HelloOoOOO, my lovelies! And HAPPY NEW YEAR!

It is now 2015. It doesn't feel much different from 2014 to me yet-what about you guys?

All right. Here's chapter one of Year of Nightmares-your sequel to my Blood of Olympus. These chapters will have titles-a lot of them named after songs, most likely-because I like naming my chapters, and I didn't do that with Blood of Olympus.

These chapters are going to be shorter then you're all used to for a while, until I hit my stride and get settled into writing this story, but they'll start getting longer soon, hopefully.

Updating will probably be sporadic and unreliably off schedule, but I will try my very best to make sure the gaps between chapters don't grow longer than a week or two. I'll aim for an update every Sunday-sound good? Occasionally, I'll post another chapter between two Sundays, or I might post a chapter on a Saturday or Monday because I can't on Sunday, for some reason, and sometimes I might be a few days late. I'll try not to be-a week should be plenty of time to write these chapters.

I feel like this sequel will be easier to write, because I'm working towards a goal completely my own instead of one Rick Riordan set-in Blood of Olympus, the end game was the big battle with Gaea, and the plot was building up to that. It was all to defeat her, to get closer-lots of that. But now, since this is completely my sequel, I get to choose my goals, I get to choose where my plots and my side plots and my plot twists are and why they're there, so I feel like it should be a whole heck of a lot simpler to keep up with updates.

No iron promises, though. Sorry. I'm disorganized and lazy.

Another great big THANK YOU! to everyone who read, reviewed, favorited, or followed Blood of Olympus-I hope to see all of you guys with me on this story, too!

Also, guys, since this is, again,my sequel, I might be taking requests every once in a while. Headcanons, plot ideas, things like that. I think it'd be nice for you guys to have a heavier influence on the story-well, than you already do. But this way, you can help build it a bit, too, instead of shouting motivations in the audience-which is still a very important job; I need motivation. Disorganized and lazy, ^^^ remember?

But if there's something in particular you'd like to see in the story-and it can be as small as a moment a few sentences long-you can tell me, and I'll do my best to fit it in. My New Year's/Christmas gift to you, all right? \(^_^)/

Love you guys! Enjoy chapter one-named from Tom Odell's Long Way Down, on The Fault in Our Stars movie soundtrack.

Long Way Down

Percy

Three nights after Percy wakes up, it starts raining.

He wakes up to the sound of thunder crackling through clouds and looks to the window in time to see a sea monster diving through the water under a flash of lightning before it disappears with the light. He doesn't worry about an attack-for some reason, he can sense that the creature isn't hostile.

He lays back in bed, his heart racing with the abruptness of his waking, and strokes Annabeth's hair where her head is resting on his chest. His stitches still hurt-she's always careful not to rest there when she falls asleep, and he always pulls her closer after her eyes close anyway. She scolds him when she wakes up, he smiles and kisses her good morning, and they repeat the same thing when they go to sleep again.

He tries not to sleep. It only brings with it nightmares and dark dreams about menacing creautures half-hidden in shadows.

Percy sighs and sits up, carefully pulling Annabeth's head from his chest and resting it on the pillow instead. He climbs out of the bed, leaning heavily on his right leg to avoid putting his weight on his left-which is encased in a bulky padded plastic cast from the knee down. His right arm is awkward in its cast and sling, and he pulls it out of the sling so that he can slip on a sweatshirt and jeans over his boxers.

There are crutches leaning against the wall, and as much as he wishes he could leave them behind, he knows as soon as he takes one step that he can't. So he grabs them-Leo added a special modification to the one on the right to accomodate his broken arm to make it easier on him.

But he doesn't want it easier. He doesn't want them to feel sorry for him, or to be afraid of him. He wishes things were the way they were before, but he knows they never will be.

He goes out the door as quietly as he can and shuts it carefully behind him, taking one last look at Annabeth's blonde hair spread across the pillow like a golden halo-her bare arm resting across the bed where he had been laying.

Then he leaves, and makes his way down the hallway, where he faces the stairs.

He looks up them, to the door waiting above, and he sets his crutches on the first step to swing himself up.

It takes him nearly five minutes to get to the top, but he doesn't stop or think about turning around even once.

Lightning lights up the sky at the same time he pushes open the door, and he looks up at the sky, watches the rain falling down, and steps out into the storm, placing his crutches carefully on the wet deck to avoid slipping.

The door shuts behind him, and he leaves it behind.

He doesn't bother concentrating on staying dry-he lets the rain soak him. He wants to feel it on his skin.

Leo's controls are covered with a black tarp, and Percy assumes the son of Hephaestus came up when it first started to rain and put it there to protect his stuff. It's not supposed to rain on the ship, since it has the same protection the camp has against weather, but this is a special kind of storm.

"Nice to see you're as upset about Jason as we are." Percy says to the sky, and thunder rumbles in agreement. "Do you miss him?"

Lightning brightens the night again, and for the briefest moment Percy could swear there's a picture of Jason formed by the sparks of electricity. Then all at once, it's gone again.

"Yeah." Percy agrees. "Me too."

He closes his eyes and lifts his head to the sky, letting the rain run down his face. He breathes in the salty smell of the ocean, the cool freshness of the rain, and underneath it all, the slight metallic tang of blood.

He doesn't know if he'll ever stop smelling that after this.

"We're almost home." He murmurs, and it fills him with mixed feelings. He wants to see his friends again-to get tackled in a hug by Grover, nearly have his arm torn out of its socket by Clarisse, be pick-pocketed by the Stolls for the thousandth time. But he doesn't want them to see him like this. And he knows things aren't going to be anywhere near the same as they were nearly a year ago when Hera kidnapped him.

Chris and Lacy are dead. Nyssa is gone. He hasn't told the others yet, because he doesn't want to have to explain how he knows. Either way, though, he knows they're going to wonder why he isn't surprised about it when they get there and find out.

He walks over to Leo's tarp-covered controls and slides awkwardly down into a sitting position against them, cushioned perfectly in the U shape Leo set them up in. He sets his crutches to one side and crosses his arms over his chest, pulling his hood lower over his face, and closes his eyes, not caring that he's still getting soaked by the rain or that the others will worry. He just needs to be here. He needs to have the rain.

The sound of the thunder, the rain, the waves-it starts to lull him to sleep, and he doesn't bother to fight it. He'll have to give in to exhaustion eventually, and he'd rather do it when and where the others won't be able to hear him cry out from a nightmare.

It's dark, and he's scared. Thunder is loud and shakes the building, and lightning flashes outside his window.

In his bed, Percy sinks lower into the covers and clutches his raggedy blue teddy bear-named Blue-to his chest. Tomorrow is his seventh birthday, and his mom told him he'd get a surprise if he went to bed like he was supposed to, and he did, but he woke up when the storm started and now he can't fall asleep again because he's afraid.

Thunder cracks again, and he squeaks, burrowing under his pillow. There's a flashlight there that his mom lets him keep because sometimes he gets nightmares and doesn't want to be in the dark, and he grabs that and flicks it on, setting Blue down in front of him and shining the flashlight in his teddy bear's face.

"I'm not scared." He tells Blue, but the words are a lie and he can't convince himself they're true like his mom taught him.

With a fearful look at the window, he pulls Blue back to his chest and climbs out of bed, dropping to the floor on bare feet and running out the door to the living room, where his mom sleeps on the couch because their apartment doesn't have a second bedroom. He's told her he'd rather sleep in the room with her, even if he didn't get a bed, but she just ruffles his hair and tells him he's a big boy now, and big boys get to sleep in their own bed.

She's still sleeping on the couch, and Percy knows she's probably tired because she worked all day since really early this morning when it was still dark at the bakery downtown that is the only place that was willing to hire her. But he's scared, and he doesn't want to go back to bed, so he walks over to her and pushes against her shoulder, trying to shake her awake like she wakes him in the morning.

"Mommy." He whispers loudly, and she groans. He crawls onto the couch beside her, with Blue still clutched in his arms, and sits next to her, curled up with his knees squishing his arms.

She moves a little, and yawns, and he looks down at her. "Mommy, are you awake?"

One of her eyes opens sleepily, and she yawns again and then stretches and rubs her forehead. "Percy, what's wrong?"

"Mommy, I'm scared." He tells her, and her eyes both open and look up at him, and then she smiles gently and holds out her arms for him. He crawls into them beneath the covers and she cradles him against the couch, looking down at his wide eyes and messy hair and the old t-shirt of hers that serves for his pajamas because they can't afford real ones since his old ones got too small.

"It's just a little storm." She tells him reassuringly, and he nods, but she must be able to tell that he's still scared, because she hugs him tight and doesn't make him go back to bed. Even though he knows she's tired, she stays up and whispers stories in his ear about heroes fighting monsters and how even they got scared sometimes, and the sky is just starting to turn gray outside when he finally falls back to sleep.

When he wakes up, the sky is bright and sunny and his mom is in the kitchen, and she smiles when she sees his eyes open.

"Good morning, Little Bear." She tells him, and he smiles back at her, yawning wide and rubbing his eyes, still holding Blue in his arms. "Happy Birthday!"

He grins at her, and she laughs at his gap-toothed smile because he just lost his two front teeth a week ago.

"Want some pancakes?" She asks, and he nods enthusiastically, jumping down from the couch and running to wrap his arms around her legs. She laughs again and ruffles his hair fondly. "I made chocolate chip cookies today too, and later, we're going to go to the aquarium! How does that sound?"

"Best birthday ever." He murmurs into her pajama pants, and the young, happy look on her face when he says that, even in their beaten-down kitchen with the leaky sink, peeling wallpaper, and plastic tile, makes it the greatest day they've had in a long time.

Again, I know this is shorter than you're used to. But I'll post Chapter Two on Sunday-to get my routine going. So you only have to wait a few days for this second update. That's a good thought, right?

You're all the best! Cheers-and one more time, HAPPY NEW YEAR! LET'S BRING IN 2015 WITH RAINBOWY FEELINGS AND HAPPINESS AND FLUFFY UNICORNS, OKAY?!

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