I own nothing, not the characters, the space where this story exists, or even the eyes that you are using to read it. This is for entertainment purposes only, no money involved.

"Danny... there are even more in this town than there were in the last one." Annabeth murmured, hugging herself close to Danny for protection as they walked down the street towards Luke's supposed safe house. Every eye on the street was staring at their small party and people whispered all around them. Though not for the reason Annabeth assumed.

"As much as I am usual one for blaming things on monsters, I'm afraid this time they are staring for... other reasons." He said, glancing back at Luke and Thalia, who were two steps behind them. They were still wearing their stupid improvised leather armor and Luke's wooden shield bumped steady at his side. Which would have been weird enough, even if it wasn't for the fact that they were using Danny's blanket to tie Thalia up on Luke's back to make it easier for the boy to carry his friend. Which was extremely out of place in the suburbs of the small city they were pacing through. "This is actually a tactic I never thought of before. Gather everyone's attention so that the monsters can't attack you with being spotted."

"Shut it, bleach-for-brains." Thalia grumbled as she shifted uncomfortably in her baby carrier. "Luke, how much longer until we get there."

"It's three blocks away." Luke said flatly, he didn't look to happy about that fact.

Danny spotted this. "You feeling said that you won't be carrying your damsel anymore, lover boy, or is there something we should now?"

Luke flushed slightly even as Thalia's hissed. "It's just... this safe house is actually my mother's house. My human mother's house. The home I ran away from." Luke said glumly.

"Why'd you run?" Annabeth asked nervously, thinking about her own situation back with her wicked step mother. Thalia just looked sadly at the boy's back.

Luke grunted. "I'd rather not talk about it, though I suppose you will all probably see it. My mother isn't well. Mentally I mean."

Danny winced. "I'm sorry to hear that." He said, sounding sincere for the first time since Thalia and Luke had met him. Danny had seen people who had seriously lost there minds and ended up in the loony-bin. His parents had taken him to see it before in an attempt to scare him straight before seeking professional help. Not that there was ever anything wrong with Danny. "Was the case... natural or..."

"A curse." Luke said, confirming the worst. "She's had it as long as I can remember. Even at the best of times she is unstable. But every once and a while she would have horrible fits. Eventually I couldn't take seeing it day after day and ran away to get away from it."

"Isn't there any way to break the curse?" Annabeth asked. "In the stories, some curses were broken in the end. Maybe there is something we can do to help her."

"I would have if I knew how." Luke said, a bit of frustration in his usually calm voice. "I prayed to my father everyday to do something to help her, but he never answered. None of the gods ever helped us." He stopped in front of an apartment complex. "This is the place." He mumbled, holding up a small ring of old keys, the metallic paint coming off of them, as if he had rubbed them between in fingers on far too many nights, thinking about the doors they fit.

He unlocked the front door to the apartment complex and the group filed in, finally getting away from prowling eyes. "She's up on the fourth..." Luke started, heading for the stairs, but Danny throw out his arm to stop him, the brown shield manifesting on his ring arm as a smell reached him.

"Show yourself!" Danny barked as he went down in a defensive stance in front of Annabeth, prepared for anything.

"No need to be so aggressive, kiddo." A familiar voice chimmed as someone walked around the corner of the stairs, holding a backpack slung over one shoulder. His lean face was charming and his blue eyes seemed sad as he looked down at them, but Danny finally recognized the man's feel. "I just thought I would save you kids an unpleasant meeting." The black haired man said, holding out the backpack.

"Hermes?" Danny tested. He hadn't managed to get a good look at the man when they were in the dark train compartment.

"What are you doing here?" Luke said with wide eyes, as if his father was the last thing he had expected to see on this earth.

"I already told you. You seeing May now would only cause both of you pain. Isn't that why you swore you would never come back? Because you know this." Hermes said, his voice more sad than anything else, though the words were a bitter pill for the son to swallow.

"You have no right to call my mother by her name." Luke said angrily. "You left us. You never did anything for us."

Hermes looked down. "You're right. I suppose I never could. Some father." He said before tossing them the backpack. "Your stuff is in there. I suggest you take care of the girl's injures rather than wasting your time with your useless old man."

Luke pulled the backpack open, checking to see that it did indeed have his weapons and the medicine he needed. Then his eyes shot back up. "You really don't want me to see her, do you?" Luke said in an accusing voice. "You're too good to help her, but you still come down here to stop me from even seeing my mother. Why, you never cared about anything I did before?"

"If you saw her now, it would trigger the vision again and she would see your future. That is what the curse does to her. That was why she was always in pain. Because of the terrible things in it." Hermes said as his face grew cold. "I tried to help, but sometimes we gods are not as powerful as we need to be. With our stature comes restrictions. Don't ever thing that I didn't help because I didn't want to. I loved you and May."

Luke blinked in shock. "You know... my future?" He said in surprise. "You know what it is? Tell me!" He shouted, sounding rather dispirit.

But Hermes just turned his head away. "I can't tell you that. I've already said too much."

Luke gritted his teeth. "Fine, I get it. Don't tell me." He said turning and walking out with Thalia still on his back, seeming too shocked to say anything.

Danny was about to follow them with Annabeth when Hermes stopped you. "No you, Danny-o. You stay here, I've got something I'd like to talk to you about." Hermes said, stopping Danny from leaving, though his eyes went to Annabeth as if wondering if he could get her to leave. "Maybe she could go out with the others."

"I'm not letting the princess away from my side." Danny said with finality.

"Fair enough I suppose." Hermes said with a sigh. He was silent for a few seconds, as if the messenger of the gods was weighing his words, trying to find their true value. Finally, when he did speak it wasn't in the style that most would think of when they that of the mighty Greek Gods. "Despite what most of my relatives up on the top of the world pretend, we really are limited in what we can do. There are laws that we can write into existence, and once written, they live us completely helpless. Doesn't help that most of us are so fickle with our powers."

Danny was having a hard time understanding what the god was saying, but it was easy enough to tell that Hermes wanted something from him.

"Why didn't you help Luke and his mother?" Annabeth said, earning a angry glare from the god, though Danny quickly moved between them. The moment passed and Hermes's eyes fell to the ground.

"I'm a lousy father, I get that, but never think for a second that I didn't try everything I could to cure Luke's mother. The curse came from Hades himself, we didn't even know it was there until it was too late. Hades can't remove his curse, Apollo can't cure it. There is nothing I can do." Hermes said still not looking at anything in particular. Though his eyes slowly moved towards Danny's. "But there might be something you can do."

Danny blinked. He had never done much more than killing. Curse's were outside of his knowledge. "How can I help with a curse?"

Hermes smile a bit at the comment. "Sounds like you need a history lesson. Have you ever heard of the birth of all the world's evils?"

"You mean Pandora's box?" Annabeth asked.

"No, not that story! Gods, no! Why does everyone think that we are some kind of psychopaths!? No!" Hermes shouted, shaking his head before sighing. "That story was based on the older story. One about events that predated even the Titans, back before the golden age ever even started."

"Long ago, there were two of the principle beings that were personification of fundamental parts of the universe; Nyx, the incarnation of the nature of darkness, and Chaos, the embodiment of... well chaos." Hermes started his story. "These two beings were infatuated with each other, though the universe as a whole feared them beyond anything else. For every time they produced a child, another evil was introduced into the world. Personifications of death, hunger, fear, pain, jealousy, hatred, disease, madness, curses, every evil you can imagine. But in the end they also had one other child, something that was impossible to explain from such a mirage."

"It has been called many things, the True Light, the Wave of Dreams, the Breath of the Gods, the Healing Embers, Hope, though we gods simply call it, Aether. And it is the power to destroy the other evils." Hermes said with a smile.

"So, you want us to find this Aether stuff?" Danny asked, wondering if he could get out of it.

"You already have it." Hermes said, further confusing Danny. "When oxygen condenses in an single area, along with something that can be burned, it creates mortal fire. Well, Aether is the same way, only rather than mortal fire, you get an immortal flame. One that burns green."

Annabeth gasped and looked to Danny with wide eyes. Danny raised his hands, letting the pale light come over them before they erupted into bright green flames that lashed out at the air, as if they wanted to be free to rip apart everything. "This fire doesn't heal. It can only destroy." Danny said, thinking the god was nuts.

"Maybe. But the fuel that powers the fire is what I want, not the fire itself. It could be enough to heal May." Hermes said his voice hopeful. "Kiddo, if you can remove May's curse, then I will make it worth your while."

Danny looked down at his own hands, wondering just how much control he had over this power he had never understood before. Could he us it to destroy a curse without complete reducing the woman's body to ashes?

"Danny?" Annabeth said, holding onto his sleeve and looking up to him with big eyes. He could see the encouragement in her eyes.

Taking a deep, Danny turned back to the messenger god. "I'll give it a shot. Don't blame me if this doesn't go well."

My boss came into my cubical today rubbing his knuckles and looking down at me with an overly friendly smile and said "Peter, you've got a lot of free time on your hands, right?"

FUCK!

Yeah I just had a project dumped on me that will probably take up all of my free time for the next two to eight months. So this is more or less a goodbye from regular updates.