Work Text:
Nico woke up like smoke – unmoored, drifting through the air. His chest was full of fire, blood, iron.
He took another breath and the pressure on his lungs lessened – the pain of knowledge and sacrifice leached away as his eyes blinked open. Strawberry fields and a pine tree faded into Venetian canals. The strained hum of a city on edge cut through the sounds of battle and death.
Nico was born in this city – now a foreign one. He took his first steps under the shadows cast by Gothic arches and had dozed in the shade of nettle trees. He knew the house rising slowly in his vision – his house, his and Bianca’s and his mother’s. The shroud of the Lethe burned away with every breath Nico took – he sat up.
“Fratellino,” Bianca said, despairingly, “you’ve gotten yourself all dirty again.” She brushed the mud off of Nico’s knees with a laugh. Nico lurched unsteadily, flopping onto the grass by her side.
Black wisps of smoke were trailing off his hands and feet.
“Bianca,” Nico asked, a child full of trust and love and bitterness and hate, “how do you know when it’s time to go?”
“Oh, Nico,” Bianca replied, chuckling as she playfully swiped at his nose, “no one ever truly knows when their time has come. Few of us even have the chance to decide for ourselves. Some things, however much we might pray and beg, cannot be prevented.”
Nico tried to snatch her floppy green hat from her head, but his fingers only passed through it.
“But you knew when to leave,” Nico said, shivering as his bomber jacket slipped off his shoulders. He breathed out black smoke, and blood dribbled from his shoulder onto the grass.
“Maybe it’s okay to still be a kid once in a while,” Percy said. He was swinging on a rocking chair outside the Triple G Ranch, a fragile body among white stone and big windows. The entrance to the Labyrinth loomed in the distance, dark and majestic.
“I haven’t been a child for eighty years,” Nico said, sitting down beside him. Mussolini’s Italy on the brink of war had been the grave of innocence. The Titan War had ripped to shreds whatever spark of childhood remained.
“The end of childhood doesn’t mean you need to go through everything yourself,” Percy replied evenly, kicking out his legs.
Nico glanced up at him and saw a veteran of only one war. His arms were pale and unblemished – unbranded.
Nico looked out to the fields of red cattle.
“We haven’t been here in years.” It wasn’t a question.
“No,” Percy agreed, “we left, and we’ve been fighting ever since. And you’re still fighting now, can’t you tell?”
Nico’s jacket fell away from his shoulders. He shivered and plumes of dark smoke rose above his head. Blood dripped from his shoulder onto the porch.
“Is it time to leave yet?” Nico asked, tugging at Bianca’s sleeve.
She glanced away from her game of Pac-Man, looking him up-and-down.
“Fratellino,” she said, smoothing down the curls of his dark hair, “that’s not my decision to make.”
People bustled around them, moving from game to game – the Casino was as busy as always. Care and love were carved into Bianca’s face as she gazed steadily at Nico.
He looked away.
“But I don’t know how to make it,” Nico said quietly. He felt small, evaporated. His hands were smoking.
“Oh, Nico,” Bianca said, takings his hands in hers, “In your heart, you do – in your heart, you’ve always known, you just need to listen.”
“Listen to what?” Nico asked plaintively. “I don’t understand!”
But Bianca had turned back to her game and people were shoving their way around Nico – through Nico. His jacket slipped off and black fumes clouded the edge of his vision.
“But, Nico, you do choose how to live your life,” Jason said, leaning against a broken column in Salona. He had an earnest look on his face.
And so you run away again. From your friend, from yourself.
Cupid’s voice echoed through the ruined palace. Nico’s teeth chattered, and his jacket felt loose. Jason was still leaning, gazing at Nico.
Nico swallowed dryly. “No, I’m done running.”
“Are you really?” Jason asked, running a hand through his golden hair. “You’ve run away from both camps. You’re so afraid you’ll get rejected that you won’t even try. Maybe it’s time you came out of the shadows.”
“I-I’m trying! I want to try,” Nico said, but Jason was advancing on him now, stalking forward like a predator.
“Ha,” Jason said harshly, “We all know that if there’s something that Nico di Angelo actually wants, he’ll find a way to get it. You don’t really want this – you don’t really want us.”
Nico shrank back, his bomber jacket fell to the floor.
“Well, maybe we don’t have any more time to wait,” Jason said, looming over him. “Maybe your time is finally up.”
Nico was shaking, dark fumes rising from his arms.
“No, it’s not up yet – it’s not,” he said to himself, eyes clenched closed. “Jason knows that, Jason wants me.”
Blood trickled down from his shoulder onto cold stone.
Nico opened his eyes to a Long Island sunset and the smell of pine.
“I had a present for you once,” Bianca said, eyes a million miles away. A faint silver glow traced its way around her body; there was a delicate silver bow hung over her shoulder. “You would’ve loved it – I know you would’ve.”
“Bianca, I’m scared.” Nico was so cold; his jacket lay at his feet.
“I dreamt of us together some day, you’d be all grown up and happy, and I’d be with you, free and young and bold.” Bianca closed her eyes. “Sometimes the price of freedom is too high to pay.”
“Bianca, I think I’m making the wrong choice – I don’t want to hurt anymore, why does everything hurt?”
Tears glistened on Bianca’s cheek, her head was tilted up to the sky. Constellations were beginning to sketch their way across a darkening sky.
“Holding grudges is our fatal flaw,” Bianca said. “But I don’t think I’ll ever forgive myself.”
Nico felt like his soul was dissolving.
“We had one home,” Reyna said. “Now we have two.”
“Home,” Nico said, every breath a battle as his lungs brimmed with thick, black smoke. “I think I have a home, waiting somewhere.”
Reyna met his gaze, sitting placidly in the shadow of the Athena Parthenos.
“You will always have a home with me, Nico, if you choose to accept it.” Her black eyes bored into his. “My strength is yours whenever you need it.”
His jacket fell to his feet, discarded. Reyna rose, taking her shimmering purple Praetor’s cloak into her hands.
“You are not alone, Nico,” she said, laying her cloak onto his shoulders. “You will never have to be alone again.”
Nico shuddered, hands spewing black fumes. The cloak began to slip.
“Oh, my son.”
Nico could barely raise his head. Maria di Angelo sat under the shade of a nettle tree, wearing Bianca’s smile and using Nico’s eyes.
“You’ve been so brave and so strong, tesoro mio,” she said, fastening the purple cloak around his neck. “Just be strong for a little longer.”
“It’s up to you, you know,” Hazel said, kindly. She was sitting cross-legged in the crow’s-nest of the Argo II. “It’s always been up to you.”
“I’m so cold,” Nico said, and the cloak was turning black as the dark smoke pillowing from Nico’s arms touched it.
Hazel’s spatha lay at her feet, and she was lifting his face gently, staring unblinking into his eyes.
“I love you,” she said, quietly, firmly, “and nothing, not even death could ever change that.”
Nico’s tongue was too heavy to move, he was choking on black smoke and fumes.
“You have a choice,” Hazel said suddenly. “It won’t be easy, but it could be worth it. Your home could be worth it.”
Nico was drowning in the cloak and dark smoke and her love. Blood dripped down his shoulder.
“So, where were you?” Will Solace demanded. He was wearing a green surgeon’s shirt with jeans and flip-flops, standing in the doorway to the infirmary. “You can’t help out a friend? Maybe cut bandages? Bring me a soda or a snack?”
His pale blue eyes were challenging, asking why didn’t you try?
Nico was sprawled out on the ground at his feet, tangled in cloak and the weight of a thousand different kinds of suffering. He wanted to get up, but he couldn’t – his legs were all smoke now.
“You have friends – or at least people who would like to be your friend,” Will said, reaching out his hand.
And Nico dreamed of home, an old house in a foreign city, a dark cabin on Long Island, a beautiful girl with gold eyes.
Nico lifted his hand to Will’s.