prompt: ignite

pair: thalia/luke

Shoplifting is easy. He knows he's cute, and he uses smiles and charm to their full extent to distract the shopkeepers as he sneaks food under his loose coat.

She barely waits till they're out of sight of the store before pouncing on it.

"Bread," she sighs in sheer happiness, "Actual food. You have no idea how sucky it is foraging stuff."

He does, actually. Thievery is his Father's domain, he sure as hell was not resorting to it out of choice. He doesn't correct her though; it's hardly worth the bother- and besides, she saved his life.

He slumps down next to her as she eats. He's tired. The part of him that knows this is unfair (he's eleven- almost twelve; he shouldn't be killing monsters with sharp objects- that goes a little beyond precocious) is raging and screaming and really just wants to sit down and let the next monster eat him up.

But this girl- she's younger than he is- and she seems to have no problem with their lifestyle. In the last one hour, she's speared through a thing with too many legs, hauled his injured ass a mile or so, and treated him with something golden and burning and obviously magical.

It makes him feel a little inadequate, to be honest. It also makes him feel a little relieved. Maybe he's not the only one who has to go through all this crap. So maybe the next time he stumbles across a mythological monster trying to eat him, he won't have the fleeting thought of "what's even the point" before his body automatically kicks into survival mode.

"Hey, you listening?"

Thalia Grace is looking at him, one eyebrow raised and the other wriggling. He has no clue how she's managing that. Then again, he has no clue how she carried around that bloody huge shield and whacked a monster over the head with it hard enough to make it collapse, either.

"Sorry," he apologizes, "I was uh... thinking."

"I figured," she snorts, and dusts off the last of the breadcrumbs, "So, you have a name? Only I really can't be hiking across a country with a guy whose name I don't even know."

There's a part of him which immediately freezes up. Conman (because screw it, that's pretty much all his Father was, anyway) genes or the part of him which repeatedly tells him that his mother knows things she shouldn't know, and he should be careful; something's always kept him from using his real name since he's run away.

But Thalia Grace is staring at him expectantly, all bright blue eyes and freckles and studied indifference; and somewhere in her eyes beyond the cockiness, he thinks he can see a desperate need for someone else to share this hell with.

He can understand.

"Luke Castellan," he tells her, and smiles. He thinks maybe, that this could end up being not as bad as it's supposed to be.