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Nico ate his pomegranate half, solemnly. This was the first time he’d had to rest in some time. The people around him were reuniting as if they hadn’t seen each other in ages, which given all they’d been through wasn’t surprising.
He saw Percy and Annabeth sitting together as they shared recent events with their friends. They looked happy to be out of Tartarus. Happy to be together.
Nico remembered what he had had to reveal to Jason, how he said he had given up on Percy. Seeing Percy with Annabeth made his heart ache slightly and made him realise that he may have told yet another lie when he said that he had given up.
He knew it was silly to still want him, to still feel this way for him. There were a million and one reasons why it could and would never happen. And yet Nico’s heart still ached faintly. Enough to be felt over the happiness he felt from seeing his friends safe, his sister happy.
Soon the conversation switched to the Athena Parthenos statue. Annabeth mentioned her dream about the statue needing to be brought to the Camp by a roman. He responded to her, to prove to himself that she wasn’t going to find out and therefore he didn’t need to shy away whenever she talked.
When he spoke, however, he swore he saw Percy flinch momentarily. Percy returned to his usual self almost immediately though and Nico’s mind quickly moved to all the eyes that were on him. In order to move the focus, he continued speaking.
“The statue is a powerful symbol,” He said. “A Roman returning it to the Greeks… that could heal the historic rift, maybe even heal the gods of their split personalities.”
Everybody felt the importance of the statue after he spoke, they began to talk about how to move it in such a short time. Hazel brought up the Labyrinth and before Nico could say anything against it, Percy and Annabeth shot it down.
Nico remembered that their time in the Labyrinth had been much different to his own. It had been bad for everyone involved but at least Nico had had a guide in King Minos. Percy and his friends had to go through it alone.
Back then his crush on Percy was much newer, and much scarier to him. Nico had hated himself for it, he had hated Bianca for leaving him and he had turned that hate towards Percy. He couldn’t see how Percy had forgiven him for hating him, but regardless it made Percy seem so much more heroic than he already did.
But even Percy couldn’t forgive him enough to look at him the same way Nico looked at Percy when he was sure no-one was looking.
The topic turned to who would go with Reyna. Frank was first to volunteer but Reyna turned him down as he was a member of the seven and therefore needed on the Argo II. Suddenly, the little voice inside Nico’s head telling him that he didn’t belong, got louder. He knew what he had to do, it wasn’t like they wanted or even needed him to stay.
With that thought, Nico offered to help Reyna by shadow travelling her to the camp. Hazel spoke up, to try and talk him down but he moved on before she could properly begin.
What he wasn’t expecting was for Percy to speak up. Percy sounded worried for him, he sounded protective over him. As if he were trying to keep Nico from hurting himself. It reminded Nico of when he first met Percy. It made him angry, not at Percy directly, but angry at the fact that Percy Gave him so much, and yet Nico’s heart ached for more.
Percy stopped speaking before he was actually finished, having caught the anger in Nico’s eyes.
“I’ve changed since I came back from Tartarus. ” Nico said, staring back into Percy’s eyes.
But Percy didn’t look at him how he so deeply wished he would, instead Jason spoke up. Jason rephrased what Percy had said, but it didn’t hold the same weight coming from someone else and he was easily able to convince the group he was capable. Even Percy looked satisfied, but that was all he was looking like.
Reyna agreed to Nico’s idea and then Frank suggested for Coach Hedge to go along as well. Nico didn’t have anything against the satyr and neither Reyna nor the coach objected so it was settled. He, Reyna and the coach would take the Athena Parthenos to Camp Half-Blood.
Coach Hedge made an excuse to leave and Nico saw the opportunity to do the same. He wasn’t a people person on any occasion, and the only alternative to speaking to people was to be in his own head, listening to his own thoughts. And at least his thoughts would be less depressing if he wasn’t sat so close to the focal point of most of his thoughts.
He got up and left, saying he was going to get some rest. Percy looked his way as he walked, making Nico’s heart ache once more. “Please look at me…” Nico thought, “Please, just look at me like I look at you…” But Percy didn’t look at him any differently, and then he was out of view.
Once Nico was on his own he made a promise to himself, in order to be at his best he needed to be focused on the task at hand, getting the Athena Parthenos to camp. In order to be focused on the task, he couldn’t spend any more time wishing and longing for Percy to look at him, to have the same look in his eyes for the younger boy that he had for Annabeth.
So Nico resigned himself to the belief that in all this time of wanting, Percy had never looked at him in that special way, and no matter how heroic he was to Nico or how much Nico silently wanted, Percy was never going to.
And with that last rationalisation, Nico pushed himself into sleep.