A/N: Prepare for weirdness with this one.
The first time Leo sees It, he's in Greece.
It's a big beast, with long, bloodstained teeth, and rotten black gums. It's huge, Leo's head just barely meeting its shoulders, but it's spindly, having a strange, thin quality to it. Greyhound-esque, but with the fur and look of a wolf. The face is actually ripped to show off every single tooth in its arsenal, leaving a long, molten-fire tongue out in the open.
The tongue is odd; it looks like fire, but with the liquid property of magma. It's a queer, alluring quality, drawing Leo in despite the fact that his muscles are screaming, run.
The eyes are made of the same material, boring into Leo with the presence of a ghost and the power of a demon. Why he associates them, Leo doesn't know.
It howls, a piercing scream like broken wind chimes on broken hearts, and it sends chills down Leo's spine. Liquid fire splatters the sky, and, somehow, Leo knows it will burn him.
Then the vision's gone, and Leo's alone, and Gaea's asleep, and his heart won't stop hammering in its chest.
Leo was caught by officers five miles outside of New Orleans.
Consequently, he's shipped off to the nearest orphanage - The House of the Rising Sun.
Leo doesn't know how long he roamed the streets, watching the clocks in shops and the hourglasses in the antique window panes with a cold feeling in his chest.
He doesn't know why he remembers it. To be frank, he doesn't truly quite care. He just knows that this is the last day before the beast claws up the ground and drags him under, kicking and screaming, to spend centuries minting in a flame that will finally, finally burn him, like he's always secretly wanted it to.
It's just a legend, he thinks.
But it's not quite true.
Percy Jackson is a legend. Jason Grace is a legend. The gods were just legends, and then he stepped into the world where Poseidon's throne is a fishing chair with trident-holder.
They're all real, Leo, he thinks, viciously.
The House of the Rising Sun is home to five kids with glassy eyes who only speak when spoken to, roaches, and Miss Bluebird.
Leo, at first, thinks her name is totally fake, but she proves it to him with a birth certificate. Miss Bluebird hated it when people didn't tell the truth, or believe others were telling the truth, so she basically hated Leo right off the bat.
Miss Bluebird, however, knew her way around a child's natural curiosity - and Leo, at nine years old, was as curious as they come.
He hears the snarling when he runs into Jason.
"Leo, man!" Jason exclaims, clapping the Latino on the back. "We were looking for you everywhere! Did you find some machine shop or something?"
Jason blinks at Leo's dull stare, and then he hears it -
Grrr-aheek. Grrr-aheek.
Jason jumps, drawing his spatha, and grabs Leo's bicep. "There's a monster here. Come on, don't check out on me now!"
The lopsided growling starts a fire in Leo's belly, one so hot it turns Leo's nerves to ice. Leo wrenches his arm out of Jason's Man-of-Steel grip and pushes Jason out of the way.
That's when the jaws come in.
Right out of the shadows, the long, perfect teeth snap down on his wrist, and the pain is so blinding that Leo blacks out for a minute. When he comes to, the Hound's paws are splayed over his chest, silver-black claws slipping through clothing and tearing skin.
"Leo? Leo, where are you?"
Don't come after me.
A drop of the liquid fire lands in Leo's eye, and he howls. It does burn him, after all.
The Hound barks, spraying more of the burning liquid on Leo's chest, seeping into the cuts from its claws. The eyes are dripping, down, down, down, almost like the Hound is crying.
Leo looks into those fiery eyes, and the two reach a mutual understanding.
You and me, Leo thinks at it. Diablo and el perro del infierno, el demonio. We're both murderers, here.
The beast nods, splaying brimstone, and its jaws come down, in an insane parody of let's all go to Hell.
Miss Bluebird told stories.
The five children there believed in them firmly - when Leo even started to question them, the normally subdued children would awaken, their eyes becoming miniature versions of Hell.
"They're real," Annabelle, with the blonde hair and the blue eyes and the porcelain-doll features, had said. "You don't know what you're talking about."
Leo would snort, and arm himself with a witty reply - and then, every single time, through the doors would burst Miss Bluebird.
"Just because you haven't heard my stories, doesn't mean they're not real," she would chastise, her voice like rotten honey.
After three and a half weeks, Miss Bluebird finally told him a story.
Leo had walked out of the living room shell-shocked. He'd run off into the night as soon as possible, but then came morning, and Miss Bluebird in her pastel-blue dress and white apron was standing there with a smile.
Leo woke up to white.
Quickly, he realized it was a white sheet. And that this room was very, very cold. He threw off the sheet, standing up and -
Promptly falling backwards.
The floor was covered in crunchy ice, painting the walls white and giving the airy a foggy feel to it. He was in the freezer. He was in the freezer.
Why would they put him in a freezer?
Oh, wait. His body can't burn.
Leo slaps a palm to his forehead. Stupid.
His memories come back to him in a rush. The Hound, the burning, dying -
He should be dead right now.
You're going to die again if you don't get out of this freezer, Leo thinks. He slaps himself on the forehead again. You have fire powers, dumbass. If you freeze to death, ever, it's probably going to be the most embarrassing thing since forever.
For the umpteenth time, Leo curses himself. He most likely just jinxed whatever good luck he was having - y'know, if being mysteriously resurrected is called good luck in demigod-speak.
Leo scrabbles for a handle on the door. It takes a little firepower, but he gets it melted to the point where he can turn the handle and step out.
The Argo II is dark. And very, very cold.
Still shivering, Leo shuffles through papers on the desk. Funeral payments.
He'd been dead for three and half days.
That's half of seven, his mind - unhelpfully - supplies. The Devil has seven heads.
Shut up, he mentally hisses.
But the number of the Beast is straight sixes, isn't it?
I said shut up.
Sorry, Lazarus, Leo thinks back to himself, and then he drops the papers he was holding.
Lazarus. Lazarus. Great Styx almighty, Lazarus.
"Sin is the illness," Miss Bluebird said. "The virtuous are the true doctors of the world. Of course, Lucifer tempts us to sin. To fall with him."
Leo nods, because if he did anything else, she'll open the welts on his back.
"Sometimes, Lucifer tries to tempt us with power. Sometimes children are born with great power."
Leo's hands, which had been folding one of Michael's shirts, stilled.
"We call them cambions."
Leo hands had started shaking.
"They are children of demons," Miss Bluebird said, looking at him with bright blue eyes. "Leo, what happened with that hot poker?"
Leo scrambles to the nearest trashcan and heaves.
He throws up blood. It takes him a while to figure it out in the din of the kitchen.
The light flicks on, and Leo jumps, thinking, demon.
"...Leo!?" Annabeth shouts, her hair tied back into a sleep-messy braid and wearing gray cotton shorts that Miss Bluebird would have burned.
"H-hi," Leo croaks, his voice hoarse from disuse.
Annabeth's mouth falls open. "Oh m-my gods. Percy!"
"Yeah, you kinda locked me in the freezer. What's with that, man? I thought we were friends."
Annabeth raises a dagger, backing up. "What are you?"
"The super-sized McShizzle, Commander of the Argo II, y'know. All sorts of things. I'm a multitalented kind of guy," Leo jokes, but his heart isn't in it.
Percy comes racing down the hallway, Riptide firmly in hand, clad in sweats and a Camp Half-Blood t-shirt, looking particularly ruffled. The thundering of more pairs of feet down the hallway sounds.
Percy's eyes widen, and Riptide drops to the floor like a decapitated head. Thunk. "Holy Poseidon."
Leo shrugs. "I dunno what Poseidon had to do with it."
Demon, Leo thinks. She was a demon.
Jason appears, shouldering between Percy and Annabeth, mouth open.
Leo crosses his arms and chuckles. "I got some flycatchers, don't I?"
"What the - man - I saw you die! Your heart stopped! How are you alive? We already told everyone - and - Good Zeus!" Jason exclaims.
Leo spreads his arms. "You aren't gonna get rid of me that easy!"
Piper gasps, somewhere in the crowd, and suddenly he's on the ground, looking up into the kaleidoscope eyes of Piper McLean.
"Oh my gods! We were - we were so screwed up, you don't even know -"
Leo laughs, just a tad bitterly. "You were screwed up? I died, man."
Miss Bluebird is a demon.
"Holy cannoli, Valdez, how did you swing immediate resurrection?" Frank asks.
"I don't even know. First thing, I'm staring down a hellhound, next I'm waking up in a meatlocker."
"That's what did it?" Percy asks. Piper dismounts, helping leo to his feet.
Leo nods. "Yep. Straight out of the Underworld, I guess."
Jason shakes his head. "This doesn't make any sense."
"Leo," Annabeth says, her eyes still wide. "This is impossible."
Leo shrugs, but the words settle in his belly like balls of ice tied to butterflies.
But here I am, and somewhere out there, there's a little Miss Bluebird.
Leo had tried to run away six times. Each and every time, Miss Bluebird had dragged him back, kicking and screaming, bleeding and sobbing.
"Murderer!" she would snarl. "Devil child! A demon, bastard of innocence! Rot with the hellhounds!"
- and then she'd slam the door, and Leo would be locked away in the dark until the sun came up, until the moon would go down, until the welts stopped bleeding and the fire in Miss Bluebird had gone out.
Then she'd drag him out, and take him to the back garden, when the sun was high and blazing, and she'd strap him there with the snakes. She wanted them to bite him, to officially claim their child - their cambion.
They never did.
Miss Bluebird got more frazzled. More destructive. She whispered stories to him through the hole in the wall, the one right above his bed - she'd whispered the Passion, she'd whispered Exodus, she'd whispered Lazarus and Cain and the Book of Revelation. She stopped feeding him in that dark room altogether.
The story she told him every night before he slept hadn't happened yet. It was the one where the hellhounds crawled out of the fiery pit and snapped his neck, and drug him down to where he belonged - amongst the fire and smoke and burning bodies, and he'd burn for a thousand years.
Miss Bluebird killed herself with a gun in the next room, and Leo picked the lock, and he ran.
He didn't run fast enough to miss the five emaciated, unmoving bodies with the glassy, dead eyes and the snakes that had slipped through the open door.
They didn't bite him, and Leo ran from New Orleans, and he never came back.
"Leo!"
Leo snaps awake, gunshots blaring in his ears.
Jason's face is the one swimming above him. "Dude, you okay?"
Leo gulps in air, whispering an "I'm fine," into the hot, heavy air. "Did I set something on fire?"
Jason shakes his head. "No, man. You were screaming."
Leo nods, like he'd expected this. Of course, he had. "Sorry."
"Don't apologize, Valdez."
Leo sits up, surveying his room. He'd seen it four days ago, before he'd died, but somehow it felt longer.
The two sit in companionable silence while Leo gets his breath back. This is the reason he loves Jason - the son of Zeus doesn't pressure him. He doesn't have to be Leo, the class clown, around him - he can be Leo, the depressed little boy who killed his mother. And Jason will never ask.
It's why Leo feels obligated to explain. Judging from the twitching of Jason's hands and the quirk of his brow, Jason feels prepared to listen.
"Dude, I don't bite. You can ask if you want."
"Oh! Uh," Jason says, blushing red. He rubs the back of his neck with a broad hand. "What were you dreaming about?"
Leo could name a million and one things. But, for the first time in his life, he wants to speak the truth.
Sin is an illness, his mental Miss Bluebird whispers, and lying is a sin. Sin will make you fall from grace.
So be it, had been Leo's reply.
"Second time I ran away," Leo says. "The only orphanage I'd been in more than a day."
"You ran away from an orphanage?"
Leo shudders. "Yeah. You would, too, if you'd been there."
"What happened?" Jason asks, a little sheepishly.
Leo sighs. "This is going to be a long, weird, possibly terrifying story. It doesn't even have dragons in it. It's not very fun."
Jason shrugs. "We all need a little boring."
"Well, to start, they called the place The House of the Rising Sun."
"Wait…. like the Animals song?"
Leo laughs, slapping Jason on the back. "I knew there was a reason I liked you! Yeah, like that one-hit-wonder."
Leo scrubs a hand through his hair. "It was even in New Orleans, too. Freaky. There were five kids there, and the person who ran the place, Miss Bluebird."
"Miss Bluebird?"
Leo grins. "I thought it was fake, too. But she showed me a birth certificate to prove it. To give you a mental image, Miss Bluebird always wore the same light blue dress, same white apron, same red lipstick and the same curly, blonde pigtails. She kind of reminded me of Dorothy."
Jason laughs. "Man, she sounds like a doll. Like a literal, actual doll."
"She was," Leo says. "Her and Annabelle - Annabelle was one of the kids. She couldn't have been more than six, blue eyes, curly blonde hair. It sounds like she looks like Miss Bluebird, but they couldn't've been more different. Trust me.
"Michael was the oldest, and he was ten. Brown hair, tall, dark, and handsome thing going on - that shizam. There were the twins, Elle and Belle, and come to think of it, they kind of look like Hazel - but let's not go there. And then there was Gabriel, who was three."
Jason nods. "How old were you?"
"Nine," Leo replies. "Miss Bluebird - she was crazy. She hid it, and she was good at hiding it, but she was batshit-psycho-up-the-damn-belfry insane. In the absolute craziest way."
Jason's brow furrows.
"She hid it by being really, really religious. She told the other five stories - Bible stories, I think. I don't know if I heard what they heard. But the rest of them would be speaking gibberish, stupid things, and when I told them that's not true, they completely freaked.
"And you don't know these kids, Jason. They didn't speak unless spoken to, they were like dogs, or broken horses. And after three weeks - later, she told me three weeks because three is a holy number - she started telling me stories."
"What were the stories?" Jason asked, concern gleaming in his blue eyes.
"Oh, man… They messed with your head. Big time. She had a major storytelling voice. It's almost like Piper's charmspeak, but you know what's happening, and it's not making you do anything. You're thinking of all these things on your own. She led the horse to water, but she chose the dehydrated one to take in the first place, and she knew it was gonna drink, but she didn't make it do anything.
"And, somehow, they were all Bible stories."
Jason looks a little green. "And you were only nine?"
Leo chuckles. "It gets worse. I refused to believe her, and she hated me. Well, she hated me before that. It was hate at first sight. But, the things she told me… I tried to run away, after the first story. I slept in between a dumpster and a mouldy wall, and when I woke up, there she was. Sunny, crazy smile. Gods, it was terrifying."
Jason's eyes widen. "Dude."
"Yeah, I know. Her outfit, expression, eyes - none of it ever changed. She always looked perfect. She dragged me back and took a hot poker to my back."
"Good - Good Zeus, Leo!" Jason chokes.
"Wait for it. She noticed that the hot poker didn't do anything. She threw me into the cellar for three and a half days - no food, just water. When she dragged me out, she told me I was a cambion - a child of a demon and a person," Leo laughs, bitterly. "She wasn't the first, though. Aunt Rosa was three steps ahead of her."
"Leo, I'm so sorry."
Leo waves the apology off. "I kinda got off track. This wasn't what I was dreaming about. I was dreaming about the last day I was there."
Jason looks at him with wounded, empathizing eyes, and Leo - for once - doesn't mind that someone cares.
If they get themselves killed by being close to him -
So be it, his mind whispers back.
I'm going crazy, he thinks.
We're all mad here.
"I'd tried to run away six times before that, but she'd dragged me back. She kept me in the cellar permanently, but she didn't leave her room, either. She whispered at me through a hole in the wall," Leo's voice cracks, the memory of one big, blue eye staring at him through the wall in the middle of the night making him jump.
Jason pats him on the back. "It's okay, man, you're with us. On the Argo II."
"It was like being in one of her stories constantly. I was going crazy, Jace, and I mean crazy. Screaming-at-nothing crazy. At nine, even. But then she killed herself in the next room, and I picked the lock, and I ran out. All the other kids had already starved to death."
Jason's mouth fell open. "I'm gonna bet that this isn't even the half of it."
Leo nods. "The most hellish six months of my life. But, uh. There was this one story she used to tell me, every night at three in the morning. It had to be three, because there wasn't another story she loved so much."
Jason nods. Go on.
"She told me not to worry, that she was going to wait for me, and that it would all be over soon. She told me hellhounds were going to jump out of Hell and they were going to drag me down, and I'd burn. I'd actually burn down there."
Jason's mouth falls open.
"And - Jason - I was just killed by a hellhound. And I came back."
"Lazarus was resurrected by Jesus," Miss Bluebird's harsh, crazed voice carries through his room. Leo's spine locks in fear. "because he was righteous."
Leo's rigid against the floor; how's it so cold in here, for it to be August?
"But Lucifer could do the same. He could resurrect a sinner, because they were a sinner. Oh, my sinner, my cambion, who's more perfect for the job than someone who can only be burned by the fires of justice? To the greatest injustice, cambion, my cambion."
Fear drives people crazy, his mind supplies, and for once, Leo doesn't reply.
Somewhere, some when, Hera's face cracks into an ugly grin.
A/N; Wow, don't even ask. Just, don't. I think this came from my tendency to write horror, but this isn't exactly horror?
By the way, it seems like I'll be doing Valkyrja!