How Do You Say Gods- Battle of the Labyrinth

20: THE COUNCIL GETS CLOVEN

Nico read the new chapter title with a faint smile. It was a silly descriptor, as these usually were, for a serious topic about a whole concept, a whole way of life for the satyrs up to this point being disbanded.

"Sounds like a kick-ass time," Alex laughed in delight.

A lot of things had changed about camp that day, and a not so small part of Nico regretted not staying. Working out how to keep Percy alive in the coming war with him instead of for him while the other kids adjusted to all this.

The larger, more pessimistic part of him was still more convinced it wouldn't work out. That the death kid wouldn't be allowed in anybody's cabin after what had just happened.

He'd probably have been kept with the other prisoners. Surely not every enemy had been defeated, though what Chiron would have done with them he wasn't sure he wanted to know. Taking away their dessert privilege or putting them in timeout didn't seem the appropriate response here...the best outcome had probably been offering abdication of Luke to stay or escorting them back out of Camp on the bus to...?

How many unclaimed children had died over the course of this battle? How many had the gods even noticed, let alone cared of both sides? He didn't agree with Luke's methods, but he'd have liked to have ever met him in moments like this. Luke wasn't around to care anymore, but whose to say he even would have been more kind to the returning, losing forces than Kronos would be.

Nico had been sitting around to long chewing on his thoughts, as if he could change the past no matter the outcome. He even knew what he was really arguing with himself about too, as Will's arm stayed around his shoulders now and his hand rested in place on his arm. This camp was Will's home, and while Nico had a cabin there it still never felt like someplace he could stay.

But there was a soft throat clearing, and this was a question he could still avoid for a time longer as he tried what he hadn't in the past and kept moving forward rather than sitting around in his past.

There had been no jokes, no snide comments while he'd collected himself. Nico's hesitance, Will's drawn penance, and Percy's tightly controlled anger made an obvious display of how this was going to go before it even started, which was of some comfort to Nico it wasn't entirely his fault for once.

...first saw burial shrouds used on bodies... not something I wanted to see again.

Will's hand was already starting to shake slightly. Nico didn't want to ask how many times he had seen it before, how many of those deaths were accidental and how many were monsters. Not because he could have asked the ghosts themselves at camp if they so lingered, but because if Will wanted him to know he'd volunteer it. He had yet been the kind of person to hide a single thing.

...Lee Fletcher ...wrapped in a golden shroud without decoration.

Will didn't really think anybody would want to hear his war stories, his graphic memories, his gruesome details added into this. They dealt with the worst of their life every day hearing through Percy's memory, it hadn't really crossed his mind before now anybody would even ask.

And yet Thalia turned to him, her eyes vivid with worry as she asked, "do you need a minute?"

"No," Will promised calmly. "I've had time since then to adjust."

There must have been something in his voice though. A longing, a weighted cadence that meant it really was still going to get worse.

"You guys probably don't want to hear this," he tried to caution anyways when the silence lingered and he hadn't meant it to.