"Are you okay?" Piper nagged Leo as they wrapped his arm up and set it in a crudely made sling.

Leo raised his eyebrows. "What do you think, Beauty Queen?"

She bit her lip with frustration, but held her temper. She could afford to get annoyed at Leo's obnoxious nicknames later.

"Leo?" Percy called from where he was sitting on some stable chunks of debris. "Piper! Love of my life! We gotta make a plan so we can get the other half of our group back."

"My name is Annabeth!" the blonde called, strolling over regardless.

The three formed a group huddle around Percy.
"So what now?" Piper asked, her hands on her hips.

"Literally every time we make a plan, it goes wrong," Leo said, "And I know Percy is kinda addicted to having adventures where we all almost die, but I'm not. I'm already sucking up a whole lot of ouch, so if we could not run into danger this time, I'd appreciate it."

They stared at him, unable to make the concern on their faces.

"I'm sorry we can't do much else about your arm." Piper apologized, "And I know it sucks. But what else can we do?"

"As a child of Athena, I can't go along with the plan being that there is no plan," Annabeth added, crossing her arms in thought. "Instead, maybe we could…"

Leo sighed and started tapping in morse code on his leg. Of course you won't listen to me. Just a useless engineer

"We listen to you, Leo." Annabeth said quickly before moving on, "Anyway, I think we need to stay here and wait for them to come back."

"I can't do that, babe. Like Fire Boy pointed out, I have to rush into danger. But in all seriousness, I want to be out there helping them."

"I want to help too. Jason is out there…"

Leo wanted everything to stop. Annabeth knows. He pressed hands against his ears and shut his eyes, trying to block out the rest of the conversation. He never figured anyone would realize he was talking to himself in morse code. How long had she known? Did she know every bad thing he said about himself when he tapped out those messages.

He never really expected someone to be paying attention to it.

"Hey Leo?"

Leo felt Piper tugging his hands away from his head.

"You okay?"

Leo swallowed, not really sure how to answer as she helped him reposition his sling. His gaze drifted toward Annabeth. Her gray eyes pierced his.

"H-how long have you been-"

"The Morse code thing? I noticed it earlier but never really figured it out until now.."

"Honestly?"

"Yeah. Why would I lie?"

Leo shrugged. "I don't know… Do they know it too?" He asked, motioning toward Piper and Percy.

"We know it's Morse code, but I have no idea what any of it means," Percy answered casually and Piper nodded along with him.

"Yeah. I have no idea how to speak Morse. Is it even technically speaking?"

"Okay," Leo said shakily, standing up despite the waves of exhaustion flooding over him. "Let's just go find our teammates and get out of here. I'm done sitting around and doing nothing."


Sorry this chapter took a bit longer than normal to update! Thanks again for the support! 3