Of Greeks And Romans (Leo Valdez x Reader)

LXIX

You

The giant’s words kept playing in my mind on repeat. Then, I was back in that moment before everything fell apart.

The giant faced towards me. "You foolish girl," he said with a growl. "Mother isn't going to be happy with you joining the enemy."

"No," I said back. "I was never on her side. I never joined the enemy, I always was the enemy. I have already killed two of your brothers. You will be next." I had been so confident at the words. My silver sword was pointed so steadily. Where had it all gone wrong?

The giant only seemed to laugh. "I never thought you truly forgot. But it seems you have. Don't you remember, all those years you fought against the gods with us during the original giant war?"

I shook my head, I remembered the story of Andromeda from the Amazons. A goddess stripped of her powers and banished, but that was not me. "You have me mistaken with someone else. I am not Andromeda."

Polybotes grinned, the kind of grin that sent shivers up your spine. "I wasn't there to witness when your powers were stripped from you, your memory wiped, and sent somewhere no one would ever find you again. But, I remember when that news came crawling down to tartarus after we lost the first war."

The giant had been so confident, carefully planting that seed of doubt in my mind.

"And don't think I've forgotten about you, son of Neptune." The giant snapped his gaze in Percy’s direction, and mine followed only to see him get picked up by that gorgon Sthenos.

I snapped my head back towards the giant, the grip on my sword less sure.

The giant grinned. "I see you considering it. The fact that I'm right. Haven't you ever wondered why all that power called to you? Why it always felt like you belonged in this world."

He was right, of course. Those thoughts had come into my mind more than once. I wasn't sure if it had just been so long since I had been home, but it was starting to feel less and less like home. I wasn't sure I'd even want to go back home if the opportunity arose.

"You can't be right. I remember growing up with my parents, my siblings. I was never adopted."

"Is that what they told you?" He grinned as the earth started to shift. Gaea was here, taunting me even as we spoke. "Here it from your father himself. If you would even call him that."

The earth shifted until a face was looking back up at me. I had expected Gaea's face, but this time, it was my own father.

"Dad?" I whispered, that desire to drop everything and run into his arms just barely held back by Polybotes’s unpleasant gaze. But he wasn't even here.

"I'm alright, Y/n. They let me go home. With your mother too. They brought her back, somehow."

I tear of relief fell from my face. With the Doors of Death open, of course, they could do that. And if they really were sent home, maybe death wouldn't look to reclaim their lives. "I don't understand, Dad. Why am I like this."

My dad sighed, his dirt face shifting. "Me and your mother should have told you a long time ago. It was all just so confusing that we forgot. You were just a child when we found you at the front door. Something must have come over for us to bring you into our home and raise you as our own. It was as if you were always ours, as if some spell had been cast on us."

My hand started shaking, and I gripped onto the yellow stone I kept in my pocket. That sweet power pulled me in. Andromeda's power, my own power. Banished, stripped of memory and power, a goddess reduced to the form of a child... of course, what else would she do but find a home and use the last remains of her power to start over again.