he's a boy with black hair and startling green eyes and he's clutching a minotaur horn like if he lets go he might disappear.

she's a girl who's never left camp with blond curls and stormy grey eyes and too much for such a small place and all she wants to do is run-

and maybe he can help her with that.

the first quest, they're testing each other out, seeing how far she can push him and how far he can knock her. both learn, very quickly, that they both have very short spans, when she ends up drenched in water and he with a blade at his throat.

xx

she follows him back to new york that summer, watches from his window, tries to catch his attention, does anything to let him know she's there. but every time he glances toward the window, she puts the cap back on, as though afraid he's going to see her.

he returns to camp with a cyclops for a brother and, once more, a long line of people who want to kill him - her included, once or twice, not that he ever really notices. the nightmares get worse, for both of them, though neither tells the other.

it's not until years later when she wonders if maybe they should have.

xx

having thalia back, it's not what she expected. thalia is - was - dead. it's like having a piece of the little girl she once was, a little girl that she desperately wants to forget.

every now and then, she'll catch thalia watching her, and she wonders if thalia's thinking the same thing as her:

where did the little girl with a knife in a back alley go?

neither of them are sure, because now she's a confident, kick-ass young woman with a lot of blood on her hands and a streak of gray in her hair.

xx

she starts to scream in her sleep - she dreams of drowning in green, she dreams of being rescued, though she can never see the face. she dreams of dying.

maybe it's nerves, maybe it's stupidity, maybe it's that little voice in the back of her mind that's whispering, he's dying, that makes her kiss him, the boy with the dark hair and the electric eyes, before he blows up a mountain and disappears for almost a month.

when she sees him again, she's angry, sure, but her lips still taste like his and when he meets her eyes, she feels safe.

xx

battles are never easy. death is never easy. driving a knife inside the stomach of someone who might be your half-sibling is never easy.

watching the boy you might have loved - once - bleed out on the floor of olympus, it's never easy. but looking at percy, kneeling in front of the gods, looking almost dead (and having forgotten his birthday) she knows that if he accepts the offer, she might just die -

he doesn't. in case you were wondering.

xx

it's a happily ever after. sort of. because then he goes missing and all of a sudden it's like she's twelve years old, waiting waiting waiting.

xx

is there a road i could follow to bring you back home?

i'm not really too sure how i feel about it...PJO is my new obsession. i'm not gonna lie. and if you've been reading me for a while, you know i write angst. so, my love of PJO wasn't complete until i posted a angsty story to my FF account. SO. Ya know. Read. Review. Whatever tickles yo peach
Elyse