For those who don't know me, Hazel Levesque is in my Top Three favourite PJO Characters, and also in my Top Three reasons why I'm nervous about The Blood of Olympus. The subject of how the council will deal with Hazel since she's a soul escaped from the Underworld keeps me up at night. Will she be allowed to live? Will they send her back to Asphodel? Elysium? The Fields of Punishment for her escape stunt? Who knows. Here's one of my wackier theories, and a story I'm quite proud of. Let me know how I did and if the ending makes sense. Enjoy!

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

So Be It

Death is not the greatest of evils; it is worse to want to die, and not be able to.

-Sophocles

The Seven held onto each other and formed a chain in the midst of the grand throne room of the gods. Clasped hands, blood, sweat and massive anxiety was the rule. They had more in common that second than they'd had at the beginning of the year or than they would in their entire lives.

The second that Hazel would be confronted and thanked for her service by the Olympian council.

Service that shouldn't even have happened if Hazel hadn't been one of the thousands of clandestine souls living in the mortal world.

The gods had definitely talked about it before the meeting and judging by some of the glares that Hades and other gods were giving each other, they probably still were. Hades' fists were clenched and he kept shooting the other gods dark, dark looks.

"Hazel Levesque, daughter of Pluto," Zeus called.

Hazel was locked between Jason and Frank. They held onto her hands for longer than they should.

Hazel wasn't breathing and her chest felt as if someone had filled up the empty spaces between her bones and organs and blood with cement. Tears were just about to run out of her eyes.

She squeezed Jason's hand and he let her go. She held onto Frank's for a second longer.

She'd just watched the gods send thousands of ghost soldiers back to the Underworld after Gaia had fallen. She'd seen the gods rant about justice and make Frank praetor, give Percy the credits that he'd missed during his disappearance so that he could graduate with his friends, officially retire Jason from the 12th Legion so that he could go to Camp. Now she was cornered in from of them, the very gods whose authority she'd directly disobeyed.

It was possible that Hazel would die again in this throne room. She didn't know what would be worst. That brutal death in the caves of Alaska- one she'd picked for the sake of sacrifice, or to be snuffed like a flame in front of her friends in this lavish and grand room.

She knelt in front of Zeus.

What if she never got back up?

"You are an interesting demigoddess, Miss Levesque," Zeus said.

Hazel was shaking. Nico wasn't even here. She wouldn't have said goodbye to Nico.

"A powerful one," Zeus said. "A brave one. A daring one. An important one. A disobeying one."

Hazel swallowed.

"You came back to the mortal world illicitly," Zeus said.

What if Nico got in trouble for this?

"You wanted to live."

Hazel swallowed.

"You wanted to live," Zeus said. He was repeating himself, like Jason sometimes did when he was trying to figure out what his next idea was. That's when Hazel realised that the gods didn't even know what they were going to do with her yet. Send her back to Asphodel? Elysium? The Fields of Punishment? Make her one of the Lares at Camp? One of the ghosts who served Persephone?

"You wanted to live, and so be it," he said. "You will live."

A few of the gods looked outraged at Zeus' decision. Hades smiled- so did the rest of the Seven's parents. Aphrodite clapped and cheered before regaining the serious composure of Venus.

"Justice," Nemesis said worriedly, from a corner.

"Right," Zeus said. "I suppose that if you will not stay dead, in return you will have to live forever."

After everything had been done for the dead and dying, Frank and Hazel could finally take a breather. The first one since they'd met Percy Jackson, come to think about it.

They lay down on Camp Half-Blood's dock, Hazel tucked into the crook of Frank's arm with no intention of moving anytime soon.

"Hazel?" Frank said.

"Hmm?"

"I don't want to burst the whole calm and quiet mood we've got going…"

"Okay."

"But are you immortal?" Frank asked.

Hazel didn't answer at first. The idea was so strange, after living through a bloody war and spending almost 70 years in the Underworld and spending the last year of her life fighting for her life from monsters and gods and more monsters and more gods and giants…

"I guess," Hazel said. "Maybe it's a... I don't know. I don't know, Frank, I don't know. All I know is that I'm not leaving you anytime soon."

"That's what I'll be praying for from now on," Frank said kissing the top of her head.

Hazel pulled herself up and kissed him on the lips.

The dragon, out of nowhere, broke free from the ropes binding him and dove straight down to two newbies in the cohort.

Hazel hadn't even realised she'd moved, but she'd thrown herself at the two kids and pushed them out of the way. Except once the dragon's fire hit her and wrapped her up like a Christmas present… she didn't feel a thing.

Once the dragon had been dispatched, Frank rushed to Hazel's side and he hesitated to touch her. Not because she was burnt to a crisp or injured, but because… well, because she wasn't.

Hazel wasn't hurt.

They both looked at each other and Hazel swallowed hard.

"So," Frank said. "That whole can't-die thing…"

"Yeah," Hazel said. "That whole can't-die thing."

Frank kissed her forehead. "I'm glad you had it, just there."

Hazel forced a smile on her face. "Me too."

Even though, for the longest time, she'd pretended that Zeus' words meant nothing and that she wasn't actually immortal… Well there was no denying it now.

She was 23 years old. Her service with the Legion had officially come to an end. Hazel had every intention of leaving Camp Jupiter and even San Francisco, but she didn't know what for. Percy and Annabeth were helping her look at history programs offered at NYU –the only university in the world to offer demigod discounts. She was looking into jewellery asserting, that looked fun and a nice way to say 'go to Hades' to her old curse. Maybe she'd just do like Nico and run commissions for their dad depending on what monster had to be killed at what moment. Who knew?

She only knew where she wanted to be, and that was Vancouver- where Frank would be.

But the transfer wasn't easy, which was how she ended up sitting around the Big House's Ping-Pong table with Chiron and Lupa.

"We don't know how this is going to play out," Chiron said, knotting his hands together. "The gods have never done this."

Hazel's shoulders stiffened. She wanted Frank or Jason or Percy or Annabeth or Piper with her.

"I haven't bled in the last ten years," Hazel said. "Never in battle, not even for a paper cut. I've survived dragon fire, I've never twisted an ankle. I… I'm not even sure that I've been sick."

"Physical immunity," Lupa said.

"It would appear," Chiron nodded. "Hazel, I don't know what your future holds but I'm sure that you can live a regular life for now."

"I'm like you now, aren't I?" Hazel said.

Lupa and Chiron looked at her questioningly.

"I'm going to grow old and instead of dying I'll just grow older," Hazel said. "I'm going to be alive to watch everyone I love die. Then I'll meet more people to love and I'll see them die to. And it'll be a cycle with little changes here and there, but it'll always end with watching funeral pyres go up in smoke."

Chiron took a deep breath. His resignation said yes, his words were hopeful. "I can't tell yet, Hazel. You'll just have to live as normally as you can and we'll see."

Hazel nodded. "We'll see."

Hazel checked her reflection in the metal toaster's to make sure that her hair was immaculate. Again.

She'd faced a wolf and she'd been at the doors of Camp Jupiter knowing fully well that she could be turned down after a week on the run. But for some reason, this job interview was more stressful than any monster. What if she said something about technology that made her sound horrible and uneducated? What if she didn't look professional enough- an hour on the phone with Piper had reassured her that a blouse and a skirt was a perfect way to dress, but what if?

Hazel swallowed and tried to reason with herself. She was going to do fine. And if she ended up not getting the job, that was fine. She'd just apply somewhere else. She had time. She was fresh out of school. She had an entire life in front of her, and her life would be long, apparently.

She heard sneering in the back of her head,

An eternity to be useless with.

It sounded suspiciously like her mother.

Hazel swallowed hard. She was going to be sick.

Then Frank's arms wrapped around her waist and he kissed her cheek.

"I turned the coffee pot on and I'm going to make eggs," he said.

Eggs. Good. Coffee. Better.

"I'll be late to my lecture if I have breakfast with you, but I'm sure you'll do great," he said.

Frank. The best.

Hazel let Frank lead her to the dance floor. Her heels clicked against the floor- they were dance shoes, dance shoes from the forties- bless Nico for finding them for her- and until a few minutes ago she couldn't wait to break them in.

Until then, Hazel had been having a blast. She'd bawled during the ceremony and made Frank cry and most of the Seven also cried (because they all cried at each other's weddings). Walking under the arch of swords formed by all the soldiers had been pretty exciting. She'd felt beautiful in her dress- a short, playful dress with a bare back and short lace sleeves, the kind of thing that the pretty brides wore back in New Orleans. And Frank looked infinitely handsome in his uniform, Hazel smiled just by looking at him.

Instead of a speech, Jason, Percy and Leo had put their heads together to make a sketch about what they thought Frank's life had looked like that had had Hazel killing herself. Annabeth, Piper and Reyna had stuck to tradition. Nico had even talked in front of a crowd, which had Hazel crying again. Grandmother Zhang had taken the podium too, although she'd mostly yelled at Frank about needing strong women in his life and dished out his most embarrassing baby stories. One of the guys that Frank had served with made the speech, and he'd finished with the cheesy and cute line: "Frank, you sure picked a good girl to grow old with and Hazel, bless you for letting him tag along."

It'd made Hazel's stomach sink. She'd started counting over the guests and she realised that… well, not all of them knew that Hazel and Frank wouldn't grow old together. They'd grow. Frank would become old. Hazel would not. They'd pledged their lives to each other, but really how much of Hazel's life was she really giving to Frank?

She rested her head against his shoulder as they danced (or swayed; Frank didn't dance, Hazel did). The fabric of his uniform was pretty rough, but she was comfy. Even more so when his chin rested on top of her curls.

"I'm going to do something really cheesy," Frank whispered to her.

"Yeah?" Hazel whispered back.

"Yeah," Frank said. "During our first dance I'm going to whisper in your ear that you've never looked more beautiful."

Hazel cracked a smile.

"Will you?" She said.

"Yeah. Think you'll take it well?"

"I think I like a little bit of cheesiness," Hazel said.

They swayed (danced, this was their dancing) for a bit more.

"You look-"

The song finished, cutting Frank off. He decided to kiss her instead. The care and attention of his lips conveyed basically the same message.

Hazel was shaking as if cold wind was blowing through the windows- but there were no open windows in the ICU.

She'd been counting the tubes coming in and out of Frank for a while. She'd been rubbing her thumb against his hand. She'd been talking to him softly. She'd been ignoring the vibrating phone in her pocket, probably because of demigods eager for news. Hazel should answer. Hazel shouldn't be as angry as she was.

Maybe it was a side-effect of the worry. Maybe it was the taxing questions from the well-meaning nurses who wanted to know if Hazel needed water or a blanket or a pillow or a taxi home or anything at all. She didn't. She just wanted to be left alone with her simmering, bubbling anger.

She clasped Frank's hand.

He was not dying.

He was so not dying.

He was not going to be offed at age 23, he was not going to die in a meaningless hell hound attack, he was not going to lose his life with so much ahead of him. Hazel didn't care what the way of the fates and half-bloods were, Frank deserved more.

It nearly had Hazel in tears. The doctors were saying here that Frank had a 75% chance of not making it through the night. And Hazel had a life that would extend past any perception of time that she may have. Where was justice? What kind of fair was that for a hero, a sweetheart like Frank?

She pressed her lips against his hand that she was holding.

"Come on, baby," Hazel said shaking her head. "Be the 25%…"

He didn't answer of course, but Hazel rested her head next to him.

The long night made her selfish. Hazel had forever to live. She couldn't do it if she lost him so freshly out of the gates. She couldn't… she wouldn't be able to stand it… she would have to rip the fates in two…

"I'll let you name the baby, anything," Hazel said quietly.

A dash of red. A dash of yellow. A dash of purple.

These kids were running for their lives around the playground, and it made Hazel laugh so hard.

Wen and Shen were all over the place, running up and down the play structure, circling the trees, dashing across the sandbox… Katherine was more strategic with her approach and she hid from their pursuers (or parents). Usually Frank and Hazel would stop chasing whichever twin they were on the heels of to look for her, and they could spot the telltale purple of her fall coat in a tree or under the structure or whatnot. She'd notice their eyes on her, smile and disappear again.

Wen and Shen needed some definite running though. Hazel didn't know how they'd managed to produce kids that were this different from one another, but they had and here they were more thankful for their legion training hours than they'd ever been.

"Gotcha!" Frank said. Hazel turned around and saw Wen flung over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes. Wen wiggled and tried to sound alarmed and panicked even though he was laughing.

"Monster's got me, monster's got me!"

"That's right," Frank said in the same deep voice that he used to read out a bad guy's line when he was in charge of the bed time stories. "And I'm putting you in the dungeon!"

He plopped Wen on a play structure's tower.

"You can escape!" Katherine cried out to him from her hiding spot on a slide.

"No helping the prisoners!" Hazel said rushing towards Katherine and sweeping her up in her arms. Katherine wailed and wiggled and Hazel had to force herself to keep her bad-guy voice under control instead of giggling with her daughter.

Wen triumphantly fled from the dungeons by sliding down from it, so Hazel knew that Katherine wasn't going to stay either. She also knew that they weren't getting out of this park until the kids got hungry.

When they were all out of breath, they noticed that Shen had started to rake a bunch of leaves into a pile. This of course meant that Wen had to piss off his brother by jumping in it, and Katherine followed in his mischievous footsteps and jumped in too. Eventually Shen gave up and just threw leaves on his siblings. Katherine giggled from Wen's arms (he insisted he hold her so that she didn't "drown in the leaves").

Hazel smiled.

If she was going to live forever, she wanted to frame this moment and bring it with her.

When Hazel had realised how horrible her examples of motherhood were and panicked, Sally Jackson had given her the best tip she'd ever had.

Parenting was 99% improvisation, 1% intesive calendar usage.

Gods, was the woman ever right.

But if Hazel ever had to pass on that piece of advise, she'd say it was 98% improvisation, 1% calendar use, and 1% attention to detail.

Noticing that cookies had gone missing from the Tupperware that was supposed to be shipped off to the bake sale, knowing what soup each child would crave when they were sick. Getting to know every little quirk of her kids. It wasn't enough to know that Wen was the clown and that he suffered from short-term memory loss with hockey stats and his practice and game schedule as the only exceptions- she had to know that if someone had clothes in the washing machine that they hadn't transferred to the dryer yet, it was probably him. It was important to know that if Shen had turned himself into any animal, it was Shen, so she had to do a headcount before getting the flyswatter out. It was important to know that Katherine only craved chocolate chip cookies when one of her friends had made her angry or when she got a (rare) bad grade, that her nails would only be plain and unpainted if she was sad, and that if Hazel was going to piss her off in any way she better await some kind of retribution like honey in her hairbrush or a total rearrangement of the fridge.

But that was easy.

Hazel hated the colour black. Everything in the Underworld was black, and it stirred bad memories. And now she was wearing it at her son's funeral.

She didn't care how Shen had died. She wasn't mad at whatever monster had taken him out of the world. She didn't curse the gods.

She wanted him back. She wanted to strip off her black dress. She wanted them to be having a picnic in Stanley Park like they did every Sunday after the kids finished their training with weapons and shape-shifting, and she wanted Wen to be joking and Katherine to be wearing her permanent smile. She wanted Shen to be there, keeping Wen under control and letting him know when his jokes got untasteful and she wanted him to ask Hazel hard questions that she had to scramble to answer about life and love and death. She wanted Shen's bedroom door to be closed not because none of them wanted to see the traces he'd left behind, but because he was in there trying to read while his siblings stampeded around the house making a racket. She wanted Shen to take her side and argue about how great Ella Fitzgerald was when Wen complained that Hazel was playing old music. She wanted her son to take that internship that local politicians had offered him. She wanted him to take his girlfriend to junior prom like they'd been so excited about. She wanted her son to go to university like he'd dreamed. She wanted her son to travel the world and see Heaven's Trail in Ireland, peanut markets and safaris in Africa, the Valley of the Kings in Egypt, dramatic sunsets in Australia, the crooked forest in Poland, Shi Huangdi's terracotta warriors and every other surreal landscape and historical city that had been on his bucket list. She wanted Shen to keep cutting the crusts off his sandwich and hate the smell of bananas and bruise like an apple and only eat the green M&Ms and turn into bugs when he didn't want to do his chores and she didn't want to be burying her son, she didn't want to be burying her fifteen year old son was that too much to ask?

She buried her face in Katherine's hair and panic overtook her.

Right now she was grieving Shen harder than she'd thought you could possibly grieve somebody. But one day Wen would die and one day Katherine would die and one day Frank would die and what would Hazel do? Bury then. Maybe her kids would be sixteen, maybe they'd be seventy. Maybe they'd vanish one day and Hazel would be burying an empty casket, but there would be burial either way. How would she do this again, when one death had her in such a mess?

Hazel wished that she could die right there, right then.

This was the beginning of the rest of her life.

They were in New York for what they'd decided was a well-deserved family holiday. They were bunking with Percy, Annabeth and Callisto Chase-Jackson. The girl time was good on Katherine, and Lili Chase-Jackson was absolutely pampering Katherine- doing her nails, braiding her hair in fancy Greek braids, gossiping about camp life… The change of space and air was good for all of them. While everyone was at work or school, they slept in until lunch time and then went and wandered New York City armed with subway passes and a lot of gut feelings and guesswork.

Wen, ever the clown, had somehow managed to climb up onto the shoulders of a statue of a man reading a book and starring at a duck. He'd been doing this with every statue- pretending to stab himself in eternal love at William Shakespeare's feet, having a tea party with Alice in Wonderland, turning into a dog and barking at the statue of Balto, imitating Daniel Webster's facial expressions…

For some reason it was his sitting on the man's shoulders and screaming out the lyrics of "Old McDonald Had a Farm" that pushed Katherine over the edge and she started laughing and laughing. She tried joining into the song but she was laughing too hard.

Frank met Hazel's eyes and smiled.

It was the first time that they'd heard Katherine's usually opportunistic and easy laugh since she'd watched Shen die. Frank had seen it too.

It made Hazel smile and laugh too before calling out, "Wen, are you sure you can't get arrested for climbing the statues?"

"Nah, but I'm sure that you guys would bail me out," Wen grinned lopsidedly.

"You're sounding pretty confident, there," Frank said. Hazel smacked his elbow and he laughed too.

Frank put the phone down and wouldn't meet Hazel's eyes.

"What's wrong?" she asked putting down the knife she'd been chopping vegetables for gumbo with.

Frank looked up at her with a glassy look in his eyes.

"Piper just called. She's on her way to New York. Percy…"

Hazel's hand flew to her mouth.

She turned her face to look in a mirror at another angle. She knew that she was hogging the bathroom and that Katherine also had to get ready before they flew out the door and scrambled to a friend's wedding, but she was intrigued.

She was sure that yesterday she'd had vertical wrinkles around her mouth. Today they were gone. Today she looked thirty- thirty-five, tops.

Today she stopped aging.

People were looking at her weirdly and it took Hazel a while to figure out why.

Here she was, strolling around downtown Vancouver holding Frank's hand- which was more than normal for her. But others saw an old man with wrinkles around his eyes and graying hair holding a very young woman's hand.

She swallowed and as they paused to look at something in a window display she called out to the mist. She felt it digging into her skin and attacking her hair until she looked… well, until she looked Frank's age. Like an old woman.

Frank startled a little when he saw her, but he didn't point it out until later. They just kept walking.

Bridgit laid out a a beautifully frosted, store-bought cake in front of Hazel. It was even personalised.

HAPPY RETIREMENT!

Hazel smiled and told them that they shouldn't have, even though whenever someone retired everybody at work always, always pitched in to this kind of little party.

But in this case, they really shouldn't have.

Hazel didn't really have to retire. She wasn't really growing old and tired, she didn't really have a bucket list to check items off of before dying. She just had to pretend to retire so that it fit in with the age that she had.

Her fingers clutched his as tightly as she could. Under her fingertips the wrinkles on his hands felt like chasms and mountains on a topographic map.

"I'm glad you won't grow old, Hazel," Frank confided.

Hazel sucked in her breath. She'd do anything to take his place right now, but how did you say that to an old man with tubes in his nose and nothing but skin and grief on his bones?

"I would have done it with you," Hazel said quietly.

It was a cruel joke, of course. That out of all the Seven –the Seven who had been picked off the planet by monsters, heart attacks, drunk drivers, assassins and disease- Frank was the one to die of old age.

"But you didn't," Frank said. "You have other things to do, more things to see, more lives to live. I hope you do it all. Twice even."

Hazel nodded but right now she didn't believe it.

He was definitely dying. He'd signed the papers two months ago saying that next time his heart stopped working or he had a seizure because of the tumours he wanted to be left alone to die. They'd been waiting since. Frank had been waiting, actually. He had somewhere to go after this- an Elysium where he'd be young and healthy again, where he would see his mother and his son and Percy and Leo and Jason and Piper and Annabeth, where he'd be able to move and breathe and eat and walk.

Hazel stayed with him. They played a game of chess that Frank beat her at. They flipped through all the stupid channels on the TV one last time. Hazel read to him. Katherine and Wen made it with their spouses, and five year old Jade came to chatter on about her school day and show Frank her latest wax crayon exploit before being driven home by an uncle from her dad's side of the family.

It was quiet and calm and monster-free.

But it was still Frank's death.

"Mom," Katherine said pointing to the pocket of her jeans- which was glowing like embers. She realised that Frank's piece of firewood had burned itself out, and that she only had ashes in her pockets.

She kept a handful of the firewood's ashes in a little bottle around her neck at the funeral, and for a long, long time after it.

Ten generations later when Hazel was supposed to be long dead, she was still finding work at Zhang Mansion.

Zhang Mansion was an acquired taste. After it burned down, Mars had it magically rebuilt. The inside was still a maze of rooms. Parts of it, like the kitchen, had been redesigned and modernised by Frank and Hazel when they'd moved in, which made walking around it an adventure through time. Antiques that nobody had the heart to get rid of littered it. It also had a particular set of traditions and superstitions. For example, as soon as the youngest child of the owner turned 18, they inherited the house from their parents though it was far from unusual to have different generations living under the same roof –which explained Frank's childhood. Training courses and obstacle courses in the trees were still here and there in the backyard, and the attic, of course, was a real armoury.

The place was still swarming with legacies- children who looked like their parents, who in turn looked nothing like Hazel or Frank or Emily or Mars. Children who sometimes learned to fly before they could walk. Children who still had to learn how to fight and shoot arrows and use ballistas and throw spears and hold swords. Children who didn't know if they'd go to camp or the legion or stay in the mortal world, and who wouldn't know until fate sucker-punched them.

Children that Hazel came to love. When her great-great-something-nieces or nephews or grandchildren were at school, they'd drop by for lunch, sometimes with a friend to which Hazel would be introduced as a family friend who house kept and tutoured them in piano. After school all the Zhang kids, even those who didn't actually lived in the house, came by and she'd organise scrimmages and drills and courses until their parents got home. She cleaned, if nothing else. She kept the weaponry stock up. She went in the woods and found arrows that had gotten lost during archery training. If one of the kids was struggling with their powers and had accidentally gotten stuck as a horse or something, Hazel would camp out in the barn and tend to their needs while coaching them back to human form.

She taught sword fighting. She tapped back into what she'd heard Frank tell Katherine and the twins to help them learn how to use the family gift. Ocasionally she made huge batches of cookies and kissed scraped knees better and explained obscure grammatical rules and soothed hysterical high schoolers through heartbreak.

She had her own apartment within the mansion and it was good to know how her children's grandchildren were doing and so forth, though she'd long ago lost the ability to look at the Zhangs and think of them as family. It was funny, to her, how the twelve relatives today were actually Portuguese but kept a Chinese name. She felt like a grandmother. But in a good way. She felt connected, busy, purposeful, useful, loving and loved.

Sarah, twelve generations after Frank, was the first shot of godly blood in the family since Hazel's husband. A daughter of Hecate who had outlived siblings Serenity, Sabbatha and Samuel, and who was now pregnant, to her father's conflicted emotions, with a child of Hermes.

Vague memories of Lou Ellen Gupta and the Stoll brothers drifted through Hazel's mind… Ouch, what a mix…

But Sarah was glowing and pouring over the latest ultrasound on the phone with her dad, curled up in the main living room with a fuzzy blanket. Sarah said she'd call Hermes later. Gods weren't welcome in Zhang Mansion, no matter who they'd impregnated.

Hazel wandered in and gathered some papers on the floor. Lists of names- some crossed, some sound. Her eyes quickly surveyed them as Sarah told her father about no, the bloodwork is routine, I'm okay, nothing's wrong.

· Serenity

· Sabbatha

· Savanna

· Sage

· Serena

· Saskia

· Aether

· Argent

· Biania

· Sunna ***

· Adelle

· Brighid

· Cerriwend

· Idelle

· Maeve

· Nimue***

· Isolde

· September

· Trivia

Hazel smiled. Celtic, Norse and otherwise Pagan names, of course.

"For a baby girl?" Hazel asked showing one of the papers to Sarah once she hung up.

Sarah smiled brightly and nodded.

"Wow," Hazel smiled. She remembered when Katherine was born and Hazel had bawled when she'd been a girl. She'd named her after her favourite movie star right away, Katherine Hepburn.

Sarah nodded and her hands curled around her baby bump.

"Her dad's going to be ecstatic," Sarah smiled.

"She's going to be a special little girl, that's for sure," Hazel said. Blood of Hecate, blood of Hermes, gift of Periclymenus, and who knew what else would surface.

"Sarah," Hazel said. "Are you going to train this little girl at home or wait until the last minute to send her to Camp Half-Blood?"

She'd been waiting a long time to ask her this question.

Sarah paused before answering. "I'd like to wait. Give her an as normal life as possible for as long as possible, you know?"

Hazel nodded. It was what Emily had done for Frank.

"And so we're going to have to start putting the weapons in the attic, the books in some firebox, the blessed objects in a locked room because even those may have some influence on her scent. Everything mythological is going to have to disappear from this house to make that possible," Hazel said.

Sarah nodded again. Then her eyes met Hazel's, scrambled, and she shook her head.

"I didn't mean you, Hazel," she said.

"I know sweetheart, I meant me," Hazel said. "If my children would have had scents, that's what I would have wanted for them."

"Yes but Hazel, we could-"

"Of course we 'could' manage," Hazel said. "But why would we when it could be so much easier?"

"Zhang Mansion is your home," Sarah said.

"It's yours by inheritance," Hazel said. "I'm just a guest who may have outlasted her welcome."

"Hazel, of course not I…"

"Sarah, do you care for your daughter?"

She stopped her protesting and nodded straight away.

"Will she make you happy?"

Sarah smiled softly. "Already is."

"Will she help center you to the world?"

"Yes."

"Then what do you need little old me for?" Hazel asked with a brave little smile.

Through the grapevine, while she was at Camp Half-Blood, she heard that Sarah had named her daughter Hazel Augustine Zhang.

Hazel hadn't been in Camp Half-Blood in forever. The place hadn't changed much. The Big House was now a buttery yellow colour and its roof had been retiled by some brave sons of Hephaestus. Cabins 1 and 3 were bursting with demigods again, the loneliness that Jason and Percy had complained about now a thing of the past. The climbing wall now had a gravity-defying extension. A few new cabins had popped up, including one for legacies. They'd added a swing set and a massive jungle gym. The strawberry fields were full of fruit even if Mr D hadn't put a toe back at camp in a long time.

Hazel had used the mist to make herself look thirteen years old again. It felt wrong to be at camp as an adult.

She leaned against the wall of Cabin 11 as the counselor, Marius, scratched the back of his head.

"Well, you are asking me to commit human fraud," he said.

"I'm sorry," Hazel said.

"Naw, naw, naw, I never said I had a problem with it," Marius said. "I just wanted to let you know that it may take a while, but I can totally get you all the fake ID that you could want."

Hazel smiled. "Thank you. You're the best."

"What are you planning to do with fake ID anyways? You look old enough to get into bars and shit." Marius said, leading Hazel back into his cabin.

"I need to buy an apartment in New York," Hazel said. "I want to start working again."

"Huh. Cool. Do you want me to forge you references too?"

Criminal or not, Hazel liked this guy.

Hazel, after a rather successful and monster-free first day, was feeling pretty good as she walked home.

For starters she was wearing an awesome little black dress and some awesome heals. She looked adorable. Secondly, she'd even gotten invited out for apple martinis in a trendy bar after work by some coworkers. After a single workday, Hazel felt part of something again.

She didn't feel too good about the guy sitting cross-legged in front of her door, she figured she could just tell him to leave with her friend the dagger, and then she recognised him from the day in the throne room, just after the war. The blonde, charming Apollo.

"Sir you're blocking my front door," Hazel said.

"I'm no sir," Apollo said. "Don't need to get the 'lords' out either."

Hazel swallowed. "You're still blocking my front door."

"I thought you might want plans for tonight," Apollo said.

"I've had plans," she said.

Now I want chicken noodle soup and dinosaur nuggets, she kept to herself.

"Party on Olympus tonight," Apollo said. "Non-godly guest list looked pretty thin. Thought you might want to join."

"Me?" Hazel said.

"Course," Apollo said. "You're immortal, aren't you? About time we recruit you, now that you're out of Zhang Mansion. It's an anniversary party for Bacchus and Ariadne. The booze will flow like you have no idea, Levesque and some wild nymphs will be there. What do you say?"

Hazel should have said no.

But she was having a good day.

So what the hell?

"Huh. Pretty nice stuff you've got here," Marius said.

They'd hung out at camp a lot. Every holiday, some weekends, Hazel would drive out to camp and tell the others at the studio that she was at a family ranch for the weekend. Today he was in her element, her apartment in New York, and it was a bit scary but super exciting.

"Thanks," Hazel said. "Tiny, though."

"But nice," Marius said looking around.

The apartment opened in a small living room which Hazel had cluttered with books and an antique phonograph- a present that she'd brought with her from Zhang Mansion. The wall was dotted with pictures that Hazel had hung where the previous owners had randomly drilled nails- pictures of the Seven, of Frank, Katherine, Wen, Shen, Nico, her grandchildren, Arion, Hazel Augustine... The door to the fire escape was open and candles were still there from when Hazel had been reading last night, as well as plants suspended in tin coffee cans. The kitchen was a narrow walkway that barely two people could walk across at a time. Hazel's room didn't even have a door, she'd hung curtains that were currently pulled back to reveal a mattress straight on the floor and fairy lights everywhere.

"Nice," Hazel nodded. "Lots of windows, at least. Nice neighbours, kind of permanently high, but nice…"

"Do you plan on moving out one day?"

"Not unless I have to move into a bigger apartment because someone wants to move in to come study," Hazel said. It was a desperate case and Marius knew she didn't mean it. He wasn't cut out for school- he had the brains, but no patience with the system and no attention span for the big books. Right now he taught at Camp and organised sick parties behind Chiron's back, and that was the life he wanted.

"Do you have a cat in here?" Marius said noticing the food bowl in the corner.

"Kind of," Hazel said. "He belongs to someone in the building, but according to the neighbours they don't take care of him. He always climbs in through the back door, so I started leaving food for him. They tell me his name's Raymond."

Marius smiled and kicked back on her couch.

"You've got a pretty sweet deal here, Levesque."

Hazel smiled.

"And you haven't even seen the booze cabinet," she said.

That got his attention and the look on his face made Hazel laugh.

"Start the movie, I've even got that weird fruity beer you like."

"You're the best," Marius said. "For some reason that's the stuff that never gets snuck into camp."

"Yes I know," Hazel said.

Maybe because she was part of the illegal booze commerce at camp. Maybe.

"How's the job?" Marius asked while Hazel was in the kitchen. Hazel did the exact same job she'd had way back when she was raising three kids; jewellery asserter, except this time for a big, big company in New York.

That was always his first question. That way they could get the boring adult stuff out of the way and go back to being friends. The kind of goofy friends who put toothpicks into peeps and stuck them in the mircro-wave to watch them 'joust'.

"Fine," Hazel said. "Another of the asserters is on maternity leave, so we've been busier than usual."

"Did your boss calm down?"

"Yes, he hasn't put his hand on my leg in weeks," Hazel said.

Moment of silence.

"You know, I heard about this place in Bulgaria…"

Within seconds he had Hazel laughing about rude jokes and misadventures while backpacking (which they were so going to do together one day as soon as they picked a place).

Marius was good for Hazel. He was young and still excited and hopeful about the world, a total daredevil and an adventurer which rubbed off on Hazel just right. He also had such an open mind that when Hazel told him how old she was, that she'd been married and a mother once, he was fine with it and could see Hazel for where she was in her life now- and he could convince Hazel that that was a good place. Hazel had enough rationality to keep him from getting himself killed and the guts to slap him when his jokes got mean, so that was her contribution to their partnership. When he'd lost his fiancé (Mara, daughter of Dionysus) a year ago, Hazel had been able to pick him up and walk through his grief with him. Over the last two years that she'd known him, Marius had basically become her best friend.

"We should go to Sweden," Hazel said.

"And do what?" Marius said. "If we're going anywhere anytime soon, it's Africa."

"Africa?"

"Yeah, yeah. Like the Serengeti and shit," Marius said. "Climb Mount Kilimanjaro… pet some lions…"

"You have a death wish," Hazel said.

"If I had a death wish I would pet hippos," Marius said. "Hippos are deadly. Lions are just an adventure."

"You know what else would be an adventure?" Hazel asked. "Thailand."

"Oh!" Marius said. "Forget Africa, we're going to Thailand! You and me, Levesque. Phang Nga Bay and floating markets… "

"The temples and the beaches," Hazel daydreamed.

"If you want beaches, we've got to go to Seychelles," Marius said.

"Is that the one with the pink sand?" Hazel asked.

They didn't even get around to the movie, never did.

Hazel was never comfortable hanging out with gods. Hearing about their latest flings made her uncomfortable since one day her own mother had been in one of those conversations, and the gods did get rather crude. Hearing them bitch about each other always made Hazel feel like she'd get caught in a catfight any time. Laughing at Mars' dirty jokes made her feel like she was detaching herself from her real personality since giggling at her father-in-law's jokes about sex was gross.

But gods were predictable. Gods were cliché. Gods were constant.

That was good for Hazel since, no matter how much she liked Marius or the girls at work. See, they couldn't promise her that.

And so she joined Apollo and Vulcan and Mercury and Mars for drinks or monster hunts, shopping trips in chic boutiques in even more chic cities with Aphrodite, rowdy parties and/or shots with Bacchus, brunches with Ceres, Vegas weekends with Fortuna… All of these things were out of Hazel's element, of course.

But she was only human.

Consistency was her element.

Marius died, age 23, after he got stabbed to death by a dracanae.

His mother was dead, he hadn't had any flings since Mara and so his belongings were shipped to Hazel. She donated most of his clothes to an organisation that would distribute them in Thailand, so that at least part of Marius would get to go there.

When she dug farther into his trunk she found a map of the world that he'd hung above his bunk, among some plastic glow-in-the-dark stars. Places had been coloured green (to go) and red (have gone).

Hazel booked her first plane ticket for Argentina that night, and didn't really pay attention to what she packed except for that map, which she'd decided would be her new bible for the next four months.

She'd changed apartments after getting back from Morocco, and had hung Marius' map (which now contained much more red) in the living room as her first decoration, and then she'd added all the souvenirs she'd collected from around the world- sculptures, fabrics, painted objects, gifts...

That was a good change.

But even then, she still got restless. She got tired of wearing stylish black dresses and going into work and telling people if their diamond was real and pricing emeralds and fixing jewellery.

She was bored.

And so she quit her job and signed up at NYU to get a degree in history.

A tiny dog had been abandoned in a grocery bag in front of her building, and it just so happened that Hazel was the one to find it.

He was a tiny, peanut of a dog that looked cold and hungry. Hazel couldn't help it. She skipped her lecture of the morning (it wasn't as if she needed a refresher on American Propaganda During WWII) and brought it to a daughter of Demeter vet that she knew. The veterinarian (Rose Cotton) told Hazel that she had a German shepherd on her hands. He had to be about a month old; too young to be away from his mother and probably abandoned or issued from a puppy mill. She offered to bring the puppy to a shelter for her, but Hazel declined for now.

On the way back home, he started barking from her arms and Hazel couldn't figure out why for the life of her. Then she saw that he was yapping at a Cyclops who was lazily trailing after Hazel.

She decided to name the puppy Sirius, keep him close and start looking for an apartment that allowed pets.

She was nibbling on a pencil and listening to Eric, her newest partner for the newest project at school, talk about a battle that they were supposed to lead a debate about in class.

"Okay," Hazel said. "But I would argue…"

Eric made her think of a child of Athena. His eyes got bright and still when he was focusing and he could go hours without moving when he was working- that scary thing Annabeth did that they called her Praying Mantis Twilight Zone.

"Okay," Eric said. "I buy it. All good points."

Hazel smiled and sipped her coffee. This officially meant that Eric was buying the lattes next time they studied together.

"You're pretty smart, Levesque. And pretty, period."

Hazel nodded quietly and took another long sip.

"I was thinking that we should do something off-campus together," he said shyly.

"Like a date?" Hazel asked.

Eric's eyes suddenly dropped from hers and he nodded.

Hazel was tempted to say no and pack her bags and tell him that her dog was sick and that she needed to go home, but she didn't. What had Frank told her before he died? You have other things to do, more things to see, more lives to live. I hope you do it all. Twice even.

She hadn't really thought about dating since she'd lost him. Hadn't craved human connection farther than small toddlers tugging at her pants and whining about how their brother had turned into a shark and bit them, or leaning on Marius when they watched a movie. Was that weird? Was that unnatural? Was that part of immortality- not wanting the thing that most mortals lived for?

Maybe she should… try?

"A date sounds nice," Hazel said with a smile.

Eric's face lit up.

"Geez Levesque, you look pretty glum," someone said.

She stopped fumbling with her apartment key and saw Apollo leaning against her front door.

"Pretty though," he said as Hazel ignored him and messed with her lock. He tipped his head to the side. "You're not still mad about that thing on Olympus right? You know that Hermes dared me to do it right? You're a smart girl…"

"I'm not angry with you Apollo, I need you to leave me alone," she said. The door opened and she walked right in, greeted by a happy bark from Sirius. Apollo followed her in and closed the door behind himself.

"Sparkly shoes," he said. "Cocktail dress. You were on a date weren't you?"

"Leave," Hazel said.

"It didn't work out, did it?" Apollo said. Hazel was about to tell Sirius to rip this god's throat out, but he didn't sound teasing. He sounded… compassionate?

"He's a sweet guy, and I think I just blew whatever friendship we could have had left," Hazel said reaching into the fridge and finding a can of Coke. It would have to do until she could get her hands on mouthwash.

"You went into that unprepared, Levesque," Apollo said shaking his head. Before Hazel could turn around and tell him how rude he was, he caught himself. "You went in there wanting your ex back."

Silence. Not because she didn't want this conversation (not that she did, either), but because his words were like a punch in the stomach.

"Frank Zhang is not my ex," Hazel said quietly.

"He could be," Apollo said. "You love him. He broke your heart."

"Not by choice."

"No, but at the end of the day he died," Apollo said. "That's why I think so many gods took wives and husbands knowing they'd never respect their vows and that they could do without a spouse- especially the first gods. Because at least at the end of the day they could go back to someone who wouldn't die on them."

Hazel let the fridge slam and she rested her forehead against the handle.

"How do you do it?" Hazel asked. "How do you date?"

"The key is to treat it like a game," Apollo said. "Not like something the rest of your life is banking on."

Hazel raised an eyebrow.

"If you walk into a nice restaurant all dressed up, you know that you're going to be disappointed," Apollo said. "Because people walk into these places for engagements and anniversaries, and you can't have any of that- at least not any happy ones that you'll treasure as much as mortals can. You have to be ready to forget people when you're immortal. You have to be ready to live with the fact that you're alive and that whoever you last kissed and thought you'd love forever either isn't, or you lied to them when you gave your heart away. You've got to treat things lightly, Levesque."

A god treating things lightly is the reason I grew up in 1940 America with a bitter mother and all of society foaming at the mouth about my white, no-show father, Hazel wanted to say.

Still, she saw Apollo's point.

But she realised that she wasn't ready to do that.

Hazel wasn't a god. She was human. She hadn't grown up knowing that she'd live forever, she had no sense of entitlement to Father Time and the world around her. To her, things just mattered more than they did to the gods she'd grown to spend time with, and maybe even like in a quirky friendship to put all other quirky friendships to the test. Human, mundane things. Like she was glad that she'd worn a white dress at her wedding and had had a something borrowed, something old, something blue and something new. In her head, her children were still angels. To Hazel, there was such a thing as true love and she had already found it and lost him to time, and it had hurt so badly that it had only sealed in her belief that he was the only man she'd ever love as fiercely.

So what was the point of looking some more?

What was the point for settling for less, for a duller passion, for an okay lover after that?

That was her problem. Not that she feared for a future without Eric if she fell in love with him, although that would spring up eventually.

Just that she'd never feel as loved and loving again. So why bother?

It was stupid. She knew how much it sucked to losepets, but she shouldn't be this overemotional about putting a dog down for so long- even if that dog was Cassie, even if that dog had been Hazel's only companion for as long as she could remember.

That same week, Marie-France got hit by a car. Émilienne at work had a miscarriage and was off until January. The twins' birthday was this week. Maybe it was an accumulation of things that were tearing Hazel up inside.

Hazel wasn't new to loss, but for some reason-for only a second in what would end up being a very long life- she went ahead and imposed it on herself by meeting new people and getting attached to abandoned dogs and calling goofy boys her best friends.

She decided to stop that now.

It all got to Hazel's head after a while.

She'd done so much with her life. She'd traveled enough to complete the bucket lists of several loved ones, had been a teacher, a volunteer, a museum tour guide, a historian, a writer, a cartographer, an artist, a mother, a soldier, and a movie critic. She spoke English, Latin, French, Mandarin, Greek, Creole, Spanish, German, Portuguese, Russian and Swahili fluently. She had a pilot's license, a doctorate, a degree in this, a certificate in that. She'd worked jobs that hadn't existed when her family had died, and she'd owned objects that would have blown the inventors of her adulthood away. She'd met enough people to stop wanting to see faces disappear and she'd seen enough to stop being amazed.

So what was the point?

Why was she still here?

How could she get out?

Could she get out?

She'd been praying to Zeus for days.

You've got me. You made your point. I've seen enough. Take me back to the Underworld, let me go back in, let me cross the doors. Once I do put me in the fields of punishment for all I care, split the pieces of my bodies in all the rivers of the Underworld. But please, for the love of all things good, take me out.

Zeus never did.

How else could she go back?

How else could she call it quits?

How else could she die?

Hazel was just about to join the Hunters of Artemis. Hell, she wasn't interested in anybody romantically. She'd done everything she wanted to do, and she'd served many presidents and even a king in the world's messy history. Why not a goddess?

Thalia was talking her through the logistics and processes.

"How do you do it? Be immortal," Hazel asked.

Hazel meant, how did Thalia handle the fact that her brother had died so long ago that counting was futile, how did Thalia bear loss after loss, but Thalia answered a totally different question.

"I'm not immortal, so to speak," Thalia said. "If I get hurt badly enough, I will die in battle. But how do I handle everything changing?"

Hazel didn't listen to the rest of her explanation. She was caught on that, and eventually it became the reason why she didn't join the hunters.

When Percy had been offered immortality, it had been a big deal (or so Annabeth had told Hazel). It'd been thrown on Hazel casually, however. So there had to be something up, right? Some kind of... of exception? Maybe she was like the hunters. Old age wouldn't get her, disease would never find her, but if she got hurt badly enough… if she tried hard enough…

"You can beat hellhounds, Hazel," Chiron said. He didn't sound angry like Hazel thought he would, he sounded tired.

"That last one was big," Hazel said. She didn't even touch the bruise on her cheek. She'd spent all night touching it and cursing it for being nothing more than a harmless, if not more sensitive, black spot on her face.

"No, Hazel, I think that you let it win," Chiron said. "And I think that you've been doing this for a while now."

Hazel played dumb.

"Picking a fight with whatever monster you can find in the streets, letting it win, coming to visit camp with a new injury each time, being so careless with yourself…"

"Don't tell me to treasure my life more," Hazel said. "Don't tell me to take care of it because I'm lucky to win these fights when so many little kids are dying. Because I didn't ask for this and I'd gladly switch anything to these kids for their mortality and I don't care anymore."

"I'm not," Chiron said. "I'm telling you to be careful. And until you do, I'm going to have to take precautions."

The two children of Hades standing behind Chiron –all dark hair and pale skin- nodded.

Hazel's jaw dropped.

"You're having me… followed?" Hazel asked.

"Unless you look me in the eyes right now and swear on the earth that you'll watch over yourself," Chiron said.

Hazel stormed out of his office angrily.

The first of Hazel's shadows died about five months later, of a blood disorder that Hazel hadn't known he'd had. She attended his funeral in secret. Found out his name was Guillaume.

The second was killed by a dracanae that Hazel had been fighting. She'd dispatched it and had cradled the dying half-blood in her arms.

"Why?" Hazel asked. "Why, why, why did you jump in front of that monster?"

"Save… you…" he said before choking on a mouthful of blood.

"I'm immortal," Hazel said. "I'm immortal, I would have been fine."

She didn't even know if he heard her before dying. She never found out his name.

Hazel brought his camp necklace back to Chiron and said, "No more escorts or I get rid of them myself."

She didn't hear his answer before she shadow-traveled out.

Lupa hadn't had the memo.

You disappoint me, daughter of Rome, she told Hazel the second that this one stepped into New Rome.

"I've gotten that a lot, recently," she said. She wouldn't dare to sass Lupa usually, no Roman with it would be like spitting on your grandmother, but today she was in a horrible mood.

May 8. Nico's birthday, Frank's death day- a twisted coincidence and correlation in time, one that always made Hazel fume a bit.

Disappointment yet again, the wolf sneered. Has it been so long since your lessons that you've forgotten the value of respect, little cub?

"I am not a cub," Hazel said. "I am not a child."

You act like one. You act as if you have never struggled for your life. You act as if you have never been taught respect and duty. You act as if you have never valued the importance of aut vincere aut mori.

"Conquer or die," Hazel translated.

Exactly, my little cub, Lupa said. You have gotten feeble. You have gotten soft-spoken. You have gotten critically and disappointingly weak.

"Then maybe you can just count me out of conquering and sign me up for dying," Hazel snapped.

You already have been, the wolf said. And maybe she said it sadly.

Apparently Lupa and Chiron still schemed with one another because Hazel's stunt at the Wolf House and the following three month disappearance to Turkey weren't appreciated. So much, actually, that it was brought to Pluto's attention.

"Sign me up for dying," Pluto said. "Are you serious, Hazel?"

She didn't answer. She refused to answer. She owed nothing to any god, particularly the father who'd let all of this happen to her. Who'd let her outlive her husband, her friends, her children, her purpose.

"As an alternative, I'll be more than happy to enroll you as a handmaiden to Persephone," Pluto said.

"What?" Hazel protested.

"A handmaiden to Persephone. We have an opening right now. I don't think that spending some time in the Underworld could do harm to you, or to my nerves," Pluto said.

"You…" Hazel said. "You're kidding. She despises me."

"No. She despised Nico. She disliked you," Pluto corrected. "But all that was years ago. I'm sure she's forgotten you."

Hazel balled her fists together.

"I refuse," Hazel said.

"Oh, I'm sorry," Pluto said. "Did I deign to mention that this isn't a choice?"

Her jaw dropped.

"Your behaviour is alarming to say the least," Pluto said. "You are causing quite some concern."

"Then listen to what I'm saying," Hazel begged.

"You're acting unlike yourself," Pluto said.

"Living forever is unlike myself," Hazel snapped at him. At first she'd been angry at her father. Then when she'd found out who he was and how Hazel had broken every rule of his realm, she'd been afraid of him. Then she'd respected him. But after a thousand years, all of that got old. It made way for being angry. Being frustrated. Being upset.

"You'll do as I tell you."

"Or what?" Hazel sneered.

Pluto shot her the kind of deep look that reminded Hazel that even immortals could get in some intense trouble. She shut up and didn't argue any more.

She hated being a handmaiden.

She hated smiling and nodding and fetching things and making small talk. It reminded her of when she'd worked in retail.

She hated brushing out her stepmother's long ink-black hair or braiding it. It reminded her of Katherine and her daughters and granddaughters and every other little girl she'd taken care of, or the girls on the Argo II who started all wearing their hair the same way to see when the boys would notice- and then who kept doing it just to bear the separation and feel close.

She hated cleaning. It felt trivial and useless.

She hated being addressed to with a fake name by Persephone and the rest of the palace staff, who called her Leah.

She hated the dark Underworld.

She hated the fact that she couldn't leave.

She hated watering the plants in Persephone's garden because emeralds were not plants.

But the part that she hated more?

The fact that from Persephone's chamber window she could see Elysium and the Isles of the Blest, and she knew that somewhere in there the people she'd once lived for were there without her. She hated seeing the place where she knew Frank had been welcomed to with open arms when he'd died by Percy and Annabeth and Piper and Jason and Leo who had been just as handsomely welcomed there beforehand. She hated how she should have been there with them, united in youth with her best friends once more, but never would be able to set foot in Elysium. She hated seeing the place where her son had had to wander alone when he'd died so young, but not knowing if there was still a chance that he was still wandering in the walls.

She hated being so close to the people she'd loved until it hurt- but having no way of touching them.

It hurt more than loving them ever had. And that had hurt a lot.

At the end of the day that was what broke down Hazel's angry, restless, fleeting spirit. Not the service, not the purpose. The tearing love.

Pluto didn't know that. He thought that he'd calmed down his daughter's self-destructive habits and made her the obliging and cheerful and daring and imaginative girl she'd been before. He thought he'd showed her reason and that she'd bathed in its light and welcomed it like a saviour- like the divine sons of religions long forgotten.

But there was no going back to before. Gods didn't have a sense of before, they had a sense of now and forever. They never became nostalgic. They never wanted to crawl into the past and wrap themselves in memories to hide from the present.

Hazel wasn't a god. To her before was the only thing she craved more than an end.

So really, she wasn't fixed at all when she was released from her service to Persephone.

Partially because she had never at any point considered herself unreasonably broken, but also because she'd seen hell and wanted the paradise within it more than ever.

Another side-effect of seeing hell was that Hazel had seen how many people had accidentally ended up there. How many people had been thrown there by chance, human stupidity, jealousy or violence (especially violence).

So for a while, Hazel lived for those people. She painted for the artists who had never gotten to sign her name on a painting because of the unique feminity of her title. She signed petitions for the boy who had died trying to change the world and had instead eaten bullets. She smiled for the woman who's husband had thrown acid at her now melted and disfigured face. She read books and learned new things every day for the toddler who hadn't made it to elementary school and considered becoming a fireman for him. She arranged her hair in beautiful braids for the teenage girl who'd lost her hair to chemotherapy.

But the thing about life? Everybody gets one, and at the end of the day your life is tied to your own sake.

Fuck good intentions, fuck the kind of caring that wraps your every attention around someone else, fuck the reputed force of willpower, fuck wanting things so badly that you were torn in two between wanting to do the right thing and the guilt that came with failing.

You can't live for other people.

After she'd jumped from the bridge, her body had been fished from the river, broken in a thousand ways- half of those beyond repair. The paramedics jumped out of their skin when they found a pulse at her wrist.

The pulse didn't stop. The pain did the same, and there was plenty of it. Hazel had shattered bones against the river, had snapped nerves in important places, had haemorrhaged everywhere that blood flowed in her body. This is how Hazel found out that her body could be broken beyond how it could be fixed, but that no matter what she did to her body, Hazel would always be alive in it.

She had been unconscious for an hour an twenty minutes only after that jump. An hour and twenty minutes was all the rest from conscience and dreams that she'd had in more than three thousand years, and it was all she was going to get.

She should have cried when the doctors told her how lucky she was to be alive, but she laughed.

Luck, doctor, has nothing to do with it. Think along the lines of curses.

Chiron came to visit. He didn't lecture Hazel, didn't make her feel bad in any way. He just read to her because he'd found a book on her nightstand at home and thought that she'd like to know how the story ended. It was sweet of him, though Hazel had grown dis-attached to the plot. Hazel wouldn't have sent him away even if her mouth wouldn't have been otherwise occupied with a ventilator that she wished she could tell the doctors she didn't need. The doctors could put Hazel in the emergency room's waiting area as a rug and she wouldn't die on them. She wouldn't die on anyone. What a relief it had been when three young children had smiled at her every day, and what a curse it was now.

Through a legion messenger and the complex roads of Rome, Lupa sent a letter to Hazel telling her to heal well.

Pluto didn't drop by. Chiron said he felt guilty. Hazel didn't know if it was true or not.

When the doctors decided that she could probably breathe on her own and took the tube out, Hazel could talk again. The first thing she did was apologise to Chiron.

"You don't have to," he said gently.

"You pour so much of your time and energy and soul into keeping demigods alive," Hazel said. "This must destroy you."

"It destroys me that you are unhappy, Hazel," Chiron said. "And that isn't your fault. Much like these characters are helpless to what the writer springs on them," he said gesturing to her paperback.

"Can you read more of it?" Hazel asked.

"Of course, child," Chiron said reaching for it and cracking the spine.

"Whose fault is it?" Hazel asked.

"Pardon?"

"You always say it's not my fault that I'm unhappy, that I was... that I so much as wanted to jump. Then whose fault is it?" Hazel asked.

"Whoever makes things the way they are," Chiron said. "So the same who made sure that you met your husband, befriended your friends. Whoever will make you happy again."

"I don't think I will be," Hazel said.

"That doesn't sound right," Chiron said brushing Hazel's hair off of her forehead.

"I've exhausted the world," Hazel said. "I've exhausted myself."

"I know."

And he did. Chiron knew the feeling too.

"How do you do it?" Hazel asked. "How do you keep living? If anyone has any reason to break down, it's you. You watch kids die, you've done the same thing for years and years… why haven't you ever wished that you were dead or mortal? Or… or have you?"

"It's not easy to laugh at the idea of forever," Chiron said.

"I know," Hazel said.

"It was harder at first. It never gets easier to lose a hero, but it's harder for me to close my heart to more."

"I'm not like that," Hazel said. "I've had to work hard to get to the people I love. I love easily, but I don't reach everyone that way."

"I know," Chiron said. "That is my blessing- or my curse."

"Have you ever thought of what happened after the book ended to the characters?" Chiron asked looking at the book on Hazel's side table, the paperback that they'd finished that morning.

"No," Hazel said. "That's what the epilogue is for."

"Is it?"

"Yes," Hazel said. "You know that they did save the city, and after that they kept living there, and Teresa marries Jon and their children inherit the throne, and the wall is still standing and will keep standing, and Gregaas remains captain of the watch..."

"But what about after the epilogue?" Chiron asked.

"There is no after the epilogue," Hazel said.

"See, that's another thing about immortal life," Chiron said. "You can't check things off a list and wait for an end. You won't get one. You have to keep thinking of the next thing to do, a new adventure, a new development, even so much as a new card game to learn."

"Are you and Mr D still playing Pinochle?" Hazel asked. "Come off of it. I know that you two still meet in the Big House. Apollo and I have been thinking it for ages."

"Go Fish," Chiron said. "We have made a full-circle back to our Go Fish phase. Have you played recently? No? I happen to have a deck of cards on me right now..."

"Another way you can stay alive and sane," Chiron said -he'd gotten into the habit of giving Hazel a bit of advice every day, so that every day she felt more in control if not more healed- "is that you can admit that immortal life is a burden, you can say it out loud, you can complain about it, you can cry for all you're worth, but you don't find your escape in suicide."

Hazel swallowed. The doctors had all used euphemisms, nobody –not even Hazel- had said that she'd tried to commit suicide.

"Where, then?" She asked.

"Purpose. Ideas. Stories. Happiness is another. And none of these things are easy, but I have found that they are what it takes to survive life."

"Hardships for a hardship," Hazel said.

"That would be one way to put it, of course," Chiron said. "A pessimistic way to put it, but sometimes the sky is indeed grey."

"Then so be it," Hazel said. "Hardships for a hardship. It's better when you're honest about it, when you're not with the gods who are all alright with everything. Can I… stay with you? After I'm out of all of this hospital, assuming my body remembers how to heal itself. Can you bring me back to Camp, can I stay with you? Being on my own has always made everything worst and I need to start learning how to live. How not to want to stop. How to stay willing. Because I can't do- do- do this again. I can't try to end it and wake up alive and heartbroken about it."

"Hazel, you can rest," Chiron said. "Relax. Recover."

"Then I'll live?" Hazel asked. "Well?"

"Why my dear," Chiron said. "I certainly hope so."