My Boyfriend is a Dead Roman Hero | Jason Grace

I Get Haunted

Nico has more reason than most to resent the gods.

The last four years of his life have been spent in darkness. Through learning his place as a demigod, discovering his powers, figuring out how to go on when the only person who ever loved him went and got herself killed, Nico has been alone.

He likes it better that way. The dead tend to be better company anyway for a son of Hades. Nico likes their bluntness. Since their lives are over already, ghosts have no reason to plot and scheme. They have no reason to lie to him. Well, with an exception for Minos. Gods, Nico does not miss that creep.

The point is, the Olympians made it very clear early on that Nico would not be living a happy life. And, they've certainly delivered on that promise. He's been beaten and bruised. He's been kidnapped. When he was ten, he spent six months living on the streets with nothing but a jacket and whatever got tossed into the dumpster behind the McDonalds on Broadway. And on top of everything, along with the hundreds of monsters he's had to fight off because of his parentage, Nico gets to be a freak too.

Part of him wants to blame Percy Jackson.

Maybe if the son of Poseidon had never shown up with Grover to take Nico and Bianca from that school, everything would have turned out normally. Maybe Bianca would be around. Maybe she and Nico would have met their father together, and he would have been proud to have such a strong and capable heir like her. Maybe Nico would have eventually gotten a girlfriend, and none of this sinful perversion would have ever infected his mind. Maybe he would have gotten the chance to be happy.

Or maybe Kronos would have gotten them, and Nico would be dead. Maybe that would be better.

Nico almost pinches himself. The impulse to do so surprises a tiny laugh out of him. A small one. One quiet enough that he easily passes it off as him just clearing his throat when Grace looks over in interest from the helm.

Juliette made it a habit soon after Manhattan to give him little pinches whenever Nico says things like that out loud. He never realized how much her "psychological conditioning" rubbed off on him. He'd better keep that to himself.

The thought of his friend helps to pull Nico gently out of his spiraling thoughts. If there's anything Nico could ever bring himself to thank the gods for, it's probably her. Her and Hazel. They're really the only people he's still living for. The only people he cares about anymore. The only people who have earned it.

Meeting Juliette Aster the first time was like running into someone from a past life. Never before had Nico been able to connect with someone so easily. Even when life was happier, Nico was never good at making friends. But, by the end of his first night at Camp Halfblood, they were finishing each other's sentences. By the end of his first week, they'd spent just about every minute together since his arrival, and Nico had told her things he'd never shared with anyone.

But, then Percy got back. And Bianca didn't. And Nico's world fell apart.

His second meeting with Juliette went very differently. They were both in states of panic, both searching frantically through monster infested territory to find Percy Jackson. It had been six months since Nico had spoken to someone his own age, and, if he was being honest, he hadn't even thought about Juliette since the day his life crumbled. Seeing her round that corner, watching her green eyes flip from surprise to relief to excitement even while held at the throat by his sword...It had been overwhelming. If they weren't both on the same mission, if she hadn't warned him about Minos, Nico would have left her right there in the Labyrinth.

But, he didn't. He knew he couldn't. Once upon a time, Juliette had cared about him, and Maria di Angelo raised a gentleman. Leaving the girl to die down there wasn't an option, so he chose the next best strategy to keep her at arms length. He took her to the Underworld.