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Jason is sixteen, when he stares into the ocean and hopes Poseidon takes him. His father would strike his cousins from the sky without a single ounce of remorse but he is safe in the water.
It’s not fair, has never been fair, that Leo died in a fiery explosion and Percy was afraid of drowning and Piper was scared of love. That Hazel didn’t like jewelry, and Nico had never gotten over death. It’s not fair that he’s afraid of storms now and Annabeth is scared of weaving.
Fair has never been something he thought about before. Before he loved someone with his whole heart and that person died a terrible fucking death and he said he would be the Pontifex.
Gods above he’s sixteen now, he’s not even legally allowed to be on his own but he is and Piper and he still share an apartment. Shel knows about the monsters, has seen them from the corner of her eyes for years.
Jason is sixteen turning seventeen and his birthday is fucking cursed because bad things always happen in July. He was abandoned in July, Percy and Annabeth fell into the Pit on his birthday, Leo died in July.
So Piper asks him quietly one night, after the nightmares have run their course and they’re curled on the couch, if he wants to choose a new birthday. If, because it’s June now, if he wants to find a day to celebrate that isn’t tainted like July.
“Do you want to?” She asks, “whatever you say goes, Jase,” she says, silence echoing in the room. He doesn’t know what to think, how to feel, where to go. Piper has Shel, Jason had Leo but Leo’s dead now.
It’s a fact of life. People who love Jason leave. Reyna left for the hunters, though they iris message almost daily, Piper broke up with him because she loved him but not like that, Percy’s happy in NYC with Annabeth, he and Frank were never that close, and Hazel is busy with New Rome.
He’s got Nico, but he’s busy with the camps and Will, so people leave, he knows. Lupa left him at the mercy of Camp Jupiter, Camp Jupiter left him at the mercy of the Gods, the Gods left him at the mercy of the world.
“No,” he tells her, “I don’t want a birthday,” he says. She looks right through his battered heart and softens.
“Alright Jase,” she says, curling her shoulder deeper into the blanket they’re sharing. He’s glad she let it go.
But that was in June, pride month, when he was still okay. Then came July and the anniversaries of so many bad things, and he couldn’t do it.
Piper drove him to the hospital and he told them he had cut himself chopping fruit. They hadn’t questioned it. Piper cried and cried, and he just listened with his back against her door.
“Tell me, Jason, tell me when it gets bad. I can’t lose you too, I can’t, I can’t. Tell me, please promise me,” she begged. He had tears in his eyes and he doesn’t want to make that promise because he doesn’t know if he can keep it.
“Okay,” he whispers eventually. He doesn’t know if he’ll keep it but she wants him to try so he’ll try for her. God he loves Piper, with her open heart and too much love to stay contained. Piper is a tornado when he’s a rainstorm. She’s the fierce wind that rips you apart so you’ll grow back stronger.
It’s July again and he’s struggling and Piper hasn’t eaten in three days and he’s starting to get worried and he doesn’t know if she still has her razors. God he hopes she doesn’t have her razors. He forces her to sit down and eat a protein bar but she only chokes down half and he can hear her throw it up later.
When did they get so fucked up? Was it when Leo died, or was it before that, when Piper was first starved for attention and Jason was thrown to the wolves? Was it when Piper collapsed and Jason got stabbed, or was it when they became soldiers?
Piper hasn’t talked to Shel in weeks, hasn’t texted her and can’t bring herself to look at her wallpaper.
(Its her and Leo on the Argo, on the couch with Jason sleeping between them. It hurts so much to see, back when they still had each other.)
He drives Piper to the hospital this time, when she collapses and he tells them she’s just been really stressed with school exams coming up. He doesn’t want to lie, but they’ll put them in therapy and that wouldn’t end well.
She comes back home the next day with strict orders to eat something and he’s got orders to make her eat. Piper still hasn’t seen Shel in weeks.
July is on its last legs so they should be getting better now, but he’s still spiraling and Piper’s relapsed again. Piper is still mourning Shel, because she’d loved her but hadn’t wanted her get hurt by them because demigods hurt everyone they love.
Sally Jackson stolen to the underworld, Sammy Valdez, cursed to never see her best friend again, Esperanza Valdez, dead by fire her son could control, Bianca di Angelo, dead for the all powerful gods. People who love demigods get hurt, get screwed over for things they have no part in.
Piper broke up with him and she told him she loved him not romantically and had said okay. Because that’s her choice to make and honestly he doesn’t know if he ever loved her like that either.
He’d asked her one day, how she knew she like women and she had told him that she wanted to kiss a woman named Shel and spend the rest of her life with her and she made her feel complete. Jason had told her that maybe he was a little bit like her.
“I think I loved Leo, like that. I think I loved him like I wanted to spend the rest of my life with him and I don’t feel fully human without him anymore,” he said.
“Sometimes you love someone and then you lose them and you lost pieces of yourself that you had given them, but you get to keep the pieces of themself that you were given.” She had said, soft smile tugging on the corner of her lips because sometimes he forgets. She had loved Leo too.
“It’s a pain like no other but you lose pieces of yourself like the way you tie your shoes and you smile like he does now, a little sharp grin when you’re feeling devious,” she said with her eyes leaking salty tears.
That had been one of the bad nights. The bad nights were the ones when Jason or Piper or both of them woke up with a phantom hand wrapped around their throat, an explosion behind their eyelids, a pit opening and watching people they loved fall. The bad nights were more frequent that the good ones, when they slept through the night, or if they had nightmares they didn’t remember them in the morning.
He drags Piper to the store on a Tuesday. He would choose a day when the world hadn’t ended, but they’ve fought enough times that can’t happen. He has the list and Piper is just trying to keep him from forcing her to pick snacks to try and eat more, when they see Shel.
It goes like this: “Jason! Stop trying to get the pretzel twists, those suck,” she says, laughing. “No, they do not suck, you just have bad taste,” he replies, “and anyways you don’t even like French fries, you can’t talk!”
She opens her mouth to respond when she sees Shel walking towards them with her head down. Shel who Piper still loves, a little piece in the center of her heart- carved out and hollow but still there.
“Shel?” She asks quietly, her voice shaking and fragile. Shel startles, pasting in a bad imitation of her smile. Jason doesn’t know her very well, but he does know that her smile is supposed to be bright and light up a room. This is not that kind of smile.
“Yep, that’s me,” she says, awkwardly trying to scoot around them. “Nice to see you, now I’d really like to be on my way. If I could go get to the eggs please?”
The thing is, Shel isn’t the bad guy here. No one is, but maybe Jason’s biased because he’s seen Piper cry because of Leo and then cancel plans because she doesn’t want Shel to worry and then seen her cry when neither of them have texted in a week and she’s so crushingly sad.
So no, maybe Shel isn’t the bad guy, Piper isn’t the bad guy, life is just the fucking shittiest thing ever and Shel doesn’t owe Piper shit, but Jason knows what’s Piper gonna do. He just hopes it doesn’t blow up.
“Can I talk to you?” Piper asks, her voice shaking and her hands trembling where they’re grasped together. Shel is still considering when Piper adds, “please?”
Shel cracks, “fine, ten minutes no more.” She says, grabbing her too thin wrist and pulling her to the drink aisle. Shel cracked quick and behind whatever barrier she wanted to build, anyone can see that she still loves Piper. Jason keeps shopping.
He gets eggs, bread, cheese, protein bars, chicken nuggets, vegetables and some snacks to hide, trying to make Piper eat a little bit more. He gets some chicken and broth that he might add some of their protein powder to, trying to get her more calories. Gods know she needs it.
They both come to the front red eyed but holding hands and he smiles, happy that Piper has another person in her corner. Shel is still looking at Piper like she hung the world and created the stars, and he is glad. Piper deserves for someone to look at her like that.
—
Leo comes back on a Friday. Jason punches him in the arm and sobs into his shoulder. Piper about strangles him with a hug and Calypso stands off to the side. She’s tired and sad and angry and Jason gets it.
Calypso had been left all alone on an island for the crime of loving her father, had been forgotten about for millennia, and she was bitter. She deserved her bitterness, hard won and deep-set.
Leo had sworn to the river styx that he would come back for her, and he did, and Calypso needs some support. She was also a lesbian, which she had told Leo when he came back, after thinking hard about why she was never truly attracted to the heroes they sent.
Jason kissed Leo in the firelight the second night he was back at camp half-blood. Leo kissed him back and he was happy.
Piper and Shel got married three years later, and Jason was Piper’s best man, and Leo was a bridesman. Percy and Annabeth had a son, Frank and Hazel were happy with their newborn daughter and Nico and Will were happy at camp.
(Emmy, Frank and Hazel’s daughter, was the flower girl and Jason and Leo’s wedding, as well as Will and Nico’s.)
Drew had been there, to Piper’s surprise, because she hadn’t thought she loved her. Drew was her sister but gods don’t have DNA, there wasn’t much tying her to Piper. Drew had been a bitch to Piper and Piper had been a bitch right back and both of them had been angry hurting broken people who deserved to have someone love them.
They had made it past their childhood, had survived the gods and all their quests. They had done the thing they weren’t sure was possible. Somehow, despite the monsters and the prophecies and the quests, they had made it to the other side alive.
Jason and Leo got married in the summertime, and he still couldn’t believe they got to be happy.
Jason had been sixteen when he willed the water to take him. He had been sixteen when he fell in love with his best friend and only figured it out when his best friend was dead. He was sixteen when parts of him died and his other best friend had lost pieces of herself too.
They had been children when they lost parts of their humanity. Things like that take years to regain. Jason had been sixteen, but now he’s twenty one, and life didn’t end at seventeen like he thought it would.
They were happy, and Jason married Leo and they got to be like this. Life was their gift and it hadn’t been taken away.