(A/N: you actually have to look up "A Million Years Ago" because content guidelines ban song lyrics. whoops!)
Thalia said yes to the hunters because she didn't want to be the child of the great prophecy. Being a day younger than sixteen for all eternity seemed like a pretty good escape. She never thought she'd still be here after all this time.
I should have known, she mutters at the first funeral. It's Leo's. What did I expect? I'm immortal, and they're not, she says to Artemis in the forest. Funny. I always thought I'd go first. She adds a picture of Leo to her scrapbook and moves on.
The next one to go is Jason. Somehow, a disgruntled former Kronos soldier got into camp, and he was gone. Annabeth, Piper, and all their children are in tears. Thalia stares numbly at his shroud. If I hadn't been selfish and become a huntress, none of this would have happened. Chiron gives her two little vials of Jason's ashes. She can't stop the tears from flowing down her face.
Thalia stares into the lake at Camp. Nico's gone too. Some rowdy Titan pushed him into the Lethe. Hades had mercy on him and killed him. All my fault. Everything's my fault. I told Nico to start mapping the underworld. I hate myself. She runs her hand across the water's surface, scattering her reflection. Camp Half Blood is starting to feel empty and cold.
Zoë is shining brightly in the night sky at the next funeral, twenty years after the last. Percy holds a small laurel sapling in his wrinkled hands and Annabeth has a small juniper sapling in hers. A forest fire took Grover and Juniper. Grover always wanted to be a laurel, she says, laughing bitterly. Annabeth sobs, and their kids cry too. Thalia doesn't cry, not anymore. She's used to the death. Everyone she cares about will die someday soon. The sky covers with clouds and the only thing she can do is watch helplessly as Percy plants Grover right in front of her old tree, right where he loved to sit and play his pipes.
Ten years later, she comes back. Her nieces and nephews are all grown now, and their parents, her friends, hobble around on weak knees and clutch their walkers and canes as if they're lifelines. They sit in front of Grover, talking, laughing. Percy's grey hair shines in the sun and Annabeth's dulled down blonde hair sits limp and lifeless around her shoulders. Piper's smile lines are starting to fade. She hasn't smiled in the nearly forty years since Jason died. There's a thud. A scream. Piper slumps against Grover's laurel, her eyes lifeless. Annabeth screams. Thalia looks away. She knew it would come soon. Percy and Annabeth are nearly eighty. She stays to watch Piper's shroud burn at last, then she disappears into the moonlight once again.
Thalia sits alone by her mother's crumbling gravestone. It's been nearly a hundred years since her mother died. Percy and Annabeth are bedridden until they die. The hunters are looking for a place to set up camp for the night. Thalia pulls a vial of her brother's ashes out of her pocket and lays it on the grass. For you mom. As she turns towards Artemis, she swears she can hear her friends whispering their thanks from Elysium. In her bag sits her scrapbook. She tries to remember the days with them, like Nico's twenty first birthday party. It seems so long ago. Their voices and faces blur in her mind.
Thalia walks the streets of LA alone. The air is so smoggy that she needs to wear an oxygen mask all the time. People stare. They are so used to this terrible pollution that they can just breathe it in without a care in the world. Man, I can't wait to bring Grover here! He'd have a fit! She remembers Grover is gone. Everyone is gone. Percy and Annabeth died side by side months ago. Or was it years? The years all blur together now. It's 2357. They've been gone for nearly 250 years. Thalia holds back the tears, just as she has for the past three hundred years.
She sees her mother's old home being torn down to make room for more skyscrapers. There is nothing left for her. The only thing left from her own time is Camp Half Blood. Chiron is all she has left.
Thalia didn't expect immortality to come with so much pain. Her joints creak with every step up the hill to her precious tree. She crosses the border and finds herself hoping, wishing for someone she knows to greet her, but nobody comes. She is alone. If I hadn't become a hunter, I'd have died with my friends. She sees a new boy in the Zeus cabin. They can't replace Jason. Thalia pities this poor boy. He dies two weeks later, going out of camp to visit his mother. Thalia doesn't care.
Thalia always thought she'd die at a young age, not suffer into her nine hundreds miserable and alone. She walks into Olympus with her team. It's the first time she's seen it since, well, she's forgotten again. Her memory's going now. First the voices go, then their names, then the faces. Did Percy have green eyes? Did Annabeth have black hair? Or did their kids? I don't know.
The sky everywhere is covered in smog. People don't believe there even is a sky anymore. Her father is weakening every day. She missed her milestones. In her now nearly one thousand years on earth, she's never once voted, or driven, or drank, or done anything besides fight and run. The world feels so cold and empty. She can't remember her friends. Their faces, their voices, anything. It's as if they never existed. The only face she can remember is one with blue eyes, blond hair, and a long scar across his face. She doesn't know who's face she sees, but it's not her brother's. Did I even have a brother?
Thalia sits on the run down dock, staring out into what used to be the Long Island Sound. The once brilliant blue water is a murky brown and the forest is nearly gone. Tears slide off of her cheeks and down into the lake. Camp doesn't feel like home anymore. Thalia doesn't even know what home is.
The border of the camp falls when Thalia is two thousand six hundred and fifty four years old. The hunters run around trying to help, but it's no use. The last campers fall. Chiron disappears. Thalia sobs and watches the last place she has left fall apart.
The next few hundred years are rough. Her father is losing everything. Her joints creak and there are days Thalia is so ill that she can't move. It's on one of those days when a Hyperborean steps on Thalia's tent. Everything goes dark.
Thalia opens her eyes and her friends and family crowd around her. I remember now. A boy with blonde hair, blue eyes, and a wicked scar takes her hand. Nico runs around, taking messages from wherever she is to his and Annabeth smile and welcome her to Elysium. Jason sits by her fireplace, excitedly talking to Piper, Leo, and two people she doesn't recognize. I'm finally home. For the first time in three millennia, Thalia Grace has found her home.