leo_valdez (leo_valdez) wrote in thedisplaced, @ 2018-03-26 19:43:00 |
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Entry tags: | leo valdez |
Who: Leo Valdez
What: Narrative post battle
Where: Medbay mostly
When: Post battle Monday, March 26th and into the early hours of Tuesday, March 27th
Warnings: Mentions of character death, lots of emotions on Leo’s part
Status: Complete
Leo had been here before. Only that time he’d been eight and his mother was dead because of him. His Aunt Rosa’s look of disgust and hatred had been focused on him then. He felt it again even though she wasn’t here. This time he was seventeen and his girlfriend was dead. His mind told him it was his fault, that he should have left the ship to other people and stuck close to Ava, but the ship had needed to get up and running. He’d known that. He hadn’t known this would happen. It didn’t make him feel less guilty about it. The night before was so clear in his mind. He could remember the look Ava gave him when he showed up, the way she smiled when he produced the whipped cream, the sound of her laughter. He remembered how it felt just to be around her. He remembered waking up next to her and feeling happy. As if that was something he was allowed. But he was a demigod and a son of Hephaestus, so he should have known that wasn’t something that would last. Through all of the times when she left and came back, he’d never really considered this. He could have survived another disappearance. He remembered when they parted before the battle. Joking with her that he didn’t have a lot of supplies for a prosthesis, so she’d better be careful with herself and her limbs. Working on the machines, listening to the ship, feeling it and checking on the progress. He remembered going to check in at the medbay and seeing Ava come in. The panic spike then. It wasn’t until the doctors that had gone in came out that he knew, the heaviness of it all settling in his stomach and on his shoulders. She was dead. Everything past that was a blur. He had a vague memory of Rey’s voice and the feeling of arms around him. The blank feeling that settled over him, but seemed to almost instantly turn into sorrow the moment he felt the arms around him and before he knew what was happening, he was crying. The arms tightened around him and he felt ill. He heard other voices, familiar. Percy, Annabeth, Rachel, Nico, Bianca. He couldn’t remember the words they said or their faces. He couldn’t remember anything clearly about that point outside of the ache of it and the guilt, the loss. A part of him understood that he wasn’t the only one that had lost her. There were others, but he wasn’t fully aware of it in that moment. For a boy who always moved, Leo was still, but everything felt more amplified that way. He needed to know what to do, but he couldn’t manage the words to ask. He didn’t remember getting to his room, but he assumed someone must have taken him back. He’d sat in a corner of his room, staring blankly ahead of himself as the numbness settled in around him. At some point he must have fallen asleep because he woke up, the stillness of the room around him pressing in. He felt like it would suffocate him. He quickly made his way out of his room, out of the suite and toward the only place that felt like he could breathe: the engine room. The robots were out and about, but he didn’t care. He just needed to be surrounded by the hum of the engines. He found a spot off to the side and mostly out of the way to sit down, which slowly turned into him lying down. It was like being back on the Argo II, spending all of his time in the engine room, sleeping there. It was somewhere he felt safe, somewhere he didn’t have to think to exist in. Eventually, the hum of the engines around him and the sound of moving parts, the feeling of the engine mixed together lulled him off to sleep. |