Something I've had cooking for a while. Enjoy!

He had wanted to feel brave.

That was why Nico had ventured into the pit in the first place. Nico didn't want to let down any of the people he cared about. He wanted Hazel to be safe. He wanted Percy found and Annabeth to cry no longer. Nico wanted to do something about it. He wanted to stop feeling helpless and sorry for himself. He wanted to go back to a world where the wise weren't foolish and the brave ignorant.

Percy had once talked to him about holding the sky. At the time Bianca's death was still the freshest wound in Nico's heart, but what he didn't realize that by just being in close proximity of Percy, he was slowly carving another irreparable scar into himself. Percy's eyes would seize up as if the memory was as painful as the experience. "I couldn't even form a coherent thought," he whispered. "Imagine every muscle in your body, melting, turning to mush. I was dying, Nico, because I didn't have the strength. But I had to, for my friends," Percy's fingers clutched the cabin table so tightly his knuckles were turning as white as Zeus's bum. Nico wondered if anyone else in the pavilion ever noticed Percy's distant looks or tortured expressions.

(He didn't think anyone cared. The camp only wanted the hero, not the fallout.)

Nico made himself think of Percy with his every step in Tartarus. He didn't want to be here at all, but Nico was a martyr and made himself believe it was his duty. He hadn't even given himself the choice.

He was months ahead of Camp Jupiter and Camp Half-Blood, who were still struggling to acknowledge each other's existence and form an alliance to battle Gaea. Nico didn't need to worry about botching up relations, because he only had himself. The Ghost King. Ambassador of Pluto. Little kid.

More than anything, Nico wanted to be a hero. (Oh, how he wished he could be one.)

But heroes can't afford to be careless and Nico was too naïve. For eons he fell and before he could hit rock bottom, the monsters caught him and took him hostage. He hadn't prepared himself for this. There were too many monsters and they couldn't be slain.

Percy had told him once how his sword, Anaklusmos, would always fail him when he needed it the most. Nico wished that was his problem. The Stygian Iron sword he wielded was never even meant to be his. It was always too heavy, another burden on his conscience. His heart could only hold so many grudges before it gave out from exhaustion.

With a defeated whimper, Nico let the sword fall out of his grasp and swallowed the seeds of poison—the pomegranate seeds of myth—and let the darkness consume him.

…

Time is an interesting concept. It's fluid but also so, so very strong like silly putty. Time isn't measured in days or hours at all. It's measured in numbers and spaces. Which is why when Nico lost count, there was no time—he became timeless.

Seconds became minutes became hours became days became years became eons. Nico teetered on the brink of death, feeling his life force ebb and return to him like a dangerous game of catch. He shuddered, feeling cold and warm at the same time. This was what living and dying both felt like at the same time. Nico couldn't choose between them. He lived in a world of binary oppositions.

All around him, he could feel the presence of other living beings—so much heat, so much warmth, so much possibility. He could hear the battle raging inside him and out. It echoed poorly off his cage, a glass jar.

Nico found it sick that he'd been placed in a jar like a museum artifact. The monsters jeered and laughed at him, the first of their many demigod casualties. Nico knew it was a temporary solution. Because of Percy, Gaea no longer controlled Thanatos and killing demigods wasn't nearly as simple a solution as it used to be.

For some reason, they needed demigod blood.

Sometimes Gaea would whisper thoughts into his ear, how her husband too was rising, that she and her husband of old would again conquer the world. Her voice was like sludge—impossibly cold and hard to classify. Nico had felt fear before but nothing quite ever compared to his fear of losing the world he'd just come to appreciate.

Times like these, Nico forced himself to muster up just enough energy to eat another seed and continuing living this lie of a life. He must eat one seed each day to sustain his life force and keep himself protected from the monsters. But Nico wasn't invincible and the seeds weren't the Holy Grail of solutions either. He was running out of seeds and each one was tantamount to murder by a thousand cuts. Nico was dying, albeit slowly, but dying nonetheless under the blanket illusion of safety and hope that his demigod friends might rescue him.

It might be better if they didn't; it would give them something to fight for, maybe. Nico took a shudderingly slow breath. What he had done in taking the pomegranate seeds was far worse than confining himself to the Underworld like his stepmother had in legend. The seeds had deposited him powerless and alone with his own worst enemy—his mind.

…

Given the fact that Nico was an almost never-ending well of negativity, sorrow, pain, loss, and heartbreak, it was nothing short of a miracle that the Fates had neglected to cut his thread yet. In fact, it was nothing short of an ethereal vision when Percy saved him from the two giants, ever the smart and confident hero he was.

Being out of the jar was breathing oxygen for the first time in forever; it was almost too much too handle. Nico's lungs burned from the air, almost angry that they weren't allowed to die. Nico's heart, though, did that little sad, flip-floppity thing in his chest when he saw Percy, and was decidedly less bitter about not dying. But here's the thing: all happiness is an illusion, masked by the bouts of endless human suffering, the eternal woes of life. And what is life but pain, loss, and heartbreak all rolled into one? What is life but chasing after that happiness, that fleeting moment in between all the pain, loss, and heartbreak?

Nico should have known. Percy rescued him, yes, but only to find himself and Annabeth (poor girl) falling back into the hell Nico had just thought he'd escaped. What a fool they'd both been. "Meet us on the other side," he had ordered Nico.

And when had Nico never not obeyed him?

Thanks for reading!