A while ago while writing my TM9 x PJO post, I thought of a certain Leo au and it hasn't left my mind since.
So, you get to suffer through the horrible, no-good idea with me. What is it, might you ask?
It's a !titan army Leo concept.
I can hear the audience grow silent and concerned, but please read this a chance.
Luke has turned on the gods. Luke is fighting for his child self, for all the unclaimed and ignored demigods, Luke is fighting for a better world.
Luke will not let what happened to him happen to others.
So he sends patrols across different cities. He searches for demigods without keepers, without homes, without any way to get to safety. He takes them in. He tells them about their world.
Luke wasn't given a choice. He was made to serve the gods. He wasn't going to make these kids serve Kronos, if they didn't want to.
One day, he finds a boy sleeping under the Houston Bridge.
And Leo, Leo who hasn't belonged anywhere since his mom's death, Leo who doesn't understand his powers, Leo who hates his dad for the uncontrollable fire in his veins and his silence, Leo who hates the sleeping deity whose name he doesn't yet know and wrongly assumes to be an Olympian, Leo who is given a chance for once in his life -
He doesn't question it, for a while. He learns to fight. To control his powers. To create. He makes friends. It's fine, for a while. But then, Silena starts talking to him. She tells him about Camp through her eyes. She tells him about her regrets. Ethan tells him about what the Labirynth was like, to be traversed alone.
Doubt starts to settle in his gut.
But Leo has always been a coward.
He doesn't intervene in either case, frozen.
He doesn't intervene when Luke finally kills himself either.
He watches. He hates himself for that.
Numbly, he will watch Percy Jackson, the hero of the War be approached by the Gods, the Gods he loathes, the Gods who did this -
He will watch Percy be offered immortality. He will watch Percy decline. He will watch Percy ask for all the things his friends have been fighting for instead and more.
Percy asks for all the traitors to be forgiven as well.
Percy asks for Leo to be forgiven. Percy who killed Luke, the first ever person who made him feel safe.
Leo has always been a coward.
And so, he won't face his siblings at Camp Halfblood.
Run back to the mortal world, to foster families and the Houston Bridge and everything in between until the law gets fed up with him and decides to send him to Wilderness School.
It sucks, for the most part. Piper is the only saving grace. Piper who is nice and funny and reminds him of Silena.
Silena who is deadeadead because he didn't save her.
Vaguely, in the back of his mind, he registers she's probably a demigod. But he ran away from the godly world for a reason and he wasn't going to think about it.
And then Jason Grace appears. Jason who's more put together than him or Piper but still kind anyway. Jason who protects them from bullies when they're too tired to fight.
Jason who reminds him of Luke.
And then, of course his delusional fantasy of happiness gets ruined. They get attacked. Annabeth Chase shows up, and blames him almost immediately.
Because of course one of Luke's little soldiers has something to do with Percy's disappearance. For Christ's sake, he didn't even know the guy vanished.
They have a screaming match over the Grand Canyon while an amnesiac Jason and not-in-the-know Piper stare confused.
Piper, once she finds out, is pissed at him at first for not mentioning anything, but one comment about trauma and war gets her to shut up.
And then, as if getting stuck at the very place he was running from wasn't enough, they find out their memories of Jason were fake.
(He spends that night crying. He lost Luke. And now he lost Jason too.)
He relishes at the chance to go on a quest and run away from this place, from their suspicious gazes and snide comments and the Gods he still hates.
He and Piper remake their relationship with Jason. He keeps them alive (he saves Luke and Silena, just this once).
And then, the quest of the seven.
He does what he's good at. He builds. He creates the Argo.
Logically, he knows he'll have to see Percy. That doesn't make him ready for it. To see the person that killed Luke again, to see him in power again, to see him-
He swears he's not the one to destroy New Rome. No one believes him. Not even Piper.
That hurts the most, he thinks.
It feels bittersweet when they finally learn of the eidolons.
Seeing Nemesis makes him feel a lot of things. He wants to cry. Wants to scream at her for setting Ethan on his path. Wants to hug her and pretend she's his friend.
(Ethan is dead. You didn't save him.)
He deals. He mostly ignores Percy. Tries to stay in the steering room or wherever. Pretends he's fine.
When Percy falls into Tartarus he doesn't know how to feel. So he pushes it down and keeps working.
And then he ends up on Calypso's island. And looking at the bitter goddess, he'll be faced with the one thing he can't be angry at with Percy.
He'll tell her that Percy did everything he could and she shouldn't be angry.
She'll point out he's clearly mad with the boy.
He'll say it's besides the point and promises to come back for her.
The prophecy says the world will fall to either the storm or fire. He's fire. But a storm could be either Jason or Percy.
He doesn't know how to feel about the latter. But he's not letting Jason die.
Even if it means lying to Piper. What's one more betrayal, right? At least he gets to save Luke.
He won't be a coward this time.
Okay but /srs do you get the Vision??? Like. For starters it would give is way more depth into the Army. Like Alyss or whatever he name is from the PJO show (i haven't watches season2)
But also. Rick tried to set up diff conflicts on the Argo and this would be soo good and less forced than the canon Calypso issue.
