Summary: “Where’s Jason?”
The moment the words left Leo’s mouth, Piper crumpled against him, sobbing uncontrollably.
Leo wrapped his arms around her, more impulse than conscious choice. His trembling fingers bunched up the fabric of her shirt.
“Piper, what the hell happened?” he asked. He looked around, and, seeing everyone’s grave expressions, he felt like he was eight years old again, sitting in the back of an ambulance, waiting for the paramedics to tell him that his mom was gone. He couldn’t breathe. “Tell me- tell me he’s not-”
He couldn’t get the words out. Couldn’t even begin to consider what it would mean if he’d failed to cheat the prophecy—if after everything they’d been through, he would never get to see Jason again. To his immense relief, Piper shook her head.
“He’s not- but Leo, it’s bad. Jason is really, really hurt, and we don’t have any stupid ambrosia left, and-” The rest of her sentence was swallowed by another bout of sobs. She was trembling like a leaf in Leo’s arms. “We’re not sure he’s going to make it.”
Written for @lost-trio-week Day 6: Reunion
Word Count: 6k
Rating: Teen and Up
TW for major character injury (Jason for the love of god please stop getting stabbed so much)
I did say I wanted to post two fics today, and I stuck to that, despite the fact that it’s currently absolutely unreasonable hours of the morning. I allowed myself exactly one heavy angst fic for the event, and it’s this one! Lots and lots and lots of hurt/comfort in this one. As with the other ones, some Valgrace that’s tied into a larger plot focused on the fact that all three of them care about each other so, so very much.
———
Leo could tell something was wrong the moment Festus touched down on the beach.
Everyone was looking at him, sure, but it was almost like they were looking through him. Not a single person managed to make eye contact.
Leo honestly wouldn't have minded this—direct eye contact felt really uncomfortable to him a lot of the time—but he’d learned over the years that when other people avoided eye-contact, it usually meant bad news.
For a moment, he was too caught up in his relief that Lester and Meg and Piper were fine to really let himself think about this, though.
He just went through the line of people and hugged everyone.
He paused in front of Piper—there was so much he needed to say to her, and he wasn’t sure she’d appreciate a hug before he’d properly apologized.
“Pipes, I-” he started, but then she looked up at him with red-rimmed eyes and everything stopped. Terror grasped his heart. “Where’s Jason?”
Leo hadn’t registered Jason’s absence as weird at first. He hadn’t known for sure Jason would be here. With everything going on in the demigod world, there could have been plenty of reasons he was busy elsewhere.
Please let it be that, he thought.
But the moment the words left his mouth, Piper crumpled against him, sobbing uncontrollably.
Leo wrapped his arms around her, more impulse than conscious choice. His trembling fingers bunched up the fabric of her shirt.
“Piper, what the hell happened?” he asked. He looked around, and, seeing everyone’s grave expressions, he felt like he was eight years old again, sitting in the back of an ambulance, waiting for the paramedics to tell him that his mom was gone. He couldn’t breathe. “Tell me- tell me he’s not-”
He couldn’t get the words out. Couldn’t even begin to consider what it would mean if he’d failed to cheat the prophecy—if after everything they’d been through, he would never get to see Jason again.
To his immense relief, Piper shook her head.
“He’s not- but Leo, it’s bad. Jason is really, really hurt, and we don’t have any stupid ambrosia left, and-” The rest of her sentence was swallowed by another bout of sobs. She was trembling like a leaf in Leo’s arms. “We’re not sure he’s going to make it.”
“Pipes, hey, breathe,” Leo said gently, trying and failing to take his own advice on the matter. He couldn’t get a handle on his racing heart, but his arms around Piper felt a little steadier now. Hurt, even badly hurt, was a million times more manageable than dead. “Jason’s going to be okay. He’s way too stubborn to just die on us after everything we’ve been through.”
He said it with more confidence than he felt.
“It’s a miracle he’s even alive at all,” Lester said quietly. “But with the condition he’s in-”
“He’s going to be okay,” Leo repeated, because the alternative was unthinkable. Jason was going to be fine. They’d survived a lot of impossible shit together. He had to be okay.
Besides, Apollo— Lester —wasn’t the god of medicine right now. He wasn’t really the god of anything right now. That was sort of the point.
What did he know, anyway?
“Where is he?” Leo asked, trying to ignore the anxious lump in his throat. “Can I see him?”
“Inside. Coach Hedge is with him,” Piper said immediately, slowly breaking the embrace. “Come on. Let’s go see Jason.”
~~~~
The former McLean mansion felt like a setting straight out of a horror movie. It was way too big, all the furniture was gone and the floorboards creaked as they walked inside. Piper’s hand was trembling in Leo’s as she led him down the hall to a room that smelled strangely of a mixture of disinfectant, mushrooms and gatorade.
Much like the other rooms, this one also didn’t have much furniture, with the exception of a lonely mattress. It was the most makeshift sick room Leo had ever seen. A bunch of supplies were loosely strewn about—some meds and bandages that had clearly been taken from a regular medical kit, along with what looked like sticks and moss and various other plants that he guessed were Hedge’s contribution.
Leo barely had the brain space to take in any of it. Instantly, his attention zeroed in on the mattress.
Jason was pale as death. What Leo could see of his chest was wrapped in bandages. It rose and fell slowly, which was the only outward sign that Jason was alive at all.
Coach Hedge was sitting at his bedside and pressing a piece of cloth to his forehead.
“Still no change,” he said somberly. “The nature magic I used barely helped.”
“Thanks for trying,” Piper said quietly, squeezing Leo’s hand so tightly that it hurt.
Leo had no room to complain. He was squeezing back just as hard.
“Yeah. I’m sure Jason appreciates it,” he agreed, trying not to think about the way Hedge’s attempt at sports medicine had looked and smelled when he’d tried to help with Piper’s broken ankle.
He knew the satyr meant well, and besides, Jason looked like he could use all the help he could get.
Hedge whirled around.
“Valdez?” His eyes were wide with shock. “We thought you died!”
“Yeah.” Leo shrugged, eyes wandering back down to Jason’s too-still form. “I got better.”
“I’d kick you across the room, but luckily for you, Mellie’s putting Chuck to bed right now,” Hedge said, his expression an attempt at fury that was dampened slightly by the fact that his eyes were misty. “He should be here for this. I need to set a good example,” he continued before Leo could attribute the first statement to the fact that he might not want to wake his sleeping child or something equally absurd.
“Good to see you, too,” Leo said, giving Hedge a weak smile. He dragged Piper along as he kneeled down by Jason’s side.
“Hey. I’m back,” Piper said, gripping Jason’s hand. Her voice was quavering. “Leo’s here, too.”
Jason didn’t react. His eyes stayed firmly shut.
Leo carefully reached out to touch his friend’s face. Jason’s skin felt cold and clammy, and it made Leo ill with terror.
But being so close to Jason meant he could at least hear his breaths.
Alive. Alive. Alive.
“We managed to free the Sibyl,” Piper continued, undeterred by the tears that had started to stream down her cheeks again. “She’s safe now. We couldn’t have managed it without your help.”
Jason’s unconscious form was unmoved.
“I’ve got some nectar left. It’s not much, but it’s probably better than nothing,” Leo said, rummaging through his bag for his flask. He cursed himself for not refilling it before he’d left Camp Jupiter.
He hadn’t even considered asking if they could spare any. Not with the amount of people that were wounded. Not with another battle still looming on the horizon. Besides, he’d figured what he had would be enough, considering he’d be heading out of danger.
Gods, he was such an idiot.
Piper’s face lit up just slightly when he produced the flask, despite the fact that it was nearly empty.
“We should wait until he’s a little more conscious, but yes, this will help.”
“What happened to him?” Leo asked, not sure he actually wanted to know the answer.
“I-” Piper gulped, hard. He wasn’t sure what she saw, but her eyes had gone distant. He pulled her back into his chest.
“Sorry. You don’t have to talk about it if it’s too hard.”
“I don’t know the details,” Hedge took over for her, “but he got a spear through his chest and a bunch of ocean in his lungs. Ocean generally isn’t great for children of Jupiter, even when it’s not in their lungs. He’s been out cold since yesterday.”
“I don’t know what I’ll do if he doesn’t wake up.” Piper’s voice was awfully broken and quiet.
Leo couldn’t stand it. He couldn’t stand any of this. Not the way she obviously blamed herself. Not his own fear. Not Jason’s pale face or his bandaged chest or how ragged his breaths sounded.
What Leo said next was reckless, and stupid, and also horribly insensitive. He couldn’t say he cared very much. He’d spent ages traveling, trying to get back to his friends. The only reason he’d made it through all these months of fighting monsters and camping out in the wilderness, which had been terribly reminiscent of the time he spent on the streets, was thinking about this—being back with Piper and Jason. Finally having a home to go back to where he’d be welcomed with open arms, mad as the inhabitants would probably be at him for disappearing for so long.
He didn’t have it in him to be sensitive or reasonable or smart when there was still a chance he’d have half that home ripped away from him.
“Oh, he’d better wake up. I’m never talking to him again if he doesn’t,” Leo said, crossing his arms. He was furious. At himself for leaving and at the world who kept ripping all of his loved ones away from him and especially at his stupid best friend and the fact that he always had to play the fucking hero. “You hear that, Jason? I swear on the Styx, if you die on us right now, I will spend our whole afterlife ignoring you. I mean it. I did not go through all that nonsense with the physician’s cure for you to croak the moment I get back here.”
He learned later that a broken Styx oath was half the reason they were in this mess. He had time to feel a little bad about what he’d said, then.
Right now, though, Jason’s fingers twitched in Piper’s trembling hands, and Leo couldn’t bring himself to regret a damn thing.
****
The sun had dipped below the horizon an hour ago.
Piper was curled up in a sleeping bag, staring intently at Jason’s sick bed.
Her father was in one of the other rooms in an old sleeping bag of his own, probably fast asleep. He was trying his best to help—he had made her and Leo a truly disastrous meal in an attempt to make sure they ate—but it was clear he didn’t understand the situation. Piper wasn’t sure what the Mist was showing him, exactly, but it must have had a hell of a time trying to make sense of the fact that they’d chosen to treat their severely injured friend with homebrew medical supplies in the house they no longer owned instead of calling an ambulance.
Hedge and Mellie had left for Aeithales a few hours ago, hoping to fetch some more demigod-grade medical supplies. She doubted they’d be back before tomorrow afternoon.
It would have been more effective to just take Jason there— safer, too —but they couldn’t move him while he was in this state, so this was the best they could do.
Piper had offered to come, hoping that doing something proactive might help her feel a little better about everything that had happened, but Mellie had put a hand on her shoulder and told her “your friend needs you. Both of you,” and that had been that.
Piper was exhausted, so she probably should have slept, but she didn’t. It had been three days since she’d last so much as napped for half an hour.
She couldn’t bring herself to sleep. Couldn’t bring herself to take her eyes off her injured friend. Guilt was gnawing at her, hollowing out her chest until there was nothing left.
She was supposed to protect Jason like he’d always protected her, and she’d failed him, in the same way she always seemed to fail her loved ones.
She was fifteen and her absentee goddess mom had to save her father because Piper wasn’t strong enough.
She was sixteen and Leo didn’t trust her with his plan or the real physician’s cure, and then he was gone, and she couldn’t do a damn thing. Couldn’t find him, no matter how desperately she tried.
She was almost seventeen and Jason was comatose because her powers had failed her when she’d needed them the most.
Her mother was the goddess of love, for crying out loud. Her love for her friends should have been her greatest strength.
It wasn’t. Her love was a dagger that she only ever managed to point at her own chest. Piper loved herself bloody, and it was never enough.
Every time she closed her eyes, she was back on that damned yacht. She saw the determined expression on Jason’s face, then the spear through his chest. She saw Jason stumbling into the chasm where the yacht was breaking apart, dropping like a rock.
She knew she couldn’t change what had happened.
She still tried to reach for him every time. And every time, her hands grasped empty air.
She kept having to remind herself that Tempest had slowed Jason’s fall and dragged him back out of the water, but it barely helped. Nothing really seemed to help, with the exception of watching the slow rise and fall of Jason’s chest. Any time she turned away from him, she was afraid she might have imagined it—that she might turn back and find his body utterly still.
“Pipes?” Leo asked, looking up from where he was sitting on the floor. “You good?”
Having Leo back by her side should have been comforting, but it felt much the same way Jason’s survival did—like a dream she would wake up from any moment now.
Piper was used to waiting. She had spent much of her early childhood waiting for a mother who had never come back. Later, she’d spent ages waiting for her father—to come home, to visit her at school, to remember she existed for more than a few days a year.
She was great at waiting for things that would never happen. She had no previous experience with waiting for things that did.
She’d stopped hoping Leo would come back a long time ago. Now that he had, she wasn’t sure how to handle it. She kept waiting for the other shoe to drop—for Leo to dissolve into Mist like the rest of her life had.
“Fine,” she lied, moving closer to where he was sitting. Leo wasn’t doing much better than her, sleep-wise, but unlike Piper, he’d at least found himself something useful to do. Currently, he was in the process of inspecting one of Aurum’s diamond eyes that had come loose. Piper looked down to where the two dog automatons were lying in sleep mode, heart clenching again. “How’s it looking? They’re gonna be okay, right? Reyna will probably kill me if any of the damage is permanent.”
Aurum and Argentum had gotten pretty banged up dragging Calligula off Jason. They’d retaliated, getting in a few nasty strikes that would have been satisfying to watch if Piper’s heart hadn’t been dropping to the bottom of the ocean at the same time. Now, the damage they’d taken was just another item on the ever-growing list of Piper’s failures.
She hated the thought of anything happening to the dogs. She’d seen the way Reyna interacted with them—the fond smiles and head scratches and the inadvisable treats she snuck them whenever she thought no one was looking.
To say Reyna struggled to let herself be soft would be the understatement of the year. But it was obvious to anyone with eyes that she loved her dogs to death, and after everything that had happened to her, the last thing Piper wanted was for her to lose them, too.
“‘Course I can fix them. But you know Reyna wouldn’t have given you the whistle if she hadn’t wanted you to use it, right?” Leo asked, putting aside the diamond before reaching out to touch her arm. “One of the first things she did when I got to Camp Jupiter was ask about you, and not in a ‘I’m worried she’s gonna wreck my automatons’-way.”
“I just…” Piper balled her hands into fists, losing the fight against her tears. “All of this is my fault. If I had-”
“Beauty Queen, hey. Don’t be stupid,” Leo said gently, pulling her into his arms. “There’s lots of people you could blame. Calligula is a really obvious one. Or Lester and his dumbass oath. Or, you know, me. Never yourself, though. None of this was on you.”
Piper looked at him with a startled expression. “Why in the world should I blame you? You weren’t even there.”
Leo deflated against her chest. “Yeah. Exactly.”
“Leo…”
“I thought I could cheat the stupid prophecy,” Leo sniffled, holding her tightly. It was like her crying had made his dam break, too. “But I couldn’t. And now Jason’s hurt, and I- I wasn’t there.He could have died because I wasn’t there.”
“I think you did cheat your prophecy,” Piper told him, squeezing him back just as tightly. “It’s not your fault we failed to cheat ours.”
“The gods really seem to have it out for us,” Leo said, huffing a half-laugh, half-sob against her shoulder. He felt warm, in the nice, soothing way he always had. “Why else would we get so many shitty death prophecies, huh?”
“Yeah. I think we should get a refund on this whole demigod experience. I want my money back.”
“Tell me about it.” Leo opened his mouth to say something else—likely to make another joke, no matter how hollow it rang—but then he froze. “Jason?”
Piper turned, feeling cold as ice at the realization that she’d taken her eyes off him for a moment. She was terrified of what she would find.
But Jason’s chest still rose and fell steadily. More than that—he was moving his head, blinking in obvious confusion.
Leo and Piper were by his side in an instant.
“Hey buddy,” Leo said shakily. “How are you feeling?”
“Hurts,” Jason rasped, wincing when Piper touched his face.
“Yeah, I know. I’m sorry,” she told him, her lip wobbling. Jason’s eyes were glassy, and his skin felt way too warm. “Shit, I think he’s running a fever. Leo, we need-”
“On it,” Leo announced, already elbow-deep in his tool belt.
With all the months they’d been separated, Piper had almost forgotten how naturally these things came to them.
She remembered sitting at Jason’s bedside, re-bandaging the stab wound in his abdomen that refused to heal. Remembered Leo handing her bandages and disinfectant and holding Jason’s shoulders steady to make sure he didn’t move too much.
They’d done this before. They hadn’t needed words, then. They wouldn’t need them now.
For the first time in months, Piper actually felt like things might be okay.
****
Jason woke up tasting cocoa. He only knew three things for certain. One: from what he remembered, him waking up should not have been a thing. Two: everything hurt. Three: everyone was mad at him.
Things had been hazy and painful for a while. He could tell that people were speaking around him, but despite the fact that his aching head couldn’t seem to properly process the words, he could tell that the voices sounded upset. He was pretty sure that was his fault.
Everything was blurry and dark and a cold, wet thing was on his forehead and he couldn’t make sense of any of it.
“You’re gonna be okay,” someone said from the darkness, barely more than a blurry shape. Jason knew the voice, but he couldn’t remember how he knew it. He tried to make out the person’s features, but the harder he tried to focus, the more the image in front of his eyes swam. “What do you need?”
He registered he was trembling, mostly because it made his pain worse, but he couldn’t get his body to stop.
He wanted to ask for- Jason wasn’t actually sure what he was going to ask for. Something warm, probably. A blanket, maybe. Something to make the trembling stop.
But that wasn’t what came out of his mouth when he opened it.
“I wanna go home,” he said instead, feeling incredibly childish. “Please.”
There was a pause.
“You mean camp?” a different voice asked. It was just as familiar as the first, but something about it was strange, too. Jason hadn’t heard that voice in months. He didn’t know why, but hearing it kind of made him want to cry. “Dude, you got skewered less than a week ago. We’re not making a fucking cross-country trip right now.”
“No,” Jason said, feeling whiny and desperate. He didn’t care about camp right now. Camp hadn’t felt like home in forever. “I just want Piper and Leo.”
“Oh,” the second person said, voice quavering. Hands gripped his. Strangely, one of them felt several degrees warmer than the other. “Jeez, how out of it are you?”
For a moment, Jason struggled to process the question—which was probably an answer in and of itself. But then he remembered.
Remembered that Leo had been gone for months and the only way he’d be seeing him again was making it to Elysium. Remembered the prophecy that had told him it had to be him or Piper. And he’d woken up, which meant it hadn’t been him, no matter how much he’d wanted it to be.
If he was alive, that had to mean-
Jason wanted to cry. His lungs wouldn’t work right. The already blurry world grew even blurrier around him.
“Jason? Jason, you’re okay. Breathe.” The hands squeezed his tighter. Fingers combed gently through his hair. The voice was so sweet that all thoughts vanished from his head until he could remember nothing except how to breathe, despite the horrible ache in his lungs.
“There you go. That’s better. No more stupid moves, alright, Superman?” the other blurry shape told him. “Piper and I are getting real sick of patching you up constantly.”
Finally, the voice slotted into its rightful place in Jason’s fever-addled brain, and now he felt like crying for a completely different reason.
“Leo?” he asked weakly, then coughed a few times, which did really awful things to his aching chest.
“Gods, it’s been, what, six months? Did you already forget what I look like?” Leo asked, teasing and concerned and alive.
“No. You're just really blurry,” Jason told him, attempting to blink the spots out of his eyes without any success. Like he could ever forget what Leo looked like. Like he hadn’t spent the past months filling an entire sketchbook with portraits because he was terrified he’d forget the slightest detail. “My head hurts.”
“Of course it does.” Leo sighed. “Please tell me he didn’t get concussed again. At this rate, it’s a miracle he even remembers his own name.”
“Actually, I’m the one who ended up concussed this time. We decided we needed some variety,” the other voice said, and this time Jason knew it was Piper. She was okay. They’d both made it.
“Yeah, I get it. Gotta switch things up occasionally,” Leo joked.
Jason was exhausted and everything hurt, but he didn’t care. Piper and Leo were right here with him, and nothing else mattered.
He was home.
~~~~
The next time Jason woke, someone had switched on the sun and his surroundings weren’t nearly as blurry.
“Morning, Sleeping Beauty. Feeling better?”
Leo was leaning over him. Jason could properly make out his features now that it wasn’t the middle of the night and he wasn’t quite as hazy with fever.
Leo had strange highlights in his hair, and it had grown a little longer since Jason had last seen him, but other than that, his best friend looked almost the same he had eight months ago. With a sting in his chest that was entirely unrelated to his injuries, Jason realized Leo also looked worn out in the same way he always had back on the Argo. His shoulders were slumped and he had deep rings under his eyes.
Jason couldn’t stop staring at him. Couldn’t process the fact that looking at Leo was a thing he got to do again.
Leo raised an eyebrow.
“Are you checking me out?” he teased, smiling widely despite his obvious exhaustion.
The next thing Jason did was probably ill-advised, medically speaking, but he couldn’t stop himself. Wouldn’t have wanted to, even if he could have. He pushed himself up into a seated position and wrapped his whole body around Leo.
The pain came a moment later, bad enough to almost be blinding, but Jason didn’t care. As far as he was concerned, he was never letting Leo go again, no matter how badly it hurt.
“We thought you died,” he said breathlessly. The tears came unbidden.
Jason had never really allowed himself to cry much. He hadn’t had time for it, and besides, it hadn’t felt like his place when he was supposed to be the brave, competent leader at all times.
Crying in front of other people wasn’t a thing he could ever remember doing.
But he was past the point of caring about that right now, because his best friend was alive and breathing and so, so warm against his chest, and that was the only thing in the world that mattered.
“Dude, stop!” Leo said immediately, eyes wide with alarm. “You’ve got two broken ribs and a hole in the middle of your chest! You’re going to hurt yourself!”
“I don’t care,” Jason insisted, holding him tighter. “I thought I’d never get to hug you again.”
“I love you to death, okay?” Leo told him, sounding exasperated. He squeezed Jason just slightly, for barely half a second, before he expertly wiggled himself out of the embrace. “But it took me days to finally coax Piper into getting some rest. If she wakes up and you’re worse off than you were when she went to sleep, she’s going to kill me, and I doubt I can get her to nap for as much as half an hour again if that happens.”
He gestured vaguely to the other end of the mattress where Piper was curled up like a cat, snoring softly.
She was alive. All three of them were alive.
Jason still couldn’t fully believe it.
“I’m not going to-” Jason started, wincing when he lowered himself back down onto the mattress. “Ow.”
“Told you so,” Leo commented, but he didn’t look very happy about it. “Take it easy and get better, okay? Then we can maybe renegotiate the hugging thing.”
“You suck,” Jason told him, but he couldn’t stop smiling.
Leo was okay. They were all okay.
“Oh, I know.” Leo grinned. “I’m about to suck a lot worse, too. Hedge made more of that sports medicine stuff. Full disclosure, we’re not sure if it really does anything, but at worst, I figure making you take shitty meds will discourage you from getting stabbed a third time.”
“It’s not like I did it on purpose,” Jason grimaced, but he did drink obediently.
Swallowing sucked. His throat hurt and his mouth felt parched and the strange liquid didn’t really help with either of those facts.
But, weirdly enough, he didn’t mind the taste too much.
“This actually isn’t that bad.”
Leo looked at him strangely, then turned towards where Piper was sleeping.
“Pipes, are we sure he isn’t concussed?” She just continued to snore softly in response. “I’m gonna take that as a no.”
“Is Piper okay?” Jason asked, trying to sit up again to take a proper look at her. “She didn’t get hurt, did she?”
“Nuh-uh. None of that. You’re resting,” Leo protested, gently pressing his shoulder back down onto the mattress. “Piper’s not hurt. She’s just really tired. I think she’d be significantly more fine if her dumbass best friends would stop dying in front of her face, though.”
Jason winced. “I promised her I wouldn’t do anything stupid. But we were all going to die, and I just- I couldn’t lose anyone else.”
“Dude, Piper’s the one you have to apologize to, not me. I may not be happy about it, but I get it. I did the same damn thing, remember?”
Like Jason could ever forget. Like he hadn’t spent months dreaming of the burning sky.
He reached out to grip Leo’s hand—warm and calloused and just enough to remind him that Leo was fine.
“Let’s just agree not to do that anymore, okay?”
“Yeah, deal. I’ve died more than enough for one lifetime.” Leo grinned, but then his smile wavered. “So, you’re- uh- you’re probably wondering where the hell I disappeared to for so long.”
“Leo-” Jason started, trying to express just how little he cared in this current moment. That the only thing that mattered to him was that Leo was alive.
Leo went on talking like Jason hadn’t said anything.
“No, I get it. It’s a fair question. Also, you’re allowed to be mad at me. Everyone’s mad at me.” Leo rubbed the back of his neck anxiously. “I sort of went back for Calypso.”
“Oh.”
Something clenched in Jason’s chest. He hoped it wasn’t showing on his face—Jason’s messy feelings were his problem, not Leo’s—but from the way Leo’s face fell, it was obvious he could tell something was up.
“See? Told you you’d be upset with me.”
“I’m not upset with you. I just-” Jason sighed. “Are you two…?”
Leo looked confused, then utterly baffled in a way that immediately melted the ice in Jason’s chest.
“I didn’t go back for her because I was in love with her. I knew this girl for like, a week, tops.” Leo laughed. “I went back for her because she’s been stuck on an island for three thousand years and that fucking sucks.”
“Oh.” Now Jason just felt like an idiot. “So you’re not dating?”
“Nah. We’re not even very good at being friends, honestly. We argued almost the whole way back here. But she’s free now, and the Waystation seems to make her happy. She deserves that.” Leo shook his head. “Did you seriously think I ditched you guys to get a girlfriend? Wow, if that’s what everyone assumed it’s no wonder I got punched so much.”
Jason froze.
“What do you mean, you got punched?”
“Everyone at Camp Half-Blood and Camp Jupiter was really mad at me for disappearing the way I did. People lined up to hit me. It was a whole thing.” Leo shrugged. The nonchalant way he said it made Jason feel nauseous. “So, yeah, if you think you’re feeling good enough to punch me, you and Piper still get a freebie. If you wanna yell at me instead, that’s cool, too. I’m not picky.”
Before Leo could say anything else, Jason had wrapped him in his arms again.
“Jason! Seriously, stop sitting up! This isn’t- if you make yourself worse-” Leo protested, but this time Jason didn’t let him go. He didn’t care that it hurt. He couldn’t just lie there and listen to Leo talk about himself like that.
“I’m not going to hurt you,” Jason said, holding him tightly, feeling incredibly angry at the fact that he lived in a world where Leo needed that reassurance at all. “Nobody should hurt you just because they’re mad at you.”
“It wasn’t that bad,” Leo insisted, but he was trembling slightly against Jason’s chest. “Besides, I sort of deserved it.”
“No, you didn’t.” Jason spoke softly into his hair. “You really, really didn’t.”
Leo didn’t say anything else. He just let his head drop onto Jason’s shoulder and cried.
A moment later, the mattress moved and another pair of arms wrapped around both of them.
“Gods, I let myself sleep for three hours and suddenly you’re not resting and you’ve managed to make Leo cry. What in the world did you two get up to?” Piper complained groggily.
Jason wasn’t surprised they’d woken her up—they hadn’t exactly been quiet even before Leo had broken down sobbing.
There were so many things Jason probably should have said to Piper.
Thank you for saving me, for one. And, sorry I got myself stabbed.
But he wasn’t sure how to say any of those things. Since the breakup, he’d barely known how to talk to her in general. Things had been so weird between them in the last few months, and he had no idea how to fix that.
He ignored everything he didn’t have words for, and instead chose to just say “Leo got punched.”
“What?” Piper blinked at him. “Did he annoy Hedge or something?”
“Not right now,” Jason explained, then relayed everything Leo had just told him to Piper.
Unlike Jason, who had been more concerned than anything, Piper just got angry.
“Names. I need names,” she demanded immediately. “Whose idea was this? I swear, when I’m done with them, they’ll wish-”
“Okay, calm down!” Leo let out a startled laugh. “Guys, I appreciate this, seriously, but can we just group hug for now and put the murder plotting off until later?”
“I guess,” Piper grumbled. “As long as we will do it later.”
Jason had a feeling the later in question would be applied to a variety of things beyond murder plans, but right now, he couldn’t bring himself to think about everything they’d still have to deal with. Not when things were finally starting to feel normal again.
~~~~
Jason had managed to tear his stitches.
Leo and Piper would not stop chiding him about this for the following half an hour as Mellie patched him back up and redid his bandages, which she covered in truly ridiculous amounts of aloe vera for reasons Jason didn’t entirely understand. If nothing else, at least the sensation was soothing.
In the end, he was sentenced back to bed rest.
When he told his friends he didn’t really feel like sleeping because he’d already spent the last few days unconscious, Piper suggested they watch a movie, so that was what they did. Leo got a miniature projector out of his tool belt that painted a large rectangular image on the ceiling, and then the three of them just laid there together, watching the movie and sharing the snacks that also came out of Leo’s tool belt. The movie was about talking cars that were also large robots, which Jason was pretty sure would have gone entirely over his head even if he hadn’t still been slightly feverish and his aching chest hadn’t made it impossible to focus. He didn’t really care that he didn’t understand the movie, though. Leo had picked it, and therefore he’d already decided he was going to like it, even if he couldn’t follow the plot.
Leo spent the first thirty minutes of the movie quietly mouthing along the words, which was endearing beyond anything Jason had ever witnessed. Then, suddenly, he was fast asleep with his head on Jason’s shoulder, radiating a soothing warmth.
Piper didn’t speak. For a brief moment, Jason thought she might try to start a conversation about everything that had happened, but then she closed her mouth again, maybe deciding to save it for when he wasn’t distracted by pain and she wasn’t exhausted.
Instead, she just reached out and took his hand, squeezing it hard.
Jason knew she would forgive him, then.
Lying there sandwiched between his best friends, the pain in Jason’s chest ceased to matter. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d felt so completely safe and content.
Home had meant a number of things to Jason over the years. As a small child, from what little he remembered, home had meant people arguing and only ever feeling safe in his sister’s arms. With Lupa, home had meant protection in exchange for him proving his worth. Growing up in New Rome, home had meant chores and responsibilities and others looking to him for guidance.
Jason was still getting used to the fact that it could mean other people taking care of him, too. That it could mean just existing in other people’s spaces and being loved for it, even if you had nothing beyond your own love to give in return.
And the quiet, selfish part of him that grew steadily louder told him that, given him the choice, he would always choose this—that he would always choose them —for as long as he lived.
———
Fic Notes:
-Hey, I had to do at least one angsty piece of Injury Hurt/Comfort fic for this event, right? I’ve got a brand to stick to.
-Fun fact about this fic: I originally came up with the concept in the context of a completely different, far sillier valgrace fic that I have yet to finish. Part of the reason I didn’t finish it at the time was that I wanted it to be silly but then I started coming up with the backstory and it got way too angsty, lmao. So maybe that’ll be easier now that the backstory is a fic of its own.
-The reason Reyna’s automatons are here is Jason’s whole comment about how the word at the end of the prophecy has to be “die” because “one of us will dog” makes no sense. It’s immensely silly and I’m pretty of proud of that one. I feel kind of bad that they just disappear halfway through the fic, but Jason didn’t know they were there at all, so he doesn’t notice. Please assume Leo finished fixing them up while Jason was conked out and they’re doing well and are off doing Tyrant’s Tomb stuff with Reyna currently.
-Also yes, I did specifically put the punch line thing in because the fact that it happened at all makes me angry. People lining up to punch a kid we know suffered abuse in foster care is not very funny to me, actually. I’ve seen several angsty posts about how “Jason didn’t even get to punch Leo for disappearing 3” and I felt the need to point out that a) Jason wouldn't have punched him and b) he’d be horrified Leo would even suggest it at all.
-I’ve got one, potentially two more fics I’d like to set in the same universe as this (one of them being the aforementioned silly Valgrace fic), but I’ve always got too many fic ideas at once, so we’ll see if and when I get around to actually writing those.
Thank you so much for reading!! As always, feedback is immensely appreciated.