The hostility in the room was so intense that I didn't even need contact to feel it. I could almost see it rippling off the walls and countertops. Even while it gave me anxiety it also gave me hope that things were improving.

I sat down and kept my eyes on the paperwork in my hands but I could feel him staring daggers at me.

"This is normal. There's nothing-" The glass jar nearest to me shattered. I looked at the place it had been. "I didn't know you could do that. Are you able to manipulate the PSI?"

"What! I don't know. Shut up," Nico hissed at me.

"For what it's worth, I'm glad you're feeling better this week. Last week was...chaos."

Two grand mal seizures in 36 hours and a recovery process that was twice as long. Yesterday had been the first time he had been able to form a coherent sentence again. And then there was the sleep walking. I could see the toll it was taking on his psyche. It worried me a little because they were caused by stress, but I could tell Nico had gotten past some threshold.

By the gods, this is the most resilient person ever. So I might as well throw caution to the wind too.

I took out my AP books and started grinding. I failed my last exam by a narrow margin and I didn't want to repeat the course next term.

"Why are you here," Nico said, after nearly forty-five minutes of it.

"I'm worried about you."

"Oh please. Do you think being nice to me will get you on my dad's good side or something?"

"I hadn't really thought about it." That was true enough. I always aimed to make the good outweigh the bad but hadn't considered Nico when doing it. I thought about what he might really be saying. "It can be difficult for anyone to know who their friends are. But I get that it might be even harder for you."

"Oh you get it, do you? You think you know what it means to be the son of Hades?"

It was an effort not to smile when he said that. He wouldn't have understood. But I was so relieved that he was giving me an opening. "No. I don't. Can you explain it to me? What does that mean?"

I didn't expect him to answer right away because who could possibly do so? I gave him a few beats and turned my attention back to my studies so he could gather his thoughts some more.

I completely lost track of time. I was going over some diagrams of the nervous system when-

"But what if someone breaks my heart. What do you think might happen to that person?"

"In relation to your father?" Nico didn't answer so I knew that's exactly what he meant. I hadn't considered that either and the thought filled me with dread. I took a breath and forced myself to look at it more objectively. "Do you really think he's so unreasonable?"

"You haven't seen the Fields of Punishment."

As a doctor, there was an underlying suggestion that Nico was having delusions of grandeur and it really concerned me. As Will the whole thing terrified me; Pursuing this relationship could end with me being ripped apart by wild animals for all eternity. As a healer, I wanted to guide him through his fear. "But that's for evil people. And breaking someone's heart is just human."

"I don't think he likes Percy Jackson very much," he said after a shorter silence.

Well that's a punch in the gut. He wasn't even talking about me but Percy Jackson and that changed everything. Then I realized he was admitting Percy had broken his heart and everything changed again. "If that's the case, then Percy made his own bed."

Another longer silence followed by, "What would you do if I told you I wanted to kiss you right now?"

"Who's asking, Nico or the son of Hades," I teased him.

But he took it seriously. "Both."

So I did too. "Then I would tell you both: No."

Nico looked dumbfounded. "No!?!"

"You are not going to kiss me right now."

He stared at me in disbelief. "But I thought that's what you wanted?"

"It doesn't matter what I want," I said firmly. "You're not ready for a relationship like that. I am not going to ruin what could be because you want to rush into things."

I pointed to the broken jar again. "So let's talk about that, instead. How did you do it?"

"I was angry."

"I know that but I'm sure you have a wide range of gifts from your father. I wonder if it's the PSI that you can control or the minerals. What do you think?"

He shrugged and looked sullen and that irritated me to no end. Oh no, you are not going backwards after all that. "Have you tried bending metal?"

He scowled at me and said, "I am not Leo Valdez." His eyes shifted briefly to grief and fear.

"I bothers you, what happened to Leo?"

"The Romans needed their pound of flesh after he fired on their home. It was the only way to get them to back off even with Octavian dead," he said bitterly.

"So their dead for sure? They still haven't found the bodies."

Nico nodded. "Octavian is dead. He's not coming back."

"And Leo?"

"I'm not sure."

I frowned. That didn't make sense to me. "How can you be sure about Octavian being dead and not Leo?"

"I don't know."

He was being evasive again and it was really starting to grate on me. "That doesn't make sense. If you have a gift that lets you know about these things why would it suddenly stop working?"

"It usually works." He shrugged again. For someone that had been visibly upset about it two minutes ago, he was being incredibly dismissive now. I couldn't understand it.

"Its all anyone can talk about, even now, whether Leo is alive and you won't give me an explanation?"

He gave me a weird side glance that I couldn't interpret. Then he said, "I told you everything I know."

Oh gods. I started to say something but he gave a quick shake of his head and said, "Jason and Piper went looking for him, right? They could find him any day now. Or he could just show up on his own."

"So that's what it means to be the son of Hades?"

He actually smiled back at me. "The Cliffs Notes version."

"I can't wait for the hardcover." Yeah, I'm a dork. I closed my books. "Do you mind if I, uh, take care of something for a little while?"

"Are you coming back?" Nico looked immediately embarrassed at having asked.

"I will," I assured him. "I'll even leave this here, so you know I have to," I said, waving my hand over the text books. Abandonment issues, yeesh. "I've just realized that I need to talk to my sisters about something."

"About Leo?"

"About you, too. You're going to be fine. And everyone should know it too. Leo can handle himself, out there," I promised him, waving my hand vaguely in the distance.