So I couldn't help myself. It was sitting on my bookshelf temptingly, and I couldn't keep myself away... I read BoO! And... well, I have a lot to say about that book, good and bad, so if you feel like discussing it, I FEEL LIKE DISCUSSING IT TOO LET'S TALK.

Anyway, sorry about the slow-ish update—life's been even crazier than usual—but I'm here now!

AND IT'S THE LAST CHAPTER GUYS. WE MADE IT. I MADE IT. I ACTUALLY FINISHED BEFORE THE END OF THE YEAR. I'M GOING TO CRY. Actually, no, I'm not, because this means I get to start new projects now! But I am sad to see this end...

In other news, THIS STORY HAS OVER 400 REVIEWS! GUYS, I'VE NEVER BROKEN 400 REVIEWS WITH A STORY BEFORE AND I HAVE NOW AND THIS IS INSANE. Thank you all for your support of this fic; you're all amazing and I can't appreciate you enough. And special congratulations to Costana, the 400th reviewer!

But enough about me. Enjoy the conclusion to this behemoth of a fic!

Disclaimer: It's a good thing I'm not Rick Riordan, or people would still be waiting for BoO. :P

Part XXIV

They spent at least one glorious hour together, talking, joking, and kissing like an actual normal teenage couple. And then Reyna screwed everything up.

"A year ago, I never would have dreamed that I'd date a short Latino boy from New York one day," she reflected.

"Hey!"

"I'm just saying," she laughed. "Heck, I wouldn't have dreamed that even after I found out that your camp existed. Peace between us seemed so impossible." She shook her head. "I guess one good thing came out of the time we spent in Tartarus, huh, Leo?"

All of a sudden, she felt him stiffen up under her. When she looked at him, frowning, his eyes and mouth were squeezed shut, and he was shaking like one of his about-to-explode inventions. She breathed in sharply. "Styx, Styx, Styx," she gasped, cupping Leo's face with her hands and praying that he would just open his eyes and look at her. "Leo, I'm so sorry. Leo, that was dumb of me to say. Leo, I'm the gods-damned ridiculous idiot now, and oh gods Leo please look at me, you're not there anymore, you're here, with me, in the infirmary, you're okay. . . . Leo, please tell me you can hear me. . . ."

Reyna wasn't sure how long they sat like that, her clinging onto him as he shivered and hyperventilated, almost thrashing. Finally, in desperation, she pressed her lips to his to try to calm his breathing. By some ironic miracle, it worked. Leo's eyes shot open, shocking him out of his overwhelming memories. Immediately, Reyna pulled away and bit her lip, inspecting him worriedly. He offered her a shaky smile to reassure her, but Reyna wasn't fooled. She could read the pain in his eyes as clearly as the writing on his new camp shirt.

"Sorry, mi reina," he muttered. "I'm fine."

"You are not fine," she scolded, pulling him into a hug. "Gods, Leo, I'm the one who should be apologizing." She pulled away in shame. "I shouldn't have said something so stupid. I'll just . . . I'll go now. You said you were hungry, right? I'll go grab some food from the banquet for you and screw whatever Will said—"

"No!" he yelped. Then he flushed bright red. "I mean, you can stay if you'd like."

Of course. Reyna was being an idiot again. He'd spent over a week alone in Tartarus, with only sadistic monsters for company. With that in mind, she couldn't even imagine leaving him by himself.

Instead, she scooted closer and grinned. "Stay?" she repeated, getting almost uncomfortably close to him. "Well, if you insist."

His laugh was as shaky as his smile, but that came from her proximity rather than his fear. Reyna felt proud for distracting him. "If it helps," he said, "you were right. If I'd never gone . . . down there . . . you'd probably be thinking of ways to make me pay for my war crimes right about now." He closed the few inches of space between them and pressed his forehead to hers. "I like this better."

"Really?" she teased. "Making you pay for your war crimes might be kind of entertaining."

He pulled back and frowned at her. "Reyna!"

"Kidding," she promised, tugging him forward again. "I like this better too."

Reyna went along with the subject change because she knew it was what Leo wanted . . . but there was no way she was going to let this drop completely. He was as far from okay as she was from being mechanically-competent. He might have been her repair boy—su mecànico—but it was about time she did some fixing for once.

Three days later, after Leo was finally released from the infirmary, Reyna got her chance. She found Leo with his head between his knees, clutching at his hair and squeezing his eyes shut. When she touched his shoulders, he jumped about two feet in the air before realizing it was her.

"Leo, are you all right?" she asked worriedly.

He tried to shake off her concern with a blinding grin. "Fine, mi reina," he claimed. "Just playing hide-and-seek with Harley."

She didn't let up that easily, though. "You're sitting out in the open behind a random tent, Valdez. I know for a fact that you'd never choose such an awful hiding place. What's really going on?" She hesitated. "You know, during my first year in the legion, Jason kept trying to convince me that talking about your problems can make them hurt less." She shrugged. "I hate listening to his advice—"

"Me too," Leo grumbled.

"But he's right sometimes." Her tone softened. "Talking helps, Leo. I . . . You never did tell me everything that happened to you down there."

He nervously ran a hand through his hair, which immediately told Reyna that he was hiding something. "What happened to me was no big deal," he claimed. "It was nothing a little sunlight couldn't fix."

"Now, I know that's a lie," Reyna said, glaring at him. "Have you looked at yourself lately? You're practically a walking bandage."

He grabbed her hand and offered her a bright smile that almost seemed genuine. "I'll be okay, mi reina. I promise. You don't have to worry about me."

But Reyna knew Leo was an expert at faking his good moods. "You used future tense," she noted.

"What?"

"You said, 'I'll be okay'," she explained. "That means you're not okay now."

He swore. "Would you believe me if I told you it was a slip of the tongue?"

Reyna sat down next to him, forcing him to look at her. "Not a chance," she said. "Tell me everything."

He tried to evade her a little more, but Leo soon realized he wasn't going to be able to avoid her questions any longer. He finally started talking—really talking—about the hell that had been his life for over a week.

Reyna didn't ask him any questions, just made sure her presence was known. When he mentioned the Cyclops at the River Cocytus, Reyna rubbed his still-aching shoulders. When he talked about the empousa who had dug into him with a knife, she skated her fingers down his back reassuringly. And when he started sweating and trembling, she just hugged him tightly and told him that he could stop. She didn't let go until his breathing slowed to a reasonable rate again.

"Leo," she whispered eventually, "I'd seen some of what you faced, but I had no idea—"

"Don't tell a soul," he warned her firmly—more firmly than anything else he'd said to her since he'd returned to the surface, actually. "As far as everyone knows, I came out of Tartarus unscathed, okay?"

"But Leo—"

"You can't tell anyone," he said, almost panicking again. "I'm the funny one, remember? I'm the one who keeps things light when everything's gone to Hades. I'm the one who cheers up Piper and Lacy and Mitchell and even Drew after their brother Nathan died in the Battle of Greece. Because Nathan was going to be a sophomore in college and had a mortal girlfriend who didn't know a thing about his demigodishness and adopted parents who were just as clueless and the kids in Aphrodite's cabin have no idea how they're going to break the news, or what the hell they're even going to say." He paused. When he started speaking again, his voice had dropped from an almost-yell to a whisper. "How am I going to make other people feel better if they know I'm just as big of a mess? I can't do that to them. I have to be okay. At least in public."

Reyna frowned. "That's not your job," she said. "You went through Tartarus, Leo. No one expects you to be okay after that. No one expected Percy, Annabeth, or Nico to be okay."

"That's different," Leo insisted. "Nico can be a little unstable and the dark, powerful Ghost King at the same time. Percy can be a little unstable and an incredible fighter. And Annabeth—well, nightmares don't even qualify as instability. All demigods get them." He shrugged. "You can't be crazy and be the comic relief, though. It doesn't work like that. Styx, you can't even be crazy and be the repair boy. Nobody wants to see an unstable person with power tools in his hands. And don't even get me started on the combo of insanity and fire powers. Can you imagine . . . ? Gods, but people would be nervous around me. Hades, they might even be scared around me. And that's not my job. I'm not the scary one. I'm the approachable one. I'm the funny one. I'm the able-to-fix-anything one. That's my job. You can't tell anyone, Reyna."

His eyes were so serious, Reyna wasn't sure what to say. "You're not scary, Leo," she managed eventually, touching his hand. "And you're not crazy. I promise." She smiled a little. "Well, I don't know about that part. But you're not crazy in the way you think you are."

He actually laughed, and a glint of real happiness—not just the fake kind—started to dance in his eyes. "Does that mean you won't say a thing about any of this?"

She sighed in mock exasperation. "If it's that important to you, I won't. But I still think you're being ridiculous."

"I'm always ridiculous," he said slowly. A grin started to spread across his face. "And that's why I'm going to do something ridiculous right now, even though we've been having a very grave conversation."

"Oh?" she asked, raising an eyebrow. "And what might that be?"

He reached into his tool belt and withdrew a screwdriver. "Since weapons such as this one have served you so well in the past," he said, trying to sound serious but failing because his eyes were still dancing, "I thought you might want one in your arsenal permanently."

Reyna snorted. "Wow, Valdez," she said dryly, "you really know how to make a girl feel special."

For some reason, the light in his eyes changed from amused to nervous at her words. He swallowed hard. "Just . . . take it, please?"

Giving him a confused glance, Reyna took the screwdriver out of his hand. It was a little cleaner than the last one she'd been given, but other than that, it looked the same . . .

And then she flipped it over and realized that it was even more similar than she'd realized. This one also had writing on it. Awkward, impossibly-Leo chicken scratch. Reyna read it slowly, eyebrows raising higher and higher as she went.

Reina—This is probably the stupidest (is that even a word?) way to ask you this ever, but . . . will you go out with me? (Or at least not kill me when you read this?)

After getting over her shock, she waved the screwdriver in his face. "Is this going to become a theme with you?" she demanded. His expression was terrified, but she wasn't finished. "Are you going to keep writing me sweet messages on useful tools that could also be used as weaponry and then acting like it's silly when actually the gesture combines sentimentality and practicality into one adorable gift?"

He looked completely shocked. "Um . . . yes?"

"Good." And then Reyna surprised herself with her own act of insanity by throwing her arms around his neck and planting her lips on his.

"Although," she added after they pulled apart, "I kind of figured we were already dating."

He reddened. "I thought so, too," he admitted, "but then I found the last screwdrivers I gave you on my bedside table yesterday, and . . . well, I just wanted to make sure."

Reyna laughed. "I announced that I was in love with you in front of about thirty giants and the earth mother herself, and you weren't sure? Gods, Leo, what's a girl got to do to convince you?"

"Not return my screwdrivers," he mumbled.

"I thought you might need them to do repairs!" she said defensively. "If it matters that much to you, then I'll be glad to take them back." That sparked an idea in her mind, and she smiled. "I could start an arsenal," she said dreamily. "Get a cross-body belt and strap them all into it. And then each year, you could get me more—"

"Each year?" Leo squeaked. Reyna could hear what he was really asking. You care about me enough to think that we'll last a year? That we'll last several years?

Now it was her turn to flush. "Oh, shut up and give me my screwdrivers back," she muttered.

"Yes, mi reina," he said, but he couldn't keep his eyes from gleaming.

When Reyna burst into Leo's room on the Argo II that night, he almost dropped the Archimedes sphere in shock.

"Gods, Rey, you can't do that to me!" he cried, fumbling the device in his hands. "If I'd let go of this now, it would have exploded!"

"What are you doing that could make your most prized possession explode?" Reyna questioned worriedly. Then a smile snuck onto her face. "Oh, it doesn't matter. It's time to go."

"Go where?"

"It's a secret." She stepped into his room and touched his shoulder. "Come on, Leo. You shouldn't be working on that while you have a broken arm anyway."

"It's only sort-of broken now!" Leo protested. "Will says that the ambrosia is working right on schedule . . ." But he trailed off as Reyna glared at him and he suddenly realized that she was in his room.

He flushed.

"What?" she demanded.

"Um . . . you're in my room."

"Are you serious?" she snorted. "You don't have to be embarrassed by the mess or anything, if that's what you're worried about. I've been in your room a lot over the past week."

If anything, he only turned darker red. "That's not exactly what I meant . . . Wait. You were in my room? A lot?"

Now it was her turn to blush. "We—Annabeth and I were studying the notes you wrote!" she spluttered. "I was doing research! I wasn't—I wasn't just going in here because I was worried about you or thinking about you or something ridiculous like that! And I certainly didn't fall asleep in here or anything—"

"Reyna?"

"What?!"

"I didn't say you did." He peered at her suspiciously. "Which means—"

"Which means absolutely nothing," she interrupted. "Nothing at all, Valdez. Now come on. We're going to be late."

"Late for what?"

Reyna grinned. "You'll see."

Leo followed Reyna reluctantly, protesting about how leaving his modifications to the Archimedes sphere unfinished could destroy the Argo II once and for all—even though that wasn't strictly true. Actually, he just really hated the dark now. He still looked at shadows and saw the horrors of Nyx's Mansion, heard voices screaming that he was a murderer and would face unimaginable misery and pain and should just jump into the River of Punishment while he had the chance—

Reyna took his hand, and thoughts of the rivers of Tartarus faded from Leo's mind a little. "Come on, Leo, why are you stopping?" She kept her tone light, but Leo caught a hint of worry in her eyes. "I told you, we're already late."

Leo mustered up an annoyed eye-roll. "Late for something that you won't explain to me," he reminded her, although he kept walking. "Why should I care about being late to something I don't know anything about?"

She grinned. "Because I know for a fact that it's something that you won't want to miss. Something you can't miss, actually." Her smile widened. "Close your eyes."

"What?"

"Oh, come on, Leo, it's a surprise."

"But—"

"Leo."

Leo grumbled a little, but he closed his eyes. Gently, Reyna took his shoulders and steered him forward. "Okay, and . . . Open your eyes."

He did—and gaped.

"What are you guys doing out here in the middle of the night?"

"The middle of the night?" Nyssa scoffed. "It's barely nine, Leo, don't be an idiot."

"Besides," Jake smirked, "we didn't really have a choice."

Harley whisked a bag of marshmallows out from behind his back. "We had a mandatory s'mores party to get to!"

Leo just stared.

"Oh, come on," Nyssa said, rolling her eyes. "Don't tell me you've forgotten already! You're the one who forced us into this, remember?"

"But—you invited Reyna?"

"'Course we did," Jake grinned. "We figured you'd be more likely to wander outside after dark if your girlfriend promised a surprise." He wiggled his eyebrows in a very un-Jake-like manner.

"What?!" Leo spluttered. "I didn't—we're not—why would you—"

"Don't even bother, Leo," Nyssa laughed. "It's been written all over your face for the last three days. Reyna's too, actually."

"That's not true!" Reyna protested. The stern praetorly effect was ruined by her silent laughter, though.

"Sure it's true," Nyssa teased. "Besides, Leo, I'm your sister. Did you really think I wouldn't figure it out?"

"You liar!" Jake complained. "I was the one who told you! You had no idea!"

"Leo," Harley butted in, "are we going to start this s'mores party or not?"

Slowly, the flush faded from Leo's cheeks. He looked around at his brothers and sisters—all of them, since the Hephaestus cabin had managed not to lose a single member during the Battle of Greece—and grinned. "Of course we are. But I didn't bring any supplies . . ."

"Yeah, you did," Harley frowned. "You were in charge of the fire, remember?"

"That was a joke! I wanted to cook taquitos, and enchiladas, and these tiny little Spanish cookies that are more delicious than they have any right to be—"

"So make those when we get back to camp," Nyssa interrupted. "This is a s'mores party, not a potluck. Light the fire, Repair Boy."

Leo stuck his tongue out at her, but he stopped arguing. With a glare of concentration and a snap of his fingers, he lit his first fire since the end of the war, and in minutes, the entire Hephaestus cabin (plus Reyna) was seated around it with sticks in their hands, roasting marshmallows and singing outlandishly off-key campfire songs. Eventually, other demigods—Greek and Roman alike—wandered up to the group, wondering what the Hades was going on. Thanks to the Argo II's self-replenishing dinner plates, and Leo's never-ending fire supply, almost every camper from both coasts ended up eating s'mores and leaning against each other, shaking with laughter at jokes that weren't even funny. Their numbers were sprawled haphazardly across the fields, but Leo remained close to the original campfire, with Reyna at his side.

"I can't believe you guys planned all this without me knowing," Leo said, shaking his head.

"Well, we didn't plan for four hundred extra guests," Reyna said, "but . . . yeah. We did it while you were in the infirmary. It seemed fair."

"It's awesome," Leo grinned. "I've never had such good s'mores."

Reyna shrugged. "It's your mandatory s'mores party, yes. But also . . . also think of it as your welcome-back party."

Leo opened his mouth to respond—to thank her, maybe—before realizing that her eyes were distant, focused on the campfire rather than him. "Hey, reina, is something wrong?"

She started. "No, everything's fine, I just . . ." She sighed and finally turned to face him. "No, everything's not fine. I haven't been totally honest with you."

Leo didn't know much about dating, but he was pretty sure hearing I haven't been completely honest with you from his girlfriend was a bad sign. "What is that supposed to mean?"

"I was lying earlier," Reyna admitted. "I . . . did spend time in your room because I was worried about you. And"—she made a face—"I may or may not have fallen asleep in there several times."

Leo laughed. "I figured as much," he told her, putting his good arm around her waist. "That wasn't really lying, just . . . evading the truth. It's fine, Reyna. Don't worry about it."

But to his surprise, Reyna drew away. "I wasn't finished," she muttered. "I went in there because I felt terrible. I left you in"—she took one look at his face and shook her head—"that awful place for over a week. You were experiencing literal hell, and I didn't save you."

"You couldn't have done anything, mi reina," Leo frowned. "I know that as well as you do. I don't blame you for anything."

"I know you don't," Reyna sighed, obviously frustrated. "Nobody does. And if I'm being honest with myself, I suppose there's nothing I could be blamed for. Not really. But that doesn't keep me from feeling like Styx because I flew up in that helicopter and left you to be . . ." She gulped. "Anyway, I didn't admit this to anyone, not even Annabeth or Nyssa, but that's why I kept falling asleep in your room. I felt closer to you there, so it seemed more likely that I'd be able to contact you in my dreams. And I figured that if I was going to leave you down there, the least I could do was comfort you as best I could." She twirled her marshmallow stick in her fingers. "I just thought you should know."

Leo stared at her. "You tried to dream about that place every night? You willingly returned to the worst place in existence, just to make me feel better for a few minutes?"

"It didn't always work," Reyna said softly. "Sometimes I couldn't talk to you. Sometimes . . . all I could do was watch."

"My gods, Reyna." Leo touched her hand, quelling her stick-twirling. "You went through all that on purpose, just on the off-chance that you might get lucky and be able to talk to me?"

"It was nothing compared to what you went through for me," Reyna shot back. "It was the least I could do."

"No, it was not the least you could do." Leo grabbed her hands. "You think you didn't save me, but those moments saved me. Those moments when you promised me I wasn't going crazy, even though that was the fattest lie you could have told, and those moments when the truth that you guys would rescue me shone clearer than a Houston sun in the middle of summer. They saved me, Reyna, and don't you dare forget that."

Reyna looked at him, her dark eyes shining in the light of the fire. "Good," she said finally. "If that's true . . . then it was worth it."

"Reyna—"

"Oh, look, the lovebirds are cozying up by the fire," Nyssa grinned, popping a s'more in her mouth as she wandered up to them. Then she hesitated, looking between them. "Am I interrupting something?"

"No," Reyna said quickly, at the same time Leo said, "Yes."

Nyssa just grinned wider. "Good. Can't have you two doing something embarrassing in front of four hundred witnesses."

"Nyssa!" Leo shouted, feeling his face heat up.

She laughed. "I'm kidding, you idiot." She plopped down on Leo's other side and grabbed his marshmallow off his stick. Leo glared at her, but she ate it before he could do anything about it.

"So why'd you come over here?" Reyna asked, holding back a smile.

"Oh, no reason in particular," Nyssa claimed, still eyeing them suspiciously. "Just wanted to point out the camp intermingling that's going on right now."

Leo tore his eyes away from Reyna to look around and whistled. "My gods. You weren't kidding."

"That's amazing," Reyna said, a little awed. "Everyone's mixing together. I don't see any group that doesn't have at least three members from the other camp."

"Greeks and Romans, allies and friends," Leo said with satisfaction. "You must have been one hell of a public speaker on Half-Blood Hill that day, mi reina."

"Oh, she was," Nyssa reassured him. "And it's great to see everyone getting along. But . . . gods, those shades of orange and purple look disgusting together."

"You sound like Drew," Reyna laughed. "She's been complaining about it all week. She wants to redesign both t-shirt designs, just because of that."

"Wait." Leo squinted at the crowd of demigods. "Purple and orange don't go together?"

Nyssa snorted. "Classic guy. No, Leo, they don't go together."

"What?" Leo whirled on Reyna. "Why didn't you ever tell me that?"

Reyna frowned. "What do you mean?"

"I wore my ratty camp shirt over those purple bandages for almost two weeks after Gaea captured me! Why didn't you tell me it looked bad?"

"I—"

"Gods, Reyna, I thought I'd saved the world in style! Now you're telling me I looked like a walking fashion mistake?"

Reyna spent at least a minute staring at him, her eyes wide. Then she managed, "To be honest, I didn't really notice. All the bloodstains masked the color combination. It was all just . . . red." She winced.

"Oh. That's okay, then."

Both girls gaped at him. "That's okay?" Reyna repeated, studying him worriedly. "Leo, you know you don't have to hide anything from us, remember? You don't have to talk about . . . everything . . . like it doesn't bother you." Leo heard what she was really saying. I saw what you went through firsthand—you know that now. Don't even try hiding anything from me.

But Leo didn't budge. "Why should it bother me?" Leo questioned, slinging his good arm around Reyna and pulling her closer. "It's over. And I'm fine, mi reina."

The funny thing was, Leo actually meant it. Reyna was resting her head on his shoulder, and his siblings were tossing marshmallows into each others' mouths. Four hundred friends (and total strangers) were scattered around him, filling the night with camaraderie and laughter. The glow of the campfire still cast uncertain shadows around him—but somehow, the darkness didn't seem nearly as threatening as before.

No matter what he claimed, Leo wasn't fine.

His emotional scars didn't fade as soon as they talked. He still jumped at sudden noises and got anxious for no reason. Reyna (or Nyssa, depending on who found him first) still had to calm him down from a panic attack every once in a while. Sometimes he got so terrified that even Reyna couldn't set him straight, so she just stayed nearby and waited for him to calm down enough for her to help him.

But he was a lot better. Most of the time, Leo was his normal, joking, lighthearted self, and he could shake off the edginess that lingered after Tartarus—in him, and in Percy, and Annabeth, and Nico, and even Reyna herself. Reyna could tell he felt okay, and she was incredibly grateful for that. It meant that she could leave him alone for long periods of time. As much as she cared about Leo, her whole life couldn't revolve around him. Reyna wasn't one of those kinds of girls. Besides, she was a praetor. With all of the planning going into the return trip, combined with her usual praetor duties, plus participating in the discussions of a joint celebration, a joint council (which would probably end up being a combination of the legion's senate and the Greeks' head counselor meetings), and even a joint camp (although even the gods didn't know if that would ever be a real possibility), Reyna was busy as Styx at practically every moment of the day. Leo was actually around a significant portion of the time—after all, he was a Greek head counselor and one of the seven—but he wasn't there at every moment. It helped Reyna tremendously to not have to worry if he'd be all right without her there.

So she focused on the negotiations. Days passed. They planned. And then finally, more than a week after the battle of Greece, everyone was ready to go home. They began the trek to downtown Athens, where Drew and Piper would charmspeak their way into acquiring a few charter buses to get everybody back to the airport with their stolen—borrowed plane.

"I hate this," Leo whined, adjusting the bag on his back with only a slight grimace. After over a week, most of his injuries had faded significantly. His arm was still broken, and Reyna suspected that he still ached all over, no matter what he claimed, but Will had promised that he really was healing on schedule. "I wish we could ride back in style."

Nyssa rolled her eyes. "Taking our own illegally-obtained airplane isn't 'stylish' enough for you?"

"Not as stylish as a warship," Leo mumbled.

"How many times do we have to go over this?" Reyna scolded, shoving him gently. "Even if every single repair we made was completely stable, we wouldn't all fit in the Argo II anyway. And those repairs aren't all stable, and you know it."

"Yeah," Leo grumbled, "because the instructions I left in my cabin were apparently only 'guidelines'. Gods. I'm sorry that between building a giant grabber arm and preparing for an adventure that I didn't expect to survive, I didn't really have time to describe every detail of the ship's workings."

"Annabeth didn't mean it like that, and you know it," Reyna sighed. "Stop complaining, all right? The gods will transport the Argo II back to your camp, and you can spend months and months fixing it up however you want. Heck, you can do more than fix it. Modify it, improve it, transform it, whatever."

Leo's eyes lit up. "Now that's a brilliant idea," he gushed. "The Argo III. Self-firing cannons, retractable wings to stabilize flight and offer gliding capabilities . . ." He rambled on while Nyssa and Reyna shared knowing looks.

"At least the gods were willing to send the Argo II back to camp," Nyssa muttered in Reyna's ear. "I think Leo would have refused to get on this plane otherwise."

Reyna just smiled. "Oh, there was never any danger of that. I went up to Jupiter the day after the Battle of Greece and told him that if he didn't get that ship moved, I would tell Jason that all his claims of being a better god now were utter BS, and then Jason would hate him for all eternity and he wouldn't get a third chance to repair relations with his only living demigod son."

"Reyna Concessi, blackmailing the gods," Nyssa said with open admiration. "That takes guts."

Reyna shrugged. "Leo deserved it."

Leo paused in his avid gesturing to glance over at the two of them. "What do I deserve?"

"Nothing, if you don't stop spouting off mechanical gibberish," Reyna informed him. "Can we have a conversation about something I actually understand?"

"Oh. Sure. Sorry." Leo paused and thought for a moment. "When do I get to meet your dogs? Because I really want to meet your dogs. I bet they'd love to meet me too. All automatons love me. Besides, I could improve them too. Adjust their knee joints to make their walking smoother, increase their durability so they can withstand more attacks . . ."

It didn't take long for Leo to become as incomprehensible as he had been while talking about the Argo II. Reyna wanted to be annoyed with him—really, she did. But it was hard for her to muster up the energy to be annoyed when he was looking at her hopefully and Tartarus was obviously the farthest thing from his mind. Instead, she just took his hand and grinned when he jumped in surprise.

She didn't let go for hours.

"Hello?" Nyssa radioed in. "Air traffic control, do you copy?"

Soon enough, a voice came crackling over the speaker. "This is Air Traffic Control. We copy. Who is this?"

Nyssa didn't hesitate. "This is flight 3289 requesting permission to land."

"No problem," they said. "Gate 6C is open, as scheduled."

"Good. And when I do land—after I drop off all my passengers at 6C—I'll need someone to steer me over to the maintenance garage." A hint of amusement flashed across her expression. "Something's wrong with the backup navigation systems."

"Right you are, sis," Leo muttered, so quietly only Reyna could hear. "I broke them myself."

Reyna grinned; she couldn't help herself whenever Leo was around. "And I bet it's killing you not to be allowed to fix them again, isn't it?"

Leo shook his head in mock exasperation. "Mi reina, you know me too well."

Reyna laughed and kissed his cheek. "I think I know you just well enough."

Finally, Leo grinned back. "Not quite enough yet," he said. Before she could ask him what he meant, Leo tugged on Reyna's braid, forcing her to look at him. As soon as she did, Leo leaned forward and kissed her. Almost automatically, his free hand moved to her back, and Reyna's hands ended up clutching his hair.

When they broke apart, Leo was smiling wider than ever. "There," he said. "Don't you know me better now?" He looked and sounded like an idiot . . . but somehow, Reyna had managed to fall in love with this idiot. Something was seriously wrong with her.

Oh well. It was a good problem to have.

"What are you grinning about?" Leo asked, furrowing his eyebrows.

Reyna didn't waste words. "You," she said simply. Then she entangled her hands even further in his hair, pulled him forward, and kissed him again.

"No PDA in the cockpit," Nyssa told them sternly.

But as she turned back to the controls, Reyna was sure she saw her smiling.

IT'S OVER OH MY GOSH IT'S OVER. There were some points when I thought I'd never finish, but IT'S OVER IT'S OVER I DID IT! I don't know whether to be relieved or sad about that. :')

Anyway, thank you all so much for enjoying this story and putting up with its sporadic updates for so long! And a giant special thanks to those of you who have stuck with me since the beginning and reviewed every single chapter, or most of them—you guys are amazing! All of you readers are amazing, actually . . . Even just the amount of people that have followed this fic makes me happy. It's hard to wrap my brain around the fact that over 140 people read this story and like it enough to want to be notified when it updates. And I know there are even more of you than that (because of guests and whatnot), so just . . . thank you, thank you, thank you! You guys really have been great! I'll miss this fic.

Still, no need to fret! BoO may have destroyed all hopes of canon Leyna, but it cannot sink this ship for me! Stay tuned for more Leyna fics that are going to be popping up on my profile in the weeks to come! ^-^ And many other fics as well... Don't worry, guys. I have an endless stream of ideas to write up and post. :D

Since it's December 23rd, Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to all of you! I hope you're having a wonderful winter, and thank you again for your support of this story!

Forever writing,

Storm