It started with the soldiers. Oh, how he yearned to be like them with boyish adulation as he watched them walk down the streets in their crisp uniforms. Their hair was cropped and their eyes were bright.
There were so many posters, so many calls to arms. Uncle Sam pointed at them from a burst of proud red, white and blue.
"I want you."
And he wished he was old enough to fight. The boys in his neighbourhood played games with him, war games. There would be the Nazis on one side and they would always lose. They were too young to understand the complexity behind war. Their understanding was limited to cardboard shields and guns made out of fists.
"Pound them Germans, yah! Take that ol' Hitler, yah!"
There was champagne on the streets and pride in the eyes of strangers. There were songs and anthems and the indefinite hope of victory. It was a time of glory, a time of pain. For a young boy, it was heaven.
my name is nico i am boy and today I went wit my friends to collect scraps for war effort. I am proud to serve my country I love my mother my sister I love them very much they take care of me I am gratful and happy to th em.
Hope America will win the war because hitler is bad man and he deserves to lose
My speling not very good, teacher I am sorry.
He wished he was old enough to fight, to do his part in this great upheaval. At the same time, when the family down the street put up the neighbourhood's first Gold Star in their window, he felt grateful that he was Nico, and he was just a boy.
Their son had been just a boy too. Now in death, he was a man.
The prospect of death, even then, hadn't been as frightening to him as it was to most. He understood that its skeletal grip would bear him away one day but it was just that, wasn't it? Just a little separation, almost like a best friend moving to another neighbourhood. Just.
Then the next thing he knew, his mother was dead.
His mother was red roses and red lips and heavy lidded eyes and sweet dreams on dusty midnights.
It was more than a best friend moving, that was for sure.
-v-
He wasn't sure how long he spent in that wonderful hotel where there was no bedtime. There was no getting up for school or homework. There were snacks for meals and an eternal flow of sweets and it was just… dizzying.
Bianca seemed to be happy, too. And for a while, it was paradise. Pained paradise because he missed his mother so much, but somehow that place made him feel surreal. He was Nico and he was a boy and he was spinning in an endless waltz.
-v-
When he came out, the war was over. His heroes were no longer smart young men in crisp uniforms and brass willing to die for their country.
Now there was Percy Jackson, who almost defeated that monster! Everyone in camp looked up to him, the son of Poseidon. He was going to save that blond curly haired girl who had sacrificed herself (and believe me, you knew a lot about sacrifice when you were born in his era) and he was going to make sure his sister was safe too.
It was sad that Bianca had left him, and he couldn't say he was too pleased.
But he just wanted his sister to be safe.
Maybe one day, he thought, she would come back.
-v-
She didn't.
-v-
Nico di Angelo was just a boy.
He changed, that day; he turned from a boy with eyes of sewn-together stars and crystal dreams to one of shadowed circles and so much pain and darkness inside of him.
He thought, for a fleeting moment, that he was the devil.
Son of Hades, lord of the dead.
His brother had been Hitler.
He had wanted Hitler dead.
Hitler was a monster.
How could this be his father?
-v-
He missed Bianca. She was olive skin and straight black hair and she had been his sister, his mother, his guardian.
Now he had no mother.
No sister.
He had himself.
He was just a boy.
-v-
And then there was another war and for the first time, his father was his father. He felt proud; he did, when he commanded his army of the dead to rise, when he played one of the biggest parts in the battle of Manhattan.
For a moment, he was a little boy in the dirty New York streets just before sneaking into a war reel.
He was a soldier in the German mountains, battling the Nazis.
Just for a moment.
There was a time like that once; when he had his mother, when he had Bianca.
-v-
But people forget, sometimes. He was a soldier, yes, but he had never actually come of age.
People forget.
He was Nico, he was Boy.