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"Go! Remember!"
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It wasn't supposed to end like this.
Jason knew it had to end, but gods, it wasn't supposed to end like this.
He was supposed to make it to a time where he didn't have to fight for his life. He was supposed to grow old, supposed to see his friends go gray.
He'd always seen them sitting together in New Rome. Percy and Annabeth would have kids running around, giving their parents a headache to rival the one their grandmother gave their great-grandfather. Frank would be a cranky bulldog in Hazel's lap. Jason had always thought she'd make a good old lady, though in a way she already was one. Piper would have kids around her feet, telling them the stories of the great prophesied 7 while Leo threw in white lies. Maybe Nico would feed the pigeons while Reyna walked her dog.
There was a time where he might have seen him and Piper with little ones too, but... they weren't Percy and Annabeth. Jason Grace didn't love Piper McLean, not anymore. He didn't know if he ever had. There was an alternative, one that he was too scared to admit even as he lay in a pool of his own blood. No, Jason would be...
Jason wouldn't be there.
Fuck, why wouldn't Jason be there? He was the son of the king of the gods, a two-time savior of Olympus, a hero, for fucks sake- and here he was, a spear in his chest and blood in his lungs, dying to restore his brother to godhood. And for what?
He'd heard stories of a hero's death, a blazing star going down in history as a supernova. A hero's death was nothing like that. It was a scared kid, gone too soon, dreams left unfulfilled, scars left for nothing.
A hero's death was anything but glorious. It was a hole.
Dully, he noted that Thalia's hole had been filled with a tree, and later her return, but Jason didn't have what she had. He didn't have a prophecy to be preserved for, a reason to be saved.
No, the only connection he had to his father- his father who his whole life was devoted to- at his death was the coin loosely held in his limp fist.
Maybe that was how the fates decided who would die. They wove their stories, sipping on ambrosia and nectar safe from the people they doomed, flipping a coin and cutting. It would be fitting, he mused, something so simple. Maybe they found prophecies in patterns etched into bark.
Prophecies.
Fuck, prophecies.
"To storm or fire the world must fall."
Leo had died to save him. Only one of them could die. Jason was dying. (Or was he already dead? At some point, the pain blurred to numbness, his joints seized, and he only lived as a brain.) Which meant Leo was alive.
Leo was fucking alive.
Jason could at least die knowing that. Leo was alive. His Leo, who- fuck it, he was dead- he loved. Beautiful, smart Leo lived on.
But, then again, so did everyone else.
Piper. Percy, who he'd just grown to see as a brother. Annabeth. Hazel. Frank. Reyna. Shit, Nico, who had already lost so much.
Thalia, who'd already lost him once. Who'd already lost their mother.
They'd never see him again. He'd never see them again. (There was Elysium, but if he hadn't earned a full life, had he earned paradise?)
The funny thing was, as Jason lay abandoned by his father, abandoned by the gods, his thoughts turned to a mortal woman who he barely remembered. His mother.
When Jason had looked up Beryl Grace, he saw a woman with his blond hair. His blue eyes. His crooked nose and the mole under his eye. (Sometimes, when he looked in the mirror, he saw her.)
Was this how she had felt? Had her dead heart clenched with pain like his did?
He must be close, now. His eyes were unblinking. He could feel his heart slowing. Would his memories flash before his eyes?
A cradle, in what must've been a nursery. He was swaddled in a blanket, warm in a way he hadn't felt since he was young. Then, he was in his sisters arms, stories leaving her lips as she rocked him.
Earlier, his mother. She whispered in his ear, stroking his hair. Her eyes were red, with alcohol or something else, but her smile made baby Jason coo. She taped his pudgy nose, her voice like honey, her breath like poison. "You look just like me, darling. Act just like me too." Without her tone breaking its sweetness, she sighed. "I'm truly sorry for that."
Wolves. Hunting, digging, scratching, clawing, anything to earn his place in the only home he knew. "You will be strong, little pup, and you will be brave," Lupa growled, "You will go down blazing."
He sat cross-legged in front of Reyna while she braided his hair to match hers. (His hair was long. Only now that he couldn't get it back was he realizing just how much Hera took.) She sighed. "What's wrong?" The words were out of Jason's lips before he could think. Reyna pursed her lips, her dark eyes calculating. "You've been training more," she said, "I'm worried we won't be together as much." Jason thought that was silly. Nothing could ever tear them apart. He would never leave her.
A fire in the sewers of his first quest with Leo and Piper. Both lay passed out while Jason took watch. He kneeled in front of the fire, thinking about a million things and nothing all at once. The murmurs grew, and Jason resisted the urge to tear at his (as he now understood, much, much too short) hair. Run, little hero, they seemed to say. To roar. Turn back. Give up. (Maybe, Jason thought bitterly, he should've.) Leo stirred, his limbs twitching fitfully. Maybe he heard them too. One of his arms was out of his blanket. As Jason turned to look, his eyes zeroed in on his upwards hand. Something in his stomach churned, either the tacos Leo made or something much deeper, as he resisted the urge to take it.
If only he had took it.
He felt the light finally go out of his eyes. He couldn't even close them.
It wasn't supposed to end like this.