Scars - A PJO/HOO Soulmates AU

19.

Actually, his dad kicked him out of the house, saying he needed some air that wasn't infested with smoke.

This is coming from him, Leo thought idly, The person who leaves the house once in a millennia.

A little ways away, Leo spotted a community garden. Covered with fences to keep out the rabbits and mice eating away at the plants. He thought, why the heck not. Might as well try to get used to what his soulmate liked to do.

The gate creaked as Leo opened it, and creaked again when he shut it. There didn't seem to be anyone inside, and he was about to leave when he heard some rustling coming from the other side of a row of bushes. Leo stood on his tippy toes and managed to see a head of caramel-colored hair braided down one shoulder. The girl's head was down as she concentrated on pulling something out of the ground, so Leo couldn't make out the face.

He decided to approach her and walked to the other side of the tall bushes and shrubbery. The girl was humming a sweet tune, which sounded suspiciously like "The Schuyler Sisters" from Hamilton.

He accidentally stepped on a twig and when it snapped, the girl's head jerked up so fast that Leo winced watching it.

Gods, he thought, that whiplash must feel horrible.

She winced and rubbed the back of her neck and opened her eyes to see who sneaked up on her. Leo would recognize those almond-shaped eyes anywhere.

"Calypso?" Leo asked, surprised, using all his resistance to not look at his wrist.

"Leo?" Calypso responded, standing up and wiping the sweat off her face, "What are you doing here?"

Leo didn't know what to say, so he decided to tell the truth.

"Actually, I got my soulmate tattoos today. And they are gardening tools, so I came here," Leo said, trying not to sound weird.

Calypso nodded and said her congrats to him and went back to pulling weeds out of the ground. Leo felt awkward just standing there and not doing anything while Calypso got sweaty gardening, so he asked if he could help.

"Sure," she said with a blinding smile that made Leo want to melt right into the ground and stay there.

Leo got down onto his knees and started pulling out things from the ground. He kept glancing over to see what Calypso was doing and trying to follow her example. He tried to pull something out of the ground, and Calypso laughed and told him to only pull out weeds and that he'd pulled out a flower. Leo couldn't really spot the difference between the green weed and the green flower. He was no good with organic life forms, being around machines, and his dad (who was 90% machine too) all the time.

Calypso was pretty fun to talk to, and she also had a quick tongue of her own. If Leo said something stupid, which was a lot, then she would snort or scoff and retort quickly as a whip. Her bubbly laughter was contagious, and Leo could see the love she had for gardening in her eyes and the way she handled plants.

They were laughing at something Leo said when an ambulance interrupted them. Leo craned his neck to catch a glimpse of the truck.

There was a kid on a stretcher, black and blue bruises all over his or her body, and bleeding in various places. It was a horrible sight to behold because this was a kid. Not even over 18 yet, they still had a lot of life to live. Mutilated beyond belief, some of them died from their wounds.

And the mayor wasn't hearing any of it. All of the news stations have downplayed the disasters, made it seem like not a big deal, and none of the police are investigating it. The number of kids this had happened to was substantially larger than what was said on news channels.