Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

The first thing Jason hears is Leo yelling.

“Shit. Shit, shit — shit!” Leo’s grip on the wheel tightens as the car swerves—the shift is followed by a series of thuds, followed by the car’s right side jumping half a foot in the air, which is finally followed by Jason’s body hitting the inside of a car door. 

“Jesus Christ,” is what Jason lands on saying, blinking himself awake. They drift past hundreds of trees, all a blur considering the absolutely illegal pace Leo is driving at. The car jumps again, and he instinctively grabs for a headrest in front of him, which is a terribly hard journey to make, as he’s only able to see in the few seconds the car’s inside light decides to be on. His foot slips on an empty container of Burger King fries, and his arm lands on an interior design magazine stuck between the seat cushions.

Jason makes purchase. He grips onto the headrest for dear life. Piper laughs. It’s mean.

“Sleeping Beauty finally woke up, huh?” She says.

That comment is met with Leo turning his body 180 degrees to look at Jason, face similar to an overeager hunter finding a bear stuck in a bear trap, a movement in which Leo unfortunately forgets he’s driving. “I wouldn’t say Sleeping Beau—”

Leo hits a woman.

She makes no noise at all, only falling to the ground without so much as a thud.

Everything lurches forward, including Jason, who, at one point, is only connected to the car via his hands clutching a headrest. The car skids to the right, falters, then stops.

Jason realizes only belatedly that the windshield has a massive crack in the front.

“Oh my god,” Piper says.

Wisps of smoke rise from the engine of the car, and Jason squints as the inside light flickers incessantly, shifting them from pitch black into light, relentless. He swallows, prying himself off the headrest, and he breathes in slowly. A weight’s been pressed on his chest, abnormally tight. 

“...ty,” Leo finishes.

“Oh my god,” Piper repeats. It goes accusative at the very end. “What the fuck? Did you guys also see a person? I’m getting out. Is everybody okay? I’m going to check. I’m — holy shit — oh my god.”

The car door clicks open.

“Hold up,” Leo says. His voice is shaky. He looks only ahead, but he puts his hand on Piper’s arm. “Close the door.”

Jason’s expecting Piper to tell Leo to fuck off. He’s expecting her to punch him and rocket out the door. She doesn’t do either of those things — she sits back down.

“Leo,” Jason says, trying. “Leo.”

The headlights spit out twin beams into the forest. It’s still, despite the wind.

One of the trees moves. 

“Oh, shit,” Leo says, frantically backing the car up, alarms finally going off in his head. “Oh, shit. Oh, shit. We’re so fucked. Oh my god. It’s a dryad. She’s a dryad.”

“What?” Jason says.

“What?” Piper says.

It’s three AM. One week ago, Jason (no last name available) hitched a ride with Leo Valdez and Piper McLean in a stolen (borrowed, from Piper, and acquired, from Leo) 2004 Subaru Crosstrek and has driven with them since from Nevada’s very own Wilderness School all the way to Long Island, where Leo claims a “a last-resort safe place” is.

It started with angry Greek winds attacking them on a field trip. It’s continuing with Leo hitting whatever a dryad is with a car.

Jason can pick up a slight shake in her voice when Piper asks, “On a scale of one to ten, how bad will your divine punishment be?”

“I— they’re supposed to be shy. They’re supposed to be shy. Why was she in front of the car?” Leo replies, speaking faster than Jason thought was humanly possible, ignoring the question.

Piper shakes Leo. “Why are you victim blaming the dryad you hit with a car you stole?” 

“Shhhhhh,” Leo says. Piper looks like she’s about to sputter out another reply, before thinking better of it. “It’s fine! It’s fine!” He manages, despite looking like he’s about to vomit, “We just have to… we just…”

“What,” Jason starts, taking a moment to process, “is a dryad?”

The car shifts again, turning, rolling over. It’s not very fast at all. It happens one side at a time, car-appendages like the rearview mirrors crunching under the weight over ten second long waits. As if whoever’s doing it is using up all their energy with every inch moved. Maybe if he knew what a dryad was, it would be funny.

Jason feels the whole world go still.

A large dent situates itself just right of Jason’s head. It looks like someone punched through the hundreds of pounds of metal.

They are upside down.

“Okay,” Piper says, unbuckling her seatbelt. She catches herself with her hands, allowing herself to fall onto the car ceiling, and she kicks the windshield until it breaks open. Shards of glass are only half visible in the light.

“Jesus!” Leo yells.

Piper doesn’t give him any notice. “Okay. Let’s go. Let’s go, now.”

By the time Jason manages to get out of the car, Piper’s started booking it through the wet grass. He can only vaguely see that Leo’s following, through a blurry silhouette, constantly looking behind him. The grass itches at Jason’s ankles, and all of this is uncomfortable, and he doesn’t even know what a dryad is.

He breathes — in, out. In, out — don’t get mad, Jason. You don’t achieve anything by getting mad.

In a blur of motion, a tree falls over the car and heads straight for Leo.

Jason rushes forward, but Piper gets there first, pushing him through the tree’s trajectory. They fall in a heap, and Jason catches up to them in the time they’re still on the ground. They have a countless amount of scrapes on their arms and legs at this point, and the fall will most definitely bruise, but Jason very intelligently concludes they will worry about that later. 

He can see leaves sinking from the treeline. “Why didn’t you pull him the other way, and not through where the tree was going to hit?” Jason asks. He pulls them up as quickly as he can. 

“I don’t know! I panicked!” Piper yells, wiping off blood and dirt from her face. Her voice is ringing and metallic in Jason’s head; he waves away the noise.

After the distinct creak of a tree swaying, they start running again, breath ragged and shallow, coming off more as gasps, if anything. They’re still moving, though, thankfully, despite the mud dragging at their feet. 

“Holy shit, holy shit— oh my god,” Jason can faintly hear Leo say under his breath as another large thud of echoes behind them. The car’s alarm blares through the woods, headlights flickering manically, and Jason wouldn’t be surprised if the entirety of New York could hear it. “Dryads aren’t,” Leo pauses, taking another harsh breath, “they aren’t— hostile!”

“Even if you hit one with a car?” Jason replies, attempting not to trip on the mud or twigs or— anything.

“No! They aren’t! It’s— they’re not supposed to be like this!” Jason isn’t too sure how much he believes him.

The grass starts grabbing at him. The strands become, suddenly, too high — it feels like hands around his ankles.

There’s something familiar about it. He swears he hears a giggle.

And, suddenly — “Je t’ai manqué?” — he hears, from his mouth. It’s said like it’s meant to be sweet, but it comes out mumbled. Each syllable is a struggle. But still, he hears the response — the same river, the same giggle, the same —

They’re still running.

“Did we miss you?” Piper mutters. “Oh, Jesus, Jason— Leo!”

She pulls on his arm. “Are you okay?” Leo asks.

He blinks. The river fades away. “Keep going,” he says. “We need to keep going.”

“It’s up—” Leo flinches at another crash, “up this hill.”

He sees it. A golden shimmer of a wall denotes the entrance — he can see fields of strawberries. The weather isn’t any nicer on the other side.

Jason’s endurance is stronger than he thought. He’s racing up the hill faster than both Piper and Leo, but the hands — it’s like they’re trying to bury him.

— The river passes in front of him. Sequana, an altar reads —

Leo and Piper get him through to the other side. It feels wrong, passing through the barrier. Like he’s not supposed to be there.

“Are you okay?” Leo repeats. “Was it — was it the same…?”

Piper rests her hands on her knees, breathing heavily. “He said, ‘Did you miss me?’. I think that was Pierre talking to the dryads. They were trying to grab him.” She looks up. “What is this?”

‘I’m okay,’ he’s about to reply. But —

A hand grips his arm.

The dryad from earlier. Her eyes are blown out, wide. She’s almost smiling.

“You’re back,” she says, reverently. Her voice is divine.

And she pulls.

Bang.

Leo screams. Piper scrambles back. Jason blinks, looking for where the dryad once was. And he finds it.

“Oh,” he says. “oh.”

A flash of light shocks the woods, illuminating the bark of the trees and the sticks on the ground, and only a few seconds later, a loud crash erupts through the clouds, causing Jason to step back. His breath is shallow all over again.

No, no, no, no— no. There’s a voice, repeating itself over and over: “I didn’t hurt anyone.” Tinny, like static. Electric. Like a recording.

There’s another light. The stylized shape of a lightning bolt, a foot above Jason. It’s not from him, this time, which he knows because — the previous one was from him — a lightning bolt, just in front of him, hitting the dryad — he did that. He did that. He wasn’t hurt. Isn’t. Isn’t hurt.

“Holy shit,” Leo mutters.

“What?” Piper asks, taking another slow step back. She’s looking just above his head. “What does that mean?”

He hears more shouts from behind him. Other people, he thinks. He can’t turn around. It smells like burnt wood.

“Zeus,” another voice says. “King of the Gods, Master of Lightning and Thunder, Lightbringer.”

Leo runs a hand through his hair. “Jesus,” he says.

“I don’t think we should be swearing by him anymore,” Piper replies.

—

The time between what Leo’s calling Jason’s ‘claiming’ and them getting rushed to the infirmary is a blur. He remembers a boy saying something like, ‘Hey, stay awake for me, okay?’ before Jason thought mentally — or said aloud, he doesn’t really know — fuck that, and promptly fell asleep.

It’s morning. Leo’s sat up on his cot, swinging his legs back and forth, despite his bandaged knee. Jason wonders how long he’s been awake.

He can hear birds chirping. A stray beam of sunlight filters through a window and hits Jason squarely in the face.

There’s around two seconds where Jason thinks the past 24 hours were all a strange fever dream. And then he turns over and sees ten children doing first aid on ten other children, and he decides it was either real, or the fever dream is still happening.

Some parts of what Jason's assuming is the infirmary are a mess. It’s an eclectic mix of bandages, a plethora of bottles labeled with ‘DO NOT TOUCH!’ in red marker on them, and beside an actually organized portion of the room, a boy stands, whistling a song Jason couldn’t name.

Jason blinks, once, twice. Piper is sleeping in the cot next to him.

“How are you doing?” The boy says, with a slight southern drawl. 

The words take a minute to process. He stretches his arms. “Fine.”

“I tried to clean you up the best I could, but the other two seemed to be more beaten up than you.” He sighs, wrapping a loose bandage around itself. 

Jason glances back at Leo. He’s fiddling with paper clips now, and Jason can spot bruises all around his limbs.

Piper has a thin scar on her arm, but the blood and dirt have been wiped off. If he hurt her while— “Is she alright?”

The boy looks at her for a moment, then looks back to Jason. “Yeah. Yes — thank the Gods you didn’t get hit by one of those trees,” he looks to the ground, “that would’ve been a bigger mess.” Jason decides not to pry any further.

“Will Solace,” the boy says, facing Jason again and sticking out a hand to shake. “Leo filled me in on your journey here.”

He shakes his hand. “Jason,” he replies. “Jason, um, G–...” he starts, but trails off. He’d seen the first initial of his last name on some attendance charts for the Wilderness School, but never managed to get the full thing before being whisked away on a road trip with two other people he’d met two weeks prior.

Three weeks now.

“Jason G…?” Will replies.

“Oh, yeah,” Leo says. “I forgot to mention that part. He has no idea who he is.”

Jason can see, plainly, when Will realizes that the other shoe has dropped. His lips purse. “I’m gonna check for a head injury now,” Will says, voice forcibly calm.

“It’s magical,” Jason says, before Will can reach a hand over. “We think.”

“Piper’s sort-of trained in first aid,” Leo says. Will looks like he wants to drop his head into his hands. “No brain damage.”

“You have magical amnesia?” Will asks, voice strained.

A different boy walking past their cots stops as Will says that. “Holy shit, another one?”

Jason has spent a sum total of maybe ten minutes conscious in this camp and has been greeted with child-doctors and dryads that want to steal him forever and, coincidentally, another kid who just so happens to also have magical amnesia.

“Another one?” He manages.

Will sighs. “Around a week ago, a girl washed up on our beach with… well, magical amnesia. No head injuries, no brain damage, no physical pain. She had — still has — no idea who she was. Is. Austin,” he says, turning around to the same boy, “Can you grab me Reyna’s file?”

His vision goes double for only a second. “Reyna?” He asks.

Will pauses. “You know her?”

“Hand the book over, Octavian.” She said. Her voice was calm. Her voice is always calm.

He had half a mind to—

“Dude,” Leo says, snapping in front of Jason’s face. Jason, briefly, thinks about breaking his arm. “Back with us?”

“Um,” he starts. “Yes. Sorry. I might have known her.”

“You might’ve?” Will asks, raising an eyebrow. He reaches for a clipboard that Austin’s holding out. “No, great. That’s good. I’m just going to ask you some questions.”

Leo shifts on his cot. “Should I move? Isn’t this breaking HIPAA, or something?”

Will stares at him blankly. “HIPAA?”

“Let’s just move on,” Jason says.

Sighing, Will sits beside Leo on his cot. “So, post-amnesia,” he pauses, “what is your earliest memory?” Leo leans over slightly, examining the paper over Will’s shoulder.

Jason pauses. “I was in a line. They were doing attendance, I think, and I didn’t know my name, so I couldn’t respond when they called it.”

He can hear Will write something down. Leo examines it carefully. “Do you remember where you were?”

“Yeah.” Jason fiddles with the cushioning of his cot. “Nevada.”

“A ‘wilderness camp,’” Leo interjects, air quotes and all.

Will looks at the both of them for a moment, in thought. He writes down something else. Hesitantly, he continues, “Did you have any, uh —” he clears his throat, “‘innate’ knowledge of Greek gods?”

Jason looks to the ground, then to Piper (secretly, he wonders how she’s still sleeping through all of this), then back to Will. He gives it a moment. “What, like Jupiter?”

For the second time in the last 24 hours, the world stills.

“Right,” Will says, breaking the silence. “Uh. Sure.” He writes something down again. Leo watches as he writes, face completely neutral. Great. After a second, he continues. “Could I see your arm for a second?”

Jason is inclined to say no. He doesn’t.

‘SPQR’ is what’s written — Senatus Populusque Romanus — The Senate and the People of Rome, Jason thinks.

Will blanks. “Do you,” he pauses, “remember getting this?”

Jason shakes his head. “I wonder if…” he trails off, “Gods, it’s burnt onto you, too.” He writes something else down, clearing his throat. “What the fuck?” He can hear Will mutter, just under his breath. Jason stares at it himself, momentarily. A part of him is glad he doesn’t remember getting it.

“Last question,” Will says, eyeing Jason carefully, “Do you have any specific name you remember? Like from — pre-amnesia.”

Jason pauses for what seems like the fifth time. “Other than Reyna?”

“Reyna doesn't count,” Will replies. “You have to have known it since you ‘woke up’.”

It takes him a moment — the infirmary seems quieter. 

“Oh,” Jason finally comes to, “I do.”

—

The sun shines down on them in streaks, just bits of light that have snuck their way past the shade of the leaves. It’s humid now, as to be expected — air hot with the past rain. Jason yawns, despite himself. It’s too early.

It’s the first time Jason’s gotten a proper look at the camp. It’s what he assumes most child-oriented summer camps are like, with bright colors and wood-plank pathways.

Nobody’s out yet, save for some goat-people around the mess hall and some kids sitting just outside of their cabins. Leo’d explained each one was for the children of a different Greek god, and explained a couple other aspects of the camp, too, despite Will’s promise to give them a full tour after he took them to the Big House.

“Do you know what that is?” Will says, pointing to a pine tree.

Jason blinks. He has a suspicion this might be a trick question.

“A pine tree,” he answers. Occam’s razor strikes again.

He turns to Leo, and also Piper, who magically just happened to wake up the instant Will mentioned taking them somewhere. “You guys want to guess?”

Piper shrugs. Leo says, “You know, I’ve never actually been here before.”

Will smiles, but it doesn’t look happy. “No, um,” he pauses, “for about five years, that,” he points to the pine tree again, “was Thalia Grace.”

Leo blankly stares at Will. “Not sure if you noticed, but, uh — that’s a tree.”

“I’ve never actually gotten to tell this story before,” Will says, wistfully.

Piper elbows Jason’s arm and whispers, “Is he crazy?”

“It was Annabeth Chase, Grover Underwood, Luke Castellan, and Thalia Grace. Grover was their satyr — which, um, satyrs are supposed to find young half-bloods and lead them here, but.”

Will falters. Piper stares. “Well, that didn’t happen with you guys,” he continues. “Thalia was a child of Zeus, like you,” he gestures to Jason, “and that meant she was really powerful, but also really potent. Monsters could smell her from miles away. That, with the fact she was running up the East Coast with two other demigods…”

He understands the implication, even with the ‘potency’ and ‘monsters’ and ‘two other demigods’, aspects of the story that are entirely foreign to Jason. “She didn’t make it,” Jason finishes. Something in saying that feels like a betrayal.

“She almost did,” Will says. “To save her, Zeus turned her into a tree.” Jason hears Leo stifle a laugh. Will rolls his eyes. “Anyway, five years later, and three years ago, Percy Jackson shows up,” he waves his hand outwardly towards the Poseidon cabin, “a child of Poseidon. He found the Golden Fleece in the Sea of Monsters, used that to heal Thalia’s tree, which was poisoned by Luke Castellan — long story — and healed a couple other things besides the poison. Like, y’know, the fact that Thalia was a tree.”

Piper’s face scrunches up. She tilts her head. “She’s out now?”

Will nods. “She joined the Hunters of Artemis a couple months after being freed. And she’s been Lieutenant for the past three years.” He pauses. “But she disappeared three weeks ago.”

Dread pools in Jason’s stomach.

Leo laughs, humorlessly. “Do people just… do that here? Disappear?”

“Not usually, no,” Will replies, shifting uncomfortably, “But it’s happened three times this month.”

A silence covers the conversation.

Piper breaks it. “Wow, I’m feeling so safe right now.”

Will scoffs. “Well, exit’s that way, if you want to leave.” He crosses his arms. “Listen — we’re trying to find them, but the only lead we’ve got right now is Jason.”

Jason shifts his weight between his feet. “I only remember her name.”

“Better than what Reyna’s giving us,” Will says. He nods his head towards a light blue house sitting on a tall hillside overlooking the strawberry fields. “C’mon. You’re about to meet the sixteen-year-old that was left in charge of Camp Half-Blood.”

—

Will leads them to what he calls the Big House. It is, indeed, a big house. 

The wood creaks underneath their feet as they walk up the steps. Jason can hear the weather vane spin in the distance — musical, in tandem with the wind chimes hanging from the right side of the porch. Everything is embellished, from the tiny swirls around the beams holding up the roof to the semi-transparent curtains with floral embroidery to the stained glass art lying against a window. The only part of the building that seems neglected is the paint job — the white’s been scraped off some parts of the railing, and the blue’s faded off the walls.

It gives the house atmosphere. Distantly, some part of Jason thinks this is the first time he’s seen what a home’s supposed to look like.

Inside is a different story.

They’re greeted with a ping-pong table with the net taken out, papers and tablets in Latin and Greek and English scattered on and around it — Jason can see maps of New York, maps of the East Coast, maps of Virginia and Richmond, Virginia, and a hand-drawn map of what looks like a maze. Sitting squarely on the middle of the table is a boy Jason can only assume to be Percy Jackson. His eyes are sea-green.

Next to him, pointedly not sitting on the table, is a girl—

“I’m not going to repeat myself.” She settles a hand on the hilt of her sword.

Octavian says—“Jason?”

She studies him.

“Hi, Reyna,” Jason replies.

The girl—Reyna, Jason knows now, apparently—has her dark hair in a single braid, and her gaze is unwavering. She stares in a way that’s reminiscent of a fox looking down upon its prey. Something about it makes Jason nervous. She stands, just beside Percy, holding a map or two in her hands. She’s dressed in one of the orange Camp Half-Blood shirts, which he can’t help but feel is wrong. 

Percy sifts through a pile of maps, interrupting. “Hey, I hate to ruin this great moment, but it’s not often you get the head of the Apollo cabin climbing all the way from Half-Blood Hill to the Big House with,” he squints, “three other demigods in tow.” He crumples up a map and throws it at the nearby trash can. It misses. “What’s up, Will?” Percy says.

“Jason,” Will says, gesturing towards him, “is another one of those magic-amnesia people. He was claimed,” he checks his watch, “about four hours ago, and he mentioned remembering Thalia and—”

Percy practically jumps from his spot on the table, scrambling over all of his papers, causing the piles to topple over. He’s face to face with Jason now, a hand on his shoulder. “Do you know anything about Annabeth Chase?”

Jason does not know anything about Annabeth Chase.

“No,” he replies, hesitantly. He feels bad about letting down Percy, because he immediately frowns, retreating back to his spot on the ping-pong table, sighing in the same way a high school level opera singer would.

“Anyway,” Will inserts, clearing his throat, “Jason is now our first lead on Thalia’s disappearance.”

“And Annabeth’s,” Percy says.

“And Nico di Angelo’s,” Reyna posits. Will looks at her strangely. “You said he was also gone, no?”

The room suddenly becomes a great deal more uncomfortable.

“He’s separate,” Will says.

“Um,” Leo interjects. “Hello?”

Will sighs. “It’s — complicated.”

Percy runs a hand through his already-mussed hair. He has large bags under his eyes, and sitting directly next to him is a coffee maker, seemingly on standby for his next cup. The cup in question is sideways, precariously next to the edge of the ping-pong table. A stone tablet is the only thing keeping it from plummeting to its doom. “Jason was claimed?” Percy asks. Apparently, that only settled in just now. “By who?”

“Jupiter,” Jason answers, at the same time Will says, “Zeus.”

“Did he just get here?” Percy asks. “And where’d you get that tattoo?”

He’s talking about the massive SPQR on Jason’s forearm, which Will spent plenty of time being confused about in the infirmary. Jason sputters for an answer that comes out vaguely in the “I have no idea” region.

“I’m just asking because Reyna has a matching one,” he replies.

An awkward pause settles between Reyna and Jason.

Piper raises her hand but speaks unprompted anyway. “Hey. Can you explain where we even are?”

“I literally just explained all of it to you,” Leo whispers.

She rolls her eyes. “I wasn’t listening,” Piper replies, voice normal volume.

They all end up filing into the room, sitting on mismatched couches and stools around the now-lowered ping-pong table. Percy still sits on it. “Do you mean ‘where are we’ as in, in the world or in the camp?”

Piper reclines on the ugliest couch Jason has ever seen in his life. The other half of the couch has its cushions completely destroyed. “I literally have never, in my fifteen years of living, been told what ‘camp’ even is.”

“But I told you,” Leo complains.

She sighs. “Do you really think I listen to you?”

Percy purses his lips. “How do you know so much about this?” He asks, gesturing towards Leo. He abruptly turns to Reyna and Jason. “And how do you two know each other? You’re a Zeus kid?” Percy squints. “How old are you?”

“Sixteen,” Jason answers.

Reyna eyes him, hostile. “We’ve met before the amnesia.”

A silence descends upon the room as Jason tries to process that statement.

Leo breaks it. “My mom told me. About camp, I mean. And, like, myths and monsters and heroes, too, I guess.”

Crossing his arms, Will adds, “Then why weren’t you here earlier?” His words lack any sort of bite. 

Leo sighs, shrugging. “I dunno. Something with fire, something with foster homes — whatever. It’s a long story, dude.”

Will gives him a softer smile. “I can listen.”

Before Leo can say another word, Piper groans. “The rest of us cannot,” she adds, seemingly tired of staying silent on the couch. “Can someone please explain what the fuck ‘camp’ is?”

Will opens his mouth, but Percy beats him to it.

“Shhhhh,” Percy says, holding one finger up in Will’s direction to silence him. “Let me do it.”

He searches around the ping-pong table for something, and once he’s fully stretched across it, lying over hundreds of pieces of paper, he picks up what he’s looking for — a remote.

He clicks a button, and the lights dim. A white sheet descends from the ceiling, nearly hitting Leo in the face, and a video begins projecting from the mouth of a stag head hanging over the front door.

Jason thinks he shouldn’t have a frame of reference for it, but it, somehow, looks distinctly ‘80s.

“Welcome to Camp Half-Blood!” A cheery voice exclaims. The narration is overlaid with drone footage of the camp. Suddenly, music begins vamping to the tune of ‘Hokey Pokey’. “It keeps the demigods in! It keeps the monsters out! It keeps the half-bloods safe, but turns mortals all about. It’s Misty, and it’s magic, and it makes me want to shout: the border is all about!”

The video glitches and plays over makes me want to shout about three times before Percy manages to turn it off, smiling so widely Jason believes there’s no world where it isn’t fake. When the lights turn back on, Percy says, “Great, right?”

Will sighs for what Jason thinks might be the sixth time since they’ve met. “Percy, was that necessary?”

“Well, I thought it was pretty good,” Leo says. Jason has a hunch Leo probably did not think it was pretty good.

Reyna frowns. “He rhymed ‘about’ with ‘about’. Lackluster lyricism.”

“It was written by my dad, Reyna,” Will says. She shrugs.

Percy sits back up. “Well, whatever. Camp Half-Blood was created by Chiron back when everybody knew the Greek gods were alive and real and heroes walked around killing monsters all the time. He made it for kids like us. Back then it was Achilles, Theseus, Hercules, Zeus, Amelia Earheart, Abraham Lincoln, Perseus, you know — and now it’s for you.” He emphasizes the you by pointing the remote at Piper.

“What was that part about Abraham Lincoln,” Piper asks.

Leo sits up. “Wait, it was in Greece and it moved to New York City? What?”

“Well, we’re not in New York City,” Percy answers.

“My point still stands,” Leo exclaims, throwing his arms up in the air.

“Abraham Lincoln was a demigod?” Piper tries again.

“Um, hey,” Jason starts. “Who is Abraham Lincoln? And why was I taken here? To this building? In the first place?”

“I don’t actually know why Percy’s keeping you,” Will says. “I’ve done my job.”

Percy’s head whips around to Jason. “Right. You — you and Reyna,” he puts a hand on each of their shoulders and pauses for about five seconds, like he’s looking for something. When he finds it, he says, “Okay, pop quiz.”

He delves his hand into a pile of papers. It returns with a picture of a statue, vaguely Renaissance-era. It’s some god, looking up into the sky.

“Apollo,” Reyna answers.

Leo throws his hands up, again. “Percy, if you’re trying to prove a point, I think you should know that Apollo is Apollo whether he’s Roman or not,” he argues.

“Say the epithet, too,” Percy continues, ignoring Leo.

A look of understanding comes across Reyna’s face after a couple seconds. “Apollo Coelispex,” she says. “It’s a statue of him in his capacity as a prophet.”

“Coel, as in caelum, Latin word for sky,” Will mutters. It sounds disapproving. “Spex, as in spectare. To look. Also Latin.”

Percy grins. Jason doesn’t like it. He grabs another paper and faces it towards Jason. “Your turn.”

It’s a laminated picture of a dilapidated mosaic on a wall. There’s a man drawn on it.

“Quick. Name this guy,” Percy says, pointing to what is clearly a depiction of some kind of god, and Jason tries to remember everything Leo told them about Greek mythology.

Horses. Water. Chariot. “Oh,” Jason gets it. “Neptune.”

Will shakes his head. “We would know, Percy. The gods wouldn’t— couldn’t keep something like that secret from us.” Jason’s not entirely sure what he’s referring to, but Will’s face is grim when he says it.

Piper leans over to look at the photos. “So, what does this mean about Jason?”

“It means,” Reyna says, pausing to inhale, “that we are not Greek.”

—

Jason spent the rest of the day being toured around a camp that he probably doesn’t belong in.

Nothing of note happened during the tour (at least, nothing to the extent of summoning lightning bolts and trees falling on cars), save for a couple things:

1. Leo also got claimed.

It happened right outside of Cabin 9.

“Hephaestus’ cabin,” Will said. He stood awkwardly in front of a pillar, trying to cover up graffiti. “They've been in sort of a feud with the Hecate kids ever since Beckendorf, the previous Hephaestus head counselor, blew up Luke Castellan’s boat with half their siblings on it.”

Piper didn’t so much as blink. “Previous head counselor? What, did he get demoted?”

“Oh, no, Beckendorf died in the explosion,” he answered, and, apparently, that was all that was left of the story.

The inside was a normal cabin until you got to the basement, and at that point Jason thought he might die on account of the heat. Leo didn’t seem affected at all, despite Piper literally stumbling backwards.

Both Jason and Piper elected to stay in the main cabin area with Will while Leo went down with Nyssa, the temporary head counselor. Piper was hesitant about being alone with Jason, which he… did not know how to feel about.

“All the cabins are supposed to be equal in size — even the Hermes cabin, which is constantly at max capacity, ‘cause it takes in all the unclaimed kids. It’s where you and Leo’ll stay for the time being.” Pointing to the basement door, he said, “But people find loopholes like this.”

Five minutes later, Leo came racing up the stairs with the symbol of a hammer hovering over his head. It wasn’t surprising — in those five minutes, Piper and Jason had made bets on how long it would take Leo to actually get claimed by Hephaestus.

“Guys,” Leo managed, breathless. “Guys.”

“Hm,” Jason said.

Piper nodded sagely. “So he’s a communist.”

2. Jason reached fame at the Camp Half-Blood level.

They tried figuring out Piper’s godly parent after that.

“I hope it’s Hecate,” Leo said. “That way I could beat you up with no repercussions.”

“I hope Nyssa makes you head counselor so you can follow in Beckendorf’s footsteps and blow up in your own explosion,” she replied.

Jason stayed silent.

“What the fuck,” Will said.

Suddenly, someone shouted, “Murderer!” and for a second Jason thought they were talking about what Piper had just said to Leo. It took a little bit for him to process it was a) directed at him, and b) said by a girl near a cabin fully across from the one they were standing next to, being restrained by another camper. “Dryad killer!” she managed to get out, before the other girl covered her mouth.

“Sorry!” The other one yelled. “Shut up, Katie.”

Katie went ballistic. He pretended not to notice.

“I thought it was really cool!” She continued.

Jason just shot her a thumbs up.

3. They were granted a cool, inside view into Camp Half-Blood’s impending civil war.

Will briefed them on the Titan War through a list of, largely, Don’ts: 

• Don’t mention Luke Castellan to the Hermes kids
• Don’t mention Silena Beauregard to the Aphrodite kids unless it’s Mitchell and he brings her up first and Drew isn’t around because if Drew is around it’s probably a test
• Don’t think about touching Beckendorf’s bed in the Hephaestus cabin, Leo
• Luke Castellan’s bed is fair game in the Hermes cabin unless it’s taken already which it probably is because they need the space but if it isn’t you can take it but Chris Rodriguez will give you dirty looks but he’s almost eighteen so he might die soon anyway
• Don’t bring up the Titan War in general around Hecate kids because they are mostly sympathizers
• Don’t try to get the Hermes kids to help find Annabeth Chase because everybody has pretty complicated feelings about her
• Don’t bring up the Titan War in general around Ares kids because while Clarisse cracked down on sympathizers with an iron first, there is probably a coup being planned somewhere in there
• Leo, don’t go within twenty feet of the Hecate cabin
• If one of you end up being Aphrodite and you choose Mitchell’s side, don’t even touch the Hephaestus cabin
• By the way, the Labyrinth is opening and we don’t even know anything about that please don’t ask, we cordoned off the area in the woods do not even think about going in you will probably die
• Don’t choose Mitchell’s side if you end up being Aphrodite but also be prepared to not feel safe inside your own cabin because while Drew’s side is the majority in camp as a whole, Mitchell’s side is an overwhelmingly large majority inside the Aphrodite cabin
• Don’t go in the Athena cabin. Annabeth was head for nine years and now they’re floundering
• But don’t tell them I said that

And there was one last point: We don’t know what happened to Nico di Angelo.

Will left everything about the Apollo cabin generally ambiguous, but considering the amount of “don’t ask about”s he left in his list, Jason chose not to question it.

After finishing up the tour, Will took Jason in the direction of the Zeus cabin, before they all promptly realized their all stuff had been left in the car.

Piper and Leo and a couple other campers went to go get the bags from the forest. Jason didn’t go with them on account of the dryads trying to rapidly decompose him.

Anyone could take a passing glance at the Zeus cabin and assume it wasn’t made for living. There’s a bed shoved in the corner of the room, fitting awkwardly around the massive 20 foot tall statue of Zeus built into the marble floor, and a side table pushed against it. Jason isn’t sure what the Hunters of Artemis are, but Thalia must’ve been right to leave camp if this is what she had to live in.

Meeting Zeus’ eyeline, there’s a series of thin slats in the wall, exposing the cabin to the outside. It’s just about noon, and that makes the Zeus cabin the most uncomfortable place Jason’s been in throughout his three weeks of conscious existence.

Nobody bothered to clean out Thalia’s belongings. Jason guesses they probably weren’t expecting another child of Zeus.

The side table’s drawer scrapes against the wood as he pulls it open — it’s filled half with dust and half with polaroids. There are some newer ones, pictures of Thalia and Percy sword fighting, her and a blond girl hanging out, her standing at the top of a rock — it looks like the kinds of photos Piper and Leo take together. And older ones, too, likely placed here by one of the other three people Will named when he was talking about Thalia’s journey to Camp Half-Blood. They’re framed.

He grabs one of the framed photos. Dust falls off it as he picks it up. Four people are pictured in it: the blond girl from one of the other photos, except she looks about ten years younger (who Jason realizes is maybe Annabeth Chase), Thalia Grace, a satyr whose name is Grover, Jason remembers, and a boy that looks around Thalia’s age. Luke Castellan, probably. He sets it back down.

He doesn’t like any of this — not the massive statue of who is, apparently, his dad, not how personal Thalia managed to make the cabin despite spending a terribly short amount of time in it, not the fact the windows are thin and sixteen feet up and fully open.

Jason sits. Jupiter’s gaze seems to be permanently stuck on him, and Jason feels the terrible urge to melt into the floor. It’s a cold marble, reminiscent of a museum. He feels the spit of fire burn up in his chest, and he hates this and himself — if he could rip open his skull, he would.

He breathes. In, out, in out. You don’t accomplish anything by getting mad.

Memories seem like such a natural thing, as natural as Piper and Leo’s friendship, as natural as Percy loving Annabeth. But all Jason has is a name. He looks back to Thalia’s photos, collecting dust.

There’s not much else to examine, at least nothing that’s not disturbingly personal, so he just resorts to sitting on the bed.

The ceilings are high. It isn’t an astute observation. He can hear the vague sound of talking from outside, but none of it is intelligible. He closes his eyes. Opens them. It becomes suddenly apparent that he has slept only three hours.

The next time he opens his eyes, it’s night. 

There’s shuffling at his window. Upon the realization that an actual person is breaking and entering the cabin, Jason immediately gets to his feet.

“Fuck,” is what he can hear out of the dark, as the aforementioned intruder falls on the floor. This is about the exact opposite of graceful. Another follows after them, and Jason thinks he’s beginning to see what’s happening here.

A bag falls with a thud. “Ow, ow, ow, Jesus fucking Christ,” one of them says, and Jason immediately registers it as Leo’s voice. He turns on the light. Leo looks up at him. “Jason, my bestest friend, my greatest pal,” he reaches over to the bag that fell, holding it up like a four-year-old that just won their karate tournament. “It was a treacherous mission, but we got your bag,” Leo beams.

Jason thinks about sobbing right then and there. He’s not sure why.

“Thanks,” is what he can manage.

“It’s bullshit that they won’t let us stay here,” Piper says, sitting down on Jason’s bed. She looks around the cabin. “No, actually, maybe they have a point. This is the saddest looking one I’ve seen so far.”

“It’s awful,” Jason adds, and he sits beside her.

Leo decides to lay on the ground. “I actually think I broke something.”

“Don’t be dramatic.” Piper rolls her eyes. “You just wanna go to the infirmary again to see—”

“Oh my fucking God,” Leo says before Piper can continue her sentence, “I am going to kill you.”

“What?” Jason says.

“Shut up, shut the fuck up.” Leo gets up and begins wrestling Piper, MMA style.

“It’s just — that Leo — really enjoyed,” Piper starts, but Leo manages to cover her mouth for a couple seconds, “our tour this morning.”

Jason takes a moment to register everything. “Will? You like Will?”

“I don’t! Piper’s trying to — she’s an idiot.” Leo imitates shooting himself. Dramatically, he flops around on the floor before finally “dying.”

Piper rolls her eyes again. “Wow, I’m so sad. This is such a sad day. Leo Valdez is dead. Oh, no. I bet the whole world is devastated. He died without being able to tell anyone how gay he was.” She kicks him.

“I’m a good Catholic boy, Piper. You wouldn’t know anything about that,” Leo deadpans before going back to being dead. “And what about Jason? I caught him staring into Percy Jackson’s opalescent eyes.”

“I think I caught Will staring into Percy Jackson’s opalescent eyes,” Piper replies. “Everybody was doing it.”

“How do you feel about Percy Jackson’s opalescent eyes, Jason?” Leo asks him, reaching a hand out from where he’s tangled with Piper to tug at Jason’s leg.

Jason looks at the both of them, thoroughly confused. “They’re,” he pauses, “nice, I guess.”

Leo frowns. “You don’t have anything else to say? Not,” he stops, clearing his throat, continuing with his voice ten times higher than it is usually, “they’re absolutely pulchritudinous, and it is so very unfortunate that he is madly in love with his girlfriend because I really want to get married to him right now. And Leo is my best friend ever, so I can confirm that he is so extremely heterosexual. And doesn’t like Will Solace. Because that’d be weird.” 

Piper stares out into the stars. “I think Reyna is pretty,” she says, completely ignoring Leo’s rant.

“I think Reyna doesn’t like me,” Jason admits.

“I think you did something to deserve that,” Piper replies.

“Um,” Leo says. “Hello? Not even a chuckle?”

Jason flops down against the bed. “Leo, you are very funny, and we all love you, and we all agree that you are heterosexual.”

“Speak for yourself,” Piper says.

Jason kicks Piper lightly. “At least I think you’re heterosexual, Leo.”

“Good to know someone here has common sense,” he replies, getting up from his spot on the ground, pushing Piper off of him.

Leo and Piper both get back on the bed. It creaks against their weight. They stay in silence for a moment. Or two.

“Jason,” Piper says, quieter this time around. Her eyes scan the ceiling. “Are you… alright?”

The answer doesn’t come to him quickly. Piper holds his hand.

“I’m okay,” he lands on saying.

The silence returns, and Jason’s half-convinced that Leo already fell asleep.

“It’s weird,” Jason continues. “I don’t know.”

Piper turns to her side, facing Jason now. “It was really fucked up. What happened with that dryad.”

Leo snores. Piper kicks him. He stops.

Jason laughs. “My brain gave itself a lobotomy after that,” he says. “I immediately forgot about it.”

“That’s weird and unhealthy.” Leo yawns. “Personally, I remember every bad thing that’s ever happened to me in great detail.”

“Awesome, Leo,” Piper replies. She shifts closer to the both of them, until they’re all a jumbled mass of limbs. “We really needed to know that.”

“You’re welcome,” he says.

Jason can tell they’re falling asleep. He’s usually the first to go out, purposefully, as a safety precaution, but Piper and Leo just walked through half a mile of forest and Jason just took a nap and Camp Half-Blood, despite how much Will tried to persuade them to believe otherwise, is an unbearably safe-feeling place.

“I’m—” he tries. “I don’t want to fall asleep.”

Leo latches onto Jason’s arm. “We’re surrounded by, like, one hundred child soldiers. You’re okay. We’re okay.”

“We’re right here,” Piper says.

“Okay,” he mumbles. “Okay.”

Jason drifts off to sleep, Leo and Piper surrounding him on both sides.

—

The first thing Jason hears is a high-pitched ringing.

“Shit, shit, shit,” says a girl. She rushes into the room holding two bags, one already full. It’s not the Zeus cabin, he thinks, or any of the cabins he looked at while he was touring with Will. The room has wallpaper scraping off, revealing other, older wallpaper behind it — the room is held up entirely by bunk beds — and the only light is uneven and warm, coming from outside the door. But there’s something in there that’s familiar.

Oh. The boy. He’s here, again.

The girl doesn’t notice either him or Jason, instead shaking awake one of the still-asleep kids. Half the bunk beds are empty.

“That’s Eloise,” the boy says. His appearance has never changed — low ponytail, black coat, linen shirt, black hair. “Daughter of Zeus. These are… the shabby remains of Camp Half-Blood.”

It’s at that point he recognizes the ringing; it drones, sound undulating.

Air raid sirens.

“I don’t understand,” Jason replies. His voice feels far away.

“I’m already dead here,” the boy continues. “She was born — maybe a century and a half after me. But she had my book. One of them.”

The boy’s coat obscures most of his body. It’s like a mass of shadow. “You’re dead?”

His face somehow contorts its way into being offended. “I thought that was apparent, yes.”

“Jason?” He hears. It’s Leo. “Hey, Jason.”

The boy doesn’t hear Leo, or if he does, he doesn’t care.

Jason’s still sitting on his bed in the Zeus cabin, he realizes. He can hear crickets — those are real. Leo’s voice is real.

“Lina, please,” Eloise says. Her voice is panicked, and there’s something else about it: she has a British accent, he realizes. “Get up.”

“Jaaaaaaason,” Leo says, stretching out the a as long as possible.

The old bunk beds fall away. It’s just him, Leo, and Piper on the bed.

“See?” Piper mumbles. It’s barely comprehensible. “Told you we wouldn’t let anything happen.”

He thinks he’s supposed to find that reassuring, but the boy’s still standing next to him.

A different scene comes up in Jason’s peripheral vision. “We ought to say hi. I mean — sorry. Bonsoir. Ton voyage—” it starts, before cutting off. More words stack up in Jason’s head. “Don’t call the Great Prophecy stupid. What— I’m not giving this back! ‘Since when do you read —’ I’ve been able to read French. You know, Lucius, just because you’re educated doesn’t mean—”

“—nos tua benedic infinita—” comes the sound of a river, again, and then, “I don’t know what I did wrong,” and then, “Je suis généralement sur le point de mourir, Joséphine, s'il vous plaît, ne vous sentez pas mal,” and then, “Annabeth, right? Sorry, we saw the absolute fit Octavian threw about… well.” and then, “—Aphrodite’s children are fluent in French, which is awfully convenient,” and then, “I don’t think your Mother — she is the godly one, yes? Oh, Salacia?” and then, “You should thank the gods Mars is outweighing Poseidon for you,” and then, “Christ, it’s like you actually worship them,” and then:

“Alius prophetius. Vingt denarii dit que Lucius sera—”

A voice says: “Child of Diana?”, scandalized.

“The Greeks have a labyrinth running through the entire world. You say, ‘Octavian, it’s too dangerous,’ but do you know what I think is too dangerous? Letting the Greeks slaughter us in our sleep.”

“Jason!” He thinks he hears Piper yell.

A small, slight figure races through a field in Sacramento. “You’re no Roman,” says a girl, chasing him. Her face is violent. “I’m willing to bet your sister isn’t, either!”

“We’re leaving now,” Eloise says. “Come on. Come on. They abandoned us, Lina, they fucking left. The firepit isn’t burning.”

Senate meeting. Octavian raises a hand — “Graeciae delenda est,” he says. The entire room repeats.

The boy steps in front of Jason. He’s breathing heavily, but every other characteristic is hard to see, distant behind a watery filter.

“Juno always makes these things harder for me,” he says.

Jason’s vision goes black.