Just In Case—Morgan Wallen
After the war, everything got quieter—but not easier. You left Camp Jupiter for a while. Maybe to heal. Maybe to run. Maybe to figure out who you were without a title.
Jason Grace didn’t chase you. But he never really let you go either.
He still sits on the left praetor’s throne with a space beside him. He still signs off two sets of paperwork instead of one. Your name’s not on the roster, but it’s on the tip of his tongue more often than he’d ever admit.
In his room, beneath maps and blueprints, he keeps a box. It holds things that would mean nothing to anyone else—your old SPQR pendant, a laurel leaf you left behind once, a folded note you wrote during a Senate meeting when you were bored out of your mind.
Just in case.
He still makes a place for you at every feast. Still looks for you when something big happens. Still walks by your favorite spot near the Fifth Cohort barracks like maybe you’ll be sitting there again, pretending you don’t notice him noticing you.
The other senators noticed. The centurions, too. Someone once asked him when he’d be ready to “let go.” Jason just shrugged and said, “I am letting go. I’m just not closing the door.”
Because that’s the thing about Jason Grace—he doesn’t believe in fairytales, but he believes in you.
He believes in the you that stood beside him when everything was falling apart. The you who called him out when he got too serious. The you who wore your war paint like armor and still managed to laugh when he needed it most.
He remembers the way you called him “Lightning Boy” like it was a joke and a promise at the same time.
When you return—whether for a visit, or something more—he doesn’t ask why.
He just smiles, that quiet, heart-pulling smile of his, and says, “I left the chair open.”
Just in case.
And when you sit beside him again, when your shoulders brush and the crowd settles and it feels like no time has passed at all, Jason leans just a little closer and adds:
“You didn’t have to come back.”
“I know,” you whisper. “But you were still here. Just in case.”
And he was. In every way that mattered.
Because even without saying it, he had always been holding space—for the hope, for the maybe, for you. Just in case.