Getting in through The Door of Orpheus wasn't as hard as Will had feared. True to his word, he could get anyone into a rousing campfire song if he put enough, will, behind it and he actually got Nico singing a chorus of Dem Bones up to the knee until the crack opened. The smile on Nico's face had only been indulgent at best, he was humoring Will playing along to the beat, but it was the first actual smile Will had seen since they'd left California, so Will couldn't ask for more as he followed him down, hand in hand again.

The Fields of Asphodel were as boring as Nico had promised they'd be. The ghosts chittered softly but didn't stop them as they parted before the son of Hades whose eyes swiveled amongst them, head cocked to the side occasionally, listening for something Will couldn't guess. Will being right behind him missed the majority of them, but not all of them.

On occasion when Nico squeezed his hand and Will looked too long, he could make out details of what the person had been in life. Their clothes, their features, but only if he didn't look directly at them. When he did walk through them was the worst. He'd get a tiny glimpse, like a camera shutter through someone else's life of what they were feeling when they died. Impossible to avoid in the packed stadium of impressions that were once alive, leaving him in a constant state of being an emotional conduit for practically everything a brain could slam into him.

He took it in silence as long as he could, but Nico seemed to notice he was lagging behind when he called over his shoulder and asked casually, "this vacation away from Camp all you wished it would be?"

Will shrugged, and might have even been a bit curt otherwise answering, but he couldn't bring himself to be tart with Nico right now. "I've had worse."

Nico didn't push, but Will felt the need to explain his bitter tone anyways. "I traveled more than enough with my mom growing up. Sleeping in a van in all weather, smelling everything there is to smell in every dive bar that would have her. She's a good singer, nobody could deny that, she just always seemed a little too late for all those talent competitions, a little too out of touch with the current trend to chase it. I know it's how she met my dad, she sang me a song about it she swears is going to be famous one day, but," he shrugged again. "I like camp. I like waking up home every day."

He didn't think this was the time or place to pour the rest of his heart out; feeling like his mother had only kept him in her company so long hoping some of his half-godly blood would help her reach the fame she craved before the monster attacks began interrupting the few performances she could get, and agreeing he should be somewhere safer and only visiting once a year at best. He'd been nine when he looked at her for the first time and realized the way she kept a choke hold on that guitar on stage was the thing she'd never let go of as he sat alone in the crowd. He still had dreams about standing on top of that hill watching her van drive away and waiting to see a hint of flashing red lights in hesitation. The vision just dragged on until it shouldn't have been possible for him to see anymore, and it never came.

Nico had never felt something like that. He said nothing now, still turning his head this way and that in a restless pattern, same as he always had when Will brought up Camp. Really, this setting wasn't so different than being surrounded by the ghosts of Nico and Percy's own past living through those books.

"She visits me sometimes," Will added, just to change the subject. "Last year for my birthday, she promised she'd buy me anything I wanted, and I told her I wanted a tattoo just to see her reaction, and she got a matching one with me that day."

"You have a tattoo?" Nico asked incredulously, stopping in place for the first time since they'd started, trying to imagine his mama approving of such a thing. It was easier to imagine her ghost frowning in disapproval, but really, that was nothing new.

Will pulled up the sleeve of his grungy old orange shirt. There was only the faintest light from the stalactites above, really the bottom of the ocean had been brighter, but Nico could see fine in the dark. He could make out the outline of the sun. He let go of Will's hand and traced it. When he was done touching all the points, it glowed with a faint golden light, and Will laughed softly and took his hand back, kissing his knuckles. "That's something I added later."

"You hate being in the dark," Nico had guessed. He'd grown paler every day in Oceanus's bath house. Even just the few hours they'd spent in the moonlight resting, on the back of the pegasi fighting for their lives, and walking to here had put a few brushes of color back in Will's face.

Will didn't deny it, but he didn't hesitate on the next step either as they kept walking. The wall, the outer rim of the Underworld loomed in the not so far off distance. They must have been down here for hours already.

"You going to ask what we're doing?" Nico finally asked, eyes on the massive craggy wall of black that was somehow a different shade of dark than the rest of this place promising a new horror.

"I already know," Will promised. "I don't think we'll find them."

"Neither do I," Nico sighed. "There was this, feeling, I've never sensed anything like it before. When they died, their spirits went, I don't know how else to explain it but up. Maybe because they weren't Greek? I, I don't know what to make of it, but I have to try. They didn't deserve that. They weren't supposed to be in there. Maybe, maybe they just skipped into here hoping I'd come get them out?" He didn't really believe that, he couldn't imagine Alex in such a dreary place not throwing confetti around for attention, and Magnus would be the loudest miserable shade imaginable if this were his fate.

"I wasn't supposed to be in there either," Will reminded. "I don't think it gives them a free pass."

"Then I'll make them one," Nico said as he dropped Will's hand to dodge around one side of a fallen rock penetrated deep into the ground.

Will let his hand go to walk around the other side, feeling colder for it instantly. "You've been down this path before," he cautioned, still following him without judgment. He'd expected Nico to head for his father's palace, but instead he'd made straight for Cerberus, guarding the pathways beyond. "Your sister-"

"Alex and Magnus aren't children of Hades!" Nico reminded bitterly. "We don't know who their parentage is, for all I know they'd thank me!"

"I don't want to fight you Nico," Will sighed. "I'm trying to say you can't keep doing this every time-"

Nico whirled around, anger stewing in his face all the same as he glowered at him. "Every time!?" The ghosts were pushing away from him, hissing like a thousand snakes, crowding the crowded nothingness into a tight bubble. Will shivered, a prickle of true fear. Nico didn't seem to notice. "You plan on dying when we get back to camp Will?! How about when Percy slips and hits that one stupid weak spot! What if Jason goes home and they'd rather execute him because he's been hanging out with the enemy!? How many people have to die before I'm supposed to just get on with it!? I, I let it happen to Alex, so I should-"

"You didn't let it," Will's voice kept getting quieter the louder Nico got. "You saved me while he-"

"I made a choice," Nico said flatly. "I didn't know it at the time, but I knew the second I felt what Percy was trying to do he'd never accomplish it in time. The earth was fighting him, both of us! Then, when I, I couldn't-" Will took his hand again. Nico held back as tight as he could. "I just want to apologize," Nico murmured, looking everywhere but at him. "And that means I'm sorry for saving you but I'm not and, and I just-"

"I know," Will promised the only thing he could, at least someone could understand. He tried another tactic, well aware Nico could shadow travel away and leave him here to get lost in the Underworld if he angered him too much. He knew Nico would never do that though, he wasn't afraid of him. "At least go ask your dad if he knows about them passing through. They weren't like us Nico, you know that. For all we know there's more afterlives your dad-"

"I know!" Nico snapped, his hand growing cool beneath Will's fingers once more. "I know they're not down here, I know my dad would ground me, I know if I keep walking I'll find myself at the edge of Tartarus again and right now you're the only reason I wouldn't jump down just to stop this, this-" he dropped Will's hand and gestured at everything around him. His life being a constant joke. He'd finally made a good friend in Alex, someone who understood everything he'd gone through and was happy to know him for it because of his strangeness.

"What would you have me do?" Nico asked, his voice breaking. He swiped at his nose and looked away. "Go back to your home and pretend it never happened? I can't Will. I can't just sit around pretending to be happy when I know there's something I could be doing now that we're out of that place. I know I said I wouldn't, but maybe-"

He hadn't looked away from the wall that seemed to have grown closer somehow, though Will would swear they hadn't actually walked much farther since he'd first noticed it. It was just looming there, and he knew. There was an entrance to the world below, somewhere in those rocks. No matter what part of the Underworld Nico went to, it seemed to call him, draw him there again and again.

He hadn't gone to his fathers palace because he hadn't trusted himself to walk past the one by there. Instead,he'd wound up at another, like a sick game. The whispering was back, he'd barely heard the shades voices like he'd meant to. Just the same thing, stronger than ever, on the back of his neck. "Gaea stirs..."

If Will hadn't been behind him the entire time, he would have kept walking right into the pit without looking back just to finally make it stop. Not after witnessing the earth's power awakening on that mountain and the trouble it had already started to cause them. Even being down here was dangerous enough for him, let alone Will. He had to make it stop, find out about those Doors of Death if he could...

Will stepped forward and took his hand, and said nothing. He'd promised to go with him if Nico needed to do this, and he wasn't going back on that.

Nico opened his mouth, to warn him away one more time-

but then he heard something else. A voice, and it wasn't the warnings, the whispering they all kept chanting.

She just sounded very lonely.