Six years later…
Six years. It had been six years since I last woke up with Annabeth in my arms. Six years since the last time I felt her arms wrapped around me. Six years since I told her that I would never leave her and six years since the last I told her I loved her.
During those long years, I often replayed the events that transpired just before my…death? I'm not sure you would call it a death, per say. I was not dead. My soul did not belong to Hades. But gods knew that I felt dead. I wanted death. In my mind, I already was dead. I could not breathe as I once did, I could not run, I could not laugh, and I had no way to say the words that sat, for six years, just inside my lips. But I could remember. I spent so much of those six years just remembering.
My father had wanted to save me; he'd wanted to keep me alive and protect me. He didn't know that he was condemning me; that a life without her in my arms every night was not a life I would have ever wanted to live.
He had left me to a life of rigidity, stagnation, and cold. My warm arms would never again wrap around a slender waist and my lips would never form themselves around her name.
The only consolation for my pain was the peace I gained, knowing that I was helping to protect her - my Annabeth. I didn't even really care that it was the camp I was truly protecting, so long as my curse somehow kept her from harm…kept her happy and healthy and thriving.
Time was so different for me, then. Days seemed at once small eternities and passing whispers. Hours were not concepts easily grasped by something so long-living as a tree. I found it easier to mark the passing of time in other ways.
I marked it with memories, with milestones: Annabeth being claimed by Athena, Annabeth showing me the baseball cap her mother had given her for her birthday, Annabeth clinging to me, sobbing when Luke barely survived his quest, Annabeth telling me about a son of Poseidon (my cousin, I suppose?) who had shown up at camp, Annabeth telling me she was to leave on her first quest.
But the passing of time didn't only bring about these milestones. With each passing day, my angel was growing. Before I knew what had happened, my little Annabeth had become a young woman. She was 13 now. I had watched her grow from the small timid girl I'd met in a dark alley into a tall, blossoming young warrior. She was independent and she strong, but most of all she was beautiful. With long blonde hair and smart, piercing grey eyes, she was every bit the heart breaker I'd always known she would be.
And she was so smart, my Annabeth. Sometimes, I would peak over her shoulder when she would read in the shade beneath me. I could almost feel the smile wanting to form on my lips as I caught pictures of blue prints and architectural drafts. I would remember fondly how she had always wanted to help Luke and I expand the shelters we'd stayed in... always with new ideas and designs. I probably could have guessed then that she would grow to love architecture.
Her visits kept me strong and helped me find and re-find my will to live. I would wait, always, to see the soft glint of sun off of blond hair as she climbed the hill toward me. I would relish the moments she spent nested in my arms and I could almost imagine my stiff, rough branches softening and curling towards her, protecting her.
One day, though, everything changed. It was as though, suddenly, someone had set fire to every inch of me at once. I never saw it…him…coming. In the depths of the night, he came, a traitor. I felt my life seeping out of me.
I screamed for help, but no one heard. No one heard for days, and then a week. After all, trees can't talk, can they?
Of course, it was Annabeth who finally noticed that something was wrong. She had come to visit, but when she reached the top of the hill and saw me, standing there, I think she heard me scream. I think she felt my pain. By then, my leaves had yellowed, my bark had become a sickly shade of grey, and my wound...my wound burned and seeped and I was called out to her, begging to make it stop. Hoping she could hear.
I think she could.
The book dropped from her hands and she sprinted to me, pressing her hands flat against my bark, searching for the source of my pain. Finally, her fingers traced over a tiny yet gaping hole in my side. She gasped when my hold body shivered, shaking dead needles down around her. She pulled back her fingers, looking wide-eyed at my blood.
Help me, my angel. It hurts…
Faster than I'd ever seen her movie, she turned and ran down the hill, golden hair flowing behind her.
Not ten minutes later, she returned with Chiron and a few others in tow.
The centaur pressed his finger tips to the wound and and then brought it back to his lips. He though only a moment before his eyes and face fell in defeat.
He looked to my Annabeth, who was crying so hard now, "I'm sorry Annabeth. She has been poisoned…there is nothing I can do." Annabeth fell to the ground screaming in pain and I strained against the fibrous solidity of my body, aching to comfort her. Pine needles fell down all around the party of would-be rescuers. My bark creaked loudly as I tried to reach for her.
But the strain was too much. It tired me and I was already week. I eventually surrendered to the nature of my prison. Chiron looked up at me, as if he understood. How could he?
Chiron continued, speaking only to Annabeth, "I suspect she has less than a couple of weeks left before the tree, and Thalia along with it, dies entirely. Then….I fear that Camp will fall with her."
"NO!" My angel screamed, "There has to be something! Something we can do to save her! To save the camp!" She searched Chiron's eyes desperately, searching for some assurance that this was no definite. He only sighed and walked past her, pausing to put his hand on her shoulder as if to tell her to let go.
Then, the satyr Grover (for whom I had no great love) spoke, "Well, there are actually two things…"
She looked to him, beckoning him with her eyes to speak further. They turned to walk back to camp, talking of old legends and myths.
Annabeth, I thought, please save me…
Two weeks passed. Chiron said that it was a miracle that I had lasted this long, but he didn't know…
He didn't understand how much I had to fight for. He couldn't.
I had to stay alive. I had to live so that I could protect my angel. But it was so hard. Every night, I felt them pressing against me, testing my strength. Every night, holding the line became more difficult, more of a strain. But I knew that I had to hold onto life for as long as I could. For her.
It was an unseasonably cold day, I remember, when Annabeth came to me for the last time. She wrapped her arms around my middle, her warmth giving me strength if only for a little while, and she whispered to me, "I promise, Thalia. I will make everything okay. You always protected me, and now it's my turn. I love you, Thals."
I felt her warm lips against my hard, rough flesh and cried to myself as she ran off towards the beach, where I was sure Percy (that damned son of Poseidon) was waiting.
I worried over her. I had no idea where she was going and I had no idea if she would return. I would pray to the gods every night, begging for her to return safely to me. It was this hope and this hope alone that kept me clinging to my last dregs of life. I needed to see her again, safe and alive.
It had been over a month since that bastard son of Hermes had pierced my flesh, poisoning me and leaving me for dead. I was dying and I knew it. Every day, every night of strain against forces the pressed ever harder at my border, brought me closer to death.
I awoke one morning and, somehow, I knew that it would be my last day on this earth. I prayed harder than I have ever prayed before for her, my angel's, safe return. My needles were gone entirely, by then, and my bark looked sickly. My boarders had fallen almost entirely.
I felt my spirit fading, and I could see my eyes closing. I wasn't ready for death, but death was so ready to take me. I knew Hades had been waiting. He'd been waiting for years to collect me like a prize jewel - his brother's only living daughter. I'd fought. I'd fought all of it: death, Hades, hopelessness, for so long. Maybe, just this once, I would concede a battle. Maybe this time, defeat would be easier.
Then, just as I felt everything slipping from me…
I heard the faint whisper of my name. I knew that voice. I knew its owner. I searched my dimming mind for the name…
Annabeth.
My Annabeth.
Have you come back to me, my little angel?
"Thalia!" I heard again, this time a yell. "Please don't leave me, Thalia!"
Suddenly, I felt an embrace. It wasn't hers though. It was the embrace of something warm and shining. I felt a hot, sweet breeze sweep its way into my skin, bringing everything back to painfully sharp clarity. It was so…alive. I was so alive.
I embraced it back. I strained against my prison of a body, reaching my arms towards the burning, glorious life that was surrounding me now.
I felt almost as though I was being ripped from my skin as I clung to the force and let it drag me away from the dark, cold, and stagnant.
Then, black.
My eyes fluttered. Eyes? I saw flashes of light, of color.
I felt a cold breeze against my skin. SKIN?
Then…that voice. That voice that could only come from…
"A…Annabuh….Annabeth?" I struggled to say it. The word that had been on the tip of my tongue for the past six years.
I searched. My head turned. Finally, my eyes found what they had sought: those beautiful pools of grey, that golden hair, that smile. I brought my hand up, touching it to her cheek just to be able to feel that she was real, that I was real. I smiled tiredly at my angel, my Annabeth. My heart fluttered when she smiled right back at me.
"I'm right here," she whispered, "I'm here."
Her hand moved to cover mine and she leaned into my touch.
"I'm here, Thalia, and I'm not going anywhere."
"Anna…beth," my voice scratched, "My Annabeth. I told ….told you…always there. I prom….promised."
She smiled wider and pressed her lips to my forehead. It was this feeling that I relished as I slipped into the depths of sleep, safe in my angel's arms.
