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Leo felt a little shaken up as he walked up to his apartment building in the dark. He led Jason and Piper past the little yard that all families in the building shared. Past the picnic table he’d eaten at more times than he could count over the years—the very same one he’d accidentally burnt his handprints into at the tender age of five.
How the hell was he going to explain any of this?
‘Hola mamá. Sorry I’ve been missing for more than a week. My godly abuela sort of kidnapped me after robotics and dumped me on a random bus in Arizona. I’m fine, though! How have you been?’
Yeah, that probably wasn’t going to cut it.
Leo was glad he’d at least gotten Hera to drop him off in Houston instead of sending him right back to camp. Sure, he had a ship to build and a world to save and whatnot, but his mom must have been worried sick.
That Jason and Piper had insisted on coming along had surprised him, though. He was good enough at getting his classmates to tolerate him, but he’d never been great at making actual friends—especially not ones that actually wanted to come home with him after school.
Maybe coming home with him after a death quest was different, though.
Not that he was complaining.
Leo was reluctant to use the rickety elevator that had a tendency to get stuck between floors at least once a week, but Jason was still recovering from nearly getting his brain melted out of his skull, which didn’t seem like a great condition to walk up several flights of stairs in. Besides, Leo figured that, at worst, getting stuck in the elevator would give him some more time to think about what to say to his mom.
Of course, for once, the elevator did its job as intended. That was just Leo’s luck.
For several moments, he stood in front of the door, not able to bring himself to press the doorbell. Considering they’d just come out of a supernatural fight, they all looked like complete disasters. What was he supposed to tell his mom? Leo was well aware that she knew some things—she’d seen his fire a few times over the years—but that didn’t mean she’d be able to process the full extent of what was going on with him.
He thought of Piper’s dad, who had glimpsed into her world briefly and been utterly broken by it. How much could he even tell his mom without risking that it would hurt her? Would he spend the rest of his life telling her half-truths the way Piper had to? The thought made tears well up in his eyes.
“It’s gonna be okay,” Piper told him, reaching out to squeeze his shoulder.
“I’ve never brought friends home before. Mom’s probably gonna go into shock over that alone,” Leo joked, wringing his hands.
Their apartment would probably be a mess. It usually was.
His mom had always told him to warn her before he brought friends over so she could tidy up a little, but he’d never had the opportunity before this. And now that he was finally bringing friends over, he hadn’t managed to give her a heads up. He felt kind of guilty about that.
“I don’t understand how anyone wouldn’t want to be friends with you. You’re pretty much the coolest person I know,” Jason said softly.
“High praise from the amnesiac who doesn’t remember the first fourteen years of his life. I’m one of, like, three people you remember being friends with, and you don’t even know the third person’s name.”
Jason shrugged. “I still stand by my statement.”
“Right.” Leo tried to shake off the blush that crept into his cheeks. The absolute last thing he wanted was to greet his mom with his hair on fire. “Here goes nothing.”
He took a fortifying breath, then reached out to ring the doorbell. He expected the usual rusty alarm clock sound, but the sound came out nice and clear. That was strange. His mamá had been putting off repairing the doorbell for well over a year now. She’d always been too busy to get around to it.
The door swung open in an instant.
“Emilio?” Leo got pulled into a fierce hug before he had the chance to get even a single word out. “Oh, thank the dioses.”
A small part of his brain noted that she’d said gods, plural. The rest of him was too busy melting into her arms to think about much of anything.
“Hi.” He was completely choked up. He hadn’t realized just how terrified he’d been up until this moment. Terrified he wouldn’t make it home. Terrified Gaia might have made good on her threat to hurt his mom while he’d been away.
He could still hear the goddesses’ threat in his mind. The Fates do not protect your mother any more than they do Piper’s father. You saw what happened to him. But I could keep her safe for you.
Leo shook off the thought like a dog shaking off water. His mom was obviously fine. Sure, she looked like a total mess, but not any more so than usual. Her curls had slipped almost entirely out of the loose braid she wore them in when she worked, there was a smudge of soot on one of her cheeks and she smelled like motor oil. She wore her favorite jacket, which was so old and had been patched up so many times over that one could probably start to ask the Theseus’ Ship question, and she hadn’t changed out of her grimy work overalls yet.
Except for the tears that had sprung into her eyes, everything about her was exactly the way it should have been.
“Are you hurt?” She looked him over frantically, like she was going over a mental blueprint of him and making sure all his gears and cables were still in place. “Oh, look at you. You’re all scratched up.”
“Cálmate, mamá,” Leo laughed, waving her off. He was home. The realization almost made him dizzy with relief. “I’m okay. I promise.”
“Like hell I will! When you didn’t come back from school, I thought-” She held him to her chest even more fiercely. “Mijo, do you have any idea how worried I was?”
“Considering you seem to be trying to strangle me right now, I can make an educated guess,” Leo muttered, burying his face in her shoulder and hugging her back just as tightly. “Missed you, too. I’m sorry I wasn’t around for our cooking session on Sunday.”
That was probably the dumbest thing he could have apologized for in the current scenario.
“Oh, Leo. I’m just glad to have you back more or less in one piece. Let’s get you inside and out of these clothes, you’re drenched,” his mom told him—and, yeah, she wasn’t entirely wrong about that. Stupid snow goddess. His mom lifted her head, apparently only now registering the fact that Jason and Piper were also standing there. Her whole face lit up. “You brought friends?”
“Yeah. Long story, large parts of which you probably wouldn’t believe,” Leo told her, reluctantly making himself pull away. “Mom, this is Piper and Jason. Piper and Jason, this is my mom, as you’ve probably already guessed.”
“Esperanza Valdez,” his mom introduced herself. She was beaming.
“Hi!” Piper waved enthusiastically.
Jason on the other hand ducked his head, seeming almost nervous. “It’s a pleasure to make your acquaintance, Miss Valdez. Leo has told us so much about you.”
Considering Leo had seen him fight two Giants in the past twenty-four hours, the thought that anything would scare him—especially Leo’s mom—was ridiculous, but considering the way he shifted from foot to foot, eyes glued firmly to the floorboards, that sure was what it seemed like.
“Ay, dioses mío, you’re absolutely not calling me that. Esperanza is fine.” She gave Leo a funny look, as if to ask ‘where in the world did you find that one?’ “Please, come in.”
Diego greeted Leo by nearly making him break his neck the second he stepped back into the apartment. The black tomcat darted up to him and sidled around his legs, nearly tripping him up. Then he hissed at all of them and darted off towards the kitchen.
“Nice to see you, too!” Leo yelled after him, laughing. “Guys, meet Diego. Or, you know, don’t. He’s not big on friendly greetings.”
“You said he was a stray, right?” Jason asked, looking to where the cat had disappeared behind the kitchen counter—probably to guard his food from the newly arrived strangers who may or may not try to eat it.
Generally, this was an unreasonable instinct, but Jason had weird preferences when it came to food, and Piper was absolutely the type to eat cat food on a dare, so Leo figured he should cut Diego some slack in this particular case.
“Yeah. We fed him for a while, and he eventually decided we were nice enough to keep us around. He’s still a little skittish around strangers, though,” Leo explained.
“Sounds like someone else we know,” Piper teased. “Your place is nice.”
She immediately made herself at home on the couch.
Leo was about to tell her to watch out for any spare wrenches between the cushions, but he found himself a little preoccupied when Jason stumbled.
He moved to steady him.
“Dude, you good?”
“Yeah,” Jason said, then amended, “everything still kind of hurts. I think I just need to sit down for a little while, if that’s okay.”
“Nah. The sofa is for looking at, exclusively,” Leo told him, making sure to check for stray tools before he helped his friend sit. Remarkably, he didn’t find any. “There we go.”
“Is your friend alright? He’s a little pale,” his mom asked, her worried-parent-mode not even slightly impeded by the fact that Jason wasn’t her kid.
“He’s kind of had a long day,” Leo told her, because that was easier than trying to explain what had actually happened or that nearly getting incinerated by looking at Hera’s true form probably wasn’t something VapoRub could fix. “I’ll get you a glass of water, okay?”
Jason nodded. “Thanks.”
“When was the last time you three ate? No, don’t answer that. I’ll fix you something,” his mom decided, immediately moving to the kitchen.
Leo was a little relieved she was so distracted. That made it way easier to shove the last of their mostly crushed ambrosia at Jason without having to explain what it was.
He paused halfway to the kitchen sink. The fact that he now had the brain space to look around the apartment meant he finally noticed just how tidy the place was. Usually, the only place he could count on looking tidy was the kitchen, but right now, the whole place was spotless. The only hint of mess were the blueprints on the dining table that his mom had obviously been working on when he’d rung the doorbell.
“What in the world happened here?” he asked, baffled. “Did tía Rosa visit or something?”
His aunt had hangups about cleanliness that his mom and his abuela—the one on the human side, anyway—did not, so when she visited, there was usually a lot of last minute cleaning involved.
“No, I just-” His mom raked a hand through her hair, looking mildly embarrassed. “I may have been stress cleaning.”
Leo stared at her. “That’s not a thing you do. Who are you and what have you done to my mom?”
She laughed. “At first I ran around fixing anything around the apartment I could find. The door bell, the slightly leaky shower head… I took apart the entire piping system underneath the kitchen to figure out why it clogs sometimes. But I got all of that done, and you still weren’t home, so stress cleaning it was.”
Leo neglected to point out that fixing things around the apartment technically should have been on their landlord. They both knew the guy was useless when it came to fixing things. On the upside, this meant he’d let his mom fix things around other people’s apartments in the months they couldn’t make rent, back when that had still been a problem. Besides, he turned a blind eye to them keeping Diego. All in all, he could have been a lot worse.
Diego was still sitting by his food and water bowls protectively, but he graciously allowed Leo to pet him when he leaned down, giving him a happy purr.
“Paloma still isn’t letting you stay late at the workshop, hm?” Leo teased.
“Me vuelve loca,” his mom sighed, but her voice was tinged with amusement. “She worries too much.”
“Yeah, a reasonable work-life-balance is completely overrated,” Leo agreed with a snort. He liked Paloma. She’d been his mom’s best friend since college, and she was always nice to him when she visited.
When she’d moved back to Houston three years ago, his mom had immediately offered her a job. She could afford to, now, between how well the shop was running and the tool designs she’d patented over the last few years. They probably could have afforded a bigger apartment, too, if his mom hadn’t insisted on saving the money for his college fund.
“Do not get cheeky with me, cariño.” His mom pinched his cheek.
“Your fault for raising me to question the system,” he shot back with a grin. He grabbed a glass from the cupboard and filled it with tap water.
When Leo put the glass down in front of Jason, his friend was already looking a little better.
His mom was right behind him, setting down a plate of fruits on the couch table. “I’ll cook you an actual meal in a minute, but I figured I shouldn’t let you starve to death in the meantime.” She looked Jason and Piper over. “I should maybe find you two some dry clothes, too.”
Jason ducked his head. “Sorry for dragging mud into the apartment.”
They’d all taken their shoes off by the door, but their clothes were a different story.
“That’s alright. I’m a little more worried about what you three have been up to, honestly.” She looked at Leo, who suddenly had an immense interest in the squeaky clean floor boards. “Emilio, go change and bring some clothes for Piper, alright? You two look like you’re about the same size. After that, we’ll talk.”
Leo nodded and tried to ignore the way that his heart climbed into his throat.
Leo stepped back into the living room to find his mom sitting on the couch between Jason and Piper, the first aid kid in her lap. Jason had changed into a pair of pants that were slightly too large but not nearly as muddy and a sweatshirt with the logo of some football team printed on the front. Leo was pretty sure those were Raphael’s—probably the ones he’d left here after someone had accidentally set off the sprinkler system while he’d been on the lawn a few weeks ago. Piper had two bandaids on her face that definitely hadn’t been there when he left.
His mom was currently dotting a cut on Jason’s arm with a wad of cotton. Despite the fact that it was probably covered in disinfectant and had to sting like hell, Jason didn’t even flinch.
“Aw, are you guys having a party without me?” Leo asked, then chucked some fresh clothes at Piper. “Bathroom’s at the end of the hall. Do not try to snoop in my room. For your own safety more than anything. There are traps.”
Piper raised an eyebrow at him, clearly not quite believing him, but then she shrugged and got going.
To be honest, Leo had just made that up. But he also genuinely wasn’t sure what kind of wind-up toys he’d left in there, and his room was a bit of a death trap based on its usual state of chaos alone. Well, she’d been warned.
He flopped down on the couch next to his mom, occupying the spot Piper had just left.
“So, doc, do we think he’s gonna live?” he asked, looking over at Jason. There were three bloody cotton pads already disposed of, and his mom was now gently bandaging Jason’s arm.
“He’s going to be alright,” she said, but Leo could see the worry in her eyes. Considering Leo had been missing for well over a week and had just shown back up here drenched and dragging two other banged up teenagers along, that probably wasn’t too surprising, though. “Would you mind taking over for me for a minute? I promised your friends I’d make enchiladas.”
Of course his mom was insisting on cooking for his friends. He suspected she’d been waiting for this moment since the day he’d been born.
His own stomach also growled at the thought of getting to eat his mom’s cooking again after a week of mostly field rations, so he definitely wasn’t complaining.
“I’ve got it,” Leo agreed, letting her dump the first aid kit into his lap. “Your mom’s amazing,” Jason said quietly. He didn’t even flinch when Leo started dotting disinfectant on his face. He did blush, though.
Leo really wished Jason’s little crush on him hadn’t been so mixed up with him having three months’ worth of fake memories of Leo that had culminated in them dating. The circumstances made it really hard to tell how genuine the feelings were. Even Jason himself seemed confused about it—but he also had bigger amnesia problems than the three months at Wilderness they hadn’t shared.
If nothing else, Leo could tell that Jason really, really liked him as a friend. No matter where things between them went long-term, that was a win in Leo’s book.
“Yeah, she’s pretty great.” Leo smiled. “Are you feeling any better?”
Jason nodded. “Way better. Really tired, though.”
“Shocker. I feel like the longest you ‘slept’ was when you got knocked out in Detroit.” Leo grimaced. “You kept taking all of the watches.”
“Not all of them,” Jason insisted.
“Right. Only about seventy percent,” Leo said dryly. “Take a nap, dude.”
“I’m okay for now.”
Leo rolled his eyes, but he figured he’d be about as successful arguing with a wall, so he just finished cleaning Jason’s face, sure his friend would nod off on the couch sooner or later now that they were finally out of danger and his adrenaline no longer worked overtime.
He didn’t even protest when Jason insisted on cleaning his scratches in turn. Most of them were so minor that this seemed silly. He pointedly ignored the way Jason gently holding his chin in one hand made his skin tingle.
“I’m afraid to even ask, but what kind of monsters did you fight?” Leo’s mom asked when she sank back onto the couch on Leo’s other side.
She asked about it so casually that it made Leo’s head spin. “What are you talking about?” he asked, at the same time as Jason said, “a snow goddess, two Giants, a few Cyclopes, some Earthborn and way too many wolves. Also some reborn mortals. It’s been a weird quest.”
“Oh, dioses mío.”
Leo stared at his friend. “I’m sorry, why the fuck are you giving a battle report to my mom?”
“Language, Emilio,” his mamá warned, but there was no real admonishment in her voice.
Leo was still looking at Jason. He felt slightly hysterical. “At which point did we decide we’re telling her the whole story? You saw what happened with Piper’s dad. I don’t want-”
“Your mom already knew,” Jason told him, but he had the decency to still look sheepish about the whole thing.
“I- what?” Leo turned to look at his mom, only now registering the complete lack of surprise about any of the things Jason had just told her and how strange that was. She had guilt written all over her face.
“I’m sorry, mijo. I did not mean to keep these things from you. But Hera warned me that, once you realized exactly what you were, there would be no going back.” She worried her lip. “I didn’t want to invite the monsters to our doorstep before you were ready.”
Leo’s eyes went wide.
“You knew? Like, all of it? Including my dad being a Greek god?”
Honestly, this explained a lot about why she hadn’t freaked out way worse all those times Leo had gone up in flames.
He had no idea how he was supposed to be feeling. Maybe he should have been upset, but after the week he’d had, he honestly just wanted to crawl into his mamá’s lap and be held. He let his head drop against her shoulder and enjoyed the feeling of having his hair ruffled.
The upset might hit him later, but for now, he was mostly just relieved he could talk to her. His heart ached for Piper, who would never get to have this.
“I’ve always seen strange things. My whole life,” his mom explained. “Your dad was the best one.”
Leo grimaced. “Right. As much as I hate you keeping things from me, that is too much information.”
She chuckled, but her expression quickly turned serious again. “I’ve always known you were destined to be a hero, but you’re still so young. Lo siento, Emilio. I’d hoped we had more time.” She squeezed his shoulder. “When you didn’t come home last week… Hera came to take you away, didn’t she?”
“Yeah.” Leo had been very confused when Tía Callida had picked him up after school considering he hadn’t seen her in a while—not since she and his mamá had had some sort of falling out when he’d been younger. But she’d watched him enough times as a kid that, when she’d claimed to be picking him up because his mom was working late, he hadn’t really questioned it. She’d always struck him more as a confused, kind of mean old lady than as actually dangerous. But the moment he’d sat down in her passenger seat, the world had gone dark, and the next thing he knew, he’d been sitting in the back row of a school bus between Jason and Piper. “She dumped me on a field trip to the Grand Canyon. That’s also where I met these two.”
He pointed one thumb at Jason, the other down the hall towards where Piper had disappeared to.
“The Grand Canyon?”
Leo nodded. “Great view. I only almost fell in.”
His mom looked at him, horrified. “Don’t even joke about that!”
“I’m not,” Leo said. He would have felt bad about worrying her, but if she wanted the full story… well, he was about to worry her a whole lot worse. “Kind of a non-issue, though. Superman over here can fly. 10/10 experience, there’s no one I’d rather fall into the Grand Canyon with.”
His mom’s eyebrows disappeared into her hairline. “Seriously?”
Jason nodded. “It’s not really that big of a deal, I just-”
Leo shoved him. “Dude, shut up. You can fly. Of course that’s a big deal, are you kidding me?”
Jason’s face was going red again. Leo felt a little stupid for only now realizing that this was sort of a meeting the parents-situation for Jason, considering his fake memories of them dating. No wonder he was so nervous.
“What are we talking about?” Piper asked when she stepped back into the room, for some reason opting to vault over the back of the armchair instead of sitting down on it the normal way.
She looked mildly annoyed with Leo, but in his defense, the slightly faded Transformers shirt was a perfect fit.
“Falling into the Grand Canyon,” he informed her.
“Right! We both did that. It was fucking terrifying.” She shuddered at the memory, but was quick to collect herself again. A moment later, she was picking up a fork to stab one of the apple slices Leo’s mom had cut, like she hadn’t just been talking about almost dying. It was incredible how quickly you got desensitized to the experience once it had happened a few times. “Would probably take that over almost getting cooked into soup by Cyclopes in Detroit, though.”
“…I’m sorry?”
“Leo saved us. He was amazing,” Jason said, smiling softly at him.
Leo’s face grew hot. “Dude, stop! You were unconscious for that part! You didn’t even see any of it!”
“He’s right, though! You were pretty amazing,” Piper chimed in.
“As sweet as this is,” Leo’s mom said, and he could tell without looking just how hard she was smiling, “could you maybe start at the beginning?”
Piper laughed. “Yeah, I guess we could do that.”
Something strange happened, then. Diego, who usually stayed in the kitchen whenever they had guests, cautiously made his way over to them. He circled the armchair a few times, sniffing Piper skeptically. She reached down so he could inspect her hand, but without actually petting him. A moment later, he’d taken up residence in her lap.
As far as Leo was concerned, this was an even bigger miracle than them surviving the quest had been.
“He still won’t even sit on my lap half the time,” he complained, but his treacherous cat remained in Piper’s lap, unfazed, purring contently as she petted him.
“Have you considered that maybe I’m just cooler than you?” Piper teased, looking incredibly smug about the whole thing.
The image made Leo crack up. “Pipes, I mean this in the kindest way possible, but you look like a supervillain who’s about to start monologuing.”
“I’ll take that as a compliment,” Piper informed him, grinning. “And one of us probably should start monologuing, since your mom asked what happened. Might as well be me.”
Leo wasn’t sure how long they spent taking turns telling his mom about their quest. She listened intently, looking concerned but also so, so incredibly proud that it made Leo’s chest hurt. At the mention that his father had contacted him, despite having restrictions against doing so from Zeus, her whole face lit up.
“I’m finally getting the hang of my fire powers,” Leo told her. “Well, sort of.”
“That’s wonderful, mijo. I’m so proud of you.”
He curled up in his mamá’s lap and cried when he told her about Festus, and she held him for a long, long time.
“Your father took his head back to Bunker Nine?”
Leo nodded, sniffling quietly into her shoulder. “He’s going to be the figurehead for the ship, but it won’t be the same.”
“Does it need to be?” His mom ruffled his hair. “We’re always changing. All of us. It’s a natural part of life. Why should it be any different for giant metal dragons? Why should he be any less special or loved just because he’ll take on a new form?”
“He won’t be.” The tears just wouldn’t stop. “But I still miss him. It still hurts. Is that stupid?”
“Of course not, mi sol. Whatever feelings you have deserve to be felt.” She kissed his head. “I sometimes still miss the time when you were small enough for me to carry you on my shoulders. That doesn’t mean I love the current version of you any less for it. Loving someone changed doesn’t mean you can’t miss who they used to be.”
Leo maybe should have been embarrassed about the minor breakdown he was having in front of his friends, but he wasn’t. Not even a little bit. He genuinely didn’t know what he would have done without his mom.
Besides, there wasn’t much to be embarrassed about when they’d all had their painful emotional moments throughout this quest.
When Jason got to talking about Thalia, he was the one who needed his hand held.
When his mom got the enchiladas out of the oven, they moved their little group over to the dinner table. The relief Piper felt at getting to put off talking about her dad for a little longer was written all over her face. She kept stuffing her face instead of continuing the story, mumbling compliments between mouthfuls of food.
Leo wondered how much harder him having a mom he could tell all of these things to made it for Piper. He reached across the table to grab her hand. He’d be there for her, even if her dad wouldn’t.
When she did finally manage to talk about it, choked up and holding Leo’s hand so tightly he was a little worried she’d pop his fingers out of their sockets, Piper wasn’t the only one who got misty-eyed.
“It’s so hard when the people around you don’t understand. To learn to hide away parts of your life that are too much for others to process.” Leo’s mom said, looking at Piper with infinitely gentle eyes. “When I was little, mamá and Rosa told me I had abuelo Sammy’s sense of imagination with a kind of indulgent amusement, but the older I got…” She bit her lip. “If you still insist you can see pegasi at age fourteen, people will generally think you’re a bit loca.”
Piper wiped at her eyes. “It just… I spent so long trying to get him to see me, and the moment he finally does, I have to make the choice to make him look away again because his mind can’t take it. It’s not fair.”
“It’s really not.” Leo’s mom reached out to squeeze her shoulder. “For what it’s worth: I know I’m not your father, but if there’s anything you ever need to get off your chest—anything at all—I’m here for you, entiendes?”
Piper nodded, crying even harder now.
“You can talk to me, too” Jason added. “You’re amazing, Pipes. If he can’t see that, that’s his loss.”
“Yeah, what they said. Fuck your dad. We’re your family now.”
“Shut up, Leo,” Piper told him. “That’s not what either of them said.”
But she was laughing a little through her tears now, and Leo counted that as a win.
Besides, he stood by his statement. Sure, he hadn’t known Piper and Jason that long, but he could already tell the three of them belonged together. They were three pieces of a very messy whole, and he loved them with his entire heart.
He thought he could get used to this—eating his mom’s enchiladas and telling ridiculous tales of quests at the dinner table with Diego brushing past their legs. As much as he would have liked a life that didn’t require him to save the world by the end of next summer, he wouldn’t have traded meeting Piper and Jason for the world.
They were family now. Nothing was ever going to change that.