Clocks
Prologue
They say people never heal from the deep scars caused by life-changing, and at times, life-threatening events. Sometimes, they manage to forget, but that's temporary. These elements of the past will come back, maybe in the form of dreams, or a whispering voice at the back of your head that just won't shut up about how you could've done something. In a situation that in maybe you were helpless.
A child, too naive to the world around to notice that something was wrong. A silent, struggling spectator. A screaming protester held back by thousands of hands to be rendered useless to the situation. A tiny voice amidst a thousand, much crueler tones. Even a warrior who turned a second too late just to collapse. In all these instances, a human is practically one word - helpless.
But to this, the main character of this story would highly protest to. Maybe it's because he's not exactly human. However, in any case, he was just a clueless kid back then.
Why does this happen, is the question pushed forward by thousands of grieving souls. Why?
Perhaps it's Fate that puts us in these situations. Maybe it's Fate that gives you all the bad luck ever possible in the world, or all the tricky instances that even a wormhole out can't save you from.
If you've had such experiences that make you want to recoil in shame, or toss an explosive across the room to make the memory somehow explode from memory, you'll know what the young man in this story feels all too well. If not, well, now you'll know.
And this man? His name is Nico di Angelo.
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I
A cold breeze ripped through the early skies of Camp Half-Blood. Even though it was three twenty-six in the morning when everyone should be sleeping, there sat one lone bird, wide awake of course, on the window sill of the thirteenth cabin.
It chirped curiously, peering in to the window, possibly searching for what the peculiar structure was for. The window was foggy,musty; like it hadn't been cleaned, or used, for years. It's big, shiny, black eyes almost squinted a bit, trying to see through the haze, but all it could see was the onyx color of the blackbird spreading throughout the expanse inside.
In present time, we have a word for this kind of place. We call it, 'deserted'.
Obviously, the bird knew, but it didn't know the word for the chilling feel of being alone in front of a dark building that possibly contained no life like his. A sparrow like it wasn't meant to.
A sudden flash of movement, seemingly unnoticeable, but there to the bird's keen gaze. It chirped in surprise, instinctively jumping off the ledge and flapping its wings.
Then all of a sudden, a pair of glowing, brown embers stared into its eyes from the musty surface of that window. Alarmed, the sparrow scrambled down, and managed to fly away fast enough from the impending danger towards the groups of trees nearby.
A pale, ghostly hand began to rub the other side of the window, revealing a face that was equally white and cloaked with exhaustion. Smudged eyeliner around eyes that seemed too old for their owner, dark unkempt hair, and a gaunt frame could be seen from the tiny, clean oval he had made with his palm on the window. Not a spotless window quite yet, but close.
He sat on the only slightly clean bed in the entire cabin; the rest were all perfectly kept and untouched, but covered in so much dust that it would probably make the garden nymphs jealous. He had no use for them because he didn't hang around much in Camp anyway, and nor did his only half-siblings or anyone around bother to check up on the Hades cabin. Typical.
He'd slept for exactly fifteen hours, he noted as he stood up again and stretched, wincing when he heard the bones shift a bit. Needless to say, Nico had absolutely no interaction with the outside world the entire time he solemnly existed at the Camp, except when he saw that sparrow on his windowsill that wasn't shutting up earlier. Nico was glad it flew off. It was driving him nuts.
Glancing at the big grandfather clock on the opposite side, he groaned out loud.
Silence rang out through the room, broken by an angry kick to the bedpost. Nico finally said something in a week.
"My sleeping schedule is fucked."
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II
His hair wouldn't fix itself no matter how hard he tried.
Nico threw the comb across the bathroom, right into the bathtub. Stupid piece of plastic couldn't do its job.
Turning back to the looking glass, he glared at his disheveled appearance. Did he look like he'd been sleeping for the day? No, it seemed that he'd stayed awake for a week, with the size of the black bags under his eyes and hair that seemed like they had been through hell and back, not him.
He couldn't even see clearly thanks to the wonderful convenience of the electricity being out for a while, or basically, for the whole time the rest of the demigod camp lay asleep. Nico wished he hadn't woken up when he had, but he was pinning this on the bird that kept tweeting its head off on the window, like that was going to make things better for it at the time. Waking up to that was not a pleasant experience.
The moon from the window across the open bathroom door somehow managed to lighten up a bit of his face, but all he could see were his gaunt cheeks and now angry expression. Nico needed to punch something, anything, but fast. Land mines did need space to explode, after all.
After contemplating over not combing his hair for another hour or doing it, he brushed his teeth, managed to take a shower under the freezing cold water, and picking the latter, the son of Hades went to his desk and sat down in the black chair, and slumped over a blank sheet of paper with a pencil firmly between his fingers.
Sketching had always been a sort of escape for him, one could say. Nico found it easier to just draw his nightmares rather than sitting and thinking about their meaning for hours and giving himself a migraine. Once again, eyes squeezed shut for majority of the time, his pencil moved over the paper, outlining faces. Faces he wished he could never see again, be it this life or the next.
He folded up the paper and opened the creaky drawer under his table and slid it inside, shutting it with a soft thump. Taking another plain sheet, Nico drew eyes. He saw them sometimes, peering at him through the dark and somehow making everything go to mode ultra-bright.
Nico rolled his own. These green orbs showed up as quick as the Flash could whenever things got unbearable. That happened a lot, in his dreams at least.
Real life was a trifle... different. The owner of these eyes hadn't been met by Nico for centuries, practically. Well, maybe 'centuries' is too harsh a word, but it sure felt like it. He didn't know what was happening in Camp anyway, always cooped like a chicken in his cabin, and frankly, he didn't really care.
The pencil very conveniently snapped its tip into two, and he groaned again for the third time that time, throwing into the desk drawer with the half-finished drawing and banging it shut. Just as if on cue, he stood up and kicked the wall, perfectly in beat. Sharpeners were somehow not available anywhere, no matter where he went, and because his dad was a moron at times he wouldn't give Nico one, no matter how many chores he did for Persephone and no matter how many flowers he bought her.
Nico fell back into his bed, coughing when the dust flew into the air from the top bunk down to where he was.
He really had to do some serious cleaning.
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III
While our favorite son of the Underworld was trying to get dust off blankets, another hero stood in front of a huge pyre, watching the flames lick the sky like a hungry dog. His eyes were misty; distant, and more like a doll's. Although the he was far from a doll, Jason Grace would remind someone of their childhood days with those toys with the huge eyes which seemed to sparkle with a strange light.
A common person would ask, 'why the fire?' To which Jason's reply would probably be a silent, unreadable look, and then more silence, followed by more questions in that person's head. That person, very unluckily, happened to be Leo Valdez, whose face could literally be the definition of a question mark.
"What the Hades are you up to, man?" When he received no reply, Leo sighed. "Look. I know it's been hard, and-"
"You don't know shit," Jason said quietly, anger lacing his tone as he turned to face the other boy, a storm brewing in his already grief-stricken eyes. "I watched it happen. You weren't there." He breathed in heavily, and continued watching the pyre.
Leo didn't say anything after that.
He watched the flames grow higher, the plumes of smoke shading the stars that were seemingly stagnant. No hope, or no wishes today, he thought sullenly.
"You know," Jason said suddenly, startling Leo out of his stupor, "she talked about you sometimes." A bitter chuckle forced its way out of the son of Zeus' mouth. "Said she thought you were the most insufferable yet the smartest kid she'd met in a while. She was the most worried about you, when you went... missing." The other boy stayed silent, feeling a bit lighter with the words.
"Thought she'd want you to know," Jason finally said.
Leo nodded.
It stayed silent after that.
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IV
A dark shadow fell upon the cowering figure on the floor. A voice, sort of like prickling needles shrieked, "You have failed me! Again! I asked you to kill that bastard! What did you-"
"I'm sorry! I'll go try again-"
"DO NOT INTERRUPT ME PEASANT!" The figure flinched back at the tone.
The robed person dragged a hand across their face. "I gave you one job- oh, you know what?" A slow, evil grin appeared, scarier than a Fury.
"The imbecile deserves a punishment worse than death itself. If we can't kill them," they clasped both their hands together, "we do everything worse than that. And I know exactly what to do."
