#< ​only vaguely but please assume this was written w valgrace in mind (as many of my posts are)

[demigod-shenanigans]

Jason thinks love needs to be earned. The only love in tiny Jason’s world that ever came without strings was Thalia’s, but he was so young when they got separated that he barely remembers her. His mom abandoned him but surely she had her reasons. Maybe he just wasn’t a good enough son.

So he tries to be a good strong wolf and then a good little soldier, for Lupa’s approval and Camp Jupiter’s approval and because maybe if he earns enough points on the achievement scoreboard his dad will come see him. Maybe his dad will love him. If he hasn’t yet, it’s just because Jason hasn’t tried hard enough.

And his friendship with Reyna feeds into this mindset. It’s not anything Reyna says or does. But Reyna is guarded—understandably so, considering she’s extremely traumatized and lived the first ten years of her life knowing love mostly as a thing that could blow up in your face at any given moment. Of course she’s slow to trust and even slower to love.

It takes time for her to let herself love Jason.

And she doesn’t love him because of some achievement scoreboard, or because he’s a good soldier, but Jason doesn’t know that. Jason just sees that Reyna is his friend now, so apparently he’s gotten a good grade in being a friend through his achievements. His dad may not love him yet, but Reyna loves him, so clearly it’s possible to earn love and the world works exactly how he always assumed it did.

And then he meets Leo and Piper. Leo and Piper who love each other without terms and conditions. Who get in trouble together and make fun of each other and would die for each other in a heartbeat. There were no grand gestures or heroic achievements that caused that love to happen. It just did. They just looked at each other and knew they were meant to be friends.

And they love Jason, too. Even after they realize their memories of him aren’t real, they stick with him. Even when he keeps messing up, which in his world should get friendship points docked and make their love go away, they keep loving him anyway.

Jason sees Leo make his little pipe cleaner helicopter and immediately asks if they’re actually friends, because he may not even remember who he is, but surely he hasn’t done enough to earn the friendship of someone that cool. In MoA he talks to Piper about how he keeps being knocked out and having to be saved and how that makes him a terrible hero. He tells her he doesn’t deserve her when she tries to reassure him.

But Leo and Piper keep loving him anyway. They met the version of Jason that’s a mess before they ever met the Jason that’s capable and heroic and they still love him. Leo loves Jason so much he dies to keep him safe.

Leo loves the Jason that laughs at his stupid jokes and plays video games with him and gets stupid competitive about it. He loves the Jason that’s a nerd about Ancient Rome and the Jason who is kind and the Jason who’s unsure what the future holds and what he wants it to look like. He loves the Jason who’s a bit childish and cannot cook to save his life and has a terrible taste in movies.

When Piper is trying to comfort Jason when he almost dies, she doesn’t talk about his heroics. She talks about Jason when he was happy, with a goofy grin on his face and marshmallows stuck in his hair.

All his life Jason thought there was a certain version of himself he had to be in order to earn love. A mold he had to somehow fit himself into, no matter how uncomfortably it fit. And here Leo and Piper are, loving him even when he’s not exactly the fearless hero leader everyone’s expected him to be all his life. Even when he doesn’t know who he wants to be, or what he wants to do with his life. Even when he tells them that maybe he hates being a leader.

And Jason wonders if that’s what love is supposed to be. If he’s been doing it wrong his entire life. If maybe Reyna could have loved that version of him, too, if he’d let her see it.

But he’s so afraid of the answer to that question—so afraid that the girl he considers his platonic soulmate won’t like who he is now—that he never lets himself find out.