Don't Fear the Reaper

91) Trust the Process...

A/N: I've been writing/editing such long chapters recently that I was mentally reminding myself to disclose that this was a short chapter as I was waiting for it to paste... it's 2k words... my general goal is 1500... I have fucked my mental barometer

Bruce had been very purposefully minding his own business. The walls for the apartment were thin, so he just hummed anything and everything he could think of to fill up his mind to ensure that he didn't accidentally eves drop. He wanted Nico to have time with his Aunt without fear of being over heard, so even when he heard his ward raise his voice a bit, he turned it out.

And then he noticed the pictures on the wall.

He could swear that he didn't meant to snoop—he was doing everything in his power not to—but the sight of Nico with a horde of other teens struck him with a force that it was almost like gravity. He was pulled forward by the picture until all the existed was what lay before him—the rest of the world silenced and gone.

Nico, while looking malnourished and vaguely like death, looked happy. A girl with coily, cinnamon brown hair was hugging him while everyone else was just generally smiling at the camera, but Nico was looking at her with a small but genuine smile. His eyes—his brown eyes—had a glimmer of something Bruce hadn't seen in the boy before, and Bruce instantly knew who the girl was.

His sister.

Nico had never really told Bruce anything about the girl, other than how she died, but he still had this feeling in his chest that he was right.

This version of Nico... it wasn't one he knew. This Nico had suffered, but he had his arm wrapped around his little sister and... this Nico looked at her like he thought everything would be alright.

"They were called the 7 heroes of Prophecy," Sally said, thoroughly scaring Bruce and making him whip around, instantly beginning to apologize, but the woman's eyes were locked on the photo. "I never met most of them—they died before Percy came home—but he talks about them a lot. He didn't know them for very long but... half-bloods tend to form connections fast—a byproduct of their short life expectancies, I'd guess."

"It must have been hard, raising Percy, knowing the danger he would face," Bruce said quietly, just watching the woman.

Sally tore her eyes from the photo, meeting Bruce's gaze. "I had no idea what he would face." Her voice was stern and steady, but there was a tone of vulnerability in it. "I thought I knew, but mortals can't even begin to understand the mythological. Even now, after 8 years of my son knowing he's a demigod, I can't fully comprehend it. He tells me all these things—the quests, the monsters, what he's survived—and I am at a loss."

Bruce nodded slowly. "I can't imagine."

"As a parent, you want to protect your children. You want to keep them safe and make sure that nothing happens to them..." Sally's eyes were both full of pain and stone cold. "And then the bad things happen, and you are utterly unable to do a single thing about it. My son was nearly killed by a friend when he was 12. He was presumed dead at 14—crashed his own funeral and everything. He led a war at 16. He was kidnapped by a goddess that same year before being thrown into another prophecy that not only put him through ring after ring of his own personal hell, but through actual hell. He then fought in another war."

"Why are you telling me this?" Bruce asked, not rudely, but with a clear level of confusion. Sally, while seeming absolutely wonderful, didn't seem like the kind of person to let others peer into her own personal pain. 

Sally's gaze hardened on his. "My son has suffered in ways you couldn't even begin to manage. He has fought and killed and survived things that neither of us could ever dream to understand... but Nico... Nico suffered more." She took a step closer to him, looking up at him with such an intense aura of motherly protection that Bruce felt like she was towering over him. "That boy out there has suffered more than you can even begin to conceptualize. He is stronger than you can imagine, and he deserves to be with people who love him and will do everything in their power to protect him—even in the face of knowing that nothing they do will ever be enough to actually keep him safe. I don't know the exact details of how you met him, but that kid is terrified. He has suffered and survived unimaginable things, and yet today, he flinched away from me. That's not the Nico I know. The Nico I know is brave and strategic and strong-"