#burning-moths

Now, I'm gonna briefly segue into Bianca and Artemis because this will have relevance to Apollo and Nico as well. I firmly believe that Artemis and Apollo know the di Angelo siblings' parentage right from the start. Reading between the lines, you also even get the implication that the entire reason the Hunters are in the area is because they're looking to grab Bianca, and that doesn't make sense under normal circumstances - the Hunters are all girls who don't have any meaningful attachments, and Bianca has Nico. Yes, Bianca willingly leaves him for the Hunt when it's offered to her (specifically phrased as being a freedom from responsibility, which was incredibly manipulative, thank you, Zoe), but the only other character we know the Hunters actively pursued and tried to recruit despite having an attachment is Thalia.

What do Bianca and Thalia have in common? They're daughters of the big three - they're potential prophecy kids, but they have a way out because, as proven, if they join the Hunt they're no longer eligible to fulfil the prophecy, so I think Artemis was intentionally trying to get both of them to protect them (which fits in with her role of protector of maidens, etc.). The big three sons are tough out of luck, but the daughters have an option and they take it (Bianca is manipulated into it, Thalia openly takes it as a "this is me dodging the prophecy, sorry, Percy" sort of way - which is far too self-serving to ordinarily be something I think Artemis would allow into the Hunt). I'll talk more about the di Angelo kids and the Hunt and the Twins later, if there's interest.

But anyway, back to Nico and Apollo.

Nico is not a happy kid when Apollo turns up. He's been attacked, abandoned by his sister (I will note that I do not personally disagree with Bianca joining the Hunt, but regardless of her reasoning/the reasoning behind Artemis and Zoe of press-ganging her into it, to Nico's eyes it's a straight-up abandonment and he's not actually wrong), and the glamour of his card game suddenly being real life is wearing off really damn fast.

And yet - he bounces back later. By the time he's seen the orientation video, he's back to the bubbly kid we first met, and all the naivity seems to be back in full force by the capture the flag game. So what happened?

Apollo happened.

There's only really two interactions between Apollo and Nico here, but they're both pretty important, to me.

Firstly:

"Cool car," Nico said. "Thanks, kid," Apollo said. "But how will we all fit?" "Oh." Apollo seemed to notice the problem for the first time. "Well, yeah. I hate to change out of sports-car mode, but I suppose…" He took out his car keys and beeped the security alarm button. Chirp, chirp. For a moment, the car glowed brightly again. When the glare died, the Maserati had been replaced by one of those Turtle Top shuttle buses like we used for school basketball games.

Was Apollo being actually dumb and not noticing the problem until Nico pointed it out, or was he waiting for someone to point it out? Quite frankly, it doesn't actually matter (although personally I think it's the latter, because almost all Apollo's appearances seem to be carefully crafted to make him seem like an idiot, but also it doesn't make sense for him to actually be that dumb, but that's another rabbit hole entirely). What matters about this scene is that Nico's being listened to and validated for the first time in the book - Nico points out a problem, a literal god confirms that yes, there is a problem, and immediately acts on it. For a ten(ish) year old kid who's so far been very neglected/ignored/abandoned, that's actually a big deal (and also that was pretty brave of him to even try and speak up when so far he's been shut down or ignored at every turn). He's been taken seriously.

And then Apollo continues to take him seriously! Unlike Percy, who's really quite short with him, Grover and Thalia, who are both intent on the Hunters, albeit for very different reasons, and the Hunters themselves (including Artemis), he doesn't give any indication of being irritated by Nico's innate questioning and lets him back out of the grumpy little shell we were starting to see:

The Hunters piled into the van. They all crammed into the back so they'd be as far away as possible from Apollo and the rest of us highly infectious males, Bianca sat with them, leaving her little brother to hang in the front with us, which seemed cold to me, but Nico didn't seem to mind. "This is so cool!" Nico said, jumping up and down in the driver's seat. "Is this really the sun? I thought Helios and Selene were the sun and moon gods. How come sometimes it's them and sometimes it's you and Artemis?" "Downsizing," Apollo said. "The Romans started it. They couldn't afford all those temple sacrifices, so they laid off Helios and Selene and folded their duties into our job descriptions. My sis got the moon. I got the sun. It was pretty annoying at first, but at least I got this cool car." "But how does it work?" Nico asked. "I thought the sun was a big fiery ball of gas!" Apollo chuckled and ruffled Nico's hair. "That rumor probably got started because Artemis used to call me a big fiery ball of gas. Seriously, kid, it depends on whether you're talking astronomy or philosophy. You want to talk astronomy? Bah, what fun is that? You want to talk about how humans think about the sun? Ah, now that's more interesting. They've got a lot riding on the sun… er, so to speak. It keeps them warm, grows their crops, powers engines, makes everything look, well, sunnier. This chariot is built out of human dreams about the sun, kid. It's as old as Western Civilization. Every day, it drives across the sky from east to west, lighting up all those puny little mortal lives. The chariot is a manifestation of the sun's power, the way mortals perceive it. Make sense?" Nico shook his head. "No." "Well then, just think of it as a really powerful, really dangerous solar car." "Can I drive?" "No. Too young." "Oo! Oo!" Grover raised his hand. "Mm, no," Apollo said. "Too furry."

Not only does Apollo answer all of Nico's questions with no indication of being irritated by them, he goes above and beyond answering the basic question and actually puts a lot of detail into his answer - so much detail, in fact, that it's actually a little confusing for Nico (and me, the first time I read it...). There's no brushing off, there's no feeling that Apollo doesn't want to be answering those questions - he even checks Nico was still following and only dumbs down the explanation after Nico admits he doesn't get it.

And yes, he shuts Nico down pretty quick about the driving thing (which actually makes even more sense when you view it through the lens of Apollo knowing exactly who Nico's father is - and let's be honest, Nico is described as looking a lot like Hades, it's honestly more unbelievable that Apollo wouldn't have put two and two together even if he doesn't know/remember the di Angelos from the 1930s but again this is another rabbit hole to poke at another time if there's interest - because a child of Hades driving the sun chariot is gonna summon lightning super quick), but then he shuts Grover down with an even more stupid reason - even Nico's gonna see "too furry" as a dumber reason than "too young", so it negates any slight that might have started to take root.

So - Apollo and Nico's first interaction, Apollo is the first person to be nice to Nico, to take him seriously and treat him like an actual person with feelings rather than an irritating kid, and that's really important. And yes, while Nico is very good at grudge-holding (hello, fatal flaw), I can't see him forgetting this very clear, stand-out bit of kindness in his otherwise pretty rotten introduction (or potential re-introduction) to the demigod world.

Then we really hop, skip and jump to TOA because Nico flits around quite a lot in PJO and HOO but he doesn't really interact again with Apollo.

“Hey, I’m just stating the obvious. If this is Apollo, and he dies, we’re all in trouble.” Will turned to me. “I apologize for my boyfriend.” Nico rolled his eyes. “Could you not—”

Nico's not at all worried about interacting with Apollo here, and he doesn't seem particularly happy about the prospect of Apollo dying, which isn't that surprising, but one thing about this particular exchange that I do like is how Nico doesn't mind that Will told him about their relationship - considering how in the closet he was in BOO, this is a pretty big thing. I know Will starts teasing about "would you prefer significant other" but I think it's pretty obvious that Nico's actual protest is about Will apologising for him, not that he referred to him as his boyfriend. The rest of the exchange is just Solangelo being comfy Solangelo in front of Apollo, which is completely precious.

“Nico,” I said at last, “shouldn’t you be sitting at the Hades table?” He shrugged. “Technically, yes. But if I sit alone at my table, strange things happen. Cracks open in the floor. Zombies crawl out and start roaming around. It’s a mood disorder. I can’t control it. That’s what I told Chiron.” “And is it true?” I asked. Nico smiled thinly. “I have a note from my doctor.”

And then again, Nico's completely at ease even when some people might find Apollo asking that question to be kinda scary - after all, it could be construed to sound like Apollo doesn't want him at his table, but Nico is perfectly comfy bantering back at him. (He's also not afraid to drop Will in it, which shows a level of trust that Apollo isn't gonna get mad at his son, either.)

There's a lot of little moments like that, and I know Nico isn't generally shown to be particularly reverent to gods in general, but he seems more than just irreverent - he feels comfortable with Apollo. And he genuinely wants to help him:

Will hovered nearby. “Look, Apollo, I don’t think you’re back to a hundred percent.” “I’ll be fine.” I pulled on my jeans. “I have to save Meg.” “Let us help you,” Nico said. “Tell us where she is and I can shadow-travel—”

Again, yes, there's the argument that Solangelo and doing it for Will, but Nico's still being nice to Apollo, in his own way. We know how Nico acts when he doesn't like someone and the whole of TOA's interactions with Apollo is not it.

The want, or even need to help even extends later into TON - even before Nico finds out about the prophecy, he’s worrying about what he can do to help:

‘And if she can break you out,’ Nico added, ‘and if you can destroy the fasces before Nero burns down the city … That’s a lot of ifs. I don’t like scenarios with more than one if .’ ‘Like I might take you out for pizza this weekend,’ Will offered, ‘if you’re not too annoying.’ ‘Exactly.’ Nico’s smile was a bit of winter sun breaking between snow flurries. ‘So, assuming you guys go through with this crazy plan, what are we supposed to do?’

It’s admittedly very difficult to separate out Nico and Solangelo in TOA because we almost never see Nico without Will, but even so, a lot of the time the Solangelo lines are there more as a tension-breaker in the narrative than anything else - here, certainly, Will’s contribution adds nothing of his own concern, so we’re still looking purely at Nico’s worries here.

And this isn't just from Nico's end. Apollo worries about Nico as well:

Will picked at the wrapper of his bran muffin. ‘It’s complicated. Nico sensed Jason’s death weeks ago. It sent him into a rage.’ ‘I’m so sorry …’ ‘It’s not your fault,’ Will assured me. ‘When you got here, you just confirmed what Nico already knew. The thing is … Nico lost his sister Bianca a few years back. He spent a long time raging about that. He wanted to go into the Underworld to retrieve her, which … I guess, as a son of Hades, he’s really not supposed to do. Anyway, he was finally starting to come to terms with her death. Then he learned about Jason, the first person he really considered a friend. It triggered a lot of stuff for him. Nico has travelled to the deepest parts of the Underworld, even down in Tartarus. The fact that he came through it in one piece is a miracle.’ ‘With his sanity intact,’ I agreed. Then I looked again at Dionysus, god of madness, who seemed to be giving Nico advice. ‘Oh …’

(And can we appreciate Nico being canonically in therapy because I love this little detail).

It’s also interesting to note that at no point in any of the TOA books is Nico ever rude, abrasive, or otherwise harsh/disrespectful to Apollo.  He worries about him, he works with him (and saves him a couple of times), he teases him, but there’s a very clear baseline of respect between Nico and Apollo that clearly has nothing to do with Will/Solangelo and everything to do with just these two characters mutually getting on really quite well.  Honestly, it’s incredibly likely that Apollo is Nico’s favourite god (with the possible competition of Dionysus), and this itself likely stems from Apollo being the first person to take him seriously, and never not taking him seriously, which should not be as hard a bar to reach as it is but Nico spends most of PJO and HOO being ignored or shunned, either for being a naive kid or for being a son of Hades, and the number of characters who are never shown to treat Nico badly, either to his face or behind his back... are really very, very, low.

Nico hadn’t joined the battle until the seventeenth, on the cusp of Percy’s birthday when his father finally caved to his demands that he set aside his differences and fight, and he’d never really known what had happened before his arrival.  He’d never expected to know, either, but when he trudged into the infirmary for his obligatory check-up and found Will Solace missing his usual sunshine aura, something didn’t quite settle in his mind.

The son of Apollo had been waning steadily since Gaia’s defeat; Nico had almost never seen him outside of the infirmary, aside from short breaks when Chiron or his siblings kicked him out, or that one memorable occasion when he’d collapsed and sent the entire infirmary into an uproar.  Physically, Will didn’t look as bad as he had done at times, but the small smile he dragged onto his face was painfully, transparently, fake, and there was no energy at all in his voice.

“Be right with you.” No Death Boy, Lord of Darkness or any of the other ridiculous nicknames Nico had found headed his way since the battle.  Nothing to indicate Will even knew who had stepped in the door, even though his light blue eyes had flickered up from some sort of paperwork when the door had opened.

Something had drained all the life from the demigod, leaving him almost as pale and lacklustre as Nico himself, and it felt wrong.  Maybe it was hypocritical of him to complain about someone being withdrawn and antisocial when that was his own default state of being, and realistically he knew he couldn’t expect Will to be chipper all the time, but Nico didn’t like it.

“You look like you should be the one this side of the desk,” he said bluntly, leaning against the desk in question.  He was ignored – no quip about how Will was the doctor, or even an attempt at deflection. Just silence as the son of Apollo finished scrawling something down in handwriting that was even less legible than usual before putting his pen down and pushing himself to his feet.

Nico half-expected him to sway on the spot, but Will remained stable even though he moved lethargically, as though his limbs weighed several times what they should and he was pushing through molasses.  It might have been more reassuring if Will had fallen; at least then there would have been something obvious that Nico could do something about.

Suspicious but with nothing to latch onto, Nico followed when he was mechanically led into the infirmary and suffered through Will poking and prodding at him in silence. The other demigod wasn’t as warm as usual, not in his demeanour (although he made a solid if pathetic attempt at faking it) and not where his fingers touched Nico’s skin, and Nico felt like he should say something.

He just didn’t know what.

Did he know Will well enough to call him out on whatever he was pretending didn’t exist?  Will called him out on things all the time, not always relating to his health, so Nico could probably return the sentiment, but he had no idea what to expect.  Will could be stubborn; memories of the son of Apollo dragging himself back to work in the infirmary barely minutes after regaining consciousness despite Chiron and his siblings protesting loudly filled Nico’s mind.

But it didn’t feel right to go along with Will’s façade.  Nico’s gut told him something was wrong and a chance sighting of the date scrawled on the paperwork Will was making notes on as he confirmed that Nico was indeed on his way back to a clean bill of health (although he refused to lift the ban on shadow travelling) abruptly reminded him of the upcoming anniversary.

“Okay, Solace,” he said, mouth ahead of his brain – body ahead of his brain, as his hand reached out and wrapped around the other boy’s wrist firmly.  “You need a break.”

Lifeless blue eyes met his, devoid of the light Nico had come to associate with him.  “I’m fine,” Will said, in a voice that sounded the complete opposite of fine.  “My shift isn’t over yet.”  The smile that stretched over his face was the least convincing yet, deformed and wobbly in a way that felt a lot like a cry for help, and Nico found himself having to make a decision.

Did he let it go, the way Will was clearly trying to get him to, walk away and leave the problem for someone else to handle – someone who was actually capable of handling whatever was going on – or did he dig his heels in and bulldoze his way through?

Most of his instincts were screaming for him to leave, pointing out that Nico could barely sort himself out, let alone anyone else, and that Will wasn’t asking him for help so he didn’t have to get involved.

The rest of him remembered Will reaching out when Nico refused to accept any hands, pushing past his walls because despite the way he was acting, he’d needed help, and saw the reversed situation in front of him.

Will needed something or someone.  Help. Even Nico could see that, and although he was certain he was the worst person for the job, he was there and his feet wouldn’t let him turn around and leave.  Nor would his heart.

“No-one needs help right now,” he pointed out, gesturing to the mostly-empty infirmary.  No-one in it looked like they needed a doctor’s attention imminently; most of them seemed to be asleep.  “Take a break, Solace.”

“I can’t-”

Nico yanked him to his feet and used the element of surprise to drag the other boy into an unoccupied corner of the room, away from anyone else.  Will looked like he was on the verge of tears, and Nico once again realised how unqualified he was for dealing with whatever this was.

He soldiered on regardless, remembering stubborn blue eyes on the battlefield, snatching whatever time they could to convince Nico not to leave, even if it meant drawing the wrong sort of attention.  If Will could try and bash some sense into him in a warzone, Nico could do it in the serenity of the infirmary.

“You look terrible,” he told him bluntly.

“It’s nothing, Nico,” Will tried to convince him.  “Don’t worry about it.”

Nico growled and tightened his grip on Will’s wrist when the son of Apollo tried to walk away.  “It’s something,” he insisted.  “Talk to me.”

“Don’t,” Will pleaded, his transparent façade cracking even as he visibly tried to hold it together. “Nico, I can’t.”  He started shaking, and to Nico’s alarm, his bright eyes grew glassy with unshed tears.  “I have to- Let me- I can’t.”

A single tear slipped down his face, and in a moment of blind panic, Nico found himself resorting to the same thing Bianca had done whenever he was unhappy, pushing away the memories of his sister as he yanked Will closer and laced his arms around him tightly.

“You need a break,” he repeated, tightening his grip when Will made a futile attempt at escaping before the fight seemed to drain from him entirely.

Nico was caught off-guard when a face buried itself in his shoulder and shaking arms wrapped around his own back.  He was completely blindsided by the sobs as hands balled into fists around the fabric of his t-shirt.

Will clung to him tightly, crying near-silently but intensely, and Nico’s brain panicked as he realised he’d put himself in a situation far too far out of his depth for him to handle. There was no way to escape; shadow travel was still banned and there wasn’t a convenient shadow in reach anyway, and Will’s grip was far too tight to wriggle out of.  All Nico could do was follow instincts he didn’t know he even had and hold the crying son of Apollo tightly, hoping it was helping.

At the least, now that Will’s façade was obliterated, he seemed disinterested in releasing Nico.

“I saw them die,” the son of Apollo hiccupped, an eternity later.  His voice was thick and wet, and his head stayed buried in Nico’s shoulder.  “The bridge…  A year ago.”

The words were disjointed, but Nico could piece together the context.  He didn’t know exactly what had happened during the Battle of Manhattan before he’d arrived, but he knew some of the broader strokes.  The way they’d tried to hold the bridges and tunnels before being forced to retreat.

He’d known, in a detached way, that demigods had died.  He’d been the one to perform their funerary rites in the days after Percy’s birthday and Kronos’ defeat.  He’d never really known any of those demigods, though, and it was only a year later, with Will’s grief overflowing, that he remembered how many golden shrouds had been burned, some with bodies and some without.

Will’s siblings.

Siblings that Will knew, that he shared a cabin with, lived with.

Mourned.

“They’re in Elysium.” It was all he could think to say – everyone who had died fighting for Olympus had been fast-tracked straight through, honoured heroes one and all.  Nico didn’t know how to comfort people, how to handle other people’s grief.

(He didn’t know how to handle his own grief.)

Will shuddered in his arms. “I know,” he sobbed.  “Thank you.”

Nico wasn’t sure who he was thanking, or why, but nodded his head slightly anyway, silently acknowledging the words.

“It’s hard,” the son of Apollo stuttered a moment later.  “I…  It hurts.  So many-  Kronos smiled and Michael saved us-  I miss them so much.”

What was he supposed to say to that?  Nico swallowed and stayed quiet, letting Will struggle his way through incomplete sentences because he didn’t know what else to do and he hoped that having someone listening helped, even a little.

Eventually, Will ran out of steam and Nico felt him sag against him.  He took that as a sign to pull Will down onto the nearest bed; the son of Apollo looked beyond exhausted, and Nico said nothing when a blond head fell onto his shoulder.  He really did need a break, but he knew that if he tried to convince Will he’d get nowhere, and Will would probably have a point if he said that there was no-one else who could take over.

The other Apollo kids were no doubt equally grieving, and the rest of the camp just didn’t know enough to keep the infirmary going without them.