Before anybody shoots me with a pistol, I would like to say that yes, I've read the House of Hades and I know about Nico's preferences. I wrote this fic about two months ago, but only got around to editing last week. Unfortunately, I couldn't add in the little tidbit about Nico in this fic. Rest assured though that I'll mention it in my other fics (in fact I have a Nico appreciation fic in the works so...yep). That doesn't mean I'll stop writing Nico/Rachel stuff, though. I'm waaaayyyy too invested in these dorks for some strange reason, and I can't let go of them yet. (Besides, part of me has this headcanon that Nico never subconsciously accepts that he likes guys only, thanks to a little thing called inborn belief due to being born in the 40's. Long story short, I'm p. sure Nico's pansexual.)

Anyway, I can't remember what/who triggered the prompt, but this entire fic is basically centered on the question: "If you were given the chance to know how or when you would die, would you take it?" This fic is much more serious than my other Nico/Rachel ones, so IDK how you guys will find this but I absolutely love the context and I hope you do as well.

Disclaimer: Rick Riordan owns all rights to Percy Jackson and the Olympians. He is also responsible for an overabundance of feelings on my part towards a little twelve-year-old we fondly call Nico di Angelo.

To Predict Death
(I have seen your death, and it is mine)

Apollo and Hades found out about them.

Nico and Rachel didn't actually think it would take the two gods this long. To be honest, they had assumed that Hades and Apollo had known all along but had chosen not to bring it up. After all, they'd been together for a little over four years now. Not only that, but from what Percy and Annabeth had once told them, the sexual tension between the Oracle and the Ghost King had been clear as day for years before they even started admitting to themselves that they had feelings for each other.

But, for some reason or another, neither god had known about them. Now that Hades and Apollo had found out, though, both were decidedly not okay with this arrangement.

"Look, I don't see what's wrong about this picture." Nico said once both Apollo and Hades took a break from their yelling. The two gods had unceremoniously popped into the apartment that morning, each with a vein at their temple ready to burst and a whole slew of words to say. "Rachel and I are together, yeah, but Rachel is still the virginal Oracle. We haven't done anything. I respect her position, and like I told her before, I'm willing to wait."

Apollo scoffed. "Don't give me that chivalry spiel, brat."

Nico blinked. "Excuse me?"

"Don't think I've forgotten what your father has done to my last Oracle. Hades set you up to this, didn't he? He ordered you to— to corrupt my Oracle."

Nico chortled. "Okay, that is the stupidest thing I have ever heard."

Apollo glowered at him, gold eyes gleaming dangerously bright. "You dare disrespect me, boy? Your father may be king of the dead, but he cannot save you from it. By the River Styx, I swear, your days are numbered, son of Hades!"

Nico fell to his knees as white-hot pain seared in his eyes.

"Nico!" Rachel screamed before rushing over to his side.

"Apollo!" Hades snarled, rounding in on his nephew.

Apollo just glared at his uncle. "You cursed my last Oracle! It's only justice that I take it out on your sorry excuse for a son."

The temperature in the apartment suddenly dropped as the Lord of the Underworld spoke in a low, deadly tone – the same one Nico used when he was positively furious. Rachel shivered.

"Your previous Oracle could not properly die, but this one?" He glared at Rachel, "This one will know death—hauntingly, intimately, for every day of her life, every time she so much as closes her eyes!"

"Dad, no!" She heard Nico yell out before her surroundings were lost to her as pain coursed through her head.

When her vision cleared, she saw Hades roughly pulling Nico up by the arm. With one last glare to Apollo and the Oracle, Hades summoned the shadows to take him and his son down to the Underworld.

Apollo's normally carefree eyes gleamed a furious gold. Rachel shakily stood up (she hadn't even noticed she'd been on the floor) before addressing him.

"Lord Apollo, what just happened? What did Lord Hades do to me? What did you do to Nico?"

Apollo looked at her, and she thought she spotted a hint of guilt in his eyes; but before she could be sure, his form started glowing and Rachel had to avert her eyes to stop from getting disintegrated.

When the light died down, Rachel was alone in the apartment.

That night, Rachel dreamt that Jason Grace had died.

It wasn't a steady, solid dream like the demigod dreams Nico once told her he had sometimes. It was erratic, like she was watching a slide show of pictures instead of a single movie clip. All she saw was the sharp glint of a long blade, a streak of lightning, a quick flash of Jason's cropped blond hair and sky blue eyes, and so much blood. But none of those images compared to the sounds of Jason's agonized screams or the pain that coursed through her, like someone had stabbed her in the back and twisted the blade while it was still inside of her.

She woke up the next day, panting and sweating, Jason's screams still echoing in her head.

It happened again the night after, and again the night after that. She'd lost sleep the in the past couple of days because every time she closed her eyes, she would see Jason.

By the time Friday came around, heavy bags had lined her eyes and her head was pounding so hard that the slightest noise or movement set her off. So when her phone rang that morning and she saw that it was Annabeth calling, it was all Rachel could do to press the 'answer' button. Rachel was about to ask her if she knew how to stop a headache which put any migraine or hangover to shame, when Annabeth's solemn tone spoke through the line.

Last night, Jason was killed while trying to bring down a group of Gaea's remnant insurgents. A long, thin sword had gone right through him from behind, puncturing his stomach and even severing his spine.

Rachel's mug slipped from her fingers and shattered on the floor, spilling raspberry juice everywhere and staining the tiles in a red color sickeningly similar to one in her dream.

Vaguely, she heard Annabeth call out to her in worry, but Rachel was too shaken up to respond. The pounding in her head had been replaced by an incessant ringing as flashes of her dreams of Jason raced through her mind.

No. Not dreams.

Those dreams weren't just dreams. They were predictions.

Her mind quickly flashed back to earlier that week, and dread washed over her as she remembered Hades' parting words.

"This one will know death— hauntingly, intimately, for every day of her life, every time she so much as closes her eyes!"

Hades had used her gift of the prophecy and turned it into a death sentence.

It was pretty embarrassing for a twenty-four-year-old man to be grounded by his father, but seeing as how this wasn't just any father but Hades, the Lord of the Underworld, Nico figured it was in his best interest (read: necessary for his survival) to obey the god.

Thus, Nico had spent almost five months under house arrest in the Underworld, helping his dad with the flow of traffic of the dead, and on the days after he did something that particularly pissed his step-mother off, weeding Persephone's bejeweled garden.

So he was reasonably relieved when Hades un-grounded him. Finally, actual sunlight and contact with someone who wasn't dead or immortal. He was a son of Hades, sure, but years of 'rehabilitation via normal human interaction' by Percy, Annabeth, and Rachel had kicked his habit of preferring the company of the dead to the living.

He was still wary of Apollo's curse, though. Even with the large amount of time he'd spent thinking about it, Nico still didn't know exactly what the god had done to him. Apollo had said his days were numbered or something like that. Well, Nico wasn't dying; that, he was sure of. It'd be pretty stupid if the son of Hades couldn't be able to sense his own death.

Whatever; he reckoned he could figure it out once he saw Rachel again. He hadn't seen her since the incident, and he was worried about what his dad could have done to her (Hades had remained tight-lipped about it, despite Nico's constant annoying badgering).

When he finally returned above the surface and emerged out of a New York alley, though, Rachel was momentarily pushed to the corner of his mind as he noticed the numbers floating above the heads of everyone he passed.

Oh, great; this was what he meant by numbered, Nico snorted. Apollo had 'cursed' him to see annoying, meaningless numbers flashing everywhere. The god must be losing his touch if that was the best he could do. Seriously, his kids' rhyming couplet curse a few years back had been worse.

Suddenly, sirens wailed as an ambulance stopped at the end of the block. A crowd of curious New Yorkers began forming, and Nico walked up right in time to see a couple of EMT's pulling a man on stretcher out of a brownstone. Nico's ADHD absently noted that everyone had numbers floating above their heads – always a string of ten numbers, separated into pairs by colons or dots. The man on the stretcher was no exception, but what drew Nico's attention to him was his rapidly weakening life force.

While the EMT's were trying to stabilize him, the man's life force disappeared completely, taking the strange numbers with it. Nico grimaced; he didn't need to hear the EMT's verdict to know the man was dead.

"He's gone." The EMT said to his partner. "Call it, Jim."

"December 5, 2021. 11:35 A.M." His partner replied, looking at his watch.

Nico frowned as something nagged at the back of his head. Those numbers seemed familiar, as if he'd just recently seen them somewhere. But where?

His eyes drifted to the stretcher, and suddenly, he remembered the numbers he'd seen flashing above the man's head.

12:05:21∙11:35

Nico felt dread wash upon him like freezing water.

It hadn't been a random string of numbers like he had originally thought; it had been a date – the month, day, and year – and a time. Today's date, and this exact time.

He honestly hoped it was a coincidence, but when had anything ever been 'just a coincidence' in their world?

He had been wrong; Apollo had cursed him.

Before, thanks to his abilities as a son of Hades, he could feel it when a death happened. Now, he could see exactly when people around him would die.

Days passed, and each night, Rachel dreamt of another death. She had opted to stay in Camp Half-Blood when Nico didn't return a week after the Hades/Apollo debacle, if only not to be alone.

That didn't stop the dreams from coming, though.

Sometimes, she would dream of the same person more than once, like what had happened with Jason. She wasn't sure of her theory, but so far, the dreams repeated when she knew the person. If it was someone she didn't know or wasn't close to, she only dreamt of them once. But if it was someone she cared about, she would see their death again and again; sometimes it would be on consecutive nights, other times it would be spaced in between other dreams.

One day, about five months since she vacated her apartment, a camper had entered her cave and requested a prophecy. When she looked up and spotted the tall Athena boy, her heart lurched. She had seen this boy last night, struggling to find a crack in the ice large enough to swim through to the surface. She remembered the pain of trying to breathe, only to have ice cold water fill his lungs. She remembered the numbness of his mind shutting down, the locking of his limbs, and finally, the decisive stopping of his heartbeat.

He asked her what his fate was, and Rachel felt the familiar, invasive spirit of the Oracle take over. When she finally came to, the boy had just finished propping her up on her chair.

She hadn't been able to do anything for Jason, but this time, maybe she could do something for this one. She could try to warn the son of Athena.

Rachel grabbed the boy's arm just as he was turning to leave. She told him – made him promise, actually – to stay away from frozen lakes or anything of the sort. He looked at her oddly but nodded.

Nico arrived just as the Athena boy was exiting the cave, and the son of Hades' eyes had widened as he stared at something above the younger camper's head. Even though Rachel should probably ask him what that was about, or at least ask how he was doing in the last few months since she'd last seen him, she just stared at the retreating form of the son of Athena, wondering if her warning would be able to help.

A week later, the latest group of campers returned from their quest short of a leader. Their quest had led them to a cave in the middle of a lake, and they deemed the ice thick enough to walk on. Unfortunately, as they were leaving the cave, the goddess Khione had shown up on their quest and had caused the ice to crack under their feet. The other demigods had gotten safely onto the lake bank before the ice collapsed, but the Athena boy, who had been bringing up their rear, hadn't been as lucky. Once he plunged into the lake, Khione had made the lake's surface freeze over once again, trapping him.

As he watched Annabeth mourn with the rest of her siblings, Nico was guiltily not surprised. It only confirmed what he already knew. He ran a hand tiredly across his face.

The numbers hadn't been wrong yet, and as the days passed, it seemed more and more likely to him that they never will be.

"Rachel?"

She was staring at a portrait she had done of the Athena boy – Aaron, she found out his name was. She hadn't even known his name before he died.

"You knew, didn't you?" She asked Nico, already knowing the answer. She had seen his expression when he saw the Athena boy before he left for his quest. "You knew something would happen."

A few beats of silence, and then:

"I'm seeing numbers everywhere." He admitted. "It sounds crazy, I know, but it's true. I'm seeing dates and times. I open my eyes and they're right there, floating above people's heads like… like an expiration date."

She looked at him, her green eyes uncharacteristically flat as she whispered: "At least you can close your eyes and not watch the people you love burn."

He raised an inquisitive eyebrow at her, his eyes flashing with concern as he momentarily forgot about his own predicament.

"I dream about them." She said, a chill running down her spine as she did. It felt eerie saying it out loud, as if acknowledging the existence of the curse outside the recesses of her mind somehow made it a lot more potent and cemented its place in her life. "Every night, I watch— I feel someone die.

"Gods, we're messed up," She said, a harsh laugh escaping her lips as she wiped her tears away with the back of her hand, "I mean, we were creepy enough as it was before, but now we're both predicting deaths and—"

Nico moved until he was standing beside her and pulled her closer. Rachel just wrapped her arms around his waist tightly, not saying a word.

Word had spread throughout the entire Camp about Nico's and Rachel's newfound abilities. Apparently, a nosy camper had eavesdropped on their conversation a few days ago and proceeded to blab about it to anyone who would listen.

Everyone blatantly stared at them and whispered whenever they passed, but nobody dared go near them anymore, as if being in close proximity would cause certain death. The only ones who weren't afraid to approach them and actually talk to them on a regular, non-awkward basis were Percy, Annabeth, and Sophia Chase-Jackson, the only known legacy of both Poseidon and Athena. The family of three had opted to stay indefinitely at Camp Half-Blood to support Nico and Rachel, even though the latter two said it wasn't necessary.

Finally, roughly ten months after Apollo and Hades had cursed them, Percy and Annabeth got fed up and, true to their combined nature as stubborn, meddlesome, too-loyal friends who had a knack for getting in the gods' faces, the couple barged up to Olympus and outright demanded Nico and Rachel be freed from their curses. After a brief, impromptu council meeting, both Apollo and Hades consented to lifting the curses under the condition that Percy and Annabeth face a number of challenges, challenges far more difficult than the twelve trials Heracles had to complete millennia ago. Being the stubborn, meddlesome, too-loyal friends that they were, they had agreed.

"We'll fix this. You'll see." Percy told both of them as Annabeth handed their daughter over to Chiron to look after.

Nico and Rachel stayed silent. Percy and Annabeth already knew about their strong opposition against this quest, even though successfully completing it meant getting their normal lives back (at least, as normal as life got for the Ghost King and the Oracle of Delphi). Although Nico and Rachel hadn't talked to each other about it, they both knew the fate of the Jacksons, and no matter how resilient the curses had proven, neither of them wanted to lose the two people closest to them.

But Percy and Annabeth Jackson were the two most bull-headed people they knew, and Nico and Rachel knew there was no way the two Heroes of Olympus would sit around when there was a concrete way to help get rid of their friends' curses once and for all. Besides, as Rachel had already proven once (the blue, waterlogged body of the Athena boy still haunted the depths of her psyche until today), there was no use in trying to warn others about their deaths.

So they watched Argus pull away from Camp, taking Percy and Annabeth to New England, where Apollo had their first challenge waiting for them.

Rachel thought that, while it was a shitty consolation, at least Percy and Annabeth would die together, an ending that fitted them so well. Nico just hoped little Sophia was mature enough to understand and accept why her parents were never coming back.

A quest. A monster so ancient it hadn't been seen in millennia, with snarling teeth and vicious claws. Fire. A burning warehouse. Two people, unmoving on the searing hot concrete, hands clasped tightly together. Messy, ink-black hair and long, golden curls.

Percy and Annabeth Chase-Jackson.

Five days after Percy and Annabeth left for the quest, Rachel was sitting on one of the barstools in their kitchen, staring blankly at the mug of tea in her hands as Nico made dinner. With Percy and Annabeth gone from Camp, the whispers from the campers grew louder and their hostility and wariness towards Nico and Rachel more evident, so they'd left and gone back to their apartment.

"Do you know your number?" Rachel asked, breaking the heavy silence that had recently become a constant presence in their apartment.

Nico didn't answer, and Rachel thought she might have overstepped a boundary. Apart from the conversation they had after the Athena camper had died, they never spoke of the curses again. There wasn't much point in doing so; talking about it would only bring up things they'd rather forget, and as time passed and the dreams and numbers kept on being correct time and time again, they slowly resigned themselves to the fact that nothing could be done about their predicament.

But, try as she might to quell it, a small part of Rachel was morbidly curious. After all, if Nico knew when he would die, would he just wait for that day and accept his fate lying down? Or was he going to change his fate and do something that would cause the numbers to be wrong? Do something that would make his demise happen earlier? Would he go so far as to leave her and just di—

"No," He said, halting Rachel's thoughts. He turned off the stove as his gaze drifted to the shiny, reflective surface of the kitchen counter. "For weeks, I didn't look at my reflection, afraid of what I would see above my own head. When I finally did look, I saw nothing. Just a blank space like anybody else would see."

He approached the counter and looked at his reflection, trying to see if the circumstances had changed since he last checked and he somehow gained the ability to see his own number; but he still did not see anything. He looked at her. "I don't know my death."

"But I do." Rachel whispered. Nico watched her quietly as she stood up and headed for her studio. Seconds later, she returned with a large, black Moleskine notebook in hand. She slid it across the counter towards him. "You're in here."

For weeks after Hades had first cursed her, the deaths had swirled in a constant cacophony in her head. In a desperate attempt to remove the dreams (nightmares) from her mind, she'd painted every death she ever saw into this notebook. She ended up doing the same thing to all the dreams that followed after – her dad, Piper, Percy, Annabeth, Nico (that one had been the hardest; she couldn't stop shaking and sobbing for hours when she first dreamt of him) – until the entire notebook had been filled with them.

Nico made no move to open or even pick up the notebook. Instead, he pulled out a smaller, beaten-up leather journal from his jacket and tossed it onto the counter.

"Same goes for you," was all he said, but Rachel understood. This was his notebook, where he kept all of the numbers he saw. And her name was in it – her death, the one death she hadn't dreamt of yet.

The question she had directed at Nico in her head was suddenly turned on her now. Would she open the journal? See the date of her death? And if she did, would she dare defy it? Meet her end earlier just so she could say that she was the one in control and not Apollo or the Fates or even that stupid string of numbers? Would she? Could she?

"Rachel." Nico said, snapping her out of her thoughts for the second time that day. He placed a large, calloused hand on top of hers, and only then did she realize she had been shaking. She looked up at him and saw his eyes swirled with emotion: concern, exhaustion, a little bit of fear, and—she sucked in a breath. There it was, love.

Love, the emotion that had caused all this in the first place. For the past few months, everything had been so wrong, and she was afraid that he'd think all this was too much of a hassle to put up with. She had been terrified that Apollo and Hades had brought an even more formidable curse upon them, that in the midst of chaos, the two gods had managed to dissolve the bond between her and Nico as well.

But here was proof that her fears were unfounded. Nico still looked at her in that impossible way that made her heart race and her mind settle at the same time. And while it didn't exactly give her hope that their deathly doom-and-gloom situation would stop, it eased her heart to know that he still loved her as much as she loved him.

She glanced at the two notebooks on the counter.

"I keep yours and you keep mine?" She asked him.

Nico pulled her Moleskine notebook closer to him. He nodded.

After the exchange, Rachel placed his journal under lock and key in the hidden compartment in her studio, and Nico kept her Moleskine notebook hidden in his bedside drawer, right beside all the jewelry that had once been his mother's.

Both notebooks were left unopened.

Nico made an enormous effort not to look at the date that day, even though it kept ringing in his head that it was June 20th. When Rachel noticed the way he refused to look at any clock, her heart gave a painful twist, causing her to realize what today was, and she quickly covered any and all timekeepers in the apartment.

It was only when the clock in the living room chimed midnight on June 21 that they allowed themselves to grieve.

Percy Jackson: 06:20:2219:23

Annabeth Chase-Jackson: 06:20:2219:23

Three weeks later, Nico and Rachel were in the apartment when an Iris message appeared in the living room. It was Chiron. They braced themselves, waiting for the centaur to finally deliver the news they'd been expecting since June 20, but what he said had shocked them both.

Last night, Percy and Annabeth had stumbled through the protective barriers of Camp Half-Blood.

Nico quickly shadow traveled himself and Rachel to Camp and rushed into the Big House. Upon reaching the infirmary, they immediately spotted Percy and Annabeth. Their cheeks were sunken, their clothes were torn, and they had slowly healing bruises and burns on every possible surface of their skin. They were barely hanging on within an inch of their lives; but they were still undeniably alive. Nico looked at Rachel, and when she turned to face him, he saw that she felt just as stunned as he did.

Both the dream and numbers had been wrong. That had never happened before.

The cycle was broken.

Percy's raspy voice brought them out of their thoughts. "Why are you looking at us like that?" He asked, looking at their dumbfounded expressions confusedly.

From her spot on the bed next to his, Annabeth rolled her eyes. "I told you they didn't believe us. Nico, Rachel, when are you two ever going to learn that when we say we're going to fix it, we sure as hell are going to fix it?"

It was quiet for a moment while Nico and Rachel attempted to take in the turn of events. Finally, Nico spoke.

"Figures that you two would be the odd ones out." He grumbled.

Percy shrugged, wincing a little at the sting from his recently-dislocated shoulder. "When you're issued a death sentence every few years, you get really good at defying them and spitting in their proverbial face. Annabeth and I are damn masters at it by now."

A bubble of laughter escaped Rachel's throat, surprising everyone in the room. Nico cracked a smile, and before long, he and Rachel were laughing hysterically. Percy and Annabeth looked at them in slight worry.

"Are you two okay?" Percy asked cautiously. "Is this a side effect or the curses wearing off or something? Apollo and Hades did mention yesterday that it'd take a while before you two were completely back to normal, but I didn't think it meant you'd go loopy while it wore off."

Rachel didn't answer. Instead, she threw her arms around Nico and hid her face in his shoulder, tears suddenly flowing from her eyes. Nico burrowed his face in her neck as disbelieving laughs continued to escape from his mouth. His arms wrapped tightly around her, feeling the heavy weight in his chest disappear.

For the first time in almost a year, Nico and Rachel allowed themselves the luxury of hope.

The worst is far behind us now.
We'll make it out of here somehow.
Meet me in the aftermath.
—Lifehouse; "Aftermath"

As always, reviews are loved. I might not be able to reply to them, but know that you all make me smile.