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Was it petty? Yeah maybe a little but Drew had been driving Piper insane, she wanted to get back at her sister, sue her.
It was Drew's fault to begin with. She was the one who mentioned she had a locked box with all her favorite nail polish in it and she was the one who had been pissing Piper off. What was Piper supposed to do? Not steal her sister’s nail polish?
Piper had only mentioned to the cabin that she was going to take some nail polish with her on the Argo II, her favorite colors, so that the rest of the cabin could confirm they would be okay with that when Lacy made a joke that at least she wasn't hoarding it like Drew and then Drew insisted having a locked box with her favorite nail polish was perfectly reasonable.
It wasn't.
And so Piper left dinner early the night before they were planned to leave on the Argo II, picked the lock of Drew’s nail polish box under her bed and grabbed all of it.
Was it a petty thing to do? Absolutely but Drew's dad had more than enough money to buy her more and she had really been annoying Piper lately, with all her nitpicking and comparing Piper to Silena, saying things like ‘you’ll probably be a traitor, just like her’ it was ridiculous.
A few days after the seven all came together on the Argo II Piper finally decided to put her (stolen) nail polish collection to use.
Piper had laid all her nail polish out on the dinning table, now all she needed was a test subject to see what the colors looked like on actual nail instead of just in the bottle.
“Hey Jason, come here,” Piper said, waving him over.
“Why?” Jason asked, tilting his head like a confused puppy as he walked over.
“‘Cause I wanna paint my nails but I dunno if I like this color so you get to be my test subject,” She cooed, showing him the purple nail polish she had selected. She had no idea if she would like it on herself though she imagined it would look nice against his pale skin.
Jason paused, looking at the nail polish, as if debating the decision like it were a test or something else important. “Okay,” he said as if testing the answer.
Piper grinned and laughed softly, “it’s not a test, Lightning Boy. You can say no, if you don’t want me to paint your nails, I’ll just go ask Leo”
“No, no, it’s fine, I just.. It’s not very Roman, I guess, it feels weird,” he explained, staring at the nail polish.
“Well, you’re not very Roman anymore either,” she said, reaching for his hands.
“Huh.. yeah, I guess I’m not.”
He let her paint his nails, the polish was a deep but vivid shade of blueish-purple with metallic shimmers in it. He ended up liking the color more than she did, so she just gave him the bottle.
By about week two of all of The Seven living together on the Argo II, they had made a system of who gets what nail polish if Piper didn't like it like: if it's a blue it goes to Percy, if it's a red, orange, or metallic it goes to Leo, etc. But if the people who get first picking of that color don't want it then the rest of the group gets offered it.
And then if no one else wants it; Jason gets it because he doesn't really know how to say ‘no, I will never use this unless someone else uses it on me’ so he just slowly gets the collection of nail polish he's never going to use unless Piper paints his nails.
---
When the Argo II got destroyed in the battle, Jason assumes all of their stuff on it was also gone but the gods decide to, for once, be kind to their Heroes and grant them all of their items (or at least identical replicas) that they lost when the Argo II blew up.
Sadly bringing Leo back was not that easy, and even if it had been it wouldn't be the same Leo, just a replica. Identical but not Leo.
Lupa had not taught Jason how to mourn a body that wasn't there. One of his siblings, one of her wolf cubs, had died when he was seven, he has still been living at the wolf house part-time back then. The legion didn't want to take him away from Lupa fully as he was so young, and let's be honest no adult in New Rome wanted to deal with a feral child of Jupiter, so when the legion couldn't watch him he went home to Mama.
He didn't understand it, not fully, why wouldn't they getting up? why weren't they playing with him anymore? why mama was always curled around them when they were so cold?
Lupa would bat away the birds of prey and the scavengers that wanted her cub, if Jason died would she do that with his body too? Would she growl at anyone who wasn't pack that got too close? Would he have to tell her “no, they're pack” about the rest of the seven, Nico, Reyna, all of his friends before he died so his friends could say goodbye? But Jason wasn't dead, not yet, hopefully not for a long time. enough if he could help it he would not die anytime soon, not till he grew old, not till he could watch Annabeth and Percy get married, not till he could see Leo again.
Leo would come back, Leo had to come back. If he was dead the gods would have brought his body back if he was dead and Jason would be curled around his body like Lupa had crawled around her cub’s, because that’s how you morn pack.
But there was no body, because Leo wasn't dead, not properly. Maybe, hopefully not. So Jason could not curl around his beloved friends’ body and growl at anyone that got too close, he could not bat away the scavengers that wanted to eat his corpse and there was nothing to burn as the Romans did for their burials, the Greeks did the same, they could burn a shroud in his honor but he wasn't dead. He wasn't, right?
Jason and Piper started to drift apart after that, he didn't understand why but in a way he did, and it had always been the three of them. Even when Leo was gone, they spent all their time trying to figure out how to get him back. It was always been three of them and now it was just the two of them, it had been months since the battle and Jason still felt like a grieving wolf, he still felt like he needed to bat away at scavenger birds, like he needed to curl around the body and growl to try to keep it warm as the flesh cooled from the lack of a heartbeat but there was no body and Leo wasn't dead. He wasn’t
They spent months searching for him with no luck but he wasn't dead. Jason refused to believe that until he saw a body, he refused to believe that until he could curl around a body and beat away the Scavengers, he refused to believe that until he saw a body. Leo was not dead, there was no body. He was not dead.
Piper and Jason broke up. It wasn't Jason's decision but he didn't argue against it, not as much as he maybe should have. If Leo had been there he would argue, Leo had been there him and Piper wouldn't be like this. It was always the three of them and now they were all on their own.
He didn't like his dorm room, no that's a lie, his dorm room was fine; cramped and, well, a dorm room at a boarding school but fine. It just didn't smell like his pack, there was no Piper talking to him from the doorway, no Leo napping under his bed, no Percy yelling at him from down the hall, no Frank and Hazel hesitantly asking him questions about the legion that he didn't fully remember the answers to, no Annabeth explaining history he didn't learn in camp Jupiter, no Nico sitting on his bed in comfortable silence. Just Jason, no pack.
Lone wolves die, that was the first thing Lupa had taught him ‘when you leave this pack the legion will become your new pack, do not stray from the pack: lone wolves die’
Was that what he was now, a lone wolf?
When he got the prophecy from the Sibyl, he was not surprised one of them was going to die. The gods had already taken Leo, of course they would take more, they were never satisfied. It wouldn't be Piper, not if he could do something about it.
Jason had never painted his own nails, Piper had always done them, even when she had gone through all of the nail polish she had brought and deemed what was her favorite he would sometimes bring her the bottle of purple nail polish he liked the best, the first one she had ever used on him sparkly and purple, and just sit still let her talk to him and paint his nails. It was soothing for them both.
Today was the first time he would ever paint his own nails. His hands were shaking, it was messy, messier than Piper ever was but his nails were purple: the color of the legion, the color of his pack.
If he was to die a lone wolf then he would not die truly Alone.
Apollo, who was apparently human now and went by the name Lester, (Jason didn’t question it) had visited him in his room with a girl, Meg, and told him the best news of his life.
He blew out all the light sockets, Leo was alive, Leo was alive and maybe if he was lucky he would get to see him one last time, Piper would not die to this prophecy and now he felt a little less guilty about that decision because she would have Leo by her side now.
---
Piper had to clear out all of Jason's stuff from his dorm; she had given the notebooks and the dioramas to get Apollo (Lester? Apollo? Same difference) what was she supposed to do with the rest of his stuff though? She didn't know so she packed it in boxes and put it on the moving truck with the rest of her family's things, three new boxes all labeled “Jason” in wobbly sharpie because she wasn't able to stop crying while labeling them.
He had purple nails when he died, she didn't know why that was what she was clinging to. It wasn't important, it didn't mean anything, it didn't stop the spear going through his chest, it didn't stop anything, it didn't change anything but he had purple nails like she had painted for him during that first week on the Argo II but messier because he never had the time to learn how to get better about painting his own nails now he never would.
She didn't know what to do with any of his shit, maybe she should have given some of it to Leo, maybe he would have just gotten rid of it. No, that was cruel, he wouldn't, Leo was grieving as much as she was if not more, she had gotten to say goodbye at least. Her and Jason had spent months looking for Leo and then he finally showed up just a bit too late, he hadn't even gotten to say goodbye to Jason. They were almost finally reunited, a trio back together again, and Caligula took that way, the gods took that away because they took everything good away, well fuck them and fuck their quests, she wasn’t doing it, not anymore. But her rejection of them and anything to do with them didn't change the goddess blood in her veins or the boxes labeled ‘Jason’.
What was she supposed to do with boxes full of her dead ex-boyfriend’s junk? It wasn't like she could ask her dad; he still had everything Aphrodite had ever given to him when she was in mortal form before Piper had been born, every piece of junk the goddess had ever given to him was still buried in a box in his closet just as it had been Piper's entire life so what was she supposed to do? Hold on to this for the rest of her life? Never move on? She didn't want that.
She was barely half awake while unpacking in their new house when she accidentally opened one of Jason's boxes, she hadn't realized it was his clothes until she saw the Camp Jupiter shirt, she also hadn't realized she could cry anymore until she started sobbing and holding that shirt. It still smelled like him.
She remembered when Leo had first “died”, Jason had been weird, he tried to explain it to her but it didn't make sense, but she got it now, maybe. Wolves usually mourn with the body of their lost pack member, they curl around it, nuzzle it, lick it, as if in the hope it will come back to life, as if enough love could revive someone from the grave. It doesn't matter and when the buzzards start bothering the rest of the pack the alpha or the leader, typically the mom, will drag her cubs body into the woods and lay it to rest but Leo didn't have a body, so every item that Jason came across that belonged to Leo; he hoarded. He hoarded and he growled at anyone who tried to take it from him, he was like a feral dog and well maybe he was.
Maybe grief got into a part of him that no other emotions seemed to, the part of him that was still an animal, the part of him but Lupa raised.
The nail polish has been in the box with his clothing, she doesn't even like any of these colors. No one else on the Argo II did either, maybe Rayna would like them? How was she supposed to ask that: ‘Hey Rayna, here's your dead best friend's nail polish. Well actually I stole it from my sister but then no one else wanted it so we just gave it to Jason. Do you want it?’? Yeah right.
That sounded like a very quick and easy way to get herself killed and the grief had not taken her over that completely yet, not yet? Was it a yet? Would she go insane with grief? She missed Leo, she missed Jason, she missed when it had been simple and just the three of them on a quest that was important but not that actually important.
---
A week later Piper called Leo over. she had painted her nails the same purple she painted Jason’s that first week of the Argo II, the same purple that was on his corpses fingernails.
“Hey, Beauty Queen,” Leo said, walking into her bedroom and reaching out for her hand but then froze when she saw her nails “oh but that's, that's-”
“Yeah,” she paused, taking a shaky breath, she would not cry, not yet, not right now “Yeah, it was his favorite.”
“Didn't you steal that stuff from your sister? You could return it now I guess,” he said with a shrug. They were both staring at her hands, at her nails, as if it would bring back Jason, as if that color would show a portal of him smiling and telling them it would be okay.
“Yeah, I guess I could.”
“Are you going to?”
“Absolutely not, no this is mine now” She paused fighting back tears “he, he uh painted his nails with this color, I guess just a little bit before... it's weird that that's the part my brain keeps latching on to, out of all parts of it, of seeing his body, of, of his death-” her voice cracked, “the fact that he had purple nail polish, that- that is what I- I'm latching on to.” She sniffled and wiped at her eyes.
“Grief makes you be the fucking weirdo, I guess” Leo said with a shrug and forced casualness in his voice, there were tears in his eyes too, he was hurting just as much as she was but he was trying to be strong for her. A pack member missing makes you go a little insane, as Jason had described it when Leo “died”.
“Oh boy does it ever,” she Laughed despite the tears “it fucked Jason up too, when, when you first “died” he would hoard anything of yours he could find and literally growl at people if they tried to get near it, only your siblings, the rest of the seven and Nico could go near it but if anyone else tried to touch it he was ready to bite someone's head off and it was absolutely in-fucking-sane” she paused for a moment “but also..”
“You get it now?”
“I get it now, yeah.. fuck, yeah I get it now.”
“Yeah, that's grief, I guess,” he said with a laugh, they were both crying now but neither mentioned it.
“So,” she sniffled and wiped at her eyes, “how are you doing?”
“Uh well I'm not dead,” he shrugged.
“So, how's Calypso?” She asked, sitting on the end of her bed.
“I don't want to talk about it,” he said, plopping down next to her.
“Ah, so not good?” She asked with a soft laugh, she wasn't laughing because she found it funny that Leo and Calypso were having problems, she just didn't know what else to do.
“It's- we're trying, it's- I.. I dunno, I don't, I don't think she gets it,”
“The grief?”
“The any of it, she was on that island for Millennia, she never had to worry about people dying or about herself dying or about mortality in any way and she just doesn't get it and-” he paused, flopping back onto Piper’s bed “and then she gets mad at me because I'm not communicating properly but there's nothing to communicate, it's just-” What sounds like months worth of frustration spill out of his mouth but he cuts himself off.
“He's gone.”
“He's gone, that's.. that's it, just.. gone, like a Jason Grace sized hole is just in my life now and I think it will be forever.”
“Yeah..” She nodded, Staring at her bedroom wall
The two just sat like that for a while; Leo laying on her bed staring at her ceiling and Piper sitting next to him and staring at her wall, the silence was heavy but comfortable. The shared grief still there, still present, still impossible to miss, just like the absence of the third member of their Trio, but it was comfortable. Both were hurting but both knew they weren't alone in that hurt, that the other was just as hurt, that didn't fix it it didn't change it but it made it a little easier.
“Do you want me to paint your nails purple?” Piper asked finally breaking the silence and looking at Leo
“Yeah, yeah.. yeah, hell yeah, paint my nails Jason Grace purple, Beauty Queen,” Leo said, sitting up and wiping his eyes.
“Well actually according to the bottle it's called ‘The Grape Gatsby’,” She said, reading the bottom of the nail polish bottle
“That's dumb.. ‘s Jason Grace purple now,” Leo laughed, looking at the nail polish bottle in her hand like it would bring back Jason. It wouldn't. But Piper got it.
“Yeah, come ‘ere so I can give you Jason Grace purple nails.”
They both ended up crying while his nails were getting painted so they were messy and a lot got onto his fingers and nailbeds but neither of them cared.
Later she would look up the color in the hopes of buying more and find out it had been discontinued. She cried over that fact, it felt like he was dying all over again, it was ridiculous, she knew that, it was just nail polish but it was his nail polish, it was Jason Grace purple and it was discontinued. She never used it to her nails again, was it a waste? Yes but it was one of the few things she had left of him she couldn't lose it.