Holy Hephaestus, 207! I'm so happy!
Okay, so each and everyone of you deserves a chapter dedicated to them, but I promised this

to the 200th reviewer, which was...:
I am Lara daughter of Hecate!
This chapter's for you, girl, hope you like it! This fits, as Pen is a daughter of Hecate as well ;)
Also, I still don't own whatever Rick Riordan owns.
I love you all, I hope you like this chapter, please note that there will be at least one more.
Review!

Warning: Reading this chapter might cause suffocation by overload of fluff.
The author cannot be held responsible, as she herself nearly died writing it.

Chapter fifty-nine: Not for Anything in the World
~Leo's POV~

Of all the things Leo had ever thought he would die of, coldness had never been it.
When you could control fire, make it appear at will, hypothermia simply wasn't something you would worry about. He'd been wrong.
As he lay miles underneath the surface, in danger of being crushed by tons of dirt or suffocating,
it was the cold that got to Leo. It creeped through his torn clothes and into his back, spreading through his whole body, making it shake violently at first, and then starting to paralyse it.
Penelope had tried to take his mind of the feeling, he knew, and at first it had worked. But then it had come back, ten times as bad, and now all Leo could think of was how his heart was sure to stop beating, would soon be frozen to death.
When the drowsiness came, he reckoned it was death, settling upon his body, finally taking him away from this misery. He didn't even try to fight, there was too little energy left inside him.
Gaia had taken it all.
As he lost consciousness, he wished that he could have seen daylight once more before dying.
"You are not dead, son of Hephaestus" a female voice, soft and beautiful, said "Not yet, anyway."
Leo opened his eyes. He wasn't sure where he was as he was standing in a hazy fog, but it was definitely not the underground cell.
Slowly, his surroundings solidified, and Leo saw a white pavilion, beautifully crafted, with a little white table and three chairs standing in the centre of it.
And two of these chairs were occupied.
When she saw him, Penelope got up and more or less hurled herself into his arms. He caught her, amazed at how solid she felt, or maybe they were both so mist-like that it didn't matter.
The other person seated at the table smiled at this display of affection, her hair rippling around her face as it changed colour from blonde to red to brown and finally to almost the exact same shade of dark as Penelope's.
"Aphrodite" Leo said, having met the goddess before.
"Yes." Aphrodite smiled, and motioned for them both to sit down. They did so, and immediately Leo started to ask questions.
"Where are we? Are we dead? Why are you here?" but he was cut off by Aphrodite's hand, which she held up to silence him.
"There is no time, Leo, to answer all your questions. I have induced a trance for you, with the aid of Hypnos. You are not yet dead, though you will be soon, I am afraid. Yet there is still hope for
your friends. So now you need to listen."
Leo was about to protest, but Penelope laid a hand on his arm. "Please Leo" she said, and her voice was so serious and sad, that it shut Leo up. "We need to listen."
"Good." Aphrodite smiled. "You two are a better pairing than I would have thought."
"What do you mean?" Leo asked, unable to retain his curiosity.
"Well, I had a very different path planned for you, Leo Valdez. If it had not been for Penelope's, ah, creation, we would not be having this conversation right now."
Leo could feel Pen tense next to him. His face set. "Yeah, well, we are here, and I thought we didn't have a lot of time?"
Aphrodite nodded, but she seemed lost in thought.
"Yes, yes. We don't. Gaia is extracting all your powers as we speak, and she has already grown strong. If she succeeds in completely draining you, then the world will be destroyed."
Leo and Penelope looked at her, expectantly. "Is there some way we can stop that from happening?" Pen asked.
"I think so." the goddess answered. "You see, if Gaia does not get every last bit of power from you, she will not rise. At least not now, not empowered by you two. Your friends might still succeed in stopping her. But to achieve that, you must die."
This took a moment to sink in.
"What?!" Leo said "I thought you're trying to help us!"
Aphrodite sighed, and for a moment she looked genuinely sad for them. "I am, Leo. But I'm afraid the only way to help you now is to save your friends. You yourself are already beyond any help."
Leo heard the words, but couldn't accept them. Aphrodite was telling them they were as good as dead, but that there might be a chance to save the others. If they died. Yet that would mean that Pen would die, too, and hadn't Leo sworn to save her? Hadn't he just gone through hell to get her back?
Penelope seemed to know what he was thinking, for she slipped her hand into his.
"We need to do it, Leo." she whispered. He nodded, not meeting her eyes, he was too ashamed of himself. For failing her.
He addressed the goddess "What do we have to do?"
"Give up." she answered. "You see, Gaia is counting on you to keep fighting until the end. And through the strength you try to bring up, she will get the power to rise. That's her plan. So if you two give up now, before she can come by that last, crucial drop of Olympian Blood, she will be hindered."
"How do we give up?" Penelope asked, her voice steady now. It seemed she'd accepted the prospect of what lay ahead. Maybe dying once made you no longer fear death.
"You need to ask Thanatos to take your souls. Death is not affected by the Roman/Greek conflict, just as I am neither. This trance will last long enough for you to...say goodbye."
Aphrodite gave them both a long searching look. Leo wanted her to go, but he still had one last question.
"We're in Gaia's realm, completely shut off from everything. How did you reach us?"
Aphrodite actually chuckled. "Heroes, so blind to the greatest powers of all. What am I the goddess of, Leo?"
"Love" answered Leo, completely perplexed.
"Exactly. And because of that, I can appear where true love exists. You might be physically and to a great part mentally separated from any help, but my power comes neither from your body, nor from your mind. It is your heart and your soul that draws me, and the connection between you two was enough to allow for me to appear. Hypnos, whose power also partly comes from the heart, after all, dreams are never random, helped a little. Yet I am talking too long, and there is too little time. Of course you may also choose to return to your underground prison, and fight, but then you will doom us all."
And with that, the goddess was gone.
Penelope and Leo looked at each other.
They were no longer sitting on chairs, but on the floor of the pavilion, which was otherwise empty.
"So, we're going to do it, huh?" Leo asked.
Penelope nodded. "We have to. We're their only chance, even if it's just a slim one."
"Yeah" Leo agreed, his heart heavy.
He had to say it, before his courage left him again. "Pen, I'm sorry. I promised to save you, and I completely failed you. You only just got back, and now you're going to die again, and it's all my fault. I brought us those berries.."
He was shut up by a finger on his lips.
"Leo." Pen said, and there was an inexplicable smile on her face.
"You didn't fail me, not in the slightest way. We can save the others, and maybe the world.
And" she added, her eyes as bright as they'd been before her death "I think dying won't be so bad this time. After all, we're together."
She was right, Leo realised. Dying together was definitely not the worst way to go.
"You're right. We can do this, if we're together."
They hugged, tightly. Leo never wanted to let go, yet he knew he had to, and soon. The mist around them was already beginning to get thicker.
Suddenly he remembered something he had never asked Pen, something he'd completely forgotten about, as unforgettable as it should have been.
"Pen" he said and pulled back looking her in the eye. "When I pulled you out of the water, that time back at the beach... "Yes?" "Well, you came round, for a second or so. And you looked at me and said my name. Leo. How did you know?"
He'd expected her to be shocked, and for a moment confusion did seem to pass over her face, before she shrugged her shoulders.
"Maybe I've always known it was you." she answered, as the mist swirled around them.
Understanding seemed to pass between them, as Leo realised that Aphrodite had been right in saying heroes were blind to the greatest power of all. But maybe the same was true for gods and giants, and every other creature on this earth as well.
When Penelope spoke to Thanatos, asking him to take their souls and guide them to the Underworld, Leo had his gaze fixed on her face, smiling slightly.
A dark shape started to swoop down upon them, spreading its great dark wings. Thanatos, the god of Death, was coming to claim them.
There was one last thing Leo wanted to say however.
"Gaia was wrong."
"What do you mean?" Penelope asked.
"She told us to spend the rest of our time alive regretting the choices we've made." Leo held Penelope's gaze, those bright turquoise eyes as captivating as the first time he'd seen them.
"But I wouldn't change a single thing. Not if that would mean not being here with you."
It was probably the most emotional thing he'd ever said, yet he wanted Pen to know.
Tears glistened in her eyes at this, and she kissed him, letting him know that she felt the same way.
As they stood there, holding onto each other, he recalled what Aphrodite had said: I had a very different path planned for you, Leo Valdez.
Maybe that one wouldn't have led him to this end, he thought, while gripping Pen's hand.
But standing there with the mist swirling around his body, face to face with Death and the girl he loved by his side, Leo knew he wouldn't have chosen a different path, not for anything in the world.