madness and ecstasy // leo valdez

-intermission-

sorry the update's late lovelies, I was off seeing Melanie Martinez live [it was orgasmic]

<3

They appeared on the hillside overlooking the River Acheron. The sun was just rising, making the water glitter and the clouds glow orange. The cool morning air smelled of honeysuckle and everything was very out of place. Not physically, it was just that odd too early in the morning to be up sort of time.

Leo looked around, his stomach rolling. It was like coming out of the cinemas to find it was bright outside.

Then Hazel shuffled out of the way so he could once again vomit his guts up behind a mossy boulder. He heaved for a second, and wiped away the tears in his eyes, then crawled back to the unorganised circle of exhausted demigods to collapse between Piper and Teqi.

Teqi.

Leo reached out and scooped her up in his shaky arms as Piper began giggling deliriously and Frank dug an arrow out of his shoulder like it was only a splinter.

She was still asleep, but Leo wasn't worried, he imagined it would take a while for her body to connect with what was left of her brain and then realise that she needed to eat something. Besides, Percy was still out cold, and Annabeth was only just waking up now, but judging by the sheen over her pale skin and the fact Jason was feeding her nectar, she wouldn't be up for long.

Leo looked around at his friends. Nico was squinting against the sun, Hazel on his other side grimacing at the sounds coming from Frank's shoulder as he pulled something else out. Percy was using Pipers legs as a pillow, not that he knew that. Leo grinned. He buried his face in Teqi's hair.

It was gross. They were alive. He wanted to live in this moment forever.

The Argo II still floated over the river a few hundred yards away. It was beautiful. Leo tilted his head to the sky and clutched Teqi and watched the sun rise over the world they were still in.

He vaguely knew that they should signal Coach Hedge and tell him they were alive. Had they been in the temple all night? Or several nights? Leo knew for a fact that Teqi and Percy and Annabeth had been in Tartarus for weeks, but judging from the letters they sent, they didn't know that. There was a lot of things to discuss, hopefully not Leo's meltdown, or, explosion, but at the moment, the group was too tired to do anything except sit and marvel at the fact that they were okay.

Piper coughed, and Leo brought a hand to his throat. His voice hadn't gone back to normal. He'd try some more ambrosia later, but he doubted it would help much. Hopefully Teqi wouldn't mind.

At that thought, he remembered that his girlfriend [!!!] would need to be alive to find his voice incredibly attractive, so he pulled some bandages and gauze out of his toolbelt and shuffled her torso onto Jason's lap so he could begin stopping the trickles of blood running down her legs. She was gonna be so mad that her jeans were ruined.

Piper picked up a ladybug from the grass they were on. She watched it crawl along her pinkie finger. "You know what I need?"

"Cookie dough?" Jason asked.

"How did you know?" Piper muttered, completely serious. She let the spotty bug crawl onto Percy's nose. "Cookie dough, and a day off."

Frank snorted, "I doubt we'll get a day off."

"You certainly won't, Praetor Zhang," Jason said proudly, and ran his hand through his hair. It stuck up stupidly, thick with golden dust and blood.