"Hello, Nico.

How are you? I'm ok, more or less. After the defeat of Gea, readapting has been proved more difficult than I thought. All of us are trying to rebuild our lives, although it seems impossible. Annabeth is the worst: she has suffered too much things. First she was forced to cross the Mare Nostrum by her mother Athena, and to go to Rome to search the Athena Parthenos, and maybe she didn't care about dangers of the mission and she made her fight against who terrorized her most, Aracne. Then, as you know, we fell in the Tartarus. Anyway, you were right, that place is horrible, scaring and dangerous. I don't know how we could come out alive, maybe thanks to a divine miracle. Although the success of the mission, Annabeth suffer so much, she's afraid, and I don't know how I could help her.

We miss you, Nico. We miss to see your friendly face. Although you suffered and you've been hurt during the mission, and, yes, I know that it's selfish, but I'd like you to come back to the Halfblood Camp. I know you will like it, I'm sure. We will be together all the time, like at old times, maybe training with the sword or playing a match of Capture the Flag. And I think that I'm talking for all of us when I say that we wish you were here, with us. Even Leo miss you, and Hazel misses her brother, too.

Please, come back. We would be happy all togheter, and we would come back to a life relatively normal. You're my friends. I know you have suffered, but, please, don't isolate yourself, don't be close.

I hope we'll see you soon, at the Halfblood Campo, and that you're good.

Bye.

Percy

After he had read the letter, Nico felt an heart pang. He crumpled up that paper that brought only pain and unhappiness. Percy had written "You're my friend", and he could almost hear his voice while he said it. Immediately Nico felt the pain of the regret, and he opened the letter again, smoothing it with his hands, he was trying to smooth the creases of the paper, as if it was more important than his life itself. And it was.

That routine had gone ahead since almost two weeks. Two weeks spent meditating about the difficult of the choice.
Nico didin't know what he had to do, he was confuse and sad. He didn't want to come back to the Camp. Before he wasn't already welcome, and now that he was forced to reveal his biggest secret by Eros, in front of Jason, too…No, I couldn't do it, he couldn't bear it.

To be clear, Nico was happy that everything was returning normal, more and less. Everybody was certainly destroyed for Frank's death, but Nico knew that the son of Mars was happy, in the Elysium, and he was eating barbecue's steaks. Beh, not so happy: he missed hazel.

And Hazel suffered for his absence. But it would have been worse for both. Nico knew it would happen. After all, Frank's live was linked to a little piece of charred wood. But he had preferred to tell nothing to Hazel, Nico knew that he would only have made the situation worse. Moreover his sister was an intelligent girl, maybe she had understood that. Nico knew that he would have been with her, but he could do nothing. He couldn't, he was scared.

But he was quiet, because he know that there was Leo with his sister, although he wasn't the most reliable boy of the world. I knew that he would have been next to her also for him, and that Leo wouldn't have left her alone.

Moreover Nico would have been happy. Now the Athena Parthenos has been recovered, and the Halfblood Camp and the Camp Jupiter could coexist without those Greeks and Romans would cut their throat. Gea and the giants had been defeated. And Octavian had been punished because he had tried to conduce a war against Greeks: besides he has been expelled from the Senate, he has been degraded from "augur" to "official cleaner of roman's latrines". Nico called them like this because he didn't know how Roman's latrines were called.

Nico would have been happy. Piper and Jason were a wonderful couple, everything was good for them. The same was for Annabeth and Percy. Obviously, the Tartarus experience had joined them more than before.

Nico would have been happy. But he wasn't. The world around him looks at him always dark, deep and empty. He knew that if he would come back to the Camp he would have seen his friends again, but he couldn't, and all for his own. Because he couldn't be himself.

And Nico hate himself for that. His "ego" forbade himself to tail his heart, to run to the Halfblood Camp with his arms opened, to see his friends again. But he knew that it would have been worse, he would have seen they together, every day, the teardrops would flowed on his face again, to make him weak. I couldn't see they together again, Annabeth and Percy. I couldn't, he didn't still have the strength.

Nico didin't know how his crush started, but he had his theories. Probably it started at the first time he met Percy, or maybe when his sister Bianca died. Nico was only a child, he was only ten, and he had already been scared and confused, because he was in a new age, totally different from his. He knew that his father had sent him and Bianca to Lotus Hotel to protect them, but the boy often regretted to come to that century, and to leave 1940. Maybe he wouldn't have met them, and he wouldn't have felt so bad, so alone in that big world. He remembered that day in a perfect and clear way. He still remembered the face of his sister Bianca, who made him feel so protected and loved, in a safe place, everywhere they were. He remembered Bianca, a shy girl that had used to hid herself in a big green hat, a girl that wouldn't have go out but she did it only for his little brother, Nico, a child that was joyful and scared at the same time, that played Mythomagic as all of others like him.

When he knew them, Nico couldn't believe it. They had become his heroes. He still remembered his euphoria when he discovered that gods and monsters of his amazing game, with figurines and all other things, were real. After that Annabeth had been kidnapped by a monster, and they had been safed by Zoe and Arthemides. Bianca became an Hunter of Arthemides. And Nico felt cheat and leaved by her, his only point of reference. Just after that he understood that his sister couldn't bear the responsibility about him.

Maybe the thing started in that moment. Or maybe at Bianca's death, after all, it was a good theory. When Percy told him that Bianca had died to take a little statue of his favorite game, Nico died into. And he was alone, without someone that considered him or that took care of that scared child who was ten. Maybe all started for all of those things. The loneliness and to miss his sister made him to hate and after that to become fond to the first available person, one that inspire to him more protection than others.

Maybe it was the reason for Nico suffered so much. Gods are punishing him because he caused the death of Bianca? It was the reason for he felt a strong pain at his chest every time he saw those two togheter?

Because Nico couldn't deny to himself that he have felt in love with Percy Jackson.