The Life And Times of Thalia, The Immortal

by Icy Roses

Disclaimer: Do not own.

Author's Note: I quite literally wrote and rewrote this thing at least four times, in an attempt to get it just right. It ended up being an existential contemplation on immortality and how it feels to be left behind. It wouldn't necessarily call it sad, but as Thalia says herself, it's different. Immortality is different. And we can only pretend to understand what it's really like.

There will be time, there will be time
For I have known them all already; known them all:
Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons,
I have measured out my life with coffee spoons;
I know the voices dying with a dying fall ...
- T. S. Eliot, "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock"

There are a lot of things that suck about immortality.

Sure, the perks are obvious, and those are the ones Thalia thought about when she made the choice. For one, she'll stay fresh-faced forever. No anti-aging cream or under-eye wrinkles for her. It's probably a small consideration, and Thalia isn't big on looks anyway. Still, it's nice to catch a glimpse of herself in a puddle of fresh rain and know she'll never have to shy away from her own reflection.

She'll be a day from sixteen for the rest of forever, and sleepovers never get old. Giggling, gossiping, and footraces never fail to entertain the Hunters, no matter how many millennia it's been. And that's nice too. Being bored would be kind of a bummer, and being bored for the next hundred or thousand years would be even worse.

But sometimes, she thinks being immortal really isn't worth it. The thought first occurs to her when she is standing at the foot of Artemis' throne, basking in the glory of bringing honor to her father and to her beloved goddess.

It's when Percy gets his prize that her smile falters.

The gods, all twelve of them, offer her friend the promise of eternal life. And for a minute, she thinks he'll actually take it. But Percy looks back at Annabeth searchingly, almost as if he's asking her a question. Thalia isn't as blind as the two of them, but she's still stunned when he does the unthinkable. He turns it down. He confidently tells the gods of his alternate request and insists he doesn't want immortal life because he wants the chance to be normal.

He can say it until he's blue in the face, thinks Thalia ruefully, but everyone knows the real reason. Partly because that reason is standing behind him glowing with such happiness she might as well spontaneously combust.

They walk out together, hands linked, and Thalia's throat dries.

She swallows hard. All of a sudden, she's irrationally angry with Percy, because she might've thought—well, she might have thought occasionally it would be cool to have an immortal friend like Percy. But instead, she's left feeling inexplicably alone, and it dawns on her for the first time that she'll have to watch her friends go through life while she stands on the sidelines.

She doesn't know if she can handle that.

It's even harder to stomach when Percy and Annabeth get married and settle down. It's totally awful thinking of them as an upper-middle class couple.

"You know you shouldn't be moving stuff like that in this stage," Thalia says skeptically.

Annabeth sets the box down, huffing and puffing. She props her hands behind her back and sticks out her ballooning belly. "We have to get all this into the U-Haul by six." She looks around the room wistfully. "I'm going to miss New York."

"Ha," Thalia barks. "I doubt you're going to miss it more than Percy. He's acting like someone's died. It makes me depressed to be around him."

Annabeth smiles faintly, and Thalia is struck by how weird this whole situation is. The girl who used to be five years younger than her is now seven years older. And nearly eight months pregnant. This new confident, motherly woman unnerves her. Annabeth laments constantly about how she's grown to the size of a whale, but Thalia thinks she's really not that upset about it, especially since Percy is so quick to assure her she's the most beautiful whale he's ever seen.

Such a way with words. Thalia snorts. She's glad she never had a desire to have kids. If she did subconsciously, it's definitely been quelled by this gushiness. But as it is, she's happy for the couple.

"You promise to come visit us in Seattle?" Annabeth says, and Thalia is jerked back into reality.

"Duh. But I don't know if you'll necessarily want me around after a while, because when we go to the mall, people will probably mistake me as your daughter," she jokes.

Annabeth makes a face. "Oh, don't say that. I'll be so old."

And while Thalia might not necessarily miss motherhood or old age, she will miss being able to talk to Annabeth about certain things. Because the next time she visits, Annabeth has a four-month baby on the crook of her arm. She has under-eye circles, and her hair looks like a rat's nest. Percy doesn't look much better, although his hair was always a mess, so it's not too different than usual. Thalia feels so bad, she offers to watch the baby for a night, and her two friends immediately collapse on the couch and start snoring with aplomb.

The little girl has dark blue eyes—she wonders what color they'll turn eventually—and tufts of honey brown hair. Thalia rocks her awkwardly (and may have calmed her with a bit of magic, although she'd never tell the parents in a million years) and realizes she'll never be able to share in the experience of raising a child. Annabeth will have all of this and more to get off her chest. What can Thalia do to help? She knows nothing of this. She never will.

She almost wishes she had the peace of settling down and pushing play on her life, instead of being stuck on pause.

She notices a lonely boy wandering the streets of Charleston, South Carolina. His face is downcast and so dirty, she wonders briefly when he took his last shower. But he's got a nimbleness of hand that intrigues her, and she spies on him from behind a corner. He wanders down several blocks nonchalantly, but Thalia knows that gleam in his eyes. She and her little makeshift family of three lived for almost a year off thievery and cunning. The boy may think he's fooling everyone around him, but Thalia can see how he appraises the people passing by. He's looking for a bulge in the back pocket or a loose clasp on a woman's purse.

He finally hones in on his target, a middle-aged gentleman who strolls down the sidewalk and stops occasionally to admire display cases in store windows. The boy crashes into him and apologizes profusely. Quick as a cat while the man is distracted, he reaches back into the seat of the man's pants and slips out a leather wallet. He scampers away.

Thalia is bemused, but she chases him. There's an aura about this kid. He's no ordinary homeless boy, and she's proven right when he pulls a knife on her in the alley. "Easy," she says, holding up her hands.

He narrows his eyes. "You're not normal. You have a weird glow."

She chuckles. "Yeah, but bet I'm probably the least of your concerns. How many monsters did you run into today?"

He chews his lip for a moment, as if he's contemplating if he can tell this strange girl about his troubles. He raises his chin defiantly. "Two. Not a bad day."

"What's your name, kiddo?"

"Brandon. And if you think I'm going to give the wallet back, you'll have to fight me for it." He brandishes his dagger in warning. "I need this money, okay? I don't like to steal."

"Well that's odd for a son of Hermes," she says with a smile. She doesn't know how she could tell, but now she's said it, she's sure it's right. The boy must be a son of Hermes. That must've been why he reminded her of Luke. She fumbles around in her pockets and pulls out a roll of twenties. She's lucky—she doesn't usually carry around mortal money anymore. She holds it out to him, and he takes a step back.

"What're you doing?" he says suspiciously.

"Giving you money. There's probably more here than in the wallet." She's impressed by Brandon's wiles when he opens the wallet to confirm. There's only a couple of credit cards and about fifteen bucks. Thalia offers sixty. "He'll suspend the credit cards before you get to use them, and you'll get caught for fraud," she says.

Brandon exchanges with her. "Why are you being nice to me?" he asks.

"Because I'm not so different from you." She tells him about Camp Half-Blood and makes him swear he'll go. The promise of a monster-free environment is enough to lure him. She sends him off and finds herself sending up a prayer to Hermes for the kid.

Her heart feels a whole lot lighter for some reason. Maybe she's trying to make it up to another son of Hermes. Brandon's childlike behavior reminds her that at one point, Luke wasn't so bad.

She returns the wallet to the bewildered gentleman and goes on her way.

The memory of a blue-eyed boy with upturned features and a mischievous grin crosses her mind more often than she would like. Before he had the scar—he was more cheerful then, the perfect foil to her irritable complaints.

She misses him now that he's gone, and even though she'll never admit it, she surreptitiously checks passerby when she goes through cities. He chose rebirth, so she thinks—maybe he'll be just around the corner. She looks and she looks, and each time, she gets tired and frustrated. She calls herself silly; she lashes out at the Hunters who ask her questions. She won't mention a word of it to the goddess, naturally.

It's just when she visits Percy and Annabeth, stewing in their lovely marital bliss, she feels…wistful? She convinces herself she isn't the marrying type, because she most definitely is not—yet she remembers a time when she entertained fantasies of that big white wedding dress and the clinks of champagne glasses. There's only one person she imagined standing at her side. He promised to be her family.

Immortality gives her way too much time to muse about broken promises and broken hearts.

Time pads along on patient feet, but Thalia can't catch up.

The days and years blend together for her, so a decade passes in the blink of an eye. The laugh lines that deepen in Annabeth's face and the salt-and-pepper in Percy's hair haunt her. It makes her shudder when she drops by, but she pastes a smile on her face for them and teases their descent into middle-aged life.

She doesn't do it on purpose, but she starts to visit less and less. It makes each time she does visit a worse experience, but at least the pain of seeing Percy and Annabeth age can be relegated to every few years instead of every few months.

She makes up excuses. She blames her memory, the rigorous schedule imposed by the goddess, anything.

She does help when they move back to New York.

She stops by Camp Half-Blood sometimes, and on a breezy June day, she notices Cassie Jackson has finally joined its ranks. Thalia waves hello, and for once, feels happy about growth and progression. Cassie's not anything like her parents, but Thalia likes watching her struggle through her first summer at camp anyway. It reminds her that even mortal people can leave something of worth behind in the world. She suspects Annabeth and Percy, with all of the war and excitement in their lives before their sixteenth birthdays, are content with raising a small family and just…living.

Immortality can't be like that. Peace and quiet, it's not an immortal's way. Thalia begins to understand why the gods bicker relentlessly on a daily basis. Without the impending doom of an apocalypse, what is there to look forward to? What is the point of tomorrow? Mortals have death. With a short amount of time allotted for life, they think everything is precious.

Nothing is precious to an immortal. Nothing except a snippet of dreams, the hope of finding someone lost.

Redemption.

There's a man who resembles Luke so much, she has to do a double take. He's writing on his laptop in a Starbucks. She goes in and orders a caramel macchiato just so she can get a better glimpse.

His brow is furrowed as he types away furiously, and there's something about him that makes her think, no, that's not him. She tosses her drink in the garbage can without finishing it. There's a curiously bitter aftertaste in her mouth she's not sure is entirely the fault of the coffee.

She attends Cassie's Sweet Sixteen party—safely under the shade of a large oak tree with the parents, because she's so not cool enough to be on the actual guest list. "Teenagers," she says, rolling her eyes.

Percy laughs. "You are one, Thalia."

"Only physically," she retorts. "Mentally, I am definitely the same age as you. But way more mature, as usual."

"Isn't it totally bizarre how Cassie is older than you?" Annabeth pipes up.

"Ugh, would you guys give it a rest?" says Thalia in exasperation. This constant fixation with her age is ticking her off. That and the fact she's considered a fuddy-duddy "friend of the parents." It sounds gross, and she makes a face.

"Hey, we never had a Sweet Sixteen party for you," Percy says to her.

"That's because I never turned sixteen, you idiot."

"Also, we were kind of busy in the middle of a war," Annabeth adds. "Did you ever want one?"

Thalia looks over at Cassie, who is currently being mobbed by her friends. "Um, and wear that puffy pink monstrosity they call a dress? No thanks. I have no idea how you ended up raising such a girly girl. It must've been all that Disney princess exposure as a child," she says.

Percy protests, "It wasn't my idea. I was strung along by force. By the time Cassie was four, I could probably recite all of Cinderella and sing the songs by heart. And trust me, if I had to listen to 'A Whole New World' from Aladdin one more time, my head might've exploded."

Annabeth punches him in the gut playfully and he yelps. "Well, it doesn't have to be all princess-y if you don't want it to be," she says.

Thalia stares. "You can't be serious. You guys, I'm like forty-something in real life. This is crazy."

The other two grin at her and drag her off for a night of cake, presents, and Six Flags. It's irresponsible to the extreme, since Percy and Annabeth don't return home until two in the morning, and they both work. Thalia is mortified, but secretly, she's happy she got to experience something she never thought she would.

There's so much she won't get to do, after all.

Her friends fade before her eyes, and it makes her insides go all twisty and uncomfortable. Thalia feels worse then they announce retirement, because after retirement there's—

"What's it like to be old?" Thalia inquires, grasping for a topic. She then realizes she sounds callous and insensitive, but to her relief, Annabeth only laughs.

"I don't know, it's not too bad. The arthritis isn't all that great, but otherwise. What's it like to be young?"

"You were young once."

"That was a long time ago. I hardly remember the last time I could walk faster than the worms on the sidewalks."

Thalia shrugs. "Youth isn't all it's cracked up to be. Sometimes, I wonder what it would be like to get old."

"You're not missing out," Annabeth says.

For some reason, Thalia feels like she is.

Luke could be the sandy-haired four-year-old from Minnesota she sees in the park with his mother.

He could be the sullen boy with startlingly blue eyes she runs into at a guitar store.

He could be the man with the long white beard who sits at the same bench in Central Park every day and feeds the pigeons.

He could be the father pushing a stroller down the sidewalk in Chicago suburbia.

He could even be on his third life already. Maybe she missed him altogether.

Thalia needs something to find, or someone, rather. A goal to cling onto, to stay with her when everything else is moving so fast.

She keeps thinking naively that the day will never come. It does. And the world as she knows it comes crashing down.

One down, one to go.

"Maybe he'll try for three times," Thalia says. "Like Luke."

Annabeth stares out the gauzy blue-curtained window. Raindrops slide down the glass pane, and below, the traffic of a normal Monday morning in Manhattan crawls by. "No," she replies, her voice dreamy. "He promised he'd wait for me."

A flash of lightning lights the sky and makes Annabeth's hair shine silver for a split-second. Thalia thinks maybe it's her father's way of sending his condolences. Percy did save Olympus several times, after all. Even the gods have suitable gratitude.

She is surprised at how well Annabeth is taking Percy's death, especially with Cassie living on the west coast, far away from her. Thalia has decided to stay with her best friend until…well, the end, for lack of a better term. It's easy to get lonely, but Annabeth doesn't seem to suffer from that problem. She chirps brightly and offers a brilliant smile—the only thing on her face that hasn't changed throughout the years.

Thalia barely listens, only nods and tries to keep the lump in her throat at bay. She won't cry. Can't. It wouldn't do at all if she started bawling. It's not like she married that stupid Seaweed Brain, who had to go off and die first. She crosses the room and kneels at Annabeth's feet, puts her hand up to the window and watches it fog up. The world rushes on below with no regard to the passing of a true hero, no idea the man who saved the world fifty-eight years ago has died. And she thinks it's cruel and wrong. There should be a huge funeral, masses of attendees bearing flowers, a national holiday, and the President should be speaking on TV.

There's nothing of the sort, of course.

Her eyes brim, and suddenly, Annabeth's stroking her hair, comforting her, instead of the other way around. Annabeth does look the part of a grandmother, and Thalia, her troubled granddaughter, but—no. "Why aren't you sad?" Thalia demands unsteadily. "How can you stay so calm about this? It's not fucking fair! He was my friend," she says, burying her face in her hands, feeling horribly selfish. Perhaps she even feels a little bit guilty, since she should be decrepit and ready to die too, but she's not.

Annabeth sighs, but she doesn't say anything. There really isn't anything to say. He's dead, and there's nothing anyone can do about it. Annabeth seems to accept this, disentangles her fingers from Thalia's short black hair and sits back. Her finger traces the path of a particular raindrop until it slips out of sight underneath the windowsill.

Thalia steadies her breathing, silently curses her emotional outbreak, especially in the face of Annabeth's immovable serenity, and gathers herself into the kitchen to prepare a pot of tea. She was never one for tea, but it somehow seems appropriate for the soggy, rainy day.

They sit quietly, cupping the loose-leaf tea, and blowing off the steam wafting from the surface.

"Are you lonely?" says Thalia, worried. She wishes she could apologize for freaking out unnecessarily—she didn't want to upset Annabeth and failed massively at it—but she's too embarrassed.

When Annabeth doesn't respond for nearly a minute, Thalia panics and thinks she's made her friend mad. When she does speak up, it's not what Thalia expected.

"No. Are you?"

The question thunders in the silence. Thalia finds, to her dismay, that she has no answer. Maybe she is. Maybe that's why she's here, not for Annabeth, but for herself. Maybe she's afraid of what will happen when her last link to the mortal world finally dissipates. Whatever the reason, she can't find any words. Only a growing fear that grips her throat, shakes her.

Annabeth leans in close, like she's divulging a secret. "Don't fear life. We had pretty good ones, don't you think?"

And just like that, Thalia knows.

She shakes Cassie's hand firmly. Garbed in black, for once she doesn't look out of place. "Will you be okay?" she says to the daughter. Thalia remembers when she rocked the girl to sleep in her arms. Now, the same girl stands in a dark business suit, her hair in a smart bun, and her makeup streaked from crying. She's in her late forties, and she's still the absolute vision of her parents.

Cassie wipes her face and nods. "I didn't expect it to be so soon after Dad is all. She was in much better health than him."

Thalia offers a tissue, and Cassie blows her nose. Another guest walks up to Cassie and expresses sympathy. He turns to Thalia in puzzlement. "Did you know Mrs. Jackson?" he asks her, and she can see why he's confused. But his use of "Mrs. Jackson" throws her off for a second, and all she can do is stare.

Cassie clears her throat apologetically. "She's an old family friend. Mom knew her for a long time."

"Oh." The man still looks somewhat befuddled, for what does "a long time" mean when the family friend is only fifteen? But he smiles awkwardly and turns away to converse with another group.

The whole atmosphere is depressing, and Thalia decides it's time to leave. She's always hated funerals. "Goodbye, then," she says formally to Cassie, who she never really got to know and suddenly almost wishes she did. But it's too late now, and it doesn't matter anyway. Cassie could never replace her parents.

"It was nice seeing you, Thalia. Mom appreciated you being around at the end. Will you…come back sometime? You're always welcome."

It's the hardest thing she's ever had to say. "No. I think—I think this is it."

Cassie digests it, but she doesn't protest. "Okay, then. I guess this really is goodbye for good."

"Yeah. I hope you—well, I hope you have a good life." It sounds corny and lame, but Thalia thinks it may be the one time in the history of the phrase's existence that it's actually genuine. Plus, she can't think of anything better to say. So she walks away with a head full of memories, and cuts ties with the Jackson family forever.

Somehow, the world feels a little bit emptier.

She drifts. The Hunters are good and wonderful, and Artemis is still glorious, but there's a hole in her heart, and it can't be filled. She dreams of her friends in Elysium, and she knows they won't be trying for the Isles of the Blest. They have everything they want right where they are.

The one thing that's good about immortality is that there is plenty of time. And like they say, time heals all things. It's slow and it's horrible, but the hole eventually patches itself up and becomes a scar. Scars fade, but there's always that small reminder—they were here once.

They were here.

She reflects on Annabeth's last words, about not being afraid. She figures she should probably try to take the advice, since it's the only thing left of her friend. Her greatest fear is that one day, she won't remember Percy and Annabeth at all. They'll be a vague dream, and when she wakes up, she'll smile and shake it off. What then?

So she lives.

The mortal world loses her interest—she's seen too much, and she doesn't care about what's left once Percy and Annabeth are gone. So instead, she likes to reminisce about the past, about the golden days when everything seemed focused on the next cataclysmic event, and the heroes at Camp Half-Blood focused on glory and adventure. It seems a bit morbid, but Thalia has since stopped caring if the next prophecy does bring about the end of Western civilization. She thinks, life and death are much the same, except you hang out in different places. And she wouldn't be too put down at having to move to the underworld. She's been there before. It's dark, and Hades isn't the greatest of hosts, but it's okay.

Sometimes, she wonders if the Fates have misplaced her life's thread, because after three centuries, she's continues to mill about this world, still powerful, still fearless. Maybe it's a mistake.

She also starts to think it's possible she hasn't yet completed the task she needs to—the kind of ridiculous notion that comes from watching too many movies with moral messages. She doesn't know if she believes in that kind of stuff anyway.

There's only one thing she feels like she's never truly done right. She hasn't found Luke. And it kind of irks her, because she won't receive an apology for everything he's done until then. She keeps telling herself he might be in the next city. He could be. It's what gets her up in the morning anyway.

He'd probably not know her, but it's not a big deal. She'll know him. She's sure of it.

And then, she'll have someone to tell all of the things that have passed. He'll think she's crazy. He won't believe her. But it doesn't matter. They shared something, at some point, and that's more than she has with anyone else on this planet. She'll tell him about all the things he's missed, and it's possible, just possible, they can make his second (or third) life better.

They were supposed to be together, she thinks. The titans and the war and the unfair twists of fate tore them apart. But that's another good thing about immortality.

He has two more chances to get it right. She has forever to wait.

And so she searches. And she lives.

For an immortal like her, life has no beginning, middle, and end. It's only a continuum of moments, scenes, and days. Emotions. Memories. Past, present, and future blend together. It's not so bad.

It's just … different.

She needs this something to look forward to. She plans out their first meeting a billion times in her head, but it's all just speculation. She thinks, she doesn't really know what she'd do if she actually found him.

And that's what makes the waiting okay.

A/N: Really hope it ended up decent. Reviews are appreciated, as always. If you didn't realize, I reused the name Cassie from "Heritage," although this story does not run in the same reality as the former. In my opinion, Percy and Annabeth got their happy ending in this one.