2002, Half Blood Hill (NononoSTOPWhatDoYouMeanShe's-)
"THALIA!"
Luke couldn't tell who was screaming louder him or Annie. It didn't matter though, there were some camp-kille- murderers holding them both, three girls holding back Annie, and - well he didn't care anymore.
The hill where Thalia fought for them, where she protected them, where she died for them, was a tree. All the monsters had left as soon as she turned into the tree.
A stupid tree . Not a gravestone, not anything saying who she is, or how brave she is-wa-
Swinging his arms, or trying to, there was only so much a fourteen year old without constant meals and training could do, he writhed and punched, trying to get free. The bronze clad arms around him didn't let him. He was carried off by- he didn't know how many arms and bodies, all armoured. And much stronger than him.
When they were carrying him off, he still managed to get a few punches and elbows in.
Good he thought, he knew there were at least two others that he'd injured that tried to grab him. Now he was surrounded by armour - no chance of his fists doing anything against them. But he did try.
His knuckles were bruised, some fingers were definitely broken, and he tore a few nails out, but the armoured murderers carrying him didn't stop, not until he felt something going in hi-
2002, Camp Half Blood, Infirmiry (Luke Hates This Stupid Camp More Than His Father)
Luke woke up, and the first thing he saw was Annie, cleaned up and looking peaceful sleeping on the chair. He looked left and right, itwasadream, itwasdefinatelyadrea-
No Thalia.
Something collided with his side and before he could swing at it, Annie had planted herself next to him.
"LukelukeLuke STOP please." Even he could hear that her voice was croaky and hiccupy.
That was the only thing that stopped him from trying to run to the damn hill. He promised he would protect Annie, and he would never trust her around them . Annie buried her head onto his chest and wrapped her arms around him, thinking it would keep him there.
It would. Luke was angry, but he wasn't heartless, like the campers, to make a seven year old girl cry .
He just shuffled as much as he could on the bed, and wrapped his lanky arms around Annie. They were each the only family each other had left. They were a damn better one than whatever crap there was on up at Olympus. Luke stayed there, thinking as Annie dropped off to sleep. He wante- no he needed to be better. Annie would never go through something like that again if he could help it.
One of the kids in the bright orange t-shirts came up to him, but Luke looked at him, and he knew it was a glare because the stupid kid backed off. Coward
Just when he was about to nod off, his Annie-shaped teddy-bear definitely making sure he wasn't moving, he heard a door open, and hooves .
2002, Camp Half Blood, The Big House (What A Stupid Name)
Camp Half-Blood, was run by an actual god. Apparently.
If he was really a god, surely he could've done something to save Thalia? If he didn't, then why was he put in charge of like a hundred ADHD kids? Why was there a lava-based climbing wall for kids, and why was this more like a military training camp than a home.
Even though he knew there was something wrong with him - normal kids didn't runaway from home and fight monsters on a daily basis as a preferable alternative to living with their mom- this was crazy even for him. What normal place just accepted kids dying before they reached 18. The only reason he hadn't left yet, he would probably have better luck like how it was before , was Annie.
She seemed to enjoy it, had a cabin when her mom claimed her, after Luke was knocked out, got along with her new fri-fami- friends , and Grover was Okay. So Luke would keep his bitterness to himself - it was what he and Tha-her-Th -. It was what he promised after all, that they would be a better family to Annie. He looked over at his cabin - Hermes, the biggest and worst looking - all the other cabins had some sorta personality, or you could tell that the god involved actually cared about them. But not Hermes - a basic timber cabin with peeling paint and a worn everything - he knew how to spot when something was old and just forgotten about. Well at least Hermes didn't ignore Luke on purpose, apparently he ignored all his kids equally.
Annie was in the cabin where, creepily, everyone had blonde hair and grey eyes, like Athena had a thing for that. But the older guy, a fifteen year old called Callum, seemed OK, but Luke couldn't say anything about the rest of the kids in that cabin.
The twelve cabins, well eight really, four were empty. But why build those cabins in the first place? It seemed like a waste to him, but whatever.
There were eight actual cabins with kids in.
A bright gold one, where Apollo - and Luke never would've guessed that - put his kids, they were the medics mostly, even if some of them were barely thirteen. Luke wanted to hate them all because they couldn't heal Thalia
Then there was a barbed-wire and badly painted red cabin - it looked like a drunk boxer had put it together still wearing his gloves. All the kids there were broad, ugly, and really mean - one of them made Annie cry the other day. Luke was still planning revenge. No one would hurt his family if he had anything to say about it. And what was the point of being a kid of a fighting god if you couldn't even fight off a few hellhounds!
Right next to it was a steampunk-nerd's fantasy. It looked so weird but so cool that Luke was almost jealous he wasn't in there. Almost.
Then there was a low pastel coloured thing that looked more like a barbie doll house than anything else, and that included actual barbie doll houses. The kids there, mostly girls but some guys, were ok, they acted all shallow and stupid, but Luke could tell an act when he saw it.
A weird cabin with vines and barrels built into it was next to that one, and Luke knew whose cabin that was, even if he didn't, the fact that Mr D. went in and out and seemed to actually like the only 2 kids there, it was kinda hard to miss.
Then there was a weird cabin that looked kinda like some of those hobbit-things that popped up outside a load of movie theatres last christmas. There were plants and loads of stuff actually growing on it, like someone had taken rooftop-garden a bit literally.
The Athena cabin looked, well, kinda like a log cabin painted grey, but each of the logs had carvings or stuff on them, so it was difficult to tell. It definitely looked the coolest cabin, he thought.
And finally, there was the Hermes cabin - it was actually a cabin. But it was the worst .
Each cabin, Luke found out, could hold 10 bunk-beds max plus the Counseller's own larger bed. But the Hermes cabin was the only one that needed sleeping bags and floor space as well as every available bunkbed, and sometimes even doubled up. They were also the only cabin (apparently, no one had been into the four empty ones to check) that the counseller's bed had been replaced by a bunk-bed, they were that short on space. The Hermes cabin had nearly fifty kids. That was more than double their bedspace, but because of gods taking offence, they couldn't expand, or build an extension, or even let some of the kids sleep in tents. It wouldn't be proper according to Chiron.
He found out later that the Athena kids barely had ten people in their cabin, the Ares kids had around twelve, the Apollo kids maybe ten, Aphrodite seven, the Hestaphus cabin only had five, the Demeter kids were around six total, and the Dionosys cabin only had two.
But each and every cabin was exactly the same size. Except Zeus' his was twice the size of anyones, and Hera's was only a little smaller than that. But the rest of the cabins - all tiny in comparison.
All the occupied cabins were exactly the same size, even though the Hermes cabin needed to be bigger, at least double its current size. It just wasn't right, or healthy, putting that many teenagers, and some pre-teens, crammed together like that for weeks. Add in ADHD, the sense of abandonment that some kids felt, and just the stress of living ontop of each other, and it was a miracle no one had gone mad. Yet. If Luke needed yet another reason to think the gods - their parents - didn't care about them, well the cabins were obviously it.
At least outside of summer it got quieter - most kids went home, or wherever they stayed that wasn't camp. But Luke and Annie knew that they couldn't be anywhere else, not without Thalia.
2003, Camp Half Blood, Sword Training Arena (Luke Hasn't Killed Anyone Yet, Which Is A Minor Miracle)
Luke was good with swords. Like, really really good, everyone kept telling him.
If he was so good, then why didn't the campers let him help Thalia.
It took nearly a year, but he could think about Thalia, and her name, without wanting to destroy something. Or break someone's nose. Again.
Everyone thought he was a son of Ares at first. Like they couldn't believe that someone would want to fight for their friends, not just because of who their parent was. It's not like they needed to fill in a permission form. Well, they did for some things, just like a normal summer camp.
He knew that Annie had put him down for next of kin and as a guardian on some of her forms originally, but Chiron (the one who was actually filling out the forms - yay dyslexia!) frowned and said she couldn't.
Chiron still couldn't find his curlers, or nice jacket.
Luke, because he was petty like that, told Chiron to put down Thalia as his next of kin, and guardian. When the centaur tried to oppose that, Luke just looked at the tree and said.
"Well she's not in camp. She's not taking part in any activity, and if she can be responsible for the border for the entire camp then she can also be responsible for one demigod fuck-up."
He knew what he was. What stupid demigod, couldn't save one person.
It took a few weeks, but eventually Luke was claimed by Hermes, and after seeing how bad some of the Apollo kids were at fighting, found a sword, and began to teach them (the Ares camper that was supposed to be teaching the group was off trying to impress some Demeter kid).
It wasn't that long before Luke ended up helping out in a few sword fighting classes, and even taking on some of the older Ares and Athena kids.
Luke grabbed a longer sword and squared up to an Ares camper - Mitch or Mike or something - he needed to vent.
It had nothing to do with the fact that the Ares camper he was facing happened to be one of the people holding him back from helping Thalia. That's what he tried to tell himself at least
2003, Camp Half Blood, Dryad Grove (Luke Always wondered if Dryads were like bowtruckles that Harry talked about)
The dryads in the camp were nice, and were completely different to the wild ones that scared them in Sheredon last year. Luke tried to ask them about it, but apparently the camp dryads kept themselves apart from the more wild dryads. They had no idea about bowtruckles (Luke vaguely remembered Harry telling him and Thalia about his wand and how it was made), they only seemed to care about being in camp. The camp dryads, after all, had been blessed by the gods themselves to help watch over their children.
Yeah, Luke thought, they were real helpful, as he saw another camper being rushed to the infirmary.
The only reason most of the campers weren't dead was that nectar and ambrosia healed demigods stupidly well. Walk in with a broken arm? Sip of nectar, and two hours later, you're fine! Nearly decapitated? Shove some ambrosia down your neck, and the next day it'll be like it never happened!
Luke understood that lots of kids+ADHD+sharp stuff = lot of accidents, but some of it was just stupid. Swords were cool, but accidently killing another kid wasn't.
He made an effort to try and get along with some of the other campers - they couldn't help who their parents were, or that the whole 'you can eat and stay with your cabin mates' idea was plain stupid. He noticed that the camp wasn't really a whole camp for demigods, but a lot of different groups that just happened to work together more often than not. Most of the Aphrodite cabin were mean even the ones who were nice could be stupidly mean and petty. The Ares cabin picked on anyone and everyone, the Hestephus and Demeter cabins didn't care for much apart from making stuff and flowers, and the Apollo cabin was Okay he guessed, but were really full of themselves.
He didn't like the Athena cabin on principle, but since Annie was there, he guessed they were Okay overall.
The Hermes cabin, well the jury was still out on that. Some kids snored way too loud, Bailey had made Dennis cry last weekend, and no one had bothered to fix the creaky floorboard under Luke's bunk (it didn't help that Clara on the top bunk could actually sleep through a fire).
2004, Camp Half Blood, Athena Cabin (Annabeth Thinks This Is Great, Just Like Having A Real Family)
Annabeth - Annie was a nickname just between her and Luke now - loved her new home. Two years and everything was still so amazing. Nymphs in the canoe lake, food every evening, and best of all an actual family . Nothing could replace Luke, or Thalia really, but this was nearly as good.
"Hey Annabeth, wanna help me with the plans for Capture the Flag tonight? We'll crush Apollo for sure this time!"
Malcolm, one of the best brothers she could ask for, was already sitting at the planning desk, with another chair pulled out. This was great, she could finally show Luke that she didn't always need him looking out for her.
Sitting down, she grabbed the rough map of the forest and stream that they would be fighting on.
"We could send some of the Ares kids through the pines there and they could split up and search for the flag in pairs, and we could get the Demeter cabin to setup ambush points to stop them coming through the forest, and have the rest of the Ares kids defending the easier route to the flag."
"Good idea Annie, Luke won't know what hit him."
She felt proud at that thought - they would win and everyone would know that it was her strategy that won it. And maybe then Luke would actually trust her to go on 'supply runs' with him. He always went off on the weekend and came back with loads of stuff. But he always told her she was better off at camp instead of having monsters chasing after her for a few tacos.
2005, Camp Half Blood, Thalia's Pine (Luke Still Remembers Her Birthday, Even If Everyone Else Thinks It's Weird Giving A Tree Presents)
Three years. Over a thousand days (he knew that because Chiron mentioned it, he was now one of the oldest campers, and definitely the oldest year-rounder which was a bit messed up). It was far too long, really.
Sometimes he would look over the campers in the pavilion and wonder what happened to the kids that were there when he and Annie arrived - either they grew up and left, living normal happy lives, or they died because the gods didn't care enough to help them survive monsters better. Usually when he followed that train of thought, he had to cool off in the lake, or sit back and listen to the campers' indistinct chatter. That usually helped calm him down.
Luckily he had a much better hold on his temper. Thalia hated it whenever he lost his temper, especially in front of Annie. Chiron also got annoyed, but Luke honestly didn't care all that much about him. How could the centaur even pretend to care when he probably said the exact same thing to hundreds of other heroes
He threw down his latest gift, a bracelet that just screamed 'Thalia' when he saw it in Montauk, and hummed 'Happy Birthday'. Just like they used to do when they were living rough and didn't have the time for proper celebrations. Just threw each other tacky gifts with a grunt and carried on running.
Life was going okay for him, he had a few friends, mostly those that came after him and Annie arrived at camp, a few girls followed him around and were especially shy when he spoke to them, and he was one of the camp counsellors. All in all, a kinda normal life for a seventeen year old.
Except for the fact that his best friend was a tree, the summer camp was run by a god and some of the girls that were especially shy around him were nymphs.
It made him feel better though, that he was trying to keep the promises he and Thalia made, years ago, to stop kids like them being hunted and hurt. Well it wasn't like Mr. D. or Chiron were doing anything on that front. It was down to him, and some of the Aphrodite cabin sometimes to keep an eye on any of the new kids. Some of the Aphrodite kids there were great, Selina especially, others, well Tartarus existed for a reason, he guessed.
His thoughts turned to Harry. Sometimes he wished he could contact the wizard with that cool mirror-phone-thing. But Thalia had that (and basically all the stuff Harry gave them) on her when she died. All the magical stuff was locked away in the pine tree - and if Luke mentioned witches or wizards in the camp, he'd probably be sent off to the infirmary to have his head checked.
Anyway, he sat by the tree and waited for the sun to finish rising, Thalia loved early morning sunrises, where everything looked peaceful, even if it wasn't. Luke would tease her about being a softie, but honestly, he got it . It was nice to think that for at least a moment, you weren't going to be killed or hunted.
Even the harpies knew not to disturb Luke today, even if he was outside of curfew - he managed to kill three before Chiron let him carry on his tradition.
Annie would come later, he didn't want to put her in any danger, especially for a silly tradition that wouldn't mean much to her - Annie was never a morning person. And anyway, the early sunrises were a thing between him and Thalia only.
Luke made himself comfy in his - formerly Chiron's - jacket, and just watched the sunrise, and promised, like he always did on her Birthday.
Never Again
2007, Camp Half Blood, Hermes Cabin (He Failed To Keep His Promise Again, A Twelve-Year Old Had To Kill A Minotaur, Sorry Thalia)
Percy seemed like an alright kid. A bit sheepish at first, but Luke could tell a performance when he saw one. Pretending you weren't bricking it was the first trick many campers learned after all.
Annie just glared at him, really disliked him for some reason. Maybe he'd need to talk with her. She was obsessed with quests, the prophecy, and the outside world. For a ten year old it was understandable, but she was the same age when Thalia - well kids needed to grow up at some point.
And he knew she had a crush on him. It wasn't all that subtle, but thankfully most of the rest of the camp, outside of some Aphrodite kids, were completely oblivious to any sort of romance that wasn't direct flirting. He hoped that it would just fade away - he couldn't bear to tell her that he was still in love with Thalia - but he couldn't bring himself to face her and tell her. Well in a few weeks, he guessed that they wouldn't need to worry about it.
He couldn't blame her, he thought as she left. Not really, not when it was his fault that quests stopped. Well, honestly it was something he didn't mind that much. At least Shaun and Eddie got what was coming to them. But the monsters, he could do something about that.
Soon the world would be much safer and Annie and the others would be able to see the world, not be trapped like prisoners. The only reason half of the monsters were there was because of the gods, the only reason so many demigods died was because of the gods.
Luke turned back to the cabin, Bailey was giggling with Dennis over some picture, Sara was doing Charlie's hair, Alice was frantically searching for something - Connor probably had it - and Travis went back to teaching card tricks to some of the younger kids.
Luke sighed again, these kids weren't the best family, they were all messed up in more ways than one, but they were a damn sight better than their actual parents.
He just had to keep telling himself that - Olympus needed to be brought down, the gods were capricious, negligent and far too arrogant - it was the 21st century, not 210BC, the gods reign needed to be corrected . If Zeus and Poseidon fought like this, earthquakes and storms all over the USA then how the hell could they be trusted to carry on with that power, the mortal world already had its own share of problems, they couldn't deal with godly ones on top of it. Hell wasn't that in the constitution, protection against tyranny and all that?
It was only a matter of time, either way, it couldn't be stopped now.
A/N:
timeline notes
My fic PJO timeline: 2002 annabeth is 7, Thalia 12, Luke 14, for Thalia to be 12 in 2002, she was born in 1990, Luke born 1988, Annabeth/Percy born 1995)
1999
Auror Office puts away most Marked Death Eaters except the Six, trials commence
More DA join Auror Office (after staying on for '8th' year) (Neville, Parvati, Terry Boot, Dean Thomas, people from Ginny's class/year)
Luke 'runs away' from home, returning occasionally for supplies (never completely runs away until he meets Thalia)
2000
Trials continue, many of Voldermort's international followers and collaborators have been identified, Auror Office begins sending DA members (Harry, Neville, Ron, Seamus, Parvati mostly) out internationally as experts and consultants and to track down some of Voldermort's remaining Marked followers
Thalia runs away from home after Jason's 'death' (Thalia is 10, Jason is 2), survives on her own entirely until she meets Luke
2001
Most of Voldemort's Marked followers and major backers have been identified, and most reside in Azkaban for varying lengths of time (except Draco Malfoy), the hunt for the Six remaining Marked Death Eaters continues
(Auror Office now drops to around twelve Aurors including Robbards)
'Some Muggle war' begins, causing smuggled cuneiform curse tablets to begin to appear in Southern Italy and Madrid near the end of the year, the UK Auror Office doesn't take much notice
Harry is polyjuiced and chaos is caused in Magical Madrid, eventually stopped by efforts of combined Spanish, French and Italian Aurors with Dwalish and Harry assisting; Dwalish looses his left foot and three fingers and is assigned more desk work from that point onwards, Dwalish develops a rivalry with Harry
2002
The cuneiform tablets, among other cursed objects, have made their way to the UK, and the Auror Office now begin paying attention, the possibility that the smuggling operation is connected to one of the Six is one of the less outlandish theories that they are working with (in reality without the possible involvement of the Six, this may have taken much longer to be investigated)
Chapter 1 of this fic starts
Thalia becomes a Tree, Luke/Annabeth/Grover make it to CHB
2004
James Sirius Potter born
2007
PJO lightning thief occurs in the summer, Percy finds out he's a demigod
2008
Ron leaves Aurors, has a going away party, Harry and Ginny take a 'family holiday to America', Ron's departure has made Harry think about his own career
Sea of Monsters, Thalia returns