Will's siblings paused at the storage room door, glancing uncertainly at each other. Light glowed from where the door was cracked open, and the heavy thumps of boxes being moved sounded over the whispers being exchanged at the threshold.
"I'm not sure if this is a good idea..." Anna looked nervous, her small hands fiddling with the end of her braid. At ten, she was one of the youngest Apollo campers, but her strong proclivity for healing and her adoration of Will had made her want to come with. "Will told us to heal him for a reason; we can't tell him we can't and let him down!"
"We're not going to let a patient...disappear...because we weren't able to tell Will that we can't heal him, and need help." Alan's sharp eyes caught each person's gaze. "Will is the best healer we have. He knows better than any of us: the patient comes first. No matter what."
Ivy pushed a strand of short, dark hair behind her ear, considering Alan's words. She stood out from the rest of the group, her looks mirroring her mother's Asian background, but she'd long ago crossed that barrier, and felt at home among her siblings' blond heads and athletic builds. "Alan's right. He's not getting any better, and he could get worse really fast if nothing's done."
"He has gotten worse. And none of us can stop it, especially since Dad's gone quiet..." Alan glanced out the window, to where the sun burned low in the sky. "Will is his best hope." Alan glanced around at the reluctantly nodding heads, and pushed the door open, stepping inside.
"Will?" Will's head popped up amid a stack of boxes labeled 'bandages'. As he turned to look at them, his siblings seemed to edge back; even though nothing close to unfriendly crossed his face, the lack of a grin, for Will, was worse than a scowl.
"Yeah?" His siblings looked uncomfortably at each other, unsure what to say now that they'd started.
Ivy glanced back at her siblings, then stepped forward. "We're having trouble healing Nico. We realize you asked us to heal him for a reason-"
"Although you won't tell us what the reason is..." Alan muttered.
"-But all us have tried, and we haven't made any headway. He might even be getting worse."
Alan glanced at Ivy, then focused on Will. "We know you don't... We know that something... We know you asked us to do it," he finished lamely. "But we can't." Alan's voice gained confidence, and his eyes locked onto Will's. "And no matter what's going on in your life, the patient comes first. Always. You're the one told me that; now I'm telling you."
There was a moment's pause, where Will's face became a weather map, emotions shifting across his face like fronts. The trend, though, was worry. He looked at his siblings without focusing on anyone in particular, and nodded.
Will set down the box of bandages he was sorting. "Is he in his cabin?" Alan gave a brief nod in reply. "I'll take a look."
Will crossed the room unusually quickly, pushing open the door as he left and leaving it askew in his haste. No one spoke for a moment, exchanging wordless glances with each other.
"It seems like Will's sunshine disappeared with Apollo." Anna's voice seemed to be amplified in the quiet of the moment, before the silence froze over again, like a layer of ice coating the room, with not a spot of warmth to melt it.
Nico's eyes fluttered open as the dark wooden door to his cabin swung open, hitting the windowpane opposite it as a tall, lean figure barreled through. "Nico!" Will's voice hit Nico's ears like a cool drink on a scorching day, melting away his worries. "Who do you think you are, refusing to get better? I've sent in my best healers, and they haven't been able to make any headway!" Will stopped at Nico's bedside, his clear blue eyes catching Nico's. "The nerve."
Nico searched Will's face, looking for something to tell him that Will was joking. An arched eyebrow, the slightest curve of a smile - there. The smallest twinkle in the corner of his eye. Nico's shoulders relaxed a fraction of an inch, and the barest trace of a smirk appeared in the corner of his mouth. "You haven't sent in your best healers." The smirk grew, filling his face.
"Wha- are you insulting the competence of my healers?" Will tried for indignant, but he was struggling to suppress a grin to match Nico's. It felt so good, so right to be talking again, the banter between like running, where they each fell easily into step, matching each other stride for stride.
"No. I'm just pointing out the fact that you haven't come by, and your skills far outstrip the rest, so you can hardly say you've sent your best."
"Well, I-" He shook his head in defeat. "I'm here now, anyway, and I heard you've been getting worse. Let me look." Will glanced at the edge of the bed, seeming to consider sitting there, before letting his gaze sweep the room for a chair. He grabbed a stool from across the room and put it next to Nico's bed. He sat on it, and his voice became businesslike. "Give me your hand, please."
Nico's grin dropped into an expression of worry as he pulled his hand out of his cave of covers, and uncurled his fingers from a loose fist. His hand had turned entirely into smoke.
Will's face was alight with shock. He reached out tentatively, hesitantly, letting his fingers hover an inch over the surface of Nico's shadowy hand. Will caught Nico's gaze, and saw that the worry that filled his own eyes reflected there, jockeying for space amid nervousness and fear.
Will swallowed and broke eye contact, looking down for a moment, in which he composed himself. You are the healer. Your concerns aren't important. All that's important is the job at hand; and you need to be focused on that. Nothing else. Will trained his eyes on Nico's hand, letting his fingers fall to the point where they should have been touching pale flesh; instead, they passed right through. It was as if nothing was there, except the memory of thin fingers and soft skin, and a feeling of cold from a breeze that wasn't there.
Will's eyes fluttered closed and he started to mutter a light, quick string of words that evoked a feeling of warmth and brightness, focused on Nico's hand. The indistinct, smoky forms of his fingers became denser for a moment, struggling to form, but as soon as Will stopped speaking, they relaxed back into smoke.
Nico looked distraught. His voice struggled to sound controlled. "Does-" Nico swallowed. "Does that mean I can't be healed? Will it get worse? Will-will I become smoke entirely?"
Nico's dark eyes, filled with undisguised fear, fixed on Will, praying for Will to tell him he had a chance, but Will's attention, usually so fixed on Nico, was elsewhere. Will's hands pushed the beads on his camp necklace as he whispered to himself, lost in the recesses of his mind where he stored ailments and remedies. His fingers pushed a bead decisively, and Will's head jerked up, his eyes alight. "Yes!"
Nico looked like someone had smashed a frying pan over his head.
Will blink and focused on Nico's face, his excitement dropping away at Nico's shell-shocked expression. "Um, what did you say? Or what did I say? Or..."
Nico cut him off anxiously. "Am I going to fade away completely?"
"No! No, I think I figured it out. What's eating away your essence like this; it's the shadows," Will explained, "They suck what little warmth and life you can muster out of you, and try to pull you into the shadows. That's why those words I was saying were helping, they were inducing warmth and light into what I was focusing on, your hands." Will was speaking quickly, his excitement at having found the answer returned, and his words were tumbling over one another. "You've gotten worse because you've been here. This cabin is the darkest place in camp. If anywhere is going to suck the light out of you, this place is."
Nico furrowed his brows, piecing the information together. "So I have to go back to the infirmary?"
"No." Nico looked up in surprise at Will's words.
"But you just said-"
"The infirmary's not where you need to go; even there, the shadows pulled at you, and you were fading. Not as quickly as you are here, but still..." Will paused, seeming to decide something. "I'll have to get Chiron's approval, of course, but seeing as I'm the head counselor, so I get to make to calls, and it's in the name of medicine, and dad's... gone silent..." Will met Nico's eyes. "You'll have to stay in the Apollo cabin."
