Shattered

Nico

Dreaming had been a strange experience for Nico ever since he and Bianca were enrolled at Westover. Many were the symbolic in nature, offering clues as to the current state of the world of gods, some were him watching events happening somewhere else in the world, and some were manifestations of his deepest desires that he thought would never come true in the waking world. All of them left him exhausted once he awoke, but the latter seemed to take the most out of him.

But there was another type of dream he had that became more and more frequent with each passing day; memories of his life before the Lotus. Those kinds of dreams were bittersweet. They allowed him to get a glimpse of his life before, to fill in some gaps as to why he liked certain things and avoided others, they gave him more time with his mother and sister, but in turn that made him feel like he was missing his family more with each passing day.

But right now, Nico was wishing that this one memory would have stayed hidden.

He was walking alongside the canals with his mother and Bianca, all three of them wearing clothing that they only wore for special occasions. The shoes he wore pinched his toes to the point that he was in tears, so his mother picked him up and kissed his forehead, calming him down to some degree.

"There, there little one," his mother whispered in his ear, while stroking the back of his head. "You mustn't cry in front of your grandparents. You have to make a good first impression."

He nodded against the crook of her neck and remembered what his father had told him, that Nico was a man and that it was his job to be strong for mother and Bianca when father wasn't around. Nico didn't understand why as his mother always seemed so strong, but for some reason his mother looked the same way Bianca did when there was a bug in their room. He didn't like seeing Bianca like that, so he certainly didn't like seeing his mother like that.

"I'll walk mama," Nico sniffled in her ear. His mother kissed him once more and set him back down, this time doing his best to ignore the pain in his feet. He felt so proud of himself when he looked up to see mother smiling back at him, and he was sure that his father and...

The dream skipped ahead as he wracked his brain for a name, a face, or any clue of the identity of the person who he felt would be proud of him. It wasn't Bianca, because she had been right there, and it made little sense for him to include his mother, but his younger self had clearly held someone at the same level of his mother and father.

Now they were standing on the stoop a very large stone building with doors blacker than his father's suits. Carved in the stone above the doors, were dozens of angels, all surrounding one with a flaming sword fighting a giant dragon. The dragon's body was carved into the dark wood of the door and was surrounded by numerous figures of skeletons and demons laughing and dancing in a raging inferno. There was a laughing skeleton staring at him that was scary and unlike the nice ones his father called to sometimes play with him; this one made him take a step back and grab his mother's skirt.

For her protection, of course.

"Come here Nico," his mother sighed. "We need to fix your hair." She crouched down and licked the palm of her hand before running her hand through his hair. Nico fussed and whined as the woman tried to flatten his wild hair, but the part of him that knew this was a dream wished that he could experience his mother's grooming just once more. "There!" his mother smiled, standing back up to assess her work. "Your grandfather will think you are a perfect little soldier."

Grandparents were a foreign concept to Nico. Before that morning he had never even known he had grandparents and he was positive he had never met them and Bianca thought along the same lines. Some of the kids he played with in the parks were brought there by their grandparents, old people with wrinkly faces and kind eyes, but he and Bianca had mother and-