The Boy of Shadows and Sin

Chapter 6

They appeared on what seemed to be a mountain. Will was standing beside a tree, and Ricky beside him. But where was Nico?

In the darkness, he heard a cry of fear and pain. Nico! Will took of the bracelet and it morphed into an axe glowing slightly. That was all he would ever use it for, he knew. He was no good in battle. He looked around frantically but Nico was nowhere in sight.

There was another cry which caused Will to look up. There, in the middle of the tree, was the son of Hades. He seemed to grimace, and then disappeared. Will felt his stomach drop. Something was very wrong.

Nico appeared in a splash of shadows, standing beside Will. He staggered, clutching his shoulder, and Will caught him. For once, Nico didn't protest. Yes, something was very wrong.

"Ricky, can you start a fire?"

She scoffed. "Can I start a fire. I could burn down this whole forest if I wanted to."

Within a few minutes of her claim, she proved it to not be so outrageous; a fire flickered in a clearing. Ricky had also placed a few logs around the fire to function as benches. Will led Nico over to them and got him to sit down. It scared him, that Nico wasn't complaining about his help. In fact, the boy was shivering. He was going into shock.

Quickly, Will got Nico to lie down in front of the fire, and that was when he saw the blood dripping down Nico's arm. As gently as he could, he rolled up the boy's sleeve and revealed a large puncture wound in his shoulder. He was almost relieved. This was something that he could deal with, despite the pressure of the situation.

"Get me that bag," he ordered Ricky. She raised her left hand to the shine in her eyebrow in a mock salute and then threw Nico's bag over to him. He dug through it almost methodically, looking for the first aid kit Nico had no doubt packed, in addition to ambrosia and nectar. In a very, very rapid fashion, Will put his medical skills to work.

About an hour later, Will found himself putting another branch on the fire while Nico sat frowning on a log, with a blanked wrapped around him. He had argued that he didn't need it. Standard medical procedure, Will informed him. It's just what one did when someone went into shock.

Internally, Will suspected that Nico's body would not have reacted this way normally, but he had a sprained wrist and a twisted ankle—and how did he ever manage to do that?—in addition to a fractured fun, and that wasn't counting the manticore poison.

Together, he and Ricky had pieced together what had happened. When they were shadow-travelled by Nico they had ended up safely. Nico, however, hadn't known that there would be a tree and had somehow landed in the middle of the branches. Or, more accurately, landed with a branch in the middle of his shoulder, leaving a fair-sized puncture wound. He had then proceeded to shadow travel out of the tree, which got him back down in safety but really only served to drain him more.

Will had just performed a quick check on the shoulder wound and any other injuries; Nico was recovering remarkably—his rib seemed to be completely mended and both his ankle and wrist were also back to normal. The manticore's poison had cleared and the skin around the spike wounds had returned to its usual olive shade.

He was still worried, though. He hurts inside. Will couldn't get Reyna's voice out of his head. Nobody had ever spoken truer words. Part of his gift as a healer was the ability to detect pain, but pain simply radiated off of Nico. That scared Will. Nobody should ever have to ever hurt that much, but the poor boy had been to hell and back—and not just literally. Nico had emotion baggage that Will couldn't even begin to comprehend, and the medic didn't know how to deal with it. The boy was fourteen, for Zeus' sake! He hurts inside.

Ricky stood up. "Will. You and I are going to get more firewood. Come on, get moving. Mr. Accident Prone, you are not doing anything right now, except for sitting there."

In the deeper part of the woods, Ricky started scavenging for good dry branches. "What's your plan?"

Will kicked down a dead tree. "Find Thorn's home, kill monsters—"

He was cut off by a dramatic sigh. "Not about your sister. That easy. I mean about soon and gloom back there. He's got a lot on his plate."

Will hesitated. He knew exactly what Nico's problem was, but... "It's not really—"

"Your place to tell me what I already know. He's from the 40's, from when it was a criminal offends to be gay, he had a crush on the famous Percy Jackson and fell in love with him, but naturally Percy's straight as a board and has the IQ of one too, because he doesn't notice this after four years of being around the kid. So Nico risks his life time and time again for this Jackson jerk, but he gets with his girlfriend and they're practically hitched by this point, leaving Nico alone and heartbroken."

How did this girl, who had known them for a matter of mere hours, manage to sum up Nico's story better than Will could? "You—"

She grinned briefly. "I make it my business to know things. What're you gonna do about his poor little broken heart?"

Unfortunately, Will didn't have an answer for that. "I...I dunno. I mean, I think he's gotten over his crush on Percy, but..."

Ricky gave a harsh, bitter laugh. "No. No, you don't understand. He's not over it. And it's not just a crush. It's not hard to figure you out, sunny big. You're oblivious, you're open, and you've never been in love. Nico—he's in love. Still is. He told Percy it was just a crush. The poor boy was shaking when he told him, and he was shaking for weeks afterwards, could you see that? Of course you did, but you chocked it up to exhaustion. Do you know that he didn't want to do it but he knew that it would just eat away at him for the rest of his life? But he's still in love, still hurt."

"How do you know this?" Will demanded.

"I told you. It's what I do. I can tell what a person's greatest fear is, and all the times they've felt fear—not just been scared, but fearful."

"Then how do you know about Nico and his feelings?"

Ricky shrugged, and something changed in her face. "Love, fear, death, we're all connected. People fear death and death loves fear, but people still fear death despite the fact that love lives on. But as many people fear death, even more fear love, and fewer still realise it. They're scared of the commitment involved or being hurt or hurting the person they love. But there's also a fear of rejection, spoken or unspoken.

"For Nico, he was hurt and rejected. Oh no, Jackson never said that he didn't love him, but he just knew. Percy had Annabeth, he loved her, but he could never love Nico, and that's been killing him for years."

Will, suffice to say, was speechless.

Ricky shook her head. "We should be going back. It'll be light soon."

"No."

She turned and glared at him. "No?"

"No," he repeated. "One, I need to process what you just said, and two, well, have you ever been in love?"

"Rule two," Ricky snapped. She stopped though and stared at the moon wistfully, but with anger in her gaze. "Don't ask about me or my family." But this time there was an undercurrent of remorse in her voice, and for a moment she seemed lonely.

Will felt a wave of hurt roll off of Ricky.

"There's only one thing that's worse than loving someone," she whispered, so soft he could hardly hear her, "and that's knowing that they never will, can't ever love you back, but you never stop hoping that one day they'll wake up and realise that you're there and you've been there the whole time—and you've been there a very long time."

He reached out to put a hand on her shoulder, but she jumped and flinched away. "We should be heading back."

This time, Will didn't argue, and when he sat back down next to Nico—who complained that they had taken so long—he was vividly aware of Nico's pain, and this time, he knew the reason for it.