Disclaimer: I don't own Trials of Apollo
TOApril day twenty-one: "Knowledge In Death"
Nico knew Apollo was going to die. The oppressive air of death cloaked him like a second skin, an observation he made the mistake of voicing the first time he came face to face with the mortal god. He shouldn't have said it, he realised that the moment the words left his mouth even before Will lightly scolded him for freaking Apollo out even more, and immediately latched onto Will's words as a way to redirect the conversation into the easy banter he enjoyed with his boyfriend (his boyfriend; Nico loved thinking it, being able to think it and know that it was okay, know that he wasn't broken, disgusting, or any other slurs he'd heard thrown around, because as Will had pointed out to him, they were both gay, so if Nico was those awful things, so was Will, but Will was far, far too good to be those so maybe Nico wasn't, either).
He was lucky they'd misunderstood him. He didn't normally like it when Will misunderstood him, because it happened, because their relationship was still growing, still learning, and he'd only been actively letting him in since August, which was only four months even if they were four of the best months he'd had in a long, long time, but in this case it was a relief. Will clearly thought, and Apollo seemed to be taking his cues from Will, so Apollo likely thought, too, that Nico was simply comparing the Apollo in front of him now with the Apollo from the day he first arrived at camp, that it was just the norm for death to cling to mortals.
In a way, that was true, but it wasn't like this. The death that wrapped around Apollo, coiled like a snake - and Nico knew more than enough of the stories to know that the impression of a serpent was far too apt and not just his imagination - was nothing like the death that lingered around Will. The death that lingered around Will was the same as the death that lingered around his siblings, Sherman, Chiara, the other campers. It was a lazy inevitability, that one day Thanatos would come and take their souls, the background hum of mortality that Nico didn't even notice unless he was searching for it any more.
The constricting serpent of death around Apollo was different. It was heavy, oppressive and suffocating in a way Nico had never felt before. It wasn't the same as Thanatos himself, when death actively came for a soul whose time was up and the Fates snipped their string, so he didn't think Apollo was going to drop dead then and there - he hoped he wouldn't, because Will would be inconsolable - but the promise was there.
Nico had been working on being more open with Will about things; it was simultaneously a slow process yet also remarkably easy, maybe because Will just felt safe, maybe because Nico had been an open kid, once upon a time, and he hadn't entirely forgotten how to share when there wasn't a prickly wall in the way and Will had tackled that wall down the instant he realised it existed between them. He wasn't perfect at it, but then again neither was Will, which had been a bit of a surprise when he first realised how much the son of Apollo kept hidden behind the soft smiles and mostly laid-back attitude, and Will never asked for more than he could give, so they made it work.
This was one of those things Nico didn't think he could give.
It didn't seem right, keeping this a secret from Will, but at the same time Nico knew he had to. Will probably deserved to know that his dad was cloaked in death, but Will already wasn't coping with the Apollo situation. He was breaking beneath the air of healer he was projecting almost forcibly out - everything's going to be fine, he insisted, while Nico could see the cracks no-one else seemed to want to see - and Nico feared what the knowledge would do to him. It was, in the short term, kinder to go with the lie of omission, ignoring the guilt gnawing at the pit of his stomach in favour of holding Will together when he needed that, and offering him a safe place to fall apart when he needed that.
It was worse when Apollo came back, six months later. Nico watched Will, who had been so worried and panicked the entire time Apollo was gone, throw himself at his dad and tried not to flinch at the thickness of the coiled death. It wasn't just an air of death anymore, it was a miasma, thick and oozing and so very, very close.
He should have told Will then. In hindsight, he should have told him earlier, because crunch time was clearly fast approaching and Will deserved some warning, but Nico had been sitting on the secret for six months and he was scared of Will's reaction, so he kept it to himself, feeling the guilt weighing even more heavily on his gut. He couldn't even be mad at Will for missing out a line from the prophecy, for trying to keep him safe, because he was doing the exact same thing only on a much, much bigger scale. That was his opening, even, to confess, but he let the conversation take its natural course instead and the opportunity passed untaken.
Will was struggling again, he told himself as though his boyfriend hadn't been struggling constantly since January, and arguably before then. It would be cruel to add to it further, dangerous to distract him when they had troglodytes to parlay with and a quest with more people than there should be on it (although he knew he couldn't leave Will behind, not this time, not so close to the end. Will deserved all the time he could possibly have with his dad before it all ended, and Nico knew the ending was coming soon. Besides, he wanted Will with him; his boyfriend wasn't wrong to be distrustful of the trogs and this felt like something they needed to do together).
When they reunited in Nero's tower, Nico was glad he hadn't said anything. Not because the miasma of death had gone away - because it hadn't - but because there was something else beneath it, impossibly only revealed as death thickened. Something that reminded him of the glow of Elysium, of the Isle of the Blessed and rebirth and things beyond death. Apollo was going to die, and soon. There were hours left, not days, not weeks nor months nor years. Apollo was at the end of his mortal journey but there were little hints, like the way he could take nectar again, the way he stood a little bit straighter, more confident in himself in a way that brought to mind the disastrous Thalia Incident than his mortal feats, that when that journey ended, another would begin.
Nico felt when Apollo died, but he didn't mourn, didn't even tell Will. He just smiled to himself and looked up towards the sun, shining brightly above their heads.
Death couldn't kill a god.
A little more Nico pov, playing with Nico's death sense a bit because that interests me, especially in the context of TOA and a mortal god.
Thanks for reading!
Tsari
