sky blue ● jason grace

any

 They watched Daria walk back up the gangplank, Piper with impatience and Jason with normalcy-a gentleness that couldn't be erased. Piper wondered if Daria ever noticed it, if there was something secret that Piper couldn't see or whether Jason just loved Daria more than she loved him back.

"Darling?" Piper asked aloud.

Jason glanced back at her with surprise. There was assuredly something different about him, a newer confidence, borderline arrogance, that he hadn't carried days earlier.

"Well?" she urged. "Blow out the candles."

Jason did. Piper wondered if he'd made a wish, wondered what it was. Hopefully, it would be something like we all survive the quest and live long and happy lives and I get to vibe with my kick-ass friend Piper for the rest of eternity.

Jason plucked the candle out of his cake. "I've been thinking."

That got Piper's attention. "With the amount of head trauma you have? Be careful."

He snorted, one of those outbursts of air that passed off as a laugh. "Ha." He put his hands on the grass behind him and leaned back, Piper found herself wondering if he would burn in the sunlight. "About Camp Jupiter," he continued.

Piper's heart beat a little faster. "What about it?" At Camp Half-Blood, Jason had been strictly analytical in his descriptions of New Rome.

"Camp Jupiter was basically a military," he was looking at something beyond Piper, drawing his inspiration from the city in front of them. "But before that, we started at the Wolf House. All new recruits had to pass Lupa's test before they could join the legion and I had already been there for a few months when Daria arrived." He smiled reminiscently, "oh my god, Daria and Lupa hated each other. As soon as Daria could talk, she was snapping at Lupa."

"She taught you English?" Piper wondered.

He shook his head, "Latin, our first language. Anyway, I found Daria incredibly annoying as a toddler, but there was no denying she was fierce, and she was ready to be accepted into whatever Camp Jupiter was."

"We became friends when we were...around three, I'd guess. We grew up in the same house, so we basically couldn't get a break from each other, and she became my best friend. We got our first stripe together when we were a little older than that."

Piper began to realize that this was it. This was the life story she'd been asking for in the Mediterranean. "And sure I was the son of Jupiter, but everyone respected the hell out of Daria. And she'd earned it too. She killed her first unhinged monster when she was five, was the first pick for the first cohort, even without recruitment letters."

"I was," he debated his wording. "Well technically, I was nobody. I wasn't a great student when we were in school. After we graduated, about 9, I think, I was a trouble-maker for a few years, snapping at people, refusing to follow the rules, and by the time I grew out of that, it was too late. I'd already made a name for myself, so I decided that all I could do then, was bring honor to the Fifth Cohort."

"Daria and I went on quests together, though. When she began to lead them, she always chose me, which people sneered at her for. People would laugh at her, behind her back of course, no one was crazy enough to laugh in her face, but she never stopped being friends with me." He swallowed. "Even when I was a total asshole, which, trust me happened a lot."

"And then Reyna entered the picture, and the whole dynamic of Camp Jupiter flipped upside down. Daria began to defer to Reyna, she had to, Reyna was claimed and she wasn't. And people began to see me as a leader too, even if I didn't deserve it."