Chapter Text
Nico didn’t think it’d ever happen, but he was starting to hate sitting at Apollo’s table.
“So you’ll leave soon?” Kayla asked, picking at her food.
It wasn’t the first time, and it wouldn’t be the last, but he didn’t blame her. He wouldn’t want his sister leaving Camp Jupiter to take a trip in Tartarus, either.
“Yeah. Just have some things we need to sort out first,” he answered.
The “things they needed to sort out” consisted of figuring out how exactly they’d get out of there, but he didn’t say that, so not to alarm anyone: they were already alarmed enough.
No one spoke for a little while. The silence was tense, and Will, who usually could never shut up during meals (or ever), did little to break it.
As the day they’d set to start their quest got closer, he’d been shutting down. Nico kept telling him that he didn’t need to come and that actually, he’d much rather Will stay home and not risk his life, but it was no use.
As terrified as he was, Will would be coming with him.
Nico started circling his thumb on the back of his hand in a comforting gesture, and his boyfriend relaxed the slightest bit.
“I’ll be there the whole time,” Nico wanted to say, “I’ll let Tartarus eat me alive before he gets a hair from you.”
“Eat something,” he said instead.
“Uno Reverse Card,” Will answered.
That earned him a chuckle from his siblings, and Nico felt relieved. He had the impression they wouldn’t easily forgive him for bringing their brother in Hell, but he didn’t want them to be angry at Will too.
Was he making a stupid decision? Yes. Was that the natural state of being of a demigod? Also yes.
“Look out for your job, Solace,” he replied casually, and a conversation about his feasible medical skills spontaneously erupted from the rest of the table.
“Nico is far too much of a snob to be a doctor, honestly. Can you imagine him popping a cyst? He’d just look at it disapprovingly,” Austin was saying, in defense of his brother’s honour.
“I’m a what?“
“You kinda act like a prince,” Gracie explained, with her 8-year-old-girl bluntness.
“I don’t! Will, tell them I don’t.”
“You do.”
“I don’t! Actually, I’d say I’m-“
But his protest got buried by all the Cabin 7 members, which, if you asked him, was a bit of an unfair fight.
It took a moment before he noticed that he could only hear Cabin 7 members.
A deafening silence had fallen on the rest of the Dining Pavillion.
Nico looked up and saw someone he’d never, ever expected to see at Camp Halfblood.
“Father?”
Lord Hades calmly walked the distance that separated him from Dionysus’ table as if he wasn’t the literal last person anyone would have ever thought to see at Camp. He was regarding his surroundings with what could have been deemed curiosity.
“Of course,” Nico thought, “he’s never been here.”
Why was he here now, then? Surely it had something to do with him, but his father had other means to contact him.
Perhaps it was very urgent. The thought wasn’t reassuring.
Hades had chosen to appear as a man in his forties, dressed in a black suit and with long dark hair, but no one could have mistaken him for anything other than a god. If the powerful death aura he was courteously extending in any corner of the room wasn’t enough, his unnatural height and paleness did the job just fine.
The silence that had fallen in the pavillion was yet to be broken. Even Mr D hadn’t recovered from the shock in a useful time, though he was still the first to do so.
“Uncle Hades,” he exclaimed in the end, his voice loud enough for everyone to hear (just in case someone had mistaken the guest for a new demigod, or Aphrodite, or Justin Bieber, clearly).
At his words, everyone seemed to come back to their senses and realize what was happening. The entire room hurried to kneel like their life depended on it (and to be fair, their lives could very well depend on it, according to the mood Hades was in).
His father barely seemed to notice the great show of respect.
He said something to Mr D that only they could hear, and after a moment they were joined by Chiron, who bowed to the god and nervously tapped one of his hooves on the ground.
Nico felt Will tug him at his sleeve.
“Why?” he mouthed.
“I don’t know,” Nico mouthed back.
His father, Mr D and Chiron were whispering, and no one could hear a peep. He saw Chiron nodding, and the expression on his face was slightly relieved.
Hades turned to the demigods that were still kneeling.
“I need to speak with Will Solace,” he said to the shocked room, in the tone he could have used to say I came to ask if one of you could lend me a pen.
“Alone,” the god added after a moment, staring right at Nico.
Nico’s brain processed the sentence he’d just heard. Then he froze.
Next to him, Will had frozen too. He was still gripping Nico’s sleeve, and didn’t seem to be motioning to get up.
They glanced at each other.
“Go,” Nico whispered, trying to contain the fury he was feeling. What was the meaning of this?
“I have no idea what he wants, but he knows who you are. He’s not going to hurt you.”
Will seemed to very much fear the encounter anyway, but he slowly got up.
“I’m here, my lord,” he said. His voice was surprisingly not shaking, but it was still pretty small for a big boy like Will.
Hades raised an eyebrow, with an unimpressed look on his face.
“Good,” he replied, “and get up, the rest of you”.
Then, he turned to Chiron expectantly.
“Come to the Big House with us, Will,” the centaur stated, in a gentle tone.
With a last “what-the-actual-fuck” look to Nico, Will went.
The unlikely group wasn’t even a foot out the door, when all of his siblings started pestering Nico with questions.
“What does your father want?”
“Is he in trouble?”
“Did you two do something?”
“Is it about your quest?”
“Was that man a vampire?”
The last one was Gracie.
“That man was my father,” he explained to her, with much more lucidity than he was feeling.
Gracie stared at him for a moment.
“Are you a vampire?”
Gods help him.
“No.”
“Is your father here to tell Will to be a good boyfriend?”
That would have been very funny, and also very disturbing, for everyone involved.
“I don’t know,” he answered sincerely.
“Did you two do something that could have made him angry recently?” Kayla asked harshly.
“No! I don’t know! If that was the case, he’d call me too.”
Their trip to Tartarus came to mind. But his father had no way to know, did he?
Austin sighed. “Well, I doubt he’s gonna kill him, right?”
“He’s not going to!”
“Yeah, okay.”
Nico didn’t like the doubt in his voice, and the feeling of the campers’ eyes on him.
He had no idea what his father could possibly want from Will, but he knew he wasn’t cruel. Not if he didn’t have any reason to be, at least.
Still, his brain was tirelessly working through the last few months, trying to think of any possible motivation Hades might have had to create such a scene.
A quest was out of question. Gods rarely went all the way out to personally speak to campers to assign a quest, and if his father was in need of something, he would have called him.
A potential offense was also unlikely: Will was respectful to a fault, and never had trouble with anyone. And even if he had accidentally killed a mosquito that was Hades in disguise… his father wouldn’t actually hurt him, right?
Perhaps it really had something to do with their upcoming mission in Tartarus, but that was much more Nico’s business than it was Will’s.
The absurd idea of an incredibly extra shovel talk was starting to gain traction.
Will’s siblings were still ardently looking at him.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I really have no clue.”
In that moment, the nervous chatter that had filled the pavillion after Hades and Will’s departure quieted, and silence fell again. Nico turned to see what else was happening (couldn’t they have one quiet morning…) and- Oh, they had to be kidding him.
Apollo strode urgently onto the room. Demigods were so used to him “coming to say hi” that no one went for the whole kneeling business, but any outsider with the slightest understanding of human behaviour could have sensed his presence was far more appreciated than Hades’: Will’s father had become immensely popular in both Camps, after his time as Lester.
Not that being more popular than Hades was particularly hard.
“Where are they?” he asked, to their table.
“Dad!” Kayla exclaimed, relieved. “Hades came here and no one knows why, then he called Will and-“
“I know,” Apollo interrupted her. “I was just hoping I’d be first.”
Apollo’s kids looked betrayed, and Nico couldn’t say he didn’t share their feelings.
“He has no right,” the god mumbled to himself. “I’m going to-“
“You know what’s going on and didn’t tell us?” Nico pressed, maybe a bit too aggressively.
Apollo didn’t even bother to look at him, but he could see that the comment had angered him.
He hoped the god wasn’t going to take it to heart: the last thing Nico needed was to be on his father-in-law’s bad side. He was already on thin ice with the rest of Cabin 7, as of recent.
“It is nothing that any of you, including him, should worry about. I do need to speak with both of them, though,” Apollo reassured them. “Big House?”
Everyone nodded, still affronted, and he left.
Nico had to admit that he felt calmer. Apollo was a real drama queen, and there was no way he would be so cool and collected if Will was in any real danger.
The entire situation was still incredibly weird, but they had grown accustomed to weird.
Boy, had they.
Half an hour passed, and Nico was getting worried again. No demigod had left the pavillion to go about their morning activities yet, all eager to know what would happen.
“Ten other minutes and I’m going to check what’s going on,” he said to the table.
“Isn’t it like, dangerous?” Jerry asked.
“Nah.”
“Yes,” Austin spoke over him.
Nico turned to him. “Whose side are you on?”
“The side that doesn’t get us turned into pigeons. And yes, I’m saying us, because if you’re going, I’m going.”
“Me too,” Kayla added.
“And me!”
Gracie.
“What is this, a school trip? I want in.”
Jerry.
“I go where Jerry goes, so.”
Yan and Jerry exchanged a fist bump. They had been an inseparable menace ever since their first day.
Nico huffed noisily. “Okay, you win, I’m staying here.”
There really was no respect for the elders anymore, he brooded, to himself.
Will arrived a few minutes later, looking pretty unsettled. Nico got up the second he saw him, shortly followed by everyone else.
His boyfriend quickly reached the table and took a big breath.
“I’m going on a quest,” he said. “And your father says you can’t come with me.”