Chapter Text
Name: Desdemona Azalea Sinclair
Nicknames: Des, Desa, Desy, Mona
Mother: Reta Marie Sinclair
Father: Hades (Hadden DiAngelo)
Date of Birth: 13, January
Age: 16
Siblings: Nico DiAngelo, Bianca DiAngelo (Deceased) Hazel Levesque
Cousins: Perseus Jackson, Thalia Grace, Jason Grace, Diana Prince
Aunts & Uncles: Sally Jackson-Blofis, Beryl Grace (Deceased), Hera Reina, Zane (Zeus) Reina, Don (Poseidon) Ocean
Hair Color: Black with a white streak
Eye Color: Dark Blue with silver flecks
Skin Tone: Lightly Tanned
Height: 5 foot 6 inches
Build: Thin, flexible, athletic, strong
Notable Features: Scar on her jaw and throat from a Hellhound attack, Scars from claw marks, Scars of various types everywhere, small rose shaped mark/tattoo on her right shoulder
Weapons: Sword made of all three godly metals (Celestial Bronze, Stygian Iron, Imperial Gold), Hunting Knife, Steel Dagger, Silver and Celestial Bronze Dagger
Residence: The Narrows: Gotham (Former), Hades Palace (Temporarily), Camp Half-Blood: Long Island
Powers from Hades: Shadow Travel, Shadow Manipulation, Raising the Dead, Summoning Spirits/Skeletons
Powers from Persephone: Make Plants Grown, Controlling Plants, Other Spring Related Things
Significant Other: None
Pets: Oleander (Domesticated Hell-hound, shared with Nico)
Friends: Annabeth Chase, Piper McClean, Leo Valdez, Calypso Fortier, Kayla Knowles, William Solace, Frank Zhang, Meg McCaffery, Juline & Theodore Dormer, Gleason Hedge, Reyna Ramírez-Arellano, Rachel Dare, Jason Todd-Wayne
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It was early February, almost seven months had passed since the end of the Second Giant War, Camp Half-Blood had been restored to its former glory, the biggest change was the once thought lost Athena Parthenos that now stood proudly in all its glory at the crest of Half-Blood Hill. The camp was practically completely deserted, at least compared to the summer months and previous winters, even the majority of the former year-rounders had gone home to their families, although the ones with the worst home lives remained at camp. Percy was back in Manhattan with Sally and Paul, Annabeth was living in the dorms at her high school, School of Design New York City, close enough to both Percy and Camp. After two wars in the span of a year and a half, most campers had decided that their mortal families were worth the risk of leaving the safety of camp for the school year, others who had reached eighteen or just wanted a normal life had transferred to Camp Jupiter for the off-season or had gone off to college.
There were, of course, some campers who either had bad home lives, were legally orphans, or simply did not want to return home for reasons of their own. Amongst the few campers who had opted to remain at Camp Half-Blood were the two oldest Apollo kids, William Solace and Kayla Knowles, Will was the Head Medic so it made sense for him to stay, Kayla just didn't want to go home, her mortal dad would be too busy training archers for high profile events anyways. Three of the Athena kids, Malcolm Pace, Annabeth's Co-Head Counselor and two others, both newer kids who'd arrived at camp over the summer and had been claimed after Athena's intense identity crisis had ended. Three kids from the Hermes Cabin, Connor Stoll, -thankfully for the sake of camp remaining intact until the summer- was sans his older brother and Co-Head Counselor Travis Stoll for once, was acting as counselor.
Four campers were staying in Hestia's cabin, giving the Goddess of the Hearth a cabin had been Annabeth and Thalia's idea, it would alleviate a large amount of the stress on the Hermes Counselors, and would prevent overcrowding in Cabin 11 to not have all the unclaimed kids living there, and maybe, if all went as they hoped, would prevent another demigod from being manipulated like Luke had been. Two Hephaestus kids had stuck around Nyssa Barrera, the Head Counselor after Leo had left with Calypso a few months prior to take her on a trip around the country, and one other, although for the time being, Leo and Calypso were back but were staying in Bunker Nine. A few of the Aphrodite kids were still around, Drew Tanaka unfortunately being one of them, Piper had handed off the position of Head Counselor to Lacy, who was doing a much better job of actually upholding the real ideals of the Aphrodite Cabin than Drew ever had.
Three of the Ares Cabin kids, Sherman Yang, the Head Counselor who had followed Clarisse, and two of his younger, and more recently claimed, siblings were staying at camp for the winter. Miranda Gardiner was the only Demeter Kid still around, although Meg McCaffery popped in once in a while for various reasons, sometimes just to annoy Chiron or sit on Clovis' chest until the teen boy woke up. Pollux and two of Mr. D's other kids were hanging around the camp for the winter. Blanche was the only Iris camper staying around, but only she hated her dad. Clovis and two of his younger siblings from the Hypnos cabin were still around, though only the younger two were frequently seen around camp, Clovis on the other hand, was rarely seen around camp outside of meals since he spent most of his time shut away in their cabin sleeping, the younger two Hypnos kids were twins, and their father had foolishly given them wings which they used to torment just about everyone in camp, the other campers, the Satyrs, the Dryads, Chiron, Mr. D and the pegasi.
None of the Nemesis kids had chosen to stick around, although there weren't many of them to begin with and all five of them were on the older side of the age range of the campers, late teens. Holly and Laurel Victor of the Nike Cabin were still around and constantly arguing. Paolo Montes was still staying in the Hebe Cabin, claiming that it was too hard to make the trip back to Brazil for the winter, or summer really. Only one of the seven Tyche kids had decided to stay at camp for the off-season, although she didn't have much of a choice since her father had passed away in some workplace accident a few years earlier. Only two girls, Lou Ellen Blackstone and one of her sisters were staying in the Hecate Cabin over the off-season.
The Artemis Cabin was empty, the Hunters were off somewhere in the forests of Canada tracking some pack of monsters. The Zeus Cabin was empty, Thalia stayed in the Artemis Cabin when she was around, and Jason was living out in California with the McCleans so that he'd be close to Camp Jupiter, where he and Piper were attending high school. The Hera Cabin was its usual sacred shrine-like temple of a space.
Both of the Hades campers were staying, Nico DiAngelo and his older half-sister, Desdemona Sinclair, although for Nico it was a matter of being a legal orphan and having no legal family members, aside from Desdemona, who was also legally speaking, an orphan. Desdemona had arrived at camp a little more than a year before the Battle of Manhattan. She had arrived at camp in mid June, about six months after her thirteenth birthday. Desdemona had trained extensively with the other campers for the year leading up to the battle, remaining unclaimed by Hades until the end of the battle itself. She and Nico had briefly met during his second stay at camp when he was eleven and they had become friends in that time, but after Nico left for the Underworld following the Battle of the Labyrinth, Desdemona had gone back to being a loner.
They'd doubled down on training even before she'd arrived at camp, or at least that's what she'd been told by some of the senior campers when she'd arrived. But Desdemona had been born and raised in Gotham City, the most crime ridden city in the country, which naturally meant that even before she arrived at camp she could hold off a man twice her size for long enough for backup to arrive, hand-to-hand combat, basic knife skills and slight-of-hand were a life-line for kids in Gotham, but even more so for a Crime Alley kid with a single, addict parent like Desdemona. Those skills had come in handy several times during her first year at camp, when she had no known powers and hadn't been claimed. Those skills had been especially useful during the Battle of the Labyrinth, she'd barely been at camp for two weeks at that point and hardly knew how to properly wield the sword that she'd been given, so naturally, she snagged a Celestial Bronze dagger that someone had left in the amphitheater and fought with that instead.
Since there were so many campers residing in the Hermes Cabin, the majority of the unclaimed campers were assigned to train with other cabins, usually the smaller ones, which meant that Des had been placed with Cabin 3, the Poseidon Cabin for training. Naturally, with Percy being who he was, he wasn't at camp all that much, he lived at home most of the year, and most of the summer he was doing whatever various things the gods had told him to do, it left Desdemona to train alone or find another cabin to train with. As a result of Percy's frequent absence from camp she spent most of her time in combat training with the Demeter Cabin, which had landed her in the favour of her step-mother, Persephone.
The favour of her step-mother had been exceedingly useful during the Second Giant War, as within days of Mount Olympus going into lockdown, Desdemona had been summoned to Hades Palace in the Underworld by Persephone. The Queen of the Underworld had insisted that the young Demigoddess would reside in the Palace of the Dead until the situation had blown over. Persephone had managed to convince Hades to have some of his skeletal guards, mainly the ones who either were deceased Demigods or were Greek or Roman soldiers during their lives to train Desdemona in sword fighting and other weaponry based skills.
Most afternoons in the autumn and winter, although it was hard to really tell the passage of time in the caverns of the underworld, after finishing with her training with the deceased, Desdemona would make her way to the Gardens of the Underworld, the place where her Step-Mother was most often found working on cultivating her flowers and vines. More often than not, Persephone would invite the young Demigoddess to join her with her hands in the dirt. Other days, Desdemona would be summoned by her father who would help her learn to use her powers, summoning the spirits of the dead, summoning a skeletal army, bending the shadows and darkness to her will.
When winter came to an end and Persephone had to return to the surface, Desdemona was a little bit sad to see her leave, but before the Goddess of Spring departed, she had declared Des as her champion. Being her champion didn't mean all that much, only that Persephone would look out for Des, and that Desdemona would gain a few powers related to Persephone's, mostly plant related powers.
Nico and Desdemona were sitting in the Hades Cabin, it was late in the day, almost 9:00pm, all of the remaining campers were in their cabins for the evening, seeing as it was past curfew, and most campers, aside from maybe Connor Stoll, wouldn't dare run the risk of being seen by the Harpies that patrolled the camp at night. Nico was sitting on a silver-black bean-bag chair near the fireplace, fiddling with his dull silver skull ring, quietly humming some old Italian lullaby. Desdemona was sitting across from her younger brother on the carpet, a large potted plant in front of her, the plant in question was a small Oleander bush, poisonous if ingested, she'd buried her fingers in the soil around the plant and was periodically humming bits of an Ancient Greek melody that was making the plant grow in small amounts.
"Something is bothering you." Nico said dully, glancing at Desdemona sharply.
"Mmh?" She hummed in reply, eyes still trained on the poisonous plant in front of her.
"What is it?" Nico asked, "I'm your brother, whether you like it or not, so you're going to tell me what is bothering you."
Desdemona sighed, "I don't really know, I'm just a little bored, I guess." Her younger half-brother stared at her like she'd grown a second head, although, knowing Demigod life, maybe she had.
"Don't look at me like that, Neeks, it's just been too quiet lately. Ever since I first found out that I was a demigod there's been some huge thing going on. Two weeks after I got to camp, when I could barely swing a sword properly, the Titan Army broke into camp through the Labyrinth entrance at Zeus's Fist and I had to fight with a dagger that I found in the amphitheater because I didn't know how to use a sword. After that there were so many scouting missions and constant training, then Percy and Beckendorf attacked the Titan Ship, and then the Battle of Manhattan started and everything went to Tar- sorry, Styx." She glanced quickly at her brother, hoping he wouldn't catch her slip up, ever since his time in Tartarus, she'd been careful not to use the name of the pit.
"Then Father claimed me and lifted the curse on the Oracle and then Rachel became the new Oracle and then she gave The Prophecy of Seven. Then when we got back to camp we had to oversee the funerals and the ceremonial burning of the shrouds for the fallen, and the cabin was being built, and then we had to completely remodel and redecorate the interior because whoever picked out the decor didn't ask us and went for the most gothic and vampiric decorations possible. Then you went and tried to find Bianca in the Underworld only to find Hazel instead, then Father made you Ambassador of Pluto and you stayed at Camp Jupiter for a while. Then Persephone summoned me into the Underworld in late October and I was there for months, training with Father's skeletons, and at the start of spring Persephone made me her champion." Desdemona sighed, removing her fingers from the soil of the pot and wiping the dirt off on the rug.
"Not long after I was summoned into the Underworld, Percy vanished and I was occasionally sent out on missions to try and track him down, and then Jason, Piper and Valdez showed up. Then you went into... into that place to try and reach the Doors of Death, then you got captured and held in that jar for a little while. Then Percy and Jason rescued you, then Percy and Annabeth fell into the Pit and you had to lead the others to Father's temple, and then you, Reyna and Coach Hedge brought the Athena Parthenos all the way from Greece. And in the middle of all that I was sent back to camp by Father to help prepare for the impending Roman attack. Then everything happened, Gaea rose and the Seven defeated the Giants with the help of the gods, the Romans attacked, you and the others showed up with the statue, Leo died, then came back with Calypso, we had to rebuild half of camp, and then practically everyone went home or someplace else once the summer ended...." Desdemona explained, staring down into her plant.
"And...? You aren't happy that we are finally at peace and there isn't some incredibly massive end-of-the-world type of event in the foreseeable future?" Nico replied, prompting his sister to sigh.
"Nico, you know that isn't what I mean. Of course I am glad that there isn't another war on the horizon." Now it was her turn to stare at him like he'd grown a second head.
"Its just, Neeks, I may be a Demigoddess, but before I was a Demigod, I was a Gothamite. I know you've never been to Gotham, but it isn't the greatest place, especially not where I grew up. And yes, I know that technically, I've been a Demigod since I was born." She let out a slightly frustrated sigh.
"Before I ran away I lived with my mother in one of the most crime riddled parts of the city, Crime Alley, that's what everyone in Gotham calls it. My mother could not care less about the fact that I was in constant danger living there, it was the only place in the city that she could afford anyhow, she worked for one of the villains in the city, Oswald Cobblepot aka Penguin, didn't pay much, I don't think, or- well, she was always either reeking of liquor or high on crack- I suppose she spent most of her pay on drugs and liquor." Desdemona looked like she wanted to summon her mother from the Underworld and strangle her.
"I remember sometimes going a day or two without a proper meal, some days I'd have a stale slice of bread for breakfast, nothing for lunch and I'd go around to the shops in the area begging for food for dinner." She put her hands out behind her, fingers splayed out, gripping the carpet lightly, and leaned back, resting most of her weight on her hands.
"Gotham is a dangerous place, it has enough problems on its own that Mr. D put a shield around the city that prevents monsters from entering it, unless they spawn inside of the city, satyrs generally avoid the city altogether, which is why I wasn't found until I ran away and left the city. I'm used to the crazy and chaotic, always something going on, ever since I was little, and now, there isn't anything and it feels wrong, bad almost." She explained to him, eyes begging her younger brother to understand what she was trying to say.
"You want to go back, don't you?" Nico questioned, staring at her expectantly.
"I guess I do but at the same time I don't." She sighed deeply. "Gotham is a bad place, dangerous, even without the usual crazy dangers of Demigod life. I guess what I'm trying to say is that I want to go back, but not just for myself, if I'm a Demigod from Gotham, I can't be the only one. I just know that there are more kids in Gotham who are Demigods and don't know it, and I'm afraid that if none of those Demigods find out about their heritage and they leave Gotham when they are adults, that they will be attacked by monsters and will be unable to properly defend themselves because they don't know what they are or they don't have the proper weapons."
"You should try talking to Chiron or Mr. D in the morning. I mean, I guess that I doubt Mr. D would care much at all, but Chiron might have an idea of how to deal with it, or he'd care at least a little bit about the well being of any unknown Demigods from Gotham." Nico told her plainly as he stood up and stretched before vanishing around the corner to his side of the cabin.
It was a few minutes before Desdemona stood up and walked to the side window on her side of the cabin and closed the curtains, and set her Oleander bush off to the side before making her way to her own side of the Hades Cabin.