"What did you do?!" 

Nathan faces away from me as he turns off the mixing tap above the sink. Small strings of steam rise up from the warm water. The pile of dirty dishes stays untouched on its place as Nathan drapes the tea towel over his shoulder in silence. 

"Nathan, what did you do?!" 

I frantically grab him by his shoulders and turn him around. With wide eyes I look at him, wait for him to assure me with soothing words that none of it is true. But he stays quiet. 

"Nathan..." I shake my head. I can feel the boiling tears well up from behind my eyes as my fingers grip tighter in his shoulders, "what on earth did you do?!" 

The late evening sun falls in through the glass windows. His eyes shimmer a thousand shades in its fading light and the swinging branches of trees make shadows dance over his face. He swallows while looking at me. My heart throbs in my chest.

"He lied, right?" I try to keep breathing. Wait for him to say yes, to nod, to spin his way out of that accusation, "September the ninth, he lied didn't he?" 

My lip quivers as our noses are just a few inches away from touching. Too close to deny the way his eyes dim at the sight of me.

"Nathan?" a half-plead, half-sob. I'm shaking on my feet, "Nathan did he lie?!" 

I want to shake him until a yes rolls out, I want to burn out this feeling that swallows me whole, rip out that battered, ugly heart that crushes my chest.

"Did he lie?!" I scream as I slam him against the sink. I gasp for air, over and over but nothing enters my lungs. My veins are scorching with rage, I don't know whether to cry out or roll up into a ball on a floor and never speak again. 

It can't be true.

Cause if it's true then...

"You seem upset." His voice is a soft whisper, the look he gives me is earnest. His hand gently caresses the side of my cheek, "maybe you should take something to calm down your nerves a bit."

My fingers are shaking with the urge to wrap them around his neck and squeeze the lies out of him. The air. The light. 

In that moment where our gazes are linked in each other, I could have sworn I never hated any person more than Nathan with his eyes of meadow green. 

"I've got just the right thing in my drawer upstairs. Makes your head a bit fuzzy so you can sleep better. I'll go get it for you," he offers. 

"I don't want any medicine, I want the truth." I grit out as a tear slips past my chin. 

Nathan clicks his tongue in disapproval, "Octavian obviously wants to rile you up. He's bitter that the Half-Blood house is probably going to win the yearly subside again and not the Roman-Room. He wants to unhinge you so he still has a shot, that's all."

I keep looking at him.

"Don't lie."

He scoffs, "I'm not. How can you even be sure, that conversation actually happened? The way you've been downing mess from the streets... It wouldn't surprise me if you made all of that up."

My grip unconsciously loosens a bit. A hot feeling of shame crashes like a wave over me.

"I don't-" I start but don't find the breath in me to finish. 

"You mindlessly swallow all of that junk and then make a big fuss over one, tiny sleeping pill. Just take it and rest a bit. You'll feel better in no time and realize that all that crap you've been talking, is just junkie speech."

The tears roll hot over my cheeks.

"I'm not a junkie!" 

I'm not my sister. I'm not my sister. I'm not my sister.

Nath gives me a flat look. "Some people would disagree."

I let go of him. Eyes aimed at the floor, watching how the drops splash open on the tiles. 

"Octavian was crying," I say, "he never cries!"

Nathan shakes his head softly with a small smile, "All the more reason to know it wasn't real."

My hands clench into fists.

"I'll decide over that." 

"What?"

Nathan frowns. I take a daring step forwards, trying to ignore the height difference between us as I glare daggers into his soul.

"I'll decide from this point on what is real and what isn't, Nathan Miller." 

A dark shadow crosses his face. The lopsided smile he was carrying distorts into something obscure. I try not to flinch.

"I'll get you that pill." He answers simply. No longer an offer but now a command. He makes an attempt to move past me but I grip my claws into his lower arm. 

"You put a pill into my mouth and I'll put a bullet into your head."

The air grows with static. Both of us stay silent as we keep staring at each other.

He lowers his head. His lips ghosting against my ear.

"Try if you like Nico, have fun explaining to the chief officer how you killed his only son," his words tickle in my ear but make my insides freeze, "I don't even want to know how long that prison sentence will be. You'll rot away faster than your sister did in that ditch."

My breath hitches in my throat and with a content smile, Nathan walks past me up the stairs. My chest heaves up and down, faster and faster. Every inch of me is electrified with pure, unfiltered rage and it's just going to spew out and explode. I hear him rumbling in his drawer before walking back out of his room.

"What did you say about my sister?" I squeeze out the words. He gazes down at me from the top of the stairs, the blister pack in his right hand. 

I point one shaking finger at him. 

"You, say one more thing about my sister and I'll gladly take that sentence." I'm crying, shaking, burning up from the inside out. He watches me with an expression I've never seen on his face before. I take a few steps back until my back hits the sink behind me. 

"Putting her on a pedestal again?" He says, "have you forgotten the way she tumbled off of it the last time?"

He takes a step forwards and waves the blister pack in front of him, "Come on Nico if you truly want to live as your role model, there are a lot more pills you have to swallow," He mocks. His gaze is sharper than the blade of a knife. 

My hand slips upwards behind my back. I harshly breath in.

wrong fucking choice of words.

"Don't fall off the stairs Nathan," I whisper while my fingers reach for a plate behind me, "you might break your neck." 

Like a black discuss whizzing through the air, the plate whirls towards him in record speed. There's no time for him to scream, only the widening of his eyes before he ducks as if his life depended on it.

And oh, it depended on it.

Missing him with just the breadth of a hair. It crashes against the wall behind him and showers the floor with thousands of broken pieces. Even long after the sound of a shattering plate, it stays still in the house. Neither of us dare to breath in or out.

My heart stills at the sight of him slowly getting up again.

He pries his arms away from his face to look at me with frantic eyes. 

I missed.

Dear lord, I missed. 

He's silently gasping for air, brown locks falling messily into his bewildered face. The poisoned green in his eyes catches fire as they bore into mine.

"Do you ever," he closes his eyes and forces himself to breath in again, "stop making bad decisions?" 

The tears have dried on my cheeks. The enormous wave of rage has washed ashore as a paralyzing grip of fear. I feel my heart stutter in my throat.

Nathan combs his fingers through the mess of hair while looking at me. Everything immediately falls neatly back in place, as everything always does for him. 

"I understand that Will doesn't want you anymore. Look at you, playing the victim when you are the one who can't control his tantrums." 

The tone in his voice has changed. He looks at me like a hyena who sees a little bunny hop over the field.

I glance at the door on my left.

He takes another step down. My breaths are getting squeaky in my throat.

"Nath I-" I take another quick look at the wooden door and as if reading my thoughts, Nathan sprints down the stairs. 

I try to bolt for the opening but his arms are already clasped around my middle. He hoists me from the floor and drags me towards the sink. I kick in every direction, trying to wring myself out of his grip, knocking glasses and bottles from the table. Between the clattering of books on the floor and the bumping of my knees against the kitchen table, Nath takes one pill out of the blister pack. He crushes me against his chest as he reaches for a water bottle. 

"I know what you're trying to do!" I grunt between kicks, "you're trying to haze me so I'll forget what Octavian has told me, but listen up you dickhead, I won't take your God damn pill!"

Nath tosses me into the kitchen table. Cutlery clatters onto the floor as I cry out in pain. I try to scramble up again but he pushes me down with an iron grip around my throat. The lights pierce into my eyes. I squint up at the ceiling with heavy breaths as Nathan's fingers pry open my mouth. 

"N-no!"

I kick my legs at him but he just tightens the fingers around my windpipe. I try to push out the pill by spitting it over my lips but it's already half melted on my tongue.

"No!" I shout while wriggling fiercely. 

I can't forget.

I need to tell them.

September the ninth.

I need to tell them!

"Drink up love," Nathan says while looming over me. He unscrews the cap of the bottle with his thumb and pours the water into my mouth. I gurgle in between attempts to gasp for breath. I spit the water out but only more gushes in. I cough and cough while adverting my face from the stream.

"It'll calm you down, I promise." Nath's voice assures me as the bottle gets pushed between my teeth. A good gulp of liquid flows through my lips.

He yanks me up into a sitting position and squeezes my nose with one hand while clasping around my chin with the other. 

"Better swallow that." Nath's face is close to mine. His features get blurrier the longer I refuse to swallow the pill down. I slap around at him in an attempt to fend him off. My lungs get tighter with every passing second. 

Air.

My heartbeat thrums between my two ears. 

"Come on now," Nath ushers while tilting my head backwards. I feel the strength leaving my arms, the adrenaline coursing through my veins in painful spikes. 

"Come on!"

Survival instincts kick in and in the blink of an eye, I swallow the pill down and Nath's hands let go of me. I gasp heavily while nearly falling off the table. My face flat against the wooden surface. My chest goes up and down as I close my eyes for a few seconds.

"You'll feel better in no time, you'll see," Nathan says as he pulls me into a sitting position again. I shakily let myself slide off the table, my feet landing with a soft plop onto the ground. 

I pant and he turns towards me, "where's your phone?" 

He glances down at the pockets of my jeans. When spotting the thing, he yanks it out of its place. 

"It takes more or less an hour for that pill to work so why don't you go lay down and rest a bit?" He gestures at the leather two-seater in the living room. 

"Give me my phone back." My voice is raspy, nearly not there. But as the water slides down my neck and chest, the adrenaline is still pulsing it's last tingles through my body. 

Nath looks at me as if I had just hit him in the face. 

"This device only works you up more," he tries to look open, "no, I don't want you to get even more stressed out than you already are."

I lay my palm open and hold it up before me.

"Phone," I hiss while swallowing down my fear. 

Nath shakes his head and laughs "Nico I-"

Before he can spew out any more nonsense, I lunge at the device. In his surprise, Nathan topples over. I start pushing buttons like crazy as I crawl away from him on hands and knees. 

"Nico for the love of God-!"

He yanks at my ankle and I fall face first onto the carpet, the phone slipping out of my fingers.

"Nine one one what's your emergen-"

Before I get the chance to scream, Nathan has jumped up from where he sat and clambered over me. He snatches the phone away from my wriggling fingers and smashes it against the table corner. 

"No!"

A dead, white webbed screen falls before my nose before splintering every flicker of hope I might have had. 

"No..." I sob in anger. 

Nathan yanks me up by the collar of my shirt and bangs me against the sink.

"You lied, you lied about everything!" I struggle against his death-grip, "it was you, all that time, it was you!"

He holds me up just an inch from his own hateful face. "You make love impossible," he says with all the honesty in the world and I feel new tears stream out of my eyes. He pushes his lips onto mine. It only makes me cry harder.

"You bring out the worst in people, you bring out the worst in me."

His fingers dig into my black locks. With one brisk movement, he dunks my head into the water of the kitchen sink. My arms flail blindly around me. I try to push myself up again but his fingers are like lead on the back of my hand. I scream out but only bubbles float up to the surface. I kick my legs in every direction but it only makes me topple deeper into the water. My lungs are screaming, bursting with the need to expand. 

My hands claw at him, dig into the soft skin of his face. I bang my head against the side of the sink. My heart is a hammering time-bomb in my chest, with every passing second closer to exploding. 

I want to scream out the last inch of air into my lungs. Watch as it floats like a bubble up to the surface. blood rises to my head and clouds any last thought I might have had. My arms start shaking harder and harder. Adrenaline throbs painfully in my head. My lungs are shredding apart as the blur of light flickering on the bottom of the metal sinks becomes hazier with every passing second. With every ounce of power I can summon in my body, I kick my leg as hard as I can upwards. 

Nathan's hand shoots away from me as I hit him right in the groin. I fall backwards with no sense of direction while wheezing in deep gulps of air. My back hits the carpet. For a moment I just lay there while breathing in raspy breaths through my butchered throat. 

A pained moan makes me turn my head to the left to see Nath slumped against the corner with both his hands wrapped around his groan. His face screwed up in an expression of agony. I stumble to my feet and sloppily grab the pile of dirty plates, before dropping it with the little force I have left onto his head. His eyes goggle before rolling back into his head. 

"Say hi to Bianca for me," I rasp out. 

His chest keeps rising and falling as if he just fell asleep on a very inconvenient place. I stumble towards the cracked phone and pick it with trembling fingers off of the ground. I try to activate the call button but no sign of life is given. 

The hotness swells up behind my eyes. I'm sobbing before I even have a choice in it. I keep wiping at the tears that roll without stopping, the useless phone glides out of my hand. Through the blur of my tears, I glance up at the kitchen clock above the table. 

Fifty minutes and all memories of the past few hours will be more or less gone. 

"I-I need to go to the Half-Blood house I- I need ...I need to...I need to tell them," I announce to the emptiness of the house.

It hurts my head to form a coherent thought.

With one last look at my knocked-out boyfriend, I guide myself through the front door. My hair falls wetly against my face and drops slide down my chest. I breath in deeply before walking into the freezing air. A throbbing pain pulses through my ears and my eyes sting with the sharpness of the cold. 

When Nath wakes up, I'm a goner.

-------------------------

WPOV

"And then I was like, no Stella is the best fairy of Winx and Baby hit me in the face!" Piper exclaims while finishing her story.

Brendon shakes his head in between sips of lemonade, "Bullshit, it's obviously Flora."

From my side, Blair pipes in "Excuse me, don't disrespect Bloom like that." 

"Tecna you uncultured fuckers!" Leo yells from the other side of the Half-Blood House yard. The kids chuckle and Piper and I share a look. Brendon and Blair have been circling around the House for two months now, both of them getting more stable in the school system and less dependable on their bad drug habits. They always like hanging out in the sun-loungers and although it's windy, some sunlight still filters through the clouds so Piper and I decided to join them. 

"So how did that English test go Blair? Did you feel confident in it?" Piper asks with a smile.

Blair nods her head eagerly. Her cheeks are still a bit hollowed out but her arms are filling in nicely with the new diet I had put her on. 

"Yes! Annabeth is a great tutor, I think I knew all the answers." 

Piper nods in approval and raises her glass of orange juice. "Awesome! I'll drink on that."

Blair's smile is blinding as she clashes her glass a tad too enthusiastic against Piper's. They both laugh as some drops spill onto the tiled terrace. 

"How about you Brendon?" I asks the boy. His face half shielded away in that black hoodie he always insists on wearing. His blond head doesn't turn from the horizon, "Brendon?"

"Is that Nico?" He asks.

All three of us turn towards the spot he's peering at. The undeniable figure of Nico potters in a painstakingly slow rate over the tiles next to the pool. I want to turn my head away from it but somehow my body won't let me.

"I think, he's walking this way," Blair states the obvious. 

"Something's wrong." Piper mutters, already on the edge of her seat.

"Yeah," Brendon snorts, "instead of checking in on the kids every five minutes perhaps you should check in on your staff because that's not the way a sober person walks, you know." 

Blair flicks him against his forehead and he yelps. "That, was rude," she warns him with dark eyes.

He rubs the skin that is already colouring in a red blotch. "The fact that it's rude doesn't make it any less true though. Aw-!"

Now he's massaging his forehead with two hands. 

Could it be?

I try to contain the gnawing feeling of worry. Nathan did say he would do anything to keep people's attention. Would he really go that far?

Piper shoots me another concerned look before turning herself towards the approaching figure. I squint my eyes to take in his disheveled appearance. His hair is wet and tousled into every direction, the upper buttons of his shirt are yanked open and his face is just contorted into every expression of panic. 

"Nico?" Piper calls out but he doesn't glance up. She waves at him but he doesn't seem to notice. His pace slows down. His feet start dragging over the asphalt and in one exhale of breath, he slams face first against the edge of the pool before toppling into the water. 

Piper cries out in shock. Brendon has his hands clamped over his mouth and Blair just watches with wide eyes. My chair screeches backwards at the same time the one of Piper does. All four of us race towards the pool. Piper already wrestles herself out of her sweater mid-run to jump into the water, but I beat her to it. 

"Stay out of my life!"

His voice bounces through my head as the coldness of the water robs my lungs from their breath. 

-----------------------

Leave a vote, leave a comment, leave some serotine for your loyal author to collect :)

Some absolutely stunning fan art from @karla_Di_Angelo inspired on last chapter. This did mean a lot to me because it showed me that although most of the times I feel that not a lot of people are invested in this story, this is not the fact in reality. 

People like it, enjoy reading it. 

It's just that when readers don't vote or comment, that enjoyment doesn't become visible to me. I don't know what faces you're making or what thoughts you're having when you read my work.

That's why I love comments so much. Because it shows me what parts or sentences are important to you, what you think is funny, or what you can relate to... It makes you visible and I like seeing you all :)

So thank you for anyone who takes the time to express themselves in this story and thank you to all who just simply enjoy reading it. 

love xx