If you recognise it, it's not mine.

They all had nightmares. It was part of a demigod's job description.

But nightmares were not supposed to hurt you. They were not supposed to leave you trembling and stumbling, unsure of your own continued existence. They were supposed to go away when you woke up.

But these ones didn't.

Nico was alone in the Hades cabin, which was usually how he preferred things.

In a way, it was probably best that there was nobody there to see him wake up gasping and choking on air, to see him fall to his knees when he tried to stand.

His nightmares had always been worse than others. Maybe it was because he could move through dreams, maybe it was because he was a son of Hades, maybe he was just unlucky.

They started when he was ten years old, when they- he and Bianca- arrived at Westover Hall. The huge building with its military routine didn't scare him, but something about Dr Thorne sent cold shivers down his spine at night. The teacher paced his dreams like a cat stalking a mouse. When Grover came, befriended them, asking how they were, Nico didn't say anything. He shuffled his Mythomagic cards, and pretended everything was fine.

Things only got worse when Bianca left him. He'd never been away from her for more than a few hours at a time, and now he was left to be wedged in the Hermes cabin between a pair of mischievous twins who stole his cards and pranked him while he slept. Dr Thorne, or whatever he'd become, spun in his head, merging with the girl falling from the cliff, and Percy standing in front of him, sword raised, as if he could do nothing wrong. He promised to keep them both safe as Bianca left on her quest.

Bianca never came back. Percy told him what had happened, trying to be kind, but all Nico could think of was 'you promised'. He ran away, and when he eventually stopped, he dreamed of lost sisters and skeletons rising from the ground.

That year the ghosts came to him as he wandered the labyrinth. They told him who he was. They gave him a sword, taught him to use it. And Nico still had the nightmares. He wasn't frightened of Dr Thorne anymore. He had worse demons, the sort which became stronger with every new degree of his power he discovered.

Then Percy came again and saved him again, and sometime after that, Nico realised that his feelings went somewhat further than awe or gratitude or hatred. And that scared him more than any monster.

When Nico was very young, he had been out with his mother and sister. They had seen a young man being shoved down a flight of stairs into the street, angry screams following him until the door slammed shut. The man didn't try and re-enter the house. He simply sat on the edge of the street, a blank expression on his face. Bianca wanted to go and help him, but their mother wouldn't let her.

"But Mama, he looks so sad. Why is he sad, Mama?"

"Because," she'd said quietly, so none of the people walking by on the street could hear her, "he tried to love another man."

"But...love is nice," Bianca had said, eyes wide with disbelief.

"Not that kind." And their mother had refused to say another word on the subject.

The image of the young man sat in Nico's mind, surfacing for a nightmare every so often. Sometimes Nico only watched the scene. Sometimes it was him being shunned, abandoned. Either way he always woke up with tears on his face.

When he helped Percy become invincible, he was expecting the nightmares. He had, after all, almost killed one of the few people who gave a damn about him. Helping to save Olympus was one of the best days of his life. He felt happy, something he hadn't known in years. Of course, he collapsed soon after the battle, drained from summoning dead warrior after dead warrior, but still. Friends. That was new.

And then he went to Tartarus.

Alone.

He could have died a thousand times. He lived to wish that he had. Each day brought new horrors, each night fresh demons. The one good thing about being all alone in Hell was that nobody could see him cry.

Nico made it out alive, barely, and after that everything happened too fast for him to think, to process. Cupid, Gaia, Jason, Percy, Will.

Will. The son of Apollo, kind and caring. Nico had only felt that way about one other person, and this time he hoped that they maybe, maybe, felt the same way back. But even Will wasn't there all the time, and soon enough, when he had recovered enough to stop simply fainting at the end of the day, the nightmares came back.

And so, barely a week after the battle, Nico di Angelo woke up in the Hades cabin with a scream on his lips and his heart pounding in his chest. Over the next few nights, they got worse, until he was hardly sleeping at all.

Eventually, someone noticed.

"Nico, are you okay?" His long, tanned hands grip his wrist gently, holding him back.

"I'm fine. How are you?"

"Worried." Will's clear eyes stare at him, and Nick can't help but blush. "You're white as a sheet. Are you feeling alright? You look like you haven't slept in days. I'll get Clovis to give you a sleeping draught."

Nico tries to protest, but Will grips his arms and tugs him away to the Hypnos cabin and then to the Hades cabin, practically force-feeding him the sleeping draught. Don't go, Nico tries to mumble, but the potion is too powerful and he's already asleep by the time the door closes.

He dreams of the young man being thrown down the stairs, of all the demons and monsters in Tartarus, far past the point where he would usually wake up. And then there's the new one. An overwhelming feeling of suffocation, curled in a cold, dark place, reaching for the last pomegranate seed, knowing someone will save him soon, Percy, Jason, anyone... And nobody does, and Nico jolts awake to the sound of the conch being blown for dinner, trying to stand and falling to his knees, retching over the cold floor.

There's a knock on the door. "Nico? Are you awake yet? It's time to eat." Nico stands up shakily and opens the door. Will looks over him critically. "Are you sure you're feeling better?" he asks, although Nico hadn't said anything.

"Yeah, I'm fine," Nico says back, already walking towards the dining hall.

He's preoccupied, thinking about something other than the telepathic plates, and so he doesn't notice the pile of pomegranate seeds until he mechanically walks up to the brazier to give an offering to his father.

He scrapes every last seed from his plate, shuddering. When he sits down again, concentrating so hard it gives him a headache, the plate fills with a simple sandwich, because any of his favourite foods would make him think of Bianca, and that wouldn't help anything.

He isn't really hungry anyway.

Later, Will tries to talk to him, but he claims he's tired, which he is, and walks away feigning going to bed, which he isn't. He winds up perched on the roof of the Hades cabin, far back enough for nobody to be able to see him from the ground. The wind nips at him through his jacket all night, bitingly cold, and stops him from falling asleep. By the time the sun rises in the distance, and people start to trail over to the pavilion for breakfast, he is shivering, but only slightly. At least there weren't any nightmares.

The day passes much like the previous one, except Nico avoids...well, everybody. Will catches his wrist during archery, making him jump, the arrow he was nocking stabbing into the back of his hand.

"Nico," and there it is again, the worried tone drawing out the syllables of his name, "is everything okay?"

"No," Nico could say, and he could explain everything, and maybe it would get sorted out. But he doesn't. Instead he glances at the cut on his hand, blood dripping to the sandy floor, so he doesn't have to meet Will's eyes. "I'm fine. I just didn't get a lot of sleep last night, that's all."

Will's brow furrows in concern, and he takes Nico's bow from his hands firmly, laying it down on the ground. "Your hand's bleeding."

"Yes, it is," Nico replies. "And?"

Will gives him a light shove towards the benches by the wall. He shouts something to one of the other Apollo kids, and follows him, picking up a med kit on his way.

"Nico, if something's wrong...you can tell me, you know?"

"I'm fine, Will."

Will cuts the bandage neatly, then looks at him with wide, worried eyes. "You aren't acting like yourself."

"What do you mean?" Nico asks, resisting the temptation to lean back against the wall and close his eyes, just for a little while, because he knows it wouldn't end well.

"Well, you're avoiding people, you're hardly talking, you look tired all the time. You're pale and sort of...dull. You hardly noticed when the arrow cut your hand."

"And?" Nico says, the word coming out harsher than he intended it to. "Will, ask anybody who knows me. Ask Percy, he's known me since I was ten. I am not sociable, I'm usually pale, I don't need to sleep that much. This," he gestured to himself with his free hand, "is completely normal, okay?"

Will doesn't say anything, fastening the bandage without looking up. Then his eyes meet Nico's, and they are dark with something Nico has seen staring back at him from mirrors too many times for him to see without a stab of guilt piercing his chest. "I thought I was different, that's all. That you were different with me." He stands up and walks away, and Nico doesn't know whether to call after him or to let him go.

He doesn't sleep again that night, or the next. By now, his body is insistently reminding him that he needs to sleep, that it's going to have had enough of this soon, but Nico ignores it. Until he stumbles during a spar, and Lou Ellen accidentally catches him across the upper arm with her blade, Nico forgets how to feel at all.

"Oh gods, I'm sorry!"

The shrill shout makes everyone look up for a second, but Nico waves the attention away. "I'm fine, it's just a scratch," he reassures the girl, who looks ready to burst into tears. "Really. I'm fine. See?"

Lou Ellen peers at his arm and gasps again. "Nico, that's deep! I'm so sorry! I didn't mean to, I swear, really, I just was expecting you to dodge..." Nico glances at the cut. Sure enough, it is deeper than he originally thought, tearing the thin fabric of his orange top (which still feels strange and foreign after so many years of neutral black) and leaving a steadily bleeding cut in its wake.

A girl from Apollo cabin jogs over. Nico catches a glimpse of Will skulking in a corner, separating arrows into careful piles. "Here," the girl says, offering him a small chunk of ambrosia as she wraps a bandage over his arm. Nico takes it warily. It tastes of the delicate lotus flower biscuits from the Lotus Hotel. Nico thanks her quietly, amid another stream of apologies from Lou Ellen, and slips away quietly, pretending he doesn't see Will's sad, lost look following him.

That night at dinner he's faced with a plate of steaming beef stew, and after a bit of manoeuvring and slopping at the brazier, Nico sits down and allows himself to remember the days when his mother would make this stew for them, Bianca begging to be allowed to help by stirring or chopping vegetables. He doesn't realise that tears are falling into the stew until he tries to take a mouthful and can barely hold the fork because his hands are shaking so badly. Grateful that he sits with his back to the rest of the pavilion, Nico closes his eyes and breathes in and counts to ten quietly. He pushes the plate away resignedly and wanders away. He's found a nice quiet place by the river, where spray from a small waterfall catches just enough of the fading sunlight to make a rainbow, and is tossing a drachma from hand to hand before he realises he doesn't know who to call.

Hazel would like to hear from him, he knows, but she'd fuss too much, demand to know what was going on.

Both Percy and Jason had told him to call at any time, but they were probably busy, and Nico didn't want their pity or sympathy anyway.

He dismisses Annabeth immediately. She'd just tell Percy, and knowing her, she'd be astute enough to notice he was upset anyway.

Eventually, he flips the coin in the air again, pinging it into the rainbow as the sun sinks lower in the sky. "Show me Reyna, at Camp Jupiter," he says wearily, saying the name of the person who has seen him at his worst and would never judge him for it. There's a slight fizzing noise, and then the rainbow vanishes.

"You do not have a strong enough connection," a breathy female voice says brightly. "Please try again when the conditions are more suitable."

Nico curses in Italian and walks away.

He gets into the Hades cabin and a sudden shuddering dizziness hits him, forcing him to cling to the back of a chair, then to the bed. He winds up lying flat on it, and his eyes close without him noticing. Predictably enough, the nightmares start up again.

Nico is walking through a dark cave. He recognises it immediately. This is the place he visits almost every nightmare. Tartarus. There's a silvery light glowing at the end of the tunnel, and although he doesn't want to, although he knows how it will end, he walks towards it. As he approaches, it shifts into two figures. A woman, a kindly smile flickering on her face, holding the hand of a small girl whose dark hair covers her forehead and left cheekbone. "Mama?" Nico whispers, stumbling forwards. "Bianca?"

The figures reach out to him, but before he can touch them they recoil, like snakes pulling back to strike. "What happened to you, Nico?" his mother asks sadly, smile fading from her face.

"Nothing, Mama. I'm still..." his voice trails off as he sees the cruel look twisting her face.

"A disappointment," she says sharply. She raises a hand, swinging it towards him, and although she passes through him, he flinches and steps back.

"You let me die," Bianca says, and her voice isn't that of a little girl, but the same tone she used when she said goodbye to him for the last time.

"I didn't, please, I didn't..."

"Don't you remember, Nico?"

Nico squeezes his eyes shut, but that doesn't stop him seeing the shell of a burnt out house, his mother's dead body, and a scene he has only ever seen in dreams; a huge metal statue with electricity arcing across its body until it collapses to the ground, with Percy and others shouting as they search in the rubble. "You should have stopped her going," his mother snaps cruelly, and it isn't fair, because what could he have done, a ten year old boy against the gods?

"I couldn't, Mama, Bianca, please, I'm sorry, Percy promised..."

His mother's eyes burn black. "Ah, yes. Percy." A cruel smirk slips across her face, cold and bitter. "Your...crush." The phrase sounds foreign in her voice as she raises a furious hand towards him again.

"Mama, please..." Nico croaks, trembling all over, sick to his stomach with fear.

"I am not your mother!" she screeches, rushing towards him, Bianca following her silently, dark eyes reproachful and cruel. His mother screams at him, and Nico recognises the words as the one the young man's family were shouting at him as they kicked him out into the street. He steps backwards and the ground vanishes from under him, and he falls away from the ghosts of his mother and sister until he lands on a cold stone floor, at the foot of a throne he knows all too well.

"Nico," a threatening voice booms, and Nico tries to scrabble backwards, away.

"Father, please," he begs, knowing it is futile.

"You are no son of mine."

And with those words, Nico feels himself being tipped and shaken. When he tries to uncurl his body, he finds himself in a small, dry place. Cautiously, he reaches out in front of him to find the pomegranate seeds which must be there, and his hands only touch cold metal.

He hears voices. Piper, Hazel, Annabeth. Jason. Percy. Will. Surely they'll help him, they'll save him.

But as each of them passes, he hears the same word.

"Never."

"Never."

"Never."

And as Will's footsteps draw nearer, there is a sudden tilting feeling and Nico knows the jar is being pushed deeper into Tartarus, where he'll never be able to get out. Deeper and deeper, and still he can hear Will's words. "I thought you were different, with me."

Nico wakes with a jolt, cold sweat covering his body. His stomach rolls uncomfortably, and he stands only to fall to his knees, retching and choking and coughing up the little that was in his stomach. He shivers uncontrollably, tears burning his eyes. He leans against a small table, and a penknife falls into his lap.

Picking it up slowly, he recognises it, vaguely. Will left it here by mistake a week or so ago, when Nico had shown him the inside of the cabin.

Fidgeting with a sharp knife with shaking hands is never a good idea. Nico feels a light sting in his fingertip and looks down to see a bead of blood welling up.

By the time he's cleaned up the vomit and gotten dressed, it's time to go to breakfast. He doesn't eat anything, the very thought of food making his stomach churn. The day passes in monochrome, activity after activity. At some point, he bumps into Will, and they automatically turn away as if the other's touch burns them. At the campfire that evening, Nico sits on the outskirts, barely able to see that Will isn't joining in on the songs like usual. That night he accidentally falls asleep again. He dreams of Daedalus, the man who was barely human by the end, a human soul trapped in mechanics, and wakes up fighting for air as he desperately tries to remember that he isn't more shadow than human, that he's recovered from that.

Eventually it takes the sharp sting of the penknife on his skin, the starkness of red and white, to convince him that he's alive and human and real.

This continues for several days, this cycle of not-enough-food and not-enough-sleep and avoiding people and the rows of small thin cuts which are starting to litter the inside of his forearm. He never cuts that deep. Just enough to sting, enough to convince him that everything's okay. Because blood means alive, and humans bleed, so it's going to be fine.

The irony would make him smile, in different circumstances.

When Jason shows up, hurried and anxious, talking about another rogue automaton in Manhattan, can a team come and help him take care of it, Nico volunteers immediately. More because he can't bear another day of trying not to see Will stare at him with that ragged, betrayed look than because he actually wants to help, but still.

Piper comes too, as well as her half-brother Mitchell, who really seems to be trying to avoid Lou-Ellen and Lacy. Chiron volunteers the Stoll brothers; apparently they're in a particularly irritating mood today. A slightly random team, but that's nothing new.

Jason flies off with Piper after Nico offers to shadow-travel the rest of them there. When they arrive, it's impossible to miss the large statue stomping around, waving a dented metal top hat in the air. Behind him, Nico hears the Stoll brothers groan. After the whole thing with Kronos had been dealt with, one of the major jobs had been to track down all Annabeth's activated statues, get them back to the right place, and hopefully deactivate them. Even now, there was still the occasional automaton who decided to defend Manhattan from a low-flying plane or something.

"Is that Abraham Lincoln?" Mitchell asks, frowning at the statue.

While Nico was trying to decide if it was, and trying to ignore the dizziness from the shadow-travel, Jason and Piper showed up. "Okay. Here's the plan," Jason says straight away. "I'll form a hurricane or something around the statue, try and keep in the same place long enough for Piper to charmspeak it into deactivating. Travis, Connor, you two try and work out where it came from. Mitch, can-"

"Mitchell."

"Mitchell, sorry. You keep an eye out for anything else which might show up. Nico, can you shadow-travel the statue to the right place once it shuts down?"

Nico nods and runs after the Stoll brothers. Behind him, he hears thunder and a crack of lightning, and he tries to force the memory of a huge automaton sparking with electricity toppling to the ground, becoming his sister's grave, out of his mind. It mostly works.

They follow the trail of destruction until they reach an empty pedestal outside a large building. A slightly battered plaque informs them that the statue is not Abraham Lincoln, but some poet Nico has never heard of. Nico memorises the location, fixing it in his mind to make it easier to travel to, and heads back towards the statue.

It's not every day you see a guy hovering in front of a large hurricane, fingers jammed in his ears, while a girl yells at the storm to 'Stop! Deactivate! Shut up!'

Over to the side, Mitchell is standing with his sword raised awkwardly, frozen in position by Piper's charmspeak.

After a few minutes, Jason lets the wind fade away, and Piper stops shouting. Mitchell falls over, released from the compulsion. The statue stands tall, hat back on its head, only slightly dented. Jason waves Nico over as he returns to the ground, and within a few seconds the statue is back in its rightful place. After the Athena Parthenos, it's really quite easy, but it still forces him to sit down for a few moments until the churning feeling in his stomach calms. Nico walks back to the others, trying to ignore the sudden headache making an appearance.

Jason looks exhausted from maintaining the storm for so long. "Nico, are you good to shadow-travel us back?" he asks, slightly sheepishly.

"Sure," Nico replies, gesturing for everyone to form a circle. He manages to get them to Thalia's tree, at the top of Half-Blood Hill. There, they can see a stream of campers heading towards the pavilion.

"Sweet!" Travis says, elbowing his brother in the ribs. "Just in time for lunch!" They take off running down the hill. Mitchell follows at a more sedate pace, looking around warily in case Lacy tries to set him up with Lou-Ellen again. Piper, Jason and Nico walk down together.

"How are you?" Jason asks, resting a hand on Nico's shoulder.

"Fine," Nico lies, ignoring the way his body feels like it's made of lead. He hides his trembling hands behind his back. "You?"

They start chatting, and it fades into the background as Nico tries to figure out what's gone wrong with his vision. With every step he takes, the world tilts sideways, and he can taste blood in his mouth. It's getting harder to breath, although he was fine a minute ago. As his eyesight blurs, and black spots appear at the edges, he grips Jason's arm as tightly as he can, trying not to lose his balance. "Jason..." he mumbles as loudly as he can, fighting a wave of nausea.

Jason breaks off from a story about Frank turning into a llama and spitting at Percy to peer at Nico worriedly. "Nico? Are you okay?" Nico moves his head vaguely as his vision tunnels dizzyingly. He feels too hot and freezing cold at the same time. "Nico, what's wrong?" Jason has stopped walking, and at some point he started supporting him by the shoulders. Nico gasps for air as he sways, staggering pathetically.

Suddenly, his legs give out from under him, and strong arms are catching him and laying him down on the grass. It's warm and dry against his skin. "Nico, can you hear me? Nico!" Jason's voice sounds like it's coming from a very long way away. He can hear Piper screaming for a medic in the background, but everything's getting quieter and blurrier, and it's easier to just close his eyes and slip away.

So he does.

This time he dreams about skeletons. Hundreds, surging across the ground, new crevices still opening. Nico feels drained, empty, but he forces the dead army forward, until everything suddenly stops and he collapses to his knees.

It wasn't enough. He can hear sobbing, and out of the corner of his eye he can see someone, maybe Jason, carrying a body in his arms. A girl with curly hair and dark skin, long sword falling from her dead hand.

Hazel.

Frank stands in front of him, eyes dark and furious, and Nico tries to back away, because Frank is tall and muscular and can turn into a freaking dragon, while Nico is smaller and exhausted. Frank draws back his fist, and Nico flinches before the blow actually lands on his face, knocking him to the ground. Then everyone else is there, punching and kicking and shouting. "It's your fault, Nico!" And all Nico can do is lie there and take it, because it's true.

A foot is pressing down on his throat, more hitting his ribs, his stomach, and he can't breathe and he doesn't deserve to, because it's his fault that his sister's dead, again, and then there's a snapping noise and everything hurts, and suddenly everything goes black...

...and he hits his head against the wall hard as he jerks upright, shaking fingers scrabbling at his throat. He coughs and retches, the world spinning in front of him, and suddenly he's tipping sideways off the bed. Arms quickly wrap around him, and he panics before realising they aren't hostile. They're gently rocking him, and Nico feels safe. He's crying, huge shaking sobs which choke him, and he knows it's pathetic but all he can do is curl into a tiny ball, huddled against a chest which smells of fresh cut grass, arms which smell of the sea and other people, surrounding him, holding him in some way. It makes him feel less alone, for the first time in what seems like forever.

Eventually he stops, and looks up to see everyone gathered around him, faces creased with worry. Hazel has an arm around his shoulders, curly hair tickling his neck. Jason and Piper are each holding one of his still-shaking hands, and Percy's arms are wrapped around him tightly, holding him steady. He's pretty sure Annabeth's petting the top of his head like he's a little kid, and there's a small furry thing (a guinea pig?) butting against his ankle comfortingly. Even Reyna's there, sitting cross-legged at the foot of the bed. And he's still leaning against someone's chest, someone who smells of freshly cut grass and is bending their head down to whisper in his ear now. "Are you okay, Nico?"

Will.

And for the first time in what seems like way too long, Nico answers that question honestly. He shakes his head. Frank the guinea pig makes his way to the end of the bed and turns back into a human, eyes just as concerned as everyone else's, and Nico tries to push the image of his fist smashing into his face out of his mind.

"Nico, what's going on?" Jason asks, a note of sternness in his voice making everybody draw back until they form a semicircle around Nico, and the old feeling of insecurity returns, bringing with it the need to hide everything.

Nico raises an eyebrow as convincingly as he can. "I'm-"

"And if you dare say that you're fine I swear I will punch you so hard you black out again," Reyna says, but Nico can tell she's worried. He looks down at the pale blue bedcovers again.

"Not fine," Will finishes the sentence for him, reaching forward, and for a second Nico thinks that he's going to take his hand, but instead he lifts his wrist from the covers, holding it with gentle, long fingers as if he's scared to break it, like glass. Nico tries to tug it away, and Will's grip tightens, fingertips digging into the thin red lines which haven't quite scabbed over yet, and Nico can't help but flinch.

"Nico, why?" Hazel begs, eyes wide and betrayed looking. Frank takes her hand gently. A tear falls down her cheek.

"Dude, I know that it's difficult sometimes, with everything. But I don't get why you didn't try and talk to us," Percy adds, sounding completely confused.

"We're your friends," Reyna says firmly.

"Friends tell each other stuff. Friends help each other out," Annabeth finishes, catching her eye.

Jason doesn't say anything, but he stares at Nico with the same 'I-want-to-help-you' look he had after they faced Cupid.

Nico feels horribly guilty, like there's a pit in the bottom of his stomach which leads to Tartarus. "I wasn't...I wasn't trying to... I would never do that," he stammers, meeting everyone's eyes so they can see he's being completely honest.

"Then tell us what's wrong," Piper says, pleading, desparate, inadvertently charmspeaking. She immediately clamps a hand over her mouth, eyes filling with tears. "I didn't mean-"

Nico shakes his head at her and talks. He talks about the young man being thrown down the stairs, about Doctor Thorne, about going through the Labyrinth. Bianca. Daedalus. Shadow-travel. Tartarus. He goes through everything, and then he talks about the nightmares. It hurts and every new sentence leaves a bad taste in his mouth, but he finally stops talking and looks up to see that everybody looks unbearably guilty or about to hit something.

"Gods, Nico, why didn't you tell someone?" somebody says, and Hazel is crying into Frank's shoulder, and Percy and Jason are exchanging worried glances. Reyna sits next to him and rests a hand on his shoulder, and Nico remembers when she leant him strength, felt his pain for a fraction of a second, when he unleashed everything he had on Bryce Lawrence. She nudges him in the ribs to make him look behind him, which he does.

Will is sitting away from everyone else, face buried in his hands, shoulders trembling, and Nico immediately goes to him, tugging the hands away. He isn't crying, but his face is haunted and pale. He looks like he wants to throw up.

"I'm so sorry," he mutters, not meeting Nico's eyes. "You were asking for help, and I didn't even notice."

"You didn't notice?" Nico asks incredulously. "Will, you kept trying to fix me. I'm the one who pushed you away." He winces as he realises how clichéd that sounds.

"Wait, what?" Piper asks, looking between them as if her favourite couple in a film just broke up.

"Long story." Nico shrugs in that way he does when he doesn't want to talk, and amazingly, everyone picks up on it.

Reyna, Frank and Jason need to head back to Camp Jupiter- apparently they had to postpone a ceremony when they heard about Nico- but Percy, Annabeth and Hazel are planning on staying for a few days.

By the time they let Nico out of bed, it's almost dinner time, and he has to admit it feels good, sitting at the Hades table, Hazel opposite him, Percy a couple of metres to his right at the Poseidon table. Annabeth, Piper and Will have to sit at their own tables, of course, but still. Friends.

That night, with Hazel at the other end of the cabin, breathing softly, Nico tentatively falls asleep. And he sleeps better than in a long, long time, because this time when he dreams of the cold, dim claustrophobia of the jar, he is pulled and shaken into the sunlight. "See, Nico? We promised we'd look after you," a voice says in his ear, and before Nico can tell who it is, he wakes up to Hazel prodding him gently and telling him it's time for breakfast.

That morning, after they've eaten, Will and Percy corner him in the courtyard and grab him by the arms, checking his wrist even as he wriggles and protests. "Will, stop it! I'm fine!"

"We're just checking," Percy says firmly.

"Percy, let me go!" Nico wrenches himself free and stumbles away, glaring daggers at both of them. Before he can say anything else, the girls come over, having already simply asked Hazel if anything happened.

"Hey, what's up?" Piper says, frowning between the three boys.

"Nothing," Nico sighs, ignoring Percy's sad, puppy-dog eyes and Will's raised eyebrow. He resists the urge to stalk away and hugs his sister as she whistles for Arion.

"Take care of yourself, Nico," Annabeth whispers as she hugs him goodbye. Nico barely has time to nod before he's faced by Percy, green eyes serious for once.

"If anything happens, just iris-message me, or shadow-travel or something."

"Okay."

They stand awkwardly for a second before a grin splits Percy's face, and he pulls Nico into a tight hug that smells like the sea, ruffling his hair. "I'm serious, you know. You're like my little brother. I don't think I'd be able to live with myself if anything happened to you."

"Okay," Nico says again as he pulls back, slightly embarrassed, hair skewed and sticking up, but a sense of comfort warming him nevertheless. Percy and Annabeth climb onto the pegasi, and Hazel stops feeding Arion chunks of gold, and soon they're little more than dots on the horizon.

Chiron finds him as he spars with a relatively new camper, showing her how to hold her sword properly in the ten minutes they've got before lunch.

"Nico, may I have a word with you?" He tells the girl to keep trying the strike on a dummy and follows the centaur out of the arena. Chiron turns to him with an outstretched hand. Nico holds his own palm out, slightly bemused, and a leather cord with three brightly coloured beads drops into his hands. "But I haven't been here for a whole summer yet," he protests, although the necklace feels good in his hand, like a missing piece has just been slotted in.

"You have done more than many heroes could in a lifetime," Chiron says quietly, and Nico gets the impression that he isn't just talking about the battles. "Nico, I feel that I haven't payed as much attention to you as I should have."

Nico shrugs. "I'm the one who ran away."

His fingers trace the details on the beads. An intricate labyrinth. The Empire State Building with too many names carved around the edges. A dark blue bead with a bronze dragon figurehead. Suddenly, his hand clenches around the leather cord, and he realises he's nodding to himself.

"Nico?"

"I'm fine." And he is, because it's sunny, and his friends are waiting for him to go to lunch with him, and for the first time since Bianca died he feels like he belongs. "I'm fine," he says again, and then he's running back across the grass, and he's smiling and it doesn't feel forced at all.

"You look happy," Will notes when he arrives. Nico just shrugs cheerfully, grabbing a plate. Will elbows him gently. "Nico di Angelo, are you smiling? Did Lou-Ellen curse you or something? Let me get a camera."

Nico laughs, and nearly three-quarters of the camp turns to stare.

"I'm fine. More than fine."

Of course, it isn't that easy. There are several nights when the nightmares come back, as nightmares do, and those are the nights when Nico wakes up gasping for breath, wondering if he really belongs.

One of those nights, he eventually gets out of bed and pads across the commons area to the Apollo cabin. A yawning camper generally opens the door, sees him, and immediately starts prodding a still-sleeping Will in the side. Apparently the healer is such a heavy sleeper, he may as well join the Hypnos cabin, but when he finally wakes up, muttering something indistinct, and catches sight of Nico shivering against the doorframe, he drags his blanket off the bed and bundles them both away to the beach, where it's calmer and emptier. They huddle together under the blanket and they talk until Will's drooping against him, eyes half closed, and Nico doesn't feel like he's more shadow than human anymore.

These nights get less frequent as time goes on.

The last one is two weeks before Christmas, and before Nico can begin to explain what was bothering him (Will always listens, and always comforts him), the son of Apollo turns to him and takes his hand gently.

"Nico, can I ask you something?"

"Depends what it is," Nico replies.

Will smiles secretively, and whispers something in his ear, blonde hair mixing with his dark hair for a few seconds. Nico sits stunned for a moment afterwards, watching the reflections of the stars ripple in the water.

"Nico?"

He fingers the beads around his neck, and nods almost imperceptibly. And their hands find each other, and they shift closer under the blanket. Piper finds them in the morning, curled in the sand with the tide reaching for their toes, and she squeals so loudly they bang their heads together as they jolt awake.

It's not the most dignified of first kisses, but they don't mind.

After all, it's not like it's the last.