#dri writes

He says he wants to go back to school, except the last time he was educated was over centuries ago. You express this concern gently and he agrees, but he points out Calypso can do it, so why can’t he try? And how are you supposed to argue with that?

So, he takes advantage of the Hades Tutoring System. Or, well, as much as he can without getting caught by the god of the Underworld. Meaning, he really just relies on Calypso’s, Hazel’s and Nico’s notes.

You can barely understand the chicken scratch from any of their notes, but you are definitely able to explain things if they ask. Your home/cabin turns into the official study spot for everyone as they work through catching up over the last few centuries, decades or what have you.

Eventually, they all get to a point where they’re able to go to mortal world schools appropriate for their age/knowledge level. Meaning, they’d caught up to their mortal counterparts.

Lit, given his estimated age, is thrown into his first year of college and he takes it as seriously as being on the battlefield. It’s honestly adorable how into his homework he gets.

Some days are better than others. English is still somewhat a struggle for him as far as analysis goes, but he’s able to navigate it with your help. Maths is, interestingly, where he excels. For some reason, the numbers make sense to him.

His science of choice was biology, which in some ways was really lucky! In others…well, some days led to broody silences followed by tears, but that was okay with you.

He didn’t have any specific goal in mind other than to go to class and see what it was like. Your favorite days were when he came home talking about what they’d discussed in his psychology course. For some reason, he really liked to talk about that one. Who knew, maybe he was a budding therapist?

He has only two last people to bid goodbye to.

Ethan and Bryce.

Two unexpected friendships.

A doctor, A surgeon and a paramedic….. well ex-paramedic, he thinks bitterly.

When he meets Ethan it's far from how he had expected it to go. He barely hears his instruction to alert security as he runs beside him to catch up to his frantic footfalls. And then it's pandemonium.

The crazed eyes of a killer.

The pleas of a politician.

A black cannister.

A single shove.

Silence.

….

Somewhere in his poison addled brain he hears a plane taking off towards an adventure that stay unattainable to dying men.

Ethan

He had stopped praying when he was twelve and his mother hadn't returned from the grocery store for thirteen months.

He had come close to it that night in Miami. He had sent a fervent prayer to her as their lips had drowned in each other under the endless expanse of stars above them.

His lips had formed yet another the night after her hearing.

Somehow prayers had become equivalent to her. Diana's touch and the swirling brown that turned obsidian under the single sliver of moonlight that had fallen in the room.

And today he sent another as Naveen had to stop her from entering the room, from breathing the same nameless poison that ran in his veins.

As tears pooled in those clear twinkling browns, he thought of things he never told her. Things he would never tell her again.

He needed to tell her that he was sorry.

That he shouldn't have pushed her away.

That he wouldn't be his mother who left without explanations.

That he cared― no loved her beyond what his cowardly heart could comprehend.

He needed to give her the lunchbox of food cooked together that he kept in his desk.

As he sunk down the glass door of the room, his feet too weak to hold him any longer, he thought only of her and the words he wanted to tell her.

She's a poet's last poem of the words he couldn't say.

Sienna

When she was young her grandmother read her fairytales. They all ended in happily ever-afters, With the prince marrying the princess and the evil witches killed in rainstorms.

And young-her would dream of such tales.

As they led Danny away, she thinks perhaps she wasn't meant for fairy tales.

But she knows someone who still has a chance at it. Someone who is currently staring down the most powerful man in Boston.

Someone who refuses to back away without learning the location of Travis.

And in that moment she decides one of them would get the happy ending she so craved. Mirroring Diana from when she stood by her side rebuking Wayne, Sienna does what she does the best, smiles and tells the Senator exactly what he wants to hear.

Diana

She now knows how he had felt when Naveen was dying.

How she couldn't save the ones who mattered, not Mrs. Martinez, not Danny, not Rafael and not Ethan.

Her fingers are stained in chemicals, a broken nail from when she had punched the wall and a dozen crumpled papers littered the lab. Stained with words she couldn't even read through the haze of her tears.

It is now that she truly feels out of her depth, like a child playing a game of pretend. Her shaking hand measuring yet another probable antidote reminds her of all the things she hasn't learned. All the things he needs to teach her since the day he steadied her shaking scalpel.

She needs him to tell her what to do.

She needs her mentor.

She needs him.

….

That night they hold each other through the distance of a hazmat suit. And she doesn't know who comforts the other.

That night she tells him things.

She tells him about the three sleepless nights when she was eighteen, reading his book for the first time.

She tells him about his grey sweater at the back of her closet.

She tells him about her family, about childhood holidays.

She tells him about the replacement cactus she bought him that currently grows on her windowsill.

And all along three words run in her head and heart and her entire being.

Three words she clings to with a hope of them seeing another morning together. In a future where he holds her hand in the dark and they trade lazy kisses in early mornings.

And slowly she drifts off to sleep in his arms.

…..

She is once again in the lab as he watches the last marker of toxin washing away from the sampled blood.

Something like hope fights to rush out of her restrained realism.

Diana has always processed things in numbers. Always calculating the order of occurrences.

When she tells him about the success of the antidote, the first thing he does is walk towards her, his steps a little dazed, in battle with his restraint. The second thing he does is ask about Raf. The third thing he does is hug her, hold her so closely that they both forget the plastic barrier that was between them a few hours ago.

The forth thing he does is whisper three words over and over, in a broken prayer and a whispered wish….

I love you…. Once, I love you….. Twice, I love you….. Thrice, I love you....

And that's when she stops counting and whispers back the words.

A/N : As it can be seen I write one fic then I vanish from the face of the earth and I am really sorry for that. I still have engineering entrances till July end, but I'll try and be more active after that.

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