Chapter Text
Everyone is feeling celebratory. It was meant to be a vacation, it really was, just the Seven plus Nico, and Calypso if she and Leo showed up in time. Of course, when do demigods ever really get a true vacation? Something always goes wrong.
In this case, it was a cave full of monsters. Annabeth swore (repeatedly) and wondered out loud what such a motley collection were doing in there in the first place before the tide of the battle swept away all conversation. As always, there were some close calls. Near the end, in a scene that felt almost cliché but no less deadly, Percy found himself bent over backward on one of the rocks, Riptide just out of reach and a large, reptilian creature who name Annabeth certainly knows but that he couldn’t be arsed to remember at the moment, brain in overdrive looking for a way out. And then suddenly he doesn’t have to, because Nico body-tackles the thing from the side and finishes is off with a few stabs, leaving Percy free to grin at him and jump back into the fight. In a bout of uncannily good timing, Leo and Calypso arrived to finish off the last monster with some well-oiled teamwork, after which he bent her over for a kiss, stoically ignoring the catcalls.
So really, back at their campfire everyone is feeling like a celebration is in order. Then Percy slings his arm over Nico’s shoulder (“Saved me again, Nico. Love you, man, what’d we do without you?”) and suddenly everyone is feeling very different things.
Percy is very confused, thank you very much. For the life of him, he cannot figure Nico out. He just gave him a complement, for the love of Poseidon, so why is Nico suddenly wrenching himself away?
Hazel is panicked, as she sees her brother twist away from Percy’s arm and stand stock-still for just a second before stepping quickly over to the shadows of the trees.
Jason is just a little (okay, very) mortified, and it’s not even him who’s being the idiot. Then he’s angry, because he’d worked so hard to convince Nico to stay after the Giant War ended, and here Percy is, ruining all of that with just a few choice sentences. Who knows where Nico went? Not Jason, that's for sure, but he does know it’s going to take more than just a quick search party, because if the son of Hades doesn’t want to be found, he isn’t going to be found.
Percy is also very confused as to why Jason chooses this moment to slam his fist into Percy’s jaw.
Nico knows it's probably a bad idea to shadow-travel before he gets him emotions under control, going from past experience, and he can already feel the exhaustion from the battle kicking in, but he does it anyway. He steps into the shadows, and feels his body become one, and then something goes sideways. In a brief moment of panic, Nico feels himself die (or maybe it’s like the cold of the shadows freeze him in that instant before death). And then he stops remembering.
Nita is very startled (but does not scream, thank you very much) when the shadows suddenly seem to disgorge a shape of black leather that immediately collapses right in front of her. Nita is used to acting in such situations, however, and she’s got her Manual open to healing in the time it takes for her to kneel down beside the shape, which she can now see is a boy of about her age, so pale and thin that he looks like a skeleton. But a quick check of his pulse spots tells Nita that there may be nothing useful in the Manual, and she’s about to transition into panic when the boy takes a huge, gasping breath, arching off the ground. She scrambles towards his head to steady it as he looks wildly around, hands grasping the grass. “The dead,” he chokes out. “I can’t feel the dead.” Then he passes out, and Nita decides she may need some help.