Disclaimer: I do not own the riordanverse. Rick Riordan does.

Hey guys, so I found this story [just a few chapters written] in my google drive and... I liked it. Not the best, but not that bad either. So I'm gonna post it here, and if it's liked enough, and if I still have the motivation, I'll continue it [past experiences tell m, regardless of readers, I'm continuing this] The idea is kinda shit, but like, why not? I should also mention that you don't have to have read PJO & HOO to understand this, since it's a mortal AU.

And, ofc, this isn't going to be one of the books I'm really invested in, like "Cursed" or "Label Me A Killer". So, sorry 'bout that.

Anyway, onto the story! {this is the same thing from the one-shots book btw}

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Warning: way too much angst and death and trauma, etc. to the point its kinda cringe. I still kinda like it though, which is why I'm publishing it.

So, here's the first chapter I've written. I've written 3 chapters so far.

It isn't as good, actually. But yeah, basically, this chapter *kinda* says what's happened to the two of them, etc etc. Also, Thalia Grace lovers are gonna be a little.... disturbed. You'll see.

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Jason Grace heard them. He heard the rumours. There were too many of them, all jumbled up to the point they often contradicted each other.

He was raised by animals. That's why he's so weird.

He wasn't, though. The idea was hysterical— if so, he wouldn't have been able to be in his senior year of high school and manage with high grades.

He'd had a rough childhood on the streets, but he hadn't been raised by animals. He'd been raised by himself, the world, and maybe a contributing factor would be his partner on the streets. He was put in a carton and ditched somewhere by his mother, at age four, because she was drunk and thought it would be funny.

For starters, fighting for survival was not funny. There were no 'animals'. Only humans, hunting him down. Literally. He had ideas why, which seized him with the fear of the possibility: what if.

Anyway, he'd learnt stuff that others didn't early. Too early. And he'd turned into a psychopath. Not literally, but maybe. He'd never really tried to find out. But he'd learned that no one really cared. One person there, then they're not.

And by the age of fifteen, he'd finally tracked down his sister's house, finally escaped his old life.

Then the rumour came– he pushed his sister off a roof.

He didn't exactly, though she was now dead.

He should've felt guilty, but he didn't. Besides, a person was just a person. Thalia had changed from his idol, to a person. A person who hadn't bothered to try to help him when he was a kid, alone and lost.

And they got into fights more often, too often.

Then, once, when she'd lost her cool, she'd shoved him hard, and he would've tumbled off the roof. But he whirled around, and regained his footing, and she was the one dangling off the edge. And she was in horror for what she could've done, even more than the fact that she would fall any second.

But his opinions changed in that moment, and in his mental ranking, she went one place down. She wasn't a person anymore, she was a knife. And, from experience, knives just knew to drown in anger, push, kill. She became one of them. Jason didn't help her. He just stared at her, his eyes emotionless.

Then, he walked away. A man heard her screams for help, and came running up the stairs to help her, and he tripped him. He didn't know why, he just decided that she didn't deserve to be saved.

She'd let him go, was the thought that consumed him. Even when he came back, she left.

Her shouts became more a scream, more desperate, pure terror, and abruptly stopped. At that moment, Jason walked out the door and was met by the body of Thalia Grace. He stared at it for a second, before continuing, unaffected.

Someone had seen him, of course.

Otherwise, how would the rumour start?

He killed a girl.

He didn't kill anyone. Because, in his eyes, when she'd almost pushed him off, she'd lost her title as a person. He'd simply broken a knife into two, because that's what you did when it tried to stab you.

Then, he'd dated one of the prettiest girls in the school, Piper McLean. That was a time that he'd become naive, despite himself. He allowed himself to make an exception. He'd become everything she wanted, and it worked.

But those kaleidoscopic eyes watched him as he took his sister's body and threw it in a hole. No funeral, nothing. Nothing marked the spot, because the world wouldn't care, and nor did he. Maybe she'd seen the absolute emptiness in his eyes, like he was just throwing out the trash. She asked him about it the next day, probably expecting an emotional response, despite what she'd seen. Maybe that encounter changed something in him, because he didn't fake anything.

"Well," he had responded coolly, casually even. "She was there. Now she's not."

And the next day, when he looked at her, he'd seen the fear in her eyes. And, like Thalia, she wasn't Piper anymore. She was just a person.

From then, everyone was a person. No more exceptions came into being. He was a person. Jason Grace was just a label, the world wouldn't cry if he disappeared. Of course, he didn't want to disappear. So he didn't.

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In the second class, Jason had physics. He sat next to a boy named Perseus. Or Percy, as he preferred to be called, he'd told him. He simply shrugged in response, "It's just a label. Doesn't make much of a difference, but okay."

Percy was silent for a few seconds, "Jeez, that's deep."

He didn't respond, and scribbled down the questions, his handwriting messy cursive, in italics. Percy didn't say anything until 10 minutes later.

"Ugh," he groaned, leaning back, "Physics sucks, Why is it so hard?"

Jason gave him a look, "It's just energy transformation. What the fuck's hard about that?"

"The maths part. And remembering all the forms of energy. So, yeah, everything."

Jason passed him the calculator under his table. He gave him a grateful look, "Thanks, man. I don't have one."

"You can keep it. I honestly couldn't care less about it."

Percy's face morphed into a slight frown, but he reverted back to his normal expression. "Some people can barely afford stuff like that, you know."

Jason glanced at him from his notebook. So he was one of those people. "But they're just people, no?"

"What d'you mean?"

"None of them have really started a revolution. Are we studying about them? Are they special to the world? No."

"Maybe if they had a chance to, they would," Percy said, evidently triggered by what he'd told him.

Jason closed his book, and put down his pen, fully facing Percy. "Let's say, I give you infinite money. Power, fame, status, all of that. Anything you want, you could have it. Would you change the world?"

"I would give-"

"Bullshit. So, you give most of it to the poor. And once that money's over, what're they gonna do, huh? You think that's going to end poverty?"

Percy was silent, "Well... Just because they didn't change the world, doesn't mean their lives don't matter."

"Yeah. They matter, because if they didn't exist, that one birth certificate wouldn't be made. Big deal."

Percy gave him a look that was a mix of emotions, is eyebrows knitting in a frown, lips twitching, and an unreadable expression in his eyes. He said, "What about you, then? What if you died, and no one cared, how'd you feel about that?"

He didn't need to think much before he said, "I care about myself. That's why I'm alive. But, other than that... I'd be dead, so would I really care? I don't expect the world to stop spinning if I disappear."

But he was one of those, meaning that he wouldn't ever be able to process that. So he kept arguing. "And a sibling, or a parent of yours died?"

So he hasn't heard the rumours.

"They were there, now they're not."

💋

Percy knew that people could turn cold. But, everyone had emotions, he'd known and seen that for the longest time. Looking at Jason Grace, though, he doubted himself. Those sharp blue eyes were icy, void. He was a void. And he wondered what happened to him, for him to become like that.

"Maybe you wouldn't care if someone you knew died, but others would be."

Jason sighed, sounding a bit exasperated, as if he was explaining something to a stubborn toddler. "The world still spins."

"So whose death would matter?"

"Well, I honestly don't know. Probably that person who's a month away from inventing an artificial ozone layer." A slanted smile placed itself on his lips, "That'd suck, so close to solving global warming problems."

Then the teacher finally noticed their conversation, and looked up from her laptop, "Jackson, Grace." That was all she said.

He remembered joking about her with his mom, saying that she had never spoken more than eight words in a sentence– he'd kept track for 3 years. Yes, he was that person, who was friends with his mom, and he really didn't care what other people had to say about it. Anyway, behind her short message, he knew what she meant: both of you will shut up and continue with your work, or you'll be going straight to the principal's office.

So, being a smart person, he went back to his work. Jason also did so, and he watched as the blond flipped open his book and started lazily scribbling onto the pages. Mrs. Olen kept her dark eyes on them for a second, before going back to whatever she was doing.

Jason had a unique way of writing, his letters in small loops, messy but elegant as they tilted towards the left. He watched the way he wrote in a flow, pausing for a few seconds before each answer. After about 10 seconds, Percy decided that he was being creepy, and went back to his notebook– which was horribly messy, the words written in slashes of ink, with probably a lot of them in the wrong spelling.

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Dyslexia sucked. Of course, his mom had somehow managed to arrange money to get 'treatment' to help him overcome it. It was effective, he had to admit. He didn't fail his english exams because of spelling, and he could now read somewhat normally, thanks to her.

How had his mom gotten so much money? He knew how– she'd married Gabe, who'd paid for his treatment to make a good impression. The good impression was gone six days later. He still paid for it till he was in sixth grade, though, when he started becoming a pure burden and nothing more. Then, his mom had threatened to cover him in wet cement and sell him as a statue. And he left. He still wondered whether it was an empty threat or not.

After that, it was much more peaceful.

Until it wasn't: fate had never been kind to him.

At one of the biggest birthday parties he'd been to, a car slipped and swerved towards him and his friends. Michael Yew. He had died. Grover Underwood, his best friend, had gotten paralysed from the waist down.

From there, it'd gone downhill.

Not even four months later, there was a school shooting. The school had absolutely no preparation for an event like that– no drills, nothing. And so many people had died– people he barely knew, but it still hurt. Lee Fletcher, Charles Beckendorf, Silena Beauregard, Zoë Nightshade... The list would never end. And even Annabeth's best friend, Luke. 

The school shooting had been one of the worst ones in the whole country, on the news headlines.

The whole school had suffered from that, actually: when he though about it, he was probably the most mentally intact people there. One of his classmates, Drew Tanaka, had fallen into depression. Another kid, Lou Ellen, had started showing severe symptoms of mental illnesses– dissociation, PTSD– and had been sent to a mental hospital. Alabaster, the top student, was flunking exams in a row. An 8 year-old was already dealing with a declining mental health. 

The teachers themselves were pathetic– they didn't care, bombarding students with homework, and when the students started protesting, it'd just be detention. Anxiety attacks were ignored, and so were so many other signs of trauma. That was what really made it so much worse, Percy thought.

After a particularly horrible breakdown he'd had in front of his mom, at age 14, she, along with other parents, got the school shut down, and forced them to pay a compensation for the psychological harm done to students, though it would never really heal them.

All the time, he escaped unscathed.

It was only by the time he was 16, he'd learnt to completely cope with it, in a healthy way. So, now at 17, he could pretty easily pass for normal.

Still, staring at his messy notebook, thoughts haunted him. He hadn't contacted anyone from his old school, except for his close friends– Annabeth Chase and Grover Underwood.

He wondered what happened to the rest of them. He remembered Nico di Angelo, who was 11 at the time, around 15 now. Nancy Bobofit, who'd used to be his rival, curled up next to him, trembling. The image of Will Solace, frozen, blood covering him as his brother was shot next to him, imprinted in his mind. How were they doing now?

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It was only when Jason coughed, breaking the silence of the class, that he finally clicked his pen and started writing, trying to block out the thoughts that plagued his mind like termites. And when he was finally able to focus on the sums, despite himself, his thoughts wandered to the Jason Grace, sitting next to him. His ideology of the world disturbed him.

Something had happened to him, he thought. He recognised trauma when he saw it.

"Hey, Jason..." He began.

"Hm?"

He didn't know what to say, not sure how to express what he was thinking. He still tried, and said, "Why do you think people don't matter? You've never been attached to anyone?"

Jason's answer was dull, Percy noticed, his voice lacking any real tone. As if it was rehearsed. "Of course I have been. But in the end, everyone leaves. And, it kinda sucks when you're too late in realising that the world won't care."

Percy didn't respond, and class went on.

To his annoyance, Jason was right. Despite his inner turmoil, the world still spun.

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So, um... Holy shit, my mind only knew of angst while writing this. *glares at past-self*

I just yeeted logic out of the window, and went "SUFFERING! SO MUCH SUFFERING!" like Akhlys. Lol.

How was it, btw? I was going to proof-read it, but it was too long and I didn't feel like it. [And I still tell people I'm not that lazy.]

Anyway, if you read it, thanks! 🙃

See ya, guys!

~It's mee <3