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It had been deja vu, not that she’d recognized it at first. Laying in the dewy grass of an early morning, the feeling of bark against her bare arm. There were voices, distant, and too close, and they washed over her in jutting cliffs and curved thorns. Her clothing rubbed wrong, creating tiny bursts of static, and a face hovered over her. She thought she’d had dreams of this face. His outstretched hand, pale blue nails, a scar on his palm, and hefted her up. The world tilted extraordinarily, her stomach upturning like it usually did when she thought about being too high up in the sky (ha, the irony), and he said, “you’re safe now.”
A long time ago, but it felt as though it were only last week, it had been a different voice, more feminine, a girl with a long braid and a silver circlet, a bow slung over her back. They’d been cornered, her and Luke and little Annabeth, and Thalia had been trying not to show how afraid she was, how certain she’d been that this was the end, and she was failing because little Annabeth’s inquisitive, knowing eyes seemed to understand what she was thinking anyway. She always had.
But then over a dozen girls burst from seemingly nowhere, in silver parkas and carrying bows, leaping at the sides of wolves and hawks swooping over their heads.
“Thou are safe now,” the girl with the circlet said, nodding to Thalia, “Thou have fought bravely, young maiden. The hunters honor that.”
But Thalia had not been able to leave Luke and Annabeth, and she’d departed from Zoe Nightshade with a bitter fight.
“The boy will betray thee,” she’d warned, and Thalia hadn’t believed her. She’d fought and traveled with Luke for so, so long. They had each other's backs.
She felt like a fool, now.
The boy with the scar on his palm had looked anxiously to the centaur, then to the others, then to the girl at his side, the girl frozen, with the braids and the dark, knowing eyes that looked gray in the light, the girl who was older than Thalia remembered but who she’d recognize anywhere.
“Luke joined Kronos.”
Thalia figured she was living in a spiral downwards. A loop of repeated history, a hall of funhouse mirrors, distorted reflections of past events replayed in her present in a mocking corruption of what they’d been.
Yesterday she was twelve and running for her life, and yesterday she knew she was going to die. Today she was fifteen, and alive, still a forbidden kid, still counting down the days until she was dead again, for good this time. It was so depressing it was funny, really, or that was what she told herself as she sat by the lake, chucking pebbles into the water, and ducking scowlingly as once in a while, a naiad would hurl it right back.
A shadow cast over her shoulder, the reflection of the water distorting, and, “Can I sit with you?”
Even Annabeth’s voice sounded different.
Thalia turned her head despite herself, peering up at the girl who had once been so small. She was older now, of course, they both were, though they had not aged to the same degrees. A part of Thalia felt like she hadn’t aged at all, in the time she spent in tree-form.
But Annabeth…Annabeth had truly seemed to grow into herself. She was taller, lean instead of malnourished, that terrifying gauntness on a child merely a ghost for them both to remember. Her hair fell in little braids, all pulled back in an elastic band, practical. Everything about her was practical. The dagger that Luke had given her, the yankees cap dangling at her belt loop, the vigilant, calculating sweep of her eyes.
Thalia was grateful for that practicality as much as she found she loathed it. It helped hide the little girl who had traveled with her. It helped hide the child she’d been, so it made it easier for Thalia to picture herself as different from the girl she’d been, too.
“Knock yourself out,” Thalia said, turning back to the lake and skipping another flat stone.
Annabeth lowered herself next to her, kicking her sandals off so she could dip her toes in the water. According to rumor, she’d been to the Sea of Monsters to help retrieve the golden fleece with that daughter of Ares, Grover, and Thalia’s apparent cousin. Thalia didn’t know how she wasn’t utterly sick of water after that, but Annabeth appeared at ease, feet gently creating rippling patterns that her eyes tracked until they fizzled out.
“How are you doing?” she asked abruptly, and Thalia’s jaw twitched in surprise.
“If one more person stares at me and whispers, I’m shocking them into next Tuesday.”
Annabeth rolled her eyes, suddenly amused, though that quickly faded, “we didn’t mean to drop everything on you all at once like that. I,” her face pinched slightly, “I’m sorry.”
Annabeth’s pridefulness, Thalia thought with a strike of amusement, at least had not changed. She waved the younger girl’s words away halfheartedly, “doubt there was a good way to drop the bomb.”
Annabeth shrugged, an action that Thalia hadn’t associated with the girl, though perhaps she’d picked it up during her time at Camp, “we still could have handled it better. I guess, I mean it was a shock, and Percy’s brain to mouth filter is…”
“Shot to shit?” Thalia’s brows lifted, and Annabeth nodded.
Thalia hummed, “how’s Grover?”
This time it was Annabeth who was raising her eyebrows, “hasn’t he talked to you?”
“Emotional reunion, waterworks, everything,” Thalia agreed distantly, “he kept apologizing, though, it was one of the only things he could get out.”
“He blamed himself for how things turned out,” Annabeth said, looking away. Thalia followed her gaze, feeling her throat constrict irritatingly. In the distance, a group of girls bobbed in the water, their hair flowing into the lake as though it were part of it, their eyes dark. A few waved at Annabeth. One chucked a pebble at Thalia, and she flipped them off. It did little but get a bunch more hurled at her face.
Annabeth laughed at her, “they’re usually flirts,” she said, “I’d say I don’t know what’s gotten into them, but I doubt they appreciated you throwing rocks at them.”
“Is it true that if you litter, the nymphs will put centipedes in your bed?”
Annabeth smirked at her, and Thalia took that as a yes.
It was quiet between them for a minute, the distant sound of swords clashing and shouts of glee as the climbing wall rumbled and erupted in a brilliant display of lava. If she wasn’t freaked out about heights, Thalia would have adored it.
She eventually dared to unfold her legs and wiggle her toes in the water. It was cool to the touch, and even being a daughter of Zeus, it wasn’t as uncomfortable as she’d have thought. Sure, it wasn’t like how she felt in a lightning storm, but it also wasn’t being chased by a horde of hellhounds, so that was great.
“It wasn’t his fault,” Thalia said once she found her voice again, clearing it a few times when it came out rough, “I told him that.”
“So have I,” Annabeth tucked one of her knees up to lay her chin on it, “doesn’t change much.”
“It wasn’t your fault either.”
Annabeth eyed her for a second, and then sighed, “like I said.”
“You think I chose to do that because I didn’t want to? It was my choice, not yours.”
“I know that,” the daughter of wisdom scowled, “but I didn’t want to, for a long time.”
“Why?” Thalia scoffed, “would have spared you a lot of guilt.”
It was what her mother would have done. But Annabeth wasn’t Beryl, obviously, because only Beryl was Beryl. Still, it was sometimes hard to remember that.
Case in point, “why would I want it to not be my fault, when that would mean I could get strong enough people would finally stop leaving me?”
For a second, Thalia felt like she couldn’t breathe, the oxygen stolen from her lungs by a cruel fist. Then it came flooding back, and she huffed a breath, “what the fuck was Luke thinking?”
Annabeth’s face shuddered, closing off, “he thinks he’s right. Probably that you’d have-” she cut herself off, but Thalia could hear the bitten words as clear as if they’d been shouted at the top of her lungs: probably that you’d have agreed with him.
She grit her teeth against a snarl, that familiar rage whipping up inside her ribcage as though it were trying to cage the betrayal and fear, smother them until she didn’t have to acknowledge any of it.
“Jesus fucking Christ,” she scoffed.
“Wrong religion to blaspheme, Thalia.”
“I’ll blaspheme any religion I want.”
It was strange, hearing her name again, like she was not used to it. A strange thing for her body and mind to have gotten unused to. But it was all she heard nowadays. Thalia, daughter of Zeus, Thalia the forbidden kid, Thalia of the barrier, Thalia’s pine, have you seen Thalia? She’s another Big Three kid you know…
It also still hadn’t hit her yet that she wasn’t the only Big Three kid anymore. Not that she was entirely sure how the oath or the prophecy worked. Chiron had been explaining all she’d missed, giving her private lessons about the Mist and the myths. Things she had missed out on, on the Greek side of things. Sometimes, she thought the trainer of heroes did it to keep an eye on her, that he didn’t trust her. Because of what she’d ended up as? Because at one point it had not just been Thalia but Thalia and Luke. Both, probably.
It was at the same time gratifying to get the private attention without all the gawking, and infuriating. She hated that people kept defining her by Luke Castellan.
And maybe she resented her little cousin, just a little. This son of Poseidon who had offered her a hand that day. He had seemed to take her place by Annabeth’s side, and she spoke of him often enough she had that painful knowledge that those two knew each other better than she now knew Annabeth. The same with Grover; just as once, Grover had traveled with Thalia, helped Thalia, now it was him and Percy who were best friends, who stuck to each other like leeches.
It was just a fact of things, really, and she tried not to let it get to her. But it was also just: not only was life so changed, the world so changed, that Luke was gone but not gone, but Percy fucking Jackson. Percy Jackson who could have taken the prophecy, and now she had it instead; who still had the audacity to attempt crooked little smiles at her when for just a second, when she heard 'Poseidon', she thought she would not be alone to bear this burden.
But she was. Again.
If only Grover and Annabeth didn’t seem to like him so much, then Thalia could have a much easier time marinating in her dislike. As it was, she just felt guilty over it. Which lead to anger. Of course it did. A lot of Thalia tended to go towards anger. A cruel cycle, that started when she was a kid and had to tiptoe around her mother’s blame and the needles littering the ground, and the shouting that seemed to sow the seeds of helplessness into Thalia’s young mind, and the knowledge of where to go to regain her power. Rage, and violence.
Why did Zeus leave you, Beryl? Oh, maybe because you’re a raging bitch, that’s why. But Beryl had only ever seen Thalia’s face, too much like her father’s, too much of a reminder. Of course, it was Thalia’s fault, because Beryl Grace had never been lacking, had never been to blame, for anything in her life.
“You still carry his knife,” Thalia said, “the one he gave you.”
Annabeth looked suddenly so very bitter, that Thalia wished she was as familiar with comforting someone as hurting them, “yeah, well, not that family ended up mattering much apparently.”
Thalia knocked their shoulders, and said gruffly, “matters to me.”
The younger girl’s lips quirked up at one side, but her eyes were still tired. Tired, as Thalia thought her eyes must have been once, probably still were. What a pair they were. Broken edges of a torn photograph. And a hole ripped from the middle.