Chapter Text
It all started out normally enough. Thalia had long since become accustomed to sleeping in the captain's quarters, and the musty morning air was a welcome scent to start any day. Especially when such scents and visions come with it. Scents and visions such as a sleep ruffled captain with her hair undone and strewn across Thalia's shoulders like a second blanket.
She can't quite stifle the laugh that comes rumbling from her chest at the notion, for Reyna is simply too much. She always has been. Now she's just a sleepy person who's grumbling and burying her face into Thalia's back, like that'll somehow protect it from the ghastly amounts of sunlight that are streaming in through their window.
"Get up Sunshine, it's a new day," Thalia hums softly into the pirate's ear and Reyna just grumbles louder, reaching down to pull the covers up and over them. Thalia chuckles again, she's always been more of a morning person than Reyna, but she guesses that comes from years of being trained to get up at the crack of dawn.
"If you don't get up, I'm going without you," she teases gently and makes out a half-coherent 'no' as Reyna moves to settle her head underneath the British girl's chin. "Cuddling me isn't going to win me over." Thalia reminds, but Reyna doesn't acknowledge the comment, wrapping her arms around Thalia's torso instead. She just chuckles more at the response.
"You seriously need to get used to mornings," Thalia mumbles, smoothing down Reyna's hair, but making no attempt to actually move. Someone will come and find them if they're needed, and it's really warm and comfy in the bed.
Not that the rush of wind and sea doesn't have its own charm. It does, and Thalia's come to appreciate it over the years. However, she has to say that she prefers the company of a certain pirate over the roaring waves. Reyna seems to agree, as she burrows further into Thalia's side. She's warm and smells like cinnamon and cocoa and all the things one would find in a tea house back in England, which Thalia finds both curious and comforting. She hasn't seen the country in nearly five months and as much as she enjoys the sea it's hard not to feel a bit homesick. But Reyna's always lived on the sea, so Thalia sometimes wonders if the poor girl even knows how to walk on land.
Now that's a funny thought. Reyna wobbling around in the middle of the cobblestone streets of England, walking like a drunk person and clutching onto any surface she can find. It's enough to get Thalia to laugh and Reyna to grumble in protest to being bounced on Thalia's shaking shoulders.
"Why do you always have to be so awake," the pirate mumbles. Thalia returns to running her hands through the grumpy girl's hair.
"Because one of us has to be a morning person, Cheri," Reyna hums appreciatively at the nickname. The sunlight that filters through the window turns the Hispanic girl's skin a warm color like creamed coffee, and her glossy black hair reflects the sunlight like an obsidian stone. Thalia's never been quite able to figure out how she got such good hair with being around sea spray 24/7.
"Why do you have to be the morning person," her mumbles aren't really conscious and Thalia knows that. Reyna isn't fully aware of anything until she's necked an entire pint of coffee.
"Because you certainly aren't," Thalia snorts out and Reyna makes a face that is adorably close to a pout, but the queen of pirates would never admit to pouting. Ever.
"Shut up," Reyna mumbles and Thalia laughs again, which has become as much of a normal occurrence as breathing. So has kissing, and Reyna decides to do so right at this moment. She leans up and plants her lips directly against Thalia's own, who only manages a hum of enjoyment.
Reyna's still the same girl she was all those years ago when they kissed for the first time. The same girl who had grabbed her by the back of the hair and pushed her into a wall before she had even fully realized her feelings herself. It's just that now when she does it Thalia knows exactly what it's supposed to mean.
Reyna's hands have somehow found their way to either side of Thalia's head, making sure she can't escape when the captain rolls on top of her. She can't help but smile against Reyna's lips, and Reyna makes a grunt of displeasure at the loss of contact. To try and alleviate the grumpy captain, Thalia allows one of her hands to slide up the other girl's waist, and the resounding sound of content tells her all she needs to know.
Unfortunately, they're interrupted before this can start to actually go anywhere. There's scarcely a thump of warning from the door before it bursts open and Reyna hastily thumbs back onto the bed beside Thalia. It's Will, who's already seen enough that it really isn't necessary, but Reyna still proceeds to scoot away from Thalia leaving the woman to groan softly at the loss of her lover's warmth.
"What is it?" Reyna's sitting up, but her eyes droop and her hair is still loose, sticking out in ways that defy the laws of physics and are quite amusing from such a serious face.
"We're heading towards a storm Captain," Will's own hair is looking severely mussed, but Thalia has a sneaking suspicion that it has nothing to do with sleep and more to do with the blonde's disappearance with Nico the night before.
"You know what to do Solace, you don't need my consultation for everything," Reyna mumbles, but again it's only the sleep talking. If she were fully conscious she would already be out the door shouting orders at the crew. Instead, she's mumbling in a soft, gravelly voice because she'd much rather stay in bed for another hour or two.
Fortunately, Will is used to this situation. He grabs the covers of the bed, and rips them off, leaving the pair of them exposed. Reyna is wearing her sister's old sleep shirt, and Thalia... well Thalia proceeds to flop off the bed to keep at least a little of her dignity. Will doesn't bat an eye, in fact, he's getting better at that poker face of his.
"Captain, get up," he says exasperatedly and, with one more groan of protest, Reyna is up for the day. Will gives Thalia a momentary look of pity before saying, "I trust that you can take care of her from here, I expect you in ten minutes." and with that the Blonde has descended the stairs, leaving the pair of them in the quiet comfort of routine.
It takes around five minutes for Thalia to gather all of the covers and put them back on the bed, and another three for Reyna to locate her trousers. By the time they've descended the stairs for breakfast it's been nearly twenty minutes, and Reyna's hair is still undone, leaving the inky locks to smack Thalia in the face freely when the wind blows.
"Jesus," Reyna mumbles and pulls her coat tighter over her shoulders because the sunlit morning had tricked them into thinking it was warm.
Smoke rises from the kitchen where Leo is leaning out of the window, chatting up anyone unlucky enough to be in a five-foot radius. Percy lays lounged on the dining table, Annabeth leaning back against him with her hair blowing in the wind much like Reyna's. Piper is chuckling to something Frank had said, resting her head on the blonde's collarbone and her feet in Nico's lap. All their breaths rise in the cold January air, mingling with the sea spray and dissipating before it can rise even above their heads.
"What do you have to say about our Lord and Savior," Thalia teases, earning a glare from the Captain, one that usually scares people half to death, but Thalia has long since gotten used to.
"That he can go suck a barnacle," she grumbles, and Thalia widens her eyes in mock offense.
"Why, Reyna!" she gasps overdramatically and Reyna kisses her to shut her up.
"No PDA! It is too early for that," Nico grumbles from his position as Piper's footrest. If there was one thing he and Reyna shared in common it was chronic hatred of mornings. His hair stuck up much like Will's, and the bags under his eyes had significantly darkened, making him look like he had two black eyes. Thalia just snorts at him, taking the opportunity to wrap herself up in Reyna's arms and grin at him.
"Hey, you're just as bad with Will," Thalia teases, and Reyna simply rolls her eyes, but she looks satisfied that Thalia is leaning back into her.
"She's got a point there," Piper laughs from her spot, almost in Annabeth's lap at this point, but she doesn't seem to mind. Thalia admires how much she's mellowed out since her days aboard the Navy ship. She's gone from uptight and strict, to practically breaking a rule every time she breathes a little too hard. Her gray eyes spark with some sort of aliveness that they'd never held in her Navy days.
"Alright, enough, I need coffee before we do anything this morning," Reyna mumbles, disentangling herself from Thalia, and ignoring her pout as she picks her way towards Leo, who is already offering her a mug of the black liquid.
"Right here, capitán," Leo grins devilishly and Thalia ponders if she'll have to make sure he didn't put any rum in the Coffee again. Given Reyna's zombieness, she doubts she would notice if there was.
"Alright, so, what's this storm William so kindly informed me about," Reyna's demeanor is cold, but there's a fire in her eyes that more than makes up for it. This is what Thalia's known for a good while now: when they're alone, in their bedroom or somewhere no one can see, Reyna is every inch the same pirate she was when they first met. But out here, where everyone can see her she has to broadcast an image of strength, she becomes someone else. Someone entirely new and Thalia loves both. She loves the kind girl who would rather spend all day cuddling her in the privacy of the captain's quarters, but she also loves the leader who will look into the depths of the roaring sea and yell out a battle cry. Because Reyna is all that and more.
"About 20 knots north," Percy mumbles, not bothering to raise his head from the table. He's covering it with his arm which leads Thalia to believe he's suffering a hangover.
"Captain, just look that way if you want to see what we're talking about," Frank says and gestures in the direction the boat is heading. Curious, Thalia clambers portside to see and nearly falls over the railing.
Not to get her wrong, Thalia's seen her fair amount of storms in her time on the sea, but this is no ordinary storm. It's a towering abyss of ink charging towards them at top speed. Lightning flashes, crackling against the sea and flashing between clouds, hundreds of tendrils at once. They're still too far from it to feel the wind, but going by the way the sea curls and moves underneath the clouds it's enough to send her flying from the deck. Reyna hasn't moved from her spot beside the kitchen, but Thalia catches her eyes and knows that she can see how bad it is written on her face.
"What's the depth?" Reyna barks to Percy, who still hasn't risen from his spot on the table.
"Too deep for an anchor, Captain," He says without moving and Reyna frowns, knitting her eyebrows together. No one has moved, but suddenly the lazy summer feeling is like iron plated in gold. Cheap, and thin. It's easily scratched away, and now Thalia wants to yell at the whole crew to get off their asses and do something.
"Grace, Winds?" Reyna calls, and Thalia winces, and glances over the side of the deck again.
"Not Good. If we go in we'll tear off our mast," Thalia mutters and glances back at Reyna. She never calls her by her last name unless something's wrong. Reyna was scared of storms once upon a time, but she'd outgrown it. At least Thalia thought she had.
"Chase?" Reyna asks finally and Annabeth shakes her head.
"Nothing nearby. We're in the middle of the ocean." She says calmly as if she's perfectly fine with the sentiment that they'll all die soon.
"Well then, any last wishes men?" Reyna says breathily and stretches, popping several vertebrae in her back.
"That you'd stop calling us men?" Piper snipes, grinning evilly. Reyna simply rolls her eyes and stretches.
"Yeah, yeah, alright. Jackson, Zhang, get the sails in check. Valdez, Chase, Mclean tie down everything valuable. Stolls, get everything that's too small to be tied down below deck. Levesque, Di Angelo, Solace-" most of the crew was already starting to scramble off to their own duties, some willingly like Piper and Annabeth, and others not so much. Percy literally being dragged by Frank towards the sails. However, everyone froze when someone yelled, sounding quite panicked, "CAPTAIN!"
Reyna frowns, looking up at the girl sliding down the railing towards her, looking thoroughly panicked.
"Lou, what is it?" she asks. Reyna is a good foot, at least, taller than the other girl.
"Ship, incoming," Lou Ellen huffs, and the rest of the crew looks to each other, confused. "Portside, and it doesn't look like a military ship. If it is, I've got no idea what country."
Annabeth is already scrambling up the Ratlines, Piper close behind. Reyna's face darkens visibly, growling slightly.
"Chase, report?!" she shouts, but Annabeth has gone pale.
"Captain..." she says and exchanges a panicked look with Reyna, Thalia can feel her stomach dropping to her toes. Annabeth never looked that panicked. Reyna, followed by Thalia, and then the rest of the crew, scrambled portside.
A towering ship made of light wood with a mast even taller than their own, but much like Lou had said, it was no military ship. It looks as if it had been made custom for those who rode it, and that's when Thalia felt her blood run cold. She recognizes that flag, and apparently, so does Nico. He growls, looking visibly pained, and draws the attention of Reyna.
"Di angelo, you have something you'd like to share?" she asks, not quite understanding whom they were spotting apparently.
"It's the Hunters," Thalia says, saving Nico from having to face a visibly ticked pirate captain.
"The who?" Piper asks from her perch and Thalia sighs heavily. "The Hunters of Artemis. A pirate crew infamous for being all female and throwing any male they come across to the sharks."
"It's said all women who get thrown off of ships by men who believe them unlucky join them," Reyna adds, frowning, "and that they are lead by something of a goddess. Little is known about Artemis herself, only that she's been around much too long to be human."
Thalia nods with solidarity, familiar with the legends of the immortal crew of pirates. "When I was younger they attacked one of the ships I'd been assigned to. The only survivors were a stewardess and me."
"Well shit," Percy mutters, gripping the side of the deck. "They just came out of the storm and their ships hardly scratched."
"Forget the preparations, we don't have the time. Get ready for your battle stations," Reyna orders, unsheathing her sword. "Last I heard the Hunters weren't a very diplomatic bunch."
~
And that's how Thalia's ended up in this situation she's decided to dub, the frying pan. For you see, there's an old tall tale that has something to do with a fire, and there's a freaking hurricane that's getting closer by the minute. The knife digging into her side could be considered a first world problem at this point.
The Hunters, as it turns out, are a fast and loud bunch who are pretty much an entire crew of Reynas. As much as Thalia loves Reyna, she still comes second best in combat to the other girl and it really isn't helping her situation.
It's utter chaos, rushing around her and screaming in the wind like a banshee. The hunter girl currently pinning her to the wall isn't much help to the chaos considering she can't breathe thanks to the knife pressing into her throat. One of the Stolls goes screaming past, at least three girls who don't look any older than thirteen on his back. Annabeth tumbles overhead, tangoing with two of the buggers, while Piper is just beneath her, standing back to back with Percy. Her dagger gleams in the dying sunlight as the storm begins to darken the sky above. Percy is already bleeding from both his temple and his shoulder, clutching onto his sword which is covered in the stuff up to the hilt.
Leo and Frank are on the stern, Leo on Frank's shoulders and swinging a mallet twice his size while Frank lets a rain of arrows loose to the crowds below. The other Stoll is dancing in between helping them and keeping the hunters away from the steering wheel. Will and Nico have disappeared from sight along with Hazel, and Lou is tangled in a heap of hunters that are much older than her.
Then, of course, there's Reyna. Reyna who's in the center of it all calmly dueling with the Hunter who seems to be commanding the whole attack, but certainly isn't the captain given she's missing the signature coat that seemingly all Captains bear. Reyna somehow makes bloodied and battered look good, stained in the stuff.
Wind howls, lightning flashes, thunder cracking across the sky and Thalia's losing the ability to breathe. Her Hunter counterpart is hardly budging as she struggles to push her off, clawing with desperate hands.
"Grace, watch out!" a voice yells, but it's too far away for Thalia to discern who it's coming from. There's a crash and suddenly she's on the deck, tasting sea salt and coughing, but oxygen is at least available again.
"Jesus," she heaves, coughing up something that's not saliva, and gasps unceremoniously, "Christ."
"My, my, my Grace, I expected better from you," a voice chuckles, and Thalia doesn't even have the energy to flip him off.
"Fuck off, Nico." She growls instead and he laughs. The clashing of metal is still ringing all around her as Nico helps her up. He's sporting a new layer of bandages around his scalp and Thalia has a sneaking suspicion where he got it from.
"What's even happening right now?" she asks because she's been wrestling for far too long to keep tabs on how the fight's been going in a broad sense.
"Well, still no sight of their captain, but they haven't stolen anything either, which is odd. I think they're after something specific they think we have," Nico comments and hands her the hilt of a sword she isn't familiar with. She's still grateful, at this point she'll take any weapon she can find.
"They don't seem too concerned with the fact that we're going to be capsized soon," Thalia remarks at the waves which have begun crashing over the sides of the deck with a vengeance, like inky black tongues licking at them.
"We might want to get down there," Nico mutters, watching as Reyna stabs into the girl facing her and there's an outcry from the surrounding hunters, which begin to close in around their fallen comrade, surging towards Reyna with something like the enclosing waves.
"Good call," Thalia says and charges down the steps towards the Captain who currently wrestles at least three different hunters per arm. Dual daggers gleam in the flashing light. Rain thunders down on the deck and swallows them all in its embrace. By the time Thalia makes it to clash with more of the Hunters she's soaked in more water than blood. The screams get louder, ringing in her ears and all she can hear is chaos. Utter and complete chaos. Thunder, lightning, rain, crashing waves, screaming Hunters, metal scraping along metal, metal on skin, metal on wood, crying, yelling, screaming, she's lost in the sound. Lost in the torrent of unending sound that's just closing in around her.
"STOP!" It's a voice like thunder. A voice that commands. The Hunters freeze, and as such comes with an opponent stopping in the middle of a death strike, Reyna's crew does as well. They're mesmerized by the person who has given the command.
It's a girl, who can't be any older than thirteen, standing on top of her ship's stern, glaring with eyes that must've trapped the moon in their irises. Lightning flashes, illuminating her silhouette which has no right being as terrifying as it is with how young she is: knobby-kneed, with baby fat still in her cheeks and stomach. The girl jumps, falling onto the deck of the ship without so much as a sound. The storm continues to rage on but feels somewhat subdued by the girl's presence. As if she herself is the eye of the storm.
"We came here, for one reason, and what do you do when I fall asleep?" Her voice is thunder, crackling and roaring, but at the same time, it is one consolidated thing. It doesn't meander or go on for anything unmeaningful. It's one solid noise that doesn't match with the girl's childish face. The girl who Reyna had just struck down is being held up by two others, her eye is swollen shut, hidden under a mop of bright red hair that even in the storm darkened light is ungodly vibrant.
"M'lady, we know that-" she starts, but the girl doesn't let her finish. She turns with the expression of such pure rage that Thalia herself backs away and she's not even under it.
"You. Know. Nothing." She says, and the ginger visibly deflates, cowering away from the girl.
"Now, kindly, I assume you're the Captain of this wreck," the girl grumbles, turning towards Reyna who looks just as unsettled to this surprisingly unguarded captain as Thalia. She swallows that, however, and instead straightens herself back into her reserved, confident self.
"And you must be Artemis," Reyna says to the girl, who nods solemnly.
"I'm afraid I must apologize for my crew, I assure you this was without my command," Artemis snaps another glare in the ginger's direction.
"Unfortunately, given the current state of things, I don't believe we can solve this all so easily," Reyna remarks evenly, and Artemis again nods. For some reason, she didn't seem too upset about the whole ordeal.
"True, but my quarrel isn't with you, or your crew. It's with a certain, Miss Thalia Grace." There's a visible stiffening in Reyna's stance. Her knuckles going white on her sword as if that alone would stop bad memories from surfacing. Thalia fought the urge to step up to Reyna's side and potentially give herself away.
"If you want her you'll have to take her by force," Reyna snarls and Artemis frowns, there's something terribly cold and primordial about her. Like something that shouldn't exist, but at the same time, the world would die if she didn't.
"I wasn't asking," Artemis said simply, and her voice again is thunder. Booming, thundering, roaring, growling in Thalia's ear like a spell. It hurts, it really hurts for some reason, but no one else seems to realize that. To see that. No one else winces at the sound of a thirteen-year-old's voice. How the hell that even makes sense, for the 'immortal' captain of the Hunters to be a thirteen year old is something Thalia can't fathom.
Artemis whips her head in Thalia's direction, and Thalia can feel her blood freeze under that expression. Artemis frowns, then her expression morphs completely. An evil smile that could shatter the sky with how sharp it is.
"Thalia Grace, good. Well, we might as well make this short, for your sake and mine," with that the fight swings back into chaos, but for some reason, Thalia feels rooted to the spot. Her feet won't move, her arms are frozen, everything has turned to stone and all she can see is Artemis's eyes. All she can see is the moon in the middle of a storm.