Sunshine Through the Clouds

Nico--Stupid. Monsters.

Something was up. The dim glow of the Big House led to shadows flickering around, showing elongated silhouettes that made Nico's skin crawl. Will would be back tomorrow, maybe that was all that was wrong, but there was an undeniable strangeness in that day. Kayla could feel it, too, Nico could tell by the way she seemed a little on-edge during their message with Will that morning after breakfast. She tried to hide it, and he didn't seem to pick up on it, but Nico certainly did. He decided to bring it up as they left the Big House to go towards the dining hall.

"Is something wrong?" He asked.

"Yeah," She replied, not looking at him but rather looking ahead, "Don't you feel it, too?" Nico nodded.

"I get it."

"It's like...Nyssa describes the damage to the wall as if 'something's been breaking in.' I-I thought the camp was impenetrable to monsters. How could something sneak by?"

"Well," Nico began, "The border helps, yeah, but it's not perfect. Some monsters can slip by, especially if nobody's there to catch them. All they need is to learn where the right angle is, find the right time of day..."

"I guess," Kayla shrugged, then she grinned, "Race you to the pavilion." She was already sprinting before Nico could even start.

Nico came to a quick stop a few feet ahead of Kayla, who whined.

"Un-fair," She said, fake-pouting before bursting into a laugh. Nico managed a weak smile, which quickly grew. He missed that feeling. It was almost sibling-like, so calm and perfect. Yeah, he liked staying at Camp. Not that he'd admit it.

Now that bright morning memory had given way to the sunset. It was after dinner and the campfire, but just before the sun went all the way down, that Nico sat on the railing of the Hades cabin and watched the ominous darkness fall over the area before him. Nothing sat right, at all. He twisted the sun charm around his wrist and let his thoughts take over.

The day the lava wall failed, nothing seemed super wrong. It probably just slipped

up a little, even the best machines do. Kayla was fine, people with burns recovered by the next day, it was okay. Nothing they hadn't expected as demigods. Then, when the unofficial 'investigation' began, he started to suspect a little. Of course, it wasn't super bad; Just a little mistake, maybe a bad repair a couple years ago.

Naturally, things had to get worse overnight. There were more scratches and marks along both the inside and the outside of the wall. It wasn't easy to figure out what had done it. He still wasn't even sure of what it actually was. A monster, of course, one with claws sharp enough to dig through metal and gears. That narrowed it down to...approximately every monster in existence.

He was so ready to give up, to let these little petty attacks win. They didn't hurt anybody, they were impossible to stop...It wouldn't make sense to bother fighting them. He knew it wasn't right to want to give up, to give in like that, but every part of him wanted to. Every part of him was just waiting for one last crack to shatter him into a million pieces, the way it was meant to be.

Nico didn't care if anybody was there and let tears fall out of his eyes. He'd done so much, just to be ruined by a stupid fucking monster that refused to be caught. The tears were hot and stung along every single cut in his face, sliding down his neck and soaking up the collar of his shirt. The grass below him wilted and went white in his anger. His feet kicked along them, barely reaching the ground below, as he delivered more waves of death to the greenery.

Nico looked up and saw nothing. There was nobody there aside from him. Nobody was there to comfort him, tell him it's okay, to let him cry it out and take as long as he needed. Nobody would ever be there. That's just the way it was supposed to be. If a single illusive monster could break him down like this, send him crying and angry out of his damn mind, then maybe he wasn't a hero in deservance of comfort. Maybe he was still just a scared kid. He wiped his eyes with the back of his hand and took another look at his surroundings.