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The last thing he felt was a blinding, intense pain erupting through his chest. The last thing he heard was Piper’s voice screaming out. The last thing he saw was the look of fear in her eyes. Her eyes were not such a terrible last sight, but he just wished there didn’t have to be fear in them. At least he could face his death with the small comfort that it wasn’t her who was dying here today.
His body hit the deck of the yacht, and he stopped being aware of anything.
But he was not dead. Not yet.
Had he any awareness left, he might have remembered that it was the brain, not the heart, that determined death. The heart could stop, but the brain would have up to six minutes of life left without intervention. Only then would it begin to die. He had learned that at Camp Jupiter, from one of the grisly-minded lares that hung around the infirmary, and then had remembered the fact more recently in a biology class at school. Had he any ability to think, he might have remembered it now. Or, more practically, he probably wouldn’t, as he would be too overwhelmed with pain to think of anything. Especially when Caligula ripped the spear out of his back and thrust it back in, ensuring that his heart was indeed pierced. The pain would have blocked out everything else, even Piper’s screams. How ironic, he might think later… after everything they had been through, together and apart, he had protected the love of his life one last time, only to die from a literal broken heart.
Five minutes left now. There really was no saving him. He would go on to Elysium, at least. He hoped Apollo would honor his vow to bring the shrine plans to the camps. He hoped Tempest would carry the rest of them to safety.
Four minutes. Suddenly he was cold, so very cold. Had he breath in his lungs, it might have been knocked out by the sudden, icy chill. Was he moving? Was he in water? Floating, or perhaps sinking… Perhaps in the River Styx, he might have supposed, if he had any ability to think left in him. His lungs were heavy as they filled with salt water. Was the River Styx salty?
Three minutesー
“Awaken, Jason Grace.” A voice ー somehow familiar ー commanded him.
He couldn’t. He was deadー
“You are not dead. You will not die.”
Pressure on his chest, as if compression would ever be enough when he had a spear hole torn through him. A rush like a sonic boom, and his ears popped and the seawater burst from his lungs as air rushed in with the speed of a hurricane gale.
Jason’s eyes flew open and he gasped, a stream of bubbles leaving him. Oh, oh gods, there was the pain… it was so intense he nearly blacked out again, and he almost wished for the release of deathー
“No,” that voice, which rasped and boomed like crashing storm waves, broke through the pain. The pressure on his chest tightened like a vice. “You are still needed here.”
Here? Where was here? All he could see was darkness, swirling and cold geen-blue-black… no, it was a face in front of him, huge and surrounded by swirling dark hair, and two glowing eyes glaring at him.
Two eyes. Two minutes...
“We haven’t much time,” the voice said, even as his eyes fell shut against his will. “Drink.”
His mouth couldn’t move. His throat didn’t work. Whatever being had him didn’t care, and with a growl, she shoved his lips apart and poured something down his throat. He choked on a gasp ー it was hot, so hot, like liquid sunlight, and it burned as it flooded through him. It burned like fire, burned like ice. It raced through his veins, cauterizing every wound. It hurt so, so bad, just as bad as being stabbed with the spear. Only this time, unconsciousness didn’t come to take him. He had to live through it.
Wait… he realized. Live?
“Yes, live,” the voice told him, crashing over him like the ocean surf. “You’re not done on this mortal plane. Not until we’re remembered.”
Remembered…
“K...Kym...opol...eia…” Every syllable felt like sandpaper on his throat. He didn’t even know how he managed to get the word out. The liquid fire burning inside him squeezed around his heart, wresting bone fragments out of where they were buried in his muscles and organs. It felt like pulling glass out of a wound ー a wound that was rapidly cauterizing itself at the surface.
“Ichor can only do so much,” Kymopoleia told him, as her stern face came into view. As his vision cleared, he realized the twenty-foot tall goddess was holding him in one hand, a finger pressing hard against his chest to stem the bleeding. A cut on her finger was leaking golden ichor into the water, where it swirled with his own red blood. Kymopoleia frowned, the stern expression looking much more natural on her face than the cold, unnatural smile she had offered the first time they met. “I have done what I can, but you need ambrosia and nectar. Ichor will stave off death only in the most extreme circumstances, but it is ill-suited to the delicate bodies of mortal demigods.”
“You… you saved me?” Jason managed, though the words climbed sluggishly up his raw throat.
“I saved myself.” Kymopoleia narrowed her eyes. “I have watched you, all those days and nights researching, writing your plans, making your models. If you die, all your diligent work would die with you. I would never be remembered, not with shrines or banners or a single action figure. Such a fate is worse than death, to a god.”
“I… I told Apolloー”
“Apollo?” Kymopoleia snarled. “He may claim to have lost everything, but he has no idea. He would only chase his own goals, restore himself to godlyhood, and then what? The Apollo I know would happily spend a few centuries lazing about and relaxing after his mortal ordeal , and only then might he consider honoring his promise. Has he changed? I cannot safely say. I cannot trust him. He has not proved himself to me. But you…” She loosened her grip on him, sharp glowing eyes assessing his wounds as she carefully pulled her finger away. The ichor had cauterized the hole ripped through his chest, and while it felt like half his skin tried to peel itself off along with her finger and burned him like hell, he managed to stay conscious. Kymopoleia frowned, but nodded approvingly. “You… you are mortal. You know you will die someday. You know that you have only a short time to leave your mark on history. That is the power you mortals wield, without even realizing it ー you can accomplish more in your puny lifetimes than gods will ever do in eons.”
Jason wasn’t sure if that was a compliment or not. He also wasn’t sure how he had gotten to the bottom of the sea. The goddess must have seen his confusion as he looked around.
“Don’t you remember the storm?” Kymopoleia’s sharp lips curved up in a self-satisfied smirk. “Where there are storms, I am never far behind. And in throwing your body overboard, Caligula tossed you right into my hands.”
A shiver raced through him as he imagined the emperor throwing his limp corpse over the side of the yacht like a sack of garbage.
“I… I can’t thank you enough…” Jason started.
“I don’t want thanks,” Kymopoleia hissed. “I told you before. I want respect . I want to be feared, for mortals to regard me with the awe and terror I deserve. You are the only mortal who truly knows the power I wield; you are the only one who can make my name known as it should be.” She leaned closer, her glowing stare pinning him where he lay sprawled on her palm. “I need you, Jason Grace, just as much as you needed me.”
The gravity of her words weighed down on him just as heavy as the weight of the sea at these crushing depths, and as much as the weight of exhaustion was quickly bearing down on him. “You’re right. I won’t forget this ー your power, and your kindness.” Jason lifted his chin and looked her in the eyes. “I will be your loyal devotee, the first in millennia. And I will make sure your name and might are immortalized.”
She gave a little, derisive snort. Her smile was still cold, but the mirth in her eyes was real. “How dare you call me ‘kind’, little mortal.” The words might have been a threat, if she hadn’t sounded so amused. Her fingers curled up around him, and the last thing he saw was her smirk as she told him, “Better hold your breath.”
That was all the warning he got before seawater enveloped him and she threw him toward the surface.
~~~~~~~
Being hurled from the depths of the sea to the surface in a matter of moments should have killed him. But then again, there were a lot of things that should have killed him.
Jason broke the surface with a gasp, filling his lungs with much-needed air. The mini-storm that had carried him up burst and spun away, the winds and waves running wild the moment they had been freed.
Limbs aching with every movement, Jason wiped water out of his eyes and looked around. He could see the line of yachts in the distance, the garish lights glittering on the surface of the bay as they headed north. He needed to warn Camp Jupiter… he needed to… Styx, first he needed to get out of the middle of the bay before he froze or drowned.
One last storm wave tightened around him, and he realized it was holding him aloft. He was grateful for it, because he didn’t think he could tread water on his own in the state he was in. Jason looked around and mentally calculated that he was at least a few miles from the shore. He couldn’t ask Kymopoleia to push him to shore; the power of storms was intense, but brief. Already he could feel the swell supporting him beginning to lose traction. He needed to get out of here, now .
A flicker at the edge of his vision, and he realized it wasn’t just the wind gusting over the surface of the bay ー it was Tempest, galloping over the waves searching for him.
Jason had very, very little air in his battered lungs, but he put his fingers to his lips and whistled ー or, he tried to. It came out weak and reedy, so quiet it should have been lost in the winds. But Tempest picked up his head and looked toward him, then let out a high-pitched whinny like the shriek of wind passing between buildings in the height of a storm. He raced over to Jason just as the wave holding him up dissipated, and Jason used every bit of strength in his body to grab onto the ventus’s neck as it scooped him up.
“H-hey, buddy,” Jason managed weakly, threading his fingers into the horse’s mane. He wanted to ask about Piper, and Apollo and Meg… if they had gotten to safety… but the effort of grabbing onto the ventus was already taking its toll on him, and he felt himself fading back into unconsciousness. He was barely aware of the wind whipping past as Tempest ran, nor when the horse slowed to a halt… not even when he fell onto the sandy beach.
“JASON!” Oh, ow, he was awake now… the sheer volume of Piper’s scream ensured that.
Hands turned him onto his back. He wanted to protest as pressure landed on his chest, but it was too hard for him. Piper’s voice sounded distant, but he would know her hands gripping his shirt anywhere. “No, no… oh gods no, Jason… You’re not dead, you can’t be dead…”
He wasn’t, but he was close now. But after Kymolopeia's care, he wasn’t so close that Piper’s charmspeak couldn’t grab him and keep him from slipping further.
Pressure against his throat under his chin, then he heard Apollo’s voice. “He’s… he’s not dead. Not yet.”
“Notー?” Piper gasped. Hands clutched his cheeks, wiping sand and blood from his skin. “Jason? Jason, you will not die. You will live. You hear me? You are going to live !” She injected each word, each syllable, each soundwave with every ounce of charmspeak she possessed, hauling him back from the edge. “ Breathe , Jason, breathe!”
At her command, his battered lungs expanded in his broken ribcage, breath flooding in. There was a smokey sweetness there that he recognized as cinnamon and campfires and sunlight and walks through the strawberry fields at Camp Half-Blood ー Piper’s scent, surrounding him, filling him with breath.
“That’s it, Jason, keep breathing,” Piper told him. He wanted to weep ー he could hear the tentative hope in her voice. “Keep breathing, Jace, stay alive. Stay alive.”
Jace… She hadn’t called him that in months. Even longer since she uttered it with the affection she had before they realized they were demigods, back at the Grand Canyon. When they were both still living Hera’s lie ー a lie he wanted to make true, even after they realized what it was.
Fingers brushed his hair away from his forehead, accidentally trailing too close to a cut on his brow that smarted with pain at the touch. His glasses were gone, he realized. Probably lost at the bottom of the ocean.
“Jason? Listen to me, you’re going to be okay. You’re going to live. Just keep breathing.” He would. He would, now that she was helping him. He let himself relax into her voice, into her arms. Even without the charmspeak, he knew it would be okay now. But… just in case it wasn’t, he still had something left to tell her.
Opening his eyes felt like a Herculean task. His reward, though, was seeing Piper’s face above him, albeit blurry. Better still was seeing the relief flood her eyes as she whispered his name. “Jason…”
His cracked, bloodied lips ached and smarted as they pulled into a weak grin. “Pipes…” His voice sounded as raspy and thin as the spray from one of Kymopoleia’s storm waves. His fingers twitched, but he couldn’t move them more than that. Piper seemed to know what he wanted, though, and she grabbed his hand in one of her own. He sighed, relieved. “If… if I can’t…”
“No,” she interrupted him, her eyes going as hard as diamonds. “You’re not going to die. You’re going to live.”
“Please, Piper,” Jason pleaded. He had already died once with this regret. He couldn’t do it again. “I need to say… I love you. I always have. I don’t… I don’t care if it started be-because of Hera’sー” he broke off, coughing, and it hurt so much that his vision went black and spotty at the edges.
“You’re okay,” Piper whispered, half in charmspeak, half in genuine comfort. “You’re strong enough to… to say what you need to say.”
He smiled weakly up at her. He knew the last thing she wanted to hear was anything remotely like a death-bed confession, and yet she was still giving him the strength to do it.
He took a deep breath and went on. “Even if it started because of Hera’s illusion, my feelings were real. They only got more real as time went on. I loved you. I still love you. I just want you to know that. Even ifー”
“ Don’t say if you die,” she warned him.
“ーyou don’t feel the same,” Jason finished.
It was hard to look at her. He was tired, so tired, and his eyelids were so heavy… And it was harder still to watch her expression shift ー through surprise, conflict, hesitation… Finally, though, the tension in her shoulders loosened. Still, she was silent. He didn’t really need to hear her say it, but he would have liked itー
Piper tucked a lock of hair behind her ear and swooped down, pressing her lips to his. It physically hurt, but the warm relief flooding him made the pain worth it.
When she pulled back, her lips were red, but she didn’t seem to mind. Her eyes were still hard, determined… but honest as she met his. “I love you too,” she whispered.
Jason smiled, finally feeling at peace. His eyelids slipped, too heavy to keep open now.
“ No, ” Piper’s charmspeak yanked him back. “You are not dying on me now. Open your eyes. Stay awake. Do not leave me.”
It was so hard to keep his eyes open. But he would do it for her, with or without charmspeak. For her.
“Piper?” A distant voice called, and Jason watched her turn and look over her shoulder. “Piper, what’s going on?”
“Dad!” Piper called. “Call nine-one-one!”
Tristan McLean swore, and Jason heard shifting cloth as he dug in his pockets. “Is thatー? Oh my god, he’s covered in blood… What, what happened?”
“Jason, do not close your eyes,” Piper commanded him again, and he realized his lids had been slipping once more. “Stay conscious. We’re getting help. You’re going to be okay. Just look at me, and keep breathing.”
He did. She helped him stay awake, stay alive. He was distantly aware of Piper’s father on the phone, stammering something about “...a surfing accident, I think. Maybe a shark attack? He’s all cut up… He’s burned, too ー I think he might have been struck by lightning…”
Jason managed a weak chuckle at that, and he and Piper shared a brief, amused look before she went back to charmspeaking him to stay conscious. The charmspeak helped, but he would fight tooth and nail to stay awake just for her, even without it.
“The ambulance is coming,” Tristan McLean relayed to them, the phone still clutched to his ear.
Suddenly Apollo dropped to his knees on Jason’s other side. Jason wasn’t sure when he had left, or if he even had left. He could feel himself slipping again, and barely caught fragments of what Apollo was saying ー “Iris message… Nico di Angelo… shadow-travel… Camp… medicine… not enough...”
“Jason, open up for me, okay?” Piper pressed something to his lips… bizarrely, it smelled like a cheeseburger, his favorite one from the place nearー oh, it was nectar, he realized as he swallowed it. He wondered absently where they had gotten it from. It went down a lot easier than the ichor had, and the warmth it filled him with was much more gentle. But he could tell it would work slower as well. Piper cradled the back of his head and tipped more nectar down his throat, slow enough that he didn’t choke on it. “There you go. You’re gonna be okay, Jason.”
“Yes, you’ll be okay,” Tristan nodded, looking almost vacant as he paced in the sand. “The EMTs are on their way. They’ll be here soon.”
Jason met Piper’s eyes with a weak smile. “Not sure they’ll be much help at this point.”
“Don’t say that,” Piper looked panicked. “It’s not too late. You can make it.”
“No, ah,” he glanced at her father, but luckily he was busy relaying their address to the 911 operator. Jason lowered his voice. “Shouldn’t nectar… be enough?”
Piper’s expression contorted in a strange way, like she wanted to smile, sob, and punch something all at once. She looked down at his body. “I think you will need regular mortal surgery too. There’s… Jason, there’s so much…”
He couldn’t really look down to see the damage himself, but he sure could feel it. Everything hurt, and whatever miraculously didn’t hurt felt eerily numb. Plus, Apollo kept muttering about internal bleeding and contusions and broken bones, and lamenting the long time nectar would take to work.
“Hey,” Jason caught Piper’s attention. “I’m gonna be okay, Pipes. You said so yourself.” He squeezed her hand (or, his hand gave a feeble twitch in hers). “I’m not leaving you again. I promise.”
Piper offered him a shaky smile that flickered in the red and blue lights as the ambulance came wailing to a stop near the beach. She stroked his hair ー gently, like she was afraid of hurting him more. “I won’t leave your side either.”
And she didn’t. Even with the flurry of activity as the EMTs arrived, even as her father told her to back up and give them space to work on him, she stayed within arms reach of him. Things grew fuzzy after that ー he was vaguely aware of shouting around him, being strapped to a board, and being carried up the beach to where the ambulance was waiting. He slipped in and out of awareness, each time being called back by Piper’s voice.
“Ma’am, I’m afraid you can’tー” an EMT tried to reason with her when she climbed into the back of the ambulance with them.
“I need to go with him,” Piper cut him off. Her charmspeak powers were growing thin after being used so much and her own exhaustion, but it was enough.
The EMT blinked. “You need to go with him,” he repeated, then looked a little puzzled why he might say that. He tilted his head as he regarded her. “Well, I guess you do need some medical attention too,” he decided, and passed her a cold compress for her face as the back doors slammed shut and the car took off into the night.
Everything was a blur after that. The wailing siren, Piper’s hand clutching his, the shouts of the EMTs, being jostled as they wheeled him into the Emergency Room… he overheard something about surgery, and absently wondered what conclusions the Mist would draw for the doctors when they saw his injuries.
“Miss, you’ll have to wait hereー”
“No, I canー” Piper started, charmspeak at the ready.
“Pipes,” Jason cut her off. He knew she could get them to let her into the operating room if she really wanted, but he also knew it wouldn’t be safe for either of them, and he didn’t want her to have to see him like that ー limp and cut open. Not after she had seen him die. He squeezed her hand weakly. “I’ll be okay. Take care of yourself. I’ll see you after.”
Conflict flickered across her expression, then she nodded and stepped back. They wheeled him away, and in a moment of deja vu, the last thing he saw before he fell under was her eyes ー worried still, but thankfully lacking the fear from before.
~~~~~~~
He came to consciousness slowly, his awareness filtering back in pieces. Beeping nearby. The chill of air conditioning on his skin. Heavy aches and dull pain everywhere. The sound of shifting cloth to his right.
“Jason?”
Piper’s voice. Soft, questioning, cautious… like she was afraid to be wrong about him finally waking.
His eyelids felt like they were glued together as he pried them open. The room was bright, and everything was foggy. The fog cleared a little, but anything too far away from him stayed blurry (he imagined it would until he got new glasses). The one thing that wasn’t blurry was Piper’s face as she leaned in to peer at him in concern and relief. A bruise stained her brow, but it was already yellowing at the edges, and most of the other cuts on her face had healed. She had a scar on her lip where Caligula had backhanded her (a memory that cut him deeper than the spear)
Jason offered her a weak smile. “Hey. We match now.”
She looked confused by that. With no small amount of effort, he lifted one aching arm and clumsily tapped his own scarred lip. There was a thick plastic clip around his index finger, a wire connecting him to one of the beeping machines.
Piper’s expression softened into something like fond exasperation. “You… are ridiculous.” She shook her head with a smile, then looked at him again. Her gaze flicked from his face to his body, lying propped up in the hospital bed. “How are you feeling?”
“Hurts,” he admitted. “But I guess that’s better than feeling nothing.”
Piper’s lips tightened. “Yeah. I suppose that’s one way of looking at it.”
He looked at her carefully. “How are you?”
A rush of breath left her, like a hollow laugh. “Not nearly in as much pain as you. Had some ambrosia, that healed pretty much everything up within a few hours.” Aside from the scar, he supposed. It must have been too deep.
“That’s not really what I meant,” Jason said softly.
Piper was silent, her gaze fixed on something near his feet (or perhaps something only in her mind’s eye). She fiddled with the edge of the pale beige fleece hospital blanket on her lap. “To be perfectly honest, I think I’ll have nightmares for a while. It’s pretty traumatizing to watch one of your best friends be brutally murdered right in front of you.” She looked at him again, and the smile she managed to give him didn’t quite soften the pain in her eyes. “I’m just so relieved you’re okay. I-I don’t know how… it feels like a miracle…”
He realized that she and the others had no idea what had happened. He hadn’t exactly been in a state to chat, back on the beach.
“It was Kymopoleia,” he explained. “The goddess of stormy seas. The one I promised to build the shrines. When Caligula threw me overboard, she caught me. She gave me ichor to… well, kind of heal me, but in the way burning stops bleeding. Hurt like hell, but did the job.”
“Hence the burns, I guess.” Piper’s gaze fell to his chest. He was all wrapped up in bandages and a hospital gown, but he could imagine he had a nasty-looking burn bored through his chest. It certainly felt tight and stiff like a burn.
He thought back to his fractured memories of the beach, and Tristan McLean telling the 911 operator about him. “What story did you go with, for the doctors?”
Piper released a heavy sigh through her nose and pushed a hand through her hair, shaking her head a little at the ridiculousness of what she was about to say. “You were surfing at night. Got struck by lightning. Then got bit by a shark as you washed ashore.”
Jason let out a thin huff of laughter at that. “That’s almost as unbelievable as what really happened.”
“The Mist really did a number on the mortals.” Piper shrugged. “And considering the scope and type of your injuries, can you think of any better ideas? Pretty sure the truth would land you in a mental hospital.”
“Fair enough.” He supposed that was a good point. If he told the doctor he was speared by a famously-long-dead Roman emperor, tossed overboard, and healed by a twenty foot tall goddess with her godly blood which basically burned him up from inside, he was pretty sure the Mist would make them think he was telling an elaborate and imaginary story. “You do realize that the chances of either of those things ー lightning strike or a shark attack ー happening individually is already extremely low, and put together is nearly impossible?”
Piper lifted her hands in a shrug. “And yet, that’s what they all believe, no questions asked.”
Jason’s gaze drifted to the window. It was bright and sunny outside, the palm trees waving in a slight breeze. For the first time in months, there wasn’t a hint of wildfire smoke in the sky. “The Burning Maze?” he asked.
“Gone,” Piper said. “Apollo and Meg took the shoes and left when the ambulance arrived. They freed the Sibyl and fought the emperor’s forces at Camp Jupiter. Caligula is dead; Frank killed him and avenged you.”
A shiver raced down his back at hearing that last part. Avenged… “I should have been there. With the Legion,” he said quietly.
Piper gave him a tired, exasperated look, like the kind a parent might give a child who tried to put too many snacks in their mouth and was now coughing. “You can’t be the hero all the time, Jace.”
He heard the words she wasn’t saying, too: you can’t fight every battle. You can’t always be the one to sacrifice yourself. She was right ー that had literally gotten him killed. But it was still a hard truth to reckon with.
The nickname caught his attention. “Should we… talk about, that?” he asked cautiously. “About… us?”
Piper sighed and pulled her feet up onto the chair, hugging her knees. “I don’t know what to say, Jason. My feelings are… complicated.” She sighed and pushed a hand through her hair. “When I found out our whole relationship ー all our memories together ー had been an illusion by Hera… I felt hurt. Tricked. Used like a pawn for something I never asked to be a part of. And then Aphrodite… I felt like we were just being pushed together, with no say in it. And I hated that. But I didn’t hate you. I just… you know how much I hate being told what to do.” She laughed ー a short, hard, bitter bark devoid of humor. “Isn’t that ironic? I can make almost anyone do anything I want them to do. But the second someone tells me what to do, I can’t help but want to do the opposite.”
Jason nodded. “I understand. I… I felt that way too, when we first learned the truth.” But he had never once stopped loving her, even through all of that.
Not for the first time since their breakup, he thought back on Cupid's words to him in Croatia: you've found true love, after all... Or do you doubt yourself? No. It was never him who had doubts.
Piper picked at the fuzzy balls pilling on the fleece blanket. “But then… everything we went through ー all those quests, the battles ー I think I started to fall in love with you. But I couldn’t tell… there was always that fear there, that maybe it was just stupid goddesses messing with my head again. That illusion had felt so real, how could I be sure if what I was feeling this time was real or not? So… I pushed you away. And I tried to ignore my feelings, because I didn’t know what to do with them.” She sucked in a shuddery sigh, and her expression shattered like spiderwebbed glass finally splintering as she brought her hand up to cover her eyes. “I just wish it hadn’t taken you dying for me to realize that my love for you was real,” she said, the words barely covering up a sob that broke his heart all over again.
“Piper…” Jason shifted, reaching for her. Pain sparked through his entire body in protest at the movement, but he didn’t care.
“Please don’t,” Piper stopped him. There was no charmspeak in the request, just her voice. She moved closer and took his hand, a wet laugh escaping her. “You’ve got so many tubes in you, I don’t want you to pull something out.”
Jason sat back reluctantly, knowing she was right. It didn’t quell the urge to wrap her in his arms and hold her tight.
Piper looked down at their joined hands and rubbed her thumb over the backs of his knuckles ー a steady back and forth as if to ground herself in his skin. “I want to try again. Now that it’s us choosing to be together, and not the gods. Maybe I didn’t fall in love with the Jason I ‘met’ at the Wilderness School, but I know I did fall in love with the Jason I fought side by side with against Gaea,” she lifted her eyes and met his with a wobbly smile. “Even if he’s sometimes a too-heroic, self-sacrificing idiot.”
He smiled sadly and squeezed her hand. “I’m sorry I wasn’t honest with you. I swear I will be, from now on.”
“I will too.” Piper promised. She leaned in and kissed him ー a feather-light touch of her lips to his, like she was afraid he would break. She lingered there, then pulled back quickly and looked at the door as if she heard something. “Oh. I forgotー”
The hospital room’s door opened before she could finish her sentence, and a familiar voice grumbled “ーentirely your fault we got kicked out. Not even the Mist can conceal you eating the godsdamned silverware …”
“It’s a nervous habit,” a gruff voice muttered in response. “And be quiet, don’t want to disturb theー kid! ”
Thalia gasped at the same moment Coach Hedge let out his exclamation, and the two of them rushed to his bedside.
“Jason! Youー oh, you…” Thalia looked torn between hitting him and hugging him, but ended up settling for placing the cafeteria tray of pitiful-looking hospital food on the couch and instead grabbing his other hand. “When did you wake up?” she asked, looking between him and Piper.
“Few minutes ago,” he said vaguely. Well, give or take…
“And you didn’t call me?!”
“You don’t have a phone…” Piper pointed out.
“When did you get here?” Jason asked them both.
“Couple days ago,” Hedge rubbed his nose. His ruddy face looked even more pink, and he was blinking rapidly as his eyes roved over Jason. He was fighting back tears, he realized. “I came as soon as Apollo and Meg returned with the news. When I got here, I contacted Thalia, and she came within hours.”
“Tempest brought me,” Thalia explained. She shuddered, looking haunted. “I don’t know how you ride him. It was terrifying.”
Jason’s lips twitched as he imagined his sister ー tough as nails, but ironically afraid of heights ー clutching the ventus steed with her eyes screwed shut.
Thalia carefully sat herself on the hospital bed near his hip and hesitantly reached out to cradle his cheek, her sharp eyes taking in his face like she was afraid it would be the last time she saw him. He couldn’t imagine how she had felt, hearing what happened and showing up to find his broken body in a hospital bed.
Moving carefully, like any sudden movements might shatter him, she leaned in and gingerly hugged him as best she could with all the bandages and tubes. He lifted the arm that wasn’t connected to a monitor and curled his fingers into the leather jacket covering her back, tears filling his own eyes as he felt the shuddery breath she drew in. She felt small in his arms, smaller than she should be. He realized, suddenly, that he was technically a year older than her now. But when she pulled back to look at him again, he saw that her eyes were older than her body ー eyes that were still that of his six-years-older big sister.
Movement at his feet caught his attention, and he looked down to find Coach Hedge patting his foot and scowling back his tears. At Jason’s puzzled look, he cleared his throat. “I’m, uh, gettin’ better at being gentle with things, ever since Chuck was born. But I don’t want to crush you. Rest assured, kid, once you’re back to normal, I’m wrapping you up in a big bear hug.”
Jason chuckled. “Looking forward to it, Coach.”
Coach Hedge nodded stiffly and scrubbed at his eye, then glanced at Piper, who was still watching them all from her bedside chair. She laughed a little and got to her feet, and had barely lifted her arms before Hedge was scooping her into a tight hug. “Thanks, kid. I needed that,” he mumbled into her hair. He looked at Jason over Piper’s shoulder and pointed at him. “You’re next. Don’t you dare die before I get to you.”
“I won’t.” Jason looked from Hedge, to Thalia, to Piper, meeting each of their eyes. “I promise.”