Broken (Thalico)

In Which Nico Sees A Blue Flying Worm

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"Hi!" A cheery looking Annabeth greeted as Thalia and Nico made their way to there seats. Nico wondered in amazement how she managed to be so upbeat at this ungodly hour, on their way to highschool none the less! But he brushed it off, taking a deep breath and trying to convince himself that what he was about to do was ok.

"Hi." He let out softly as he and Thalia took their seats, Annabeth's eyes widened while as Thalia just smiled, silently telling him to go on. "How have you been?" He tried, slightly more confident this time, yet you could still hear the nervous anxiety flowing through his words.

Annabeth looked awe strucken, looking over at Thalia as to make sure she heard him correctly.

"He asked you a question." Thalia prompted, slightly amused at her flabbergasted expression. It was quite funny really, even to Nico who rarely found the humor in a situation. The blond looked so completely confused and amazed that she completely ignored Nico's question, which he supposed he would have found quite rude I'd he weren't so amused by it.

"I- how- what- when-"she cut herself off, shaking her head and letting out a breath, "I've been well, how about yourself!?" The cheery happiness was back, even more so than before. Annabeth looked so intrigued by Nico's sudden desire to speak to her. Which he found quite unnecessary and stupid, he had simply deemed her trust worthy, it wasn't as if he had grown an extra arm. That was only his opinion of coarse, and to be fair it had been three and a half months of silence, one does not simply decide to speak after three and a half months of nothingness

Nico decided not to mention his attack earlier that morning, settling with a simple, "good" and a small forced smile. Annabeth obviously noticed, but decided not to comment, if Nico was going to talk to her she was not going to push her luck.

"Nico's been talking to me for the past," Thalia paused, mentally counting up the days that Nico had been speaking to her, "two weeks-ish." She smiled, and Annabeth was to excited to even correct her grammar, which would normally be the first thing she did. She was nerdy like that, top of all her classes, despite being ADHD and dyslexic. Most people wouldn't even know she had them, but she did, her love of all things school related just balanced it out. But that's not important.

"Wow, that's, amazing! Nico the progress your making in the span of two weeks is astounding! The average-" Annabeth started rattling on, her nerdy side taking control. But Nico wasn't paying attention, he was to busy staring in fascination at the way the blue thread of the bus seat wiggled, slowly sliding out and into the air. It floated around, wiggling and twisting in front of Nico. He knew that no one else could see the almost animated looking thread, that his therapist had told him at times like this he should close his eyes and tell himself 'I am in control of my own thoughts'. She told him it wasn't real, that it was just his schizophrenia playing tricks on his mind and that if he didn't stop it it could turn into a full on episode. But this seemed harmless enough, of coarse, Nico wouldn't know, his schizophrenia was very mild and the medication worked well enough, so this didn't happen to often. But how did he know it was the disease? It looked so real, as if he could reach out and grab it. Maybe Thalia could see it too, he would know it wasn't the disease taking control of his mind.

Disease, Nico didn't like that word, it made him sound sick, crazy, and he was not crazy. He was different, the therapist called him special, but he didn't like that either. Special sounded just as bad, he was different.

"-So- Nico? Are you listening to me?" Annabeth asked, "What are you looking at?"

"The thread" he said, reaching out to grab it, but it simply floated just out of reach, dancing right in front of Thalia's face. She didn't seemed fazed, how did she not notice the blue worm like string right in front of her? Was she that oblivious? No, maybe she was just lost in her thoughts, like Nico was sometimes.