Hello! I apologize to everyone who wanted more chapters, but I thought that now would be a really good time to end this story. If anyone doesn't think this is a good ending, I'd love suggestions. Thanks to everyone who reviewed!
Disclaimer: I don't own Percy Jackson and the Olympians.
/./././
"The rain is just a part of you/A phenomenon of nature sixteen billion years in the making" –Chris Koza
"Listen up—there's no war that will end all wars." –Haruki Murakami
/./././
It starts off as a dream. Not when they met, because that was the least important thing. They're camping out in an alley behind a restaurant, laying sleeping bags against the cold floor.
Thalia's cheeks are bright pink, illuminating her freckles, and her spiky hair looks more frizzy stuffed into a wool cap. Her movements are thick and slow when she turns.
Luke is about thirteen, though he's hit a growth spurt recently and could pass for fifteen. It's simultaneously hard and easy to believe that he was on the run for three years already before she met him. Her gaze catches him off guard. His face is trapped in a serious, pensive expression, one that he saves for himself, and his blue eyes have something in them that always frightens her. He smiles when he sees, and all the dark seems gone, though it is only hiding under the surface.
She turns away and when she turns back, something has changed.
His face is barely older while he stares and stares and stares, fear and doubt and grief spreading. Strange panic comes over her. The cold is lessening.
"Thalia!" Luke's voice says, though his mouth doesn't move and it seems recorded, from so far away. "You can't! Annabeth needs you, too. I need you." Still staring at her, the Luke she sees now holds his hand out.
She can't think of anything to do but take it.
When she looks back up at him he has changed again. He's so much older.
Just a second ago she was holding his hand, but now hers floats right through. He's become gray and insubstantial.
"A real Greek tragedy," his voice says, though she's having trouble connecting it to his mouth. "It was always fate."
She shakes her head. She doesn't believe in fate. She believes in love and power and sarcasm and action, and so much more. But her voice won't work.
For him, it was fate, and he would have done anything to preserve it that way. She would have fought against fate to the very end. But it never would have worked.
The ghost that stopped haunting her briefly becomes less and less human. Even at the very end, he still has the ability to move on.
Everything is so gray.
Now she's here, unsure if it was a vision or a message or just the truth. Artemis sits regally in her tent. The Hunters bring down wild turkeys for dinner, blessing them after the final blow. Thalia stands motionless. Suddenly she isn't confused at all.
/./././
After leaving camp Thalia fights like she's never fought before. She brings down monster after monster, viciously yet cleanly, relentless in tracking and ruthless in slaying. At first it's amazing. But slowly, the fresh glory begins to fade until all she feels is one invigorating moment.
That's when she leaves.
/./././
The thing is, it all happened so fast. One minute Thalia had finally convinced herself that Luke was a traitor, and the next he was suddenly a hero, and in all the chaos she'd been left behind, hadn't known what had happened.
Watching everything swirl around her, she knew that she could never escape.
It isn't this easy, you know.
This is the point where that all changes. This is the point where Thalia stops following all the signals laid out for her and starts making her own fate, because she can. It's not about running anymore.
I'm sorry it had to happen this way.
She still sees traces of him everywhere, in the gestures and half-smiles, even in the produce section. She still loves him.
I'm sorry. It had to happen this way.
She has no regrets.
/./././
"Everything ends, and everything matters…
(Ron Currie, Jr.)
..Are you really so sure that a floor can't also be a ceiling?"
(M.C. Escher)