Thalia sees her brother as a Hunter.
They stop in New York, or in what used to be New York, after taking down a pack of hellhounds and rescuing a pair of demigods. The Hunt is unusually quiet and solemn as they gather around the two demigods.
Thalia can tell they are siblings from the way their cheekbones curve and the hard line of their jaws. Her eyes trace the features she knows so very well, because—
She sees them in the mirror every morning.
They are both girls, and Thalia mentally starts to laugh as she imagines Jason's reaction to him being a girl in his next life. 'OMGs, you mean that I'm a girl? Like one of those impossibly hard to understand creatures that always cry whenever they see the Notebook?'
Then she stops her ADHD from getting away with her thoughts, because Jason's lower lip is starting to tremble, and he's—or rather, she's—only ten. So, so young, to be already pulled into the world of the Greek gods.
"What's your name?" She asks, bending down before Jason—her heart gives a painful lurch at seeing his—her—hollowed cheekbones. She hears Phoebe ask the other sibling a similar question, but her attention is focused on Jason.
Jason's cheeks flush. "I don't have one," she mutters softly under her breath, as though Thalia will look down upon her for not having a name.
To her credit, Thalia only pauses a second, too overwhelmed by anger for what type of lazy, rotten, mortal parent did not give their child a name?
"Your parents never gave you one?" She asks, and keeps her voice soft, for she doesn't know what reaction Jason will have to the mention of his parents.
Jason's fists clench a little. "They never bothered," he—she—says in that hard tone made of steel.
Thalia fights the urge to reach out and unclench that fist. "I'm sorry," she says, and she truly is, for everything that Jason—her little brother!—had been through.
Jason snorts. "Don't say that. It makes me feel as if—" His tone just rubs Thalia the wrong way, and she knows this isn't her brother.
Thalia cuts him—her, she needs to stop messing up the pronouns—off. "It makes you feel like they don't mean it, like they're just saying it for the sake of saying it."
Jason looks up with wide eyes. "I know the feeling. So don't act as if you deserve pity and all, because everyone here as been through the same thing you probably have, in one way or another." Thalia's voice rises in pitch at the end of the sentence, because this isn't her brother, this hard, tough girl/boy whose already acting like she's/he's on top of the world and deserves special treatment just because she/he has been treated badly before.
Jason's eyes are wide, probably because everyone's been walking on eggshells around him/her because it's been so, so long since they've last had a demigod, much less two, and no one wanted to let this chance slip through their fingertips. "Okay," he/she nods, and Thalia smiles. This is the brother she knows now.
"I'll call you Jay. Now, I bet you're hungry. Let's get breakfast." She rises to her feet and pulls the newly named Jay to hers.
Thalia takes Jay under her wing after that—the rest of The Hunt starts when they hear the news, because Thalia's not the type of person to take care of another without being assigned or anything.
Artemis just gives her a sad smile when she sees Jay and mouths, "I'm sorry," at Thalia during breakfast. She pretends she doesn't see it, because goddamned it, it hurts, it hurts like Hades when she sees her brother—her brother!—smile and wave to her every morning without any idea that she's her sister. Just thinking that Thalia's kind and all. Without remembering all that they've been through together.
Sometimes she starts to crack an inside joke that only she and Jason will get because it's pathetically easy to just forget that Jay's not Jason, only to have Jay give her that blank look that tears open her heart.
But she lives with it. She pretends everything's all right, even though she knows Jay or herself will probably die one day and she won't ever get to see him again—for their lives to be entwined in one life is close enough, much less two, and she probably won't ever get to see those high cheekbones and the elegant curve to his eyebrows again, but who cares, at least she has him for the time she does, as short as it may be. And that's enough for her, at least.
So yeah, this is short. I wanted to make it longer, but I'm working on another story in my other account that I'm planning to reach 5000+ words with, and you know I usually write around 1500+, so this is more of an update to reassure you I'm not dead than anything else. Next one will definitely be longer. Preview:
She sees Leo in a mental hospital.
As usual, REVIEW! (I'm evil.)
