Death's Reason

Chapter 20

AN: Wow I'm so glad so many people love this fic, it makes me so happy!

I have a couple ideas I hope you all will like. One is more POV's, especially now that we're going into the Heroes of Olympus series. Like? Dislike? Lemme know.
And another: I've had the ending to this planned for awhile now and I'm still going to fulfill that ending. But after this story is "finished", I'm going to post another that will be if the ending is different, if Nico wasn't so hellbent on saying no to Hades's offer to godship. Anyone interested?

So like...this is the start to Arch 2, if you can call it that? Heroes of Olympus time

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The first time around, Nico didn't get to fully know how the seven were brought together, how they were brought to the camps, what made them into the heroes he fought side-by-side with. He didn't know them during the good days. He didn't get to see them happy, healthy, be themselves. So in a time he originally spent looking for Percy, he now spent watching the soon-to-be "seven demigods of the prophecy".

When Annabeth had come to him with the news of Percy's disappearance, distraught and demanding, all he could see in her persistent eyes was Aila staring back at him.

"Is he okay?" she had asked. "Just let me know if he's okay."

He could stare into those gray eyes and see she was willing to go to Tartarus for Percy before she ever would. If her children were living- (Aila's, not hers. He needed to keep in mind that Annabeth Chase wasn't his Lady Aila, or not anymore. She wasn't married. She didn't have children. He hadn't seen her body during birth in a way he never should have)

"You know I can't say anything," he told her. "But his soul isn't in my father's kingdom."

And that had been enough for her to search the ends of the earth, to send others to search more. It had been enough to keep him away in fear of being questioned some more. But he couldn't stay away for good, until he was needed again. Because for the first time in years, he was curious. He wanted to keep an eye on the seven before they were labeled as such.

(Or he just wanted to see them happy incase he fucked them all over again)

He found himself shadow traveling to Coach Hedge as soon as he found out where the satyr was. Just as expected, Hedge was leaning on his baseball bat and yelling at one kid or another. They were on a skywalk, near the building, over the Grand Canyon.

As soon as Nico made sense of where he was, he backed into the wall and kept a hand on his sword. Staring into the canyon felt too much like staring into Tartarus.

Coach Hedge sniffed the air before looking back at him. "Were you planning on announcing yourself, cupcake?"

Nico felt his lip twitch at the nickname and the memory of being able to hold the coach's child before the small family perished. "I was just watching. Heard what you sent camp. Wanted to see for myself."

Coach Hedge gestured with his baseball bat. "Those two are the ones. Not sure bout their parents, but they're for sure halfbloods."

Nico's eyes landed on Piper and Leo, not too spread out on the skywalk. Piper was standing with a boy that sent ice down his spine, but he wasn't too surprised that there'd be a monster there. She looked almost the same as when he first met her on the Argo II, yet her eyes gave away the innocence still in her. The ignorance. She had no idea who she was or what she'd have to go through.

Leo was standing with Jason, messing with something in his hands while Jason held a worksheet in his own. Neither seemed to care about it, and Jason kept glancing over their way. He looked more anxious than the leader Nico knew, more confused, the amnesia getting to him. Leo, on the other hand, was the same laid-back character he saved from a fiery explosion.