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Thalia jumped up from the couch when she heard the lock of the door click. She rushed forward, arms reaching out for the familiar drunk weight she knew would fall against her. It wasn’t the first time she’s done this, after all.
Instead, the door swung open and Thalia found herself looking at a stranger who held her mother loosely by the elbow.
“Huh,” he said curiously, peering at Thalia. “I suppose the rumours about the secret child were true, then.”
Thalia gulped, not trusting herself to speak. She despised all of her mother’s actor friends, especially those who offered to bring her home after a drunk night out. They act like it’s their responsibility as friends, but they never bother to keep their heads down as they leave the apartment complex, and they would always act surprised the next day when the tablets crawled with news of Beryl Grace’s new flame.
At that moment, her mother’s eyes snapped open and she pushed herself to stand upright.
“Thalia!” She slurred, darting forward and twisting her arm away from the man. Thalia stumbled under the weight of a drunk adult, quickly holding the door frame to steady herself.
She cautiously looked up at the man who was still watching them with a bewildered expression. His hair was dark and his features slightly Mediterranean, like all of her mother’s other male friends. Thalia was old enough to know that her mother chose that particular circle of friends because they reminded her of Zeus. That knowledge still made her awkward, though.
“Thank you,” She said in the end, a hand trying to reach out to the door so she could shut it in the man's face.
“Wait.” The man——why wasn’t he leaving?——looked at Thalia almost pityingly. “I’ll help you get your mom to bed, okay? Don’t worry, I’ll leave as soon as she’s asleep.”
Thalia gritted her teeth. “There’s no need, mister, I’ve done this before. I’ll get her to bed myself.”
“No.” The man frowned. Why was he still here? “You’re practically falling to the ground from the weight. I’ll help you——“
Thalia finally reached the door.
Bam!
She would’ve winced at the sound of the heavy wood hitting the guy’s face and forcing him to stumble outside, but she was preoccupied with holding up her mother.
Now that the nosy guy was gone, Thalia could finally resume her routine.
Slowly, she guided her mother to the nearest couch and positioned her limbs so she was lying down sideways. A normal child of around eight or nine should never be able to move around a grown woman like that, but Thalia had always been abnormally strong for her age.
You are my daughter, Thalia. Of course you would be strong.
She shook her head from the distant memory of her father and slipped a blanket over her mother’s shivering form. Her mother refused to sleep in her bed when she was drunk, which really was every other night, so the biggest couch of the apartment has been transformed into her second bed.
Thalia stood over her mother, who was knocked out cold as soon as her blonde head hit the designated pillow on the couch.
She couldn’t help but feel disgusted, looking down at the child-like woman who veered off to her dreams without a care in the world.
Does she not care what the tablets will say about her tomorrow? How will she react when the guy from tonight ‘accidentally’ let slip that she indeed had a secret daughter, and said daughter tried to inflict bodily harm on him by smashing a door in his nose? Her mother had led him to their apartment, not thinking about the consequences.
He could’ve seen Jason.
Thalia balled her fists.
Practically everyone in Hollywood knew about her existence due to the insane number of times her mother had carried her around outside in plain view of paparazzi when Thalia was just a toddler. It was part of her mother’s desperate acts for attention.
The thought of her mother doing the same thing with Jason made Thalia want to hit someone.
Her baby brother was the only reason she still stayed. There were so many times when she had packed a small bag and stood in front of the door, willing herself to leave, but the sound of her brother crying while being ignored by their mother always made her turn back. She would throw her backpack across the living room, deliberately over her mother’s head, and tend to Jason. Over time, she stopped trying to leave, and that backpack began gathering dust from where she hid it under her bed.
Thalia and her mother’s relationship was salvageable enough for her to stay, but only if Jason was there with them. Some days their mother would even be sober as she laughed and played with Jason while the storm poured down from outside. Those days were Thalia’s favourite, but only because Jason’s eyes always shone at the sight of their mother looking alive and not half dead.
Slowly, Thalia came back to the present when a shuffling sound made themselves present on the thick carpet.
A small tuft of Jason’s hair peeked out from behind the couch.
Thalia smiled. “Why are you up, Jason?” She asked softly.
Jason slowly revealed the rest of his face at the side of the couch. He was giggling madly and Thalia found that she couldn’t be strict with him even if she tried.
“Come on, Jace, let’s go back to sleep,” She said as she approached the toddler, who was hiding his grinning mouth behind his hands.
“Talia!” He beamed. It really was scary how Thalia felt like she would level Olympus for a little boy who pronounced her name wrong and kept wriggling around as she tried to steer him to his bedroom.
She picked up Jason and dropped him on his little bed, chuckling as he squealed. “Now stay, Jason, you gotta sleep.”
He blinked up at her as she tucked his blanket up to his chin. Thalia determinedly avoided her brother’s eyes, knowing that she would fold and let him stay up if she looked at them.
“Night, Jason,” She called quietly as she backed out of the room.
He yawned, looking like he was drowning in blankets and soft toys. “Nigh’, Talia. Love you.”
“Love you too, Jace.” Thalia shut the door, her heart incredibly full.
She turned to the direction of the couch, where she could see her mother’s blanket being kicked onto the ground. Sighing, she went and picked it up before draping it over her mother again. Not for the first time, she wondered why the role between parent and children seemed to reverse in her family. Though at least Jason could still stay the youngest child, carefree and innocent until he was a bit older, and would eventually find out the truth about their father.
It had been two years since Thalia last saw Zeus (but was it Zeus, really? She couldn’t explain how but the kind man from two years ago just didn’t seem like the father she knew from when she was much younger), but she found that she didn’t mind his absence as much as she once did. Her father had left her and her mother with Jason, and she knew that they didn’t need anything else.
As long as they were together, she felt that she could brave the world of Ancient Greek monsters and evil step-mothers. They would find their happy endings as demigods, and Thalia would protect her brother, no matter what.