Written for the FanFiction ImagiNation forum Challenge E
Thalia would have cared.
These four words pounded in Luke Castellan's mind, threatening to break him, cause him to show cowardice. Ever they whispered, behind everything else, urging him to stop in that small little voice you can't ever seem to ignore…
As he turned from the gods, the first thing that came into his mind–
Thalia would have cared.
As he raised Kronos from the dead, the thought that presided over all else–
Thalia would have cared.
Her name was the infinite sky, spiraling up into the clouds, a place he'd once known.
But now he knew only the depths of the earth.
And so each and every time, he pushed her out of the way. Each and every time, he forgot, ignored, pretended.
"He's not Luke anymore," Thalia said, with a cold voice like the steely winter gaze in her eyes. "Not the Luke that I knew."
And Annabeth could only agree. But if she had looked a little harder, peered a little closer, she might've noticed Thalia hiding something. Buried deep and ever discreet, it burned faintly but it still thrived. Hope.
(And maybe, just maybe, a trace of something else.)
She concealed it every day, the sharp, cold icicle she felt in her heart, anger and disappointment and betrayal.
(And maybe, just maybe, the breaking.)
She joined the Hunters of Artemis, unable to bear it anymore, wanting an escape, and thus abandoning all hope of him ever returning.
(And maybe, just maybe, that wasn't true.)
He couldn't continue like this forever. Even the strongest snap like a twig sometimes. And one piercing blue gaze, so filled with ice and bitterness, was the blow that cleaved Luke Castellan.
She was a Hunter now, and yet she still had the same effect on him. He still hoped and wished, but she was gone now. Gone like the feather he'd failed to catch in time.
When he died, she still felt something stir. She was Thalia Grace, lieutenant of Artemis. But she never truly became a Hunter until Luke died. When her last dying embers of hope were snuffed out, only then did she fully embrace her choice. And she was glad. Because her heart would have been broken had she not.
Time is layered. Sometimes lives entwine perfectly, the right streams connecting and raveling around each other.
But they rarely end so perfectly. Many are cut short. Some time streams meet only once, some never at all.
And then there are the streams that meet in multiple points, that ravel and unravel, but always at the wrong times. And those are the saddest of all.
When she fell, so began his downfall too. When she rose, he was already so far gone, it was nearly impossible to pull back. And later, after she left, he did the impossible because of her.
Luke never knew that Thalia became a Hunter because of him. Thalia never knew Luke had done it for her.
Millennia later, a blond haired boy will come up to a raven haired girl and promise to protect her. Later, he will whisper in her ear that he will always love her. But the first was a promise, and promises are always broken. And even if the second was truth, would it matter if the first was not kept?