Leo

NAME - Leo

AGE - 21 years 

PRONOUNS - HE/HIM

HEIGHT - 5'7

^{ALL ABOUT LEO}

Leo sees himself as a pretty boring guy.  He’s carefree and around his close friends he’s goofy and often participates when they pull pranks on each other. He loves movie nights and usually recommends documentaries even though his friends tease him about them being boring.  He’s not a total introvert but not the type that finds parties fun. But he doesn’t really have something that drives him. After going through high school doing no after school activities besides sometimes tagging along in his friends track meetings, he’s quite confused on what to do when choosing a college to attend. His parents, who own a pretty big chain restaurant, tell him to go down a culinary route, but Leo ends up just going to a business college close to a different college a few of his friends attend.

In his freshman year of college, (two years before the story begins) Leo goes home for thanksgiving break. A day before the holiday, he comes back from buying groceries to see the house aflame. Firefighters have already arrived. His mom and dad are out safe but his mom seems to be having a panic attack. After frantic questioning, Leo discovers his younger sister Marie is trapped inside. Not thinking straight, he rushes into the house in an attempt to save her, but in the process he gets badly injured when a piece of the roof collapses onto his back, causing him to get knocked out.

He wakes up in the hospital a full day later and immediately asks about his family. His dad got out uninjured, his mom was lucky as well and only got a small burn on her left arm, and even Leo himself managed to only get a burn on his back and one that runs from his right ankle to below his knee. Unfortunately his sister was in such a critical condition upon arrival that the doctors were unable to help her, and she passed away. This news causes Leo to sink into a deep depression as he starts to blame himself for what happened. If only he had arrived back sooner before the building started to collapse. If only he’d taken Marie grocery shopping WITH him. He refuses to think he deserves happiness after he believes he caused something so horrible to happen.

After seeing Leo’s mood take a sharp decline, his parents worry about his mental health. They tell him that’s he’s free to drop out while they cope, and let him stay at their house. But they end up letting things stay this way for much too long, and unintentionally enable him to sit around and do nothing. Dark thoughts invade Leo’s head for months and he ends up getting a therapist. But the days become so repetitive that Leo becomes less and less motivated to get out of bed in the morning. He wakes up. Stays in bed for a few hours. Parents force him to leave his room. He eats with his parents. Goes back upstairs. Scrolls on his phone until it gets dark out. Sleeps. On lucky days he’d try to find a song on YouVideo and teach it to himself on electric guitar, an instrument he picked up by request of his therapist, but ended up...kind of enjoying. Silence, or the faint rumble of the guitar strings. That’s what every day contained. The same thing. Again and again and again and again until. 

One day after dragging him downstairs for a giant pancake breakfast, his parents announced that they used his name to apply for a job at a music shop, ‘Winged Strings,” and that he had an interview later that day. Leo gets mad at them at first, asking why he would get a job if he had nothing he would even spend the money on. But they expected this and fired back that he NEEDED to leave the house, and told him there were countless things to spend his money on, including a new haircut (because as you can see in his design, it’s quite messy and long, which usually wasn’t his style) new clothes, (he’d been wearing the same three outfits for months) and guitar picks. This last thing caught him off guard and he asked if they heard him play. They admit they sometimes lingered near his room when passing by, and proceeded to shower him in compliments. Leo didn’t fully believe he deserved their praise but the mention of guitar picks got him to head over to Winged Strings. As he’s walking he thinks about it. Guitar picks are dirt cheap...his parents could absolutely afford it...so why was he really going to the shop? But it was too late to go back - he had already arrived. 

Leo ended up feeling bad that his parents were trying so hard to put his life back together, so he ended up mustering enough courage to actually attempt the interview. This seemed to pay off when, a week later, his parents were overjoyed to hear that he got the job! Leo was less than enthusiastic to go back, but did anyway. He proceeded to work at Winged Strings until the main story takes place.

After Leo has worked at Winged Strings for a while, he becomes sort-of friends with the owner, Vivian. (aka Viv) Although he still has depressive episodes often they’re less intense then they were when the incident first happened. Plus, he was able to find a medication that was pretty effective for him. He still won’t let himself live a full life because of the guilt he has, though. 

This is around the time when Dani and Jax escaped from their species, and one day they burst into the store and head towards Leo’s desk. Seeing a reptilian kid and what he assumes to be an ‘assassin monster’ Leo is about to call for Vivian, but Daniella threatens him (she’s still confused about her morals, being a different species and all...more about that in her story) and when shes asks for him to hide them in a back room he agrees. Once Dani thinks they’re safe she asks Leo to rent them an hotel for a night or two to get themselves together. He agrees, not wanting to deal with her threats again. 

After successfully sneaking them into a hotel room he rented, he starts to leave, but then spots a bunch of police cars outside. Okay, apparently he was UNsuccessful in sneaking them in. Over their megaphones they order Leo to surrender and to tell them all about his little alliance with monsters. Realizing if he walks out he’ll be arrested and questioned, and possibly found GUILTY of working with ASSASSIN MONSTERS AND REPTILIANS, Leo heads back to Dani and Jax and tells them they have to leave ASAP and take him with them. Two minutes later and they escape the hotel and officially become on the run!

Throughout the story, Dani helps him by being there just to listen to whatever he has to say and never interrupting or giving him things to “cure his problem” like his therapist would. Dani and Leo end up being able to be vulnerable in front of each other because neither of them have a pre-made image of the other that might effect how they see that person and what they’re experiencing. 

Jax is also able to help Leo, but not in the way Dani does. Jax is only eleven and he’s dealing with his own trauma at a young age and isn’t in the right mindset to help someone else out. Jax and Leo bond because they both feel guilt over something that they couldn’t control. Jax because he accidentally hurt someone with his powers, and Leo because he was knocked out before he could help his sister. Jax and Leo are also able fill a hole in each other’s lives, as Leo lost a younger sibling and Jax has never had an proper older brother/parental figure, but this is more complicated than just that. Leo has trouble accepting Jax at the start because he doesn’t want him to be a replacement for Marie, and Jax is unsure of Leo at first because of his experiences with his siblings involving manipulation. (More about that in Jax’s backstory.) But once they can overcome this, their bond becomes closer than ever. 

Dani and Jax don’t see Leo as a “depressed guy” they need to fix. They just see him as a guy. This opens up the opportunity for Leo to recreate his self image for them. 

And in the end, for himself too.