WHEN YOU FALL

Permanent

After all the medical jargon and complicated diagnoses had been said, that was all Bianca really understood. The thought of Nico shackled to a wheelchair for the rest of his life...

It did nothing less than crush her.

And it was in Bianca's desolate, forlorn face that Thalia saw herself. The two girls sat together, finding solace in the comforting silence. One wondered about to her family's future. The other remembered her scarring past.

-O-

Sometimes you wake up.

-O-

A nine year old girl paced fretfully around the two-room apartment that was her home. Her footsteps made dull thuds on the worn carpeted floor. She took a deep breath, one that smelled faintly of booze and last night's microwave dinner, and forced herself to think straight. Something was wrong. Something was horribly, horribly wrong.

The click and jingle of keys sounded noisily at the door and Thalia rushed to yank it open. She glared at the woman who stood crumpled and red-eyed at the doorway. "Where is he?"

"Gone," Thalia's mother replied, voice devoid of any emotion as she brushed passed her daughter.

"Gone?" the girl parroted softly. Raising her voice, she trailed into their kitchen, where she knew her mother would find refuge in a bottle, and forced the adult to look at her. "You can't just get rid of another human being."

Ms. Grace, because no one was ever close enough to call her by first name anymore, sat slumped at the dining table. "He's at the Wolf House."

Thalia felt her world come crashing down around her. "You gave him to them?"

The words 'social worker' were never spoken in the Grace household. It was an unspoken law that had been in place for as far as anyone could remember. Because even after all the hell they'd gone through, even when the booze ran dry and tensions rose, they were still a family, no matter how broken and tattered they were.

Thalia had put up with it. She'd forged through every lonely Father's day and lackluster Christmas because every birthday her mom would light a candle. Every birthday, she was reaffirmed that someone cared.

But this, this was unacceptable.

"Yes, I gave him to them," Ms. Grace replied, a slur creeping slowly into her voice. The bottle she'd gotten from the cupboard was already a third empty. "Maybe you haven't noticed, Thalia, but this isn't exactly a child friendly environment."

"Who cares if it's not child friendly. It's HOME," Thalia screeched. The reality of the situation was sinking in. She'd likely never see her baby brother ever again. "We're all we've got and you just give him away?"

"You only call this home because it's all you've ever known!" Ms. Grace yelled back, tears gathering and blurring her vision. "He can have a better life. He's only a baby. He won't even remember us."

Thalia listened to the excuses and seethed, knowing that her mother was trying to convince the both of them. "If giving your kids away was such a good idea, then why didn't you dump me off sooner?"

"Because," Ms. Grace hiccupped, taking another swig from her bottle. The alcohol loosening her control as the tears fell freely. "I need you, Thalia. Do you think it was easy for me to let Jason go? I can't raise another child, Thalia. I can barely get myself out of bed every morning. If it were up to me, I'd just end it all now. But I've got you and you've got me. We can't lose each other, Thalia. We can't..."

The woman left her drink on the table and inched closer to the only thing that anchored her to life. She ran her hand through her daughter's long, dark hair and sobbed.

They stayed there for what may have been seconds, minutes, or hours.

During all that time, Thalia had made a decision: she was going to run away.

Need

Ms. Grace hadn't said "I love you" she'd said "I need you."

The only reason she'd stayed for so long was because of Jason. Now that he was...gone. What else was there?

So sometime in between that night and the next morning, she left.

Thalia packed a bag full of food and all the money she'd saved up, before opening the fire escape and stepping out into the rainy streets of New York. If thirty-two dollars wasn't going to be enough to live, then she'd have to make do.

She stood on the small ledge that extended from their window and wished that their building didn't have a night guard. Otherwise she could have just walked out the easy way. The cold metal of the escape ladder was slippery in the rain as the nine year old planted her foot on the first rung. Maybe it was a sign to turn back. If it was, Thalia paid no heed.

As she climbed lower, she forced herself to think only of the future. Thalia couldn't let herself look back the life she was leaving because she knew that her resolve wasn't that strong.

Amongst the tumult of thought and drum of rain, a peal of lightning flashed, and suddenly Thalia found herself falling.

The sky melded into the ground as she flailed helplessly.

Cold.

Wind.

Rain.

Confusion.

Fear.

And just as suddenly, she hit the ground.

She landed on her arm, the force of the impact reverberating through her body. For a moment, she felt no pain. For a split second, there was only the pounding of her heart and the rush of blood in her ears.

A crash of thunder roared and with it came the pain.

The scream left her mouth before she could stop it and Thalia almost didn't recognize it as her own.

"Hey!" called a voice she barely heard. "Are you alright?"

She fought back the darkness that crept into the sides of her vision as she looked up into concerned blue eyes. "Who?"

"I'm Luke," he replied. Luke turned towards his companion, a girl around Thalia's age in a blonde ponytail. "Annabeth, go and call 911."

And then everything went black.

-O-

Sometimes the fall kills you.

-O-

Thalia woke to throbbing pain and the antiseptic scent of the hospital. Groaning, opened her eyes to take in the damage. Everywhere she looked, she saw gauze or plaster.

"You shouldn't try to move," came the voice that she vaguely remembered.

Craning her head off to her left, Thalia saw the blue-eyed boy and his ponytailed friend. Throat dry and aching, she rasped out the first question that came to mind. "What happened?"

"You fell off a fire escape," Luke explained. "You're lucky I was passing by. The doctors said you've fractured a lot of bones and have some internal bleeding."

"They called you a medical miracle," the other girl supplied, turning a page in the book she was reading. "Around a ten percent chance of survival and you still made it out of surgery in one piece."

"Where am I?" Thalia asked, still trying to grasp the situation. She felt at her head with her good hand, because apparently the other one had been set into a cast, and pawed at the short spikes of hair her fingers met.

"You're in Caduceus, a hospital on the outskirts of the city," Luke replied, noticing her agitated motions. "Sorry about your hair, it got in the way of the stitches."

"How long have I been here?" she questioned.

"A little over thirty hours," Annabeth added.

Thalia grit her teeth in frustration. How the hell was she going to pay off hospital fees without contacting her mom? She'd never heard talk about insurance in their home. "Did you call my family?"

"Yeah," Luke said. "Funnily enough, my dad knows your dad."

All thoughts that had been running through Thalia's head suddenly stopped. Hadn't her mom told her that Dad was gone for good? After all the times Ms. Grace had broken down crying at the very mention of the man, Thalia had taken that to mean he'd died. "You contacted my dad?"

"Yeah," Luke repeated, confused at her reaction. "My dad owns the hospital and said he recognized you when you came in."

"Mr. Rhemsey told us you had eyes just like Mr. Deus'," Annabeth commented, closing her book. She wandered closer to Thalia's bed and smiled. "We haven't actually introduced ourselves yet. I'm Annabeth."

Thalia eyed the two strangers who'd saved her life and bit her lip. Should she really be so trusting when everything up to this moment had been so awful? Was this all really just falling into place? Thalia couldn't smile back at the grey-eyed girl in front of her, not when she was so broken.

But maybe, just maybe, these people who'd picked up her broken pieces would be able to make her whole.

"I'm Thalia," she said, planting a half hearted smirk on her face. This would be her new life. There was no way she would ever look back.

-O-

Sometimes you wake up. Sometimes the fall kills you. And sometimes, when you fall, you fly.

Neil Gaiman

Note: There you go guys, Thalia's backstory :D Please tell me if it was any good, I'm feeling kind of iffy about it. At least now we know why she's so afraid of heights ;)