Will's throat tightened. "It's too dark down here." Confession.
"Is it?" Jason tilted his head. "It reminds me of night-time." The son of Jupiter pointed upward to where the stalactites glittered like distant stars; a sky inverted. "Those remind me of stars—you should see them reflected in the waters of the Lethe, they shine like lanterns flying low over a lake."
"It sounds beautiful," Will murmured, trying to imagine something so beautiful in such a realm where death and decay was found in tandem. 
"So is Persephone's garden," Jason pointed again in a different direction, "It has flowers that only grow here in the Underworld; bushes of fruits and gemstones and such." Jason smiled broadly, the scar over his lip pulling with the expression, "Nico likes it there—now that Persephone has stopped turning him into a plant every time they speak."
"There's life here?" Here where Death reigned.
Jason raised an eyebrow, "You're here, aren't you?" 
Will huffed, a smile pulling his lips for perhaps the first time since he'd entered the Underworld. On one side of them the River Styx bubbled and on the other skeletal trees leaned towards it, their branches reaching for water like roots would in soil. 
"You should look for it more here." Jason said, "You can't have death without life."
A certainty: that death and life were so intertwined. But Will couldn't see it as being good or even 'just a part of the cycle'. No, Death just took. Took Lee. Took Michael. Took patient after patient as they bled out beneath his glowing palms. 
He could see no beauty in that. How could Nico?
"Why did you really come, Jason?" Will asked, "Was it just Melinoe's orders?"
Jason turned to look at him, his expression solemn. "No," he said softly. "It wasn't just that. Nico's my friend..."
"And?" Not rudely, just having heard the invisible ellipses and unsaid words.
"And this is his home."
Death. Darkness. Decay.
"It's not." Desperate.
"It is." Truth.
A palace made in Olympus' image, with a garden of wealth. A gated community of heroes, a paradise at the end of life and the beginning of infinite. 
"It's dark."
"So is Nico," Jason smiled, "He's light too, though. He loves so wholly it lights up a room. So, just keep an open mind, yeah? You two have a second chance now, I know it was hard when he left—but you have the opportunity to really understand him now...Just think on it."
"I can't lose him," Will said, his voice cracking, raw with desperation he couldn't hide. "I can't do this without him."
Jason gave him a sad smile, the kind that said he understood far too well. "Then don't give up," he said simply. "You'll find him, Solace."
"Thank you," Will said, "for being a good friend to him."
"It's my pleasure." Jason waved him off. 
"What do you think 'to find his hearth' means?" Will asked after some time, thinking about the path he now walked with Nico's ghost-of-a-best-friend at his side. 
Jason's eyes seemed to gleam. "A hearth is where the heart is, isn't it? It's home. Safety. Love."
Will felt a flicker of warmth in his chest, despite the cold air that surrounded them. He knew what his hearth was, what he was fighting for. Or rather, who. And as he took the next step forward, it felt a little less like walking into darkness and more like walking toward the light.