Fate Withstands

Chapter 5

AN: another note about any use of 1940s Italy and WW2... All I'm using is my small knowledge from American schooling and sites I found through Google that I shouldn't trust so outside of this story I wouldn't trust these facts much

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"Master, Lord Hades sends me."

It had been cold all night, all day. Had been cold for weeks and years and lifetimes. Nico couldn't remember the last time chills weren't burrowing into his bones. Warmth and heat now seemed like a far off land, a legend, a fairytale. The hoodies and sweaters Percy loaned him didn't help, but it was better than having bare arms exposed to the wind. Wind, cold, chill. It reminded him that he had no place on this earth.

But there he was, looking up at a sky he never should have seen again, when he heard the voice. A voice he knew all too well. In the darkness, he turned to see that the voice had solidified into a figure.

The old demigod king looked just as he had before- pale, bearded, maliciously cold eyes and tendrils of Mist coiling off his robes. He was more solid than Nico remembered, though he now was out of the Underworld. But how...

"Why are you here, Minos?" Nico hissed. He slid the window shut before they could wake Percy. "Shouldn't you be in the Underworld?"

"Shouldn't you, master?" Minos replied. "I won't dwell on the question much as it is something Lord Hades needs to ignore, at least for the time being. But as you are in the world of the living, for whatever reason, you need to be able to protect yourself."

"I have my sword." Nico moved his shoulders, feeling the familiar weight of the weapon on his back. "Isn't that enough?"

"If a simple sword was enough, you wouldn't have told your fellow demigod about an old lesson of ours." Minos eyed him. "You've been practicing with the shadows, have you not?"

Nico shrugged. "I can move them. But what's that going to do? I might as well be one of them and that's not good... Minos, why am I not like the other undead?"

An emotion Nico didn't recognize flashed over the ghost's face. "I'm sorry?"

"The undead. Like Sisyphus, or...or...well, I can't remember who else cheated death. But they never looked like...this." He gestured to himself. "I'm still like a shade. I'm gray. My hands turn to shadow and I feel so...so...cold."

"I'm afraid I cannot answer that or dwell on the topic. But I can help you learn more about your powers, learn how to fight."

"You've already said that." Nico looked through the window, saw Percy's sleeping form. "But...I do want to help him against Kronos. I want to pull my own weight. It's the least I can do. He took me in and he...he's the reason I'm out of those fields."

Minos smiled. "Very well, master. Shall we start?"

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Nico worked until he dropped. Literally. After one last jump in the shadows, he collapsed onto the Jacksons' couch. He could feel his arms melt into it, could barely breathe in and out. Exhaustion. Pure exhaustion. But the feeling gave him hope that he was actually alive again.

"Nico?!" The voice seemed to be coming from underwater. Too jumbled. Too far away. Nico let his eyes slide shut despite its persistence. The old saying "I can sleep when I'm dead" had been extremely inaccurate, and all being dead had done was add to his insomnia.

He crashed.

There were no dreams, no...nothing. He was gone from the world for however long he slept, and it wasn't upright good or bad. It was just...there.

When he did open his eyes, however, and was met with blue eyes he had never seen before. Blue eyes of a blond boy around his age. Blue eyes...that were adorable.

"What the hell?" Nico winced as his own thoughts came to a sudden halt. This was the second boy he had met, the second his mind somehow someway saw as attractive. "Damn you..."

The boy blinked in surprise before stepping back. "Um...Percy?! He's awake!"

Nico then noticed that he wasn't on the couch, but on his bed in Percy's room. The second thing he noticed was that he was bare-chested and fucking cold. The third thing was that his hands were actually solid.

"What the fuck?!" Nico slid back on the bed and wrapped a blanket around himself as Percy came running into the room. "Why did you undress me?!"

"Nico, Nico," Percy pulled the blond boy back. "He's a healer, from camp. I was worried. You came and you weren't...you were almost all gone and I needed someone who knew healing."

"I thought camp couldn't know about me." Nico started to calm but kept his chest covered.

"I won't tell anyone," the boy spoke up. "I'm Will Solace. It's nice to meet you, Nico."

Nico stared at this boy as he felt the familiar feelings he got around Percy. "What. The. Hell." Was he cursed to feel like this for every teenage boy he met?

"Um..." Percy seemed to be just as confused as Nico felt internally. "Nico? You okay there?"

Nico looked between them before running a hand through his hair. "Damn." He had almost given it away. "What happened to me?"

Percy jumped into a topic he knew about. "You disappeared for a week and then showed up here almost completely gone. Gave mom and Paul a heart attack."

"You had a lot of darkness in you," Will picked up. "I got a lot out with my abilities but it took some time." Nico then noticed how exhausted he looked. "My dad's Apollo, the sun god among other things. So I kind of have light powers."

Nico looked him over again. "So...you took shadows out of me?"

Will nodded. "I put them into myself, where the light quickly got rid of them. I could have put that light into you but..."

"It might have sent you back to the Underworld," Percy shrugged. "We don't know much about you yet, Nico. Or...your situation, I guess."

"But...you told Will what you know?" Nico asked. "You told him that I'm...that I'm..."

"Yeah, he told me." Will smiled at him as if he wasn't looking at the undead itself. "So if you're ever like that again, you can come to me. I can help without questioning you."

Nico made a small movement that could either be taken as a nod or muscle spasm. "Um..."

Percy handed him a hoodie. "Will, want me to walk you out?"

Once Nico got the hoodie over his head, he saw that they were both already gone, which was somewhat of a relief. Boys...why did he feel this way about boys? In his old life, his first life, his short life, he would have been hated. Shunned. Possibly killed. Boys didn't like boys. Not in this way.

But there he was, with butterflies and a racing heart. Because a boy with blond hair had come to fight Percy for a spot in Nico's heart. A spot neither knew about. A spot that they never should have been able to fill.

What would his mother think? He tried to remember her gentle manners and words. She always assured them that she loved them. Would she still if she knew the truth?

Then there was Bianca. Feisty, serious Bianca. Nico could only imagine what had happened to her, what her feelings evolved into. Did she even still love him by the time he died? By the time she died? Had she even died, or was she an old woman growing sick in a nursing home, somewhere in what was once a battle raging Italy?

Had her love for him lived that long? Would it have if she knew he liked boys?

Nico pulled the covers over himself, buried himself in blankets as the cold buried itself in him. Whatever it took, he wasn't going to tell his new friends. Not when it was a possibility that they would leave him for it.