#hopefully i'll be able to finish up this damned chapter of hockey AU and get back into writing new content for it!

[jankwritten]

For spotlight: what does Hades do/what’s the relationship w Nico?? Oh also what’s Persephone up to? Does she get along w Nico?

Okay so it's never really FULLY explained in canon - and maybe I will explain it at some point later in the story, who knows - but Hades is a super rich politician/business man. Not really politician, but he's very Influential and works really closely with a lot of politicians and so people kind of lump him in as one of them.

He's also super mysterious and...quirky. Like, he's just. A weird guy. He's super goth and believes weird things (he believes in Santa and the Tooth Fairy and shit like that) and he's pretty emotionally distant a lot of the time. Think of him as like, the walking poster for undiagnosed Dad Autism, y'know? Does that vibe make sense? Like he's very "I love my kids but hugging and touching makes me feel horrific. I love my job because I get to work with numbers and sort data and make solutions that are obvious to me but apparently nobody else understands and therefore I Have To Teach Them" but he's also super stressed all the time and has had drinking problems in the past.

Nico and Hades don't have the best relationship. Nico loves his dad, of course, but he also feels rightfully distant from him. When they lost Maria and then Bianca, Nico kind of felt like he lost his dad, too, because Hades withdrew entirely into his work and, since they lived in such a big house, they didn't see each other a whole lot. Plus, when Nico was first getting really into Hockey, he basically had to sneak around his dad to play, because Hades was strict about Nico not doing anything that would get himself hurt. He'd done a lot of research into hockey in an attempt to get closer to Nico, be interested in his interest, and instead found himself loathing the idea of his son being in such a hostile environment.

Hades and Nico have a very complicated relationship that's just kind of always been how Nico is with his father, so he doesn't know anything other than that. It doesn't bother him all that much day to day, though when he goes and visits it definitely weighs on him a little bit, especially after he's gotten a taste of like, what it means to have somebody really there for him and looking out for him, like Jack Seas and Snowy do on the team.

It's also an issue of independence, TBH. Hades never really wanted Nico to be independent, Hades wanted Nico to stay home, go to a really good school, get a business degree and start working his way up either in Hades's business, or starting his own business and thriving that way. Hades wanted to keep Nico close because he knew Nico's mental health struggles and feared that if he let Nico get too far out of his web of control, Nico would spin out and end up dead.

TLDR; Nico and Hades have a super intricate relationship that's spun out of their grief over losing Maria and Bianca, and the intricacies of their own mental health struggles and how they handle that.

PERSEPHONE is thriving living her best life etc. etc.

No but actually she's Hades's business partner, a lifelong friend who was there for the deaths in his family and became a big part of helping them through the grieving process. She and Hades started dating not too long after Maria died - I've said it before somewhere and I can't exactly remember where, but I think I mentioned something like the three of them had been in a polycule? IDK, but I like the idea either way.

ANYWAY Persephone runs the arts and PR side of Hades's business because he loathes that kind of thing, and she also helps him with numbers and some of the bigger projects when it gets to be too much for him to handle on his own. She moved in after Bianca died, and planted a big garden in the back yard that has memorials to both Maria and Bianca, as well as various family-and-associated pets who have passed throughout the years.

Persephone and Nico get along pretty well. He's a little awkward around her only because he sometimes still doesn't know if he's meant to treat her like a mom or what, because some days he does see her as more of a mother figure and some days he feels really disconnected from her. She cares about Nico in her own way - she was a little tough-love on him growing up, especially after he started hockey. No bullshit excuses would get past her, basically, and if Nico had a problem and came to her crying with it, she would let him cry it out and then make them have a logical, rational discussion about it. (This was pretty rare, though, because Nico used to do that with Maria and he feels like he's betraying her a little bit by going to Persephone. It's fucked up, but y'know.)

Persephone is super supportive of Nico playing hockey, though, as opposed to Hades. She thinks it's great, and cool as hell that Nico found something that he's really good at, kicked the shit out of stereotypes and all that.

Persephone and Hazel also get along really well, not that you asked about that :P But Hazel and Persephone have met a couple of times, and Persephone does know that Hazel is Hades's kid - she was there when the original "scandal" came out, after all. Hazel doesn't see Persephone as her half-step-mother, but more like an Aunt, or a really good family friend. Hazel likes to teach Persephone how to make spell jars and tea blends out of the herb and flower garden.

All in all, the family isn't very close-knit and they have a lot of internal structural problems between themselves, but Nico still loves and cares for them because they are his family no matter what. They're what he has left and he's not letting that go.