Well hello there, reader! Thanks for clicking on my story! :)
A summary: There's a HUGE battle going on, and it takes place in the past. Then, sometime later, Leo leaves another foster home. Again.
Everything is in third person POV, unless otherwise mentioned, yet the story is solely focused on Leo and his thoughts. If anything is inaccurate, blame the AU sign, not me. The words "Alternate Universe" are there for a reason.
And one more thing: Will HOH affect this story? NO.
Disclaimer: I do not own the Camp Half-Blood franchise. All rights go to author Rick Riordan. Idea for this chapter goes to Michael Carrol's: The Awakening. It's not that bad of a book. :)
Chapter key:
Italics = someone else's POV
Normal = Leo's POV
PART 1: BEGINNINGS
THE PAST
...
We are the hero of our own story.
- Mary McCarthy
...
〈〈〈 14 years ago 〉〉〉
"Two weeks."
"What?" she asked the man as she looked up from the child cradled in her arms.
"Two weeks," he repeats, practically collapsing in the chair by the basement entrance. "We've been at this for two whole weeks."
BOOM.
A bomb goes off outside. The building shakes, and a mug falls off of the table and crashes to the ground, spilling the tea that the woman was drinking on the floor. The baby cries, but she just murmurs a few words, and he's quiet again. She makes no effort to clean up the mess.
Car alarms go off above. The man and the woman share a tired glance as the screams of victims pierce the air. The lights flicker, leaving the three of them in brightness, then darkness, then brightness again. Neither of them seem alarmed.
After a while, the room is still with an eerie, out-of-place silence, which struck the woman as odd for the sound of war. Even the screams are gone.
She's about to say something about the quiet when she is cut off. Another bomb goes off in the distance, and the woman grips the baby tighter. Soon, the lights go out and the child starts to wail again.
The woman looks to the man, and he looks at her. Their eyes are the only things shining in the room.
She finally breaks the gaze, looking at the baby and telling him to quiet down. He's the first to sigh.
"We're going to lose," he admits into the darkness.
The woman knows this. She sighs, too, and wraps her arms tighter around the little boy. "I know."
A boom. More screams. More fear arching through the night.
He looks at her and his eyes burn bright, like fire.
"I'm going to die."
She looks down onto the floor. "If you want me to be honest, I will be. I think we're both going to die."
He grunts in indignation and shuffles in the chair. The clock ticks away on the wall, and the baby sniffles. It barely startles her at first when yet another chain of bombs go off, but the woman's eyes soon dart around the room. The entire building seems to be rocking on it's hinges. The bombs, the screams...they're getting closer.
Her eyes stop searching the shadows and rest on him. He's already looking at her.
She speaks first, "This prophecy you mentioned- "
"I didn't know about it," he says. He lets out a frustrated groan as he buries his face into his hands. "Not until the war actually started. The two of them- they kept it from us. From all of us. Part of the reason we're losing this war is because of a lack of trust," he tells her, and she just stares at him. Angry and frustrated, he gets up. Trying to let out his anger, he picked up the chair he had been sitting on and threw it in a corner, where it splintered into a million pieces and proceeded to burst into flames. Seeing this, her eyes widen. He glances at the flames, groans again, and starts pacing, and the baby cries.
"Calm down," she begins to say, but he goes on.
"If it wasn't for that stupid package," he vents, pacing back and forth in the light of the flames. Her eyes widen even more as he starts throwing off sparks in agitation. "We knew about it, but they didn't tell us that they had it. We could've won. If we had just cooperated and- "
"¡Dios mio! Stay calm and power down!" she tries again, and she puts the baby down on the sofa and grabs his shoulder. Looking at her, he relaxes, and the sparks are gone.
Her hands are still on his broad shoulders. In the sliver of light that comes from the basement window, she can see his entire figure - tall, dark, and covered in blood and grime from the war. Dark lines surround his once bright eyes, the ones that are now aged from years of worry. If it wasn't for the hair, she thought, he'd almost look his age.
Yet another bomb goes off. It sounds close - maybe one hundred, two hundred feet away. His gaze flickers down to the baby, who is lying down on the sofa.
"I wish we could talk more," he murmurs, and for a second she's not sure if he's talking to her or the child. "I don't have much time. I'll try to send help as soon as I can manage." He looks at her again, and his eyes burn brighter. "Keep him safe. Make sure he doesn't know anything about this. He must find his path on his own."
His arms find their way around her waist. Her hands cup his face, and their leaning into each other, his pools of fire gazing into her brown ones.
"If your right," she says, and her hands go back to his shoulders again, "Then he does belong to her. They all do. And if he's really going to be as powerful as she thinks he is..." she trails off, glancing at the child. "Will he ever be safe?"
He kisses her briefly, then pulls away. "We can only hope."
There's a staircase at the opposite end of the room. He takes long strides towards it, and she scoops up the baby in her arms again and watches the man go. He reaches the staircase and starts to ascend, but stops.
She watches as he slowly turns around to face her.
"I love you."
The words reverberate throughout the entire room, stronger than any bomb.
Something inside of her breaks, and the baby gurgles in her arms. "I love you, too."
She watches as he goes up the staircase, and she knows that he'll never come back down.
〈〈〈 7 years ago 〉〉〉
"What's your name, boy?"
"Leo Valdez."
"How old are you?"
"Ten. Almost eleven."
"Who are your parents?"
"Esperanza Valdez, deceased. I don't know who my dad is."
The deputy made a noise between a snort and a grunt, his pen hovering over the paper. "Deceased, huh? Big word for a little person."
The deputy chuckled. Leo did not reply.
The chuckling became awkward, and eventually turned into a series of coughs. Leo watched with forced patience as the cackling died down. The deputy coughed a final time, wheezed into his hand, and then went on.
He adjusted his glasses on his nose. "What'cha do this time, boy?"
Leo looked down, and one of the guard's hands rested on his shoulder and began to tighten around it.
"Nothing."
The deputy raised an eyebrow over his round rimmed glasses.
"Nothing? Are you sure, son? They're three people here who can differ."
It took all of his willpower to not turn around, but he did, anyway. Leo turned to see his current (former, now) foster family, the Josephs, staring at him in shame. And standing right next to them was Ellen, the evil social worker, who glared at Leo with such intensity he would've thought he had killed her family or something.
Leo turned back around. "I didn't run away on purpose, okay? There was this lady - "
"The lady you saw the night your mom died?" interrupted the deputy as he lifted some papers on his clipboard. "The same one?"
A lump formed in Leo's throat, and his hands started to sweat. "Yeah. Yeah, her."
The Joseph's sighed. Ellen massaged her temples with her hands, and the deputy muttered something under his breath as he jotted something down on the form. Then he handed it to Ellen, who took it from him with a look of exasperation.
The deputy turned back to face Leo and continued on.
"And what exactly did this lady do?"
"She said stuff," Leo muttered as his eyebrows knit together. It was hard to remember, and it hurt. "Stuff about my mom, about me."
"Mm..." the deputy rubbed his chin, not really listening. "You know you're going to have to relocated, right?"
Leo looked down at his old, beat up sneakers. He sounded like a crazy person. "...Yeah."
The deputy came out from behind his desk as the two guards from Social Services led Leo over to one side of the room. Ellen walked over to the deputy and the two of them began to talk in hushed tones as the Josephs muttered their complaints to themselves as they left the room. Leo glanced over at Ellen and the deputy, and picked up on their conversation:
" -Now how in blazes are you gonna' get 'em adopted?"
"That's not the initial plan here," Ellen replied, and then her tone dropped. Leo can almost see her brown eyes darken as it did. "Trying to get him into a home is hard enough. I just need him to stay in one, that's all. Just until he can support himself."
The deputy glanced at him and regarded him warily with weathered, blue eyes. Leo quickly looked away.
"That's ten years, you know."
"I know. But you know what he said- "
"Yes, yes, I know- "
"And you and I both know that he's our responsibility, not the states. If he's going to be one of the- "
"Leo," someone called his name from the other side of the room. Everyone turned to see who it was, and Leo was relieved to see that it was Mae, one of the nicer social workers from the agency. "It's time to go. The van's out here waiting for you."
Leo walked/was forced towards the door, the guards still by his sides. Ellen followed.
Leo walked down the steps of the Harris County Judicial Building and into the smoldering Texas air. The black agency van was waiting right out in front. Heat waves bounced off of the crumbling parking lot, and cicadas buzzed in the non-existent trees. The Josephs hung by their car, Mrs. Joseph getting inside to beat the heat as Mr. Joseph stalled to watch.
Ellen's heels clicked against the concrete steps as she descended behind him. The deputy stood back by the door. The two of the were still talking, and it took Leo a little while to remember that he was supposed to be eavesdropping on their conversation.
Too late. Just as Leo was about to be shoved into the backseat, he heard Ellen-the-evil-social-worker and the deputy exchange one last word.
" -New York."
He didn't get much time to understand. The moment she said it, Leo was shoved into the car, buckled up between two guards, and driven down a dusty back-road out of today and into tomorrow.
Thanks for reading! :)