Chapter Text
When my time comes around, lay me gently in the cold dark earth...
. . .
Will looked up from cutting bandages as he heard Kayla approach. She looked nervous, and Will prepared himself to hear about some gruesome injuries that they needed him for -- some satyr had found no fewer than four demigods at a middle school in upstate New York who were attracting monsters from every corner of the Earth. The camp had sent a tougher extraction team than usual, consisting of a satyr, a daughter of Hermes with a gift for finding the right roads, and the three best fighters in camp at the moment -- two children of Ares and Nico. Will had been a wreck all week, throwing himself into his work could keep his mind off of Nico fighting for his life and trying to protect four kids at the same time. He tried to be rational with himself as he looked at Kayla with an eyebrow raised. It was probably one of the kids. Some scared twelve year old got in the way and got hurt. Will started going over what he would most likely need in his head. But there was something off about the situation. Kayla was a skilled healer and very professional, and really they dealt with this kind of thing all the time. Sure, it was tragic, but she shouldn't look so distressed. And there was something else in her eyes that Will didn't understand, didn't want to.
Something was wrong.
She bit her lip, took a deep breath, and shattered Will’s world with two words.
“It’s Nico.”
Nico woke up in his bed in his room at his father’s palace and looked around, confused. What was he doing here? He thought about it, but his last memories were of camp, the smell of grass and strawberries and the sounds of swords clashing and kids laughing. No, wait, there was more… a quest? No, a mission. Those kids in New York were in trouble. He volunteered, of course he did, and it was going fine, just like he told Will it would a thousand times. Will… as he thought the name he remembered flashes of something else, panic, his boyfriend yelling orders at people in the room then turning to him and begging him to wake up, to be okay… wake up? Be okay? He was okay, wasn't he?
Oh gods. He wasn’t.
There had been an accident. There were monsters everywhere, Nico and the others had been fighting for their lives, for the lives of four scared kids. The satyrs were guarding them, playing tunes on reed pipes to confuse the monsters but something went wrong. One of them, some lion/bull hybrid, had gotten too confused, bucked its horned head, and charged the kids. Nico had jumped in front. he killed it, he thinks, but not before it reached him… horrified, Nico looked down. His body was there, he wasn't quite a ghost, but it wasn't all there either. His limbs seemed smoky in some angles and his skin was devoid almost completely of color. No. No. He remembered now, he killed the weird monster and the others had killed the remaining few monsters but everyone knew more would come, they didn't have any time, so Nico told everyone to grab hold of each other and he shadow travelled them out. They came out of the shadows at Half-Blood Hill, they had made it, he couldn’t be dead. But then… he also remembered pain, more than he had felt since Tartarus, and he remembered drifting in and out of consciousness in the infirmary, hearing chanting and feeling hands flying over his broken body and opening his eyes once or twice to see those hands and following them up to the pale but otherwise stern and determined face of Will. Looking into that face he couldn't believe WIll wouldn’t fix him, until he looked up further and saw the panic set in Will’s eyes. Maybe he couldn't have been fixed. Maybe Will never stood a chance.
Will.
Will would be a wreck right now. Hell, Nico was a wreck right now. How could he do that to Will? Will, who had worked so hard, who had helped Nico see his own worth, who had saved him too many times and in too many ways to count, who had understood him and loved him more than anyone else ever would. And, honestly, who needed Nico. Will was an amazing healer, but he wasn't a fighter. If something happened Will would never be able to protect himself and Nico would never trust anyone else to. And now he was alone. And Nico would never see him again.
Yeah, fuck that.
Nico was suddenly furious. He couldn't be dead. He wouldn't be dead. Nico had never feared death and he understood its importance, he understood that everyone had to die sometime. It was why he hadn't stopped Octavian all those years ago. He had felt that it was right –- everyone’s time came eventually and Nico had known instinctively that letting Octavian’s time be then would push back the times of dozens of people, prolonging innocent life. Life had a balance and death was crucial to that balance.
And that was all well and good and whatever, but Nico was the son of Hades. Nico was the Ghost King. A title he had claimed when he was only eleven to protect his friends, but ever since then word had spread and the dead took that word seriously and treated him as such. So he didn't really care if coming back made him the ultimate hypocrite. He wasn't ready to die. He had a lot to live for and people who he loved and needed and who loved and needed him and he wasn't going to leave them. He wasn't going to leave him. Nico was the son of Hades, the Ghost King, and as far as he was concerned, death could bow to him or it could fucking bite him. He went to find his father.