𝙄𝙉𝙁𝙇𝘼𝙈𝙀𝘿; heroes of olympus

kindness

LEO VALDEZ
LEO had seen better days, and that wasn't just because his girlfriend was probably dying as he spoke.

No, she wasn't the whole problem. More like just eighty percent of it.

Well, she wasn't the problem at all. Her predicament was the problem. Everything about their relationship was avidly and definitely the damn problem right now.

Leo was so frustrated with his life he wanted to scream until his head fell off of his shoulders and rolled away.

He was miserable, and his misery played on a loop in his head.

The first thing: Erith, Erith, Erith. Erith, twenty minutes before she fell, the feel of her skin on his. Erith, descending the rope ladder without a second thought. Erith, glancing at him as Annabeth told her story, her gaze flutteringly intense.

And the story Nico, Hazel, and Annabeth told when they got back on the ship. They had barely survived―only minutes after Erith and Percy had fallen, the floor had completely given way. Annabeth had been the last one on the ladder, and Leo was sure she would've fallen had Nico not grabbed her hand and looked at her with those dead eyes.

He had said please. Just one word, and Leo only knew because he could hear both of them muttering it under their breath. Well, Nico muttered it under his breath. Leo took watch with the kid a lot of the time, and even though di Angelo thought he was quiet, he wasn't nearly quiet enough for Leo, whose ears were surprisingly keen for working with clanging metal.

Annabeth, on the other hand, sobbed. She sobbed a lot of words over and over, but please was one of them. And she only sobbed in her cabin, and the walls weren't extremely magical or anything, so he could hear her sobbing, which was one reason why he was currently wrestling with the giant Athena statue.

Because there was only so much sobbing he could hear before he was suddenly going to start sobbing, too.

He hadn't cried since Erith had fallen. It had been embarrassing, honestly, the way he just broke down. She was just a girl. This was a stupid teenage relationship, and it probably hadn't even been on its way to last, seeing how things had been going.

But he cared for her. He hated himself for not running. He wished he could run now, but he was stuck on a ship in the middle of nowhere and now that his grief had caught up, it was strangling him.

When the word please got to be too much, Leo mustered his fears and talked to Nico di Angelo, because surely the son of Hades couldn't be worse than his grief. And he wasn't. He just looked at him with those same dead eyes that he had looked at Annabeth with and said, "That's what I told her when she wouldn't get on the ship."

Leo had wanted to leave then, because Nico's tone was so cold, and he wasn't used to cold. But he had to ask it, even though it felt like something had crawled into his throat and was choking him.

It was only three words, but it felt like a mile.

"Is she alive?"

Maybe he should've asked about Percy, too, but the guy had never been fond of him. He hadn't spared him nearly as many thoughts as he had Erith.

Nico gave him a wry smile, as if he had been expecting the question. His skin was horribly pale. His cheekbones jutted out of his face.