Disclaimers: I am not Rick Riordan. I do not own anything you might recognize. This story is a work of fiction, using the characters from Percy Jackson and Heroes of Olympus, with a plot that is a mash-up of plots from a few books and movies. As such, it's not marked as a crossover.
Warnings: Guy x guy pairing. The romance is not the main plot, but it is an important subplot, so if you do not like this, click the back button. Rated for mild cussing that might occur somewhere in the near future. The characters are slightly out of character, too.
Summary: It was only supposed to be just one day in someone else's life, to see what the world could have been like if things had only been the slightest bit different. When the time was 3:59 and he couldn't get back, though, Nico started to realise just how much can go wrong when you climb through the looking glass without looking to make sure that this was a two-way passageway first.
'Thoughts'
"Speech"
Dreams/Flashbacks/Memories
It's Not Goodbye
(Don't let it be)
The whole while was spent in solitude and silence, each thinking about their own sister, perhaps. Well, Nico spent the whole time trying not to think too much about Bianca now that he's brought her up, and he's assuming that Reyna, meanwhile, would be going through her memories of her times spent with Hylla in an attempt to comb out what she might have missed.
Trying not to think about Bianca turned out harder than expected now, though, so, in a misguided attempt, he started sorting through his memories with Percy instead. This Percy, the one that he would have to share a bed with later. The one who said that… He searched for an indication that, perhaps, Percy was truly telling the truth and was not just saying this to.
To what?
"Are you coming, or not?" broke him out of the loop. He looked up, in surprise, at Reyna, who had migrated to a bush a few trees away, partially disappearing into the forest, sometime during his inattention.
Not quite inclined to keep her waiting, he saved the 'analyse her actions' part for later, storing it away, before hurrying to catch up with her. The sun was setting, casting the whole forest in a darker light, the little streams of rays filtering through slowly disappearing as they made their way back in silence.
Close to the edge, however, they ran into Hades.
Nico was suddenly, forcefully reminded that this was his father, the one who gave a damn about him. The one who actually cared if he was alive and might have been worried when he ran off. A little guilt started to worm its way into his conscience.
"Where had you been?" Hades asked upon spotting the two of them.
For a moment, there was silence. Then, Reyna spoke up on Nico's behalf, "He followed me to make sure I would not get lost or get killed, sir."
Nico stifled the urge to give her a grateful look. He didn't want to lie to his father, not now, not so soon.
Hades, thankfully, took her word for it.
"It's dark." Without another word, he turned, leading the way.
The two of them followed, automatically, although Reyna lingered when they reached the door – she had no place in there, yet.
For a brief few seconds as Hades opened the door, he made eye contact with Nico.
He can't read his father at all.
"Is there any empty rooms in there?" Reyna asked hesitantly, eventually.
"I'm not sure. If you don't mind, we could just share a room until tomorrow." Belatedly, it occurred to Nico that he was sharing a room with Percy. He was quick to amend, though, "I'll take the floor, you can take the second bed."
Reyna looked away from him.
Silence accompanied them to the room.
Upon opening it, Nico discovered that the second bed was not empty.
Apparently, they must have decided that he was a lost cause, as was Reyna. Grimacing, he was prepared to leave Percy and Leo be and go to share with his father – before he remembered that his father was sharing with Antares.
Reyna caught onto his indecision, apparently. "It's okay," she whispered, moving ahead of him into the room and digging out the pillow from Leo's grip.
"Let's just share the floor. It's just one night."
Nico stared for a while as she settled herself down, before deciding that this was a better idea than going to the other rooms to search for space, he would be sleeping on the floor regardless. At least the two in this room slept like sleeping beauty.
Dragging the pillow out from under Percy's head felt like retribution. The victorious feeling did not quite diminish when Percy did not even wake up. In fact, only amusement came when Percy snorted once, shuffling a little to resettle into a new position.
As he woke for the fifth time, though, unsettled by something he couldn't quite recall, he gave up on sleeping and returned Percy the pillow. Reyna, apparently, had not had the same problem, seen from how she was deep in sleep regardless of when he woke up.
Closing the door behind him quietly, he climbed onto the roof, looking to be alone.
Only, he wasn't.
Bianca looked at him, startled, from her place on the roof.
For a moment, they stared at each other, at a standstill. He then smiled at her a little awkwardly, moving to climb back down.
"Wait."
He looked at her, surprised.
"I'm sorry," she blurted out. He levelled a gaze at her. Deciding that he probably should stay here and finish the conversation, he scooted closer to her and settled there, waiting for her to finish.
She looked away uncomfortably. "I shouldn't have reacted that way, I suppose. I'm sorry."
Nico kept quiet for a while, considering.
"I should have told you," he said at last. "I meant to. Towards the end. I just never quite got around to it."
She didn't respond.
Eventually, she spoke up again. "Is he safe?"
"Your brother?"
"Yeah."
"He should be. My life was quite…" Normal. Safe. Different. "Normal, back home."
She looked down after that. They sat in silence for a while before she asked another question, this time about his world. What it was like. It prompted a conversation that led to them comparing their lives, lasting until the sun broke the horizon.
There was silence, for a while, as they watched the sunrise.
"We have to meet the council."
Nico looked at her, uncomprehendingly.
"They'll assign us places to go." After a pause, she added, "You could probably join the Amazons."
Nico grimaced a little. "Do we have to join one of the groups?"
"Well. It's safer, isn't it? And easier. Besides, there are advantages. You can pause your timer with them."
"You can't restart it," Nico reminded her.
She pursed her lips for a while before shrugging. Nico took the hint and let the topic rest. They sat through the sunrise quietly, watching the colours shift and brighten together.
They made it to the council meeting place (Hades' room, apparently) in time. From the looks of it, Hylla had sorted out her issues (at least some of them) with Reyna, given that while Reyna still refused to look at her, she doesn't actually glare at Hylla anymore.
The session concluded with the decision to reallocate all of them to the campsite with the most available slots and let them make themselves useful there.
Nico was quite sure that it escaped no one's notice that Bianca was not given a place with them. No one pointed it out, though.
When almost everyone had vacated the room, it was Bianca, Nico and Hades left.
"I'm joining the Hunters," she told them. There was defiance, challenging them to tell her to do otherwise.
Hades accepted her decision with a nod.
Nico, Nico had seen it coming ever since she kept her peace.
It didn't make anything hurt less, though.
And that was that.
Life in the canyon was, mildly put, busy.
He only discovered, much later than he should have, that they were given a place in the safest valley amongst the children because what they had with them was, as Hylla put it, "ground-breaking". The unofficial reasons: Reyna was with them and they were a package deal; Nico and Hades were around and they were a scientific curiousity; Antares was young enough that he had a direct pass there; they were all not quite good enough to survive for long with either the Hunters or the NightWatch.
The point was, when they got there, they got to work, and the workload truly multiplied at a rate faster than bacteria carrying out cell division – it only ever increased, no matter how hard they tried to decrease it. They became invaluable, sure, but it left them with no time to themselves.
Nico and Leo had their work cut out decoding and sort-of replicating the stuff the notebook had provided, while training a bunch of newbies shipped over to try help them out. At the same time, Percy and Jason got to work testing out these babies and not die in the process. Reyna was just squirreled away to help Hylla with the administrative work – apparently even rebels needed paperwork.
The responsibility and the understaffed 'research and development branch' allocated to Nico and Leo meant that there was barely any free time for both Nico and Leo.
Which meant that there wasn't time for Nico to spend with Percy.
Which doesn't translate to him avoiding Percy, no matter what Leo said, because he doesn't have time for anyone else, either. It helped that Percy never sought him out.
It was just coincidence that whenever he came down to collect whatever new thing they came up with, Nico would be at the back end 'lab' (unofficially his workspace) of the warehouse they were given, working on something else.
He had to crack the timer, after all, and it was bloody complicated. It needed time. It made no difference that the members whose timer would self-activate still had a few years to go. Leo agreed with him on this.
What Leo doesn't know was that he was also attempting to reconstruct his own portal, because, no matter what, this was not home. This was not his Leo, not his Jason, not his Reyna, and Rachel… All those people that were truly his friends, nobody here could compare, no one here mattered the way they did.
Sure, he's not making any progress at all on that front, given that he's working entirely off theories, but. It's just, he has no idea how long it would take before he could eventually have enough time to sneak into Olympia and try to access the portal once more. At least this way, he could reassure himself that he was doing everything within his ability to get back to his home.
He just wanted to go home.
When Percy eventually took the hint and stopped staying when he dropped by, though, he wasn't elated. Neither was he surprised. He couldn't help the disappointment, though.
Life went on, however.
And then Bianca died.
It was so out of the blue, like a lightning strike – which was exactly what it was. Funny how life was, truly, that in the end, it wasn't even a bloody alien that got to her, it was a lightning bolt.
An honest-to-god lightning bolt that could have struck anywhere and just so happened to hit her.
When he got the news, he solemnly retreated to his test lab.
And proceeded to beat the hell out of all the (metal) test-dummies that were made to be shot at.
Nobody questioned the dried tear tracks and the bloodied knuckles when he eventually came out the next morning and sat quietly in the corner until Hades came and sat with him.
Percy wasn't around, ever.
He wasn't upset.
He was dealing.
Alright, so he broke out the mops and buckets every time he got into his room. So he rearranged and colour indexed every item of his wardrobe. So he made sure that everything is precisely a certain distance apart. So he kind of maybe growled at anyone who tried to touch his things or enter his room (or his workspace).
And maybe he started making everyone working in the 'R&D department' (the warehouse, really) wipe down everything before and after they use it and place it exactly where it was before.
And perhaps he had been destroying at least three dummies a day testing out even more weapons on his own, but this destruction kept him calm. It kept him from giving in to the urge to spread his zone to the entire house, the entire warehouse instead of confining it to his space.
Okay, so he wasn't dealing so well.
He was dealing, though, whatever anyone says.
Percy, he bitterly reflected sometimes when he was alone, couldn't stand this.
It was true – he never, not once, came near Nico. He wouldn't even come in to pick up his equipment, leaving Jason to pick up the equipment for both of them.
When Will discovered a few buried maps with campsites and posts that they were not aware was around, Jason was sent to help him reclaim them, given that he was the best at handling all the new equipment Nico and Leo were coming up with, right up there with Percy.
With Jason now working with Will on expeditions, Reyna started coming down instead.
The day Reyna came down with the news that there was something else left behind in either Delphi or Olympia and that Hades would thus be going there, given that he was the most familiar with both places, he didn't flip.
He just took a deep breath and turned up at Hades' room-slash-workspace in the warehouse with his cleaning tools. Hades didn't comment, letting him do what he needed to.
He felt all of five years old and scared of the lightning storm as he curled up on the bed with his father and let him hold him. He no longer fit that well, but it made him feel safe in a way he hadn't really felt since… a long while ago.
There was no objections to him pretty much moving into this room, even though the bed wasn't really that big.
Because it wasn't enough to just send Hades (of course it wasn't enough), they need someone to go with him. With Bianca gone, Jason tied up with Will, Reyna tied up in admin and Leo tied up in R&D with him, it was only Percy, since his job could be done by anyone with guts, anyone who dares to go out there with minimum backup, including the people he and Leo were 'training'.
He didn't go and see them off.
Actually, that's not true.
He did not intend to see them off.
But he did.
There wasn't much to say, in the end – Percy was gone after one indecipherable look. As Hades followed him, disappearing into the bushes, Nico couldn't help it.
"Get back soon!"
He never intended for his voice to waver slightly.
Hades paused, turning around, smiling at him for a moment. He waved, too, before disappearing into the shadows of the forest, leaving Nico there.
He didn't move for a long while, not until the sun was down and Reyna had come around on her little boat to drag him back into the safe island, because it wasn't smart to stay on land and unarmed and he should have been back long ago.
'I'll do your job for you, I'll wait,' he vowed silently, sitting on the bed in Hades' empty room. 'Just get back here soon.'
'Don't let me lose you, too.'
*** NaNoWriMo 2014 Winner ***
Thanks to everyone for sticking with me for this long! The next chapter would be the last one, a semi-epilogue/prologue thing that kind of jumpstarts the sequel. Let me know what you thought about this work, please?
I read everyone's comments, really, you probably have no idea how excited I get when there's a comment notification (unless you're a fellow author), but yeah, I pretty much jump for joy whenever there's a notification, so, please? I'd really appreciate it!
And, talk to me on tumblr! I'm on tumblr as ivory-kelly-1969.