4-hot coffee in the morning

Leo looked like a mess when he woke up. Dark purple bags looked permanently etched under his eyes. He looked like he'd barely slept, even though he'd slept pretty well.

Coffee, he decided. Coffee was good.

Leo dressed in a daze. After figuring out that he was putting his shoe on the wrong foot, he tried to put an actual effort into paying attention.

After successfully clothing himself, he staggered out the barracks door and headed for the town, which he thought was called New Rome. A light mist hovered in the air, and dew covered the grass. Leo could appreciate the beauty of the place as he stumbled to the boundary line. Even Mount Diablo-the Devil Mountain, which still made him shiver, looked innocent and harmless.

With a little imagination, Leo could picture a towering palace in the fog, with smoky columns and misty animals haunting it. It seemed a shame that the sun would burn it up in an hour or two.

He stumbled up to the city's boundaries, and a broken statue materialized in front of him, looking angry.

"Please unload your weapons." The broken statue said in an annoyed tone. The little pig-tailed girl behind him held out a tray helpfully.

"Unload…my weapons?" Leo asked it.

"Yes!" The extremely ticked-off statue demanded irritably. Maybe he'd realized he had no hands earlier, or maybe nobody had fixed him. "There are no weapons allowed inside the Pomerian line! Your fancy belt there, take it off!"

The little girl held out the tray again, blinking candidly up at him. Leo seriously doubted her abilities to watch the tray, because her attention was mostly fixed on a couple of Monarch butterflies that were fluttering past, but he decided that he would do what the statue said. It looked as pissed off as a marble head and torso could be.

It felt weird not having his belt on. Like he was weak and helpless, running away from another foster home. He searched his pockets for some copper wire and cursed when they were empty. Just some lint.

The coffee/pastry shop was on the main road. It had a little, red-tiled patio with a couple spindly, black steel tables and chairs with umbrellas on them.

Guess Rome modernized.

Not many people were up; the city was still sleeping as the barracks were teeming with life. Leo could imagine this place as a ghost-town, forgotten and abandoned like Ancient Rome.

"Large black, please." He told the person across the counter, who was a pretty blond girl, maybe around 18. Her name tag read "Gwendolyn"

"Sure." Gwendolyn smiled at him and called his order back into the kitchen area of the shop.

Leo hurried to an empty table and kicked his feet up. He ran a hand through his hair, which probably made him look like a porcupine, and traced a groove in the metal.

"Leo?" Someone asked.

Leo yanked his head around. 14-karat eyes blinked at him. Unforgettable.

"Oh. Hey Hazel." She didn't look like she slept well either, Leo observed, as she nearly collapsed into a chair. She tucked a cinnamon curl behind her ear.

"Hey Gwen!" Hazel called. The blond turned around.

"Yeah?" The girl, Gwen, called back.

"Medium, extra cream." Hazel placed her order and turned back to Leo. She smiled wearily and placed her elbow on the table, leaning on her hand.

"What are you doing here?" He asked, not really thinking the question through.

Hazel raised an eyebrow as if questioning his mental stability. "Getting a coffee." She looked around at the shop, exaggerating the motion.

Leo could feel his ears burning, and he stared at the crimson tiles until his vision swam. "Oh. Right." He swirled his hand around the curved table edge.

"You look like crap." She told him bluntly, tapping her fingers impatiently.

"Thanks." Leo teased, looking up with a grin. "You sure do know how to make a guy feel good about himself."

Hazel laughed. He grinned at the sound. Gwendolyn looked over at them suspiciously as if she didn't trust him.

"Why do you look like you stayed up half the night?" He asked her.

The daughter of Pluto flinched, her eyes widening with something close to panic. "Nightmares." Her voice was remarkably steady.

"Oh." Leo finally used his head and stayed silent on the subject. Hazel was chewing at her bottom lip worriedly.

Score 1 for Leo. You managed to chase a girl off, and you don't even like her.

But, a tiny voice whispered in his mind, what if you do like her?

Gwendolyn helpfully provided a distraction from the question and set down their coffees, which were steaming, and she smiled fondly at Hazel. Leo wondered if they were related or something before he remembered that Gwen used to be Cohort 5's centurian.

"Hey Gwen." Hazel said between sips of her Styrofoam cup. "How's college?"

"College?" Leo interrupted.

Hazel and Gwen looked at him like he was crazy.

"Yeah, doesn't your camp have a college that demigods can go to after they've finished their 10 years of service?" Hazel asked.

"Not that I know of." Leo shook his spiky head. "I think they're just thrown into the streets. We don't do service."

Gwen frowned. "That's weird." She walked away to talk to someone else, waving a goodbye to Hazel.

Hazel was staring in amazement. She leaned back, hooking her thumb into the belt loop on her jeans and sipped her coffee nonchalantly. "Really? Nothing?"

"Nope. They go into the mortal world." Leo said, swallowing a lot of hot coffee and almost choking to answer her.

"Weird." Hazel looked mystified. "What if they die? And the children of the Big Three?"

"We're trained to fight for our lives." Leo reminded her. "I think Chiron's just a pessimist though."

She laughed again, and Leo felt proud of himself. He'd gotten a daughter of Pluto to laugh twice.

"It must be nice to have a teacher there all the time." Hazel said. She took the top of her cup off, releasing a bunch of swirling steam, and traced the circle with her finger, seeming distracted. Her eyes were dark and unsettled, as if she believed that the differences between Greek and Roman were too great to overcome.

"Not really. Can you imagine having a teacher with you all the time?" Leo grinned crookedly at her. "I think Reyna and Annabeth should get together and talk sometime. If they ever wanted to conquer the world, they'd be unstoppable. Annabeth's architecture and Reyna's...dictatorship."

Maybe he'd had too much coffee.

Hazel agreed though with a laugh, her eyes lightening up. Leo was astonished at how pleased he felt, just from her being happier. It was strange; he'd never got that reaction from making people laugh.

Hazel stared steadily at the street, which had long shadows casted over it from the sun. She didn't seem to want to look at him.

"So, who designed the airship?" She asked as she turned to watch the sunlight glimmer off the bronze in the emerald field.

"I did." Leo couldn't help but be smug.

"What?" She looked astounded, and her eyes flew to meet his. "You designed it?"

"Yup. And I built it. With my cabin." Leo felt compelled to add, so he didn't look like he was trying to impress her.

Because he wasn't. Nope. Definitely not trying to impress a girl. Not just any girl either, Hazel Levesque, who had seen it all. And he wasn't even trying to impress her anyway, so why did he care that she looked so admiring?

He didn't.

Denial, the voice said in a sing-song tone.

Shut up, he told it. There's nothing to deny.

"What's with the cabins?" Hazel asked curiously. "I've heard you guys mention them a lot." Leo tore his mind away from his thoughts.

"Well, at our camp, instead of cohorts, we have cabins. You're sorted by your godly parent, and the cabin is decorated pertaining to the god or goddess." He tried to explain, tapping his fingers on the metal table restlessly.

"What about the ones who are alone?" Hazel asked sadly, staring at her tattoo on her forearm with the weird glyph.

"There's other campers." Leo offered. "And the gods aren't exactly chaste. There's a bunch of Big Three children."

"Like who?" Her eyes were still fixed on her arm.

"Jason and Thalia-his sister," He added. Hazel looked astounded.

"I didn't know Jason had a sister." She said quietly, clenching her fist. Leo hoped she wouldn't clench the other one, or she'd crush her cup.

"Yeah, she's a Hunter of Artemis. Super hot." Leo blundered on, oblivious to Hazel's hurt look. "And Percy's alone, but you got Nico. Oh, and his sister, who died, what's-her-name..."

"Bianca." Hazel muttered, glaring at the scarlet tiles so hard, Leo wouldn't be surprised if they cracked. She cleared her throat, and said, louder, "Bianca di Angelo."

"Oh." Leo nodded, his hair flopping in front of his eyes.

"She went for rebirth." Hazel said. Her knuckles had turned white. The metal chair he was sitting in creaked as if threatening to break apart.

"Oh." Leo looked bewildered. Hazel sighed through her nose and leaned forward, coffee forgotten.

"Didn't anyone tell you about the Underworld?" She asked.

"Uh, no, well, the basics." Leo flushed, suddenly hyper-aware of exactly what shade of eyes she had and the way her hair curled into her face. She brushed the offending curl behind her ear again as she tried to find the right words.

"The Underworld is made of three parts-The Fields of Punishment, Elysium, and the Fields of Asphodel." Hazel paused, as if she were considering saying something else. "You probably know that. There's a river called the Lethe; it makes you forget everything, wipes your mind blank."

Leo watched her, interested, as she frowned, biting her lip. Her eyebrows bunched together, forming a crease as she tried to remember.

"And if you choose, you can be reborn after being dunked in the Lethe. If you've achieved Elysium three times, you go to the Isles of the Blest." She explained.

"Maybe that's what Bianca di Angelo wants." Leo offered. Hazel shrugged, noncommittal, and kept silent.

Leo sipped his lukewarm black coffee, watching the street. People had filled up when they were talking; the sun was higher in the sky. Cheerful chatter echoed over to them, tiny snippets and fragments of conversation. The hills provided a peaceful green contrast to the red shingles on the roof and the mild, laidback palette of the buildings.

Hazel finished her tepid coffee off quickly and walked toward the street and the boundary line with the fanatical statue.

"Oh, and your shirt's on inside out." She said to Leo as she turned back to wave at Gwen, and she dashed away.

Leo's mouth was hanging open after her. The recognition hit him again, stronger than ever.

He knew Hazel Levesque.

I don't really like the ending, because you all probably know what my theory is. Oh well.

Did I put enough detail in? I tried to put more in than the last one, but some parts seem less detailed than the rest. Meh.

If you're wondering, Hazel is hurt/offended when Leo called Thalia hot because she still remembers Sammy when she looks at him.

Rick Riordan is still in denial. He has this crazy idea that he owns HOO and PJO. Well he doesn't! I do, MWAHAHAHA! Wait...why are you coming toward me with a straightjacket?

Good? Bad? Review?