You'll Learn to Love Me (Leo Valdez x OC)

Chapter 54: Monkey-Dwarves Are Not Laylana's Thing Either

Laylana was partly happy, partly sad, that her and Leo had designed the screens in the mess hall to show Camp Half-Blood in real time. She never thought she'd admit it, but she missed being at camp. Despite all the memories it held, she missed being there with her friends. She missed the activities, and their capture-the-flag nights. But as everything started to go downhill, she couldn't look at the screens.

The scenes from back home – the campfire sing-alongs, dinners at the pavilion, volleyball games outside the Big House – just seemed to make everyone sad. The further they got from Long Island, the worse it got. She couldn't bear to see everybody enjoying their time, having no idea what was going on here with them. It got worse after the time changes started happening too, and most of the time they couldn't see anything happening at camp considering it was the middle of the night there while they were in Italy. Moonlight glittered on the waves of Long Island Sound. 

Laylana wished she was back there. The campfire sing-alongs she'd take part in with Will, the building she'd do with Leo's siblings Jake, Nyssa and Harley, swimming in the lake with Percy while Annabeth watched the two fight from the dock, the sparring with Clarisse that almost always had ended with the two of them in the infirmary... But what she missed the most was her, Leo, Piper, and Jason's double date nights along the beach. That was always Laylana's favorite. That combined with movie nights which, although they had every once and a while on the ship, their time was scarce. 

With a start, Laylana realized that yesterday had been the Fourth of July. They'd missed Camp Half-Blood's annual party at the beach with awesome fireworks prepared by Leo's siblings in Cabin Nine. She always enjoyed that event. Laylana was never too patriotic, but she loved the get togethers. Now that she thought about it, she was terrified of fireworks back in October when a few of some kids on her street set them off. She wondered if she was still scared of them.

Laylana tried to push down the dream she had. How camp was in ruins, and how people were dying all around her. She tried to not remember how Gaea had finally confirmed what she wanted. To possess her body and use it, along with her powers, for evil. Laylana had always been known, until the war, as a person with a villain's power. She refused to use it for evil, didn't even turn her powers on demigods during her fight. She only used them on monsters, and relied on her combat skills to defend herself against demigods. Laylana took a seat at the head of the table, next to Jason, who had been assisting her with leadership duties as best he could. Leo sat on the other side of the table next to her, allowing them to interlace their fingers together.

"So," Laylana started, pushing her scrambled eggs around her plate with her fork. "now that we're here..."

Laylana glanced at the others around the table. Hazel was bleary-eyed, but of course she'd been up all night guiding the ship through the mountains. Laylana would have to remind herself to check up on the girl later. Next to her sat Frank, dressed in black workout pants and a Roman tourist T-shirt that said CIAO! Frank's old centurion badge was pinned to his shirt, despite the fact that the demigods of the Argo II were now Public Enemies Numbers 1 through 7 back at Camp Jupiter. His grim expression just reinforced his unfortunate resemblance to a sumo wrestler. Then there was her brother, Nico. He sat back in his leather aviator jacket, his black T-shirt and jeans, that wicked silver skull ring on his finger and the Stygian sword at his side. His tufts of black hair stuck up in curls like baby bat wings.  His eyes were sad and kind of empty. Laylana reminded herself to check up on him later.

The only absent demigod was Piper, who was taking her turn at the helm with Gleeson. Laylana wished Piper were here. She always provided a calming sensation towards the crew, and had been at Laylana's side constantly. Laylana remembered the night after Percy and Annabeth fell, how she had woken up in hysterics. Nico hadn't had much luck in helping her calm down, and found Piper on deck. He asked her for help with Laylana, and although Piper hated using her charmspeak on her friends, she did it for her, to help bring her out of her state.