiting –

And then, the lights go dark and plunges everything into the darkest black. Somewhere, in the back parts of his mind that are just starting to flicker on and catch wind of the situation, a voice is murmuring, wow, this is not good, not good at all. Can someone turn on the lights, please? He realizes he's holding his bare sword in one hand, when he hears Thalia scream, "Put it away! You're going to accidentally stab one of us in the dark!" Her disembodied voice wakes him up, and he hastily replaces the sword back in its scabbard – not without some difficulty.

"Where are you?" he calls out blindly. This is absolute darkness, he remembers dimly, from some silly cave exhibition he went on when he was young and his mother still took him on occasional vacations. The tour guide told them all to stay on the path as she flipped a switch and all of the lights in the cave went dark. This, the tour guide said with the feigned interest of one who is remarking on the merits of moldy cheese, is absolute darkness. It means there is the lack of any light. No light leaks into this cave. So it doesn't matter how long you stand here, your eyes will never adjust. Stick your hand in front of your face. You won't even be able to see the outlines. And she was right. It was a strange feeling, standing in impenetrable darkness, so black, it was almost like swimming through inky soup, like the darkness had a consistency.

That's how it feels now, like he had gone back to being a five-year-old who wasn't quite sure what the noise coming out of his closet was. Out of nowhere, a hand grabs his. He coughs, finding his voice again. "I'm going to assume that was you, Lizzy," he says aloud to the blackness before him. "And not a monster with really nice, soft hands."

Next to him, she huffs and her hand squirms a little. "Of course it's me."

"I'm here too," Thalia says.

"I heard you earlier," James replies.

"I know. I just wanted to remind you, since you're obviously more concerned with Liza's safety than mine."

He blushes, feeling grateful that no one can see it. "You're a big girl. You can take care of yourself, Hunter," he retorts. "Now, can we please think of how we can turn the lights back on so we're not fighting blind? You know, some monster could appear right now and stick its hand through our stomachs, and we wouldn't even know until our livers were gone and stopped processing whatever it is livers process."

Heavy breathing from all sides. The good thing is, James thinks, that it doesn't seem like there is going to be a monster attack after all – or if there is, that monster is horribly late or asleep or possibly just as bad as seeing in the dark as they are. He realizes his hands are sweaty, which is slightly mortifying, but he doesn't pull away. He doesn't think he could anyway, because Liza's hanging on so tightly that it's hampering his blood circulation. Think, he tells himself.

But in the end, of course, it is Liza who comes up with anything rational at all. "It's because we're in the realm of Nyx, isn't it? She is Hypnos' mother, so wherever he is, there is a little bit of her too. In the world of the goddess of the night, everything is dark. Except…" She falls silent for a few moments, and they wait patiently for what she might come up with next.

"Except what?" Thalia asks, brash and impatient.

"Hmm, I wonder," she says. "Take out an arrow, Thalia."

"Why –"

"Just do it!"

Thalia grumbles but does as she is told. She fumbles around with her quiver and pulls out an arrow. "Nobody move," she warns. "I don't want to take out an eye by accident." Then, as if by magic, the arrow flickers like a broken light bulb, before settling into a steady silver glow. Thalia brings it up to her face, where it illuminates the crevices of her young face, makes her eyes look dark blue.

"Bingo," Liza says. "I figured that since we were in the cave of Night, the only thing that shines is the moon. And Thalia is a Hunter, so she must have some moon properties." They huddle around the light of the single arrow like a bonfire. It's only enough to show the circle of their faces, swift glances shifting to one another. Below them, the conveyor belt moves on inexorably to their destination. James looks around, half expecting to see neon red exit signs pointing the other way, but even Hypnos and Nyx aren't ironic as all that.

It's Thalia that ends up voicing the obvious. "I guess we wait from here." Pause. "This is the worst quest ever."

"Maybe that's the point," Liza suggests. "Maybe the waiting is supposed to drive us crazy, so they won't even need any monsters. Maybe Hypnos will find us at the end of the tunnel absolutely bonkers, and he'll just have a good laugh and let us go."

In the darkness, Thalia gives the other girl a blank look. She turns to James. "For a non-demigod, she's got the 'thinking positive' part pretty much down, you think?"

..o..

There's no such luck for them. It's not long before a monster comes traipsing along, fighting the forward flow of the conveyor belt to get at them. It would be a piece of cake, except (as they find) the occurring theme of the monsters in the tunnel of Nyx is that they are not like the normal ones they face. For one, these monsters are all blind. They don't even have eyes, which is the part that is probably the scariest to Liza. They're just a face with huge nostrils and a gaping mouth. Their arms are rippling muscles and their legs are like tree trunks, so running away is not an option. Besides, there aren't any directions to run in.

Secondly, these monsters, probably deduced from the cavernous nostrils, have an amazing sense of smell. There isn't anything in a mile radius that they wouldn't be able to pinpoint with their noses. James and Thalia and her are not even remotely that far away.

The monster is so wide that his girth practically stretches from side to side of the belt, so there isn't any way to dodge it either. It's like a walking wall.

"Get behind me!" James yells at her. He catches the monster first, but he's not prepared enough, and it ends up slapping him five feet backwards.

Thalia shoots one of her arrows, but it's like pricking a buffalo with a needle – the thing probably doesn't even feel it. It screeches at her, all pissy-like, and then proceeds in hounding toward her, hands outstretched. All of a sudden, Liza finds the monster almost directly in front of her so she does the only thing she can think of. She stabs it in the foot and rolls between its legs to the other side, prays to the gods that she'll make it out clean. The monster narrowly misses stepping on her, and Liza manages to keep her brain from short-circuiting.

The monster howls, hopping on one foot, and there's not much left to do as James and Thalia finish it off. They stand there, sweating and panting, the noises echoing strangely in the tunnel. "That wasn't too bad, Lizzy," he says when he's caught his breath. "I thought for a second that he'd crush you with his foot for sure."

"Aren't you glad I gave her that dagger?" Thalia reminds him. "You need to have a little faith in people."

Liza shrugs. "I'm just glad I'm not dead." She replaces the dagger in the sheath and tries to get her ears to stop ringing with the roar of the disintegrated creature.

..o..

It's hard to mark how much time has passed in the darkness. Nobody is wearing a watch, and it doesn't matter anyway. But knowing the time probably would help them keep saner; yes, it's the wondering that's the hard part. Have they been there for a day or a week? Liza knows, at least, that his circadian rhythms have been severely hampered by the lack of daylight. She feels tired all the time, and she doesn't doubt the other two feel the same way.

The thick, heavy silence makes her contemplative. Something about the inevitability of the destination being on a single-track conveyor belt makes her think about…well, where's she's going to be if they ever get out of this thing alive. She's always been a planner. She's the kind of girl that drives men away because when she gets nervous, she gets into her hyper-planning mode and starts charting out her life years in advance and cleaning like a maniac. She has long known and accepted this facet of her personality.

She steals a glance at the two people with her – an almost-sixteen-but-really-three-hundred-year-old-servant-of-Artemis and the boy who she met on the playground defending her lunchbox way back when. They are the last people she ever imagined being with her for the most spontaneous thing she's ever done. Where she should be is at work. She doesn't need to have her pager on her person to know that she's no doubt missed at least fifty emails and twenty voicemails from work. There might be one from her mother or father telling her to stop ignoring their calls and show up to a public function once in a while. There might even be one from Bea, telling her she's pissed off that Liza disappeared on her own birthday dinner. Il Picco seems like it was a hundred years ago, back in a life that she's not sure she's interested in leading anymore. Which is funny, because just a few days ago, she would've told anyone who asked that she was perfectly happy with where she was in life, that she was making a statement, that she was going to get far without the Allen family.

Thank you very much.

How can so much change in just a few days? The very thought of returning to her tiny cubicle in the Department of Education gives her that claustrophobic feeling – this is, assuming, of course, that her lack of contact with the outside world hasn't already gotten her sacked. Maybe that wouldn't be such a bad thing. Maybe she would be able to start over.

In New York City, she thinks, with a measure of surprise. That would be somewhere to go. It is the city of opportunity, where people go when they don't know what they want to do.

It scares her, this feeling of not knowing what she wants to do. Ever since she was born, she knew what she wanted to do. Most people could not say this without some admitting that they were exaggerating but truly, Liza can't remember a time in her life when she felt lost like this. She grew up reading and writing. When she was six years old, she ran away from home for the first time. Admittedly, it was poorly thought out – she was six years old, after all – but she knew from that time forward that her family was stifling her. She wasn't interested in politics, wasn't interested in social spheres or making good impressions. She was anti-everything the Allen family had spent years establishing as a political dynasty.

She knew she wanted to make a difference in her life. She almost majored in social work in college, but her father's threats to immediately disinherit her and cut her off from the family made her reconsider. She loved her family, even if she disliked them very much. The job at the Department of Education was supposed to be her chance to climb up the ladder on her own. The interviewer had leaned in and said eagerly, "Liza Allen. Does this mean you're the daughter of Senator Allen?"

And she had gone into a nearly five-minute panicked oratory about how she didn't want her family connections to have any bearing on the hiring process until the interviewer, red and embarrassed, said he promised that it wouldn't and even sent her an apologetic card once they hired her, saying that she was very qualified and he was sorry for upsetting her.

And now, here she is in this impossible tunnel to a goddess' lair, her former, accomplished life waiting for her back in D.C. She isn't the kind of person who can just push it off until later to decide what to do with that. But part of the reason she's so wound up on it might be because she is unsure about a lot of things, and she thinks, maybe if I can just figure out this one career problem, I can figure out the rest of what I am so afraid of.

That is the question. What is she so afraid of?

So James turns to her with a crooked smile and says, "Ready to back out yet? The world of Greek mythology is a pretty freaky place."

It's not that that scares her. And she doesn't know how to answer anyway. She just takes his hand and hopes in the dark.

..o..

Five minutes into the tunnel, James had started feeling heavily guilty for bringing Liza into this whole mess. This is his world, his world that he's tried for so long to escape, and now, he's bringing a mortal into it, just because she can tell them where to go. Don't they have some kind of mythological GPS for this?

Five minutes after the first monster attacks, he's so guilty, he's thinking about telling Thalia to take Liza out of the tunnel. How? He doesn't know. He just knows that if she gets hurt, it will be his fault. Nothing and no one will ever make him forget what happened when he was fifteen. That time, he was alone. It ruined his life. Chiron will tell him time and time again that it was good for him, a learning experience, and he shouldn't beat himself up over it, but Chiron has seen heroes die. That James made it out a little battered but alive probably seemed like a huge success. Besides, he's pretty sure Chiron is obligated to sound encouraging and wise at all times.

This time, he's got people with him. Thalia knows what she got herself into. Liza? Not so much. He admires her optimism, but he's afraid for her. If she gets hurt then he will –

He doesn't even want to think about it. It's like he's afraid it will happen if it even crosses his mind. At the same time, he's ashamed to admit it, but he doesn't exactly know how to tell her to go home. And not because he's afraid it will hurt her pride, but he's afraid to say goodbye. He forgot how much he liked her. The woman sitting across from him looks like the very image of a professional career-type, even though there's a smudge on her cheek and her hair is flying in four hundred directions (something, he knows as a man never ever to tell a woman). She looks smart and accomplished. She looks like she knows where she's going in life and what she's doing. She looks like she wouldn't be out of place on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange or at a high-end law firm.

Women like that didn't fight monsters or hang out with troubled guys like him. Women like that married men who were also professional career-type people and sent their children to expensive college prep schools in New York City. They had friends who bought Louboutin shoes and went to Europe for vacations. They didn't believe in Greek gods, much less go on quests. They certainly couldn't dispatch monsters with knives.

The point is, the point is, it all leads to one devastating conclusion. He likes Liza Allen. Like likes. He snorts. He's making it sound like a fourth-grade crush, but that other word is a bit too strong. He likes Liza in the way that, if they weren't headed toward potential doom, he might ask her out on a date. You know, if he could get back into the swing of dating. The last girl he dated was a daughter of Demeter, Janelle, and after the quest, he stopped talking to her. She got mad and dumped him. That was pretty much it. The other girls at Camp started thinking of him as That Emo Kid. When he became a counselor, he had a couple of flings – nothing he would consider dating, per se. He doesn't want to just have a fling with Liza, though. He wants to actually be with her. She is – what is the word he's thinking of – cool. And he likes her.

The problem is, he's still thinking of the reincarnation thing. That is so weird. So Liza is supposed to be Annabeth Chase, his soul mate or something. Does he like Liza because he's legitimately attracted to her, or is his dormant soul doing some freaky reconnecting thing with hers? He still doesn't have any memories of his past life, even though Thalia spends the spare time recounting stories that mean nothing to either Liza or him.

He doesn't know what to think. All he knows is there are a million reasons why this might be a nice fantasy in a dark hole in the ground, it would never work in real life. Firstly, Liza is a mortal. He has tried the whole mortal thing before, and it always ends badly. His favorite (and by favorite, he means, most mortifying) conclusion was when a party of centaurs crashed into the girl's living room while they were – ahem – occupied. The Mist made her think it was a group of drunk plumbers, but not even the Mist could hide the gigantic hole in her wall and how the "drunk plumbers" knew him by name.

Secondly, Liza has a life. Who knows, she might even have a boyfriend.

Thirdly, just because some ancient fated love said that they would end up together again, doesn't make it so. In a past life, he was the hero of the world. Today, he is James Fording, a wanderer and a son of Hermes who lives by his wits. Shit happens.

There isn't any conceivable way this would work out.

She slips her hand into his. He could pretend, though. For a little while.

..o..

The end comes almost sooner than they expect, and with a lot less pomp and circumstance. "Hey," says a voice, brassy and loud and hurting her ears. Liza wakes up, not remembering when she fell asleep, and finds Thalia's toe lodged in her side.

"Sorry," she murmurs groggily. "When did I fall asleep?"

"I dunno," she replies, "Doesn't matter. We're here."

Liza bolts upright. The tunnel has lit up, light from the doorway, and the conveyor belt is very quickly coming to an end.

James swears. "So we are. All right, everybody. Stay together. This could be a trap. This could be a false alarm. Whatever. As long as it gets out of this gods-forsaken cave." He stands up, and the rest of them follow suit, squinting against the piercing light and what lies beyond the doorway. He holds a hand up to his eyes and attempts to see past it, but it's like a liquid wall of brightness.

The belt is getting shorter and shorter. Liza braces herself between James and Thalia and grits her teeth.

There's that brief moment of panic as they approach the doorway, and then – they're through.

Liza takes a breath so deep it hurts her lungs and blinks profusely until tears wet her eyelashes. They seem to be in the middle of a – no way. She looks around again. "Are you serious?" she asks. She glances at Thalia and James, waiting for an answer to her question, but they don't seem inclined to answer. Maybe because they are in disbelief too.

They are standing in the reception area of a grand lobby. A hotel lobby. Above them, a crystal chandelier sways softly, the pinpricks of light flickering around on the carpeted floor as if someone had just disturbed the glittery hanging monstrosity. In the middle of the room sits a burbling fountain decorated with carved marble dancing cherubs, the bottom coated with a healthy layer of golden coins, as if tossed by wealthy patrons making wishes.

Except – "Umm," she pronounces with a degree of surprise. There are no wealthy patrons in the middle of the underworld, and she's also fairly sure there's no one who would need a hotel room here either. "Umm," she presses, which means, someone please tell me what the hell is going on?

"Uh, I think this is a hotel," James says. "Actually."

Liza notices a man hutched over a grand piano in the corner, plunking out a gentle melody. "Right. A hotel. That makes sense," she hears herself say faintly. Because that's what supposed to be at the end of a miles-long conveyor belt in pitch darkness, right? A hotel. Clearly.

"Yes." For the first time, she sees a lady behind the reception desk – for a split second, Liza wonders if she only just appeared – dressed in an extravagant chiffon ball gown. When she sweeps out from behind counter, the train trails behind her. She looks like a Victorian era debutante. Liza doesn't need a demigod to tell her this woman is a goddess. She could be a monster, but Liza thinks she's far too beautiful and far too comfortable with herself to be a monster.

The goddess stops right in front of them. Her goblet-sized curls, a shade darker than Liza's butter yellow hair, is twisted in a French chignon, but half of it falls down her back like a waterfall of antique gold all the way to her impossibly thin waist. She is so slim and perfect, she looks like a real-life sketch of a Disney princess. Maybe Aurora from Sleeping Beauty. "Welcome," she says. Her eyes are amber. She smells like jasmine. She speaks with a heavy Georgian drawl. It's like she stepped straight out from the pages of a history textbook, except she's prettier than anyone looked back then.

In short, she is the opposite of what Liza expects out of a goddess. But really, at this point, shouldn't she have learned not to be surprised?

"Who are you?" Thalia demands. She has that belligerent stance, the way she braces her legs when she expects to have a face-off.

The goddess' rustling gown settles around her in folds. She purses her lips. "I might ask the same, little girl. You are barging into my hotel, after all. Except, I do know who you are, Thalia Grace. And you two, James Fording and Liza Allen. I know all of you. I have been watching you."

Liza shivers, but Thalia just looks outraged at the insult of her using "little girl" and her full name so close to each other. "You didn't answer my question, and I asked first."

"I am Mnemosyne." She sounds bored, and her tone puts into words what she doesn't need to say aloud – obviously! As if she is annoyed that they don't immediately recognize her for who she is. Well, Liza thinks, shaking herself out of the shock, it's not like anyone gave them picture identification like hey, this is who you're looking for, just by the way, so you're not running around like chickens with your heads cut off, which is in essence, what they'd been doing. It worked out rather well, though. Here is Mnemosyne, unharmed and ready to go.

But there are so many questions, way too many questions. Like, why are we in a hotel? Or where have you been? The one that ends up being asked is, "Why are you dressed like that?" because to tell the truth, Liza had been expecting some rendition of a toga, and she certainly hadn't expected the warm Georgian slur of her words.

James shoots her a look that says, why are you questioning her fashion sense when she has the ability to send us all up in flames?

"Because," she says, "I like the simplicity of older days. When people were friendlier and liked to reminisce. Now, it's all go-go-go, and people barely sit down to collect their memories anymore. They have photographs and videos and technology to record memories for them, but there's nothing as sweet as a memory locked deep in your head. I haven't had anything to do for ages. And this is why I like to run this hotel. A hotel is where people come and go. The checking point between adventures. I like the in-between. So here I am. I dolled up Hypnos' cave for my own little place. He didn't seem to mind."

"So this hotel is…" James ventures.

"—This hotel is where lost souls come on occasion when they tire of wandering along the shores of the Styx. Or the ones who are unwilling to cross into the underworld. Denial. It's a powerful motivation. Some people are simply not ready to be dead. They come to this hotel and the pool can help them unload whatever it is makes it difficult for them to let go. The rooms are for them. Of course, many of them come simply for the sleep. Hypnos offers the best sleep anyone can give. And dead people are very, very tired."

"…Right," he says. "And the reason why no one knows where you are?"

"I usually stay near Hades' palace, but the Sky Train gives me headaches with all of its rumble and clattering. It's so loud there. It completely ruins the ambiance of what I do." She makes dramatic hand motions to accompany her speech, as if clattering and ungainly modern architecture will be the death of her. "So I relocated, and Hypnos was only so glad to oblige. He likes it here too." She turns her head ever so slightly and smiles at the piano man in the corner.

"And you didn't tell anybody?"

"Nobody asked. Nobody ever asks where I go. I'm just one of those minor goddesses, show up on Olympus twice a year to do our solstice meetings and then I come back here."

Liza finds this outrageous. Unbelievable, even. "Your daughters are threatening to halt the progression of culture!" she shouts. "You didn't tell them either?"

It might be her imagination, but Mnemosyne's eyes flash from molten gold to black for a second, but they return to normal. "It can be tiring, you know, to be the mother of nine teenage daughters. You wouldn't know a thing about that, Liza Allen; don't look at me with that horrified expression. I just needed a break from them. I wasn't going to let anything happen. But I just needed some peace and quiet. When I don't want to be found, I'm not found. Hades wasn't all that concerned. It's not my fault the whole of Olympus went into some kind of hullabaloo over this."

"Yes, yes it is your fault." Liza stamps her foot. "You brought us all the way down here, but you were fine the whole time. You could've, I dunno, sent a message or something. You're a goddess. Aren't goddesses supposed to be responsible over mortals and earth and other important stuff like that?" She is mad. She is so mad. How dare she, standing there smugly in her lavender chiffon gown and smile her sharp condescending smile! She sent all of them on a wild goose chase!

"Y'all wouldn't know the first thing about being a goddess." She crosses her arms and bumps up her ample cleavage.

"Well, Lizzy's right," James says, standing next to her, and his arm brushes hers. "The Muses are acting like a bunch of spoiled kids, and that's your fault, at least, don't you think? Also, we could've died. But you know, no big deal. We're just expendable mortals, right?"

Mnemosyne looks thoroughly unamused at this time. "Enough. I did not expect such insolence. I am not here to be lectured." She glances over at the piano man, who has stopped playing and turned around on the bench. "And besides, we have done enough talking. I think y'all should know that rules are rules. There's nothing for it. People come here to sleep." Her fingers twine together. "I can't have angry, loud mortals coming here and imposing their ridiculous notions on this place. It's time for you to go to sleep. Hypnos?"

The piano man – Hypnos, Liza realizes, startled – stands up and strides toward them. He's wearing a slick double-tailed tuxedo, and he has sleepy hazel eyes and twitchy fingers.

Thalia nocks an arrow, but Liza blacks out before she gets a chance to see if Thalia released the shot. In her last moments of consciousness, she expects to hit the ground with a thud, but the thud never comes.

..o..

In front of her is a two-faced man. Kind of like Two-Face from the Batman reruns on TV when she was young, except this guy is almost seven feet tall and he literally has two faces, not just two halves of one face. They're standing at a train station that is empty with the exception of the two of them. It's the kind of cloudy day that appears bright white, the kind of day she hates, because it can't decide whether to be gloomy or sunny.

Liza can't remember coming here, and she doesn't know why she's here. In fact, it seems like she has been here for…forever. Like she has always been here and like she will never leave. This is a dream, she thinks, quite clearly. She checks to make sure she can see her feet, because the defining factor of most dreams is that she can't see her feet; it's too hazy. But no, her feet are there. She's wearing tennis shoes. She can't remember the last time she wore tennis shoes; maybe in high school P.E. This is when she notices that she's wearing an orange Camp Half-Blood t-shirt and jean shorts. Still…

She looks the strange man straight in the face (er, faces) and says, "This is a dream, isn't it?"

He shrugs, which is the strangest of gestures, because the shoulders bump at his two chins. "I don't know, is it?" One of the faces looks pleased and the other one looks disgruntled and keeps checking its watch, like he can't believe he has to DVR his favorite show to talk with her.

"Who are you?" She asks the obvious question, because she's the kind of person that can't come to any conclusions unless she's gathered enough facts. She stays calm. There aren't enough facts to warrant panic. Yet.

The voices speak in eerie unison. "I am Janus, god of doorways, beginnings, endings, and choices. I am here, especially to see you."

"Me?"

"Well, you don't see anyone else around here, do you?" the left face says insultingly. "And everyone said she was a smart one. Maybe intelligence doesn't stay through reincarnation."

The right face tuts. "Maybe she's not the right one, after all."

"Oh, come on. Have you looked at her? Spitting image, spitting image. Besides, I remember her being a bit dim-witted when we visited her that very first time. Except that time, she was with the Jackson brat, and he kept interrupting. And then Hera, of course. Everyone is so nosy. Thank goodness we caught her by herself this time. No distractions. No influences. She can make the decision all by herself."

Liza frowns. They're talking about her, but she can't make any sense of it. "What decision?" she says, too loudly. Her voice echoes in the empty station. She notices, for the first time, a red train stopped beside them on the tracks. The windows are big and clear, and she can see the seats all on the inside, lined up in rows.

Janus ignores her question. The face on the left eases into a Cheshire-cat smile, so sharp, that she can almost imagine needle-sharp teeth peeking past the lips. "Memories, Rosie. Which ones do you remember?"

"My name's not Rosie."

"Oh," the right face sighs. "Of course it's not. Stop being an idiot," it tells the left face. "Her name is Liza now."

"Liza is an ugly name," the left face says. "It doesn't suit her pretty face. Rose was my favorite. Flower names are timeless. The original name, at least, was interesting. Not one you saw on the street every day. Divine mothers are more creative."

Liza grows tired of this banter. "Stop speaking in riddles. What do you mean by all of this?"

"Slow down, Annabeth," the left face teases. "We can't tell you anything. You have to figure it out by yourself. You'll just have to decide whether you want to or not. Your choice. Your curse, after all. Three lives, almost over. We are reaching an end."

"Or a beginning," the right face puts in hopefully.

"Or a beginning," the left one agrees. "But that's all up to you. Mnemosyne is up to her old tricks again. The human mind is a fascinating thing to play with. Janus knows. Sometimes, even the minor gods can enjoy their jobs." He (the left face) looks at her. He has a blue eye and a green one.

Annabeth, Annabeth, says a woman's voice in her head, singsong. Liza's head is spinning in circles until she is too dizzy even to formulate one clear thought. She cups her hands up to her mouth and puffs out a white cloud of water vapor. "Tell me, Janus. What am I supposed to choose?"

The left face, the more talkative one, hoots and slaps his thigh. "It is not our job to tell you what is the right choice. It is your indecision that delights us. Makes us brim to the edge with delight. We are here to offer you the choice. If you make the right choice, then good for you. If you make the wrong one, then, better for us. But in the end, the choice is yours, to do with what you please." Little crinkles of laughter gather in the corners of his eyes. "What a hollow shell of oneself when memories are gone. Perhaps the choice for Elysium wasn't the right one to begin with. You were always too self-confident. Percy Jackson is a funny boy to have picked you."

Liza's head throbs horribly. She rubs her temples. Aloud, she says, "This is no dream. A nightmare, definitely." She glares at them, as if with the sheer willpower of her eyes she can make them give her the answers. Who is Percy Jackson? And why has he picked her? Why doesn't she know who he is?

The worst part is, she feels awful for not knowing who he is, because the name seeps into her veins and into her very blood, as if it is an intrinsic part of her. But she doesn't know who it is. She knows that Percy Jackson is important, but why? And why can't she remember him? She remembers the other name Janus mentioned, Annabeth. Annabeth-Annabeth, the woman's voice calls out insistently, making her headache worse. When she repeats it in her head, it's as if the names make a certain kind of convoluted sense – Annabeth-and-Percy, fitting together somehow like two parts of a whole.

Janus turns to leave, and she knows the minute he goes, the train station will disappear and the dream will be over. Before he can disappear, she shouts, "How am I supposed to know the right choice?"

The left face blows a raspberry, but the right face looks pensive. The latter slowly lifts its gaze, lips flat. "Easy advice," he says. There is a pause. "Follow your heart."

And then, she wakes up.

..o..

Wow, she has a horrible headache, the kind you get when you are fully aware the night before that you are going to have a dreadful hangover in the morning and then you decide to oversleep on top of it. She feels like her brain is pushing right up against her skull and pulsing and – ow. She blinks and realizes that she's lying down on one of the couches in the lobby of a five-star hotel; where is – oh right. It wasn't a nightmare. She is here. In the background, the soft piano music plays on.

She turns her to look for the direction of the music, where Hypnos is. There is a horrible crick in her neck. And she notices for the first time that she is chained to the couch. What is going on? The couches are arranged in a circle with a coffee table of lacquered warm blond wood in the middle. Images of carved satyrs and maenads dance around the edges, so lifelike, they might as well actually be moving. James and Thalia are chained to separate couches. Both of them seem to be sleeping, and she's too afraid to try and wake them up in case Hypnos hears them and sends them back into a dreaming stupor. Mnemosyne, the bitch herself, is nowhere to be seen.

But then James slowly opens his eyes. He can't put a finger to his lips, but he just barely shakes his head, to say, please, don't say a word. She nods. What are you going to do? she mouths silently. He doesn't move, which she takes to mean, to hell if I know.

The chains are of some golden-bronze material, not the shiny silver metallic links she expected. They are surprisingly light. She shakes her wrists a little to see how tight they're bound, and unexpectedly, her hands go right through the links. She almost yelps in surprise, but she swallows the sound right before it escapes her lips. Celestial bronze, she thinks, the truth dawning on her. They had this conversation before in the tunnel. Celestial bronze is harmless to mortals, and lucky for them, Hypnos and Mnemosyne forgot she was a mortal, traveling with demigods as she was. She breathes in deep, tries to chase the headache and her jitters away with oxygen.

Behind James, Hypnos plays the piano, his fingers flying over the keys. His back curves with the melody and straightens with the beat. He is utterly absorbed in the music. Even so, Liza doesn't think she'll get away with undoing noisy metal chains. But what can she do? Her eyes fall upon the quiver full of arrows and the slender bow resting at the feet of Thalia's couch, all perfect and waiting for her to pick them up. She's never handled a bow and arrow before, but there's no time like the present to learn. Especially if there's a god playing the piano and threatening to send you into slumber like sleeping beauty for the next hundred years. Yep, no time like the present.

Carefully – thank goodness the floor of the hotel is carpeted – she skirts around the edge of the coffee table and pulls a tip-heavy arrow out of the quiver by its tufted back end. The bow, constructed of smooth mahogany, is heavier than she expects when she picks it up. Thalia imperceptibly nods her approval. Liza isn't sure about this. The one time she can remember ever using a bow was in archery class freshman year of high school. She missed the target, ended up almost nailing the teacher, and was pretty much advised to never sign up for archery has her elective again. There went her goals to be this graceful, self-possessed archer. It wasn't in her. It probably wasn't going to be in her now, and that sucked, because she had one chance to get this right.

Impossible things, she thinks. Many impossible things have happened. She raises the bow, nocks the arrow, and pulls it straight back to her eye. She swallows. Just need one more impossible thing. Her hands quiver. She sends a prayer to Artemis and wonders if goddesses even hear mortal prayers. One more impossible thing. She counts down to herself. Three. Two –

"What are you doing?" Mnemosyne shrieks, running into the room.

One. Liza lets the arrow fly. Out of the corner of her eye, Mnemosyne shoots her own brand of magic out at the path of the arrow, but it is too fast, or it is protected by something moonlit and magical. Thalia doesn't have normal arrows. Time is slow, and Liza can see everything happening frame by frame. Hypnos stops playing and swivels his head, but it's too late.

Thump.

Almost absurdly, the arrow sticks out of Hypnos' back like a poorly positioned needle on a pincushion. He stares at it for a moment, and then disappears, leaving the room oddly quiet without the piano music.

"Hurry!" Thalia yells. "There isn't time!" She's right. Liza's mind goes clear and blank. She rushes to James and unwinds the chains, fingers fumbling madly. The chains clink to the ground, and he draws his sword.

Mnemosyne has shaken herself out of her angry stupor. "You wouldn't attack a lady, James." She lifts her chin.

"Yeah? Watch me." He charges toward her.

She sidesteps daintily, but the tip of his sword catches one of her balloon sleeves. It rips. Mnemosyne lets out a furious scream. "I'm a goddess! How dare you!"

"Keep saying that," James suggests, "and see how far it gets you. It's not like I can kill you anyway. It's fighting without the guilt! Perfect."

She puts on a scandalized expression. "You're despicable. I'm not staying around for this. Y'all going to regret coming down here and messing up my beautiful hotel. Forcing me to go back to the noisy upper world, I won't forgive you for that. I won't." She snaps her fingers and disappears in a shower of gold, right as one of Thalia's arrows passes through the spot where she stood.

Thalia slings her bow over her shoulder and inclines her head at Liza. "Pretty good shot. Messy form, but you hit the target."

There's an awkward pause. "Thanks," Liza says. "Does this mean everything is going to be normal now? Mnemosyne is back where she is supposed to be. We can go back to the real world, yes?"

Thalia picks through the couches and coffee table, other random décor in the room – like a Ming porcelain vase and a potted palm tree – and stops at the fountain, where the bubbling water replaces the piano music with its sleepy quality. "Maybe. Come look at this."

Liza and James exchange looks and follow her. The water shimmers with an iridescent quality, like it has a fine layer of oil skimming the surface. The colors reflect flash-quick images, and Liza thinks she sees something, but it might just be a trick of the light. The marble cherubs look menacing instead of cheerful up close.

"This," says Thalia, "is the pool of Mnemosyne."

"Okay." James nods. "If this is Mnemosyne's, it means we should probably get as far away as we possibly can. Right. I can do that."

"No!" Thalia says. "I mean, this is the pool of Mnemosyne, the pool of memory. This is the water spirits drink when they want to retain their memories in the afterlife. It's only people who are granted Elysium or Isles of the Blessed who get to do it, usually, because they're the only ones who would have any benefit in remembering the past life. But it works on everybody. It retrieves memories – all of your memories. This is why we came here. I get it now." She looks up at them, her blue eyes fierce and sharp.

In that moment, Liza realizes what she means. Helplessly, she glances at James. Their eyes meet, and suddenly, she finds, she doesn't want everything to go back to normal. Not normal-normal anyway. There is so much to say. The air is heavy with meaning, but Thalia is waiting, and the pressure gathers until Liza is too tired to pick out what is important and what needs to be said.

"Don't you see?" Thalia presses. She shakes a finger at the water. "This. This is why we came all the way down here. It's fate. This is supposed to happen. You are supposed to drink the water, and then, you'll be Percy and Annabeth again, just like it should be. Just like I told you it would be." She smiles beatifically. The silence in the air slowly remolds her smile into a frown. "What? Why are you standing there like that?"

After a few beats, Liza sits down next to her. "It's not all that simple, Thalia."

"What do you mean?" she demands.

"Don't you think this is kind of a big decision?"

Thalia crosses her arms. "Okay," she says skeptically. "This is not one of those things you can 'sit on' for a couple of days and come to a conclusion then. This is right here, right now. You are either going to do it or you're not. I don't see what the big problem is. You are who you are. Nothing you do is going to change that. Whether you know it or not, there are memories inside, and you can either choose to replace them or ignore them."

She thinks of the mysterious, hazy dream that she only has snapshots from now. Janus visited her, she remembers. Is this the decision? Is this the choice she is supposed to make? She can't make this choice, this choice that would change her future, reorient her place in this world. She just looks at James.

"Well?" he says in that nonchalant way, but she can tell his thoughts are thick as hers. "What do you want to do? It's here." He gestures at the pool.

Yes, she thinks sadly. Why does it have to be here? Just once in her life, she wonders what would happen if she took a chance and did the thing that wasn't logical. Fifty years from now, will she regret making the decision she did? Will she regret not having the courage to choose the road less taken? She wishes she wasn't the kind of person who had to weigh all of the consequences. But she is. She can't change her core-self. She never wanted to until now. She never felt so useless. But again, there isn't anything she can do about that, either.

Once, she asked herself in the tunnel what she was afraid of. She thinks she knows. She is afraid of what will happen if she does not control it. Everything could unravel.

"You aren't really thinking about this, are you?" she says finally, but it comes out all wrong. She can see the hurt that flashes across his face in a split second, before he wipes it off with the trained skill of one who is used to shoving his feelings under the rug. That's not what I meant, she thinks, but she doesn't say it out loud. It's too late.

"Liza," Thalia starts.

"—I just can't do this," she blurts out.

James shifts on his feet. Almost too quiet to hear, "You don't have to do it alone, you know."

Their eyes meet. Just tell me, she thinks. Please. But how can she ask something of him that she is too afraid to say?

Softly, he says, "We could, if you wanted."

She wishes she could believe. "I know." The cherubs wink at her, tilted eyebrows that seem to move. "I can't be someone I'm not."

"Then let's be exactly who we are," he says. "You and me."

And he is looking at her with those green eyes and slack cheeks that tell her he is hoping she will say yes, and she thinks she might break his heart if she says no. Because she thinks he might like her, might even love her, but she can't let him do that.

She cannot drink the water. She cannot force herself to be this Annabeth, if she's not right now. And she can't let him love her just because there's some forgotten memory inside him telling him that he should love her. She can't force him to do anything. The water is a trick. Fifty years in the future, she doesn't want to wonder if he loves her just because the stupid water told him to.

"I want to go home," she says.

He swallows. "Okay." With his two hands, he draws a shape in the air. The hotel rumbles and a hole emerges midair for her to step through. The portal hangs there, waiting for her to say goodbye.

She considers saying sorry, but then again, it wouldn't mean anything after the crushing rejection she just dealt. So maybe it's better not to say anything at all.

One foot in the hole.

"Hey," James says, grabbing her wrist. He searches her face for something he might've missed, and she feels ashamed. "Don't be afraid. Be brave."

"I am being brave," she says and pulls away.

..o..

Summers in New York City are surprisingly muggy and humid, even though it's hundreds of miles more northerly than Washington D.C. So that's one thing that reminds Liza of home. She's been in the Big Apple for three months now, but there are still days when she wakes up in the wee hours of the morning wondering why she's in an unfamiliar apartment for a few seconds before reality catches up with her sleep-deprived brain.

"Go home, honey. It's almost six-thirty. The memos can wait." Carrie says. Her eyes crinkle up in the corners sympathetically. "You're such a hard worker."

Yes, it's good that some things are still familiar. No matter where she goes, Liza will always be a workaholic. But things are a bit different. She's working as a secretary for an accountancy firm in New York. It's not the most thrilling work in the world – gods know, the paperwork is dreadful, but it pays sufficiently well enough to pay her rent. Rent in NYC will have her soul, she thinks as she shuffles away her papers.

She likes to stay long hours because the work gives her something to do, something to keep her busy. Going home to an empty apartment and turning on Lifetime is only a sign of to what degree her life has degenerated. Sitting in front of the TV and eating butter pecan ice cream out of the carton, it's hard to believe that three months ago, she was traipsing about in the underworld. In her utterly unremarkable life, it's easy to think the whole thing was a dream.

But there are small reminders. Like how she sees monsters with increasing frequency now that she's closer to Camp Half-Blood. They mostly ignore her, but she carries a celestial bronze knife on her anyway. Once, she ran across an eleven-year-old son of Apollo. She drove him to the borders of Camp and watched him cross. When she drove home that night, she took a bunch of sleeping pills and slept for eighteen straight hours. It wasn't safe, but there was too much on her mind to stay awake and sort through it all. She doesn't like to sort through things much these days. She isn't one for regret.

She's reminded every time she opens the door, walks down the street. This is New York City, not D.C. Her parents don't live fifteen minutes away. Bea and her will never be friends again, not after she showed up at the office four days without leave and quit on the spot without an explanation. Bea was furious. It didn't matter at the time, but sometimes, Liza feels bad about it. They were kind of friends, after all.

The thing that does matter, always matters, is how she lives here alone, and every moment of every day, she knows it's her fault. There's no way she can apologize for what she did. They probably don't want to hear it anyway, Thalia and James. There are times, on impulse, when she'll be seized by a crazy desire to drive back to D.C. and scour every street for James, maybe return to the old playground where against all hope – she believes he'll be waiting for her with a half-smile, watching the children swing. But that's ridiculous, of course. He probably doesn't want to see her. She didn't give him any reason to want to see her.

And it all loops back again to being her fault. She tries hard not to feel guilty about it. She has a new life now; she likes it. Being in New York has given her the distance and the kind of new outlook on everything that she's wanted. If nothing else, meeting James again and Thalia gave her that.

"Hey, Liza," a voice says.

She turns around, smiles a little blankly. "Hello, Rob. Something the matter?"

Rob is slightly sallow, but most of the accountants at the firm are a bit sallow because – well, come on, they're accountants. He was the guy who conducted her orientation when she was hired. He's been exceptionally nice and helpful. Probably a couple of years older than her. Normal, middle-class New Yorker. He sidles up to her awkwardly. "You need a hand?"

"Need a hand putting away my papers?" She laughs. "No thanks, Rob. I'm a big girl. I think I can wrangle the horrors of my file cabinet."

He grins and relaxes. "Yeah, sorry, I guess you can, huh? Well, actually, I came over here because I was wondering…"

"Mm hmm?" Most likely, he has some new project or some late report he needs to review or send to the boss, and he feels bad giving it to her at this point.

"Umm, I was wondering if you were free this weekend, actually."

"Oh." She looks up. This is unexpected. Rob blushes. If she paid enough attention to her surroundings, she might've noticed him hanging around her desk a lot recently, probably plucking up the courage to ask her out. Well, she's done enough rejecting for a while. She can't think of a good enough reason to say no, and she's obviously not going to be busy this weekend. "I think I am."

"How does dinner sound?" he says eagerly.

She smiles. He's nice. A nice, normal, mortal guy. And she hasn't dated for so long. "That sounds fantastic. Pick me up at seven? I promise I'll look nicer than I do for work."

"Great. I'll see you then." He looks thrilled.

Liza is…Liza is feeling okay. She feels considerably better by the time she packs up her stuff, turns off her lamp, and heads for the door. The office is empty, and tonight, she is not dreading going back to her apartment. Maybe she'll have fun on this date. This is good for her, getting back to dating. She can't live in regret all of the time. She is moving forward, the way James would tell her to do.

She is being brave.

..o..

Summer in D.C. sucks. It's not like he hasn't lived them before, but at this point, the heat is really just pissing him off. He wants to just hang out like he used to around the streets at dusk when the humidity would die down and a breeze would pick up. But because he's trying his hand at this whole "responsibility" thing, he's taking classes at the community college during the day and working the night shift for museum security. The good part about this is he has an apartment to call his own for the first time in his life. The bad part is he rarely gets to use it because he's busy all of the time. He sleeps about four hours in the morning after his shift at the museum and before his first class. He naps between the other classes and does homework at dinner. His dyslexia is just as bad as he remembered it being in high school, but he's learning ways to work through it with a counselor.

Ah, at least the museum has air conditioning. He swings around a flashlight loosely, tosses it in the air, and catches it again.

It really sucks that the only museum that had an opening was the Aerospace Museum. Every time he comes to work, he has to walk up those same steps that he and Liza and Thalia sat on when they first ran into that dracaena. It seems like forever ago. But those goddamn steps. He hates walking up them. He hates seeing them from inside the glass. They make him think of Liza, and she's gone for good, so that's the least productive thing ever.

It's not like he didn't try to find her. He returned to D.C. and went back to the Department of Education, waited for her to come out of that door with her blond hair tied up, carrying a leather suitcase. She never came. He went inside to ask about her, and they told him she quit and moved out of the city, although she didn't tell them where. And that was it. She had done a damn good job of getting away and covering her tracks. He was so stupid. He is so stupid for still thinking about it now.

It seems like such a horrible trick of fate that he ran into his childhood friend twenty years later only to lose her because he is a demigod. Demigods just can't be happy. It's like against the rules of Greek mythology for demigods to be happy.

Thalia left after the quest was over. She said she would help him find Liza, although he isn't even sure he wants to find her. She obviously doesn't want him to find her – she made that abundantly clear when she picked up and moved away just to avoid him. It hurts his pride a bit, but that's not the worst thing. The worst thing is how she completely dumped him but he still can't get over her. He can't bear it. He will take the long way around, risk being in the sweltering heat for an extra twenty minutes, just to avoid the neighborhood around Il Picco. But avoiding it means he is aware of it, that he is thinking of it, and avoiding it means it stands out all the more prominently in his mind. It's like a catch-22.

On nights like these, when it's sticky and hot and quiet outside, when the traffic doesn't seem to be as bad as it usually is, and the college students haven't hit the town yet, his mind swims with thoughts of Liza. Sometimes, he even thinks of the way her hair was always in tight, high pigtails that made her look younger than she was as a child. He wonders when her parents finally let her do her hair by herself in the morning. By that time, she had stopped coming to the park and he had felt curiously hollow inside from her absence, as hollow as a nine-year-old boy could be. But he had forgotten about her quickly then. It isn't so easy now.

He yawns and tosses the flashlight again. Something swoops by with a sharp twang and knocks it out of the air. It lands with a clatter and rolls across the floor.

A girl with windblown black hair picks it up.

James swallows his surprise and groans. "Aw, dammit, Thalia. You broke my one good flashlight. Did you have to shoot it? What was the poor thing doing to you?"

..o..

Liza dresses up for the first time since that night at Il Picco. She still has that little black dress, but she figures she won't be wearing it ever again. Even so, she can't bring herself to throw it out, so it hangs in her closet. For the date, she decides to go with a knee-length silvery gray number, a single necklace to dress it up, and a pair of silver stilettos.

She has that goosebumpy feel, the nervousness that almost verges on illness in the fifteen minutes before Rob shows up. She turns on her curling iron to fix a curl only to turn it off thirty seconds later before the iron has completely heated up. She spends five minutes trying to decide what perfume to wear. She is suddenly seized by the realization that he is going to see her living room, which is not nearly as clean enough as it should be, so she dusts and polishes everything for the fortieth time. She dials his cell ten minutes before to tell him she feels too sick to go on a date tonight, might they reschedule? But she hangs up the phone in a panic after the first ring, chickening out. Of course, now he's going to think she's a total spaz if he gets that missed call – does a missed call show up if she hangs up before it rings all of the way through?

There are all of these all-important things to think about until – oh, the doorbell. Her nausea clears up. She opens the door, and Rob is standing there with a bouquet of lilies. "Thank you," she says. "These are beautiful." And they are. In a nervous frenzy, she can't remember where she's put any of the vases, so she ends up sticking it in a large blue glass and putting it on the coffee table by the door.

"You're quite beautiful yourself," he tells her and she blushes. "Are you ready to go?"

In a nice shirt and khakis and his dusty blond hair controlled by hair gel, he looks much more put together than he does at the office. He looks perfectly opposite of James, who has never used hair gel, but whose hair falls in a charming, messy kind of sense on his head – stop that. "Definitely," she says firmly. "Where are we going?"

"I hope you like Greek cuisine," he says.

This strikes her as almost laughably ironic. "I do, in fact. Love it."

He appears heartened by this, but he needn't have worried. Liza is a food connoisseur; she'll eat practically anything as long as it's put on a plate in front of her. "There's this lovely place just around the corner from our office. It's kind of out of the way, so you probably haven't noticed it before. It's a beautiful night outside. D'you want to walk?"

She says she would love to, and they head out.

On the way, he asks her about where she came from. She doesn't tell him much about her family but the rest of it, she sticks pretty close to the truth. "Why'd you decide to move to New York?" he asks her innocently as he opens the door to the restaurant.

"It seemed like a good place to start with a clean slate," she says. To erase the memories, she doesn't say.

Dinner is delicious. They have an appetizer of fresh feta cheese and olives, a famous Greek soup called fasolada, artichokes cooked in olive oil, and the main course is this lovely lamb all roasted with tomatoes and orzo. "The perfect kind of meal for a girl with an appetite," she tells him, taking a bite of lamb. "Impressive choice for a first date."

"Didn't want to screw that up," he agrees with a laugh. He leans toward her from across the table. She notices for the first time that he has warm eyes, blue as the summer bay. They are probably his best feature. "You know, I'm glad you moved here. The office was dreadfully boring without you. Accountants are not known for having the most exciting stories to tell at the water cooler."

Oh, you have no idea, she thinks. The stories I could tell you. Would you even believe me? Of course, these are stories she can't tell anybody. Locked in a world of mortals, she feels like she's stuck in a glass box again. But on the surface, she smiles. "You think so? I'm sure accountants have the most wonderful adventures, if you would only stop to listen."

"Yes," he says. "Why, just the other day, I spent two hours wrangling a particularly difficult Sudoku puzzle. I almost broke a sweat. But I didn't always want to be an accountant."

"Really?" She puts down her fork and wipes her lips with a napkin. "What did you want to be then?"

"I wanted to be an archeologist. I wanted to travel the world and have all kinds of adventures. I specifically liked ancient cultures. It seemed like a cool thing to be able to go on archeological digs and discover the past. You know? But it wasn't a very practical thing to do. So I took my parents' advice and majored in accounting instead. Granted, I live here, which is more exciting than if I took up a job in Iowa or something. But still. I get tired of working in a cubicle sometimes."

That isn't what she expected, but then, Rob has been good about surprising her today. She can barely imagine him roughing it in the desert with shovels and brushes. Nothing is as it seems. He is like her. All of her life, she has been taking the practical path, hardly pushing the envelope. Up until now, it suited her just fine. "Do you regret it?"

"Not really," he says. "I live a nice life. Normal. Middle-class. I could do much worse in the world. It was not much more than a pipe dream. Something I think about when I get really frustrated with work or when I'm looking up at the stars on a clear night, wondering where else my life could've turned. But hey, everyone has something they regret in their lives, right?"

"Mm, yes," Liza says. "Maybe."

"Don't tell me there isn't anything you would've liked to do over. Maybe not gotten so wasted that you woke up next to a homeless man in college that one time. Maybe not cheated on that spelling test in third grade." He grins.

"Nope," she lies. "I don't regret anything. Forward-thinking, yes sir, that's me." She wants to tell him the truth. Here he is, earnestly taking her out on a date, sitting across from her, telling her his childhood dreams, and she is closed up. It's not fair, really. If she really wants to let go, she would let go. She would close the last chapter of her life and move on. For some reason, she can't. And it really pisses her off, because how dare James and Thalia and the whole fucking Greek pantheon have a grip on her three months after the encounter and two hundred miles away? If she were honest with herself, she moved to New York to escape them, not to start brand new.

But she is bad at being honest with herself, so they meander through the date, and before she knows it, he's walking her home. Nighttime is cooler and it calms her down. The city lights, even she has to admit, have a beauty about them that she is glad she came to New York to see. It has a modern, futuristic feel that Washington D.C. would never attain with its creaking historical monuments and dusty streets.

Rob is telling her some joke, recounting a story of how clumsy he was when he first started the job, and she is only barely listening. She is looking at the way he has a lopsided smile and how he has the lightest sprinkle of freckles on his cheekbones, and thinking, he is quirky and kind, and the type of guy she should really give a chance. He deserves it. If she is serious about moving on, letting go, like she repeats in her head, she will let him hold her hand and they will step into a new future together. Things could be good.

Like a perfect gentleman, he does hold her hand. If she closes her eyes, she can imagine them walking through Central Park six months from now, laughing and kissing – erasing old memories under inky sky.

If she wants, she can let herself fall for him.

He walks her up to the front door of her apartment. She fumbles for her keys, knowing what will come next. With the backdrop of the swish of traffic and the electronic blinking of neon signs, he leans in close, grips her at the waist. He presses his lips against hers, flat and sweet.

It's then, in a burst of clarity, she knows.

When he pulls away, he whispers, "I like you a lot, Liza Allen."

The feelings in her chest tumble against each other – relief, regret, and resignation. Slowly, she puts her arms around his neck and kisses him softly on the cheek. "I like you too." She waits a few beats to collect her thoughts. "But I can't be with you."

The hurt flashes across his face, bare and painful. "Oh."

She touches his arm. "It's not you. I realized something. Just now." She smiles hopefully at him. "I realized what it is I regret. You helped me realize it, even though I knew it all along. I was being stupid, and I shouldn't have dragged you into it. I should thank you. But I don't think that's what you want to hear." The kiss meant nothing. It meant nothing in the only way that a kiss can – which is to say that there is another kiss that might mean a little bit more. Even after all of this, she thinks. She is afraid, and she doesn't know if that will ever change.

Still. Some things cannot be denied.

"I'm sorry," she says, thinking of laughing and kissing and erasing memories under an inky sky in Central Park. What could've been, but won't be, because that's not the way fate has it worked out for her. Love is a funny thing.

He steps back, sadness and a bit of anger in his eyes. "Me too, Liza. Me too."

..o..

James and Thalia sit outside on the steps of the Aerospace Museum. She hands him the broken flashlight. "Gee, thanks," he says dryly. "A whole lot of use I have for it now." They watch the traffic go by for several minutes, neither of them saying anything.

"I couldn't find Liza," Thalia offers finally. "I tried looking everywhere, but it's like she disappeared off of the face of the earth." She looks at him at last. "I'm sorry."

"S'okay," he says, smiling at her half-heartedly. "It's not your fault she wanted to get as far away as possible." For once, he doesn't feel annoyed with her, even though she broke his stuff. He is actually kind of happy that she is here, with him, because these past few days, he's been lonely and looking for a familiar face.

"What are you going to do now?" she asks him.

He shrugs. "Not knowing where she is doesn't really change my plans. I was planning on getting my degree in criminal justice. Tracking down thieves seems right up my alley. I'm a real reform story. I'm tired of living perpetually as a teenager. I dunno, I guess Liza did something good, eh?"

"I'm proud of you," Thalia says. "Liza didn't do anything. You always had it in you."

That's not true, though. He might've always had it in him, but he would've been a wanderer until the day he died unless he met Liza again. She is just one of those people, one of the few people in his life who makes him want to try. He wants all the time to be mad at her. But with her, it's like the anger fades away in the mornings or peters out before he goes to bed, and it's too tiring to maintain a grudge that he doesn't really hold. "Maybe," he says.

Maybe Thalia hears the wistfulness in his voice. Maybe for once she understands, so she puts her hand on his. "Hey."

"Yeah?"

"I'm sorry."

"You already apologized. It's okay that you didn't find her. It's not that big of a deal; I didn't think you were going to anyway."

She sighs. "No, I mean, I'm sorry about what happened in Mnemosyne's hotel. I shouldn't have tried to make you drink out of the fountain. I was being selfish. Man, I already tried to do this once." She blinks rapidly – is she crying? "And I probably ruined a good thing. It's basically my fault. It gets lonely sometimes, you know?"

He knows exactly, and yet he has no idea at the same time. What could it possibly be like to be immortal? There isn't much he can say to help her. "Stop being an idiot," he says, nudging her with his knee.

"Really comforting," she retorts.

"I'm your friend now. And whenever you feel like you're running out of people to stalk and annoy, I'll be here for you." He claps her on the back. "That's what friends are for."

She stares at him, until slowly, she breaks into a genuine smile. "Yeah. I guess so."

And it's true. They are friends now, he and her, with or without the memories. He's actually glad about that. He never thought he'd end up being friends with a Hunter, but life takes you on funny journeys. He is glad he was a part of this one.

Face turned upward toward the night sky, she says without looking at him, "You really like her, don't you?"

He doesn't need to ask who she's talking about. "Yeah," he replies. "Yeah, I do." He interlaces his fingers and stares at the ground. "It's kind of stupid though." Laughs. She's gone. They both know that.

"Then don't give up," she says simply, turning her electric gaze back on him. "I'm telling you that, as a friend."

He snorts.

"Hey, seriously now! When has my advice ever turned you wrong? What do you have to lose anyway?"

"Oh, I don't know. A broken heart. Being perpetually useless in love. There are a lot of things to lose, Thalia."

She rolls her eyes and shifts toward him. "You're so melodramatic. There are a lot of things to lose if you give up now too. Nobody gives up after the first try. Don't be such a loser."

"You know, I really enjoy how our relationship consists of entirely of insults. And by 'enjoy,' I mean, 'am constantly annoyed by.'"

She bumps him with her shoulder. "You know it works. So what are you going to do?"

Thalia isn't making things easy for him. What can he do? He meant to just stay in D.C., establish a life here, learn to move on. That would be the smart thing to do. The logical thing to do. Of course, he hasn't been very logical lately. He followed a fifteen-year-old Hunter to meet a girl on the steps of the Department of Education that he'd never heard of before. He took a quest, even though he swore he'd never do one again. He even believes at this point that he really was Percy Jackson, even though he can't draw up any memories. Logic has not been his strong point since he met Thalia.

That might not be such a bad thing.

"I think," he says slowly, "I'm going to go to Camp Half-Blood for a little bit. My classes are already over for the semester, and this is a temporary job anyway. I'm feeling nostalgic. It'll be a good time to go back to where it all started." I am being brave, he thinks. He hasn't been back in such a long time. He wonders if things will look different when he gets there.

"I think that's a good idea," Thalia says.

..o..

Going to Camp Half-Blood is like coming home after a very long vacation. The smell of strawberries is heady in the air. Argus gives him a lazy wink – or about fifty winks, if anyone's counting. The counselors are screaming directions, clouds of tiny summer aphids immediately start swarming around him, and the thick, choking humidity greet him as he steps across the border.

In other words, it's so absolutely beautiful that it leaves a lump in his throat. It's impossible to know the depth of how much he's missed this place. Camp Half-Blood has the golden sheen of an untouched paradise. A better time.

Nobody seems to pay any attention to him as he walks along the side of the target practice fields, the combat arena, and around to the Big House. Maybe it's because everyone who is here, pretty much belongs here. The main door is open as it usually is to allow some free-flowing air circulation. The air conditioning in the Big House has been broken ever since he can remember, and nobody has bothered to fix it. For some reason, this strikes him as ridiculous right now, because any god could probably fix it with the snap of a finger, yet nobody has. He knocks on the doorframe, faded blue paint chipping all over the place. "Chiron?"

There isn't a sound. Well, where could the old centaur have gone? He slips his hands in his pockets and wanders off, thinking he might spend the night here if he can, stay a couple of days to clear his mind. He meanders through the fields and through part of the wooded area, just reminding himself of some of the memories that have been made here.

He walks past the clearing where Hermes finally claimed him and the bushes where he got into his first serious fight with an Ares kid – Joe Pastorelli – knocked his head wide open and had to get seven stitches behind his ear, plus kitchen duty for two months. He even walks past the pavilion where he snuck out in the middle of the night to have his first kiss with the Demeter girl – Violet Holmes.

He's walking past the lake when he sees someone sitting with her knees drawn up to her chin, toes dabbling in the water. She has golden hair and looks like –

"Hello," Liza says. "Fancy seeing you here."

And what is he supposed to say to that? Stopped completely in his tracks, he manages to say, "I thought they had tighter border security here."

She laughs – he suddenly realizes that it may possibly be the loveliest sound he's heard in months – and pats the grass next to her. There's nothing for it. He sits down next to her. The lake spreads before them and the sunlight splinters on the surface into a thousand shining pieces. "Chiron told me that since I'd gone to the underworld and back, there's really no way I can not be a part of this world anymore. I already had the Sight. It was only a little jump from that to full-blown mythological freak. The border only blocks mortals. I'm – well, I'm not exactly a normal mortal anymore. Plus, Argus and I are friends now, so there's that."

"Oh," he hears himself saying. "Argus and you are friends now." Really, it's remarkable how he can make it sound so conversational and not completely ridiculous. "You chat a lot, I'm guessing? You in a book club together?"

"Something like that." She chuckles. "I've been here for a week now. It's nice. And for some reason, Chiron hasn't kicked me out yet. I was wondering how long I could bum here before he'd say something."

James admires the way her hair has grown longer since he's last seen her. It falls in a tangled cascade all the way down her back. He wants to run his fingers through it. "That's not fair. He kicked me out on my twenty-seventh birthday. It was a great birthday present, really made me feel loved and appreciated. I guess he treats you nicer because you're a pretty girl."

She nods solemnly. "I do like to use my looks as a bribe."

Is he allowed to put her arm around her now? Kiss her, maybe? He can't decide why she's shown up. How long are they going to stick with the safe, teasing talk before they are forced to face the inevitable conversation?

"I didn't tell you that I moved to New York," she says.

Not long, apparently. "Okay," he says, trying his best not to sound judgmental or ticked off that she didn't even leave a calling card.

She glances at him furtively, embarrassed almost. "I know. I can recognize your 'I'm-pissed-but-trying-to-hide-it' expression. It's the way your eyebrows jump for a split-second. I'm not saying you aren't entitled to be pissed. And I know that I can apologize, but you probably won't hear it anyway. You're being remarkably nice to me in spite of everything, and I appreciate it."

"Liza—"

She puts up a hand. "No, wait. Just hear me out first before you start yelling. Then, I promise I'll sit here and take it."

"Liza—"

Sharply, she makes the "zip your lips" motion with her fingers. He gives up. He wasn't going to yell at her, isn't going to yell at her. He should yell at her, but how can he? "I moved to New York and didn't tell anybody. I was tired of living in D.C., and I was just too freaked out and cautious to sever ties with the place. But I'm glad I did. I have a job at an accounting firm – not a great job, but it's somewhere I can go from. I'm happy." She looks away from him. "I started dating this guy from the firm."

James feels his throat constrict. "Okay," he says, using the same faked neutral voice.

"He's really nice. He graduated from Georgetown too, a year before me. He likes Greek mythology. He likes classical music, too." Her face softens. "Our favorite composer is Debussy."

Why is she telling me this? He wonders if it's possible for anyone to feel so crushed. It's like his heart has literally stopped beating. He wants to just get up and leave, but she asked him to hear her out. If she wanted to let him down easy, she could've written a letter or something. This is plain torture. She's basically listing all of the ways this guy is better than he is, and while he would like an explanation of why she pretty much dumped him, he doesn't need her to go into excruciating detail. Her laundry list of how great they are for each other isn't going to convince him.

She takes a deep, shuddering breath. "What I mean to say is, Rob and I fit together. We make a good couple. I like him. And I want you to know, he kissed me."

James is still.

"But I told him that we couldn't be together."

He is going to kick Rob's ass from here to – wait, what? "Why?" he asks, completely bewildered. "I thought you just told me that you were perfect for each other. What about your shared love of Debussy?" He doesn't mean to come across as sharp and nasty, but it slips out somehow anyway.

"We love Debussy, but I don't love him." She turns the full power of her stunning gray eyes on him. "I think – I think I might love you. Maybe."

His heart restarts, does a little jig and jumps into his throat. He leans toward her. "Maybe? Maybe's good. I could deal with maybe." Hope swells inside him like a hot air balloon and threatens to carry him away.

"I'm scared," she says and stopping him. "I didn't want you to drink the water and be forced to love me because of something that happened before we were even born. I'm scared that this isn't real."

The shadows stand out under her eyes. Illuminated, he sees the fears reflected in her wide, dark pupils. He sees a little girl with dirty knees and pigtails, waiting for him. "You don't have to worry about that," he tells her at last, "because I'm pretty sure I fell in love with you way before we were even close to that stupid fountain. I just didn't know it. I might not even have known it until recently. But the girl that I love, I met her a long time ago. I met her on a playground, and she had me at her ridiculous private-school uniform and Disney princess lunchbox. That's about as real as it gets." He puts his hand on hers. "You have to trust me, Lizzy."

She swallows. "I trust you."

"Do you really?"

She gives a small smile. "Yeah, really."

"Okay," he says. And she looks so painfully beautiful in the afternoon glow and he's waited so long for this; the lake is so bright it makes his eyes water and his vision blink in and out. So he does what the moment calls for – he grabs her and pulls her over the edge.

With a splash, they fall into the lake. He hears her shriek with laughter and fleetingly, he catches the scent of her lemon soap before they go under into the cool deep blue and underwater, he kisses her –

..o..

"Then up on Olympus when they wanted to make me a god and stuff, I kept thinking—"

"Oh, you so wanted to."

"Well, maybe a little. But I didn't, because I thought – I didn't want things to stay the same for eternity, because things could always get better. And I was thinking…"

The dots connect.

..o..

They surface, gasping for air, to a whole new world.

Liza is crying, but nobody can tell because of the water. Bravely, she puts on a smile and says weakly, "You know, I think that may have worked better the first time around as I remember it. You, with the water powers and all, so we didn't get completely drenched. Any chance you'll get those back too?"

He dunks them again.

"Ah, thought not," she says, coming up and dripping water. "Just to be sure, you remember now too, right? I'm not feeling like my head's about to explode all by myself, am I?"

"I'm right here with you. We'll be all right." He kisses her again, hands in her hair and holding her to him, and it's like two puzzle pieces, finally falling in place.

They scramble out of the water and stand on the shore, looking out at a sunset that streaks the sky with brilliant bands of color. He presses a kiss to her temple, wraps his arm around her waist. He doesn't need to say a thing, because for once, everything in the universe has righted itself. They watch until the first stars come twinkling out and don't even mind their wet clothes. It is a new moon tonight.

"So," he says eventually. "What do we do now?"

"We go home. We live happily ever after," she says. "Or something like that. I don't know how well it all works out. I think third time's supposed to be a charm."

"I guess we'll see," he agrees, smiling. "I guess we'll see."

..o..

Author's note: This story has just spiraled out of control and taken its own direction. I wanted it to be three one-shots, but it ended up being pretty much a novel. So there you have it. It has been a huge blessing to write, even when it was being a pain in the ass. The only thing left is the epilogue, which will be a short, simple thing that hopefully won't be too much of a challenge to write.

A million thanks goes to Kioko for her encouragement, for the late night/early morning chats about writing and Percy Jackson and Hot Pockets, all of which got me through the actual writing of this thing. You're the bestest fandom BFF ever, and I totally don't deserve you, dear.

Also, to oneoffour111, who I beta for and is always so nice and wonderful to me and pimps my fic and makes me blush for realsies. You're such a sweetheart, and you make my day when you write fic.

Thanks to all the readers. You guys rock my world, because I write for you, seriously. I'm so grateful to be able to share my writing with you.

Look for the epilogue (I will try and not make it a total fluff-fest), and leave a review if you can!