***

This is the end
Hold your breath and count to ten
Feel the Earth move and then
Hear my heart burst again
For this is the end
I've drowned and dreamt this moment
So overdue I owe them
Swept away I'm stolen

***

LEO WASN'T A BELIEVER in the past determining the future. He thought it seemed unfair that something they may have no control over could ruin their entire life.

And yet here he was, still running from a past he didn't want to define him. A past that seemed to ruin his future wherever he went. He could remember each hurting word of each painful day so clearly, like when he was cast out by his only living relatives... and when he left all he knew for love, a scarring love like a fatal wound.

The day he left Camp Half-Blood to find Ogygia was bittersweet, the love and determination he had felt being dampened by the realisation that he would being leaving his friends behind. That was a day he remembered clearly, but it wasn't the same as the day they won the war. The day they lost him, and the day that he would never forget.

This was only coming from a seventeen year-old Latino, however, and he knew there was a pain greater than his out there, yet he still braced for the it all as if a bus was hurtling at him – because in honesty, his history really was a bus-load of baggage.

He remembered how the skies used to seem endless and the stars were brighter than anything he'd known. How the world was hopeful and beautiful, back in the days when everything stayed the same as they were left.

He heaved a sigh, looking out into the dark sky above him. Blinking back the building tears that tried to force their way to the surface, his shoulders sagged. "Oh, Jason," he spoke to be open wind. "Where are you?"

***

If the sky falls
And it crumbles
We will stand tall
And face it all, together
If the sky falls
When it crumbles
We will stand tall
And face it all, together
At Skyfall
At Skyfall

***

PIPER NEVER MEANT FOR ANYONE to get hurt. She was only trying to help... though it seemed like even that was backfiring on her.

The last thing she remembered was pushing Jason aside as a maliciously-gleaming dagger cut its path through the air and into her rib cage – just below her heart. She had felt the wind rushing through her, as if the son of Jupiter was trying to catch her once more, and the ground rushing up to meet her as her dive reach its fall. She remembered the agonising pain that had followed, her ribs cracked and her blood hot like molten lead from the centre of her chest.

She couldn't quite remember anything else. Not the war raging around her, nor the blood soaking the soil of the Earth or where Jason went after she took the hit for him.

They said he was off the grid, no one could find him and Iris Messages just weren't getting through. Jason was unreachable and Piper had never felt more alone.

All she had wanted to do was to was save him, but he wasn't there for her to save.

***

Skyfall is where we start
A thousand miles and poles apart
Where walls collide and days are dark
You may have my number
You can take my name
But you'll never have my heart

***

FRANK DIDN'T KNOW WHAT he could do. The person he had looked to for guidance and a role-model was nowhere to be seen, and he was still expected to pretend nothing was wrong and everything was right.

The streets of New Rome were quiet and near-empty, the only signs of life being him, the thunderous sky above and the other stragglers caught out in the pouring rain of the heavens. Lightning was threatening to strike at any moment yet he felt perfectly at ease, albeit the rain that soaked him to the very shape-shifting bones in his body.

His eyes were squinted as he watched through the downpour on the streets, looking but never really seeing. All the lines seemed to blur in his vision, but still he persisted.

At some point, he felt the loving presence of Hazel join him, he wasn't sure when it was, however. She rose her umbrella above them, the purple material shielding them from the heavens' wrath.

"I remember his screams, you know," Hazel's voice was quiet. "I remember Piper being stabbed and falling limp in his arms, and he had screamed. All of us could feel his pain – all of us – and we couldn't do a thing."

Frank's eyes watered and he blinked back the tears that threatened to spill over. None of them would forget that day, the day when he disappeared. That memory was burnt into them and it would go with them to the grave.

To storm or fire the world had fallen, but the storm had fallen too. Jason Grace was gone, and no one could find him.

***

If the sky falls
And it crumbles
We will stand tall
And face it all, together
If the sky falls
When it crumbles
We will stand tall
And face it all, together
At Skyfall

***