n o c t u a r y {s i x}
n o c t u a r y {linked universe x demi-god reader}
content warning: some swearing
The pale yellow walls of the Apollo cabin are just as you left them; cheerful on a good day, obnoxious on a bad day. The white floorboards creak under your weight, they’ve always been noisy, but it’s the only noise inside the cabin. It’s unusually silent. Even if no one is inside, the radio is always playing in the background or someone left their iPod on shuffle.
You look around but find no one. The beds are unmade, their covers thrown around haphazardly. Clothing is strewed all over the floor. A broken bow, its upper limb snapped in half, rests against a bed frame. A lyre with its strings cut in half peeks out from under another bed. Half-finished art projects cover the desks, some just angry scribbles and others blobs of paint. Vases of wilting yellow flowers occupy the window sills. The smell of burnt bay leaves perfumes the air.
You’ve only seen the cabin this messy twice before, when you and your siblings were grieving.
There’s only one last place to check, one last place to hide in the cabin, the loft upstairs. Originally it was built for the cabin leader, a small space for privacy, but it changed into a place to hang out for your siblings. They certainly have no qualms in jumping into your bed during sunrise or lounging around when they’re feeling lazy. A lone figure occupies the bed now, curled up in a tight ball.
Your knees almost give away as they knock into the bed frame. “...Will..”
The boy shoots up like he’s been burned. His golden curls have lost some of their shine and definition, falling limply around his sallow skin. His sky blue eyes are wide, glassy, and spooked, as though he’s seen a ghost. He looks like shit and you know it’s because of you. You reach out one hand, wanting to comfort your younger brother when you finally notice what he’s wearing.
“Is that my fucking hoodie?”
Being the oldest, it’s inevitable that you have to share with your siblings. Most of the time you don’t mind letting them borrow your art supplies or musical instruments for a day or two. But you draw the line at clothes. If you let them take your clothes whenever they pleased, you would have nothing to wear. Kayla’s the main offender, insisting your clothes are more comfortable despite owning similar wardrobes. Yan always takes one of your sweaters when he’s feeling particularly homesick. Will has taken all of your flannels for himself. So yeah, you’re a bit overprotective of your clothes, especially when you bought an (overpriced) hoodie from the bookstore of your future university.
“Are you a ghost?” Will asks, voice hoarse from disuse. It makes you wince.
“Yeah, I am. I sensed you took my hoodie and I’ve come to take it back.”
His lips twitch, as though he’s unsure whether or not he should laugh. Out of automatic instinct, he pulls it over his head and throws it to your awaiting arms. One hand reaches tentatively up, fingers shaking as they press against your forearm. You feel the weight of the touch, but the area his fingers meet your figure shimmers and turns a purple color, as if you were a hologram.
This isn’t real then. It’s just a dream.
“I’m not dead, Will,” you say quietly. “My quest took a turn for the worst and I ended up…I ended up in a different universe, one where there are no Greek gods at all.”
“Sounds like a vacation,” Will jokes weakly after a moment of silence. He peers at you with glassy eyes. “Are you…are you safe?”
You take Will’s hand in your own, ignoring how your skin ripples with purple light, how you can feel the touch but it does nothing to comfort your heart. “I’m okay. A group of heroes found me and offered me a spot with them until I can come home. I can’t- I don’t know when that’ll be though.”
Your brother grips your hand tightly, knuckles going white. “We couldn’t help but assume…Dad’s been refusing to answer our prayers and Lady Hecate has been silent…and at the end of the week, Chiron insisted that-” his voice breaks. “That we burn your funeral shroud.”
“I’m sorry,” you whisper. “I’m sorry.”
You can’t imagine it; your siblings forced to go through another funeral burning, another older sibling lost. After the war with the titans, there’d been hushed rumors amongst the other cabins that the Apollo cabin leader position was cursed. You shut those rumors up quite easily, but it’d done its damage. None of your brothers or sisters looked forward to you turning eighteen and leaving for college. They didn’t want to imagine all the dangers you would face in the outside world. None of them wanted to be the next leader, didn’t want the fate that awaited them.
Your hand slips from Will’s and you watch with horror as your fingers start to fade away. Coldness starts to burn through your body and you know your time here is up. “I’ll come back you Will, I’ll come back to all of you, I swear it on the River Styx.”
You’ll return back to it all, back to Will’s gentle hands and bright smile. Return to attend another one of Austin’s jazz concerts and help Kayla dye her hair some vivid color. Come back and listen to Jerry ramble on about musicals and plays while Gracie draws the characters. You’ll return one day to write poetry with Yan and you’ll let him add his favorite songs to the campfire playlist. One day, you’ll be complete again.
The image of your brother fades away as your vision bleeds black and purple. The biting cold creeps up your body like a thousand of little spiders. For a moment, you’re stranded in nothingness, just existing in a void with your senses stolen from you. Hands grip your shoulders and it shocks you out of nothing. You scramble against the hold, trying to escape from it, but large hands pin you down against a hard surface. Your ears ring sharply and a voice tries to speak over it with little success. Only as the ringing subsides, does the voice calm you.
“It’s okay, don’t try to move so much. You’re alright.”
You stare into the purplish blue eyes of Twilight. “Hello.”
He offers you a weary smile. “Hey. You with me now?”
You sit up so fast your vision swims for a moment. You dodge the hands that try to keep you down as you climb shakily to your feet. The trees are no longer green. The plain you’re in is surrounded by trees with fiery red and orange leaves. The occasional tree possesses yellow leaves amongst the rare pine. It is not the same woods you were once travelling. “Where am I?”
“That’s what we’re still trying to figure out.”
A finger pokes your back. “Where did you get that?”
You crane your head over your shoulder to look at Wind. His bleached blond hair is tousled from the journey but otherwise, he appears fine. He’s looking at something tucked under your arm. At the sight of the familiar material, you can’t help but laugh, like bending over and clutching your stomach type of laughter. You’ve given up long ago on understanding the laws of space and how reality works, one tends to stop questioning things with a Greek god as a parent, but stealing your hoodie back across reality has got to be one of the best things that’s ever happened to you.
Wind leans over to Twilight and whispers not so subtly, “I think they’re losing it.”
Your laughter dies down and you wipe a stray tear from your eye. “I’m sorry, I really am losing it, but look!” You show your hoodie proudly. “I stole this back from my brother!”
Wind and Twilight exchange glances. “Hyrule? Can you come here? Our guest hit their head.”
Hyrule looks over. He’s kneeling beside a grumpy-looking Sky, checking his chest for anything wrong. He starts to get up but you wave him away. “No, I’m fine. I didn’t hit anything.” The curly-haired teen comes over anyway, he tries to poke around your head, but you dodge his insistent fingers.
“Is everyone here?” Time asks, voice ringing loudly across the clearing. “Is anyone hurt?”
“No,” Hyrule answers. “But Four has a headache.” He gestures towards a motionless lump laying face down.
“Champion, where are we at?” Time’s voice draws your attention back. Subconsciously, you start inching forward to where he’s standing flanked by Warriors and Wild.
Wild stares down at his stone iPad, face hauntingly blank. “Akkala. Near the base of Ulri Mountain.”
“Figure out the closest town or place to restock and rest.” Time clasps a gentle hand on Wild’s shoulder, but when he turns toward you, the cold anger and irritation are a startling difference. “That will be the last time you go after the Shadow by yourself.”
“Okay.”
Time inhales sharply. “If you think you can go after the Shadow, then you can act like a proper member of our group. You will help us with chores, stand watch at night, and battle with us. You’ll be expected to pull your own weight.”
“Of course,” you say pleasantly. As an afterthought, you add, “Sir.”
“We will still try to help you get back to your own world, but if something important comes up, that will take precedent.”
“I understand, sir.”
Time stares down at you, as if he could decipher your sudden mood change by staring into your eyes. You stare back at him, even daring to smile sweetly. He narrows his eyes at you, suspicion clear in his gaze before turning away. He calls Warriors and Wild to his side, and they whisper in hushed tones, all huddled over the stone iPad. Once you’re sure his attention is turned off of you, your smile drops and you glower at his back. You have no choice but to listen to him now. The thought bubbles uncomfortably in your mind and simmers acidly in your stomach.
You break away to the edge of the group, clutching your sweater close to you. It smells like laundry dried in the sun and the sharp sting of disinfectant.
That night, you play along with Wind’s games. You don’t complain when Wild ropes you into helping with dinner or dishes. Twilight sets up your bed roll for you with an awkward smile before scampering off to his own blankets beside Time. You fall asleep fitfully that night, far too aware of the changing dynamics of the group and a promise you made that could cost you your life.
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Legend waits until most of the camp has fallen asleep. His steps fall silently as he creeps toward where their guest is sleeping between Four and Wind, their traveling pack left unguarded. He grabs it by a strap, pausing momentarily when the demi-god shuffles a little bit in their sleep. A few seconds pass with no movement. Legend yanks the pack to him and steps away just as silently. Time says nothing as he takes a seat by the fire. The old man, still bitter about losing the Shadow earlier makes no comment about the invasion of privacy. Legend can’t bring himself to care either. Back in Ordon, he was only able to glance over all the objects shoved into the yellow pack, but now, he’s going to thoroughly inspect everything to make sure the demi-god isn’t working against them.
Resting on top of the pack are several round, tin containers. Legend knows they’re healing balms and salves, their pungent scents, and Hyrule’s expertise confirmed it. He still opens one. Lavender wafts upward, and Legend resists the temptation to dip his fingers in it and smear it across his wrists to keep smelling it and to store it away in his own pack. He allows himself a few sniffs of the calming smell before setting it beside the rest of the tins. Legend pulls out a roll of bandages, a small bottle of golden liquid, and a clear bag that has some sort of squashed dessert.
Next, come the clothes. The demi-god must have lost their common sense because who in their right mind wears bright, eye-watering orange on an adventure? It’s just begging for a monster to come and attack them. Even worse, they own two of the same shirt in the gods awful color. He sets the folded shirts on top of blue pants and a pair of rolled-up socks. What he’s truly looking for is at the bottom of the bag.
Legend is no stranger to books. During the rare moment he has between adventures, he loves to sit and read. It’s one of the ways he’s picked up multiple languages, but no language like this. For the life of him, he can’t understand what the book is saying. He first thought it was a code, something the demi-god and the Shadow came up with, but it’s a bit excessive to have hundreds of pages of code. The multiple items shoved between the pages also make the code theory more and more implausible. No one would bother keeping seemingly sentimental momentos in between all that.
Of all the momentos, the one’s that intrigue him the most are the small paintings. They remind him a lot of Wild’s photos, just, actually on paper. The first one Legend pulls out is of a golden young man, golden hair, golden eyes, golden skin. He’s wearing a short-sleeved shirt and blue pants and leaning back against the railing of a bridge. The smile he gives is absolutely cocky, self-assured. One of his arms is wrapped around a woman who shares a startling resemblance to the demi-god. Their parents. The edges of the photo painting have gone soft with age, almost fraying in some parts. There’s small scripture on the back, in yet another foreign language, the lettering different than the book.
The second is of the demi-god and a boy. The demi-god is younger, perhaps twelve or thirteen. They’re smiling, bright and full of pure happiness as they wrap their arm around the waist of a boy. The boy’s grin is downright mischievous, as if he’s just stolen something right under your nose or set something on fire. Like the demi-god, he has short rounded ears, but the tip of them are pointed just the slightest. They’re wearing multi-color t-shirts like they dipped the shirts in multiple pots of dye, but they have the same symbols as the orange t-shirts, a silhouette of a winged horse.
The third photo has seven people in it. The demi-god is in the center of it, holding a horribly decorated cake. The frosting is a horrendous yellow with candles stuck randomly on the top. Little candies are scattered on top with no rhyme or reason. Many of the unknown kids are wearing colorful, pointed hats. It’s clear even though none of the people look similar, that they’re related. It’s in the way they smile, how bright their eyes are.
There’s more photo paintings, one of a scowling boy and one with eyes as clear as the sky, but he takes no interest in those. More things are shoved in between the pages. Scrap bits of paper with something written on them in that blasted, foreign language, little doodles, and even a feather, yet nothing that reveals anything of malicious intent. If anything, it reminds him of a journal he once kept. There isn’t anything that proves their new addition is working with the shadow. (But there isn’t anything that disproves it either).
Legend quietly admits defeat to himself. He packs the bag back to the way he found it. There’s other pockets on the bag, he knows that, but they don’t have anything of interest; a strange set of playing cards and a small bar of soap. As quietly as ever, he deposits the pack back over to the sleeping demi-god.
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this chapter sucks but thank you so much for reading!!💖💖
