Chapter Text
Thalia
As I looked out the window to the small twinkling city surrounding us, taking in all the tiny details and late-night stragglers driving from place to place, I wondered if that was what it felt like to be a god.
Not the power side of things—being a young, homeless child on the run, I had none to speak of. Hell, between cities, I could barely scrounge up enough change to afford food from day to day. I meant the watching part. The sensation of sitting above creation looking down, unseen and unnoticed, just observing humans as they went about their mundane business. Living normal lives, so blissfully unaware of an existence just beneath their noses.
My eyes fixed on a small restaurant across the street that was packed full to the brim with customers and bustling waiters. The back patio was dressed with fancy white-clothed tables and full of couples, smiling and laughing under the glow of warm, welcoming candlelight. Meanwhile, a live band played slow, romantic tunes on a nearby stage. I could hear it drifting across the street and climbing to the window to meet me, but behind the cold, tinted glass, it sounded so far away, and its happy tune felt sorrowful.
As my gaze hopped from table to table, I fixed in on each person, wondering what their stories were as they smiled and fawned over the golden-lit faces across from them. At one table, there was a family of four; a man and a woman with their two children. A boy and a girl. The girl looked like she was about my age, and she sat with a smug smirk while picking at her younger brother, who giggled and protested her prods with his hands.
I remember longing to be one of those humans in that moment. Just a normal little girl with her family—brother, mother, and father all still by her side—sharing a loving night together over a warm, delicious meal. I didn’t want to be who I was. A scrappy, beat up runt miles from home, being hunted every second that I wasn’t moving.
The child of one of the very gods I was imagining being…
The office building we had found shelter in for the night was just on the edge of the city; a place where it began to climb up onto a hill before tapering off into farmland on the other side. From the three-story building, I could really see it all; the soft glittering lights stretching on for miles. Based on the sign in the bottom floor window, the place was for lease, so we figured we could stay at least one night without interruption. Plus, how could we pass up sleeping in a building with actual heating and cooling for a night?
I had no idea what city it was that I was currently staring at. After so many weeks of breakneck travel with my companions, I’d stopped keeping track a long time ago. We had to be somewhere in New Jersey, I imagined; just on the outskirts of New York.
Almost at our latest destination, according to our newest ‘family’ member.
We hadn’t known at first if we could fully trust our strange half-human, goat-legged companion when he showed up out of the blue one night. When he’d promised that he could take us to a safe place made just for people like us—demigods—I definitely wasn’t sure if I could believe him. After nearly a full year on my own fighting and clawing for my life, it almost seemed too good to be true. Still, after a few months back when I’d injured my leg in a close call with some monsters, my closest partner insisted that if there was even a slight chance of some better place, we needed to take it.
Speaking of, it was that moment that I heard gentle footsteps approaching from behind. If I weren’t already so wired from stress, I don’t think I would have even noticed them with how masterfully quiet they were. Then again, children of Hermes were known to be light on their feet.
I spun in my computer chair to face the boy and smiled. He stared back with a signature grin on his lips that I always thought he wore well. His blond hair seemed to shine gold in the soft light trickling in, long and wild, teasing at the brow of his dazzling blue eyes. He was thin like me from so much time living on the streets, but he was fit beneath the scrappy, makeshift leather armor he wore, which complemented his rugged, handsome face well.
Even so young, I remember thinking he’d looked rugged. So much pain and experience at such a young age made him look five years older than he was…
All in all, his looks combined with his scruffiness made him look like a stray cat, but luckily for him, I’d always found stray cats cute.
“Annabeth is down finally. So is Grover.” He said casually. He grabbed a roller chair with his foot, then tugged it near to me, plopping into it with a heavy sigh.
“He do the thing again?” I smirked.
The boy snorted, “Yeah. Took me fifteen minutes to help Annabeth calm down, but he was out the second he hit the pillow. I don’t get how he does that.”
“I’m jealous, honestly; wish I could sleep that easily.” I chuckled. It went dark as I focused in on that first part of what he’d said, “Is… she okay?”
He nodded, “Those snake things really freaked her out, but she’s getting more used to seeing monsters; especially traveling with us now. If anything, I think hiding in those bushes with all the spiders that got on us freaked her out more than the attack.”
I nodded solemnly, my gaze returning to the window, “She’s beyond brave for her age. I know we’ve all been through it, but… being out here so young? Even you and I didn’t do that.”
“She shouldn’t have to be…” He returned darkly, his eyes fixing on a point out the window just beyond the horizon.
I really couldn’t tell which part of my words he meant that about; her having to be brave, or her being out here at only seven years old. Regardless, it applied to both…
I tried to ease his mind a bit, “We’re almost there, Grover said. Just a few miles through New York to Long Island. This camp he keeps telling us about—if he’s right, we could finally be safe.”
He didn’t look at me. He didn’t even seem to hear me at all. Gently, I reached over and placed my hand on his arm.
“Luke?”
He finally faced me, “Huh? Oh, yeah. We’ll need to leave early in the morning. We’re still being followed, after all.”
I nodded in agreement, but didn’t let him get away so easy, “You didn’t respond to what I said.”
“Sorry, what did you say?” Luke said with a snarky grin, “I got bored and zoned out.”
My gentle affection on his arm changed to a slug on the shoulder, “I was saying that Camp Half-blood might actually be safe for us, jerk!” He chuckled, and I continued, “That would be nice, wouldn’t it? No more running? No more having to make it on our own? If there’s really other demigods there like us, then…” I returned my gaze to the horizon, as if looking for a future that could be just on the other side, “Maybe we can finally have a home again. A real family…”
I’d gotten so carried away with the thought that I’d forgotten why I’d said it aloud in the first place. I glanced back at Luke to find his eyes turned away from mine, focused on the floor this time. He chewed on his cheek for a moment in thought, “Yeah, it would be nice. I guess we’ll see when we get there.”
“That doesn’t sound too confident.” I noted.
Luke shrugged, “Yeah, well, with the way the gods have orchestrated our lives, can us demigods ever really find peace?”
I chewed his words over in silence for a moment, my eyes fixed on his profile. It was an awfully profound thing for a fourteen-year-old to say. I think I knew what he meant, though, and it worried me for two reasons.
The first reason was a pretty common one that often came up when I thought of Luke. He had a lot of baggage. We all did, of course—when you’re a demigod, it sort of comes with the turf. Rare was it in those days that you actually knew who your godly parent was, and even if you did, knowing that you were nothing but a lowly affair in a random mortal's life was always—to put it lightly—a major bummer. Even if you did know them, knowing that they often wanted very little to do with you cut even worse.
Being the daughter of Zeus myself, I understood that feeling all too well. If there was anything that I knew about my father from the old myths and legends (or—in our world—ancient history), it was that the god rarely had care for the love he gave to mortals. It was reckless and impulsive, and it always came with an earful from Hera when he got found out.
In simple terms, I was nothing more than a mistake in his long, immortal life. Probably not even a thought in his mind. Me and my brother, Jason, who he hadn’t even bothered to protect when my mother had taken him—
The thought hitched in my mind like a migraine, making my skull dizzy and my eyes water. I didn’t want to think about it. Even after so long away from home, I couldn’t bring myself to think about it. After all, it was that reckless, impulsive love that had driven my mother mad in the first place.
All of this was to say, I understood where Luke was coming from. Demigod blood was like a type of weed, and it found a way to tangle and twist the joy out of every flower in your life. Even if this camp we were heading to was safe, how long would that last for? Could they protect us forever? Or would our fate there be the same as it most likely would be anywhere else?
Utterly tragic.
That brought me to the second reason I was worried for Luke. He seemed unsure of the idea at all. Of safety and shelter. Of family and love. When I had injured my leg before we’d met Grover Underwood, in a state of emergency and with no other options, Luke had led us back to his home, knowing that his mother could help.
While there, his father Hermes had shown up, and though I didn’t get to hear the talk he and his dad had in the living room, something changed in him after. It was bad enough that he wouldn’t talk to me about it—and mind you, Luke and I told each other everything—but ever since, he’d been acting different. More impulsive and angry. Less careful.
Before, he used to engage monsters only when necessary; taking them when we were attacked or if they were in the way of our goal. A lot of times, we’d even flee or hide away from them altogether. Lately though, Luke had been provoking them. He’d go out of his way to clear a den of beasts or actively spring from hiding just to take a scrap. It felt like he had something to prove, or maybe that there was something even deeper festering inside him.
That he’d resigned his fate to always fighting. That there could be no real peace in our world, and that war was the only way…
I didn’t like that last thought. Luke was sweet and kind and charming, and the idea of him getting so lost and consumed by his bitterness that he became a new person altogether scared me. In this lonely, crazy world of ours, I didn’t know what I would do without him; both of us would be dead or worse without each other by now. We were each other’s rocks, and if one crumbled, I feared we both would…
I tried to steer clear of that fate by changing the subject, warmly reminding him of one solid truth. I’d always had a hard time being openly emotional, even with this boy who I was closest to, so nervously fidgeting with the magic silver circlet on my wrist—the same one we’d found the day we met Annabeth—I spoke shakily.
“Well, um, the good news is… even if it’s not safe, we’ll always have each other. It’d be nice to have a real family again, but we do already have a pretty dang good one.”
Luke’s eyes drew back to mine, and he smiled, his affectionate gaze making my heart beat fast, “Yeah… I guess we do, don’t we?”
I could feel my pulse turn into a horse's gallop as I pinned a finger between my bracelet and my wrist. He looked almost angelic beneath the city light streaming through the window, and though I’d given him plenty of cheek pecks along the roads of our adventures by this point, I couldn’t help but wonder what it might feel like to really…
A crackle of static rippled across my fingertips, making my skin tingle and jolting me from my trance. I hoped Luke hadn’t heard the tiny pops, and that he couldn’t see the pink of my cheeks in the dim light. Embarrassed, I tried quickly to pass the buck, looking out the window again and pulling up a smug grin.
“I thought you might agree, seeing as you’re the ‘Dad’ of this bunch and all.”
Luke’s face went confused, and a little surprised, “H-Huh? What?”
I gave him an amused side-eye, waiting for him to catch on.
It didn’t take long. “Oh, you brat!” he cried, sitting upright and swatting at me, “You read the journal Halcyon gave me!?”
I blocked his attacks and giggled, “Hey, you left it out! I just wanted to read what he had in there before you took over. Thennnnnn maybe I got a little carried away. Might have skimmed your entry you added.”
“Thalia!” Luke scolded in a whisper, looking back toward the cubical behind us where Annabeth and Grover were sleeping. I didn’t know if he could see my red cheeks a second ago, but I could certainly see his in that moment.
“Relax! I only grazed the beginning and end. I was there for all the middle part, remember? Besides, I thought what you wrote was sweet.”
I did this thing that I discovered he was weak against after that in an attempt to calm him down. I fixed him with my eyes and batted my lashes real slow and intensely. Like usual, he gave a sigh and buckled, rolling his own blues before jabbing a finger out at me.
“Alright, fine; you’re off the hook this time, but from now on, leave the sticky fingers to the son of Hermes, yeah?”
I challenged him by sticking my own finger out to meet his, then funneled all the static living there into it with a small electric Pop! Luke recoiled with a small wince of pain while I just smiled at him innocently. He couldn’t keep up the act anymore at that, and eventually, his lips curled into a smile of his own.
In the silence that followed, the music from the restaurant below finally found a crack in the window to crawl through. The band played a slow, swelling jazz tune that rode the night air like a gliding bird, and as Luke and I looked out to the scene, we could see dozens up couples now up from their seats, holding each other close and swaying softly to the rhythm on a dance floor. The tune made me feel warm now, goosebumps rippling across my skin at the saxophone's melodic hum.
“Wonder what’s going on down there,” The words drew to my lips, almost as if in a trance. The mother and father that I’d noticed earlier were now standing and dancing cheek to cheek, eyes closed and smiles softly frozen on their lips.
My heartbeat picked up again.
Luke furrowed his brow in thought, then counted something on his fingers. “What’s the date today?”
I shrugged, “Don’t know. Stopped keeping track’ a long time ago.”
He looked back out at the crowd, and did some more counting, “Well, about two weeks ago was the first of the month, and it was February, so if my math is right, that makes today the fourteenth. His eyes turned to me, and he jokingly wiggled his eyebrows, “Valentine’s Day.”
My cheeks went red, and I quickly averted my gaze outside, my skin feeling hot under my jacket. “Oh.” Was the only thing I could muster.
You know how I mentioned I’m not good at the whole ‘emotional’ thing? Well, that went doubly so for romance. Sure, I could toss out a flirtation now and then, or be bold when I wanted to—sometimes it was fun to just see Luke get flustered—but real, intimate romance? The kind that the man and woman were sharing out there on the dance floor below?
Well, my mom and dad hadn’t exactly taught me a good example of what that looked like…
I tried to laugh and dismiss the idea altogether, “I don’t get it.”
“Get what?”
“Slow dancing. Like, what’s the point? You just hold each other and rock back and forth; occasionally, give your partner a twirl. What’s so fun about that? Or—er—romantic, I guess?” My words sounded stiff coming out, like I was trying more to convince myself not to see the appeal. The truth was, the couples out there looked positively happy, and the idea of being held so close to someone with so much passion…
Static began building in my fingertips again.
Luke’s words sounded similar to mine as he lost himself in the scene outside. All he even bothered to return was a halfhearted, “Haha, yeah…”
It was quiet for a long moment, both of us observing the music and the visuals that accompanied them. I expected that to be the end of it, but then…
“Wanna find out?” Luke said.
I turned to him, my heart stopping in my chest for a moment, “H-Huh?”
He smiled that smile that I thought he wore oh-so well, then extended a hand, “Well, neither of us gets the hype. You wanna’ give it a go and see if it's as fun as everyone makes it seem?”
My mouth hung open for a few moments in surprise, and I blinked rapidly to make sure I’d heard the invitation right before finally getting myself together. I eyed his hand, and I think for a moment he was worried I wouldn’t take it. The slight tension in his face told me he was nervous, which only added to the static buzzing through my body.
Why would he be nervous? There would be no reason to be if it was just a friend asking another friend to dance…
I awkwardly reached out to take his hand as I stood, and the moment our fingers touched, another pop of electricity exchanged between us. Luke didn’t wince away this time though, or even show that it stung. His eyes met mine, then looked back out the window to make sure his form was right.
He slipped his palm firmly into mine, then wrapped his other arm around my waist, pulling me close. My hand slipped to his back, where it buzzed lightly with every heavy breath I took.
It was awkward at first. It didn’t feel nearly as smooth and effortless as the gliding across the floor that the adults were doing outside. To be fair to ourselves, however, I think we were more focused on whether we were doing it right or not.
As we held each other and softly swayed though, eventually the world fell away. The ambient drone of the building's vents faded to nothing, Grover’s snoring from a few cubicles over became silent in my ears, and it seemed almost like the music outside grew louder. It filled the room, encircling us like warm, flowing water, and we gave ourselves to it, letting the current take us.
I don’t remember much of what I was thinking about it that moment. It all became a blur. I remember staring at Luke, though. His eyes to mine. I remember thinking about how lucky I was to have found him. How glad I was that of all the demigods lost and scattered about the world, I had the fortune to run into him. I didn’t think very highly of fate or the plans of the gods, but I figured if they had brought me to Luke, there at least had to be some goodness there…
He didn’t speak the whole time I stared at him; just got lost in my blues. Eventually, the emotion building in my chest became too much, though, and I had to take them away from him.
I slipped my arm deeper around his back and pressed into him, laying my forehead to his neck and cheek to his chest. I found it a little adorable the way I could hear his breath hitch in his throat, but I couldn’t tease since I also noticed his rapid heartbeat matched mine.
“If you read that journal,” he suddenly spoke, his voice a low, deep rumble against my ear, “then you read the part after that right? And you remember what I told Annabeth when we met her?”
I didn’t respond verbally. I just found myself squeezing him a little tighter and nodding into his chest.
“I won’t fail you or Annabeth or Grover like our families did,” Luke repeated his promise in a soft whisper, just for good measure. I felt him softly place his lips to my hair and kiss it, a gesture that made a shiver run through me, then he spoke again.
“I’m going to keep you safe. I swear.”
In that moment with him, beneath the city lights and the music of mortals filling the air around us, I almost forgot that we were being hunted. It almost fell to the back of my mind that I was a daughter of Zeus who had been abandoned and forgotten, and that every waking moment could be my last.
All my worries and fears drifted away for one glorious instant beneath the comfort of Luke's words and his embrace, and maybe that was why it was so easy to believe him. That he could defy the gods and the fates and every other force of the universe just to keep us all together. That he would be able to keep us safe, and that he would never hurt us…
Maybe if I had known what would happen after that night, though… what would become of Annabeth and myself and the boy holding me tight making impossible promises…
Maybe if I could have seen the future, I would have been wiser not to get my hopes up.