Chapter Text
NICO
Dreams were like ghosts. Their edges were soft and they moved with no respect for the living, because ghosts, just like dreams, had no real purpose. Time held no relevance and when Nico looked too close, he could see right through his dreams, just as he could see through ghosts. Normally he felt solid and alive while the rest of the dream moved around him like fog but this… this was different.
He felt more like a spectre moving through a solid world. The feelings were still warm, but his hands were useless and everything he touched passed right through his fingertips.
It was his turn to be the ghost.
He was at Camp Half-Blood, but the spot wasn’t somewhere he had been before. Slowly, the training arena built itself around him and then finer details gradually began to piece themselves together as if he was watching an artist carefully creating their masterpiece. He could hear voices, but everything sounded as if he were underwater. The words were unclear and the sounds unrecognizable, but he knew someone was nearby. His eyes darted around to find where they were coming from but it wasn’t until he began to move forward, watching as more of the dream unveiled itself, that he could begin to find its source.
There were two male figures along the arena’s seating. Their features were muted but Nico continued to move closer until the first was shockingly clear. He blinked, unbelieving and then stumbled back as he recognized the Stygian iron sword at the first one’s side.
For a moment, Nico thought he was looking into some sort of twisted mirror. This boy was older, but he shared Nico’s features. They were more complete, more defined, and permanent, but Nico knew them all. His limbs were longer, and his muscles lean, but Nico shared the scar on his arm, even though this boy’s mark had faded with age. His hair was shorter, his voice was deeper, but there could be no confusion.
The scars, the build, the sword, they were all Nico’s, but the eyes… the eyes were different. They were still dark, they were still guarded, but they weren’t broken. Instead, they were clear and observing the boy next to him as if he were the moon.
Nico turned to follow the older boy’s eyes and instantly there was blonde hair, blue eyes, and a smile that made Nico’s fingers itch even in a dream. It was Will, as if he had always been there, just older, and gorgeous, and perfect. His laugh was musical and his hands were animated, trying to explain something that Nico could only hear in muffled sounds. Nico watched as Will’s leg bounced, and instinctively he wanted to reach out and stop it, to touch him and make him real.
“He’s cute,” someone said clearly from next to Nico, sending ripples through his dream and making him understand why everything had felt so different. “I like him.”
Without looking Nico smiled and said: “I knew you would.”
There was a soft laugh beside him and when he turned, Bianca stood alongside Nico with a big sun hat covering most of her face.
He paused and tried to will her into reality, flicking the brim of her hat. “This is new. It’s not terrible.”
“I’ll take that as a compliment from you,” she smiled, touching the rim and tilting her head so Nico could see more of her face. His heart gave a stutter and any hope he had been clinging to vanished. This wasn’t really Bianca. This was only part of her and the rest was… something else.
“Father said you chose rebirth”
“I did.”
“We shouldn’t be able to talk.”
“It’s just a dream, Nico.”
“Dreams are never just dreams.”
“That’s true,” Bianca agreed with a foreign smirk, her eyes drifting over to Will. “But I think it’s fair to say that most things aren’t ever just anything.”
Nico turned to look back at the two older boys. He could see his older version notice Will’s bouncing leg out of the corner of his eye, watching it move until finally reaching out and placing a hand on the blonde’s knee to steady it. Will’s movements immediately calmed, and without stopping his sentence, he placed his hand over Nico’s to link the two together, looking at him like maybe he was made of stars.
The dream flickered and Nico knew time was short.
“I look different.”
“Well, that’s what happens when you get older.”
“No. I mean, I look… happy.”
“Anything is possible, Nico.”
“Then is this what the future looks like?”
Bianca snorted and Nico turned to see her laugh. “This isn’t A Christmas Carol, darling brother. I’m not the ghost of Christmas Future.”
“No,” he agreed, trying to memorize the face that was barely Bianca’s. “Not a ghost at all.”
Bianca grinned but it wasn’t her smile. The corners weren’t right and her lips looked thinner. Her features were still there, but they were slowly fading, morphing into something different. Into someone different.
“I miss you,” he said desperately, feeling the edges of the dream begin to disintegrate.
“I know,” she replied, reaching a solid hand out and resting it on Nico’s cheek. “And that’s okay. You’re going to be fine though, Nico. You’re going to be better than fine. You have a lot of wonderful people around you, and if you let yourself love them, you’ll find something better than Elysium.”
Nico reached up to place his hand over hers, but his fingers passed right through. “Why are you showing me this?”
“Because you need to know that good things will happen to you if you let them,” she said very seriously, placing both hands on his face. “They take time, and they require hard work, but they’re worth it. Just remember that things like these, they’re all choices, and you can choose to fight for happiness, or you can choose to accept misery. You have to fight for them, and sometimes you have to make them happen for yourself. You need to be willing to treat someone else’s heartbeat as your own.”
Nico turned to look back at where Will was sitting, and for a moment he thought he could see his older self looking straight at him, smiling like he knew something Nico didn’t, as if maybe Bianca was right and what Nico was seeing wasn’t too far out of the realm of possibility. He wanted to ask her if he would see her again, but when he turned around, she was gone and he was left staring at the inside of his cabin.
Nico took a long while to get out of bed. His head was full, but everything felt calm as he played Bianca’s words over and over in his head. Minutes turned into an hour and he wasn’t entirely sure he would have gotten out of bed at all if it hadn’t been for Percy Jackson pounding on his door, shouting that Annabeth and he were leaving because if Percy’s mother had to wait another moment there was going to be “fire, brimstone, and all sorts of end of the world schist”.
To which Annabeth added: “And no nosebleed required this time.”
Nico pulled himself up and quickly dressed, stepping outside the door and being jolted by the overwhelming awake-ness of the camp. Campers were rushing around, dragging their bags and trading goodbyes. Nico thought he caught a glimpse of Will helping one of his siblings with their backpack, but Nico blinked and he was gone in the next moment.
Briefly Nico wondered if maybe he was still dreaming.
Annabeth made Nico promise that he would try to visit at least once. She preemptively invited him for Christmas but Nico explained that Hazel and he had already decided on celebrating the holiday at Camp Jupiter so they could be together. It hadn’t been his idea, but when Hazel had mentioned it, he couldn’t deny that he was looking forward to having some sort of holiday again.
He tentatively hugged Annabeth goodbye, still feeling strange in his own skin, but Annabeth beamed at him and for a moment Nico thought he saw Bianca. Percy swooped in and tried to do the same, but Nico dodged him and the son of Poseidon stared at him with his mouth gaping open, affronted.
“Oh come on! Really? We go like way back! You’ll hug Annabeth and not me? And Jason! You’ve known Jason for like a few months, tops! How is he better than me?”
“You want that list alphabetically or chronologically?”
“Rude, di Angelo. I thought we were cool,” Percy replied with a joking smile before clapping his hand on Nico’s shoulder. “Seriously though. Take care of yourself. Come visit whenever you need anything.”
“I will,” Nico nodded. “Travel safe. Try not to drive Annabeth totally insane.”
“Too late,” Annabeth replied. “I’d already have to be to stick with him for this long.”
Nico walked with them until Jason and Piper came jogging over. The five traded their goodbyes, and once again, Nico was swept into varying degrees of physical contact he hadn’t quite been expecting. Percy was still adamant that he deserved a hug goodbye, and by the end it, Nico continued to resist just to be diligent to his word.
“You’re going to let us know when you’re at Camp Jupiter, right?” Jason asked as they walked toward the edge of camp. “I want to go and visit, but it would be even better if we could see you too.”
Nico agreed, feeling strange making promises, but none of them were things he wouldn’t willingly do on his own.
The four set off over the top of Half-Blood hill and before Nico really had time to realize what had happened, he was alone watching as the camp went from busy and packed, to thin and sparse. He searched for Will, almost expecting him to be nearby, but he found nothing. He turned towards the Apollo cabin, but its brightness was dimmed and the windows looked empty. A sense of dread set heavy onto Nico’s shoulders as it occurred to him that maybe he had missed Will’s departure in all the chaos of the morning.
His head still felt lost in a haze.
His eyes darted around for any sign of the healer, but he came up empty handed until he reached the top of the hill and saw Lou Ellen, Cecil, and Kayla standing at the bottom of the barrier, apparently waiting for someone.
“You looking for something?”
Nico spun around; he couldn’t help it. He turned to find Will walking from the Big House with a pack slung over his shoulder. Nico let out the breath he hadn’t realized he was holding and relief warmed his veins. Will looked like Will. Not the Will Nico had seen in his dreams. This was the real Will, the one whose laugh was now familiar, whose eyes said more than his words, and the one who had proven that Nico wasn’t alone. He wasn’t a dream. He was real and he was right next to Nico, close enough to touch.
The butterflies in his stomach started their flittering and Nico said: “No. Not anymore.”
Will smiled nervously and kicked at the ground, shifting the bag on his shoulder. “So I guess this is goodbye?”
“I guess,” Nico said, feeling the weight of the distance settle abruptly and undeniably before it was even truly there. “I’ll see you in like… nine months though.”
“Right,” Will nodded reluctantly, making it clear that Nico’s answer hadn’t been the one Will had wanted, but Nico wasn’t sure what to say to make him feel better. The taller boy stared at the ground, chewing at the corner of his mouth and shuffling his feet. “That’s just… a really long time, ya know?”
“Yeah,” Nico replied, trying to ignore the longing that crept into his throat. “I know.”
Will’s head bobbed with another nod, still staring at the ground. “Well, I mean- maybe we could…“ Will trailed off, sighing, frustrated and then took a deep breath. “Are you going to New Rome at all?”
“Yeah. Hazel and I are going to spend Christmas there.”
“Well I… I would really like to see Camp Jupiter and… I live in Santa Cruz so…” Nico looked at him blankly, unsure about how the two were related. Will watched him expectantly and then said: “That’s like an hour and a half away from San Francisco.”
“Oh. Well, I mean, you can always go. Just tell the Romans you’re from Camp Half-Blood and you won’t have a problem.”
“Yeah, I just- I have a break from school and…” Will let out a breath, his body slumping as if all his confidence had escaped with the air from his mouth. “Never mind. Forget I said anything.”
Will was looking at him expectantly, as if Nico could say something to make his leaving better, but all the words Nico had were stuck in his throat. He wanted to ask Will to stay, but his head was still foggy from his dreams and the idea of missing someone who was still alive seemed foreign and difficult to understand. He would see Will next summer.
That just seemed particularly close to forever until then.
Will shifted the bag he was carrying and looked at the ground. “Okay well, it was nice to… hang out with you a little this summer.”
Nico nodded, unable to trust his voice.
“So… I’ll see you next year, I guess.” Will looked at Nico sadly and then shook his head, more to himself than Nico before turning and starting down the hill towards where Lou Ellen, Cecil, and Kayla were waiting for him.
Something liquid and hot slithered into Nico’s chest as Will moved away. His heart rate skipped several pulses before trying to collect them all at once. Something was wrong. Even in the hazy portions of his mind he felt like there was something he was missing and something that was meant to be happening, but wasn’t.
Because you need to know that good things will happen to you if you let them, he thought, hearing Bianca’s voice as clearly as if she were right next to him again. And sometimes you have to make them happen for yourself.
“Will, wait…” Nico stuttered out, trying to quiet the buzzing that filled his ears. The blonde stopped instantly and turned to look at Nico with something in his eyes that looked a little like hope. The son of Hades jogged down to meet him on the hill and tried to explain what he was thinking several times before finally staring at the healer hopelessly and saying: “Look… I’m really bad at this.”
“Yeah,” Will said, his voice still heavy with disappointment as his eyes dropped from Nico’s. “I mean, you’re not the worst, but you are pretty bad.”
“You’re not helping.”
“I never do.”
“I mean, I told you. Living, breathing people aren’t really my strong point.”
“Yeah well, you should probably work on that considering you are a living, breathing-“
Nico huffed. “Are you really going to do this right now?”
“As opposed to later? Like, oh let’s say, I don’t know, next year?”
“It’s not that bad!”
“How can you say that? Yes it is!”
“Well then shut up for a second so I can invite you to New Rome!”
Will’s eyes shot up to meet Nico’s holding his eyes for only a moment before looking away again. He said nothing, his posture was stiff and guarded. Nico ducked his head down, trying to catch Will’s gaze with his own and doing his best to sound confident and calm as he repeated himself.
“You should come see Camp Jupiter with me at Christmas.”
Will hesitated. “No, it’s okay. I don’t want to invite myself, and you’re going to be busy with your sister anyway so I can just go on my own another time.”
“Don’t be difficult. I mean, you definitely can but it’s not really inviting yourself if I’m inviting you.”
“Yeah well, I don’t really have a ride either so it’s fine. I don’t know what I was thinking.”
“You don’t need a ride. Jules-Albert and I could come and get you. I mean, what’s the point of a chauffeur if I don’t use him every once and a while?”
The taller boy watched him for several moments, eyes flickering over Nico’s face before finally giving a hesitant smile and saying: “You’re serious right now?”
“Do I look like the sort of guy who tells jokes on a regular basis?”
Will chuckled and Nico’s stomach did a flip.
“Okay,” Will nodded with the faintest hint of a smile. “That would be… fun. Yeah. That would work. We’ll um… Iris-message about it?”
“Sure. Or… it doesn’t even have to be about that. You could just say hi. Friendly face and all that.”
Will bit his lip, trying to hide his smile. “Great. Okay. Um...”
Will paused, shuffling for a moment before abruptly sticking out his hand. Nico raised a questioning eyebrow.
“What is that?”
“It’s this thing normal people do. It’s called a handshake.”
“Is that some sort of joke?” Nico asked, studying the unsure look on Will’s face that was masquerading as aloofness. Will dropped his hand, looking a little defensive and Nico was unable to stop the smirk that formed on his face before saying: “You’re an idiot,” and hugging him.
The white noise that had been clouding Nico’s mind all morning quieted the moment he had Will in his grasp. His arms wrapped their way around Will’s torso, clutching at the fabric of his shirt and holding him close. He pressed his face in the spot just below the crook of the healer’s neck and took deep breaths, trying to hold on to every bit of Will he could, trying to keep anything that might help him through the next several months of absence.
To Will’s credit, his reaction was immediate. He wound his arms around Nico, bringing him impossibly close and nuzzled his own face into the side of Nico’s so the dark-haired boy could feel Will’s smile against his skin. Electricity filled his veins and for a moment Nico knew what it might be like if he were made of sunshine.
This was what she meant, Nico thought. Good things will happen if I don’t shut doors in the face of every opportunity.
He clutched at Will, holding on to him much longer than he was proud of, and even still when he pulled away, it wasn’t very far. Will’s hands were still clasping his and he looked… happy. Nico wasn’t sure he had ever seen Will look quite so radiant and he wasn’t entirely positive that Will wasn’t actually glowing. The feeling made Nico feel a little lightheaded and stupid, but Will’s eyes were bright and he was looking at Nico like he mattered, like there was no place else he would rather be.
You’ll find something better than Elysium.
They stared at each other for more than an acceptable amount of time, and when the silence turned to awkwardness, they both stepped back, laughing quietly and trying to brush off the feeling. This was outside their usual bantering and pestering, but it wasn’t all together a bad change.
“So…” Will started, rubbing the side of his own arm. “You’re not going to ditch me, right?”
“Not this time. Maybe when we get there though,” Nico replied, only to receive a smack in the arm from Will who at least had the sense to look entertained. Nico smiled. “No. I promise. I’m sure Reyna and Hazel will want to meet you anyway.”
Will tilted his head. “Why would they want to meet me?”
“Well…” Nico fumbled his words, mentally scolding himself. “We’re friends, right?”
Will gave Nico a long, intense look before dropping his eyes to the ground and laughing softly to himself, flicking his gaze back up at Nico with a playful smirk that caused the butterflies in Nico’s stomach to nearly explode. “Yeah. Something like that.”
Nico tried to regain his composure, giving Will a little shove and inwardly telling himself to not do anything stupid before saying: “Oh, shut up. Get out of here. Kayla has probably been waiting for you for like ever.”
Will paused a moment and then grinned at him, quickly launching himself at Nico and wrapping him up in another tight hug. Nico barely had time to react before it was over and he even thought Will might have pressed his lips to his cheek, but the pressure was soft and it was over before Nico could be sure. All the same, he blushed and squeezed Will’s hand before the blonde started moving back towards where his friends were waiting.
“By the way,” Will called, turning around and walking backwards down the hill. “Take care of that bracelet for me. It was a gift from my dad.”
Nico’s eyes dropped to his wrist where the bead at the end of the leather cord was glowing brightly. “He’s not going to smite me, is he?”
“Probably not, but if you start talking in haikus, I had nothing to do with it.”
Nico thought about sending a skeleton after him, but Will just laughed and waved goodbye, meeting up with the rest of his group. They all waved farewell and Nico mimicked the motion, standing at the hill until Will was with the others and completely out of sight.
He stood at the barrier long after Will was gone, but the weight that he had been expecting to settle in his heart never came. He had been prepared to be angry with himself for feeling attached, but instead there was a strange sort of lightness. He felt closer to the world than he ever had before, and Bianca’s words playing over in his head, making him feel sure and alive.
Eventually Nico made his way back to the camp, finding Chiron waiting near the entrance for him. The two fell into step together and when they reached the Big House, the centaur looked over at the edge of the camp with a thoughtful expression on his face.
“Well, Mr. di Angelo, the world still stands for a little longer.”
Nico nodded. “We’ll see how long it lasts.”
“You and I both know that it is only temporary.”
“Yes,” Nico agreed. “But I guess it’s worth fighting for again.”
A slow smile spread onto Chiron’s face, but Nico’s eyes were still locked on the direction he had last seen Will. Minutes passed and the two said nothing until at last Chiron turned to Nico and said: “I am glad you have decided to stay with us. Camp Half-Blood will always need you. Do you think this will ever be home?”
Nico paused, and then smiled, looked down at the bead that was still glowing at the edge of his wrist, and thinking that maybe all these years he had been wrong. That maybe home was a person, and not a place. He looked up at the centaur, who was watching him with an amused look. Nico nodded. “Yeah. Something like that.”