I have been planning to do this for a long time, but it took me so long to find the time and motivation to do it!

This will be a three shot! So there will be one more chapter after this.

Disclaimer: I own nothing.

WARNINGS: ATTEMPTED SUICIDE

"Nyssa?" Grover called as he approached the construction sight.

The daughter of Hephaestus turned around to face him… or more accurately, look down at him. Nyssa was standing on the roof of one of the cabins they were fixing, hammering some nails into the material, and upon seeing the satyr, she climbed down using the ladder leaning against the wall of the cabin.

"Hey, Grover," she greeted. "What's up?"

"Have you seen Leo?" Grover questioned.

"I think he went back to the cabin. He said something about forgetting his tool belt," Nyssa answered, scratching her head. "Now that I think about it, that was pretty weird. I've never seen him without that tool belt. I think he sleeps with it on," she laughed. "Anyway, why do you ask?"

Grover frowned. Leo had been wearing his tool belt the last time the satyr saw him...

"I just need to talk to him for a little bit," Grover replied. "Thanks, Nyssa."

"Your welcome," she responded, a little confused as to why Grover would want to talk to Leo, who he barely knew. She shrugged it off and resumed her work while Grover headed towards Cabin Nine.

"Leo?" he called upon entering the cabin. "Hello?"

The cabin was empty.

Grover sighed and sat on Leo's bed, waiting for the fire user to return to the cabin (after all, he had to come back at some point, and waiting for him was probably better than trying to find him in Camp Half Blood, which wasn't exactly a small camp), but his elbow smashed against a button on the headboard. Grover may be Lord of the Wild now, but he hadn't lost his clumsiness when he was given the title.

Grover mumbled his frustration, but before he could reverse whatever the button did, he found out exactly what it did.

The floor around the bed groaned, and the bed began to descend, causing Grover to yelp and cling to the headboard for dear life as the bed sank into the floor.

Grover expected the bed to crash into the ground, but instead, it rested softly on the floor, and after Grover was positive he wasn't about to die, he pried his eyes, which had been tightly closed, open.

He was in an underground room. Work tables and benches lined the walls, all of them littered with tools and scraps of metal and other materials and half finished projects. There was a packed back pack to the side of the bed, and a dresser was pushed up against the wall. There was a closed door in the corner of the room, which presumedly lead to the bathroom. A light shone from under the door.

"Leo?" Grover said, knocking lightly on the door. "Can we talk?"

There was no response.

"Leo?"

Silence. No words, no footsteps, not a single sound. You could've heard a pin drop.

"Leo?" Grover repeated, turning the door knob, only to find it locked. "Leo!"

He sniffed, and his eyes widened as a familiar stench filled his nose.

Blood.

Grover yanked on the doorknob, but when pulling didn't work, he stepped back and kicked the door down with one swift kick his parents would've been proud of.

Leo Valdez was leaning against the bathroom cabinet, pale and lifeless. Blood poured out of his wrists and onto the tiled floor.

"Leo!" Grover shouted, kneeling at the mechanic's side and pulling off his own shirt. He ripped the fabric in two pieces and tied one half around each of Leo's wrists to slow the bleeding.

"HELP!" Grover wailed.

Footsteps sounded, and he heard the bed creak as someone jumped through the hole in the floor and landed on the bed. Two sets of footsteps came running, and Nico Di Angelo and Will Solange appeared in the doorway, horrified by the sight before them.

"Don't just stand there! Help me!" Grover pleaded, pressing harder on the make shift compresses around Leo's wrists.

"Nico, go to the Infirmary and tell them to bring a stretcher to the Hephaestus cabin," Will barked.

Nico nodded and faded into the shadows.

Will knelt beside Leo and used his own jacket to wrap around Leo's wrists, adding more pressure.

"Oh, Leo," Grover murmured. "Why?"

Will seemed to be thinking the same thing, but he was in too much shock to voice it.

Grover shouldn't be surprised. He should've expected this. Leo's mental state was already terrifyingly fragile, and Grover had pushed him. This was all his fault…

Nico appeared with two healers, and they lifted Leo onto the stretcher. They were about to run for the exit, but Nico stopped them.

"Trying to lift him through that hole in the floor is too risky! I'll shadow travel you to the Infirmary. Hang on tight."

Shadows wrapped around them, and seconds later, Will and Grover were alone.

Grover ran for the exit and used his powerful goat legs to leap through the floor while Will sat on the bed, which began to rise until Will was able to hop off of the bed and onto the main floor.

Grover bolted out of the cabin and nearly ran into the seven.

"Grover, have you seen Leo? We need to talk to him," Percy asked.

"He's in the Infirmary," Grover told them, already running towards that very location.

The other members of the seven rushed to catch up, each more stunned and worried than the last.

"Why?" Jason demanded.

"He attempted suicide," Grover responded before running faster and leaving the heroes of Olympus in the dust.

The six of them exchanged shocked glances.

Leo Valdez… depressed… suicide… The words didn't fit together. They didn't belong together.

"That happiness that Leo shows... it's all a mask to keep you away from the truth. I asked around and heard some stories about Leo. Now I just wonder how you guys didn't know sooner. Look, you guys are my friends, but you can be really oblivious sometimes. Yes, even you, Annabeth. Do yourselves and Leo a favor, and wake the heck up."

Was Grover right? Were they really that oblivious to Leo's pain?

Leo was drifting. He couldn't focus on anything, not even the horrible pain in his wrists. Leo had never been burned, but he assumed that this is what it would feel like; still, he could barely feel it now.

Darkness rolled on for miles. Any sounds that managed to worm their way into his ears became fuzzy mumbles by the time they reached his brain. He could feel small sensations, like the prick of a needle in his arm or the pressure of something around his wrists, but it all seemed to be dull.

He couldn't speak. He couldn't see. He could barely hear. He could barely feel.

Then, the cold set in.

It was a frigid feeling that settled into his bones, making him shiver. But that wasn't right… he couldn't be cold. He couldn't ever remember a time he'd ever been cold. His fire powers didn't allow it. In fact, when it snowed, people huddled around him for warmth because Leo's body temperature was naturally high. Or should I say unnaturally. Leo nearly laughed when he thought about all those times he freaked out adults when they took his temperature, and it was like 115 degrees.

But he couldn't laugh because an unbearable amount of fear crashed over him in waves.

Leo had spent his entire life wanting to die. He'd attempted suicide many times, but he'd never been afraid, not even when he technically died defeating Gaea.

Before… his life hadn't been worth living in his eyes. His mother died. In foster care, if it wasn't abuse or neglect, it was bullying or generally feeling unloved. Whether the foster parents tried to show affection or not, he never felt wanted, never felt loved, never felt at home. The few times he did were ruined, usually by monsters or unforeseen events (unexpected deaths of friends, for example. That had happened far too many times) or his past coming back to haunt him (particularly in the incident of his final foster home when his best friend got kidnapped by a gang Leo got mixed up in, but that's story for another time). Then, he never felt like he belonged at camp or with the seven. Even after he defeated Gaea, no one seemed to care when he worked for days on end; when he disappeared for several hours because he took a walk in the woods and fainted from lack of sleep (that had happened three times in the past month); when they saw his packed bag in his room, like he was planning to run away. If they made the connection, which it was unlikely they did, they didn't care enough to talk to him about it.

But then Grover came along, and he genuinely seemed to care…

The cold and the terror were getting stronger now, and Leo realized something that made him begin to sob. Ever since his mom died, the thought hadn't crossed his mind. In fact, the exact opposite of this thought had plagued his mind since that summer day nearly six years ago.

The thought ricocheted off of his skull like a ping pong ball, and Leo cried harder.

For the first time since his mom died, he didn't want to die.

"And you're not going to."

Leo managed to open his eyes, and he found himself staring at the ceiling of his mom's warehouse, the one that had burned to the ground with her inside. But it looked like it had before the fire.

Leo struggled to sit up, and he found himself staring at a person he would've given anything to see again.

"Mama?"

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