Chapter Text
On the ride back to Olympus, Percy and Annabeth take Blackjack, and Bianca and Thalia take another pegasus, who Percy introduces as Porkpie. When Bianca asks, “Why is he named that?” Percy just shrugs and tells them that the young campers sometimes choose names, and they stick.
Bianca sits in front on the pegasus, and lets Thalia hug her from behind, eyes squeezed shut. It's astounding to her, how much they just… let her be afraid. How they don't shame her for it. She sits with the feeling, and her stomach churns and churns and churns the whole way there.
Preserve or raze.
Preserve or raze.
Preserve or raze.
It’s true, she thinks. They’re monsters, the gods, of the worst kind. Immortal. Untouchable. With no requirement to feel empathy, to invoke kindness. There is no true forgiveness with immortals, because there doesn’t have to be. With enough time, they simply move on. Nurse their grudges like children. Nurse their grudges more than their children.
On Blackjack’s back, Percy and Annabeth are dark and glowing in the night. In front of Thalia, Bianca is steady and moon-soaked, made for darkness and death.
She would commit atrocities for them, she realizes. She would kill. She would destroy. She would raze. And she could make all of it right in her mind, she thinks, if it were to save them. She could justify it. She could call it justice.
Preserve or raze.
This has never been about her, she realizes. Never about her, or Percy, or any demigod. It’s about him. About his justice. About the way he justifies it. Zeus Moiragetes. Zeus Olympios. Zeus Patrios.
Thalia exhales, long and slow. She looks sideways.
Blackjack is an ink splotch against the void. Zoë the Huntress darts across the heavens, sparkling starlight. Percy’s skin glows off Annabeth, outlining them both like constellations. The last day of summer, whispers her mind. And she makes her decision.
When they arrive to Olympus, sweeping up through the storms surrounding the peak, Thalia takes point, pushing the lightning away with her heart. They dismount outside of the throne room. Percy looks queasy. Annabeth looks on edge. Bianca shuffles back and forth, nervousness in her tight movements. “We should probably-” Percy sighs, starting toward the room.
Thalia steps forward, and seizes his hand.
He stops. Turns back to her. The full weight of his glowing blue gaze falls on her.
“Percy,” she says, “I…” Her words fail her. Spark out like a fuse blowing. She stares at him, his sharp nose and his dirty curls and the baby fat still clinging to his cheeks. “I almost… I almost…”
His face softens. He exhales slowly, gills fluttering. He squeezes her hand. The tips of his claws press into her skin. “You didn’t, though,” he says. “I think that means more than anything else.”
She blinks away the water at the edge of her vision. “It’s my birthday tomorrow.”
He smiles wryly. “I know.” He huffs through his nose. “Prophecies will be what they will. And so will people. I trust you, Thalia. Do what you’re gonna do, and I’ll be with you.” He pauses. “Probably.”
She can’t help it. She bursts into peals of laughter. She tugs him closer, and ruffles his hair, ignoring his squawk of protest. With her other hand, she reaches for Annabeth, who accepts easily. Percy grabs Bianca’s hand, and in one line, they walk into the Olympian throne room.
It’s enormous, towering, gilt marble and gleaming braziers. Fifteen-foot figures dominate enormous thrones. The whole air burns with ozone and rose petals and the brine of the ocean and dozens more scents, battling for dominance. The gods are all around, but as they enter, Thalia stares ahead. She meets her father’s eyes. He is tall and regal, his suit dark and smooth. His gaze is locked on hers as they enter.
They walk forward in a line, holding hands, all the way up to the hearth that the horseshoe of thrones faces. Then Thalia lets go of her friends’ hands, and steps forward.
Around her, the Olympian Council is silent. Zeus Olympios gazes down at her. King of this mountain, of this pantheon, of these gods. “Daughter,” he greets, his voice even.
Thalia exhales. Her heart pounds, her body shaking with animal fear, but her mind is calm. Made up. “Father.” She thought about calling him Zeus. Giving him a distant name. But it felt wrong, after her realization. For better and for worse, she is her father’s daughter.
“You have done us a great service,” he says. His voice settles like the whole sky. Like thunder rippling out into nothing. “You see now the power you wield.”
She laughs. It echoes in the silence. The gods stare, but Thalia has no fear anymore. She is leaving this behind. “No,” she says. “But I see you. Zeus Patrios. I understand now. I do not forgive you, but I do understand.”
She felt it, with the Ophiotaurus. Felt how easy it was, the idea of sacrificing one thing, so small, so temporary, made to die anyway. It practically justified itself, and all to save a handful of people she has known, realistically, all less than a year.
Here in this throne room, it is all but inconceivable that a thing as small as Thalia could threaten their very existence. And yet, she does. What simple math, to remove her. What easy justification. To save his siblings. To save the broken shards of family that the Olympians cling to.
Broken in a million ways and messy beyond belief and the makers of their own destruction nine times out of ten, Zeus is still their King. He is still their father, and brother. How cruel, she thinks, to always be commanding this sinking ship.
Zeus’s eyes are dark and impossibly old and they hold no regret for her. She’s fine with it, she realizes. She never needed him before, and she doesn’t now. But she understands. “I am no threat to your family,” she says, and for the first time, she sees an actual flicker of relief in his eyes. He exhales, and the whole throne room exhales with him.
“Then you will fight for us,” he says.
Thalia smiles. “No.” She turns, and meets her half-sister’s eyes.
Artemis smiles, clever and wicked and wild. The goddess of the Hunt. The goddess of escape. The goddess of girls who give up on their fates. She nods.
Thalia sinks to one knee. “I pledge myself to the goddess Artemis,” she declares, and her voice echoes in the chamber.
Behind them, Percy gasps.
Zeus stands up out of his throne. “Daughter-”
“I turn my back on the company of men,” she continues. “I accept eternal maidenhood, and ask to join the Immortal Hunt.”
“Thalia Grace,” says Artemis, rising from her seat, vast and wild wild wild. “I accept your pledge, and welcome you to my Hunt. Rise as a Huntress.”
All of the fires in the room burn brighter for a flash of a moment. And Thalia’s veins, which have always burned-burned-burned, like a match in a vat of gasoline, like an electrical line wrapping around a tree, like lightning forking through the sky, sigh, and settle. Her insides go liquid and silver. She breathes, and everything slows. Calms. Her heart skips, and skips, and goes quiet. Still. She actually, physically feels the prophecy release her, unfurling from her neck like a noose slipping free.
She stands up on shaky legs. She turns to Zeus, who is staring, stunned, and the rest of the Olympian Council, their heads ping-ponging between their king and his mortal daughter. Immortal, now, she supposes.
“I will not turn sixteen tomorrow,” Thalia declares. “I will never turn sixteen. I cannot. I am too angry with you. I am too tempted to hurt you like you have hurt me. I would make the wrong choices for the wrong reasons.”
The taste of ozone builds in the air. “You would abandon us?” Zeus growls.
“I have done the opposite of abandon you. I have given you the best chance your family has.” She smiles. “I leave you in capable hands. Claws. Whatever.”
Zeus stares at her for a long, long moment.
“Father,” says Artemis finally. “The Hunt has accepted her. Can you not feel it? She has passed beyond it. What is done is done.”
At long last, Zeus moves. He nods to Thalia, once, slowly. And he says something that rocks Thalia to her core: “I bless you, my daughter. May your Hunt be long and fruitful.”
Thalia blinks. She nods once, shocked.
Then, of course, that moment is ruined by Athena saying, “Now, what of the beast and the boy? They remain security risks.”
“Destroying the monster seems a sensible course of action,” Zeus agrees.
“Bessie?” Percy protests, startlingly loud.
Poseidon leans forward on his throne. Thalia has never met him before, but he looks like Percy. Sandy hair, blue eyes. His form ripples and arches in waves. His neck pulses with gills, his skin with aquatic light. His fingers are too long around his trident, too scaled, claws pitch black and wickedly sharp. “You named the Ophiotaurus Bessie?” he asks, a hint of amusement in his voice.
Percy bristles. “Better name than Ophiotaurus,” he grumbles. “And you can’t kill him. He’s done nothing wrong.”
“This is not a matter of wrong or right,” Athena says. “It is a matter of preventing problems before they present themselves.”
“Yeah, ‘cause that always works perfectly,” Percy snarks. “But sure, go ahead. Start killing stuff just because it presents a ‘potential problem’ for you. Make our grandfather proud.”
Thalia sucks in a breath. “Percy,” she hisses.
Percy glares at her.
Athena’s eyes flash. “Has anyone ever told you it is wiser to have more allies than enemies? You would do well to remember that, demigod.”
Percy bares his teeth at the goddess of Wisdom. “If being wise means killing things that don’t deserve it, all just to keep myself safe, then I will gladly be unwise.”
Athena watches him, her eyes like razors. Her form does not flicker at Percy’s visage, which scares Thalia more than the opposite. “Rash,” she observes. “Brazen. And with no true fealty to us. Your defense of this place comes from defense of our children, not true defense of us.” She straightens. “You are a risk,” she declares, her voice like a gavel coming down.
Dionysus sighs. He gazes down, swirling soda in his cup. “I have no special love for him. Athena, do you truly think it is safest to destroy him?”
Grover makes a choked noise in the bottom of his throat. Thalia bares her teeth in a silent snarl. Poseidon stands from his chair, form stretching and face contorting with rage. Percy stands there, unmoving, his face exhausted.
“No.” Annabeth’s voice cuts through the room, glacial. She shoves forward, and plants herself in front of Percy, trembling with fury. “No.”
“Daughter-” Athena sighs.
“No,” snarls Annabeth, and she is rigid, unmoving. “No, you won’t. You wouldn’t dare be so unwise. You think Camp will stand behind you? You think the demigods will still follow you, when they see what your love is worth? When they see that even the Earthshaker cannot protect his one, his only demigod, after Percy has saved you multiple times? You think that if you throw around your weight, we will always fall in line. You’re wrong. You kill him, it’s pandemonium. Forget it. No one will ever defend you again.”
“Is that a threat, girl?” Ares says, sounding vaguely interested. He’s grinning.
“That’s truth,” Annabeth says. “Nothing more, nothing less.” Then, she rounds on Athena. Her lip curls up, baring her blunted teeth. Fangs would suit her well. “You had your Pallas,” she accuses. “You leave me mine.”
Thalia sucks in a breath.
The Olympians stop breathing, literally. Their bodies flicker, give up on the pretense of life. Everything pauses to watch Athena blink at her daughter. She doesn’t physically flinch, but her form wavers. She sees feathers and roots and olive leaves stretching toward the sun, the call of a war bugle and the hiss of an arrow releasing and the hum of a loon and the flashing blade of a spear point and blood and a scream and-
Percy shoves in front of Annabeth. “She didn’t mean that,” he says, frantic. “She didn’t mean that, whatever that meant.”
“I meant every word,” she hisses reproachfully.
Percy turns back and actually snarls at her, fangs bared. Annabeth snarls right back, teeth flashing. He stomps on her foot. She kicks his shin. They look geared-up to start actually wrestling before Athena raises her chin, and, with a voice colder than the grave, says, “If you are wise, daughter, you will never say something like that to me again.”
Annabeth glares at her mother. “If you are wise, you will not make the same error twice.”
Olympus takes a vote. To kill the Ophiotaurus, and to kill Percy. The double death sentence loses.
Pallas hangs over the vote like a choking smog. Perhaps that's what sways them. Both innocent beings live another day.
In the aftermath, they throw a party.
Thalia steps aside with Percy. “I’m sorry,” is the first thing she says to him. “I’m sorry. I just… I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t-”
Percy steps forward, and yanks her into a hug. She presses her nose into his gills and breathes in the smell of the ocean. He holds her so tightly she feels right again. “Don’t be sorry,” he says. “I meant what I said. I trust you, Thalia.” A pause. “I mean, I think you’re crazy, but I do trust you.”
She laughs, and cuffs the back of his head. Her eyes are wet with tears. She pulls back, finally, and he releases his death grip. But when he retreats, he keeps a hold of her shoulders. He stares at her, unblinking, his second eyelids pulled over his dark pupils. “Are you happy?” he asks.
Thalia exhales. She looks between him, his skin gentle with light like a dusting of dew, and Annabeth, standing beside him, smiling wetly and proudly at Thalia. She's been crying, it seems. There's an undercurrent to her expression that Thalia can't name. She's grown up now. She doesn't need Thalia to be the one fixing everything for her. She has Grover, and Percy, and that's more than good enough.
For the first time, possibly ever, Thalia can just… be.
“Yes,” she says. “I'm going to be happy.” And so are you, she thinks at Percy. Eventually. “That said,” she tacks on, “next time I show up to Camp, Bianca and I are going to absolutely kick your arse with the Hunters.”
“Bullshit,” Percy says. “We're gonna eat you alive.”
Annabeth grins, and despite the tear tracks on her face, it turns wicked and gleeful. “I'll have fun crushing you,” she says.
Grover, sidling up to them with Bianca, heaves a sigh. “Great,” he says. “Are we already back to posturing?”
“This is a form of affection, Underwood,” says Thalia. “Get used to it.”
They all grin for a moment, and then Percy turns to Annabeth. “Hey, by the way,” he asks, “who is Pallas? I thought Pallas was just the name for your mom.”
Annabeth freezes. Grover full-body flinches. Thalia winces. Bianca looks back and forth between them, concerned. Percy sighs, “Oh, no. This is going to be bad.”
Annabeth clears her throat. She wrings her hands. “Um,” she says. “So. Yes. My mother is called Pallas Athena now, but she… sort of got that name from Pallas, who was the daughter of Triton.”
Percy frowns. “Triton, like…”
“Your father’s son with Lady Amphitrite.”
“Okay. So, Pallas was his daughter. What did she have to do with Athena?”
Annabeth swallows. “Well, they were friends. And then, one day, there was an accident. When they were sparring, Athena accidentally struck Pallas with her spear. She died. Athena took her name as a way to honor her memory.”
Accidentally. For Athena, perhaps. Zeus distracted her on purpose, protecting his daughter from the embarrassment of losing. Their parents eat themselves in circles.
Percy stares, open-mouthed. His skin flickers with little fragmented shards of light. He closes his mouth. Closes his eyes. Exhales. Thalia waits for one of his moments of strange profundity, his way of making things somehow make sense, in a human sort of way.
Percy opens his eyes, and says, solemnly, “Wow. This family fucking sucks.”
For a heartbeat of seconds, no one says anything. Then Annabeth bursts into peals of laughter. She doubles over, clutching her stomach. Her whole frame curves around the hysterical sensation of amusement.
Grover shakes with silent giggles. Bianca shakes her head, affectionate and exasperated.
“Nah,” Thalia says, amused and gentle and overwhelmed with the truth of it. “It’s pretty okay, actually.” Her part of it is, anyway.
Annabeth, Percy, and Grover leave in the early morning, exhausted. They’re going to crash at the Jacksons’ apartment for the night. They all give out hugs before they leave.
When Thalia hugs Grover, she tells him, “Take care of those two for us.”
“Always,” he says. “And you take care of yourself and Bianca. You’re my kids too, you know.”
When Thalia hugs Annabeth, folds her pointy teenager frame up into a crushing embrace, she murmurs, “I’m so proud of you. Gonna miss you, too. But you got good people looking out for you.”
“I do,” Annabeth agrees. “You still better show up for my birthday party next year. Go and be happy, but don’t you dare think I’m going to let you out of my life now.”
Thalia grins. “I would expect nothing less.”
When Thalia hugs Percy, her nose presses into his gills. Her hand finds the ridges of his spine, the dorsal fin below his shirt and jacket. He smells of clean ocean and white sand. He’s warm against her. When he hugs her back, his claws grip her jacket. “Stay safe, you hear me?” she says, and tells herself her voice isn’t wet. “I promised Annabeth I would be back for her birthday next year, and I can’t bake for shit. Need you for cake purposes.”
He laughs against her. “Sure thing. You stay safe too. For cake services, I demand payment in cool stories. Rack up some good ones.” He pauses. “Enjoy being you, Thalia.” You, free of prophecy, he doesn’t say, but she hears anyway. You, free of every part of this family, except for the parts you want.
She pulls back. Holds his shoulders with her hands and looks into his dark eyes, the ring of blue around the wide pupils, the scales drifting out across his cheeks. The light, filtering up through his skin from the deepest parts of himself. She thinks about Zoë’s final words to him, and hopes that the Huntress was right. “Someday,” she says, “we’re gonna get you there, too.” I can’t wait to meet you, Percy Jackson, she doesn’t say, but he hears anyway. You, free of this prophecy. You, when you want to live again.
He smiles. Disbelieving, but that’s fine. Thalia can wait. Thalia’s got forever to wait.
When they leave, off down the elevator back to real life, Bianca and Thalia are left standing on the outskirts of a godly rager. “I’m going to miss them,” Bianca says, her voice wistful. There's a sadness clinging to the edges of her, but love, too.
Thalia smiles, and it’s easy. “Yeah,” she agrees. “I’ll miss them too. But don’t worry. We’ll be around.”