Author's Note: Hey there.
Remember how in Blood Of Olympus Nico talked about leaving the camp after the giant war and Will got unusually angry? That made me think of something- even though Will had never been on Nico's mind before, Will had thought of Nico. That connection they had? It didn't come out of absolutely nowhere.
Solangelo is canon now (yay), but I want to look back. I want to find out when and what Will first thought of Nico, and I want to build on that. Hence this story.
The story is set after the titan war, and is told from Will's POV. It will probably be a few chapters, four/five at most. How often I update will depend mostly on the feedback I get; so dear reader, please let me know what you think.
Thank you, and enjoy. :)
Disclaimer: I don't own the characters (except one)
You almost wouldn't notice him.
I almost didn't.
Us campers were in the middle of the fourth or fifth song- the campfire singalongs- and were still going strong. The mood was high in general. We had just won the titan war; and yes, we lost friends, family, people we loved but for the first time in months we were free from the sense of impending doom that there had been no escaping from. For now, that was enough for us. It had to be.
We sang about grandma going to war, shouting at the top of our lungs, making the campfire glow bright orange, its flames licking the air ten feet above. My eyes wandered as I sang, and there he was.
Sitting in the shadows. Hugging his knees. Not even trying to join in. His face appearing ghostly in the faint flickering light.
'Ghostly' probably hit too close to home. Nico Di Angelo was a child of the underworld, a son of Hades; and had the awesome and terrifying power of summoning ghost warriors to his aid in a fight. The campers who witnessed him fighting along with his father at the battle of Manhattan, summoning undead soldiers in huge numbers, were still in awe.
But with awe came unease. There hadn't been a child of Hades at the camp before Nico. There hadn't even been a Hades cabin until a few days ago when Nico built one with help from his dead minions. A Hades kid was an unfamiliar concept to most, and while Nico was definitely an ally nobody was completely sure what to make of him. That much power over death tended to scare people. There were whispered questions about where he had been after he disappeared from camp for the first time (I wasn't here then), how he survived. There were rumors about him having shady connections. The way he could melt in the shadows made people uncomfortable. Also, Nico wasn't even from this century, which just added to the confusion.
As I looked at Nico sitting away from everyone, alone and completely unenthusiastic, I had conflicted feelings.
On one hand, I thought he wasn't helping matters. At all.
People talk. That's what they do. Even here in the camp, where we were all demigods- siblings or friends, fighters and soldiers together, caught up in this bizarre in-between reality of the regular and the mythical- we weren't free of those small problems. Pettiness, careless and mindless comments, filling in gaps with own judgmental views. That's life everywhere. But for every one person acting hurtful, there were ten people willing to be kind, open and friendly to Nico; and I felt he could never see them. People feared what they didn't understand, and he seemed extremely unwilling to give anyone a chance.
On the other hand, I felt sympathy. I heard he lost his only family- an elder sister right after coming to camp, and that's why he'd run away. He was a powerful demigod, being a child of one of the Big Three, and power attracted danger in our world. Surviving alone couldn't have been easy. Apparently, he'd spent a lot of time exploring down in the Daedalus' labyrinth (which is now gone), and that labyrinth was a monster itself. How he managed not to die I didn't know.
And the few times I happened to be near him, I sensed a deep exhaustion within. I am a son of Apollo, and healing was my area of expertise. I could tell that sort of thing. Nico Di Angelo put on a brave face, but he was holding it together with significant difficulty. And there was also a strange cautiousness, a quick hostility under his surface that surprised me. Did it really have to be that hard?
I realized the song was over. Two of my siblings put down their guitars- tired of playing for five songs straight. Austin cracked his knuckles. Seth turned to me and said, 'Hey. Do I have cabin cleanup duty tomorrow or the day after? I forget'.
'Huh?' Well, sometimes I forget that I'm head counselor now. Michael not being here…I'm still processing that. 'Tomorrow, Seth.'
He groaned. 'Oh, man.', then he yawned. I yawned right along with him. Between counselor duties and working at the infirmary- a lot of us were still recovering from war injuries- I didn't get a lot of rest.
Campers were scattering now, leaving for the cabins, the lakeside, wherever. I glanced at Nico's direction, but he wasn't there. Silently disappeared, like he could so well.
As I walked to cabin seven with Seth, arranging and rearranging my schedule for tomorrow in my mind, I made a mental note to go up and talk to Nico Di Angelo when I could. It looked like he could use a new friend. And if he was finding it so difficult to extend a hand, maybe it would be easier for him to accept one instead.