madness and ecstasy // leo valdez

- who doesn't want to get chased by an angry mob?-

Teqi watched Hazel intently as she spluttered, "No! why would you think that? I'm not- I didn't....how did you know?" Panic showed on her face, and Teqi touched her shoulder gently.

"Nobody else knows that didn't already, Nico got you out, right?" Teqi asked quietly, glancing ahead at Percy and Frank. Hazel gulped, and nodded, looking at where her shoes landed on the cobblestone path. It was a warm afternoon, and the sunlight filtered through trees onto the garden beds lining the path.

"Are you my sister?" Hazel asked, looking up curiously. Teqi's eyes widened and she laughed at the thought, her? A child of Hades? 

"Oh, no, no I'm not. Neeks is like my little brother I guess, I showed him around camp on his first day and when Bianca went on-on her quest.... I looked after him...."

"Did he tell you he was going to get me out of the underworld?" Hazel asked cautiously, and Teqi frowned, a tiny vine growing from between the stones beneath her and wrapping around her foot. It broke and fell back when she stepped forwards. 

 "No, not exactly." She laughed bitterly, kicking a stray pebble. "My brother was killed. In the second Titan War. Battle of Manhattan." Teqi said shortly, her heart clenching, and she earned a look of sympathy from Hazel.

"I can't get him back for you...I'm sorry."

Teqi looked around the gardens they were walking through, the cold prickly feeling underneath her skin coming back as she thought about Tony. She watched the clouds, trying not to let the wetness in her eyes fall down her cheeks. "We could, though. We were going to."

She took a shuddering breath, "After he was killed, and the war was over, Nico found me...He promised that we would find a way to get him back out, I think it was just to give me hope, or maybe calm me down, but he stayed with me in the city. We knew that if I went back to camp, I wouldn't get the chance to bring him back, so we lived on the streets while we figured out what to do."

Hazel watched with dark eyes, stepping over a fallen branch from the peach trees above. "We lived like that for about three weeks, we had a plan, we just needed to get to the underworld... I didn't know that the doors of death were open then, Nico would've. He hid a lot of things from me. One morning I woke up, and he was gone."

 "At first, I thought that he had gone by himself, because the underworld is dangerous for demigods who don't have a connection there. I waited a month for them to come back. Then I lived on the streets for another three months, I couldn't get back to camp, so I was homeless until the government found me. Nico never came back, but he took the supplies we were going to use when we were in the underworld, so I knew that he went down there."

Hazel frowned, "I'm sorry. I wish it was different."

Teqi chuckled humourlessly, looking at the rows of multicoloured flowers. Some of them were growing between the stones. "What if I could get him out? Through the doors? How did Nico do it?"

"I'm not sure. I don't remember it very well; I wasn't fully aware when I was down there. Your memory starts to fade. You start to fade. If you help me find Nico, he might tell you."

"I might be mad it him, but of course I'll he- Oops." Teqi looked down, lifting her shoe at the crunching sound beneath. She had stepped on a rose that was starting to grow in the rows of moss between the cobblestones. 

A loud rushing sound filled her ears, blocking out Hazel's voice. Teqi's hands started to shake, and she brought them up to her ears, squeezing her eyes shut so she didn't have to see the purple rose.