In a cabin with only three campers, the loss of one was a massive blow. Jackson and Natalie holed up in the forges when they weren't shut up in the Hephaestus cabin, unable to face sympathy and apathy both, and they let the little shack reach such a temperature that no one else could go in safely. The best Nico could do was leave meals on the doorstep, and make sure they disappeared eventually.

Needless to say, the next trip to the Underworld didn't happen on schedule. It made Nico nervous, but who was he to say anything at all? All he could complain about were nightmares, on the nights he slept at all.

Two nights after the second attack, Nico was sitting alone at his table in the dining pavilion. It getting was dark and everybody else was long gone, milling around in the courtyard before curfew. He glanced resentfully at his incapacitated hand and rebelliously tried to wiggle it around. It was healing unnaturally quickly, but far too slowly for Nico. He grimaced as the stitches pulled at his skin and let it be. His left hand, curled around his immortal piece of charcoal, fidgeted impatiently as he struggled to remember some forgotten dream, something to turn his mind from important things. "Mad World" was stuck in his head. Finally he gave up trying to draw, and laid his head on the table morosely.

"The dreams in which I'm dyin' are the best I've ever had," he started singing to himself in a soft voice rough with insomnia. "Find it hard to tell you," he mumbled on, "find it hard to take." He trailed off. Something about running in circles. "Mad world," he finished flatly. "Stupid world," he growled. He buried his head in his crossed arms on the table and resolved to fall asleep right there.

"Stupid world," agreed a bitter voice. Natalie sat down next to him. He picked his head up off the table and looked at her. She looked rough. But beautiful. Nico smiled tiredly at her.

"Are you back?" he said.

Natalie attempted a smile. "I think so," she sighed. "I just... shut down for a while there," she said slowly, like it scared her. "I don't even wanna know what Riley would have said."

Nico sat up abruptly.. "You know," he said haltingly after a moment. "If you ever do want to talk to your brother..." He trailed off. He didn't know if he was saying something stupidly insensitive or not.

Natalie looked sideways at him. "What?" she prompted.

"Well, I can make that happen, you know, being Styx Boy," he finished, smirking at the nickname.

She was silent for a moment, but not offended, Nico was pretty sure. "I don't know that I want to," she said. "Do you know if he's in Elysium?" She stared at the table. "I know he'd try for the Isles if he is."

"Natalie, I don't know how in the world he wouldn't be in Elysium," Nico told her very honestly. He wrapped his good arm around her, and buried his nose in her hair. She smelled like smoke, but not the oh-something's-burning kind of smoke; it was sweeter.

"What're you drawing?" she asked, shifting closer.

"No idea," Nico admitted.

Natalie thought for a moment, trying to contribute. "Draw a—draw yourself!" she said abruptly. "I saw pictures of all kinds of stuff on your floor, some of people, but never you."

Nico blinked. He had never tried to draw himself. "Hmm."

Natalie laughed. It was nice to hear that again. "You're overthinking it. Just draw, Styx Boy."

After a moment's hesitation—she was right, he was overthinking it—he roughly sketched a male face, stalling the person-specific features he was pretty sure he was going to botch. He topped his head with a mess of black hair and then didn't know where to go from there.

Natalie giggled. "That looks like you alright."

"Oh, shut up," muttered Nico. "I don't stare at my face in the mirror all day."

Natalie shook her head, shaking with laughter. "You know what I look like better than you know your own face."

Nico grinned at her. "Yep." And before he could come up with a reason not to—don't overthink it—he leaned over and kissed her.

Natalie ruined it with a smile. "Sorry," she pressed her cheek against his neck; it burned feverishly hot, and Nico started.

"What?" Natalie's eyebrows knitted.

Nico pressed the palm of her hand to his cheek. "Are you sick?" he asked, baffled.

Natalie rolled her eyes. "No," she chuckled.

"Why are you burning up, then?"

"Blame Hephaestus," she smirked.

Nico raised an eyebrow. "So you're always a hundred and ten degrees?"

She shook her head. "Not always. Mostly when I get really mad, or—" she blushed, something only Nico would have been able to see in the dark.

"So," Natalie said quickly, "what were you trying to tell me the other night?" Nico's heart skipped half a beat—had she heard him after all? "Something about Peter? Falling asleep?" Disappointment twitched at his mouth, but Natalie didn't see.

"Yeah," he answered after a minute, remembering. "Yeah," he repeated, all his suspicions returning instantaneously: Peter and the warriors and dreams and more death. "Yes," he said a third time, forcefully.

"What?" Natalie asked curiously.

"Peter—he ran by at the same time I fell asleep in the tree." He paused. "Let's see: he's Morpheus' kid; what all would he be able to do? God of dreams, right?"

Natalie made an uncertain face at him. "What are you talking about?"

"Peter! Don't you see?—he made me fall out of the tree during capture the flag. What would he have done that for? He was on our team in the game, and nobody knew the skeletons were gonna show up again."

Natalie still looked doubtful. "Are you saying that our best swordsman, one of the only people that can kill the undead warriors, is summoning them? That's crazy!" Nico frowned stubbornly, but she continued. "I don't know why he put you to sleep—that's weird, I admit it. But summoning enemies to sack his home?"

"I don't know—but Minos sure knows how to knock sense out of people. Certainly out of people that want revenge. What could Peter possibly want?" A face jumped unbidden to his head. A dark-haired Morpheus kid: Peter's brother Kyle. He'd been killed in the battle against Luke's army. Nico finished the scrawled face with Kyle's features.

"You wouldn't remember him," Nico answered Natalie's questioning look. "He was Peter's older brother, killed in—a battle against some of the Titans and the leader of their army." He didn't want to explain that. "I wonder…. You know what, I bet one of the skeleton warriors killed him—and he blames me!"

Nico fell silent. There was no way to prove it, but he was almost positive he was right.

"That… makes sense," Natalie admitted after a moment. "A little out there, and by no means a sure thing, but I would believe it."

Nico bit back a less-than-family-friendly word. Peter must be summoning the undead warriors—but how? And where did Minos fit in? Was Peter calling Minos from the dead, who in turn called the skeletons to the surface? It seemed like the only way. He had heard there were ways for others (not children of the god of the dead) to summon the dead; they were far more complicated, obviously, but possible.

"We need to get campers back down to the Underworld."

"Nico," Natalie sighed, "it's almost dark. Nothing is going to happen tonight. I agree with you, but honestly, I don't really care right now." Her unhealthily warm cheek pressed against his neck. "You're freezing," she murmured.

"Yes, I am," Nico agreed fervently, and hugged her close.

"Nico?"

He looked down at her.

"Have you ever met your dad?"

"Yeah, a couple times. Have you not?"

"Only once. When I got to go up to Olympus for Winter Solstice. Jackson had already been, so he let me go instead. I think you were there, too? I'm pretty sure it was all the cabin seniors."

"I remember. What's he like?"

"He seemed sad to me—like I made him remember sad things. My mom, maybe? I've never met her." She paused. "Orphanage, naturally." For the first time Natalie sounded bitter. Even in mourning she had always been sad, never bitter.

"Me and my sister got dumped in the Lotus Casino. Chiron supposedly shut it down after we came, but—I don't know. Things like that aren't so easy to get rid of." He shrugged. "We were there for seventy years." The words tasted wrong in his mouth. He was eighty-something years old. It was a little gross. "Zeus killed my mother." Nico waited for another surge of anger, the same one that he felt every time he talked about Zeus. But there was just resignation. "I think he loved us," Nico said. "He saved us—me and Bianca. And hid us for a really long time. Trying to keep us safe." But gods were never great dads, whether they tried to be or not. It wasn't anybody's fault.

"Hey," Natalie sighed, "we're alive."

"I suppose that's the point, isn't it?" Nico laughed tiredly.

They wandered back to the cabins, Natalie's ash-covered fingers between Nico's heavily bandaged ones.