Chapter Text
Some things happened too fast for Nico to register. Bianca often talked faster than Nico could process the words, and he couldn’t play a lot of action-heavy video games because his character always died before Nico ever saw the attacks coming. Other times, time seemed to drag on around him, like he was the one moving at the speed of light, but the world wasn’t turning beneath his feet. He didn’t know which feeling he hated more.
It always felt so unnatural whenever he seemed to move out of sync with time itself. Like his mind was straining to either speed up or slow down, but it couldn’t figure out which was which. Eventually, when he finally figured out why he had felt this way, he couldn’t decide if things had really made more or less sense.
See, his father - a man Nico had only met once or twice that he could remember, but even that seemed to get foggier and foggier the more he tried to think about it - had decided to send Nico and Bianca on a little vacation. A week in some hotel a few blocks down from the hopping Vegas Strip, supervised but only the dead-eyed employees who wouldn’t let them so much as crack a window in their bedroom for fresh air.
When they finally left, it wasn’t their father that picked them up, but his lawyer - a grouchy woman with her hair pulled into a bun so tight that it lifted all of the wrinkles she should have had. She had ushered the children into a car without letting them enjoy the sun and the breeze for even a second, and refused to answer any question the two of them had (like: “How did they build so many new hotels so fast?” and “Why is everyone dressed funny?” and “Where are we going?” and “When can we see our mom again?”)
Even outside of that hotel, with wind blowing through his hair from the cracked-open car window, Nico felt like he was moving outside of time. Nothing looked familiar anymore, besides the green grass on the roadside and the blue sky above. The cars were smaller and shinier than anything Nico had ever seen, and every inch of roadside was covered in advertisements. Somehow, without him noticing the passage of time, they’d wound up in New York, speeding down country roads as the ground started to shake behind them.
Nico turned around in his seat and knelt on the cushions so that he could look through the back window. It was dark outside, and it had just started to rain, so he couldn’t make out any distinguishable figures - until lightning struck. The flash was so bright that, for just a second, Nico could a hulking shape a few hundred yards behind them - like a man who took bodybuilding too seriously, or a bull that learned how to run on its hind legs.
Nico grabbed his sister’s shoulder and began to shake it. “Bia, look! There’s something out there!”
Bianca glanced over her shoulder, but turned back around soon after. “You’re seeing things, Nico.”
“You didn’t even look!” Nico argued, tugging on her shirt sleeve. “It’s like a giant guy running after us! He was right there, I swear!” Lightning flashed once more, and Nico saw the figure again, closer, clearer, spotting two pointed horns on the top of its head. “There it is! It’s closer now!”
That made Bianca move. She turned around, mirroring her brother’s position, and stared out the window. “Nothing can run as fast as a car, Nico, you know that. And I don’t see anyth--” Another flash, and Bianca screamed. The creature was right there, almost close enough to touch, and it jumped. It tried to grab onto the back of the car, but the rain-slicked metal left nothing to hold onto, so the creature fell, but not before taking off the back bumper.
The car swerved for a moment, and the lawyer shouted, “Children, in your seats!” The car picked up speed, but it wasn’t much - that creature could easily catch up again.
Suddenly, the back window shattered, and the bumper was wedged in between Nico and Bianca as they screamed. The car swerved again, this time going off the road and colliding with a tree. Nico’s head hit the back of the seat in front of him, leaving him dazed, the ringing in his ears overpowering the shouting going on around him. Somebody grabbed his arm, and he was pulled underneath the bumper and out the opposite side of the car. He thought he heard the lawyer shout, “Up that hill! To Percy’s tree!” but he was starting to think this was all a dream.
His feet carried him close behind Bianca, but he couldn’t feel when they hit the ground beneath him - not until he slipped on the soaked grass and fell face-first into the mud. Bianca tugged him up again. They kept running. He glanced over his shoulder, watching as the bull-man figure approached the abandoned car, and the lawyer jumped out - except, no, he didn’t remember the lawyer having wings.
She scratched the creature with hands like talons, but before she could fly away, a big, meaty hand reached out and pulled her down by a leg. The lawyer was slammed against the round, and Nico watched her dissolve into a coppery powder.
He was dreaming. He had to be.
Bianca continued onward, up the hill toward a giant willow tree. If it hadn’t been for her vise grip on his hand, Nico never would have been able to catch up. He kept slipping and tripping, and his head was starting to pound. He flinched at every flash of lightning that seemed to burn his eyes.
Then that thing caught up.
It grabbed his leg and pulled him away from Bianca, raising him into the air. It took a moment to sniff him - gross - before Nico was dropped. He managed to catch himself on his hands before his head hit the ground, but something in his arm snapped with an audible crack!, so painful that Nico’s vision blacked out.
“--and I mean, Chiron said that the two of you are probably going to be really powerful, but I don’t think I was supposed to hear that. But, you know, maybe he shouldn’t talk to himself so much when just anybody could be waiting around the corner, right? But, like, I mean, your sister killed the Minotaur, with her bare hands! That must mean you two are powerful, but I just wish Chiron told me what was going on, you know?”
Nico didn’t know where he was, or who this blond boy was that kept rambling at him, but since Nico didn’t know what to say, he found himself, for the first time, speechless.
After probably five minutes of listening to this kid, the boy finally looked at Nico to see that his eyes had opened. “Oh! You’re awake! Let me get you some water!”
He jumped out of his seat and turned his back to Nico, filling up a glass of water from a pitcher that sat on the other side of the room. He helped Nico sit up before handing him the glass. “How are you feeling?” the boy asked as Nico drank. “You had a concussion, and I’ve never fixed one of those before, but I think I did okay, you know, since you woke up again. So? Does your head hurt?”
Nico shook his head. “Um. What happened?”
The boy frowned at him. “Do you have memory loss? Maybe that concussion was worse than I thought. What’s your name?”
“Nico.”
“Do you know where you are, Nico?”
He shook his head again.
“You’re in the infirmary at Camp Half-Blood. Do you know what year it is?”
Nico hesitated. “Um. 1939?”
The boy looked shocked for a second, then laughed. He had a nice laugh. “Okay, I get it, you’re messing with me. You and your sister were fighting the Minotaur last night, but you got knocked out. I treated you for your concussion, and now you’re caught up!”
“Treated me? But you’re just a kid.”
He grinned at Nico. “So are you.”
Nico frowned. “What about my arm? I thought I broke it.”
“Oh! You did! I fixed that, too.”
“In one night?”
“Yeah, I’m good like that,” the boy said, looking awfully proud of himself.
“What’s your name?” Nico asked.
He looked surprised at the question. “Me? I’m--”
“Hey, Will,” somebody else called out, stepping into the doorway - he looked like he could be the boy’s older brother, with the same freckles and blond hair. “Chiron said to tell him as soon as this kid wakes up. You promised me I could trust you on this one, right?”
“You can!” the boy - Will, Nico figured - exclaimed. “I was just making sure his concussion was healed! We’re going right now, I swear!” He jumped up and grabbed Nico’s hand, tugging him out of bed. “C’mon, Nico!”
They brushed past Will’s brother and out of the building until they were on a large, white porch that seemed to wrap around the side of a house. Will pulled Nico around the bend and up to a card table, at which three of the four seats were filled - one by Bianca, the other two by a couple of grown adult men.
One of them, a man with a friendly smile and a brown beard, says, “Ah, Nico! You’re finally awake. Please, take a seat. We need a fourth for Pinochle.”
Nico hesitated, then let go of Will’s hand and sat down in the open chair, next to the other man who was covered in leopard print from head to toe.
“Will,” the first man said, “please go to Cabin 11 and make sure Luke has prepared enough space for Bianca and Nico.”
“Yes, sir!” Will said, and turned on his heel to leave.
The bearded man folded his hands on the table and turned his attention to Nico and Bianca. “Now, I’m sure the two of you have plenty of questions. Where would you like to start?”
Nico couldn’t wrap his head around any of it. He was supposed to believe that he was the child of a god? He was going to have crazy powers and learn how to fight with a sword? Don’t get him wrong, it was the coolest thing he’d ever heard, but how could it be real?
Bianca had gone off to make friends as soon as Chiron had finished explaining things to them, but Nico couldn’t make himself leave the Big House. If he stepped out into that world, then everything would become real. So instead, he sat on the porch steps, arms wrapped around his knees, and watched the campers around him.
After a short while, someone came to sit next to him. It was Will, who immediately started picking at a bandaid on his scraped knee. “It’s crazy, right?”
“Huh?” Nico was pretty sure he wasn’t talking about a little bit of peeled skin.
“The whole gods thing. You understand what’s going on, right?”
Nico huffed. “I get it. I don’t think I like it.”
“Yeah, it’s a lot to take it. I hear it gets easier once you’re claimed.”
“Claimed?” Nico repeated. “What’s that mean?”
“It’s like… So, I know who my mom is, because she raised me, but I don’t know who my dad is, because he’s a god. But I don’t know which god. So claiming is, like, when my dad finally tells me who he is. Once you get claimed, you get to move into the cabin where all of your siblings are, and you get to do your activities with them, and you get to learn how to use your powers - if you have any.”
“Like you have. You healed me.” Nico said. “So you have healing powers, right? Who’s your dad?”
Will blushed and looked away. “Okay, so, I might have...lied to you about that. See, I really, really want my dad to be Apollo, because then I’ll get to hang out in the infirmary all the time and learn how to heal people, but… Lee actually healed you, not me. All I can do is give people ambrosia, and even then I have to have Lee portion it out for me.”
Nico frowned. “But… You and that other guy, you look so much alike. I thought you were brothers.”
That seemed to perk Will up again. “You think so?” Nico nodded, and Will’s smile brightened. “Okay, who do you think your parent is?”
Nico shrugged. “I don’t know.”
“I can help you narrow it down! Is it your mom or your dad?”
He tried to think, but it was like something was blocking his memories. He couldn’t remember who had raised him. He tried to remember his mother, but the only face he saw was Bianca’s. Did he even have a mother?
“I...don’t know.”
“Oh. I mean, that’s okay! Let’s go through your options.” Will reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a small deck of cards. “Have you ever played Mythomagic?”
Nico shook his head.
“It’s this game where you can fight using the gods as your weapons. Kinda like Pokemon, you know?”
Nico didn’t. He nodded anyway.
Will started laying out cards between them, naming gods and explaining their basic roles in the universe. Nico noticed that Will had called Zeus and Poseidon Big Three gods, but after he’d laid out the twelve cards for the twelve cabins at camp, Nico never heard the third name.
“Who’s the third Big Three god?” Nico asked, frowning down at the cards between them.
Will started searching through the remaining cards in his hands. “Oh. I mean, there’s like, zero chance that you’re the child of a Big Three god, because they made this pact that they would never have children again. Because those kids are way too powerful, you know? And the last time the pact was broken by Poseidon, well…” Will’s eyes drifted toward the edge of camp, and Nico followed his gaze, but all he saw was a standalone willow tree at the top of a hill. “It didn’t go well.”
Will placed the thirteenth card on the step between them. “The last of the Big Three is Hades. He doesn’t have a cabin here because he doesn’t have a throne on Olympus. He’s kind of the black sheep of the family - the god of the dead and the Underworld. He hasn’t had kids since World War two, I think. So, it’s more than likely not him. Besides, you kinda look more like an Ares kid to me, you know?”