A/N: 20 chapters and 3 months later, here we are! The last chapter!
A/N A/N: for those who care (and I do, because I take Latin) 'ave' is pronounced 'ah-way' and 'praetor' is 'prae-tohr'.
The air was getting crisper and the sun was shorter and shorter lived. Pumpkins adorned windows and front steps, those with faces showing where families with children lived, and those remaining intact denoting the homes of elderly couples who saw no reason to deface the fruits. There were hay bales on street corners and orange and brown ribbons on the lamp posts, mixing unpleasantly with the purple and gold of the Roman banners.
Reyna watched children talking excitedly about what they'd dress up as for Halloween, trying not to grin at their indecision. She had dressed up for ten Halloweens. The only ones she could remember, she had been a skeleton, a nurse, a witch, a cat (Hylla had repeatedly sworn that no one had ever looked cuter than seven-year-old Reyna in a cat costume), and a pilot. The last one had been for her father, who had flown planes in the Air Force before being deployed in Iraq. He had not seemed to notice; but then, she remembered, even then he had been beginning to slip away from them. Not physically, but mentally.
She hadn't dressed up for Halloween since coming to Camp Jupiter. Her first year, she had been brand new. The second year, she had been on a quest with Jason to Charleston, and her third year, she had been campaigning for praetorship. Now that she had secured it, however, she had no reason not to look like a fool on Halloween. And she really didn't want to.
"Reyna! Hey, Rey!"
Reyna paused at the Pomerian Line as Jason came sprinting down the steps of the Senate House and fell in with her. The blonde-haired blue-eyed son of Jupiter hadn't changed much in the three odd years she'd known him. He was taller now, of course, and his jaw was more defined, and he had a mischievous sparkle in his eyes, and his hair shone gold— but Reyna didn't really notice all that. She didn't. Not at all. Never. Mostly.
"So," Jason said, fixing his purple cloak, which had been blown askew in his mad dash to reach his co-praetor, "D'you know what you're gonna dress up as yet?"
"What a presumptive opening," Reyna remarked, continuing her walk back to the principia, Jason beside her. A group of girls probably about ten years old pointed at the two of them and giggled. She pretended not to notice. Jason was perfectly oblivious.
"What, you aren't going to dress up?" He looked horrified. "That's the whole fun of it! They don't give you candy if you don't dress up!"
"I am not going to waste an evening intruding in other people's houses to beg for candy," Reyna established firmly. "Besides, no one hands out jellybeans."
"Reyna, they ask you to take candy from them," Jason pointed out. "You can go with Bobby and Gwen and me, Dakota's coming, probably Alice, too—"
"I am not dealing with Dakota after three hours of pure sugar consumption," Reyna argued. She noticed with a kind of satisfactory pleasure that Jason suddenly looked rather hesitant about his plans. He clearly hadn't thought them through.
"I'm going to be Superman," He said, ignoring Reyna's disapproving scoff. "You could be, like, um… Okay, I can't think of any woman superheroes right now, but you could get away with anything. Seriously."
"I dress up for my job every day," Reyna pointed out sardonically, gesturing to her armor and cloak.
"Yeah, but this is dressing up that's fun and without fifty pounds of metal… Oh, you could be a princess! Or… not…" Jason finished feebly as Reyna sent him a look to freeze him in place. "What about a pirate?"
"I've met pirates, they're barbaric."
"But you could get, like, an eyepatch and a stuffed parrot… no? Okay, how about a soldier or something?"
"Jason, if I went as a soldier it'd end up being some skimpy thing with a neck that ended at my waist and a skirt three inches long. That's scandalous for a normal person, never mind a leader with a reputation to uphold." They reached the entrance to the fort and nodded to the two centurions from the third and second cohort who were on their way out.
"If you wanted something scandalous, dress up as a Greek," Jason suggested, grinning broadly like this was some extremely clever comment. "Octavian would mount your head on a pike, but I'd love to see his face first…"
"I had to warn some girl yesterday about dressing up as a ghost," Reyna remarked. "I can't see the Lares being too thrilled about that. There's always someone, though."
Jason nodded in agreement. He continued throwing out costume ideas until they came to the doors of the principia, where he was distracted by something else.
"Wha's that?" he asked, pointing to the slim white envelope Reyna had begun to carefully open. "I didn't get any mail." The last part was indignant.
"It's from my sister, you dolt. Not everything comes in equal shares." Reyna scanned the brief letter (shockingly brief, seeing as she and Hylla hadn't spoken in over ten months). Hylla was doing well as queen. She hoped Reyna was okay. Blah blah blah. She had enclosed a check for—and Reyna couldn't believe it— an absurdly large amount of money that Reyna could barely begin to fathom. Being queen paid well, apparently.
There was a short paragraph that was almost a post-script; I've been thinking about what you said and decided that you were right. This is half of what that car cost. Cassidy what's-her-face. You should cough up and pay the other half.
Reyna rummaged in her desk drawer with Jason watching intently and discovered her hitherto-unused checkbook. It had taken her three years, but Hylla had come to her senses. Cass would get repaid in full.
Reyna realized that Jason was leaning across the desk to see what the check was for. She stashed it away quickly. "Excuse me!"
Jason threw up his hands in defeat. "Okay, okay! I'll… go get us some coffee or something. It looks like it'll be a long night, so we should start getting hyper now." He gave the stacks of paper on their desk a meaningful look.
Reyna shook her head. "No you won't. The last time you 'went out for coffee', you were gone two hours and I had to track you down and drag your sorry butt back here."
"It won't happen again."
"Hm."
"It won't!"
"Hm."
"I swear."
"Hm."
"Come on, Rey, I can't do all this without a coffee!" Jason gave her his signature puppy-dog-eyed look that made Reyna melt just enough.
"Okay," she conceded. When Jason proceeded to jump up and do a victory dance, she added, "But if you disappear on me again, I'll have to assume that you've defected to join the Greeks."
Jason laughed and, spinning on his heel, hurried out of the principia. Reyna watched her co-praetor go before bending over her checkbook again.
It would be eight months before she saw him again.
Regina Aeterna means 'Eternal Queen' in Latin
Thank you so much if you stuck with me until the end! Thank you to everyone who reviewed. Every time I got one, it made my day. Thanks also if you favorited my story. This is my first multi-chapter fic and I think it went pretty well. Because I didn't do a disclaimer in the beginning... I think... well, if you thought I owned this, you should know better. I own nothing but this computer.
Signing out for now,
ThereBeDragons17