Ghost King Meets Batman

An Angel's Breath

[Edited July 28, 2022]

[TW Panic attack & brief suicidal ideation]

[June 25th]

Nico's POV

  Being stuck alone in a jar was just as boring as it sounded. 

  Nico woke up in a small space. So small that he couldn't stretch his legs out all the way, and if he tried to stand, he would hit his head before he could get all the way upright.  It didn't take much poking around on his end for him to realize that he wasn't in a normal cell. For one thing, this container had curved walls and smelled metallic. If he had to guess, he would assume that it was a vase or something similar. Either he had shrunk, or the vase was massive.

  His mind was numb, which was keeping him from going into a full-blown panic attack, but the gears were starting to turn with each passing second. It would only be a matter of time before reality crashed back down on him.

Nico ran his hands all over the interior of the jar, trying to feel for anything helpful. He was mainly searching for anything that indicated that there was airflow of some kind, his chest tightening painfully when he came up empty.

The panic started seeping in.

[Panic attack]

He knew he was in trouble when he felt his throat closing up. His breaths became faster and more shallow as he sank to the floor on his hands and knees. He could hear his blood rushing in his ears and feel his heartbeat resonating throughout his entire body.

  The surface was cold to the touch so he set his head against it in an attempt to pull himself back to reality. It was a technique he had used before a few times with varying degrees of success. 

  After a particularly bad dream, Bruce had once found him in a similar position. The man taught him a series of grounding exercises to do to stop the attack. Nico pulled on all those skills now.

Count, Nico. You can't count and panic at the same time. What are multiples of three?

  "Three, six, nine..." he trailed off as a horrifying thought occurred to him. 'What if I'm almost out of oxygen?' All at once, he became completely still, as though movement alone would use up his remaining air. Silent tears gathered on his chin before eventually dropping onto the back of his hands which were folded in his lap.

  Focus! What can you see? What can you smell? What can you hear? The more you panic, the more air you'll use up.

  There wasn't much he could see in the darkness, though there did seem to be a little bit of light coming from his sword. Why they had left it with him, he wasn't sure. It didn't matter, he didn't have enough space to swing it, and he didn't think he had the energy or oxygen to waste trying something he didn't know would work.

  He couldn't see much, but he could smell the metal casing and some of the acrid Tartarus air that was still on his clothes. He patted his pockets to see if his other items had been taken from him and was pleasantly surprised to see that he still had his dagger coin and the pouches of herbs and seeds from Persephone. The rest of his stuff had been lost.

  He hoped some monster found his greek fire reserves in his backpack and set themselves ablaze.

Even though it wasn't pleasant, he could feel himself starting to breathe easier and the fogginess in his brain was starting to clear. He moved on to the next step of the grounding exercises, hoping that he would be able to come up with a plan once he wasn't panicking.

  Nico couldn't hear much more than his shaky breathing and sniffling. The walls of the jar much have been thick, or he must have been alone. Every once in a while he would think that he heard voices, but they were so muffled that he passed it off as wishful thinking. It didn't matter if they were voices, anyway. They clearly weren't planning to let him out.