It's quiet when Will gets back to the cabin. Anteros is watching over the hurt campers from the games in the infirmary, and even when Will strains his ears, he can't hear the sound of Sohee breathing. He peeks into her bunk, and he can't help but smile sadly at the sight in front of him. Dozens of stuffed animals litter her bed, including the one tucked into her arms. Will can just barely make her out amongst everything on her bed, an overlarge hoodie he recognizes as Dylan's covering her body. She's fast asleep, her breath steady.

Will goes back to his bunk, reaching underneath his bed to where his trunk is hiding to grab a change of clothes. Curfew isn't for about 30 or so more minutes, so he figures he has time to change right quick and brush his teeth before slipping out to Nico's cabin. He tries his best to not glance at the bunk across from his own, not think about the stillness. About the fact that Kayla and Austin won't be showing up to move the perfectly still curtains in front of their bunks. No. He can't think of that right now.

Will can barely look at himself in the mirror. The condensation from Sohee's shower still hasn't quite gone away, but he can see the mess of golden curls that's so familiar to him. The way the light hits the golden center in the middle of his iris. The dimple in his right cheek that mirrors Daniel's. The scar on his eyebrow from when Aaron had accidentally hit him in the face during sparring. He runs his fingers over his camp necklace, counting the beads on it.

One for every summer at camp.

The summer he came to camp. The summer Thalia's tree was healed. The summer he lost Daniel. The summer he lost everyone. The summer he started dating Nico.

Five beads. Five summers. Five years.

He looks at the bracelet on his wrist that's made out of Daniel's necklace. Daniel had four beads when he died. Will realizes something suddenly, looking at the sun charm hanging between the beads.

He's as old now as Daniel was when he died.

Will scrubs furiously at his face, his hands. Sometimes he thinks he can still see Daniel's blood on his skin. Can feel the life force draining out of his brother. Can see the light leave his brown eyes.

Will grips the sides of the sink, forcing tears not to fall.

He keeps losing the ones he loves. And now he's lost Kayla and Austin.

There's a quiet, but not timid, knock on the door.

"Will." A voice drifts through his mess of thoughts. Not the one he expected. Will opens the door, and Nico is standing in front of it, a frown on his pretty face.

Gods above, Nico is pretty. He will never understand how people ever found him creepy. Maybe he's biased, but he can't find it in himself to care. Nico is hands down the most beautiful person that he's ever seen, and that includes all of the Aphrodite kids. The way his dark hair is starting to curl around his ears, the dark flecks of green hidden in his eyes until the light hits them just right, the dusting of freckles across his cheeks that he knows from Nico's stories mirrors Bianca. The lithe fingers tap tap tapping against the door frame, the familiar skull ring adorning his pointer finger. One of Will's darker plaid shirts tied around his waist.

"Yeah?" Will asks, realizing that he's taken just a bit too long to answer his boyfriend. Nico's eyes tighten at the corners, and Will knows his little breakdown in the bathroom hasn't gone unnoticed by Nico. Shoot.

"Are you okay?" Nico asks, stepping forward to tilt his head up, inspecting Will like he's expecting something physically to be wrong with Will.

"Right as rain." Will says, and Nico hums, but the sound is one of disbelief. "Well…"

"I suppose you mean as good as you can be given the circumstances." Nico says with finality, and Will huffs.

"Stop readin' my mind, angel." He says with a grumble, and Nico just barks out a laugh.

"Stop being so easy for me to read then." He reaches up to flick Will's forehead affectionately, and steps back. "You coming to my cabin?" Will nods, stretching his arms over his head.

"Yeah, I just needed a moment to gather myself and alla that. Brush my teeth, change my clothes. I'm all good now though." He grins at Nico, who just shakes his head with a laugh. Will steps out of the bathroom and goes to grab his jacket from off the back of the chair at his desk, but something catches his eye that makes him stop and frown.

Some of his books are missing. Books that he keeps to tell the new sunbabies stories of their father and all of his deeds and explain things. Nico must catch the expression on his face, because he steps closer, the smell of the ground after rain strengthening as his boyfriend approaches.

"Apollo had them. He was coming out as I was coming in. I didn't really ask. You know I'm not much for talking, especially not to your teenaged dad." Will snorts, shaking his head. '

"Stop thinking about him being a teenager. It's weird. You know it's weird." Nico doesn't give him an answer, instead picking up Will's dagger from the desk and turning around to put it on the hook on the wall under his name.

"You won't need this." Nico says simply, and Will just shrugs.

"Lead the way, sunshine."

Nico's cabin is quiet as always, the darkness making it feel slightly eerie. It's familiar to Will though, he's been in here enough times.

Nero is curled up on Hazel's bed. It's always slightly unsettling to see Nero sleeping, since he glows slightly, like a ghostly apparition. Well… he is a ghost.

Nico flops down on his bed, kicking off his shoes with a huff. "Make yourself at home." He waves his hand dismissively, and Will chuckles, gingerly taking off his own shoes before sitting crosslegged on the bed next to Nico.

His leg bobs up and down in anxiety, thoughts overwhelming him. He's never been away from Kayla or Austin for this long, and the thought of them struggling with something that he's unable to help them with, stuck somewhere possibly in danger—

"Will." Nico says, and Will blinks, looking over at his boyfriend. Nico sits up a little bit, his overlong dark hair falling into his eyes slightly. "You're spiraling again, aren't you?" Nico's tone is slightly accusatory, and Will shrinks into himself, tucking his hands into the pockets of his hoodie.

"...No." He says after a bit, and Nico sighs deeply, ruffling his hair.

"There's nothing we can do right now. You know that."

"'Course I know that." Will snaps, and Nico raises an eyebrow. "You think that I DON'T know that, Nico? How could I not? My siblin's are out there MISSIN' and all I can do is sit here and think about my dad going out into the woods as a MORTAL to go find them because we weren't allowed to go with and– and—" Will takes a deep breath and Nico reaches forward, tugging on the front of Will's hoodie.

"Hey, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to set you off. You came here to rest and get your mind off of everything. Just come here." Nico says, his dark eyes worried. Will relents, letting Nico pull him down to lie on the bed next to him.

"I'm so scared, Neeks." Will says after a minute, and Nico hums, reaching out to brush a few wayward curls out of Will's eyes.

"I know you are. I know the feeling. Really well." Nico says, his voice low. "But it doesn't do you any good, or anyone for that matter, to let it stress you out so much that you can't function. Sohee and Anteros still need you. Apollo will find the missing campers. I can feel it." Will nods, burrowing himself into Nico's shoulder, sighing deeply.

"The rational side of me knows that. But you know how bad I've been since the war and alla that." He says.

"Which one?" Nico snarks with a slight laugh, and Will pinches his side. "Sorry, sorry, I was trying to lighten the mood."

"Maybe don't do that by joking about that." Will says, and Nico nods, his fingers running up and down Will's back.

"You should try and get some sleep. You'll wake up before me anyway." Will nods, pressing his cheek against Nico's slightly cool skin.

"No promises on the sleep front, but I'll try."

"That's all I can ask for."

—-

The morning doesn't bring any comfort. Once Will wakes up (much before Nico, as promised) Sohee sticks to him like glue, like a little shadow. She refuses to let him out of her sight.

It hurts, seeing his little sister like this. Will HATES this feeling. It reminds him too much of how it had been after the Battle of Manhattan, Kayla and Austin hovering around him not only out of their own fears, but out of fear of his anxiety, his controlling tendencies. The fear of losing siblings haunts all of them, sure, but Will most of all, and he hates seeing those fears reflecting in Sohee's dark, teary eyes. He never wanted her to feel this way, not ever.

He barely sees Apollo, if he is being honest. His dad seems content to completely ignore the rest of them. Will balls his hands up into fists at the thought, staring at Austin and Kayla's names on the wall from where he's laying on one of the beanbags, tap tap tapping his feet, willing his hands to stop shaking enough for some semblance of normalcy.

Will knows where Apollo is, of course. The sound of the helicopter that Rachel uses hadn't woken him or his siblings up, since they had already been up, but it sure woke up the rest of the camp. He can't help but wonder what they are talking about, but Chiron had told them all to stay away, and Will can't bear to leave Sohee on her own anyway.

"Will?" He looks over at his sister. She's sitting cross legged on the floor, her slim fingers stringing small beads onto a bracelet. Purple, pink, blue. Over and over and over again. She frowns at her hands, her bottom lip jutting out.

"Yes, sunbaby?" He says softly, and Sohee sighs, putting her bracelet down, careful not to drop any of the beads onto the floor of the cabin.

"Do you think that they will be found? Austin and Kayla, the others?" She asks in that quiet voice of hers, and Will reaches out to catch a piece of her hair between his fingers.

He has to be honest with her, he decides. Too much of their lives are living in danger, and as much as he wants to shield her from reality sometimes, it's just not feasible. He can't keep everything from her, and it hurts him too.

"I dunno, Sohee." He says gently, and she frowns again, tugging on the goblet earring in her right ear. "I can only hope that Apollo and Meg can figure it out. We just have to have faith." He strokes her hair, and she gets up from her spot on the floor. She climbs into his lap and curls into his side, resting her cheek on his shoulder.

"I'm scared, Will." She admits after a long while of just existing in his personal space. Will presses a kiss to the top of her head, willing the dark feeling curling in his stomach to go down. This is not his usual darkness. This is anxiety, this is fear. Worry.

"I'm scared too, Sohee. I really am." He admits, and she burrows deeper into his arms.

"I miss them." Her voice sounds her age for once, not colored by war or by having to grow up too fast, as most demigods have to deal with. She sounds ten, a scared child. She IS a scared child.

You're a scared child too, Will. He can practically hear Daniel's voice in his head, and he has to close his eyes so he doesn't break down into tears of his own.

"I miss them too, sunbaby. We will get them back, no matter what it takes. Dad and Meg are going to try their hardest, and we just have to continue on while they do, okay?" He says gently, and Sohee nods. She climbs out of his lap, going back to where her beads are sitting. Will watches her for a minute.

"Who is that for?" He asks, and she tilts her head, looking up at him with a small smile.

"It's for you, big brother. Do you want me to put your favorite Taylor Swift song on it?"

—

"Do you think he will take it?" Will asks Nico, fiddling with the ukulele in his hands. Nico hums a noncommittal sound, his shoulders rising and falling in a shrug.

"It's hard to say… He seems pretty reluctant to do anything related to his godly domains, even if he still retains some of it. Sohee said he made Chiara cry in music class the other day just from tuning his guitar. What I would have paid to see that." Nico says, and Will snorts.

There's some weird beef between Chiara and Nico, something about their families and some old grudge that Nico has no idea about but Chiara refuses to let go of. Sometimes Will can't help but think that Nico enjoys the banter. It's hard to get a read on Nico and his emotions oftentimes.

"Well… I hope he will take it. It just feels like he should, y'know?" Will says and Nico reaches out to squeeze Will's wrist, eyeing Billie Ng who is really trying hard to not listen into their conversation.

Will straightens up when he sees Apollo and Meg making their way to the edge of the forest. He smiles warmly, or as warmly as he can, at his father, who looks halfway to throwing up. Will gets it, he's felt the same every single minute that Kayla and Austin have been gone. He has to will his hand to stop shaking, a soft golden glow starting to take up space. Luckily, his father doesn't really seem to notice.

"Be careful, please. And…here, take this." He says as Apollo and Meg approach them, holding out the ukulele, and Apollo's eyes widen, his head shaking.

"I couldn't possibly! I made an oath and–" Will sighs.

"And that was real fuckin' stupid of you. But this ain't a normal ukulele, it's a combat one. You can fight if you need to." He says, pushing it back into his father's arms. He watches Apollo inspect it, his mouth settled into a frown.

"The work of Hephaestus?" Apollo asks after a bit, and Will shakes his head.

"Naw. Work of Harley. He wanted you to have it. Just sling it on over your back. For me and for Harley. It'll make us both feel better." Will says gently, and Apollo looks up, making eye contact with him. It feels so weird, seeing the familiar golden center that he and all of his siblings have, reflected in the eyes of this… human.

"Here." Nico says, holding out a small baggie of ambrosia. Will frowns. He hadn't even noticed that Nico took it, nor did he think of it himself. His hand clenches into a fist.

Bad healer, bad counselor, bad—

Nico's hand touches his left wrist, even as he's talking to Apollo, and Will looks over at his boyfriend.

Nico knows him too well. Even when barely looking at him. Gods above, Will adores him.

The other campers also help out with the quest supplies, Billie giving Meg some seeds, Malcolm showing Apollo locations on his map, but Will chooses to focus his energy on the fingers wrapped around his wrist, keeping him calm. He breathes out a shaky breath, and Nico turns to face him, dark eyes flicking over him.

"Are you okay?" He asks, and Will nods, hesitates, and then shakes his head.

"Yes. No. I don't know." Will says, his voice barely above a whisper. "I'm tryin' real hard to be okay, but…" Nico nods, squeezing his fingers around Will's wrist again, his thumb rubbing against the pink, blue and purple bracelet that Sohee had made him around his wrist.

"It's okay. They'll find them, I'm sure of it." Nico says, but his mouth is still set in a frown.

Apollo finally rests his hand on Will's shoulder, and Will stiffens a bit at the warmth of the touch. Gods above, he will never be used to his dad TOUCHING him.

"We will be back by dawn, don't worry." Apollo says, and Will feels his mouth twitch in anxiety, running a hand through his unruly curls.

"How can you be so sure?" He asks after a minute, and Apollo gives him a crooked smile, blue eyes gleaming.

"I'm the sun god." Apollo says confidently. "I always return with the dawn."

Will wishes that gave him a more sure feeling.