Wow, I'm used to tons of people following and not doing anything else, but this story has more reviews than followers right now! That's insanely awesome! Thanks, guys! In appreciation, have this update. :)

This is a short Calypso interlude drabble, just to keep you all in suspense for a while. Don't worry; Leo will be back in the labyrinth next chapter. :) But I did warn you this was a series of Caleo headcanons, not a strictly-linked story. Hope you enjoy it anyway!

Disclaimer: I don't own PJO/HoO.

The Necklace

During her endless years on Ogygia, Calypso had wandered its beaches and collected its most beautiful shells more times than she could count. She used the large ones to decorate her cave and garden, but she strung the miniature ones into a long necklace, using some rope she'd braided as a cord. It was pretty much the only ornamentation she ever wore, now that she'd been banished to Ogygia. Regular jewelry reminded her of her opulent childhood with the Titans too much, but the shells symbolized her own usefulness—whether she was a prisoner or not—since she'd made the necklace herself. Whenever she felt nervous, lonely, or upset about the many boys who had come and gone from Ogygia, she always fingered her necklace. The night that Calypso watched Leo sail away from Ogygia, his ridiculous-looking guidance console rigged to the front of the raft that had come for him after all, she fingered the necklace a lot.

After Leo disappeared into the starry darkness, Calypso slept on the beach. It seemed like thousands of years of getting left behind had finally drained her last shreds of emotion and energy, and she didn't have the strength to stumble back to her cave, weep and break things for a while, and then calm down. She just curled into a ball and passed out next to the campfire that burned as brightly as her aching heart.

The next morning, all of Calypso's energy came rushing back, and she spent a fair amount of time kicking the remains of her ruined dining table and cursing Leo for tricking her into believing they had another week together and then sailing away.

At about noon, a small voice in the back of her head reminded Calypso that he hadn't tricked her—she'd just fallen in love with him too quickly. After that . . . well, she'd been angry with Leo for destroying her dining table, but by the time she was finished with it, there was no evidence that furniture had ever even existed there.

At about two, an aura floated by with some cider and stew because the spirits were concerned that she hadn't eaten since last night's picnic. Unfortunately for the aura, the meal reminded Calypso of Leo's stupid wonderful dream of owning a mechanics garage and his stupid wonderful offer to let her work with him. After yelling at the poor wind spirit for a few minutes, the food ended up tossed into the trees, and the cider was poured onto the smoking remains of the campfire from the night before.

At about two-thirty, Calypso wandered back to her cave to apologize to the aura profusely and then get some (non-Leo-related) food—and her fountain was fixed. She gritted her teeth and walked past, pretending she could still hear the sporadic plink of water dripping from the bronze satyr—and she saw her garden tools sitting near a flower bed, sharp and clean like they weren't thousands of years old. Her throat tightened, but Calypso hunched her shoulders and reached her cave—and it was surprisingly easy to sweep the curtain aside because the rod was level.

At approximately 2:34, Calypso forgot that she was supposed to be angry with Leo for leaving and collapsed in front of her cave entrance, dirt staining her jeans and tears streaking her face.

At four o'clock, Calypso dried her eyes and decided to clean up the remains of their picnic, mostly because she couldn't stand to be in her garden any longer, surrounded by the things Leo had fixed. She meandered down to the ocean . . . only to find that the aurae had already cleaned away the dinner and were beginning to take apart the forge Leo had built farther down the beach. Something constricted in Calypso's chest, and she cried out for them to stop. She could practically feel their curiosity; she always demanded that they strip away every trace of a hero's presence, and she usually helped them do it. But today . . . "Leave the forge alone," she said softly. As soon as the words left her mouth, she could feel the wind spirits drift away, however hesitantly. She knew she was being silly. She knew the sensible thing was to tear apart the forge and forget all about Leo Valdez, just like she tried her best to forget the other heroes. But that obnoxious little voice in the back of her head refused to let her treat Leo like he was just another hero who had broken her heart. After all, all those heroes had offered to visit her, offered to try to break her out of Ogygia . . . but none of them were as bullheaded about it as Leo Valdez. None of them had tried to make her a stupid stubborn promise like his. And what if he actually pulls it off? the voice asked, despite Calypso's best intentions to ignore that part of her heart. He might need his forge again.

Calypso cursed her heart that was as stubborn as Leo's promise, played with her necklace, and stepped reluctantly towards the forge. If she was going to leave the forge there, she couldn't let it remain singed, sooty, and strewn with random metal scraps and mechanical parts. She walked inside and started to pick up Leo's leftover bits and bobs, stacking them on his homemade anvil. She told herself she collected them so she could stuff them into a bag, rather than have birds carry them off all over the island, but in her heart, Calypso knew she was kidding herself. She would stuff them into a bag to keep them safe—just in case, by some miracle, Leo managed to find his way back and needed some supplies. And it was while Calypso was wrestling with her heart, trying to convince herself not to focus in on the impossible promise he'd made the day before, that she found The Stash.

It was a familiar-looking drawstring bag—familiar because Calypso had made it herself. She opened it up and—sure enough—it was filled with nuts, bolts, screws, nails, wire, and a heap of other hardware supplies Leo had pulled out of his tool belt and stuck inside the bag, so that Calypso didn't have to ask him every time she needed another part. It was stuffed full of so many odds and ends that Leo had joking begun to refer to it as The Stash, and somehow the name had stuck. Seeing it brought back so many memories that Calypso couldn't help but tear up, thinking of the countless occasions when they'd reached inside The Stash at the same time, their hands had touched, and one or both of them had jerked backwards, usually spilling the contents of the bag and always giving each other flustered looks—until the day when they became so friendly that brushing hands while grabbing a screw was no big deal. Oh, gods . . .

Without any conscious thought about what she was doing, Calypso began to sort through the bag. Each screw reminded her of the time Leo had taught her how to use a screwdriver and had stood close behind her to make sure she got it right, even leaning over her shoulder once. Every wire seemed like the same ones Calypso had braided that day when Leo had talked about starting a repair shop with her, and they had worked together in easy silence all afternoon. All the nuts and bolts felt wrong in her fingers—she had spent too many days watching Leo thread the former onto the latter. And the washers—

Calypso tried to take one of the washers out of the bag, to add it to the right pile, but she couldn't pull it free. Eventually, she grabbed it and yanked, and it finally flew out, taking half of the bag's contents with it. Calypso stared at it. A thick coil of wire—nearly as thick as the rope she'd woven for her necklace—had somehow gotten threaded through the washer, and by pulling the washer, she'd also pulled out most of the wire, which had in turn pushed the other bits of hardware out of The Stash as well.

Calypso kept staring. The steel washer looked surprisingly pretty against the bronze coil, with the contrasting metals gleaming in the sunlight. They glinted, almost like jewelry . . .

Within a few minutes, Calypso had laced the washers and nuts onto her necklace, alternating them with the shells. Island beauty and man-made practicality hung side by side, more beautiful together than they had ever been apart. The next time Calypso fingered her necklace, it didn't seem so painful to think about Leo Valdez. The shells and washers were better when next to each other—they weren't meant to be by themselves. And because of that, Calypso began to listen to that voice in the back of her mind. She started to believe that Leo would find a way to get back to her. He was just that stubborn (and clever, and amazing, and ingenious).

For the first time in thousands of years, Calypso allowed herself to hope.