It is not often that Charon misses out on his Solstice bonus. But when he does, he holds a grudge.

Call him greedy. Call him petty. Whatever you'd like! Charon's no mortal. He's not worried about passing through Judgement one day.

No, his only worry is being able to afford his yearly splurge at the New Years, New York, New Me! 3 Piece Suit Sale at his favorite tailor, and Hades cutting his bonuses strongly impacts his closet's population.

So, one of Poseidon's brats snuck down to the palace on Charon's watch. Five years ago. The brat also ended up finding and returning Hades' helm, so Charon really thinks that all of that situation should be Styx water under the bridge by now.

But, no. This was the fifth year in a row that Hades refused him his Winter Solstice bonus. And, honestly, he's about had it. Charon had been ready to march down to the palace and turn in his resignation.

'Here!' He'd planned to bark at the king. 'Even oblivion is better than the clearance rack!'

Just as he'd put the finishing touches on the draft of it, though...a coin had clinked into the jar on his desk.

Charon had frozen in place, hand still clutching his ballpoint pen, white eyes still fixed on the words 'two week notice.'

Surely, he was hearing things. There must have been a breeze blowing in from the studio doors. Surely, it couldn't be that-

Clink.

Slowly, reverently, Charon's gaze had rested onto the tip jar on his podium.

The sight of it, dusty and unused, unpolished for centuries, suddenly housing two gleaming golden drachmas had nearly made him weep. Charon had frantically fished the two coins from the bottom of the cup, mouth ajar. They were real. Slightly heavy. Cool to the touch and ridged with carved laurels.

Mortals had not burnt him an offering in centuries. Millennia. It had been so long that Charon nearly forgot that his tip jar even existed. He still does not remember what mortal food smells like.

And yet, there they were. Two little drachmas. Recently produced by Hades' forge. The year etched into them passed less than a decade before.

He had spent the next two days staring silently at the jar. Lines of the dead passed by without Charon's notice. He gave them halfhearted waves down into the Underworld. Percy Jackson could have strut right past the god again, and he'd have been none the wiser. Every scrap of his attention was glued to the empty glass jar on his lectern, his dark skinned fist cradling his two new coins like they were the most precious gems to ever be mined.

And then, forty seven hours, eleven minutes, and nine seconds later-

Clink. Clink.

It was uncanny.

Every two days - between forty two and fifty hours apart - two more coins would fall into his jar.

Clink. Clink.

Charon's smile began to grow. It became fixed across his cheeks as he waited, eyes trained on his jar, right hand carelessly waving on his line of dead to continue their journey to the beyond. He would anticipate it every time, and yet every time the sound of those two little coins-

Clink. Clink.

It really would just make him giddy.

The pattern continued. Days turned to weeks. Weeks turned to months, and Charon found himself swiping through handfuls of drachmas, beaming, bouncing happily on the balls of his feet and wondering just what mortal he had to thank for this sudden blessing to his wardrobe.

He no longer needed to wait for the New Year sale. Charon was buying his suits at full price.

It made no sense to him. Humans believe the Olympians to be a fairytale. Charon, to them, is nothing more than a spooky Halloween decoration. It crossed his mind that it could be a demigod making the offerings - Nico di Angelo does play a mean hand of poker - but what rascals the other immortals have running around topside hardly give the minor gods (Pfft. Minor.) a second thought. Charon himself is not permitted to sire offspring (always read the fine print when completing onboarding paperwork), so that source seemed rather doubtful. Perhaps Hades just felt guilty about Charon's recent trip to the secondhand suit shop on Olympus. He is the god of Wealth, after all.

And yet, Charon has never known his boss to be so consistent with his rare acts of kindness.

Clink. Clink.

December.

Clink. Clink.

January.

Clink. Clink.

March.

Clink. Clink.

April.

Again and again, Charon's coin purse filled up. He danced across his recording studio in fine leather dress shoes. He polished the buttons on his Versace dress shirt. The coins continued to fall into his tip jar, and Charon's life continued to get better and better.

And then, one morning, they stopped.

Charon hadn't noticed for hours. He'd become so used to his mortal's consistency that staring at the tip jar awaiting his offering had gotten old months before. That day, he'd barely even glanced at his jar, so sure that soon enough, he'd hear the telltale clink clink of his next pinstripe tie walking itself to his closet.

But he didn't. Oh. Well, okay.

After months of such loyalty, Charon could excuse a bit of tardiness. Perhaps his mortal had a busy few days. Perhaps his worship simply slipped their mind. Rude, but excusable just as long as it does not happen again. Surely, the offering was just running a little late. It would arrive any moment.

That is what Charon had told the churning in his stomach as he got comfortable in front of his glass jar and waited.

Three hours, sixteen minutes, and eleven seconds later, the bell above DOA's front door rang open and a soul stepped inside.

Commonplace. Charon sees thousands of souls a day. There was no reason for him to even offer this one a glance.

But he did, because he felt a spark on his fingertips which were clutching his most recent offering. Charon felt the drachmas in his hand turn as frigid as Stygian Ice as he realized what had happened.

He had heard mutterings from the other minor deities, but he'd hardly believed them. There was a legacy of Apollo claiming the title of pontifex maximus only months ago, but he'd never lifted a finger to actually do Charon or the others any good. He'd watched that boy's soul be carted off to Asphodel recently and had stopped paying attention to chatter about priests and newly constructed shrines.

Watching Jason Grace's soul, white button-down dripping water, golden spearhead poking out of his sternum, take its place at the back of the line, Charon had realized the extent of his misunderstanding.

Pontifex maximus.

He'd looked down at the coins in his palm. Even from there, all the way at the front, Charon could sense that the boy had no money on him when he died. Silly mortal. Demigods should know better than to go into battle without their fare.

Fondly, sadly, disappointedly sighing, Charon had pushed away thoughts of silk cravats and dropped Jason Grace's final offering into the toll box. Reluctantly, almost irritably, he had marked out the boy's name and beckoned his soul up through the line of empty-eyed apparitions.

After all of the blazers the boy had funded over the previous months, Charon figured the least he could do was expedite his trip to Elysium. If the boy couldn't be rewarded in life, he may as well be treated to a private boat ride across the Styx.


"Jason Grace: born July 1st, 1994 to Beryl Grace in Pasadena's General Health Center."

Jason Grace. Born July 1st. 1994. Beryl Grace. California.

The shape blinks its dry eyes, processing these words. Is that what-who it is?

"Trained under Lupa the Wolf Mother from ages two to four years. Following his arrival by foot to Camp Jupiter, he served as underling, centurion, and praetor consecutively."

'Praetor Grace,' The girl giggles. 'Don't you know I'm some kind of hero?'

It feels dazed. It listens attentively as the man reminds it who it's meant to be.

"At age fourteen, he slayed the titan Krios in single combat. At fifteen years of age, Mr. Grace embarked on the Quest of Seven and thus played a crucial role in the defeat of Gaea the Earth Mother."

Her forehead against his is bracing. 'We have to go save the world now,' He tells her. And he knows that he can. Because he's never again letting his world feel the way that she does right now.

"The boy met his fate at age sixteen in Stearns Wharf off the coast of California by way of exsanguination following a fatal spear wound to the upper torso."

'We'll just keep each other from dying.' Piper's pinky is soft and warm when it links with his. 'Okay?'

"Death was delivered by former Emperor of Rome, Gaius Julius Caesar Augustus Germanicus, aka: Caligula, whilst Mr. Grace stood in defense of the fallen Lord Apollo."

The snapping of a scroll sliding shut. The void...the expressionless shape of a boy...Jason Grace teaches himself how to open his eyes. The air around him is stale and buzzes strangely against his skin. It feels wrong to him. His body feels like it's used to having more control over the atmosphere than it currently does.

He feels stagnant. Powerless.

Under the green, Greek fire sconces, the young soul waits for the three figures before him to come into focus.

"I move to nominate the boy for Elysium," drones that same male voice. The man sounds older and creaky. "Do I have a second?"

"Seconded," agrees the voice of a young woman. She has a strong French accent. The figure in the center raises her hand. Blinking rapidly, the gleam of silver armor greets Jason's weak, ghostly vision. "Is he eligible for the Isles of the Blessed?"

Rustling. The figure on the left shakes its head, flipping through a stack of parchment. "No." This one is male too. Middle aged. "His soul is original. No rebirths are on file."

"Very well," nods the woman. "Isaac, what is your vote?"

"Put him wherever. I don't really care."

"You never care!"

"Well, for every good soul, there is-"

"An equal and opposite one," The woman groans. "Yes, we know. You only say as much a million times every day."

"Mademoiselle d'Arc is correct," The older man sighs. "You must give a ruling, Sir Isaac. It is why our souls were selected by King Hades."

"Fine. Elysium, then. Next!"

A compulsion takes over Jason's body (no...not body...soul), steering him from the center of the pavilion towards a golden threshold. On his way, he passes a red doorway. From it, a heat like a furnace is pouring out, laced with the screams of the damned. He passes a blue archway. The other side of it is silent. Calm. A cool breeze blows right through Jason.

The threshold he's approaching is made of Imperial Gold. The ornate tiles leading to it are lined with Celestial Bronze. Jason can see names carved into every one of them, the etchings so cramped that each one is smaller than an ant. He can smell warm brownies wafting towards him, freshly baked. Honeyed wine, pizza, and...and coconut.

One breath in, one step onto the marble tiles before the door, and Jason's confusion washes away. His anxiety disappears. He closes his eyes and breathes out, and that strange buzzing he's been feeling turns into a comforting hum.

He's ready to go to sleep. He's been ready for years now. Gods...He can already feel how comfortable he's going to be.

One step inside of those gates, and Jason Grace can finally rest.

The murmur of another judgement is beginning behind him. Lighter than air, chasing the sounds of singing and laughter, Jason lifts his foot and moves forward.

He's well acquainted with lightning. The jolting, painful, blinding sensation of a thunderbolt is exactly what burns right through him the moment that his toes leave the floor.


"Hey, buddy. What's your name, hon'?"

Jason pants, tiny hands gripping his miniature golden sword, holding it out in between himself and the teen girl in the purple cloak. She lowers down to one knee, hands up placatingly, and Jason eyes the guy behind her. He's also in a purple cloak. He gives Jason a smile and sheathes his weapon, raising his palms as well.

"Did you get here all by yourself?" The guy asks.

Sniffling, bloody fingernails picking at the pommel of his sword, Jason nods.

The girl's face spasms. She glances behind him with a frown. "How old are you, sweetheart?"

Jason gulps. He hasn't spoken in a long time. He isn't sure he remembers the word for the right number, so he lets go of his sword with one hand and holds up the correct amount of fingers.

"Four?!" yelps the guy.

Jason flinches back. The girl glares at her partner and gets even lower to the ground.

Mother Lupa taught him that that means you mean no harm. Jason wonders to himself if she taught that to this girl too.

"You're very brave to have made it all the way here," She tells him kindly. "Are you hungry?"

Food means safety. Food means you're one of the pack.

Hesitantly, Jason nods.

She grins at him and points with a thumb to the concrete tunnel behind her. "Let's get you into camp, then. We'll take good care of you. And you can tell us how you got that awesome sword."


"I knew it!" Reyna shrieks, slamming into Jason at full speed.

Sweaty, aching, covered in dirt and bleeding from his nose, Jason laughs and lifts her off her feet from the strength of their hug. His men cheer around them and bang their swords on their shields in celebration.

The other unit is scowling, all thoroughly beaten and glaring across the practice battlefield as Jason's team hoots and hollers, lifting their ten year old centurion into the air.

"This is our first win in a century!" Dakota laughs, KoolAid totally forgotten for the moment.

"I knew we could do it!" Reyna cheers again. On the shoulders of their squadron, the new recruit reaches out for Jason's hand. Laughing, grinning around the blood pouring from his nose, Jason links their fingers together and raises their arms in celebration.


"I'm tired of just taking his shit!"

"It's just Octavian," Jason sighs, scratching his signature onto his squad's paperwork. "There's no point in letting him rile you up."

Reyna scowls down at her own clipboard, shaking her head as she checks boxes on the sheets as well. "I don't understand how anyone in the Legion could listen to him talk and actually think he's right."

Jason shrugs. "Well, Apollo does speak to him. Even if Octavian's...peculiar...that does count for something."

Bewildered, his friend turns to him with wide eyes. "Is it even possible to make you angry? You're so...diplomatic."

Jason rolls his eyes. "If I picked a fight with everyone I disagreed with, I'd never step out of the colosseum. And, besides, he's still one of us. Demigods need to have each other's backs."

He continues filling out their duty forms. After a moment of silence, Jason realizes Reyna is staring over at him still. He turns to her awkwardly and raises an eyebrow.

"What?"

She jumps in surprise at his question. Her cheeks flush a bit pink. Her orderly composure is quickly regained, though, and she gives him a weak smile. "You should be praetor one day."

Praetor.

Jason bites the scar on his lip. He sighs, chest heavy, and looks back down at his name scrawled across the page. "I probably will be," He mutters.

The bitterness of his tone drives his companion into silence. They finish their paperwork without another word.


The sea monster's ink has made the water around Jason taste like rotten gasoline.

He coughs it out, swiping the brown liquid from his eyes just in time to spot the tentacle hurtling his way. Jason shoots out of the surf to hover fifty feet in the air. He breathes heavily, staring down at his opponent.

First Hercules and now Jason. This thing must have a serious hatred for sons of the Sky.

The serpent-like monster squeals a horrible screech into the air, slapping the water with its two long, tentacled arms. The wave it sends up must be 80 feet tall. Jason cringes as its shadow swallows him up and gets ready to hold his breath.


"Are you ready?"

Hands folded in front of him, bent over his knees where he's perched on a park bench, Jason glances over at his approaching colleague. "No."

Reyna chuckles. She sheathes her sword, wiping the sweat from her forehead onto her gloved hand, and sits down next to him.

Jason wishes her warmth beside him could help him to relax. Unfortunately, it's 90 degrees out here, and every reminder that Reyna's life, all of their lives are in his hands just causes Jason's knee to bounce quicker and quicker with his rising anxiety.

They're all counting on him. He needs to be perfect today.

"You know," Reyna begins. Jason looks over at her. Her back is perfectly straight, her chin high. She looks far more official than Jason does. Far stronger. He knows that she is. Jason might have been born for this role, but Reyna has earned it. "I would have died that day in the rain."

Jason scans her face. No emotion is betrayed by her mask of calm. His once expressive friend has hardened over the years. Blank faced or not, though, Reyna reaches for his hands. Gently, she unwinds them from one another and laces their fingers together.

The corner of her mouth quirks up, and Jason gives her a puzzled glance.

"I can protect you this time. You know, since I owe you one."

Jason snorts. He squeezes her hand, shaking his head, and stands up from the bench.

"How hard could one titan hit?"

"Krios doesn't stand a chance." Reyna smirks. "Just make sure you don't get distracted, loverboy."


Jason's knees hit the marble.

The Judgement Pavilion goes silent. He hardly notices past the raging current tearing through his brain. Jason cries out, hands over his eyes, and presses his forehead to the cold tiles as images continue to assault him.

The banquet tables before training.

The barren room he grew up in.

Reyna's crooked face when something disgusts her.

It's all coming back to him. All at once. All at the same time that he's getting images that feel...more familiar to him. More recent.

A boy with curly brown hair and a devilish grin handing him a pack of red candies.

A young girl with golden eyes. He's correcting her posture with her blade.

A couple, one blonde and one brunette, speaking in soft tones on the edge of a ship. The boy's sea green eyes are alight with affection as he watches the girl under his arm speak.

Jason doesn't know what's happening to him. He feels like he's dying. Dying more than he was when he died. He's being torn apart and stitched back together into patterns that his body doesn't understand. The voices behind him sound urgent now. Confused and alarmed. Jason pays them no attention, grasping his temples and letting out a pained shout.

It's electric, this pain coursing through him. It's like nothing he's ever experienced. And he would know now. Because he remembers.

He remembers too much. It starts to overwhelm him. He wants to block it all out.

And then, it stops.

Like someone pressed pause on a television remote, all the images behind Jason's eyes screech to a halt. They fade into the back of his mind, settling into their distinct placements, fitting his memories together like puzzle pieces.

He's Jason. That's right. He's Jason, and he died today.

He opens his eyes and stares down at the names between his knees.

'Are you alright, son?"

He breathes in deeply. A hand comes to rest on his back. Jason doesn't actually feel it. Only the strange drop in temperature between his shoulder blades.

"What's happened, child?" asks the French girl.

The old man from before tuts impatiently. "Joan! We still have four hundred more judgements to do before lunch. Send the boy off to Elysium already."

The girl sighs. Her hand retreats from Jason's back. "This is why Hades was going to put you in the Fields of Punishment, Jefferson."

"That was poppycock, and you know it!"

They're returning to their next judgement. Elysium is calling him. The Underworld is moving on, but Jason is still on his knees.

The sound of Piper's laugh.

Resting his chin on Nico's head, holding the boy as carefully as possible during this rare moment of affection.

Meg's small hand slapping his as they grin at one another, getting ready for the fight of a lifetime.

A fight which Jason would never return from.

Hands pressed to his heart, shins against the marble, he gasps for breaths that he doesn't truly need anymore.

He'd call it ironic, but it isn't. It's exactly what he should have expected for himself.

Jason Grace would be the exact kind of person to never know who he truly is until he's sitting at the threshold of Elysium.

It isn't just the years that Juno stole from him. It's everything.

Letting Percy pull him to his feet after a defeat in the arena.

Frank teaching him how to string a bow and arrow properly.

Annabeth and Hazel listening ravenously as Jason explains the different water textures of cloud types.

Carrying Leo to bed after he fell asleep with one hand on his mysterious guidance system project.

He knows.

He knows who he is.

Jason...remembers.

'You think this is funny?! You think putting your life at risk is funny? You think-'

'You've got to get up. She's counting on you.'

He shoots to his feet.

The conversations in the pavilion stutter again. He pays them no mind. His eyes leave Elysium's gates. They swipe past the frigid doors to Asphodel. They skip over the hellish portal to Punishment. They move efficiently until they find what they're looking for.

Until they come to rest on Hades' palace in the distance.

"Would someone figure out what is going on with that soul?" Isaac Newton sighs. "It's holding up the line."

"I'll handle it," mutters Jefferson.

If he starts pursuing Jason, he doesn't do so quickly enough. Jason's ghostly feet are already moving, already pushing through the lines of the dead as he quickens his pace, eyes trained on the black castle floating over the hill.

There's heat blooming in his chest. It feels scorching compared to the iciness of the souls he's shoving from his path. It's getting hotter by the second, and Jason can feel the beginnings of frantic tears in his eyes.

He has to get there.

He has to fix this.

He has to be alive again, because-

'Do you think we'll ever get to meet in person?'

Jason looks over at the girl laying across his bed beside him. Even translucent and halfway through a jaw-popping yawn, the sight of her makes little harpies spin a tornado inside his stomach.

'I hope so,' He answers her.

He has to be alive again. He has to get to Hades.

Jason has so rarely broken rules in his life, but he's never wanted anything like he wants to be alive again. He needs to be alive. He wants it so desperately.

So, when a cold hand coils around his upper arm, Jason doesn't consider what might happen to souls that get caught in the crossfire. He doesn't consider whether what he's doing is moral. Jason doesn't give any thought to whether or not he's being a good person.

He just lets lightning strike from the bottom of his hemorrhaging heart and cuts down everything in between himself and the life that he finally recalls.


Maybe the scene could have been more romantic. Jason could have stormed into Hades' palace throne room expecting her to be sitting behind the door. He could have taken a moment of reflection to wonder why the heat in his chest has been so forcibly tugging him towards the King of the Underworld.

For once, though, Jason was being selfish. He didn't look beyond his own desperation to get back to her and wonder what she might have done after watching him bleed out on that ship.

So, he isn't prepared when he tosses Thomas Jefferson's powder wig down at Hades' feet, and Juliette is sitting there too.

Jason Grace during life would have dropped down to kneel before the god, showing the respect he was raised to provide when being so bold as to request anything of Olympus. He would have been horrified at the idea that Jason might be intruding on Hades, arriving without permission.

Jason Grace in death ignores the man entirely.

This meeting with Rosa is like none he's had before.

She's gaping at him, slumped on her knees in front of the black throne of Stygia. Her dress is ragged, her hair is tangled, she's bleeding, she's crying, there are Fury scales stuck like splinters in her skin, and Jason has never seen anything more beautiful in his life or in his death.

The day that they met plays before his eyes. That night in the rain, she'd reminded Jason how to fight. She'd been the reason that he lifted his sword again and faced that cyclops.

He'd been in love with her before he ever knew her name. He'd been in love with her before he'd touched her hand. Before he'd kissed her. Before he'd ever seen her face to face.

And he remembers that now.

She's his best friend. His family. She has been since they were twelve years old and giggling well into the night over stories they'd never told another soul. She knows him backwards and forwards. He knows her inside and out. He could draw the pattern of the freckles across her cheeks by memory. He could pick out the taste of her lips blindfolded. Jason would die a hundred times over - a million times over - if it meant he'd get to kiss her again like he does right now.

Hades doesn't even exist anymore. The gods don't exist. Death doesn't exist.

There's only life, lightning, mountain laurels, and the feeling of Juliette's hands gripping his cheeks as she sobs, lips slotted between his.

She's warm. She's always been warm when he was cold. She's always been the comfort to his loneliness, the sweet smelling dream to his nightmares.

Jason doesn't remember ever throwing himself across the throne room to pull her in against him, but he does remember that day at the canyon.

She's alive.

She's alive.

She's alive, and she's here.

She tastes like seawater and blood, and this is going to be the first day of Jason's new life. It might be hours before they pull away. It might be days, years, centuries, seconds. When they do, though, Hades doesn't get a single glance.

Jason speaks to him, yes. But his eyes stay on the green ones before him. His hands trace the scratches on her face. His thumbs swipe away her tears before they can salt her lips. He speaks to the King of the Underworld, but he doesn't have a request.

Jason makes a demand.

"Bring me back," He orders. "I know that you know how."