Title: Promises

Pairing: Percy/Nico

Disclaimer: I do NOT own any Percy Jackson characters, they all belong to Rick Riordon.

Warnings: boyXboy, potty mouth

A/N: Sorry for all the mistakes you find :)

Also if anyone wants to be my beta and beta this, I'll be more than grateful!

Thanks to all who reviewed, especially those who took my challenge, and as promised here is the new chapter! Hopefully it's slightly longer than previous chapters, and the begining is a filler, but its the end that makes it interesting. I hope...

Chapter Six

"Is that blood?" I looked at Percy like he grew a second head.

"No, it's melted gumdrops*, of course its blood!" He rolled his eyes at my remark.

My eyes followed the bloody foot trail right up to my bed. Sitting down, I lift up my feet, checking them for blood. It turned out it was from my left foot. I must have cut it last night when we visited The Big House. Grasping my foot with both hands, my thumbs gently prodded the soft pads, looking for the wound. Percy came from the bathroom, wet rag within his hand. He swatted my hands away and took my foot within his own hands.

"Don't do that. You don't know how bad it is." He muttered, taking a seat on the floor and started to gently wipe the blood away.

I tried hard to stop myself from laughing. My feet were ticklish and I'd be damn if I let Percy found out. To distract myself, I stared at him in wonder. He looked strange; having a concentrated face directed at my foot like it was the most important thing in the world and his gentle cleaning. I couldn't help the grin on my face. Weirdly this reminded of that Disney movie, the one with the glass slipper. Just, you know, without the slipper.

"What are you grinning at?" Percy glanced up from his task.

"You." He tossed my foot away from his face.

"Well there's no wound or anything, lucky you."

I laughed. "What's with that face, Perce?"

"You." I stuck my tongue out at him, as childish as it seems.

He responded by tosses a pillow at my head. I dodged it but couldn't dodge the second one thrown my way. His laugh was melodic and infectious that I found myself laughing along. Settling down, I grabbed the rag from the floor and proceeded to wipe away the foot prints. Percy had perched himself onto a nearby bed, content with watching me clean. Feeling a little playful (when was the last time that I was? So long ago…) I pretended to focus on a particularly hard stain, bringing my face close to it so that my butt hovered in the air. Smirking lightly (so Percy couldn't see it) I waved my butt side to side, keeping tabs on Poseidon's son's reaction from the corner of my eye. Immediately his face flamed red.

"N-Nico!" He stuttered out, turning his head away from me.

I sat up on my hunches, holding in another grin, and instead tried my acting skills. I remembered I could've easily pull Bianca's leg with my acting, though it was mostly the puppy dog eyes I sent her way, but my acting helped too! There was a time that I had used my awesome skills on her. I had gotten the Zeus figurine that Christmas. I sucked in a sharp breath, quickly shutting out all other thoughts and memories pertaining to my sister. Hopefully Percy didn't notice the solemn expression that crossed my face quickly.

Pulling on an innocent face that gave nothing of the wistful and painful emotions, I tilted my head to gaze at Percy.

"Yes Perseus?" He glared at the name, but it was ruined by the still ever present blush.

"You did that on purpose!" He accused. God, he looked so cute right now.

Snapping my head back down to the stain, my hair fell into my face, hiding the blush that crept up my cheeks.

"W-what are you talking about?" I cursed silently for the stutter. Still acting, I went back to cleaning the stain which wiped away with ease.

"Don't play dumb with me Nicky!"

Nicky? Where the fuck did that come from? How the hell did he get Nicky from Nico? Again I looked at him like he was crazy.

"Don't look at me like that…" He smirked. "Nicky."

"Hm, I wonder about you sometimes Percy."

"Nico! I didn't know you day dream about me!"

"Oh shut up!" I threw the rag at his face but he moved out of its destructive path. "Come on, we're wasting daylight. It won't be long till the other campers start waking up."

He nodded, and whistled. In a swoosh of air and the darkening of the shadows in the corner, the big form of Mrs. O'Leary materialized. We had agreed before going to bed, that it would be easier and faster to use Mrs. O'Leary to get to the city. Then after, we would hike our way back here seeing as shadow traveling for the hellhound is quite as taxing as it is for me. Over the years I have gotten better, going farther distances with more company, but not by much. Mrs. O'Leary wasn't used to taking more than one person per ride. This trip would drain her even more than usual.

Before greeting the obviously happy dog, I kneeled by my bed, plucking away the loose floorboards to reach the small compartment there. I kept all of my important things in there, including some pictures I had manage to hold on to of me and Bianca as well as the Hades Mythomagic figurine and some money. My father was also the god of wealth; it wouldn't be wise to keep my treasures out in the open especially when the cabins didn't have locks on them and the Hermes cabin only a few meters away. I didn't mind that Percy now knew of its existence. I trust him at least that much that he would keep away from it. And if anything does go missing, I know who to blame. Pocketing a good amount of cash, I replaced the floorboards and went back to Mrs. O'Leary. I scratched the dog behind her ear in thanks for the ride she was about to give us.

"You ready Perce?"

He blinked a couple of times.

"Huh? Oh, yea…I guess."

I frowned. What was up with him? He seemed to be hesitant to place his hand on Mrs. O'Leary. I know shadow traveling can be a little…weird, but nothing out of the ordinary. It's sort of like flying. Maybe that's why Percy's a little tentative to do this. It's not advised for us to fly in airplanes, being cautious that Zeus would do something to sabotage the craft, probably strike it down with lightning. Shaking my head in disbelief I asked him if he was afraid. He clammed up even more.

"It's not that I'm afraid…it's just that…I'm not used to it I guess."

"You're okay when I shadow travel us in the past. What's the difference?" Poor Mrs. O'Leary whimpered a little.

"It's…just different okay. Forget about it, let's just go." He sucked up his courage (what was left of it) and placed his hand next to mine on the hellhound.

In a second we were gone. Melted into the dark and wispy shadows. Oh, how I missed this. The feel of flying without actually flying. It felt like every inch of us was air, gliding across the land, like water naturally flowing with the current of the river. It felt natural. It felt right. I know Percy couldn't see anything but darkness, but I could see it clearly. The trees and buildings and cars and people and everything passing by in a blur. Smells that somehow penetrated the flowing current of shadows simply overwhelming. It sent my body into overdrive, sensitive to everything and anything.

It was freedom.

No one would ever understand this; shadow traveling. No one ever would even if they were given a ride. Only someone who could do it can understand everything that I mean. It was a rare and unique feeling that only a few were lucky enough to be gifted with it. I was one of those lucky bastards.

Things started to slow down now, only a few seconds having ticked away. That's how shadow traveling was. It felt like forever but in reality, only a few seconds or even minutes had passed. It was like escaping the hands of time itself for a few fleeting moments.

Mrs. O'Leary took us into an abandon alley way close to the contact store. From the map we had to memorize before our trip, we were three blocks away from the hole in the wall shop. The hellhound yipped us goodbye and wandered away.

"Here." Percy shoved some dark sunglasses onto my face. "So people won't be staring at you strangely."

I slowly took them off. Where the hell did he pull these from?

"People are still going to be staring at me strangely because I'm wearing sunglasses in the morning where the sun is barely even out and it's cloudy as fuck. Besides isn't the mist supposed to cover up stuff like this?" He rolled his eyes (he's been doing that a lot lately) and pushed the glasses back over my eyes.

"At least they'll be staring at you for having a horrible fashion sense and I'd rather not take the chance with the mist. Now let's go get you contacts."

I grumbled all the way, muttering about that even if they saw me, they're normal people; they'll think it's those special contacts anyways. He paid no heed to my words, dutifully marching along and pulling me with him. We spent the entire trek in silence, occasionally throwing a 'sorry' and 'excuse me' for bumping into people. For this early in the morning, there sure are a lot of individuals meandering about.

The store we chose was small and crappy. I'm surprise people even come here. Perhaps the interior is better looking than the shitty external frontage. I nodded a temporary goodbye before giving the cash to Percy as he walked in by himself. It was better for just him to get them, that way I wouldn't have to remove the shades to reveal my red irises. I know they make you try the contacts on, and it'll be weird to keep sunglasses on indoors.

I leaned against the cement wall, idling people watching. The good thing about these sunglasses is that they didn't know I was staring at them. For a moment my eye was caught on a mother and son, power walking to the store a couple of buildings down on the opposite side of the street. The mom had wild fiery shoulder length hair as her son had a light brown. She looked to be in her 30s and the kid about 8 or 9.

A shrill laugh pulled my attention away from them onto a girl roughly my age, maybe a little older. She had long straight black, black hair and a deep brown flavored skin. Her eyes were equally as dark as her hair, but all in all, she was beautiful. Her laugh diminished into a giggle as she stared at me with knowing eyes. This girl was only a few feet away from me to the left. Something told me she was familiar. Very familiar. Like I knew her from somewhere and it was at the tip of my tongue but I couldn't for the life of me remember where from.

Her insistent giggling was getting on my nerves and I wanted to scare her away with a glare but I couldn't. So instead, I looked back over to where I saw the mother and child only to find they had disappeared within the store. Frowning (for it definitely wasn't a scowl) I gazed back to where the girl was.

"Great. Not only are my eyes red, but I'm seeing ghosts too." I muttered bitterly, looking all around to see if I could see the dark skinned woman. She vanished. I had only looked away for a few seconds.

"Got it!" I blushed a little when I jumped at hearing Percy's voice right next to me. I didn't even hear him or see him for that matter, leave the store.

I took the bag from him. "Yeah…thanks."

He stared at me for a while. "Are you okay?"

"Yea fine." I cracked a smile. "So now that we've got the goods, do you want to start heading back or what?"

"Actually, if it's okay with you, I'd like to go visit my mom and Paul."

I shrugged. "It's better than doing camp activities. And if we're lucky, she'd have baked some cookies."

Percy grinned at the prospect of his mother's cookies. "Yum!" He lightly punched my arm and this time I really did scowl.

"What in Hades was that for?"

"For being a lazy ass." He shook his head in an 'Oh Nico' kind of way and led the way to his mom's house, all the while mumbling about 'idiots wanting to missing pivotal camp lessons cause they were lazy'. The scowl stayed fixed onto my face. I knew he was talking about me, the bastard.

I was right; Mrs. Jackson had indeed made a fresh batch of blue chocolate chip cookies. Damn am I good! On the way here, we had stopped at a public bathroom so I could place the contacts on. They were black in color and it easily masked the crimson.

Mrs. Jackson had us sit at the table; fussing over about making us lunch to eat. Her and Percy engaged into mild conversation, once or twice bringing me in, but I opted to stay out and just listen. Seeing them like this, like a family made me happy inside. It's been over 70 years since I've felt the love of a family. I know I'm family because of the way Sally and Percy are. Everyone they meet and make friends with are immediately a part of their family. It took me 2 years just to figure that out. I never really noticed the way Sally had treated me like her own son until I recognized the behavior she took with Percy was the same as she took with me.

I vaguely remember my own mother. It's been so long that the memory of her was diluted, and I hated it. It was like I was forgetting her. Now a day, my memories from before the Lotus Casino were growing dimmer and dimmer. Only the ones I've worked hard to hold on to remain untouched by time. Being here, with a mother figure again was bringing those thoughts back.

Reaching out, I grabbed a moderately cooled down cookie and stuffed it into my mouth to change the course of thoughts to something else. It worked. I was scolded lightly for eating a cookie while it was still hot, and I just grinned and did it again, loving the feel of a family.

We stayed there for a couple of hours before we had to book it. The trip back was going to be a long one. So we bid Sally goodbye (Paul was at work and Percy's step brother was at school) and with some cookies in our pockets, we left back to Camp.

There was only an hour or two left of sunlight before the new moon came. We had finally made it back to camp. The cookies we had stashed in our pockets were long gone, eaten on the way here. Such a shame too, I could really go for another right now.

We passed by Thalia's pine tree along with the Golden Fleece and the small dragon guarding the borders.

Instantly I froze. Pure fear and rage ran a war within my body, holding it rooted in place. I was quivering lightly too. I didn't know which one to fall back on, which on to feel. It was like Armageddon. Why was I feeling this way? Why were my instincts telling me to run away…to get away from here? I've never felt this way before. Each emotion was fighting to show onto my face and I could tell it was making Percy nervous and curious and just plain worried and concern. I could see his lips moving, making out an 'are you okay?' but not hearing the sound that usually accompanies such an action.

But I did hear, loud and clear, someone say "Oh good…you're back!"

It sounded sinister and familiar but I just couldn't place it but it's there jabbing my mind like a hot poker. Before I could place anything together, my mind goes strangely black and all I can see is nothing.

*Can anyone guess where this is from?

Now things are really on the roll and the plot is coming to fruition! Since I was mean, if I happen to finish the next chapter early, before Monday, I shall post it, no catches! let me know what you think!