safe || leo valdez x oc

sixty-seven: congrats! we're all fucking depressed!

ARUNA

~•♡•~

aruna felt like she was being consumed from the inside out. the world was a blur around her as nico- poor, starved, weak nico- hauled her further away from the pit. aruna's body was numb. the sun blinded her as her limbs went slack and her head rolled to the side, mindlessly gazing at the floor littered with cobwebs. she couldn't hear anything. smells were evaporating before her nose. her tongue was foaming with the taste of her own blood. her vision was concentrated on only the cobwebs on ancient floorboards.

she'd failed.

she'd had one job; save percy and annabeth. she had enough strength to do it, she was sure of it. she'd been able to move fast enough to catch them before they fell, but why couldn't she pull them up? the chasm was speaking to her, imploring her to follow them in. it spoke of people and things she'd not heard from in years; her father, her grandfather, old friends. it spoke of the evil of her life, urging her to just give up.

she was weak. she couldn't even summon two seconds of power to pull percy and annabeth up.

hot tears ran down her cheek. blood tainted her lips. her entire body radiated with pain. she'd been dehumanized by a robot, but this was the pain of loss.

it felt like she'd lost her dad again. it was the same feeling; the feeling of being a failure, of knowing she was unable to save them. it started in her heart, a stabbing feeling, like a vampire with a wooden stake. then, it spread all over her body. waves of loss rolled over her, over and over again, like the unforgiving sea to a mere fisherman's boat. it rolled over her own boat, sinking her, drowning her, and laughing about it.

she felt both nothing and everything at the same time. piper had force fed her ambrosia, but she tasted none of it. hazel had dribbled nectar all over her wounds, but it only reminded her of how thick her own blood was, how thick the blood on annabeth's leg was, and she cried more. leo had approached her, trying to reach out, but he stopped when aruna didn't even blink. frank had tried to bring her a change of clothes, but aruna felt like she needed to sit in her failures for longer. jason had tried to bring her a simple plate of enchiladas, but aruna looked away from it. nico had handed her a water bottle as she had done to him maybe two hours before then, but she could only stare at it until he went away.

she'd failed.

~•♡•~

if aruna looked as terrible as she felt, she thought leo would just break up with her entirely.

it had been a few days since they'd lost percy and annabeth to tartarus. two or three, if aruna was counting correctly, but everything just seemed like a complete blur to her. in the time since percy and annabeth fell through the chasm, through aruna's own hands, aruna had not a single wink of sleep. she kept blinking, almost squinting too harshly to re-wet her consistently dry eyes. her skeleton felt like it was trying to climb out of her skin. the world would randomly spin, lights would make her brain tickle, phantom smells passed her nose every few seconds. through her eyes, colors would consistently change. sometimes, everything was pink. others, it was covered in hues of orange, red, and yellow.

in a sense, she couldn't sleep. every few hours, some new roman monster loved to attack the ship. aruna was participating in every single fight, with various different demigods (if everyone hadn't been awake). all around the air, an ominous, depressive aura hung. it was suffocating. it felt like trying to breathe methane gas. her chest would throb whenever she tried to join group discussions with everyone; which is exactly the problem.