Here we go. Excuse Nico for the moment. Proper sibling stuff will follow eventually.
Under the Poplar Tree
In the following weeks, Nico was very successful in not thinking about the girl. As expected, his father kept him busy running errands in both worlds, leaving his thoughts barely any time to stray to the foolish quest that had brought him to Asphodel in the first place. If Hades knew about it, he never brought it up, either. The lord of the underworld was more lively than Nico had ever seen him – though perhaps that was a poor choice of words. Busy was perhaps more appropriate. There was a lot to do, now that the Olympians had somewhat accepted him among them again.
"We'll see how long that lasts." he told Nico in an unusually forthcoming, quiet moment after they left Olympus. "Sooner or later they always find something to blame on me. The gods, and people, are so changeable. You're doing very well to keep a certain distance from them." Hades clasped his shoulder appreciatively.
Nico felt as rush of pride, as always when his father bestowed one of his rare compliments. Hades was a lot less irascible since Kronos' defeat, and every now and then he would actually let on that he valued Nico and his talents. That was more than the young demigod had ever received before, so he made sure not to disappoint his father. He spent most of his time travelling, never staying anywhere for long; especially not at the Camp. He came, did what he was meant to do, and left again, without so much as catching a glimpse of Percy or the others. Which was a good thing. Really. Nico was feeling good. In a way, he became Hades' personal ambassador, the one the god of the underworld had always wanted: loyal to him, with a foot in the door to both Olympus and Camp Half-Blood, but not really attached to anyone there who might divide his loyalties.
His father graced him with smiles, his command over the dead grew stronger, and in general Nico was good at what he was doing. He had found the place for himself, finally.
So why, exactly, did he one day find himself back in Asphodel, searching for the girl that wasn't Bianca?
He honestly did not know how he found her again among the billions of souls that filled the plain. Her ghost was just a little stronger than those around her, but even with Nico's attuned senses, that was impossible to see until he suddenly stood right in front of her. It was as if an invisible string had pulled him right to this point.
He looked at the ghost for a long moment. Then he began to dig a new grave.
This time, it took a lot longer before Hazel approached his offering. When finally she did and her features were fully formed, her face wore a look of surprise.
"Did you really call for me?"
"Yes." Nico replied, trying and failing to keep the irritation out of his voice.
"I thought you'd never want to speak to me again."
"I didn't, either."
"Then why?"
Nico shuffled his feet. Why? "I don't know." he finally breathed, frustrated.
"Oh."
"You – you said you were a daughter of Pluto?"
Her dead, golden eyes flickered with emotion. "Pluto." she repeated. "Yes." Nico couldn't quite discern the tone of her voice. Perhaps it was resentment.
"Not Hades?" he pushed further.
"Does it matter?"
Nico didn't know. He wasn't sure how different the Roman aspect of his father was to his Greek one, if at all. This entire duality principle was very confusing to him. For his part, he had only ever spoken to Hades.
And anyway; he was more interested in Hazel herself.
"When are you from?" he blurted out.
Hazel visibly didn't know what to make of his questions. But she was bound to answer him. "I died in 1942."
Before we were sent to the casino. We might have met.
"I was born back then, too." he confessed.
The girl cocked her head, looking him once over. "But then – how are you here? You're alive."
Nico scratched his neck. "That's a longer story." He didn't particularly feel like telling it. But at the same time, he did want to keep talking to her. Even with all the uncertainty what he was doing here; he for some reason felt more at home than he ever did with other ghosts – or, gods forbid, other people. Perhaps it had something to do with her being just as out of time as he was.
That's when a thought crossed his mind: she was a child of Hades; just like him. She doesn't look older than thirteen… The prophecy of the Big Three could well have applied to her, too.
"How did you die?" he asked curiously.
Pain flashed across her face. "We were buried alive."
"You and your mom?" He remembered that.
Her eyes searched his. "Why do you want to know? Why do you care about me?
"I don't know." Nico repeated, and it was the truth. All he knew was that he didn't want her to go yet. "Please, can we just – talk?"
Hazel seemed surprised at that. Then, for the first time, she smiled a small, hesitant smile. She nodded shyly. "I'd like that. It's been so long since I really talked to somebody."
"Same." Nico replied.
Talking to Hazel was strange. She was utterly unlike the ghosts he usually summoned. It couldn't be compared to talking to other demigods, either. A child of the 1940s, Hazel didn't understand a lot of what he was saying, but picked up on other things; little things that normal people ignored.
"You played Mythomagic? Really?"
Nico blinked. Somehow, in those first few hesitant exchanges, she had gotten him to talk about what he liked, and his tongue had run away with him. And he hadn't really expected a response. "You know it?"
Hazel shrugged her pale shoulders. "Some boys at school played it sometimes. I was never allowed to join in."
"It's a great game!" Nico's twelve year old self blurted out, before his grown-up side could stop it. He blushed up to his hair roots. "Ahem; I mean; why weren't you allowed?"
"I didn't have that many friends." She paused, then corrected herself: "Forget that; I had no friends. People stay – stayed away from me. They called me a witch."
Nico raised an eyebrow. "Are you?"
Hazel's expression flickered. It was a strange mix of amusement and bitterness. "I wish I were. Maybe I would have turned some of them into toads. No; it's because of my – curse. It's – I attract riches, like a magnet."
"Excuse me?"
"Gemstones, gold, diamonds. They appear wherever I go."
"You can summon diamonds?" Nico repeated, impressed. While that was part of his father's sphere of influence, he himself had never managed it. He was better with the dead.
"It's not as great as it sounds."
"But why would that – you said that was a curse…?"
At his inquisitive look, the dead girl lowered her eyes. She looked like the memories pained her to think about. "Can we talk about something else? Please?"
She looked like Bianca; when she had begged him not to summon her anymore.
"Uh; okay. If you want." Nico retreated. He swallowed the lump in his throat. "What do you want to talk about?"
What am I even doing here? , he questioned himself, more than once.
He still had no answer to that,
But it's nice to talk to somebody again, another part of him insisted.
Two things he learned in those first few minutes of talking to his half-sister. One; she spoke about a lot of things in the present, like they had only just happened. Nico had met ghosts before who didn't know they were dead; and though Hazel luckily wasn't that, she seemed to still cling to life a lot more than normal for one who had been dead for so long. Perhaps that was why Nico felt so drawn to her.
And two; most of the memories of her own life seemed to pain her. She avoided the subject of her mother, and refused to talk more of her fascinating diamond-power, too. Nico didn't press her, even though, to his surprise, he found that he actually wanted to know more about her. He had to hold back and remind himself not to ask her too many questions; since, as a summoned ghost, she would have been compelled to answer.
Nevertheless, they ended up talking for a long time.
Because Hazel, on her part, wanted to know about the world she'd left. About the magical part, in particular. It quickly turned out she only knew a bit about the gods, very little about Olympus, and nothing of Camp Half-Blood. She'd met her father exactly once, and from how she told it, Pluto wasn't any more forthcoming than Hades. Most of what she knew about the mythological world was what little she had gleaned from the ghosts around her.
Nico was more than happy to explain this world to her, especially since it was on such an abstract level that it didn't really involve him, personally. There was a curious kind of wonder that appeared on Hazel's face during some of the myths and legends he told her, and it brought him back to the time at the Lotus Casino, when he discovered the world of Mythomagic – and then later, when he learned the legends were real. The side effect was that, occasionally, he noticed his explanations slipping off into the realm of the card game, and he would break off in embarrassment. He wasn't twelve anymore, for Hades' sake!
Hazel didn't seem to notice, or if she did, she didn't mind. Everything was new to her, her curiosity evident. But her questions, when she asked them, were shy, as if she hadn't quite grasped yet that she was allowed to ask them. Her mother hadn't allowed her, she confessed after a while.
"Didn't she tell you your father was a god?" Nico inquired.
A trace of bitterness crossed the girl's lips. "Only that he was the reason for everything that was wrong with our lives. I gathered the god part myself, eventually. I just don't…" she broke off, frustrated. "It wasn't really all his fault; I understand that. But – if he's a god; why couldn't he make everything better?"
Wasn't that a familiar question?
"Being a god doesn't mean they're all-powerful. They can't always take direct influence." That was the safest answer, and the ones the gods themselves usually used in their defence. It sounded like a platitude, now that Nico had to say it out loud. He sensed there was a lot of grief in Hazel's past; it was evident in everything she told him and in everything she didn't. 'The gods want to help but can't' didn't really seem a like a suitable explanation for whatever had happened to her.
"He gave me a sketchpad. And pencils." Hazel's voice interrupted his thoughts. She was looking at him with a helpless expression. "Is that what gods normally do?"
Can't say he ever gave anything to me, Nico thought. But the picture of Hades, the lord of the underworld, handing a set of pencils to a little Hazel was so absurd that it puzzled him beyond the point of even thinking to be jealous. "Why would he do that?"
"Well; I don't know! He knew I liked art and horseback riding, so he gave me the art. His words, not mine."
Nico rubbed his temples. Trying to explain a god's actions could give you a headache at the best of times, and applying the concept of logic to Hades in particular was the equivalent of trying to use Latin to explain math. Except that that suggested that the god followed a set of clear rules. Nico decided not to even attempt it right now. "So; art and horses?" he moved back into safer territory.
Hazel brightened up. Her eyes gleamed with a lively spark that surprised Nico. Everything else about her past had been accompanied by sadness. "Yes. I love riding."
"Never tried it."
She smiled: "You should. It's the best; I didn't have to worry so much when I was riding. I used to go often, with Sammy…"
She trailed off. A cloud seemed to cast over her face and she pressed her eyes shut. Nico didn't inquire. He felt like he was stirring up a lot of memories for her, and it didn't seem to be a good thing.
But that wasn't the reason for the sudden queasiness in Nico's gut. No; it was because that look on Hazel's face when she'd mentioned the name – it was the absurd mix of sad-happy that Nico always felt when he thought about a certain other demigod.
Hazel didn't offer to talk any more. Nico didn't feel like it, either. He leaned back against the poplar tree they were sitting under and gave in to the memories, letting them wash over him like a cooling flood.
Some of them were happy; others not; most hurt. And they always kept coming back to two familiar faces. One was gone; the other forever out of reach. Nico bit on his lower lip until he tasted iron. He glanced at the ghostly girl by his side. Why did children of the underworld always have it this difficult with the living?
His stupid emotions were still there. They hadn't faded.
At some point, Nico noticed a shadow in front of them that wasn't cast by a ghost. He looked up to see a winged creature hover above them a little distance away. The fury Alecto had tilted her wrinkled head to the side, watching him curiously with her beady black eyes.
Nico stood. "I have to go." he told Hazel.
She looked up at him with an expression he couldn't identify.
"Will you come back?"
Would he?
Nico was torn. In truth, he hadn't planned on it. Perhaps a part of him had only come back to reaffirm that Hazel was completely unlike Bianca; that he had no connection, or obligation, to her. So that he didn't have to think about her anymore.
And that part was certainly proven right: Hazel didn't share his sister's looks in the slightest, nor her easy smiles or bossy attitude. Most strikingly, she lacked that otherworldly glow that had surrounded Bianca since she'd joined the hunters of Artemis. The only hint that she and Nico might be related were the sharp lines of her face, and her eyes, which, though golden instead of black, had a hint of Hades' flinty spark in them. Other than that, Nico might have passed her on the street and wouldn't have looked twice.
So, no; Hazel was nothing to him.
But then she would start to speak, and Nico would hear the deep loss in her voice. And, underneath it, the fierce stubbornness and energy that still clung to a life she hadn't had time to live. And Nico would feel the exterior of the son of Hades starting to slip away, replaced by a twelve year old boy who just wanted his sister to come back.
"Yeah. I will." he said, more to himself than to the girl beside him.
