fic: The Three Lives of Luke Castellan [PJO, PG-13, 2/5]
Title: The Three Lives of Luke Castellan
Rating: PG-13
Characters/Pairing: Thalia/Luke
Spoilers: All books, including The Last Olympian.
Disclaimer: I don't own Percy Jackson and the Olympians.
Summary: Thalia Grace encounters Luke Castellan's soul trice over five hundred years. She thinks it's a conspiracy, but, as they say, death cannot stop true love. All it can do is delay it a little while. Futurefic.
Notes: Finally got this finished. Plenty of angst with this chapter.
The Three Lives of Luke Castellan
One - Adam
When Athena asks the Hunters of Artemis to help in a quest to find a lost family heirloom, the last place Thalia Grace expects to find it is at Kennedy Children’s Hospital.
Then again, she also doesn’t expect to find it in the possession of a monster or for her ass to get handed to her quite so well by said monster.
“I think I saw this on an episode of Buffy once,” Thalia grunts, hauling herself to her feet despite her body’s protests of pain. “Except I don’t think she got her butt kicked this badly."
Beside her, Ariel, daughter of Demeter, looks at her with glazed amber eyes. The monster of the week had thrown her pretty hard against the wall right after it had trounced Thalia, and if the look in her eyes is any indication, she probably has a concussion. Good thing they're at a hospital, seeing as though their resident daughter of Apollo had to go and get herself buried under rubble two blocks back.
"What are you talking about? Who's Buffy?" Ariel asks and Thalia is more horrified by this than the fact that her small group of Hunters is getting thrown around the Kennedy Children’s Hospital rooftop by a vicious monster with a magical item that makes it frickin' invisible and thus extremely hard to slay. "Is she a new Hunter?"
"Oh my god, I am so old!" Thalia howls, wanting to kick something. Preferably invisible monster ass.
It never fails to frustrate her every time one of her pop culture references falls on deaf ears, and she’s reminded by the blank stares and snickers from the other Hunters that the things she grew up with are now outdated relics from the twenty-first century - that she’s an outdated relic. She swore she would never become like Zoë Nightshade, with her “thees” and “thous,” but Thalia’s just as bad with her allusions to television series that aren’t even airing on TV Land any more.
Thalia hasn’t changed much in the one hundred and sixteen years since the Battle of New York with her short hair, piercings, dark clothes, and attitude to match. The years flew by at a maniac pace with hunts, another Great Prophecy, and recruiting taking up most of her time, and she barely noticed their passing. Before she knew it, Percy was sick and then dead, and Annabeth with her wrinkles and white hair lasted a few more years before following after him. Nico had died a hero’s death long before either of them, and Rachel Elizabeth Dare had disappeared after the power of the Oracle had been passed on to the next girl. Grover and Tyson were still around - at least, she thought they were - but Thalia was the last of her generation and would be until the end of time.
Unless, of course, she got herself killed by some uppity monster that likes to torture and suck the life out of sick kids, which was starting to look more and more like a possibility.
“THALIA!” Mara screeches as she’s grabbed by her ankle and hoisted into the air. “DO SOMETHING!”
Thalia grabs her bow off her back and notches an arrow, aiming for the space right beside Mara’s kicking right leg. She prays for a quick blessing from Artemis and launches her arrow. A terrible yowl erupts as the arrow sinks into invisible flesh and the monster drops Mara to the floor. Another arrow is launched across the room, knocking the magical heirloom off the monsters head - it’s a faded and familiar Yankees cap.
The Hunters get one look at the monster - something big, dark, and butt ugly - before it crashes through the ceiling and disappears down into the hospital.
“After it!” Thalia commands, pulling Ariel to her feet. “Split up, it should be easy to spot now! Corner it and kill it if you can!”
The girls who haven’t been hurled into walls are already jumping through the hole in the ceiling and Thalia hurries after them, but not before she scoops up the Yankee cap and tucks it into the pocket of her jeans. She is going to have a very long talk with very sharp objects involved with whatever blasted Jackson-Chase descendent let this out of their possession.
While her most of her Hunters focus on the fourth and third floors, Thalia goes down to the second floor, kicking open closed doors, checking under beds, and making sure not to step on any of the mortals collapsed on the floor or draped over furniture. The monster had put some sort of sleeping enchantment on the hospital - it was the magic that had alerted the Hunters to the hospital in the first place and conveniently, the object of their quest had been there as well.
All the machines are still in working order, but a few of them aren’t registering any signals from the patients they’re attached to. From the looks of things, this floor is the place where all the really sick kids are and the monster’s main feeding ground. Thalia really doesn’t want to be here when the spell wears off and people wake up to realize their kids are dead.
After finding nothing but sleeping mortals in the last forty-nine rooms, Thalia is enormously surprised when she glances in the last room at the end of hall and finds the occupant of the room wide awake. At first, she thinks it might be a trick of the Mist, but when the image of a little boy propped up in bed and reading a book doesn’t fade or transform into a fanged monstrosity, she decides the monster must’ve just been sloppy with his enchantments.
“Huh,” Thalia says, lowering her bow and walking into the room. Even if he’s a boy, she still has a duty to make sure he isn’t hurt. “You okay, kid?”
He doesn’t look like he can be more than seven years old, although it’s hard to tell when his blankets are swamping him. He’s small and skinny with an unhealthy, pale gleam to his skin, and there’s a green cap over his head where his hair should be.
Cancer patient, Thalia thinks miserably.
“Would I be here if I was?” he says snottily, not looking up. “What a dumb question.”
Thalia bristles instantly. Sick kid or not, she’s the only one who’s supposed to be copping attitude in the room.
“I didn’t mean…you know, your…er - ”
“Leukemia? Spit it out already,” Cancer Boy interrupts, turning a page forcefully. “I’m not going to cry each time someone brings up the fact I’m diseased.”
“Well excuse me for trying to be sensitive, you stupid kid!”
“Wow, you just called a dying kid stupid. I hope that makes you feel better about yourself.”
Thalia grits her teeth and resists the urge to go find the monster and demand it suck out Cancer Boy’s life before she kills it. She hasn’t been this annoyed in such a short time by anyone in several years, probably because she doesn’t hang out with men anymore.
Speaking of the monster…
An inhuman howl fills the air as something heavy drops on the floor above them, shaking dust from the ceiling. Thalia curses under her breath, suddenly reminded that she has more important things to be worrying about than arguing with a seven-year-old cancer patient, and starts backing out of the room.
“What was that?” Cancer Boy asks, finally looking up from his book and at the ceiling. There’s a tremor in his voice that makes Thalia pause, and she wonders how (or if) the Mist is hiding this situation from him.
“Monster,” Thalia says because she’s probably never going to see Cancer Boy after this moment. “And I’ve got to go slay it, so if you’ll excuse me…”
Thalia turns to go, but once again she halts because of the boy in the bed.
“You’re a monster slayer?” he asks and she can hear the sneer in his voice. “Yeah right.”
She glances over her shoulder, ready to tell him exactly how many unpleasant ways she can kill him with her pinkie finger, and notices he’s turned his attention away from the ceiling and onto her for the first time. A second later, she notices the color of his eyes.
Thalia actually feels herself go pale as her world slides out from under her. Her limbs go numb from shock and her knees grow so weak that she has to grasp the doorframe as she sinks to the floor. She’s suddenly a hundred years in the past and eleven years old again, trying to attack a boy with blonde hair and blue eyes for the first time…
“Luke,” she whispers, hardly able to get the words out because of the sudden, sharp ache in her chest. Thousands of memories and emotions, long forgotten or pushed to the dark recesses of her heart, come rushing back and Thalia has to fight to not to dissolve into a puddle of sobs on the hospital room floor.
He’s back, he’s back, he’s back -
The boy who has Luke Castellan’s blue eyes wrinkles his nose and looks at her like she’s insane.
“No, I’m Adam,” he says, turning back to his book. “Stupid.”
*
Thalia has no idea how she got out of Luke’s reincarnation’s room at Kennedy Children’s Hospital that day with the monster. She thinks the other Hunters must’ve found her, just staring at him like a lunatic, and dragged her out because the next thing she remembers is Mara shaking her to her senses back at their camp outside the city.
She also briefly remembers Luke’s reincarnation saying something like, “Take her back to the crazy ward already, geez! This isn’t a zoo!” when the Hunters arrived to pick her up, which is why she finds herself hovering outside of his room at Kennedy Children’s Hospital a few days later.
Not so she can spy on Luke’s reincarnation - because why on Earth would she care about that? Closed life chapter, remember? - but so she can set him straight on the whole thinking she’s a mental patient thing. Because she hasn’t turned crazy without him and he’s an idiot for even thinking that. She was just shocked, that’s all, shocked that he had big enough balls to come back and she really wants to clobber him for even thinking she’s the crazy one -
Oh, who is she kidding? She’s totally there to spy on Luke’s reincarnation, just to make sure he’s not plotting to overthrow Olympus or poisoning magical trees with old friends stuck inside them or abducting tourists on a cruise ship when he’s not, you know, busy dying of cancer or anything.
Thalia Grace, daughter of Zeus, has to be the biggest asshole on the planet right now.
She lets out a huge sigh and slumps against the wall, looking up at the ceiling. Doctors and nurses pass by without looking at her once, thanks to her manipulation of the Mist, leaving her alone with her thoughts.
This whole finding Luke’s reincarnation thing has thrown her through the wringer these last few days. She’s been jumpy and scatterbrained during the day, and waking from nightmares of the past during the night. Her Hunters have noticed (especially Mara, that backstabbing Poseidon spawn) but she laughed it off as being hit too hard in the head by the monster. She’s just thankful Lady Artemis is busy with events at Olympus throughout the month and isn’t with them right now because Thalia really doesn’t want to explain to her mistress why a little boy has affected her so much.
It hurts her pride to admit it, but Thalia has no idea how to deal with this reincarnation business. Luke is the first one she’s ever encountered and even then, it’s different because it’s Luke, the only boy who kissed her and then became a murdering dick because he couldn’t get over himself and his stupid destiny.
Repression and time have not been kind to her memories of Luke, and she was startled to find her feelings of betrayal and rage still burned as bright as they did the day of his funeral. She can’t get the image of Luke as anything more than a bloodthirsty, gold-eyed Titan out of her head, and the urge to sock him a good one isn’t helping anything either.
Thalia wasn’t lying when she told Annabeth years and years ago that reincarnation wasn’t his style; Luke didn’t (or doesn’t?) like to do the same things twice and reincarnation would be the ultimate form of a duplicate job. She isn’t prepared for this, and she hasn’t the faintest clue of how she’s supposed to treat the kid lying in the bed in the room behind her. Does she treat him like Luke and vent her hundred year’s worth of rage on him? Or does she act like she has no idea who he is or what he’s done, and treat him like she’d treat like she would any other boy?
Granted, either option wouldn’t be the best way of going about things, but she’s not going to solve anything by standing around and moping about it…
Taking another deep breath and gathering her courage, Thalia ducks into the room.
Nothing has changed since she first encountered him. His room is depressingly bare and he’s alone in his bed, reading again. She notices a worn stuffed bear on the bed stand and for the first time, she wonders where his parents are. If she had a child stuck in a hospital, she’d be there every second. It would completely suck if Luke got shitty parents two lives in a row.
She clears her throat and Luke’s reincarnation looks up. His shadowed eyes widen for a moment and then settle back into a cool, unimpressed stare. What did he say his name was again? Oh, right. Adam.
“I’m not crazy and I’m not a patient here,” Thalia says before he can make some obnoxious remark. “Just so you know.”
He isn’t even fazed, like weird girls frequently come into his hospital room to declare their sanity to him.
“Then who are you?”
“I’m your…uh…” Thalia says eloquently, wishing she would’ve thought this visit out a bit more thoroughly. Her eyes glance upon the only picture in the room - a sickening painting of a fat cherub - and inspiration strikes. “I’m your guardian angel.”
Adam stares at her for a long, unsettling moment, and then says matter-of-factly, “Guardian angels don’t use doors. Or wear black fingernail polish.”
Thalia wants to punch him. He’s definitely Luke Castellan’s reincarnation.
“How do you know? Are you an angel?” Thalia replies, approaching his bed. She drags one of the nearby chairs to the side of the bed and plops down in it. Adam watches her warily.
“No,” he admits grudgingly. “But I don’t need guardian angels. It’s past visiting hours anyway and I want to read.”
Thalia raises an eyebrow in interest. Luke was never a good reader, mostly because of the combination of ADHD and dyslexia, but also because he liked to be the one inspiring the stories, not reading them.
“What are you reading?”
“If you’re my guardian angel, shouldn’t you know that already?” Adam snaps, trying to hide the cover under his blankets, but Thalia catches sight of the title anyway.
“Ew, Stories of the Egyptian Gods for Children?” she makes a face. “Those Egyptian kids suck. Couldn’t you have at least gone with the Greeks?”
“I was the only one in my class who knew who Osiris and Isis were,” he replies defensively. “Besides, everyone likes the Greek gods, and I think they’re stupid and boring.”
Thalia wonders if she’s imagining the slight resentment she hears in his voice when he talks about the Greek gods. Do reincarnations have memories of their past lives or is living again just like one giant moment of déjà vu? She wonders how much Adam remembers of his life of Luke, who he -
She cuts the thought off before she can finish it. It doesn’t matter if he remembers or not. It’s not going to change anything and he’d be the same Luke as he always was.
“You must be reading the wrong stories. The Greeks are anything but boring,” Thalia says, leaning back in the chair and propping her feet on his bed. He glares at her and tries to shove her feet off. “I could tell you some of the good ones, if you want.”
Adam pauses, his hands on her left foot.
“Really?”
Maybe it’s the fact that he’s Luke’s reincarnation and she’s tied to him no matter what, or maybe it’s because she hasn’t talked to anyone who isn’t a member of the Hunters in a long time. Mostly, she thinks she offered to tell him stories because he’s a lonely kid in the hospital and she can recognize the fear behind his bravado. He needs the company.
“Sure. You ever hear the story about Jason and the Argonauts?”
Adam lets go of her feet, sits back in his bed, and listens.
*
And that’s how their visits go during the two and half weeks the Hunters are in the area. Thalia shows up whenever she can get away from the Hunters, usually right after dinner and visiting hours are over; she and Adam exchange witty barbs (well, witty enough for a seven year old anyway) until he gets tired of it and asks her to tell a story. She tries not to tell him any stories that might draw on old memories, but he gets a book from his parents after her second visit and she’s forced to tell him some of the other ones.
Sometimes he falls asleep during the first story, but most of the time he stays awake long afterward asking her questions and generally being a little brat about things. Thalia leaves when he falls asleep or whenever his medicine makes him unpleasant.
The Hunters take note of her absences right away. Most of them know enough not to say anything to her about it, but Mara, daughter of Poseidon, always likes to pick a fight with Thalia over something or the other as children of the Big Three are wont to do. Percy must’ve been the one exception to the rule because Thalia always wants knock Mara’s block off…well, whenever she sees her which is everyday since they’re tentmates.
When Thalia comes back on the third day, Mara’s sitting on top of her sleeping bag and waiting for her with narrowed green eyes.
“I know what you’re up to,” Mara says. “And you should probably stop it.”
Thalia scoffs. It doesn’t surprise her that Mara’s taken the time to spy on her; it wouldn’t be the first time she stuck her big nose someplace it didn’t belong.
“I think you forgot who wears the silver tiara in this outfit. She’s in this tent and I’ll give you a hint: she’s not you.”
“And that person with a silver tiara needs to be reminded that she’s not doing her duty by hanging by the bedside of a sick boy all day,” the other girl replies tightly. “What would Lady Artemis say if she found out her lieutenant breaking her vow?”
Thalia throws her bow and quiver onto her sleeping bag, and starts pulling off her jacket, keeping her back turned. Mara’s trying to provoke her and the longer she doesn’t look at her, the longer Mara’s face keeps its form.
“He’s seven and he’s dying. I hardly think it counts.”
“I think you and I both know this is more than keeping a dying kid company. I’ve heard your nightmares. You think this kid is the reincarnation of whatever guy made you join the Hunters in the first place.”
Thalia spins around and points her finger in Mara’s face.
“Shut up! You don’t know anything, you stupid Squid Spawn!”
“What you’re doing isn’t fair!” Mara shouts back, launching herself to her feet. “To us, to him, to yourself! You’re visiting this kid, thinking one day he’s going to look at you like he really knows you and he’s not, Thalia! He’s a completely different person! Do you even think of him in any other way instead of somebody else’s reincarnation?”
Thalia opens her mouth and then closes it just as fast, her temper dying. There’s no glint of triumph in Mara’s eyes when she catches the look of guilt cross Thalia’s face, however.
It’s true enough. She thinks of him as Adam, but she’s always waiting for a sign that it’s really Luke in there so she can pounce. When he does something that reminds her of Luke, she gets standoffish and mean, and she’s seen the confusion in Adam’s eyes. It’s never bothered her until now, and she hates Mara even more for being concerned about her for once instead of just being a bitch.
“If you’re going to keep doing this, you can’t treat the kid like that. He has done nothing wrong and he’s got enough problems on his plate without having your unresolved angst to deal with. So get over yourself and be a real guardian angel for this kid,” Mara finishes, crossing her arms over her chest. When Thalia says nothing after a moment, she starts to twitch a little bit. “Aren’t…aren’t you going to punch me or something?”
“Not this time,” Thalia says evenly. “But don’t get used to it.”
Mara’s advice doesn’t change the way she interacts with Adam completely. It makes her more aware of what she says and does, certainly, but Adam’s personality is so similar to Luke’s it’s hard to distinguish between the two of them.
Everything comes to a head on the fifth night, though, when she arrives and Adam is in the midst of a terrible nightmare. He’s trashing back and forth, pulling at the intravenous lines in his arms, and whimpering softly. Even though she knows better, she shakes him awake and he looks at her with wild, scared blue eyes.
“Th - Thalia?” he says, his forehead knitting in confusion. “What…?”
“Nightmare. You okay?” she asks, sitting back in her chair.
“Yes,” he says, looking away from her and at his hands. It takes her a moment to realize he’s embarrassed that she witnessed one of his nightmares. She almost rolls her eyes. Boys and their pride.
“Hey, it’s okay. Everyone gets nightmares.”
She pats him on the hands awkwardly, hoping that will give him some comfort.
“Not like mine.”
A little shiver goes down her spine at the tone of his voice. It’s dark and dangerous, not emotions a seven year old should have.
“Do you want to tell me about them?” she asks slowly.
He sighs and looks out at the window at the sun dipping below the city skyline. He doesn’t say anything and Thalia figures that’s a definite “no” to that idea.
“Well, I brought some cards if you want to play a game today - ”
“There was a shadow in my dream,” Adam interrupts, keeping his eyes away from her. “A shadow in a pit, and it made me…do things. Really bad things. I think I knew it was evil, but I did them anyway to…to get even or something.”
Thalia pales, instinctively leaning back as far as she can in her chair to put some distance between the two of them. Those weren’t any nightmares - from what Adam was describing, his nightmares were Luke’s memories of his time with Kronos. Thalia’s extremely harsh side thinks it’s good he doesn’t get a clean slate just because he gets a new life and that he’ll continue to suffer for everything he’s done.
Another part, the part that’s growing to love Adam as the little brother she never had, thinks it’s completely unfair that he has to go through all of this on top of having leukemia. Sure, Luke racked up some seriously bad karma in his past life, but the disease and the years in the hospital has to be punishment enough.
“That’s not you, Adam, and it’s never going to be you,” Thalia says, surprised by how much vehemence is in her voice. “They’re just dreams.”
“But…but what if that was me?” He finally looks at her, his eyes wide and desperate, and lower lip trembling. “Don’t you ever have that feeling that you’ve done something before? That’s what the dreams feel like. I - I was a bad person, Thalia, and I don’t want to be that person!”
“Then don’t be,” she replies softly. Even though she wants to look away from him because seeing those eyes and hearing about his nightmares just makes her see Luke instead of Adam, she knows he needs reassurance more than she does. “You always have a choice, Adam. Don’t listen to the shadows, don’t despair because the road is a lot harder than you thought it would be; don’t blame anyone for your lot in life, don’t forget who your friends are and why they’re important to you. And most of all, just…don’t be bitter, no matter what happens. If you keep that in mind, you won’t be that bad person from your dreams. You’ll just be you.”
Adam’s eyes are glistening with tears as he croaks, “Really? You believe that?”
“Yes.”
Adam launches himself out of the bed at her and wraps his bony little arms around her in the first hug Thalia’s gotten in decades. She can feel his shoulders shuddering as he starts to cry and she pats him on the back less awkwardly than she did than before.
And as she rocks him back to sleep Thalia finds, to her surprise, she really does believe that.
*
When the two of them are together, they rarely talk about his leukemia, but it always comes up every now and then. From what she gathers from his thinly veiled comments (and the medical records she stole one night), Adam has been in and out of the hospital since he was two years old. Chemotherapy worked once and then he went into remission a few months ago. He’s been waiting for a bone marrow transplant and has been getting steadily worse since then. The doctors only gave him a few more months if he didn’t get the transplant.
About a week and half into her visits, Thalia catches one of the nurses making a remark to Adam’s mother that his stats have started to pick up and he’s begun to make a turnaround. The doctors can't explain it, but Adam’s mother, who looks far too old for her age, doesn’t need an explanation. She sinks into a chair and covers her face with shaking hands; Thalia feels a moment of remorse for thinking Adam’s parents didn’t care. It couldn’t be easy, always feeling like you’re about to lose your child that you’ve barely gotten to know.
Thalia likes to think that it’s her visits that have helped him recover. Ever since the their talk about the nightmares, Adam has been much livelier and acting much more like the seven year old boy he should be.
So it comes a complete shock to all of them about five days later when Adam starts coughing and he’s suddenly too weak and tired to get out of bed. The doctors hurry to his side and make a quick diagnosis: pneumonia.
Adam’s mother collapses again at the news, but this time it’s out of utter despair. Thalia doesn’t understand what’s wrong. She had pneumonia before and she came out of it just fine. Most kids come out of pneumonia just fine, don’t they? But Adam’s not most kids, and most kids don’t already have leukemia on top of everything else.
His cheeks start losing whatever color they gained and become worse than before, sunken and grey. His breath rattles in his chest when he sleeps, which is all he does some days, and his eyes dull to a less brilliant shade of blue. He doesn’t talk to her much, but she stays by his side and tells him the Greek myths until the clouds begin to lighten.
Thalia isn’t sleeping well and Mara sees the darkness in her eyes when she returns to camp each night, but doesn’t say or do anything more than offer to cover her patrol shift the next day.
The night before Lady Artemis is due back, Adam gets worse. When Thalia appears in the hospital for the night, she overhears Adam’s doctor telling his parents that if his fever doesn’t go down, he probably isn’t going to last the night. Adam’s mother accepts this with a jerky nod, but his father is the one who collapses into one of wicker chairs in the lobby and starts sobbing.
Terror seizes her heart and Thalia’s stomach churns in misery. This isn’t fucking fair. Adam’s just a little kid, and he has to die like this? He hasn’t even gotten a chance to really live yet. This is a shitty excuse for a life, even for Luke’s reincarnation.
Adam’s room is dark and quiet except for the beeping of the various monitors beside the bed. Thalia forgoes her usual chair beside the bed and climbs up in it to sit beside his sleeping form. She wraps his sweaty little hands in hers and places a hand on his burning forehead.
“I’m here Adam. It’s all right,” she says, her voice tight with unshed tears.
Her voice causes him to stir and after a moment, he cracks his eyes open, looking miserable, tried, and dying. She’s seen this look before, but it’s much more painful seeing it in those blue eyes. She wonders if this how Luke looked when he died…
“Thalia,” Adam says so softly she has to strain to hear it.
“Hi,” she whispers, trying to smile for him and be strong like a guardian angel should. But Thalia’s only a half-blood and even she doesn’t have the strength to remain unaffected - her bottom lip trembles with emotion. “You - you don’t look so good, kid.”
“I…I was dreaming,” he says, ignoring her quip. There’s a focused, energized look on his face that she’s never seen before and certainly not in the last few days. “Of you.”
“Was it nightmares? Because I know I’m pretty scary - ”
“No. They’re…nice. They’ve always been nice.”
Thalia’s hair stands up at the back of her neck, and she drops her attempt at being playful. She knows Adam’s nightmares were a result of Luke’s worst memories, but she hadn’t though anything about his nice memories surviving reincarnation.
“You’ve dreamed of me before?” she asks, leaning in close to him. Maybe she’s thinking this through too much, maybe he just started dreaming of her after she visited for the first time…
Adam nods as best he can, his face contorting with pain for a moment. Thalia tightens her grip on his hand, desperate to keep him anchored to her.
“Since I was little, in the hospital for the first time,” he whispers. “That’s how I know you weren’t lying…about being my guardian angel.”
Thalia stares at him, completely at a loss for words. Out of all the memories that could bring him comfort when he was alone or scared, the ones that come to him are the ones of her? What can she say to that?
“I’m sorry I was mean to you. I just thought guardian angels only showed up when people were about to die, and I didn’t want to die. But I’m glad…I’m glad I met you first.”
“I would’ve found you sooner if I knew where you were, Adam,” she says fiercely, and she means it with all her heart. “And you’re not going to die. You’re…you’ve just got a little cold, that’s all. You’re so strong, you’ll pull through this and you’ll grow up and…and… ”
Adam squeezes her hand comfortingly as her voice breaks.
“Thank you, Thalia.”
She ducks her head, trying to hide her tears from him. The two of them don’t say anything for a very long time, and Thalia wonders if he’s fallen back to sleep and this is the last time she’ll talk to him. She wonders if she should leave so his parents be with him instead, but she even the thought of leaving in what could be the last moments of his life hurts more than she can bear.
“Thalia,” he asks quietly, breaking the silence at last. “What’s dying like?”
“It’s…it’s not too bad, I suppose,” Thalia replies. She supposes he wouldn’t remember what dying had been like in his last life and she wouldn’t want him to either. “I wouldn’t know. The only time I came close to dying, I got turned into a pine tree instead.”
Adam’s eyes widen comically and for a moment, they’ve gone back in time to when she was regaling him with stories about the Olympians and her fellow half-bloods, when he still had a chance at getting out of this stupid place.
“A tree?”
She nods. “Before you came along, I was a guardian angel to a little girl and…and another boy. They got into trouble, and I saved them.”
“By turning into a pine tree,” Adam says skeptically and he’s stronger in this moment than he has been in days. “You are the worst guardian angel of all time.”
“I never claimed to be otherwise,” she laughs.”I would’ve turned into a big oak tree for you.”
Their moment of relative normality passes and is broken by a series of shivers that overtake Adam’s frail body. The monitors near him go wild, and Thalia backs away as the nurses rush in to attend to him. She takes this time to compose herself by wiping her tears on the sleeves of her coat and watching the medical staff work. They leave once Adam has fallen back into a fitful rest, one of them muttering about fluid in Adam’s lungs.
It finally hits Thalia that she’s watching someone she cares about die a slow and very painful death, and she could do something about this.
She could run back to the Hunters camp and force one of the Apollo daughters to heal Adam; surely they could fix the fluid in his lungs and give him more time. She could go to Apollo himself and beg for Adam’s life, to free him of his leukemia and let him be a normal boy for a change. It doesn’t have to be this way!
But instead of being strong, grief overcomes her and keeps her by his side. She doesn’t want to leave and for him to wake without her there. She lost her first chance to be with him as he lay dying and nothing in the world is going to make her give up her second chance, even the slim hope of saving him.
Thalia returns to her spot on Adam’s bed, cupping his hand in hers, and praying to every god she knows for some kind of miracle. Adam’s parents float in and out of the room throughout the next few hours, but they take no notice of her. Even without the Mist manipulation, they probably would’ve been too lost in their grief to notice anything but their son.
Adam wakes for the last time around midnight. His parents aren’t in the room but he only seems to have one thing on his mind anyway: her.
“Thalia,” he whispers, startling her.
She notices there’s something different about his voice, something that isn’t caused by the medication or his illness. Thalia looks up from her study of their entwined hands, and notices the difference extends to Adam’s eyes. He’s looking at her like he knows her; really knows her, not just as his idiot of a guardian angel -
Realization hits her like a lightning strike and she nearly falls off the bed.
“Luke?” she gasps, the throbbing gap in her chest expanding into excruciating chasm. She can hardly breathe from the ache. “Luke?”
He nods slowly. Adam’s body must be at death’s door if Luke’s spirit can take control, and that pains her more than anything. She’s grown to love Adam, not just the shell housing Luke’s body, but as a completely different person with his own strengths and weaknesses. She can’t handle losing two people at once, even if one is the stupid traitor her heart can’t seem to get over -
“Adam - Luke, I can save you!” she bursts out, tears streaming down her cheeks. “I can have someone heal you. Just, please, stay strong, for a few minutes! I can…!”
She trails off as she feels Adam’s cold and clammy hand on her cheek. She doesn’t know where he’s found the strength to comfort her when he’s dying.
“Has to be this way,” he replies with Adam’s weak voice. “Not my destiny this time. Be strong. Don’t - don’t be bitter, Thalia.”
Thalia’s heart stops for a nanosecond.
Luke heard her.
Luke heard her. Not only had he heard her, but he listened to her well enough to spit back her own advice when she needed it most. It’s the fact that he still cares is what makes her tears turn into hoarse sobs.
“I - I can’t. I can’t do this again, please stay. Please.”
Thalia has never begged for anything in her life, not even to be saved by her father that one time, and Luke knows this and doubtlessly isn’t pleased that she’s stooped this low just to save his miserable life. The hand on her cheek grows stronger for a moment.
“I have…two more times,” he murmurs. “I’ll find you again. Promise.”
“You better do better than your last promise.”
She doesn’t know how her emotional baggage managed to escape its confines in the dark regions in her heart and find its way into this situation. Adam’s eyes harden, but not with dislike or disgust - with determination.
“I will…Forgive me?”
One hundred and sixteen years.
That’s how long she’s had to carry every last memory and feeling from everything leading up to the Battle of New York. She’s the last of her generation, the last to hold on to the anger and the betrayal, and she’s damn tired of being the one to carry it all. It’s taken too much time for some things to be forgotten and forgiven, and it’s held her back from being the person she’s always wanted to be.
“Yes. Of course,” she says, feeling the pulse in his hand beginning to slow. “Just find me again, Luke Castellan. Find me and we’ll make everything all right.”
He smiles faintly and his blue eyes drift closed. Thalia holds his hand until the tiny pulse comes to a complete stop and Adam dies.
“I’ll be waiting for you,” she whispers, pressing a tiny kiss to the knuckles of his cooling hand.
She flees as the doctors and Adam’s parents come into the room, and finds a nice, dark corner outside of the hospital to sob her aching heart out.
She doesn’t think about it. Not when she returns to came with red, puffy eyes and looking like the living dead. Not when she greets Lady Artemis, who simply stares at her and then sends her on her way. Not when she bumps into Mara and the other girl gives her a hug. Not even when she crawls into her sleeping bag, curls into miserable little lump, and cries herself to sleep.
As she closes her eyes, all Thalia can do is hope the next one hundred and sixteen years pass as quickly as the first.
Part Two: Jake.
Rating: PG-13
Characters/Pairing: Thalia/Luke
Spoilers: All books, including The Last Olympian.
Disclaimer: I don't own Percy Jackson and the Olympians.
Summary: Thalia Grace encounters Luke Castellan's soul trice over five hundred years. She thinks it's a conspiracy, but, as they say, death cannot stop true love. All it can do is delay it a little while. Futurefic.
Notes: Finally got this finished. Plenty of angst with this chapter.
The Three Lives of Luke Castellan
One - Adam
When Athena asks the Hunters of Artemis to help in a quest to find a lost family heirloom, the last place Thalia Grace expects to find it is at Kennedy Children’s Hospital.
Then again, she also doesn’t expect to find it in the possession of a monster or for her ass to get handed to her quite so well by said monster.
“I think I saw this on an episode of Buffy once,” Thalia grunts, hauling herself to her feet despite her body’s protests of pain. “Except I don’t think she got her butt kicked this badly."
Beside her, Ariel, daughter of Demeter, looks at her with glazed amber eyes. The monster of the week had thrown her pretty hard against the wall right after it had trounced Thalia, and if the look in her eyes is any indication, she probably has a concussion. Good thing they're at a hospital, seeing as though their resident daughter of Apollo had to go and get herself buried under rubble two blocks back.
"What are you talking about? Who's Buffy?" Ariel asks and Thalia is more horrified by this than the fact that her small group of Hunters is getting thrown around the Kennedy Children’s Hospital rooftop by a vicious monster with a magical item that makes it frickin' invisible and thus extremely hard to slay. "Is she a new Hunter?"
"Oh my god, I am so old!" Thalia howls, wanting to kick something. Preferably invisible monster ass.
It never fails to frustrate her every time one of her pop culture references falls on deaf ears, and she’s reminded by the blank stares and snickers from the other Hunters that the things she grew up with are now outdated relics from the twenty-first century - that she’s an outdated relic. She swore she would never become like Zoë Nightshade, with her “thees” and “thous,” but Thalia’s just as bad with her allusions to television series that aren’t even airing on TV Land any more.
Thalia hasn’t changed much in the one hundred and sixteen years since the Battle of New York with her short hair, piercings, dark clothes, and attitude to match. The years flew by at a maniac pace with hunts, another Great Prophecy, and recruiting taking up most of her time, and she barely noticed their passing. Before she knew it, Percy was sick and then dead, and Annabeth with her wrinkles and white hair lasted a few more years before following after him. Nico had died a hero’s death long before either of them, and Rachel Elizabeth Dare had disappeared after the power of the Oracle had been passed on to the next girl. Grover and Tyson were still around - at least, she thought they were - but Thalia was the last of her generation and would be until the end of time.
Unless, of course, she got herself killed by some uppity monster that likes to torture and suck the life out of sick kids, which was starting to look more and more like a possibility.
“THALIA!” Mara screeches as she’s grabbed by her ankle and hoisted into the air. “DO SOMETHING!”
Thalia grabs her bow off her back and notches an arrow, aiming for the space right beside Mara’s kicking right leg. She prays for a quick blessing from Artemis and launches her arrow. A terrible yowl erupts as the arrow sinks into invisible flesh and the monster drops Mara to the floor. Another arrow is launched across the room, knocking the magical heirloom off the monsters head - it’s a faded and familiar Yankees cap.
The Hunters get one look at the monster - something big, dark, and butt ugly - before it crashes through the ceiling and disappears down into the hospital.
“After it!” Thalia commands, pulling Ariel to her feet. “Split up, it should be easy to spot now! Corner it and kill it if you can!”
The girls who haven’t been hurled into walls are already jumping through the hole in the ceiling and Thalia hurries after them, but not before she scoops up the Yankee cap and tucks it into the pocket of her jeans. She is going to have a very long talk with very sharp objects involved with whatever blasted Jackson-Chase descendent let this out of their possession.
While her most of her Hunters focus on the fourth and third floors, Thalia goes down to the second floor, kicking open closed doors, checking under beds, and making sure not to step on any of the mortals collapsed on the floor or draped over furniture. The monster had put some sort of sleeping enchantment on the hospital - it was the magic that had alerted the Hunters to the hospital in the first place and conveniently, the object of their quest had been there as well.
All the machines are still in working order, but a few of them aren’t registering any signals from the patients they’re attached to. From the looks of things, this floor is the place where all the really sick kids are and the monster’s main feeding ground. Thalia really doesn’t want to be here when the spell wears off and people wake up to realize their kids are dead.
After finding nothing but sleeping mortals in the last forty-nine rooms, Thalia is enormously surprised when she glances in the last room at the end of hall and finds the occupant of the room wide awake. At first, she thinks it might be a trick of the Mist, but when the image of a little boy propped up in bed and reading a book doesn’t fade or transform into a fanged monstrosity, she decides the monster must’ve just been sloppy with his enchantments.
“Huh,” Thalia says, lowering her bow and walking into the room. Even if he’s a boy, she still has a duty to make sure he isn’t hurt. “You okay, kid?”
He doesn’t look like he can be more than seven years old, although it’s hard to tell when his blankets are swamping him. He’s small and skinny with an unhealthy, pale gleam to his skin, and there’s a green cap over his head where his hair should be.
Cancer patient, Thalia thinks miserably.
“Would I be here if I was?” he says snottily, not looking up. “What a dumb question.”
Thalia bristles instantly. Sick kid or not, she’s the only one who’s supposed to be copping attitude in the room.
“I didn’t mean…you know, your…er - ”
“Leukemia? Spit it out already,” Cancer Boy interrupts, turning a page forcefully. “I’m not going to cry each time someone brings up the fact I’m diseased.”
“Well excuse me for trying to be sensitive, you stupid kid!”
“Wow, you just called a dying kid stupid. I hope that makes you feel better about yourself.”
Thalia grits her teeth and resists the urge to go find the monster and demand it suck out Cancer Boy’s life before she kills it. She hasn’t been this annoyed in such a short time by anyone in several years, probably because she doesn’t hang out with men anymore.
Speaking of the monster…
An inhuman howl fills the air as something heavy drops on the floor above them, shaking dust from the ceiling. Thalia curses under her breath, suddenly reminded that she has more important things to be worrying about than arguing with a seven-year-old cancer patient, and starts backing out of the room.
“What was that?” Cancer Boy asks, finally looking up from his book and at the ceiling. There’s a tremor in his voice that makes Thalia pause, and she wonders how (or if) the Mist is hiding this situation from him.
“Monster,” Thalia says because she’s probably never going to see Cancer Boy after this moment. “And I’ve got to go slay it, so if you’ll excuse me…”
Thalia turns to go, but once again she halts because of the boy in the bed.
“You’re a monster slayer?” he asks and she can hear the sneer in his voice. “Yeah right.”
She glances over her shoulder, ready to tell him exactly how many unpleasant ways she can kill him with her pinkie finger, and notices he’s turned his attention away from the ceiling and onto her for the first time. A second later, she notices the color of his eyes.
Thalia actually feels herself go pale as her world slides out from under her. Her limbs go numb from shock and her knees grow so weak that she has to grasp the doorframe as she sinks to the floor. She’s suddenly a hundred years in the past and eleven years old again, trying to attack a boy with blonde hair and blue eyes for the first time…
“Luke,” she whispers, hardly able to get the words out because of the sudden, sharp ache in her chest. Thousands of memories and emotions, long forgotten or pushed to the dark recesses of her heart, come rushing back and Thalia has to fight to not to dissolve into a puddle of sobs on the hospital room floor.
He’s back, he’s back, he’s back -
The boy who has Luke Castellan’s blue eyes wrinkles his nose and looks at her like she’s insane.
“No, I’m Adam,” he says, turning back to his book. “Stupid.”
*
Thalia has no idea how she got out of Luke’s reincarnation’s room at Kennedy Children’s Hospital that day with the monster. She thinks the other Hunters must’ve found her, just staring at him like a lunatic, and dragged her out because the next thing she remembers is Mara shaking her to her senses back at their camp outside the city.
She also briefly remembers Luke’s reincarnation saying something like, “Take her back to the crazy ward already, geez! This isn’t a zoo!” when the Hunters arrived to pick her up, which is why she finds herself hovering outside of his room at Kennedy Children’s Hospital a few days later.
Not so she can spy on Luke’s reincarnation - because why on Earth would she care about that? Closed life chapter, remember? - but so she can set him straight on the whole thinking she’s a mental patient thing. Because she hasn’t turned crazy without him and he’s an idiot for even thinking that. She was just shocked, that’s all, shocked that he had big enough balls to come back and she really wants to clobber him for even thinking she’s the crazy one -
Oh, who is she kidding? She’s totally there to spy on Luke’s reincarnation, just to make sure he’s not plotting to overthrow Olympus or poisoning magical trees with old friends stuck inside them or abducting tourists on a cruise ship when he’s not, you know, busy dying of cancer or anything.
Thalia Grace, daughter of Zeus, has to be the biggest asshole on the planet right now.
She lets out a huge sigh and slumps against the wall, looking up at the ceiling. Doctors and nurses pass by without looking at her once, thanks to her manipulation of the Mist, leaving her alone with her thoughts.
This whole finding Luke’s reincarnation thing has thrown her through the wringer these last few days. She’s been jumpy and scatterbrained during the day, and waking from nightmares of the past during the night. Her Hunters have noticed (especially Mara, that backstabbing Poseidon spawn) but she laughed it off as being hit too hard in the head by the monster. She’s just thankful Lady Artemis is busy with events at Olympus throughout the month and isn’t with them right now because Thalia really doesn’t want to explain to her mistress why a little boy has affected her so much.
It hurts her pride to admit it, but Thalia has no idea how to deal with this reincarnation business. Luke is the first one she’s ever encountered and even then, it’s different because it’s Luke, the only boy who kissed her and then became a murdering dick because he couldn’t get over himself and his stupid destiny.
Repression and time have not been kind to her memories of Luke, and she was startled to find her feelings of betrayal and rage still burned as bright as they did the day of his funeral. She can’t get the image of Luke as anything more than a bloodthirsty, gold-eyed Titan out of her head, and the urge to sock him a good one isn’t helping anything either.
Thalia wasn’t lying when she told Annabeth years and years ago that reincarnation wasn’t his style; Luke didn’t (or doesn’t?) like to do the same things twice and reincarnation would be the ultimate form of a duplicate job. She isn’t prepared for this, and she hasn’t the faintest clue of how she’s supposed to treat the kid lying in the bed in the room behind her. Does she treat him like Luke and vent her hundred year’s worth of rage on him? Or does she act like she has no idea who he is or what he’s done, and treat him like she’d treat like she would any other boy?
Granted, either option wouldn’t be the best way of going about things, but she’s not going to solve anything by standing around and moping about it…
Taking another deep breath and gathering her courage, Thalia ducks into the room.
Nothing has changed since she first encountered him. His room is depressingly bare and he’s alone in his bed, reading again. She notices a worn stuffed bear on the bed stand and for the first time, she wonders where his parents are. If she had a child stuck in a hospital, she’d be there every second. It would completely suck if Luke got shitty parents two lives in a row.
She clears her throat and Luke’s reincarnation looks up. His shadowed eyes widen for a moment and then settle back into a cool, unimpressed stare. What did he say his name was again? Oh, right. Adam.
“I’m not crazy and I’m not a patient here,” Thalia says before he can make some obnoxious remark. “Just so you know.”
He isn’t even fazed, like weird girls frequently come into his hospital room to declare their sanity to him.
“Then who are you?”
“I’m your…uh…” Thalia says eloquently, wishing she would’ve thought this visit out a bit more thoroughly. Her eyes glance upon the only picture in the room - a sickening painting of a fat cherub - and inspiration strikes. “I’m your guardian angel.”
Adam stares at her for a long, unsettling moment, and then says matter-of-factly, “Guardian angels don’t use doors. Or wear black fingernail polish.”
Thalia wants to punch him. He’s definitely Luke Castellan’s reincarnation.
“How do you know? Are you an angel?” Thalia replies, approaching his bed. She drags one of the nearby chairs to the side of the bed and plops down in it. Adam watches her warily.
“No,” he admits grudgingly. “But I don’t need guardian angels. It’s past visiting hours anyway and I want to read.”
Thalia raises an eyebrow in interest. Luke was never a good reader, mostly because of the combination of ADHD and dyslexia, but also because he liked to be the one inspiring the stories, not reading them.
“What are you reading?”
“If you’re my guardian angel, shouldn’t you know that already?” Adam snaps, trying to hide the cover under his blankets, but Thalia catches sight of the title anyway.
“Ew, Stories of the Egyptian Gods for Children?” she makes a face. “Those Egyptian kids suck. Couldn’t you have at least gone with the Greeks?”
“I was the only one in my class who knew who Osiris and Isis were,” he replies defensively. “Besides, everyone likes the Greek gods, and I think they’re stupid and boring.”
Thalia wonders if she’s imagining the slight resentment she hears in his voice when he talks about the Greek gods. Do reincarnations have memories of their past lives or is living again just like one giant moment of déjà vu? She wonders how much Adam remembers of his life of Luke, who he -
She cuts the thought off before she can finish it. It doesn’t matter if he remembers or not. It’s not going to change anything and he’d be the same Luke as he always was.
“You must be reading the wrong stories. The Greeks are anything but boring,” Thalia says, leaning back in the chair and propping her feet on his bed. He glares at her and tries to shove her feet off. “I could tell you some of the good ones, if you want.”
Adam pauses, his hands on her left foot.
“Really?”
Maybe it’s the fact that he’s Luke’s reincarnation and she’s tied to him no matter what, or maybe it’s because she hasn’t talked to anyone who isn’t a member of the Hunters in a long time. Mostly, she thinks she offered to tell him stories because he’s a lonely kid in the hospital and she can recognize the fear behind his bravado. He needs the company.
“Sure. You ever hear the story about Jason and the Argonauts?”
Adam lets go of her feet, sits back in his bed, and listens.
*
And that’s how their visits go during the two and half weeks the Hunters are in the area. Thalia shows up whenever she can get away from the Hunters, usually right after dinner and visiting hours are over; she and Adam exchange witty barbs (well, witty enough for a seven year old anyway) until he gets tired of it and asks her to tell a story. She tries not to tell him any stories that might draw on old memories, but he gets a book from his parents after her second visit and she’s forced to tell him some of the other ones.
Sometimes he falls asleep during the first story, but most of the time he stays awake long afterward asking her questions and generally being a little brat about things. Thalia leaves when he falls asleep or whenever his medicine makes him unpleasant.
The Hunters take note of her absences right away. Most of them know enough not to say anything to her about it, but Mara, daughter of Poseidon, always likes to pick a fight with Thalia over something or the other as children of the Big Three are wont to do. Percy must’ve been the one exception to the rule because Thalia always wants knock Mara’s block off…well, whenever she sees her which is everyday since they’re tentmates.
When Thalia comes back on the third day, Mara’s sitting on top of her sleeping bag and waiting for her with narrowed green eyes.
“I know what you’re up to,” Mara says. “And you should probably stop it.”
Thalia scoffs. It doesn’t surprise her that Mara’s taken the time to spy on her; it wouldn’t be the first time she stuck her big nose someplace it didn’t belong.
“I think you forgot who wears the silver tiara in this outfit. She’s in this tent and I’ll give you a hint: she’s not you.”
“And that person with a silver tiara needs to be reminded that she’s not doing her duty by hanging by the bedside of a sick boy all day,” the other girl replies tightly. “What would Lady Artemis say if she found out her lieutenant breaking her vow?”
Thalia throws her bow and quiver onto her sleeping bag, and starts pulling off her jacket, keeping her back turned. Mara’s trying to provoke her and the longer she doesn’t look at her, the longer Mara’s face keeps its form.
“He’s seven and he’s dying. I hardly think it counts.”
“I think you and I both know this is more than keeping a dying kid company. I’ve heard your nightmares. You think this kid is the reincarnation of whatever guy made you join the Hunters in the first place.”
Thalia spins around and points her finger in Mara’s face.
“Shut up! You don’t know anything, you stupid Squid Spawn!”
“What you’re doing isn’t fair!” Mara shouts back, launching herself to her feet. “To us, to him, to yourself! You’re visiting this kid, thinking one day he’s going to look at you like he really knows you and he’s not, Thalia! He’s a completely different person! Do you even think of him in any other way instead of somebody else’s reincarnation?”
Thalia opens her mouth and then closes it just as fast, her temper dying. There’s no glint of triumph in Mara’s eyes when she catches the look of guilt cross Thalia’s face, however.
It’s true enough. She thinks of him as Adam, but she’s always waiting for a sign that it’s really Luke in there so she can pounce. When he does something that reminds her of Luke, she gets standoffish and mean, and she’s seen the confusion in Adam’s eyes. It’s never bothered her until now, and she hates Mara even more for being concerned about her for once instead of just being a bitch.
“If you’re going to keep doing this, you can’t treat the kid like that. He has done nothing wrong and he’s got enough problems on his plate without having your unresolved angst to deal with. So get over yourself and be a real guardian angel for this kid,” Mara finishes, crossing her arms over her chest. When Thalia says nothing after a moment, she starts to twitch a little bit. “Aren’t…aren’t you going to punch me or something?”
“Not this time,” Thalia says evenly. “But don’t get used to it.”
Mara’s advice doesn’t change the way she interacts with Adam completely. It makes her more aware of what she says and does, certainly, but Adam’s personality is so similar to Luke’s it’s hard to distinguish between the two of them.
Everything comes to a head on the fifth night, though, when she arrives and Adam is in the midst of a terrible nightmare. He’s trashing back and forth, pulling at the intravenous lines in his arms, and whimpering softly. Even though she knows better, she shakes him awake and he looks at her with wild, scared blue eyes.
“Th - Thalia?” he says, his forehead knitting in confusion. “What…?”
“Nightmare. You okay?” she asks, sitting back in her chair.
“Yes,” he says, looking away from her and at his hands. It takes her a moment to realize he’s embarrassed that she witnessed one of his nightmares. She almost rolls her eyes. Boys and their pride.
“Hey, it’s okay. Everyone gets nightmares.”
She pats him on the hands awkwardly, hoping that will give him some comfort.
“Not like mine.”
A little shiver goes down her spine at the tone of his voice. It’s dark and dangerous, not emotions a seven year old should have.
“Do you want to tell me about them?” she asks slowly.
He sighs and looks out at the window at the sun dipping below the city skyline. He doesn’t say anything and Thalia figures that’s a definite “no” to that idea.
“Well, I brought some cards if you want to play a game today - ”
“There was a shadow in my dream,” Adam interrupts, keeping his eyes away from her. “A shadow in a pit, and it made me…do things. Really bad things. I think I knew it was evil, but I did them anyway to…to get even or something.”
Thalia pales, instinctively leaning back as far as she can in her chair to put some distance between the two of them. Those weren’t any nightmares - from what Adam was describing, his nightmares were Luke’s memories of his time with Kronos. Thalia’s extremely harsh side thinks it’s good he doesn’t get a clean slate just because he gets a new life and that he’ll continue to suffer for everything he’s done.
Another part, the part that’s growing to love Adam as the little brother she never had, thinks it’s completely unfair that he has to go through all of this on top of having leukemia. Sure, Luke racked up some seriously bad karma in his past life, but the disease and the years in the hospital has to be punishment enough.
“That’s not you, Adam, and it’s never going to be you,” Thalia says, surprised by how much vehemence is in her voice. “They’re just dreams.”
“But…but what if that was me?” He finally looks at her, his eyes wide and desperate, and lower lip trembling. “Don’t you ever have that feeling that you’ve done something before? That’s what the dreams feel like. I - I was a bad person, Thalia, and I don’t want to be that person!”
“Then don’t be,” she replies softly. Even though she wants to look away from him because seeing those eyes and hearing about his nightmares just makes her see Luke instead of Adam, she knows he needs reassurance more than she does. “You always have a choice, Adam. Don’t listen to the shadows, don’t despair because the road is a lot harder than you thought it would be; don’t blame anyone for your lot in life, don’t forget who your friends are and why they’re important to you. And most of all, just…don’t be bitter, no matter what happens. If you keep that in mind, you won’t be that bad person from your dreams. You’ll just be you.”
Adam’s eyes are glistening with tears as he croaks, “Really? You believe that?”
“Yes.”
Adam launches himself out of the bed at her and wraps his bony little arms around her in the first hug Thalia’s gotten in decades. She can feel his shoulders shuddering as he starts to cry and she pats him on the back less awkwardly than she did than before.
And as she rocks him back to sleep Thalia finds, to her surprise, she really does believe that.
*
When the two of them are together, they rarely talk about his leukemia, but it always comes up every now and then. From what she gathers from his thinly veiled comments (and the medical records she stole one night), Adam has been in and out of the hospital since he was two years old. Chemotherapy worked once and then he went into remission a few months ago. He’s been waiting for a bone marrow transplant and has been getting steadily worse since then. The doctors only gave him a few more months if he didn’t get the transplant.
About a week and half into her visits, Thalia catches one of the nurses making a remark to Adam’s mother that his stats have started to pick up and he’s begun to make a turnaround. The doctors can't explain it, but Adam’s mother, who looks far too old for her age, doesn’t need an explanation. She sinks into a chair and covers her face with shaking hands; Thalia feels a moment of remorse for thinking Adam’s parents didn’t care. It couldn’t be easy, always feeling like you’re about to lose your child that you’ve barely gotten to know.
Thalia likes to think that it’s her visits that have helped him recover. Ever since the their talk about the nightmares, Adam has been much livelier and acting much more like the seven year old boy he should be.
So it comes a complete shock to all of them about five days later when Adam starts coughing and he’s suddenly too weak and tired to get out of bed. The doctors hurry to his side and make a quick diagnosis: pneumonia.
Adam’s mother collapses again at the news, but this time it’s out of utter despair. Thalia doesn’t understand what’s wrong. She had pneumonia before and she came out of it just fine. Most kids come out of pneumonia just fine, don’t they? But Adam’s not most kids, and most kids don’t already have leukemia on top of everything else.
His cheeks start losing whatever color they gained and become worse than before, sunken and grey. His breath rattles in his chest when he sleeps, which is all he does some days, and his eyes dull to a less brilliant shade of blue. He doesn’t talk to her much, but she stays by his side and tells him the Greek myths until the clouds begin to lighten.
Thalia isn’t sleeping well and Mara sees the darkness in her eyes when she returns to camp each night, but doesn’t say or do anything more than offer to cover her patrol shift the next day.
The night before Lady Artemis is due back, Adam gets worse. When Thalia appears in the hospital for the night, she overhears Adam’s doctor telling his parents that if his fever doesn’t go down, he probably isn’t going to last the night. Adam’s mother accepts this with a jerky nod, but his father is the one who collapses into one of wicker chairs in the lobby and starts sobbing.
Terror seizes her heart and Thalia’s stomach churns in misery. This isn’t fucking fair. Adam’s just a little kid, and he has to die like this? He hasn’t even gotten a chance to really live yet. This is a shitty excuse for a life, even for Luke’s reincarnation.
Adam’s room is dark and quiet except for the beeping of the various monitors beside the bed. Thalia forgoes her usual chair beside the bed and climbs up in it to sit beside his sleeping form. She wraps his sweaty little hands in hers and places a hand on his burning forehead.
“I’m here Adam. It’s all right,” she says, her voice tight with unshed tears.
Her voice causes him to stir and after a moment, he cracks his eyes open, looking miserable, tried, and dying. She’s seen this look before, but it’s much more painful seeing it in those blue eyes. She wonders if this how Luke looked when he died…
“Thalia,” Adam says so softly she has to strain to hear it.
“Hi,” she whispers, trying to smile for him and be strong like a guardian angel should. But Thalia’s only a half-blood and even she doesn’t have the strength to remain unaffected - her bottom lip trembles with emotion. “You - you don’t look so good, kid.”
“I…I was dreaming,” he says, ignoring her quip. There’s a focused, energized look on his face that she’s never seen before and certainly not in the last few days. “Of you.”
“Was it nightmares? Because I know I’m pretty scary - ”
“No. They’re…nice. They’ve always been nice.”
Thalia’s hair stands up at the back of her neck, and she drops her attempt at being playful. She knows Adam’s nightmares were a result of Luke’s worst memories, but she hadn’t though anything about his nice memories surviving reincarnation.
“You’ve dreamed of me before?” she asks, leaning in close to him. Maybe she’s thinking this through too much, maybe he just started dreaming of her after she visited for the first time…
Adam nods as best he can, his face contorting with pain for a moment. Thalia tightens her grip on his hand, desperate to keep him anchored to her.
“Since I was little, in the hospital for the first time,” he whispers. “That’s how I know you weren’t lying…about being my guardian angel.”
Thalia stares at him, completely at a loss for words. Out of all the memories that could bring him comfort when he was alone or scared, the ones that come to him are the ones of her? What can she say to that?
“I’m sorry I was mean to you. I just thought guardian angels only showed up when people were about to die, and I didn’t want to die. But I’m glad…I’m glad I met you first.”
“I would’ve found you sooner if I knew where you were, Adam,” she says fiercely, and she means it with all her heart. “And you’re not going to die. You’re…you’ve just got a little cold, that’s all. You’re so strong, you’ll pull through this and you’ll grow up and…and… ”
Adam squeezes her hand comfortingly as her voice breaks.
“Thank you, Thalia.”
She ducks her head, trying to hide her tears from him. The two of them don’t say anything for a very long time, and Thalia wonders if he’s fallen back to sleep and this is the last time she’ll talk to him. She wonders if she should leave so his parents be with him instead, but she even the thought of leaving in what could be the last moments of his life hurts more than she can bear.
“Thalia,” he asks quietly, breaking the silence at last. “What’s dying like?”
“It’s…it’s not too bad, I suppose,” Thalia replies. She supposes he wouldn’t remember what dying had been like in his last life and she wouldn’t want him to either. “I wouldn’t know. The only time I came close to dying, I got turned into a pine tree instead.”
Adam’s eyes widen comically and for a moment, they’ve gone back in time to when she was regaling him with stories about the Olympians and her fellow half-bloods, when he still had a chance at getting out of this stupid place.
“A tree?”
She nods. “Before you came along, I was a guardian angel to a little girl and…and another boy. They got into trouble, and I saved them.”
“By turning into a pine tree,” Adam says skeptically and he’s stronger in this moment than he has been in days. “You are the worst guardian angel of all time.”
“I never claimed to be otherwise,” she laughs.”I would’ve turned into a big oak tree for you.”
Their moment of relative normality passes and is broken by a series of shivers that overtake Adam’s frail body. The monitors near him go wild, and Thalia backs away as the nurses rush in to attend to him. She takes this time to compose herself by wiping her tears on the sleeves of her coat and watching the medical staff work. They leave once Adam has fallen back into a fitful rest, one of them muttering about fluid in Adam’s lungs.
It finally hits Thalia that she’s watching someone she cares about die a slow and very painful death, and she could do something about this.
She could run back to the Hunters camp and force one of the Apollo daughters to heal Adam; surely they could fix the fluid in his lungs and give him more time. She could go to Apollo himself and beg for Adam’s life, to free him of his leukemia and let him be a normal boy for a change. It doesn’t have to be this way!
But instead of being strong, grief overcomes her and keeps her by his side. She doesn’t want to leave and for him to wake without her there. She lost her first chance to be with him as he lay dying and nothing in the world is going to make her give up her second chance, even the slim hope of saving him.
Thalia returns to her spot on Adam’s bed, cupping his hand in hers, and praying to every god she knows for some kind of miracle. Adam’s parents float in and out of the room throughout the next few hours, but they take no notice of her. Even without the Mist manipulation, they probably would’ve been too lost in their grief to notice anything but their son.
Adam wakes for the last time around midnight. His parents aren’t in the room but he only seems to have one thing on his mind anyway: her.
“Thalia,” he whispers, startling her.
She notices there’s something different about his voice, something that isn’t caused by the medication or his illness. Thalia looks up from her study of their entwined hands, and notices the difference extends to Adam’s eyes. He’s looking at her like he knows her; really knows her, not just as his idiot of a guardian angel -
Realization hits her like a lightning strike and she nearly falls off the bed.
“Luke?” she gasps, the throbbing gap in her chest expanding into excruciating chasm. She can hardly breathe from the ache. “Luke?”
He nods slowly. Adam’s body must be at death’s door if Luke’s spirit can take control, and that pains her more than anything. She’s grown to love Adam, not just the shell housing Luke’s body, but as a completely different person with his own strengths and weaknesses. She can’t handle losing two people at once, even if one is the stupid traitor her heart can’t seem to get over -
“Adam - Luke, I can save you!” she bursts out, tears streaming down her cheeks. “I can have someone heal you. Just, please, stay strong, for a few minutes! I can…!”
She trails off as she feels Adam’s cold and clammy hand on her cheek. She doesn’t know where he’s found the strength to comfort her when he’s dying.
“Has to be this way,” he replies with Adam’s weak voice. “Not my destiny this time. Be strong. Don’t - don’t be bitter, Thalia.”
Thalia’s heart stops for a nanosecond.
Luke heard her.
Luke heard her. Not only had he heard her, but he listened to her well enough to spit back her own advice when she needed it most. It’s the fact that he still cares is what makes her tears turn into hoarse sobs.
“I - I can’t. I can’t do this again, please stay. Please.”
Thalia has never begged for anything in her life, not even to be saved by her father that one time, and Luke knows this and doubtlessly isn’t pleased that she’s stooped this low just to save his miserable life. The hand on her cheek grows stronger for a moment.
“I have…two more times,” he murmurs. “I’ll find you again. Promise.”
“You better do better than your last promise.”
She doesn’t know how her emotional baggage managed to escape its confines in the dark regions in her heart and find its way into this situation. Adam’s eyes harden, but not with dislike or disgust - with determination.
“I will…Forgive me?”
One hundred and sixteen years.
That’s how long she’s had to carry every last memory and feeling from everything leading up to the Battle of New York. She’s the last of her generation, the last to hold on to the anger and the betrayal, and she’s damn tired of being the one to carry it all. It’s taken too much time for some things to be forgotten and forgiven, and it’s held her back from being the person she’s always wanted to be.
“Yes. Of course,” she says, feeling the pulse in his hand beginning to slow. “Just find me again, Luke Castellan. Find me and we’ll make everything all right.”
He smiles faintly and his blue eyes drift closed. Thalia holds his hand until the tiny pulse comes to a complete stop and Adam dies.
“I’ll be waiting for you,” she whispers, pressing a tiny kiss to the knuckles of his cooling hand.
She flees as the doctors and Adam’s parents come into the room, and finds a nice, dark corner outside of the hospital to sob her aching heart out.
She doesn’t think about it. Not when she returns to came with red, puffy eyes and looking like the living dead. Not when she greets Lady Artemis, who simply stares at her and then sends her on her way. Not when she bumps into Mara and the other girl gives her a hug. Not even when she crawls into her sleeping bag, curls into miserable little lump, and cries herself to sleep.
As she closes her eyes, all Thalia can do is hope the next one hundred and sixteen years pass as quickly as the first.
Part Two: Jake.