i. half-life
His life revolves around death. It revolves endlessly around the end. He feels it when he's awake and dreams about it when he sleeps. It's been with him his entire life, this ability to feel things that aren't meant to be felt, to know things that shouldn't be known.
It comes in handy sometimes, yes- if by handy you mean absolute certainty that someone vaguely important to your life or the lives of those around you has come to the end of their own. Because he can feel it; he can always feel it. He can feel all of it:
Not always names, not always faces- their lives. He feels their lives come to an end. He feels their last words, their broken sentences, their last thoughts and sights and breaths, he feels the holes they leave behind, he feels their souls whisked out of their bodies and sometimes it's so sudden and so jarring he feels like his own is ripped out too. He feels their essences fade. And it happens all the time.
Do you know approximately how many people die within the span of a single day? A lot. Too many. There are too many and he can feel every single one of them. Not always immediately- sometimes only when he notices their absences, and suddenly he feels where they've gone, where they've ended up (everyone ends up there eventually- it's the final destination, the end of the end, so he doesn't know why it still affects him).
And that's the thing- it's always a feeling. Instead of seeing or hearing, it's feeling. It's feeling forced upon someone who isn't supposed to be able to feel, who is stone-cold and stone-hearted and soulless and utterly remorseless, right? Right? It's feeling of all things- death brings it to an end but it always leaves a bit of the person behind- and he finds it almost laughable that he is the one to feel it.
Every minute of every day there is a clock in the back of his mind. Every few minutes or seconds or however long in between ends, the tick-tocking is drowned out by the sound of feeling, the sound of death. He can tune it out at this point; it's become easier and easier to let it fade to a white noise in the back of his mind, easily ignored and easily disregarded. But every little while the white noise gets louder, the feelings start to become feelings that he can't keep down and there are lives that are not his own in his mind- too many at once sometimes- a war maybe, a mass murder, too many coincidental deaths at one time or someone dying with so much emotion that it can't be kept contained and those are the times he feels like he might explode, that he feels like he might disappear, that he wishes he didn't have to feel this.
And every little while it's someone important. A kid he's seen at camp once. A familiar face on the street. The life force of the most powerful demigod he knows flickering dangerously deep beneath the earth. Important. Important ones are the worst. And feeling his own life force flicker- it's not something he likes to experience.
-:-
ii. whisper
Breathe in; breathe out. In and out and in and out and over and over and over again.
Breathe in the salty ocean air; breathe out the sulfurous stale air.
She whispers it in the dark, in the small room in the small house- terror stifled by soft hands and soft smiles and soft words- "Breathe"- and she teaches him how to use his lungs again.
He whispers it to himself- sometimes he forgets how, forgets how to breathe and how to whisper when his throat dries up and his heart beats too fast and all he can do is focus on hers.
They whisper it to him in the dark beneath the earth; they whisper for him to stop.
Whispers.
In and out and in and out and in and out and in and out and in and…
Breathe.
-:-
iii. lost scene
He wonders what it is like to lose your identify- your memory, your life. He's seen it happen in natural and unnatural ways. He's seen two powerful people and one powerful titan and many powerful demigods go through the process.
Wiping your mind; bathing in the River Lethe.
He's done it. Not complete memory washing, but he's done it.
He wonders if it's peaceful, or if it's maddening. He supposes it would be both. A part of him wants to find out- but that would be cowardly. He is also too cowardly to go through with it though. Cowardly.
Loosing memory and loosing time and loosing precious scenes of your life, precious moments captured in your mind's eye. He wonders if the Gods ever want to forget. If he had lived for millennia, he might.
-:-
iv. locks
Nico di Angelo is locked in a jar. Trapped. Suffocating. Wasting away. All sorts of synonyms.
He is locked in a promise. "Lead them. We'll meet you there." It is a near impossible promise, but he won't break it- he has experienced first hand the aftermath of broken promises; he doesn't take them lightly.
He is trapped on an island. Love and hate and cruelty mix together in the form of Cupid. Cupid traps him, and also lets him free. But see, he wasn't ready to be free- it traps him again, in a dangerous game of trust with a demigod he barely knows.
He is locked in his heart. His heart is locked in a box. He is covered in layer upon layer of locks.
He is locked inside himself, and Jason is determined to pick those locks.
-:-
v. rise
The morning is an important time of day.
The sun rises and people rise and animals rise- the dead might rise if the son of Hades has something he needs to do with them.
Everything that rises eventually has to fall- gravity and stuff; the laws of physics. His hopes at camp, the hope in his feelings, the hope in raising his sister from the grave.
Rising and falling. It's life, right? Rising and falling. Nico thinks he probably does more falling than rising, though.
-:-
vi. linger
He sees her everywhere.
He feels her hands in his hair when he sits alone. He hears her laugh in a crowd on the street. He sees her eyes on the face of a child glancing at him from her place on a swing.
He runs his hands through his hair to brush hers away. He focuses on other laughs and other conversations to drown hers out. He looks away to keep his eyes off of hers.
But he also savors it. He hears her voice urging him on. Feels her smile when he falls asleep. Sees her shadow out of the corner of his eye.
Bianca is everywhere.
He doesn't know if he wants her to go away or wants to cling to her and beg her not to.
-:-
vii. incalculable
Light is the opposite of dark, yes? Air is the opposite of earth. Zeus is the opposite of Hades. Jason Grace is the opposite of Nico di Angelo.
Opposite- that is what they are. Jason is loved, likeable. Powerful in a way that shouldn't be allowed, really. He is a natural born leader. He is very bright- golden- like his hair and his lightening and everything else about him. Nico is not. He is dark- like his hair and his sword and his eyes and his shadows; like the underworld. Like his father. He is the opposite of golden.
And so Jason Grace should detest him, yes? Despise him. Alienate him, like everyone else does, because he belongs with everyone else.
And Nico should be able to detest him right back. But it's hard to detest someone you can't really hate- with eyes filled with concern and care and things so odd to Nico, things that are never for him. It's hard to hate someone that- for some bizarre reasoning- doesn't hate him.
Even after he's seen the parts of Nico that should disgust him, that should push him farther away. Jason wants to be his friend. The golden boy wants to befriend the son of Hades.
Nico doesn't understand. He wouldn't want to be friends with himself.
He doesn't understand Jason Grace.
He hates not understanding things.
-:-
viii. liar, liar
Annabeth is kind to him. Unfairly kind. He really wishes she wasn't.
He is by no means attracted to her- she's very pretty, yes, with stormy gray eyes that seem to pick away at his mind and blonde hair that falls into place easily- and he wonders if she knows that, somewhere deep down inside. He really hopes she doesn't.
He by no means hates her, either. He can't. She loves Percy; she gives him something to hold onto, to believe in. He can't take that away from her, and he can't take away her from him. He isn't that selfish.
And so every time he looks at her, he feels a horrible mixture of envy and shame. Envious of her. Ashamed of himself. He really wishes he didn't.
Every time he looks at her, he feels like a liar. He feels dirty. Every time she looks at him he feels like she's trying to dissect him, trying to pick him apart. He feels like a monster on display, like a science project she wants to figure out. He really hopes she won't.
He hopes she doesn't find out.
He thinks he's grown to be a pretty good liar.
-:-
ix. hunger
He's been hungry for so long that he's forgotten what it feels like.
He's been starved (of attention, of affection, of the slightest bit of understanding or company or love) for four long years; it's become a state of being.
And when the starving come across food, they can't have too much of it- they physically cannot stomach it.
When he comes across something like normalcy, something like what he's been looking for, he can't have too much of it. If he does, it might disappear. He might loose it again. He doesn't know what to do with it.
When he helps Hazel, with her smiles and feathery kisses on his cheeks and trust and care for him, he doesn't know what to do with her. When he stumbles across Jason Grace, with his sickening concern and sickening kindness, he doesn't know what to do with him. When he travels with Reyna, with her understanding and slow acceptance of him, with her respect and friendship, he doesn't know what to do with her.
He has been hungry-starving- for far too long. So it takes him far too long to be able to feast again.
-:-
x. the beginning is the end is the beginning
Westover Hall isn't the best of schools. It's rather strict, the uniforms aren't very form fitting, the classes are dull. But it isn't the worst of schools either. (Or so he thinks; he can't be sure- he doesn't know if he's ever gone to any other school).
The older kids tease him sometimes- one of them though, a boy a few years older than him with dark hair that sticks up like leaves from his head and a very freckled face, had given him a few pieces of candy he'd stolen from the teachers' lounge. The kids his age tend to stay away from him. The teachers don't seem to like him.
But he has Bianca.
She holds his hand in the principle's office. They're waiting for their tour of the school to begin, where they'll find out what classes they'll go to and what teachers they'll have, where they'll start a new adventure, with candy given in secret from dark haired boys and ill-fitting uniforms.
A chance to start over.
Bianca grins down at him, her floppy green hat securely on her head.
"We'll make this the best adventure yet," she says, eyes smiling, "Right?"
Her grin is contagious, and he'sexcited- the school is very different from the casino they'd just left.
A new adventure.
Nico smiles back.
"Right!"