Finally. Here's chapter 4. Hope you enjoy. I don't own anyone or anything that you recognise as part of the PJO/HOO series.

Chapter 4:

The Beginning

" How is that possible?" A male voice broke through the darkness and instantly caused Jaden's eyes to snap open.

Looking around, Jaden noticed that he was in a dark room with barely any light. The only light that could be seen was from behind the door where someone in a wheelchair sat obviously talking with someone else. In the dim light, he was able to make out the two shapes on the table next to his bed. Hopefully they were George and Peter. And his dog tag was still around his neck. He wasn't sure what to think about that now that he was sure that it had become a sword, but it was a familiarity to him in that strange place. But one thing was true. Little Jaden Luke Castellan was scared.

" Mum?" Jaden called out weakly, tears springing into his eyes and voice.

The talking stopped for a few seconds. Whoever was outside probably thought that they had just misheard something because once they were sure that everything was quiet, they went back to talking. The darkness began to press around the seven year old and he couldn't help the soft whimper that escaped his lips. Blindly, he reached out to the shapes that were on the table and managed to grab both of his soft toys by their necks. He stopped strangling them as soon as they were safely against his own neck and head. But he had alerted whoever was beyond the door when he knocked over and broke a glass as he went to snuggle into his toys.

" Mummy?" He called once more, this time a little louder, as the tears began their treks down his face.

Slowly, the door opened and light flooded into the room as a man with brown hair wheeled in in his wheelchair. Following closely behind him was a boy at least twice as old as Jaden, the light catching on his hair and turning it a brighter gold. But there was no sign of Jaden's mother following behind the two. The thought that something had happened to her made the seven year old grip his toys even tighter and his tears speed their way down his cheeks. He had known that something bad was going to happen when he left Poppy's place. He just wished that it didn't have to happen to his family.

" Where's my mum?" He asked weakly as the man wheeled his chair to the side of the bed.

" She got hurt, Son." The man replied after a few minutes of thinking. " Now drink some of this and get some sleep. It's late and you need your rest."

" I want to see my mum."

" She's not here. She had to go to another hospital."

Jaden didn't understand. His eyes stung with both pain and tears and his entire body hurt. He was in a strange place with strange people. How could he trust them? George and Peter were the only things he had… but they couldn't tell him that everything was going to be okay. They couldn't take away the hurt that was inside of him. He needed human hands and voice to reassure him of that. And only one person knew how to do just that. Jaden needed his mother.

" Mummy!" He called out desperately, ignoring the boy and the man.

Mummy didn't come. And the rest of the tears finally spilled over Jaden's eyes. The boy at the end of the bed sent a worried look to the man in the wheelchair, but the man merely sighed. He had seen many things in his long life, some of the arrivals even more gruesome than this one. But it was arrivals like this one that were the most heart-wrenching of all. Why, just over a decade ago he had witnessed the arrival of a great hero shortly after his mother had disappeared, thought to be dead. Only, that boy was five years older than Jaden. And this little boy, this seven year old, was never going to see his mother again.

" That's enough, now." The man said as softly as he could. " Drink this and get some sleep."

" No! I want my mum!" Jaden screamed.

At the sudden outburst, Jaden's eyes began to glow gold. A few seconds later, all the tiny fragments from the broken glass flew into the air and resealed themselves to the main body of the glass, each fragment following the exact same path it had taken when it had shattered. Even the newly formed glass righted and filled itself with water. Once the last drop of spilled liquid was safely back in its container, the golden glow of Jaden's eyes died down. Within a matter of seconds, Jaden had collapsed out of sheer exhaustion.

" Uh, Chiron... what just happened?" the older boy asked as he hurried to get Jaden back under the covers.

" You are not to speak to anyone of what you have just witnessed, is that clear, Mr Rodgers?" the man in the wheelchair replied, a slight hint of fear in his voice.

" Yes, Sir."

" Also, you are the only one to tend to the boy."

" Yes, Chiron."

" Good night, Gary."

When next Jaden woke, it was day. The same blond haired boy from the night before was tending to him, making some sort of drink for him. In the daylight, things seemed less scarier. They seemed less dangerous. But Jaden couldn't shake the feeling that something bad had happened to his mother. It was that same feeling from when he had left Poppy's house. And he was almost certain that it was following him. Not to mention he still remembered being refused a visit from his mother when he needed her the most the night before. Quietly he began to slip out of bed to go see for himself where his mother was.

" So you're up." The older boy said, still not turning around.

Jaden froze. He hadn't expected to be discovered this early in his escape. Usually people didn't notice he was gone until he was… well… gone. This boy was the first person he knew to stop him in his escape.

" I've had practice." The boy explained. " We have a whole cabin full of people who do just what you're doing now."

" Who are you?" Jaden asked before he could stop himself. " Where am I? Where's my mum?"

" Who am I? I'm Gary Rodgers, son of Apollo. As for where you are; you're in the infirmary of Camp Half-Blood."

Out of all that, Jaden only registered one thing… that Gary had not told him where his mother was. " Where's my mum?" He asked again.

Gary became physically uncomfortable, scratching at the back of his neck and avoiding Jaden's golden eyes. The clock ticked heavily in the silence that followed. Without a second thought, Jaden continued his way out of the bed and, with Peter and George in hand, limped out of the room. It took Gary a little while to figure out what was going on before he was out of the room and chasing after Jaden. The only problem, he quickly found out, was that the seven year old was quite fast when he wanted to be. By the time Gary had caught up with him, he was already at the big pine tree at the border commonly known around camp as Thalia's pine.

" Kid. You can't go past the border. It's dangerous and you're hurt." The son of Apollo said, trying to get Jaden back to the infirmary.

" My name is Jaden. And I'm going to find my mum." The younger boy growled, his gold eyes shining dangerously in the sun.

Little did he know, Jaden had caused quite a commotion with some of the other campers. This was mainly due to the fact that the guard dragon around the tree couldn't figure out if he was friend or foe and so was growling at him with his head tilted to the side. To the surprise of some of the other campers, though, Jaden didn't seem at all phased by the large fire-breathing creature growling behind him. In all honesty, Jaden was petrified of him. But he was more worried about what had happened to his mother at that point than to be scared of a dragon. He could be scared of that after he had found his mother.

With a shake of his head, Jaden turned away from the gathering campers and ran past the border. Behind him he heard muffled sounds of people ordering other people to 'go after him', but he ignored every word that was called to him and ran on. In fact, within a few minutes, Jaden had outrun them all and couldn't hear them by the time he had reached the deserted road. Well… at first glance there was no one there.

Looking around for a second time, trying to figure out which way he should go to find his mother, Jaden's eyes laid themselves on the black dog sitting only a few metres away from him. Its blood red eyes gave off the impression that he was some kind of killer. But it was the urgency in those eyes that made the boy think that he could trust the animal enough to be led to where his mother was. For some strange reason, he had the feeling that the dog knew where his mother was… or at least what had happened to his mother.

" You know where my mother is, don't you?" he asked the dog.

In reply, the dog lowered its head and began walking into the forest. Taking it as a sign that it knew, Jaden followed. In the distance, he could hear Gary calling out to him, trying to get him back to camp. But the black dog ignored the older demigod and continued through the forest. Jaden did the same. There was no way that he was going to go back without finding where his mother was first. And he was almost certain that the people from the night before were lying to him about his mother being in a hospital. He couldn't explain it, but he just knew that something bad had happened to her.

After reaching the tenth tree, the dog sat down. Peering around the large mass of black fur, the blond haired boy found himself face to face with his mother's car. Or what remained of it, anyway. The bonnet and boot had both been forced up upon impact and the car itself was welded around the tree. Bits of glass and metal were littered around the tree and the back door had been ripped off completely. Jaden guessed that that was how the people looking for him had managed to get him out of the car. But what about his mum?

Cautiously, Jaden took a couple of steps towards the car. The dog began whimpering though it remained sitting next to the tenth tree. At the sound, the memory of Digger whimpering after Nanny was laid in her wooden bed in the cemetery emerged from the back of Jaden's mind and he found that unwanted tears had sprung into his eyes. Then he saw it. The dark red stuff on the steering wheel. The car was empty, but he was pretty sure that that red stuff came from his mother's head when she hit it on the steering wheel. But the sight of the blood made his eyes glow gold and he was just able to hear the black dog barking before he was thrown into the past.

He was in the car again, this time sitting next to himself and without a seatbelt on – something that his mother would never let him do. His past self was inspecting his dog tag. And just like it had in the past, the sword emerged with but a small utter of a word that was etched into one side of the thin sheet of bronze. But that was when he began to feel the things that he hadn't noticed before; the shift of the car and his mother's words.

" Jaden? Is everything okay back there?" She had called before looking up into the rear view mirror and noticing the sword in his hands. " Oh my God! Jaden, where did you get that? Jaden? Please tell mummy."

That was when the car had driven into the tree. It was that first impact that had made his mother hit her head and made him black out. The second, which followed quickly after, was the one that made the car look like it did now. The spirit form of Jaden was whisked to the outside world where it was raining with that second impact, almost like the wind had rushed through the car just to make sure that he was out of it. But now that he was out of the destroyed vehicle, he was able to hear what was going on outside. And the first things he heard were the voices.

" I think it's over this way!" Someone called.

" What do you mean it's that way? It clearly came from over here." Another voice called over the first.

" You're both wrong! It's where the smoke is coming from!" A third and older voice growled.

Sure enough there was smoke coming from the engine of the car. But all Jaden could do was stare. He was still staring when he fell to his knees in shock. Somehow his mind asked him if these people were going to find him staring at the car wreck, but somehow he knew that they wouldn't see him. It was only now dawning on him that he could travel into the past like some of the cartoon shows he watched, but so far he wasn't liking how it was turning out.

As expected, the people who had been looking for the crash ran right past him. At first there were three people… and one of them looked like the boy who had been riding the cloud horse back at school. The other two looked younger, maybe Gary's age. But when one of them called out for help, about five others arrived. And one of them looked like he was part horse. It was another one of those weird animal people.

" Give me the boy." The horse man said. " Mr Rodgers, I want you to come with me. Bring anything that you see him with."

" And the mother?" The older boy asked.

" It's too late for her." Another boy said sounding like Gary.

" How long has it been already?"

" It's been nearly fifteen minutes because someone wanted to go in the other direction!" With that, Gary pointed at a boy with blue eyes, brownish-blond hair and a mischievous grin.

" Boys! Enough. Is the boy still alive?" the horse man asked.

" Yes, sir." Gary replied after a few minutes of trying to get to the back seat.

" Then bring him into the infirmary."

Jaden watched, still in shock, as the boys tried to get the car door off its hinges so that they could get him into the infirmary. But the sound of a dog growling began to penetrate the air. At first, Jaden thought that the growl was from an animal around those working in the past. But the sound of his name being called made him realise that he was returning to the present.

With another jerk of the wind, Jaden woke to find himself on his knees and staring at the empty ruins of his mother's car.

" Jaden! Where are you? It's dangerous out here!" Gary's voice called out.

The black dog was now standing next to the tree, but he was still growling. It almost seemed like it was protecting Jaden. Feeling sick, Jaden sat on the grass and allowed the tears in his eyes to fall. A few minutes later, the growling stopped and he felt a hand fall gently onto his shoulder. He was vaguely aware of someone calling out to someone else, probably to tell them that he had been found, before he was picked up by strong arms and carried back to the infirmary.

He didn't know it, but from that day on Jaden Castellan was going to have to live in a world that thought of him as a threat.

Please do tell me what you think of this. I'm having serious doubts about this and am thinking of deleting it. If you don't think I should, then please tell me that I'm naughty for even thinking such a thing.