Mortals Meet Percabeth + one shots and headcannons

The End of the Road

It was fitting, Hazel mused as she lay on her death bed, that she was the first amongst her friends to die, and the last.

Of course, Jason had been the first to go, Caligula having torn out his guts. She remembered how miserable Apollo had looked as he delivered the news, and how she had thrown herself upon the mahogany coffin, tears dripping hot and fast down her face.

On that day, she had lost a great friend, an even better mentor, and the demigods had lost perhaps their second-greatest protector.

The next to die was Piper. The poor girl died the year after Jason. The daughter of Aphrodite had been heartbroken over her ex-boyfriend, and it had only led her down a dark path in which she seemed to have found a light in the shape of her new girlfriend, Shel.

Of course, it wasn't meant to be. It never had from the start. Because when Hazel and the others who remained had gone to visit her for the monthly Argo 2 reunion, they found her body in her room, all the blood sucked from it, Shel standing by her side, a wicked smile across her bronze face

Hazel was sure that an empousa had never suffered an uglier fate before.

Of course, it became clear at this point that something was up. The woman who had tricked Gaea to sleep, tricked by a mere daemon of Hecate? Not only her but also the remaining greatest heroes of all time? Impossible.

Or at least, impossible if not for intervention.

On that day, Hazel lost a sister.

But she, Frank, Leo, Calypso, Percy, and Annabeth let the matter go, for nothing happened in the following decade.

Just as she thought things might go back to normal, and the doozy of a ride that their teens had been over, disaster struck again.

It was supposed to be beautiful. A tour across the world, sightseeing the greatest monuments. But alas, Leo and Calypso's story ended, like it had started, with a crash.

When they finally tracked down the smoldering remains of Festus, they found that it was not because of a freak malfunction- Hazel had never thought that; Leo'd been the best mechanic across the camps, and the very idea that he had failed in his most impassioned project was frankly ridiculous.

The control disk had been charred and destroyed, lightning having ripped the body to ribbons.

On that day, she lost two dear friends, and on that day, the anger inside her burned hot. She had never itched this badly to lose control, but she controlled herself. The same could not be said for Percy, who, in his blind rage, leveled mountains.

That night, they'd held an impromptu meeting, and they'd agreed always to stick together. After all, surely nothing short of the Big Three would be able to mess with all four of them together.

The gods' silence, even though unnerving, had failed to achieve its main goal: to her Hazel, Frank, Percy, and Annabeth's guard down. They had learned their lesson through blood and they would be loath to forget it.

Once again, despite all their measures, they seemed to have underestimated the gods and their cruelty, and the swift, long arm of Death came about once more.

A couple of years after Leo and Calypso, the icthyocentaurs Aphros and Bythos approached Frank and Percy regarding the sea animals at Atalanta. Never had the four of them thought that the cousins of Chiron-who had after centuries of brutal battle, gained freedom from the gods- would side with their old rulers.

Percy and Frank had left a few days later, their bags packed with enough equipment for a week-long battle with Keto and Phorcys.

Percy had kissed their daughter, Sophia, goodbye before leaving. It would be the last time he would ever do so.

Hazel and Annabeth traced the boys' path to the place of battle, and judging from the amount of ichor that stained the ground, mixing with the blood of the two demigods, and the bodies of Ares, Athena, and Hera, it wasn't hard to figure out what had happened.

Unnervingly, Frank and Percy's bodies were not there, and thus, however unwillingly, she and Annabeth returned to Camp, keeping the hope that their husbands might yet be alive.

Those hopes were crushed as one day, Frank, taking the shape of a horse, staggered into Camp Jupiter, a body splayed across his back. It was Percy. Dried blood stained the front of his shirt, blood still lacked from every orifice, and his limbs were twisted at all wrong angles.

On that day, Hazel lost a role model, a baby her father, a wife her soulmate, and the demigods their greatest protector.

Annabeth managed to live with her broken heart for a few months, sustained only by Sophia. Her trips to the camps declined, and every time Hazel and Frank visited, she looked even more haggard, her clothes more threadbare, and she herself thinner, paler, her features now angular, her eyes sunken behind dark bags.

Tragedy struck the daughter of Athena again as her daughter, only five years of age, was killed in a school shooting.

During Sophia's funeral, Annabeth had been completely closed off, distant from Hazel and Frank, not speaking a single word, her lips pursed, not allowing a single tear to fall through.

Annabeth, someone who, although slow to love and slow to trust, loved deeply, now having lost all she held dear save for two of her closest friends, was now broken, and not days later, she took her own life.

And thus, Chiron lost another piece of his soul, a young satyr baby lost both its godparents and Hazel lost the last of her friends.

And now that the chessboard was clear, the last pieces fell quickly. The gods abandoned any mask of secrecy and went straight for the jugular. An army of monsters fell upon Camp, headed by the worst of their kind: Kampe, the Nothern Cyclopes, and even some Egyptian demons.

She and Frank went to battle their heads held high, backs straight, pride on their faces, their weapons and armor glinting under the sun . The legion was given explicit orders to stand down- it was the last of the Seven they wanted, not the hordes of faceless, nameless demigods.

And the last of the Seven they would get.

It was a necessary sacrifice, required to stop any more bloodshed. It would finally mean an end to the pain, and the suffering. Deep down, Hazel knew that this was what she wanted, for she would finally be free from the toils that had plagued her life- both old and new.

This time, there would be no do-overs.

And she could not be happier. After all these years, she would be reunited with her friends in the afterlife, be it in the hells of Punishment or the paradise of Elysium or the Isles.

Because she knew she was never to wander Asphodel again, never again stare into those soulless, sightless faces who wandered aimlessly for eternity.

Either the gods would have some sliver of mercy left in them and would let them live their afterlife in bliss, or they would make the demigods' lives the same hell they had been on Earth.

She and Frank ripped through the enemies' ranks- one last act of defiance- ripping through them like they were made of paper. 

But eventually, the spark was snuffed and her husband lay beside her, peace in his eyes, a ghost of a smile on his face.

As quickly as the enemies had advanced, they retreated, leaving a bleeding, bruised, beaten, and destroyed Hazel to drag Frank's body through the mud to camp with her dying breaths.

That figured. Even her death would be drawn out and painful. All of her friends' had been, so why would she be any different? Although Frank's had been quick, he'd been dead long before the killing blow had struck. Really, the two of them had passed with Percy and Annabeth.

And in the infirmary she died, clutching Frank's hand, seeing the Furies soar above the sky, swooping and descending with their long, shriveled, blackened arms and long talons.