I couldn't stop this from happening once I read House of Hades...this obviously take place at the end of Titan's Curse...

WARNINGS: HOH spoiler alert :)

In that moment, Nico is certain he hates him. Standing there with a grey streak in his jet black hair and his stupidly apologetic sea green eyes – he's standing there alive and Bianca isn't and all Nico has the time to think about is a single question, over and over and he just wants to know whywhywhywhyWHY?

Bianca's dead, and Percy Jackson, for all he had vowed to protect his sister, is still alive. Nico doesn't think he's ever wanted anyone dead before, but looking at Jackson- well, there's a first time for everything, isn't there?

(And Bianca would hit him for that thought, but she isn't there, and he can think whatever he wants.)

He wants Jackson deaddeadDEAD- and then there are skeletons rushing for them, and for the first time, the image of dead Percy flashes into his mind. Lying askew on the grounds of Camp Half-Blood, no more light in his eyes, never looking at anyone with eyes the colour of the ocean anymore, never looking at Nico again – and suddenly his anger at Percy over Bianca's death is nothing compared to what he feels in that moment.

Percy is telling him to runrunRUN and save himself, but that isn't something that Nico can do. He can't leave Percy to face the skeletons alone, not when there's some unknown part of him that's telling him that he's the only person still alive who can defeat them.

He has no clue how he does it – if you asked him later, he would just look at you blankly – but in that moment, his rage is extreme, the same one that prompts Zeus' torrential rains and Poseidon's great tsunamis and even Hades' rages that shake the Underworld. In that single moment, seeing Percy threatened right in front of his eyes, he's nothing more than a blazing wall of fury, and he just wants the skeletons gone.

And suddenly, they are. He has no idea how he did, but there's a gash in the middle of the floor, and skeletons are gone. (Just like Hades made off with Persephone in the old days, he mind whispers, but he ignores it. His parentage is a matter for later.)

There's a small obsidian statue in Percy's hand, the statue that his sister had given her life for. He doesn't truly want Percy Jackson dead, the skeletons have proved that- but Camp Half-Blood isn't the place for him either. Not when every stone reminds him of his sister's death – of Percy's failure to protect her, of the fact that Nico wasn't even there when she died (and maybe he could have saved her if he had been). The camp is his every memory of Bianca's last days, and he needs to leave.

Besides, he has his own past to look into. There are things he has to do that have nothing to do with Percy Jackson and his stupid eyes.

(And maybe he's running away from his own feelings, for the potential for feelings that he knows he has, but he refuses to think about that.)

He has a world he still needs to explore, and he cannot afford to take a chance and look back at the Son of Posiedon before he does that.

So, this is my first time writing for this fandom...I'd love it if you guys could drop a note on your way out, I'd love to know what you thought of it and how my characterisation was. I hope you enjoyed! :)