Chasing Me Down

Chapter 3

Leo stared at himself in front of the mirror as Nicole looked at him excitedly,"You look great! The hair totally compliments you! It's like seriously cool and awesome...."

"It's purple," Leo said bluntly", why did I ever let you do this to me."

Nicole huffed, combing my now much straighter hair,"Well I think it looks absolutely brilliant. I can barely recognize you!"

Leo turned to her wryly, his eyebrows raised.

"In the best possible way imaginable," she added quickly.

"Besides," she drawled,"The whole point was to not let anyone notice you!"

"Yeah!" he said feigning enthusiasm, " because purple hair is so, unnoticeable!"

Nicole sighed," At least no one will recognize you by your looks."

Leo sighed looking at himself in the mirror, they were at a hairdresser, and the barber was pretty surprised when Nicole told him what she had in mind. Leo could relate, the poor man probably never had a client where their own aunt had their hair dyed purple. He probably thought Nicole was crazy and that she was trying to drive one of his parents crazy, but the dude had seemed unnaturally eager to dye his hair for him though.

As Nicole paid the barber, Leo had no idea if it was real or just a trick of the mist but she seemed to sense that he wasn't willing to use his own money on dying his hair a ridiculous color.

As they walked out of the store, Nicole ruffled his hair, "That's some real hair you got there kiddo. Now all we need are some contacts."

Leo glared at her,"I am not putting anything in my eyes! You already got me some clothes that are totally not my style, dyed my hair purple and I probably look like a doofus!" he said hissing the last part gesturing to his clothes which now consisted of a white winter vest, a red t-shirt and a pair of dark blue denims."

"Relax! I'm only going to change the shade of brown, I'm not gonna make it blue or anything!"

"No," Leo said firmly.

"Leo, listen to me," Nicole said looking ahead of them, "Your eyes?,"she exclaimed stopping as if at a loss of words, " they're really recognizable if I were to actually recognize you from somewhere, I would look at your eyes and know right then that you were who I was looking for,"she took a hesitant breath as if she was extremely ruffled," your eyes are really, really, different, please Leo, just put contacts on...I'm willing to use the mist if I must."

Leo thought about this, he had always remembered his mom commenting on his eyes, and whenever they met with their family, and Leo must admit it was a pretty huge family, people commenting on his eyes. But did he really want to give away the only thing on him he had left of his past life? It was one of his priorities to never forget the past and where he came from, it always made him remember the pain and horror he never wanted to go back to. If he let Nicole change his eye color, he would never get a reminder whenever he looked into the mirror. He had looked into it so many times in camp half-blood, just to convince himself that things could never change, and it had never even once in his 16 years of life, been wrong.

"I'm sorry Nicole, but changing my eye color is something that I would never change, for personal reasons."

Nicole sighed,"I suppose it's alright, not a lot of people are as observant as me, I hope."

"So...,"Nicole said looking at him,"where to?"

"Away from here, it's way too close to camp."

"Ahhhh, so you are running away from camp...halfblood probably since it is the closest, something is chasing you and by, the way you're saying it, it's tied to you leaving the camp and so, you want to stay as far away as possible from it and the thing that is chasing you."