"CAN'T YOU FIGHT?!" Reyna yelled at Nico.
"NO I CAN'T, FOR THE LAST TIME REYNA!" He yelled back.
"DIE!" shouted Coach Hedge, swinging his club like a cricket bat.
"ARGH!" Reyna fumed, dispensing a hellhound with a jab of her sword. She thought about their empty bag of ambrosia and frustrated, stuck her sword up the rump of a second hellhound. Coach Hedge bellowed incoherently and charged towards the assorted varieties of enemies assembled a few meters away. Reyna shook her head, once, and followed.
"Do we have to spend nights every time you shadow travel twice?" Reyna asked, her voice steely with anger.
"Yes." Said Nico. "Unless you want to continue on foot while I sleep. I need it."
"Sure, sure, and the rest of us are lares." She muttered.
Nico thought darkly about Reyna's unintended pun. She didn't know he had been named 'Ghost King' once. He had successfully shadow travelled them twice without dying. That was worth a few hours' sleep.
It was still light in this part of Italy. His grim face, though, must have not been enough to shut Reyna up.
"And why exactly," she asked," have we halted in Venice?"
"I told you. The only monsters this place had for miles were the katoblepones. And Frank destroyed them all not a few days ago. That time hasn't been enough for other monsters to migrate in yet. That's why it's safe."
They were camped right outside the city, where the Athena Parthenos had landed. It wasn't like they could lift it, so they couldn't go inside, or leave it alone after all everyone had been through to get it and then keep it safe.
"And Frank did that all by himself? That's surprising, for the demigod I knew when he left Camp Jupiter was very different. Frank Zhang, praetor." Reyna mused aloud.
Nico was getting irritated. He liked Frank, and the way he had compelled war ghosts in the House of Hades to lead them to the Doors of Death. He felt a slight, nervous twinge when he thought about Percy emerging from them, tired but safe.
Suddenly shaken, shocked and furious, he got up and marched away.
Coach Hedge, not Reyna, intercepted him. Without even looking in his direction, he said, "I'll be back after some time. Before sunset." He was surprised at the shakiness in his own voice. His hands automatically clenched into fists; he stormed into the city. The pavement shook with his footfalls.
"Coach?" asked Reyna softly, as the faun walked towards her. Satyr, she reminded herself, not faun.
"He says he'll be back before sunset." He replied. "I'm worried about that kid."
Reyna nodded. Dealing with so many people for so long had made her sensitive to people's emotions. A leader needed to have that quality. She understood that Nico resisted company, but she couldn't figure out why. But she also understood this: that however much he tried to resist it, he craved company too. She could see it in the moments he was not angry. The moments he seemed like a person completely different than the one she was familiar with.
Reyna stood up in a single, smooth motion. "I need to go after him. He may be not be right about the 'no-monsters' thing."
Coach Hedge nodded. "Keep safe."
She nodded back absent-mindedly. Lightly, she swept off in the direction Nico had followed.
Reyna kept him on the edges of her vision. She was careful to see him turn around corners and take turns. Nico seemed to know the city well. Too well, she thought. Like he lived here. Wrapping her cloak around herself, Reyna drove on deeper and deeper into the city.
Finally she saw Nico stop in front of an old mansion. Like the entire city, this building too was decaying and extremely old. Bright lights lit up the living room windows, spilling out warmth into the twilight sky. A canal ran by on one side of it, lined on either side with beautiful shrubberies and flowering plants. The scene homely and for some reason reminded her of home.
"You can come here if you want." Nico called out in a dry, brittle voice.
Seeing no point in secrecy now, Reyna walked over to stand next to him. "Why here?" she asked.
Staring ahead, he said, "See that toddler over there? Playing on the porch?" Reyna nodded, a little confused. In a higher voice, Nico continued, "that's my sister, Bianca. She went to Elysium after she died, and chose to be reborn." His throat convulsed. Tears appeared in his eyes. "This is the house I used to live in with my parents. My parents." Nico looked at Reyna. "My father and mother, and Bianca and me. We were a family." He choked on the last word, and the tears finally surged forward, splashing uncontrollably on his cheeks. He turned away to hide them.
"60 years ago," he whispered to himself, barely audible.
Reyna's thought's irrevocably turned to her own home. Startling tears filled her eyes and spilled on without stopping. She looked at Nico and felt she owed him something too. "My first home was in Puerto Rico." She choked a little on the words, then swallowed and continued, "I was six when Hylla persuaded me to leave it. I remember my mother; we had a family too. I remember a regal roman woman. She had hair like me." Reyna eyes were on the little girl playing with a nurse. "I hadn't known my mother was a goddess then. But Hylla had grown old enough to get suspicious and ask questions, so our mother mysteriously disappeared. Of course, she had left now that we were old enough." She stopped, unable to continue. But Nico was looking at her intently now, forcefully. Reyna used that force to make herself continue. "Strange as the circumstances were, my father held his own daughters responsible. Hylla and I ran away from him, from the mortal world. We found refuge in the Sea of Monsters, on Circe's island." She stopped again. It was dark now, and a nurse was carrying the child inside.
"What happened?" asked Nico quietly. "How did you come to Camp Jupiter?"
A painful smile crossed her face. "Percy Jackson happened." She noticed that Nico shook slightly at the name, but was too tired of interpreting people to wonder why. If he wanted to tell her, he would. She couldn't force it, wouldn't force it.
"Annabeth and Percy set free some pirates who destroyed the island. My sister and I managed to escape. She went to the Amazons, I went to Camp Jupiter."
"And you don't hate Percy?" Nico inquired. "You have no hard feelings?"
"I know I should." She answered bitterly. "Gods, yes. But it's been…difficult, seeing that he apologized and that he saved Camp Jupiter during the Feast of Fortuna. I don't think I blame him anymore." Reyna answered, and wiped the tears quietly in the dark. Nico accepted the answer and they both turned away, staring into the distance. For a moment they stood silent, companions in pain. When night fell, they returned to the Athena Parthenos, sharing hurt and lightening feelings.