How on earth can a wounded man make war?

—The Iliad, Homer

There's a rhythm to stitching closed open wounds that Will finds a strange kind of comfort in. It's a clinical process of ins and outs, ups and downs, of closing dead space and approximating skin edges for the cleanest join he can manage, and the precision involved has a way of calming Will's ADHD like nothing else. For the rest of his siblings, healing is might be a hobby, sometimes even a chore; for Will, it's something akin to an art form, this stitching suturing up of skin, this massaging of salves and creams into burns and scars, this soft depression of a syringe into the warm, pink tissue at the crook of someone's elbow.

Kayla has her bow, Austin has his guitar, Will has his needle and thread. He knows he's a poor excuse for a son of Apollo, let alone Head Counsellor of the cabin, unable to shoot arrows with the skill the rest of his siblings possess, unable to join in with the campfire sing-a-long for fear of deafening people with his abysmal voice. Maybe that's why Will takes such comfort from healing; it's something that he can do and do well, making him feel slightly less of a replacement for Lee and Michael and slightly more like the leader everyone expects him to be.

Only slightly, though. Will never said he was good at healing his own wounds.

The first person to die in front of Will's eyes, beneath his shaking, glowing hands, is a daughter of Demeter during the Battle of the Labyrinth. Will is barely thirteen years old, with five beads on his camp necklace, and he knows next to nothing of the world outside the infirmary. He's never been on a quest, never killed a monster, never even picked up a Celestial bronze sword. His life as a demigod has revolved around healing split lips and broken wrists, twisted ankles and purpling purple bruises, and not once did he stop to consider the way it would feel to have someone's life drain from them right in front of his eyes.

The girl's name is Lila Hightower, and the sight of her slack, ashen face, her cold, stiff fingers, the blossom of red blood that is already drying against the skin of her neck, slashed open and exposing the muscles of her trachea; the sight of it all makes Will feel light-headed and dizzy, except he can't afford to feel that way because Lila may be his first dead body, but she is far from his last.

As the sounds of the battle rage on outside, the infirmary seamlessly transforms into a morgue. Will closes more eyelids than wounds, his hands giving an almost imperceptible shake each time, because these aren't just faceless strangers he is farewelling; they are his neighbours, his friends, his cousins—his brother.

When the body of Lee Fletcher is carried inside by a weeping son of Hephaestus and laid to rest in a shadowed corner of the main room, Will stumbles outside to empty his stomach into the long, yellowing grass by the steps of the Big House. Lee is dead. His brother is dead. Only yesterday they sat together at breakfast; only last week were they standing side-by-side at the archery range, laughing at Will's attempts to hit at hitting the bullseye. Now Lee is dead, and his body is cold, and Will wishes he didn't have a heart because the one that is beating in his chest now is so, so heavy, and it's aching, it's crying out for his brother to return to him but its cries are going unheard.

At thirteen years and one-and-a-half months old, Will Solace is a hollowed-out version of what he used to be. When the time comes to burn Lee's shroud, Will finds that he can't face the ceremony and instead runs to the woods, where he waters the bloody earth with his tears and tries to remember how to breathe.

When summer ends each year, Will leaves camp and returns home to his mother in Jacksonville. In some ways, it's a welcome relief from the days spent in the infirmary, whispering healing prayers to his father until his voice goes hoarse, running to and from sickbeds throughout the day until his knees give out. It's a nice change to attend school, the monotony of his classes almost as soothing as stitching up a wound. His dyslexia makes English and History difficult subjects to stomach, but in Math class and Chemistry Will is in his element.

He likes the certainty of numbers. No matter where you are in the world, one plus one will always equal two, and pi will always be equivalent to 3.14159. Numbers like these are tangible, things he can grasp onto that keep him anchored in the mortal world. In a way, solving equations and simplifying fractions is as orderly and clinical a process as healing is. There are rules to follow, guidelines to stay within, and Will's always at his most comfortable when told what to do.

He thinks maybe that's why he's such a terrible Head Counsellor. Without Lee or Michael ahead of him to show him the way, Will is deathly afraid that he will be lost, and that he'll take his younger siblings with him. He was never cut out to be a leader; he'll never make his father proud.

The Battle of Manhattan finds Will running himself ragged. A few of his siblings are helping him, carting Ace bandages and store-bought (stolen) painkillers from bed to bed, but Will is the best of them all, and so it is his healing abilities which are used on as many of the wounded as possible.

He's tending to a dryad with a broken ankle when Percy Jackson asks for help. "It's Annabeth," he gasps out, green eyes looking wild with fear and rage. Will swallows heavily and nods, handing the dryad over to Victoria and following Percy through the streets of Manhattan.

"What happened?"

"She got stabbed," Percy says shortly, spinning his ballpoint pen in his right hand. "Protecting me." Will nods, and out of the corner of his eye sees Percy shoot him a worried glance.

"What?"

Percy sighs. "It's Michael," he says haltingly, and Will's world bottoms outceases in its revolutionorbit. "I don't know if he's just missing, or—we were on the bridge, and he told me to collapse it so I did, except—except I think I swept him away too." Will just stares, uncomprehending. Percy bites his lip and comes to a stop next to a motorcycle whose biker is snoring softly in the leather seat. "It'll be quicker," Percy says, and Will just climbs on behind him, still numb. As they reach the Plaza Hotel and ride the elevator up to the penthouse suites in silence, Will pushes down the sick feeling currently bubbling away inside his stomach and instead focuses on the task at hand.

Annabeth is in bad shape, but after changing her bandages and praying to Apollo, Will knows she'll pull through. He stands shakily, giving instructions to Travis Stoll to find him some more medicine, and then leaves Percy and Annabeth alone. There's a ringing in his ears that has nothing to do with healing Annabeth and everything to do with the possibility that Michael Yew could be dead.

In the space of a year, Will might lose two of his brothers; two of his closest friends. And with Michael gone, that means the Head Counsellorship goes to Will, who can't even shoot a bow and arrow properly, let alone lead his cabin.

"Will?" Jake Mason's voice breaks through Will's panic and he spins around, swallowing down the bile that's rising in his throat. "Couple of Demeter kids back here in pretty bad shape. Could you—"

"Yeah, of course." Will pastes on a smile and follows Jake to where the two girls are lying next to each other, pale and groaning and pressing their palms against their wounds, sticky with blood. He takes a deep breath to calm himself, pushes the thought of Michael from his mind, and settles in to do what he does best: heal.

There is nobody in the shroud they burn for Michael. Unlike Lee's funeral, Will manages to attend this one, and watches with an empty stomach and a hollow heart as the golden cloth is laid on the pyre and catches alight. The rest of his cabin stands with him at the front of the crowd, his four brothers and five sisters, and every single one of them has tears streaming down their faces that glitter like small jewels each time they catch the fire's reflection.

Will isn't crying. He used up all his tears last night as he sat alone on the beach, looking out on Long Island Sound and hoping, praying, for a message from his father. Nothing came. Will isn't in the least bit surprised. If you're not a hero like Percy or Annabeth, the gods don't give a crap about you. Not even if they're your parents.

The golden cloth has by now blackened and shrivelled up, and soon all that is left of it are golden sparks drifting through the air. It isn't fair, Will thinks as he leads his siblings to the back of the crowd. Just a year ago I was standing in this exact same spot, feeling the exact same way, except this time there isn't even a body to burn.

Will doesn't know what hurts more: the knowledge that Michael will never truly be put to rest, or the weight that now comes settling down onto Will's shoulders, the weight of leadership and responsibility that is heavier than it should be because in this case it is dripping with blood, red with the stain of Michael Yew and Lee Fletcher and the countless others who have worn this mantle and died. As they make their way through the forlorn crowd of campers, Will feels pitying and sympathetic gazes on him, but he refuses to meet their eyes. He is Atlas, and he carries the weight of the world on his shoulders, but he is also Will Solace, a fourteen-year-old boy with blood on his hands and ghosts in his hollowed-out heart.

Will keeps up appearances well enough to know that everybody at camp seems to think of him as a happy-go-lucky kind of guy. He smiles, he laughs, he plays the fool; he wears bright colours and flip-flops and tries to remind people that Apollo is the god of the sun. The act seems to have them all convinced. Even his mother can't see past the illusion.

Because it is an illusion. Will carries Michael's name on one shoulder and Lee's on the other, and with them breathing down their his neck he tries to be better. He practises his archery until the callouses on his fingers split open and bleed; when he's alone he sings until his terrible voice is hoarse; he heals every small bruise or cut or sprain that comes within fifty yards of the infirmary, and he does it all the while his stomach churns from the strain of pretending to be someone—something—he's not.

So it comes almost as a blessed relief when Percy goes missing, and the new kids come to camp. Annabeth would stab him for saying that, but it's true. Everybody is so busy with Jason and Piper and Leo, they don't have the time or the inclination to observe just how fragile Will's façade is, just how close he is to falling apart completely. With everybody's attention on the quest and then, later, the building of the Argo II, Will can take this small reprieve to breathe, fall apart, and hurry to put himself back together again before anyone notices what's wrong.

It works, to an extent. Will still practises his archery and his singing, still heals whatever unlucky soul is in the infirmary, and still plasters on a smile whenever anybody looks his way. But he no longer jokes around, no longer laughs just for the hell of it, and though his siblings sometimes give him odd looks, no-one says a word.

At fifteen years old, Will Solace falls apart with as much grace as he does everything else, and he very nearly gets away with doing it alone.

Until Nico, that is.

The three days Nico spends in the infirmary are the most taxing—but also the most enjoyable—of Will's life. They banter, they argue, Will cracks jokes and Nico cracks a smile, and for three blessed days it almost feels as if the weight from Will's shoulders has disappeared entirely.

But nothing lasts forever. Will knows this better than most.

"Why do you do that?" Nico asks on the third day as they're sitting under a tree together. Will looks up from where he's been absentmindedly wrapping and unwrapping an Ace bandage around his wrist and frowns.

"Do what?"

"That." Nico nods at the bandage, and Will lets go of it as if burned. He swallows. He could tell a lie—he's awfully good at those—or he could laugh it off like he does most things. With anybody else, he'd probably follow one of those two courses. But Nico is—different. Will can't explain it with all the medical knowledge rattling around inside his brain, he can't fathom it with any Math or Chemistry equation he remembers, he can't excuse it with any side-effects of healing too many people in too short a time—he simply can't explain the way his heart flutters inside its cage of ribs every time he looks at Nico, or the way it races like a foxtrot every time they accidentally brush up against each other.

Will remembers wishing once that he didn't have a heart, because the pain of losing Lee hurt so much it was hard to breathe. Now, that pain is still there but lessened, less like an open wound and more like a scar, and Will knows that it has everything to do with the way Nico is looking at him now: a small crease between his eyebrows, like he's concerned, his lips pursed together and angling downwards on the left side. Will has Nico's expressions and micro-expressions memorised, and for some reason the face he's looking at now is one that can't be lied to.

"It helps," Will finds himself saying, the hard-won truth instead of some half-assed lie. "Helps the—bad stuff in my brain." He runs a hand through his hair and looks away from Nico's beseeching eyes, waiting for an answer to the confession that has stripped away his skin and bone to reveal his soul, small and scarred and scared.

There's a feather-light touch against the back of his hand, then, and Will glances down in surprise. Nico's hand is resting atop the Ace bandage, and as Will watches it slides downwards and pushes through until their fingers are linked. Will swallows around the sudden obstruction in his throat. "There's bad stuff in my head, too," Nico admits, ducking his head as Will turns to meet his gaze. "'S'why I am—what I am." He glances up and their gazes catch, dark brown into pale blue.

"Quite a pair we make, then," Will says with a soft laugh, smiling so wide his cheeks hurt as a small blush blooms across Nico's face. "And for the record, I like what you are—who you are—just fine, Death Boy."

Nico seems to steel himself, then, and his blush only intensifies. "I like you, too." Will squeezes his hand and they fall into a shared, companionable silence, that air of maybe which has been drifting around them for the past three days solidifying into a definite something inside the left ventricle of Will's heart, the heart that he longer wishes were gone but is instead infinitely glad for, for without his heart there would be no ending promising the possibility of happiness.

The Oxford Dictionary defines solace as comfort or consolation in a time of great distress or sadness. Will has always laughed at the irony of his name—healing people certainly provides comfort for them, but there is little consolation left over for him at the end—but at sixteen years of age, it doesn't seem so funny.

In fact, sitting with Nico and looking out on Long Island Sound, holding him close and kissing the crown of his head on the anniversary of Bianca di Angelo's death, the word solace sounds less like a joke and more like a promise, a vow, a comforting consolation for when Will needs it the most.

Nico seems to think so, anyway, if his answering smile and close-mouthed kiss is anything to go by.

Note: I know the Battle of the Labyrinth had minimal casualties. I took artistic licence. Title from Shakespeare's Henry V.