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Amidst the darkness, he heard the sounds of water.
It was a gentle tune: the sloshing of water hitting a rocky bank, the bubbling it made each time a small ripple broke, the quiet humming beneath the surface he couldn't have heard with his ears alone - too quiet for an ocean's roaring or the vast seas' loud chanting. The melody was more gentle, more friendly, almost like a lullaby.
A stream, Nico thought, or a canal.
The water seemed to be calling out to him, flowing into the cracks of his fractured consciousness as if it was where it belonged, so natural and sweet, a softness so safe it made Nico reach out on instinct, chasing the warmth he hadn't yet to know what it was. And then he realized he couldn't. His body was heavy, frozen in what seemed like a sleep of which he couldn't get out. Not that Nico wanted to.
Slowly, he could feel pieces of his senses return to him. The noises grew louder as Nico's mind came afloat at the beckoning.
He heard the people. The voices surrounded him, talking, laughing, murmuring, all at once. There were so many of them that everything blended into faint chatters in the back of his mind, just miscellaneous words Nico couldn't bring himself to care about in his sleep-induced state. And then came the rhythmic thumping, like a woman's heels clacking on the cobblestone floor, each step attuned with the rises and falls of his senses.
It was then that Nico realized he was being carried.
Strong arms enclosed his boneless body, a broad chest shielding him and shoulders so strong it made all problems nothing. The smell of ice and winter soil was refreshing compared to the surrounding lively air, with a flowery undertone akin to his mother's perfume. Each step was a sturdy one that sent his feet dangling, stable and decisive, but still light enough to make Nico feel like a gondola gliding swiftly across the water.
But Nico wasn't on the water. He was on the fondamenta, nestled deep in his papà's embrace and swimming in a cotton dream, rocked to sleep by the rumbles of his quiet conversation with mamma. His mamma was walking side by side with them, her paces always sounding like a dance. Half-asleep, Nico wondered if Bianca had run ahead of them. Unlike him, who had a penchant for exhausting himself by running around and bothering strangers, she had never had problems regulating her strength throughout their family outings, opting to watch the people or simply enjoy the sun instead.
Nico couldn't hear her voice, though. The gondoliers' oars flopped noisily down the rio, the tourists were loud even as background noises - as they usually did in his dearly beloved Venice, and papà's large hand kept drawing hypnotic circles on Nico's back, turning even opening his eyes into a challenge. His face was tucked securely in the pocket of papà's collarbone. The clean, fresh scent of ebony hair - black like Nico's and so much more smoothly combed - wafted off Venice's fishy water smell.
Right then and there, Nico thought he needed nothing else. He was comfortable. He was safe and contented. The world was so much simpler to Nico's young and naive five-year-old mind when he was cradled in his father's much larger arms, out like a light without a care in the world.
The kids next door thought his papà was a devil who had enticed his mamma before leaving her alone, to which Nico strongly disagreed. Papà wasn't evil. A little scary sometimes, but Nico knew better. They were right about the latter, though. Father wasn't around as much as his friends', no matter how much he and Bianca whined about it. So Nico clung to sleep as if it was his only lifeline, fingers twisted into the expensive vest in a vice grip. His body was too heavy to move, better try his best to glue himself to his father's chest already. Because as long as Nico was still asleep, hanging off his shoulders like an octopus in Bianca's encyclopedia, papà wouldn't leave that easily, Bianca would be happier, and mamma wouldn't look so sad.
Vaguely, Nico felt Papà's hand on his head. His fingers were cold through a layer of Nico's messy hair. His low voice was soft.
"Are you awake, son?" He asked, and the dream shattered behind Nico's eyelids.
Waking up felt like walking through Tartarus all over again.
The pain came to him so suddenly that Nico was left awashed by the overwhelming ache at every corner of his body, paralyzed under the weight of all his senses coming back - not alone but with immense exhaustion that turned his bones into lead and his blood liquid mercury. Everything hurt. Each breath rattled his lungs. His left eye stung. His limbs didn't belong to him. There was blood on his tongue, the metallic taste mixed with something Nico hoped wasn't dirt.
Engulfed in pain, Nico barely registered someone shifting him, hands so careful and firm. All his muscles had given up, leaving him stranded in a poor imitation of a sentient puppet whose strings had been cut off. With difficulty, he cracked his eyes open and found himself looking into his father's abyss eyes. Red stained the outlines of his limited vision. Somewhere above them, huge bat wings flapped heavily.
Hades looked tired, his scowl deepened by grimness. He had always seemed a little weary, a little overworked, and moody in Nico's eyes, but right then, his father appeared pained - as if Nico's fatigue was somehow transferred directly to him and it hurt the elder god much more than Percy did with his Achilles' Curse.
Nico had never seen his father like that.
He tried to say it aloud, but all that came out was just a broken rasp. The sounds of water drowned out his frail cough. The flapping of wings turned frantic.
"The princeling has awakened!" A screechy voice crowed, followed by two others. Nico couldn't see much, but he knew they were Alecto and her sisters, circling him and Hades protectively.
Hades smiled, a thing of heart-wrenching relief that melted his permanent scowl like snow on pine trees. "It's alright. Everything's alright." The hand on Nico's head dug into his hair, stroking. "We won. Gaea's gone, you can rest now."
Gaea. Right.
The images flashed through Nico's mind in a series of damaged film reels, strips by strips stitched together in a poor attempt to make sense of each wound on his body. Every cut and bruise hurt deeper now without the rush of adrenaline nullifying his pain receptors. There had been monsters - lots, lots of monsters - and demigods decked in armors, pila and swords in hand, golden and bronze glimmering brightly in the sunlight. Flashes of his friends filtered through the monsters' daunting figures - Reyna's blowing purple cape, Frank's guttural roar, Lou Ellen's blast of indigo, Nico's own streak of darkness, sprinkled with gold every time he cut down an enemy, a handful of shining ashes exchanged for another rip on his numb skin, another crack on his weary bones.
Nico remembered storms and fire - Jason and Leo, the arc of smoky gold he had let Octavian draw on the sky, and the blazing dome that ended it all. He wondered what happened to them. He had been too tired, too war-ridden, and utterly clueless to process their situation. And then Hazel met his gaze. His sister, with eyes more effulgent than all the flowers in Persephone's garden of jewelry combined, met his gaze across the battlefield fogged up by Gaea's remains, and sent his will to stand, to ignore the pain, to push on the shadows despite their grasping hands, crumbling.
What came after that was only darkness.
Nico sucked in a puff of frosty air. "Is - Is everyone okay? Is Hazel okay?"
"They'll live. As for your sister," As though it was possible, Hades' eyes darkened, and the nod he gave seemed to be hiding, "She would be alright. She's strong."
It left Nico deflated like a balloon.
He wondered what Hazel could be feeling right now. Throughout the limited time they had known each other, she had rarely shown traces of their father's morbid aspect, mostly sticking to the richness the Romans preferred. In the best-case scenario, Nico hoped she was spared from that haunting sensation of emptiness he was blessed with, from the lingering grief that had prickled his skin for days on end back when Bianca was still fresh in his mind.
They had only been brother and sister for so long. It would be better than him hanging off her mind, even when it stung a little deep in his exhausted heart. Hazel would be fine, Nico trusted his father's judgment, dead or alive.
Breathlessly, Nico pushed forward. "What..." His chest hurt. "What happened?"
Hades' quiet voice deepened as he answered, "You overexerted yourself and passed out. So I came to pick you up."
"Oh."
Strangely, Nico didn't feel that many emotions upon the revelation. He supposed he was more honest than he thought when he said those words to Reyna. If anything, the emptiness overshadowed them all, and Nico had been in too many turmoils over the last few years to not appreciate the closure.
Truthfully, Nico didn't expect his father to come. Sure Hades had implied here and there about wishing him a life unlike that of Nico's many predecessors. It was only now, however, that Nico caught on to the sincerity. If he wanted, Nico could pretend he had fallen asleep after a playdate as he usually did nearly a decade ago, and it was only Hades who had picked him up and carried him all the way home like he used to do. The reminiscence seemed real enough, at this moment.
You can rest now, Hades made it so easy. The hand in Nico's hair was a reminder of what he'd just dreamt of.
Nico tried to shift. He only succeeded with a slight crane of his neck, everything else strained more than bearable. Still, Nico could see past his father's bottomless pupils now. He could make out the Furies hovering closely, a triumphant smile on Alecto's lips as though Nico waking up was a victory. Nico himself was in Hades' arms, whole weight supported in a careful hold, tucked tight to the god's chest. He recognized his father's favorite soul-printed cloak, which pooled around Nico's body akin to a safety blanket, surprisingly velvety against his blistered skin. He felt Hades' footsteps, just slight jolts eased off by the silky magical cloak but enough to send him spiraling back to the reminiscence of their strolls along Venice's canals.
It felt weird to be cradled by his father again, after seventy years of history and four years of age. Hades was in his human form, a spitting image of Nico's childhood, black and white all over much like an old monochrome picture coming alive. Ageless. He was a god, after all, and no matter how much Nico had grown, he was still that tiny child, powerless in between the folds of his father's thin, long, waxen arms.
Now, he lay as an obedient child half asleep in his father's arms, once again being carried along the edges of singing streams, the undeniable difference being his mother's and sisters' absences. If Nico could ignore it, it would be like going home after a play-out all over again - no matter how darker the rio was or how more forlorn the fondamenta was.
The water cheered loudly in his ears. The Styx, Nico realized, as his gaze fell upon the lapping waves of liquid black and grey, grinding on the Underworld bone-piled bank, reaching out, calling.
There was a graveling sound of something heavy crashing up the shore. And then Charon's sunken eyes stared down at Nico from the raise of his ferry. His wide hat shaded Nico's view like a stormy cloud, but his gaze was calm, serene, welcoming.
"My Lord," he greeted, voice gruff. Hades nodded in response, his chin grazing across Nico's fringe. "I see you have brought a special passenger today."
Hades hummed. "My son needs his rest." His voice was carefully leveled when he replied, yet his hold tightened on Nico's shoulders and knees, a restrained touch. "I'm bringing him to where he can be safe."
Nico glanced up, searching his father's face, but the god was turned away from him, unrelenting gaze pinned on Charon's hooded figure. The only things Nico was able to catch were the clench of his jaw and the darkened shades under his eyes, hollowing his cheeks even more. Above his head, the Furies stationed themselves like hounds ready to pounce. The river raged on.
Charon knocked his oar against the hull, hat tipped down, bowing. "No payment required for a returning resider of the land."
Returning - as if this place, the Underworld, by the Styx, was the place that birthed Nico.
With that, Charon let them on board.
The ferry creaked under newfound weight. Styx blew wet, spine-chilling breaths at his cheeks. Nico twisted his fingers into his father's robe, hiding his face and curling up smaller in the bundle of underworld fabric. Hades shifted his embrace, maneuvering slowly with surprisingly scarce triggers to Nico's tattered body until Nico was less hanging off and more popped up against his chest. Alecto swept down to fix the cloak that had fallen down his shoulder. Her nails scraped Nico's chin by accident, her touch nowhere near warm as his mother's but just as careful.
Swiftly, the ferry sailed across the water like Hermes with his winged shoes. Murky fog wrapped itself around them, steamy and wet. Underneath them, seemingly in a good mood, the Styx sang tumultuously, loud and clear with each wave shattered by the hull, just an arm away. Nico's fingers twitched with the unfamiliar yet familiar impulse to throw himself over and touch it.
He definitely shouldn't. Styx would burn his body into river foam and send his soul dissolving into thin air. But the memories persisted nonetheless - not of Styx, but of those waterways he and Bianca had so much as brushed their fingertips like any other child would try to do the moment their parents turned away. It was weird, and maybe a little dangerous, to think of Styx as any other harmless rio in Venice. Yet, the call was almost the same, the same sense of belonging and reassurance one would only get after spending so much time together.
Home, the river seemed to be telling him, You're home.
Home, Nico heard. He didn't know whether it was his mind agreeing or the echoes of Styx's telepathy voice in his empty head.
Seventy years ago, Nico's home was by a canal, near a beautiful bridge in front that made Bianca a princess and kept the vigorous water just a railing away. That water had been patient enough to listen to his childish prattles about pirates and mythology when Bianca couldn't bring herself to, had held both their laughter and tears alike deep in its invisible currents that no eye could see.
Compared to the Styx's centuries - millennia - of age, Nico's seventy years seemed like a child's expedition that always wrapped up by dinner.
"Where are we going?" He asked as though he didn't know the answer.
"My palace. Where you can have your rest," Hades replied simply, finally, "You have done enough."
Something wet wormed his way up to Nico's eyes. Perhaps the soggy air was getting in his eyes somehow. Nico suddenly had the urge to bury his face into the ashy scent of his father's robe, bunched up right where his head rested, and cry. His shoulder shook along the wet breath he took. Hades patted him gently, rocking almost imperceptibly.
"I'm sorry," Nico wrenched out, hating how his voice shook too.
Hades only hummed. "For what?"
"For thinking I could make it."
A pause. The arms around Nico turned rigid.
It was no different from betrayal to Nico's ears. Happiness was far and few between for the children of Hades, and Nico had just smothered the precious seed his father had entrusted in his hands in the Underworld's desolate soil. Little Nico - never knew how to do it right.
Styx's song was deafening. Hades spoke up again, low and stifling. "I am upset that you are wound up in this state," he heaved a sigh - Nico hated that he was the reason - resumed his patting, "But you are never at fault. We fight for that in which we believe. You did what you felt right."
His cold fingertip swept under Nico's eye, and only then did he realize he was crying.
"You will be alright." His father said, firm and heavy like Atlas' sky, as though he would personally make sure of it.
Nico felt small again, a young bird with undergrown feathers nested under the wingspan of his parent, naive enough to be curious but still too scared to leave. He was tired. So tired. All godly riddles and cruel games, dragging a forty-foot tall statue across Atlantis, fighting for something he wasn't sure included him. They left his feathers torn apart, wings gone and he was falling, deep, deep into the endless darkness of Erebus.
He wished to go home. Home was where you were supposed to shed your burdens and feel breathable again. But his mother and his Bianca were long gone, and the Venice in his memories had vanished into the flow of time, leaving only katobleps hissing poisonous gas in his face.
Hazel was great. Nico would always love his sister, completely unconditionally. However, she didn't understand, nor he desired her to. Hazel was different, as how Pluto and Hades were the same yet differentiated. And that was okay. She deserved her own life. Nico would never live it, knowing he had roped her into his own dolled-up outdated image of a home.
Only Hades remained. An indelible remnant of the home Nico held dear. Still the same little Nico, who, whenever the world got too bright, would hug his father's leg and hide in his imposing, inky shadow, it seemed.
It was such a relief to know that his father was still here to shelter him.
Fiddling with the creases on his father's cloak, Nico listened to the humming waves, thoughts wandering. The trip was uneventful, perhaps as most souls would prefer. Briefly, Nico entertained the thought of something similar to a pirate boat trip, something six, seven, eight-year-old Nico would absolutely adore.
He almost missed the chattering. Somewhere in the far distance, dissolving into Styx's tunes, people were gathering.
"They are here to welcome you", Hades said loftily.
Through a layer of fog and poor eyesight, the first thing Nico could make out was the grey shades raising on the bank. It flickered and glowed, shimmering akin to the city's light on the other side of Long Island Sound. As they neared the shore and the lapping picked up again, the gray became people's figures, transparent and distorted, morphing in and out of shape. Nico blinked against the cloudy red of his eyes.
No, not people. Ghosts. So many ghosts, crowding the riverbank, wispy forms dissipating and then reforming again as they pushed through each other to get a front seat but not too close to the soul-sucking stream. Their cheer was louder than the obscenities they threw around.
Standing out the most, however, was a familiar figure. The goddess towered over her dead people, long black hair flowing weightlessly into a stream darker than Styx, a stark contrast to her billowing gown of faded flower fields. She shone like nothing else even amongst the limited beauts Nico had witnessed in the Underworld, a blossoming asphodel, tall and proud in the middle of this bleak and barren land of the dead, waiting for them like a light at the end of the tunnel.
It sent a surge of unknown warmness through Nico's chest.
The boat screeched to a halt. Hades resumed his pace.
"Take care, passengers," Charon said, not unkindly as they passed. Nico briefly wondered if the ferryman expanded his regards to the passing souls too.
"Lady Persephone," Megaera announced above him, extending her wings in a formal courtesy.
"Lord Hades has returned!" Alecto continued, and the ghostly crowd burst into a cacophony of voices, more joyful than not.
It got Nico to wonder what they were cheering for.
And then he remembered, to welcome you, his father had said.
Try as he may, Nico couldn't recall any time he had been so warmly and enthusiastically welcomed by so many people. His chest tightened at the newfound experience. Nico didn't even know the ghosts could be allowed off the Asphodel to come by the River Styx.
True to Hades' words, the dead seemed to enjoy watching him with excitement in their eyes. The jostling only escalated now that Hades had stepped off the ferry. Some are clapping, others waving their hands in a surprisingly friendly manner, their buoyancy out-of-tune with the Underworld's doom-and-gloom aesthetic and definitely eye-widening to Nico's poor rattled mind. He spotted Shakespeare's round face amongst the very first row, who, unlike Minos' grumpy scowl, was smiling kindly at him. The smile he repaid with was probably too awkward and slightly crooked due to split lips, but the screenwriter appeared pleased anyway.
Persephone was even more radiant up close, all flower crown and ruby jewelry. The Underworld's gloomy veil only served to accentuate her vigorous exuberance. Similar to the other residents of Hades, the goddess seemed to be in an exceptionally good mood today. Her multicolored eyes brimmed with rare enjoyment upon meeting Nico's gaze. Flower buds broke out under her heels as she approached him, a joyful smile on her rosy lips.
"You've returned, dear husband," She dropped a kiss on Hades' cheek and then ignored his response in favor of stroking a hand down the side of Nico's face, "Hello, little one."
Persephone beamed at him, thousands of colors dancing in her genuine eyes, making Nico a little hazy. Her caress was as soft as bougainvillea petals when they brushed his eyelids, leaving Nico's red-tinted vision much clearer and his muscles loosening up slightly. She smelled like lavender and cinnamon, and perhaps many more fragrances Nico failed to name.
For some reason, Nico suddenly had a recollection of a floral balcony that hung off the doorway with year-round flourishing plants that had sometimes gotten caught in his hair, leaving twigs and leaves in his crow's nest, whenever his parents carried him through. It made the rising smile nearly effortless. "Hi, milady."
"Always the polite one, aren't you? That's why you're my favorite."
She grinned - a cheeky stretch of her lips that made her more of a friend than a godly stepmother, who had probably forgotten their times of feud, which Hades definitely shouldn't know. Persephone had never been outright hostile to Nico nor had she been easygoing either, and Nico tried to maintain it that way by offering the same respect. As long as she wouldn't pull a Hera anytime soon, he had nothing to complain about.
He liked to think that they were on the same level of dedication to their Lord, whose upstairs family had given him a fair share of dramas to ruminate on for centuries to come. Now, however, as his stepmother patted his hair with the same adoration as that in Hazel's eyes, Nico saw the sincerity in her eyes, coupled with childish excitement that would have sent him laughing, if not for the possible cracked ribs.
Still, something must have leaked out because Persephone's grin grew wider and she spread her delicate fingers in the motion of an explosion. A 'puff' later, Nico felt tickles in his hair.
Noticing Nico's struggle to find out, Hades offered quietly, "She gave you a flower crown."
"Valerians, for the resilient one!" Persephone exclaimed proudly, brandishing her arms as if presenting a work of art.
The ghostly crowd rejoiced. Alecto clapped, her nails screeching against each other into high notes. Tisiphone cackled as if it was her day off work and there was a cake somewhere. Heat rushed to Nico's face, burning with emotions.
"T - Thank you, milady." He stuttered out lamely.
The unconcealed satisfaction on Persephone's youthfully beautiful face set off floating daydreams in Nico's restless mind.
"Everything would be alright, my dandelion," she said, not unkindly.
Nico chanced a glance at his father. Hades met his gaze, amusement clear in his ebony pupils at Persephone's antics. For the first time since Nico woke up, his lips curled up pleasantly and the blaze in his eyes quieted down to a homey fireplace, gloom rolling off him in waves.
He wished his father could smile like that more. He could afford to wear crowns of all flowers and plants once in every while.
"Now let's head back before your brother gets lonely," Persephone said and clapped her hands.
Hades nodded. With a single glance at the crowd, he got the dead to drift apart like the Red Sea upon Moses' praying, leaving them a clear passage through the Fields, towards the palace.
They kept walking, now with two walls of enthusiastic followers by their side. The valerians in Nico's hair were a constant touch of Persephone, who was never more than a step behind them. His father's cloak wrapped around him, not that different from a warm blanket in the middle of Erebus' winter night.
A howl rang through the air, and Nico lifted his gaze to see Cerberus' silhouette jumping up and down with the overflowing elation of any typical dog. Next to him, a figure bathing in vibrant red was waving at them with more fanfare than a typical Underworld deity. The palace loomed behind them, blank and huge as the night sky. Its unwelcomingly designed gates had opened wide for Nico every time he came seeking refuge. The gargoyles were a sinister choice but Nico had climbed up too many of them to feel anything but nostalgic.
"I hope he's not planning to let loose Cerberus anytime soon." Hades mumbled under his breath.
This time, Nico couldn't help but let out an airy laugh that quickly turned the irritation in Hades' eyes into amusement.
He felt so much lighter.
Sagging, Nico whispered into the folds of his father's black robe, "Thank you, dad," and then, "I love you, dad."
Hades' stride stuttered for a moment. Nico didn't blame him. It had been too long since the last time. Too much had happened. He didn't even have the squeaky voice in which he used to say those words anymore. And Nico would probably be embarrassed had he been a little more coherent.
Nevertheless, his father still looked at him with that same loving smile and whispered back to him a tender, cherishing "I love you too, son."
So, it was all worth it.
Home, they said.