kaleidoscope gold ● jason grace

question.

The new clothes didn't make Jason feel as good as he thought they would. Really, the fact that there was a fully functional bathroom in the depths of Tartarus unnerved him, like maybe there were monster realtors that would eat him if he asked for more living room space.

The three of them sat in the kitchen, Jason with a reluctant slouch. From his angle, he could see Daria exhale softly. Her face looked less pale, and she wasn't shivering anymore; Jason counted his blessings.

"So," Sam was the only one of them that wasn't eating. Which was fitting, since he was well, dead."I assume Daria's told you a little bit about me."

Jason felt self-conscious. "Not really."

Sam blinked. "Oh. Well, I'm her father, mortal side, though I'm sure you guessed that. I was a Classical Studies major, which is why I know so much about Roman mythology, and also perhaps, why I ended up here."

Jason had about a million questions. So, as he usually did, he went in order of most Dariaesque to least. "But why are you in Tartarus instead of the Underworld?"

His eyes shifted, looking at his plate for a moment before looking back at him. Jason wasn't as good as Daria at reading people; he didn't understand what the crease in Sam's eyebrows meant. "I fell in love with Gaea, Tartarus is her husband," he shrugged. "Do the math."

Jason creased his eyebrow in confusion. "But why you? I mean...what's so special about a college student?"

"Hey," Sam shared a glance with Damasen, who looked about as interested in the conversation as Daria in a math class. "That's rude."

"I'm sorry?"

"Right," Sam Jackson pursed his lips disapprovingly. "You were raised by wolves."

"Well, we both were, so I don't think-"

"Gaea didn't want me because I was a Classics student, idiot." He frowned. "The real reason was because of the family lineage. Because of my nephew."

Jason's soup suddenly lost its appeal. "Because of Percy?"

"Right." Sam affirmed with a grim look. "By that point, the Fates had already warned nearly every single immortal about Percy Jackson. About-"

"No one told me," Damasen grumbled in the background.

"- the role he'd play, with Kronos and Gaea. It was fated...decreed, that blood would spill blood."

Jason hesitated. "In less uncertain terms?"

"I can't say more than that," Sam looked at his daughter, pained. "I don't know more than that."

The firewater and soup combo were doing cartwheels in Jason's stomach as Sam's words sunk in. "Do you remember nothing else?."

Damasen shrugged. "Something about blood being thicker than water," he scratched his beard. "Or was that another prophecy?"

"It's..." He struggled to find the right words. "It's Daria. She's not going to spill any blood."

"I'm not saying she's evil," Sam argued. "But that's why Gaea created her, she was meant to be a weapon."

There was a bitter taste in Jason's mouth. "You can't tell her any of this."

"She's not going to suddenly turn evil," Damasen said. "I mean, maybe you know her better than I do, but I doubt it."

"It's not that..." Jason remembered the hurt look in her eyes as she had told him about Gaea's prediction, about the claim that she would betray her friends, betray him. He couldn't put her through that again, not when it would make her cut off all contact with everyone, he couldn't have that again.