A/N: Found The Prompts forum a few days before and only came up with an inspiration for a story today. The inspiration came when I was walking down the street towards my house and it was raining heavily and I restrained myself from getting my umbrella. This story was supposed to be about Luke, but I don't think the judges of The Prompts would be pleased to read a depressing five thousand worded story. It's ironic – Thalia's life is a whole lot longer, but her story here's only about one thousand words. Anyways, this all came like a big blah! and little editing was done, so sorry if this came out as disappointing.

The Non-Romantic Romancers Society is officially discontinued and deleted. Will be using the plot for one of my NaNoWriMo projects. Sorry, guys.

Of Cuts and Pills will be updated a little later this August and, to all those authors who inquired (spammed) about Stuck In Between, I've already finished the story – still polishing the ending – and I'm just waiting for my beta-reader to forward it to me. Sorry for the long wait.

Reviews, CCs and flames are highly appreciated.

Enjoy!

Percy Jackson and The Olympians

Title: The Girl Who Didn't Want To Grow Up

Summary: She wished to be a maiden forever. And now she's just one day before sixteen. What immortality really was to a girl who didn't want to grow up. Mild ThaliaxLuke. Written for The Prompts: Third Prompt - First Line Dilemma.

Written for: The Prompts: Third Prompt - First Line Dilemma

Disclaimer: I own the plot. Nothing else.

~0~

You know that place between sleeping and awake, that place where you can still remember dreaming? That's where I'll always think of you.

~ J.M. Barrie (From his novel "Peter Pan")

~0~

Spitting on her hand was something Thalia Grace loved to do.

Back when she was five, she always sneaked out from her shabby bedroom window to meet with a boy and a girl she made friends with across her backyard. They would always laugh and climb the sycamore trees, horse around, make hell with the elderly neighbors. Just basically being the most beloved pest around town.

Just like Peter Pan.

Thalia always admired Peter Pan from the start, and the thought of never growing up was forever enticing to a five-year-old mind. She and her backyard friends would always spit on their hands and slap it together at the highest of fives.

Just like Peter Pan.

But pretty soon things started to change, as things always did. In the end, Thalia had to move away with her petulant actress mother, and little did she knew that the once backyard friends she had had stopped wishing about flying and rainbow candy-canes and started hooking up and growing up.

Everybody knew the story of the boy who never wanted to grow up, but hardly anyone believed in it.

And so little Miss Thalia Grace made a wish under the evening star.

And so she got her wish.

~0~

Mostly everyone thought that scouring the whole world for monsters and killing them with a gang of eternal teenage girls was a good way to spend a lifetime. But Thalia knew better. The perks were obvious, of course. Sometimes vanity would reach her and she'd take a peek on her reflection on the mirror. She'd see that none of her features were out of place ever since she made a pact with Artemis. No wrinkles, no gray hairs. Thalia was always at the top of her game. No irritating glasses or adult diapers to slow her down.

But voids in her forever were sometimes hard to fill.

Sometimes, even with a band of Hunters trailing behind her, she felt lonely. She'd seen a lot of people come and go, places form and change and close. Sometimes she felt like blowing up with all those secrets cramped inside her chest – she had seen, heard and felt too much, too many. She possibly couldn't contain them all, as little as her heart was. So she wondered whether this must be one of the reasons why even after a few hundred years, bickering would never cease to emerge between the Hunters. Whether it was out of boredom or sheer annoyance, some used-to-be-mortal or used-to-be-demigod-daughter-of-whoever would continuously butt heads with random slashing and flying arrows here and there. Hunters had the tendency to act like children more often than the gods did, sometimes even more than children. Nonetheless, Thalia grew irritated with it. Soon she grew tired of bossing everyone around, and as goddess' lieutenants have perquisites, she ventured off alone.

~0~

Waiting.

Before, it took a long, long while before she finally stomached the whole prospect of Luke running off and dying first. It's probably part of the secret pact Father Time made with the heavens, anyway, or to whoever controls the cosmic occurrence of life and death. Death is hard and sallow – it gets a whole lot worse through time. But waiting. Waiting and waiting. Sometimes, it feels like the only thing you can do. Sometimes, waiting's the only thing that makes you alive.

A child would always wait.

And so she waited.

And she watched.

She started looking out for any sign of him. He might be that boy running after a yellow balloon down in Vermont one day, or he might be that elderly man who fed the birds the morning after that. Thalia ran her fingers across the smooth edges of her bow, watching and waiting, looking for him. As if she was dreaming. As if she's the one who's floating away.

Who knows? Luke Castellan might be out for round three.

It was an endless cycle of days, months and years. Thalia and her folks would gather around like a little troop under Artemis' hand and gallop in magical forests with magical creatures like fairies do in fairytales. They didn't worry about age or whoever gets to be the next crummy Wall Street idol.

But every other decade, Lady Artemis leaves her handmaidens be, busy with other moon goddess business as she foretold.

Patrols at random. That was Thalia's escape plan. But forever was something she could not escape easily. Time didn't really matter much to immortals like her, but it still applied.

It was night time. A steady night. Thalia could hear the faintest moaning and snoring of the sleeping mortals inside the rickety apartments up north. The streets were still busy – no surprise there.

And Death still followed Thalia's footsteps.

As soon as she made a turn towards a damp gift shop, she heard a booming noise of metal shuddering a few feet away from her. In a shadowy alley, a tall and stocky man grabbed someone by the collar and threw him towards a pile of trash bags. The man tried to stand up, gripping hard on the cold cement and pushing himself upwards, but got kicked in the groin and got shoved, his back breaking at the brick wall. Thalia could see that the man was saying something, pleading.

And Thalia froze. In that single mirthless laughter, the mugger plunged the knife into the man's chest. In point seventy-six of a second, the man went down.

Stunned into silence, her electric blue eyes watched as the mugger slapped the wallet on the fallen man's face and retreated to the back of the alley, gone in a flash. Seconds flew by as Thalia ran towards the opposite sidewalk, ignoring the angry drivers pulling down their windshields with a colorful spill of curses. She took the heavy man in her arms, not knowing what else to do.

His dirty blond hair was coated in grime and other filth. His blue eyes were cool, open. His pale white hand tried to quench the oozing blood coming out from his chest as every gurgle of air seemed like his last.

And with a resounding alarm, Thalia remembered Luke Castellan had chosen rebirth.

Boy, why are you crying?

"Family," the man gasped. "My family – "

"Everything's going to be all right," Thalia shushed, close to tears. "Your family's going to be all right."

"Y-you'll keep t-them safe. P-promise m-me."

Knowing that her voice would break if she would speak, Thalia only nodded.

"Stay with me," he said, spitting and coughing blood. "P-please. Stay."

The tears finally sprang freely and flowed. Thalia sniffed hard and hummed a song she vaguely remembered. She gingerly put a hand towards his chest. She tried very hard to stop the bleed, to stop him from dying, anything at all. But it was too late to change anything. Too late –

The man's bloodied hand stroked Thalia's cheek. She was glowing immensely beneath the moonlight that escaped through the darkest shadows.

He whispered something inaudible as he closed his eyes.

You won't forget me, will you?

Me? Forget? Never.

And so Thalia came back to the grounds with streaks of dried blood staining her torn navy shirt, ignoring again the relentless questioning of her fellow hunters and went straight to her tent.

She cried, knowing that with his last look, the man with the blond hair and familiar blue eyes did not remember her at all.

Never is an awfully long time.

~0~

And Thalia lived on.

She knew, now, that she's way ahead and beyond time. And she knew that she would also always be left behind. Learning from the experiences of hunters that came and left, she knew she was one of the fortunate ones. She had faith. She had trust.

She quickly whirled around to see if Luke was somewhere in that blond teenage boy crossing the street.

Dying.

She had seen many people die before her eyes. Ever since she saw what happened that night on the alley, she tried stopping any deaths as long as she could. It worked for some time. But the will of the Fates could not be bent – ancients do have a way with things. She wondered, all this time, how Luke died. She was abandoned under a chunk of Hera's stupid statue fragments at that time, and she always wondered how it must feel like to be -

Dying. Even the lightest of hearts grew heavier in time, and time was something that never stopped for anyone.

And time was the one that separated Thalia and Luke.

Growing up.

Spitting on her hand was something Thalia Grace loved to do. She remembered that. She always did. She took a glance at her hands and outstretched them in front of her.

Five fingers each.

Percy. Annabeth. Nico. Rachel. Even Luke.

They all grew up.

She didn't know what else would happen from then on, and she found out herself that she couldn't bring herself to worry. Because Thalia Grace continuously lived on, as any immortal did. Forever is definitely a long time for her to think about it, and she's sure she would never stop caring. There's a second to a minute, a minute to an hour, a day until night. And every second she lived her life, she knew that each time, she's getting better. That each time, she finally began to understand.

And so another tale started about the girl who never wanted to grow up.

And the time she finally did.

To live, to die, to love, will be an awfully big adventure.

~Fin~