Work Text:
The door shut with a slam. Jason hated that the doors at Edgarton Day did that. They were massive blocks of mahogany and made in a bygone era. Like most things on campus, they became a defining feature of the obnoxious outdated landscape that was his current boarding school. You could be sitting alone with your thoughts in peace and quiet and suddenly a huge slam would knock you right out of your spiraling stupor. It just wasn’t right. Didn’t they know how to let a man brood in here?
With a long sigh, addressed to no one in particular, he threw his leatherbound book bag on the floor and promptly face planted into the bed. These days he wouldn’t trouble himself with removing the itchy sweater vest or the difficult-to-fasten striped tie that made up pieces of his paralegal-esque uniform. He couldn’t remember the last time he had actually washed or changed it. He probably smelled of ‘oud to Katobleps,’ but he was too in his own head to care. Getting in bed was easy. Getting out was a chore. He had no idea how he had lasted this long.
Mortal school and society was so incredibly different than what he was used to. He fit into it like a round peg in a square hole. It was no longer normal to always fear. It wasn’t normal to fly. Not normal to fight for your place in a hierarchy or prove yourself to your primordial parent. No one understood him here. Within a week, his peers made up a rumor he had been homeschooled. He had no friends.
He rolled over and looked at the ceiling. His new favorite pastime since transferring. He liked to think. He thought a lot about what to do with his life now that his great demigod purpose of being used as a tool for the gods had been fulfilled. He thought about how Reyna was doing. He had never really gotten to reconnect with her after the war. He thought about Leo’s last smile before the explosion. He thought about Piper, only an hour away, yet that felt like worlds considering what had happened between them. And most of all, he thought about his mom. He thought a lot about the times his toddler sized body peered past the marble tile walls of their penthouse. Straight into her bedroom which reeked of cognac and vodka. She used to lay in those fluffy pink comforters for days. Never changing out of her robe. Never taking them to the grocery store or making them dinner. She was so quiet, Jason used to be so scared of her. Her eyes always looked so so far away, yearning for a man who was never coming back. Rotting while she was still alive. Being pestered incessantly by children she had never wanted to have.
Jason hated looking in the mirror, because he couldn’t deny the resemblance. The last time he saw Thalia, she had said it. That dreaded truth: “You look just like her.” And he did. With strikingly blue eyes and blonde hair. His nose even shaped the same way. It was awful. He hated his mother. Yet, he understood her intimately. He yearned to tear himself away from the flesh that had housed him, and yet he was made up of it. He wanted to be like Thalia and find new families and a new mother.
Yet here he was. He was the one who had lived out his own prophecy. But his found family had been blown to bits.
‘It isn’t fair,’ he thought, ‘I did what I was supposed to, and its not fair.’
These months since the prophecy had been rife with thoughts of self-pity. It was new for him, but he found it a welcome change. He hated that it seemed like he was the only one whose life had been ruined by the prophecy. He was supposed to be a hero. But he didn’t feel like one. He felt like a random teenage loser who had lost his best friend and was broken up with.
Swift as an Edgarton Day door slam, a steadfast knock sounded on his door, shocking him out of his spiraling stupor. He shot up, eyes darting around his room. It was unsightly: another new thing for him. Pictures of Piper littered the floor from when he flew into a rage and ripped them off his corkboard. He still wasn’t proud of that. His clothes he had packed for boarding school, piled out of his suitcase and spilled onto the carpet in the corner. His desk was covered in foam board, sketches, and monopoly pieces for his plans to build temples to the gods. For a minute he sat in silence, waiting for another indication of a person on the other side. As if it had just been a fluke or a figment of his imagination.
Unfortunately for him and his pigsty, a raspy voice called, “Jase? Jason Grace?” ‘Oh, dear gods,’ he thought. It was Thalia. He rushed up and hurriedly threw all the pictures in his nightstand drawer, and his entire suitcase in the closet. The monopoly pieces were just going to have to be there. He thought briefly about changing, but Thalia was getting antsy now. She paced outside the door and shouted.
“Jason Grace, if you don’t open this door, I will blast it off the hinge-” She didn’t get to finish her threat. He threw the door open, taking care to hold the handle so the heavy thing wouldn’t put a hole in the wall.
She looked at him in shock, then she smiled, then she scrunched up her nose. Ahh sisters’ sweet sisters they never lie.
“Holy Hera, Jason, you STINK.”
“Nice to see you too,” he replied, stepping back to let her in.
The stench must have not been too bad, because she still pulled him in for a hug.
“I’ve missed you, little brother,” she said quietly, all meanness temporarily absent from her demeanor.
“I missed you too, Thals,” he said. And he meant it. He hoped he wasn’t holding onto her too tight. He didn’t want to show her how much he had been suffering. He didn’t want her to worry over him. Still, he cherished every second of their contact. It had been a while since someone held him like this, and it was almost enough to make him cry.
“Jason?” She said, “You can stop hugging me now.”
“Oh,” he stepped away, “sorry, it’s just been a while since I’ve seen you.” He explained, hoping to cover up the fact that the last few months had left him irrevocably devastated in every conceivable way.
She held up a brown paper bag Jason hadn’t realized she had been holding.
“I got you In and Out,” she said. There were grease stains on the bag, which according to Piper, is how you knew it was going to be good. Jason almost fully salivated. When had he eaten last? And what had he eaten? A pack of cheese crackers at about 6 am this morning? Just enough to stay alive so he didn’t have to face any other actual human beings in the cafeteria during lunch and he could sleep in the courtyard instead?
He didn’t mean to, but he practically ripped the bag out of Thalia’s hand.
“Hey!” she said defensively, “that’s my food too!”
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
As him and Thalia sat on the floor, eating their In-and-Out, she asked about how his regular, boring, non-immortal life was going. He attempted to be as vague as possible in his answers, but unfortunately, it just wasn’t working out for him.
“That’s it?! Schoolwork? That’s all you’ve been doing?” Thalia cried. She threw a French fry at him.
He didn’t react, and instead picked the fry up off his comforter and promptly ate it.
“That,” she said pointedly, “is disgusting.”
Jason shrugged his shoulders. Food was food.
“I’m telling you, Thals, my life isn’t half as interesting as yours.”
“C’mon! I’m not human anymore, Jason! I’m trying to live vicariously through you!”
“Sometimes I fight a monster,” he said, “An empousai here, a bemmyae there…”
“You’re impossible,” Thalia groaned.
She was quiet for a moment when Jason realized she was eyeing a tiny white square poking out from underneath the bed. ‘Shit’. He had missed a polaroid picture.
Before he could grab it, Thalia snatched it up off the carpeted floor. Just as he had figured, it was a picture of Piper. She was sitting in a pool side chair on the beach at camp half-blood in her swimsuit and sunglasses. Her tongue was poked out playfully, and she threw up a peace sign with her fingers. Thalia half smirked and gave a little huff of laughter when she saw it.
“How is she, by the way?” She asked.
Jason shrugged, not eager to discuss the matter.
“I’m not really sure, we haven’t seen much of each other since I moved out.”
“Yeah, why did you do that by the way? Have a sudden urge to be forced to dress like Mr. Rogers?”
Jason sighed softly, “It’s complicated.”
“In what way?” she said through a mouth full of hamburger. She never was the congenial type.
Jason took a few moments to think about how he wanted to respond. Vague? Maybe he would just say that they were taking a break? Or maybe he would say he just needed space…
Before he responded, he noticed Thalia looking at him strangely. She raised her eyebrow and looked around before leaning in and asking, “Did they kick you out? Were you and Piper…you know?” She said before making a hand gesture that Jason could only describe as demonstrative of his sister’s lack of education in this particular subject.
He could feel his face heat up at the implication though he tried to keep a neutral expression. “No, we weren’t doing that,” he clarified quickly. He tried, and failed, not to imagine Coach Hedge busting down the door to Piper’s room with a baseball bat just to catch them in the act. Gods, how mortifying would that be?!
“It’s okay, Jason, you can tell me. Just because I’m a hunter doesn’t mean I’m a prude,” she said, causing Jason to finally just throw his head in his hands in exasperation and embarrassment.
“WE WEREN’T HAVING SEX!” he said. His face felt so hot, he thought it might explode. He sat there for a few awkward minutes of silence before peeking out behind his fingers at Thalia. She back at him like she was trying not to laugh. It was a little funny, but when he started thinking about the Piper of it all, he decided to just tell her the truth.
“We broke up,” he said from behind his hands. Thalia’s expression immediately dropped.
“What?! But you all seemed so happy…”
Jason finally took his head out of his hands and added pathetically, “More specifically she broke up with me.”
Thalia looked shocked. Her dark eyebrows contorting into a look of concern, “Oh, Jason,” she said, “I’m so sorry.” She dropped her food and pulled him in for a hug. She smelled like In and Out. He thought again about how good it felt to be held before pulling away, hopefully in a normal amount of time.
“It’s okay,” he said, even though it certainly wasn’t. The truth is that would be lying if he had said that the sting of Piper leaving him didn’t remind him of the scars already inflicted upon him by his mother in the woods when he was two. Jason knew logically that the two instances didn’t really have anything to do with each other, but his little animal brain kept clinging to this recurring aching thought; ‘Why does everyone leave me? Am I not worth staying for?’
“Why did she do it?” Thalia asked genuinely.
Jason shrugged, because honestly, he wasn’t that sure himself. “She said a lot about not knowing who she was outside of our relationship. That and she brought up that her memories of me at the Wilderness School were all fake.”
“That can be disorienting,” Thalia pointed out, finishing up the last of her fries.
Jason sighed a little at that, “Yeah.” He agreed.
Thalia looked at him, “What?” she asked.
“What do you mean ‘what?’” He asked her.
“You seem a little miffed that I said that.” Thalia said.
“Well…,” he shrugged. He wasn’t used to being this petty, but Piper and his breakup had put him in a weird place emotionally. “It’s just that…you’re my sister, and I feel like you should be on my side…” he said.
“Oh,” Thalia responded, “Oh, I’m sorry, I thought you were the guy who likes to see all sides of a situation before making a decision?” She asked playfully, “My bad, I was trying to be objective.”
That got a half smirk out of him. “Yeah, well, I left conscientious Jason at Camp Jupiter,” he said.
Thalia gave him a look that was like, ‘are you for real?’
“No, you didn’t” she said.
“No, you’re right, I didn’t.”
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
After they ate, Jason told Thalia about Piper’s dad possibly going through a bankruptcy, the gods awful food at Edgarton day, and his trouble fitting in. Almost all subjects seeming to give her some concern. Well, all but the Dining hall food. That was a given at most schools, according to her.
“Have you joined any clubs? Are you keeping up with your homework? Why don’t you join a study group? I mean, Jason, if you haven’t made any friends, what do you do all day?”
Uh-oh. He had to make something up. Or at least that had been his plan until he saw Thalia’s facial expression, staring at him in a way that almost seemed to scream, ‘If you lie to me, I will strike you down just like dad.’ He decided he had better tell the truth.
“I just kind of…lay in bed. And don’t get up. Until the next day.” He felt really goofy telling her this. Thalia had always seemed so cool and confident. She was his strong older sister, and he longed to be like her like the annoying younger sibling he was. It felt embarrassing to admit he was struggling. He had never been so down bad before. It was like all those years of intense trauma were catching up to him. Why now? Some things hadn’t felt so bad when they had originally happened, so why did they seem to hurt more now?
“Jason…” she said, her voice full of concern, “that’s like…really not normal.”
Well, that was a relief to hear. Jason flopped back on his bed and exhaled. Thalia flopped back with him. He looked at her, and she studied his face. ‘Probably thinking about how much I look like mom again,’ he thought.
The thought made him focus on something else he had been ruminating over yet had been too scared to say. Now with Thalia looking at him, he found it even harder to get it out. He tried not to feel emotional over it, but failed, like most other things he had been trying recently. He felt a swath of sadness wash over him.
“Thalia?”
“Yeah?”
“Can I tell you something and you promise not to get mad?”
She stared at him. Not getting mad wasn’t exactly her specialty. After looking at him for a few more minutes, her curiosity and concern won out. “What is it?” she asked.
“I think…,” Jason swallowed the lump in his throat. He hated the way his voice warbled, “I think I’m getting sick,” he said.
“Like…as in you need to go to the doctor? Or the In and Out is making you queasy? Because it was kind of greasy-”
“No,” he said, though the In and Out was turning in his stomach a little now, “Sick like mom.”
She didn’t say anything for a minute. Her face flashed with incredulousness, with anger, with sadness, with worry. She seemed to settle on worry. Jason wasn’t sure if that was bad or good.
She held his face in her hands. He didn’t bother to hide the desolation around her anymore. Maybe then she would see how bad it had gotten for him. She would see that he was right and that he did look just like mom. In more ways than one.
He contemplated her reaction. Maybe she would leave him too. Eager to get away from the reminders of her and Jason’s past. He didn’t blame her.
Instead, she closed her eyes and pressed her forehead to his. “Jase,” she said, “don’t say that” she said, “please don’t say that.”
“I don’t know how to stop it,” he said, and he felt tears prick his eyes, despite his best efforts to keep it together. “Its like a wave of darkness coming to take me away, and when it reaches the shore…I just want to let it wash over me. I don’t want to run away anymore. I don’t know if I can anymore.”
She pulled him close and just held him for a while. “Don’t say that” she kept saying, over and over. “We will get you on medication, Jason. We will get you a therapist with some of mom’s leftover inheritance, hell, I will send you on a grippy socks vacation right now if you think it will help-”
“It won’t,” he said, shaking his head, “no mortal therapist is going to understand the life I've lived.”
“Then go back to Camp Jupiter!” Thalia shouted at him, “They must have some demigod practitioners in therapy, right? They’re populated enough!”
Jason filled with dread at the thought of having to return to Camp Jupiter. The place that had held him captive with expectations for at least 12 years of his life. If he saw a therapist there, word would spread like wildfire, HIPPA be damned.
“I do NOT want to go back to that place, Thalia-”
“Then what ARE you going to do?” She wasn’t holding him anymore, instead she sat up, and he noticed the raw emotion in her voice. He should never have told her this. He was a bad brother for worrying her, he decided.
“Are you going to sit here and rot for the next however many years? Just like mom?!”
Jason knew she had a point, but her words still stung. His ears hurt at the mention of his mother again.
“I don’t know! I hope not. I’ll…join a sports team, or whatever you said. I’ll try, Thalia. I’ll…I’ll try.”
She seemed to calm a little at that. She laid her head back down.
“I’ll figure it out,” he told her. He made a mental promise to himself to actually try and do it. For her.
She exhaled loudly. Then she said, “okay.”
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Their goodbye was short and sweet. Jason held her as tight as he could because with her being a hunter, he had no idea when or even if he would see her again.
“I love you, Jason,” she told him as she embraced him.
“I love you too, Thals” he responded, and he meant it.
And with that, that giant Edgarton day door slammed in his face.
He wandered back into his dorm room. He was about to faceplant back into his bed, when he remembered his promise to Thalia. He instead opted to strip the bed with plans to go to the community closet for more sheets. He changed his clothes into pajamas for the first time since being at Edgarton, and even hang up some of his clothes in the closet from the suitcase on the floor.
After changing the sheets, and even doing some neglected homework, he finally decided to let himself relax, as it was late anyways. Not that this one good day had taken away his depression, or anything, but it had made him a little more motivated to get better. It felt good to know that at least one person was in his corner.
He chased away the thoughts of his breakup and lost friend and mother and tried to just remember Thalia’s face and tasty In and Out. It helped to think of something better for once.
Once he settled in, he said to himself, “I’ll try, Thalia. For you, I will try.”