Daria grabbed a cup of water as everyone trailed into the Mess Hall. Jason looked considerably better, there was a light in his eyes that hadn't been there before. He grinned at her as they made eye contact; she knew the feeling. She felt giddy with excitement after not seeing him for eight months.
Coach Hedge was at the helm, a war crazy faun was definitely a new concept, and the demigods gathered below for dinner. It was the first time they'd all sat down together—just the eight of them. Maybe their presence should've reassured Daria, but seeing all of them in one place only reminded her that the Prophecy of Eight was unfolding at last. Every day was one day closer to her revelation.
The others must've felt something too. The tension in the mess hall was like an electrical storm brewing, which was totally possible, considering Percy's and Jason's powers. Daria would've thought that both of them would fight to sit at the head of the table, but Jason didn't hesitate to sit beside her. He nudged her in greeting, kissing her cheek.
"So where to now?" Leo asked with a mouthful of pizza. "I did a quick repair job to get us out of the lake, but there's still a lot of damage. We should really put down again and fix things right before we head across the Atlantic." He stared at the ceiling. "Apenas hemos comenzado y ya es un desastre."
"It'll get better soon." Daria waved a hand in Leo's general direction.
Percy frowned, "you speak Spanish?"
"And Latin," Jason added. "And like German for some reason."
"Oh, so she's a huge nerd," he teased, earning Daria's furious scowl. "Anyway, we need to put some distance between us and Camp Jupiter," he said. "Frank spotted some eagles over Salt Lake City. We figure the Romans aren't far behind us."
That didn't improve the mood around the table. Piper spoke up with a small, guilty voice."I don't suppose we should go back and try to reason with the Romans? Maybe—maybe I didn't try hard enough with the charmspeak."
Jason shook his head. "It wasn't your fault, Pipes. Or Leo's," he added quickly. "Whatever happened, it was Gaea's doing, to drive the two camps apart."
Piper still looked uneasy, but at this point there was nothing to be done. Daria had no time for hypotheticals. "Maybe if we could explain that, though—"
"With no proof?" Daria asked. "And no idea what really happened? I appreciate what you're saying, Piper. I want the Romans' trust more than anyone here, but going back is suicide."
"She's right," Hazel said. She still looked a little queasy from seasickness, but she was trying to eat a few saltine crackers. The rim of her plate was embedded with rubies. "Reyna might listen, but Octavian won't. The Romans have honor to think about. They've been attacked. They'll shoot first and ask questions post hoc."
Daria's heart clenched as she thought of Reyna. Maybe this was what the Gods had meant by her betrayal, after all Reyna was, after Jason, her closest friend. There couldn't be anything worse than leaving her by herself. Of course, Reyna wasn't helpless, but she was still a teenager, and she needed her friends.
"You're right," Piper decided, as if she had given up trying to sway the decision. Daria wondered how powerful that charmspeak really was. "We have to keep going. We have to hurry."
Hazel nodded. "Nemesis said we have only six days until Nico dies and Rome is destroyed."
Jason frowned. "You mean Rome Rome, not New Rome?"
"It's the end of the world," Daria pointed out. "I'm pretty sure she means both."
Hazel grimaced. "Maybe. But whatever it means, that's not much time."
"Why six days?" Percy wondered. "And how are they going to destroy Rome?"
No one answered.
"There's more," Piper said. "I've been seeing some things in my knife."
Frank froze with a forkful of spaghetti halfway to his mouth. "Things such as... ?"
"They don't really make sense," Piper said, "just garbled images, but I saw two giants, dressed alike. Maybe twins."
"Twins, like in Ella's prophecy," Annabeth said. "If we could figure out those lines, it might help."
"Wisdom's daughter walks alone," Percy said. "The Mark of Athena burns through Rome. Annabeth, that's got to mean you. Juno told me...well, she said you had a hard task ahead of you in Rome. She said she doubted you could do it. But I know she's wrong."
Annabeth took a long breath. "Reyna was about to tell me something right before the ship fired on us. She said there was an old legend among the Roman praetors—something that had to do with Athena. She said it might be the reason Greeks and Romans could never get along."
Leo and Hazel exchanged nervous looks.
"Nemesis mentioned something similar," Leo said. "She talked about an old score that had to be settled—"
"The one thing that might bring the gods' two natures into harmony," Hazel recalled. "'An old wrong finally avenged.'"
Percy drew a frowny face in his blue whipped cream. "I was only a praetor for about two hours. Daria, Jason, you ever hear a legend like that?"
Jason looked like a deer caught in headlights. "I...uh, I'm not sure," he said. "I'll give it some thought."
Percy narrowed his eyes. "You're not sure?"
Daria frowned in the blond's direction, but she covered for him. "The last time it happened we were children." She nodded at Annabeth. "Give me a few hours and I'll write down what I remember."
Annabeth nodded back gratefully, "I'd appreciate anything," she admitted.
Daria gave another curious glance in Jason's direction. She understood why he wouldn't tell a stranger about it, the Mark of Athena was awful at best, deadly at worst, but Daria expected him to tell his new friends about the curse. Unless, he didn't trust them.
Hazel broke the silence. "What about the other lines?" She turned her ruby-encrusted plate. "Twins snuff out the angel's breath, Who holds the key to endless death."
"Giants' bane stands gold and pale," Frank added, "Won through pain from a woven jail."
"Giants' bane," Leo said. "Anything that's a giants' bane is good for us, right? That's probably what we need to find. If it can help the gods get their schizophrenic act together, that's good."
Percy nodded. "We can't kill the giants without the help of the gods."
Jason turned to Frank and Hazel. "I thought you guys killed that one giant in Alaska without a god's help, just the two of you."
"Alcyoneus was a special case," Frank said. "He was only immortal in the territory where he was reborn—Alaska. But not in Canada. I wish I could kill all the giants by dragging them across the border from Alaska into Canada, but..." He shrugged. "Percy's right, we'll need the gods."
"Great," Percy sighed. "Two out of three prophecies solved."
Annabeth frowned. "Three? What's the third one?"
Daria gave Percy a sharp look. Somewhere, she had heard that talking about betraying your colleagues wasn't a great first impression. She could tell that the others were watching the two of them, maybe even brewing for an argument, which wasn't unlikely.
Percy raised his eyebrow almost imperceptibly, sarcastically. But Daria remained strong. "I think you're a little out of it from the water spirits," she forced a laugh. Fake to anyone who knew her; Jason took her hand in comfort.
"Yeah," Percy muttered, looking away at last. "Just out of it."
"Okay...." Leo pushed his chair away from the table. "First things first, I guess. We'll have to put down in the morning to finish repairs."
"Someplace close to a city," Annabeth suggested, "in case we need supplies. But somewhere out of the way, so the Romans will have trouble finding us. Any ideas?"
Again no one spoke. Daria wondered if anyone on this quest actually knew what they were doing.
"Well," Piper ventured, "how do you guys feel about Kansas?
Daria had trouble falling asleep.
She stared at the bronze beams on the ceiling. Her cabin was pretty cozy. Leo had programmed their quarters to adjust automatically to the occupant's preferred temperature, so it was never too cold or too hot. The mattress and the pillows were stuffed with pegasus down, so they were über-comfortable. A bronze lantern hung from the ceiling, glowing at whatever brightness Daria wished. The lantern's sides were perforated with pinholes, so at night glimmering constellations drifted across her walls.
The walls of the cabin were navy blue, her favorite color, so that everything looked like the night sky. There wasn't room for much else. A closet, a bed, some pictures.
There was a half-bath on the other side of the desk. True to Jason's word, the medicine cabinet behind the mirror contained a 2-month supply of her meds. One of which he had made her take before bed, she could already feel herself getting drowsy.
But even then, she kept thinking about Jason's reaction to the Mark of Athena. If she had managed to hear the stories by just being a centurion, there was no doubt that Jason had heard them as Praetor. So it came back to him hiding information, but why?
Coach Hedge was spending the first hour after curfew doing his nightly duty, walking up and down the passageway yelling, "Lights out! Settle down! Try to sneak out, and I'll smack you back to Long Island!"
So of course, merely minutes after Coach Hedge had quit his yelling and Daria was just about to dream her lovely demigod dreams, Jason peaked into her room; successfully scaring the shit out of her.
The light grew substantially brighter as Daria grabbed her glasses, blinking a few times to adjust her vision. "How did you even get in here?"
Her six-foot-tall boyfriend was adorable when he was sleepy. He was clutching his pillow to his chest like young children did after they had a nightmare. His blond hair was tousled and charged with the static electricity that always seemed to float around (not fun when she tried to hug him).
"I asked the air not to make any noise," he replied, as if that was a normal thing to say. "Now scoot over."
The bed was large enough that they both fit. Barely. Jason snuggled in closer to her, yanking the bedsheets in his direction. Daria rolled her eyes as she pressed their legs together for warmth, typical. She was tempted to ask him what earlier had been all about, but why ruin a good thing? It could wait.
"Where's my necklace?" he squinted at her in the dark.
"Table." She ran her fingers over his rough calluses. "You can have it. I hate that thing."
"Jupiter hates you too, darling." But the words were said too adoringly, without any bite.
The boat rocked underneath them, and for a few seconds Daria couldn't remember whether they were in air or water. "You were always too rebellious to be Roman, you know that?" She made herself smaller so that she could tuck herself beneath his shoulder. "If we get caught this is all on you."
He shrugged as much as he could. "I mean, okay. Forgive me for missing my girlfriend."
"I could tell, how was your tour of New Rome with Piper?"
He groaned, "Dariaaa."
She squeezed his hand. "Kidding. But I want to hear more about the last eight months."
He played with her hair, his hand dry and calloused. "I wish we had all the time in the world. I would give you everything." He still didn't ask the question. Content with not knowing about his own mortality.
"We have now," she pointed out. "We have this flying ship that also swims, somehow. We have this crazy quest to go on and horrible monsters to fight and a bunch of Romans who want to kill us."
"You're really selling it."
"But we have each other too, Jace. After eight months that's more than enough for me don't you agree?"
His lips were warm against hers and she could feel the pure electricity coursing from his body. He tasted like toothpaste. Daria reached up, finally getting the chance to run her hands through his hair, a comforting act of better times. Jason was content with not responding.
She hummed as he draped his arm over her stomach, holding her. The Jason in front of her was kind and thoughtful, he smelled like honey and mint and whispered sweetly to her as Daria smiled sleepily. The love of her life lay there, a bird who flew away in order to avoid confrontation and words sweeter than white chocolate. This was not the story she had read. This was not her Jason.
"I love you." He stated matter of factly. Somewhere along the way, she had taken off her glasses but Jason was just as clear as he had been when she saw him walk off the Argo II that morning. "And you're right," His eyes were awake though it had to be well past midnight.
She knew this. But something wasn't right. Daria spoke slowly, looking for a reaction to her next words. "I love you too."
He grinned back, teeth perfectly straight and white like he was a knock-off Superman. "You should sleep."
She paused. Nothing was noticeably different about his expression, and amnesia or not, Daria still knew how to read Jason Grace too well. Was it fair to be upset over a difference in wording? She didn't really know. But Percy and Annabeth hadn't missed a beat with each other, and Jason's timeline was much longer.
"And what are you going to do?" She squinted at him. "Go back to your room?"
Jason gasped in mock horror. "And leave the love of my life defenseless in her sleep? No thank you, I think I'll be staying right here."
Daria poked his stomach, "defenseless?"
He laughed, and she could feel it rumbling against her. "Go to sleep, Daria." Another difference. Maybe there was something wrong with her, but Jason had never been this sweet in his entire life.
Either way, there was no Gaea for her tonight.
Hi folks! Happy Friday! Enjoy this update, even if Jason's ~strange~
-M