Thank you so much to BlackRaven for adding me and this story to your favourites! And of course thank you to SoManyThingsSoLittleSpace for reviewing! Severe writer's block is no excuse, but I hope you'll forgive me (in a lovely review, if possible?)

Now on with the story.

"Screaming, crying, perfect storm / I can make all the tables turn" -Blank Space, Taylor Swift

:::

"Thank you for meeting me" are the first words out of Thalia's mouth, and all Annabeth can think is that they signify danger, disaster having unfolded, aftermath and fallout and triage. It's the kind of thing people say after deaths, injuries. After fights and arguments and uncertain hovering between chaos and peace.

"Of course," Annabeth replies. She looks around the lavish suite, drops her laptop bag onto an armchair, joins Thalia on the edge of the bed. "Mind telling me why I was summoned?"

She plays at playful, pointlessly tries to lighten the mood when she knows it's heading towards trainwreck, when she knows there will be destruction to follow.

"Luke is back," Thalia answers. "He's back, and do you know who did work for him?"

For once, she doesn't. For once, her encyclopedic mind has failed her, finding it impossible to put even a guess of a name to reply. "No, I don't."

"Hades." Fists clench, Thalia's black-painted nails glossy against the skin of her palms. Annabeth's own fingers dig into her hands too, and she finds herself looking for a fight to pick, as she breathes in, like this bland hotel room smell is the odor of stale beer and sweat, like she and Thalia still wear combat boots more often than heels, like this is a bar with someone ripe for the beating-up.

"Hades? As in, your uncle, the one who does all the enforcing and threatening and coercing money out of your dad's business partners?" She feels her eyes widen.

"The very same." Thalia's smile is cutting, sardonic, looking for a target. "Oh, and my boyfriend is Hades' long-lost stepson, so, surprise! Technically I've committed incest."

"Do you have any other bombs to drop before we get to work on whatever it is I came here for?" She breathes shakily, unsettled.

""Lucky for us, no." Her friend uncurls her fingers from her palm, revealing raw, crescent-shaped indents. "Now help me start plotting."

:::

By the time it's very late into the night after seven shots of espresso between them, they finally have a plan.

Maybe it's the late hour, the caffeine affecting her already over wired brain, but she finds herself wondering how she got here.

How did she get here, from her awful, screwed up life, to an even more awful, overcomplicated life? She's making plans and plotting and scheming and right back in her father's trap; she's right back where she was when Luke was alive, but Luke isn't alive. Nico is.

Thalia wasn't supposed to meet Nico. She wasn't supposed to fall in love. She wasn't supposed to want to stay.

She was supposed to get in, get out, and be back to New York before anyone knew she'd left. But then again, her life was never as expected.

"Thalia?" Annabeth's voice makes her blink, the brief burst of darkness soothing to her tired eyes. She holds then shut. "Thalia, there's someone at the door."

"What?" The espresso shots are beginning to wear off, and fatigue seeps into her like warmth from a hot bath. "Um, hide the stuff!"

"Okay." The blonde complies, efficiently clearing off the espresso containers into the trash, stuffing the files and Annabeth's own laptop into her laptop bag and hiding Thalia's under the pillow.

Meanwhile, Thalia reluctantly answers the door, peering through the tiny warped disk of glass to find...

Nico. Everything is okay now, everything is a thousand times more complicated now, now that he's shown up, and she minds so much and she doesn't regret it at all.

She lets him in, introduces him to Annabeth and makes up a story about helping her friend with wedding planning in an insomnia-fuelled daze. She collapses on the same bed that she plotted against him in, and laughs as he pulls her close, kissing down her neck. She acts like all is right with the world and maybe for him it is but all she can think is that it's about to come crashing down, and she's the cause of it that.

She doesn't, for a single second, suspect him of being just as awful as she is.

:::

He offers her a smoke, and it's everything like it was when they first met, and everything better.

(and everything worse, whispers the guilt forming in her stomach)

The guilt presses at her, clawing its way into her throat, temporarily paralyzing her vocal cords. Thalia swallows. "Thanks," she says, playing along. "Trying to quit, though."

Nico gifts her a lazy grin to go with the cigarette, plays his part perfectly with the line "Aren't we all."

She inhales, takes a long, deep drag, feeling the rush of the drug filling her lungs, can imagine it unfurl like a flag, some invader landing on a foreign planet, claiming it as their own, and she watches him thinking that it might not be so bad. Then she imagines it, expanding like an explosion's mushroom cloud, and shudders.

They stand (not sit, she notes, and they aren't on the canal but her hotel room's balcony) as they watch drifts of smoke disappear into the equally pale sky, the overcast suiting her mood. Hinting at something ominous, but wavering; the little glimmer of hope, the silver lining, the maybe it's not going to be so bad after all showing up in the fact that the clouds are lighter than heavy storm clouds, lighter than the cumulonimbus.

(she should know better than to hope, by now)

For another chapter... 3 reviews.

Have a nice day! :D