alright so I was going to do another chapter before this one with nico talking to will abt how he's worried abt leo and all that and leo having another nightmare and ppl being worried but I am getting impatient and I want the secrets spilled already, you know? Also I am getting less and less time to work on this and without the extra motivation of getting to the exciting chapters im afraid I'll just abandon it bc im so lazy lmao.
Speaking of motivation thank you to everyone who has been reviewing! Keep it up (bc without reviews I would probs lose all motivation and stop working. Not like to spite readers for not reviewing but I actually need u guys for motivation so yeah thanks guys!)
Killua yeah sorry I've been getting swamped with school stuff lately with finals and graduation coming up so it's taking me a long time to update each time :( and I tend to write short chapters, it's a bad habit of mine, sorry lol
WARNING WARNING WARNING WARNING:
THIS CHAPTER IS THE WORST IN TERMS OF SELF-HATRED.
ALSO INCLUDES CHILD ABUSE AND THOUGHTS OF SUICIDE
IF YOU THINK YOU MAY BE TRIGGERED PLEASE DO NOT READ.
Months had gone by, and the nightmares had become more frequent. It seemed it was almost every night now that Leo would wake up screaming and crying from some sick form of torture. Luckily he had thought ahead. So no one would hear him and ask questions, he thoroughly soundproofed the walls to his private room his bunk retracted into. He certainly didn't want anyone getting worried about him and becoming more of a burden than he already is.
Grease was constantly smeared on his face so no one would notice the dark bags under his eyes from avoiding sleep so often, and even though he was spending less time in the bunker working on projects than ever, no one questioned it. And, of course, he never forgot to smile. Laugh and smile, and no one will notice the pain you're in.
Still, there were the occasions when someone would ask him what was wrong. His face would falter for a moment before coming up with a distraction. "You know me, Beauty Queen, I just can't help but get distracted by Jason's beautiful face, you know? His dreamy eyes and gorgeous hair, oh wait, that's you." He got elbowed in the side for that one. "Sorry Callie, I just get lost in thought thinking about all the awesome gadgets I'm going to make!" "I'm just peachy, Death Breath, how are things with your boyfriend?"
And so he hid his secrets for these months, but he should have known it was just all building up to this. Looking back, he can never say that it was a sudden reveal. Unexpected, yes, but if it hadn't happened that day, someone would have found out soon after.
Jason and Piper had set up a system with the two camps. They had, of course, begun by setting up a plan for Kymopoleia's cabin and shrine at Camp Half-Blood. While overseeing the building, they had begun plans for Kym's Roman shrine and a shrine for another Roman god. So it would go, they would bounce from camp to camp and have huge parties upon the completion of each shrine where half of everyone's tribute of food would go to the god whose shrine had just been finished. Everyone from both camps was invited to attend, but Leo was the only one (besides Piper and Jason of course) who always managed to drag himself to every party.
He was really regretting going to this particular party.
It had been at Camp Jupiter, in honor of Veritas, the Roman goddess of truth. The Seven all sat together, along with Calypso, Nico, and Will. They had all been laughing as they were served, but things went wrong soon after.
Leo had been forced by Piper to clean his face off this time when he came to the party, and though he even stole some makeup from an Aphrodite girl back at camp to put under his eyes, he still got questioned about his sleep schedule, particularly by Nico.
"If it's the nightmares that are bothering you, we can get a Hypnos kid to help you out." Nico suggested as he followed Leo to put their tribute in the flames.
Leo almost seemed to consider this, but realized that a demigod of Hypnos stopping nightmares might involve them seeing what the nightmares were about. "I'm fine." He insisted as he slid part of his food into the fire. Big mistake.
The fire started to spark and grow angrily until it was well over ten feet tall. Demigods backed away some and drew their weapons. Leo was the only one to not take a step back (not that he didn't want to, but he had a reputation to uphold. The flame boy couldn't exactly be seen backing up from a fire because it was a little intimidating) and soon the fire died down to reveal a very pissed off goddess.
She was dressed in a suit, and had not a spot of color on her from head to toe. Even Her skin was a dark grey hue, as if she stepped out of a black and white film.
"Leo Valdez." She glared at him and he swallowed hard. He didn't know who she was, but looking her in the eye was the most terrifying thing he has ever done.
"How. Dare. You." She said slowly. "I am neglected enough in this day and age but blatantly lying as you make a tribute to me? That's a direct insult, and you are going to pay the consequences."
"V- Veritas?" He asked.
"Of course. You have been none too kind to me, Leo. I get swamped with your lies and secrets. Do you know how hard it is to keep track of everyone's dishonesty? Oh, the files, and the paperwork, and your name just keeps popping up. And then you pull this. So how about we clean out your file? Make every large secret you've kept known to the world, so it won't have to stay cluttering up my file cabinets." She gave a smile and snapped her fingers, making a file cabinet appear beside her that had Leo's name on all four drawers.
Leo was incredibly pale, searching for some way out. He wouldn't try to battle with the goddess, he knew that would only end in others getting hurt. He needed to be anywhere but there. He felt nauseous as Nico stepped forward and leaned into his ear. "What did you do?"
"Oh! Right, I forgot to introduce the guests to the little show we're having tonight. See folks, it's easy to understand once you know that Leo has been lying to you ever since you first met him." A couple angry glances were thrown his way and some started pointing their weapons at him, so the goddess added "Oh, not in the way you're thinking, of course he's loyal to the demigods, but to me this is a matter of great importance all the same."
"Please." Leo tried, hoping that somehow she would take pity on him. His voice sounded weak and whiny, and as he fell to his knees he knew he looked pathetic, but he didn't care. Anything to avoid this. "Don't."
"You should have thought about the consequences before you lied as you were giving tribute to the goddess of truth." She pulled out a drawer from the file cabinet. "Now, let's start at the beginning, shall we? Now, nothing too bad up until your mother died. You kept a lot of secrets about that. How you still think it's all your fault, how you wish it was you who died, how you thought you deserved to die and –ooh- burn in hell for what you did. Yeah, see, this is the kind of thing you tell someone about so they can help you before you spiral into a huge depression, or whatever." She threw a pile of papers into the air and they disintegrated before they hit the ground.
Already worried eyes were focused on Leo. Piper shook her head in disbelief, they had talked about this, she thought he wouldn't blame himself anymore, that he knew it was all Gaea's fault.
"Of course, it's not like your Aunt helped. Turning your family against you, calling you a devil, saying it's all your fault, sending you away to foster homes, that's really just plain cruel. Of course, not as bad as that couple that tried to adopt you!"
Leo froze. Nononono. He had to keep some secrets, this wasn't fair. He slumped down until he was sitting and stared at the ground.
"You would go home and not be able to focus because any moment he would walk through the door and criticize you no matter what you were doing. Working on a machine? 'Stop playing with those toys and do something useful!' Doing homework? 'Reading isn't going to get things done.' Sitting in your room and waiting for him to give you an order? 'What, are you supposed to be fucking royalty? Sitting on your ass while I work my butt off to feed you?' But he didn't want you to actually do work, did he? Because if you were ever in the middle of something important, he'd be mad because he couldn't tear you away from it and make you do what he wanted you to do."
Leo was shaking, whenever Veritas imitated his adoptive father, her voice morphed into his. It had the same angry bellow that made him quake in fear years ago. Piper had gone to hug him, but he pushed her away and moved away from her.
"Stop." Piper commanded. "This is just making him miserable."
"Oh, little girl you should know that charmspeak won't work against truth. I will not stop. He brought this upon himself. Besides, he was already miserable, but maybe now you guys can help him carry his troubles instead of him hiding and bottling everything up. Now, where was I?" She tossed another pile of papers in the air to disappear, and grabbed another stack. "Feels nice to clean this thing out, huh, Leo?" No response came. "Well, I'm enjoying it." She shrugged.
"And he would yell at his wife, too, and you blamed yourself for not standing up and stopping it, but look what happened when you did say something to him. He cracked you with his belt, with the buckle flying around no less, until you couldn't move anymore. Then you blamed yourself for running away when she still had to live with him. Tsk, tsk, I'm starting to see a real theme here- bad things happen to Leo, and he thinks it's his fault. Nice."
"Stop being so smug about everything!" Annabeth yelled, standing up from the table. "You're talking about child abuse and making it into some sort of joke! It's-"
Veritas rolled her eyes and waved her hands before all the demigods went silent. Anytime they tried to speak, nothing would come out. "I'm getting tired of all these distractions. Besides, I'm not the one turning serious things into jokes. Leo's the one going around laughing and smiling when he is miserable." She gestured to the boy in front of her defensively. "Anyway, so after you ran away, you got caught, and put into another foster home. You're still angry at the cops who found you, they didn't send you back, but didn't report your adoptive father either. Shame, he was a pretty big liar too, I would have loved to see some justice served, but I'll just have to wait until he dies for that." More papers were thrown into the air.
"Ugh, all the foster care stuff is so repetitive. They don't feed you enough, you run away. You make friends with an older girl, she becomes a sister like you've always wanted, she leaves for college, you run away. The other kids pick on you, you run away. You make an actual genuine friend and everything is fine, you run away because you feel that bad things happen whenever you care about someone so you should just run away before you hurt people. Wow, you just love running from your problems, don't you. That's a very unhealthy coping mechanism, but whatever.
"Ah yes, the Wilderness School. You want to know what really happened? You got third wheeled before Jason even got there, when it was just you and Piper. You would make her laugh and help her with her math homework and you almost came close to opening up to her, actually telling her the truth about something, but she would blow you off. Not even to go hang out with another boy." She morphed her voice again to match Piper's. "'Sorry Leo, I've just got too much homework.' 'Sorry Leo, I have a headache and I can't hang out tonight.' You were the outcast before you were the odd number in the group! Isn't that hilarious?
"And how about this? Your first thought when you found out that Jason didn't remember anything was 'I could see him forgetting who I am, but to forget Piper?'" She laughed as Leo flinched at the sound of his own voice coming from her. "And then how you harped on and on about being a fire user. 'Nyssa said fire-users are dangerous, and look at me, I've already hurt my mother, who's next?'
"And then the dragon. I've never heard someone beat themselves up so much over a piece of machinery. 'It's all my fault. I destroy everything I care about. I'm so useless, I can never fix what matters.' Pfft. And of course, how could I forget the love interests? You kept falling in love at first sight, only to be disappointed when you couldn't be with them. You had that crush on Khione, and of course Thalia, a hunter no less. I think you may have a thing for girls you could never be with because of some sick desire to punish yourself or something. Or maybe you're desperate for anyone that's not currently taken, desperate for someone to give you attention, and you just have bad luck when you set your eyes on a woman to give you that. Either way it's a little pathetic.
"And the Argo II. That project nearly killed you. You hardly ate, hardly slept, spent every moment working, passing out on the job more than once. And every day Annabeth would come down and worry about the deadline. You acted like that job was going to make up for everything you've ever done wrong, nearly killed yourself working on it, and at the end you didn't feel any better about yourself. Not for long anyway."
She was silent for a moment and this scared Leo most of all. He looked up, tears streaming down his face. He screamed when he saw what she had gotten out of the file cabinet, quickly realizing he must be the only demigod she hadn't muted.
"That was destroyed! I even burned it before I left the Argo so no one would even find it in the wreckage. How do you even have that?"
"All things of truth end up in my realm, even your little journal of angst from the journey." She gave a cruel smile and it made Leo plead more.
"Please, stop, I'll do anything, just don't show them this." He had his hands together, begging against all hope.
"Will you tell them everything yourself?" She waited, nothing but silence as a reply. "Didn't think so." She moved her hands and suddenly the journal was enlarged, big enough for all to see. "This was little Leo's diary on his days of the journey. She flicked a finger and the cover of the giant floating book was opened. Inside was a messy scrawl.
"I'll read aloud too for some of you more dyslexic folks, and of course this kid's writing is hard to read even for the best of us" She cleared her throat. "'I thought this quest would be a chance to redeem myself. Turns out I can't do anything right. Now everyone hates me because I started a war between the camps. Now whoever gets hurt- it'll be my fault. I already hurt Jason, he and Piper are going to hate me now. I don't even deserve to be on this quest. I'm no good for anything. All I was really needed for was finding Bunker 9. After that, the other Hephaestus kids could have made this ship, probably better than I did. They would have found a way to fix Festus. They would have been strong enough to resist whatever made me fire on that camp. I'm no good to these heroes. I'm garbage. They'd be better off if I died. At least then I wouldn't hurt anybody.' Wow, pretty dramatic. And look!" She flicked her finger, going through pages and pages that just had one word written on them- "USELESS". Some pages had tears in the paper and most had shavings of lead all over because he was practically grinding the pencil into the paper. The tearstains were still there too, and parts were singed from where he got too emotional.
"And of course, you didn't write it down in here, but what did you do later that night? Think about jumping off the Argo? You didn't of course, because Piper came up just as you were about to climb over the railing, but it could have happened." She shrugs. "And then your little trip to visit Nemesis. That was fun, wasn't it? 'You will always be the outsider, the seventh wheel. You will not find a place among your brethren.' And Hazel was trying to tell you she was wrong, but you brushed her off and insisted you were fine. Maybe that's why Nemesis was right. You won't find a place among your brethren because you always push them away. Maybe you're not even looking for a place. They will always count you as a friend but you will insist to yourself that they deserve better or something silly like that. That's what's making you the outsider." She paused, taking a moment to appreciate her own words. "Damn, that was some philosophical shit right there. Anyway, back to the matter at hand.
"You put on that whole 'Team Leo' show, partly to get the celestial bronze, but let's be real, it was mostly some frantic attempt to get Hazel to believe that you didn't agree with Nemesis, so she wouldn't ask questions. Alright, back to your diary." She skipped over a few pages. "That's just him bitching about Nemesis, we went over that already. Ah! Here!" She pointed in delight as she started to read. "'So apparently I was possessed by something called an eidolon when I fired on the other camp. Percy and Jason were possessed too, today, and almost killed each other. I'm sure, though, that they would have been strong enough to stop it before doing any real harm. Not like me. I was too weak to stop the war from happening. It's my fault. This is why I fall face-first onto the floor while Jason and Percy are caught by someone. They have someone to care about them, I don't deserve that. I should have been stronger…"
She flipped the page to the next day's journal "Oh boy! More angst! 'I screwed up with Hazel today. I shouldn't have suggested that Nico was working with the enemy. She probably hates me for suggesting that about her brother. I should have trusted that she knew him well enough. She certainly knows more than me, I'm just too stupid. I shouldn't even talk, it just seems to annoy everyone.'" She flipped the page again. 'Great! Well Frank seems to hate me! I knew he wasn't a fan, but I didn't think he would DROP ME FROM THE SKY. I wonder why he dislikes me so much. I mean, I get it, I'm annoying, but to want me dead? Look, I pick on him a lot, but I would have figured he knew I was joking. Like the thing with how many Franks I was worth. It's obvious he's worth more than me, anyone on this ship is. And he seems to be jealous of me when Hazel spends time with me. That's absurd, Hazel would never be interested in me when she has a perfectly not-terrible boy right in front of her.'
"Oh, this one's nice! 'So today Hazel showed me her memories of my great-grandfather, who apparently looks exactly like me. I guess that's why she tolerates me. She expected me to be like him as well, not some shitty imposter who wasn't as smart, cool, or funny. Guess that was a huge disappointment. Then, to top things all off for the day, I screwed up again and almost got people killed. I didn't switch the sonar on, and if I had been paying attention instead of playing around this never would have happened. It was only luck that saved us, and I can't leave their fates up to luck again. I have to work harder from now on. But I'll tell you, one thing happened that wasn't too bad. Frank doesn't seem to completely hate me anymore. I almost suffocated because of starting a fire in a thin air bubble, and he didn't really care that much but after that we got a chance to talk. As it turns out, he has a pretty good reason to hate me. Besides the whole Hazel thing. His life is connected to a piece of firewood, and he dies when it burns. I don't blame him for avoiding me, I manage to wreck everything so how would I possibly be able to handle something as delicate as that?'"
She flipped through the pages again. "Sorry, trying to avoid the boring and repetitive stuff, don't want to take all day. So many lies being told right now, I have to really work to catch up later as it is. Here, some angst about Percy and Annabeth in Tartarus. 'I can't seem to stop screwing things up for everyone around me. If only I was smart enough to figure out how to save Frank and Hazel without using the fortune cookie, Percy and Annabeth would be safe. Nico says they aren't dead, that we'll still meet up with them and get them out, but I basically tossed them into Hell. That's unforgivable, I don't care if they make it out in a few days, I don't see how they would ever want to look at me again. I thought when I used that fortune cookie it would be me who would pay the price, and I was prepared to do anything it took as long as it saved Frank and Hazel. Why should Percy and Annabeth pay the price? I deserve to be rotting in Tartarus, not them. Can't dwell on that now, though, I have to do the one thing I can do right now. Fly the ship towards the Doors of Death.'
"Blah, blah, blah, overdramatic whining about some dream that almost killed him, where some sorceress or whatever wanted him to jump off a cliff. Of course, he would have wanted to jump, but his crew needs him, yada yada, so this chick starts trying to kill him and he wakes up just in time. Yeah, he told you guys about most of that dream, but how about how he barely slept between the time he had that dream and when he got shot off to Ogygia? He dozed off once or twice only to have a sorceress work on killing him before he woke up, so he decided to try to avoid it. Of course, he didn't come to you about that, you had enough on your minds and you 'didn't seem to care too much' when he mentioned she started to attack him in the first dream.
"Oh no, Calypso. Thank the gods he didn't have his journal with him on that island, there's enough brooding in here from after he returned. 'I landed on some island only to have a beautiful girl start yelling at me. I thought she was obnoxious at first, but I really couldn't blame her. She was cursed by the gods to be alone on her island except for attractive heroes she would instantly fall in love with before needing to send them away, and then after she was supposed to be freed some ugly annoying kid shows up and she can't get rid of him. She called me a mistake, which is more accurate than she'll ever know. She somehow managed to put up with me eventually, and of course I started to fall for her. And I think she may have loved me back, by the end, or at least convinced herself she did. How could she, though? Anyways, when I had to leave her on the island, I just had to make a promise to her. I swore on the River Styx to come back for her, which is supposed to be impossible, but I have to do it. She doesn't deserve to stay on that island. Well, I guess we know what the oath to keep with the final breath is. Hey, that might mean I am almost certainly going to die, but at least it also means I'll find a way to get her out.' How sweet. I'm practically gushing." Veritas rolled her eyes.
"Man, I thought this journal would be a good idea, but this is just taking so long. I'll sum up the rest. 'Boo hoo, I'm useless because I couldn't fight that giant Clytius like I was supposed to, I'm so weak! Boo hoo, look how miserable Percy and Annabeth are, all because of me!' Then, just basic angst after he got rid of the journal. 'How could I have used the Physician's Cure on myself when so many other campers died? So selfish, blah blah blah.' Now, Leo, can you do one thing to make it up to me and tell them the biggest secret you've been keeping?" She lifted his head to look at her. "Pretty please?"
Leo sighed, he didn't see any other option. He got to his feet, and tried to choke out the words. "I- I had a dream- the first night that I got back from Ogygia. Hades visited me. He said- he said he can't tolerate people blatantly cheating death anymore, that he had to make an example or everyone will start doing it. He told me that when I died next time I would be sent straight to- to- to-" He swallowed. "To the Fields of Punishment."
Many mouths dropped, and Veritas glared at Leo, telling him to continue. "Ever since I've been having nightmares, I think he's sending them, and I'll be tortured in a different way each night and-" He choked on his words "I thought I did some good on the quest, I thought with fighting Gaia I wouldn't be see as a total monster who kills his own mother and starts wars between camps, I- I didn't think I would deserve eternal punishment, I thought I finally did something good and I was good and-"
He collapsed into sobs and his friends came forward to comfort him but he smacked them away. Veritas grinned and waved her hand again and suddenly the voices of the other campers worked again and it went from silence to chaos.