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The sins of the fathers are the children's to bear~ Unknown
Thalia Grace is twelve when she dies.
She’s twelve and the furies and hellhounds are ripping into her skin and it hurts like the styx is trying to burn her up from the inside. She’s twelve and her blood soaks into the earth, her body twisting into the bark and veins of the tree.
She’s twelve and the god who never cared about her is turning her into some immortal monument of her death, like he cared, if he did he should have done something, but now she can’t feel anything anymore.
She’s just a towering monument to tragedy now.
oO0Oo
Thalia Grace is twelve and Luke, her best friend, the one she loves, is screaming his throat sore when he catches sight of her turning into that tree. She’s twelve and he’s fourteen and he knows now that forever doesn’t last for eternity, it can’t because all it is is how long they live, and no demigod ever lives a long life.
Their lives with always be steeped through with tragedy carved in the woven threads of the fates. Thalia Grace is twelve now and, oh, doesn’t it burn that even as she dies, even as her blood, her red blood flecked with golden ichor soaks the ground, he couldn’t be bothered to help. He couldn’t even be bothered to care.
Her eyes, even as she dies, burn with fury that could raze Olympus to the ground if she let it out.
oO0Oo
Thalia Grace is encased in a tree, her consciousness spread thin, her soul powering safety for all, but for Luke and Annabeth especially. They were family, and family protects family. Her father turned her into the tree, but she made that barrier.
oO0Oo
But Thalia Grace is fifteen now and wakes up to find the world has moved on without her there, to find out that Annabeth is now a jaded, world weary teenager, to find that Luke gave in to the anger, the pain the gods caused him, caused her. Thalia Grace is fifteen now and knows there is no rest for any demigods.
Thalia Grace was twelve and hunted and now she’s fifteen and hunted and the world has kept on turning. Thalia Grace is laying on the ground, her lightning blue eyes cracked open to gray skies and dripping rain. She sees a boy with stormy, sea glass green eyes kneeling over her, screaming for a medic. She knows in the very beat of her heart that Luke Castellan will not be there when she looks.
She asks where he is anyways.
oO0Oo
She knows they’re surprised when all she looks is grim when they tell her Luke is overthrowing the gods. She thinks about joining him, but she can’t leave this once seven year old child of Athena she had taken care of while they were on the run alone. Not when she doesn’t have Luke to look after her anymore.
When the dust and rubble of the quest that brought her back from the half life in that tree settles, she stays at camp half blood. She realizes now she has nowhere to go, no one left to turn to, but now the little girl she’d known was nearly her age now. And that was what killed her most.
She thought about going on a quest and not coming back, a last nod to all the children who never got to come back, because they deserved to be remembered. And they would be remembered if the daughter of the king of all of these gods died like they had. Because Annabeth was fine, had lost her once and not just survived but thrived, Luke was gone, and she carried the old, familiar weight of Olympus on her shoulders. But that was unfair to all the demigods who had bled red with flecked gold onto their own battlefields. Their own shrouds burnt in silent memoriam.
She had a second chance, this one would not be wasted.
oO0Oo
She held her head up high throughout the winter. She was Zeus’ child, daughter with lightning in her veins, her blood red and flecked with godly gold, her father’s immortality diluted in her soul. She had his power, his divinity, his lightning colored eyes, but she had her mother’s blood, her mother’s death written into her fate. She was not her father, and thank the gods for that, she didn’t have his apathy, his godliness. She was not her father, and she was not her mother. She was nothing but ichor and DNA and Thalia. She was not her father’s daughter, and nor was she her mother’s.
She was a child that should have never been born but was, a child born of a broken promise and the sting of the Styx in her blood. She was not a child born of love or life, she was born of cold sky blue eyes and a wild, electric soul.
Thalia Grace was born with the power to destroy Olympus, a pull in her bones that led her to the broken entrance of their gates. She was born with the power to burn it all to ashes and salt the earth behind her. But she won’t do it, not this lifetime at least.
This time she ignores the power in her, the want to watch them burn, let them feel the tragedy they’ve heaped upon generations of their children. This time she looks at the cabins of camp, all twelve in their semi-circle, and she ignores the pull of Kronos.
She is fifteen now, and fifteen year old demigods don’t cry anymore. They’ve seen too much for that.
oO0Oo
She’s fifteen still and her cousin, another who should have never been born but was is back. He’s the boy with stormy sea green eyes that filled with tears when she had woken up. He’s back, and now they’re in a car heading to Westover Hall, to pick up two more demigods who she knows will only die soon.
She makes small talk with Sally, Percy’s mom who told her call her Aunt Sally. She’s kind, rare for a lover of the gods.
(the gods have always loved submission or people just like them)
They get dropped off and she hides her shock that Percy can’t manipulate the Mist, that Chiron hasn’t taught him. She hides everything now, all her emotions and everything that makes her separate from the monsters they fight. She will not let them show, she cannot show any weakness.
They split up, knowing these children have no time left to wait, and then they leave the safety of numbers and strike out alone. She wanders down abandoned halls with a purpose, trying to find the demigods who were in this terrible place.
She pokes her head in what she thinks is a Math classroom, old equations still on the board and the smell of chalk in the air. The Art classroom is next, the heavy stink of paint permeating the air, and then the English classroom, and after that what looks like it might be a Civics class.
Percy screams, and then she’s running. She gets there just in time to see the manticore try and kill them. She intervenes, and then Annabeth is falling off a cliff, and the last person she could truly call family was gone into the sea. But then she wasn’t in the sea because then Percy would have known, she had been taken instead.
The Hunters arrived, their silver jackets glinting in the cold winter sun, Zoë Nightshade looking smug and satisfied after Bianca accepts the Hunters oath. She hated her after she met her the first time, after Zoë had told her all men disappoint you, and she had said “Not Luke. He won’t be like that.” She had been stubborn and she regrets it now, now that he had done this.
Even though she understood, she could never forgive this, she could never forgive him hurting Annabeth. So they went to camp and she burned, because this terrible, divine, used to be human- just like us, she thinks- god, had just written Annabeth off because we had gained campers.
She hates camp, just as Luke had. She misses him so much, but saying it makes her a monster, because Luke is razing the gods to the ground, and he is now the enemy. And no one mourns for the enemies. Because if you mourn your enemies, all it does is make them human.
oO0Oo
She sets off on a quest, fights a couple of cyclopes on the way to Washington D.C. And then Percy crashes their quest, and the Nemean Lion roars its ugly head and she thinks that today might be the day she dies again.
But then Percy kills it with freeze dried ice cream of all things, and she can’t help but look at him in shock tinged with respect, for this other child just like her, but not like her because he was still innocent, still had faith. They keep moving, and she spirals down and down, until they reach a train with a man named Fred.
(It’s Apollo in disguise)
They get on the train, then going to a desert place filled with the cast offs of the gods, the things they didn’t want.
(just like their children, a traitorous voice in her head whispers. she ignores it)
They enter, a warning lingering on their minds to not disturb anything. Talos, an automaton made by Hephaestus, rose after something was disturbed, a small Hades figurine that Bianca had taken.
They scattered, trying to fight this metal monster that was far too difficult to do much damage to. They are alone and afraid, their friends in this dust laden place dispersing to fight these battles. Percy shouts, what, she does not know, but then Talos goes up with sparks flying from his metal body, and she can breathe again.
Then Percy screams because Bianca was in Talos’ metal skeleton and now she was gone. She was gone and Percy was here and someone would have to tell Nico. Thalia Grace can not say she truly mourned, because she had seen too much, seen too many shrouds, even in her short time at camp and on the run. She can not say she has mourned any of them. She can not mourn, because to mourn would be to fall apart.
oO0Oo
They keep moving. They make it to the Hoover Dam, crack some jokes about the snack bar and the way Zoë talks, trying not to remember the way Bianca had died in the land without rain, foretold by the prophecy. She is always angry when she thinks of the prophecy, because why should the gods, the fates, get the right to cut string, kill people whenever they see fit. But the gods know nothing of tragedy, so they do not change.
They arrive at the entrance to the garden, where Zoë used be one of their protectors, one of the Hesperides. She distracts the dragon, Ladon, and they slip by, up towards the Titan Atlas and Artemis and Annabeth. She sees Luke, and all the feeling she had had for him once come rushing back, their tragic little love story.
She almost doesn’t want to go out to fight him, wants to focus only on the boy she’d left that was now just an angry man, utterly infuriated on behalf of all those slighted by the gods. She goes out to fight him anyways. They fight swords clanging, shields raised to defend themselves, and she can’t help but weep later that night for the thing they’d lost when she died all those years ago, her twelve and him fourteen.
They fight and they both hold back, because hurting the other would fray that last, final string beyond repair, and neither of them wants that. But then they fight close to the cliff, and she sees an opening, and then he’s falling. She stays stoic and unafraid, even as he does not move. She will not let this show.
She holds her head high and stands her ground, though she wants nothing more than to collapse into tears because she just pushed Luke, the boy who she could have loved, if their life had been different, and she had just pushed him off a cliff onto cruel, hard rock. But instead she keeps her chin raised up, refusing to cower before the Titan trapped back under the sky.
They run as fast as they can, bring ambrosia, but Zoë Nightshade had her thread cut, and there was nothing that could prevent that. There is nothing, and so Zoë Nightshade, who she had hated before she truly understood hate, before she knew there were far worse people than she, was dead and gone, only a constellation of stars and their memories left to remember her by.
She is not ashamed to say there were tears on her face, tears to remember Zoë, yes, but also to remember Bianca and all those who died before, because before she could not mourn, but now she can, so she lets herself cry silent, stolen tears for Bianca, for Zoë, for Luke. And then they go to Olympus, and when she sees her father, there is no love in her stare. She watches him like a hunter watches their prey, stone cold and ready to take the shot.
She holds her head up high when Artemis asks if she would like to be her Lieutenant, the second in command of her Hunters. She holds her head up high and stares her father in the face when she says yes to Artemis. She does not bend, she does not break, she will not sway, and that means removing the temptation to burn Olympus and salt the earth behind her.
She says yes, and the circlet that only hours before had been worn by a girl now dead but forever immortalized by the stars is placed on her head, and she does not feel free. She feels like there’s a shackled crown on her head, holding her an oath she would only break for one person, and he had already turned traitor.
Her father’s face is a mask of cold, smooth, marble stone that only cracks when she smiles, a broken, sharp toothed thing that holds no happiness and is the gaze of the person waiting to be your downfall. Her father is too arrogant to see it for the warning it is.
oO0Oo
She is only four hours the lieutenant when she feels a weight lift that she did not know she carried, not the heavy weight of Olympus, not the familiar, well known pull to the blood stained gates, but the weight of a prophecy that had been formed under a curse and the burden of a broken oath sworn on the river Styx.
She does not smile, but she is glad. She will not have to choose whether or not to watch Olympus fall, or to save the gods who care nothing. This is still her fight, but she is no longer the figurehead. That role belongs to her cousin now, the son of the sea.
oO0Oo
She fights monsters, hunts them down to slay them before they kill more demigods. They find out later that there was a battle in Daedalus’ Labyrinth, that so many were dead and gone, their shrouds burned, the tar black smoke of a child sized shroud lifting up towards the gods who do not care, but they will make them care.
Apathy is dangerous, it all leads back to those broken, blood stained gates.
oO0Oo
When Typhon escapes his prison, she is left in charge of all Artemis’ Hunters. They travel to Manhattan, the entrance to the desolate, once beautiful palace abandoned. They left their children to fight their battles, she thinks bitterly. They do not care anything for their kids, the ones they brought into this world they knew would hunt them.
She keeps on fighting her way north, towards those terrible, blood soaked, streets they will defend. They arrive in the center of the hurricane, the eye of the storm. They arrive just as Percy runs out of campers to defend the city, specifically the Lincoln Tunnel.
She had bad memories of the damp and dripping walls of that place, of fighting one eyed monsters there, surrounded by the ghosts of dead demigods, but she would not bend, would not break and so she marched ever onward. She marches onward towards destiny, waiting to die like so many others have before her.
They arrive at the tunnel, and the monsters that come are cyclopes and dracaena, hordes of them that just keep coming, never stopping. By the time the day is over, sixteen of her Hunters are dead and four are wounded, and she has fifty four left to defend their tunnel.
The Hunters normally travel in groups of twenty or thirty, splitting into Artemis and her Lieutenant each leading one, with a new Lieutenant being chosen in interim command. For this battle though, they come together as a single group, united to defend their Lady’s, their Sister’s home.
They keep fighting, swords in hand and shields raised to defend. The night is spent on the blood stained floors of Olympus, four girls on watch switching every four hours. They sleep that night with war in their blood, with the fury of the gods in their bones. They do not wish for war, but they fight this one anyways.
They rise the next day, the sun casting paths of shadows dancing on Olympus. They hear the Drakon’s roar, and then Clarisse’s scream. She tells them to hold the line at the front of the tunnel, and sets off for Olympus.
They file into the elevator at the base of the empire state building, her and Annabeth and Grover and Percy. All the way up to Olympus they go, the terrible music reminiscent of a time when they did not fight wars on these streets. The elevator dings, a high and clear sound. The file off, 1, 2, 3, 4, then going into a room with a judgmental statue of her step-mom, Hera. The statue almost falls on Annabeth, who is saved only by Thalia shoving her out of the way.
The statue is now on her legs, but the pain is manageable so she tells them to go to Lu-Kronos. He is Kronos now, Luke is gone, the blue-eyed boy he had been, who had loved her was dead. She tells them to go, knowing she may never see her cousin again, knows he might die today. She is already saying her goodbyes inside, like she did for every Hunter she’d left behind.
She waits there, alone until they come back, apologies on their tongues and sorrow in their eyes as they tell her Luke was the hero, not Percy, but Luke. Her best friend, her partner in everything that had come before had been the hero all along. She does not cry for him, not for the dead and gone, not anymore, but she cries for the living, who have to keep fighting wars and smiling through tears and mourning brothers and sisters for gods who don’t care.
oO0Oo
When they ask her, hundreds of years down the road, who she is, she tells them all. “I am Thalia Grace, Daughter of Zeus, Lieutenant of the Hunters of Artemis.” She says that and nothing else, but the truth is so much more complicated, because she is Thalia Grace, Styx cursed and with hands forever stained by blood of so many demigods before her.
She is Thalia Grace, forever and always fifteen, forever cursed to watch friends die, to never get to say goodbye. She is Thalia Grace, daughter of Zeus but so much more. She is Thalia Grace, and she bleeds red blood flecked with gold and not completely ichor. She is Thalia Grace, and she is a legend.
She is Thalia Grace, and she, unlike her father, is human.