Disclaimer: Percy Jackson and the Olympians is the sole property of Rick Riordan and blah, blah blah—you get the picture.

A/N: I'm not entirely sure where the idea for this fic came from, but I suppose simply hearing the phrase 'plutonian' automatically made me think Hades, which in turn made me think Nico, so...well, you get this. Surprisingly, the quote fits the text pretty well. Read and enjoy, and don't forget to review at the end; constructive criticism is always appreciated.

"Be that word our sign of parting, bird or fiend!" I shrieked upstarting -
"Get thee back into the tempest and the Night's Plutonian shore!
Leave no black plume as a token of that lie thy soul hath spoken!
Leave my loneliness unbroken! - quit the bust above my door!
Take thy beak from out my heart, and take thy form from off my door!"
Quoth the raven, "Nevermore."
—E.A. Poe, The Raven

The Plutonian Shore

The sound of churning, dark, oily waters filled the cavern, echoing and rebounding off the harsh, black, craggy rock. It was cold there, on that barren shore—empty, dead. There was no life, no hope, no dreams or love; darkness there, and nothing more. Only–

"Will you shut up?"

The words were a harsh snarl. They were met with a low, feminine chuckle, muffled by the sound of a hand pressed to tight lips.

"Sorry, master. I just couldn't help but point out the irony."

Nico scowled at the ghost-girl as she smiled. Even though she was only a faint astral of her original self, he knew that she would have been pretty: her hair was a bundle of black, stringy curls, coiled loosely from her head; her eyes were bright, maybe because they'd once been hazel in life; and he could still see that her skin had once been a light brown, that her nose had once been marked by little freckles.

A frilly white dress came down to just under her knees, held to her pearly body by two thin shoulder straps. She looked to be thirteen, maybe fourteen. Only a little older than she'd been when it'd happened. A year or two more that she never had.

But the girl was dead now. Only a ghost. Only a flickering mass of blue. A pale imitation. The corner of her mouth twisted in a smile as a blue wisp escaped from her lips.

"Staring again?" she joked.

Nico looked away. "Shut up, Violet," he muttered again. "And I don't see what's so funny about it."

"Oh, c'mon," the girl, Violet, chided. "The only MythoMagic card you didn't have and he turned out to be your father? Hades, Lord of the Dead?"

Nico clenched his jaw. "Yeah," he said bitterly. "I should be so lucky."

He didn't really remember how he'd gotten there. He only remembered running through the forest, a burning in the back of his throat and a wetness in his eyes. He remembered the sting of dry branches as they cracked against his skin, leaving him sore and bleeding. Everything had hurt: his hands, his feet...his heart.

And then he'd woken up to the wet splash of stalactite dew on his nose and Violet's giggling in his ears. Which clashed terribly with the mood of the place.

Because he didn't like it here. It was dark and scary, gloomy and nasty. There was a howling that kept whistling in his ears, a sort of wailing that made the hairs on his skin stand on end and cold sweat prickle his brow. Like the call of the damned: always screaming, always howling...

"Are you brooding again, too?"

"I'm not brooding," Nico snapped. Because he had every right to. Violet had been trying his nerves the moment he'd come to.

"Brooding, moping, angsting..." The girl waved her translucent hand dismissively. "They're all the same thing, really. And none of them ever help."

Nico quirked an eyebrow. "What're you talking about? I don't need—"

"Liar." She picked at her nails primly. "I know you're all down, you know. That you're all sad. It's kind of...obvious, what with the dead screaming in agony like they are."

Ah. So that's what it had been. His pain was palpable to them, seeping from his pores and into the air, twisting in them like a jagged knife, making them writhe.

Good, he thought savagely. Because nothing was worse than hurting but hurting alone.

Violet flinched as he though it. Her jaw tightened slightly, though she was still smiling amiably at him. And then he realized, suddenly, that she was afraid. That they were all afraid. Of him.

Violet was still smiling.

"You don't care," Nico snarled. "You're only talking to me to get on my good side. To try and gain some immunity from being punished because you're afraid."

"That's not true!" she said hotly. But her lip was trembling. "I mean, of course I'm afraid. You're you. And I may be a lot of things—"

"—like annoying."

"Fine. But I'm not manipulative. Believe it or not, master, I actually kind of care for you. What with the whole 'king of the dead' thing. You're safety and well-being are important to me, so if you wouldn't mind, could you stop being such a jerk?"

Nico blinked. Violet's pearly fists were balled at her sides, and even though they were shaking, her gaze was defiant.

"...Sorry," he mumbled. He sighed and ran a shaky hand through his ruffled hair. "I just miss her is all."

"Your sister?" Violet perched her elbows on her knees and her chin in her palms. "Yeah, I figured that was the problem."

"You figured?" Nico said sharply. "What do you mean? You know about my sister? Have you seen her? You know how to get her back, don't you?" His voice had begun to rise steadily as he shouted, growing more shrill. "Tell me! Tell me how to get her back!"

Violet bit her lip nervously. "Master, that's not such a... the dead should stay... I mean..." She faltered under his piercing gaze. Finally, in a quiet voice, she said, "Have you ever heard of The Raven?"

Nico blinked, his anger abated momentarily in his confusion. "The what?"

"The Raven," Violet said hesitantly. "It's a poem. And it's relevant, too. I read it back when I was alive. I thought it was pretty stupid at the time, but it actually makes a lot of sense from the other side. I mean, a lot of stuff makes sense from the other side. I guess when you've got eternity to think things through, everything just comes into focus. Like—"

"Violet."

"Right. Sorry. The relevant part. See, in the poem there was this guy, a scholar, moping and brooding alone in his house. Sort of like you, actually," she added thoughtfully. Nico glowered again before she continued.

"So anyway, he was sad because he'd lost someone really important to him, someone he loved. Her name was Lenore, and she way his everything. Only, she was dead. So, naturally, he wasn't very happy about that.

"Then he heard a few taps at his door, and after opening it and expecting a visitor, a raven flew in instead. But it wasn't a normal raven. This one could talk.'Course, it could only say one word over and over again, but that didn't stop the scholar from talking to it.

"He joked with it at first, teased it on how it couldn't really even understand what it was saying. But, eventually, his thoughts led him back to his grief over Lenore. He kept pressing the raven for answers, kept asking it when he'd hold her again, when he'd see her...

"And he really, really didn't like its answer. He called it a demon bird, shrieked at it to get out and go back to the 'Night's Plutonian shore,' to Hades, because he didn't want to believe what the raven was telling him, even though it was the truth.

"The poem doesn't really mention what happens next, but I think it's pretty obvious: he went crazy, went wild and mad over his grief and love for Lenore. And that was the end."

Nico had been listening raptly, eyes focused on her face as she told the story. "The raven," he croaked hoarsely. "What did it tell him? When did it say he could see his Lenore?"

Violet twisted her fingers together anxiously. She looked him in the eyes, her fluorescent ones teary and imploring.

"Nevermore."

"And?" Nico said crossly. "What does that mean? How does that have anything to do with me?"

"Pining after the dead will destroy you," Violet whispered. "A little advice."

Blotches of purple colored Nico's cheeks. "ADVICE? I DON'T NEED ADVICE! I NEED HELP! I NEED SOMEONE WILLING TO HELP ME SAVE BIANCA!"

And then the air turned icy cold.

He felt it then. Felt the touch of wispy blue hands scraping along his scalp, his arms, his face, raking at him painfully. He heard their desperate wails as they offered their services in exchange for personal gain, and the mantra of "master" chanted by thousands of lost souls, each vying for his attention. A warm trickle started from his nose, seeped slowly down the parting of his lips and dribbled off of his chin. Blood. And their screams. Their screams were echoing in his skull...

"Violet!" Nico screamed. "Make them stop! Make them go away!"

"You are our master!" she told him urgently. "We follow your bidding. Command them to stop and they will!"

"Then STOP!"

His shrill shriek rang around the cavern, long after the ghostly hands had vanished into the dead air. He panted, slicked with sweat and shaking to his toes, as he sank down to his knees. And then he retched.

"I can't do this," he heaved. "I can't, Violet. I can't. I'm not strong enough. I'm not strong or smart or brave or—"

"Yes," the ghost-girl told him stubbornly, "you are. Son of Hades. That's you. This is what you were born for. What you're destined for. So get up and face it."

She offered him her ghostly hand and smiled encouragingly, urging him to rise to his feet, to face the dark and scary world for what it was and tackle its ghastly truth.

He ignored it.

"I can't," he whispered again, and the bleak words dissolved into broken sobs. He was shaking violently, shaking and crying in a puddle of his own sick as the weight of the world—the sky, the heavens, hell—came crashing down on him.

Bianca was dead. She wasn't coming back. And he, Nico, was alone now, trapped in this new world of death and damnation and suffering with no more than the wailing of ghosts as his company. So it was then, as he lay there, choking on his salty, bitter tears, that he thought the unthinkable:

Does suicide hurt?

Oddly, it was a comforting thought. Death would be a solace now. No more hurting. No more confusion. No more pain. Only sweet, sweet damnation and eternal bliss. He could do it now; the River Styx was only a few feet away. He could drown himself in it, hold his breath until the dark waters clouded his lungs and left him spiraling down to the river's murky depths...

"And for that, you would most certainly end up in Tartarus."

Nico started at the voice. It was not the softer, younger voice that he knew as Violet's, but rather the sharper, sterner one of a man bitter with the hand life (and, he supposed, afterlife) had dealt him. He looked up, and knew his eyes were puffy and red from the fuzzy view he saw. But still, he could make out the sharp facial bones, the pointed little beard.

"King Minos." Surprisingly, Violet's voice was filled with considerable disdain as she nearly spat the name. True, he'd only known her for a few days, but in that time he had never heard her speak with contempt. Disapproval at times, but never outright disgust like this. "What do you want?"

"Hold your tongue, girl," the bearded man hissed, as he studied Nico's face with his beady, calculating eyes. And then, with an exaggerated flourish of his smoky tendrils, he knelt at Nico's side. "I am at your service, master."

Nico blinked. Once. Twice. He sniffled a little as he wiped the blood from his cold lips. "You can't help me," he grounded out harshly. "No one can. Violet's already told me that you can't bring the dead back, so—"

"And what if I told you the little wench lied? Told you that I knew of a way to bring your beloved sister back from the grave?" The bearded man's eyes were alright now, shining with something Nico couldn't quite identify. Violet snarled viciously in the background.

"Violet...lied?" Nico's gazed trailed over to the girl who was still standing just behind Minos's back, her eyes angry and pleading at once. "No...Violet wouldn't...she'd never..."

"I assure you," Minos pressed, "that she would. She failed to bring her little sister back from the dead and died in the process, and so ever since has made it her business to lead others who would try to do the same astray." When Nico looked away hesitantly, he added harshly, "Ask her, master. Ask her for the truth which she cannot deny."

There was a tense moment then as their eyes locked, his puffy red with her ghostly blue. He could see the sadness in hers, the anger...and the fear.

"Is it true?" Nico whispered. His voice cracked. "Don't lie to me, Violet."

She looked away bitterly toward the black barren rock. "Of course it's the truth."

He stared at her. He stared at the billowing white hem of her dress as she kicked a rock aside, as she held her hands clasped behind her back and refused to look him in the eyes. Because she'd been the only person he had, after he'd lost everything. He'd thought he could trust her. If anything, he thought that if there was anyone he could trust, it was the dead—her.

So he swore.

"You're no better than the others," he gritted. "You're just like all the rest. You never... you never gave a damn, did you?"

Violet stretched out her hand to caress the crook of his shoulder as she touched a hand to her still, dead heart. "I did it to protect you, Nico! I was killed trying to save the person I loved, and I didn't want to see the same thing happen to you! I know you love Bianca—"

He slapped her hand away.

"Don't say her name," he hissed. The sound of his voice was cold, even to his own ears. "You don't deserve to talk about Bianca."

"Please!" she begged. "You don't understand! I saw...things, Nico! Half the time I thought about cutting off my own head and showering in my own blood!" A shiver ran down his spine as she yelled out the words, placid tears trailing down her translucent, blue cheeks. But he didn't care. She was a liar, so who could say that she wasn't lying to him right now, that it wasn't all just an act?

"Listen to me, Nico!" Violet screamed. "What I did was wrong, but if it could keep you safe, do you think I really cared if it was right or wrong? Minos doesn't even care about you! He only wants— "

"Enough, Violet."

"But—"

"I said enough."

A wicked smile curved onto Minos's cruel lips as Nico said the words. The boy paced around her slowly, calculatingly, as he thought of her lies, of her deception. A nasty smile twisted Nico's lips. "Go back to hell." He turned from her and snapped his fingers at Minos imperiously. "Come on, ghost. If we're going to raise the dead, we'd better get started."

And he walked away without a second glance, dispelling his childhood delusions of truths and love and goodness and light. There was only one truth, one absolute, and that was death. And he, the son of Hades, was its king. He was its god. There was nothing that he could not do.

So he carried this with him as he trudged along the craggy bank, as he walked along the land of the departed with Minos gliding along in his wake. But even as he faded into the plutonian shore, he could still hear Violet's godforsaken apologies above the discordant thrum of the dead:

"I'm so sorry, Nico."

And only Hades could have given a damn about the tears choking her words.