*cocks gun* this one's gonna hurt (this is your warning that people are unwelllllll this chapter)

Percy Jackson

I wonder if Annabeth realized she has a matching grey streak with Thalia and Luke.

After what happened, I didn't dare bring it up— she seemed even more fragile than the two girls who almost died today.

For the most part, it was a quiet flight back to New York. The Pegasi can fly a lot faster than I remember, and with the incentive of a few sugar cubes, didn't even complain about it.

As soon as we landed, campers were running up to us, I'm sure having seen the pegasi from a distance. At the front of the group was the Hunters, Jason (who was technically flying), and then Chiron with Nico on his back, Octavian running alongside the centaur (or, trying to).

Getting off Blackjack, I thanked him again and gave him one last sugar cube before he flew off (I wonder if Chiron eats sugar cubes). The other three dismounted, though Phoebe and Zoë were essentially mobbed by their now ex-comrades.

Meanwhile, Nico almost broke his leg jumping off of Chiron and Jason almost tumbled as he flew down faster than he should've. The two of them were tripping over themselves as they ran up to us.

Only for both of them to see that their sisters weren't with us.

"Where's my sister?" Both brothers asked in unison.

The sons of Jupiter and Hades just... Stared at me as if they didn't just suck all of the air out of my lungs.

Sure, I expected the question from Jason. If Thalia originally assumed she'd come back here until the solstice, they wouldn't have given him a suitable goodbye.

I looked back at Chiron and Mr. D, because they knew about Bianca.

According to what Zoë said on the flight back, after we told Annabeth about Bianca, she said that Artemis knew about the daughter of Hades before we arrived. She said that Hades had sent her a vision the same day it happened.

She warned Zoë and Phoebe that the Hunters may be in mourning when we arrived because they should know about Bianca.

Chiron should have told them.

Chiron was supposed to tell them.

Yet, the centaur wouldn't meet my gaze and Mr. D did for a moment, but just looked down after that.

Before I could summon what I'm sure would not be the right words for this because I'm not a crisis counselor or a grief counselor or a therapist in any capacity and this isn't supposed to be my job, Annnabeth took a deep breath.

And then she ran off.

Grover squeezed my hand, stifling a breath out, seeming conflicted about what to do, our anxiety feeding into each other.

I'll go try to handle her. He informed me through our link.

"Annabeth!" Grover yelled, chasing after the daughter of Athena, who ran towards the cabins.

Which left me with Nico and Jason.

"Thalia... Sorry." I apologized, collecting myself. "Thalia will be back in New York for the solstice, I think— we sort of had a run in with the police in Albuquerque, so he's no longer considered missing, which means that there's a ton of stuff they have to figure out at your mom's estate. They just wanted to see how much it was before coming back. She's okay— you could probably send an IM, if you know how to, but she's just in Pasadena."

Jason breathed the biggest sigh of relief, but it came pretty close to that of Octavian's behind him— I'm sure if Thalia passed, he'd be the one who would have to comfort Jason, so it made sense.

"Oh, thank the gods, thank you." Jason said, visibly and audibly relaxed. "I'll try and IM them tonight. Pasadena isn't that far from Camp Jupiter, maybe I could take a day or two to help her out after I go back."

"He'd appreciate it, I'm sure."

"Is Luke not with her?" Octavian questioned. "Not saying that you shouldn't go, Jason, just... If Reyna vetoes it since you've already been gone for so long."

And suddenly, Mr. D and Chiron had the gaul to stare daggers into me.

"Is he... I think so, but I'm not sure." I half lied. "He was with Thalia when we left California, but I'm not 100% sure what their plan was, besides that Thalia was going to Pasadena."

"But you don't know for sure?" Chiron questioned.

I shook my head.

"I can't say for sure."

Feeling a tug on my jacket sleeve, I looked down to see the son of Hades— the only living child of Hades, looking up at me, trying very hard to be patient, but reaching his limit.

"What about my sister?" He asked. "Where's Bianca?"

The younger demigod paused.

"Is she with Thalia, too?"

At first, I opened my mouth, but nothing came out. A block of ice seemed to freeze inside of me, causing a wave of goosebumps to cover my skin despite the winter jacket I was wearing.

What am I supposed to tell him?

"Is she... No." I said, feeling the tone of the camp dampen as everyone but Nico seemed to be able to read my expression. My reaction. "she didn't go with Thalia."

One last time, I looked back at the director and trainer of the camp, but it was pretty fucking clear that they were going to be of absolutely no help because, once again, it's like they couldn't see me.

How many times did Luke have to do this?

Closing my eyes, I took a breath and put in the least believable smile known to man and tried to ignore the extra weight of my jacket pocket.

"Why... Don't we go for a walk, Nico?" I suggested, not wanting either or both of us to break down in front of the entire camp. "We can find somewhere to play mythomagic and I'll tell you all about your sister, okay?"

And, at the mention of getting to play his favorite game in the entire world, Nico nodded his head and practically jumped in excitement as we walked away from the group.

How do I even begin to describe what happened?

"So," Nico said. "Where is Bianca?"

She never said goodbye to him.

"She's..." I nearly lost my voice, losing against the despair as the events of this week sank in. I grabbed the figurine from my pocket and crossed my arms. "She's with your dad."

"She got to see him again!?" Nico exclaimed, which was my reminder that they knew their dad, personally. He was there for them as kids. "Lucky! Can I go, too? How long will she be there? How do you get there? I miss my papa."

I stopped at the amphitheatre, Nico looking back at me once he realized I'd stopped.

"Nico, you can't..." I began, feeling my voice shake as I couldn't stop the vision of Bianca running to her death from repeating on a loop in my mind, the guilt of not catching up to her eating me alive.

I reached my hand out to him— the one that held the statue of his dad.

The last thing he would ever have of her.

I felt a tear fall.

"It's not... That kind of visit, Nico." I broke the news to him, my voice shaking in the process as I fought against the voices in my head because they can wait for this to be done before they convince me to try and not wake up in the morning. "She isn't... She isn't coming back."

Stepping closer to me, Nico's hand hovered over the statue of Hades.

"Bianca sacrificed herself two days ago," I elaborated as he just... Stared at my offering. "She... Wanted you to have this. She said it was... The only one... One you didn't have left."

Very gently, the son of Hades took the statue in his hands, eyes still fixed on it.

"She loved you so much, Nico," I went on as he began to process what had happened. "She wanted me to tell you that she loved you and that she was sorry and she's... She's dead now, Nico, and I'm... I'm sorry."

And he just... Stared at the statue. Silent.

For a moment, I was worried he didn't hear me, so I just kept talking, and in hindsight, I should've kept my mouth shut.

But I told him everything. About how Zoë had warned us to not take anything, and Bianca did anyways because it was special for Nico. How she entrusted me with it once she decided what she was going to do and knew the dangers.

How she ran and I couldn't run fast enough.

How, after the fact, they had to drag me away because I couldn't believe that she would sacrifice herself so soon after being granted immortality.

How I stared out the window of the SUV we stole for hours, begging to see her run or somehow fly after us.

Getting confirmation that she was gone from Artemis.

I told him everything.

"But you... You said you would protect her." Nico finally responded, looking up at me with tears in his eyes. "You promised! How could you!? How could you let her...?"

He lost his voice temporarily, swallowing the rest of the sentence, but him yelling caused me to jump back.

"Nico, I tried to stop her—"

"IT DOESN'T MATTER, BECAUSE IT DIDN'T WORK!" His shrill voice made me step back, as silly as it seemed to be to be afraid of a ten year old child. "You were supposed to protect her, but now she's dead. She was all I had and you just let her—"

Hearing the sound of bones clicking together is something that I'm going to hate hearing in health class for the rest of the year.

Turning around, the most annoying creatures to ever have tried to kill me were suddenly back—the skeletons that can only be killed by a child of Hades.

"DIE!" Nico yelled, a crack opening in the cement of the amphitheatre, causing the skeletons to fall in before I could even think of pulling Riptide out.

Almost as soon as the hole appeared, it closed again.

And Nico was running.

"Nico—"

"LEAVE ME ALONE!" He screamed as I tried to run after him, but tripped and fell. "I WISH YOU DIED INSTEAD— YOU SAID YOU WOULD PROTECT HER, YOU MONSTER!"

Cool. I thought to myself ironically. The voices in my head don't even have to tell me to die, Nico did it for them.

Struggling to get up, I realized I had tripped over a new crack in the flooring of the amphitheatre, where the hole had formed.

Looking in the direction where he ran off, I couldn't see any signs of the young demigod.

I wish you died instead.

You and me both, kid.

Carefully stepping over the crack, I ran to try and catch up with Nico because surely somebody has to intercept him along the way.

Chiron and Mr. D had to have somebody stationed at the camp border or at the Hermes cabin to stop him from doing something stupid, right?

Right?

I followed what I think was Nico into the woods of camp, which is insanely dangerous for somebody with very little training (suicidal, some may say).

Eventually, pretty quickly, Grover joined me with Annabeth, who was probably calmer but I couldn't tell because I was frantic and on the verge of having a panic attack.

For hours, I searched and scaled and scoured the woods of Camp Half Blood, desperately hoping to find a young Italian boy curled up by a tree or in a small cave, crying in the safety of a nymphs or driad's arms because he missed his sister and just wanted to get away from people for a little bit.

"Percy," Annabeth said after I looked into the same cave near the stream for the third time ten minutes after the dinner alarm had sounded — I had already missed lunch before the others found me. "I think it's time to rest, maybe tomorrow—"

"Maybe tomorrow he'll he dead, too, Annabeth, we can't just let him—"

"Percy," Annabeth repeated my name, this time cupping my face in her hands in a way that was firm, which matched her expression. "You need to stop. The sun is already down. If we're out here much longer, monsters are going to find us, and in our states, it's a suicide mission."

"But if he's out here—"

"If he's out here and Grover can't sniff him out, monsters won't be able to, either." the daughter of Athena pointed out, letting go of my face. "You're going to kill yourself if you keep this up any longer, and you have a party to attend in like 2 days— snap out of it. Let's go get some food and we can tell Chiron and Mr. D what happened. Who knows, maybe they found him somewhere else or maybe they can send a searcher after him. But looking under the same rock every hour isn't going to help."

And while she had a point, and her stubborn tone made me less frantic, I didn't want to admit that she might be right and that we might not find him tonight.

"He's going to be just fine, wherever he is." Annabeth added on as I paused, wondering what would take longer: for the guilt to consume me, or a small monster. "who knows, maybe it's a good thing— there's no doubt now that he's Hades' kid, right? Maybe between him and Jason, you don't have to take the prophecy on. There could be a loophole that—"

"He's a child, Annabeth!" But her insinuating that I should cheat death by assigning somebody else to die left an awful flavor in my mouth. "he's a child who isn't from this time period that just lost the only family he had left! If he survives, Annabeth, I don't think he's going to be just fine! He didn't even have a weapon on him! How could you insist that I try and give him or even Jason a death sentence! Do you realize how fucked up that is? Did you suddenly forget about all of the times that I've already tried to kill myself? All I'm doing is waiting for one of those times to work, and I'm sure that when I turn 16, it finally will! I'm not giving that to Nico! He deserves better than that! He..."

He wishes I were dead, I reminded myself.

That makes two of us. I responded to myself, feeling all of the energy finally drain out of my body as I just sat on the ground.

Annabeth, probably hungry, walked away.

"Percy?" Grover whispered as I could feel my tear ducts reactivate. He squatted down across from me, placing a hand on my shoulder. "Sweets, hey. Are you going to be okay?"

Even though he'd know if I tried to lie, I couldn't even surmise the energy to try and lie about my mental state to my boyfriend.

Unable to form words, I just shook my head and felt the dam slowly crack before flooding all at once.

You said you would protect her.

Look after Nico for me, would you?

I failed both of them.

Both of them could be dead, and it would be my fault.

Grovers arms wrapped around me, a feeling so distant I wondered if I'd get to find out Nico's di Angelo's fate the next time I "woke up."

I wouldn't mind it, after all.

It's what he wants.