Broken, But Not Lost

By Olympus -117

~O~

"Friends are the Gods' way of apologising to us for our families."

~O~

The young girl stares at Luke with intense grey eyes. She clutches a warm mug of hot chocolate in her hands and a thick woollen blanket is wrapped around her shoulders.

Cold.

That was the only thought that ran though her mind.

So cold.

Across the small campfire, she sees Thalia lean over to Luke and whisper in his ear. In the still night air, Annabeth can hear her words perfectly.

'She's freezing Luke, I think she's sick.'

Luke sends the Thalia a worried look 'You think?'

Thalia nods, 'Her hands were so cold when I gave her the cup and she hasn't stopped coughing since we crossed the James River.'

Luke picks up the pack behind him and quickly riffles through its contents. 'We're running low on medical supplies,' he mutters before glancing back up at Annabeth's shivering form. His brows furrow together as he thinks quickly.'There's a pharmacy a few miles down,' he says, 'I can go -'

'No, I'll go,' Thalia immediately cuts him off. 'You stay with her,' she orders Luke before grabbing her spear and pack and quickly disappearing into the woods. Luke sighs and gets up, walks around the campfire and sits down next to Annabeth. The little girl eyes him apprehensively, her grey eyes narrowing with suspicion.

'Thalia will be back soon with some medicine,' Luke says, 'You'll feel better afterwards.'

Annabeth just nods. Luke sighs again and runs his hand though his blonde hair. Suddenly Annabeth speaks up. 'What do you do?' she asks.

Luke pauses and looks at her with one eyebrow raised, unsure about the question. 'Do about what?'

Annabeth shakes her head, causing her curls to fall over her face. She draws them back and answers, 'I mean what is it that you and Thalia do every day?'

'Ah,' now it dawns on Luke what she meant. He shrugs in an almost non-committal way. 'We survive' he says simply.

Annabeth coughs and draws her blanket tighter around her shivering body and stares quietly at the flickering flames. Luke correctly interprets her silence.

'Relax,' he reassures her, 'Thalia and I will look after you. We're family now remember?'

Annabeth feels a strange, warm glow blossom in her chest. It takes her a while before she realises what she's feeling. Acceptance.

They sit in silence for a several long minutes, but it's the comfortable type of quiet.

A faint rustle of leaves in the trees behind Annabeth and Luke immediately reaches for his sword. He visibly relaxes when Thalia's voice calls out 'I'm back,' as she steps into the clearing. She pulls out a small white plastic bag with a logo of a red cross from deep within her pack and hands it to Luke. 'Here,' Thalia says, 'This should take care of the cough and fever. If it doesn't, I swear I'm going to go back to that pharmacy and brain that man across the counter. He kept trying to rip me off!'

Luke bites back a laugh and even Annabeth feels her lips twitching upwards. Thalia glares furiously in the general direction from which she had come before, as if daring the pharmacy man to come stumbling though the undergrowth.

She then turns to Annabeth and smiles, a genuine, warm smile. Luke smiles too and playfully jabs Thalia with the cup he is holding. Thalia laughs and takes the package from Luke and begins to peel off the medicine wrappers.

As Luke goes to fetch another cup of water, he says: 'We'll take care of you Annabeth, don't you worry.'

(And Annabeth thinks that just maybe this could work out)

~O~

Pure terror races through Annabeth's body as she slips and slides up the hill.

Monsters, monsters everywhere!

She blindly slashes out with her knife and feels it make contact with something scaly. With a howl, a monster disintegrates. But more and more appear and they begin surrounding them. Teeth, jaws and blood fill Annabeth's vision.

There are too many, everywhere!

She is dimly aware of Thalia and Luke and Grover behind her, fending off the hordes while she desperately staggers up the hill. Lightning arcs across the sky and Annabeth can momentarily see the silhouettes of armoured figures on top of the hill.

Why weren't they helping!

Everything is a muddle of darkness, rain, mud and the howl of monsters. Yet one sentence manages to cut though the wind and reach Annabeth's ears.

'No Thalia, I won't leave you!'

'Go you idiot! I'll hold them off'

There was the sound of Aegis slamming into flesh and the monster howls intensified. Suddenly . . .

'THALIA NO!'

Annabeth stumbles to the ground as a huge electric shock blasts though the air making all her hair stand on end. The next thing that she knows, Luke is carrying her as they and Grover sprint across the border line.

It's not until the next night that Annabeth wakes up. Her first thought is Thalia.

Grover is sitting at the foot of her bed, his head bent down, hands over his eyes. She can see that he has been crying. Annabeth meets his mournful gaze. Then she remembers the lightning, the monsters . . .

She immediately realises what has happened. She leaps out of the bed and runs out of the infirmary despite the protests of the satyrs, though none really try to stop her. She sprints to the top of Half Blood Hill, desperately praying that she was wrong.

She wasn't.

There on the very spot where Thalia had died, stands a great white pine tree, illuminated by the faint moonlight.

Annabeth collapses on the damp grass, sobbing her aching heart out. She was gone, Thalia was gone. It just didn't seem possible; Thalia was so tough, so brave and strong. Always the consummate survivor. She couldn't just die and leave Annabeth all alone. She wanted to stop crying but she didn't seem to be able to, it just hurt so much. So she just sat there, underneath the shade of Thalia's tree with her knees drawn up to her chin.

Vaguely, she was aware of someone warm and strong wrapping their arms around her and whispering: 'Shhhhh, it's okay Annabeth; it's going to be okay.'

She gives a wet sniff and looks up at Luke's tear stained face. 'How can you say that?' she demands, 'Thalia's g . . . gone and you're just . . . jus . . .' She stutters off as fresh tears begin to roll down her cheeks.

Luke sighs and grips her pudgy hands in his own, 'Hey,' he gently tilts her chin up slightly so that they are staring eye to eye. 'Thalia wouldn't want you crying for her. She'd tell you to be strong. Can you do that? For Thalia?'

She gives him an anguished look then slowly Annabeth nods, her bottom lip quivering. Be strong she says to herself For Thalia.

Luke embraces her. 'I'll never let anything happen to you, you know that, right?'

Annabeth stares up at him, her eyes still a little watery. 'Really?'

'We're family Annabeth,' Luke says softly, 'All we have is each other. Thalia . . . Thalia would say the same thing. Family look after one another no matter what, and I'll always be there for you.'

Annabeth clings to him and puts her face against his chest. 'Promise?'

Luke gently ruffles her blonde hair and stares up at the leaves of Thalia's tree, rustling in the evening breeze. 'Promise' he whispers.

(And Annabeth holds him to that)

~O~

Annabeth can't believe it. Luke did this to her, to her. Where was his promise now? She thinks bitterly. As she struggles under the weight of the sky, her admiration and (maybe) love for Luke is slowly slipping away, being replaced with a deep sense of anger, hurt and betrayal.

It's not Luke, she tries desperately to convince herself as her arms burn like fire and her legs turn to lead, It's Kronos.

(But it's getting harder and harder for her to believe that)

~O~

The rain pounds the tiles on the roof and cascades down; it overflows in the gutters and creates a waterfall barrier between the two demigods.

Annabeth stands on the porch. She clutches her knife; the one that Luke had given her all those years ago, in her hand. She knows she won't need it though; Luke hasn't come to hurt her.

The son of Hermes stands just a few feet away from her, in the rain. His blonde hair is plastered to his forehead and he must have been freezing but if he feels any discomfort, he doesn't show it.

His bright blue eyes lock with Annabeth's stormy gray ones. They are pleading, desperate. He is begging her to go with him. Annabeth meets his gaze intently for a few moments, trying desperately to see past all the hatred, the fear, the evil, trying to find the old Luke, her Luke. The Luke that once promised her with every fibre of his being that he would never ever, abandon her. That he would never fail her; that they would always be a family.

She finds nothing.

Finally Annabeth looks away, unable to take it anymore. She glances up at Luke and ever so slightly shakes her head.

Luke understands immediately. His expression turns cold and without a word, he turns on his heel and walks away his fists clenched tightly, swinging by his sides. The rain and the night quickly swallow him up.

Annabeth is left standing on the porch, her face slowly turning wet. And it has nothing to do with the rain.

(Yet she can't help but hope that he might still come back)

~O~

The last time that they meet, it's on the battlefield. Sword onto spear, knife onto shield, it is chaos. The pitch black night that covers everything in a blanket of shadow doesn't help either. Everywhere monsters and demigods fight to the death, and everywhere, prone bodies of her friends litter the ground like autumn leaves.

Annabeth disintegrates another hellhound before moving on to a dracaena. Yet for every monster that she kills, three more take its place, all of them baying for blood.

Meanwhile the campers are slowly being pushed back toward Olympus. They are fighting at their hardest but it is not enough. Slowly and surely, they are giving ground.

As she parries a blow from a Hyperborean giant, a black Pegasus swoops out of the clouds and on its back is Percy holding Riptide aloft. Annabeth feels a little thrill of elation in her heart at that moment. As she and Percy fight back the hordes of monsters, she thinks that maybe there is still a little hope.

Later that morning though, that hope almost deserts her. They gather the wounded and try their best to heal them, but most times it is not enough. The most that they can do for some of them is to ease their passing.

As Annabeth holds the hand of a dying Apollo camper; his chest heaving and his side torn open with a lance; only one thought reverberates through her head:

Why Luke, Why?

(And she feels, deep down that he can never truly be the same again)

"Even though we've changed and we're all finding our own place in the world, we all know that when the tears fall or the smile spreads across our face, we'll come to each other because no matter where this crazy world takes us, nothing will ever change so much to the point where we're not all still friends."

~O~

The throne room is quiet. The only sound that can be heard is Luke's raspy breathing. He is lying on the cold marble floor, blood pooling in his side, his eyes, blue now, not golden, dart around the room.

As Annabeth edges closer, Luke's eyes lock with hers. And just like that night, a million years ago as it seems to Annabeth, Luke smiles. Though his lips are cracked and blistered and there are more scars on his face, Annabeth could almost imagine for one blissful second that nothing had happened, that he didn't betray her and Thalia, but the truth was lying in front of her, gasping for breath.

Her fingers close around his rough ones and she savours the moment, knowing that it will be the last time that she can hold his hand.

Luke's fingers briefly tighten on hers and Annabeth immediately kneels down, bringing her other hand over and clasping his. Luke is shivering, he is seconds away, Annabeth knows. But Luke's eyes are staring straight past her, beyond her, and they somehow seemed almost . . . serene. Luke pulls her down and his lips whisper one last word.

Luke didn't need to say anything else, Annabeth already knew.

When Luke finally slips away, Annabeth cries. To be fair, Percy cries too, so does Grover. But a small part of Annabeth was content, in his final moments, her Luke had come back. Her Luke's promise had been broken, a long time ago, and there was nothing that she could do about that. But in those last few seconds; something had shone though all the fear and the hatred and the anger, something that re-kindled that promise.

After all, when all is said and done, family was still family. And even though it only lasted for the briefest of moments, it was enough.

(And when she thinks back; that was all that really mattered)

"This is the comfort of friends, that though they may be said to die, yet their friendship and society are, in the best sense, ever present, because immortal."

~O~

Disclaimer: I don't own Percy Jackson and the Olympians. All characters belong to Rick Riordan.

A/N: Thanks for reading! Please review, tell me what you think and give some constructive criticism !

Constructive criticism tells me what's wrong, how I can fix what's wrong and what other things I should do. It is essential to any decent story, so please, if you have the time, give a helpful review. Thank you very much. I do truly appreciate it.

Ahem, okay ... I changed the title. Again. And again. The whole 'Fly Me to the Moon' thing just wasn't working; it felt too rushed and jammed into the rest of the story. So I took it out. This ending seemed to fit in a lot better. Sometimes, simple is works best. :)

All quotes are anonymous except for the last one from More Fruits of Solitude by William Penn.