This is the final chapter, ladies and germs!

I know it's a bit fast and blah, but with all that's going on, I feel like this was the only way it could end. I want this guilt/weight off my shoulders.

As I said before, I am not a doctor or psychiatrist and as such should not have my remedies for mental illnesses or PTSD taken seriously.

Oh, and um, for those of you who haven't read Trials of Apollo book one yet, two things: 1) SHAME ON YOU; 2) Spoilers lurk at the end of this chapter.

Disclaimer: I own nothing you recognize as canon.

Chapter Nine: Getting Better

Leo wasn't scared because there were so many people.

He was scared because he couldn't clearly remember who half of them were, and he didn't want to disappoint them! Every time someone came up to him, he had to search his fractured mind for a hint of a memory. The looks on their faces when he came up short were horrible, and it made him feel like less of a person.

Calypso helped. When she was near, it was like his mind was actually healing itself. Gods were real, he was one of their children, he had fire powers, and he didn't question as much.

But when she inevitably let go of him—to get meals, to sleep, to go to the bathroom—it was like the madness was slowly returning. The fire wasn't inside of him; it consumed him, starting from an outside source. The gods were just made-up stories to fool him. His friends weren't really his friends—they were just those awful nurses screwing with his memories. What was real? What wasn't?

Nico…Nico seemed to help. He had no idea why Nico, of all people, seemed to be the only other real person in his memories. Perhaps it was because of how freaky he was? You can't make up a memory of someone that creepy. You just can't. Maybe he just hadn't mentioned Nico during his sessions with Dr. Gerald and the guy had been spared the 'memory modification'? Leo didn't know for sure, but he was still grateful to have another constant in his memory bank.

Will made him nervous. Medicine. Nectar. Ambrosia. Tests. It felt like a condensed version of his tortures at the asylum. And that inevitably made Leo freak out. He had to have Calypso with him during these sessions, or Nico within sight. He heard Will saying Leo now had a case of Iatrophobia—fear of doctors. Made sense, considering what he'd been through.

Leo knew he wasn't well. By anyone's standards he was sick. Crazy, no matter what anyone said to the contrary.

He had PTSD, and it was soon discovered that it hadn't originated from the asylum memories.

Within a week, Leo started having the Nightmare. Fire burst from him in an explosion, consuming everything in its path. People—friends and family—were reduced to ashes. Wildlife disintegrated. The ground turned black. Leo's skin became transparent, and soon it felt like he was a piece of the fire, like he was made of it. Control was but a memory. He couldn't control the flames any more than he could control the wind that carried them.

He woke up blazing every time. Calypso, who shared a bed with him, tended to have a bucket handy whenever the 'pre-bonfire' signs woke her up. Leo insisted she sleep in a different bed—for her health—but she convinced him that she should stay.

He hadn't burned her yet, and it was now two weeks into the Nightmare phase of his recovery.

Eventually, Calypso had an idea. When she shared it with Leo, he smiled. That might be exactly what he needed!

"Will," she began one day during one of Leo's follow-up appointments. "I was thinking maybe we're doing this wrong."

"Oh?" Will recorded the numbers on a machine that took Leo's blood pressure and heart rate.

"Hear me out," she defended. "I think Leo and I should take a trip."

The son of Apollo paused in taking the info. "Say that again?"

"Leo's getting slightly better here, it's true," she began slowly. "But it's hard for him to feel…right."

"I'm not following."

Leo chimed in here: "I appreciate what you've done, Will, but…I'd really like some down time. Just…me and Calypso. No worrying about who goes where in my memories. No trying to make people see that I'm okay…Just…us."

Will put his clipboard down and looked at Leo with furrowed eyebrows. "I don't think a trip is a good idea for you right this moment, Leo."

"No," Nico interrupted. Leo jumped, forgetting the son of Hades had been sitting in the corner of the infirmary, completely silent as always. "It's exactly what he needs. He's suffering from a lot of things, Will. He needs some alone time. A trip with Calypso—the only stable memory he has—might just be the thing he needs to get back on his feet. No pressure from friends to get well soon, no doctors saying he needs to do something, no medicine or tests."

Will pinched the bridge of his nose. "I honestly wish I was better suited to treat PTSD, because I really don't know if this is right or not. I'd like it better if you got more bedrest first; you're still extremely thin."

Calypso took Leo's hand in hers. He felt a spark come to life in his heart. "Let's just see how a month sounds. We won't go far. If something serious happens, we'll IM Nico for a quick shadow-travel."

"Please?" Leo begged. He really just wanted to get away. He loved his friends—but he was tired of seeing all of their disappointment, their pity, their sadness. He wanted to remember on his own and come back kicking. Like nothing had ever happened.

Will sighed, exasperated. Then, he held up two fingers. "Two weeks. You can go wherever you want for two weeks, and Nico will be on-call for emergency travels. At the end of it, I want to see how Leo is doing with everyday tasks and interactions. And he'd better be eating more than one meal a day. If I don't think Leo's doing any better he goes right back to camp life. Deal?"

"Deal," Calypso and Leo agreed together.

Festus had been fixed up—mostly—by the Hephaestus Cabin during Leo's initial treatments. It was decided that Calypso and Leo would take off quietly. No one would know their leave date until it was too late to stop them.

It was for the best. Leo was far too fragile for teary good-byes and friendship hugs right now. He hoped that his friends would understand why he was doing this, and that they wouldn't kill him when he came back.

He also hoped he'd be able to remember more and make everyone know he was truly getting better. He didn't want to come back with a worse fear of disappointing his friends.

"Don't worry about that," Calypso said when he stated that fear aloud. She helped him scramble onto Festus's back. "I'll quiz you on some things while we're gone—things you told me about while we were on Ogygia. The rest of the time is just you and me exploring this modern world."

"Right."

Calypso stuffed a bag into a chamber in Festus's newly-constructed belly. "First question: Who's your two best friends from Camp Half-Blood?"

"P-Piper and Jason," he answered. That wasn't bad.

"And who are they?"

"Um…"

She paused, reassessing her question. "Tell me what you know about Piper."

"She's, uh, Tristan McLean's kid. He's a famous actor and she hates how everyone thinks he's super hot…?"

"And?"

"And…she's a daughter of Aphrodite?"

"Very good."

Leo remembered how Dr. Gerald would shock him or do something bad to him if Leo had said something like that. How the asylum had forced him to answer the way they wanted. Like he was a bad dog going through obedience school. Punishment for bad actions, and the reward is you don't get punished. Maybe a treat if you are extra good.

Calypso didn't do that. She gently prodded him in the right direction. If he was wrong, she corrected him without pain. She rewarded him with smiles and kisses every time he was right.

He smiled, feeling the image of Piper reform in his mind. His confidence in his answers rose at Calypso's encouragement. "And…And she can pretty much convince anyone to do anything. It's her power: charmspeak. She used it to steal a BMW once."

Calypso laughed. The sound was so pure as it rang through Leo's ears. "I don't know what a BMW is, but it's still funny."

"And she's the toughest daughter of Aphrodite ever. She makes sure no one calls her a weak doll."

"Good for her."

Calypso kissed his cheek from where she sat behind him. "That's enough for now. Why don't we get going?"

Festus snorted in agreement.

"Where to?" Leo asked.

"Wherever the wind takes us."

The couple took off in the dead of the night, leaving no trace that they'd ever been at Camp. They'd had every intention of returning within the allotted two weeks, but…

…random monster attacks, sudden continent-hopping, Albania…

By the time Leo had sent that glitched video scroll, he was feeling tons better. The monsters and the danger solidified his demigod memories a lot better than random quizzes from Will or the campers. He'd spent a large amount just tweaking Festus and getting back into his old groove.

He still had his PTSD. That wasn't going away any time soon. But with Calypso by his side at a moment's notice, he didn't feel quite so scared of his own fire, and his Nightmare visited less and less after another month of traveling.

How they'd ended up back in Europe after a night of flying, neither of them would know. And it took forever to figure out how to get back to the States! But at least during that time, Leo truly got better physically and mentally.

Albania was what really brought his whole personality back. He'd rediscovered what it was like to be a demigod—going on a quest to save his hide as well as Calypso's, fighting off monsters, solving puzzles, and all within a time-crunch! He remembered what it was like to laugh for real, to joke, to annoy. Even though they would never speak of the horrors they'd seen and experienced in Albania, Leo and Calypso both agreed it was exactly what Leo needed to get back to normal.

So, by the time they'd landed back in Camp—six months after the War—Leo was pretty much back to his old self. Sure, he immediately had to sit through getting punched by literally everyone in camp, but it felt way better than disappointing everyone with his broken memory. Yes, he was still suffering from PTSD, but it wasn't as bad as before, and when no one brought it up during the 'punch line' he definitely had a better handle on his thoughts of it.

It was a jolt to realize he now had to go on yet another quest to get Apollo his immortality—and all the oracles—back. But he had Calypso. He would be able to see his friends in Camp Jupiter. Come Hell or high water, he would smile like he used to. He would fight with Apollo—or, snicker, Lester.

Leo smiled as he thought of his situation. A quest with a god-turned-mortal to reclaim all of the lost oracles, with his girlfriend-who-also-used-to-be-immortal, on the back of a sentient metal dragon he'd pretty much rebuilt from scratch.

Good memories. Bad memories. Quests. Monsters. Demigods. Friends that could fly or charm a guy into punching his own face. Three-legged tables that hated Windex. Flying Greek warships.

It wasn't all in his head.

It was just as real as the ground beneath his feet.

And no one would ever be able to take that away from him again.

A/N: The. End.

Ish.

I left it with the ToA ending, because now Leo is going on this new quest and will probably suffer from some sort of PTSD-like symptoms from his death. Or there might be some pained-bro-bond between him and Apollo now that both of them broke their Stygian Oaths (though Leo only broke his because of his death, which was immediately rectified, I still believe he got some sort of punishment for that between his death and rebirth).

All I know is, I'd like to see where Rick takes poor Leo next, and I wanted this story to kind of connect with it. I DID change up the timelines a bit, as well as their knowledge of his rebirth, but other than that I kept it rather close. Leo's mental stability has nothing to do with Apollo's adventures as Lester in THO, and he and Calypso still end up going with Apollo after losing their way back to camp-let's just ignore everyone meeting Calypso for the first time in the book, ja?

Hope you all enjoyed the story, and thanks for sticking through that year-long delay for updates! With my job getting more and more demanding (deployments, moving, etc) I appreciate all the patience you guys can muster.

Thanks again, all! See you in the next story~!

Oh, and to all the Americans, Happy Thanksgiving.