The Coming of Nico di Angelo

The Badass di Angelo

CHAPTER SUMMARY

Nico returns.

BEGINNING NOTES

Chapter Rating: General Audiences
Content Warning: None
Word Count: 2586

 And all the characters are owned by JK Rowling, or Rick Riordan.

Credits at the end.

____________________NICO____________________

Fa la ninna, fa la nanna [Go to sleep, go to sleepy]
Nella braccia della mamma [In the arms of your mother]
Fa la ninna bel bambin, [Go to sleep, lovely child,]
Fa la nanna bambin bel, [Go to sleepy, child so lovely]
Fa la ninna, fa la nanna [Go to sleep, go to sleepy]
Nella braccia della mamma. [In the arms of your mother]

Nico woke to the sounds of silence. He looked around his room; Bianca's bed was already made. Nico stared in surprise; he tended to wake hours before his sister.

So, curious and looking for an answer, he pulled the sheets from his body and slid off his own bed. He relished in the soft thump his bare feet made as they hit the wooden floor; it always signaled his arrival to Bianca every morning. A soft thump meant Nico di Angelo was awake.

Though the floor felt cold on the soles of his feet, Nico continued his trek down the hall, the pitter-patter bouncing off the walls. Bianca wasn't in the bathroom or the library or the kitchen. So, he opened the final door in the hallway and walked up the stairs.

At the sound of Nico's feet, Mamma turned and smiled. "Buon giorno, Nico," she cooed in that melodic voice. She pushed her chair from her work-table and went to him; she put her hands under his arms and lifted him into the air with an exaggerated grunt. "Such a big boy," she teased, switching to English. She often did that, so he'd know both her language and the language of his and Bianca's father--the American. "If you grow anymore, I might have to pile bricks on your head, mio piccolo angelo." [my little angel.]

Nico giggled at the tease; it turned to laughter when she tickled his stomach. She smiled at him, waiting for him to speak; he knew she expected English, so he thought long and hard about what to say. "Where are Bianca?" he asked, quite pleased with himself.

"Where is, Nico," Mamma corrected. " Ma altrimenti perfetto." [But perfect otherwise.] He beamed at the praise, even if it wasn't perfect. He understood English fluently, but always had trouble speaking it; this time, though, he knew he got it almost right. "Bianca left with Nonno for Sunday mass."

"Possiamo andare anche noi, mamma?! [Can we go too, Mommy?!] Nico asked, so excited he forgot to speak English.

"I was waiting for you to wake up, and I just finished the last one. Let me clean the workshop, and we'll join them."

Mamma put him back down on the floor and shuffled through her papers and journal. Nico loved staring at the strange letters of her writings; the letters of his own alphabet but arranged in a different way than either Italian or English. He would watch her for hours as she stared at the strange words, brows furrows and lip bit in concentration, moving her pen as she turned the gibberish to Italian to English to gibberish again, then typed the final product on the special typewriter he wasn't allowed to touch.

"A game," Mamma always said about her pastime. "A puzzle."

She put the puzzles she'd finished and the one she was working on in the closet next to her table, opening and closing the three different locks she changed at least once a week. Then, she took the notes and the cardboard she wrote on and put it on her second table, the one covered in tin foil. She lit a match and set it all on fire, smiling at Nico's wonderment at the orange flames. It died down after a few seconds, and she wrapped the ashes into a tight ball the size of her fist, the black hidden in the center. She put it in her pocket to dispose of later; she never liked throwing her work out near the house.