"The moment I met you,
I held my breath.
And you've been taking
it away ever since,
Nico di Angelo."
[ NICO DI ANGELO x MALE OC ]
[ PERCY JACKSON SERIES ]
[ HEROES OF OLYMPUS SERIES ]
cover by @humaneity !
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0012. | THE BROKEN CANNOT FIX THE BROKEN
Nico was a mess.
Luckily, he was always slightly a mess so he was pretty good at covering it up. After Bianca's death, Nico was very well versed with loss, but losing Vela... he didn't know how to react. It wasn't just a death. Nico could converse with the dead, if Vela was dead, it wouldn't have been the end. It was the fact that it was a loss. He would never be able to see him again, not for thousands of years.
And Nico worried if he could wait that long. Of course he could - of course he would. He would wait that long for Vela; but the pain still killed him. It still reminded him every second of every day that Vela wasn't there with him anymore.
So Nico made a plan. He had people making requests of him from all sides; his father, Percy, Chiron... Vela. So Nico's plan was to do what Vela would want him to do. A final tribute and then he would leave. Just disappear and hope no one followed. Pfft, 'hope'. No one would follow him, that was the problem. The three people who Nico cared about most were dead. He was left with no one to follow him anymore.
The only child of Aphrodite - or person - Nico could stand to be around was Silena. They didn't talk much - there wasn't much to say ('So the person you care about most in the world died? Mine too' - 'Awesome!'). Instead they took solace in each other's presences. Nobody else really wanted to be around the mourning children of Hades and Aphrodite other than Clarisse who occasionally checked in.
Nico hadn't seen Lea since they saw what happened to Vela. That made Nico mad. The girl had been so nosey about everything else regarding him and Vela and now suddenly she couldn't stand to even look at him.
Nico also didn't like all the werewolves lingering around. It just reminded him of Vela and that was bad. Thinking about him made him think about him shattering and that made Nico feel like he was dying.
So instead he had helped Silena tidy cabin ten. Well, helped was a strong word. She did the majority of it and he straightened up Vela's bed area that hadn't been used in a year but they still left vacant for him. Nico huffed. He knew it would cleared away soon and be made ready for another camper. That didn't sit right with him. It didn't seem right that there would be a whole new generation of people who hadn't known the godly son of Aphrodite and that wasn't fair. Everyone deserved the chance to meet him, even just once.
By the time he and Silena finished tidying the cabin, it was spotless and wafting with the scent of some designer perfume she took from Drew's dresser. Silena was sat on her bed, once again leaving them in silence but Nico was okay with that. He was preoccupied with looking through the things Vela had left behind.
