#f&gwriting

[connorstolltheshow-blog]

Saying Connor was dressed warmly was an overstatement. He had no winter clothes with him and hadn’t had time to go to the shops to buy something yet. The snow had blown in over night and New Rome had woken up to a winter wonderland. Walking down the street, trying not to slip on the icy cobblestone, he stopped and cursed to himself. “Where the fuck am I supposed to find clothes.” He had never had a tour of New Rome officially and it was way to cold to spend so much time adventuring around trying to find a decent clothing store. He shivered and approached the first person he saw. “Could you perhaps point me in the direction of a clothing store? Possible one that’s decently priced?”

[fireandseaweed]

Baby It’s Cold Outside || Jason and Percy

Jason and Percy leave the unity feast early, missing the Dominus’ announcement, but they make their own discoveries that evening or early morning.

The Unity Feast had been, well, all told it had been mildly successful. Nobody had killed anyone, nobody had really done anything to shatter the fragile peace and Jason had gotten back to his apartment at a decent hour. Which was when the trouble had really started. Sleep eluded him for many reasons these days; phantom pain in his eyes, his anxiety, nightmares… so he was old comrades with insomnia. But tonight he had really been hoping for a good night's rest. Tiptoeing carefully past Percy’s closed doors he shucked off the vest and loosened his tie, letting the dark fabric hang loose around his muscular neck. He sat on the couch, whisky soda on the table in front of him and booted up his thin MacBook. Might as well get some homework done if he was going to be awake anyway. The clock on the microwave blinked a troublesome “2:30” at him but he shook it off. He could sleep I’m tomorrow. If sleep came for him at all.

After everything that had happened in the last few hours Percy had to admit that he should’ve been tired. It had been a good time, but a long time. His feet were sore from brand new dress shoes that he’d yet to adequately break in. He’d gotten home before Jason and passed out right away, or at least that was the plan. Rather he’d been lying there for a little while when he’d heard Jason return home, and a little while later he had given up on sleep all together, quickly rummaging through his bag and pulling out his small wooden box where he kept all of his paraphernalia. Pulling out a compact grinder, he quickly added and ground a sizeable bud of weed down to a relatively fine grain. Pulling out a pouch of tobacco, he layered a rolling skin with it and carefully poured the grains of weed on top of it. Placing a final layer of tobacco over the weed, Percy rolled a roach and tucked the paper before licking and sealing his joint. Stepping out of his room, he stumbled pretty tipsy still into the kitchen. Smiling as he used a pencil to pack the joint down before tying down the top. Looking up he finally noticed Jason. “Oh, hey man, couldn’t sleep?”

Jason was intent on the assignment when he heard Percy’s bedroom door open and watched his best friend stumble towards the kitchen with a joint in his hand. It took Percy a minute to notice jason sitting on the couch but when he did, Jason waved with a lopsided grin, “nah. You know how it goes. I hope I didn’t wake you, dude.” He leaned forward to grab his drink and took a giant swig from it. “All in all tonight could have gone worse. I resisted the urge to kill Cat Karavadra and nobody started the war back up again. So at the very least we can pretend to be united again. And pretending is the first step to making it happen for real.” He set his nearly empty glass down and slumped back onto the couch. “Remember when we were kids and we could sleep real easy? Before everything rested on our shoulders? I can’t remember the last night I fell to sleep immediately.”

“Wake me?” Percy asked remembering the familiar feeling of dread that always settled into his stomach whenever he thought about his nightmares, “I couldn’t sleep actually, I was hoping that this would help me feel a little better, y’know, try and take the edge off a little bit or something, get me feeling a bit sleepier…” he shrugged gently and nodded. “It was hardly perfect,” he agreed. “I don’t honestly remember that ever happening to me, I don’t think sleep was ever something I got to do. I always felt so wide awake and full of energy. Eventually I’d drift off, then I became a demigod and everything was kind of compacted and somehow it got worse?” He paused and looked around. “You wanna come smoke this with me?” he asked curiously. “We can keep talking, don’t wanna stink out your kitchen that’s all.”

Jason’s weak smile barely cut through the gloom of his dim apartment “I guess it was too much to ask that one of us actually got a good night’s sleep for once.” He draped himself over the back of the couch and looked across the room at Percy, nodding. “You know….. I can barely remember life before I came here. I think I can remember my childhood room. But. It’s vague and fuzzy. We’ve been doing this for so long that that kind of stress and tension just seems normal now. And that can’t be terribly good for us, can it.” He nodded and vaulted the couch, tossing his tie and shirt onto a barstool at his kitchen counter, “don’t want to get them all weedtastic.” He muttered before opening his balcony door and looking out over New Rome. “It’s been awhile since you and I got stoned together.”

“Getting a good night sleep feels like a bit of a myth right now, which is ironic considering our situation.” Percy smiled brightly at his friend and laughed. “Please, the weedtastic is everything that I want from one of these,” he looked at the joint in his hands before stepping out of the balcony door and gazing out over the city. Settling into his chair, he loosened his tie and undid a second button before pulling his belt off. “There, that is 200 times better.” He smiled brightly and reached out, scooping up a lighter and striking the flint confidently. “Too long since we got an opportunity to smoke together,” he agreed, “I missed getting to do this stuff while the war was on, now that I’ve got more time on my hands I’ve been doing everything that I can to enjoy that, and spending this last week with you has been …. I dunno, it’s been pretty great.” This was the happiest that he could remember being in a long time, and although it might’ve been somewhat of a once a year sort of thing, he was already looking forward to the next set of holidays where he was sure that this was going to become a tradition.

“I think the whole demigod aesthetic is sharp weapons and giant bags under your eyes. I know I’ve been sporting them since the year 2000.” Jason pulled one of the chairs on the balcony closer to Percy’s, settling into it and grabbing a blanket he kept folded under the eaves and spreading it over his lap, “Time to de-dapper? It was nice to get all dressed up… but… it’s nicer to undress afterwards and relax. Always feels twice as relaxing.” He cocked his head so he could look at his friend from his fuzzy blanket cocoon. “This is what we needed. Just… to be. No war, no temples. Nothing but being two guys relaxing at home.” He watched Percy light the joint, turning his attention back to the city spread out beneath them and the brighter lights of San Francisco beyond it, “I needed this. Desperately. Just to spend time with you. It recharges me. Can’t be properly sparky without my Percy time.”

Smiling gently, Percy lifted his joint to his lips and took a deep drag. Swallowing the smoke he exhaled gently a moment later, the smoke curling upwards and spiralling into the obsidian night sky. “You’re not wrong,” Percy leaned over to Jason and passed him the joint. A moment later he was fishing his pen out of his jacket as if to prove the point. I never really think all that much about always being armed. It’s normal, but really it shouldn’t be. It wasn’t before. So why do I feel so uneasy without Riptide?” He laughed, almost as if it were a bad joke lacking a punchline. Pushing the pen back into his pocket, he turned and smiled at Jason. “We all deserve a break after everything that we have had to go through, but you’re right, it’s been a real treat to recharge with just you.” He had never met someone like Jason. At times they were so similar that it was difficult to actually believe that Jason had spent the majority of his life living as a legionnaire in this very city. Despite their similarities they were still from different worlds. Not that that had ever stopped them. “Going back to real life seems daunting now….”

Laughing at the pen Percy held loosely in his fingers, Jason tugged the cord tied around his neck to reveal the bright golden coin it was threaded through, “I feel the same way. If this bad boy isn’t touching my skin it just doesn’t feel right.” A quick flip of the coin turned it into a glittering spear, and a second one turned it back into a coin and he tucked it under his white t-shirt. Casting an affectionate glance at his friend he held his scarred fingers out for the joint, “Recharging with you has been the highlight of my year, P. Just getting to spend time where we get to be us, with no pretense or shielding up. It doesn’t happen often, and I think I need it even more than I realize.” It was hard to imagine that there had actually been a time in his life before he and Percy had been best friends. It seemed like the son of Poseidon had been an integral part of his life for as long as he could remember. “Well… remember that anytime you need a break from real life I’ve got a bed with your name on it and all the baked goods you can steal.”  

Nodding gently, Percy was pleased to know that he was not the only one who still struggled with their demons. It hadn’t been easy, but he was hopeful that things would finally start coming together. They had to. This was the future that they deserved. It was definitely one where they got to have a happy ending. “I’m glad that I’m not the only one who is a paranoid lunatic,” he laughed gently, knowing that he was neither of those things. But it was nice to know that other people practiced the same habits as him. “That is awfully high praise, but I don’t disagree, I’ve really had a good time, it’s been nice just getting to hang out. Eat too much food. Drink too much. Smoke too much. Indulge ourselves generally I guess.” He looked to Jason once more and smiled weakly at him before taking the joint back and swallowing down several lungfuls of smoke. “Thanks man, but at some point in your life you’ve got to get back to it, right?”

“I don’t think it’s paranoia if you’ve lived your entire life in such a way where having a weapon instantly accessible is a necessity. Sad. But not paranoia.” Thick smoke flowed from between his lips and he twirled his fingers, watching a tiny cyclone spin through the cloud. “As cheesy and dumb as it sounds… you’re my anchor. When it all gets dark and loud and anxiety is beating down my door you’re the North Star I can turn to. You’ve helped me through a lot since we became friends. Hopefully I’ve returned the favor.” Jason watched Percy do some serious work on the joint as he burrowed into his blanket. “Yeah. You do. But getting back to it doesn’t mean you can’t hide out for a night and recharge. Self care, right? We’re millennials. We’re supposed to be all about that. And this can be your self care safe place.”

“The irony is that I constantly tell everyone that all I really want anymore is to have a more normal life. But I can’t help but keep a sword on me at all times like some sort of safety blanket.” Percy let out a gentle cough as he handed the joint back to Jason and gazed out across the early morning sky that had settled over New Rome. “I wouldn’t know what my life would look like if we weren’t friends, it sounds cheesy I know, but I feel the same. I’m no introvert, but if I was then I don’t think you’d count as people, being with you is just like me time.” He pauses and smiled gratefully at Jason. “What did I do to ever deserve a friend as good as you?” He fell silent as he felt a pang of happiness and joy at the sheer prospect of spending more time with his friend. “I’ll make sure to take you up on your offer,” he promise, “something tells me that we are going to need some time to ourselves with everything that’s going on at the moment.”

“We could do worse as far as security blankets go. But I get where you’re coming from.”  Jason’s fingers brushed the ever-cold coin resting against his sternum and moved to the scar on his lip, before settling on the ragged edges of the spiderweb of scarring around his eye, “Really, all of this is the same thing. Life is tumultuous but this… marring, as it were, helps me anchor myself. I am a warrior. I was a priest and I was a praetor but I’ve always been a warrior. There’s calm in the labelling, but it’s a double-edged sword, because if that’s my anchor, I’m never going to be able to be anything but that.” He took the joint and took a long slow drag on it, listening to Percy talk with a smile on his face, “You were a good person. One of the best people. That’s all. That’s why I love spending time with you. Because you’re just good and lovely and even as much of an introvert as I am… spending time with you recharges me even better than alone time.”

“Well, we could literally have physical security blankets and obviously that wouldn’t be ideal, two studs with eight packs and a blankey.” Percy smirked quaintly at the other and shrugged. The way that Jason spoke was interesting. It brought several thoughts to his mind and he frowned. “I don’t think you should define yourself by the things that happened to you, you’ve always been brave in the face of fear, in the face of certain death at times, but what’s more, you’ve always been compassionate and kind. You’re a good person Jason and that is what your anchor should be, remember who you are before you try to define yourself.” Percy took a moment to breath, grabbing a spare blanket and wrapping it around him to fight off the chill in the air. “I’m not sure that I’d call myself a definitively good person,” Percy replied, “I did some terrible things in the war. There’s so much blood, both Greek and Roman blood and it’s all on my hands. I led us through a war where hundreds died. Do I still get to call myself a good person after that?”

“I dunno man. I think we look pretty goddamn hot right now, two half-dressed-in-formal wear studs wrapped in blankets. That’s a calendar right there.” Jason’s face fell as he listened to Percy question his own goodness. “Percy. You can’t sit here and tell me not to focus on the bad things about myself and question your own goodness in the same breath.” He leaned over and thumped his hand against Percy’s chest. “That heart is the heart of a good man. We all did terrible things in the war. We all have the blood of hundreds on our hands… and believe me I don’t think it ever washes off. But I don’t think that’s enough to tip the scales for you. What you did you did for the good of all. You’ve fought, your whole life, to keep the world safe and to make sure we all have a life to keep living when the war is done.” He sighed to himself and leaned back in his chair, giving Percy’s shoulder a squeeze. “One day you’ll see yourself like I see you.”

“Don’t give anyone that idea,” Percy had a hard enough time with his renown as it was already, “it’s hard enough introducing myself at the moment, I don’t need my body plastered over every middle aged spinster’s fridge.” He hated that his name made people prick their ears and turn with hushed whispers about whether that was him. Could that be the Percy? He sometimes wondered whether people were disappointed by the average height, dark haired and green eyed latino they were met with. He often didn’t feel that he lived up to his … well reputation. He smirked gently. “Well I am a bit of an oxymoron myself,” he replied with a shrug, “being a hypocrite isn’t really that surprising on top of that is it?” He considered Jason’s words. Seeing himself like Jason saw him seemed unlikely to him. But then again he never truly felt as if his friend really saw everything that he did. “It’d be really convenient if we could stop being so self sacrificing and be really honest, but then I guess that’s just the nature of being a hero. Something tragic like that? Right?”

“Gods right? Advantage to studying at Stanford and not NRU. To everyone there I’m just another wounded vet non-traditional student doing his thing. Office of Integration decided that was the best way to explain me away.” The Office that handled the melding of demigod pasts into acceptable mortal stories had been incredibly non-plussed with his injury. Apparently this was old hat to them. “Yeah… well… take off the oxy and that’s what you’re being right now. A moron. I’m calling you a moron.” Jason really did wish that Percy could see himself the way Jason saw him; handsome and kind, intelligent and ferocious, all the little pieces added up to make a man so amazing he put the gods to shame. “It would be. But that really doesn’t seem our style now does it. I guess you just have to keep me around so I can tell you how amazing you are. I’ll keep reminding you, all the time, because I know it’s the truth.” He let his head loll back against the chair, unbraiding his blonde hair and looking up at the stars, “It’s nice to be somewhere where it’s quiet. That Feast was getting to be a bit much.”

“Maybe I’ll transfer out of NRU, although it seems dumb to do it when I’m so close to graduating…” Percy pauses and smiled gently. “Of course they weren’t concerned by something as trivial as injuries. Now if you’d been half satyr or something then that would’ve probably worried them some. But I’m sure you can’t be the first demigod to want to do something outside of the city with some sort of visible injury.” He fell silent as he took the joint back from Jason, or maybe he’d had it all along. To be perfectly honest he wasn’t entirely sure. He was starting to get pretty stoned and he’d drunk a lot at the party. He was hardly a notoriously heavy drinker. “As long as we can stop one another from being too humble then that will keep me nice and happy, can’t allow anyone to think we are braggarts now can we?” He paused and scootched his chair over closer to Jason, placing a affectionate hand on his friend’s shoulder. Squeezing it gently he sat silently for a moment, watching the cloud of smoke ride through the sky away from Jason’s balcony. “Thank you Jace,” he finally said quietly, “this week has done wonders for me.”

“Yeah. I still have a year and a half at least so transferring wasn’t as big a deal for me. But if you’re close then it doesn’t really make sense.” Jason’s laugh cut through the chilly night, “they invented a neat little background for me, falsified some paperwork, bing bang boom Jason’s got a nice backstory for his classmates.” Another laugh and he took a drink of his whisky, “I don’t think either of us are in danger of turning into Octavian. But it’s nice to have someone with a little objectivity to help you keep your head on straight.” Percy moved his chair closer to him and Jason leaned his head to rest his cheek on Percy’s hand, the warmth of it bleeding through his chilly stubble. “My home is always open to you. Always. This week has been amazing. Just spending time with you. When I’m with you the normal buzz and hum of my mind is actually quiet for once. I wouldn’t trade it for anything.”

“Either way I’ve got to wait, either for the university to be rebuilt or for the university to be rebuilt so they can transfer me. But I’m making sure I keep nice and busy.” Percy wondered what Jason’s made up past was? “You’re not going to tell me about your backstory? Are you worried it’s going to be cooler than your real life?” Pausing for a moment he laughed. The truth was that Jason had lived a life that was so cool that it would be difficult to live anything comparable. But there was a big part of Percy’s life that was lived in hopes that it would one day become normal. He envied everyone else who’d gotten to grow up as normal. “I actually don’t think I have ever met someone that I got along with better than you and believe me it’s weird, me and Thalia never got along well. I almost dropped an entire river on her once.”

“Well yeah. Trying to fix the entirety of demigod society is certainly a way for you to keep busy, P. You’re definitely not lying.” Jason laughed brightly, moving his cheek away from Percy’s hand, “Explosive Ordnance Disposal in the Middle East. That’s the backstory. Lost my eye to some shrapnel from an IED on patrol. Nothing fancy, just gets the job done.” It felt a little wrong, co-opting his story from so many mortals who had had that fate befall them. But the Office of Integration had assigned it and he’d gone along with it. The good soldier to the end. “Well. In your defense. I also have wanted to drop an entire river on my sister and I don’t have hydrokinesis.” Thalia was a stormy personality at best. She wasn’t really a people person. “It’s true though. You’re just….. you work. With me. With all my crazy. You being around works.”

“I’m not trying to fix the whole of the society,” Percy replied with a shrug, “all I am trying to do is rebuild a city and get my people something better than they’ve had for the last nine months.” Although when he put it like that he didn’t know if that sounded any less like an impossible and insurmountable task. “Well, they aren’t entirely wrong, I know it is stretching the truth a little but IED does sound more normal than exploding ballistae bolt.” Pausing once more, he considered how different Thalia and Jason was. Jason was like a breath of fresh air on a rainy day. Thalia was like a hurricane in the middle of the ocean, tearing anything apart that came in it’s way. At least that was what she was like when she was pissed off. “It amazes me how well she and Artemis get along with one another, especially considering how wildly different they are from one another.” Pausing for a second longer he stretched out further in his seat, embracing the cold night air. “We slot together pretty well,” he agreed.

Jason sat in a very pointed silence in order to give Percy a chance to see that what he was saying was exactly like trying to fix the whole of demigod society. He laughed, self conscious fingers rising to brush his face, “Well… since the mortal world doesn’t know what an exploding ballistae bolt is, this is indeed the better option. Even if it smacks of dishonesty.” As Percy kept talking about his sister Jason laughed, “Well… from what I’ve heard, my godly sister Lady Artemis has a rage and fury that makes Thalia look like a docile little lamb. That’s probably why they get along so well. Though it seems like Thalia is angry constantly, and Artemis only some of the time. But when you’re thousands of years old you probably learn how to pick when to be angry and when not to be.” Watching Percy stretch out of the corner of his eye Jason listened carefully; wondering if perhaps there was a second layer of conversation happening. Though in the secret parts of his heart he was unsure if he was wondering about it, or hoping for it, “We do. Peanut butter and chocolate and other apt comparisons like that. We’re good together.”

Allowing the silence to settle over them, Percy pulled his own blanket around him more tightly. It was a cold night and despite leaving the feast early he was still feeling pretty sleepy. The joint was hardly helping either. “You don’t owe anyone an explanation for everything that you’ve had to go through in the last six months. Sure it’s dishonest but it’s none of their business whether you were hurt by exploding mortal weapons or whether it was of the immortal variety.” He knew that Jason was a traditional hero who thought of self sacrifice as a necessity. But the truth was that Jason had given up more than many in the war. Not to mention his reputation and everything that he’d worked towards as Pontifex Maximus, all for the Greek people. That wasn’t something that Percy would ever forget. If anything it endeared him to Percy more. There was a lot to be interested in Jason. Apart from the fact that he had the body of a literal God, Percy knew that Jason was kind. Thoughtful. Intelligent. Introspective. Selfless. It was really something. Not to mention that Jason was one of his oldest friends excluding Annabeth and Grover. “Red Wine and Steak?” Percy suggested with a smile, admiring the stubble that dotted Jason’s face.

As Percy wrapped himself tighter in his blanket, Jason flipped the end of his fuzzy blanket over the other man’s lap, scooting slightly closer as he did, “I stole the good one. Might as well share.” Heaving a sigh he shrugged. He knew Percy was right. But his life had been one of explanations, of transparency required by duty, and it was difficult to let go of those ideals. “Yeah yeah yeah. You’ve always gone too easy on me so I can’t really trust your opinion now can I. You’re my best friend. You’re hella biased.” He cocked his head to look at Percy as the other guy talked, stifling a yawn. He wasn’t ever quite sure how Percy managed to look like a male model and still be the humble amazing guy he was, but it was always the case. “French fries and too much salt.” He responded, laughing softly, “a bubble bath and beer. Whisky and a cold night. All the great things come in pairs.”

Taking the bit of the blanket that Jason had passed to him, Percy tucked it over his feet and smirked. “Well, this is your balcony, I’m not exactly going to start complaining because I think that you’re being selfish, you’ve put me up free of charge for more than my fair share of time.” He paused and considered Jason’s words. “I’m not biased, I am as objective as it is humanly possible for someone to be.” He smirked gently, knowing full well that he would always take Jason’s side irrespective of the circumstances. It was simply something that was outside of his control. He loved his friend too much to not always take his side. “Can you ever have too much salt?” he asked smirking gently before shrugging a little and stretching. “Who knew that we were such a dynamic duo?” he asked his increasingly handsome friend.

Jason laughed loudly, the sound echoing through the chilly night, as he squeezed Percy’s shoulder, “P. You could crash with me for the rest of your life and that wouldn’t be an imposition. I literally don’t think I’d ever get tired of having you around. It’s the best part of my day.” He waved Percy’s argument away. It was impossible for either of them to view the other objectively, which somehow worked because it balanced out how harsh they were on themselves, “You can never have too much salt. Nor too much hot sauce.” He squeezed Percy’s shoulder again and let go, watching him stretch languidly, “I mean… we did. It’s why we hang out together so much. We’re just great together.” He didn’t know if it was the whisky, the exhaustion, or just years of friendship all coming together, but Percy was growing ever more handsome in the dim light of his balcony, “It’s just the way it is. I’m better when I’m around you.”

“I don’t know,” Percy quietly replied with a smile drifting across his face, “I am sure that if I were able to stay with you for the rest of your life that you’d get sick of me soon enough. There comes a limit to the amount of human interaction that we can all take.” Raising an eyebrow thoughtfully, Percy slipped deeper beneath the pile of blankets that he was nestling within. Breathing deeply, Percy idly flicked at his lighter, it sparked on and off before he tucked it away too. His inability to sit still had always been famous, but he often wondered if his ADHD was getting worse with age. “That sounds like an advert for a hot sauce place, except I’ve never been anywhere in the world that sells just hot sauce on its own…” he laughed and shrugged, glancing at Jason and swallowing somewhat uncomfortably as new feelings washed over him uninvited. “My question was rhetorical,” Percy laughed, “You’re perfect the way you are, you just think you’re better when I’m around because you’re blind to your own abilities and the truth about it.”

The moment seemed like something special; which meant that Jason was ill-equipped to deal with it. “I don’t think so. I think you know me well enough to know when I need to hide in my room playing video games and when I’m ready for more people time. But. Having you here is a great thing.” Percy fidgeted and Jason sat, trying to avoid giving into his nervous energy that made him fidget just as much. Normally he was prone to the standard demigod amounts of ADHD but he tried to keep it in check as much as possible: a feat easier said than done. He kept his hands clasped in his lap, twirling the silver ring on his finger. “There are some shops that specialize in just hot sauce. I know there are a couple in the city. There’s one in Haight-Ashbury. We can go sometime if you want.” He listened as Percy talked, glad for the dim light of the balcony as he blushed violently. “You’re wrong. There’s always room for improvement and I’m far away from perfect. But…” he fell silent. Not even sure of the end to that sentence.

Maybe it was the amount that Percy had drunk. Maybe it was the fact that he had smoked half a joint. Maybe it was the time of the night. Either way Percy couldn’t help but think that Jason looked truly radiant in the dim light. It seemed to shine through his long blonde hair and almost cast a golden glow. At least that was what Percy imagined. “I get that you need time alone, you and Annabeth are similar in that way …” he shrugged gently, suddenly wondering why he had decided to make a connection between his ex and his best friend, “but I’m glad that you think so highly of me. It actually really means a lot Jace…” he sighed contentedly and shifted once more in his seat. “I’d like that. Getting hot sauce with you,” he smirked at the thought, “do they have a blue one?” He paused for a moment and shrugged. “Damn, I wouldn’t know what to say about that, it is pretty hard to argue with such a strong denial. It’s definitely changed my opinion about you. Good job bro.”

“Yes but she’s more likely to use her alone time to try to save the world with her super genius, and I’m more likely to use it to play Horizon Zero Dawn in my underwear until I’ve gotten all the trophies. Big difference there.” He laughed again, shimmying deeper into his mound of blanket and closer to Percy, “even if they don’t have a blue one I’ll dye it for you. We’ll get you a blue hot sauce that’ll make your eyes water. There’re some nice shops down there. We can make a day of it. Get out into the city, grab a nice lunch, just be touristy for once. I’ll even wear a Fanny pack so we blend right in.” He could sense Percy’s sarcasm in his response and head butted him in the shoulder “uh huh. I can tell when you’re being sarcastic, P. I’ve gotten pretty good at it over the years. We can’t all be handsome smart amazing guys like you. I’ve just gotta keep trying to be as good as the amazing Percy Jackson.”

“I don’t know about you,” Percy replied with a laugh, “but I would rather spend my day in bed playing HZD in my underwear then save the world. Besides you give Annabeth far too much credit, not that she doesn’t deserve it, but she’s as good at procrastinating as you or I.” Possibly even better. He’d seen her re-design Olympus and had experienced her procrastination first hand. “Damn, and I thought that you’d let me wear the fanny pack, I guess I’ll have to get a “I love Stanford” shirt or even a visor! But that won’t hold a candle to the level of touristry that you’ll have achieved.” Smirking gently, Percy reached out and wrapped a hand round the back of Jason’s head as he placed his forehead on Percy’s shoulder. “You don’t need to keep trying anything, there is a reason that you were Praetor for more than five minutes and I wasn’t, you don’t give yourself nearly enough credit.” He gazed into Jason’s stormy eyes and smiled contentedly.

“Absolutely. Trying to navigate one of the cauldrons is way easier than facing down Gaia, more fun too. I definitely don’t think I give Annabeth too much credit, that woman is scary smart. I think even her procrastination is productive. Which is more than I can say for me.” The image of them as a touristy couple made him laugh, and then the realization Jason was imagining them as a couple gave him brief pause, though it seemed he wasn’t too upset by the mental image. “I’ll lend you some of my Stanford wear. I’ve got way too much of it.” Percy’s hand rested in his hair and Jason took that as tacit permission to snuggle up against Percy’s side. “Yeah yeah yeah they’re gonna sing the ballad of Jason Grace for years to come and all that good shit.” He waved Percy’s comments away before resting his hand on the other man’s broad chest, “in the end it's not really the opinion of History that matters to me, I think. Just if I did right by my friends.”

“I once saw Annabeth construct a scale model of New Rome with an absurd number of playing  cards. It was both impressive and a little sad. I’ve never seen someone get so annoyed at someone opening the door and letting wind in…” Percy laughed at the memory before shrugging, “you’re doing it again, you don’t need to compare yourself to anyone else because you’re doing great just as you are.” He smirked gently at his own cliche, it was funny because if the tables were turned he knew damn well that he would be unable to take Jason’s advice. “I look forward to looking like a UCS advert / brochure. I never knew until now what my true calling was.” As Jason leaned against him, Percy felt his pulse quicken slightly as their bare skin caught contact. Swallowing a breath of air, Percy smiled as he tried to ignore the racing adrenaline that was pounding around him. Suddenly he felt somewhat light headed. He’d never felt this way before and in that moment he didn’t want to move. Despite everything that he was feeling, he didn’t want to ruin what was happening in that moment. “Of course you did right by your friends, was that something that was ever in doubt?”

“That’s so peak Annabeth I can’t even handle it. Of course she did. I’m surprised she didn’t start doing the whole of San Francisco.” Rolling his eyes Jason waved Percy’s words away, hand accidentally grazing his friend’s beard as he did. “Of course I am. And don’t give me that guff about how I should only try to be better than my previous self because you know that’s not how my brain works. I have to keep trying to be the best.” He could hear Percy’s heart thudding through his chest and was glad his friend couldn’t hear that his was doing the same thing. “Doing right is an ongoing process. I have done right. I want to keep doing right. Until I finally die. But I need to keep making a difference. Keep doing something. Just so I can always be there for you guys.” He heaved a sigh and twisted his head so he could look up into Percy’s eyes “you know how that is.”

“Annabeth is certainly one of a kind,” Percy replied, dipping his head gently in admittance to what Jason had said. Annabeth had a singular focus when it came to certain tasks, it was almost scary how hard she could work on something if she really set her mind to it. Laughing gently, Percy shrugged. “Maybe I just mean that I think you’ve done more than enough good to secure your place in Elysium a thousand times over. But if you want to insist on trying to get straight to the Isles of the blessed during your first attempt then who am I to try and stop you?” He chuckled gently and nodded.  ���That sort of attitude is why you’re so good though,” Percy had never particularly had qualms with platonic physicality, especially not with Jason. Yet there was something making the breath in his throat catch. “You just insist on dramatising it, and then you claim you’re not a drama queen.”

“And I wouldn’t have her any other way.” Jason’s love for Annabeth burned almost as bright as his love for Percy. She was a genius and one of the best people he knew; he’d fought beside her through a hundred battles and he’d do it through a hundred more. “I mean why live three times if I can go to turbo-heaven on the first go? Come on, P. I’m trying to speed run this bitch.” He laughed and straightened up, leaving the warmth of Percy’s chest with a little bit of sorrow. It was comfortable, and in all honesty felt absolutely right. But he didn’t want to overstay his welcome. “I think we both know when I claim I’m not a drama queen it’s a goddamn lie. I’m super dramatic. I just like to say I’m not.” He brushed hair out of his eyes and smiled at his friend, admiring literally everything about the man sitting next to him, “I’m happy we have this time. It’s just… good. Everything about it is good.”

“Well as long as whatever it is that you decide is enough to make you happy then you’ve got my approval.” Percy smiled gently. That was what his mother had always told him. At the end of the day if what he did made him happy then that was something to be proud of. “Well acceptance of a state of denial is one of the first steps on the road to recovery.” Percy smirked gently and sat up as Jason moved away. Honestly he was somewhat disappointed by the fact that his friend had moved away from him. He yearned for his touch for a moment before snapping back to reality. “Dramatics have always been one of my favourite parts of your personality,” Percy admitted as he sat forward, leaning against his knees and rubbing his eyes gently, “I am never bored when I’m around you. Besides your dramatic flair is impressive. Having seen you use harpies as aerial stepping stones and still manage to impale a cyclops with your spear I can tell you it is somewhat impressive.”

“Oh gods. That was such a Sallyism. I’m pretty sure she told me that exact same thing earlier this year. You are absolutely your mother’s son.” Stretching languidly in his chair, Jason scratched his stubbly chin, laughing at Percy’s gentle teasing. “What’s the point of being the son of the god of lightning and the sky if you can’t use that to fuel your dramatic flair. I mean I’ve gotta treat each of my battles like a Cirque du Soleil routine, otherwise I’m going to disappoint my fans and I can’t do that. They’ll stop writing to me for autographs.” Percy leaned forward and rubbed his eyes and Jason automatically started scratching his back gently, before a jaw-cracking yawn brought his hands to his mouth. He gathered the blanket up and wrapped it around him, starting to head back down the hallway towards his bedroom as they moved from the chilly outside to the warmth of his apartment. Pausing at his door he turned back to look at Percy, sweeping hair out of his eye as he weighed a couple of options in his head, “Hey P…” his voice was almost soft enough to get lost in the ambient noise of his apartment, “I know that room gets chilly. I haven’t had a chance to replace the weather-stripping on the window yet and it leaks cold air in. But uh….” he could feel his cheeks getting a little rosy, “My room’s plenty warm… and there’s room for two in my bed. If you don’t wanna be cold all night, I mean.”

“It would be difficult not to be my mother’s son,” `replied with a laugh. “I’m not complaining Jason, I can definitely see the comparison between Cirque du Soleil and your fighting style, and believe me that wasn’t something that I thought I was ever going to say.” He smirked gently and shrugged, before rising to his feet and following Jason back into his apartment. As they slowly made their way back towards their bedrooms, Percy strode towards his room, folding the blanket and placing it in the lounge before moving through. Jason’s question however caught him off guard, and he took a moment to consider it. Pausing, he glanced down at the door of his room before turning back and nodding. “Sure, that sounds nice.”

[fireandneurosurgery-blog]

Searching For Help || Bobbi and Martina

Bobbi and Martina bump into one another on a scavenging mission, they decided to join forces to help one another.

Bobbi’s constant frustration as the war dragged along was with the worsening state of her supplies. Medication, gauze, ambrosia, nectar and just about every and any other medical supply that you might need were in short supply. The deaths, injuries and mental onset of damage from the curses was really beginning to take its toll and she was informed that they would make a supply run soon, but not soon enough. So Bobbi took it upon herself to scavenge and found herself in an abandoned section of the city, picking through a pharmacy, or what was left of it. Hearing the door creak half way through trying to get into their locked medicine cabinet, Bobbi stepped nervously behind the door and prayed that it wasn’t a Roman.

There was only so many things Martina could do at the current moment. She was, in a sense, bored. At this point she took any job they gave her. As a slightly trained person in the medical field, she had been set out to gather more medical supplies that they needed. Finding a pharmacy that hadn’t already been totally picked through was difficult, but finally she found one. She entered as quickly as she could, looking around the area, before quietly setting out to find what she could. She only had a few knives on her belt, but otherwise was rather casual for the mission.

Not recognizing the other person scavenging through her spot, Bobbi had to admit that she wasn’t prepared for a confrontation. She had the short sword and dagger that Jax had provided her as a Christmas present at the end of the previous year, but truthfully she hadn’t quite got the hang of using them. She usually ended up training about twice a week, she knew that she should train more, the threat of monsters without a war going on was enough to convince her of that, but the truth was that she spending more and more of her time working in the field hospital and she didn’t exactly get much time to herself. Swallowing, she stepped out into the open, calling out to the stranger. They could be Greek, please be Greek. “Hello?” she asked somewhat tentatively.

Martina’s head whipped around to look over at the voice, her hand on her throwing knife as she crept out to see who it was. She knew she could probably throw and hit faster than someone could pull out their sword, which made her less worried than she realistically should have been. She didn’t know who the woman was before her, just that she didn’t think she had seen her around New Rome. She narrowed her eyes at the woman,“Who are you? What are you doing here?” No one else would have been on this same mission, at least Martina assumed they wouldn’t send out two people for medical supplies.

Raising her hands to prove that she wasn’t looking for a fight, Bobbi swallowed at the sight of the throwing knives. It didn’t matter if she had a sword, if this girl was accurate she could turn her into sushi before she could say by your leave. “I’m not here for a fight,” she said quietly, “I’m just trying to get some medical supplies. My name’s Doctor Roberta Truman, but most people just call me Bobbi…” she looked nervously at the weapon before swallowing once more. “What about you?” she asked perhaps somewhat hopefully.

Taking in the raised hands and the general look of anxiety, Martina decided that the woman was telling her the truth. She shifted her hand off the hilt, but made sure to keep it close enough to pull if she had. She searched her brain for that name, knowing that she had heard it from someone at some point. “You’re with the Greeks,” She said in reply, knowing from Jax that this was his brother’s girlfriend. She definitely couldn’t fight her now, not when that would make things really awkward with Cat and Jax. “Martina Acosta. I’m looking for my own supplies,” She replied, trying not to give away the fact that the Romans weren’t doing as well as they wanted their enemy to think.

As Martina’s hand moved off of the hilt of her weapon, Bobbi couldn’t help but feel slightly better. “I’d like to say nice to meet you, I just wish that the circumstances were somewhat better…” she smiled sheepishly before nodding gently. “I am with the Greeks, actually I’m a daughter of Athena, though I’ve hardly been aware of it for very long…” she cut herself off and sighed. “Sorry, I don’t mean to ramble, it is just kind of … I’m not good in these hostile situations.” She turned and looked around the room. “I’ll split half of what I find with you?” she suggested, knowing that it was hardly an ideal solution but right now it was probably the best one that she could offer.

Martina had the feeling that the woman in front of her wasn’t much of a threat. It made her feel a bit better about being there alone. She wasn’t too worried, she could take someone out if she had to, but she really wasn’t ready to have that conversation with Jax or Cat. The woman… Seemed pretty nice anyways. “I’m not hostile yet, don’t worry.” She replied, beginning to look around the pharmacy. “You said you were a doctor? I assume you’ve had your hands full.” She looked back at the woman with her eyes narrowed,“Why?” Martina wasn’t ready to give her half what she found, so why was she willing to do that for Martina?

Raising her eyebrow, Bobbi couldn’t help but frown at the word yet. It wasn’t exactly what she wanted to hear but she was intent on hearing everything that she had to say. “Let us hope that you don’t become hostile,” she laughed nervously, “I’m not really in this for the fight, I just have a job to do.” She paused as she turned to one of the mostly abandoned shelves and swept a number of items into a bag. Bandages, disinfectant wipes, any painkillers that they had left. “I am a doctor, neurosurgeon by training and by design as well, but things don’t always work out according to plan…” she paused. “Because there are both Romans and Greeks that need help, I don’t care about the stupid differences that everyone else seems to care about. We’re all demigods and we all need as much help as we can get.”

“Let’s hope not. I don’t get much say in it either,” Martina replied lightly. She wasn’t exactly lying, most of the time her mood ended up getting affected by other people. Though, she would admit that she tended to get annoyed easily. “I’m not looking for a fight either. I would get quite the lecture if I hurt you.” She wasn’t looking to fight a woman who wasn’t a fighter either, there was nothing exciting about fighting someone who wasn’t at the same level. She nodded,“I feel that. I was in pre-med before this. Still in the Legion, but mainly working towards getting out of school early. Don’t see that happening anytime soon.” She cocked her head looking over Bobbi with critical eyes. “Romans hate the Greeks, half of them wouldn’t care if y’all ended up dying. That doesn’t seem stupid to me. I wouldn’t expect someone to patch me up after I killed their friends.”

Bobbi raised an eyebrow but decided to remain silent. She wasn’t about to lecture a Roman with weaponry about responsibility for their own actions, especially when she was in a precarious enough position as it was. “Well as there is no reason for us to fight, we can both get what we need and leave without having to fight.” She paused and raised an eyebrow at the explanation that Martina gave her, she honestly wouldn’t have pegged her as being pre-med, or any sort of med at all. “Ignorance has always been an excuse for prejudice and violent actions against people groups that don’t deserve it. I’m not here to hurt other people, I’ve got a job to do and I intend to do it.” She continued her job, at least to the best of her abilities, sifting through what meager leftovers were in the pharmacy. It wasn’t exactly encouraging.

Martina gave her short nod, agreeing for now not to try anything. She could see how grabbing one of the Greek’s doctors would do good for her, but at this point she was really feeling loyal to the Legion. Her loyalty laid with people now. She supposed it always had been. She followed people to the Cult, she’d probably follow them out if they wanted her to. “Yeah, well you’re one of the only people around here who’s got that privilege. We don’t all get what we want being passificists. Some of our jobs is to kill people,” Martina replied back tensely as she gathered supplies. This woman didn’t seem to understand that some people didn’t have the liberty to be selfish in their fight. “I’m that fucker. The one who kills people’s friends. That’s my job.”

“Maybe you should think about getting a job where they save people and you’re not put in a position where it is kill or be killed,” Bobbi replied quietly. This entire system was cruel. It forced children to fight for their lives and experience a plethora of trauma, assault and injury at a truly formative time in their lives. The fact that the Roman demigods had a standing army was nothing short of lunacy, The fact that they were mostly children made her mad. Though she couldn’t say that the Greeks were any better. That was what struck her as confusing about this entire situation. Why were they so intent on focussing on their differences and not their similarities? “You could always just leave. You don’t owe anyone enough to make you kill people’s friends… or see friends die, any of the other shit that we’ve experienced in this hell hole.”

“Get me a job where I can get enough money to support the people I need to, and I think about changing careers,” Martina replied back, knowing that she would be keeping her position with the Legion for as long as she could. No words from someone who didn’t get struggling would convince her otherwise. She looked over at Bobbi for a long moment, before scoffing,“I owe these people my entire life. I was kicked out of my home at twelve. This was the only place that took me in. These people are the reason I got any form of education, the reason that I have a place to stay. No matter the shit I have to do, I owe them. You don’t get it.”

“Being a doctor is usually at least relatively well paid and has decent benefits which mean that the people you’re having to support will benefit from your work, not to mention you said you were pre-med so you’re on the right track for it. You could really help people,” Bobbi paused for a moment and tried to recall her name. “I don’t know what you’re looking for in your life Martina, but there are few paths as challenging or as fulfilling as being a doctor. However, the hippocratic oath is not something to be taken lightly. We have to make sure that we make good on our promise not to harm or hurt anything should we be able to help it.” Pausing, she sighed. “I may not understand the process, but anything that asks you to sacrifice your morals and beliefs and ethics in a war isn’t good. It shouldn’t have ever come to this point.”

Martina stopped and placed her hands on her hips, looking at Bobbi with narrowed eyes. “I’m twenty, I’m not in Med school yet. I have years until I will actually be a doctor, not to mention the fact I’m trying to get into surgery. I’m sure you know that makes the path even longer. I ain’t going to be making that much money for years, not to even mention the amount of debt I’m going to have.” Jax might be helping her out with Milo and her brother at the moment, but she wasn’t going to rely on him forever. She needed to make her own money, get out of the debt that she was already in with him. Huffing, she shook her head at Bobbi. “You don’t get what it’s like having people on your back do you? Not as a doctor, but as a family member. I pay for my brother and my - his nephew’s,” She grimaced at her mistake,“Rent and phone bills. I’ll sacrifice anything for them. Even if it means I gotta kill people who used to be my friends. Morals don’t mean shit when you fail your family.”

Bobbi shrugged, “If you don’t start it soon then I don’t know how you’d ever manage to finish it off, but you’re right, it is a long way away and there is a lot that you need to do first, but there are several programs that help demigods reach their goals despite financial difficulties, you’re not the only one who’s made it through hard things. You could manage this too.” She paused and shrugged. “We’ve always got a need for new healers, whether you’re a trained doctor or not there is always someway that you can help.” Pausing she frowned and sighed. “I’m sorry that you’ve got that to deal with, I understand that it is difficult and I’ve never had to support my family through anything like that, but would your family want you having to do all of this?”

Martina rolled her eyes, this woman really didn’t get it. It wasn’t easy trying finance everything while still keeping herself going. Sacrifices have to be made, even if it’s her doing all the sacrificing. “Programs like that are probably on hold at the moment for the war. Not to mention that would just add to all the shit I already owe this city,” Being in debt to the collectors here was not something Martina could deal with. She could deal with Jax and Fergus, when he was around and helping, they didn’t even expect her to pay them back. She was going to, but they didn’t expect it. “I’m a Daughter of Apollo who can’t heal a scrape. They’ve got healers better than me.” She shrugged as she picked up a roll of bandages,“They don’t have to know. Plus, like I said, I owe people on this side and I’m not dying to join your’s. Rather stick with the people I know can take care of me than with nothing.”

Pausing for a long moment, Bobbi pursed her lips and continued scavenging and dividing rations up that would eventually be used to patch her and Martina’s people up. “I can’t imagine what you’re dealing with and frankly it’s none of my business o even try and do so, however I don’t think you should give up on your dreams and hopes and the possibility for a life that you’re happy with because you’re facing adversity, but I may simply not be able to understand that the obstacles you face are untenable and possibly impossible to over come.” She shrugged and placed a roll of bandages on both terribly small piles before sitting back and sighing. “I’ve separated all my stuff that I’ve been able to find, either pile is fine, but I’ve got a few more hunches if you’re interested.” She paused and quickly packed one of the piles of supplies into the rucksack that she brought with her.

“I got a lot of people who are on my shoulders. After this war, I’ll continue studying, right now though, I got to keep doing this. For them. I’ll be a doctor one day, I promise.” Martina told Bobbi, as if she was trying to convince her as much as she had to convince herself. She looked at the piles and sort the supplies she found between them too. Placing an extra roll of bandages on one pile, she took the other. Greeks probably needed it more. They had enough apollo kids that Martie was sure they wouldn’t miss one roll. “Yeah, gotta get some more stuff anyways. We will do this with those too?”

“I really hope so Martina,” Bobbi replied quietly as she double checked her supplies before zipping up her bag and shouldering it, “there is a distinct lack of capable demigod doctors.” She stood and looked around the now entirely empty pharmacy. A truly surreal experience. Bobbi noticed Martina’s generosity and smiled but didn’t acknowledge it out loud. Martina seemed to be the quiet stoic type. Or at least that’s what she assumed. “Cool, I guess you should follow me then?” she wasn’t really sure what she should say to Martina, they hadn’t known each other long enough for her to know how she would react and Martina’s tension wasn’t making her feel any less concerned.

“I mean a lot of these kids think they’re industructiable. They don’t think they need doctors. At least they don’t think so until they have arrows in their stomachs.” Martina had thought she was indestructible until she ended up in the hospital a few times herself. She couldn’t heal herself. “Where we headed? I can keep you from any sights of the Roman towers.” She zipped her own bag, slinging over her shoulder. “Don’t tell anyone I did this shit with you or for you. I can’t have people know or I’m going to be a traitor.”

“Believe me, I know the type, there was this stunt man who I had to do a few minor operations on, he never seemed to understand that if he didn’t tone it down he could get very seriously injured…” Bobbi remembered him clearly. He had eventually been killed in a car accident. The irony was somewhat palpable. “There is a small bodega with an even tinier pharmacy attached to it on the northern edge of the city. But believe me, I don’t want to jepordise my position within the Greeks anymore than you do.” Especially not because of Leo.

“I broke my wrist once. I was training too hard and too much. I didn’t go to the healers until my centurion saw how swollen it was. I had been trying to hide it under some bracers. Didn’t learn til my third break that I actually have to go to the healers.” Martina had broken quite a few bones over the years. More than she’d care to admit. “I’ll give the Greeks one thing. You tend to be far more forgiving. We aren’t. So, let’s do each other a favor and not tell anyone anything.”

Frowning gently, Bobbi couldn’t imagine ever being so desperate to train and fight that she would hide the pain and the sight of a broken bone. It was frightening what some demigods did out of a perceived duty to their Legion or their People or their godly parents. “Going to the healers is always a good idea,” she shrugged gently, “Agreed. We can definitely keept this between the two of us, for our own good.”

“Not if you got something to hide. You all tend to be nosy.” Martina was the same. She wanted to know what happened and why. She knew that sometimes people weren’t willing to give those answers. “You’re with the oldest Karavadra, aren’t you? Didn’t he leave his family for you?” It had been bothering her since the beginning. It made sense though, how she kept saying you didn’t have to give up morals for family.

“Doctors are usually obliged to keep all matters discussed confidential, I can’t imagine that any of them have been nosy for anything other than professional need, at least I hope not.” Bobbi paused before nodding. “Leo, me and Leo have been together on and off basically since high school, though I guess it was more off than on  …” she had almost married someone else. “I guess I must bear some of the blame, but he didn’t approve of the Roman treatment of the Greeks and this entire conflict, that wasn’t something that suddenly changed when I returned to his life.”

“You’d be surprised,” Martina knew that her doctors had had good intentions, but it had made a little bit of trouble for her. Excuses were harder to find after so many questions. She pressed her lips, giving the woman credit for at least taking some of the responsibility. “Take it from some who doesn’t speak to most of her family, he’ll regret it later in life. I’m not trying to start anything with you, but family should come first. At least in my book. Especially in a town like this.” She shrugged,“Hard place to be in, where you two are. Harder than mine.”

“I think everything that happens is at least somewhat surprising,” Bobbi said with a gentle incline of her head as she slipped through a small alley that wound its way between houses and apartment complexes in the center of New Rome’s italian architecture. “Leo knows exactly what he is doing and I think he is starting to make a new family. He hasn’t cut all ties to his siblings but his father is probably the worst person ever born, so I don’t think he’ll really miss him all that much.”

“I could do with a break from surprises, I think. At least for a little. I almost wish that the curses breaking would give us time to rest, but we just went straight back into this war.” Martina was tired of the war, if she was actually willing to admit that she was. She’d still fight it, still stay with New Rome and her people, but she was tired. More tired than she could explain. “Yeah, I don’t envy them with him as their dad. And mine kicked me out when I was twelve.” She didn’t know Jefferson well, but to have kids like Cat and Jax there had to be something messed up in his brain. Even if she was their friends, she had to admit they were a little messed up. “Father like that could drive anyone out.”

“There seems to be no common ground that we can agree on,” Bobbi agreed. It was nice to hear that the Greeks weren’t the only ones who were done with this entire conflict. Swallowing, Bobbi sighed. “I hope we can end this before we do irreparable damage, although I’m not sure we’re not already past that…” Bobbi wasn’t sure if there were enough adjectives in the dictionary to describe the depths of depravity that Jefferson must have decided to stoop to. “Jefferson may well think he is doing what is best for his children, despite his despicable approach he is not a stupid man. He was simply raised in a culture which is dangerous for us all.”

“I think we’re already there. Let’s say the Greeks are let back in, how do you think that’s going to go? If I had to bet, hate crimes would skyrocket, more fights wll break out a lot. Doesn’t help that half of us are under twenty five. We don’t have the brains for this shit,” Martina grumbled. She, at this point, didn’t even care if they came back. She just didn’t want to deal with this shit anymore. “Yeah, well didn’t half those kids who deserted grow up in that culture too? Why aren’t they fucked up like he is? Culture can’t be all there is to that.”

“We educate the population to avoid hate crimes, we prove that those who have a reputation for hatred mongering and scare tactics are nothing more than cowards. We do all of that and we’ll start to make the impact that we need. I am by no means saying that this is going to be an easy fix to a problem that more than likely has a years long fix to it.” Bobbi paused for a breath. “But this isn’t something that we should or that we can just ignore.” She paused and frowned. “Those children weren’t deliberately shaped to be something that they shouldn’t be. The culture is so much more extreme in the Karavadra family. Why do you think two out of three of Jefferson’s children have led soldiers into battle during this war?”

“Who is going to lead all that? I can’t see us being open to the Greeks telling us that New Rome is full of fear mongering officials, even if it is true.” Martina sighed, even if she wanted this war over, even if she didn’t care if the Greeks came back, this was going to be a city at war for a long time. She shrugged,”They probably feel like me. Like they owe someone something. Or at least, maybe they did at first and now it’s an opportunity. Lots of people are looking at this as an opportunity.”

“We do what everyone else has ever done, we compromise, we elect people democratically and we attempt to move into a better system less hell bent on upholding dangerous and deviant traditions based on prejudice.” Bobbi swallowed for a moment. Pausing, she frowned. She’d not considered that before. “Well, I can only speak to as exactly what my boyfriend has told me, but you’ll simply have to forgive me for being skeptical about any system that prioritises the militarisation of children.”

Martina snorted,“Good luck with that. I’m pretty sure the same families controlled the Senate when my grandfather was here. People are weirdly conservative here.” It was both a surprise and not that the younger population was rather conservative at times. Romans loved their traditions, even if they were too young to understand why they did them. “Dude, I went to war the first time when I was like twelve. Everything is about militarisation here. There are people who are taking the centurions who died or left as opportunities to move up. We ain’t kids here, we’re weapons. Instead of getting a barbie here, you get a dagger.”

“Just because something has been someway for a certain number of years, doesn’t mean that it should be that way,” Bobbi replied defiantly, she liked to think of herself as a realist and whilst she didn’t realistically know whether or not there would be change in her life time, she could only hope, “and things are never going to get any better if we don’t take  a stand and say enough is enough. In Sparta they used to leave their deformed children to die. We would think that was a terrible abuse of power now, and it will be the same with this eventually. Just because things have been one terrible way for a few generations doesn’t mean that we can’t find a way of making things better.”

“I just don’t see it happening. Who’s even got the support to go up against the Senate? Call me a pessimist or whatever, I just don’t know.” Martina didn’t want get her hopes up about the whole thing, not when things seemed to be in a weird limbo thing. “I don’t know who’s going to stand up against this stuff, other than you all. I mean no offense, but people could get in trouble with stuff if they do. Obviously, it’s not as bad as you guys going through your shit, but we’re selfish creatures most of the time. Maybe it’ll change, maybe it won’t. I’m not holding my breath.”

“I can’t tell you how this would pan out, but surprising things happen at times like this,” Bobbi had to hope, gods she prayed that she was right and something happened, “The Russian Revolution, the French Revolution, the rise of the Septum Piercing. Not all were ideal or necessarily good, but they happened at times of tension…” she smirked gently at her own joke. “We’ve just got to hope that something happens, because from my position I can’t see things getting anything but worse if things continue.”

Martina snorted at Bobbi’s joke, her shoulders becoming slightly less tense than they had been before. “Maybe they’ll teach about this in New Roman schools one day. Maybe it’ll be a lesson for everyone.” She couldn’t help but think of her son and how as he got older, if he were to be in New Rome, he’d known she had fought against the Greeks. She hoped he would understand why, her intentions weren’t completely terrible, even though she wasn’t overly fond of them. She would admit she was in a gray area when it came to where she stood at the moment. “If things continue, we’re going to have more dead kids. I honestly don’t care what happens anymore, I just don’t want these children fighting anymore.” In that moment, Martina realized that she wasn’t exactly grown either. She was twenty one, yes, but she was barely an adult.

[discordandglory-blog]

Cursed || Cat and Leo

Cat tries to keep her brother safe, but it seems fate has another idea.

The last thing that Cat had been expecting was contact from Leo. But gods had she missed him. She would even admit it. She had the perfect place for them. A small house by the lake that was hidden from view unless you knew exactly where to look. As she paced the deserted Garden of Bacchus, she tried to keep calm. The war had all but ground to a halt at this point with the effect of the curses all but crippling both the Greeks and the Romans. The Romans had come no closer to securing the cure to these curses and Cat worried that she wouldn’t be able to help her brother. Taking a deep breath, she forced herself to settle on a bench and wait for her twin. Nerves usually resulted in her cleaning a weapon, but she thought that considering how things had been left that it might be better to just leave the weapons out of it for now. Finally she spotted him and rose to her feet, moving towards him cautiously she wondered if maybe this was some kind of trap and her paranoia started to kick in. With a hand checking her weapons she called out to him. “Leo?”

New Rome was not looking like the New Rome Leo knew. They really weren’t exaggerating when they said that there was a war going on. He moved as carefully and quietly he could through the city, not knowing when someone would be around. Getting to the Gardens with a small pack on him, he breathed a sigh of relief. At least he was closer to where Cat was now, though his hand didn’t leave the sword hilt that he had on his side. He moved as silently as he could, before he eventually heard Cat call out to him. “I’m here. It’s just me right now,” He said cautiously as he moved closer to her. It hadn’t been much time since he had seen her, well, seen her four years ago. That whole thing still made his brain hurt. She looked good though, healthy at least. “You’re good then? You said no curse, but you’ve been fighting a war.”

The closer that Leo got to her, the more that she was struck by just how much younger he looked. Cat knew that her brother had never exactly looked old, but he had filled out and broadened a little. The thing that really struck her was the face that was clear of worry. The last year hadn’t exactly been kind to them. Disaster after disaster had struck and now they were in the midst of another crisis. Without thinking Cat threw her arms tightly around him, she was much shorter than either of her brothers and so she literally had to jump to get to his shoulders, but damn it felt good. “You weren’t lying about a curse,” she said quietly as she took a step back to give him a proper once over again, “we will put things back to rights I promise.” At his question her mind flashed back to the various injuries that had been inflicted on her over the war and she banished them all but instantly. “Don’t worry about me, I can take care of myself and the Greeks always underestimate me for my height.” She smiled at him again. How are you?”

It wasn’t as if Cat looked older than she was, but there was a certain way she held herself that felt different to Leo. She didn’t seem exactly as she did when he last remembered, though he imagined that he didn’t to her either. He held her close to him, not truly understanding the feeling of lose that had occurred between them, but understanding the need she had to hold him. “Tomorrow you’ll have to explain everything to me again, so I hope you’re ready for that.” He assumed that he was losing years rather quickly and he’d likely wake up younger again. Hopefully not six or seven years old though. He ruffled her hair with a slight grin,“You certainly made your height your greatest disguise. No one thinks you’re as badass as you are.”

Pausing momentarily, Cat almost told him off for messing with her hair, but then she remembered that this was her brother who had literally come back to her. At that point she decided that it was probably better if she were to avoid shouting at him over her hair. But the action took her back to the good old days when her father had taken her along to meetings with Leo. His friends would scoop her up and place a kiss on her cheek before mussing her hair. The memories weren’t exactly painful. Yet they weren’t the easiest things to experience. “I’m ready to do anything that you need,” she promised, “but we need to get going before someone else turns up. We’ll come back for Bobbi once you’re settled.” She took a deep shuddering breath, and considered telling him the truth. The worst that would happen is that he’d simply forget it anyway. “I’ve considered lining my trousers with stilts, but they’re a bit tricky to constantly walk around in.”

Leo didn’t doubt that Bobbi was telling the truth about him and his siblings, but it felt so hard to really believe it when he was so happy to see his sister. There couldn’t possibly be something that she could do that would make things so horrible between them. They weren’t people who could break so easily. Her words meant a lot to him, but he couldn’t help but think that he was quite the task to undertake at the moment. “I’m ready to go then, where are we headed?” He was rather sure that they had safe houses around the city, but he didn’t know if they were being used anymore. “It might be hard to fight in them as well, but it would be a cool skill to have.” Fiddling with his strap, he looked at Cat nervously. “How is everyone else? Jax, Bella, Gus, Ella?”

Pausing as she prepared to go and get on their way, Cat looked at Leo and it finally sunk in that he wasn’t lying. He didn’t know what had happened. He didn’t know that Gus was dead. A pit formed in her stomach and she considered lying to him but decided better of it. “Ella and Bella and Jax are all fine but I’ve got some bad news about Gus…” she sighed and pressed her fingers to her temple for a moment before taking a deep breath, “the long and short of it doesn’t exactly matter but he’s passed now. We built a memorial to him that I’ll show you when you’re better…” hot tears stung her eyes as she remembered her inability to save him. She just prayed he didn’t ask about Callum. Swallowing, she tightened her straps on her back before setting out through the city. “I’m going to take you through the tunnels, it’s the fastest way there. It’s a safe house even Dad and Jax don’t know about, I purchased it early last year, a little getaway just for me. But it’ll work. You’ll be safe.”

Leo felt all the air suddenly leave his chest. Gus was dead. He was a kid how did he even die? He didn’t even want to ask. He nodded, a little bombstruck. “That’s bad,” He muttered. “Let’s not tell me that anymore. Tomorrow let’s not tell me.” At least he had that, he didn’t haven’t rehear about it every day. Until he was better, if he was better. He hoped that he would be better soon. “I’d like to see it someday. How… How are you doing with that?” He could tell she was getting emotional, which made his chest hurt. “Does Jax know I’ll be staying there? He hasn’t really responded back to me.”

Pausing for a moment, Cat nodded. “Fine, I just … I didn’t want to lie to you.” She was trying to make things work, she really truly loved Leo even if he had betrayed her and broken her heart. Yet this Leo wasn’t quite that Leo. He hadn’t done anything to her and he didn’t even hate her like the other one. He didn’t think that she was a monster. Everyone had looked at her differently after what had happened to Callum. But Jax and Leo were the worst. She’d had no choice, why didn’t people understand that she was only doing what must be done. She got her hands dirty so that others did not have to. “Things aren’t easy,” she replied, “but we struggle on.” She found the grate in one of the corners of the garden and winched it up. Slipping down a ladder, she pulled out two flashlights and handed one to Leo. “I haven’t told him, I won’t unless you want me to. But I didn’t know what you’d want … so I decided to just keep quiet about it.”

“I get that. I just… I don’t think it’ll get easier as I get younger. I can’t imagine that at fourteen I’ll take it even remotely as well as I am right now.” Leo wasn’t going to lie, he wasn’t taking it great, he was basically ignoring the whole situation, but he supposed that it was the best he could do currently. “Hopefully things will be over soon. War isn’t good for anyone.” People were going to die and that was never good for anyone. Kids were going to die in a civil war. He nodded taking the flashlight, thankful that she giving him the choice in this. “I’ll let him know. He should know that I’m around.”

“I agree, this isn’t easy and we’ve got to do everything that we can to minimize the difficulty of this for you…” Cat paused and tried to imagine what having a fourteen year old Leo back with her would be like. She couldn’t imagine that it would be as fun as when she was fourteen too. Right now she would give anything just to have regular Leo back with her. Pausing for a moment as she set out into the tunnels, Cat was certain she heard a noise, but when she looked in the direction of the sound there was nothing but darkness. The beam of her flashlight cut through the darkness and led the way, and she followed through the twisting tunnels. She was glad that Leo was here, it made the journey more bearable. “Do whatever you think is right.” Pausing for a moment longer, she raised an eyebrow as she her the sound of something wet on a paving stone before whirling around to find nothing. “You don’t see anything right?” She was just being paranoid.

“At least, I’ll be real cute when I’m five again. Though, I was a really picky eater. When I get that young we probably shouldn’t even try to explain this right? It would be too much.” Leo couldn’t imagine that a five year old version of him would even understand the concept of curses or magic. It would probably be too much for a kid. He swept his flashlight back and forth, his eyes narrowing but not seeing anything noticeable. He shook his head,“I don’t see anything, but… I don’t know, something doesn’t feel right? Maybe I’m just paranoid because of the curse.”

“We’ll cross that bridge when we get to it I guess,” Cat replied really hoping that they’d have worked out a way to make this better before then. However she was starting to become more convinced that they weren’t the only ones down in these tunnels alone. There was no way that it could be monsters as this was New Rome, however with the curses flying around she wasn’t convinced that it couldn’t be something else out there in the darkness. “Come on, let’s just get out of here and then we won’t have to worry about this anymore,” she replied, spotting the ladder that would lead to the lake and then it was only a few miles to their location. “Gentlemen first this time,” she said indicating that he should take the ladder up first whilst she double checked behind them.

“Hopefully we won’t get to it anytime soon. I like being an adult. I can do things for myself which is definitely nice.” Leo told her with a slight smile. The ladder felt a little straight out of a horror movie, but Leo was pretty sure that was just him being paranoid. He never liked things like tunnels anyways, so it would make sense that he was just being hyper vigilant. He didn’t mind going first but he sent Cat a teasing look as he started to climbed,”Sure, now you wanna be super polite and let me go first.”

Laughing at his reply, Cat felt a smile tug at her lips. She hadn’t realised how much she had regretted what happened between the two of them, would they ever be able to solve their problems if things went back to normal? The meandering drip of water filled the background. As she watched Leo climb, she took one last look down the tunnel before stepping onto the first rung of the ladder and beginning to haul herself up towards the circle of light pouring into the tunnel, she was no more then a few rungs up when she felt something sticky wrap around her leg and tug it. Whipping her head around she looked down and spotted a thick pink tentacle wrapped firmly around her ankle. A second tug later and she went tumbling down towards the bottom of the tunnel, hitting the floor with a painful crunch. Fuck.

It was terrifying to think that somehow, Cat and Leo had become so broken that they weren’t speaking anymore. He had made his sister cry, she had made him cry, that had never broken them before. He couldn’t think of a world where either did something so wrong that they “hated” each other. He heard her go down and without hesitation, he was going back down the ladder to her. He pulled out his sword, whipping his head back and forth trying to understand what was happening. He saw the tentacle and swung at it, grazing it slightly. “Cat! Are you hurt?

As Leo’s boots squelched into the damp mud that ran across the bottom of the tunnel, Cat slowly rose and wiped mud from her face before grunting. “I’m going to have a really nasty bruise but I’ll be fine,” she reached to her belt and without hesitation her dagger and revolver were in hand and raised. Ready for whatever threats may come their way. Her nocturnal vision assisted her in seeing in the darkness, and without it she very well may have misestimated their opponent. They appeared to be some poor soul afflicted with a terrible curse. Their limbs had transformed into a mass of tentacles and their face was now a grinding maw of teeth that gnashed towards them. “However, I think we may have a bigger problem then my bruises.”

Whatever was in front of the two of them was nothing Leo had ever seen before. Monsters weren’t supposed to be around here, but this didn’t seem like a monster that he knew from myths. “What the fuck is that thing?” He growled out, swinging his sword out again as the monster whipped another tentacle towards him, his sword clipping it once again. “We put it down and then we go up, we don’t know if there are more of it down here.”

Normally Cat was a fan of caution, but when it came to Leo’s safety she wasn’t about to waste time trying to be careful when this thing was already threatening their way of life. “I think it is someone who has been cursed,” she said as she sprung to her feet and managed to smash the tentacles away from her for a moment. “I don’t want to have to kill someone who may be innocent, but it doesn’t look like we’ve got any other choice.” Grasping her weapon, she thought back to their training together and looked around their surroundings in hopes that there would be some advantage that would allow them to beat their enemy. “Any clever ideas?” she asked as the tentacle thing began to circle back around.

Leo frowned, the idea that this was someone who was cursed made him feel pretty terrible about the whole situation. Yet, they were faced with a pretty big decision; them or it. “Think you could knock it out, if I got you over the tentacles?” It was probably safer just to kill it, but there could be someone they know in that body, trapped deep down. He’d hate for them to die because of their decision not to try. “We could do our jump?” They certainly had quite a bit of combos between them, but it was fun and it made training more interesting.

Looking at Leo, Cat huffed and slid her revolvers back into their holsters before pulling a long dagger with a blunt pommel from her sheath. “Only for you,” she said with a frown like thunder as she prepared for the jump. “I’m ready whenever you are,” she said as the tentacle monster began making another pass at them, apparently having regained its composure. She thought back to all of the times that they had done this before and although it had been a long time since she’d fought alongside her twin, she was sure that it would feel just the same as ever. As he knitted his fingers together, she charged forwards and leaped at the monster, sailing clean over it for a moment before a tentacle whipped out and wrapped around her, sending her slamming painfully into the mud once more.

“Well, fuck,” Leo groaned as he watched Cat get slammed into the ground. He had really hoped that he wouldn’t have to try hurt whoever this poor person was. He didn’t enjoy killing anything, even a monster. Especially now that he had the idea in his head that it could potentially be a person inside that monster. He gripped his sword in his hand and resigned himself, any jovialness he had previously held, leaving him. It was like this in any fight he was in. He’d often fall into a seriousness that was unlike him when things got truly dire. “We’re just going to have to go for it then,” He told Cat as he grabbed the monsters attention again with far more threatening and fatal hits going for it.

“Yeah that wasn’t ideal,” Cat had managed to get over the monster, but now she and Leo surrounded it and the only way that they were going to get out of it was to deal with the monster and she wasn’t sure that they had a chance in hell of dealing with this non-lethally. Drawing her pistols, she took aim at the monster and fired a warning shot just above it, driving it towards the slopped walls. “I’m going to try and injure it enough that it won’t be able to fight, but that requires it to hold still that long and I’m far from convinced that is going to happen … so just watch my back and get involved when you feel like I need it. I trust your judgement.”

Leo shook his head at his sister,“I’m more of a close combat fighter. I should be jumping in there, distracting it and trying to hold it long enough that you can get a shot in.” He might not show it off often, to the point where people sometimes forgot, but he was an amazing hand to hand fighter. If anyone was going to get the monster to be still enough for a moment, it would be him, not Cat. Especially when her plan had her going in there and him trying to weave around her with a sword. More dangerous, but maybe easier with a bullet. “I’ll get stay away from that whole teeth situation and we should be good.”

“I know how good a fighter you are brother,” Cat replied with a roll of her eyes, “that is why I plan on standing back here with my revolvers and shooting at it whilst you, the big strong man that you are, take it down to pain town.” She winced at the cliche that had just spilled out of her mouth, but it was too late to take that back now. “Whatever you do,” she said aiming the pistol and opening fire, watching an imperial gold bullet cut through a tentacle with a sickening bang and hiss, “make sure that you stay away from the entire teeth situation because who the fuck knows where this things mouth has been.”

“Did you honestly just utter the words ‘pain town’? Embarrassing.” Leo teased her with a grin, before jumping back from a tentacle that sailed toward him. With impressive speed for his size, he managed to get out of the tentacles reach, though he was closer to the teeth. “Based on how it smells, at least one diaper has been in this thing’s mouth.” He side lightly, though his voice was strained as he started to attempt to wrestle with the monster. He needed to pinn or at least hold the thing still for a moment.

“Is this really the time Leo?!” Cat snapped as she suppressed the laughter that had bubbled in her stomach at her brother’s comment. Taking aim, doing her best not to hit her brother with a celestial bullet, she fired again and was rewarded by seeing more orangey-purpley gore splatter across the walls of the sewers. Wiping mud from her face, she took aim again, firing once more and wincing at the deafening echo of the gunshot ringing across the and around them. Swallowing, Cat tried to get a good look at the monster. “Can you stop playing with your food please?” she called to Leo.

The thing had muscles and even though Leo was tall and strong, it seemed whatever this thing was was stronger. “It’s the only way I have fun though! Why would they make things like goldfish if you weren’t made to play with it?” He replied back, though his breath was heavier as he finally got a good hold of the monster. His arms wrapping underneath where their arms had once been and behind the head to make the monster at least a little less wiggly.

Watching her brother fight filled Cat with a familiar dread which she inevitably felt whenever she had to watch someone that she cared about go into battle. That was one of the reasons that she limited her connections so much. You couldn’t get hurt if you didn’t have anyone who could hurt you. At least that was the working theory. “Whatever you say,” he said with a laugh before taking aim and hitting the tentacle monster with shots to the knees. “I don’t want to waste all my ammo on this thing,” she grunted as she drew a knife and approached, “do you want me to knock it out or kill it?” she asked, knowing that Leo had always been a bit more sensitive than her.

Leo understood why people loved fighting, adrenaline was a feeling that could not be described. Winning a fight was even better. “There’s a person in here, Cat,” He said, his answer seemingly obvious to himself. “I would prefer we don’t kill someone we could know,” He grunted in the effort it took to keep the thing still as it wrestled against him. “Please don’t shoot me though, I don’t need anymore scars.”

Grunting in irritation at Leo’s need to aspire to a moral absolute that was not necessarily objective. However Cat did not have time to debate ethics with her twin, in fact time was probably the single commodity that they did not have in abundance. Money couldn’t bring time to a stop anymore then it could stop the sun from rising in the East and setting in the West. “Just hold it still for a second longer,” she grunted before moving forward and striking the monster at the rough area that she expected the monster’s temple, “if this doesn’t work I’m killing it,” she said as she hit it again.

Leo knew that others looked at him differently because of his need to do what he thought was best. He was, he liked to think at least, a pacifist. Which was difficult considering he was, apparently, in a war. Still, life was precious, every life was precious. He tightened his grip, pulling the monster closer to himself to get it to still even further. “Fine with me, I just need us to try before we just kill it.” It wasn’t really fine with him, but he couldn’t argue his way out of this one.

As the stock of Cat’s revolver crunched into the side of its temple and it slumped to the ground in Leo’s grasp. “Fortunately,” she said wiping a muddy hand across her forehead and sweeping sweat away, “We weren’t forced to take lethal action against whatever poor soul has been afflicted with this awful curse.” Toeing the body of the tentacle thing, Cat looked at it disdainfully before taking a step and slowly climbing the rungs of the ladder. “Not too long now…” she said quietly as she hauled herself up to street level. Pushing a sewer cover off the ground and dragging herself onto the street, she took a deep breath of fresh air.

Compared to that, Leo didn’t think his own curse was that bad. Yeah, sure he could definitely end up losing all his memories, but at least he’d still be a person. He looked down at the body of the monster, quietly asking,“Do you think they’ll remember attacking us when the curse is lifted?” He couldn’t imagine what that would be like, how it would feel to have no control over yourself. He followed his sister out of the sewer, thankful for clean air. “I really hope this place has a shower, because we both need one.”

“Shower, bath, I considered including a hot tub,” Cat replied with a shrug, “but I hope they have no memory of what happened to them.” She could only imagine what it would be like to potentially kill someone with your abilities when it wasn’t your fault. When she had killed before, it was because she had no other choice. “Come on. We’re nearly there.” She smiled kindly at Leo before setting out for the safehouse.

[harperduncans-blog]

This Isn’t Ivy League || Brooks, Cat, Harper, and Marcus

Brooks and Harper attempt to go out for a nice afternoon of nature exploration and get more than they bargained for.

Brooks left camp pretty frequently. He liked to think that he was becoming very good at sneaking in and out of the camp unnoticed. It wasn’t uncommon for people to leave camp, Brooks had noticed that. The camp had still gone unraided by Roman soldiers which meant that the secret hadn’t gotten out yet. Today, as Brooks was heading toward the edges of camp he had run into Harper and invited her along. “I know some great spots with beautiful views.” Had been Brooks best selling point. That’s how the two found themselves wandering around the lake above camp. “I come here a lot to clear my head. It’s quieter than camp.”

When Brooks had suggested that they go and explore some parts outside of the camp, Harper had agreed quickly. She loved the camp, and she was fairly certain that they weren’t exactly just supposed to go about everywhere. But she was still new, relatively speaking, and it was important to go and see new places. “Quiet is good.” Harper nodded, offering a small smile. “I am certainly a fan of it, especially in a place as beautiful as this.” She gestured around them. “Thank you for inviting me.” The lake was beautiful, and Harper breathed in the smell of all the trees and flowers around them.

“How are you adjusting?” Brooks found himself asking her. It seemed strange, those words coming out of his mouth instead of someone else saying them to him. He still didn’t feel like he had a good grip on everything that demigod and camp life had to offer, but he thought himself adjusted enough to at least offer assistance to others. He liked helping others, the sensation was new but pleasant. “It took me awhile to find my bearings, but once I started making friends it became a lot easier.” Once he had started training and involving himself in the war. He knew Harper had no desire to fight, but maybe she just needed to find her own reason to stay.

“It’s all still more than a little confusing,” Harper admitted honestly, “but it is so beautiful. So I am rather fond of it all.” She looked up at Brooks. It was all true, she did still have a great love for her new home, even though she still hardly understood anything that was going on. But one day her mother would out her - claim her - though Harper still didn’t understand what needed to happen in order for that to happen. “I like to think I have started on the friends thing,” she looked over to Brooks, not wanting to add on ‘with you’, because although she was fairly certain he would agree, she did not wish to assume that he would. “Besides, I have my schoolwork and dance courses to focus on, so that is something.”

“That’s an understatement” Brooks laughed. “If you ever have everything figured out please enlighten me.” Across the lake he could see the large lake houses that were part of New Rome. A portion that the greeks were no longer welcome at. “Well the people here are friendly, so it’s not surprising.” The two hadn’t known each other long but Brooks considered Harper a friend. He quite liked all the people that he had met so far actually. “Well at least you have something to keep you busy. I spend my free time roaming around keep or sneaking around outside of it.” The last thing he needed was to be sneaking around outside of camp only to be kidnapped by Roman soldiers.

Harper shook her head. “I have high doubts that I will ever find and figure everything all out.” She bit her lip. “But if I do, I’ll let you know first of anybody.” She pulled one leg up and out, into a stretch much like the one she and Brooks had done before their run not too long ago. “I have been very lucky to find such kindness here, yes.” She listened to Brooks and gave a nod, “I think that is still a valid way to spend your time, so long as you enjoy it.” She glanced around them both quickly before wrapping her arms around her body, slightly chilly despite the beautiful day.

Brooks appreciated Harper’s willingness to stay positive and kind despite the war. Especially with how little that she knew about the demigod’s world it was amazing to see her so positive and willing to learn. If Brooks had a life to go back to outside of New Rome he wasn’t so sure he would be as willing. He wasn’t sure he would have stuck around or he might not have even come to New Rome in the first place. These were the things he came up here to think about. Brooks glanced at his watch, the two had been gone for a couple of hours now. Roaming around for too long in the open probably wasn’t a smart idea. “We should probably start heading back. It’s going to get dark in a little bit.”

She breathed in the fresh air all around them, only half paying attention to what Brooks was saying. Harper enjoyed the time spent out here more than she figured that she ought to. Especially since neither she nor Brooks were technically supposed to even be out here. Which were rules, and rules did often and usually have importance, but these rules only existed because of excessive fighting that should have never had to happen in the first place. “I suppose we should.” She whispered.

After the initial battle in the Eastern district, Cat had been commanded to patrol the more vulnerable parts of the city, and to her great amusement she had found something out of place. Two Greeks, stealing through the streets of her city. Using sign language, Cat directed her troops to fan out around them before motioning for Marcus to follow her. Stepping into the street, she smiled menacingly, pulling her revolvers from their holsters she clicked the hammers back and aimed each one at a Greek head. “By the laws of New Rome, and the authority of the senate and the first cohort, this is your first and final warning. Stand down, and I won’t hurt either of you. Resist, and Marcus will show you why the first cohort is the best.”

Marcus enjoyed patrols with Cat, she always seemed to make the right choices and the tough calls without hesitation. He admired that and learnt everything he could from her. As she signed orders to the troops he read her orders before reading his own. As she stepped out and announced their arrest, he stepped out from behind her, smirk on his face. Yeah, he definitely would show them. As if it had all been planned out, he summoned flames that danced around his right hand and aimed it at them with a wink. Flames were one of the easiest elements he could control, he always reasoned it was due to his descendance from Vulcan. “I’d do as she said.” He added.

Brooks’ heart plummeted as soon as he heard the woman’s voice. Before she even finished her sentence Brooks could tell that these were roman soldiers stepping out to capture them. He immediately felt sick to his stomach and glanced around, taking in and and all exit strategies that came to mind. But escaping demigods with magic, arrows and guns were different than running from a mugger or cop. Brooks stepped in front of Harper and held his arms up in surrender. “Please don’t hurt us!” He didn’t need to fake fear but some tears might not hurt. “We aren’t greek soldiers!” That part wasn’t even a lie. “My name’s Brooklyn, son of Mercury. This is Harper. She hasn’t even been claimed yet. We are just walking around the lake. We aren’t trying anything we swear. Don’t hurt us please.” Whether or not these soldiers bought the story, Brooks needed to find a way to get him and Harper out of there pronto.

This was not happening. Harper wished that she could just sink into herself. She moved closer to Brooks and found herself extremely grateful for once that she didn’t talk too much, and didn’t like to talk too much. She nodded at Brooks’ words - it was okay to lie in this situation, and it also was true that she hadn’t been claimed. Though she was fairly certain that she was Greek, even though that was not something she entirely understood. “I just r-really like nature.” She finally said, finding her voice, though it wavered. “That’s all we were doing, you do - don’t need to hurt us.” The weapons and clear magic were not something she wanted to be anywhere near right now.

Nature. What a quaint ideal. Cat however had grown up in this city. There wasn’t a single member of the Legion by the name of Brooklyn. He was of the age where he’d have certainly joined the Legion were he to be Roman, and she would recognise him if he had joined the Legion. Of course, they didn’t know that. Which meant that she and Marcus could have a bit of fun with their prey. “Brooklyn, son of Mercury,” she pretended to think, scratching at her chin for a moment before frowning, “from the Queen family?” she asked, making up a name to see if he agreed with it. “If you are Romans then what are you even doing so far past the last Roman position? It is incredibly dangerous here, Jackson and his Greek dogs have been killing any Roman that they can get their hands on. Probably as vengeance for what happened to his friend Grace, I heard he lost the eye y’know.” She turned to Marcus for the end of that sentence, hoping to get some sort of reaction from the Greeks.

Marcus didn’t recognize the other and that was saying something. His father and family were well known and everyone who was someone attended their family’s gala evenings and even the most meaningless families were gossiped about. What really gave it away was Cat mentioning the Queen family, which did not exist. Catching on, Marcus made the flames vanish before he sat down and lay himself out besides Cat, propping himself up with his arm and resting his other arm on the knee of his bent leg. “It’s true, although I’d say we helped and that he looks a lot better this way.” He smirked. “It’s dangerous out here, them Greeks can be a real menace.” He paused before asking, “Wait, Brooks? From the 6th Cohort right? I think I might have heard off some good looking guy called Brooks from the 6th?”

Brooks knew when he was walking into a trap. One of the pros of living the last two years learning to lie and act his way out of situations. He had picked up on more than a few red flags in a conversation. Brooks knew nothing about the Queen family, but it was far too specific of a reference for Cat to willingly offer an out to them. In an ideal situation, Brooks would have some semblance of information on the Romans to fuel his lies. Unfortunately, he didn’t have any personal information to to share that would help his lie. But Brooks needed to be flexible. “I have no idea what either of you are talking about.” He was walking a dangerous path, he knew that. But with both his and Harper’s lives on the line he seemed to have little choice. “I don’t know any Queen family and I don’t even what a cohort is! Let alone how many there are.” Grace. A wave of anger rose in his body. They were mocking Jason’s injuries. He was furious, but logical. He couldn’t show his anger. He needed to remain as frightened as possible. “I was claimed a couple of months ago. I was told about New Rome and directed out here. When I got here I learned out about the war and the Greeks found me. I panicked and told them that I was a son of Hermes so they wouldn’t kill me.” His hands were growing tired but he refused to lower them in fear of getting shot because someone thought he was reaching for a weapon. If it came down to a fight, both him and Harper were screwed. So they needed to find another way out. “I was trying to leave the camp and convinced Harper to come with me. We escaped and found the lake but I don’t have any idea where I’m going. Please do not hurt us. You can clearly see how terrified we both are. We don’t even have weapons. All I have is a pocket knife. It’s in my back pocket. I can grab it for you if you don’t shoot me.”

She felt sick to her stomach. This was about a million-and-one times worse than any elementary school playground bullies. Harper continued to let Brooks do most of the talking as she tried to figure out just what the two adults were up to. Even despite her belief in the good of all, there were too many signs that that something was wrong. She felt her body stiffen at the woman’s mention of Jason’s injury. Mocking something like that was cruel, comparing others to animals was terrible. You helped? She bit down as hard as she could on her lip and stared right at them, wide-eyed though remaining relatively silent. “He just w-wanted me to be safe, too.” She whispered. “So that the Gr- the Greeks didn’t decide to lock us up or anything.” Harper silently cursed herself, everyone in the Greek camp who she’d met had been nothing but warm and welcoming and kind. They didn’t deserve even the smallest lie that said they were anything but. “We’ll just go ahead and get back home,” she stumbled over her words, “you know, back to safety and all.”

“Enough,” Cat announced, suddenly growing bored of these foolish games and wishing for another respite from her time patrolling. Bringing these fools into Camp Jupiter would have to do for the days activities. Besides, she was sure that if they were truly telling the truth then it would be found out soon enough. Although she couldn’t quite bring herself to believe their tall stories. They’d made no reference of Lupa, something a true Roman would recognise. “I don’t believe that you’re not Greek, but I guess there is only one real way to tell. We’re going to detain you and take you back to the Camp, they’ll be able to test whether or not your claim is true. Besides, if you’re Romans you’ll be safer off outside of the city. We can transfer your leaving information as soon as we’ve validated your claims.” She nodded at Marcus, and reached behind herself, hooking a pair of handcuffs off her belt. Unsnapping them, she looked at the suspects, daring them to move.

Marcus rolled his eyes as the fun ended. He could see through the lies as if they were the mist. The boy seemed to have a golden tongue, a gift given to children of Mercury and Hermes. There was no telling just yet if his statements were true or not. The girl seemed very timid and unlikely to be a threat, she also seemed to be scared out of her mind. Most Roman’s knew who the Centurions were, especially Cat, yet they hadn’t called her by name once. Jumping up to his feet he too took out a pair of handcuffs but his materialized into his hand rather than him reaching for them attached to his belt. “Listen, don’t make this hard for yourselves. You obviously know the Roman law, and resisting can lead to even greater consequences. Besides, if you run, I’ll just put the handcuffs on magically, and with a moving target, there’s no guarantee it won’t hurt.”

They were so screwed. Brooks was trying to remain positive and level headed but the odds were stacked against them. These two roman soldiers were obviously well trained and if part of a cohort or whatever they were claiming, that probably meant there were more soldiers around. He could not imagine a situation where the two of them were going to make it back to the Greek camp. The two of them were too outnumbered and not nearly skilled enough. It was times like these that he wished his pocket knife magically turned into a chainsaw or something fantastic like Percy’s pen or Jason’s coin. Unfortunately, it looked like the two were on their own. And with Marcus threatening his magic handcuffs, which were apparently a thing, just running didn’t seem like an option. Maybe if Brooks could provide a distraction it would give Harper time to get away. “Fine. Fine. Just don’t hurt us. Like I said, we aren’t soldiers.” Brooks began walking forward, eyeing the ground and spotting a root sticking out from the ground. He veered his path to make sure he would have to walk into it and purposely planted his foot under it, forcing himself to trip onto the ground. He planted face first, digging his palms into the ground and gathering as much dirt as he could into his fists. “Damn it.” Brooks mumbled, pushing himself back up off the ground. “If I’m actually a greek spy I must be the clumsiest soldier known to man.” Then, as quickly as he could, threw the dirt at the two soldiers, and spun to yell  “Run!” to Harper. He knew the dirt would do nothing. But he at least hoped that they would focus their attention on him so that Harper may be able to get away.

No. No, no, no. Harper’s eyes glanced at the handcuffs that the woman held, and she felt her nails dig into the palms of her hands at the mention of magic handcuffs that the man could apparently use. How would that even work? She found herself thinking, too curious and too unknowing once again. If they made it out of this, she desperately needed to find somebody to help explain all the ins and outs of this place to her. They would make it out of this, though, because nobody needed to die. Nobody ever needed to die. She could feel her mouth go dry as Brooks moved toward the other figures, then her eyes grew wide as he threw dirt at them - and yelled for her to run. But she remained, unmoving, feet planted on the ground. I’m not leaving you. She wanted to say, but remaining mostly quiet was for the best. “Leave us b - be.” She said, her voice wobbling as she attempted to feign confidence, ever part of her body feeling terrified and anxious. “Don’t you dare hurt us.” Especially not my only full-confirmed friend here. She took a few steps forward, finally - unsure of what her plan was, unsure of what she was supposed to do here. Harper finally relaxed her fists from their clenching, giving a small flick of her wrists, and found herself give a half-audible gasp as a few strands of ivy suddenly sprouted from the ground and wrapped around the handcuffs in the woman’s hands.

Cat was moving forwards, having brushed the dirt out of her eyes and blinking a few times, she’d started after Brooks, intent on handcuffing him just a little too tightly. Stepping forward she reached out and was about to snap her cuffs around the Greek when she noticed the girl move. The earth almost seemed to respond as vines of ivy leapt up and wrapped themselves around the handcuffs in her hands, the ivy moved of its own accord, defying gravity and surging through the air. The vines lashed around the metal circles and pulled down tightly, dragging them out of Cat’s hands and causing them to rattle onto the floor. “She’s a child of Ceres or Prosperina,” she snapped, reaching to her belt and pulling a sword out before hacking free of the vines and taking a step away. “We’ve got to stop them, she’s too valuable to allow to join the Greeks.”

Marcus growled as the vines leapt out at Cat and then became annoyed as they seems to move on their own accord and wrap around his arms too. He struggled to pull his arm from the plants but soon the vines had wrapped themselves around both his wrists and held them close together. Now he was the one who was handcuffed. With a roar of frustration, his hands burst into flames, burning away at the vines that held them tight. The smell of burnt vines and white smoke filled the air and with another tug, be broke away from the charred vines. He made a move towards the boy whom was closest, hoping to use him as leverage, hold him captive until they both surrendered. But the same root that has tripped the other seemed to find its way over Marcus’s foot, causing him to topple forward and into the dirt too. He did however, manage to send a ball of flames in the girls direction before his face met the dirt beneath him. He had probably missed and looked up as soon as he could, spitting the blood that had come from his busted lip.

What the hell had just happened? Brooks was so sure that the two were completely screwed when all hell broke loose. Vines began growing from nowhere and both Cat and Marcus seemed taken aback by this new development. Brooks glanced back at Harper and the realization that this was her hit him. She had powers too apparently and they had just completely saved their asses. Or at least, they were giving the two the chance to get away. Marcus fell and in a fit of rage seemed to hurl at fireball. Brooks tried scrambling to his feet to save Harper but when he realized couldn’t get there in time, instead reached out and pushed out at her ankle, knocking her over so that the fireball would miss. A second later, Brooks had crawled to his feet and was helping Harper onto her feet. “We need to go. Right now.” He said in a rush, yanking her along by her wrists as the two made their way out into the forest.

She’d never known that she had powers of that sort. For a moment, Harper stood, wide-eyed as the vines wrapped around the man and woman in part, but then they each broke away from them. This still isn’t working. Her heart was still racing and then the man sent fireballs toward her and before she could even duck, Brooks had pushed her out of the way, causing her to fall down on the ground. She caught her fall with the palms of her hands and then grabbed Brooks’ hand as he reached out to help her. “Right there with you.” She whispered and began to move with him, turning back halfway and gave another flick of her wrist, causing a small fence of vines to grow between them and the others - given that the man could apparently create fire, she doubted that it would do much, but maybe it could help a bit. Until she could figure out exactly what she was able to do. This was much more than simple keeping flowers alive always and growing a few small plants in her room.

After the two were safely away from these Roman soldiers, Brooks and Harper would have to explore this new and exciting revelation in Harper’s powers. For now, the two would have to focus instead on surviving. Along the path of their escape a single Roman soldier stepped out to stop the two. So they did have soldiers spread out. Made sense. Brooklyn was positive that this soldier could outfight the two. But Brooks remembered what Jason had said. That chaos was Brooks’ best friend. He just needed to do the unexpected. So while Brooks and Harper ran full speed toward the soldier, Brooks dropped. And fell to the ground and into a roll, barreling into the soldier’s leg and kicking into the soldier’s groin. Then he recovered quickly and kicked the dude’s head with his foot. He neglected to see if the man was unconscious or not and instead waved Harper along so the two could keep running. He veered Harper off of the path leading back to Camp, “We can’t go back there tonight. No telling if they’ll follow us or not.”

Somehow, they’d made it away. Harper didn’t quite understand how any of that had happened, but right now she just needed to keep moving until both she and Brooks were safe. But another soldier appeared, apparently making their ease of escaping more difficult than it should have been. If there was no war, they would not have had to run, they would not have been attacked simply for being Greek. The prejudice made absolutely no sense to Harper, and she refused to hate someone else simply because they had a different birth than she did. Harper couldn’t help but watch in amazement as Brooks deftly dealt with the soldier - though any violence was not somethings she would ever be fond of, but right now she needed to get out of here alive, and make sure that Brooks did too. Then she could maybe start to process what on earth she had done back there. “Yes, we’ll have to stay in the forest this evening.” She looked around at the upcoming trees. “I - I don’t want to risk harm to anyone back at the Camp.”

The two ran for what felt like forever. Even Brooklyn’s legs were tired by the time they finally slowed. But the adrenaline still hadn’t stopped pumping through his blood. When he was certain that the two hadn’t been followed - and to be clear Brooks still had not been completely sure they had not been followed - the two finally stopped running and decided to take a rest. He leaned against a tree and slid down it until he was sitting on the ground. Then he rested his head back against the bark and took a long second to catch his breath. “We can figure out a place around here to make camp. It won’t be a particularly luxurious night, but we won’t put anybody else in danger.” Then he paused lifted his head to look at Harper, “That was impressive. What you did back there.”

She skidded to a halt when Brooks stopped. “Yes,” she sighed, “we can. I am not bothered by sleeping here, I’m sure we can find a nice patch of grass, or dirt, and it is still lovely out.” At his mention of what had happened, she felt her face grow red. “I - I do not know what happened, I just - I didn’t want them to hurt us, and then,” she gestured vaguely around, “that happened. It’s - I’ve grown f- flowers before, but not that.” She wrapped her arms around her body. Harper smiled down at Brooks, “but thank you. I appreciate your kind words.” She let the words of gratitude hang in the air for a few moments before she moved to sit down - but before she could, she noticed a slight shift in the way the light fell around her and glanced up - a sickle and a few sheaths of wheat floating above her head. “What - what is that?” She said, moving towards Brooks, the image following her.

“Well it was incredible. You saved both of us.” Brooks smiled. A part of him was disappointed that everyone around him seemed to have these incredible abilities. The other part knew that Harper had already had some type of abilities. He recognized the flowers and the way things seemed to spring to life around her. And most of all, he was happy that whatever she had done it saved the both of them. “So thanks.” Suddenly, something was appearing over head and Brooks jumped to his feet to get a better look at it. “You just got claimed.” Brooks admitted, wide eyed. “I don’t know who it is though.” He studied it further, willing the name to come to him, but his mind remained blank. “Damn it.” He groaned. He wished he could have been more helpful to Harper. “When we get back to camp we will figure out. Other’s will know.”

Her cheeks turned a bright shade of pink. “Thank you, again. You were a big help though, I would’ve been in way bigger trouble from the st-start without you there. So thank you.” Harper smiled at her friend. “Claimed? Like, by my mother? But -” She scrunched her nose. “I - we - still don’t know who she is.” Harper glanced up at the image above her as she sat down next to Brooks. “It’s okay. It is no trouble either way, I am just glad that perhaps this means I can be of more use.” Chewing on her lip, Harper gave a small flick of her wrist and let a few vines sprout up from the ground and wrap around one another, forming a small fence around the tree where she and Brooks sat. “Perhaps that can help keep us safe until we go back home tomorrow.”

[sofilltomethepartingglass-blog]

Unwelcome News

Nico di Angelo, in the Underworld attempting to assist his father with as-of-yet unspecified “family business,” learns of the beginnings of the war in New Rome.

Nico sometimes wondered how his father could be one of the most feared and respected of the Olympian Gods. Sure, Hades had power over the dead, and sure, he sat enthroned as King of the Underworld, but there were times he was absolutely useless - whether by his own choice, or by circumstances. Which was how Nico found himself sitting in judgement once again over the souls of the recently deceased, trying very hard to not look like he was bored out of his mind. Those who appeared before Nico had already passed Aeacus and Rhadamanthus, and it was Nico’s third and final vote that would decide their fate in the Underworld.

Wondering why he ever destroyed Minos - because this was mind-numbingly tedious work - Nico was distracted from the soul of a peaceful little Russian babushka who had died in her sleep by a sudden wave of deaths that filled his mind: the deaths of people he knew were the only ones that registered in that manner. He was already standing and moving before he realized he had yet to give the woman her verdict. “Elysian Fields.” He stated distractedly, moving as quickly as he could towards the First Court - that of Aeacus. 

The crowd was larger than usual. Nico shoved his way past Aeacus’ seat of judgement, moving swiftly for the back of the queue - where the recent arrivals would be. His pulse was thundering in his chest as he shouldered his way past souls of every description. Who was dead? He wondered anxiously as he gave up on trying to be polite - now roughly shoving innocent bystanders out of his way.

He drew up short. People he recognized. His eyes found a blond demigod he knew had been at Camp Jupiter, who was missing a leg and was coated in blood and ash. Another he knew lived four doors down from him in New Rome - a Greek with an arrow through his neck. Swallowing slightly, Nico began picking through the crowd - realizing with dawning horror that he recognized these Greeks and Romans. Something had happened - something absolutely horrible, judging by the blood and gore and carnage he saw in some of them. One poor Camp Jupiter member he recognized from visiting the camp was clutching his stomach, holding in his intestines. 

His breath hitched in his chest slightly as, before his eyes, the Greeks began to outnumber the Romans in the crowd - more and more Greeks appearing every few seconds. He grabbed one he vaguely knew - a Son of Eros - and shook him slightly. “What happened?” He demanded desperately. “An attack.” He was told. “We were leaving New Rome, as the Senate commanded, and the Romans attacked us.” 

Nico’s mind started to reel as he rounded on a nearby Roman - seizing him by the breastplate - ignoring the bloody chasm in its middle where a sword had clearly been sunken into it. “Why did you attack them?” He demanded roughly - but got no answer beyond “Bombing Camp Jupiter.”

Piece by piece, he started to put the story together from the victims of the Roman massacre and the Greek bombing. Something didn’t add up to Nico. When he had left New Rome several months previously, things had been peaceful. Now tensions ran high, and war had broken out. 

He left the victims, quickly summoning Triptolemos to take over as the third judge of souls while he sped as quickly as he could to his father’s palace, to demand he be released from his obligations to go and help his friends.

Hades would refuse. It would be nearly four more months before Nico would be permitted to leave.

[sonoftriton-blog]

             ---Caspian fights for his life

                                                                 But nothing in life is for free---

Caspian’s heart beat loudly inside his chest. This was one of the first advances the Greeks were making and the thought of killing made his stomach churn. It wasn’t long until the adrenalin kicked in and soon enough all those thoughts were gone. His survival instincts took over and all he could remember were his years of training. He was fighting for those he loved and so that other’s would not lose loved ones either. Not to mention that at the back of his mind a soft voice nagged at him. “You have to be better. You have to do better. You need to impress him.” He said a small prayer to the gods asking that he’d fight with honor and that he’d survive this. 

Caspian wasn’t with Percy. Percy was out in front with the older and more experienced demigods. Besides, having two water torrents on either side of their Greek army was definitely a benefit. War cries filled the air and the energy of everyone surged around him. He felt part of something. Something bigger than he was. Perhaps the gods looked down on them today. Perhaps some of the gods were down here with them. He lost his train of thought and he found himself staring at one piece of cracked cobblestone, his breath the only thing he could hear. He was brought back to reality by the surge forward and they were off. 

Duck, swing, strike, slide, sidestep, kick, strike, stab. He worked through the Roman army with ease. He was grateful for all the times he was held back in training rather than being allowed to go and play. He reached out for ponds and other sources of water, his body and the liquid moving in unison. The water wasn’t a weapon he controlled, it was an extension of himself. After plowing a path forward through the Romans he paused and took in the scene around him. He had no direct orders and nowhere to work towards, just to clear out space so that the Greeks could claim this district. He moved towards a few other groups of Greeks, aiding them in the fight. 

They continued to fight. Seconds turned to minutes, minutes turned into hours. The Romans seemed to match the Greeks in skill, but as people grew tired, mistakes were made and injuries were caused. Medics flew in and out of the battle, taking wounded back to safety. Caspian used ice shields were necessary and reused his water, scared that he might not find another source. Soon the water was no longer clear but a light pink, then crimson as time past. He finally found a fountain and took control of the immediate space around it. Like the king of the hill. He was the king and nobody could touch him. He had lost track of time and the amount of Greeks around him. He felt the effects of using his powers, but the need to continue and the adrenaline drowned out the pain and fatigue. 

A horn in the distance went off and snapped Caspian back to reality. The horn had come from the Greek’s side and it was meant to call a retreat. “No!” Caspian shouted out in protest. He was sure that they could have made it. He watched as Greeks around him formed back into clusters and moved backward towards safety. “No!” He refused to go back to the lake empty-handed. He moved from the fountain into open space. His first mistake was not following the call to retreat, his second was moving into an open space. As he became singled out he struggled to maintain his position. Roman’s surged at him and it wasn’t until an arrow broke through his watery defense and grazed his thigh that he felt the pain. The pain that seemed to come from his whole body. He was tired and had become weak as if he hadn’t eaten for the past 3 days. He stumbled backward, his thigh trying to give out, but he wouldn’t let it. With a roar of anger and pain, he shot out a volley of icicles in all directions, using up his watery defense. That’s when he made a run for it. His Greek friends had left him, following orders, but for some reason, he still felt betrayed. He swung his trident through the air, meeting swords and causing sparks as he limbed away as fast as he could. He was confident he would make it, sure of it. That’s when he miss-judged a sword swing. He moved his Trident to block it, but it simply deflected the sword into his arm. 

He let out a howl of pain as he dropped his Trident. He felt lightheaded immediately and did not dare to look at his arm. What happened next was unclear. He felt rage and anger inside him. He felt the pull of water in his guts. He felt movement as if his feet were no longer on the ground and he was being carried away. He couldn’t see anything, as if his vision had failed him, but he still felt things like the air around him and the pull of water in his guts. He still heard the shouts of the battle, or were those shouts of distraught? Was that Percy? He had no idea and soon enough even the voices were gone. Nothing. He felt nothing, he heard nothing. 

Caspian woke up in an Infirmary bed. He turned his head to the side, looking at his surroundings. On one side there was an empty chair and on the other was a bedside table with a note on top. Caspian groaned as he tried to sit up, trying to use his arms to push himself up, but he became lobsided and fell off the bed onto the infirmary floor. A nurse rushed to his aid. Disorientated, Caspian felt sick. What had just happened? It was as if his limbs weren’t responding. That’s when he looked down to where his right arm was supposed to be. Where his right arm wasn’t. Caspian was speechless, his mind ran through so many thoughts at once that he couldn’t think of one single thing to say. “What happened to my arm?” He asked in Atlantean, tears in his eyes, voice catching in his throat. “Where’s my arm? Where’s my arm!” He repeated over and over. He tried to fight off the nurses that had come to aid him back onto the bed, but he was still weak from the fight and the anesthetic hadn’t left his system yet. “Uncle! Percy!” He shouted, “Kol!”. The nurse made her best effort to calm him down, but his English skills seemed to have left him. He couldn’t understand a word she was saying and before he knew what was happening the nurse had administered another dose to calm him down. His vision blurred, reality swirled and he fell back into the darkness. He prayed that he’d wake up next to Kol and that this was all a bad dream, but a sinking feeling had started in his stomach and something told him this was not a dream.

[canemnecredite]

armis exposcere pacem.

date: 08 february 2018, approx. 8:15 pm / midday after the battle for the eastern district location: the woods along the lake & the perimeter of the greek camp / adriana’s tent at the waterfront headquarters  

synopsis: after accepting the proposal extended to her by jax, adriana makes her way to the greek headquarters to initiate their mission / adriana reflects on the events of the war up to the present and her place in the battles to come (with a noticeable change in appearance)

triggers: death mention, gore (just one theoretical mention of injury)

characters this may concern: @avadakaravadra​ / @fireandseaweed​ / @peacefully-blossom

“Armis Exposcere Pacem” - They demanded peace by force of arms.

       The motto of the Clan Caninii works twofold. It defines their history as rebels against those who challenged the Roman Republic -- insurgents such as Julius Caesar and Octavian who sought to turn Rome from a people’s Republic to an Empire under the single authority of a dictator -- and upholds their belief that the independence of the Roman people and their voice in matters that concern their home and livelihood are meant to be respected and heard -- that these crucial foundations of the Republic must be defended for the good of the people. When Caesar began taking arms against those who would oppose him and threatened the continued governance of the Senate, the Caninii, along with others, took up arms against the tyrant, because there is no peace without war.

But if the New Roman Senate has become a Caesar in its own right... is there even a Republic left to salvage?

Roman names are unique. A Roman may have multiple given names and compartmental surnames. When most people hear the name Caninii, their minds immediately recognize the root word caninus, meaning “canine;” and while this root is not false, it is also not the whole picture. Caninii is the plural form for each individual family member’s surname, Caninius -- a name also related to the word canus, which means “white” or “grey.” White, for peace. Grey, for ambiguity. The name for a clan who hold themselves in neutrality, until the time is right.  

Clans, of course, have branches. For Romans, these branches are identified by cognomen, names ascribed to individuals or families for particular traits or achievements. Rebilus is theirs. It comes from rebellis, meaning “rebellious,” “rebel,” or “insurgent.” A curious name for such a high ranking noble family, but the Caninii are in no way ashamed of their legacy. They embrace their ancestor’s victory over Octavian. Defying a man like that, with immense power at his back, as ancient pirates attacking, raiding, and blocking his navy, no less, was remarkably bold. Sirius had been an integral part in a successful act of defiance against Rome’s future first emperor. For millennia, his descendants have strived to follow his example -- to fight for peace and end a war, even if that peace came to be short-lived. But the tenets set down in antiquity and preserved through countless generations have warped over time. They have been tainted by the the New Roman Senate and the shadowy organization that backs their ideals. But how can the Senate be a true senate when they hardly regard the words of their people? All of their people. They have become manipulative and absolute, dishing out orders as if they were a single power not to be questioned. As if their council is an emperor in its own right.

Adriana no longer believes they deserve the title of Senate. Though their mark has been burned into her arm as an obligatory identification of her conscription to the Legion, if this is how they intend to continue, she has come to reject any subscription to their orders. Her careful resistance to her grandfather’s authority and yet determination to inherit the empire that her kin have made is the result of her intention to reforge her house’s reputation and operation. She strives to be true to her ancestor’s legacy, even if it means threatening her standing in New Roman society.

As she trod through the forest shadows along the lakeside, Adriana found herself facing somewhat of an existential crisis. The events of the war up to this point had left her with mixed feelings. When Blossom’s pride celebration had been subjected to a raid, the sweet girl arrested, the Greeks branded as alien citizens, forced from the Legion, and then exiled-- each event had stoked her frustration, then anger, with the Senate. She had come to Lina the day before the horrific attacks that prompted the war, ready to defy the Senate’s orders to their cohort and shed the blood of any legionnaire who got in her way, if it came to that. Perhaps it was unbelievably rash, but her legionnaires being commanded to assist in the exile of those who had been their family in the Fourth had triggered a rage that had her seeing red. If Lina hadn’t “assaulted” her, it was likely she would have been branded a traitor and locked away... or worse. Lina had made a tremendous sacrifice to keep their kids safe, and now it was Adriana’s turn to protect those she loved.

However, the armory had been bombed, supposedly by the Greeks. She had no way of confirming that, but the loss of a place so dear to her heart, and multiple siblings and co-workers along with it, had stirred the poison in her blood. Fergus and Callum had fallen to the Romans, and still, those few weeks in camp had left her conscience torn. Lina had obligated Adriana to watch over their legionnaires. The centurion had felt as though she couldn’t budge, because she owed Lina that much. Then, she had attended Fergus’ wake and funeral. A funeral with no body to burn in his honor. It was Jax’s proposal that night that had finally pushed her over that edge. She had been clinging to orders to maintain stability, so a mission had been the perfect catalyst for initiating the action she had been dying to take. Especially knowing she had Jax backing her as a partner and ally.

Whatever they had become was a stranger to the tempestuous relationship they had shared growing up. Their rivalry remained, though void of the mutual dislike that had existed so passionately between them. Adriana didn’t know what to make of it. Despite their animosity, they had always made efficient partners. They trusted one another in their own twisted way, only now, something far deeper was underlying that trust. But she refused to acknowledge it. She was putting blind faith in that force as if it was liable to break should she address it. The mission was enough. Her personal emotions would only get in its way. Yet, leaving him behind in the dark to venture into dangerous territory alone widened that tear of doubt in her chest ever so slightly.

She had to shake her head to cast off the feeling, but it would never fade entirely. For just a moment, she paused and looked out over the water. The radiant silver glow of a waning half moon rippled atop the lake. The corner of her lips twitched upward at the sight. It was lovely. Too lovely for the period of violence that had engulfed her home. With that thought, the lighthearted tease of a smile faded.

“I hope he’s right,” the daughter of Mars sighed as her gold-tinted gaze lifted to the titaness in the sky, assuming she was there in some capacity. The titans were far more elusive than the gods, but Adriana regarded her ancestor with a childlike hope. Surely, Luna was not entirely ignorant to her bloodline’s prayers. “Keep an eye on him,” she implored. “Not for my sake, or his; for everyone’s. You can’t take sides, and neither can I, but I need him to do this. I know Fergus believed in peace, even if he refused to say it. He had the same blood of yours in his veins as in mine and he died trying to prevent this war.” Subconsciously, her thumb brushed over the small shell that had been tied around the hilt of her sword-- a reminder of her silent promise to avenge an undeserved death. Her lids slid over her eyes as she did so. “If you have any regard for your legacies, please, listen to me. Just this once.”

When the moonlight reflected in the woman’s vision again, her observation of the night’s canvas failed to identify any shift in the surroundings, to no surprise. Her attention fell to her hip, where her sword was harnessed and her fingers wrapped around its hilt. A long breath exhaled through her nose. War was meant to be her element, yet here she was, praying to a distantly related deity for assistance in terminating it. Her father must have been aghast. Nevertheless, the daughter of war set her sights forward and pressed on.

As the lights of the waterfront base grew nearer, the grip on her sword tightened. However she was received by the Greeks, it wouldn’t be readily. Adriana was, after all, a long-established centurion of ancient Roman blood. No matter what recent sentiments she had displayed, she would be questioned, and carefully guarded. What came after the declaration of her purpose was impossible to discern. If she had any hope of securing a place within their ranks, it was best she approached with as benign a demeanor as possible. So, as she emerged from the treeline, she slowed her pace and unbuckled her sheath. Her hands were held up, the blade in her right, and when the three boys on patrol spotted her nearing the perimeter, she acknowledged them with steady words. “I’m here to speak with whoever’s in charge. You can tell them that Centurion Adriana Caninii has come to join your cause -- and she has a very important matter to discuss with them, if they’re willing to hear it.”

The trio looked to one another, wordlessly seeking each other’s thoughts, before the eldest among them nodded and the youngest ran toward the heart of their operations. The third confiscated her sword, which resulted in a reflexive snap of, “Careful with that, or there will be trouble,” and a small spell secured her hands in front of her person. But, they escorted her no further than the interior edge of the border. Smart. It wouldn’t do to lead a suspicious figure through the camp without further inspection. Now, the lot of them had nothing more to do than await the leading Greeks’ judgement.

Adriana’s acceptance into the Greek camp had been a surprisingly more welcome ordeal than expected. Her previous support for their plight had been recognized and her help gladly accepted. The only potential hiccup arose when they had intended to bunk her with the rest of the Roman transfers in the underwater complex. Despite the fact that the dome was secure, she was plagued by an intense fear of diving below the water’s surface in any fashion. As a result, she had pitched a tent in the shade of the forest’s edge. It was in fair proximity to the main corpus of operations, yet far enough away that she could have her privacy. Once again, her new compatriots raised little opposition to her desire. 

Nearly four months had passed since her arrival, and in that time, Adriana had done whatever was required to assist the Greeks’ endeavor. She had been distributing supplies and managing refugees, joining in on supply runs, offering training to some of the younger and lesser experienced fighters, and providing as much information on the Roman strategies and movements as she had to give. She fought where force was needed. No large scale attacks had occurred for some time. It had given them the opportunity to rebuild their strength and stabilize their position. However, true battle was bound to break out eventually, and the Eastern District had proven to be the greatest receptor of demigod blood yet. 

The daughter of Mars had been in the thick of it. Nothing charged her like a real fight. Yet, facing fellow legionnaires in attempted lethal combat had left her with far less enthusiasm than usual. There had been an instance or two when she reflexively defended an old friend -- cursing an arrow from a distance or knocking out an old companion to give the impression that they had fallen in battle. They had almost seized the day. They had been so close to claiming victory... but the Romans countered them with a second wind that no one could have predicted. And despite their valiant efforts, the Greeks were the force to sound a retreat. 

Both sides had dead and wounded to tend to. For a brief time, an tense truce had hovered over the field. The soldiers were able to collect their dead without the threat of physical conflict. Neither the Greeks nor the Romans would want to appear total barbarians, after all. Adriana hadn’t come out unscathed. She wasn’t heavily injured, but bearing a series of small cuts with chips of debris from an explosion off to her side, a cut on her arm from the narrowly dodged thrust of a pilum, and a bruise from a slam to her shoulder that was sure to ripen, she too had stepped away to tend to her wounds. 

She sat on the edge of her makeshift bed -- one of the thin mattresses from the bunks and a blanket to go with it -- sanitizing the slash on her arm. The sting of antiseptic drew a hiss from her tongue. Thankfully, the cut was superficial enough to avoid being stitched. The medics had assured her that with the proper daily cleanings and fresh wraps of bandages, it would heal fairly quickly. The former centurion had gotten off lucky. 

Now, you might be thinking, “Well she’s been fighting since she was four! Of course she made it out;” but the truth is, surviving a battle has nothing to do with skill. You can be the best damn swordsman on the field, but that doesn’t make you any less likely to have an arrow hit you from behind or your leg blown off by a grenade that didn’t catch your eye until it was too late. When the chaos of battle is swirling around you, it’s up to luck and fate whether or not you’ll live to fight another day. And yet the history books still call war glorious.

While winding a bandage around the freshly cleaned skin, an auburn strand of hair slipped out from behind her ear and dangled directly in her line of sight. The woman huffed, and the strand blew forward before inevitably drifting back again. Adriana frowned. Despite the distraction, she completed her task. Once the bandages were firmly tied, she straightened her back and brushed the bit of hair back over her shoulder. The quiet moment was taken to examine the parts of her body that hadn’t yet been treated. Her injuries had all been cared for and cleaned, the exposed skin wiped down to check for any other marks hidden behind the dirt and blood. Her armor, clothes, and hair, on the other hand, were a mess. The armor could be done fairly quickly, but there were places where her clothes were torn, and sanguine stains dappled the fabric.

She hadn’t noticed it at first, but as her hands ran through her tousled hair, she found that the light auburn hue was no less stained than her attire. Adriana brought a portion of it into her grip, considering how to proceed. Washing it would be easy enough... but would it be worth it? The hip-length tresses were a trademark of her person. Skipping over the scene of those blazing locks moving in tandem with the dance of a swordswoman was almost impossible to miss. Adriana knew that, and she counted on it. Why?   

“You can’t fight with hair as long as that!”

The mocking words of a young boy rang through her head as it had in her ears so many moons ago -- a tease that spurred a lifelong competition based on little more than a silly insult taken too seriously. Pride had been of great importance to the future Caninii heiress as a child. The day when that competition began had been one amid the naive period of her life, before she realized that her future was limited by her birth and that her grandfather was manipulating her world to shape her toward a specific role. Her pride had shifted, then. Although honor for family would always remain prominent, it was pride in herself -- rather, confidence -- that became the source of her actions. On that day, she decided to leave her hair long. She would prove to him that her skills in combat could not be dulled by her appearance, her size, or her gender. The funny thing was, her skills didn’t need to be proven. The truth was obvious. But, her childish stubbornness had resulted in her carrying on his challenge for years to come. 

Adriana wasn’t a child anymore. She had nothing to prove in terms of ability. That boy was no longer a child either. They were both walking in shadow to see the war to see the war through. The competition had become trivial, especially now that they sought peace in arms. As she sat there in her tent, the clanging of weapons and shouts of medics in the distance, situated in the Greek encampment, the daughter of war had to wonder-- perhaps, it wasn’t worth it after all. Looking back on who she was then and who she was now, an incredulous puff of a laugh brought the hint of a grin to her lips. Novi diluculo, novus dies. Right?

Rising to her feet, Adriana grabbed her sword and marched down to the lakeshore. She took in the sight of herself for a minute, memorizing the picture that she made so that she could remember it, after. That image would serve as a reminder of who she had been to better appreciate the person she had resolved to become. She closed her eyes and exhaled deeply as she unsheathed her blade and hovered it behind her neck. With one swift cut, her lifelong distinguishing feature had been sheared from her person. When Adriana opened her eyes, the juniper orbs found a welcome stranger gazing back at her, and her grin widened. Literally and figuratively, it felt as though a heavy weight had dropped away. She felt free to do and be as she pleased. Limitless. 

And that was a dangerous state for a demigod of ancient Roman blood with a sword in her hand.

She would find Blossom later, she thought as she turned to stroll back to her tent and sheathed the blade once more. She was a pretty girl. Surely, she knew something about styling a spontaneous haircut... 

[martiemcfliest]

Death & Tragedy

Martina learns a sharp lesson on how the world works and how she fits within it. She learns how things she thought she so easily controlled were not at all.

Tw: death mention, blood

There would always be death in a demigod’s life. There would always be death in Martina’s life. Visions reminded her weekly that people died, that tragedy hit those who didn’t deserve it. A child without a mother, a brother losing a their sibling. Tragedy was a constant in the world. It was supposed to make things sweeter. That’s what they told her, that tragedy made the happy moments sweeter.

The death in Martina’s life was controlled, decided by her. She was the one who picked who lived and died. Well, Jax really made that decision, but she helped him. She controlled death. She was the one holding the blade that cut. She was the one singing the hymn that healed. Her decisions were swift and final. Death was a tool she used.

No one she had ever loved had died. She had been abandoned, but her family was healthy. Her grandparents lived happily in Nevada, her mother was still attempting to rebuild her life in Georgia, her siblings were scattered, but alive. Landon… Landon was still alive, being a grandfather to her siblings’ children. They were a mess, but all of them were alive. Jacob had been her decision, she had decided to use the punishment of death on him.

Tragedy was something that had grazed against Martina once or twice in her life. However, it had never fully taken a hold of her. She had dodged tragedy. Quick moves and thought out plans avoided tragedy. Lucky visions avoided tragedy.

There was no move, no plan, no vision that day. They had been given orders, Martina went to follow those orders. She assumed that he would have as well. She had almost called him to ask if they should walk over together. She had told herself she didn’t have to. She’d see him there.

Expect tragedy decided that day would be the day it grabbed her and pull her deep into its folds. Death had decided to prove to her that it was not a tool. It was not a decision that could be made by her. When Fate decided that a life was going to end, they would end it. Martina was nothing. She did not decide these things.

No demigod did.

No one told her at first. Perhaps they didn’t want to be at the receiving end of her reaction. Perhaps they didn’t think to. She didn’t deserve kindness. She hadn’t been there for him. She didn’t have his back, even though she had promised she always would. She heard it through the grapevine.

It couldn’t have been real. Who would have killed him? He was a fucking demi-titan. They don’t just die. They’re stronger than regular demigods. There was no way that her best friend was gone.

She left her position. She heard people calling her back, she had a job to do, no war stops for grief. She kept walking. She didn’t turn back to tell them off as she usually would. No, she wouldn’t be back until someone proved to her that it was true. There was no way it was true. Why would anyone kill him? Sure, he was an asshole at times, but he was a kind person underneath it. No one would kill him. He wouldn’t have gone down without a big fight too.

He wouldn’t have started a fight without her. No, they’d promised to have each other’s backs. He would have told her to come with him. He wouldn’t have left her behind. He had to know she would have come with him into any fight. She wasn’t sure she had made that clear enough to him.

With each passing face, Martina felt the knife twisting. Why were they looking at her like that? She started to run. She didn’t know where she was going, but she was going. Death and tragedy weren’t going to break from her control without her fighting. There was no way he could be gone.

She ran into someone, an older member of the Second, someone who left the Legion, but returned for the war. Someone she trusted, someone she used to look up to. She grabbed the younger girl’s shoulders. “Martina. Fergus has died-.” She heard nothing else after that sentence, though the other woman continued to speak.

She wasn’t even sure what she was whispering as she went to her knees. Her hands went into a begging prayer. She pressed her face down to the ground, arms in front of her. “Bring him back. I’ll give you anything, bring him back.” Tears began to streak down her face, falling on to the ground below her.

“Bring him back.” She continued to repeat, her voice raising with desperation. As the minutes went by, with no answer, with no Gus, her desperation was peaking. “Bring him back!” She screeched, her hands pounding against the ground.

She raised her head to look at the sky,“Bring him back to me!” Her voice rang loud in the silent area and with no answer. She snapped,“Fucking bastards. Cowards! Fuck you! Bring him back! I need him back!” She started to scream as she smashed her hands again and again into the ground below her.

Tears streamed freely down her face, her screaming and cursing of the gods almost animalistic, the skin of her knuckles breaking and letting her blood out onto the ground. She lurched forward, bent at the waist, bringing her hands into her hair as she began to sob. Her best friend was really dead. He was gone and she hadn’t been there to back him up. She hadn’t been able to say goodbye. She hadn’t been able to thank him. She hadn’t been able to remind him that he was her number one. She hadn’t had his back when he needed her.

No one dared to touch her for many minutes, in fear she would do something horribly drastic. Her crying was somehow preferable to her punching the ground and cursing the gods. Eventually, once it was apparent that she needed someone to look at her hands, a soft hand pulled her up. She didn’t move, her feet wouldn’t let her. She was scooped up into someone’s arms.

She didn’t know who it was. She couldn’t tell where she was. She didn’t even know she was moving. Her eyes were strikingly dull. She would be of no use to anyone in the state she was in currently. She was brought to her bunk, where her hands were tended to as she shook with her sobs.

She was sure that nothing she had ever felt in her entire life was as painful as this. How was she supposed to keep going without her best friend? She had not felt this alone since the day her family had sent her on her plane away from them. She was lost. She couldn’t do anything.

So she prayed. She prayed for the first time since she was thirteen. She prayed to God. She prayed to Apollo, to Pluto, to Oceanus, to Venus, to every god she knew of. She prayed and prayed and prayed. She only stopped when she finally fell into a horrible sleep.

Death and Tragedy had given her a sharp reminder of who she was in this world.

[avadakaravadra]

Nocere. Dolor. Et Culpa. || Self Para

               it matters not how strait the gate,                           how charged with punishments the scroll,               i am the master of my fate,                           i am the captain of my { s o u l } 

date and time: two days after the centurion holiday dinner (december 23rd at 5:00 pm) suggested listening: eros by ludovico einaudi triggers: torture, blood, serious injury, homicide, death

    It was just another day at work, though his Centurion job wasn’t the office he was en route to. Instead, it was time to descend into the dreary and damp tunnels of the Cult, time to call forth the darkness he kept hidden in the light of day. He had only just gotten the message an hour or so ago. A high caliber target had finally been brought in after months of tracking, and they needed Jax’s special services to crack open their mind like a newfound book, spread the pages across the floor so that he might glean whatever information the Cult might need from this particular person.

    As Jax prepared to do his work, one of his fellow Cult members clapped him on the back, as if they could give him their own version of a pep talk though Jax wasn’t very fond of receiving such things. Still, they persisted and received an eye roll in return of their words. “I loosened them up a little before you got here. So everything should be fine.” There was that word again. Fine. It’d been ringing in his head ever since Lina had asked her question over text. Are you fine? Of course he was fine. It wasn’t as if he felt like there were claws inside his stomach, trying to scratch their way through his throat whenever his phone buzzed and her name appeared. It wasn’t as if they tried to rip through his intestine whenever he saw Bobbi smiling at Leo, words echoing in his head of her true mother’s greek identity. And it most certainly wasn’t as if the sight of Maia, crying at the dinner table in Touch of Class had somehow given the scratching inside his gut a small victory in the form of an apology finding its way to the surface. He was fine.

    He entered the room, darkness engulfing him and his subject. It was a simple scare tactic. Put someone in pitch black, and it wouldn’t be long before they were hopelessly disoriented, possibly even seeing strange figures and shadows in the inky lack of lighting. But it was no matter for Jax. He could see the man he was here to interrogate easily in the darkness, trying to appear as if he wasn’t scared out of his mind whilst being tied to a chair. That would change soon. “Are you comfortable? Are you fine?” Jax’s voice pierced ever so softly through the darkness, so quiet and smooth that one might think they were imagining things in the murky room, though the tone of his last word betrayed some of the malice that was bubbling within him. He wouldn’t start with telling them what he wanted to know. Let them wonder at it for a while. Hopefully then, they’d be even more desperate to tell Jax whatever it was that he wanted.

Jax circled his specimen, not bothering to cause any physical pain yet. Instead he took the flat of one of his favorite blades, and slid it over the skin of his victim’s arm. “You know what that is, don’t you? You’d be a pretty sad excuse for a demigod if you couldn’t recognize the feeling of a knife against you.” The cold metal of the blade moved harmlessly over the man’s skin, goosebumps creating a path behind it. “Though, being a graecus, perhaps one of your inherent shortcomings is that you wouldn’t even recognize a weapon when it’s pitted against you.” he drawled. But suddenly, his words threw themselves back onto him. The Greeks, now they were a sad excuse for a demigod. But once again Bobbi flashed before his mind’s eye, and the claws that had continuously threatened to break through his ever so careful demeanor were back, scratching at the lining of his stomach. And now that he was here on his lonesome, no threat of being exposed, where none could see the emotions flitting across his features— his mind finally confronted him with what it was he’d been trying to avoid.

    Bobbi wasn’t a sad excuse for a person. And yet here she was with Athena, the most disgraceful of the Greek gods, for a mother. But Bobbi was different, he told himself. She wasn’t the type of Greek to set fire to the Senate House, nor the kind to distract his childhood Centurion on the battlefield at Camp Half-Blood even after the two sides had reconciled their differences. Not the kind to get said beloved best friend and leader killed in an act of senseless idiocy because they were doing something they shouldn’t, distracting the faithful Roman just long enough for a giant to deal it’s killing blow. And most certainly not the kind to be the reason for an eighteen-year-old Jax having to watch and kneel beside the body of said best friend as they died on the field in front of him in the midst of chaos, not even giving the son of Discordia a chance to grieve before he had to continue where his Centurion had left off. Never giving him the chance to grieve. He’d had to keep going, just as he always did— just as he was trying to do now. He was fine. Bobbi was different. Not like the Greeks that needed to be eradicated.

    Making a quick decision, he let the sorrow of the loss wash over his target, Jax’s abilities lending him the power to do such a thing. Again his voice pervaded the air ever so quietly. “Hurts, doesn’t it? The loss of someone so close? All because of the idiocy of you graeci.” He could see the tears beginning to stream down his victim’s features, the sheer pain of Jax’s emotions washing over them as the man began to shake. “You’ve lost someone too, haven’t you?” He shifted somewhat blindly through their past pains via his Discordia-given abilities, until he found one that felt similar to his own before pressing on it with a steady mental thumb. It would hurt more if Jax could make the pain of the loss personal. The man’s tears began to flow more freely and his body twitched with emotion. “Wasn’t that long ago for you that they died.” Jax most often couldn’t get details, only the slightest of senses and hunches. “But the death of the friend isn’t the worst form of loss,” he said ominously, a humorless smile finding its way over his lips.

    Jax had learned that the hard way. Lina had been simply a name and face for the longest time, and then suddenly she’d become much more. A friend. One of his closest. But that had only made the realization all the more painful when she’d expressed her backing of the Greeks, her support for those who had stolen from him. The injury to his family name had only been salt to the wound. The clawing in his stomach worked upwards into his chest, as whatever beast that lie within him desperately tried to force its way through his careful charade of not caring, and continuing to do what it was he was meant to do. He couldn’t let it break through. So instead he forced it onto the man before him once more.

    Jax still had yet to draw blood, but that was remedied as he made the first of his stabs into an area of the man’s abdomen that wouldn’t prove lethal, just extremely painful. As the warmth of the blood flowing from his wound coated Jax’s hand, he leaned over his victim, speaking directly into the man’s ear. “It’s a bitch, isn’t it? Knowing that you lost someone in your life. You’d think it’d be less painful when they stay alive, but no.” He accessed their own memory of such a pain, bidding it to replay over and over again in his victim’s mind in conjunction with the death of their loved one.  “Pain hits you right in the gut. Knowing that things are different now. That even though they’re alive and well things will never be the same.” But he had to pretend like they were. Don’t burn bridges. You never know when you might need something from someone, and it’s a lot easier to mend a bridge than rebuild one. Jax could practically hear his father slithering the words into his ear. But if Jax didn’t use the fire to burn the bridge, and couldn’t let it out in a show of anger or frustration for fear of insult...where was the fire meant to go? Inwards was the only place left for it. Though he didn’t let it rage even there, always being careful to keep the flame safely tucked away, but it still ate away ever so slowly, waiting for the day it would find its freedom alongside the clawing in his stomach. Still he ignored them. He was fine.

    “They’re lost to you, even if they’re not dead.” A sob from the man tied to the chair fell on deaf ears, though it wasn’t clear whether it was the emotional or physical pain that had cowed the man. Nevertheless, Jax could feel him shuddering beneath him. Jax knew it didn’t matter how much he broke this man, how much he revealed of his powers. He was going to die soon anyways— though Jax had been sure not to tell him that. Someone who thought pain was all they would know for the rest of their time on this planet was generally someone much more willing to talk. Death gave them an out, and Jax didn’t have pity. He had a job. “You wanna know what I want, don’t you?” He spoke into the man’s ear once more, and the man nodded, the rivers of tears still flowing freely down his face. “I wanna know what makes you feel guilty. What is it that’s the secret you’re keeping locked up tight in here?” Jax brought the tip of his blade to the other side of the man’s stomach, adding enough pressure to break skin, the beginnings of ruby droplets forming at the end of the blade.

    “That guilt that just eats away at you, constantly trying to break free. Of course, that’s how I’m told it feels. I wouldn't know. I don’t have anything to feel guilty about.” But if he hadn’t felt guilty why was it that he had apologized to Maia at the Centurion dinner? Jax had tried to tell himself it was to save face, a play in hopes of gaining the compassion and trust of Maia, but he couldn’t deny the truth— not when he’d felt those returning scaly claws thrashing in his stomach when he’d uttered his apology two nights before. Again Jax thrust the confused pain of his own whirlwind thoughts onto the man, and he immediately broke out in frantic, sobbing tones. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry— I didn’t mean- I didn’t want- I had no choice.”

    Jax had little patience for crying, though he was pleased with the obvious progress he’d made in breaking the man. And yet he’d had patience for crying when it had been Maia at the dinner table? No. Jax banished the errant thought with another plunge of his knife into the man’s gut, this time twisting the blade within, and Jax was certain he felt bone as the tip of his knife hit something hard. He lodged it there, not wanting to withdraw the blade just yet. He couldn’t have the man losing consciousness from bloodloss once he removed the tool. However, that didn’t keep him from pressing the metal in further, taking a small hammer from his belt to tap at the hilt of it, driving it deeper— threatening to split the bone like a toothpick after finding just the right place to hit. “So what is it you’d like to confess?” he asked his weeping victim. The man simply shook his head, as if he’d found a last reserve of strength and was using it to deny Jax what he wanted. And with that Jax gave the final blow, breaking the bone beneath his blade as the other man gave a thunderous howl.

    “I can make it stop, you know,” Jax offered. “The hurt. The pain. The guilt.” This time, instead of adding to the pain, Jax drained the man of it entirely. He would feel nothing inside or out, just a complete numbness, almost apathy and the severe absence of the broken bone and his stab wounds. “If you just tell me what I want to know.” And finally Jax was whispering his question into the man’s ear, the question that the Cult wanted the answer to. But sometimes the absence of pain was more disorienting than the presence of it, and Jax’s outlet seemed to be in a stupor because of it— for he barely reacted to Jax’s question. “You don’t want to tell me?” He let a fraction of the pain slip back in, his threat of bringing both the emotional and physical pain back full force dangling rather obviously above the pair.

    Suddenly the man before him broke out in sobs once more, unable to handle the thought of feeling such unbearable things again. “Stop, please. Please just stop. I’ll tell you. I’ll tell you. Just don’t make me feel that again, please.” His voice was a begging and pleading whisper, and Jax leaned closer, wanting to catch every word with his knife still sandwiched between the man’s broken bone. A moment later, once Jax had the information he needed and no more use for the man, he let the knife rip upwards— slicing through an artery that would result in a nearly instant kill. It wasn’t pity that drove him, but the wish to leave this place after the emotions he’d let himself feel here, and then shoved onto the man before him.

    As the now dead man slumped in his chair, Jax reflected on this particular meeting. He had never let his sessions get as personal as this before, preferring to only use the pains of the other person’s past to torture them, but gods knew that he’d been bottling these emotions up for weeks, for years— and apparently this was the only way he knew how to let them out, by thrusting them onto someone else. Make them hurt the way he did, though he’d never even admitted to himself that’s what was clawing within his stomach. Hurt. Pain. Guilt. The hurt the Greeks had caused all those years ago. The pain of realizing Lina, one of closest friends, wasn’t an ally in his war against the Greeks stemming from his original hurt. The guilt of seeing the casualty of it at the disastrous Centurion dinner in Maia’s tears. The thought of them brought Jax’ gaze back to the man before him, his eyes trailing the drying tracks of tears on the man’s face, replaying the shuddering and convulsing that had wracked him as he’d experienced what was going on in Jax’s own head and heart.

    As the son of Discordia left the room, waiting for a clean-up crew to appear, he considered his reflection in the mirror of his bloody blade. If he’d had any sense, after witnessing what his bottled up emotions had done to the man within the room, he might wonder what they were doing to him. But no. He was fine. No matter the fact that when Lina had asked them those three little words he’d first typed out the simple answer of no. He had to be fine. There were jobs to do.

[spellbindingbeefcake]

What To Do?

As the war they are in passes over Valentine’s Day, Wally reflects on what he thinks is to come and what how his relationships will change.

Wally had been in this state before, when they first fought against the Romans just a few years ago. Before they all joined hands and turned to face Gaia, he had wondered what life would be like in a war against other demigods. That war didn’t do much to answer his questions now, because things were different. In the past war, Wally held no reservations for the Romans. Back then they were simply enemies that needed to be stopped. They had come for the camp, one of his only homes.

Today the Romans were allies, friends and family. Lina was somewhere in Camp Jupiter. Z had his patients who he worked with, some of whom were likely Roman. The big seven alone were made up of Romans and Greeks. Wally rested his head on his knees and closed his eyes. In his mind he thought of what things would look like in the coming weeks. He kept hoping that some Roman would come up with a peace treaty or something that would keep Percy from gathering an army. But in his head all he saw were burning buildings, demigods without life and total destruction. 

The last time Romans and Greeks fought, it coincided with the American Civil War. Wally realized in these moments that it was perhaps because of them that America was so divided right now. Would their war here cause another split between the country? The thoughts running through his mind only made the demigod feel smaller. The idea of running away crept in. He thought of how easy it would be. He only had to make it out of camp and then he could go anywhere. He could even return to Circe’s island and fight her. That battle would have to be easier than all of this. 

Of course, he wouldn’t abandon the Greeks. There was a compulsion to help, to protect and to attack. He had Z now, a type of relationship he hadn’t had before. They had grown so much closer in the past couple weeks. Forced together physically by the cramped space, they had been literally sharing each other’s air at night, and it brought them closer to each other. All the feelings he had for the son of Hypnos were getting stronger everyday. 

There was Blossom, who Wally dearly wanted to see succeed. She’d tried so hard to help the Greek people and now more than ever she deserved to see her hard work pay off. Percy and Jason were fantastic. Percy was a great friend and Jason was a true hero, coming to the Greek side when it counted. And Annabeth. The famed genius who put any ideas of the “dumb blonde” stereotype to rest. She had to be rescued. There was simply too much here for Wally to do, but that’s why Percy had told him to practice his magic. And practice he would.

[connorstolltheshow-blog]

Breaking Ice and Locks

Connor needs some medical attention whilst he makes a new friend, Lina.

Connor woke up in the infirmary. He hadn’t expected to get so hurt on his arrival, but he was happy that there were at least nurses around to help him out. The last face he saw was Percy’s, damn had he got old. Well actually, they were all getting old. He looked around him, taking in the surroundings. With a groggy groan, he called out to the girl who sat on the bed next to her. “You seem grand.” He said with a laugh, flinching as his body hurt. “Better than I’m going anyway.”

Lina looks over at the man who called over to her. She was getting her wound checked out, the nurse clicking her tongue at her. She seemed to need stitches to make sure that it would stay closed. “Got stabbed with a spear during a cave in. What about you?” She said casually. She wasn’t sure who he was but he was definitely new. “You’re not from New Rome.”

“A cave in sounds horrible.” He shuddered, remembering the brief time of the Labyrinth. “Also, stab wounds suck.” Connor hadn’t really been stabbed before, just scratches and gashes. “No, not from New Rome. I’m actually here visiting.” He said, wincing as he moved to make himself more comfortable. “Who stabbed you?”

“We got out after a few hours, but it wasn’t great. It was kind of eye opening in a way,” Lina replied not overly bothered by the whole cave in situation. She hated how it happened but she couldn’t change anything. “Why would you visit in the middle of a war?” She couldn’t fathom the idea that he would pop in at a time like this. “Don’t know. Happened while the cave was collapsing.”

Connor returned to the center of his bed and looked up at the ceiling. “I didn’t know there was a war going on. Nobody knows I guess.” He shrugged. He was becoming restless and with a sigh he tried to sit up. A few moans later, he was sitting upright on the side of the Infirmary bed. “Sounds terrible to be honest. Accidental stabs. Gross.” He slid off his bed onto his feet and his knees almost buckled beneath him, but he refused to give in. “As for me, I’m brand new.” He life through the pain, wanting to be released from hospital and go find Percy.

“Well, someone better tell them. Maybe we’ll even get reinforcements if we do,” Lina said lightly, even though she did want the reinforcements, she knew that a good amount of those from Half Blood were younger than those who lived in New Rome. They didn’t need more kids fighting this war. “It was even grosser when we had to burn the wound closed using gunpowder. Fun fact, flesh doesn’t smell good when it’s burnt.” She looked at him with her eyebrows raised. “Get back into bed. They’ll make you stay here longer if you don’t.”

Connor shrugged. “If the Greeks come here, who’s going to protect Camp?” It was a simple reason, and he knew that way too many of the kids there had already been in one war too many. He remembered the losses from previous wars, he didn’t want people to go through that. “I’m here now, so I may as well help.” He took the others advice and sat back down into the bed, but refusing to lay back down, swinging his legs off the edge of the bed. “As for flesh being burnt, I know.” He winced, remembering the smell too clearly for his liking. “What were you doing in the cave in the first place?”

“Better them there anyway. Children shouldn’t be near here until things are safe again. They’re younger there, aren’t they?” Lina asked, curiously. She had never been there, she never planned to go. “What happened to you that had you burning flesh?” She was oddly curious about the whole situation. “We took the imperial gold mine from the Romans for a moment.”

“Yeah,” He pursed his lips, “They pretty much are. I’m one of the eldest there now,and I’m not that old anyway.” Connor said with a shrug. It had always been that way, bringing in young kids to safety, and finding it hard to leave as the years pass. Although it had become rather loney, being older meant you found it harder to relate to this kids. “Oh, I’ve never had to burn my own flesh, but I’m smelt it before on the battlefield, defending Olympus, the attack on Camp Half-Blood, nasty stuff.” His eyes lit up, actually, if you looked into them, you’d probably see a small twinkle in them. “A whole Imperial gold mine? Here?” His imagination ran wild with the things he’d be able to buy by selling that gold. “Where?”

“Yeah, well I’m considered pretty young here, at twenty six. So we sincerely don’t need anymore kids on the battlefield. Got enough teenagers getting hurt out there.” Lina had seen so many teenagers laying down their lives for this. She knew she had done the same at their age, but now it made her feel ill. “I had smelt it before too, battlefields, but knowing it’s your own flesh makes it kind of worse.” She said, thinking back to how she had thrown up right after she had gotten it done. Her eyes narrowed at him,”No. The cave in has taken out a main entrance, the entire system could be unstable, not to mention swarming with Romans.”

“Oh, no. Not that I wanted to go, I was just wondering. We don’t have a mine back at camp, so I’m interested, that’s all.” Connor lied with a weak smile. “Hm, so you’re from New Rome then? A Roman on the Greeks side? That’s pretty interesting. Aren’t you afraid of what would happen after the war?” As much as she has helped the Greek forces, he doubted she could go back to her old life and still be accepted wholesomely. “Do you come from a position of power?” He asked, there was something about her that made him think she was a leader of some sort. Damn, he really should have done some more research before coming over. “I’m Connor by the way, Connor Stoll.”

Lina’s eyes were narrowed on him,”Okay. If your curiosity takes you there, know you’re probably going to get arrested by the Romans.” She didn’t need anyone near that cave, not when they had lost so many people just a little while ago. “Yeah, I was in the Legion for eleven years before defecting. I was the centurion of the fourth.” She shrugged, her face emotionless, but her shoulders tense. “I won’t get my job back, my career in politics and the Legion is over, I’m not trusted anymore with them. I’ll have to figure something else out. I’m sure the potion shop needs someone to work there.” She didn’t want to give up teaching, she wanted to keep helping, but at this point it was looking rather unlikely. “Kolina Valla. Call me Lina.”

“I’ve been arrested once already.” Connor sighed, “Not even a minute in a new city and I already have a criminal record.” He couldn’t help but laugh. “I’m sure I can take care of myself, unless they devise a new way to keep me in prison that doesn’t include locks.” Hopefully they wouldn’t realize he couldn’t unlock cursed locks. Or perhaps they already knew due to their own children of Mercury. “Ah, a Centurion. You’re speaking to a camp counselor, same thing.” He shrugged. It was in a way but it also wasn’t the same at all. “A potion shop doesn’t sound terrible, I guess that means you’re a child of the goddess of magic?” He asked curiously. “Nice to meet you Lina.”

“Everyone on this side has a record, I mean even Blossom’s been arrested before and she pets chipmunks for fun. So you’re not in bad company.” Lina said lightly. “You know how to pick locks? Always wanted to learn how to do that. Probably would have come in handy when they had me in cuffs.” Honestly, things would have gone so differently, if she had been out of the power cuffs. “I mean, in the way we take care of younger people, but I was also in charge of a large amount of the army New Rome had.” Camp counselor didn’t really match up to centurion in Lina’s mind. “Trivia, yes. Things could be worse than working in a potion shop. Might work on breaking cursed objects too, who knows?”

Connor grinned at that, petting chipmunks for fun. “Yes, I do know how, but that’s not what I did.” He shrugged. He had learnt to pick locks a long time ago, second nature now, but luckily his father had granted him with a gift. “I can unlock them without even touching them, just need a little concentration, that’s all.” He listened to her explain Centurion, he, along with Travis, had led their cabin in the battle of manhattan and the attack of camp half-blood. They just didn’t have official war armour or heavy military training. Connor furrowed his eyebrows, he hated having to know the different counterparts for the gods, now it sounded like he was going to have to remember who was who again. “Hey, maybe I could help you with the cursed objects part. I can uncurse cursed locks, but it’s pretty difficult.”

“Well, Blossom lead a rally about Greek Pride and peace. So of course, the backward government that New Rome is decided to punish her for it. The chipmunk petting wasn’t why she got arrested” Lina was still rather annoyed about Blossom getting arrested. She was annoyed about how Blossom was treated in general. “Want to teach me how to? They always put me in power inhibitors so I can’t even use my magic to get them off.” She tilted her head at him, now that was interesting. “I haven’t heard of that before, I’d love to see what extent that goes to. I wonder how powerful the curses can be and you still open them.”

“I could probably pick locks in my sleep, teaching someone how to do it though, I’m not sure if I’ll be able to.” Connor paused, “but I’ll definitely try. Power inhibitors sounds like a pain in the ass.” He didn’t have many powers like children of Hecate or Trivia, but if he did, he’d hate to have them stolen from him. “We can try, although we could probably only do one cursed lock a day.” It took so much from him, with Travis around, it was easier. But right now, he’d have to do it on his own, which, he was capable of doing.

“I’m pretty good at picking things up,” Lina assured him, even though she had the vague feeling that picking a lock was going to be harder than she expected. She’d always used her magic for that type of thing. At least while she was on bed rest, she’d have something to do. “It’s like someone taking away a limb, a part of me was missing when I had them on. It lasts for a little while too. You don’t get it back right away.” She subconsciously rubbed her wrists, thinking over the feeling again. “I enjoy working with curses and cursed objects, so that is quite an interesting power you have.”

“Thank you.” Connor said with a grin and a nod, just as he did so, a nurse walked in and scolded him for sitting up. He groaned and lay back down into the bed as the nurse did a few checks. “I guess the lock picking skills workshop is going to have to wait until I’m released from here.” He rolled his eyes as the nurse said that his medication might make him feel drowsy. “They always say that, but I honestly never feel any difference.” He said to his new friend. As the words came out his mouth, his eyelids felt heavy. “Aw shit, this stuff is like edibles, they doesn’t do anything until they hears you talking shit about them.” He said, finding it harder and harder to stay awake. “I -- It was nice meeting you though, I’ll see you around.” And with that, he fell into medical induced sleep, which was probably better for his health, he wouldn’t have been able to keep himself in bed if they hadn’t knocked him out.

[fireandseaweed]

Let’s Got Basted || Jason and Percy

Percy and Jason spend the holidays together, enjoying the well earned time off. Relaxing has never been so enjoyable.

Jason and Percy had been friends for almost ten years now. In that time they’d developed a certain comfort in one another’s presence. Aside from Annabeth and Grover, there were few people that Percy would want to spend his time with as Jason. So the invitation to spend the holidays with Jason, at least in the runup to Thanksgiving, was if nothing else something to look forward to. Now that it had finally begun, Percy had to admit that his excitement almost got the best of him. Standing outside of Jason’s front door, he struggled to stand still as he prepared for the first break that he had had all year. He’d packed all of the essentials of course, beer, food and everything else that they might need. It promised to be a good week. Knocking on his front door, he knocked and stepped through knowing that Jason wouldn’t want him to wait. “I’m here, sorry I’m early,” it was 12:00PM and Jason had told him to come at 1:00PM, “I got bored and the excitement over took me.”

Hearing the sound of a knock at the door Jason rushed out of his bedroom, still toweling shower-wet hair off, to see who it could be. But when a key scraped in the door and it opened of its own volition, he knew exactly who’d shown up. “Percy!” he waved from the hallway, in all his sweatpant clad glory, before wandering back into his bedroom, “I set up the guest bedroom for you, cleared all my papers out of it and everything. Set yourself up and I’ll be right out. And it’s never too early for you to show up at my door.” He finished drying his hair and changed into jeans and a tanktop, flying out of his bedroom once again to tackle his best friend in a giant hug, “It’s Thanksgiving! And my best friend is here to stay for awhile. I literally could not be any happier right now. This is fucking perfect.”

Setting his rucksack down on the sofa, Percy moved over to the fridge and started emptying the contents of the carrier bag into the fridge. He’d brought a few steaks that he was sure they’d eat one evening, some beer, regular soda and a few tubs of ice cream. “I’ve brought all of the essentials,” he said reassuringly, “everything that we could possibly need for our week being shut in together.” He smiled as he adjusted his bag and set it down on the floor before sinking into one of Jason’s comfortable sofas. “Believe me!” he practically screeched, “I am just as over joyed to be a part of this little event as you are, this is going to be a holiday to truly remember.” After everything that they had been forced to put up with this year he thought that they deserved to be able to enjoy a week off. He refused to feel guilty about this.

Jason hopped up on his kitchen island and watched Percy put things away in the fridge like he belonged there, which, they both knew, he did. “All of the essentials,” he said with a laugh, snaking past Percy to grab a bottle of water from the fridge, “beer steak and ice cream. The most American of shopping lists.” As Percy collapsed into a sofa, Jason did the same into an arm chair, “gods a week being shut in together sounds amazing. No work to call me away, school is already on thanksgiving break, it’s going to be amazing. Just you and me and food and games and booze and chilling.” They had earned this. Having been commanders in three wars now, they’d learned too well that relaxing weeks were hard to come by, but Jason was determined to make this a good one. “What do you wanna do first?”

Carefully slotting the final three beers into the fridge, Percy closed the door carefully behind him with a gentle clink. “I know you would’ve probably had all of these things covered, but I wanted to contribute at least something.” He knew that they wouldn’t get to do everything on their own, inevitably something would breach their solitude. “The best thing is that I won’t have people asking me what to do constantly,” Percy replied with a contented smile, “I didn’t mind leading, but it’s gotten to the point where people aren’t using their initiative. I get that we are experienced but some stuff you’ve got to do yourself.” Frowning, he rubbed his forehead and smiled. “I shouldn’t just bitch, things have gotten so much better but still not quite there yet.” He pulled a pillow underneath his back and shrugged. “Do we need to get anything ready yet?” he asked somewhat hopefully, “or am I too early for that one?”

Beaming beatifically at his friend Jason chuckled, “your presence is contribution enough. But thank you. I’m sure some late night beers will be fantastic at some point this week.” He watched Percy make himself comfortable, marveling at how perfectly at home Percy looked. He just fit in the tableau of Jason’s apartment. He belonged. “Well I promise not to ask you what to do. You know me and thanksgiving. I’ve got a whole schedule written out of what to cook and when.” As Percy looked at him with hope glittering in his vibrant eyes jason laughed again, “well… I do need to make some cookies. I told some people I would and so you can steal chocolate while I make those if you want.”

“You know that I have always thought that was a bullshit answer and you’re doing absolutely nothing to convince me otherwise.” Percy beamed despite this all. It was hard not to feel good when there were so many good things that would follow on from this. Raising an eyebrow at the suggestion of stealing chocolate from Jason’s cookie mix, he had to admit that he thought it sounded rather accurate. He would never admit that to his best friend of course. The prospect of admitting that Jason was right was something that he was unwilling to relish. “I will pretend that I have somewhat of a semblance of self control and attempt to restrain myself, at least while you’re looking.” A blatant lie, Percy’s race horsesque metabolism meant that he’d never had to worry about putting weight on, the holidays were the perfect time to flex those muscles.

A broad shrug flexed tan muscles underneath Jason’s tank top, “I don’t have to convince you. I just have to know it’s true… and I do. So… it’s true.” Rolling his eyes he launched himself out of his chair and across his apartment, starting to move through his ingredient list with the speed of a dervish. “First I think will be the ginger molasses ones, then while they’re in the fridge resting we can make the peanut butter ones, then at the end we can start baking pieces for gingerbread cookies and if you’re super extra good I’ll let you play with the icing.” He gave Percy his brightest most honest smile, “Frankly this is way more than needs to be done, but, I’ve got you here to motivate me so I might as well take advantage of it. Feel free to put whatever you want on netflix while we’re working.”

Percy flicked through Netflix before putting something mundane on in the background. If he was totally honest he hadn’t even really considered what it was that he was picking. Turning to Jason, he leaned forwards before slumping into a chair next to the breakfast island. “That all went right over my head,” he admitted as he pulled a bowl of chocolate chips towards him and began nibbling on the small chocolate chunks, “but I am glad that I can be your muse. If you must model your biscuits after my fair child, then I shall pose for you.” He laughed heartily before cramming more chocolate chips into his mouth happily. “How’s school?” he asked sincerely, as swiveled on the chair.

Digging a recipe box out of a cupboard, Jason set to laying out ingredients for the first set of cookies; grabbing them both beers while he did it, “That’s fine. It was more for my benefit than yours anyway. You’re just here to look handsome and keep me company and not have to be in charge of something for once.” Laughing, Jason shook his head and leaned across the counter to pat Percy on the cheek, “I don’t think I could do your handsome face justice in gingerbread, Jackson. But we can certainly try when we get there.” As he set to weighing out individual ingredients and setting them aside, building the foundation of his mise en place, he shrugged, “It’s hard. It sounds strange but it’s hard to focus on just that. I’ve always juggled things, but now I only have school to worry about and it’s a difficult adjustment. Might get a short story published in the school’s journal though. My professor really liked it.” He licked an errant drop of vanilla off his finger and intoned solemnly from memory, “In the beginning there was naught but the Eternal Void and the Boundless Melody, stretching to both the past and the present and the future and the dark places beyond all three…” He huffed a laugh, “You know… the usual fiction nonsense.”

Though Percy knew that his best friend was joking to some degree, it was certainly a refreshing change to not have someone hanging on his every word. He didn’t want to have to constantly be in charge and with Jason he wasn’t. Jason was one of the few people able to take charge of almost any situation. It was certainly a nice change. “Well, I am sure that is something I can manage.” He smirked with a mouthful of chocolate and shrugged. “If you can’t do it justice then why bother, frankly mediocrity bores me.” He laughed at his dramatic outburst. “Change isn’t always a bad thing,” Percy pointed out as he popped the cap off of a beer and slugged several mouthfuls down, “you’ll take a little bit of time to get adjusted sure, but you’ll get to live a more normal life than before. That’s surely got to be a good thing.” He smiled at Jason, “How can something be both when there’s three things in it?” he asked with a bright smirk.

“I’m sure you can as well. I have infinite faith in you. More so than anyone else around.” Jason started to carefully mix dry ingredients, swirling flour with fragrant ground ginger, cinnamon, and cloves, watching as the pale mixture turned ever darker by degrees. “Change isn’t a bad thing. This just takes more adjustment than I thought it would. Mundanity is… different. I understand why so few of us try to live normal mortal lives. Once you’ve gotten used to the frenetic pace of Legion life it can be…. Boring.” He cracked a couple of eggs and started scrambling them together, pausing only to level an accusatory finger in Percy’s direction, “Creative fucking liberties that’s how. Consider it a treatise on the duality of time or some shit. Don’t give me fuckin’ sass about it your mom approved it all.” He resumed mixing the eggs together, adding heavy cream before carefully mixing them in with the flour mixture, “What about you? Outside the Reconstruction… how are you?”

“I’m not sure that you’re placing your faith in the right person my friend, I know that it doesn’t seem like it considering how close to perfection I am, but I am actually fallible, believe it or not.” Percy had to admit that he loved being around cooking, the smell of the various ingredients. Whether they were spices, starches, sugars or something else entirely different always enchanted him and threw him back into a happier and simpler time with him and his mother. Before she’d met Gabe. Before he’d been kicked out of a hundred or so schools and fought Titans and Gods. “Mundanity sounds, perfect.” He couldn’t help but be honest. “I’m sure that me of all people couldn’t do it for very long, but I feel like I’m yearning to be bored. It has been such a long time since I was and now I wish for it. Though I’m sure that I’d hate it all the same.” He raised an eyebrow and laughed along with Jason, wondering how he actually was. “The war really took it’s toll on me,” he replied eventually, “when we hammered out the cease fire, I slept for almost 24 hours straight. But that was the last good night of sleep that I got and it was months ago. Since then I’ve been kept up by reoccuring nightmares, either old ones or new ways of examining the horrors we went through…” he fell silent, staring at the perspiration on the side of his drink.

“Faith has absolutely nothing to do with fallibility, old friend.” Jason replied airily, snagging the bowl of chocolate chips from Percy’s fingers and sprinkling them liberally into the dough mixture in front of him, “And everything to do with purity of character. In that regard, you are beyond reproach.” He listened with an ever sinking heart to Percy’s story, worry gathering in the furrows of his brow with each syllable, until Percy trailed off into silence, looking at the bottle in front of him. “Let me tell you a story,” Jason murmured, wiping his hands on the towel flung over his shoulder and leaning forward to wrap his hands around Percy’s; the uncharacteristic intimacy sheltered by the walls of his apartment, “Once upon a time there were two princes, born of war, with the gods in their bones and the wither of mortality in their blood.” The tv talked aimlessly in the background, weaving between the susurrations of Jason’s story, “In the way of all heroes they had been given much, but had much taken from them, as the scars on their bodies told a story so too did the deep-etched scars on their souls.” He looked down at their hands, hair falling in front of his face, “The Prince of the Sky grew weak and wounded, and wondered in his darkest hours if the burden of the royal blood would be too much for him to bear, and in his weakness sought out his brother-beloved, the Prince of the Sea, for counsel. But what came to light was that neither Sky nor Sea could fathom a way to escape the horrors of the war eternal they’d been born into.” He paused for a long moment, trying to decide how best to phrase what he was trying to comunicate, “But in the end perhaps it was not an exit that the Princes required, but simple assurances that the war would never overshadow them entirely. That dawn would come again, if only for a brief moment, and they could breathe unfettered by cares and commands.” An uncharacteristic blush skated across his cheeks as he withdrew his hands and resumed mixing, “Long story short…. Sleep will come again, and sleep free from nightmares. I know it, because you’re strong, and because I’ll be there every step of the way to make sure of it. Whatever happens you’ve always got me for whatever you need.”

“Hey I was eating those,” Percy complained as the chocolate chips were tugged from his grip and used for their intended purpose. Pouting gently, Percy fell silent as Jason took his hands in his own. Percy was not opposed to physical platonic intimacy. Yet there was an intensity to Jason that he had never previously experienced. Whether this was due to neglect on his part was somewhat unclear. However he could see that Jason truly and deeply cared for how Percy was struggling. “Thanks, that was a great improvised story by the way,” he smiled slightly before sighing, “I know that things will eventually get better and my therapist has always told me that recovery was a long and lonely road. Things get better everyday but I am sure I don’t need to tell you how frustrating it is that my problems can’t all be fixed with the blade of my sword.”

“You were eating them and I needed them.” Jason kept his tone breezy to alleviate the somber attitude from his story, “You can have them back when I’m done with them.” He wrapped the dough in cling film and tucked it into his fridge, returning to the counter to start weighing out ingredients for the next project, “In all honesty… it’s not improvised. The Princes of Sea and Sky are in a project I started that your mom won’t let me give up. She says it’s cathartic.” He started to knead bread dough, arms working the lump on the counter as he kept listening to Percy talk, “Yeah… it is. But it’s not one you have to travel alone. I’m here for whatever you need.” His laugh broke through the room as he paused his kneading and took a swig of his beer, “Believe me I know that feeling. If I could just lightning bolt everything to smithereens I’d be way happier.”

“Yes well it seems obvious that you need a bowl for yourself that isn’t my bowl of chocolate chips,” Percy replied with a chuckle, “I can’t help it if you have to attempt to use all my food.” As Jason kept working, Percy busied himself with observing. Jason was so at ease and so careful with his cooking that Percy found it almost relaxing to watch. It was certainly cathartic to say the least. “Of course my own mother was involved. This had the whiff of her all over it, she appears to be one of the few people left on earth that believes in the power of fables.” He nodded and looked at Jason. “I know, you’re here for me and so is Piper and Annabeth and Connor and everyone else. The thing is, what can you really do? We know this isn’t something that can be beaten back with a sword or even a lightning bolt. Unfortunately I don’t think there’s a quick fix for this.”

“My chocolate chips, sir. Mine. You’re the pilfering party here.” As Jason felt the dough start to come together under his hands he weighed it out carefully into eight equal balls, starting the complicated process of braiding them all together. “You can just assume if it involves my writing it’s got your mother involved. She’s second only to you in terms of people who are super vocal in their support of me.” He bit his lip in concentration as he continued to braid the well spiced dough, listening to Percy talk, “I know I know I know. We can’t really do anything, which is the hard part. Because I want to. But you’re right. There’s nothing I can do. So I’ll just keep letting you drink beer and steal my chocolate chips and hope we come out alright on the other side of this all.”

“What’s yours is mine,” Percy joked, reaching into the bowl of chocolate chips and using his long fingers to scoop up another handful, “and I intend to share the bounty amongst us like equals. I tell you this, we shall share. I shall only tax you a requisite sixty percent, for I am a kind and benevolent lord.” He smirked gently and raised an eyebrow gently. “You two spend far too much time together for me to be comfortable about it,” he said with a complete lie. He loved how close they were. It was refreshing to see the antithesis of what the usual friend-friend’s parent dynamic was. “Let’s just pretend that we live in a world that we’re all happy, that there are no monsters what so ever and we even have semi-normal lives which is a joke compared to the previous world we actually live in.”

Jason stopped braiding his loaf of bread long enough to slap at Percy’s hand “and you wonder why I buy so much extra… my lord.” He kept the mockery thick in his voice but it was interwoven with affection. “You should be worried. Sally showed me where all your baby albums are kept. Ive seen allllllllll the embarrassing pictures of you.” He finished the braid as Percy talked, setting it carefully on a tray to rise a second time, the smell of it already permeating his apartment. “I don’t think we can pretend anymore, P.” He smiled hollowly and tapped at the gnarled flesh where his eye had once been, “too many permanent reminders. And not just the physical ones.” Propping his chin in his hand he smiled, “but the reconstruction continues and life marches on. What more can we do but march with it.”

“I can’t help but eat food when you put it in front of me,” Percy rarely felt this at ease. But there was something about being in the presence of Jason that set him in a more comfortable mood. They’d been through so many things together and seperately. Their upbringing was so similar, yet so different. The heritage they shared, the responsibility of their birth. “Puh-lease,” Percy said emphasizing the p, “there is not a single photo that has ever been taken of me where I haven’t looked hot shit, therefore there cannot be an embarrassing photo of me out there. Even my baby photos.” Percy watched fascinated at Jason’s skill. “We can make things better, that is the whole point of this, we didn’t fight for nothing. We fought for a change. Now we’ve got the chance to. I don’t doubt for a second that the two senators who weren’t mentioned in the document, Arcadi and Karavadra, they were definitely involved in some way. I don’t trust the amount of power that the Karavadras still have in the Legion too. They led the war against us and they’re sitting relatively pretty, they’ve not suffered a single loss yet.”

“Having a dish of supplies on the counter does not count as leaving it in front of you, Perseus.” Jason turned his oven on to preheat and took the chilled cookie dough out of the fridge. “Oh yeah? You think? Cuz I’ve seen some of your baby outfits. It’s good to know Sally loved neon in the 90s as much as everyone else did.” He started to roll the cookie dough into small balls, dusting them with sugar before placing them on a baking sheet. “Senator Karavadra has always wielded too much power.” Jason’s voice turned bitter as he kept working, “of course he would have redundancies in place to ensure nothing was ever traced back to him if he indeed was involved.” He looked up at Percy as he slid the sheet into the oven, “we joked about it before. But a full dissolution of the Senate isn’t a terrible idea. Start completely anew. No former Senator may have a family member on the new Senate. And we have to split it equally between Greeks and Romans.” He moved onto the next baking task, never content to be still for too long. “Rome could use Senator Jackson. Rome could use Emperor Percy to be honest but that won’t ever happen.”

“I’m basically a dog, you cannot leave food unattended in front of me. Isn’t this something that my mother covered with you?” Percy asked teasingly with a bright smirk dancing across his face before flickering away as he sipped at his bottle of beer. “Please, I look hot as shit in neon. I don’t care for non-neon baby grows.” Nodding gently, Percy sighed. “I believe that we need to change the complete senatorial system and the entire political system in New Rome.” He paused and scratched at his beard. “Maybe we get rid of the senate entirely. It didn’t work the first time, why would it work the second time? We could come up with a brand new system where everyone’s voices are heard, where all the needs are addressed.” He considered what Jason was saying and sighed. “I don’t know if I am the right person to lead this city, and even if I were, is that what I want? I know that was never part of the plan.” SIghing he sipped at his beer and watched the bubbles trickle to the surface of his larger. “I don’t think the Romans would ever accept me. I’ve not exactly been their best friend.”

“Honestly? It absolutely is.” In fact, during one of his frequent visits to see the Jackson family, Sally had indeed gone over a list of concerns and such, which is how Jason had known some things Percy liked to eat without being told. “The problem is we’re all stuck in the past. Our blood is old and so we all feel like we have to stick to the old ways.” The cookies started to fill the apartment with another layer of holiday scent. “The Senate worked for the Old Rome and so it must work for the new one. But that’s not necessarily true, is it.” Jason barked out a laugh as he dragged a mixer out from under the counter “I think a lot of the old romans are well and truly done with both of us. When I left with the Exodus a lot of them saw that as a massive betrayal but honestly. I don’t care.” He polished off his beer and reached for a bottle of whisky sitting on the side table, pouring himself a modest amount before adding soda water. “No clear way forward and traps everywhere. It’s just like the good old days.”

“I’m glad that she ensured that you are properly prepared for eventually becoming my primary care giver.” Percy hadn’t dated anyone in several months, hell it was probably close to a year now. “I don’t know how much longer we can blame our genetic make up for the situations that we find ourselves in. At what point do we say that enough is enough? When do we take a stand and say no more?” He sighed sadly and ran a hand over his jawline, scratching gently at the hairs of his beard, tracing the outline of the bone. “Well it obviously is not true,” Percy agreed, “otherwise we wouldn’t have found ourselves in the situation that we are in. The fact that a handful of families have the majority of the wealth and power within New Rome is pretty terrifying.” Raising an eyebrow, Percy smiled warmly at his friend. He would always be grateful for everything that Jason, a son of Jupiter and a Roman, had decided to sacrifice for his friends, over his people. “You know I can never truly thank you for everything that you did for us.” Percy followed Jason’s example, copying his drink choice and drinking a chunk of it straight away. “Well, all we need is for Leo and Grover and your sister to come back and we’d have most of the old crew.”

“Somebody has to take care of you and Gods know it isn’t going to be you. So I guess I’ll keep feeding you chocolate chips and making sure you wear your coat in the winter.” Jason shook his head and left off his baking, walking over to lean next to Percy against the island. “My worry is we have been taking stands. Over and over and over and how long before people just start tuning us out. Oh it’s just Jason and Percy raising a fuss again just ignore them.” He waved Percy’s thanks away, “the deep and abiding love I have for you and my Greek friends left me little choice. It was the right thing to do and even with all it cost I would do it again and again and again. I could never abandon you, Percy. Not then, not now, not ever.” He raised his brow at Percy’s quick chug of his drink, “Oh is it going to be that kind of night? I can get behind that.” He thought of his sister, off doing whatever immortal Huntresses do, “it would be nice to see them all again.”

“I do a pretty good job of looking out for myself,” Percy replied with a chuckle, “I just don’t live up to your high standards of health and care. Sorry.” Percy frowned gently and considered Jason’s point. “I don’t think that means that we have to stop making a stand, I think that all that it means is that we have to make an even bigger fuss about things otherwise no one is ever going to listen to us. I know that you don’t intend to stop fighting for what is right and neither do I.” He shrugged gently and smiled at Jason. “All the same, what you did for us and what you gave up for us was more than we could’ve asked for and I am so thankful that we have you about to help us.” He smiled gently and shrugged. “It would be really nice to see them all again, especially Grover.”

“You do a moderate at best job of looking out for yourself.” Jason stuck his tongue out at his best friend and shook his head, “We need to get you a girlfriend just so I can split the duties of caring for you with someone else.” His smile faltered for a moment, “No. It doesn’t. It just means it’s more of an uphill battle every time we do it. Which is exhausting.” An eye roll preceded a hand flapping and a sigh, “Hush. What I did for you and gave up for you I would do a hundred times over if it meant I could keep you all safe. And that’s the end of that discussion.” Jason topped off their glasses, “Yeah. It would. It’s always nice to have the whole family together. Wish they could spend thanksgiving with us, but, I guess we’ll just have to make it perfect just us.”

“Moderate my ass, exemplary. Look at me. I’m in perfect shape, my hair is healthy and clean, I have a full face of hair.” Percy smiled happily, genuinely enjoying himself more than he had in a good long while. “Believe me Jace, if there was anyone out there that I was interested in, I’d much rather be with them than stuck here with you.” He joked of course. They both knew that there was nowhere in the world that Percy would rather be at this exact moment. “Either way, I’m sure when they realised that it was a full time job, they would quickly give up on it.” He considered continuing their conversation about his gratitude to Jason, but decided to respect his friends wishes. At least for now. “Speaking of, who are you planning on inviting over?”

Jason cast an appraising eye over Percy, “Well… you do have the body of a god… well demigod at least, and that beard is a solid 8.5.” He reached out and scratched Percy’s beard before walking back to his kitchen, “Oh I know… but that sounds like the kind of talk that means you don’t want one of my famous molasses chocolate ginger cookies fresh out of the oven.” He pulled the tray out and set it on a rack on the other side of the kitchen, flipping Percy off after he pulled his oven mitts off, “Their loss, then. They’d be missing out on one of the best dudes in the world. If they couldn’t see that then they don’t deserve you. Any girl would be lucky to have you.” Jason shrugged, putting the bread he’d neatly braided into the oven after washing it with egg and milk, “Nico, though he won’t come. Frank, Reyna, Hazel, probably Piper if she isn’t going to go see her dad, Annabeth if it won’t be weird for you. I dunno. Part of me wants to invite everyone. Part of me just wants it to be you and me getting drunk and fat on thanksgiving food.”

“8.5?” Percy almost spat out his whiskey and soda in shock. Surprised by what he was hearing. “What would constitute getting a ten then?” he asked teasingly. “Would Gandalf or Dumbledore be worthy of getting a ten? What about Chiron? Where does he come on the Grace scale, which is how we shall measure all beards from now on.” Percy laughed gently. “You and my mom definitely have been spending far too much time together, you’re beginning to say almost the exact same thing at the exact same moment that the other would say it.” Percy was glad that he had his friend for the holidays. It was easy to feel sorry for yourself and to miss home, but he knew that even though he wasn’t with his family, he soon would be. Or at least that was what he hoped. “Invite Annabeth,” Percy said with a nod and a shrug, “the more the merrier.” He nodded and shrugged. “I can’t decide for you, all I know is that whatever we decide will be great.”

“Mark the day! Percy Jackson, offended that his war beard didn’t score a perfect ten on the Grace Scale!” Jason shook his head mockingly at his friend, laughing all the while, “Perfect ten beard? John Krasinski in A Quiet Place… totally a perfect ten beard there.” Chuckling he kept working in the kitchen, always moving, never stopping entirely, while he talked with Percy, “You know that’s a gigantic compliment right there. I’ll always take being compared to your mom. She’s one of the dopest ladies around.” Nodding he started to assemble the ingredients for his gingerbread, “I will then. I’ll invite them all, though while you can’t decide for me you definitely get some input. This is your Thanksgiving just as much as it is mine.”

“It’s now actually known as the “War and Peace Beard” thank you very much,” Percy couldn’t help the pout that crept upon his face. “Bullshit, John Krasinski doesn’t have anything on me. My beard is fuller, shinier, has better volume, shape and definition than Krasinski does.” He wasn’t going to be defeated by some actor who couldn’t grow a beard in the Office. “Why do you think I said it?” he asked with a smirk. “I think that if we can all get together like we used to, if we can all settle down and really enjoy an evening together. Despite everything that has happened, despite everything that we’ve had to do. Then you know what, that is probably the best victory we can ever get.” He swallowed a mouthful of whiskey and soda, shifting on the stool he sat at as he continued to watch Jason work. “You know we’re really lucky?” he said with a laugh, “I just realised that there is pretty much no chance that our parents are going to show up uninvited.”

Jason shook his head dolefully and sighed, “Percy. I love you more than life itself and would literally throw myself into a burning building to save you… but…. I have to say… his beard is better than yours.” Jason chuckled and nodded, pulling one of the many pads of paper that littered his apartment towards him and started writing names down on it. “I love that reasoning there. Our family and and us celebrating the good things is a good victory indeed.” Jason’s chuckle turned into a deep booming laugh as he nodded to Percy’s realization, “I can’t really imagine my father descending from the heavens to sit at my kitchen table and bitch about my baking skills. He seems like he’d be really judgey.” Leaving his kitchen he brought Percy a warm cookie fresh from the oven, leaning against the counter as he waited for his verdict. “Well?”

“Lies and slander can often be responded to with an example of litigation of some variety.” Pausing for a second, Percy raised an eyebrow gently and smiled. He was rather proud of his beard, it was not difficult to argue that it was the best thing to come out of this war, though he wasn’t sure that was entirely true. “I don’t know, I don’t think that my concern would be Jupiter but rather Mrs Olympus AKA Juno, or Hera. I don’t care what we call her, but she’s the patron Goddess of cows for a reason.” Pausing for a second, he sipped his drink and did his best not to be the most judgemental of bitches. “Ah, excellent, allow the sampling to begin.” Percy grabbed a paper napkin and made a huge show of tucking it into the collar of his t-shirt before grabbing a plate and a knife and fork to complete his display. Using his cutlery to cut into the cookie, he delicately stabbed it with his fork and chewed on it. “9/10, it’s not as good as those chocolate rainbow cookies you made for pride.”

“You think it’s awkward for you. She’s my stepmother. It’s so awkward. She’s one of the worst creatures in existence.” Jason paused and canted his head toward the ceiling “and yes I know you can hear me and no I don’t care.” Returning his attention to Percy’s ridiculous and grandiose display of cookie eating he shook his head in utter disbelief. “A 9 out of ten?! Those cookies have won baking contests, Jackson! You just liked the pride cookies because they were rainbow and that handsome dude from the parade ate one off your abs.” It seemed a long distant past when Percy and Jason had been in the closet to each other, but now they were both out and supremely comfortable with each other. “speaking of… a guy in my writing seminar asked me out for beers the other day. First date I’ve been asked on since the injury.”

“Well, having had the worst and best stepfather in the entire world, I can sympathise with you, to some extent at least. Though neither Paul nor Gabe ever tried to mind wipe me and send me to the wrong Camp.” Percy shrugged gently as he nursed the last of his drink, swilling the whiskey and soda around and around his glass. At the mention of eating cookies off of his abs, Percy found himself smirking gently in remembrance. “Yes, well that might’ve been one of the highlights, but there was something about those blue chocolate chips that you used or made or whatever,” raising an eyebrow gently, “I don’t know what to say, this is not the first time you’ve not been able to best a previous accomplishment.”

“Though. I do have to give mommy dearest a tiny sliver of credit. Without her I never would have met you, and I can’t imagine not having you in my life.” Jason started to eat one of his cookies before a timer went off and he moved back to the kitchen, pulling the bread from the oven and smiling to himself at how it looked. “Nice to know I haven’t lost any of my skills.” Pride with Percy had become a yearly tradition after Jason had come out of the closet as bisexual, and it was something he enjoyed. It was nice to be free and unconcerned for an afternoon, and if he was incredibly honest; he liked the attention. “I turned him down. But. It’s nice to be asked. I just don’t think I’m at a point in my life where dating mortals is a good idea. Too many things I can’t explain to them.”

Though Percy remained silent, he couldn’t help but think that Juno’s original intention had not been to provide her two favourite demigods with a lifelong friendship. He was certain that she would claim credit for that too. “I guess we occasionally get lucky don’t we?” Pausing he chewed on the last of the cookie in front of him and smiled brightly. “These are really good J,” Percy said quietly, “one day you and my mother will have to teach me how to bake. Maybe I can be someone’s house husband. That would be the dream.” He smiled brightly and shrugged. “Poor kid, I bet he was devastated ….” he still saw Jason the way he saw him when they’d first met. Jason was tall, tanned, muscular and well groomed. He looked like the stereotypical popular kid in all the movies. “You might enjoy the distraction, it could be a nice outlet to get away from all of this.” Percy couldn’t help but wonder what it would be like to really date a mortal, everyone he’d dated had been demigods. Maybe it would be the bridge into the mortal world. A first step into normalcy? But he knew that was something they’d never achieve.

“As much as it seems like the Fates shit on us constantly I guess we do get lucky some of the time.” Jason gave Percy his most dazzling smile and threw on his Hollywood voice, “You’re the best piece of good luck that’s ever happened to me, Jackson.” He heaved a longing sigh, “Oh gods right?! Being a house husband is the fucking dream. Just cook and write and game. That sounds amazing. Need me a man or woman who’s on board with that.” He shut off the oven and moved to flop onto his couch, deciding it was time for a break. “I’m sure he wasn’t devastated. But he was disappointed. But I’m retired now. There’s not much I need a distraction from. I mean… I do homework and cook. I help out a little bit but not as much as you or Annabeth.” He shrugged, swirling the liquid in his glass and watching it, “I dunno. I just don’t feel like having to hide parts of myself. You know? I could never invite him back to my place. It’d be very one sided and that’s not good for a relationship.”

“You could maybe try actually getting to know the guy, discover if he is trustworthy and be honest that there are somethings that you simply can’t tell him.” Percy wasn’t really sure why he was suggesting this, he preferred Jason single so that he could always be about when Percy needed him. “I know it’d be difficult to make work, but you never know, what if he is the one and you’re missing it completely because you’re too focussed on what might go wrong?” he paused and picked at a crumb on the marble kitchen island in front of him. Absentmindedly crushing and rolling it between his fingers. “I don’t know, you know what’s best for you, but you’re not leading anymore, you’re basically retired. I’d think that if there was ever a time to look into the benefits of love, then it’d be now, right?”

“Yeah because that doesn’t scream cliche. I’ll just swagger over like hey I know I’m a one-eyed man with a checkered and mysterious past but you just have to trust I’m not a serial killer.” Jason shrugged, “I really don’t feel like there’s the one. There’s someone who’s good for me now, but I mean, especially as a bi bro… there’s a lot of fish in that sea. I don’t wanna get stuck in the rut of thinking there’s just one. But. Who knows. Maybe there is just one.” He laughed “the benefits of love? I think we’ve both been single for far too long to speak on the benefits of love. We just have a hazy memory of what they are.” Sitting up he tugged the hair tie out of his long blonde braid and let his hair hang loose around his shoulders, “I’m still young. 24 isn’t that old. But hey. Whatever happens happens.”

[centurionmaiacruz]

Love Bites V: Another Christmas in New Rome

After seeing to it that the younger legionnaires had finally managed to go to bed and reminding the older ones to behave, Maia had decided to go out to Juturna’s Meadow to send some good wishes to the gods as well. She had a feeling some of them might get jealous after she’d celebrated her Catholic faith all morning, so going at midnight would probably appease them.

The snow was still a bit of a hassle, but she couldn’t deny that it made things look pretty. Everything blanketed in white, people bundled up as they hurried indoors to escape the cold. And, because of the godly aura, the fountains continued to dance, even as snowflakes fell from the sky. Rummaging around in her pockets, Maia pulled out the last few golden coins she’d been saving and began to make her rounds to the original sixteen fountains, muttering a quick prayer to each of the gods and goddesses that she passed. She asked for guidance, for strength, for wisdom as she went into the New Year and that she would have the clarity to know how to navigate the… divided city that surrounded her.

As she passed by the last fountain, a chill went down her spine and it had nothing to do with the cold. The crystal she’d taken to wearing around her wrist went frigid like ice in her pocket, sticking to the skin of her palm. Glancing up, she recoiled.

Staring down at her, the stone eyes of her father, wings carved from granite and bow in hand. Cupid, the foolish god of desire. Her hand curled into a fist inside her pocket as she turned her back on the statue, anger and grief burning through her. He was the reason why she didn’t have a family, why she didn’t have a mother, why she spent every Christmas with her Cohort, delivering presents and cheer in an attempt to ignore the feelings of loneliness that threatened to overwhelm her every year.

“It’s not my fault, you know.” Clear, crisp Spanish rang in her ears and she whirled around, her hands automatically drew her bow from its quiver, an arrow knocked in an instant. Scanning her surroundings, Maia’s ears twitched as she kept her senses on high alert. Nothing. No one. She was alone.

“But that’s not true. I’m here, you know I am.” His voice whispered and Maia gritted her teeth as she swung her bow around. “You’d shoot your own father? The gall.” His voice hissed, like steam from a kettle.

“You shot my mother.” Maia growled as she swiveled around, still keeping her guard up. Even as she did so, the searing cold of the crystal at her wrist made her hand ache. “Fair is fair.”

“Listen to that puny crystal and drop that silly toy.” His voice cut through the winter air, sharp as a knife. The arrow tip began to drop as Maia fought to keep her bow level, straining against the unseen force that pushed the weapon out of her hand. With a gasp, the bow clattered the ground, arrow skittering off into the snow.

“Why are you here? I didn’t ask for you.” She said. No, she’d stopped asking for him, praying for him years ago. She’d lost faith in her father a long time ago.

“And here I thought you liked blind faith.” He laughed a cold, bitter sound. Maia bit her cheek and shook her head violently.

“Get out of my mind!” She yelled. She hated this, she hated him. She hated how much control he had, how he could read everything that was going on inside her, how much he knew. When he didn’t deserve to know any of it. He’d made his choice to stay out of her life the day he’d cursed her mother, he didn’t deserve to be here and know her.

“So much like your brother. Weak, in all the worst ways.” Cupid purred, his voice a whisper in the wind. “But… I have a gift for you. Something to remind you of where you came from.”

“I know where I came from.” Maia spat. “I’ve worked hard to get where I am, no thanks to you, no thanks to your “help” and no thanks to your first gift.” She said, reaching into her quiver and pulling out the burning arrow that always appeared inside. Maia waved it around angrily as she whirled around, hoping to catch a glimpse of her father so she could throw this goddamned arrow at him.

“My arrows don’t work on me.” He scoffed, though for a moment, Maia thought she heard the barest trace of sadness in his voice. For an instant, he sounded like any other person, alone on Christmas.

But, before she could say something about it, a white feather fluttered down from above her and into the palm of her hand. “Something to help your crystal. Magic and meditation… it works for Trivia, but our power comes from love, unseen.”

“Your power.” Maia said, shaking her head again. “Not mine. I didn’t want it.”

“But you have it. You’ve been using it. I’ve seen you.” Her father replied and let out a sigh. “Keep my gift and use it or don’t. I don’t care. Just remember that, you and I, we’re blood. And as much as you hate me…”

The hair on the back of Maia’s neck stood up on end as she felt a hand on her shoulder, her father’s face next to her ear. “Love finds a way.” He whispered.

[discordandglory-blog]

The Spoils Of War || Cat and Wally

On their latest attack against the Roman enemy, the Greeks cause greater damage and bring up a higher body count than the last time they raided. For Wally, he’s had to hit harder, last longer and save more people than the last time. It comes with a cost he isn’t ready to pay.

“It’s the butterflies that are worst for me,” Wally says to a son of Aphrodite. The man next to him looks like he’s never been in a fight. He fits what might be a stereotypical mold for the son of the goddess of love. A lean build with perfectly chiseled features and clear skin. Wally can tell that no matter how long that helmet stays on for, when the guy takes it off his hair will have beared no damage. Wally easily notices how scared he looks though. A lot of people do, even those who have been in the past wars. “Every time I go in to fight I get nervous. It’s natural, ya know? Even if we’re meant to have that kinda nerve in our blood, I still get scared like hell. But, don’t worry, okay?” The other guy looks like he’s too frozen in place to even blink. “You’ll be okay.” Wally stares ahead as they approach their target, wondering how bad this fight will be, and if they’ll be able to return . . . The battle lasts for hours in Wally’s mind. He spends equal amounts of time fighting off Romans and hiding between wherever he can find to wait and restore his energy. This fight has gotten him into smaller areas than he thought possible. Crevices and in between structures where he’d be totally stuck if not for his powers. Wally has been letting out curses, hexes, spells of all kinds. In the beginning he was just trying to slow down the Romans. He’d make a few of their eyes so puffy they wouldn’t be able to see, or switch their legs with their arms. But as they got started to push back, the magic began getting darker. He felt, somehow, that it wasn’t really his decision to down a harsher path with his spells. Coming back out into the battle, Wally froze when a pissed off looking Roman, one who’d got him good last time, rounded the corner.

The battle was unexpected, Cat didn’t want to say that she saw it coming. She didn’t. It was a bold and brash attack and for that she gives credit to the Graeci, a strong plan of attack but they’re able to recover, and within three hours the Romans have ground back at least half of the territory that they lost. However, she knows that this attack comes from the fact that the Greeks were able to recover their key strategist and she can’t believe that they let Annabeth go. She holds a key point, surrounded by Romans who she has trained personally and a swell of pride at their ability to fight. She wonders if this is what being a parent is like. Leading her troops around a corner to set up a new position, she spots the blonde Greek that had attacked her convoy. “Shields,” she orders her Romans and they respond to her command with a shout of Latin and the clang of tall boards locking together. “Your move Graecus,” she spits in his direction.

“Eh’great,” he breathes out. Wally keep his sword sheathed and strapped to his waist. He can handle a one-on-one with a weapon, but this fight with five legionnaires and their pissed off centurion will be a lot more fair with some sorcery involved. Fearful of the power she sprung on him last time, Wally’s placed a charm over himself so that he doesn’t go mad like he did last time. Pulling out a glass orb from his pocket, he launches it at the two closest warriors. One is able to jump back and miss the blasts radius. The other isn’t so fortunate and the pig bombs hit takes. While the smoke clears, they hear what is the clattering of armor against the ground. As the legionnaires rush past their hammy companion, Wally puts out a volley of magical blast, keeping them just far enough away while he thinks of another quick attack. One of Cat’s soldiers gets close, and Wally raises a simple shield that evaporates the moment its forced upon. Wally catches the legionnaire off guard, a sneer across his face. Magic sweeps the man off his feet and carries him right into Wally, before being forced back and over a ledge, falling a dozen feet then landing into a shallow pool. Three more and a feline, he thinks. I got this. As the remaining trio of grunts form around him, Wally gathers the mist around his arms, shouts in ancient Greek and unleashes a quick surge of winds, knocking them all off their feet. “Is this all?” he asks her, feeling more confident than he probably should. “You can’t ruin my raid, shoot me a couple of times then send this weak ass pack of shitheads to me.”

-

Gritting her teeth, Cat had to admit that she was far from pleased to see some of her best soldiers get so easily dispatched by simple magic. Wally wasn’t skilled enough to do this without magic, or if he was he wasn’t bothering. She made a mental note to find someway to dispel magic, because she was sick of it being used as a trump card against her. Swallowing, she watched him deal with the three soldiers she had left before grunting. “Why do I have to do everything myself?” she asked before charging him. Springing over the prone form of some of her soldiers, she leapt towards Wally, jabbing her pilum at his eyes, hoping to move fast enough that he wouldn’t have a chance to use magic to defend himself.

-

Wally knew that he’d have to pull out some more talented tricks if he wanted to get Cat immobilized. Unfortunately for him, but good on her, she was really fast. Wally barely dodged the pointy end of her stick going into his eye. His hand flew up to grab at the edge and push it away while his face moved to the side in the opposite direction. He lifted his leg up and kicked her in the chest, knocking himself back since he wasn’t in a balancing stance. Wally ran through his choice of spells and settled on forming a bubble around her, something that would keep her locked up. As he shaped it, a Roman soldier came down from above, landing on his feet behind the blonde. Wally had to stop his casting to fight the costumed gladiator. Luck being in his favor this time around, a few more Greeks began piling into aid him. Wally and the Roman had fallen to the ground, wrestling. This guy seemed to know Wally’s M.O. as the man grabbed both of Wally’s hands and started to squeeze. Wally let out a vicious scream and let his eyes rake over the man, trying to find some sort of weakness. This guy wasn’t your average legionnaire. He had a modified armor, different from everybodies, even Cat’s. And there was a not-so-subtle insignia on his shoulder plates, made up of tallies that Wally could only assume was a body count. As the Greeks rounded them, Wally screamed for them to get him off of him.

-

Cat was knocked back for a moment before leaping back to her feet and charging forward, she drove her spear through the chest plate of a Greek before raising her shield to catch a crossbow bolt that had come streaking her way. Swallowing, she watched as a gladiator dealt with Wally, at least for the moment, giving her the time to duck and weave through the Greeks. Three of them surrounded her, but as a wild grin spread across her face they started to realise what their mistake was. Summoning her powers, she allowed blinding flashes of light to cause chaos and sow discord within their ranks. Dancing forward, she drove her spear through a stomach, before wrenching it free and slashing it across the throat of the poor bastard she’d just skewered. Drawing her pistol with her spear hand, she allowed the Pilum to clatter to the floor before firing off a single round that caught a Greek girl in the left eye socket. The back of her head exploded in brain matter and gore, coating the wall behind her before the Greek slumped forward. Glancing over to Wally, she saw him still occupied by her fellow Roman. Good, they’d gut him together. She just had to get rid of the last Greek.

-

“Frrru, fuck you.” Wally curled his lips in then spat out spit onto the man’s face. The strain his fingers were under was agonizing. This man had gone right for Wally’s most sensitive and vulnerable area, an area he hadn’t even really thought of protecting all that much. Wally was kicking for all his worth, trying to think of some charm or hex that could get him out of this. A helpless squeal came out when the man put more strength into his fists, about to put Wally out of commission without even doing much damage. His eyes panned over just at the wrong moment. The son of Hecate caught Cat in her moment of glory, killing a Greek soldier, like it was the easiest choice she had ever made. A silent ‘no’ fell from his lips. For a few moments as time slowed down, there was pain in him. He didn’t know who that Greek was, but a life had been taken. That pain warped into anger without much thought. Wally’s face turned back to the man above him, a fire in his eyes of the most royal color. “Bind.” He then felt the power move him up, pulling his back off the ground for a second. The pair then fell back to the floor. “Bind.” Mist pooled around them, as Cat advanced on the third Greek. The soldier meant to destroy Wally could feel himself becoming constricted. A sinister smiled started to appear on his face. “Bind.” The man began to choke, coughing up both mucus and saliva onto Wally’s face. Wally repeated the mantra, the soldiers grip weakening. Wally focused all his thought on the man’s throat. He saw in his mind the man’s innards twisting, contorting and wrapping around each other in ways that defied the greatest man’s logic. “Bind.” Wally spat at him again, spitting directly on his face as a mark of the final move to be made. The Roman soldier had let go of Wally’s hands. His own hands, which Wally could now see were the hands of a true killer, had wrapped around his throat, trying in some way to help him breathe. Wally watched as this victim of his magic became the first to die from it. His face was purple. His eyes, filled with tears and bloodshot, were pleading. The man’s throat constricted and Wally, not expecting it, heard from outside the soldiers bones cracking and breaking from inward. Wally didn’t take a lot of time to examine what he’d done, as he knew he still had Cat to deal with. As he turned around, he looked on at the dead Greeks. Never before had Wally felt such a level of hatred, such a passion in him. It scarred him, how good it felt. Wally looked down at his hands. They were sore, and his fingers were hard to move, but they weren’t broken. They were calloused, from some of the work he’d help do in the Greek hideout. They were dirty, and his nails could be better. But they weren’t dry with blood or have scars on them like the mans he had just killed. Wally looked up at Cat. “Hey, bitch, you still gotta kill me.”

-

The last thing that Cat needed or even wanted was to watch the hulking form of the gladiator die beneath some dark magic or some other Greek trick. It was almost too much for her to accept when she saw his body crumble and she heard the bones crack. Swallowing, she worriedly took a step back before feinting left and bringing her sword whipping out from her belt. The short imperial gold blade cut through the leather armour that the Greek wore with ease and she dispatched her final enemy. She knew that Wally wasn’t going to succumb to her powers twice, which meant that she was at a severe disadvantage. But she wouldn’t allow this undisciplined scum to beat her at her own game, she’d been training at war since she was almost knee height. Raising her blade in one hand, she discarded her shield and held her gun lazily in one hand. “Don’t worry,” she said with a grin as she wiped away blood that had sprayed her face, “I’ve got more than enough bullets for you and the rest of your friends too!” Smiling maniacally, she charged forward, her sword flashing in the dim light as she slashed at him.

-

Wally needed to conserve his energy. He’d brought along wedges of ambrosia and bottles of nectar, stuffed in the satchel around his waist. There were crystals that’d been charged by the sun, lined along his armor to give him energy. For the better part of a full hour of fighting, Wally had been doing good, but as the universe does so, the playing field was uneven. Cat wasn’t experienced against magic and Wally had more than enough to throw at her. It only made sense that he start to lose his stamina around the time she showed up. They were a balanced act. As she came at him with her weapon, Wally used magic to raise a simple shield, then lowered his other hand to shoot a blast of energy at her waist. The shield crumbled under her first strike, and Wally didn’t waste time in trying to get the weapon out of her hand.

-

Dodging away from the sudden blast of energy that Wally had sent her way, Cat took a short step backwards but she was too slow. The energy lanced through her body tingling before exploding into a lancing sensation that electricified her for the briefest second. Wiping away sweat, she sprung forward again before bringing the butt of her blade crunching down towards Wally’s forehead. If he was going to play dirty then she would too. But she was working with limited ammunition and especially in a time of war it was even more difficult to find ammo for her pistols than it had been before. The thought of Z flashed in her mind for the briefest second as she realised she was using the weapon he’d given her.

-

Having the blunt end of a weapon knocking against your cranium was an unwelcome action. Wally let out a disgruntled . . . sort’a cough. Wally fell onto his back, pushing his hands onto the ground to relieve his fall. He kicked at the front of her knee, probably not doing a lot of damage. With his hair in his face, his vision had become obscured. Wally snapped his fingers and made a rinsing, spinning motion with his hands. Wally was doing this all in such a fast motion that he couldn’t even stop himself when one Roman soldier came out of the blue and tried to finish what Cat began. The soldier, having put herself between Cat and Wally raised her spear. Wally’s magic acted just as this legionnaire created the divide. Her armor began to break off into dozens of pieces, falling to the ground and leaving her in only in the simplest of clothes. Wally, with his hair, his mind racing, and all the commotion didn’t even really recognize that this wasn’t Cat. He snapped his fingers and bellowed out a howl. The soldiers weapon shimmered for a moment then changed into a long piece of rope. With his final act, Wally wrapped the mist around the soldier. She was too stunned and unsure to do anything as the Greek wizard used a simple spell of telekinesis to push her over the edge, literally. The woman was knocked to the side and found herself falling three stories down to her death, with no armor or weapon to save her. Wally, seething with a newfound anger cried out again and pulled the mist around him then forced it away, sending Cat backwards. Wally then started to run in the opposite direction, not yet realizing what he’d just done.

-

Cat watched the Roman plummet to her death as Wally kicked her knee out from underneath her. She swore loudly and scrabbled downstairs to the fallen Roman’s side, pulling her matted black hair from her eyes and checking the dead soldier’s pulse. With her death confirmed, she slipped the dead soldiers eyes closed and sighed sadly before vowing to kill Wally. He was becoming a real thorn in her side.

[fireandneurosurgery-blog]

For Whom The Bell Tolls || Bobbi and Leo

Bobbi and Leo discuss Bobbi’s wedding.

Bobbi sighed gently as she slumped onto the couch in Leo’s living room. Christmas was over, it was the early hours of the morning and Jax and Cat had returned to the Kadavara mansion or their barracks. Staring at Leo, she sighed gently. She knew exactly what was going to happen now, she’d been dreading this moment all evening. Christmas with her family and Jax, Cat and Leo had been going perfectly until someone mentioned a lack of a ring on her finger and then winked at Leo. It had been awkward to say the least. She would never forget the look that Cat gave Leo, he hadn’t seemed to have understood what had happened until that look. The way his face fell. It was awful. But he hadn’t done a thing, he had been perfect. There was no scene, just a smile and a laugh before everything returned to normal. But how the hell was she meant to enjoy herself when she couldn’t explain to him. She’d dragged their stay out as long as she could, but finally her own mother had said that she was going to bed and Bobbi had known that it was time to leave.

Leo wanted to pace, which was never a good sign for him, almost all his fights happened when he was pacing. “I’m making myself tea.” He told her quietly, trying to give himself a moment to pace where she couldn’t see him. He made his tea as quickly as he could, pacing in solitude. He wasn’t even sure if he could be upset at this, it was her life and he’d barely been apart of it at the time. He noticed how long they stayed and wanted to chalk it up to her being excited to see her family, but he was rather sure that underlying was the dread of this conversation they were both feeling. He came back out and leaned against the kitchen door, looking at her. “So you were getting married. You didn’t invite me.”

“Okay.” Bobbi didn’t want a tea. She wanted to go to bed. She wanted to lie there naked with Leo, she wanted to feel her head against his chest. Or his head against hers. She didn’t care which, she simply wanted to hold him. Rather than be here. As he stalked out of the room she worried the edge of her blouse, fiddling with the thread and pulling it apart. It was a bad habit that she picked up whenever she was nervous. Swallowing at his words, she didn’t look up straight away and when she did she had fought off the tears already. “I told you I was getting married, we just moved up the wedding date at the last moment. Andrew found an apartment overlooking central park and we would’ve gotten some tax write off once we were married that would’ve been our deposit and then a tiny mortgage for a few years and we’d have the dream home…” it hadn’t worked out like that.

The tea was scalding, he regretted making it so hot, but he didn’t put the mug down. Blowing on it softly, Leo tried to focus on how Bobbi wasn’t exactly lying. His fingers tapped against the mug, he wasn’t angry, but he was upset. “I could have still come to the wedding. You know I could have afforded it.” Why was he so upset about not being invited? He would have hated it either way. His jaw clenched, but he forced the muscles to relax, he wasn’t looking to upset Bobbi anymore. “Why didn’t you just tell me? Keeping it hidden is worse and I would have found out eventually anyway.”

Looking down at her feet, Bobbi swallowed once more. She couldn’t bring herself to meet Leo’s eyes, she knew that she should have invited him, but how the hell could she possibly have invited him. “I know that you could have afforded it,” she replied quietly with a sad sigh, she was quickly resigning herself to having this argument, so she might as well say her piece. “You just don’t get it Leo, how the hell could you get it?” she asked. She wasn’t sure if the pain her voice was tangible or not, maybe she was just imagining it. Either way this was turning out to be more painful than she had imagined.

His jaw clenched again, however this time he didn’t force it to relax. Leo might not have gotten what she was going through exactly, but it wasn’t as though she was seeing things from his side either. “Then explain to me why you didn’t tell me. If I don’t get it, give me a chance to.” The tension in his voice was easily heard and he hate how much he sounded like Jefferson. “Please.”

Looking up at him, Bobbi wiped a single tear from the corner of her eye before taking a long shaky breath to calm herself. “Leo, leaving you behind when I went to New York was the hardest thing I ever had to do, I spent weeks crying alone in my apartment. When I wasn’t at work I was missing you, but eventually I managed to piece my life back together and start new, I managed to forget about you for a bit and get on with my life. I don’t blame you for not wanting to come with me, I understand your reasons.” She paused and fiddled with her hair. “But, when I met Andrew I tried to fall in love, like I did with you. Andrew was only ever a good man and when he asked me to marry him how could I say no? I knew he’d look after me and support me, and that is what I wanted.” Turning to Leo she shook her head, the memory of it all was still raw and painful in her mind. “When I stood up in front of everyone at the altar I couldn’t do it, so how the hell would you expect me to marry someone else if you were there?”

Leo forced himself to look at her, see what he had done to Bobbi. “I’m sorry.” He was sorry she went through that, he was sorry that she cried for so long, and that she had to put her life back together. However, he wasn’t sorry that he didn’t go. There were moments he wished he had gone, but he couldn’t imagine how wrapped up in Jefferson his siblings would be if he wasn’t there. “You would have had someone there who understood doing what you had to to go on with your life.” It was a weak excuse. “If you weren’t a demigod, this would never have worked out.”

“Don’t be,” Bobbi replied quietly, “I don’t regret what happened, there was no other way that we could’ve done things.” She shook her head and sighed. “It was going to be hard enough without having to deal with anything other than the wedding, we wrote you an invitation but I could never bring myself to send it. I told myself it had just get lost in the mail and that would be that.” She shook her head gently. “If you had been sitting there in that church, then I knew that there was no way that I could marry Andrew with you watching. I never loved him like I loved you and I’ve always wanted to be with you. I just couldn’t bring myself to do it.”

Leo stood, silent letting what she was saying wash over him. She was right and it was understandable, but he didn’t want to admit it. “You didn’t marry him anyway.” He said quietly, knowing that he probably shouldn’t have said it, but the words came from him anyway. He put down his cup of tea and started to pace a bit. “And not telling me? You came here, we fucked on your balcony, and it wasn’t something you thought you should mention?”

“Of course I didn’t marry him,” Bobbi replied standing and moving over to Leo’s side. She wanted him to know that she loved him, that she cared about him. “How the hell could I have married him when he wasn’t you, as I was stood there at the altar, I knew that this wasn’t what I wanted, I didn’t want to be marrying him, I didn’t want to be with him, I wanted to be alone or with you…” she bit her lip nervously and slumped back down onto one of Leo’s couches. “What was I meant to say? Oh I nearly got married but then I backed out at the last moment and got attacked by a chicken woman that left me with scars.” She shook her head, wishing she had a cigarette or something to keep her hands occupied. “I didn’t marry Andrew, I choose to be with you. Why isn’t that good enough?”

“So what did it matter if I was there or not?” Leo knew that response was irrational, but he was getting madder with every sentence. “It would have been nice to know that you had left someone at the altar before we fucked. I know I’m not, but it makes me feel like you were hiding that I was your rebound.” He wasn’t her rebound, he knew this, but he still felt like he was. “Because how are we supposed to be in a relationship if we’re hiding things like almost getting married from each other.”

Bobbi shook her head at Leo and sighed sadly. “It mattered to me, why can’t that be enough for you?” she shook her head and sighed deeply once more, running a hand nervously through her curls, unpicking knots wherever she found them. Keeping moving was the only thing that helped right now. “How can you think you’re a rebound?” she asked, honestly hurt by what he had said. “After our past, after me saying that I loved you, after what happened on the balcony and everything between then, how the hell could you think you’re a fucking rebound?” she wiped away a stray tear and sighed. “What was I meant to tell you?” she asked quietly, “I didn’t know how to bring it up and after moving here I kept putting it off and telling myself that it could wait and I’m sorry that you feel like I betrayed your trust but …” she didn’t know how to finish her sentence, what else was she meant to say?

“I don’t know why it isn’t enough! I don’t know why this matters to me?” Leo said frustrated, with the situation and with himself. Why did it matter, it wasn’t his place to judge what she did. “I know I’m not a rebound, but it just makes me feel like I am? It doesn’t make sense and I’m sorry, but hiding it made me feel like you had to hide how serious it was with him.” He ran his hair, tugging on the end of his hair. “I just… I just thought that we were different and than you would feel comfortable enough to tell me this stuff.”

Sighing gently Bobbi held her head in her hands, too exhausted with the last couple of weeks events to keep it upright on her own. “I don’t,” she didn’t know what to say, starting her sentence once more she sighed and shook her head again, “I don’t understand what I’m meant to do to make you feel better. This is serious to me, I’ve spent basically every waking moment with you since I came back to the city, the only time that I don’t spend with you is when I’m at work or when you’re busy painting.” She sighed gently and wiped away a tear that was threatening to pour from the corner of her eye. “It is different, for the first time you can be honest to me about who you really are, I didn’t say a damn thing when I found out you were a demigod, is hiding my wedding really all that different from hiding who you were for twenty plus years?”

Leo picked up his cup of tea, taking a sip of the too cool liquid. He sighed over the cup, they weren’t getting anywhere with the other. After so long apart they shouldn’t be spending their time fighting,“This isn’t our first fight, this won’t be our last fight. I think I’m just hurt that you kept it from me, but I’m not innocent either. We’re upset with each other and I think it’s okay.” He put down the cup again and finally approached her, squatting in front of her,“I’m sorry for not understanding you point of view and for losing my temper. We spent too much time apart to be spending our time together being upset with each other. It’s our first Christmas back together.”

Looking at Leo, Bobbi bit her lip and sighed sadly. “Leo, the truth is that I think you are right, it is Christmas and we shouldn’t be arguing.” Quashing her feelings of pain she forces a smile into her face and reminded herself why she loved him so much. “I promise you that there is nothing that would change or is going to change because of this, and the next time I think about getting married you will be the first person to know.” Hopefully because he would be the one marrying her. Sighing gently she shrugged, she’d moved on and was content to leave the fight behind her.  “I’m sorry for not telling you sooner, why I didn’t tell you doesn’t matter, all that matters is that I hurt you and I hate that.” She looked at him and pulled her best puppy eyes. “Can we have Christmas sex now?”

Leo used his thumb to wipe away any tear marks left over and cradled her face in his big hand. Of course, he was still hurt, but arguing wasn’t going to make him or her feel any better. It would be something they learned from. He let out a soft laugh,“Well, personally I’m hoping that next time I’m going to be the guy waiting at the altar for you. If that’s okay with you.” He hoped that wasn’t too much, but it was true. If he had gone to New York he had the feeling they would already be married. “What matters is that we’re going to learn from this and try to never hurt each other like this again. We were both wrong in different ways.” He let out a big laugh at that,“Yeah, I think I could have some Christmas sex.”

Recoiling gently, Bobbi bit her lip and had no problem imagining her and Leo getting married. Though she wondered how long it’d be before they got to that point. “I think that if I was going to marry anyone then I’d like it to be you.” She smiled at him weakly, aware of the fact that her hair and makeup were now a mess. She thought about Andrew, wondering if his Christmas had been good. The thing that shocked her the most was that she didn’t care. It didn’t matter to her what he was experiencing and in that moment she realised that she had been cruel to lead him on for such a long time. “You’re right, Jesus, when did you become the more mature one in this relationship,” she giggled at her own comment and pressed a kiss to his lips, “Well, what are we waiting for then?”

Leo watched her reaction carefully, his eyebrows furrowing. “Boob, if the idea of marriage is something you don’t like it’s okay to tell me. It’s not like it’s a deal breaker.” He didn’t think he could ever have a deal breaker with Bobbi. Which he thought in some ways made him selfish, he’d do anything to be with her. Anything that didn’t compromise his siblings. “I’ve always been more mature than people thought I was.” He laughed. He smiled into the kiss and the suddenly grabbed Bobbi by her waist, throwing her over his shoulder, smacking her ass. “I’m not waiting for anything.”

“It isn’t that I don’t like it, it is just that I’ve rushed into one marriage and I don’t want to rush into another, right now there’s no reason for us to get married super soon, I just want to enjoy my time with you and settle into this city.” Sighing gently Bobbi raised her eyebrow and took a deep breath to continue to calm herself. “Yes, you have always been more mature than people thought, but you never acted that way, that was always one of my favourite things about you.” She smiled brightly and shrieked with giggles as she was tossed over his shoulder with very little effort, “Leo! Stop it,” she said squirming gently in his grip, “aha Leeo! Put me down!”