My Boyfriend is a Dead Roman Hero | Jason Grace

Jason Goes Dorothy

There's a funny thing that happens once one has lived the years that Medea has. Every hero's story starts to look the same.

Really, by now, Medea can only quite see a distinction in just how far each hero is going to fall on their plummet from Olympus.

Will they be a mirror of Hercules?: A vicious narcissist claiming to be a victim of circumstance. A scourge on any who hold love for him. A murderer. A tyrant. A legend.

Odysseus?: Impressive and clever. Capable, loyal, and yet too prideful to heed the counsel of his betters. Those who follow him meet their ends at the hands of their own leader's self righteousness.

Jason?: Selfish. Vain. Handsome. He who leaves behind the corpses of those whose hearts he still carries, bloody and raw and beating in his unworthy mortal hands. He who lays waste to the powerful for his own self interest, only to let it all be for nothing when he takes his own life and climbs his way to Elysium using the backs of those he damned.

Medea has seen variations of these stories come and go during her two lifetimes. She's become talented at guessing which will be which.

Juliette Aster will live the same life as Orpheus. Kind natured and intelligent. A product of Aphrodite's weak heart. A patron of the arts. Driven by her love for another - by her love for a demigod greater than herself. She has spent her life reaping consequences for the wrongdoings of her patron, and that devotion will be her undoing.

Medea figured Jason Grace to be Theseus. Powerful. Prideful. Annoyingly resilient. Like a cockroach. A demigod of legendary power set on glory and prepared to use the women he's ensnared however he pleases to achieve it.

When Juliette became the Triumvirate's prisoner, Medea expected the events following to be confirmation of this. She sighed and leaned back and waited for the girl, like Ariadne before her, like Patroclus, like Medea herself, to be left out to sea to drown in the great hero's sins.

Yet here he is.

"I take it you are here to steal my favorite toy," Medea sighs. She is mildly impressed that the two demigods have made it this far. Caligula's pandai aren't often so lax with security. For Meg McCaffery and Jason Grace to have reached Medea's research vessel with all eight limbs attached, Medea suspects quite a few large-eared heads will be rolling at the next staff meeting.

The boy has to reach a hand out to stop his younger companion from charging her. The girl has bristled, snarling her ridiculous little battle cry as Medea drapes one leg over the other and takes a sip of wine from her chalice. The fluorescent lights in her lab are horrendous. She has to squint across the white tiled room at them, but she's found they are the only bulbs that will not affect the cooking time of her brews.

One of which is steadily boiling beside her desk, the violet liquid in the bronze cauldron smoking a toxic green. She'll need to stir that soon. Then it can join its duplicates in the storage halls.

"Where is she?" The boy asks her, voice quiet and threatening. Medea smiles.

The medical table behind her is empty. The straps are hanging limp, burnt in places, stained in others. She heard these fools coming the moment they set foot onboard the first ship. She made a point to leave their friend's bloodstains on the floor for their viewing pleasure.

"With her master, of course."

The child manages a step away from the boy. "If you stupid idiots hurt her-"

"The pun seems rather drab at this point, but I believe that ship has sailed," Medea sighs, gesturing to the stained tiles. She watches both intruders notice them. McCaffery's tough-girl act falters.