Chapter Text
When the gods had told Percy, Jason, and Nico that they were going on a quest, they hadn’t expected it to be easy, or fun, or, really, anything except excruciatingly difficult and terrifying and life-threatening. They most certainly didn’t expect to end up in a completely different universe, with their youngest half-dead (again), and forced into working for some mob boss (well, Percy and Jason were working for him) named Penguin in order to keep him safe.
All in all, it had not been a good three weeks.
Although, of course, things had started off really well…
Three weeks ago… Camp Half-Blood, Long Island, NY
Jason had to resist the urge to skip through the air (he doubted he’d be able to do that and keep up his control of the wind) as he flew to Camp Half-Blood. He’d spent a lot of time sketching and mapping out his expansion of the temples on Temple Hill, and he felt bad. Not for working hard on his project, but spending so much time at Camp Jupiter, which was on the other side of the country from his girlfriend, Piper McLean, daughter of Aphrodite. He felt as if he was neglecting her, and, so, he had decided to make it up to her by clearing his schedule for the entire week. He’d left Frank to oversee his project with the help of Hazel; faked horrible illness (which was really hard. He was not a good actor when it came to that kind of stuff) to get out of school; packed more than enough clothes, money, and supplies for a week-long trip (questing had taught him to always bring extra, because you never knew when you would need it); and booked a plane ticket to Long Island, New York. He was going to spend the week doing whatever she wanted (which might not be the best idea, but, whatever. He wanted to make her happy).
He was also determined to spend as much time with her as possible, which is why he landed directly in front of Cabin 10 right as the sun broke over the horizon.
He walked up and knocked on the door. He only had to wait a few seconds before the door was opened by a blonde girl with pigtails and braces. Lacy, one of Piper’s half-sisters. She looked bewildered for about half a second before her mouth twisted up into a huge smirk.
“Piper! Someone’s here to see you!”
There was a lot of clattering and a few curses, as if whoever it was had tripped over something. A minute later, Piper came into view.
“Lacy, who is - JASON!” The last part was an excited shriek that undoubtedly woke up anyone else in the camp who wasn’t yet awake as she ran and jumped at Jason. He stumbled back and laughed as he caught his girlfriend. She wasn’t super heavy, but she also wasn’t exactly light, either.
“Dios, Piper, it’s way too early for you to be shrieking that loud.”
Both of them turned their heads to look at Cabin 9. Leo Valdez, son of Hephaestus, stood in the doorway rubbing his ear. He had what looked like motor oil splattered on his clothes and arms.
“Shut up,” Piper said. “I haven’t been able to see Jason in weeks, you get to see Calypso every day.”
“Still,” he said, “screaming was definitely not necessary.”
“Um, Pipes,” Jason said cautiously, not wanting to offend his girlfriend, “you’re kinda getting a bit heavy, so can I put you down?”
She turned to look back at him. Her face was so close, he could feel her breath warming his face from the cold flight over. It had a slight herbal scent to it. “Right after this,” she informed him before kissing him.
He smiled as she broke away and wiggled to get out of his grasp. He put her down gently and looked her over. She had a blue jean jacket over her orange Camp Half-Blood t-shirt, dark brown pants, and her hiking boots. Her choppy brown hair had owl feathers braided into the longer strands. She wasn’t wearing any makeup, but that just made her that much more beautiful to Jason.
“So,” she said as she put her hands on her hips, “why are you here, Jason? Not that I’m complaining.”
“Well -”
“As much as we’re enjoying getting to see you two love-birds reunite, did you have to wake up the whole camp?”
Piper turned and Jason leaned to the side so they could look at the new speaker. It was Mitchell, one of Piper’s half-brothers.
Piper grinned sheepishly. “Sorry.”
“Eh, not like we were really sleeping anyway.” His eyes drifted in the direction of the newer cabins, and Jason knew without being told that he was looking at Cabin 13. Hades’ cabin.
Jason felt a protective urge rise up in him, and squashed it down. I’m here for Piper, he reminded himself, not Nico. Besides, it’s not my job to comfort Nico after every nightmare. He knew it was true, but he still felt that same obligation. The young teen had, after all, shared his most closely guarded secret with him (no matter how unwillingly). He hadn’t even told his half-sister, Hazel, about it.
Piper tracked his eyes. “It wasn’t so bad,” she said. “He didn’t summon ghosts this time, at least.”
Jason’s head snapped back around as alarm shot through him. “He summoned ghosts at some point?!”
Piper gave him an annoyed but knowing look. “Yeah. A couple times these past few weeks.”
Wait, no. I’m supposed to be focusing on Piper, Nico can handle himself.
He gave her a sheepish look. “Sorry. I came here for you, and now I’m getting distracted.”
She lit up. “You came here for me?”
“Well, yeah. I cleared the whole week so we could spend time together. We’ll do whatever you want to do.”
More people started emerging from their cabins as the bell rang for breakfast. Piper gave a mischievous grin as she spotted Percy Jackson (son of Poseidon) and Annabeth Chase (daughter of Athena). “Triple date!” she declared. “At noon today!” She turned to Jason. “We’re gonna have a little bit of time to ourselves first.”
Jason laughed, then what she said registered in his brain. “Okay, wait, ‘triple date’?”
She still had that mischievous grin. “Percy, Annabeth, Leo, and Calypso will join us, of course! It’s been a while since we all got a break.”
“Oh, great, now we just have to hope no monster attacks us,” Percy said. The son of Poseidon didn’t look too particularly eager about doing a date with four other half-bloods.
Annabeth walked over and punched him in the arm. “Piper hasn’t seen her boyfriend in a long time and wants to include us when she hangs out with him. Show a little bit of gratitude. Besides, we can handle anything that comes at us.”
“Wait, wait, wait,” Calypso said as she walked out of Cabin 9. “Why do I have to go with this dork?” She pointed at Leo.
“You’re dating this dork?” Leo said.
“Eh.”
Jason snorted at the interaction. Leo and Calypso had shown up at camp about six weeks ago, scaring half the people there at the time by dropping in on Leo’s bronze dragon, Festus. Jason had been at Camp Jupiter at the time, working on his project with Hazel’s help, when Piper Iris-messaged him that Leo was back. Jason hadn’t believed it until Hazel shadow-traveled them all there and he’d seen it for himself. He still had a hard time believing that Calypso was actually dating Leo at first (sometimes he still did). She acted like he was the most annoying person on Earth half the time (while he actively tried to annoy her). Watching them interact was actually kind of funny.
“So,” Piper’s voice brought him back to the present as she slipped her hand into his and leaned close so she could look up at him, “what do you want to do after breakfast?”
He grinned down at her. “I told you, I’ll do whatever you want.”
She grinned back mischievously. “Good, because I had an idea for how to add some color to Nico’s cabin, but he’s been brushing me off because he ‘doesn’t know how we’d get it done’ ‘cause neither of us are tall enough.”
His grin turned slightly nervous. “I’m going to regret offering, aren’t I?”
She shrugged. “Probably, but it’s too late now.”
Jason laughed as the breakfast bell rang out. If only he knew that he wouldn’t get the chance…
Nico barely managed to keep his scream in as he shot up in his bed. He looked around his cabin, confused. It was lighter than normal, even with the black curtains drawn over the windows. He threw off his blanket and opened the curtains, letting the late-morning light filter in.
Late morning light…
Nico cursed in Italian and ran over to his bed. He grabbed his shoes and hopped around as he put them on. Will was going to kill him, or, worse, demand he spend more time in the infirmary. Part of his stupid agreement with the insufferable son of Apollo was that he eat three times a day, even though he didn’t feel like it half the mornings, especially on ones like this, when he barely got any sleep due to nightmares. He could fend them off some nights by ignoring the memories like he usually did, but, sometimes, they came back full-force. The Labyrinth, Tartarus, Cupid. He had nightmares about all of it.
He grabbed his jacket and pulled it on as he ran outside, hoping he hadn’t slept through all of breakfast. He got cold easily, ever since the war with Gaea. Will had said something about it likely being a side-effect of how much he shadow-travelled and used his powers. He had been eager to get out of the infirmary and didn’t pay that much attention to the head medic’s explanation. (Which, in hindsight, probably wasn’t the best idea. He’d been trying to explain stuff that was important, but, by that point, Nico had had enough of being cooped up and hadn’t really cared.)
He ran up to the pavilion, slipping in after the last kids in Cabin 20. A couple of the Hecate kids in the back turned to look at him, but they didn’t pay that much attention to him. He grabbed one pancake and a couple apples, he dropped one of them and a good portion of his pancake in the fire, sending up a silent prayer to his dad that Solace would ignore him, at least for a little while. He didn’t feel like explaining exactly why he was late to Will Solace.
“Di Angelo!”
Apparently, Hades wasn’t in a let’s-listen-to-my-son kind of mood.
He sighed and turned around to face the son of Apollo. “What?” he questioned unnecessarily. He knew what he wanted.
Will eyed the meager meal Nico had. “What is that?”
“Breakfast.”
“That is barely anything.”
“And?”
“You’re supposed to eat three times a day.”
“And I am. You never said I had to eat a lot,” Nico pointed out.
“Why are you late? I hope you weren’t thinking about skipping breakfast.”
Nico was saved from having to explain by Jason Grace.
“Nico!” Jason said cheerfully as he hooked his arm through Nico’s. The son of Jupiter was lucky Nico had left his sword in his cabin, or else he probably would have gotten stabbed. “C’mon, c’mon. Let’s sit together. Percy’s already there.”
He dragged Nico after him towards the Zeus table where, sure enough, Percy was sitting down, digging into his own pancakes, which were, somehow, blue. Will glared after them.
“This conversation is not over, di Angelo!” he called after him.
“Shut up, Solace!” Not the best comeback, but Nico was too tired to think of a better response. He was not a morning person on the best of days, and today was even worse.
The whole Aphrodite table giggled. He gave them an icy glare, effectively shutting up about half of them. Piper just gave him a mischievous grin. He had no idea what was so funny, but anytime any of Cabin 10 were anywhere nearby when Nico and Will interacted (which was a few times a day, and usually involved them arguing) they started giggling. Nico didn’t understand what was so funny, and they only gave him grins as if to say I know something you don’t. It was infuriating.
Jason plopped down on the bench opposite, taking Nico with him and forcing the son of Hades to sit next to him. They ate in silence for a couple minutes, most of which just consisted of Nico pushing his partial pancake around on his plate. He stared at Percy.
“How are yours blue?” he questioned. “The rest aren’t.”
Percy shrugged. “I asked if they could be blue, and poof! blue pancakes. I don’t question it.”
Nico snorted, somewhat amused. “You’re weird, you know that, right?” He’d felt awkward around the son of Poseidon for a little while after he admitted to his former crush on him, but the older teen hadn’t treated him badly. Actually, he’d gone out of his way to spend more time with Nico (although not normally one-on-one, “so that I don’t make you feel uncomfortable” was his reasoning) which was nice. He’d been more confused about it than anything.
“Of course I do,” the older demigod said cheerfully. “I am the human version of weirdness.”
“No, that’d be Leo,” Jason said.
Percy laughed. “Yeah. But, I’m second.”
Chiron had objected to the three of them all sitting at the same table, since there was a Poseidon table, but he’d given up when they just moved to Table Three instead. (Mr. D. didn’t actually care…) Even when Jason wasn’t at Camp Half-Blood, Percy would drag Nico over to his table so they could eat together. “It’s no fun eating by myself, and I doubt you like it either,” Percy told him the first time he dragged Nico over when Jason wasn’t there.
Nico was honestly glad things hadn’t turned sour between him and Percy. The other boy was irritatingly immature at times, but he was still one of the first half-bloods Nico met, and one of his closest friends. Him, Annabeth, and Jason were the only people who knew his secret (he’d threatened to hunt them down if they ever told anybody). He liked having his cousins around and being able to talk to them about stuff he didn't even tell his sister.
“Why are you obsessed with blue food?”
“Because, it’s my color!”
“Your eyes are green, your shirt is orange, your hair is black, in fact, the only blue thing about you is your jeans and the syrup stain on your shirt. How did you even get blue syrup?”
“Wha - ?! How dare you! I will tangle your earbud cords!”
“Don’t you dare - !” Jason reached over the table, trying to grab his earbuds from Percy, who was leaning back and holding his arms above his head. “Percy, give them back!”
Even if they did drive him batty…
Nico chuckled and shook his head at the pair. “How am I the most mature person at this table?”
“It’s Percy and Jason!” Annabeth shouted from the Athena table. “They’re maturity level drops lower than their normal low when they’re together!”
“Hey! Annabeth!” Percy whined. Jason took advantage of the distraction to grab his earbuds, which he started untangling.
“Ugh,” Jason groaned. “Percy, seriously, how did you get them this tangled? I’m gonna need some sort of professional knot-untier or something to get this out.”
“I’ll do it after breakfast!” Annabeth called.
“What? No! He was being mean! You’re supposed to be on my side!” Percy objected.
“Too bad!”
Percy opened his mouth to reply, but, of course, Hermes chose that time to drop out of the sky onto the middle of their table.