Nico grabbed the bottom rung of a fire escape ladder and tucked up onto a little platform next to the wall. He used the momentum he had from running to swing up to hang onto the ladder. As the monster neared, he scrambled up to the platform.
The monster stopped below him and tried to grab the ladder like he had, but as its short, clumsy fingers wrapped around the rung and it tried to climb, the ladder slid off the platform and clattered to the ground.
While the monster recovered from the short fall and shoved the ladder out of the way, Nico focused on his destination and sank into the deep shadows of the surrounding buildings.
He stumbled into the empty and dark dining pavilion, falling to his hands and knees from the sudden rush of weakness. He was breathing heavily, tired from the running, fighting and shadow travelling. He started getting up, but as he pushed himself up his left upper arm he felt a flare of pain shoot through his entire arm and shoulder. He rolled to the right so that he was sitting on the cold stone floor of the pavilion.
He didn't want to, but he pulled his bloody long-sleeved shirt's sleeve up, uncovering his arm. He let a little hissing sound escape his teeth when he saw it.
In the fight the monster, whatever it was, had bit him, but he hadn't realised just how bad it was. There were two already swollen arcs of big, deep, bleeding marks, with two bigger and deeper marks on both arcs, left by the monster's canine teeth.
He let the sleeve fall back down on the bite and forced himself to stand up. He started walking towards his cabin, but after only a few steps decided not to. He disliked shadow travel, but he disliked the prospect of running into someone right after a fight he hadn't even won even more. So he shadow travelled to his cabin, using up the last bits of his energy in the short trip. There he stumbled to one of the beds, specifically not the one he mostly used since he wanted to avoid getting blood all over his mattress, and without even removing his Stygian Iron chestplate, he fell on the bed and fell asleep.
The next morning, Nico woke up groggily. He pushed a few strands of hair off his face and groaned at how his entire body hurt.
He sat up, swinging his legs off the bed and to the floor. He started undoing the straps holding his chestplate on, but as he had just opened one of them someone knocked on his door.
Nico froze.
There was not even one person in the entire camp who could see Nico, wearing what he wore to battle and covered in dried blood, and not make an unnecessarily big fuss about it.
He got up and sneaked to the door, careful to not make any sound that might alert whoever had knocked that he was there. As he reached the door, he could hear bickering behind it.
"There's no way Nico's gonna join your team. He's my bro. He'd never betray me like that," a voice, easily distinguishable as Percy's, said.
"Oh, your bro? I think you'll very soon see that Nico is my bro, and because of that will join my team," another voice, most likely Jason's, said.
"Whatever," Percy said. "Nico! Get up, we have important stuff to talk about!" He shouted. Nico stayed still. Maybe he could convince them the cabin was empty.
After a while more of waiting, Jason spoke up.
"He's probably gone to have breakfast already. Let's go," he said.
"You can go, but I'm making sure Death Junior is on my team," Percy said, and pushed the door open in one swift motion.
"Nico?" he squeaked. "Why are you- Why do you look like you just wrestled with the Hydra?"
Nico didn't know how to answer, so instead he just said "Uh…"
"Are you okay?" Jason asked.
"I'm fine, how are you?" He said.
Jason looked at his blood-covered, well, everything, and said "Yeah, no you're not. C'mon, let's get you to the infirmary."
"No, no, no. It's fine. No need to worry people, I can deal with this. And what do you even know? I haven't told you what happened yet," Nico said, though he knew Jason and Percy weren't going to take any of it.
"You can tell us on the way there. Let's go," Percy said, stepping forward and grabbing Nico's arm to hold him up, as if he couldn't walk by himself. Jason stepped to his other side to support him from there, and grabbed his arm to hoist it over his shoulders.
Nico flinched, trying to hide how much the bite still hurt.
Jason immediately let go. "Are you injured?" He asked. Nico couldn't help but roll his eyes.
"I hate to sound so much like Annabeth, but seriously? I'm wearing my armour and it's splattered with red, human blood, and you ask me if I'm injured."
Jason sighed, sounding resigned. "What I meant is, is your arm injured?"
"Not badly. But I can walk without your help," Nico said, pushing Percy away too.
They walked to the infirmary, not running into many campers since everyone was already at breakfast, and the few they did run into sidetracked quickly at the sight of the children of the Big Three together, with two of them looking worried and stoic but also resigned, like they were completely aware of how the third one was probably badly injured but also knew he would never admit it.
"Nico!" a worried voice shouted the moment they walked through the door. The source of the worried voice ran to them.
"Are you okay? What happened?" He asked.
"I'm fine, seriously Will, you need to stop worrying about me," Nico complained.
"I have the full right to worry when my boyfriend shows up, clearly injured!"
"Okay, okay, fine. But I'm barely even injured."
At this point Percy nudged Jason, signaling to him that maybe they should leave and give Will and Nico some space, and they casually snuck out.
Will pointed at the nearest bed demandingly. "Sit down." Nico obliged. Will started pulling the chestplate's straps open.
"I can do that myself," Nico grumbled.
"But it takes you twice as long. And then you won't be able to tell me what happened while doing something else," Will said.
"Okay," Nico said.
Will waited for a moment, before saying demandingly, "Well?"
"I was in Brooklyn," Nico said, refusing to elaborate without being asked to.
"Why were you in Brooklyn?" Will asked.
"Just, uh, cleaning up the streets?"
"From monsters, sure."
"Well yeah, uh, I did run into a few."
"A few," Will said incredulously. He knew very well how capable Nico was of protecting himself, especially against monsters, and there was no way any less than a small army of them could get him covered in blood.
"Actually just one. But it was a really weird monster. Looked kinda like a dog, but weirdly human too. And my sword passed right through it, so not even a real monster," Nico explained.
Will stopped undoing the strap. "What do you mean your sword did nothing? But… How'd you kill it, then?"
"I didn't. I ran," Nico admitted.
Will's eyes widened as the words sank in. If there was a monster out there that even Nico, one of the most dangerous demigods that had ever been born, couldn't defeat, any less trained and less powerful demigod would have no chance.
He finished undoing the straps quickly, and slipped the metal off Nico.
"Take your shirt off," he commanded. Nico raised an eyebrow. "You'd love that, wouldn't you?"
Will huffed. Nico was impossible. He did take the shirt off though, revealing a surprisingly small amount of wounds, though they were all still quite bad. Will had to bite his lip to not start lecturing Nico about underplaying the severity of his injuries. That was for later.
"Okay, so, what happened before you ran?" Will asked to distract Nico while he got some disinfectant off the nearby table of medical supplies. They had to use strong disinfectants, even though they could hurt.
"I was just walking, actually about to leave, when the weird dog-looking thing just jumped at me. It would've been dead almost immediately if it had been a normal monster, but… My sword just passed right through." Nico winced from the stinging of the disinfectant on his right hand. "So, that caught me off guard, so it managed to land a few hits. I tried to fight it off, but that was pretty useless so I just ran."
Will started wrapping Nico's hand in bandages.
"Hey, don't worry about those. I've had busted knuckles before, it's fine."
"Oh, yeah, totally." Will said unconvincingly, continuing to wrap his hand.
When he finished the hand, he moved to the bite on Nico's upper arm.
"You're lucky this is on your arm, rather than somewhere important," he said.
"You can thank my dad for that. He's the one that gave me the chestplate."
"But, would you wear it if I hadn't told you to?" Will said with a smirk. "This is odd though," he continued.
"What is?" Nico asked.
"It's not the shape of a hellhound bite, but too small to be anything else." Will explained.
"It wasn't a hellhound. More human-looking."
Will frowned. "Doesn't sound like anything I know."
He shifted his attention back to the bite.
"Also this shouldn't be infected yet, since you only got it yesterday," He said.
"Well, it was bleeding a lot yesterday. And kind of hurt," Nico said. Will looked worried.
The door to the infirmary opened, and Hazel walked in.
"Why is it that almost every time I see you two together Nico is hurt and Will has to stitch him up?" She said.
"Oh, hi Hazel! I didn't know you were in camp," Nico greeted, ignoring what Hazel had said.
"Seriously, I don't think a doctor/patient relationship is very healthy," she said.
"We're in an infirmary. How could it get any healthier?" Will pointed out.
Hazel sighed. "Seriously, some day you'll ignore all your other patients to treat a papercut Nico got."
"I don't think he'd come to me for a papercut. He didn't want to get any care for this, either," Will said, gesturing to the bite. Hazel only noticed it then, rushing forward.
"Nico! Are you okay?" she asked.
"How many times are people going to ask that? It's not even bad. I've had much worse," Nico said.
"The day Nico stops underestimating his injuries I'll stop being the one who treats him every time. Someone else might even believe him," Will said.
"Will's gotten everyone, like, every single demigod in camp, to stop believing me," Nico complained.
"Your fault for being stubborn. "No, I'm fine," "I already ate," "It's not that bad," "I'm not tired,"" Will said, mimicking Nico.
"I'm not stubborn. And I don't sound like that," Nico said.
"You kinda do," Hazel said.
Will got up, opened a nearby medical cabinet and grabbed a little golden square.
"Eat this," he said, handing it to Nico. He crossed his arms, despite it kind of hurting because of the bite, and said "I don't need ambrosia."
"Totally you don't, mister I'm-not-stubborn," Will said, rolling his eyes.
"Okay, if you'll stop fussing," Nico said, taking the square.
"I'll stop fussing, but you still have to come here every day to get the bandages on that bite changed until it's healed. And no fighting."
An hour later Nico had showered, changed, walked to the training area and started sparring with some new Ares camper who had been stupid and arrogant enough to challenge him. Obviously Nico was winning. He'd let the kid almost win first, even dropping his sword, but then he had shadow travelled behind him, picked up the sword and had easily gotten the upper hand.
Now the kid was getting frustrated.
"C'mon, just throw your sword away and we can be done with this," Nico said.
The Ares kid refused, tightening her expression. Nico stepped to the side when she lunged forward.
He pushed his foot out, kicking her ankle and tripping her. Her sword went clattering along the sandy ground.
"Thanks for the fight," Nico said, sheathing his sword, picking up her sword and putting it back on the weapon rack.
"Who's next?" He asked the little audience they had gathered. Nobody volunteered, but from some group of friends one guy was pushed forward. Nico raised an eyebrow at him.
"You want to fight?"
"Uh," he said, glancing back at his friends. "I guess?"
They started sparring. Nico wanted to stretch the fight, since ending it immediately would just be boring.
But just as the fight was getting interesting and Nico was getting a little short on breath, an angry voice shouted "Nico. Di. Angelo!" from the group watching the fight.
Nico quickly disarmed his opponent and turned to look at Will, stomping across the sparring ground.
"Yes?" He asked innocently. Will crossed his arms.
"No fighting, remember?"
"But I was taking it easy!" Nico complained. Will grabbed his forearm, dragging him away.
"Come on, Will," Nico pleaded. "What am I supposed to do? Sit in my cabin all day, not allowed to do anything because of one little bite?"
"No, but you can not go fighting anyone who will volunteer."
"But it's fun! Also I can walk by myself, you don't have to keep holding me," Nico said.
"But if I let you go, you'll just go running to the climbing wall or something."
"Hey, you never said anything about not climbing."
Will sighed.
"You're impossible, Nico."
"Hey, my arm wasn't even hurting much."
"Your arm was hurting?"
"Uh, a little?"
"It's not supposed to. I put a healing charm on the bite. And you ate ambrosia."
"Oh," Nico said, starting to feel a little dizzy. He half collapsed, leaning on Will. He grasped at the bite, which had started to burn.
"Nico?" Will asked, worried.
"M'fine…" Nico said.
