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new rome is a city of flowers.
the myth says that people were once two sided. that they were whole. that zeus took them and tore them in half, full of jealousy. myths, of course, are all based in truth.
all mortals might have other halves, but its only when the children and chosen of the gods share souls that they are able to find their soulmates. when two soulmates touch flowers bloom. in new rome, a city of the gods favoured, the streets are full of colour.
-
reyna grows up in a family blessed by bellona. her and her older sister are the goddesses children, but her family has always been favoured. flowers are not unheard of and prized, but they are also hidden. a soulmate could be a weakness, a soulmate is unheard of for mortals that do not know of the gods. when she and her sister escape and find themselves on circe’s island a scarce handful of the women have flowers. those that do keep them on display.
when the men take over the island, reyna thinks very little of flowers and thinks much more of trying to escape.
it’s in the after, when she finally settles in new rome, that she thinks of soulmates.
not everyone in new rome has a soulmate. after all, not everyone falls in love or stays in new rome. but most people in new rome, those who stay, have a soulmate.
reyna comes to new rome alone with arms bare and no flowers in sight, and no one minds. she meets jason when they’re both twelve and she starts to know she’s in the right place as he laughs with her and fights with her and somehow they both know to very carefully avoid skin to skin contact. soulmates are something special. what she has with jason is special - he’s her best friend. and neither of them want to know if being best friends isn’t enough.
they go to the movie theatre in the city and carefully separate the popcorn into the extra bag they asked for, they go to the cafe and they never grab the others drink first to pass it to them, when they spar the winner doesn’t pull the other onto their feet. reyna knows the legion and the city thinks the two of them are being silly, that they should just touch and the flowers will bloom eagerly and happily when their skin meets.
but reyna’s lost more than she should. and all jason knows is the legion. neither of them are ready to risk it. so they shove each other in the winter when they are bundled up in layers, and keep space between each other when they sit and watch the sunset.
they make it two years. at fourteen reyna falls off scipio and jason saves her. it should’ve been a moment of relief, instead they both freeze at the sight of their still empty skin. jason finds reyna after the mess of it all.
“i don’t care if we aren’t soulmates,” jason says, sitting next to her on reyna’s bunk.
“i do,” reyna tells him. she hasn’t met his eyes since he held her and nothing showed on their skin. now, she turns her head to meet his gaze. “i care that we aren’t soulmates. but, you’re still my best friend. and you aren’t going to stop being my best friend just because we aren’t separate halves. your future girlfriend can be your second half, or something.”
jason opens his palm to her and she takes it. he smiles at her and she smiles back. “well,” jason says. “i can hug you now.” and then he throws his arms around her and they fall of reyna’s bed and reyna doesn’t even mind that much that their arms aren’t covered in flowers. instead, she laughs and laughs and squeezes jason tight.
after that, if they’re within two feet of each other some part of them is touching the other. when people ask reyna ignores them, jason smiles with his too sharp teeth and claims they’re making up for the two years of their friendship when they always kept apart.
they aren’t soulmates, their connection isn’t enough for vines to grow around their limbs, or for sunflowers to sneak across their faces, or for bluebells to be found hiding between their fingers as they hold hands. reyna cares, but only because she cares about jason. reyna doesn’t mourn a half she’s still going to find, instead she teases jason about who’ll be brave enough to come close to the wolf boy.
and then she meets venus in charleston and the words she hears swim around in her head, promising a life so barren no child of ceres could heal it. no demigod will heal your soul . she will never know her other half. reyna will never be blessed with the sight of her flowers on another’s skin. her touch will never cause life to bloom. she takes venus’s words and she buries them in the half of her soul she will never know how to fill. reyna might live her life without a soulmate, but no one else has to know that but her.
-
reyna sees soulmates find each other more times that she can remember. new rome is a garden of souls finding their missing half. reyna tells herself half of a soul isn’t soulless.
by the time they give her praetor there are few members of the legion her age that are never seen with flowers. reyna thinks of the women on circe’s island and she does not cover her arms. she is not lesser without a soulmate to be found.
she drives the legion forward, she hugs her friends and doesn’t ache for petals she will never know. she rides scipio and from the sky she can’t see the gardens growing on skin. she takes care of those she loves and she is reyna avila ramirez arellano. no one mentions that she has not found anyone. she is 16 and she has time, in their eyes. more importantly, reyna makes herself into the perfect praetor.
and then jason grace goes missing.
-
even perfect praetor’s are not able to rule alone. she does her best. she does everything right. reyna dodges octavian's touch, even though she’s felt his slimy fingers on her arm before. he wants to fill a space that belongs to her best friend, the boy who could’ve been her soulmate. soulmate praetors are a dream in the eyes of many. reyna couldn’t care less.
instead of wallowing she searches for jason. and after months of looking, percy jackson arrives as a saving grace. part of her would prefer the grace she knows, percy jackson comes with faded flowers he traces everytime his eyes catch them. he is a mystery and reyna has no idea how to solve him, nor the time to try. instead she watches him leave on a quest and breathes easier when he comes back.
someone who has already met their soulmate taking the place of praetor eases reyna’s worries. reyna doesn't need to feel bad about not being his soulmate, too, if he already has one.
except it can’t be that easy.
-
there’s a war. there’s seven to answer the call, and only six to come home. reyna finds herself with a new praetor by her side and her best friend across the country on a semi-permanent basis and he doesn’t even remember her well.
reyna’s been having a very bad year. but she lives with it. she adjusts. she hugs frank and laughs when he asks if it’s true that she and jason are secretly soulmates, and then he helps her set that rumour to rest.
there are meetings with camp half blood and jason becomes a liaison, and when he visits camp jupiter again they watch the sunset. it’s another sunset of so, so many for reyna. but she watches jason’s face more than the sun as it drifts down through the sky, because it’s the first for him.
reyna and frank raise the ages of when demigods start their service and lower the number of years needed significantly. she goes to a game of capture the flag and is thoroughly surprised when the greeks beat her team of romans. she shakes the hands of all of piper’s siblings as piper watches hopefully, she is patted on the back slightly aggressively by the children of ares and she gets pulled into a very awkward group hug by a cabin lead by two almost identical boys with mischievous smiles.
flowers never sprout. reyna lets it go, she’s had time to learn to let it go and learn to not care and she’s gotten very, very good at it.
what she cares about is being happy, now. and she has that. She’s had that since she first found camp jupiter and the son of the camp’s namesake welcomed her with a smile better fit for a wolf.
-
and then, reyna starts to grow up. at seventeen she surprised two camps and a hidden city and chooses to go to a university other than the university of new rome. she goes to fucking harvard.
“harvard?” frank asks her as she slings her bag over her shoulder.
“yeah,” reyna says smirking. “fucking harvard. being the mayor of a small town looks really good on college apps, i think. and i’m getting the legion to bankroll it. imperial gold is a lot more in mortal currency.”
“okay,” frank says. “but like, did you do high school? Because i haven’t really been doing high school since before i got here.”
reyna laughs at that. she puts her bags back down and pulls out her phone to text frank some links he really should’ve had, “i do night school and online school. the entire legion should be? I guess you can go bother them all to start while i’m at harvard.”
frank shakes his head, but then he pulls a hat out from behind his back and reyna starts laughing again. it’s maroon and in big lettering on the front it has the harvard logo. reyna asks him where he got it, but he pays her no mind. he puts it on her and pulls it down too far in front of her eyes before jumping back out of her range. “well, i guess you’re going to harvard. stay away from frat parties!” he smiles at her and reyna rolls her eyes at him and pulls him in for a hug. flowers don’t grow, but reyna doesn’t need them to know that frank was the best co praetor she could’ve asked for.
and then he walks her to the bus and she sits at the back of a bus no one else gets onto. it stops in new rome and no one ever gets on or leaves, reyna doesn’t know why but she’s always like the idea of how confused the bus driver must be. she certainly startled him when she stepped on and paid her fare, and reyna smiles at the driver when he makes eye contact with her in his rearview mirror. he doesn’t make eye contact with her again for the rest of the trip, not even after other passengers filter on.
-
harvard, for the most part, is easier than being praetor and (probably being the only roman demigod) doing high school. her classmates are mostly awful and reyna would like to show some of her professors why monsters fear her name almost as much as percy jackson’s, but she shows restraint. all those years with octavian finally come in useful.
no one at harvard has flowers that came from their other halves' touch. reyna thinks there are one or two greek demigods also on campus, but she doesn’t see the telltale flowers anywhere. so either they’re very good at avoiding her gaze or the other demigods at harvard are also bloom free.
it’s nice. she gets to laugh at her own jokes and she goes on dates with girls that aren’t watching for petals as their fingers brush and none of the friends she makes try for touch too much or too little. reyna can’t remember the last time that skin contact didn’t mean something. she entertains getting a tattoo of a dead plant on her shoulder, but she lets her roommate talk her out of it pretty quickly.
when she goes back to new rome for the summer in the tiny apartment she gets for her service as praetor she teases her friends who are stuck in summer school because they never thought about high school until frank made a big fancy assembly after reyna left in september. frank and leila have grand plans for high school education - even though neither of them have finished high school yet - and reyna sees construction ongoing for a school behind one of her favourite parks. it makes her smile.
there’s a reunion for the seven and company when reyna’s in town, leo makes a crack about how she’s been missing longer than he was and reyna’s eyes soften as she sees the red camellias and hyacinths jason’s touch leaves on leo as he puts his arm over leo’s shoulder. they weren’t there until after leo came back from death, but no one knows why. then, leo tugs piper close and reyna is properly surprised when she sees geraniums and asters grow on piper’s arm. (later she will find piper and get the story out of her. once she has the story she’ll go to hug jason and tell him how happy she is for them all)
she’s forgotten the way it feels to be around soulmates. but there’s frank and hazel who are as free of flora as reyna remembers, like her. nico covers the flowers of the boy he’s been seeing he’s trying to keep a secret from her she thinks he’s worried she’ll threated the mystery boy. he’s not wrong) and percy and annabeth will never be found without each others jasmine, thyme and chrysanthemums. reyna finds it hurts less, even knowing that it’s likely one day frank and hazel will find flowers too.
reyna has a life where no one knows of souls that make their mark with blossoms.
-
reyna joins the harvard climbing team her second year for kicks and also out of spite. she goes to her program’s societies events and has been known to drop by the chess club to and make the members cry. she’s involved. but, as dakota had pointed it out with far too much glee, she’s not on any sort of athletic team or club.
so she picks up climbing. if she’s going to fucking harvard she might as well join the fucking harvard team.
later, dakota will say she owes him. reyna will offer to spar him for credit when he mentions it and he’ll back off.
in reyna’s second year when she joins the climbing team, a first year named zia rashid joins too. zia’s originally from egypt, but she did high school in brooklyn where she was staying with family friends. she’s majoring in history and has a minor in earth sciences and is planning to do her masters in archaeology. she’s a little addicted to smoothies and reyna is going to fall off the climbing wall one day because of her.
their friends, really, just friends. they spot each other on the wall and zia is one of reyna’s few friends at harvard that knows she was the “mayor” of a “small town”. reyna really, really wants to go out with her.
they’re getting lunch together after they leave the gym when reyna finally gets up the nerve to ask her out. she’d been teasing zia for ordering a smoothie even though she’d had one as they walked over to the cafe.
“uh,” reyna laughs as she watches zia’s mouth maybe a little too closely. “how many smoothies is that today?”
zia sighs at her, “well i didn’t know we were coming here. the restaurant next door - i wouldn’t have ordered a smoothie there. but this place is my favourite.”
reyna raises an eyebrow, “you didn’t give me a number.”
zia pulls her straw out of her mouth and sighs. “here try this,” she says. “it’s the best thing you’ll ever taste. try it!” she starts waggling the drink at reyna and reyna grabs it when zia’s smile turns soft and teasing.
she tries it. “okay,” reyna says, still holding onto the drink. “maybe you have a point.”
zia gives her a knowing look and then reaches for her drink back, but reyna moves it out of zia’s reach. zia’s mouth drops open, “i. you.”
“i like it,” reyna says with a shrug. and then she steals herself and goes for it. “let me take you on a date and get you another one.”
the hand zia had in the air that was trying to get her drink back freezes. for a moment, reyna worries she read their quiet moments and late night perfect grammar text chains wrong. the hand drops to her side, though, and zia’s face turns warm. “yeah,” zia says. she pushes her hair back behind her ear and reyna thinks she just got a hint at one of zia’s little gestures she’d been curious about. “yeah, that sounds good.”
for a few moments they just smile at each other across the table. eventually, their hands find each other under the table and reyna gives zia her drink back. in those few moments though, reyna is reminded of sunsets with jason and nights with nico after shadow jumping across the ocean and horseback rides with hazel and calls with her sister.
they don’t let go of each other’s hands until they have to pay. all reyna can see is zia’s eyes and they wander out from the cafe bumping into each others sides and reyna can’t remember the last time she was this close to someone.
zia pulls reyna down to a bench and reyna bumps into zia softly, her heartbeat faster than normal in her ears, but it doesn’t sound like it’s racing. nothing needs to be a race with zia. reyna brings their linked hands up to her mouth to kiss when she sees it.
she’s never seen roses bloom when soulmates touch before. she could’ve sworn she’d bumped into zia before in some way that would’ve had their skin touch, but reyna had grown used to being kept apart and carefully not getting close enough to be disappointed.
zia’s eyes are wide and reyna’s mostly confused as to how she didn’t know.
“i haven’t seen you in any nome, though,” zia says.
“um,” reyna says. and then she realizes what nome means as she remembers a story from percy and annabeth about magic and a different pantheon. “oh. that’s because i’m roman.”
zia blinks, and then understanding flashes through her eyes, reyna giggles lightly and zia squeezes their still linked hands. “we both have long stories to tell, i think,” zia says.
they share them. soulmates are not unique to the children and blessed of the greek and roman gods, reyna finds. and as she listens to zia’s stories she knows she would’ve found zia with or without the roses on their palms.