Snowfall

Freedom

She knew this was coming. She had known it for decades. It still hadn't lessened the blow.

Thalia Grace was the last remaining of the great heroes, the only one left of their memory. All of the great heroes had a memorial in Central Park, for all to see and remember. The gods had placed it there a few years after their reveal, when Frank Zhang was the first of them dead. His stick had finally reached its limit, it burned along with his first and only mortal home. Hazel had cried for days on end until she eventually found escape from drowning herself in wine.

She died three months later from a car crash.

Annabeth was next. Her firstborn child was five and she was six months pregnant with a second, but the Jackson family was attacked by a group of anti-god mortals. She died in the attack and her son was left with his legs from the knee-down gone. Percy, of course, was horrified, but he kept thriving, his son Nile the drive.

Reyna died in battle. Though she was in her mid-thirties, she had refused to retire. Her mother was war, fighting was in her blood. She was an advisor to the praetors and would accompany major quests. She took her final stand when she had been sent with two other young legionnaires to investigate a sudden monster rise in southern California. They were ambushed, and she died along with another legionnaire while the last managed to make it halfway up the state before his defeat.

Everyone else ended up dying of old age, leaving only their children and grandchildren. Thalia wasn't particularly close to any of them, not even her two nieces, but she felt no need to. They would only pass on later and become a flash in her never-ending loop of immortality.

It wasn't at all what she had been told. All the huntresses said that she would get over it, they would fade into the background eventually. But she didn't want that. They were too great of people to just be forgotten. Of course, the memorial remained, but Thalia was the last living connection to the great wars. It was painful.

She found herself inside the memorial, more like a museum of heroes now. She was in the hall entirely dedicated to the great heroes, herself included. She stared sadly at all the statues, tears threatening to spill. She got especially choked up at her little brother's sculpture, a small whine escaping her throat.

"Mommy, why is the girl sad?" She heard a little boy ask his mother. There was a pause, most likely the mother looking at her.

"I don't know," his mother replied. "Perhaps something bad has happened." Thalia looked over her shoulder at the two, the boy in his mother's arms.

The little boy studied her and gasped dramatically. "Mommy! She looks like that lightning statue girl! The one over there!" He pointed to her model. The mother looked at the statue then back at Thalia. Her eyes widened and she shushed her child and scurried away, giving a polite but anxious smile in her direction. Thalia wanted to collapse and cry right there. Why did they all have to be so afraid?

She fled, bolting from the memorial and into the forest in the park. She sprinted blindly, branches scratching her face, leaves getting caught in her hair. The largest lake was in front of her, looming, like the sky had fallen and settled itself there. She knew she shouldn't touch the water, Poseidon would kill her, but hopefully, she could beat him to it.

Freedom comes in the worst of ways.