here it is! the third installment! the final? we'll see. thanks in advance to everyone who's been reading these fics. this one has a lot going on and a lot of words. posting it now because i'm impatient and things have finally come together for this fic.

Midnight. The only noises in Cabin 11 were the sounds of breathing and people rolling over. Almost everyone was asleep. One boy was awake.

Nico di Angelo, newly discovered demigod, lay in a borrowed sleeping bag. He clutched a Mythomagic figure in his hand: Morpheus, god of sleep and dreaming. Currently, his prayers were going unanswered. No matter how hard he tried, he couldn't lie still. The day's earlier activities should've tired him out. They had a snowball fight. A bigger kid from the Ares cabin had stuffed snow down his shirt.

Normally when he couldn't sleep, he went to Bianca, but she was gone. Nico didn't know when she would be coming back. He held the Morpheus figurine tighter. The sooner the quest was over, the better. Percy would be back, too. He hoped that they wouldn't be too long.

Now that Bianca was a Hunter of Artemis, maybe she wouldn't have time to coax her little brother back to sleep anymore. They said that the Hunters traveled a lot. Which meant she would leave again. Nico would be lying if he didn't admit that he was a little mad at her. When she returned, he would try to convince her to stay.

For the moment, he needed to figure out how to get to sleep. It was annoying, being the only one awake. He didn't have anything to do. Nico sat up. The Hermes cabin was crowded. Not only were all the bunks full, but the floor was covered in prone bodies. It would be hard to sneak out. He didn't want to go alone anyway.

Nico put the Morpheus figure aside and climbed out of the sleeping bag. He carefully stepped over two campers on his way to the Stolls' bunks. Connor was passed out on the bottom bed, one arm dangling. Nico tapped his shoulder.

Connor came to instantly. It startled Nico. He hadn't expected him to be a light sleeper. Connor stared at Nico for what felt like a full minute before whispering, "Can't sleep?"

Nico nodded.

"Good. Me neither." Connor sat up. Even at thirteen, he was tall and long-limbed. He swung his legs out of bed. "Let's go down to the beach."

"Won't we get in trouble?"

"I do it all the time. It's no big deal. If someone catches us, we'll just split up and meet back here. Capiche?"

"Sì," Nico said, on reflex.

They crept past the rest of the Cabin 11 campers. It was cold outside, but not horribly so. The weather, Nico had learned, was always perfect at Camp Half Blood. Connor headed off in the direction of Long Island sound, his sneakers crunching in the hardened snow. It would either be refreshed or melted by tomorrow. Everyone was hoping for more.

At night, the water looked black. Nico hoped Connor wasn't going to talk him into swimming. Connor and Travis had tried to talk him into a lot of things. He'd managed to get out of most of them. Luckily, Connor was more interested in stirring the mixture of snow and sand with his foot, forming swirls and tiny mounds.

"What's keeping you up?" he asked.

"I don't know."

"Nightmares? Anxiety? You don't have to hide anything from me, kid."

"You're a kid, too," Nico pointed out.

Connor shook his head, a smug grin on his face. "I'm a teenager. You're still a shrimp. I mean that in the best possible way. What's the matter?"

Nico sighed. He crouched and started gathering sand into a heap. It was cold. "When is Bianca going to come back?"

"Wish I could tell you, but I have no clue. You just gotta wait."

"But she might never come back." Nico squeezed the sand in his fists. He let it hiss through his fingers, then picked up more and did it again. "She joined those stupid Hunters of Artemis. What if she gets back from the quest and leaves me here?"

"Do you want me to lie to you or do you want me to give it to you straight?"

Nico looked up at Connor. He could never tell when the Stolls were being serious. Connor's eyes said one thing, but the quirk of his mouth said another. Nico was learning that it was good to be suspicious. Anyone could be trying to take advantage of his weaknesses.

"Tell me the truth," he said slowly.

"Sometimes people change. They do things that surprise you. Sometimes people leave." Connor shrugged. "If your sister goes with the Hunters, she goes with the Hunters. It doesn't mean she loves you any less. She probably wants you to be happy."

"I…" Nico was going to say that he couldn't be happy with her abandoning him when he realized that he was happy. Camp was the greatest thing that had ever happened to him. The past couple of days in particular had been wonderful. He was scared that one day he'd wake up and find out the whole thing was a dream.

"Are you happy here, Nico?" Connor asked. He rested his hand on Nico's head. It was a comforting weight.

Nico looked at the sand. Then he met Connor's eyes. "Yes."

"Good." Connor ruffled Nico's hair. "Bianca is going to be really jealous when she sees us again. She can't keep you all to herself anymore. One big happy family."

"Yeah," Nico agreed.

Connor yawned. "Alright, bedtime. I'm beat." He put an arm around Nico's shoulders and guided him back toward the cabins. "If you want, I can tell you stories until you fall asleep."

"I'm not a baby!" He was lying about not being able to sleep.

"Never said you were. Did you hear the one about Hercules and the moon men?"

"That didn't happen."

"Of course not, it's a story. So there were these moon men…"

Nico ended up drifting off to the sound of Connor's whispered ramblings. He never got to the end of the story. And he never saw his sister alive again.

note: "hercules against the moon men" is a real actual italian film you can watch, but i don't recommend doing so without the mst3k crew.