Fire and Ice (A Leo Valdez fanfic) [2017]

Chapter 13: Leo

LEO JERKED AWAKE to a loud banging above him. He'd accidentally fallen asleep. He heard Nyssa's voice yelling, "I don't know, Harley, okay? She must've caused it! D'you think I know everything?"

"Leo!" Christopher yelled, banging on the floor. "Come up now!"

"Coming!" Leo called, hitting the button that brought his bed back into the Hephaestus cabin. A scene of chaos met him once his bed reached the main room. Shane was helping Jake into his wheelchair. Harley was yelling at Nyssa, whose clothes and hair were covered with white powder.

"Nyssa, did Travis and Connor dump flour on you again?" Leo asked. It was a reasonable question; once during the time Leo was at camp building the Argo II, the Stolls had climbed on the roof of the Hephaestus cabin and dumped water on the first person to walk through the doorway, followed by a bucket of flour. Nyssa had been the unlucky person, and Leo thought it was hilarious when he came back from Bunker Nine to see Nyssa covered in flour.

Nyssa shook her head. "No! Haven't you heard?" And she opened the door of Cabin Nine. Leo gasped. The entire camp was covered in snow. Eira had attacked.

Leo cursed in Spanish. "Why the Hades would she do this?"

"It happened only a few minutes after I came back," Nyssa said. "We have to get her to change it back."

"Excuse me? Who's the fire guy around here?" Leo demanded. He touched Nyssa's arm and the snow on her melted. "Everyone who's going to go outside, get a coat. I'll go and see if anyone's hurt and try to help as much as I can."

"Leo, wait." Nyssa touched his shoulder. "Are you okay?"

Leo turned around. "I just came back to life and found out that the girl I loved didn't really care about me, then I came home and met another girl who I fell in love with and ended being the daughter of one of my worst enemies. Do you think I'm okay?"

"I'm sorry," Nyssa said quietly. "That was a stupid question. Wait-- you and Eira..."

Leo grabbed his jacket from his bed and left the room without letting her finish. He didn't want to talk about his feelings for Eira. It was colder than he expected. He shivered in the freezing air and looked around camp. Snow had piled in drifts and was falling at least twice as quickly as normal snow. The dining pavilion was covered with snow almost up to the height of the tables. It was really hard to walk. Leo tried to melt a path to make it easier to walk. The snow didn't want to be melted. It remained stubbornly solid.

"What the Hades?" Leo muttered. He lit his hand on fire and tried to melt the snow. It didn't work. He cursed in Spanish. Why wouldn't the snow melt?

He struggled through the deep snow, his teeth chattering like crazy. Freezing wind blew the snow around. It was like the snowstorm they'd had in mid-January of last year, except it was September second. It wasn't supposed to snow at this time of year.
"Leo!" someone yelled from across camp. Leo squinted in the direction of the voice but saw nothing. He grabbed a pair of safety goggles from his tool belt and put them on. He could just make out a person with brown hair struggling through the snow.

"Piper?" Leo yelled, trying to run through the deep snow and falling on his face. Piper dug through the snow in front of her to make it easier to move. She reached Leo and helped him up. "Let's go to the Aphrodite cabin, it's faster."

Leo grabbed her hand and followed her into Cabin Ten. It was, if possible, even more chaotic than Cabin Nine. Kids covered in snow were fighting over the showers. Drew was blow-drying her hair and brushing it furiously, complaining that frizzy hair was so hard to take care of and that snow messed everything up. Lacy was trying to comfort the eight-year-old girl Leo had seen earlier, who was crying and saying that "the snow girl will freeze me." Other kids were fishing through their trunks and trying to find the warmest clothes they had. Piper raised her voice and yelled, "Quiet down!" Every person in the cabin fell silent.

"I know this is weird and kind of scary, but we don't have to panic. We're going to stay calm. Take out your warmest clothes, stay inside if you prefer. It's nothing to go berserk about," Piper said soothingly. She really had control when she was using charmspeak. The cabin quieted down, and everyone scrambled for their warmest clothes. Leo summoned a pair of protective gloves and put them on. Piper handed him a towel and sat down on her bed, patting the spot next to her. Leo collapsed on her bed.

"This must be hard for you," Piper said quietly.

"That's an understatement," Leo muttered.

"You really did love her, didn't you?" Piper said quietly.

Leo turned sharply. "Piper, I still do. I know it was fast, but I love her. I'm going to go out there and find her, and I'm going to stop her mother from trying to take her over. Because I know Khione, and she knows me. That's her plan, to get me to fall in love with Eira, and I fell for it. I blamed her, but it's my fault the camp is like this." He hadn't meant to raise his voice, but he was nearly shouting by the time he finished.

"Leo," Piper said gently, "you've heard that every hero has a fatal flaw?"

Leo nodded.

"I think I know yours," she told him. "You blame everything on yourself, and if anything bad happens, you convince yourself that it was you."

He was silent. Piper continued, "But it isn't your fault. I know you think you made Eira leave--"

"I did!" Leo interrupted. "You two were horrible to her too, but I was the worst because I'd trusted her and she'd trusted me. I hurt her the most. I have to find her and help her change the camp back."

Piper looked at Leo with alarm. "Leo, I appreciate your wanting to find her, but what if she hurts you? I mean, I don't want you to get hurt."

"She won't hurt me," Leo promised, but he wasn't so sure.