Reading Recommendation #16: It's a No-Regret Life
I've been going way back to some of the earliest Nico fics I could find on AO3 and FFN and found this gem:
It's a No-Regret Life by @kaikamahine
(PJO, 13.5k words, Rated T, Percicobeth)
This summer isn't going how Annabeth envisioned it would. She'd imagined a lot fewer cows, for one.
It's just delicious. Annabeth x Percy plus an undefined dynamic with Nico, which eventually turns into a just magical-feeling three-way dynamic. Reading pre-2013 Nico fics is always a special treat, unburdened by the restrictions of later canon and fanon, and this slots right into that category.
The characterisation is delicious – not so flanderised as Heroes-era fics often tend to be; Percy isn't an exaggerated naive dumbass, Nico isn't 250% doom and gloom, Annabeth isn't that uber-logical, unemotional saint nor the obsessively jealous bitch fandom so often likes to make of her – they all just feel real, true to the books, and lifelike.
There's some plot beside the romance, too, and like any good writing, the two tie together and neither feels slapped on as an afterthought. A wee bit of a quest here, some symbolic dreams there, a bit of worldbuilding, it's just got everything in the right amounts.
"We're not as different as you think," says Nico to her the day following the Iris-call to Alecto […]
She absently brushes eraser shavings off her papers. "Besides being demigods and veterans of a war, I'm not sure what we have in common."
"Of course you do," he replies instantly, and when she looks up, he has the same expression he's taken to wearing a lot around her -- a look she can't identify, something that might be angry but wistful, distant but very personal. It's the classic enigmatic look.
He jerks his chin in the direction of the bedroom […] "If it's for him, it's worth it."
Just a huge shout-out, great fic!
