robinnest | Children of Hades

[He rolls his eyes and smiles softly, nodding his head.]

Yeah. Really alike. Same eyes and nose...she kept her hair long and liked to wear it down. [Well, she liked to wear it down before anyway, and that's how he remembers her even if it was one of the things she changed in the end.]

It went almost to her waist. And she'd always wear this stupid floppy hat. [She was pretty, Nico remembers. Like their Mama.]

[ I wish I could have known her. I wish I’d known you both sooner. I wish, I wish, I wish. but wishes don’t always come true.

mal falls quiet and bends over her work. if she is to be interrupted, she raises a finger—“one minute”—and remains engrossed in her task. finally, she blows on the page and turns it around, sketchbook and all, for nico to see. ]

Like this?

[ there are two sketches on the page. one stretches across the top of the page. incomplete, only the rough outline finished, but the figure is undeniably nico as he lies on the grass, his weight on his elbows and his head tilted up.

the second, more detailed, is of a girl roughly a couple of years younger than him with his eyes and his nose and long dark hair underneath a floppy hat. the girl is smiling, imagined in the process of laughing at her own joke. ]

If I got a detail wrong, tell me. I’ll fix it.

[The thing about being from the thirties and then ending up at a camp for demigods without any parents present is, cameras aren't really a thing. It doesn't bother him most of the time. He doesn't need baby pictures of himself or images of his time at the casino. But it also means he doesn't have any pictures of Bianca. None to remember her by, none of them together. No lens caught the way she'd look at him, tired, exasperated, and endlessly fond.

Nico's eyes drink in the image and he feels a familiar prickle in his eyes at the same time his throat starts to ache. He blinks rapidly, unwilling to close his eyes and look away and fighting through the emotions that threaten to take him down and hold him under.

Eventually he remembers that Mal asked him a question and he bobs his head in a weak nod, eyes glued to the sketch.]

Y-yeah. No. It's right. [Then quietly.] She's perfect.

Here.

[ mal takes the paper and folds it back and forth a few times. she carefully tears it along the new crease until bianca's portrait is free.

the incomplete sketch she keeps; the portrait she hands to nico. her smile is as gentle as it is sad when she does. ]

Edited 2019-08-30 03:43 (UTC)

[Nico takes the paper from her, eyeing it still and holding it to his chest like it's something precious and fragile. After a moment he looks back up at Mal, clearing his throat and trying to regain the ground he's lost in his moment of weakness.]

Thank you. [Maybe he can go to the store sometime tomorrow and buy a frame for it. It would look nice on his nightstand, he thinks.]

Um, are you okay? [He might be the one getting emotional, but Mal is the one having to take all of this in at once.]

Edited 2019-08-30 04:28 (UTC)

[ only nico would tell mal about the loss of his sister ( their sister, a voice supplies, but in truth bianca doesn’t feel like hers; mal can’t feel her loss the way nico does ), and then want to know if mal is okay. ]

Yeah. Just…trying to get a handle on how much I missed.

[ five years ago, she was twelve when nico and bianca left the casino. twelve when bianca died. and mal had no idea. didn’t even know who her father really was then. and it’s so hard not to be angry at him.

he could have come for her. he could have hidden her somewhere else too. he never did. if mal hadn’t decided to leave — if she hadn’t used the spell she did — ]

Edited 2019-08-30 07:36 (UTC)

[He nods, understanding her need for time to take it all in. It's a lot for anyone. Unfortunately, he knows he can't stop there. There's still one more extremely important thing she needs to know.

Nico rises from the grass and after a moment of hesitation, resettles next to her, the drawing still held close to his chest.]

There's one last thing you need to know. And like everything else about being a demigod, it's a little confusing.

Edited 2019-08-30 08:02 (UTC)

[ mal lets out a disbelieving laugh. oh boy, another one! is her reflexive answer, though it’s a little too dickish to say considering what came before it. ]

Confusing isn’t the word I’d choose, [ she opts for instead, ] but sure. Confusing. What is it?

[Complicated, he thinks might have been better. Complicated and confusing.]

You've heard of the Roman gods, right? When the Romans conquered Greece, they took the Greek gods for their own. The same gods but given slightly—or in some cases very different personalities and traits. Zeus became Jupiter, Poseidon became Neptune, and Hades became Pluto. [There is a lot to say about the differences between Hades and Pluto who for all of their similarities, were regarded fairly differently. Pluto wasn't feared the same way. It helped that the Romans emphasized his aspect as the god of wealth.]

When that happened, the gods took on...a second persona, I guess, one that embodied the Roman beliefs more than the Greek ones. [Like the first time he pauses to see that Mal is following along.]

Please don't tell me my dad has a split personality.

[ she already has an evil mother, she can't deal with this too. ]

Well...[Sorry Mal.]

It's not exactly split. It's...just a different aspect of who he is. [But that's not the news.]

So the thing is, there's another camp just like this on the other side of the country. It's called Camp Jupiter and that's where the Roman demigods are. We didn't know about each other until about a year ago. The gods kept us apart because there'd been fighting between the two camps before. [That's one way of putting it, but Mal doesn't need the details right now. All she needs to know is what's important to her.]

Hades doesn't have any other children, but Pluto does. A daughter. Her name is Hazel. She's fourteen and lives in California. [There are some other key information points that he would like to share about, like when she was born and how they met but, he keeps quiet. Those weren't his stories to tell.]

[ mal breathes a sigh as she looks away from nico. leaving her pencil between the pages, she shuts her sketchbook. her eyes find the strawberry fields in the distance, the plants growing green and tangled.

another sister. suddenly going from having just her mother to a whole mess of family isn't the easiest thing to get a handle on. it's not bad and it's not good; only new. ]

I feel like I should find all of this weirder? [ she admits. ] But I'm also sitting in a summer camp for demigods masquerading as a strawberry farm with a brother I didn't even know I had until literally yesterday so…

[ her weirdness meter is officially and permanently jacked up.

a question suddenly hits her, mal wrinkling her nose as she faces nico. ]

Wait… Am I the oldest or the middle child?

[ you're the goddamn baby, mal. ]

[He snorts at the question and pauses, deciding on how he wants to answer.]

Technically speaking, you're the youngest. [You know, if non-years get to count. Which they don't.]

Although from a legal standpoint you're the oldest. Especially since me and Hazel haven't worked out the whole social security number thing. [He doesn't know what a social security number is, he just knows Chiron keeps mumbling about getting Nico one because he's Supposed To Have one in order to exist as a person in the mortal world.]

[ massively bold of you to assume the disney heroes who said "shit happens" to kids being born in prison bothered to get them registered. ]

Hold on. How am I the youngest? You said Hazel is fourteen.

[ she cannot be both the shortest and the youngest, she refuses. ]

Her circumstances are different than mine, but Hazel was born in the twenties. [He smirks, shrugging a not at all sincere "what can you do?" shrug.]

Is there a reason you're all old enough to be my grandparents?

[ says the girl with the immortal father and long-lived ( until sword-to-chest upset ) mother. ]

[Yes. It involves prophecies, truces that no one keeps, wars, and the doors of death going missing; none of which Nico feels like talking about. Instead he fixes Mal with a sly smile.]

Don't know, but you better stay off my lawn you darned whippersnapper.

[ mal smiles.

not as an expression of good humor at her brother's joke. ( he's not that funny. ) nor is it a "that's so corny" reflexive gesture accompanied by a shake of her head. happy smiles, genuinely so, are not as rare as they once were, but she still reserves them for only a handful. nico has somehow, quickly, made himself a part of that exclusive group. but in this instance, it's not happiness or a more sarcastic expression of it tilting up the corners of her mouth until both of her cheeks dimple.

no, this smile, mal learned it on the isle as a little girl, standing at her mother's side, looking up at maleficent's twisted face and trying to be just like her.

this is a smile the inhabitants of the isle, even knowing maleficent and her daughter were without magic, shrank away from.

this is a smile of pure malevolence.

still smiling, mal gets to her feet and starts toward to the arts & crafts center. she does not utter a word.

wherever in the camp she is, she knows she'll hear when he finds his bed and everything on it missing. ]

[Nico is in fact annoyed when he returns to the cabin later only to find his bed missing. Or, he is at first anyway. It doesn't take very long to figure it out because he'd been expecting the other shoe to drop since Mal gave him that look. Better Mal than a Hermes kid. Once he's assured himself that his immensely talented sister is behind the theft and no one else, he hums in consideration. He is feeling a little tired...

And so he lies down to take a nap.

On her bed. Two can play at this game, Mal.]

[ when mal returns to the cabin, a whole new set of paints under her sketchbook, she has almost forgotten about the prank. a benefit to being the one typically doing the pranking. mal could just kick back and calmly wait for the results.

that dynamic changed when she and jay became friends. being closest to the prince of thieves meant mal often found her things missing: a bracelet, her paint cans, on one memorable occasion a cup of the thick bilge that passed for coffee on the isle as she was drinking it. things she would never have tolerated from anyone else, jay got away with by virtue of being the only other person on that island mal could stand.

but there were still limits.

when she walked into her room to find jay lying on her bed, going through her things, mal did not hesitate. ]

Off.

[ nico has one (1) second. ]

Edited 2019-08-31 23:50 (UTC)

[Nico sits up with bleary eyes when Mal comes in which means he's already facing her when she notices where he is. It takes him a moment to remember why he's not in his own bed and when he does, he pauses for a second to consider. He could not listen and stay there and wait for her to inevitably spell him off, but it doesn't seem right to push her (even if she is the one who started it.) With a yawn, Nico rises from her bed, gives her a short wave, and then goes to curl up on the floor where his bed used to be.

He's too groggy to care and he's slept on much worse. Besides, he hasn't had a nap so pleasant in weeks. It's hard to feel anything but content knowing he's not sleeping alone in his cabin for once.]

[ he is sucking all the fun out of everything.

mal hops onto her bed and starts sorting through her newest acquisitions. despite herself, her eyes continue to slide over to where nico lies on the floor perfectly content and not all put out. she tries to ignore him, but there's a twist in her stomach that mal has learned to identify as guilt and finally she can't ignore it anymore.

wanting to be good sucks. ]

Move.

[ that's all the warning he gets before she grabs him by the shirt and bodily drags him out of the line of spellfire. straightening, she leafs through her spellbook before finding the spell she needs. a green portal opens on the floor, spitting out his bed exactly as it was.

slamming her book shut, she gives nico a look before turning on her heel and stalking back to her bed.

#siblings ]

[Nico lets out a soft sound of surprise when Mal grabs him and finishes scurrying out of the way once she's let go. Even after already having seen her use her magic, he can't help being a little awed by it again. Nico meets her look with a surprised one of his own that slips into a slight smile but she's already turned from him and he smiles to himself instead.

He plops himself back on top of the (incredibly comfortable) bed and lets out a relaxed sigh. After a longer moment, he rolls over to the side and pulls the sketch she'd done for him from his nightstand drawer. He doesn't have a frame, but that doesn't stop him from setting it on top of the space there. His fingers ghost over the picture for a moment and he forces himself to put it down so he doesn't ruin it.]

...Bianca would have liked you. [His eyes are on the ceiling as he settles himself back against his pillow.]

It would have been terrible. You'd have teamed up on me for sure.

That's how you grow. [ mal, your isle is showing. ] Anyway, we would have also been the first ones to defend you so it balances out.

[ she looks over at nico smugly. ]

I'm terrifying when I want to be.

[ any remotely concerning effect is promptly ruined when she wrinkles her nose at him with a laugh. unzipping her jacket, she lays it out beside her. a golden dragon pendant swings back and forth from the chain around her neck. she uncaps the tubes of oil paint one at a time to test them. ]

Hmm. It runs in the family. [She might have picked up on that with the whole grass withering anger at her situation. He's laying on his side facing her and her laugh prompts a grin out of him.]

Me too, in case you didn't realize yet. I'll defend you too.[After a long pause he adds] Parents might suck, but siblings are different. I've got your back.

[It's on the sappier side for him and most of his friends would be shocked to hear him so clearly state his loyalty and affection, but Hazel and Reyna wouldn't. Family is different. There's no shame in making his stance clear on that. There's no reason to hide his feelings from Mal and leave her to wonder. From the sounds of it, they've both dealt with enough doubt and Nico refuses to be a part of it.]

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