Bewitched || P. Jackson

𝔸 peace meeting... mostly

Thalia and Nicki walked side by side, slightly behind the two boys. The silence enveloping them was deafening.

"Y'know, I had a brother," Thalia whispered.

Nicki's shoulders dropped. "Had?"

"Yeah. I don't even know why I'm saying this, I've never told anyone before. It's just- I guess, if this is it... for either of us, I want you to know."

"Thank you." Her voice was quiet but held more emotion than Thalia had ever heard before.

"I'm not sure how to say this. Our mom wasn't exactly stable. She caught Zeus's eye because she was a television actress, and she was beautiful, but she didn't handle the fame well. She drank, pulled stupid stunts. She was always in the tabloids. She could never get enough attention. Even before he was born, she and I argued all the time. She... she knew Dad was Zeus, and I think that was too much for her to take. It was like the ultimate achievement for her to attract the lord of the sky, and she couldn't accept it when he left. The thing about the gods... well, they don't hang around."

Thalia managed a weak smile in Nicki's direction. She was one of the lucky few to grow up with her godly parent and she wasn't exactly better for it.

"When I was about seven," she said, "Zeus started visiting Mom again. I think he felt bad about wrecking her life, and he seemed—different somehow. A little older and sterner, more fatherly toward me. For a while, Mom improved. She loved having Zeus around, bringing her presents, causing the sky to rumble. She always wanted more attention. That's the year he was born. Mom... well, I never got along with her, but he gave me a reason to hang around. He was so cute.

And I didn't trust Mom to look after him. Of course, Zeus eventually stopped coming by again. He probably couldn't stand Mom's demands anymore, always pestering him to let her visit Olympus, or to make her immortal or eternally beautiful. When he left for good, Mom got more and more unstable. That was about the time the monsters started attacking me. Mom blamed Hera. She claimed the goddess was coming after him too—that Hera had barely tolerated my birth, but two demigod children from the same family was too big an insult. Mom even said she hadn't wanted to name him Jason, but Zeus insisted, as a way to appease Hera because the goddess liked that name. I didn't know what to believe."

"Jason," Nicki whispered. Her mind flicked back to a conversation she had had with Thomas Asher what felt like decades ago. The leader of his old camp, Jason.

He had never told Nicki where his camp was or any real details, be he used to talk of his old leader with such high regard, sometimes Nicki thought he was bubbling with regret.

The witch shook off the thought. It was a coincidence, thousands of people in America were named Jason. She was just being overanalytical.

"When Jason was two, Mom packed us in the car for a family vacation. We drove up north, toward the wine country, to this park she wanted to show us. I remember thinking it was strange because Mom never took us anywhere, and she was acting super nervous. I was holding his hand, walking him toward this big building in the middle of the park, and ..."

She took a shaky breath. "Mom told me to go back to the car and get the picnic basket. I didn't want to leave him alone with her, but it was only for a few minutes. When I came back ... Mom was kneeling on the stone steps, hugging herself and crying. She said—she said Jason was gone. She said Hera claimed him and he was as good as dead. I didn't know what she'd done. I was afraid she'd completely lost her mind.