And part three, the finale. The third one to make it through Tartarus. Once again, it's something quite different torturing this poor child.
Poor babies. How I love them so.
And might as well throw in a disclaimer: RR's characters. My story.
L'Enfer, C'est les Autres
Part 3/3: Nico
Nico had thought he would be able to make it through Tartarus even after he had arrived there. It was part of Hades domain, after all. He should have been perfectly fine. From what he'd heard, that was where the Doors of Death were, so the trip was inevitable. And so Nico had set off to pay Tartarus a visit. He'd shadow traveled, as that was the fastest method of transport.
When Nico landed he immediately realized that two things were wrong. The first was that he did not feel the slightest bit tired. The second was that it was not dark. There were no shadows he could have possibly come out of. It was bright, and very disorienting, and there was a person right in front of him.
He jumped back, but Nico quickly realized that he was in a box made entirely of mirrors. It wasn't that big, but large enough that he could stand up and easily spin in a circle with his arms outstretched, and not touch the sides or the ceiling. There was no visible source of light inside the box, but nonetheless, Nico could see his reflections. Not very impressive for Tartarus.
There was, of course, the matter of getting out.
Things went downhill from there at an alarming rate. As Nico examined the mirrors he began to notice something very odd. Most of them simply showed him as he currently was: skinny, rumpled, and really, really tired looking. But some seemed to show him at fractured angles, more brooding, or more miserable than he really was. And, no matter how many times Nico tried to break the mirrors, he couldn't.
The mirrors were still sharp though. Thin, invisible hairline cracks must have been running through them, because sometimes when Nico touched them they left long slices on his hands and arms. The blood that dripped onto the floor seemed to seep into the mirrored ground, which was still pristine even though Nico had been walking all over it in his muddy shoes.
It didn't take long for Nico to give up and sit down for a break. And that was when he began to understand why Tartarus was a place of eternal suffering.
The emotions crept up on him with stealth. He didn't even notice that they had entered his mind until he no longer had any control of them. Nico stared at his reflections.
In front of him sat a boy who nobody cared for. And, he thought glumly, they were right not to want him. Hell, he didn't want him. There sat a boy who did not fight to help others. A boy who was too selfish to let his sister move on. A boy who never ate enough. He'd gone to Underworld, refusing to leave his sister in peace and returned with what he could scavenge – a second-rate replacement sister. He'd even let her know that she was second best.
The boy in the mirror was not a good person. He did not think of others. Nico was an outcast. He spent more time with the dead than the living, not that he had friends among either. He was both too old and too young. He was too dead to belong in the mortal world and too alive to belong in the Underworld. He couldn't even like the right people. He had to go and be gay on top of everything else. He was never, ever going to be normal.
The reflection glared back at Nico, blood dripping down its arms. The boy in the mirror was obnoxious; he talked either too much or too little. He couldn't even control his own powers. Spires of rock, bones of creatures (once alive, and deserving respect) were dragged up from the ground by accident. Things he touched would sometimes die, so he made a point of never touching people. And he ached to be hugged and loved, but surely he would kill them by accident, and what kind of person would that make him?
The boy that he hated so much was Nico di Angelo.
No wonder Bianca had left him. No wonder she wanted to stay dead. And no wonder she had moved on when the Doors of Death had opened. A boy who wasn't as good as his sister, who lured his friends into traps. A boy who didn't belong at either camp, or with the dead. This was the boy who had lied to an old friend with amnesia, because maybe, just maybe they could start over and he could get something out of it. This was a boy who's own parents hadn't wanted him. This was the boy that Percy Jackson didn't want, and neither did Rome, or Greece, or his sister, or even the Titans. And who could blame them?
Nico wasn't good.
