-Want to know a secret? Promise not to tell?

make a wish into the wishing well,

thats all you have to do,

and if you hear it echoing,

your wish will soon come true-

Snow White

Luke Castellan was alive. Very much alive in fact, but he wasn't too sure about that at the moment. He opened his crystal blue eyes experimentally, closed them, and opened them again, everything was so bright, the dullest of colors were suddenly brilliant to his unused eyes. He raised one long fingered hand, holding it in front of his face so he could scrutinize it. It looked solid, felt solid, he made a fist, cracking his knuckles, yep, definitely solid.

He grinned to the empty room, before sitting up slowly, wincing at the cracks in his back and arms as he stretched. He took a deep breath before he got to his feet unsteadily. He walked around the room a few times, stretching and popping joints until he felt renewed. He ran a hand over his face tiredly, before sitting back down on the bed, torn.

As good as he felt in his new body, he still couldn't work up the courage to leave the room. Outside of this room were people who hated him, who wanted to kill him, who's loved ones he had probably killed in return. He winced at the thought, he had killed innocent people. He hadn't exactly had a choice, but their blood was still on his hands, still eating at his conscience. Annabeth was out there too.

His little girl, the one who he had had to watch hold up the sky at his hand, the one who he had sworn to protect with his life, the one who had been a daughter, a sister, and a friend to him. He knew she didn't hate him, and that he was forgiven, but he had seen the gray streak in her hair, and he knew it was his fault. As much as he looked down upon the son of the sea god, he was grateful that Percy had been there to pick up the pieces of the girl he had broken.

Then there was the other girl. The sarcastic, obnoxious, reckless, spikey haired, beautiful other girl. The one he would (and did) go through hell for. The one he had had to break to save. But unlike Annabeth, the other girl knew how to put herself back together again without any help, having done it before. He closed his eyes tightly, breathing in deeply, yanking them open again as her angry face haunted behind his eyelids. He had to go see her, if only to make sure she was unharmed, intact, his.

He gathered together his courage, but it still wasn't enough, what if he just ended up hurting her again? Who did he think he was, barging back into her life like this? He thought back to their battle on Mount Tam. He remembered how she wore the same clothes she had when he had lost her, how her mouth set grimly as she took in his appearance, how her eyes had had that infinite amount of disappointment, but familiarity, as though she had been let down by so many people that it wasn't new to her, but he was the only one who had mattered. He remembered how she had yelled at him, how she had gritted her teeth, and how she would glance at Annabeth every so often just to make sure she was safe. Safe from him. He took in a ragged breath, and cleared his mind of these images of her. Remembering her this way wouldn't allow him to move forward. He pushed his memory back, to the times when he was the happiest.

Her grinning down at him as she beat him (again) in a spar, half smug and half affectionate. Her, as she tenderly wrapped Annabeth's young sleeping form in her leather jacket and her own blanket, and swiftly kissing her forehead when she thought he wasn't watching. Her, laughing breathlessly as they ran down the street trying to get rid of the cops that were chasing them, before grabbing his hand and hauling him down the nearest ally. Her, looking up at him through her ragged black fringe, giving him a coy smile and twining their fingers together. Her punching his arm, swearing and blushing when she found her bra in his backpack. The feel of her hand in his, the subtle looks and conversations they had using only their eyes. Her soft lips pressing hard against his, her lean body folding against him. Her teary electric blue eyes as she gave him her last kiss and ran towards her death. Her laughing, crying, talking, breathing, living, being.

Thalia.

He smiled without meaning to, rolling her name around his mind. He took his head out of his hands and took a deep cleansing breath. He could do this, he had to. He got up and made his way to the door carefully like he was walking on glass. Then the next thing he knew he was sprinting down the hill to her cabin, ignoring the shouts of the campers as he passed them. He skidded to a stop on her front step. Running a hand desperately through his hair he straightened his shirt and opened the door, he didn't bother knocking, she had never liked the polite gesture of asking permission to come in.

"Luke?"

It wasn't Thalia standing in the cabin, he noticed, with disappointment; it was Nico, son of Hades. The boy that Luke vaguely remembered was a short, thin, pale kid, with dark searching eyes and black hair almost the same color as Thalia's, reflecting a subtle shadowy light. That boy was gone. In his place stood the new Nico Di Angelo, not a short thin kid but a tall, muscled teenager. He was wearing all black, fitting, as the light around him seemed to bend away, as if it were repelled by him. His eyes still had their dark searching look, but the baby fat was gone from his face, leaving high, angled cheek bones and a thin face. The kid had turned out good, to say the least.

"What are you doing here?" Luke asked, a slight edge of suspicion to his words, "Wheres… where is she?"

"I don't know if I should tell you Castellan," Nico raised an eyebrow, hostility rolling off him, "planning your next murder?"

"Not hers," Luke retorted, giving the boy a pointed look.

Nico snarled, and stalked towards the door, Luke snagged one of his arms, wrenching him back around, "I need to talk to her, do you know where she is?"

"Get your hand off me, traitor. "

Luke let go with an impatient sigh, "You know as well as I do why I came back, why I'm even here. Please."

Nico scowled at him, dropping his eyes to the floor of the cabin as he mulled over what Luke had said.

"She's unconscious, "He started, and Luke's blood ran cold, and "we found her in here, on the floor, after we had a… meeting… in the big house. Her heart rate is slow; it would have to increase drastically for her to wake up, but we don't have any medical supplies that can do that safely."

"How?"

"Fairy dust." Nico answered sarcastically. Luke glared at him until he continued with a breath of exasperation, "Ben, probably. He crashed our meeting, and started being an ass and talking about how we shouldn't trust her."

"And?" something hard and sharp dropped into Luke's stomach at the mention of Ben. Images of Thalia, clutching his shirt sobbing, almost incoherent, rolled into his mind. His hands clenched, trembling with pent up anger, Ben's fault.

"He had this glass ball, some sort of compacted memory container, he said that it was full of Thalia's most important memories, like, when she got the most emotional or when she some big milestone moment. Then he threw it on the floor, and it shattered, and suddenly all of Thalia's memories got out and we all were forced to watch them. It was intense."

Luke staggered back; he grabbed the bedside table's edge to steady himself. He wondered vaguely what Thalia's most important memories were, if he was in any of them. Nico kept talking.

"We didn't know what to do after that, so we went looking for her, well, the campers did, the hunters stayed in the big house. Annabeth found her in here, lying on the floor," Nico said, "so, she ran to Chiron for help, and we got her to the medical room in the big house."

Luke pushed past the shadowy teen with a quick "thanks kid." He marched out, and jogged back up the hill. Wasn't it funny, that the whole time he was debating whether or not to go see her; she was lying in the room next to him? He rushed through the doors, and to the medical rooms. He pushed open a few doors before he found hers. He hesitantly rolled the doorknob and entered.

The room was pale pink, with cream colored sheets that matched the curtains. He knew the pale colors were supposed to calm him, or her, but he also knew that they weren't working. And that Thalia hated pink. Thalia.

She looked so small, inside the large hospital bed, and pale. He went to stand beside her, pushing her uneven bangs out of her closed eyes gently. She was fast asleep, her limbs tightly tucked around her body. There was a screen beside her bed with a wire that ran up to a clasped heart monitor on her wrist. The screen ran a single beat every few minutes, her heart rate.

Luke pulled up a chair; he sat down gingerly, clasping his hands and resting his chin on them. He almost laughed at her expression; she looked on edge, ready to leap into action even in her sleep. Her light freckles stood out at attention from the pale skin of her heart shaped face. Without thinking, Luke slowly moved so he was hovering over her slightly. The heart monitor picked up speed. Luke glanced at it in surprise; he moved closer, and the heart monitor picked up speed again. He grinned before moving so that his lips were only a few millimetres from hers. He was going to look back to see if this was working, but he found his gaze trapped on her mouth. Her lips were pink, and slightly parted, almost inviting him to kiss her. He didn't turn down the invitation.

Gently, so gently at first, before he felt her gasp against his mouth, and felt fingers twine into his hair, and her mouth begin to move desperately against his. She was alive, she was conscious, she was here, now with him. And she was kissing him.

Then, suddenly, she went tense, her mouth became ice, and the fingers that were tangled in his hair were suddenly yanking him away painfully. She pushed him off the bed harshly, before jumping up and shoving him up against the wall. He yelped as she electrocuted him through her palms which were driving hard against his chest. His wide eyes met her own, angry, shocked, scared, furious, terrified, elated, hateful, emotions flying inside them before they were cut off and her eyes were a flat angry blue.

"You complete asshole!" She screamed furiously, "What the hell was that?"

"I-"

"You have no godsdamn right to kiss me." she yelled, enunciating every syllable, which hurt almost as much as her cold shocks of electricity, "if you ever try that again, I, personally, will make sure that you will never be able to kiss anyone ever again!"

"You kissed me back!" he blurted, suddenly angry at her, he winced as her face shut down, no emotion was seeping through at all anymore, but he knew where to look. She was scared, he could tell by the slight almost unnoticeable arch of her eyebrows.

"I did not." She said flatly, threateningly, "that was me trying to get you the hell off me!"

Her voice shook in the second half of her sentence, and he noticed, "I had to get your heart rate up; it seemed to get your heart going when I was close to you."

His voice had been gentle but she looked as though he had slapped her. She staggered back, sitting back down on the hospital bed and pulling her knees up to her chest, "Why did you want to wake me up?"

"Same reason you woke me up."

"I doubt that."

He raised an eyebrow, "I remember when we were on that bus to Maine, you went into a rant about how stupid doubting was, for at least half an hour, do you remember that?"

"That doesn't matter anymore, things were different then."

"Things could be different now…"

She looked up at him, her face was stripped of all her pretend masks and guards, and she looked… fragile, as fragile as Thalia Grace can get, anyway. He realized then, that she must have been lived behind her masks for at least two years now, never letting anyone in because of him.

He had never hated himself more.

He reached out to her, but she turned away, setting her feet back down on the ground as she picked up her silver hunters circlet from the bedside table, twirling it around in her hands, she spoke.

"Just leave, Luke."

And because he couldn't possibly hurt her again, he did.

YOu lucky people!

three chapters in one day!

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