CATHARSIS, jason grace¹ [REWRITING]

𝟬𝟬. when in new rome

°ʚ(*'꒳'*)ɞ°

"Darling, your looks can kill."

AERA WAS STARTING TO RESENT SNOW WHITE. Maybe if the fabled princess didn't have such fair skin then snow wouldn't be so blindingly bright. And maybe if the Evil Queen hadn't been so obsessed with her wicked schemes then snowstorms wouldn't be so stingingly cold. Though it was perhaps important to note that the root of the daughter of Aphrodite's hard feelings towards the current blizzard raging around her stemmed more so from the group of barbaric Roman soldiers hunting her down rather than her favorite childhood fairytale.

"Up there!" one of them shouted, their voice buffeted by the howling of the winter gale. "She went this way!"

Gods, those screaming Romans were really starting to get on her nerves. The snowstorm made it difficult to do anything other than shrivel into a shivering sack of crackling skin, but Aera managed to spot an army of shadows over her shoulder.

Where were the poison apples when you needed them?

The icy wind compromised both her vision and her hearing, but Aera had no choice but to keep her brisk pace trudging through the flowers of ice blooming in the snow-kissed air. She was well aware that if those barbarians captured her for the third time, there'd be no telling what they'd do to her. Probably something really horrible like cutting her fingers off or worse—forcing her to wear one of their saggy bedsheet togas. The thought alone made her shudder.

Part of Aera also wanted to turn back—the furious part. She wanted to pull a total Elsa moment, remove her long, satin gloves, and go back there to give that Jason Grace a major dressing down.

After everything they had been through, how dare he betray her?

Aera had showed Jason everything he needed to have a good time in San Francisco: a 5-star spa resort, her black credit card that had no limit, an expensive makeover, even her heart-stirring powers, which not many could live to tell the tale about. Jason had taken advantage of all of that. He couldn't get away with that while she was out here freezing to death in her Jimmy Choo's.

Not long ago, Aera had sworn that she would never let the heart of someone who deceived her beat any second longer if she could help it. But when she tried to go back the way she came, the ice pricked at her skin, stinging and stinging across her cheeks and bare legs until Aera couldn't take it anymore and complied to its prickly nature.

Whichever path she was endeavoring now was forged solely by the blizzard, which was unusual considering it was the end of November in San Francisco. Sadly, the only other problem with blindly running high-heel-first into a thick snow squall (besides the insufferable splatter of powdery snow onto your new designer faux fur coat) was that Aera had no clue where she was going. Like, at all.

She held onto the vague intuition she was still somewhere on the cluster of Oakland Hills those badly-dressed barbarians had dragged her to, chains and gags and all, but she wasn't sure which way was far away enough. The farther she hiked, the more disoriented her senses became, blurring in the glacial tempest.

By the time she reached the summit, Aera was ready for a face mask and a nice foot massage. Thankfully, the heavy snowfall had subsided to powdery sprinkles of ice up here. The winds were kinder and lighter, in favor of the thin miniskirt Aera wore under her coat. Compact mounds of snow fenced around the edges of the hilltop like large, white boxes. Stretching below was a wide valley spotted with a neat grid of buildings: Camp Jupiter.