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Jason has never met The Three Fates, always just a nebulous concept Jason himself never came into contact with. Three old women, who spun the fates of those who lived and died and even the most powerful of gods must bow to. You could never escape the Fates, and even attempting to would fail. So, Jason paid them no mind. What use was pondering over something he could never change, or talk to or barter with? The Fates would thread and spin and cut his cord when the time came, when his time was done and that would be that. Jason would serve the gods and New Rome until that time came, bringing glory and honor until his last breath
Jason had never had a problem with the Fates until he found family.
In all her vicious fear and anger, Reyna was not like anyone Jason had ever met, in Camp Jupiter, or even with Mother Lupa. 12 years old and as powerful as anyone double her age, Reyna made for quite the formidable opponent, and she made herself everyone’s opponent. She proved herself through bloody fights and spoke with a voice like steel, which made Jason want to bear his neck in submission. Friendship, and an even more nebulous concept to 12-year-old Jason than the Fates, came slowly, like the beginning of a rainstorm, a few shared conversations on patrol, Jason’s attempt at a joke he heard Dakota tell once, and then Jason realized he had made his first friend, entirely on his own, without the help of Gwen or Dakota telling him how normal people who weren’t raised by wolves spoke.
Though Reyna Ramírez-Arellano was raised by wolves too, they just had the sense to hide their cruelty under the guise of humanity.
So, Jason learned friendship, and he learned family and leadership and pain. He learned that the Fates weren’t as nebulous as he thought, especially when they took his siblings-in-arms away from him, made them lose battles and turned allies into enemies, and gave him Luke Castellan and a rebellious Senate to deal with.
Fate, he learned, was cruel and unforgiving, because as much as it gave him, it took away so much.
He only learned he was more than Jason at 14 when he saw his own face on a daytime murder-mystery documentary asking ‘ What happened to Jason Grace?’
At the time, in that dingy motel, as Reyna bandaged Octavian’s eyes as blood wept from them, all Jason could think was ‘ Well, I’d like to know that too’.
So, the Fates hung around and snipped cords and threads, haunting Jason but never appearing, like a scary story mothers told to children to keep them from the woods
(jason, of course, was never told any scary stories by his mother. because she was apparently too busy being very dead and jason spent the majority of his childhood being the scary story in the woods)
Until Hera wiped his memory and until he woke up in the back of a school bus heading to the rest of his life, with two of the most important people to ever enter his life.
Until now.
They don’t look how he imagined, to be honest. Jason is standing on the busy steps of the Met, staring at the three elderly women huddled together on a bench in the plaza below, head’s bowed together as if they were attempting to absorb one another, hands flying over the string pulled taut between the three of them. Their skin is shriveled and dull, their faces forgettable and unknowable, a hazy blur of humanity. Shk-shk-shk , goes the needles as they knit the fabric from the string, the sound impossibly loud over the dull clamor of the crowd everywhere. Jason shouldn’t be able to hear the blades of the golden scissors glancing off one another over even his own breathing, but he does.
These are the Fates, and Jason is watching someone die.
Not in this moment, but this is a foretelling, a sign of things to come soon, soon, soon. Like foreshocks before the earthquake.
Jason is watching someone die, and he thinks it might be himself.
He’s too far away to see the color of the string, but it has to be his, right? The Fates wouldn’t show it unless it was for him, telling him that his days were numbered. Did his mother see them before she died? Praetor Mikhail? Any of the children who died during Lupa’s training?
A million questions, none of which he’ll ever get an answer for.
He’s only at the Met today because Annabeth needed a break from Camp and Piper thought it would be a good idea to force Leo into the world of the living again. They, of course, had to resort to literally dragging Leo away from the skeleton of his Ship and promising they’d be back before midnight so Leo could continue working, but it’s a miracle Leo even came. Jason hasn’t seen his friend in so long since he practically disappeared into Bunker 9 to build the Argo.
The Fates continue to weave and spin, and Jason continues to watch, the crowd a dull blur around him.
He moves down the steps, leaving Piper, Annabeth, and Leo to argue about lunch, trying to focus his eyes more to see what color the string was- it was dark, at least, but-
A few more steps down and the Fates’ faces still remain cloudly and misty, features always moving and changing, never quite able to settle. The string pulls from the basket beside the one on the right and Jason catches glimpses of gold, bright ichor gold in the string, so definitely a demigod, so it must be Jason, right?
Maybe the reason Jason’s never seen them before because Jason wasn’t as close as he is now to his death. That makes sense, he’s on a quest to stop Gaea, the mother of all things, his death should be no surprise to him, and it is a dull acceptance. Jason will, at least, die in battle, like a capable soldier, like a good soldier. He had hoped for more time, especially with Piper and Leo, to act like a normal teenager, but it seems his birthright still will always lie with giving his life for Olympus. It is acceptance but tinged with a bitterness that he has never felt before. Leo and Piper have changed him in that way, because he feels slighted by this, that he feels he deserves more time with them.
He reaches the final step and moves across the plaza until he is standing directly in front of the three women, feet feeling as though he isn’t touching the ground, and maybe he isn’t.
The string is thin and tightly woven, shining with flecks of godhood and a person’s entire life, dictated by just this string.
“Is it mine?” he asks, even though he knows he won’t receive an answer.
It is red in color, a dull crimson, like old blood or embers from a dying fire, like true red that has rusted over the years.
It is not his. He knows this, like he knows the back of his own hands. This string carries a life that is not his but he knows who does belong to this string and it hits him like a car, as if a truck had just rammed into the plaza and struck Jason straight back onto the cool, damp floor, cracking open his skin and splintering his bones.
He can feel his eyes widen, blue spilling open like the sky from the clouds. “Wait,” he hears himself choke out, mouth parting as if he could reason with Fate, “Wait, hold on, why are you showing me this? Can it be changed? Why would you-” and Jason feels his own jaw click shut. He cannot ask them why, and he cannot ask them how, because nothing will come of it, but, maybe, if they’re showing it to him, then Fate isn’t set in stone, and Jason can change it.
That is Leo’s string, and Jason will not allow him to die before him.
His feelings around Leo are strange, and uncomfortable and make him feel as if he’s falling from the atmosphere, the wind ripped from beneath his feet as he falls and falls and falls, clouds and sky tearing past him. He’s never felt like how he feels about Leo, with the need to see him happy and safe consuming him until he’s awake with Leo until 5 am, just watching him work. Leo makes Jason want to do stupid things, makes him want to defy gods and steal stars from the sky. It makes Jason afraid and vulnerable and it sucks, but Jason knows that he wouldn’t change it.
He likes Leo. A lot.
So, maybe, this is the Fates way of saying ‘ here, kid, look, leo’s gonna kick it, but you can stop it!’. Maybe the gods have gotten tired of tragedies and now they want a real love story, or maybe Leo is just too damn smart to die, or maybe the Fates-
Three things happen at once.
One is, Jason feels a hand grab onto his forearm over his jacket, fingers fisting in the material. Two is, the final fate, Atropos, snips the string, the sound reverberating over the plaza and making Jason’s ears ring and the Third is-
(Jason sees a boy on a dragon, and he knows that this is his own body, but this isn’t a memory, but a vision, and the boy, and Leo, who is glowing like a second sun, like the center of a star, grins a grin Jason has never seen before, something that says hi, hello, goodbye, i love you too, and-)
-Jason is pulled around to face Leo, and the crowd comes back to life again, color bleeding back in and movement returning.
“Jason, I know you think the Met is boring as fuck, but staring blankly into the crowd is gonna get the cops called on you, seriously, and since you don’t technically exist I’d like to keep you away from any authority which might realize you’re basically the Rockafeller baby,” Leo tells him, grip still strong on his arm and brown eyes bored and glazed. He’s been exhausted for a while now, and Jason thinks Leo’s not had a good night’s sleep since he was 8.
It feels as though it didn’t happen, but it definitely did and Jason feels as though the world is tilting on its axis, that the ground is going to crack open and swallow Jason whole.
Leo’s brow furrows, his dark skin crinkling, and Jason, absentmindedly, wants to run his thumb down the center and smooth out the lines carefully. “Jason,” Leo says again, “Are you okay? You look way paler than usual, like one bad minute away from Casper the Demigod Ghost kind of pale, bro”
They’re so close.
“I’m fine,” Jason says after a minute, wiping his tongue over dry lips, “Just got kind of nauseous for a second, I’m fine”. At this, Leo purses his lips, face crinkling up even more, as if his face is trying to convey its displeasure with Jason’s weirdness all by itself. He smells like his deodorant and the Camp-brand soap, but even Leo manages to make that smell good.
His breath puffs against Jason’s face slightly and all Jason can think about is I think I just saw you die.
After what is probably just a few seconds, but feels like hours, Leo pulls back, his long fingers unclenching from Jason’s thick dark blue coat he got from one of the Apollo kids. Jason immediately misses the too-tight and too-warm grip, the feeling of those long and skilled fingers wrapped around Jason’s forearm like a dangerous vice. He tries to not let his disappointment show on his face as Leo steps back.
“Well,” Leo tells him, turning his back to Jason so he can wave to the two girls still on top of the steps, “Piper and Chase are still arguing about food, but you don’t have to eat if you’re sick or somethin’. I’m not exactly a fan of you puking your guts out in front of me“. Leo is wearing a black hoodie under his familiar green army jacket, his hood pulled over his thick dark curls and pressing them slightly to his forehead and the sides of his face, spilling into his dark brown eyes. It’s cold, colder than Jason thinks either of them is used to, and Jason longs for the mild winters he barely remembers from California.
“I- yeah, no, I don’t think I’ll eat,” he forces out because he’s still thinking that he has to be able to change this, as he looks down at Leo, who’s staring up at Piper and Annabeth, who is ambling down the steps towards them. Leo and Death are two concepts Jason wants nowhere near one another.
Leo is-
“Good,” Leo snorts, “I puke whenever I see vomit, so if you started heaving it would start a cycle neither of us wants starting. A whole ouroboros of barf” and Leo, predictably, laughs at his own joke, mouth lifting at the corners and showing off sharp teeth and the way his cheeks fill slightly when he laughs, the crinkle at the corners of his eyes.
“I’ll try my very best to keep it down” and Jason feels his own mouth curve slightly, his eyes rolling, despite the deep pit in the center of his own chest, slowly getting wider and wider.
“Good boy, Grace, and speaking of stuff that makes me hurl, McLean have we decided on a place to eat, or are we gonna stand around arguing until we just die of malnutrition?”
Piper kicks half-heartedly at Leo, which he dances around, hiding behind Jason, putting him between Leo and the two girls. “Shut up Leo,” she huffs, her breath turning to mist the minute it leaves her mouth, her mouth pulled up at one corner, “your diet is literally diet coke, red bull and family-sized bags of Takis, another 30 minutes of a wait is the least of your worries”
“Pshaw,” Leo waves away, hanging off Jason’s arm again, while Jason does his level best not to burst into literal flames. “I’m an orphan, literally every bag of Takis I have is a family-sized bag”
Piper startles even herself with how loud her laugh is, and even Jason feels a shocked laugh burst from his lips. He looks down at Leo, who’s grinning like the griffin who got the ambrosia, obviously pleased with his own joke. It makes him seem younger, or maybe just his age, when he looks like this, happy and alive. It makes Jason feel his age too, like he’s one of those teenagers he used to see on quests, having fun and worrying about curfew and homework.
Annabeth interrupts eventually, telling them they’ve decided on a pizza place not far from here that has good vegetarian options for Piper and Leo spends the entire walk there talking about what they have to get done with the Argo and Jason has never been so interested in engineering in his life. He doesn’t understand the words coming out of Leo’s mouth, but he understands the wide arc of his arms, the way he looks like he’s leading an orchestra, mouth wide and eyes lost in ideas and plans.
Jason uses Leo’s inattentiveness as an excuse to lay a hand on his shoulder, just to pull Leo away when he’s about to walk directly into a pedestrian or pole or newspaper stand. He’s warm under Jason’s hand, firm and unrelenting and there.
Jason plans on keeping it like that. Jason plans on making sure that as long as Jason is here, that Leo’s warmth is here too, wild and mean and captivating. As familiar as a Californian Wildfire and twice as dangerous to Jason’s health.
Leo Valdez will not die, not as long as Jason Grace is here to continue spinning his thread for him, leading him back to safety and, at this moment in time, good pizza.