NEVER BE THE SAME . . . percy jackson

one hundred and eighteen: the epilogue.

BROOKLYN WAS TIRED of this conversation.

She was listening to her mother drone on and on about something, so she just decided to just leave.

She got up and went to walk off when her mother screamed after her: "Brooklyn! Come back here."

"I'm done," Brooklyn snapped, turning and glaring at her mother. "I'm not being your daughter anymore."

Francesca Hayward laughed coldly. "We share the same blood, Brooklyn. You have the Hayward ability."

"Blood isn't thicker than water, or however the saying goes," Brooklyn waved her off. "I met father again. And you know what he said? He said that he couldn't give me or my brother any praise because he's the king of the gods and he needs to set an example or whatever."

"This is about giving you praise?"

"This is about you being a shitty parent," she said, her voice way too calm for how she was really feeling, but it made her mother scared because of the sudden change. "I've been treated like a pawn for too long. First, I lived under you for sixteen years, and took every single class, listened — well, not really — to every lesson that you tried to teach me."

Her mother raised her eyebrows. "And did you learn anything?"

"I'm not done yet," stated Brooklyn. "Then Hera wipes my memories, and takes me to Camp Jupiter, a camp of Roman demigods so I could be a part of her wicked scheme to fulfill the prophecy." She showed her tattoo, to really prove it. "Do you know how agonizing it is, to not be able to remember anything about your life? You have gut feelings, but no actual reason why you have them? And then you're booted to a quest with no time to stop and think? Because that happened to me in the span of, really, a week."

She laughed, and it sounded like a cartoonish evil laugh, but it wasn't a good laugh, and that's what she was going for. "And do you know what happened next? Next, I fell into Tartarus."

For once, her mother looked surprised. "If this is another one of your jokes—"

"It's a hellish landscape, like what the Hayward ability shows us." Brooklyn looked down at the ring that her father had given her, before looking back up at her mother. "And, gods, I have nightmares of that place every other day, and the other half are days where I can't sleep because I'm too scared to." She inhaled sharply, before making herself remember that place. "I had to drink water from the Phlegethon to survive. I faced so many monsters down there, I thought that it'd never end. I had to breathe that toxic air while facing the goddess of misery and night and Tartarus himself."

Her mother stared at her, shocked into silence for once.

"So you're not going to argue about me leaving," Brooklyn said. "And not about Xander, either, because he bought an apartment for us, and we're gone. Don't contact me again. Don't even look at me again, unless you want me to throw you down in Tartarus so you can feel what I've felt over the past few months."

Since her mother didn't protest, Brooklyn turned and walked away, out of the penthouse for the last time ever. She went down the elevator and walked out the door and to where Xander was waiting for her in the car, folding herself in the passenger seat.

"To our new apartment?" he asked her.

"Let's go out for ice cream first," she smirked. "I'm suddenly feeling really hot."

* * *

That was four days ago, which was the day after the last day of camp, which was longer because of the war that happened. Brooklyn had been MIA because she'd been helping Xander with moving into the apartment and also getting ready for school.