CHAPTER 000, True North
THE LAST OLYMPIAN

To love is to endure.

She is shaking fists and trembling teeth but her brother is made of anger and he is violent in more ways than one. He is fourteen in this timeline and his world has been burning for more than a millennia. There are ashes in every place he has been and there are ghosts everywhere he went and no amount of time nor healing will convert him into something worthy of falling again from greatness. He is no saint.

Theo Holloway wears a Greek chest plate and a sword held in his hand in this version of his boyhood. Time did not bring relief to him. His faith is gone and he doesn't tiptoe in the line of any other religion than his own. The boy is egotistical and psychotic, too rough around the bloody edges of who he is to be tamed enough to be held in arms that weren't his own. Theo is more god than mortal and he bathes in the summer sun of one of Manhattan's most violent days where demigods battle their own kind. How do you kill your people?

They are on the front lines. This is what it takes to be too much and this is what it takes to say goodbye to each other. Theo loves Robin more than words could explain—She is the setting sun and morning glory of his days, always the hero of his story and never the villain of his nightmares but he will never admit to that kind of devotion. It's too human and too fragile and everything gentle will always be taken away. He won't tell her he adores her even at knifepoint and that is enough to destroy him more and more. Theo Holloway has been made out of madness for so long that it is embarrassing to give in to the feeling of wanting to be gentle to the person he loves the most. Let a knife kill him if it means he won't show that kind of yearning ever again.

Over and over and over again. It keeps repeating. This is what it takes to be human and this is what it takes to love jagged-edged raven-haired boys who were always too high on their high horse. Alabaster Torrington is her south and there is something in him that is too broken. She knows it and she had always known it. There was something wrong with him—something in him was bloodthirsty and demonic and always too dark for her to want to deep dive in even when she was the bravest of the brave and had loved chasing the thrill. Robin finds the next best thing after Luke Castellan leaves and she finds that big brother in Alabaster. Only sooner than later she will be left crying when he leaves to join the same sacrilege Luke leaves for.

There is history behind everything she does—there is violence in her pettiness and there is clarity in her cause. This is what it takes to love the leaving people and this is what it takes to always be the one leaving the girl.

It comes with a price.

Theo Holloway is the direction she will always run to. He is the ocean floor and the sailor song of her bluest days. Teddy is not cruel despite how he is. He is her brother. He is good, He is good, he is good. Teddy is four and they're good. Teddy is four and he is made of comics, superheroes, and innocence. This is what it takes to be so unlovable to the outside world that she needs to love him despite it being unbearable. He is her responsibility and he is her little brother who knows nothing about anything.

To love is to shelter the little fourteen-year-old boy that comes in the form of Theo Holloway. She will always look for him and she will always look after him. It is in spite and despite the burning fires and the drowning waters. Let it burn and let it drown if it means they hold each other in the wreckage of every version of their lives.

To love is to know you are loved enough.

Ten years of only having each other will always guarantee the question that comes when you think too much about the decade you spent away from your ghosts and your home.

There is so much yearning and there is so much vulnerability when you know there won't be any tomorrow. It's midnight of August Eighteen, Theo is still fourteen and he is all messy and nostalgic while Robin turns sixteen in this timeline, full of melancholy even in the greens of her eyes.

"Do you think he was scared?" Theo loves her. She is all he knows but there is longing for someone that is more than a decade away from them. He barely remembers his father and you can give him an old class picture and he will fail to recognise his own father in them. This is what it takes to be too mortal.

Robin Holloway will never talk about him. Her father is a stranger to her now and she barely remembers him too. She will never admit to looking for him in every fatherly figure she meets—Robin has been looking for her father for so long even when she knows he is long gone. "There are better things to talk about,"

They are overlooking the city and the wind blows against their hair and it is the first time in a long time that they love each other to the point of asking. Then enter the sadness of their father being mentioned now. Robin remembers it all. She remembers the details of his death but never the details of his eyes and his laugh. He is more than a decade away and it's been so long, why doesn't the grief of losing her father never go away?

Her father was the sun. It is the highest pedestal anyone could ever be on and he is still on there. After all, you don't replace the sun even after it's gone. It will always be nice that they are/were under the same sky. They were looking at the same stars and they were looking at the same sun. That is the loneliest she will always be when the realisation loops back to her. She is with him and she is not anymore. What happens after the sun is still the sun.

Theo was made out of anger and violence and his world has been burning for a millennia. All he knows are gods and monsters and Robin. The love will not pass and he could lose her today. The love will not pass.

To love is to cry in front of your god and your religion. Theo Holloway never tiptoed on the line of it all because he stood where Robin stood.

"Hold my hands and look at me," There is a gentle hand stroking his cheek now and he crumbles even more when he knows it is his sister. There is so much love he is drowning in it. His lip quivers and he is fourteen in this timeline. He is just a boy.

"Do you think I'm a bad person?"

There is so much love. No sailor song will ever amount to this type of longing that comes in the most gentle of waves.

"All I think is that I love you." Her south is somewhere on the island, bloodthirsty and full of vengeance but all she can focus on is the home that comes in sharp features. True North is where Theo is.

And when the last trumpet blows, True North will be gone.