"Everyone is a moon and has a dark side,

which he never shows to anybody."

-Mark Twain

-Ω-

Jason was vaguely aware of Piper's reassuring hand rubbing his back as he emptied the contents of his stomach into the toilet bowl. His head was pounding, so badly that he could barely hear his wife's soothing words over the bellowing of his own heart. He didn't dare tell Piper of this, though; she already had enough on her mind with all of this Lucifer crap, and she didn't need to be worried about the health of her klutz of a husband. Somehow he'd managed to get sick through all of this, which was odd, considering he'd only really been around his friends. Perhaps he'd gotten some weird stomach shit from the wackos in the Whisper. That was the best bet, so he sighed through dry heaves and wiped the corner of his mouth while he flushed the toilet.

"You okay, honey?" Piper asked, her brows furrowing as she saw the haggard look on her husband's face. He looked beyond exhausted, his eyes sunken and with dark shadows under them. He didn't know the last time he'd gotten a good night's sleep. In Heaven, maybe, but he couldn't remember when that was. A few weeks, maybe? A month? All he knew was that Percy had been missing for three weeks, and for all the Golden Swords knew, he was dead. Jason found that hard to believe, though, since Percy had immortality, however Lucifer was a fallen Archangel, so God knows what he could do to the poor messenger angel.

"No," he replied, not wanting to lie any more than he had to as he brushed his teeth to keep bad throw-up breath at bay.

"Is there anything I can do?" she asked.

"No," he repeated, sighing at his worn-down reflection in the mirror. "It's just a stomach bug. It'll pass." He felt really dizzy, though, and stumbled to the bed without another word. Piper stared on with increasing concern; between this sickness and the bouts of insomnia that was continuously becoming more frequent, she was worried for her husband's well-being. Jason didn't want to be coddled, though, so she'd stepped back from the whole thing and allowed him to deal with this in his own fashion, whatever that may be. She stayed immersed within her thoughts for a long while before flicking the bathroom lights off and entering the stark room that they shared in the Golden Swords' headquarters.

Jason was curled up, a lump on the bed that could easily be mistaken for a sleeping form, but when Piper spooned him, she could hear his ragged breathing and racing heart that showed just how awake he was. "Do you want me to bring a garbage can?" she asked, referring to the fact that Jason could chuck his guts at any given moment.

"S'not necessary," her husband slurred drowsily, and Piper was glad that he at least sounded like he was going to go to sleep.

"Okay," she replied softly, heaving herself up to give him a kiss on the forehead. It was burning with fever, but that's what came with the stomach flu, so she didn't think much of it as she lay back down and tried to get some rest, though Jason's rocketing temperature was keeping her high on alert. She buried her face into his neck and he mumbled something incoherent in a way that Piper would consider cute if it hadn't sounded so exhausted. He smelled of salt sweat and summer rain, and it would've been comforting had it not felt like her cheek was on a furnace. It was to the point where she actually drew away, rubbing her face and she tried to make out Jason's facial expression in the dark.

"Bear with me for a moment," she ordered and Jason grumbled a bit about needing to get sleep, but they both knew that that wasn't going to come tonight. She used to be an angel of healing. She should be good at identifying this shit. She pulled up memories of her training and did the proper sickness examination, though she made it more intimate in order to make sure it didn't feel like strictly business. She kissed the back of Jason's hand. Burning hot. She kissed his cheek. Like the fires of hell. She kissed every place she could reach that wasn't sexual, and everywhere she kissed the skin was fiery with fever. "I need to take your temperature."

"What does it matter?" Jason sighed, rubbing his eyes a bit, "It's a fever, that's all."

"In all of my time as an angel of healing and as a nurse in a hospital, I have never encountered something like this," Piper admitted quietly, and the tension in the room thickened considerably. The fallen angel was becoming increasingly worried for her husband's health, and as she shuffled to the bathroom to get a thermometer, countless numbers of sicknesses, both angelic and human, presented themselves as if on a conveyer belt in her mind. They came forward, presented their symptoms, and then were whisked away as Piper eliminated them.

When she came back, Jason was sitting up, propped up on a pillow. She went over to flick on the lights and saw just how uncomfortable Jason was. His eyes were glassy and dull with the heat, and his expression was a bit sunken, his brows knitting and his brow crinkling. He was breathing heavily, and he gave Piper a very tired look as she approached, her heart roaring in her ears.

"Open up," she ordered and inserted the thermometer under his tongue as he did so. It was an electric one that told the temperature on a small calculator-like screen, and she stroked Jason's hair reassuringly as they waited for the temperature to register. The little scar on his lip was quirking as he held the thermometer in his mouth, and she just wanted to kiss it. Kiss all of his pain away because she was a wife and that's what she needed to do for her husband, and what her husband should do back if the roles were reversed. The thermometer began to rage, beeping and blaring out an alarm that told Piper that Jason was sick.

She slipped the instrument out of her husband's mouth and looked at it. Her heart nearly stopped, the only sound in the room being Jason's ragged breathing and the silence that screamed at them. "Jason," she whispered.

"Yeah?" he rasped, his eyes shining with an unhealthy sheen as he worried his bottom lip between his teeth, his hands wringing nervously in his lap as he saw Piper's expression.

"You…" she paused, swallowing hard as her heart leapt into her throat, pounding the beat of life that bellowed in her ears and was so loud that she thought Jason could hear it." You should be dead." She showed the thermometer reading to him.

One hundred seven degrees.

"Your cells should be shutting down and dying right now, and you'd have so much brain damage that you wouldn't be able to understand what I'm saying right now," she whispered.

"That…that can't be true," Jason stammered, his eyes going wide as he squinted at the thermometer like it was playing a trick on him. His glasses were on the nightstand, though, so he probably could only see a mass of color. "It's broken, that's all."

"Jason it hurts to touch you for long because your skin is so hot," Piper breathed. "How are you still alive? What's going on?" But that question would never be answered because at that moment Jason slumped, his eyes rolling back into his head.

-Ω-

"Hello, Jason," said a familiar voice. He was in a restaurant of some sort, at a table for two. He couldn't really make out the interior, but it must've been fancy because he was wearing a tuxedo. He felt really hot, though, and there was sweat trickling down his forehead and soaking his body, making his formalwear stick uncomfortably to his back. The table was set with fine china and silverware, as well as silken napkins and half-full champagne glasses. He grabbed the one closest to him and downed it in one gulp, the cold of the beverage a godsend and immediately cooling his entire body off, though he had no idea how that was possible. In fact, his entire body was feeling cold as of now, and he shivered in stark contrast to the heat he was feeling before.

Across from him, there was a young man that he was pretty sure he knew but he couldn't put his finger on. Heck, as he peered over the lovely bouquet of lilies that served as the centerpiece, he was beginning to become frustrated that he didn't know this face. He knew it, he did, but it was as if something, or someone, was preventing him from remembering. He had neatly styled black hair, and his eyes were a more navy blue than what Jason's eyes were. His facial structure was fairly Greek, and he'd look a lot like Percy if he didn't have such a chilling expression. The Roman numeral two hung from a cord around his neck, the golden shape settling snugly against his breast. He, too, was wearing a suit, though he made Jason jealous at how natural he looked in it, but unlike Jason's suit, his was a pure white that was nearly blinding. Was it him or did he have wings? One of them looked damaged. When he looked up again, though, they were gone, and Jason singled it out as a trick of the light.

"Do I know you?" he blurted, and the young man smiled, a crooked thing that was a little off-putting.

"I'm afraid not, but it's better that way," he replied, and that all the more made Jason nervous. There was something terribly wrong going on as of now, but Jason's mind was too murky to figure out what was happening. When did he get to this restaurant? Where was Piper and the others? It was odd, but Jason didn't have it in him to look into it further.

"Why am I here?" he asked. He had so many more questions bouncing around inside of his head that it hurt slightly, a throbbing pain that Jason didn't think should be associated with thinking too much. It was actual pain, and Jason wondered what was causing such a thing. He was in a restaurant with this young man, and when he rubbed his forehead he didn't have anything embedded within it.

"To talk, of course. Here, eat." The young man gestured to his plate and suddenly it was filled to the brim with food. When did they order their food? Jason must've missed it. Cautiously, he dug into his food, which tasted fine. He just found it odd that the calamari tasted the same with and without the marinara sauce. In fact, the calamari tasted the same as the champagne that he downed once more. Wait, didn't he already drink his champagne to cool off? The waiter probably came without him noticing.

"So what are we going to talk about?" Jason asked when he was finished eating, and it wasn't that the meal was unenjoyable, it was just…odd. It hadn't really tasted or smelled like anything, and something was a little bit off about this whole situation. He just couldn't put his finger on it, for something was blocking the answers whenever he tried to reach out into his mind and grasp them.

"I'm about to go against my orders as of now," the young man told him. "I'm Giel, by the way." That name sent spikes of emotions within his subconscious. His body knew that name, but Jason was pretty sure he didn't.

"That's a nice name," he replied.

"Thank you, and I'm going to warn you that the next few…months, years maybe, will be painful. So I'm going to ask you once to make sure that you are, indeed, okay with your suffering and will now relinquish your control to me out of your own free will: May I come in?"

"Come in where?" Jason asked. When there was no reply, which was really, really creepy, he said slowly, "Yeah, sure." And that was the end of that.

-Ω-

Leo knew that something was wrong as soon as Piper came slamming on his and Calypso's door. He knew it as they ran to get the others and they all sprinted back to her and Jason's room, with the fallen angel's eyes wild and wide with fear and anxiety. He knew it as he saw Jason lying slumped onto the bed, only the whites of his eyes seen as they stayed rolled back into his head. He knew it as he was burned by mere contact with his friend's skin. Annabeth was pacing, trying to find solutions as Piper relayed the entire story to them; how Jason had been having bouts of insomnia and how he began to throw up, eventually boasting a one hundred seven fever. They took his temperature again just in case and it had boosted to a one hundred eight, yet Jason's heart was still beating strongly and healthily.

Leo, Reyna, Nico, and Will carried Jason to the bathtub, while Piper, Calypso, and Annabeth ran as fast as they could to the Golden Sword's huge walk-in freezer, coming back in record time as they dumped several bags of ice into the tub whilst running the faucet on the coldest temperature it could go. Leo's heart was roaring, and he could taste the metallic tang of blood in his mouth where he'd worried his lip too hard in between his teeth and had rendered it raw. Jason was heavy, but with the help of the other three he was holding up surprisingly well under the boy's incredible weight. And that was all muscle. Once the tub was near-full with ice and freezing water, they unceremoniously dumped Jason into the tub, jumping back as they expected the boy to leap out with a gasp of surprise.

Except that didn't happen.

The water actually steamed where Jason's body touched it, and yet his friend still didn't wake up. Piper was in a panic, blubbering and crying as she buried her face into Annabeth's neck, her shoulder's heaving with her sobs. Annabeth stayed silent and rubbed her back, unable to say anything reassuring because they would all be lies. Everything was not okay, everything wouldn't be fine, and there was every single reason in the world to be worried right now. Leo, Nico, and Will talked quietly amongst themselves as they waited. It was all they could do, really. The rest was up to Jason now. Leo was panicking. Severely. But he didn't want to work Piper up even more. Calypso and Reyna had come to Annabeth's aid, and all were trying to console the fallen angel by bringing up funny experiences from the past, though nothing seemed to be working.

"This is like nothing I've ever seen," Nico growled, his hands constantly in motion, whether they be running through his long, disheveled hair or wringing his hands feverishly.

"You need a haircut," Will snorted, and the fallen death angel gave him a withering glare, though his boyfriend shrugged nonchalantly. It was merely an attempt at humor. Tension was so thick in the air that Leo could almost taste it, and he felt as if the fear, the fear of losing his best friend, would consume him. He was just thinking about other things that would save Jason, including shooting him up with every drug and medicine available, when there was a sudden sharp intake of breath. Everyone, bodies wound tighter than bowstrings, whirled around as their blond friend sat up sharply, brushing his sopping hair from his eyes. He spluttered a bit, spitting out water, and then looked down at his hands, smiling as if they pleased him. Nobody talked. Nobody moved.

Jason held his hands up to the light, his grin growing ever so wider as he clenched his fists and then fanned his fingers out. His feet rose from the water and he wriggled his toes, one foot at a time. Still, nobody talked. Then Jason turned to them, frowning like he'd just realized they were there, and then he grinned.

"Glad to be alive," he said addressing everyone in turn. There was a problem, though. Jason didn't speak in that octave. It was Jason's voice, sure, but he didn't speak as high as this, not to mention the fact that his eyes seemed more navy than sky blue as of now. Seeing the unnerved looks on his companion's faces, Jason told them, "Probably just a side-effect." He then made a face at the sound of his own voice and the entirety of the tension, so overwhelmingly thick that you could cut it with a knife, drained out of the room all at once as the entirety of the team melted into laughter.

They helped Jason out of the tub and wrapped him in a towel, and no sooner did he turn did Piper throw herself at him, wrapping her arms around his neck tightly. They kissed, and everyone crooned at how adorable they were being, though Nico grumbled about them getting a room. Will elbowed him in the ribs and the fallen angel grumbled some more, and just like that everything was back to normal. It was just a big scare, that's all, and everything was going to be just fine.

Except it wasn't. The next morning, Piper came to them, sobbing. The other half of the bed had been empty when she woke up.

-Ω-

(A/N) Thank you for all of the wonderful reviews, and as a reward you get a new chapter. The more reviews the faster you get chapters. Deal?

Disclaimer: i Do NoT oWn PjO