Prompt #017 - Brown

Prompt # 017 - Brown

Burial
Time Frame: Post-Titan’s Curse, Pre-Battle of the Labyrinth
Pairing: None
POV: Nico Di Angelo

**

“The bitterest tears shed over graves are for words left unsaid and deeds left undone.”

-Harriet Beecher Stowe

**

Nico stands and Nico stares.

His chest is heaving, his eyes stinging, his nails digging into his palms. He’s finally stopped running. Somewhere in the woods outside Camp Half-Blood, he is surrounded by trees and boulders and the occasional babble of the creek far off in the distance. He doesn’t know where he is, and he really doesn’t care. It doesn’t make much of a difference, now does it, he reasons.

Bianca is gone, how could anything else matter. Through the tears brimming in his eyes, the dark packed earth beneath him swims and swirls like a kaleidoscope of grief. His sister, his mother for all intents-and-purposes, his only attainable family left…now she was gone too.

Gone because of a stupid quest to find some stupid boy’s stupid girlfriend and some stupid goddess he hadn’t even believed in three weeks ago. None of it had been worth his sister’s life. Nothing could have been worth that.

How ironic, he thinks. A child of Hades having to embrace death so early in life.

He is ten years old and completely alone in the world.

He could go back to camp, but that idea is shot down as soon as it enters his mind. No way in Hades is Nico going back to that camp with that lying, murdering Percy Jackson. No where to go, no food, no money, and no knowledge of this new, advanced world he had been thrust into.

Bianca would have known what to do. She had always known. She was the leader. She would have taken care of him.

But she’s dead, he reminds himself. Dead and gone. She can’t help you now.

And that thought is what brings him to his knees on the forest floor, sobbing and clutching his hair, his arms, his clothes, grasping for something, something real to hold onto as the hot tears pour down his face and his breaths come short and quick. His exhaustion and worry and fear all come crashing down on him and he finally just lays on his back on the cool dirt and stares up at the sky through the trees, letting his sobs rip unhindered from his chest, his arms wrapped around himself, clutching his sleeves as if trying to keep himself from falling apart.

He is alone and scared and regardless of whatever powers or parents he might have, he is still only a child.

Finally, his tears slow and stop all together. His breathing evens until he is lying on the forest floor, feeling completely empty. The brown earth is cool and loose at the base of this tree, his abused hands finding relief as he lays them against it.

How peaceful it is here, he thinks. Bianca would have liked it here.

After a moment, he drags himself to his knees, brushing the bits of grass and earth clinging to his jacket off. He digs in his pocket a MythoMagic keychain Bianca had once bought him. He slowly drags himself to the tree and, using one of the sharp corners, slowly and painfully carves a small cross into the bark, and under it, the letters B. D. A.

In the loose dirt near the tree’s roots, he covers the little keychain with rich brown soil—the same color as his eyes—and presses, feeling the dirt compact around the little charm.

“I’ll bring you back,” Nico whispers. “Somehow. I promise.”

~fin~