madness and ecstasy // leo valdez

-a boat of bitches-

Leo scrubbed at his hair with towel. Someone had drawn a smiley face on the corner. The only reason he didn't just light himself up like normal, being he didn't really feel like blowing up the Argo II and everyone inside it.

He sat on the end of the uncomfortable fold out bed and glared at the curls hanging in his vision. He needed a haircut. He just didn't trust Piper with scissors.

It was Teqi's bed, obviously. The other two were filled as well. An especially vicious hellhound was digesting most of Frank's thigh, and now he had to stay in bed or slither around as a bandaged snake until they figured out how to grow his muscles and veins back or something. Franks muscles and veins. Not the hellhounds.

He was asleep now though, drugged up on painkillers and everything else Annabeth could dig out of the storage boxes to help.

Percy was in the other one, pretending to eat one of the sandwiches Hazel had made everyone for breakfast. Leo didn't bug him about it, he figured it'd probably take the three of them a while to adjust to normal food instead of blueberry muffins and fire.

And also to, you know... not being in Tartarus.

Teqi had gone back to normal. Normal meaning she was asleep.

Leo stayed next to her anyway, because gods help everyone if she woke up and he wasn't there. He wasn't about to leave her again. Ever.

She would have to file a restraining order to make him go away. Or she could ask. He wasn't about to become a stalker or anything, but he hoped she wouldn't. She'd probably be arrested before she could get through the doors to sue him anyway, to tell the truth.

He also hoped that when Teqi woke up, which she would, she would remember him.

The thought had occurred to him when he explained to Annabeth what had happened while they were unconscious on the floor of the burnt-up cavern.

How Dionysus had come and healed her, or at least that's what the demigods put together from his muttering. It certainly wouldn't be a surprise for a god to ruin someone's life or take their memory for what they claimed was the greater good.

But then again, he figured all of Olympus would have to be pretty wary of angering the crew of the Argo II now.

Hazel could reshape reality. Frank was ordering around Roman armies of the dead when he wasn't complaining that having a walking stick would be extremely uncool. Leo's fire had become a weapon of mass destruction that he had a concerningly loose grip of control on because he missed his girlfriend.

Piper and Jason hadn't discovered any new strengths, but Leo could tell with one look that they'd discovered something.

Bitterness.

Everyone aboard the ship docked at the secluded edges of the island was bitter.

The demigods were being pushed to the edges of their patience and that was fairly obvious when nothing was being burned at mealtime and glares were sent to the statue of Athena once she had been unloaded off the Argo II and onto grey-ish green stone covered bluffs of the island.

Percy and Annabeth had gotten through Tartarus without ichor in their blood streams to help, and now they were just expected to just... get on with it, continue to Greece, save the world.

All in a day's work.

Right?

Leo didn't even want to think about what Teqi was feeling. Or would feel, when she woke up. Because she would. Leo smiled down at her. She would.