Chapter Text
Jason is—fucked.
Yeah, that’s it, really. He’s so, so fucked.
He’d thought he could pull this off, maybe, for a minute or two.
There was some memory hissing at the back of his mind, after all, about a foe like this. A giant in front of a throne. A sacrifice, an impossible fight and blinding light…
And for a minute or two, it had been working.
He’d white-knuckled his way through flipping his coin into a javelin, learning the limits of the giant’s reach and how to dive out of them—he was smaller, so he was faster, right? Enceladus only had one working eye, and at the start of the fight that had seemed to really be screwing with his depth perception, which was great for Jason.
The fact that the giant’s spear was on fire…really not so great. But he could work with it. It was fine.
And it had been. Jason had managed to stab Enceladus a few times, once hard enough in the back of the knee to draw ichor. It wasn’t a winning strategy, but it hadn’t been losing, either.
Until the ground had started sticking to his feet, dragging him down.
And then the smoke had made his eyes start watering, and his lungs stinging.
And then the spear strike to his arm that made the whole thing go numb.
And then the tripping over a burning log.
And then the sneered list of things Jason had apparently done, which made his buried memories thrash at the base of his skull, which distracted him long enough for the giant to breathe fire, hello—
And now, the flying backward after Enceladus deflected one of his stabs hard enough that Jason’s javelin exploded.
Right.
He’s fucked.
He hits ground so hard a whole line of his ribs crack—one, two, three, four, just popping neatly, and sending fire arcing down his side.
The earth shudders open into a crater around him, showering plumes of dirt. For a dizzy second he thinks it was the force of his impact—then he hears a low, slow chuckle. Like the rocks shifting against each other as they chew apart ground.
His fireworking brain catches up. Gaea.
Preparing her sacrifice site.
Fuck, fuck, fuck.
Enceladus appears over the corner of Jason’s new crater.
At least Leo really did do a number on him, Jason thinks blearily. His left eye is swollen entirely closed, red-ringed and oozing horrible yellow pus. That’s something.
“You see your fate, little demigod?” the giant leers. “The earth itself moves to accept you.”
This would be an excellent moment to attack, while the giant wastes words—but Jason tries to push himself up and his ribs scream.
Gaea’s laugh oozes through the forming mud into his ear.
Little sacrifice, she murmurs to him. Drowsiness seeps into his bones at the very sound of her voice, the sleep-fuzzed edges of it. You do know…oh, and do you know you are lucky…not to see what comes next…?
Jason forces himself to breathe. He commands his hands to curl—slowly, agonizingly, burned palms stinging, but he does it. Fists in the dirt.
He won’t die like this. On his back, weaponless, useless? No.
“I am a child of Rome,” he whispers. Every word sends traces of fire up his side. His throat seizes around the words.
Enceladus laughs and Gaea twines through it.
“And you will die as one,” the giant tells him. “The first blood of Olympus, spilled to wake the earth mother!”
Wait, Gaea says abruptly—the giant doesn’t seem to hear her. He’s too busy hefting the spear, twirling it into a two-handed grip. WAIT!
And then she’s—
Gone?
The mud stops lapping its way up Jason’s arms, dries and cracks all at once. The exhaustion dragging at him melts away.
She’s gone—but Enceladus is still hoisting the spear—
“ENCELADUS. STOP.”
For a delirious moment, Jason thinks Gaea has woken without him. The high voice rings out that clear, that commanding—it can only be a goddess.
Enceladus staggers back from the rim of the crater, spear going slack in his hands.
And a massive black wedge of metal thuds into his chest.
Jason blinks.
The giant bellows, and topples over out of sight.
“Fuck yeah!”
Jason—knows that voice. That’s—
“Leo?”
The boy appears, upside-down on the opposite end of the crater. His grin is wild and the brightest thing Jason’s seen all day. “Present, accounted for, and with a hydraulic fucking axe, baby! Come on, get up here.”
Like Jason isn’t trying. He sucks in as shallow of an inhale as he can, tells himself he must’ve had worse with the life he’s apparently led, and rolls over.
His ribs make a horrible crunching noise, but he seems to have floated somewhere above the pain.
He grits his teeth, and scrambles upright. There. Fine. Done.
Leo cocks his head, sucking his bottom lip in between his teeth. “You good, dude?”
“Fine,” Jason grunts. Which he is, because he has to be. It’s taking all his focus to get up the side of this fucking crater.
Which doesn’t slip wider, or try to suck him in. Where did Gaea go? Wait— but for what?
By the time he reaches the top, his ribs burn so badly he has to hunch sideways and let Leo slip an arm around him.
He wheezes, even bent nearly-double, and starts turning himself around toward the giant—
And then he sees her.
Piper.
Piper?
She’s massaging her throat, face pinched. Streaks of mud and dust fling across her silky red shirt and her cheeks and her clenching and unclenching hands. The dagger is back at her waist.
She won’t meet his eyes.
Across the crater, Enceladus coughs. Jason whips around.
(He regrets it immediately as his ribs flare again.)
The giant staggers upright, the edges of the ax steaming in the middle of his bloody chest—but he’s upright, hefting the spear from hand to hand.
“Valiant effort, annoying little mortal,” he wheezes, pausing to cough black blood. “But I cannot be killed by gods or mortals.”
And that phrase—
Jason’s memory is motheaten and dusty and tattered, but that phrase tugs at something deep within it.
Not by mortals or by gods…but by both together…
From there, it’s almost easy. Piper yells distractions, Leo puppets construction equipment. Jason flings himself at the giant. Catches on. Holds. Prays.
His father answers.
The lightning obliterates the giant and the construction equipment alike. It leaves one curling fern-like burn on each of Jason’s arms, and the odd afterimage of healed pain in his ribs. His hair is slightly singed.
He staggers out of the crater.
Leo starts toward him straight away, eyes wide, lips shaping a litany of worry Jason can’t hear over the ringing in his ears.
Piper—doesn’t.
She stands at the edge of the ruin lightning made of the earth, arms crossed fracture-tight, looking anywhere but at Leo slotting himself under Jason’s arm again.
“I’m okay,” Jason tells him, “Leo, it’s okay.”
Piper still doesn’t look up.
“Are you sure?” Leo asks. He’s warm tucked against Jason’s side, almost a fever. There’s engine oil and soot shedding from his clothes, worked into his cheeks and the hot, stinging smell of him. It’s—disorienting, this close up. “Because, uh, I don’t know if you remember the last time you tried to stand up, but after that I had to throw you at a giant, and—”
“I’m fine,” Jason says, and shrugs the other boy off to prove it. His ribs twinge, but they don’t hurt. “Piper.”
And finally, finally, she looks at him.
Tear tracks slice through the grime on her face. Jason steps closer, and she holds her hands up—a warning or a plea, he can’t tell.
“I’m so sorry,” she says. “Jason, Leo, I’m—I’m so sorry.”
“It’s okay,” Leo starts, “Pipes, you came back, that’s—”
But she’s shaking her head, hard. “That doesn’t make it okay. I know, I know I fucked up, I just—”
“You knew,” Jason says. “That this was a trap.”
She meets his eyes for all of half a second. “I…I’ve known since the beginning. He had my dad, and if I brought him you guys, he would let him go. It was always the deal.”
“And you believed him?” Jason’s louder than he means to be. He isn’t sure if it’s anger or just sheer disbelief—he can’t remember shit, but he knows he would never have fallen for that deal.
And then he thinks of Enceladus, letting Piper and her dad go—more than the promises of the gods.
No. He can’t think like that.
Piper presses her lips together so hard they go pale.
“Hey,” Leo says quietly, “Man, she came back. That’s what counts, right?”
“No,” Jason says. “It isn’t. I’m sorry too, Piper, but—you should have told us. We could’ve figured it out, but you didn’t give us a chance, you just betrayed us. That can’t be how a team works.”
“And what would you have done, if I told you?” There are still tears coursing down Piper’s face, but she’s gone taut and furious. “Would you have come to save my dad, really?”
“Pipes, of course,” Leo blurts. Jason’s heart hammers.
Would he? There’s part of him flailing against it—walking into a trap like that—
But Piper is standing in front of him, incandescently angry and clutching her sides like her dug-in fingernails are the only thing keeping her together.
“Yes,” he says. “Piper, yes. We would’ve tried, if we knew.”
Her voice breaks around a laugh. “Of course. I should’ve…I’m sorry. It was just—he’s my dad.”
Our mom...wasn’t exactly stable , Thalia murmurs in the back of Jason’s mind. She said you were as good as dead. I didn’t go back, even when she died—
There are other memories there, he thinks. Older, deeper. He can feel them stirring, claws and spines slipping over the inside of his skull.
What can’t he remember about parents, and betrayal, and going back?
Would he ever have said it like that— my mom?
Piper is still talking. Another “I’m sorry,” small and miserable.
Leo rushes in with reassurances.
Somewhere in the distant sky, helicopter blades thud.
Jason—
Shakes himself.
Whatever the memories are, the only way to actually get them back is Hera. Finishing the quest.
Focusing.
“It’s okay,” he makes himself say. “Just—next time tell us, right?”
“Next time?” Piper chokes on another laugh.
“I mean,” Leo says, “there’s still this time to get through, but yeah. Ten out of ten would quest with you again, beauty queen.”
“Yeah,” Piper says, and scrubs her hands across her eyes.“Okay. Yeah. Next time.”
She drops her hands and looks at Jason. “Thank you. For giving me a second chance.”
He doesn’t…he doesn’t have the words for this.
But maybe that’s okay.
He limps over and pulls her into a hug—knows immediately it’s the right thing to do by the way she melts against him. Her fingers dig into his back.
He squeezes her tighter. They both smell terrible, probably—blood and sulfur and mud, the sweaty aftertaste of battle—and he’s sure there are words he should be saying.
But this. This hug, he can do.
“Huh,” Leo says from somewhere behind them—the buzz of the helicopter echoes through the valley again.
Jason lets go of Piper.
Leo has a hand shading his eyes, tracking the tiny speck of the machine. Which—
Isn’t that tiny, actually. If anything, it’s growing. Circling lower and closer.
“That’s landing, right?” Leo sounds just on the edge of manic, a little too casually cheerful.
Jason chews his lip. “Um…”
“Because it sure looks like it’s landing.”
It thuds through another circle, drops again. Wind blasts against them, kicking up dust again.
“Back up!” Jason yells—Piper’s already doing it. Leo follows, still squinting up at the machine and almost tripping because of it.
The helicopter plunges as soon as they’re clear, huddled next to the smoking remains of a bulldozer.
Jason runs through options furiously—mortal minions of Gaea’s? Aelous again, somehow? An intervention from Hera?
And then the helicopter blades slow and stop, the machine safely landed and—
Piper gasps and is gone, sprinting toward the helicopter. Jason’s brain blue-screens a little—
And then he sees the man leaning over the pilot’s shoulder.
He looks just as battle-wrecked as all of them, long hair in horrible tangles and blood streaked down his head, but he grins at the sight of Piper pelting toward him, and even Jason feels the magnetism of it.
“Need a ride?” he yells. His voice is painfully hoarse, but something about it feels familiar all the same.
Like Piper, Jason realizes, he sounds exactly like Piper.
“Holy shit,” Leo says next to Jason. “I think Tristan McLean just stole us a helicopter.”