Where You Go ― Jason Grace

xxi. the steady calm before a sudden storm

THIS WAS SHAPING UP to be the worst birthday Jason had ever had.

It had been going great—they'd finally reached Rome, something Jason had never thought he'd do in his lifetime. He'd gotten to have a birthday picnic with his girlfriend and even got to talk through some of his worries. It had been a pretty good day, especially by demigod standards.

And then his girlfriend disappeared.

He didn't even notice until they reached the bottom of the stairwell, which wasn't earning him any best boyfriend in the world awards. 

After landing on the bottom, he turned to offer Ophelia a hand down. It was too dark to see very well, so even if she had been behind him, he wouldn't have been able to really see her. 

When no one took his hand, he frowned. "Phee? Are you coming?" 

No answer. 

Jason touched the edge of the last step, which was a few inches below his eye level. When he didn't hit any shoes, panic started to take root. 

"Ophelia?" he called, his voice echoing slightly in the tight space. 

"What's wrong?" Percy asked from a few feet away. 

Jason swept his arm over the bottom step, trying to feel for the edge of her boot. Nothing. 

"Ophelia's not down here," he said, the panic growing branches. "Ophelia!" 

"What are you talking about?" Percy asked, coming closer from the changing volume of his voice. Jason could faintly see the shape of him in the darkness. "She was right behind us. She was locking the gate back." 

"She's not on the step," Jason said. "Ophelia!" 

"She's not coming." 

Piper had been so quiet, Jason startled at the sound of her voice. Her tone didn't help—it was soft, almost mournful in a sense. There was an edge of what sounded to Jason like guilt, tinged with worry. 

The panic's branches began to blossom into fresh fruit. "What do you mean she's not coming, Piper?" 

Piper's silence was almost as loud as the steadily-increasing beat of Jason's heart. 

"Piper, what aren't you telling me?" Jason all but demanded. 

"I didn't see her in the vision," Piper admitted quietly. "The one of us drowning. It was just the three of us." 

In any other circumstance, hearing that his girlfriend wasn't in a vision that predicted her drowning would have been great news. But Jason knew Ophelia, and she wasn't the type to run from danger—if anything, she'd go in first, just for the chance to take the brunt of it and protect the people she loved. Which meant...

Ophelia only left because she had to. 

Jason recalled the imagine in Piper's blade from earlier, of Maren Russell with blood on her face. For days, Ophelia had agonized over the task she'd been saddled with—to kill the daughter of Neptune once again, to repeat history, to do again the thing that had traumatized her most during the war. 

He'd watched, feeling infuriatingly helpless as he silently begged the gods not to make her do it, to let him be the one to fight Maren this time, if only to lessen the blood on her hands that Ophelia could never seem to wash away. 

"She went to face Maren," he whispered. The fruits of his panic fell silently to the earth, rotten. 

He hoisted himself back up onto the final stair, retracing his steps back to the top so he could get to her before she met her fate. She'd kick and scream, but he'd drag her away from it no matter what it took.