#annabeth have fourteen fake ID's

[demigods-posts]

i saw this post the other day about annabeth and how she doesn't have a birth certificate because she was never technically born. and that raises so many interesting questions. like, does she even legally exist? does she have a fake ID? i don't need sleep. i need answers.

[claracastellan]

so say luke and clara never make it to camp

the co-dependency tho, we’re talking Winchester levels here

So say they don't end up going to camp, Grover takes Annabeth and sends her there alone. Luke and Clara dip and head back onto the streets on the basis that anything is better than the gods, especially after they've just watched Thalia die

And Luke's fourteen, so Clara's about seven and they run they head down to Florida first, so they can stay warm in the winter and they find some city to hole up in, sleeping in alleyways in cardboard boxes with newspapers and running from the cops/CPS/concerned citizens when they turn up. Luke's paranoia comes up and he'd convince Clara anyone like that would only take her away from him so she doesn't go near them and would fight anyone tooth and nail

They stay in Catholic Churches sometimes, sleeping under pews or, once or twice, curling up on the alters. Clara prays, Luke never does. Sometimes he'll pour holy water on his hands, just to remind himself he isn't evil

Searches from Camp get sent to find them and even though they can usually avoid them, a couple of times they're too determined and it ends in a fight. In the worst fight, the satyr knocks Luke out in self-defence but Clara thinks he's dead and kills the satyr. When Luke comes too, Clara's sewing up the gashes on his skin with shaking hands, they are both covered in blood.

By the time Luke hits 18, he starts getting under the table work and they are able to rent motel rooms occasionally and they squat in a lot of empty houses in bad neighbourhoods. At the start, the backstreets crawling with hookers, druggies and rats scare Clara, but the longer they spend there the more she starts to find it comforting. Eventually, Luke saves up enough to buy an actual car (and a couple of cars he stole and re-sold) instead of stealing them and ditching before the police can catch them, so they start travelling the US in Ernest. He does more work while they're on the road, lots of manual labour and thinks like that

Neither of them have had any formal education (Luke had more with a couple of years at school) so although they're practically clever, they can barely read and write – not to mention the dyslexia – and they end up with this weird, partly-phonetical, partly-symbol short-hand they use between them that pretty much only they can understand.

The first time Clara kills a mortal, she's fourteen and some guy drags her into an alley with the obvious intention. Luke always makes her carry a knife and she doesn't warn him before she digs it into his throat – the blood ends up all over her. She bolts to the bar Luke had been in ('help needed' signs become one of the few written words she can recognise immediately) and she's crying and still covered in blood. They skip town, leave the motel bill unpaid and all their clothes there (they'll steal new ones, he tells her in the car as she cries hysterically, everything will be okay). Before they leave, Luke finds the guys friends, the ones who encourages him to go after Clara in the first place and sliced off his cock and leaves it on the church alter for good measure.

They never learn not to be dependent on each other and since splitting with Annabeth, they're the only company they have. It gets to the point that Clara can't stand to have anyone but Luke touch her and it feels like it burns. They rent motels with one bed and he stays awake long after she drifts off, knife in hand just in case a monster comes through the door after her

When she's seventeen with a fake ID – the years make her look older than she is, with all the travel and outdoor work and beatings she's endured, she does coke for the first time in a club bathroom and her blood sings

Luke has an opiate habit. They don't talk about it. But one of his dealers ends up dead and he holds her hand while they drive away from town, sirens echoing in the background

She comes home blood stained and beaten one night, nose broken, jaw shattered and so high she can't feel the pain. Luke patches up what he can and listens to her ramble about the nice man and the snow and the way bone feels cracking under her fist and for the first time there's some power there. he wonders what Thalia would say, because frankly he has no idea.

She learns to fight bloody, brutal and dirty and makes it a habit. Underground rings, sometimes, for money. More often than not it's just for fun. Her body is coloured in bruises almost permanently and she wears them with pride, even as the drawn out ache in her bones makes it difficult to move or breathe. Luke's the best with a knife of anyone she'd ever seen. They have a gun in the glove compartment. There's a warrant out for their arrest in half the states in the US.

Clara wears her hair in a tangled mess or braids when she needs it out of her face. One day in the height of summer, she cuts it off so it hangs at the base of her neck and holds the remains of her waist-length hair in her hands, dead end curls. She burns them, since why not?

He's 26 when he sees Annabeth again. she's nineteen and in college, snuck into a bar with a dark haired friend of hers. He glares at Luke and Luke bares his fucking teeth on account of how dare he? Annabeth's careful and angry. She looks like a girl, with her neat hair and fresh clothes. "What happened to you?" she asks, staring at the scars and dirt and blood under his nails. He smiles something mean. "What didn't?" she asks if Clara's still alive. He says yes and nothing else. He doesn't ask about her. He gets the drink he's come for and gets back to the motel. It's earlier than he's supposed to be back and he catches Clara by surprise, she's sprawled out in the middle of the floor, a book on witchcraft open and a fire burning in an empty bin – it smells like blood and she looks like power. "I met Annabeth." he tells her, looking at her badly cut hair, face marred with scars and the brutal look she carries like a weapon. "Do you regret this?" he asks her. He should have known the answer. She grins with her tongue in her teeth. "We'd be wasted there." she says, her smile turns dark, "we'd be dead."

They never visit their mother after they run away. Once, they make it all the way to the front door before hearing her scream from within. They don't look back when they drive away. "Just us." He vows to her, eyes on the road, music blasting out of the speakers. "You and me." She agrees.

He figures out she's still a virgin when she's 22. "Why?" he asks, laughing at her just a little. His back aches. "Waiting for Prince Charming." She tells him to fuck off and smiles secretly. "Maybe I just don’t wanna condemn some poor man to murder?" she looks at him knowingly. He doesn't correct her. He thinks she's probably right.

They're both covered in tattoos. Sigils and symbols and mythology and bible quotes and each other's names over their hearts. She has angel wings across her back and a cross down her spine. Luke has her date of birth on the inside of one wrist over his vein and the date they ran away from home on the other. she has his birthday in roman numerals at the base of her neck. He says she's fucked up. she says she got it from him. Katrina and the time it stuck the city curl around her arm, partly a reminder, partly penance. She has Annabeth and Thalia's names tucked behind her ears and that's definitely remorse. There are spells inked into her skin, half of them she did to herself, a patch work body of scars and magic.

She insists they get a motel with a kitchenette that actually works over the weekend he turns thirty. He thinks she's being difficult for the sake of it (and it wouldn't be the first time) but he find out why when he wanders through the door the morning of his birthday, breakfast in hand. She's there with a single yellow balloon and a badly made, probably foul tasting cupcake in hand with a candle stuck in it. "Surprise!" she offers, smiling her 1000 watt smile he hasn't seen for years. He laughs aloud, swings her into a hug and eats every crumb of the cupcake (it tastes worse than he expected. He doesn't care)

Clara meets a med-student in California when she's twenty-six. It's the only time she's ever thought about not getting home for the night. He's gorgeous and funny and clever and when he flirts with her, he looks her in the eyes, not peaking down her bra. The scars don't seem to bother him – he has enough of his own. He's got a strange tattoo – twenty lines and an eagle and letters she can't quite read – and an unearthly quality about him that makes her think he must be like her and Luke. He doesn't speak Greek though. She loses her virginity to him in the bar's backroom (she's good with locks and he really is gorgeous). After she leaves, she never goes back to the bar and convinces Luke they should skip town early. She forces herself to forget his name.

Clara overdoses. She's in intensive care for a week.

He asks her what brought it on a hundred times, a thousand. She keeps the secret for three years. Then, an unremarkable afternoon in February as they pass through some arse-backwards town in Indiana, she sits with him on the bonnet of his car and tells him their father spoke to her. "So you OD?" he asks, just barely not shouting. She rolls her eyes, not intimidated in the slightest. "I wanted to forget him." he frowns and tells her she can't, he's their dad. "You're my dad." she counters. "And my brother and my best friend. You're my everything."

Someone hits on her in a bar in Kansas and Luke knocks their teeth in. they have to abandon the car to avoid the cops.

Luke asks her if she believes in angels when they crash in a Church back in Louisiana. She's lying on the pew, staring up at the arch ceiling above. She wants to be asleep but it won't come. Luke lies next to her, on the cold stone floor below (it's hell on his back, but he insists). She tells him she does. She says she doesn't think they're good though. "I don't know if our life now's worth a damn," he considers, "But I'm glad we never worked for the gods." she knows they can't cross the boundaries into a church, some spiritual bullshit, but she looks to the door anyway. "Me too." she takes his hands and squeezes.

Luke dies on a Monday. She finds the torn up pieces of his body in an alley in New Orleans, of all places, on Tuesday morning. On Wednesday she rips apart the monster that killed him and makes his death last. On Thursday she tracks down Annabeth – she's married, almost thirty. She did become an architect. She says goodbye. On Friday, she takes enough cocaine to stop her heart. Someone finds her in a gutter on Sunday, her hand is open like she's expecting someone to hold it. Hermes steps away from his daughter's body, her rosary in hand and takes it back to her mother, chest heavy.

Neither of them have marked graves – Annabeth tries to find them, but never can – but Hermes ensures they're buried together.