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He has memories of himself crying from when she used to slap him. He doesn’t remember how old he was when it happened, or what he did to deserve it, but he remembers the cruel scent of alcohol and disappointment as she raised her hands against him. And he knew even then that mothers shouldn’t hit their children. Thalia would come to his aid, stick up for him while he was crying in a corner. She always did that.
He can still feel his hands pressed sloppily against his ears in an effort to stop the noise from penetrating his brain, his skull, while his mother yelled and Thalia screamed back at her. Thalia was his safe haven in their unpredictable household. Back then, he was a baby. Back then, he was allowed to be scared and to show it. He had someone watching over him.
***
He remembers shedding bitter tears when his mother left him. He was two years old, barely a toddler, and she promised him that it was going to be okay, that they would see each other again. He knew she was lying, but she was crying, and her emotions conducted his in that moment.
He cried as she walked slowly away from that musty spot in the dark woods, holding on to a sliver of hope that even at two years old he knew was childish. He cried for Thalia, and his mother, even though he no longer harbored any sense of trust towards her. He cried until the wolves came and took him away. He was still wailing in the morning when Lupa shook him roughly awake with her muzzle, and he learned not to cry after that. He had a new pack, after all, and weakness was not acceptable if he wanted to survive them.
***
He didn’t cry his dirge for a long time after joining Lupa’s pack and then arriving at Camp. He was taught not to show pain, never to show pain. No matter how badly he wanted to escape Camp Jupiter and find his broken and dying family, his sister and his mom, maybe even a step-father, he knew he couldn’t leave.
He was their soldier, a product of their army and one of the most prized possessions of the Legion. And soldiers didn’t cry, didn’t have time nor energy to spare for emotion that would get them nowhere.
Camp Jupiter had given him a home, and he couldn’t very well renege that and say that he wasn’t grateful. He couldn’t complain, didn’t have a right to, really. He had to be strong, become the man they needed, and no one would take him seriously if he cried. But the ache was always there, hidden under a veneer of calm in his electric-blue eyes, his shattered mirrors that he used to see, his cut edges of the windows to his soul.
If they were windows, they were stained-glass. Not pretty, not that type. Stained from blood, from years of anguish and hurt and lacerations that would never heal, scars that would never fade. You could see the picture of composure painted gingerly on them, but you had to look closely, too closely - press your nose against the glass - if you wanted to see what was on the other side.
He had built himself a fortress in which he could stash all his emotions and never use them, where he could change his reflection simply by looking the other way, by becoming the soldier he had been raised to be. He had learned to hide - coward that he was - from his real thoughts and feelings, to forget the sense of weakness and replace it with confidence that at first he stumbled under the weight of. But he was used to it by now. He carried it around with him all day as if it was an extension of himself; an arm, a hand. A shield. And after all these years, you could be certain that he had mastered the art.
The years had dragged on, and he spent every moment of them hiding from what he really felt, pushing his tears down and drinking in their salty flavour from within his soul. Even when Reyna asked how he was doing; even when Bobby and Dakota and Gwen were mourning the death of a fellow legionnaire; in all those moments, he felt but never emoted pain. He had a duty, and emotional upheaval wasn’t part of it.
***
Until the night of his sixteenth birthday.
Percy and Annabeth had fallen into Tartarus. Though he had lost great soldiers to war and quests many times, death paled in comparison to the suffering to which his friends had been damned.
He cried himself into a tormented sleep alone in his cabin on the Argo II, where the nightmares could chase his exhausted body and finish him off, where there was no one to see him or hear him. For the first time, he cried for his future, something that may never even exist. For the first time, he felt tears slip down his cheeks out of fear and anxiety over his new responsibilities. He sobbed himself into a fitful sleep, allowing his body to indulge in these actions, waking up in the morning on the eve of an onset of insomnia that would last for years after this night.
He doesn’t remember falling asleep for the last time in many years, but he remembers the way his tears stained his pillow like blood. He can still trace the images they drew on the fabric, like a map that he couldn’t read showing him a life that he couldn’t know. The image of shame imprinted on his pillowcase, and a promise to himself that he could never let himself feel this weakness again, words resounding from his past into his present about duty and honour and responsibility, and how successful leaders keep their emotions in check.
Even when Percy and Annabeth were retrieved from that darkness, there was only more of the quest in front of them, and no room for Jason to spare for any more than a quick bout of temporary relief before he needed his time for more urgent matters of imminent survival.
***
Losing Leo was a thousand times harder than losing Percy and Annabeth, but somehow, he managed to retain his training and remain stoic. He was broken then, but he was too spent to cry again. He was too devoid of anything that wasn’t bitter. There was pain in his mind and anger in his chest, and he hid, the same way he had for years after that night with the wolves. He wanted to beat someone up, to punch the walls of his cabin until his hands bled raw, but he refrained. Instead, he stabbed and parried until his arms grew heavy, or scaled the climbing wall until the lava scorched his clothes and singed his back.
He cried in actions until he was bruised and burned and broken. He was going crazy. But no one ever saw him shed any tears. When people noticed him training, angry and alone, they didn’t step in.
And still, no one knew. He was empty and broken and lost. He would make himself hold it together for Piper and Leo and all their friends. He pretended that he was healing, that he had removed the bandages and the stitches were finally gone. Even though at night he was only digging the lacerations deeper until they bled again, would take a knife to trace the lines burned onto his skin, reminding himself that he had earned those lines; as a soldier, a strong man; and strong men don’t cry. He relished the pain of grounding himself in his hurtful masterpiece, transforming in the safety of Cabin One, retreating into the cold depths of darkness that he just couldn’t shake, as if the shadows in his cabin were breathing down his neck.
***
Even after Leo had returned, he couldn’t bring himself to show tears of relief like the others. The shame of his tears that night on the ship plagued his every action. He never even closed his eyes, too afraid of the demons that would chase him in his most vulnerable state. But it wasn’t the demons that saw him. It was Piper.
One night, when she couldn't sleep, she came into his cabin for comfort and found him on his bed carving the shape of his shame onto his arm, and there was no more hiding. No more strength. Only the darkness that gripped him when he stripped down the walls of his fortress, the pain of his emotions and his demons forming from the shadows as he told her. But he wasn’t a soldier to her. Not meant to be stoic, not meant to put on a proud and unbroken face. He was a boy who had suffered. The scorn of which he had been so afraid was stopped in its tracks. She didn’t judge him or hate him or think anything less of him. Just told him it was okay to feel pain, normal to need to cry about it.
***
But old habits die hard, and it took him years before he was comfortable enough with his pain to be entirely vulnerable with himself. Nonetheless, he was a soldier, and soldiers persevered. He cried when he finally got back to sleep after years and woke up screaming from a terrible nightmare. He would cry when he relived those early days of pain and slaps and shouting from his drunk mother. He cried at night, muttering over and over that he didn’t want to remember anymore, he didn’t want to relive those memories night after gods-dammed night! When he wished he could forget; when he wished he could dig a hole and stare into the darkness until his own name eluded him; when he wished he could stop looking back.
Even if the paint shouldn’t run down the sides of a stained-glass window; even if he was a boy expected to be a strong man and they don’t cry, a good leader and they don’t show emotion; even if he was weak and alone and broken and scared and even when he cut his feet on shards of glass; even when his soul was a kaleidoscope of emotions, a torrent of hardships and happiness.
Now, his eyes could cry. But he remembers that when he was young, it was only his soul.