SUNSHINE and DARKNESS

"The Door Was Never Locked"

sooo, this oneshot is dedicated to  , who requested this chapter... 

and also made me overcome my writers block...soo mwahh to youu 

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Nico di Angelo is good at pretending.

Pretending the shadows don't whisper. Pretending the silence doesn't know his name. Pretending that breathing is easy when the air dimples around him like fabric stretched too tightly over the frame of something dying to break.

Most days, it works. He walks across Camp Half-Blood like a ghost in broad daylight—quiet, composed, impeccably unreadable. He trains. He eats. He spends afternoons teaching younger campers how to properly wield Stygian iron without slicing a hole through reality. He occasionally joins Will for lunch because apparently "even children of the Underworld require vitamin D and socialization," and Will puts the words together with such seriousness that Nico finds them too amusing to reject.

He has built an existence made of workarounds. If someone suggests they cut across the woods where the skeletal trees touch too closely overhead, Nico claims he's needed elsewhere. If the Aphrodite cabin hosts a cabin night in the rec room, with fifty bodies pressed together and laughter bouncing off the walls, Nico says he prefers the stars. (Which is true, but not the whole of it.) He always walks a little further around the crevices between the boulders near the North Woods. Never stands too close to the rock climbing wall. Won't admit to anyone—not even himself—that he doesn't sleep with his eyes closed fully anymore, just in case the world decides to disappear around him.

Claustrophobia is too gentle a word for it. It is not fear of small spaces; it is the memory of being swallowed.

And today, the walls feel closer.

Camp is loud with the hum of change. The construction team—courtesy of Hephaestus cabin and a few especially enthusiastic Roman architects visiting from Camp Jupiter—has begun expanding the infirmary to accommodate more demigods. There are wooden panels sectioning new hallways, beams pinned in place, tarps hanging like gaping mouths waiting for foundation. It makes the usual walk from the dining pavilion to the Big House narrower, the path twisted through temporary barricades like a maze drawn too tightly.

Nico walks alone, hands pocketed, shoulders tucked inward like he's apologizing for existing. The sky is washed-out blue, and someone is hammering something into place a few yards away. He glances at the tall structures rising on both sides of him—wooden frames, netting, stacked supplies—and feels his pulse tap-tap-tap against his ribs.

He's not thinking about anything specific when the footsteps fall into place beside him.

"You look like you're walking through a graveyard," Will says gently.

Nico almost laughs, though the air catches sharply before it leaves his lungs. "I live in one," he replies.

"Cute," Will says, tone even softer. He walks quietly for a moment, matching Nico's slower pace without drawing attention to it, hands full of medical charts. "You okay?"

The question is casual, but it lands like a pebble tossed into deep water.

"Yes." Nico's voice is smooth. Non-negotiable.

Will gives him a look. Not smug. Not knowing. Just... careful. Like Nico is a page of ancient text written in blood, and Will is trying to read without smudging anything important.

"You don't have to be," Will says simply.

Nico doesn't answer. His fingers curl more tightly into his jacket pockets.