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Dying as it turns out, feels a disturbing amount like accidentally slipping into a meat grinder and then spending the entire time terrified someone will turn it on before they realise you’re in there. At least that’s the only way Leo Valdez can describe it. A rotting festering acid churning through every system in his body. Blood turned rancid. Lymph nodes leaking sanies. Nerve fibres seizing. Disgusting. That’s what it feels like.
He wishes he had been braver. Wishes he had looked death in the face, metaphorical death anyway— Thanatos doesn’t show up till later on, and by then it really is too late— but he wishes he had stared his dying in the face and said ‘fuck you” or “not today” or “try me bitch”. No, instead he had suffered and screamed and cried his way through it. This last moment of bravery and he couldn’t even be brave.
Maybe it was those blue eyes he looked into, or the way a gentle hand was always resting against his burning cheek. But he couldn’t be anything but miserable as he left it all. How does anyone expect him to be brave when the weight of what he’s leaving behind presses against his final visions. Friendship beyond time and space and person. Love encapsulated in every hug, folding around him like stars curve around the universe. Jason Grace could laugh and Leo thinks he’d go to war to hear it again. Surrounded by all this lightning goodness, how can he be expected to die anything but wretchedly.
*One hour earlier*
No matter what happens his friends could not find out what he had planned. No matter what. The loop plays in his head, scratched vinyl, stuck cd. They deserve to know he will die but he cannot give them that knowledge. They will try to stop him. Maybe worse, maybe horribly selfishly worse, they will agree with him. He doesn’t know if his heart will be able to handle that confirmation. “It’s the best course of action,” he can just see Annabeth nodding. Piper’s eyes filled with tears but no words of protest escaping her lips. Frank’s half-hearted attempt to stop him. Percy may fight, say there must be another way, he and Annabeth will have one of their silent conversations and it will end with the son of Posiedon storming off and the plan going through anyway. He doesn’t want to think about Jason’s reaction. The good roman soldier who will die for his cause. “We are not here to live for ourselves. We must represent the bigger picture.” And Leo will want to know why dying is so lonely if living must always be for something bigger. Nonetheless today he must stop breathing. Today he stops. The boy who never stops moving, finally dead still.
He strokes a hand down Festus’ cool metal back, feels the hum of his engine, The sound is comforting, enough so that the heart racing behind his ribcage slows down a fraction. Running a marathon instead of a sprint.
“I dont want to die.” He whispers to the air. No-one responds.
He turns to Festus, “Will you miss me buddy?” It has come to this. Asking the dragon he created if he will be missed. He wonders if this is what Frakenstein felt like? If the doctor ever asked the monster created if he would be missed. Maybe gods ask the same things of humans.
“Leo?” The tent flaps open and a head of blonde hair and electric shockwaves fills the room. “What are you hiding in here for?” Even now with war at their doorstep, his blonde Superman has high spirits and so much hope.
“Wanted to get a little air before this whole thing blows up.” He smiles and he feels it reach his eyes, his head, his breaking heart. “You know i work best in suffocating heat.”
And gods the tent is hot. Air thick and heavy with the anticipation of war, and the unrelenting summer heat.
A breeze prickles against his skin and he looks up to see eyes sparkling with mischief.
“Better?”
“My hero! When this is all done would you mind if I hired you for the bunker?”
Jason’s laugh is carried along the breeze, brushing against his hot skin again and again and again.
“When this is done I'm taking a very very long vacation in the most remote area of the world.”
“Can I join?” Leo wants to live in this moment forever.
And then his friend smiles and maybe his mind starts writing sonnets of all the ways this convolutes time and space.
“You never had a choice, Valdez. I was dragging you with me whether you liked it or not.”
He’s laughing now. At a time like this. Forty five minutes before he ends a war. “For the record Grace,” He pronounces every curve of the surname, “I would like it very much.”
“Oh good!” The blonde wraps an arm around his shoulders, knocks their heads together. “I’ve got snacks and to-go bags waiting at the camp border.”
“So I don't have to bring anything?”
“Just Festus.” Jason strokes his hand over the dragon’s head. “We can’t leave you behind buddy.”
A horn blares outside, the signal that more enemy armies are fast approaching. Jason’s entire demeanor changes. Gone is the friend, enters is the soldier.
“See you out there?”
He nods, words caught in his throat. He is trying to pour every single fatal droplet of love into the hug they share. When the son of Jupiter pulls away, the entire world gets a little colder.
Leo takes a final steadying breath, sucking up the lingering breeze left behind by the demigod.
Festus whines at him, a clicking noise stumbling from his long throat. Leo strokes a hand down the metal again, all the comfort he can offer. Life is a worthy one if you leave it being missed. And if no-one else Festus will miss him. Of that he is sure.
“Okay buddy,” He clambers onto the dragon’s back, letting the familiar warmth of working parts settle into his bones. “We’re gonna take it to the skies and then you’re gonna find Jason for me while i sort some stuff out. Got it?”
They had been over this plan a hundred times, and every time Festus had protested and every time Leo had swallowed his sadness and did not change the path he had coursed.
The tent flaps billow open just as a conch shell sounds. He wonders, for the umpteenth time, why the call of war was so beautiful. Sorrowful, yes, but beautiful? It seemed cruel, and violent. As if this destruction could be made pretty with the exact right note. Not even Apollo had discovered such a sound yet.
With a final glance around, he knocks on the dragon’s side twice, and they take to the skies. Immediately he is engulfed with noise: yelling, and clashing metal, and roaring from various beasts. It sounds sort of like his mind. Loud. Engulfing. Inescapable.
“HEY LEO!” He hears a yell from below.
Peering over the side of Festus he sees Frank racing towards a pack of vicious looking wolves. Something about them didn’t sit right, as if they had been stretched and pulled into a different shape and then unsuccessfully put back. “Try for the other side of Gaia with your fire bombs.”
His friend is now a war strategist. No longer the scared little kid with too much grief, and a stickler for authority. He is the authority. And he wields it like a carved bow.
“Will do!” He gives a thumbs up in case his words are lost to the wind. Then he’s looking up and out into the mass of earth stretching itself from below to above above above. As if Gaia was once more trying to meet her husband.
“LET'S CHANGE THIS WAR!” He screams.
Him and Festus are barrelling towards the mass. He shoots fire from his hands, and the little kid in him obsessed with superheroes is proud of how far he has come. Festus breathes fire of his own, and the child in him obsessed with fairytales is looking at him with wide bright eyes. If he has made anyone proud, it’s the kid he used to be. He doesn’t have to worry about any adult version of himself being proud of him.
“Okay Festus.” He presses his chest into his dragon’s back so they’re head to head. “It’s time buddy.”
Another metallic whine. Enough clicks to mean “I love you”.
“I love you too my friend.” He keeps a warm hand on the dragon’s neck. “Remember to find Jason after this.”
And then Leo is standing up. On the golden back of Festus. And then Leo is taking a final deep breath, a final encompassing look at the world, at his friends scattered across the battlefield.
“Thank you for being with me.” He whispers.
“Leo?” Jason’s voice carries across the entire world.
He looks down, sees those blue eyes even across this violence. There is confusion in them, a starting gleam of worry and… horror.
He waves, smiles softly.
Jason is already shaking his head, feet stumbling, stuttering, sprinting towards him.
“I love you.” Leo mouths.
“NO!”
Leo Valdez leaps.
And his heart is so quiet as he falls directly into the dark swirling earth.
He explodes from within himself.
Heat pouring from every pore in his body, overwhelming the world, turning his vision white.
For the first time in his life, Leo’s fire burns him.
But the pain is inescapable. Charring at his fingertips. Gut-wrenching. Blistering. Bubbling. He feels like a cauldron melting into the earth. He feels searing with this pain. Food burning in an oven. Ripped apart by this being with no teeth. Scorching. He understand why stars turn into blackholes. Anything to escape this mind-numbing inferno. Gods he’s burning so much he doesn’t know the meaning of cold.
He knows he’s falling but how far or to where he cannot say. All he can focus on, all he understands, is this flame. Eating at him like a monster gorging on grotesque delicacy.
He hits the ground with a sickening crunch. Eyes failing to open. Doesn’t matter anyway, all he can see is endless blinding white.
He feels something at his side, a hand, or a leg, or a… someone. Someone is there. He can’t hear anything. There’s no ringing in his head, no crying, or wretching. It’s just quiet. Somewhere, he exists, but it is no longer here.
The white of his vision obscures with a dark figure. A person, with dark brown skin, dressed in silver and black looks at him, nods his head. “It’s time Leo, you can let go now.”
And he takes their hand, and he realises they’re a god and he sinks into their support. He takes a step, another, another. He doesn’t stop. Nor look back. Not this time. This time he’s home for sure.
***
Jason Grace has felt fear so many times he recognises it like a warm meal. It has kept him company, fed him lies and truths, and strange revelation. But nothing, not a single thing, living, dead, or abstract in this world has ever given him more of this poisoned meal than right now.
He is kneeling besides the burnt, broken body of his best friend and there is nothing but acid salivating in his mouth. He can’t touch the body, it is burning too hot, too fast. A self-made cremation.
“You’re not gonna die,” he’s muttering, trying to cool everything with wind he’s breaking to his will. It doesn’t work. It’s not WORKING! “Do you hear me Leo Valdez!” he’s crying and his tears don’t make it to the ground before they’re up in sickening sizzling steam. “You. Are. Not. Going. To. Die.”
There’s a shift in the air, a rippling of power and then Thanatos is over them. His shadow longer than it has right to be, as if his body can be made into a human form but his shadow is still that of a god’s.
“No, no, no, no, no,” He’s sobbing, and he still can’t touch Leo. “Please, Please save him. Please don’t take him away Please.”
“I am sorry Jason Grace.” The God gives a small bow.
He is fading away, disappearing the way Nico does. Into the thickening blackness.
Leo’s body goes quiet, scorch turning to simmer, turning to coolness. As if his soul had been burning like that. It wouldn’t be a surprise.
He reaches out, touches a blistered, broken hand. Holds it within his own bloodied, scraped ones.
“Why did you do that?” The silence is deafening. “Why did you leave me?” His friend that could never stop moving, is still at last.
“Please come back.” Tears choke him. “Please don’t leave me. Not like this.” There is nothing but violent calm surrounding them.
“I love you.” He strangles through the syllables, not wanting to let them out in case they too die in this catastrophe. “Please open your eyes. Please finish this war by my side.”
Jason tilts his head up. The sky is clear and bright blue. “Leo—” He trembles.
His head falls back down to his chest. The earth is flat, unmoving.
“We’re not supposed to be here.”
Leo Valdez does not protest. Leo Valdez does not move again.