Thalia Grace (wasatree) wrote in welcomethreads, @ 2014-08-19 18:58:00 |
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Entry tags: | luke castellan, thalia grace |
WHO: Thalia Grace and Luke Castellan
WHERE: The demigod apartment
WHEN: Aug 19
WHAT: Not a great reunion
RATING: PG
When Thalia had first seen the apartment she’d been assigned upon arriving, she’d thought it was a mistake. There was no way they’d put her in a four bedroom apartment by herself. But apparently the information on the PDA had been accurate, and so she’d shrugged and accepted it. Unused to having a large space to herself - or any space where she could sleep in the same place two nights in a row - Thalia had kept her stuff mostly to the bedroom she’d chosen for herself, which was convenient once Silena and Charlie and then Annabeth - and Luke - showed up. Thalia wondered if whoever was assigning these spaces had some kind of heads up about who was coming. And if they had a really dark sense of humour. It seemed strange, to be in an apartment. She and Annabeth - and Luke - had once talked about what it would be like to have a place of their own, a place like this, where they could watch TV and get a cat and own stuff that didn’t have to be folded up and shoved into back packs. Now she had it, and Annabeth even shared it with her, but it still felt all wrong. It made her restless and ill at ease in the space, so she decided she was going to try to do some cleaning. She’d never actually tried cleaning an apartment before, but mopping and wiping the table tops couldn’t be that hard, could it? Luke had thus far managed to avoid Thalia entirely. He doubted if she wanted to see him - when he had offered to talk, she hadn’t taken him up on it. Therefore, he made an effort to stay out of her way. When he was in the apartment, he’d mostly kept to himself and stayed in his own room. Today he was coming in from an afternoon of job-hunting, though, and when he walked in the door Thalia was right there in front of him. He couldn’t very well avoid her then, nor could he ignore her. He just stood there for a moment, having a hard time processing the fact that it was really Thalia and she was really here and that he was really here, too. A flash of guilt and pain flared up as he thought back to the last time he had seen her, which led to thoughts of all the wrong he had done and allowed to be done before his death. He wanted, as he had wanted so many times before, to tell her he was sorry for everything. The words froze in his mouth, paralyzed by the fear that she would rather he didn’t speak to her at all, even for that. Just before he came in, Thalia was trying to read the instructions on the cleaner bottle. Tiny don't was hell on dyslexic eyes, and she was seriously considering just squirting the hell out of the table and seeing if that worked. She glanced up when the door opened - and froze. She hadn't talked to Luke since that altercation on the network; Annabeth had convinced her to just stay away from him. And until just now, they'd managed to stay out of each other's way despite sharing an apartment. At the very least, he hadn't tried to slit everyone's throat in their sleep, which was better than what Thalia had expected. She still didn't feel any more kindly towards him, though. He'd once been her best friend, the one person she'd trusted above all else, and one of the people she'd sacrificed her very life for. And then he'd thrown it all away and spat on her sacrifice. There were a lot of things she could've forgiven him for, but not that. She recovered from the shock of seeing him first, and she scowled at him. "What are you looking at?" It was more or less the response Luke expected, and he quickly averted his eyes. “Sorry,” he said, and turned to walk to his room. After all, what else was there to say? Clearly she didn’t even want him looking at her, not that he could blame her for that. The last time they had met, they had been in a fight to the death. He couldn’t expect her to let that go, even if he had killed himself to put things right in the end. He could say he was sorry for everything, but that would probably just make her angrier. He could try to explain, but he couldn’t imagine that she would want to hear it. It was better to just leave her alone. The thing was, silence and avoidance didn't work for Thalia. Her temper was like a flare: it burned bright and hot, and then it was gone. This constant simmering just put her on edge, and she didn't want Luke Castellan to have any effect on her any more. For Annabeth's sake she wasn't going to cram the bottle of oxyclean down his throat, but she wasn't going to just let him walk away, either. "So who came up with the brilliant idea to poison me?" she asked as he started to walk away. "Did you come up with it all by yourself? Or did you get some help from your pal Kronos?" Luke didn’t turn to look at her, but he stopped walking. “It was Kronos,” he replied, just loud enough for her to hear. The guilt that had come washing over him with the reappearance of Thalia and Annabeth in his life was exhausting, and it was evident in his voice. He sounded as tired and sad as he felt, because there wasn’t any point in trying to hide it. “He told me the tree wasn’t really you anymore, that you’d never even feel it, and that once he had the Fleece I could use it to heal you,” Luke went on, since it sounded like she wanted an explanation. “I believed him.” Thalia held onto the cleaner tightly, though it wasn't the only sign that this conversation wasn't easy on her either. Her face was pinched, her blue eyes dark with lingering hurt. "And that would be when you still cared about what happened to me?" she scoffed. "What about Annabeth? What about the fact that poisoning my tree would mean putting her in danger?" “I’d convinced myself that it was all for the greater good,” Luke said. “Bringing down Olympus was supposed to be a great revolution. It wasn’t all about revenge for everything that was screwed up about my life - I thought that in the end, things were going to be better for demigods. That was how it started, anyway.” "And when did it turn into endangering - no, killing - demigods?" Thalia demanded. "How did doing things for the greater good end up with blackmailing Silena into spying on the camp?" She set the bottle down hard on the table and turned to face him fully. All the hurt and anger she'd felt at his betrayal, all those emotions she thought she'd pushed down and out of reach, were bubbling over again. “I don’t know!” Luke had tried to piece it all together a thousand times in Elysium, trying to find the moment when things had changed. He had never been able to find one. “I keep looking back, all the time, looking for when the switch flipped,” he went on, feeling just as helpless and lost as he always did when he thought about those days. “I can’t find it. It was one little wrong thing, then another, and another, and Kronos kept working his way in deeper, and I was convinced everyone was against me and that war was the only way - and that in war, sacrifices had to be made. It makes me sick when I think about it now, but at the time it seemed logical and right.” "Well, it wasn't," Thalia snapped. But that much was obvious, and so inadequate for what he'd done. The problem was, even with all the built up anger, Thalia was finding it hard to keep it up in the face of his dejection. He looked so miserable that she found herself believing him when he'd said that there was nothing she could do or say to him that he hadn't already done to himself. She tried to remind herself that he'd gotten a lot of good people killed, and he'd even threatened to kill Annabeth. She tried to tell herself that he deserved to be that miserable. But the flare of her temper had burned out, and now all she could feel was a deep sense of disappointment. "You were supposed to be happy," she whispered. "I gave up my life so you could be happy." For Luke, her sadness was worse than her anger. It dug even deeper into his heart and made everything hurt just a little more. “I didn’t know how to be happy without you,” he said, his voice just as quiet as hers. “And at the time, I didn’t see it as you giving your life - I saw it as the gods taking it just like they’d taken everything else. I got everything wrong, and I...I’m sorry, Thalia. I’m so sorry for all of it, and I wish I could take it all back, but I can’t, so I’m just...I’m gonna do it right this time. No matter what. I know I can’t ever make up for what I did, but I’m going to do my best to do as much good now as I did evil before because that’s the only thing I know to do now that I’m here.” He sounded so sincere, so regretful over his actions, but Thalia didn’t want to believe that it was. For so long, her anger and hate had kept her together. She’d clung to them on Manhattan Bridge, when she’d looked him straight in the face and saw only gold eyes staring back at her - and not even at her. Kronos’s attention had been on Percy, and Percy only. He hadn’t even spared her a second look. Afterwards, her anger and hate had kept her from falling apart, when Annabeth had told her that Luke had killed himself to stop Kronos. She’d told herself she was glad, that the world was well rid of him, and she kept telling herself that so she wouldn’t have to break down and grieve for the boy she’d once loved so fiercely. Now faced with him and his regret, Thalia tried to hold onto that anger, but it was slipping through her fingers. But she still couldn’t allow herself to believe him or trust him. To do that was to open herself up to hurt again, and she wasn’t willing to put herself in that situation again. “I’ll believe it when I see it,” she told him, voice hard. “And gods help me, if you’re not sincere about this, if you disappoint Annabeth again, I am going to stab you myself. I don’t care what she says.” Luke nodded, just once. “Like I said before, I wouldn’t stop you,” he quietly replied. If she came after him with the kitchen knife right now, he wouldn’t lift a hand to defend himself. In some ways, it would be a relief. Dying hurt, but being dead was a lot easier than being alive. It seemed he was going to live to start the work of redeeming himself; he just wasn’t sure if he was thankful for that or not. “I’ll, ah...I’ll try to stay out of your way,” he concluded, his voice still low. “But if there’s anything you want me to do or not do, just say the word.” Thalia wasn’t sure just how well he could stay out of her way when they shared an apartment, but it was probably the best arrangement they could have, short of one of them moving out. She nodded jerkily and went to put the cleaner back in the cupboard; she wasn’t in a cleaning mood anymore. “Just make sure you don’t disappoint Annabeth again,” she repeated. That was the most important thing at this point. Thalia wasn’t going to let herself run the risk of disappointment, but if Annabeth could be happy, that was the main thing. “I’m going to work,” she announced. “I’ll be back around six.” “Have a good day,” Luke replied, because he didn’t know what else to say. He felt blank and numb, and responding with basic politeness was all he could do. He couldn’t add a “see you later” or anything like that, because he was going to try to make sure she didn’t see him at all. Instead, he finally resumed the walk to his bedroom. There, he could immerse himself for a while in the grief over everything he had lost. Starting anew could begin afterward. |