madness and ecstasy // leo valdez

-skydiving-

Leo held the wheel, his knuckles white.

He pressed the green button with the chip on it from that one-time Ginny had thrown a surprisingly solid teddy at the control board, hoping it would stop them all from leaving. The green button pulled up the faulty rope ladder.

It pulled up Hazel, who was holding her brother tightly, her hands bleeding and her cheeks wet with tears. She collapsed as Frank pulled her over the side.  It pulled up Nico, who's eyes were disturbingly vacant. He slumped, watching the sky, not blinking once. Then his shoulders started to shake.

It didn't pull up Percy and Annabeth. They were gone, down in the dark hole, webs and vines snapping as they fell, according to a sobbing Hazel.

It didn't pull up Teqi.

Someone was yelling and swearing words Leo hadn't even heard before. Someone pulled up the grappling lines carrying the stature below them, securing it through their tears. Someone growled. Maybe that was the leopard though. Leo's hands let the controls do their own thing, he didn't really care.

Instead, he ran below deck, and grabbed one of the backpacks full of supplies from the hooks on the back of the kitchen door. He stopped when Piper began yelling at him for some reason, waving her hands. He grabbed her shoulder, squeezing it tightly.

"Do you remember when I showed you how to talk to Festus, with the translator mic on the compartments lever?" Leo asked her slowly, hoping she was taking in his words. "You can use that, okay? Festus will know how to load the Athena Parthenos into the stables. I've set the location to take you to the nearest park."

"Wh- what?" Piper shrieked; her colorful eyes shiny. Then they widened, and she was scrambling after Leo, yelling his name and reaching for the backpack he was holding.

She didn't get to him in time though, and he leapt over the side without a problem.

The only problem, apart from the wind whipping his face and the ice-cold feeling throughout all of him and the fact he couldn't see very well was the one thing he could see. Which was the cavern closing up as he fell towards the black hole of a drop. He could make it, definitely.

It was too hard to see exactly what was around him, he only knew the cold and the tightness in his chest that wasn't from what was there but was from what wasn't there.

Then he was yanked to a standstill in the air, as if he had released a parachute.

His breath caught, squeezed out of his lungs by the arms wrapped around him. It was disorientating, really. He couldn't concentrate, whatever it was pulling him downwards was being fought back against.

His voice was stolen by the wind, but Leo was still yelling and thrashing, the backpack in his tight grip falling where he should've been falling. He yanked at his friend's arms, telling him to let go and let him fall because he couldn't leave her down there. The opening in the ground got smaller, but it wasn't just because he was being flown upwards, it was shrinking, the cavern disappearing and the whole scene becoming a mess of police and crushed cars and a normal sinkhole that they couldn't fall into anymore.

"No- no! let me go-" Leo screamed, but there was nowhere to go. The cold of the air was replaced with the steam of his tears and the shoulder of Jason, who landed with a thud on the back of the ship.

Jason held him tightly, and they were both shaking against each other, their tear's mixing together. Jason's voice was croaky and raw with pain in the way Leo's would've been if he had kept yelling, but he couldn't speak around the lump in his throat and the pain in his body. "...Not letting it take you too."

"We'll get them back," Piper said sternly.

Leo could hardly see through the steam wafting from his eyes, but when he could, there was something there he hadn't seen before. An anger that wasn't raw like the pain in his chest, but cold like the pit he had tried to fall into.

She dropped to her knees next to them, her shoulders stiff as Jason held them, and her tears were gone. "We have to get her back."

"She took em," Leo mumbled vacantly. His gaze didn't move from a spot on the horizon. He couldn't believe how naive he had been, but then again, it was easy, because he hadn't got them all out of that chasm as quickly as he could and he hadn't gone back for them and he hadn't burned the webs clinging to Annabeth and he could've changed it but he didn't.

"Who?"

"Nemesis. I should've listened..."

The goddess had promised an eye for an eye. An answer when he needed it most for an eye, but that wasn't what the answer was worth. It was worth so much more than an eye, or both eyes even.

It was worth everything he had. 

This was the last chapter thanks to y'all that stayed and read up to this point holy crap we're literally halfway through the series!!!

And we're gonna take like, a few days break bcs imma be heavily editing the first maybe ten chapters because they're pretty old and shitty written so come back next Saturday for the intro chapter love y'all 

<3