I want to start by saying that I'd wanted to write this story for a very long time. You see, Leo (of course) has always been a very dear character to me, and as soon as I finished reading The Lost Hero I started looking for fanfiction abaout him because, as you already know, I'm a sucker for HUrt/Comfort. With time, my love for this character also lead to me writing stories with him.

However, I realized that in the stories in which he went back to his original home and found Rosa he always did so alone, and that enraged me because he isn't alone anymore, so that's why I wrote a story called "Blood and Family". On the other hand, I decided that perhaps the whole fandom is being a little too harsh on Rosa. I mean, I don't justify that she abandoned a child the way she did, there's literally no justification to that, but she might have been under the influence of Gaea or an eidolon for all we know (I actually plan to write a story with that theme). Also, regret is something that people learn to feel over time, when they realize their mistakes, so I decided that, as I haven't seen any story with a similar scenario I might as well give it a try.

This is a story in which Rosa is not as bitchy, probably the first one of the kind, so I really hope you enjoy this new take on such character!

In Another Time

To say that memories hold the capacity to haunt was an understandment. It became especially hard to fight them after a trauma such as a war or, if you were unfortunate enough, a near-death experience. Leo Valdez had been, in all honesty, not very lucky in that department, and thus he had to deal with memories he was better off without on a regular basis.

Regrets were, also, something that most demigods had to come across pretty often, and if the son of Hephaestus was to be asked the thing he regretted the most, the memories that haunted him the most often, the answer was simple―the ones of his mother, the memories of his mother's death, of what had happened afterwards, of the few last days he'd shared with her.

It wasn't as strong now, not like it had been before, while he roamed from one foster home to another, with only those hurtful remembrances to cling on to, finding a numbing comfort in recalling what he had lost. Right then he'd forgiven, he'd let go, even when he knew he was unable to forget and, slowly but surely, he was reaching a point in which he could stare back at the past a little more objectively, a little with less pain.

And it was now that he could remember with a bit more nostalgia than pain that he looked back and realized a couple of things he hadn't before.

For example, he now recalled those free Sunday afternoons in which his mother, as a relaxing therapy and a little because it was fun to end up covered in colors painted something, the first thing she could think of, only to pass the time.

She didn't sell her paintings; sometimes she gave them away as a gift, but most of them were still hanging from their house's walls.

Leo's personal favorite was maybe one of the simplest ones―only a chimney, not decorated for Christmas, not covered with photographs, not ornamented at all, plainly a chimney with a burning fire that sent a comforting feeling of home whenever you looked at it.

It had started as a vague idea, as a thought―he wanted that painting back, for no other reason than to remember his mother, not with pain or regret, only with love.

Of course he didn't have the painting with him―all he really kept from his mother were a couple of discolored pictures and the very same memories he wasn't sure whether or not he was glad to have.

In theory, Rosa should have the painting, along with their old apartment, for at the time he'd abandoned the house he'd been too shocked to properly pack his things. And, of course, the runaways didn't help much when it came to luggage so, if his aunt still had the portrait, then it was better that she had kept it.

Sincerely, Rosa could keep everything else, the apartment, the pictures, his mother's things―but he wanted that painting, only that. If that harpy hadn't sold it, of course.

Which explained what he was doing, standing in front of Rosa's house, with only Calypso knowing where he was, after a quick visit to his old apartment complex and being informed that Rosa was renting his old apartment and still living in the same place.

By the time he actually knocked the door his hand was shaking and he was chewing on his lower lip so hard he wouldn't have been surprised if it started bleeding. For the millionth time that day he rehearsed what he was going to say, a speech long-planned, in his mind.

He was there only for the painting. Only for the painting. If after that she didn't want to see him again, then he was just fine with it, seeing as he didn't want to have anything to do with her either.

On the other hand, of course, as soon as he heard the steps approaching the door all trace of the words he was supposed to say evaporated from his mind and left him with a stupid song of a toothpaste commercial and the useless wish of possessing charmspeak like Piper did as his only thoughts.

His unfortunate condition, sadly, did not improve when the door was finally opened,

Rosa Valdez wasn't someone to look through the peephole in the door before opening it, and thus he wasn't expecting her to do so. That didn't lessen his shock when the gap of the door widened enough to reveal the woman's lean figure.

She hadn't changed much, Leo decided with his breath caught in his throat. She still used her waist-long hair in a high pony-tail, same that curled at the tips. The wrinkles around her eyes and lips were perhaps a little deeper, but her chocolate eyes still shone furiously and she hadn't lost a bit of her imposing presence.

Upon all the things that someone receiving a stranger at her door could have said, Rosa Valdez seemed at the same loss of words Leo was in, her right hand still gripping the doorknob so tightly that her knuckles had gone white, her mouth mildly opened, as if she wanted to say something but found herself unable to. Instead of anger like the last time he'd seen her, her dark orbs only showed a slight trace of confusion mixed with a vague recognition when she scanned him calculatingly.

"Umm… Hi, Mrs. Valdez. Good afternoon" he muttered, decided that someone should start talking at last. "I'm… You… You had a sister and she… I'm her son…"

"Leo?" she let out under her breath, not even surprised at Esperanza's mention, only astonished with her nephew's return.

"I… Yes, Rosa. I'm Leo" the son of Hephaestus accepted, knowing there was no use in lying now that he was there. Nervous as he was, Leo failed to notice how the woman in front of him grimaced when he called her by her first name instead of the family surname. "Listen, Rosa… I only want… You see, my mother kind of painted in her free time, so I was wondering if you could… I only came here for…"

But she wasn't listening, he noted when he finally dared to meet gazes with her, her eyes still wandering through his features, as if trying to find and answer, a clue to who he was, something.

"It can't be…" she muttered shakily. "It's impossible… It can't… it can't be you…"

"Rosa, I only came here for… For…" but his already broken speech was cut short when she propelled herself to the front, her lips still slightly upon in surprise, her eyes seeming wet.

"Oh God!" the woman let out, circling the boy's neck with her arms. Even more stunned than before, Leo tried to step back, with no use, as she only gripped him more tightly. It wasn't an attack, the son of Hephaestus realized suddenly. It was a caress. She was… she was hugging him. "It can't be you…"

"Ma'am" he managed coyly. "Rosa, I―"

"Oh God, oh Dios*!" the woman murmured. "I… I can't believe this… Please… Please come inside" she offered, breaking apart. "I can't believe it… Come inside".

And without further ado she let go of his neck, gripped his wrist and entered the douse, dragging the young demigod behind her. The son of Hephaestus wasn't out of his astonished trance until he was already inside Rosa's house, sitting in front of a round table, with his aunt right across the piece of furniture.

If Rosa hadn't changed much, then her house surely had. It was dirty, untidy, was the first thing that caught Leo's attention. There was a pile of unwashed dishes next to the sink and the dust could be spotted from afar, on top of the furniture, on the corners of the room. And, put out in those very same corners, laid several glass bottles and cans of what Leo could only identified as beer containers. Rosa didn't drink. Neither did she smoke, although the ashtray on the table said otherwise.

"I… I'm so glad to see you" Rosa began in a low voice, her eyes turned to her lap before she raised her hands to wipe away some salty moisture from her eyes. "After… after you disappeared from the Wilderness School I thought… Oh, dear, I thought the worst. You just… You disappeared into thin air. I was worried sick…"

What?, Leo thought. What? This was the first time he saw her in nine, almost ten years, after she had dumped him from her house, calling him a devil and accusing him of his mother's death, and after all that time, after depriving him of every single type of comfort from his only living family, after never sending a letter, a card, after never calling suddenly… suddenly she was saying that she was glad to see him? And she expected him to believe her?

"I know what you're thinking, Leo" she continued with a nostalgic smile. "I… What I did has no forgiveness of God and I'm sorry for all I said. After that I'd always be informed when you ran away from a foster home and I always thought, I knew I had to go and get you back with me, offer you a home or… talk to you… something! You deserved it, Esperanza deserved it… but I… I never gathered enough courage and before I could manage to force myself to meet my previous mistakes you were gone or you ran away and I was so worried…"

You don't have to say this. You don't have to say this…, Leo thought to himself, trying to pierce Rosa's hunched over figure with his gaze, trying to pinpoint the lie this so glaringly was. However, he found himself unable to do so when Rosa raised her eyes and all that he could find in her chocolate orbs was sincere regret and the throbbing pain he knew so well.

What interrupted his musings was precisely the woman's voice.

"I… ever since I left you, ever since I was so careless and so cruel I haven't stopped dreaming about Esperanza and it's always the same image, she's just standing there, asking me where her baby is, how her son is and I can never find the face to tell my sister that I abandoned her child" she explained, letting tears ran freely down her cheeks and her hands tremble as she made a fuss with them to illustrate her words. "At least when you were under foster care I knew where you were, I knew you were safe" she continued, a little more composedly. "But after you ran away from the Wilderness School I never… I never heard of you again… Your friend Piper, who disappeared just as you did is back to her family, safe and sound and yet… you never… you never came back. I started to fear you never would…"

There was something in her voice, the son of Hephaestus noted, something so heartrendingly lonely and so shamelessly desperate it was almost tangible. She had been thinking, both day and night about something that she couldn't solve, about something that she was responsible of, but couldn't fix because the damage was terribly huge, no matter how badly she wanted to turn back time and make things better.

He knew how that felt, how memories haunted, tortured, how unsaid words hung in the air until breathing it made its victim sick. How absence hurt and burn and destroyed hope.

"Raphael* left me and hasn't called in years" Rosa continued in a low voice. "Not that I'm surprised, he hated me and by this time he must be so drunk it wouldn't be strange that he doesn't even remember his own name, let alone my phone number. I guess I deserved it, right? How everyone I ever loved or thought I did leaves me now?" she whispered shakily. "For all that I did, for how I took it upon myself to break my own family. I hurt you. I hurt you all and I… I'm sorry…"

Only then, as he watched Rosa's emaciated figure, eyes full of regret, expression marked by despair and took pity on her that it stricken the son of Hephaestus that this, an apology, the simple recognition of the pain he'd been forced to endure was the only thing, the one and only thing he had wanted almost a decade in the past―and then… why was he so bothered by the sight in front of him?

"But now you're back!" Rosa dwelled on suddenly, and her features lit as soon as they had grown stormy. "You came back, willingly! And you're safe, too! You can… you can stay with me and we can be a family again and… ¡Oh Dios!, for the memory of your mother I promise you… I promise you that I'll make up for my mistakes" she whispered, and with trembling finders Rosa Valdez leaned down, trying to reach for the boy's hands. When Leo jerked away out of here reflexes she couldn't find it within herself to hide her pained grimace.

There was a pleading tone in her voice, a gleam so desperate in her eyes that it was nearly insane. But she was being sincere, she genuinely believed that a minute's kindness could heal a decade of wounds and rejection. She genuinely thought that a simple apology was enough to leave years of overdue care and love in the past, and while that would have been enough for Leo in the past, as a forsaken child in cold, lonely nights it just… it wasn't now. It wasn't nearly enough now that he knew better.

Shifting his weight uncomfortably on his chair he let his eyes wander through the house, further than the empty bottles of liquor and the numbing emptiness of the place and that was when he noticed it―the painting he'd come looking for, lazily hanging from the living room's worn off walls.

We can be a family, Rosa had said, and yet… none of her actions, previous or even current, met Leo's definition of what a family was. Sure, they shared blood, but they didn't share strings or ties and no bonds related them. He had bonds, he had ties and strings that tied him to other people, to his real family―but Rosa Valdez wasn't included in those people.

"Please, Leo, please…" he heard Rosa say. Only then did he notice that she had continued speaking. He hadn't heard a thing of her long-winded speech. "We can do it the right way now…"

That was the moment something finally made its way to Leo's mind―by the way she spoke it was easy to pinpoint how Rosa wasn't talking out of love or fondness or affection. No matter how kind her voice was when she talked or how warm her embrace had been as she greeted him, she was being selfish, heedless.

Her life hadn't turned out the way she wanted it to and, somehow, she had decided that if she was a better person, more approachable, nicer, more open, then she would be happier and not as lonely, which was almost accurate, except for the fact that she had forgotten to remember that to earn that love, to earn the bonds of a real family the people she craved to be nice to needed to want to remain by her side.

One couldn't force the bonds of a family to grow, one couldn't force the love a family shared out of thin air and that precisely was what Rosa Valdez was trying to do.

"Leo?" Rosa questioned when she noted his lost gaze. "Are you listening?"

No, he decided, he wasn't listening merely because there was no point in paying attention to nonsenses such as what his aunt was saying.

"Look, lady" he started, and suddenly his voice wasn't as shaky. "I appreciate your offer, it's… it's quite tempting" he nodded, refraining himself from adding 'I would have accepted with no further thoughts in another time'. "But I… I already have a family" he let out, noticing just as the words left his lips how genuine they were. "And I don't need anything else".

"But… Leo, what are you saying?" Rosa inquired in a high-pitched voice. "I… I am your family… We only have each other… Why…?"

"Listen, ma'am, I… I needed you, I needed this" he accepted, shrugging. "In another time, but not now. It's too late" he said, already standing up. "I didn't come back for you I… I came back for one of my mother's paintings, the one that hangs from the living room, actually. I don't need your pity now" he explained, directing himself to said place.

"But… but, Leo, dear… Please…"

"Rosa, I know what I'm saying. I've made my decision" and his voice was secure and held resolution as he spoke, no longer the one of a frightened child. He wasn't just trying to get rid of Rosa, he was sure of what his words meant. And it was precisely that certainty what brought new tears to Rosa's eyes.

"Leo, please…" she tried one last time, attempting to reach for the boy's wrist, but the son of Hephaestus had already unhung the picture from the wall and was walking over to the door.

"Uno siembra lo que cosecha*" he muttered, freeing himself from her hold. "I… I have to go. I'm sorry".

When he left the building, clutching the painting ―the last string that tied him to Rosa and this house― to his chest he decided to turn a blind ear to the woman's muffled cries, just like she had left him sobbing at the police station so many years in the past.

Surprises were not yet over he realized as he turned the first corner and found Calypso patiently waiting next to Festus.

"After you left Piper kind of made me tell her where you were going and… they sort of made me promise to come with you unless I wanted them, all of them, to come after you, so…" she explained with a smile, drawing her arms around Leo's shoulders and giving him a tiny peck on the lips before stepping back.

As she said so, her voice was soft, cheerful, sounding as if she hadn't even thought of her words, as if they were merely meant to be said. And, somehow, that made sense. Leo wasn't even surprised of finding her there, awaiting him with a smile and, furthermore, he wasn't mad that she hadn't left him have the privacy to go and talk to his aunt and then return to the camp with dark thoughts and musings he was better off without because a part of him had always known that a trip that seemed so casual like this one would call his friends' attention and it was precisely that what made their actions so meaningful. Yes, even as they were invading his privacy indeed.

They noticed them, things as simple as this one, things small like going out without informing anyone or skipping dinner.

"She threatened you to do so or was it just charmspeak?" he asked her, leaning down to press a kiss to her forehead.

"It didn't take much to convince me" Calypso admitted in a low voice, her beautiful features letting her worry show for once. "Are you alright?"

"Better than ever" the son of Hephaestus nodded with a sincere grin. "I'm glad to see you" he added, dwelling on how true his words were just when they left his mouth.

And that was all they needed to say, that was all that needed to be said, with no words, with just arms drawn around lean shoulders and meaningful smiles.

Later on, as he hung his mother's painting from the walls of the dining room in the Argo II he couldn't help but think once more that he'd made the right decision. And now, just like that feeling of belonging that had adorned the living room of his house in another time he knew, he knew that he was with his family whenever he spent time with any of the other demigods that he shared the ship with.

What did you think? That he would stay with her? Nope, nope, nopity, nope. As I said before, Leo isn't alone anymore, and not even a kinder Rosa can change that.

Also, you know that I'm not really into Caleo. Actually, my original draft ended when Leo leaves Rosa's house, but as I wrote it down I decided that nah, Caly deserved to be there and Leo deserved the love of his girlfriend, so there you have it Dawei, don't say I don't listen to you! ;)

As a matter of fact, I want to dedicate this story to all of you who have stayed despite how 70% of the time I'm writing either Angst or Hurt/Comfort. There you have it, a happy Leo!

Now, the translations (you know how much I like playing around with words, especially in Spanish):

*1: Dios, Spanish for "God".

*2: Raphael is actually canon. I think he is mentioned by Leo either in The Lost Hero or The Mark of Athena.

*3: Uno siembra lo que cosecha, "You reap what you sow".

That's all for now guys, I hope you enjoyed this little something and please let me know in your comments what you think about this take on Rosa's personality! Thanks for reading! ;)