Chapter Text

This Far and No Further

“Was it…a mistake…to come here?”

Rubber soles pushed and pulled against the concrete as he paced circles into the school’s roof.

Shimmer to his left. Caught out of the corner of his eye.

“You mean, abandoning nearly every relationship you’ve built over the last four years in a heartbeat? Based on…”

She squinted, reading some hidden cosmic ledger like the words were Latin but meant nothing to her.

“…a hunch? Not the call I would have made…” a very familiar, very divine voice made its point from six point four meters to his left.

Edge of the roof, and then half a meter past that.

The words left his mouth.

Quiet. Calm. Diplomatic.

“…I know the call you would have made. That’s why I left.”

An eye roll.

“…certainly,” she continued, unperturbed, “but…you always were your father’s son.”

Like that explained…him.

Static electricity did laps in his gut.

Fist clenched.

Maintain line of sight, but do not use it.

“And she, her father’s daughter,”

Uncleeench.

Ease the throttle. There are people here.

“yet here you are.”

Calm. Flat. Composed.

Roman.

“You know why I’m here.” She repeated, tit-for-tat-in-tone.

Imperial Gold flashed out of his palm like a miniature lightning strike. He pressed the blurred bolt of metal into his pocket.

“Of course I do. The answer is no, thank you.”

A pause, an eye-brow raise.

She squinted down at him, record scratch in that same cosmic ledger.

“You…you are my champion, child of Rome.”

Reasserting the law of gravity as divine mandate, but he kept his back turned. His feet one centimeter above the ground she was standing on.

“Was.”

She was standing directly behind him now. She smelled of goat, smelled of Sonoma.

“Are.”

His voice never faltered, never fell, never climbed, never went anywhere. Unstoppable force, immovable object, arrow, shield.

“I gave the Legion 11 years of my life. I fulfilled the oath I made at 5 years old. A disciplined, faithful, obedient child soldier in your little jihad.”

She blinked.

“Struggle.” She translated absently, then paused as she followed what he’d been staring at since she’d appeared on the roof.

Mountains.

He stared off into the distance, looking over the mountain range he’d told Piper they might one day head out to. No rules, no expectation, just two kids with busy fathers refusing to be too busy for each other.

Being a father… that… does sound nice.

“I owe you nothing, and I have no intention of lending you a second more.”

She approached, standing behind him, her feet hovering two centimeters before a gust of wind reminded her of the law she’d tried to enforce.

Thud as her sandals hit the concrete.

“I thought we’d built a relationship.”

“Reyna was a relationship.” He said, now staring a hole through one of the mountain peaks as that early morning sun went into full bloom behind it. “Octavian was a relationship.” His lip trembled slightly. “I ‘abandoned nearly every relationship I’ve built over the last four years’.”

A gust of wind poured out of his trachea, reasserting the law of rank and file on his tone. Pushing the register down.

Calm. Flat. Composed.

Praetor.

“Did you think you were special?”

“I’m your mother,” she chided, talking to him like he was a slow child. Sensing his mouth open, she amended her statement with a forced smile, “in function, if not by blood.”

“My mother by blood is dead, my mother by function—adopted—despises you. No, you don’t get to play that card. Not with me.”

He did the full one-hundred-eighty degree turn nice and slow.

A silver lining flitted back and forth across his pupil.

Allegedly, the last thing the titan had seen.

Because allegedly was all Lady Juno was going to get from him.

“Not. Anymore.”

She straightened, turning her back on him now, tucking in the shawl. Tit-for-tat.

“After everything I’ve done for you… this is how I am to be repaid?” She coughed and fanned her face. “With apathy? With scorn? A back turned on the one who was nice enough to make sure you didn’t run your ship aground on a sandbar in the Pacific?”

She bit her lip.

Hard.

“This is more important than you and your grudges, boy. This is prophecy, and this is the rising tide of war.”

She scoffed.

“Not that you’d know anything about that. Your co-Praetor is grieving you as though dead,”

He stiffened.

“but you didn’t know that, did you? No…”

She walked circles around him, watching the words dent. “…you’ve been having a nice retirement, making friends, staring over while everybody else picks up the pieces.”

A twitch in his lip.

She leaned down, eye level.

“Of the bloodbath you led them into.”

Point made, she went back to pacing.

“Your Augur is seeing the dead birds in the Tiber,”

A twitch in his finger.

“your home is falling apart at the seams, but still you insist you’re retired. Do you know which prophecy we’re talking even about? Or have you buried your head in the sand there as well?”

His voice didn’t falter.

“I do.”

Yet.

Pointer crossed thumb, then middle.

“Seven half-bloods shall answer the call, To storm or fire the world shall fall, An oath to keep with a final breath, As foes bear arms to the Doors of Death.”

A tropical depression moved through the warm tide of his mind, picking up power and heat as it churned.

“You can make many accusations about my character, but ignorance is not one of them.”

She rolled her shoulders, taking a long breath.

“You’re the storm, to state the obvious.”

Her finger pointed just in case he was capable of not grasping her meaning.

He eyed the finger. Jaw clenched.

“Could. Be.”

The levees guarding his irises were straining against the living hurricane making windfall against them.

“Again, knock on my sister’s door, because my answer is no.”

She gestured out to the mountains wildly.

“Hundreds of thousands of lives. Gambled on your selfishness, recklessness, impulse. On your ‘hunch’.”

A sandal step forward. In front of him.

“That’s what’s at stake here. Maybe an order of magnitude will make things click.”

A rubber step forward.

“The Court of the Dead has a duty to judge my character. You do not. Your duty is to defend Rome. I offered you a solution, you refuse to pursue it. The burden of action falls to you.”

Under his breath: “Which is nothing new, in my experience.”

Said the boy who’d once torn through a mountainside of dracaenae without breaking a sweat.

Her eye twitched rapidly. Pink and gold did livid figure-eights across those eyes. Ichor brought to a dangerous simmer for any mortal.

“Thalia despises me. She would gladly let my world burn just to spite me.”

“That isn’t my problem. Your character is yours to answer for, not mine.”

A rubber step back, a sandal step forward.

She gestured to the sky, fingers pointing and jabbing to beckon her friends in high places to see what she had to put up with this time.

“I am a goddess, Jason, I cannot attend to ev’ry li’ttle girl with anger issues. I do have a kingdom to run when I’m not tolerating your antics!”

“Goddess of childbirth, Patron of Women. If caring for women and children isn’t your domain, what is?”

Her mouth fell open for a moment, the familiar peacock shifting and flapping its wings to stay at her side as she stumbled back a step.

“I can’t be everywhere at once, hero.”

“Neither can I, perhaps you should learn to plan ahead.”

Under her breath:

“Oh, I have.”

As the small bird got comfortable on her shoulder again, she brushed its feathers affectionately.

It cooed into her neck, nipping at the metal skin playfully.

“I have been authorized to use force. This is more important than two hundred odd lives of troubled children that do nothing but waste the time invested in them.” She said smoothly, gesturing to the playground below them.

A couple of kids were cornering a boy against the school building now that school hours were over.

“Making no effort to better themselves or improve. Is it beginning to sink in now?”

“Now I’m confused,”

He kept his body near the edge of the roof, watching the kid out of the corner of his eye. Just in case.

Her on one side, the kids on the other.

“are you talking about the kids, or is this another unannounced metaphor?”

“Unannounced—” she said, until she put two and two together, “I am not some kind of CHILD!”

She pounded her sandals hard enough to crack the concrete beneath them.

Pounding our feet and shouting. Mature.

“You… asked for that in advance… making my obedience in this ordeal ceremonial at best… and now…”

He crossed his fingers pensively.

“Now every time I think that maybe you’ve made an effort to better yourself, to improve, despite the substantial amount-of-time-and-effort-invested-by-people-like-me-helping-an-overgrown-child-see-reason… you’ve made it your mission to waste my time. I wish I was stunned, but…”

Sigh

“…I’m not. You’re not even a tragic victim of your own upbringing, your own life, you’re just…”

He gestured to the whole of her, making measurements for some cosmic ledger.

“…a martyr. Digging your own grave a little deeper with each family shattered.”

Two sandal steps forward, with no rubber step to meet them. A finger raised in accusation.

“A MARTYR? My husband is a SERIAL adulterer and you think I’m—”

“You’re standing on two hundred broken homes.”

Rubber patted the concrete roof again. Slowly being led towards the ledge, with none of the fear that should have come with it.

“Please, have some perspective.”

Three sandal steps.

“Perspective? Perspective! My marriage is one long string of affairs, and you think I need perspective?”

She growled, clenching her fists.

“What you are is apathetic.” She spat, and then pressed a circle into the concrete beneath her feet. “Perhaps…this need be more personal to help you see…reason.”

He met her eyes, unflinching.

“Define personal.”

His eyes flitted to the kid again. Backed against the wall now.

Incapaci—no.

This was a domestic environment. He’d had to rebuild half his playbook now that the rules were different.

He kicked a rock, and it flew over the roof edge to hit a very particular satyr’s bat in the middle of the courtyard.

“I TOLD YOU NOT TO TOUCH MY— WHAT ARE YOU RUNTS DOING OVER THERE?”

The threats kids bolted, leaving the boy alone as hooves went after the four cupcakes that had dared to touch an old satyr’s weapon.

The son of Jupiter’s eyes flitted back to her as she clarified with… a smirk?

“A small-scale attack on Camp Jupiter. I imagine Octavian will be leaping at the opportunity. And he will not be the only one in a war-frenzy. The Senate will declare a draft, and a veteran like you would be dragged back into service.”

Something isn’t right. Juno does not attack her own home.

Coin fell through air, landed heads-up, expanding in a golden bolt into a gladius.

Jason stepped forward, and shoe connected with ground hard enough to leave a crack in the concrete a centimeter deep.

“Counter-offer. You go home, and you leave these people alone, and leave Camp Jupiter alone.”