Don't Fear the Reaper

75) Twas My Birthday... Tis No Longer

Nico had somehow actually managed to sleep the rest of the day away, waking up once again as everybody was going to bed. He hadn't quite rested, the nightmares coming back with a vengeance after being forced away the night (or technically day) before, but they were only about his worst days with the League—unpleasant and deeply unsettling, but at least they were less painful than Tartarus and everything that came after.

He continued with his nightly routine of training in the gym while the others slept, Canary joining him at around sunrise. She greeted him kindly, much like the day before, but all he did was give her a small nod of acknowledgment before turning back to his training. The woman seemed to accept that he wasn't in a space where talking was really possible and just moved to sit on be bench.

Every once in a while she would say something, praising an especially impressive move he pulled off or critiquing his form if it was warranted, but she never seemed to expect an answer.

"You leave yourself too open," she said as the holo training pad's figures faded away, Nico having turned it off so that he could be gone by the time the others began to wake up. "Your attacks are more than impressive, but you leave yourself vulnerable when you switch to defense. While you'd be fine in most fights, you'd be putting yourself at risk in a fight against a more skilled opponent."

"I'm not too worried about dying," Nico muttered, his voice gruff from the strain of trying not to scream in his sleep.

"Is that a part of your abilities?" Canary asked, seeming genuinely curious. "I've trained many powered people who had a bad habit of being completely dependent on their powers in a fight, but, as your experiencing now: powers can be taken away. It's best to train for the contingency that you don't have them so you can never be caught unprepared."

Nico rolled his eyes, moving to sit on the bench as he began the ritual of removing all weapons from his person. "Revival isn't a power of mine; I'm just not that worried about death."

"Do you want  to die?"

Nico was tempted to just reply with a smirk and leave, but he really didn't want to have his sharp object privileges taken away so soon after getting them back. Plus, he wasn't even halfway done with removing his weapons, so he just let out a sigh and gave a casual shrug. "It's like that old saying, 'beware of monotony; it's the mother of all the deadly sins.' I've died and come back enough times for it to become monotonous, but staying dead sounds like an interesting way to mix things up." His tone was probably sassier than it needed to be, but he was in a bad mood so... fuck it.

Canary looked at him with those same analytical eyes as before, but there was a look of fondness in them as well. "That's an Edith Wharton quote. You didn't strike me as an American Classics reader."

"Probably because I'm not," Nico said, putting his larger knives in the bag before beginning to remove the smaller ones from their hiding places around his person. "I'm pretty sure my mamma was though, and she used to read me... what's it called in English? La Duchessa in Preghiera, so... The Duchess Would Pray?"

"The Duchess in Prayer," Canary corrected.

Nico nodded in thanks. "She would read me the Duchess in Prayer  when I was little—I assume she read me other books as well, but that's one of the only ones I can remember."

Canary hummed. "It's ironic that you use her quote to call death monotonous when she wrote 'to me the only death is monotony'. She believed that a life void of passions and excitement was more profound and deadly than the actual, physical  death."

Nico finished stowing his last knife, shouldering the bag as he stood up and kinda just gestured vaguely with his arms outward. "Welcome to my fabulous, passionless life of monotony. There is nothing quite so beautiful and satisfying as living the same day on repeat, surrounded by strangers, while actively being held against my will."

"You have complete control over whether or not you break the monotony," Canary said, not in an accusatory or condescending way, but rather as a means to make Nico see the other side of things. "You choose to maintain the same schedule. You could easily turn strangers to friends if you just spent a little more time around the others—Impulse and Blue Beetle already seem to like you a great deal. As for the 'being held against your will', I can't quite argue against that. I could say that you should make the most of it, but that seems a bit condescending."

"A bit?" Nico said with a raised eyebrow.

Canary chuckled at that. "Okay, a lot condescending."

Nico just rolled his eyes, walking to the lockers to stow his bag of weapons. He heard Canary following a few steps behind. "Since I'm pretty sure you're a shrink, I'll put it in your own terms for you: I've lived in an environment that has been constantly changing for as long as I can remember, but I've always had certain constants in my life; however, those constants have been taken from me. Repetition gives me a manufactured sense of control—which is pretty hard to come by these days. While it is monotonous, it's also a source of stability." 

"I'm impressed," she said with a small chuckle."

"Why thank you. I've been traumatized a lot," Nico said with a smirk and a glint of mischief in his eyes. Canary chuckled lightly again before he continued. "As for the whole 'friends' thing: I don't exactly have a great track record with friends. I used to have some, but they aren't around anymore."

"How so?"

Nico's mischievous spark disappeared as he let out a huff of annoyance and he closed the locker, turning to meet Canary's eyes with a done look. "Well, I'd love to bring them in so we could do a really fun group therapy session, but they're all pretty dead right now, so it'd be a bitch to coordinate." Nico began walking away, but paused by the doorway and looked back at the woman. "Actually, I take that back. Most of them are dead, the others just abandoned me for 'shits and giggles', as youngsters like to say."

"They all  left you?"

Nico, who was halfway out the door already, stopped. He didn't look back, just starred at the floor in front of him as flashes of the bluest eyes and the brightest smile filled his mind. "One didn't—I abandoned him instead."

"Why?"

Nico hesitated before looking over his shoulder to meet the woman's eyes one last time. "He got a bit too close and saw the truth. I don't like the idea of others suffering on my behalf."

Canary probably tried to say something in response to that, but Nico was already walking away. 

A/N: Sorry for ghosting, but I had finals and then I was moving and then it was my birthday (shout out to BADDOCTER for wishing me a happy birthday <3). I am literally about to move again, so I am trying to pre-edit some chapters rn, but you'll get to see how well that goes based off how many chaps keep up with being back to back lol.

Vote. Comment. Tell me what you've been up to since the last chapter (I already said lol, but I did get Hozier's premier album on vinyl for my birthday, so that's exciting)