Thank you to Guest, sparklehannah, Katlover98, Percabeth824, AnnaUnicorn, sickasfrick4578, and GamerV for reviewing! Your support means a lot to me. :')

Chapter edited June 2020.

The underlined dialogue is taken directly from the Titan's Curse, pages 173 and 201-202 of the Disney Hyperion 2008 edition. Enjoy!

Chapter 4: Thalia

Vibrant green eyes and hair as dark as hers were the first thing Thalia saw when she woke up after six years of being a pine tree. Flash forward five months to Thalia considering Percy a friend, but a dam annoying one. When pressured, Percy was serious and could connect the dots faster than Thalia expected, but when not about to die, Percy's nickname from Annabeth aptly suit him.

Thalia retrieved Aegis then stood next to Percy, and the two watched the boar struggling in the snowbank in front of them.

"You're afraid of heights," he stated.

"Don't be stupid."

"That explains why you freaked out on Apollo's bus. Why you didn't want to talk about it."

"If you tell anyone, I swear—" she threatened, turning to face him, her anger and shame visible on her face.

"No, no," Percy said. "That's cool. It's just… the daughter of Zeus, the Lord of the Sky, afraid of heights?"

Thalia's rage grew and she developed a plan on how she wanted to pummel the kelp head into the snow and fry that stupid half smirk off his face.

Percy recognized Thalia's expression and quickly said, "Woah—I don't think you'll want to do that. How about a trade while we wait for the others to find us?" Percy spread his palms in front of him. "I'll tell you my deepest, darkest secret if it makes you feel better because, quite frankly, I'm sick of being struck by lightning this week and you'll promise not to fry me. We'll be even." He looked evenly into Thalia's angry blue eyes and waited anxiously for her answer.

Thalia rolled her eyes in exasperation. "Yeah, right. I already know your secrets. You're only on this quest for Annabeth who you like as more than just a friend and I've seen the scars on your back that aren't from the monsters."

Percy paused for a moment in shock. His face turned a light shade of pink while a pained expression flashed over his features from the conflicting parts of that statement; obviously he didn't realize Thalia knew those things. When he opened his mouth next to argue, Thalia thought perhaps she bumped her head harder on the way down than she originally thought and impaired her hearing. "Well, I definitely didn't expect that but neither of those was my super-secret secret. And also I don't like Annabeth that way." He then smiled that troublemaker's smirk that Thalia knew Annabeth had a soft spot for but mostly it just made Thalia angry.

"Sorry, what did you just say?" Thalia asked him. She could blame her sudden hardness of hearing on the pine tree that got its needles stuck in her hair (which she was sure Percy would bring up later, calling it her long-lost cousin or something).

"I said, I didn't expect that but neither of those was my super-secret secret. And I don't like Annabeth in that way." He watched Thalia closely as she tried to figure out what she heard. It wasn't the words Percy said. No, those she understood just fine—it was the way the words were entering her brain. He spoke upon seeing the confusion on her face (his smirk got even wider) and Thalia's ears were still malfunctioning, apparently.

"You know I grew up in Manhattan. Did you really think that you didn't have a weird accent growing up in California? The West coast accent is just. So. Slow. And your vowels sound lazy, too."

At that last jab, Thalia's eyes grew large in understanding and she started laughing, the last dredges of residual fear receding. "I'm not the one with the accent, that's all you Kelp Head. The rest of America sounds like this," she gestured to herself.

Percy laughed too at their playful banter. "Come on, we should let the others know we're alive," he said, turning in the other direction. "And you can't tell anyone about this because I know your darkest secret now, too," he reminded her, wagging a finger at her.

Thalia sobered up, still upset that one of the rare times Percy was exceedingly wise he found out her greatest fear, but it was made better with her new knowledge of his accent. She didn't know Percy's full history after all. He probably had good reasons and unfortunate childhood experiences which forced him to hide it, even if fellow campers would have accepted this quirk of his with open arms.

Above the pair, Grover's voice echoed down the canyon, "Helloooooo?"

"Down here!" Percy shouted back, reverting to his covered voice. Thalia was both grateful and bummed. Grateful that she no longer had to have this emotional, embarrassing conversation and could now focus on the quest but bummed because when they weren't arguing, Thalia actually enjoyed Percy's company.

0~0~0

The desert spread out far and barren as the eye could see, and a river cut through it.

"There's a path. We could get to the river." Grover said, looking at a narrow ledge.

Percy looked towards the canyon. "That's a goat path."

"So?"

"The rest of us aren't goats."

"We can make it, I think."

Thalia stayed in the back of the group as they were debating their next move, and began turning pale at the thought of clinging to a goat path on the side of a steep cliff with a harsh river at the bottom.

"No, I, uh, think we should go farther upstream."

"But—"

"Come on, a walk won't hurt us." Percy looked over to her, and Thalia's shoulders relaxed as her face expressed her gratitude.

They walked about half a mile, found some canoes, and began preparing them for travel.

Thalia felt the need to truly thank Percy and approached him when they were getting the oars, letting Zoë and Grover push the canoes towards the river and organized their supplies inside.

"Thanks for back there."

"Don't mention it."

"Can you really…you know."

Percy thought about it and dropped his fake accent. "I think so. Usually I'm good with water." Thalia felt touched that Percy would feel comfortable enough to not hide his accent around her.

"Would you take Zoë? I think, ah, maybe you can talk to her." Thalia said.

"She's not going to like that." Thalia, and Grover too, had also noticed the obvious dislike Zoë possessed for Percy.

"Please? I don't know if I can stand being in the same boat with her. She's…she's starting to worry me." Zoë had been beating herself up for Bianca's death nonstop on the car ride when it was just the two of them. Thalia hoped that Percy could help ease her anguish and get her to focus on the quest, perhaps even getting Zoë's hatred towards Percy to fade enough for cooperation. After all, Thalia had been told the story of when Annabeth agreed to work with Percy when on their first quest. Thalia knew that if he could handle Annabeth, then he could handle this ancient, stubborn warrior also.

Percy finally nodded, and Thalia sighed in relief. "I owe you one."

"Two."

"One and a half," she compromised, smiling. Maybe, just maybe, she would consider Percy her second little brother in the future, and she suspected Percy felt the same way after he dropped his fake accent for the second time around her. After all, they certainly fought enough to make it to sibling status.

Yeah after that line break nothing else was really accent related, but I like that scene between Thalia and Percy and wanted to explore it a bit more.

I realized that Thalia's debts to Percy were talking about something else than I thought when originally planning the chapter, so it took a different turn than I expected but I'm happy with it. Let me know what you think! Should Percy have any other deep dark secrets? What do you think Thalia should have said there instead of the Annabeth/Gabe statement?

Who else should I do? Nico is up next, I will be expanding the birthday party scene at the end of the BotL. Then plans include the 7 and Reyna.

Review please! :)