SUNSHINE and DARKNESS

Do whatever it takes to survive, cuz' I'm here for you

trigger warnings - mentions of deep dark places (tartarus)

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The first night after Percy and Annabeth's fall into Tartarus was not a merry one. No one celebrated Nico's rescue. Hazel had gone off to have a hushed conversation with Frank and he didn't know any of the other demigods. He shouldn't have expected anything less, really – so he was alive. Big deal. They had more important things to worry about. Hazel eventually came back up to the main deck and said they should go to bed, so he followed her back to her room. Nico insisted she took the bed, as it was her room, and so he settled down on the floor with a pillow and a blanket.

"Wake me up if you need anything, okay?" Hazel whispered before turning the light out. Nico's heart immediately jumped up into his throat, but he didn't complain. He was a son of Hades. He shouldn't be scared of the dark. It was his birthright, the place where he truly belonged to.

That first night, Nico couldn't sleep.

The dark was just too frightening; logically, he knew there were no monsters in Hazel's cabin. But the tortured, traumatized part of his brain was telling him that he had to stay alert, had to stay awake. Besides, if he did fall asleep, he would just wake Hazel up with his nightmares, he rationalized. There was simply no point. So, he didn't sleep.

When Hazel woke up in the morning, she rolled over to see Nico, eyes still wide open, pressed with his back against the wall in the corner. "Did you not sleep at all?" She asked, her voice still rough with sleep.

Nico's head snapped towards her. "No. Uh, couldn't."

"Couldn't, or didn't?" Hazel said shrewdly.

"It doesn't matter," Nico snapped, rising from the ground and casting away any lingering doubt. "I'll... see you later." He said, more gently this time.

Hazel's brow furrowed in worry as he closed the door behind him, but she brushed it off and started getting ready for the day. She couldn't force Nico to share his feelings; that would only end in disaster. The best she could do was just be there for him.

Nico didn't want breakfast. He hadn't eaten anything except pomegranate seeds in two weeks, yet he still wasn't hungry. How that was possible, he didn't know. He just knew that he didn't want to eat.

"Yo, death breath, you going to eat anything?"

Nico gritted his teeth against Leo's grating voice. He'd barely known the son of Hephaestus a day and he was already annoyed by him. "No."

"Weren't you in a jar for, like, a week?" Piper said. By Nico's judgement, she was less superficial than most Aphrodite daughters, but he hadn't known her long. There was still time for her to reveal a mean streak.

"Twelve and a half days." He responded, trying to ignore their concerned stares.

"So... you need to eat."

"No, I don't."

"You really do." The son of Jupiter seemed like too much of a goody-two-shoes to Nico. He was bound to secretly be a piece of shit. Nico reminded himself to definitely never trust Jason.

Nico glanced towards Hazel, silently begging her to get them to shut up. She looked back, resolute. So she was on their side too. Frank wouldn't save him; Frank always sided with Hazel. "I'm not hungry."

Piper turned to him more fully. "That's the thing about not eating for a long time; I'm not sure if it's the same thing with death trances, but your stomach physically shrinks, which means you won't feel like eating even if you really need to. And you really need to. At least eat a piece of toast or something."