And now you find out. Well, the Leo part, anyway.
Wow… I am really bad at keeping you in suspense.
And I just realized I forgot do a disclaimer the past few chapters, so…
Disclaimer: I do not own Percy Jackson. And I haven't owned him for any previous chapters. Nor will I. But if I did, the Blood of Olympus would be out already *ahem, ahem, Rick Riordan*.
Enjoy!
Leo sat on his bed, Beckendorf's curtains drawn. He was remembering his friend from Houston. Sara.
He was five.
Sara had been his closest friend in Houston. They were both the poor kids. Both had only a mother. Both the outcasts. Sure, Leo was class clown and funny as anything, but this was kindergarten. Five year olds don't appreciate humor as much as older kids.
But Sara did.
Tall, blonde-haired-blue-eyed, she was the stereotypical cheerleader. Shrimp Leo had to crane his neck to talk to her. But they were friends. Good friends. Best friends.
Then Sara's health started to go downhill. She would wake up sweating in the middle of the night, sweats so bad her sheets would be soaked. She would fall asleep an hour after she had woken up. She felt cold, but her skin was perpetually hot. She was sick.
The one doctor that Sara's mother could afford said it was leukemia. But she couldn't pay for chemo. There were no organizations to help. So she fought her leukemia unaided besides for regular drugs. Penicillin. Tylenol. Nothing that would make the slightest difference.
They fought the symptoms instead of the cancer.
Leo was a match for her. It didn't make any sense. Leo was Hispanic, short, black hair, brown eyes, and totally unrelated to the tall, blonde, blue eyed girl of German descent. No one else matched- not even her mother. But that was the way it was.
Sara needed the blood badly. Hers wasn't clotting properly. A needle stick would leave her bleeding for a good half hour. Sara's mother begged. But she needn't have done so.
Sara and Leo were best friends. What was a little blood to help one's closest acquaintance? Even at five, Leo understood.
He gave blood not once, not twice, but three times to Sara. And in the middle of the final transfusion, she flatlined. Leo had been sitting there, cross-legged on a chair by the bed, watching her.
And he watched her die.
It was an open-casket funeral. Her blond hair was the only thing untouched by the cancer. Lying there, she didn't look so tall. Her blue eyes were closed, as if sleeping, the way everyone's were, in death.
After the funeral, Leo had gone back to his room. A stray bolt had gotten in from his mother's workshop across the hall. He picked it up and looked at it.
Bolts don't get sick, he thought to himself. They don't die.
And that was how Leo, without even realizing, went from being a people person to one with the machines.
The next morning, they sat around the Poseidon table. The mood was somber. Leo had dark circles under his eyes, as if he'd been up all night. He probably had. Percy and Annabeth looked the same way.
"When do you have to leave?" Piper asked.
Percy looked at his watch, the one form Tyson. "Five minutes."
"What time will you be back?" Frank asked.
"No clue. Could be lunchtime, could be midnight again. My hunch is that I'll be back to welcome the new campers into sword class. Three o'clock, right?"
"I'll find a way to call you if I won't be able to make it. Don't want to keep the kids waiting for their first activity of the summer! I gotta go," he broke off abruptly. He stood up. "See ya later."
"Good luck!" Jason called after him as he jogged down the hill.
"How long until he can't run like that anymore?" Hazel asked, quietly.
No one answered.
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