Other than Kayla and Chiron the camp was entirely deserted, it was odd. It's a place so vibrant it should have kids and teenagers running around, laughing, joking, and being loud. At the moment it was so quiet everything we said seemed to echo around the silent cabins.

Will was silent, and I knew he had his worries about Paolo, but he was alive. I wished Will saw that, and let himself feel pride in the fact that he did that, he saved him. Sadly, my boyfriend was more complicated than that dammit.

We eventually got to my cabin and I looked at him, he had a bit of blood on his chest, it stained him through the scrub and after that much running around he was a bit sweaty.

Now when I said, "Let's get you cleaned up" I didn't mean getting in the shower with him. No, I had a washcloth and that would work just as fine.

Sorry to disappoint.

We walked in and he fidgeted with the laurel that sat on his head. I frowned as I tossed off my jacket, "It looks fine, Will, I would have told you if it didn't." "You do tend to be brutally honest with stuff like that." He admitted, taking a deep breath as I went into the bathroom. I filled a bowl that somehow found its way into my bathroom with water, grabbed one of my black washcloths and walked out to him again.

"I guess you were right to worry about the maze." He murmured, his blue eyes falling and I rolled my eyes at him in return as I dipped the cloth into the water. "Hush, I'm not going to let you put yourself down. Okay, it's my job to insult you and you know I don't even mean those."

He raised a dirty blond eyebrow at me, and he leaned back on his hands as I began to dab away the blood. "Even when you call me idiot?" "No comment." I replied, cracking a small smile.

That got a faint smile out of the Son of Apollo, making me relieved.

I tried not to make it obvious that I was staring at his chest, but I found it cute how he had freckles even there. He was pretty quiet, more so than usual which I guess I should have expected after everything but it was so weird compared to how talkative he usually is. It's like the empty camp that stood around us.

Weird.

"I think I'm going to stay in the infirmary tonight, give Kayla a break and keep an eye on Paolo." He explained and I looked up at him as I wrung out the washcloth, "I'll stay there too, even though like I said months ago, you probably don't want a Son of-"

Will gave me a soft smile, "I would love the company of a Son of Hades. Thanks."

I finished getting the dried blood off of him and set it down on the side table by my bed. "Oh and do you want one of my shirts?" I asked, still taking note of his chest.

There were a few scars, making me wonder what they were from. Monsters? Sword practices gone wrong? Other demigods?

He shrugged and I dug through my trunk, finding a shirt that I knew Will would never chose of his own free will (no pun intended) but I think it would look nice.

I tossed it to him and he held it up in front of himself. "Really?"

It was a simple black t-shirt with the word "No" written on it in white. Ah, a classic. "Yes, really. Now come on, while you were stitching up Paolo I talked to Damien and he said Chiron wanted to speak to us."

Will took off the laurel and put it back on again, so it was more comfortable I guessed and pulled on the shirt before he stood up. "Okay, lead the way, di Angelo."

The two of us stood up and he reached over for my hand, "Thanks again Nico." He murmured, and I stared at him.

Thank you's were not something I heard often, and staring at him…Him, in his shirt from me, his shorts, his dirty blond hair, the laurel wreath, his freckles, and those pale blue eyes of his…all I could do was nod in reply and reply back with a stupidly small response. "It's alright Will, I don't mind."

Stupid mouth, always saying dumb things, that was a point where I should have just said: "You're welcome." And left it at that.

As we started to head out of the door I flipped off the soft light that I had got put into a room recently and shut the door behind me.

Outside, it was just as quiet as when we had left, and we made our way over to the Big House with its old country feel and blue paint.

Chiron was in sitting in his wheelchair on the wraparound porch, gazing out over the camp that lied before him.

This camp was old, and even though everyone knew it had been around for centuries, somehow the realization just hit me. People in the Revolutionary War may have gone here. The thought that teenagers, and maybe even a select few adults during the Civil War walked on the very same grounds Will and I were walking around on… Well, it's something you don't necessarily understand the feeling of until you're standing in an empty place.

The old teacher saw us and beckoned us over with his hand. "Damien explained to me the situation with Paolo." He started to say and Will scratched the back of his neck. "Yeah, for the time being he should stay in bed rest."

Chiron nodded and looked from Will to me and back to Will. "I see you're wearing the laurel," A faint chuckle escaped him; "Damien insisted he didn't want it, and that you should have it." He paused and wheeled over to my boyfriend. "You've done well, I'm sure your father would be proud."

The Son of Apollo sighed and let go of my hand to lean on the railing with both of his hands as he stared up at the cloudy evening sky. "Yeah, if he ever got down off of his high horse." He grumbled slightly, then seemed to remember something and turned to look at Chiron. "I had a dream last night, and I'm not sure what it means…"

This grabbed my attention, if we were talking about dreams my first thought would be to go to the Hypnos Cabin but all of their campers had left for home so we were stuck. It was all open to interpretation at this point.

"I can only give my thoughts about it," Chiron started to say, running his hand through his beard that he was growing out for winter. "Do tell me."

Will put his hand in his pockets and closed his eyes, as if trying to remember the fine details in the dream. With things of this nature, everything counted.

"Well I was in an alleyway, it was dirty," As alleyways tend to be. I thought, thinking it would be better not to cut him off. "Lightning flashed in the sky even though it was completely sunny…"

"Lightning, so it means Zeus?" I guessed and Will shrugged, "That's how I thought, and I looked up at the sun when a figure fell. It seemed to me like it fell out of the sun." He said, narrowing his eyes as if he didn't understand.

I folded my arms across my chest and had an inkling of what this might be trying to warn us of. "The sun is your father's symbol, and from what I've heard from the seven at the Battle of the Acropolis Zeus seemed to want to have somebody to blame."

Will may not be the biggest fan of his father, but family is family. Even with their mistakes, you can't always hate them. At least in most cases.

He frowned and shot a glare over at Manhattan. "So he'd put the blame on my father? How does that even make sense?! If anything it's the anemic loser, Octavian's, fault for pitting the camps against eachother-" He started to say and I held up a hand, so I could explain it.

I'm no god, but I've hung around enough to know their train of thought is like an ADHD drunk's; it's all over the place. They're always looking for somebody to blame and punish for even the smallest of things.

"From what I can gather, Zeus believes if Apollo hadn't have made Rachel Elizabeth Dare the next Oracle, she wouldn't have issued the Prophecy of Seven. He thinks if she hadn't have been made the Oracle, the Giant War wouldn't have happened." I tried to explain, sounding as unbiased as possible.

Don't get me wrong, Zeus is stupid if he actually pitted all of the blame on his son, but he's the kind of the gods. It's not like Apollo can just squeeze out of punishment if Pinstripes decides to punish him.

Will tapped his foot on the wooden porch in an aggravated way, and grumbled, "So why then out of all the places to watch Apollo fall out of the sky I was watching from a dumpster?"

Chiron, who had stayed silent with his "I-know-what-it-going-on-but-I-can't-tell-you-because-of-dumbass-reasons" look on his face, finally spoke up. "Perhaps it is where he'll land."

"So it hasn't happened yet?" Will questioned, as he stopped tapping his foot (thank Hades, that was getting annoying).

A small, sympathetic smile crossed Chiron's face and he chuckled, "I'm sure we would hear of a god falling from the sky."

He began to wheel away, towards the door that led inside and sighed deeply, looking like he aged twenty years in a matter of minutes. "For now, do not worry. We can't live in fear of the future; all we can do is prepare for it." He wheeled himself inside and I rubbed my temples.

"Well that was a gratifying talk." I mumbled, sarcasm dripping from my voice and Will sat down on one of the nearby wooden chairs. "If anything I feel more confused…"

I pulled up a chair next to him and reached over for his hand. "Don't, if it makes you feel any better I'm just as lost as you are." "How's that supposed to make me feel better?" He asked, managing a laugh. It didn't sound like his usual one but it was a start.

He looked over at me with those pale blue eyes of his that made my mind momentarily turn t utter mush. "You're Nico di Angelo, for cryin' out loud. You knew about the Romans before anybody else. You knew about the Doors of Death before anybody else. You seem to know more about the world than everybody here at camp being put together."

Compared to everybody here at camp at the minute, yes I did. But that wasn't of my own free will. The world was at stake, so I had to do a little more digging because I have a bit more leeway to do so with my ability to shadow travel and the fact that I could blend into the shadows also made it easier than most to find out the things I did.

The Romans is a completely different story.

I was in the Underworld with my father, around two weeks after the Battle of Manhattan, just around the time people had started to fear me the way they always do given time.

My father was in his throne room with Persephone, and had sent me away but when you send away your son, threatening to feed you a pomegranate and keep you there if you heard or saw anything related to what he needed to do when I was gone…well, it rings a few alarm bells.

So, naturally, I spied on him. Odds were he knew about it, but it was already too late.

He and I have an odd sort of father-son relationship. If I don't make a big deal out of something, neither will he. I never brought up what happened so he didn't either.

What happened was, the doors to the throne room closed but I managed to hold it open just enough where I could peek in without it being noticeable.

Inside, Persephone was lounging on her throne, looking bored as usual.

When I looked at my father, expecting to see his usual self in dark robes and untidy hair, instead I saw a man wearing a very formal suit that looked both gray and black, with well-kept hair speaking in a more formal way than my father, Hades, would ever have spoken.

His voice was the same, he still had the same cold eyes, yet the manner in which he spoke, held himself, and the feeling of power that radiated off of him seemed more primal. This was my father…but…wasn't.

That got me to thinking, there were two forms of him, and they were very similar, yet completely different.

As I was walking out to the garden, trying to understand what I had just seen I heard a ghost float past mutter something in a language I recognized but wasn't fluent in. Latin. Then it hit me that was the Roman form of my father. That was Pluto, not Hades.

Which led me to thinking, if there's a Greek camp, who's to say that there isn't a Roman one, kept separate to make sure we didn't start fighting.

In a place where all Greek demigods are warned not to go…The Bay Area. I realized and set off to see if my suspicions were true.

Surprising enough, I was right.

"Will, I'm good when it comes to hunches, but foretelling the future is something that is in your department more than mine with your father being the god of prophecies and all. After all, if I could tell the future I would never have trusted Percy to make sure Bianca didn't die." I said, and only after saying it did I realize I hadn't kept my mouth shut about the Bianca part.

"I'm joking." I quickly said, trying to cover up my slip up with words, but Will saw right through it.

He gave my hand a small squeeze, and stood up, pulling me up as well. "All of this future talk is just as depressing as talking about the past, so why don't we just forget about the dream for now? I have some movies in my cabin if you want to watch something."

Watching a movie with him…would that be considered a date? Like a typical, watching a movie with your boyfriend? Netflix and chill? (Okay, scratch that last part, no chilling. I am completely okay if we don't Netflix and chill-)

"Nico, your face is turning red." Will stated, as he put his hand against my forehead, like he was checking my temperature. I swatted it away and frowned. "I don't have a fever, Will." I grumbled, rolling my eyes.

"And I would love to watch a movie." I added and he grinned, before he slung his arm around my shoulder, "Great, andiam, il mio amore." He said, slipping in a bit of Italian.

I knew for certain I was blushing then, how long did he practice saying 'Let's go, my love'? I wondered.

He winked at me, and I knew that he knew exactly what he was doing. "Sei così stupida, e io ti amo." I replied back, and his face went blank. "Sorry I didn't google translate that yet." He admitted, now his face turning red, and I laughed, shaking my head. Gods, I got the biggest idiot in the world to be my boyfriend, and I love it.