Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
━━ chapter twenty-three family grace ( jason )
✿✼:*゚:༅。.。༅:*・゚゚・⭑
━━Jason felt like his knees were going to cave out on him. Was he dreaming? Would someone pinch him and he'd wake up on that bus all over again, his memories wiped and searching for her━she who stood right there ... real, alive ... not just a face on a picture, a distant memory━she stood there right in front of him: Thalia Grace and Jason wondered whether it was too good to be true. He wondered whether he was wrong. That this ache in his chest, searching for his sister was just another cruel trick━
Until Thalia's eyes watered━the electric blue glistened with a tearful storm and she launched forward to hug him.
Jason stiffened. He didn't know what to do. There was part of him that wanted to slump and break down into tears. He felt that lump in his throat, but there was another side of him that wouldn't let him. That discipline. He had to stay strong. He had to stay a leader. He was a soldier━he had to stay a soldier.
But she was real.
She was real.
Jason's arms shook as he carefully wrapped them around his older sister, scared that she'd disappear. He couldn't stop the tear that escaped and he clenched his eyes shut, hiding it by letting his head fall into his sister's shoulder. She looked barely older than him, but he knew she was. She was at his height━it didn't seem right ... after all those years.
"My gods!" sobbed Thalia Grace. She pulled away to grip his face, her hands just as clammy and shaky as his. "She━she told me you were dead!" Her eyes searched him━everything, from his brows to his hair to the scar on his lip. At the sight of it, she grew even more tearful. "Thank Artemis, it is you," those words almost cracked in the back of her throat. Jason tried to swallow the lump in his throat to speak, but he couldn't find the strength to do it. He just stared back at her, unable to believe he had found her ... he finally found her. He felt like he had been on this journey way before he lost his memory. Jason had been searching for his older sister the moment he registered that he lost her. Just barely three-years-old, all alone and scared, left to defend for himself against the wolves and Lupa's training.
Thalia chuckled, her voice heavy. "That little scar on your lip━you tried to eat a stapler when you were two!"
Jason knew Leo couldn't stop the laugh that burst out of his lips, "Seriously?"
Hedge nodded, as if he approved of Jason's taste. "Staplers━excellent source of iron."
He barely paid attention to either of them. He felt sick at what Thalia had said. He forced his words up from his throat, "W━wait," he stammered. "Who told you I was dead? What happened?"