Asphodels (Valdangelo)

Affect

I feel like Hazel is all of you. Piper was hard to write for, let me tell you.

Hazel wonders if perhaps her own curse is the reason she feels so connected to other cursed people; if so, she'd like to get Frank and Leo to spend more than two minutes together. It's something they've talked about, Frank and her; though she hasn't told him Leo's cursed, only that he's a good friend, and hopelessly in love with her brother.

She's glad that Frank knows, because it's nice being able to go to someone whenever watching those two dance circles around each other gets to be too much; but she's particularly glad for it now, because this is ridiculous.

It starts with Nico, who's decided to befriend Leo, and because Leo can't tell him no without explaining why it'd be a bad idea to spend so much time together, let him; Hazel had been worried about it, of course, but Leo had assured her he had a plan for Nico to know about the curse, without knowing he was the cause. And Hazel had to give it to Leo, because it had clearly worked.

It had worked so well, in fact, that now, Nico was not only clueless about his involvement, but also convinced the flowers were for Jason.

This is something she learns from Nico himself, as he explains a nightmare he had where he learned of the cures Asclepius had given to Leo as options, and the consequences either option would have. Particularly, Hazel thinks Leo isn't stalling simply due to fear of rejection, but because of that one line of the prophecy he's convinced refers to him; granted, Hazel also thinks the line is talking about Leo specifically.

But, what makes this entire thing ridiculous, is that Nico, her brother, the boy Leo's actually coughing flowers for; thinks, for some gods forsaken reason, that Leo is in love with someone else. And, the cherry on top, he talks about this with all the resigned energy of someone who's heart-broken; because Nico is in love with Leo.

Hazel loves her brother, but she wants to sock him in the head, shake him by the shoulders, and scream at him for being an idiot; and he would deserve it, really. She does not, as she respects Leo's wish to keep it secret; so instead she complains to Frank, who has the patience of a saint.

Piper is sure something's going on, and it has to do with her mother's area of expertise, but it isn't because of her, somehow. Children of Aphrodite had an easier time noticing romantic emotions than others; and though Pipper didn't have as good of a grasp on this as she did with her charmspeak, she could still sense something.

Something coiling almost snake-like around Leo, following him where he went, like a shadow, like an afterthought. Sometimes, if she looked at it when half-awake, it had the shape of thorny vines wrapped around his neck; and that scared her, because it was as though his emotions were trying to kill him.

She's yet to talk to him about it, because what if he doesn't know? What if it's just another mirage put there to strain the relationship between them? Another one of Gaia's cruel tricks. Things between the remaining six of them are tense enough as is, and Piper and Leo haven't had the time to sit down and talk about the memories they have of each other; had they really been best friends? Or was that Juno's doing too?

She knows Aphrodite isn't involved though, because her influence hardly if ever takes the shape of plant life; sea foam, feathers, and on the very rare occasion petals, but never something as stifling as the vines Piper saw around Leo.

Something else changes then, not on Leo, but on the person he's spending most of his time with nowadays; and then Piper worries for a different reason. He hasn't really given them any reason to be weary, in fact, given how Leo acts around him it's clear the boy's done something to earn his trust; but still, something about him offsets her, as though he was guilty of something.

There's also what happened yesterday with Jason, and how Leo seems to be avoiding him like the plague; which Piper has been trying to make sense of, because if an underworld flower isn't some kind of omen, then she doesn't know what is.

Leo spends his time working on his plan for the death cure, he's told Piper it's a failsafe, because out of the two destined to face Gaia, he's the least likely to survive normally, but the most likely to win if he has an ace under his sleeve; it helped that neither wanted Jason to risk his life. The problem with the plan is hiding it from Nico, who gets this worried aura around him whenever he catches Leo after a particularly rough coughing fit; and Leo loves him enough to not want him knowing, because he's sure it would hurt him.

It's weird, knowing he means so much to Nico, but not the way Nico means so much to him; and he regrets their friendship sometimes, when he considers his options for how to deal with his Hanahaki. He considers the hard option, as he so often does these days, because the easy one isn't even remotely good; forgetting Nico would mean forgetting Hazel too, and that would be entirely cruel to both of them, who have become Leo's closest friends.

But Leo doesn't know how to go about confessing, and he still has a plan to go through; and he knows he's procrastinating it, and that it'll blow in his face eventually, but he's got no other ideas. He thinks of his father, and the words 'not good with living organisms', and then immediately, he thinks of Anabeth, in one of those instances they matched each other in the quieter parts of the ship, saying 'humans are social creatures' the way one may say 'the world is small'; secure and yet hard to grasp.

He misses her, and despite the jealousy that likes to raise in his throat like acid, he misses Percy too; though, and to be fair, he doesn't really know Percy, just what both Nico and Hazel have told him. Still, he does, but feeling the guilt associated with missing them is easier to do than deal with his other emotions; and healthier too, considering the momentary lack of flowers.