Revisiting the (Jasico) Chalice Scene
For a very tiny 2-paragraph moment narrated by Frank, the possibly furthest person in emotional proximity to both Jason and Nico on this ship, the chalice scene is pretty darn important.
See, this moment proves nothing. It is one hundred percent expected of everyone in this team, whether they trust Nico or not, to take that chalice of poison and drink. Hence why it's brushed over so quickly. Nothing out of the ordinary happens here.
...But that's not entirely fair. Frank does note something weird in his narration: What is Nico talking about? Why is he making a big deal of giving it to Jason? Assigning all this meaning to it? Talking about trust?
Let's look at Jason and Nico's relationship up until this moment.
Nico has no POV chapters in HoH. Jason has eight, covering two mini-storylines. The first is their mini-quest to retrieve Diocletian's sceptre in Croatia, covering chapters XXXIII-XXXVI. The second is when they're stranded "somewhere on the northern coast of Africa" and Jason is working on negotiating with Auster/Notus, covering chapters LVII-LX.
Part 1: Building Trust is part of The Job
So during the Diocletian's sceptre mini-quest... well, we all probably know what happens, but let's chart it.
Jason XXXIV: Jason's internal narration shows his strong discomfort with Nico.
He judges not just Nico's "vibe", but also Nico's moral character. He interprets Nico as challenging him, toying with him. Positions Nico as someone otherworldly and in control of himself, but in an ominous and uncomfortable way. He makes a point of saying he hopes he's doing a good job of hiding these thoughts.
It's hard to stay away from a Doylian perspective here. Heroes of Olympus is ultimately a fantasy series, and Nico isn't a perspective character. In some ways, he isn't a character at all. He is meant to be cool, ominous, otherworldly. Fantastical trappings that the audience will find cool. But Heroes of Olympus also doesn't commit because that was never what Percy Jackson did. Nico is not a inhuman cryptid, he's a kid just like the rest of them.
Jason's thoughts here are in line with what everyone else has been thinking about Nico up to this point. It proves to us that Nico is not wrong about what other people think of him. Feeling left out and unwelcome are not fantasies he's made up in his head, they are being presented to us in the internal narration of everyone on this ship.
Jason XXXV: So Jason goes on the quest with Nico. He gets a chapter to hang out with Nico before Cupid actually gets involved. Compared to the ominous setup in XXXIV, the relationship growth in this chapter actually feels a lot more... authentic. Let's look at it while trying not to screenshot the entire chapter.
In this tiny interaction, Jason and Nico are very successfully pretending their relationship is great, casual, friends, joking around, physical affection, the works. We know Nico hates physical touch. We know Jason finds Nico creepy. Jason doesn't sigh at Nico's joke. Nico doesn't recoil from Jason's nudge. But more importantly, Jason makes the social effort to interact with Nico and initiate this moment. And Nico makes a possibly even bigger social effort to joke with Jason.
Have they both done this before? Yes. This is nothing special. Jason interacts with everyone, as he's about to reveal. And Nico is notorious for dropping witty jokes all the time, welcome or otherwise. So why am I mentioning this?
Because, for whatever reason, they're both "trying".
It's a lot less genuine on Jason's end. He has a job to do, and building trust with Nico is part of that job. He is willing to push away any feelings he might have himself to build a good relationship with Nico, all for the sake of the job.
And in the service of this, Jason makes small talk with Nico. He uses the right words to get Nico to talk. And then the wrong ones, evidently. But he's trying. He's always trying.
And as you may notice here, Nico goes through three different stages here. He starts off casually, talking to himself, experiencing something alone, answering Jason's questions off-handedly. But after Jason's carefully placed words, he opens up, and it's hard. He looks away, takes a deep breath, comes to a complete stop. He tries to change the suject, talks about Hazel, talks about Bianca, even still tries to give Jason more information after that.
Jason was having a hard time figuring out what to say. But there was nothing vulnerable about it. All of that was on Nico. He struggled here, about to pour his heart out, holding back. Being more honest than we've seen him in a while. This was hard.
Jason says the wrong thing next, and Nico clams up. Because when you're vulnerable and talking about something so deeply personal, a careless remark that could mean nothing can be deeply hurtful.
And Nico's not wrong. Jason immediately goes on to speculate about Nico based largely in things he's heard about him from Percy and other rumours. Nico is largely absolutely correct that what Percy has told Jason about him has damaged his reputation in Jason's eyes. It happens to be the case that Jason finds Nico trustworthy enough and useful enough to the job that he still wants to create a good relationship with him, but that is while giving weight to those rumours.
The way he talks about Nico in his head and when he's trying to make conversation with him is like he's assembling a puzzle. "I don't get him." "I can't figure him out." "It's not easy."
Jason does not care about Nico. Everything he says is for the sake of the job. Building trust is for the sake of the job. Encouraging Nico in this moment is not to make him feel better, it's so that he'll do what Jason needs him to do.
Jason XXXVI: Watch their camaraderie change as the fight as Cupid progresses:
I have to admit that the Cupid chapter is not my favourite. But we're here to talk about Jason and Nico.
Why does this chapter change Jason's impression of Nico? Why does it make him start to care? Why does he see him in a different light?
The answer is essentially that Jason got to experience a piece of Nico's life through this. The memories Jason saw were not just still images, but detailed experiences that included Nico's tinted perspective, emotions, and interpretations of everything that happened to him. Suddenly, Jason has the full puzzle.
Except he doesn't. He isn't Nico. A few moments of getting to "be" Nico is not enough for Jason to understand. But it is enough to shift his own objectives.
From now on, Nico is not a job. Nico is a person that Jason is invested in purely because he wants him to be happy. Which is a lot harder than building trust, a task that he has already been only barely passing at.
Forgive me for brushing past the other specifics of this chapter for now or we'll be here all day.
Part 2: Things Change on the Ship
If I unshackled myself completely, I'd have included every single Jason and Nico interaction from the entire book, including from the very beginning of the book in Leo IX where Jason acts as an advocate for Nico's voice.
Does it sounds so clearly strictly professional to you? Me too. I hate that the Seven were made into a group of coworkers instead of a true friend group.
But even then, it still tells us a few somethings. Nico is diligently going to Jason with information. Jason is giving Nico the respect for the information. From the ship's point of view, Jason is completely unfazed by Nico because he's objective and inhumanly heroic while the rest of us are scared of Nico because he's scary and cryptid. (This isn't about Hazel, Hazel loves Nico very much).
An excerpt from Piper XLI, which is after the Diocletian's sceptre miniquest:
"This is new" is what Piper is saying. Piper also seems to claim that Leo is on the same page here. And considering these are possibly the only people on this ship that actually consider Jason a friend, let's take this as true.
Jason has started defending Nico when Nico's not around. Could this still tie into The Job? It certainly might make team morale better if everyone as a whole helps Nico, then maybe the onus wouldn't be on Jason to single-handedly help him be happy.
But it's new. It's different. It's different from Jason moderating for Nico when it helps keep a work meeting on track. It's different from Jason being nice to Nico to his face. If it felt like Jason turned on a switch when he went on that quest with Nico, that's because he probably did. "Yesterday's objective was to make plans, today's primary objective is to get the sceptre and the secondary objective is to Build Trust."
Jason is so quick about this moment. He tells Leo not to make jokes at Nico's expense. He changes the topic immediately. Is this logical? Objective? Useful to The Job?
The priorities have shifted. He's defending Nico because it bothers him. Because he knows it bothers Nico. It's as simple as that, but it's so much harder.
Jason LVII: Jason dedicates basically an entire chapter to another Nico update. And the contrasts here are a fascinating look at how their relationship has changed.
I have... problems with how Heroes of Olympus deals with describing Nico and other characters like Octavian by equating looking sickly to being creepy. It would have been great as a commentary, considering that Nico has just been through a huge traumatic event that resulted in very, very poor health. The text doesn't do that, which frustrates me to no end. It's not like Nico chose to do this. It's not even like Nico could actually go back to eating a full meal portion straightaway after being literally starved. But I digress. This will turn into too long of a rant.
Jason does not actually describe Nico's physical appearance much in HoH. He goes off Nico's vibes, actions, "blending into the shadows", "slept very little and eaten even less", so on. He doesn't really describe him objectively.
Jason is, very ironically, a little more objective in this description. He admits Nico still looks gaunt, but has regained a little more weight. This is fair, Nico is unhealthy and is in recovery. And there are paragraphs written about what this means for Jason's attraction to him, but I'll leave that to the allos to analyse cause honestly my aroace self is lost on this.
The way Jason describes Nico here is absent of all his previous markers of how cryptid, ominous, and scary he is. Even Nico's appearance, which previously made Jason jump, is very calm. There's no slinking in the shadows here, no appearing out of nowhere. Nico is there. Jason's not sure since when. This is not a scary thing, it just is.
Nico is not a scary, inhuman entity. He is just another person.
(Which is great, because Jason still can't be fully objective about describing Nico as is. His internal narration on everyone is riddled with judgement, which I find hilarious.)
Nico engages Jason in Professional Talk about The Job. As established, this is what their relationship probably was before Croatia. Nico is the information guy, Jason is the leader and the only one who will take him seriously.
Jason, it seems, changes the script. He doesn't keep up being professional with Nico. They both get emotional, and instead of backing down like Jason seems to have done before, Jason keeps pushing.
I have a love-hate relationship with all the books. Jason and Nico being my favourite characters probably doesn't help. Does this post matter? Do we even care about canon? I'm like a beaver that needs trees to grow before I can build anything. This book is a mighty awesome tree, perfect for me to cut down and build something cool.
Jason falls into a specific type of argument here: He wants to convince Nico of the "fact" that everything is ok. Nico is fine, his sexuality is not something wrong with him, everyone else will not be homophobic, people are good and once Nico realises that he'll be happy.
This is wrong (at least in part). Jason cannot convince Nico that he is "wrong" about the world rejecting him because it's at least partially true. And we know this because we've seen the inside of everyone's head, including Jason's. And we know they all judge him.
It does not make a difference that they might not judge him for being gay, because they already judge him regardless. Nico believes that this is the cherry on top of all the treatment he's already been getting.
Any argument that people won't judge him for being gay sounds fake to Nico because he is already judged for being sickly, for "acting" creepy, for his powers (which the Argo II regularly makes use of), for his parentage, for his looks, for his past... the list goes on.
Jason throwing platitudes of "It's just who you are" doesn't work because it originates in a social conversation that Nico doesn't know about. If anything, it makes Nico feel worse, more helpless than ever in a never-ending cycle of rejection. Did he have a choice in Jason's friendship when he was making jokes about ice-cream? When Cupid broadcasted his private memories into his mind? Now?
The fundamentally scary experience that Nico is going through is not as simple as internalised homophobia. It's not as simple self-loathing. Nico is suffering under the judgement of society, including, currently, his supposed inner circle of allies. Percy Jackson, of all people, is actively undermining his reputation to strangers, whether he intended to or not. His own sister Hazel is a candle in the darkness, but she's from the same time too. What if he loses her? Frank Zhang used to be chill with him, but now he's not. Why? Why is he losing everyone? He used to be strong enough to shadow-travel to China and back, he used to be a major force on the battlefield, an ambassador of Pluto, holding his own on both camp councils. Now he's passing out all the time, weak, tired, recovering too slowly from being starved in captivity, judged for it. It is scary.
Nico is not a puzzle. Jason cannot fix him. He can damn well try, because he's stubborn and for once, refusing to take no for an answer, but he cannot run Nico's life.
But let's break this down. Jason cannot convince Nico of the facts, because the facts aren't exactly pretty. His view of the past and the present are reasonably grounded in truth — though the only reason why we can say this is because we're the audience and actually do have mind-reading skills. In real life, we would never know for sure what everyone is saying inside their heads.
So he makes a much more specific argument. Jason will be his friend. Maybe not yesterday. But maybe today. Maybe tomorrow. Maybe you already don't trust me. But maybe I've been trying, and you haven't been responding. Heck, maybe I've been getting it wrong, but you're not even giving it a chance. Maybe if I try, if you try, if we both try, we can make a new and better reality.
"I'll be here. But if you never give me a chance, then I can't do anything for you."
Part 3: The Challenge and The Chalice
Here's the thing: Jason is probably pretty good at forming relationships.
I will honestly ignore canon evidence for this if I have to. But Jason is good at getting people to talk. He's good at respecting boundaries. He's good at gaining admiration, respect, loyalty...
And it falls apart because people aren't blind. They eventually figure out that Jason is doing A Job. (See: Hazel, who realised this precisely because of how he voted against Nico in MoA, and continues to doubt that Jason will have her back for the rest of the quest)
We can point out that Jason is failing at Building Trust with Nico and, yes, he is. And that's because he's technically lost focus. He can certainly motivate Nico to complete The Job. Completing The Job is an easy goal. But if his goal is for Nico to be happy, that's an entirely different ball game with an entirely different brand of building trust.
Nico has already been trying. But he's also been touchy, aggressive, and operating on his own terms as much as possible. He's right about receiving never-ending rejection. He's also been rejecting people right back.
It is a dilemma on multiple levels.
If building trust with Nico is part of Jason's job, how is Nico supposed to figure out whether he's genuine? How is Jason supposed to convince Nico that he truly wants the best for him?
Also, if Jason's spent his entire life building relationships that revolve around obtaining good soldiers, what would an equal relationship look like? Nico has certainly also had a long pattern of placing someone at the centre of his world and operating around them. What would an equal relationship look like for him?
And in this scary, scary world of rejection that Nico is experiencing, what is the right answer? How should he move forward? Can he protect himself while opening himself up to new possibilities? Does he have to choose between protecting himself from rejection and opening up chances for acceptance?
The chalice scene means nothing.
There is no grand gesture here. There is no feat of strength, no test of loyalty, no proof of conviction.
There is a question: "Do you trust me?"
Let's go back to Jason's grand, messy speech to Nico in their last argument.
Jason cannot prove he is worthy of Nico's trust if Nico never trusts him with anything. And this contradicts Nico's internal order of protection, because the best way for Nico to guarantee Jason will never break his trust is to never give him any in the first place. And that leaves Nico trusting nobody, and suffering for it.
Let's go back even further to all the interactions Jason has led up until now.
In trying to get Nico to open up, Jason risks very little personally. He uses tactics that centre around Nico's life experiences and only tangentially mentions his own to keep the conversation going, even when he thinks it's for Nico's sake. It leaves Nico as the only one in the conversation who is sharing deeply personal information about himself, while Jason has a difficult but not risky job of responding and supporting. Nico tries to balance this slightly by bringing up Jason's life: "You're everybody's golden boy, a son of Jupiter." But he doesn't understand either. He's not privy to Jason's struggles any more than Jason used to be. He has no way to even the playing field.
The question: "I will take the risk of being vulnerable with you, if you will take the risk of being vulnerable with me."
The answer: "Whenever you reach out to me, I will prove to you that that trust was not misplaced."
Jason and Nico continue to have moments sprinkled into HoH, but none in their perspective anymore. And again, I'm just barely holding myself back from pouring all of them in here.
Why I personally find Jasico such a compelling ship is because of the relationship that they end up building. That is, fundamentally the relationship is built off of an understanding that they are both not mind-readers. They don't know what the other is thinking. Their good intentions will not magically come across. They will mess up on boundaries, on trauma, on acceptable topics of conversation, on everything. They essentially enter a relationship that requires them to stop, think, notice, communicate, problem-solve, and work to change.
Jason and Nico are both characters that suffer under their reputation in opposite ways. It gives them a unique head start in undoing their preconceived notions compared to other characters. Nico is not a dangerous invincible monster any more than Jason is a perfect invincible god. The extent to which Nico is convinced that society will not accept him no matter how hard is tries is not more true that the extent to which Jason believes that society will condemn him if he makes a single mistake.
The chalice scene is communication. It is Nico saying: "Look, I know we ended that last conversation badly. I know I told you the equivalent of it's never gonna happen. I've been thinking a lot about what you said. I want to give it a try. I want to be friends with you. I wasn't ready before, but I'm ready now. I choose to take this risk on you."
It's what Jason has been waiting for. It's his opportunity to say: "My friendship has no time limit. I trust you. I'm ready to be vulnerable with you. I'll wait for you to choose when you take these chances in your life. I'll follow your lead. I won't let you down."
It's not really about Jason, because Jason has spent the whole book pushing, and it got him nowhere. He had to wait for Nico to be ready.
And the chalice scene. Is how Nico tells him he's ready. Because Nico just had to find a theatrically perfect time to propose to Jason.
Jasico is very dear to me and I could ramble on about them forever. But I've already got a 298K fanfic ongoing on that and it definitely won't fit in a single tumblr post.
But I do want to say that Nico really likes giving Jason these little "challenges", which Jason does seem to respond to pretty readily.
Something about Jason's character design poises him perfectly for the urge to prove himself, especially when paired with friendly competition. And Nico definitely enjoys achieving that effect. It's a cute little part of their dynamic that I really enjoy.
I'm personally not a fan of relationships that put each other down or require someone to change. Again, there's a lot of Doylian problems with the writing, and you miiiight have noticed that I'm ignoring the existence of anything that comes after HoH, a book that was already a mixed bag for me.
Jasico is meaningful to me specifically because I think it's Nico most important relationship whether it's romantic or not. It represents a new era of hope for Nico; an era where he goes on to risk a relationship with both Reyna and Coach Hedge, and is rewarded for it. It takes a lot of strength to accept that you have gone through something very difficult, and still live on hoping for a better day.
I connect a lot to Nico because of this idea. What if I have gone through something that is undeniably, clearly terrible? Is there no better future for me? Should I give up forever? What if Nico was not accepted in the camp? What if people did think he was creepy and didn't want him around? What is his way forward? How could he possibly go on with the rest of his life?
His experience with Jason shows him that things can change. That it is still worth taking those risks and opening himself up over and over again. It's hard! It's hard when you've been hurt so many times and finally learnt to protect yourself. It's hard when you're told that it's gotten to the point where you're contributing to your own problem.
I don't talk about many other perspectives in this post, but here's an excerpt from Frank XVII, earlier in the book.
We know, as the audience, that Frank is a little freaked out by Nico (for reasons unknown since he was very proud of being good friends with Nico back in SoN, and for this reason I loathe to consider this fully canon).
But let's consider what's happening here. Frank assumes Nico is shutting his singular question down, something that Frank is obviously going to take into account interacting with him moving forward. But it's way more subtle than what Nico's been saying to Jason.
In response to the famous "grabbed Nico and lifted them both into the air" in Jason XXXV:
When they're in the air, Nico makes a muffled sound of protest. Jason doesn't note anything else wrong until they've landed and this moment happens. Way before this, Jason nudges Nico about the angel and the ice-cream stand. It takes being grabbed, flown into the air, and then landing safely before Nico explicitly tells Jason not to do that again. All in all very reasonable.
Jason is the one who adds this little threatening flair to it, which is noticeably more charged than Frank's little interpretation. And in Frank's little interpretation, Nico doesn't explicitly say anything. In fact, Frank specifically notes that he goes onto speak quite calmly.
So which is it? Is Nico pushing everyone away, or is everyone reading between the lines and assuming the worst? Is Nico misunderstanding reality, or is everyone else?
It is so, so easy for any book that comes after this to be like "Naturally, Nico is misunderstanding reality. Once he accepts this, he'll be happy." Because it's so hard to change society. But it also sucks, because that's what the original Percy Jackson series was all about. We, the audience, don't think it's too much to ask to see big societal changes come into play in Heroes of Olympus. But ah, writing is hard too, isn't it.
What does reality look like for a child like Nico in the real world? If he has truly been rejected by his community, but they're not all assholes for it. Some of them are just fucking teenagers who don't know what else to do.
There is hope in a relationship like Jasico which finds support in an unexpected place, and very realistically frames them not as soulmates, but as people who want connection. Whose hearts are in the right place, who are ready to take responsibility and take risks. I'm done reading the story about the magical island where everyone is like me. Heck, Percy only got a week of that before the island found a way to make him the odd one out again. There is no such thing as a rosy little community where everyone is perfect and good and always on the right side of history. It takes work.
So yeah. The Chalice Scene isn't flashy. It makes a good symbolic picture, it definitely makes a pretty artwork. But it's not the grand gesture that anyone else had. No diving into Tartarus, no holding up the sky, no taking a knife for each other. How to do you raise the stakes when Nico has already been to Tartarus, already argued with the gods, already broken the laws of Death? How do you raise the stakes when Jason has fought a Titan in hand-to-hand combat, or jumped into a canyon for a stranger before he knew he could fly?
It comes back to the core of the Percy Jackson universe. The real monsters isn't the war. It's the abusive stepparent. The teachers and bullies at school. The system built to undermine you.
The real test of love isn't dying for each other. It's living for each other.
And that's what makes Jasico for me.
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