The Rebirth

****

Elena
Every single day.
No quitting. No stopping. Train every day. Make room in your schedule. You’re already so behind- Tae Kwon Doe, Jiu-Jitsu, Karate, kickboxing, self-defense- anything you can take, take it.
That was your promise. So what if you have maths tonight? So what if your mates are all going out without you? You know what’s important.
An extra hour can save you another minute, another day, another year of your life.
So keep going.

****
Nico
“He’s right, you know.”
It was a sunny day. Nico was resting out in the forest, sleeping quietly. The dark of the woods never bothered him like it bothered other people. He hadn’t meant to nod off. It just… happened.
He awoke to a taste of rain to the air. A breeze. A little bit more light in the forest.
It smelled very strongly of Stepmom. Step-god-mom. Gah. Whatever.
“Persephone.”
“How sweet. You remember my face.”
“How could I forget… stepmother. Dear.”
“Don’t be sour. Or polite. I am so done with formalities. They are so unnecessary and stupid and fake. If people were blunt and to the point, this world wouldn’t be the way it is.”
“Feeling a little bitter about something?”
“No. Don’t be a smart aleck, either. It’s not an attractive quality. I’ve come to help you, you ungrateful demon.”
“I feel very helped.”
“That’s what I mean! Don’t do that!”
` She really was very agitated. Probably a fight with Hades. She looked about seventeen- young and pretty and carefree. Except her face ruined it. It was tight with irritation and the weight of a thousand years.
It felt odd to be older than his own stepmother.
“Okay. Okay, I’m sorry.” He did feel bad for her, a little bit. “What… have you come to help me with?”
“I came to tell you that my grandson, Daniel,” (as if he needed reminding of who his own boyfriend was) “is right. And your father…”
She snorted in disgust. So. They did have a fight. Nico wasn’t sure if he actually cared. “Although he certainly isn’t right about all things- far from it, actually, and he happens to be quite the drag and quite the hypocrite, too, if you ask me- anyways, he actually does happen to be correct about this. You shouldn’t keep searching, Nico. The Reborn is beyond your scope.”
Nico immediately soured, and all the sympathy he had for Persephone soured with him. Why did everyone meddle where they didn’t belong? Why didn’t anyone see from his point of view? “Great. Thanks. Is that all?”
Persephone looked insulted. “Are you kidding me? You need to stop, Nico. Why can’t you see that it’s just going to hurt you in the end? This is in the Fate’s hands, now- if they wanted you to keep going, they’d send you a sign. And so far, there hasn’t been a very clear sign that you should!”
“Actually,” Nico raised his eyebrows. “They have. I can track wisps.”
“Wisps? What is it you call them?”
“I can track- you know what? Never mind. I don’t have to explain myself to you.”
“Nico di Angelo,” Persephone spit, like his last name was the worst thing she could think of. “You have no idea-“
“Why do you even care?”
“Have you ever even thought about Daniel and what his feelings about this may be? Have you even thought about what he’s going through?”
His heart hardened. “We’ve… settled this. And that’s a private matter.”
“You can be so much freer, Nico, without this ridiculous project. You say you have information? You have knowledge? But you need that one step, right? You need that one thing that tells you- this person is her. Or it was her. But how do you know she hasn’t already died yet? How do you know she is not a boy? What if she’s a completely different race- completely unrecognizable? What if she’s had a life-shattering experience and has been reduced to complete insanity? What do you have to connect her to Bianca from the past?”
Nico’s throat went dry. She’d hit the spot. The one place where Nico’s plans went wrong. The identification. He was already gathering wisps quickly all throughout the countries around the world- his sense of sniffing them out had increased dramatically, and his shadow-traveling has gotten tuned to near perfection. But how did he know she hadn’t already died yet? How did he know who she was?
“Age,” Nico said. “I have at least that.”
“Ah, but that narrows down your search to- still- twelve people. And more to come, if there are still more out there. You don’t know. You can’t know.”
“The Fates-“
“Oh, good luck with that. They will never appear for you unless they want to appear for you. There is nothing you can do about that.”
“I can capture the Old Man of the Sea-“
“He doesn’t know! Nobody knows! I am the Queen of the Underworld! Your father is King! And even us, we, Lord Zeus of the Universe himself- they do not know-“
“I’ll find a way. I will. I know I can.”
Persephone’s eyes glowered, blazing the same deep brown as Daniel’s, before finally drooping in defeat. She slumped over, seemingly accepted Nico’s incompetence. “Then I hope, at least, that you will keep your promise to Daniel.”
Nico swallowed again. Another hit to the chest. “And he promised to not force me unless totally necessary… He’ll give me time…”
“And he’ll uphold his side of the bargain. But will you uphold yours? Can you really throw thirteen years of work away, as well as the memories from the first ten years of your life? No matter how much time you have?”
His throat was dry when he answered with a gasp, “Yes.”
“You better. Not just for Daniel’s sake. Yours, too. I won’t even need to turn you into a flower if you break your promise. With Daniel gone, you’ll break yourself.”
And she was gone in the slight scent of flower perfume.
Meetings with Persephone were always optimistic.

***
Elena
She remembered one night.
It was very fuzzy, but when her dreams finally stopped being nightmares, they still came. Fuzzy or not, she understood the connections. She finally understood.
The next afternoon, after Tae Kwon Doe, she trudged down to the parks and the rivers. It was a long, long bus ride, and her parents would probably be furious when she got home, and she wasted some pretty good quid on the rides for one sentence, but she knew it was worth it when she strolled up to Oakley and said,
“It’s over. I know. I don’t know why you pretended, but I know now. Oakley, I’m back.”
And the tree shook back a bush of leaves over her head before stopping itself.
She waited, but he never came out. She shook her head, strolling away back to the bus to completely empty her pockets of money. “I’m back.”
***

Notes

short chapters but double update so yayyy

I'll be posting a post that's on the Forum on my stories tomorrow so everyone can see this announcement I have. buckle up for november, guys!