PJO: Halloween Challenge | Nico/Rachel, Edgar Allen Poe ain't got nothing on me
I really need to stop writing fics based on songs. XD; Also? Muuuuuushyyyyyyy~ One of these days I'm going to write something horribly tragic. Actually, maybe for the other prompt I'm thinking about doing...
Anyhoo, this started out totally differently than it ended up, but that seems to be the usual fare around here. So maybe I'll save the other stuff I cut for later... I admit I'm not sure this really has much plot and the ending might be a bit abrupt, but here it is nonetheless. Written for the Halloween Challenge at pjo_fic_battle.
Title: Ghost Town
Prompt: Nico/Rachel, Edgar Allen Poe ain't got nothing on me
Rating: G
Genre: Drama
Wordcount: 3,584
Ghost Town
"Nico," Rachel said, hanging on the side of the doorframe with her yellow spandex gloves, "I know you like to be fashionably late and all, but would you please put on a costume already? You said you had one."
"I'm wearing my costume," Nico said matter-of-factly from the couch. "I'm going as a misunderstood literary genius who likes to wear black."
"Well that's exciting," Rachel said sarcastically, rolling her eyes. She reached down to re-check the knot on her yellow sash before stepping into the living room. "So which one are you going as, then? Edgar Allen Poe? Maybe I should gel up your hair and slap a mustache on you."
Nico quirked an eyebrow, folding his hands behind his head and shifting to plant steel-toed black boots on the coffee table. "Hey," he said, affronted, "Edgar Allen Poe ain't got nothing on me."
All this got him was a burst of snorted giggles, which he did not appear to take particularly seriously given that they were coming from a girl wearing a yellow and green spandex suit. "That is the lamest thing I have ever heard you say," Rachel managed to get out between bouts of girlish laughter.
Nico swiveled his head around, glare dripping sarcasm without any words at all. Rachel tried to put one hand over her mouth like that might stop the laughter. It didn't. "What?" he asked sourly. "It's not funny."
"Yes," Rachel managed to gasp out, "It is." She tried to stop laughing, snorted, but then finally managed to subdue herself somewhat. "So what, you think you've got one up on the guy who married his thirteen year-old cousin and wrote horribly angsty prose and drank too much?" She put her hands on her hips, mock-serious. "Nico, are you secretly married? You told me you were single!"
Nico made a face. "I am not married! And I've met Poe." He sniffed. "I'm a lot cooler."
"You've met him?" Rachel asked, blinking. "I didn't think you were that old." But even as Nico glared, the final traces of laughter disappeared as she asked (still grinning), "So then... how'd he really die?"
"He asked me not to tell. Adds to the mystery and all."
Rachel flipped her hair over one shoulder, smug. "Yeah, sure. You haven't met him. Liar."
"I have too!" Nico said indignantly, swinging his feet off the table to plant them on the floor. "I'm the son of Hades! I've met plenty of dead people - it's kind of what I do, you know."
"So then you ran into his ghost on the street or something?" Rachel prodded. That seemed awfully unlikely; but then she was the living host of the Oracle of Delphi and Nico was the son of an ancient Greek god. 'Unlikely' often paled in comparison.
"No," Nico sighed, like she was the dumbest third-grader on the planet. "He's in the Underworld. Duh."
Oh. Well, yes. Okay. "And you've really met him."
"Yes."
"Okay," Rachel crossed her arms, feeling just a little mischievous. "Then introduce me."
She knew what she was asking of him, and it was no surprise when Nico just stared at her blankly for almost a minute. "You want me to take you to the Underworld," he finally said, flatly. "On Halloween."
Rachel shrugged. "Yeah. You can do that, right? I mean, you go there all the time."
Nico snorted. "My family lives there," he pointed out.
"Some of them," Rachel corrected. "I mean, technically everyone at Camp Half-Blood's your family."
Nico just gave her an unimpressed look. "My immediate family lives there," he amended. "Except for Bianca. I mean, she's there. But she's... well, you know." He trailed off with the air of someone who was still uncomfortable with a subject but didn't want anyone else to know.
Rachel nodded absently. She did know. You didn't date Nico di Angelo for the past year and a half without understanding about Bianca, after all. The subject didn't come up often, of course, but he'd told her a few things and the rest she'd been able to guess. Well, and Percy had filled in a few of the blanks, too. He'd told her as much as he could when she'd started dating Nico, and she'd realized early on that it was important to let Nico have that one thing. Bianca had been his whole world, and Rachel had never had her world taken away from her like that, but she could maybe try to imagine. And she could at least sympathize, even if she couldn't fully understand.
Then again, there were a lot of things about Nico she didn't understand. And right now, she wanted to cross one more thing off that list. That was what being in a relationship meant, right? Getting to know someone as well as you knew yourself. And this was a big part of Nico. "Well," she said, maybe a little too brightly, "Let's get going." She strode over to the couch, threading a hand under Nico's nearest arm and tugging.
Even though he hadn't actually given her an answer (though Rachel had clearly assumed one in the affirmative), Nico stood. "You're going to wear that?" He pointed to her costume: Phoenix, from X-men, which meant bright yellow boots and gloves and a green spandex bodysuit.
Rachel looked down at herself and shrugged. She wasn't going to go get changed - in the time that would take, Nico might change his mind. "Sure, why not? I made it and all, and I'm obviously not going to wear it to the party now. Besides, they're all dead in the Underworld. They don't know what people are wearing nowadays."
Nico snorted. "The people who died this morning do."
Rachel just scowled, trying not to think past the surface of that particular comment. "Well then they'll know it's Halloween." But then another thought followed on the tail of that one - "It's not going to be weird because it's... you know. Halloween."
Nico rolled his eyes. "No. No one in the Underworld cares about that." He shrugged. "I mean, it's nice to know that people honor the dead - or, well, that they used to. But it's not like it's anything special for us." He shrugged. "Besides, the holiday's become kinda..." He tilted his head towards Rachel's costume. "Y'know."
Rachel pursed her lips. Obvious crack at the good old-fashioned American rape of cultural traditions aside, she hadn't missed Nico's particular choice of words. "'Us'?"
Nico shifted uncomfortably. "Well, I didn't mean me us. I mean, I'm not dead." Rachel just watched him. "Come on," Nico said, "You know what I mean."
"Not really," Rachel admitted bluntly. Then, quieter, "I mean... in all the time I've known you, I've always known there was more to you than you ever let on. There are things you won't tell me and I don't ask because sure, everyone deserves their privacy and it's not like it's something that I need to know." She paused, watching him for a minute. "But no, Nico. Sometimes I really don't know what you mean."
Maybe now wasn't exactly the time to have this sort of conversation, but Rachel had never exactly been known to say tomorrow what could be said today. She knew how to respect boundaries, sure, but she also wasn't afraid to to challenge them under the right circumstances, either. After all, this entire relationship had been based on respecting boundaries - she was the virginal host of the Oracle of Apollo, after all. With her and Nico, it was all about testing the rules, toeing the line and knowing when to stop, when to push. And this was a wall that Rachel had been considering pushing for quite some time now. It had just never seemed right until tonight. But tonight it felt like that wall just might give.
Maybe it was because tonight was supposed to be the night when the boundaries between living and dead broke down. Tonight, that tenuous membrane that kept Nico's world from mixing with her own was supposed to thin and disappear, and maybe that somehow made tonight the perfect night for Rachel to ask, just this once, if he could help her understand.
Nico was silent for a moment, just watching her warily as she watched him right back. Then, suddenly, the look in his eyes changed - turned more intense. "You have to promise me some things, though," he said. "And I mean really promise. Don't eat anything. Don't even think about eating anything - or drinking anything. Let me do the talking. And don't wander off without me."
Rachel nodded, sobered - just because she was going to get her way didn't mean she was going to flaunt the restrictions that came along with it. After all, she conceded that Nico did know a fair bit more about the Underworld than she did. Even if she was curious to find out more. "I promise."
"Come on, then," Nico said quietly, reaching out one pale hand. "I'll take you to the Underworld."
*
It was... strange. It was almost like Nico had undergone some kind of transformation, between sinking into the shadows in the apartment and emerging from them here, in the Underworld. Here, where everything was washed-out and pale like a faded black-and-white photograph, Nico stood out like something bright. Stumbling out of the shadows after him, Rachel believed she could almost feel the way the stale air wrapped itself around Nico like a living thing; the way this place fed off of him and somehow fed him, in turn. The black of his clothes seemed blacker, the alabaster of his skin whiter, more luminous. It was an oxymoron that her brain couldn't reconcile, and yet at the same time it seemed the most natural thing in the world. This place was Nico, and it knew it as well as he did.
"Hm," was the only sound Rachel could make for a minute. She realized she was staring and quickly turned her attention to the grass - black - and the sky - or what passed for it. Really it looked more like the roof of a giant cavern, littered with stalactites and cloaked in murky gloom. "Kinda old-school," she finally murmured, trying for witty and probably failing completely.
"What, were you expecting Halloween Town? Not everything looks like Tim Burton designed it, you know." Nico's mouth stretched into a half-grimace, half-smile. "Though I bet he'd like to do some redesigning down here when he gets here."
Rachel chuckled a little at that, but it was quickly cut off as she realized they weren't as alone as she'd first thought. This place might look desolate and abandoned, but now that her eyes had adjusted to the haze she realized that the haze wasn't static - it was moving. And it was separating out into figures, shadows - people. All around them, half-formed people of all shapes and sizes were wandering by, and all of them were murmuring. The low background of noise that Rachel had at first thought was maybe just her imagination was, in fact, millions - billions - of voices intermingling, long strings of words that flowed into sentences that collected into paragraphs and none of it made any sense.
Rachel couldn't quite make out the words, like they were hidden just underneath a layer of static on the radio or muffled by cotton in her hears. The people - ghosts? Spirits? - seemed to realize that as well. But instead of putting them off it only seemed to make them try that much harder to get her to listen. They began crowding up around Rachel and Nico, a circle of death that kept tightening around them -
"... Uh," Rachel said, not wanting to back away because that would show fear, but not really wanting to let them get close, either. There was something about them, something sad and terrible, and she didn't want it to touch her. She didn't know what would happen if it did. Nico had been worried about her wandering off? No chance.
"It's okay," Nico said, and his voice was so gentle that it actually made Rachel turn around and stare. He wasn't actually looking at her; rather, he was looking out at the mass of see-through spirits that surrounded them, something in his dark eyes that Rachel had never seen before. "They won't hurt you."
"Right," Rachel said softly, actually believing Nico despite the press of white faces around them. He didn't seem worried at all - in fact, he seemed strangely calm in a way that she had never seen before, and it was hard to be frightened when Nico was for once so serene. And so after a moment, her curiosity returned. "What are they saying?"
Nico shrugged. "Not much of anything, really. Mostly they're just talking about mundane stuff, the minutiae of their lives. They fixate on the details - they can't see the whole picture. They don't realize they're dead." He paused. "They don't really realize much of anything, unless I make them."
Rachel swallowed, remembering suddenly that day in Daedelus' lab, Nico proclaiming himself the king of ghosts. Right now, that sounded just about right. "'Make them'?" she echoed. That sounded awfully... unpleasant. It hadn't sounded like something Nico enjoyed - simply something he accepted, as easily as breathing. And maybe he did. It wasn't as though he'd talked to her much before about controlling the whims of ghosts.
"I can make them do anything," Nico said, confirming her suspicious. "I can make them remember, if I want to," Nico said distantly, as though only half of his mind were on the conversation. It only made him seem more eerie, more a part of this place, and Rachel shivered. He still wasn't really looking at her. "But it's not usually very nice. No one likes being reminded that they're dead." Perhaps, Rachel thought, he'd made that mistake before and now he regretted it. Or maybe it was simply that he didn't want to be reminded of Bianca, and how she was dead. Maybe he was afraid of reminding himself yet again.
After a minute Nico seemed to come back to himself, and he looked down at her with steady gaze and a bit of a sardonic smile. "They like life anyway," he said, cocking his head to the group surrounding them. "They don't even really understand what it is anymore, but they're still drawn to it even if they can't have it."
"Right," Rachel said again. Her eyes were fixed on Nico's, and after a minute more of silence (except for the ceaseless murmuring) she couldn't help but ask, "So this is really all there is?" She swept her too-brightly-gloved hand across the landscape, across the dead grass and the dead air and the dead rock hanging from the ceiling that was really the floor. Across the shadows of the souls that had once walked above, breathing and thinking and speaking words that could be heard. "This is it?" Because if anyone would have the answer, it would be Nico. And maybe tonight he would tell her, when the boundaries were tenuous and lines could maybe be crossed.
"Well," Nico shifted uncomfortably, "not all. I mean, there's Tartarus, and the Fields of Punishment - but that's only if you're really bad. There's also Elysium - I mean, not that a lot of - "
"That's not what I meant," Rachel said quietly, cutting Nico's words like a knife and the air sat silent and stagnant around them and still the dead muttered on. "I mean... is this it?" To forget in death you were even dead? To forget everything you ever were? That sounded almost worse than being forced at the whims of a god or a half-god to remember. At least if you could remember that you were dead, you might remember that you had once been alive. The whole idea made Rachel uncomfortable - the idea that maybe there was a life after death, but it wasn't really a life, it was an existence made for and from nothing, a vegetable dream from which the dreamer never woke nor never cared enough to even realize they were dreaming in the first place.
Maybe it was the truth and people had known it long before she had - maybe it was truly what people had celebrated all those years ago, on the first Hallows' Eve, when people welcomed their dearly departed back into their lives and asked them to remember. Maybe it was the one night a year that the spirits were believed to be closest to life because they were reminded of what they had left behind.
Or maybe it was all a hoax. Nico had said no one here cared about Halloween and from what Rachel had seen, it was certainly true. None of these sprits remembered, but maybe that was because their families up in the living world had forgotten the true meaning of the holiday, dressed instead in garish costumes and collecting candy from door to door.
Suddenly Rachel felt very, very foolish.
And then, "Yeah," Nico whispered finally, the only sound in this entire world that made sense as it crossed Rachel's ears. "Yeah, this is it." He glanced around, just a flick of his eyes, but suddenly the dead around them began to disperse. They moved away, shuffling off into the distance and taking their litanies of nothing with them, and Rachel was as floored by the simple, unthinking display of power as she was by Nico's answer. Even in the land of countless dead, she was suddenly very alone.
This is it.
"Now you see why I didn't want to bring you down here," Nico said, and the regret was sharp and clear in his voice. "The stuff I don't tell you... well, it's this." Now it was his turn to swing an arm across the landscape, to sweep up death and let it slip through his fingers. "How could you even want to hang around someone who belongs to this?"
Rachel thought, her mind skimming too quickly from place to place, trying to come up with a reason when she wasn't sure she had one. But the truth was that she did without even knowing it, and her mouth opened before she could think to open it. "Maybe because you remind me of how important it is," she said slowly, the words almost choosing her as opposed to the other way around. It was half a prophecy, half her heart, buried in the words. It was something she hadn't realized she knew, and something he needed to be told. "Because even if you are a part of this place, so is everyone else - at least someday, right? But you still fight to preserve what we have while we're alive, in the hope that death will mean something more." After all, Bianca's death had meant something, even if it could never mean enough for Nico. But the idea was there, she was sure, in the back of his mind - a mantra he didn't even know he lived by, that death can mean even more than life.
"Maybe," she said, a little coy and a little shy and very much sincere, "you show me that the dark isn't something we should fear. It's something we should embrace." Because maybe if people didn't forget, then Hallows' Eve could mean something again and the waking dream of death could mean more than just an end to the sunlight on your face.
But Nico was shaking his head emphatically. "But I don't want the dark," he said, stepping forward and his palm was cool against Rachel's cheek, fingers threading through fiery hair. "I want the light, like - like you. You're so alive, you know that? You live every second of your life and you're not afraid of it. You're so... I don't know. Bright. Not like here. Not even like most of the people walking around up there," and he tilted his head in the direction of the not-sky, indicating the living world above. "I think there's too much dark up there already. Maybe the dead don't know they're dead, but most of the people I've met don't know they're alive. Not compared to you. " He paused, swallowed. "You're just... alive. Sometimes I feel like I can't get enough."
Some girls, Rachel thought dizzily, waited their whole lives to hear something like that. Most never would. And none, she was sure, would fully understand what it meant. But she did. Whether it was because she was the Oracle or simply because she was Rachel Elizabeth Dare, it didn't matter. She understood. For all that she needed the dark, Nico needed the light. She could give him that, and together they didn't need All Hallows' Eve to prove that life and death were one and the same, and all that mattered was that you made it mean something.
"Nico," she said, feeling out of breath and high on oxygen all at once. She laughed, giddy, and swung her arms around his neck to pull them close, feel his beating heart filling in the gaps of the rhythm of hers. "You know what? You're right," she finally said, her lips just barely brushing his ear and her words the ghost of a warm whisper through the shaggy hair at his temples, "Edgar Allen Poe's got nothing on you."
Anyhoo, this started out totally differently than it ended up, but that seems to be the usual fare around here. So maybe I'll save the other stuff I cut for later... I admit I'm not sure this really has much plot and the ending might be a bit abrupt, but here it is nonetheless. Written for the Halloween Challenge at pjo_fic_battle.
Title: Ghost Town
Prompt: Nico/Rachel, Edgar Allen Poe ain't got nothing on me
Rating: G
Genre: Drama
Wordcount: 3,584
Ghost Town
"Nico," Rachel said, hanging on the side of the doorframe with her yellow spandex gloves, "I know you like to be fashionably late and all, but would you please put on a costume already? You said you had one."
"I'm wearing my costume," Nico said matter-of-factly from the couch. "I'm going as a misunderstood literary genius who likes to wear black."
"Well that's exciting," Rachel said sarcastically, rolling her eyes. She reached down to re-check the knot on her yellow sash before stepping into the living room. "So which one are you going as, then? Edgar Allen Poe? Maybe I should gel up your hair and slap a mustache on you."
Nico quirked an eyebrow, folding his hands behind his head and shifting to plant steel-toed black boots on the coffee table. "Hey," he said, affronted, "Edgar Allen Poe ain't got nothing on me."
All this got him was a burst of snorted giggles, which he did not appear to take particularly seriously given that they were coming from a girl wearing a yellow and green spandex suit. "That is the lamest thing I have ever heard you say," Rachel managed to get out between bouts of girlish laughter.
Nico swiveled his head around, glare dripping sarcasm without any words at all. Rachel tried to put one hand over her mouth like that might stop the laughter. It didn't. "What?" he asked sourly. "It's not funny."
"Yes," Rachel managed to gasp out, "It is." She tried to stop laughing, snorted, but then finally managed to subdue herself somewhat. "So what, you think you've got one up on the guy who married his thirteen year-old cousin and wrote horribly angsty prose and drank too much?" She put her hands on her hips, mock-serious. "Nico, are you secretly married? You told me you were single!"
Nico made a face. "I am not married! And I've met Poe." He sniffed. "I'm a lot cooler."
"You've met him?" Rachel asked, blinking. "I didn't think you were that old." But even as Nico glared, the final traces of laughter disappeared as she asked (still grinning), "So then... how'd he really die?"
"He asked me not to tell. Adds to the mystery and all."
Rachel flipped her hair over one shoulder, smug. "Yeah, sure. You haven't met him. Liar."
"I have too!" Nico said indignantly, swinging his feet off the table to plant them on the floor. "I'm the son of Hades! I've met plenty of dead people - it's kind of what I do, you know."
"So then you ran into his ghost on the street or something?" Rachel prodded. That seemed awfully unlikely; but then she was the living host of the Oracle of Delphi and Nico was the son of an ancient Greek god. 'Unlikely' often paled in comparison.
"No," Nico sighed, like she was the dumbest third-grader on the planet. "He's in the Underworld. Duh."
Oh. Well, yes. Okay. "And you've really met him."
"Yes."
"Okay," Rachel crossed her arms, feeling just a little mischievous. "Then introduce me."
She knew what she was asking of him, and it was no surprise when Nico just stared at her blankly for almost a minute. "You want me to take you to the Underworld," he finally said, flatly. "On Halloween."
Rachel shrugged. "Yeah. You can do that, right? I mean, you go there all the time."
Nico snorted. "My family lives there," he pointed out.
"Some of them," Rachel corrected. "I mean, technically everyone at Camp Half-Blood's your family."
Nico just gave her an unimpressed look. "My immediate family lives there," he amended. "Except for Bianca. I mean, she's there. But she's... well, you know." He trailed off with the air of someone who was still uncomfortable with a subject but didn't want anyone else to know.
Rachel nodded absently. She did know. You didn't date Nico di Angelo for the past year and a half without understanding about Bianca, after all. The subject didn't come up often, of course, but he'd told her a few things and the rest she'd been able to guess. Well, and Percy had filled in a few of the blanks, too. He'd told her as much as he could when she'd started dating Nico, and she'd realized early on that it was important to let Nico have that one thing. Bianca had been his whole world, and Rachel had never had her world taken away from her like that, but she could maybe try to imagine. And she could at least sympathize, even if she couldn't fully understand.
Then again, there were a lot of things about Nico she didn't understand. And right now, she wanted to cross one more thing off that list. That was what being in a relationship meant, right? Getting to know someone as well as you knew yourself. And this was a big part of Nico. "Well," she said, maybe a little too brightly, "Let's get going." She strode over to the couch, threading a hand under Nico's nearest arm and tugging.
Even though he hadn't actually given her an answer (though Rachel had clearly assumed one in the affirmative), Nico stood. "You're going to wear that?" He pointed to her costume: Phoenix, from X-men, which meant bright yellow boots and gloves and a green spandex bodysuit.
Rachel looked down at herself and shrugged. She wasn't going to go get changed - in the time that would take, Nico might change his mind. "Sure, why not? I made it and all, and I'm obviously not going to wear it to the party now. Besides, they're all dead in the Underworld. They don't know what people are wearing nowadays."
Nico snorted. "The people who died this morning do."
Rachel just scowled, trying not to think past the surface of that particular comment. "Well then they'll know it's Halloween." But then another thought followed on the tail of that one - "It's not going to be weird because it's... you know. Halloween."
Nico rolled his eyes. "No. No one in the Underworld cares about that." He shrugged. "I mean, it's nice to know that people honor the dead - or, well, that they used to. But it's not like it's anything special for us." He shrugged. "Besides, the holiday's become kinda..." He tilted his head towards Rachel's costume. "Y'know."
Rachel pursed her lips. Obvious crack at the good old-fashioned American rape of cultural traditions aside, she hadn't missed Nico's particular choice of words. "'Us'?"
Nico shifted uncomfortably. "Well, I didn't mean me us. I mean, I'm not dead." Rachel just watched him. "Come on," Nico said, "You know what I mean."
"Not really," Rachel admitted bluntly. Then, quieter, "I mean... in all the time I've known you, I've always known there was more to you than you ever let on. There are things you won't tell me and I don't ask because sure, everyone deserves their privacy and it's not like it's something that I need to know." She paused, watching him for a minute. "But no, Nico. Sometimes I really don't know what you mean."
Maybe now wasn't exactly the time to have this sort of conversation, but Rachel had never exactly been known to say tomorrow what could be said today. She knew how to respect boundaries, sure, but she also wasn't afraid to to challenge them under the right circumstances, either. After all, this entire relationship had been based on respecting boundaries - she was the virginal host of the Oracle of Apollo, after all. With her and Nico, it was all about testing the rules, toeing the line and knowing when to stop, when to push. And this was a wall that Rachel had been considering pushing for quite some time now. It had just never seemed right until tonight. But tonight it felt like that wall just might give.
Maybe it was because tonight was supposed to be the night when the boundaries between living and dead broke down. Tonight, that tenuous membrane that kept Nico's world from mixing with her own was supposed to thin and disappear, and maybe that somehow made tonight the perfect night for Rachel to ask, just this once, if he could help her understand.
Nico was silent for a moment, just watching her warily as she watched him right back. Then, suddenly, the look in his eyes changed - turned more intense. "You have to promise me some things, though," he said. "And I mean really promise. Don't eat anything. Don't even think about eating anything - or drinking anything. Let me do the talking. And don't wander off without me."
Rachel nodded, sobered - just because she was going to get her way didn't mean she was going to flaunt the restrictions that came along with it. After all, she conceded that Nico did know a fair bit more about the Underworld than she did. Even if she was curious to find out more. "I promise."
"Come on, then," Nico said quietly, reaching out one pale hand. "I'll take you to the Underworld."
*
It was... strange. It was almost like Nico had undergone some kind of transformation, between sinking into the shadows in the apartment and emerging from them here, in the Underworld. Here, where everything was washed-out and pale like a faded black-and-white photograph, Nico stood out like something bright. Stumbling out of the shadows after him, Rachel believed she could almost feel the way the stale air wrapped itself around Nico like a living thing; the way this place fed off of him and somehow fed him, in turn. The black of his clothes seemed blacker, the alabaster of his skin whiter, more luminous. It was an oxymoron that her brain couldn't reconcile, and yet at the same time it seemed the most natural thing in the world. This place was Nico, and it knew it as well as he did.
"Hm," was the only sound Rachel could make for a minute. She realized she was staring and quickly turned her attention to the grass - black - and the sky - or what passed for it. Really it looked more like the roof of a giant cavern, littered with stalactites and cloaked in murky gloom. "Kinda old-school," she finally murmured, trying for witty and probably failing completely.
"What, were you expecting Halloween Town? Not everything looks like Tim Burton designed it, you know." Nico's mouth stretched into a half-grimace, half-smile. "Though I bet he'd like to do some redesigning down here when he gets here."
Rachel chuckled a little at that, but it was quickly cut off as she realized they weren't as alone as she'd first thought. This place might look desolate and abandoned, but now that her eyes had adjusted to the haze she realized that the haze wasn't static - it was moving. And it was separating out into figures, shadows - people. All around them, half-formed people of all shapes and sizes were wandering by, and all of them were murmuring. The low background of noise that Rachel had at first thought was maybe just her imagination was, in fact, millions - billions - of voices intermingling, long strings of words that flowed into sentences that collected into paragraphs and none of it made any sense.
Rachel couldn't quite make out the words, like they were hidden just underneath a layer of static on the radio or muffled by cotton in her hears. The people - ghosts? Spirits? - seemed to realize that as well. But instead of putting them off it only seemed to make them try that much harder to get her to listen. They began crowding up around Rachel and Nico, a circle of death that kept tightening around them -
"... Uh," Rachel said, not wanting to back away because that would show fear, but not really wanting to let them get close, either. There was something about them, something sad and terrible, and she didn't want it to touch her. She didn't know what would happen if it did. Nico had been worried about her wandering off? No chance.
"It's okay," Nico said, and his voice was so gentle that it actually made Rachel turn around and stare. He wasn't actually looking at her; rather, he was looking out at the mass of see-through spirits that surrounded them, something in his dark eyes that Rachel had never seen before. "They won't hurt you."
"Right," Rachel said softly, actually believing Nico despite the press of white faces around them. He didn't seem worried at all - in fact, he seemed strangely calm in a way that she had never seen before, and it was hard to be frightened when Nico was for once so serene. And so after a moment, her curiosity returned. "What are they saying?"
Nico shrugged. "Not much of anything, really. Mostly they're just talking about mundane stuff, the minutiae of their lives. They fixate on the details - they can't see the whole picture. They don't realize they're dead." He paused. "They don't really realize much of anything, unless I make them."
Rachel swallowed, remembering suddenly that day in Daedelus' lab, Nico proclaiming himself the king of ghosts. Right now, that sounded just about right. "'Make them'?" she echoed. That sounded awfully... unpleasant. It hadn't sounded like something Nico enjoyed - simply something he accepted, as easily as breathing. And maybe he did. It wasn't as though he'd talked to her much before about controlling the whims of ghosts.
"I can make them do anything," Nico said, confirming her suspicious. "I can make them remember, if I want to," Nico said distantly, as though only half of his mind were on the conversation. It only made him seem more eerie, more a part of this place, and Rachel shivered. He still wasn't really looking at her. "But it's not usually very nice. No one likes being reminded that they're dead." Perhaps, Rachel thought, he'd made that mistake before and now he regretted it. Or maybe it was simply that he didn't want to be reminded of Bianca, and how she was dead. Maybe he was afraid of reminding himself yet again.
After a minute Nico seemed to come back to himself, and he looked down at her with steady gaze and a bit of a sardonic smile. "They like life anyway," he said, cocking his head to the group surrounding them. "They don't even really understand what it is anymore, but they're still drawn to it even if they can't have it."
"Right," Rachel said again. Her eyes were fixed on Nico's, and after a minute more of silence (except for the ceaseless murmuring) she couldn't help but ask, "So this is really all there is?" She swept her too-brightly-gloved hand across the landscape, across the dead grass and the dead air and the dead rock hanging from the ceiling that was really the floor. Across the shadows of the souls that had once walked above, breathing and thinking and speaking words that could be heard. "This is it?" Because if anyone would have the answer, it would be Nico. And maybe tonight he would tell her, when the boundaries were tenuous and lines could maybe be crossed.
"Well," Nico shifted uncomfortably, "not all. I mean, there's Tartarus, and the Fields of Punishment - but that's only if you're really bad. There's also Elysium - I mean, not that a lot of - "
"That's not what I meant," Rachel said quietly, cutting Nico's words like a knife and the air sat silent and stagnant around them and still the dead muttered on. "I mean... is this it?" To forget in death you were even dead? To forget everything you ever were? That sounded almost worse than being forced at the whims of a god or a half-god to remember. At least if you could remember that you were dead, you might remember that you had once been alive. The whole idea made Rachel uncomfortable - the idea that maybe there was a life after death, but it wasn't really a life, it was an existence made for and from nothing, a vegetable dream from which the dreamer never woke nor never cared enough to even realize they were dreaming in the first place.
Maybe it was the truth and people had known it long before she had - maybe it was truly what people had celebrated all those years ago, on the first Hallows' Eve, when people welcomed their dearly departed back into their lives and asked them to remember. Maybe it was the one night a year that the spirits were believed to be closest to life because they were reminded of what they had left behind.
Or maybe it was all a hoax. Nico had said no one here cared about Halloween and from what Rachel had seen, it was certainly true. None of these sprits remembered, but maybe that was because their families up in the living world had forgotten the true meaning of the holiday, dressed instead in garish costumes and collecting candy from door to door.
Suddenly Rachel felt very, very foolish.
And then, "Yeah," Nico whispered finally, the only sound in this entire world that made sense as it crossed Rachel's ears. "Yeah, this is it." He glanced around, just a flick of his eyes, but suddenly the dead around them began to disperse. They moved away, shuffling off into the distance and taking their litanies of nothing with them, and Rachel was as floored by the simple, unthinking display of power as she was by Nico's answer. Even in the land of countless dead, she was suddenly very alone.
This is it.
"Now you see why I didn't want to bring you down here," Nico said, and the regret was sharp and clear in his voice. "The stuff I don't tell you... well, it's this." Now it was his turn to swing an arm across the landscape, to sweep up death and let it slip through his fingers. "How could you even want to hang around someone who belongs to this?"
Rachel thought, her mind skimming too quickly from place to place, trying to come up with a reason when she wasn't sure she had one. But the truth was that she did without even knowing it, and her mouth opened before she could think to open it. "Maybe because you remind me of how important it is," she said slowly, the words almost choosing her as opposed to the other way around. It was half a prophecy, half her heart, buried in the words. It was something she hadn't realized she knew, and something he needed to be told. "Because even if you are a part of this place, so is everyone else - at least someday, right? But you still fight to preserve what we have while we're alive, in the hope that death will mean something more." After all, Bianca's death had meant something, even if it could never mean enough for Nico. But the idea was there, she was sure, in the back of his mind - a mantra he didn't even know he lived by, that death can mean even more than life.
"Maybe," she said, a little coy and a little shy and very much sincere, "you show me that the dark isn't something we should fear. It's something we should embrace." Because maybe if people didn't forget, then Hallows' Eve could mean something again and the waking dream of death could mean more than just an end to the sunlight on your face.
But Nico was shaking his head emphatically. "But I don't want the dark," he said, stepping forward and his palm was cool against Rachel's cheek, fingers threading through fiery hair. "I want the light, like - like you. You're so alive, you know that? You live every second of your life and you're not afraid of it. You're so... I don't know. Bright. Not like here. Not even like most of the people walking around up there," and he tilted his head in the direction of the not-sky, indicating the living world above. "I think there's too much dark up there already. Maybe the dead don't know they're dead, but most of the people I've met don't know they're alive. Not compared to you. " He paused, swallowed. "You're just... alive. Sometimes I feel like I can't get enough."
Some girls, Rachel thought dizzily, waited their whole lives to hear something like that. Most never would. And none, she was sure, would fully understand what it meant. But she did. Whether it was because she was the Oracle or simply because she was Rachel Elizabeth Dare, it didn't matter. She understood. For all that she needed the dark, Nico needed the light. She could give him that, and together they didn't need All Hallows' Eve to prove that life and death were one and the same, and all that mattered was that you made it mean something.
"Nico," she said, feeling out of breath and high on oxygen all at once. She laughed, giddy, and swung her arms around his neck to pull them close, feel his beating heart filling in the gaps of the rhythm of hers. "You know what? You're right," she finally said, her lips just barely brushing his ear and her words the ghost of a warm whisper through the shaggy hair at his temples, "Edgar Allen Poe's got nothing on you."