Leo Valdez

We gave them like 15 minutes before I decided to go and investigate, definitely for reasons other than what the others were probably thinking was going on.

The others, as far as I could tell, assumed that Nico followed Percy to their room and that they were doing gross couple stuff.

I, on the other hand, was worried that he went off and had a panic attack or something because I'm not sure if it was asking about the gods or what (personally, I could care less what he thinks about them, he's been around long enough to have his own opinion on them and have it be justifiable), but something seemed to trigger his anxiety or something like that and it worried me a little.

Grover saying he was going to go make some cookies wasn't very reassuring, either. That feels like it was bad.

Walking down, I saw that Nico and Percy's door was cracked open just enough for me to see the two of them in bed. Percy was essentially using Nico as his pillow, which was cute for all of two seconds.

And then I saw the fresh bandages, and my brain finally connected the pieces from earlier.

When Nico and Grover called him out for joking, I didn't realize what the joke was, and I'm not sure if the others did, either, but those bandages made it like, pretty clear. To me, at least.

Percy's suicidal.

Or, at least, severely depressed. He's self-harming, which is... Scary, to say the least.

I know Grover said he had a rough year but like... How rough was it? Was this rough was this worse then it got before?

I'd like him to live long enough to meet Percy's mom at an event that wasn't his own funeral.

"Leo," I heard Nico whisper, which meant he noticed me. "Is that you?"

Nodding my head, I opened the door a little bit more.

"Yeah, what's up?" I responded, motioning to Percy. "is he...? Okay? Asleep?"

"Hm? Oh, Percy's out cold," Nico reassured me. "he had... A moment. I'm not sure if it was a panic attack or a breakdown or maybe it was both, but he had it. Nothing specific as far as I could get out of him, just... Yeah. Sorry, im trapped, but can you fill my water? I would but... You know."

"Oh, yeah, I can do that," I figured, grabbing the empty water bottle that I assumed was his since the other one was half full and blue. "Do you think he'll be okay? I've noticed his anxiety has been bad since you've been back but like... Duh, I guess? It was Tartarus."

Nico gave me a doubtful look.

"I think that when he goes home he's never going to want to go back to camp or see another god ever again," Nico told me. "he's had a really hard time with this quest and it'll get better when he gets home, which should only be like a week from now, but... That's still a week and while the gods won't just let him die and he knows that, it doesn't change the fact that he is going back and forth between being suicidal and not being suicidal and that he isn't in therapy and he's been off his meds and Tartarus happened and just... He will be better, but probably not before we go home."

Percy's suicidal?

So it's a lot worse than I thought it was, cool. Good to know.

I'm literally never going to risk making him anxious ever again.

"Oh, shit," I responded, trying to think of how much I noticed it in the past and just wrote it off as battle or quest humor, because I've noticed it here and there, but not frequently enough to be all that concerned.

If he leaves the room with the bandages on his arms visible, though, he better be ready for questions.

Not from me, but just generally speaking.

I'm like, just getting to start to know Percy and he seems like a super cool dude, so it'd be nice to be able to continue to get to know him.

Sure, he's a walking ball of anxiety right now, and I would never want to get on his bad side because he's also very powerful.

More than that, though, he's nice and considerate and fun and just... cool.

"Yeah," Nico agreed, nodding his head. "Oh shit is right."

After that, I filled up his water and just said that if they needed anything to let me know and I'd try to be like, somewhat subtle about it for the sake of not everyone freaking out about him having a meltdown for reasons we're not sure about yet.

With that, Nico thanked me and said that he'd keep me updated, which was my signal that I was good to leave.

I passed Grover in the hall and told him that Percy was asleep, but Nico was up so he should be good to head on in as long as he knocked.

Getting back to the deck, the others we're still just hanging out and I think waiting for an update. They had started some card game, but weren't into it.

"Leo! You're back!" Frank called as the three of them turned to look at I rejoined them, sitting down next to Piper and across from Hazel. "Where are the other two? Are they coming or...?"

"Uh, not right now, no," I informed the group, which seemed to disappoint them. "Percy just fell asleep, nothing major. He just got anxious and needed space, Nico went to make sure he was fine and then Percy fell asleep on top on him. Nico said not to worry, he's just destressing."

I don't think Hazel bought like, any of it, and I'm not sure the others did, either, but they also knew that if they asked more, they weren't getting answer. Which meant they just said okay and moved on with their time.

Percy didn't sleep for long, surprisingly. Like an hour later I spotted him and Grover just sitting at the table, eating cookies, talking, and doing something in their own notebooks. Drawing, maybe?

They were talking in a foreign language, though, and I was struggling because it seemed so familiar and I was starting to get worried that my Spanish has gotten so shaky that I couldn't understand it anymore when Nico walked up behind me, probably to get through to the kitchen.

"It's not Spanish, don't worry," the son of Hades reassured me. "I had a moment when I first heard it, too. I'm making dinner, by the way, so if anybody enters the kitchen, no they don't."

But did he tell me what language they were speaking?

No.

And now I was curious, so I sat down at the table with the two of them and Grover definitely asked me something because he looked at me and when I didn't respond, he kept looking at me.

"Grover," Percy said after a second. "Leo speaks Spanish, he doesn't know what you're saying."

"He— oh, sorry, I forgot that those are two different languages sometimes," Grover responded which... Weird, but I guess. "What's up? Sorry, you definitely didn't understand anything I said."

"Yeah, no, I didn't," I confirmed. "And just walking around, the others are busy, so. What um... What language was that? It's not Spanish and it's not slurred enough to be French."

"Wh— Portuguese," Percy explained as he put his notebook down, closing it as well so I couldn't see what he was doing. "I know Spanish, too, but I don't use it much outside of school. Then again, I also don't use English much outside of school and like, camp, so... Teachers thought I was really stupid until I was in third grade because of my je ne sais quoi inability to read English and terrible ability of speaking it. After that they thought I was stupid because of my dyslexia and ADHD."

"Oh, cool, I've never actually met somebody that spoke Portuguese," I responded. "Was your mom Portuguese then? Or, is she? She's alive."

"Very much so, I should call her later," Percy agreed. "But she's Brazilian! She lived in the Sao Paulo area until she was like a teenager and then her uncle won the green card lottery and they moved to New York and she had me like... 5 years later? She was like 19. ICE still comes to our place like once a year, though, and it's really annoying because she got her citizenship years ago, and by now our ICE dude knows that but they keep telling him to go and check, so every year on some random day in like, November or December we have dinner with this random dude named Greg from ICE."

"ICE?" Grover hasn't heard about this, though.

How he didn't know what ICE is is beyond me, but he is white, so... That would explain it.

"Immigration and Customs Enforcement," I filled Grover in. "They're basically a bunch of government paid bullies who will raid the homes of most any immigrant who hasn't gotten citizenship yet and try to arrest them for literally anything. It was bad when I lived in Texas, I remember my uncle and his kids got deported that way, even though they were waiting on their green card or something and we're here on a visa that was still active."

"They... They do that?" Grover asked, seeming horrified as he put his own notebook down.

"Oh, yeah, my mom almost got sent back to Brazil when her uncle died even though she had her green card," Percy told his best friend as Piper walked in, holding an empty bowl. "Because she was a minor, dude. They assumed she couldn't be documented on her own since he had died, and they held her for like a day and a half before they could confirm her green card."

"And she still lives there?"

Percy chuckled.

"Can't afford to leave," Percy corrected, which made sense. "It's not like that anymore, she wasn't held after that and the ICE dude they sent knows us, plus her childhood best friend just got relocated to New York, so... Yeah. She doesn't hate it, though. She likes Manhattan. She has a girlfriend, too, now!"

That one took me a second to think through.

Not because I didn't think that Sally Jackson couldn't be bisexual. That wasn't the issue.

I just thought I heard he had a step dad.

"Your mom has a girlfriend?" Piper asked and Percy nodded his head. "I thought she was married for some reason. I thought Annabeth said she was married."

The son of Poseidon shrugged.

"She was engaged for a while, but they broke up last fall like... He was kind of homophobic," Percy explained, which was bad and my expression gave that away. "yeah, it fucked with me for a couple days, but they broke up. She was married a long time ago, but he was... He died in a weird accident my first summer. So now my mom finally gave up on her shitty taste in men and started dating women."

"Percy, didn't your Mom use Medusa's head on Gabe?" Grover recalled, which is very different than what Percy just told us. "That's... Not a freak accident. It wasn't even an accident."

"What? I thought he got electrocuted at work," Nico popped in and Grover, and myself, quickly realized something. "Didn't it stop his heart?"

Well, two something's.

1: for whatever reason, Percy (or maybe Sally) lied about how Gabe died to Nico

2: the reason is probably really bad

"Wh... I know he got electrocuted that summer, I don't know if it was the thing that actually killed him," Percy tried to lighten that blow. "I wasn't home when he died. Medusas head was in the apartment, but I also don't know if Mom used it, so... Mom just told me that he died."

Why wouldn't he know how his own step-dad died, though?

I had a strong feeling it was what Grover said, but I also knew that asking might make things worse and he already had one uh, episode today, so we weren't trying for another.

It's definitely weird, though.

Percy has an interesting choice of secrets, or at least of things he doesn't care to talk about, and it makes me wonder sometimes if he's somebody I can actually trust or if he's just really nice and somebody that I want to trust.

I guess we'll find out over this next week.