ONE LAST TIME . . . heroes of olympus

5.5

KATERINA FELT LIKE her brain was short circuiting.

Jason's name hasn't left her tongue like that for years, at least. She usually tried to avoid saying his name. It's been months since she's said it, maybe even more than a year — with her life, days blur quickly into weeks.

Yet she always manages to think about Jason and Piper. Every single day, without fail.

Katerina has wondered what it would be like to see them again — even for just a moment, a glimpse of them. She's seen glimpses of them everywhere: every sunrise and sunset she gets to see, every wave that ebbs on the sea, every splash of color she sees around her.

She always thought about what they looked like now. Did they change a lot since ten years passed? Did Jason still have the scar on his lip? Did Piper still have that mischievous glint in her eyes whenever something funny happened? Did they still have those secretive, small smiles that they'd only give to each other?

Jason still had the scar on his lip, though it seemed to have faded over time. His hair was closely cropped to his face, like the Romans usually did it, and it brought Katerina back to when they'd technically first met, when he'd woken up in that bus without any memories.

"It is you," the smile that broke out over his face would've sent her heart into cardiac arrest, if she was still one of his girls. But she wasn't. Not anymore. "I thought I was hallucinating."

I wish you were, Katerina thought. Because then I could postpone this meeting.

She wasn't ready to see him — not now, when Julia would force her to stay here because of her extended days off that she'd also made Katerina take off. But then again, they've gone on missions during breaks, even some around Christmas. She could hope.

"Yeah," she said, tearing her eyes away from him. She couldn't help noticing the many differences that had arrived since she'd last seen him, over ten years ago. He's now twenty-six and she's almost twenty-seven. How have the years gone by that quickly? "It's me."

She made eye contact with Jules, who raised her eyebrows. What do you want to do? She mouthed at Katerina.

But Katerina didn't know what she wanted to do. A part of her — the part that had quickly formed in her over the last ten years — wanted to run. She was good at running. She did it back then, and she could do it now.

But on the other hand . . . this was Jason. Jason, who had argued against her leaving. But he was also Jason, who hadn't said anything that disagreed with what Piper had said.

Not that Piper had been completely wrong. Katerina had been the one to hide it from them. She'd been the one to break them up.

"Why are you home?" Jason asked, drawing her out of her thoughts. "I never see you at camp anymore."

"New York isn't my home anymore," Katerina quickly corrected, looking sideways at Julia. "But it is Jules's. And I do what she wants, because if I don't, then she'll beat me up like the Rockets did to me in the last mission."

"That's true," Julia smirked. "You looked horrible by the end of it."

"You looked equally as bad," Katerina gently elbowed her because they were still hurt after that mission. "So I'm here because she wants me to be here. Also, because headquarters is here and we needed to report after our mission."

Julia rolled her eyes. "You're staying until New Year's with me. Then we're taking on a new mission."

Katerina snorted. "Please. I could ask to go on another mission without you, go somewhere else. They probably have better Christmas gifts literally anywhere else. I don't know what to get for Leo."