Stupid. Cut.

He killed his sister. Another angry slash of red.

I hope he dies. The onyx-eyed boy's wrist was splashed with blood, but he didn't register the pain that should've been there. Instead, he stared out into the air, his eyes empty and devoid of emotion. He slumped onto the wall, arm hanging limply.

Eventually he regained his senses and plastered a few white bandages over the new wounds, and put on his long-sleeved aviator jacket. One of the last gifts from...her. From Bianca, his sister. His... his dead sister. He knew that she would be heartbroken to see him like this.

"Nico, il mio piccolo soldato," she would sigh, "you must stay strong. Strong for us, for the world we share." But our world is gone now, he thought grimly, destroyed, obliterated.

The spiky-haired girl was at the local bar, ordering another drink. Alcohol was the only way for her to forget. To forget her crazy mother and the little brother she left behind all those years ago. To forget how she'd walked away without a single glance back, not even when her little brother, so young and innocent, had cried out her name despairingly-"Thalia!"-and that single word had cut through the air like the sharpest of knives.

While all this was happening, the grey-eyed girl was sitting in the corner of her room, silent tears trickling down her face. Helen. She wanted to kill Helen. Helen was the reason she was disliked by her own biological father, the reason she was bullied for being different. The reason she was left out, why she was mistreated by Drew and her gang.

The girl knew that she could be strong, but that was hard, so hard, with a venomous stepmother watching her every move.

On the other side of town, being and staying strong was exactly what the green-eyed boy was trying to do. Gabe was home again, and this time worse than ever.

"Son of a-" Punch.

"Crybaby coward." Kick.

"Annoying kid." Shattered vase.

"I should kill you. Nobody would notice." Overturned table, glass scattered on the floor.

Gabe snarled and punched the boy again, oblivious to the glass fragments on the tiled floor, the blood on his stepson's face. The doorbell chimed. Gabe swore. "If you make a move, boy, this will just be the beginning," he snarled, and made toward the door.