Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

It wasn’t a discussion between Leo and Piper whether or not to go to Jason’s funeral. They came to the decision that they wouldn’t silently—or as silently as one could come to an agreement when all parties involved were sobbing.

Maybe it should have been a discussion. There was a part of Leo that worried he’d regret this later—his refusal to take this chance to say goodbye and let himself grieve.

But Leo remembered his mother’s funeral. Remembered the way his aunt Rosa had looked at him like she knew his mother’s death had been his fault. Leo couldn’t stand the thought of people looking at him like that again.

He also didn’t remember his mother’s funeral bringing him any sense of closure or comfort. He’d stood at her grave, afterwards, just as desperate and afraid and utterly inconsolable as he’d been before the funeral, except it had suddenly felt sickeningly final. The wound it had torn in his soul had kept bleeding for years, and the scars would stay forever. He didn’t need any of Apollo’s shitty oracles to know Jason’s death would be exactly the same.

At this point, Leo was pretty sure his sanity was being held together by a combination of jokes and a truly questionable amount of duct tape.

Beyond all that, though, Camp Jupiter was a battlefield right now. It would continue to be a battlefield for the foreseeable future.

Leo wasn’t a coward. It wasn’t that he didn’t want to go back and help. But one of his best friends was already in a box, and there was no way in hell he’d risk the other.

With how tightly Piper was clinging to him, maybe she was thinking the same thing. 

For all his big talk about dragon escorts, Festus did most of the actual escorting on his own, occasionally torching what Leo hoped were monsters and not random public monuments. Leo, for his part, spent most of the journey crammed into the backseat of the car next to Piper, sandwiched between her and a bunch of moving boxes that seemed determined to flatten him into a Leo-shaped pancake whenever they took a sharp turn.

He’d spent so long thinking about seeing her and Jason again. 

He’d talked Calypso’s ear off about them the whole journey, to the point where it had clearly started to annoy her. He’d thought about various ridiculous entrances he could make, and the fact that he’d probably get yelled at, but he’d also thought about sitting together by the campfire, sharing nachos. He’d thought about Jason hugging him so fiercely that he couldn’t breathe, and Piper cussing him out while she held him, making him promise never to do anything that reckless again.

Now Piper was actually holding him, and Leo couldn’t feel anything. There was a numbness in his chest. He wasn’t sure he had it in him to ever feel happiness again. Hell, even if he did, what was the fucking point? Every time anything even remotely good happened in his life, it got ripped away from him again.

They didn’t talk a whole lot for most of the drive. They cried until it felt like they couldn’t anymore, clinging to each other like desperate children.

Even if they’d wanted to talk about what had happened, Piper’s dad was right there, and despite the Mist usually working overtime for them, having him overhear seemed like a gamble. Or, well, maybe that was what Leo told himself. Maybe he just wasn't sure he was ready to hear it all. He still felt like he couldn’t think. He was overwhelmed to hell and couldn’t stop fidgeting.

Several hours into the trip, his stomach started grumbling. Piper dug through the bag at her feet and offered him one of her PB&J sandwiches, but Leo couldn’t eat. He hadn’t skipped a meal in forever—he’d been homeless and unsure when he’d even get access to the next meal enough times that it had been all but tattooed into his skull that he couldn’t afford to—but he couldn’t even think about eating without feeling sick. He thought about Jason. He thought about the state he’d left Camp Jupiter in and the fact that they hadn’t even been able to give the dead their proper funeral rites.

Had Leo’s help made any difference at all? Had anything he’d done in his life changed things even slightly?

Leo knew the Fates had intended for it to be fire that fell—for him to burn in a bright, hot blaze and turn himself to charcoal. But he’d refused to stay dead like a good little pawn, and now Jason was gone, and it was all his fault.

He wasn’t sure how Piper could even look at him right now, but he was beyond grateful that she was holding onto him as tightly as she did. It was the only reason he didn’t fall to pieces completely. The cog at the heart of Leo’s machine had broken in a way that made it utterly beyond repair, and now it felt like a matter of time before the whole thing came apart. Piper holding him was the only reason his remaining pieces were still functioning. 

It should have been impossible for Leo to fall asleep under these circumstances, but he’d been traveling for hours and fighting before then and he’d cried out his remaining energy, so eventually, the world started to fade around him, reduced to just the sound of Piper’s breaths, until finally, those went, too.

It would have been kinder, maybe, if Leo had dreamed up some shitty visions promising violent death and/or the end of the world. That would have been business as usual. 

Instead, he dreamed of his time on the Argo II—of one of those early nights when the different groups were still getting to know each other, having a brief moment to breathe between their ridiculous tasks and saving the world. 

It had seemed reasonable to start their journey by properly catch each other up on what had happened on their end—going into a bit more detail regarding the monsters they’d faced than had seemed appropriate for a New Rome lunchroom conversation.
Percy, Hazel and Frank had talked about rescuing Thanatos, and Piper, Jason and Leo had told them what had happened with Hera in turn. 

This would have been a boring intel conversation at best, seeing as Leo had been there for all of their part, but they’d grabbed snacks and sat on cushions on the floor and made it a whole bonding activity. Jason had been wedged between Piper and Leo, and they’d taken turns storytelling. 

And Jason had bragged. So much. But he hadn’t even had the decency to brag about himself like a normal human being. Instead, he’d talked about how capable Piper and Leo had been, somehow managing to make Leo sound like the coolest person he’d ever met. Which was ridiculous, considering he’d met everyone else on their team.

And sure, Leo made it sound like he thought he was amazing all the time, but he was exaggerating, which everyone, himself included, knew. 

Jason didn’t seem to have gotten the memo, though. He had one arm wrapped around Leo the whole evening, and he got all starry-eyed when he talked. 

“Leo took on three Cyclopes by himself. Three!”

“Dude, stop!” Leo had laughed, shaking his head. “I know I’m incredible and you’re blessed to be friends with me and stuff, but you weren’t even conscious for that part.”

“Still happened, though.” Jason had beamed at him. “You’re amazing, dude. I would have died about fifteen times on that mission if it hadn’t been for you. You guys should’ve seen him.”

It would have been easier if Leo had thought Jason was just trying to talk him up to the others to make them more willing to trust him after how badly he’d messed up in New Rome, but Jason wasn’t the type. He’d looked like he honestly believed every single word he was saying.

So, of course, Leo had refused to seriously deal with any of the things that made him feel.

“Sorry, Pipes, but I’m pretty sure your boyfriend is in love with me. It’s the fire powers, I’m afraid. I’m just too hot to resist,” Leo had joked instead, and Piper had untangled herself from Jason’s other side to throw Doritos at Leo, and everything had been right in the universe.

Waking up from that, blearily blinking himself awake in the car full of moving boxes and remembering… that was a worse punch in the gut than waking up from most nightmares had been. And Leo should know. He’d had so many of those over the years that he was basically a certified nightmare expert at this point.

Leo wanted to go back in time and spend forever in that one evening, living it over and over and over again until the Fates or a temporal paradox or something eventually killed him. He wanted to hold on to what they’d been back then—the three of them together and happy and whole, back before they’d realized what the prophecy really meant. 

He wanted to stay wrapped in Jason’s arm and hear him laugh at whatever stupid joke Leo came up with while he and Piper threw snacks at each other like ten year olds. He wanted to believe he could actually be the person Jason was bragging about—this invincible hero that could do just about anything and saved people’s lives.

But Leo had never been that hero. Even his sacrifice had been the selfish decision of a coward who wasn’t ready to die just yet. Jason had been their Superman. The guy who could fly and threw lightning and saved people from falling to their deaths. Jason had been the hero. And ultimately, that had been what killed him.

Leo wasn’t exactly sure what he planned to do once they got to Oklahoma. He should have been heading back to the Waystation, to give Calypso the normal life he’d promised. But he wasn’t thinking about Calypso, or the Waystation, and the thought of a normal life had gone out of the window the second he’d seen the coffin. Besides, the Waystation would mean people asking questions, wanting to know about his mission and asking him to talk about his feelings, and he didn’t want that.

The only thing Leo really wanted to do right now was not think. 

By the time they got to the house, it was so late that a cross-country dragon flight seemed inadvisable for visibility reasons alone, so Leo agreed to stay the night. Festus nuzzled him for a bit, got a fuel snack from the canister Leo had brought and then folded down into his million pound suitcase form for the night.

It took a little under two hours to carry all the boxes inside, which was an annoying amount of time to be carrying boxes but seemed like an absurdly short amount to move the contents of an entire life.

They spent some time in search of the necessities that needed to be unpacked, but the house was still furnished and also had running water and electricity as of a few days ago, so it wasn’t that bad.

While Piper went in search of some ancient camping gear so Leo wouldn’t have to sleep on the floor—this seemed silly to him, the floor was far from the worst place he’d ever slept—Leo asked Piper’s dad if he could help with dinner. 

Tristan looked relieved at his offer, actually. He’d been staring at the assorted vegetables with a slightly lost expression, trying to hack at one of the zucchinis with a butter knife. It seemed like he was trying to remember how cooking worked and had just discovered he had absolutely no idea. 

Considering how long he’d been an insanely rich guy with a personal cook, Leo guessed that actually might have been a pretty accurate read on the situation. 

“You might want to try a sharper knife,” Leo suggested, which made Piper’s dad look absolutely mortified. “Try not to chop off any of your fingers, though. I think Piper’s been traumatized enough for one week.”

The words were out of his mouth before Leo could think to stop them. Tristan didn’t laugh, but at least it didn’t seem like he’d be tossing Leo out of the house over this. Maybe he realized people sometimes said stupid shit when they were grieving. Maybe Piper had just warned him in advance that Leo was like this sometimes.

Tristan just went to find a different knife, which would have maybe been concerning if he hadn’t gone back to hacking at the vegetables a moment later.

“Well, at least this one is actually cutting through the zucchinis. That’s already an improvement.”

“Yeah, I’m basically a cooking expert,” Leo said with a grin, only half-joking. He went to peel and chop up the carrots, and was done with those and about half the mushrooms by the time the poor zucchini had been hacked to bits.

“You and Piper went to school together, right?” Tristan asked after a while of them quietly chopping vegetables for the casserole, trying to make sense of things with information he didn’t have and that, judging from past evidence, probably would have made his skull crack. “You and her and Jason.”

“Yeah. We went to Wilderness school together.” Leo winced, trying not to think too hard of Jason while also trying to remember the lies they’d already told Piper’s dad. At this rate, he was pretty worried his own skull would crack, too. “Then all three of us switched to a different school. Then I was gone for a while.”

Tristan nodded like this made perfect sense, though he mostly seemed lost in thought. That was a little rude, in Leo’s opinion. If he went through all that effort to remember their elaborate setup of lies, the least Piper’s dad could do was appreciate it!

“I’m glad you’re here now, with everything that’s happened. Piper was really upset when you left,” Tristan said, still with that faraway look in his eyes. “The last few months were hard for her. Between the move and the breakup, she really could have used a friend.”

Leo promptly lost all rights to make fun of Piper’s dad and his vegetable chopping skills because at the word ‘breakup’, the knife slipped and he nearly sliced off two of his fingers.

“Fuck! Ow!” he said eloquently, trying to avoid bleeding all over the cutting board in his attempt to get to the sink. “Jason and Piper broke up?”

The question sounded absurd even to his own ears. Why would Jason and Piper break up? They’d been happy together.

Surely, Piper’s dad had to be talking about something else.

To Leo’s shock, Tristan nodded.

“A while ago, yes,” he said, but he didn’t go into details—possibly because Leo was bleeding all over the sink. “We should bandage that. Do you think you need stitches?”

“No, the cuts aren’t that deep,” Leo decided, turning on the faucet and holding his bleeding hand under the stream of cold water. Maybe he should have been more concerned about the injury, but his mind was still whirring at the thought of his best friends breaking up. Unfortunately, the cold water stung like hell. He hissed with pain. “Sorry for making your kitchen look like a crime scene right after moving in. Usually, I at least have the decency to wait a day or two.”

Because the house was a small, cozy place and Leo had not had the decency to curse quietly, Piper appeared in the doorway a moment later, an alarmed expression on her face.

“What happened?”

“I’ve been bested by a stupid potato,” Leo cursed, holding up his bleeding hand and wiggling his fingers for emphasis. He figured out immediately that this was a mistake. “Ow.”

“Stop that, dumbass!” Piper cursed, moving to stand beside him. “Sink was the right call, but you need to use soap or the cuts could get infected. Dad, any chance we have gauze lying around somewhere?”

Tristan didn’t seem to question why his daughter had immediately jumped into emergency medical treatment mode. He just abandoned the cutting board and headed for the front door.

“Not exactly sure what box our regular medical supplies are in, but I’ll get the first aid kit from the car. I’ll be right back.”

“Do we have to do the soap?” Leo whined, because fuck, that stung, but Piper nodded with a scary expression on her face, so he complied. “How do you even know this stuff? Are we sure you’re not secretly an Apollo kid?”

“I know this stuff because I’m friends with a bunch of morons who have zero sense of self-preservation,” Piper cursed, gritting her teeth. “You shouldn’t be around knives when you’re this distracted.”

“I can usually cook just fine when I’m distracted. Your dad was the one who told me you and Jason broke up in the middle of this stupid potato,” Leo said defensively. “Is that the Mist messing with him?”

That was the only explanation his mind had supplied so far that made any sense to him.

Piper shook her head. “We really did break up. That was a few months ago.”

Leo felt his jaw hit the floor. 

“What the hell happened? You were together for ages. I thought- you always seemed so happy.”

“I know, but-” Piper broke off abruptly when her dad came back inside with the first aid kit. Demigod stuff, then?

Leo’s mind was racing. The breakup was a completely stupid thing to focus on, considering everything that had happened in the last few days. He knew that.

But it was easier to try and make sense of this than it was to try and make sense of the fact that Jason was gone and he’d never get to see him again.

“Is it alright if we do this somewhere else?” Piper asked her dad, taking the first aid kit from him.

“Of course. It might be easier to patch him up when you’re both sitting down, anyway.” He turned towards Leo. “Thank you for your help, but I think I can take it from here.”

Leo sent a silent prayer to whichever deity was responsible for protecting vegetables—Demeter, probably?—and gave what he hoped was an encouraging thumbs up with his uninjured hand before he followed Piper into the hallway to presumably be reprimanded some more.

They ended up sitting on an old bed that looked like it had lived a long, miserable life and was excited for retirement, but the wooden frame thankfully didn’t break down under the weight of the new mattress or the additional weight of them sitting on said mattress. Piper explained that this had been her dad’s room when he’d lived here as a child, and that it would probably become her room now. Then she went very quiet and focused on bandaging his hand, clearly avoiding looking at him.

“It wasn’t because of me, was it?” Leo asked. The thought made him feel ill. “Please tell me it wasn’t something like, I don’t know, you two being unable to stand being around each other after what happened to me. I think I’d actually have to blow myself up again if it was.”

He tried to make it sound like a joke, but it didn’t feel like one at all. The thought that he'd managed to ruin his best friends’ relationship on top of everything else made it hard to breathe.

When Piper shook her head, it felt like a whole boulder was lifted off his shoulders.

“I actually think we would have broken up sooner if you hadn’t gone missing. We leaned on each other a lot after you disappeared. It wasn’t until we realized we wouldn’t find you and things started to settle down a little that I had time to think. And when I did…” Her voice went very quiet, and she still didn’t look up at him. “I realized I wasn’t happy in the relationship. I don’t think I ever was.”

“How did I not know that?” Leo wondered quietly. “I just… you two seemed happy to me. What kind of garbage best friend am I?”

Piper shook her head. “It isn’t your fault. I was telling myself I was happy for a long time. It’s almost- sometimes I wonder if I was charmspeaking myself. That maybe I kept saying I was in love with Jason until I convinced myself I actually was. And with Hera and my mom setting it up… I love-” her voice caught in her throat, and Leo felt like maybe he needed to throw up, “-loved Jason, but not like that.”

“Pipes, I’m really sorry.” Leo squeezed her shoulder. “That sounds like it was super hard for both of you.” Leo felt awful about the fact that he hadn’t even been around to comfort either of them, but it wasn’t like he could fix it now. It was just another item on Leo’s unending list of epic screwups he’d never be able to make up for.

“Jason was… well, he took it exactly like I expected him to. He was surprised, but he didn’t get angry or anything. He mostly seemed okay. Part of me wonders if maybe…” But whatever Piper had been thinking about, she seemed to decide it wasn’t important. “It was hard to get a proper read on him, and as nice as he was about it, things were still super awkward after. I'm terrified he died thinking I didn’t care about him.”

And then she was tearing up again, and Leo thought he would shatter if she cried. 

“He knew you cared,” he said as earnestly as he could manage, pulling Piper to his chest again. “You love way too annoyingly for him not to have known. Hell, even I know you love me, and we both know I’m a fucking nightmare when it comes to this stuff.”

“I missed you so much,” she whispered, wrapping her arms around his back like it was the easiest thing in the world.

“Oh, I’m about to make you regret saying that,” Leo said, forcing himself to smile. “I’ll bring it up each and every time you say you find something I do annoying.”

“You’re annoying as hell, but you’re still my best friend.” He could feel her tears dripping onto his shoulder, and he knew that would make him start up again too. “I don’t know how I’d do this without you.”

And well, passing away from dehydration after crying too much would be a really lame way to die the second time, but everything was just too much right now, so if that was how he went, Leo wasn’t sure anyone could blame him.

For the next couple of weeks, Leo stayed.

Helping Piper and her dad unpack was the perfect way to keep himself occupied and not have to think. Usually, a mundane task like this probably would have driven Leo nuts. But right now, it was a bit of a godsend—if not literally, at least figuratively. Being productive was always so much easier when it was done in order to avoid something you wanted to do even less. There was a reason his spaces in the foster homes had only ever been tidy when he had exams coming up.

He helped cook, too, and Piper’s dad became increasingly less garbage at it the longer this went on—like muscle memory was finally kicking in after years of disuse.

It was mostly good—listening to Piper reminisce about trips she’d taken with her dad and where she’d gotten the weird variety of items she kept in her room. When they weren’t unpacking, Leo and Piper played video games or watched movies or explored the area. Twice, during the night, they took Festus on a little flight to a nearby fast food place. Finding a parking spot was a bit of a nightmare, unfortunately. Leo would submit a complaint about their inability to accommodate celestial bronze dragons the first chance he got.

The first time they tried hiking—Leo didn’t even like hiking, he’d spent enough time outside for several lifetimes, why did he do this to himself—they got hopelessly lost in the woods, and of course, due to demigod bullshit, neither of them had brought a phone, so Google Maps wasn’t an option. It was probably for the better. The last thing that situation needed on top of them being lost was a monster attack. 

They were already jokingly planning out their new life in the woods when, thankfully, a girl their age came to their rescue.

“A human being! Thank the gods. The squirrels weren’t talking to us,” Leo greeted her, which had Piper shout “Please ignore Leo!” loudly from the branches of the tree she’d been climbing.

The girl lifted her head, spotted Piper and promptly burst out laughing.

“What in the world are you doing up there?” 

“Trying to get a better vantage point,” Piper sighed, making her way back down the tree. “We’re hopelessly lost.”

“Well, nice to meet you, hopelessly lost. I’m Shel,” the girl said, still grinning. Leo decided immediately that he liked her.

Piper had almost made it back down when she somehow missed a branch and fell the rest of the way. In comedic movie fashion, Shel moved before Leo had the chance to and caught her mid-tumble. “That was a bit of a dramatic way to get my attention, but you’re cute, so I’ll allow it.”

“Oh yeah, Piper’s got a bit of a thing with falling for people that way,” Leo commented, and Piper gave him her most murderous look while she got back on her feet.

“You guys need help getting back?”

“Please, yes,” Piper said immediately. “It turns out we’re both garbage with maps.”

“Maybe you just need a tour guide next time,” Shel suggested, winking at Piper, whose face turned scarlet. Leo wasn’t even mad about being the third wheel for once. He’d give her so much shit about this later.

And he did. And then Piper properly came out to him—no label or anything, mostly as extremely confused but sure she liked girls, which also made a few additional pieces click into place regarding her breakup with Jason. She ended her anxiety-riddled explanation by thanking Leo for being so normal and annoying about all this. 

Which was how Leo realized he’d apparently never told Piper he was bi.

Or maybe he had, and it had gotten lost along with their other memories of Wilderness. Stupid memory-stealing babysitters.

Well, at least they got to hug about it now. 

It was strange how normal some days felt when nothing would ever truly be normal again. When in every moment Leo and Piper spent together, the gaping hole that had been ripped into their trio was so blatantly obvious.

The benefit and problem of this friendship was that Leo and Piper were both experts at not talking about things they were struggling with. 

This wasn’t exactly news. From what little Leo did remember of Wilderness School, they’d spent months not talking about his mom, or about the fact that Piper’s dad kept canceling their weekend plans. They’d both known there were things left unsaid, but as long as they’d been able to cheer each other up, that hadn’t really mattered. It made sense, honestly. Put two people who hadn’t had a shoulder to cry on for ages in a room together and see what happens!

Right now, this meant they were expertly ignoring the box of belongings Piper had picked up from Jason’s school. It had been pushed so far under the bed during that first night that it was no longer visible, and neither of them had made an effort to move it out of its new home since. They ignored the topic of Jason, period, until it inevitably hit them in the face again. 

It was mostly dumb shit that set them off. Piper automatically reaching for vanilla ice cream at the grocery store because it was Jason’s favorite—seriously, who in their right mind even liked vanilla ice cream?

Sometimes, Leo would make a joke and burst into tears instead of laughing because he knew it would have cracked Jason up. They found old photos unpacking. One time, Piper’s dad suggested they make tacos and they started simultaneously bawling their eyes out.

Leo had spent a long time exactly like this—pretending everything was normal and okay when it wasn’t either of those things until he inevitably broke down. Then he’d started to actually feel sort of okay whenever he was with Jason and Piper. Now, he was sure he would spend the rest of his life pretending.

His appetite was too used to being stuck in survival mode for him to bow to nausea for long, so he went back to eating properly after a few days. He still cried himself to sleep most nights. He kept dreaming about Jason. The memories wrapped themselves around him like a safety blanket that he knew would get ripped away again in the morning. He always woke up feeling empty. Sometimes, he wished he could just go to sleep and never wake up again.

But other than that, it was mostly good.

Then demigod communications went back up, and everything went to hell.

Chapter Text

The first Iris Message came through on the ninth of April, barely ten minutes after breakfast. Piper’s dad was already at work, which at least meant they thankfully didn’t have to explain why there was a floating rainbow that had people’s faces in it chilling in the middle of the living room.

It was Thalia and Reyna. 

Leo hadn’t even realized they knew each other, but apparently the Hunters of Artemis—Diana, whatever—had come to Camp Jupiter’s aid. This should have been a relief, but there was no relief to be found in Reyna’s expression. The only flicker of joy he saw on her face was when she told them she’d be joining the Hunters.

It wasn’t the kind of decision Leo had expected from Reyna. Then again, she barely looked like the same girl that had shown Leo around New Rome with a proud smile, eagerly listening to and expanding on Leo’s ideas for fortifications and long-range weaponry. Had it really only been a few weeks since then? It felt like a lifetime ago now.

There was still that same grim set to Reyna’s jaw, but her usual proud posture looked more like she was… well, posturing, for lack of a better word. And the expression on her face… 

Leo knew that expression. He had seen it in the mirror many times as a child, and again in the last few weeks. It was the expression of someone who’d seen their home get burnt down to the foundations and found themself sitting in the wreckage.

He knew the kind of news they were getting even before Reyna started telling them what had happened.

Thalia was easier to look at—Thalia, whose grief was all fury, small bolts of electricity dancing through her dark hair like she was the human embodiment of a storm cloud.

At that moment, she looked nothing like Jason. It was such a relief that Leo almost cried.

They’d won the battle against the emperors, but Reyna called it a Pyrrhic victory—one that was so disastrous for the victors that it was basically indistinguishable from a defeat.

New Rome was in ruins. So many had been wounded. Even more people were dead.

Leo felt sick to his stomach. He’d known some of these demigods. Not well, admittedly, but he’d fought side by side with them. The thought that so many lives had been cut short, and that none of the gods had bothered to interfere for the longest time, despite the fact that it was their kids down there, made him want to punch something. 

Knowing that at least some of them had probably been friends with Jason in the life he’d never properly remembered, and how desperately Jason had always tried to protect everyone when the gods couldn’t be bothered to… 

Leo clenched his trembling fists, flames dancing in his curls and licking at his arms, all the way up to his elbows.

He needed to go outside and cool down for a bit to avoid lighting Piper’s bedroom on fire by accident.

They were talking about Jason’s funeral when he got back. Thalia hadn’t been able to make it, which felt like a punch to the gut. She hadn’t found out he’d died until after it was already over. Percy and Annabeth still didn’t know, and Reyna wasn’t sure about Nico.

And there was the regret Leo had been so terribly afraid of feeling. He didn’t regret keeping Piper safe, especially not after hearing just how hard-won the ensuing battle had been. She was sitting here, next to him, alive, and nothing would ever make him regret that. It wasn’t even that he suddenly thought attending the funeral would have brought him any closure. How the fuck could there ever be closure for something like this?

But the thought of Jason, who’d been abandoned by both of his parents and had his memory wiped by his patron—whose camp had barely looked for him after he’d gone missing—going into death alone, surrounded mostly by strangers who had only known the person he’d been before he’d lost his memories, if that, made Leo feel sick to the stomach. 

It didn’t matter that he knew Jason would have cared more about them being safe than he would have about them attending the funeral. It felt like failing him all over again.

“I ditched you both in life, and now he’s gone, and I couldn’t even bother to be there for him, then.”

His eyes were swimming again. Piper wrapped her arms around him wordlessly. 

Reyna—serious, stoic, collected Reyna—had an expression on her face like she wanted to reach through the Iris Message and pat his head.

“I held some private rites for him,” Thalia said gently. It wasn’t worded as a suggestion, but the meaning was clear anyway. “I’ve also spent a lot of extra time shooting arrows at stuff lately. It helps, if only a little.”

“The only thing I could shoot here is Leo, and he hasn’t annoyed me that much yet,” Piper commented, so Leo promptly kicked her in the shin. “Ow! Actually, keep it up and I might use you for target practice, after all.”

“You can’t. I still owe Thalia hot sauce.”

It was such an absurd statement that even Reyna almost cracked a smile. “Yeah, I’m going to need context on that one.”

Two hours later, a rainbow image of Frank and Hazel popped up. The worst part of that conversation was them asking how exactly it had happened, because apparently Apollo had performed a song about it, which had been emotional but not super clear on the details. Piper struggled to tell the story again, and she was reassured several times that she didn’t have to, but she pushed through. The only slight comfort was that Jason would have been dead right away—hopefully he hadn’t been in pain for long.

The second worst part of the conversation was way more mundane: Frank asking what their plans were going forward. 

Leo didn’t think there would be much going forward for him, just in general. In his mind, he’d been planning on staying in this reprieve forever—playing video games and getting lost in the woods with Piper as they continued to pointedly ignore the emptiness of the third chair at their little table.

Jason’s face kept popping up in his dreams, but the days were mostly bearable as long as he was here with Piper.

But then Piper talked about school, and the classes she was planning to take, and the possibility of college somewhere in the area. She talked about her dad and camping and maybe getting a job to help out.

Things that a person with a normal life would have done.

And, okay, maybe a part of Leo had realized that his idea of the future wasn’t exactly realistic. He also realized he couldn’t stay 

there forever. He didn’t want to be a burden on Piper and Tristan. He knew how long Piper had been wanting to properly spend time with her dad, and now she actually had the chance to, and here Leo was, inserting himself right into the middle of their already complicated father-daughter-relationship. He wasn’t supposed to be here, messing this up for her.

As much as he disliked thinking about this, he couldn’t keep ignoring that particular part of reality. He’d already spent too much of his life in homes where he wasn’t wanted. He couldn’t stand the thought of bothering Piper so much that she started feeling that way about him, too.

As good as it felt to see Hazel and Frank, a part of Leo was relieved when they ended that call. The even more horrible, selfish part of him was also glad Hazel had promised to be the one who told Nico. Leo didn’t know him that well, but he knew Nico didn’t have many friends and that he’d already lost too much. That particular breakdown Leo felt like he was in no way equipped to handle. He could hardly even deal with himself right now.

The calls didn’t stop. 

Piper’s siblings called, asking how she was and what had happened, and so they had to tell the story again, tearing off the scab and making their wounds bleed all over the place. 

Then, like everything else wasn’t bad enough, Leo got an IM from a very anxious Harley, who seemed relieved he was alive and asked when he was coming back to camp. 

“Don’t know yet,” Leo said, forcing a smile. “Probably not for a while. I’ll call you, though. I promise.”

He didn’t have the heart to tell his kid brother that he wasn’t sure he was ever coming back—that even thinking about stepping into this place that was brimming with memories of Jason made him feel sick to the stomach.

Leo supposed he couldn’t blame Reyna for wanting to leave behind a city full of ghosts when he couldn’t even handle one of them.

Shel invited Piper out for coffee two days later. Via letter, of all things, because obviously Piper hadn’t had a phone number to give her but Shel apparently wouldn’t let that stop her.

“You falling out of a tree really did it for her, hm?” Leo teased, trying to read the letter over Piper’s shoulder. 

“Har. Har. Har.”

“Hey, you were the one who said you liked me being supportive and annoying.” He nudged her. “Come on, what’s it say?”

“Like I told you, she just asked me to grab coffee with her.” She folded the letter before he could get a proper look at it, but Leo knew it had way too much text to just be that. 

“Liar.”

“Okay, okay.” Piper held up her hands defensively. “She really did just ask, but she might have done it with a poem.”

“Damn.” Leo raised his eyebrows. “You think she’s picked out engagement rings yet?”

“Shut up.”

“I will refer back to your comment about liking that I’m supportive and annoying again! You’ll never get me to shut my mouth now. Besides, I did promise to make you regret saying you missed me,” he teased her. “I have a reputation to uphold.”

Piper snorted. “Yeah, yeah. Shel’s picking me up in an hour. Are you sure you’ll be alright here on your own?” 

It was clear that she was reluctant to leave him, especially since her dad was at work. 

Truthfully, Leo wasn’t super thrilled about the thought of being alone, either. But it was clear that Piper wanted to do this, and that was more important than him not wanting to be alone for a few hours.

He could totally do this. He’d spent a pretty large chunk of his life alone. He had plenty of experience keeping himself busy.

“I’ve third-wheeled on enough of your dates for one lifetime, thanks,” Leo informed her, still grinning. “Besides, I should probably call my own girlfriend. That’ll be a lot less awkward without you being around to give me shit.”

Because contacting Calypso may have barely crossed his mind in the past few weeks due to him being both a garbage boyfriend and a garbage person just in general, but at least in theory, they were still dating.

Piper stuck her tongue out at him, and he just hoped his laugh wasn’t too obviously fake.

“For the record, though, this won’t be a date,” Piper said determinedly. “I’m not- I don’t think that would be fair to Shel. Not when I still have so much to figure out, and not when I’m still dealing with… you know.”

“For the record, I don’t think Jason would be the type to show up and haunt his ex during dates. If he does, let me know, because then I might have to unfriend him post-mortem.”

He knew Piper didn’t love when he made these kinds of jokes, but she never told him to stop. Humor had always been how he coped. Piper got that.

“Leo.” Piper groaned, exasperated. “Be serious for a second, yeah?”

“Oh, I’m super serious. Possessive ghost exes are a total friendship dealbreaker for me.” Leo nudged her again. “As the resident expert on constantly getting rejected, maybe don’t take my advice on this, but I don’t think there’s a timeline for these things. It’s okay if you find her cute. I think he’d want you to be happy. That’s the kind of awful sap he is.”

Leo realized he’d slipped into present tense again, but he didn’t have it in him to correct himself. He tried to swallow the lump in his throat.

“I do find her cute. I just don’t think I’m ready for a relationship at the moment.”

“That’s fair.” Leo shrugged. “If I don’t get to be best man at your wedding, I’ll be really pissed, though.”

Piper stepped on his foot, so he kicked her in the leg and a moment later, they were swatting each other with pillows like they were little kids. Piper was actually laughing. For the first time in weeks, she seemed genuinely excited about something. And Leo wanted her to be happy. He was glad at least one of them was.

The door closing behind Piper was terrifying. Suddenly, Leo was truly alone with his thoughts for the first time since Jason had died. Even late at night, when his thoughts inevitably drifted in all kinds of awful directions, Piper was there. Even if she was asleep and all he could do was hear her breathing, that still helped. This? Being alone with his thoughts in a completely quiet room? 0/10 experience, would not recommend.

He didn’t give himself much time to think. He rummaged around in his tool belt and pulled out a golden drachma for an Iris Message—as upset as Leo was with all the gods right now, he supposed at least his dad had the decency to actually give him an allowance—then pulled out the device he’d been working on. It was a small cylinder, no larger than the palm of his hand, and it obediently folded out into a prism at the push of a button. You just needed to fill it with water, switch it on, and voilà: you got yourself a rainbow. It even had an inbuilt flashlight in case you needed to use it when the sun was out.

He tried to swallow his anxiety and flipped the drachma into the rainbow.

“Iris, goddess of the Rainbow, please accept my offering. Show me Calypso. Waystation, Indianapolis.”

For a moment, nothing happened. Then, the rainbow flickered and an image appeared—blurry at first, then slowly taking shape. Calypso was sitting at a desk by a window, brooding over some notebook that almost looked like…

Leo blinked.

“Huh, am just heroically saving you from your homework?”

Calypso’s head snapped up. Her eyes went wide as saucers. “Leo?”

“I do recall that being my name, yes.” He grinned and waved. “Hi.”

He tried to remember how to talk to Calypso. The thing was, Leo wasn’t sure he’d ever actually known. Hell, even if he had, how exactly did you greet a girl you’d sort of ditched a few weeks ago and hadn’t called since?

Calypso didn’t look very amused. “Where are you? You were gone so long that- I was beginning to think you’d died!”

“Well, yeah, I did,” Leo said with a shrug. “That’s how I rescued you, remember?” 

It was easier to say that than to say anything else. To admit it really did feel like there was a part of him that had died and that he was never getting back. He didn’t want to have to actually talk about Jason—to tell the story again—especially not without Piper there. 

He realized his mistake a moment too late. Calypso’s eyes flared with anger.

“For the last time, you did not rescue me!” she snapped. “And do you think that’s funny? You disappear for weeks without a word, and that’s one of the first things you say to me? Do you have any idea how worried we were?”

Right. Joking back and forth with Piper had been so natural and easy that he’d briefly forgotten Calypso didn’t like it when he did that.

Okay, admittedly, Piper probably wouldn’t have appreciated that particular joke either. She would have crossed her arms and told him off. But they would have been okay, after.

He never felt like he and Calypso were okay, coming out of these arguments. Most of the time, he just felt like shit.

“Yeah, well, things happened. And it’s not my fault communications were down.” He didn’t look at the image in the rainbow.

“What is it?” Her voice softened a little. “What happened?”

“I don’t really want to talk about it.”

“Well that’s not exactly helpful,” she huffed. “Will you tell me when you’re coming back home, at least? Maybe we can talk then.”

Leo was pretty sure he visibly winced at the word ‘home’. He wasn’t sure what the Waystation was, but he’d only spent a few days there. It wasn’t a bad place, but it most definitely wasn’t home. Home had burnt down when he’d been eight years old. The only other home Leo had ever found was ashes scattered across the ruins of New Rome now. 

Leo pushed the thought away. He had to keep it together. 

“I… listen, I don’t know yet. I just need some time to… I don’t know. Process, I guess.” 

“Process whatever it is you’re refusing to tell me about.” Calypso crossed her arms. “Fine. But you are coming back?”

There was an edge to her voice now—that of someone who had been left behind a few too many times. Over the course of her life, every person who’d ever kept her company had eventually dipped and left her heartbroken, never sparing her another thought. 

And now Leo had done the exact same thing.

Wow, he was a terrible person.

“Obviously.”

He couldn’t stay here. He couldn’t continue bothering Piper when she clearly wanted to at least try to move on. And he had promised Calypso to try and stay somewhere with her—to live a normal life with her. Going back on that wasn’t fair to her. Not even when he was sure he was too broken to live that kind of life—too broken for anyone to ever properly put him back together. 

Staying here wasn’t fair on poor Festus, either. Leo knew his dragon friend didn’t like being folded up into suitcase form as much as he was, but Piper’s new home wasn’t exactly made for huge metal dragons. 

Leo tried to keep talking to Calypso. He really did. She lit up a little when he asked about school, and so they talked about that for a while. Calypso told him about classmates she got along with and how she liked marching band and Emmie tutoring her in the subjects she didn’t understand. 

Leo listened and tried to get past the fact that he just didn’t get it. He tried to grasp her excitement for a place that had at best been boring as hell and at worst been actual torture for him. 

“That sounds… I’m glad you’re happy.”

“I wish you were here. You’ve already missed several weeks of classes, but I think you’d like this school.”

Leo almost laughed. “I highly doubt that. They have yet to invent a school that can even contain me, never mind one that I actually like.”

“If you’re still refusing to engage in any sort of actual conversation with me that even vaguely implies there is a future where you may be coming back,” Calypso said bitingly, “will you at least tell me where you are so we can all stop worrying so much?” Leo kept brushing past the answer to that question because he knew it would prompt more questions that he wasn’t ready to get into. “Did you manage to help Camp Jupiter?”

“I-” Leo’s throat closed up. Not enough, his brain supplied. I couldn’t save Jason, and I couldn’t protect his home, either. I’m not sure me going there made a difference at all. He couldn’t bring himself to say any of that. “Kind of. I’m with Piper right now.”

Calypso’s expression soured even further.

“You ditched me and let me think you were dead for weeks so you could hang out with your friends? Let me guess, Jason is there, too.”

Somewhere, there was a rational part of Leo’s brain that realized this did sound bad. If he had been listening to that rational part right now, he probably could have had a mature conversation about this with Calypso. They could have resolved this like reasonable people.

But at the mention of Jason’s name, he just shut down. He did not tell Calypso anything. He just hung up on her.

Leo showered, so by the time Piper got home he didn’t look like he’d spent the past hour curled up in a corner, bawling his eyes out.

Piper wasn’t an idiot, though. She knew that something was up the second she stepped through the door to find Leo in the kitchen making burritos.

“You okay?”

“Just got hungry.” He shrugged, like he wasn’t in fact trying to cook out the feelings he hadn’t been able to get rid of with his tears. It hadn’t really worked—cooking couldn’t exactly fix relationship issues or the fact that his best friend was dead—but rolling up the ingredients in one of his handmade tortillas at least helped keep his hands busy, and he actually was a little hungry. “You can have one, if you didn’t already eat on your date. Ingredients are pick what you want,” he said, gesturing at the mess of bowls and the still sizzling pan of fried tofu, “but they’re all vegetarian.”

“You are my favorite person in the whole entire world, and also definitely trying to distract me,” Piper said, shaking her head, but she did move to fill up one of the still-warm tortillas with a ridiculous amount of black beans, lettuce and tofu, combined with not nearly enough salsa, as far as Leo was concerned. “And it wasn’t a date.”

“Mhm, sure. Did you guys-” Leo broke off in horror. He’d been watching Piper work, and sure, he’d been lovingly judging some of her completely unbalanced food combos in his head, but this he could no longer tolerate. “Pipes, what in the world are you doing? I’m unfriending you.” 

He set his own food down on his plate and moved to stand beside his best friend. Screw the date interrogation, for now he had to save Piper’s poor tortured burrito.

“I thought I just had to roll the tortilla. Did I put too much stuff on it and that’s why it doesn’t work?”

She’d been trying to roll the entire thing in a single direction, impressively managing to make her excessive amounts of filling spill out of three sides at once. 

“This is what I get for briefly forgetting you grew up a rich kid with a private chef,” Leo groaned, shaking his head in exaggerated disbelief. He gently shoved Piper away from the kitchen counter to do rescue breathing on her half-slaughtered dinner. “You can’t roll it like that, you absolute heathen. You need to tuck the sides in. Here, like this. That way you won’t end up with ingredients all the way down your shirt.”

He gently opened the tortilla back up, took a spoon to move the filling Piper hadn’t spilled to the middle and then rolled it properly, like his mom had shown him when he’d been five. He made a point of doing it way slower than necessary, like he actually expected Piper to memorize the steps and maybe take notes.

“Okay, okay, point taken.” Piper raised her hands. “But heathen is a hilarious insult considering we both have a Greek god for a parent.”

“Yeah, yeah, I’m a riot.” Leo grinned, neatly cutting the burrito down the middle and handing the plate back to Piper. Then, he started wiping down the counter. Kitchens were the only work spaces Leo had ever properly bothered to keep tidy. “Now that neither you nor your food are at immediate risk of death, tell me how things went with Shel. You engaged yet? For your sake, I hope she’s better at rolling burritos than you, because otherwise you’re both doomed.”

He made a show of looking at her hands like he was actually expecting to find a ring.

“Shut up.” Piper rolled her eyes, but she smiled. “It was pretty great, actually.”

“Hello? Details?” Leo waved his hands in circles for emphasis. “You don’t seriously think I’m letting you off the hook that easily, do you?”

Instead of moving towards the table like she should have, Piper flopped down on the small couch with her food, so Leo grabbed his plate and joined her there. He wasn’t complaining about dinner on the couch.

“I’m only telling you if you tell me what’s up with you first. Because, distraction or not, you won’t get rid of me that easily, either.” She nudged him gently, then stuffed her mouth with food like she was trying to emphasize she wouldn’t go first.

Her face melted into a completely content expression, and Leo immediately felt happier.

“That good, hm?” Piper made a humming noise of confirmation. “Then I think you owe it to me to tell me how your date was. I promise I’ll tell you what’s up with me after,” Leo said with a grin.

He knew he had to give her something or she would never talk, but he really wanted to hear about Piper’s day before he went and ruined the mood.

“Ugh. You’re the worst.” Piper sighed, letting herself fall against the sofa’s backrest dramatically. “Fine. But only because you’ll be completely unbearable otherwise.”

“You know me so well.”

Leo tried not to feel a sting at how great Piper’s day had been without him there. What he felt when she talked wasn’t the same painful sting he’d felt when it had been her and Jason dating, though Leo couldn’t quite explain why. Most of him didn’t mind this. Hell, most of him was happy for her.

But it certainly didn’t help the feeling that he wasn’t exactly needed here.

The not-date itself actually sounded pretty nice, as long as Leo managed to make all the useless voices in his head shut up.

Shel and Piper had grabbed coffee (which Leo couldn’t sympathize with) and just talked for ages. Shel was apparently on her school’s swimming team, did theatre in her free time and liked a lot of the same music and movies as Piper. She’d lived in Tahlequah her entire life. She’d also known she was a lesbian since she was eight years old.

At that point, Piper had apparently felt like she owed her some sort of heads up—both about the fact that she was still new to all this and about having recently lost a really close friend that she’d dated at some point and how that didn’t leave her with much headspace to figure out… everything else.

That seemed like a lot to share so early on, but Piper said Shel hadn’t minded. She’d just thanked her for being so honest, and told her she was there if Piper needed someone to talk everything through with.

“Which I obviously can’t, because well, if I told her a Roman Emperor came back to life and stabbed my ex, she’d definitely think I’ve lost it completely, but it’s a nice sentiment.”

“Yeah, I thought everything else was already a bit much, but ‘my mom is a Greek goddess, I can brainwash people and me and my friends saved the world last year’ really isn’t a conversation for a first date.”

Leo wasn’t sure how Piper could stand it. The thought of having to keep most of his life secret from a mortal parent and any new friends he made seemed impossible to him. Hell, even if he’d wanted to, Leo was pretty sure he’d inevitably slip up and make a joke about the time he almost got eaten by a giant killer shrimp, and that was if he didn’t anxiously catch himself on fire first.

“Anyway, she said it’s totally understandable that I need time, and if the worst she can get out of this is a friendship with a pretty girl, that’s still a win in her book. And she still insisted on paying, to welcome me here,” Piper told Leo fondly. “It was… I don’t know. She’s nice. I’ll probably end up at the same school as her, and she’s offered to show me around.”

“So, how soon can I expect a wedding invite?” Leo asked with a grin. “You’ll remember the best man thing, right?”

“Keep this up and you won't get an invite if I do actually get married one day,” she teased back, gently flicking him in the head. “Now, tell me what’s going on with you. You promised. Did your call with your girlfriend go okay?”

Leo winced, which was answer enough in his opinion, but he knew Piper would disagree with him on that one. He still didn’t want to have this conversation. He also really didn’t want to bring Piper down when she’d finally had a good day for the first time in ages.

But she was looking at him expectantly, and Leo knew that no matter how much he wanted to, he wouldn’t be able to get out of this one.

“It wasn’t great. Apparently, me being gone for so long had everyone pretty worried. Go figure,” he admitted, hoping he could avoid elaborating. He didn’t exactly want to dump all of his relationship issues on Piper, especially since there wasn’t anything she could do to fix them. He knew it was sort of necessary to keep talking, but he could barely get the words out. “And, uh. Because of that, I think it might be time for me to head back to the Waystation.”

It was something he’d been thinking about on and off since that IM with Frank and Hazel. And as much as the thought of going back made his stomach pool with dread, the call with Calypso had just sealed the deal. Once he’d managed to stop crying like a baby and his heart had quit throbbing out a painful rhythm of Jason, Jason, Jason until he couldn’t breathe, Leo had at least tried to figure out what he wanted to do now. He couldn’t keep staying with Piper, who was finally starting to be somewhat okay again. He couldn’t keep ignoring the fact that he’d just ditched Calypso for the world’s longest, most depressing sleepover.

If he wanted any chance to salvage that situation, and if he wanted to give Piper a chance to actually move on instead of continuously dragging her down with him when he didn’t want to move on the way she was trying to, then he had to go back to the Waystation.

The teasing smile slid off Piper’s face.

“Oh,” she said, her lip wobbling a little. “Do you really have to go?”

Leo felt almost relieved that Piper seemed sad, though he realized maybe that was a bit of a shitty reaction on his part. At least he hadn’t completely annoyed his way out of this friendship just yet.

“See, that’s why I refused to go first. Instant mood killer.” He tried for a half-smile. “But yeah, I should probably go back soon. I’ve kind of been neglecting my girlfriend a whole bunch—I haven’t seen her in over a month, which is pretty shitty of me. Besides, poor Festus deserves to be in a place where it’s easier for him to stretch his legs. You know he doesn’t like being in sleep cycle this much.”

Piper wrapped her arms around herself. “I guess that makes sense, but- do you have to leave right now?”

Leo shrugged. “I mean, I don’t think another day or two will make a difference at this point. I’m going to get an earful once I get back either way.”

“Okay. Good. I know that you can’t stay here forever. But I need a few more days with you. I’m sure Festus will forgive you eventually.” Piper was obviously trying to sound like she was teasing him, but something pleading, almost desperate crept into her voice, which had Leo worried. 

“Yeah. Festus.” Leo cringed internally. He actually wasn’t all that worried about Festus staying mad at him—sure, he might pout for a bit and would probably complain most of the way back to the Waystation, but he was usually easily appeased with enough motor oil, Tabasco sauce and maybe an upgrade or two.

Leo was unfortunately pretty sure his relationship issues with Calypso would need fixing that was beyond the magical abilities of Tabasco sauce—though what would fix them, he had absolutely no idea.

Them having problems wasn’t exactly new, and hadn’t entirely been caused by him running off on her now—even if that admittedly hadn’t helped.

“So, are we doing the world’s longest goodbye movie marathon, or do you need me for anything specific?” Leo joked, trying to hide his relief at getting to stay for a few more days, consequences for his relationship with Calypso be damned. “I know you’ve been lucky to bask in my presence for so long, I’d be reluctant to let me go, too, but that sounded like you might have actual plans.”

Piper didn’t laugh. She didn’t even roll her eyes at him, which was a terrible sign. 

“If you really have to leave, there’s something I want to do first.” She reached out and took his hands with shaking fingers. “I- I’ve been thinking. About what Thalia said. And I want to find a way to properly say goodbye, too. But I don’t think I can do this without you.”

Leo felt like someone had punched him. He could basically feel the way all color drained from his face at Piper’s words.

“I- I don’t know if I can-” he stammered, fighting his instinct to immediately turn on his heels and run—out of this room and this house and preferably the entire state of Oklahoma.

Joking about it was one thing. Facing the reality of it—the fact that Jason was truly gone and he’d never get to see him or hug him or joke with him again—was an entirely different beast.

Leo wasn’t sure he was ready for that. He wasn’t sure he would ever be ready for that.

“You don’t have to say or do anything you don’t want to. I promise,” Piper told him, gently squeezing his hand. “I won’t force you to do anything you don’t feel ready for, okay? I just need you there. Please?”

Piper wasn’t charmspeaking him. Leo would have known if she was, and he knew that she’d never do that to him—not when it came to something as important as this. But she was looking at him with such wild desperation in her eyes that it was still impossible for him to say no.

It didn’t matter if this didn’t help him. Piper needed it. He’d left her for over six months. She was the one who’d actually been present when Jason had died.

The thought of that kept him up at night. He kept imagining Piper kneeling over Jason. Piper shaking Jason’s shoulders and screaming his name, hoping desperately for an answer she’d never receive. Piper clutching Jason’s body to her chest for the very last time. Piper wailing on that awful beach while Leo was a thousand miles away.

He hadn’t been there for her when she’d needed him the most. This was the least he could do to start making things up to her.

“Okay,” he said, reaching out to pull Piper into his arms. It was a mostly selfish act, really—if he hadn’t been holding onto something, Leo wasn’t sure how he would have kept himself from falling apart. “What do you want to do?”

“Jason wasn’t just a Roman demigod. Not since-” Piper broke off, but Leo caught her meaning anyway. Not since he met us. “He belonged to both camps. That was important to him. I think he should have a proper Camp Half-Blood funeral, too.”

Chapter Text

Leo and Piper picked out a simple white bedsheet to use for the shroud. It wasn’t fancy, but it was easily available and they made the most of it.

They tie-dyed it, both of them ending up with splotches of purple and orange all over their arms and clothes in the process.

Once the bedsheet was dry, they spent a whole afternoon stitching—and, quite frankly, doing a terrible job. They were both utter garbage at it. Hopefully, “it’s the thought that counts” still applied with dead best friends.

There was something kind of comforting about just sitting with Piper, working in silence on different ends of the same piece of fabric. In knowing that, if nothing else, Leo could at least do this for her.

“Jason would have loved this,” Piper sniffled when they inspected the final product.

“You think so?” Leo asked, building up to an entirely misplaced joke so he didn’t split open right there. “Personally, I’m not sure. He was such a stickler for rules, he might be offended that his shroud doesn’t meet demigod funeral regulations.”

“Shut up. You know he would have loved this,” Piper repeated, voice quavering terribly as they folded the shroud into a more compact form so they’d be able to carry it outside with ease later.

They couldn’t do a full funeral pyre—Piper’s backyard didn’t have the space, and they didn’t have the materials—but they’d built a campfire, and that would have to be enough.

Jason had already gotten a proper hero’s funeral. This wouldn’t be that. It wasn’t supposed to be.

“Pretty sure I poked myself with my needle and bled on the bedsheet at one point. If we end up summoning Jason and/or a random demon by accident, that’s totally my bad,” Leo warned, because he absolutely couldn’t be serious right now. He couldn’t. He’d shatter if he tried.

It wasn’t closure, but Leo still felt a bittersweet satisfaction when he looked at the finished product.

It was tradition to represent the godly parent with the shroud. They’d decided to say fuck that.  

Jason’s shroud was a mess of orange and purple dye. It had symbols stitched all over it, but none for anyone’s godly parent.

It had Piper’s dagger and a small flame for Leo so the three of them could be together one last time. 

The rest was just memories. A mess of stitches that was only recognizable as a bird’s eye view of the Grand Canyon if you had a particularly vivid imagination. A cartoonish taco and marshmallows and twin video game controllers. The Superman logo. A meteorite among a sky full of stars.

And, Leo’s final contribution: a terrible likeness of a ridiculous wolf plushie from the time they’d dragged Jason out of camp to go to a fair after he’d mentioned he’d never been. Despite the fact that it was his first time, Jason had somehow been the only one of them who’d actually managed to get a prize out of one of the terribly rigged claw machines. He hadn’t even cheated! There was truly no justice in the universe.

If Leo closed his eyes, he could still hear the way Jason had laughed that afternoon, his eyes sparkling and his usually neat hair a disheveled mess from all the rides Leo and Piper had made him try. They hadn’t let him live the wolf plushie down their whole ride back—they’d jokingly dubbed it his son and repeatedly asked him to name it. Jason had rolled his eyes at them and then promptly given the plushie up for adoption to one of the younger campers when they’d gotten back to camp, despite their horrified protests about how he couldn’t do that to his child.

Leo wasn’t sure whether to laugh or cry when he remembered it now.

Above all, this shroud was a tribute to Jason. Not to the version of him that most people had known, either. It wasn’t a tribute to Jason, the hero of Olympus, or Jason, the son of Jupiter and champion of Juno. 

Because sure, Jason may have been all of those things, too, but most of all, he’d been their friend. The guy who’d stayed awake with Leo in the sewer and tried to cheer him up. The guy who’d spent all night on the roof of his cabin with Piper, recreating a memory Hera had made up and making it theirs. Who was kind and just the right amount of goofy and had learned to loosen up and laugh at their antics. Who believed in the people he loved even more fiercely than he believed in the deities he’d been raised to worship.

This version of Jason had never been for the gods. This version of Jason was just for them.

They waited until nighttime to hold the funeral, both because Jason had liked looking at the stars and because that posed less opportunity for the neighbors to wonder why the strange family that had just moved here was burning tie-dye bedsheets in the yard in the middle of the day.

Tristan didn’t ask exactly what it was they were doing. After a few weeks with them, he was probably used to their antics.

It was a nice night—not too warm, but also not super cold. The sky was clear and beautiful. Leo’s heart was too heavy to enjoy any of it.

With a gulp, he walked up to the unlit campfire, spreading the bedsheet across it with Piper. They had to keep it partially folded so it fit into their makeshift fire pit—the purpose of this wasn’t to accidentally burn down half of Tahlequah.

Piper let go of the shroud and stepped back, nodding to him.

Leo gulped. Right. He was supposed to light the shroud on fire. 

If the deceased didn’t have a partner, it was camp tradition for their closest friend to do final honors. Despite all of Leo’s faults, that was him. 

Besides, he was the one with the fire powers. He was the obvious choice.

This was supposed to be his job, and his burden. 

He couldn’t bring himself to do it. He held the fabric in his hands, all those memories of everything Jason had been, and he couldn’t do it. The lump in his throat felt bowling-ball sized, and he could hardly see what he was doing through the veil of tears that just wouldn’t stop.

Even after everything he’d told himself and promised Piper, he just couldn’t bring himself to close the lid on Jason’s figurative coffin. He wasn’t ready to say goodbye.

He wasn’t sure he’d ever be ready.

Leo didn't have to light the shroud on fire.

They’d let Festus come out of suitcase form for the evening, because it was only right that he also got to attend the funeral, weird looks from neighbors at the tiny plane flying back and forth above the house be damned. When Leo stood frozen in place with his hand on the shroud and couldn’t bring himself to light it, Festus creaked in sympathy, giving him another moment before promptly torching both Leo and the shroud. 

Leo didn’t have much capacity for focusing right now, so his clothes got a little singed, but he didn’t care. The fire felt familiar and weirdly soothing against his skin.

Festus creaked sadly, and Leo wiped at his own eyes with burning fingers, which was without danger for him but would have caused most other people to go blind in an instant.

“Thanks, buddy,” he said weakly, genuinely grateful for the warmth even though the night wasn’t super cold and he was technically dressed for the weather. He knew this was Festus being affectionate with him. It was Festus being affectionate with Jason, too. In a way, Leo was glad all three of them had gotten to be a part of this.

He kept his other hand on the burning sheet for another moment, afraid letting go would mean losing Jason all over again. It was a stupid thought. Jason wasn’t even actually here.

Finally, he wrapped his arms around himself and stepped back, sobbing quietly.

He was supposed to say a few words. That was how most funerals went—not just Camp Half-Blood ones. He’d actually wanted to come up with something to say, but every time he’d tried to focus on it, the pain got too intense for him to handle.

“I can’t do this,” he said quietly, the flames draining out of his body from the sheer intensity of the cold, raw grief. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”

He wasn’t even sure if he was apologizing to Piper for not being able to do any of the things he’d promised, or apologizing to Jason for disappearing and failing to cheat fate and getting him killed.

Whatever the case, he didn’t think he deserved either of their forgiveness.

Piper stepped forward and took his hand, squeezing it gently. Telling him it was okay, even when Leo knew it wasn’t. Even when it felt like he was failing both of them all over again.

“Jason, you were maybe the bravest, kindest person I knew,” she began, her voice quavering. Her hand shook in Leo’s—her whole body was trembling—but unlike Leo, she kept talking despite her tears. She’d always been stronger than him. “You did everything to protect the people you loved, up until the end. I wish you’d told me about the stupid prophecy sooner. I wish you didn’t always make yourself carry everything alone. I just- we both loved you a whole bunch, okay? I just need you to know that.”

“Why did you always have to play the fucking hero?” Leo cursed, squeezing Piper’s fingers a little too tightly. He could barely form the words. To no one’s surprise, the burning shroud didn’t answer. “This isn’t fair.”

“It never is,” Piper said in a quiet, broken voice. She pulled Leo to her chest. “We shouldn’t have to just accept this after everything we’ve been through. But as mad as it makes me, that’s all we can do.”

Something burned in Leo, then—a tiny, glimmering spark of grief and anger and despair, screaming that this couldn’t just be it. There had to be something they could do. He wouldn’t just accept this was how things had to be.

“I miss Jason. I just want him back,” he said, trying to pretend that was something that could happen, and not the same desperate wish of a crying eight year old that refused to be pulled away from his mother’s tombstone because she couldn’t be gone. She just couldn’t be.

Half the reason he’d kept everyone at arm’s length for so long was he’d never wanted to feel loss like that again. But here he was—feeling just as small and helpless as he had back then.

“Yeah, I know.” Piper was still trembling against him. His shirt was wet with her tears. “Me too.”

Gods, Leo couldn’t do this. He couldn’t keep talking about this. He couldn’t keep thinking about this. He couldn’t keep Jason’s stupid face out of his head for ten seconds and at this rate, he was sure he was going to lose it.

“I hate funerals,” Leo sobbed into Piper’s shoulder. “I’m just not a mourning person.”

It was a completely stupid thing to say. For some reason, it helped, though.

“Did you just make a pun?” Piper half-laughed, half-sobbed, looking at him in startled disbelief. “And it wasn’t even a very good pun. It’s literally the middle of the night.”

“Fuck off, I’m grieving. Actually funny Leo will be back in five to seven business days,” Leo said, clenching his trembling fingers into her shirt. “Besides, Jason liked my shitty puns.”

“Yeah, he did.” Piper sniffled. “Thank you for doing this with me. I couldn’t have done it without you.”

“Don’t do that. Don’t thank me. The last time I should have been there, I wasn’t.” Leo was trembling so hard that he genuinely thought he might have shaken himself to bits if she hadn’t been holding onto him. “Besides, I kind of failed massively at everything you asked me to do, so-”

“I don’t care,” Piper interrupted, hugging him so fiercely that it knocked the air right out of Leo’s lungs. He wouldn’t have had it any other way. “I’m just glad you’re here.”

For the longest time, they just stayed there, sitting in the grass, holding each other until the flames died and all that remained was the pitch-black night. 

Leo spent half the night numbly staring up at the ceiling. He had been right. The funeral hadn’t helped him. All it had done was cause him to cry himself into a pounding headache. 

He’d done it for Piper’s sake—and looking at her sleeping face that was almost peaceful, he was glad he had—but unpacking all the emotions he’d tried so desperately to lock up had still left Leo feeling like shit.

He felt like someone had taken him apart and put him back together all wrong, conveniently forgetting to put some components back in at all. Every part of him that had belonged to Jason had been violently ripped out, and now Leo was left with a bunch of sparking cables.

None of this was right. Nothing would ever be right again. 

Jason was dead. He’d been larger than life, and now he was gone, just like that. Even after weeks of living with that reality, it still felt completely surreal. Time should have stood still. The whole world should have stopped spinning to mourn a loss like that. But it didn’t. The world just kept turning, completely unmoved by Leo’s grief. Life continued. And all that was left of Jason were memories, an empty dorm room and a single box of belongings that was collecting dust under Piper’s bed.

All Leo could do now was mourn the six months he’d lost, and every single memory they’d never get to make. 

Worse, maybe, was the fact that he had to mourn a future he’d started to take for granted—one where Jason was present for all of his birthdays, and his wedding, and the opening of the machine shop Leo had dreamed of since he was a kid. One where they were the kind of lame adults who had barbecue night once a week and spent a lot of time reminiscing about all the bizarre shit they’d gone through as teenagers. One where Leo got to corrupt a little blond kid into being his troublemaker accomplice, and a girl with dark curls sat on Jason’s shoulders, making a mess of his hair. One where they got to grow up and grow old alongside each other.

Leo had no idea how he was supposed to face a future without Jason. Every fiber of his being ached, but despite the pain, he wasn’t sure any of this would ever feel real.

Leo hadn’t imagined any sort of future for himself in a very long time. He’d spent years just trying to make it through the day. Anything beyond surviving had been a minor concern.

But then he’d met Jason and Piper, and he’d foolishly allowed himself to dream.

And now here he was, staring at the ceiling, mourning a world that would never exist.

Leo dreamed of fire.

This in and of itself was not unusual. He was a demigod son of Hephaestus. Dreams of fire to him were about as shocking as Percy eating blue food or Annabeth designing a building that utterly defied the laws of physics. 

Leo’s first thought was that this was a call from his dad, who was sick of his moping and wanted to offer helpful, comforting insight like “this is why machines are superior to demigods. You can’t just rebuild demigods when they die.”

He wondered if there was a way to hang up on a godly parent. Man, he really needed to figure out how to cancel this crappy dream vision plan he’d been automatically opted into. That was what he got for never reading the demigod terms and conditions.

But it wasn’t his dad. He’d been in Hephaestus’ workshop often enough that he could recognize it on sight, and that wasn’t what this place was.

Leo looked around, confused. He was in what looked like a standard underground parking garage. 

Except, unlike what Leo assumed to be the norm for underground parking garages, this one was both completely empty and had a raging fire tornado in the middle of it. 

Despite the fact that Leo was standing decently far away, the air felt uncomfortably warm—and if he, who was usually completely unbothered by flames of any kind, could tell, that meant it had to be scorching hot.

It was the kind of heat he’d only felt twice in his life. Once when he’d blown himself and Gaia to bits, and once when he’d been eight years old.

Leo shivered. He could feel his whole body trembling, everything in him trying desperately not to remember.

“What the hell is this?” he yelled into the empty parking garage.

The parking garage didn’t have the decency to answer.

Except it suddenly wasn’t empty. 

There were figures crouching behind the columns. Most of them were blurry, more shapes than people Leo could recognize.

But one of them…

“Piper?” he asked breathlessly. She was right in his line of sight, halfway across the empty car park, pressed closely to one of the columns.

Piper didn’t look up. Her gaze was fixated on the swirling cone of fire. Flames rolled outwards from the storm’s center in waves. They collided with the columns, including the one Leo was standing behind. The column provided some protection from the fire, but didn’t help much with the heat. 

“Piper!” Leo repeated, louder this time. Panic gripped his heart. If he could tell it was hot, how painful did it have to be for her?

He had to get to her. He had to make sure she was okay.

It was a frustratingly slow process. Leo kept having to duck behind columns to dodge the fire. Usually, he wouldn’t have bothered, fire-resistant as he was, but this was the kind of heat even Leo wasn’t brave enough to mess with.

The final blast of fire before Leo got to her left Piper’s hair and one of her sleeves singed.

“Pipes?” he asked when he kneeled down beside her, his voice small. “Are you okay?”

She did look up, then, but she was looking past Leo like he was invisible.

He looked her over frantically. Her face was a mask of pain. Her arms… Leo gulped. Piper had been burnt, and badly. 

Leo couldn’t be burnt like that, but he knew it must’ve hurt like hell. He had no idea how Piper was even staying upright.

“Come on, we have to get you out of here,” he said, but it was hopeless. She didn’t seem to hear him.

More fire rolled past the column they were crouched behind and Piper winced at the heat, but she just stayed right there like she was pinned in place. She wasn’t running. Why the hell wasn’t she running?

Instead, she unslung something from her back—was that a blowpipe? —and aimed it right at the fire tornado.

“What, are you planning to knock the fire unconscious?” Leo asked, exasperated. Piper still didn’t seem to even notice he was there. She just poked her head out from the semi-safety of the column and took aim at the fiery cone, with no regards for how hurt she already was and how much worse it would get if whatever was controlling the fire got more pissed off. “We have to go!” 

Leo wasn’t thinking. He just knew instinctively that if he didn’t get her away from the firestorm, Piper wouldn’t make it.

He grabbed for her arm in blind desperation, pulling her back into cover.

Piper screamed in agony, dropping her weapon and clutching at the spot he’d touched. She curled into herself with a terrible whimper. 

Leo pulled away in horror. In his panic, he’d forgotten about the burns on her arms.

“I’m so sorry. I- I was just trying-” he said, his voice breaking. He’d gotten Jason killed, and now he’d hurt Piper. What kind of awful friend was he? “I didn’t mean to hurt you.”

“But you did,” Piper bit out, furious. It wasn’t her voice. There was something resentful and ancient about it. “Look at you. The little demigod who defeated Gaia. Do you truly believe you can save your friend? Whose flames do you think caused these burns?”

The scene shifted. Piper was running. The parking garage behind her had exploded into a wall of fire that was rapidly catching up to her—nipping at Piper’s heels, then enveloping her. She screamed as the flames swallowed her whole.

Leo was screaming too. He tried to reach out, to find her in the flames, but he couldn’t move. He could only watch as she disappeared in the wall of heat and smoke.

Suddenly, it was Leo at the center of the firestorm, flames pushing outwards from his supernova center.

He tried to rein his powers in, but they wouldn’t listen. The more he tried to control them, the more fiercely they pushed back, rolling outwards, swallowing everything in their path.

Leo was eight and the machine shop came down around him. He was sixteen and the sky was on fire. 

He was almost seventeen and everything he’d ever loved continued to be swallowed by the inferno of his dumpster fire life.

“You are a child of fire,” the voice that wasn’t Piper’s taunted at the back of his head. “Anything you touch, you burn.”

Chapter Text

It was mid-April by the time Leo got back to the Waystation. 

Honestly, he felt like he deserved props for not just bolting the hell out of Tahlequah in the middle of the night after the horrible vision he’d had.

Granted, even if he’d wanted to, that would have been kind of difficult considering he’d managed to startle Piper awake with his screaming, but still.

Piper hadn’t pushed him to talk about his dream, but they hadn’t gone back to sleep after. Leo had joked that maybe this was a sign from the gods that they shouldn’t waste their last night together sleeping, but really, he’d just known that even if he’d tried, he wouldn’t have been able to sleep another wink. He was too terrified of waking up to his hands on fire and smoke curling around his ankles.

Instead of sleeping, they’d spent the night kicking each other’s asses at Mario Kart.

When she’d hugged him goodbye, Leo had very bravely not spent the whole time thinking about the fact that he might set Piper on fire by accident.

He didn’t know for sure his dream had been a vision, but some of the details seemed too random for him to just make up. Why an underground parking garage? Why would Piper use a blowpipe? And the voice he’d heard… he’d been dealing with this nonsense long enough that he was sure it had to be some kind of deity.

Besides, Leo knew it was more than possible for him to lose control like that. It had happened before. Who was to say it couldn’t happen again?

As much as that sucked, it did seem like a sign that going back to the Waystation was the right choice. If Leo wasn’t around Piper, he couldn’t explode into a firestorm in an underground parking garage and hurt her—or worse. That was pretty sound logic, in his opinion.

Piper had known something was up, but he’d played it off by saying he was just worried about what would happen with Calypso when he got back, considering she hadn’t exactly been happy with him during their call. Piper had accepted that explanation. A tiny, awful part of Leo felt grateful that she had never been able to read him quite as well as Jason.

His return to the Waystation was a bit of a mixed bag. Jo and Emmie seemed happy enough to have him back, asking for help in the workshop and with dinner. Georgina hugged his knees and then promptly bolted again. Lit gave him a semi-pleasant nod—or whatever qualified as semi-pleasant from someone who’d tried to kill you at one point.

Calypso, though… yeah, she wasn’t Leo’s biggest fan right now.

She was in good company, considering Leo wasn’t too happy with himself, either.

Calypso really wanted to know the reason why he’d ditched her. Leo, on the other hand, still didn’t feel like talking about what had happened. This, maybe predictably, didn’t mix well.

It took all of three minutes of him being back for them to have their first fight. Things did not get more pleasant from there.

The next month passed in a grief-heavy haze, most of which Leo only vaguely remembered later.

A lot of those days, he operated purely on autopilot. 

Leo gave Festus his promised repairs and upgrades and Tabasco sauce and was graciously forgiven with a few nuzzles and another fire shower. 

Afterwards, Leo threw himself into a bunch of projects—anything Jo said she needed help with. Anything that could use fixing and improvements around the Waystation. He worked and worked and worked relentlessly because things were kind of okay as long as he didn’t have time to pause and think and miss Jason.

When he wasn’t working on any of his other projects, he had one of his own he was fidgeting with. He wasn’t sure what it would be when he started. It was just a mess of wires and strings and anything else he could think of. There wasn’t a purpose to it. He just needed to keep himself busy when there was nothing else to work on, and for some reason this was the nonsense blueprint his brain had picked—one that was metaphorically upside down, with all of the instructions in a language Leo couldn’t speak. 

Well, he supposed distracting himself was easier when he had no idea what he was doing. Maybe he’d find a brilliant use for whatever this was supposed to be once it was done. That had happened before. And if he didn’t… well, it didn't really matter. At least it kept him busy for now. And it wasn’t like he couldn’t take the thing apart and rebuild it into something new if it turned out to be useless.

Leo kept to himself a lot more than he had when he’d been with Piper. Being alone with his thoughts still sucked, but it sucked less than having to explain things to people who fundamentally didn’t get it. People who might try to make him talk about events and feelings he’d rather keep between him and Piper or put back in the box and never acknowledge again.

Being at the Waystation wasn’t bad, for the most part. Jo and Emmie gave him space when he asked for it. They clearly knew something was wrong, but they seemed to accept that he wasn’t ready to talk about whatever it was.

Leo was made to help with meals on the better days, and on the worse days someone brought food up to his room.

When Jo realized being busy seemed to help him, she gave him additional little projects to work on. She asked him to come into the workshop and then let him work wordlessly by her side if that was what he wanted, occasionally trading tools or asking for advice if he was up for it. It felt a little like it had with his siblings. Not that that was a thought Leo allowed himself often—missing Camp Half-Blood was an express train to thoughts about why he couldn’t bear to go back, and he did not need to take that right now.

Leo wasn’t as close to Emmie, who was more focused on the gardens, which really weren’t his area of expertise, but when they did interact, she was kind.

As an additional way to keep himself busy, he made little toys for Georgina. She always got super excited about them, and if nothing else, that at least temporarily managed to put a smile on Leo’s face.

Things with Lit were kind of weird, but they managed to make dinner together in amicable silence, which was more than Leo could say about Calypso.

Leo’s relationship with Calypso had been a wreck since he’d gotten back. Most of their interactions dissolved into arguments.

It wasn’t entirely Calypso’s fault. Their relationship had been hanging by a thread for months at this point, and that thread had been frayed and on the verge of snapping even before Leo had left. Everything that had happened since then had just made it worse.

If things had been different, maybe they could have fixed this. If leaving the island hadn’t robbed Calypso of her powers and her immortality. If Leo hadn’t come back from his best friend’s funeral, barely a shadow of his former self, unable to make good on his promise of a normal life. If they were both a little better at communicating and empathizing with each other. 

If. If. If.

But things weren’t different, and they were exactly who their respective experiences had shaped them into, and so things were a mess.

They fought about school. The thing was: Leo did not like school at the best of times. Him and school would never be friends. Honestly, them ever becoming amicable acquaintances seemed like a stretch. He deeply did not feel like dealing with classes on top of trying to deal with Jason’s death. So he just didn’t go, regardless of what he’d promised Calypso.

They fought about Leo holing himself up in his room. They fought about Calypso’s powers. They fought about Leo’s sense of humor, and the amount of Iris messages he sent to Piper and the fact that he talked to her but would not talk to Calypso.

They fought about a bunch of really minor garbage because they were both angry and on edge and none of this was working. 

It took two weeks of arguing back and forth for Leo to snap at her that his best friend was fucking dead, and could she please back the hell off?

To Calypso’s credit, she did try to comfort him, then. Tried to apologize. Tried to at least cut back on the number of fights they were having.

But it didn’t work. Things between them didn’t improve. 

Calypso just didn’t get Leo—not when it came to this, and not when it came to anything else. That the problem was mutual also didn’t help.

They were two bent, broken gears that fit together so poorly that it had really only been a matter of time before the entire machine exploded.

Right! Leo’s machine metaphors. They fought about those, too.

It wasn’t that they hadn’t had their good moments. They’d bonded when she’d first helped him to get off of her island. They’d had a few good weeks after he’d come back for her. But the longer and more frustrating their journey had gotten, the faster that initial honeymoon phase had worn off, the nice moments sprinkled far and few between.

Leo couldn’t pinpoint what the first crack had been—when the pointless arguments had become their normal, growing more heated with time. Had it been the nightmares? The constant monster encounters? Had it been something specific one of them had said or done?

Maybe it didn’t actually matter how they’d gotten to this point. Maybe all that mattered was this: in the end, the choice he’d made to sacrifice himself to rescue her like the hero in a romantic epic couldn’t make up for the fact that they were terminally incompatible people. 

No, sorry, not rescued. He’d just collected her. She hated when he called it a rescue.

That they cared about each other didn’t mean a thing when they couldn’t seem to understand each other to save their lives.

Leo didn’t know how to support Calypso through the loss of a steady home when he hadn’t had one of those since he’d been eight. He didn’t know how to handle the resentment she very clearly harbored towards the fact that he’d gotten her off the island, despite having asked for it and happily agreed to it at the time. He didn’t know what to do with the guilt he felt over her having to trade her immortality and most of her powers for her freedom.

Calypso didn’t know how to handle him, either. This maybe shouldn’t have come as a surprise—few people in his life ever had. She’d grown weary of his jokes over time, down to interrupting him and apologizing for them to other people when Leo felt like joking was the only way he could remember to breathe. She wanted emotional sincerity, which he’d always been terrible at. She usually didn’t understand the way he saw the world, and when she did understand, she didn’t seem to like it very much. 

Calypso’s desire to settle down in a quiet place like this was fundamentally at odds with everything Leo had been for so long.

Even that would have been far too much for most relationships to handle. But they’d tried to make do. Decided to settle down at the Waystation and figure out what their relationship could be in a safe environment. And Leo really had wanted to try and make this work.

Except then he’d had to leave to help his friends, and he never fully came back.

This, it turned out, was finally too much. More than anything, their already fragile relationship could not handle the death of Jason Grace. 

Six months of cracks and fissures tore wide open, and suddenly they found themselves screaming at each other from across a chasm the size of the Grand Canyon.

As much as she tried to, Calypso did not understand mortal grief that wasn’t clean and obvious. She’d been isolated for so long that this maybe shouldn’t have been surprising. 

She kept cornering Leo in the workshop after dinner, apparently determined to bug him into one of the emotional conversations that seemed to be her cure-all regardless of the fact that he would much rather explode himself a second time than talk about this particular topic.

“Why won’t you let me help you?” Calypso asked for the umpteenth time, trying to reach out to place a hand on his shoulder. “I could if you would just let me.”

He despised that she didn’t take no for an answer on this. Every day for the past week, she’d tried to start this exact same conversation, and it just didn’t get through her fucking skull that he didn’t want to have it—especially not with her.

Leo didn’t know how to make her understand that he didn’t want the kind of help she was offering. That it just wasn’t how he operated. 

Hades, even if it had been, Leo was pretty sure there was no helping him. Trying to help him was how people ended up dead.

“I need to be alone right now,” he snapped, pulling away from her. “I have work to do.”

He gestured to the work bench, which was covered with a collection of faulty pipes in various stages of decay that needed fixing almost as desperately as Leo needed a distraction.

For a moment, Calypso’s hand lingered in the empty air between them. There was a kind of hurt in her eyes Leo didn’t get at all. He was the one with the dead best friend, for fuck’s sake. He needed to figure out how to deal with it. What gave Calypso the right to make him feel like shit about the way he was coping?

“No one should be alone during a time like this,” she insisted, trying to reach out again. “I can see that you’re hurting. I don’t understand why you won’t talk to me, but it’s still obvious you need-”

Leo had had it at this point.

“No. You have absolutely no clue what I need. For someone who’s always telling me to talk about my feelings, you’re doing a shit job listening to me.” Leo gritted his teeth. “You wanna hear what happened to Jason? Fine! It’s the same thing that always happens to me. I get distracted and lose things, courtesy of my ADHD. Sometimes it’s screwdrivers, or the box of crayons I bought for Georgina’s birthday. Sometimes it’s my best friend.”

It was barely a joke. His laugh sounded forced and bitter even to Leo’s own ears. But it was the only way for him to not drown in it all.

Calypso’s almost hopeful expression fell, replaced immediately with utter disbelief.

“Can you not be serious for fifteen seconds? Not even about this?” She sounded exasperated. “When I try to bring up what happened, you avoid me. You throw yourself into a new nonsensical project and refuse to talk to me. But the next second, you’re fine joking about your friend’s death like it’s at all comparable to misplacing a box of crayons! Does it make you feel good to let yourself care for him so little?”

Leo felt like he’d been punched. He wanted to throw up. He couldn’t think. Everywhere he looked, he saw some memory of Jason smiling back at him, and he couldn’t deal with it. He couldn’t rewatch any of the movies they’d seen together, or listen to the kind of music Jason liked, because doing so would snap him clean in half even if he’d been having a good day. He couldn’t even make a blasted joke without imagining Jason’s eyes crinkle, his serious expression softening into a laugh that Leo would never fucking hear again. 

Calypso had never made much of an effort to understand how and why Leo used his humor. Who the hell did she think she was to tell him he didn’t care about the person who had mattered most to him in the entire world?

“I’m just saying it like it is!” he snapped. The vortex in his chest swallowed everything, scraping him raw and bloody and leaving only his nastiest parts. “I got distracted. You distracted me! I wish I’d left you on that fucking island!”

The thought had been drifting around in his mind since he’d gotten back—burning, festering, building up pressure before finally erupting out of him like from an active volcano. He knew the second he let the words explode out of him that he would never be able to take them back.

If it hadn’t been for Calypso, Leo wouldn’t have left his friends. He would have had six more months with Jason, if nothing else. Six months that he’d foolishly wasted, thinking they’d have all the time in the world once he got back. Maybe he could have been there when it happened—could have changed something, or at least said goodbye. 

Instead, he’d sacrificed all that for a girl he’d barely known—a girl who wasn’t even sure she wanted to be away from her island prison.

And now here Leo was, desperately trying to find some way to keep himself going after Jason’s death, despite feeling like an automaton with half the pieces ripped out. And there Calypso was, trampling all over his feelings and Jason’s memory like she knew better than Leo how he was supposed to be feeling right now. How he was supposed to be handling this.

Calypso looked horrified, then furious, and Leo couldn’t find it in him to care at that moment. She’d hit him in his sorest spot, and in that moment he wanted her to hurt. Wanted her to know exactly how she’d made him feel.

“If what you’re saying is that an eternity of isolation might have been the preferable fate if the alternative was your company, I’m beginning to agree.” Calypso’s hands were clenched into fists at her sides. “All I did was try to comfort you, in a way no one ever bothered to do for me, and this is the thanks I get?”

“Your idea of ‘comfort’ is apparently stepping all over my boundaries until I give in and do what you want, so no, gratitude isn’t the word that comes to mind! Screw you!” he shot back. The spark of his fury, now that he’d finally let it loose, hit kindling. And before he could think to stop it, it was a forest fire. “What right do you have to get mad at me for saying that when you’re not even sure you want to be here half the time?! Besides, you’ve made it pretty clear you hate me for getting you out of there!”

“You never even bothered to try and understand why I felt conflicted about leaving! You just decided that I shouldn’t, so you could continue to feel like the grand hero who rescued me! I chose to go with you, yes, but it was not the easy choice you clearly think it should have been!” Calypso scowled at him. “Trapped as I was, Ogygia was also the only home I knew for an eternity. I made the furniture you destroyed. I planted the gardens—watched them grow from the first seeds. Do you have any idea how it felt to leave all that?”

She was right, of course. Leo didn’t understand. He got cabin fever in most places if he stayed too long. If someone had trapped him somewhere—anywhere, even in the coolest place on earth—for years, Leo would have jumped at the opportunity to leave and never look back. 

He also didn’t really care to understand at this point.

“My best friend is dead!” Leo shouted back. “Sorry if I can’t find it in me right now to care about you missing your fucking tomato plants!”

“It’s me you don’t seem to care about! You let me think you were dead for weeks!” He could see the tension in her hands as she clenched them even tighter. “I’m sorry about Jason. I am. I’m trying to help you, but you won’t allow me to. And somehow that’s my fault, too!”

“I told you exactly how you could help! It was by leaving me the fuck alone!”

“Unlike you, I don’t intend to make a habit of leaving the people I love to their pain!”

They spent the next several minutes screaming at each other, both of them spiraling, the full extent of their bottled-up hurt and resentment glad to explode in their faces. 

“You know what?” Leo yelled finally, his voice raw. “If you really hate me that much, maybe we shouldn’t be in a relationship.”

“We aren’t in a relationship,” Calypso said, like this wasn’t a discussion at all. Like she was merely stating a fact. “You can’t even talk to me. You’ve spent the past several weeks avoiding me. That is not a relationship. I’m beginning to think that it never was.” Over the course of the argument, all the fight had drained out of her. Now, she just sounded hollow as she spoke. “I’m done with this, Leo. I’m not waiting around for you to leave me again.”

“Great! We’re done, then!” 

That was it. Six months tumbling into the chasm like it was nothing. Like that was where they were always destined to end up, sooner or later.

Despite everything, Leo kind of wanted to curl up and cry.

“I’ve watched hero after hero leave me over the years. I was a fool to think you’d be any different.” There was a bitterness to her voice. A hurt that was somehow both fresh and much, much older than Leo was. “The others at least had the decency to be kind about it. They all left me for noble causes. But you? You had the cruelty to promise you’d stay with me, knowing full well that you already had one foot out the door. Because that’s not who you are, is it? You don’t stay.”

“Right. Gods forbid you spend ten minutes not reminding me I’m not the perfect hero you always dreamed of.”

“It’s not about whether you’re a hero, Leo Valdez. I cared for you because I thought you understood. Because you spoke of not belonging with your friends, and it sounded like you knew what it was like to be left behind. Because I saw a kindred spirit, and believed that you would keep your promise to come back to me.” Her voice was watery. When Leo forced himself to look up at her, he realized Calypso’s eyes were brimming with tears. “But I understand now that the problem was never that you did not fit in with your friends. Your real problem is your cowardice. You run from your friends and you run from your feelings and you run from any place that might accept you as you are, because if you just burn all your bridges indiscriminately, you never have to find out which ones might not hold your weight. But you also lose any chance you have of finding the ones that will.”

Then she turned and headed for the door, leaving him standing alone in the middle of the workshop, exactly like he’d wanted.

Leo forgot about fixing the stupid pipes that had started the argument. For a while, he just stood there, frozen in place, tears pouring freely down his face. He felt empty and disgusted with himself. It got so bad that the nausea became physical. His lunch came up. Then he spent several minutes dry-heaving, wishing he could disappear. Wishing he’d just died correctly the first time.

Jo found him like this—a trembling heap on the bathroom floor. She made it worse because she didn’t scold him, despite the fact that Leo was sure the screaming match must’ve been audible throughout the entire Waystation. She didn’t call him a horrible person. 

She just helped him back to his room and asked what had happened. 

There was no pressure behind it, no coaxing. It was just a question. He didn’t have to tell her anything.

But the fight had rattled all of Leo’s broken parts loose, and now he came apart, dissolving into sobs. He didn’t tell her everything—there were many things he didn’t think he could ever tell her, or anyone else for that matter—but she got the CliffNotes version of his recent epic screwups, half-swallowed by his pathetic wailing.

Jo still didn’t look at him like he was a horrible person when he was done. Not when he talked about how he’d messed up with Jason. Not when he talked about his fight with Calypso, or after his shameful admission that he couldn’t stand to be around her half the time because all it did was remind him of every moment with Jason that he’d wasted rescuing a person who apparently couldn’t even stand him.

Leo hated himself for these thoughts. Hated that he’d yelled at Calypso that he wished he hadn’t gotten her off the island. It didn’t matter how mad and hurt he was right now—no one deserved to spend their life in that kind of solitary confinement. 

…okay, maybe not no one. Leo could openly admit that he would wish it on Gaia and Caligula and Jason’s mom, if they’d still been alive—for them to be so far away from any living being that they could never hurt anyone again. 

But Calypso didn’t make that list. She wasn’t even anywhere near that list. What kind of horrible person would say something like that to someone they cared about, even when they were fighting?

“Neither of you handled that very well,” Jo determined when he finished. “She shouldn’t have said the things she did, and you shouldn’t have lashed out at her. But you’re both hurting, and grief is a messy creature. Apologies may be warranted, but from both sides. Please don’t be so hard on yourself.”

“I think we broke something we can’t fix,” Leo admitted quietly, his shoulders trembling. “I’m not sure I want to fix it.” 

He felt awful admitting that out loud.

“You don’t have to stay in a relationship that doesn’t make you happy. Not for any reason,” Jo said, gentle in a way Leo wasn’t sure he deserved. “It doesn’t sound like either of you were very happy.”

And they hadn’t been. Not for a long time. So why did this breakup still suck so much?

Leo didn’t have the strength for any more words in him. He just pulled his knees to his chest and sobbed.

“If you’d like, I could sit on the bed with you and put an arm around you,” Jo offered. She’d pulled up the chair from his work bench instead of just sitting next to him initially. “I know physical comfort sometimes helps. I also know that sometimes it doesn’t. Just tell me what you need.”

Leo had never had a foster parent like Josephine before. 

He’d had ones who would have tried to hold him regardless of his comfort, like a stranger smothering a traumatized child who had just lost the only family he’d ever known was going to help anything. He’d had others who had yelled at him to shut up and get over himself. Once, Teresa had locked him in her storage closet for three hours because he hadn’t cried quietly enough.

None of them had ever thought to ask.

Jo wasn’t Jason or Piper. She most definitely wasn’t Leo’s mom, whose arms had always felt like the safest place on earth. But she was kind, and patient, and being held by her actually did help a little. Leo hadn’t had an adult like that in his life since he was eight years old.

It was almost comforting that he got to have this. Unfortunately, it also made him miss his mom with a fierce desperation he hadn’t felt in a long time. 

Why was he never able to keep any of the people he loved?

After Jo left, Leo stayed up all night tinkering with his distraction project. He didn’t want to sleep—to deal with the nightmares that were bound to come like clockwork after a day like this, in case sleep even managed to find him at all. He just wanted to keep his mind off everything for a while. 

For once, tinkering didn’t help. Leo couldn’t shut his brain off. He wasn’t even sure what he was building, but none of it seemed to fit together quite right, and more than once he had to screw pieces loose again. In the end, it looked like this misshapen… whatever it was had exploded all over his workbench.

“Well, at least that makes a decent metaphor for both my relationship and my life, I guess,” he groaned, briefly considering tossing the entire thing out of his bedroom window.

So much for keeping his thoughts off the breakup. 

He kept thinking back to all the awful things he’d said, replaying them in his mind like the world’s nastiest YouTube video stuck on loop. 

Almost worse than the breakup itself was the fact that the weeping breakdown he’d had with Jo afterwards was exactly the kind of conversation Calypso had been trying to have with him for weeks. Probably not to the degree she would have liked, but it had been something. So much more than he’d been able to share with anyone who wasn’t Piper.

Why hadn’t he been able to just give Calypso what she wanted? Why couldn’t he seem to change himself into a person other people actually liked?

Part of him wondered if love always felt like this—raw and awful and aching, forcing you both to twist parts of yourself into a different shape until you fit together, even if it didn’t feel right or comfortable for anyone involved. If it was always like hammering broken machine parts into place to very barely keep things running, with everything constantly on the verge of coming apart.

A more treacherous part of him knew that it didn’t. Remembered the way Jason had laughed even at his lamest jokes, and the way his eyes lit up whenever Leo rambled about some new device he was working on—obviously not quite understanding what Leo was talking about most of the time, but making up for it with all the genuine enthusiasm he had to offer. The way Jason had seemed to trust him so instinctually, even when Leo felt like he didn’t deserve that trust. How Jason had always had a kind of confidence in Leo’s plans that Leo himself distinctly lacked.

He remembered Jason just showing up to help with the Argo II, despite the fact that he had no clue what he was doing—dropping by with snacks and water bottles and tricking Leo into taking breaks by bringing up movies he’d never watched or things he needed explained to him or complaining about how sick he was of sitting alone at dinner.

Sometimes Leo had fallen asleep on the bunker floor working late into the night, but he’d always woken up in his bed. Nyssa had given him endless shit about the fact that Jason had kept carrying him back to the cabin like some fainting damsel.

“You’re sure he’s dating Piper? Because I’ve never seen him carry her around like that.”

“Yeah, well, unlike me, Piper has a reasonable sleep schedule like a complete bore.”

Jason had never made a big deal about it when he’d asked—he’d just said that the floor was cold and hard and he didn’t want Leo to get sick or hurt himself by accident. He’d said it like it was the most natural thing in the world to him.

Leo knew that meeting Jason had changed him. It had changed Jason, too. But that had been different. It hadn’t felt like bending out of shape. It had been like him hammering away on heated metal, working out the kinks on two pieces with gentle precision until they fit together to make an even better whole.

Leo hadn’t recognized it, back then. Hadn’t questioned the way seeing Jason and Piper together made his chest hurt. They were the first real friends he’d made in a long time. Of course it ached to feel like they’d found each other and didn’t need him anymore.

That truth was easier. It was instinctual, almost, to cling to it. If Leo had recognized what his feelings were—clung to all the ways love could be when it was Jason—then he might have lost him. He might have made things weird between them, messing up the two perfectly good friendships he had in the process.

Leo had been losing people since he was eight years old and so very rarely allowed himself to get attached to others so completely. He’d never been able to stand the thought of losing Jason or Piper. Maybe he’d subconsciously decided it wasn’t worth the risk.

That kind of love had always been for other people, anyway. The way Jason had looked at him—awe and joy and utter trust—didn’t matter when Leo couldn’t be loved like that. He’d been content with Jason just continuing to love him the way someone loved a best friend, because even that had felt like more than Leo thought he’d ever be able to have. More than Leo deserved.

Because the Fates were cruel, Leo had lost Jason in a way that was far more awful and permanent than the ache and awkwardness of unrequited feelings. And if his shitty nightmare visions were anything to go by, there was still a pretty decent chance he’d lose Piper, too.

Chapter Text

Because Leo was mature, reasonable and great at dealing with conflict, he spent most of the following week moping in his room. 

He and Calypso avoided each other like the plague. The Waystation got the hint and actually made that decently easy for them—it turned out that if you didn’t want to meet in a magic shifting building, your paths simply always led away from one another.

That was pretty handy, he had to admit.

Leo felt particularly shitty on Saturday. He’d dreamed about Jason again. Like that wasn’t bad enough, the humans that rented out the space below the Waystation for events had chosen this weekend to celebrate a wedding down there. Cheerful songs about everlasting love had begun blasting through the floor at eight in the morning—seriously, which monster planned their wedding ceremony for eight am?— and Leo had not been granted even a minute of peace since.

His plan was to not leave the room all day, exclusively eat snacks out of his tool belt, and hopefully hammer loud enough on one of his projects that it drowned out the obnoxious love fest downstairs.

At first this worked okay. He spent most of the morning glued to his workbench, trying and failing to figure out what wasn’t working about the stupid device he was working on.

It would have been seriously helpful if he’d at least known what he was building, but nope. It felt even dumber because something about it was familiar. The feeling was like an itch at the back of Leo’s brain that he couldn’t reach or make sense of.

It was like having a word at the tip of his tongue that didn’t come to him no matter how hard he tried to think of it.

As tempted as he was, he still didn’t throw the mess of pipes and scales and wires out the window, but he did maybe throw it at one of the walls.

He startled himself with how loud it was.

There was a knock on his door a few seconds later, and he cringed.

“Sorry! Technical difficulties! I’ll try to throw stuff at the wall more quietly next time!” he announced, sighing loudly. The knocks continued. “I’m fine, I swear! No need for anyone to come in.”

The voice that responded wasn’t Jo or Emmie like he’d expected.

“I did not fly here all the way from Oklahoma to let your door stop me.”

Leo’s head snapped up. “Piper?”

“Breakup food delivery service!” she announced, and that did finally get him to detach himself from his workbench.

The door to his room opened. And there Piper was, holding a container of chocolate ice cream of truly ridiculous size and two bags of Fonzies.

Leo had to hold himself back from hugging her on the spot. He couldn’t risk the snacks.

“I love you.”

Leo was still terrified of all the ways he might hurt Piper, but he was also terribly selfish and had had a shitty week and he’d missed her like crazy. 

Besides, he hadn’t had another dream about parking garages or fire tornados in weeks. Maybe it really had just been a nightmare for once. He so, so desperately wanted to believe that.

He wanted to sink into Piper and never let her go again.

“Yeah, yeah, I’m the greatest best friend you could ever wish for.” Piper grinned and flopped down on his bed. 

“I was talking to the Fonzies, actually,” Leo declared. He sat down next to her, took one of the bags and kissed it for dramatic effect. Piper snorted.

“I know what I heard. No take-backs.”

“Fine. Maybe I also love you a little bit. Not as much as the Fonzies, though. Where did you even get these?” 

“State secret,” Piper said with a grin.

Leo did hug her, then, and for a while, they stayed like this, and the world felt a little more okay. 

“How do you even know Calypso and I broke up? Did your best friend spidey senses go off or something?”

They had sent two Iris messages since it had happened, but Leo definitely hadn’t mentioned it.

“Calypso called me, actually.”

Leo blinked, baffled. “I- really? Why?”

“She said she doesn’t want to be around you right now, but she’s worried. She figured I might be able to help.”

“Oh. That’s… really nice of her.” Leo didn’t feel like he deserved that, after all the awful things he’d said to her.

“Hence, emergency trip to visit my best friend. Speaking of Calypso: how mad are we at her? Because I don’t care that she was nice about this one thing. I will deck her for you if the situation warrants it.”

That almost got a laugh out of Leo. “No one is decking Calypso. We just didn’t work. I can forgive a lot of stuff, but I draw the line at her thinking I’m not funny.”

If Calypso hadn’t gone into why they’d broken things off, Leo wouldn’t either. 

The longer he thought about it, the worse he felt about the way their entire relationship had gone down.

Even more awful than that was the fact that he was starting to realize that maybe he hadn’t even loved Calypso—at least not in the way he’d convinced himself he did. 

He’d loved the idea of her. Because somehow, loving an immortal girl on an island no one had ever been able to return to was more convenient than addressing the way being around Jason made him feel. 

He wasn’t entirely sure he felt ready to have that conversation with Piper, though.

“Some of your jokes are pretty terrible, to be fair.” Piper nudged him gently. 

Leo nudged her back. “Oh, shut up. You think I’m hilarious.”

He knew Piper was teasing him. It wasn’t like when Calypso interrupted his jokes because they didn’t fit the scene he was trying to cope with. It didn’t make him feel childish or stupid or awful.

It just felt like home.

“You wish.” Piper smiled at him. “We don’t have to talk about your breakup if you don’t want to. We can just sit here and eat ice cream and you can tell me about the project that exploded all over your desk.”

Leo groaned. “I actually don’t want to talk about that, either.”

“Boo.” Piper poked him. “You won’t even tell me what it is?”

“That’s part the problem, honestly,” Leo sighed, letting himself flop backwards onto his bed dramatically and gesturing at the ceiling. “I have no idea what it’s trying to be.”

Piper looked down at him, obviously baffled. “Then why are you building it? You could always just start something different with an actual purpose in mind.”

And yeah, in general, Piper was probably right. That would have been easier. But that also wasn’t how Leo operated.

Sure, he had a tendency to start a million different projects and abandon several of them in the middle because his ADHD brain found a shiny new idea to focus on that excited him more. 

But with some projects—like Festus, or the Argo, or this busted chunk of metal—he couldn’t do that. His brain got stuck on every inconsequential little detail of those, and good fucking luck focusing on anything else while that was happening.

Compartmentalizing usually worked okay. With something as big as the Argo, finding smaller steps to break the project into had been doable, especially with Jason and Piper helping and/or letting Leo ramble at them until he figured things out himself.

But breaking his current problem project up into steps when he didn’t even know what it was supposed to be? Yeah, good luck with that.

“I don’t know. It’s one of those things I keep tinkering with, and for some reason I feel like I really need to finish whatever it is. That I can’t seem to manage just makes me want to finish it more.”

Piper got up off the bed and walked over to his work bench to look at the project. Stupidly, Leo felt kind of embarrassed to have her looking at this particular disaster.

She inspected it closely, seeming to give it a lot of genuine thought.

“You know, it kind of looks like the world’s strangest instrument to me,” Piper eventually concluded, holding up the wrecked device. “Here. These wires kind of look like guitar strings to me.”

“Great. So, what, my subconscious was thinking I should play myself a sad song on the world’s weirdest violin?” Leo huffed out a frustrated breath. “Thanks, brain.”

“You’ll figure it out eventually. You rebuilt all of Festus in a few months. I don’t think this weird violin will be the thing that finally defeats you.” Piper sat back down next to him, patting his arm gently. “It’s fine if you can’t figure it out right now, though. Today is for eating breakup snacks and ridiculing shitty romcoms. Sounds good?”

Leo let his head drop onto her shoulder. “Sounds amazing.”

They had a great day filled with way too much junk food and absolutely terrible movies.

Leo fell asleep curled up against Piper, like they’d sometimes done back in Wilderness after an especially rough day. That was one of the few memories that Hera hadn’t tampered with. 

This was nice. He felt safe and almost happy for the first time in weeks.

So, of course, his nightmares had to go and ruin things again.

He had the exact same dream he’d had before he’d left Tahlequah, because the godly nightmare factory was not very creative.

“This again?” he shouted into the parking garage. “Seriously? You couldn’t have thought of something more original?”

“You did not heed my warning last time, so it seemed that a reminder was in order,” the deity said. He instinctively knew it was the same one that had tormented him last time, though their voice sounded different—maybe because they weren’t pretending to be anything other than a deity this time.

The words reverberated through the parking garage, but the echo wasn’t the deity’s voice, either—it was much worse. It sounded like a thousand desperate voices all speaking simultaneously.

Leo trembled, heart hammering in his chest with a kind of primal fear he hadn’t felt since he’d been a small child—a fear of monsters under the bed and curtains moving in the dark.

The repeat nightmare was worse than the voice. Leo tried to look away from the fiery tornado. From Piper and her burnt arms and her peeking out of cover to fire her blowpipe. From the parking garage exploding into an inferno that swallowed her whole.

But as much as he tried, he couldn’t tear his gaze away from the horrible scene.

“What do you want from me?” he screamed into the fire, his eyes stinging with tears. 

“I’m doing you a favor, keeping your friend safe from you.” The voice was low, dangerous, and seemed to come from all directions at once. “I know the past that haunts you, little demigod. Choose your path carefully, or it might very well become your present.”

Leo startled awake in complete darkness. He was shaking violently, his heart was racing and his skin felt clammy.

He was also clinging to Piper way too tightly. His fingernails had dug into her arms so hard that they left little half-moon marks behind when he finally managed to unclench them. This time, he hadn’t screamed when he’d woken up, but it was still a miracle she remained asleep despite his shaking body and him clinging to her like an industrial clamp.

Piper looked completely peaceful sleeping next to him. She wasn’t afraid of his fire—she never had been, even though she knew what kind of destruction it could cause. She slept like she didn’t even question whether or not she was safe. Like Leo had ever been anything other than a danger to his loved ones.

Even when he tried to wiggle out of her embrace, she still held onto him, making an unhappy whining noise when he finally managed to duck out from beneath her arms.

Leo made himself look literally anywhere else. His eyes caught on the window. He couldn’t remember leaving it open, but it was open now. The moon was a crescent in the sky, barely reflecting any light.

The wind caught in the curtains, moving them gently in the breeze, and something about it startled Leo so violently in his frazzled state that he nearly fell sideways off the bed.

Fuck. Fuck.

He had to force himself to inhale slowly through his nose. He tried to close his eyes and breathe to calm himself, but when he did the vision painted itself over his eyelids again.

He moved to close the window, careful not to make too much noise to avoid waking Piper. When he raised his arm, he realized it was absolutely covered in goosebumps. He couldn’t shake the feeling that something in the darkness was about to jump him, but when he looked around, there was nothing there. 

He laid back down as far away from Piper as the mattress would physically allow. He did not sleep another wink. 

The next day, Leo dragged his feet about sending Piper away longer than was probably safe. If he had to let her go, he at least wanted to have Sunday with her, before she had to fly back for school. Before he had to stay away from her for good.

They had another day of snacks and movies and talking, but the looming dread that hung over everything meant it didn’t feel the same. Leo couldn’t relax. Not even a little bit.

Piper noticed, of course. She’d realized he was on edge the moment she’d woken up that morning. But he’d told her the awful magic words “nightmare about Jason”, and she’d just held him about it, not asking any further questions about the topic or his weird behavior.

They tried to make the most of the day—as best as they could, given the circumstances. Leo told Piper about all of his little projects. Piper told him about Shel, and finally being able to spend time with her dad, and about her new school. School still wasn’t great, but it wasn’t Wilderness School bad, and now her dad actually sat down with her to go over the subjects she was struggling with instead of hiring fancy tutors. He was horrible at it, to be clear—math was apparently a fantastic time for both of them—but Piper was just glad he was trying.

Leo was happy for her. He really was.

But even if it hadn’t been for his horrible Piper-related nightmares, he wasn’t sure he could have fit into a life that was so normal after everything that had happened. 

If Piper was ready to leave behind so much of what they’d shared, how long would there even be a place for him left in her world?

“Hey Pipes, can I talk to you about something?” Leo finally brought himself to ask, barely an hour before Piper had to leave for the airport.

“I mean, we’ve been talking all day, but sure! What’s up?”

“It’s been really nice to have you here,” he started, like that would make anything better. Like it would make what he was about to say hurt any less.

“Do you want me to stay for a bit?” Piper asked, something almost hopeful in her voice. “Because I will if you need me to. My dad can call my school, and-”

Leo felt cold all over. He wanted to cry. 

“No. It’s kind of the opposite of that, actually. I’m glad we’ve been IMing each other as much as we have. You know I love talking your ear off every chance I get.” He tried for a weak smile, but he couldn’t really manage. There was a huge lump in his throat, and he could feel the tears stinging in his eyes. “But I think I need some space.” 

Piper looked absolutely crestfallen in a way that made Leo desperate to take the words back. He would have, if this hadn’t been the only way to keep her safe.

“Sorry, I- was coming down here without warning too much? I probably should have asked, but I thought-”

“It wasn’t too much.” Leo reached out to take her hands in his. The last thing he wanted was to make her feel awful for the best weekend he’d had in ages. “I’m so glad you came, okay? You are literally my favorite person in the entire world. But I’ve had some time to think lately, and I… promise you won’t hate me?”

Piper must have been able to tell this was a legitimate concern, because she didn’t even try to joke. She just pulled him to her chest and held him. “You’re my best friend. I love you to death, okay? Nothing you say could change that.”

He couldn’t tell her that he had to keep her away from him for her own safety, because he knew Piper would never have agreed to that. But there was something else he could tell her that was just as painful and just as true and that he was pretty sure would work.

“It’s Jason. Everything’s been so much lately, and I-” He broke off and pressed his eyes shut, not wanting to look at Piper when he said it. “I’m starting to think that maybe I was in love with him.”

“Shit, Leo.” Piper didn’t let go. One of her arms wound more tightly around him. The other gently brushed through his curls like she was trying to soothe a child with a fever. 

“That’s one way to put it, yeah.” 

This was who Leo was, he supposed. He wanted impossible things, and he always knew way too late.

“I’m so sorry.”

“I feel like I’m the one who needs to apologize. What kind of garbage human being falls in love with their best friend’s partner?” he scoffed, kind of wishing Piper would pull away and get mad at him. Kind of wishing she’d never let him go. 

“You’re my best friend, Leo,” Piper repeated, not an ounce of resentment in her voice. “We don’t control these feelings. Hell, I didn’t even actually like Jason in that way.” She was so terribly gentle with him. He didn’t deserve that. He’d never deserved Piper. “You and Jason were always happiest when you were with each other. Anyone with eyes could see that. How could I resent you for wanting to be happy?”

“Not to worry,” Leo said, feeling absolutely awful. “I can resent myself more than enough for both of us.”

It barely sounded like he was kidding. Truth be told, he wasn’t entirely sure it was a joke.

“Please don’t.”

Piper kept holding him for what simultaneously seemed like an eternity and not nearly long enough. 

He held her like one held their breath in a dangerous situation—desperately, afraid that if he let go, it would be the last time, but also knowing he couldn’t keep holding on forever. It felt like letting go might kill him. But holding on might kill her, and that was infinitely worse.

“So, yeah, I don’t know, I just…” Leo sniffled, slowly untangling himself from Piper so he could wipe his tears off on his shirtsleeves. It terrified him how much this felt like an ending. “Things are kind of a lot right now. I need some time to sort everything out with myself, I think.”

“I understand. I’ll give you space to do whatever you need to do to deal with your grief. But I’m still here for you when you need me, okay? I’ll wait for you. I’ve always been good at waiting.”

Leo felt like his chest might cave in. He remembered all the times Piper had pointlessly waited for her dad to call or to visit back in Wilderness, only for him to cancel last minute because he was working on some project or had an interview or any of the other stuff that really shouldn’t have been more important than his daughter. He thought of how long Piper and Jason must have waited for him, only to eventually be forced to admit that they might never see him again.

He thought of Piper, alone, waiting and waiting and waiting, only for no one to ever come back. 

Not her dad, not Jason and definitely not Leo, whose entire life had been built around running and running and running and never looking back.

“I’m awful,” he choked out, the voice from his dream still nagging him from the back of his mind. Leo’s flames had never touched Piper, and somehow he still managed to leave her burnt.

He had to do this. Piper was the one good thing Leo had left, and he had to keep her safe, even if it meant staying away from her. Even if it meant he could only ever love her from a distance.

“You’re not,” Piper said, way too sincerely. “No one our age should have to go through the shit we faced. We shouldn’t have had to fucking bury our best friend. I’m not expected to deal with this well, and neither are you.”

“Why does loving people suck so much?”

“I don’t know,” Piper sniffled, wiping at her own face. Leo hadn’t meant to make her cry, too, but here they were. “We should send a letter of complaint to my mom.”

Leo forced a smile. “I’m in.”

He couldn’t bear the thought of holding her again—couldn’t bear the thought of having to let her go again—but when she grabbed his hands, he could not refuse her.

“If we won’t see each other for a while, can I at least ask you for a favor?”

“Anything you want,” Leo said immediately.

Piper quirked an eyebrow at him. “You should be glad I’m not planning to abuse that offer. I could ask you to do karaoke in front of a crowd. Or to show me your diary.”

“Joke’s on you. I’m an excellent singer, and I don’t have a diary.” Foster families with shitty siblings and boarding schools with shared rooms would have broken that habit for even the most avid diary writer in record time.

“I contest the excellent singer -bit. The Argo wasn’t that big. I definitely heard you singing in the shower at least twice, and I’ll have you know that my ears are still recovering.” 

“No way you’re making fun of me right now. Not when Jason was a million times worse.” Leo tried to smile, but the joke rang hollow.

Piper reached for the blade at her belt. “Hang on to Katoptris for me, okay? If I can’t be with you in person, I at least want to be with you in spirit. You know, just so you remember you won’t get rid of me that easily.” 

She grinned at him, but there was something fragile in her expression, telling him just how desperately she needed him to say yes.

She’d been carrying that blade every day of her demigod life—every moment they’d spent together since the Grand Canyon, and in the months her and Jason had been looking for him. And now she was offering it to him like it was nothing more than a memento. Like it hadn’t been the thing that kept her alive in so many situations.

“But what if there’s a monster attack? You need to have some way to defend yourself.”

“Tahlequah has been pretty light on monsters so far. It’s kind of boring over there. Not that that’s a bad thing,” Piper said immediately, holding the dagger out towards him. “Besides, my charmspeak isn’t going anywhere, and I’m pretty decent at using a blowpipe these days.”

The words hit Leo like a punch to the gut.

If the warning words in his nightmare hadn’t been enough, this fully sealed the deal. He needed her to go, and to stay the hell away from him.

“Hey, don’t look at me like that. I can take care of myself just fine,” Piper said, taking one of his hands back in hers and gently placing it on the dagger’s hilt. 

All Leo could see was burnt arms and a wall of fire.

“I know you can take care of yourself, I just-” Leo forced himself to breathe. Forced his trembling hand to close tightly around the dagger. “I can’t lose you, too.”

Maybe he should have been thankful to be able to keep some part of her, but right now the hilt just felt cold and heavy in his hand. 

“You won’t. I’ll be okay. I promise.”

But Leo knew she couldn’t promise that. 

After Piper left, Leo glued himself back to his work bench, trying not to think about it all. Trying not to think about the new weight on his belt. Trying not to think about how alone he felt, and how long it might be before he got to see her again. If he could ever see her again.

Even the thought of throwing himself back into this frustrating project seemed comforting in comparison.

He looked down at the device, trying to make sense of it through Piper’s eyes. Trying to see the weird musical instrument with guitar string wires and work from there.

And finally, it clicked. 

Leo felt like a complete moron for how long it had taken him to recognize it, considering he’d built almost this exact thing before, music box and phonograph and all. 

It was a new and to-be-improved version of the Valdezinator he’d traded Apollo in exchange for a part of the physician’s cure.

Things slotted into place, then. It was suddenly so ridiculously obvious—the connection between death and music and Greek mythology. Part of his brain had understood what it was Leo most desperately wanted to do, even when he hadn’t been able to really let himself think about it yet. 

He thought back to the funeral, suddenly overcome with a sense of determination that he hadn’t felt since Gaia had tried to taunt him into abandoning his friends and he’d decided he was going to punch her stupid face in instead.

Leo wasn’t going to accept things had to be like this. He didn’t have to. There was a precedent for this.

He couldn’t fix the Piper situation right now. He didn’t know how. But he could try to get Jason back. 

Maybe then, the three of them could figure out his weird threatening vision. They’d always been able to figure anything out as long as they were together.

For the first time since he’d found out about Jason’s death, Leo felt almost hopeful.

Chapter Text

“You shouldn’t do this,” Nico said for what was probably the third time now—Leo hadn’t actually counted, he’d just adjusted his annoyance levels accordingly.

The image of Nico shimmering in the rainbow, pitch black clothes and pinched expression and all, was honestly kind of hilarious, but Leo didn’t feel much like laughing at the moment.

“Again, I don’t think I asked,” Leo bit out. “I also don’t think I told you what I was planning to do, if I’m even planning to do anything.”

“Right, because there’s a ton of reasons why you’d want to know if Jason is in Elysium.” Nico crossed his arms. “Listen, I get it. I really do. But-” He gulped. “When Bianca died, I spent ages trying to get her back. I got manipulated by a ghost trying to use me for revenge. I almost lost myself. That’s not what she would have wanted for me, and this isn’t what Jason would have wanted for you.”

“And did you reach that conclusion before or after you resurrected Hazel?” Leo snapped back. Part of him knew he was being unfair, but he wasn’t sure he cared. He’d spent the past month preparing for this. He didn’t want to fail now because Nico, hypocrite that he was, refused to give him this one crucial piece of information. Why should Jason deserve a second chance any less than Hazel? “Just answer the damn question, di Angelo. Elysium or rebirth?”

Reasonably, Leo probably should have asked this question a lot sooner into his plan, considering said plan hinged entirely on the assumption that Jason was actually in the Underworld.

There were a few reasons why he hadn’t.

1) Leo being Leo, he’d just thrown himself into this project and not even considered that Jason might have chosen rebirth at first, despite the fact that that kind of heroic overachieving was a perfectly Jason thing to do.

2) Once Leo had realized it, he’d longed to keep pretending this would work, not wanting to think about the alternative. He finally had some distant flicker of hope to hang onto. He was terrified what it would mean to have that hope ripped away from him again.

3) He had worried Nico would act like this, and if he planned to snitch, it was better if Leo was prepared to get his plan in motion before anyone could stop him.

Mostly due to point three, Leo was currently glad he’d stuck to this schedule.

“Hazel was stuck in Asphodel. She was lost and terrified and needed to come back. Jason made a choice, Leo,” Nico said quietly, completely ignoring what Leo had said. “We should respect that.”

“No. Screw that. It was a stupid choice, and I’m not respecting it. Why would I?”

Leo hadn’t accepted that the Fates would take him or Jason in return for Gaia’s defeat when they’d first realized what the prophecy meant. Why in the world would he accept it now?

“Because the last thing Jason would want is for you to get yourself killed trying to get him back.” Nico didn't snap at him. He was gentle, looking at Leo with an expression somewhere between sympathy and a kind of sadness that verged on pity. Leo had been pitied a bunch throughout his life, and he could count the times that it had helped him on… exactly zero hands, because pity was never fucking helpful. “I’ve had a few sessions with Dionysus. It’s helping me deal with my PTSD a little better. Maybe you should consider-”

Leo didn’t let him finish.

“I don’t need some kind of godly therapy session,” he hissed, his trembling hands clenching into fists at his sides. “I just want my best friend back.”

“I get that. Trust me, I do. Jason was my friend, too. I miss him every day. Fuck, I’ve thought about getting him back.” Nico kept clenching and unclenching his hands. He looked really upset. “But death doesn’t work like that, and it wouldn’t be fair to Jason.”

Leo knew losing Jason had been painful for other people, too. But he didn’t get why everyone else seemed to agree on the same lackluster advice of well, what can you do but keep going?

Leo had spent years running away from his grief. ‘Don’t stop moving. Never look back.’ had been his motto for so long that he could probably have gotten it printed on a shirt.

But grief had caught him now. And everyone kept telling him to just walk alongside it like it wasn’t trying to strangle him every step of the way. 

Leo had never been strong or foolish enough to take that advice.

“I don’t care about whether or not it’s fair to him. None of this is fair. Jason can get a vote when he’s no longer dead.”

“You know Elysium is paradise, right?” Nico tried, obviously desperate to make Leo see even a little bit of reason. “I promise you he’s happy.”

Unfortunately for Nico, inconvenient things like reason and rational thought had gone out the window way back when Leo had first decided he was doing this.

“I get it, okay?” Leo said, lifting his hands placatingly. He tried not to smile about the fact that Nico had just given away the answer he needed, and that meant he was absolutely following through with his plan. “No necromancy. No joining forces with manipulative, vengeful ghosts. I won’t. I promise.” 

“You won’t do anything stupid?” Nico sounded sceptical. 

Leo knew why. He’d changed his tune too fast. If he wanted to avoid Nico raising alarm bells on all of his friends, he had to give him more than that.

“You know I can’t promise that. Most of the things that pop into my mind are stupid. I’m an inventor. Kind of comes with the territory.” Leo smiled at Nico, allowing a little of his pain to bleed through. He had a lot of practice with lying. It was always easier to make people believe you if at least some of the lies were grounded in truth. “But breaking into the Underworld would be a whole different level of stupid, especially considering I probably already pissed off Thanatos with my little Physician’s Cure-stunt.” He wrung his hands. “I just really miss Jason. Not to sound incredibly lame, but I wish I could hug him again.”

“Yeah. I know.” Nico sounded pained. “Listen, I’m not great at this, but if you need to talk to someone-”

“Fine,” Leo interrupted him. “I’ll come down to camp in a few weeks, to visit Harley and stuff. Maybe we can talk, then. Don’t think I want to see Mr. D, though. I’m a bit sick of the gods right now.”

Nico still didn’t look entirely convinced. Leo thought that was a little unfair. He was totally planning to head to camp. Just, well, after he got Jason back. Nico didn’t need to know that part.

“Listen, I’ve got to go help with lunch, but I’ll see you in a bit, okay?” Leo smiled. It was convenient now that he and Nico weren’t that close. Lying to Piper about this would have been much harder. “Now go bother your boyfriend or something.”

Nico glowered at him through the rainbow, which made for a hilarious image. “I hate you.” But his lips twitched into a smile.

“You and a bunch of other people! Get in line.” Leo grinned into the rainbow one last time, waved, then deactivated his rainbow phone. 

…okay, yeah, terrible name. He was still working on that part.

In his defense, he’d been busy with other stuff. 

For the past month, he’d been tinkering away at the Valdezinator 2.0. He’d gotten a little more obsessive than a project this small probably warranted, but he needed it to be perfect. If he was going to try this the Orpheus way, the stupid musical instrument couldn’t be the reason he failed. 

There had been a part of Leo that wanted to do his usual thing—to just run in blindly and improvise from there. That had been his main Modus Operandi for ages. But he only had one shot at this, and Jason was too important for him to take that kind of risk. 

So he’d tinkered until he couldn’t think of any more improvements. He’d done some research on how the Underworld worked, even going to an actual public library, which he hadn’t done since he’d been a runaway kid that needed a warm, dry place to stay for a while. He’d trained with Lit, trying to figure out how to use Katoptris. 

He wanted Piper with him, but since he couldn’t have her, this was the next best thing.

Piper respected his request for space. They hadn’t been talking much. He checked in occasionally to make sure she was safe, and he’d sent her a hand-crafted fidget bracelet and a huge box of chocolate cookies for her birthday, which she’d claimed to be happy about, but even Leo knew that was a cheap replacement for having your best friend there to celebrate your birthday with you. He tried not to think about the way they’d celebrated Piper’s birthday the previous year—the cake he’d baked for her and the impromptu picnic he, Jason and Piper had had in Bunker Nine. The Leo from back then hadn’t even realized how lucky he’d been. The end of the world had been looming over them all, sure, but they’d been together, and at the time, everything had felt like it might actually be okay.

But now Jason was gone, and Leo hadn’t seen Piper in weeks, and nothing was even slightly okay.

It felt like a lifetime had passed between now and those first few weeks after Jason had died when you couldn’t have separated Leo and Piper with a crowbar. He missed her like crazy.

The few times they had talked, Piper had seemed happy enough, considering the circumstances. In a way, that was almost worse than if she’d kept unsuccessfully pestering him into spending time with her.

Most of the time, she was apparently just fine without him. 

And the one time she wouldn’t be, Leo was-

A sudden knock on the door pulled Leo from his thoughts, reminding him that what he’d told Nico to end the call hadn’t just been an excuse.

“Hermano, if you don’t get a move on now, I’m starting without you,” Reyna called from the other side of the door.

Leo knew from past experience that he did not want to risk that, even before factoring in that annoying Reyna by ditching her to do the cooking on her own wouldn’t be a good idea. 

He’d learned in the past few days that Thalia was a pretty decent cook. The same could not be said for Reyna, who was somehow almost worse at it than Jason. What did they teach people at Camp Jupiter?

“Sorry! Coming!” He scrambled to get to the door before Reyna could enter. Back in New Rome, he’d seen with his own two eyes that she kept everything in neatly organized, color-coded folders. She’d probably have a stroke seeing his mess of a room. 

“Got absorbed in one of your projects again?” she asked amicably.

It was still a little weird to be talking to Reyna like this.

For a time, Leo had been terrified of her—convinced she’d hold a grudge against him for firing on her home for the rest of eternity. Not that he’d have blamed her. That was a line most people would have drawn.

For some reason, it hadn’t been Reyna’s line in the long run. By the time Leo had flown a giant war machine over New Rome the second time, she’d actively stopped anyone from trying to aim artillery weapons at him—so if nothing else, his heroic sacrifice had at least earned him a bit of leeway on that front.

Reyna was still kind of scary, obviously. Leo didn’t really want to count the amount of deadly weapons she could wield. The fact that she could have killed him in an instant if she wanted to was a purely objective observation. But they’d bonded when he’d helped upgrade New Rome’s defensive system, and a large pot of midnight tamales had done the rest of the job for him. Reyna didn’t take shit from anyone, Leo definitely included, but she had something of a soft spot for him these days. 

They were friends now. 

Mostly, this was good. He’d even gotten an embarrassing Jason story or two out of her before he’d left New Rome—not that he’d ever gotten to use them to actually tease Jason, but it had felt like a huge victory at the time.

Right now, Reyna’s soft spot for him was mostly a problem, though. Her knowing Leo meant she would pick up on it if he lied to her, and her liking him meant she would care to know why he would lie.

Meaning: he couldn’t lie to her.

“Not exactly,” he admitted, trying to sound casual. “I was in an Iris message. Kind of lost track of time.”

“Ah.” Reyna looked at him curiously. “Who did you call? Piper’s at her art club right now. I don’t think she would skip that.”

Leo stared at her, surprised. He had no idea how Reyna could possibly know that Piper had art club today, or that she wouldn’t skip it because as much as she sucked at art, Piper did generally enjoy it, but it was a little inconvenient right now. He’d definitely hoped she’d just assume he’d been talking to Piper. 

Well, now he couldn’t exactly not tell Reyna who he’d actually been talking to. That would just make her suspicious, and speaking from past experience, suspicious Reyna was not someone you wanted to get on your case.

He did briefly consider derailing the conversation to ask why, exactly, she had Piper’s schedule memorized, but even with his experience limited to a few months of Nyssa, Leo still knew older sisters could smell that tactic from miles away.

“Eh, just Nico.” Leo shrugged. “I don’t know. Checking in to see how he’s doing. Asking if seeing his boyfriend’s dad again was awkward.” That wasn’t technically a lie. Leo had done all that, even if it hadn’t been the main reason he’d called Nico.

“Oh. You could have told me. I’d have stopped by to say hello.” 

Right. Leo had kind of forgotten Nico and Reyna were friends.

“Sorry. Next time.” He gave her an awkward smile. “Lester dropping by Camp wasn’t half as bad as him showing up here, apparently.”

Apollo had tried to talk to Leo about Jason. It… hadn’t gone over well for Apollo.

“Yeah, I bet. You properly tore into him.” Reyna grinned. “He looked even more flabbergasted than the time I laughed in his face after he tried to ask me out.”

“I still can’t believe he hit on you. Like, read the room, my guy. I know I’m a disaster sometimes, but I’m also sixteen.” Leo shook his head. He had spent a lot of his time as a demigod ignoring his feelings for Jason so hard he’d basically turned hitting on everyone else into a sport, and even he had been sensible enough not to flirt with Reyna. What exactly was Apollo’s excuse? “Imagine still being that clueless at thousands of years old.”

That got a proper snort out of Reyna, which made Leo feel proud. He was still figuring out which jokes worked on her. Spoilers: there weren't many.

It didn’t take long for them to reach the kitchen, though he did notice that the Waystation hadn’t made an effort to shorten their path. He wondered if it was upset with him for planning to leave—Did it know? He figured the answer was probably yes—or if it just glad that he’d been leaving his room a lot more in the past few days and trying to encourage this by making him take walks through its neatly decorated hallways.

Reyna entered, holding the door open for him. “Time to help cook my own farewell lunch, I suppose.”

“Absolutely not!” Leo said immediately, moving to stand protectively in front of the oven. “You can cut the ingredients, maybe. But you’re staying the hell away from the pot, and especially the seasoning. I will not have you explode another salt shaker all over my poor pasta.”

Reyna glared at him. “You will not speak of that particular incident to anyone ever again, Valdez.”

Leo grinned back at her, holding out his hand. “Agree to my cooking terms and you’ve got yourself a deal.”

She redirected her glare at his hand, like she was contemplating whether to chop it off with her dagger rather than take it, but eventually she relented with a sigh. 

“Fine.”

When she wasn’t exploding salt shakers all over Leo’s pasta, cooking with Reyna was nice enough. 

There was something deeply comical about the way she glared at the tomatoes before she began dicing them, like they’d caused her personal offense and she was deciding how to murder them most efficiently.

Leo watched her for a moment before promptly deciding it wasn’t necessary. Reyna’s general cooking abilities may have been questionable at best, but she had never given him a reason to question her knifing skills.

The Hunters dropping by was something Leo couldn’t have planned for, but it had been extremely convenient. With Calypso at band camp and only him, Georgina and Lit around for Jo and Emmie to pay attention to, sneaking food and equipment for his trip would have been difficult. But with everyone focused on their guests, no one had raised an eyebrow at it, if they’d even noticed at all.

With the amount of people here, they likely wouldn’t have been able to trace it back to him specifically even if they’d tried. Leo knew at least some of the girls had been sneaking into the kitchen at night. 

Who knew, maybe one of the side effects of hanging around with the moon goddess was a terminal craving for midnight snacks.

The Hunters were leaving later today. A part of Leo was sad to see them go, especially Reyna and Thalia, but they had a fox to catch before it could flatten any more cities, and he had his own mission to worry about.

Leo was planning to dip a few hours after the Hunters left—sometime tonight, when everyone would be asleep. That way, he could avoid awkward questions and no one would be awake to stop him.

Originally, he hadn’t had a set date in mind for when he’d leave. Honestly, it had taken a bit of outside motivation for him to finally decide to get this show on the road—because, as desperately as Leo wanted to do this, he also knew that he had never encountered a situation he didn’t screw up. And this one he absolutely couldn’t afford to screw up. If he managed to convince the gods to let him try, he’d only have this one shot. If he squandered it, he’d never be able to forgive himself. 

Leo wished he could claim it was his Apollo-related anger that had gotten him to finally decide to get a move on. Unfortunately, that wasn’t the case. Calypso had been right—Leo was a coward. 

As much as Apollo’s absolute gall to waffle to him about how Jason was a hero and wouldn’t want to be brought back when he’d barely known him had pissed Leo off, his breaking point had come a few days before that—during his last Iris Message with Piper. 

More specifically, it had been Piper asking him to come to New Rome with her for Jason’s birthday. 

“We could go see the memorial. Maybe after, we could visit some of his favorite spots together,” she’d suggested, almost smiling at the idea. “There was this coffee shop he was always talking about, and the gardens, and-”

Leo hadn’t even let her finish. He couldn’t do this. Not just because he couldn’t risk Piper’s life by being near her.

Jason had promised to properly show them around one day. The thought of going without him—of visiting the place that had been Jason’s home for most of his life and seeing nothing but the empty space he’d left behind—very nearly killed him.

He couldn’t deal with the thought of spending Jason’s birthday without him. Of spending his own birthday, barely a week later, unable to think of anything but the fact that Jason wasn’t around to celebrate it with him. That he was older than Jason now, because Jason hadn’t made it to his own seventeenth birthday.

This was the only thing Piper had asked of him since Leo had asked for space. She hadn’t even asked him to come visit for her own birthday. But this—the obvious terror she felt at the thought of spending Jason’s birthday without Leo—had finally been enough to at least make her ask.

And because Leo was a coward, he couldn’t even give her that.

If he left now, maybe he could get Jason back by his birthday. Maybe, if he could figure out how to prevent that stupid vision, Piper could spend it with both of them. Maybe, if he managed that, she would forgive him one day.

Or maybe, an awful, pessimistic part of his brain supplied unhelpfully, he’d fail and die and his last memory of her would be this—her crying and begging him to come with her and then apologizing for pushing him too soon.

After the Hunters left, Leo spent the remaining day with Festus. He wished he could have taken him along. He’d considered it. But that wouldn’t have been fair to Festus. There was no way he’d be able to tag along into the Underworld, no matter how much he wanted to, which meant Leo would still have to leave him, just slightly later. Besides, the only place in New York he could have safely dropped off Festus was camp, which would be a really awkward thing to explain, especially given Nico’s suspicions about what he was up to. And as much as Leo liked his siblings, he didn’t want to leave Festus with a bunch of people his poor dragon barely knew, some of which had tried to dismantle him at one point.

It wasn’t like Leo could have taken Festus up to Mount Olympus with him, either. The winds protecting it from that kind of approach aside, landing there on an iron war machine with occasional misfiring problems was probably the wrong strategy if he planned to actually get a word in before getting fried.

No, as much as it pained Leo to leave him, it was best that Festus stayed here. He was content at the Waystation.

Leo took his dragon on one more flight around the area, rambling his plans at his friend as he did. Festus did ask to come, but he seemed to understand when Leo told him why he couldn’t. He did creak about extra Tabasco sauce before he left, though, which was definitely doable. 

“You’re so spoiled.” 

Festus gently torched him in reply, and Leo laughed, pressing himself to his friend’s giant metal head, letting himself feel all of his inner working one final time to get his own whirring mind to slow down. Something about the utter familiarity of the dragon he’d rebuilt from scratch always felt calming. 

Other people tended to be disconcerted seeing him press himself so closely to Festus’ several rows of rotating teeth, but Leo wasn’t worried about it. He trusted Festus not to hurt him more than he did most people.

“I’ll make sure you’ll have all the motor oil and Tabasco sauce you could ever wish for, don’t worry,” he promised, mentally adding that to the list of things he needed to put into the letter he’d write to Jo. He ran his fingers over Festus’ metal snout. “You’ll be well taken care of.”

Regardless of what happens to me, Leo didn’t say.

Despite all of Leo’s careful planning, Josephine caught him trying to sneak out of the Waystation through his bedroom window in the middle of the night. 

He was already partially on the roof when he heard his door open, then close, Jo’s steps familiar after two months of living with her. He winced.

“Hey!” he said awkwardly, sticking his head back inside the room. “I was just, uh- getting some fresh air.”

Not his most convincing lie, maybe, considering the fact that he was fully dressed—boots and all—at two in the morning and that one of his legs was still halfway out the window.

“You could have used the door, you know,” Jo said, an eyebrow quirked in amusement. “This isn’t a prison. You can come and go whenever you like.”

Despite the late hour, she was dressed in her work clothes, overalls covered in grime. There was still a part of Leo that was confused by the fact that she wasn’t a Hephaestus kid, with how many of his own habits she reflected back at him.

“Yeah, I know, but I figured the air up here was better.” He shrugged.

“I found your letter,” she told him, which meant he didn’t need to bother with making up some elaborate story about stargazing on the roof—she already knew he was lying.

Leo sighed. So this was going to be a longer chat. 

He pulled his leg back in through the window and sat down on his bed. Having this conversation with one literal foot out the door—or, well, window—seemed stupid, and he was also starting to feel ridiculous, balancing on one leg like he was in a freeze-frame from a heist movie.

“Of course you did.” It was just his luck that tonight of all nights she’d apparently gone back into the kitchen before turning in for the night. Maybe the Waystation had even actively led her there—which would be the first time in his life Leo would have to say ‘dick move’ to a building. He crossed his arms. “If you’re here to talk me out of doing this, that’s not happening. I have to try to get Jason back.”

Weirdly, Jo didn’t look mad. She didn’t even look surprised.

“Talk a Hephaestus kid out of attempting to fix things? I reckon I’d be more successful talking a wall into becoming a hallway,” she said gently. Considering how the Waystation worked, Leo figured that probably wasn’t even a metaphor. 

He didn’t know what to make of the fact that she wasn’t upset with him. He had snuck out of a lot of windows in his long-lasting career as a serial runaway, and while he’d always been careful not to be caught, when he had been, his foster parents generally hadn’t been thrilled about it.

Maybe he shouldn’t have been surprised. Jo had shown him time and time again that she wasn’t like his other foster parents. The Waystation wasn’t like the places that had felt like homes for other people where he was just the replacement kid for a couple with empty nest syndrome or the charity case that always turned out to be more than they bargained for. 

Jo and Emmie had been taking in demigod kids for years, and had lived a long time before that knowing about gods and monsters. His ADHD and his trauma and the weird shit that happened around Leo weren’t going to be deal breakers for them.

How much of a difference that made was something Leo was still struggling to process.

In another life, maybe this could have been the place where the boy who kept running finally put down roots.

The thought of roots had scared Leo for the longest time—the thought of letting himself grow attached to a place, to other people, only to be uprooted when those people decided they no longer wanted him there, or to watch glued in place as the people he’d stayed for left him behind.

Piper and Jason were the only reason he’d ever relearned to stay anywhere, and now they were both gone from his life—ripped away by the Fates cutting strings and vague threats from a deity.

Leo appreciated the kindness he was shown here. He liked Jo and Emmie and Georgina. But he didn’t have time for roots right now. He was angry and grieving and had a best friend to resurrect, so any thoughts of staying he might have had otherwise were far at the back of his mind, lost somewhere in his vortex of emotions and his weeks of planning.

Calypso had been right about that, too—about the fact that he’d never given this a real shot. About him having one foot out the door from the get-go.

An awful part of him wondered if that was why Jo wasn’t more upset about his plans. It wasn’t like he’d ever let himself properly become a member of this little family. And if he didn’t belong here, well, why would she be upset about him leaving? It just freed up space for someone who’d actually appreciate everything they were offering. 

There were plenty of foster kids who would have killed for the kind of home he was squandering here.

“So, what, you don’t even care that I’m leaving to do something dangerous?” Leo asked, trying to ignore the way it stung. It was ridiculous that it did. This was convenient. 

Leo had been planning to leave for weeks. Nothing Jo could have said would have stopped him. 

So why did he still want her to try?

“Of course I care. But I figured something like this would happen, and I’ve lived this life long enough to know there are things that people can’t be talked out of.” Jo sighed. “I always wish I could talk my kids out of putting themselves in danger, but I’ve both been the kid putting myself in danger and know it’s necessary sometimes, as much as I wish it wasn’t. Emmie and I would have done a lot of dangerous and stupid stuff to get Georgina back. That you’re willing to do the same for someone you care about… well, I’d be a bit of a hypocrite to criticize you.”

That hit Leo harder than her asking him to stay could have.

“Oh.” He wrapped his arms around himself, trying to stop the feelings building in his chest. Something about how easily she included him in her family when there had been so many times people hadn’t made his heart ache. “How long have you known I was leaving?”

“Since you opened up about what happened to your friend,” she admitted. “Maybe since before then. If you live long enough, you learn to tell the difference between people who aren’t all there because they’re processing something that happened to them, and ones who aren’t all there because they’re moving somewhere else with purpose. But when you told me about Jason, I started to realize what you would do, and why.”

Part of Leo still couldn’t believe he’d actually done that. Part of him felt even more shocked she’d known what he was up to even before Leo himself had even fully realized it.

“And you didn’t try to talk me out of it.”

“No. Like I said, I understand the impulse.” She smiled at him. “I’m glad I caught you before you left. I made something for you.”

Jo pulled an object from a pouch of her belt, no larger than the palm of Leo’s hand. It was a wrist watch, crafted so all the inner workings were visible. 

Leo’s mechanic heart jumped for joy. A more vulnerable part of him started to break open as he remembered sitting on the couch with his mom, playing with his first hand-crafted toy as she beamed with pride. 

“I- Thank you.” His eyes stung. His voice wouldn’t work right.

“Keeping track of time in the Underworld can be difficult. I thought this might help.” Jo lifted her hand and waited for him to nod before she looped the watch band around his wrist and fastened it gently with calloused fingers. “If you get yourself into a tough spot, touch the little button on the front. It might be single use—Mist Cards tend to be a little moody with demigods who aren’t children of Hecate, especially the multi-purpose ones—but this should shape itself into whatever you want.”

“I… really don’t know what to say.” Leo was losing the fight with his tears, badly. He had a lump in his throat that felt bowling ball-sized. “I don’t have anything for you.”

“The only thing I want in return is for you to remember there’s always going to be a place for you here, if you want it,” she said, still terribly gentle. She didn’t say home, maybe because she knew he wasn’t ready to hear that, though it was still obvious what she meant. “For your friend , too, if he’d like to tag along.”

Leo wiped at his face, desperate, overwhelmed with the fact that she believed in him so much. Overwhelmed with being offered a place to come back to and stay with no strings attached. 

This wasn’t bars on his bedroom window so he wouldn’t leave, and it wasn’t Teresa dragging him back from the police station after his second attempt at running away, grasping his arm so tightly that it bruised.

He remembered the way his mom’s bedroom door had always been open when he’d been little. When he’d been maybe six, just starting school, he’d gone through a stupid phase of feeling much too big and mature to go to his mom after a nightmare. She’d smiled at him, nodded and said he was a big kid now, and as a big kid, he could choose if he wanted to come to her or not. But she’d still left the door open, and it had stayed open, no matter how many nights he chose not to enter.

That was what this felt like—a perpetually open door that would remain that way, no matter what.

“I don’t know. Jason’s not really the gardening or tinkering type, plus he’s kind of shit at cooking,” Leo sniffled.

“Even Apollo learned to chop carrots, and he was a tough one. I’m sure Jason will be just fine.”

Leo laughed, immediately feeling lighter. “Oh, you think I’m exaggerating? I’ve tried teaching him before, back at camp. Hopeless case. He got nervous and accidentally fried the microwave.”

That got Jo laughing, too. 

“We’ll figure it out.” She gestured towards the window. “You still using your special exit, or are you staying for breakfast? I’m sure a few extra hours of sleep won’t hurt, and the others would like to say goodbye. But I won’t push you. I get it if this is easier.”

And it would have been. It would have been much easier not to be offered a ride to the airport or emotional goodbyes or the pipe cleaner doll Georgina had made for him. 

Leo stayed for breakfast, anyway. He left through the front door rather than a window, like a reasonable person that might still learn to leave some bridges unburnt.

Chapter Text

“As your friend, I think I’m supposed to tell you this is a terrible idea,” Percy said from the driver’s seat of his parents’ beat-up Prius.

Full disclosure: Leo had wanted to just take a taxi from the airport to the Empire State Building. But his first attempt at that had gotten him covered in monster dust, and he’d figured a second attempt might be pushing his luck.

Speaking of pushing his luck: the way Leo’s life was going, he’d obviously done something to severely piss off Tyche at some point, though he had no idea what. Was a six year old cheating at Parcheesi something she took personally?

Whatever the case, he’d reluctantly IMed Percy, keeping the details vague aside from the fact that he needed someone to pick him up. Of course, upon being picked up, Percy had asked for a destination. Leo had given him an address a few blocks away from the Empire State Building, but, well… Percy wasn’t stupid, so Leo had (albeit reluctantly) told him the plan.

As anxious as he was about any of his friends knowing, Percy wasn’t Nico. Reckless plans—especially those that included giving the gods a piece of your mind—were sort of Percy’s brand.

He just hoped it wouldn’t backfire on him now.

“If you think it’s such a terrible idea, why are you going along with it?” Leo asked, staring intensely out into New York’s awful afternoon traffic. He wasn’t going to let Percy stop him, either. He’d jump out of a moving car if he had to. It wouldn’t be the dumbest thing he’d ever done.

“Hey, I’m not judging. I’m basically the demigod expert on terrible ideas at this point, and in my experience, they tend to go better if you’ve got friends ready to charge into trouble with you.” Percy was clearly trying to say it in a light-hearted way, but he looked too upset for that to really work. “Besides, I’m used to our lives being dangerous. I’m used to bullshit errand quests. But between what happened to Jason and what went down at Camp Jupiter… I’ve hit my limit on what I can tolerate.”

“Yeah, no kidding.” Leo drummed his fingers against the dashboard, trying to calm himself. He had zero desire to light Percy’s car on fire, but his flames were much harder to control when he was upset. “It still doesn’t feel real, sometimes.”

The fact that so many of the Camp Jupiter demigods had been killed still made his knees buckle whenever he thought about it. To know that none of their parents had bothered to intervene… It made him feel sick to the stomach.

It was even worse knowing he couldn’t fix it. That he couldn’t fix most things in a way that mattered.

Calypso said this was one of his problems—that he treated everything like a machine that needed repairs when some things weren’t meant to be fixed that way, and sometimes all you could do was accept there wasn’t a fix and find a way to move forward.

He’d tried. But sitting in a circle and talking about his feelings wouldn’t make Jason being gone okay. It wouldn’t make the memory of Piper sobbing into his shoulder go away. It wouldn’t take away the guilt pooling in Leo’s stomach in every waking moment, the shitty prophecy that had sentenced him or Jason to death echoing in his mind. Was it the fact that Leo didn’t stay dead long enough that had killed his best friend? Was that why he hadn’t even been able to say goodbye?

“I thought I could change things when I was sixteen.” Percy’s hands clenched around the steering wheel. Leo made himself look away. “And I did, a little. But way too much stayed the same. I’m glad you’re doing this for Jason. He needs someone in his corner, and it’s obviously not going to be his dad.”

“I’m not sure he would be glad, honestly.” Leo tried to laugh, but it rang hollow. It always did these days. “Disagreeing with the Fates isn’t really something a sensible person does.”

Percy grinned. “Well, that’s what they need us for.” 

“Exactly.”

Leo had spent his whole life having to come to terms with things that happened to and around him, and he was tired. He was sick of losing people. He was sick of them all being footnotes in someone else’s story, pawns to be sacrificed and taken off the board at a moment’s notice. 

He couldn’t change the world, as much as he wanted to. Even asking for a chance to get Jason back was a long shot. But he had to at least try. 

Standing in front of the giant elevators of the Empire State Building, Leo was glad he wasn’t alone. Percy had talked his way past the security guard and gotten the key off him with such practiced ease that it really made one wonder just how many times he’d had to do this before. 

Was that a big three kids thing? Jason had never mentioned being summoned to go up there, so probably not. Maybe just a Percy thing, then.

“Just so you know, me being there might not be a point in your favor for most of the gods,” Percy warned, holding the keys out towards Leo. “I can wait down here, if you want.”

“Nah. I’d rather have backup. It’ll be nice for the gods to have someone to glare at who isn’t me. Besides, there needs to be a witness to my murder aside from deities, otherwise I’ll end up on Olympus Unsolved or something,” he joked, nervously fidgeting with his tool belt. 

The elevator welcomed them in with a ding that didn’t nearly feel ominous enough for the occasion, in Leo’s expert opinion. It even played ridiculous elevator music.

Bad enough that Leo was willingly walking to what would most likely be his execution. He did not need shitty theme music to boot.

For 600 floors, the elevator ride didn’t take nearly as long as Leo had expected. It probably helped that elevators for gods didn’t bother to stop on all the different floors to pick up tourists. 

He didn’t feel even remotely ready when another ding sounded and the doors slid open.

Leo took a step out onto a stone walkway. He was suddenly very glad he didn’t share the same fear of heights so many of his siblings had told him about, because the walkway in question was suspended in mid-air and had no visible supports.

Leo was thankful that the path came with railings, because that made it feel slightly less like one misstep would turn him into a skydiver—minus the parachute.

On the plus side, you got a very nice aerial view of Manhattan from up here, and unlike on his trip to Aeolus’ palace, this wasn’t a bridge Leo thought himself capable of melting.

Bad thought. Leo tried to push away the memory of falling and being caught by a pair of strong arms. The feeling of the winds swirling around him. It should have been terrifying—their weird ups and downs that had almost been like bungee jumping. Jason should have been angry at him for messing up and melting the bridge. But Jason had just held him, and Leo had clung to his jacket, thoughts and heart racing but weirdly not nearly as afraid as he should have been. He’d made a mess, but he’d known even then that Jason would never let him fall.

If he fell now…

“You okay?” Percy asked sympathetically. “Sorry, I know you’re usually fine with heights, but I probably still should have warned you.” 

“It’s fine.” Leo shrugged, putting on his best ‘everything is great’ -expression while he failed to beat his memories off with a stick. Jason had always smelled faintly of ozone, like an oncoming storm. This close to the clouds, everything smelled like him. It wasn’t helping. “The view is pretty impressive.”

“Yeah. Also kind of terrifying. I’ve fallen to my death enough for several lifetimes, thanks.” Percy patted the handrails. “I’m so glad Annabeth had these put in.”

“They’re new?” Leo cringed imagining the bridge without them. “Yikes. They really value demigod safety up here, don’t they?”

Percy snorted. “No kidding.”

“Well, let’s keep moving,” Leo decided, like their delay hadn’t been his fault. “We don’t have all day.”

Mount Olympus was impressive as hell, Leo could admit that much. They followed the skybridge onto the edge of a giant mountain city that was made up of fancy palaces and temples and beautiful gardens as far as the eye could see.

As used as Leo was to godly weirdness, the fact that all this existed right above New York and so few people knew wouldn’t quite compute. 

On any other day, he might have spent hours staring at the buildings. Annabeth had clearly poured a lot of work and love into the redesign—he was friends with the person who’d designed this place, how bizarre was that? 

But right now, Leo barely had the brain space to pay attention to any of the architecture. The gorgeous buildings and giant statues weren’t important—or, more accurately, they were only important in the sense that they were intimidating and made him feel small. The beauty of it all was a minor sticking point in comparison. His brain was vibrating at rapid speeds, thinking about Jason and the Underworld and everything he wanted and needed to say to the gods. Everything he’d been working on for the past month came down to this.

It seemed weirdly fitting to be up here today of all days. It was June 21st—the day of the summer solstice, marking the one year anniversary of their journey on the Argo II.

The city seemed to stretch on forever. There were a lot of stairs. Leo supposed he should have expected that, given the Mount part of Mount Olympus, but if you asked him, there had been no need to take it quite so literally.

A few curious citizens came out to watch them as they ascended the stairs to the palace of the gods. Nymphs, mostly, though a few of them might have been minor gods that Leo didn’t recognize. There were so many of them that even after more than a year of this, he still struggled to keep them all straight. He had no idea how Jason did it.

The elevator doors that had seemed so huge to Leo before seemed like they’d make okay pet doors for the palace of the gods. The scale of this thing was ridiculous. Like walking into a hall filled with gods wasn’t intimidating enough by itself, you got to feel like a bug about to be squashed before you even got the pleasure of seeing the shoe that would do the squashing.

The building seemed to ask what Leo had been thinking, walking up here. Who was he to ask the gods for anything?

“You good?” Percy asked, patting his shoulder encouragingly. “I know it can be a lot the first time. You get used to it.”

Leo stared at him, baffled. “Okay seriously, how many times have you been up here?”

“A couple.” Percy shrugged. “Kind of comes with the job. But hey, you know how I am, and they haven’t killed me yet, so I think your chances are pretty decent.”

“Well, clearly we’ve got different job descriptions. Also, you underestimate my ability to make people hate me on sight,” Leo only half-joked.

“Eh, when you’re not possessed and firing ballistas, I’m sure your first impressions are decent,” Percy replied, going along with Leo’s joking tone with practiced ease. 

Leo cringed at the memory of their first interaction.

“Right! And I didn’t bring anything I could fire at the gods with, so as long as I don’t go for spontaneous combustion, we should probably be good.” 

He felt physically ill. His hands were clammy with sweat. It brought him back to the school play he’d signed up for at age seven—he’d been so excited and rehearsed a million times, but the morning of the performance he couldn’t remember any of his lines and felt too nauseous to eat. If it hadn’t been for his mom coaching him through his jitters and then calling him in sick so they could spend the morning at the machine shop, him fiddling with one of his little projects until he felt better, he probably wouldn’t have gone.

And yeah, Leo had forgotten some of his lines, but he’d skillfully bullshitted his way through these parts and his mom had beamed at him the whole time, her eyes gleaming with pride. He still remembered how embarrassed he’d been at her cheering from the crowd when they’d bowed, so loudly that some of the people around her had given her strange looks.

He could have used a few good mom cheers right now. But his mom wasn’t here, so he supposed he’d have to settle for Percy joking about one of Leo’s worst hits in an attempt to make him feel less anxious.

It wasn’t helping much—or at all, really—but he appreciated the attempt.

“You ready?”

“To figure out the fastest way to get myself squashed by a bunch of gods?” Leo joked, but he squared his shoulders. He was going to do this. He had to. It didn’t matter that he was terrified. Some things were too important to run from. “Born ready.”

The door swung open before Leo could stop to wonder if they were meant to knock. The second he and Percy entered, the chatter in the throne room died. Thirteen pairs of eyes stared down at them.

Thirteen! That was good. Leo hadn’t been sure if Hades would be up here. If he hadn’t been, that might have made things even more difficult than they were already bound to be—in that case, he might have traipsed halfway through the Underworld with the permission of the remaining council of the gods (assuming they’d grant it), only for Hades to deny him then. Now that wouldn’t be a problem—his plan would either be endorsed or shut down where he stood.

As exciting as it was that things were going semi-well in theory, Leo felt unnerved by the fact that thirteen gods, all twenty feet in size, were staring down at him. Looking at them almost made him yearn to be dealing with a good old-fashioned monster attack instead. At least with those, you knew what you were in for. This situation felt far more unpredictable.

“Kneel,” a voice boomed, and Leo knew it was Zeus without having to look. He did as he was told, and could see Percy doing the same thing beside him. “What is the meaning of this? I do not believe you were invited to join us.” 

Leo’s eyes remained firmly glued to the ground as he spoke. “I’ve come to make a request.”

Someone laughed. “Oh, that one’s bold. If he wasn’t a Hephaestus kid, I might just like him.”

“I’m not asking for my sake,” Leo continued, ignoring the other god—Ares, he assumed, given the little context he had. He took a shaky breath, gathering every ounce of courage still left in his body, then finally looked up to face the king of the gods. “I want to gamble my own life for the life of Jason Grace.”

“You’d dare to speak my impertinent son’s name in my presence?” Zeus asked, voice like a thunderstorm. The curious, almost amused look had vanished from his face. His eyes were bright and dangerous as lightning. “Your role in Gaia’s defeat is the only reason I will spare your life. We should have struck you down when you defied death, but we did not. Leave and be satisfied with that mercy.”

The thing was: Leo had had a script for this. He’d practiced what he would say several times. He’d accounted for the fact that the gods might not agree to what he wanted immediately. He’d imagined himself begging in the dirt if necessary. 

But Zeus’ words—his casual dismissal of everything that Jason had been—had Leo physically fuming. He was the son of the god of forges, and there was liquid fire in his veins. His fear evaporated in an instant, replaced by white-hot rage. 

If he had been thinking, he probably would not have done what he did next. Thing was, though: Leo wasn’t thinking. Not even a little bit. 

He’d reached a point in his life where he was so far past thinking that he couldn’t even see it in the rearview mirror.

There had been rational thoughts inside his head at one point, but they’d vacated the premises somewhere between him blowing himself up and Jason’s death. There was a vortex in his chest where his heart should have been.

And this—the gods sitting around with all that power, none of them caring enough to protect their kids when it mattered—made his blood boil. 

The fact that Zeus acted like deciding not to kill Leo after he’d saved all of their asses was some kind of gracious favor made him want to burn this entire palace to the ground.

“Be satisfied?” he asked, with a defiance that surprised even him. “Are you kidding me? We saved you, and, what, this is it? Tough shit, have a nice afterlife? After everything we’ve lost and everything we’ve been through, I’m supposed to pretend it doesn’t bother me? I should be grateful for my life going to Tartarus because hey, at least you guys get to boss us around for a few more centuries? And Jason is the least impertinent person on the planet. What the fuck are you talking about?”

“If my son had valued his life, perhaps he should have chosen his words more wisely.” Zeus scowled. “Though I’m beginning to think it’s his friends that he chose poorly. This is your final warning, child. My patience is waning quickly. Leave while I’m still willing to let you.”

Leo’s mind reeled as he grasped what the king of the gods was really saying.

“You let Jason die. You wanted this.” He moved to stand, determined to showcase all the pitiful five foot six of his height. His body was rapidly overheating, smoke curling from his ears as his thoughts raced. When Thalia died, Zeus had turned her into a tree to save her. When Jason died, Jupiter hadn’t even lifted a finger, despite the fact that Jason had dedicated his whole life to serving the gods from the moment he’d arrived at Camp Jupiter. Despite the fact that they’d just saved the world a few months before. And Leo had thought that was, what, a coincidence? Jason had just so happened to die on Jupiter’s day off? Gods, he was an idiot. “Did he use up all of your good will when he said just punishing Apollo wouldn’t fix the issue? Was that when you decided if he’d defy you for Apollo’s sake, he might as well die to teach Apollo a lesson? Jason lived his whole life for the gods, and that’s all it took to nullify all of that? One moment where he wasn’t the perfect picture of obedience? What is wrong with you?”

“Leo,” Percy warned, in the same gentle tone Leo’s mother had used when he was about to get himself into serious trouble.

That was when he knew he’d gone too far. Percy’s understanding of what was okay to say to the gods was so fucked that if he thought something crossed the line, they were as good as dead.

Leo usually realized these things too late—when his big mouth had already earned him a black eye and a broken nose.

Except this time, he wasn’t just signing his own death warrant. Zeus already wasn’t Percy’s biggest fan. What had Leo been thinking, putting him in danger like that? 

He went cold with horror. His fire died. But the damage was done. Why did his flames always end up burning the people he cared about down with him?

Zeus lifted his lightning bolt, and yep, they were screwed.

Forget Tartarus. Piper would kill Leo for dying, and then Annabeth would hunt down his ghost and murder him again for getting Percy killed. That was way worse than whatever torture the Underworld could have in store for him.

Lightning never struck. Before Leo could think to mutter a desperate apology or construct a lightning arrester on the spot, a twenty foot tall figure appeared in front of him and Percy, shielding them from harm.

Leo half-expected to see his dad when he looked up, but what he saw instead shocked him even more than the sight of his absent father suddenly deciding to step up after almost seventeen years would have. Instead of looking at Hephaestus, Leo found himself staring at the back of the woman who’d put him into a furnace as a baby.

“You will not touch them,” the queen of the gods said, arms outstretched. 

Leo mouthed what the fuck at Percy, but his friend looked even more shocked than Leo felt. He had the expression of someone who was worried his brain might melt out of his ears.

“Move, woman. Do not force me to invoke your vows,” Zeus bellowed.

Hera didn’t even flinch.

“After everything you’ve done, you would speak to me of vows?” She sounded like she wanted to laugh, but couldn’t. “You forget yourself, husband. You forget I’m not just the goddess of marriage. I may have been an imperfect goddess of family in the past, but I remain the goddess of family all the same. You will not harm my grandson.”

It took a moment for Leo to register that she was talking about him. He assumed it was a symbolic thing—Hera strategically linking her position to her godly domain to strengthen it—but after everything that had happened and the role she had played in his life, the queen of the gods referring to him as family as she stood before him and Percy to protect them still rattled Leo to his core.

“You dare-” Zeus bellowed, but Hera interrupted him.

“Does the boy speak the truth? Did you let my champion die? Did you break another vow you made me?” Zeus remained quiet, which Hera apparently decided was answer enough. “Here is what we will do. To honor Leo’s role in saving us, we hear the foolish, brave child out. There will be no more insolence from him.” She directed a warning glare at Leo. “At the end of this, we will decide as a council what to do with him. All in favor?”

Slowly, Leo could see a few hands raise past Hera’s giant form.

Finally, Hera moved to take her seat at her husband’s side again, her head held high.

The whole atmosphere in the throne room had changed. Zeus still had lightning crackling in his beard and his face was twisted with anger, but he didn’t seem to be considering frying Leo or Percy anymore, at least for the moment. Hephaestus was wide-eyed. Apollo was grinning, though he was quick to wipe the expression off his face when his father glanced his way.

“Well?” Hera nodded his way. “Speak, little hero.”

“Right.” Leo took a deep breath. His heart was still racing. He’d gone so far off-script that he was struggling to remember any of the things he’d spent so long memorizing. In his defense, near-death experiences and spontaneous grandparent adoptions tended to throw most people slightly off their game. “I’m not asking for you to just revive Jason. I know that’s not how it works. All I’m asking for is a chance to lead him out of the Underworld myself.”

“You’re thinking of Orpheus and Eurydice,” Hades deduced. 

Leo bowed his head to the god of death respectfully. “I’ll agree to the same rules. Please just let me try.”

Hades shook his head. “If we just let every hero who has lost someone get them back from the Underworld, it will unbalance death itself. The result would be Chaos, and she may be the most dangerous one out of all of us.”

“I understand that,” Leo said, desperately trying to remember any of the things he’d wanted to say and failing miserably.

“Leo isn’t just anyone, though,” Percy interjected. Apparently he’d finally shaken himself out of his haze. That he even still wanted to help after Leo had almost earned him a lightning bolt to the face was honestly kind of a miracle. Then again, Percy’s fatal flaw was his unwavering loyalty towards his friends. Apparently Leo was still a part of that group, despite all of his epic screwups. “He’s a hero of Olympus, isn’t he? He didn’t just help win the war with Gaia—he was the deciding factor. It was his plan and his willingness to sacrifice his life that defeated her. He also remedied the situation with Calypso that you swore on the River Styx you would fix.”

Leo didn’t think he deserved nearly as much credit for the Calypso stuff as he was getting after everything that had happened, but that was kind of beside the point right now.

“Your son makes a surprisingly reasonable point,” another goddess—Leo assumed it was Athena due to context clues like the giant owl sitting on her shoulder—very begrudgingly said in Poseidon’s direction.

“You made promises to me that you didn’t keep. You still didn’t claim a whole bunch of your kids, and you spend even more time ignoring your Roman children than you do us. So many of them died.” Percy’s voice was quavering. Some of the gods had the decency to look ashamed, though Zeus remained unmoved. “What’s a chance to save a single life in return for everything we’ve sacrificed? Leo isn’t asking for much. Let him try.”

“The matter isn’t quite as simple as you make it out to be, I’m afraid.” Apollo did not seem pleased to have to be the one to break the news. “Even if we allow him to resurrect Jason, and even if he should succeed, one of them might just die again. The Fates did not intend for both storm and fire to live.”

Leo’s heart dropped hearing the confirmation for the thing he’d feared most—that his own survival had been the thing that ensured Jason’s death. Sure, Zeus had let it happen, but if the Fates hadn’t predestined one of them for death, he probably wouldn’t have had it quite so easy.

As much as it ached to think about this, Leo didn’t let it discourage him for too long. He’d been prepared for this. It was the main reason why he’d needed to come up here—why he hadn’t simply waltzed into the Underworld and just begged Hades and Persephone for a chance to take Jason back with him like Orpheus had.

He nodded appreciatively at Percy, then steeled himself and took over again.

“Well, if I try this and fail, the Fates can have both of us. They did seem pretty eager to have the matching set, so I bet that sounds good to them. They’ve got excellent chances. The whole thing about Orpheus’ story is that he failed, isn’t it?” Tempting fate was stupid. Tempting all three Fates at once was so unbelievably idiotic that someone would need to invent a whole new word for it. “If I fail, I’ll pass on into Asphodel without protest, and you never have to deal with me again. But if I succeed, you find a way to release us from the prophecy. No more dead storm or fire. You’ll let us live out our lives in as much peace as can be expected for the average demigod. All I’m asking for is a chance, however slim it might be.”

For a moment, the throne room was silent as everyone seemed to process what he’d said. Then, the first person spoke up.

“I don’t think that’s a terribly unreasonable request. Besides, I love Orpheus and Eurydice. It’s such a touching love story.”

It was a woman’s voice, speaking in a sweet tone that made an unpleasant shiver ran down Leo’s spine.

When he looked at her, he knew immediately the goddess had to be Aphrodite. She had an otherworldly kind of beauty to her—a glow he didn’t quite understand. For a brief, confusing moment, her appearance seemed to flicker, like she couldn’t quite decide what face she wanted to wear today. Her hair shifted in length and color. Her features seemed to change with it.

When Leo blinked and looked right at her, her appearance settled into a steady image—short, blonde hair and light eyes, the color of which he couldn’t quite determine due to the fact that the light kept reflecting off her glasses.

Why a goddess would wear glasses, Leo had absolutely no idea. One would think vision correction should be the easiest thing in the world when you were a deity. Who knew, though. Maybe she didn’t have insurance, so the only thing she’d gotten was the sanitizing snake.

She didn’t look anything like Piper, which was strange considering she was Piper’s mom—but he supposed it was more complicated than that, with the gods’ abilities to take on whatever appearance they wanted. Still, there was something strikingly familiar about her appearance that Leo couldn’t quite place.

“Thanks?” he said quietly. Gods, he missed Piper. He’d never properly interacted with her mom before, and doing it without her present was weird.

“Besides, leaving Jason in the Underworld would be a bit of a waste, doesn’t it? He made Piper’s love life terribly interesting,” Aphrodite continued, smiling. “My darling girl has always been so full of love. She was very sweet in her promise to refuse tradition and not break a heart. Like she wasn’t breaking her own heart as she made that oath. Like his heart was ever hers to break.”

She was looking at Leo like she could see right through him—and well, being the goddess of love and all, she probably could.

Under different circumstances, he might have worried about flushing, but currently he was too busy trying to keep his anger under control.

Interesting. He thought about Piper sobbing into his shoulder, talking about how weird things between her and Jason had been before he’d died. Talking about how confused she’d been, and how much she’d hurt him when she’d stopped being confused, and how now she could never make it right. Because regardless of everything else, he’d been her friend, and she’d cared, and she was so afraid he hadn’t known that, at the end. 

Like figuring out you were queer wasn’t complicated enough without the Gods’ bullshit.

Piper had been to Tartarus and back over all this, and all her mom had to say about it was that it had been interesting.

Leo wanted to light Aphrodite’s hair on fire.

Unfortunately, she actually seemed to be thinking about supporting his cause, if for completely fucked up reasons, so torching her maybe wouldn’t be the best course of action right now. He’d already pissed off the king of the gods. As tempting as it was, starting a fight with the goddess of love on top of that, potentially dooming himself and Percy for the second time today, to the point where even Hera couldn’t save them, was unfortunately off the table.

He promised himself at that moment that if he made it back, he’d set a new record for the world’s longest hug—once Piper was done punching him for pulling this stunt, that was.

“You’d let me try, then?” he asked, struggling to keep the anger out of his voice. His hands were sparking, but considering the circumstances, Leo thought himself the epitome of restraint. 

This was the most infuriating conversation he’d ever been a part of.

“Love, in its rawest forms, is brave and reckless and self-destructive. It’s two souls so thoroughly intertwined with one another that if one ceases, the other cannot help but unravel along with it. It’s dying to ensure someone else will live on. It’s taking great risks knowing you’re unlikely to succeed, but wanting to believe there’s a chance that you might. Sometimes the world changes for it. Sometimes everyone involved dies tragic deaths. But that the love is there matters, even when it doesn’t change a thing. I’ve never been able to resist these types of stories.” She beamed at him. “The two of you have always been so beautifully eager to fall on your own sword for each other. You remind me a bit of Pyramus and Thisbe, actually. Wonderful pair. Delightfully bloody ending.” 

Leo had a sudden, awful understanding for what Ares saw in his best friend’s mom, which was not an understanding he’d ever had much of a desire to reach.

“Personally hoping for a little less death this time around, but I appreciate the vote of confidence.” 

He bit his lip a second too late, wondering if that counted as insolence and Zeus had permission to nuke him now.

Hera didn’t look thrilled, but Aphrodite just quirked an eyebrow in amusement.

“I like hope in my love stories. The tragedies are never any fun without it.”

On that delightful note, Ares chimed in, seeming utterly disinterested. “If the kid wants to get himself killed, I say we let him.”

Right. He didn’t put it like that, but he’d never ruin his girlfriend’s fun. Besides, he had no love for Hephaestus, which, if Leo had to guess, made the thought of one of his kids dying for Aphrodite’s entertainment even more appealing. 

Well, that made two votes in his favor, at least. Potentially three, assuming Hera was still on his side.

He turned to his father, who he’d seen, what, all of three times in his life? He understood things weren’t easy, and that Hephaestus struggled with living beings just as much as Leo did, but the radio silence between them ever since the war with Gaia hadn’t exactly helped how disgruntled he felt with the gods in general. 

“Dad?” he said shakily. “You said you care about me. That you cared about my mom. I don’t know if you meant that. I can’t fix what happened to her. Give me a chance to fix this.”

“I suppose if that’s really what you want…” Hephaestus seemed a little lost, but did smile at Leo. “Machines always work best when they’re well-balanced. Sometimes the parts you need are in inconvenient places. Why, it’s not like I’ve never had to go into the Underworld to collect a piece of machinery I’d dropped down the wrong chute.”

Leo almost cracked a smile. He couldn’t imagine a world where him and his dad were actually close, but he did feel understood in their matching tendency to use machine metaphors.

…at least he hoped it was a metaphor, rather than his father assuming Jason was some sort of automaton Leo had lost track of and that had wandered off into the Underworld without his permission.

He shook his head, deciding not to think about that one too hard.

Athena sighed. “If there is any lesson to be learned from the second Titan war, it’s that there has to be a balance between sacrifice and gain. We cannot simply expect loyalty from children that rarely so much as see our faces. We should have honored all that was lost to defeat Gaia, and we failed to do so at the time. That mistake needs to be amended. Leo has fulfilled the role the Fates placed on him admirably. If this is the reward he chooses, I do not think it wise to deny him.”

Note to self: if Leo survived this, he desperately needed to ask someone what the hell had happened during the second Titan war. He’d heard some things, sure, but all of it had been pretty vague, and he’d been too busy trying to prepare for his own battles to care that much about dusty old stories from the previous summers.

Either way, real convenient for Athena to point this out now, rather than when Camp Jupiter had desperately needed help from its deities. Leo wondered if she’d considered those losses necessary, even strategic—if teaching Apollo whatever lessons he’d learned as a human had been worth so many lives. 

The thought made Leo feel sick.

He forced himself to take a few deep breaths and move past this. He couldn’t ask for more if he wanted any chance to have Jason back. That wasn’t how the gods operated. As much as Leo wanted to, he couldn’t change their world. But he promised himself that if he lived past this, he’d find a way to make a difference—to do something meaningful to help other demigods, even if it was on a small scale. If their parents would not look out for them, they had to look out for each other instead.

Percy was glowering at his dad from across the room, and that seemed to be working just fine. Leo sort of wondered if he should have brought more of his friends to glare at their parents, but he had a feeling it wouldn’t work this well with the other gods.

Poseidon shrugged. “I despise agreeing with Athena, but I suppose she makes a valid point for once.”

They looked like they wanted to start squabbling, but before they could, Leo had already turned his attention to the next god.

“Apollo?” He didn’t have to make his case there. Glaring worked just fine. Apollo seemed to remember their last conversation vividly.

Good.

“I broke a promise I made to the River Styx. Jason suffered the consequences.” That was all it was. In the end, Jason’s life had been a toll paid for someone else’s mistake. Whether Leo or Apollo or Zeus or all of them were to blame didn’t really matter. The end result remained the same: Jason was gone, through no fault of his own. “I understand that we cannot just disrupt the natural flow of life and death, but this isn’t unprecedented. Leo deserves to have this shot. Besides, I can’t speak for his ability to make music, but he makes wonderful musical instruments.”

That was quite the change in tune from his waffling about how Jason had chosen his path and blah blah blah back at the Waystation. The reminder that Leo had been Jason’s best friend while Apollo had known him for all of a day—which was all the time it had taken him to get Jason killed—and that it was therefore a pretty bold claim for him to try and tell Leo what Jason would have wanted must have stuck.

Artemis just gave him a nod, quick and decisive. “My lieutenant helped my brother when he required it. It would not be just for me to deny hers in turn.”

And one by one, the other deities nodded their assent. Most of them seemed fairly disinterested in the matter, honestly—what was one more demigod life lost or gained when there were so many of them?

It was frustrating, but as long as they agreed, their disinterest was just fine with Leo.

Mr D—who Leo had never actually met in his Greek form before despite his role as their camp director—looked at him for a moment longer than was comfortable. 

“I’m not sure you’re in the right state of mind to enter an agreement like this.” Leo was about the protest, but then Dionysus shrugged. “But I’m the god of wine, not the god of good advice, so who am I to talk you out of this? Do try not to die, though. Di Angelo’s been making good progress lately, and it would be quite unfortunate if your death were to screw it up.”

Leo barely kept himself from rolling his eyes.

In the end, the only gods who had remained silent were Hera, Zeus and Hades. Leo assumed Hera was waiting for everyone else to speak so she could conclude this meeting. There was no way he was getting Zeus’ vote, but Leo didn’t really care for it either way. Unless council votes had to be unanimous, which he doubted, he didn’t need Zeus’ vote.

Hades was a problem, though. Even if every other god had been in agreement to cut Jason and Leo loose from their fate, it would all be in vain if Hades didn’t agree to actually let Leo take Jason’s soul.

Briefly, Leo considered kneeling again, but he’d been standing for so long that that would’ve felt ridiculous now, and he didn’t want to risk pissing off all the other gods he hadn’t kneeled to.

He figured it best to address the god of the Underworld directly. “Lord Hades, is there anything I can do to convince you? I know Orpheus’ music was important to the original story. If that’s what it takes-” Leo started, already sweating at the thought of having to lay his emotions bare to the whole council of the gods, even though he’d known from the beginning that he might have to.

Percy cringed next to him, possibly remembering the shower songs Piper had teased Leo about.

“Nothing like that. You will need your music soon enough, but not for this,” Hades interrupted him, less malicious than Leo had expected. “But I need to be sure you understand what you’re asking, child. You must trust your friend to follow where you lead. You must have faith. The strength of your bond must be sufficient. Otherwise, your doubts will doom you both.”

Leo’s heart was hammering in his chest.

“I’m awesome. Jason’s my best friend. Of course he’ll follow me,” he said, though his mouth felt dry. “And then I just don’t turn until we’re both standing in the sunlight again, right? Easy. I can totally do this.”

It was incredible that he sounded as confident as he did, considering the fact that he, well… wasn’t.

Could he trust Jason to follow him? Jason was the leader. He was the one people followed. Leo wasn’t Piper, either—he didn’t have her enchanting voice or her ability to lie and de-escalate her way out of situations. If she’d asked Jason to follow her, her charmspeak alone probably would have been enough to convince him. She’d have known for sure he was there, even if she couldn’t see him. 

Leo was just the fire guy—the trusty sidekick who provided funny quips and then died in act two to motivate the real hero. And he hadn’t even gotten that part right.

What reason would Jason have to follow him when all Leo did was fuck things up?

Thankfully, Hades continued before Leo had the chance to get even more up in his head about it. Pro tip: when you were relieved the god of the dead was addressing you, that was probably a bad sign.

“You know that, even if you succeed, it will be a temporary victory. Thanatos will eventually reclaim you both. Death is inevitable for mortals.”

“Of course I know that,” Leo said. “I know a few years, a few decades, are nothing to the gods. But they’re an eternity for us. They’re all any of us have.”

“And still you’d gamble your years for his. You’d gamble your afterlife. Even knowing that, once you die, you would have an eternity with him.”

“Only if he never chooses rebirth. Jason’s so stupid heroic that he might.” Leo had thought about that option a lot in the last few days as he worked up the courage to call Nico. He’d run the different scenarios through his head until he felt ill. Thought about the fact that he had no guarantee he’d even make it to Elysium when he died, and that, if he did, there was a chance Jason wouldn’t be there anymore by the time it happened. “I can’t risk that. I don’t want the chance of an afterlife with him if it means having to live my whole life without him.”

It was more honestly than he’d been aiming for. 

“Ah, love makes us so courageous and so very foolish.” Aphrodite looked downright gleeful. “You know this, don’t you, Hades?”

Hades sighed and bowed his head. “Very well. Then, with the assent of my family, I will honor your request, young demigod.”

“It’s decided, then,” Hera announced, folding her hands in her lap. “Should Leo succeed, we do what he asks. We release fire and storm from the Fates’ decree.”

Zeus looked seriously displeased with this outcome. “We cannot-”

“We can and we will. The council majority has overruled your objection,” Hera interrupted, furious. She rose from her throne once more, her image flickering. Zeus had apparently upset her so much that she was shifting into her Juno aspect. Talk about serious marital problems. Yikes. “You promised Jason’s life to me. The final word on this matter will not be yours.”

Leo hated that they talked about Jason like he’d been nothing but a bargaining chip. To see everything that Jason had been—his kindness and the way he laughed and the way he always seemed to think of other people before he stopped to consider what it was he wanted—reduced to an argument between two gods that desperately needed the contact information of the Greek goddess of divorce.

At least one of them seemed to have some genuine care for Jason buried somewhere deep within her.

Leo hadn’t initially given much thought to the way Hera was dressed. As a child, he’d only ever known her in a widow’s dress and black shawl. It occurred to him belatedly that whenever he’d encountered Hera after figuring out she was a goddess, she’d been dressed in white.

She was dressed in black now—a dress and veil fit for a funeral.

Leo wasn’t sure he wanted this—to feel any sort of sympathy for the woman who’d made him play with knives when he was three and given him a rattlesnake for one of his birthdays. But a part of him was just glad Jason had at least one parent that seemed bothered by his untimely death, even if that parent was his meddling step-mom.

Zeus scowled down at Leo like he wanted to smite him very badly, but Hera was staring daggers at her husband, maybe daring him to get rid of another one of her chosen heroes and seeing what would happen. 

Leo wasn’t sure if it was this that did it, or if even Zeus realized going against the whole council and being the only one who actively vetoed a chance at reviving his son made him look like a bit of a dick.

“Fine,” he spat, looking at Leo like he was a bug he’d graciously decided to refrain from squashing. “Try. But do not take this as a gift, child. Most likely, all you will achieve is your own death. And even if you were to somehow succeed, you are never to set foot on Mount Olympus again.”

Leo almost laughed. Right, because after all the shit that’d happened to him, he wanted to be here.

“Done. I swear on the River Styx that after this is over, I will never bother any of you again. I won’t ask for any more miracles, and I’m definitely not doing any more godly quests. I’m through with this.”

It felt like a win to him more than anything—like finally handing in his two-weeks notice at a miserable job with no benefits or pay and truly abominable work conditions. He was through with the gods. If they needed another human sacrifice for some battle they refused to fight themselves, they’d need to find someone else. Leo would be an idiot hero for his friends, and for absolutely no one else ever again.

“That’s the matter settled, then. You may come find me at my palace,” Hades said. With that—possibly to show off he really was Nico’s dad with their mutual love for dramatic exits—he rose from his throne and vanished into shadow.

Apollo clapped his hands. “Well, I suppose this means you’ll need a prophecy. Luckily for you-”

Leo immediately stopped him with a gesture of his own. “I’m good, actually.”

“Excuse me?” Apollo looked at him, clearly confused.

“Your last few prophecies are what got us into this mess. I don’t need you or the Fates or anyone else telling me I’m destined to fuck this up.”

“You know, just because you don’t hear the prophecy doesn’t mean-” the god tried, but Leo didn’t let him finish.

“I don’t care. If I mess this up, I need it to be my screwup, okay? Can you at least give me that?”

“I-” Apollo sighed, but then he nodded. “I suppose I can, if it’s really what you want.”

“Can I ask for something else, though?” Leo looked straight at the god, finally letting the implications of everything wash over him. He’d succeeded in his pleas. Meaning he could have Jason back if he succeeded. Meaning if he didn’t succeed, Leo had just signed his own death sentence and would never see Jason or Piper or any of his other friends again. “If I fail, can we please skip the part where Orpheus’ severed head spent a whole bunch of time as an oracle? I do not want my legacy to be traumatizing a bunch of demigods. Thanks.”

Leo had already had one run-in with the maenads, and that had been one too many, in his completely unbiased opinion. He’d much rather explode himself again than pull an actual Orpheus and get ripped limb from limb. He still shuddered at the memory of the poor drakon he’d watched the nymphs descend upon.

“Oh, absolutely.” Apollo held up his hands. “I don’t do severed head oracles anymore. They went out of style centuries ago. People tend to find them creepy. Terrible for branding.”

“Great! That’s all I’m asking.” Leo grinned. He bowed his head once to his father and once to Juno, who still hadn’t changed back to her Hera aspect. Stubborn defiance of her husband, maybe. “Thanks for giving me this shot. I’m not going to waste it.”

He wanted to mean that, more than anything.

Chapter Text

In Leo’s opinion, Hades could have at least shown him the common courtesy of teleporting him down to his palace or something so Leo had a decent starting point. Instead, the deal was that he had to waltz all the way through the Underworld, to Hades’ palace, like Orpheus had. Only then would Jason’s soul be allowed to follow him back.

Leo had read up on the myth, sure, but he hadn’t thought they’d be sticking to it down to the letter. Note to self: before signing your soul away on contracts that were probably a dumb idea, at least read the fine print.

Granted, that was a little difficult when you were both dyslexic and the contract was verbal, but still.

“So, that could have gone worse,” Leo said when he and Percy had finally made their way out of the Empire State Building again. He was trembling like a leaf. That had really just happened. Holy shit. “Sorry for almost getting us nuked with a lightning bolt, by the way. That was my bad.”

“That was so reckless and impertinent it could have been from me. I’ve never been prouder to call myself your friend.” Percy grinned at him. “But I’m glad we managed to not get ourselves killed. I’ve got a pretty decent track record of not getting murdered up there, and it would have been a shame to break it now. Besides, Annabeth would have been mad at me for my entire afterlife,” he joked.

“Yeah. I really prefer to go unmurdered,” Leo agreed. “So, I guess I’ve got to get to the Doors of Orpheus now. From what I could find, they’re probably somewhere around Central Park, but I wish I had actual directions. Questing should really come with a map.”

“Oh, right! You’ve never been!” Percy snapped his fingers. “I’ve had to use them for a quest before. I can take you.”

Leo looked at him incredulously. “Jeez, is there anything you haven’t done? Leave some stuff for the rest of us, dude. This is getting ridiculous.”

Percy laughed. “So, is that a no on me driving you, or-?”

“It’s a yes.” Leo was already yelling “shotgun” before they even made it back to the car, despite the fact that he had no competition.

Percy was still chuckling when he unlocked the car doors and got in the driver’s seat.

“Man, it’s been since my last encounter with her, but Hera was… really different from all the times I’ve interacted with her,” Percy said as he fastened his seatbelt and started the car, shaking his head in obvious disbelief. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen her be genuinely helpful before, but I guess you guys did save her. Maybe that makes a difference.”

“Maybe. I mean, we technically saved all of the gods, and Zeus didn’t seem to give much of a fuck, so who knows with them, honestly. I appreciate not getting struck by lightning—that wasn’t how I planned to get into the Underworld, thanks—but a part of me is still worried I’ll have some sort of debt to pay later.” Leo sighed. “But hey, maybe she really does just care and finally wanted to apologize for making me play with knives when I was three. Who knows.”

“Sorry, what?” Percy stared at him, utterly baffled, until the person in the car behind them started honking at him due to the fact that the traffic light had turned green. “I’m… not sure I get that joke.”

“Not a joke, actually! It’s a bit of a long story, but if Hera ever offers to babysit your future children, say no.” Leo had sort of forgotten he’d only told Jason and Piper about that part of his life. “Side note, is Aphrodite always… like that?”

“If by ‘like that’, you mean ‘is she always messing with your love life for her own entertainment’, then as far as I’m aware, the answer is yes.”

“Poor Piper. Not a huge fan of my dad’s mostly nonexistent parenting, either, but I’ll gladly take an absentee father over having the goddess of love for a mom. Regular parental relationship meddling is bad enough from what I’ve heard, and this is that, but like, times a million.” Leo shuddered at the thought. At the same time, he was trying to push away the mournful feeling pulling at his chest at the thought that his own mom would never be grilling any partners he brought home. He had bigger, more life-threatening problems right now. “Also, I know the gods change appearance at will and Aphrodite apparently does it more than most, but it’s still kind of weird that she doesn’t look anything like Piper. I mean, it’s not like I look a ton like my dad, but at least we’ve got similar hair colors. And what’s with the glasses? Does she actually need those? Is wearing non-prescription glasses as a fashion statement a thing?”

Leo knew he was rambling. About completely pointless stuff, too. That was probably stupid. He should have used the time to ask Percy about the Underworld, especially since the drive wasn’t long, even in bad traffic. But that was just how his brain operated. He got caught up on stupid details. 

Besides, he kind of wanted to be thinking about anything other than where they were going and all the ways he could screw this up for just a few minutes.

“Glasses?” Percy sounded surprised. “What did she look like to you?”

The question should have been a bit of a red flag, considering Percy had been right there with Leo, but Leo didn’t even think about it. 

“Short, fluffy blond hair. Light eyes—maybe blue, I’m not sure, I couldn’t see them that well through the glasses. But yeah, Piper must’ve gotten most of her looks from her dad.”

“That kind of sounds like-” Percy started, then stopped. “Oh. Pyramus and Thisbe. Right. That’s what she was rambling about.”

“Care to let me in on whatever it is you’re rambling about?” Leo asked, raising an eyebrow at his friend. “Because you’re not making a lot of sense right now.”

“Aphrodite always looks like Annabeth to me,” Percy told him, like that explained anything at all.

It didn’t. 

Leo had never heard of a deity appearing completely different to two people who were looking at them at the same time. Was that something Aphrodite consciously decided to do? How did she decide how to appear to which person? That made no sense. 

Not unless-

Leo froze as the implication of what Percy had said slammed into him. He was glad he wasn’t the one driving, because he absolutely would have crashed the car into the nearest lamp post if he had been. 

“You mean because she’s the goddess of love, she like- she changes into whatever your type is, or something?” Leo’s mouth was dry. His face felt so hot that he was worried his hair might go up in flames. 

“Love has all kinds of forms. What it looks like depends on you as a person.” Percy shrugged. “Or at least I think that’s how it works, anyway.”

He didn’t press Leo on the matter—didn’t ask any awkward questions or make him feel like he had to say anything—but it was clear that he’d realized who had looked back at Leo when he’d looked at the goddess of love, and just letting that fact hang between them unaddressed felt stupid when Leo was literally about to march off into the Underworld. 

“Cool! So, was not actually plan to out myself to you before I run off to get myself killed, but since the gods cannot stop fucking with me, here goes, I guess.” Leo groaned, letting his head drop against the dashboard for dramatic effect. “Yes, I’m bisexual. Yes, I’m apparently in love with my best friend’s dead ex. No, Piper wasn’t weird about it. I will take no further questions.”

“Same, actually.” Percy paused. “The bisexual part, I mean. I love Annabeth. I’m not currently in love with anyone’s dead ex.

Leo snorted. “Lucky you.”

But he felt pretty content, actually. It wasn’t that he’d expected Percy to be weird about it, but not being weird about someone else’s queerness wasn’t the same as getting it. 

“Yeah, lucky me. Except for the fact that Annabeth gives me a ton of shit for my taste in guys. Unfortunately for me, we tend to find the same type of girls attractive, so I can’t even roast her back.” Percy laughed. “Gods, I love her.”

“Everyone knows that. You two are unbearable.” Leo grinned.

“After everything we’ve been through, I’ll be as unbearable of a boyfriend as I want to be.” As per usual, Percy was beaming just thinking about Annabeth. Leo wondered what it felt like, being loved like that. “Glad stuff between you and Piper isn’t weird, by the way. I know things were definitely weird between Rachel and Annabeth for a while.”

Leo’s eyes bugged out of his head. “Hang on. You had a thing with Rachel? Like Rachel-Rachel? Spews green smoke and prophecies? That Rachel?” He had a hard time imagining Rachel Elizabeth Dare dating. He had an even harder time imagining a world where Percy was with anyone but Annabeth.

“We weren’t officially together or anything. But yeah, sort of. That was before the oracle stuff, though.” Percy sounded sheepish. “I’ve known Annabeth since I was twelve, but we actually didn’t start dating until I turned sixteen. We were best friends for ages. It took me forever to realize I liked her like that.”

“Yeah, that sounds kind of familiar.” Leo sighed. “I bet Aphrodite thinks she’s hilarious.”

“Probably. But I did get a girlfriend out of her antics, so I’m not going to complain too much. I don’t want to jinx it.” Percy stopped the car. “We’re here. Come on, I’ll show you where the entrance is.”

Leo was out of the car in seconds, nervously looking around to see if there were any monsters waiting to ambush them, or for any of the other usual things to go wrong. He was caught somewhere between eagerness to get this show on the road and anxiety about all the ways he could—would—mess this up.

He latched and unlatched the watch Jo had given him just to keep his hands busy while Percy rummaged around in the trunk.

“You got spirit repellent or something in there?” Leo joked, moving to see what his friend was doing.

Percy laughed.

“Not exactly. I did bring you lunch, though.” He emerged from the trunk with a large tupperware box, handing it to Leo. It held sandwiches as well as a bunch of cookies, which, in typical Percy fashion, were blue for some unknown reason. “You took care of most of our Argo food, so it only feels fair to return the favor. I put some of my emergency ambrosia cubes in there, too. I wasn’t sure what to expect when you called, but I figured better safe than sorry.”

“Oh.” Leo smiled, sticking the box in his tool belt. Thank the gods for the fact that it was a limitless void. “Thanks.”

Leo’s heart hammered in his chest as they crossed the park, people and noises blurring into the background as he tried not to completely freak out. Eventually, they came to a halt in front of a large grouping of boulders. 

“Here we are,” Percy announced, gesturing towards the rocks. “You ready?”

Leo took a deep breath.

This was it. The one shot he’d get. If he screwed this up… 

He couldn’t. 

“Ready as I’ll ever be,” he said, placing his hands on solid rock. He wasn’t sure what he expected—maybe some kind of mechanism like the one back at Bunker Nine? But his magical machine senses didn’t go off. He couldn’t feel anything. As far as he could tell, this was just a random wall of solid rock, which seemed entirely unimpressed with their presence and which he was currently holding hands with like an idiot. “So, what exactly do we do now? Do we need a pickax? Because that’s not exactly regular workshop equipment.” He thought for a moment. “I could probably do a power drill, but I doubt that would work, and besides, we don’t have Jason’s storm horse to plug it into.”

“I’m not even going to ask,” Percy said, shaking his head. “But we don’t need either of those things. The doors open with-” He suddenly looked sheepish. “I forgot we’re both garbage singers. That might be a problem.”

“I’m not a garbage singer! I don’t know why everyone keeps saying that!” Leo protested, feeling a little hurt in his pride despite the fact that he was, actually, a pretty garbage singer. “It just needs music, then?”

“Yeah. I’m not sure about the specifics, though. I’m not exactly an expert on enchanted rocks.”

“We should have brought Hazel. Enchanted rocks are definitely her department,” Leo joked, reaching into his tool belt. His shoulders relaxed a little.

He’d known that music would factor into this quest somehow. That was the whole reason he’d spent so long working on the new version of his Valdezinator.

Hera had told him a long time ago that heroes were shaped through sorrow. Well, if nothing else, Leo had plenty of sorrow to give.

He pulled out his hand-crafted instrument and played his heart out.

…to be fair, the Valdezinator did most of the work for Leo. Sure, there was some playing involved, but the instrument was also enchanted—he’d asked Jo for tips on that a few weeks back. He’d thought he was being subtle at the time, but in retrospect, it was no wonder she’d figured out what he was up to.

The instrument basically played itself—pulling all the emotions from his heart that Leo had never quite been able to put into words because he was shit at sharing when he was lonely and scared and hurting. But here it was. Years of pain all in the open for the world to see and judge and stomp on. He could feel himself trembling with emotion.

If this wasn’t enough to open the entrance, Leo wasn’t sure anything he could do would be.

Some story that would make. 

‘Sorry, Jason. I tried. Even got the gods to agree. Unfortunately, a sentient rock decided my musical talents were lacking, so you’ll have to stay dead. Tough luck.’

For a moment, absolutely nothing happened. Then, finally, the boulders began to shudder, opening to reveal a person-sized, triangular crevice.

“Leo, that was…” Percy started, wide-eyed, but Leo waved his friend off.

“Yeah, yeah, I’ll sign your shirt later. Kind of busy with this whole resurrection business right now.”

He took a step forward, trying to take a closer look at the entrance to the Underworld.

Immediately, the smell hit him. A mixture of mildew, dust, decay and whatever else qualified for perfume to dead guys and monsters. 

It wasn’t exactly roses, but Leo had honestly braced for it to be worse. Then again, he was used to the questionable smell of the forges at Camp Half-Blood, melting metal and all, so he probably shouldn’t be the one anyone asked on the matter.

He couldn’t see much past the narrow entrance—just the first few steps of a narrow staircase, and a whole lot of darkness.

“So much for Highway to Hell, hm?” he joked lamely, fiddling with the wristband of his watch and making sure his tool belt was tightened properly around his waist one last time.

He was grateful when Percy still laughed. “Yeah, you get stairs or the elevator. Probably spares you a lot of traffic jams, though.”

“Yeah.” Leo chuckled, but his heart wasn’t in it. His palms were sweaty. Staring into the darkness maybe made him freak out a little.

Sure, he’d planned this out for ages, but even if he hadn’t been shaken from his little performance, looking at blueprints always felt vastly different from seeing the reality of the finished machine in front of you. This was no longer a plan—no longer a collection of vague ideas on a whiteboard that slowly came together to form what had to be the dumbest, most reckless idea Leo had ever had. 

He was about to walk into the actual Greek Underworld. 

It hadn’t fully sunken in until right this moment. Hadn’t sunken in that, depending on how this went, this might be the last time Leo ever felt the sun on his skin.

He gulped, any semblance of confidence in him waning.

“Hey, Percy? Can you do me a favor?” he asked, wringing his shaking hands. “Another favor, I mean. You did go to yell at the gods with me and all,” he amended.

“Eh, that was barely a favor. Yelling at the gods is basically a hobby at this point.” Percy smiled at him. “What do you need?”

Leo thought of Piper, and the fact that she had no idea about any of this. 

He’d thought about leaving a letter for her, just in case. Giving Jo instructions to send it. But he hadn’t been able to do it. Every time he’d sat down to try writing that letter, he’d come up empty, too many thoughts in his brain to actually pluck them out and write down anything coherent.

How could he put everything that Piper meant to him into words? How she’d made a home for herself in a heart that had felt so utterly shattered Leo hadn’t thought he even still had one of those? How having a friend that loved him in a way no one had since he’d been eight years old had changed everything for him?

He could never convey any of that in a letter. 

A bunch of incoherent nonsense riddled with spelling errors wasn’t the kind of goodbye he wanted to leave Piper with if he didn’t come back.

But leaving her with nothing was infinitely worse. 

He swallowed the lump in his throat and made himself look right at Percy.

“If I somehow manage to mess this up, tell Piper-” There were a few things that came to mind now. The main bullet points that should have gone in the letter he hadn’t written, distilled to their rawest forms. ‘Thank you. I love you. I’m sorry.’

Leo didn’t get to say any of them.

“Tell her yourself when you get back,” Percy interrupted him, pulling Leo into an impromptu hug. “You’ll be fine.”

”Oh.” Leo swallowed, hard, returning the embrace. 

They hadn’t shared a ton of hugs before this—just the one, back when Leo had returned from the dead.

Their friendship had kind of been a huge mess because of Leo’s whole firing on New Rome thing, and then Percy had been in Tartarus, and then Leo had sort of disappeared for six months. They’d learned to trust each other and they joked around, but they’d never really had a hugging kind of relationship.

LThis was… Leo had kind of needed a hug from a friend more desperately than he was willing to admit, even to himself.

Percy smiled at him as he let go.

“Hey, I mean it. If I could do it, so can you.” 

“Dude, that is not the encouragement you think it is,” Leo said. He was surprised to find himself properly laughing. The hug had apparently shaken something loose in his chest. “You’re basically the greatest demigod since Hercules. That’s like telling the citizens of Atlantis well, if Aquaman can do it, so can you!”

“Please don’t compare me to Hercules. That guy is an asshole.” Percy scrunched up his nose. “Besides, you’re one to talk, literal Human Torch.”

“Oh, you’ve been dying to make that joke for a while, haven’t you?” His friend grinned, confirming Leo’s suspicions. “Bad comparison! I can’t even fly!”

“Eh, close enough.” Percy gave him an encouraging pat on the shoulder. “You’ve got this.”

“Thanks.” Leo did not feel like he had got this at all, but he did appreciate the vote of confidence. “Any more words of advice, seasoned Underworld traveler to novice?”

“Charon appreciates tips. Cerberus is mostly just lonely and really likes it when someone plays with him. Tell him hi from Annabeth, yeah?” Percy said. Then his expression darkened. “And be careful in the Fields of Asphodel. Annabeth got trapped down there on our mission. Only got out because we had an emergency exit strategy. Terrifying place. Pins people down with their regrets. Messes with your head a whole bunch from what she’s told me.”

“Great! No doubts, no regrets. I will be confident Leo only going forward.” Extremely not confident Leo clapped his hands together, feeling like he might throw up. 

Well, now at least he knew he had a minimum of two very likely ways to screw this up. 

He tried not to think about how his mother was probably pinned in place in Asphodel like Percy had just described. Tried not to think about how many of her regrets he might be featured in.

“So, I guess this is it.” He made a mock salute towards Percy. “See you around, Aquaman.”

“Send me an IM when you guys get back, yeah? I’m home to spend some time with my sister, so I’ll be here for a while. I can come pick you up.”

“You got it.” Leo smiled at his friend. 

He took one more deep breath, looking up at where the sun was starting to dip between the buildings, then turned back to the Door of Orpheus. He ignited a small flame in his palm before facing the crevice and the darkness beyond.

As he stepped through the stone entrance to the Underworld, a terror crept into Leo’s heart that was weirdly reminiscent of the awful feeling he’d had when Jason had jumped into the ocean, feverish and confused and with a stab wound that wouldn’t heal. Leo had shouted at him to get back inside, but the wind had drowned it out. Though, honestly, even if it hadn’t, Jason probably wouldn’t have listened—he never had when it came to his stupid heroics. And then he’d been gone. Swallowed by the waves.

Piper had had to grab Leo by the arm to prevent him from just jumping in after Jason. Leo had been so afraid Jason would drown and that he’d never see him again. Realistically, the only thing Leo would actually have achieved by jumping into the water was drowning himself by accident, but at the time it had felt like he had to try and save Jason. Like Leo was somehow Jason’s only real chance for survival.

It had been a reckless, stupid thought then. It was still a reckless and stupid thought now, but it was also undeniably true.

This time, Piper wasn’t here to hold him back. This time, Leo jumped.

The Door of Orpheus shuddered, then closed behind Leo like the lid of a coffin, which he tried not to take as a bad omen. He fought the tightness in his chest at the thought of being locked in again—of doors slamming and locking themselves and the red-hot fire that had swallowed his mom’s machine shop. 

He tried to remind himself that this wasn’t like that. He could always rap his way back out of this door, or something.

The feeling of the closed entrance behind him still weighed heavily, but turning away from it helped. His flames danced in his palm, lighting up the staircase Leo had caught a glimpse of from the outside. 

It was the longest staircase he’d ever seen in his life, including the Mount Olympus one—Leo could tell that much, even in the limited light of his magic fire. There was no end in sight, in the most literal sense of the word. A little further down, the stairs disappeared into the inky blackness, making him feel like if he passed that point, the darkness would simply swallow him. 

Leo’s skin started to feel clammy again. A shiver ran down his spine.

This was ridiculous. There were so many things in his life that he could perfectly reasonably be afraid of. He refused to develop a phobia of staircases.

There was an upside to the literal staircase to hell, at least: even with the closed entrance behind him, it was hard to feel like he was locked in this place when it seemed to go on forever. 

Leo cracked his knuckles, skillfully avoiding setting his shirtsleeves ablaze in the process by all of an inch.

“Well, time to walk into the deepest, dustiest, creepiest cellar in all of Greek mythology,” he announced to the void, and for once, he was relieved when no one laughed at his joke.

Chapter Text

So far, the Underworld was a little underwhelming. This was to say: Leo had spent the past half an hour walking down some stairs and there was no end in sight. Up until this point, nothing had attacked him or growled at him from the shadows or anything. He couldn’t see any eyes in the blackness. The biggest threat he currently faced was the fact that the staircase was steeper and more slippery than he’d expected, which made falling down the remaining ten bazillion stairs a very real possibility. Out of all the stupid ways he could have died in his almost seventeen year long career as a demigod, that had to at least make the top three. 

On a general threat level, the endless staircase of eternal boredom wasn’t ranked nearly as high, though. He had to take slow, careful steps, which was annoying, but he’d expected much worse.

Leo wasn’t… disappointed about the lack of other threats, necessarily, but they did make him anxious, in a calm before the storm-kind of way.

Even with the research he’d done, he still felt like he barely had a clue what to expect once he reached the Underworld. Sure, he knew the basics—about having to cross the Styx and Cerberus and not eating fruits from Persephone’s garden. But it wasn’t like a lot of the literature on the topic was written by people who’d actually come back from the Underworld. Demigod quests to the Underworld were rare. Successful resurrections were basically unheard of. The only one Leo knew of aside from his own—which unfortunately hadn’t come with any convenient knowledge of the afterlife—was Hazel’s, and he obviously hadn’t been able to ask her for advice.

He couldn’t have asked her to keep that kind of secret for him. Not again. Not when it had already weighed on her and Frank so heavily the first time.

Hazel… that was another person he’d failed pretty solidly in the friendship department. He hadn’t reached out to her even once after getting back the the Waystation. 

Leo hadn’t been doing a very good job keeping up with any of the Seven after he’d gotten back, but Hazel was the one he’d probably been the closest with aside from Jason and Piper. He’d gone on a lot of quests with her and Frank on their Gaia Tries To End The World-Tour. Part of that had been selfish—despite the weirdness of the whole Sammy situation, hanging out with them had felt less complicated than third-wheeling Jason and Piper (which probably should have told him something, but Leo was nothing if not a professional at being in denial). But he’d grown to genuinely like her and Frank. They weren’t the foundations of a home the way Jason and Piper had been, but they’d still been his friends, and now he’d gone and fucked that up, too. Grand fucking job, Valdez.

He wondered if Nico and Hazel had felt him enter the Underworld. He hadn’t gotten in by croaking, so he hoped not.

He pushed the thought away. There was no use lingering on hypotheticals. He was doing this. No one could stop him now. Whether his friends found out, whether anyone worried about him or tried to come after him… that was out of his hands now. There was nothing he could do about it.

All he could do was keep walking.

The first thing that changed was the background noise. Mostly because there’d barely been any background noise for most of his walk down this stupid staircase. There’d been the sound of his own steps and the crackling of the fire in his hand and the sound of his breathing, and that had been it.

Suddenly, he could hear rushing water. The noise was faint, but it was definitely there, growing louder with each step. 

Fucking finally. Leo had been seriously starting to wonder if these stairs were bottomless.

His legs were starting to hurt. He was a decent enough runner, considering how much of his life he’d spent bolting from people and places and all the painful memories he’d never quite be ready to face. The last year and a half of running from monsters trying to kill him had made him even faster.

But running and walking down the stairs forever were two completely different things. Running for his life meant he had adrenaline pumping through his body, his mind pushing out everything but the stuff he needed to know for his immediate survival. 

Right now, he was a little short on adrenaline. It wasn’t that he wasn’t terrified—he was walking into the Underworld, of course he was terrified—but stairs weren’t usually the sort of enemy that chased you around corners and tried to tear you to bits with sharp claws, hence why the adrenaline wasn’t kicking in.

Between this and Mount Olympus, Leo was getting real sick of giant staircases.

When dim grey light began to fill the tunnel, he breathed a sigh of relief, extinguishing the fire in his palm.

His arm was tired from holding it up for so long (he’d tried to let it drop a few times, but that made it harder to see the staircase and had nearly resulted in him lighting up his pants twice), and although it took a lot for him to completely exhaust his powers, he couldn’t be sure if the rules were the same in the land of the dead. Better not to push his luck if he could see alright without his flames.

Besides, walking around as a live candlestick seemed like a great way to inform any ghost and monster in the vicinity that there was something different and exciting going on with him, and he didn’t really care to ring the dinner bell on them any more than he was already bound to by walking down here while he was still alive. 

The sound of the Styx had grown louder and louder, and it was roaring in his ears now. 

‘Almost there.’

Leo figured this was probably the most stoked anyone had ever been to reach the river of hatred.

He was grateful to have his feet on semi-even ground again.

The cavern he’d stepped out into was huge. Leo had been through a variety of caves in his lifetime—he had slept in some (usually much nicer than sewers, but also much more likely to have other, larger inhabitants, and therefore enter at your own risk) and fought monsters in others. None of them compared to this one in size. No wonder getting down here had taken him forever.

The view was breathtaking—heh, there was a pun in there that all the newly deceased that came through here probably wouldn’t have appreciated. The wide, domed ceiling was covered in stalactites. Colorful veins ran across the stones—gold and silver and copper. 

Right. In Roman mythology, Pluto was also the god of riches. Even knowing Hazel, that was easy to forget sometimes—it was kind of outweighed by his whole eerie death theme. 

The air glowed strangely and smelled kind of weird and Leo had absolutely no clue where the light was coming from, but he figured there was no real point in overthinking the land of the dead. He didn’t like not having explanations for things—he’d always preferred the comfort of complex machinery that he could explain with logic over magic and things created through godly powers that were just kind of there with no rhyme or reason—but he’d reluctantly had to accept them as a fact of life.

Leo let his eyes wander. He stood on the dark, sandy shore of the Styx, which rushed past him, down a section of rapids and then winded along the gloomy landscape.

His eyes immediately landed on his destination. As far away as they were, the giant dark walls of Erebos were hard to miss. Hades’ palace lay beyond these walls. Jason was somewhere beyond these walls. 

They were illuminated by some sort of light—fires, maybe? It was hard to tell from so far away. Giant gates were surrounded by a strange, shifting mass that glowed faintly. 

It would have almost been beautiful if it hadn’t been so fucking creepy.

Leo checked the watch Jo had given him to see if he was just being dramatic about the amount of time he’d spent coming down here, and nope. He’d just spent a fucking hour and a half walking down some stairs.

A distant part of him also registered that if he survived, he’d have to walk back up these same idiotic stairs, and that would be significantly more annoying than walking down. 

Well, that was a problem for future Leo, he supposed.

Current Leo’s most pressing issue was figuring out a way to cross the Styx with Charon nowhere in sight.

After a moment of hesitation, he committed to walking upstream, figuring he was better off not taking his chances with the rapids—from everything Leo had been able to find on the topic, a dip in the Styx was generally inadvisable unless you really wanted to dissolve your soul and your entire sense of self. As useful as the Curse of Achilles sounded, Leo was good, thanks.

He wasn’t sure what he was hoping for. There probably wouldn’t be a convenient path somewhere in the middle of the river—that would be a huge security risk in terms of souls breaking out of the Underworld, and would also put Charon out of a job. But hey, maybe he’d get lucky and find a narrower section where the water didn’t move quite this fast. 

Leo thought it was annoyingly possible that he would have to build another stupid boat. At least he had plenty of practice with that. The thought still didn’t exactly thrill him, though.

The water was a mess. It was dark and oily and filled with so much random garbage that it made the Hudson River look pristine in comparison.

All the unfulfilled dreams the living left behind when they crossed drifted along in the current. Leo watched a novel drift by. Had that person dreamed of writing one? Had they just really wanted to finish the book they’d been reading before biting it? A pair of baby shoes bobbed along the surface. There were plenty of pictures, a few trophies, a few half-finished paintings and a lot of paper that might have been diplomas or legal documents—Leo could not be bothered to wrestle his dyslexia long enough to find out. 

He really wished someone here had dreamed of whitewater rafting, but no such luck.

A little further upstream, a whole damn motorcycle floated in the current.

That was odd. Leo was pretty sure that motorcycles didn’t usually swim, especially not for extended periods of time. By the time he had the presence of mind to decide to investigate, it had almost drifted past him.

Because Leo had excellent impulse control and was great at thinking things through, he decided the next logical step was to stick his hand into the current to retrieve the motorcycle. He wasn’t even sure why thought the stupid thing was important. He just did. 

Leo had made an impressive amount of stupid decisions throughout his life, but this one had to be one of the absolute dumbest. By the time his brain caught up to be like “hey buddy, maybe don’t stick your hand into the river that’s said to burn away your soul”, his fingers were already on the handle. Styx water splashed all over his arm when he pulled the motorcycle towards him.

Leo was familiar with pain.

Back when he’d been a little kid, he’d “upgraded” the swing at the local playground because he’d wanted to know what flying felt like, earning himself a hospital trip and a very stern talking-to from his mom. There’d been the two bruised ribs that had finally made CPS remove him from Teresa’s care, and the time at the beginning of his glorious demigod career when he’d gotten severely concussed on a wrecked skywalk, to name a few highlights.

None of those experiences were even slightly comparable to this.

Hell, the pain was so intense that it almost made Leo feel nostalgic for the time he’d exploded himself.

His knees buckled, and he nearly face-planted into the river. It was mostly dumb luck that he fell backwards into the volcanic sand instead, half-blind with agony. It felt like someone had poured acid down the length of his arm, and now it was dissolving slowly, being sandpapered off layer by layer. 

For some reason, his numb fingers were still clutching the handle of the stupid motorcycle. It took forever to get his hand to unclench. Once he managed, he clutched his arm to his chest, sobbing quietly. 

He was so delirious with pain that he almost thought he could feel a hand on his shoulder.

“You’re okay.” A slightly blurry version of Piper was smiling down at him warmly. “Look at me and try to breathe. You’re going to be just fine.”

Breathing. Right. He could do that. He could totally do that. 

Rationally, Leo knew Piper wasn’t there. But he hadn’t completely made up the image either. It was a memory. 

He’d forgotten—lost it somewhere in the Mist—but he saw the scene in his mind’s eye with an absurd clarity now. 

He’d been roommates with Piper. He had no idea how that had happened, since co-ed definitely hadn’t been common practice at Wilderness School, but they had been. 

A few days into them sharing a room, he’d had a really bad nightmare about his mom. 

Usually, after a dream like that, he tried his best to make himself small, hoping whatever foster siblings he was rooming with hadn’t heard him cry or noticed how tightly he was clinging to his pillow. 

But this nightmare had been particularly bad. Maybe Gaia had figured he needed a reminder of what happened when he stepped out of line, since she’d known it was almost time for him to learn the truth.

Whatever the case, Leo had apparently been thrashing so violently that he’d woken Piper, because he’d been ripped out of the burning machine shop by someone gently shaking him. 

Piper had been sitting on his bunk, her hand on his shoulder, her smile kind. There had been absolutely zero judgement in her expression. She hadn’t poked fun at him. She hadn’t even asked what he’d dreamed about. She had just stayed with him until he’d calmed down a little, and then offered him an MP3-player she’d apparently kept hidden well enough that it hadn’t been confiscated yet.

“In case you don’t want to go back to sleep.”

The following night, Leo had tried to dip through the window.

The feeling of Piper’s hand on his arm lingered for a moment longer, even as the rest of the scene faded along with the majority of the pain. 

Leo was staring up at the strange Underworld sky again. He wasn’t sure how long he’d been lying on that beach, half-conscious, trying to remember how breathing worked.

“Alright, note to self: sticking your hand into the Styx is a terrible idea. Don’t do it again,” he said breathlessly, quickly making sure all his limbs were still attached. Thankfully, the answer was yes.

His right arm was an angry red where the water had splashed across it, like he had a really nasty sunburn. He reluctantly took one of his ambrosia pieces out of his tool belt, breaking off half and popping it into his mouth. The marks on his skin melted away, and the remaining pain faded to a dull throb.

“Wow, that was really stupid,” he mumbled to himself, looking at the idiotic motorcycle he’d almost killed himself to retrieve.

Why had he wanted that again? Something about its weight?

His thoughts were still a little hazy.

Well, he had it now, and after everything he’d just done to get it, not investigating would have been stupid. 

Leo took a moment to collect himself. Then he asked the tool belt for a pair of disposable gloves so he wouldn’t get any more Styx water on his hands—it seemed likely that the bike was still wet, and after the experience he’d just made, he wasn’t taking any chances—and started his inspection. 

As far as he could tell with his eyes and the machine-senses he’d inherited from his dad, it was a perfectly normal motorcycle. The ridiculously expensive kind, sure, but Leo was pretty certain the prize tag wasn’t related to the fact that it could double as a raft. If that had been a thing, he’d have known about it. Marketing loved to brag about that sort of nonsense.

The only thing that set this motorcycle apart from other vehicles of its kind was the fact that it weighed absolutely nothing. Leo wasn’t strong in the way most of his siblings were. He had a pretty terminal case of noodle arms, if he was being honest. But somehow, despite how heavy this thing looked, he could lift it no problem.

“Okay, that’s super weird.” 

Was it a property of the river that things within it became weightless? Leo didn’t think he’d float if he stepped in it—not that he was particularly eager to test that theory—but he did drop a screwdriver into the current to see what would happen. It behaved like any regular old screwdriver would have, sinking immediately.

It wasn’t the water, then. Was it the bike itself? Did it float because it was someone’s dreamed-up bike instead of a real one? 

And if that was the case—if all the dreams floated because they were weightless—did that mean Leo could use them to get across?

He let his eyes wander further upstream, to a place where a rock jutted out partially over the Styx, mind whirring so hard that his hair started smoking. 

Right. Okay. He could work with this.

Leo would freely admit that this plan was probably completely insane. Then again, so was this entire operation. Insane plans were kind of his brand, if he was being honest.

Using some materials from his tool belt, he’d made two improvised grappling hooks that he managed to toss and fasten on the outcropping of rock across the river after a few attempts. He tied the other ends to two large stalagmites close to the cavern wall. The end result were two parallel-ish ropes that ran diagonally across the river and would make okay handrails for the truly crazy part of this plan: a makeshift bridge made up of random dreams that drifted by, which Leo would have to construct on the fly.

He’d fastened the weightless motorcycle to a large stalagmite with wire rope that was typically utilized in lifting equipment so he could be sure it would hold once his body weight was added—and it had better hold, seeing as it had sent his tool belt into timeout for half an hour. Everything else he built the bridge out of he’d have to collect as he went across, judging spontaneously if he considered it sturdy enough to hold his weight and praying he didn’t fuck it up.

He had to wait for his tool belt to come out of cooldown before he started, but that wasn’t too bad. That gave him a little extra time to recover from his first encounter with the Styx, plus time to carefully test the ropes. 

Then he pulled out the lunch box Percy had given him.

Leo hadn’t had much of an appetite all day because he’d been so anxious, but tinkering always brought his anxiety levels down, and coming out of blueprint hyperfocus mode had made him realize just how hungry he was.

He also kept an eye on the Styx, just in case he spotted something he could use. Just as he was about to pack up and see if his tool belt was feeling generous again, he spotted it: tennis equipment, still packaged, including a plastic cylinder filled with exactly three tennis balls.

Jackpot.

Leo ditched the racket because it wouldn’t fit, but the tennis balls he dropped into his tool belt for later. He grinned. Things were going surprisingly well for a change.

He fastened a carabiner to one of the handrails, connecting it to his tool belt with a second carabiner and even more rope. He wasn’t sure how much it would realistically help if he misstepped or misjudged the ability of an object to hold his weight, but it made him feel a little better about his chances to avoid going for the world’s worst swim.

“Well, here goes nothing,” he said to nobody in particular, gripping the handrails tightly and stepping out onto the motorcycle.

It held his weight. Leo hadn’t even realized he’d been holding his breath, but now he released it with a happy whoop. That was one point for Leo, zero points for the Underworld trying to kill him.

…well, okay, maybe one point for Leo and the Underworld each, if he were to count properly. But hey, at least he wasn’t losing!

For a while, all he could do was stand there and watch the river. Most of the things that drifted past were too small and light to be of any real use. Blueprints, college degrees, deeds for houses… he could understand why they were floating around in here, but they didn’t exactly make for a great bridge. Besides, he already felt a little weird about literally walking all over people’s dreams to get across. Stepping on someone’s marriage certificate felt a bit too far.

Finally, Leo spotted a large wooden sign. He kneeled, one hand on his carabiner and his heart in his throat as the motorcycle swayed in the current, water sloshing over his boots. He was grateful that he’d had the presence of mind to wear water-proof safety boots for this trip.

He grabbed for the sign, barely reaching the edge with the tips of his fingers. Carefully, he drilled two eye bolts into it (one on each side) and fastened it to the motorcycle with more iron wire. Upon closer inspection, it was a nerdy bakery sign that read “Do or Donut” in large yellow letters, framed by two cinnamon rolls on one side and a breadstick lightsaber on the other. He’d have appreciated the pun a lot more if he hadn’t been trying not to die.

He pulled himself back into a standing position via his carabiner.

He carefully tested the stability of the sign with one foot. When it didn’t give, he pulled the other one across, holding onto his rope handrails as hard as he could in case the bridge wouldn’t hold.

It held.

Leo exhaled and started looking around for his next piece. 

A part of him had always been a little jealous of his siblings’ strength—of the way they could easily lug around heavy equipment all day without their arms getting tired—but being scrawny came in undeniably handy for this task. If he’d been taller and more muscular, finding objects that held his weight would have been much harder than it was already bound to be.

Slowly but surely, he made his way across, utilizing a variety of strange objects that had most definitely not been intended to ever be used in bridge construction. A Hollywood star with a name he’d never heard of before. A large TV that Leo felt a little sorry to ruin, even though obviously no one down here would be using it. A window frame that looked like it might have been intended for a treehouse. 

Every time he shifted his weight from one object to the next, he could feel his heart rate spiking. But the objects he’d picked didn’t give. His iron wire didn’t break. 

Before he knew it, he’d made it most of the way across.

He was just starting to think that hey, maybe he’d actually make it to the other side without fucking everything up.

That, of course, jinxed it.

He was kneeling on top of a large, unfinished painting now—a weird type of abstract art that made Leo feel grateful he’d been too busy preventing the apocalypse to attend art class, because he definitely would have failed that analysis.

He figured if he got lucky, he could make it all the way across with one, maybe two more bridge pieces. 

Unfortunately, he’d have to either abandon the safety of one of his handrails or scale the rock outcropping for the last part of this trip. The outcropping had been his best option for fastening the grappling hooks for height and sturdiness, but the downside was that if Leo didn’t want to go for a climb, he had to go past it on one side, out of reach of his second rope.

He was still weighing his options when the river made the call for him. He wasn’t sure what caused the calamity, but something large slammed into the bridge at great speed behind him. It wasn’t heavy enough to break the bridge—nothing in this river was heavy, that was the entire point—but the force of it still shook the whole bridge, pushing the front of it further downstream than Leo had planned for it to go. He scrambled to hang onto his handrail ropes, struggling to keep his balance on the floating bridge. Then the rope to his right snapped.

Leo screamed.

He only had a split-second to make a decision now. Thankfully, his brain worked fast. He only had one rope now, and it wasn’t even the one he’d secured himself on. It was a shit option. But if the bridge got pulled any further downstream, the second rope might rip too, or the metal wire might, and then he’d definitely be Leo soup. 

He held tightly onto the rope with one hand, pulled a hammer from his tool belt to create a handhold and lunged for the stone outcropping.

His feet found purchase, but barely. 

His heart was thundering in his chest. 

Leo hadn’t exactly felt nostalgic for that time he’d fallen into the Grand Canyon, but that was exactly what this felt like—except this time, coach Hedge wasn’t around to rescue him.

If someone had asked Leo later on how he made it up that outcropping of rock, he genuinely wouldn’t have been able to explain it. It was like his brain had just pushed out all thoughts that weren’t up, mapping out the best hand- and footholds to get him to the top and pumping every bit of adrenaline it could spare into his bloodstream to make sure he followed through.

By the time he made it up, he was dazed, his gloves were ripped to shreds and his hands were scraped bloody, but he was alive , and that was the only thing that mattered.

For a while, he just lay there, staring at the ceiling and processing. 

He’d made it across the Styx without dying. Barely, but still. 

“Holy shit,” he breathed. “I need to think of something else for the way back. I’m definitely not doing that again.”

Leo removed the mangled remains of his gloves and got up slowly, still trembling with adrenaline. He made his way down to the shore of the Styx. 

He wondered if whatever had disturbed the bridge was still there. Out of morbid curiosity, he took another look at the river to see if he could spot it. 

The answer was yes. 

His makeshift bridge had been pulled even further downstream, moving further and further away from the shore Leo was sitting on now. And right there, in the middle of the bridge, bobbed a fucking canoe. 

The Fates probably thought they were hilarious. 

Leo was about to turn away from the Styx and figure out his way forward when he spotted something else—much closer, and much, much worse than a stupid canoe. 

There was a picture stuck on a jagged piece of rock just slightly off shore. That part wasn’t surprising. Leo had seen a lot of pictures drift past him in the last few hours.

But he knew the people in that picture. 

Distantly, Leo registered that this was going to hurt—possibly worse than the first time had, considering his hands were covered in scrapes and getting Styx water in his bloodstream was probably a really shitty idea.

It didn’t matter. He was already moving. Nothing mattered except for that picture. If it ripped through the force of water against rock or he let the current drag it away, he would never forgive himself.

Leo clearly hadn’t learnt his lesson about keeping his hands out of the Styx the first time. When the pain hit, it was so intense he almost dropped the picture. 

Belatedly, he remembered how he’d bested water the first time, conjuring up Piper’s image in his head. The pain turned from blinding agony to a throbbing ache—still awful, but not unbearable. Enough for him to pull his hand back without face-planting into the river. He stumbled away from the shore, the picture clutched in his hand.

He desperately wanted to be wrong about what the photograph was. 

Unfortunately, he hadn’t been wrong. 

Whatever agony the Styx had subjected him to earlier, it was nothing compared to what this image was doing to him now. The unforgiving ache in his hand suddenly seemed like a minor issue.

He sunk to the ground, all the air knocked out of his body.

The photograph looked like it had been taken with a Polaroid camera. The white bit at the bottom had been pierced and ripped where it had gotten stuck on the rock, and there was some water damage, but the picture itself was mostly intact, if a little faded. It showed three people, laughing, wearing identical purple hoodies. There would have been no mistaking the logo on their chests, even if Leo hadn’t been to Camp Jupiter recently. The words “New Rome University” were printed in bold, golden letters around the university’s logo: a stylized temple framed by laurels. 

A slightly older version of Leo stared back at him from the center of the picture. His hair was a little shorter than in reality—he’d had things other than his haircut to worry about lately. His hoodie was rumpled and had a burn mark right below the neck, despite the fact that it was clearly brand-new. He was pulling a face at the camera—both of his eyes looked inwards and he’d stuck his tongue out, the small gap between his front teeth clearly visible.

Piper stood to his right, eyes crinkled with laughter. Her hair was much longer than it had been since her spontaneous grief haircut. She had her tongue out just like Leo, but she was biting hers, which made her look infinitely more cheeky than him. One of her hands was in a rocker pose in front of her chest, the other loosely wrapped around Leo’s shoulders, for some reason not even retaliating for the bunny ears he was giving her. Maybe she hadn’t realized what he was doing until after someone had already snapped the picture.

And to Leo’s left…

Jason’s mouth was wide open like he was mid laugh. His hair looked tousled, sticking up in several different directions, and his hoodie was apparently a size too large—a gray shirt was slightly visible beneath. Like Piper, he had an arm around picture-Leo, despite the fact that he, too, had been graced with a pair of bunny ears.

fedzz_z 

Reality-Leo felt like someone was surgically excising his lungs from his body. He couldn’t breathe, and no amount of hallucinated breathing exercises were going to fix it this time.

It would have been bad enough if it had been his own dream drifting along the currents—if the river goddess of the Styx had decided he was already as good as dead and she might as well get paid upfront.

But school had been hell for as long as Leo could remember, and even before this whole demigod nonsense, college had never been a part of his plan—not that it had been a real option due to how far out of his budget it was and the fact that troublemaker kids didn’t generally get picked for scholarships, but even if he could, why would he want to put himself through more of that when his brain just wasn’t wired for it? No fucking thank you. 

Leo wanted to open a machine shop, like the one his mom had had. That dream had grown to involve more demigod tools and celestial bronze dragons since the original draft from when he’d been little, but the gist of it hadn’t changed. The exact way he’d get there had always been fuzzy at best, but the thing he’d dreamed of had always been that end result, not whatever academic endeavours he’d have to put up with to reach it.

Which meant this wasn’t his dream.

Which meant…

Leo curled around the picture and started sobbing uncontrollably.

“Jason made a choice,” Nico’s voice echoed in his head. “We should respect that. Anything else wouldn’t be fair to him.”

”Jason was a hero,” Apollo’s voice added. “He’s done so much for all of us. He’ll always be remembered for that.”

Leo wanted to yell at them to look at this picture, look him in the eye and say that again. 

Jason was so much more than the paragon of the perfect hero. He was a Roman history nerd who liked to sketch and build models in his free time. He got way too competitive about video games and ate porridge every morning and he loved Leo’s cooking, even though he couldn’t handle spice for shit. The scar on his lip twitched when he was anxious. Sometimes he slept in the woods for no discernible reason instead of using the bed Leo and Piper had put up in the Zeus cabin. He refused to cross the street at a red light, even when there were no cars anywhere in sight. He was thoughtful and kind and picked up on things no one else paid attention to. When Leo had asked how he’d even known he needed comforting after coming back from Ogygia, Jason had just shrugged and said “you weren’t fidgeting, and you don’t even like coffee, so I figured something was wrong”. He was terrible at making jokes and had a soft spot for old romcoms and he was so useless with boats that he basically couldn’t even look at a canoe without capsizing it.

All of that—all of those stupid traits and quirks—had made up Jason Grace. 

He hadn’t dreamed of being remembered as a hero. Jason had never even wanted to be a hero. He’d carried out that duty because he felt like he had to—because he’d never been allowed to be anything else—but it had made him completely miserable. Anyone who’d paid even a little bit of attention to him could see that.

This was the biggest Jason had ever allowed himself to dream. Fucking college orientation. Living for one more year and having Leo and Piper by his side. Getting to be Just Jason for a little while, and figuring out what exactly that meant.

Compared to the kinds of dreams other people had that had drifted past Leo—endless riches or fame or scientific discoveries that would fundamentally alter the way the world worked—that one was depressingly doable. 

And the Fates had still refused him.

Leo gently stroked the face of the Jason in the image, sniffling.

“I’m trying to make this happen for you, okay?” he said quietly to the empty riverbank. Gods, how desperately he wanted to see Jason laugh like that again. “I think your biggest dream being college is really lame, for the record. We should probably work on that.” He rubbed at his eyes with his sleeve. “But I’m trying, I swear. You deserve to be nothing but a lame college kid for a change.”

It wasn’t a Styx oath—he’d already tempted fate way too much today—but it was a promise nonetheless.

Leo wasn’t sure how long he remained frozen on the river bank. He couldn’t remember how to move his limbs. He distantly registered that staying in one place for so long wasn’t smart—there were monsters down here that could kill him, and he was much easier to track if he wasn’t moving—but his soul was so heavy with grief that moving seemed like an impossible endeavor. 

You could just stay here, a malicious voice at the back of his head whispered. Let the river dissolve you and spare yourself the pain of your inevitable failure. To the people you left behind, you’ll be just another memory—a bad dream fading away in the water. The seventh wheel. The escaped spirit. You’ve always been destined for loneliness. Destined to wander. Why bother to resist? 

The sound of rushing water startled Leo awake. He was completely disoriented. He had no memories of falling asleep. 

Had he cried himself unconscious? The thought was so pathetic that he almost hoped he’d passed out from Styx-related pain or exhaustion instead.

He sat up slowly. He was still clutching the photograph in one hand. Leo pressed it to his chest one last time, then carefully placed it in his tool belt, praying desperately to anything that would listen that it wouldn’t get even more crinkled than it already had.

He had to keep Jason’s dream safe for him. He wasn’t sure what would happen to a soul that left the Underworld if their dreams had been damaged or lost in the current of the Styx, but he had absolutely zero desire to find out. 

Speaking of the Styx—why did the roaring seem louder than before?

Leo turned his head, realizing with horror that he was barely an arm’s length away from the river. 

He scrambled to his feet, backing away from the Styx as fast as his jelly legs allowed. 

“What the hell?”

Despite how dazed he’d been at the time, Leo remembered walking further away from the river bank in fear of losing or further damaging the picture very clearly. How had he gotten so close to the water again?

Had something tried to pull him in? 

But he couldn’t see any signs of that. Aside from the strange mist that had settled over his surroundings, everything looked exactly the same as it had before he’d passed out. 

The only footprints he could see were his own.

Chapter Text

Leo wasn’t sure how long he spent walking towards Erebos. 

The strange mist he’d woken up in had settled over his surroundings, impairing his sight a little, but he could still see faint lights in the distance, so at least he knew where he was going. 

The whole thing freaked him out, though. Was this normal?

He hadn’t really thought to check out the Underworld weather forecast on Olympus TV in advance. 

“Then again,” he mumbled, thinking back to his visit to Aeolus’ palace slash TV studio on his very first quest, “that’s only ever reliable for twelve minutes, anyway.”

Whatever. He was here now. Weather conditions were dark and hazy with a chance of ghosts. He would deal.

The noises around him were ominous. Sometimes, he thought he heard the shuffling of feet behind him. 

Was someone following him? Was it a monster of some kind? 

He couldn’t hear any breathing. 

A ghost, then? Did ghosts even have feet to shuffle with? He’d never really thought about that before.

He could hear wailing, too. He wasn’t sure where exactly it came from. It seemed to come from everywhere at once.

The sound was heartbreaking. A desperate symphony of grief and loneliness that dredged up some uncomfortably familiar feelings in his own chest.

There is no point in going on, it seemed to say. Past these walls, all hope is lost.

Leo shook himself out of his daze. He had to keep walking. 

He put one foot in front of the other, his eyes fixed on the dark earth as he tried to ignore the sounds. He couldn’t let it get to him.

Unfortunately, his body didn’t get the memo.

Leo’s heart was racing. His skin was covered in goosebumps, and he couldn’t stop shivering. He’d tried to up his body temperature, but it didn’t help. 

The problem wasn’t that he was cold. He was just scared.

That was stupid as hell. Leo wasn’t a little kid. He was almost seventeen, for crying out loud. He had faced monsters and giants and even the Earth Mother herself. 

Nobody had so much as attempted to approach him so far. The wails made his heart ache, sure, but they weren’t threatening. There was nothing there for him to be afraid of.

Why was he suddenly jumping at shadows? 

Had the Styx rattled him that badly?

Leo put one hand around the hilt of Katoptris to calm himself. He desperately wished Piper was here. She’d tease him for being stupid, and he’d startle her in retaliation, and then they’d both laugh and the whole thing wouldn’t seem nearly as terrifying anymore. 

Everything had always been so much more manageable with Piper and Jason around.

Honestly, even having Calypso to argue with would have helped. Anything that cut through the ominous background noises would have been a massive improvement.

There was, of course, the Orpheus option—he could have just taken out the Valdezinator and played music all the way through the Underworld, making the souls of the dead cry with empathetic grief or something. But Leo wasn’t Orpheus. He wasn’t a child of Apollo, either. Opening the Orpheus entrance with the enchanted instrument had taken a lot out of him. He could already feel himself getting tired, and exhausting himself more probably wouldn’t have helped the situation. Besides, he wasn’t convinced plucking a tune about grief would improve his mood. What this place really didn’t need was even more wailing.

Leo also could have solved this in a way that was more fitting for a child of Hephaestus. He could have reached into his tool belt and pulled out something to block out the noise—the kind of soundproof earmuffs used in construction, maybe. Unfortunately, that also wasn’t a real option. He couldn’t afford to dull his senses like that. Foregoing any kind of audible warning that something was about to jump him for some temporary peace of mind would have been really stupid.

“Just keep moving,” he told himself. “Just a little further.”

Had the black walls of Erebos gotten any closer? It was hard to tell through the mist. He could see lights flickering in the distance, but it seemed like they were just as far away as they’d been when he’d started walking towards them.

Leo shook his head. He had to be getting closer. Surely. He’d probably just misjudged the distance—when something was far away, it was hard to say for sure how long it would take you to get there. Leo had never been good at guessing things like that. He didn’t know the environment. 

Besides, the more impatient you were to get to a place, the longer it seemed to take to get there, and that was even without factoring in weird mythological shenanigans. He remembered his mom taking him to the Museum of Natural Science for a special exhibit when he’d been six, and how the drive that had objectively been under an hour long had stretched into a subjective four week trip, with him asking if they were there yet approximately every fifteen seconds.

Nothing about this was weird. He was just making a big deal out of it because he was scared.

“Get it together, idiot,” Leo chided himself. 

According to every iteration of the Orpheus and Eurydice-myth he’d read, getting to Hades’ palace was supposed to be the easy part. If he was already losing it now…

He kept walking. 

Leo’s legs were starting to hurt, but he’d also spent forever walking down some stairs, then balanced on a wonky bridge and followed that up by scrambling up a rock wall. He was tired, but he’d been down here for a while, and the only rest he’d gotten was via ill-advised passing out. None of this was really that weird, no matter what his anxious brain tried to tell him.

Belatedly, he remembered the watch Josephine had given him. Right. She’d said something about it being hard to keep track of time in the Underworld. He could just check how much time had passed occasionally. That way he’d know for sure he was just freaking himself out over nothing.

He made himself exhale slowly through his mouth, a bit of the tension going out of his shoulders.

It was a good plan.

The next time Leo looked at his wrist watch, he’d lost nine hours, and the lights on the horizon hadn’t moved an inch.

Someone was messing with Leo. He’d been thinking it over for a concerning amount of hours, according to his watch, and that was the only explanation that made sense.

He’d been walking in a relatively straight line the whole time. You couldn’t be walking in circles when you were walking in a straight line. Besides, he couldn’t hear the roaring of the Styx anymore—hadn’t in a while. If he hadn’t been moving away from the Styx, he should have still heard the rushing water.

He was clearly moving. He just wasn’t getting anywhere. 

Leo felt stupid for not putting it together sooner. Whoever it was hadn’t only started messing with him now. They’d been doing it since he’d first entered the Underworld.

The boat could have been a shitty coincidence. Honestly, in retrospect, Leo had been pretty lucky that one of the larger dreams hadn’t slammed into the bridge and made him topple into the river way sooner. That was on him for assuming that the lack of weight would negate the effect any larger object had if it hit the bridge—for trying to apply real-world physics to a place that utterly defied logic.

But the picture…

Jason had been dead for three months. By now, the photograph should have disappeared somewhere downstream, never to be seen again.

Instead, it had appeared right where Leo had crossed. The chances of that happening were so astronomically small that they were basically nonexistent.

Someone had put it there on purpose, well aware that Leo wouldn’t be able to resist reaching for it, even if he knew how much it would hurt him.

And those words he’d heard on the river bank… at the time, Leo had assumed they were his own thoughts, made more malicious by his grief and the Styx water in his bloodstream. But thinking back on it now… 

The voice had said that he was destined to wander.

And here he was. Wandering.

“For fuck’s sake.”

“You look like you want to set fire to something,” someone said, right in his ear. “You love burning things down, don’t you?”

Leo flinched violently. When he turned to look, no one was there.

“What the fuck?” 

Leo spun a full 360 degrees, but no one was there. Whoever had spoken to him was either invisible or had immediately disappeared back into the mist. 

His heart was hammering. He lit a fire in his palm and waited—for that strange, cold feeling of an eidolon taking possession of his body, or for something to try to tear him to shreds.

Nothing did. 

“Go ahead. Use your cursed flames. I’m not afraid of you,” the voice taunted from somewhere behind him. 

When Leo turned, he wasn’t surprised to find he still couldn’t see anyone.

His fear was a little more manageable now. He’d expected to hear someone speak, so this time he’d been able to actually pay attention to the person’s voice, and they’d promptly become far less threatening.

Leo had just stood before the council of the gods. He knew what a deity sounded like. This obviously wasn’t one. Their words held no real power. 

This person sounded more like a high school bully throwing a tantrum.

Besides, Leo highly doubted a deity would have bothered to play hide and seek with a random demigod.

“Seriously? If you’re gonna haunt me, at least commit to it.” Leo rolled his eyes. “You can’t just spend ages waiting for an opening, then say three lines and just disappear again.”

The joke helped. Some of the tension went out of Leo’s shoulders.

“That isn’t- I wasn’t-” the person spluttered, clearly offended. Some sort of gray presence flickered briefly in and out of view. “How dare you?”

Yeah, definite high school bully vibes. 

Leo could handle bullies. This wasn’t even his first time being haunted. He hadn’t been especially eager to repeat the experience, if he was being honest, but for demigods most monsters unfortunately seemed to come in some sort of crappy buy one, get one free -deal.

“Oh, please. The last ghost I dealt with possessed me. In comparison, this is, like, a three out of ten haunting at most. Might actually only be a two, now that I think about it.” Leo shrugged. He extinguished the fire in his palm as casually as he could. “Besides, if you’re not afraid of me, how come you’re hiding from me? Because that screams ‘I’m so very afraid of you, please don’t hurt me.’”

“I’m not hiding! And I’m definitely not afraid of you!” the ghost protested indignantly. The air in front of Leo flickered again. It seemed irritated—as far as that was possible for air, anyway. “You’re the one who should be afraid!”

“Sure. Whiny ghosts that I can’t even see are absolutely terrifying. I’m quaking in my boots.” Leo waved them off. “Now, if you’ll excuse me? I have somewhere to be.”

He returned to what he’d been doing before, walking towards the walls of Erebos that still seemed to have no interest in coming any closer.

“You’re never going to reach the judgement pavilion,” the ghost spat. Leo’s dismissal of them seemed to make them even angrier. “I have no idea what you were thinking, coming down into the Underworld, but you’re stuck here now.”

“Are you the one doing this?” Leo asked, trying to sound as bored as possible. He figured the best way to get information out of them was to make them even madder. People always said more than they meant to when they were upset. “Because from the fit you’re throwing, I honestly doubt you have any real power. If it’s not you, could you call management and file a complaint on my behalf or something? I’ve spent half my life on the run. This is barely a punishment. I’m just bored out of my mind.”

“Don’t speak to me like that!” The ghost was shrieking now, which did not make them any more intimidating. “Who do you think you are?”

“Leo Valdez. At your service.” Leo made a mock bow. “But since I’ve obviously managed to piss you off somehow, I’m assuming you already knew that.”

“If it was up to me, you’d be in the Fields of Punishment for what you’ve done!” the ghost yelled, their voice seeming to come from all directions at once. It was too shrill to be scary.

“Right! So what I’m hearing is that it isn’t up to you, and you probably have no idea who is doing this, either,” Leo concluded. “Well then. Like I said, I have places to be.”

He continued walking through the Underworld like he was taking a leisurely stroll.

“Don’t ignore me!” Leo continued to ignore them. “You’ll regret this! You have no idea who you’re messing with!”

Leo waited for something to happen—maybe to be levitated off the ground, turned upside down and have his lunch money shaken out of his pockets, just to really drive home the high school bully parody—but the only thing that was levitated off the ground was a singular pebble.

A moment passed, then it flew in Leo’s direction, hitting him in the shoulder so lightly that he barely felt it.

Leo couldn’t help it. He burst out laughing. 

“Holy shit. That was pathetic.”

“You’re pathetic.” Another pebble flew in his direction. That one missed Leo entirely, despite the fact that he hadn’t even tried to dodge.

“Sorry, you’re so right, I have absolutely no idea who I’m messing with,” Leo said, lifting his hands placatingly. He was still trying to catch his breath from laughing. “I wouldn’t have been so mean to you if I’d known I was being haunted by a five year old girl.”

“I’m a guy! And I was eighteen at the time of my death!” the ghost protested, but his voice grew halting in the second sentence, like the words he’d just said were somehow new information to him.

“Was that a question?” Leo asked, raising his eyebrow. “You don’t sound sure.”

“No. I am sure. I just…” The ghost trailed off.

A form flickered into being—a ghost that was vaguely shaped like a person. He was slim, a decent amount taller than Leo and almost entirely featureless—faded beyond recognition. This wasn’t a type of ghost Leo had ever encountered before. He did not glow in the soft purple color the Lares did, and he didn’t have the golden eyes that were the only part of an Eidolon’s appearance Leo had ever gotten a glimpse at. This was something else.

“Forget me not knowing who I’m dealing with. Do you even know who you are?”

“I- it doesn’t matter!” the ghost insisted, but he sounded vaguely disturbed. “I know you can’t be trusted. I know you’re finally being punished for your crimes. That’s the only thing that’s important.”

“Hang on. So someone decided you’d remember who I am so you could stay mad at me all the way into the afterlife, but you have no memory of yourself?” Leo asked, baffled. “I’m always happy to meet a fan of my work, don’t get me wrong, but that just seems mean.”

“Insufferable Greek!” the ghost shrieked. The confusion that had momentarily given him pause had been overtaken by anger again.

“I’m from Houston!” Leo shot back, rolling his eyes. “Are you sure I’m even the person you’re mad at? You seem a little confused. No offense.”

“Of course I know who you are!” The ghost was trembling with rage—or whatever qualified as trembling with rage for a mostly shapeless blob. Another pebble bounced harmlessly off Leo’s leg. “You blew up half of New Rome! People got hurt! Is that a laughing matter to you?”

Leo froze. 

“You’re a Roman demigod,” he realized. In retrospect, maybe being called a Greek should have made that obvious. 

“Of course I’m a Roman demigod,” the ghost said, but he was speaking haltingly again. “And you are an enemy of Rome!”

So the jerk ghost was actually kind of justified. Great.

“Would you mind hearing me out?” Leo asked hesitantly. “I have some stuff I’d like to say about the New Rome incident before you use your pebbles to pelt me to death.”

He couldn’t think of any way to fix his other problem at the moment, but now that he knew why the spirit was mad at him, he wanted to at least try to resolve the situation.

“I would mind!” the ghost said immediately, but his voice seemed slightly more subdued than before. “I don’t care for your lies!” 

The next pebble missed Leo by so much that he was almost impressed.

“Listen, dude. Jason said we’d stand trial if we went back to New Rome. That’s how it works, right?”

“I… suppose,” the ghost agreed. Something in that statement seemed to have given him pause. “But you’re already being punished. What’s the point of being put through trial now?”

“I’d like to have my sentence reduced by a few pebble throws,” Leo told him with a shrug. “If you don’t think that’s fair, or if you think I’m lying to you, you can always resume throwing stuff at me after I finish talking. But if I’m stuck with you anyway, I’d like to at least plead my case.”

The ghost was quiet for a moment. 

“Fine!” he finally spat. “Go ahead and talk.”

“Remember that possession I mentioned earlier?” Leo started, wringing his hands. He hated talking about that incident. “That happened while we were in New Rome. I got taken over by a stupid Eidolon.”

“Is that your defense? You’re making excuses?” the ghost scoffed. “I should have figured as much.”

“Objection,” Leo said immediately. ”I wasn’t done.”

“That’s not how an objection works in court,” the ghost informed him, because clearly being a pedantic jerk was his favorite hobby. “But fine. Go on.”

Leo took a deep, shuddering breath and just came out with it. “For what it’s worth: I’m sorry for firing on your home. I didn’t ask for that Eidolon to possess me, and my friends kept telling me it wasn’t my fault after we found out what had happened, but… I still have a hard time believing it, sometimes. I feel like I should have been able to fight back. If I’d just tried harder, maybe I could have stopped myself from firing these stupid ballistae. I should have included some sort of safety to prevent an incident like that from ever happening in the first place. I should have told someone about that weird, cold feeling at the back of my neck. I should have done more, or known better, or… I don’t know.” Leo stared intently at the ground. “New Rome is beautiful. It means so much to so many people. I hate that I wrecked some of it. I hate that people got hurt because of me.”

New Rome was the only city-scale safe haven for demigods in existence. He hated knowing that he’d endangered that. He didn’t even want to think about what it had looked like after the last devastating battle that had taken place there.

The ghost did not immediately return to hurling insults or pebbles at Leo, which he figured was probably a good sign. 

The silence stretched between them.

“I believe you,” the ghost said finally. He sounded shaken to his core—like something had fundamentally shifted. All the anger had gone out of his voice. “I’m sorry, too.”

Leo waved him off. “Eh, I get it. If someone blew off my roof, I’d be pretty pissed, too. Besides, the pebbles barely hurt. Half of them didn’t even hit me. Your aim is pretty shit.”

“I… I don’t think that’s what I’m apologizing for.” The spirit sounded absolutely miserable.

“Well, that’s officially the most cryptic apology I’ve ever gotten,” Leo said, raising an eyebrow. “Could you be a little more specific?”

“I think I messed up, somehow. I know it’s important. But I can’t remember why.”  

“Well, feel free to get back to me when you remember what you’re apologizing for, and I’ll let you know if I can forgive you, then.” Leo hazarded a smile at the ghost. The situation was a little easier, knowing the ghost wasn’t mad at him anymore. Knowing they’d somehow both messed up. “If you want to start making whatever it is up to me, do you have any guesses what’s up with the environment? Is it always like this?”

He got a real answer this time—not cryptic yelling he had to deduce a meaning from.

“No. I’m not doing anything. I’ve been following you around for a while, but that’s it. I have no idea why you can’t seem to reach Erebos.”

“Hang on.” Looking at the ghost, Leo had a sudden realization he arguably should have had way sooner. “You never got to Erebos, either. Why are you here and not in the afterlife? Is there something wrong with the Underworld as a whole?”

Leo didn’t really allow himself to hope that he wasn’t the problem—chances were high that it absolutely was him—but he was still confused.

“I don’t think so. I feel like this place would be way more crowded if it was happening to everyone. I just…” The ghost thought for a moment, his voice growing quiet. “I think I got lost.”

Leo wanted to ask how you could get lost while walking in a straight line, but considering his own situation, he supposed he wasn’t really one to talk. 

“You thought I was being punished,” he continued. “Was that just you being a dick, or is it because you think being stuck here is some sort of punishment in general? Do you think that’s what’s happening to you?”

“I’m not sure. But I don’t think whatever is going on with me is related to what’s happening to you. I’ve been here for a while.” The answer would have sounded cagey if Leo hadn’t known the ghost was confused as shit. “What I don’t understand is why you’re even trying to break into the Underworld. Most people want to go the other way. There’s a reason escaped spirits are part of Thanatos’ job description and intruders are not.”

“The thing is, I’m not breaking in. I have an agreement with Hades. I’m trying to get someone out.” Leo huffed in frustration. “Not very successfully, as you can probably tell.”

“That seems like a great way to get yourself killed,” the ghost commented, floating alongside Leo. 

“On the upside, I’m already in the Underworld, so if I bite it here, at least I’m saving Thanatos the commute,” Leo joked.

“Have you tried going back?” the ghost asked. “If you can’t reach the gates, there’s not much you can do for whoever it is you’re trying to save. The most sensible thing you can do at this point is to save yourself.”

“I’m not turning around,” Leo said without hesitation. “Turning around is what got Orpheus killed. The same thing would happen to me. If I fail, I die. That was the deal. But even if that wasn’t the case, I wouldn’t go back. I don’t care about saving myself. I just want Jason back.” He clenched his fists. “I’m leaving the Underworld with him, or I’m not leaving it at all.”

“Jason?” The ghost went rigid. “Jason Grace is dead?”

His voice was choked up with grief.

Right. The ghost was a Roman demigod. Of course he’d remember Jason, even with his memories all messed up.

“Yeah. He died three months ago,” Leo said quietly. Guilt pooled in his stomach. He couldn’t believe he’d let Jason wait as long as he had. “I didn’t even get to say goodbye.” 

Leo’s voice broke. 

He couldn’t keep walking. The grief had been eating away at his wiring for months, and now his legs wouldn’t work right.

He sank down against one of the boulders that occasionally interrupted the otherwise plane landscape, letting his head drop back against the stone.

The ghost sank down next to him almost mechanically. “Did he- did he get killed during the fight against Gaia?” He sounded absolutely horrified.

That gave Leo pause.

“What? No. What makes you think-” He broke off. Right. Time-keeping in the Underworld didn’t just suck for the living, then. “It’s June. Gaia’s been a non-issue for almost a year.” 

The ghost’s shoulders slumped with something that might have been relief. 

Huh. The distinguishable shoulders were new. 

“It’s been that long?” he asked.

“Yeah.” Leo stared into his lap. “Was that how you died? The Gaia fight?”

Leo didn’t know how many casualties there’d been—largely because he’d been one of the casualties—but it made sense. Camp Half-Blood and Camp Jupiter hadn’t started properly building bridges until after the fighting was over. Leo hadn’t been around for that part, but Reyna had told him how much effort it had taken. If anyone was likely to hold a grudge, it would be a person who had died before that had happened.

“I’m… I think so.” The ghost didn’t sound sure. “What about the prophecy?” he asked cautiously. “It said the world would fall to storm or fire. I always assumed… Jason was storm, wasn’t he?”

“Yeah. He was absolutely going to sacrifice himself, but, well. I couldn’t let that happen.” Leo was still staring at the ground. “There’s nothing I wouldn’t have done to keep him safe.”

“The world fell to fire,” the ghost concluded, sounding a little awe-struck. “You saved everyone.”

“I managed to keep the world safe for about six months before everything went to hell again. Big whoop,” Leo said bitterly. “I used the physician’s cure to save myself. If I’d just stayed dead, Jason might still be alive.”

“What happened to him?”

Leo hated telling that story. He wished no one would ever ask him about Jason’s death again. But he was stuck on the plains before Erebos, with no way to get closer and no one but this spirit to talk to. And if he’d known Jason—and from the way he’d reacted to the news of his death, this was obviously the case—he deserved to know what had happened to him.

“After the war with the Gaia, Apollo got kicked off Mount Olympus and turned into a mortal for fueling the conflict between camps. He had to fix the oracles. Some evil Roman emperors got turned into these pseudo-gods, and… Jason was trying to help. He knew he was going to die. He got a whole stupid prophecy about it. But he still wanted to help. This time, I wasn’t around to keep him safe.”

Leo was shaking. He’d taken a few pieces out of his tool belt and started playing around with them—putting together a small tennis ball cannon that he’d never even need if he couldn’t reach the walls. It was the only thing he could do to keep himself sane.

“Jason’s always been like that,” the ghost said. He still sounded shaken up. “Even when we were little, he was always playing the hero.” 

“You’re remembering something?” Leo asked. 

The ghost nodded. “Not much, but… some things are coming back to me. Talking about it helps, I think.”

“That’s probably a good thing, right?”

“I don’t know.” The ghost’s appearance had changed some more. He had recognizable hands now, fingers and everything. “Thinking about Jason is painful, knowing that he’s dead. But I’ve spent a long time down here, unable to remember anything about myself. I was just angry all the time. This is better, even though it hurts.” 

Yeah, Leo was starting to feel pretty bad for that jerk ghost. 

“Do you remember anything else? If you knew Jason as a little kid… that means you’re probably a legacy, right?” Leo deduced. “I know Jason got to camp really young, but I’m assuming most people don’t pass Lupa’s trials at age three.”

That smidge of extra information seemed to do the trick. 

“No, definitely not.” The ghost made a noise that almost qualified as a laugh. “I grew up in New Rome. I’ve known Jason since I was… five, I think? He was a little odd when we were kids.”

Leo raised an eyebrow. “Odd how?” 

“Jason was a quiet kid. Barely spoke. Enjoyed sleeping in people’s yards for some reason. He was fierce, though. It was obvious how powerful he’d be, even when we were little.”

“That sounds like you spent a lot of time with him,” Leo said, trying to actually focus on the conversation he was having instead of just being terribly endeared by the thought of a small, grumpy Jason snoring away in someone’s perfectly manicured rose bushes.

“My parents really wanted us to be friends. And we were, for a while.” The ghost sounded sad. “But we got older, and he didn’t grow up to be the kind of person my parents expected him to be. We had a massive fight when I was twelve. Things between us were never the same. That was right after…” The ghost broke off. He said the next few words like he was choking on them. “…right after I was named augur.”

Leo’s eyes went wide as saucers. The pieces clicked into place all at once.

“Octavian?”

Chapter Text

One of these days, the universe would run out of jokes to make at Leo’s expense. 

Clearly, that day wasn’t today. Today, he was stuck with Octavian out of all people.

That was what Leo got for wishing he had literally anyone to talk to.

He hadn’t been looking at the ghost as they talked. He’d been listening intently, but his eyes had been fixed on the device he was building. But he was looking now. 

The spirit had been a vague, mostly featureless blob for most of their conversation, but the more he’d recalled himself, the more he’d turned into something that actually resembled a person. 

He was clearly recognizable as Octavian now, with his cropped, stringy hair, his thin face and the stupid toga that was so large on his lean frame that he kind of looked like he’d wanted to dress up as a ghost for Halloween but forgotten his head was also supposed to go under the bed sheet.

Well, Leo supposed Octavian would have had a pretty easy time with that costume, even without the bed sheet toga. He was dead, after all.

There was something about Octavian that was different, though. 

The few times Leo had had the displeasure of seeing him in person or in visions, he’d had an insane glint in his eyes. His face had been screwed up in anger and distrust.

His expression was slack now, and he was looking past Leo, like he couldn’t make himself meet his eyes.

“I remember now. I remember what I was apologizing for,” Octavian said quietly. “And I don’t think sorry is going to cut it.”

“No shit.” Leo gritted his teeth. “You caused us so many problems on our quest to stop Gaia. You almost got everyone killed!”

“I was trying to keep New Rome safe,” Octavian said hesitantly. He had the decency to sound ashamed.

“Yeah, good fucking job on that one, buddy,” Leo shot back.

Octavian was silent for a long moment. Then, he made himself meet Leo’s eyes. He pulled a face like this action physically pained him.

“I should have heard you out,” he said. “I should have used my common sense and kept my focus on who our real enemy was. Instead, I just made things worse for all of us. Is that what you wanted to hear?” 

“I-” Leo blinked, momentarily taken aback. “Actually? Yeah, kind of.”

Silence stretched between them again.

“Would you hear me out?” Octavian finally asked.

“I’m sorry?” Leo was so baffled by this guy’s audacity that he momentarily forgot to be angry. “If you think anything you say will make me forgive you-” 

Octavian didn’t let him finish.

“I’m not. What I’ve done… I don’t deserve anyone’s forgiveness. I messed up too badly. I know I can never make things right.” Despite his tall frame, Octavian suddenly looked very small. 

Leo tried not to think about how much those words resonated with him—how often he’d had these same thoughts in regards to what had happened with his mom and Jason and everything that had gone wrong on every single quest he’d ever been on. He wasn’t going to start empathizing with Octavian of all people.

“So, what are you asking of me, exactly?”

“The same thing you asked of me.” Octavian spoke quietly—with none of the sway or power he’d had when he’d whipped the legion into a frenzy. “Allow me to stand trial. I won’t ask your forgiveness, but there are some things that I’d like for you to understand.”

At that point, a reasonable person would have gotten up and returned to walking across the plains of the Underworld for all of eternity. 

Leo didn’t need to listen to Octavian. He didn’t owe this guy anything.

The thing was, though: Leo had never been a reasonable person. He was stuck here anyway. He had absolutely zero idea how to solve his little Erebos problem at the moment. It wasn’t like he had anything better to do.

Besides, he was at least a little curious what Octavian was going to say, even if he fully assumed most of it would be bullshit.

“Fine. I think we can pretty safely say the verdict will be guilty based on the sheer amount of eye witnesses that you were a jerk to, but I’m feeling gracious, so I’ll humor you,” Leo said with a resigned sigh. “I can always resume hurling insults at you afterwards.”

“Thank you.” Octavian thought for a moment, like he was unsure which part of his tragic backstory to start with.

Leo rolled his eyes.

“Dude, get a move on.” He made an impatient gesture with his hands. “You may have all the time in the world, since you’re dead and all, but personally, I’d like to finish up here before I die of old age.”

Octavian glared at him, but then he lowered his head. 

“I will. Sorry,” he mumbled. “The thing I need you to understand is that a lot at Camp Jupiter has changed in the last few decades. My parents were around to witness our last Golden Age. The gods favored us. The legion was at the height of its power. Almost every quest was a success. No monster had breached the city limits of New Rome in a hundred years. It was a time of peace and prosperity.”

“Something went wrong,” Leo guessed. “In movie narration, if you’re told about how great and peaceful everything was, that is usually the part where things start going to shit.”

Octavian didn’t seem pleased about the interruption, but he accepted it without complaint. Leo would freely admit that seeing him grovel like that was at least a little funny.

“Yes,” Octavian confirmed. “Less than a year after my mother handed off the augur position and retired from the legion, the legion standard was lost in Alaska. Everything changed after that. The gods were angry. Auguries became harder to interpret. Missions got more dangerous.” He looked away. “That was the Camp Jupiter I grew up in. One where monsters regularly broke through our defenses and kids went off on quests they never came back from.”

Hearing that made Leo feel’s stomach churn. He remembered the traces he, Piper and Jason had found of Roman demigods on their first quest together—the son of Mercury the Cyclopes had supposedly eaten and the wrecked purple shirt Piper had found at Medea’s department store. That this might be a pattern hadn’t even occurred to him. 

He thought of Jason, and what growing up designated to be a leader would have been like under those circumstances. He’d been the first son of Jupiter in decades. The son of the god their camp was named after. Their first spark of hope that maybe the gods hadn’t completely abandoned them.

Leo had known that Jason had been under a lot of pressure growing up, but these circumstances upped the scope beyond anything he’d imagined.

Leo also thought of Reyna standing in the wreckage of New Rome, her eyes hollow. He thought of all the ways the gods were still failing their children.

“That’s awful.” It felt like way too small a word to encompass everything Leo was feeling right now. Quite frankly, he didn’t think any words would suffice. “What about the augur? The one who took over after your mom? I know it works differently than it does with our Oracle, and even she is vague as hell most of the time, but didn’t they at least issue a warning that something bad would happen if that quest to Alaska was authorized?”

It seemed wildly unfair that the gods or the Fates or whoever it was had decided to punish the whole camp for something no one had even told them not to do. 

Not that Leo had gotten the impression lately that anything about their lives was particularly fair.

“He did, actually.” Octavian sighed. “He predicted a lot of things. Most of them bad. All of them accurate. He tried to warn Michael Varus that the Prophecy of the Seven wasn’t his. But Michael was ambitious and stupid. He thought he was saving the world.” From the way Octavian was speaking, Leo was pretty sure he wasn’t just talking about Michael. “The augur’s name didn’t help, either.”

“His name?” Leo cocked his head in confusion. “What did that have to do with anything? Did he get stuck with a stupid nickname that made it impossible for people to take him seriously or something?”

Octavian shook his head. “His name was Cassander.”

“Cassander?” Leo blinked. “Like Cassandra of Troy? The one who was cursed to never have anyone believe her prophecies? Yikes.”

“Not how I would have put it, but yes. I’m surprised you know the story.” 

“Duh. I don’t think I’ll ever forget it. It was the most frustrating side plot in King of Sparta, hands down,” Leo said, enjoying the face Octavian pulled. Everything was too much. Jokes were the only thing that helped. “Don’t be like that. It’s a fun movie. Lots of shirtless guys in Greek war kilts. Very educational.”

After their quest to save Hera, Leo had made a bunch of jokes about how they absolutely had to watch King of Sparta now, since the Greek mythology knowledge Piper had gained from helping her dad research for the role was half the reason they were even still alive. They had to pay their respects! It was only fair!

Piper had been absolutely mortified whenever he’d brought it up, so Leo had eventually dropped the subject.

But the night before they’d arrived in New Rome, they’d all been bundles of nerves. Nobody had been able to sleep. 

That night, Piper had apparently decided she’d rather be mortified than think about all the ways the next day might go wrong. 

They’d put Hedge on guard duty—or, more accurately, Leo had put Festus on guard duty, and Hedge had insisted on joining “in case anything needed a good whack with a baseball bat”—and settled around the movie projector Leo had installed. 

Piper had even convinced Annabeth to take a short break from making sure everything was prepared for their arrival. Leo still had no clue how she’d pulled that one off.

Anyway, they’d spent the next two hours watching a retelling of the story of the Trojan War, featuring Piper’s dad as Menelaus, who fought relentlessly to bring home the wife that Paris and/or Aphrodite had abducted. (Piper’s mom probably got a major kick out of the fact that this was Tristan McLean’s most successful movie.)

Annabeth had spent the whole movie doing running commentary of every inaccuracy she could find, which had done a great deal to lift her mood. Leo had spent most of the run-time teasing Piper, and she’d spent the first fifteen minutes or so hiding her face in her hands, apparently regretting every life decision that had led up to this moment. But eventually she’d relaxed and been able to laugh along at the ridiculousness of the whole thing. 

Jason had been the only one to watch quietly. He’d obviously had a lot on his mind, but given the circumstances, he’d seemed surprisingly content to just sit next to Leo and watch him and Piper joke with each other.

That had been before Leo had colossally screwed everything up.

He looked back at Octavian. The other demigod was visibly struggling not to look annoyed that Leo had interrupted his monologue with movie chatter, but he let Leo get away with it. He hadn’t even protested.

“What I’m getting at,” Octavian said once he’d concluded Leo was paying attention again, “is that many of us were raised knowing we’d displeased the gods. My parents always said that we stopped following tradition as thoroughly as required, and that’s why they abandoned us. That the only thing we could do to restore Camp Jupiter’s old glory and keep everyone safe was to listen to the gods and return to honoring them like we used to. But Jason was destined to lead us, and he was always advocating for change, with no regard for our legacy. And then Reyna became praetor and started introducing all of these reforms, and things just kept getting worse—people deserting during the Titan war, Jason disappearing, then the conflict with Gaia. And then you Greeks showed up and tried to destroy New Rome. Everything seemed to point towards the fact that my parents had been right: that the people fighting for change were the problem. That they’d built bridges for our enemies to storm across and then left us to our doom. At the end, I was so angry and afraid that I couldn’t remember how to be anything else.” He gulped. “But my parents were wrong. I was wrong. I realize that now. Reyna and Jason… they improved things for so many people. Bad things happened during my lifetime because that’s the way the Fates spun their threads, but they would have been so much worse if it hadn’t been for them. You were all heroes, doing your best to save the world. All I managed to do was to almost screw it up. I know I can never make things right. But I still owe you an apology.”

“Oh.” Leo had to sit with those words for a moment—words that weren’t enough to fix anything, but that still made something shift in a fundamental way. “I… appreciate that, I guess.”

For the first time, Leo thought he saw Octavian exactly for who he was. This wasn’t some supervillain. He wasn’t Gaia or Caligula or any of the other ancient evils Leo and his friends had faced on their quests. Octavian was just some kid barely older than Leo who’d been furious and terrified and given a kind of power that no teenager had any business wielding.

Without that power, Octavian wasn’t dangerous. He was just kind of a jerk.

A jerk who’d spent almost a full year alone down here in the dark, losing his entire sense of self until he couldn’t even remember his own name.

Even considering all of the problems he’d caused them, that seemed kind of harsh.

“I’m not forgiving you for what happened,” Leo told him. “But I did mean what I said—I don’t really blame you for reacting badly to the fact that I fired those ballistae at your home. I mean, you were literally standing next to me when I started doing it. If the roles had been reversed, I don’t think I would have believed a word you said, either. And some of what happened after…” Leo trailed off. He thought back to the vision he’d had before they’d reached Bologna—Octavian standing in the middle of the destroyed camp, speaking in Gaia’s voice. “I wonder how big of a hand our friendly earth goddess had in it. I know from very sucky first-hand experience that she can really get into your head.”

“It doesn’t matter. I still gave orders that resulted in a ton of people getting hurt.”

“Yeah. You fucked up. But, like, realistically, what punishment do you want me to give you? A death sentence?” Leo gestured vaguely at his ghostly form. “That seems kind of redundant at this point. You’re already-” Then he froze. Something else slotted into place in his mind. “Wait. You’re dead.”

“I’ve noticed,” Octavian said dryly. “Why are you saying that like it’s news to you?”

Leo stuffed the mostly finished tennis ball cannon into his tool belt and got to his feet. He needed to get his thoughts sorted, and pacing helped—always had, ever since he’d been a child.

His mom had been the exact same way. Leo vividly remembered how much time she’d spent traipsing through the workshop muttering to herself, interrupted by brief periods of her frantically trying to get everything that was on her mind copied down onto a blueprint in a way that would still make sense to her later.

He felt that way now. He saw how all the pieces were coming together in his mind’s eye, but getting them sorted enough to actually make a coherent image out of it, especially one he could explain to someone else? That was a different story.

Still, he had to try.

“That part isn’t news to me, obviously. But I just realized something.” Leo’s mind was whirring, working overtime at such an intensity that his body temperature rose and steam started pouring from his ears like he was a stupid cartoon character. “Unlike me, you’re supposed to be going to the judgement pavilion. That’s the natural order of things. If that system stopped working, the entire Underworld would collapse.”

Octavian had assumed Leo’s inability to reach the walls was some sort of punishment. But Octavian wasn’t being punished. He’d said he’d gotten lost. Why would a ghost get lost? Erebos naturally drew them in.

Besides, there was no point in punishing a ghost out here. Punishment for those who deserved it was what the afterlife was for.

What had happened to Octavian didn’t make any sense. Not unless…

Leo remembered the wails he’d heard before Octavian had appeared next to him. 

Past these walls, all hope is lost.

Of course.

Leo snapped his fingers, which struck a spark that nearly set his shirt on fire. “I think you can help me.”

Octavian didn’t refuse. He didn’t protest. He simply asked, “what do you want me to do?”

“I need you to get over yourself.”

Octavian stared at him. “Could you perhaps find it in yourself to be a little more specific?”

“Yeah. Sorry.” Leo patted out a few sparks that were dancing in his curls. “You’re scared you’ll be sent into the Fields of Punishment, right? That’s why you got lost on your way to Erebos. You didn’t want to face the judges.”

Octavian looked away. “I’m not sure if it was something I consciously decided to do, but you’re probably right. I remember dying. I remember thinking I’d angered the gods. I lost the path. But how is knowing that helpful for you?”

“Whatever deity is messing with the environment, they’re obviously targeting me specifically. Hades just said he’d give me a shot, not that it had to be easy, so he isn’t preventing whatever this is. But surely he wouldn’t allow someone to stop all souls from reaching Erebos just to ruin my day. I cannot even begin to imagine the amount of chaos that would cause.” Leo was pacing laps around the stupid boulder. He felt like a tiger in a cage, itching to be let out. “So, let’s assume for a moment that a ghost were to head for the gates. The deity would have to let them through. And if I stuck close enough to said ghost…”

“…they’d have to let you pass, too.” 

Octavian’s eyes were wide. There was something like begrudging respect in his voice.

“Bingo.” Leo grinned. “Ergo: I need you to get over yourself and find the gates of Erebos for me.” He looked directly at Octavian. “You can’t fix everything you’ve done. You can’t even fix most things. But getting me to the judgement pavilion is something you can do. Something that would make a difference.”

Octavian nodded.

“I’ll try. For Jason’s sake and yours.” He moved to stand beside Leo. His voice was trembling a little. “But I don’t know if I’ll manage it. Like I said, I don’t think getting lost was something I consciously decided to do. I was afraid. I can’t just decide not to be afraid anymore. That’s not really how it works.”

“I know it’s not,” Leo told him. “But I don’t think you have to completely stop being scared. Everyone’s bound to be at least a little scared when they’re dead. You just can’t let it paralyze you.”

“I guess that makes sense.” Octavian floated in front of him, hesitating for a moment before he picked a direction. He was obviously nervous.

Leo would have suggested a breathing exercise, but considering he was talking to a dead person, that seemed kind of insensitive.

“If it helps: there’s no way in hell you’ll actually be sent into the Fields of Punishment,” he said instead.

Octavian stared at him. “But-”

“I don’t think people who are intended for the Fields of Punishment would be able to just slip away like this. The Furies would never let that happen. Besides, if that was how it worked, this place would be overrun with evil ghosts. But most of the ones I heard… they just seem really sad,” Leo explained. “The Fields of Punishment are where the worst of humanity is sent. I don’t think stupid kids who got manipulated by evil earth goddesses count. Not even if they’re complete jerks.”

“I guess I have no choice but to hope you’re right.”

Octavian seemed slightly more relaxed now. He was moving, if nothing else. That was progress. Leo followed closely behind him—unsure if his Underworld tour guide had a single clue where they were headed, but still willing to give this a shot. 

So much for his promise to Nico not to make pacts with vengeful ghosts. 

“Of course I’m right,” Leo said with a grin. “Not to brag, but I’m a total genius. Being right is kind of my thing.” 

“What if I can’t find the way?” Octavian asked. He was moving slowly. It was obvious that he was not convinced he’d picked the right direction. “What if there’s always going to be a part of me that won’t be ready to face what’s ahead and it prevents us from ever reaching Erebos?”

“You’ve been here for, what, almost eleven months? And you still aren’t ready to get out of here? I’m surprised you lasted this long, honestly. I felt ready to leave after, like, an hour.” Leo shook his head. “Listen, I can’t promise that the Fields of Asphodel are going to be great. Percy’s sales pitch on the place was pretty dismal, to be honest. But if your choice is between staying here and going into Asphodel, choosing to stay here is just stupid. This place sucks ass. It’s basically just Asphodel, solitary confinement edition.” Leo hadn’t even been here that long, and this gloomy hellscape had still left him so desperately wishing for literally anyone’s company that he would have settled for arguing with his ex. No wonder all the souls here were weeping. “You’re gonna have to find a way to deal with your regrets either way. There’s no need for you to punish yourself with loneliness on top of that.”

Octavian was quiet for a long time, but his steps (could they be called steps if he was a ghost?) grew steadier after that. 

“I guess it always just felt… safer, staying here. It wasn’t good, but at least it was familiar. I don’t know what it will be like past the walls.”

“I don’t know, dude. If the familiar option is to stay miserable forever, trying something else might be worth the risk,” Leo pointed out. “It’s fine if you let your fear slow you down a little. Just keep moving. Don’t overthink it.” He grinned. “And hey, if thinking about something else would help, I would not complain about a few more stories I can embarrass Jason with.”

“Okay.” Octavian nodded. “I suppose that’s something I can do.”

Leo wasn’t sure how long he spent following Octavian. He felt like time was still moving strangely, but he was too nervous to check his watch again. He had no idea what he would do if this didn’t work.

To Leo’s delight, he did get a few more Jason stories out of it. Tales of the Jason from before that he had never gotten to meet.

Of a slightly feral toddler with strange eating habits who seemed more comfortable hanging around the legion teenagers than any of the adults who tried to foster him. Of a child that had been taught rules and discipline and was generally well-behaved but fought like a wolf, using everything he had including his teeth. Of a serious, stone-faced teenager who grew from a spark of hope into a fire, leading one successful mission after another. 

Leo wished he’d known him back then. Camp Jupiter’s Jason sounded like he’d been in desperate need of some corrupting.

After a while spent on stories, and after even more awkward hesitation, Octavian asked about the relationship between camps. “Did they ever properly make peace, or did I mess up any real chance we had at that?”

“We’re good now. It took a lot of work, from what I was told. They were up against millennia of hatred—way beyond the scope of the conflict you caused. But Annabeth has never met a problem she couldn’t solve, Reyna has never backed down from a challenge in her life, and Piper smoothed over the few fights that did break out. I wasn’t around for it, but I figure they got things sorted in, like, a week, tops.” Leo smiled. “Percy and Annabeth actually decided to go to NRU for college. We don’t really have a New Athens or anything comparable, so I feel like New Rome might have to put up with a few more Greek demigods going forward.”

“I’m glad.” Octavian lifted his head, gazing straight ahead. “I think I’m ready now. I’ll face whatever afterlife the judges of the Underworld deem right for me. I’ve spent enough of my life being a coward.” 

It was a good declaration. Really solid. The Underworld seemed to think so, too, because suddenly, the mist around them cleared and Leo walked face-first into the walls of Erebos.