Chapter Text
When Thalia woke up she understood only one thing — she was alone.
Thalia had been alone before, had spent most of her life alone before she found the others, and that had been fine. So Thalia didn’t actually care that she was alone. She cared that she didn’t know where Luke and Annabeth were, that she wasn’t with them.
Every cell in Thalia’s body ached as she pulled herself out of bed, but the real concern was her lack of weapons. Fine. Whatever. She’s dangerous without a spear and she felt that power in her blood and decided not to worry about whether the storm outside was her doing or her father’s. He was displeased, she was sure, but what did that matter to her? After all, Thalia was pissed.
Now where were her friends?
It wasn’t hard to figure out where she was as she stomped through the large house. She remembered everything fine. Well, mostly. She remembered making it to Camp, guided by the satyr Grover. She remembered the harpies and she remembered her father. The only part she was foggy on was some flash of battle she swore she could have seen — but she had been alone on the hill with Zeus. The point being, this was obviously Camp, and this was obviously some main house, and Thalia cared to learn no more except the location of her friends and the quickest direction to the borders.
Camp and country.
As Thalia stood on the porch, the storm only worsened with her mood — maybe it is me — until finally she heard voices behind some ornate glass windowed doors. She threw them open as thunder rumbled and Thalia told herself the storm was responding to her anger, not her fear.
She didn’t know these people. She didn’t know what happened. She didn’t know where her friends were or where her spear was.
But the people inside weren’t armed. Just three kids in orange shirts and an older centaur. Thalia practically stumbled in, braced for an attack or anything really, until realized that she recognized one of the campers in orange. Grover. The satyr who’d brought them to the camp. She’d never wanted to come, but Grover hadn’t seemed too terrible and it was clear he had cared for their youngest travelling companion especially.
Annabeth. “Where’s…?”
But then the shortest of the demigods stepped into sight. A young black girl with her hair pulled back who Thalia recognized instantly despite the fact that she shouldn’t. “Annabeth…?” Thalia asked incredulously. Because it was her. Thalia knew this kid, had been willing to do anything including come to this godsdamned camp for her, but… “You’ve grown.”
Thalia didn’t understand.
Annabeth, meanwhile, just stared, eyes wide and watering and disbelieving until she finally started moving forward, gasping softly as she wrapped her arms around Thalia, who felt her own heart start to settle.
Annabeth’s here. Annabeth’s alright. She’s safe. She’s okay.
And she was years older than Thalia had last seen her, but at the moment that seemed secondary. After all, it wasn’t hard for Thalia to figure out this meant she’d been a tree for longer than she’d thought.
But what had happened while Thalia slept? Zeus had warned of an impending war. She had wanted to get her friends and leave and instead Annabeth must have spent the past several years in this place. And— “Where’s Luke?”
She knew from Grover that the Centaur in the room must be Chiron, but she didn’t know the final person, who had been watching all of this with a stony, wary expression. But Annabeth was here and okay, so surely Luke…?
Except the room seemed to tense, Grover going as far as stepping back. And everyone’s eyes seemed to turn to the stranger in the room.
He’d been in some kind of fight, that was clear. And Thalia didn’t think he’d come out the winner. He was probably Annabeth’s age, or at least a little younger than herself, white, pretty tall, and had dirty, curled hair that Thalia didn’t think had been washed since before whatever fight he lost.
Thalia didn’t like the way everyone turned to him and she liked the way he looked at her even less. “Where is he?” she demanded of the boy who had suddenly become the center of the room.
He straightened his back and Thalia clutched Annabeth to her tighter. Grover now shuffled forward as if to step between her and the stranger.
Then his eyes shifted to Annabeth. Then Thalia again, but always back to Annabeth. She stepped out of Thalia’s arms.
“Annabeth—“ he said.
But she had stepped in front of Thalia, turning her back to Percy. “It’s okay, Thalia.”
The boy behind her made a sound of disagreement and tore his staring gaze away. Annabeth’s head twitched in a way that made it clear she had heard him. “Luke is… complicated.”
“Complicated?” the boy repeated, angry and incredulous.
“Percy,” Chiron chastised, but there wasn’t much heat behind it.
“Come on, Annabeth,” Percy insisted to her back.
“I’m telling her my way,” she argued without turning, which only seemed to upset him further.
“Telling me what?” Thalia demanded. Without even looking at each other, or at least without Annabeth looking at him, the two seemed in a stand off.
Grover stepped forward, looking equally nervous about both of them. “There’s a war—”
“I know, my father told me,” she cut him off. She wanted to get to the part about Luke and why it was complicated and why Annabeth looked like she was trying not to cry and why this Percy boy looked like he was trying not to scream. “What’s this to do with Luke?”
“It’s Luke’s war,” Percy answered. Not shouting, but resolute.
Annabeth spun on him like he’d screamed. “This is Kronos. Not Luke.”
“Maybe, but it was Luke who just led the charge against camp.”
Annabeth faltered, and then turned back to Thalia. “He’s angry at his dad. You know he is, but he’s being manipulated by Kronos. He thinks he’s helping everyone.”
Luke attacked the camp? At face value, Thalia wasn’t terribly shocked. He had been the most resistant to coming at all and even more vocal than she about his anger at their parents. Doing something like this to piss them off sounded about right.
But… What was this about Kronos? And… Annabeth was wearing one of the orange shirts. That means she’s a camper, right? She stayed. So if Luke attacked Camp— “Were you here when he attacked?”
Annabeth’s eyes pressed closed, but Percy stepped forward. “Yes.”
“He wouldn’t hurt me,” she insisted. “He saved my life.”
Now Percy charged forward several steps, looking angrier than ever. “He saved—?!” he stopped when he saw both Grover and Chiron move in his direction. He watched them carefully with heavy breaths before he landed on Thalia. It was clear he didn’t trust her, which suited Thalia fine because she sure as shit didn’t trust him. Then he looked to Annabeth, who still had her eyes pressed shut, back to him, and the anger seemed to fade into something more… devastated.
He looked away, expression now a muted sort of pissed off. “Fine. Whatever. I’ll give you all a minute to talk.” He looked at Grover and Chiron pointedly and then left out the doors behind Thalia. He didn’t look back, but Annabeth had opened her eyes to track his exit and startled when the doors slammed shut.
“He’s angry,” Annabeth told Thalia, not meeting her eyes. For a moment, Thalia thought Annabeth was repeating herself about Luke until she added, “He didn’t know Luke as well as us. He only knew him for a few days before… doesn’t matter. He doesn’t think Luke can be saved and he’s wrong.”
“While I hope you’re right, Annabeth,” Chiron said, “we cannot understate the threat we are under. Luke has made serious advances towards raising Kronos and has an army of both demigods and monsters at his side.”
Annabeth’s eyes turned pleading as she insisted to Thalia. “He thinks he’s helping demigods.”
Thalia considered Percy’s angry outburst and the way it had clearly affected Annabeth, not to mention everyone’s wary eyes on her. Chiron and Grover were trying to be more subtle than the Percy kid was, but they weren’t very good at it. Not to mention, she remembered what her father had wanted out of her. A weapon.
“Is he?” Thalia asked.
Annabeth sniffed a little wetly, though she hadn’t cried. “What?”
“Is he helping demigods?”
Grover and Chiron did not like that question and even Annabeth twisted back to catch their reactions. Chiron looked to the satyr, and Grover stepped forward nervously. “Thalia—”
“I told you I didn’t want to come to this camp. I told you that we wouldn’t be safe here. You said it would be safe.” Thunder roared and the whole room except her jumped. “Now there’s a war, Luke might be at the center of it and my father…” She remembered his face when she’d had the audacity to tell a divine being No. “Well, let’s say I’m not feeling particularly charitable towards him. And I’m not saying I care about all demigods but the few people I care about are all demigods, so… Is he helping demigods?”
Annabeth started: “He thinks—“
“No,” Chiron answered more bluntly. “Many demigods will die on both sides, regardless of who wins this fight. That’s not even mentioning the impact it will have on the mortal world should Kronos win. This is about more than just your parents.”
Thalia felt caught in a wind storm. Or maybe a tornado, spinning her around so much she’d lost the feeling of gravity. She didn’t know what to think about this war or this camp or even Luke, and that threatened to wreck her, so she focused on the one thing she did have.
Annabeth. “We need to leave,” Thalia told her, grabbing her wrist.
But Annabeth, years older and much stronger, pulled back. “No, we can’t.”
“Why?” Thalia demanded, not quite used to having to explain herself to this little girl who had just minutes ago (to her) depended on Thalia for survival.
“Because Percy—” she answered right as Chiron said, “The Great Prophecy.”
Annabeth looked away and pushed a braid out of her face. “Right, the Great Prophecy.”
Hm. Thalia wasn’t sure she liked that development at all.
But she forced herself to face the answer that seemed marginally more deathy. “Prophecy? Yeah, the furies told me about this prophecy. Pass. No thanks. We should leave,” she pressed to Annabeth once more. “Let all these god lovers do as they please.”
Annabeth met her gaze again. “It is about more than the gods. For us, its war, but if we lose it’ll be genocide to the mortals. We can’t let that happen.”
Thalia stepped away. “You’re saying you want to fight in this war.”
She swore Annabeth’s gaze darted to the door briefly before answering. “I have to.”
“This war that is against Luke. You want to stand against Luke?”
“I don’t want to… He’s being manipulated. I swear.”
“You said he attacked camp. Did he hurt you?”
“No! He—”
“Did he?” she asked of Chiron and Grover.
Annabeth twisted to glare, but Grover admitted, “You got shot, Annabeth.”
“Not by Luke!”
Grover was gentle as he countered, “By his right hand, though. And we were only on that quest, where you almost died, because he poisoned Thalia’s tree.”
“Quest?” Thalia asked, but no one seemed to hear her.
“He didn’t know you could be brought back!” Annabeth was quick to defend.
Sounding even sadder, Grover said, “It was still Thalia.”
Annabeth didn’t have an answer to that and looked increasingly desperate. “I got hurt and he saved me with the golden fleece.”
“Percy sacrificed the whole quest to give you that fleece. Luke was just there at the right time.”
“Percy shouldn’t have done that. We needed that fleece to save Thalia—”
Now Grover stepped forward, sounding annoyed. “Who was only poisoned because Luke stabbed her. Her tree.” When Annabeth didn’t immediately refute his claim, he continued, “Your arguments are twisting in on themselves. Between this year and last, how many times have the three of us almost died, Percy especially, because of Luke’s actions. I’m not saying— I don’t know, Annabeth. Maybe he can be saved. But we need to be honest about where Luke is right now.”
Thalia had a lot of questions, most of them about whatever quest—quests?—Annabeth had apparently been on and each and every way Luke has even mildly put Annabeth in danger, yet what came out of her mouth was, “So who exactly is this Percy kid?” She watched Annabeth carefully, which was apparently what Chiron and Grover elected to do as well.
Annabeth seemed to take note of this and tried to shake off her emotions. “Percy Jackson,” she answered robotically. “Son of Poseidon.”
“Poseidon?” Another Big Three kid then. “Pity for him. So wait — did he think this prophecy was about him?” Was that why he was staring daggers at her? She hadn’t been told the full thing, but she knew the gist. Child of the big three, shitty sixteenth birthday, Olympus lives or dies. Had the kid wanted the glory for himself? The idolization Zeus had tried to lure her with?
“He only found out about it a few days ago,” Annabeth answered, still with that flat tone of hers and meeting no one’s eyes.
Grover looked at Annabeth oddly, before saying, “He’s our friend. Percy just wants to look after his friends.”
It’s Luke’s war. It was Luke who just led the charge against camp, Percy had said, clearly angry at Annabeth’s attempts to water it down.
Percy sacrificed the whole quest to give you that fleece.
It wasn’t hard to see that Percy cared about Annabeth—even more so maybe, if Thalia was putting the threads of what had happened recently together correctly, than he cared for this camp. Which, good. That was the only level of care Annabeth deserved.
Which made Luke standing against Annabeth the most baffling part of all of this. And based on Annabeth’s insistence that he could be saved, her little sister felt the same.
“So what? Now you all want me to fight in this war, fight against Luke, just like my father did? And tell me, if I say no, what will you do? Because my father turned me into a fucking tree to stop me. It will take no less to stop me if I choose to leave.”
“Please don’t leave,” Annabeth asked her. She’d spent the last several minutes refusing to even look at Thalia, but now her eye contact was wide and watery and desperate. “The gods are… complicated, but Camp isn’t. This is the only place we can be safe and Kronos will destroy everything if he rises. Please stay. You might even like it here.”
Thalia doubted that and it kind of looked like Annabeth did too. “You want me to fight?” she asked Annabeth and only Annabeth this time.
Looking like the strong, stubbornly determined little girl Thalia knew, just a little less little, Annabeth said, “I want to save— the people I care about.”
Thalia wondered which name Annabeth had stopped herself from saying, because she’d been defending Luke this whole time, but her eyes had drifted to the doors again.
Standing there, Thalia felt like she still understood so little, and couldn’t quite ignore the fury still in her blood, her own anger at her father. After all, maybe if she hadn’t been a godsdamned tree, she could have stopped Luke from whatever led him to working with Kronos — manipulation or no. She could have prevented this whole war. She certainly had planned to pull them out of the camp that first night.
But she did understand one thing and it was maybe the only thing that mattered. “I’ll stay,” she said, pulling Annabeth into another tight hug that the girl easily reciprocated.
Thalia wasn’t ever leaving this (not so) little girl again. And while fighting in this whole war and being her father’s weapon was one thing she wasn’t sure she could sign up for, she knew would never stand against Annabeth.
Luke, what have you done?