Nico had asked her not to leave, begged her with tears in his eyes. Somehow he already could feel what would happen without actually knowing it, a grating sense of doom that lurked at his ankles. Even so, he knew something would happen, but a vague feeling wasn't enough to persuade her not to go. "This is important, Nics," she'd said, and ruffled his hair. "I'll bring you back something nice, kay?"
And then Bianca left, brand new silver jacket glinting in the sun.
He realised a few weeks after that she must have felt it too – they had the same powers after all – and yet she had left anyway, leaving him to worry. She left, and she didn't come back, and he was so angry for so long; at her, at the gods, at Percy, at everyone and everything that hadn't stopped her from dying.
Hadn't she cared? Surely she had noticed how scared he was (so, so scared, lying awake on the Hermes Cabin floor to go over everything that could go wrong while the moon cast shadows through barred windows). Surely she knew how much he needed her, the one stable foundation in a life spent on the move. But then, surely if she had been aware, she wouldn't have just brushed his concerns off like fallen leaves. He doesn't know what he hates more – Bianca the accepting martyr, making promises that broke the instant they fell from her lips, or Bianca trapped and desperate having dancing herself to death before she realised.
It was easier to be angry. It hurt less. But a year of wandering around the labyrinth in the dark, constantly asking himself why his sister abandoned him, took its toll. When he caught sight of his reflection at Geryon's ranch, Nico almost didn't recognise himself. His hair was lank and greasy, his skin was unhealthily pale, but it was more than that. There was a fire burning behind his eyes that scared him to look at, that he could feel burning away every positive thought he had. Bianca wouldn't want him to live like this. He didn't want to live like this.
It was easier said than done, but slowly, painfully slowly, Nico began to thread himself back together. He'd built himself so tightly around the person he had been, he'd neglected to save space for the person he would become.
Besides, there wasn't any point in being angry anymore. The closer he got to Bianca's age, the more he realised exactly how scared she'd been – not just in dying, but in living her whole life on the move, knowing there was something different about her (something wrong), never knowing what would happen next and feeling completely powerless, an acorn in the shadow of a forest of redwoods. And Bianca had been responsible for her baby brother the entire time, not just herself. Children should not be asked to do what adults cannot.
He gets older, moving past Bianca but never leaving her behind. He looks back and realises just how young she was (and it makes him want to cry, for himself and for her). By now, the frozen grief that filled him with so much rage in the past has melted. He's forgiven her, though he isn't certain that there's much to forgive, because in the end she was just a child that the world had asked to much of.
The gods, their father, the Hunters – even Nico had asked Bianca for things that she didn't know how to give. Nico had asked her not to go, not to put herself in danger this way. But she was already in danger from before he was even born. She just had the misfortune to see it coming.
A/N: Written for Caesar's Palace Monthly Oneshot Competition with the prompt fear/foreboding
