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rubythecrimsonwriter · 9 months

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ATC rewrite part 1 outline

The vote was 6-2 in favor of sharing, not counting my vote, so it's under a readmore for those who want to wait until I've finished the first chapter.

My outlines vary from story to story and they're usually quite odd, and take more of a condensed story format than a traditional outline with the bullet points and such. This truly is an outline. It reads like a story. I've embellished on parts that I currently have, glossed over the parts that I don't but know they need to be there.

For those who are new, or followed me from Flipping Legacies and never realized I wrote for other fandoms: Percy Jackson was my first fandom. I started All Together, Cousins in 2013, wrote about 80K words for it in two years, got burned out big time for Percy Jackson stuff. Technically speaking I updated it in 2018, but I'd completely lost the plot of it and relied on subplots and characters to keep it moving and it just. Wasn't fun. And around the time I started Flipping Legacies (in 2020) I'd also taken a look at ATC and kind of. Winced. You can tell a 15 year old wrote it. Happy ten year anniversary, old friend, the fic that haunts me in the night--I'm finally back.

I love the premise of it, but it's kind of like a 1940s house. The walls are cracking, the wiring needs to be updated, the plumbing needs to not be lead. It needs some work. A lot of work. And here's the start of it.

🗲

Thalia’s ten and Jason’s two when she snatches him out of Hera’s grasp, threatens a goddess with grievous bodily harm and bloody revenge schemes and runs like the proverbial bat out of hell. She tires quickly. It’s winter. They’re two Big Three demigods. Cops are not kind to homeless people, shelters are not kind to kids, and the system is even crueler.

Luke Castellan is a blessing, and she thanks Hermes every damn day for him. He’s great at getting out of tight spots, talented with a sword, gentle with her brother, and willing to fight her over what’s best.

He’s been on his own for three years now. He knows what he’s doing a lot better than Thalia does, in terms of actual survival. They bunk down in one of his old hiding spots and gear up and she’s so exhausted that she falls asleep almost immediately, Jason sprawled across her chest.

Never again. She’ll never again let Hera get that close. The sight of her brother in that woman’s arms will haunt her for the rest of her life.

She urges Luke to move faster, the next day, to get them farther away from the Wolf House, and they have a screaming match about I want to be as far away from this place as possible and Let’s not fucking pass out about it, that does nobody any good! and also What if she tries to take him again and Well they’re gods, it’s not like physical distance means anything to them.

Jason isn’t happy about the loud noise of a fourteen year old boy and a daughter of thunder going at it. That’s finally what gets them to shut up. Every demigod she’s ever met has backed down immediately after watching her zap her surroundings when she gets frustrated.

Luke has rubber soles, a steel spine, and a golden heart. How lucky is she, that he’s the full range of conductivity?

The positive and the ground, and together they can move mountains—or make sure that one little boy is safe and happy as is possible for a son of Jupiter.

🗲

Thalia’s twelve and Jason’s just turned four when Luke goes into a cursed mansion and never comes out again.

She straps Jason to her chest and circles the burned out husk of the mansion for any sign, any clue, any remnant of her friend and partner in raising both Jason and hell. She searches the house, then starts working her way out steadily until its more than a mile from the mansion in all directions and she has to admit defeat.

Luke is gone. Luke is dead. He wanted to see his future and Thalia wishes futilely that she had argued more with him about it.

She clings to Jason and weeps bitter tears. Then she pulls herself together and marches on. Anywhere but here. Tennessee, she’s heard, is hot and muggy this time of year, but Thalia feels like she’ll never be warm again.

Meanwhile, Luke has the shield of aegis, a lot more issues with the gods, a golf club, and a blonde little girl terrified of spiders.

🗲

Thalia’s just turned thirteen and Jason’s still four when she snaps her gum obnoxiously and says to the cashier who asked her why she’s not in school, “I’m seventeen, I have a half day before I go to work, and he’s four, dipshit. Now pack it up, I haven’t got all day.”

Her heart thuds in her ears, but Disinterested Teenager is the name of the game, and she’s the godsdamn master of it. Thick eyeliner, chunky mascara, and fake piercings do the rest to convince them. They’ve played this game a thousand times.

Three Big Three kids in a corner store is too much temptation for the monsters, though, and that’s how she meets Sally Fucking Jackson, who’s clear-sighted in every sense of the word.

🗲

Sally is a badass—not a word that Thalia applies to just anyone. Thalia also can’t stand to be around her for too long, because the woman has sacrificed everything to try and raise her son safely.

Seeing herself reflected—mother and son, sister and brother, who would kill or die or be abused to keep him safe and happy and well—is an ache like the cold. And she wishes Beryl had tried.

Is it a crime, to wish that she’d had herself or a Sally to protect her? Thalia thinks not, but it hurts much worse than stealing. She giggles at Jason and Percy arguing over cookies, swiftly removes Jason from Percy when it becomes clear that two small, angry Big Three children wreak havoc on indoor plumbing and HVAC systems, and high tails it out of there with Jason in tow when Sally offers them a place to stay.

Luke survived two years with her and Jason. Sally has her own son to think about living for.

Her eyes burn. She takes a deep breath and marches on.

🗲

Thalia’s fifteen and Jason’s seven and Thalia needs all her fingers to count how many issues she’s got going on currently.

It’s the middle of summer and it’s hotter than Hades’s asscrack, so she thought, “oh hey, it’s not like we’re not already nomadic, let’s go north for the summer and see Yellowstone and such.”

Yellowstone was great. Grizzly bears hate everything pretty equally, but avoid Thalia and Jason like the plague. That means that grizzly bears will happily maul a monster and leave them be. Thalia would like to stay here forever, please and thank you.

But then there was the fucking Fury that chased them to (not quite) hell and back, and Thalia packed them up and ran so far that they wound up in the mountains before they stopped for breath, and then hung out with the Hyperborean giants for a while. Hot Furies and freezing Hyperborean giants don’t mix well, apparently. And then Thalia figured, well, if she was already on the mountains, might as well see what the West Coast has to offer them.

The Fury caught up to them right as they were crossing the Nevada/California border, and Thalia just wants to say that it’s completely ridiculous how hot Nevada is. No place needs to be that hot during the day and that cold at night. A week later and they’ve run so far west that Thalia can taste the salt from the ocean in the air.

They’re out of places for them to run.

Thalia has silver plated hunting knives, handles wrapped with shredded old tires and fabric cushioning the edges. She’s blasted the Fury back with lightning so many times her hair is permanently standing on end and her fingers tingle.

There’s a girl in a purple shirt on the edges of the fight. Her mouth is dropped open like she can’t believe what she’s seeing.

Thalia has a few other things to worry about.

Then the girl comes back with more people in purple shirts and—and they’re armed. Armed with things that can actually hurt a monster.

The Fury shrieks and dives at them and the girl shouts, “Turtle formation!” and shields close around them on all sides.

What Thalia wouldn’t give for a shield. Or a proper weapon.

The Fury rakes its claws across the shields, clambers all over them like a really big, really weird looking lizard, and then almost gets skewered by a sword that pokes itself between a minuscule crack between the shields.

Thalia braces herself between Jason and the Fury, waiting for it to realize that there’s easier prey. Jason, weaponless, hugs her from behind and buries his face in her back.

She breathes deeply. She shivers in spite of the hot air—

A cold wind from the east. The Fury rises, sees them in the open, launches—

There’s a tendril that feels like lightning, a hot line of power. Her gut clenches. Jason shudders so hard he almost yanks her off her feet. The sky goes from blue to black and raging in an instant, and the thunderbolt that comes from the sky is as thick around as Thalia is, blinding and deafening everyone in the vicinity. The Fury vanishes in the lightning’s blaze, naught but golden dust and ash on the ground.

Thalia almost passes out. Her ears are ringing and she can barely see.

The girl in the purple shirt is very tall, Thalia thinks, before she realizes her knees have buckled under her and that the girl is probably a normal height. She’s saying something that Thalia can’t hear, but she can hear Jason yelling something indistinctly. She gropes around behind her, grabbing him.

“He’s my brother,” she says, loudly enough that she feels her own chest rumble. She might be too loud, but she’s guessing otherwise with how useless her own ears are. “He’s annoying but he’s my brother, don’t kill him.”

Jason socks her in the shoulder, so at least someone can hear something.

The girl says something, looking at Thalia. She thinks that the word take was somewhere in there, but reading lips has never been her forte. “You’re not taking him,” she says loudly. “I threatened to destroy Olympus the last time someone tried taking him from me, and I’m still not joking about that.”

“You did what,” was clearly audible, so that must have been screamed in her ear.

“Oh yes,” Thalia says with probably more satisfaction than is wise, considering Jason shaking her and the girl in the purple shirt looking at her with wide eyes. Her vision swims, but it’s been five years and the vicious satisfaction has not yet dimmed. “Dearly beloathed stepmother tried stealing you from mom. I fried her ass, grabbed you, told her if she tried that again I’d do my damnedest to bring Olympus to its knees, and ran. Haven’t seen her in five years.”

The girl, wide-eyed, brings both index fingers together parallel, and clearly says, “Both.”

Oh. Taking them both. That was fine. Nothing short of Tartarus could hold them captive together.

“That’s fine,” Thalia agrees, and immediately passes the fuck out.

🗲

Thalia wakes up with Jason on her right, looking like he’d been slapped with a live flounder while she was out, a blond man with a circular shield in front of them, and a pounding headache.

“Thals,” Jason whispers. “Can you hear me yet?”

She nods, moving her hand enough that he can feel it.

“Is there a monster that imitates dead people?”

What.

The blond in front of them—shielding them, in the most literal sense of the word—glances back just long enough to check on them and it’s long enough to see his profile and what the fuck.

“Luke?” she breathes, propping herself up on an elbow.

“What in the gods be damned Hades are you doing in California?” Luke hisses. “This place is like monster central, don’t you know better?”

“We didn’t exactly have much of a choice in the matter,” Thalia says dryly. “What are you doing alive?”

He glances back at them again, a crooked grin on his face. “You know me,” he says. “Always escaping by the skin of my teeth. Can we have this conversation later, without weird, culty demigods trying to grab you guys?”

Thalia looks up at the swirling clouds above them. She hates to admit it, but— “I don’t think I can walk.”

“Oh for—“ Luke exclaims. “Jason, buddy, hold this.” He unlatches the shield from his arm and passes it off to her brother. “You can terrify us with it later, until then, just keep pointing it at the purple people.” Then he reaches down and scoops her up with a huff of air. “You need to eat more,” Luke tells her as an aside. “Jason, north and east. I’ll follow.”

“Sorry I just spent the last two weeks fighting off a fucking Fury,” Thalia says sarcastically. “I shall endeavor to take a break and eat a hamburger every six to eight hours as my body demands—except wait, no, I can’t, because I have a literal demon from hell that wants to kill me because I had the audacity to be born.”

“You couldn’t have fried it before today?” Luke asks.

“You think I didn’t fry it like fifty times?” Thalia says. “You know, I know we’ve been apart for a couple of years because I thought you were dead, but I didn’t realize my temper was forgettable.”

Jason’s giggling in front of them.

“It’s really not,” Luke says, grinning. He looks back, even though Thalia can clearly see the purple people, as he called them, not following them. He sobers. “I looked for you.”

“I looked for your body,” Thalia says.

“I’m sorry.”

“Be sorrier.”

“Hey, who’s carrying who?”

“I fried a Fury. When you fry a Fury and don’t pass out, then you can talk.”

“Uh-huh,” he says. He sounds unimpressed, but she looks, and there’s both amusement and awe in his eyes. “I’ll take that under consideration. But really. I’m sorry. I knew that when I couldn’t find you, you’d think I was dead and I didn’t do more to let you know otherwise.”

Thalia wrestles with her temper and her hurt. “So why didn’t you?”

Luke shakes his head. “The explosion? Was my fault. It was the only way I could see myself getting out alive.”

Thalia remembers the old house suddenly exploding, going up like someone lit an entire matchbox on fire with Greek fire. There’s a certain shade of lime green that she hates to this day, and it’s entirely because of that.

“I got literally blown out of the house, managed to land in a dumpster and not on the metal roof next to it,” Luke continues. “Badly injured, vaguely flash fried, I’d broken my leg on the way out. I laid in the dumpster with some ambrosia trying get myself to heal for at least a day.”

Yikes. Big Yikes.

“By the time I managed to hobble out of the dumpster, our camp was gone. I went to the city to get some mortal bandages, trying not to burn myself out on ambrosia, and I went down an alleyway. There was a weird noise, and I wanted to investigate before I tried bunking down there for the night, and the next thing I know, there’s this little girl trying to take my kneecaps out with a hammer.”

Luke shakes his head, grinning to himself. “Her name’s Annabeth, she’s a daughter of Athena. She’s eight.”

What were the odds? Probably basically zero.

“What?” Thalia says.

“Yeah,” Luke agrees. “Nuts, right? Pretty sure either Hermes or Athena—or both—were keeping her safe. I convinced her I wasn’t a monster and got her to travel with me. She’s strong, so it was tough while I healed.”

“And then, like six months later, Clarisse found us,” Luke says. “Daughter of Ares, also really strong. The three of us racked up almost as many as the three of us did.”

Thalia winces.

Luke goes quiet. “There’s a camp, in New York,” he says slowly, “specifically built to handle and protect demigods.”

Thalia lifts her head.

“They send out satyrs to try and find demigods before—well, before we get overrun by monsters. And the three of us, roaming around the New England area with a horde of monsters on our tails? It was enough to attract some attention, especially when we were in New York City. Clarisse...she didn’t make it. But Annabeth did.”

Thalia couldn’t breathe.

“She’s safe, back at camp.”

“What are you not saying?” Thalia demanded. “That’d be the first thing out of your mouth. Why would we not be safe?”

“There’s a pact that your dad made, way back after World War II,” Luke says. “No more kids from the Big Three. The crack that you made, about having the audacity of being born? He broke his oath. But he’s immortal, so you pay the price.”

Luke twitches a bit, so Thalia holds her breath until she doesn’t have enough air to be mad.

“The campers there haven’t seen a child of the Big Three ever. Chiron, the centaur who runs the place, hasn’t seen a child of the Big Three since World War II. You guys die too fast. And, even worse, there’s a prophecy about one turning sixteen and potentially destroying the world.”

“Luke,” Thalia says, very calmly. “I need you to put me down.”

Luke sets her on the ground with gratifying speed.

Thalia draws her hunting blades and stabbed them into the ground and made ladders of electricity between them to try and not send off stray pieces of lightning to everyone else around her.

Thalia rests her head against the humming pommels. “Two years ago, Jason and I were in a corner store in New York when monsters attacked.”

Luke stills.

“I’d kicked butt not an hour prior, but it turns out that three Big Three kids is too tantalizing a prospect.”

Luke gasps. “How—“

“Poseidon had a son with a badass woman,” Thalia laughs hollowly. “His taste in women is impeccable, I’ll give him that. Percy’s eight. Him and Jason almost blew out the plumbing in the building arguing over a cookie, so I knew we couldn’t stay.”

“You—I’ve never heard you describe someone as badass, much less a mortal,” Luke says.

Thalia—sighs. “Yeah. She’s sacrificed damn near everything to keep him safe. I can respect that.”

She hauls in a deep breath and forces herself standing. She sways, her vision swims a little, but worlds better than earlier. She pulls her knives out of the ground, cleans off the dirt, and sheathes them. Luke stands behind her, to the left, arms hovering.

Gods, she’s missed him.

“I’ve missed you,” she says. Like a phantom limb.

“I’m so glad you’re still okay,” Luke says.

🗲

Luke goes back to Camp Half-Blood, quest unfulfilled, and brings Annabeth out of the borders. Chiron and Grover come with them, and it’s a very nervous daughter and son of the sky god that they meet.

“Annabeth, Clarisse, Grover, the first bunch I ran herd on,” Luke says fondly, ruffling Jason’s hair. He pats the tree next to him. “Thalia, Jason, this is Clarisse, Annabeth, Grover, and Chiron.”

Annabeth scowls at Jason first, then Thalia. “I’m coming with you,” she announces.

Grover let out a quiet sound of horror. Which, fair. Cute kid, but Thalia had enough work with Jason, and she refuses to endanger a third strong demigod again.

“Um, no,” Luke says firmly, but gently. “You’re not coming with us.”

“You’re not coming with Jason and I, either,” Thalia says, cutting that off at the trunk.

Luke whirls around. “I just—“

“We had to watch you die once already,” Thalia says icily. Annabeth goes white. “Forgive me for not wanting to repeat the experience, with no guarantee that you’d appear out of nowhere three years later.” She tucks her brother closer to her. She softens, just a bit. “We’ll visit,” she promises.

“You would not stay?” Chiron asks.

Thalia glances at the demigods on the other side of the barrier. “Stay in one place that’s constantly watched by the gods. We’d be dead on the inside of a month. Thanks for the offer, but no thanks.”

She sees the brief look of confusion on Chiron’s face and immediately glares at Luke. “You didn’t tell them?”

“It’s none of their business if you’re not going to stay anyway,” Luke says practically. “Annie knows. Clarisse didn’t. I’m pretty sure all they can smell is that you’re strong demigods, not your parentage.”

Thalia eyes them dubiously. “Thalia, daughter of Zeus,” she introduces herself shortly. “And my full-blooded brother, Jason. I’m fifteen and I threatened Hera with the end of Olympus five years ago if she tried taking him from me. I suddenly see why she took my threat seriously.”

Grover chokes on a laugh. Annabeth kicks him in the shin and scrutinizes Thalia. “The gods are better than the other options,” she says seriously. “But kicking them probably wouldn’t hurt. Much.”

Thalia grins at her. She looks at Luke. “You’re right, I like her.”

“So I can come with you,” Annabeth says confidently.

“No,” Thalia says. “But, even if me kicking them doesn’t work next year, I have a mission for you.”

Luke frowns at her in askance.

“In like, four to seven years, Beth, this will be very important, so listen carefully,” Thalia says slowly. “There will be a boy who comes to camp, probably beat to Hades and back and probably grieving. I need you to befriend him.”

Annabeth looks puzzled. Chiron looks politely confused. Grover looks utterly befuddled. Luke looks like she’d slapped him with a hagfish and then offered him some sunflowers: astonished, disgusted, and delighted, all at the same time. Jason starts laughing.

“Thals,” Luke says, obviously trying not to laugh.

Annabeth looks at Luke and then back at Thalia. “It would be a prank on them?”

“It would be a kick in the face,” Thalia corrects. “He’s nice. Perhaps a little slow on the uptake sometimes, but he respects the women in his life.”

She considers this. “Four to seven years? I’d be twelve to fifteen?”

Thalia nods.

“Okay,” Annabeth decides. “If I don’t like him I can kick him though, right?”

“He’d probably deserve it,” Thalia agrees. “But don’t do it if he doesn’t deserve it.”

🗲

Thalia’s fifteen and Jason’s eight and they’re in Tennessee when an old dude named Fred approaches them. “That wasn’t very nice to set them up like that. Funny, though.”

Thalia glances to the side and sees the golden sunshine yellow of his iris. “They have a habit of setting us up to fulfill their rivalries. I’m just breaking the cycle.”

Jason peers around her from the other side to see who she’s talking to. He seems puzzled at who the stranger is, but cautiously says, “Hey, cousin.”

A hilariously safe bet.

Apollo seems to thinks so, too, because he guffaws once before he says hi back.

“But seriously, the kid’s got enough problems, you want to add to his list?” Apollo says.

“Luke was the best thing that ever happened to me, short of Jason,” Thalia says. “Someone who will argue with him rather than agreeing to everything will do them both a world of good.” She pauses. “I’m not the child of the prophecy. Am I.”

It’s not a question.

“You could be,” Apollo says finally. “Basically any time after you turn sixteen. But while some Old things are stirring, none of them are close to waking. There’s nothing happening that would aid you in Olympus’s fall, and nothing that would topple it that you’d be able to preserve.”

He pauses. “Between you and me?”

“And Jason,” Thalia says.

“And Jason,” Apollo agrees. “Prophecies can be fulfilled in a lot of odd ways. Ideas, you know, last beyond a mortal lifetime. Maybe you preemptively introducing that troublemaking pair will destroy an idea that Olympus holds sacred. Some things need to be changed, otherwise it will spell our end.”

Thalia glances at him and quirks a sarcastic smile. “Good thing I’m dyslexic.”

“Yes,” Apollo agrees, completely serious in the face of her joke. “Good thing that you are.”

She covers Jason’s eyes as Apollo goes supernova and they’re left alone in Nashville.

🗲

Jason’s eight and today is Thalia’s birthday, and Sally has taken the four of them out to a restaurant to celebrate when everything…

Well.

Thalia would say when everything goes to shit but it’s really when they reached the proverbial fork in the road. Or perhaps, when everything changes.

It starts with the restaurant’s door chiming open, with a woman’s gracious voice waving off the waitstaff saying, “My party is already here, thank you.” And she walks closer to them, a brown woman in a white business suit with a shirt that shimmers blue and green and purple. Her brown heels clack on the stone pavers that make up the floor.

She stops at their table and slides into the booth next to Thalia.

Across from her, Sally picks up her steak knife in a move that’s undeniably a threat. Thalia fucking loves her.

“Hera,” Thalia says evenly, making a show of going back to her menu. “I know immortals have a screwy sense of time, but I do believe you’ve managed to pick the worst possible time to have a confrontation. Congratulations. That takes some true talent.”

Hera reaches out and snags Sally’s menu that Sally is completely ignoring in favor of glaring metaphorical daggers at the goddess while threatening her with a steak knife. Thalia absently sends a prayer to both Apollo and Hermes. They both cover such a wide variety pack of stuff that one of them should cover badass but also kind and occasionally stupid mortals.

“On the contrary,” Hera says. “I believe this is the perfect time. We are constrained by polite society, so we must at least appear to get along.”

Thalia lowers the menu to look at Hera, and then swing her gaze at Sally. Hera lowers her stolen menu at the long look, and then sees the attempted threat. “Ah. Well. Some of us are constrained by polite society. I see that others don’t apply.”

Thalia takes a deep breath. It feels like it goes deeper than usual, somehow, like her guts have made way for her lungs. And, like magic, Thalia’s water tips over without anyone touching it and spills all over Hera.

Thalia hasn’t got a drop on her.

That—it felt like she did that, not Percy. Percy looks almost as startled as Thalia feels, safely sandwiched in between Sally, the table, and the wall. Hera makes a disgusted noise, taps her fingers along the menu, and the water vanishes. Thalia reaches out and rights the cup slowly.

“Lady, you’re probably the only one in polite society,” Thalia says bluntly. “Say your piece and get out.”

“Very well,” Hera says. “When I tried to take Jason six years ago, you told me that you would destroy Olympus if I succeeded to get him back. Does that still hold?”

“Yes,” Thalia snarls. Her fingers clench the menu in her hands and it feels like she’s holding onto a live wire now.

“Is that the only reason why you would even try?” Hera presses.

“Don’t fuck with me, Hera,” Thalia says. Her voice slides into a lower register that’s meant to be heard over a horde of monsters, but she still only speaks just above a whisper. “I have only ever wanted to be left alone by you people. Leave me and mine be and we won’t have an issue.”

“You and yours being?”

“The people at this table and Luke and his second family—Annabeth, Clarisse, Grover,” Thalia says. “Is that your game? You want to see who you can fuck over without me triggering the prophecy?”

Hera goes silent and Thalia knows she’s hit the nail on the head.

“You listen well, Hera, goddess of marriage,” Thalia says. “If I found out one of my people died because you’re so short sighted and possessive of a husband that has never and will never respect you, I will bring the prophecy down on all our heads, chop you into a gazillion pieces as Zeus did to Kronos, and toss you into Tartarus myself and let you rot with grandfather. If you insist on sharing his mental issues, you can share an unliving space with him as well.”

Hera’s jaw is clenched and her lips pursed together.

“How about,” Thalia continues, “you learn about this novel thing called communication, and possibly divorce. It’s the twenty first century, step mother, aunt, cunt, whatever you’d like me to call you. Women have rights, women have therapists, and women have divorce lawyers. Zeus was around for my childhood, I actually know the decrepit prick. I can’t imagine being around him for three thousand years and not straight up murdering him. If you have an issue with me besides me being born—which, I’ll remind you, I actually had no say in—not kidnapping my brother is a great way to start a conversation.”

Jason chokes on a laugh about reminding the goddess of marriage that she has no say in herself being born. Thalia silently tells him to shut the fuck up before Hera remembers his existence.

“The gods are not allowed—“

“Then it’s a great thing that you’ve never had demigod kids, so you can safely interact with demigods that are not your kids. Which is all of them.”

Thalia pauses. “Goodbye. I’m celebrating surviving to sixteen. You are not invited.” She waved down a server. “Could I get another water? I was really thirsty,” she says guilelessly.

Sally visibly swallows a laugh as Hera rises. Definitely not running from being threatened with more ice water on her suit. Nope. Definitely not.

“Your disrespect,” Hera says severely, “is only matched by your loyalty.”

And then she vanishes.

“Well, that went swimmingly,” Thalia says brightly. “I want lad naa.”

Sally sets down the knife carefully and then rests her head on the table.

🗲

(the mental image is too funny: a pristine business woman, a teenager with the nineties grunge aesthetic, two eight year old boys, and a mom in mom clothing sit down in a Siam restaurant.)

🗲

It’s when Thalia delivers them all safely back to the Jacksons’ apartment that she asks Percy quietly, “The water spilling. Was that—?”

“It wasn’t me,” Percy says uncertainly. “I dunno. It didn’t feel like me.”

“It felt like I did it,” Thalia says. “But that’s not my power.”

“Maybe the air pushed it over,” Jason says.

Thalia pauses. The air is their domain. She doesn’t remember any weird gusts of wind, but she was also very focused on not frying someone and also making sure Hera didn’t do something stupid, like try kidnapping Jason. Again.

“Maybe,” she says. But she doubts it.

🗲

Thalia’s seventeen and Jason is nine when they see the Jacksons again, a whole year and a half later. They celebrate Percy’s tenth birthday in a cabin on Montauk, and while Thalia’s supervising the boys playing in the surf, she can hear...something. In the cabin.

Sally is taking a well-deserved nap, or she’s supposed to be. Instead, she sits on the bed and bows her head over a head of dark, curly hair, attached to a tanned man kneeling in front of her.

Thalia shuts the door again just as quickly and guns it.

Later, she thinks, and wonders—that’s real devotion she saw there. That was I missed you and come with me? and he is beautiful. She naps under the sea of stars, one boy under each arm, and she can rest easy knowing that neither can be stolen away without her knowing immediately.

There’s a shush of displaced sand, and Percy shifts under her arm, and she cracks an eye open. She assumes its Sally, but its Poseidon, who rests a large hand on Percy’s forehead and looks awed and wistful.

He sees that she’s awake, a split second after she’s seen the heartache and longing on his face, and smiles at her ruefully. Thank you, he mouths, and dissolves into a salty sea breeze.

🗲

There’s an entire pack of hellhounds to deal with in the morning. Thalia picks Jason up with one arm and Percy with the other and hurls them both into the shack calling itself a cabin with Sally.

There’s a lot of yelling about her decision, but Percy has never been trained, Sally is a mortal, and Jason is nine. She can do this.

She can do this, right?

She draws her hunting knives and her power up from her gut and they crackle with lightning immediately.

Thalia gives them the run around, around and around and around the beach and over and behind the shack and into the surf. She’s dusted four already, starting to drag a little with the many scrapes and scratches and near misses that she’s acquired, and regrets taking off her leather jacket. She stabs another and somersaults off a dissolving back into the surf.

She hoists herself to her feet, ankle deep in the lapping waves. She sets her jaw, takes a deep breath, and braces herself. Another three. She can do three hellhounds. She’s done three hellhounds before.

Thalia almost has her feet knocked out from under her by the three-foot-high waves. The air has become dim and gray, and smells of ozone. She risks a glance away from the hellhounds to the sky and—

That’s a hurricane.

That’s impossible. Sally checked the forecast before they left for Montauk, there wasn’t a hurricane within a week’s hurricane travel time, and no potentials out in the Atlantic near New York, either.

Did she—?

Thalia checks in with herself and no, she’s not nearly as tired as she would be to make an entire hurricane so she couldn’t have done it but Percy?

Percy’s ten, and in danger, and aware of who he is, and the son of the Stormbringer, and with a distressed son of the sky. They could have done it.

Maybe. Does Jason even know what a hurricane is? Thalia’s steered them away from the eastern and southern coasts during summer and fall for a reason.

The hellhounds attack, and there’s no more time to think about it.

Thalia whirls out of the way of the first, stabbing her knife into its flank on the way by, blasts the second back with a string of lightning, and would have been eaten by the third if a rouge wave hadn’t scooped her up bodily and flung her clear.

Water doesn’t behave like that, Thalia thinks, crashing back into the surf. She sucks in a lungful of seawater, coughs it back up, and staggers to her feet. She goes down on one knee and braces herself when she sees the charging hellhound and lets it impale itself on her knife. It bursts into dust and whirls away on the rising winds.

She rolls to the left, out of the surf, to escape the other two bearing down on her. She jumps, and the wind gives her a boost, and she flips neatly over the first hellhound and stabs downward at the second hellhound’s skull with the full force of her entire self falling through the air and almost beheads the monster. She lands, tucking the knives out to the side and somersaults on the landing through the monster dust and pops back to her feet to see the final hellhound has managed to turn on a dime and is going to flatten her.

It does. One paw lands on her chest, the size of a dinner plate, and bowls her back into the sand. The breath wuffs out of her, and she scrabbles to bring to bear her knives—

The world goes white.

She’s—alive?

Yes. She’s in the water. The white is hundreds of thousands of bubbles in the wave that just tried to crush both her and the hellhound both. She can see the black mass, now, that she assumes is the hellhound, writhing in the waters about four yards off to her left.

Follow the bubbles. The surface is only a few feet above her head, thank you, Poseidon, and she swims up and gasps for air and tries to look around. The sound is choppy, gray and violent with the sudden hurricane whipping everything into a froth.

She’s hundreds of yards from shore.

Thalia swears loudly enough that she’s sure the boys can hear her from here. Lightning flashes overhead to punctuate it.

What happened? Was there a storm surge and then a riptide? She couldn’t have been out for more than a few seconds, if she was out at all!

Teeth sink into her leg and she’s dragged down again.

The hellhound is terrifyingly adept at swimming in the water. Thalia is a good enough swimmer to keep her head above water and get back to dry land, and not much else. Practicing surviving the water more than was absolutely necessary seemed foolish, given that one uncle already hated her guts. She was not about to try to piss off the other one, as well. She’d only let Jason play in the surf if Percy was also there.

Thalia was not above holding his son metaphorically hostage if it meant Poseidon would play nice with her brother.

It makes passes at Thalia in the water, darting in to claw or bite at her and darting away before Thalia can get a good hit in. She’s slow in the water, from both the resistance of the water and from the lack of air.

Out, out, I need to get OUT OF HERE—

There’s something wrong at the surface.

It looks wild from down below, but Thalia needs air and she’s not aware of any monsters that like hanging out in the air in a hurricane, so she swims for the surface.

Oh look, she deadpans to herself. A waterspout. Just what I need.

Hurricanes spawn tornadoes frequently, this should not be a shock. But she needed a way out, and a waterspout would, in fact, get her out of the water, and also probably slice her to pieces.

Hmm.

She dives back under the waves, gets whirled around a couple times by a wave cycle, and finally spots the hellhound. It sees her about the same time.

Thalia, thinking, what the HELL am I doing? swims towards the waterspout. She swims as fast as she can towards the waterspout that’s probably only thirty feet away, but feels like a mile.

The hellhound is on her before she can believe it, and she grabs it by the chest fur, ducking under the dangerous teeth, hauls herself close, and swings around, hoping that her own momentum would do what she hoped. It did, it reversed them, so that the hellhound was closer to the surface than she was, and then Thalia braced both feet against its chest and blasted it back with a plume of bubbles.

My superpower, Thalia thinks, amused, bubbles.

Straight into the vortex it goes, and up, and up—

Thalia surfaces ten feet away, swimming backwards, and watches the hellhound get sucked more than thirty feet up before it dissolves into golden dust. She breathes out a sigh of relief. The waterspout dissolves just as quickly as it formed.

Can’t believe that worked, she thinks, and starts swimming to shore.

There’s a lot of yelling. And nobody can agree on who made the hurricane, or the waterspout, or the weird waves, but they’re all tired as Hades.

🗲

Thalia is eighteen and Jason is eleven and the world almost ended. It’s June 24th, mere days before Jason turns twelve, three days after Percy pulled some seriously stupid stunts for a month and then vanished again, and Thalia found out that he, Annabeth, and Grover found Zeus’s zappy wand and returned it in the nick of time before all out war broke out.

She and Jason storm Camp Half-Blood. There’s a lot of yelling involved, and some blood, and some swords stuck in places they should not be stuck. Luke pulls her off to the side and she has both hands wrapped around the edges of his breastplate because otherwise they’ll shake and she’s whispering, “What the fuck, Luke. He’s twelve. Why—How—?” over and over again into his collarbone.

“Thals,” he says, chuckling, wrapping her in a hug. “Those three are going to take over the world, and the world will be gladder for it.”

“They shouldn’t have to,” she says.

“I think world domination would be a self-directed and mostly accidental task, actually,” Luke says thoughtfully, and its such a ludicrous statement that Thalia falls into hysterical laughter.

#atc rewrite #all together cousins #pjo #fanfic #im excited actually #thalia pov #pre books and tlt #mostly pre books though #do i need to list the entire cast of characters #okay just the important ones #thalia grace #jason grace #luke castellan #percy jackson #sally jackson #hera #there are plenty of others but they're currently in fairly minor parts of the story or only mentioned

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