A/N bit of backstory here I've been reading a lot of like complicated literature for school and I was loving this literary technique of trying to make the reader feel the emotions of war by writing in a way that's kind of confusing and scary. So sorry this is a weird chapter I wanted to play with that and after all this fic is something I do for fun. :P
"Well done Reyna." Nico murmured to himself spotting the statue being carried towards camp and grinning. Just then Toby lunged over the hill, diving down and skidding to a halt next to Nico.
"Progress report: the seven are back and they're talking to the Greeks, Reyna is bringing the statue and the greeks have been warned about the creeps. The creeps are on standby to be called in as soon as your peace is affirmed." Toby recited promptly to Nico. Nico grinned, those were Reyna or Annabeth's words not Toby's, he was just passing them on.
"Excellent thank you for passing the message along Toby." Nico said and Toby nodded smiling in satisfaction, then stepped a little nearer to stand just behind Nico.
"It's a trick." Octavian shrilled bringing all of their attention back to him. "The Greeks are trying to make us let our guard down."
"Is that Octavian?" Toby hissed to Nico under squabbling amongst the Romans now under Reyna again and the ones still answering to Octavian. Nico nodded without taking his eyes off Octavian. "I'll secure him for you, whenever you think it's time." Nico nodded again.
"This is no trick Octavian. The rightful leader of the Roman legions has returned. The true punishment for your betrayal is death but if you step down immediately and stop trying to cling to power that was never meant for you, Reyna and the rest of the Roman council may choose to go easy on you." Nico said coldly. Octavian turned bright red.
"Apollo has granted me a vision of the future!" Octavian yelled, his voice breaking and his face almost purple. "The Romans shall be victories!"
"The Romans and Greeks shall claim victory together or the world will be lost." Nico stated dully. "Gaea is waking, she has risen. We must bond together to defeat her."
"Besides you're no son of Apollo." Will cut in. Nico didn't look at him and he noticed by the lack of movement out of the corner of his eye that neither did Toby. Both of their attention was fixed only on Octavian. There had been a stir of nervous murmuring through the Romans at Nico's claim. They fell silent and everything was still for a moment. Then all hell broke loose.
A wave rolled through the earth and screaming broke out deeper in the Roman camp. The monsters Octavian had been inviting as 'reinforcements' were turning on them. The Romans turned to aid their brethren against the monsters in their midst. When the Greeks came charging over the hill their help was not rebuffed.
All the while Octavian was screaming orders that no one was following anymore, as if by sheer wishful thinking he could tame the disaster he had made. Nico glanced at Toby out of the corner of his eye and jerked his head ever so slightly toward Octavian. Toby reacted immediately, even though he was Nico's boyfriend he was still trained for situations like this. Even implied, nonverbal commands were obeyed. Toby grabbed Octavian's arms before Octavian had a chance to know what was happening and twisted them behind his back, making him yelp.
"Octavian, former prophet of the Roman legion, your sentence for subverting the will of your commander and breaking the law of your society, is death. As a child of the underworld I claim the responsibility of dealing it's justice." Nico half chanted advancing on Octavian. He didn't bother drawing his sword.
"What are you doing!?" Octavian yelped indignantly but he was afraid, Nico could tell. "What do you want son of Pluto? I can help you."
"Pathetic." Nico spat in disgust covering Octavian's mouth with one hand. "You do not deserve the life the gods gave you. Return it." He ordered, feeling for the life within Octavian, and with his next breath ripped the life out. Octavian gave one more shuddering gasp as he went limp and Nico stepped away. Toby pushed the body away from himself, wrinkling his nose in disgust and stepped closer to Nico who was holding the small ball of light that was Octavian's life in his hands.
"Look at it Toby." Nico chuckled staring in awe down at the ball that was almost grey, nothing even close to the gold a pure soul was meant to be. "His soul is even more corrupt than yours." Nico purred almost reverently. Toby chuckled placing his hands on Nico's shoulder from behind.
"Take it." Toby urged. "It's his fault that you had to drain yourself traveling across the fucking planet. It only seems fair that he give you his energy to replace what he made you use."
Nico flashed Toby a grin over his shoulder and, ignoring Will and his friends who were now looking at Nico in alarm, Nico slipped the ball of concentrated energy into his own mouth. He shivered happily as the new life coursed through his veins. He tilted his head back and slowly exhaled the corruption from Octavian's energy, watching the snakelike tendrils of black mist dissipate back into the realm of shadows where they belonged.
"Better?" Toby asked softly.
"Much better." Nico agreed sighing and giggling a little when a few last bits of darkness rushed out with his breath.
"Good, because it looks like there's a good fight going on there." Toby said grinning towards the battle. "and I'd like to be in it."
"Be careful." Nico chuckled and Toby dove away towards the fight.
"What was that?" Will asked Nico looking a little shell-shocked.
"Culture clash." Nico said smiling reassuringly at him. "Don't worry you'll get used to it, but now is not the time. Just then Percy came dodging by with Jason. Jason was barking commands at the Romans and as far as Nico could tell Percy was basically just screaming like the happy barbarian he was. Nico laughed, he spotted the giants advancing on camp with more monsters and headed that way whooping when he realized the creeps had been called in now too.
"What a pleasure to see you Ghost King!" Seed Eater greeted, loping over to him and giving his hair a few cursory licks. "You've fed, well done."
"Thank you Seed Eater, it's good to see you too. Yes I have fed." Nico confirmed, knowing what she meant immediately.
"If the energy of your monsters is compatible with us we shall feast today." Seed Eater pointed out, her purring hum increasing in volume, indicating her pleasure and excitement. "Shall we try?" She asked crouching down a little and offering her back to him, they could fight together better that way.
"Yes, why not?" Nico laughed swinging himself as gracefully as he could into Seed Eaters back, holding on as she raced towards the thick of the battle. They passed Jane and Jeff fighting back to back as mirror images of each other, Slenderman using his tentacles to rip a monster limb from limb. There was Smile Dog and Mrs. O'Leary and a few other dog creatures Nico didn't recognize. Sally was fighting hand in hand with another young ghost, a black and white boy with bleeding eyes.
Their enthusiasm was infectious and with adrenalin and foreign life coursing through Nico, he felt like he was functioning at least three times his normal rate. By the time he and Seed Eater settled on a foe he could have been seen as manic, but so were most of the other demigods and almost all of the creeps.
Things became a flurry of movement and bodies, some of them he fought with, some of them against. Now and then it was hard to know who to attack because some demigods had sided with Gaia, and of course, most of the creeps looked like monsters. The creeps seemed to have mostly managed to find themselves celestial bronze or imperial gold weapons, probably from the dead.
Some fought with their hands like Kagekao, who Nico fought side by side with briefly. Nico was impressed more than anything as he watched Kagekao impale a monster with his claws and use his grip to literally tear it apart.
"Nice!" Nico laughed as the monster shrieked in pain and turned to dust.
It turned out that Nico could take energy from monsters but after the first one he didn't want to anymore. They had so much more energy than humans, and it was so much more warped and corrupted than anything Nico had tried to consume. Seed Eater had to defend him briefly while his body tried to reject the energy. Seed eater could filter the energy it seemed, but Nico knew he couldn't take in much of that before he became it. Nevertheless when his body stopped trying to reject the energy and he had managed to separate and exhale some of the darkness, he felt stronger.
"I'll be okay now." He reassured Seed Eater, and went back to fighting. With the new power he was able to summon a few dead to help him. Possibly because of the darkness in the energy he was using, the dead he summoned were harder to control, but his will was stronger than a few of the gods, and the dead would not break free from him. Nico's stupid Hawaiian shirt was gaining a new pattern as it was splattered with blood and the gold dust left by the monsters, he liked this pattern much better.
Percy and Jason were organizing the Greeks and the Romans but he ignored them. He had played roles in both but he was neither, he fought with the creeps. With Sally, BEN, Slenderman, Seed Eater, Jane, a blond girl wearing a white dress he didn't know but who seemed to know his actions before he did and too many others to keep track of.
He was aware vaguely that his father was somewhere in this fight helping defeat the giants, but he didn't try to seek his father out. There was only one person he really wanted to fight with and finally he spotted Toby again. It was not easy to make his way back over to Toby. Why had they let themselves be separated in the first place? But Nico dodged through and finally made it to Toby's side.
Toby grinned widely when he saw Nico and gave a quick half bow, inviting him to dance. Nico laughed loudly and accepted. This was the best way he had found to learn Toby's movements. They found a rhythm, moving in perfect sync with each other back-to-back or side-by-side. They cut down whatever enemies faced them until the only one who dared to was one of the giants.
Nico knew they couldn't kill this giant alone but he wasn't worried. He knew his father was here somewhere, watching and waiting. Nico also knew his father wouldn't wait long, other gods had waited until their children had proved that they were worthy or some such nonsense, but Hades already knew Nico was worthy. Nico had first taken the titles of Ghost King and Prince of the Underworld, but after that it was Hades who had gifted them to Nico and trusted him with the responsibilities that came with those titles. Sure enough roughly ten minutes into the fight as Toby was thrown back and landed cat like on his feet next to Nico, Nico felt a familiar power behind him.
"Father." Nico greeted smiling wryly and not turning around. Hades rested his hand lightly on Nico's shoulder.
"I'm getting tired of this war. Let us end it as quickly as we can." Hades proposed in a conversational tone.
"Sounds good to me." Nico agreed and gave Toby a warning glance. Toby seemed to understand and took a step back. The giant needed to be defeated by a god and their child working together. Nico didn't even know if it would work if Toby interfered. It didn't matter, the battle was starting to wind down but there were still plenty of other enemies that Toby could occupy himself with. The giant looked scared but it couldn't run, so it fought. It managed to give Nico a nasty cut across his chest but that was all before Nico and Hades reduced it to an overly large pile of mud.
Then the fight was over. Nico blinked in surprise when he looked up and around and there was no one there ready to attack him. There were a few pockets of fighting going on still, but the remaining monsters had fled. Now the children of Apollo were checking wounded and seeing to the worst of them. He could see Hoody had already volunteered himself to help with that and E.J. had broken away from the fighting to see to any creeps capable of being injured. When Nico looked he was giving Masky stitches on his arm but Masky didn't look badly hurt. Nico had to grab Toby before he could run off towards one of the pockets of fighting.
"They're fine. You've done enough. Let me check if anything hurt you." Toby made a complaining noise but he fell back and let Nico check him for injuries. Nico found a shallow one on his chest, and a deeper one on his leg, but neither of them were overly bad. There were many people who were hurt worse. He would make sure Toby got them looked at when the children of Apollo and other demigods with a knack for healing weren't rushing around trying to help people who were near death.
"I'm going to have to stay here for a few days." Nico stated dully eyes wondering over the battlefield.
"What! Why?" Toby squawked unhappily.
"Look at the dead. As a child of Hades their funerals are my jurisdiction. If I wasn't here Chiron could do them but since I am here it would be irresponsible of me to allow anyone else to do them since I'm the only one who can do them truly properly."
"Be irresponsible for once." Toby pleaded reaching for Nico's hand and then remembering Nico didn't want anyone to know, letting his hand fall back to his side twitching unhappily.
"You know I can't." Nico said smiling ruefully at Toby. Toby fidgeted briefly and then hugged Nico tightly, that could pass as a friendly gesture.
"I'll never get used to your conscience." Toby muttered affectionately and then let go again. "I'm not leaving you again though."
"Don't worry you won't have to." Nico promised hugging back. "My father knows you, you can stay in my cabin with you, he doesn't like you, but he won't object."
"Slenderman's planning to offer some of our help to rebuild too if you need it." Toby said pulling away from Nico and stepping back clasping his hands behind his back awkwardly.
"That will be nice." Nico agreed. "Even though most of the things in our camp are magically protected it hasn't exactly gone unscathed." Suddenly he groaned. "Oh I'm going to have to completely redecorate the Hades cabin too! I first helped build it when I was twelve I think. It's awful, I think the bunks are legitimately shaped like coffins which is just a bad stylistic decision." Nico said rubbing his temples and smiling dryly when Toby stifled a laugh. "Oh go ahead and judge twelve year old me, I'm judging him too." Nico chuckled. "Just don't blame me for his bad choices, I'm not that person anymore."
"It doesn't sound so bad to me." Toby pointed out smiling crookedly. "A lot of creeps decorate like that."
"Ya well I'm going to change it." Nico said. "Now I'm going to go find the dying and do that 'reading them their last rights' thing."
"I'll go see what I can do to help." Toby agreed and trotted off to find someone who could give him a job.
It was hours when they met up again, all of the injured had been moved to tents and now all of the dead were being grieved. Nico would prepare them for burial tonight. It would be easier if he could animate some of them to help with the rest, but he couldn't do that until everyone else was in bed. Or more so he could, but it would alarm and disturb some of them , and Nico didn't want to do that. Toby had helped move everyone and had had his cuts sewn up. Now he was on a forced break because he had almost definitely over worked himself.
They sat in the shade of a tree with Sally, Seed Eater, and a couple creeps Nico didn't know. Sally braided chunks of Nico's hair and chattered to a quiet friend of hers. It was a boy who seemed to be entirely black and white besides splashes of blood from where his arms seemed to have been cut off and some that flowed from his eyes. He seemed to be paying wrapped attention to Sally even though he didn't contribute much to the conversation.
Finally everyone retreated to his or her sleeping or work places. The Harpies wouldn't be enforcing curfews for the next few days while urgent care needed to be given, but habits died hard, and it had been a long day. Most of the creeps had found places to wander off to as well. Nico made sure Toby was asleep before he slipped out of the Hades cabin to prepare the dead for the burials that would start the next day.
It took Nico until roughly three in the morning to get all of the bodies properly dressed in their burial clothes which had been set out by their friends. All the cabins with skill in weaving were working through the night as well, making flags that the dead could be buried in. When all the bodies were ready, Nico wandered back towards his cabin but he was so exhausted that he couldn't keep his eyes open as he walked. He ran straight into something nearly falling over.
Seed eater wrapped her front legs around Nico and fell backwards pulling him with her so he was laying against the soft fur of her underbelly.
"Will you ever stop working yourself so hard?" She asked him. "The war is over."
"I'll stop working so much when so much work stops being required of me." Nico mumbled tiredly.
"Never then?" Seed Eater asked humorously.
"Maybe." Nico agreed chuckling hoarsely.
"Let's get you back under your roof with your love." Seed Eater coaxed prodding Nico back to his feet and letting him lean on her as she led the way back to the Cabin. She clawed at the door rather than go in and Toby answered it quickly, taking over responsibility for the half asleep Nico. Toby took off Nico's shoes, belt, and jacket and tucked him into bed as gently as he could and with as few jars from twitching as possible.
The next morning when people came to wake Nico up early Toby chased them away. "He was up until past three am working for you. Let him sleep until at least eleven, he told me your funeral things don't start til evening anyway." Toby snapped quietly. "If no one else can do it it can be done later." Toby wouldn't be drawn away from Nico's cabin either because he assumed, and rightly so, that is he wasn't there to deter them someone would come in and wake Nico up pretty darn quickly.
"I really do need to talk to him." Jason said softly his voice slightly husky. Toby was about to insist that Jason couldn't again but before he could Nico spoke from behind him.
"It's alright I'm awake anyway. Another flashback woke me up." Nico said stepping out of the Cabin still in his bare feet. "What's the matter Jason?"
Jason opened his mouth answer but his breath seemed to catch in his throat. He took a deep shaky breath and nearly sobbed.
"Leo's dead." He choked out finally. Both Nico and Toby blinked in surprised. "He killed himself helping destroy Gaia. He created fire hot enough to turn her earth body to glass but it was hot enough to burn him up as well. We can't find anything at all.
Nico froze up. He knew what to do about death, but when it came to the livings response to death he was clueless. He hadn't really known Leo, hadn't really cared about or liked Leo, but Hazel had.
"Where's Hazel?" Nico asked softly. "She must be devastated."
"She's with Frank." Jason said nodding. "But you're right she is. We couldn't have won the war without Leo."
"He had the potion to cure death you people stole didn't he?" Nico asked suddenly looking sharply.
"We didn't steal it." Jason protested and Nico rolled his eyes.
"Fine, tricked the gods into giving to you. I didn't feel Leo's soul crossover. There were a lot of people dying so I might have missed it, but I usually a pick up on ones that are familiar to me."
"I don't know." Jason said but there was a little hope in his eyes. "but… it's possible! I'll go tell Hazel!" he said and dashed off. Nico turned around and walked back inside. Toby followed him and sat down on the edge of the bed next to Nico, wrapping his arms around Nico's shoulders now that they were alone.
"So much death." Nico sighed unhappily. "I guess we won, but is there any actual good news?"
"Miss O'Leary and Smile Dog had puppies." Toby answered promptly smiling at Nico when he looked up startled. "Yep, five of them all beautiful and healthy you can meet them today."
"That is good news." Nico said smiling softly and kissing Toby gently just because he could.