Where You Go ― Jason Grace

vi. no more waiting

UP ON THE DECK, Ophelia could faintly hear Annabeth interrogating Leo and Piper's calmer voice trying to mediate, but all she could really focus on was an unconscious Jason, who looked too close to death for comfort.

Apparently after Ophelia had sprinted to the ship, a brick had knocked her boyfriend out, and he still hadn't woken up. If Frank hadn't been there to get them out of the mob and to the ship, gods only knew what could have happened.

She felt sick—the sight of him just lying there reminded Ophelia too much of when he'd witnessed Juno in all her godly glory and nearly died because of it. The cut on his head was particularly nasty, and he wasn't showing any signs of waking up.

She glanced back at Percy Jackson. The son of Poseidon's presence wasn't helping her nerves in the slightest, and the tension was palpable.

She didn't know what to make of him. From what she'd seen of him—which was fairly little—he seemed so different from his Roman half-sister. From the stories Annabeth and some of Ophelia's half-siblings had told her, she knew he really was nothing like her, in a dozen different ways. He was popular at his camp; people loved him rather than feared him because of who his father was; he was a hero of the Second Titan War, and adored for it.

A small, secret part of Ophelia had hoped the legion would hate him as much as they'd hated Maren. She would never say it out loud, and she felt guilty just for thinking it, but she couldn't help it. From Maren's first day as a probatio, she'd been seen as a bad omen by the superstitious legionnaires and citizens of New Rome, all because her father was Neptune. Ophelia thought Percy's arrival and stay at Camp Jupiter would be the same—yet here he was, raised up as praetor days after arriving, heralded as a war hero by Greeks and Romans alike.

She wanted to hate him for it, even if it wasn't fair.

"How's he doing?" Percy asked, looking at Jason.

Ophelia felt Jason's forehead, frowning at the heat against the back of her hand. "I think he has a fever," she murmured.

Percy called for Annabeth, and after a few seconds, the blonde walked into the room, visibly tired and anxious. She studied Jason for a silent moment, checking his temperature as well. "Go grab an ice pack and a bottle of nectar from the sickbay," she told Percy.

He disappeared for about a minute before returning with the supplies. "He gonna be okay?" he asked Annabeth.

"Of course he is," Ophelia said, a bit more snappy than she'd intended.

Annabeth squeezed her shoulder lightly before unscrewing the vial of nectar. "Jason'll be fine," she told Percy. "He's tough." She trickled a little into Jason's mouth, then put the ice pack on his forehead. She handed Ophelia the rest of the nectar, nodding for her to drink it.

She did, and the cuts and bruises on Ophelia's arms—courtesy of the angry Roman mob—started to fade, along with the dull ache in her cheek from the bruise Leo had given her.

After swallowing, she said quietly, "That wasn't Leo, Annabeth. I don't know what it was, but it wasn't him."

Annabeth nodded, though she still looked uncertain. She wasn't like Ophelia—she couldn't sense the ghost that had possessed Leo. To her, it looked like Leo had aimed ballistae on the Roman camp and ruined their one shot at an alliance between their two camps.

"We'll all talk about it later," Annabeth promised. "Jason needs rest, and you could use some too, I bet. We'll be on the deck if you need anything."

She and Percy left Jason's cabin, heading back up to the main deck. 

Ophelia closed her eyes, fully relaxing now that it was just her and an unconscious Jason. She knew logically that Percy wasn't a threat—Annabeth trusted him with her life, had fought beside him in the Titan War, and he'd earned the trust of her old camp in a matter of days (ignoring the fact that that trust was now shattered, possibly forever).