Nico's POV
Nico guessed that Nyx left him there for around a week, but it was hard to tell down here. He felt that he might actually prefer the company of her beetles over himself in the dark room. The quiet was really starting to tamper with his brain.
He spent his time huddled in one of the dark corner, often massaging his temples when the voices grew louder, unable to sleep for fear of it being worse than his current state. The entire time, he kept his eyes clamped shut, so sure that if he opened them, he'd find creatures crawling from under his skin, tearing at his flesh.
Why don't you scream?
You don't want to, do you?
Something in you knows that no one would come down here for you.
No one goes looking for something that they won't miss.
While the cacodemons had been compartmentalized into their necklace form, their voices still reverberated in his mind, so often that Nico struggled to tell them apart from his own thoughts.
Nico had wondered the same thing, though. Why was it that it made sense that people go back to save Bob yet he still doubted they would come for him?
Because they find your presence detestable. Even after you saved them, you represent what each one of them fears the most, and they realize as well as you do that you're out of place.
You take and take and take, just like your father.
When Nyx did return, she found him half-sunk in the the shadows, drawing them in as a sort of sustenance to his power, hoping that they might help him regain some strength in his decrepit state. She seemed slightly surprised when she saw that he hadn't croaked while she was gone.
Will had never liked it when he "brooded" in the shadows like this. It was incomprehensible to the son of the sun god to heal through a closer proximity to death.
Will...
These days, Nico had spent hours entertaining scenarios where Will told him how disgusting he was; how much he wished that they'd never met.
This would have been so much easier that way.
"Seems I was right. You're more perfect than I could have ever imagined. It's too bad you wasted all those years on the wrong side. The loosing side." She sounded almost pitiful as she made the remark.
Nico felt a twang of pride at first, but finally realized what she meant by the "loosing side."
"They haven't done anything wrong. The mortals belong to the light. Whatever you're planning—" Nico snarled, backing himself into the wall to maintain the furthest distance between him and the goddess.
Nyx cut him off before he could continue. "'Belong to the light, you say. If only you knew how much more raw a person is when they are enshrouded in darkness, without false hopes and all those farces. Why do you of all people, who have never received their thanks or acknowledgement, even defend them?
You were willing to DIE for them! Where are they now?!"
You knew this would happen.
It's why you never stay in one place.
You don't belong amongst them.
She stepped forward and grabbed his face, frustration evident on her face, her claws etching into his skin. "Don't you see?! Her form shifted and she split into multiple parts, her murk oozing off each piece. In front of Nico stood Bianca, Hades, Octavian, Jason, and Nyx disguised as his mother who stood in the middle of them all.
"You belong with us," they declared in unison.
~
"Nico! I saw that the gift store has your Mythomagic game," Bianca called out, meeting Nico in their room at the Lotus Casino. Her hair hadn't been cut in a while, so it flowed past her shoulder in soft curls.
"Seriously?! Can we go?" Nico pleaded, and Bianca laughed, ruffling his hair.
"Come on. Let's go," she replied, smiling when his face lit up. He hopped off his bed, stuffing his feet into his sneakers, crushing the heal of his shoes inwards in his rush.
When they arrived to the shop, which had walls lined with different games, he rifled through the card stacks, his gaze landing on a figurine beside them.
"Woah. They have Aphrodite! If I get this one, the only god I'm missing will be Hades," Nico informed Bianca, who had been rummaging through other items.
"Grab it, then. I'll find you a Hades figurine one day, so your collection will be complete."
Nico beamed, grabbing the figurine in one hand and a stack of cards in the other. He immediately placed them back down, though, leaping towards Bianca and wrapping his small arms around her waist.
"I love you Bianca," Nico murmured into her stomach.
~
Nico wanted to tell them--especially Bianca--he was sorry, beg for their forgiveness, but he felt his body shake and his head lolled towards Nyx, who smiled, her eyes like a pit that threatened to engulf him, devouring his entire self.
Nico's lip trembling and his knees begged for support. Each of her companions liquefied like they'd been boiled alive, feeding into her palm where all five became her obsidian-shelled beetles. From her clawed hand, they crawled up his cheek, When they reached the uvula at the end of his throat, he squirmed, only causing Nyx to strengthen her grip on his jaw
"You know what to do, Nico."
Nico swallowed, pain erupted in his stomach as if it were being eaten from the inside. He'd thought the worst thing he had ever ingested was the fire-water from the Phlegethon. Now, he had found something so torturous it was beyond his comprehension.
Nico tried crying out, but an eruption of needles in him made it difficult to gasp for air, much less make use of his vocal chords.
Nyx kneeled by his twitching body, whispering, "Shhhhh. It will all be over in a matter of time."
"Mamma." Nico inhaled sharply. "Don't leave again... Please." Nyx coddled Nico's head in her lap, brushing her sharp nails through his matted hair, raking through the knots.
"You will be reborn, darling. If you'll just accept what has been giving to you, I'll never leave," she promised.
Despite the feeling of his insides corroding, he smiled when she spoke in his mother's voice.
It was something he'd forgotten.
He'd forgotten his own mother's voice.
He crumpled once again into her arms, his mother brushing her hands through his hair despite the matting. She hummed a tune that felt beyond familiar, but he couldn't grasp where he'd heard it. His tears and mucus dripped onto her leg, but she didn't seem to mind.
He didn't sob because of the pain--that, he had dealt with too many times to count. Rather, he had yearned for so long for a sign that any of his past would return. The time before Hades, before the fighting... before they died. When Bianca had left him for rebirth, she had taken the last of his childhood along with her.
Nico spent so long playing villain, hero, martyr, when all he'd wanted was for his sister to play with his hair like she'd done countless times.
But she never would again.
Even when you've died, I'm the one who suffers because I couldn't take your place.
Nico couldn't count how many days he was left there on the floor, rendered unable to sleep nor get up to drink.
A couple hours after he regained the ability to move without breaking out in cold sweat, he heard a knock on the wall and something in him flourished.
When Nemesis emerged from the darkness, looking as ill as ever, he scowled (or did the best he could in that state).
You thought they came for you, didn't you?