Disclaimer: Nothing's changed since last time; hence, I own nothing from the Percy Jackson series, or anything from the Greek's wonderful mythology. I do, however, claim ownership to anything else.
Grammar/Spelling: As always, I did my best. If you catch something I missed, I'd really appreciate knowing.
Any idiot can face a crisis - it's day to day living that wears you out.
Anton Chekhov
The first thing Thalia registered when she woke, was that her head hurt. She didn't want to lift her eyelids: she knew the light would only add to the dull pain. Then, it all started coming back to her.
Licking her lips hesitantly, Thalia found that she could still taste the drugged water's residue on her soft skin. A bitter, unsavory flavor that she should have noticed before. Before, when she'd been to busy being scared too keep her guard up.
And now you're trapped, Thalia reprimanded herself sternly, finally daring to open her eyes.
To her surprise, the room was sparsely furnished: a bed, desk, and bureau were the only pieces of sizable decor. One the stone walls, a single, woven banner hung above the fourposter bed; stitched on it, the symbol of Kronos: the sickle.
Thalia herself was kneeling on the cold, stone slabbed floor. When she tried to stand, she found, much to her annoyance, that her wrists were secured behind her back and her ankles likewise lashed together.
Frowning, she continued to struggle against her bonds with greater force. She was losing the feeling in her legs-which were tucked neatly under her-and while she hadn't had much choice in whether or not she married Luke, she wasn't going to remain his prisoner in this castle of darkness.
She was in the midst of attempting to bring her arms up and over her head far enough to inspect at closer range, when the door on the opposite wall swung open abruptly and her aforementioned husband came sauntering in.
"Don't wear yourself out: there's no way you can get those off," Luke smirked, dropping the folder of papers he'd been holding onto his waiting desk. "Even the strength of Hercules couldn't break those handcuffs."
"Watch me," Thalia snapped, trying fruitlessly to calm her racing heart as she felt it thud uncomfortably against her ribcage. He was close; just a few feet away. Her former best friend, current captor, and the only living being she had ever truly feared.
"I plan to," Luke assured, pulling his desk chair out from its place and closer to where she knelt.
Pain blossomed on Thalia's tongue as she bit back an unhelpful retort.
By the time dawn broke through the slit like window in Luke's room, Thalia had tried everything she could think of to get free. Every plan had failed. The handcuffs were, unfortunately, not breakable by any measure of strength she could muster. Also, by the same ill luck, she couldn't try to break whatever was keeping her ankles pressed together, because even the unpleasant feeling of pins-and-needles had disappeared from her lower legs and she had lost all power of movement over both them and her feet.
Having grown bored and hopeless of an immediate escape, Thalia turned her head to look at the blanket covered mass on the bed that was her feared companion. At the very least, she could stare at him until he woke up; a few hours ripped from the 'sleep block' in his schedule was, at present, the only real discomfort she could cause him.
One thing hadn't changed about the son of Hermes since their days on the run together: he was still the world's lightest sleeper.
"Cut it out," he mumbled, jolting awake only minutes after Thalia started her unwavering stare. "I'm sleeping."
"Not anymore," Thalia insisted stubbornly, counting the seconds before she was forced to blink.
"What'd you want?" Luke asked, still not awake fully enough to realized he was asking his prisoner a question about her personal comfort.
"Is there a bathroom in this dump?" Thalia snapped, successfully managing to keep a biting tone to her quavering voice.
Promptly, as if a switch had been turned on somewhere behind his eyes, Luke's face drained of all traces of exhaustion, and he smirked. "I have a system for that too, dear wife!"
Thalia flinched as 'wife' passed over his lips in a hiss: the reference to their new bond flared even more fear within her midsection, and her breathing was already tight. "A system for using the toilet? How clever of you."
A brief sense of satisfaction spread through the demigoddess' restrained body as Luke struggled to keep an expressionless face. Her own happiness vanished only seconds later, however, as one of the two doors swung open to revel a trembling girl held captive by a much larger Laistrygonians.
Luke snapped his fingers, the ties binding Thalia's ankles falling away. "The bathroom's through that door,"-he pointed to the one that had yet to be opened-"if you aren't out in two minutes, still unarmed, or if you try to escape at all, this girl dies. Slowly."
Floundering unsteadily as she struggled to stand, Thalia spared the quaking girl a glance. There was no way the poor thing could have been over ten, and the empty look in her brown eyes suggested that she had already given up.
There was a half-second, a moment's work of indecision, as Thalia contemplated letting the girl die. There was a good chance she would anyway, what with probably being starved and worked half to death; but then something moved within the deepest pits of the girl's iris, and her mouth moved.
"Please," the younger female whispered, the words sounding hoarse and hollow. "Don't let him kill me."
The last syllables were followed by a long, hacking cough. Thalia could practically feel the last drops of moister in the young girl's body rushing to her mouth to wet her pallet.
"I won't try anything," she raised her eyes to meet Luke's as she shuffled forward cautiously. "I promise."
She didn't even ask if she could have her handcuffs taken off: she was sure he'd already started his two minute count-down.
After a week, even Thalia's defiant, stubborn outlook was beginning to cave. Every morning, after Luke had left her alone to go and do whatever it was Luke did, she scanned the bedroom: searching everywhere for an escape route. After two days, when she'd grown bored of staring at stone walls and stone floors, desperately trying to glare her way out, she started something else. Rubbing her ankles against her wrists. Well, to be more precise: chafing the rope that bound her ankles against the handcuffs on her wrists.
This, however, proved to be a waste of time, when, on the fifth day of her imprisonment, after one of her trips of the bathroom, Luke retied her ankles with a new cord. All her hard work was tossed into a trash bin without a second glance. Although, if he didn't know about her half-formed plans of escape, it was probably to her benefit.
Food was delivered to her once a day: right after Luke returned. It became increasingly frustrating: that he never left a weak link. No one had even come into the room other than brown-eyed girl and the Laistrygonians who held her captive.
Not only was lack of new faces irritating, but the fact that none of the old faces Thalia knew ever popped up. There had been no Iris messages from Annabeth-who had, after Thalia joined the Hunt, been IMing her at least once a month-nor was Artemis looking for her; something Thalia was starting to find more then annoying.
What lie, she wondered, could Chiron have told the moon goddess that would keep her from worrying or contacting her lieutenant? Thalia's curiosity would start nipping the back of her mind every time she felt the cool, silver Huntress band press firmly against her forehead. After all, why would Artemis not have taken back the metal band; wouldn't she want a lieutenant that wasn't married?
Her musings were dropped short when he walked in. Today, his arms were full of what appeared to be scrap metal, and he was muttering incoherently about Hephaestus' children being to loyal to their father and direct relations for his personal liking.
"You're late," Thalia started, ignoring the pounding of her heart and the little voice in her head that warned her today wasn't a good day for mouthing-off. "Did Kronos keep you in the forge, picking up the unwanted castoffs?"
Immediately, when Luke turned sharply around to face her, Thalia realized she should have listened to the forewarning voice. The blond's eyes were full of the same, strong rage that had, so many years before, earned Annabeth a slap and after, when Thalia had stood up for her, a matching handprint. It was not a look to be taken lightly.
"This is not a good time, Grace," he snarled, dropping down to the floor to meet her gaze.
She should have stopped; assumed that, given she was the prisoner and he the captor, she should respect his anger and leave him be. She should have realized that if he had gone to the trouble of telling her it was a bad time, she should keep her sharp tongue silent until a better one arose.
If he had used "Thalia," or "girl," or even "Joseph," then maybe she would have found it somewhere in herself of forget momentarily about the handcuffs, and use common sense. But no, he had said "Grace," and no one used her last name. No one.
"It isn't a good day?" She repeated, scornfully. "What's not good about it: the chains, the moldy food, the cold floor, the-"
She had anticipated many of his possible reactions: they ranged from a slap to having her tongue cut out. There wasn't much else he could do, she'd reasoned, since, technically, she was a peace offering for Kronos; and the microscopic matter of the Lord of Time being in many pieces at the moment didn't change that she wasn't Luke's to dispose of.
Something she hadn't reasoned for was that he would jump up, pluck a glittering knife from thin air, and then cut rapid, deep lines across her back. Right through her now rather dirty wedding dress.
"Did you not hear me, Grace?" he whispered harshly, the knife making another pass on her back and drawing a sound even more unpleasant then the one that slipped, unbidden, from Thalia's mouth. "I said, this is not a good time!"
Thalia bent forward and gritted her teeth firmly against the searing pain as the blade did another sweep and more blood warmed the untouched skin still left. She would have fought back, but the feeling in her legs was once again gone, Luke was holding her head still by the roots of her short hair, and she was afraid to move her hands into the knife's range.
Still though, through the horrific pain and blurred thoughts, she managed a grim smile. "I heard you," she replied, fighting off the incoming darkness with the strength she had left. "I just didn't care."
AN (author's note): No, I did not just throw any bit of filler information I could think of into this; everything that seems pointless now will be explained later. Somewhere down the line in my still messy outline.
I do have one question, though: do you prefer when the author of a story replies to reviews individually, or writes their reply at the end for the next chapter so that anyone who has the same inquiry doesn't have to ask again?
