Work Text:
He wakes up with blood on his tongue, and Bianca’s name on his lips.
It's dark out, it probably has been for a while. Moonlight filters through the windows of the Hades cabin, streaming onto the wooden baseboards where Nico had fallen off his bed in his wake. Shadows of odd shapes and ends climb the walls. They’re not as comforting as they normally are.
Gods. What was his nightmare about this time? The blanket that Hazel had thrown into his cabin before she left for New Rome so many months ago now rests tangled between his legs as he tries to orient himself.
It slowly comes back to him, the olive skin that so matched his own, the splash of freckles that had always danced across her nose. Her dark, silky hair that always managed to stay long and pretty in his eyes, thick strands that she would let him play with whenever he got bored. The dream always starts the same way.
It always ends the same way, too. Her eyes that bleed into red, her hands that turn into claws, carding a path through his hair and onto his neck, squeezing until his lips go blue and he can’t breathe.
(“Your fault,” she whispers, and he can’t breathe. “It’s your fault. How could you leave me alone like this? How could you abandon me?”
He can only choke. “No, Bianca-”)
And she only squeezes harder, and all of a sudden, he can feel the tug of the Pit, and fuck, he’s going to fall again, and he’s alone again, and it’s not Bianca’s voice that’s whispering in his ears because Bianca’s voice never sounded that harsh, she was always so kind, so protective, and it wasn’t really her fault for joining the Hunters, was it?
And then he wakes. The Hades cabin feels bigger than usual.
He’s 15, the son of Hades, and he still gets nightmares about his dead sister. He’s not sure how to feel about it.
Slowly, he untangles Hazel’s blanket from his legs. He can’t really bring himself to care that it’s definitely too cold to be wearing just a t-shirt and shorts for the chilly night air, and the sweat that plasters his hair to his skin doesn’t do anything to change his mind. He slips on his shoes without much thought, feeling the aglets of his sneaker’s laces digging into the soles of his feet as he trudges out of the Hades cabin.
The shadows that pool near his fingertips as he follows the path near the canoe lake makes him feel sick. He could shadow-travel to anywhere in the world, and still, the person he wants to see most is out of reach.
Before he can stop himself, he finds himself standing at the beach of Long Island Sound, salt stinging at his eyes.
And it’s too much, because the beach always makes him think of Percy, which makes him think of Bianca, and it all boils down to the fact that Nico was ten, a boy too young to be a demigod, too young and too stupid to realize all of the shit he was about to get into. He feels like a little kid all over again, standing at the beach, his hands limp at his sides because he doesn’t have the energy to wipe his tears away. His breaths come shuddering, his gasps ripping out of his chest as if he'd just ran a marathon, and for fuck's sake, he can't get himself to just breathe.
“Nico?”
A voice, soft and barely audible over the rush of waves at his feet. He whirls to the source of the sound, hands itching for his trusty sword. The one he left in his cabin.
He’s about to call forth his shadows when he realizes that it’s only Annabeth, sitting a couple feet away from him. Her knees are tucked close to her chest, her arms linked in a circle so that she’s curled like a ball. As he approaches, he can see blonde curls escaping from the loose ponytail by the nape of her neck. The thick sleeves of her hoodie spills over her wrists as she waves him over.
He’s hesitant. His relationship - friendship? allyship? - with Annabeth isn’t exactly ideal. He knows as much about her as she does him, and that doesn’t say much. In his ten-year-old mind, Annabeth was just another hero, another tragedy to idolize.
But she doesn’t look like much of a hero now, shoulders hunched and voice ragged. Beneath the moonlight that bounces off her face, he can see the red that rims her eyes, and knows that she’s been up for a while.
She can probably see the dried tear tracks on his face, too. Sleep doesn't come easy to any demigod.
She pats at a spot beside her, and he sits. He doesn’t really know what to say.
“Did you-” His voice cracks, and he coughs into his fist. “What are you doing here? Aren't you leaving for New Rome soon?”
Which is a stupid question. He knows why she’s here.
“I should be asking you,” Annabeth says, a lifting tilt to her voice. “You don’t seem like the type to come to the beach.”
“Couldn’t sleep,” he says.
She sighs. “Cheers to that.”
Silence settles over them like a blanket, filling in the cracks between them. The crests of waves crash like soft drums with a constrained sort of calm. Nico wonders if there’s another certain demigod that can’t sleep as well.
He rubs his eyes. He’s so tired. The rope in his stomach winds and winds and winds, and he thinks he might explode. He just wants to talk , even if the only person who ever understood him isn't here.
“I dreamed of Bianca,” he says before he can regret it. “I dream about her a lot, still.”
Annabeth hums, tucking stray strands of hair behind her ears.
“I dream of Luke.” She glances at Nico, a wry smile on her lips. “Almost everyday.”
He forgets that she was only 16 during the Battle of Manhattan (though to be fair, he tries not to think about it). The Second Titan War settles in the back of his mind like a safe he's too afraid to crack open, the remains of everything he's tried to forget from when he was just twelve years old. If he tries to dig back a little, even just dipping his toes into the prophecy, of Luke, of Percy , he's pretty sure he'll never breach the surface.
A quiet understanding passes between them, and Annabeth pulls her hoodie over her head. She tosses it into Nico’s lap, raising a brow as he hesitantly pushes his arms through the sleeves.
“You’re gonna get cold in just that shirt,” she says.
The back of his eyes sting. “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome,” she says. “It’s Percy’s. Don’t tell him I stole it.”
He laughs a little at that. “Secret’s safe with me.”
“Knew I could trust you,” she says, her lips quirked into a soft grin, and Nico feels the familiar ache of guilt pool in his stomach.
He needs to get it out. He needs to tell her.
“I used to be really jealous of you,” he says quietly.
Much to his chagrin, Annabeth smiles, and he can almost hear the tease in her words, as if she knew all along. He wouldn’t be surprised if she did.
“Did you, now?”
“No need to rub it in.”
She snorts at that, her fingers tracing lines and curves along the sand, which makes Nico smile. Just a little.
“Can you blame me? You had respect, won a war, got the guy.” He throws her a weak glare, half-hearted and without any bite. “And you were so fucking nice to me. I couldn’t hate you as much as I tried.”
“I bet you tried a lot, huh?” Her tone is fond, but her expression is weary as she scans her gaze across the sea and the flickering tide.
“Sure did," he says, his breaths heavy. "You tried to convince me to stay. You went out of your way to be kind to me.”
And he pauses, feeling a little awkward.
“Thank you, by the way,” he says, shoulders stiff as Annabeth turns to take a glance at him. He isn’t sure why he’s so nervous, but he ignores the coil unwinding in his stomach as he bites out his next words. “If it weren’t for you, I think I would’ve been a lot more of an asshole.”
His voice falters, and he wets his lips.
“I’m sorry,” he says finally. He keeps his gaze planted on the stray string by the sleeve of the hoodie she gave him, though he can feel Annabeth’s gaze burning into his head. “About back then, about Bianca. I didn’t know who else to blame.”
He takes a breath, steeling himself. “I’m really grateful. For you.”
The punctuation of his words doesn’t slip past her, and he shouldn’t have expected otherwise. But he still flushes beet-red anyway, running a hand through his hair as word vomit jumbles on his tongue.
“And for Percy, and the rest of camp, you know?” he stammers, and he feels more stupid with every second that passes by. “I think I have a lot of people to thank-”
He can’t describe the sound that comes out of Annabeth’s mouth. He looks up with a start, wondering if she just suddenly decided to combust from the sheer embarrassment of his words, but he’s even more confused to find her very much intact beside him. Her body tips forward, her shoulders shaking with the effort, her forehead leaning against her knees.
She laughs with her whole body, he notes as she finally looks up at him, rubbing her eyes with the heels of her palms.
“Me?” she says breathily, her grin wide. “You’re thanking me?”
The way she says it makes it seem like Nico had just said the funniest joke in the world. He shifts, feeling the coarse sand beneath him sift between his shoes.
“Well, yeah.”
Her laugh tapers off, soft, and her expression turns weird. Her brows furrow, and when she points her finger at her chest (as if she couldn’t believe it herself), Nico can’t help but think that Annabeth has aged a thousand years in just a minute, her gray eyes weathered like stone.
“Me,” she repeats, and he can’t do anything but nod. “You’re thanking me.”
"I am.”
She falls quiet. Nico thinks belatedly that this is the first time he’s rendered Annabeth Chase speechless.
“I don’t really know what to say,” she says finally, her voice a whisper above the waves that crash onto the beach. Absent-mindedly, her fingers brush the clay beads that rest at her collar. “I don’t think I really deserve your thanks.”
He’s pretty sure he’s not imagining the hoarseness of her voice. “What do you mean?”
She flashes him a glance, her brows knit together.
“I don’t deserve it,” she amends. “I wasn’t kind to you. I wasn’t there for you when I should have been.”
He frowns. "What do you mean?"
Her expression is stormy. Nico remembers it as the one Percy had coined so long ago, his fingers steepled together as if he had just come up with the world's greatest heist.
("Her thinky expression," Percy had said, one brow cocked. "Always thinking of something, that smartass."
Annabeth's voice was firm, but the glint in her eyes had given her amusement away. "I heard that.")
"I knew what you were going through, Nico," she says now, voice quiet. "Everything about Bianca leaving, I knew how it felt."
Nico thinks dimly of a story he'd heard from Will, something about a Cyclops and Thalia's pine.
"You were scared, and I should've done something to help." Annabeth's gaze is as hard as steel. "You never deserved to feel like an outcast. I, of all people, should've known better."
He thinks back to that summer, the night when he'd tossed the Hades statuette to the floor, vowing to never return. When he refused to believe that Percy's promise ever amounted to anything, all because he needed someone to blame beside himself for what Bianca had done.
"To be fair," he says, not even trying to hide the fact that his voice breaks with the effort, "that was a rough summer."
She snorts out a wet laugh, and from the corner of his vision, he can see her wipe her eyes with her palms.
"I'm really sorry, Nico," she says, and this time, he faces her fully.
"I don't really think there's anything to forgive you for," he says. "But for what it's worth, it's okay."
She opens her arms, a little hesitantly.
"Only if you're up for it," she says.
It doesn't feel forced when he nudges himself closer to her, burying his face in the crook of her shoulder as she rubs circular motions on his back. Annabeth's touch is soothing, and something about feeling her steady breaths beside his erratic ones makes it a little easier to calm down.
"You've come so far," she says, the soft timbre of her voice quiet against his ear. "You deserve to rest a little, too."
And so, he cries. He cries for everything that he's bottled up since when he was ten years old, everything from the two wars that he's become nothing but a byproduct of, everything and everyone that he's lost as he's gotten so much older. He cries, because sometimes, he feels like Tartarus will never leave him, that it's always going something about himself that he can't fix. He cries for Bianca, too, even though the little voice in his head says that he's shed too much for her already. He cries for Percy, too, because 16 is too young an age to accept death, to bear the burden of a Great Prophecy alone.
And then he cries some more, just because.
He pulls away after some time, when the moon has long fallen and the sun peaks over the horizon. Gold washes over the camp, and Nico can finally breathe.
"Have you gotten taller?" Annabeth asks as she sits back, smoothing a hair from her face. A small smile graces her lips, and the red around her eyes has faded into pink. "I keep forgetting that you're 15."
He cracks a smile. "You're only 17."
"Never too old to grow."
"You're tall enough already," he says, and she hums.
"I guess so," she says.
He takes another breath. His hands are still loosely held in hers, and he doesn't feel the normal dread that comes with touch. He's surprised at how much he doesn't want to pull away.
"If you..." He pauses, scratching the back of his neck. "If you, um, ever need someone to talk to, I'm always available."
Annabeth's grin is like lightning, endearing in a way that makes Nico understand all of a sudden how Percy is so undeniably in love with her.
"And I to you, di Angelo," she says, knocking his shoulder with her own.
Then, she leans in conspiratorially.
"Now, let's get into the thick of things," she says, and he raises a brow. "I've always wanted to learn how to play Mythomagic. Don't tell me you're too old for that game."
A laugh slips out of his lips before he can stop it, and she tips her head to the side, a challenging glint in her eyes.
"Of course not," he says.
She gestures toward the cabins, and when Nico takes a glance back at Camp, something about it feels less foreign.
(And a little more like home.)
"Lead the way, di Angelo."