Note: Written for the Nine Muses Competition (Polyhymnia) on PJFC. 590 words on ffn.
Disclaimer: Characters not mine. Not written for profit.
prompt: kindness
pairing: mrs o' leary/nico
Mrs. O'Leary is not really anyone's dog.
Nico can understand that. He's been around his father long enough to pick up little factoids about Hellhounds. They were fierce, enormously loyal creatures, and once they found a companion, they would remember them forever. Mrs. O'Leary had been Daedalus' the same way Cerebrus belonged to Hades- and not all the frisbee playing in the world would make her anyone else's. Not that Nico ever actively tried to woo the hellhound or anything- he just felt really guilty about having effectively killed her companion of centuries. He figured he owed the poor dog the occasional game of frisbee.
At least she seemed happy enough hanging out with him and all the Jacksons and their Blofis.
Still, he wasn't exactly a permanent fixture in the hounds' life, just an occasional companion. Which was why it was really weird to look out of his classroom window one day and see her dancing around the parking lot.
Ten minutes and a badly faked stomachache later, he'd crept into the shadow of one of the school buildings and waved wildly at her. Mrs. O' Leary promptly and happily danced her way to him, carrying something in her mouth. Nico squinted against the sunlight and couldn't quite make out what it was, but he was reasonably sure it was a frisbee. And playing frisbee with her sounded a lot more palatable than sitting through another hour of English.
Mrs. O' Leary skidded to a stop in front of him and held one enormous ear out to him. It was so large that he couldn't even see the rest of her face. Nico grinned, and scratched her behind it.
"Hey girl. Getting lonely?"
Mrs O' Leary shook her head violently, and there was a tiny little mewling noise of protest from near her mouth.
Nico blinked and checked. Sure enough, the thing in her mouth was not a frisbee but a tiny black puppy, eyes open and staring mutinously away from the sunshine.
Nico felt his stomach sink a little. Hellhounds never really did the family thing- something about their biology made the fathers and mothers either drive away or eat their offspring. It was a quirk his father had never really been able to explain. If Mrs O' Leary had puppies, she was eventually going to give into the urge to gulp them down; even if she'd loved them till the day before. Monsters had urges in their nature that would horrify humans. And for all that she was tame, Mrs. O' Leary was still a monster.
She laid the pup at his feet, and nudged it to him.
Nico wanted to protest. The gesture was clear, but there was no way he could take care of a pet. He had school. He had occasional requests from both Camps and the Underworld. And there were so many ghosts in LA that he'd marked down his Thursday nights as Ghostbuster nights. He really didn't have the time-
Mrs. O' Leary nudged him, dark eyes worried, and there was really only one thing he could plausibly say.
"Thank you," he told her. "For your trust."
Mrs O' Leary butted him on the head and danced back to the parking lot, leaving Nico to stare at the puppy's judgemental eyes. She was obviously not happy about being taken all the way to sunny LA to be given to a kid who smelled like ghosts and death.
…maybe he could ask Reyna for help. She knew what to do with animals, right?