obsidian black ● jason grace

epilogue

Jason almost doesn't go to the funeral.

It hasn't even been 24 hours, and he is exhausted. But instead of sleeping, he wanders. Down to the beach, through the ruins of Camp Half-Blood, the burnt forest. He is too afraid to shut his eyes, mostly because he isn't sure of what he will see. His worst nightmare has already come to life.

The sky overhead Camp Half-Blood is gray and dreary. Idly, Jason wonders if he is the one that caused it. He kicks a rock into the ocean. He wonders if the gods are listening. He hopes he is the one that caused it.

(He should know better by now. The gods never listen).

They cremated Octavian that morning. As far as Jason understood it, Romans and Greeks alike are holding funerals like a series of Christmas parties, you stopped by for a few minutes, then went to the next. Jason doesn't think anyone went to Octavian's; he certainly didn't.

Nathan's funeral was right after lunch. Jason stood in the corner, dust and shadows like Horace wrote. His parents are there, weeping to each other. Clara gives a nice speech, or at least he assumes. Jason is too dizzy to listen. He leaves when Dakota starts crying.

No one wastes their efforts in talking to him today. Earlier, Reyna said something about holding Daria's service in the nighttime, and Jason thinks it's a good idea; she loves the night, loves the peace of it all. Then someone uses the word 'loved' and Jason forgets how to breathe.

He knows it is selfish; he knows that Daria deserves to rest without the unfinished business he alone carries. Everyone calls her brave, she sacrificed her life to save the world, even her worst enemies hold her in a grudging respect.

Jason cannot bring himself to hold Daria in the same reverence. He doesn't understand how she could choose the fate of the world over him. Probably will never understand. He sits on the sand, rubbing it between his fingers, oddly empathetic. Sand is just shattered glass after all. They are not so different.

He thinks the worst part is the secrecy. He can't stand the fact that Leo and Percy knew; Jason knows that if they loved Daria half as much as Jason did, does, they would have found a solution. Daria would be sitting on this beach beside him, and somehow, Jason would find the strength to keep going.

In his possession is an unlit cigarette, still contraband, but the Stoll brothers are too nervous around him now to argue. He remembers promising 'for us'; it seems like years ago, now. Either way, there is no 'us' anymore, which is what Jason will use as his justification.

Also, in his pocket are two pieces of paper. One of them he found neatly placed on top of his bedsheets; it had been folded when he saw it, the only indication that it wasn't a mistaken delivery was the small signature in the corner. Jason hasn't opened it. He is more tempted to take a lighter to the letter and set it ablaze.

Now he holds it in his hand, stares at it as if it will start narrating to him. Typically, reading cursive gives Jason a headache, but even if Daria's name wasn't methodically printed in her quiet typewriter handwriting, he can feel her words through the paper, her writing a piece of her own soul.

He wonders if the others have this fragment of her as well. Reyna definitely. Daria wouldn't leave her without an explanation, assuming that's what she has given him. Michael, Clara and Dakota, Percy, Hazel, Piper, Leo, Jason thinks, for sure.

But then again, there is nothing she left unsaid to Percy and Leo. They don't need, don't deserve any of her writing. He is overcome with a white-hot anger that dissipates almost immediately, leaving him washed with embarrassment. Just because he lost his Daria doesn't mean they didn't lose a friend.