Jaimie Solace and the Unavoidable Affliction of Love

Chapter Fifteen

The ceremony was a very somber affair, for the most part. Jaimie had stayed generally around the back of the crowd, hand in hand with Bruce, with most of the other 'retired' campers. A large number of them had shown up to show support, the 'retired' campers of course being those of them who had aged out of camp.

Bruce had been saddened by the amount of young people there, all of whom looked very familiar with the proceedings and, well, grief in general.

His sadness was dampened by the general amazement of seeing camp for the first time, because he had really seen nothing like it before. He was particularly enraptured by the Cabins, as the multicoloured array was pretty dazzling to him. He couldn't help himself, as Jaimie took the time to explain each one to him, but to secretly assign each member of the team a cabin.

Rogers would've been Zeus, going by the general noble and heroic characteristics the only resident Jason seemed to have (as told by Jaimie). Clint obviously would've been Apollo, Bruce himself would've loved the Athena Cabin, and Tony could've been either Athena or Hephaestus. Or Dionysus.

He knew that none of the team could actually be a demigod, but it was a fun thought nonetheless.

He had also been interested in the burning of the pyre itself, however he knew that he was there to support Jaimie, not ask a million questions about Ancient Greek funeral practices, so he kept his mouth shut. It didn't escape his notice how many of the younger demigods, and a fair number of the elder ones, focused on him and Jaimie's joined hands. He heard quite a bit of giggling from a gaggle of Aphrodite kids, and was glad that they could add a bit of levity to the somber occasion.

The ceremony had only taken about an hour, and soon enough he found himself joining Jaimie and her brother, along with nine other adult demigods, at the large pine tree on Camp Half-Bloods border.

He didn't remain attached at Jaimie's hip for very long, however, because an elfish looking latino man approached him and pretty quickly dragged him unto conversation.

"Dr. Banner, right? I'm Leo, kind of a huge fan," the man spoke very rapidly. "Is it true that you and Tony Stark are working on transferring artificial intelligence to a hybrid biological-mechanical entity? Because seriously, that's so cool."

"Uh, we kind of already did that–"

"With Vision right? Or whatever his name was? Does he really have an infinity stone in his head because that's sick as fuc–"

"I am so sorry about him, Bruce," a blonde headed woman who was introduced as Annabeth interjected. "He's had too much coffee today. Ignore him."

Bruce was glad she said that, because he had no idea what an infinity stone even was. Probably nothing important, then.

"Yeah, yeah, sorry," the man, Leo, didn't sound very apologetic. "It's in my blood, I'm a Hephaestus kid. If you ever want to see any really cool demigod inventions Bruce, I think you would love my Bunker. And you should tell Iron Man that, too."

Jaimie came over to catch the tail end of the conversation, and started chuckling. "Oh I've already told Tony all about you, Leo. The Avengers were very interested in the spyware you made. Tony in particular was interested in Festus. He would love to meet him one day."

Leo was starstruck, his grin taking up almost his whole face. But Bruce was just confused. "Who's Festus?"

"Leo's dragon. He built him from scratch."

"Built him? You know what, I don't want to know."

The group laughed quietly. The mood was generally somber but lighthearted, which was an odd combination. The seven, plus Nico, Will, Reyna and Jaimie were of course sad that this was the event that brought them all together for the first time in years, however they were enjoying the time together nonetheless.