Chapter Text
Whatever trouble was brewing in the infirmary was anything but little. Nico di Angelo was having a nightmare, despite Will Solace’s best efforts to prevent them. Some experiences simply left wounds too deep, too significant to ignore. Will was there, though no longer by Nico’s side. The son of Apollo was running around the infirmary, jumping over mercifully-empty beds, leading a veritable army of skeletal soldiers around in an effort to distract them from Nico. He didn’t really need to distract them. As soon as they rose, they seemed to go straight for the son of Apollo.
Will was waiting on his half-brother Andrew to fetch him a celestial bronze sword from the armoury. He’d first charged the boy with evacuating the other patients, which thankfully he did in record time. Now, it was only a matter of time before one of two things happened: he arrived with the weapon for Will, or Will became overran by the undead soldiers. The weapon came not a moment too soon. He was about to be overwhelmed.
The other son of Apollo tossed the blade to Will, who caught it out of the air and struck down the nearest skeleton in one fluid motion that he had not anticipated he’d be able to do. He had been training with Lou Ellen, but he’d not expected he would be in combat so soon. The golden-haired demigod dashed through the infirmary, cutting down any skeletal soldier stupid enough to get in his way. He didn’t rest until he returned to Nico’s side. The son of Hades’ face was contorted in absolute anguish.
Nico’s back was arched off of the bed. His arms were tucked to his sides, hands strained into claws, the tension in them palpable. His legs were stiff, his entire body rigid and locked into position. Will placed his hands on Nico, and summoned his healing light, which he’d practised on the other patients in the infirmary, but the pain Nico was feeling rebounded.
The membrane of light forming over Nico’s body snapped, and recoiled, like a rubber band, back into Will’s hands and into his body. He felt the agony that the son of Hades was experiencing for a split second before he was hurled into the nearby wall. That had been a bad idea. “Nico!” he cried out, shaking the son of Hades by his shoulder, but to no avail.
Nico would not stir from his deep, fitful slumber, and soon enough Will’s voice became hoarse from shouting the son of Hades’ name at the top of his lungs. Chiron cantered into the infirmary and shot an arrow at a skeleton that decided that then was a good time to crawl out of a fissure in the infirmary floor. The thing dissolved instantly, and the bronze arrow embedded itself in the wall above Nico’s bed. The son of Apollo glared at the centaur. Chiron hesitated, wanting to step inside. “I can deal with this myself!” he yelled, a crazed look in his eyes.
Chiron had trained heroes long enough to know that look. He understood. There had been many in his experience who’d never believed in themselves, who thought that there was something they needed to prove. Will Solace was one such soul, and who was he to deny him that chance? The centaur nodded and trotted away. Will tried to justify the refusal of help by saying he was only doing it so that no one else would be put at needless risk, though no one was listening for the lame excuse. He did have something he wanted to prove.
He wanted to prove that he could take care of Nico di Angelo on his own. It wasn’t like he couldn’t fight the skeletons alone. They were slow, and lumbering, as though they were half-asleep and unresponsive like Nico himself. The only trouble was their numbers. Will couldn’t help the dread that gripped his heart when seven crawled out of the Underworld at the same time. He looked briefly at Nico, whose form briefly flickered. Will’s grip on his sword tightened in anger and despair. With a guttural battlecry, he raced at the skeletons and turned them into dust.
Will soon found out why Andrew had taken so long getting his weapon. There was unwelcome company. Two other demigods whom, unlike Chiron, were not about to back down from Will Solace. Jason Grace and Percy Jackson stood side by side by the threshold of the infirmary, weapons drawn, looking entirely ready for a fight. Instead, what they witnessed, was Will cutting down a skeleton that had burst out from right in front of the doorway. As the undead warrior’s dust settled, the son of Apollo regarded the two other demigods with a glare. “Why are you here?” he snarled with uncharacteristic aggression.
The son of Jupiter was somewhat taken aback. The son of Poseidon didn’t care. He wanted to help his friend. Percy tried to push past Will, but the son of Apollo had other ideas. Percy took a single step, and, almost instantly, found himself windmilling backwards out of the infirmary. The son of Apollo had somehow managed to shove him back out in the span of a second. Jason noted that there was a slight golden glow hanging around Will. It was probably a blessing from Apollo, but given that the god was in enough trouble, he did not know what to make of it.
Maybe Artemis had gotten their father to pardon Apollo after all. It was unlikely. Nevertheless, he was shaken out of his thoughts when Percy stormed back up to the threshold. “Man! Solace! We’re here to help!” he protested. The son of Poseidon was too busy trying to look over his shoulder to check up on Nico, that he did not notice the quick flash of anger that crossed the son of Apollo’s face. Jason wasn’t so distracted. He was watching Will. He noticed.
The son of Jupiter had the feeling that they would be asked to leave soon enough, by force, if necessary. There was a burning determination, and something else that Jason couldn’t quite name, dwelling behind the golden-haired demigod’s eyes. He decided that even if he was told to stay out of the infirmary, he would remain to watch in case something untoward occurred. Another group of skeletons clawed their ways out of the ground, but before either Percy or Jason could react, Will had already taken care of them. As the dust of the Underworld creatures settled, the son of Apollo returned to the doorway.
Will planted himself in such a way that neither Jason nor Percy could just dash past him. He was determined to keep them out. “Why, Jackson? You don’t think I can handle a few skeletons?” was the challenge. The head counsellor of Apollo bared his teeth. Then he glanced furtively back at Nico in his bed by the corner. “I can handle myself just fine, thank you” he growled. Percy was dense enough to not get why Will Solace was being so confrontational and aggressive. Jason was more perceptive. He had a sneaking suspicion. That, and dating a daughter of Aphrodite gave one a sense of these kinds of things.
Percy tried to elbow his way past Will one more time, but he was roughly shoved back again. He was about to take one more step forward, but something stopped him, something he had not expected out of the son of Apollo who bungled up even the simplest shots of a bow and arrow. The point of Will’s sword was placed right on Percy’s sternum, though not hard enough to draw blood. “Leave, Jackson. I can take care of Nico myself” growled the son of Apollo.
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Jason was shaken from his reminiscence of the previous night’s events by the noise — cacophonous relative to the almost-deafening silence of the Big House — of a pair of surgical-grade steel scissors onto the cart of medical supplies that Andrew had been obsessively fiddling with, sanitizing, and organizing for the past couple of hours. The son of Apollo had been charged by the rest of his cabin-mates to make sure that Will was alright. Unfortunately, he was far too wary of skeletons popping out of the ground again to actually tread into the infirmary at that time.
That was part of the reason that the Big House, and by extension, the infirmary was so blessedly quiet. Word had gotten around camp of what had happened the previous night, and campers were all too afraid to approach, in case of skeletal warrior attacks. Somehow, the son of Jupiter knew that none would be forthcoming. At least not for a while. There was a peaceful, angelic serenity on Nico di Angelo’s face as he slept, contrary to the anguish that had been there the previous night. Whatever nightmares had haunted his dreams then seemed to have dispersed, at least for the time being.
By the son of Hades’ bedside, the son of Apollo sat in a chair, his whole body slumped forward towards the bed, his head lying on his arms folded against the sheets. The two young men looked serene, so jarringly in contrast with the previous night, when there was a determination, anguish, and anger in Will that the once-praetor had never seen before. It was almost as though there had not been a life-threatening situation mere hours beforehand. According to Andrew, neither boy had yet stirred for hours, though Jason could only imagine the toll of the previous night’s events on the two.
The son of Jupiter himself was still tired. Percy and himself had eventually complied with Will’s wish to be left alone to defend Nico on his own, but they had not left the infirmary. They sat in the hallway outside, watching, ready to be backup in case things took a turn for the worse. They never did, but Jason did not think it had been a night wasted. At least they had been there. He didn’t think he could have forgiven himself if he had somehow compromised not only Nico’s safety, but Will’s as well by leaving.
No. That sleepless night had been worth it. Jason and Percy owed the son of Hades so much. Without him, they’d never have found the Doors of Death in Epirus, never have survived the Necromanteion. The once-praetor of Camp Jupiter had developed powerful protective instincts of the young Italian boy who had been browbeaten into confession of his love for Percy Jackson by that bastard Cupid in Salona. Nico had been through so much pain and suffering, that Jason wanted to see him happy for once.
Watching how the son of Hades slept peacefully with the son of Apollo at his side, Jason could not help but think that this, whatever this was between Will and Nico, was at least a step in the right direction. “Nico di Angelo…” muttered the son of Jupiter under his breath. “You, more than any of us, deserve to be happy…” he continued. There was a loud squeak from nearby as Andrew dropped another thing off of the cart, which he then proceeded to obsessively clean for the next little while. The son of Jupiter felt somewhat strange, standing out here in the hallway with the other scrawny son of Apollo.
Andrew kept shooting glances at him. It was uncomfortable. Finally, after a couple of minutes of Jason watching the other demigod out of the corner of his eye, the apprentice healer spoke. Or at least he tried to. Whatever it was that he’d said came out as a squeaky, garbled, unintelligible mess. Andrew took a deep breath. Then he looked at Jason. “Don’t tell him I told you this…” The apprentice healer had looked up to Will for so long that at some point in the past, not that he’d care to admit it anymore, he’d stalked the son of Apollo.
Jason raised an eyebrow. “Well…” Andrew said, trailing off. “Well, he doesn’t even know that I know…” the boy’s voice was somewhat high and squeaky and, normally, would have been irritating, but Jason was curious as to what he was getting at. There were a few moments of tense, uncomfortable silence before the son of Apollo finally blurted out, “He likes Nico!” Then, Andrew clapped a hand over his mouth and fled from the infirmary.