Ghost King Meets Batman

The Consultant

[Edited July 17, 2022]

[I found the post that inspired me to have Nico be a talented artist! Don't think I won't be using it for angst later.]

TW: Death, mention of suicide, mention of murder, derealization.

After Nico had agreed to start the adoption process it was past time to start lunch, apparently, he'd slept away the better part of a day.

"Nico, I was wondering, are you able to tell how people died?" Bruce asked around a piece of steak. Alfred would have tutted in fatherly displeasure if he had seen him.

Nico considered his answer carefully, "It's not one of my powers, necessarily, but I have found that I am pretty good at figuring it out."

"What do you mean by that? How have you found that out? Have you been practicing?" Jason spoke up.

"I guess you could say that. Sometimes I would go into the DOA lobby and try to guess how people died. I guess you could call that practicing." Nico shrugged and cut himself off a bite of steak-- missing the pointed looks that were passed around.

"Dead on arrival lobby?" Damian frowned.

"Yeah," Nico swallowed before the steak was quite chewed enough and he pulled a face, "It's a recording studio in Hollywood. It's really a secret entrance to the Underworld."

"There are secret entrances to the Underworld? Isn't that... a bad thing?" The son of Hades frowned. They should know that there are secret entrances by now. He could have sworn that he had mentioned it before.

"Yes? They're not exactly secret. Orpheus used one, Psyche, Thanatos has his own, and there were many more when the Labyrinth still existed. As for your concern about the security-- my father isn't exactly worried about people trying to get into the Underworld. Trust me, it is much harder to leave." The room became silent and Nico knew that he had made them uncomfortable. He decided to continue eating as though nothing was amiss so that they would go about their business.

"I want to see how good you are identifying the cause of death. I want to test you on a couple of pictures after dinner if you wouldn't mind." Nico didn't mind. Thankfully, the topic of discussion strayed away from him for the rest of the meal. It wasn't that he didn't like their curiosity or the feeling that they genuinely cared about his life, it was more that anything he told them made them uncomfortable or could put them in more danger. Not many sane people invited death into their homes.

After dinner, Bruce led the procession of curious boys down to the Batcave. He took a couple of minutes to pull up some pictures on the screen-- each one of a crime scene-- that contained a dead body as the centerpiece. There were a few gory ones, a few open and shut causes of death, and a few eerily clean scenes as well. There were also a few where you could very clearly tell that they came from Gotham and had run into the wrong Villain at the wrong time. More than one had joker smiles cut into their faces.

"So, tell me-- step by step-- what you look at when you try and see the cause of death." Bruce prompted, waving at the pictures on the screen.

"Can we focus on them one at a time? I need to see a bigger picture. This is just... overwhelming" Nico waved at the screen of pictures. His eyes couldn't decide where to look first. The first picture in the lineup shifted to take up most of the screen. It was a middle-aged woman, probably mid-'30s to 40, would be his guess. Her body lay in the middle of an office cubicle. Her skin was pale but her body wasn't stiff yet. She hadn't been dead for long, but her blood had either receded below the skin or drained out.

"Do you want me to solve who killed her or how she was killed?" Nico doubted that there was enough evidence in this one photo to determine who had killed her, but he would have tried if Bruce asked.