Author's Note: Well, this is my first foray into the world of Percy Jackson fanfiction. Hello, everyone! Basically, on request of CrayolaMarkers, I bring fic! Please read and review!
Disclaimer: I do not own Percy Jackson and the Olympians in any way.
Don't Look Back
Katako-Chan
After Artemis asks Thalia to be her new lieutenant, there is silence. It is brief: Percy is shocked (and a little relieved), Annabeth is encouraging, and Thalia is floored. But it persists, invading the spaces between people.
She knows right away what she should—will—answer. It's on the tip of her tongue, swirling around and settling in a way that reminds her vaguely of ambrosia, except a little greener, a little more serene. Annabeth squeezes her hand, and she feels ready.
Thalia draws in a breath to answer. But in that moment, she feels like time slows (not Kronos, thank the gods) and warps and rushes her backward and forward and sideways. She's not on Olympus anymore, but she is.
She's running; running with Luke and Annabeth, so long ago. Annabeth is so small, and in the back of her mind she thinks it's wrong, but then remembers that this is the past. Of course Annabeth is small. Stupid Thalia.
Then it hits her that they're running with Luke (and she curses the sudden departure of her ADHD-battle-senses). Luke. The traitor. The one that isn't making her heart wrench right now for a time when things were right. Well, maybe a little. Or a lot.
Oh, no, but now he's nothing like the Luke from then anymore. On Mount Tam, his beautiful eyes had been dark, cloudy, full of bitter brewing anger that swills up and around in the cauldron of his irises, waiting to strike. He wasn't twelve-year-old Luke running frantically across the country to the haven of Camp Half-Blood. He wasn't the cheerful Hermes counselor she remembered from her pine tree.
No. Kronos had twisted him: the same, but different. He had the same sandy hair, and his eyes were still blue, but it was like one of Kronos' hideous lackeys had dunked him in a pot of Evil Villian Soup, or something. Except worse.
She'd wanted to scream at him, skewer his sorry little face, and kick his butt all the way back to camp. Oh, and she'd been about to, too. The anger had reddened her vision, made Luke grow madder, more evil. She remembers shaking it out of the way and looking.
And he'd been pale. So pale. Weak and shaking and broken. Not the same friendly boy she remembered since she'd seen him last. He'd looked shattered.
Thalia had expected change, and she saw some of her expectations in him. The sneering. Cold looks. But they'd come from a body so torn up and beaten. So...fragile.
And while part of her brain was still screaming for blood, she'd wanted nothing more than to take him into his arms and hide him from the rest of the world, take both his pale, clammy hands in hers and tell him, with certainty, that it would be okay.
But she knew it wasn't true. It wasn't that simple; life wasn't that simple. So she had hurt him (and herself), and hurt him bad, and hadn't looked back. And that's what she was going to do now.
So she tumbled back onto Olympus, except not really, because she was already there. She was still drawing a breath, a little voice in the back of her head pointed out, so she inhaled completely.
"I will."