Chapter Text
loyalty, it seems to jason, is meant to be optional.
it was certainly optional when former praetor matthew lane had slipped from the legion, and his family from new rome, and half the imperial gold weaponry from camp jupiter. it was optional when octavian had promised to do anything to help, and when he had taken on the curse of prophecy, and when meeting his stare had stopped meaning locking eyes with a friend. it was optional when his father, from olympus on high, had chosen to entertain himself with jason’s mortal mother.
from the wolf house, to the foot of his father’s temple, to the head of the fifth cohort, jason’s never really felt the optionality. as a legionnaire and as the son of jupiter and as juno’s champion he had to represent his patron gods, and defend the twelfth legion. all of his decisions would centre around this loyalty to everything he had ever known.
not that jason regretted any of them, but he would wonder whether he could really be considered loyal if he had never actively chosen for himself where he wanted to be. was it loyalty if he knew that he was just waiting out his ten years service?
it felt like constantly marching down a hallway, while everyone he meets flits in and out of the doors on each side. at the end of ten years he would finally reach the only door belonging to him, and it would open. out would walk a god— juno, or mars, or maybe even his father— to tell him the legion still needed him to march. and jason would look at the door, and then turn around and start again the opposite way, back down the hallway, so he could be turned back at the other end.
questing was fun, when it tagging along with the adult legionnaires, clinging to their purple shirts, and to their pant legs, as they guided his sight away from claws catching on flesh, and swords catching on bones. when they would finish quickly, dust the gold from their clothes, tuck away their knives, and take him to see landmarks, and to art galleries, and for ice cream.
questing was fun when it was him, and gwen, and dakota, or later when it was him, and reyna, and octavian. when it was the three of them slipping past harpies, giggling the whole way down side streets, and using camp money to buy slurpees, drinking them cross-legged on park benches, grinning.
quests were not fun now that the monsters he came face to face with were as likely to be the people he grew up with, as they were to be any myth. even in dehumanising them, taking away their faces and names by calling them monsters, it makes jason feel guilty more than it helps him cultivate detachment.
even so, jason is one of the first volunteers when new information comes in. he’s one of the most experienced legionnaires, and he’s jupiter’s son, and it’s better that he goes than dante, who is thirteen, or sneha, who has never left new rome, or collie, whose father followed praetor michael to kreios’ titan legion. it’s expected that it’s him.
when dakota stumbles through the door into reyna’s office, holding jennifer up with one arm under her shoulder, reyna shoves her chair backwards and the scrape of wood on linoleum effectively cuts off whatever report the two could try to give. she motions with the back of her hand, scarred fingers splayed, telling jason follow me, words unnecessary by now. new rome’s only praetor slides her arm under the other shoulder of vulcan’s legacy, and helps bacchus’ son drag her down the hall.
“while the legion does place emphasis on dedication, it’s hardly any use if you keel over trying to report to me before you report to the infirmary.” this is maybe an exaggeration on reyna’s part, but it has happened before. it’s happened with jason before.
“cool,” dakota says. jennifer just grunts.
reyna shoots them an annoyed side glance, but she probably also recognises the absurdity of a fifteen year old trying to give orders to people years older than her. in spite of whatever time or effort she contributed, next to michael lane, reyna was the child leader. now she is the only leader, and the cognitive dissonance still hasn’t dissipated for some, regardless of the respect she commands.
still, jason sees the faint, telltale glow of reyna’s silhouette that always snitches her out for caring too much. she can’t be too mad if she’s sharing the strength she’s grown into her soul for something as small as the 30 foot trip to the infirmary. or maybe it’s just that; caring too much, for her friends, for her camp. maybe it’s the manifestation of her desire and choice to protect the life and the people she has found for herself. it all comes back to loyalty, in that regard.
reyna manages to force a plastic mountain valley spring water bottle full of unicorn draught into dakota’s hands (he fishes a kool-aid sachet from his pocket and pours it into the bottle, shaking it until the lavender liquid turns a royal purple). jason flags down an aurae to help treat jennifer’s legs (mostly minor basilisk burns up her shins, but some purpling with infection already). then, reyna lets them speak.
jason tugs the door shut with a click, and says “i’ll go.”
reyna gives him a grimace that was probably meant to be a smirk. “i had thought you might want to.”
it’s a reasonable thing for her to say. jason always volunteers first, and he had literally just volunteered. still, the knowledge that one of his closest friends thinks that this is something that he wants— or likes— to do, rests on him like a layer of armour present for so long that his skin has grown over it; under his flesh but over his bones. it feels safe though— as a son of jupiter, as a champion of juno, shouldn’t he be giving his all to help, to protect new rome?
jason just nods, and follows her back down the hall. “it’ll be quickest that way. utah salt lakes right? i can just fly up, grab the gold, and fly it back. they mentioned that they didn’t notice any titan legion action up there, and i can avoid most monsters a lot easier than anyone having to walk.”
“i’m not disagreeing with you,” reyna shoulders open the door to her office, and moves to rummage through her desk drawer. jason stands by the other desk. “but you should still stay in contact.”
she straightens, keys in hand, and unlocks one of the cabinets lining back wall. she turns around and tosses him a doro 1370. he pockets the burner phone just as she notices his positioning in the room.
“you know-“
“no.” it’s the one choice he really wants to make for himself. and it’s selfish. reyna needs help, and jason’s trying to do that without accepting praetorship. he could give hundreds of reasons why it shouldn’t be him; accusations of nepotism; the camp never fully learning to respect reyna’s decisions; other, older campers being more suited. but ultimately, it’s selfish.
most demigods don’t get even a first glance from their immortal parent, let alone the respect and expectations inherent for a son of jupiter. it is nepotism and it’s a weight that jason doesn’t want, but how can he reject everything juno and his father (indirectly) gave him, when some legionnaires spent years of their lives proving themselves to an absent audience, hoping for anything.
(how can he reject everything handed to him when octavian spent years of his life trying to ‘keep up’ with reyna and with him, trying to ‘make himself useful’, as if his use and his worth was defined by the godly gifts that shine through every demigod’s mortal skin; the attributes that weaken and fade with every generation removed from the deities. how, when octavian prayed for recognition and was gifted the curse of prophecy, when the sun bleached all the colour from his hair, and when his skin started to burn instead of tan.
he had always been abrasive, insensitive and cruel, but he had never hurt jason in a way that stuck. jason doesn’t know where they stand now that octavian has his scrap of divinity, burning up at his core, curdling his soul from the inside out
if godliness is so important to demigods then how can jason be so selfish as to say that every instance of his father’s impact grates at him; to say that he wants nothing to do with it?)
still, if jason can prove that he’s a greater help as a regular legionnaire than he would be as praetor, it won’t fell like a betrayal to the purpose— to the people— he was raised for. in theory.
“okay jason,” reyna doesn’t pry, but she does warn him “it’ll come up again sooner or later, you know.”
“i know.”
jason lands on an island in the lake, at the edge of a crowd of twenty-somethings wearing chitons that fold into the grass around their feet. a few give him a glance, then turn back to whatever’s so interesting at the centre of their circle. jason hopes it isn’t the imperial gold that’s interesting them. he would like this to be easy, and getting past fifty-odd nymphs would not be easy.
still, he ducks through the crowd, which doesn’t move an inch to accomodate. it takes jason a minute to notice that their dresses ripple infinitely as they move among themselves to whisper, but the fabric doesn’t sway with the breeze. when jason’s hand accidentally brushes too close to one, her chiton is as solid as cartilage; when the nymph wipes her hand down it, as if jason’s touch had contaminated her, her skirts fold and shiver like the lightest, thinnest silk. jason shoves his hands into his pockets before he continues.
at the crowd’s centre is a boy so beautiful jason gasps, harsh enough to hurt the back of his throat. the boy is propped up on his arms at the edge of a pond, peering in, and jason can see the muscles in his shoulders flinch at the noise, but his head doesn’t move. his face and neck are lit up like the sun is setting in that pond, and jason has the sinking feeling that he’s in the right place.
“hello?” the boy’s voice is low and wary, and jason notices the way the grass grows longer at the pond, wrapping around the boy’s forearms like a finger trap. a nymph across the way raises her eyes from the boy to jason and bares her teeth in what could be excused as a smile.
jason stumbles forward, having to rip his feet out of grass that had already started to grow over him on the first step. he stops a foot away from the pond’s edge, and a few feet away from the beautiful boy. his eyes catch on the boy’s profile, on his jawline, and the length of his lashes, and the tears dripping from his nose and chin, and jason hesitates to introduce himself. nothing in the boy’s voice had prepared him for this.
“hello? are you okay?” jason turns his words over carefully in his brain, unsure how to help this strange, breathtaking boy, crying in a circle of nymphs. the boy lifts one hand and jason follows it with his eyes as he swipes under his eyes with his thumb.
“well enough. and you are?”
jason’s voice sticks in his throat again at having this boy’s attention, though he still hasn’t looked at jason. he averts his eyes to the pond, searching and— there. “that’s good to hear. i’m jason,” he says, distracted. he can finally see the boy’s full face, reflected golden in the large sheet of metal laid across the rocks at the bottom of the glass clear water. “legionnaire of camp jupiter,” he tacks on to the end. “is that imperial gold? and do you need it?”
for an impossible split second, the boy’s eyes lock with jason’s, molten in the reflection. just as the boy’s mouth opens to answer, the grass winding up jason’s legs tightens, and drags him down under the ground. he’s forcefully ejected from the ground forty feet away, near where he had first landed, and he can barely yank his hands out of his pockets in time to catch himself before his breaks his nose. his wrists throb from the force of his landing. some of the nymphs have broken from the circle to surround him, and the rest block the pond and the boy from jasons view.
they start to speak and jason can barely hear through the peat clogging his ears, or see through the dust caked over his eyes. he can barely breathe around the wet clay, slippery on his tongue and down his windpipe and gritty against his teeth, and he nearly eats his shirt trying to clean it from his throat. the hem of his shirt is a dirty grey-brown, instead of purple, when he’s done clearing his senses, and the nymphs are still talking.
one steps closer, her shadow over jason, and when he looks up into her face he finds that he recognises her as the one who’d met his eyes.
“a warning to you mortal,” she says, and her voice is so human. “he will not part with that metal lightly. the blood of one of hephaestus’ cyclops was so recently spilled on this island.” and jason is paying almost too much attention to the nymphs circling him, and to the remaining dirt in his windpipe, to notice the use of the greek name— almost.
this nymph steps back into line, and another steps out. there’s nine of them, jason notices.
this nymph sneers. “and besides,” her voice sounds with a godly power that has jason almost flinch. “isn’t the reflection off the metal so complimentary? after all he’s done doesn’t he deserve at least this?” he’s not sure he wants to find out what that means.
“oh yes,” another continues, “without such magnetism for him, surely he’d leave.” her voice rings, imprinted in jason’s mind even when she finishes her part.
the nymph with the human voice— the only one so far that hasn’t bowed jason’s spine or made his head ache— smiles at him, equally fond as it is sharp. “for everything that he has left behind, he cannot leave us. we love him so, you see.”
other nymphs chime in, their immortal voices swirling together, and jason cannot even hear their words past the sheer gravitational force of the sound. he’s sure his skull would split if even one more joined in.
it doesn’t sound like love, to jason. more like anger, like the thunderclaps in the sky that seem to follow his least successful quests, like a sword under a whet steel, or the rocks that crackle under juno’s tread when she walks the earth. maybe that is how these nymphs love, he thinks. jason has never felt anything as strongly as they must feel this.
the first nymph bends— one hand on her knee, the other offered to jason— and her human voice is brittle and tinny under the thunderstorm of the chorus. “you’ll find it’d be best for you to leave.”
jason lifts a hand to take hers, and finds the skin of his palm is woven through with splinters, like someone’s failed first cross stitching experiment. now that he can pay attention to something other than the overwhelming voices, or the aching of his wrists, or the dirt clogging his airways, he finally registers the way the entire surfaces of his palms sting. the intensity of it makes him grit his teeth.
“i can’t— go. i can’t go,” he manages to cough out when the nymph stands, tired of waiting. the stone lines of her face soften into a frown, but she’s interrupted before she can say anything.
“alright ladies, listen up! everybody back off,” a girl speaks, her voice just as human as the first nymph’s— and just as tinny— but somehow less brittle. jason needs to listen, and he starts to scramble back, still on the ground, before the heavy aching pain in his wrists and hands stops him. instead he just collapses, back to the ground, bending the grass around him.
from there, he watches as the nymphs listen, each stepping back, melting into the grass, and the wildflowers, and the trees. he finds himself in the centre of a circle of shrubs, where before there was only the nymphs. his view of the pond is very obscured, and he doesn’t bother trying to see; now he can hear.
“hey, we’re back,” the girl says. something lands on the floor.
friends of the boy? maybe. jason could barely talk to him, but maybe he could talk to her. he wants to know more, and he wants to be involved, to have plans, to be waited for. he wants— he wants to use her to learn more about the boy at the pond. its an awful realisation. he hated that kind of person. he’d never been on this side of that behaviour before now. how petty to even think about something like that, ever, and especially now.
“woah, dude, what’s wrong with your face? you look ugly as hell today,” this is someone new and, jason thinks, possibly blind. this interruption to his thoughts couldn’t have come at a better time.
“i’m sure we would both prefer if that were true,” the boy at the pond says.
a pause.
“cool, and i’m sure we’d both prefer if that were true,” the third person snaps. “i remember what you looked like when we met and-“
“okay well, fun as your little psychological pissing contests are to listen to, i’ve had to carry this soup for 3 miles and my arms are sore. you two are more than welcome to cold soup if you really want, but I’m putting this down and eating right now. it’s pumpkin” the girl interrupts, followed by the sound of a body thudding onto the ground, and another pause.
“did you find the other demigod? jason?” at the sound of his name from the boy by the pond, jason realises he has been sitting and listening silently for far too long. the boy continues. “what’s pumpkin?” but jason can’t pay attention to the rest of the conversation.
the shrubs in front of him start shaking, and a boy trips through, picks a bramble off his left t-shirt sleeve, and makes brief eye contact. “you jason?”
so this is the third person. another demigod apparently, and one who knows it but— not anyone jason recognises from camp, or from new rome. mystery boy’s eyes flick away as he tugs his sleeve forward to examine the new hole there. he pulls a face at it, and jason uses this time to stumble onto his feet.
he prays this boy doesn’t recognise him from camp either. if he was another member of kreios’ titan legion jason would be leaving this place far worse than he had entered. fighting the monsters was fine; they were eternal, they reformed, and they had no issues with killing him first. but monsters did not make up the majority of the legion.
unsure of how to proceed, jason sticks out a hand to shake. “that’s me. it’s nice to meet you,” manners were usually appropriate, so that’s what he went with.
mystery boy’s right hand lifts from his sleeve like he’s going to take it. then he looks at jason’s hand and his hand goes right to batting back his black hair where curls had fallen into his eyes. “dude. why are you trying to shake my hand, you’re like 16, not 60. also i’m not touching that, it looks like a twelve year old girl’s fucked up embroidery project.”
jason pulls back. funny, he thinks. he had thought almost the same thing.
he must have pulled a face when he recoiled though, because mystery boy twitches and his eyes slide away from jason’s. “and i’m leo. follow me.” he turns back through the bush.
jason glances at his hand. he flinches. about a fifth of his skin is still visible. under the dried and drying blood. splinters are laced through the skin of his palm and fingers, knotting at the surface like muddy red and brown thread. the more he looks, the more it seems to hurt. he had paid attention to how bad it was initially, now it seemed worse.
jason tries to gingerly pat some of the blood off onto his jeans. the minute his hands make contact with the denim it feels like he shoved them into powdered glass and start rubbing.
he keeps them close, palms facing his chest as he steps through the brush.
the girl looks up from where, sure enough, she’s sitting crosslegged next to the boy at the pond, eating soup with a plastic spoon. her hot pink tights are ripped at the knee. leo’s sitting on the boy’s other side.
“i’m piper. didn’t know we’d be having a guest so there’s no soup for you,” her brown eyes meet his, narrowed, and jason feels like he can’t breathe. he doesn’t recognise her either, but that’s not assurance that she doesn’t recognise him. “sorry,” she tacks onto the end, not sounding at all sorry.
it feels like a trial, and jason’s determined to pass. “ah no-don’t be. even if you’d known, you don’t know me and it’s your money.” she seems satisfied with that answer. “i’m jason, also.”
piper slurps up a spoonful of soup. “apparently. you should sit”
jason sits. he awkwardly lays his hands face up in his lap, trying to figure out how to remove the splinters when he can’t really use either of them. he might have to try his teeth.
leo cracks the lid of one of the two soup bowls left, plops a spoon in it, and offers it to the boy by the pond. he grabs the remaining bowl. to jason he says “this is narcissus,” gesturing to the boy. then he takes off the soup lid and starts drinking straight from the bowl, as if that absolves him of the responsibility of explaining why exactly greek myth narcissus is alive, and in utah.
jason opens his mouth, finds he has nothing to say to that, and closes it.
“i heard then nymphs got to you,” piper saves the conversation. “can see it too, i think you have dirt in your ears,” she laughs.
jason tilts his head, and hits one side with the back of his hand. a sprinkling of moss falls out, and he scrunches his nose at it. piper laughs harder.
leo snickers at him too. his hair is dark brown, jason notices— not black.
narcissus sighs. “yes, echo's mourners. i am sorry any of you had to face with them. they are…quite determined to keep me here.”
“wait, so are the nymphs in a cult?” jason asks. he gets no answer.
“not as if you could leave regardless. they’re just causing problems for fun,” leo sneers, wiping his mouth with his shirt collar.
there’s something there, jason thinks. he had thought the three were friends but— there’s genuine resentment when leo talks to narcissus. jason doesn’t know who the hatred is for.
piper spares jason a nod, and answers his question briefly. “you could call it a cult," before asking a question of her own. "were you here for the metal too jason?”
“no he was just here to enjoy the great salt lakes in summer,” leo mutters. jason drags his eyes back to piper and nods. “of fucking course he is,” leo mutters again, louder. in a normal voice, he says “great. get in line,” and glowers at jason, who blinks back.
“uh,” he starts to say.
“leo come on. it’s not like we really need it anymore,” piper stretches her leg around narcissus’ back to lightly kick at leo’s ribs.
“wh- yeah, it’s a matter of pride, piper.”
“ah yes, your fatal flaw. what did you need it for anyways, jason?” she continues, turning away from leo to face him.
“ah-” he begins. these two don’t seem like part of the titan legion. they don’t seem like trained demigods at all. but he can’t be certain it would be a good idea to tell them regardless. if they truly are uninvolved, telling them would like put them in more danger. if they stayed here, maybe they would be out of the way.
leo turns around too. “quit assigning me fatal flaws all the time,” he whines.
piper smirks at him. “what, does it hurt your pride?”
narcissus clears his throat and six eyes fix onto him. jason is used to being listened to, as long as he had something beneficial to say. but he couldn’t imagine having that sort of magnetism. all three of these people seemed to have, to some extent, that quality that drew attention their way. any of them could speak and jason would actively want to listen. it’s almost hard to stand.
narcissus speaks. “jason was answering. pay him some attention.”
that seems like a running theme; jason must draw his respect from others like a leech. he only has the spotlight when it’s put on him for others. never when it’s for something he wants.
and now jason does not want the spotlight. he still hasn’t figured out what to say, and without preparation, calling him a mediocre liar is being too polite.
but piper doesn’t know this, nor would she likely care. she opens her mouth; she looks curious. “sorry jason. tell us?”
he tells them.