#pluto simply looked the other way after she came back to life and thanatos was released. not their problem anymore!

[arch-dieangelo]

self indulgent self para under the cut. trigger warnings: canon typical mentions of death and familial death. takes place between the last olympian and the lost hero. non rp blogs please do not interact, thank you.

One month after the final battle against Kronos in New York City, things went to shit again.

Nico heard the Doors of Death weakening before he saw the proof of monsters coming back to life as soon as they were slain. When people died, there was a ringing in his ears—annoying, but easy enough to ignore for the most part. The dead defying the natural order was more a debilitating screech that went on for several minutes, millions of nails on chalkboards broadcasted through the strongest speakers in the world.

He collapsed to his knees in pain, clamping his hands over his ears like it could protect him from a noise only he could hear. His vision went spotty, and all he thought was that this would be a terrible way to die—doubled over on the ground without a tangible enemy or single physical wound.

A hand rested on his shoulder, and he felt the minute vibrations through the floor as someone walked around him. Whoever it was spoke to him, but he couldn’t hear them. Finally, the screeching faded to a low hum leaving his head aching. Nico’s hands fell and he blinked, vision returning.

Thalia stared down at him, concern written across her face. The Hunters would bring stray demigods now and then, since the promise the gods made, so her visits to camp were becoming frequent. She offered a hand, and he let her help him up.

“I thought you left a few hours ago,” he said, sounding distracted.

“Chiron needed help.” She let go once he was steady. “What was that?”

Nico didn’t hear her, his mind was busy darting around to string together explanations and possibilities. If the Doors were open, monsters and mortals wouldn't stay dead. Death himself had to be captured.

And if things won’t stay dead, who’s to say that those that have died a while ago, can’t get another chance at life?

“Hey. Earth to Nico.” Thalia lightly punched his arm, bringing him back to reality. Her voice lowered when she said, “Something’s happening. I don’t know what, but it’s definitely not good.”

Reluctantly, he nodded. “You felt it too. The Doors are open.” She raised an eyebrow, and immediately he was annoyed. “If you actually took me up on my Mythomagic offer…” he grumbled, but waved it off. “The Doors of Death and Thanatos. They keep dead things dead, and now the Doors are open and Death himself has disappeared.”

“And now the dead won’t stay dead,” she concluded.

He shifted his weight. “It’ll be gradual. I don’t think we’ll see the effects of this immediately, but it’ll be quick, and it won’t be pretty.”

Thalia’s expression darkened, and if Nico squinted and the lighting was just right, he could pretend that he was talking to Bianca. Even when she wasn’t here, she was here. The ghost of her lingered in every interaction he had, whatever it was. Some days, he wished she would stop haunting him, though there were no actual hauntings, just him yearning to see his sister when he most needed her. He was glad he felt her now, real or not, because it meant he could follow through with the plan that was brewing in his mind.

“No,” said Thalia. Sometimes, he thought she could see right through him. He had heard something about her having a sibling in the whispers of the dead, but nothing solid. Surely, she knew loss. She was there when Bianca died. She had to know.

He stared at her, and she looked older even though she’d be fifteen for the rest of her life. Maybe all Hunters are like that, wise beyond their years and shrouded in silver. Bianca should have been like that. She deserved the chance for that. He made up his mind. “I have to try.”

Thalia sighed. “Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.”

“That doesn’t leave me a lot of possibilities, does it?” He smiled.

She matched his expression and shook her head. “No. No it doesn’t, little cousin. I should be going. We’re already late, and I have to warn my Hunters of what’s to come. You owe me a burger next time we meet.”

“Of course,” he agreed. “And Thalia, scatter the dust after a kill. It’ll make reforming harder.”

The Underworld was more of a home than Camp Half-Blood. He felt comfortable entering the realm. Cerberus looked at him expectantly as spirits passed under the giant three-headed rottweiler.

“No treats right now, buddy, I’m sorry. I’ll bring you something next time,” he promised. Cerberus whined, and a couple of spirits narrowly avoided getting crushed under his paws. Nico waited for the dog to calm down, and slipped through.

He took a detour to his father’s palace, ignoring the skeletal guards posted at regular intervals as he got closer. The palace wasn’t of interest right now, anyway. Right before the looming gate, Persephone’s garden grew wildly. He knelt and dug his hands into the dirt, shoveling it out to create a messy, single square foot deep hole.

Halfheartedly, he muttered an apology to his step-mother for yet again ruining her pristine garden, but this was assuredly more important than pomegranate trees. Into the hole, he poured a five-hour energy drink and tossed a granola bar. He made sure to tuck the empty bottle and wrapper back into his pocket. There was no littering in the Underworld.

For once, he was nervous about doing this. It was second nature now, but the only reason he’s summoning Bianca instead of marching into Elysium and taking her away himself is because he stopped feeling her presence a few weeks ago. From the moment she died, he could sense her right under him every step he took. For the past few weeks, he’s been getting nothing. This is his final opportunity, a plea that his plan can still work, that Bianca can get her second chance.

He stood, brushed the dirt from his jeans, and began chanting. His voice became louder, more commanding. Heavy footsteps sounded from behind him, yet he continued, not allowing himself to waver or be distracted. He took her name with all the strength and focus he could muster, and was met with absolutely nothing. He cracked his eyes open. She hadn’t shown. Maybe he messed up.

“That’s enough.” Hades stood a few feet away, in his suit that shifted between perilous souls of the damned.

“Dad. I’m busy,” he complained. This should have worked. He checked that his preparations were correct. Hades stepped forward into his peripheral vision. He shook his head and squared his shoulders, determined to enter Elysium and get her out anyway. As he turned, Hades stopped him, standing in his path. “Let me go.”

“Nico,” he said with a sigh. It was the first time since the war that he’s seen him, and though he’s immortal, the god looks like he’s aged decades. “She has already been given a second chance.” Disappointment laced his voice uncharacteristically. His image flickered before solidifying again.

“No…” Even as he said that, Nico knew his father was right. Bianca had spoken about rebirth last he saw her. “She wouldn’t leave me.” He was the one who was supposed to give her the second chance at life, to bring her back. Hades expression remained impassive, though a shadow seemed to cross his face. “She wouldn’t leave me,” he repeated, weaker. Hades didn’t bother with an apology, despite the fact that he, of everyone, could have stopped it. Nico balled his fists in anger.

“There are bigger problems brewing,” Hades said. “Ones that even I have little control over. You must be understanding, son. Soon, I will not be able to help you. All you can do is try again.” With that, the god disappeared into a cloud of black smoke.

Nico let out an agonized scream and punched at the space where his father had been standing. He pulled at his hair until the physical pain overrode the emotional, and tried not to break down in his hands. Useless. He glared at the stupid hole he made and kicked at the excavated dirt.

The air above the hole shimmered, and he stopped, foot still raised and dirt sprinkling off his boot. Slowly, he set it back down. He leaned close, trying to make out what the blurry vision was. It never came into full focus, but he could make out the unmistakable black grass of the Fields of Asphodel and a gnarled poplar tree. He tried concentrating on the scene to get more information, and the image fizzled out. If it wasn’t him who made the vision appear, it was literal divine intervention. Whoever did this wanted him to go to the fields, and as much as he wanted to defy the wills of the gods, he knew this would be important to him. In a rush, he had the hole refilled, and he left the garden.

The Fields were sad. That’s the best way he could describe the landscape in front of him. Millions, billions, of half-formed shades milled about aimlessly, shoulder to shoulder. Nico felt suffocated as he walked into the meadow, the ghosts gaining a moment of physicality when they touched him. None of them retained their memories after having drank from the Lethe, mumbling incoherently and appearing disoriented.

In a way, Asphodel was worse than Punishment.

He pulled out his sword to keep the shades away from him and clear a path as he got closer to a collection of poplar trees that dotted the Fields. Something was pulling him there, someone. They had some sort of connection to Hades, or maybe a similar god. Thanatos? No. He had heard about the Roman aspects of the gods before…

Finally, there was a small clearing where some ghosts stayed subconsciously away from. A girl that looked more living than dead sat with her back against a tree. He tilted his head, keeping a distance from her.

Pluto. A daughter of Pluto. His half-sister.

And she shouldn’t be here. She had been offered Elysium and turned it down. No one in their right senses chooses the Fields of Asphodel over an eternity celebrating in Elysium. She can’t spend the rest of her death in apathetic misery, especially not when she remembers her old life, even when she shouldn’t.

Especially not if he can regain some family.

There was a reason why he was sent here. Not to resurrect Bianca, she had taken a different route, but her. This girl, his other sister, he can bring back.

He stepped forward, forcing confidence into his stride as he approached her. Nico locked eyes with her.

“You’re different,” he said, a chill running down his spine. “A child of Pluto,” not Hades. “You remember your past.”

“Yes.” The girl looked up at him with a sort of understanding. “And you’re alive.”

He studied her for a long moment, processing that she was real, that this interaction was real. “I’m Nico di Angelo,” he said finally. “I came looking for my sister. Death has gone missing, so I thought…I thought I could bring her back and no one would notice.” Thinking of the plan and enacting it were two different things. On the surface level it was easy, find Bianca and then leave. Life–or Death, he supposes–had a different plan.

“Back to life?” she asked. “Is that possible?”

She sounded so much like Bianca, that Nico considered leaving before his heart broke anymore, but he sighed. “It should have been. She chose to be reborn into a new life. I’m too late.”

“I’m sorry.”

The apology he should have gotten from Hades was said by a sister he didn’t know existed until ten minutes ago. He held out his hand for her to take. “You’re my sister too. You deserve another chance. Come with me.”

“You don’t even know my name,” she said, but took his hand regardless.

He pulled her up, her ghostly form solidifying as they touched. “I’d like to learn.”

“Hazel Levesque.”

Bianca was reborn into another life, one that Nico would never know of. It was better that way. He couldn’t keep holding onto the past.

He walked with Hazel out of the Fields, not letting go of her hand in fear of losing her too. His other hand held his sword in front of them, and he saw Hazel grimace in its purple light. She would have to learn a lot, but the children of Hades, Pluto, whatever, were some of the strongest. He had full faith that she would do fine, better than him even. He just needed to figure out where to take her. Camp Half-Blood was out of the question, she was Roman, it simply wouldn’t work.

This sister, he would keep safe. He wouldn’t let the same fate befall her, he simply couldn’t. Her life wouldn’t end as unfairly as it did the first time. Hazel Levesque would not die. His sister would not die. Not again.

When he pulled Hazel out of the Doors, it took her a few minutes to come back into her physical body. She took it well, examining that she was all there and she was real.

She was real.

She grinned hugely at him, and he smiled back, cheeks hurting.

“I’m alive,” Hazel said, with the fascination only someone who had been dead for nearly a century could have.

Nico nodded. “How does it feel?”

She didn’t answer him, and instead inched closer, arms open. When he didn’t back off, she enveloped him in a bone crushing hug, the type he hadn’t gotten since Bianca left for her quest and never came back. He slowly wrapped his own arms around her, returning it.

He laughed. “Must be a little overwhelming, right, Bian- Hazel?”

Hazel untangled herself from him, and he swore he saw her step over a few coin sized gems as she backed up. A question for another time.

“Hazel,” he tried again, making sure he said the right name. “You must be hungry. Let’s get something to eat. Future food is wild. You’re going to love it.”

He had a sister.

#PARA. #ooc notes on this because im actually terrible at these things (boo tomato tomato tomato): #nico has difficulty keeping the separation between his sisters. its stupid its selfish its hurtful to both of them. he knows this #he doesn't fully get over what happened to bi until probably mid-hoo #his intentions in resurrecting were purely selfish. he's a kid. he wanted some sort of family after everyone else abandoned him #and bi was the only one he had for the longest time #he learns he grows he figures it out he apologizes he heals #and well eventually hl's resurrection was also written by fate/planned by others anyway. #pluto simply looked the other way after she came back to life and thanatos was released. not their problem anymore! #we love u hl <3 best ever im so serious

[seavoice]

rewind

hey ever write something super weird that only you can understand (until you write the actual story that goes with it?) and impulse post it? hmm yeah :( but its ms levesque so 💖🥰 as usual link to ao3 in the title!

Death was cold, but so was winter, and that was the reason Hazel didn’t realise she was being trailed by it until it was too late. Not that it would have made much difference to her, really. Being as old as she was, she had been waiting for this day for quite some time now. And well. It was December anyway, a dead month if there ever was.

Still, if nothing else, Hazel should have been alert enough to realise who the footsteps belonged to before she looked up from her sketch, unprepared and caught off guard. She put her pencil down and rose to her feet. If she was to die today, clad in pyjamas and completely weaponless, she would do it on her feet at least.

Death looked as beautiful as ever.

Death also seemed content in coming through the door. For months after the quest to Alaska, hell, for years after the Prophecy of the Seven, Hazel had imagined this moment taking place in a multitude of ways, a hundred different scenarios. Thanatos — or maybe even Letus, his Roman form — would sweep in with the evening shadows, melted into the darkest shade of the largest trees. Descend from the heavens with his multicoloured wings. Just appear before Hazel one fine night on the Argo II, come to take her back to the rightful place in the fields of Asphodel, an eternity of forgetfulness. Maybe even done right this time.

Then she had outgrown the fear of her teenage years, outlived her first life by years and then by decades, and the scenarios grew kinder. More softer around the edges — death would come, but it came to those her age anyway. It came with heart disease and cancer and kidney failure, rather than bloodthirsty monsters, and it came at the end of a long well lived life. Maybe, she even dared to hope, enough time had passed that she would see the rolling green of Elysium instead of the colourless poplars.

But in no scenario did Death simply twist the doorknob to her house in New Rome and walk in with his kind eyes and grim brow.

In every scenario though, Hazel knew what would happen next, and she jutted her chin out defiantly, trying to ignore the burning in her eyes. She would die on her feet, and she would die with her dignity.

“Come for me at last?” Hazel tried to keep her voice as even as she could, but her hands shook despite her best effort to the contrary. “And over here I’d been thinking you’d forgotten me.”

Thanatos’s smile was cold, but not unkind. “That would have been to your credit, Ms. Levesque.”

It wasn’t a joke, but Thanatos’s eyes seemed to soften with his words.

“Many escape death,” he said. He didn’t say anything else, didn’t phrase it as a question, but it was clear that he expected Hazel to have something to say to that.

Hazel didn’t have anything to say to that.

Thanatos took the hint. He repeated, “Many escape death. But no one as well as you. I didn’t think my attention would have done any great favours for your case.”

Hazel hadn’t known that dying took so much time now. Thanatos had never been the type to loiter. There had been no kindly, infuriatingly pensive death gods at the site of her first death. Only her mother, pressed into Hazel, face in her hair and body wracking with suppressed sobs. She still felt the warmth of her mother’s tears, the broken echo of her apologies.

Decades of living a full life, a full second life, and the jagged edges of the first still managed to cut her up. Centuries apart now, and Hazel was older than Marie Levesque ever got to be, and she still missed her mother.

“But you’re here to take me now,” Hazel said. “I finally caught your attention.”

“I never thought you would have regrets,” Thanatos said. “Not after the life you’ve led. Eighty years is far more than most people get. Decades unimaginable to demigods, let alone children of the Big Three. You cannot tell me you have regrets?”

“No regrets,” Hazel agreed. Her hair was grey and she found new smile wrinkles in the mirror every day. She hobbled to her friends’ graves when she could, laid flowers on the family she had found, and then lost. Nico’s grave never went a month without fresh lilies, despite her brother being dead for over ten years now. She had lived long enough to hear her joints creak and her gait wobble. Long enough that her life had meant more than waiting for a monster to do her in. Long enough that it had been more living than surviving. “At least, not...many.”

Thanatos inclined his head. “I have heard that’s the best mortals can hope for.”

Greeted by death as a friend . Hazel guessed he had a point. Hazel might have been interrupted mid-sketch, and she would never get to say goodbye to the sweet Ceres kid who had inherited Arion from her. She would not get to visit her brother’s grave one last time or stroke her horse’s luscious mane and offer a goodbye — but a death in old age, a death heralded by the god of it himself...not many were as lucky as her.

A lump rose in her throat. No one had been as lucky as her.

In death at least, she would be reunited with her friends. Roman emperors, car crashes, heart attacks, vengeful monsters, cancers...it had picked them off one by one until it was just Hazel alone.

She nodded, tears welling up in her eyes despite her best efforts to keep them at bay. “I’m not — I don’t regret it. I’m ready. I’ve...I’ve lived a good life. Lives. I got more chances than I thought I would, Even...even unfairly , you can say.”

Thanatos didn’t say anything. He just met her eyes, expression unreadable. “”Fair” is the most useless word in matters of life and death, I’m afraid.” He raised his hand. “But regardless. We have spent too much time talking, Ms. Levesque. Far more than I ever spend with the souls I collect.”

Hazel nodded. “I’m ready.” She knew it was useless -- it didn’t matter to Thanatos whether she was ready or not. But it steeled her own bones.

She could feel his coldness seep into her own limbs, at once comforting and frightening. His hold was so icy it burned . She watched Thanatos’s form flicker like a dying candle, and with it, her own soul.

Hazel Levesque would die for the second time, face judgement for the second time, enter her father’s kingdom for the second time. She found herself floating away from consciousness and dying, dying, dying , closing her eyes—

//

She opened her eyes on a white sand bank. Beyond her stretched green fields. Elysium.

Elysium. Had she been judged? She couldn’t recall who her judges had been, what their verdict was. Elysium? You’d think she would remember getting sent to eternal paradise.

And then she saw the river separating her from the green fields of the blest. The Styx cut an angry line before Hazel, bubbling with broken oaths and shattered promises and discarded dreams.

She was on the other side. Not in the Elysian Fields like she had thought but instead…

She turned behind in recognition and sure enough, millions of poplars and grey shades dotted the scenery. The endless Fields of Asphodel, as dreary and terrifying as she remembered it.

Her heart sank. Asphodel. After it all. Asphodel? A second chance squandered and she couldn’t even remember the verdict. She raised a hand to her aching head, a hand that was unwrinkled and soft, and — unmistakably a thirteen year old’s .

Wait.

A shadow crossed her periphery. Hazel lifted her eyes to a flash of black iron, a Stygian sword raised as a torch. A young boy no older than thirteen was bundled up in a black overcoat several sizes too big for him, dark hair unbrushed and falling into his eyes.

Hazel was looking at her dead brother, a brother who looked several decades younger than when she’d last seen him, when she’d pressed a kiss to his wrinkled cheek in the New York hospital room.

Nico looked very much not old and very much not dead and very much like he didn’t know her yet. Not properly.

“You’re different,” he said, and had he ever sounded so young? His voice was cracking, and was that a zit above his right eyebrow? “A child of Pluto. You remember your past.”

“You’re alive,” Hazel said. Her voice sounded ragged even to her own ears. She longed to reach out and cup his cheek, hug him so hard that she would never let go. She had missed him so much.

But Nico didn’t seem to even know her.

“I’m Nico di Angelo,” he said, young in a way she didn’t remember. But those words she did remember, as if it were yesterday when she had heard them and not more than sixty years ago. Her heart sank further. “I came looking for my sister. Death has gone missing, so I thought…I thought I could bring her back and no one would notice.”

#hazel levesque #nico di angelo #thanatos pjo #heroes of olympus #pjo #hoo #voop fic #rrverse