Curate, connect, and discover
The first thing Will ever destroys is a songbird. He is four, and screaming, and his mother is twenty-three and exhausted and screaming back, and he wants to tear the world to shreds with his bare hands. And the little feathered thing out the window chirps at the wrong volume at the wrong time, tilting his little head, and Will just thinks deathdeathdeathdeath. And it keels over, and it dies.
The second thing Will ever destroys is immediately after and it is a little thing in the centre of his belly. And it is gone. Others have it, he’s sure, and it is what tethers them to the place between Hades and Heaven and what will float them gently to Elysium when their string withers, but his died with the bird. He felt it drop like a stone echoing deathdeathdeathdeath.
Every other thing he destroys wraps its twisted tethered tendrils around his throat.
———
He learns how to use it. Eventually. There is a moment in Cabin Seven in the dead middle of the night, after a nightmare, when Lee blinks green smoke out of his wide eyes and says, when he recovers: “Never speak of this again.”
And Will, eight, destroyer of so many things Abraham and his sands could not count them, nods. And Lee takes his hands and presses a gentle, squeezing kiss to his knuckles and in two years’ time Will destroys that, too. He holds the fragments of Lee’s skull in his hands and green smoke pools from his palms, from his eyes, from his mouth and his nose, and the grinning Cyclops cannot hold his breath in time and Will thinks deathdeathdeathdeath.
And the songbird was quick and the hole in Will’s belly gets bigger and Lee was slow, slow, slow. And for ever second his brother suffered Will extols it tenforth upon his enemy, and he collapses to his knees, tongue blackening, eye shrinking in its massive socket, throat screaming around sounds Will drags from his lungs. Boils pepper his skin and his bones crack and splinter into his muscle and blood seeps from his pores. And Will watches, and Lee’s blood pools in his hands, and the smoke thickens. And thickens. And thickens. And the Cyclops does not turn to dust when he dies, but a shrivelled, slimy corpse of a bird, a crow, and bile crawls its way up Will’s throat. He turns his head just in time and vomits all over the disintegrated grass and watches it smoke and bubble, devouring everything it touches. Lee’s stained skin smoulders under his palms. He drops him.
Michael watches, wide-eyed, and says: “Oh, my gods.”
And later when they are fitting the fragments of Lee’s skull together and tucking a coin in the spaces between his broken fingers, because the plates forming the roof of his mouth have been torn apart, Michael holds his shoulder. And he breathes, and he says.
“Never speak of this again.”
And Will feels around for that empty spot in his belly, and he rubs his hand over his burned, bruised throat. He imagines Lee’s big hands joining the fray, squeezing.
And he nods.
———
When he destroys Michael and follows Percy off the ruined bridge and then watches as each one of his older siblings is dragged into the broken hotel infirmary and drags sheets over their heads. When he closes their eyes and commits their blame to memory. When he saves Annabeth’s life and comes back to find his youngest older sister dead.
He squeezes his eyes shut and he thinks deathdeathdeathdeath. And the smoke is thin and cooling and scaly, and it slithers through the cracks of the ruined Manhattan pavement and wraps around exposed heels. And it bites, sinking into flesh, and demigods die, shrivelled, diseased, screaming. And they join the chain of souls wrapped around Will’s neck and whisper their echoes into his ears: deathdeathdeathdeath. And when he is the last and only son to walk through the only gilded doors he will ever see there is an electric fan still humming. There is floral wallpaper still up on the walls. There are unmade bunks. There is the smell of sweet hyacinth and the gentle curve of bowstrings.
He squeezes his eyes, sinks to the floor, and thinks deathdeathdeathdeath. And the hyacinth spots and dies, and the dandelions turn to ash. The wallpaper yellows and yellows and crumples in on itself and the wood of guitars rot. And when he wakes up on the creaking floorboards in the morning there is nothing but broken metal frames and a thin layer of soil, of grave dirt, where there were once painted hydrangeas. And he sweeps it out the steps and tells Chiron his cabin was burned to ash by Greek fire. His throat itches and aches, a fraction as much as his palms.
It is renovated by the end of the week.
The walls are sterile-white.
———
When a straw-haired suffering boy stretches into his face and screams I am the son of Apollo, Will squeezes his eyes shut. And he thinks: death.
And Death wraps a hand around his elbow, squeezing, stalling, and says: “Octavian, think of what you’re doing.”
The praetor-elect snarls, and does not. His robes catch on the twisted end of the onager, and his string of Fate is cut. He is launched into the air, screaming, and when his ghost floats back down, it does not join the thousands on Will’s back. Instead it sits on Nico’s shoulders, and Nico takes the weight, breathing through his mouth, and soldiers on. Will watches him with wide eyes.
———
“Never speak of this again,” his brothers warned him.
———
His father told him: you are marked.
———
He hears, endlessly, echoed: deathdeathdeathdeath.
———
“I could use a friend,” he says, and swallows. The dead on his back echo their laughter: friend. Friend. Friend.
“Friend,” Nico echoes.
Will nods. He tries for a smile. It’s thin, but Nico does not comment on it. “Or a friendly face, if that’s easier to swallow.”
“You don’t want a harbinger in your infirmary, Solace.”
And Will cannot help but laugh out loud. And Nico scowls, offended, but Will holds up a hand, palm open.
“I know something about harbingers,” he promises. “You are not by far the worst thing to happen to this camp.”
Nico’s eyes widen. Will snatched his hand back, and there must be something in his face. Because Nico nods, slowly, big eyes blinking.
“Okay.” he says, and swallows. “I have to do something, but I’ll be — back.”
And he is.
———
Nico controls the dead. He cares for them. Like his father he is commanding, but he is fair. He gives the dying the chance to fight, the space to plead; when it is time to collect souls he will take them, gently, and guide them, weeping, on. Death is compassionate. Nico moreso.
Will curls his blackened rotting fists to his sides. The snake wraps up his leg, tongue resting on his scraped knees. It hisses, gently.
Nico places a soft, caring hand on his shoulder.
“It’s not your fault,” he says, gently. “Some deaths are not preventable. You know that.” He squeezes. “You are a light on this Earth, Solace. She was suffering. She will be granted Elysium, as all the heroes who died here will be.”
Heroes.
Nico searches for his eyes, and smiles. The snake around Will’s ankles hisses, moving close. Will holds his breath.
“Remember all your hands have done, Will.”
Will swallows, and tucks his palms into his pockets.
Death.
Death.
Death.
Death.
“Believe me. I will.”