Hello again everybody :) This chapter will have mentions of self harm again, so please look out for that warning. Thanks for all of the faves and follows. And 400 reviews! I love you all, I never thought that this story would be so popular. Also, I'm not to sure how the whole flashback thing with Hazel and Leo worked so I decided to manipulate the idea a little bit.
Pacenya347 : Poor Leo having another panic attack.
DamnYouPeopleWithCoolUserNames : 1. It will be in this chapter then. 2. No sorry and 3. Thanks.
QueenofLothlorien : Thank you, and I'll try to put that in next chapter. Now that I think about it, that does remind me of Goodnight Mr Tom...
Kittehx1 : At least she died feeling safe and happy.
Our Mismatched Socks : Yes you were :)
Siddalee M : Thank you, and your idea was awesome so I was happy to write it in.
Cupcake Gal : I feel bad for Leo, I'm so mean to him. I'm glad that you enjoyed it though.
Ybbilicious : I feel bad for making you all cry, but I'm happy that you love it.
Neon Wish : Thank you :)
LadybugGirl7068 : Even if it was a coinky dink, I'm glad that my story made your day better.
Melancholy's Sunshine : I won't tell him if you don't tell the demigods what I've written ;) And maybe the emotion was all bubbling up for this chapter? Muahahahahaha.
Catsrawesome : I'm happy that you liked them all, even the sad one.
Hartemis : I hope that you survived :) Though as I'm not a daughter of Hephaestus, I probably couldn't handle a car.
Bdog123 : I have only written three scenes of abuse and two child/teen deaths. All of those were requests. And I don't personally believe that the scenes are graphic and I definitely don't have a fetish for something as sick as that. I don't have any fetishes.
ObsessedwReading : Thanks, and the feels are so strong when I think about Leo.
Septimus : I feel sorry for all three of them as well.
Iluvbooks : Leo is one of my faves (Grover is the other). And I hope that this is soon enough.
Killua minamoto : Thanks, and I'm sorry bur I don't really ship Liper so I probably won't do that.
Mondmaedchen : Thank you, it is so nice when I'm told that my story is someone's favourite :)
FracturedSanity419 : You're very welcome, and thanks for the virtual doughnuts. And I'll put that in next chapter for you.
Disclaimer : Please don't make me repeat it again! (I also don't own Dr Seuss).
Hazel's P.O.V
Leo's arms flailed as he desperately tried to suck in some oxygen. Annabeth was back in front of him, attempting to calm him down, but this attack seemed so much worse then the last one. Leo's eyes were glazed, distant, and Hazel had no doubt that he was experiencing some sort of flashback. She thought of her own visions, and wondered if there was anyway for her to help Leo through this. Maybe... she had managed to show Leo one of her memory flashbacks, maybe she could join him in his.
Hazel padded over to Leo cautiously, and placed her hand on his cheek, oblivious to the slight waves of confusion from Annabeth who was still trying to frantically help Leo.
Hazel was sitting in the cupboard alongside the sobbing eleven year old Leo and the equally terrified modern version of her friend. Both were curled up in terror ,and though they existed in two different realities, their grief seemed to cycle between the two.
Her Leo looked up at her appearance. The fear mixed with pain in his eyes hurt Hazel more than any monster could.
"The monster is coming." Both Leo's whimpered this in unison, burying their heads in their knees.
"You better leave while you can." Hazel was about to ask what monster was coming, when she heard banging on the door of the closet. The Leo's both cringed.
"Leave me alone!" The younger Leo howled. Hazel shifted (hard to do in such a small, enclosed space) so that she was between the Leo's and was facing the door. It rattled with the force of each blow, and Hazel drew in a deep breath, before unsheathing her sword and pointing it towards the door.
As they weren't actually in the memory, Hazel was pretty certain that her blade would do no damage to the monster, but unsheathing her blade made her feel braver, and in this claustrophobic closet with the terrified Leo's, Hazel needed all the courage that she could get. Then she realised something. In the memory, Leo had been rescued by two policemen. So what was going on here?
The door cracked with a boom that caused Hazel to flinch along with the two Latinos. Her Leo gripped her free hand and she gave it a reassuring squeeze, glad that Leo was holding it tightly enough to mask the trembles of fear that spiked through it. The other Leo actually seemed to be getting younger, shrinking before Hazel's astonished eyes.
Light flooded into the dark space, and Hazel felt her eyes adjust rapidly (a perk of being a daughter of Pluto and spending a lot of time underground). The sight that welcomed her was simultaneously confusing and horrifying.
Leo stood in front of the newly opened door, staring back at her and the other two. But this Leo was different. His clothes were torn and cindered, and his hair hung over his face, obscuring his eyes. Twin trails of grease and dirt stained his cheeks, starting at his eyes and ending just above his chin. They looked suspiciously like tear tracks.
Hazel lowered her sword so that the point was no longer facing the opening but it remained in her hand, as a demigod it never hurt to be careful. She wasn't exactly sure what was going, and her confusion grew as the Leo's either side of her screamed.
A dark smirk appeared on the standing Leo's face. And then he looked up. Hazel felt the air forcefully expelled from her lungs with a combination of shock and pure, undiluted fear. Leo's eyes were completely black. Ghostly fingers danced along her back as the Leo stepped forward in a jerky movement, a broken machine like motion. She scrambled back, dragging her Leo as far as they could go back into the wardrobe. Little Leo remained paralysed in fear, he was about nine now, and although Hazel loathed to abandon her Leo, she couldn't leave his child self to the mercy of the creepy figure.
She let go of his hand, and lunged forward to try and grab the little boy. A roasting hot hand clamped over her wrist, and Hazel felt herself being wrenched out of the wardrobe. Both Leo's who had been sitting with her reached out to try and help her, but she still ended up tumbling out of the closet and ended up standing face to face with the third Leo, his eyes like black holes stealing her attention and all of the breath from her body.
"Leave her alone!" Surprisingly, it was child Leo who yelped this out as he and his older counterpart crept out of the closet.
"Why?" The voice was colder than death, a strange contradiction to the burning palm wrapped around her wrist.
"Because you'll hurt her!" Her Leo exclaimed, and the boy holding her tipped his head to one side. As Hazel stared, something flared up within his eyes, and his hair was tinted red. Tiny flames danced, lighting up the dark that had previously been his eyes.
"She hurt you. They all did." Hazel's eyes widened at this comment, especially as the tone of voice remained frigid, despite the flames nestled in his eyes.
"It doesn't matter." Her Leo's voice quivered, and Hazel twisted her neck into an awkward position so that she could see his face. Little Leo was now eight, and he was nibbling on his fingers nervously
"I wasn't going to hurt her anyway." The flame eyed boy announced in the exact same tone. His voice hadn't altered at all since his appearance in this bizarre scenario.
"Of course you didn't." Modern Leo snarled. she turned her head back to the Leo who was holding her captive and noticed with a spike of concern that the flames had dimmed and that the Leo looked... saddened, as if the accusation had hurt him. He released her unexpectedly, and her knees hit the floor with a dull thud.
"You hurt everyone." Modern Leo helped her to her feet, though he was rougher then he usually would have been.
"You killed my mami." The child version wailed. A trace of anger was visible on the flame Leo's face.
"She was my mother as well." The three Leo's seemed to be locked in a weird showdown, and Hazel took the silence as an opportunity to ask a question that had been plaguing her for a while.
"What did you mean by she hurt you?" All three pairs of eyes wheeled towards her.
"It doesn't matter." Her Leo insisted, before turning back to glower at the dark Leo.
"Protecting her from the truth will do you no good." Modern Leo leapt at him, aiming a fist at his mirror image. The other boy simply side stepped, and the eight year old Leo walked forward and gripped her hand tightly. His grip was also warm, but this was more comforting then when the flame eyed Leo had been holding her.
"I'll show you out." He mumbled, and tried to tug her forwards, but she remained firmly rooted to the spot.
"Shouldn't we stop them?" She cried out in alarm as the Leos brawled.
"They have been fighting for years, stopping them now won't count for anything in the long run." The little Leo again tugged on her arm, but she refused to budge an inch.
"Not until I get some answers." She stubbornly let go of the youngest Leo and waded into the fight.
"DON'T" The child yelled, but she ignored him. The two older Leo's stopped fighting as Hazel drew closer. They released each other and stood up, still glaring daggers at one another.
"What is going on here?" The two Leo's shifted, and in that moment they went from being teenagers who had just fought each other viciously, to acting more like the eight year old Leo.
"An eternal, internal struggle." Flame Leo replied.
"One that I will win." Her Leo shoved the other boy, but he didn't respond to the provocation Instead, he stared at Hazel with those chillingly lost eyes.
"If you want to know what I meant, ask Hera to play the Argo knife memory." Modern Leo roared in frustration, but the other Leo just muttered "I'm sorry" before dissolving into flame.
"You really have to go." Child Leo seemed even more anxious, and Hazel noticed in dismay that shackles had formed on his wrists. He turned and climbed back into the shadowy door confinement of the closet. The door swung shut behind him (somehow fixed from the earlier transgression)*. Before Hazel could lift her hand to reopen the door, her Leo clasped her hand and the image around her faded to black.
Hazel woke up sputtering, and staring directly into the fearful eyes of the real Leo Valdez.
"Di immortales! Warn a boy before you do something like that again." Percy sounded incredibly concerned as Hazel backed away from the scrawny Latino.
"What in the name of my father was that?" She had no idea what had just happened, sure she had shown Leo some of her past through a flashback, but that was more like going into Leo's head.
"You met fire, and child me." He ran a hand through his ear while the rest of the demigods flipped.
"Then why were you and fire fighting? And what happened with child you?" Leo frowned at her.
"Just leave it." Hazel knew that Leo wasn't going to tell her anything, but she could at least get answers for one of her questions.
"Lady Hera, may I request the knife Argo incident." Leo's eyes turned panicked as the screen flickered on.
"Why couldn't you just let it go?" He hissed at Hazel. She was shocked, Leo had never used such a tone with her.
Warning: Mention of self harm.
Leo was walking down the main corridor of the Argo, hips swaying jauntily. He door to the dining room was propped open slightly, and he peeked inside merrily. Annabeth, Frank, Percy and hazel sat inside, apparently too caught up in their discussion to notice the tanned boys presence.
"He never takes anything seriously!" Annabeth accentuated this point with an exasperated hand gesture. The smile slipped off Leo's face.
"I understand being in the wrong place at the wrong time, but Leo always seems to be causing some sort of trouble." Percy wrapped an arm around his girlfriends waist as she leaned into him.
"I don't feel very comfortable around his fire. And he always makes me the butt of his jokes, and he flirts with my girlfriend. How would he like it if I made fun of him for the way he always bursts into flames, or that he's stick skinny and short?" Frank seemed to be full of ire, unusual for the generally sweet boy. Hazel also looked upset.
"I understand that he isn't Sammy, but it still sort of hurts sometimes to look at him, the doppelgänger of Sammy and have him be... Leo instead." Leo's grip on he door tightened at this. His eyes darkened, and he slipped away from the room.
He wandered into his lair aka the engine room, hands shifting inside of his tool belt. He sits down in the darkest corner of the room.
"Never takes anything seriously. Not like I worked my butt off to get this ship finished in time." His fingers seemed to grasp an object within the tool belt, but he didn't remove his hand.
"Always causing trouble, not like I'm constantly patching this ship up." He snorted sardonically.
"And of course, I love my fire soooo much. And the fact that I'm skinny and short has nothing to do with the days and weeks that I've gone hungry in the past." He pulled out the object and twirled so fast that only a glimpse of silver was visible.
"And of course I could never measure up to Sammy. Perfect Sammy. I'm just the cheap, Microsoft rip off." His hands stopped moving to reveal a perfect blade of plain silver.
He laid the blade down before stripping of his belt and pants.
"Cuts on the inner thigh are harder to discover. Not that they would care, they would only care that I was endangering the quest with my reckless behaviour." His words were absent-minded, though there was a resentful edge to them.
The knife flew across his skin, a crimson line symbolising its descent. he marked himself four times, before grabbing a fairly clean rag from the nearby worktable and wrapping at around the wound to temporarily stem the flow.
"Soy un idiota (I am an idiot). Of course they wouldn't like me."
Memory over
Fire Leo's words taunted her. She had hurt Leo. She had hurt him so badly that he had... that he had taken a knife to his own flesh to escape the pain of her words. She knew that she wasn't the only one at fault, four lines for four perpetrators, but there should have been no lines. No blood should have been spilled because of their careless words.
"I'm sorry." All four of the guilty parties choked out. Annabeth looked more ashamed of herself then Hazel thought was possible, Percy was impersonating a fish as he was clearly still shocked by his own involvement in the incident, Frank looked to be on the cusp of tears, and she knew that she was crying again. She seemed to be constantly crying for Leo.
"I know that you do take things seriously."
"And that you solve so many more problems then you've ever caused."
"And that your fire can be a tool for saving people."
"And that you are you, and that will never be a bad thing. Sammy was my friend. You are my friend. No, your my brother." She enveloped him in her arms.
"Please never do that again." Leo nodded stiffly.
"You guys have convinced me not to do anything like that again. Don't worry."
"And if we had found out, we would have lectured you so long that Gaia could have risen and we wouldn't have noticed, quest be damned. We care about you." The words were more powerful when spoken by Annabeth , who had just condemned authority for the scrawny boy again.
"Scrawny is the new sizzling hot, remember?" Leo stared at Hazel as if she were crazy for a few seconds, and then he caught on. They both burst out laughing, and the others gave them a look that questioned their sanity. After all, the mood had just done a complete 180.
"Looking back on it, that was kind of fun." Leo giggled. Hazel nodded.
"What are you two talking about?" Frank gazed at them imploringly.
"When we went to get materials to repair the ship, the celestial bronze was being used as a mirror by Narcissus. He had a gang of followers, and I happened to convince them that Leo Valdez is way hotter than Narcissus. With a little help from a friend." He winked at Hazel, and she tried in vain to remember Echo's face. She saw the matching struggle on Leo's face. Then, he seemed to get an idea as his eyes lit up and he started scribbling away again happily.
As if it recognised the improved mood, the television started up again.
Four year old Leo was cuddled up in his mom's lap. She was holding a book in her hands, and Leo was enthralled, staring at the pictures with a look of innocent, childish wonder.
"Congratulations! Today is your day. You're off to great places. You're off and away." Esperanza made a soaring motion with her arm, and Leo giggled sweetly.
"You have brains in your head. You have feet in your shoes. You can steer yourself any direction you choose. You're on your own, and you know what you know. And YOU are the guy to decide where to go." She tapped his head and then tugged his foot playfully. Leo squealed in joy.
"You'll look up and down streets. Look 'em over with care. About some you will say, I don't choose to go there. With your head full of brains and your shoes full of feet, you're too smart to go down any not-so-good street."
"I think that she overestimated me there." Leo was clearly thinking about the gang memories.
"You made some wrong turns, but now you're here with us." Leo smiled at Piper in thanks.
Hazel relished the warm feeling that blanketed them all. And she was beginning to think that she knew what Leo was drawing. He was drawing all the good people from his past.
The next video flicked on, Hazel assumed that the last video had been to dispel any lingering tension.
Thirteen year old Leo was playing a game with an intense focus. Another boy walked in, took one look at the game that Leo was playing, and burst into hysterics. Leo ignored the other boy (who appeared to be around fifteen) for a few seconds as he completed whatever he was doing, and then he turned and gave him a death glare.
"Are you seriously playing Bella's Wreck It Ralph Sugar Rush Racers game?" Leo gave him a superior look, and the camera adjusted so that the game was visible.
"Yes I am, Byron, and I am winning." He stated smugly as all the Sugar Rush Racers ran over on screen to congratulate Vanellope von Schweetz, Leo's character (Hazel only knew this because of Leo's imposed movie night education scheme).
"May I ask why?"
"You just did." Byron hit Leo in the back of the head. Leo stuck his tongue out.
"Because, she asked me to make it so that the other racers all got along with Vanellope, and she wanted me to add a character in for her. I had to play it to check that my modifications are working."
"You hacked it that flawlessly?" Byron looked to be in awe.
"Maybe." Leo smirked at him again.
"Show me her character." Leo brought up the games menu, and flicked through the character profiles, settling on one called Bella Buttercream. A cartoon image of a brown haired racer with huge brown eyes and a cute cream outfit with a brown sash and small brown ribbons dotted throughout.
"It actually looks like her!" Byron was astounded.
"It's what she wanted." Leo seemed to brush of the compliment, and he turned to Byron.
"Bet that you can't beat me." The reply was instantaneous.
"Bet I can."
"That was one of the best places that I stayed in while waiting for adoption/fostering."
Hazel grinned as her theory was confirmed, Leo's scribbling increased after that memory.
*This will be explained in either this story or it's sequel.
Also, I have absolutely no clue what the Wreck It Ralph game is actually like, but I've watched the film so I just made my own version, sorry. And I apologise if the first part was a little weird, inspiration struck. See you all next time :)