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"i must die. not tomorrow. not tomorrow's morrow comes this misfortune on me, but even now i shall be named with those that are no more." [1]

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"shit, if you wanted to talk to me, you didn't have to kill a dude to summon me. i mean, it worked, so i suppose..." thanatos appears, surveying will in my arms.

"shut up," piper hissed at him, her voice so commanding that the god obliges. "just give me the damn thing."

i say nothing. will's eyes are still open, empty and hollow. with shaking hands, i closed them. i didn't need thanatos' presence to know that will was dead, but now i was sure that his soul would be gone.

the world blurs and un-focuses around me as i stare into his face. he has a sort of innocent look to him that i only ever see when he's asleep. completely blank and wiped clean. his skin is bright and pale, devoid of the healthy flush that warmed his cheeks. his hair, slightly damp with the blood, now dark red, felt like silk in my fingers. those golden strands seemed to lose its glimmer.

"nico," piper's voice sounds far away. i don't respond at first. i hardly register my surroundings. "nico, i got it. we should go. we can catch a train-"

"i can shadow travel us." i say. i hear the words come out but i don't feel my lips move. my body feels strangely not a part of me. my consciousness is drifting somewhere else, in some state of shock. as if my own essence had decided to leave town until things made sense again. i wish it had not come back. when things clicked, it felt like worlds ripping.

"are you sure? do you have the strength left to do it?"

"what?" i say, hearing but not comprehending what she said.

"strength, nico, i'm not sure if you have the strength to shadow travel so far after all this. you're tired."

"strength?" i repeat. "i'm not leaving him here."

"nico, i'm really sorry." she says softer. i recognize the understanding in her voice. she knows better than anyone that love stings. love hurts. but her charmspeak is no match for grief.

i close my eyes and feel myself quiver. "don't be."

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"lay me down; all strength is gone from my feet. hades draws near! dark night falls on my eyes." [1]

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"they're back! chiron, they're back!"

i shadow traveled us in one long trip, without a stop. my head feels light, but dizziness is preferable than being in a normal state of mind. will is heavy on my shoulders, even though the weight is distributed between piper and i. in the fog of my exhaustion and confusion, i see figures coming up the hill towards us. dusk is quickly falling now and it is hard to make out any shapes.

"dear gods, is he alright?" chiron's voice, i think.

the dead weight of him lifts off my shoulders as people help us. it's all a blur. i think people are asking me questions. not sure. i mumble incoherently.

"take will to the infirmary, quick!"

i shake my head i try to tell them that it's useless, but they do it anyway. i feel his body part from me and i feel like an empty shell. as if my soul resided in that body too. now half my soul lingers elsewhere, in between his body and mine.

"get nico somewhere to rest. look at the state of him-"

someone is holding my shoulders and guiding me down the hill to find a place to lie down. they try to tell me that everything is going to be alright, but the words pass through me like i was made of nothing. the hill is steep. my legs wobble underneath me and i black out, seeming to lose all substance or solidity. i turn to liquid smoke before i hit the ground.

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"the king will not know his loss until he suffers it." [1]

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i awake in the infirmary. no sign of will, or at least, his body. it is deathly quiet and the air is cold with darkness. with difficulty, i turn my neck to the side. there's a vase of flowers. someone had left some daisies. my eyes dart around as my mind pieces together information. i feel a sharp sickness in my gut.

oh gods.

i get out of bed and make it to the bathroom, where i throw up. i rinse out my mouth in the sink and i avoid looking at myself in the mirror. i make my way back to the bed i was in before someone catches me not resting like i should be. i almost expect to hear his voice telling me to go back to bed and not to wander? who is taking care of me? i'm in a fresh outfit of cotton clothes. daisies aren't my favorite flowers. when i'm stuck in the infirmary, will usually gets me peonies.

this time, not peonies, but daisies.

i lay my head back down on the much-too-fluffy pillow. not peonies. i feel an awful wrench in my gut. if every moment leading up to this was numbness and incoherent whirls of memories, i suddenly understand everything very sharply. my consciousness has finally caught up with me. my soul had returned to its host. it churns deep in me, eating at me, venom in my blood.

i want to scream. i want to curse the gods. i want to claw my own eyes out, oedipus-style. i want to pull my hair and scratch my skin and descend into a madness that would numb this all. i understand every greek tragedy all at once. pain! madness! grief! sorrow! suffering! the chorus sings it in my ears loud enough for my head to pound.

i understand the fit of rage of achilles. i know that terrible state of blind sorrow that drove clytemnestra to kill her husband and for demeter to kill all life. the darkest, most deepest pits of our primal emotions and impulses. the greeks know it most well. grief, sorrow, madness.

i feel all of this, laying in that infirmary, the first bits of dawn coming up through the windows. i want to do anything but lie there. beat something to a pulp. scream. sob and weep. rip out my own heart. tear off my own skin. climb up to olympus and tear apart the gods. seek revenge upon the fates. there is no escaping this in me. it burns and it hurts and my mind seems for any way to numb it. the silence of the morning cuts into me. how i am here in the light of the sun and he will never see it again. all this, yet i can do nothing but lie there as my head is burning with pain and i could barely stand.

the sun mocks me from the horizon. so does the vase of daises at the table. i do not want to see the sun. i shut my eyes tight and i pretend to be dead. dead in the kind embrace of the darkness in my eyelids. dead so that maybe i could see him once more.

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"the sun looks upon you and me, both of us miserable, who have wrought nothing against the gods to deserve death." [1]

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muffled voices from outside the hades cabin door.

"is he okay?"

"why would he be?"

"he's in there?"

"yeah, he hasn't left for a few days now. ever since being discharged from the infirmary early. he was told to rest, but i didn't think he'd take it so seriously."

"but how has he been doing?"

"it's always hard to tell with hades kids, him especially."

"i can't go in?"

"i don't think it would be a good idea."

"can i? i'm his sister, after all." pipes in another voice.

"i don't know. you know him better than me."

the door creaks open. i see a sliver searing light from the opening. i see hazel's outline in that small fraction of sight. the door closes again.

"why is it so dark in here?"

"i don't like the lights on." i answer, my voice sounding unrecognizable.

"are you on the bed? i can't see."

"yeah, that's the point."

"to not see?"

"right now, the dark is preferable to the visible world."

i hear the bed that is almost always empty in the hades cabin next to mine squeak as i assume hazel sits on it. i see her dark figure dimly in the dark, black on darker black.

"what is it?" i ask.

"what is it that you've been doing in here?"

"thinking."

"that's a dangerous thing to do in the dark alone."

"i can't bear an alternative."

"tell me what your thinking, what you're feeling."

"there is too much i think."

"then start with feel."

"i felt his soul depart. i felt it go down to the underworld where i'll follow him."

"please, nico, don't do anything rash." hazel pleads.

i turn in my bed, facing the wall where nothing moved and i was alone. "you don't have to be worried."

nothing i do or plan to do has been or will be rash. nothing done is ever rash. it's all been done before, thousands of years ago. our existence in itself is merely an echo of an ancient story, is it not? echoes of echoes, even.

no, not rash. desperate, grief-stricken, and sudden, but not rash. i close my eyes where there is enough darkness for the both of us to dance in. it already feels like forever. nothing done is rash because every minute without him to me is a thousand years.

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"that i had the power to bring you back to the light from the dark halls of hades, and from the waves of cocytus with the oar of the river of hell. oh, you only," [1]

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[1] Euripides, Alecestis