For liliths - I hope you like it! :)

Seeing him for the first time, it is like the faithless gods are heaping insult upon injury to her. She has grown resigned to the fact that they will not keep their promises, that no matter what Percy Jackson told her, she will never be free of Ogygia.

And yet, the last thing she expects is for the gods to make a joke out of her by sending a boy who looks like the furthest thing possible from a hero to her island. When she first realises that someone else has landed on her, she starts to hope once more – no matter how many times she has had her heart broken, it still persists on hoping that the next one will stay back with her – and then she sees him.

Perhaps she is being unfair. Perhaps she is being too harsh on him, but – well, she remembers when Percy Jackson first landed on her island. This one has nothing on him. He is not Percy Jackson, or Oedipus, or Achilles, or any of the many men who have found their ways onto her island.

And yet – she cannot help but feel hurt when he announces he wants to leave as soon as he sees her. The men she has loved may not have been able to stay with her, but at the same time, none of them were ever truly eager to leave her either.

And then the gods play their last trick. The one male she feels no desire for is the one who cannot leave her island.

She is almost ready to give into despair.

It takes her a few days to realise that it is entirely possible that she has judged Leo Valdez far too quickly.

She does not realise it at first, but she soon starts to see slow improvements to her island. Without her noticing, her fountain is repaired. And then the curtains across the cave entrance suddenly look much neater, and her gardening tools are sharpened.

She cannot help but remember that Leo Valdez is a child of Hephaestus. But even then, she cannot see any reason for him to be behind all the repairs – even the men who had professed to love had not tried to repay her help to them in this way.

Still, she cannot shake the feeling that it is him, and if it is, she knows that she needs to repay him for what he has done for her. Creating the clothes is simple – and even if it is not him, and rather some unknown magic, she can easily excuse her creation of the garments by expressing her distaste for the way he drags the smell of fire behind him when he walks around in his ridiculously flammable clothing.

She soon realises that perhaps she should have kept her distance.

When she first saw him, she could not see any reason why he would be sent to her. But as soon as she confronts him over the possibility that it was him who took care of the problems on her island, she realises the truth.

Oedipus and Achilles would never have been as humble as him, and even Percy Jackson, she thinks, would have had some slight measure of pride in being able to help her. But Leo Valdez – she can see that he is attracted to her, but to him, his help is meaningless. The desire to improve – to change – is as much a part of him as the colour of his skin or the shape of his lips is.

(She does not stop to wonder why she is noticing the shape of his lips. It is easier for her, if she lives in denial.)

She has known far more magic than even most gods have – after all, Circe is her cousin – and looking at Leo Valdez, a part of her is inclined to believe that he is as powerful a mage as some of the greatest she has ever known.

At least, she would believe that had she not known of his parentage.

Still, she doubts even Hephaestus himself could have created the seeing device were he bound by the same restrictions that his son is. No, she thinks that that is all Leo.

For a moment, looking at what his device shows them, she is afraid that perhaps he is like all the other men who has found his way onto her island before. After all, it serves to reason that he has someone waiting for him outside Ogygia.

And yet, knowing that as she does, she still cannot help but believe him when he says that unknown Reyna is not someone he is in love with.

Then every thought of that is forgotten as her great-grandmother rises from the sands of her island home. For a moment, she is tempted by her offer – she would give nearly anything to be free again – and then she sees Leo's look.

Knowing what she does of him, she cannot believe that the outside world is so lost that she would feel the need to ally with Gaia.

He sings when he works. She has not noticed that before – but then, she has not seen him work before.

He is not the best of singers, but he is not horrible. She cannot help but want to laugh every time he pushes her to sing – she wonders what he would say if she asked him the same thing he persists in asking her.

They work together, and he jokes about setting up a business with her once she is free, like it is not even a difficulty to jump over, let alone the impossibility that they both know it is – and somewhere along the line, she finds that she has fallen in love with him.

Regardless of what he says, she knows her own history and the hearts of the gods well enough to know that it is hopeless. Perhaps they might have had a chance – but there is a war in the outside world, and she knows her loves well enough to know that none of them would ever abandon their allies and friends in the middle of battle.

He is the same.

But there is an innocence about him that she has no desire to destroy. And she pretends to believe in his dreams. The gods have crushed her heart for millennia – she sees no reason to emulate them and crush his.

And then he talks about returning.

She has tried to be subtle in her reminders that she can never leave the island, but when he talks about returning to rescue her – like she is another Andromeda, chained and sacrificed to a monster – she snaps. There is only so much hope even she can take.

But despite everything she tells him, he insists on being positive. On promising her that he will return, if only because it is what is fair to her. If only it is what she deserves.

None of the others had ever spoken to her about fairness.

Hope, hope, hope. She hates hope. It is the one thing that keeps on crushing her, man after man after man. If only she could stop hoping, her imprisonment would have been so much more bearable for the last three thousand years.

And yet – when he says he will return, she cannot help but hope. She cannot help but believe.

She has not believed in a long time – not even when Percy Jackson left her island. But this time, she does. And she cannot stop herself from kissing him.

She might never see him again, but in the few days that he has been with her, he has changed her more than every other man who she has known, combined. If she weren't already in love with him, she would have fallen in love just for that.

She should have known better than to doubt him.

It is a secret that she guards jealously, because she knew that if the gods knew, they would snatch it away from her as they have done everything else that has ever mattered. But sometimes, when he feels it is important, Aeolus allows her to hear whispers on his winds.

"I'm coming back for you, Calypso," she hears. "I swear it on the River Styx."

She thinks that perhaps this is the truest love she has ever known.

A/N: On Calypso and Circe's relationship, and Calypso and Gaia's relationship: Calypso is Atlas's daughter, and Circe is Helios's. Atlas's father is Iapetus, and Helios's father Hyperion - two of the original Titans, and brothers. Therefore, Circe and Calypso are cousins. Furthermore, even though Calypso calls her grandmother in the book, Gaia is Iapetus' mother, and therefore Calypso's great-grandmother.

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