A/N: Thanks so much everyone for reviewing last chapter! So awesome, I recognise so many names and I love you all!
And...ahem... I, erm, apologise for the last chapter. I should have probably given a bit of warning for that so, um... sorry for the feels *sheepishly hands over one or seven band-aids*. Might want to use them a little for this chapter too. I haven't killed anyone off, I swear, but...
Chapter 2: Breaking
The hospital was bright. It was white, and bright, and it smelled of chemicals.
That was all Nico registered when he shadowed directly into its walls. It was all he had time to discern, all that his weary mind could register as he staggered towards the desk of the emergency room with Will slung across his shoulders.
He didn't hear exactly what the startled young receptionist asked. He didn't really care about the specifics. She blinked in surprise before blanking into professional efficiency as she called out for what he assumed was assistance over her shoulder. Nico was panting heavily. His legs trembled under the strain of holding both himself and Will off the ground. He hurt, but it was a secondary concern, he was dizzy and his vision blacked out every few seconds from the shadow travel that had been just one too many that day, but it didn't matter. Nothing mattered but…
"Please help him," he croaked to anyone, to everyone. He just hoped that his voice was loud enough to be heard.
Nico didn't know why he'd taken them to a hospital rather than the infirmary at Camp Half-Blood. Maybe it was panic that had driven him, or a passing memory of the hospital he'd visited numerous times alongside will as he stopped by to see his mother. Naomi Solace was a doctor – the best doctor. Surely if anyone could help, could fix what had happened, what was wrong, what could go wrong with a head injury that spewed forth that much blood, it would be her.
He nearly lost it when Will was pried from his grasp. Spinning and nearly falling, only maintaining his feet as a faceless nurse steadied him, Nico whipped his head around in terror as his blurry eyes fastened on Will being lifted onto a gurney. He was nearly hidden entirely from view by the ring of orderlies around him, then he physically was when they set off at a near-run from the waiting room, Will trundling along between them.
Nico released a hoarse cry, wrenching himself from the steadying nurse's grasp and making after him. He lurched across the room, a moan that was more of a sob, a whimper, tumbling from his lips as he stumbled in the gurney's wake. Only to have his way bared by the double doors that snapped shut behind the orderlies, stealing Will from his sight. The doors that clicked and fastened, locking to anyone who wasn't authorised beyond. The rectangle of glass window at head height taunted Nico with the barest glimpse of the other side. Nico grabbed at the handle-less gate barring his passage, his fists pounding in terror and panic and insanity as much as desperate rage.
They didn't budge. They didn't even tremble beneath his strikes.
"Will," Nico cried, a pitiful sound even to his own ears that echoed like a mournful wail. Will, Will is gone, they've taken him away, oh Gods, they've taken him away where I can't get to him, I can't – I can't see… I won't know…
Sobs wracked through Nico, bodily shakes that rocked him and buckled his knees beneath him. In a sprawling collapse that had the nurse who had waited alongside him exclaiming in worry, he sunk to the hard, cold linoleum floor. A wash of tears unlike any Nico had experienced since his sister had died gushed forth. He curled forwards, arms wrapping around his stomach and head nearly touching the ground in his slump. Everything seemed to spill forth in an unending, unrestrainable torrent.
Will.
They'd taken him away. To fix him or just to hold him until he died Nico wasn't sure. And he wouldn't know. Nico wouldn't even know which it was until someone told him.
He hurt. His fingers hurt, and his legs moaned in protest at his twisted sitting. His ribs pained him every time he breathed and the welling bruise that had blossomed on his shoulder, the numerous cuts and gashes and scrapes and grazes, were all making themselves known. But all of it was nothing compared to the sheer debilitating ache in Nico's chest. The ache that chanted and cried for Will, that drew forth time and time again in stark clarity the image of his blood smeared face, of his unconscious expression that could have been dead but wasn't, it wasn't, Will couldn't be dead, not my Will…
A low keen rung through the room. It took Nico a detached moment to realise it came from him. He didn't care. For once he didn't care who heard him, who judged him for his weakness, for his display of grief, who frowned and sighed and complained that "couldn't he just stop already?" Nico was hurting and though his cries didn't help they may have just stopped him from sinking further, from being torn even more decisively apart. Just maybe.
He sat, crumpled and hunched before the doors of the ER of St. Soleil Public Hospital and poured out his grief, entirely ignoring the tentative hands of the nurse that stood beside him. Nico was terrified. He'd never been so terrified in his entire life. Before him rose his weakness, his greatest fear, and it was overwhelming him in a earth-shattering, nerve-shorting, disastrous explosion.
Percy had developed something of a fear for water after the quest that had taken them to Greece.
Thalia had always been strung into near hysterics by heights.
But Nico… Nico feared death. He feared death itself more than anything else in the world, more than monsters, more than pain or the darkness of nightmares that drove him into insomnia. Only it wasn't his own death that he feared the most. After Bianca…
This is why. This is the very reason. It really is too much, too painful, to get close to people. Not when they leave you in the end…
Nico was unfeeling. Unfeeling both physically and emotionally. Even as his gaze rested upon his fingers, their broken lengths bandaged by the doctor that had visited when he'd refused to move from the waiting room, Nico felt nothing but numbness. Numb and detached and faintly curious, though not quite enough for that curiosity to absorb his attention.
He didn't know how long he'd been sitting there for. Nico hadn't seen the nurse at the reception get up and leave during handover but they must have because the young woman he vaguely recalled from before was absent, replaced by a middle aged man with a shadow of a beard and kindly gaze that drew towards him far too often. That was about all that Nico noticed of him, though. Anything else remarkable about the man was overlooked as his focus fell inwards, drifting in the listless exhaustion that had arisen to replace the hysteria that had collapsed him to the floor when Will had been... taken away.
A doctor had come to see him. Or maybe it was a nurse, Nico wasn't sure. A short, plump woman with a clipboard and ballpoint pen was all he could recall of her after she'd left. She'd questioned him, asked him questions about Will and what had happened before snapping her attention from her questioning when she'd realised that Nico was injured too. Nico didn't care about that, about any of that. He didn't respond to either her questions or her urging to follow her lead to get himself looked at. He didn't think he could have spoken even had he wanted to. Nico just felt...
Empty.
Somehow he'd managed to seat himself on one of the uncomfortable, plastic chairs in the waiting room. Seat himself and remain seated, despite the insistent tugging of the woman - the nurse or the doctor or whoever she was - that attempted to urge him to follow her. She'd eventually ceased her efforts, speaking to one of her colleagues who had approached to help with words like "resistant" and "shock" and "can just patch him up. Nothing critical". They'd left him when their fiddling was done, giving him a plastic cup and a pair of pills that were supposed to relieve pain. Or at least they'd left him after sitting alongside him for several minutes or days and urging him to take the pills, murmuring that they'd make him feel better.
They wouldn't. Nothing could make him feel better. Why should he bother?
The endless time after that was lost in the depths of Nico's thoughts. In a torrent of self-loathing and terrified regret, of horrified what if's and rabid frustration, demanding what possible stupidity could have urged him to let Will be the one to face the Chimaera. It should have been Nico. It should have been him to have battled it, to have taken the blow if it had to fall or - or he should have been faster in killing the lesser monsters, he should have been better, done more –
He'd been too slow. And now Will... now Will was made to suffer for it.
There was the reliving of every second of the battle. The image of the frightened young demigods Nico had left behind that was smothered by the memory of Will lying broken and bleeding on the ground. And alongside that, drifting like a distant tune of background music...
"We will come for you, son of Hades. She has willed it be done. You have killed my brother, you with that sword of yours. We will come for you and just as you have destroyed that which she most loves, we shall destroy that which you hold most dear.
You can't escape from us..."
The words the Chimaera had whispered in the seconds before its was burst into dust, whispered in a voice that Nico hadn't even known it possessed, returned to his memory in his mindless, scathing retrospect. He could guess who the Chimaera's brother had been – it was a commonly known fact that the Nemean Lion was the sibling of the Chimaera – but 'she'… no, Nico fathomed that he could guess who 'she' was as well.
We shall destroy that which you hold most dear…
He had to close his eyes at the memory. Close them and squeeze them tightly shut. Not because he felt the urge to cry, for Nico doubted he'd ever have the strength or the tears enough to cry again after his eruption of unstoppable grief on the floor hours or days before. He had to close them to erase the torrent to images, of people, the endless list of those he did care about. Smiling faces and frowning faces, laughter and teasing and swordplay and questing. The precious moments of sitting beside one another in silence, or in idle, superficial conversation. Of being caught beneath an arm and drawn into an embrace, of Will's broad, radiant smile in the second before he leaned forwards for a kiss…
There were too many people. More than Nico had realised, and too many that he simply cared too much about. This person, this monster that apparently had affixed a target on his back… she would destroy those precious to him?
Nico detachedly contemplated that reality. Detachedly and unfeelingly, as he did with every thought that arose but for the distant guilt and reprimand and self-loathing. He knew it was bad, that he should worry, that it was really bad and he would have to do something, would have to protect those he cared about but… to do so, to really manage the utmost of such protection. Was he strong enough for that?
Nico wasn't sure. He wasn't sure he had a choice even if he wasn't. That reality hit him like a blow to his already aching gut, but he hardly felt that either.
He wasn't sure how long he'd been sitting in the waiting room when Naomi came for him. Not that it mattered, but some distant, passing thought pondered the useless consideration. At first Nico couldn't look at her. Not because of the guilt or shame but because he couldn't shake himself from his stupor immediately. Nico simply stared, eyes fastened upon the door Naomi had entered through unblinkingly, unshakeably. He couldn't draw his attention from the passage that Will had disappeared through for a bare second.
The touch of Naomi's hand finally drew him from his listlessness. Slowly, with a heaviness that almost made it painful to do so, he turned his head towards her. Like everything else in the room, Naomi's features, wreathed in her golden curls, were distorted, glowing slightly from the too-bright light overhead. Her expression, though discernible, was unreadable to him. She tilted her head slightly and her hand pressed gently upon Nico's at it rested in his lap.
"Nico," she murmured, quietly. It took a moment for the sound to actually register in Nico's mind, even as he heard it clearly enough. "Nico, it's alright."
Nico blinked up at her, not even attempting to make sense of her words. Alright? No, it wasn't alright. Nothing was alright because Will –
"Will's alright, Nico," Naomi continued just as gently. "He's asleep, but he's going to be alright. I've… we've seen to him. He's just resting now."
Nico would have shaken his head if he could have. If he cared to. Not alright, it could never be alright, not after what happened, there was no fixing –
"Would you like to come and see him?"
Not alright, never better, never fixable – Nico's mumbling thoughts whirred into background noise as Naomi's words slowly registered. Finally, with more effort than it should have taken, he blinked and focused upon her face. It was a struggle, piecing together the slight crease of worry in her brow, the weary heaviness of her eyes and the downturn of her lips that she attempted to reverse into a soothing smile only for it to slip back downturned once more moments later.
Nico couldn't speak. He wasn't sure if he even had a voice anymore; it might have been lost somewhere alongside his ability to really feel his feelings. But he nodded. Slowly and jerkily, a gesture that he knew the meaning of but didn't exactly make sense in that moment. Nico tried, though, because he knew it was what he should do.
Naomi attempted and failed to reverse the downturn of her lips once more before rising to her feet, hand slipping from Nico's. Nico rose like a puppet on strings after her and, without a backwards glance at the room he'd spent hours in, followed her through the doors that she beeped into opening with a flash of her badge. They clicked shut behind him with a hissing sigh.
White, bright, and smelling of chemicals. That was the sense that Nico revisited as he followed Naomi down the hallway, eyes trained upon the heels of her shoes and the hem of her white doctors coat. He noticed in his periphery the passing of other doctors and nurses, the occasional machine of wrapped cords and cables sitting idle in a corner, the standard issue picture and frame or the procedural description for fire drills, or chemical spills or directing to 2B or 3C. They passed doors, some open but most closed, and Nico didn't possess the care to look inside them.
Naomi walked with sure steps, certain in her route and uttering nothing more than a nod or a murmured word of greeting to her fellow workers that she passed them. She paused only once, at an elevator that seemed to take far too long to arrive, at which point she spared a glance over her shoulder and up at him as though to ascertain whether or not Nico still followed her. He had to wonder if she would have cared had he not.
The ward that they arrived in was quiet but for distant murmurs and the incessant, muted beeps of machines buried in the rooms they passed. Nico was alerted for the first time to the fact that it was night, or at least evening. The absence of visitors, of anyone but the skeleton staff of orderlies and nurses, should have registered to him sooner, but he it hadn't. Even that thought left his mind when Naomi paused outside a half-opened door into a dark room.
She glanced up at Nico once more, her expression becoming even more weary and closed. She attempted another smile, however. Nico wondered if it was more of an attempt to reassure her or himself. "We're just keeping the lights off for the time being," she said quietly, the sort of quietness used to speak around a sleeper. "He won't wake up likely for at least another day or two but we're trying to keep everything toned down as much as possible." And with that she slipped silently into the room.
Nico wanted to burst in after her. He wanted to tear open the door, fling aside the drawn curtains that he could see encapsulating half of the room, to throw himself onto the bed that Will was lying in, Will who was alright, who would live because… because…
It was only just registering, slowly and incrementally, that Naomi might have been speaking the truth. That, as foreign and ridiculous as it might seem, she wasn't attempting to comfort or deceive Nico by offering him a false hope. Why would she? It would pain her as much as it would Nico when reality was restored.
Nico wanted to cry again. He wanted to sag with relief, to lean heavily against the nearest wall and allow his aching body, tension the only thing that still held him upright, to ease and release. He wanted – he needed – to see Will, to touch him, to be assured of his existence, that he was still alive.
He didn't do any of those things. Though the emotions welled within him, a lid had clamped atop of them, preventing them from spilling forth and easing Nico with their simple feeling. His face felt hard, brittle, as though wrought from stone. He felt cold, chilled, as lifeless as the dead that he had seen far too often. It was all Nico could do to shuffle his feet forwards and step into the dark room beyond, to draw aside the curtains and approach the narrow, elevated bedside.
There was nothing else in the room besides Will. Or there might have been, but if there were it was inconsequential. Nico's eyes fell upon him and he couldn't even blink for staring at him, for drinking in the faint touch of colour to his cheeks, for listening to the shallow, sleepy breaths that sounded oh-so-alive.
He still looked unwell. His normally sun-kissed skin was still pale beneath the faint flush, the freckles all the more apparent for it. There was a slight darkness beneath his eyes, as though his body was fighting against a rising tide of exhaustion. Even the golden blonde of his curls seemed to have dimmed slightly, though that may have simply been for the darkness of the room or the prominent patch that covered half of his forehead and folded beyond his hairline.
But he was alive. In that moment, that fact was the most important to Nico in the world.
The locking of his knees was the only thing that kept Nico on his feet. He couldn't move, couldn't have sought a chair had one presented itself beside him. He couldn't even bring himself to reach forward to touch Will, to make sure he was in fact solid rather than an imperfect illusion created by Nico's own mind. He could only stare, his eyes the only thing moving as they drew across the speed-bump mound of Will's body lying prone beneath the thin hospital blankets. Across the oximeter clipped onto one fingertip of his single revealed arm, the cannula protruding from the elbow, the neck of the standard-issue hospital gown and up to his face once more. The upwelling of emotion, of feeling, was roiling just beneath the surface, clamped firmly beneath the unwieldy lid.
Nico wasn't sure how long he stared for. He had always had that difficulty, a skewed sense of time when he became deeply unhinged. Minutes could have been hours or even days and he likely wouldn't have noticed. He wouldn't really have cared either. It was only because Naomi sidled around the bed to his side that Nico even managed to draw himself from his stasis, from his unblinking staring, at all.
"Nico?"
Her voice was quiet, faintly questioning and just slightly touched with request. With just the faintest demand for an explanation and yet understanding that, should Nico be unable to speak, she wouldn't push it. Naomi had always been kind to Nico, had always been accepting of him in her bubbly, outspoken sort of way. That bubbliness was absented at the present, vanished without leaving even the faintest impression of a footprint in its wake. But Nico owed that kindly woman his consideration at the least. At the very least.
With a struggle that was deeper than any Nico could have predicted, he drew his gaze from Will's sleeping face. Sleeping, not dead, he had to remind himself. Naomi's features were so similar to her son's, noticeable in spite of their familiarity in individuality, that he nearly flinched. Nico swallowed down a thick tightness, his throat grown as dry as unbuttered toast without his realising it.
He didn't know what he'd intended to say, but the words spilled forth nonetheless. They sounded as though someone else spoke them. "I'm sorry, Naomi. I'm s-so sorry. This is all my fault."
Nico stared at her for a moment, blank and unfeeling despite the sudden upwelling in tamped emotions churning within him. He stared at her open weariness, at the sadness and grief and worry etched into her features, and he saw the moment she sagged in acceptance. With a single hand, she reached out to Nico's arm and drew them both backwards into a pair of seats that Nico hadn't even noticed he stood before. It hurt to sit down. Nico wondered at that, even as he considered which part of him actually hurt.
Naomi gave a sigh. A heavy sigh, the likes of which Nico had never heard from her before. Naomi was a genius neurosurgeon, was almost frighteningly intelligent both with her medical knowledge and her deductive skills, but she had always been an optimistic sort of person. She wasn't the sort to fall prey to melancholy, or the listlessness that had consumed Nico before she had found him.
In that sigh, Nico heard weariness tapering towards exhaustion. He heard the fear, the terror of a mother who had nearly lost her son, the disbelief that she had dodged that bullet and the need to reassure herself that she had, indeed, survived the ordeal. The grasp she maintained on Nico's wrist was tight with that need for reassurance. It was a reassurance that Nico himself couldn't provide.
"Nico," she said quietly, and waited until he had struggled to draw his gaze towards her once more. "It is not your fault. I don't believe that."
Nico was silent. Silent as he stared at her, then silent further as he returned his gaze back to Will. Naomi gave another sigh, just as heavy as the first, before she continued. When she spoke it sounded as though she spoke as much to herself as she did to Nico. "I was angry. So angry until… not too long ago. I was angry at you, yes – because you were involved, Nico; it wasn't fair but I was angry at you – but more than that I was furious with Will. In the end, regardless of whether it was because he followed you into danger or whether you had simply fought alongside one another and circumstance had nearly… had nearly killed him…" Naomi paused as though to steady herself after her own admission. "In the end, it was his decision. I have long since had to reconcile myself with bowing to his decision."
Her hand tightened around Nico's wrist almost painfully, but it was a dull pain. It was nothing compared to the aches that tightened every one of Nico's muscles, that breathed upon every inch of skin. It was barely noticeable when compared to the gaping wound that was his own terror and despair, a wound that barely even contemplated the thought of healing with the reality of Will's continued survival presented to him.
Naomi continued after a pause. "When I stopped being angry, I realised that my anger was actually fear. And when I stopped – no, actually, I don't think I have stopped being afraid. I doubt I ever will. But when I became… less fearful, when I realised that my worst nightmares were not coming to be realised right before my eyes… I'm grateful."
From Nico's periphery, he could see Naomi draw he gaze from her son to rest on Nico. He didn't see so much as feel the intensity of her gaze, an intensity that Will himself had so often affixed upon him in many varied and entirely different situations. He didn't turn to face her – he couldn't, not with the weight of his guilt sitting upon him. Not with Will as the focus of his attention, demanding monopolisation of his gaze.
Not even when Naomi's following words, quiet and thick with emotion bordering on tears, caused him to flinch. "Thank you, Nico. I don't know what happened – I'm not sure I want to know what happened – but I know that Will wouldn't be alive right now if it wasn't for you. Not only did you bring him back to me, but you healed him before, didn't you? With that ambrosia that Will is always talking about?" She shook her head and gave a faint sniffle, her free hand rising to wipe at her eyes even before her tears had fallen. "There's no other explanation for it. None of the other doctors could explain how it wasn't as bad as it realistically should have been. He had a concussion, his skull was fractured, and there was – there was so much blood, but it wasn't as bad as it could have been. It wasn't nearly as bad."
Nico didn't want to hear that. He didn't want to hear the damage that he'd caused to Will with his negligence, how close he had come to losing him. But he couldn't speak to stem Naomi's words, not even if he'd wanted to. She needed to speak just as much as he needed her silence.
"I don't think there's any way to repay you for returning my son to me. And the strain it put on you, too…" Nico saw her gaze drop to Nico's arm, to his hand as her own drifted down to gently touch the bandages around his fingers. "You have nothing to apologise for, Nico. If anything, I should be apologising to you."
Nico swallowed once more, but even that didn't rid his voice of its croakiness when he finally managed to force his words out. "If it hadn't been for me then none of this would have happened." The hasty shadow travel, the careless disregard for support, allowing Will to face the Chimaera when it should have been Nico. All of it – there was no one to blame but him.
"Maybe," Naomi murmured. "I don't know. I don't know the full story of what happened, of how it happened. But I know what I've seen, and what I've seen is that you brought him to me so that he could be saved."
Nico knew Naomi was crying now. Once more he could feel it more than he could see it or hear it, silent as the cascade of tears was. Her slight sniffles were barely audible themselves. He could physically feel the weight of her grief, battering against the relief that built with each word and which was the inevitable linchpin that tipped her over into expressing herself in an upwelling of releasing emotion.
Nico didn't cry. He still didn't cry, even though his throat tightened in response to Naomi's tears. He couldn't even squeeze his eyes closed, because that would be robbing him of the sight and reassurance of Will lying before him. He wondered detachedly whether Naomi would think him heartless for his lack of emotional display. She didn't appear resentful, from what he could vaguely make out, nor even saddened by his response. If anything she seemed sympathetic, sympathetic for Nico for some reason. He couldn't fathom why.
When she continued, turning back towards Will, her words were faintly pondering. "I've always known that I had to expect it. Or at least prepare myself for it. As a demigod, I know Will faces dangers I can't even imagine. The fact that he survived into adulthood at all is something of a miracle. He told me, even though I'd guessed much for myself, of some of the dangers he's been forced to endure." She shook her head and a touch of fondness coloured her tone. "I always thought he gave me something of a watered down version of things. That's what I thoughts. I suppose I was right.
"But what I mean, Nico," Naomi turned back towards him, her hand tightening around his wrist once more. Nico hardly noticed. "Is that I knew. I expected, and I think even a part of me has always thought that someday I would lose Will to a monster. The fact that I haven't as of yet is a blessing. And that is as much because of the support of those around him as because of his own skills. I'm sure of it.
"He left me because of those dangers, did you know? I've deduced that much, even though he doesn't tell me. There was one time when he was only a child – I will always remember it so clearly, even though I knew I wasn't seeing what was really happening because of the Mist. It impressed upon me the reality of our situation, however, that there's a danger that pursues my son that I can't protect him from, a danger that would only inhibit his own survival and likely jeopardise it further if we remained together. If he had to try to protect me as well as protect himself. It was one of the main reasons that he decided to come to Camp Half-Blood, did you know? Even at barely nine years old he made that decision."
Naomi shook her head and Nico was afforded a very distinct sense of pride. Sorrowful pride but pride nonetheless. "It was one of the hardest decisions I've ever made to let him go, even if it was only temporarily. The hardest decision, but necessary nonetheless."
She fell into silence after that. It was a silence that was broken only by the beeping of the ignored machine at Will's bedside. Her hand remained tight around Nico's wrist, holding onto him as though he were a lifeline, and Nico didn't care. He had eyes only for Will, even as his mind turned over the words that he had heard and only barely registered.
They was far too relevant for him. Far too applicable. They gave him the answer to his decision that wasn't really a decision at all. Naomi had said it entirely, laid out reality perfectly, and Will had demonstrated his own strength in doing what must be done even as a child. What Nico, too, had to do. He might not be strong enough – he knew he wasn't – but as he sat there beside Naomi, staring at Will and reliving the moment that his world had seemed to fracture into splinters, he knew he didn't have a choice. That he would do it anyway. The echoing words of the Chimaera taunted him just on the edges of his thoughts.
We shall destroy that which you hold most dear…
Nico didn't have a choice. There was only one thing he could do.
He'd always been partial to running. It was what Nico did when a situation was too impossible to handle. Cowardly, some might call it, but necessary. It was the only way he'd managed to survive for as long as he had. This time, however, though cowardice was still a primary trigger for his actions, Nico knew he would be driven by a sore and desperate need as well. It was that desperation, that need to protect, which inevitably urged him to leave. He wasn't sure if it was a good thing or a bad thing that Will wouldn't be awake in time to tell him.
Sorry, Will. I could only keep one of my promises to you. I'm sorry for that, even if it was the most important one.
Grogginess wrapped his mind like a limb thickly blanketed. Will felt warm, comfortable as he swum into vague consciousness, even as his head immediately set up a dull, persistent throbbing. Slowly, squinting against a light that was barely discernible through the smothering gloom, Will cracked his eyes open.
He recognised where he was immediately, even if it didn't really make sense that he was there. A hospital. The room reminiscent of so many peered into both when visiting his mother at work and through his studies and clinical rotations at the teaching hospital.
Hospital. How had he even gotten there? After…
In a slow, patchwork-quilt-assemblage of memories, the reality of Will's situation settled upon him. The Chimaera, the questing demigods, Fionn and Harley, Huang and Riley and Josef. Fighting the Chimaera and the lesser monsters that could only be its offspring for their likeness, with Nico fighting at his back. Nico who was –
Blinking around himself, Will squinted at the empty room. It was entirely empty, but for the heart monitor at one side of his bed and the empty IV stand on the other. That, and two chairs to the left of his bed, both similarly empty. He could make out the sound of voices beyond the slightly open door across the small room, beyond the curtains that surrounded his bed and dampened the light from that door, but there was no one in the room.
Will didn't know what time it was. His internal clock, the clock that had always told him where the sun sat in the sky even when it was on the opposite side of the world, was fuzzy and muffled as though he were looking at it through misted glass. Even so, he would have hazarded from the murmur of sounds beyond the room that it couldn't have progressed to the nightshift yet, even if visiting hours were over.
Which might explain why Nico wasn't there. Will might have been a touch indulgent to assume that Nico would be at his bedside if he could be but he was also realistic. Of course Nico would be. Just as Will would be for him.
Rolling his head slightly to take another, wider scan of the room – just for the hell of it – Will winced as his head twinged painfully once more. Raising a hand, he felt to his forehead, to the source of the pain, and his fingers brushed against thick padding and a thinner shroud of gauze. A head injury, then, which he could have deduced simply from the throbbing headache he was enduring. A head injury from…
The Chimaera. Right. The Chimaera had gotten a hit in. He could remember that now, vaguely, distantly, as though he was watching a movie rather than recalling the events that had transpired. Between himself, Harley, Fionn and Josef – though in reality it wasn't really arrogant to state the truth as such but it had mostly been him – they had disabled the snake and the goat heads and were faced with just the lion. They might have defeated it too without further injury on their part, but then Josef had drifted a little too close to the swiping paws and fallen to the ground in an attempt to avoid losing his head. Will had dived after him in an attempt to shield the younger demigod and then –
He couldn't really remember the moment of impact, but it must have happened. He must have been struck by the Chimaera, and it must have knocked him out. And then, given Will's current circumstances, he must have been taken to the hospital.
That it was a hospital at all suggested it was Nico that had taken him. Nico knew of his tendency towards hospitals, even as most demigods were just as content to have their wounds tended to by the Camp's infirmary. And if Nico had taken him to hospital…
It means he's alright. It means that, most likely, the Chimaera was defeated and, hopefully, the kids were saved. Gods, I hope they're safe.
Will wished he could get up. He wished he could move, that he could lever himself from his bed and seek the nearest person with a brain who could fill him in on exactly where he was, what his condition was, when he could leave and where the person who had brought him in currently waited.
He couldn't do any of that, however. Will could hardly even sit himself up, he rapidly came to realise, as when he attempted, propping his elbows beneath him, it was to waver dangerously for a moment, dizziness brightening the feeble light of the room and making it spin. He managed to remain upright, however, if with a struggle, and gradually his vision cleared.
It was unlikely that Will would be standing anytime shortly, however. Or that he would be healed enough to wander through the hospital in search of Nico who must be here somewhere. Not for the first time in his life, Will wished that his healing abilities, the skill that enabled him to fix minor injuries with the force of his willpower and intent, worked on himself, too. Instead, he settled himself for attempting to remain upright; Will would be damned if he would just lie back uselessly, even if such recline would most likely do nothing more than hasten his recovery.
It was because he was sitting up that Will saw it. He likely wouldn't have noticed it for hours if he hadn't been attempting to maintain a ninety-degree angle ofseat. At his feet, nearly camouflaged into the blankets that engulfed the distinctive mound of his knees and legs, was a folded piece of paper. In the poor lighting, Will could just make out the word written in spidery letters on the top of it.
Will.
Reaching forward, wincing as the lethargy of his body and the protesting ache of his head, Will grabbed at the folded paper. He would recognise Nico's thin, spindly handwriting anywhere, and not the return of the Chimaera itself would stand between Will and reading whatever note he'd left for him. Although, why Nico felt it necessary to leave a note rather than simply wait for Will to wake up himself he didn't know. Will tried not to begrudge him that – he didn't even know how long he'd been out for.
Still, it was with detachedly rising foreboding that he opened the note. Will didn't know what it was, why it had arisen in the first place, but the simple presence of the note itself wasn't reassuring. Raising a hand and struggling to force a faint glow of sunlight radiance from his palm to see by more easily, he squinted down at the spider web of words printed across the page. At Nico's words, that he would have picked to be Nico's even without recognising his handwriting.
Will,
Don't die. Before I say anything else, I have to ask you that. No, I'll demand that from you. It's the first and the most important thing I could ever ask of you, so you make sure you listen to me. I'll never forgive you if you don't, and that might not mean all that much to you in just a little while but I hope it sticks enough that you actually do what you're told for once.
Secondly, I'm sorry. You know I'm not all that great with apologies, so that was actually harder to write than it might have sounded. I'm sorry because I couldn't manage to keep my promise. Because some promises are harder to keep than others, and making sure you don't die is the most important one. You're an idiot, Will, and you're too self-sacrificing. You care too much about what happens to other people, about what happens to me, to step out of the line of fire to save yourself.
And that's why you're on your own now. I could have told you that I don't love you anymore, but that would be a lie. I could tell you that you've made me so angry that I can't stand you anymore, but that would be a lie too. Mostly. You wouldn't believe me anyway – you've always been good at telling when I'm speaking the truth. I think you have a bit of that from Apollo in you too, even though you don't think so. You used to think that you lacked that honesty gene because you didn't have it yourself, but I think it takes a couple of different shapes. You've always been able to read me well enough.
I don't want to abandon you. I don't want to make you sad by doing that. I know you'll be angry, and hurt, and probably hate me for it, but I can't help that. Even knowing that won't change my mind. I care that you live more than I care about you hating me. That was actually harder to write than I expected it to be too. Does that make me a selfish person? You'd probably say yes but admit that it was warranted anyway.
I'm a son of Hades. Basically, being a kid of one of the Big Three makes me a ticking time bomb. I don't want to take you down with me, Will. You'd be a casualty of war, and you might kick up a stink about that but that's the truth of it. And I'm probably being selfish here again, but I couldn't handle that. I do love you, Will. I'd die for you. But I don't want you to die along with me.
Don't be an idiot, even thought you always have been. Don't think that I'll come back, because I won't. And don't try and find me either, because I'm better at running away and hiding then you are at seeking. If you even think about jeopardising your road to becoming the world-famous surgeon that I know you'll be, I'll kill you. And I don't care how counterproductive that makes me sound. I seriously will.
Live and be happy, Will.
The paper was coarse. Coarse and slightly crinkled. Morphed, as though it had been faintly misused. Or dampened. Or cried upon. Just a little bit, but enough for Will to notice it through the static numbness that shrouded his thoughts. Enough for him to affix his gaze upon the slight crinkling next to his own name – his own, not Nico's, the note left unsigned. The words he'd read over and over slowly, slowly started to shift and morph, to make sense.
Even when they did, it was still incomprehensible. Will didn't understand it.
Nico was leaving? Was leaving him? He still loved Will, but he was leaving him? Because he was worried that staying around him would get him killed? How did he make that deduction? It was true, Nico was a child of the Big Three, but that wasn't that exceptional. It didn't make him that much more attractive to monsters than any other demigod. Did it?
Did it?
Did he?
Where -?
Why -?
How could he have -?
The numbness of Will's thoughts abruptly crumbled. Crumbled and unleashed the chaos of Tartarus, bursting forth in a flurry that overrode even his weariness, even the pain in his skull that protested at his sudden fury. Horror – anger – loss – frustration – anger – despair – aching grief – confusion – more horror, and so much anger.
What had he done? Nico, you fucking idiot, what in Hades have you done?! Left? He thought he could leave Will, just leave, after everything? After their years together, as lovers and best friends and comrades-in-arms, he thought he could just leave?
Will's head throbbed. It was painful, making the feeble light welling from his palm spark and dance blindingly. He felt his breath catch and his eyes blurred, though from dizziness, anger or tears of sheer pain he didn't know. All Will knew was that he hurt, he was confused, that he wanted Nico beside him right now so that he could smack him, kiss him, could wring his neck and hold him so tightly that his very bones creaked from the force.
Why did you leave me? Because you don't want me to die? What kind of an excuse is that?!
Will raged. He was frozen in immobility, in the madness of his mind that failed to burst forth as his lips remained frozen and his eyes stared unblinkingly, unseeingly, at the letter in his lap. At the letter that attempted and failed at light-heartedness, at nonchalance, but that Nico had cried over. And Nico didn't cry. Nico never cried.
He was –
Why did he –
After everything –
How could he do this to me?!
That was how his mother found him not half an hour later, sitting silently and staring at the letter in his hands. A nurse had come and gone, had frowned with concern when he remained unresponsive, then with sympathy and reproval and just a hint of confusion as she took a glance at the note in Will's hand. He heard distantly, through the whirling of thoughts in his mind, how she admonished, how she clicked her tongue and scowled at the absent person who could possibly abandon their lover in such a situation. Will felt angry with her for that, too. She had no right to disapprove of Nico, to be angry with him, to hate him. Only Will was allowed to do that. Only Will.
Naomi read the note. She read it, then sunk down onto the mattress at Will's side and wrapped an arm around his shoulders. Through the swirling haze, the dizziness, the pain of his mounting headache and the anger and grief and incomprehension that shrouded him, Will felt like nothing if not a child at his mother's side once more. He had long since outgrown her, towered over her when they stood side-by-side, but he leaned into his mother for the simple, silent support she offered.
Naomi understood. At least, she understood as much as Will did. Maybe even more than he did, for Will could fathom that Naomi would be of a like mind to Nico. That should she put Nico's wellbeing against Will's, against his own safety, that the Will's would trounce.
Will didn't even realise he was crying until he saw his tears spilling down to stain the letter just as Nico's had. Nico had run away from him. Just as Will had feared he would long ago. Just as he'd convinced himself he wouldn't.
And this time, Will didn't know if he would ever get him back.
