I wasn't planning on uploading this story so soon after the other one but for some reason I just got really excited when I saw that I got quite a few viewers, so I felt encouraged to put this one up. Next chapter coming soon, I'm almost done with it!
Disclaimer: I only own the plot (which has been used before), though the idea for Nico's twins was highly inspired by someone called Unadulterated on archiveofourown, the idea for Bianca's reincarnation and imaginary friends came from supergecko also from archiveofourown, sorry for stealing your ideas! All rights still go to Rick Riordan, I guess.
I'm not going to put the disclaimer on every page that would be boring.
Percy
It was definitely his apartment. And it was definitely time to finally meet up again.
Maybe it was the children with them. Natasha slouched against the wall, messing up her pretty golden ringlets and fluffy dress. Zoe tried to claw her way out from Jason's grip. Lily whined in Hazel's arms. Chloe seemed to be getting heavier in her sleep. Tamsin was drawing on her hand. Selena was doodling on her math book. All of them acting as immature as children could be. An eight year old, a two year old, a five year old, a three year old, a seven year old, a nine year old.
They didn't know whether Nico would be happy to see them. They had no idea what life was like for him now.
Percy gathered up his courage and rang the bell.
There was a clear 'ding-dong!' and a little voice said in a polite and formal tone "Who is it?"
Percy was surprised, and said, "Um, it's me, Percy. And friends."
"I know Percy, but mommy says it is dangerous to open the door to strangers."
Percy shot the others a look. Obviously Nico had a kid now.
"Yeah, but we're not strangers." said Frank. "You just said that you knew Percy."
"I know, but daddy says not to open the door to other people."
Then, "Jade, who is it?" that was his voice.
"Percy, daddy." replied the little voice. There was the sound of something crashing then a faint sound of someone cursing in some other language (hint: not in Greek, Ancient Greek, Old Latin Latin, Italian, or Spanish). Then the door opened and Nico stood at the door with a carefully controlled expression on his face.
"Percy! What are you doing here?" he asked, unfortunately lacking enthusiasm and visibly gritting his teeth. He looked a lot like when they had last seen him, only older. He was wearing a black long-sleeved shirt with his name engraved in silver at the end very sloppily. He also wore worn-out black jeans and no shoes. His hair was messy but looked recently combed and he had a few specks of food on his hands.
"Just come to visit, Nico. What, can't I drop by to see an old friend?" said Percy, hoping to get a positive answer out of him.
"Can we come in?" Hazel asked, very sweetly.
Nico was carefully standing in the doorway so that none of them could see anything but the ceiling, which was relatively clean compared to Piper and Jason's house where Zoe loved to fly everywhere and use the ceiling as a runway or Percy and Annabeth's house where Tamsin drew on anything she could find or Hazel and Frank's house where Lily splashed her baby food all the way up to the ceiling.
"If you remembered what day this was," he said, apparently choosing his words very carefully, "you would realize why it is important for me to finish up here. We did tell you about today. Since you have children you probably know how hard it is to maintain a home so if you would please just-"
"Excuse me?" Percy blinked and looked down to see a little girl who was only six or seven and looked remarkably like Nico di Angelo, with waist-long black hair and wild eyes and pale skin, speaking with the same voice from behind the door. "Sorry daddy, but Aden needs help with his homework. He burned his pencil."
Percy exchanged incredulous looks with the others.
"We could help." offered Annabeth. "With the mess, I mean. We know this stuff."
Everyone agreed. They had come for a reason.
Nico swore under his breath in that different language then said, "Fine. Take off your shoes, don't touch anything, don't disturb the cooking and don't kill yourself. Just go sit on the couch or something. I need one minute."
He closed the door to leave an inch then hollered, "Okay kids, we've got company! You've got one minute to pick up your stuff before the other children trash it! Countdown fifty-nine...!"
The little girl visibly turned and ran back in. Suddenly, the ground trembled slightly and there was a flurry of movement on the other side before Nico got to one everything went silent.
Then a door slammed somewhere inside and Nico opened the door. "Welcome to the war zone."
There were several toy plastic swords and shields and guns around the room. Besides that, there weren't many toys on the ground, but there were fruit wrappers and pizza boxes and tons of other junk all over the place. There was something cooking on the stove too. Next to that there were two glass sliding doors leading out to a balcony and beside that there was a small hall with doors lining either side.
Besides the kitchen, a picnic blanket dominated the room surrounded by three black sofas. Everyone immediately sat down. They were amazed at the fact that their own children also sat down, quite obediently and without instruction.
The was a bang from one of the rooms in down the small hall and Nico cursed again before running over and throwing a door open to a cloud of gray smoke.
Percy and the others quickly scrambled to cover their kids mouths and noses so none would have a coughing fit but some machine somewhere quickly sucked up the smoke.
Nico stood facing whoever was inside the room and said, oddly calmly "What did I tell you about playing with dynamite?"
A voice similar to the previous little girl's said, "I was bored!"
"We have guests, remember? Come say hello."
Nico walked back over followed by the little girl and someone else who looked like a short-haired duplicate of her, probably a boy twin.
Tamsin, always more adventurous, cocked her head and said to the girl, "Who are you?"
"Jade Elizabeth Sadie di Angelo. Nice to meet you too." she said with a slight hint of sarcasm.
The others were a bit taken aback at this, considering the twins were probably no more than six years old.
The boy had no smile either and said, "My name's Aden Zachariah Carter di Angelo. Thanks for asking." in the exact same tone.
They both crossed their arms simultaneously.
Immediately, Percy could pick up on a million things that they mirrored Nico d Angelo in. Their sarcasm. Their genius tone. Their pale skin, slightly messy black hair, black clothes, their wild black eyes. Their close sibling-hood.
Oh gods. Sibling-hood. Bianca's birthday. Today.
"Oh." he said, breaking their brief silence. "Bianca's birthday..."
Shock rolled over Jason, Hazel, Piper and Frank. Grief flooded his and Annabeth's emotions. He snuck a look at Nico and was mildly surprised to find him trying to keep his slight temper down instead of kneeling on the verge of tears. That was his usual reaction to anything related to Bianca, especially her death.
Yet he didn't say anything. All he did was send Aden back to clean his room and Jade to help him clean the sitting room.
Nico kept looking back over to them and he would also check whatever was cooking once in a while too. At one point, when everyone was beginning to close their eyes, there was that tremor again and people's eyes snapped open.
Nico lunged across the room and pinned Jade down. The tremor stopped.
He whispered something in her ear and she nodded slowly before they both went back to cleaning up like nothing had happened.
It was also at this point, Percy couldn't stand the silence anymore and said, "So... Nico... You're a dad now! You've got twins!"
The can he had been holding crumpled into a ball of metal. "Yeah."
"Um, how old? Eight? Nine?" Maybe they were just short for their age.
Nico snorted. "Six. Obviously."
"Six?" Annabeth cut in. "But they're so smart!"
Percy had a feeling she was just a bit jealous that none of their kids were particularly brilliant yet. Sure, Chloe was only three so it could take a little longer for any Athena genes to kick in, and Tamsin had brilliant creativity while Selena was actually pretty smart, only that the older girl didn't particularly care. But they were grandchildren of Athena and seemed less capable than the Hades twins.
Nico glared in her direction. "Just because you're a daughter of Athena, doesn't mean you're the smartest person in the world."
"Yeah. I bet you're still afraid of spiders too. That's not smart." said Jade with a smirk.
Annabeth went red. "Of course not!"
"There's one on your head."
Annabeth went hysterical. "Aaaaaah! Get it off! Get it off! Aaaaaah!" she jumped off the couch and ran around pulling at her hair.
Jade laughed and Nico said, "Annabeth, careful!"
She tripped over something invisible and wound up in a net suspended in the air.
Nico breathed out a sigh of relief. "At least that wasn't the black-fire one." He whipped out a penknife and cut the ropes.
Nico pulled a tray of moon-shaped cookies from the oven as Jade stuffed some wrappers under the couch and said, "Done!"
Nico patted her on the head and set the plate down on the picnic blanket when the doorbell rang. His eyes widened and Jade squealed and ran for her room. Nico wrung his hands as if not sure what to do with them and paused and hesitated at the door before opening it.
"Bianca!" he said brightly.
Everyone suddenly craned their necks to see as Nico led in a young grinning seven-year-old girl with long silky black hair and a green cap falling over her face. Her ears were slightly pointed and her skin had a Mexican tinge and she looked so familiar.
"Daddy!" she said happily. He bent down to give her a hug before he scooped a pack of cards away from her.
"What's this?" he said teasingly. "Another deck for Nicholas? Don't tell me you spent your birthday money on your invisible friend!"
"But he loves them, daddy!" she said, giving a signature di Angelo big-round-puppy-dog-eyes look and he stared back down adoringly. Then she noticed the others and said in a much smaller voice, "Who are they?"
Nico gave her a sympathetic look. "My friends. You don't mind, I need to talk to them first."
She shook her head obediently. "Of course not, daddy." She grinned. "They look just like Peter and Annabelle."
They stared at her, still unable to comprehend what was happening.
Nico gave her back the deck. "Why don't you go upstairs and ask Natalia and Nicholas to help you pick a dress to put on, okay? You can have your lunch afterwards."
"Okay. But you now Nicholas and Natalia always pick black." then she ran down the hall and into a room.
Nico held the bridge of his nose then turned and said, "Nothing personal. It'll be nice if you could leave. Preferably take Jaden out with you. Bianca isn't really comfortable around strangers."
Hazel blinked. "You mean that was actually Bianca?"
Nico scowled. "That, was Bianca Valdaz. Bianca di Angelo's reincarnation."
Everyone stared. "Reincarnation." Jason repeated.
"Hey there, remember us?" everyone turned to see Leo Valdaz standing in a blue shirt and jeans and waving a hand mockingly. Next to him was a young woman in silver with a long black braid down her black with a gold ring at the end.
Nico brightened up. "Leo! Reyna!"
Leo gave him a hug then Reyna cupped his cheeks in her hands and gave him a kiss.
"The room looks great!" said Reyna as they broke apart.
"You did tell me to clean it." he said, raising his eyebrows.
"I tell you that everyday." she said.
Nico turned back to the visitors. "Are you going?" he asked as the twins walked out and began putting their shoes on at the door.
Relunctantly, also as if pulled by invisible force, they got up and walked over to the door.
"Coming Leo?" called Piper.
"What? You don't want to pull me out of my own daughter's birthday party, do you?" he said with a teasing —gloating!— smirk.
They would have said more but Reyna stepped back which slammed the door shut in their faces.