Cousin It

Hera’s little hero was just two years of age when he started crying in the middle of a perfectly ordinary afternoon.

Revolutionary! A toddler? Crying? Someone call the police!

(She rather enjoyed human humor. Esperanza had introduced her to a thing called sarcasm, and it had, uh, how should she say this…rocked her world? Is that right?)

She emerged from her comfortable armchair to go check on him (that was one thing humans did right: armchairs. Wonderful to take this little thing called naps in). After all, what right did she have to call herself goddess of motherhood if she couldn’t take care of a human baby?

“Leo, my dear, what’s the matter?” She asked, half-expecting him to answer as she joined him in his playpen. “Stop crying. That isn’t becoming of a demigod such as yourself.”

The boy quieted down somewhat at that, as he should’ve, but his big brown eyes still glistened as he pointed to his mouth, which was trembling with the effort of holding back his sobs.

His mouth, which was covered in blood spouting from a thin cut on his upper lip.

Well, that was peculiar. She hadn’t left him in the playpen with anything that could do that, now, had she?

Hera lifted her little hero into the air, holding him against her shoulder as she scanned the floor for what could’ve done this.

That jigsaw puzzle in the corner was made of cardboard, too flimsy and dull to cut him like that. Those rings he liked to stack on that pole were too round and soft to have done it, either. The blocks were possible culprits, she supposed. If someone were to rub a sharp edge against their lip, it could make a cut like the one Leo had…

…but Leo hadn’t been holding anything when she found him. And it didn’t look like any of his blocks had blood on them.

But if none of the toys had done it, and there was nothing else he could’ve reached to cut his lip on, how on Earth—

—oh, shit. (That was another thing humans had gotten right: cussing! So liberating. She had to try it out on Zeus sometime.)

The part of herself that was keeping an eye on her champion halfway across the country was setting off alarm bells in her head. The poor boy had attempted to eat a stapler, of all things. The boy’s sister was taking care of it at the moment, but the encounter had ended with a cut on his upper lip.

Just like the one Leo seemed to have developed.

“What are the odds?” She asked aloud to herself. “My little hero and my champion, soulmates. The Fates must think themselves funny.”

Leo mumbled a response in his charming toddler language. He was crying again.

“Yes, yes, of course, dear,” Hera appeased, stepping out of the playpen and towards the apartment’s kitchenette. “Do you want a band-aid with the cool mutant turtles on it, the funny puppets, or the dinosaurs?”

Leo Valdez was six years old when he began bleeding smack dab in the middle of Sunday dinner.

It had been a normal meal with the extended Valdez family up until that point. Tía Rosa was gossipping about the other women in her church group, Raphael was laughing with Leo’s other cousins on the other side of the table, Abuelo and Abuela were quietly eating their chicken as they watched over the rest of the table.

Leo had learned to dread these dinners. The good food couldn’t make up for the cold ignorance he faced there. When he spoke, he was shut down or talked over, and the upset looks his mamá sent the offenders were not enough to make it stop. And he certainly didn’t wanna make his mamá fight with the others when they were already lucky to be invited! So, he enjoyed the food, and tried his best to stay absolutely silent.

The nosebleed was the exact opposite of what he wanted. First of all, it freaking hurt, like someone had reared back and hit him between the eyes. He almost fell back in his chair with the force of his flinch. Secondly, everybody was looking at him now, frowning. Having their attention was unfamiliar territory for him. He didn’t think he liked it.

He just wanted to go home.

His mamá sprung into action as soon as she saw the blood dripping from his nose. She grabbed his chin, turning him this way and that, poking and prodding at his face.

“I don’t think it’s broken,” she concluded, “but it’ll leave a nasty bruise.”

Tía Rosa rolled her eyes from her place across the table. “Ay, Leo, someone needs to tell your soulmate to stop getting into fights! She’s making you bleed all over the tablecloth.”

The family laughed with her (at him, he realized) and he found the tears beading in his eyes were no longer just from the force of the punch.

His mamá got up from her seat, tugging at his arm until he got the message to follow her. They made their way to the nearest bathroom in his abuelos’ ranch house, the one with the seashell wallpaper. Mamá set him on the counter beside the sink as she rifled through the closet looking for a spare washcloth.

Leo kicked his legs aimlessly, staring down at his feet, trying to ignore the tears running down his face.

“I hate my soulmate,” he sobbed, barely audible, as if he were testing out the idea. “I hate them.”

His mamá frowned at him just like the others had frowned at him earlier. He turned his head away. “You don’t mean that, mijo,” she soothed.

“Yes, I do.”

“No, you don’t.”

“Yes, I do. They’re always getting into trouble and embarrassing me,” he hiccupped.

“That isn’t your fault,” Mamá argued, dampening the towel she found with warm water, “and who knows? Maybe it isn’t theirs, either.”

Leo sniffed. “They still make me look stupid.”

“Maybe the problem isn’t your soulmate doing these things. Maybe the problem is the people who think you’re stupid because of it.”

Leo scrunched up his nose at her. Ouch, that hurt. He stopped scrunching up his nose. “What do you mean?”

Mamá smiled down at him as she ran the washcloth over his face, wiping away the tear tracks. “You remember that time you stepped on one of your legos?”

Leo let out a wet laugh. “Yeah.”

“Somewhere out there, your soulmate felt that same pain, and they probably did the same thing you did: jump up and down on one leg and howl like a stray dog.”

“Yeah,” Leo snickered as his mamá smoothed the washcloth down the bridge of his nose.

“Do you think it’d be fair for anyone who saw your soulmate do that to think they were stupid because of it?”

Leo shook his head after a moment of thought. “Wasn’t their fault.”

“Exactly,” his mamá agreed, “so if it wasn’t fair in that case, why would it be fair for people to make judgements about you because of something your soulmate did?”

“It wouldn’t be,” Leo realized.

“There you go.” Mamá finished cleaning him up and handed him a tissue to stop the bleeding. “Do you still hate your soulmate?” She asked.

“I guess not,” Leo said. “I’m sorry, soulmate,” he continued, aiming the words at the ceiling.

Mamá chuckled and ruffled his hair. “You’ll find them someday, mi hijo, and they will love you almost as much as I do.”

Jason Grace, son of Jupiter, was eight (almost nine, he’d have you know) when he started feeling faint in the middle of training.

It was a cool spring morning, just after a few days of rain, though, so he had no clue as to why. He had been drinking plenty of water like the nurses told him he should after the last three times he found himself in the infirmary. He was wearing shorts and his SPQR t-shirt, so it was unlikely he was overheating. None of his opponents had managed to hit him in the head thus far, so he couldn’t point a finger at the root of this sudden dizziness.

That was, until the taste and burn of smoke began clawing at his lungs.

When he tried to call for a time-out, he couldn’t get the words out of his mouth. All he managed were thick coughs as he tried to dodge the attacks the other soldier was throwing at him. He looked desperately towards his centurions watching him from the sidelines before he collapsed in the field without any hit knocking him down.

The other soldier, a girl only a little older than him, sheathed her gladius in victory before she realized there was something wrong. The centurions were already rushing towards the pair, though, pushing aside other trainees to get to them.

“I-I don’t know what happened,” his opponent stammered. One of the centurions hissed an order at her, and she ran off, yelling about something.

The other centurion helped him up into a sitting position as coughs racked his body, smacking him continuously on the back. He was hacking up blood, now, and it dribbled down his chin, onto the yellow letters on his shirt, into the hand he was holding to his mouth.

That was when he decided that seeing wasn’t for him at the moment.

He squeezed his eyes shut tight, ignoring the tight pain in his throat and the warm blood spilling out of it.

Instead, he strained to focus on the hurried steps of people arriving to help. There were two, from what he can hear, and one of them was the girl he was duelling. He could hear her filling in the newcomer and the sword on her hip clanking against her armor.

He focused on the soothing voice of the field medic, or at least, who he assumed was the field medic. She sounded like the one who helped him last time he got injured during training. He liked her voice—it was like a thunderstorm, all low and rumbly.

He focused on the centurions talking amongst themselves as they stepped back to let the medic handle him. It was a quiet conversation, barely audible from this distance, but he picked out a few words: “Do you think it could be his soulmate?” The question was whispered, half-concernedly, half-dissapprovingly to their brother in arms.

It was the last thing he heard before the static overtook the darkness of his shut eyes. The last thing he tasted was ash.

Jason Grace, son of Jupiter, centurion of the Fifth Cohort was thirteen and trying to get some sleep when something collided with the back of his head.

He let out an involuntary grunt of pain, followed quickly by another as what felt like a hand came into contact with his cheek. His eyes began to water without his input.

Jason gritted his teeth, trying to stay quiet so he wouldn’t wake anyone else, even as the blows kept coming. There was one on his upper back, then another, a squeezing pain on his bicep, and another slap to the face. He tried and failed (yet again) to not think about how he would bruise in the morning. Would there be a black and blue handprint on his shoulder tomorrow? Would his uniform shirt be enough to cover it?

Many of his nights had been spent like this as of late. It wasn’t even the first time this week, and it was only Tuesday.

With a sigh, Jason swung his legs out of his bunk, making his peace with the fact he wasn’t going to get any more sleep that night. He pulled on a jacket over his tank before heading out into the balmy winter night.

His feet took him towards the square just outside of the main plaza, where he found his friend Reyna picking flowers. She was dressed in the same standard issue tank top and sweatpants he had. The dark circles under her eyes matched his, too.

“Hi,” he greeted, plopping down next to her on the grass. “Nightmares?”

“Yes,” she confirmed. She tossed him a commiserating look. “Is it—”

“—the soulmate thing?” They said at the same time.

“Yeah,” Jason finished. “Yeah. It’s bad. Actually, could you check if my head is bleeding?”

Reyna nodded wordlessly while he bent down. He felt her fingers in his short hair. The area where his soulmate had been hit was sore, but it didn’t feel like the skin was broken.

She patted his shoulder, drawing back when he winced a bit. “You’re good.”

It was Jason’s turn to nod, now. They sat together for another moment or so. Reyna braided her flowers into a crown and Jason was content to share the same air as someone he cared about.

“You’re lucky,” Reyna said finally. “You might not feel like it, but you’re lucky.”

Jason picked at the grass by his knee. “What do you mean?”

“You have a soulmate.”

He laughed weakly. “Doesn’t everybody?”

Reyna lifted her head. Her dark eyebrows were knitted together in an expression that would be unreadable for anyone else.

“Oh.” Jason rubbed the back of his head, and immediately regretted it as the pain spiked. “Sorry. I didn’t know.”

“I’ve never felt them,” Reyna whispered. “I don’t think they exist. Either that, or they’ve been much more careful than I have.”

“Maybe that’s it,” Jason reassured.

Reyna’s mouth drew back in a snarl. “How many people do you know who have never felt pain?”

Jason opened his mouth. He closed it when he realized he didn’t have anything to say.

“That’s what I thought. In any case, why would they ever want me? I’ve put them through so much. They must hate me at this point.”

Jason placed a hand over hers. “Reyna, don’t say that. They’d be a fool if they didn’t love you. You’re so…well, you’re you. You’re Reyna.”

The other centurion rolled her eyes. “What an astute observation.”

“Shush. You know I’m not good with this stuff.”

“You’re telling me.”

“My point is, you’re a great person, and a good friend, and an amazing leader, and so many other admirable things, and you’re all of that because you’re you. If your soulmate—Gods, if any person in general is worth their salt, they’ll recognize that immediately and want to be part of your life and for you to be part of theirs.”

Reyna’s nose twitched. “Thanks,” she said, voice cracking.

Jason was beginning to think she didn’t want to talk about her soulmate anymore, so he decided to change the subject. “Besides, if anybody’s soulmate hates them, it’s mine,” he joked.

She punched him in the arm lightly. “Why would any sane person hate you?”

Jason shrugged. “Octavian hates me.”

“I said any sane person.”

He unleashed a giggle he didn’t let many people other than Reyna hear. “I dunno,” he admitted eventually, taking a deep breath, “it’s just, I’m so angry for them. There are evil people or, Gods forbid, monsters doing this stuff to them, and I can’t…help them.”

“Your soulmate’s survived this long. They can take care of themselves,” Reyna pointed out.

“They shouldn’t have to,” Jason huffed. “I want them to be safe and happy. And none of this stops me from having all this hatred for whoever’s doing this to them but having no place to put it. I can’t do anything to protect them. I can’t let them know I’m on their side. I can’t do anything but wait for us to meet, so then, maybe, I’ll be able to help. I feel…trapped.”

One of Reyna’s hands came up to pat his back. “There, there,” she comforted.

“You’re not any good at this, either,” Jason laughed.

Reyna’s mouth clicked shut. “I’m trying.”

“I know, I know…thanks. It means a lot.”

“Anytime,” she said, and it sounded like she meant it, “and, for what it’s worth, you might be the only thing they have to look forward to at the moment.”

She mumbled something along the lines of “Lords know I’ve been there,” but Jason didn’t want to assume. He furrowed his brow at her, but she had already looked away.

“…Thanks, Reyna.”

She gave him one last pat on the back before she pushed herself up, leaving a half-finished daisy chain in her wake. “I’m going back to the bunks. You coming with?”

Jason smiled at her. “I’ll catch up. Don’t wait for me, though.”

Grass crunched underneath her boots as she stalked off towards the centurions’ quarters, and finally, Jason was alone.

“I love you,” he whispered to his soulmate and the stars. “I’m in your corner. We’ll find each other someday, I promise.”

Leo Valdez was fifteen and pretty damn sure he closed his eyes when Tía Callida told him to, but at the same time, he was pretty damn sure his corneas were melting out of his skull.

Which was crazy because—

A) as previously mentioned, he totally fucking closed his eyes,

B) he didn’t know corneas could melt. That seemed like an evolutionary flaw if they could, and

C) even if they could melt, Leo should have been exempt from that cruel twist of fate because he was fireproof, and that should have applied to his corneas, too.

Yet there he was, flashbanged to oblivion in the middle of the newly monster-free Wolf House.

“Piper?” He called out, stumbling to his feet with his arms out in front of him. “Jason? Tía?”

The sound of Piper’s groan as she got up was a welcome one, even if she didn’t seem particularly happy about him yelling. Her footsteps sounded closer and closer by the second. “Leo? You good?”

“Yeah, probably not,” he hissed, pressing the palms of his hand into his eye sockets. Oh, that was a relief, it seemed like his eyeballs were still eyeball-shaped. But when he opened them, he still couldn’t see anything. “I might be kinda sorta blind.”

“What? Dude, you should be dead,” Piper balked. “Really happy you aren’t, but, like, if you didn’t close your eyes when Hera went beast-mode, you should be super mega ultra dead. How the hell did you survive?”

“I dunno, man. I’ve got a killer headache right now.”

“Same. After this, I am gonna steal all of the nearest CVS’ tylenol. You wanna go halfsies?”

Leo laughed despite the pain. The relief and euphoria of winning, for once in his life, hit him all at once.

After everything, they had done it. They had freed Tía Callida, defeated Khione, driven Lycaon and his sons away, and made it out alive—

“Wait, where the fuck is Jason?”

Piper paused for a moment before she gasped. And it wasn’t an oh, you remembered our anniversary and got me my favorite flowers! gasp. It was even a holy shit! gasp. It was a holy shit. gasp. In Leo’s experience, nothing good ever came from holy shit. gasps.

“Pipes? Pipes, what’s wrong?” He asked, his voice suddenly hoarse. When she didn’t respond, only led him carefully forward, he tried again. “Tell me what’s wrong. Please, Piper.”

She sat him down in the charred grass, the scent of ash surrounding them. A heavy thump accompanied her own collapse next to his spot. She leaned against him and threw an arm over his shoulder as she began to sob. “It’s Jason. Oh, god, Jason… he’s—”

The mournful voice of Tía Callida made itself known surprisingly close to where Leo and Piper were sitting. “Poor boy. I did tell him to close his eyes.”

“He’s dead?” Thalia asked before Leo could.

Fabric rustled. Piper’s sobs grew louder. Thalia’s breaths grew labored.

As Tía Callida and Thalia began to argue, Leo reached out for Jason’s hand. His own jaw had gone slack with shock, and his fingers were growing numb from the adrenaline crash, and his headache was only getting worse (frankly, it was a migraine, at this point), but was filled with the overwhelming urge to have his hand in his.

Jason’s hand was limp when he found it, but he held it in his grasp like it’d disappear if he didn’t. Leo’s other hand came to rest on Jason’s chest, which was stonily unmoving. It flitted up to his neck, where two fingers pressed down hard, but found no pulse. It smoothed up the side and front of his face, which burned with a deathly chill.

His thumb caught on something as it ran over the skin of Jason’s upper lip. There was a faint line there, barely even noticeable, tucked between the textures of his face. It was almost like the feeling of that one scar Leo had. It was on his upper lip, too, and he’d had it since he was two. Rubbing his fingers over it had become a bit of a nervous habit of his since his mamá died. See, it was from his soulmate, and whatever minute comfort that had provided for him was often all he could get—

—oh shit.

What were the odds that Jason was his soulmate the entire time they were on that quest, and he only noticed after Jason got himself killed? He was so dumb, God, he was so dumb, how could not have noticed by now? That every time Jason took a blow, he felt it, too? That every time Leo chewed on his nails, Jason would mess with his?

Oh, he was so, so, so dumb.

Jason was fifteen or sixteen-ish when life got breathed back into him for a reason he didn’t know, and the first thing he thought was that he was so, so, so dumb.

Stupid, really. He was stupid, stupid, stupid, because he didn’t close his godsdamn eyes when Lady Juno told him to, and it had gotten him killed. It hadn’t even done him the favor of being painless—it had felt like being baked to medium well and then some on the surface of the sun. Turns out, the gods’ true forms weren’t to be messed with. If only he had had someone to tell him this!

He didn’t have much time to dwell on that, though, because just as soon as he had realized he was dead, he was coming back to the land of the living.

The feeling came back in his arms and legs, first, a tingling sensation that spread towards his core. It was just like falling asleep and waking up as the sun hit your face: slow as molasses and just as sweet, too.

When that feeling reached his chest, his heart jumped back into motion. He gulped down air and spat it back out in deep breaths, like he had just emerged from the ocean. His throat was dry from disuse and his skin still felt like it was boiling, but at least when he opened his eyes, he could actually see.

Before his death, all he had seen was a supernova, bright golden light pouring from Lady Juno as she revealed herself in all her glory. He was still blinking away the afterimages of the formless glow, but behind it was the bright blue sky of a California afternoon. He caught glimpses of his friends bent over him. Piper was clearly distraught, crushing Leo in a hug as she wailed. Leo himself was looking just as bewildered as Jason felt, hunched over Jason’s body with one hand in Jason’s and the other on Jason’s… face?

That felt nice, actually. Jason leaned into the touch. He moved to say something, but he couldn’t hear himself over the ringing in his ears and even if he could, he most likely just let out a pained groan. He did his best to keep his unfocused gaze trained on Leo and Piper.

Piper seemed to hear whatever sound he made, though, and she sprung to her feet. “He’s alive!” She declared, not unlike an evil scientist. “Jason’s alive, you can stop fucking arguing now!”

Lady Juno and Thalia’s jaws shut in sync. Jason would’ve laughed if he had the energy.

“Sheesh, Pipes, did you forget about the headache?” Leo griped after letting out a relieved sigh. His eyes were staying stubbornly closed.

A nagging voice in the back of Jason’s head told him something must be wrong. He pushed himself up on his elbows with considerable effort, sore muscles complaining all the way until he was in a position that passed for sitting up. “Leo?” He croaked. “Are you alright?”

He had barely finished his sentence before Leo’s arms threw themselves around his shoulders, hugging him within an inch of his life. It would have been a shame to lose his second lease on life so quickly, but all things considered, this wasn’t a bad way to go. “Jesus Christ, man, don’t scare us like that ever again. And shut your eyes faster next time, yeah? I don’t wanna wind up blind and soulmate-less.”

Jason’s hands had been rubbing circles in Leo’s shoulders, but were stopped in their tracks when the last sentence met his ears.

What?

He pulled away ever so slightly, not wanting to stray too far. He scanned Leo’s face for any hint he was joking (it was a nice look on him whenever there was. His eyes got this calculating look in them, and he would crack a bright smile when someone laughed. That someone was usually Jason).

He found none.

Mostly because his gaze had gotten stuck on Leo’s upper lip.

There was a razor thin scar there, a carbon copy of the one Jason had seen in the mirror in the Jupiter—no, Zeus—cabin just a few days earlier, the one Thalia had said was from the time he tried to eat a stapler.

By the Gods. Was Leo his soulmate?

He should start thanking them; thank them for finally letting him see who it was, for tying him to such a brilliant person, and also probably for bringing him back to life…