A/N: So, yeah, this is just a weird headcanon of mine. Hopefully, I didn't make these people TOO out of character. But, YAY! This oneshot actually has a PLOT! Oh yeah, and I usually try to make the facts in this fanfic as accurate as possible, but feel free to correct me if I'm wrong about something.
Constructive criticisms are welcome.
Disclaimer: I do not own Percy Jackson & the Olympians or the Heroes of Olympus.
Ashes-
-to ashes
We-
-all
-burn
Leo had been slightly disappointed when he found out that Hazel could not revive the dead or do weird voodoo death magic or stuff like that.
Sure, her ability to pull goldand bronze and other extremely valuable metals straight from the ground was downright awesome, and she could kick butt like nobody's business, not to mention the fact that she wasn't all that bad to look at either had all been cool, but a part of him still wished that, as a daughter of Hades/Pluto (Seriously, the gods might have been going schizophrenic and all, but did he really have to call them by whatever name they went by at that time?) she possessed the power to do what he had expected.
Then they'd rescued Nico, the creepy emo goth kid who could do voodoo death magic, and he'd gotten slightly excited.
Percy and Annabeth's one-way trip to Tartarus, however, had driven all thoughts of that subject from his mind.
Now, however, a week since that tragic incident, those traitorous little musings had come crawling back into his mind.
And they would not leave.
She whispered to him in Spanish, warm brown eyes twinkling with affection.
"Leo, mijo, wait here. I'll only be gone a minute."
No, no you won't, wait please, nostopcomebackcomebackcomeback-
He so desperately wanted to call out to her, but he was frozen to the ground, restrained by an unknown force. He can only stand and watch as she turns her head and gives him a smile, one more beautiful than any girl he had ever seen.
Won't you smile at me one more time?
The clang of the door as she unknowingly seals her fate is the loudest sound so far.
What happens next is always the same, no matter what.
I didn't kill you, right?
And suddenly, those eyes are back, cold and sharp and blank and so, so wrong. They bore into him, burning him like no fire ever could. They accuse, they torment, and they condemn.
No! It was her fault! Tia Callida! The lady in the earth!
"Don't make excuses, Leo Valdez," a voice of a thousand hissing vipers, curling around his feet, waiting to strike. "After all," the cold smirk he received, nothing like bright smile of the mother he killed-no-shediedIdidn'tdoit chilled him to the bone, as they accompanied the terrible, terrible blank eyes.
Please don't look at me like that, please.
His wish is granted, as the cold, unfeeling stare of glass dissolves as her face begins to crumble, shortly followed by the rest of her body, leaving a mere husk of clothing and an eternal burden of guilt for him to bear.
Where are you going?
Won't you stay with me?
"Remember little hero, remember this night, when they ask you to oppose me."
"How will you stop me?"
His hands-
-caught fire
I'm sorry, -Leo, was it? You were very lucky, but I'm afraid that your mother didn't make it.
Ashes-
-to ashes
We-
-all
-burn
After he deemed that Nico was somewhat healthy enough to possibly undertake his request, he asked the kid for the favor that had been plaguing his mind for so long.
He quailed inwardly at the piercing gaze he received, from dull, lifeless eyes (Somewhat similar to ones haunting his dreams.) that held pain and wisdom beyond their owner's years. He'd seen that look before, in his own eyes from his days of the aftermath of his mother's death.
Speaking of which-
"I can try," Nico offered flatly. "She might be there, she might not. I won't know for sure until I actually try to summon her."
Leo's mouth went dry. "She-She might not be there? What does that mean?"
Those eyes of shattered glass seemed to break even more. "Spirits...sometimes they choose for another chance in life. They pick the option of rebirth, and their memories are wiped clean in the river Lethe. Then, they are reincarnated into new bodies, and then...well, the ones they left behind never get to seem them again."
The son of Hades didn't seem to want to pursue that particular subject anymore, so Leo decided to drop it. "So...then you can do it, assuming she's there?"
A nod.
"Right...so...when?" Leo asked rather uneasily, hoping that he didn't sound too much like a eager kid at a candy store. (Which probably would NOT be good for his already hyped up personality.)
With a lethargic shrug, Nico tossed out, "Whenever you want. I'm guessing that you wouldn't want the others coming along, though. This stuff is always the kind of stuff you want to do by yourself, trust me. It was bad enough when Per-."
He stopped. "Sorry, I didn't mean to mention them."
Leo managed to ignore the huge wave of guilt that suddenly slammed into him like an 18-wheeler. "That's okay. Besides, your referencing of them has just proved one thing to me."
Nico raised an eyebrow, otherwise keeping his expression the same.
"You are not a cold, unfeeling robot!"
The kid actually smiled this time, and Leo was so stunned by it that he completely forgot to follow up his joke.
"Do you always make jokes at relatively inappropriate yet completely fitting times?" Nico asked, and the shards of glass began to piece themselves back together, just a tiny bit.
Leo grinned. "Your Supreme Commander of the Argo II, at your service!"
He was, however, considerably less jovial when he and Nico both agreed that it was a good time to perform the ritual. The crazy satyr was on guard duty, (Although, Leo had a great amount of doubt that leaving his precious baby with the war-crazed "I-will-drink-you-blood-after-I-stomp-on-your-muti lated-corpse" former gym teacher was safe.) and the rest of the demigods were asleep.
Nico popped out of the shadows, effectively scaring the crap out of him while maintaining a calm demeanor.
"Do you have ten bucks?" The question, while seemingly off topic, was asked with such seriousness that it was almost painful for Leo not to crack a joke. He restrained himself, however, choosing to indulge in the question.
"Um..." He dug into his pockets, knowing that his magical tool belt, while a wonderful workshop storage cabinet and bottomless random-items pit, was not a bank. He pulled out several objects, casting them aside in front of the unimpressed Nico.
A piece of lint.
A half chewed stick of gum.
Lint.
A fortune cookie crumb.
More lint.
A nut. (The metal kind, not the edible one.)
Yet another piece of lint.
The exact same box of breath mints he had pulled out in his adventures with Jason and Piper.
Even more lint.
And guess what? Yes, lint.
"So you don't have money." Nico's voice was completely deadpan.
"Um...nope, I guess not. Why?" Leo stuffed the nut into his tool belt and brushed lint out of his hair.
"We need to go to McDonalds."
Leo yelped. "We're summoning the dead at a fast-food restaurant?!"
Nico frowned. "First, we're not summoning the dead, we're calling forth a ghost. Second, no, we are not going to McDonalds for that. Their toilets make for horrible sacrificial offering bowls."
"...That's not exactly what I meant."
"Whatever. Anyway, if you really don't have any cash," A dubious glance was given to his never-ending sources of lint. "We'll just have to get some food from the ship. But..."
"But what?" Leo pressed, slightly anxious. "Does that mess up the process somehow?"
"No. It just means that I won't be able to get the free toy."
Oh.
One shadow travel to some random outskirts of an unknown village later, they were walking to a more vacant spot of the town, plastic bag of food and orange juice in hand.
The lump in the back of Leo's throat had grown larger, and his internal panic was evidently beginning to show on his face, for Nico, without looking at him blandly spoke. "There's nothing to be worried about. It's not like this is going to hurt or anything."
But what if she's not there?
What if she doesn't come?
What if something happens?
What if-
What if I don't get to say "I'm sorry?"
"If she's anything like you've described her, she's probably actually been waiting for this moment."
Leo was dumbfounded. "But...how could she even know that I would meet a kid of Hades?"
Nico shrugged. "Who knows? The dead know a lot of stuff. They just choose not to share it with us."
Leo decided to think about this for a while, choosing to stare at the gravel path, his feet kicking the occasional rock out of his path.
Did she know, then? Did she realize what he did after she went to the nice happy place in the Underworld? (At least he hoped that she went to Elysium.) Did she know that he killed her, with his own two hands?
"We're here." The bag was dropped at his feet, and Leo watched as Nico walked over the empty patch of dirt and snapped his fingers. Cracks began to form in the earth, and a few birds flew past his head, as if escaping from an oppressive presence. With a sharp crackle, the ground split and two skeletons clawed their way from underground, brittle ivory bones contracting and stretching.
Leo jumped backwards a few feet as the eerie figures turned towards Nico, as if awaiting his command. He handed them two shovels, motioning toward the dirt. With a vague resemblance of a nod, they began to dig.
The kid promptly joined him at his distant spot several feet away from the working skeletons.
"So...now what?" He questioned, his ADHD beginning to get the better of him.
"Now," Nico sank to the floor, keeping the skeletons in his field of vision. "We wait."
"You are dismissed, thank you."
The skeletons crumbled into a pile of bones, and Leo was secretly relieved.
Nico picked up the bag of food and dumped it into the pit that had been dug.
"Isn't that wasting food?" Leo tried to joke, partially to relieve himself of the strangling tension.
Nico's face was stony. "No." They didn't talk after that, because Nico started chanting in Ancient Greek and Leo decided that lint was the most interesting thing to examine in the entire world.
Then, halfway through the blabber of words that Nico was muttering, the atmosphere shifted. A deep fog began to settle over them, draping over their shoulders like a heavy cloak. The remaining birds that had not flown away from the previous appearance of the skeletons immediately fled, and all signs of wildlife simply ceased to exist. Clouds blocked the moon, shading the only source of light that they had.
Vaporous spirits materialized in the fog, glowing softly against the cool night.
And then, Leo saw her.
The ghostly figure knelt at the base of the pit and scooped up the contents with its ethereal hands.
As it stood up, the form solidified into a more human figure.
Before him hovered the ghost of Esperanza Valdez.
His mother.
He dropped to his knees at the sight of his greatest regret, suddenly feeling colder than any ice that his flames could ever hope to melt. He was vaguely aware of Nico in the background, uneasily shifting away from the two beings.
"Mom, I-." His words froze in his throat, everything he'd been longing to say for ages dying before they escaped his lips.
I what?
I love you?
I'm glad to see you again?
I'm sorry?
I...I killed you?
A wispy hand extended towards him, reaching out to touch his cheek, but dissipated upon contact. Leo could barely bring himself to meet her eyes.
And then he did.
And they were exactly like he remembered, nothing like the ones at the end of his torturous dreams, but the sweet, caring orbs filled with understanding and love.
"I'm so sorry!" He blurted out, the dam lodged in his throat shattering into millions of pieces. The tears that he had held back for over eight years cam flooding out, and the cynical, self-accusatory part of him was disgusted at his inability to mask his emotions with his usual smile.
His mother's smile faded as she retracted her hand.
Here it comes, he thought, bitterly acknowledging the fact that this moment would happen, the day where his mother would finally blame him for her death.
But it does not come.
"Leo."
He refused to look up, because he just knew what he would see. Accusing eyes, blank and cold and dead, speaking to him in enraged hisses, "Why did you kill me Leo, why?"
"What are you sorry for, mijo? What have you done that requires an apology?"
Now she wanted him to say it out loud, repent for his crime.
"I...I killed you. I burnt it down! The workshop!" Distantly, he wondered if Nico was now as revolted by him as everyone else was. "I didn't listen to you when you told me not to use fire. You said it was dangerous, and then you paid the price for my stupidity!"
His mother showed no signs of disgust, much to Leo's surprise. "That was inevitable. The Fates had decided that it was my time, and so, it was."
What?
His head snapped up, staring at the ghost of his mother, shocked at the serenity in her eyes.
"Then...how can you be so calm about this?! How could you die just because the Fates told you to? How could you just-," he cut himself off before he could really say what was on his mind.
His mother seemed to know what he had been about to say however, and he remembered Nico telling him about how the dead knew a bunch of stuff and how it suddenly turned them into wisdom gurus or whatever.
"Ah, now you are getting closer to the truth. It is not yourself you are mad at, it's me."
Leo could have sworn he saw Nico flinch out of the corner of his eye and made a mental note to ask him about it later.
"I am sorry I left you, but you must understand, your destiny-," his mother's eyes flickered with sorrow, upon realizing that he really did not quite understand.
He leapt to his feet, suddenly enraged, for no good reason at all. "You said that you didn't care about destiny or Fates!" He faintly registered the trails of smoke flying from his hands and the sudden spike in temperature.
"You're right, I didn't," she looked behind him, briefly passing her gaze over Nico who was staring at the floor with great interest. "But I realized that it was out of my control, whether I liked it or not. And you should learn that too. Your friend over there seems to have already experienced something similar to this."
Leo looked at Nico, unsure of what his mother was talking about.
"In any case, Leo, please listen to me and others around you when we say this: None of this is your fault."
With a jolt, Leo realized that she wasn't just talking about her death, she was also referring to Percy and Annabeth.
His throat closed up. "I-."
"Sh, mijo, there is no need to talk anymore. For now, I must return to the Underworld," his mother silenced him with a gentle admonishment.
"What? But there's still so much left to say!" Leo protested, reaching a out a hand, only to pass through her ethereal form.
He received another smile, so similar to the last one that she had ever given him in life. "I am like the ash, Leo. The fire has consumed me, and all that remains is a fragile remnant to be revered by those I have left behind. Likewise, I am scattered in the wind, forever at peace, and forever with you."
She began to flicker, and Leo almost panicked, thinking that she was crumbling away like she always did at the end of his dreams.
"Wherever you go, I will find you, and whenever you need me, I will be there. After all," a playful glint crept into her eyes. "We do not need to see each other in order to communicate, do we?"
Her image grew blurry, up to the point where he couldn't even see her anymore.
And then she was gone.
Wiping away his tears, he turned toward Nico, who had managed to muster up the most sympathetic expression that a creepy emo goth kid could manage.
"Did you get the results that you wanted?" Nico asked, understanding in his eyes.
He paused, just for an instant, because he thought he could feel the wind brushing against his face in a very familiar pattern.
Dot, dot-
-dot, dash, dash
-dot, dot
He was sure of it now.
"Yes, actually. I did," Leo responded, feeling certain of his answer.
"So...then should we be getting back to the ship then?" Nico proffered a hand, a clear invitation of joining him for shadow travel.
Leo grinned. "Actually, I think I owe you a free toy from McDonalds."
He swung an arm over the shorter boy's shoulders and hauled him away from the pit.
"So, how good are you at acting? I bet you can get a couple of people to cough up a few bucks with those puppy dog eyes of yours!" Leo goaded, instantly dissipating the tension that previously inhabited the air.
"Puppy dog eyes?!"
"Y'know, that expression you get that makes you look like a starving but cute animal begging for table scraps!"
"No, I don't know. Besides, if we really wanted to make money, wouldn't it be better for you to do weird fire tricks or something?"
"Nah, besides, I might scare a few people, besides, people can't resist scrawny children in need!"
"Do you think I'm one of those cats you see on those ASPCA commercials?"
"You'll never get adopted with that attitude! Now, come! Turn on the little cat-boy charm!"
"On second thought, let's not get McDonalds."
"Chick-fil-A, then?"
Ashes-
-to ashes
I will always love you, Leo.
We-
-all
-burn
Goodbye.
Scattered in the wind,
Forever at peace,
And-
-With
You