Her Changing Perception

Summary: Nico tells Hazel his secret. She doesn't understand, but she's trying. And she's getting better.

A.N: This came about because I ended up thinking about what Hazel's feelings on homosexuality must be considering the fact that she was also raised in a different time. I came to this conclusion. And note: being homophobic or racist or any of the like doesn't make one a terrible person if they are willing to try to overcome their prejudices. I personally believe that the ability to overcome a prejudice that one once held is quite admirable. So no, if you're wondering this is not Hazel bashing. Not in the slightest.

Hazel never understood why her brother was so closed-off, so afraid to trust. The girl wanted to understand. She knew that he had lost his other sister, his real sister. She knew that he had lived in a time long since passed, just as she had. Hazel knew that he loved her, but she knew that love was a different breed of feeling entirely than trust. Whatever secret Nico held close to his heart, Hazel knew that he didn't trust her with, no matter how much he loved her.

When Hazel finds out, she still doesn't understand. Well, completely at least. Now she understands why Nico has always been so secretive, so paranoid. Hazel understands why her "introduction" of Nico to Percy had seemed more like navigating a landmine. And she understands, at least partially, why Nico is the way that he is.

What Hazel doesn't understand is how her brother could be that way. She can't even fathom that. The words of her pastor after the arrest of a man caught with another from when she was a girl echo in her mind.

Disgrace, disgusting, damned, perverted

ABOMINATION

It's wrong. It is despicable. She can't comprehend it. Her brother can't be that way. He just can't be, as she has heard the more modern term, gay. A man loves a woman and a woman loves a man and that is the way that it had been and it would always be. But her internal struggle shows on her face and Nico looks as though he is going to flee back into the shadows whence he came. The look reminds her of the one that so often graced the faces of children she had seen bullied for their race or whatever else in her childhood. It reminds her of the one that she was sure she wore when she was as well.

Her heart aches and her guilt and conflicted feelings course through her veins as she tells him, "I'm sorry. I don't understand. But I'm going to try to, because you're my brother."

She toys around with her next phrase for awhile before letting it fly from her lips.

"I love you," she says. He seems relieved, overjoyed even, and Hazel knows at that moment that Nico wouldn't have chosen this. He takes her into a deep embrace, a signal of affection that she become at least slightly accustomed to getting from him. In this moment, she knows that it isn't about sexual deviancy or sin or anything that she has been taught. It is just an integral part of Nico. And she will try her hardest to understand, no matter how difficult it is.

It is more than a year later when Hazel finally does. After Nico introduces a boy named Conner Stoll to her as his boyfriend. They bicker like an old married couple, they tease and joke and he makes Nico smile wider than she's ever seen him smile. And when Conner plays an incredibly unsuccessful prank and ends up with an enraged Reyna on his hands, the look that Nico sends him says everything there is to be said. It's not like the kisses that Nico presses softly to Hazel's own forehead, or the all engulfing hugs that Piper gives Leo when he's feeling down. It's more like the looks that Jason sends Piper when she's done something stupid or ridiculous, but he still finds incredibly endearing.

Love- and suddenly Hazel gets it. It's just Nico, and he's just the same as anyone else. He fell in love once, and he's fallen in love again. And from that point on, Hazel almost forgets why she didn't get it before.