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The Waystation was eerily quiet.
Leo didn’t much appreciate that fact. In fact, his decade-and-a-half long one-sided beef with silence had only grown in the past couple of days.
That being, since Jason’s death.
Leo dug his fingers into the wood of the workbench he sat at, wincing as the wood splintered under his nails. He was seriously regretting speed-working through all of his unfinished projects in an attempt to distract himself from this overwhelming sense of dread that boiled inside his stomach every time he thought of it for too long. Now, he was left with nothing to do, his leg bouncing with uncontainable energy, mind buzzing with thoughts and thoughts and more thoughts.
That was his whole problem with silence. Not only did he have a terrible history with it, but his brain hated it so much it had no other choice but to think to replace the overbearing quiet.
"The party can now start!" he announced, feeling giddy and satisfied from his work at Camp Jupiter. "There’s my peeps!"
Leo should have noticed it sooner, the way Apollo and Meg stared at him like they had no idea what to say. The way Piper looked near terrified to even speak. Their silence should have said enough.
"Man, what’s up with you guys!" he asked. "Somebody hit you with a flash grenade? So, I got good news and bad news from New Rome, but first…" he frowned. "Where’s Jason?"
Where’s Jason.
There was a minute of aggravating silence. He’d felt his mood crumble, his heartbeat picking up in his chest as Piper’s chin trembled, her hazel eyes filling with tears.
Leo heard his breath hitch, and he immediately cursed himself for letting his brain lure him back to that heartbreaking moment of silence. It was always that same silence, the type that polluted the air after death.
The type that had swept around the ashes of his mother’s workshop, the type that had stolen his words and left him standing helplessly, waiting and praying for her to miraculously walk out of the debris, to break the quiet and assure him that they’d be fine. The type that echoed around the sewage pipes he’d slept in while on the run, the type of silence that filled Cabin Nine whenever someone brought up Beckendorf.
He blinked rapidly, refusing to let himself cry over this again. Suddenly, he found it impossible to stay sitting down for a second longer. He jumped up from the bench, turning around to—
What?
He didn’t have anything to do.
The fate of the world was on Apollo’s shoulders this time. Leo had already finished all his projects. There was nothing wrong, nothing to do, nothing to fix.
There was so much wrong, so many things he wanted to fix.
Something in his chest cracked as Leo stared at the empty halls ahead of him, sending a splintering feeling spreading throughout his body, hurt and pain and longing hammering his heart from every angle.
Leo remembered how it had felt to be in the explosion that had taken out Gaea. Flames had engulfed him from every side, burning hotter than anything he could have conjured up on his own. The sound of the bombs going off had nearly deafened him, the red-white fire forcing him to blink out spots from his vision. He’d had no idea whether the plan would work, but he hadn’t particularly cared at that moment. The only thing he’d needed to work was taking out the Earth Mother so his friends would be safe.
The fact that the Physician’s Cure had worked in the end had been rewarding, especially since nobody had even died in place of Leo coming back to life. The fact that Festus had even found Ogygia again was an extra surprise. The whole thing had felt so amazing, Leo should have known it was too good to be true.
Jason was dead.
And all because Leo wasn't.
Leo had grown up on the streets long enough to know by now that there was no such thing as a free meal. Really, it had been stupid of him to assume he'd truly escaped death unscathed.
There would always be a price.
And if Leo had known that it would be the death of his best friend, he would have never gone for the Physician’s Cure. He would have gladly let himself burn and be detonated into smithereens if it meant that Jason would live. He would have done anything.
He still would.
Leo was honest to gods holding himself back from pulling an Orpheus and bargaining with Hades to let Jason live the life he deserved, and Leo wouldn’t even insist on coming back alive alongside him. He would give anything for Jason to come back.
Only, he didn’t have anything left to give.
Leo’s chest constricted, remembering in a flurry all the moments he’d spent with Jason, all the moments he’d never get to relive. His failure to protect his friends struck like a blade, and it tore through him before he could even brace for it.
Shame. Grief. Self-loathing.
The stillness in the air, the steady calm, it faltered for a single heartbeat—just a crack, a ripple of shared disgust with the thoughts pounding on the inside of Leo’s head like the thunder he would never get to hear again.
He sucked in a shaky breath. The sound was piercing in the exploding silence that weighed on him, dragged him down as if it had chained him to the seafloor, leaving him breathless, suffocated, drowning.
Tears burned his eyes. He didn’t bother fighting them this time around. They pooled quickly, spilling down his cheeks in burning streams. He tilted his head back, staring at the ceiling and wishing it would collapse on top of him, bury him with his failure and pain. Instead, the bricks shifted with the Waystation, leaving him behind to wallow in his own naivety.
He could practically imagine that dumb joke coming from Piper, if his best friend hadn’t moved to Oklahoma. She’d say “gullible” was written on the ceiling, and naturally, Leo would look. Not out of stupidity, but out of the curiosity that Jason had sworn up and down would get the son of Hephaestus killed one day.
In the end, it had only ended up killing Jason.
At least the word wouldn’t have actually been on the ceiling. His best friend was actually, really, very truly, gone.
To storm or fire the world must fall.
The world had ended up falling to his flames.
And so had Leo’s.