#it wasn't just Apollo's life on the line. it was Piper's. it was Meg's. it was everyone if the emperors won.

[pain-is-too-tired]

Honestly, I think it's more sadder what really happens

Jason, by the time we see him in ToA, he saw Leo get blown up and believed he was dead, recieve a scroll from him alluding to him having survived, spent so hard trying to find him that Chiron had to step in to tell them to start their school year(one the only other times I remember Chiron stepping in to tell someone to get back to schedule was him telling Clarisse when Chris was kinda on his death bed before being cured)

Then he's told at some point that him or Piper might die. And he makes the decision then and there that it had to be him.

He already knows that Leo might still be alive out there. He doesn't know where he's at. He doesn't know if he was dead again.

But he does know that Piper is still here. She's still alive. She has her father, she has life to look forward to.

Jason can't lose her too. He can't. Especially with no Physican's cure. If she dies there no hope to bring her back. She's all he really has. Sure there's the rest of the 7, and the camps. But he doesn't really feel he belongs at either without Leo and/or Piper. After years of just being a soldier they have him a place to truly belong.

Saying that Leo coming back to life doomed him takes that agency from Jason. It become more destined to always been him with no roome for doubt. It makes him choosing that he be the one to die mean so much less because it was more of an illusion of choice.

The Great Prophecy might've always been meant to be Leo in a way narratively, but there was still a choice there. There was still room for doubt. He wasn't mean to be the one to defeat gaea just because of fate, but also because he made that choice and laid his own groundwork to make sure it was FIRE that took gaea. That it was him that died. The oath wasn't just to Calypso. It was in a way to himself. He swore to himself that it would be him, not Jason. The same way Jason swore it would be him and not Piper.

Both were brought up to be lambs to the slaughter. Both had some raising by Hera. Both became disconnected from their family at a young age. Both had no true sense of stability or family. Jason spent his life as a soldier, as the "Son of Rome". "Juno's champion. Leo spent his life on the run. No real family, no place to call home. He was a trouble kid, to the point he was sent away to the wilderness school.

Finally finding eachother and Piper gave them an actual home. A family. And they chose they would risk everything for that. Of course it would be Storm or Fire. Because both had nothing else to lose but the family they built together. Storm or Fire. Two things that can cause so much destruction but also so much comfort in its calmer states. A fire that warms you in winter, that helps cook your foot and boil water to help make it safer to drink, can destroy everything around it just as easily.

Or a storm, that can bring water, that can ease one to sleep in the sounds again one's home, can sweep you and everything you have away.

Both so dangerous, so destructive, but part of life. Even when it destroys, it leaves room for things to grow back. A storm washes items and crops away and more grow back in their sted. A fire burns through a forest and life returns anew.

They're similar in their own ways, it was no shock they would die not too differently. That they would give everything to protect others. They were two sides of the same coin.

As much as I love the whole "Jason died because Leo didn't fulfilled the prophecy' this is not even remotely canon guys, that's why it's just an headcanon. Gaea was supposed to fall by storm or fire, not that one of them would simply die.

And she fell, the prophecy was fulfilled, Leo really died for a few seconds, he took his "final breath", it was him since the beginning . The point of prophecy is that all things happen as they should happen. If anyone is mad at Leo it's not the Fates for ""cheating the prophecy", it's Thanatos, and I assure you he wouldn't be taking Jason's life to compensate for Leo's. It's a great hc tho