𝐌𝐞𝐦𝐞𝐧𝐭𝐨 𝐌𝐨𝐫𝐢━━Nico di Angelo

70

Nico clenched his jaw, "We're stuck here now." He scanned the ruins. "But Pompeii is the last place I would've chosen to land. This place is full of lemures."

Ajax wanted to look down in shame. Sure he wasn't amazing at shadow travel, but he'd practiced once or twice, he should be better at this by now.

"Lemurs?" Coach Hedge seemed to be making some sort of snare out of kite string, a tennis racket and a hunting knife. "You mean those cute fuzzy critters –"

"No." Ajax remembered, "Lemures. Unfriendly ghosts."

Nico nodded, his exhausted expression softening a little. Ajax almost blushed. "Yeah, all Roman cities have them, but in Pompeii –"

"The whole city was wiped out," Ajax completed.

"In 79 C.E., Vesuvius erupted and covered the town in ash." Reyna's memory or her lessons in history must have been more thorough than whatever knowledge Ajax had.

Nico nodded. "A tragedy like that creates a lot of angry spirits."

Coach Hedge eyed the distant volcano. "It's steaming. Is that a bad sign?"

"I – I'm not sure." Nico picked at a hole in the knee of his black jeans. "Mountain gods, the ourae, can sense children of the underworld. It's possible that's why we were pulled off course. The spirit of Vesuvius might have been intentionally trying to kill us. But I doubt the mountain can hurt us this far away. Working up to a full eruption would take too long. The immediate threat is all around us."

"Can you keep them at bay?" Reyna asked.

Nico turned up his palms. "I've sent out that message: Stay away. But once I'm asleep it won't do us much good."

Coach Hedge patted his tennis-racket-knife contraption. "Don't worry, kid. I'm going to line the perimeter with alarms and snares. Plus, I'll be watching over you the whole time with my baseball bat."

That may not seem very reassuring, but frankly, they were too tired to care

"Okay. But... go easy. We don't want another Albania."

"No," Reyna agreed.

Their first shadow-travel experience together two days ago had been a total fiasco, possibly the most humiliating thing Ajax had ever gone through. Perhaps someday, if they survived, they would look back on it and laugh, but not now. The four of them had agreed never to speak of it. What happened in Albania would stay in Albania.

Coach Hedge looked hurt. "Fine, whatever. Just rest, kids. We got you covered."

Ajax looked up at Coach, he gave him a grateful smile.

"All right," Nico relented. "Maybe a little..."

He managed to take off his aviator jacket and wad it into a pillow before he keeled over and began to snore.

Ajax, though still exhausted, couldn't help pausing. He marveled at how peaceful Nico looked. The worry lines vanished.

Usually, it was the other way around, Nico would stay up watching Ajax sleep, until he felt comfortable to sleep as well. Nico also woke up before Ajax so it was rare to see him sleep.

If he was beautiful when he was awake, he was angelic when he slept.

He seemed younger, worry free, Ajax could almost believe he was a regular fourteen-year-old boy, not a son of Hades who had been pulled out of time from the 1940s and forced to endure more tragedy and danger than most demigods would in a lifetime.

Ajax had the urge to reach out and touch Nico's face just to make sure he was real. He almost believed him to be a figment of his imagination- too good to be true. Surely Nico was something conjured by Ajax, a trick of the mist.

But if it was a trick, a boy made from his imagination- things wouldn't be as complicated as they actually were.

That's how Ajax knew he was real. 

"You don't trust me- us" Ajax said aloud, not even looking at the girl. His eyes were heavy, his throat hurt. He wanted to sleep, sink into the land of dreams. He could control dreams to a point as well. He remembered one of his half siblings teaching him.

"No point in lying, I suppose"

"No," Ajax agreed. He half turned to look at Reyna.

He could tell she was conflicted in her thoughts about him. Her face was stoic and cold. Not even a sliver of emotion being let through.

Hedge was setting up the perimeter, so Ajax wasn't very worried about him.

Reyna eyed him. Ajax felt strangely like an animal in a zoo, people coming to see him for entertainment.

Ajax didn't like Reyna from the moment he laid his eyes on her.

She was too uptight, too serious, she looked like she had been through a lot- things that shaped her to be as she is now.

Ajax swallowed, waiting for her to say something.

"You joke too much. Try to hide the darkness within"

"You think I should let it out? Be every bit the monster everyone fears me to be?" Ajax questioned. His words had a little bite to them. He was tired of being nice all the time, making everyone on board trust him slowly, befriend them. "Not all of them trust me- Percy doesn't, neither does Annabeth."

"I don't care what the others think of you"

"I do" Ajax admitted, "Sometimes, a little too much. I was so fucking scared when they found out. Nico came screaming onto the deck, telling everyone I was a traitor and a zombie apparently"

Ajax's half closed eyes looked at Nico.

He was the one who looked like a zombie.

He looked half corpse, half god.

"Are you? A traitor?" Ajax didn't like the way Reyna looked at him, assessing him as a threat.

"No. That life is behind me now. Literally" Ajax didn't want to go through this again, all the -please trust me, I would never work for Gaea. He was tired of having to prove himself. "I don't give a fuck what you think about me. But you need me. You need us"

Reyna looked at Nico. She folded her arms. Ajax had the sudden urge to push her away, cover Nico protectively.

"I won't ask you to trust us, gods know we've done some fucked up stuff. But we're on your side, our friends are your friends. Trust that. Trust that we- I- won't betray that."

"You care a lot"

"He's worth it"

He didn't remember much after that. He felt his surroundings blur and then vanish altogether. He'd slipped into the land of dreams. His answers didn't make sense, he knew it. But he hoped Reyna wouldn't be so guarded around them anymore.