The rainbow seekers guide to seeking rainbows

Nico

Nico regained his balance and tried to fathom what had just happened.

He had gotten to the road. He had almost stepped on it. No, he had stepped on it, he had felt his shoe make contact with the road, he had committed, it had been a matter of seconds until death would strike him, and yet...

He had been pulled back.

He had been thrown onto the side of the road.

He had been moved by Will.

And now it was Will who lay unmoving on the road, Will who had been hit by the braking truck, Will who was now the one who would most likely be pronounced dead in the next hour.

What on Earth?!

"He's not dead, is he?!" The truck driver had immediately stepped out of his vehicle and was now hurriedly checking Will for a pulse, but it was clear he had no idea how to. "Oh gosh, I didn't mean to kill him, this weather, I didn't see him until it was too late, oh I hope I haven't hurt him but he isn't responding..."

Trying to focus on the present, Nico walked towards where the man was frantically trying to get a response out of Will.

He knelt down and tried to steady his breathing as the other man - only a couple years older than Nico, he was around Percy's age - looked at him with wide, hopeful eyes. His chest shuddered with each breath in and out, and Nico tried his best to quell the rise of the tears that threatened to stream down his face. Already a torrent of emotions had flooded over him, and Nico was beginning to sniffle.

Please, please be alive, please...

Oh, thank God, thank the stars, thank the heavens!

Nico slumped to the road when he managed to find a pulse, so relieved was he. Will was alive, at least, Will wasn't gone, he...

"I'm gonna call the ambulance, okay?" The man from the truck has creases between his eyebrows - it was almost as if he had aged ten years in two seconds. "He's alive, right?" Hurriedly, he stabbed at his phone as Nico closed his eyes and prayed that Will would wake up soon.

"Okay."

With a last, concerned glance in his direction - it seemed that he hadn't actually seen what had happened, he had only gathered that Nico knew Will - the truck driver rushed away, the rain quickly obscuring his figure as he made the call.

The irony of this was even greater than the irony of Nico committing suicide.

Because in the end, it had been Will who had left him.

Looking up at the sky, the shafts of sunlight seemed to beam down directly on him, as if he were standing on the stage in the spotlight, as if he were the star of some show he wasn't aware of.

The rain had stopped.

- - - - - - -

"The doctors told me this, and they asked if I wanted to know the side-effects, and I said no, but..."

The man named Professor Chiron who was - no, had been Will's professor looked at him with a kindly gaze. Nico himself was fidgeting. He disliked hospitals - he had just emerged from where Will was in a coma, where he looked like he was simply sleeping but the machines he was attached to said otherwise. He had been planning on getting some fresh air, and had bumped into the man in the wheelchair outside.

Now they were together next to the wall, in what Nico would describe as an extremely awkward silence.

"Is that exactly what they said, Nico?"

"Yeah..."

"Oh..." Chiron trailed off, and Nico tensed. Was the news bad? How bad could it be? Would Will die? Well, that was what he deserved, didn't he? He deserved it, jumping straight in like that, forgetting just how determined Will would be to save him, even if that meant putting his body on the line.