madness and ecstasy // leo valdez

-it was acceptable in the 80's-

how would people feel about seeing all my teqi + cabin 12 art and some leo?

<3

⋆˖⁺‧₊🌥️🪽🏛️⭐🐺₊‧⁺˖⋆

________________________________________________________________________________

Somehow, he knew her.

He recognized her loose silvery singlet with the star on it. He remembered fiddling with the sequins. He recognised her low waisted jeans and the plastic bangles on her wrists that had dug into his back when she hugged him goodbye at the Wolf House. He recognized her hair, over-brushed limp blonde waves and her scent of perfume and cigarette smoke.

Her eyes were blue like Jason's, but they gleamed with fractured light, like she'd just come out of a bunker after a nuclear war - hungrily searching for familiar details in a changed world. There were bags underneath them.

"Dearest." She held out her arms.

Jason's vision tunnelled. The ghosts and ghouls no longer mattered.

His disguise burned off, somehow, and later he'd wonder how it happened, with Hazel on the Argo II holding no knowledge of what happening at that moment. He felt the loose cloth over him fall off, his cuffed jeans and threadbare Camp Jupiter sweater underneath. The weight of the wine stained pottery in his hands became the hilt of his sword.

The burning sensation didn't stop. He felt as if layers of his life were being seared away from him- his months at Camp Half-Blood, his years at Camp Jupiter, the wolves. He was a two-year-old again. And a scared one. Even the scar on his lip, stung like a fresh wound.

"Mom?" he managed, quietly.

"Yes, dearest." Her image flickered. "Come, embrace me."

"...You're - you're not real."

"Of course she is real." Michael Varus's voice sounded far away. "Did you think Gaia would let such an important spirit languish in the Underworld? She is your mother, Beryl Grace, star of television, sweetheart to the king of Olympus, who rejected her not once but twice, in both his Greek and Roman aspects. She deserves justice as much as any of us."

Jason's heart felt wobbly.

The suitors crowded around him, watching. I'm their entertainment, Jason realized. A show for them, between picking on serving girls and the next plates of meat to come out.

Piper's voice cut through the buzzing in his head. "Jason, look at me."

She stood only a few feet away, holding her ceramic amphora. She was impossible to look away from. "That isn't your mother. Her voice is working some kind of magic on you - like charmspeak. Can't you see it? She's just a remnent."

"She's right." Annabeth said. She was standing next to the table they'd been at, her hair blonde again and her back straight. He realised they hadn't even moved.

"Exactly! I'm a remnant!" His mother's ghost whimpered. "Look what I have been reduced to. It's Jupiter's fault. He abandoned us. He wouldn't help me! I didn't want to leave you in Sonoma, my dear, but Juno and Jupiter gave me no choice. They wouldn't allow us to stay together. Why fight for them now? Join these suitors. Lead them! We can be a family again!"

Jason felt hundreds of pairs of eyes on him.

Everyone had always watched him, expecting him to lead the way. Despite his attempts to alter his destiny- joining the worst cohort, trying to change the camp traditions, taking the least glamorous missions and befriending the people no one else wanted to- he had been made praetor anyway. As a son of Jupiter, his future had been assured.