[Shock passes over Nico's features before he can mask it and his gaze flickers away, the question sitting heavily on his heart. Percy's right, it isn't the sort of question he meant, but that doesn't mean he won't answer. Still, even with the truth curse sat waiting on his tongue, it takes him several minutes to form an answer.
Is he happy?
Grief continues to gnaw at his bones. There are days when he wakes and curls onto his side, dragging the blankets up over his head because it's easier than facing the day, easier than trying to fight the voices that slither inside of him and remind him of all of his failures and inadequacies. There are moments when he catches Will Solace's gaze and feels himself desperate to fall back into old habits, desperate to just run from everything building inside of him that he feels helpless to stop.
It's hard. There's pain. Healing is so slow to take. So hard to keep holding onto.
But the grief doesn't ache the way it used to, and when it gets especially bad, he calls Hazel or Reyna, and the sound of their voices drown out the residual pain, not erasing it, but living there beside it. When the days are so hard he doesn't leave his bed, someone comes to check on him. Sometimes Clovis helps to pull him from his worst nightmares, and someone must tell Jason because he calls sometimes, on the worst days. And when he wants to run from Will's warm smile, he doesn't. Nico stays and he fights and he allows himself to wonder and to hope.
Is it getting easier? Yes, a thousand times yes.
Nico is surrounded by friends. He is cared for. He is fighting. Nico is rediscovering what it means to love and allow himself to be loved.
His lips curve up into a barely there smile and he meets Percy's gaze.]
my FACE
Is he happy?
Grief continues to gnaw at his bones. There are days when he wakes and curls onto his side, dragging the blankets up over his head because it's easier than facing the day, easier than trying to fight the voices that slither inside of him and remind him of all of his failures and inadequacies. There are moments when he catches Will Solace's gaze and feels himself desperate to fall back into old habits, desperate to just run from everything building inside of him that he feels helpless to stop.
It's hard. There's pain. Healing is so slow to take. So hard to keep holding onto.
But the grief doesn't ache the way it used to, and when it gets especially bad, he calls Hazel or Reyna, and the sound of their voices drown out the residual pain, not erasing it, but living there beside it. When the days are so hard he doesn't leave his bed, someone comes to check on him. Sometimes Clovis helps to pull him from his worst nightmares, and someone must tell Jason because he calls sometimes, on the worst days. And when he wants to run from Will's warm smile, he doesn't. Nico stays and he fights and he allows himself to wonder and to hope.
Is it getting easier? Yes, a thousand times yes.
Nico is surrounded by friends. He is cared for. He is fighting. Nico is rediscovering what it means to love and allow himself to be loved.
His lips curve up into a barely there smile and he meets Percy's gaze.]
I'm getting there.