Discolored

14: I Get A Taste of My Own Medicine

WPOV

I stay in the infirmary after Percy wakes up for another forty-eight hours before Chiron forces me to leave and tells my siblings not to let me go back until I've had at least one meal, eight hours of sleep, and two hours in the sunlight. It feels like an order I might have given someone else who overworked themself.

I don't like being on the receiving end.

I don't like having the leave the infirmary. It feels like giving up. But I stand at the doorway to the infirmary now. My siblings have all been ignoring my knocking. They refuse to let me in, and every time I knock, they just call, "Will, you are supposed to be asleep right now."

I glare at the door.

They don't get it because it wasn't their soulmate that got trapped in—well, in whatever is trapping Nico. I don't want to believe he's really gone; I should never have let Nico go save Percy. I know it's selfish to say that—I know Percy would never have made it out without Nico there to help him. But staring at the infirmary door, my life feels like I've been thrown into a terrible nightmare, only no matter what I do, I can't ever wake up from this.

Your soulmate is supposed to be the person who is always there for you, a constant support in an otherwise tumultuous life. I will never have a person like that again—soulmates only get one chance.

I think back to when Nico said he would rather have lived the rest of his life with no soulmate at all than to learn that his soulmate doesn't want him. Would I rather have lived in ignorance than to meet my soulmate, love him, and then lose him?

I don't think so. I think I cherish these memories enough that I can simultaneously miss him and be infinitely grateful that I met him. Maybe grief and gratitude are not exclusive.

I turn from the infirmary doors, knowing very well that I will be back as soon as I fulfill my required self-care tasks. I know it's stupid that I'm latching onto the infirmary like this, but I can't help it. Annabeth lost her ability to see color, but Percy was still able to come back. Maybe Nico will be able to pull through against all odds—hasn't he been able to do that before?

He's an amazing warrior. He never turns down a battle. I pray to any god that will listen to give Nico the strength to fight this one, too.

I need to get my minimum hours of sleep done so that if Nico comes back, I'll be waiting there in the infirmary for him. I think the rest of the camp has lost hope. The Demeter cabin brought me flowers yesterday, and Percy has been talking like he saw Nico die—but he didn't, not really. If I have to spend the rest of my life waiting in that infirmary for Nico to come back, I'm willing to do it. I will wait as long as it takes because if no one saw him die, then there is a chance he is alive, fighting to get back to me.

I pause at the Demeter cabin. I see their chrysanthemum bushes in a row, and there's a section of a couple of the bushes that are missing flowers—not cut professionally as the Demeter kids do, but picked by hand. Nico.

And that's the exact moment when I lose my composure entirely.

I don't remember how I ended up on the ground, but I'm there on my knees, and I'm sobbing. I can't believe Nico stole from the Demeter cabin for me. There are signs everywhere warning against it, but it was the middle of the night, and he was willing to risk getting in trouble if only he could bring me something that might make me feel better.

I want to see the flowers in color again—losing Nico means I'm missing an entire piece of the world. I can never again stare at the expanses of the strawberry fields in awe of the greens, I can never understand the beauty of a sunset, I can never look at a rainbow in the sky and appreciate it for what it really is.

And then horrible coughing and gasps for air rudely interrupt my mourning. I turn, wiping my tears on my sleeve, to yell at the sick person to go to the infirmary and leave me alone when—

Holy schist, color leaks into my vision again all at once, dripping into reality like watercolor paints running down a page. And when my gaze finds the source of the coughing—

Oh my gods, it's Nico—How—? I mean, it's a sunny day, there are no shadows—? It doesn't matter. I'm on my feet in an instant, and I'm so unhealthy right now that I'm dizzy from standing too quickly, and my vision is dark for a moment, but I don't care, and I'm stumbling towards Nico's heaving body anyway.

"Nico?" I ask, and he coughs in response. I reach for his neck, both to check that he's real and to take his pulse. He's real and solid beneath my fingertips, and his pulse is strong and regular. "Oh my gods—I've missed you so much, everyone kept telling me you were dead."

When Nico's eyes open the tiniest amount, he looks at me. He falls into another coughing fit, and then weakly lifts his hand to my hair, and says, "Breathtaking."

And then he passes out, and I pick him up, and my siblings better fucking let me back into the infirmary now.

Word count: 943

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Yours,

Sunny