Chapter Text
Percy
Nico di Angelo barreled in through the parlor door, and looked hastily around the room.
“Hey! Where’s… where’s Bianca? Where’s my sister?”
The room was silent. Percy glanced at Chiron, and realized… Nico didn’t know. No one had told him yet. Slowly, Percy rose from his chair,
“Hey Nico” he said. “Let’s take a walk, okay? We need to talk.”
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They walked slowly through the softly falling snow towards the dinning pavilion in silence, the place they had last spoken before the quest.
“Nico…” Percy started to say, the words catching in his throat. “Nico, I did something I shouldn’t have done. Before we left, I made you a promise. A promise I shouldn’t have.” He took a deep breath. This was not going to be easy. The look on Nico’s face told him he already knew what was coming. “It’s not easy being a demigod. It’s dangerous. Every year you come back to camp; you always find a few faces missing. A few kids who didn’t make it through the year. Sometimes their deaths are pointless. Bad luck, a monster when you don’t expect one. But with Bianca,” he faltered. “Bianca died saving us. Saving me and Thalia and Grover and Zoe. We couldn’t have gotten any further without her.”
Percy looked at Nico, at this small, skinny kid in front of him, and watched as the kid’s world fell apart with each additional word he spoke. Even as he explained how it happened and tried to describe it as a noble sacrifice, he knew he was only making things worse. The wind whipped around them bitterly, cutting straight through Percy’s coat. He took out the little golden figurine he had stored in his pocket, and held it out to Nico.
“Bianca wanted you to have this,” Percy said. Nico took the figurine Bianca had found in the junkyard and stared at it.
“You promised you would protect her,” Nico said bitterly. The words stabbed Percy like a knife.
“Nico, I – I’m sor-” but Nico continued.
“You Promised!” Nico glared at Percy, tears brimming at the corner of his eyes. “You promised and you lied to me! I shouldn’t have trusted you, my nightmares where right!”
“Wait, what nightmares?”
Nico flung the figurine to the marble floor. “I hate you!”
“She might still be alive,” Percy said desperately. “We don’t know for sure-”
“She’s dead.” He said, his small frame trembling with grief and rage. “She’s standing before the judges right now. I can feel it.”
Before Percy could fully comprehend that statement, he heard a hissing, clattering noise approaching from behind him. He turned, drawing Riptide as he did and found himself face to face with four skeleton warriors.
“Did you… you bring these things?” Nico screamed.
“They followed me Nico! Run, Nico! Go get help, they can’t be destroyed.” But Nico stayed, rooted in fear.
“I don’t trust you! You could be trying to kill me!”
Before Percy could respond to that last, in his opinion, idiotic statement, the first skeleton warrior attacked. Percy parried its blade to the side, then sliced it in half. It fell, but instantly started to reform. And then, the other three were upon him. He sliced and jabbed with Riptide, but even if they lost an arm, or even a skull, the undead warriors kept fighting. Percy knew it wouldn’t be long now until he was overwhelmed as they pressed him back.
“Run Nico! Get help!” Percy tried to doge the attack of one of the warriors, but he sidestepped too slowly. The skeleton’s blade cut through his jacket and across his left shoulder, leaving a deep, burning gash.
“No!” Nico screamed, covering his ears. “No! Go AWAY!”
And then the unthinkable happened. The ground rumbled beneath them. Percy and the skeletons froze. Percy stumbled back just in time as a twenty-foot crack opened at the feet of the four warriors. Flames erupted from the fissure, and the skeletons fell. Then, as suddenly as it had appeared, the cracked closed with a loud crunch and the skeleton’s disappeared within the earth.
Percy looked at Nico in awe. “How did you do that? That was -”
“Go away!” Nico shouted. “I hate you! I hate you! I wish you were dead!” but even as he said it, Percy saw the small boy’s eye’s flicker to the blood now dripping off his hand. But before Percy could respond, Nico turned and fled toward the woods. Percy started to follow, but slipped on the pavilion steps. He got up slowly, and picked up the small statue he had slipped on. With a sickening realization, Percy stared at the statue. In that moment, he stitched it all together, Bianca being able to destroy one of the skeleton warriors, Nico’s dreams, the giant crack that had just opened in the pavilion floor. This was a statue of Nico di Angelo’s father. This was a statue of Hades, Lord of the Dead.
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Percy searched the woods for about an hour before Annabeth and Grover found him, and joined in the search. They searched for several more hours, in the cold and dark. Percy was headed back towards camp, chilled and exhausted and ready to give up on finding Nico when he noticed a small figure huddled in the shadow of Zeus’s Fist. Percy was almost sure he had passed this way before and not noticed the boy, as he practically blended into the shadows. Slowly, he approached Nico.
“Hey Nico,” he said softly. Nico sniffled and turned his head away from Percy.
“I told you to go away, to leave me alone. I hate you.” Nico mumbled, but his voice was raw from crying and his words had lost conviction. Percy looked at the tear tracks that crossed Nico’s face and sat down next to the small boy, but not to close as to not frighten him off.
“I’m not going to try to kill you, you know,” Percy started, staring off into the trees. “But hey, come to think of it, someone did actually try to kill me not to far from here my first year at Camp.” Nico’s face looked stricken in the moonlight. Shit. Percy thought. Why would I start off with that? “But anyway” he said hastily, “I lived, and that guys not here anymore. Not that I killed him. No, he’s just not at camp anymore.” Percy realized he was rambling and decided to just shut up. They sat in silence for a few minutes before Percy tried to speak again.
“Nico, I’m sorry. I really am about everything that happened.” No response. “But we need to head back to camp. We’ll freeze to death out here if the monsters don’t come for us first.” Again, no response. Percy stood, wincing a little as he moved his left arm. He closed the small distance between Nico and himself, and knelt down in front of the small demigod, who was still curled into a ball. He reached out to touch Nico’s shoulder, but his hand was slapped away.
“No!” Nico yelled. “Go away!”
“Nico, I’m just trying to help!” anger began to burn in Percy’s chest. Unrighteous anger, he knew that, but still, why was Nico making it so difficult to help him?
“I don’t want your help! You’ve never helped me! You- You-”
Percy had had enough, he was cold, exhausted, and needed his wound tended to. He a good deal taller than Nico, and he figured even with his injured arm he could carry the kid out of the woods. So, he reached over to grab Nico by the shoulders and haul him out of there, fully prepared to fireman carry him if it came to that.
“No! No! Go away!” Nico cried, and lashed out at Percy, hitting him in the chest with his fists. He flailed aimlessly and beat against the larger boy’s chest as Percy tried to scoop him up. Percy had almost got a solid grip on him when one of Nico’s flailing arms hit him in the shoulder, right on top of the gash the skeleton warrior had given him. Percy winced in pain, and nearly dropped the small boy, catching him just before he hit the ground. Nico’s punches had grown weaker now, and Percy realized that he was sobbing uncontrollably. Gently, he let Nico down, where he fell to his knees.
“I – You – Away – Bianca,” Nico gasped out between sobs, tears rolling down his face. His fists clenched the front of Percy’s t-shirt, no longer swinging and punching. Bewildered, Percy awkwardly patted Nico on the back as he sobbed into his chest. The yelling and hitting he could deal with, but he was unsure of what to do with this raw, open grief. He supposed Nico’s reaction was what his would be if he ever really lost Annabeth or his mom, and they weren’t just taken by an agent of Kronos or Hades. Hades- that’s a problem they would have to deal with, but he wasn’t sure yet what to do… maybe Annabeth would have a plan. Who was he kidding, Annabeth would always have a plan. The two boys knelt tougher for what seemed like ages, until the sound of a cracking branch sent Percy to his feet, spinning to face the noise.
Annabeth and Grover approached them from among the trees.
“We heard, uh, yelling,” Annabeth said, her grey eyes quickly darting over to Nico who was still on the ground, taking in the scene. “We should get back, who knows what will come for us if we stay much longer.” Gently she walked over to Nico and helped him to his feet, half supporting him. “Let’s get someplace warm,” she said to the group and together they walked back to camp in silence.