Thalia Grace (wasatree) wrote in thedoorway, @ 2013-03-01 23:23:00 |
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Entry tags: | !log, annabeth chase, thalia grace |
WHO: Annabeth & Thalia.
WHERE: Annabeth’s apartment
WHEN: Evening, February 23
WHAT: Thalia is not a horrible person.
RATING: G
STATUS: log; complete.
Although things were pretty much back to the way they had been before Thalia had brought up the whole Silena thing, she still felt bad about everything. Not only had she unconsciously implied that Luke was the type of guy who was willing to move in on a dead guy’s girl to alleviate his own loneliness, but apparently this whole time he’d thought she wasn’t taking his attempts to redeem himself seriously. Neither was true, but Luke’s hurt had been very real. It was a relief when Annabeth confirmed that she really wasn’t a bad person, because she felt like a puppy kicker right about then. With a mumbled excuse to Jason, who looked to be in much better spirits than he had been the other day, she took off for the elevators and headed up to Annabeth’s apartment. She could do with a lot more reassurances. Annabeth’s brow had furrowed when she’d seen Thalia’s text messages. She was sure she was missing some integral part of the story...Thalia was anything but dismissive of what Luke was trying to accomplish here. Sure, they’d struggled at first, but they had moved past that now, and Annabeth had seen nothing but support from Thalia. Was it just the Silena thing? Or was there something else that she’d missed? She began going over everything she could think of in her mind, but kept coming up short. With a frustrated snort, she pushed the thought aside. She’d just have to wait and get the whole story from Thalia, maybe then it would make more sense. She pulled an elastic band from the pocket of her jeans and pulled her curly blond hair back into a ponytail. She was dressed in a pair of comfortable jeans and a dark blue sweater. Her camp necklace hung around her neck, and her feet were bare as she moved around her apartment. The front door was unlocked, and Thalia knew she needed no invitation, so Annabeth sat on the couch and scrolled through Thalia’s texts again while she waited. Thalia knocked on the door before letting herself in, because she wasn't a complete savage. Spotting Annabeth on the couch, she smiled in greeting and went over to plop down beside her. "So he didn't actually say I'm an awful person," she began without any preamble, because she'd been thinking about it all night and all morning, and this was the first time she'd been able to talk to someone about it. "I just feel like one." Annabeth had no trouble picking up the conversation after Thalia dived right into things. In fact, if the other girl hadn’t gotten right to the point, Annabeth would have just started asking direct questions anyway. That’s just how the girls were. A fair number of their conversations started out exactly like this. It threw people off sometimes. But Annabeth simply set her phone down on the coffee table and turned herself sideways, so she could look directly at Thalia while they spoke. One of her legs was tucked underneath her, while the other hung over the side of the couch. “First of all, you’re not,” she answered briskly. “So you can knock that off. Secondly, what did he say. Start from the beginning.” Thalia didn’t agree with or deny Annabeth’s assessment, but it made her feel better all the same. She wasn’t used to feeling bad about anything she did - in general she just tried to be a decent person and was pretty unapologetic about what she did - but she definitely felt bad about making Luke feel so horrible. And she hadn’t even meant to. She’d thought she’d been supportive and understanding about him and Silena, despite her own feelings on the matter, and somehow that had backfired. “Okay, so you know how I thought he was dating Silena?” she began, shifting so that her back was to the arm of the couch and her knees her drawn up to her chest. “I mean, they’re already roommates, and they’re taking cooking lessons, and pretty much spending every morning and evening together and generally being domestic and doing everything we used to say we were going to do. And then the other day I saw them at the market, and they were doing something silly like picking avocados, and he just looked so happy. Like he had everything he ever wanted. So I thought....well, you know what I thought.” Annabeth had gotten the barrage of texts, after all. “Anyway.” Thalia picked at a non-existent loose thread on the couch. “I decided I was going to be a good friend, you know? I was going to be totally supportive about it. If he and Silena wanted to find some happiness in this crazy world, I was all for it. So I asked about her here and there, and finally he asked me why I was so interested in Silena, like I wanted to get around the No Boys thing by being with a girl, so I just kinda told him he didn’t have to keep it a secret from me...and that was when he shut down. You know, that way he gets these days when he’s hurt or mad and he goes into total avoidance mode so he doesn’t actually get mad? Yeah. He said he wasn’t stealing Beckendorf’s girlfriend just because he wasn’t there, and then he accused me of thinking that he’d dishonour Beckendorf just to get a girlfriend. Not in those words, but basically that’s what he meant.” Annabeth gave Thalia her full attention while she spoke. It was difficult for demigods to sit still for long periods of time, but when Annabeth was really focused on something, she could sit for hours without moving a muscle. Her gray eyes took in everything from the way Thalia hugged her knees protectively to her chest, as if trying to guard herself from getting hurt, to the way she averted her eyes and picked at the couch’s fabric. She’d become pretty good at reading people over the years, and she knew Thalia better than anyone. She could imagine how her friend was feeling in that moment. Thalia had set aside her own feelings to try and support Luke and Silena. Which was way more than Annabeth knew she’d ever be capable of. She’s sooner go for her knife and stab someone if it were Percy. Thalia was being more supportive and selfless than Luke could possibly know, and because of his own ignorance, he’d said the one thing that would hurt her the most. She shook her head, blond ponytail swinging as she did so. “If he had any idea...” She exhaled loudly and gave Thalia a sympathetic look. “I hope you told him that wasn’t the case.” Thalia grimaced at the reminder of her feelings for Luke. It was something she didn’t like to spend a lot of time thinking about, and in fact tried to actively shut away as much as possible. No matter how she’d felt about Luke in the past, she couldn’t feel that way about him now. She was a Hunter, and Hunters were forbidden from falling in love. The problem was, no matter how hard she tried, those feelings just wouldn’t go away. Her heart wouldn’t stop beating harder whenever he put his arms around her, and her breath refused to come normally when he smiled at her. Her dreams kept giving her images of things that Thalia was pretty sure she wasn’t even supposed to know about, let alone wake up aching to do. And judging from Annabeth’s sympathetic look, Thalia could tell the other girl knew exactly how she felt, no matter how she tried to deny it. Bethie had always been so perceptive. “I did, and I think he eventually believed me,” Thalia said. She was silent for a moment, revisiting the argument in her head, and when she spoke again her voice was quieter, as if it could keep certain goddesses from hearing. It was reflexive; even though Artemis wasn’t here, her next words could doom Luke if the goddess ever got wind of them. “He said he hadn’t been interested in having girlfriend once he realized I couldn’t be it.” Thalia kept her voice soft, but Annabeth caught every word. Her face crumpled in response and she reached her hand out to grab a hold of Thalia’s tightly. “Gods, Thal. I know you’ve been struggling. That-” she exhaled. “Hearing that must have just made everything ten times worse. Are you okay?” Thalia held on tightly to Annabeth’s hand in turn and tried to smile, but it came out more like a twisted grimace. "Part of me’s actually relieved. I didn’t know he felt that way. I thought it was just me.” And she hadn’t even realized the true nature of her feelings until she’d thought that Luke was someone else. She was still reluctant to give a name to her feelings, knowing that whatever she ended up calling them, they would be forbidden. And now she had to deal with the idea that Luke felt the same way. “But it’s not like we can do anything about it. It’s too late.” The girls continued to face each other on the couch, their hands linked in between the two of them. Not for the first time since her arrival here, Annabeth was conflicted about this world. On the other hand, here she was safe from Tartarus and Gaia and she and Percy could just be (mostly) normal and happy teenagers. She had Luke back in her life and she had Thalia here with her. But it was also complicated. Thalia was separated from her other family, the Hunters, and things that should have been behind them in the past kept cropping up again. Like Luke and Thalia’s feelings for each other. In their world, Luke was gone, and Thalia had her oath and that’s just the way things were. But here things were different. They were mixed up in ways that they shouldn’t be. For someone like Annabeth who liked things to be neat and orderly, it could be endlessly frustrating. Especially when it meant her best friend was hurting. “This is stupid,” she sighed, her brow furrowed. “It’s not supposed to be like this.” Thalia had to agree on both sentiments. It was stupid. She wasn’t supposed to be feeling these things any more; in fact, she’d joined the Hunters partly to get away from those feelings. And now they were back in full force, maybe even more strongly this time, because when she was twelve she’d never had the kinds of dreams she’d been having lately. But acknowledging it didn’t fix it. She still harboured feelings she wasn’t allowed to have, and now she couldn’t even tell herself to ignore them because it wasn’t as if Luke felt the same anyway. He did, and she didn’t know what to do about that. “At least he’s not looking at me like I’m a puppy kicker anymore,” she said, trying to find the bright side of all this. “And we’re still friends. That’s huge. He says he’s happy trying to make other people happy anyway, so we can just go on like we were. He doesn’t know how I feel.” Even as she said the words, however, Thalia looked troubled. She never used to hide anything from Luke, and if she wanted things to go back to the way they were, she probably shouldn’t be keeping something this big from him. Annabeth regarded Thalia for a moment. Another impossible situation faced them. Thalia knew about Luke’s feelings, but Luke didn’t know about Thalia’s. Sure, Annabeth had known they were there, but Luke was still clueless. Would he want to know something like this? Would it make things easier or more difficult? And would he be upset if he ever found out the girls had kept it from him? Annabeth tried for a small smile. “You’re right, that is huge. It means so much to me that you guys were able to become friends again.” She paused. “Do you want to tell him how you feel?” "Yeah, being friends again is pretty great," Thalia said, unable to keep from smiling slightly at the thought. She saw Luke almost every day now. Knowing that he often forgot to eat, she brought him dinner almost every night. It had gotten to be somewhat of a ritual between them, a chance to decompress and talk about their day. But Annabeth's question still needed an answer, and Thalia didn't have one. Fortunately for her, her best friend was the smartest person she knew. If anybody could help her figure it out, it would be Annabeth. "I don't know," Thalia admitted. "I mean, it's a pretty big thing to keep from him, but no matter what, it's not like we can be together. So I guess it comes down to whether it's better for him to think it's because I don't feel the same, or know that it's because of my oath." Annabeth considered that carefully. She let go of Thalia’s hand and adjusted herself more comfortably on the couch. A deep furrow had emerged on her brow as it always did when she was thinking hard about something. Already she was going over possible scenarios in her mind. “It seems kinder,” she began, “to leave him in the dark. To let things be as they are and maybe give him the chance to eventually move on.” She was sure Thalia could sense the but hanging at the end of her sentence before she even said it. “But I think Luke would want to know.” She flashed back to the last conversation she had with Luke before he died. When she told him she’d only loved him like a brother. “And secrets never stay that way forever.” While Thalia knew that the best thing to do was give Luke a chance to move on - because really, he deserved to be in love with someone who could truly love him back - she couldn't help but clench her fists at the very thought. But the alternative was to dangle something in front of him knowing that he could never have it. Annabeth was right: not telling him would be kinder. Then again, the last time she'd decided to do something for his own good, she'd gotten turned into a tree and he'd tried to destroy the world. She sighed. "Do you think I should tell him?" Annabeth nodded, “I do. It might be the more difficult choice, but I think it’s the better one for the two of you. Even if nothing can come of it. He deserves the truth. And you, Thal, if he knows, then he can’t make hurtful assumptions about you like he did with the Silena thing.” That much was true. And since he’d already made his feelings clear, Thalia didn’t have to worry about how awkward it could be if she told him about hers and he didn’t feel the same, like she used to when she was twelve. And it was only fair that he knew the truth, when he’d put himself out there. “Okay,” she said, taking in a deep breath. “Okay, I’ll tell him.” Then she immediately grimaced, second-guessing herself. “It’s just...he made it sound so trivial. Like, ‘oh, I can’t possibly think about having a girlfriend, I’m too busy making the world a better place’.” Annabeth smiled at that. “Thalia. He was confessing his feelings to a girl who has forsaken love. He wasn’t trying to make it seem trivial. He was protecting his ego.” Oh. Well, that kind of made sense in that context. Thalia made a face. “Boys are stupid,” she announced. “I wish they could just...not be stupid.” Annabeth laughed. “I wouldn’t hold your breath.” She pushed herself up off the couch in one fluid motion. “But until we can find a way to cure them of their stupidity, we’ve always got ice cream.” She headed for the kitchen. “Come on, I’ve got leftover sundae supplies.” Thalia hopped off the couch much less gracefully, but no less quickly. When ice cream was involved, no dawdling was necessary. She was feeling a lot better after her talk with Annabeth, and was ready to move on to a less complicated subject. “Best balm for dealing with anything,” she agreed, and moved a little more quickly to catch up with Annabeth so she could hug her. “Thanks, Bethie. You’re the best.” |