"I can always talk to you?" I echoed. "About anything?"

"Anything," comfirmed Will. "Anything at all."

And suddenly, everything was bubbling up inside me came to a boil. To an intense, overpowering, violent bubbling, threatening to spill over in hot, angry tears or in dry, brittle hatred.

"Then how about I talk to you about how everything is the same? How everytime, every damn time I do something for someone else, it ends with me still being the same disgusting monster everyone believes a child of Hades is supposed to be?" I spat. I didn't know why I was saying this to him. He never did anything wrong.

Maybe everyone hated me for this; for always taking it out on the first innocent person to offer me help.

"How about I talk to you about how when I first came back to camp after the Titan War, everyone thought I was so cool or whatever, for saving the day by bringing my father, and an army, but when I wanted friends, all I got were shifty side-eyes and flaky excuses?" Will never seemed to do anything wrong. This was unfair- I couldn't just unload on him.

And yet, here I was, doing just that. Unloading all of my shit on him, because I had to ruin someone's life.

"How about I tell you about the time I visited Camp Jupiter for the first time, and people at first thought oh cool an ambassador for a god! And he brought us a good soldier, too! And quickly changed to thinking oh, gods, not that creep again. I hope Hazel gets rid of him quickly.

"And even after the Giant War, the Romans don't like me. They don't even trust me to be alone in the same room as Reyna." The words kept spilling out of my mouth, no longer in my control. "They don't even trust me to be in the same room as someone I could've killed Zeus knows how many times this summer!"

Will opened his mouth to say something, but now that I was going, I couldn't stop. "And the same thing happened here that happened once before- after the Titan War, everyone was like oh, wow, he almost died to give us the Athena Parthenos, how amazing! But they still refused to make eye-contact. That shit hurts, you know!"

My hands were shaking, a fact I hid by squeezing them into tight fists.

"Nico," Will began to say. "I-"

"How about how by now, I've learned that history always, always repeats itself, and it can't be much longer before even less people talk to me, because once Jason or Percy or Annabeth gets mad at me, or once they get bored, or come to their senses or whatever, they'll start telling every person they can that oh how gross Nico likes boys," I sneered.

"Soon this whole trash can full of demigods will know that nasty Nico di Angelo used to like Percy. And everyone will be disgusted, and everyone will forsaken me. Everyone, that is, who hasn't already, and I'll lose everything else I care about."

"Nico," Will tried once more, speaking soothingly. He reached for one of my hands, and I realized that in my anger, I had stood, and pushed myself away from the son of Apollo. "I promise-"

"No," I said, drowning his words in my anger. "No more promises; I should've learned long ago not to trust them- everyone breaks them, anyways. Everyone, everytime. Percy broke his promise when he said he would protect Bianca. King Minos promised to help me, and that nearly got me killed. Every promise, every single promise, ends in pain and broken trust. So don't."

What was he going to do about this? About my emotional trauma? None of this was related to him, so why would I need to trouble him with this?

His gaze was still fixed on mine. "Nico, I know that you-"

I gave him a withering glare. What could he possibly know about me, when no one bothered to acknowledge me at all, much less gather information on me?

"I know that you have had a lot of traumatic experiences, and have gone through awful things," he continued, completely disregarding my glare. "And I can't pretend that I know exactly what you have gone through, or what you've felt. But still, I know that you deserve better than you've gotten."

My legs felt antsy, and I kept fidgeting. And I was restless again.

"Nico, I want to help you see that this life is worth living."

I felt overwhelmed. And suddenly aware of the white noise of the infirmary. And the presence of Death, as it always is in hospitals and such. And I couldn't breath.

And I needed air. I couldn't breath. I couldn't breath. I couldn't breath I couldn't breath I couldn't breath I couldn't-

"Nico," Will's everpresent worried managed to cut in, against the metronome of hopelessness my mind was stuck on.. "Nico, are you okay?"

I needed air. I gasped and wheezed, and managed to stumble my way out of the infirmary, and out of the Big House, and I was outside but I still needed more air, and I needed it fast, and my feet were moving faster and faster and I was running, running past the training center and past the cabins and past a few startled campers and towards the forest.

And I was leaning against a tree, the bark digging into my back painfully, and tears were coming out of my eyes at an alarming rate, so that everything around me just appeared to be blurs of green and brown and blue. And I was tearing grass out of the Earth in fistfuls and I was sinking and drowning and I was alone.

I was so, so alone, like I always am.