*HI GUYS!!!!

I AM SO SORRY FOR THE WAIT.

I THINK I SAY THIS EVERY TIME, BUT SERIOUSLY. With all the nice comments I was getting from everyone, I was starting to feel terrible about not updating (but that's not your fault!! Your comments are all amazing!! Seriously, my day (or probably my week) is made each time I see a fan take the time to comment ;). Anyways, I was having some difficulty thinking of what to do with this chapter, but I finally planned it out and figured out what to do. I will get back to Gruniper/Frazel/Percabeth/Jiper, etc in the next chapters but I really wanted to get this one out :) I imagine it's not the longest chapter but I really wanted to get it out, so now I will stop babbling and just let you read the stupid story.

Anyways.

Enjoy!*

Chapter Five: I Contemplate Life

NICO

Rachel really hadn't wanted to start on the quest or do a prophecy that night. Nico understood. So he left the warm lights of the Big House and stepped out into the night, past the dozen dead roses.

He didn't want to go back. The others were better than he would've liked to admit at guessing his emotions, and they'd know something was up. Especially Hazel or Piper.

He didn't feel like telling anyone.

So he continued on into the cool night air, figuring he'd find something to do until most of the others were in bed.

He walked aimlessly through the nearly deserted streets of the old Camp Halfblood. There was a light on in the Hermes cabin, and sound of laughter echoing through the air; he supposed there was a party going on. It amazed him, sometimes, how something that seemed so big and important and life-changing to one person could have no impact on the world itself. How always, at any given time, there were people dying and people being born, people losing hope and gaining it, people breaking up and those having their first kisses, people celebrating and mourning, laughing and crying, loving and dreaming.

He always got this way, all philosophical and melancholy, when he was by himself on a night like this.

He made his way over to the lake of Camp Halfblood and sat down on the cool ground, not even bothering with the bench. A child of Hades felt at home on the dirt.

"Nico?"

Nico jumped up, startled. His old demigod instincts kicked in and his hand flew to his side, ready to draw his sword; then he saw a figure step out of the darkness.

"Oh, it's just you," Nico said as the pale moonlight revealed Will Solace's face. "I mean..." he trailed off. He hadn't meant to sound rude, or like he didn't want to see Will. "I mean, you scared me."

"I scared the son of Hades?" he faked surprise.

"It's not as hard as you'd think," Nico muttered under his breath. Just the thought of being close to Will was making him sweat in nervousness. He had gotten used to being with Rachel, and it somehow it was different with her; after those first few hormone-filled kisses, something began to fade between the two of them. Maybe Rachel hadn't felt it, but Nico had; it wasn't that he didn't like her, but something about the two of them didn't feel romantic. Being with her felt like being with a good friend, but nothing more; he hoped that they could continue to be friends.

Nonetheless, prophecy or no, he'd needed to break things off romantically with her.

"What was that?" Will asked.

"Nothing," Nico replied. He didn't want Will to see how nervous he was.

"Hey," Will said. "What's wrong?"

"Nothing's wrong," Nico said coolly. He hadn't meant for it to come out that angry-sounding, but

he was on edge right now. On edge and vulnerable, something that Nico never wanted to be.

"Of course not," Will snapped, put off by Nico's coldness.

"Ouch," Nico muttered. That hurt. Especially coming from Will. But the worst part was that so many things were wrong, with Nico himself and everything he was feeling, and he wanted to let it out and tell someone and he was seriously getting sick of being alone, but what could he do? He couldn't let himself fall, fall and depend on someone else to pick him back. His family was dead all except for Hazel, his friends virtually nonexistent, his romances crumbling... He had had Rachel before, and now he wasn't even sure he had her.

And he was sick of it.

"So," Nico snapped before he could stop himself; it wasn't even what he wanted to say just his old instincts kicking in. "Come here to arrest me or something? I suppose I look suspicious, a child of Hades all by myself out here at night."

For a long moment, all was quiet. Will just stared at him, open-mouthed, silently shaking his head back and fourth.

"No," he said finally. "I came here to see if you were alright. I saw you wandering around, all lost and lonely and I thought maybe I'd try to cheer you up. I get that you've had a hard life, I get that people have died and left you but maybe you'd actually have a chance at keeping someone with you if you didn't constantly push them away! I hate to get all guidance-counselor-philosophical on you, Nico, but it's true. I come here to say hello, see how you're doing, and the second I try to question you you just get all dark and defensive like you always do. And it's not just to me, either! If it was just to me, I'd take the hint. But you do this to everyone, Nico, and then you walk around all depressed like the world hates you."

"I'm sorry," Nico said after a pause, Will's harsh but shockingly true words threatening to break through the brick wall Nico had tried so hard to keep out. "But sometimes, after all your family dies and time after time people leave you, it really does seem like the world hates me." He wasn't trying to "push Will away", to give proof of everything will had just accused him of, but it was true. He liked Will; he really, truly did. But Will had always been happy and sunny and optimistic, had never seen the things that Nico had, had never been where Nico had been. Nico had been through hell and back in the most literal sense. He had left Rachel for Will, but now he wasn't sure he could make it work with Will after all; Will was optimistic, social and popular, a complete opposite to negative, lonely, depressed Nico.

Will sighed, shaking his head again in that slow, sad way that made Nico extremely uncomfortable. "I don't think the world hates you, Nico. I think you hate the world." In that moment of silence, that awkward, tension-filled, icy moment of silence, Nico honestly expected Will to just sigh again and disappear back into the woods, leaving him behind for the other, happier, stronger people who Will actually deserved.

"Lucky for you, Nico," Will said suddenly, surprisingly cheerfully. "I don't hate the world. And I don't hate you, either, and I'm not going to give up."

With that, he sat down next to Nico, staring out at the lake, so close that their arms touched. Once again Nico felt that strange electric current run through his arm, the one he'd felt when he'd first touched Will, the one that had been strangely absent all the time he'd been with Rachel. The one that filled him with warmth and made him vow that somehow he would change, somehow he would make it up to Will, somehow he would make it all work out.

* *   *

RACHEL

It was late that night when Rachel felt the prophecy coming on.

She should've been asleep by then, should've at least picked up a book or started counting sheep or anything that might giver her a chance to a fall asleep. But although she wasn't crying, wasn't splurging on ice cream or talking to a friend like girls on breakups always did in movies, Rachel was just sitting there thinking. 

She was sad, of course; but, although it had hurt to hear that Nico was more than ready to move on from her, prophecies aside, she'd been expecting anyway. Although she'd been prepared to tell him that their relationship was not worth putting him in danger, not worth the chance of him fading away, she had secretly hoped that he wouldn't agree quite as quickly as he had.

But Rachel Elizabeth Dare was not a teenage girl in the movies; she was stronger than that. And yet, between the prophecy that left her questioning whether she and Nico were indeed safe now that they had broken up and the words Nico had said to her, she found it impossible to catch a blink of sleep.

Rachel wasn't completely surprised when she felt the prophecy coming. Sure, she'd already had one, but she wasn't sure what would happen now that her and Nico had broken up. She'd still broken the oath, but now she'd fixed it... would she still have to complete the quest that the prophecy had promised? Based on her experience with the Olympians, she would; she expected, hoped even, that the prophecy coming would help explain that situation.

When Rachel felt it coming on, she knew she needed to find someone to witness and record it, and fast. After a prophecy she could rarely recall more than small bits and pieces of what she had chanted, and even that was far from guaranteed. She didn't know who to go. Part of her was hesitant to talk to Nico again so soon, but another part knew that if this prophecy was about her and Nico as she suspected, she didn't want anyone other than her and Nico to know about it.

She knew where she'd find him; she'd found him many times before sitting out at that little spot near the lake. He'd even taken her there a time or two when they wanted someplace quiet and undisturbed.

What she hadn't been expecting to find was a guy sitting next to Nico, talking and laughing with him as if everything was just wonderful and Nico hadn't just dumped his girlfriend. When she saw the face of the boy, a dam deep inside her that she had previously thought stronger than the Hoover where she'd first gotten into all of this threatened to burst.

It was as if Rachel and Nico had never even existed. Rachel had to agree that something had felt off between the two in the past few weeks, but seeing Nico sitting there talking and laughing with Will, the happiest she'd seen him in ages, put her to the edge. If it hadn't been for the prophecy she knew would soon come, she might have run back the other, locked herself in her room, and engaged in the crying-ice-cream-eating behaviors herself.

"N-Nico...?" She muttered. Her face was heating up. She hated to interrupt this.

Nico jumped when he saw her, looking slightly scared.

"Rachel! Could we, um... talk later? If that's why you came to talk?"

"Um." Rachel said. "Not exactly."

Nico cocked his head to the side.

"Prophecy," Rachel whispered. She wasn't keen to have Will hear this.

"What?" Nico asked, getting up.

"Prophecy!" she said a little louder.

Nico's eyes widened. "Oh. Will, I'll be right back. Sorry. C'mon," he said, nodding to Rachel and taking off down the path.

At the edge of the path, Rachel sunk down against a tree, holding her head. The migraines that were the symptoms of an oncoming prophecy were something she would never get used to.

"Are you okay?" Nico asked.

"I'm fine," Rachel replied. She was surprised to see the caring in his eyes, the worry; romantic or no, Rachel's suspicions about Nico previously cheating on her with Will disappeared. Somehow she knew he'd been honest. "Here it comes," she muttered. She closed her eyes, the Oracle's spirit taking over.

"Two have broken a sacred oath

Three will be punished

Four will know

One will hurt and two will inflict

The roles are assigned

Olympus has picked

The eternal maiden

Shall see to their quest

Until it is done

Neither will rest

The tree must be strangled

With shadows and ghosts

Two have the power

But neither will boast."

Then she took in one long, rattled breath and collapsed against the tree, in Nico's arms once more as he made sure she didn't hurt herself. Nico had heard the prophecy, and it didn't sound good; but even as he held Rachel in flickering torchlight and the dark night on the edge of the forest, even with his dark, lonely mind, Nico had no idea of the horrors the prophecy was predicting.

* * *

So guys... I hope you enjoyed that! Tell me what you thought! I tried not to make it too corny, but it probably was anyways...

So, I have a bit of a favor to ask of all of you who haven't already. If you need something to do whilst waiting for the next Jiper update ;) you can check out my brother's youtube channel, ThecobraBro. He recently posted a video of our own take on the smoothie challenge (featuring me!! I'm Rachel in the video, Evelyn is actually just a pen name). It's not the best quality (quite terrible, actually...) but it's hopefully kind of funny and entertaining. He's had other videos in the past but no one ever saw them so he got discouraged and took them down... if you could check out his video, you would make his day :) I'll follow anyone who leaves a comment on his Smoothie Challenge Video! (Feel free to give him feedback if you have any, as well). He plans to get other videos up in the future.

Just pm me or comment here or something if you comment on his video and I will follow you :)

Thanks!

Love y'all so much (and I really don't deserve all of you after the time it took me to get this out...)

~Evelyn (Rachel;)