Epilogue—Likewise.

Previously: He clenched his hand into a fist and heard the clacking of bone on bone, and felt the slide as two surfaces met and neither yielded.

He threw up again. . .

That night, the phantom pain—and real pain—kept him from sleep.

And he spent the whole night thinking.

.

One month saw a lot of throwing up, a lot of visits from a few, regular people, and a lot more thinking.

Percy was a serious barfer/thinker, Nico noted. Some people were like that. It was like existential crisis itself made them sick.

When he finally got word to Annabeth of what happened, she turned up at the door to the bunker area—scratched face, twigs in her hair, and one eyebrow nearly burnt off. She looked young, too—the youngest he'd ever seen her. She'd always seemed strong to him—implacable, unmovable. It'd been a inside joke between him and himself that she looked like the statue of her mother, the Athena Parthenos. Both powerful and untouchable.

But here she looked small and terrified, about how she would have looked when she was younger and first dipping her toes in the 'real' world of demigodliness.

She brushed a curl behind her ear, grey eyes fixed on Percy's bone arm, flopped beside him on the quilt on the ground. It looked ethereal and creepy in the half-dark, but the fingers kept twitching as he slept.

Detached looking.

Annabeth carefully lowered her backpack to the corner and asked, "Is he going to be okay?"

Nico, at a loss of a word or a saying or even a facial expression—this bridge of loss and shared experiences between them was too much of a language barrier—shrugged.

"Is he ever?"

Annabeth reached up and tangled a hand into his hair (it was long, he needed a haircut, but somehow things kept getting prioritized higher) and tugged him down.

She pressed a kiss to his forehead.

Soothing, familiar, protective. Deja vu.

Detached.

"No." She kicked off her shoes and smoothed his hair back down, before crawling down to curl up behind Percy on the floor. She touched a fingertip to Percy's wrist bones, pebbled in a mosaic on the blanket on the ground, like reminding herself that it was a reality now.

Detached.

"No, he isn't." She said again, quietly. "None of us are, are we, Nico di Angelo?"

It was rhetorical (or so he hoped), so he didn't answer. He just slid down the wall and leaned back into the corner, and pretended he was somewhere where he couldn't hear the breathing of two people he didn't want to be attached to, but was, and slept.

Detached—

Not really—

But that was okay.

"Nico?" Annabeth sounded tired.

"Yeah?"

"He still drools in his sleep."

"Yeah."

"You need a haircut."

"Yeah."

.

"If you know what's good for you, you'll get on."

Chiron's voice was low and warning, a strong contrast to the way he looked.

Ridiculous.

Chiron (out of his wheelchair and in his full, half-pony glory) stood in bright, glimmering armor, with a pool noodle wrapped around his waist.

Trailing from a harness studded with various flower stickers was a bright chariot.

In the chariot was a low-seated lawn chair, and in the chair was a small, pudgy man with a Diet Coke in each hand and a leopard-print shirt.

Mr. D.

Ridiculous.

In Mr. D's hand was a spear with a snake skin dangling off the tip.

"We need you, Peter Johnson." Dionysus declared with all the import a camp director could muster. Which was apparently not a lot. "And you, di Ablo."

"Do we know what's good for us, di Ablo?" Percy turned to consult Nico. His skeletal fingers and his flesh ones tapped the backpack straps.

"No we don't, Mr. Johnson." Nico pulled out both his swords enough that he could pull them at a moment's notice. The black and the bone contrasted as sharply as Chiron's dress code.

"We're coming." Percy clambered up onto Chiron's back with Nico on his heels. "What's the problem?"

"Olympus is under attack."

"Again." Mr. D added from the back, from around a soda can.

". . .and?" Nico asked.

Why, why, why was it always them? With the gods' track record, there were surely a truckload of kids elsewhere.

"And Percy's got the best track record for saving Olympus." Chiron stamped his hooves twice. "Hold on to the noodle. We have a long ride ahead of us. And boys," Chiron turned to look at them, "it's good to see you."

"Likewise." Percy smiled dangerously. Like a junkie with a fix, Percy Jackson had a quest (or something close).

Ridiculous.

.

Part II will be starting soon. Thank you to everyone who read this work, and I hope to see you in a few.

Tobi.