Jason was six years old. He knew that. He knew many things. He knew that his favorite color was blue. He knew that he lived in a place called Camp Half-Blood. He knew that he liked to swim in the lake and play with the pegasuses and climb trees.
Something he didn't know was where his sister was. Or why there were two people walking toward him now, led by Chiron.
Grover was walking with them. Jason knew Grover. Jason liked Grover. He was the one who took him to this place, along with his big sister, Thalia.
Grover looked scared. And sad. Jason didn't like that at all.
The other two people walking behind Chiron were people that Jason didn't recognize. They looked like him- both with blond hair and light eyes. There was a boy and a girl. The boy looked older than him, with blue eyes identical to his and a hand on the girl's shoulder. The girl was around Jason's age, but scary-looking. Her eyes weren't blue, they were grey. It looked like she was turning to stone from her eyes outward, and she also looked like she'd just been crying. Jason decided that he should stay away from her.
"Hello, Jason." Chiron smiled kindly at him. "Would you care to join us for juice and cookies in the Big House?"
Chiron gave Jason juice and cookies. Chiron understood Jason. Jason liked Chiron, and liked cookies. So he nodded, and followed the four up the dark wooden steps of the Big House.
Once they were all inside and comfortable on the couch, Chiron cleared his throat. "I brought Jason here because- well- he's Thalia's brother."
The older boy who looked like Jason winced.
"Where is she?" Jason asked, looking at the space between the bottom of his shoes, which were dangling off the massive couch, and the floor.
"She's dead," the scary girl said plainy. Jason looked up, but the girl's grey eyes still scared him, and his eyes fell onto Grover's face instead.
"What?"
Grover's eyes were watery, and a strip of paper was shaking, poking out from his quivering lips. His face screwed up when Jason looked at him, and he broke down in sobs. The older boy patted his shoulder halfheartedly.
"Y-You tried, Grover. She made her choice."
"What do you mean? Who are you?" Jason was scared now.
"Jason," Chiron interrupted. "Calm down. This is a… stressful time. For all of us." The older boy stared at Chiron for a moment, as if just noticing the lines of age circling his eyes. He turned back to Jason.
"My name is Luke. This is Annabeth-" he nudged the girl's shoulder. "I assume you already know Grover."
"Hello, Luke. Hello, Annabeth. I still don't understand where Thalia is."
Chiron sighed, easing himself into his magic wheelchair. Jason had asked to climb into his magic wheelchair many times, but Chiron always refused. "Well," he began. "Annabeth is partially right. You see…"
.
.
.
Jason's eyes burned. He'd been trying to read the same page for an hour, but was having no luck. Finally, he sighed, and dropped the book onto the grass next to him. Closing his eyes, he leaned his head back against the tree trunk behind him.
"I miss you, Thalia." He turned around to run his fingers across the bark, finding the place where he'd crudely carved 'I 3 U'. He smiled. It had been three years now since Thalia had… changed. Jason almost didn't remember her as a human anymore.
Almost.
The conch shell blew, letting Jason know it was time for dinner, so he got up and started walking toward the mess hall. Now that he was nine, people let him wander on his own, but if he wasn't at dinner they would still get worried.
As he walked in, he nodded at several of his friends; Michael from the Apollo cabin, Selina from the Aphrodite cabin, even Annabeth from the Athena cabin.
He sat alone at his table, of course, because he was the only child of Zeus at camp. He watched as Annabeth ordered her cabinmates around. She'd only spent three years here, yet she somehow already had seniority in her cabin. The head counsellor of Athena beforehand, a boy named Dewey, had left for college a few months ago.
Seeing Annabeth's siblings fuss over who got to sit where, Jason felt a pang of loneliness shoot through him. He looked down, stabbing his mashed potatoes with his spoon. He hadn't had anyone to sit at his table since Thalia… changed. And that was three years ago. A third of his life, he thought, recalling the fractions that Chiron had insisted on teaching him. 3 out of 9 was the same as 1 out of 3, so he had spent one third of his life the sole child of Zeus.
That wasn't a pleasant thought, and Jason scowled as he pushed the thought out of his mind. He was so invested in it, in fact, that he didn't even notice when someone sat opposite him.
"Hey, Jase." Annabeth plucked a grape from Jason's plate. "You ok?"
Annabeth was his friend now. He knew that. But, well… he didn't take back his initial impression that she was scary. As he stared into her slate grey eyes, he got the feeling that it was no use lying. She would see the truth anyways.
"I'm fine," he said glumly, spreading a line of mashed potatoes in a half-circle on his plate. Annabeth scowled.
"Don't play with your food. And don't be something's bothering you, say it." That was Annabeth. Straightforward to a fault. She always talked like she knew everything and Jason was stupid for deviating even slightly from her ideas of how the world should work. It got under her skin. Sometimes he just wanted to grab her and shake her.
Still, she was the smartest person he knew. Jason sighed. "I miss Thalia."
Immediately, Annabeth went still. Her mixed emotions about Thalia, Jason knew, were the only things she truly didn't know how to deal with. She picked up a pea from Jason's plate and squished it against the table. So much for not playing with your food.
"I know," she finally decided to say. "So do I."
Jason shrugged. "It's different for you, though. You only knew her for a few months. And- and now you have all of those siblings over there, too. Me… Well, I sit here alone every day."
"That's not true." Annabeth's eyebrows furrowed. "I come over here to sit with you all the time. And my siblings…" She glanced over her shoulder at the Athena table nervously. "They don't really understand me. Not like you do."
Jason's head shot up. "Y-You think I understand you?"
Her head cocked. "Don't you?"
"Not really." Jason laughed. "You honestly make no sense to me."
"Are you sure? I think you do understand me. Better than they do, anyways. They don't get why I'm always up so late, and they think I'm in love with you because we go on walks together."
Jason laughed. "Okay, maybe I do understand you better than they do."
She grinned. "Told you. You have me and Luke and Selina and everyone. So don't be stupid."
Jason was smiling now, too. "I'll try."
.
.
.
Annabeth was acting weird. Jason knew she'd been spending more time in the infirmary, and chalked up her recurring disappearances to that. Except, he couldn't ignore that she'd been acting strange around him specifically recently, always avoiding eye contact and mumbling about some prophecy. Every time Jason tried to confront her about it, she'd be her usual self, rolling her eyes and brushing it off.
This morning, though, she was acting extra weird. She chewed her breakfast slowly, heavy silence surrounding her. Jason, assuming she'd just blow him off like she always did, kept his distance for most of the meal. But eventually, he couldn't take it anymore. He slipped into the bench opposite her, ignoring Chiron's exasperated sigh.
"How are you?"
"Fine."
"Is something wrong?"
"No."
"How's the infirmary?"
"Fine."
A beat of silence.
"Are you mad at me?"
Annabeth glanced up, her oatmeal forgotten. She was twelve now, Jason was eleven, and she looked so different than she had the day they met five years ago. But her grey eyes hadn't changed. They locked Jason into an intense stare that he couldn't break. Despite the two of them growing closer over the years, if he was really honest, Annabeth Chase still terrified Jason.
"No. No, I'm not mad." Annabeth started cracking her knuckles- a habit she knew Jason hated and yet still refused to break, perhaps simply to bug him. She was considerate in that way.
"Then what happened? And would you quit that?" Annabeth grinned, cracking her knuckles all at once on the table and making Jason cringe. "Stoooooooooop."
She laughed. "Okay, okay. And as for what happened- it's really not a big deal. Some new kid showed up. He's passed out in the infirmary now."
"Then why is it bothering you?"
"It's not!" Annabeth said quickly- too quickly. She sighed. "Fine. It would be easier just to show you."
"Okay, lead the way."
"Let me finish my breakfast first, stormy! Jeez."
Jason rolled his eyes, but waited. When Annabeth finished, she brought him to an infirmary, opening the door to reveal a boy around their age fast asleep. He had messy black hair strewn across his face, and his mouth was wide open, letting a line of drool crawl down the side of his face. Still, if you looked past that, there was something about the boy that Jason couldn't put his finger on… something about his face… he almost looked like-
"Thalia," Jason breathed out. "He reminds me of Thalia."
Annabeth nodded. "That's what I thought, too. I mean, they don't even look that much alike, I guess, but-" she hefted up a minotaur horn.
"Minotaur? When did you fight a-?" Jason looked back at the boy on the bed. "Oh."
"And there's more," Annabeth said urgently. "Grover's the one who brought him here."
Jason felt a chill run up his spine. "Weird."
Annabeth nodded. "Weird."
Jason looked at the boy for a second. He'd never had the ability to predict the future like the Apollo kids did, but somehow, he felt he knew that this boy would change both his and Annabeth's lives.
"What's his name?" Jason finally asked.
"Percy Jackson."