Solangelo 2

Part 23

REYNA

'Wake him up.' Jason says, kneeling down beside Nico.
'He won't.' Will says, 'he hates to fall asleep, but when he does, he won't wake up. He's been awake for the last three nights or so. He's exhausted.'
'Well what the hell do we do now?' Annabeth asks, her eyes fierce. She holds onto Percy.
Frank has taken Hazel off of Nico, and holds her in his arms.
'Take them to the beds in the other room.' I say, 'if they're not going to wake up anytime soon, they might as well be comfortable.'
Everyone is silent for a moment, staring at me, realising I'm right. Frank is the first to rise and take her to the other room. We all follow.
'We proceed as we were always going to. We knew there could be casualties.'
'Casualties?' Thalia asks, looking at me.
'Sorry wrong word.' I say, 'but we need to continue. Annabeth, you had ideas?'
'A couple. All theoretical so far.' She says, hesitant.
'It's all we've got.'
I watch Will as he carefully puts Nico on a bed, pulling the covers over him. He keeps hold of one hand as he sits on the edge of the bed.
'Well for one, we could try the placebo effect.' She says, half distracted by Percy.
'The what?' Piper asks.
'Placebo.' She repeats, 'if this is all based around what Nico thinks is happening - he thinks this curse or whatever it is causes death and death comes, or makes it focus on certain people and it does - we make him think it's fixed, and he'll think it is. He won't think bad things will happen, so they won't.' She explains carefully, 'but-'
'It won't work.' I finish for her. She looks up and nods.
'Why not? It sounds like a good plan?' Frank says, his voice still a little weak. We all look to him, his eyes red, still holding tightly onto Hazel.
'Nico's too smart for that.' I say, 'he knows when we lie to him, and if any of us let it slip that we were lying, it would all start again.'
'It's a temporary fix if anything.' Annabeth says.
'Plus he wouldn't trust it. It's too easy.' Will says, not looking at any of us, 'nothing has ever been fixed easily for Nico. If we were going to just tell him we found something to help him, he would know it was too easy.'
'We could possibly work with that, though.' Annabeth says, 'give him a placebo, but make it a difficult one. Push it as far as we can do it's more convincing.'
'But like you said, if we ever accidental tell him, it'd start again.' I say.
'So we do something we think will work too.' Annabeth says, pausing for a moment, thinking on the spot, 'there's another idea I had. I was working on it before this all happened anyway, just a side project really, nothing major, just-'
'Annabeth.' I say, prompting her.
'Sorry.' She says, catching herself. Without Percy here she seems far more distracted, less grounded, 'Percy and I, and Nico obviously, we all, um, nightmares. Really bad. Every night we go back to...' She trails off, and looks up, her cheeks red.
'Go on.' Piper says gently.
'Percy would sometimes just never sleep because it got so bad. I know it was the same for Nico. And I was always scared to. So I started running some idea by the Hypnos cabin, and the rest of my siblings, and a couple of the Hecate girls.' She says, rambling again. I've never noticed how distracted she gets without Percy to redirect her.
'What's your idea?' I say, carefully.
'It was to stop the dreams. To...effectively cut off the subconscious.' She says quickly.
'Is that...what?' Jason says, doing a sort of double take as he runs over her idea.
'Isn't that dangerous?' I ask, 'the subconscious is intricate. There's a fine line between losing your subconscious and losing yourself.'
'I know. It was all theoretical until about two minutes ago. Now it's gone from theoretical to...to necessary.' She says. Her eyes dart around, as if she's already trying to figure things out in her head, 'it could work though. The subconscious is where magic takes its hold. The Hecate girls were running tests on me, brief things to check whether I would still be myself without it being active. It worked.'
'And this is magic.' I say slowly, figuring it out, 'what's being used on Nico was made by Circe, it's based in his subconscious.'
'Exactly.' Annabeth says, 'if we...effectively...disable his subconscious say, then the magic would have no hold on him. It would be over.'
'It could work.' I say, slowly, quietly.
'The thing is, the Hecate girls could only hold back my subconscious with their magic. As soon as they stopped, it returned. I tried the same with the Hypnos cabin while I slept - they couldn't make it stick. Someone always had to be actively holding it back.' Annabeth explains.
'I know a way.' Will says. We all look at him, waiting.
'To stop the subconscious? Without people?' Annabeth asks.
'I think so. I mean, I have an idea.' He says, 'it's worth a try.'