One month. Two updates.

I'm not responsible for anyone dying of shock.

We're coming out of the other side of a very long and very dark tunnel now. Things are going to start to get better for Nico from now on. It's about damn time, huh? I'm sorry to anyone who may have found the last chapter unnecessarily dark but suicide, to get on my soapbox for a second, is a thing that happens. It's an important issue to talk about; if you ever want to talk, you can PM me.

This chapter is lighter, you'll be pleased to know. I had fun writing it.

I don't own PJO, nor do I make any money from this.

Thank you, as usual, to the wonderful and talented JJDracula without whom this fic would never have been born. I am little more than its midwife, really.

You're all too kind to me with your reviews and your favourites, seriously. And to everyone that is reading this and hiding in the background thank you for always being there silently supporting me. I keep up with you anonymously through the hit count but I do like to hear from you now and then so drop me a line. I promise I don't bite — I'm a vegetarian. And although I am a procrastinator extraordinaire, I eventually reply to every signed review. You deserve my time for taking the time.

I still can't believe that people are actually reading and liking what I write. It's all new and crazy to me. Just wow.

Thank you.

Marzipan.

Nico shook his head. He felt numb. The warmth of the nectar was rapidly dwindling and the cold water from the sprinklers soaking him to the skin was worming through to his bones. The bells of the fire alarm were a dim echo in his ears as he stumbled blindly after Percy, tugged along by the wrist.

He looked up from his shoes, blinking slowly at the crowd of damp people huddled on the sidewalk outside of the club. In the vague distance he could hear sirens brewing from several blocks over. It was hard to get the cops to turn up somewhere like Him's but apparently the fire department had less of a choice in the matter.

His feet shuffled and stumbled over the sidewalk with squelching footsteps; Percy was leading him like a toy but right now he couldn't expend the mental energy needed to plot a course anyway. He had to think about the last part of his dream.

Most of it hadn't been news to him. He'd lived it after all. He knew what he had done and he wasn't proud of it but it had probably been the darkest time of his life, darker than even his time with Gaea. He had felt like there were no other options.

That evening he had felt truly alone in the world for the first time. Even after Bianca had died, he'd still been a demigod and his powers had afforded him access to the Underworld and to solace. Admittedly, he'd sought comfort with a psycho, power-hungry ghost but at the time Nico had thought he'd found a friend, an ally, someone who understood him. It had been a replacement for Bianca in a way and he'd felt like he still had someone.

After Ell, though, he had just felt like he'd fallen off the edge of the world. There was no one left who cared about him or wanted him around. He was off his face on painkillers and reeling from what Ell had done, but really Ell had been little more than a catalyst.

She had sparked the event but Nico had been fleeing from what had happened deep beneath Rome for a long time. It had driven him to drugs as some kind of talisman, creating a smokescreen between himself and what had happened to try and make it easier to bear. Even now he couldn't sleep without some kind of light on for the gods' sake because it brought back memories of being trapped in the ground. A cheering crowd could cause his legs to liquefy and take him right back to Mimas' cavern, eliciting flashbacks of the demigods who had died at his hands. The noise of any sports arena turned him into a blubbering wreck.

There was barely a single night that went by without some kind of nightmare or night terror, where he'd wake up screaming and clawing the blankets from his sweat-slicked body. On top of all of that, he lived every single day in fear that someone was going to grab him and make him live it all over again. Either that or he'd wake up and find himself still buried, the life he'd lived since he was rescued being scrubbed out like a fragile chalk drawing on the sidewalk as the reality of being back in Mimas' clutches dawned.

No one knew what he'd been through, that was the worst part. There was no one to share his experiences with and that left him completely isolated. He felt both ashamed and guilty over what had happened to him. If he'd been more careful, none of it would have happened. He'd been so stupid to get caught in the first place. The uncomfortable weight of the knowledge that he was entirely to blame for what had happened was a millstone around his neck no matter how many times Percy tried to tell him it wasn't his fault.

Sometimes, the worst thing was that he felt like he had never made it back from the cavern, like he had left part of himself down there and would never again be whole.

There had been no other way out for him. He had tried to leave it all behind, but he had been saved by Hades. His father had saved him. Why? It made no sense, not after everything Hades had said to him when he had cast him out. Unless… Hades really was sorry for what he had done, and maybe Nico wasn't so cut off from the world of demigods as he had thought.

The thought sent his head spinning; it was just so contrary to everything that he had come to accept over the years.

His father… didn't completely hate him?

Percy was pulling him through the crowd of people gathered on the sidewalk on the opposite side of the street to Him's. As well as those damp from the club there were new people milling around, the promise of a burning building luring them to the spot to try and catch a glimpse.

"We're going to have to walk. We're never going to get a cab," Percy muttered mostly to himself, drawing himself up to his full height to look up and down the street. He steered them out of the crowd as he did so.

"Of course we are," Nico said, surprised to find that he was actually capable of speaking despite the sheer number of thoughts swirling around inside his skull. It was easier this way, to let Percy distract him. Maybe it was the only way to stop himself losing it.

"I know it sucks but we're wet and both look like we just tumbled out of a boxing ring, so no one in their right mind is going to pick us up," Percy said. He looked down at his bare chest. "And… I'm also in desperate need of a shirt. I can't believe they tore it. That was my favourite shirt."

Nico stopped dead, the ridiculousness of Percy's words piercing through the clamorous thoughts in his head. "You got your shirt torn off by five, count them, five, women so hot they made the surface of the sun look like Antarctica. Only you would complain about losing your favourite shirt to that."

Percy grinned. "Okay, so maybe that part was pretty awesome. Although if you tell Annabeth I said that not only will I deny it so hard Bill Clinton will be taking notes but I will make it my life's mission to replace every black piece of clothing you'll ever own with someone bright yellow while you sleep."

"Great, so you're planning to condemn me to a life where it looks like I've got hepatitis," Nico grumbled, pressing forwards again. Percy fell into step beside him. "And besides, telling Annabeth something like that would be a kamikaze mission. You'd see the mushroom cloud five states over." He paused thoughtfully. "Maybe if I did it remotely…"

"Right now you're thinking that I won't be able to find you any canary yellow pants but believe me, I will," Percy threatened darkly, and Nico had no doubt that his cousin would outdo himself to make good on it.

Nico threw up his hands. "Fine. I won't say a word. I'll just let the giant hickeys do all the talking for me. My lips will be sealed. It's just a shame you can't say the same about those monsters…"

Percy rubbed at a particularly large, angry-looking love bite on his collarbone self-consciously. "Yeah… I'm still thinking of a good explanation for that. Do you think she'll buy that I had to fight the Kraken and these are sucker marks from its tentacles?"

Nico snorted. "Sometimes, I wish I loved in a world where that wasn't so ridiculously possible," he grumbled tiredly. Then, on consideration, he added, "Actually, who am I kidding? How boring would that be?"

"Oh, gods, Dullsville," Percy said immediately. "I mean, what would we do?"

Nico's stomach chose that moment to clench unpleasantly; Percy's flippant question had touched a nerve. What would he do if he wasn't a demigod? Well, he'd probably be at school right now. He'd probably have friends. A life. His sister. His mother. And he definitely wouldn't have been tortured for sport. So much crap could be erased with that little what if, that accident of genetics that had made him a god's son rather than mortal.

Although… He'd probably be dead right now, or on his way out at the very least given when he'd been born. He'd never have met Percy or Annabeth or Rachel or any of them. He reached up distractedly to run a hand through his hair and found it already slicked backwards with water.

Sometimes, it was so damn hard to know whether the good outweighed the bad, whether the pros were heavier or lighter than the cons.

Dark thoughts clawed their way from their ooze-filled cesspit in his chest as was their wont to do periodically; previously, this had sent him reaching for a little something to cram them back in. Now he no longer had that, yet another thing in his life that he wasn't sure was good or bad.

Something must have changed in his face as those thoughts reared their ugly heads without him realising it — he hadn't known that his face was that expressive, or that Percy could even pick up on such subtleties — because Percy jumped in and broke the silence that had befallen them almost immediately.

"Anyway, if you do tell Annabeth and she does explode on you you'll have no one to blame but yourself," he said. "Besides, keeping quiet is the least you can do. You owe me. Himeros nearly shot my arm off."

Nico snorted, taking a mental step back from the brink of gloom, again being reminded of just how much he needed this. More than he would have ever admitted. "Come on. That little flesh wound is nearly having your arm shot off?"

"I could see bone!" Percy protested, loudly enough to make passersby stare. Well, more so than they were already staring at the wet, shirtless man having an animated argument with a sodden teenager. "Really, really pointy bone!"

Nico rolled his eyes. "Don't be so dramatic," he said. "Besides, even if the sprinklers weirdly didn't fix the hickeys — and wow, they must have been seriously going at it for them not to have; I don't know whether to congratulate you or get you some kind of tetanus shot — they patched you up. You'reforgetting who took the world's worst swan dive off those railings to get the sprinklers working in the first place."

"Of course they were going at it, they drink blood," Percy said. "They're good at sucking."

Nico quirked an eyebrow at Percy and managed to bring a wry smile to his lips despite himself. He didn't know what it was about Percy but he was so grateful that he was here. Again he was struck by just how much he needed this, just aimless nothingness. He hated to admit it, even to himself, but it was true.

"Okay, wow, that came out so wrong," Percy said immediately, slapping a hand across his eyes. "Can we—"

"Yup," Nico said, cutting Percy off. "Don't worry: that has already been added to the list of things I won't be mentioning to Annabeth. You and everyone living in the chunk of city she would have taken with her when she went nuclear after hearing that are so welcome."

Percy rolled his eyes. "Fine. On behalf of the city, if you waive your right to a parade I'll bake you a thank you cake."

Nico wrinkled his nose and again cocked an eyebrow at Percy.

"On behalf of the city, I'll get my mom to bake you a thank you cake," Percy hastily corrected.

"Better," Nico said. "Unless you've become a pastry chef since I was last around, I'd rather have a cake not a house brick."

"You're exaggerating," Percy said airily. "It was not that bad."

"Tell that to Paul — he's the one who lost a filling," Nico deadpanned in return.

"You're just jealousbecause while you were taking a nap, I created a giant fist of water and punched Himeros through a wall before force-feeding you nectar," Percy countered immediately, shoving Nico lightly. "So you, my friend, can suck on that. Check and mate."

Nico shoved him back, then dodged out of range of Percy's counterattack. "Jerk," he said through lips curved upwards into a smile.

"Runt," Percy returned good-naturedly.

They lapsed into an easy silence for a couple of blocks, each of them instinctively turning their heads from the street every time a vehicle with a siren blazed by them heading towards Him's. The squelching of their shoes was the only thing that punctuated the silence.

Nico descended back into himself, his face set into a frown. Although Percy had helped to hold back the rising flood of misery, he still had plenty to think about. There was so much that didn't make sense. It felt like he was trying to do a puzzle and he didn't have all the pieces or a picture to work from or anything. Hades had pulled him from the dressing room at Him's, healed his neck and carried him into the ER.

Why?

After everything, it just didn't make any sense. And then his father had said that he was destined for some kind of greatness one day, if only he could kick the drugs first? Why would his father save him from bleeding to death and get him to the hospital, where they'd pumped his stomach and crammed him full of activated charcoal to counteract the pills, only to abandon Nico and leave him to raid the pharmacy and spiral all over again? It was like giving life with one hand and snatching it away with the other instantly. No matter how hard he tried, he couldn't fathom an explanation for it.

"Nico, are you okay?" Percy said suddenly. Nico sensed that Percy had been dying to ask for a while now. "It's just… you seemed pretty freaked out when you woke up. You can talk to me about this stuff, you know?"

Nico sighed, scrubbing a tired hand across his eyes. Despite the nectar his body was still throbbing with pain and he was having to expend so much energy to stop his brain craving pills to dull the ache from winning out. He had so little left to block Percy out as well.

"A couple of months ago…" Nico started, suddenly finding it almost impossible to say the words. He closed his mouth again, chewing on his traitorous tongue. It was one thing to know that he'd tried to kill himself; apparently, it was another thing entirely to actually say the words aloud. "A couple of months ago, I was in a really dark place," he said instead. "I hit rock bottom. There was all this stuff with Ell plus all the other shit I have had to deal with since Gaea and it was just this whole mess that came to a head. I… I tried to, you know. Kill myself." He said the last two words quickly, running them together into one shameful word.

"What?" Percy asked in a strangled voice.

Nico had seen the point where the breath had left his cousin's body and his face flushed. He stormed forwards, trying to put as much distance between himself and Percy as possible. This was why he didn't tell anyone. He couldn't take the way people would look at him afterwards, the mixture of pity and fear on Percy's face was like a punch to the gut. He didn't need either of those things; he was still here. Despite everything, he'd overcome the odds.

He was trying his hardest to be honest with Percy about these things because that's what Percy had asked for, what he deserved, damn it, but Percy didn't exactly make it easy. He cursed himself for saying anything at all. Why ruin a good moment?

"Nico," Percy called, half jogging to catch up. "Nico, wait. Listen to me, wait." He grabbed Nico's arm on the last word, spinning him around. Nico tried to shake him off but Percy wouldn't let him.

"Forget it," Nico told the sidewalk when it became clear that he wasn't going to get free. "Seriously, Percy, forget I said anything. It's not a big deal, okay? It's—"

"Not a big deal?!" Percy parroted back incredulously. "You can't drop a bomb like that and tell me it's not a big deal, Nico. This is serious."

Nico closed his eyes. "What else do you want me to do?" he asked softly. "I can scream and cry and fall apart if you want, Percy, but that's not who I am. That's not the way I deal with things. Shit got bad, okay? And I did something stupid, but I'm not planning on doing it again. I've moved on. What else do you want from me?"

Nico felt Percy's grip slacken as his cousin's mouth worked in confusion, so he took the opportunity to break away from Percy and continue on down the street. Again Percy caught up with him, falling in step beside him.

"Nico—"

"I don't want to talk about it," Nico said abruptly. "Just leave it alone, okay? I just dreamed about it, so my head is full enough of it right now."

"It's me, Nico," Percy said. "Just reminding you, it's me here. You can talk to me if you want."

"Well, I don't want. I'm fine now," Nico said. "I haven't felt like that since that night; I've moved on."

"Fine," Percy said, throwing up his hands in surrender. "Fine. I get it. But this isn't over. When you're ready to deal with what you just told me I want to help."

"Yeah, well, whatever," Nico muttered. "To be honest… I'm more freaked out about the fact that at the end of my dream, my father appeared and saved my life. I don't even know what that means or if it even actually happened but I'm having a hard enough time keeping it together in my head so… we're back to you dropping it."

"Your father saved you?" Percy asked, his voice sounding distant and conflicted. "He's known where you were for the past couple of months and what you were doing?"

Nico looked at him suspiciously. "Yeah, I guess so. Why do you say it like that?"

"Nothing," Percy said hesitantly, scratching the back of his head. He looked around nervously and spotted a cab, so he stuck his thumb and forefinger in his mouth to whistle and waved a hand to flag it down. "We just really need to get to lunch, that's all."

It had taken a lot of manipulation of the Mist on Percy's behalf to convince the cab driver to take them back to Manhattan. They didn't exactly look like good customers. By the end of it, Percy's hand-waving had become so desperately elaborate that, in Nico's opinion, he'd seriously over-egged the freaking pudding, not to mention he probably could have guided sixteen aircraft to land and have directed the entirety of Manhattan's traffic with his gestures by the time he was done.

The cab driver seemed to think that they were commandeering the vehicle on behalf of a classified joint NSA and CIA taskforce set up to rid the world of roosters bioengineered by terrorists to shoot shirt-incinerating laser beams from their eyes and have sufficient intelligence to hack into the Pentagon in three minutes flat.

"I am never letting you provide the backstory again," Nico muttered darkly to Percy. "I mean, seriously? What if he tells someone about the two agents he met today? They'll lock him in the nuthouse."

"I didn't know what I was saying. It all happened so fast, okay?" Percy said defensively. "And besides, are we or are we not getting a ride?"

"It happened so fast?" Nico echoed scornfully, folding his arms. "To me, it happened in slow motion. Like a car wreck. Or, better yet, a train wreck. I kept thinking you were done and then nope, there was more."

"It worked!" Percy said exasperatedly.

"I bet Hecate nearly killed herself laughing over what her Mist was being used for," Nico said. "Which is pretty damn impressive given that she's immortal."

"Maybe I gave him the idea for a cool novel?" Percy suggested hopefully. "Or a screenplay. I could have made him rich."

Nico patted Percy's arm condescendingly. "You just keep telling yourself that, Perce. Whatever helps you make it through."

Silence settled over them again as they drove back towards Manhattan. Nico rested his chin on his hand and gazed out the window, watching the grey concrete jungle slowly and haltingly grind by as the cab got snagged in traffic over and over again.

His hair was beginning to curl slightly at the nape of his neck as it dried and it was tickling him. He irritably rammed hair that was falling forwards as it dried out of his face and chewed on his lip. No matter what, his brain kept dwelling on the knowledge that his father had been the one to save him two months ago. He just couldn't let that go. It meant something — it had to.

The after-effects of coming down lingered on in his system and he rested his pounding head against the cool glass of the window. Without the adrenaline and nerves caused by being in proximity to Him's, he was back to an achy, nauseated, vertigo-suffering mess. Granted, it was getting better but his body was going to take a while to learn to properly live without the fun substances he'd been tossing down his throat for the past couple of years.

Despite himself, he felt his eyelids droop as the monotony of the city sliding by almost hypnotised him. His eyes had just closed fully when the cab stopped and he heard the door open.

Percy was hopping out and Nico blinked hard, swiping at his eyes and doing the same. They were in front of Percy's apartment building again, back to where this whole mess started. Nico's eyes wandered up the side of the building to the fire escape and it suddenly dawned on him that even in the few hours since he'd been standing up there looking down things had changed so much.

He was still drug-free, sure, but now he knew that his time with Ell, which he had cherished as the sole good spot in his personal history, was nothing more than an elaborate lie concocted by a half-mad god of lust. On the other hand, he knew that his father might actually still care about him. And he knew that, despite everything, Percy was willing to throw himself in front of a bullet (literally) for him.

The idea wracked him with guilt because he had no idea what he had done to deserve that, but it also gave him a tiny spark of warmth in an otherwise cold and desolate landscape.

Why did life have to be so complicated?

"I thought we were going to lunch with Rachel?" Nico asked.

"We are," Percy said, nodding. They moved to dart quickly across the street in between the traffic towards Percy's building. "But you know the kinds of restaurants Rachel picks. It'll be somewhere fancy with a stupid no shoes, no shirt, no service rule. Which is so dumb because I swear the best food I ever had was when I sailed down with Annabeth to the Bahamas and we found this restaurant right on the beach and I wasn't wearing shoes or a shirt and they didn't care."

Nico smiled, and it must have looked genuine because Percy actually blinked at him in shock as he let them in to the lobby of his building.

"What?" Percy asked. "Have I got something on my face?"

"No," Nico said. "I'm just imagining you trying to get around the maître d' of one of Rachel's restaurants without a shirt. Fairly sure we'd end up arrested."

Percy grinned, pausing with his finger about to hit the elevator's call button. "Is that a challenge?"

Nico rolled his eyes and batted Percy's hand aside, stabbing the call button. "As fun as that sounds, I'd rather not spend the night in jail. Let's get you pretty."

Percy plucked at the shirt Nico was wearing. "It wouldn't kill you to do the same," he said.

"These are your clothes, Percy," Nico reminded him as the elevator arrived. "They say way more about you than me."

They blew through Percy's apartment in under ten minutes, changing out of their wet clothes, dragging on button-down shirts and forcing a comb through their hair. They were in and out so quickly that Nico didn't even have time to comment on the pale yellow shirt Percy had tossed in his face after fishing it from the bottom of the closet. It had appeared a random selection, although Nico was sure Percy had picked yellow on purpose. Then they were back in the elevator again and heading down to the cab again, where the driver was idling at the kerb.

"I guess the CIA and the NSA get top quality service," Nico remarked dryly as they crossed the street and slid back into the cab.

"Sure we do," Percy said. "We're saving the country."

"From roosters."

"Bioengineered roosters," Percy corrected immediately. "Come on, dude. Keep up."

"Oh, I'm sorry; did leaving out that one piece of information make the story completely ludicrous?" Nico asked, his voice dripping with sarcasm. "My bad."

It was only a short ride to the restaurant Rachel and Percy had arranged to meet at. When they got there, Percy tried to pay the driver but was waved off with assurances that playing a part in saving the country was payment enough. Percy, looking guilt-stricken, shrouded some money in Mist just long enough to slip it in through the crack in the driver's window unnoticed as he got out of the cab. It fell into the driver's lap but he paid it no attention as he drove away.

"I can't believe you paid him," Nico grumbled. "He was giving you stuff for free, Percy. Free stuff is good, remember?"

"Only because I lied to him," Percy said glumly. "Think about all the gas he burned getting us here."

"Your morals make me tired," Nico said, his face creasing into a petulant pout as he rolled back the sleeves of Percy's shirt so he could see his hands and finally took a decent look at himself in the window of a parked car. "And your clothes make me blind."

"I think that shirt looks good on you," Percy said mildly, barely concealing a grin.

"I knew you picked this on purpose!" Nico cried accusatorily, jabbing a finger at him. "Bastard. Tasteless bastard."

"I'm shocked and appalled that you would accuse me of such a thing!" Percy said, his smile widening as he steered Nico by the elbow off the street and towards the restaurant. "Now, smile. This place looks swanky. We're going to have to charm our way in."

"Great," Nico snorted. "So we're screwed, then?"

Despite Percy's best efforts at looking like he had money and belonged there, and despite saying that they were there to see Rachel Dare, the guy standing at the front of the restaurant to greet patrons turned up his nose at them and refused to let them in. It might have been the wrinkles in both of their shirts, or the fact that Nico was glaring holes through his chest, or the hickey Percy's collar didn't quite cover, or the fact that the nectar hadn't fully healed all of Nico's wounds, or Nico falling out of Percy's jeans despite them being rolled up and cinched in with a belt Percy had had to put holes in especially, but whatever it was the guy had obviously taken offence.

He was shooing them — actually shooing them — with a menu back towards the door when Rachel came stumbling and tripping over, almost ending up with a platter of appetizers down her front as she came within a hairsbreadth of colliding with a waiter, waving at them. The guy still looked disgusted until Rachel rammed a folded bill in his top pocket, at which point he broke into a smile and handed Percy the menu he'd been shooing them with, drawing their attention to the veal.

Nico gave him the stink-eye as he walked past, the effect of which was somewhat ruined when Rachel almost knocked him over with a hug that he was fairly sure had cracked about nine ribs.

"Thank the gods you're okay," she said quietly, still refusing to let go despite Nico floundering desperately. "After what I saw, after everything, I didn't... yeah. Hold still and let me hug you. All of your scrawny wriggling is making your bones poke into me."

"I'm sorry we're a little bit, kind of… late," Percy said, wincing pre-emptively. "We—"

"No problem," Rachel said tartly. "What's two hours between friends?" She glared at Percy. "Am I going to have to get a wristwatch surgically attached to you? Because if you've got enough cash, they'll operate on anything."

"It wasn't our fault!" Percy said. "I promise. And I seriously mean that this time. We sort of got into trouble."

Rachel sighed. "Of course you did. I should have known. Big T or a little T?"

"Big T," Percy said. "Biiiiiiig T, believe me. We… kind of had a small run in with Himeros that may or may not have ended in major property damage and the fire department being called."

Rachel blinked, looked Percy up and down and then closed her eyes tiredly, tucking a hand into her hip and using the other to pinch the bridge of her nose. "Naturally. I should have known when you said you and Nico had some errands to run before lunch you meant getting into a fistfight with the god of freaking lust. Why did I expect anything else from Percy Jackson? Are you okay?"

"We didn't die?" Percy tried hopefully.

"Fine, I guess I'll take that," Rachel said. "But if you're going to keep going out and not playing nice with gods we're going to have to get you a leash or something. Also, this is so not fair just so you know. It sucks because now I don't get to put my steel-toed orthopaedics on to kick your asses for leaving me stuck with—" She broke off suddenly, choking on the next word and stumbling to a halt as her eyes flicked down to the top of Nico's head.

Nico, who hadn't reciprocated the initial hug and was standing frozen after the command to stop fighting it as Rachel had her conversation with Percy, said, "Rachel... I can't breathe. And you're still hugging me. Aren't you kind of making a scene?"

Rachel snorted and broke the hug. "Ugh, as if," she said dismissively. "This would be making a scene." She balled a fist and punched Nico, hard, in the shoulder; he yelped in surprise. Diners turned to stare. "Don't you ever do that to us again!" Rachel demanded authoritatively, her nostrils flaring.

"Ow!" Nico said, rubbing his arm. "Hey, first you break my ribs, now my shoulder?!"

"You scared the crap out of us," Rachel said, glowering at him and folding her arms. "So the least you can do is shut up and take it like a man."

Nico opened his mouth to say something but he saw the fear swirling behind the indignation in Rachel's face and closed it again, feeling guilty. He hadn't meant to scare people. In all honestly, he had never considered that he would — why would anyone care that he was gone?

"Sorry," he muttered instead, looking to the floor.

"Good," Rachel said. Her shoulders relaxed and she unfolded her arms. Then she reached out and flicked Nico's ear.

"OW!" Nico yelped again, slapping a hand to the side of his face. "What was that one for?"

"For saying I was making a scene," Rachel said airily. "I'm a Dare, di Angelo. We don't make scenes."

Nico wanted to tell her that their current situation would indicate the opposite, and ask her what the fuck flying a helicopter and almost crashing into the middle of a godly warzone aged sixteen was if not making a scene, but she had her fingers poised ready for another flick. Instead, he just untucked hair from behind his smarting ear and let it provide the little protection it could.

"What, no smartass comeback?" Rachel asked expectantly.

Nico smiled with toothy menace at her. "Nothing I could say in public," he said sunnily, his voice completely contradictory to the expression on his face.

What was he feeling right now? It… actually didn't suck. Huh. Was this what normal felt like?

Rachel snatched the menu from Percy's hand and swiped at Nico's head with it, but he ducked out of the way, dancing back into the depths of the restaurant. "Hey, can we quit this game now?" he asked, raising his hands in surrender and actually managing half a laugh. "You're meant to be nice to me. It's Annabeth that tries to kill me every time I open my mouth."

"Can you blame her? Annabeth is a very smart woman in many, many ways," Rachel said darkly, narrowing her eyes at him.

"Come on, guys, how about we go and sit down?" Percy said, walking over to them and shaking his head. "First of all, I'm starving. Secondly, I'm not sure how much longer your tip is going to keep us in this place." The staff were starting to glare now and diners were shaking their heads at them. "How much did you give him, anyway?" he asked Rachel quietly as they made their way to the back of the restaurant with Nico a little way in front.

Rachel shrugged. "I don't know. I thought it was a twenty but he really hopped to so maybe it was a fifty and I didn't realise. Whoops."

"A fifty?! For a tip like that, I'll be your server this afternoon," Percy said, blinking in shock.

"No offence, Percy, but I'd appreciate a server who didn't disappear in between the fish and the entrée to kill a couple of monsters," Rachel said, shaking her head. "No, no, no. I don't think it would work out."

"You don't know that," Percy said defensively. "It could work."

"Yeah, I do," Rachel said. "And I don't even need to be the Oracle for that. You just look like trouble. Take this afternoon, for instance. Left to your own devices for five minutes and you're facing down a god. I'm not even going to be able to get a Coke off you before you have to kill something. But that's okay. That's life. Besides, are you really arguing to save your non-existent career as a waiter?"

Percy was saved from arguing by Nico jumping into the conversation.

"Where are we sitting?" he asked, turning around to face them. They were at the back of the restaurant now, with a swathe of empty tables separating them from a sparse late lunch crowd. There was only one table laid up and it was occupied by a man sitting with his back to them; the others were covered in bare tablecloths and it didn't look like they were in use.

Rachel hesitated. "Uh… over there," she said in a slightly strangled voice, pointing to the occupied table. Nico had jolted her back to reality and it was clear she would have much rather reality hadn't come knocking. Nico knew that feeling well. She had slid the braid her hair had miraculously been tamed into over her shoulder, Nico noted, and was playing with the end nervously. Her throat worked up and down and she was chewing on her lower lip.

Percy wouldn't meet his eyes either but was looking at the floor guiltily and apologetically.

"But… there's someone sitting there," Nico said, his eyes sliding slowly between Rachel and Percy. "What's going on, you guys? Seriously, tell me. You're freaking me out."

Both Percy and Rachel looked like they'd been temporarily struck dumb, wearing nearly identical, torn expressions on their face. The hairs on the back of Nico's neck stood up when he looked at them. Something was seriously wrong here and he felt like he was the last one to know, as usual.

"Tell me," he said, and his voice cracked in a way he wanted to kick himself for. "Please?" No point in trying to hide how pathetic he was now, he might as well go for broke.

"I think we should talk," said a voice from behind him.

It froze Nico's blood and dried out his mouth. It was a voice he'd never thought he'd hear again and yet…

"Father?" he asked in a strangled whisper, still not turning around even though he felt a hand on his shoulder.

"It's me, Nico," Hades said. He was dressed in black suit with silver pinstripes, blindingly shiny patent leather shoes and a red silk tie over a black shirt. A platinum watch chain dangled from one of his pockets and he was fiddling with a black fedora, spinning it round and round by the brim.

"Why?" Nico choked out.

"Why?" Hades echoed, a perplexed expression furrowing a brow the colour of souring milk and knitting his eyebrows. "I've done some terrible things, Nico. Things I wish I hadn't done. I—"

"Not you," Nico snapped, still keeping his back to his father and jabbing a finger at Percy and Rachel, who were rapidly blurring in front of him through a pearlescent curtain of tears. "Them."

Rachel looked as if she might cry also; she tried to speak a couple of times but failed, tugging on her hair more vigorously instead.

"Nico…" Percy started.

"You know what, I changed my mind," Nico said, throwing up his hands and slashing the air with them, cutting Percy off violently. "I don't want to hear it. I trusted you. Both of you. And now I find out you're whispering behind my back to get him involved? Was Annabeth in on it as well? Might as well make it a full house, huh? I just…" He balled his hands into fists; his fingers were tingling and it was spreading up his hands and arms. Bile had risen in his throat and he suddenly couldn't say anything else.

The walls of the restaurant suddenly seemed to shift, closing in on him. The gaze of the diners seemed to burn like laser beams, even though they'd all gone back to their meals the second Hades had stood up as if his presence had slid up a window of tinted glass made of Mist.

"Nico, please," Rachel said desperately, her voice thick with emotion. "Please don't. I'm sorry, okay? We should have told you he'd be here, I know. We should. But we didn't think you'd come and, well… he's your dad. And he has things to say to you. We just thought it would help you. We only want what's best for you. We aren't trying to hurt you here."

"No?" Nico asked softly. "Well, you could have fooled me, Rachel. This seems like a lot of trouble to go to if you don't want to hurt someone. You know what wouldn't have hurt me? Just the three of us hanging out. Having lunch. Just me trying to get back to being a tiny little bit of normalcy and not having to deal with… everything. This isn't helping, it's…" He couldn't find the words for the sheer opposite of help this entire situation was bringing, but that was fine because the oxygen was rapidly vanishing from the room and he wasn't sure he could have drawn enough breath to say it, anyway.

"This is not their fault, Nico," Hades said. "I wanted to see you. When you shadow travelled, I knew you were back and I knew where you were. I asked them for this."

Nico still hadn't turned to look at Hades. "You saw me two months ago," Nico bit out, shrugging Hades' hand off his shoulderHadeHh. "Or did you think I wouldn't remember you carrying me out of that club and then dumping me in the ER?"

"He... wait what?" Rachel asked, her face creasing in confusion. Her eyes turned to Hades; the green began to crackle with dissent. "When you came to me, you told me you hadn't seen Nico since you cast him out," she said. "What is Nico saying? That you've known for two months where he is and what's going on and you've just done nothing? Sat on your hands and let us all freak out some more over him being missing?"

"I said Nico hadn't seen me since I cast him out; the last time I saw him, he was unconscious," Hades said smoothly, waving a hand. "And I don't appreciate your tone, Oracle," he added menacingly, emphasising the last word to remind Rachel what had happened to her predecessor.

"Yeah, he's known what was going on and where I was for two months now," Nico said. "Two whole months and he just sat there on his throne and twiddled is fucking thumbs. I mean, what's two months given that he's the whole reason I vanished for a couple of years anyway, right?"

Shadows swirled around Hades; the floor trembled, sending glasses hanging upside down above the bar shivering and rattling against each other. The diners ate on, oblivious, as plaster dust from the ceiling hissed down onto their plates.

"I would advise you not to speak to me like that," Hades said in a silky tone. "Son or not, you will address me with respect."

Nico finally turned; seeing his father for the first time since that day in his throne room was like taking a punch to the solar plexus. The air was driven out of him and his fast twisted into a mask of fury. How did Hades have the audacity to stand there and pontificate after everything he had done? All the ways he had tried to destroy Nico and now he wanted respect?

"Respect is earned," Nico said savagely. "What have you done to deserve it after everything?"

The glasses began to sway more violently; one edged its way off the end of the rack and shattered on the floor. Picture swung crooked on the walls and the building groaned around them.

"Sure, bring down the whole place one everyone's heads," Nico goaded. Both he and Hades were bristling now, jaws set in an almost identical manner. "That will make you look so much better, when we're all crushed under rubble."

Hades was about to speak, but Percy cut him off.

"Nico, stop," Percy said, stepping in between the two of them. "Both of you, stop. How is this helpful? We're here to try and work out all the crap between you. That is important. So let's just sit down—"

"I've lost my appetite," Nico said, turning on his heel and marching back towards the front of the restaurant. "Thanks, guys. Real great pep talk," he called back over his shoulder.

Rachel sighed, burying her face in her hands. "Oh, gods. That could not have gone worse, could it?"

"I don't know," Percy said. "We could have been smeared in meat juice and spent the whole thing fighting off some hungry lions escaped from a zoo at the same time."

Rachel didn't smile. "What are you waiting for?" she said instead. "Go after him." Percy turned to leave but Rachel grabbed his arm. "Not you. Him," she clarified, pointing at Hades.

Hades blinked at her. "You dare to order me—"

Green fireworks exploded to life over Rachel's head, showering the floor with fizzling sparks that jumped on the marble like scattered emeralds. The display cut Hades off. "You wanted reconciliation," she said stonily. "You came to me and said that you wanted to get back in Nico's life. How are you going to do that standing there? Go and find him and talk to him. He deserves way more than that, but that will be a start."

Hades looked the Oracle up and down briefly, a slightly malignant look crossing his face, but then he bowed his head and walked past them silently.

"Make sure he gets back to Percy's apartment okay," Rachel called after the departing god. "He's not ready to be out there by himself yet."

Hades turned at the door and examined her again for a long time before nodding, placing his hat on his head and walking out into the street.

Percy let out a long breath. "I thought he was going to incinerate us," he said. "I can't believe you got away with that."

"He's not all bad," Rachel said, shrugging. "Mostly bark and hardly any bite. Usually. If you skip over the whole Oracle/mummy mess. Which is kind of tough for me but I do my best. He really wants to do the right thing by Nico this time as well, so that helps."

"We screwed up," Percy said, his shoulders sagging away from his ears. "Seriously, we really screwed up, Rachel. When Hades said that he was ready to help... I thought it would be good for Nico. I thought it would make things better if they could just sit and have lunch and talk... Maybe he would have given Nico his powers back and Nico could have felt connected to things again, you know? It just messed everything up, though. This was a bad idea."

"We don't know that yet," Rachel replied gently, putting a hand on Percy's arm. "It might still help. Besides, how were we meant to know that Hades had been holding out on us for two months?"

"I don't know how I thought Nico would react," Percy said glumly. "It was so stupid to think this would be some kind of happy reunion. I mean, it's Hades we're talking about here. After what he did to Nico... Nico is going to hate us."

"Give him time," Rachel said. "He's got a lot to deal with right now. We're doing everything we can. We're here for him and that's all that matters."

"Is it enough?" Percy asked helplessly.

Rachel sighed and put an arm around Percy, leading him to the table that Hades had been sitting on. She opened the menu she had snatched from it earlier and opened it, placing it in front of him. "All we can do is hope so," she said.

"Are we really going to sit here and eat lunch and wait?" Percy said, staring blankly at the menu. "It seems... wrong"

"You're not used to waiting around for things to happen, that's all," Rachel said. "You're more used to making things happen yourself." She tapped the menu repeatedly with her finger. "Get some food in you. If you fought off Himeros, you must be starving. Just don't order the veal. He was just trying to get you to be terribly gauche and embarrass yourself, I think. Plus, you know. It's seriously cruel."

Percy blinked at her. "I don't know what that means but okay? And I don't want to eat a deer, anyway. It might be roadkill."

"Venison is deer," Rachel said. "Veal is baby cow."

"Baby cow?" Percy said, curling a lip. "Wow."

"Yeah," Rachel said. "Exactly."

The waiter came. Rachel translated the menu from poncey to English for Percy; Percy asked if they'd make him a hamburger, at which the waiter nearly swallowed his tongue before glancing at Rachel's commanding nod and saying that he'd see what he could get the kitchen to do.

"I still feel bad that we're going to sit here and have lunch while Nico is out there with his dad going through the gods only know what," Percy said.

"He's safe," Rachel said. "Hades won't let anything happen to him. And maybe it needs to be just the two of them, anyway. There's so much they have to work out."

"Understatement of the year," Percy muttered.

They lapsed into silence for a while, lost in thoughts. Percy stared at the tablecloth, which had a higher threadcount than his sheets.

"How is he?" Rachel asked eventually, unscrewing the top of the salt shaker and dumping the contents on the table so she could trace patterns in it with her finger. "And I mean... with everything, you know?"

Percy sighed. "How much has the Oracle shown you?"

Rachel hesitated. "That depends. How much has Nico told you?"

"Come on, Rachel. It's you and me here. Are we really going to play this game?" Percy said tiredly.

"You said he was mad when he found out that you'd been to see me," Rachel said with a fake-casual, one-shouldered shrug. "I don't want to... tread on his toes. I don't want him to be mad at me. He's got enough going on. And anyway, I can't spill his guts for him. It's not up to me. He has to do that in his own time. You know that."

Percy ran a hand across his face, partly to hide a yawn and partly to give him time to think. He was exhausted, tired down to his bones. "Honestly, Rachel... that was the most normal I've seen him," he told the Oracle. "You know, he just... I think he needs normal stuff. People. Human interaction. I think when he's around other people, it's easier for him. He doesn't have time to think so much, to mope, to brood... or whatever he does. And just then, when he got angry… maybe that was the first time he's really felt much of anything since he came back? I don't know. He won't let me in. What am I meant to do?"

"Eat your burger," Rachel said, dusting salt off her hands. "And then we'll go from there."