Chapter Text
Leo gritted his teeth. “I’ll find a way home,” he thought. “I swear it on the River Styx.”
There was no thunder. ¹
It was one year later and Leo was tired. He was tired of this accent, tired of this body, tired of this world. But, but, there were no gods. This was a godless world and it wasn’t Leo’s. He was so used to saving the world, that now he was just existing. He wasn’t thriving, wasn’t enjoying, wasn’t living.
When he was sixteen, a nondescript woman with tight posture approached Leo’s garage workshop. As he analyzes her, Leo absently thinks that this is the kind of person who would be a background character, meant to be forgotten and passed over.
She offers him a chance to save the world.
He accepts.
Saving the world is nothing like saving the world in his universe. In this universe, one actually has to go to school to be a hero, or, at least, an agent.
Seeing the intensity in which these people scorn outsiders, he hides. He hides his powers, hides his origin, hides himself.
Jemma reminds him of Calypso, in a sense. The snark, the smarts, the rivalry. She makes him miss home.
Phil Coulson is just as quietly intimidating in person as he is in the stories the students told. Leo sees that Coulson finds humor in chaos, though.
The Bus is a masterpiece. But it’s no Festus. Not alive, not sentient, not home.
Leo has an idea.
In the quiet of his bunk, he constructs Festus. A smaller, portable, model of him, of course. Maybe he’ll be bigger eventually, but for now, a small companion will have to do.
Leo keeps him in his pocket.
Maybe Festus will come to save him again.
Sometimes, he finds himself reaching down to his waist, grabbing for a tool from a tool belt that is not there. He reaches for breath mints, or a screwdriver, or a celestial bronze hammer.
This world is not good for him.
Leo uses monkeys to remind him of home. He uses them to remember the dwarves, the Hermes Cabin, Buford.
Leo does not tell them that when he rests his hands on the walls of the Bus, he can feel the gears moving, the engine humming, the wires running.
He uses it as a silent comfort that he is still connected to his own world.
One day, he is in his and Jemma’s lab, when he hears the familiar clicking of metal legs on the floor, and he glances up to see Buford 2.0 tottering towards him on less-than-steady legs.
Jemma looks up and shrieks. She whips out the nearby Night-Night Gun and is about to shoot the table when Leo yells.
“Stop!” He calls. “That’s just Buford 2.0.” He walks towards the table and kneels down to be about eye level with his sensors.
“Is everything okay, buddy?” Leo asks. “What are you doing unfolded?”
Buford clicked and clacked, stomping his legs.
“No, you don’t need to stretch your legs, you are a table.”
Jemma interrupted the seemingly one-sided conversation. “What is that?”
Leo looked at her strangely. “Didn’t I tell you? This is Buford the Second.”
“I know that,” she said. “But what is Buford?”
“He’s a table.”
“You automated a table?” Phil Coulson asked. They all whipped around to the doorway, where Coulson was standing.
“I built this version of him. He’s not the original. But he’s just as good, aren’t you, buddy?” He petted the surface of the table.
“There’s another one of him wandering about?” Coulson had a look of alarm on his face, or, at least, the Coulson equivalent of it, where everything is mild.
Leo sighed sadly. “No, unfortunately. At least, I don’t think so. I don’t know what happened to him in the end. And I’m not going on another Buford hunt.” He turned back to the automaton. “Your predecessor was quite the mischievous little thing, wasn’t he? Reminds me of a monkey, a little bit.”
Everyone rolled their eyes at the monkey bit.
“Just,” Phil waved his hand in the vague direction of Buford. “Just don’t let him wander around, please?”
“Of course, sir.”
When he wakes up to his words not working, a problem he cannot fix, he feels disconnected from reality, from his own world.
Talking was an integral part of the facade he puts on. Talking was part of him. He was a nervous talker, an angry talker, an excited talker. He was an everything talker.
But, but, he rested his hand in his pocket and stroked Festus, feeling the gears whirling and the disk in his head spinning.
There are still some he can communicate with.
It all came to a head when he fell.
He was in the field, on a mission in a range of mountains. It was slippery and while fighting the newest bad guy, he was shoved a bit too hard and he fell. But this time, he had no Archimedes’ Sphere, no Ogygia to cushion him.
However, he did have himself. And maybe that would be enough.
With a deep breath in the thin air, he shot fire out of his hands and feet. He burned through his shoes and his gloves, but once he reached the ground, he hovered just above it.
"Leo!" Jemma's shout echoed through the mountains. It was guttural, pained, because even a biochemist knew that a fall from that height would kill a person, even if the landing was in powdered snow.
Leo collapsed into the snow, exhausted by the sheer amount of power he had used.
His vision blinking in and out, he mustered a weak “here” before his consciousness faded out and he was gone.
Leo woke to the smell of antiseptic. He lifted his hands to rub his eyes and found that he couldn’t. His hands were cuffed to the bed.
“What?” He mumbled. His words were slurred with sleep and sedatives.
Phil Coulson was standing at the foot of his bed with his face blank and his arms behind his back.
“Sir?” He asked, more awake than before.
“What are you?” Coulson’s eyes bore through him.
Leo was speechless.
“I asked, who are you?”
“I’m— I’m Leo Fitz. You know this!” He said desperately. Had they figured out his lack of complete DNA?
“I’m happy to wait here until you decide to answer truthfully, and it’s not like you’ll be going anywhere either.” ²
“I did— I did! I promise!” He was screaming inside, why did this have to happen to him? He had finally made himself a new life, just to have it ripped away?
“Whatever your name is, half of your DNA is missing. We tested Leo Fitz’s DNA. It was complete. Yours is not. Also, we found melted snow where Fitz would have landed. Where we found you."
“I faked it. I hacked the database, made some DNA sequences for myself based off of my ‘parents’’”
They stayed like that for what could have been hours or minutes or years before there was a knock on the door. It opened, and Jemma peeked her head in. “Sir?”
Without taking his eyes off of Leo, Coulson responded. “Yes?”
“I had Skye comb through the code of the database. She found some that wasn’t supposed to be there. I then ran a sample of Leo’s,” her voice caught on his name but she soldiered on. “Of Leo’s DNA. It came back with half missing. Like his.” She jerked her head at Leo.
Phil nodded. “I see. Please have Agent Skye do a deep search on Fitz’s background. I want it picked through thoroughly and fully turned over. Understood?”
Jemma nodded in assent. “Yes, sir.” She hesitated. “Sir?” She asked.
“Yes, Simmons?”
“Please figure out what happened to Leo.”
“I will.”
Jemma ducked out and closed the door behind her.
“Leo?” Coulson asked.
“Yes! Yes! It’s me!”
Coulson cautiously sat at the foot of the bed.
“Care to explain?”
Leo smiled sheepishly. “Can I explain to everyone at once?”
Once everyone was in the med bay, Leo started.
“I don’t… I don’t come from here.”
Skye leaned forward. “What do you mean?”
“I don’t… I’m not—“ Leo cut off frustratedly.
“I died.” He said abruptly. “I died in a flaming ball of death.”
“And then I landed here.” Leo slapped the bed. “Well, not here here. Here as in Scotland. And I didn’t look like myself. Or sound like myself. I’m not Scottish! I’m from Texas! I’m not even white! I’m Latino and Greek!”
Melinda May reached her hand out. “Calm down Fitz. Start over. Where are you from if you’re not from ‘here’?”
“I’m not from this world. Or rather, not from this universe.”
Coulson just blinked in surprise. "And that's reason for half of your DNA to be missing?"
Leo grimaced. "Well, no. Not really. But my parentage is. See, my dad. My dad wasn't exactly… he wasn't really human."
Skye gasped. "You're an alien?"
He laughed. "No. No, I'm not. My father is— well—"
Melinda May interrupted impatiently. "Please just get on with it. I'm shaking in anticipation."
"I'm sorry!" He snapped. "I never quite had to explain that my father's a god, okay!" He snapped his mouth shut. "Well, that's one way to do it," he murmured.
Everyone was staring at him and May looked smug.
"So your father is a Norse god." Phil remarked calmly and Leo winced at that.
"Not… not quite…"
Jemma leaned in, her academic interest piqued. "Are you saying that other pantheons exist?"
Leo nodded. "Quite so." He rolled his eyes. "And my speech patterns changed when I landed here, as well. There are Greek, Roman, Egyptian, and Norse gods back in my world. Not sure what else. I belong to the Greek pantheon, but I've got friends from the Roman pantheon and one of my Greek demigod friends has a Norse demigod cousin. Her family is weird."
Mack hitched his hip up onto the footboard of the bed. "Who's your father?" He prompted.
"Hephaestus." Leo responded. "That's his Greek form. His Roman form is Vulcan. The Greek-Roman relations are really complicated."
Everyone stared at him in awe.
"But I'm not really anything special. A bunch of my friends, five, I think, are children of the Big Three. Zeus, Poseidon, and Hades."
Skye bounced on the balls of her feet. "What are your powers? Do you have powers like mine?"
Leo laughed slightly. "No, but my friend Percy does. He can control water, liquids, cause earthquakes and hurricanes. He's a son of Poseidon."
Jemma nudged him gently. "But what about you, Leo? What are your powers?"
He grinned mischievously, a common one on Leo Valdez's face, but a foreign one on Leo Fitz's. He lifted his hand and concentrated. A small flame erupted from his palm. "I'm exhausted from my earlier stunt," he explained. "It took a lot out of me. I can control fire, machinery, and I sort of have technokinesis slash technopathy. Basically, I can control technology, to a certain extent."
He lowered his head sadly. "I used to have a magic tool belt." He looked up, panicked. "Did you happen to find a small metal dragon in my pocket when you rescued me?"
Coulson nodded at Skye. She ran outside for a minute and came back in with a metal dragon in a small box they used for 0-8-4s. With another nod from Coulson, she handed it to Leo. He took the dragon out of the bag and stroked it's head. It perked up and shook its wings and head.
Leo cooed at it. "Hey, bud. How are you?"
It chirped and clicked at him.
"That's good." After a few more clacks, Leo responded again. "Yeah, I'm doing better. I was just worried about you. I lost you too many times, you know?"
It nodded and nuzzled his hand.
Leo lifted the dragon up to show the team. "This is Festus. He's a miniature version of the Festus over in my world."
Jemma approached him slowly with her hand outstretched to pet Festus. He let her. "How big is the version back in your world?"
"He's as big as a real dragon. Because those are real too, you know, dragons are real. But then he broke and I turned his head into the figurehead for my flying ship. The Argo II." He looked proud.
Mack stared at him. "You built a flying ship? That's awesome, man." He reached up to high-five Leo. Leo reciprocated the gesture.
Leo grinned. "Fun fact: On that ship, we had both a Jason and a descendent of the original Argonauts."
Coulson looked at him. "You had a descendent of the original Argonauts on your crew?"
Leo looked pleased at Coulson saying that they were his crew. "Yep! He's also a shapeshifter. And Chinese. And Canadian." Leo looked thoughtful. "And Roman. And technically Greek. He's a lot of nationalities."
Phil looked bemused but nodded. "And how come you aren't acting like yourself?" Everyone grew guarded at his question, noticing the out-of-the-ordinary behavior for themselves.
Leo winced, but looked resigned to his fate. "Now that I no longer have to hide who I am, or rather, who I was, I'm free to act more like myself. That is, myself from my origin world. This is getting confusing." He complained.
Skye cracked a smile. "Your real self is funny."
Leo would have bounced on the balls of his feet had he not been laying down. "That's why they called me the Bad Boy Supreme, Super-Sized McShizzle, Admiral Leo!"
May just leveled him with a Look™. "Did anyone actually call you that?"
"Naught but myself, m'lady!" It sounded very funny in his Scottish accent. He sobered slightly. "But then again," he murmured, partly to himself. "I don't have contact with anyone from back then anymore."
There was silence for a moment before Jemma piped up. "So!" She said brightly. "What are some of the highlights of your adventures?"
Leo hesitated. "Um. Well. I figured out that my old babysitter was actually the queen of the gods. She made an awful babysitter. She literally stuck me in a fireplace. Then I had to rescue her from a giant." He pouted slightly. It was nice to act more like himself. But not so nice to relive the "highlights" of his adventures.
As if sensing that he didn't want to talk about this, Jemma swiftly changed the subject. "Can you tell us about your friends?" She smiled.
He perked up. "Well, my original—and first—friends were Jason and Piper. Jason was the son of Jupiter, the Roman form of Zeus, and he could fly. He had a scar on his lip from trying to eat a stapler when he was younger. He wasn't actually my friend at first, Hera had placed memories in our mind of him being in school with us, but really he was placed there and had amnesia. He had a sister who was an immortal hunter of Artemis. Now, Piper, she was the daughter of Aphrodite. She was beautiful, but in a way that showed she wasn't trying to be. Her father was a famous actor, actually. She liked to braid feathers into her hair."
He hummed and then continued. "There's also Frank and Hazel. Frank was the son of Mars, Greek form is Ares. He's the Chinese-Canadian baby-man. Well, he had a baby-face for a while before he bulked up. He preferred bows to spears and swords and was a shapeshifter, descendent of an Argonaut. Hazel died in 1942, but her brother, Nico, son of Hades, brought her back. She was the daughter of Pluto, Hades' Roman form. She could control precious metals and gems. She dated my great-grandfather. She's epic."
Leo looked wistful talking about all of his friends. "Then we've got Percy and Annabeth. Perhaps the strongest of us seven. I told you about Percy. He had an obsession with the color blue. Annabeth was the daughter of Athena. I swear, she could outsmart us all. She was a mean fighter with a dagger and fast with it, too. Her and Percy fell into Tartarus together, but they made it out."
He went on to tell them about Nico and Coach Hedge, Nyssa and Harley, and Reyna and Thalia, all of his friends. He stuttered and stumbled his way through the descriptions, a self-conscious feeling rising that comes with all eyes being on him.
Now that they knew, it was easier.
Life was easier.
Leo stared at the drawings he had commissioned a while ago. They were almost exact replicas of pictures of him and the rest of the Seven. He missed them like he missed his mother, a background ache, sometimes sharp pains that tore through him.
This family he had made more himself wasn’t enough. This world wasn’t enough. He wanted to go home.
He picked up his screwdriver and went to work.
When he finally got to meet Jane Foster, he practically grilled her on the science of the Einstein-Rosen Bridge. He took detailed notes, even of what she was saying when she went off on tangents.
He was given a chance to make his way home, and gods be damned if he wasn’t taking it. ³
Slowly but surely, Leo Valdez was building his way home.
With his tongue sticking out of his mouth in concentration, Leo sketched a blueprint.
When he was done, he sat back, triumphant.
He was going home.
Leo called a team meeting.
“Look,” he said, his arms folded on the table. “I’ve genuinely loved my time here with you guys, but I’ve got to go home. And I think I’ve found a way. But I’ll need help. And I know I have no right to ask this of you, as—“
Coulson cut him off. “We’ll help you, Leo. Just tell us what to do.” Everyone nodded.
Leo grinned.
Once everything was done, it was time to say goodbye.
He held Jemma’s shoulders with his arms outstretched and looked her in the eye. “I’ve got energy signatures and gamma ray signatures and everything signatures of this place. If anything goes wrong, I’ll be able to find my way back. I’ll even come back to visit if I can, alright?”
She nodded tearfully. “I’ll miss you, Fitz. It won’t be the same without you.”
He smiled at her gently. “It'll be okay, I promise. But I’ve got to get home. I swore it on the River Styx. That’s a binding oath, you know.”
“I didn’t know.”
Leo grinned triumphantly. “Ah! So I finally know something you don’t! What a glorious day, we should celebrate!” He pulled her into a tight hug.
Everyone laughed.
“Have you got everything?” Coulson asked worriedly. “Blueprints, tools, Festus?”
Leo rolled his eyes. “Yes, mom," he teased. Skye giggled.
Phil grabbed his hand and shook it, the other hand resting on Leo's shoulder.
"You stay safe, okay?"
"Was that an order or a request?"
Coulson smiled at him. "Take it as you want. Just be safe."
"I will."
Mack punched him on the shoulder. "Man, they took all the good goodbyes. I'm stuck with a boring one."
"Hey! What about me?" Skye interjected.
Mack just ignored her. "Kid, just… just be happy, alright? Take life as it comes and enjoy it."
Leo smiled warmly. "Of course I will. You do as well."
It was Skye's turn. "Fitzsimmons won't be Fitzsimmons anymore, will it?" She looked down.
Leo looked down at her. "No, it won't. But maybe I'll come back one day. Just you wait."
Skye laughed wetly. "The ship is in the harbor now, see if you can spot it."
They both burst into giggles. "Another immigrant coming up from the bottom."
They hugged. They had bonded over Hamilton, a common interest that they shared.
"Keep up those musicals, okay?" Skye asked him.
"You know I will." Leo responded. "We'll talk all about them when I come visit."
They hugged again before saying goodbye.
Melinda May was up next.
"Hey, kid." She gave him one of her rare smiles. "You keep up that training regimen, now. Or else I'll come over there and kick your butt, understood?"
Leo nodded immediately. "Yes, ma'am."
"I'll miss you, kid."
Once all the goodbyes were said, Leo stood in front of the device and waved at his friends.
He clicked a button and light enveloped him.
An oath to keep with a final breath.