So I was just casually reading this because I've read all the other fanfiction and then I got to the last chapter and kind of realized that I probably should not leave you on that cliffhanger any longer so hello how are you?
WPOV
Track: Icarus & Apollo, Ripto
Shit.
Shit, shit, shit.
That's all I could think as Nico told me about the missing girl. I had completely misjudged the situation—what if I had really gotten Nico arrested? The missing girl would have been lost forever. I realize for a brief, horrifying moment, that I am the villain, not Ghost King.
Finally, I managed to put my thoughts into words: "Shit."
I had just been trying to impress my mom. I thought if I could arrest Ghost King and get the bounty, I could have contributed something to the household, and she would be proud. I remember the first week that Ghost King began searching the city, the media was all over it—every news channel was theorizing.
"Someone has to do something about that villain," my mother had said one day when she got back from work. I had looked up from my homework at the dining room table and saw her nod at the television.
"Isn't that the police's job?" I ask.
She snorts. "The police aren't doing shit." And she left, and the next day I went to go see Hecate. I told her about how there was a villain in the city who I was worried was going to hurt people, and the police weren't able to catch him. I told her that I wanted to make my mother proud, and I wanted to help support her; getting the Ghost King's bounty would mean some of the pressure on her would be alleviated.
But I see now. I was wrong about all of this—from the beginning, every move I've ever made has been wrong. He's not hurting people. He's not stealing. He's just searching for a girl who the police gave up on. He's trying to save someone. He's being a hero.
Which makes me a villain, and I feel sick to my stomach. I had never meant to cause any harm. I thought I was protecting the city, not dooming a lost girl.
I stare at the boy in front of me. We're still floating above the clouds together, and the light from the sun combined with the light reflected from the clouds makes him shine. He's watching Luke's house below us, trying to decide if it's safe to go back down. I wonder if this is the first time he's ever backed down from a fight—he doesn't seem to understand that going back in as quickly as possible is dangerous.
He's a little bit beautiful in the sky like this. Plus, the knowledge that he's a hero has completely shifted how I view him—he took some pretty horrible burns for the sake of saving the girl; he skips school for her; he has put up with relentless scrutiny from all the major news outlets over this. He put everything on the line to save her—
Wait. Is she his girlfriend?
Suddenly I don't feel as good about this situation.
"How do you know the girl?" I ask.
He doesn't hear me the first time I ask; he's still watching the house below like a hawk. I still have his hands in mine, so I trace patterns into his skin again, trailing up his fingers and then back down to his wrist. That gets his attention again.
I repeat my question now that he's looking at me, "How do you know the girl, Nico?"
He shivers. I'm expecting him to put up a fight again; he never answers my questions easily.
But he glances down at his hand in mine, watching me trace patterns. He's silent for so long that I think at first that he's not going to answer me. Just as I'm about to ask again, I watch him take a deep breath and then exhale it slowly. Then, he says, "She's my sister."
Oh, that's awful. I let go of Nico's hands so that I can wrap my arms around him in a hug instead. At first, his whole body is rigid—I wouldn't be surprised if he assumed this was some sort of attack. He usually does assume the worst intentions.
But then he melts into it, his head resting on my shoulder. He doesn't hug me back, but even the fact that he's accepting my arms around him is a big step. I doubt he would have let me do this yesterday—I wonder what caused that change. Was it me saving him yesterday? Is he feeling more emotional now that we're so close to his sister?
I don't ask questions. He's smaller than he always seems when he fight. When he's throwing shadows at your face, he seems like an insurmountable threat. But here in the sky, in my arms, he's not a big person. He's definitely shorter than me by at least a couple of inches, and his frame is lean.
I start to slowly descend, and my heart thumps. Puppy commercial, puppy commercial, puppy commercial. I manage to stay afloat.
Some instinct within me tells me I should be protecting him, even though I know that's illogical. With only a few recent exceptions, Nico has always been good at protecting himself. He has evaded police hundreds of times, he's never lost a fight against me, and he's survived Luke for this long.
But maybe he shouldn't have to protect himself. Maybe I want to be there for him.
"I'm going to help you," I murmur. He pushes on my chest, removing himself from my arms. I want to pull him close again and make sure he's alright. I don't want to push his limits though, so I don't do it.
He's raising his eyebrows at me. "Will, you can't. I'm a criminal."
"You're a hero," I correct.
Surprise flashes over his features, but it's gone as quickly as it appeared. Then, something dark and unforgiving drowns it out, and he says, "No. I'm not. And you're going to get arrested if you help me. My story doesn't have a happy ending, Will. The last page is going to be prison. You don't need to end up there with me."
He's starting to slip from our spot in the air again. He takes a deep breath, and I try to help hoist him back up to me by holding onto his arms and pulling. He looks at my hand on his bicep, and he regains the ability to float here with me.
"Why shouldn't you get a happy ending?" I ask. My hand is still on his bicep—I think it's helping him stay afloat somehow, so I don't dare to move it.
"I'm a villain," he says. "The city wants me dead."
"You're a hero." I use his arm as leverage, pulling him closer to me. "I want you alive."
His eyes dart away from my face for a brief moment. Almost bashfully? We are very close to each other right now. Our hearts beat in sync, and I'm not really sure what's happening, but it is getting really fucking difficult to keep that puppy commercial playing on repeat in my head.
Nico glances at the house below again—there's a few cars pulling away from the road in front of its driveway. All the backup that Luke had brought? They must be going out to search for us. They might have left a few people in the house, but we'll be able to fight them now that there's not so many of them.
"Looks like we can go back now," I say, even though I really want to stay up here with him. He's being so much more honest and forthcoming with me up here than he ever has been before. To get him to talk to me, do I just have to carry him into the clouds? Is this the only way we can have easy conversations?
"Right," Nico says, and he slips out of my grip to begin the descent. I follow him much less gracefully. He lands quietly at the corner of the house where he's just out of sight of the windows of the house.
I crash into the neighbors' yard and groan. My body leaves a Will-shaped mark in their grass. I try to shake it off and run to join Nico, who has an amused smile on his lips from witnessing my fall.
When I reach him and duck out of sight of the windows, Nico holds his fingers over his lips at me, and the message is clear: 'Shut up, or I'm going to kill you.'
He checks the bedroom. It must be empty because he slowly, silently slides open the window. He waits another moment, probably listening for any noises from within the house, before climbing through the window back into the bedroom.
It's my turn to follow him, then. I try to be quieter than I was last time. I'm not the most graceful person in the world, but I move so slowly that Nico actually rolls his eyes at me. But at least it means I get inside the house without making a noise.
"Yeah, yeah, Luke, I'm watching the house," comes a voice from the hall. It sounds like Travis Stoll—he goes to my school. "I don't think he'll come back today. I mean, we made it pretty clear that we'll kill him, so."
We both freeze.
The same voice starts again: "I already said I'm watching it, okay? Nothing is happening."
A few seconds of quiet. Then: "Yeah, yeah, whatever. Fuck you, too. Bye."
It takes another moment for Nico to make any movements at all. When he does, he turns to me and makes a punching motion, then nods his head at the hallway where we'd heard the voice. I nod, understanding.
His footsteps are soundless as he approaches the open bedroom door. I try my best to mimic his movements. I'm doing a pretty good job at being quiet until I make it about halfway through the room and misstep—
Creeeeeeeak.
Nico and I both freeze, and in my head, I am yelling profanities at this stupid floorboard. In the hall, footsteps rush over to the open bedroom door and—
Travis greets us in the doorway with a kitchen knife. Nico doesn't waste time being afraid—he launches a shadow at Travis's hand, knocking the knife away. In Travis's other hand, he fumbles with a cell phone, probably trying to call for backup. I send a hot lightwave at the phone, and it overheats, not allowing him to try to call any of his emergency contacts.
"Shit!" he says, and he drops the phone. Too hot to hold, I guess.
Nico punches Travis in the head, near his ear, and Travis falls, his balance shaken. Nico his him with a shadow on his head, and Travis slumps over.
We remain still for another minute after Travis has fallen over, waiting to see if he will immediately get back up. When he continues to not move, unconscious, Nico nods at me. He peeks out the hallway, but the rest of the house is empty. They had left it with Travis under the assumption that Nico would wait until tomorrow to come back, and Travis could call for help if anything happened.
I help Nico search the house. I take the living room and kitchen while Nico does the other bedrooms in the hallway with the empty picture frames. I think he wants to be closer to Travis in case he wakes up.
The kitchen is boring. I open the fridge to see if there's anything to eat—I think they owe me a snack after trying to kill me—but then think better of it. So far, Nico has clearly tried to leave the houses exactly as he found them. If I mess that up for him now, I wouldn't be helping him out very much.
Besides, they didn't have any good snacks anyway. It all looked artificial and stuffed with preservatives. Hasn't anyone ever heard of a healthy diet? I close the fridge again.
I try to remember how Nico usually searches the house. The kitchen drawers have handles that look golden. Man, thieving must be lucrative.
I open the drawers. There's not much of interest here. Regular kitchen things. I guess even criminals need a drawer for their forks and spoons.
I'm thorough despite how boring this is. I don't want Nico to be disappointed again; clearly, I already messed up once today by telling him the house was empty when I had only really glanced in the windows. If I mess this up for him, a girl's life is on the line.
Nevertheless, there's nothing in the kitchen.
I try the living room next. The coffee table is a weird design. There are large stones cemented down onto the wood. I can't imagine it's convenient to have a table like that. What if you set your cup on one of the rounder stones accidentally? It would fall over.
I shrug it off and head to the bookshelf in the corner of the room. I've seen Nico check the back of the bookshelf before. I do that. It's just a regular bookshelf—
I hear a thud from the hallway. I start to run to go help Nico, but he calls to me: "I'm good. Travis was waking up. He's knocked out again now."
I let out a sigh of relief and go back to searching the living room. I check behind the window curtains. They're just regular curtains. Surprise, surprise. How does Nico not get bored of this?
I check underneath the couch cushions because I'm running out of things to check. It's just a boring old couch. I take a painting off the wall. It's just a regular painting on a regular wall. I am getting so tired of this. Maybe I'll go find Nico, and we can at least search these boring rooms together.
Except he told me to do these rooms so that we finish the search faster. I sigh and sit on the couch, circling back to why on earth anyone would want a rocky coffee table. I mean, it's just plain inconvenient. I run my fingertips over the stones, pondering what I can do to be less bored—
One of the stones shifts under my fingers. It doesn't look any different than the other stones, but I had definitely felt it shift. Is the table just built poorly or...?
I grab the stone and peek under it. There are a few slips of paper hidden underneath this specific rock in the table. I tilt my head, wondering if I've found something.
I pick up the slips of paper and read.
Tell Hades: payment due Friday.
Underworld Ores — 1.6 — 23:00
Payment missed — move forward as discussed.
That's the end of the papers. I put the stone back in place and call, "Nico? I might have found something, but I'm not sure."
Nico's shoes squeak from his haste to see what I have. He's at my side in an instant, taking the notes from me to read them. His expression falls to disappointment as he reads them. "Who is Hades?"
"I don't know. But it's weird that the Stolls are talking about Underworld Ores, isn't it? If we had heard that Underworld Ores had been robbed recently, I wouldn't be so suspicious. But a gem robbery would have made it onto the news, and I haven't heard of anything like that."
Nico considers that for a moment. I think he's going to tell me that this isn't what we're looking for; who cares if the CEO of some gem company is being shady? That's not related to the kidnapping of his sister.
But at the last moment, instead of dismissing me, he frowns and says, "You're right. It is kind of weird. And the accountant that I was suspicious of was involved with Underworld Ores, too. I wonder if the CEO was the one that arranged the kidnapping? I don't know why they would want to, though."
"Was there a ransom?" I ask.
He shakes his head. If there was no ransom, then maybe this could have been the CEO's doing. A CEO wouldn't need money—they're probably a multimillionaire, if not a billionaire. So maybe the kidnapping was for some other reason—something personal.
In the hallway, Travis groans. Nico crumples the notes in his fist—but I notice he does not throw them away—and gestures at me to put the rock back where I found it in the table. I set it in place again, and we escape together through the front door before Travis remembers what happened.
Word count: 2789
We're getting close to seeing Nico and Will at school :)