Work Text:
Sometimes I forget to breathe.
It’s odd, isn’t it?
Forgetting such a basic necessity. Most people just do it. Some people, meaning me, have to tell themselves to do so. I’ve fought titans. I’ve fought gods. I’ve survived things that normal people would call myth. So, it’s strange I have to tell myself to breathe. I don’t know why. Well, I do. Sometimes it’s nice to have something important you can control.
Parry.
Breathe.
Slash.
Breathe.
Lunge.
Breathe.
Stab.
Breathe.
Lightning crackles at my fingertips, raw and pulsing. I tell it to breathe too.
. . .
Sometimes I find myself wondering what I’ve done with my life.
It’s a bitter thought, one that comes more than I’d care to admit. I’m a son of Jupiter.
Or was it Zeus?
Jupiter?
Or Ze—
Gods, whoever he is, that means perfection is the baseline for me. I cannot slack. I cannot make mistakes. I have to care.
Boring, I know. I can lie and tell you I don’t care what you say, but let’s be honest, I do. Reputation is everything. Keeping that gilded cage of mine sparkly and spotless is everything.
A former centurion used to say, ‘Uneasy is the head that wears the crown’. I think he’s wrong. I don’t get uneasy.
(God, I do, I do, I’m so damn scared that I’m going to mess u—).
. . .
Lupa?
Yes, child?
Do you think my mother loved me?
Don’t ask questions you know the answer to, Jason.
. . .
I came to Camp Jupiter a feral thing. All teeth bared, hands clawing, and wild eyes. I spoke, yes, but I growled and snarled and bit more.
I was three. They did not care.
I cried half the time during my first week. They did not care.
My hands sparked with electricity, and the winds obeyed my command. They cared then.
Some nights when sleep won’t come, I wonder if I was just a weapon—a symbol of Rome’s return.
A son of Jupiter, they’d called me, pinching my cheeks and smiling and passing me extra food.
Would they have done the same if I were a child of Mercury or Venus?
If I had not struck down monsters before I had reached double-digits?
If I had simply been Jason. Not a son of Jupiter. Not Juno’s champion. Not praetor.
Just Jason.
Those nights, I trace the twelve lines across my wrist and think, who am I if not a child of Jupiter? A prince of the skies? Beloved by Rome for what? My lineage, not my skill. After weeks of the thought gnawing at the edges of my mind, I realize. Nothing. There is no Jason Grace without a child of Jupiter. I’d simply be a nameless face in the crowds.
Unknown.
Unloved.
Nobody.
I make peace with that fast enough.
. . .
The thought hits me in the middle of the night.
Do I have any value apart from the powers I wield?
Percy leads the team better than I do. Annabeth makes the plans. Leo builds us everything. Hazel keeps us steady. Nico finds us information. Frank makes us feel safe. Piper mediates us.
What do I contribute other than destruction? Than power?
Percy’s more powerful than I am, I know that. He’d be loved without those powers, too. Have I always been so…useless?
I don’t sleep for the week that comes after.
. . .
Lupa is the closest thing I have to a mother. Or had been, really.
My biological mother, Beryl, had never been much of a mother. Drunk, swearing up a storm, and inviting random men over before I had even turned one. That’s all I remember—the bad.
Juno, or Hera, wasn’t a mother either. She was my goddess. My patron. Nothing more. She cares, or at least I think she does, but only because I am my father’s son. Without my father’s infidelity, she would’ve never noticed me, much less loved me. My duty is to her—the price I pay for my existence.
Lupa, however, would’ve cared for me, son of Jupiter or not. She taught me how to fight. How to track. How to eat. How to salvage everything and anything. How to steal. How to live, really.
When I was still crying for a mother that would never come or a sister long dead, she’d pushed me to my limits. She’d made me strong.
Useful.
A part of me loves her for that. A part of me hates that I needed to be strong.
I wonder if she’d be proud of me now, seeing the thing I’ve become. A blade past its lifespan. A person living long past their expiry date.
That night, I pray, kneeling at a makeshift altar.
I should be dead by now, and I’m sorry I’m not. It feels so, so, so very wrong that I’m still here.
My eyes flutter open, and the candle is snuffed out. Still, I ask.
Lupa, wolf mother, goddess, is it wrong to want to live?
. . .
The scars ache like a storm.
I have a lot of them.
Wolves, monsters, things straight out of nightmares.
Tonight, the one Krios has given me hurts the most. It trails up my back across my shoulder, dragging a raised finger over my collarbone, a dull, bone-deep ache spreading like frost across the whole area.
Breathe.
I’m lounging across from the seven as they laugh together at some stupid joke Leo cracks. My lips twitch upwards. I want to laugh, too. But the moment I shift even slightly, pain rips like the lightning I wield through my right side, and I stiffen sharply. I want to join in so bad it hurts.
I don’t.
I sit there, lost in an ocean of frustration and calm, and just listen to the others have fun. I offer a weak smile and short chuckle here and there to keep up appearances.
Breathe.
My reputation is important. I know that much. Percy gives me a few odd looks when the pain cracks like a whip, and my jaw clenches, but I wave it off.
The conversation delves deep into the night, and I retire to my quarters, remnants of pain gripping my side like a vice.
I settle into bed after taking an ambrosia square I nicked off the infirmary, and try to sleep. It doesn’t work.
. . .
The day of my birthday, Annabeth and Percy fall into Tartarus.
I don’t tell anyone.
I don’t light a candle.
I don’t do anything.
It isn’t a day to be celebrating anything. That night, I hole up in my quarters and cry for the first time in years.
Actually cry.
It isn’t silent and soft either. It’s this violent, gut-wrenching sobbing that hardly lets you breathe. I want to laugh after, and so I do.
Happy sixteenth birthday, me.
. . .
My pencil drags over the paper.
Juno’s temple is the hardest to design. Always has been. What do you gift your patron goddess when she’s the wife of your father but not your mother?
I sketch out the intricate peacocks and pomegranates. It’s my eighth draft. It still looks wrong. It’s always wrong.
I grit my teeth, nails digging crescents into my palms.
Crumple.
Throw.
Sketch.
Crumple.
Throw.
Sketch.
Crumple.
Thro—
Iron floods my mouth. Blink. I crane my head backwards, fingers darting to my mouth. They come away stained crimson.
Damn it.
I lean back on my chair, heels of my palms pressed against the edge of the desk.
Breathe.
Breathe.
I take a deep breath. The air slipping inside my lungs sends a shiver down my spine.
Just breathe, Jason.
A droplet speckles on the new sheet.
It’s so red. Oddly, the shine of the droplet reminds me of a pomegranate aril.
Crimson.
Fleshy.
Deceiving.
I run a hand through my hair.
Some legacy I’m going to leave behind—just a bunch of unfinished designs. The unfinished part gnaws at my chest, so I sketch out something that’s all bare frames—beautiful in its simplicity.
I add a few carvings on the pillars and a stained glass dome, red like her fruit. Red like the blood that’ll wash the earth tomorrow.
I slide it into the folder that carries my life’s work.
It’s so thin.
So quiet in a world full of noise.
My lips twitch upwards as I sign it. Jason Grace, Son of Jupiter.
That’s all I’ll ever be. A son. A comrade. A leader. A demigod.
Not just a person.
Because that’s never enough.
I tuck the folder under my bed.
. . .
The spear rips through my chest.
One second, I’m fighting Caligula, the next, everything is just pain, pain, pain.
Worse than Krios or Gaia, worse than anything I’ve ever felt.
Then it’s just cold, coupled with this dread. I stumble, and I’m falling, fallin, falling, falling, falli—
I feel the thud.
My mind’s screaming at me to get up.
They’re not safe yet. They’re not safe, not safe, not safe—Failure.
Blood bubbles between my lips, and this time, it’s not iron.
It’s as sweet as a pomegranate.
I want to laugh. Or cry. I try to get up, but everything’s so damn blurry that I can’t even see with my glasses on, and my hands won’t stop shaking. I drop back down.
Suddenly, this fear hits me like a brick.
I don’t want to die. Not yet.
Those designs that lay unfinished.
Lupa’s temple.
College.
Everything I’m going to miss.
Please.
I’m not ready.
Mother, please.
I don’t want to die.
I don’t want to die.
I don’t want to die.
I don’t want to die.
I don’t want to—
.
.
.
Oh, son of Rome, look where thy crown lies, tainted with the ichor of thy goddess. Pray tell, demi-god, will thy father watch as His spear glides through thine chest? Or shall he laugh?