Home Life

Well, as you can see, here it is! The first chapter of a new story, featuring Jason! Instead of an OP Percy Jackson, that's arguably an OC that happens to have the name of Percy Jackson.

This will be my take on Jason's origin story that Rick never gave us, and may never give us, just like Piper's Untold Story was my take on the time between Burning Maze and Tower of Nero. Obviously, this one will be more constrained by canon than my other stories, but I give no promises on how canon. There are five books of Jason lore, and I truthfully don't know if I'm going to go back and reread the entirety of Heroes of Olympus so I have all the snippets and most minute of details regarding Jason's life from all the passing references for the sake of a fanfiction.

Now, that being said, I do recall the Trojan sea monster and Jason saying he defeated Krios with his bare hands, so those will be included in future chapters, as will be Jason and Reyna going on their quest to Charlestown together. And also that whole relationship, exploring how Jason never returned Reyna's romantic feelings, and didn't know how to let her down gently.

Along with a bunch of other things. Lots of fun stuff in this story!

Disclaimer: I don't own PJO

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Nine-year-old Thalia Grace thought her head was going to split open. She was trying to do her math homework from her third grade class, and even with her door shut, and pretty sure with Jason's door shut, too, she could still hear her baby brother bawling his little eyeballs out. The worst part is that she knew that cry, too. Call it big sister instincts, or call it paying attention, but Thalia knew that particular cry of Jason's meant his diaper was dirty, and he wanted a diaper change.

The thing was, he'd been crying and screaming for almost two hours now, meaning their mother hadn't bothered to go in there and change him, either. As for Thalia, it wasn't that she refused to change her brother's diapers, but it was one of those things: that job was supposed to be chiefly her mother's, and Thalia was about as enthused about wiping Jason's butt as she was wiping her own. I.e. not at all, especially when his butt was covered in poop.

Thalia only changed diapers when she had to, and unfortunately, it seemed this was one of those times.

Just what was that bitch doing, anyway?

Yes, Thalia knew what the word "bitch" meant, even at nine, and she knew how to correctly apply it to her mother.

Sighing to herself, Thalia got up and left her bedroom. Jason's cries got louder, but Thalia ignored him in favor of going down the hall. Rounding the corner to the living room, Thalia found her mother, and she cringed in disgust.

Beryl Grace was passed out on the couch, wearing a t-shirt depicting an Iron Maiden album cover, and blue underwear, sitting in the unceremonious position of her legs spread wide. There were beer bottles collected on the coffee table in front of her, a mostly empty beer bottle in her right hand that was slumped on the couch, beer having spilled out of the bottle and onto the cushion. Beryl had puked on herself, vomit running down her chin and splattered on her shirt, and to make things even worse, the grown woman had pissed herself. Given her spread legs, Thalia could see her mother's darkened panties and the huge wet spot on the cushion she was sitting on.

Thalia could smell it, too, the awful stench of stale pee mixed with bile and beer. There was no telling when Beryl had passed out, or in what exact order she had soiled herself. Did she pee, then puke, then pass out? Did she puke, pass out, then pee? Thalia didn't know. She didn't want to know.

Her anger at her deadbeat mother reached a level so high that her electric blue eyes seemed to glow, and the TV screen, playing an episode of some old sitcom, flickered wildly. Seeing the TV freak out was enough to make Thalia get a grip on herself. She'd gotten expelled from her second grade school because during an argument with the principal over whether she did a bad thing by beating up the girls picking on another girl, the light fixture above them somehow exploded, showering the man with hot glass shrapnel.

Though literally nothing could be proven in relation to Thalia somehow causing the lights to overload and explode, the principal still used the situation as a whole to have the girl expelled.

As amusing as it would be, Thalia didn't want to explode the TV on her mother. It would probably lead to more problems than it would solve, such as an electrical fire, which was how Thalia got kicked out of her second daycare. Just last week, actually.

With a disgusted grunt directed at her mother, passed out and pissed all over, Thalia went back down the hall and braced herself in front of Jason's nursery door, getting mentally ready for a nightmare of a diaper. Taking a big, big deep breath, and beginning to breathe only through her mouth, she entered the chamber of her crying brother.

Even breathing through her mouth as best she could, the stench still wafted up Thalia's nose. Of course, the reason for the stench became all the more evident when Thalia saw the extent of the damage.

Jason, at two years and three months of age, was already proving to be an intelligent and resourceful little boy, and also independent. It appeared that he had decided to take matters into his own hands (in the most horrific way possible in Thalia's opinion) in the form of changing his own diaper since no one had come along to do it for him.

Which would have been nice, if Jason had a clean diaper to put back on, or something to wipe his butt with. As it presently stood, Jason had taken off his diaper, something he'd done before in similar situations, setting it aside in his crib, leaving the mound of filth exposed to the air, and then tried to clean his bottom with his bare hands, only to quickly realize how much of a bad idea that was.

To Thalia's slight relief, though, it didn't look like Jason had tried cleaning his hands off anymore. She didn't see any poop on the blankets, or on his little t-shirt, or anywhere in the crib, and thankfully not anywhere on his face.

She had to give Jason a bit of credit. She was confident that, no matter the circumstances or the situation, she would never wipe her butt with her bare hands. She would use her socks first, and just go without socks, or she'd tear parts of her shirt and use the strips to wipe, but never her hands.

At the sight of her, Jason's crying subsided. His face was cherry red, creating a stark contrast between his tuft of blonde hair and bright, electric blue eyes, the only feature he and Thalia shared. Honestly, if it weren't for those eyes, Thalia had very solid grounds to believe that he had been adopted. On top of his red face, his cheeks were stained with tears, and his nose had started running. Jason saw her, and his expression broke her little heart.

It was not the expression of a toddler going, Ugh, finally someone gets in here to change my diaper. Where've you been? I've been crying for hours now. No, it was an expression that did not belong on anyone's face, let alone a baby. It was a broken expression, one of pain and suffering, defeat, and relief.

Jason reached through the bars of his crib, splaying his filthy fingers, and said one word. He didn't know many, but he knew a few, and this one was just heartbreaking.

"Help."

Thalia stared at her yucky, half-naked little brother, mouth slightly agape and eyes wide. "Uh…I'll be right back."

She quickly left the room, hurrying down the hallway to the bathroom as Jason started crying again. She turned the shower on, getting one of the hand towels ready, because she was not about to attempt to hand-wipe Jason in his current state. Thalia ran back to Jason's nursery.

"See? I'm back!"

Jason offered a watery smile, and once again stuck his hands through his crib.

Thalia did her best to not throw up at seeing his poopy fingers.

Babies.

Being very careful to get as little of her little brother's poop on herself, Thalia extracted Jason from his crib, and carried his nasty little butt to the shower, setting him down before the tub to slip his t-shirt over his head, tossing it aside for the laundry, before picking him back up and putting him under the warm, running water. From there, cleaning him was easy. She just used the hand towel, letting it get soaked, and thoroughly scrubbed him. Hands were first, and then his butt. Thalia had to hold onto him because he had a diaper rash, his skin was red and stinging, squirming and trying to jerk away, and she could only be so gentle in wiping him when she had to be thorough enough to get him clean.

Once upon a time, she and Jason played in the mud after it finished raining. They played so long the wet mud on them dried into a crust, and she had to scrub them both to get the mud off. This was a lot like that. Jason had been sentenced to his dirty diaper so long that his mess had dried.

"I know, Jason, I know," Thalia muttered as he whimpered and whined.

The scary thing was, she did know. Or at least, she had a very good idea of just how much Jason was hurting as Thalia tried to be careful with his diaper rash.

Last Saturday, Beryl had signed Thalia up (against her will) for auditions. Auditions to be in commercials, auditions for stage, auditions for being an extra on set in the background, auditions for movies and TV, both live and animated, and videogames, and even auditions for being a clothing model, being that smiling little girl striking poses on websites wearing their latest threads, and the woman had woken Thalia up and four in the morning so they could get up and get in line. Basically half dead, Thalia had barely pulled her clothes on, barely dragged herself to the bathroom, and had just barely finished pooping and was reaching for the toilet paper when she heard her mother furiously stomping down the hall, and started banging so ferociously on the door that Thalia had a genuine fear that she was going to tear her way through.

"Hurry the fuck up in there! We're going to be late!"

Thalia was so sleepy and terrified that she completely forewent wiping, and just pulled her pants and underwear up. She didn't ever flush or brush her teeth. Naively, she figured that at some point in the near future, she could escape to another restroom and wipe herself there, but no. Beryl didn't allow her a potty break the whole day from her waking moment to almost midnight, nor did she allow a snack break, or lunch, or dinner. Only audition after audition.

Thalia's butt had started itching an hour later, and by ten in the morning, her butt was stinging, having basically contracted a diaper rash of her own. By the end of the day, starving and needing to go the bathroom again, Thalia was miserable.

Ladies and gentlemen, Beryl Grace. So consumed with trying to capture her former glory, so mad as to project her former stardom onto her daughter, that she didn't allow said precious child any time to eat, rest, or maintain good personal hygiene.

As for Thalia herself, even she didn't know why she obeyed and gave every audition her all. She had every opportunity to act out and throw a fit, and she would have been well within her rights to do so given how she was being treated by her mother, not even allowing her the time to go wipe her butt, but she didn't. Maybe it was because she also hoped to make it big, so that she herself could provide a better life for Jason, or maybe it would finally turn their mother around, and she'd start being a good mom.

Whatever the case, when Thalia finally got home, she ran to the kitchen, grabbed however much food she could carry, and ran to the bathroom, where she ate while sitting on the toilet. Her poor underwear was beyond salvation, which really made her upset because they were actually her favorite pair, sporting thundercloud with lightning bolt motifs against blue fabric.

Jason had surprisingly been asleep and in a clean diaper. Thalia had checked. Her mother had said she's gotten him a babysitter, but Thalia had her doubts. It appeared, though, that everything had turned out okay for her little brother.

But yeah.

All of that was a very longwinded way of demonstrating how horrible a mother Beryl Grace was, and that Thalia did truthfully know what the pain of an unwiped butt felt like.

The dutiful big sister got her brother cleaned up, getting another towel and the bar of soap after she wiped all the poop away. After the shower, Thalia dried Jason off and carried his naked form back to the nursery, setting him on his changing table and getting his eagle plushie from the crib to keep him occupied while she put a clean diaper on him.

Thalia had become quite adept at changing diapers, since she was basically the only one to do it. Two years ago, Beryl had shown her daughter how to change a diaper, and it had been quite the experience.

"Ewwww! There's poop everywhere!"

"Yes, your diapers used to look the same."

"They did not!"

"They certainly did. I was there. I had to change you. And teach you how to wipe your own butt, something I think I failed at given some of your panties that I've washed."

Thalia blushed and changed the subject, getting her first lesson in anatomy. "What is that thing?"

"That's his penis. All boys have that."

"Oh. Why don't I have a…a penis?"

"You're a girl. You have a vagina."

"Am I going to grow a penis?"

"I hope not."

"Is Jason's penis going to fall off and he has a vagina?"

"I also hope that never happens."

"Has that ever happened before?"

"…there are some people out there who do remove their penises, yes."

"Do penises just come off?"

"No."

"Then how do people take their penis off?"

"They cut it off."

"Wouldn't that really hurt?"

"Absolutely."

"What do you call a boy who cut his penis off?"

"Mentally ill."

Thalia blinked, not understanding. She still didn't understand, even to day, what that meant, but what she did understand was that her mother showing her how to change Jason's diapers was not in the name of responsibility, as in helping out mom and stepping up in the world by being a better big sister, but in the name of laziness. Now Beryl could just have Thalia change Jason's diapers, like she was doing right now.

Clean diaper under his butt. Rash cream. Powder. Bring the diaper between his legs. Fasten tapes. Check to see if the diaper is too loose or too tight. Adjust tapes as needed. And also coo and make silly faces at the baby to keep him occupied, though gnawing on the wing of his eagle plushie mostly did the trick.

And just like that, Thalia had successfully changed the dirty diaper of baby Jason, and cleaned him after he made the honest attempt at trying to clean himself up. Now she had another mess to clean up, thought it was minor in comparison.

Setting Jason down in his playpen, Thalia retrieved his filthy diaper from his crib, rolling it up and throwing it in the diaper pail. An inspection of the crib showed that there wasn't any poop on the blankets or sheet, so that was nice. In the bathroom, Thalia retrieved the two towels she used to clean Jason, and his t-shirt, and started a load of laundry after grabbing her own pile of things. Going back to the nursery, she did something she forgot to do in the first place, and that was grab another t-shirt for him.

She slipped it on with no issues, and proceeded to scoop him out of the playpen, setting him on her hip with her arm braced across his padded butt.

"Feel better?"

Jason responded by nuzzling his head against her cheek, cooing.

Thalia's heart melted. "Yeah, you're feeling better. Let's go."

She carried him back to her room, grabbing some of his toys in her free hand, unable to leave him alone for the rest of the night after this recent nightmare.

Setting him down in her room, she said, "You know, one of these days, you're going to be a big girl—er, you're going to be a big boy, and you're going to use the potty all by yourself. Won't that be awesome? No more diapers!"

Jason seemed to ponder this, and reached a conclusion. "No!"

Thalia blinked. "You want to keep pooping in your diapers?"

Jason pondered this as well. Then, "No!"

"So you want to use the big boy potty and wear big boy underwear?"

"No!"

Thalia sighed. She should've known. Terrible Twos and all that. "I guess you'll just spend the rest of your life in diapers, then, won't you? Pooping yourself, and waiting on someone to come wipe your stinky little butt."

"No!"

"Oh, yes. I'm even gonna tell your girlfriend," Thalia grinned.

"No!"

"Yes! You're gonna grow up to be this big, strong, macho dude, a pretty girl hanging off your arm, and I'm gonna tell her, Yeah, I used to change his poopy diapers, and since he never wanted to learn how to use the big boy potty, you're going to have to change his diapers, too."

At this, Jason seemed to be genuinely distressed. "N-No!"

Thalia stooped down to boop his little nose. "Well, if you don't want me telling your future girlfriend about how much of a stinker you are, then use the potty and learn to wipe your own butt."

Jason resumed his pondering. Then he looked back at his big sister. "You stinker."

"No, you're a stinker."

"You."

"No, you."

"You!"

"You times a million!"

Jason was stunned, having never heard this word before, this "million." He didn't know what else to say, so he went with, "No!"

Thalia giggled. "Of course, you're never gonna have a girlfriend anyway. As if any girl would ever be good enough for my little brother." She leaned back down to ruffle his hair.

He giggled happily.

Meanwhile, over in Tahlequah, Oklahoma, a certain little Cherokee girl suddenly sneezed into her dad's chest as he read her the evening's bedtime story.

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Unfortunately, Thalia was unable to finish her homework. That happened when you had a toddler in your room determined to explore every little thing he could, like the closet, opening as many drawers in her dresser as he could reach and pulling out everything he could get his pudgy hands on, and rifling through her trash can, finding snotty tissues and candy wrappers that he attempted to further categorizing by sticking them in his mouth.

Yeah, as if wiping his behind wasn't enough of a headache, Thalia also had to keep him from eating garbage and wearing her underwear on his head like a hat.

The evening wore on, and the siblings soon found themselves yawning. Thalia scooped her brother up and took him to the bathroom to brush his teeth for him, and then brush her own. A rumble in her lower tummy had her attempting what she thought was a good idea.

"Okay, Jason, I'm gonna show you how to use the potty. First, we take our pants and underwear down, okay?" Thalia demonstrated in full, not even an ounce of a thought about whether it was inappropriate to take her clothes off in front of her baby brother. After all, she had changed his diapers plenty of times, and bathed him, so what was it if he saw her without pants? "And then we sit down like this. And then we go."

Thalia went through the whole toileting process, complete with demonstrations, culminating in flushing and washing hands.

"And that's all there is to it!" Thalia exclaimed. "Now the next time you use need to go pee or poop, you let me know and we'll go potty, okay?"

Jason nodded once, looking completely lost.

"Do you need to go potty right now?"

"No."

"How about we sit on the potty for a few minutes, just in case?"

It wasn't really a choice. Thalia took Jason's diaper off him and sat him on the toilet seat, having to be careful that he didn't fall off or fall in. After all, she was a lot bigger than he was, and she hadn't sat on that special seat attachment in years. Was that potty seat even still in this house somewhere? Turns out, it was actually still under the bathroom sink in the cabinet, tucked in the back behind the basket full of toilet paper rolls.

Thalia found it after holding Jason for five minutes, and nothing, and then hauling him up and putting his diaper back on him.

The potty seat was pink and had Disney princess on it, which made Thalia gag. She couldn't remember ever having liked princesses, and the one Barbie doll her mother had given her—not at all in act of love, but an act of being able to say, Well you can't say I never got you anything—had already been defaced.

Literally.

Thalia had carved the doll up with a knife, which probably wasn't the greatest indicator of a sound mind, but anyway.

She didn't put Jason back in his crib for the night. Instead, she carried him back to her room, set him down so she could change into her pajamas, and then cuddled up with him under her covers after turning on her nightlight and turning off her big light.

Not that she was scared of the dark or anything, but so that she could see where she was going in the night if she woke up needing the toilet, or she heard Jason crying.

"You'd better not pee on me," she said sternly.

Of course, it had only been last year when she herself had finally started waking up dry and no longer needed diapers of her own—as in, actual, biggest-sized baby diapers, because Beryl didn't care to buy her daughter something more age-appropriate, like Goodnites or some other brand of nighttime underwear. She was the kind of person who firmly asserted that Thalia must be wetting the bed on purpose since she was too big to be doing that, and so thought that a diaper would have been a humiliating enough punishment to get her to stop.

Obviously, it didn't, and Thalia still resented her mother for having done that to her.

Jason giggled. "No!"

Thalia grinned. He was just so darn cute. She leaned forward and kissed his forehead. "I love you, Jason."

He grinned back. "I wuv you, Taly." He leaned forward to kiss her, only he hadn't quite grasped the concept of kissing yet, and so his idea of giving someone a kiss was to open his mouth wide and attempt to eat their nose.

Thalia grabbed a Kleenex and wiped the slobber from her face.

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Because the children were sleeping, they completely missed what was happening in the living room.

Juno had arrived.

The goddess couldn't help but feel vindictive at seeing the sorry state of Beryl Grace, and it showed in her smirk. But why shouldn't she feel vindicated? After all, it was this bitch that her husband had cheated on her with, not just once, but twice, in both his forms. A grand total of fourteen sexual encounters between a total of twenty-one meetings between Zeus and Jupiter, fifteen to Zeus and the rest to Jupiter, and two of those sexy nights had resulted in offspring, offspring that were lucky that Juno left alive and unharmed.

So many different things Juno could have done to them. Taken a chromosome, their arms, or legs, or their eyes or hearing, or maybe a few nerves from their bodies, leaving them paralyzed from the neck or waist down, or so many other kinds of disabilities, or just outright death, or maybe even turning them into a couple of calves and dropping them on a farm somewhere to spend their rest of their lives as cattle.

When you're a goddess, you have a lot of time on your hands to come up with fun punishments.

One might think that Juno had a hand in Beryl's unraveling, turning to alcohol in lieu of losing her stardom, but no. That's what made Beryl's situation as an unsightly, smelly drunk so much more delightful. In no way was it Juno's fault the woman had completely lost herself.

Maybe this was the Styx's justice on Juno's behalf. Jupiter made the oath, he broke it, twice at that, and this was the Styx avenging Juno for her husband's two-fold infidelity, by wrecking this woman. Juno had to wonder if the Styx was doing the same to Poseidon in the East, with that woman he violated the Oath with. Was Styx making her life miserable as well as punishment for Poseidon's unfaithfulness?

After all, when you really stopped and thought about it, Beryl and Sally were both homewreckers. Neither Zeus/Jupiter nor Poseidon lied about their identities, and both women had still invited these married men to their beds and opened their legs. Adulteresses, both of them.

Whatever the case, it did please Juno to see Beryl so ruined, thought the stench of vomit, urine, and beer was nauseating. So Juno did the woman a small favor, waved her hand, and cleaned the place up. The beer bottles and beer itself vanished, as did the puke from Beryl's mouth and shirt, the piss from his panties and couch, and all the trash in general. The matter simply deleted from existence because gods could just do that kind of stuff.

Being magically cleaned up was enough to wake Beryl from her alcohol-induced slumber. "Huh? Wha-?" she gasped upon seeing Juno.

It wasn't as if the woman had come in her street clothes. Elegant dress of white wilk embroidered with gold patterns, goatskin cloak around her shoulders, lotus scepter in hand, crown firmly fixed in place, eight feet tall, brown hair perfectly maintained, and the very face of beauty and discipline.

"J-Juno…" Beryl squeaked.

The goddess held her hand up before the harlot could start groveling or pleading for her life. "I have come to collect on the debt owed to me. Tomorrow, you will take your children North, to the Wolf House. There, you will give me Jason, and I will take him from you."

"Jason? What are you going to do with my son?"

"That is not your concern."

"What about Thalia? What are you going to do with her?"

"Leave her with you," Juno dismissed.

"Why only take-"

"You have exhausted my patience for pleasantries, mortal. Do as you have been instructed, or I will truly visit my wrath upon thee."

With that, Juno physically disappeared from sight, but her presence remained nonetheless, just to savor how Beryl broke down in tears.

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The next morning, Thalia was woken by her squirming little brother. She yawned. "What is it, Jay?"

"Pee."

For a second, Thalia got excited. "You need to go pee!?" Was he ready for the potty? No more changing diapers?! Then the rational part of her brain kicked in. "Or did you already pee, and you want your diaper changed?"

"Went pee."

Thalia sighed. "Of course. All right, let's get you changed."

She slid out of bed and picked him up, carrying him out of her room to his nursery.

Their mother was there.

"Oh, he's with you," she said, relieved.

"Yeah, he's with me. What do you want?"

"We're going on a trip. Get him changed and dressed, and then get yourself ready."

"Are you going to pack his diaper bag?"

"We won't-" Beryl caught herself. "Yes. I mean, no. I mean, no I'm not going to pack his diaper bag, but yes, we do need his diaper bag. Get it packed."

Thalia rolled her eyes. "Whatever."

She carried Jason to his changing table, and Beryl briskly walked out. Not even a hug, a kiss, or even a basic good morning.

About 45 minutes later, after changing Jason, getting him dressed and his bag packed, and then taking care of herself, using the toilet (once again trying to explain to the baby how the potty worked), brushing her teeth, his teeth, and getting herself dressed, Thalia and Jason were on the road with their mother, Jason in his car seat, and Thalia in her booster seat, as California law demanded that she still be sitting in one given her height and weight.

Jason seemed completely oblivious to it all, but Thalia could feel something was very wrong. Her mother was oddly silent, oddly focused, oddly intent. Not at all her usual drunk, raving self. She'd even showered and put on a layer of makeup, making herself decently presentable.

"Where are we going?" Thalia asked.

"To a special place."

"Where?"

"Further North. You know which way North is, right?"

"Er, it's the up one. Never eat soggy waffles. Yeah, up."

"Right, North is up. And the others?"

"East is left, South is down, and West is right."

"Very good! Now, if you're heading East, what direction is to your left?"

Thalia had to position her mind. "North?"

"If you were heading West, what direction is to your right?"

"Sou—I mean, it's North. Never eat—yeah. If you're heading West, North is to your right."

Beryl smiled at her in the rearview mirror. "Correct!"

Thalia offered a slight, hesitant, guarded smile in return.

The whole drive was spent like that, Beryl quizzing her daughter on things she'd learned from school. Days of the week, the months, how many months had thirty days versus how many had 31, her times tables, and so on. It almost Thalia happy that her mother was demonstrating interest in her schooling, but it was all undermined by Thalia's sense of unease and mistrust.

Keeping the conversation going made it seem like they made the trip in only a few minutes when in reality it was almost ninety minutes. Beryl made a righthand turn down a side road that led to a small parking lot. The place was empty. A sign nearby gave the name of the park, but Thalia's dyslexia made it hard to read what it said.

She started unbuckling.

"Thalia, wait here."

And with that statement, Thalia was on high alert. "Why?"

"I want to do something with Jason real quick. Just the two of us. When we get back, then it'll be your turn."

"What are you going to do with my little brother?"

"I just want to spend some alone time with my son, Thalia. Just him and me for a few minutes. I don't ever make that time, but I want to start trying. Can you give me that, please?"

Against all her nine-year-old wisdom, Thalia slowly nodded. "O…kay…"

"Thank you."

Beryl retrieved Jason from his car seat, and Thalia watched from her booster as she carried him down the trail and into the woods. Of course, she went flying out of the car when she saw her mother finally coming back, her arms devoid of Jason.

"Where is he!? Where the fuck is he!?" nine-year-old Thalia shrieked, using one of those naughty words her mother once washed her mouth out for saying yet liberally employed whenever she was drunk.

Beryl's eyes were red and puffy, her makeup smeared and running down her face from her tears. "He's gone, Thalia. He's gone."

Thalia's eyes widened, tears of her own welling up as her heart started hammering in her chest. "No, no, no, no! You—y-you-!"

She went sprinting down the trail, adrenaline juicing her body, mixing well her demigod genes, and she achieved speeds comparable to that of NFL wide receivers despite her small stature. For over two hours, Thalia screamed for her brother, calling out his name at the top of her lungs over and over as she raced between the trees. From the car, Beryl watched as the storm rolled in, the clouds flashing with lightning. She had to wonder if it was Zeus, or Jupiter, expressing his anger with his wife for having done whatever it was she planned to do with the baby, or if this was Thalia's doing, her powers beginning to show.

Or maybe it was just the weather for the day. It wasn't like Beryl had checked the forecast before delivering her son to a vengeful goddess.

Whatever the case, when Thalia finally emerged from the forest, it was pouring rain, and she was staggering from foot to foot as if drunk. Beryl went running into the downpour, scooping up her daughter, and running her back to the car to get her into the booster seat before getting behind the wheel.

Thalia's tears were mixed with the rain. "You killed him…you killed my baby brother…"

Beryl swallowed. "N-No, I-I…I…he's just gone, Thalia. He's…he's just gone. Not dead. G-Gone."

"I…fucking…hate…you…" Thalia's eyes rolled up and her head rolled forward.

She passed out.

Beryl burst into fresh tears.

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Thalia locked herself in her room for the rest of the day. In the night, she had two bags packed, one with all her clothes—socks, underwear, shirts, pants, extra pair of shoes, pajamas, and a blanket—and the other with all the supplies she thought she would need—tooth brush and paste, floss, a roll of toilet paper, soap, deodorant, snacks, and all the money in coins and bills she could find. She thought about grabbing something from Jason's room, like one of his toys, or one of his shirts, or one of his little shoes, or a pacifier, or even one of his diapers—just some kind of memento, but she didn't.

Jason was dead.

This house was dead to her.

This life was dead.

And so, Thalia ran away, and we all know how her story goes.

Rewinding time, though, going back several hours, and we arrive at Juno setting little wide-eyed Jason down before Lupa, who looked down at him with an arched lupine brow, while he looked up at her in utter bewilderment.

He maneuvered to his feet and reached up for the wolf goddess's snout with a giggle.

"Big kitty!"

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"Says this is Jason's story, but has zero Jason POV."

Yeah, that would be because he's a baby in this part of the story, and I don't know how to write from the POV of a baby. Besides, Thalia being a legendary big sister! This chapter also takes care of one of the Three Constants, lol. Only two more to go!

If you know, you know.

A number of people have asked for an update on Dragon Princess, so guess what's coming next!

I'm thinking maybe something like a rotating system, cycling from story to story, like what I did years and years ago with Backup Plan, Xenomorphic, and Leviathan.

No idea how that's going to work, though.

Motivation issues and all that.

Anyway, what'd you think? Seems like a good start to Jason's Untold Story? Hyped and can't wait for the next chapter?

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