a/n: the leo and piper dynamic has always been so good aka me trying my best to salvage the plot-writing-character-butchering mess that was blood of olympus bc i need closure / maybe liper maybe jasper maybe leason maybe absolutely nothing if u look hard enough / I'm procrastinating again bc MIDTERMS

Home, Bitter Home

"You should have just let us think you were dead."

The truth that finally occurs to him in this moment is this: Though a victorious hero always gets the glory and the love, Leo is not and will never be the kind of hero that wins.

The way Piper looks at him causes a heavy bloom at the base of his throat, as bad as swallowing an anchor. Her hands hug her arms in defense of the cold, but it's also as if she's protecting herself from him, and it hurts more than he can fathom. He takes in her achingly familiar orange shirt and notices the beaded necklace that lay atop her collarbones. There are additional beads he didn't think she should have.

Leo Valdez had been labelled deceased for 734 days, 5 hours, and 28 seconds until the day he came swooping in with a dragon and a goddess.

To him, of course, it had simply felt like a few days. There was only so much one could do in-between worlds with an immortal and a mechanical machine—only so much to see and do. The moment Calypso's feet met the camp's ground they no longer held the same weight of the time when there was grease on her cheeks and pollen on his lips.

The others—oh, they loved it. They rejoiced, threw a feast (in his honor!), a throng of laughing bodies and melancholy yells and pats on the back that made Leo itch. It was as if he'd resurrected, and, in a way, he did.

He saw his friends and they saw him, and it was then did he get hit with the wrongness of it all. They were nice to him, of course, their friend had defied the odds and came back (came back!); but now they were older, more experienced, different. They had moved on.

Without him.

And it pained him and pained them even more. Leo was a reminder of the past because that was where he meant to go back to, but you can't return to a place that doesn't exist anymore.

The good news was that, between the two people he didn't and did want to see the most, there was only one at camp at the time of his arrival because the other was across the country, waving swords and blissfully ignorant. Only now did he realize that maybe that wasn't good news at all.

An older version of Piper McLean glares at him from across the working table at Bunker Nine where they are alone, therefore free to scream as much as needed to hear their voices echo back at them by the metal confines. She's taller than him, though they used to be the same height. There's muscle in her arms that wasn't there before. Her eyes are more hollow than they used to be.

He wonders a lot about her in that moment. He wonders if she still lives in Malibu, if her father still retains an unrealistic abdomen, if she still wears her braids to sleep, if she still smells like cinnamon. He wonders why Jason isn't here instead of her.

"That's not a very nice thing to say," he says, as if it was a joke and he's still waiting for the punchline.

"I know."

He asks, "Is there…something wrong?"

"Something wrong?" Piper laughs, harsh. Her hands had pounded once against the top of the table and the aftermath vibrates through him. "Don't act like that. It's pissing me off."

"Okaaay," he drawls confusedly, pushing away a wrench and the current project he was working on to distract himself from everything. It is just a piece of scrap, but he likes others to think it'll soon be a wondrous, amazing piece of scrap some time in the future. "What'd I do?"

"How dare you! How dare you avoid me all day when you know how it makes me feel!"

He hadn't been avoiding her. Maybe he was doing it unconsciously.

"How does it make you feel?" he asks, then regrets it.

She shivers. "Just because you've been here for a couple days does not give you the right to start where you left off, as if you hadn't chosen something else over this."

"I didn't choose anything over anything. I came back, didn't I? It's not my fault magic is whack and can't get a clue about daylight savings!"

"Why wasn't it the first thing in your mind to come back to us? Oh, please, don't give me that face. A few days in some mythical land equates to years, but why waste those days anyway? You weren't even sure you could come back. So, why? Wait—I think I know why," Piper reveals meanly.

"You do?" Leo taunts, anger charging him up. He stands up from his swirly chair and it goes rolling back, back, back until it hits the wall behind him in a loud clatter. "Why don't you tell the world, then, Beauty Queen? Since you know so much!"

She flinches at his old nickname for her and it's probably the catalyst of what happens next. Because of an endearment.

"You left because you are just a boy and that's all you know! You're a boy who only knows how to run away!"

He jerks back—from the ruthlessness of it or the rawness. All of a sudden, he has the unshakable need to cry; to curl up and sob and hide.

Piper has just pulled from his very depths the truth of his being. He may wear a hero's actions, dress up in a hero's confidence, but underneath he is only a child. A simple boy, frightened and cowardly.

He always was.

Leo's eyes begin to water in frustration, and maybe the tips of his fingernails produce fine lines of gray ashy smoke, but if she sees Piper does not falter in her anger. Her eyebrows still furrow and small mouth still pouts and a part of him revels in this unwavering side of her that never fails to change.

"What—" he chokes out. "I'm—I'm sorry?"

His nervousness makes her bristle. "Sorry for what?"

"For leaving," he says, now wringing his hands in a tangle because oh crap his hands really are about to catch on fire and fidgeting is how he survives. "For running. Flying—whatever."

"No," she says immediately. She shakes her head and the braids on each side of her face flop familiarly. "No way, Valdez. Even if I wanted you to apologize for making me think you were dead for two years, I don't think I could. I can't. How could I? Gods, Leo, how could I possibly forgive you for something like that?"

"Okay, that's unfair. I was saving people! I was saving all of us!" But even that excuse is wet cardboard. He knows he said the wrong thing. Again.

"Unfair?" Piper cries. "You'd like to discuss about unfairness?"

He pinches his thigh because he feels his torso building up heat.

She says, "I'll tell you about unfair. Unfair was when the dryads had to submit a complaint for air toxicity for all the shrouds we had to burn. Unfair was the tears and the fights and the screams caused by the post traumatic depression of every kid below eighteen that dared to lift a weapon in that ridiculous war. Unfair was the fact that there are no longer any children here—only veterans, and have you looked into the face of an nine year old and seen scars reflected in their eyes? Unfair is the gods and goddesses. Unfair is the evil. Unfair is that every time the Seven gets together, the blame game is eventually played and no one ever wins. Unfair is this life, but it's ours and we have to live it.

"Oh, Leo." She sighs deeply into her palms. "What was unfair was that you missed so many birthdays. You missed Jason's, you missed mine. You missed yours. It was unfair you didn't get to see me teach Percy how to surf or see him rule the waves in a matter of minutes. It was unfair Annabeth never got to show you the blueprints to all the ruins she had to restore and unfair you didn't get to help her. It was unfair you didn't get to make jokes about Frank finally mastering how to turn into a jellyfish. It was unfair he and Hazel didn't get to beat you down for those jokes, and unfair how you would've apologized only to Hazel and she would have forgiven you with a smile and some cookies. It was unfair that Jason and I weren't part of a trio anymore. It was unfair that every time one of us made a joke, when we'd turn around there was no one there to laugh about it with.

"I found it unfair that Jason was beginning to think you were really gone, because balancing on faith is so much harder than knowing. I—I found it unfair that I could never do the same.

"But maybe what was most unfair out of all of this," she hesitates, "was that I always knew you'd come back."

Leo watches her watch him for a very long time. He stopped trying to pinpoint a solid color in Piper's eyes a long time ago, so now he just recognizes her mood by how crinkly the ends of her eyelids get or how glassy and glazed they seem. Her eyes have squinted to the size of almonds. Her cheeks are red and wet and the sight churns a storm inside him.

He wishes Jason was here.

"So did I," he admits, and the dam doesn't just break, it erupts. Trembles, relinquishes, shatters.

Nothing matters; he is home.