Frank and Hazel is probably my favourite ship week and general PJO couple. There's something as equally powerful and innocent about them, something deep and playful and clumsy and timeless and I can't handle them okay? And the fact that they're growing together as well adds a whole other dimension to add to how much I can't handle this couple.

See how terrified I am of Blood of Olympus and all the potential there?

Also I'm totally shamelessly using Avril Lavigne as an epigraph. Anyways, enjoy the story!

Disclaimer: I don't own the characters portrayed below.

Nothing's Going to Change Destiny

Hear me when I say, when I say I believe
Nothing's gonna change, nothing's gonna change destiny
Whatever's meant to be will work out perfectly

-Keep Holding On, Avril Lavigne

Hazel tended to get dizzy with all the foods and cultures and clothes and languages that were in Elysium. Unlike Asphodel, the souls in Elysium were still full of personality and character, which meant that they brought with them culture and virtues from their eras and culture. Her strategy to minimise the culture choc was to stick to a routine strict as Sister Agnes.

In the morning she got up and snuck out of her shoebox apartment in the 1900's district of Elysium. Despite the era, Hazel's apartment was well stocked with a mini fridge, an electric stove (out of all things!), strong wi-fi and easy access to Netflix (Hazel was currently marathoning Orange is the New Black). Usually she found her food in Little Italy or Chinatown- she never picked the same place twice, there was so much of it.

Today for breakfast she had scrambled eggs, potato pancakes and sausage from a little restaurant run by a Polish couple, squashed between a McDonald's and a store that Hazel couldn't quite identify since she didn't read Hebrew. Ordering was an adventure, but she did well. Better than the pork oatmeal that she'd accidentally ordered at a Thai place, although she supposed that that had some charm to it as well.

For the rest of the day, Hazel could do whatever she liked, really. She was a big fan of loitering around the library and reading up on the world around her or novels that she would never have understood or even accessed in New Orleans. Also that was where the really, really interesting innovators who'd made it to Elysium hung out. That morning, for example, she talked to Nikolas Volta for a long time. Also there was a really, really yummy shawarma stand next door that wasn't cheap on the chicken. At first, she'd really liked eating out in Chinatown, but then she'd realised that he went there a lot to visit family (and even ancestors), so she stayed clear now.

She could do whatever she liked really. There were some African drummers playing in the square, so Hazel spent the afternoon listening to them and reading a book that she'd borrowed at the library. When she went to talk to one of them after the show, she was invited to their mother's place for something called etor which was kind of a Ghanaian mashed yam dish that Hazel ended up liking a lot.

After that, she watched some more Orange is the New Black.

Elysium wasn't meant to be a hard life. It was a reward for extraordinary people, and though Hazel sometimes felt flustered and little next to the great inventors and thinkers and leaders, she liked it. She liked being able to do what she wanted, she liked meeting people, she liked how every day was new and no routine got boring. She liked Elysium. She'd been welcomed there and nobody had forced her to open up about her past. Honestly, she didn't regret what she'd done on the battlefields of Greece. Sure she missed Jason, Percy, Leo, Annabeth and Piper- but the fact that they weren't in the Underworld was reward enough. And in a weird way, she missed Frank too.

But there was nothing to do about that.

The next day, Hazel woke up with every intention to grab some facturas –this really awesome Argentinian pastry- for breakfast. Her neighbour, a man who'd been shot to death by Stalin in Soviet Russia, smiled at her when he saw her.

"Good morning, Miss Levesque," he said.

"Good morning Mr Antonov," Hazel said.

"Hazel, you are a half-blood yes?" He asked.

"Yes, sir. Roman."

"I heard that there was a gathering with ancient heroes in the football fields. Jason, Hercules, Theseus, Perseus, Achilles, Atalanta… To celebrate the winter solstice, I think."

"Oh," Hazel said. "That sounds neat."

It sounded awesome.

"I thought you might like to go," he said. "Well, I'll leave you to your business, my girl. Goodbye."

He wandered down and Hazel swallowed.

She had met some minor mythical heroes in Elysium. Orion, for example, made her think a lot of Percy and she liked him a lot. She'd met some Roman war leaders although to them she was an inferior and she spent most interactions bowing. Alexander the Great, son of Zeus, was often at the swordplay arena, always ready to give pointers and advice and tell stories. But all of them together? To hear all their stories? To hear how they'd dispatched the monsters that Hazel had dealt with a gazillion years afterwards? To suckerpunch Hercules? To talk to them about how the camps and gods were way back when? That would be so sweet. It was every half-blood's dream!

Yeah… every half-blood…

She didn't want to risk running into him.

She couldn't go.

She could hang out with the drummers again? Or follow the tip she'd gotten from Tesla and hang out in the library until de Vinci popped up?

Yeah. She had plenty of other things to do.

Sometimes it was hard to look at Elysium as a lonely place because, for the most part, it didn't feel like it.

There was so much going on, and so many people excited and willing to learn and talk and touch and discover and debate and teach that you could get your dose of human contact for the day just by walking outside your building.

But at 2:00 AM and when you woke up and when you were sick and when it rained out and when you read a beautiful book and wanted to sell it and your soul to someone, it was hard to realise that you didn't have anyone in Elysium. Sure, there were the friends that you'd made. But nothing like the friends that had always been there. Nothing like the people who knew to come over, who knew to be there, who knew how much you wanted to cuddle based off of the weather.

Most people only had to wait a few years before being joined by a loved one in Elysium, but if Hazel was lucky she wouldn't be seeing anyone she knew for a long, long time.

Whenever Hazel laid in bed with her eyes wide open, she always chided herself for what a hypocrite she was. If she just extended her arm and sucked up her emotions, she could have that. She could. He was right there. But talking to him would be admitting to a thousand toxic and painful things, and Hazel didn't want that. She was happy being dead, what more could the world ask of her ability to cope?

So she hugged a pillow or something and tried to get some shuteye.

Portuguese breakfast was something that Hazel couldn't help but come back to, and so she'd made it a Wednesday tradition to cheer her up since Wednesdays were the worst days of the week. Stuffed croissants and the strongest coffee of her life? Yes please. And the little restaurant she'd found had huge mugs and cheap refills, and the owner had yet to tell Hazel to get out of the little table at the corner and stop reading her book, even after Hazel had stayed there for seven hours once.

"Excuse me?" Someone asked.

Hazel looked up, expecting someone who wanted to pass to the bathroom or something. She froze when she saw Frank.

"Look, I don't want to ruin your day," Frank said quickly, raising his hands. He looked distressed and scared and sad, as if he didn't know how he should be talking to her. "I really don't, but… but I have to talk to you, and I know you've been ignoring me. Can we talk tomorrow? On even grounds? Like, that Cuban restaurant? We can meet there for breakfast or- or whatever you'd like."

Everything about Hazel was at a standstill. She couldn't move, breathe, talk, think…

But Frank had come all this way, far away from the 1950's-2000 building to find her. She owed him something. She wasn't sure what but… well, breakfast sounded fair.

"Okay," she said coldly.

"Okay," Frank said, twisting his hands together. He stood there awkwardly, as if he wanted to say more but didn't know how. Hazel didn't offer anything up. She kept her book open in front of her and took a sip of coffee.

"Have a good one," he mumbled before leaving the shop.

The shop was run by three sisters- Adelina, Emiliana and Monica. Two of them looked at Hazel from behind the counter, and Adelina got closer to Hazel, cleaning the table.

"He comes here often," Adelina said, shining the tables around Hazel. "He always has the same thing. He always says hello, thank you, goodbye, and please to every one of us. He even helped us close up shop a few times. The sisters all say he's a nice boy, but he's a sad boy. We asked him why last week or so. He said he was alone. He didn't know many heroes, he doesn't know many people in Elysium who didn't resurrect right after dying. His own mother did it too. We insisted that there had to be someone and he talked about this girl. We had to know more, of course. He told us that this girl had stars in her eyes and she was small and feisty, she had so many curls and she had such a big heart and such a nice laugh… But she didn't want to see him anymore."

Hazel bit her lips.

"I'm sure you have your reasons for doing what you're doing and those reasons are yours to critique and make," Adelina said scrubbing at the coffee rings on the table. "But we thought the poor boy deserved a chance, and we told him how often you came here. He wanted to ask to talk to you. He didn't hope for anything, he just had to ask."

"Okay." Hazel said dryly. She felt her mouth turn pasty. The taste of coffee and sugar and fresh croissants and sausage and cheese and spinach were all long gone.

"Are you angry at us?" Adelina asked.

"No," Hazel said.

"Are you angry at him?"

Hazel didn't answer.

She looked at her wardrobe the next morning and swallowed.

She had camp shirts, jeans, cozy sweatpants, sweaters so big they were like the ones she used to steal from Jason and Percy, dresses with collars and buttons down the front and flowery skirts from her school wardrobe in the fourties.

Every outfit had a different story. She could be schoolgirl Hazel who could barely read and was scared of the world and even of herself. She could be Legionnaire Hazel Levesque, service number 45208, strong and loyal and perfectly trained, fearless and threatening with the powers and the warrior abilities like nobody's business. She could be the Hazel who liked the miniature slumber parties with Annabeth in Piper's cabin on the Argo II, the girlish Hazel who liked getting her hair played with and liked watching sappy movies to make fun of them and could eat lots and lots of popcorn all at once.

What story could she tell to make him want to leave her alone forever and forget she'd ever been born?

A while back, the fact that none of them could had enchanted Hazel. Had made her so happy that Frank was with her, had made her so excited to know that someone loved her unconditionally...

Now it was a curse.

She got to breakfast early, but Frank was already there. He looked nervous and grim and pale, as if he hadn't slept at all, staring blankly at the cup of coffee in front of him. He was wearing a navy sweater and clean jeans, his sneakers were worn and a quiver and a bow were tucked under his chair.

Deep breath.

Hazel walked up to his table and pulled a chair. That snapped him out of his gaze.

"Oh, Hazel, umm… hi!"

"Hi," she said quietly.

The waiter brought Hazel a cup of coffee of her own and she said thank you in the little Spanish she knew.

"Thank you," Frank said. "For coming. I… I didn't think you would."

"I wouldn't have stood you up," Hazel said.

"A while back I would've thought that you wouldn't have avoided me either," Frank said.

Hazel swallowed. "You can't be angry at me for that."

"No," Frank said. "You're allowed to do what you want and to make your own choices. I'm just hurt and confused and you're the only one who can explain things to me. Before the battle we kiss on the Argo II and you say 'see you later alligator' and I go 'in a while crocodile', and you laugh because I actually have alligator teeth. And it was your real laugh- the cute one, so I know that we were okay. I mean, we knew we might die, but we were okay. And then I get to Elysium after months of waiting in line to be judged. I settle into this big apartment that I'm going to have to maintain on my own, super confused and all alone because I found out that all the other heroes that died in the war with Gaia were resurrecting. I was scared to death of having missed you, but then I find you, finally, sitting by a fountain and looking picture perfect like you always do. And then you yell at me for being dead."

Hazel took a sip of coffee. It was so sweet, here.

"I just…" Frank ran a hand through his hair. Now that he didn't have to cut it for the legion, it had grown longer. It suited him. "What did I do wrong, Hazel? Why did I get yelled at?"

Hazel took another sip. The waiter dropped off two plates of sweetened bread that they were to dip in the coffee and eat, according to his gesturing. Hazel dug deep to remember the Spanish that she'd heard flying around the Valdez house so long ago, and found the word to thank him.

"I was always going to die," Hazel said. "I was never going to get out of the war with Gaia alive, one way or another. Either I died on the battlefield like a hero, or Pluto sent me back when all was said and done- don't fight me on this, you know it too."

Frank bit his lip to keep his mouth shut.

"You, on the other hand…" Hazel said. She closed her eyes and sighed. "You were going to be praetor. You were talking to me about learning mandarin, becoming a doctor. You had plans and you might have actually gotten to them Frank, you weren't supposed to die."

"Ideally nobody was going to die," Frank said.

"There's a different between ideas and reality," Hazel said dunking the bread in her coffee repeatedly. "And that's the problem. It's all so sweet to give your life for something and die for someone, but gods, Frank, nobody's actually supposed to do that."

Frank frowned and Hazel grabbed handfuls of her hair.

"You had such an awesome life to live and so much to give the world," Hazel said. "I can't believe you're here and it makes me so, so sad and so guilty and…"

She couldn't even finish what she was saying, she could only burry her face in her hands.

She remembered when they'd read battered up copies of Romeo and Juliet at school. She remembered how Sister Agnes had blotted out some of the racier parts and dirty jokes, but the ending had stayed. Romeo killing herself on what he thought was Juliet's corpse. Juliet kissing the poison off of her lover's lips and finding her death… she remembered how all the girls had awed and teared up and called it romantic and sweet and how they'd all dreamed of boys who would follow them through death- they'd all gossiped about it in the bathrooms. Back then, Hazel had seemed least likely to ever have a sweetheart, much less one like that. Now that she did, it felt so unfair. She felt so guilty and sad and terrified and so, so guilty. None of those emotions were romantic.

"Wait, wait, wait," Frank said. "Hazel? Do you..? Do you know how I died?"

"I died first," Hazel said.

"But… how do you think I died?" Frank asked.

Hazel swallowed.

"You think I did it on purpose, don't you?" Frank said, his eyes widening. "You think I willingly took a knife or something to follow you to the Underworld…"

Hazel didn't meet his eyes. Her coffee was a way more comfortable alternative.

"My gods, Hazel," Frank said. "My gods, no. I was thrown into the Mediterranean by a giant. My arm was broken I was too hurt on impact to transform. I drowned. That's it. That's what happened to me, just another casualty, an accident. Gods, Hazel, I would never have willingly died…"

"That's not what it sounded like on the boat, okay?" Hazel said, bunching the overlong sleeves of her sweater in her hands. "The morning before we all suited up and left to fight, you told me that no matter what happened on the battlefield, you'd always love me and you'd do anything to stay with me. When I saw you after that, I thought… I… can you blame me?"

"No," Frank said. "No, but Hazel, that's… that's so not what happened."

He reached across the table and took her hands impulsively.

"Hazel, if it weren't for that giant, I would have lived for you," Frank said. "I would have taken all the life and love and happiness and curiosity that you had or wanted or needed or never got to have and poured it into every single thing I did until the day that I died if I'd gotten the chance. Every single bit of courage you had to show, and I'd have doubled it to do all the things right. I'd have done everything you dreamed to do and gone to all the places in the world that you never got to see and holy crap, Hazel, I'd have had the life. I would have had it, I would have lived, in your honour because you've shown me, if nothing else, that life is more important than death time and time again."

Hazel's heart froze in her chest. That was even more important.

Hazel's free hand curled around her cup of coffee.

"You're serious?"

"I am," Frank said. "If I died it's not… it's not my choice. It's just the way that fate works. It's just another way that we end up at the same place at the same time. If I weren't meant to die, there's no way I could have done it. Nothing can change destiny, right?"

Hazel nodded softly. Her curls bounced.

"I shouldn't have shut you out so quickly," Hazel said.

"It's not your fault," Frank said.

"See, it's easier being alone in Elysium than being with someone that you wanted to see live for years and years and years," Hazel said.

"I wouldn't know," Frank said. "I haven't, you know, actually done enough to compare it."

Hazel was quiet for a few seconds.

"It's not too late," Hazel said.

Frank smiled, but that wasn't enough for Hazel. She leaned across the table and kissed him, right on the lips. It tasted like coffee but that only made it better for Hazel. Nothing could have stopped her from melting at Frank's touch and nothing could have made her want to stay solid now that she had him back.

"I feel so stupid," Hazel said when she pulled back. "I'm sorry."

"I'm sure you can make it up to me," Frank smiled shyly.

Hazel kissed him again.

Upcoming ship weeks

September

21 - 27- Calypso and Leo

28 - October 7- Percy and Annabeth