We All Fall Down (One-sided Percico)

A/N: I don't own Percy Jackson. This story is meant to be short, croppy, and run-on sentences. It it to represent Nico's state of mind at the time. Enjoy.

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There was a absence in the room, an empty void, an object having gone missing and couldn't be found and everything miserable and horrible being packed into a box and shoved into that room. There was nothing save for the faint flickering and ripples of the green flame as it danced along the obsidian walls, shadows crawling and receding and mesmerizing the pair of deep brown eyes. The body just sat there on the bed, crouched and poised and hunched as if he had given up hope on everything.

He was all angles and bones, sharp and quick and angry and thin and lithe, much like a ghost. His olive skin had paled, the bags under his eyes like shadows and eyes a little too dark, a little too wide and large in the dim lighting, making him look like less of a boy and more like a skeleton with skin and peppery-black hair that curled in tight loops and tumbled and fell across his forehead with startling grace, like by an artist's stroke. His thin lips were pulled into a deep frown as the faint flicker of flame was reflected in his eyes that were too dark and saw too much and had experienced too much as a boy of his age.

But he's old and young all at once and it's slowly tearing him apart, because sometimes he feels old in his young body because he's lived a whole life in the casino and it isn't right, it shouldn't happen like that, but it did and now he feels only old and weak and miserable, just like this room. Just like his heart. Pulling the shroud of shadows tighter around himself like a blanket of darkness, he stares longer, his brown eyes still to wide and still too protected despite being alone now in his room even though it wasn't truly his room and probably never was.

This is not his home because it doesn't feel like it and his home is elsewhere, it'll always be elsewhere and his thoughts are jumbled and messed and he can't tell what time it is because it's dark - it's too dark - and it's scaring him and it's funny how it is because he's the son of Hades and stuff like that isn't supposed to be funny, isn't supposed to happen but it does. Now his chest is aching and his heart throbbing and he wonders if he's dying, if this is right because he can't think straight, can barely move without the coaxing of others and his heart hurts and is this supposed to hurt this much because it hurts it hurts it hurts and he can't stand it.

It hurts like nothing's ever hurt before and he's been hurt a lot by many people, been left alone and that hurts too, because he's truly alone now because Bianca's dead and oh gods was this what it felt like to die? Laughter rose up in his chest and it spills out, the sound maddening and causing his head to hurt and his ears to ring because it's too loud and too noisy and he hates himself all the more. It hurts and it hurts it hurts it hurts and will he ever stop hurting because he doesn't like to feel hurt but he feels it and he doesn't want to get used to it but he is and that just hurts him even more. He's used to being hurt and that thought makes his head hurt and then suddenly he's crying, laughing and crying because it hurts so much and Nico can't think straight anymore.

The shadows recoil from him but that's okay because he's used to being alone and that isn't a good thing. All he can really think about is how much it hurts it hurts it hurts and he wants to cry all the more because he's tired of hurting. His body hurts, his head hurts, his heart hurts, everything hurts and he hates that. Then he wonders vaguely if this is what people mean by heartbreak; why is it called that because it hurts, everything hurts and that doesn't seem right if it's only heartbreak but then he's crying harder and he lets the tears fall, even though he suspects the shadows will go and approach his father on the matter.

He's lonely and he's hurt. The thoughts are coming slower now, so slowly compared to the fast pace because that's what everything's always been, fast, so fast. Maybe it's because a demigod's life is so short and the fights are quick and painful so maybe that's why everything seems to fast. Being alone in his room doesn't help, though, and he just feels alone now more than ever and everything's so slow now. His heart is hurting less but the pain is still there and he thinks he might die.