[ YOU WOULD BREAK YOUR BACK TO MAKE ME BREAK A SMILE ]
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
KLEIN MADDOX did not ever want to play the hero, so if this was her destiny, she had some serious concerns. But the world was still ending, and her act of keeping Jason Grace alive (and getting herself killed in the process) kept her on the hook for one more quest - or it seemed, however many more it would take - to save it. So cheers to that, she supposed.
However, the whole "dying and coming back to life" cycle was not one she never planned on repeating, not that the girl would even know how to. But if she had to figure out a way to never experience that bullshit again, so be it.
It wasn't as though the "resurrection" had changed her, especially not in any way that anyone would have thought it would - or should. She was not suddenly some reformed version of herself, and she was most certainly not 'golden girl' Klein Maddox once more. In fact, it almost seemed as if the entire event had rolled off her shoulders as through it never even happened.
Jason, however, could see a change. There had been fear on her face before, not at the thought of dying - no, Klein Maddox didn't exactly have much of a will to do anything, much less live - but at the thought of what was left behind. That fear was gone now, replaced by what resembled indifference. Because Klein Maddox had seen what was waiting for her on the other side, and she was ready to meet it again.
But Klein could feel the change. A new sort of energy running through her now that she never would have thought possible - Hera's energy. Almost as if the goddess's nuclear reaction had ignited this spark inside of her, one that had yet to dim, one that she had no idea how she was meant to harness. It was dangerous, she could feel it, and Klein didn't need anyone to tell her she was unworthy of wielding such a power because she had been saying it to herself since December.
Yet truthfully, Klein didn't exactly care to try and harness it because she was meant to be done. Jason's quest to save Hera was meant to be a one and done deal for the Maddox girl, and after sticking it to the demigods of Camp Half-Blood, the Maddox girl was pretty sure she had been taken off the volunteer list for just about everything.
But the world was still ending, and her act of keeping Jason Grace alive kept her on the hook for "one more quest" - or it seemed, however many more it would take to save it.
