The Rebirth

Two months later…

Elena Rodriguez nestled sleepily in her mother’s arms as she and her family explored the towns of Coastal Croatia together. For the first month of her life, she had been giving her parents… to put it simply, hell. Christopher affectionately refers to her as “la diabla pequeña”- the little devil. Although the neighbors looked upon the screeching house in exasperation, her cries delighted her father and mother.
“She’s strong,” Yolanda decided. “She’s not going to take anything from anybody. You can hear it in her voice. Listen- how can a cry be so clear, or sharp?”
“Our little troublemaker,” Christopher agreed, not really hearing anything his wife had said. Elena had just taken an interest in his hair and determinedly yanked on it.
The second month was less enthusiastic as the first. They hadn’t slept properly since her birth. But that didn’t stop them from displaying their baby proudly in painfully bright colors, prompting strangers to come up and make conversation about her.
“She cries all the time,” Yolanda would complain, with absolute adoration on her face as she looked down at her baby, if they did manage to snag a passerby in for conversation. “But look at her now. An absolute angel. Only when she’s asleep, of course. Only when she’s asleep.”
They’d waited two months before going on any trips, for their baby’s health, but they were absolutely dying to go show their new “sleeping angel/ little devil” to close relatives. They arrived in Florence, Italy just as a bit of confusing pandemonium had occurred in Rome. Apparently there were some punk vandals terrorizing the street. The vandals were said to be reusing and destroying parts of the Coliseum, somehow; destruction of varying buildings; releasing of animals into the streets; etc.
“Thank god we don’t have any relatives in Rome, right?” Papa Rodriguez had joked. Elena had squirmed. Somehow her parents hadn’t taken any notice of the luminescent, opal-colored people that walked through walls and stared at them so sharply. Their clothes had been different from her parents- a purple cloth draped around only one shoulder. It’d been the first time Elena didn’t cry for a whole twelve hours; she watched in fascination as the funny luminescent men shook their fists and yelled at the tourists without anybody else noticing.
Then they’d visited the sister and brother-in-law of Yolanda, who squealed and cooed, which made Elena cry, which caused these funny people to agree with their daughter-in-law that yes, most definitely, she will grow up to “not take anything from anybody”.
And then they’d visited Bologna, to meet a great-aunt, who laughed loudly and proudly, which scared Elena, and here they were driving down Croatia, to visit Elena’s godmother, before they went off to England for Christopher’s work and Christopher’s brothers.
Of course, Elena didn’t know any of this. All she knew, as she slept in the hot day of the town of Split, was that she felt a smashing sense of déjà vu. And so she squirmed in her sleep, uncomfortably, until they were a good deal away from the town and it was almost time for dinner.
And she continued to sleep.
************


Nico, as he and Jason walked through Split, kept his eyes staring straight ahead. His thoughts were cloudy; they murked and stumbled into each other and went around in circles. Overall, he was just tired. And he ached inside. And he was entertaining the idea of simply not fighting anymore.
But he couldn’t. He made a promise.
He kept promises. Somehow the thought of that made him bitter. How promises he made to other people meant so much to him when he meant so little to those other people.
Just the faintest whisper of something familiar poked at him. If he hadn’t barely- just barely, from somewhere he couldn’t remember- recognized its scent, he wouldn’t have noticed the wisp at all. It was there, for a small instant, and it lingered and lingered and lingered until it was finally gone. The wisp was… weird. It was something he’d never really took notice of before. It had a weird texture, weird tint to its feel, and overall… unfamiliar.
And yet, it was familiar.
It reminded him a little bit of a home.
And with that, his mind drifted away from thoughts of the wisp and drifted towards the thought of a home. Something worth fighting for. Had he ever had that?
He hung his head lower, and then straightened up. The familiar feeling… it made him remember something. “I’ve been here before,” he told Jason, or himself, or the passing pedestrians- in short, nobody in particular. “With my mother and Bianca. A weekend trip from Venice. I was maybe… six?”
“That was when… 1930’s?” he heard Jason say, but his mind was elsewhere.
“1938,” he replied, thinking intensely of the wisp. Maybe there was a reason he was back in Split. Maybe this was meant to tell him something. That… his old home was gone? His new home was with the other demigods on this quest? He scowled. Yeah, right.
“Why do you care?” He snapped at Jason, and then immediately felt uncomfortable and tried to change the subject with, “Do you see that winged guy anywhere?”
While he and Jason continued to look, Nico’s mind wandered back to his promise, and the possibility of giving up.
Oh. Maybe that’s what the reason of being here in Split is. To remind him not to give up. Because even though he doesn’t have a home right now, he did somewhere. Once.
So, yes, he’ll fight. Out of duty. Out of memory.
And then, the second that it’s all over, he’ll be gone.

Notes

Very proud of the title for this chapter. It's quite punny. Remember this scene from House of Hades?