One Too Many Heartbreaks

XXIII. Nightmares and Stray Hairs (Nico's POV)

NOTE: TRANSLATIONS AT END OF CHAPTER
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Nico was suffocating. The air was poison and he couldn't breathe. Hope was gone and at this point he was running on pure desperation. He had to make it. He had to.

But he had no strength left. No fight in him. And a monster loomed over him, ready to kill. It pounced, and the last of Nico's energy went into a hair-raising yell.

"NOOOOOOO!" Nico cried, jolting upwards.

His head collided with the monsters, and it collapsed. Nico pulled out Nightmare to finish the job, and realized the monster was Leo just in time to not cut his head off.

Nico, shaking terribly, slid back down to sit by Leo's now unconscious body.

Nico's eyes grew wet. Instead of getting better, his flashbacks were getting worse. Right then, he wanted to leave this cave and get back to Will Solace.

Will was a healer. Will would know how to make the nightmares go away.

But Nico knew he couldn't leave. For his own sake and for Leo's and for everyone's. Both of the boys were, at this point, too emotionally unstable to be alone, and Nico didn't know what either of them would end up doing if they split up, or if they had to face the others.

So Nico just sat there, staring at Leo's limp body. He was so deep into thought after a while, that he didn't even hear the meowing.

Once he realized the sound, he was unnerved. Where was it coning from? It sounded awfully close, but right then the only people in the room were Leo and himself.

Nico tried standing to locate it better, but that made it sound farther somehow. So he got back down on his knees and crawled around. The meowing got louder the closer he got to Leo. Nico had to get uncomfortably close to the unconscious boy before he realized the sound was coming from... The tool belt.

Nico hesitantly reached into the belt until he felt something bite him.

(1)"Che cosa?" Nico wondered aloud, and reached back in until his fingers got a hold of something small and soft. When he pulled it out, it was a cat. A kitten, actually. It jumped out of his hands and fell when it landed. Nico gasped softly. It got up and tried to limp over to Leo, but gave up halfway through and just meowed sadly.

Nico tried to help it, but it obviously only wanted Leo, whom wasn't waking up any time soon.

Nico could feel the life slowly draining from the kitten and almost cried again. Leo had probably put the thing in his belt on purpose, so he could have a pet that was alive, and something alive that he could trust.

Finally, the kitten died, and Nico couldn't stand to just leave it there for Leo to wake up to. He gently scooped it up and carried it just outside the cave, where he buried it two feet down.

Nico turned to go back to the cave, but couldn't for some reason. He looked back at the mound of freshly overturned dirt. Something in him decided to pull out his sword and touch the dirt lightly with the tip. Nico watched as the dirt shifted gently, and, after a minute or so, the kitten emerged again- or, at least, its skeleton did.

Nico held out a hand and the skele-kitten crawled into it willingly, though it still did bite his thumb. It didn't hurt, though, and Nico took it back into the cave for when Leo woke up.

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(1) What?