Poor Nico. He's just getting so screwed over at every turn. Also, does anyone else have the problem writing Percy Jackson fanfiction where they have to 'correct' the swearing? I have to keep checking that I'm typing 'gods'. So I got a question I want to put out to all the readers: "The title is 'Break Myself'. Who is the 'myself'?" What are your thoughts, readers?

Oh yeah, I wrote another PJATO fanfic titled 'Heat'. Actually, it was part of a scene I was thinking about for Break Myself but didn't want to use. I have a few more I'm thinking of linking into it's own short story thing, so go check it out and tell me if it's worthwhile. That is more of just a way to write out some scenes and see how they work. Anyways.

Kitty of Deadly Poking - 1: awesome name. 2: Random musings are too fun to ignore.

Daughter of Hermes - yeah, finally showing a little bit of PercyxNico. :P Like the summary says... very, very... VERY slow-building. How many chapters are we into this? Gods, someone, smack Nico. And Percy, while we're at it.

Ninemillionhigh - it's okay if you don't review, I'll still write no matter how many readers/reviews this gets. But I admit, getting feedback makes me feel guilty that I'm not writing so I update sooner. Which is why this chapter is up so close after the last one. Wow... that sounds mildly pathetic.

lunareclipse3 - I dunno. Is it?

PharaohDehli - ...why do people keep thinking I'm a girl? Is it cause I write boy/boy? And sorry, you said regenerate. I thought Doctor Who. *geek*

9 tailed trickster - yeah, most PercyxNico writers either ignore Annabeth or make her evil. But by her personality in the books... I dunno. I think she'd be the kind of girl you'd still be friends with after breaking up.

Shadow Sunset - *innocent face*

Has anyone else noticed these last few chapters are slightly longer than before? Hmm. Okay, and in this chapter I will admit - there's a little fudging with mythology. I even mention it in the story. But Rick Riordan did it first, so I don't feel bad. HA.

Blah. I'm bored today. Anyone wanna AIM me at PanInScarlet today while I work on the next chapter?

Chapter Nineteen

Percy was still sprawled on the couch when Nico dashed to him, pain temporarily forgotten. His soft black hair hung over his shut eyes, lanky legs hanging over the edge just a bit, and one hand slightly curled next to his face. Even though he inherently knew Percy was still alive – he knew he would feel it if Percy suddenly died - Nico felt a rush of relief to see Percy's chest rise and fall slowly. He also pressed his head to Percy's chest, telling himself he was checking for a pulse. Totally. One hundred percent. Shut up conscience.

"He isn't waking up," Sally said again in a voice that sounded like she was barely staving off some hysteria. Nico could see where the blanket had originally been over Percy but cast aside in her attempts to wake him up.

"Percy? Percy!" Annabeth tried, shaking his shoulders gently, then harder. And again. "Percy!" She frowned. "Sorry about this-" Then slapped him. Nico couldn't bring himself to protest as Percy's head shifted to the side, but he didn't stir.

"Percy?" Nico asked, and at his voice Percy's brow furrowed. Nico hopefully repeated, "Percy?" But the furrow faded.

"He's dreaming," Annabeth said in disbelief. She pointed at his eyes, which were slightly twitching beneath closed eyelids. "REM sleep – Rapid Eye Movement. That means he's in the deepest stage of dreaming. But he's not waking up."

"Dreaming…Hypnos." Nico's lip snarled around the name. Anger flared at the thought of Percy trapped anywhere with Hypnos.

"Hypnos?" Annabeth asked, puzzled. "The god of sleep? What has he got to do with dreams?"

Nico didn't want to point out how obvious that correlation was to a self-boasted genius. "Remember during the Half-Blood War, his son Morpheus was putting people to sleep. But Morpheus is the god of dreams. Hypnos is the god of sleep. Yet he has powers in people's dreams too. I don't get it – maybe they have power in each other's domains or something. But…" He babbled as the wheels in his head churned. "But that doesn't matter – whatever way it works, Hypnos has power over people in their sleep."

"But what would the god of sleep want with Percy?" Sally demanded.

"I… I-I…" Nico stumbled, trying to find the words. Well, you see, Hypnos wants my ass but I ran away from him and he knows I'm in love with your son – surprise – so I'm guessing that may have something to do with Percy not waking up. No, Nico decided that wouldn't be the best way to put it.

"I have to find out what's going on," Nico finally settled on saying. Annabeth looked somewhere between suspicious and cross.

"And how do you plan on doing that?" she demanded.

"You're not going back to… to that place Percy found you in?" Sally looked mother-hen-pissed. "No. No way young man."

For a surreal moment, Nico felt like he was being talked to by a mother. Not his mother, the dead one, but just… a mother. That was his but wasn't. Before he could think on that feeling, the moment passed and Nico said, "I have to figure this out so we can wake Percy up.

"You are not. Going. Back," Sally firmly ordered, and Nico had little doubt she would tie him to a chair first.

"Look, I don't know what's going on here!" Nico yelled desperately. He was frustrated past the breaking point. "I have to save Percy, no matter what. Hypnos is somehow involved, and I need to figure out how. I've only encountered him twice, in person and in my sleep, and both of those weren't pleasant and I barely got away, so I'm not sure what he can do but whatever it is, I don't want him doing anything to Percy! So unless you have a better idea of figuring this out, we have to work with what we have!"

There was silence for a moment, in which Nico felt like a jerk for yelling at Percy's mother. Then Annabeth stood up slowly, set in her familiar plotting face. "Instead of physically going back…" Annabeth started slowly, "Can you go back in a dream?"

Nico frowned. He wasn't sure. That grey clouded… corridor thing had been confusing. But that strange certainty you develop in dreams, where you know things without knowing how, spoke reassurance that he could get through it. Could he do it again?

"It's worth a try," Nico finally responded.

Then the hard task came of trying to get Nico back to sleep. He wanted to do the drastic quick-solution and try sleeping pills, but Sally firmly refused, saying he was too young. Finally they agreed on a dose of NyQuil, which Annabeth said always made her sleepy when she took it while sick. That and a glass of warm milk – which Nico actually found really gross – and they put Nico back into Percy's bed and shut the blinds and curtains. The barely mid-morning light creeped in, and that's where Nico's attention went as he laid there on Percy's bed.

He head spun with the possibilities of what could be happening. He itched to get up and do something, instead of just lying here doing nothing. He tried to think of how tired he was, considering his sleep last night had been fretful and cut off early, but his body wouldn't listen to reason. It wanted to get up and walk around, so trying to keep perfectly still was horrible.

Gods, he was frustrated. Why couldn't things be simple again – back before, when a god wasn't after him, his father wasn't pissed at him, and Percy wasn't in danger? When it was just him and Percy at camp, goofing off and having fun as if they were normal kids at a normal summer camp. Like when Percy tried to shove him off the dock and used a wave to knock them both over, or when Nico accidently changed the field during sword practice by raising some dirt platforms. Or the time when Nico had been feeling a little depressed, over pretty much everything, and Percy had appeared and made him feel better. Nico would always remember that moment. The sun was barely beginning to set, so the red blaze filled the sky and caught Percy's dark hair so it looked rusted like an old photograph, Percy's eyes filled with concern as he wrapped his arms around Nico in a hug –

That moment had confirmed all the whispers of suspicion in his heart about the feelings he had for Percy. Percy had stayed with him, playing cards until past curfew and he fell asleep out in the woods, and barely stirred when Percy picked him up and carried him to his newly built cabin. In the dark Nico came to an understanding with his heart, and accepted it as he drifted off to dream of Percy saying his name.

For a moment, Nico thought he was walking through the memory of that dream again, before he realized the tone of Percy's voice was different now – desperate and edgy. The dark he had been in was different too – it felt different. Like… darker.

Shit. He knew he was back, with that weird feeling he got in dreams he knew were dreams. It had worked. Sort of. Nico had no idea where he was. And he couldn't move to figure it out. Maybe it hadn't worked.

"Stop it!" Nico heard Percy's voice and his heart leapt. He tried to lift his head, but found he couldn't. Everything felt incredibly sluggish and heavy, as he struggled to barely open his eyes. That was an incredible amount of blood on the ground he gazed at with half-lidded eyes.

As things slowly started to come further into focus and pain started to seep in, Nico realized where the blood had come from. He also realized it was his body – or his dream body, however he wanted to think of that – half-curled around the pooling blood, with the remains of his clothes soaking up the blood. The pain was getting stronger as details became clearer.

He recognized a blade edge as it pressed against his lower right arm. "Is it here?" he heard Hypnos' voice ask. Just that bastard's voice made Nico want to strangle him.

"Don't," Percy whispered hoarsely.

"Is it?"

"Don't!"

Nico wanted to ask 'don't what', before the tip thrusted through his skin. Nico tried to scream, but it came out as a barely muffled groan. Gods, the pain was getting more intense as Nico was starting to sense where the worse injuries were.

"Nico!" Percy yelled desperately.

Nico heard Hypnos give a chuckle. "Well, look who decided to barge his way into your dream, Perseus Jackson." The blade exited painfully, then a pajama-clothed foot stepped on the shoulder and turned Nico onto his back. He could now see Percy hazily, chained and his clothes tattered by a blade, but no injuries on his skin.

"You two are a pain," Hypnos huffed like a spoiled child. "Apparently, little Nico here is too closely related for me to be able to hold him in his dreams; and Percy has taken an Achilles-bath so I can't use him to lure Nico here…" Hypnos crouched over Nico, his young child-face twisted into a devious smile. "But that just means there's one weak point. I haven't found it yet, but since you're here, let me deliver my ultimatum now." Hypnos pressed his knee against Nico's arm, right over the newest injury he inflicted. "Eventually, Percy won't be able to handle seeing you being tortured – especially now that he knows the real you can easily be inside. He'll tell me where his weak point is." Hypnos held up Nico's own throwing knife. "So you can either come back and I'll release him from his sleep, or…" The threat dangled in the air.

"Pe…Percy…" Gods, the pain was getting too intense, like the more Nico could fill out the dream the more it was affecting him.

Hypnos bent down, so his chest was lying on Nico's, to whisper in his ear, "I told you… you'd come back." And he licked blood off Nico's cheek. It hurt too much to try and get away.

"You sick fuck, get off him!" Percy screamed, and Nico could barely see him out of the corner of his eye as Percy struggled against the bonds. "Nico!"

"Does this bother you, Percy Jackson?" Hypnos asked in a teasing tone, his voice too young to carry the menacing tone. "Or are you jealous?" He started to work a knee between Nico's legs, morphing into his naked older version. Percy kept screaming obscenities and inventive threats but the pain was starting to cloud out everything, except intensifying Hypnos' touch.

Nico wanted to jerk away, but when his dream body didn't respond, his conscious did. He pulled away from the beaten body and fell through the fog, nearly jumping to his feet on Percy's bed. His right arm didn't come with him, restricted, and instinctively Nico tried to lash out. Annabeth barely blocked him from striking her, one hand still holding on a towel on his arm.

"What the hell, Nico!" she snapped. Nico saw the blood soaked into the towel she held, and Percy's mother hurriedly entered the room with the first aid kit. She looked relieved when she saw him awake.

"Oh thank goodness you're awake, we were so worried!" She then went to his arm, carefully helping Annabeth remove the towel. A blade gash was in Nico's arm, in the middle of the half-healed, shiny scarred skin caused by the leather strap.

"What…" Nico started to ask.

"We don't know," Annabeth said, frustrated, as Sally started dressing the wound. "It just… happened. Your arm wasn't even touching anything when I peeked in to see if you were asleep."

"It happened in the dream," Nico thought aloud. Then it hit him. The bruise on his hip, the ones on his throat, the intensified soreness when he woke up – "What happens to me in my dreams with him happen to my real body." He did a quick visual check – there were no other new injuries. Maybe it was only when he was in the dream with Hypnos. "Anything he does to me in my dream happens to me in reality," he repeated the idea over and over, horrified by it's implications. What had been done to him in his dreams – Percy screaming his name…

Then the last piece fell into place, and Nico's knees went weak. "Oh gods… Percy. He's going to kill Percy."

To Be Continued