So this popped into the middle of another story I was working on and got to be so long that I had to cut it out of that story and give it one of its own. I may or may not have burst into tears when The Long and Winding Road by The Beatles started playing, followed by Two of Us. I learned the hard way that Let it Be is not the right album to have playing while writing something like this. Because nothing gets me going like a song about the greatest friendship in history that completely fell apart and was cut off before they could fully repair it.

Rated for language. Thalia likes to drop the F-bomb.

Disclaimer: Yeah, no.

Hawaii

By AbsolutAnda

Thalia liked to think of herself as a strong person, and not many people would disagree with that. She was widely regarded as one of the toughest demigods of the twenty-first century, and someone you just generally didn't dick around with. Hell, anyone else in her position—having been through everything she had in her life—would have given in, curled up into a corner, and cried until some passing stranger took pity on them and had them committed to a mental hospital. Or, that's what Thalia liked to think. Sure, maybe it was a little arrogant, but everyone has their way of coping with their traumas and neuroses in life. Percy swam until he was so tired he couldn't see straight, Thalia belittled people in her mind until she reached the point where she felt so superior that she could convince herself to get up in the morning and face another day. Tomayto, tomahto.

But every once in a while, even belittling people didn't make her feel any better, and she was reduced to a angst-ridden lump on the nearest beach, her arms wrapped so tightly around herself that it was almost painful, trying to suppress the sobs that threatened to break free.

Now was one of those once-in-a-whiles.

Everything was catching up with her, and she couldn't do much to keep it in anymore. There was nothing she would rather do than curl up on the beach and bawl until she couldn't cry anymore. Yeah, that would feel pretty good right about now. One giant cry-fest to get it all out of her system; Annabeth, Luke, everyone she had lost, and everything she would never get to experience because of the Hunters. She would live forever, but she would never again know love; she would never kiss anyone again.

She hadn't been counting on having a family, having kids, but she wouldn't have protested if the opportunity popped up. Now, it wasn't even an option. Nothing makes you want something more than finding out you can't possibly have it. But family or no, she and Luke had had a plan. They were going to live in a small house in Hawaii—they had decided years ago that Hawaii was the least likely place to have monsters, aside from Antarctica—and have as little contact possible with any major populated cities. After years of living on the streets of larger cities and constantly on the run through horrible winters that chilled you to your very core, Hawaii sounded like paradise. Neither one of them had been there, or really knew all that much about it, but Luke had an old postcard ad for a dream vacation, and that was all they needed to set them off.

Just remember, we'll be in Hawaii in no time.

He would repeat that promise over and over again, every time they found themselves cold and without shelter, huddled together in an alleyway or squatting in an abandoned house that threatened to collapse around them. They didn't believe in much while on the road, but they believed in that. They believed in Hawaii and the promises it held; promises of a better life, where parents didn't abandon you, or let you down; where strangers didn't spit at you, or make snide comments when you looked like you had been dragged under a truck down I-80; where you didn't have to beg for food or enough money to get a decent meal. Hawaii was everything their life wasn't, and everything it was going to be.

The first time he said it, she had scoffed, shoving him away for being a corny bastard. Who actually said that shit, really? But he stuck with it, and late at night, freezing in a back room of an empty building, wrapped in each other's arms for warmth, it started to sound pretty good. It became a joke, nothing serious, just a phrase to tell one another not to give up, that this wasn't the end, and things wouldget better. They had to get better, because there was no fucking way that this was it. But then Luke had started to believe in it so fully, so completely, that Thalia was sucked in by the dream, and she was lost in it. It had been her ultimate goal, and now, with Luke gone and her trapped in the Hunters, there was no way it could become a reality. The dream she had invested so much of herself in, was gone; and there was nothing she could do.

She was devastated, falling into a place where everything she had ever hoped for was out of her reach, and she didn't know how to get out of it.

Luke was gone and he was never coming back. The one constant in her life had been ripped away from her, and she was out of her depth and lost without him there to grab her hand and tell her that it was going to be okay, that Hawaii was on the horizon. She had fallen out of that pine tree into a world so different from the one she left; her country was at war, terrorists had attacked, cellphones, video chatting, iPods, earbuds, text messages, Facebook, Hannah Montana, Dancing with the Stars; everyone so plugged in and so disconnected at the same time. It was a jaded, dark world of war and terror, and Luke had left her to face it alone; the one thing he promised to never do. She couldn't handle this, it was too much.

Annabeth tried to help the transition, but they both knew it wasn't working. She was a completely different person from the small child that Thalia remembered, and it was impossible for them to pick up where they left off. It was no longer an older/younger sister dynamic, and Thalia couldn't get a handle on it. She couldn't get a handle on anything, it seemed. Everything had changed so much in six short years. This new world was a high-speed train moving far too fast for her to climb back onto, and she didn't have Luke to reach out and give her a hand. She was grasping at thin air and getting nowhere, and no one could see that she was slipping behind. No one wanted to see that Thalia—the hardass, strong, confident, punk who didn't take crap from anyone—was lost and confused, and didn't know how to get back home.

Home. Luke was home. Luke was gone. Home was gone. She was lost, without a home, and she didn't know how to find a new one. Her plan had been with him, together in Hawaii, monster-free until they died of old age. That was what he promised, and that was what she clung to through all of the hard times on the streets. That was the promise he whispered to her when she couldn't stop crying from the pain of the latest monster attack. That was the promise he whispered to her as she lay dying outside the barrier of Camp Half Blood. That was the last thing Luke, her Luke, said to her.

Just remember, we'll be in Hawaii in no time.

But they weren't; he was gone, and Thalia was far too busy to sit and daydream about the what-ifs and what-could-have-beens. She had the Hunters to lead, a responsibility to uphold; a different promise that was grounded in reality, and not in a childish dream of a beach on a postcard. This promise was real and tangible, and would be the death of her if she didn't keep it. She had friends, true friends, who would fight and die for her; many already had. She didn't have time to reminisce about old times with the best friend she had ever had, and the budding romance that was cut off before it had really begun. She didn't have time to dream about an island in the Pacific where everything was supposed to be okay, where she and Luke would be there for each other.

She wiped her eyes and collected herself, glaring out across the river that ran past. This was nonsense, she told herself, she had a job to do. She was a big girl and she could take whatever life threw at her, with or without Luke's hand.

Maybe if she told herself that enough times, she would start to believe it; like she had believed him.

Hawaii.

Fucking liar.

Well, there you have it. The angstiest story I have ever written. Tell me what you thought, I'm a little out of my depth.

Anda