#ohhh the thought of piper and Esperanza hurts now

[witchhazelevesque]

While I still think that Esperanza would laugh at the thought of dating a guy like Tristan... there are many ways to take a mortal step siblings Leo & Piper au....

so:

Tia Callida??

How would the addition of another seemingly unimportant demigod impact her dynamic with Leo?

She probably would have wormed her way into their new place, being like, 'damn, now I gotta gaslight TWICE as many mortals?'

Depending on where in his career Tristan was at any given point, they could hire actual babysitters and nannies, in which case, Hera would either need to lay the magic trickery on heavier or get a new disguise.

I think Piper says that his King of Sparta role was like his break out hit, even though he had success before that, and she helped him study up on Greek mythos, so she must not have been super young at that point. 

Then again, it'd been long enough that the McLean’s had fallen into a bad cycle of Piper getting into trouble for attention and Tristan not giving it to her and having Jane deal with her, not to mention the whole 'any three questions' thing.

So let's just assume that Tristan was mildly successful from when Piper was relatively young, like 6 or 7.

Anyway, yeah, so like, Piper would have a LOT of complicated feelings about her dad remarrying and having someone else take his time and attention, even though Esperanza would absolutely be loving and supportive to Piper. 

So like, part of her wants to lean into having a maternal figure, but she's GOT a mom, one that she's desperate to know more about, one that her father will never tell her about. And it feels like Tristan is just replacing this mom Piper's been yearning for, and no matter how great and kind this lady may be, she ISN'T Piper's mom. 

And then there's Leo. I don't think they'd get along at first.  Piper likely thinks he's odd and isn't interested in what he likes. At this point though, Leo doesn't go out of his way to be loud and make people laugh or hide his feelings, because he doesn't yet have anything to run or hide from. 

Leo's got a more healthy view of his birth father, because his mother has always told him that they'll meet one day and that he'll understand more when that happens. Leo sees his father less as part of his mother and he's less curious about him than Piper is about her mom. 

Leo would be pretty uninterested in Tristan as a person at first, but he'd be glad that his mom has more help and more time for herself and that she doesn't have to struggle as much. 

While Esperanza wouldn't let Tristan use his fame to get her a job, he DOES know a lot of rich and influential people who know people and basically, he creates opportunities for the right people to see how intelligent and valuable Esperanza is as an engineer, and gives her some breathing room to develop that screw design she was working on and trying to get patented when she died in canon. 

She eventually DOES get her design patented and sets Leo up for the future.

Both parents seem like they'd be generous with each other and their kids, but both have known struggle and idk, it'd probably be something they have to talk about, I'm not sure what outcome it'd be. 

Either way, they of course DO consider their step children as family and WOULD take care of them if something happened to their spouse.

Which leads us to the Gaea of it all. 

So she sets up Esperanza's death because her employee Madea got a premonition while in the Fields of Punishment that Leo was fated to cause Gaea issues. Gaea couldn't outright kill Leo, but she does say that she can make him suffer. 

Piper being in the picture could go a few ways:

Either, Madea also sees that Piper is a threat, which would be interesting since she and Piper have that whole charmspeak/ magic struggle in TLH and in TBM. 

It could be more personal for Madea that way, she might highlight Piper's role over Leo's which, if it's only one parent to die, might make it Tristan.

But considering that in canon Piper still existed at the time that Leo did, and Gaea decided to set him up to suffer and not Piper? But then that might have been because of Hera paying attention to him and training him to be a hero.

But if Hera was still around when Piper came into the picture...

Idk what Hera and Aphrodite's relationship is like. I'd like to believe that it's one of the more positive ones, since love and marriage go together (ideally) and I don't think Aphrodite ever had an affair with Zeus, so there's a point in her favor to Hera. 

It WOULD be something to have the whole lost trio be coached/ favored by Juno/Hera...

If that's the case, then yes, Piper might have been on both Madea and Gaea's radar, in which case, Gaea might have targeted both Tristan and Esperanza.

Which just leads to a whole other mess:

Things could go a lot of different ways depending on whether or not Leo and Piper considered each other siblings, or if they got along or were friends. 

As much as I like the idea of their friendship, I don't think it was really as strong in canon as it's made out to be by readers. Piper has a selfish streak, and I'm not saying that to be hateful. It's an important and interesting element of her character, and it could be really integral in this situation. 

Piper was like, the first person to have positive feelings about Leo's fire and to praise him for it in canon. 

Can you imagine the reverse of that, if Gaea manipulates him into killing both his mother and Piper's father? 

Piper MIGHT hold on to Leo because he's the only family she has left, and she's terrified to be alone. Or she might lash out and hurt him more deeply than he's ever been hurt.

That also depends on whether Hera trained Piper as well, and if Piper was jealous of the preference that the 'babysitter' showed to Leo over her. 

Also, Piper would have become attached to Esperanza eventually, even if she didn't want to admit it. And that, the loss of another mother, of never getting to show her that she did consider her a mom, that she's gone, and Piper made her think that she didn't want her, that she pushed her away and now doesn't get the chance to fix that?

And that, I think, could get Leo to fight back, because he spent the whole time watching Piper outwardly reject his mother, who he loved so much and now Piper wants to act like her death is about Piper's loss?

They could very well implode. 

And they go their separate ways, Piper to whatever guardian her father had appointed for her, and Leo running from that same guardian, because of course their parents wanted them to stay together. 

So Piper's just trying to live her life but she's always haunted by the knowledge that her brother is somewhere out there, alone and probably in danger and she has no idea what happened to him or where he is or if he's thinking about her. 

Oh, and when they meet up again for the Prophecy of Seven bullshit?? Woooooooo!!

Or maybe she runs off too, but in the opposite direction of Leo, and they go through they're own shit, learning and getting stronger and getting knocked down and getting back up again, but always seem to run into each other over and over again, and it's like, 'ugh, you again' but also 'oh thank god you're okay' but also 'get out of my face i never want to see you again' but 'if you touch my sister/ my brother again you'll be on your way to the Underworld WAY early'.

And maybe one of them gets into a scrape they can't get out of and the other HAS to help, they HAVE to, and that leads to some kind of reconciliation even though there are all these bitter feelings of grief and blame and abandonment, but beneath that, they just miss each other, god, they miss each other. 

Or, Piper might not blame Leo, whether because Hera did train her too and she knew about Leo's abilities already and knew that he wouldn't have hurt their parents and saw that Gaea was manipulating him. 

In that case, then, yay, a little runaway team of two. 

Doubtful that Gaea would let the two of them end up anywhere good, even though Tristan would have had better options for a guardian than Esperanza would have with her judgmental family. 

Or maybe they might have ended up someone fine, but they're both traumatized and terrified and grieving and can't trust anyone but themselves and run from any decent situation to make it on their own. 

And you know, maybe they end up in the Labyrinth, or the Lotus Casino, or get found by the Titan army. Maybe they stumble into the Waystation, maybe a random god takes them under wing and guides them along to camp, lots of stuff could happen. 

Because the world is terrible, they would need to develop their abilities much sooner to keep themselves safe.

They've probably killed some people.

 Like, Piper would scream in blind terror at some man following her to leave her alone and he'd walk out into traffic and calmly get hit by a truck, that kind of thing. 

Well, Piper probably kills people, accidentally and then intentionally when needed, but Leo might not be able to bring himself to repeat what he did to their parents. It's okay, though, Piper understands and takes care of that part.  

Oh, and by the time they get to the giant war, they are just so done.