Heroes of Chaos 3: Subconscious Memories

Nico 18

The way Percy was looking at me made me realize just how much he had really been through.

His eyes were calculating, yet cold.

He made me feel like he was looking into my soul.

Yet his eyes held more. I'm not really sure if the others noticed but his eyes seemed to flicker, at least they did to me. They flickered between the cold calculating stare, and the playful idiot that I knew from two years ago.

"Where do we start?" asked Jason.

I had forgotten the question Percy asked. I had been to busy noticing the differences between the Percy I knew and the Percy that stood before me.

"How about how you got here," Percy said.

"Chaos sent us," Parker said.

Percy raised his eyebrow.

"How did he send you?"

"He had mom and Poseidon dance around like three year olds," Peter said.

"So I wasn't the only one who thought that?" Leo said.

"You found it hilarious," I scolded.

"Come on and tell me that that dance Poseidon was doing wasn't beyond hilarious."

I rolled my eyes.

"You still haven't answered my question."

I turned back to Percy.

"The dance they were doing was a ritual that sent us into your memory."

"Why?"

"He said that since the Void Spheres didn't kill you it was probably messing with your memory. We're here to correct those messed up memories."

Percy continued to look at me.

"Why would you do that?"

I was confused by the pained look in his eyes. He finally looked away from me, and that somehow made him look sadder.

"Why wouldn't we?" asked Jason.

"I understand Parker and Peter, but the rest of you. Why?"

I suddenly remembered that none of us had gotten the chance to truly explain what happened before and after his death.

And I now realized that even if we had forgiven him, and him us, he had left before the rest of us realized Nicolas's true colors. Meaning his last memories of us were those of cold response and hard eyes.

None of us had gotten a chance to apologize and he still didn't know how ashamed we were for treating him that way.