Don't Fear the Reaper

27) Angsty Mo-Fos

A/N: I have a Meet the Author at the end!

Nico felt like he was sleepwalking through life— and it wasn't just because he hadn't slept in a while. The Lazarus Suit always left him like this for at least a week or two after it revived him. He felt hollow. The marks from the bullets that took his life time and time again on his assignment still felt like they were bleeding, even though he knew they had turned into scars days ago.

Nico stood by Damian's bed while the boy slept, his eyes scanning the room for anything that was out of place while his mind felt like it was underwater.

"I-" Nico said— or at least attempting to say. He knew it would be a while until he could speak again, but he hated that he couldn't at all. He usually chose not to speak, but to have the choice taken from him was painful.

Damian turned over in the bed, his eyes opening as he looked up at the demigod. "It'll come back soon," he said, somehow knowing exactly what Nico was thinking about. "It'll just take time."

Nico kept his face neutral, but he couldn't fight off the pit that formed in his stomach at the statement. He just gave a small nod to the kid.

Damian sat up in the bed, just looking at Nico for a long moment. "Can I see the scar?" he asked hesitantly, sounding like an actual kid. "I can guess that something happened to your throat, but..."

Nico didn't move for a long moment before he hesitantly grabbed his mask at the bridge of his nose and pulled it down, letting it fall from his face and reveal the dark scar on his throat.

Damian took in a sharp breath, eyes locked on the mark. "That's an exit wound," he muttered, probably not meaning to say it allowed.

Nico turned around and pulled out his hair from where it had been tucked into the bottom of the mask that wrapped around his neck and lifted it up so Damian could see where the bullet entered from.

"Execution style," Damian muttered, his voice soft.

Nico just turned back to face him, not making a move to answer.

Damian looked away from the demigod, his fingers fiddling with the edge of his blanket, before he finally spoke again after a few long minutes. "Thank you... you saved my father."

Nico hesitated before snapping his fingers once so that Damian looked at him as he signed, "it was a mission."

"My mother and grandfather did not order it," Damian said, a knowing look in his eyes. "They said they did, but they were lying. You wanted to do it, so you did."

Nico didn't respond, simply pulling his mask back up and going back to standing guard silently.

Damian smiled softly and got up from the bed, waving for Nico to follow him as he left the room. "I wish to see my father."

Nico followed Damian dutifully down the hall, paying no mind to the lingering glances of the Waynes and others that they passed along the way.

He knew the look in their eyes well; it was a look of pity. He saw it in the eyes of everyone at camp in those last weeks he had spent there before it all had become too much. It was the look of someone who thought they understood his suffering, but none of them ever did. They would never know the feeling of losing someone— and not just feeling their absence or the pain of watching it happen before their eyes.

He felt it.

One after another. Each of them dying before his eyes, and then the searing pain in his chest as he felt their soul depart. The sickness that filled his mind as they crossed the River Styx. The weight that hung on him until they reached judgment. The final suffocating blow that was their last moments in the limbo of the underworld before they entered their deserved afterlife.