Life is a Journey (a theyna fanfic)

Fevered Dreams

The cold doesn't leave.

It's LA and spring is on the way so, by all means, it should be warm. It is warm. Seventy today, which is amazing weather, and even warm for March. But Thalia's cold.

She's been cold for a long time like it's turned her bones to ice and now she's melting into the rest of her body. Frozen and chilled, she walks around like a ghost. Her breath misting windows and turning pavement to frost in her wake. She's cold. Much too cold.

Reyna's warm, she's always warm, but Thalia finds that she can't go near her without the fear of burning to a crisp. She's freezing, and Reyna is the sun, and she's so damn scared of burning. She's already been burnt and not even the ice in her own bones can freeze off that pain.

So she hides, hides in her room, hides in Will's office, hides in stranger's cars and around street corners. She hides from the sun, from any source of heat she can see. She hides from Reyna, from Percy, Nico and she hasn't even heard from Hylla since the night. She assumes that Hylla's freezing too in her own way.

Thalia hides. She runs, avoiding any question or slip of tongue that's thrown her way. Once when she went to the record store around the corner to avoid Reyna she ran into a mob of cameras and went charging the other way, clearing a fence and two people's cars in the process of trying to get away. It's like a manhunt, everyone seems to be after her. It's like she's the last piece of ice in the freezer on the hottest day of the year. She doesn't even fucking sleep anymore as Reyna will wake her up if she hears her crying in her room.

So Thalia just hides. Will tries to help, of course, he does it's his fucking job, but she doesn't even speak to him anymore. She's gone so long without using her vocal chords that she's almost forgotten what her voice sounds like. Okay, long is a stretch, it's been about a week and a half, but it feels like an eternity.

Thalia ran into Reyna that morning in the kitchen. Reyna didn't even get to speak to her, just gave her that same sad look she had the morning after Jason's phone call. Thalia couldn't take it. The moment their eyes met she was out the door, hearing a single desperate call of "Thalia!" at her back.

Now she's sitting with her feet hanging off the side of the golden gate bridge. Thalia hates heights, is fucking terrified of them, but for some reason, the vision of water far beneath her feet doesn't make her skin crawl. It feels comforting almost, and so she just watches waves move beneath her in an endless sludging motion. It's hot. So very hot outside, but Thalia's shivering in her coat, her hands are like ice folded against each other and she just watches the waves.

"You're going down and you're pulling all of us with you. You're going to fucking strangle us when we do, because of all this talk of keeping it bottled up, you've fucking exploded, and we're your casualties." Thalia jerks up ramrod straight and slams her fist into the pavement at her side. There's no one there, she reminds herself, and she turns to glare at passing cars. Cars whipping by faster than anything Thalia had ever seen, blowing the wind into her face and tearing her hair into her eyes, but she doesn't care. She lets the tears fall, glad for once they weren't from her own beaten chest. She closes her eyes and just lets the sound of motors, wind, and water take her, melting into the sound, begging to become part of it and just cease to exist.

Thalia dreams, dreams of just living away. No brothers who get angry, no people who scream her name anytime they see her, no pity in strangers faces, no overly friendly therapists, no lingering pressure in her chest. She dreams of a small house, perhaps a cabin, in the middle of nowhere. It's old, run down and small, but it's clean and away from the constant screaming city. And she's alone, no not alone. There's a girl, a girl with the most beautiful dark eyes and the rarest smile that makes Thalia feel the most accomplished she's ever felt in life.