` He's faced down monsters with nothing but a metal rod in his hands, yet somehow stealing from a gas station mini-mart sets him on edge. Only the bare essentials, he reminds himself – bottled water, cup noodles, three bags of trail mix, four boxes of band-aids, and a Snickers bar for Annabeth. Annabeth. He hates that she has to have a role in this, distracting the shopkeeper with teary gray eyes and a pleading request to find her lost stuffed bear.
Face burning, he stuffs the stolen goods deeper into his backpack and makes a beeline for the exit. He sees Annabeth out of the corner of his eye, sniffling and wiping at her eyes while the shopkeeper asks her where her parents are.
Thalia's waiting for him just across the street, pacing back and forth next to a traffic light. When she sees him and waves, he tries to forget the tug of guilt in his stomach and holds up his backpack. "Success!" he calls, shaking it so she can see.
"Did you get the kind I like?" Thalia asks, snatching the backpack from him and leafing through it. He grins – despite his nervousness, he'd remembered to get her the trail mix without any raisins. Thalia hates the taste of raisins. Luke doesn't remember exactly when he learned this fact, but he did at some point. She pulls out a bag and checks its contents. "Oh, score!"
Before he can reply, Annabeth's darting towards them, taking her place by his side. She smiles widely and asks, "Did I do good, Luke?"
"You did great, kiddo," he says, ruffling her hair. She beams up at him. Looking down at her big gray eyes, the feeling returns in full force. He wants to yell at himself to stop being an idiot. They've done nothing wrong, only taken what they needed, but… still. He hadn't wanted Annabeth to get involved. He'd wanted Thalia to come with him, but they both knew that would've looked too suspicious. A girl like Thalia didn't just look like trouble – she radiated it.
Later, when they've holed up in a quiet corner of a public park, eating trail mix and drinking water while the sun sets, Thalia waits for Annabeth to fall asleep before she speaks up.
"Look, I know what you've been thinking, Luke."
He grunts. "You do not."
Thalia's not smiling, but her eyes are light. "You're too easy to read, you know that?" She inches closer to him, and her expression shifts into something more serious as she turns away from him. "I don't like it either. But we made this decision when we brought her in, Luke. You can't teach a seven-year-old the best way to cut off a head and then try to keep her out of everything else we have to do."
For a moment, he wants to object, but it's Thalia, and there's no point in trying. He sighs. "I know. I just… don't want her to get hurt, is all."
She keeps her gaze fixed in the distance. "She won't. But we can't baby her either."
He thinks about her words, swallows them down, lets them crystallize in the pit of his stomach. It's harder than it should be. All he wants is to protect his family, but sometimes… maybe that means stepping back. It's an uneasy thought, and it leaves a bad taste in his mouth, but he doesn't try to push it away.
"You're right."
"I usually am. Now, I'll take first watch. You get some sleep."
For the first time in a long time, he sleeps till dawn, and Thalia doesn't wake him.
