Chapter Text
Leo was starting to hate his girlfriend.
He wondered why he ever saved her from Ogygia. Sure, at first she was beautiful, and kind, and smart, and perfect, but Leo realized he was just… desperate. He was lonely until he found Calypso there, and literally everyone else on the Argo II had a partner but him.
Calypso was the only girl that’d really liked him, and he was starting to think that wasn’t even true. She seemed to make an argument out of everything. He wondered if she’d only pretended to like him to get off of that stupid island. He didn’t think the idea was completely unreasonable. I mean, she was there for thousands of years, he thought, over and over. That would be enough to drive anyone crazy enough to fake love. But the thought in the back of his head was starting to set in and eat him alive.
He didn’t realize he wanted Jason until it was too late.
Jason was already gone.
Leo had started using concealer he stole from Calypso to cover the eye bags he still had even months later. Pulling up a makeup tutorial on Youtube with Emmie knocking on his bedroom door had definitely been a new experience for him. It had been months, and he was the only one still staying up every night wondering what would be different if Jason had lived. If Caligula never stabbed him. Even if he did make it to sleep, nightmares haunted him. And dreams that turned to nightmares when he woke up. Dreams of him and Jason growing old together, having kids…
He hated it. He hated it so bad.
And he blamed himself for the whole thing, too. The prophecy said one of them had to die. Leo thought he did, he thought he fixed it. He thought he should’ve let himself die forever if it meant Jason could live.
But it was too late for that. The war was over. Jason was dead. Leo’s heart was shattered. He would be kept up every night of his life, dreaming, wishing, praying it could be different.
His overthinking was interrupted by a knock at his bedroom door. He sat up and rubbed his eyes open, though he’d been staring at the ceiling, and walked to answer the door. It was Calypso, greeting him with a smile.
“What’s up?” he asked.
“Come help make dinner. You… You know it’s 5:00, right? Why didn’t you come out?” she questioned.
“Uhm… I guess I got distracted. I lost track of time.”
“What were you doing?” she inquired, placing a hand on her hip with a raised eyebrow.
Leo thought for a second, trying to come up with an excuse. Oh, I was staring at the ceiling thinking about the love of my life who I can never have back, just the usual! didn’t seem like a very casual answer to him.
“I was… just- uh, thinking.” he answered, biting back a sigh at how horrible the response must’ve seemed.
“Thinking? You don’t usually do that,” Calypso mused. “Anyways c’mon, dinner, idiot.”
They walked through the halls of the Waystation as it twisted and turned like always. Leo was staring at the floor. He didn’t bother to look up when Calypso slipped her hand in his.
She stopped walking, turning to look at Leo. “Is something wrong?” she asked, “You don’t seem like yourself right now.”
It had taken Leo a second to stop walking with her, lost in his own thoughts. He was a couple steps ahead of her. “Uh… What?”
“Are you okay?” she repeated.
“Yeah, I’m fine,” Leo brought his walls back up, replying with a smile, “Don’t worry about me, beautiful.”
“... Alright.”
He spent the next hour or two being his usual cheerful, funny self, not to worry anyone or look... weird. He didn’t like it when he had to be serious with anyone, no matter how close. That wasn’t his thing. His brain stayed on Jason, as it had for the last forever, but he tried to brush the thoughts off for dinner, all the while trying not to brush the concealer from his eye bags until he got back to his room an hour or two later.
He stared at his reflection in the bathroom mirror after wiping it all off, nitpicking his own appearance.
I look so tired. And dead. My face isn’t symmetrical. My nose looks weird. Gods, why am I so skinny? Was that pimple there before? My hair looks greasy, too. Jesus, I’m practically a twig. Why am I so gross? Why do I look like that? Why do I–
He sighed and switched the light off as he left to go back into his room with shaky hands. He let himself fall onto his bed, staring at the ceiling once again. Thinking. This was practically all he did with his free time now. It had been months, and all Leo could think about was his dead best friend. This is so pathetic. I’m pathetic, he told himself over and over.
After a while, he started to cry. He missed his mom. He missed Jason. And the worst part was, he could only find to blame himself for it. For both of them.
He got up, now throwing a tantrum like an angry toddler. He threw a pillow across the room, shattering something he didn’t bother to check on. He screamed to no one in particular. Maybe just to himself.
“GODS, WHY IS IT ALL MY FAULT?! WHAT IS WRONG WITH ME?!”
He kicked his nightstand over a minute or two later before crumbling on the carpeted floor, out of breath with tears soaking his cheeks. He didn’t care to get up, laying in a bed as opposed to the floor wouldn’t make him feel any better. As any person would be after sobbing and shattering a currently identified object, he was tired.
Leo Valdez, known for staying up ridiculously late or not sleeping at all, cried himself to sleep on the floor of a trashed bedroom at 7:30 PM.