Chapter Text
Six years ago, Nico di Angelo had disappeared, leaving Will Solace with endless questions and a broken heart. Six years, with nothing but a two-word note, vague rumors and scattered sightings to show for it.
Six years had been enough time for Will to complete a course of study in healing in New Rome, and then to establish himself as head of the infirmary at Camp Half-Blood. It had been enough time for him to hit a number of personal milestones. It had been, he thought, enough time to get over losing his first love.
But now, as he stood, stock-still, looking down at Nico’s unconscious, badly-wounded body, Will realized that no, it hadn’t. Every emotion he’d felt as a heartbroken seventeen-year-old came flooding back.
“He appeared, just appeared out of nowhere, he killed the monster, and then he collapsed. Look at his hands, they’re fading. What’s wrong with him, Will? Will?”
The voice penetrated the fog around Will’s brain. “Marko, get some unicorn draught and nectar. Maya, I need scissors. Prep for surgery, both of you.”
Marko and Maya Orante, the sixteen-year-old, twin co-senior counselors of the Apollo cabin, leaped to their duties. Will shoved all his emotions into a box, labeled it “To be dealt with later,” and set about saving Nico’s life. Questions could wait; wounds couldn’t. Nico had two deep gashes on his torso and one on his left thigh, as well as a number of more minor injuries. Will didn’t even need to touch him to tell that he’d overextended himself with his powers, too; darkness boiled under his skin, causing his extremities to fade. One of his shoes fell off.
“What have you done to yourself, Nico?” Will murmured.
Maya returned with the scissors. Will stripped off Nico’s jacket and cut away his black shirt. Marko brought the unicorn draught and poured a little into his mouth, then helped Will strip off Nico’s sword belt and shoes and cut away his black jeans as well. Then the three of them started to close his wounds.
Will registered, as he worked, that Nico was covered in tattoos. Once the final stitches were in place and his wounds were bandaged, Will looked his former boyfriend over. The tattoos were strange, like thorns, or perhaps bare branches, all in black, with small symbols among them. When Will took a look at Nico’s back, it fell into place.
Brushing Nico’s hair to one side, Will discovered the sigil of Hades inked on the back of Nico’s neck. Radiating out from it were . . . cracks. Like Nico’s skin was shattering to reveal the darkness underneath. The cracks spread all over his back, his arms, and were encroaching on his torso.
And at the point of every crack was a symbol. There seemed to be no rhyme nor reason to them. Will recognized the signs of several Greek and Roman gods – Apollo, Athena, Venus, Mars, Ares – and also some astrological symbols. There were symbols from other pantheons, too: Egyptian, Norse, Hindu. Symbols of several religions – a Christian cross, a Star of David, a pentagram, a Buddha – were scattered over his skin. Will spotted Native American iconography and a few animals. And then there were things Will had no idea what to make of. Runes, strange glyphs, a clock, an atom, a crown, a spade. They went on and on. Will counted at least forty of them.
And right over Nico’s heart, larger than any of the other symbols, was a stylized sun.
What did it all mean?
With Nico unconscious, there was no way to know. The important thing, for the moment, was to help him to recover.
“His hand is still fading,” said Maya.
“Get me some of that muck Coach Hedge makes, will you?” Will asked. “And Marko, go down to the Hecate cabin and tell Willa I need to talk to her. While you’re at it . . . tell Chiron that Nico di Angelo has returned.” The twins gawked at him. “Do it.”
Maya and Marko cleared out, and Will looked down at Nico again. He pressed the fingers of his right hand against Nico’s forehead and his left hand against the base of Nico’s throat. Reaching out with his healer’s senses, he looked for any other injuries or illnesses he hadn’t detected before.
What he found was that Nico was a mess of old injuries. Bones that had been broken and then healed, old stab wounds – some, startlingly enough, made with Celestial bronze or Imperial gold – scar tissue in his right shoulder consistent with repetitive-use injury, and above all, so much darkness swirling in his system that by all rights, he should have faded entirely.
Will opened his eyes. There were scars all over Nico’s body. Some ran through his tattoos; others had been tattooed over. There were two on his face. One was up near the hairline on the left side of his face. The other ran across his right cheek and marred his upper lip.
What the hell had happened to him? Will looked at his clothing and the items they’d taken off him, trying to find answers. There wasn’t much. His wallet held a black credit card Will recognized as the one Hades had issued to him for emergencies, as well as a smattering of currency: American and Canadian dollars, euros, yen and Mexican pesos.
Nico’s sword, which he’d been holding when he had appeared outside camp, had been brought in. Joining it on his sword belt were two daggers. One was Celestial bronze. The other . . .
It was tempered steel, of modern make. It was honed to a razor’s edge and, judging by the scratches and nicks on the blade, had seen action.
The sight of it gave Will a bad feeling. He knew there were non-Greek monsters out there that could only be killed with cold iron, but Nico’s Stygian iron sword could easily take care of those. Why would he need a steel dagger?
For that matter, why did he need the Celestial bronze dagger? Nico had already been an expert swordsman by the time he was fourteen. He’d never needed another weapon. Judging by the hard muscles in his arms and shoulders, he hadn’t exactly slacked off on his sword drill.
Will looked at Nico again, letting the clinical part of his brain fade into the background. In spite of the scars that marred it, his face was even more beautiful than it had been when they were both teens. In repose, he was angelic, as he’d always been. He was still slim, lean, but he’d added even more muscle to his frame. His hair was longer, and he had a silver skull earring in one ear.
Six years. Six years had gone by since he had disappeared. Why had he gone? Why had he stayed away, with no contact with anyone, even Hazel, for all those years? What had happened to him in that time? Why was he back now?
The questions were piling up, and Will had no answers.
Maya returned with Coach Hedge’s nature-magic muck, and Will began applying it, trying to focus on his job rather than the hurricane of emotions bearing down on him. The muck smelled awful, but it was an effective treatment for magical overreach; Will had used it on a number of children of Hecate over the years, and he knew that Coach Hedge had once brought Nico back from the brink of nonexistence with it.
That had been, what, eight years earlier? It seemed like forever.
“So . . . this is Nico di Angelo?” Maya asked, her voice uncharacteristically tentative. Nico was somewhere between a myth and a legend at camp.
“The one and only,” said Will. “And that’s the extent of the answers I have about him at the moment. He seems to be comatose at the moment, which has happened before when he’s overused his shadow magic.”
As Will finished with the muck, Marko ran back into the infirmary. “Willa’s gathering her stuff. She should be here soon. Chiron wants a meeting once we’re sure he’s stable.”
“Yeah,” Will muttered. “I’d imagine he would.”
“What do you think it means, that he’s back?” Maya asked.
“I have literally no idea at all.” Will wiped his hands. “Once Willa does her thing, Chiron can have his meeting. Marko, I’d like you to stay here with him, though.”
Marko nodded. He and Maya split their senior-counselor duties. He was a natural healer, much like Will, and was Will’s chief lieutenant in the infirmary. Maya, who was more outgoing and a natural leader, performed most of the day-to-day duties in the Apollo cabin.
The twins were Guamanian by birth. They were both a little on the short side, with dark, straight hair, brown eyes, light-brown skin and freckles. Marko was quiet and intense, but also good-natured and kind. Maya was open and charismatic, and her natural expression was a bright smile. They were both artistic and athletic, though Marko fell more to the artistic and Maya to the athletic.
They’d entered Camp Half-Blood during Will’s last year as senior counselor. It wasn’t a year he was fond of reflecting on, as it had been the first year after Nico had disappeared. Will had been distracted by trying to find any lead as to his boyfriend’s whereabouts, though he did try his best to do right by his siblings. Nonetheless, he couldn’t say the two had made much of an impression on him then. In their defense, very little had.
Upon his return, though, they had definitely made an impression, and a good one. He liked and trusted them both, and he knew the Apollo cabin was in good hands so long as they were the senior counselors. Judging by the chaos currently happening in his brain, Will would need all the help he could get in the coming days.
Will’s eyes were drawn, yet again, back to Nico. He remembered the last time they’d been together.
***
A week shy of Nico’s seventeenth birthday, he’d caught Will outside the Apollo cabin one morning.
“My dad contacted me last night,” Nico said without preamble. “He said he needs me for something happening in the mortal world. Said he hopes it can be handled with diplomacy.”
“And, let me get this straight, he wants you to be diplomatic?” Will asked. “Has he ever met you?”
Nico snorted. “You’re still alive. That should say something about my diplomatic abilities.”
“More like mine.”
“Dork.”
“Other dork.”
Nico pulled him close and kissed him. “I’ll see you soon.”
Will caught his hand before he could go. “How long will this take? Because . . .”
“I don’t know.” Nico looked a touch disgruntled. “Hopefully not long. I’ll let you know as soon as I know. But even if it’s more than a week . . . we can still have our date, right?”
Will’s heart sped up. They’d decided to wait until they were both seventeen to become intimate. And on Nico’s birthday, they were planning a date that would, if all went well, end up at a hotel.
“No, it’s got to be that night, or I’m taking my penis and going home.” Will grinned at the blush that overtook Nico’s face. He loved that he could do that. “Of course we can, you goof.”
“You’re impossible,” Nico murmured, and kissed him again. “But I guess I’ll have sex with you, anyway.”
Will pressed his forehead to his boyfriend’s. “I’ll see you when you get back. I love you.”
“I love you, too.”
One last kiss, and Nico was gone, disappearing into the shadow of the Apollo cabin . . .
***
Three days later, Nico had Iris-messaged, saying the job was getting complicated, and not to expect him for another week, at the very least. He said he couldn’t talk about it, but he’d be in touch again soon.
Two weeks later, Will woke to a note in Nico’s distinctive penmanship: “Forgive me.”
Will still had that note.
He pulled himself back to the present, sitting around the pool table with Chiron and the heads of most of the cabins. Brighid Mortensen, an Ares child with blazing red hair and even more blazing blue eyes who was intensely proud of her Celtic/Norse heritage, was describing Nico’s arrival just outside of camp.
“That was when another hellhound appeared,” she was saying. “Di Angelo was right on its tail, literally, and he took it and the other two down in about three seconds flat before he collapsed.”
“I can’t believe he’s back,” said Harley, the only one of the senior counselors who’d personally known Nico. It would be doubtful that Nico would recognize him, though, as Harley had gone from a cute little ten-year-old to a sixteen-year-old roughly the size and shape of an NFL linebacker in in Nico’s absence.
“How is he right now, Will?” Chiron asked.
“He’s . . . medically, he’s stable. We have some sun lamps on him, and Coach Hedge’s muck is keeping him solid.” Will fiddled with his pen. “He’s in a coma right now. He overextended himself with his powers; I’m hoping Willa’s little intervention can keep it from getting any worse.” He nodded gratefully at Willa Henderson, head Hecate counselor, who was looking tired and drinking a cup of tea that smelled like lawn clippings. “But honestly, Chiron, he looks like he’s been fighting a war. I don’t know any other way to describe it. He’s a mess of old and new injuries. If you can, I’d like you to take a look at him, because I just . . . don’t understand all that I’m seeing.”
Jules LeFleur, the Aphrodite head counselor, had focused a piercing gaze on Will. He was seventeen and truly beautiful, with eyes that changed color the way Piper’s always had. Will never discussed his relationship with Nico – the subject was too painful – though a few campers had been there long enough to have known about it. Jules wasn’t one of those, but Will was unwilling to bet that he didn’t know that Will and Nico had been in love, once.
“How dangerous is he, exactly?” asked Sophia Alotaibi, head Athena counselor. Her dark coloring made her storm-gray eyes even more striking.
Will bristled, wanting to smack her down for speaking of Nico like that, but he realized just as quickly that the question was not only sensible, but Will couldn’t answer it. He had no idea what had happened to Nico in the last six years, or what it had done to him.
“Nico’s power is on a level with Percy Jackson’s or Jason Grace’s,” said Chiron. Both demigods made regular visits to the camp, and all the campers were familiar with them and held them in a kind of awe. “While he was at Camp Half-Blood, he had authority over the dead, could shadow-travel, had at least some geomancy, and could control his dreams and even the dreams of others better than anyone except children of Hypnos.”
“I remember he could hold his own against anybody with a sword, too, and that included Percy and Jason. And pretty much the whole Ares cabin,” said Harley.
Brighid scowled. “Is that so?”
“Look, right now, Nico’s not in any shape to be fighting anybody,” Will said, cutting in. “I don’t disagree that keeping an eye on him is a good idea. I intend to do so personally. We’ve got him in a private room right now, which is where he’ll stay.” Will eyed Mark German, the Hermes head counselor. “It would be a very bad idea for any unauthorized personnel to sneak in.”
Mark gave him a cheeky grin. “Now, why would you look at me when you say that? I’m hurt, Will, I’m deeply hurt.” Brighid rolled her eyes and beaned Mark with an Oreo. “Don’t be hatin’, Red.”
Chiron cleared his throat. “Back to the subject at hand, Rachel, do you have anything to add?”
Rachel Elizabeth Dare had been sitting quietly in her chair, looking pensive. “Not at the moment. I’ll go back to my cave and see what happens, though. I can’t help but feel that . . . that Nico’s return is important.”
There was more discussion, but Will tuned it out. When the meeting broke, he was up and out of the room before anybody else, heading back to the infirmary.
Rachel caught up with him. They’d become good friends over the course of the Whole Apollo Thing back in the day.
“How are you doing, Will?” she asked. Rachel wasn’t interested in romance for herself, being dedicated to her position as the Pythia, but she was sensitive to the relationships of others.
“I could not even tell you,” said Will. He slowed his pace. “I’ve got more questions every second, and absolutely no answers, not until he wakes up, at least. And . . . I don’t know if I’m looking forward to hearing what he has to say.”
Rachel set one hand on his arm. “You two really loved each other. I don’t know why he left, but I’m sure it wasn’t because he wanted to.”
Somehow, knowing that didn’t help. “I’m not sure that doesn’t make it worse, at least for him. Rachel, he looks like he’s been through a war. Another one. What’s it done to him?”
She nodded. “I know what you mean.”
“Seeing, him, it was like . . . like he just left. All those emotions I was left with came right back. I’m supposed to be objective, but I don’t know if I can be. Not with him.”
Rachel hugged him. “Just be careful, Will. A lot can change in six years.”
Will hugged her back. Movement caught the corner of his eye, and he saw a young cloud nymph named Sela coming his way, carrying a one-year-old baby girl with blond curls. The knot in his gut softened a little.
“She just woke up from her nap,” said Sela, handing the child to him.
Will took her in his arms. “How’s my girl? How’s my Dawn?” he murmured.
Dawn gave him a huge, baby-toothed grin. “Da!”
He kissed her, loving the smell of her hair, and sighed softly. “You’re right, Rachel. A lot can change in six years.”
***
Will spent the next twenty-four hours barely sleeping, splitting his time between the infirmary and the little cottage he shared with Dawn and her nymph nanny. In the end, it paid off.
About a day and a half after Nico’s dramatic entrance to Camp Half-Blood, he finally woke up, and Will was there.
It was easy for a medic like Will to tell when Nico woke. His breathing changed, though he didn’t move or open his eyes. Will stayed as still and silent as he could, watching and waiting.
After about a minute, Nico opened his eyes. He quickly scanned the area within his immediate viewing field. His eyes caught on Will and stopped. For a good minute, neither man moved or spoke.
Nico was the one who broke the stalemate, with a single word:
“Fuck.”