Misery Loves Company

The God of Music Can't Hold a Tune

"So, Hades said you've been to the door before?" Leo questioned from Percy's side, dragging Festus in his suitcase form behind him as they walked through Central Park. Percy, Leo, and Annabeth treaded the winding paths with a palpable sense of foreboding. The Great Lawn, usually a sea of sunlit joy, now stretched out like a vast, shadowy ocean under the cold clouded sky.

Percy frowned, "Not my favourite memory. But yes, Nico and I used it to visit the River Styx."

"When he sold you out to his father?"

Percy choked, turning to the mechanic, "How'd you know about that?"

Leo looked at him sidelong amusedly, "You told me - actually you told most of us on Argo II. You didn't exactly give Nico a glowing review during the trip to Rome. He's told me about it since then too, not his proudest moment."

"Yeah, we weren't on the best of terms back then." Percy sighed, choosing not to dwell once again on his and the son of Hades' past. "I didn't think you guys were close..."

'Why are you here?' Was the unsaid question and Percy hoped it didn't come off too rudely. Leo had a streak of self-preservation that had rendered itself particularly useful in keeping him alive thus far, but risking his life for a demigod he had barely tolerated was certainly out of character.

"We were just surprised that Nico said you two had stayed in touch," Annabeth amended for Percy. She walked at his other side, her hand enclosed in his. Percy could feel the deep indents in her palm where she'd dug her nails into the battle-calloused skin the night before, during a particularly cruel nightmare.

"Why 'cause we hated each other on the Argo?" Leo smirked, shaking his head almost fondly and his dark curls bounced with the movement. He shrugged before answering his own question, "I was wary of him, sure. The dude could start a zombie apocalypse with the snap of his fingers. Took a long time for me to look past all the death stuff, especially when he looked like a walking corpse for a while there."

"So, you two just talked and now you're risking your life on a quest for him?" Annabeth had a calculating glint in her eyes before she turned her gaze away to monitor their surroundings once more. The trees, their leaves rustling with whispered secrets, loomed like ancient sentinels, their branches intertwined to form a canopy that filtered the light into ghostly patterns on the ground. It was all too easy to imagine the hulking shadow of a monster lying in wait, or the glittering eyes of a beast sizing up its prey.

"Ah no, we talked after I, you know, died...and then parted ways. It wasn't till-" Leo took a steadying breath, "-Jason died that we gave each other a chance. Nico showed up at my door and now, here I am."

"Nico showed up at your place and you didn't slam the door on him?" Percy raised an eyebrow. He'd seen what the two were like on the Argo, Leo had practically fled from any room Nico entered.

The Ramble of Central Park thickened around them, a labyrinthine maze of trees and roots and shadows. The narrow paths, winding like serpents, twisted and turned through the dense foliage. And the air was thick with the scent of earth and decay - as they approached where the boundary between the living and the dead was so perilously thin - each breeze through rustling leaves felt like the breath of some unseen watcher.

Leo, despite the foreboding scenery, grinned, "I almost did, but then my dead best friend showed up all ghosty 'n shit and told me to get my head out of my ass and give Nico a chance."

"You've seen Jason?" Percy exclaimed.

At the same time Annabeth frowned and said, "That doesn't sound like something Jason would say."