When Worlds Collide

111) Master of the Angsty Inner Monologue

A/N: I am pleased and proud to announce that this is a long chapter... its angsty, but it's long

Time felt like it had stopped moving. It could have been a day or a month, it didn't matter.

As far as being a captive, it wasn't the worst Nico had experienced— but that didn't mean it was exactly fun. The constant bright lights of his containment case meant that sleep was only really possible when his body was truely too exhausted to stay awake, yet he was unable to move the entire time, so complete exhaustion was rare. The case would open and close depending on when the scientists and doctors at the facility needed more blood or tissue to work with, but there was no way to tell how often it happened. It was never consistent, and rarely the same people back to back.

ADHD didn't help. Being left with nothing to do would mean that time lost all meaning on a normal day, but add 17 restraints and a blinding light that never left and it became a personal hell.

The jar had given him a hatred of convinced spaces, but at least it was dark. After least back then he had the pomegranate seeds from Persephone's garden that have him a torturous escape. Now, in the bright white light of hell, he had nothing but his mind to fill the time, and suffice to say, his mind was no friend of his.

He had gotten better. After the war, he had taken time and became slightly more stable. Then he got adopted by Bruce and he could feel himself healing. He learned to let people in and care for people more openly. He learned to be more than just a child of Hades. He stopped fearing the fate of his brethren— the one that told of death and destruction, because he was more than just Hades' son. He was Bruce's son too.

He learned that he had a say in his own life. He chose  to fight for those who couldn't fight for themselves, not just because the gods demanded it of him, but because he wanted to. He had chosen to fight for his own reasons and for his people because it was finally his decision to make.

He wanted to help people, and so he did... and yet here he was: trapped by a monster of his own creation.

He couldn't find it in himself to hate Tara for what she did, which only made it worse. If he could blame it all on her, then that rage could have sustained him. It could have fueled him to find a way out and beat her, but he couldn't do it.

He knew what it was like to be manipulated into trusting a terrible person. He understood how one could be taken in my someone who knew more than them and exploited for the skills they had.

Tara was a victim of Slade, just like he had been for Minos, yet she never had to opportunities he had. Nico saw what his mentor really was chose to turn against Minos. He was able to realize that he had been used and abused by the ghost, but Tara never got that chance. She thought he was her savior, and that Nico was the villain. She thought that he  was the one who took away the man that protected and trained her.

To Tara, Nico was the villain of her story, and that thought consumed him.

In the void of the light, he thought of every way he could have changed the past; every way he could have chosen a different ending and maybe saved not only Tara but himself.

What if he didn't kill Slade? What if he had stopped when Bruce asked him to? What if he never put on the mask to begin with?

Would it be different? Would he have someone wound up in the same place? Would his friends still be in danger if he could have just said no when Bruce offered him a home— because that's what it always came back to.

The day he raised his hand and asked to be a DG, that  was the day his trajectory changed. He had been one of them— one of the many demigods who were just living their lives at camp, trying to survive and cope with all he had seen— and yet he chose to be more. He asked to leave camp and became the inciting incident that led him to where he was today.