Guys, I really am so sorry for the mix-up. And for this horrible wait. I already removed the author's note, so new readers will have no idea what I'm talking about right now, but I think that's for the best. You can keep my supreme blonde moment a secret, right? I hope you can forgive me. :(

To penny(guest): wow, thanks for all the reviews! And no, I'm not Rick Riordan. This fanfiction came to be because of several reasons, being a.) I was mad at Ricky for making us wait so long for Blood of Olympus, b.) I had a bunch of things i wanted to happen in Blood of Olympus, and c.) I have no life. It's different for every fanfiction writer, but those are my reasons. And I'm really glad you like my version of it.

To Rajell Cellers(guest): No, I'm not related to Rick. I just feel like I should be. :) And yeah, I'm Christian, and I'm still obsessed with PJO. My sister Lyndsey tells me it's a sin, but she's melodramatic about everything, so I don't particularly care. Anyway, thanks for the review.

Here you go, Joseph. Reynico for you. I really like this chapter.

Some of you, no doubt, will hate it. But I don't really care.

Again, it's mostly a dialogue chapter, but this one's also mushy, so it's ten times better.

Happy Reading!

Chapter XXXV

Reyna

Reyna sees exactly when Nico wakes up. His face becomes less peaceful.

"Good morning, Sleeping Beauty." She mumbles around a mouthful of food.

He opens his eyes. Reyna loves his eyes, the dark, melty chocolate brown. He yawns and looks up at the dark sky suspiciously.

"Seems a bit dark for morning." He mutters, still looking up.

"Well, it's not my fault you chose to wake up so early. It's just before dawn." Reyna tells him.

He squints at her. "Why are you awake, then?"

Reyna grins. "I'm a Roman. And a praetor. We have to wake up early."

"Says who? If you're praetor, can't you do whatever you want?" Nico asks, his tone slightly teasing.

"I guess I could." Reyna admits. "But that would kind of defeat the purpose of being a praetor."

"How so?" He asks, looking genuinely curious.

"Well," She starts, "people elect the person they think is best for the job. The one who's the most responsible, the most reasonable, and so on. And if you just did whatever you wanted all the time, you aren't exactly very responsible, are you? Especially if you sleep in every day and ignore all the work that needs to be done."

Nico nods thoughtfully. "I guess I can see that." He says, before reaching into his bag and pulling out an apple.

Reyna is surprised. Not at the fact that he agreed with her, although that's also a first. But the fact that he's eating an apple. She's pretty sure that's the first time she's ever seen him eat anything besides a pomegranate. Or nothing at all. She stares at him.

He takes a bite of his apple, completely nonchalant, not even noticing her stare. He looks around while he chews, smiling briefly at the sight of Coach Hedge snoring away against a tree. Then he turns and sees Reyna staring at him as if he's from another planet.

"What?" He says, obviously uncomfortable.

"You're eating an apple." Reyna tells him.

"Um, yeah. I know." He responds, looking a little weirded out.

"You don't eat apples." She continues. He looks down at the apple in his hand and seems to understand. He smiles at her goofily.

"Well, obviously I do. Because I'm pretty sure this is an apple. And I am eating it." He says, his tone matter-of-fact.

"I know it's an apple, Nico." Reyna rolls her eyes. "But I don't think I've ever seen you eat anything other than a pomegranate."

He grins. "So? Just because you haven't seen me do something doesn't mean I don't do it. And, obviously, I am eating something other than a pomegranate right now."

Reyna glares at him. He just continues to smile irritatingly. Finally, she looks away.

"Smart alec." She mutters under her breath. If Nico hears her, he doesn't seem bothered by it.

Reyna finishes her food and looks around, bored. She decides to watch Nico to see if he does anything interesting.

He sits there, staring off into space, absentmindedly eating his apple.

Reyna leans back against her tree and lays her sword across her knees.

Nico continues crunching his apple.

Reyna starts tapping her fingers against the ground and shifting impatiently.

Nico doesn't notice.

Finally, she sighs. It looks like she's just going to have to deal with the boredom.

She tilts back her head and stares up at the sky. The gray light of dawn is just starting to seep into the starry night.

Reyna closes her eyes and imagines she's back at Camp Jupiter. What would she be doing right now? In her office, maybe, with Aurum and Argentum, dealing with all the paperwork that comes with being praetor. Or maybe dealing with some crisis or other.

She sighs through her nose and opens her eyes, once again staring up at the stars, marveling at how, even when the world might be ending, they still remain the same.

She remembers a time-almost three years ago, now-that a new constellation appeared in the sky. A girl, a hunter, with a bow in her hands, walking eternally among the stars.

She'd wondered what the girl had done to deserve such an honor. And then she'd decided that, if she died young, she also wanted to be a part of the night sky.

Then she'd mentally chastised herself for being so stupid. Roman demigods don't get a place among the stars. They live, they fight, they have a family if they're lucky, and then they die. Usually without ever even seeing a god once. And only a god has the power to do what Reyna had suddenly so desperately wanted.

The Roman gods have remained coldly distant since...well, forever. They don't really form attachments to demigods, although they generally have a certain amount of fondness for their children. They aren't heartless, after all. Although sometimes, it feels that way.

"What are you thinking about?" Nico's voice interrupts her thoughts. She looks at him to find him looking at her with an open, curious expression on his face. It's one of the few times Reyna has seen him without that unbreakable shield in his eyes.

"Lots of things all at once." She answers, her voice soft.

"Like what?" He asks.

Reyna looks down at her hands, absentmindedly stroking her sword. She doesn't want to tell him. But if he's willing to talk to her, she should be as well. "I was thinking about Camp Jupiter. About what I'd be doing if I was there."

Nico, obviously sensing that she's not finished yet, doesn't say anything.

"And I was thinking about a few years ago, when a new constellation appeared in the sky." She confesses. "And about how nice it would be if I someday got a place among the stars as well."

Nico is quiet. Reyna doesn't look at him, afraid of what she might see. It's been so long since she's just talked to someone, about something other than politics or strategy or fighting, and she's never told that particular thought to anyone. Ever. Now that she has, it feels like she's bared a part of her soul, which might seem melodramatic to some, since it's just a silly wish, but to Reyna, it means a lot.

When she finally gathers the courage to look up, Nico is looking right at her, a soft expression on his face. His eyes say, Thanks.

He sits back suddenly and looks up, much the same way Reyna's been doing.

"That was the year my sister died." He says, his voice quiet, with an underlying tone of grief.

Reyna doesn't say anything. She doesn't want to scare him back into hiding.

"We'd just learned we were demigods. Percy, Thalia, Annabeth, and Grover had found us at this school we went to. Grover had been at the school for a while." He pauses, takes a shuddering breath. "The day the others arrived to take us to camp, our vice principal, Dr. Thorn, kidnapped us. Percy came after us, and ended up getting taken too."

He runs his fingers through his hair, knotting his hands behind his head.

"We didn't get very far before the others caught up to us. Honestly, if Percy hadn't delayed us, we probably would have been long gone by the time they found us. The Hunters of Artemis showed up just when things started to go downhill. In the fight, Annabeth got knocked over the cliff with Dr. Thorn.

"Percy was so guilty. He thought the whole thing was his fault, since he'd left without them to go after us. But it didn't really matter to me, since I didn't know Annabeth." Here he pauses again, putting his hands in his lap and looking down at them.

"Bianca joined the Hunters that day. It would've probably been the last I saw of her, if they hadn't needed to come to camp with us.

"When we got there, the very first night, Zoe Nightshade, the lieutenant of the Hunters, had a dream that Artemis had been kidnapped. Percy had a dream too, but I never knew the details. Zoe wanted a quest, but Chiron asked her to wait. That night, after Capture the Flag, the oracle came down out of the attic and gave Zoe her prophecy.

"The prophecy said that five would go on the quest. Zoe chose Bianca, another hunter named Phoebe, Grover, and Thalia. But the Stolls played a prank on Phoebe that put her in the infirmary. Zoe decided to go with only four, no matter how much Percy insisted that he needed to go. Something about the prophecy scared her.

"I was eavesdropping on Zoe and Bianca talking one night. I shouldn't have been, but I was mad that my sister was going to leave me again. Percy caught me. But he didn't yell at me or anything. I asked him if he was going to go anyway, even though he wasn't supposed to. He admitted that he probably was.

"I made him promise to protect Bianca. He said that he would do his best. But his best wasn't enough.

"In a junkyard of Hephaestus, Bianca sacrificed herself to overpower a prototype of the giant Talos. It was the only way to stop it.

"The only reason the giant had attacked them in the first place was because Bianca had taken something. A Mythomagic figurine." At this, Nico pulls something out of his pocket and cradles it in the palm of his hand. "It was the only one I didn't have."

His voice is almost a whisper. Reyna can hear the pain in his voice, the grief.

"I'm sorry, Nico." She says gently. He looks at her then, and underneath the tears glistening in his eyes, there's something else, like relief and a sort of thanks.

Suddenly, he draws in a quick breath, sitting up and scrubbing a hand across his face. He puts the figurine back in his pocket.

"Yeah, well, it was a while ago. And I have Hazel now." He says brusquely. When he looks at Reyna again, that wall is back in his eyes, the shield that he always hides behind. Reyna can't stand seeing it there.

She reaches over and lightly touches Nico's shoulder, looking deep into his eyes so he can see the sincerity in her own.

"Thanks for telling me, Nico." She tells him, her voice as soft as the touch of a butterfly's wing. "It means a lot."

He looks back at her, and just for a moment, the shield lowers from his eyes, and Reyna can see the tumult of emotion rushing behind them, guilt, grief, pain, loneliness, and heartbreak, but there's also a hint of something else...not quite happiness, more like...acceptance.

"Thanks for listening." He says, his voice raw, unguarded.

Then the wall slams back into place, and he pulls away.

Reyna smiles to herself once he's looking away. Because it might not be much.

But it's a start.