notes: so i was reading a fic for another ship in another fandom, and after picking up the shattered pieces of my heart, i decided to build this bad boy out of multiple old unfinished fics. at first i was like "i shouldn't dedicate this to charlie bc that would be mean" but now we're here so ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)
for liperweek1.4, the prompt of which was "broken". enjoy, and good luck.
...
what's not broken
...
For Leo, breaking up was breaking down.
It was being messy and unorganized. Letting letters and bills sit idly on the kitchen table, covering the dark wood like a fine layer of dust. It was being reckless, staying up in the dark to starve and scream and tear things apart, knock things down, watch thousands of tiny pieces of porcelain and ceramics and glass burst across the floor, cutting into his feet when he walked on them.
Breaking up was breaking him. He didn't know how to take it, didn't know how to cope, and there was no one to teach him, because everyone was happy, so obliviously happy, and just together and not angry or mad or annoyed or detached. All of his friends were still in love, even after all these years. And Leo? He hated them for it.
Calypso had walked out the door at two in the morning, after a fight, in the middle of a New York winter.
She had expressed her longing to leave before, but he hadn't taken her seriously back then. She was practically a beacon for mythological activity, so it was wise for her to stay in one place and not draw attention to herself in the city, where she could put many innocent people in danger—but she still conveyed a disdain for it all, the smallness of Leo's world. She said that she didn't like to stay in one place anymore, not since they'd traveled, not since she'd seen the things she'd seen. It was like her island, she'd said. Ogygia. Small and cramped and suffocating.
She called him suffocating.
Said he hadn't given her much breathing room. She'd said it like, like—like he hadn't postponed his homecoming just to take her to see the Great Pyramids; like he hadn't chosen her over his friends just for the view of the Eiffel tower at night, a wonder she'd never even heard of. Leo didn't get it. Never would, probably. But since she'd been gone, for the first time in a long time, he could breath, too. Maybe that's what it was. She was asphyxiating him. Drowning him in deep waters that he couldn't find his way out of.
If he was drowning, then Piper was his breath of fresh air.
She was always loose about things. He attributed it all to her still being in love—with Jason, that is, who she'd all but sworn her hand to. Her words lacked the usual sharp and lofty tone that their other friends so often felt the need to use with him, filling his brain with message after message of concern and admonition. But not Piper. No, instead, she was kind and assuring. Always had been, for as long as he'd known her. She was the light in his darkness when no one else would be. A lighthouse to his ship in murky waters.
It wasn't until Calypso was gone for a year that he realized he was breaking even more.
If Piper was a breath of fresh air...well, then he was taking huge gulps of her. He was breathing her in like a ventilator, like an inhaler. He grew needy for her. Wanted her with him. Yearned in his moments of loneliness for just the slightest glimpse of her smile, the sound of her laugh, the brush of their arms when she bent down to help him sweep the shards from his floors. He missed the way she wrung tiny braids of her dark hair around her finger, and the way she'd glare at him when he told her a wry joke that she was fighting hard not to laugh at. He missed her even when she was there. Even though she'd never left, and promised him she never would.
Is this what love felt like? He wouldn't know. To keep the feeling to himself, to make it last a little longer, he resorted to confining his heartbreak to himself with a bite of his tongue when she neared. Gods knew, the last thing he wanted to do was hurt her, too.
And then came the line— "Jason and I are taking a break."
What the hell is a guy supposed to do with a line like that if not run with it?
So he does what he does best. Runs.
It only takes a couple of months for breaking to become building.
Life becomes uncluttered again. His kitchen table is topped with nothing but placemats and coasters. In the dark, he stays up to watch movies with her, to talk and laugh and joke about things, to make plans to meet up with their friends to have fun and celebrate and be happy . Happy—it is a word he hasn't felt in a long time, not since an immortal girl took it when she walked out of his life, when she rode out of it in a fiery explosion on the bronze dragon he'd built himself.
He is so, so glad to be building something else now. Something new.
Whatever the hell it was that caused the break between Jason and Piper—Leo delights himself in being an asshole and thanks the gods for it, for this one opportunity to not feel like the fragments of porcelain that once littered his kitchen floor, to get to kiss her, to not feel like he's constantly being ripped apart, or beaten, or mangled, or in pain, or depressed, or—
Broken.
Two of her ribs were broken, said Jason, as was the skin on her stomach, the wounds of which ran parallel in three, jagged lines.
They were in the woods, far from camp, far from anything that could help them at the moment. Monsters were coming.
Leo's hands, which he had just used to incinerate a monster in an act of destruction, now worked to give life, which was something he knew they weren't capable of. It didn't stop him from trying, though. He pressed his hands firmly against her chest, and tried to drown out her voice as she winced, cried, whimpered, and moaned—a stark contrast to the trill of her laughter.
There was blood, blood everywhere. Jason shook and sobbed, fumbling with the ambrosia to shout out what they both had on their minds. Why in Hades did you have to jump in front of us? Why, Piper? You're dying! You're fucking dying!
Her breathing became labored and watery. Leo heard blood in her lungs. He pressed in harder, harder, momentarily forgetting about her ribs to just save her, damnit, while Jason cried and cried, trying to get her to eat ambrosia. Right after she managed to swallow a small piece, the monster appeared just yards away, tail flicking in the dim light of the sunset. Jason stood with bloody hands and wild eyes and ran off to protect them. They were all crying now.
She didn't try to speak or give her last words or anything. She was sincerely dying, right before his eyes. Her gaze grew unfocused and her skin was paling fast; any breath could have been her last. Gods, what even were her last words to him? To anyone? Duck? Get out of the way?
Don't fix things that aren't broken, is what they say.
For Leo, losing her was being broken all over again.
What even was his relationship with Calypso in the face of something like this? What were his relationships with anyone, really? Just playdates?
Within a month of losing her, it became apparent to him that Jason was just as broken, if not more.
He heard it from Percy, who was the last to visit him.
"He's seriously let go of himself," he told Leo, all hushed tones and snuck glances. The way he carried himself felt like he was telling juicy gossip and not expounding the suffering of a heartbroken man. "His entire apartment's a wreck. Everything's messy, with all of his stuff in the wrong places, and clothes everywhere. There are no pictures of her," he tapered off, green eyes big and doleful. Leo swallowed his indignation as Percy gave him a firm pat on one shoulder. "Do you think you could talk to him? I can't seem to get through to him. After all, you were, you know…"
There.
Leo plastered on a fake smile. That's what Percy said to Piper, wasn't it? To get her to help Leo so many months before, when no one else wanted to. "Sure."
It took five knocks and two jams of the doorbell to get Jason to answer the front door, not in particular order.
Leo had seen it all before. A mound of papers and letters strewn haphazardly on the front table, like dust. A house of darkness, where the halls were shrouded in shadows and the lights never seemed to be on anymore. Torn pieces of paper lay just beyond the doorway, and Leo realized with a start that they were photos, all fragments of Piper throughout the years, smiling like the ghost she was.
"Listen," he found himself saying. It took him all of his willpower to pry his eyes off of Piper's smile to look up into Jason's tired, cold eyes. "I know it hurts," Leo continued slowly, the words pulling at his heart, "but I loved her too. She saved me, too. And I don't think she gave her life for us to live out broken ones."
Jason was shaking. Leo felt the regret now—from taking her from him. From wrenching her from Jason's hands at the first opportunity he got. From playing on her heartstrings just weeks before Leo was called to go on a quest, which prompted her to come, which prompted Jason to follow after, because he loved her just as much as Leo did, and she loved them both more than anything.
Jason swiped at his eyes with the sleeve of his shirt. Leo's heart clenched at the sight, because if he could just convince Jason that living his life in pieces wasn't all there was to life, if he could just save him, then maybe he'd right one wrong on his long list of screw ups. Maybe he could change his own ways before it call came full circle again. Maybe Leo was suffocating to the ones he loved, soaking up oxygen like the child of fire he was. But if it ended here, then so be it. He wanted to be like Piper. He wanted to be a breath of fresh air.
After a long while of wiping his eyes, Jason nodded, slowly, then quickly. He stood a little taller on his feet.
"Yeah," he said finally, his words quivering with a promise of tears. Sure enough, they followed soon after. So did Leo's. "I think so, too."
notes: if you liked it, please review! thanks for reading!