James Callahan, The Sole Survivor (nevergohome) wrote in welcomethreads, @ 2013-07-14 17:20:00 |
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While Thalia had been thrilled to find her brother here in the strange world that she’d been yanked into, she was less than thrilled to find out what he, Percy and Annabeth had been up to in the war against Gaea. She’d thought her task difficult enough: leading the Hunters in the fight against the Giants while Artemis had disappeared, but her brother and her friends had gone to the Ancient Lands themselves, and now Percy and Annabeth were falling into Tartarus. It was a lot to take in, so when Jason asked that she go out and try to find some food, she was only too happy to take the opportunity to go out for a walk and clear her head. She wasn’t going to let him see how bothered she was, though. “You’re lucky I love you,” she called through the door at him just before she stepped out into the hallway. “I wouldn’t do this for anybody else.” Luke Castellan had been mindfully locking the door to his apartment across the hall when he heard a voice from years out of the past. He turned quickly, and suddenly found himself just staring at her. They had been best friends, once. He’d loved her, like he’d never loved anybody else. Losing her had driven him off the deep in, one of the last straws that took him from resenting the gods to hating them. Unlike Annabeth, he hadn’t gotten to see her one last time or tell her he was sorry for everything he’d done. Nothing had ever been resolved between them. And now here she was. And here he was. In a place that shouldn’t even exist. In apartments across the hall from each other. Thalia was still smiling when she turned away from her door - although that quickly changed when she clapped eyes on the man standing right across the hallway. It was someone she’d never expected to see again. The last time she’d seen him, he’d had golden eyes instead of blue, and spoke with the grating, horrific voice of the Titan who had taken over his body. He was supposed to be dead now. Thalia hadn’t seen him die herself, but Annabeth had told her about it...and about the way he’d dragged himself out of Kronos’s influence and sacrificed himself to stop the Titan from destroying the world - the world he himself had helped bring to the brink of destruction. But here he was, right across the hall from her, and staring at her as if she were the ghost and not him. Thalia realized belatedly that her mouth had dropped open, and she snapped it shut while taking a quick, jerky step back. “How did you get here?” she asked. Her voice was tight in her effort to keep it from wavering. Luke had been her best friend once, and then he’d been a traitor, and now she didn’t know what he was. Annabeth had been happy to see him. He wasn’t sure if Thalia would be or not. Right now she just looked wary - not that Luke blamed her. The last time she’d seen him, he’d been possessed by an evil ancient god due to his own stupid choices. “I, um...there was a portal,” he replied, still looking stunned by the sight of her. “In Elysium. I got pulled through it, and I thought I was on my way to my next life, but...I was here, instead. What about you?” "Same, except I was in the forest," Thalia replied. Her voice sounded to her like it was coming from very far away. Here she was, making small talk to him as if they were just normal neighbors, as if he hadn't once been the most important thing in her life, as if he hadn't once poisoned her and threatened to kill her best friend. She'd thought she'd never see him again after he'd sacrificed himself and went to Elysium, but she'd never thought she'd be yanked to a little town in Maine and be told she was fictional, either. Now she had a chance to ask him all the questions that had plagued her for years, about all the things he'd done, but now that he was standing in front of her none of them came to mind. "So are you yourself again?" she finally managed to ask. That was the most important thing, anyway. He wasn’t really sure about the answer to that question. If she just meant whether he was Kronos...then yeah, sure, he was himself. Was he the person he’d been before she’d been turned into a tree, though? Not a chance. But he wasn’t the person he’d been afterward, either. “Yeah,” he finally said. “I’m myself. I--” He broke off, because he didn’t want to try to explain any more about who he was or wasn’t. There was something else he had to say first, and he looked as though his heart was breaking just trying to get the words out. “Thalia, I’m so sorry. For everything.” She’d been okay up until now. Throughout the war, Thalia had faced him when he’d been possessed by a power-mad Titan bent on revenge and bringing down the world without so much as a flinch. She’d been okay afterwards, too, throwing herself into the Hunt to keep herself distracted in the day, even as dreams haunted her at night. The last time she’d cried, in fact, was when they’d fought at the top of Mount Tamalpais, when her heart shattered and all the hopes and dreams she’d ever harboured of a future with him had been yanked away. But now, with him standing in front of her and finally saying the words she’d longed to hear for so long, she felt all the weight of her lost dreams plummeting down on her. And she couldn’t handle it. She’d spent so long and worked so hard to be okay, to keep on going when the man who had once been the other half of her had betrayed her, that the second she let go she was going to just crumble. She wasn’t ready for that. “Don’t,” she said, slicing her hand down in an almost sideways gesture, as if that would provide a barrier between her and all the feelings Luke was instilling in her. “Just don’t.” She couldn’t look at him; she didn’t want him to see the tears that were pricking at her eyes. “I can’t...I’m glad you’re back, but I can’t do this right now.” Luke could feel his breath freeze in his throat - he thought maybe his heart stopped beating, too. He didn’t know what he had expected as a reaction to his apology. He just knew he had to give it, no matter how hard it was. If Thalia needed it to be done now, though, he could understand that. “Okay,” he said, his voice quiet as he stepped back from her. “It’s okay. I’ll, um...I was just going, anyway. I’ll...I’ll see you around, I guess.” "Yeah," Thalia said, just as quietly. She was still looking away when he started to leave, but it suddenly struck her that the portal that had pulled them here could send them back at any time. This could be the only chance she had to get some answers. She lifted her head. "Wait," she called after him. Luke stopped and turned back around, looking at her with a mix of sadness, wariness, and hope. He didn't know why she might be calling him back - it could be for anything from hugging him to punching him in the face, knowing Thalia. Whatever it was, Luke felt like he owed her. "Yeah?" There were so many things she wanted to say to him, so many questions she wanted to ask. It had been such a long time since those days when they knew each other well enough to know why the other was thinking even before they thought it, and so much had changed, it would take forever to say everything she wanted to. But there was just one thing that was more important than anything else. "Why did you do it?" Luke sighed inaudibly, his eyes closing as he thought back on it all. There had been so many choices he had made, so many that had been the wrong choices, some for good reasons and some not so much. Some hadn’t even seemed like choices when he’d made them, and given that the Fates had come to carry his body to Elysium, maybe they weren’t. Whether they were or not, he still felt the guilt for them, even after his stretch in the final resting place of heroes. “Because I was stupid,” he sadly replied. “And because I wanted to change things and thought it was the only way. And then because I got in way over my head and lost myself. That’s the short version, anyway.” It covered everything and nothing at the same time. It answered all the questions that Thalia could have asked, yet left her feeling no more enlightened than before. "Then give me the long version," she said quietly. "Because I've tried and I've tried, and I've never been able to figure it out." "We can sit down and talk about it if you want," Luke gingerly offered. A moment before she had said she didn't want to do this right now, but it seemed like maybe she had changed her mind. "Or we can do it later. It's gonna be hard for me no matter when we do it, so I'll do whatever works for you." Not that Luke had any problem with the conversation being hard on him. He had never really felt like he belonged in Elysium; taking some punishment besides the simple pain of dying seemed appropriate. Thalia hesitated, glancing back over her shoulder at the closed door of her apartment. She'd promised Jason she'd bring him food, but he could survive if he didn't get it right away. This conversation was long overdue. It wasn't going to be any easier on her, but it was probably better to just get it over with. If nothing else, she'd get closure. "Yeah, okay," she said, turning back to him. "I think there's some kind of diner close by we can go to." "Granny's," Luke confirmed, and chuckled numbly. The whole situation was all still so surreal. "I think it belongs to Red Riding Hood's grandma. It's where I was headed anyway." And now it seemed he was heading there to explain the worst part of his life over pie. Things were either about to get much better for him, or much worse. "Yeah," Thalia said. It was surreal to think that they were surrounded by fairy tale characters, but not so surreal as walking next to her best friend-turned-traitor-turned-dead hero. He was someone she hadn't expected to see until Elysium, if even then. And now, although he was taller than she remembered, they fell right in step with each other, as naturally as they always had. The tense silence between them, however, was nothing like it used to be. Luke didn’t speak again until they’d reached the diner. It was busy - lots of displaced people had dropped in for dinner. They managed to find a table, though, and as they sat Luke realized that they were going to be having a serious, painful conversation in the middle of approximately a million people. At least they all seemed pretty absorbed in their own problems. “You want me to just start from the beginning?” Luke asked. Thalia nodded. She didn't trust herself to speak. The walk here had given her too much time to think about all that she'd lost and all that she was probably never going to get back. She'd thought she had come to terms with that a long time ago, but now she realized she never had: she'd just refused to think about it. And now her past was sitting right across the table from her, dredging all the painful memories she'd tried so hard to quash. Luke looked down at the table, working to get himself together enough that he could do this. He hadn't had to recount the whole story since he had first arrived in Elysium, and even in that place of perfect peace and joy it hadn't been easy. Whatever this place was, it was no Elysium, and Thalia was no neutral audience. "You know about pretty much everything from before I met you, and before you died," he said quietly. "Everything I blamed the gods in general and my father in particular for. Well...your death was the last straw, in a lot of ways. You weren't just my best friend; you were my only friend, and you and Annabeth were the only things in the world that I loved, and all I could see was that the gods had taken you just like they'd taken everything else from me. So I decided then that I wasn't going to let them take anything else, and that someday, I was going to find a way to make them pay for it." He took a deep, ragged breath. It was all so hard to even think about, much less speak aloud. If he hadn't had his time in Elysium, Luke didn't think he would have been able to do it at all. "And if not for Kronos, I would've gotten past it," he said. "I never would've liked Olympus much, but I would've gotten older and smarter and gotten on with my life. Instead, I got him in my dreams, telling me about a world where Olympus would fall and halfbloods wouldn't have to run or get jerked around by their parents anymore, and I could have my revenge on them for what they'd done to me and my friends and my mother. He promised me a better world, and I was stupid and lonely and scared enough to believe him. I thought I was doing the right thing be letting him in and letting him feed on and fuel my anger and pain. I know better now, but when I was fifteen it seemed like the best option I had." "How does an option that involves poisoning me and using Annabeth's faith in you against her ever end up seeming like the best one?" Thalia asked in a low voice. That was the part she didn't understand, the part she kept thinking about during that quest to find Artemis. She could understand how Luke could have turned against the gods. She didn't agree with it, but she understood it. Luke had always harbored a resentment and anger towards the gods that she didn't have, and more than once, before her death, she'd been afraid he would do something stupid because of it. She remembered distinctly that she had told herself to keep an eye on him and make sure that he felt loved enough by her and Annabeth that he wouldn't feel the need to strike out against the gods. But then she'd died and never got a chance to carry that out. Still, she just didn't see how he could have turned his anger and his actions against the people who he claimed to love beyond anything else. "It's hard to understand now, even for me," Luke softly admitted. "But with the poison, he told me that you were just a tree and you'd never feel it, and that I could use the Fleece to heal you when he was done with it, and then you'd be fine. He told me if I helped him, he'd be able to change you back and save you. By that time he was far enough in my head that I didn't question it. And with Annabeth..." Luke closed his eyes against the pain of that memory. That was the worst of it all, especially now. In the end, Annabeth had believed in him in spite of everything he had done wrong. She had saved him, and everyone else in the process, and he had been inches away from killing her. "I thought you and she had turned on me," he said quietly. "Like the gods and everybody else had. I'd convinced myself I was doing it for all of us, and I...I don't know. I'd like to think I wouldn't ever have really hurt her. I look back at everything else I did when he was in my head, though, and I don't know." "How could you have believed that?" she demanded, hurt. The poison she could have forgiven. It was reckless and stupid, but she could've gotten over it. But to be told that he'd so completely lost faith in them that he'd been willing to kill Annabeth? She just couldn't swallow that. "It was supposed to be you and me against the world. What happened to that?" She didn't care how far Kronos had taken over him; it was one truth that should've been unshakeable. The fact that he'd believed it just meant that despite everything they'd gone through, he still believed deep down that she was just another person who would abandon him. "They killed you and turned you into a tree, and I got left alone again," Luke said, nearly choking on the words. "It was just me against the world then. And by the time you got back, I was far enough gone to think you were against me too. I know it was wrong, and I'll probably never stop hating myself for it, but that's what I thought." Thalia sat back in her seat and tilted her head back, as if searching the skies for divine guidance. Nothing came, of course. Even if they'd been back in their world, the gods didn't get involved in their kids' lives like that. She couldn't imagine what a horrible place he must've been to believe himself so completely alone that he'd welcome the influence of a Titan. Still, she thought back to the way he'd taunted her about bringing him back to Zeus, and him coolly standing there with a sword to Annabeth's throat, and she felt the hurt rise up all over again. "Is that what you were thinking when we fought?" she asked. It hurt to even say the words, but she had some perverse desire to know. “That you were the enemy, and that Kronos was the only one who cared?” Luke asked, and then answered quietly. “Yeah, more or less.” It hurt him to say it, too. Looking back, he wondered how he ever could have gotten things so twisted. Just thinking of how he’d hurt his friends, of all the lives he had helped to end, was so powerfully painful that it made him sick. Against his will, tears welled up in his eyes. “I...I’m so sorry, Thalia,” he whispered, barely able to form the words. “And I know that doesn’t make up for anything I did or said. I just...I didn’t know what I was doing when I let him in. I didn’t know how much he’d poison me, or what I’d end up doing because of it. I’d take it all back if I could.” Thalia didn’t say it was okay, because of course it wasn’t. Too many lives had been lost, and too many people had died, for it to ever be okay. But what she was trying to remember was that the person sitting across from her and making all those apologies was one of the people who had been hurt. It wasn’t easy: she could still remember facing him on Manhattan Bridge, when his eyes had been gold and he’d had an army of monsters behind him, and she could still remember fighting desperately for her life and for his soul on top of Mount Tamalpais. She’d won the fight for her life then, but lost the more important one. But she could remember running alongside a train with him, too, laughing with exhilaration as he jumped onto the platform and held out his hand to her to help her out. She remembered wrapping her arms around him for warmth when it was 30 at night, and knowing that no matter how cold it got or how hungry they were, they would be okay because they were together. “I’m glad Annabeth got through to you, in the end,” she said quietly. She’d lowered her head again, but not to look back at him. This conversation was hard enough as it was without having to see all her regrets mirrored on his face. “Me too,” Luke replied, his voice just as quiet as hers. “She’s the real hero, and I owe her my soul.” And no matter what happened now, Luke had sworn to himself that he would never disappoint Annabeth again. She had saved him and everyone else in the process. He owed her too much to ever let her down. Now that they were together and friends again, he was going to be the big brother he should’ve been before. He only hoped that eventually, he could do the same for Thalia. “And we all owe her our lives,” Thalia added, because if Annabeth hadn’t been able to get through to Luke in time, neither of them, nor Jason, nor any of her friends, would be here now. “I heard she’s here,” she said, remembering what the sheriff had told her. Thalia had planned to search for her before she’d been distracted by her brother, and then by Luke. “Have you seen her?” Luke nodded. "She's living with me, actually," he said. "They, ah, gave her the other room in my apartment. Or vice versa, I guess. She, um...she was glad to see me alive. I told her she shouldn't be, but...Bethie's special, I guess." “...oh.” Thalia’s lack of enthusiasm about that idea was obvious. It wasn’t she thought Luke would do anything to hurt Annabeth - she didn’t he would, now - but it was hard to forget how he’d stood there and put a sword to her throat and casually talked about slitting it. Voicing that wasn’t going to get them anywhere though, so she forced a smile. “Yeah, she really is. I should drop by to say hi. I haven’t seen her in months.” “She’d like that,” he said. Luke’s smile was shaky and forced, as well, but he was hopeful nonetheless. Things were a little fragile between him and his old friends, but Luke felt as if they maybe had some ground to stand on now. “Okay.” Thalia played with her fork, hating that she was having so much trouble talking to him. She never had, once. Even when he’d been with Kronos, she’d had no problem finding words for him. Now, it was as if he were a stranger. Worse than a stranger, even. Thalia didn’t have any trouble talking to strangers, either. “So,” she finally said. “What’s it like being yanked out of Elysium?” Luke gave a quiet, rueful laugh. "I dunno," he said. "I'll let you know when I figure it out." Elysium had been weird in its own way. Storybrooke was weird in a different way. He hadn’t ever figured out where he fit in Elysium, and he wasn't sure how he might fit here. He hoped it would all work out one way or another. “Yeah, okay.” There didn’t seem to be anything more to say - at least anything Thalia was willing to say, so she pulled out a few of the bills she’d been given upon arrival here and placed them on the table. “Anyway. I should go. Good luck here.” "Good luck," Luke replied, and wished it didn't feel so final. Thalia sounded like she was saying goodbye. He couldn't blame her for not wanting anything to do with him; he didn't often like himself, either. It still hurt, though. "I'll, um...I'll see you around, I guess." "Yeah." Given that they were right across the hall from each other, and her best friend was living with him, Thalia didn't doubt that they would see each other at one point or another. She just wished it was something to be happy about, instead of just another reminder of how far they'd gotten away from the days when having an apartment with a working fridge was the height of their hopes and dreams. She paused after she got up, not wanting to leave on such a note of finality, but she couldn't think of anything to say. At least, not anything that didn't involve accusations about how much he'd hurt people, or admissions about how much she'd missed him anyway. So she just gave him an uncomfortable smile, and headed out. |