I'm telling you since now that this is pure and throbbing angst. This almost made me cry while writing it. This hurt my heart. This story and the drabble I'll publish in some minutes are stories emant for you crave to just go and hug Leo.

Closed Door

It all went wrong as soon as she noticed she did not have her keys in her pocket, no matter how sure she was that she had placed them there before leaving her workstation. She should have known things would go wrong. She… she should have known. And yet… it was a normal day, a shiny morning had preceded it, why should she have suspected anything?

"Stay here, mijo*, it won't take me long" she said nonchalantly, as she ruffled her son's curly hair, turning on her heels and walking back to the workshop she'd just abandoned.

I can't believe I'm so distracted, she thought mindlessly in a sigh, waving away various tools and papers scattered around her work-table.

"It must be here… Where else could I have left them?" she muttered to herself. Suddenly, her confused rambling was interrupted by the violent slamming of the heavy front-door of the place.

"Is this what you're looking for?" a figure… a woman dressed in a dirty brown dress asked, offering her a set of keys. Offering Esperanza her set of keys. There was no mistake—those were her keys, they even had her silly mariachi hat key-ring.

"Who are you?" the Latin woman hissed taking a screwdriver as a desperate weapon and raising it between her and the unknown woman.

"Oh, that's not important, dear" she said, and only then did Esperanza notice that she wasn't wearing a brown dress, but her own skin, same that was cracking and crumbling apart like… like a piece of hardened soil… soil.

"Gaea" Esperanza let out, dropping her screwdriver to the floor. What would a mortal tool do against a primordial giant after all?

"Perhaps you really are intelligent" the goddess retorted mockingly. "But it wasn't enough before and it won't be enough now because you won't live to say anything!" she laughed derisively, as she started to disappear, taking the keys away from Esperanza's awaiting hands. "No, you won't live to say it!"

And just like that, she was gone, gone, gone, gone with her keys and with a closed door.

"No, no, no, no!" the young woman said, starting off in a frustrated mutter until it raised to a shaky scream. Trembling, she ran to the door, falling to the ground as soon as she touched the doorknob. The locked doorknob. "Please, please, please" she begged, feeling the beginning of tears burning in the back of her eyes.

It was closed, closed, closed form the outside and she... she had no keys, she couldn't do anything but… she had to get out of that place, she couldn't just sit and wait for whatever it was Gaea expected from this. There… there was a window… maybe a little too small, but she could probably get through it anyways. Yet there were the iron bars of the outside… It doesn't matter, she thought. It doesn't matter. Brake them away, bring them down, wreck the whole place but get out!

Stopping in her tracks, she heard it, that same husky voice and then… then a shaky, thin one, answering… Her son's.

"No, no, no! Don't you dare! Don't you dare touch a hair of his head!" she hissed, banging the door in a desperate, already defeated attempt to stop the inevitable from happening. "Come for me! Take me in his place, but don't you dare, don't you dare hurt him!"

She heard her boy threat that woman, she heard him try to open the door on the other side, heard the sobs that her baby was trying to hold down while all she could do was clench her fists and bite her lower lip until she felt the metallic taste of blood in her mouth.

"No, no… not my boy, please" she muttered, finally allowing herself to dwell on how useless it was for her to continue hitting the door. "My baby…"

What stopped her train of thought was a spark, a tiny spark that soon transformed into a fire with high, terrifying flames. The oil, the oil, she thought. This wouldn't last long, she probably had gasoline and oil in storage and… oh, God, this was terribly wrong.

Maybe, if she had any soil —simple, common, dry soil— maybe then she would be able to kill down the fire, but she guessed that such a thing wouldn't work if she was going against Mother Earth, who possibly was able to control soil—and she must have been, seeing as she was wearing it instead of actual clothes.

There was no point, Esperanza understood suddenly, taking in the first, heart-wrenching intake of breath that came out as a sob. Outside, she could hear whimpers that mimicked her own.

Oh, Leo, Leo…, she thought, biting her lip a little harder. Oh, baby…

The smoke rapidly started to fill the tiny workshop. It was so ridiculous, so pathetic—this was the place she loved the most, the spot in the world she knew better than she did the palms of her hands, here was where she'd met Hephaestus, as a simple costumer, all those years in the past, here was where she'd fallen in love with him and yet… yet this was now where she'd encounter hopelessness, where she'd felt the most useless, because this time no screwdriver and hammer would be able to fix it, here was where she'd meet her death.

A lifetime in the past, she'd heard that the people who died in a fire were not killed by the flames in themselves, but by the smoke, by the smoke that had no oxygen left after the embers had consumed the precious gas and that asphyxiated its victims—by the smoke that was both rapidly and surely filing her own lungs.

"Oh Hephaestus" she said with the tiny voice she had left, mixing a sob with a dry cough. "I'm sorry I'm leaving our baby. I… I can't do anything this time, and if you, diablos*, if you can do something for him right now just please, please, I beg you…"

And she could have been mad at Hephaestus and she could have been ranting on him because he'd got her pregnant and then he'd left her, because she was dying in a freaking fire and yet he was not even there, but… what was the point? She knew it didn't matter… not… not anymore.

She had been warned, yes, yes she had been. Don't fall in love with a god, don't give birth to a demigod child, don't raise a child that can burst into flames at any time, don't—oh, but what good did that do now? She's played, left her heart at stake and now she was dying stuck in her very own workshop, hopelessly listening to the sobs of her baby on the other side of the closed door.

Oh, and her poor son, the fire, her death, the… it'd destroy him. And her sister and her mother… Her baby, her poor baby…

"Leo" she managed, only to find her throat too dry to continue.

Be strong. Be strong. Be strong. Sé fuerte. Be strong. Sé fuerte, she sent, via Morse code, hoping that her message could get pass the heavy doors now that she couldn't speak.

Be strong. Sé fuerte. Be strong, she repeated, she repeated it until she couldn't feel the pain anymore or the broken nail of her index finger, until she didn't know what language she was speaking in. Be strong, baby. Sé fuerte.

Hephaestus, please take care of him, please, por favor*, please… my baby, my son…

Oh dear, oh dear, I can't believe this is the end…, she thought sickly coughing and sobbing and crying and screaming. Oh dear, oh dear, all that she was leaving behind, and her son, her son, her baby…

"I'm sorry, mijo, I'm sorry for leaving, for everything" she let out in a emaciated voice between coughs. "I'm sorry for not being there, mijo, lo siento tanto*…" and so she curled against the heavy, closed door, feeling, just feeling the dense smoke as it filled her lungs, killing any strength she had left within her, as she leaned into the heavy closed door, the closest she'd be to her son from then on.

This story was orginally meant to be for a nightmare or something like this, I don't even remember, and originally it had an angsty part for every one of the Seven, but then my friend (let's call him H because he has no account or whatsoever but I keep mentioning him) and I refused the idea, although the mental image of Esperanza dying was so strong and so heart-breaking that I had to give in and dedicate this one-shot to her. I'm sorry for the feelings that you didn't need, I swear I am!

Now, you know how much fun my Mexican part (like, my whole self, duh) has when I write in Spanglish, so the translations are just here!

1* Mijo, Rick made it pretty clear, the contraction of "mi hijo", my son.

2* Diablos: now, although diablo by itself means devils, in plural it's a common curse that I'd translate like "damn it!" or "Hell!"

3* Sé fuerte: also, I think the context explains it by itself, but it means be strong.

4* Por favor: please.

5* Lo siento tanto: I'm so sorry.

Once again, lo siento tanto for the angst! Do I deserve a comment after what I did?

PD: If you actually liked this and don't hate the crap out of me, I'll publish a similar story called "Capital Letter" in a couple of minutes! Please check that one out too! And read you soon! ;)