Chapter Text
Nico tried to hide his excitement over the fact that they were sailing on a literal pirate ship. It probably would’ve been way cooler if he hadn’t been seasick for the last however many hours they’d been sailing, but it was better than the last two boats he’d been on.
Will had been trying to help him with his nausea, but there wasn’t much that could be done while they were still teetering back and forth with the waves. Nico had appreciated the gentle hand rubbing his back as he puked over the side of the ship that one time, at least.
They hadn’t seen much of Annabeth and Clarisse, who always had their heads together, plotting out their next moves. Nico didn’t see how they could have next moves since they seemed to be drifting aimlessly through the ocean, but Annabeth claimed to know what she was doing. She had also apparently discovered at one point - before Nico’s arrival - that Will could almost perfectly determine their location based on the placement of the sun in the sky, so he had been key in helping them enter the Sea of Monsters in the first place. Now, though, the two boys were at a bit of a loss as for what to do.
As the sun set on their first night on the pirate ship, Nico was about to brave heading below deck in an attempt to find someplace to sleep, but stopped when he heard a noise in the distance. It was the first sound he’d heard other than wind and water in almost a full day, so it immediately had him on alert.
“What was that?” he called out across the deck, where Annabeth and Clarisse were behind the ship’s wheel, staring out at the water. The two girls exchanged a look, then a few quiet words, and Annabeth started toward him.
“There are sirens up ahead,” she told him. “We’re about to enter their territory.”
Nico frowned. “Are they dangerous? Like, territorial?”
“Did you say sirens?” Will asked as he appeared beside Nico, their hands linking together between them almost unconsciously.
Annabeth nodded. “As long as we keep our distance, they won’t bother us, but…”
Will’s eyes widened. “Their song.”
“What?” Nico looked between them, but it was almost as if the two were speaking telepathically.
Then, Will squeezed his hand. “A siren’s song is how they lure in prey. When you hear it, you supposedly see your greatest desire. You get drawn in, and when you get close enough, the siren, well…”
“Eats you,” Annabeth finished for him. “But they say that there’s great wisdom in a siren’s song, if you can listen to it and survive.”
“How would you do that?” Nico asked.
“Clarisse and I have a plan.”
“Hang on, you’re going to listen?” Will asked incredulously. Then, after a second’s pause, “Can I try?”
Annabeth shot him a challenging smile and shrugged. “If you think you can handle it.”
Nico felt the ship start to turn gently as Annabeth explained the plan. Clarisse was steering them toward land, hopefully close enough to the sirens to hear them, but far enough away that they wouldn’t get attacked. Annabeth needed to find candle wax that they could all stuff in their ears to keep the siren song out. Then, Annabeth - and now Will - would be tied to a tree before their wax was removed so that they could hear the song, with Nico and Clarisse nearby to keep an eye on them.
It didn’t take long to find wax. There were plenty of old candles below deck, so Annabeth pulled out her knife to chop the wax into pieces that could be easily balled up and stuffed in their ears. When they finally came across an island, they simply had to hope that they were close enough for the sirens to be heard.
The four of them climbed off the ship with a long length of heavy-duty rope, and followed Nico around the island as their guide through the dark. He found a rock that seemed small enough to tie Will and Annabeth to, but heavy enough that they wouldn’t be able to drag it along with them, and he and Clarisse got to work. With their hands bound, they couldn’t remove their own earplugs, so digging around in his best friend’s ear had suddenly reached near the top of Nico’s list of weirdest things he’d ever done.
He could see the change in Will’s eyes instantly. They widened, and his mouth dropped open, and suddenly there were tears rolling down his cheeks. A quick glance to the side showed that Annabeth was no better. Then the two of them started fighting against their restraints. Nico started to reach out for Will to soothe him somehow, but Clarisse stopped him with a hand on his shoulder and a shake of her head.
It almost felt like Nico had blinked, and suddenly Will and Annabeth were gone, nothing but cut ropes laying on the ground where they had been. Nico saw Clarisse take off at a sprint, fully tackling Annabeth into the sand, before Nico managed to move himself. He tried his own hand at tackling, but Will was bigger than him, and it barely made him stumble. Instead, Nico wound his arms around Will’s waist and dug his heels into the ground, but the sand didn’t offer much resistance.
Images flashed in his head, though Nico had no idea where they were coming from. He saw Will with his usual bright smile, sitting next to a woman that Nico could only guess was his mother. She was playing guitar and singing, looking lovingly between Will and the man who sat on her other side - Apollo, Nico realized, though he was dressed more like a mortal than a god. The three of them gave off the appearance of a happy family, and Nico’s heart broke at the realization that this was Will’s greatest desire. The family that he’d never gotten to have, and probably never would.
Nico snapped himself out of Will’s head. He needed to get them out of there.He couldn’t shadow travel them out of there, Nico thought, though he might have been saying the words out loud. He wouldn’t be able to get them far enough away from the sirens, and he didn’t know that there was anything nearby. He wasn’t going to risk dropping them in the middle of the ocean when he didn’t even know how to swim.
When he thought back on it, Nico realized that he was saying that out loud, begging Will repeatedly to stop, shouting, “I don’t know how to swim!” as if that would stop Will from pulling him into the water.
Nico’s mind caught on something he’d thought of right before leaving camp, when Tantalus had gotten on his nerves to the point that Nico was tempted to have the ground open up and swallow him.
He didn’t even know if it could be done, but… Nico was out of options.
He prayed to his dad, and he put all of the focus he could spare into cracking into the Earth’s crust, just a few feet down with enough space for them to breathe, and a dense enough layer of dirt to cover them back up that it would block out the sound.
The next thing Nico knew, he was laying on the ground with Will on top of him, his arms still wrapped around Will’s waist but he only knew that by feel and not sight. It was suddenly so dark that he couldn’t see anything.
For the first few seconds, Will still struggled to break free. Then, he relaxed against Nico, and another few seconds later, he turned in Nico’s hold and sobbed into his chest. All Nico could do was hold him until the crying subsided, and even then, he didn’t stop. He wished there was something he could say to Will, or that he could listen and give Will a chance to vent, but he didn’t want to risk taking out his earplugs.
And speaking of earplugs…
Nico reached into his pocket and pulled out the wax, coaxing one of Will’s hands into letting go of Nico’s shirt long enough to take the wax. Nico had to assume that Will was stuffing his ears shut once more, and hoped he was reading Will’s following hand squeeze as an affirmative to Nico’s guess.
Nico dug them out of their little hole in the ground, and found Clarisse consoling a sobbing Annabeth. Nico met Clarisse’s eyes, and she nodded to him once before scooping Annabeth up into her arms and carrying her back toward the ship. Nico’s eyes widened. Clarisse was much stronger than she looked.
He kept a firm grip on Will’s hand as they walked back to the ship together.
By morning, they had arrived at another island, this one much larger than the last and absolutely covered in green grass and livestock. Nico just assumed that it was some sort of oasis in the desert, but Annabeth seemed to think that this was exactly where they needed to be.
They anchored the ship in a small inlet between cliffs, and made their way up to higher ground to see if they could find...whatever it was that they were looking for. An antidote for the poison in Percy’s tree? Nico had hijacked a quest and still had no idea what was going on. At least scaling a cliff side had helped him realize that the climbing wall at camp did have some actual real-world training purpose, rather than just warning campers that death could come at any moment with a spray of lava to the face.
Once the four of them were safely perched on solid ground, Nico whispered, “So...what are we looking for?”
Clarisse rolled her eyes with so much force that Nico was afraid she might knock herself off the cliff.
“The Golden Fleece,” Annabeth told him. “It has magical healing properties that we believe are strong enough to heal Percy’s tree.”
Nico frowned. “It’s just like, a golden lump of wool?”
Will shrugged. “You’re probably not wrong.”
“Can we get a move on already?” Clarisse said with irritation clear in her voice.
“Hang on,” Annabeth said, “we need to be careful. If this is even the right island, we need to watch out for Polyphemus. Supposedly, Odysseus blinded him a long time ago, but if he has the Fleece, he might have used it to heal himself. We need to be absolutely silent, and we need to get in and out as fast as possible.”
Clarisse looked to Annabeth with a raised eyebrow, and the other girl rolled her eyes.
“Now we can go.”
Nico kept his back pressed to the side of the cliff as they all shuffled along. He hadn’t realized he had a fear of heights until that moment, and all he could focus on was getting as far away from the ledge as possible, right now.
When all four of them were able to get a good look at the island spread out below them, it didn’t take long to locate the Fleece. The glittering gold lump of wool was draped over a low-hanging tree branch near the mouth of a cave. Nico was just starting to think that this all seemed a little too easy when he heard thundering footsteps before Annabeth tugged him behind a large rock.
“Come here, sheepies!” the booming voice of Polyphemus called out across the valley, and a stampede of sheep came rushing toward the cave.
Nico risked a peek around the rock. Polyphemus was a giant, standing at least ten feet tall, with one large milky eye centered above his crooked nose. As Nico watched, he saw Polyphemus pat one sheep on the head, then lean down to do the same to another. He turned back to Annabeth and whispered, “I don’t think he’s blind. At least, not completely.”
Annabeth nodded, as though she’d almost expected as much. Or maybe she just had about a million backup plans rattling around in her brain. “Alright. You and I will have to serve as the distraction while Will and Clarisse get the Fleece.”
“How?” Nico asked.
“Are you familiar with the Odyssey?” Nico nodded. He hadn’t read it, but he’d trained with Odysseus a few times in the Underworld and had heard most of the story first hand. (They’d had an unfortunate bonding session when Odysseus told him about the Lotus Eaters.) “You and I are now Nobody. That should get Polyphemus angry, and keep all of his attention on us, and hopefully give the others enough time to get the Fleece and get away. Your shadow travel thing, can you do that more than once without a rest in between?”
Nico shrugged. “As long as I’m not jumping too far.”
“Good.” Annabeth pulled a folded up baseball cap from her pocket. “Try to get his attention, and then jump to another spot. We’ll have to try to tag-team this. Are you ready?”
Before Nico could ask how Annabeth planned on getting around unseen, she placed the hat on her head and disappeared. Nico blinked a few times in confusion before he felt something like a flick against his forehead.
Annabeth’s voice came from right in front of him and said, “C’mon, Numbskull, are you ready or not?”
Nico waved a hand in front of his own face as if to ward off another flick. “I’m ready, gods.”
“I’ll go first,” Annabeth told him. He had to assume that she got up and walked away, since he couldn’t see what happened next, but suddenly, he heard her cry out, “Hey, ugly!” from a good fifteen feet away.
Polyphemus turned to look inside the cave, which Nico took as his cue to start moving closer. He wanted to save his energy as much as he could, so he darted back and forth between rocks to stay as hidden as possible, until he was sure that he could draw the cyclops’s attention without giving away Clarisse and Will’s location.
“Who’s there?” Polyphemus demanded. Nico saw him grab a giant wooden club from the ground.
“Nobody!” Nico shouted, and slipped into the shadow of the rock he hid behind, reappearing inside the cave. He ducked behind a pile of straw, and poked his head out to see Polyphemus checking behind the rock where he’d just been hiding.
“I remember you!” Polyphemus shouted. “You poked my eye! I’ll poke your eye!”
“You’ll have to find me, first!” Annabeth replied from across the cave.
Polyphemus growled and swung his club with enough force to send a large rock flying.
Nico held his breath for a second. He had no idea where Annabeth was hiding, so he could only hope that she hadn’t been behind that rock specifically.
“Missed me!” her voice came from somewhere off to Nico’s left.
“Where are you?” Polyphemus roared.
“Over here!” Nico shouted, and then vanished again. From the place where he reappeared, he could clearly see Will and Clarisse inching closer to the Fleece. Nico tried not to think about how tired he was already starting to feel. As long as he could keep this up for another few minutes, they’d be as golden as that lump of wool.
With Will and Clarisse so close, Nico couldn’t risk drawing the cyclops’s attention toward him, so he rose from his hiding spot to dive behind another rock. He thought he would have enough time to go unseen, but Polyphemus exclaimed, “There you are!” and raised his club.
“Nico, look out!” Will shouted, and Nico’s heart stopped as Polyphemus turned on him, his club swinging down and swiping Will off his feet. Will’s body collided with the wall of the cave, and he crumbled to the ground.
Nico went into a rage.
He drew his sword and felt himself dissolve into shadows, reappearing in the next second a foot above Polyphemus’s head. Nico dropped down with his feet on the monster’s shoulders and drove his sword into the cyclops’s eye with a furious scream. When Polyphemus swatted at him, Nico pulled his sword out and stabbed the eye, again and again and again until Polyphemus finally dropped to his knees, and then collapsed face-first into the ground. He didn’t dissolve into coppery dust, nor did he melt away into shadow, but Nico figured that a creature as ancient as he was would need more to take down for good. At least for now, Polyphemus was immobile, and definitely blinded for good.
Clarisse was already at Will’s side. He was awake but gasping for breath, his eyes darting around in a panic. Nico grabbed his hand and squeezed it between both of his own. “What’s wrong?” Nico asked frantically. “Is he gonna be okay?”
Clarisse set a hand on Will’s chest, causing him to gasp again and wince. “Broken ribs,” Clarisse decided, and Will’s chin dipped in a nod. “He should be fine, but the gasping is worrying. We should give him some nectar, or--”
“The Fleece,” Nico cut in.
“One step ahead of you,” Annabeth said from behind them, the massive golden wool piled in her arms. She draped it over Will’s torso, and his face relaxed instantly. “It won’t heal him right away, but it should be faster than ambrosia.”
Behind them, Nico heard Polyphemus groan.
“We should leave,” he told the others with a tone that said they shouldn’t argue.
Clarisse scooped Will into her arms and started carrying him down a path that Nico suspected only the sheep had ever used. Annabeth rushed to get ahead of them to make sure they wouldn’t have any steep cliffs to climb while Clarisse didn’t have a free hand. Nico brought up the rear, his sword still drawn, and keeping an eye out for a half-dead cyclops.
Annabeth told him that Florida had seen weirder things wash up on shore than a pirate ship, but Nico wasn’t so sure about that. The looks they’d gotten from the mortals on the beach made him think that the Mist hadn’t worked quite as well as it should have.
(Though a tiny part of his brain was telling him that they were watching with disgust at the way that Will seemed to be hanging off of him. He did his best to ignore that little voice.)
Nico had to support most of Will’s weight as they marched their way up the beach, since he still wasn’t at full strength. Nico wasn’t doing too hot himself, if the way he’d passed out next to Will as soon as they’d boarded the ship was any indication, but Will had asked for his help, and Nico couldn’t say no to his best friend.
One good thing was that the Fleece had transformed itself in the Mist to appear as a gold and white varsity jacket rather than a lump of wool, which made it easier for Will to keep wrapped around his chest. And it was one less thing to worry about bringing on a plane when they flew back to New York.
“You won’t come with us?” Will asked with a pout as they all sat at a picnic table near a food truck. Clarisse had just enough money left from her quest kit to buy them all a quick bite to eat, which she’d argued against until Annabeth assured her that she knew how they could get more money for plane tickets.
Nico shook his head. “It’s not my quest, and I wasn’t supposed to be here in the first place. I’m not here to steal anybody’s thunder, and if I show up at camp with the rest of you, then some people might think that.”
Clarisse shoved at his shoulder, none too lightly. “Alright, kid, I get it. I misjudged you. But I’m not gonna make you find your way back to camp all on your own just because of that.”
“Well, uh.” Nico scrunched up his nose. “I also have a certain uncle who probably wouldn’t be very happy about having me in an airplane. So I’m happy to stay on the ground.”
Will nodded, but he didn’t seem all that happy to agree. “Yeah, I guess you’re right about that.” He turned to Annabeth and asked, “But how are we even going to get the money to buy plane tickets?”
Annabeth’s eyes locked on Nico. That calculating stare of hers wasn’t any less unnerving now that he knew her better. If anything, Nico wanted to summon Jules-Albert and get himself as far away from there as possible.
“You tell me, Numbskull,” she told him, leaning her forearms against the table.
Nico blinked. “Me?”
Annabeth shrugged. “Your dad’s the god of wealth. Surely you have some way of getting money for things, don’t you?”
Nico thought about it for a second before reaching into his pocket. He brought out the small plastic card that Hades had given him a little over a year ago, though Nico had never bothered to use it. Supposedly, he could buy things with it, but he didn’t know how. “Would this help?”
Annabeth grinned.
“You have a credit card?” Will exclaimed, snatching it out of Nico’s hand. “It’s got your name on it and everything!”
“Does it have a limit?” Clarisse asked, and Nico shrugged. She grinned, which suddenly had Nico a little worried. “That sounds like first class seats, to me.”
Nico frowned. “Um. Sure. Just don’t lose it, okay? I don’t want my dad to get mad at me.”
“We won’t,” Annabeth assured him, taking the card out of Will’s hands. “I’ll make sure of it. We should probably flag down a cab soon, so we can get to the airport, asap.”
“Oh, I can get you guys there,” Nico told them.
“No more shadow traveling,” Clarisse shot down instantly. “You couldn’t do it last time, and I’m not gonna be your guinea pig again.”
Nico rolled his eyes. “No, of course not. We’ll drive.”
Jules-Albert parked at the curb within minutes of Nico summoning him. It was a thirty minute drive to the airport, the entirety of which Nico spent pressed up against Will’s side in the backseat. He knew the quest was practically over, and the two of them would likely see each other again before the day had ended, but Nico still hated goodbyes.
It was almost easier than expected to wave them off from inside the car as Jules drove them through the departures drop off.
That just left Nico with a solid eighteen hours or so to sleep off the stress from the quest, and figure out what he was going to do when he was face to face with Tantalus once more.
Except that he’d forgotten how fast the old zombie could drive, and Nico found himself woken up at the camp’s slowly strengthening border. So much for thinking up a plan.
Nico climbed up the hill and spotted the Fleece where it was draped around the trunk of Percy’s tree, then waved in greeting to the patrol that was still set up nearby, just in case. It was probably around dinner time, if Nico had to guess, so he started toward the pavilion, hearing the cheers that came from it before he could make out any of the words spoken.
He should have guessed that Clarisse was being praised for a job well done, not that she didn’t deserve it, but Nico was already sick of Tantalus playing favorites. Another cheer went up just as Nico was entering the pavilion, though he knew it had nothing to do with him.
“What do we have here?” Tantalus called mockingly over the sounds of rejoice. “The hero of Olympus, finally returned! Didn’t anybody ever tell you that you aren’t allowed to leave camp without permission, you little brat?”
Nico stopped in the middle of the pavilion, hands in his pockets and one eyebrow raised. Was Tantalus really about to tear into him in front of everyone?
Tantalus marched up to Nico, and a hush fell around the pavilion. “First you refuse to eat with your cabin, then you refuse to sleep in your cabin, then you leave without permission, and now you think you can just waltz right back in here like nothing’s wrong? Oh, no. I should have you banished for this!”
“Banished?” Nico repeated.
“Yes, banished, you little--”
Nico raised a finger to his lips, and Tantalus’s mouth glued itself shut. The man clawed at his own face and neck, but no sound came out of him.
“You want banishment?” Nico said calmly, feeling the temperature around him start to drop and watching in satisfaction as Tantalus continued to panic. “Then go to hell.”
The ground started to shake. Nico heard a few campers around him cry out in fear as the pavilion floor cracked and opened up. Tantalus tried to run, but skeletal hands reached out to pull him in. Then, as soon as it had started, the earth closed up, leaving nothing but a thin scar across the floor.
A new round of cheers went up as the campers realized that Tantalus was gone for good. Nico made himself a plate of food and took his usual seat at the head table, leaning toward Dionysus for a moment to say, “Someone might want to find Chiron soon, before this place gets any more chaotic.”
After learning about the quest, and given the camp’s usual rise in training over the summer, Chiron agreed to let Nico stay at camp without interruption for the next couple of months. When Nico shared the news, Will wrapped him up in the tightest hug, almost strong enough to crack his own ribs, now that Will’s were healed.
Chiron insisted on keeping a constant patrol on the border, at least until they were able to find a permanent replacement, to ensure that Percy’s tree was healing properly and that no one would come to steal the Fleece. Nico and Will had each served their turns on guard duty, and were happy to have a bit of free time that they could spend together - with Lou Ellen and Cecil, too, at Will’s insistence - and were on their way to the lake when they heard a cry for help.
The two took off running for Half-Blood Hill.
Annabeth had been on guard duty that morning, and Nico knew that she would be able to hold her own against any monster that came to attack, so he shouldn’t have worried, but there had been nothing but shock and fear in her voice. They weren’t the first to arrive at the scene, but there was enough of a crowd that Will had to pull the medic card to get them up close.
When Nico pushed his way up to the front, he couldn’t make sense of what he saw.
Annabeth was in tears, though she looked perfectly uninjured under her armor. She was sitting on the ground, and for some reason had the head of a sleeping boy resting in her lap. His hair was black, and his skin held a tan darker than Will’s, and the jeans and t-shirt he was wearing were torn nearly to shreds.
Will got to work immediately, checking the boy’s pulse, and then his eyes to determine brain function. Nico wasn’t sure what to do, so he sat down beside Annabeth and took her hand in an attempt to comfort her. “What happened?”
“I was just sitting here, and--” She heaved in a deep breath. “I think the Fleece worked too well. One second, I was alone, and then the next, he was just... here.”
Nico frowned. “What do you mean it worked too well? Do you know him?” Annabeth nodded. “Who is he?”
The boy in her lap gasped and his eyes shot open. His gaze met Nico’s, his vibrant sea-green eyes sending a shock down Nico’s spine, though he couldn’t understand why.
Annabeth choked out a sob. “Percy Jackson.”