CHAPTER FORTY-SIX
The first time Leo took Calypso to the city, they nearly didn't make it out of the camp.
"How many people live there?" Calypso exclaimed, while Rachel fished a coat out of her wardrobe. She appreciated her friend's silky, simple dresses. The colours were soft, the fabric smooth and the weaving was exquisite. But with the weather cooling, pretty summery dresses weren't gonna cut Manhattan on the brink of fall.
"Oh chill out, you're not gonna have to meet all of them in one day." Rachel told her, amused by Calypso's nerves. Some girls worried about boys or bases or a kiss at the end of the night. Calypso worried about entering a city six times larger than any she'd ever encountered.
"Right. You're right." She toyed her old pair of homemade jeans thoughtfully.
"Calypso, you know I'm not really the best judge of this stuff but maybe you should look for a clean pair?" Piper suggested, idly from Rachel's bed.
Calypso pursed her lips, muttered something under her breath, then shook them twice hard and held them up to her eyes for inspection. Miraculously, the stains had evaporated into thin air, leaving the denim looking as if it was newly made.
"Holy Helios-" Piper began, immediately sitting up with grabby hands.
Calypso passed them to her, inspecting the slightly paint splattered shirts Rachel had hung on her wardrobe door for her to choose from. There was a sweater she liked the look of, its warm wool dyed a dark red that reminded her of her gown on Ogygia.
"What about this?" she looked to Rachel who nodded approvingly, and then to Piper who was busily inspecting the pants. "Piper?"
The daughter of love was hardly paying attention. "Calypso, I need a pair of these."
Rachel snickered. "That's what I said the first time I saw them."
Calypso shrugged. "I'd be happy to make you some but I'm currently out of materials. Namely a loom on which to spin a pair. Although Leo probably has a few pairs to spare."
"Leo has self-cleaning pants and he hasn't shared them?" Piper demanded, outraged. "That little-"
"Piper, you're like two sizes bigger than Leo on a good day." Rachel pointed out.
"I will make you the loom myself if I have to." Piper pledged fiercely. "But I want multiple pairs. In different colours. Can you make them monster blood repellent too?"
Calypso made an impatient noise. "Probably. But for now, what do you think of this?" she held up the crimson sweater.
Piper laughed out loud. "Calypso, you could wear a paper bag and Leo would still fall over himself."
The ex-goddess frowned, glancing uncertainly to Rachel. "Women don't really wear paper bags here, do they?"
"It's an expression." Rachel assured her. "She means Leo won't care what you wear. He's going to be thrilled you're there at all."
"I just…" Calypso sat on the bed in a huff. "I used to be good at this, you know? I knew how to pin my gowns, how to braid my hair, how to catch attention. But here, I'm not sure of anything. How do you do it?"
"Me?" Piper blinked. "Er, I'm not really a great judge. My first few months with Jason were a fever dream that wasn't even technically real-"
Calypso made a small noise of helpless frustration and sagged back onto the bed.
Rachel's eyes widened. "Alright, well, we'll circle back to that in a minute. But for now, Calypso, don't worry so much. You catch Leo's attention by breathing, it's not as complicated as you might think. That being said," she pulled the red sweater of its hanger, gently pulling her friend to her feet. "I think this is a great start."
The first time Leo brought Calypso to the city, he did so on a motorcycle.
Calypso did not enjoy it in the slightest.
"You liar!" she hissed as he parked up. "That was nothing like a horse!"
He laughed, too full of adrenaline to take her scolding seriously. "Hey, it got us here, right?"
"We are figuring out some other way back to Camp because I am never getting on that thing again!"
Leo couldn't contain his snickering but before he could tease her further, Calypso caught sight of the traffic around them. Even her ire couldn't overcome her curiosity.
"What kind of chariots are they?" she murmured, drawing perilously close to the bumper-to-bumper traffic.
Leo yelped, tugging her back quickly. "Sunshine, not so close! Can't have you flattened before we even get started!"
She followed, but her eyes were huge, unable to take it all in. A yellow taxi blasted its horn impatiently and she jumped, the noise unfamiliar and aggressive. "These are…cars, right?"
"Right." Leo confirmed, quickly locking up the motorcycle with a padlock made of celestial bronze, making it nigh impossible to see let alone steal. "See? It could have been worse, I could've driven us here in one of those."
"Could you?" she asked thoughtfully.
His pride deflated a little. "Well, no. Not yet. I'll get my permit in the next few months though."
The words made little sense to Calypso but she couldn't dwell on them. The sights and smells and sounds of the city were too captivating, too bright and grabbing. She could only bob beside Leo as he guided them on, her head swivelling to and fro.
She could feel his eyes on her, waiting warily for some kind of anxiety or panic. And in truth, Calypso had worried she would be overwhelmed by the hugeness of it all. It resembled nothing like she had ever seen, was overflowing with mortals of all shapes, colours and sizes, not an inch she recognised and yet-
There was something impossibly familiar about it. Something in the sheer scale that reminded her of her old kingdom, of the world the Titans had once ruled.
Leo finally cleared his throat as they turned left up a street called forty second (and what a strange custom, to number your streets like this). "You okay there, Sunshine?"
"I…I think so." She murmured back. The slow pulse of the crowds, the hum of noise swum around her like a physical presence. But after so long spent in isolation, it was strangely pleasant to feel so nestled, so surrounded.
It helped that Leo's hand had not left hers since they'd departed Camp.
"Are you sure?" Leo checked in again, nervous about how quiet Calypso was being, how her breathing varied between short shallow bursts and long, deep gasps. They passed Grand Central Station and paused at the entrance.
Thousands of tourists and commuters alike swarmed around the building, bustling crowds that moved almost in sync like a school of fish or a flock of swallows.
"That is…a lot of people." Calypso murmured, faintly.
"Is it too much?" he worried.
But she shook her head immediately. "No. No, I just…It's sort of beautiful, isn't it? Look at them all. So many people, living together. Coexisting in peace. I wouldn't have thought it possible for so many in one place."
Leo thought about mentioning the city's notoriously brutal crime rates and then thought better of it. "Sure. I mean, I guess it is kind of a modern wonder. Come on, we're almost there."
They passed a group of street performer percussionists and Calypso was so fascinated, she pulled them to a halt. "Leo," she murmured, captivated. "These drums, do we have them at camp?"
"Er," he studied the plastic buckets the performers were using and shrugged. "Yeah, I guess we do."
"Wonderful." She said with relish as they finally continued.
The longer they walked, the more Leo realised he knew very little about Calypso as a person.
He knew the face she made when she was angry, he knew her voice when she was surprised and how her laugh sounded. He knew she could coil bronze like nobody's business and that she hated (read: secretly loved) when he called her Sunshine. He knew about her parents, that she had several half-siblings on both sides of her family, he knew she'd supported her father in the First Titan War.
But he didn't know what she liked. He didn't know her favourite colour, didn't know where she'd always wanted to go, didn't know what kind of magic mojo she had going on, whether she always had it, how she trained it. He didn't really know why she fought alongside her father. He didn't know if beef stew was her favourite food or if it was just all she'd ever had. He thought about making his mom's extra spicy quesadillas and realised he didn't know if she'd like them.
It was both weird and a little sad that he didn't know his girlfriend at all but he was determined to at least try to fix it. He peppered her with questions he'd been saving since he left, things he'd wondered while fixing Festus. His ADHD seemed to kick in to overdrive and suddenly all the questions were on the tip of his tongue at the same time.
"Where did you live before the curse?" he asked, carefully tugging her across the crosswalk before they could try their luck with the taxis again.
"My mother's palace mostly." She answered with a hint of nostalgia. "Sometimes I'd visit my father and Ogygia but my mother used to live in one of the big sea palaces and I loved it there. You could see the stars through the water when it was clear and there were gardens of waterfalls."
"What was she like?" Leo had never really met many titans before but the stories Annabeth and Percy told made them out as jerks.
Calypso smiled, her hair caught in the breeze for a second. "Tethys was elegant. She was articulate, wise. She used magic a lot. Her husband was Oceanus and neither of them were very active in the First War."
He frowned, confused. "I thought all the titans took sides. Like the gods during the Trojan War."
"Many of the ocean gods retreated. Oceanus withdrew entirely, especially towards the end but my mother helped raise Hera after the war ended. She educated her to be the Queen of the Gods." Calypso explained in a distracted tone. "Is that Eleftheria?"
"Who?"
"She was a minor goddess in Ancient Greece. She was a friend of mine actually. Had a torch just like that one." When she pointed, Leo realised she'd found a souvenir stand littered with tourist merchandise.
"That's the Statue of Liberty. Some old French guy gave it to some old American guy for some boring political reason." He rushed through the explanation, mainly because his sense of US History was shabby at best.
"Your description of modern history is so detailed, Leo." She replied dryly.
She never strayed further than a few feet or so from his side, but Leo didn't really mind. After everything that had happened, he found he rather liked having someone's hand to hold, especially when that someone was a four thousand year old ex-goddess who looked at New York with such bright eyes.
"I forgot. So Hera was kind of like your step sister for a while huh?" He mused, thinking about his old psychotic babysitter.
"In a way. Hera was older than I was, far more powerful." Calypso shrugged.
"So Hera's your step sister and your cousin which also makes you my first cousin twice removed and my step-grand-aunt…Man, I hate interbreeding. Messes everything up." Leo mumbled, his head aching. "So you lived with your mom and she taught you magic?"
"Of course. I wasn't going to learn it from my father," Calypso burst into laughter at the idea. "The General was strong, but he lacked the finesse that proper magic requires. Tethys thought I showed more promise than my siblings, it's why she took the time to teach me. She was disappointed when I sided with Atlas."
"Why did you?" Leo asked, unable to help himself.
She made a faint noise. "I used to think it was because I believed in his cause. I thought the Olympians would destroy the world they inherited."
"And now?"
"Now, I'm not so certain." she sighed. "Anyway, I'd rather hear about you. What about you, hero? Where were you raised? Where is home for you?"
Leo looked away immediately. "Eh, I'm boring."
"Leo Valdez not wanting to talk about himself?" she teased, patting his forehead down with her bare hand. It felt cool against his warm skin. "Are you feverish Wonder Boy?"
"No, it's just…" he got tongue tied looking into her pretty face. "I lived a lot of different places. Lots of houses, just not a lot of homes."
Calypso paused, studying his face intently. "What did Gaea do to you, Leo?" she asked suddenly.
His head snapped around so fast his neck cracked. "What do you mean?"
"When we were on Ogygia, you asked me how I…what was the word? Googled you." She explained, hesitantly. "I confess, I still don't understand that word but I did look for you, for your past with magic. You looked so sad, hero. So angry."
"How do you know Gaea had anything to do with that?" he evaded.
"The way you looked at her when she appeared on Ogygia. It was the same anger." She answered in a quiet voice. "What did she do, Leo?"
He licked his lips but his mouth had suddenly gone dry. "Last year I found out when that crazy witch Medea was dead-"
"Was dead?" Calypso echoed, with faint alarm.
"Well, she came back to life when the Doors of Death were open and then we killed her again. So she's dead. Like, dead dead." Leo assured her, scratching the back of his neck nervously. "But uh, when she was dead, the first time, I mean, she had a vision. Of me, in the second Great Prophecy. She told Gaea."
"I always hated that wretched woman." Calypso muttered scornfully. "What did Gaea do?"
"She found me and trapped my mother and I inside our garage- I tried to protect her but…I couldn't control it. The whole place went up in flames." He said, shortly. "Obviously, I survived but my mom- she didn't make it."
There was a long moment stretched between them which carried the words. When Calypso let her hand tentatively slip into Leo's again, it seemed to grow just a little lighter.
"Gaea possesses a ruthlessness unlike any I have ever encountered or heard of in an immortal." There was nothing but sorrow in her voice. No pity, no sympathy. Just sadness. "I am sorry for how she hurt you and your family, Leo."
"Why are you sorry? You didn't do it." He hated this part of the inevitable conversation.
"It still wasn't fair." Calypso pointed out, gently. "What was she like?"
"Who, Gaea?"
"Your mother."
"Oh." Leo tried to think of where to start but all that came out was a lame reply: "She was awesome."
After everything Calypso had told him about Tethys, he felt guilty. Was this how dates were meant to go? He wondered to himself. Spilling your guts about ancient family history and dead parents? He tried not to meet her gaze as he thought about what to say. He hadn't spoken of Esperanza Valdez in nearly six years. The idea of spilling all his memories of her now was sort of terrifying.
"I-I mean-" Words, which had always been his safety net, suddenly failed him. Leo reckoned they couldn't have chosen a worse time than his first date with the girl of his dreams who'd just told him all about her childhood in a palace under the sea and had asked one stupidly simple question about his own mom.
Her hand tightened in his, making him glance up at her. Her smile was a little sad.
"Perhaps," she said, slowly. "This is one subject too many for today?"
"Yeah." He let out a low, relieved sigh. "Maybe for today."
"Then why don't you tell me where we're going instead?" Calypso said, deftly changing the subject. She tugged his hand into the pocket of her coat, forcing them to walk close together, hips and shoulders brushing. Leo reckoned it must've been the closest he'd ever been near a girl as pretty as Calypso.
His earlier excitement fluttered to life. "Well, I know how much you enjoyed your gardens back on Ogygia-"
"You mean the ones you nearly set fire to?"
"Yeah, those ones." He said, unrepentant. "How would you like to see some that are even bigger?"
AN: …..HELLO. IT'S ME.