Lost Trio Appreciation Central Headquarters

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Chapter 1: Piper

As far as Piper was concerned, her life objectively fucking sucked, and it wasn’t even a little bit her fault.

Sure, she’d gotten in trouble with the administration of her school in LA more times than she could count. Mostly for skipping. There had also maybe been the occasional car theft. And yeah, she sort of got that her burning down the school gym was an issue not even her dad’s money could fix. 

But in her defense, most of those things were on the vampires. 

Not that she could have told her dad about those. Not that he would have listened to her—never mind believed her—if she had.

She imagined the conversation would go down something like this:

“Hey dad, when I turned fifteen I was told I was the chosen one. The only girl in the world able to keep humanity safe from the forces of evil. I’ve been fighting all kinds of monsters for more than a year now.”

“That’s great, honey. Can you pass me the milk?”

It wasn’t that her dad never listened to her because he was constantly busy mentally running lines for work, but… no, actually, that was exactly what it was. 

He definitely hadn’t listened to her about not wanting to move to Sunnydale to live with her mom and older half-sister. But her dad’s evil witch assistant—judgement on whether she was an actual witch or just a figurative one still pending—had convinced her father Piper was acting out for attention, and that the kind of attention she wanted wasn’t compatible with his workload. 

And they’d decided the solution for that was, apparently, dumping her with her other parent who didn’t pay any attention to her. Because that made sense.

I guess now I’m out of his way, if nothing else, Piper thought bitterly.

And now she was trying to unpack while Drew was all up in her business. 

“I can’t believe these are the clothes you own! You’re aware mom founded a world-renowned Fashion House, right? Besides, your dad is a movie star! How is your taste this bad?” She sniffed at one of Piper’s shirts, which had committed the criminal offense of being solid color and not a name brand. 

Piper snatched it back. “Stay out of my closet.”

Aside from the fact that dresses made her skin itch and expensive clothes had always seemed like a waste of money to her, they were also just massively impractical for Slayer work. Piper had never been confident when it came to running in heels, and she definitely wasn’t going to trade her sneakers in for them anytime soon. Also, if expensive clothes were a waste of money, expensive clothes that you only got to wear once because they got shredded or you couldn’t get the blood and monster slime out of them were an even worse offense. At least with her discounter clothes, nobody thought twice about it if they ended up rumpled or a little stained, and if she had to ceremoniously burn one of them, she wouldn’t miss it too much.  

“I’m not in your closet. You’re the one who dumped these clothes all over the floor,” Drew pointed out. “And god forbid I want to see if I can at least borrow some clothes in return for graciously agreeing to share my bathroom with you going forward.” Her eyes drifted over to the massive wooden chest that was still sitting unopened in the middle of Piper’s room. “Ooooh, what’s in this one? Is that where you keep the good stuff?” she sing-songed, walking over towards it.

“That’s the box I brought to lock up nosy sisters who snoop around in my things,” Piper informed her, satisfied when Drew tried to yank open the lid and was promptly stopped by the lock.

She was glad she’d had the forethought to make sure no one but her could open that chest. Drew had already made fun of her for being hyper-religious because of the small golden cross necklace Piper wore. As funny as the thought of her sister freaking out over her collection of wooden crosses and holy water was, it wasn’t really worth the risk. Besides, Piper really didn’t feel like explaining her weapons’ arsenal.

“Whatever.” Drew rolled her eyes. “Mom told me to take you to school with me, since you got your license revoked. I’m not required to be nice about it, though. If you’re not ready by seven on the dot, you’re walking.”

“That’s way too early!” Piper complained. The school was only a ten minute drive away from the house. She really didn’t feel like hanging out there for 45 minutes before classes even started. 

There should have been laws against license revocation under supernatural circumstances, anyway. Forget speeding. If she hadn’t cleared out that vampire den before sunset, people would have died. 

“Not my problem,” Drew said with a shrug. “Also, I need at least an hour to get ready in the morning, but from the way you look, I doubt you spend more than thirty seconds a month in front of a mirror, so I don’t think we’ll run into trouble there.”

“Some of us don’t need to put on three bazillion layers of makeup to hide the fact that we’re demons,” Piper shot back, scowling. 

She doubted Drew was any sort of actual demon—though she did have something that looked suspiciously like vamp face when she scowled at her—which was unfortunate, because that meant she had to actually figure out how to live with her half-sister instead of getting to send her back into whatever hell dimension she’d crawled out of.

“If that was supposed to be an insult, it needs work. I know I’m pretty. You trying to tell me otherwise isn’t gonna do shit.” Drew grinned at her. “My makeup isn’t the one that needs work.”

She gestured vaguely in the general direction of Piper’s face.

Piper rolled her eyes again—this time so hard that her dad would have made that stupid joke about them falling out one day if she kept doing it. She shoved the thought aside. She tried not to think about her dad too hard at the moment. “Are you done waving the house rules at me now? I’d like to finish unpacking without you being in my face the whole time.”

“Urgh, like I even want to be talking to you,” Drew shot back, sounding vaguely bored. “Dinner’s in the fridge. If you can’t figure out how to use the microwave, just. I don’t know. Google it. My room’s down the hall, but don’t even think about bothering me if you have problems.”

With that, her sister turned her back and left, meaning that, for the first time since Piper had arrived at her mom’s place, she was finally—finally—alone.

~~~~

When they arrived at school the next morning, Piper was still annoyed that Drew had made her get up as early as she had. To her surprise, there were plenty of students already milling around despite the ungodly hour. This place had to be a supernatural hotspot—she could think of no other reason why such a high number of teenagers would show up to school early if they hadn’t been hexed.

“I’m feeling generous, so I suppose I can give you a small tour, seeing as it’s your first day and all,” Drew stated more than offered, dragging Piper along by the arm. 

Piper supposed she could have declined, but getting lost and getting into trouble for being late on her first day seemed stupid when she knew she was about to have many more pressing reasons to be late shortly.

Drew showed her how to get to her different classrooms, the lockers, the library and the cafeteria. They passed the bathrooms and the gym and then took a short walk around the courtyard. Piper would have commented on this being uncharacteristically nice of her sister—would have maybe even considered her genuinely having been hexed during the night—but considering Drew spent the whole time spreading shitty gossip about her classmates, she clearly wasn’t cured of whatever her problem was, exactly. 

They’d made their “tour” of the school grounds mostly without being bothered so far, but once they’d crossed the courtyard and come to a slightly more secluded spot by the stairs, a kid who was around Piper’s age suddenly walked up to them. His posture was casual, but his dark eyes—half hidden beneath a mop of curly black hair—twinkled with mischief. 

He held a notebook to his chest that, upon closer inspection, appeared to have Drew’s name written on the front in fancy script. Huh.

“Math homework,” he announced, holding out his hand. “Pay up, Tanaka.”

Drew rolled her eyes, then pressed a crumpled-up fifty dollar bill into his hand. “Don’t push it, Valdez. I only got a C+ on the last coding assignment you did for me.”

“Yeah, well, if you hand in assignments that are way above the level of your written exams, they’ll realize you’re not the one doing them, don’t you think?” he pointed out. “I’ve got no interest in getting you caught. You’re my best customer.”

Piper decided this seemed like a good moment to cut in. 

She wasn’t necessarily judging Drew. Math homework sucked. But it also suddenly occurred to her that Drew’s illegal homework-buying activities were probably what her sister had made her get up early for, and she was absolutely annoyed at her for that. The least she could do was annoy her back a little in return.

“I mean, he’s sort of got a point,” Piper announced, which immediately turned Drew’s face sour, but also made the boy grin at her. 

“Finally, someone understands my business model,” he exclaimed, raising his hands as if in prayer. Then he held one of them out towards her. “I’m Leo. You’re new, right? What sort of misfortune did you encounter to be stuck with Drew on your first day?”

“Piper,” she replied with a grin of her own, shaking his hand. “And it’s a family curse. Tragically, she’s my sister.”

“Ah.” Leo nodded his understanding. “That sucks.”

“Ugh, I hate both of you,” Drew said with a scowl. “Can you just give me my homework? I don’t want to be seen with you.” 

“Feeling’s mutual.” Leo held it out towards her. “Look, if you give me sixty bucks for the next assignment, I’ll get you a B-. Deal?”

Drew rolled her eyes, snatching the notebook from him. “Fine.”

“Pleasure doing business with you.”

Then he crossed the courtyard, plopping down on the short wall on the other side next to a blond guy that was a full head taller than him.

Drew caught Piper staring and looked at her sharply.

“Word of advice: unless you immediately want to torch your social life, try not to associate with those two. Social outcasts, the both of them. Jason’s hot, but don’t let that fool you. The kid’s weird as hell. Didn’t speak in anything but growls for months after he moved here when he was eight. Probably trauma or whatever, since his family died right before. I could sort of excuse that, I guess? But he bit a kid.” Drew shook her head. “And then he started hanging out with Valdez, like he needed his social status to be any more shot than it already was.”

Piper made a mental note to keep an eye on Jason. Sure, it could have been a trauma reaction, but she’d rather put him on a werewolf watchlist and be wrong about it than be surprised by an unexpected supernatural being at her school. That had happened to her an embarrassing amount of times at her old school, and she’d rather avoid it this time around.

“What’s so bad about Leo? He just seems… smart and kind of sassy,” she asked, genuinely confused.

“Ugh, exactly. Like, if you’re gonna be a nerd, at least commit to being a nerd, you know? Stay in your lane.”

“Ah.” So her sister was just being a jerk, then. Noted.

Drew was either oblivious to Piper’s annoyance or—more likely—willfully ignorant of it.

“He also hangs around the graveyard at night, like, a lot.” Drew wrinkled her nose. “Who does that?” 

Yeah, Piper was definitely going to have to keep an eye on those two. “Are Leo and Jason in my year?”

Drew scoffed. “Did you not listen to a word I just said?”

“Oh, I did. I’m just choosing to ignore you,” Piper informed her with a grin. “I’ll form my own opinions on who I do or don’t want to hang out with, thanks.”

“Your funeral.” Her sister rolled her eyes. “Speaking of funerals: you’ve got P.E. today, right?” Drew lowered her voice dangerously. “Try not to burn the gym down. I’m gonna make cheerleading captain this year, and if you ruin that for me, I will murder you.”

“Believe it or not, I don’t just go around setting fire to school gyms for fun,” Piper replied with a scowl—though, honestly, the thought of that suddenly seemed at least a little appealing knowing it would inconvenience her sister. 

“I’ll believe it when I see it.”

With that, Drew walked off, leaving Piper to fend for herself.

~~~~

As Piper stood alone next to the gym entrance at the end of the day, she realized with a pang that she kind of missed her old school. Sure, it had been a snooty school for rich kids, most of which were pretty unbearable to be around. But at least she’d had a few friends before the whole Slayer business had forced her to constantly lie and ditch them. Besides, they’d still sort of tolerated her presence, despite the strain Piper’s whole Chosen One business had taken on all of her relationships. Rachel, at least, had even still felt like her friend. 

At Sunnydale High, Piper got to start out as the weird kid that unpleasant stuff happened around all the time. She probably wasn’t going to make a single friend here.

Her previous Watcher had warned her about this, even if he hadn’t used those exact words. Hedge had told her that “a girl like you doesn’t need any dead weight keeping her down. Way easier to hit things with a stick if you don’t have to worry about people you care about getting in the way,” which was, admittedly, a nicer way to put it than “you’re going to be friendless and die alone”, but that didn’t make the reality of it any less depressing. 

Slayers were destined to be alone. That was how it had always been.

Piper really thought she’d gotten the short end of this stupid destiny stick. She wasn’t even getting paid for this nonsense.

Piper hated to admit it, but she missed Coach Hedge. The council had sent him in to pose as her father’s personal trainer, since that was the only way to have someone consistently at her side who was able to train her despite the constant paparazzi problem. 

She assumed his training had been rather… unconventional, by Watcher standards, since she wasn’t entirely convinced the guy had ever opened a book in his life, but his weird combination of encouragement, enthusiasm and yelling at her to hit things had worked for her. He’d been ecstatic when she told him about burning down the school gym, calling it an “efficient job well done”, even if he’d warned her the Council might not see it the same way.

Piper couldn’t imagine being trained by anyone else.

Unfortunately, she’d be finding out what that would be like very soon. Due to his cover story of working for her dad, transferring Hedge over to Sunnydale High had not been an option—that, and the Council had apparently decided she needed someone to manage her who was “a little more by the book”. Piper was already dreading to find out what exactly that meant.

Hedge had kept his job working for her dad, and he and his wife had promised to keep an eye on her father—to protect him from Jane, the potential witch assistant, and anything else that might have caught a whiff of Piper being the Slayer and decided hurting her dad would be a good way to get to her. She slept more soundly knowing he was in good hands, even if it meant having to put up with a new Watcher.

Considering most of her mother’s time was spent at the Aphrodite offices, working on her fall collection, Piper didn’t think she had any personal assistants her daughters would regularly interact with. Besides, training in the house would be far less convenient with Drew around. For both of those reasons, she’d suspected someone at her school would be in charge of her training this time around.

But aside from a long, unpleasant talk with the principal about her habitual ditching of classes, car theft and burning down of gyms (seriously, that last one had only happened once, she wasn’t sure why everyone got so hung up on it), no one had tried to approach her so far. The only interest her teachers had shown in her beyond her introduction was based on a general sense of suspicion towards someone who’d clearly already been labeled a troublemaker. Even her visit to the library—librarian seemed like an obvious cover story for a Watcher, especially one that actually worked with books—had been entirely mundane. 

Piper had tried to busy herself with keeping an eye on Jason and Leo, but luckily for everyone involved, that task had been pretty boring. The most eventful thing she’d observed was Jason dropping his books earlier this morning, but the cause of that hadn’t exactly been supernatural. It had just been a girl.

Piper supposed she couldn’t blame him. Reyna—which was a name she’d heard a lot over the course of the day, considering the girl’s hand was always up, no matter the question—was objectively gorgeous. Her black hair had been carefully woven into a neat braid, her eyes were dark and intense and gorgeous and she was muscular in a way that Piper was entirely and completely normal about, thank you very much. She was quietly grateful she herself hadn’t been holding any books when she’d first spotted her.

Reyna was sort of a transfer, the way Piper was, but she also wasn’t new to Sunnydale. From what Piper had gathered, Reyna had gone to school here for a while, then spent some time in the UK to take a bunch of advanced classes, and now she was back. This meant most people here already knew who she was and she was therefore stared at way less than Piper herself was for being the new kid.

Not that Piper had been paying that much attention to Reyna, anyway. Currently, she definitely wasn’t paying even the slightest bit of attention to the way Reyna’s shoulders looked in her sleeveless sports shirt. 

She shook her head, turning back towards Jason and Leo. She needed to focus. At least until she’d properly ruled out any supernatural shenanigans surrounding these two. After that, she could reevaluate whether distracting herself by staring at cute girls was also a part of her destiny.

Leo and Jason were standing pretty close together near the entrance to the gym now. One of Leo’s hands rested on Jason’s arm while Jason seemed a million miles away. 

Piper startled when Leo abruptly lifted his head, looking right at her. The soft smile he’d been giving Jason turned into a scowl, and suddenly he was right in front of Piper with an expression that was almost a snarl.

“Listen, if you’re gonna give us shit for something, can you do it on literally any other day?” he bit out, all the friendliness and charm from earlier gone from his voice. “I know I’m fun and whatever, but you watching us all day like a complete weirdo is not appreciated. I don’t know what your sister told you, but please just leave us be.”

So apparently she wasn’t nearly as good at being subtle when it came to people watching as she’d thought. Shit.

“I wasn’t-” she started, but Leo just shook his head, expression sour.

“Save it.”

Then he was gone.

Great. She was still on day one, and she’d already managed to ruin one potential friendship with her Slayer nonsense. This was off to a fantastic start.

~~~~

Piper was supernaturally good at sports. That was one of the few upsides of this whole Chosen One-nonsense. If she’d hoped to impress anyone with this at her new school, she ended up sorely disappointed, though. Because somehow, despite a year of combat experience and her natural abilities, Reyna left her in the dust. She was faster than her during running, did better than her during every single one of their warmup exercises and then spent the rest of P.E. constantly getting her eliminated during dodgeball. The first one or two times Piper maybe could have brushed off as a coincidence, but over the course of the game, even other people started to pick up on the fact that Reyna was constantly aiming for her. Every time her throws found their target, Reyna shook her head, almost like she was disappointed in Piper. The whole thing was beyond bizarre.

“Sheesh, what’d you do to piss her off?” Leo asked, briefly sounding sympathetic before apparently remembering that he was also mad at Piper. Considering they were on the same team, at least he didn’t take it out on her with dodgeballs—though, from what she’d seen, she didn’t think he posed much of a threat on that front to begin with. Leo was great at the dodging part of the game, but significantly less great at hitting anything that was more than a foot away from him. 

What was worse than Reyna having it out for her was that Piper was utterly unable to get even a single hit in on her in return. The one throw she almost managed to knock her out of the game with, Reyna caught, giving her a disapproving shake of her head as Piper walked off the field. During other circumstances, having Reyna’s undivided attention would have been thrilling, but whatever brief spark of attraction Piper had felt towards her this morning was quickly smothered by her growing aggravation. What the hell was this girl’s problem?

By the time class was over, Piper almost hoped for a monster encounter, just so she’d have something to take her anger out on. 

Except then she opened the wrong locker and suddenly, she was holding a limp body in her arms. 

Piper didn’t scream, but everyone around her sure took care of that one for her. Everyone except Reyna, anyway. 

“Someone get help,” she barked, then moved to stand beside Piper, gently helping her lay the body—and it was a body, not a person, it was too cold for there to be any person left inside—down on the cold tiles. The telltale bite marks on the boy’s neck informed Piper that she really should have been more careful what she wished for. 

Reyna checked for a pulse, but Piper could tell from her grim expression that she didn’t expect to find one. She gently closed the boy’s wide, staring eyes and muttered something that sounded like an apology. Then she gripped Piper’s arm.

“Do you understand how serious this is now?” she asked, giving Piper a hard look. The changing room had cleared out around them, which was an effect that dead classmates usually tended to have on people. “I was told your previous Watcher was… lacking. But you should have been out on patrol last night. People are going to keep getting killed if you don’t get your act together. Do you understand that?”

Piper was frozen in place, staring at Reyna. She tried and failed to make sense of her words. Reyna may as well have been speaking Chinese.

“I- who are you?” was the only thing that came out of her mouth. 

“I’m your new Watcher,” Reyna informed her, which finally made Piper’s brain stop buffering. 

“What the fuck?” Right, so maybe it wasn’t entirely done buffering, then. “Aren’t you supposed to be an adult? Is the council that understaffed?”

Reyna gave her a withering look and didn’t even bother to acknowledge her questions. “We need to make sure he’s not going to turn. Do you have your equipment with you?”

And, because this was apparently Piper’s life now, she sighed and pulled a bottle of holy water out of her bag.

———

Notes:

-This fic is dedicated to @poppitron360 for getting me into Buffy and letting me ramble at them about Buffy, the lost trio, and specifically a lost trio Buffy AU!

-This is also a very, very late entry for last year’s @lost-trio-week, specifically the Fantasy prompt.

-All four chapters are written and two (probably three as of sometime this weekend) have been posted over on ao3, I’m just kind of slow when it comes to reposting

-The dynamics here are not based on the Buffy crew, but Drew really wanted to be Cordelia, and honestly, who was I to stop her.

Leo knew the gods were powerful, but he didn’t know they were “bitch slap the Argo II halfway across the world” powerful. He was just grateful he got his harness secured to the center console before Zeus decided to proceed with Operation Boomshakalaka. Still, that didn’t stop him from feeling like he’d taken a ride on a high voltage rollercoaster after dinner from a sketchy gas station and a few rounds at the dive-iest of dive bars.

Beneath him, the yellowish-green grass of Camp Half-Blood came into focus, complete with burning cabins and bloody lake water.

How picturesque. It wasn’t like Leo had the time to appreciate the view, though, since the Argo II screeching to a halt (if a ship in mid-air could even screech) sent him rocketing headfirst into the controls.

Rubbing his forehead, Leo forced his lighter than air body to whirl around, facing Jason and Piper, who had fixed themselves to the mast. “Get going!” Leo shouted over the tinny ringing in his ears, frowning heavily at them. They frowned right back.

Leo frowned harder and turned back to the console, waving them off with one hand as the other fumbled to unlatch his harness. The hatch slammed open, revealing Hazel’s cloud of curls with Frank right behind her. The splintering wood creaked under the weight of their disoriented footsteps. “Go!” Leo yelled. “Go, go, go!”

Buford was not helping—or at least, he wasn’t helping Leo. Coach Hedge’s voice blared from the table’s speaker, which Leo was beginning to regret installing, projecting evacuation protocol over and over again. Leo’s fingers stumbled every time the word “cupcake” was uttered.

Jason’s hand came down on his shoulder. When Leo spared a glance back at him, he spotted Piper just behind Jason, clutching the guardrail like a drowning woman. “Leo, you won’t make it!” Jason had to scream to be heard over the clamor, even at such a close distance. “Come with us!”

Leo shook his head adamantly, hands still working feverishly to keep the ship in the air long enough. “You won’t make out if you don’t leave right the fuck now!” He pushed Jason towards Piper and turned back to his harness. His fingers slipped yet again. Nothing was working with him today, it seemed.

Piper reached for him as she made a weak attempt at charmspeak. “Leo, please—”

“Save it, Pipes! I told you, I’ve got a plan. Now, go!”

Jason gave him one last lingering, meaningful look that Leo didn’t know what to make heads or tails of before taking Piper’s hand and shooting off into the sky. Piper was still reaching for him, protests fading into the background quickly.

Leo, with his gaze still fixed on where his best friends had disappeared over the edge of the Argo II, took a deep breath that didn’t stop him from hyperventilating for more than ten seconds. His fingers moved faster than his brain could think, and though that currently wasn’t saying much, it was working. For now. He’d worry about how fast his brain was braining when the world wasn’t at stake.

The floor beneath him began to split open, revealing Festus’ new celestial bronze and tin and copper (and anything else he could get his hands on, there were at least two cases of coca-cola cans strewn throughout) skin.

Leo was so busy uncovering Festus, prying up boards and pushing aside boxes, that he didn’t notice the mast splinter behind him. He turned around just in time to see it tip over in slow motion, watching it fall like he was a deer in headlights. It wasn’t until the last second that he scrambled to unhook himself from the harness, all the while never taking his eyes off the plummeting column, but it was too late.

The last thing he felt was overwhelming pain. He felt it in his head first: a skull-cracking impact that turned the wooden mast a dark, dripping red. Then it was his neck, stretching backwards and backwards and back further still until it felt like his head would surely fall off—

Snap.

Huh.

He had thought it would be more… momentous, he guessed. But no, his death was about as earth-shattering as the snap of a twig.

There was nothing else after that. Well, there was a dull ache in his shoulders and neck, and the distinct feeling of untetheredness, he supposed, but nothing else.

His vision went darker than a winter night and the sound of near freezing water droned on in the back of his mind. He had never seen the Underworld for himself, but from what Annabeth had described of it, this—whatever this was—wasn’t it. Where were the fields? The three-headed dog? The endless line of spirits waiting to be judged?

He was pondering all this when something moved. It was hard to tell, since everything was shadows on shadows on shadows, but Leo was pretty sure something moved. A shape, just as dark as the rest of the world at the moment, reached out towards him. Leo got the feeling he was out of his depth.

A chilly voice washed over his ears. “Are you with me?” It asked.

Leo struggled to find his voice. Actually, now that he thought about it, he was struggling to find his lungs. Was he even sure he had found his body, yet?

He choked out a sound, which the presence just took as a yes. “Good. Good,” it approved. “Get back at it, demigod. You’ve got a promise to fulfill.”

Before Leo had the chance to get a question out (he could think of many), he was back in his body.

His shoulders didn’t hurt anymore and he could actually feel his fingers again. He was on the bow of the Argo II again. A quick glance behind him revealed that the mast was still up.

So… he wasn’t dead?

gLeo was forced into reality again when Piper called out to him. She tried to lunge towards him and out of Jason’s arms, but despite his sagging posture, Jason held tight to her forearm. Well, that isn’t a good sign, Leo thought to himself. We haven’t even joined the battle yet and we’re already looking defeated.

Sparing a fearful dart of the eyes towards the mast, Leo unclipped his harness in one try. “Go! Just go!” Leo urged. Without checking to see if they listened, he activated the protocol to release Festus.

The whistle of wind fluttered through his hair and when Leo looked back, they were gone.

The Argo II broke apart under his feet. The mast did fall, but on attempt number two, Leo rolled out of the way and stumbled back to Festus.

“C’mon, c’mon,” Leo whispered to his dragon as they careened towards the side of a hill.

The sound of an explosion rang out behind him, and he looked back to discover that—the Romans had fucking cannons now? Oh, joy. That was exactly what he had wanted for Christmas.

Leo kicked aside an overturned barrel and went back to prying up boards. Festus roared frustratedly. “I know, buddy, it’s ridiculous. I’d give anything for a cannon right now.”

Festus roared in offense.

“Not you, buddy,” Leo amended.

If he was any less busy with saving the world, Leo would have given himself a pat on the back for how cool Festus looked, bursting from the wreckage of the Argo II like a phoenix. The sun caught his metal skin brilliantly, making him shine like Camp Half-Blood’s very own star.

As it currently stood, though, Leo was trying very hard not to die again.

He scrambled onto Festus’ back just as the last of the Argo II slammed into the ground. As his hands scrambled for purchase on his dragon’s smooth hide, he found himself wishing he had added more than just a seatbelt and reins. Festus 1.0 had had built-in seats and everything. Why couldn’t he let himself have nice things?

He really, really missed them. One of the other things he missed was any chance at staying on Festus’ back as the dragon was forced to propel himself upwards to avoid the same fate as the Argo II.

The last thing he saw before he collided with the earth was Festus nosediving down towards him. The gears inside Festus’ maw worked overtime as the metal dragon let out a wail. Leo flailed as he fell, because, despite having died before, he was not eager to repeat the experience.

As soon as his back hit the ground, everything was dark again. He guessed he should count himself lucky he didn’t have to feel the full weight of a metal dragon crushing him. That would hurt much more than a mast.

“Hello?” Leo called out, unsure if his voice would get out of his throat. “Are you here again or am I dead for real this time?”

The darkness didn’t respond for a good, long while. Then, there was the sound of layers upon layers of smooth fabric shifting and moving against one another. Thick, coarse hair, the same otherworldly black as everything else here, fell into place on either side of him. He didn’t know how it came to rest on anything, exactly, since there didn’t seem to be a floor underneath him. Just… darkness.

“I’m here,” the frigid presence answered.

“I guessed so,” Leo said, reaching out to brush one of the strands before thinking better of it. “Who are you? Why did you bring me back to life? Was that even what that was? Is this a dream? Are you gonna revive me again?” He asked, all in one breath, thinking he wouldn’t have the chance to if last time was anything to go on.

The presence paused, thinking for a moment. “Yes,” it answered.

“To which qu—estion. Goddamnit,” Leo, who was currently on the deck of the Argo II, groaned.

He didn’t know how to feel about it, but he had gotten the hang of that first part by then. Tell Jason and Piper to run for the hills, ignore Jason’s puppy eyes, dodge the mast, climb aboard Festus, and bada-bing bada-boom, he was one step closer to killing Gaia.

Until the fucking Romans with their fucking cannons waltzed into the picture.

Leo wasn’t expecting to be blown off of Festus’ back by a flaming sphere of whatever-the-fuck, but one moment he was flying high, and the next he was clocked in the torso by a cannonball. What was he, a pirate? He wished. Battening down the hatches and shivering timbers all day would probably be easier than piloting a metal dragon.

The last thing he saw before the darkness was the sky. It looked too pretty for a day like the one he was living.

Or not living. Whatever.

Leo crossed his arms and stared out into the abyss, hoping he was glaring at the presence and not just empty space. “This time, could you try being a little less… ah, I don’t know how to say this, creepy as shit?”

The presence’s earthshaking voice came from behind him. “It would be wise of you to watch your words in front of me, demigod,” it sneered.

He didn’t bother turning around. It wasn’t like he would be able to see anything if he did. “Cryptic! That's the word.”

“And why should I be? Are you deserving?”

“I’m deserving of your help, apparently. Why shouldn’t I be deserving of answers?”

“Would you do your job any better if you knew who I was?”

The answer was no, to be honest, but curiosity killed the cat, and satisfaction brought it back. Leo kinda sorta needed that right now. “It would be one less distraction,” he admitted.

The presence hummed in thought. It did a lot of that, now that Leo thought about it. “I am a friend of Nemesis,” it decided.

“Huh,” Leo wondered. “I didn’t think she had any of those.”

“She didn’t think you had any, either.”

“Harsh.”

“She is. That is why you hate her, is it not?”

“Hate her?” Leo balked. Sure, the lady—goddess, whatever—was an asshole, but he made an effort not to dwell on his encounter with her. As such, the muddle of feelings he felt about her were lying untouched in the attic of his brain. It would be a while yet before he deciphered them all. “Do I hate Nemesis?”

The presence let out a noise akin to a chuckle. “I know you do, even if you don’t. I am something of an authority on the subject.”

That, being the closest thing he had gotten to a hint all day, got Leo’s attention. “Why do you know that? Wait! Don’t do that annoying thing where you—fuck my life.”

Leo swore he could hear the presence laughing at him as he found his footing on the bow of the Argo II.

It was easy enough to get on Festus’ back, at this point. This time, when the cannonballs started flying, Leo made sure to give them a wide berth.

The only thing left to do was to kill Gaia.

Wind tore at his hair and orange camp shirt as the bronze dragon jetted down to where the primordial goddess rose from the ground, rupturing floors and crushing walls as she, well, unearthed herself. A nagging voice in the back of his head told him Festus wouldn’t be enough for this job. His claws were barely wide enough to hold her head, by the looks of it; how the hell would he carry the whole goddess?

Leo made a very questionable decision and decided to ignore that voice.

Festus swiped at Gaia as they got closer, smacking her with his tail, catching her hair on fire with a puff of flame. But the most reaction they ever got from Gaia was her earthen lips twisting up into an amused smile.

He was too late.

Leo whipped his head around, searching for anyone that could help him. He was too far from ground, too close to Gaia for anyone to reach him. His hesitation was all the goddess needed to raise her colossal hand up and grab Festus’ tail, anchoring them.

Only her hand didn’t stay a hand. It swallowed Festus’ shiny coat, absorbing it like thirsty soil. And Leo couldn’t do jack shit about it—he and his dragon were sinking into the dirt, and all Leo could do was watch as death number four headed towards him at a steady march.

aThe last thing he saw this time, as he scrabbled at heavy clay, was Jason. The blond was running to the base of Gaia’s torso, reaching up at him and falling to his knees as Leo’s eyeline sank beneath the soil.

Leo didn’t have time to process that disturbing image before he was back in the void. As the waves of silence washed over his ears, Leo shook his head clear, attempting to focus. “Okay, so,” Leo stated, “you’re a hate god?”

His kinder teachers had always told him there was no such thing as a bad question, but it seemed he had finally found one. “A?” The presence snarled.

“Sorry! Sorry,” Leo yelped, not wanting a hate god—sorry, the hate god to hate him. He wouldn’t appreciate that on his track record. “You’re the god of hate, right?”

“Goddess,” she corrected, her words accompanied by the sound of water splashing violently.

“Sorry again,” he apologized for good measure. “You got a name? ’Cuz I hate to tell you, but I don’t have a number for ‘goddess of hate’ in my contacts.”

The goddess grumbled, and if Leo could see them, he would bet money on the fact that her eyes were narrowed. “Trust me, you know my name. Now, get back to work; you have an oath to fulfill.”

“An oath?” He asked himself, already leafing through the file cabinets of his mind palace for an answer even as his fingers pushed buttons on the console in the present.

Well, there was the bet he had made with Frank during dinner that one time. Thank the gods he had actually managed to eat more hot dogs than Frank, otherwise he would be doomed to toil in the Styx for all of his afterlife.

Oh. Styx.

Leo suddenly felt very stupid.

He was also pretty sure that the hot dog oath wasn’t what the goddess was referring to. The answer came to him soon enough, though, making him grimace as he thought back to that night on the Argo II—back when it wasn’t a flaming comet of destruction.

Piper had managed to drag him and Jason to her room so they could all get a proper night’s sleep, for once. Leo had whined performatively, waved his wrench around like it would end up demonstrating his point for him, but he had, of course, followed her when she asked him to.

She didn’t even have to use charmspeak.

And now, Leo was lying across both Jason and Piper in Piper’s bed, while Jason’s breaths evened out underneath Leo’s cheek. But he could feel Piper’s eyes on him even though his weren’t open. “What is it?” Leo asked, voice thick with drowsiness.

Without a word, she reached up and tucked a curl behind his ear.

Leo sighed and cracked open his eyes. “Pipes, are you thinking about the prophecy again?” He questioned further, acting like it hadn’t been the only thing on his mind the past few days, bouncing around his brain like a DVD screensaver.

Piper nodded and rolled onto her back. Her hand was still grasping Jason’s like a kid with their treasured teddy bear. “I’m scared,” she confessed. Her words were low and hesitant to come out of her mouth. “You guys are my best friends. I don’t want either of you to die and… and I don’t know what to do about it.”

“Piper…” Leo started. He didn’t know how to finish.

“I just wish we could be normal together,” Piper huffed, gaining steam. “I wish we got to complain about normal shit like our chemistry teachers not putting in our grades, or how I can’t make it to the mall on Friday because my dad’s working and can’t drive me there, or how Jason totally should’ve gotten the lead role in the play instead of that other guy. I don’t want to save the world. We’re kids. Can’t they see that?” She didn’t have to specify who ‘they’ were for Leo to know who she was talking about. “Can’t they see we’re just kids?”

As Piper’s words collapsed into sobs, Leo was overwhelmed by the urge to stop fighting entirely. How bad would it really be, to just relax and enjoy the last few days of the Earth while they could still breathe? Why couldn’t he just park the Argo on a nice beach and spend the end of the world looking at the sunset over the Mediterranean with his best friends? But he shuts that train of thought down quickly. Piper had her dad to think of, and Jason had his friends in New Rome. Even the others had their camps and their families. Leo? Leo had nothing outside of that room, and it wasn’t even his.

“We’re gonna be okay, Pipes,” Leo promised. He didn’t elaborate. But tears were still running down Piper’s cheeks, so he kept going. “We’re gonna get our happy ending.”

Piper shook her head. “How do you know that?”

“Because you guys are amazing, and I’d do anything for y’all,” he said with a shrug, casually being more honest than he had been in years. The world ended in less than a week and he didn’t have anything to lose. It wasn’t like he’d have a gravestone to crave these words on. Piper moved to speak again, but Leo grabbed her hand before she could. “Piper,” he started, making what may have been the biggest mistake of his life while also not regretting a single thing, “I swear on the Styx that we’re gonna have a happy ending.”

And then he was back in the present. He’d gotten farther than he had in his past attempts. When he looked down, Gaia was wedged within Festus’ claws. Jason was flying beside him, Piper in his arms screaming her lungs out, forcing the primordial goddess’ eyes to fall shut. The image of one of his best friends singing a screamo lullaby while the Earth herself snored like a chainsaw would have almost been funny if he wasn’t currently trying not to kill himself (for once).

“Go!” He yelled at Jason and Piper. He was crying, but the tears boiled off his cheeks the moment they made contact. Words were getting hard to shape. “Get out of here!”

Jason just looked at him like a confused dog, while Piper reached out towards him like she could grab his flaming hand if she just tried a little harder.

But Leo didn’t have any time to waste, and he never did, if his first death had anything to say about it. His neck still hurt.

Fire erupted from his skin as he dug his ankles into Festus’ sides and his hands fused to the dragon’s neck. And yet, Jason and Piper were still right next to him.

“Leo! Get down from there!” Jason pleaded, and he was half-convinced to listen. Their faces faded somewhat with another flap of Festus’ wings, but in a flash, they were at his side again.

Leo’s heart warmed. It might have been because of the frustration boiling over inside of him. “You guys are so fucking stu—”

jAnd then, everything was light.

The last things Leo saw weren’t golden flames and orange skies. They were charred purple fabric and choppy brown hair burnt to a crisp. They were the bodies of his friends as they plummeted towards the lake below.

Smoke cloyed at his lungs and he didn’t bother breathing it out. Blurry black spots appeared at the edge of his vision, and he did not fight the darkness, this time, when it came for him.

Styx sounded almost gleeful when she spoke. “You did it! Gaia is dead. And to think, Nemesis said it couldn’t be done,” she chuckled. “Of course, I said to her that it must be done—the Fates told us that over brunch. Ever the contrarian, that Nemesis,” she shared anecdotally. “There’s nothing to be done for her. But for you, demigod, the happiest ending of all lies in wait: Elysium.”

Leo stayed silent. Despite the pitch black that surrounded him, all he could see was fire.

He could practically hear the odd look Styx was giving him when she started talking again. “I’m assuming you don’t want to use the cure? That can be arranged easily enough,” she asserted. “Get ready for your hero’s welcome in the Underworld, demigod. Your friends will be waiting for you by the banks of the Lethe when you arrive.” She leaned forward, giving him a hesitant, not at all reassuring pat on the head. “I hope you enjoy your happy ending.”

A novel sort of panic welled up inside Leo’s chest. “Wait!”

Styx huffed. “You’re telling a goddess to wait, boy? Bold.”

Leo pointedly ignored that comment. He was pretty sure he said worse things to Hera as a kid. “What is going on? Why have you been resurrecting me?” He screamed, the words clawing their way out of his throat without so much as a thought. “Isn’t Hades your boss?”

“Hades? My boss?” Styx cut him off with a hearty, if ominous, laugh. It was like glass shattering. “I am a titaness, eldest of the Oceanids, daughter of Oceanus and Tethys—Poseidon would cower in my presence. What business would a thing like Hades have giving orders to me?”

Leo took a deep breath and tried to calm down in an effort to remain un-smited.

“As for the resurrections…well. I have my favorites, as does any god. Apollo has his Oracle, Artemis has her hunters, and I have you: a demigod whose promise was relatively easy to fulfill and whose success would benefit me far more than their failure,” the goddess answered disinterestedly. “Consider your previous deaths trial runs, and your last one, the real thing.”

“But this isn’t what I meant,” he cried. “This isn’t a happy ending at all. We’re dead; they’re dead.” He thought of all the things Piper wanted—chemistry teachers, trips to the mall, school plays, nice, normal lives—and he glared up at where he estimated Styx’s eyes were. He had tears in his. “You’ve gotta let me try again.”

An aggressive tidal wave swept across the space, silhouetting the goddess as it rushed over her, too. The tsunami didn’t even faze her, flowing around her titanic frame that easily reached fifty feet despite her being hunched over him like a vengeful spirit.

Leo shook off the lingering moisture and picked his jaw up off the floor after recovering from liquid fear invading his veins. “Okay,” he whispered, “okay. Yeah. I get it, you all powerful beings aren’t too keen on being ordered around by mortals, but what I’m saying is, why can’t you give me another go at it?”

“At killing Gaia?” The goddess scoffed. “You did that already.”

Leo shivered. “I killed more than just Gaia. I… Piper and Jason, I—”

Styx hummed in a way that might have been called sympathetic if one had never experienced sympathy before. “I saw.”

“Let me go back,” Leo begged. “I have to save them.”

“You have to, or you want to?”

“I swear. I swear on the Styx that I will kill Gaia without killing Jason or Piper.”

Styx’s eyes glowed as she examined him. “You have to,” she repeated, seemingly intrigued. “Very well.”

The last thing he saw before he dissipated from whatever reality he had been in was… nothing.

Number six.

Leo went through the motions, as morbid as that was. He unlatched the carabiner from the console as soon as he could get his fingers to work, all while screaming at everybody to get off the damn boat. He allowed himself one final glance back at Jason and Piper as they flew off before dodging the mast.

Festus emerged from the hull with not a moment to spare, proceeding to rise at a shallow enough incline for Leo to get his seatbelt on (that felt silly, at a time like that one. Traffic safety laws should have been the least of Leo’s concerns when Jason and Piper were on the line, but there he was).

They swooped down to where Gaia met earth and she clearly hadn’t expected them because she went easy. But then, he caught Hazel giving him a salute from the battlefield, and he began to suspect the element of surprise on your side wasn’t nearly as strong as having the element of… well, Hazel.

Leo returned the salute with a smile before taking off into the sky once more. Gaia shifted into the sandy bane of Anakin Skywalker’s existence to shake off Festus’ grip, but the winds swirled around her and held her in place. Jason and Piper came into view over the ridges of Festus’s skin and Leo spared them a melancholy grin.

He couldn’t fail them. Not again.

Jason’s brow was furrowed in concentration while Piper yelled like the star of a death metal band. Leo kept grinning the whole time—as the fire roared, as the Gaia’s eyes slid shut, as he realized what he had to do. For the first time, he actually believed that there was a chance. That maybe, just maybe, they might actually be okay.

Piper’s heavy breaths were audible even from the distance between them. Jason’s sky blue eyes looked, round and helpless, to Leo. Leo looked back. As he gained altitude, he reached a hand into the metal plates of Festus’ neck to check that the Physician’s Cure was still locked and loaded. Sure enough, the vial was still there.

He took a deep breath.

This time, he wanted to make his last words count, since every other time they’ve been some variation of “go, just go” or incoherent screaming. Leo looked down at his best friends and found they were already staring at him.

“I love you guys,” he yelled down at them, before flapping Festus’ wings and launching himself firmly out of range, and dying.

Fingers crossed it was the last time in a long time.

Everything was blazing orange and scalding hot red and cries of protest until the familiar darkness washed over him once again. The sound of river rapids greeted his ears, and even with his eyes open, it felt like he was asleep.

“You did it,” Styx said again, this time more sure. She was getting impatient, Leo could tell.

Leo smiled. “I did?”

Styx sighed. “Yes, yes, your friends are alive, you are alive, or in a matter of seconds you will be, Gaia is dead, so on and so forth. This is the happy ending you were searching for, correct? Or has your palate become even more refined?”

Leo laughed. It felt weird coming out of his mouth. “Y’know what? It’s not quite what I had in mind,” he half-joked, letting his mind fill with thoughts of whatever the hell it is that normal teens do, “but it can be.”

Styx did whatever the primordial being equivalent of rolling one’s eyes was. “It will have to do,” she grumbled.

“One more thing?” Leo asked while he was feeling brave.

The river water swelled around her and lapped at his feet. “Make it quick, demigod, or that cure of yours will go suspiciously missing.”

Leo decided he didn’t feel like staying dead, so he let the words tumble out of his mouth. “Thank you! For giving me a chance.”

“Ugh, demigods,” Styx groaned, “always so sappy. I have grown thoroughly tired of you, boy. Do not swear another oath for a long time, leave me a worthy sacrifice, and this will be a fine enough thanks for me.”

With a wave of her hand, Leo was back. Not on the bow of the Argo II, or even on Festus’ back, though he had worried. He was lying in a soft bed on his back and staring up at an unmoving ceiling fan. Looking down, he saw an atrociously patterned quilt, and a look to the side revealed purple paisley curtains fluttering in the breeze from a half-opened window. One of Mr. D’s talking animal heads was stationed on the grapevine wallpaper. It was a goat. Leo was pretty sure his name was Walter. Walter was looking at him weird.

He realized with an easy breath that he was stationed in one of the big house’s rooms. He realized with a less easy breath that it hurt like hell to move his neck—maybe it was still sore from when he broke it five lives ago—but if he looked to the right, he could see Jason.

Jason was sleeping, and that moment might’ve been the most peaceful Leo had ever seen him. The wounds on his knuckles had bled through the bandages covering them and the scabs on his arms looked like they’d been picked at excessively. A bag of water wrapped in a paper towel (the ghost of a handmade ice pack, Leo guessed, probably meant for that nasty stitched-up cut on Jason’s temple) had slid down to his lap and leaked onto his shirt. Despite his battered and bruised look, Jason seemed almost at ease.

If Jason was on his right, that meant that the warmth next to Leo was Piper. Making the effort to turn his head told him that she was also fast asleep. One of her eyes was black, swelled shut, and her arms were littered in bandaids and scrapes. Most of her hair had found its way out of their braids. Her knee was badly skinned and turning all types of colors, while her left hand was in a cast. Her other hand was squeezing his tighter than Leo thought was possible.

When Leo shut his eyes again, he fell asleep feeling loved.

———

When Piper woke on the morning of her sixteenth birthday, the sight that greeted her very nearly made her burst into tears.

For the past three years, Piper’s birthdays had been roughly the same: she’d spent most of the day waiting for a thirty second birthday call from her dad, only for him to inevitably forget to call her at all because he was terrible with dates and Jane hadn’t considered her birthday important enough to put it into his calendar. Then, a few days later, she’d get some huge, awful apology gift that had clearly been picked out by someone other than him. Maybe, if her dad felt bad enough about it, she could guilt trip him into spending a weekend surfing together to make things up to her, but that depended on how packed his schedule was.

The previous year, all she’d gotten as an apology was a giant vanilla cake. She didn’t even likevanilla.

And sure, Piper had friends now, but she had only mentioned her birthday to them once. Besides, Jason was busy training, and with all the work Leo was doing on the Argo II, the poor guy barely remembered what day of the week it was half the time. They had an imminent death quest ahead of them. She really wouldn’t have blamed them for forgetting.

Which was why her throat went tight when she woke up to a card, a neatly woven friendship bracelet and a cake that had “happy birthday” written on it in fancy script and smelled wonderfully of hand-picked strawberries on her bedside table.

The card wasn’t exactly legible, which immediately let her know it was from Leo. 

It took her a little longer than she was willing to admit to figure out what the words meant, but even if she’d not been able to decipher it at all, the gesture would still have meant the world to her.

In case you’re wondering, I baked the cake, but Jason picked the strawberries for it and did the writing. I figured it’d be a bit of a shitty birthday wish if you couldn’t actually read it.

I was thinking maybe you and Jason could share the cake, since I’m still really busy working on the ship. Promise I’ll celebrate with you next year—provided we successfully prevent apocalypse and stuff.

The bracelet is from Jason. It took him a hilarious amount of attempts to make it, but don’t tell him I told you about that. I’ve got something neat to show you in the Bunker if you wanna drop by later. 

Happy Birthday, Pipes <3

P.S.: I told Drew I’d explode a glitter bomb all over her clothes if anyone touched the cake or woke you up early. Let me know if I need to make good on that threat.

P.P.S: Figured you might want to call your dad, so I borrowed the phone Will has for medical emergencies. I put it in the drawer of your bedside table. Just make sure to subtly un-borrow it later, yeah?

Piper chuckled out loud at that last bit. She couldn’t stop smiling.

Her siblings were all gone, and when she looked out the window, she figured from how high the sun was up that she was probably super late for breakfast. Considering it was her birthday and she had a whole cake to demolish whenever she wanted, this seemed like a non-issue, though.

She took her time getting ready, which was a rare occurrence these days, considering the amount of people she shared a bathroom with. It was nice to get to take a shower and brush her teeth in peace for once, without Drew yelling at her to hurry it up already because she needed the bathroom for her fifteen step skin care routine.

Once she’d gotten dressed and slipped the bracelet Jason had made for her onto her wrist, she plopped back down on her bed and dug the promised phone out of her drawer.

A part of her dreaded the phone call, knowing how little time her dad usually had for her, but she also got very few opportunities to talk to him while she was at camp. With the aforementioned death quest looming, she at least wanted to hear his voice again before that happened. If it was just for a minute… well, that was nothing she wasn’t used to.

Mellie’s voice greeted her. “You’re connected to the line of Tristan McLean, this is his assistant speaking. How can I help you?”

“Hi Mellie. I was wondering if I could talk to my dad for a second?” Piper asked, feeling, as always, a bit like a bother. 

No matter how much she liked Mellie, the fact that she had to go through an assistant at all to get a chance to talk to her father was kind of ridiculous.

“Oh, Piper!” Mellie’s voice immediately grew cheerful. That had never happened with Jane. “Perfect timing! Your dad is just about to come out of a meeting. I’ll put you right through. Happy birthday, by the way.”

“Thank you.” Piper found herself smiling again. She instantly felt a little lighter.

The line briefly went silent, and then her dad’s voice sounded through the speakers. “Pipes?”

“Hi dad,” she said, starting her mental timer. How long was he realistically going to have to catch up with her? A minute? Two?

“Happy birthday, honey. I was going to try to call you, but I know your new school has really strict rules around phones, so I wasn’t sure how to best reach you. I’m so glad to hear from you. It’s been way too long.”

“Yeah, I know.” Piper sighed. “School’s been keeping me busy, but mostly a good kind of busy. My friends are really great. Leo baked me a birthday cake and everything.”

“I hope I can meet them sometime.”

Piper’s heart ached with the knowledge that he had already met them but would never remember it. That every encounter he’d have with her friends would likely be at least slightly distorted by the Mist. And that was if they even made it back from the quest at all so he could meet them a second time. 

“I’d really like that,” she said, her voice coming out slightly choked. “How’s work?”

“Busy. Lots of offers for Greek mythology projects lately. I’ve missed having you as my research buddy,” he said with a sigh. “Mellie told me you’re working on some big school project for a few more months, but I was thinking maybe we could go on vacation for a week or two once you’re done? You could bring your friends if you want.”

“Are you serious?” Piper’s cheeks hurt with how hard she was smiling. “I’d love that.”

“Just let me know if late August works for you and your friends. Now, I want to hear what you’ve been getting up to at school.”

She blinked, surprised. Her mental timer was sitting at a minute and a half, and he hadn’t mentioned anything about being called away to his next appointment yet. Not that she wanted him to be, but… “How long will you be free for?”

She hated asking. It wasn’t like she wanted to ruin this for herself. But she also really didn’t want to deal with the heartbreak of getting half a sentence into her rambles, only to be told then that he actually didn’t have time to hear how she was doing.

“Half an hour, give or take. I’m technically at an outdoor photoshoot, but one of the cameras got blown over by the wind, and they’ll need some time to get a replacement.” She could hear the smile in his voice. He sounded so eager to hear from her. “So: tell me everything.”

Piper decided then and there that she owed Mellie a gigantic gift basket.

~~~~

An hour later, after a very confused Will had suddenly pulled the phone he’d spent all morning searching for out of the back pocket of his jeans, Piper had one arm linked with Jason’s and was carrying the cake with the other.

She was a girl on a mission, and Jason’s mildly confused expression when she’d dragged him along into the woods would not stop her.

“Leo doesn’t get to do that,” she said decisively, shaking her head. “He doesn’t get to bake me a cake and then uninvite himself from my birthday party. He’s celebrating with me, whether he likes it or not.”

Jason hung his head. “I tried telling him that you wouldn’t like that, but I’ve had to wrestle him into even taking lunch breaks these past few weeks, so I figured my chances of convincing him to take a whole day off weren’t great. I don’t think he’s slept all week.” He sounded distressed about the whole thing.

“I know you’re trying your best, Jace.” She squeezed his arm. “I’m sure we can talk him into taking some sort of break if we work together. I’m not afraid of pulling the birthday girl card.”

She banged her hand on the cliff that she knew hid Bunker Nine. “Hey loser, open up!”

The big slab of rock swung open a moment later, revealing a thoroughly disheveled Leo who looked like sleep was, at best, a very distant memory. Even with the blessing he got from his dad that meant human needs weren’t nearly as important for him as they were for the average human being when he worked on big projects, that could not be healthy.

“Piper! Jason! Hi!” he greeted them, like pouring enough enthusiasm would somehow mask the fact that he was basically asleep on his feet. “Happy birthday, Pipes.” He paused. “It’s still your birthday, right? Kind of hard to keep track of time when I’m in here all day.”

“Yes, still my birthday.” Piper put the cake down and moved to hug him, only partially because he looked like he might fall over if someone didn’t steady him in the next few seconds. Leo melted into the embrace immediately. “I’ve come to return my cake.”

“Oh.” Leo’s face fell. “Did I mess it up?”

“Only in the sense that I’m absolutely not going to eat the birthday cake that you made for me without you, you absolute doofus.” Piper shook her head. “Take some time off from working on the ship? Please? It’s my birthday.” She gave him the sweetest smile she could muster.

“You know I can’t do that.” He wouldn’t meet her eyes, which may have been due to guilt or just the fact that he was so tired they refused to open all the way. “I’d love to spend today just hanging out and eating cake with you guys, but if that means I don’t finish the ship fast enough and it causes the apocalypse, you won’t ever get another birthday we can celebrate together, you know? Seems like a bad trade-off.” He shrugged.

“In that case, maybe we could help with the ship,” Jason offered immediately. “Now that you’re done working on that easily explodable part of the engine, surely there’s stuff we can do, right?”

“I like that idea! We could have some cake and then get a bit of work done and maybe have a movie night or something afterwards, if you guys are down,” Piper agreed without hesitation.

They’d attempted to offer helping Leo multiple times now, and he had always found some sort of excuse to refuse them—mostly because, as chaotic as he was when it came to everything else, Piper knew that Leo was very particular when it came to his projects. On the rare occasions he did let someone else help, he always triple-checked their work, to the point where it was usually faster for him to just do it himself.

“I don’t think that’d be a very fun way for you to spend your birthday,” he argued, but Piper looked at him sternly.

“I think what I want to do for my birthday is still up to me, thank you very much. If I want to spend it helping you work on the Argo, then that’s how I’ll spend it. You don’t get a say in that.”

“It’s still my ship,” Leo protested. 

“Semantics.” Piper waved him off. “But if you agree to have some birthday cake with us now, we can argue about whether you’ll let us help with the ship again later. Does that sound okay?”

“But-”

“Please?” Jason said softly. He moved to Leo’s other side, enveloping him in a weird half-hug that was probably supposed to be affectionate but that Piper guessed also had a lot to do with how close Leo looked to keeling over. “You barely even let me stay past lunch these past few days. The three of us haven’t properly hung out in ages.”

Leo still looked unconvinced, but he let himself sink into Jason’s embrace regardless.

“Come on, it’s just for an hour or two. I wouldn’t even have a birthday cake if it wasn’t for you. I don’t want to eat it without you,” Piper pouted. “Besides, how can I be sure that you’re not trying to poison me and Jason if you’re refusing to eat it?”

Leo snorted. “I mean, Jason literally watched me make it.”

“Ah yes, because I’m sure our favorite amnesiac who got raised by wolves knows a ton about baking.”

“I think I know more about poisons than I do about baking,” Jason admitted casually, like that was a completely normal, not at all concerning statement, “but I can’t guarantee I’d have caught it if he had put anything in it. I was a little distracted.”

“Yeah, I bet.” Piper grinned. Jason was always a little distracted around Leo. Usually more than a little.

“You both suck,” Leo grumbled, but then he finally caved. “Alright. I guess I can eat one slice of cake before I get back to work.”

“Good answer.” Piper ruffled his hair. “Now let’s get a move on. I slept through breakfast.”

There was a cozy corner at the back of Bunker Nine that included a small kitchen, some mismatched couches and a coffee table. You could still see the Argo from here because it was huge and took up most of the Bunker, but in a way, that was kind of nice. Festus may be nothing more than a figurehead now, but it was kind of nice to at least pretend he was being included in the festivities a little.

Piper tried to help set the table, but Leo shooed her away because it was her birthday, and even if it hadn’t been, she didn’t get to make a mess of his kitchen. She obediently let herself collapse on one of the couches. 

Jason kept hovering around Leo, who rolled his eyes and sent him to put on some music.

“It’s the green button on the left. No, not that one,” he commented when Jason’s hand hovered over a button, then yelled “DEFINITELY NOT THAT ONE!” and sprinted towards the monitoring desk, apparently deciding maybe letting other people push buttons in the Bunker was too dangerous.

“No, no, push it, I wanna see what happens,” Piper joked, laughing when she watched Leo tackle Jason. Leo wasn’t particularly strong or heavy, but Jason was so surprised by it that it still sent them both to the ground, Leo sprawled out on top of Jason.

“Dude, you were supposed to catch me,” Leo complained, while Jason just stared up at him, cheeks flushed.

“Yo, lovebirds! Cake time!” Piper teased, rolling her eyes at the way the two of them immediately scrambled apart at her words, both of their faces burning. They’d figure it out one of those days. 

Once everyone had plates and Leo had gotten the music going, he plopped down next to her, taking the cake out of its dome and gently pushing the sixteen candles he’d included into the icing.

“I’d light them with my fingers because I’m sure that’d look cool, but I’m not sure how hygienic that is.”

“I mean, unless you poured lighter fluid or something on your hands, I’m sure it’s fine. I wasn’t planning to eat the candles,” Piper said with a shrug, so Leo leaned forward and flicked his finger, slowly lighting the candles one by one. 

This would have been lovely if it hadn’t been for the alarm that started blaring halfway through the process, in beautiful discordance with the still-playing music. 

Piper covered her ears and winced. “What the hell-”

Jason immediately took on a combat position. “Are we being attacked?”

“Oh no.” Leo jumped up from his seat, looking wide awake in a way that was mildly concerning for someone at his level of sleep deprivation. “Pipes, unless you want this whole table to end up covered in fire extinguisher foam, you might want to blow out your candles now.”

Piper had been a demigod for long enough that she didn’t even stop to ask questions. She just blew out the candles as fast as she could. “Welp! Happy eight birthday to me, I guess.”

“Sorry about that,” Leo said with a wince, walking over to the Argo and patting Festus the figurehead gently. “Buddy, that’s just candles. Not the same thing as dynamite! Not even close! Please shut off the alarms.”

Festus tilted his head, clearly unconvinced, then blasted a bunch of extinguishing foam right in Leo’s face. Leo coughed and spat. 

“Dude! I’m literally fireproof!”

Piper snickered. “Guess he wanted in on the celebration?” Leo turned around to glare at her, which just made her laugh harder. “Sorry, you have a little bit of foam in your… everywhere,” she said, doubling over with laughter. “Your hair looks nice. You have a little foam hat.”

“I’ll get a towel,” Jason offered, but even he looked like he was trying not to laugh.

“I may have mentioned there are still a few hiccups with the ship,” Leo groaned, trying to wipe some of the foam away from his face. This would have been wildly more successful if the sleeve used for it hadn’t also been covered in foam. 

“You don’t say.” Piper grinned. “But if this is all, I don’t think it needs fixing. As long as the ship flies, you occasionally getting covered in extinguishing foam is fine in my book. Might actually be good for team morale.”

“Hardy har har.” Leo gratefully took the towel from Jason spent a good two minutes trying to get rid of all of the foam. Then he took a pen out of his pocket, scribbling what Piper assumed was fine-tune fire extinguisher function on his own forearm. “Happy birthday, Pipes,” he said again, smearing a bit of foam right in her hair when he flopped back down next to her.

“Fuck you,” she told him, hugging him from the side and placing her head down on his shoulder so she could rub the foam off on his shirt again.

“You two are the weirdest people I know,” Jason mumbled, shaking his head, but he was smiling fondly at them.

“You love us,” Leo informed him, patting the couch next to him. Jason sank down in the spot obediently and joined their weird little group hug.

“Yeah. I do.”

“So, what are the chances of you guys setting off another alarm by singing me Happy Birthday?” Piper teased. “Is there a siren defense system that might register your voices as a threat to my ears?”

Leo wiggled out of the hug so he could grab a pillow and hit her with it.

~~~~

Half an hour later, they still hadn’t eaten even a little bit of cake, but their pillow fight had escalated so badly that they’d broken a plate, at which point Jason had decided to temporarily evacuate the cake into the fridge.

When they did finally get around to eating cake, it tasted fantastic, and not even a little bit like vanilla. Leo spent almost fifteen minutes trying to reach a bit of whipped cream on the tip of his nose with his tongue, and the facial expressions Jason made while he watched him made Piper long for a camera.

Around lunch time, Jason made sandwiches, declaring they couldn’t just spend all day eating cake. Piper protested that it was her birthday so of course she could, but she still allowed him to drag her and Leo outside the Bunker for a little forest picnic. 

Leo made dramatic hissing noises like he was a vampire being exposed to sunlight, then dramatically collapsed onto the picnic blanket and stuffed his face like he hadn’t eaten in a week. 

“Maybe breathe between bites?” Piper suggested lightly.

“Nah, I’m good,” Leo said, his mouth still half full of sandwich. “At least I’m not Jason.”

And yeah, Piper had to agree with that. Jason eating a sandwich with a knife and fork was just prime weirdo behavior. Sometimes she really did wonder if he’d walked right out of The Little Mermaid, considering the amount of times she’d seen him use cutlery for stuff like pizza and fries. Once, he’d eaten nachos with a knife and fork, but he’d quit the second Leo had jokingly threatened to unfriend him over it and never done it again. 

After Leo had finished inhaling his sandwiches, he asked Piper to throw strawberries at him so he could catch them with his mouth. He wasn’t exactly good at this—actually, that may have been the understatement of the century—which meant that, for the most part, it just resulted in Jason being pelted with strawberries, since he was sitting next to Leo. Leo insisted this was on Piper’s aim being off more than it was on his own catching skills, to which she responded by throwing another strawberry right at his forehead.

When the sun started to dip a little towards the horizon, Leo finally announced that, “this was fun, but I really need to get a bit of work on the ship done now. I meant to get back to that, like, three hours ago.” He pushed himself back to his feet. He swayed so badly that he nearly fell right back over. 

“Or maybe you should get some sleep?” Jason suggested, looking him over worriedly.

“Nah. I’m good. I’ll sleep when I’m dead,” Leo insisted cheerfully. 

Piper caught his arm. “Didn’t you say you had some sort of surprise for me? Can you show me?”

“Oh, right! Almost forgot. It’s actually Argo-related. I did some work on your room. Right this way, birthday girl.”

~~~~

It felt weird to step below the deck of the Argo. It had been one thing to watch this project grow over the last few months, but realizing it was actually coming together and they would be living here very soon was a completely different thing. The hallway lights were rudimentary, so Piper wasn’t sure what to expect, but the room she stepped into was beautiful. A large teal carpet covered most of the floor. There were some pictures already up on the walls, documenting their shenanigans over the summer. The room was still missing some furniture, but the bed looked immensely cozy and the heating immediately responded when she stepped inside, adjusting itself to be just slightly warmer than it had been. The ceiling lamp had been designed to look like a lantern and bathed the whole cabin in a cheerful light.

“Leo, this is amazing! You didn’t have to do all that.” 

It actually probably would have saved him valuable time for more important things if he hadn’t put so much effort into her living space. Piper knew that. But she was important to him—so important that he baked her a birthday cake he didn’t have time to make and took the time to lovingly decorate a room exactly the way she liked it. 

Leo made her feel seen and loved in a way she wasn’t sure she’d ever been before.

She hugged him fiercely. 

“It’s nothing,” Leo said sheepishly. “Sorry I didn’t get it all the way finished for your birthday.”

“It’s not nothing, Leo.” She squeezed him as tightly as she could. “This means everything to me. You know that, right?”

He didn’t answer. He usually dodged these types of emotional conversations like it was an Olympic sport. But he did hug her back just as hard.

That was how this worked for him. That was how he loved. And Piper wouldn’t have changed it for anything.

“She’s right, this is really, really cool,” Jason agreed, looking around with unbridled awe written all over his face.

“Oh, shush. You guys haven’t even seen the best part yet.”

Piper’s eyes nearly bugged out of her head. “There’s more?”

“I hope I’m not overselling this. That’d be really embarrassing.” Leo sank on the bed and patted the spots next to him. 

Piper and Jason both sat down. 

“Is the bed the best part? Because this feels amazing.” Piper let herself fall back onto the ridiculously soft mattress. “Sorry, I’m never getting up again. Someone else can go save the world.”

“It’s not the bed,” Leo chuckled, laying down next to her. “We’re just here because it’s the best angle for the intended effect. The beds are really great, though. They’re stuffed with Pegasus down.” He paused, then quickly added, “no Pegasi were harmed in the making of these, don’t worry.”

“So, what is it you’re trying to show us?” Jason asked, which made Leo grin.

“I’m not trying to show you anything, technically. This is Piper’s room. You just decided to tag along because you’re obsessed with me,” he joked, then quickly looked away when Jason’s face turned scarlet. Piper wondered if he was really that oblivious or if he was willfully ignoring whatever was going on between him and Jason. Maybe he was trying to avoid distractions. Whatever the case, he wasn’t very successful, because Piper could see that he was blushing, too. “Anyway! The brightness of the lamp is adjustable, but right now, I wanna show you night mode.” He clapped twice and the lantern winked out, plunging the room into relative darkness despite it barely being late afternoon. There was still some light streaming in through the window, but it had never exactly been bright inside Bunker Nine. This meant that, after a moment of her eyes adjusting, Piper could see the constellations that danced along the walls and ceiling.

She sucked in a sharp breath. “Leo, this is…” She was briefly lost for words. “Thank you.”

“You mentioned how constellations were one of the things you and your dad used to bond over, and I figured you probably missed him, so I thought maybe this would help.”

She pulled him into another hug. “You’re my favorite person in the whole entire universe. You know that, right?”

“That seems a little dramatic, Pipes,” he teased her. “You don’t even know what’s out there.”

“I don’t need to know. It doesn’t matter. You’ll still be the best thing that ever happened to me. Nothing will ever change that.” She pressed her forehead to his.

“Sap,” Leo told her, but she could hear the way his voice cracked.

“She’s right, you know. You’re pretty amazing,” Jason added.

“Can you guys stop?” Leo sounded properly choked up now. “As much as I agree that you guys should be congratulating yourselves for knowing me, it’s Piper’s birthday. She should be the one getting all the congratulations for existing today.”

“Not how that works, dumbass.” Piper pinched his cheek. “This is the best birthday I’ve had in years. You made that happen. I’m going to thank you for that, whether you like it or not.”

“Fine. Be like that,” he said, sniffling a little. 

“Speaking of things that’ll happen whether you like them or not,” she continued, “you’re staying in this bed and getting some actual rest for once. I don’t know when the last time you slept was, but you’ve looked like you’re going to fall over since we got here.”

“But there’s so much I need to get done,” Leo protested. He barely sounded like he was arguing anymore. He just sounded really, really tired.

“We know, buddy.” Jason ran a hand through his hair. “But if you accidentally hurt yourself because of how exhausted you are, it won’t help anyone. I know it’s a lot, but you don’t need to do all of this alone, okay? We can help.”

“Besides, this is what you wanted, right? If we start helping you tomorrow, I won’t be doing any work on my birthday.” Piper smiled at him.

“I don’t want you helping me at all. You guys are just gonna make a huge mess,” Leo complained, but then he sighed. “Fine. I should probably let my siblings back into the Bunker too. I just… it’s my project, and I feel like I have to check over every single nail and board that gets put into this ship.” He rubbed his eyes. “I also vastly overestimated how much time I had for this project, and now I’m kind of rushing to get everything done last minute.”

“Ah, the good old ADHD curse,” Piper nodded, squeezing his shoulders gently. There had been many times when she’d told herself she’d start tomorrow on a big essay that wasn’t due until the end of the semester, but because time wasn’t real, it had then suddenly been the end of the semester and she’d gotten basically nothing done. 

Only saving the world was vastly more important than some essay one could half-ass last minute—regardless of what some of her asshole teachers had tried to convince her of. “But we’ve still got, what, a month and a half? That’s plenty of time with all hands on deck. We need our head of the project well and not sleep deprived, though. Otherwise we’re gonna need to try to figure out your blueprints on our own, and that will for sure be a giant disaster.”

“Yeah, I definitely can’t let that happen,” Leo agreed. Then he let out a huge, thoroughly exhausted yawn. “Fuck, maybe I need to find a way to make these beds slightly less cozy, or none of us will ever get out of bed to actually defeat Gaea. I knew asking the Hypnos cabin for advice on the bedrooms was a mistake.”

“Want me to write that on your wrist?” Jason asked sincerely, taking Leo’s hand in his. 

Leo chuckled, but he didn’t let go. “I guess it can wait until tomorrow.”

Within moments of him finally allowing his eyes to close, he was out like a light.

Piper and Jason spent the rest of the afternoon in the cabin that was both hers already and wasn’t quite hers yet. Leo snored between them while she quietly pointed out the constellations that drifted along the walls while Jason listened intently, occasionally adding details to some of her star-related myths or telling her how the Greek and Roman versions were different.

Piper hadn’t felt this happen in a very long time.

———

Notes:

Happy Birthday to my darling friend @queenjunothegreat!! I asked you to give me a prompt you wanted me to write last year and I am a dumbass so somehow it’s taken me. A whole-ass year to get around to it. What the hell was I doing.

Anyway! The nice part is that this now gets to be a birthday gift to you, which I do like!

As an additional little birthday gift, I used Jace instead of Jase as a nickname because I know that’s your preferred spelling.

I hope you have a wonderful birthday. May it involve less fire extinguisher foam than Piper’s did <3

On top of this being a birthday gift, it’s also a very late addition to the Birthday prompt of last year’s Lost Trio Week! I actually have another LTW thing completed that’s getting posted very soon, which is pretty exciting!

Of course the most important thing to me here is that Juno enjoys this fic, but I hope everyone else also had fun reading this! As you all know, no-plot fluff is something I kind of struggle with.

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———

When Jason came to, it felt like his body was filled up with too many people. Except, unlike the time he’d been possessed, this time he knew it was all him. But there was just far too much of him. Memories of every part of his life were ghosting around his head in a way they had no business to—all of them vivid like they’d just happened, despite the fact that many of them had happened years ago. All these different versions of him that should never have existed simultaneously were fighting for space in his head. 

Jason felt like his skull was going to crack.

He was Thalia’s little brother, small and scared as he clung to his sister’s pant leg. He was Camp Jupiter’s Jason—destined to be a leader, whether he liked it or not. Unable to escape that fate, no matter how hard he tried. He was Reyna’s Jason, collapsed into an exhausted heap after training, laughing as she asked whether he’d let himself be bested so easily. He was Leo and Piper’s Jason, sitting in front of a video game console, marshmallow remnants still stuck in his hair.

He was a terrified child and a fifteen year old praetor and dead at sixteen, all at once. 

It was too much. Jason wanted to curl up and cry. Or maybe he wanted to punch something. Or maybe he just wanted to scream.

His mind and body couldn’t seem to agree on anything—not even on the correct way to be overwhelmed. Predictably, this fact did not help him feel any less awful.

The world was blurring back into being around Jason, dark and wrong and awfully unsteady. Both of his hands were being held. Someone pressed a kiss to his forehead.

“Hey, Superman. How are you feeling?” That was Leo’s voice. Even overwhelmed and confused out of his mind, every part of Jason knew he would follow that voice wherever it led him.

His vision slowly cleared. His boyfriend and his best friend were sitting on either side of him, eyes filled with worry.

“Leo? Piper?” Jason asked. His head throbbed. His voice sounded odd. Too stern. Not nearly stern enough.

“That’s us,” Piper agreed, sounding hesitant in a way that made Jason feel a little ill.

He sat up, his body not quite seeming like his own. He felt like a puppet on strings. 

He took in his surroundings—the dark cave and the darker water and the way the walls and ceiling of the cavern still looked all wrong, despite the fact that things weren’t quite so blurry now. The dark river’s flow was slowing and it was thinning to a small creek, as if, after centuries of residing here, the Fountain of Memory had suddenly dried up abruptly. There were little cracks spreading out across what had previously been semi-solid rock. The magic of the place had grown unstable after last year’s incident, and their interaction with the Mnemosyne seemed to have been the final straw. The place was relocating, without a care for the lives it might squash in the process.

Leo and Piper hadn’t noticed yet. They were too preoccupied with taking care of him.

Jason cursed inwardly. They’d come along to help him, and now they were all going to die down here and it was going to be his fault. 

He was supposed to protect people, but nothing he did was ever good enough. He was fifteen and Reyna was bleeding out in his arms. He was sixteen and Leo was gone. He was seventeen and Dakota was dead—Dakota, who Jason had known since he was ten years old, and who he hadn’t even remembered well enough to properly grieve up until now. The pain had been a dull ache, but now the wound throbbed and pulsed like a newly broken bone.

Jason’s sacrifice had protected Piper, but he’d failed absolutely everyone else, and so many demigods at Camp Jupiter had ended up dead because of it.

He couldn’t lose anyone else. He couldn’t.

“Get up. We need to move,” he said, pushing himself to his feet. It was a relief to let the praetor part of his brain take over. He couldn’t afford to stop and explain—not with the cave about to come down. He just needed them to listen. But Leo and Piper weren’t moving. They were just standing there, frozen, as the cracks began to spread further and further along the walls and ceiling. “I said move!”

Leo flinched. Piper put a hand on his shoulder to comfort him, her face hardening.

“Watch your tone,” she hissed, which just made Jason feel irritated.

It wasn’t like he’d yelled at them. He’d just spoken a bit more forcefully to get his point across when they hadn’t listened to his initial command the way they should have. They didn’t have time for this. They were all going to be buried alive, and it was Jason’s fault for failing to keep them safe the way a good leader needed to. He never should have let them come on this quest, especially not if they weren’t going to listen to him.

“This cave is going to come down,” he said, wasting precious seconds they didn’t have to re-establish some ground rules from training that they’d apparently forgotten. “If I’m going to get us out of here, I need you to listen to me without questioning my orders.”

Piper looked like she was about to say something else, but Leo nudged her and pointed at the ceiling. “Pipes, he’s right. Structural integrity of this place is not looking great right now. We need to get out of here.” He took Piper’s hand and squeezed it. “I did not cheat death twice just for all of us to be flattened into demigod pancakes by a stupid cave-in.”

“Okay. Yeah. Let’s not get squashed,” Piper agreed, but she still looked at Jason uncertainly. “So, which way do you suggest we go? I’m assuming doubling back isn’t an option, but we don’t exactly have a map of this place.” Her tone wasn’t exactly pleasant, now, either.

Jason blocked her out. He focused on the three pathways ahead, specifically the way the air moved through them. There was a draft—just slight, but definitely there—that came from a pathway to their right.

“This way. Come on,” he decided, and to his relief, they did follow him, then.

Not a moment too soon, either. Shortly after they’d stepped into the tunnel, they heard a crash behind them, so close that the ground shook slightly and the sound reverberated through the whole tunnel. 

Jason flinched. After everything they’d been through with Gaia and the death prophecy he’d gotten in the Labyrinth, he didn’t exactly love being underground, even without factoring in the immediate risk of a cave collapsing on top of them.

“Well, on the upside, we didn’t get squashed by a giant rock just yet,” Leo announced, and it was only then that Jason realized he’d turned to look. “On the downside, I really hope you’re right about this tunnel, because we won’t be going back that way and we do not have Hazel or Frank to dig us out of here.”

Great. So it wasn’t just Piper who was questioning him. Even Jason’s boyfriend thought they’d be better off with someone else leading this quest. 

“It doesn’t matter what’s happening behind us. Keep moving,” Jason said. It came out more harsh than he’d intended. 

“You’ve got it, boss,” Leo shot back, but his tone was sour and the salute he gave was more mocking than anything.

Jason tried not to think about it. They could hash this out later.

~~~~

Jason could feel the air flow getting stronger, but it wasn’t fast, which was a problem considering the cave system kept shaking apart behind them. This situation would have been bad enough under normal circumstances, but Piper kept pestering him about whether he even had a clue where they were going every time they took a turn, and he could tell Leo was starting to have trouble keeping up. Even before his ankle injury, he’d been more of a sprinter than a long-distance runner. Now, sprinting sometimes gave him trouble, too.

“Leo-” he started, but Leo just said, “I’m fine,” through gritted teeth and picked up the pace, pointedly ignoring the fact that he winced every time he put weight on that leg.

“You’re clearly not fine,” Jason protested. “And we need to hurry.”

Before he could get to the point he was trying to make—the fact that the reasonable course of action would have been to just let Jason carry him—Piper apparently decided she needed to start another fight.

“Oh, is that the thing you want to be focusing on right now?” she snapped, glaring daggers at him. “The fact that your disabled boyfriend is struggling to keep up military pace? Maybe you should try being better at fucking cave navigation if you want to keep ordering us around!”

“Guys-” Leo started, but he was interrupted by a piece of cave ceiling coming down in front of them, narrowly missing his head. He stumbled back, startled, then fell. It happened so fast that Jason was barely able to catch him.

Jason’s relief about having his boyfriend safely in his arms was extremely short-lived.

Leo groaned softly. His eyes seemed unfocused. Jason checked to make sure that he hadn’t been hit by a falling rock, after all, but when he carefully set him down, he saw that that wasn’t the problem. 

“I don’t think my ankle liked that very much,” Leo muttered, his voice coming out strangled. “It keeps not realizing that it’s not supposed to bend that way.”

It looked dislocated. Maybe broken. Shit.

Jason felt ice cold all over. This was his fault. The only reason Leo’s ankle caused so many problems was that he’d messed it up getting Jason out of the Underworld.

“I told you to put on your damn brace this morning!” Jason cursed, his jaw clenched. Leo had been difficult about that for a while now—about insisting he didn’t need the brace, especially whenever they might get into situations where it might get damaged. Aka, the very situations where he most needed it for ankle stability. Jason understood that Leo had made the brace with his mom. He understood that Leo was terrified of anything happening to it. But there was a reason he was supposed to be wearing it. It took so little for him to re-injure himself when he refused to wear it. “This is what happens when you don’t listen to me.”

Leo didn’t say anything. He just looked startled, and a little like he was going to cry.

“What the hell is wrong with you?” Piper snapped. She kneeled down beside Leo, but she kept her eyes on Jason, looking at him like he’d grown a second head. “I don’t know who you think you are, but I need you to get your shit together! And if you’re gonna be like this, get your fucking hands off of my best friend.”

Her voice was frigid. 

Jason froze, slowly stepping back from Leo. He didn’t realize she’d been charmspeaking him until he’d already backed away. 

His whole body bristled at being made to do this against his will. Both as the quest leader and as Leo’s boyfriend, helping him was Jason’s responsibility. He hated that he’d gotten loud—how were they ever going to listen to him when he was so obviously emotionally compromised?—but that didn’t mean Piper got to just tell him not to do his job.

“Piper-” Leo started. He was trembling.

“You’re okay,” she said gently, brushing a hand through his hair. “Do you think you can stand up?”

“I- argh. Sure. Definitely,” he claimed, but even with Piper’s support, the attempt only resulted in a pained noise and his face growing even paler. “Actually? Maybe not.”

“I’ll carry you,” Jason said, kneeling back down by his side. He didn’t have time to get into it with Piper, regardless of how obviously out of line she’d been. He could still tell her off for it once they were out of immediate danger. 

Piper glared at him. “You can’t just decide-”

“Pipes,” Leo said, his voice still coming out strangled, “we’re still sort of in the middle of a cave collapse here. And no offense to you or your noodle arms, but Jason carrying me is the obvious solution here. We’ll figure out what’s wrong with him later.”

“Nothing’s wrong with me,” Jason told him. He gathered Leo up in his arms, careful not to jostle his injured ankle. They’d done this a few times before—being a child of Jupiter meant Jason had his fair share of stupid monster encounters, even when he was just trying to go to the cinema with his boyfriend, and sometimes Leo actively asked to be carried so Jason could fly them out of whatever mess he’d also gotten them into. Not that that was an option right now. “I’m just trying to keep you both safe.”

“Yeah, and what a fucking fantastic job you’re doing,” Piper hissed, looking pointedly at Leo.

She wasn’t exactly wrong, but that didn’t mean Jason was going to let her bait him into a fight. She wasn’t the first legionnaire who’d tried it, and she probably wouldn’t be the last.

“Yell at me all you want later,” he told her, the tension in his jaw so bad that it was starting to hurt. “But right now, I need you to follow my lead, or we’re never going to get out of here.”

She balled her fists and scowled, but she did follow him without any further protest, which was good enough for Jason.

Leo nuzzled up to him as they ran.

“I know you’re trying, Jase.” His voice was gentle, almost like he was trying to soothe him.

Was it that obvious Jason was barely keeping it together?

He pushed the thought away. They needed to keep moving. 

Navigating past the collapsed section of ceiling was tricky, but not impossible. The air currents grew stronger around them. Not too long after, Jason finally found them an exit.

~~~~

It wasn’t until after they’d made it out, Jason was sure that no one had been injured any worse and they weren’t in any other immediate danger, that he could remember how to breathe.

“I’m clearly getting too old for this shit,” Leo complained when Jason carefully set him down in the grass.

They needed to get him back to the Waystation, but he needed some basic medical attention first. 

Before Jason could as much as ease Leo’s shoe off, Piper barked “back off!” at him with so much charmspeak in her voice that Jason all but scrambled backwards away from Leo before he even realized what was happening. “I’m gonna take care of Leo,” she informed him, her voice icy. 

Jason couldn’t remember the last time he’d felt this genuinely angry with Piper for anything. He wasn’t sure he ever had.

“If you have a problem with me, just tell me instead of-”

“Instead of what? Ordering you around?” Piper snapped back. “Not so fun when someone does it to you, is it? Maybe take a minute to reflect on that.”

She was looking at him like he was a complete stranger. Jason realized with a start that she had tears in her eyes.

The anger drained out of him in an instant. Now that the adrenaline of the near-death situation was fading and his praetor brain was slowly taking a backseat again, it didn’t take much for him to realize just how badly he’d screwed up.

The horror of the entire situation set in a moment later. Jason felt ill with the realization that, back in the cave, Piper had used her charmspeak on him because she’d decided Leo needed protecting from him. Because his boyfriend was hurt and Jason’s first instinct had been to chide him for not listening when he should have been comforting him. Because the way Jason had behaved—barking orders at Piper and Leo and expecting them to be followed without question—wasn’t how he talked to them, ever. They trusted him to lead them, but not like this. They were the two most important people in the universe to him, not some troops for him to order around. 

Dakota had told Jason off for this before, back during the Titan war. About how he tried so badly to fit himself into that mold of the perfect leader in his attempt to keep everyone safe that leader became the only thing that was left of him, even around his friends. 

Dakota, who Jason had failed so horrendously at protecting. 

The memories made Jason’s knees buckle. He sank into the grass, pulled his knees to his chest and started sobbing. 

He’d longed so desperately to remember who he used to be, and now he wasn’t even sure he liked that person very much.

He thought of Piper holding his hand earlier when he’d been overwhelmed, and of Leo tucked comfortably into his side, and was suddenly terrified he’d never get to have that again.

He was terrified, period. He was a child abandoned in the woods with empty promises and a fifteen year old missing person no one cared to look for and a sixteen year old high school student none of his classmates remembered well enough to grieve. No matter what he did, he could never protect anyone he cared about. He never got to keep any of them. 

He’d just messed things up so badly with two of the only people who’d ever come back for him that he wasn’t sure they’d ever forgive him. He was going to be alone again. 

“Jase?” Leo’s voice pulled Jason out of his spiral. It was so infinitely more soft than he deserved. “You’re shaking.”

Jason looked up to find that both Leo and Piper had moved to sit beside him. Leo’s leg was bandaged, and he looked a lot more perky than he had a moment ago. Worry was written all over his face.

Piper had her arms crossed. She still looked uncertain.

“I- I don’t-” Jason sobbed, trying to press words past the lump in his throat. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I-”

“I know, mi cielo. I know.” Leo reached for him. There was nothing but kindness in his eyes. “Come here.” 

“But-”

Leo didn’t let him get another word in. He just pulled Jason into his arms, gently cradling his head against his chest.

“You’re okay,” he said, running his warm fingers through Jason’s hair. “I don’t know what happened in there. I’m not going to pretend that it wasn’t rude as hell, or that it didn’t scare me, because it was, and it did. But whatever it is, we’ll figure it out. I promise.”

“You were acting like a fucking prick, Jason,” Piper chimed in, but her hard expression had softened. “You seem to realize that, though, so there may be hope for you, yet.”

“I’m sorry,” he said again. 

“Yeah. I know.” And then she was hugging him, too. “I thought we’d lost you for a second there.”

“I’m not even sure who I am anymore,” Jason said, voice so quiet it was barely audible. He was trembling like a leaf between Piper and Leo. 

Their arms seemed like the only place in the world that was safe right now.

“You’re my boyfriend. That counts for something, right?” Leo asked, pressing a kiss to the top of his head. “I found the memory stuff kind of overwhelming at first, too, and I didn’t get fifteen years’ worth of trauma shoved back into my head. I think it’d be insane to ask you to have it all figured out right now.”

He felt like a heated blanket the way he was wrapped around Jason. 

And for all the conflicting information that was going through his head, he knew he loved Leo with every fiber of his being. 

“You don’t appear to be a total jerk, at least,” Piper said encouragingly. “You don’t have to be sure about everything right now. You just got all your memories back. That has to be disorienting.” She reached for his hand and squeezed it gently.

“So much.” His head hurt like hell from all the info that had been stuffed back into it in a matter of minutes. “I just don’t want to lose you guys.”

“You’re not going to lose us, dumbass,” his boyfriend reassured him, squeezing his shoulders. “We’ve already established that not even death is getting you out of this relationship.”

“Yeah, what he said—you know, minus the relationship part.” Piper punched his arm with her free hand, the other never leaving his. Her voice sounded much lighter than it had. “You’re stuck with us now. We’re very hard people to get rid of.”

“Most of the foster parents I ran away from would refute this statement,” Leo chimed in. He was still brushing his fingers through Jason’s hair. “But yeah, I sure do love playing hard to get rid of with Jason specifically.” He pressed another kiss to Jason’s head. “Besides, I did sort of promise we’d be right here with you whatever happens. That does tragically include you being a bit of a jerk.”

Jason just sniffled quietly.

“I don’t deserve you two.”

“I’ve been there, and I’m more than happy to inform you that’s not really how that works,” Leo commented, his voice back to its usual teasing tone. 

Jason couldn’t deal with that right now. Couldn’t deal with being loved so much when he felt like he didn’t deserve it.

He made himself move off of Leo’s chest so he could properly look at him.

“How’s your leg?” he asked, voice brimming with guilt. 

“Definitely broken,” Leo announced cheerfully. “But Pipes force-fed me some ambrosia, so it doesn’t hurt as much anymore. Long-term, it’s nothing Emmie and a few days of rest can’t fix.”

“Ambrosia or not, I doubt anything under two weeks is gonna cut it,” Piper pointed out with a grimace. “Not sure how you managed to fuck it up worse by stumbling than on your little trip to the Underworld, but it’s honestly a little impressive.”

“What can I say? I’m a guy of many talents.”

“I shouldn’t have snapped at you,” Jason said. He felt even worse now.

“Yeah, that was kind of a dick move.” Leo shrugged. “Honestly though? The ‘I told you so’ was sort of warranted. I know I’m being stupid about the brace sometimes. Besides, you were obviously freaking out. I’ve done dumb shit when I was freaking out before—including shutting you both out when I shouldn’t have. No hard feelings.”

“I’m still pissed on Leo’s behalf,” Piper informed him, her tone only half-joking. “I think I need to give you a shovel talk sometime. Because Leo is my person, and I will not put up with you hurting him.” She squeezed his hand again. “But you’re my person, too, so I’ll probably forgive you eventually.”

Jason still didn’t feel like he deserved it, but hearing that made him sob with relief.

“I can give my boyfriend shit about this just fine myself, thank you very much,” Leo commented, patting Jason’s head, and it felt so much like normality that Jason’s whole body relaxed a fraction.

“I love you,” he muttered, letting his head drop down on Leo’s shoulder so he could gently head-butt him in the neck.

Leo laughed.

“Sap,” he said teasingly, but Jason heard the smile in his voice. “Love you, too.”

“Good. Keep this up and maybe I won’t have to murder you for hurting Leo,” Piper butted in, her voice tinged with amusement. “So, not to completely kill the mood, but do you want to talk about how you’re feeling about everything?” She asked it gently, but Jason was still glad he had Leo to steady him. 

He couldn’t think about any of it—could barely think, period—without all the memories and feelings in his head overwhelming him at once.

“Really, really awful,” he admitted, face still buried in Leo’s neck. He was full of grief he’d forgotten and was suddenly remembering. He’d spent his life lighting too many funeral pyres he’d felt personally responsible for and had colossally fucked things up with some of the most important people in his life and he wasn’t sure where to even start coping with any of it. He thought of Reyna and the fact that he’d treated her like a complete stranger after everything they’d been through together. It made him wish the ground would open up and swallow him whole. He wasn’t sure how she could stand to look at him. “I miss Reyna.”

Missing didn’t feel like a nearly strong enough term. Missing Reyna was what he had been doing up until this point. It was that vague ache he’d gotten in his chest whenever he’d thought of her.

But all of their memories had been slammed right back into him. He remembered the exhilaration of their first time working together during War Games and years of sparring and quests and hanging out by the stables. He remembered their post-quest tradition of eating cake at ForSnax and long nights spent strategizing and poring over New Rome’s laws and traditions to change the legion for the better. He remembered those awful few days after the Battle of Mount Othrys that he’d spent at her bedside, terrified that this time, he’d lost her for good. 

And then he had lost her—not to some monster he could at least seek out and take revenge on, but to his own missing memories and his fear that she couldn’t love this changed version of him the way she did the fellow praetor who had left her.

He wasn’t so much missing her as suddenly wondering how he’d spent almost two years breathing without one of his lungs.

He wasn’t sure he could ever face her again. He wasn’t sure how he could stand living in a world where she wasn’t one of his best friends.

“She misses you, too. You know that, right?” Piper said gently.

Jason nodded, but his eyes stung with fresh tears. “I don’t know how to fix this.”

“We’ll figure it out.”

Piper had been saying that pretty much since Leo had led Jason back out of the Underworld. She’d been trying to encourage him to reach out more ever since. 

But it had always felt so unfair towards Reyna—for her to have already spent the effort to be his friend and have to put it in a second time just because he didn’t have some of their shared memories and had lost the emotional connection to the few he’d gotten back. 

He had hoped getting his memories back would make things easier. So far, the only thing it had done was make everything hurt a lot worse.

“I wanna go home,” he said quietly. He wanted to curl up in his room at the Waystation and spend all day surrounded by familiar ambient noise while he just processed things for a little while. Unfortunately, that wasn’t really an option. “But we need to get the flask back to Zac. We should just drop Leo off, and-”

“You’re in no condition for a cross-country trip right now,” Piper pointed out. “I’ll just call Hylla. Have the Amazons do a same-day shipping thing. She still owes me a favor.”

Jason’s shoulders sagged with relief. “If it’s really okay with you, let’s please do that.”

He wasn’t sure if that counted as cheating on his quest, but Mnemosyne had promised he’d have the recommendation letter as long as the waters made it back to Camp Jupiter safely, and he was certain that Hylla would ensure they would. Even if that hadn’t been the case, though, Jason wasn’t sure he would have cared at the moment. 

It wasn’t just the trip itself or the fact that he was incredibly overwhelmed. It was that Jason wasn’t sure how well he’d handle being back in New Rome right after getting his memories back. He had no idea how he would react to seeing all those places and people that had once been his home, then nothing more than a vague feeling of familiarity, that were suddenly both of these things at once. The Titaness of Memory had warned him that regaining his memories would be overwhelming, but this was so much worse than he’d imagined.

“I offered for a reason. Let’s get you home.”

When Jason handed over the flask to Piper, it felt like a huge weight had been lifted off his shoulders. The tears finally stopped for the moment. 

“Hang on. Pause.” Leo looked at Piper incredulously. “What the hell did you do for Hylla to owe you a favor?”

“I’d tell you, but then I’d have to kill you,” Piper said sweetly. “Either that, or Hylla would kill me. One of the two, definitely.” 

“Riiiight.” Leo raised an eyebrow at her. “Speaking of: how’s Reyna?”

“Good.” Piper pushed herself up off the ground. “Anyway, we should get back to the car before it gets dark.”

“Extremely subtle change of subject there, Pipes,” Leo teased. “I’m just saying, now that you’re both perfectly single…”

“Reyna’s with the Hunters, if I may remind you,” Piper told him. “Even if she wasn’t, I’m not looking for a relationship right now. I’ve got absolutely zero desire to start dating someone again and end up right back at ‘actually, I think we’re better off as friends’ for the third time in a row.”

“Right. Whatever you say.” Leo lifted his hands defensively. “I’m just pointing out that you guys have daily Iris Messages of almost an hour. Meanwhile, when I try to talk to Reyna, I can barely get more than a few sentences out of her.”

“Have you considered that maybe Reyna just doesn’t like you?” Piper teased him right back. 

“Nah. She likes me just fine. She’d knife me for teasing her if she didn’t.” Leo grinned. “Hey, I’m just pointing out the obvious fact that Reyna acts differently around you than she does around other people. What you do with that knowledge is your business.”

Leo was right on both accounts. Reyna liked him just fine. Jason had seen the way she acted around him, relaxing a little more into herself and exchanging the occasional jab with him. She never would have done that with someone she wasn’t comfortable around. But her relationship with Piper… he’d never seen Reyna be comfortable in that way with anyone before. Reyna had always been a person of carefully chosen words and guarded expressions. He didn’t think he’d ever seen her smile as openly as she did at Piper. 

What was or wasn’t between them had never really felt like Jason’s business. Memories or no, it still wasn’t. But he quietly wished that, whatever it was, the two of them got to keep it. It clearly made them happy. And he wanted Reyna to keep smiling like that—even more now that he could properly remember the stone-faced girl that had become his best friend and knew exactly just how hard-won that smile had been.

“Keep telling yourself that, Leo,” Piper said, sticking her tongue out at her friend. “Seriously, though, we should get you both home now. You need proper medical attention from someone who isn’t me, Jason desperately needs a break and I’m honestly starting to get hungry.”

“Point taken.” Leo sighed dramatically. “Guess I’ll limp myself back to the car.”

“I can carry you,” Jason said—an offer this time, not a command. It wasn’t hard to guess that this was what Leo wanted, from the way he’d just complained, but still.

His boyfriend put his chin into his hands like he was thinking about it.

“Hmm. Only if it’s piggyback this time. I want a vantage point.”

Jason snorted. “That can be arranged, I think.”

“See, Pipes?” Leo beamed. “This is why I’m gonna marry him.”

Joke or not, Jason felt a jolt go through his nervous system. He shook the electricity out of his fingers so he didn’t accidentally shock Leo when he picked him up, but chances were he’d still make his boyfriend’s hair stand up in all directions after that comment. He was going to melt and/or cause a state-wide blackout if Leo kept saying things like that. 

A moment later, Leo was clamped onto Jason’s back like a koala, radiating warmth as he snuggled up to him. Walking back to the car like this, with his best friend and his boyfriend bickering back and forth the way they usually did, Jason was finally starting to feel like he might one day end up back in the general realm of okay. So long as Leo and Piper were by his side, he would probably be alright eventually.

———

Notes:

I’d apologize for leaving you on this cliffhanger for a year, but honestly 2025 has been a disaster for me in so many ways that it’s a miracle how much writing I did do, lol. This chapter marks me posting over 200k words this year, which is the most I’ve posted in any year since I joined Ao3! The upside of you having to wait so long is tchig is fully posted so you now get this fic with the whole Valgrace context!

Poor Jason is struggling and Piper is obviously feeling even more wildly protective of Leo than usual after the last chapter! Beautiful combination for a whole lot of mess.

If this fic feels like it’s setting up other things, then… that’s a secret for next year’s me to potentially work on :)

———

Jason’s chest was on fire and he couldn’t breathe. Despite his rapidly fading consciousness, he could diagnose himself just fine. Pierced lung. The second strike went right through his heart, which at least meant things went black quickly after that.

Jason wasn’t alarmed that the next thing he felt was movement beneath his feet. He’d always known that Charon would one day take him across the Styx. From the moment he’d heard Herophile’s prophecy, he’d known that it was his time.

Jason thought faintly that he wouldn’t see Leo again for many, many years. He’d made peace with that fact at the beginning of this quest, and yet it still hurt. He was glad he’d gotten to have Piper beside him for this, but he felt guilty for all the pain he had caused her by dying. At least she’d have Leo back. At least she wouldn’t be alone with it.

Jason kept his eyes closed. His chest still hurt and he felt a little nauseous. Was that normal? He wasn’t sure. He’d never died before—not properly, at least.

The ride felt bumpy in a way that reminded him more of a bus ride than a boat trip, but that didn’t really alarm Jason. Percy and Annabeth had said part of their journey down had been on an elevator. A bus ride seemed no weirder than that

Except… shouldn’t Charon have asked him for payment? And why did it feel like someone was holding his hand?

“Jason, you okay?”

He startled at the familiar voice. “Piper?”

“Yeah? Who else would I be?” she sounded vaguely amused.

Jason finally opened his eyes, then.

He was sitting on a bus.

More specifically: he was sitting in the backseat of a bus, and Piper was sitting next to him, holding his hand.

“Where am I?” he asked, and now he was alarmed. “What happened?”

His first thought was that maybe Piper had died, too, but it didn’t feel like they were in the Underworld. Could Piper even have touched him if they’d both been shades? 

“Field trip to the Grand Canyon,” Piper told him, voice tinged with concern. She reached up to cup his cheek in a way she hadn’t done since before they’d broken up. “Did you have a bad dream?”

“I died,” Jason choked out, heart hammering in his still-aching chest. 

“I dunno. You seem pretty alive to me,” another voice chimed in, and Jason promptly felt like all the air had been sucked out of the bus. Leo—his Leo, who Jason hadn’t seen since he’d set the sky on fire almost eight months ago—was sitting in the row in front of them, alive and well, grinning like he didn’t have a care in the world. 

Jason paid zero attention to the fact that the bus was still driving or that he was going to look like a crazy person for doing this. He all but flew off his seat, squeezed himself into the row next to Leo and held him so tightly that Leo let out a wheeze.

“I missed you so much.”

“Yeah, being separated by one whole row of bus seats all morning has truly been dire,” Leo said dryly, but then he looked Jason over and all the amusement vanished from his expression. “Dude, you look awful. I thought getting carsick was supposed to be my thing.”

Jason wasn’t sure when he’d started trembling, but he couldn’t seem to stop. He barely managed not to burst into tears.

“I don’t understand what’s happening to me,” he croaked, and Leo’s arms wrapped tightly around him, then. He was so, so warm. Jason wept quietly into his shoulder.

Piper had said they were on a field trip to the Grand Canyon. That was the day Jason had met Leo and Piper. But it couldn’t have been his life flashing before his eyes. This wasn’t how it had happened.

“Pipes, can you ask Hedge how much farther it is? I think Jase needs some air,” Leo asked, gently rubbing circles onto Jason’s back. 

“On it.” Jason felt his hair being ruffled, then heard steps as Piper presumably made her way to the front.

No yelling at Hedge through the bus this time. 

“Rough day, hm?” Leo asked him, nothing but sympathy in his voice now. “You haven’t had a nightmare this bad in weeks.”

Jason kind of realized what was happening here—not why he was back on this bus, exactly, but why Leo was acting the way he did. It was the Mist gently adjusting his memories. Making sure he not only knew Jason, but that Jason’s sudden breakdown on the bus made at least a modicum of sense to Leo.

It was more than that, though. Jason knew Leo, even if this version of Leo didn’t truly know him. He knew that Leo had trouble sleeping all the time because of what had happened to his mom. Of course his first instinct was to comfort Jason after what he assumed had been a nightmare, even if he didn’t fully understand the situation.

How in the world was Jason supposed to explain this? How could he be around Leo and Piper, knowing the things he did before they were even remotely ready to tell him about them? 

“I’m sorry,” he said, expressing a million things that this Leo couldn’t understand yet. He could barely even look at his best friend without thinking about all the ways in which he’d failed his own version of Leo.

“Dude, we’ve talked about this. I’m not even sure what you’re apologizing for.”

Except they hadn’t talked about this. Whatever Leo was remembering, it wasn’t real.

Jason wondered if this was how Reyna had felt when she’d looked at him—holding all of their memories to her chest and knowing that he didn’t. Thinking of him as both her best friend and a stranger she had to get to know all over again.

A stranger who hadn’t even tried to get in contact with her for months because he hadn’t known where to start. 

His heart ached.

“Hedge said five more minutes,” Piper reported back. “He also gave me a really weird look when I mentioned Jason.”

“Probably still mad about the prank we pulled on him last week,” Leo decided, squeezing Jason’s shoulders, because unlike Coach Hedge, he didn’t know Jason had just appeared on this field trip a few minutes ago. “Just breathe, okay? I know the air in here is shit, but I’ve opened the window and we’ll be out in a sec. We’ll find you a place to sit down, then. Try not to throw up on me in the meantime.”

“I won’t,” Jason promised. 

He knew he wouldn’t get to sit down and properly relax. Not under these circumstances. Not when Hedge was about to corner him and Dylan and the other storm spirits were about to attack.

Not when Jason needed to be ready for a fight or Leo would get kidnapped by a ventus and Piper would fall to her death.

No pressure.

~~~~

Things… didn’t go exactly the way they were supposed to. Considering Jason hadn’t made any claims that he had no idea who Leo and Piper were, they made no attempts to give him a run-down on things he already knew.

Jason wasn’t sure if that was bad. In most of the media Leo had made him watch, changing things when you were time traveling was usually a bad idea, but considering it was a consequence of something he hadn’t done, he wasn’t sure what to do about it. Besides, it wasn’t like he remembered the conversations they’d had at the time word for word. He’d been a little too busy being confused and terrified at the time to memorize a script.

Hedge still looked at Jason suspiciously, but he allowed Leo and Piper to stay outside with him so he could get some air. Piper made him take a few gulps of water from her bottle, and strangely enough, nobody joked about them sharing spit. Wasn’t she supposed to think they were dating? She hadn’t tried to hold his hand since they’d gotten off the bus.

“Better now, I think,” Jason lied after a while. His chest still felt weird, but the pain was no longer searing, and he was starting to get over the shock of this situation. He tried to tell himself he’d been through weirder shit in his time as a demigod, even if he wasn’t entirely sure that was accurate.

At least he had his memories. At least he was alive. At least he had some version of Leo and Piper around him, even if they weren’t his. Things could have been so much worse.

“You’re still really pale,” Piper told him. “Are you sure you’re alright?”

Jason nodded. “I’m fine. Let’s catch up with the others.”

He was more okay than he’d been for the last few months, separated from Leo and Piper and not sure who he was supposed to be. He was also way better than he’d been half an hour ago, when a Roman Emperor had run a spear through his chest.

The Piper he’d known—the one who had known him—would have raised an eyebrow at him and told him his bar for what was considered ‘okay’ was concerningly low. 

This one gave him a mildly skeptical look but offered him a hand up.

Once they got inside, Dylan tried to do his spiel of partnering up with Piper. 

Jason stopped in his tracks. If he was already changed things…

“No. You’re with me,” he decided, dragging Dylan away from Piper and Leo by the arm.

At least he knew what was going on this time. At least he could protect them.

They got back to the group to find Hedge cursing at his megaphone, so Leo messing with it evidently hadn’t changed. 

Neither had Isabel and friends being assholes to Piper. Jason was pretty sure Piper hadn’t originally managed to clock Isabel before Hedge yelled at them to knock it off, but in the face of everything else, that seemed like a relatively minor change.

Strangely enough, Leo gave her an almost chiding look. Jason couldn’t hear what they were saying, though. Not with how far he’d dragged Dylan away from them.

Jason played Dylan’s game of them totally being classmates and Dylan totally being annoyed Jason had dragged him away from Piper for a while, though he spent most of that time longingly watching Leo and Piper. Leo was building his little pipe cleaner helicopter—business as usual—but he kept leaning over to Piper and whispering to her. They both glanced over in Jason’s direction several times. 

He waved at them.

He longed to be back with his friends—to have Leo repeat stupid jokes at him that Jason had heard a million times by now and watch Piper fondly roll her eyes and hit his shoulder in retaliation.

But this was the best way he could think of to keep them safe.

If he could at least keep Leo and Piper from being knocked into the Grand Canyon, that would be worth something. Jason could figure out where to go from there.

From the way the storm picked up—much faster than Jason remembered—Dylan was clearly losing his patience. He apparently didn’t like being manhandled by Jason any more now than his storm form had liked it when he’d dragged him along into the ocean.

“My mistress said someone special was coming. That she’d reward me greatly for your death. But she didn’t mention you’d be this annoying,” he hissed. His arm lost its form and went right through Jason’s grip. “Who even are you?”

“Jason Grace,” Jason said through gritted teeth. “I’d say it’s a pleasure to make your acquaintance, but I’m told I’m kind of a terrible liar.”

He went into a fighting stance, reaching into his pocket for the coin he knew had been there at the time of this incident.

Dylan’s eyes went wide. “You’ve been trained.” 

“I’m gonna tell you how this goes,” Jason said, his voice almost a growl. “You’re gonna try to blast me with lightning. It’s not going to have an effect on me. Save yourself the effort and just let me kill you, why don’t you?” he suggested.

Sharing this information maybe wasn’t his smartest move, but Jason was unnerved. At the other end of the bridge, Piper, Leo and Hedge were ushering the mortal kids inside. The other two storm spirits would be with them any second now, and except for Hedge, none of them had a weapon. Crap.

Jason reached into his pocket for his coin, and, to his displeasure, it decided to go spear form on him.

Great. Now he could re-impale himself if he wanted to.

He lunged at Dylan, who backed away in smoke-form, hissing when the spear went through one of his wings. 

But he’d been preparing his own attack, too.

“Well, if I can’t hurt you, I’m just gonna fry one of your little friends,” he said with a malicious grin.

He sent a blast of electricity Leo’s way.

Jason moved like lightning, using his spear like a lightning rod. The lightning itself wasn’t a problem, but the spear grew so hot that he dropped it with a yelp.

“Not as resistant to lightning as you hoped?” Dylan grinned smugly. “Why don’t we test your resistance to falling to your death while we’re at it?”

He sent Jason over the railing of the bridge in a funnel cloud.

Someone screamed—Leo or Piper, probably. 

It took Jason a moment longer than he expected to slow his fall. His brain knew ways of controlling the winds that his body hadn’t learned yet, and he spent a moment wrestling for balance, but then he was floating. 

“Pretty resistant to falling to my death, too,” Jason concluded with a grin.

He shot towards the other end of the skywalk. 

Like he’d feared, the two remaining venti had cornered Leo and Piper the second they’d gotten everyone else inside. Luckily, one of them had already been dusted—courtesy of, presumably, Piper, who was holding Hedge’s baseball bat in an iron grip.

The satyr himself was halfway across the bridge. He scowled up at Jason. “Kid, you could have told me you could fly. I wouldn’t have bothered trying to rescue you if you had.”

Jason rolled his eyes, biting back the remark that he’d been a little busy keeping the storm spirit that Hedge had failed to recognize at bay. He didn’t dislike Hedge, necessarily, but something about him had seriously irritated Jason those first few months, and these feelings were back with a vengeance right now.

He had bigger problems. Namely: the fact that a ventus was dragging Leo upwards.

Jason didn’t have his spear anymore, but throwing it with Leo so close to the ventus would have been too risky, anyway. He just needed a few more seconds to get to them. Seconds that he didn’t have.

Before he could do much of anything, Piper threw herself at Leo and the monster with a scream. All three of them went sprawling. 

Just before Jason reached them, the ventus let loose a torrent that knocked them all back. Jason moved to catch Piper, barely preventing her from going over the railing.

“You okay?”

She nodded, then moved to check on Leo. He’d landed on the ground, but he was already starting to get back up. He appeared to be winded but mostly unhurt.

Good. That was good.

Jason was there before the ventus could try to return to its tornado-esque legs. Since he was a little short of a weapon right now, he just sort of punched it—which may have worked with Krios, but wasn’t especially effective when it came to a being made of wind. Neither was shooting electricity back at it. 

In the end, Leo had to finish it off with the borrowed baseball bat.

“Two done, one to go.” Jason almost smiled.

This was going better than he’d hoped.

“Jason, what the fuck?” Leo asked, looking at him with wide eyes.

“I’ll explain later,” Jason promised, turning back towards Hedge and Dylan.

“The mistress calls me back. I guess I’m taking this one,” Dylan said, scowling as he made a grab for the satyr.

Hedge kicked and punched, but for a guy whose body was made up entirely of wind, Dylan seemed to have a surprisingly strong grip when he wanted to.

This was where Jason made the mistake of getting cocky.

“Oh no, you don’t.”

He shot after them.

Things had been going well so far. Neither Leo nor Piper had taken a tumble into the Grand Canyon and no one was hurt. Besides, Dylan was injured from their earlier fight. He wasn’t rising as fast as he could have been.

Most of what Jason had done so far had been minor changes. But if he could prevent Hedge from being captured by Medea… maybe he could take that as proof that he wasn’t wasting this chance he’d been given. That he could use the knowledge he wasn’t supposed to have to change something meaningful.

Dylan obviously wasn’t pleased with this idea. 

The winds up here weren’t Jason’s to control. His mind remembered having the ability to wrangle the storm spirits, but this body hadn’t been trained for it yet.

He tried and tried and tried, almost reaching them, but then the storm spat him back out with a vengeance—so abruptly that Jason barely managed to slow his fall. He came down on the bridge hard, his head knocking into the railing.

The pain was immediate and blinding. Stars danced along his vision, and the back of his head felt distinctly wet in a way that made him pretty sure he was bleeding. That probably wasn’t good.

“No, no, no, no, no. Jason, can you hear me?” Leo sounded absolutely distraught. Jason thought he felt a hand in his hair, but his senses were growing too numb for him to say for sure. “Why did you do that? You weren’t supposed to be doing that!”

He was too blurry for Jason to make out very much, but he could tell from the sound that Leo was sobbing. 

Jason wanted to answer—to tell him that he was okay—but his voice wasn’t working. Everything hurt.

“Jason? Jason, look at me. Don’t you dare black out on me right now,” Piper’s voice was infused with charmspeak. “Help’s gonna be here soon. You’re going to be okay.”

It sounded more like a command than a reassurance. 

Jason blacked out regardless.

******

Leo wanted to scream, but instead, he just sat there, sobbing into Piper’s chest.

It felt unfair to make her comfort him right now—Leo wasn’t the one who’d had to watch Jason die over and over again. But Jason was way too still, bleeding heavily from a wound at the back of his head, and Leo was losing it.

“This is the first time we’ve managed to change anything, and we’ve only managed to get Jason killed sooner,” he choked out. He held one of Jason’s hands firmly in his own. 

He didn’t have his tool belt for medical supplies, or any other way to staunch the bleeding. Even if he’d had one, he was too worried he would make things worse by moving Jason’s head.

“He’s breathing. Annabeth is going to be here any second now. Everything is going to be okay,” Piper told him, but she was trembling as she held him. 

“I don’t get what happened. He’s never gone off-script like this before.” 

In all the previous loops, that had been the root of the issue. Jason was too stubborn. Too set in his ways. No amount of gentle coaxing or desperate begging on Piper’s part had gotten him to leave Apollo to figure out his stupid quest on his own.

That was why, ultimately, they’d decided to try going back to an earlier point in time. To try and instill a bit of basic self-preservation instinct in Jason long-term in hopes of changing things that way. (To at least have some more time with him, if it didn’t work. To maybe live in this one year they’d had together forever if they couldn’t save him, just so they wouldn’t have to deal with the reality of losing him.)

But Leo had failed to account for the Mist memories. Sending them back to a point in time when he and Piper had just gotten their memories overwritten to convince them that Jason had always been a part of their class had fucked with them so much that neither Leo nor Piper had actually remembered what they were here for. They might have lived out the next two years exactly the way they’d already happened and not even realized it.

Except Jason had started to deviate more and more from what he was supposed to be doing. Good news: the cognitive dissonance of that had allowed them to shake off the Mist memories. Bad news: Jason was really, really hurt. 

“I don’t know either.” Piper hugged him tightly. “But we’ll figure it out, okay? Together.”

Annabeth didn’t even have it in her to be mad at them under these circumstances. Any question she had about Percy got temporarily shelved when she realized just how badly Jason needed help. 

Leo told her “he was trying to protect us,” in a quiet, strangled voice, and she gave them a grim nod, immediately moving to drizzle some nectar into Jason’s mouth and bandaging his head wound.

“He’s going to be alright,” she concluded after a few very bad moments, instructing Butch to pick him up.

Jason looked like a rag doll in his arms.

Leo went to collect the weapon Jason had dropped, holding it as tightly as he could in his shaking hands. He and Piper spent as much of their flight to camp holding each other as they did trying not to fall off the chariot without Jason to hold off the wind spirits.

~~~~

They spent most of their first afternoon at camp sitting in the infirmary with Jason, waving off anyone who tried to offer them tours or basic information on Greek mythology.

They didn’t need those things. They’d already gotten both of them years ago. They just needed to be sure Jason was really going to be okay.

Even Chiron gave them time, given what had happened. The only person who wasn’t so easily dismissed was Annabeth, which Leo didn’t really blame her for. She’d come to the Grand Canyon looking for Percy, and instead of her boyfriend or any sort of answers, she had found two distraught kids and a third one in dire need of help from the Apollo cabin. Jason hadn’t even lost any shoes in this universe (neither Piper nor Leo had had the presence of mind to untie one considering how preoccupied they’d been with Jason almost dying again), which meant Hera’s prophecy for Annabeth was even more stupidly nonsensical than it had been originally.

“One of you has to know something. She has to have sent me to collect you for a reason,” she insisted.

Piper and Leo exchanged a look, trying to decide just how much they could tell her without completely fucking up the universe.

Piper finally settled on, “I can’t tell you much, but I can promise you that he’s okay, and that you will see him again. I’ve seen it in a vision.”

Some of the tension went out of Annabeth’s shoulders at that.

It was late afternoon by the time Jason woke up. He looked much better than he had on the bridge—whatever Will had done when he’d spent thirty minutes fussing over Jason earlier had obviously helped—but he still didn’t look good. 

He was incredibly green around the gills, and pretty much the first thing he did after waking was lean over and throw up into the bucket Will had left for him. 

Piper gently rubbed his back. “Let it out. It sucks now, but you’re gonna feel better afterwards.”

Jason whimpered quietly, which wasn’t at all like him.

“Sorry,” he finally said after he’d gotten it all out of his system. He ducked his head. “Ow.”

“Don’t apologize for throwing up. That’s stupid,” Piper said, giving him a concerned look. “How are you feeling?”

“Dizzy. My head hurts,” Jason muttered. “You guys are really blurry.”

“Yeah, and you are really concussed,” Leo told him, gently lowering him back down onto the mattress. “You can’t do shit like that, Jase. One of these days, you’re going to get yourself killed.”

“I did,” Jason said, his voice really quiet.

Piper and Leo exchanged a look, both of their eyes going wide. Jason had said something like that back on the bus, too, but they’d both been too lost in their Mist brain fog for it to really register.

“What do you mean, you did?” Piper asked. Her voice was trembling. “I got a spear through my chest. You were there. Leo wasn’t. I wasn’t ever going to see Leo again.” He was tearing up. 

“You remember?” Piper’s lip was trembling.

It seemed like an impossible thought—that this Jason was theirs, rather than that version of him from two years ago who’d had no idea who they were. But Leo remembered being clung to on the bus like that was the only way Jason could think to save himself from drowning. He thought of Jason dragging Dylan away from them and moving to keep him and Piper safe on the bridge—not just in the instinctive way of a hero trying to protect other people, but like he knew what was coming and was determined not to let it happen.

“I-” Jason stared at them in disbelief. “It’s not just me?”

“Jason?” Leo’s eyes filled with tears. “Dude, you weren’t supposed to get your first concussion until Detroit. Why is that the thing you decided to get a head start on?”

“And how is it worse than the one you got from being hit by a brick? This is ridiculous,” Piper added.

“I don’t know. This is so stupid,” Jason agreed, sniffling. His whole body sagged with relief.

They were all crying now, huddled together by Jason’s infirmary cot.

Hugging was probably a little ill-advised, medically speaking—concussion aside, Jason had several bruised ribs from his fall that Will had told them would need a few more hours to heal, even with the nectar and ambrosia. They did it anyway. For a long, long while, they just sat there, curled up to each other. After everything they’d been through to get here, neither of them was even a little bit willing to separate.

Leo had no idea what would happen now. They’d already severely fucked up this timeline—Piper hadn’t met Rachel in Hera’s cabin and Jason didn’t look like he’d be in any state to attend the campfire, never mind leave the next morning. Could they skip a few of their monster encounters now that they knew where they were going? Could they keep Festus if they never crashed into Midas’ yard? 

Or would trying to change things more than they already had have wider, hugely unpredictable consequences that would screw everyone over and cause the world to end?

Leo found that he wasn’t sure he cared at the moment. They had Jason back. They hadn’t saved him in the way they wanted to—not yet—and he was a lot more concussed than they would have liked him to be, but this was their Jason, and they both got to hold him again. That was more than they’d ever managed before.

For now, they were together. They could still figure out any global disasters they may or may not be causing tomorrow.

———

Notes:

…so. I hope the twist of Piper and Leo causing this worked for you guys? Not sure how obvious that was, but this was not my original plan for the fic. But I realized partway through that there was no good way for this to end no matter what Jason did now. If he has a ton of information that Leo and Piper aren’t ready to share with him at that point in time and he tells them immediately, he’ll severely freak them out and they might never become friends. If he waits until later on to tell them, that’s obviously a severe breach of trust and they might never forgive him. Neither of that really seemed like much fun to me, even if I was obviously never going to write a full Lost Hero rewrite based on this—I have neither the time nor the motivation not the ideas, lmao. So! They’re all in on it and get to be together again. Now they just sort of have to figure out how to not unravel the universe at the seams about it. But I’m completely fine leaving that one to them to figure out.