Hey everyone.
I've been picking at this in little spurts since I finished HoH (far later than most). It's taken a while, but I think I'm happy with it now, or as happy as I can be.
I felt like it was too important to go in my collection of oneshots, so it's a standalone piece. I hope you like it.
Marzipan.
Dimly, seemingly far in the distance, Nico felt an intense weight pressing down on his chest. His head was free but the rest of him from the neck down was pinned by a smothering layer. He groaned and the tiny sound reverberated around in his skull like a thunderclap, setting off a cluster bomb of miniature headaches which burst into life. In response to the pain his forehead wrinkled, which set off a whole new world of hurt.
His tongue was stuck to the roof of his mouth and his lips felt tight and rough; he felt more like a mummy than a human being. There was a penetrating cold which had pitched a tent in his solar plexus, driving icy tent pegs deep into his bones and freezing the marrow within.
Make that an ice mummy.
He shivered and felt goosebumps ripple down his arms and across his chest. Each heartbeat resounded in his head, but even semi-conscious he was aware that his pulse was way too slow and sluggish, like it was about to give out on him. On top of that, he felt so weak; even though he was lying down he knew that if he tried to stand his legs would feel like jelly, probably not able to support him. It was as if he'd just run a hundred marathons in a row.
The worst part, though, besides all the physical sensations that jostled for his attention, elbowing at his subconscious to make themselves felt, was the nagging feeling that there was something he should be doing. Something big that he should be taking care of, somewhere really important that he had to be. Yet despite his best efforts to work out what it was, the vast majority of his brain remained mired in a fog so thick it felt like he could stick a straw in it and take a sip. The feeling wouldn't go away, but every time he tried to think about it the fog closed in and any tiny hint of what he should be remembering was snatched away by its greedy tendrils.
Given that any serious thinking was apparently a no go, he wanted to bring his hand to his face to try and rub away the headache, but even pulling it free from the weight bearing down on him proved too great a challenge — his arms felt just as weak as his legs. Instead, he gave a strangled half-sob, half-moan and battled to open his eyes.
Even though he'd only been able to open them halfway, he was immediately assaulted by what felt like a railroad spike piercing each retina as the light in the room hit his eyes. His eyelids fluttered; he wanted desperately to close them again, to block out the light and the pain, but he knew somewhere, deep within him, that if he went back to sleep now there was no guarantee that he would wake up again. So instead he forced them all the way open and stared at the ceiling.
Well, that was some comfort — seeing an actual ceiling meant that the likelihood that he'd been captured by a monster slightly less likely. Although there were definitely exceptions, most monsters didn't tend to have ceilings. Rocky cave roofs lost in darkness, maybe, but they didn't tend to be so big on traditional architecture.
Some of the humans Gaea had unleashed on the world, however… His stomach lurched at the thought of the tales he'd heard about Medea and Midas. They'd had ceilings. He panicked and tried to summon the ability to shadow travel to him, but the dizziness it caused was almost like a physical blow and he quickly had to stop. What if—
"Nico?"
The female voice was warm, friendly and full of concern and he let that be some small comfort for him. It meant that it probably wasn't an empousa, but at least he would have known how to deal with that. On the whole, he didn't do well when people sounded like that in reference to him. It frightened him, put him on edge, and he had no idea what he was meant to do with it. Hazel and Bianca and far-off memories of his mother were just about the only people he had ever known to sound like that where he was concerned, and two of them were dead and gone now.
When you didn't have a whole bunch of people around you who cared, the sound of empathy and compassion in someone's voice was terrifying.
The only other person he wouldn't mind sounding like that where he was concerned was…
His gut twisted again, more unpleasantly that before. Apparently, the extended period of unconsciousness had done nothing to blunt the eviscerating blade he felt whenever he thought about Percy and, in extension, the wider stuff around the whole issue. It all bubbled away gelatinously, malignantly, in a cauldron full of self-loathing which never seemed to boil dry, only get larger as the days passed. The only thing the blade wasn't sharp enough to do was burst the bubble of panic that formed every time he thought about it.
He wished he was still unconscious. He wished he didn't have to lie here and think about it. He wished… he almost wished that he wasn't alive at all, a dangerous wish in the world of demigods and especially when you were a child of the Underworld, but he reconsidered quickly. Hazel had remained herself in the Fields of Asphodel; there was no guarantee that he would get to die and go there and wander endlessly, free of knowing what he was and able to forget about Percy.
And as for the other options, he'd had enough of the Underworld's punishments in Tartarus to know that his father's realm would probably conjure up Percy and his shame at every opportunity in the likely event he got sent somewhere lower than Asphodel. The only way out in death would be to somehow make it to Elysium and get to bathe in the River Lethe, and there was no way he'd make it that far if he died right now. He didn't deserve it and a new life.
The Lethe flitted tantalisingly at the back of his mind; he was a child of Hades and didn't need to die to take that particular swim. It would rid him of these feelings but afterwards… all he'd be was another Bob, a shell. Whoever stumbled on him would get to create him in whichever way they chose. He didn't want that; he wasn't sure that he could do that to himself on purpose. Not again, not after last time and the Lotus Hotel.
Even this, what he was, was better than letting someone else decide, like Percy had for Bob. As much as he hated it and as much as he wanted to claw it out of him and just be normal, at least it was him. Sure, it made him so angry that he could scream. Sure, it sometimes physically hurt and the heat of his anger may have been all internalised and used to fuel that bubbling soup of self-hatred, but…
At least he wasn't putting his whole sense of being in someone else's hands.
With the greatest amount of effort, he turned his head to the side. There were blackout shades up at the window; at one side they didn't quite fit and a shaft of light so bright it almost seemed to be blue sliced through the room. Eddies of dust motes swirled lazily in its path.
He was in a bed and the weight pinning him down was actually about a thousand blankets piled up on top of him. On the opposite wall to the one his bed was on, a fire was crackling in a fireplace. It was throwing off an inconsistent flickering and sloshing dancing shadows up the walls.
Despite what his eyes were telling him, the room was actually swaddled in gloom, with the only other source of light apart from the fireplace being a tiny lamp on the nightstand with a single, low-wattage bulb in it. It made little inroad against the darkness afforded by the blackout shade, barely enough to throw a small halo of hazy, orange light onto the chair drawn up next to the bed. It made the occupant of the chair's red hair look even redder; it burned like the fire in the hearth.
"Rachel?" Nico murmured, struggling to make his parched and apparently swollen tongue form the word.
Rachel was dressed in hotpants she had clearly fashioned herself from one of her many pairs of much-abused jeans and the flimsiest of strappy vest tops. The top was rolled up all the way to her boobs, exposing a considerable amount of midriff which was glistening with sweat. Her hair was pulled up into some semblance of a bun but it was at maximum frizz and hell-bent on escaping; some of it was plastered down her back. At her hairline, the hair was darker where it had absorbed the sheen of sweat on her face. Despite sitting in front of an electric fan which looked to Nico as if it were blowing a force nine gale at her, she was fanning herself indolently with a sketchpad.
"Hang on, don't try to speak yet," Rachel said, dropping the sketchpad to the floor and pushing herself out of the chair. She walked over to a chest of drawers, pouring something into two glasses, and then returning to Nico's bed. Both of the glasses had straws in.
"This one's water," Rachel said, holding the straw at Nico's lips. "Slow sips, okay? I don't want you drowning yourself on me."
Nico drank gratefully until the glass was empty. He could almost feel his kidneys singing their thanks. Despite Rachel's warning he coughed when the glass was finished and for a scary minute it felt like his stomach was going to reject the water and spew it back up, but he fought to keep it down. From somewhere, he made the superhuman effort to roll on his side and half prop himself up in bed.
"I said no drowning," Rachel reminded him. "I'm a bad nurse; I'd make a worse lifeguard." She put the empty glass down on the nightstand and held the straw in the second one to Nico's lips. "This is nectar," she explained. "It should help."
Nico doubted that highly. Unless the universe had quit thinking his pain was hilarious, then nectar would still taste like the blue birthday cake Percy had invited him in off the fire escape for. It had been his only taste of birthday cake and now every time he chewed ambrosia or drank nectar he was reminded of that day. He rejected them both as a result unless he was in desperate need, but the arm he was propping himself up on was shaking under the strain of doing it, highlighting how wrung out he felt. So instead of tossing the glass into the fire like he wanted he closed his eyes and wrapped his lips around the straw, trying not to choke on the taste of how happy that day had made him.
When he was done, Rachel turned to put the glass down and he opened his eyes, allowing two tears to escape down his cheeks while she couldn't see. He sniffed hard and wiped them away before she could turn around. As he tried to dig his fingernails into his palm as punishment for being so weak, a feeble fist was all he could manage despite the warmth that was slowly spreading through his body as the nectar took effect.
The mattress squeaked as he collapsed back onto it, wishing his mouth was full of ash instead of the taste of that stupid birthday cake. He'd gladly have taken a double shot of Phlegethon water over what he had actually got; the water would have been kinder to his insides.
"Do you want me to help you sit up?" Rachel asked. She'd been hovering by the bed looking down at Nico was concern.
Nico looked up at her with bleary eyes; it seemed like she was teetering on the verge of asking him something but was holding herself back. He sighed; the last thing he wanted was anyone asking him anything, but it wasn't like he could go anywhere right now. He couldn't get out of bed and the only thing he'd been able to do when he tried to shadow travel just now was to create black spots in front of his vision and almost pass out. Instead he nodded, and together they managed to heave Nico into a sitting position.
"What happened?" Nico asked when they'd got him settled. "I feel like I've been hit by a truck and run over by a steamroller and then buried under a hundred miles of snow."
"You don't remember?" Rachel asked, her brow wrinkling with concern. She held up two fingers. "How many fingers am I holding up?"
"Four," Nico said.
Rachel's eyes widened and she got to her feet. "I'm going to get Chiron," she said.
Nico rolled his eyes. "Two," he said. "I was kidding."
Rachel glared at him. "Has anyone told you you're not very funny?" she asked crossly, sitting back down in her seat with her arms folded.
Nico picked at his thumbnail. "Yeah. Apparently I'm not big on being funny," he said. "Or even fun." There was a note of bitterness to his voice as he examined the crochet of the top blanket on his bed. "Or any good things, really. Creepy, weird, freaky, odd, a loser, an emo, a goth, sulky, brooding…" He shrugged his shoulders. "I get all of those. But maybe it's good that I'm not funny. It would suck to start disappointing people now."
"You have an attitude problem," Rachel said. "Namely that you have too much of one. You can fix that."
"Who says I want to?" Nico shot back with, looking up at her and scowling.
Rachel held up her hands and shrugged. "Hey, it's up to you," she said. "You're the one holding a pity part for yourself over there, but on your own head et cetera."
Nico began to worry at the bedspread, creating a hole in the weave. Silence fell over them for a little while, broken only by the popping and crackling of the fire and the whirring of the electric fan.
"Are you hot?" Nico demanded eventually, frowning at Rachel as she picked up her sketchpad and began fanning herself again. She looked more like a puddle than a human being, the way she was sprawled in her chair. "Seriously?"
Rachel's nostrils flared; she slapped the sketchpad down on the nightstand, making the glasses jump. "Outside Camp right now it's 105 degrees," she said brusquely. "And whatever magic normally keeps us cool in here is on the fritz; it has been since this whole mess started. It has probably only knocked ten degrees of that. Since the gods went to war with their alter egos, we've been stuck with this heatwave and I'm cooped up in this sauna with a fire burning. What do you think? Other places have it worse. Las Vegas, of all places, is flooded. It's in the middle of the desert and it's full of water. Tornadoes, earthquakes, freak rainfall, hail—"
"Okay, I get your point," Nico said. "Weird weather. But hey, no one asked you to be shut in here with me."
Rachel swallowed; she couldn't meet Nico's gaze and she stared down at her hands. "I wanted to be here," she said, aiming for casual. "Someone had to take care of you."
"What, and you couldn't find a single other person in the whole of Camp—" He caught Rachel flinching and he sank back into the pillows. "Oh," he said, taking a deep breath in, trying and failing not to let that knowledge hurt him. "Huh. Okay then." He didn't know what he'd been expecting, but it still felt like a hammer blow to his chest.
"I'm sure it's just that I'm the only one without official duties to take care of," Rachel said quickly, looking up at Nico with tears gathering in her eyes. "I mean, everyone else is looking at the Romans about to attack and they're kind of busy, you know? I've got time. All I have to do is spout a prophecy every time the Oracle wants me to and to be honest since Olympus became multiple personality disorder central, there's not been a lot to do on that front."
"No one else wanted to sit with me," Nico said, nodding. "Got it. Message received." He swallowed and it felt like he was choking down lead fishing weights.
"Not true," Rachel said. "Coach Hedge has been here. I don't know what you did while you were hauling that statue across Europe but he has really taken a shine to you."
"Great," Nico said sardonically. The bitter note was back with a vengeance and it had brought discordant friends. "So a half-mad old satyr and the woman playing host to the spirit my dad cursed seventy years ago and who probably hates me for it. Well, hey, at least it keeps my Christmas card list short."
"They don't know you," Rachel said.
"You don't know me," Nico snapped back. "You don't know me and you're sitting here."
"I want to be," Rachel said again.
"Lucky you, drawing the shortest straw," Nico sneered.
Rachel sighed. "I wish you wouldn't be like this. You don't make it easy on yourself, you know?" She got up and walked over to the chest of drawers, fishing an ice cube out of the pitcher of water and rubbing it on the back of her neck.
Nico chose to ignore her comment. He had never been in the business of making things easy for himself. He didn't have the luxury. "You're really hot, aren't you?" he said instead.
"I'm dying," Rachel agreed, rubbing lazy circles with the ice cube on her chest.
Nico frowned. "So why…" His voice faltered; he realised that the answer to the question might scare him. "I feel like I'm freezing to death."
"You pretty much are," Rachel said. "Well. Were. When we got you into Camp you had hypothermia. You're getting better but it's been slow; it's been almost impossible to get your body temperature back up. I've never seen a human that blue. I guess it was all of the shadow travelling. It must have sucked the light and warmth right out of you."
Nico snorted. "Bet it didn't find much to suck on," he muttered.
"You nearly died, Nico," Rachel said. "I'd say it found plenty to take out of you."
Nico chewed on that for a while. It didn't make him feel much better. "Okay, so I can count fingers," he said eventually. "I know when you're holding up two fingers but I really don't know how I ended up here. Or where here is."
"You're in the Big House," Rachel said. "You and Reyna and Coach Hedge appeared with the Athena Parthenos on top of Half-Blood Hill. You were totalled wiped: we had to carry you here. You've been out for six days."
"Six days?!" Nico choked out.
As Rachel spoke, the details filled themselves in. The pieces fell into place and he remembered the journey across Europe, first westwards and then northwards through France, the hop across the Channel and then continuing northwards through the UK. He remembered how, after making it from Scotland to the Faroe Islands, the trip between there and Iceland had left him comatose for a day and useless for another three, only to have the same thing repeated but worse once they'd made the jump to Greenland. Apparently, travelling over water was way harder than travelling over land.
"Did it work?" he asked. "I got the statue here, right? Did it stop the war?"
Rachel sighed; she suddenly looked exhausted. Even the gloom in the room couldn't hide the shadows under her eyes. She popped the ice cube into her mouth and crunched on it before sitting down hard in her chair again.
"Between the statue and Reyna… it was enough to delay it," she said heavily, before dropping her head into her hands. "But Reyna has been away too long. She arrived unannounced, accompanied by two Greeks, bearing a treasure the Romans stole from the Greeks and probably still consider theirs, but she came to give it back to the Greeks. It was enough to get us to cool our jets, even Clarisse, but the Romans… I don't know. Reyna's barely hanging on with them. Octavian just keeps getting more powerful and he wants war. Reyna is trying, but without backup…"
"I nearly died for nothing," Nico said, the words sounding hollow. "I nearly killed myself and the statue is what, just a Band-Aid?"
All that he'd been through to get the statue here, the monsters he'd had to face, the exhaustion, the fear… All of that and in the grand scheme of things it mattered diddlysquat?
Rachel took her head out of her hands and looked at him miserably. "I'm so sorry, Nico. I know this isn't what you wanted. Gods, it's not what any of us wanted. But I don't see, or See, any other way but war." Rachel had a way of speaking that you instantly knew which type of seeing she was talking about, either capital or lowercase depending on what she meant. "One way or another, however much we delay it…"
Nico set his mouth in a grim line. There went his plans to disappear after delivering the statue. No matter how he felt about the way demigods treated him, either at Camp Half-Blood or Camp Jupiter, there was no way he was going to sit out on a war as the children of the gods tore themselves apart. That was what Gaea wanted and whatever Gaea wanted, he pretty much wanted the exact opposite. He would do everything he could to stop it from happening, even if he wasn't sure whether he cared if either Camp ever managed to rise from the ashes they could reduce themselves to. He still wanted to run, desperately, but he would delay it until after Gaea had fallen.
As much as he wanted to leave, he hated Gaea more.
"Nico…." Rachel said hesitantly, a gauntlet of emotions running across her face. Her lips formed the beginnings of aborted words for a few minutes as she struggled with what she was going to say. The fire popped and Rachel picked up the sketchbook as if she were going to start fanning herself again, but all she did was wring it nervously in her lap. "Nico, when you were unconscious… you kept saying Percy's name."
The goosebumps were back; Nico felt the pit drop out of his stomach, like he'd been shoved out of a plane over a frozen lake and had plunged through the surface. He bit down hard on his tongue as the goosebumps receded, replaced with a creeping flush up his neck and into his cheeks.
Rachel must have read something in his facial expression because she said quickly, "I mean, okay, feel free to tell me to butt out here, but—"
"Butt out," Nico said savagely, immediately taking her up on the offer.
Rachel flinched visibly at the bite in Nico's tone and the cover of her sketchpad tore, separating from the spine. Rachel blinked down at it in surprise at what she'd done and carefully released it, smoothing what remained across her knees.
"Were you dreaming about him?" Rachel asked eventually, her voice soft and barely audible over the sound of crinkling paper.
Nico honestly didn't remember, but the answer was probably. Aside from the apocalyptic demigod dreams, which came more frequently than ever now, when he was sleeping Percy was pretty much the major subject of his subconscious. Every time he lay down to catch the briefest catnap when he'd been in Tartarus, which was all had ever been safe to attempt, Percy was pretty much there the minute he closed his eyes.
The only reason he'd ever made it out of Tartarus was the thought that Percy was still up there, on the surface, for him to make it back to.
Nico looked down at the bedspread again, his worrying fingers falling limp and useless as he contemplated it. The warning prickle of tears in his eyes and nose began and he had to concentrate absolutely on keeping them where they belonged.
"Just leave it," he hissed through his teeth.
"I dream about him too, you know," Rachel said, her own throat bobbing as she watched Nico desperately try to hold it together.
Nico looked up at her inquisitively, the revelation being enough to stem the tide of tears for now. "You do?"
Rachel nodded. "Yup," she confirmed. "I wish… I mean, it would be better if I didn't have to but I still do. Even though I know what the score is. So you're not exactly the only one."
"What are you trying to say?" Nico asked, aiming for nonchalant as he scrambled desperately for a cover story. He shrugged. "I dream. I'm a demigod — we do that. Percy is part of this huge quest and without it, we're all screwed. Of course I'm going to dream about it, but that's all."
"I asked if you were dreaming about him," Rachel pressed carefully. "Leave Gaea out of this for a minute. She's been gobbling up enough of the limelight lately."
It felt like Rachel's words had been the final drop of water that broke the levees he'd carefully constructed inside him to keep the thoughts of Percy out. They came pouring forth in a frothing torrent, endless loops of images his subconscious had taunted him with over the years. It made him breathless and he felt heat rising in his face.
"Isaid butt out," Nico snarled. He didn't know where he got the energy from, maybe it was from the blush creeping up his face, but he was suddenly determined to leave the room. Even if he couldn't shadow travel away, he didn't have to sit here while Rachel put her nose in places it didn't belong.
He savagely jerked the covers aside and stuck his feet out of the bed, pausing momentarily to reel in shock from what felt like a blast of Khione's breath practically chewing his legs off mid-shin. Then he forced himself to get over it, because no matter how cold it felt out of bed it was nothing to what he was being subjected to lying in bed helpless. His feet touched the floor, toes curling into the threadbare rug, before he tottered to his feet.
Rachel had got up as well now and face was alarmed; her lips were moving but there was suddenly a roar in his ears like the approach of a freight train and he couldn't hear her. One by one, red and black dots subsumed his vision and the room gave a sickening lurch; the tiny portion of the window he could still see began to drift to the left as his legs failed him.
The next thing he knew, he was sitting on the edge of the bed with Rachel's hand forcing his head between his knees. Blood was meandering thickly from both of his nostrils and dripping between his thighs to blossom slowly through the rug.
"Nico, can you hear me?" Rachel was asking, over and over again, her voice rising in pitch each time she asked it.
"Loud and clear," Nico finally managed, although in reality the roaring in his ears had been replaced by the dull ring of chipped crystal, distorting Rachel's voice.
"Oh thank God," Rachel said.
"Gods," Nico corrected. "Plural. What are you, new?"
"What that really necessary?" Rachel demanded, her nostrils flaring as she ripped a couple of tissues out of the box on the nightstand and shoved them under Nico's face to stem the tide of blood.
"Reminding the Oracle of freaking Delphi about the whole Olympians situation?" Nico asked thickly, trying not to breathe in the blood as he took the tissues from her. "I'd say so, yeah."
Rachel's eyes narrowed dangerously. "Not that," she said. "You know what I meant: trying to kill yourself by getting out of bed. I told you, you're in no shape to be doing anything."
Nico didn't answer, trying to pinch his nosebleed into oblivion instead as Rachel swung his legs back into bed and got him settled in a seated position again. Eventually, the flow of blood stopped and the carousel ride the room had been on began to grind to a halt.
Rachel sighed. "I'm sorry, Nico. I didn't mean to poke at something you want left alone. It's just… you can talk to me, you know? Especially me. I get it."
Nico's heart sank. His passing out into Rachel's arms had proved only a temporary distraction for her. Apparently, she was still on her mission drag things up kicking and screaming that he wanted left alone. He dropped the bloodied tissues down onto the bed and began shredding them; in places, they were so soaked it was easy and they just fell apart.
When he was done reducing the tissues to confetti, he actually managed two halfway-decent fists this time and his body almost sagged in the relief of feeling the bite of his nails in his palms. The next time he spoke, he was surprised to find his voice thick with emotion. "Why are you doing this to me?" he asked, squeezing his nails deeper into his arms and desperately looking anywhere but Rachel. "What do you want me to say?"
There was nowhere to hide anymore. He couldn't get out of bed, he couldn't shadow travel away. When Jason had been pressing the issue at Notus' palace, the panic and resentment it induced had been enough to incite him to tug the freaking undead out of the ground. Nico stopped because he saw that he'd terrified Jason by doing that, and Jason had kept his secret, after all, but at least he felt like he was reacting in some way to the invasion of privacy. Now, he could do nothing but feel and listen to every word, not even able to muster up enough juice to raise a pinky toe from the other side.
"Look, I don't want you to say anything you don't want to say," Rachel said. She still hadn't sat down and was doing that hovering thing again at his bedside. "Honestly, I don't. But whatever you're going through, Nico, it isn't as bad as you think. It's okay to—"
"It's okay to what?" Nico snapped, cutting Rachel off partly because the panic her words were creating was stopping him breathing but also because he wasn't sure he could stand to hear anyone speak the words aloud.
Rachel pressed her lips together; the pity in her look was almost palpable. She gave a small sigh and walked over to the window, leaning against the wall next to it and looking out through the sliver the blackout shade left uncovered. It was a while before she spoke again.
"I kissed Percy, once," she said eventually, not looking at Nico but gazing far off into the distance in a way that showed she was seeing none of the Camp spread out beyond the window. She took her hair out of her bun, shaking it across her shoulders, and began to gather it back up into a ponytail.
Nico blinked at her, startled by both her change in direction and her admission. "You… what? Huh? When?"
"It feels like a really long time ago," Rachel said, twirling a strand of hair absently around her finger, as if it needed any more excuse to curl. "So stupid, because it's not. But so much has changed since then. Percy… he's changed. I've changed. I'm the freaking Oracle now."
"When did he kiss you?" Nico found himself demanding, the bitter burn of envy rising in his chest the same way it did whenever he saw Percy and Annabeth together.
Rachel smiled sadly and turned to face him. The shaft of light piercing the room left one side of her face in shadow while the other was brilliantly illuminated. The lighting and the wry, wistfulness of her expression made her look so much older than seventeen.
"I didn't say he kissed me," she corrected. "I said I kissed him. And it feels like a million years ago now, just before he went with Beckendorf to destroy the Princess Andromeda. You know,I always found it kind of ironic that Percy destroyed a ship named after a woman the actual Perseus ended up marrying after he saved her. But then, I guess, the boat and the real Andromeda both got rescued from monsters, just in a different way." Her face darkened. "Sometimes, being saved doesn't mean surviving. Not all of you, anyway."
The weight of that settled on the room, quenching the burn of envy in Nico's chest. Rachel was hugging herself despite the heat, suddenly feeling like one of the last people on the planet.
"You really kissed him?" Nico asked eventually. "You actually kissed Percy?"
Rachel sighed and nodded, crossing the room to sink back down gratefully into the stream of air coming out of the fan. "I did," she said. "Once upon a time. Only the gods know why. And no, before you ask, he didn't kiss me back. At least, not really. Not in a way that told me he really meant it. And hey, that's fine. He had Annabeth. Has Annabeth. I get that. And honestly, I'm just glad that he's happy. If… if he can't kiss me back and if I have to be the Oracle, then second best is seeing him happy."
Nico mulled that over in his mind for a while, letting the news sink in.
"I think… I think I'll always be a little bit in love with Percy," Rachel said, staring into the blur of the fan's blades.
"You're in love with Percy?" Nico echoed, not really as a question but more just so he could hear it again. He had no idea he would wake up in such likeminded company.
Again, Rachel nodded. Her gaze at the fan was wistful and she was fingering absently at an imaginary necklace. "I don't think I've ever said that aloud, but yeah. How could you not be?" She shifted in her seat to hide her throat bobbing up and down. She gave a little cough to loosen up the hoarseness that had crept into her voice. "Unless you were blind or stupid or… I don't know. He's brave, funny, good with a sword, and you look into those ridiculous eyes of his and you just think… he's a hero. He's just Percy, you know?" She gave a small shrug. "I don't see how you can get away with not being drawn in."
Nico's heart stuttered as Rachel laid herself bare before him, mostly because that was pretty much exactly how he would look if he actually had the courage to do what she had. But it was different for her, because she was a girl, and girls were meant to like guys, whereas he… Yeah. No excuses.
"But it doesn't matter," Rachel said, wresting her gaze away from the fan and filling her voice with a faux-brightness. She folded her hands in her lap and sat up, drawing her shoulders back. "It doesn't matter because Percy has Annabeth, and they have their picture right next to the word star-crossed in the dictionary. And it doesn't matter because I'm the Oracle now, and I don't get to go around lip-locking guys on the beach, no matter how much I like them and how pretty the sunset is."
Nico looked at her, his forehead creasing. "You don't think it's unfair?" he asked. "You don't feel that… I don't know. You don't feel that it's just not fair that… stuff happened the way they did?"
Rachel laughed hollowly. "Nico, I thought that you, of all people, would know that life's not fair. But it's just about fairer than death, and that's pretty much all we get, so cling onto that as tight as you can, got it? It's not about what's fair. It's not about what you think you deserve. It's just about making the most of what you have and learning to be happy with that."
Nico swallowed. "How do I… I mean, how do you… how?"
"When I figure it out, you'll be the first person I tell," Rachel promised him, a rueful smile passing across her face like the weakest rays of winter sunshine peeking out from swathes of cloud before being swallowed again as her face fell. "I'm sorry to be so depressing. I don't mean to be. It's just that I don't know what else to do apart from pulling myself together and getting on with things. So when I find the magic cure, we can take it together. Until then..." She drew in a deep breath and let it out as a long sigh.
"What?" Nico asked. He was leaning towards her now, desperate for any kind of insight that would get him through this.
"I'm sorry, Nico, I don't think I'm making myself very clear," Rachel said, shaking her head. "Mostly because I'm being selfish and getting sidetracked thinking about my own problems. Pity part for one right here. I spend too much time trying to be happy with the cards I got dealt. Usually, I'm happy that things ended up the way they did. I was meant to be the Oracle. But I have my bad days. Anyway, this is about you. For you, just… it's okay to be who you are, okay?"
Nico stiffened. "What's that supposed to mean?" he asked, his fingers involuntary tightening on the bedspread.
Rachel reached out to place her hands on top of Nico's, but he whipped them away and folded his arms so they were firmly trapped out of her reach. She withdrew her hands and held them up in a weary gesture of surrender.
"I'm not going to put words in your mouth," Rachel said. "They are for you to say, how you want to, when you want to say them. It's up to you who you share him with as well. If you don't want to say anything to me then that's fine. I get that. But… I really do know what you're going through. You can talk to me if you want to."
A sob rose in Nico's throat and he wished he could just black out on command, or the bed would swallow him up. He shook his head from side to side, hard enough to whip tears that had started forming from his eyes. His heart was thudding in his chest. "I don't want there to be anything to talk about," Nico said. "I just want to be normal." His voice broke on the word and it croaked into oblivion.
"You are normal," Rachel said fiercely. Even in the gloom, Nico could see her eyes flash. "Who told you that you weren't normal?"
Nico shrugged with one shoulder tiredly. "I don't know. No one. They don't have to say anything. I know." He looked up at her; she was blurred through tears. "How… how did you know that I was… that I'm…" He couldn't make himself say it. "How did you know that I liked Percy?"
Rachel sighed. "Nico, if we grew you up a bit and slapped a red wig on you, it would be like looking in a mirror," she said. "I might not be around very much, and neither are you, for that matter, but I've seen the way you look at Percy. And if there's one thing I'm pretty much an expert at, it's sneaking looks at Percy. I can't pass trig but I do enough mooning to know it when I see it in someone else."
Nico nodded, accepting that. Mostly because he thought that it meant that no one else might have noticed. Unless, of course, they felt the same way. The thought made him queasy.
"At least you have a shot with Percy," Nico said bitterly. "At least you're, you know, Percy's type. I don't stand a chance."
Rachel ducked her head suddenly, as if reeling from a blow. It caused a coil of hair to fall in her face and she tucked it back behind her ear before she spoke. "Nico, I'm the Oracle," she said quietly. "Don't you think that I'd know if I were in the running? I'm not. I never have been. Percabeth forever. And don't get me wrong, I'm happy for them both, so happy, but I've got no more of a chance than you. And I know that for a fact. Percy plunged into Tartarus after her; how am I meant to compete with that, even if I weren't the Oracle? And, more importantly, why would I want to compete with that? They are great together. They make each other so happy."
"Oh," Nico said. The word rang hollow, an external expression of the emptiness Rachel's words had carved out inside him. Percy and Annabeth were a permanent fixture. "Okay. So Percy and Annabeth, they're…?"
Rachel gave a small shrug. "Destined. Fated. Star-crossed. Predesigned. Foreordained. Decreed. Written in the stars—"
"Okay, I got it," Nico said. "Jeez. How many words do you know for that, anyway?"
"All of them," Rachel said grimly. "It came with the Oracle software upgrade. That and a bunch of other glitches. And look, here we are talking about me again. That's so not the point."
Nico shook his head. "No, it's okay. I like… I mean, it doesn't suck to know this stuff. At least I'm not… you know. Alone." He paused. "So what do we do then, we just…"
Rachel smiled sadly. "We just be happy that Percy is happy," she said. "When you care about someone enough, that's all you ever want for them." She paused. "And then occasionally, we be thankful that Percy looks damn good with his shirt off."
Nico snorted a laugh; it had surprised him and he quickly stifled it. The last thing he wanted to be thinking of was the way Percy looked shirtless, because that got too close to admitting the truth about himself. "What's wrong with me?" he asked miserably.
"Nothing it wrong with you," Rachel said. "Nico, you're not some defective toy. You're not broken. This is just who you are. That's like asking what's wrong with you because you're so pale and snarky."
Nico gave her a puzzled look. "I don't like the sun or people," Nico said. "That's why I'm those things."
"Exactly," Rachel said. "It's just part of who you are."
Nico had never really considered the idea that this might be something that was an inherent, important part of who he was rather than a humiliation he needed to get over. He let that churn in his mind for a while.
"Why me?" he asked eventually. "It just… I feel like there is something wrong. I feel like I'm being punished for all the bad crap I've pulled over the years."
"You think I don't feel that way every time I look at my hair?" Rachel demanded, reaching around and brandishing her ponytail at him. "I have red hair. And what's more, a bird could take up residence in it. Do you know how much mileage the girls at Clarion get out of this? But hey, I came out of the uterus like this. Just like you came out the way you are. And there is nothing wrong with either of us."
"You can dye you hair," Nico said. "You can cut it and have it straightened as well. This isn't something I can straighten away."
"No, but you could go and meet a woman and marry her and move to suburbia together and have a couple of kids and get a dog and drive a station wagon," Rachel said. "That doesn't change who you are underneath. Our roots will come through eventually. And besides, why should we have to change? The last time I checked, we were awesome."
That didn't raise a smile from Nico. Right now, he felt anything but awesome. "I keep thinking…" He closed his eyes ashamedly. "I can't stop thinking that this is my fault."
In that moment, Rachel suddenly realised why people said that their hearts broke. It felt like her heart had turned to glass and had dashed itself to pieces on her sternum, and shards of it were trickling down through her chest cavity. Nico's admission was just wrong on so many levels. No one should feel like that about themselves and it was painful to see someone so intent to hate and blame themselves for simply being who they were.
"Look at me," Rachel said. "Nico, look at me." He wouldn't meet her eyes, just shook his head and stared down at the bed. She saw a tear plunge from his face and wink into oblivion on the bedspread. It was enough to make her lunge forward and grab his arm before he had chance to react. "I am not leaving this room until you look at me," she said. "I don't care how long it takes. I've got nothing better to do. Don't underestimate me."
With his face mostly hidden by hair, Nico eventually dragged his eyes up to meet Rachel's.
"Good," Rachel said. "Now I've got your attention you listen hard and you listen good. There is nothing wrong with you. You are fine. You are who you are and there is no one out there in Camp who won't accept that. And even if there were, then I and a whole bunch of other people would kick their asses. The only person left to accept it is you. And what's more, this is not your fault, Nico. Don't think that. This isn't because you're a bad person, or because the gods want to punish you. It's just the way you are. Period. Don't beat yourself up over this. You can't be against yourself for the rest of your life."
"They already hate me," Nico said in a low voice. "That see that I'm a child of the Underworld and they already don't want to go anywhere near me. Add this on top and I might as well be radioactive. Clear a ten mile radius, he's contaminated."
"How do you think they feel about the Oracle?" Rachel asked. "Sometimes, I see campers looking at me and it's like I've still got the blood of their friends on my hands. I send people to their deaths, Nico. The mummy Oracle before me did, too. They remember all the people who didn't come back and they look at me and see… you know, I don't know what they see. Whatever it is, it terrifies them. I come near and you can be sure there are people praying I'm not there for them. They find excuses, remember appointments, places they have to be. You're not the only one who can clear a room."
Nico had never noticed that Rachel was bothered by that before. He had had no idea how much she had taken it to heart.
"Their loss," he said quietly.
Rachel blinked. "What?" she asked. "Nico di Angelo, did you just say something nice to me?" She shoved him. "Me? A fellow human being?"
Nico's toes curled uncomfortably under the weight of all the blankets. "You're being nice to me," he said, staring down at his hands and shrugging. "Even though I don't—"
"Do you want another nosebleed?" Rachel demanded, cutting him off. "Because if you're about to say that you don't deserve it, I'm going to try out my right hook. You do deserve it. The things you've done to make sure the world keeps turning are almost unprecedented. You defeated Minos. You gave Percy invulnerability. You persuaded your father to fight back in the Battle of Manhattan. You went to Tartarus. You survived imprisonment in a jar. You dragged that stupid statue through only the gods know how many countries to halt an all-out war. You've done all those things and more. Everyone deserves human kindness but you have done more to deserve it than most, even if most of it has been backstage."
Nico swallowed. "Thank you," was all he could manage to say.
"Don't thank me," Rachel said. "It's not necessary."
"It is," Nico insisted. "It is because you're one of the only people who have ever… you know. I don't think anyone else gets it. Percy's tried to help me, he has, but he doesn't know the whole story. Anyway, guess I haven't given him many chances. I keep pushing him away and maybe he's tired of trying. It hurts to be around him. I want to be like you and be happy for him but all I can think about is how mad I am at him, and then I'm mad at myself for being mad at him, on top of being mad at myself for just liking him in the first place."
"Vicious circle," Rachel said, nodding. "You'll get there, Nico. You're a good person. Don't let anyone make you feel otherwise."
"I'll get there?" Nico repeated. He sounded far from certain. "Rachel… no one can know, okay? I'm not… I'm not ready for everyone to know."
"I meant what I said, Nico," Rachel said. "How you want to play this is entirely up for you. No one is going to hear anything from me. They're your words to say. It's not up to me to take that away from you. Although while we're keeping secrets, the whole I'm in love with Percy thing… that should probably stay in this room. I don't want to do that to him. Or Annabeth."
"Got it," Nico said. Suddenly, he felt incredibly tired and he gave a huge yawn. His entire conversation with Rachel had drained him dry and wrung him out. "Thank you."
"I told you, don't thank me," Rachel said. She began rearranging his pillows so that he could lie down again. "You need to rest."
Nico desperately wanted to protest that he wasn't a baby and could do it himself, but a wave of exhaustion smacked into him and it was all he could do to slump down on the newly arranged pillows as Rachel fussed around him with the blankets. Rachel crossed to the fire and stirred it up with the poker; it had died to embers over the course of their conversation. She tossed a couple of logs on from the basket for good measure.
"How long do I have to be in bed for?" Nico asked, although right now he wasn't about to volunteer to get out of it any time soon.
"As long as it takes," Rachel said. "Get some sleep. You earned it."
Rachel dusted the grit from the logs off her hands and walked over to the door, stopping to peer over her shoulder at the bed.
"I'm glad you told me," Rachel said. "I don't think you know how brave that makes you."
"I'm glad I told you, too," Nico said, although his voice was slurred and muffled by sleep already. "Night, Rachel."
"It's just after noon," Rachel said. "But sure. Night, Nico."
There was no reply. She opened the door and went out into the corridor, closing the door behind her and then leaning against it with her eyes closed. It wasn't enough to keep two tears from escaping and making a break for it down her cheeks. Her sob was stifled, transfigured into a sharp intake of breath, and she held her lip tightly between her teeth to try and hold in any more.
She had never told anyone that she was in love with Percy. Not even Percy knew the full extent of it, not really. He had totally bought her saying that they weren't meant to be that day she'd become the Oracle. It wasn't like she wanted anything to happen — she knew that nothing could, both in her heart and through the Oracle.
There was no way that she wanted to drive a wedge between Annabeth and Percy because they had only just found each other again, had only just survived Tartarus, and what was more they were just so damned happy. Who was she to break them apart? Why would she want to break them apart?
They were destined. Fated. Inevitable.
They were also her friends and as a friend she was happy that they were happy, she was, it was just… every now and then, she still felt like she'd been kicked in the chest by a horse.
Back in the room, she'd tried to be strong for Nico's sake because that was what he needed from her, but what he had told her had to be one of the saddest things she had ever heard. Not that he liked guys, because who cared, but just the way that he felt about it, the way that he felt about himself. He would kill her for thinking it, but poor Nico. As if he needed another bump in the road, another excuse to hate himself.
She looked up and straightened, squaring her shoulders and rubbing tears from her eyes. He wouldn't want her crying over him; he didn't need another reason to feel guilty for being who he was. What was more, she shouldn't be crying for herself, not after everything Nico was going through, which made her rough ride look smooth in comparison. It was just that everything Nico had said had resonated so hard with her it was like confronting those feelings in herself rather than anyone else.
"Damn you, Percy," Rachel muttered fondly. "You have no idea what you put people through, do you?"
He had no idea at all, Rachel reasoned, and that was part of his charm. She liked how oblivious he was, in a good way. It wasn't his fault that people were in knots over him, but…
Rachel sighed, then slapped her palms on her thighs purposefully. There was no good to be found in standing in a corridor thinking all day about things that, like scabs, should probably not be picked at. Not just yet, anyway. It had never done her any good in the past and it wasn't going to do her any good in the future.
She just wished Nico was in the same headspace as her. Maybe he would be one day, when he'd had as much practise at it as her and when he'd come to accept who he was.
Taking one last look back at the door and making up her mind to visit again in a couple of hours, and to bring him some food, she rolled down her tank top, readjusted the straps with her thumbs, and walked off down the corridor towards the stairs.
Places to go, people to see, visions to have, monsters to foil, Romans to appease, Mother Earth to lull back into slumber.
Compared to what Nico was going through and her own situation wedged in a one-sided love affair, it all sounded like a cakewalk.
For my grandmother who, when I came out of the closet about my political views, smacked me upside the head with her newspaper but, when I came out about my sexuality, didn't bat an eye.