ohmygods. if you are still here after nearly a literal year, I love you with my whole heart and please message me so that I know who you am so I can let you know how fucking grateful I am for you.

Please, tell me about ur lives. What have u been up to! What's something wonderful that's happened to you lately? I miss wattpad. It's always been such a warm place for me and I want to properly come back. I can't promise weekly updates or anything, but I am trying my best to keep my life together and will post when I can. I love you all and thank you for supporting me xx

***

Piper sat on the ledge of the bridge, her legs kicking over the side, while Will leaned against it. She studied the sunset, not really seeing the brilliant mauves that swirled in the afternoon sky. Will absentmindedly wrapped and unwrapped a bandage around his wrist, waiting for Piper to break the silence.

"It's just—I'm a daughter of Aphrodite... I'm supposed to just inherently know these things, you know?"

Will deliberated over his answer and Piper carried on.

"How is it that I didn't even know my own sexuality, that I didn't even know that I like Reyna?" Her eyes glossed over with tears. "It's like, you wake up and you know that if you go out and shoot something with an arrow, it will hit, no matter what. You just know that. Why didn't I even understand myself?"

The silence drifted over them before Will spoke.

"Wait. You can't be expected to just know everything about yourself just because you think it's part of your godly essence. Jason-" Piper flinched at the name and Will internally kicked himself for being so insensitive. "- told me once that you literally just started fluently speaking French. Did you know that you could do that?"

"No...? But-"

"Also. Sexuality is not as easy to categorise as a skill inherited from your parents, like archery or healing."

"But, you've always known that you are gay, right?"

Will shrugged. "Yes. But everybody has their own experience. Just because I knew from the onset doesn't mean that you or anyone else will."

Piper shifted on the ledge, and Will reached out an arm to steady her, slightly afraid that she would fall into the churning mass of water below.

"Listen," he said, "it's okay not to know or understand. This isn't something that's easy to categorise. Just... be yourself." He gave a lopsided grin at her expression at hearing that same phrase for the millionth time.

"Hey, it's good advice. Really. Just listen to your heart. I'm always here for you, if you need to talk, or not talk. Anything." Piper gave him a small smile.

She loved how, aesthetically, Will and Nico contrasted each other. They were like ying ang yand, darkness and light. But, really? They were so similar. Both so kind of heart. And although, Will looked as if he were sunlight personified, warmth shone out of the both of them. If Will was the rays of the sun, illuminating all he came into contact with, Nico was moonbeams and starlight, a different guide of light and yet invigorating and comforting all the same.

The same kind of aura could not be said of Nico's father. Hades was darkness. Not the comforting twilight of summery evenings spent laughing around the camp bonfire, or the varying shades of shadow that swept over you when you fell into a deep soothing sleep, but rather the cold dark shawl of death.

Thanatos, who prided himself on staying well-informed of the times. He knew every niche meme and often made tweets that garnered hundreds of thousands of likes. In order to really become twitter famous, one needed to have a steady grasp on the thousands, if not millions, of fandoms around. It was lucky he had his iPad really. How else would he be able to binge watch Netflix or read through all the year's most popular YA fiction? Obviously Thanatos had read Harry Potter. And it was his firm opinion that the dementors of that magical world were a very poor pastiche of Hades himself.

The way that Hades' cold dark gaze seemed to bore into Thanatos' soulless body, sear into his immortal being. It hurt, the way that ice can burn at you.

The thing was, Hades wasn't always like this. Sometimes, he was mirth and kindness. He had a penchant for zeugma and anachronistic witticisms and Thanatos had often witness the guardian of the Underworld embroiled in some verbal rapport. The ripostes his master came up with were clever. So clever that Thanatos knew that those who had dared to argue against the god of death would only come to realise the true meaning, the sheer intellect encapsulated within those double entendres hours, or days, later. Probably in the shower. The shower was the best place for those kinds of deep thoughts and sudden epiphanies.

However, Thanatos knew that tonight, he would not contemplate the surfeit of equivocations and quips that Hades kept, stored like ammunition within his mind, but rather the harsh reality of the darkness that Hades could cast over an individual.

He could not believe that this was the result of his accidental desecration of a statue. Apparently, the satyr had a name. Ferdinand, uncle of the hero Grover. Thanatos knew of Grover, of course. He was one of Percy's friends. In fact that kid (he chuckled mirthless—because Grover was practically a goat and baby goats were called kids; it was a pun he was sure Hades would beam at if only he were not telling Thanatos off) had once stolen into the Underworld with the son of Poseidon and that girl, Annabeth.

That wasn't the point though. Persephone had liked Ferdinand. He reminded her of summers in the above world. And doing anything that incited the wrath of Persephone was to invite the fury of Hades himself. Thanatos didn't get it. He didn't understand marriage. It was such a mortal compulsion. A contract chaining oneself to a lover. But love fades. Everybody knew that. The only thing that persevered was death.

Thanatos wondered how the dead felt. Being immortal meant he was without a soul. Those who toiled away in the fields of punishment, drifted about forevermore in Asphodel and lavished the high life in Elysium were nothing but souls. Their physical forms were left behind on the Earth, burnt and scattered o the winds, or simply left to decompose in shallow graves beneath the world's surface. Did they feel hollow inside, without all their viscera and limbs?

He didn't know. He didn't particularly care either, but he was trying to distract himself. There was no other way that he'd be able to get through Hades' admonition otherwise. The god's words ripped into Thanatos and he imagined that if he did have a soul, it'd be ripped to pieces. What had he done to incur such fury? Only what, do his job? So what if Hades felt some angst stirring in the Underworld? So what if little Annabeth Chase was feeling sad and lonely. She was DEAD. Maybe she just missed the feeling of having an appendix or whatever other organ mortals possessed. Some people were simply too attached, if you asked him.

It was difficult to look Hades in the eyes. For one, when he was mad, he didn't have eyes. Only burning pits, that seemed to be filled with the same darkness that leaked from Tartarus. Thanatos could really see the family resemblance here, he could believe that Hades was borne of titans.

The words washed over Thanatos in a roar. Much like the screams that he often delighted in hearing. Something twinged within him. Emptiness, sadness, these were familiar emotions. But this new feeling? It took him a minute to place it: embarrassment. More than that. It was a crushing humiliation, a kind of defeat that seemed to engulf him. It hurt.

"...and I will be confiscating your iPad. You will abdicate your duties until I see fit."

What?

He let himself tune back into the words of his master.

"You heard me. You are not to provoke my wife, nor my son. I do not want to hear of more disgruntled souls. When I feel that you have learnt your lesson, you will return to your duties. But for the time being, you are to relinquish your iPad."

Hades put out a hand. The outfit he was was blah, fashioned seemingly from shadows and broken souls.

Thanatos hesitated.

Fury flared in Hades' eyes and Thanatos reached for his device. He had never been without his device for more than a few minutes at most. He watched his reflection in the polished black surface of its screen. Is this the way mortals felt when their pride was wounded? It hurt. It wasn't just losing the iPad. It was the realisation that he was not special. He was not Hades' favourite, or a particularly remarkable talent. He was just another worker in the machinations of the Underworld. One was was to be given a reprieve from the one thing they loved about their world.

Hades took the iPad and faded into the shadows and Thanatos was left to stare at the never ending fields of the underworld he had inhabited. He was a god, however minor. He was an eternal, no mortal. And yet, for the first time in his very, very long life, he wanted to die.

**

Short chapter, you guys! But please let me ease back into it !!