Disclaimer: I don't own Trials of Apollo.

APOLLO IV

Comatose, Will rests
Nico is angry with me
Let the quest begin

Apollo heard Nico before he heard him. "Let me out!" the son of Hades was demanding loudly, his voice permeating through the ornate door of what was presumably his bedroom – nothing in Hades' palace was lacking in opulence, understandably considering his domain of riches – and reverberating through the sleek obsidian of the hallway the skeleton was leading Apollo down. "Where's Will? Let me out!"

It was reassuring to see proof that Hades truly could shut Nico away somewhere safe, given the situation (not that it was a fact that was ever in doubt – no demigod could truly match a god's power). Ordinarily, Apollo would be rather concerned at shutting demigods away, especially in somewhere as subtly hazardous as the Underworld, but in this case, where it was very much potentially life or death and life was ironically the option associated with the Underworld, it helped him relax a little.

Hopefully, once reunited with Will, Nico would settle down and understand that this was for both of their own safety. At the very least, he should accept that it was for Will's safety. Apollo glanced down at his son again, cradled protectively – and no, he wasn't even going to try and deny it – in his arms, too deeply under to even begin to stir from outside simulation. In the washed-out gloom of the Underworld, he looked pale even with Apollo's own light caressing him.

Nico was not going to be happy. Apollo didn't need to be the god of prophecy to know that.

The skeleton came to a stop outside the door in question, tilting its head at Apollo in what was probably supposed to be this is the room, as though Apollo couldn't tell that for himself. Nico was doing an admirable job of announcing it.

If Hades had truly trapped Nico in, there was a reasonable chance that Apollo might struggle to get the door open, but surely his uncle had thought of that. Regardless, the skeleton was making no move to unlock it, and Nico seemed more interested in shouting (and likely shadow-travelling to no apparent avail) than trying to open the door, so Apollo was left with little choice but to readjust Will in his arms so that he had one hand free, and push it at the door.

The shadows melted away the moment he made contact, which meant that either Hades was paying attention, or he hadn't seriously locked up the door. Apollo suspected the former. From the lack of a reaction on the other side of the door – Nico had descended into Italian, a language both gods happened to be fluent in, so if he was trying to hide his vitriolic words with a different language, he was failing miserably – the irate demigod wasn't aware of his presence.

Deciding that it would not be good if Nico reacted violently when he entered – not that Nico would be able to hurt him, even with a Stygian Iron blade, but Apollo didn't want Will unintentionally caught up in his boyfriend's anger – he knocked.

"Nico, it's Apollo," he announced. The shouting immediately stopped. "Can I come in?"

"Where's Will?" came the instant reply.

"With me," Apollo promised, deciding to take that as a shaky permission rather than have the awkward conversation of by the way, your boyfriend's comatose with a door in the way. Nico didn't protest the opening of his door, although there was a distinct aura of concern when his call of Will? went unanswered.

"What did you do?" the son of Hades snarled the moment the door swung open far enough for them to see each other. "Will!" Apollo kept a wary eye on where his fist was clenched around the hilt of his sword as he stepped into the room, letting the door fall shut behind him. Shadows swarmed, Hades locking the demigods (and Apollo, but Apollo was confident he'd be able to get back out again regardless) in, but Nico seemed to have eyes only for his unresponsive boyfriend. "Will!"

"He won't wake up," Apollo admitted, looking around for the bed. Nico only came up to his waist at his current size, but his thunderous expression wasn't one to be taken lightly. Apollo took care to give him a bit of a berth as he located the bed and headed for it.

Setting Will down felt a lot like a degree of finality, like yes, he was really about to do this, yes, he was leaving his son behind in a coma in the Underworld to keep him safe. Apollo's hands lingered as his laid his son on silken black sheets, reluctant to fully let go even when Nico made a solid attempt at barging him out of the way to grab Will's shoulders and jostle them firmly.

Apollo pulled him back, refusing to flinch in the face of the snarl that rounded on him aggressively. "Don't," he cautioned. "It's to keep him alive. The Underworld is not the most ideal place for him to stay, I admit, but it's the safest."

Nico's glower didn't abate in the slightest, but he perched on the side of the bed and cautiously intertwined his fingers with Will's limp ones. "When will he wake up?"

"When I wake him." Apollo shrank back to regular human size and picked up Will's pack, rummaging to see what his well-prepared son had backed. A lot of medical supplies, unsurprisingly, including what was probably more of the infirmary's stock of nectar and ambrosia than he was supposed to have liberated for the quest. Perfect.

"You did this to him?" Nico demanded.

Apollo shrugged guiltily. "I didn't trust your father's idea of keeping him alive," he admitted. "It was safer to induce a coma."

"Coma?" Nico sounded like a throttled cat, which was a sound Apollo wished he wasn't acquainted with but sadly had encountered occasionally across the millennia. "You put Will in a coma?"

"I didn't want to risk any other gods accessing to his dreams," Apollo explained. "Functionally, he's in a stasis that will reduce the need for nutrition until I wake him, and deep enough within my domain that no others will be able to get to him."

Nico's grip on Will's hand tightened. "Reduce the need?" he asked suspiciously.

Apollo withdrew a vial of nectar from Will's pack and dangled it in front of the son of Hades. "Giving him a sip or two of this every couple of days wouldn't go amiss," he admitted. Nico swiped it from him, and Apollo allowed it. The demigod glared at it before setting it delicately on the ornately carved – black, because Hades had a colour scheme and was very rigid about sticking to it – bedside table.

"If anything happens to him…" Nico growled, his free hand settling lightly yet possessively on Will's shoulder. "You'll wish you'd stayed mortal."

Apollo let his eyes settle on his son again. Will's bright hair and freckled skin, even slightly washed out as it was, stood out starkly against the prevailing gloominess of the décor. Nico, unsurprisingly, looked right at home with the aesthetic but Will was the centre of attention, the sun around which everything else orbited. Right then, Apollo felt like that included him, but couldn't find any complaint in the thought. "I agree," he said softly, resting a hand on Will's leg lightly.

The touch was enough to have his vitals flooding through Apollo's awareness again. They were unchanged, slowed enough for the stasis to take hold and preserve his health but not so slow Will's body was in danger of shutting down entirely. Realistically, there was no reason why that should change, but Apollo couldn't argue with Nico's concerns.

"Why now?" Nico asked after a few moments of silence. His hand had strayed from Will's shoulder to his throat, clearly taking a measure of his pulse just as Apollo had been, and the tips of his fingers were fidgeting with the shorter blond strands at the base of Will's skull. "You've known about the quest for weeks. Why did you wait until the last second to stop us?"

Apollo sighed. "Securing your father's assistance took… time," he said slowly. "He was in agreement that you should not enter the Pit, but when it came to finding a safe place for Will to shelter… he took time to come around to the idea." He didn't think it worth detailing how Hades had been more inclined to forcibly evict him from the palace than even listen long enough for Apollo to pitch his admittedly rather desperate solutions to the problem. It certainly wasn't worth mentioning that Apollo's own plan had still involved Nico venturing into Tartarus; none of the foresight in the cosmos could have prepared him for Hades deciding to join him in taking his son's place on the quest.

It wasn't that he thought Nico would overly object if it had ended up that way, at least, not on his side of things. Leaving Will, alone, in the Underworld, however… Apollo had expected some resistance to that declaration and was relieved beyond words that that would not be coming to pass.

He wasn't so sure what, exactly, he thought about going on a quest with his uncle, however. Gods didn't help each other – even he and Artemis kept the mutual assistance to a minimum, and they had a partially free-pass due to being twins. Alliances, Apollo knew – finicky things that ran the risk of disintegrating from the moment they were formed – but to go on a quest with another god…

Apollo was more than a little wary about how, exactly that was going to work.

"He's stubborn," Nico agreed. "I had to pester him for days before he caved and joined in at Manhattan." Apollo was so relieved he'd managed to change his father's mind at that time; no doubt Hades' presence amongst the mortals, directly opposing the Crooked One, had saved several demigod lives – some of his own children's included. "Where is he, anyway? I'm surprised he's letting you wander around unsupervised."

Apollo chuckled. "I don't think he's happy about not having an eye on me," he agreed. "I was escorted here by a skeleton while your father finishes getting his affairs in order."

Nico made a considering noise that sounded a lot like he knew more about how the Underworld was run than demigods were supposed to. Then again, he was Hades' only living child and had managed to wrestle the title of Ghost King, so Nico di Angelo didn't really classify as a regular demigod by this point, anyway. If that didn't get Will special disposition when he inevitably ended up in Hades' domain for good – as much as Apollo didn't like thinking about that – Apollo was going to lodge a formal complaint, and possibly irritate Hades until he caved.

If it worked for his son, it ought to work for his nephew, too – right?

"What about your 'affairs'?" Nico asked. "Who's taking over the sun chariot? Don't say Thalia."

The unexpected rib – was that an in-joke because it felt like one – had Apollo letting out another huff of laughter. "No, not Thalia," he promised. "But it's under control." Some of the other sun deities owed him favours for covering their shifts; he'd just called those in.

(Not that it really mattered, when the sun was an inevitability that managed to keep driving across the sky even when the chariot's driver was incapacitated, but Apollo preferred to cash in favours rather than dwell on the implications behind that.)

"At the moment, I'm still driving," he continued. "My father won't be pleased when he finds out what I'm planning, so I'll stay behind the wheel until the last moment."

Nico's face lost some of its pallor. "Right," he said, a little hollowly. "That's why Will and I have to stay down here, isn't it? In case he throws some lightning around." The way he said it told Apollo that he had more than a passing familiarity with a certain god's temper. Apollo hadn't paid too much attention to the di Angelos back during their first attempt at life, but he'd been aware of their existence (it was always a good idea to try and keep up with kids of the big three, because they had a habit of dramatically affecting things – the war the di Angelos had lived through being a prime example). No doubt, his father had been, too.

The di Angelos had disappeared into thin air one day, the mother dead and the children gone. The only reason Apollo hadn't presumed them dead until their sudden reappearance a few years ago, no older than the last time he'd glanced down at them, was because both had flickered occasionally into his visions after their disappearance. It had not surprised him in the slightest to learn that his father had been directly responsible for Hades squirrelling them away for almost a century.

"Something like that," he said with a forced levity that had Nico renewing his vigorous glower. Apollo wilted. "Yes," he admitted. "So, please, stay here. Your father and I will sort things out when we get back."

If there was one definite positive about Hades' decision to enter Tartarus in place of his son that Apollo could see, it was that his uncle was also technically breaking the Ancient Law regarding mortal interference and would therefore have a personal interest in finding a loophole, too – if he hadn't already. Apollo sincerely hoped he had.

Nico still didn't seem to be appeased, but his shoulders slumped in what Apollo hoped was understanding (and resignation). "So I'm stuck with my comatose boyfriend and skeletons for the foreseeable future?" he asked, although it sounded more like a tired observation than an actual question. "I guess that's a step up from living in the Labyrinth with skeletons and a crazy old ghost." Apollo winced; that wasn't a story he was completely knowledgeable on, either, but even the sound of it was dreadful.

The words I'm sorry danced on the back of his tongue, but he swallowed them back down; there was nothing else he could have done in the situation. Nothing else he'd be able to live with himself over, at least. Letting Will go to his almost-certain death in Tartarus could never have been the answer.

He was sorry, but any apology made would sound hollow, and Apollo wouldn't disrespect Nico like that.

Nico's fingers had left the nape of Will's neck and returned to his carotid pulse, he noticed. He couldn't really blame him for wanting to keep a close eye on his condition; despite being the one to induce the coma in the first place and knowing that nothing would change until he made it, he was still monitoring his son's vitals through the touch on his leg, after all. Nico's fretting was entirely understandable, and Apollo wished he could ease it, but couldn't see how.

"He'll be fine when he wakes up?" the son of Hades asked after a moment, looking down at Will in what was almost entirely unguarded concern. Apollo felt somewhat honoured he'd been allowed to see it. "This won't weaken him?" There was a plea in there, as well as a hint of his earlier threat.

It was tempting to lie, but that wouldn't help any of them. "There might be some residual lethargy," he admitted, "but with the nectar as well as the stasis, there should be no muscular atrophy." Nico scrutinised him, eyes narrowed as though trying to detect a lie, before he turned his attention back to Will with a sigh.

"I suppose I can accept him being a bit sleepy," he allowed. "As long as that's it." There was a sharp clip to the last word that reminded Apollo that Nico was still not particularly impressed with his last-minute problem-solving attempt, even if he had mostly moved on to regarding Will with soft, gentle eyes overflowing with emotion. Apollo was extremely gratified on Will's behalf that he'd managed to snag a boyfriend who looked at him like that, even if it brought back memories of certain eyes that used to look at him like that.

"That'll be it," he assured him, letting his thumb rub over the fabric of Will's pants. His son had, at least, traded his preferred shorts for something offering a little more protection, even if it was ultimately unnecessary.

Really, Will didn't need to be wearing quest clothes entirely now, did he? He'd be much better served in a cosy set of pyjamas; even if he was too deeply under to register it now, when he woke up he'd be far more comfortable if he hadn't been laying in questing clothes for however long Apollo would be gone. Recalling the sleepwear he'd seen Will wearing while staying in the cabin with him, Apollo snapped his fingers.

A shower of light cascaded over his son, causing Nico to jump and glare at him in suspicion. "What are you…" He trailed off as the light faded away to reveal Will dressed in a soft tank top and sleep shorts. Will's questing clothes appeared in a neatly folded pile on a dresser that Apollo suspected Nico had never used. "Oh." Apollo saw him poke at the fabric tentatively at Will's shoulder, as though he wasn't sure it was real. From the look on his face, he was quickly convinced.

Will looked better this way, Apollo thought. It wasn't even because of the sun motif on the top – slightly off-centre and exactly the same detailing as his son's tattoo – or the subtle swirl of musical notation winding around the hem of the shorts. It was the fact that he looked comfortable, as though he truly was just sleeping (on his boyfriend's bed, no less!), and not in a deep coma.

From the way Nico was looking at Will, Apollo wasn't the only one to think he looked far better like this, as though he'd fallen asleep naturally and not because it was the only way to keep him alive for any serious length of time in the Underworld.

He didn't know how long they'd be gone. The fall alone – well, Hesiod's supposition about nine days wasn't exactly verifiable, but Apollo remembered the long, long, long fall to Tartarus with far too much clarity.

Then again, it had only been a few weeks of conscious memory ago.

Oh, Olympus, he was really going back there again, wasn't he? On the bright side, he forced himself to think, at least Python wouldn't be there this time. The horrid serpentine creature was firmly dissolved into Chaos and would not be making an encore performance. Of course, that said nothing for the multitude of other beings trapped in Tartarus who would no doubt love to have another chance at taking down a god or two – or were eager for vengeance after being cast down by certain gods in the first place.

Apollo shuddered and firmly put it out of his mind to deal with later. With any luck, it'd be a quick in-and-out job, with Bob genuinely being in need of retrieval and absolutely nothing trying to stop them.

Well, he could dream, right?

It wasn't like he could break down in front of Nico, and he certainly couldn't show weakness in front of Hades.

As though summoned, the Lord of the Underworld materialised directly in the room, taking in the sight of Will delicately placed on his son's bed while Nico perched next to him almost protectively, turning his glower on his own father (Apollo was quite glad to see it wasn't solely reserved for him, even if Hades didn't seem at all bothered by his son's judgement) before the black fire of his eyes focused on Apollo. Instinctively, he straightened his back.

Hades had changed into his own armour, Stygian Iron covering robes woven from the souls of the damned. Apollo had never been so glad to see the Helm of Darkness before, nor Hades' recent armoury addition of a wicked-looking Stygian Iron sword, which sat at his hip.

"Time to leave," he announced, and with some hesitation, Apollo drew himself up, his hand reluctantly leaving his son's leg. "Nico, do not try to leave this room. Your food will be delivered here."

Nico huffed but said nothing. He'd turned his head away from Will, to face his father, but his eyes kept flicking back to the bed.

There was no delaying it further. Apollo strode across the room, refusing to allow himself a backwards glance, until he reached the door. Hades brushed past him, pushing it open.

"Be careful," Nico mumbled suddenly, just before the door swung shut. Both gods paused and looked back at him. His face was pale, and his grip on Will's hand white-knuckled. "Both of you."

The sentiment should be laughable – two gods, being told to be careful. It was a hilarious prospect, should be a hilarious prospect, and yet neither Apollo nor Hades laughed. They didn't even scoff disparagingly.

Hades let the door slam shut behind them without a word. Apollo didn't dare turn back and make eye contact with the demigod before it closed and shadows swarmed to cover it, securing it tightly shut and ensuring the two demigods were as protected as it was possible to be. It offered some comfort, to know that Will and Nico, at least, were safe.

Even if it meant he and Hades had to brave Tartarus once more.

"It's time," his uncle said, and Apollo followed him out of the palace.

I think Apollo's haiku says it all this time; he's not left me much to say about this chapter! Small warning that Friday's chapter will be up late (potentially as late as Saturday) because I've ended up with an rl commitment and I have no idea how late it'll run.

Thanks for reading!
Tsari