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Nico di Angelo no levantó la vista.
No porque no quisiera mirar a los dioses. Sino porque sabía que si lo hacía, no cambiaría nada.
"Esto es inaceptable."
La voz de Zeus resonó por la cámara sin necesidad de gritar. Era firme, autoritaria, como un martillazo que dejaba claro quién mandaba. Nico sintió la vibración en el pecho, pero no se movió.
"Entrar al Tártaro sin autorización ya es una grave violación de la ley divina", continuó Zeus. "Pero hacerlo acompañado de un semidiós fuera de tu dominio... y liberar deliberadamente a un titán..."
Un murmullo recorrió el consejo.
Atenea frunció el ceño, sumida en sus pensamientos. Hera se cruzó de brazos con expresión severa. Ares parecía casi divertido, como si se tratara de un espectáculo más. Afrodita observaba a Nico con una extraña mezcla de lástima y curiosidad. Apolo… Apolo no lo miraba directamente.
Nico tragó saliva.
"El hijo de Apolo", continuó Zeus, "se encuentra actualmente en el Tártaro. En un estado… incierto".
Eso sí dolió.
No fue un rayo ni un grito. Fue esa palabra. Incierto.
Nico apretó la mandíbula. Sintió una opresión en el pecho, pero no lo dejó traslucir en su rostro.
¿Tienes algo que decir en tu defensa, Nico di Angelo?
Silencio.
Por un instante, nadie habló. El aire parecía pesado, denso, como si incluso respirar fuera una falta de respeto.
Nico levantó la cabeza lo suficiente para que su voz se escuchara claramente.
"No."
Algunos de los dioses se movieron en sus asientos.
"¿No?" repitió Zeus levantando una ceja.
"No tengo defensa", dijo Nico. "Yo lo hice. Todo".
No sonaba desafiante. Ni exageradamente arrepentido. Parecía cansado. Vacío.
—Eras consciente de las consecuencias —intervino Atenea—. Sabías que liberar a ese Titán podría desestabilizar las fuerzas que hemos contenido durante siglos.
"Sí."
"¿Y de todos modos proseguiste?"
"Sí."
Ares soltó una breve risa.
"Bueno, al menos tiene agallas."
Hera le lanzó una mirada de advertencia y Ares se quedó en silencio.
Zeus apoyó los codos en el respaldo de su trono.
—Dime entonces, hijo de Hades —dijo—, ¿por qué deberíamos permitirte regresar al Tártaro?
Hubo una pausa entonces.
Nico respiró hondo. Por primera vez desde que había entrado en la cámara, levantó la cabeza por completo. No para mirar a Zeus. Sino para que todos lo oyeran con claridad.
"Porque Will está ahí", dijo, como si fuera obvio. Como si no entendiera por qué era necesario decir nada más.
No "porque fue un error". No "porque lo siento". No "porque prometo obedecer".
Sólo eso.
El murmullo regresó, más fuerte esta vez.
"¿Y crees que eso justifica tus acciones?", preguntó Hera. "¿Que el amor te exime de la ley?"
Nico meneó la cabeza lentamente.
"No."
"Entonces explícate."
"I'm not asking to be excused," Nico said. "I'm asking for permission to go back down. Nothing more."
Apollo visibly tensed.
"Zeus," he finally spoke up. "Will is my son. I accept partial responsibility. If there is a punishment—"
Nico turned sharply.
"No."
The silence was absolute.
Apollo looked at him, surprised.
"Nico—"
"No," he repeated, more firmly. "This isn't your fault. Or Will's. I was the one who decided to go in. I was the one who broke the law. I was the one who freed the Titan."
Zeus watched the scene intently, as if weighing every word.
"Are you saying you accept any punishment this council decides to impose?"
"Yes."
"Unconditionally?"
Nico hesitated for only a second.
"Just one condition."
Zeus narrowed his eyes.
"Speak."
"Let me go back to Tartarus first. After that," he said, "I'll face whatever is coming."
Some of the gods looked at him in surprise. Others shook their heads.
"That is unacceptable," said Hera. "The punishment must be carried out first."
"If you punish me now," Nico replied, "Will dies."
Apollo clenched his fists.
"You can't know that for certain," said Athena, though her voice lacked conviction.
"I can," Nico said. "Because I'm the one who left him there."
Zeus rose from his throne.
The sound of the marble echoing under his feet made more than one god shudder.
"The law is not negotiable," he said. "If we allow a demigod to violate fundamental rules without immediate consequences, we set a dangerous precedent."
"Then punish me," Nico retorted. "But don't waste my time."
"There are punishments that involve loss of power," Athena interjected. "Or confinement. Or both."
"Don't take my powers," Nico said quickly. "I need them to find him. After…" he shrugged, "afterwards, you can take them if you want."
Apollo took a step forward.
"Zeus, please—"
"Silence," ordered Zeus.
The thunder that accompanied the word made the columns vibrate.
"This council will decide."
The gods began to argue among themselves. Overlapping voices. Legal arguments, ancient precedents, names of other demigods punished in the past.
Nico stopped listening.
He stared at the floor. He counted in his head. He didn't know what. He just needed not to think about Will. Not to think about Tartarus. Not to think about the guilt.
"The punishment must be exemplary," Hera was saying. "So that no one ever does such a thing again."
"But not irreversible," Athena responded. "He is still a valuable asset."
"He's a boy," Hestia murmured from her place. "And he's willing to bear it all."
No one answered that.
Zeus raised his hand, and silence fell like a slab of stone.
"I have reached a decision."
Nico raised his head.
"Nico di Angelo, son of Hades," Zeus said. "You have knowingly and deliberately broken divine law. You have endangered the balance of the world and the life of a demigod under the protection of this council."
Each word weighed a ton.
"However," he continued, "you have also demonstrated full acceptance of guilt and a willingness to face the consequences."
Zeus looked at him intently.
"You will be granted a single permit to descend into Tartarus once more and retrieve Apollo's son."
Nico's chest loosened for barely a second.
"But," Zeus added, "the punishment is not waived."
Nico nodded slowly.
"Before you leave," said Zeus, "you will receive a sentence fitting the gravity of your acts. Your powers will not be revoked prior to the mission. But the penalty will be physical, direct, and executed under divine authority."
The council fell silent.
"One hundred lashes of thunder."
The number hung in the air. Nico didn't react. Perhaps he didn't even hear the number or perceive the hand of Hades that gripped the arm of his throne. Nico didn't scream. He didn't protest. He didn't collapse.
He only nodded.
"I accept."
Zeus observed him for a few more seconds, as if searching for a hint of doubt. He found none.
"Then it is decided," he decreed. "The trial is adjourned."
Nico, his heart in pieces and his mind already in Tartarus, thought only one thing: Will.
___
The thrones stood empty one by one, the golden light lost some of its artificial gleam, and the echo of voices faded away among the columns. Zeus remained standing, gazing at the horizon as if nothing that had happened had affected him. As if he hadn't just condemned a boy who had already been through too much.
"Was that truly necessary?"
Hades's voice sounded behind him. It wasn't accusatory. Nor pleading. It was low, controlled. Too controlled. A tone hiding a volcano of helpless rage and a cold, creeping terror that froze his guts.
Zeus didn't turn.
"You knew there was no other option."
"There were many," Hades replied, and each word was an effort not to let the tremor he felt inside seep into his voice. "You chose the cruelest one."
That did make Zeus turn.
"I chose the one that upholds the law."
Hades took a few steps forward. His presence didn't command like Zeus's; it was different. Heavier. More ancient. The shadow of his dark robes seemed to swallow the light of the marble, just as fear swallowed every other thought in his mind.
"He's just a child."
Zeus clenched his jaw.
"He is a demigod who has crossed lines even gods dare not cross without permission."
"He went to Tartarus for love," Hades responded, and for the first time he let a thread of desperation filter through. "Not for ambition. Not for power."
"That doesn't make him less dangerous."
Hades stopped in front of him.
"It makes him human."
For a moment, Zeus didn't respond. The air between them tightened like a rope about to snap.
"One hundred lashes of thunder," Hades repeated, and this time the number wasn't an abstract sentence. "Do you know what that means for a mortal body?"
"He's not just any mortal."
"He is still my son."
Zeus let out a dry, humorless laugh.
"There lies the problem, Hades. He's always your son when the consequences arrive."
Hades's eyes gleamed, dangerously. A surge of anger so pure that for a second he saw red, saw the hall stained with blood, saw Zeus collapsing. "Don't you dare."
"You dared," Zeus retorted, "to raise a boy who challenges the gods without measuring the cost."
"I didn't raise him," Hades spat, and guilt, that old companion, bit into his words. "I abandoned him. And now you want him to pay for that too."
The silence that followed was different. More uncomfortable.
Zeus averted his gaze for a second.
"We are not talking about personal blame."
"We always are," Hades said, bitterly. "You just pretend we aren't."
Hades breathed deeply, as if forcing himself not to lose control. When he spoke again, his voice was lower, almost weary, burdened with the weight of what he was about to ask.
"Let me do it."
Zeus frowned.
"The punishment?"
"Yes."
"No."
"Zeus."
"I will not allow you to interfere again."
Hades took another step forward, invading his brother's space. It's the only way. The only way he survives.
"If it's not me, it will be you," he said, and the certainty in his voice was absolute. "And you know he wouldn't withstand you."
Zeus looked at him intently.
"You think I enjoy this?"
"No," Hades replied. "But you can make it an example. I cannot."
"Precisely why."
Hades closed his eyes for a second. He saw Nico as a child, in the Casino, lost in time. He saw his own back, walking away. He opened his eyes, and in them was only desperate, cold pragmatism.
"If you wield the lightning," he said, every word measured, "you will kill him."
Zeus didn't respond immediately.
"Do not exaggerate."
"I'm not," Hades replied without hesitation. "You know him well enough to know he won't defend himself. He won't scream. He won't ask you to stop."
Zeus clenched his fists.
"That was his choice."
"Because he is broken," Hades stated bluntly, driving home the most painful truth. "Because he believes he deserves anything that happens to him."
That did make a dent. Zeus breathed in slowly, and for an instant, Hades saw more than the King of the Gods: he saw an uncle, seeing his nephew on his way to slaughter.
"The law demands blood, Hades."
"The law does not demand it from your hands."
Zeus observed him for a long moment.
"If I agree," Zeus said finally, "it will be under my conditions."
"I accept," Hades responded instantly, though his mind didn't seem to be there.
"I will not reduce the sentence."
"I have not asked you to."
"There will be no witnesses."
Hades nodded.
"And you will do so with indifference," Zeus added. "If the council suspects there was favoritism—"
"They always suspect," Hades interrupted, a flicker of his old bitterness showing. "Let them suspect."
Zeus fell silent. Then he spoke more quietly, as if the very walls of Olympus could hear and judge.
"Will you be able to do it?"
Hades did not answer immediately.
"No," he said finally, with an honesty that burned his throat. "But I will do it anyway."
Zeus looked at him, and for the first time he didn't see the god of the Underworld, but a father trapped in an impossible decision. Something in his expression softened, not from pity, but from recognition.
"Then it is settled," he said. "You will carry out the punishment."
Hades nodded slowly. The deal was sealed. He had won. He had gotten what he wanted. Why that feel so bad?
"Then he goes to Tartarus, if he survives, if he returns from Tartarus,"
The shadow around Hades intensified, wrapping around him, an instinctive reaction to the threat, to the doubt.
"He will return," he affirmed.
Zeus held his gaze.
"I hope so. For your sake… and for his."
Hades turned to leave, the shadow stirring at his feet like a restless animal.
"Hades," the king of the gods called him.
Hades stopped, without turning.
"Do not mistake this for mercy," Zeus said, and his voice regained the full weight of the throne. "The law remains intact."
"I never mistake it for that," Hades replied, and looked over his shoulder, his dark eyes like bottomless pits. "I just remember who ends up paying its price."
And he disappeared into a cloud of shadows without another word.
___
The dungeon isn't what Nico expects.
And that, in itself, is odd.
It's smaller. More enclosed. There are no stands, no ceremonial torches, no distant murmur of curious gods. There is no audience. No spectacle. Only dark, damp stone and a silence so dense it seems to cling to the skin.
Nico realizes it almost instantly.
At least it won't be public.
That thought cuts through his head with a strange mix of relief and shame. Relief because he won't have to endure stares, whispers, pity, or morbid curiosity. Shame because he shouldn't care about that. Not when the punishment is the punishment. Not when what he did could have shattered the balance.
He leans against the wall without realizing it. The stone is cold even through his clothes. He crosses his arms, then lets them fall. He shifts one leg. Then the other. He can't stand still.
It's not fear of the punishment.
That's already accepted.
It's the impatience. The pure, taut anxiety that climbs up his chest like poorly contained electricity. Will. He doesn't say the name, but it's there, pounding inside him, insistent. Every second here is another second down in Tartarus, where things don't wait.
Hurry up, he thinks, though he doesn't know who the thought is directed at. Zeus. Hades. The universe. Himself.
He clenches his hands. Opens them. Rubs them on his pants. Not to calm himself: to keep from running.
The door opens.
Nico lifts his head instantly. His body tenses, ready for anything. For one absurd second he thinks it will be Zeus. Or Ares. Or someone he doesn't know.
But it's Hades.
That unsettles him in a different way.
His father enters without haste. The door closes behind him with a dry, final sound. He brings no escort. No guards. No witnesses.
Nico goes still. All at once. As if someone had flipped a switch.
What is he doing here?
He doesn't say it out loud. He doesn't know if he should. He's never known quite how to talk to Hades, and certainly not now. Part of him assumes Hades is only here to observe, to fulfill the role of a distant judge. Another part —the smallest, the one he tries to crush— wonders if…
No. Don't start with that.
Hades doesn't look at him immediately. He takes a few steps forward, stops near a stone table. On it rests the whip. Nico sees it then. Black, traced with veins of barely contained energy. It doesn't crackle yet, but he can feel it. The air around it seems heavier.
Nico's stomach lurches.
He says nothing.
He doesn't ask.
He doesn't greet him.
Hades picks up the whip. He holds it for a moment, in silence. He coils it around his hand with slow, mechanical movements, as if needing to feel its weight, its shape, before using it. Nico follows every gesture unwillingly.
Okay.
That thought is almost automatic. Not dramatic. Not heroic. Just acceptance.
Hades raises his gaze then. Their eyes meet.
There is no anger in Hades's eyes.
No explicit disappointment either.
That's what unsettles Nico the most.
There is something deeper. Something he can't name and would rather not see. He swallows. He looks away first, annoyed with himself for doing it.
Silence. Long.
Nico shifts his leg again. Then stops it. He forces himself to stand still. Compose yourself. He doesn't want to give the impression of being nervous about this. He doesn't want Hades to think he hesitates, that he regrets, that he's scared.
Because he's not.
Or so he tells himself.
Hades finally speaks. His voice is low. Controlled.
"You know why you're here."
It's not a question.
Nico nods once. A small gesture. Precise. He doesn't look up.
"Yes."
His voice doesn't tremble. That gives him a kind of cold pride.
Another silence.
Hades takes another step toward him. Then another. He stops a meter away. Nico can feel his presence like a physical weight. The air seems denser between them.
Hades looks him up and down. Not like a prisoner. Not like an enemy. Like… something more complicated. Nico doesn't know where to put his hands. He lets them hang at his sides. Then he balls them into fists.
"Take off the jacket," Hades says.
There's no harshness in the tone. No kindness either. It's an instruction.
Nico doesn't respond immediately. Not out of defiance. Out of logic. He was going to anyway. He takes off his jacket without haste, folds it carelessly, and leaves it on the floor to the side. Then he stands still for a second, waiting.
Hades says nothing more.
Nico understands. He takes off his t-shirt as well. The cold dungeon air raises goosebumps on his skin. He makes no comment. Doesn't ask. Doesn't look at Hades. This is better. Easier.
Hades watches the gesture. Every movement. Too aware of his son's body: thinner than it should be, marked by old scars he didn't ask to see now. He tightens his grip on the whip a little more.
Focus.
He approaches the manacles anchored to the wall. Nico sees them now. Metal. Heavy. Placed too high. He understands instantly.
He sighs quietly. Not to complain. To prepare himself.
Hades stands in front of him. For a second, Nico thinks he's going to say something more. That he's going to explain. That he's going to warn him.
He doesn't.
He takes Nico's wrists. The contact is firm. Not rough. But direct. Nico tenses reflexively and then forces himself to relax. Don't make this worse.
Hades lifts his arms above his head. Nico rises onto his toes without being asked. His shoulders protest immediately. The manacles snap shut around his wrists with a dry click.
The metal is cold. So cold.
Hades adjusts the position. Makes sure the wrists are close together, high up, forcing him to stretch beyond what's comfortable. Nico suppresses a wince of discomfort. He doesn't want to give satisfaction. He doesn't want to show anything prematurely.
When Hades steps back, Nico is left there, suspended, barely touching the floor with the tips of his toes. The posture is forced. Uncomfortable. The weight starts to register immediately in his shoulders and back.
Great.
He flexes his fingers slightly, testing the manacles. They don't yield. He didn't expect them to.
Hades returns to the table. Places the whip on the stone for a moment. Studies it. The silence stretches between them again.
Nico lowers his head a little. His hair falls over his face. His breathing is slow, measured. He doesn't want to think about what's coming. He thinks about something else. About counting seconds. About the cold logic of this. The sooner it starts, the sooner it ends.
He thinks about Will.
That screws him up a little.
Hades picks up the whip again. Uncoils it slowly. The sound is soft, almost intimate. Too intimate.
"This is not personal," he says finally.
Nico lifts his head. Looks at him. Not because he needs to. Because he doesn't understand why he said that.
He doesn't reply.
Hades holds his gaze a second longer than necessary. There is something there he wants to say and doesn't. Something he can't allow himself. He clenches his jaw. Takes a step back.
The air seems to hold its breath.
Nico swallows. His hands are starting to go a little numb from the position. He doesn't complain. Not now.
Come on.
The first lash hasn't fallen yet.
But everything that matters is already there.
The first time the lash falls, there is no warning.
There are no words.
No countdown.
No ceremony.
Only the sound.
A dry, brutal crack that splits the air as if the sky itself were being torn in two.
Nico doesn't scream.
His body arches instinctively, the chains holding him suspended jangle, and the impact steals the air from his lungs. He clenches his teeth so hard his jaw aches. The pain arrives late, like a wave that first shoves you and then drowns you.
So this is how it feels, he thought, with a cold, distant clarity. The judgment of Zeus. How pompous. How predictable.
Hades doesn’t move.
He holds the lightning-whip with a firm hand. His face is a mask. He doesn’t look at Nico’s face.
He looks at his back.
Second lash.
Third.
The sound repeats, rhythmic, cruel. Thunderclap after thunderclap.
Nico starts breathing badly, fast, as if the air isn't enough anymore. Each strike is pure electricity coursing through his nerves, burning him from the inside. It's not just physical pain: it's a feeling of judgment, of something divine telling him this is what you're worth now.
No, his mind corrects, each word a nail in his own coffin. This is what I deserve. For being an idiot. For being arrogant. For thinking the rules didn't apply to me if the cause was noble enough. How pathetic.
Resist, he tells himself.
Just resist.
But it's not resistance anymore. It's accounting. A payment.
He doesn't think about Olympus. He doesn't think about his father. He thinks about the gods, yes, but not with fear. With a contempt so deep it burned hotter inside him than the lightning. Let them enjoy the show. That's all they're good for, anyway. For sitting on their thrones and doling out pain. For collecting payment. Always collecting.
He thinks about enduring.
What is a mistake worth? he wondered when the fifth one fell. How many lashes does a hand that lets go in the dark cost? How many are a pair of blue eyes that trusted me worth?
Hades feels each impact as if it were going through him.
He remembers Nico as a child, too quiet, too serious for his age. He remembers thinking that silence was strength. Now he understands it was abandonment.
But he doesn't stop.
Lash after lash, Nico's back begins to tense in a different way. It's not just reaction anymore. It's exhaustion. His muscles are failing. His knees tremble even though they barely touch the ground.
On the twenty-eighth, Nico gasps audibly. A broken, deep sound that escapes his chest without permission. It's not a scream. It's worse.
Shut up, he orders himself, furious. Don't give them the satisfaction. Don't give him the… He doesn't finish the thought. He can't even name Hades in his mind. He's just the silhouette with the lightning. Another executioner. The most efficient one, perhaps. Hades tightens his fingers around the lightning-whip.
Don't look, he orders himself.
But he looks.
He sees Nico's shoulders slump, his head fall forward. He sees him swallowing again and again, trying not to lose control.
"Continue," the law commands, though no one speaks it.
The lash falls again.
Nico stifles a groan. The pain is no longer a wave: it's a fire. It burns his skin, his chest, his head. Each strike lodges inside him, accumulating.
Just one or two hours, he thinks, clinging to the calculation like a life raft made of nails. Then I'll go for Will. This is the toll. The divine tax for stupidity.
That thought was the only thing not breaking. But even it was beginning to be tinged with cynicism. And what if you're not in one piece when this is over? What if you shatter like the fragile toy you've always been? Will will be down there, waiting. Because you promised. And you always break your promises, don't you, di Angelo?
On the thirty-fifth, the sound changes.
It's not the lightning.
It’s Nico.
A short, sharp cry, torn from him against his will. As if his body had decided to surrender before his mind could.
Weak! The internal reproach was as sharp as the cry. You can't even endure this in silence. How did you think you were going to save him? How did you think you could face Tartarus again if you can't even endure your own punishment?
Hades goes rigid.
That sound… it isn't the sound of a hero. It isn't the sound of a proud demigod. It’s the sound of someone who can no longer hold the pain alone.
The lightning-whip trembles slightly in his hand.
No, Hades thinks. Not now.
Nico presses his lips together until it hurts. He tastes the metallic tang of blood. He hates himself for making a sound. He hates himself for being weak. He hates himself for the childish need that pierced him in that instant: for someone to say "enough."
It's fine, he lied to himself. This is the price. You knew it. You accepted it. Now shut up and pay.
He wasn't thinking about justice.
He wasn't thinking about punishment.
He was thinking about an exchange.
Pain in exchange for time. Lash by lash, I'm buying minutes. Seconds. The right to keep looking for him. It's a good deal. The only one they offered. The only one I deserve.
The lash fell again.
And something inside Nico began to break.
It wasn't a bone.
It was the illusion of control. The one where he could stay detached, observe his own torment as a spectator. The pain was no longer something he was experiencing; it was what he was.
On the forty-third, he couldn't contain it anymore.
The scream came from the deepest part of his chest, desperate, ragged. Nico tried to bite his tongue, close his throat, swallow it… but his body disobeyed.
The scream broke, cut off, came out again.
One after another.
Stop! Please! Stop! begged a part of him, the part that was just a frightened child. The other part, filled with rage and guilt, drowned it out immediately: "Please"? Who are you begging? Him? The gods? They don't listen. They never listen. They only know how to take. Keep screaming, make a fool of yourself. That's how they see you. That's how they've always seen you: the Underworld's problem child, the one who can't stay still, the one who always ends up chained and bleeding.
Hades felt the world narrow around him.
Every sound was a direct blow. Every attempt by Nico to silence himself—the tense neck, the shaking head, the teeth biting into skin—was worse than the scream itself.
Stop, Hades thought.
But his arm moved all the same.
Because the law does not stop for screams.
Because if he stopped now, it would all have been for nothing.
Nico began to cry without tears. His breathing was chaos. The pain was no longer localized: it was everything. He lost all sense of time, of number, of space.
He only knew that it hurt.
And that it wouldn't stop.
Will, he thought, but the name was no longer a hopeful mantra. It was a knife. Wait for me. Don't wait for me. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I left you. I left you and now I'm here, crying like a kid while they whip me. I'm not the hero you thought I was. I'm this. A broken idiot. But... I'm still going to come. Even if I have to crawl.
By the fiftieth, Hades could no longer deceive himself.
Nico's back… it wasn't just tension anymore. It was fragility.
He didn't register the details. He didn't want to. He couldn't.
He saw how his son's body trembled in a way that wasn't voluntary. How his legs no longer supported anything. How his head hung, how his hair hid his face.
Is he going to survive?
The question appeared without permission, clear, brutal.
Hades had never allowed himself to think that.
He had watched thousands die.
He had judged souls without blinking.
But this was different.
This was his son.
And he didn't know if the punishment was killing him or if Nico had already arrived half-dead.
Nico was barely aware of where he was.
There were moments of absolute blackness, followed by flashes of pain. In those brief spaces, he thought he might be dying. And he wasn't afraid.
It would be fair, his conscience whispered in the dark. A fitting end. To die in a dungeon, punished by your own father. A cautionary tale for other demigods: don't love too much. Don't dare. Don't believe your feelings matter more than the gods' rules.
What scared him was not arriving.
Not now, he repeated to himself, emerging from the blackness with a gasp. Not before I find him. I can't die being just this. A mistake. An exemplary punishment. I have to be... something more. Even if it's just the idiot who brought him back.
The lash kept falling.
Hades didn't speak.
He didn't ask for forgiveness.
He didn't explain anything.
If he opened his mouth, he knew he wouldn't be able to continue.
So he stayed silent.
And Nico, in his torment, found a final form of rebellion: to stop counting. To stop calculating. To submerge himself in the pain and the internal dialogue of self-hatred. It was all he had left. His last, pathetic strength: the certainty that all of this was, deep down, exactly what he deserved.
The seventy-second arrives without warning, like all the others.
The lash falls and, for the first time in a long while, Nico lets out a clear, broken exclamation that isn't a scream of pain, but something worse.
"Father—"
The word escapes him before he can stop it.
It's instinctive. Childlike. Desperate. The plea of a child who no longer knows who else to turn to in a universe made of pain.
Nico realizes instantly what he's said. A new horror, deeper than the whip's, floods him.
What have you just done? his mind screamed, ashamed. You beg him? You call him that, now, here? Pathetic! Weak, disgustingly weak.
His eyes open a little wider, horrified at himself. He clenches his jaw and bites his tongue until he feels the metallic taste flood his mouth. The blood flows slowly, warm, a self-administered punishment for his verbal betrayal.
He clenches his right hand until his nails dig into his palm, seeking a pain he can control, one that won't betray him as the coward he believes he is.
Hades stops.
Not because he wants to.
Because he can't continue in that exact second. The word has pierced him with the precision of a divine spear, but the poison is infinitely more familiar: guilt.
Father.
Not "Zeus." Not "god." Not "king."
Father.
The term echoed in the void of his mind not as a title, but as a living reproach. It was the word he had never deserved to hear, the one Nico, with his wounded pride and careful distance, had denied him for so long. And now it came to him like this: torn out by agony, a confession of vulnerability that was a dagger in Hades's heart.
I have reduced him to this, he thought, and the thought was as bitter as the taste of blood in his son's mouth. To screaming for a father while his father is the one holding the whip. What a magnificent god. What an exemplary father.
The lightning crackles in the air, suspended. His breath catches. He keeps his gaze fixed on a point on Nico's bloody back, but he no longer sees the skin. He sees the centuries of abandonment. He sees the impossible choice: to be the god who enforces the law or the father who forgives. And having failed at both.
Nico turns his head as much as he can. The chains don't make it easy. The movement draws a low groan from him, but he persists. He manages to look at him.
His eyes are open, but there is no defiance in them. No rage. No reproach.
There is a deafening emptiness.
And fear. Not fear of the next lash, but fear of having committed the unforgivable mistake of showing vulnerability. Of having broken the only rule he had left: don't ask for clemency.
"There's less than half to go," Nico says.
His voice is hoarse, almost unrecognizable. It doesn't sound relieved. It sounds like desperate calculation. Like someone clinging to numbers because words have already betrayed him, because feelings are a luxury he can't afford.
He's asking me to continue, Hades realized with a new surge of agony. He's counting the lashes like they're coins, and he wants his full change back. Because he believes it's what he deserves. And because… because if it's not finished, he can't go after the boy he loves.
Hades feels something inside him crack. It's not a bone. It's the fragile shell of indifference he had managed to construct.
"Face the wall!" he shouts at him.
The voice comes out harsher, louder, more cruel than he had ever intended. It's not an order from an executioner. It's the panicked cry of a father who can't bear to be seen. Who can't endure his son's empty, fearful gaze without his entire purpose crumbling. If Nico keeps looking at him, Hades won't be able to raise his arm again.
Nico blinks.
For a second, he doesn't understand. Then he obeys.
He doesn't argue. He doesn't ask. He doesn't hesitate.
Of course, Nico thought, and the thought tasted of final defeat. He won't even let me look at him. I'm so repulsive in my weakness that even my own executioner can't stand the sight of me.
He turns his head slowly, clumsily, as if every movement weighs a ton. He presses his forehead against the cold stone. The contact draws a trembling sigh from him.
Something breaks in him then.
It's not his body.
It's the little that remained of the childish, stupid idea that somewhere, in some father, there could be comfort. Now there's only cold stone and the sound of the lightning charging.
Don't look. Don't speak. Don't exist. Just receive. It's the only thing you're good at.
He doesn't know that, just as his forehead touches the stone, a silent, hot tear escapes Hades's eye and traces a path down his cheek like a river of guilt. He doesn't wipe it away. He can't. To wipe it away would be to acknowledge it, and to acknowledge it would be to stop.
The seventy-third lash falls with renewed force, as if Hades is trying to whip his own compassion away. Nico shudders, but he doesn't react like before anymore.
And then it happens.
The pain is so sharp, the shame so unbearable, that his power reacts by pure survival instinct, like an arm lifting to block a blow. A primal urge to flee.
The shadows in the farthest corner of the cell stir, responding to his anguish. Nico feels the familiar pull of the void, the promise of dissolution, of a place where the pain can't follow… A flicker. A shimmering at the edges of his form, as if for a fraction of a second he might fade and reappear in that welcoming darkness.
But it fails.
The pain is an anchor of white, electric light that nails him to his flesh, to the chains, to reality. His power fades like a stifled sigh, unable to compete with the divine torment. He didn't manage to travel. He only managed to flicker grotesquely, like a defective ghost.
The failure burned inside him hotter than the lightning. You're not even good for that anymore, his mind spat at him. You can't endure it and you can't escape. You can only stay and take it. As always.
Hades saw it. He saw the shimmer of the shadows, the failed attempt to slip away. And instead of fury, he felt a new wave of vertiginous panic. He's trying to flee from me. From this. His most basic instinct is to escape the pain I'm inflicting. The executioner became, in his own eyes, the monster his son was desperately trying to get away from.
By the eightieth, Hades sees it clearly.
Nico isn't writhing.
He isn't trying to protect himself.
There is no real resistance. Only a body hanging, surrendered.
His breathing is irregular, shallow. Every inhalation seems a conscious effort. His chest barely rises.
Hades's hand begins to tremble.
Very little. But enough.
No, he tells himself, gripping the whip until it hurts his hand. Don't stop now. Stopping is torturing him longer. Finish it. For pity's sake, finish it.
He knows that if he loses the rhythm, if he hesitates too much, the punishment becomes even worse. Longer. More uncertain.
The only way to keep him awake, to prevent him from sinking into an unconsciousness from which he might not return, is cruel. He has to provoke him, has to ignite the anger that sustains him.
Hades knows this.
And yet, when he opens his mouth, it hurts more than any lightning strike.
"We warned you," he shouts, and every word tastes like ashes. "Zeus warned you. Athena warned you. You knew exactly what would happen if you went down without permission."
Nico tenses. He doesn't move much, but something in his back stiffens. His breathing quickens a little, as if the words were a different kind of blow.
I know, Nico thought, grateful for and hating the new focus at the same time. I knew. And I did it. I'm guilty. Keep going. Tell me. Confirm it.
"You freed a Titan," Hades continues, his voice becoming a mechanical hammering, the sound of the law justifying itself. "On purpose. It wasn't an accident."
Another lash.
Nico moans, low, barely audible.
I know. I know. And I'd do it again. For him. That's the most monstrous thing of all.
"You endangered the balance," Hades goes on, choking on his own speech. "You endangered Will Solace."
That one hurts differently. It's the master stroke.
Nico presses his forehead harder against the wall. His fingers clench. The name slices through his head like an ice knife, clearer and sharper than any physical pain.
No, his mind pleaded, unraveling. Not that. Don't use his name here. Don't stain it with this.
"And still," Hades yelled, forcing the volume to cover the tremor in his voice, "you dared to demand to return to Tartarus as if nothing had happened."
Nico tenses again. Not out of pride. From the overwhelming certainty of his guilt.
He's right, he told himself, sinking. All of this is my fault. Every lash is mine. I've earned it.
For the next lashes, Hades keeps talking. Not because he wants to humiliate him. Because he needs to hear a gasp, a moan, any sign that Nico is still present, clinging to this world of pain, because the next one is the world from which there is no return.
"You accepted the punishment without argument," he said, and it sounded like an accusation, not against Nico, but against the universe that had put him in this position. "As if your life were expendable."
Nico felt a knot in his chest.
Because it is, he thought, with devastating clarity. If Will lives, it doesn't matter. My life for his. It's simple math. It's justice.
"You thought it was enough to take the blame," Hades continued, watching his son's body barely responding. "As if that fixed anything."
Nico moaned again. His body no longer moved properly. His muscles responded late. The pain was now mixed with constant dizziness, with the temptation of the black.
The words hurt because he didn't reject them. He believed them. Each one was a brick in the wall of his own condemnation.
On the ninetieth, Nico's body gave up.
Not dramatically.
Not with a final scream.
It simply… collapsed. His knees stopped supporting him. The chains kept him upright by pure external force. His head fell forward. His breathing became so shallow, so distant, that Hades didn't know if he was still there or if only the shell was hanging.
"Nico," he growled, unwillingly, and the word was a plea, a prayer.
There was no response.
Ten remained.
Ten remained.
And now it was worse than when there were a hundred.
Because this was no longer punishing someone who was resisting.
It was striking something motionless. Something that might be broken forever.
Hades felt a cold, ancient terror crawl up his spine. The terror of the god who rules death, faced with the real possibility of having caused it with his own hands.
Is he unconscious? Is he dead? Have I…?
He didn't know. And the doubt destroyed him, made him the prisoner of his own punishment.
Each of the final lashes weighed more than the last. Not because the lightning was stronger, but because Hades felt he was crossing a threshold from which there was no return. Not for Nico. For him. He was etching this moment, this horror, into his own soul forever.
On the hundredth, there was no rhythm left.
No emotional distance.
There was only the final movement of an arm that wanted it all to be over, and the terrifying silence that followed. Hades delivers the final lash with all his strength, not out of cruelty, but out of desperation. As if by scorching the air he could also burn away the time, the memory, the very act itself.
As soon as the echo of thunder fades, he moves.
He breaks the chains with a sharp gesture, a snap of power that has nothing to do with ceremony or law. Only with the visceral urgency for it to stop.
Nico falls.
Literally.
There is no tension left to hold him. He's dead weight, a puppet with its strings cut. The sensation is of endless vertigo, of a void finally claiming him after so long resisting it. There is no fear in that fall. Only a deep, terrifying relief: it's over. You can rest now.
He doesn't even brace for the impact.
Hades catches him before the cold stone can shatter him completely.
The body hits his arms with a soft rustle of cloth and a forced gasp from Nico. The weight surprises him. Too light. Too inert. As if it weren't a demigod, but the ghost of one. As if during the punishment he had been fading, and what he held now was only the trace of his presence.
"Nico," he says, and his voice is no longer the executioner's, nor the god's. It's hoarse, urgent, human in its desperation. "Nico, look at me."
Nothing.
A silence more terrifying than all the screams.
A primitive panic, as ancient as Chaos itself, seizes Hades. What have I done?
"Son," he whispers, and the word tastes like dust and guilt. "Please."
The irony doesn't escape him, but it shreds him: the god of death, the final judge of countless souls, whispering a plea to a mortal, his mortal, not to be gone. Not to have been sent by his own hand to the realm he rules. It's the worst of cosmic jokes, and it isn't funny.
He touches his face with hands that suddenly feel clumsy, too large, made for wielding scepters and not for seeking a pulse in a slender wrist. He pushes the sweat-soaked hair from his forehead, revealing a ghostly pallor. He searches, presses…
There!
A heartbeat. Weak. Irregular. Like the fluttering of a dying bird, but it's there. Life, stubborn and fragile, holds on.
Nico felt those touches as something distant, through a thickness of cotton and pain. They weren't the sharp impact of lightning. They were… intrusive. His mind, swimming in a murky sea, couldn't process them. Hands? Whose? It didn't matter. He just wanted to be left to sink in peace.
"Breathe," Hades commands, and it's a plea disguised as an order. "Breathe, please."
Nothing.
Nico's chest barely moves. Hades shakes him gently, a minimal movement, as if afraid that with more force he would disintegrate in his arms. No. Not now. Not after all this. Not by my hand.
Fear, that old stranger, reaches him completely and crushes him.
Hades hugs him.
Not as the Lord of the Underworld embraces his subjects, with the coldness of authority.
As a father.
As his father.
He presses Nico's broken body against his chest, wrapping his arms around him, curving his own back to form a shell against the world, against the law, against the gaze of the heavens and, above all, against himself. He rests his forehead on his son's damp, salty hair, closes his eyes, and weeps.
Not in silence.
Not with the stoic dignity of an ancient god.
He weeps with the rough, uncontrolled sobs of one who has just seen the abyss and almost pushed his own blood into it. He weeps because he almost lost him. Because during those final lashes, he was sure he already had. And he weeps, above all, because he fears he has lost him on the inside, that what he holds is only a shell, that the Nico who defied the world has been broken beyond any repair, even the divine kind.
"Forgive me," he whispers into his hair, a confession laden with millennia of absence. "Forgive me, please."
Nico, in the confusion of his unconsciousness, felt the warmth. A warmth that wasn't the heat of pain. It was enveloping, firm. And in his delirium, for an instant, his feverish mind formulated an absurd, impossible thought: Father?
But he rejected it instantly. It was another trick of the pain, a cruel illusion. His father wasn't here. His father was thunder and distance. So he surrendered to the nothingness, which was at least honest.
Hades stays there, rocking slightly, cradling the weight of his failure and his love, terrified that the price Olympus demanded was, in the end, his son's soul.
---
Hades leaves the cell with Nico in his arms.
He doesn't carry him like a prisoner being taken to the next torment.
Nor like a completed punishment to be filed away.
He carries him as one carries something infinitely precious and desperately fragile, something a strong gust, a misstep, could shatter. With a delicacy that completely contradicts his might.
Nico's body hangs inert against his chest, his head resting in the hollow of his shoulder, his hair stuck to his forehead with sweat and perhaps Hades's tears. He is breathing, yes, but with a terrifying shallowness. So little that Hades, in an act of purely paternal anxiety, has to check every few steps, tilting his head slightly to feel the faint breath against his neck, as if the air could slip away from Nico without warning, as if his duty now was not just his transport, but his lungs, his anchor to life.
Nico, even in that limbo, instinctively sought the point of greatest warmth, greatest stability. His head sank a little further into Hades's shoulder, a completely involuntary, animal motion of a wounded creature seeking the only refuge available.
When he crosses the threshold, Olympus exists again with its falsely benevolent golden light.
Zeus is there.
Standing, immobile, his arms crossed. A sentinel of his own justice. Hades knows—he knows with a certainty that burns inside him—that Zeus thought he wouldn't make it to the end. That his brother, the gloomy, distant one, would break. That he would ask for clemency, relief, that he would plead. Zeus was expecting that surrender.
Hades doesn't give it to him.
He doesn't even look at him at first. His gaze is fixed on the weight he carries, on the next step, on not stumbling. He advances with a step meant to be firm, though inside it's a trembling battlefield. Every muscle is rigid, not from the tension of power, but from the superhuman effort of containment, of holding a universe of pain that should never have weighed on these shoulders.
Then he sees him.
Apollo is a few steps away.
The sun god stands frozen as he sees him approach. His expression is an open book of dismay: first confusion (What is Hades carrying like that?), then a comprehension that hits him in the gut (It's Nico…), and finally a pure, genuine horror, not theatrical, that clouds his golden eyes.
His gaze, inevitable, drops to the inert body.
"...by the gods," he murmurs, and it's an empty invocation, a reflex of a shock too great.
Hades doesn't stop. He can't. Stopping would mean accepting the gaze, the judgment, the reality outside the small world of his arms. But Apollo takes a step forward, almost by reflex, as if he's going to take Nico from him.
"Is he…?" He doesn't finish the sentence. He can't pronounce the word.
Hades looks up for the first time. Their eyes lock.
Apollo sees. He sees everything. He sees Hades's hands, those hands that wield the ebony scepter, stained with dried and fresh blood that isn't his. He sees the way he presses Nico against himself, with a possessiveness that isn't of domination, but of desperate protection, as if letting go would be to drop the last fragment of his own heart. He sees no trace of pride, of the cold satisfaction of duty fulfilled. No authority remains.
Only an age-old weariness.
And a guilt so deep that Apollo, father of so many children, recognizes it instantly and feels a shiver of terrified empathy.
"Alive," Hades growls, and the voice comes from a deep, broken place. "For now."
Apollo swallows, dryly. He absorbs the rawness of that "for now."
"I…" he begins, and his voice sounds strange, too human. "I will go down for Will."
It's an offer. A trade. An attempt to atone for something, to help with the only thing left. Hades nods once, a short, sharp movement.
There is no discussion. No negotiation. No time.
Hades knows this will have a cost. Zeus gives nothing for free, and allowing Apollo to intervene directly will be another coin for the future. But in this moment, in this second where Nico's life hangs by a tenuous thread, only one thing matters: Nico will not feel physical pain for that mission. No more. He will not go down. He will not pay more.
Hades turns his head just slightly, a sidelong glance toward Zeus.
He says nothing. He doesn't need to. His gaze says it all: the weight he carries, the price paid, the line he has crossed. It is a gaze that doesn't challenge, but shows.
Zeus holds his gaze. And in the king of the gods' eyes, for a fleeting instant, there is something different. It isn't compassion. But it is… recognition. The recognition of a shared burden, of a terrible choice made. Perhaps, just perhaps, a glimmer of doubt. Was it worth it? This spectacle? This shattering?
Hades doesn't wait for an answer. He doesn't want one. He turns, adjusts his burden with infinite care, and walks away.
No one stands in his way. The shadows seem to lengthen to receive him, to hide him, to take him home.
When he returns to the Underworld, the realm seems to have changed. Not in its essence, but in its tone. Everything is darker, yes, but a dense, compassionate, heavier darkness.
__
Hades sits at his side.
Not on a throne.
Not on a high seat.
On the edge.
Every day.
He doesn't know who he's praying to.
There is no one above him. No higher god to plead with. And yet, he murmurs words he does not expect anyone to hear.
"I'm sorry," he says, over and over.
He takes his hand carefully, as if afraid to wake him or break him. Sometimes he kisses it. Sometimes he just holds it.
"Forgive me," he whispers. "For not being there. For being too late. For not knowing how to do it better."
___
Hades opens the door expecting silence.
Expecting calm breathing.
Expecting the oblivion brought by fever and extreme weakness.
He does not expect open eyes, so wide they seem to swallow everything. Nor that posture: Nico, sitting on the edge of the bed, half the bandages on his torso already torn, ripped off with trembling, bloody fingers. The exposed skin was a mosaic of raw flesh, bruises, and reopened scabs. Fresh, red blood had already begun to soak the remaining white cloth and the sheets, forming small crimson craters.
When he sees Hades, there is no startle. No fear of him. Only a pure, focused terror, like a cornered animal seeing the only way out and willing to smash through anything.
"Where is Will?" Nico's voice came out a hoarse whisper, but charged with electric urgency. He wasn't asking; he was demanding information for his mission.
"I have to go," he continued, without waiting for an answer. "I've wasted too much time. It was one or two hours… just one or two… and I…" He looked at his own hands as if he didn't understand why they weren't working. "I have to go."
He tries to stand up.
The movement was clumsy, a biomechanical disaster. His right leg gave way first with a dry pop of overtaxed tendons. He staggered forward, gripping the bedpost tightly. The sheet, soaked with sweat and blood, fell to the floor. A new scarlet stain began to spread on the bandage.
"Nico, stop," Hades ordered, closing the door and advancing quickly. "You can't move. You're—"
"No!" Nico's interruption was a ragged, desperate cry. "You don't understand! He's alone down there, with them, in the dark. I can't stay here… I can't…" His voice broke, but his eyes burned with a fever that wasn't physical. He took another step, dragging his leg.
Hades stepped between him and the door, blocking the way with his body. The shadow he cast was enormous.
"Apollo went," he said, with a clarity meant to be a wall. "Apollo went down to Tartarus to find his son. He will do it."
Nico blinked, slowly, as if processing a foreign language.
"No," he denied, automatic, stubborn. "No, that's not… that wasn't the deal. I… I said I would go. I promised. He… he trusts me." He tried to get around him, clumsily, dragging his foot across the cold floor. His breathing was a quick, shallow pant, the sound of panic drowning itself.
"Nico," Hades insisted, reaching out a hand, not to grab, but to halt. "Listen to me. It's done."
But Nico wasn't listening. He was listening to the echo of his own promise in Tartarus's void. He saw the relentless clock in his head. Every second here was a betrayal. I'm failing. I'm already failing. As always.
"I have to go myself," he murmured, more to himself. "I left him there. I am the one who… who has to…"
The dizziness hit him then, a tsunami of blackness that clouded his vision and made him waver. His knees buckled, irretrievably, and this time there was no bedpost to grab.
Hades caught him before he crashed to the floor. Nico's body, which before had seemed too light, was now a sack of trembling bones and muscles strained to their limit.
"Let me go!" Nico protested, and though his voice was weak, the force in his words was frantic. "Let me go, please! Just let me… I have to…!" He struggled, a spastic, pathetic motion. His hands pushed against Hades's chest, without strength, but with a desperation that stole the breath.
Hades instantly noticed the new, hot wetness soaking his robe where Nico was pressed against him. Blood. He was actively bleeding, reopening everything with his movements.
Without thinking, he lifted him into his arms.
"NO!" Nico screamed, and this time there was real force in his rejection. His body thrashed, a surge of desperate adrenaline. His hands didn't just cling; they pushed, beat against Hades's shoulders, his chest. "Don't carry me! Let me go! I have to go!I cant leave him there !"
"Nico, stop!" Hades's voice was a contained thunderclap, but Nico didn't hear thunder. He heard the silence of Tartarus.
Nico struggled with a wild energy, fueled by pure terror. He kicked, his bare feet striking the air, Hades's legs, with no strength to hurt, but with a clear intent to break free. A clumsy kick connected with Hades's side. The god didn't even flinch; the blow wasn't an offense, it was a symptom of agony.
Gods, how do I hold him without breaking him more, Hades thought, terrified. His own hands, capable of pulverizing mountains, sought points of grip that weren't bruised flesh, that didn't press on ribs that might be broken. He felt the fragility under his fingers, as if Nico were made of cracked glass.
"Let me go! I have to get him! I promised!" Nico was shouting, mixing words with gasps. Tears of rage, pain, absolute panic streamed down his face as if he didn't even notice. "It's late! It's already too late because I stayed here!"
"Nico, please!" Hades's plea burst forth, raw and desperate, mingling with his son's screams. "Listen to me! Apollo already went! It's not too late!"
"I DON'T BELIEVE YOU!" Nico howled, writhing. In a sudden movement, his elbow struck Hades's jaw. It was a dry impact, with no real weight behind it, but shocking. Hades didn't take it as an offense; he felt the pain for Nico, for the madness that possessed him. "You're lying! Everyone lies to me! I just want to go! LET ME GO! Why didn't you let me go?""
Nico began to strike with more force, blindly, desperately, against anything: Hades's chest, his own arms, the air. Each blow was a gasp of agony, each kick a beat of despair. Hades tried to contain him, hold him firmly but without harm, and it was like trying to contain a hurricane without tearing the wings off a bird.
"Nico, breathe!" Hades shouted, his own voice breaking. "Look at me! Not at the door! I'm here!"
But Nico didn't see him. He only saw the door. He only saw failure. He only felt the abyssal terror that every second spent in those arms was a second in which Will might be ceasing to exist. Guilt was strangling him, stronger than any embrace.
The struggle reached an agonizing climax. Nico, exhausted, bleeding, drowning in his own sobs, made one last attempt to break free, arching his back with such violence that Hades feared he would hear something actually snap.
"PLEASE!" they both pleaded in unison, with opposite meanings.
Hades, in a final act of desperation, didn't hold him tighter. He enveloped him completely. He wrapped his arms around the convulsing body, immobilizing it gently but with absolute firmness, muffling the blows against his own body, trapping the kicking legs. It wasn't a violent restraint; it was a shell.
"It's over," he murmured into Nico's hair, over and over, like a chant. "It's over. It's not too late. It's not your fault. Breathe. Please, son, breathe."
The fight gradually died down. Not from conviction, but from total exhaustion. The blows became weak, then sporadic. The screams turned into moans, and the moans into a silent, wrenching sob. Nico's body, once a taut string about to snap, collapsed against Hades's, without strength, without will. It only trembled.
Hades sank slowly onto the edge of the bed, never letting go of his burden. Nico was now unconscious, or at least had retreated to a place where pain and panic couldn't follow. His breathing was irregular, but at least it was breathing.
With a hand that wanted to be tender, Hades tried to wipe the tears and sweat from his son's face. It was then that he noticed it.
His hands were trembling.
His. Hades, the god of the Underworld, the impassive, the eternal. His hands trembled like a mortal's after a battle, with a fine, uncontrollable tremor that came from the very core of his being. The tremor of one who has been one second away from losing everything and has had to fight, not against a Titan, but against the desperate, self-destructive love of his own child. He looked at his fingers, unable to stay still, and for the first time felt no anger or shame at that weakness. Only an infinite, exhausting relief. Nico was here. He was no longer struggling. For now, he was safe. Even from himself.
He remained seated, cradling him, waiting for the trembling in his own hands to cease, while Nico's blood, slowly, stopped soaking the cloth and began to yield to magic and time. The battle was over. For now.
__
The room was too quiet.
It wasn't the silence of sleep, the kind that settles with measured breathing. It was a different one. A tense, sharp silence, like a bowstring about to release the arrow. Hades felt it in the air before he crossed the threshold.
The bed was empty, the sheets rumpled.
For an instant, Hades's heart—an organ he thought had petrified eons ago—stopped. A visceral memory of the earlier panic: the convulsing body, the blood, the screams. Then, logic returned, and with it, his gaze.
Nico was on the balcony.
Leaning against the dark stone railing, wrapped in a blanket that seemed to swallow him. He wasn't standing; he was clinging. His posture was rigid, every muscle a knot of contained pain. Bandages peeked out, white and cruel, from the collar of his tunic. The perpetual cold of the Underworld raised the hair on his arms.
He shouldn't be on his feet. They had told him not to even try to sit.
Hades said nothing. He advanced with deliberate slowness, letting his steps echo slightly against the floor so as not to startle him. Nico didn't turn. He was staring into the chasm, at the shadows crawling in the distance, as if searching for something in that darkness.
Hades stopped beside him, leaving a space of cold air between them.
"Apollo has returned," he finally said. His voice sounded hoarser than usual, as if the room's silence had rusted his throat.
Nico's body tensed immediately, an electric reaction. He turned his head just slightly, a sharp movement that made him catch his breath. His eyes, too large in his pale face, fixed on Hades.
"Where?" The word was clipped, urgent. "How is he? Is he… is he out? Is he awake?" The questions burst out all at once, one after another, without room to breathe. The mention of Will had swept away any remnant of posture, of his own pain. Only that pure, vibrant anxiety remained.
Hades waited for the torrent to subside. He noticed how Nico's fingers, whitened, were gripping the stone.
"He is out of Tartarus," he replied, measuring each syllable. "In a safe place. Badly hurt, but… stable. Healing."
Nico closed his eyes. It wasn't a gesture of relief, but of concentration, as if processing critical data.
"And…?" His voice cracked. "Is he conscious?"
Hades shook his head. Slowly. A single movement.
"Not yet."
Nico nodded. Once. Twice. Mechanically. As if he had already known, as if that were the only possible outcome in his personal universe of catastrophes.
"Okay," he murmured. The word sounded tiny, lost in the gray immensity.
The silence that followed was no longer tense. It was heavy. Full of everything unsaid.
"You shouldn't be out here," Hades said at last, with no force of reprimand. It was an observation, almost an exposed worry.
"I know," Nico whispered, not taking his eyes off the void. "It's just… the ceiling. It felt too close."
Hades didn't argue. He, too, fixed his gaze on the nothingness. Nico's fingers began to drum on the stone, a nervous, rapid rhythm.
"Apollo hasn't left his side," Hades added, searching for something, anything to anchor Nico to the present. "He won't leave him alone."
The drumming ceased.
"Thank you," Nico said. The word sounded strange in his mouth, rough, as if he hadn't used it in a long time. It wasn't false. It was fragile. Thin glass on an unsteady surface.
Hades swallowed. The sound was audible in the silence.
"Nico…"
The boy turned then, fully. Not with abruptness, but with a slowness that betrayed the pain of every movement. His eyes found Hades's. There was no anger. No reproach. There was something worse: a new wariness. A measured distance, as if Nico no longer knew what protocol to follow with him. As if the man before him was no longer just his distant father, but also the one who had held the whip.
The question, when it came, held no drama. No accusation. It was flat, direct, and because of that, it pierced all of Hades's defenses like they were smoke.
"Why did you yell at me to face the wall?"
Hades felt the air leave his lungs. He hadn't prepared an answer. He hadn't prepared anything.
He took too long. His gaze fled, escaping toward the shadows, before he could recover it.
"Because I was afraid," he confessed. The words burned as they came out, an admission of vulnerability he hadn't made in millennia.
Nico blinked, slowly. As if he didn't understand the language.
"Afraid… of what?" he asked, his voice a thread.
Hades pressed his lips together. He looked at his own hands, the same ones that had wielded the lightning. When he spoke, he spoke to them, not to Nico.
"That if you stopped reacting… you would be gone for good. That that would be the last sound I heard from you. 'Father'. And then… silence."
Nico lowered his gaze. His shoulders hunched a little, a protective gesture.
"I thought…" he began, and stopped. Swallowed hard. "I thought you did it because you couldn't even look at me. Because seeing my… my weakness disgusted you. That you hated me for bringing him out." He looked up, and for the first time there was a flash of something raw and personal in his eyes. "That… that's what finally broke me. More than the lashes."
Hades closed his eyes. He couldn't help it. The image of Nico, hanging, that ragged sound escaping… and his own voice shouting at him to look away.
"No," he managed to say, opening his eyes. His voice was a rough murmur. "It was the opposite. I couldn't bear… to see myself reflected in your gaze. To know it was you looking at me while I…" He couldn't finish. He shook his head. "I had to do it. But to see you… to see you pleading with your eyes… I couldn't bear it."
Nico watched him now with a new intensity, as if seeing something through a crack that had never opened before.
"When you yelled those things," Nico said, and his own voice began to break, losing its coldness. "That I knew what I was doing, that I put Will in danger, that my life…" He took a deep breath. "I already believed it. Every word fit. I kept telling myself, 'He's right, he's right, that's why it hurts, because it's true.'"
"They were words to keep you awake," Hades cut in, with more force than he intended. "To let the anger hold you up. They weren't… what I thought."
"And what did you think?" Nico asked, and this time there was a tremor of challenge, of need.
Hades looked at him intently. The air between them seemed to vibrate.
"I thought I was about to kill my son," he said, each word clear and heavy as a slab of stone. "And that, if I did, there would be no forgiveness in this world or the next. For a moment…" He paused, fighting a millennia-old shame. "For a moment, I was terrified. Not as a god. As a father. And I'm not ashamed to say it. I should be, but I'm not."
Nico let out a trembling sigh. His grip on the railing loosened a little.
"I was terrified too," he murmured, almost to himself. "But in a different way. When I couldn't feel my body anymore… there was a moment, before I lost consciousness… when I thought it would be easier not to wake up again." He looked up, a sudden shame coloring his cheeks. "It's cowardly, I know."
"No," Hades's denial was instant, firm. "It's not cowardice. It's the body and the mind saying 'enough.' There is no honor in enduring the unbearable until you break. That is… that is what I almost demanded of you."
Nico bit his lower lip. He looked into the chasm again.
"In that same moment, before I fell…" his voice was now a thread of air. "I had a… sensation. A hallucination, I guess. I felt… like someone was holding me. Carrying me. That…" He stopped, shaking his head slightly, as if dismissing an absurd thought. "Forget it. It was the pain."
Hades said nothing. He took a step, just one, closing the remaining distance. He didn't touch him. But his presence became tangible, solid.
"It wasn't the pain," he said, and his voice was so low Nico had to lean in imperceptibly to hear. "It was me."
Nico froze. Slowly, he turned his head to look at him. His huge eyes searched Hades's face for any sign of mockery, of a merciful lie.
"I picked you up," Hades continued, not looking away. "I broke the chains. And I held you. And I begged you… I begged you to breathe. Not to leave."
A tear, solitary and rebellious, escaped Nico's eye and traced a quick path down his cheek. He wiped it away with a sharp, ashamed gesture.
“You… begged me?” The question was a disbelieving whisper.
Hades nodded. Once. A solemn motion.
“I pleaded with you,” he confirmed, no pride in his voice, only a raw and brutal truth. “As I have not pleaded with anyone in centuries. As I never believed I would plead again. You are… the first person in a long, long time that I can remember asking… please.”
Nico stopped breathing. For a long moment, they held each other’s gaze. The icy barrier, the careful distance, shattered with an almost audible sound. In its place remained something raw, exposed, and terribly fragile.
“Thank you,” Nico managed to say, and this time the word was no longer made of glass. It was something warmer, more vulnerable. “For not… letting me go.”
Hades, for the first time, reached out. Not to touch him, but to place his hand on the railing, beside Nico’s. An offering. A bridge.
“I won’t,” he promised, and his voice regained a hint of its deep, firm tone, but now with a different nuance. “Not ever again.”
Nico looked at his father’s hand, so close to his own. Then, slowly, as if movement was still perilous, he slid his own hand a few millimeters across the cold stone. Until Hades’s little finger brushed against his. A minimal contact, almost incidental.