Not quite on Halloween, but I'll take it. I'm sorry for the wait, but I don't think I'll be able to have a consistent update schedule whilst at uni, my workload just doesn't allow for it. With that being said, thank you to everybody who faved or followed, and let's carry on with this segment of Reunions. This will not be the last chapter on the devious duo, so tune in next time for the final part of this particular situation. And a quick warning, this chapter is dark. Anybody who is sensitive to themes of abuse and suicidal ideation may want to skip this.

Azhou1: Yeah, it took me a while didn't it.

Melancholy's Sunshine: As much as they deserve it, I don't think that I'll be taking things quite that far. But the demigods definitely will not be happy with them, so some punishment will be in order.

Leohotstuff: Thank you (great name by the way).

YolkyGoblin: Thank you 😊

Sickly-wicked: I'm glad to hear it. And their butts are seriously in need of a good kicking.

Alvin6299: It's good to know that bringing his siblings in worked, I was worried that some people would want me to keep it just as the seven. And I do hope they are worth the wait as I'm so bad at updating them lately.

FellowBookReader: Oh don't worry, they intend to.

Mondmaedchen: Teehee, would I really be that evil? The answer is yes.

Flaming eyeball: Yeah, Yukio is being really erratic. And Shima needs to pick a side soon. Lightning is a strange one, but I admit he amuses me.

Ninjacook123: I'm honoured to be your favourite author, and to know that my update made your day. Hopefully they will continue to do so because your reviews always make me smile. And I'm especially glad that you are enjoying both stories as I love writing them. Possibly Miss Sparrow will be next, I'm thinking of doing a lighter one to counteract this one. Though this may change if I get inspired to write someone else.

FuzzyElf24: Yeah… he'll be fine. *Sweats nervously*. I'm happy to hear that you love the story.

Guest: Please say you didn't actually go insane. If you did then I'm sorry. The angst is just too strong sometimes. And team Leo rocks!

TheMuggleSlytherin: Nah, I love him too much to kill him. And I laughed to myself when I wrote that line (just imagine the American anthem suddenly starts playing behind him).

No one important: Wow, that is a lot of reviews, so I am going to reply to them all here. I never forgot you guys, I just have so much work to do that I can't always write fanfic when I want to and it sucks. But, just as you will persistently ask, I will persistently update. It may take me a while, but I will. And I was waiting for Halloween but (as you pointed out) I am hopeless and realised that I had a ton of work to do yesterday that prevented me from updating. It's a day late, but it's still here.

Weeziewoo: I have to hurt him, it's like an addiction 😉 And was it an impressive backflip?

Supworld: Yeah, after LAL, I wanted to explore some of the relationships so I thought this was the best way to do it. James is adorable (if I do say so myself). And I'm continuing, don't worry.

Myra109: I'm not that good, considering I can't stick to a schedule. But thank you for saying so anyway., and I'm sure you could be.

Yazbk2988: No they aren't, but I love them so.

Disclaimer: Why must fanfiction hurt me in this way by making me proclaim that I don't own Percy Jackson?

Piper's P.O.V

The moment Piper's feet touched the floor after Nico's shadow travel, she flung herself into Jason's arms.

"Whatever happened, it wasn't your fault.' Her boyfriend stiffened, and she could feel his shoulder muscles pulling taut.

"I should have walked back with him, the helmet wasn't that far away." Piper had known that he'd do this. Blame himself for something that wasn't his fault.

"Leo wanted you and Harley to enjoy Halloween. I bet he was overjoyed to have a reason to force you into trick or treating properly." Jason gently pushed her away, eyes fixed on the ground.

"That doesn't really help Pipes." That stung a little, but she understood what her boyfriend was getting at.

"Listen, if the trouble that he's in causes you to regret this entire day, he's not going to forgive himself. We're going to get him back, and when we do you are going to tell him how much you secretly enjoyed knocking on doors with Harley. Okay?" Finally, the son of Jupiter removed his gaze from the pavement. There was still guilt in his eyes, but now he looked to be focussed on the task.

Whilst they had talked, Nyssa had handed the tracker to Harley. She explained to the others that Harley had made most of it by himself so he was the best bet to use it, but Piper had the feeling that the daughter of Hephaestus was trying to assuage some of Harley's guilt.

The youngest demigod of the group did look a lot more confident with the device in his hand. His eyes blazed as he glanced up at his siblings.

"Leo's this way." He declared as the device started working. A knot in Piper's chest loosened. Not that she'd doubted the work of the children of the forge, it was just a massive relief to know that Leo could be found.

Without another word, Harley began leading the way to their firebug.

Leo's P.O.V

Wet fabric filled his mouth. Disgust faintly registered in the back of his mind as spit dribbled down his chin from the impromptu gag, but Leo honestly had more important things to focus on.

He had remembered the toolbelt tucked into his costume's pants, but there was no way for him to reach it. There was absolutely nothing he could do. Any movement of his lower half caused his broken ankle to retaliate harshly, and his upper half was sticky with dried blood.

Teresa had finished tracing out the word brat with her heel, but then she had become bored with just using the sharpened shoe and had wandered off to find a new toy to use on him.

Cormac was now sitting in front of him, eyes filled with malicious satisfaction. Inside his head, Leo could hear the horrible clatter of bricks smashing into one another as the walls he had built to subdue the memories of this man and his crazed wife threatened to shatter.

Ever since Hera had played a lovely movie marathon of his memories for his friends, Leo had been struggling to keep them tamped down. Some nights the old fear would creep in and Leo would seek out a friend, rarely telling them that something was wrong but being comforted by their presence anyway. A couple of times they had even guessed that he had a problem, which Leo wasn't always completely comfortable with, but could help on some occasions.

At the moment, Leo was torn between needing a friend nearby to rescue him, to keep him safe, and dreading them finding him like this.

Broken.

Leo knew he was breaking down. Drool had mingled with tears on his chin. In front of him, the ex-police officer was an oppressive force bearing down on him, and Leo was frantically trying to figure out why he hadn't made a move yet. Sure, in the past Cormac was often content with a punch or the threat of a broken bone, but now he had actually snapped Leo's ankle and there was no partner to restrain his actions. No fear of losing his job to hold him back.

And yet he was relaxed in a chair, not making another move.

Even with this dangerous unknown right in face, what was going on out of sight concerned Leo more. Teresa had always been a wild card, with punishments varying from calling him names to physically hurting him. The marks on his chest were like a sick mixture of the two, and Leo truly feared just how far the woman would go.

A crash sounded out, and Leo struggled to turn his head, hope rising in his gut that Jason had found him.

Instead, the unmistakeable sound of heels clacking on a stairway filled the air. Cormac rose from his seat, moving over and yanking the belt from around Leo's hands, pulling up in the process. One of his hands could easily wrap around Leo's skinny wrists, holding him place as he attempted to replace the belt around them.

Wild hope rekindled within the son of Hephaestus. If he could just reach his toolbelt, he could beat these two nightmares without resorting to his deadly flames.

However, an ominous grinding of his wrist bones as Cormac's grip tightened caused him to stop wriggling so furiously. With one ankle down, Leo couldn't really afford to break another bone.

Behind the pair, a demented chuckle started up, and Leo's body rebelled his previous thought, jerking his wrists in terror and swinging his uninjured leg to the best of his capability. Nothing good could come from that laugh.

His flailing was in vain as the belt was swiftly buckled, cutting of his blood supply slightly.

One of his kicks did manage to connect with the man's groin, and Leo was dropped for the second time that night. Unfortunately, he not only landed directly his bloody torso, his broken ankle also struck the ground. For a moment, Leo could do nothing but lie still and whimper. No matter how much pain he had suffered during his life, he could never quite get used to the sensation.

Angry growls came from Cormac as he hunched over, and Teresa hurried over, wailing to her poor darling.

Instinct had lead Leo to fight back when heard Teresa's deranged cackle, and now Leo was cursing it. La pareja loca (the crazy couple) were now even more angry than before, and all Leo had gained was even more pain. Fingers clawed at his the back of his costume, trying to get to his toolbelt, but the sensation jolted his ankle and he retched. Escape was his best option. If he could just get up and run. The broken ankle hurt like Hades, but if he could endure it for one short run let the adrenaline take over and numb the pain just long enough to find Jason. Jason would help him.

A wavering voice inside of him stated that Leo had surely been missing for long enough that Jason would have come searching for him if he cared. Rationality beat it back. With his ADHD, Leo was never really a reliable at telling time. Plus, Jason would have no real clues to go off. And Harley was there too. They had to be looking for him. Leo would just have to meet them half way.

Forcing his good leg under him, he tried to a rise, choking down waves of nausea as the broken shards pieces of his angle scraped the floor. A sudden sharp sensation in his back sent him back into the ground.

"You're going to regret that you dirty little demon." Teresa hauled him up, but struggled with his weight. Although he was still skinny, Leo was no longer a kid, and Teresa was no longer as healthy as she used to be, so his body wasn't as easy to drag around.

Cormac had already demonstrated that he had no such problem lifting the demigod, and Leo found himself unceremoniously tossed over his shoulder.

"Try that stunt again and I'll break your other ankle." The douchebag warned as Leo breathed shallowly.

Being hauled up the stairs didn't help any of Leo's injuries, and his captors seemed to take glee in that. Teresa stalked up the stairs behind her husband, snickering at Leo's quiet whimpers of pain. She even ragged the dish cloth out of his mouth to hear his poorly supressed gasps more clearly.

Due to his position on Cormac's shoulders, Leo was unable to see where they were going. After a few hellish seconds, Leo was put down. His eyes were swimming, but he braced himself in order to figure out what new torture these sickos had planned for him.

Oddly enough, he was in the bathroom. Cormac ducked out of the room, only to be replaced by Teresa. The fire-wielder may have been a little out of it, but he still caught Cormac murmuring not to go too far. It almost made him laugh. They'd kidnapped a teenager who they had both abused in the past, and then started abusing him again. Where exactly did Cormac draw the line on too far?

Simpering that she had everything under control, Teresa shooed her boyfriend out of the bathroom. For one fleeting moment, Cormac glanced back, and Leo could see concern in his gaze. But Leo wasn't stupid enough to think the concern was for him. No, Cormac was worried about what the consequences would be for them if Teresa killed him.

Inhaling shakily, Leo fell back to his old mode of defence. Quips. He knew that he may end up pushing Teresa over the edge, but maybe then Cormac would intervene and stop whatever was about to happen. Or he'd die. He didn't want to, but it would get him away from… he shook his head viciously. His friends were coming for him. They had to be coming for him. Even this thought couldn't stop him from running his mouth.

"Did good old korma send me up here to toilet train his new dog?" He spat with as much sarcasm as he could muster.

"No, I chose to come up here to bathe a dirty rat." Now probably wasn't the best time to be made aware of the bathtub that was about three quarters full of water. Leo wrestled his panic down. Teresa couldn't drown him. Surely that would be taking it too far.

"Get in the tub." At this demand, Leo shook his head.

"In case you hadn't noticed, I can't exactly use one of my legs." The blonde witch observed his twisted ankle, as if assessing the validity of his statement. As if she hadn't been there when Cormac cracked his bones.

Then she fisted her hand into his shirt, just about tugging him into a standing position before shoving him straight over. Leo folded into the tub, unable to prevent himself from bashing his head on the tiles due to the binding around his hands.

Torso fully submerged, Leo frantically sloshed about, water going everywhere as he fought to keep his ringing head in a position where getting to breathe was an option.

Teresa sighed before pulling him up by his hair.

The shock of hitting his head and the pain flaring across his body had initially prevented him from realising just how cold the water was, but when he realised it, Leo relished the numbing effect. However, he didn't want to freeze, so he gradually started upping his temperature. Hopefully his tormentor was too delusional to notice the temperature of the water reaching room temperature rapidly.

Another lovely effect of Leo being dunked was how the water appeared to rust over as dried blood seemed to melt off of his body. Nose scrunched in distaste, Teresa loomed over him.

"You're going to stay there; the water could possibly make you less dirty." Her eyes raked over him. "Then again, everything about you is dirty. You're such an idiot, I honestly don't understand how you can stand yourself." Despite his best efforts, Leo flinched, and Teresa drew back with a delighted twinkle in her eyes.

"You can't stand yourself either! Maybe you're not as hopeless as I thought. You know, don't you? You know that you're a monster, that if someone ever finds it possible to care about you they get hurt." Leo was struggling to not let it show how much Teresa's words were getting to him.

"That's not true." He uttered.

"Oh?" Teresa's vicious smile was the same as it used to be when she bullied Leo. Her attitude was also mostly unchanged (if a bit more unhinged due to her time in jail), but Leo was no longer that unwanted child with no one to turn to.

"There are people who care about me, and when they find you, you're in for a world of hurt." Teresa's laugh echoed around the bathroom.

"Are you sure about that? Are you positive that they aren't celebrating getting rid of you right now? Come on Leo, if they've kept you around then it must be as a source of cheap entertainment."

Leo wanted to stay resolute. He wanted to believe in his friends, in the assurances that they had given him after watching his memories. But it was difficult. He'd spent so long believing that no one would ever really accept him if they knew all that he had done, all that he was capable of doing to hurt them whether he wanted to or not.

"You know, after all the hassle you caused me, getting me sent to jail was really rubbing salt in the wound." Teresa mused, before picking up a container that had been tucked into the corner by the bath.

"Count this as returning the favour." The tub was upended into the bath, and Leo shrieked. Salt filtered into the wounds on his chest and Leo thrashed urgently trying to get as much of the stinging mixture away from the open cuts as possible.

Eventually Leo was positioned with his hips on the rim of the bath and his back arched. This position stretched the cuts which wasn't much better, and his hair skimmed the water as he perched precariously. Falling now could be fatal as his hands weren't loose to catch him.

As Leo had squirmed, Teresa had clapped as if this was the best play she had ever seen.

Cormac wasn't as impressed when he thundered up the stairs.

"We need to keep him quiet! Anyone could hear him speaking and then we're both screwed." Rolling her eyes, Teresa truly looked like the petty bitch that she should have left behind in her teenage years.

"It's Halloween. Screaming is expected." Not appeased by this, Cormac glared at his girlfriend.

"You've had your fun, just go put him in the closet." This almost caused Leo to slip and plunge back into the bath. They couldn't put him in a closet. Unwillingly, Leo recalled the time during the memory incident that Hazel ended up inside his head. Part of him had stayed in the closet, even after all these years, screaming at the monsters that his mind conjured up. During that fun trip through Leo's skull, Leo's fire powers had had as starring role in his fears, and was partially the reason why Leo always tried to keep part of himself locked away. The reason why the child could never truly escape the locked closet.

Nowadays, Leo had come to accept his fire powers as part of him, thanks to his friend's reassurance, but Leo still feared the monsters in the closet.

The paralysing horror that swept through him was enough to shred the majority of his courage, and his pride.

"Please don't." He rasped. His voice was subdued, but the quarrelling couple both shut up and turned towards him.

Then they laughed in sync.

"Wow, you weren't kidding when you said the brat pees his pants at the thought of a closet." Cormac jeered. Shame coloured Leo's cheeks from his natural brown to an almost unnatural red. He knew then that he was going to be tucked away in the closet, and he wouldn't even know how long for.

Please, he prayed, please let my friends find me. Silent tears fell down his face as he was removed from the tub.

Harley's P.O.V

The walk was fraught with tension, which escalated when Harley came to a halt in front of an ordinary looking house.

"He's in here." Harley hadn't been sure what to expect when they found Leo, but he did lean towards it being a monster attack. His big brother was one of the strongest demigods of their generation, only a problematic monster could take him on. Or at least, that's what Harley believed.

But why would a monster have brought him to a place like this?

His train of thought was interrupted by Jake stepping forwards to ruffle his hair.

"Good work Harley." Usually praise from one of his siblings would fill him with pride, especially if it was directed towards one of his inventions, but now Harley just wanted to get Leo.

"Are you sure?" Harley knew that the seven were worried as well, and that Annabeth was probably just expressing it by seeking confirmation of facts, but Harley knew his brother was in that house. Not just because of his sensor, but because something inside of his gut was screaming at him that Leo was not only inside, but that he needed his help.

"He's sure." Nyssa answered quickly. Obviously, she had the same gut feeling as Harley.

"Okay, guys step back." Jason instructed. Harley and his sibling moved away from the door quickly. This allowed Jason to kick it with the force of a gale wind behind his foot. Needless to say, the door didn't just open, it tore away from its hinges and skidded down the hallway.

"Cool." Harley couldn't help saying this, Jason was awesome. And furious. Harley snuck a glance at the other demigods present, taking in their matching looks of surprise and awe. Then all of their faces switched to looks of grim determination and poorly concealed rage. Weapons were drawn as eleven demigods charged the house.

At the sound of the door taking flight down the hallway, a bulky man had hurtled down the stairs. And he was just that, a bulky man. Harley could sense nothing to imply that the man was a monster.

"You." The young son of Hephaestus jerked at the pure venom in Piper's voice. The confusion doubled at the looks of absolute loathing the seven (currently six) were giving the man.

His siblings and the other two demigods also looked baffled. They were all furious at this man for taking Leo, but the others were acting as if they knew him.

A woman followed behind him, and the intensity of the hateful stares increased, but they were also mixed with pure terror. Exclamations of disbelief could be heard from the six that seemed to know the two adults, but Harley's sensor was telling him that Leo was upstairs and so he bolted past the kidnappers. They could be dealt with in a minute, Harley needed to see Leo.

He was vaguely aware of the other four (those that weren't caught in some sort of disbelieving standoff) hot on his heels, but Harley was set on his goal.

There was an open door to his left and Harley quickly checked it to see if the fire-user was in there. He wasn't, but what Harley did see made him stop right in his tracks. He knew that he was trembling when Jake wrapped his arm around him.

"Oh Gods, Harley, look away." Harley wanted to, he really did, but somehow his eyes were riveted on the scene before him. In his short lifetime, Harley had seen wars and battles a plenty. Yet this weakened his knees. He would have fallen if Jake didn't forcibly pick him up and clutch him to his chest, face turned away from the bathroom.

He could hear sniffles, and although some of them were him, he could feel Jake's shaking shoulders, and the slightly higher set had to be Nyssa. Nico and Will were cursing viciously.

The bathroom was a red splattered nightmare. In all honestly, there wasn't a tremendous amount of blood, but the majority of it rested at the bottom of the tub, congealing with what looked like salt dusted on top of it. Evidently the tub had held water which had been forced over the side, red and pink waves seeping across the white floor and beginning to dry on the tiles.

"Come on. Will can fix him up. We just need to find him." Nico's words were logical, but his tone spoke of a churning anger just waiting to escape.

They split up to check the other doors on the floor, there were only three left and the sensor couldn't quite pick up on which it was exactly.

Will and Nyssa took the first door, with Will resting a supportive hand on her shoulder. Nico approached the second, and Jake carried Harley to the final door.

Entering, both brothers immediately picked up on the smell of burning.

Harley tightened his grip on his brother's shoulders, but he shuffled about enough to be able to see that they were in an apparently disused bedroom.

And in the back of the bedroom was a closet, the doors blocked by a small but sturdy dresser. A black mark was spreading across the barricaded door. Sobbing could be heard from behind the doors, and Jake placed Harley on the floor and darted towards the dresser, shoving it to the side with a desperate blacksmith's strength.

Harley raced forwards, tugging the doors open the moment that Jake shoved the stupid dresser far enough out the way.

Curled up on the floor of the small enclosure was Leo, but Harley could barely see him through the flames.

Eerily, the flames where everywhere, but they barely seemed to be doing anything to the surroundings.

Harley gulped as he looked at his brother and Jake called out for the others to join them.

Leo was not okay.

That's an especially evil place to leave it, I know, but I swear the other part will be out soon. I hope you enjoyed, and I'll see you next time.