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Leo wants to go home.
Leo wants a normal life and normal parents and to just be some snot-nosed senior throwing eggs at his Principal’s car, laughing with friends who are also normal with normal parents and normal houses and cars and they don’t think about their death all day, every day and how no matter how much Leo builds, or how far he runs, he will always lose the people he loves. He can’t fight that shitty universal constant. People die, and half-god children die even faster than that. It’s in their blood, to die dumb deaths or get mauled by some snake creature while in a Macys.
Leo wants a home, more than a Summer Camp where he died and where he’s always reminded you are not normal, you will die soon, and Leo can’t fight it. More than a city ruled over by teenagers in the Bay Area and built on the bones of child soldiers. More than some nebulous concept of home that Leo can barely remember now, more than this, more than sitting here in the dark, waiting for his bones to sink into the hard, dry ground.
It smells like cut grass and humid night air, slightly bitter from Houston’s air pollution. Harsh streetlights cast orange light down from the street a good few feet away from Leo, their light barely reaching over here, completely blocking anyone’s chance at seeing the night sky. Leo never got too attached to the stars while living in Houston, mostly because they were impossible to see from his apartment, but Mamá would point them out anyways, tracing the constellations from their bathroom window with a weathered finger. It’s familiar in a way that aches, so much so Leo feels like he’s about to explode, maybe even literally. Taking this entire street block with him in a bright inferno, a bustling street one minute, a barren wasteland the next, which makes his chest twinge. Plenty of people here have never met him, and will never meet him, and they don’t deserve to be hurt by Leo and his temper tantrums.
He sighs, wrapping his arms his legs, balancing his chin on the loose fabric of his sweatpants. He almost wants to apologize for the way he’s dressed- black sweats, a light grey t-shirt, and a denim jacket he pilfered from Piper. The sweats are stained with work and food and Leo feels- improper. He fiddles with the sleeve of the jacket to keep himself from trying to wipe the crusted oil stain on his knee away.
Home, home, home- Leo thought it would feel different, coming back here.
Home, for Leo, for the longest time, was his mom. Even when she was dead, the memory of her was where Leo felt safest, in his own head, pretending he could just run back to her, that if he closed his eyes tight enough he’d wake back up in the apartment and it would be like Leo had never done anything wrong, that his sins had been absolved and he hadn’t burnt his own mom to death.
From crumbling and crowded group homes to foster parents who smiled too wide or didn’t care where 10-year-old Leo ran off to or decided Leo was the perfect shape for a punching bag- Leo held that hope that if he ran far enough, he’d run right back around to his mom. That all the pain and marrow-deep loneliness would make Leo worthy of his Mom again. That, sure, while everything objectively, sucked sweet ass, that Leo was going through this for a reason, and that he would be rewarded when it all ended.
But absolution doesn’t work on the children of gods and Leo’s only chance at a normal life burned when Gaia found him in his that staff-room, along with his mom and all the things he ever associated with home. Her smell and her favorite jacket, the way she belly-laughed at his attempts at jokes, her eyes, and the way she knew exactly how to hold him.
Leo wants to say he came here to get closure, or that he’s doing better- he’s not, and maybe that means he is doing better, but Leo is so far deep into this hole he’s dug himself into that he can’t imagine ever reaching the top. Leo has existed at the far end of a parabola for so long he can’t remember what it’s like at the top. As if it's a really bad rollercoaster ride that Leo was forced on at gunpoint, and has been stuck at the bottom of a loop-de-loop for nearly 9 years.
He digs his worn old workboots into the dirt as if trying to center himself, or make sure he didn’t run off
His mom’s grave is well kept, considering Leo hasn’t been here since the funeral. Swept and polished, there are even fresh flowers- probably Rosa. She hated Leo’s guts, but she loved her sister more than anything. Maybe she knew what Leo was, maybe she knew that Leo being here meant Esperanza was all but marked for execution- maybe, maybe, maybe, Leo hasn’t been able to get a straight answer out of his Tía in all the years he’s known her, and Leo suspects that Tía Rose will go to the grave without giving Leo the time of day.
The flowers are yellow bells because of course they are. Abuela used to tell Leo that that’s where she got Esperanza’s name from, that Abuelo used to see them growing in their neighbor's backyard in the summer Esperanza was born, and that they were her flowers. So, they named her after them.
Leo’s full name, Emilio, comes from the word to imitate. Leo’s imitated actions and people since he was born, knowing when to laugh and when to mock, when to play to his audience and when to step back, when to pull up a joke he heard somewhere else and when to imitate the other boys in the group homes when they brought out magazines like Playboy, imitating their big eyes and crude jokes.
Leo is a very good mirror. He is everything you expect him to be, nothing unusual, nothing to draw undue attention, he is Nobody.
He hasn’t said anything to her since coming into the graveyard. It’s 1 am and he’s sitting alone in a graveyard, shit, this thing seems way more up Di Angelo’s creepy alley than it does his. Leo is decidedly uncreepy. He doesn’t want to be edging in on Nico’s thing, kid’s got the whole ‘ i-am-evil-and-alone-and-creepy’ down pat.
He can hear dogs howling and the faint sounds of voices and civilization behind him, but no one is coming in here, and even if they did, Leo doesn’t think anyone is going to recognize a dead woman’s son from 9 years ago.
He wants to say something to her. To explain, to apologize, to ask her if she knew what she was risking by keeping him and loving him, if her putting her life on the line was her choice, or just another instance of a god deciding he knew best. Leo wants it to be the former, but he’ll never know.
“Uh, hey,” he says, and know he feels stupid. He knows his mother is in the underworld, somewhere, or her idea of the afterlife, but she surely isn’t here. All that’s here is a gravestone and what they could find from the fire.
They had a closed-casket funeral, Leo remembers and feels bile burn its way up his throat.
“I just- wanted to say...sorry? I guess? I know this is dumb and I know you aren’t listening, but I’m sorry if you are listening,” he rushes out, eyes focused on the ground, “I don’t know if you know what I am, or what you were signing up for, but I got you killed in the end and I’m sorry. I wish it had been different. I wish I could’ve stayed with you”
His eyes burn and Leo blames it on the cool air settling around him. He swallows rough;y, tapping out i-love-you and sorry-sorry-sorry on where he has his hands wrapped. “So, by the way,” and he forces a smile, “I’m a demigod- like, Hercules kind of shit! Turns out dad was a greek god? Freaky as hell” and Leo can almost imagine his mom admonishing his use of language, but grinning, all the same, encouraging him to continue his story.
“Yeah, crazy, right? He’s Hephaestus, god of like, forges and fire. Building stuff, basically. He’s super cranky and weird, what the hell did you see in him? Was he pretending to be rich or something mamá?”
He sees her frown, and she begins to tell him that looks are not everything Emilio Samuel Valdez, and he should be more respectful! At least when talking about people as nice as his Father. Now Rosa? Make fun of her all you want, mijo, she needs a peg or two removed.
She laughs and Leo almost wants to grin too, half-remembering the way she laughed, like everything he said was the funniest thing she had ever heard.
He tells her about his quests, about Camp Half-Blood and his siblings, about Festus and how amazing he is, and Hazel and Bisabuelo Sammy, about the War and his Argo and, most importantly, he tells her about Piper and-
“Oh, man, now Jason, mamá, you’d love him. He’s clueless as all hell but sweet, yknow?” and Leo feels a smile pull itself across his face, a real smile, “Dumb as all get out and acts like he has to be the fun police, don’t worry, I’m working on it, not to mention he’s so responsible and boring. Like a tiny lawyer who was raised by wolves,” Leo sighs, looking up slightly just to the left, imagining Jason, all tucked away and safe back in New York. “He’s- yeah. Turns out my interest in Finn from 2nd grade was not purely based on his sick Pokémon card collection, if you catch my drift here”
For a sickening moment, all Leo can think what would she think of- me?
The fire, the weird godly shit, that’s all fucking weird, but the whole...gay thing? Leo doesn’t know how his mom felt about that. Leo doesn’t know that if his mom was still around, would she gush over his crushes with him even if they were on guys instead of girls? Would she still want him around?
Leo imagines getting to keep his mamá and his home, but fucking it all up because he was gay. It sounds terrible enough to have come true if Leo’s life went another way. Leo can almost imagine it, ‘ Well mom, not only am I the bastard spawn of a god and monsters want to eat my internal organs like hors d'oeuvres, but I am also into men! Good luck dealing with that!’.
Leo comes back to his senses, as much as he can. Leo’s mom is dead, and her thoughts have no impact on who Leo dates or likes.
Leo likes to imagine she would have been cool with it. That she would have taken it in stride and then immediately turned around and asked ‘ so, mi hijo, any nice boys around I should be worried about?’ and grin as if she already knew all his secrets.
“He’s my boyfriend, Jason, that is,” and it feels nice to say, even just to the empty air and dead graveyard. He’s not in the habit of introducing Jason as his boyfriend, but it feels...really nice. To have a claim over Jason like that. Jason is his boyfriend and Leo is his. Mutually Assured Possession. “He’s a loser, but he’s also like 6’1 and has an alright face” Leo lies because even admitting to himself how much he lo- cares, cares about Jason is difficult. “I think you guys would get along, even if it was just to make fun of me together”
In an alternate universe, Leo can see himself bringing Jason over to meet his mom, blushing and bumbling through dinner with them while Esperanza prodded and probed and Jason held Leo’s hand under the table, as they do now sometimes, fingers interlaced, as if to make sure the other didn’t disappear all of a sudden. Which, considering their joint record of dying when the other was in danger or missing, wasn’t an unfounded fear.
It makes him ache, for a home he never had. For something, he could have had, if the world was kinder.
But it isn’t, and Leo has to make do with what he has. No point trying to build something with parts you’ll never have. That’s a recipe for destruction.
He spends all night there, just talking until his voice is hoarse and he can feel the urge to sleep creep upon him. The sun is starting to break over the distant horizon when he feels the air pressure drop slightly, the shadows elongate, and the faint feeling of two other people.
Jason is here, traveling by Di Angelo Express.
Leo’s been having nightmares all week. Hasn’t slept more than an hour every night. Jason’s noticed- fuck, Drew noticed. Leo looked better dead, but the nightmares kept coming, terrible visions of fire and death, both his Mom’s and his own, the image of people burning alive during the Great Fire of London, the feeling of his own fire eating him from the inside out. The smell of smoke and the way he watched firefighters battle the blaze in the workshop while he lay on that stretcher.
The smell of incense during his mother’s funeral. The way his aunt screamed ‘demon! diablo! he brings hellfire wherever he goes! murderer!’ as she tried to attack him, hands flying, her eyes alight with vicious passion.
He sees his mother burn whenever he closes his eyes, her skin burning and peeling to reveal pink-reddish muscle, her thick, dark beautiful hair catching alight, her brown eyes boiling inside her own skull because of his own powers-
He came here to apologize, to make it right somehow, just so he could sleep some more, just so he could stop seeing it all, again and again.
Jason walks silently up to him, Nico staying behind. The grass crunches under his shoes until he standing on Leo’s right. Leo keeps his eyes trained on the words engraved on his mother’s headstone
Esperanza Magdelena Joan Valdez
Daughter, Sister, Mother, and Engineer
1973- 2002
Simple. She would’ve liked that. Especially the Engineer part. Making sure her hard work was recognized, even in death.
She was 29. That’s young, even for a mortal. She was 21 when she had Leo, nearly 22.
“Hey,” Leo says, and he doesn’t even have the energy to be surprised at the raspiness of his own voice. Jason sits down beside him, not looking at him, but instead at the gravestone. Jason knows who this belongs to, but he doesn’t say anything, instead offering a hoodie. He blinks owlishly at it for a few seconds, before sluggishly taking it, slipping off his jacket to shuffle into the dark blue hoodie. It smells like Jason, pinewood, and camp soap.
“Did you fly Festus all the way out here?” Jason asks, looking down at Leo. Leo nods and Jason just hums, back to looking at the gravestone. “Did you talk to her?” and Leo doesn’t know how to say this wasn’t talking, this was a confessional, but nods anyway, leaning up against Jason’s shoulder, just a bit. Jason seems to mull over something and Leo wants to joke about not hurting himself with how hard he’s thinking, but Leo’s just so damn tired that, for once, he keeps his mouth shut.
Finally, Jason asks, carefully, “Did it help?”
Leo shrugs because he honestly doesn’t know. Leo will never have answers to a lot of the questions he has for his mother, and that is never going to change, but maybe all this talking might have helped.
Huh, okay. Maybe there is some truth to this shrink shit Piper and Nico talk about. Both him and Jason are... averse to the idea, Leo because he’s had shrinks before and they didn’t do anything, and Jason because he doesn’t trust medical professionals (some wolf-mom holdover thing) but Leo might have to give it a try sometime.
They sit like that for a few more minutes as Apollo begins his race across the sky, the streets around them coming alive with the morning commute. It’s so familiar because Leo can remember doing that with his mom- he can remember his mom and him walking past this dumb fucking graveyard all the time when she walked him to daycare or school.
Why did he have to lose that?
He turns more into Jason, as if he’s trying to hide from his own burning eyes and Jason just pulls him closer, balancing his chin on the top of Leo’s curls, rubbing his thumb over his shoulder in a soothing motion.
Leo surprises himself by asking “Can we go home?” and Leo hasn’t asked this question in a very, very long time. Home was his apartment in Gulfton and his mamá’s favorite sweater, her hands, and smile and washing detergent. That was home.
Home now wasn’t Camp or New Rome or the Waystation. It was Jason’s eyes and hands and hoodies and the way his hand felt in Leo’s, his dry humor and crooked glasses Leo kept having to fix because Jason keeps sitting on them, his bright eyes and that dumb scar on his lip, and how he smelled like he had just run through a forest most days, how he is content with just watching Leo work for days on end, never forcing Leo to talk but always there if Leo wanted silent companionship. The way he laughs when Leo makes a joke low enough that Jason knew it was just between the two of them-
Home will never be his mom or Houston ever again, he relents as Jason helps him to stand. That’s passed and Leo can never get that back, but he has Jason, and he has Piper and his siblings and Jo and Emmie and sometimes, Nico, Hazel, and Calypso, when they feel like it. Leo has people who won’t leave him, and that’s enough most days.
He’ll never move on from what happened in that workshop, but he can keep going. He won’t rot here if he has a choice in it.
And, he notes, almost smiling as Nico grabs Festus suitcase and Leo leans so heavily against Jason that Jason is basically just holding him up now, gripping both Nico and Leo as the shadows swallow them up, Leo feels like he could probably sleep forever when he gets back to Camp.