The first time Leo Valdez ran away was when he was eight.
The pain of his mother's death was fresh back then, merely weeks old and still tearing into him like a knife. His heart felt like it had had all of the life squeezed out of it, leaving a tight knot in his chest that refused to come undone. Guilt weighed heavily on his shoulders in those days, crushing him slowly, day by day, under its oppressing bulk. The last thing he needed to be reminded of was the horror he had inflicted - on his own mother, no less.
So when his aunt Rosa called him a diablo and slammed the door in his face, he ran.
Leo didn't look back.
In the first foster home, his guardians were alcoholics. Their house stank of old beer bottles and vomit and urine. All of the other kids bore the marks of their oppressors, and it wasn't long until he joined their ranks - sporting cuts and bruises all across his body where his foster father would beat him during one of his many drunken rages. Huge bags formed under his small, eight-year-old eyes, a testament of the extreme stress his captors put him under.
After three months, he ran away. And he still didn't look back.
It would be the same story for the next seven years; he would be sent to a new foster home, thrust into a new family, and every time, he'd try to convince himself that maybe this one would be different, maybe he would find a place where he belonged, and maybe, maybe, he would finally feel happy just being Leo Valdez.
And every single time, he would be disappointed.
Every time, he would run.
And he never did look back.
He was fifteen when he finally escaped the system. Ironically, it took being flung out into space and nearly splatting on the sides of the Grand Canyon to set him free of it. In the flurry of activity following, he was taken away to the first place in a long time where he had family, the first place in a long time where he really felt at home. There, among his half-siblings and his friends, he felt accepted, even loved. He finally had a place to run to, instead of to run from.
Still, when he, Jason, Piper, Annabeth and Coach Hedge set out on their super-important-super-secret-world-saving-mission-thingo onboard the Argo II, Leo still didn't look back.
The real story was ahead, not behind. He didn't see any reason to.
Several weeks later found him on a beach, sitting beside a girl that he never would've dreamed that he even would have been sharing a continent with, let alone a campfire. They spoke to each other in muted tones, enjoying bowls of her (absolutely delicious) home-made beef stew while warming their feet next to the campfire they had made earlier that night.
He promised to return to set her free.
She told him to forget it.
You can't come back, she had said. It's the rule.
I'm not that great at following rules, he'd retorted, rolling his eyes. I'll spring you. It's only fair.
It was right then when the raft showed up. She'd dragged him up and towards the boat. She'd helped him rig up his guidance console. She told him to go.
And then she kissed him.
The wind caught the raft's sails, effectively tearing him away from her.
And for the first time in years, Leo Valdez looked back.