Yesterday
by: Kiku Nakamura
As she sat down on her couch in the Roman Mess Hall, everyone noticed a change in the praetor's expression.
It was her eyes.
She always had on a stone hard expression, but there always was a twinkle in her eyes. Today was different. The aura she was giving off was simply not the same as before. The wind spirits, aurae almost didn't want to make her food. But they were knowing.
She had it rough. Her eyes looked at the table across from hers. The subject of her feelings pointed at one person there, maybe two.
She was wondering how he could be so dense. Was it every boy? No. It was probably just him. Everybody could tell that one one of their praetors liked the other. He might have felt that something was wrong, but quickly disregarded it without a second thought.
Reyna used to like looking back at yesterday. Yesterday would remind her of all the memories and promises that she shared with Jason- up to the time that he had disappeared.
~xxx~
Yesterday was when a Greek warship hovered over New Rome. Yesterday was when her fellow praetor, Percy Jackson got to finally see his girlfriend, Annabeth Chase. Yesterday was when Reyna finally laid her eyes on Jason again after so many months that she almost-, just almost, began to lose count. But she never could because it was Jason-. Yesterday was when Jason kissed Piper. Yesterday was when the strong Reyna, Reyna the Praetor of the Twelfth Legion's heart broke.
She thought he would've known better. She thought that he would remember everything that he said to her, because she did. She thought that he would know that she was here. Instead or remembering, he forgot. Just like all of those times that he forgot about the deadlines for his duties leading New Rome.
Reyna ran away. Her house was the only safe place for her to cry. It wasn't safe from her collection of scattered visions of them haunting her. The Champion of Juno was connected to every part of New Rome. They went all around town. Every single person knew the son of Jupiter who turned the whole Fifth Cohort around even before he was raised as praetor. Today everyone was going to talk about him.
She crawled into her bed sobbing. That brought her down a part of memory lane. Jason had came into her little bunk in her cohort to comfort her once. She wished it would happen again. It wouldn't, he already has a girlfriend who cares about him sooo damn much, Reyna thought. He forgot about me.
The brunette crawled out of bed, deciding to do something productive with her time and to clear her head. She wanted to be free of Jason Grace. At the same time, she wanted to just hold him and tell him to stay. She was so confused; she couldn't be with or without him.
Pulling on her sweatshirt, Reyna was going to take a walk to relive all the things she ever had before she let go. She could go on without him.
Before she could do all that though, the brunette would have to get a hot chocolate or coffee. She decided against the coffee. Cocoa was what she loved. With whipped cream, it would be the best.
After grabbing her drink, she decided to go take a walk along the shore of the lake. The Little Tiber flowed right into it. The sound of flowing water would make her feel better. With luck, she might even be able to rent a rowboat and head out onto the clear blue.
~xxx~
The girl didn't catch the boy's glance since he publicly came back to Camp. If it was when she last saw him, it would be when he came to eat in the Mess Hall. As a praetor, she should have greeted him. She was just Reyna the Roman camper no matter how much every other day she had power.
It was almost tempting to her to have Octavian taken the other blonde's place in power. It wasn't reasonable, but Reyna was starting to get desperate.
~xxx~
She made her way to the snack bar by the lake. The rentals were open for today. Renting for an hour and a half was acceptable. Clearing her head was the only objective that she had. Besides, she had made sure that all papers didn't need to be due tomorrow.
After getting help putting the boat on the bank of the lake, she pushed it into the water and stepped onto the wooden canoe. Two paddles were strewn across the floor of the boat. The daughter of war grabbed one and stared at the unoccupied one. She would have to use it too.
If Jason were here, they'd be talking about their duties as along with an occasional joke that he threw in. Missing that wasn't a surprise. Octavian was always serious and wanted to wage war with everything. (He was about as useless as a faun. His aim was so questionable, that she sometimes rolled her eyes during senate meetings, but she knew she was insecure during that year, the son of Jupiter wasn't next to her. They could have joked about everything together.) Percy was nice an all, but he had a Greek girlfriend.
Even with everything else that should have been on her mind, it went automatically back to Jason Grace. He shouldn't have that effect on her, at least not anymore. She ran her fingers through the bottom of her braid.
As she rowed the boat, she inhaled the sweet New Rome air. The trees circled the lake. Willows swept in the wind as ducks trailed in the water in line, one after another.
She saw couples strolling through the park as well as little kids with their parents. Along the paved track for walkers and joggers, young and old looked happy. A little girl that reminded her of little Julia ran into her mom's arms. She smiled. Two friends, a girl and a guy both about fourteen were quarreling. This she laughed at. From the looks of their behavior, one day they would be going out.
Reyna's medium complexion seemed to darken. She could almost picture it on her face: knit eyebrows and and brooding look. She laughed at herself for thinking everything could happen so easily. She was one to be like that.
When she turned her head back to the fourteen year olds, another girl ran towards the boy and kissed him on the cheek. The first girl frowned, but she quickly plastered on a smile. It seemed that her eyes screamed "if you only knew". Reyna guessed that she knew that feeling herself.
Strands of her dark brown hair blew in the wind and she just kept on rowing. The farther away that I am from the shore, the safer I would be, she thought. Reyna knew that it wasn't possible, but for now, it would. She didn't want to see anyone. Yesterday crashed down on her again for the uncountable time in eons. She didn't want it to repeat again on this day.
All she needed was a classic, luxurious, Roman bath and a talk with Hylla and maybe Gwen. Spending time away from the urban-like life in the city had made her feel much better already.
She could cross over that bridge, she knew it. But there was something that could factor in at the very last moment if it would, Jason himself.
~xxx~
The bath house had cleared up most of Reyna's thoughts. It was where she abandoned herself from distress and had became a method for her to soothe herself from stress.
Warmth filled her on the inside. The steam-filled halls weren't pressing into her, but rather, it seemed to soak into her skin. Although it was the middle of the summer, none of the legionaries could go without their luxuries, Reyna inclusive. The meals were another benefit.
The supposedly happy thing made her face grim. There she should see Jason; she wasn't looking forward to it as she once would have. As well as she could manage, she put on a seemingly nonchalant attitude.
Reyna had walked to the Gardens of Bacchus. She saw Julia near the Pomerian Line with Terminus who was his grumpy self, scolding some poor camper. When she walked by, the god lightened up to her. I guess even he heard about it, Reyna thought. This was upsetting to her seeing that her impression on the legion at the moment wasn't it's best.
At that, she shifted her eyes back to the grape vines in front of her. It snaked through the structures on which they were growing onto.
The expanse of the whole city within a city had been laid right before her. Streams of golden California sunset channeled into her vision.
There wasn't much for her to do. She had done her work for the day. When she was about to turn and leave, a flash of familiar blonde hair caught her eye.
She froze mid-way from her turn. Reyna didn't want to look up. She didn't want to see his lighting blue eyes. She wanted nothing to do with him anymore.
"Jason," she said under her breath as if she had just recalled what his name was. With that word, a thousand emotions hit her in waves.
"I'm sorry," he said. And it was there that she realized he was panting. "I'm so sorry," he started, "I really would like to talk to you about everything right now, but seeing as I just ran up the hill, I don't know how much longer I can talk like this." Reyna wanted to laugh at his foolishness, but she didn't.
"Care to sit?" Reyna asked, pointing her chin to a bench that was in the Gardens.
"That'd be nice," he responded giving her one of his smiles which she had told him could have landed him a modeling contract (which Jason said he would decline).
"So..." Reyna let the prompt hang in the air.
"So. Um... yeah." Nice choice of words, Reyna thought trying not to snicker at the usual near perfect skill of using the English language -and sometimes Latin- that he had.
"You ran up the hill for a reason didn't you?" Reyna asked.
"Yeah. I just wanted to tell you," he took a deep breath before looking her in the eyes, "I'm sorry for not being there when you needed me. I'm sorry for making you run Camp by yourself. I'm sorry for making you deal with Octavian while I wasn't here. I'm sorry that you had to deal with everything."
She looked down at her purple robes and sighed. She had been planning for this moment ever since he left. There were so many various things she could've said. Instead, Reyna chose not to.
Reyna felt Jason's hand on her chin. She whipped her head around to face him, and right there he cupped her cheek and leaned in. Out of frustration, she was slack and frozen.
She wasn't that little girl, Reyna Avila RamÃrez-Arellano, anymore. She had left her in Puerto Rico and Circe's Island. She had went to the Wolf House and made it to the Cadellot Tunnel.
However, as he walked away, she felt the ghost of a kiss on her lips.
Reyna stood up from the bench and her brown eyes just followed his receding figure until she had to squint.
Author's Note:
I really liked this story.
Well what do you think about it? Tell me, constructive criticism is acceptable. Flames are too.
Jeyna or Jasper/Jiper? Cross that out, I must be an idiot to ask that. If you read this all the way to the end, you must be a Jeyna shipper. If you aren't tell me in a review if you like Reyna a bit more now.
LEAVE A REVIEW AT MY DOOR STEP! JK, DON'T DO THAT... I WOULD PROBABLY FREAK OUT.
Tomorrow's HALLOWEEN! I have a Spanish test to study for. That royally sucks. What are you going to be for Halloween?
Thank the gods, Rick Riordan didn't pull another troll on us to end in a cliffhanger for The House of Hades. My friend loves Percico as a brotherly ship... Whatevs. Caleo FTW! Percabeth isn't in Tartarus anymore!
Disclaimer: If I'm writing fanfiction, am I the author of PJO or HoO? I thought so. Jeyna would've been canon already.
Signed,
Ivy
Date Completed: October 30, 2013