The Truth, The Journey and the Finding

From my view over the Empire State building, New York looked like it was picking up fine. All of the statues were back in their proper places and positions, the parks and road were cleared and business carried on like normal. It had only been two weeks yet the city was already back on track. I was really amazed at the lengths mortals would go to in order to ignore what they wouldn't see and at what Kronos had done to their beloved city.

My thoughts turned to that cruel, evil, villainous thing considered to be my grandfather. He was reforming, we all could feel it. It was slow work, but in a few years time he would be strong enough to enter man's dreams yet again. The gods were working hard, keeping a vigilant watch over humanity. Until we found him and captured him, we wouldn't stop looking.

I felt a tap on my shoulder and turned. Hades stood there, clothed all in black, like another version of Mick Jagger, as Grover had once remarked. I was puzzled. The winter solstice meeting had already ended an hour previously. I knew the Big Three wanted to talk in private, but I didn't know it would take this long, or why Hades was still there.

"We need to talk." His grave tone of voice left no room for argument, so I followed him into the throne room. The other gods had already left, back to their day-to-day activities. Only Zeus, Poseidon, Hades and myself remained. The Big Three sat in their thrones, looked between each other, and passed on a silent message to one another. Then Hades spoke.

"Hermes, Luke's spirit just went into judgment. Since he did save Olympus, I decided to step in on his judgment to make sure he was rewarded, or at least not to harshly punished for his actions. When a spirit is judged, we look into their memories to see all of the things they had done in their life. When we viewed Luke's memories, I noticed something.... peculiar."

I looked at my father and uncles, confused. Peculiar? How? It was simple really: Luke's mother was insane, I left him, he ran away, joined Thalia and Annabeth and went to Camp, turned to Kronos, realized his mistake and died saving us. That's it. Done. Period. End Of Story. But Hades' look told me there was more. I swallowed, looked him straight in the eyes, and said: "Tell me whats going on with my son."

Hades' held my gaze. After a few uncomfortable seconds, he cleared his throat and continued. "First of all, very few of his memories contain May Castellan. Second of all, the memories include two people, Joss Whilker and Otis Castellan, May's brother, two people of which Luke never made mention. Three: there is a boy in Luke's childhood who looks identical to him: Jason Castellan, the product of May and her first husband who left her. Since May and Joss, Jason's aunt, didn't want Jason's father coming back and trying to gain custody over him, Jason grew up living with Joss in St. Louis, Illinois."

"Excuse me, uncle, but what does this have to do with Luke's memories? I've met Joss and Otis, although never Jason, and I know all of this. I don't, however, know what this has to do with my son and his judgment." Hades' looked at me gravely. He took a deep breath and finished his speech. "This has nothing to do with Luke's memories nor his judgment simply because they are not Luke's memories. They are Jason's. Further more, it is not Luke Castellan who is about to face judgment, but Jason Castellan."