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Chapter Text

A haze of dust clouded my vision. A dull ache covered my body, and I couldn't tell if streaks of red that stained my shirt was my blood or someone else's.

The battle against Gaea had been waging for so long I'd lost track of time.

Although I'd fought alongside my fellow members of the Argo II earlier, I'd since lost them in the fray.

Everywhere I turned, there was a new monster primed to attack or a pillar of earth toppling towards me. Whoever told you that a good fight was healthy every once in a while was dead wrong. Because in war, there's never just one battle.

I didn't dare look at the ground beneath me for fear I'd find an innocent camper lying dead, a casualty in a conflict they knew nothing about. There were kids who couldn't be more than ten years old caught in this deadly match of power, fighting for their own lives and a cause they didn't even have a choice in.

The sound of screams and sobs had long since been blocked out of my mind, they were nothing more than background din.

Instead, I decided to keep my eyes above, the practiced moves of battle becoming nothing more than an elaborate dance as the gold dust from monsters meeting a swift fate almost became a glow around me.

However, my aversion to the ground ended as I felt myself being lifted into the air on a tower of dirt which had sprung up from under my feet. Apparently, Gaea had a new strategy, and that was bringing me to her level. As I rose upwards, deftly keeping my footing on the towering pillar, the true sight of battle was brought to full light. I thought about jumping down, back into the fray of monsters below, but the earth closed over my feet, rooting me in place.

Gaea's rocky face came into view, tall and immense compared to the distant events on the ground below me. My green eyes hardened at her pleased grin, and I spat, "If you want me dead, just kill me already. Stop the unnecessary bloodshed."

In her massive earthy gaze, I felt small as she gave me a look a scolding adult might give a child, a look that said I know something you don't know. Then she gave a short, haughty laugh which rung in my ears.

"Oh, I will. But first, I will break you, in every way I know you fear."

A cold vein of fear shot through me, although I didn't understand what she meant.

The pillar turned itself with a small wave of Gaea's hand, forcing my back to her. From this perspective, I could see the battle laid out in front of me.

Blood stained the ground crimson, as the screech of clashing metal still rang up to my position. The taste of desperation was in the air, and I felt a hopelessness crush through me.

I could sense Gaea's glee behind me, and my gaze fixated on specific figures.

I glanced far to the left, and I could make out Leo, setting himself ablaze as he rushed into several lines of hellhounds. However, before he could reach the oversized dogs, the earth rushed up around him, and began to smother the flame, trapping him under the surface.

I struggled against my bonds, as my view fixed on the others. Frank frantically shifted through various animals, and Hazel attempted her own mastery of the earth, before they were both suffocated in the ground around them.

A spiral of dirt flew up, colliding with a flying Jason and sending him careening down. Piper's charmspoken yell carried through the air to where I stood in horror, before they were both buried as well.

In desperation, I searched for Annabeth's blonde hair in the crowd, beginning to beg Gaea not to hurt her.

I was vaguely aware of tears dripping down my beaten face, before I spotted Annabeth, enveloped in combat with a pair of empousa, who were swiftly beaten. As if on command, she noticed me, frozen on my perch, and our eyes locked, before she began to shift unsteadily on her feet.

Dirt rushed up over her torn shoes and she began to sink down. The world tunneled, as I tried to summon some water, as if that could help at all. I could hear a broken scream echoing in my ears, and with a dull startle, I realized it was my own. The water only seemed to make her sink faster, and she moved frantically to free herself. She yelled something I could not make out as she tried to break out, but the earth only seemed to rise. It covered her form until all I could make out was her face, staring up at me softly with those soft grey eyes I loved. I gave one last desperate plea, until she was gone, swallowed by the earth, choking and drowning on the dry ground.

My voice was raw from yelling and I couldn't care enough to wipe the tears from my eyes.

The pillar underneath me turned, so that I was once again face to face with Mother Earth herself.

Suddenly, my vision became tinged with red, a rage I had never known filled me. She killed my friends, my family. Those I cared for so much it hurt. But her worst crime was killing the only one I would ever love.

I wasn't sure when I'd fallen to my knees, but I raised myself to stand, my glare piercing her eyes to the point she looked unnerved. I could hear nothing but the blood rushing in my ears and the pull of the water. That familiar tug in my gut had never before felt so violent.

Gaea began to look worried as she broke my gaze, looking down. Water rushed up through her earthy form, sending cracks spiraling through the rocky surface, breaking it apart.

She looked back up at me with a look full of fear, and I reveled in it, my face contorting into a manic grin, drinking in her pain.

With one last desperate look, her face exploded into chunks of dirt, forced apart by water which now crackled and surged violently through her mangled form.

The pillar beneath me crumbled and the clashing water broke my fall.

The moment my feet made contact once more with the ground, my power died. The moment in which I delighted in her pain vanished, and the water calmed, before dissolving into thin air.

Exhaustion gripped me, but my thoughts remained fixed on Annabeth. I stumbled over to where her body had been swept under the earth, but with Gaea's death, Annabeth's was not somehow saved. My hands scraped uselessly at the dirt where she'd been taken, but it had since set and my fingers found no purchase.

With no other option to turn to, I collapsed to the ground, a scream dying in my throat, full of despair and grief for what I'd lost.

The next thing I knew, the world faded into darkness around me.

Chapter Text

The pavement pounded against my sore feet, echoing hollowly in my mind. The bustle of passing cars and the bubbling of passing tourists all blended together to my ears, the familiar symphony of Manhattan.

Though it was only September, I shivered, pulling my sweatshirt tighter around my body. Since when did that cacophony I'd always associated with home become so foreign?

My head was down, and I tried to focus on the small pebbles and dust that littered the sidewalks, anything to keep my mind from delving into thought.

It had been over a month since the battle had taken place, the day I'd both triumphed and lost everything. Since then, I'd just spent my time in my cabin, feeling empty and broken, a shell of the hero everyone thought of me as. Although I tried to hold together my crushing emotions around those who came to check on me, like Nico, and Thalia, and even Reyna, there was only so much I could do to keep the tidal wave at bay.

After spending nearly five weeks straight lost in my own head, Chiron had decided it best I travel home, wherever that was now. Best to distance myself from the bad memories, and from the neglected responsibility.

I knew better, though.

I'd seen the flashes of fear in his gaze when we spoke of the battle, I knew he thought my emotional bonds made me dangerous, and now that they were severed, even more so.

Maybe I was just better off away from Camp, away from people I could hurt.

Even now, back in the city without a massive quest looming over my head for the first time in almost a year, the consistent sounds of urban life seemed mocking. They all went on, proceeded as normal. Every person walking by me was unaware of the vicious war which had taken place only weeks earlier, unaware of how many children had laid down their lives with the promise of a worthy cause. How many of my friends were no longer here just so mortal life could keep living uninterrupted.

I was jerked from my thoughts by a rough push to my shoulder, and I looked up quickly, almost wildly, to see who the guilty party was.

My sea green eyes met clear blue ones, who had stopped their pace after our brush. He seemed to have accidentally clipped me while running, and his face was written with an apology. He began to speak, starting with a quick, "Sorry about that," before I cut him off with a shrug.

"Don't worry about it," I replied shortly, my tone a bit more fractured from disuse than I would have liked. The man in question was tall, a few inches taller than myself by a rough estimate, with short blonde hair and a face riddled with smile lines. Upon closer observation, however, stress seemed to frequently cross the man's brow, and his eyes seemed to hold more years than he let on.

He took a moment to take in the tense way I stood, before meeting my stormy gaze with a small smile. "I'll look where I'm running next time," he remarked, before turning away.

I watched him go for a moment, before I realigned myself as well. It wasn't a strange interaction, to be sure, but it felt unfamiliar to me after so long away from the normal civilian life. I'd have to get used to confrontations like that again if I wanted to stay in New York City for any length of time.

It took me a moment before I realized I had arrived at my destination. I stopped in front of the stairs to the apartment, and I found my hands shaking. It had been so long since I'd been here, and I didn't like how foreign the grimy bricks felt, or the slightly cracked wood of the doorframe.

It felt like it took more bravery to walk up those steps than it did to fight the entirety of two wars. Each pace I took felt like a step through quicksand, and I could hardly believe it was real as I reached for the door handle.

I was going to see my mom again. The very thought brought a tremble through my body, and at the prospect of seeing Paul, too, it only increased. My hands gripped with tension. I slowly turned the handle and opened the door.

With that, my whole world shattered.

Chapter Text

The cool breeze bit into my entire body, a solemn reminder that winter was fast approaching. Though it was still early autumn, the nights had begun to be swamped with a brisk chill, leaving me to search for warmer clothes to wear. What did it matter, though, really.

My feet hung off the edge of the roof of an apartment building, one I hadn't bothered to learn the name of. It had been my residence for the past few days, at least the roof had. It wasn't easy to find somewhere to stay after the incident at my apartment, but I lucked out in finding a complex which didn't often check its premises.

Besides, I think the one of the only reasons left keeping me from completely giving up was the adrenaline rush which came from being perched on the edge.

Looking down over the blaring city, filled with lights and the noise of travel, even from this height.

The contemporary saying is true: New York never sleeps.

There was an odd beauty in it at this hour of the evening, a constant reminder that the battles I'd fought weren't entirely for nothing.

However, it also never failed to remind me of the days I'd looked out over this skyline from a different perspective, from excited child's eyes peering out a small, but comfortable apartment window. Despite the drawbacks of my childhood, such as having an abusive narcissist as your stepfather for the majority of the time, I'd always managed to make the best of it, and there was no other person to thank for that other than my mom. I was meant to see her again last week, be held in her arms for the first time in what had nearly been a year.

I closed my eyes with the memory, of walking down that street with the greatest sliver of hope I'd held in weeks, and I could feel the tears returning to their almost consistent position on my cheekbones. I knew she'd been worried sick, and there hadn't been a moment to catch up with her while I was involved on my quests with my friends. Who, I was humbled with the reminder, were also dead because of my own inability, right alongside my mom.

Now that I thought about it, she probably didn't even know I was okay. Given my track record, I'd let her believe I was dead for so long, and she'd died not knowing if I was still out there.

The scene continued to run through my head, of opening the door to the apartment with shaking hands, and seeing the familiar home quiet.

Of searching the house before eventually finding the sitting room a gruesome display of horror, of blood staining the floorboards a permanent crimson, permeating the carpet with a color I knew no wash would ever fully clean out.

Of their bodies, cold and lifeless on the floor, expressions of terror forever frozen on the faces of my mom and Paul.

Of the etchings deliberately drawn across the wall in scathing scarlet, brilliantly declaring to the world 'A LIFE FOR A LIFE', which of course was ridiculous, seeing as it should be 'a life for two lives', given the state of the situation.

Of crying out without ever truly making a sound, as my brittle and broken vocal cords seemed unable to give way.

And of giving the scene one last fleeting look, before fleeing like a coward from the apartment.

And now I was here, cast aside by the world, with nothing but my haunted memories for comfort. Left only to feel through the sting of cold reaching the dampness of my cheeks, and rush of the wind beneath my dangling feet, the temptation to fall making me dizzy but tantalized.

Truly and utterly alone for the first time in my life.

Chapter Text

A crack of thunder rolled across the sky, causing me to jerk my head up. The clouds had been a cold, foreboding grey all day, and now, it seemed, they were ready to release their hold. A pit of resigned dread formed itself in my stomach, taking its place among all the others, creating such a sick feeling I'd begun to feel chronically nauseated. While I knew I'd be able to keep myself and my limited possessions dry with my powers, it wouldn't keep the clammy chill from permeating the air, turning the whole city miserable.

I hugged the bags in my arms a bit closer to my chest as I walked along the New York sidewalks, following my usual route "home", or to the apartment complex roof I now called my residence. For all intents and purposes, it had done its job alright for these past few weeks, save for the scattered showers which had made me miss having a cozy roof over my head.

Despite its grudging effectiveness, a subtle fear had clung to the back of my mind, a scolding reminder that this could never be permanently comfortable, especially with the winter fast approaching. The nights and their decreasing temperatures never failed to remind me of that.

Besides the weather, I was growing increasingly aware of how unstable my living situation was once more by my lack of money. I'd managed to hold onto what I could get, but my luck was quickly running short in that department. Rationing was never easy when you didn't have enough to sustain you in the first place.

In fact, I'd spent a considerable portion of my savings today, attaining the limited items I now clutched close to my body, bundled up in standard issue plastic bags. Enclosed was my limited food portions for the next two weeks and what I could get for basic necessities. I'd bought most of what I needed for long term in the first few days of living on the apartment complex, but as that had been nearly a month ago, some had needed replacing. Luckily, I did manage to have a few changes of clothes left over from what I'd taken from Camp, along with a couple drachmas and a small helping of ambrosia and nectar, naturally. I'd decided early on that I was to save the latter items for emergencies only, and the thought had hardly crossed my mind to initiate contact with anyone from Camp. The message I'd received from them was clear: we're better off without you.

I climbed the access stairwell and opened the door to the roof, noticing that the heavy clouds had started their tirade. A slight drizzle had already stained the pale concrete of the roof a darker shade of beige in patches, and judging by the warning thunder from earlier, it wouldn't be long before the ground became dense with water.

I dropped my precious cargo next to the small workings of a sleeping area I'd made for myself by the stairs, under a small overhang. It wasn't much, but like everything I'd built up for myself over the past few weeks, it had served its purpose.

I was just about to start preparing myself for a rather brutal night, when I heard an unfamiliar clink of hydraulics. It was almost too quiet to hear over the rain, but with my enhanced hearing, only heightened by the element surrounding me, it was enough to cause me to tense. Hand in my pocket, I turned slowly towards the perpetrator, unsure of what I expected to see. It sounded mechanical, and when I turned to gauge what the unknown thing was, it looked like it sounded.

The figure stood tall, taller than me, though not by an extreme amount. At first glance, it seemed to be a sort of robot, however humanoid. What was even more baffling was when the "face" of the mechanism opened, revealing that it was, in fact, not a robot but a man, enclosed in a robot suit. If all my instincts weren't kicking into fight or flight, I probably would've laughed at the sheer absurdity of it all. After all the time I'd spent alone, though, my senses were dialed up to eleven.

Before I could make a move, though, the man spoke, calling out, "Kid, what're you doing up here?"

"I could ask you the same thing," I tried to snark back, but it came out more threatening than I'd intended.

"Guess you could say I was visiting a friend in Queens, then decided to take a detour home." The man in the metal suit took a step forward, and I started to pull Riptide from my pocket, stepping towards my shambled living quarters defensively. He looked me up and down than glanced behind me, obviously putting things together in his head. "Please don't tell me you live up here."

I met his eyes with my green ones, a silent challenge. "No, of course not, my parents live in the apartments and I'm coming up here in a thunderstorm for fun," I shot back scathingly, now vaguely aware of water dripping down my face. It wasn't like I could use my powers in the presence of a mortal. I just had to hope the bags had been moved far enough back under the overhang.

He gave me a doubtful look, before shrugging his shoulders dramatically. "Well, if you're going to keep lying to me, I guess I'll have to report this to the business owner-"

He had hardly finished his sentence before I surged over, fully removing Riptide from my pocket. I backed him up against the edge of the building, the silent threat clear in my face as I uncapped the pen, allowing it to grow to full size. I'd expected the Mist to do its work, but judging by the look on the man's face, just my luck that he wasn't affected. I wasn't planning to actually do anything to him, maybe just scare him a bit, but he seemed more fascinated by the dimly glowing bronze sword.

"Woah, hold on there kid, I was just joking about that," he said, although a bit of nervousness crept into his tone. When I didn't move, he instead asked, "How does the pen-sword work? Never seen anything like it."

A bit stunned by his question, I stepped back a little, allowing him more footing on the roof. Still, though, I remained silent.

After a momentary standoff, me getting thoroughly soaked and him remaining pretty dry inside the metal suit, he seemed to give up. "Alright, fine, I get it, you don't want to talk, and I've got to get home. See you around, kid."

With that, the faceplate of his suit lowered, and turning around, he flew off into the storm. I stared after the man's retreating form until it vanished into the murky grey, before turning around, grateful for the conclusion of the strange interaction.

Chapter Text

When every step started to send twists of pain shooting up my leg, I slowed my gait to a brisk, stumbling walk.

If I'd thought the last two months had been difficult, the last few hours had been exceedingly worse.

Just this morning, I'd awoken from another horrific batch of nightmarish imagery which haunted my dreams to the sight of a pale silhouette exiting the small stairwell, and noticing my presence. In my half-asleep bleariness, I could hardly reach for Riptide, and desperately hoped it was just some kid coming up to find a new play area, but with my luck, it was a man dressed in an electrician uniform. He seemed to be coming up here to inspect the generator which ran constantly, which I noticed now had seemed to shut down.

I watched as the registration of my presence added up in his mind, before he hurried back into the stairwell without a word.

In an instant, panic shot through me, and I almost immediately broke into action. The man was likely going to report me to the manager of the apartment complex. I clumsily gathered together the meager possessions I'd accumulated, most of which were already luckily placed in the bag I'd been carrying since September. I rifled the almost microscopic amount of food stores remaining, along with whatever was nearby, and shoved it into the bag, before racing towards the stairwell. The only thing which stopped my mad dash was the sound of footsteps and gruff voices echoing, and I skidded to a halt, my mind racing to find another solution.

The fire escape.

I sprinted towards the edge I knew housed the platforms in question, and with a quick scope of the area, I jumped. My feet hit the metal platform with a loud clatter, and my soles strained with the impact. I didn't have time to dwell on that now, though, as I scaled down the stairs as quickly as I could, jumping to the ground when I gauged it was safe enough. Feet still burning, I began to sprint down the alley onto the sidewalk, which was sparsely populated at the early hour.

It was this chase which brought me to where I was now, slowing and integrating into the Manhattan foot traffic, where hopefully I could lose my pursuers.

After a few hours of walking in loose circles and allowing my mind to awaken itself, processing the world, I realized how dire my situation had gotten. I mean, I knew it would never really be an easy or sustainable lifestyle, but now, as the effects of winter in mid-to-late November really started to kick in, now without somewhere to stay, it was worse than I'd thought.

As if on cue, the hazy blue-grey clouds which I hoped were just a morning fog slowly began to open, not with rain, but with a light snow. The first of the year. Just perfect.

I held my arms closer to my body, which had begun to shiver with cold, and tried to ignore the tiny flakes, which, despite their size, cut through my worn grey hoodie with a razor-sharp chill and melted into frigid damp patches. I kept myself walking, moving forward, because somewhere I knew, if I stopped, I would never start again. Even as my joints ached and sweatshirt became useless, I plodded through the slushy sidewalks, letting everything go numb.

I almost closed my eyes when I heard a rustling down the alley I'd just passed. I felt a shiver trace its way down my spine, but not from the cold.

I hesitated a little in my step, and turned to look back down that alley, where I noticed dilated eyes watching me with interest. As the being moved into the light, I realized the eyes weren't human at all, instead, a hellhound leered at me from its perch on a dumpster.

I hardly had time to reach into my pocket before it leaped to the ground, snarling. It wasn't like I hadn't fought the occasional monster in the months since the war, but I hadn't run across a hellhound yet, and I certainly hadn't fought in such a dilapidated condition.

Despite my weariness, the familiar adrenaline before a fight surged in me, reinvigorated the exhausted muscles and giving my eyes a new fire. I rolled under the dog's first attack, wincing at the scream of pain from my shoulder, and slashed at it when I got to my feet again. The hellhound howled and glared at me, rushing forward with its jaws wide. I just barely sidestepped and sent out a flash of my sword, hitting the monster straight in its flank.

Before vanishing into a gold dust, in a last effort, it lashed out with a clawed paw, knocking me to the ground and mixing the water of my soaked sweatshirt with warm, sticky crimson.

Stupid mistake in a quick fight.

I started to bend down to pick up Riptide, but the blow the dog had delivered had sapped what was left of my strength. I collapsed to my knees on the concrete, head swimming with cold and pain.

The last thing I remembered before succumbing to darkness was a familiar red and gold metal suit clanking to the ground.

Chapter Text

The all-too familiar sounds of battle manifested themselves around me as I opened my eyes, deafening and terrible. I was back in Camp Half-Blood, the grips of Gaea's war surging around me in a horrific wave.

Right in front of me stood Annabeth, her grey gaze watching me with their casual spark of life. "Come on Percy," she said, affection brimming in her smile. "The battle's nearly done."

I started to return her smile, moving forward until the dirt began to churn beneath her feet. Her face suddenly filled with fear, calling out to me as her feet began to lose their footing and she started to sink into the Earth. I rushed forward, but she seemed to grow further and further away with every step. She reached out a hand, yelling out one last, desperate, "Percy!" before disappearing.

I collapsed to the ground where she was just moments before, my hope fizzling, until her hand thrust itself from the dirt.

I grabbed it and pulled with all my strength, until her face finally resurfaced. But her grey eyes, once filled with care and determination, were empty and cold, searching my face with an icy stare.

I stumbled back a bit, but her gaze remained fixed on me. In a flash, the faces of my other friends appeared from the ground, joining Annabeth's, all matching her stony facade. Annabeth began to speak, but her voice was flat and unnatural. "Why didn't you save us? Why did you let us die?"

My deepest insecurities were dragged from their mouths, pressing into me with a violent intensity. "Wait, Annabeth, I tried, I didn't want-"

She cut me off, the voices of Jason, Leo, Piper, Frank, and Hazel joining hers in a ghostly chorus. "You can't keep lying to yourself Percy. You know it was your fault. And now we're gone, no amount of heroics will bring us back."

My own feet began to sink into the earth, and I could feel the grains filling my shoes, pushing against my ragged jeans with crushing pressure. The faces filled my vision, the voices becoming all I could hear. "Your fault. Now you must deal with the punishment."

I fought to see the sky, but the dirt fell into my eyes, darkening everything in sight as I was lost under the surface. One last voice met my ears before I was completely swallowed by the ground, Annabeth's, soft, blaming, and deadly.

"If only you'd been strong enough."

My eyes shot open, hardly taking in the unfamiliar environment. My breath was coming at a mile a minute, and I blinked hard, trying to erase the nightmare, and Annabeth's distorted accusations, from my mind. Before I could fully comprehend anything, I felt a hand grip my shoulder.

"Whoa there, kid. Calm down, you're okay."

I opened my eyes, even as I was met with a sudden wave of dizziness and the room swayed. I was in a mostly white room, filled with blinking machinery. Hospital, would be my first guess. But then there was the people.

I flinched away from the hand on my shoulder, scrambling away as much as I could. There were two men in the room, one a bit further from me, who seemed to be checking equipment, at least, before I woke up. Now, he was staring at me with the look of a practised professional. He seemed to be in his middle age, though his short stature and kind eyes reminded me a bit too much of Paul. The man closer to me, the one who'd made to touch my shoulder, I almost didn't recognize. He was taller, about my height, with a younger look to his face. The man in the metal suit from all those weeks ago.

"We're not going to hurt you, kid. We're trying to help. You got pretty banged up out there. Want to tell us what happened?"

I took a second look at myself, trying to put everything together in my mangled brain. I'd been forced to leave that roof, it had started to snow, and then there had been the hellhound- I hoped no one had seen. The most mortals would see would probably be a particularly aggressive Mastiff, but I didn't want to take any chances.

Usually I'd be able to take a single hellhound down without thinking, but given my current state; probably sleep deprivation, some hypothermia, and a nice severe case of malnutrition; it had taken what I had left. And now I was here, in some fancy hospital, surrounded by mortals I didn't know, much less have an ounce of trust in.

Finally, I managed to reply to the man's question.

"No, I actually don't want to." My voice was low and scratchy with disuse, but I ignored it and started pulling the IVs from my arms. I put a hand to my pocket to check for Riptide, and pulled myself to my feet. The room tilted, and I grabbed the table for a moment, steadying myself.

"Thanks for the talk, but I have to get home now."

"Hey, hey, hold on for a second there." The younger man grabbed my arm as I started to leave, and I leveled his concerned gaze with a stormy green glare, pulling my arm from his grasp. I stumbled for a moment, gripping the counter behind me tightly.

I tried to open the door, but it wouldn't move. Normally, I would be able to break a simple lock like this one, but my strength wasn't exactly at full capacity right now. Not to mention I could hardly walk. So, in short, I was stuck.

"We're trying to help you," he repeated, and I tried not to feel like a caged animal.

After a beat, I found my voice again and replied, with a deadly glint in my eye, to both the men in the room.

"And who, exactly, are you?"

Chapter Text

The Avengers. At least, that's what they called themselves. Some kind of mortal superhero team made to protect the world from more extreme threats, mostly alien. I didn't even know aliens were a thing, but given how my life was already going, I wasn't all that surprised. Still, they seemed more celebrities than an army.

They seemed surprised when I said I hadn't heard of them, as if they were some sort of household name. Luckily, I think the excuse of not being all that tuned in to the news worked this time.

After making sure I wasn't about to sprint off down the hallway, they offered to at least take me on a tour of the building, if I was feeling up to it. I wasn't really interesting in seeing their expensive office building/luxury apartment complex, but to be honest I would do anything just to escape the unfriendly atmosphere in that hospital room. Everything blinding white, on top of the relentless interrogation and the feeling of being trapped just made for a bad time in general. I almost said it was worse than outside, but that would be a lie.

Anyway, they took me around through medical facilities, then to a lab upstairs, followed by a gym/gun range, and finally to a sort of living area with a kitchen off to the side. I don't really care about mansions and other rich people's things, but I had to admit, the money paid off with this one. I could probably fit three of my mom's apartment in one floor alone, but it wasn't like I'd get the chance to test that.

Suddenly, my mood, which had become a bit less tense in the walk, darkened again, and I looked to the floor, fiddling with my fingers in my pockets. I'd tried to avoid the topic of my mom in thoughts in the last few months, and I'd been really good with it for a while. There goes my streak.

I was jolted from my thoughts when I felt a hand clamp over my shoulder. I flinched, taking a step back.

"Hey kid, are you alright- sorry, no touching, right."

I didn't respond for a moment, but I held his gaze, soft brown meeting stormy green. Ignoring his question, I tried another evasive tactic. "This has been cool and all, but I really have to get going."

"What, urgent appointment at that apartment roof I found you at? Alone, mind you." The man's words, Tony's words, were loud and sarcastic, a sharp contrast to my carefully delivered ones.

"I'm not alone," I nearly snarled, anger lacing through the calmness from before. "I have-" my voice faltered a moment, "-friends."

"Okay, invite them over here then. I don't mind."

I stopped, my mind struggling to comprehend what he meant.

"Tony-" the other man, Bruce, warned. "You can't just offer up your house- the team's house to all the homeless kids in Manhattan."

"Why not, I pay for the building, and I just did."

I was going to protest the word homeless, until the rest of the sentence hit me. "Sorry, what? There's no way in Had- hell I'm staying here."

"What else are you going to do, stay out there in the cold all winter? Like hell you're not. You really want to sleep out there in the snow tonight, when you've got another option?"

I hesitated for a moment, which Tony definitely noticed, but I didn't give myself the chance to consider it seriously. "I'll manage," I snapped, teeth clenched. "I always do."

"Fine, I won't force you to stay here forever. But you've got try it. Just one night." Before I could deny him again, he added. "You owe me one. Technically, if we're counting, this is the second time I've saved your ass."

I hated how much he had a point. I almost shut him down again, but in the moment of actual contemplation, I thought about this morning, how I had no reliable place to go back to. And now, with the layer of snow on the ground, light as it was, it would make settling anywhere Tartarus to endure. Of course, I'd figure a way out, but it was almost more trouble than it was worth. Besides, Tony would track me down again and bug me for the rest of eternity.

Almost inaudibly, I muttered, "Fine. One night."

His face lit up, and for a second, I almost felt bad for considering saying no; I would deprive this man of so much joy. "Couldn't hear you kid. A little louder for me," he teased, a grin on his face.

"I'll take it back," I warned.

"Okay, I won't tease you. Come on, let's get you settled."

"Just for the night," I reminded him testily.

"Yeah, yeah I know. Just for tonight."

With that, Tony guided me towards the elevator, and I had a moment to think what am I getting myself into. But despite my best efforts, the barest hint of a smile graced my face. One night.

Chapter Text

The mid-afternoon sunlight glimmered through shallow curtains and pooled on the floor in vague, orange outlines. I stood at the entrance to the room Tony had just shown me to, soft grey walls with a generously sized bed, and several dressers and side tables littered about the room. Along one edge, the door to a bathroom lay open, giving the room a wide feel.

Now, I'd known Tony was rich, but that didn't make any of this feel less uncomfortable.

What was I supposed to do with all this space? Besides my living situation for the past few months, places I'd stayed were always small and homey. There were unpolished, tight, and rough around the edges, but at the end of the day, they were comforting and perfect for anything I needed. I was pretty sure I could fit the entire Poseidon cabin into the bedroom alone, to give you a scale.

But nonetheless, I didn't voice any of this to Tony, and the fact of the matter was, I was extremely grateful. Here was a man willing to give up one of his rooms for the night, for me, a kid who had nothing to offer. Well, for that I was grateful, and suspicious. Sure, he may have room to spare, but it definitely wasn't normal to offer up a place to stay without any warning. He and his friend, Bruce, had healed me, and now gave me a room. Tell me that doesn't sound like a monster's lure, or at least someone trying to get something from me.

Whatever it was, he hadn't said it yet. It couldn't be money, he had enough of that. Information? What would I know about that would be useful?

I decided to think about it later, I'd been standing in this one place in the room for too long.

Instead, I glanced around a second time. Tony had said a lot on the way up here, not all of it I remembered, but I did note that he said he'd put my bag up here. Sure enough, there it was, lying loosely against the bed. I hurried over; it was still a bit damp from earlier, but it wasn't like water damage could happen to anything I owned.

As if to demonstrate, the first thing I reached down pulled from the bag was a flimsy picture that had been taken less than a year ago, back over the summer. I felt my mouth turn upwards into a soft, sad smile. Bright, grinning faces filled the image, caught in a frozen laugh. Sun danced in everyone's eyes, filling everything with light. The faces of the Seven, Nico, and me, caught in a moment on the Argo.

I remembered what it felt like, to not think of the world ending for just a moment when I was there with them. My arm slung around Annabeth's shoulders as if nothing would come crashing down just a few weeks later.

I blinked, having not even realized my vision was getting blurry, and a few salty tears dripped onto the photograph. I gripped it tight, like a lifeline, the memories becoming overwhelming.

Since when did I miss the impending apocalypse?

Except, it wasn't that. It was that tiny fraction of time I got to spend with the people I cared about, the people I considered family, the people who would never be here again. They didn't even get to live in the world where the primordial threat is over, they didn't get to love together without perpetual death hanging over their every move, and I do. That was the cruelest twist of fate imaginable.

They will never again have a life to feel with, and I'm left with a life without anyone to give back to.

By now, I'm clutching the picture to my chest, shaking with the breadth of emotion I've been holding back for so long.

It isn't fair.

None of it is fair.

But since when have the fates tipped the scales fairly, especially for me?

Taking a breath, I held the image out again with trembling hands, summoning my power to cleanse it of water damage. Instantly, the droplets which had seeped into the glossy fibers vanished, leaving behind a pristine afterimage. I breathed another long breath, trying to end the slew of emotions which took and took from me with no end.

Without warning, a tinny, metallic voice rang out from the ceiling. "Mr. Perseus Jackson, Sir would like to inform you that dinner is here." I leaped to my feet, before recalling Tony had "introduced" me to his AI system, JARVIS, earlier in the day. I paused for a moment, before giving a slow nod, not sure how exactly to respond to a faceless voice in the ceiling.

"Got it," I muttered, trying to keep the shake from my voice. Burying my face in my hands, I grimaced.

Time to face the real warzone.

Chapter Text

I scrubbed a hand over my face one last time, trying to hide every possible trace of the breakdown I'd just had from my face. It wouldn't do well to just reveal that to everyone, now would it?

The floor my room was on was apparently a few levels above that of the "communal area", as the infamous voice-in-the-ceiling called it. And of course, the voice- JARVIS, I had to remember to call it that- had given me directions to the elevator instead of the stairwell, at which point I had to, as awkwardly as possible, try to explain that it would be better to take the stairs. Eventually it caught on, and I was pointed in the right direction and what floor number to stop at.

Now, nearing the proper floor, I cleared my face of anything still remaining and pushed open the door as nonchalantly as I could, hoping not to draw too much attention. Of course, this was futile, because as soon as I opened the door, the eyes of Tony and Bruce locked onto me from their spot on the couch, where a couple of pizza boxes were stacked.

"You know, you could've taken the elevator. It's not off-limits- J, did you tell him he could use the elevator?"

The tinny voice called down once more, "I did sir. He opted not to."

Tony's eyes turned questioningly on me. "Aw, what is it? Doubt my engineering skills?"

I looked away, before muttering, "I don't like taking elevators if I don't have to."

It was true. I mean, I've never been a fan of tiny metal boxes, but ever since Tartarus, I'd avoided them like the plague. I'd never admit it to anyone, but the second those doors closed, I was back there again, bruised and exhausted, leaning against Annabeth for support, thinking about the companions I'd just left behind, who were now sacrificing themselves for me. And that stupid box kept rising up and up, the crackling radio music playing bits and pieces of classic pop, as we waited for either the monsters of the pit or those of the earth to kill us. Luckily, the times earlier today that Tony and Bruce brought me through were quick and distracting, my fear of them finding out about anything conquering the memories momentarily. But all alone? I don't think I'd be able to manage it.

"You're going to need to speak up, kid." Tony's abrasive tone pulled me from my thoughts.

Meeting his eyes once more with a colder chip in my gaze, I repeated, "I don't like taking elevators if I don't have to."

"Why?"

"Tones-" Bruce hissed in what sounded like frustration, before addressing me. "Perseus, you don't have to answer that."

I decided to accept his offer, and I didn't give a reply. Tony nodded in what I assumed was apology and gestured me over to the couch. Hesitantly, I walked over, feeling more and more uncomfortable by the second. Why had I agreed to stay here again? I know I'm not the best at forethought, but I didn't think it was this bad. I sat down gingerly in an adjacent armchair, scolding myself for my stupidity. Can't get out of this one now, can I?

Tony took my addition to the group as his prompt to start, laying out the three stacked boxes and pulling one open, taking out a piece for himself and leaning back. After another moment, he commented, swallowing his bite. "I gotta say, this is the most awkward dinner I've ever had. And I've eaten dinner with just about everyone you can think of."

Bruce looked down. "Tony, this is not the time to start bragging about all the famous people you know."

Tony looked with mock audacity at him. "You should be grateful I don't do it more often."

With that, the two began to banter back and forth a bit, settling into friendly conversation. Glad the attention was off me for a moment, I took a piece of pizza, trying to relax a bit in the new environment. What's the worst this could be, poisoned? I'm too hungry to care, really.

"So Perseus," I heard, bringing me back, "how about you? You mentioned you have friends. A bit defensively, I may add."

Bruce shot Tony a warning look for the last comment, but he also seemed reasonably intrigued. I paused, not sure how to answer. Go with sure, let's get dig this hole a little deeper or actually, I just completely lied to you! Just like I've been doing this whole time! I decided to go with the latter. "Uh- yeah, about that, that was just something I said-"

Instead of being angry, like I'd anticipated, or even interrogating me further, he just exchanged a triumphant look with Bruce. "Ha! I knew it! You owe me five bucks!"

Bruce shook his head, but moved a hand to his pocket, pulling out a bill. Forgetting my discomfort in my surprise, I looked between the two incredulously.

"You were betting on whether or not I had friends?"

Tony had the decency to look sheepish. "Yeah... in hindsight maybe not the best move. Sorry about that, kid."

Bruce also looked at me apologetically. "Yeah, sorry Perseus."

"It's fine," I murmured, shaking my head. Now that the shock factor was gone, any negative emotions left with it. The barest hints of a smile graced my features.

"And...you can call me Percy."

Chapter Text

tw: trauma, visceral depictions, emotional distress

Soon after the overly informal dinner was over, I found my chance to slip away, reaching my breaking point when it came to expending social energy for the day. Of course, that limit would have been different given I was around people I was comfortable with and I hadn't spent the last few months having none besides brief interactions at the stores and streets I'd found myself on, but that's a topic for another time.

I made my way back up those several flights of stairs, with a little bit of help from JARVIS, the ceiling voice. I could now see why Tony created him and kept him around. On top of just being genuinely helpful, he acted just like an actual human being, which sometimes mattered more than the former.

Once JARVIS had helped me find the right floor, I headed to my assigned room, nudged the door closed, and slid to the floor.

Until now I hadn't realized just how exhausting the day had been. It felt like years had passed since I woke up to the maintenance man's discovery of me this morning, and the frigid stumbling into the waiting paws of the hellhound. Even the time spent after that, the precarious greeting of Bruce and Tony, seemed like ages ago.

I stood from my position by the door, fatigue filling my limbs, and headed over to the bed, pushing the bagged items still placed there from earlier to the floor. I'd look through them better tomorrow, when I actually had energy to spare. Not bothering to even ease myself under the layers of blankets, I curled in on myself, the weariness of the day taking over me.

Warm light shone through my eyelids, and on instinct, I opened them.

My feet were standing on pale grass, and the sky was an endless expanse of azure. To my left, a set of cabins arranged in a familiar horseshoe sat alongside a bright blue farmhouse. I was stood above Half Blood Hill, much more beautiful than it had been when I'd last seen it. I blinked, taking in the sight, until-

"Percy!" A voice called out, interspersed with a laugh. I turned, a grin tracing its way across my features. "Come on Percy," the voice called again, and this time, I saw her, steel grey eyes and shoulder-length blonde curls which reflected the shining sun of this paradise, "It's time to come home."

Her laugh was contagious. I began my path towards her, hardly able to keep the delirious joy from infecting the world around me.

"Home." I repeated her statement, savouring the word as if I'd never known it before. "Annabeth-"

The instant I said her name, a crack of thunder sounded, piercing the pristine skies. A dark cloud covered the sun, sending the world into shadow. I blinked, trying to get my eyes to adjust.

"Annabeth?" I tried again, a shake to my voice.

I looked around, but I wasn't on Halfblood Hill anymore. I was on the steps to my apartment. No, I couldn't be back here. This wasn't right. I started to turn away, but a voice whispered in my ear, sharp and commanding. "Open it. Face what you've done." And so I listened, pushing open the already ajar door.

There Annabeth stood, in the place of where I'd found my mom and Paul, but it was if they'd been erased. She stared at me, an inscrutable expression marring her brow. "Why didn't you let me come home, Percy?" Her grey eyes watched me with an expression of pain. "Why?"

"Annabeth, I-" the words were stolen from my tongue, as the wooden floors melted into nothing beneath my feet, and I began to sink down, down, down.

Annabeth marched over to where I descended helplessly, and I called out to her.

"Annabeth, please," I gasped, the wood splintering into my sides. "Please... please help me."

I reached out a hand.

And despite my fear, she took it.

I stared up at her, but her expression was not one of compassion. It was cold, piercing, and twisted with anger. She leaned close, to the point I could pick out the faint freckles dotting her face. Venom laced her tone.

"You don't deserve a home."

With that, she released my hand, leaving me to be swallowed by the pressing darkness.

I awoke to heaving gasps, hair plastered to my forehead, shivers wracking their way through my body. Trying to breathe, I swung my feet over the side of the bed, picking up the discarded sweatshirt from earlier. The room felt foreign and oppressive, I needed somewhere else to think. I scanned the room, almost frantically, until I noticed it. The window. Pulling open the ridiculously complicated window lock, which at this point seemed like a door, I stepped onto what passed for a small balcony. It was reasonably contemporary, but the purpose was I guess to blend with the building while keeping up with codes and all that. Still, the rush of cold wind was exactly the release I was looking for.

Closing the window for the most part, I settled myself against the building and the platform. The heights would take some getting used to, I supposed. From here, I could see all of Manhattan, stretching out in front of me and beyond. It was peaceful, quiet. I steadied my breathing, slowly adjusting to the temperatures.

The world was was quiet here.

Chapter Text

I'm not sure how long I stayed up there, perched on the balcony, but it was long enough for the feeling to be long gone from my limbs. I may have dozed off a few times, but they were short and sporadic, never for more than a few minutes.

Hours crept by in a lull, as the sun rose and city awakened. Was it now a socially acceptable time for me to be awake? After seeing the number of pedestrians on the street pick up from a rarity to fairly frequent, I decided I could relinquish my position and face the day.

Pulling my tight muscles into a standing position, I began to shake almost instantly with cold, and I pried open the window to dart inside as quickly as possible.

The warmth felt oppressive yet relieving at the same time, sending my appendages tingling back into feeling and setting the vague thoughts which had floated in my mind into a solid, stern reality. Flexing my fingers, I took in the room, instantly remembering the horrific nightmare which had transpired here mere hours earlier, and I shivered, though this time not of cold. Hazy memories returned like a stain, and in a moment of impulse, I ducked towards the shower in my room, spending the next few minutes trying to scrub the discomfort from my skin. Throwing on the last set of clothes I had with me from my time before, I took a breath, and headed downstairs, taking the stairwell again.

The living room, which Bruce and Tony had called the "communal area" last night, looked different in the sunlight. I'd been wrong in thinking it was just a living room, in fact, it spanned into a spacious relaxing area, stretching further back into what seemed to be a dining area next to a kitchen, all with a contemporary open floor plan. I'll be honest, I assumed it would be excessive for a billionaire's tower, with all white everything and diamonds in inconvenient places, but the space was comfortable, almost homey. I guess I'd underestimated them.

Despite the floors not being a pristine, reflective white, I still tread carefully, making my way across the room at a slow walk, not knowing the place's rules.

Of course, every place, every house has rules. Something like, "don't walk on the carpet with shoes", or "don't touch that glass, it's someone's specifically", or even "don't use any power in the house before 8:30 AM" (all true stories from elementary school sleepovers). I was sure Tony wouldn't be picky about his power, or glasses, or carpets, but still, there had to be a rule somewhere. I was the idiot teenager crashing at his house for the night, but the line must be somewhere.

Wrapped up in this train of thought, I almost didn't notice Bruce, exiting the hallway with a coffee mug, which looked like it was newly empty. He cracked a somewhat surprised smile upon noticing me, heading over to the kitchen area.

"Didn't expect to see you up so early Perseu- Percy. Aren't teenagers supposed to sleep late?" He gave a soft chuckle at the joke, beginning to fill his mug again.

I gave a glance at the time: 6:47. Not sure how to respond, I just shrugged.

With a quick glance back at me, Bruce gave an awkward hand gesture towards the fridge and continued, "If you're hungry, Tony's got some scrambled eggs made, just warm them up in the microwave. You can have pretty much whatever you find in there-" Bruce began to head towards the elevator with his mug, taking a sip, "-just don't touch Nat's peach yogurts. She'll kill you."

I shot him a dubious look, not knowing exactly who Nat was or how sarcastic the last statement was, he seemed absentminded.

"Oh, and Percy, if you're looking for something to do, come join me and Tones in the lab. We could use an extra hand."

The elevator doors hissed open, and Bruce stepped inside, before they slid closed again. I blinked, rerunning the interaction in my head. It seemed strange and foreign, but perhaps this was normal and I just wasn't used to it.

Was I hungry? Not particularly, and it felt unsettling to go through someone's fridge when they weren't in the room with you.

Instead, I took the moment alone as a chance to look around, quietly poking around the kitchen and dining area, scanning every inch of the living area. It felt too normal, to be in what both looked and felt like a home. The energy in the room was so inviting, it was almost overwhelming.

I considered the offer Bruce had made, to work with him and Tony down in the labs. They could use an extra hand, right? And an invitation was an invitation.

Chapter Text

tw: implied child abuse, raised voices

I stepped out of the stairwell on the floor JARVIS directed me to, taking a quick breath before entering the supposed "lab". I wasn't really sure what to expect, maybe some high-tech science-y thing, but I definitely wasn't expecting something that looked half like a revamped warehouse garage and half like a chemistry collection an Ivy League university would sell their soul for.

Bruce and Tony stood next to this bulky robot arm that resting atop a workstation, the top end of the arm in several pieces. Bruce seemed to be holding a majority of the section, while Tony rifled through a few drawers, as if looking for something. He muttered something that sounded awfully like "Pep just loves to organize my stuff, doesn't she," before looking up and noticing me.

"Hey kid," he called across the room. "Here to help?"

"Uh- yeah, I think so." I gave a nod, pacing forward a bit, not exactly sure what to do.

Hearing the voice, Bruce turned to me, giving what he could of a small wave, the disjointed metal in his arms clanging together. Turning to Bruce with what I had to assume was the right tool in his hand, Tony pointed it in mock warning to the other man. "Brucey, I swear to you, if you drop any of those pieces, I'm replacing you with Percy."

Bruce held his arms more gingerly this time, responding with, "You couldn't afford to replace me. Not that I don't think you'd make a good lab partner, Percy," he added the last part quickly, almost apologetically.

I gave a small smile, still unsure of what to do besides stand here awkwardly. As if seeing right through my indecision, Tony beckoned me over, approaching the separated pieces of the robot. I walked over to his side, looking over the workstation tentatively. Now that I'd gotten closer, I could read an inscription on the robot's side in blocky letters: DUM-E. I gave another small smile at the name, and Tony looked pleased.

"Yeah, made DUM-E and U back in college." He gestured towards another robot in the corner, who appeared to be cleaning up some kind of spill. Upon hearing its name, it perked up a bit, before resuming the work. "They were my lab partners before Bruce here came along. Now they've been downgraded to assistants." The robot in the corner, U, gave an impertinent chirp at this. "Anyways, you came down here at the right time. Unfortunately, Bruce does not have infinite hands, and I need someone to hold these two circuits in place while I solder them. I would just get DUM-E to do it, but as you can see..." He gestured towards the robot on the table.

I nodded quickly, taking the pieces he specified and holding them in the place he'd gestured to. Giving a nod and a muffled, "Thanks," Tony began to use the tools in his hands against the metal, a light buzzing sound filling the air.

After a minute, he pulled them away. "All good. Just got to wait for that to set to put in the program."

Tony puled out a laptop from I don't even know where, and began to type a few things, not even looking at the monitor after a moment. Meanwhile, Bruce puled up a chair, having emptied his hands of material and wire now that the soldering was done. He pulled up a second one after that, which I guessed was for me as I sat down, wringing my hands a bit.

Occasionally pressing a few keys, Tony gave us a nod, "Now my team is back to full working order. And a plus one, I guess."

With that, Tony and Bruce slipped into easy conversation, which I was all too happy to listen to. It was almost comforting, in a way, to hear a couple of friends speak and banter together after so long. The room wasn't dark, cold, or empty, like so many of my days had been. Just by being them, I guess, it kind of made the room a little brighter, a little more friendly.

Eventually, they popped in a few questions for me, light and easy, which my answers were something to pay them back by, for all they'd done for me. I had to repay them with something for all the generosity they'd shown, letting me in for the night. Of course, I couldn't overstay my welcome, so it was all a matter of gathering up what little I'd taken out of the bag I had upstairs and slipping away.

Tuning back into the conversation, I found the topic had somehow morphed into sleep schedules. Tony had just made a half-serious joke about how he just didn't sleep at all, and Bruce shook his head, answering with something like, "I'm not that kind of doctor."

Tony then turned to me. "How about you kid? Maybe we can hear from a someone without the years of horrific genius to compare."

I just gave a shrug, I hadn't really gotten into any sort of normal pattern with sleep, given the fact that nightmares usually found me when I did.

"Ah, you've gotta have something. Come to think of it, you're up pretty early for a teenager. Don't you guys usually sleep till what, noon? JARVIS, what time did the kid get up this morning."

I froze for a moment in my seat, remembering what exactly I had done a couple hours ago. I just hoped, somehow, nothing would happen, but as expected, JARVIS' voice came from the ceiling.

"About 3:38 AM, sir."

Tony looked at me with a dubious look. "Well that's definitely not normal. What were you even doing then?"

I didn't answer, but as expected, JARVIS did for me. "Around 3:40, Percy climbed onto the western ledge balcony and remained out there for the rest of the morning, until reentering at 6:31 AM."

There was a silent pause, as both Bruce and Tony turned to look at me with faces I couldn't read. I shrunk in my seat a little, wanting to run from the scene, but it felt like I was stuck to the chair.

Finally, Tony spoke. "Tell me JARVIS is joking, except the fact that he doesn't joke about things like that, I would know, I programmed him."

After a beat of silence, he began again, a hint of anger flicking into his tone, something I'd never heard from him before, "You've gotta tell me he's joking, because no kid I know would be stupid enough to go out side at one of the coldest hours in the morning and sit out there, freezing temperatures, for two hours. No way in hell."

His pitch was steadily rising, and I don't know if he realized, but he began to rise from the chair, standing above me. Even Bruce, who normally looked kind and passive appeared angry now, or maybe he was disappointed. I don't know which was worse.

"Why would you even think to do that? I mean, are you out of your mind? I have a damn heart condition!" Tony slammed a hand down on the table as his voice reached it's peak volume, and I couldn't help it. I was twelve years old again as Gabe traipsed through my apartment, yelling curses at me and my mom, and slamming the nice family furniture we'd had for years against the wall, raising a hand-

I flinched. My body curled in on itself a bit, as if protecting itself. Tony instantly stopped his tirade, anger flashing into concern, which melted into something I couldn't discern. But it was too late, I'd done it. This wasn't supposed to happen anymore. I was supposed to move on.

Taking a slow blink, I gave a muttered, "I'm sorry," before turning towards the exit, my feet perhaps moving a bit faster than they should.

Chapter Text

I didn't remember much as I left the room, holding myself back from breaking into a run until I at the very least reached the stairs, and headed up, only stopping when I'd reached the floor my stuff was on. I was vaguely aware of someone calling my name for a bit, maybe it was Tony, maybe Bruce, maybe even JARVIS, but whoever it was, I didn't answer.

The moment I stepped into the room I'd stayed in for the night, I was gathering up the bag of my things, shoving back in anything which had gotten strewn out either last night or this morning. By the time I'd reached the door again, two minutes had hardly passed and I was on track down the hallway, thoughts clear from my head besides the repeating mantra of get out get out get out, spiraling into the stairwell as I burst inside. I almost didn't realize my path was being obstructed by a figure until I was standing right in front of him. I'd only made it about a floor, yet here Tony stood, an incomprehensive mix of emotions very poorly hidden on his face.

I stopped for a moment, but not for long, and tried to sidestep.

"Sorry, I think it's time for me to leave," I muttered, unable to keep a threatening edge from the words.

Unfortunately, Tony wasn't about to take it that easily. He followed my movement, continuing to block the stairs. "Hey kid, let's talk about this, okay?"

I shook my head a bit, backing up a few paces.

"No, it's fine, I think I'm just going to leave, I stayed my night, right?" I cursed myself for the way they sounded rushed, why did I have to make such a big deal out of this?

Tony, meanwhile, looked at how I backed up, and snuck a not so discreet glance at the stairwell railing, as if he was afraid I was going to try and jump it. Which I wasn't going to do, but maybe it wasn't such a bad idea right now. Get out was still ringing in my head.

"Look, kid-"

He took a step forward and reached out a hand, as if to stop me from running.

Instantly, I bristled against the movement. "Don't touch me," I growled.

For what it's worth, he backed off, drawing his hands away. "Alright, alright, I'll leave you alone. But at least let me apologize, okay?"

He paused, as if to check and make sure I wouldn't run. Which I was still going to do, regardless of what he said, but maybe I'll stick around for an extra minute. Tony continued. "Look, I'm sorry. I shouldn't have yelled, or gotten angry like that. But can you blame me? I mean, I'd just been told the kid sitting right in front of me, the kid I'd offered a way out of the cold for the night had gone out there in it, willingly."

Once again, he paused as if anticipating a response, but if he was expecting one, he didn't get it. He let out a brief sigh.

"I'm not good at this. Okay, I get it. It's just... I don't want to end up like my dad, okay? He wasn't great at managing his anger either. Only time he'd ever voluntarily talk to me was yelling, really. I hate it when I yell, sounds just like him. I know that's something no kid, or anyone, wants or deserves to hear."

I blinked. The last thing I expected to hear out of an apology was that. I mean, I'd been expecting a mini-lecture about "hey this'll kill you!" or something straight out of a psychology textbook, or maybe just an article off the internet of "how to handle a kid with issues". None of which I'd listen to, by the way. That third option, I might go for the window instead. But this was Tony trying to genuinely apologize, and it felt real. It almost made me feel bad that I said I was going to leave, regardless of what he said.

Almost.

Because it's a terrifying thought to be back out there again, in this cold and damp, day after day, but maybe it was more terrifying to exist here, where somehow, after less than a day, someone could show something which looked close to care for me. And how was I to turn him down when he looked at me, looking something close to hopeful, and asked me if I could "stick around? Just a little longer, you can meet the team, and I haven't even introduced you to Pep".

So there Tony was, leading me back to the room, trying his very hardest to look comfortable and snarky, as per usual, though I could see the relief shining in his eyes. I couldn't be making this a permanent thing. But for now, all I had to do was keep myself presentable in front of Bruce, Tony, and "the team", whoever they were, stay out of the way, and maybe find a way to shut up JARVIS.

Chapter Text

The day passed, thankfully, in mostly peace and quiet. I'm not sure why I let Tony convince me to stay here. Maybe I felt like I owed it to the man for putting him through all that I'd already done, or maybe I hated how nice it felt to not have to worry about being out there, skirting buildings and ledges in the dead of winter.

Still, it didn't feel right, living in the tower, using the room he'd given me like it was my own. It felt something too close to pity, setting me into uneasiness, despite the easygoing nature of the two men who I saw periodically as the day went on. For what it was worth, they didn't look to talk to me too much. As for me, I just tried to stay out of their way.

At least, I tried to, until Tony came up to let me know that "the team" would be arriving soon, and that I'd love to meet them. He gave me a knowing look, which only proved to make things more confusing. He acted like I knew them somehow, which I wasn't sure I did. As far as I knew, there were no famous "teams” that a demigod would have to know about, probably some mortal pop culture thing. Maybe they were celebrities, like a band or model group or something. Tony and Bruce didn't exactly strike me as those types of people, but I've been wrong before.

But there was this lingering worry that this would all go wrong, somehow.

That's how I ended up heading down several flights of stairs just after the sunset, hand against Riptide in my pocket. What, how was I to know if any of them were monsters?

Finally, I reached the floor JARVIS informed me of, and pushed open the door, as silently as possible, hoping this would all be over quickly and whoever they were wouldn't care to talk to a kid. Unfortunately for me, the room did not proceed as normal when I entered. Falling silent for a moment too long, is what they did. At least in the moment, I could take in the people gathered in the room.

Closest to me sat Bruce, in a comfortable chair in the front. Next to him perched a man on the arm of the couch, with cropped sandy hair. As he sat, he passed an arrow between his hands rather deftly. Artemis and Apollo would be proud.

Behind him, a woman, the only one of the group, with shoulder-length red hair, leaned against the couch's back, supported by a stool taken from the kitchen. When she looked over to me, I could feel her eyes involuntarily sizing me up, like someone would do before a fight. Still, her posture was relaxed.

Tony himself was positioned on the floor next to Clint, as if he'd once been sitting on the couch but had since slid from it and was now resting comfortably on the carpeted surface of the ground.

I was surprised to recognize the last member of the group, the only one sitting on the couch properly, a tall, well-built man with short blonde hair and a blue eyed stare. The man who I'd seen running all those months ago, before all of this. A pang of grief caught in my chest as I remembered the day, and I suddenly wanted nothing more than to leave immediately.

Before I could make my move, however, the silence was broken by the red-haired woman, who smirked at Tony before commenting, "Aww, Tony, I didn't know you had a kid."

Tony opened his mouth to protest, but the blonde man on the couch beat him to it. "Nat, don't tease the poor guy."

Something about his word choice made me bristle, and maybe if there wasn't a memory trapped in my throat, I would've spoken up. But I stayed silent, begging for an opportunity for the attention to be taken off me so I could make my exit. Unluckily for me, Tony seemed to have no intention of letting that happen.

Seeming to recover from the woman- Nat?-'s comment, he brandished a hand towards me. "Oh, yeah, forgot to mention, but guys, meet Percy. He's going to be sticking around the tower for a bit. Percy, meet-" he flared his hands dramatically at the people around him, voice amping into a more dramatic tone, "-the Avengers."

Ohhh. The ones Tony had told me about yesterday were the team.

Meanwhile, "the Avengers" seemed about ready to explode with questions, but finally, something seemed to be going my way, because Bruce stopped them all with a warning look. Instead, the blonde man on the couch moved towards Clint and Tony, and gestured for me to sit down. There goes my escape plan. Reluctant and wary, I paced around the group and sat down on the couch where he'd shown, hoping I'd sink into it and vanish.

When I'd sat, the man offered a hand to shake, his smile kind, at least.

"Nice to see you again, Percy. I'm Steve."

I hesitantly took his hand, debating over what to say, but settling on nothing at all and giving a short nod. Meanwhile, Tony looked incredulously over at Bruce.

"What do you mean, 'again'? Kid, you didn't tell us you'd met Captain America before."

I blinked for a moment, confused. Understanding dawned in Tony's eyes, followed by somehow more incredulity.

"How do you not know who Captain America is?!"

I shrunk back in a half-sort of shrug. The group around me dissolved into crossing discussion, half talking about me meeting Captain America, or, Steve, and the other half furiously debating between themselves about me not knowing who he was, or who they were, really.

I breathed a short sigh. Finally, attention off me.

Chapter Text

Eventually, the topic of me slipped away. Conversation passed in a low drone around me. I caught bits and pieces of it, mostly when I was asked an offhand question or mentioned, but I was surprised at how much they were unbothered by my being there. Of course, I had no reference for these people, as their exclamations earlier had proven, but they seemed... comfortable with each other, in an almost family-like way.

As the minutes blended into an hour, and the sun sank far out of sight, and an abundant pizza order was delivered and chipped away at, I reflexively began to loosen. Maybe it was just how close they seemed, seeping into the atmosphere itself, or maybe it was me, that small part of me that wanted what they have, envious of it even.

I caught myself. No use wallowing in self-pity. This time, right now, it wasn't about me, it was about them, and I had to prove myself worthy to Tony. Prove to him that I wasn't all temperamental teenager, but someone actually deserving of all he'd already done for me.

I tuned back into the conversation, trying to grasp where the subject had shifted to now.

"You'll have to invite them up here sometime, Stark. Been too long since I've seen Laura and the kids." That was Nat, the red haired woman. Based on the sandy-haired man, Clint's, ducked smile, I had only to guess it was his family they were talking about. Tony gave Nat a sidelong glance.

"Fury'd have a field day." Though the statement seemed warning, the grin he too held had me thinking it was mostly sarcasm.

"Come on, it's been at least a year. How old are they now?"

Clint leaned back a bit. "Well, Lila's eleven, and Coop's just turned fourteen. God, can't believe that kid's almost on his way to college. You know, he asked me the other day what schools are the best for computer science. I guess kid's been messing around too much with the family computer. I told him he should stay close and Iowa State's a good deal, or even something over here, but he's got his heart set on Stanford. I just gotta hope he grows out of that, or he's going to end up running away to California for college."

I paused. California for college. That had been the plan, right? The pang in my chest was familiar, and for once, not all-consuming. Still, it was enough for me to almost miss the question posed to me a moment later, from Steve this time. "How about you, Percy? Got any college plans?"

Out of the corner of my eye, I could see an odd look on Tony’s face, Bruce’s too, a bit of knowing sadness mixed with curiosity. And against my better judgment, I didn't dismiss it with a 'no'.

"Yeah. I was going to go to California, too."

Steve tilted his head. "Was?"

I shrugged, though the pang pressed its way deeper. "Well, plans change. I grew out of it."

The answer seemed to satiate the others, even relieve Clint a bit, but I caught Tony giving me that odd look again, for a moment. I hoped this wouldn't follow itself up with an onslaught of questions, but that hope was high, and it was practically inevitable. Well, time to dig myself out of this hole with excuses later. Besides, my plans did change. I just didn't have to say why.

The pang burrowed itself deeper in my chest, nestling beneath my lungs. This was new, a new kind of hurt. It wasn't insistent, or overwhelming, or excruciating. It was just sitting there, cold and nagging, not letting me forget when I wanted so dearly to just move on.

I grew further stiff, and the couch cushion all too soft as the minutes dragged on, discomfort rattling with every breath. College in California. That's where I would be, right now, finishing up my first semester.

Cold, nagging, stiff.

So when the pizza had been finished and the lights had wound down, when Tony asked me if I wanted to stick around for a movie, I stood up and declined, letting him know I was tired and should head to sleep early tonight.

Cold, nagging, stiff.

Maybe without this I would have been more angry when I overheard him "discreetly" telling JARVIS to let him know of any open windows as I left, but the pang was heavy in my chest, heavier than any anger I could've felt.

Cold, nagging, stiff.

And anyways, I wasn't lying. I truly was tired. But I knew I wouldn't be able to sleep for quite some time.

Chapter Text

The moment I slid the door shut to the room I stayed in, I felt a dismal wave crash over me.

Maybe I should've stuck around and watched a movie, because by the way my eyes felt traitorously heavy, it would be much more difficult to stay awake tonight. I couldn't even open the window for a cool breeze to keep my mind occupied with something other than my own thoughts, because Tony would be right on my case. A movie might've been a distraction, at least. Still, to make good use of the phrase, I'd made my bed, and now I must lie in it.

I thought about pacing, but it would only drain me even more, and even if I managed to stay moving and preoccupied, it would take a noticeable toll on me tomorrow I was not ready to show off to the Avengers downstairs. So, not bothering to undo the blanket layer on the bed, I reclined in a half sitting position against the headboard, my eyes trailing to the windows coveting the wall beside me. If I couldn't open them, I could at least leave them undimmed and watch the goings-on of the still alive-city buzzing just beyond the glass.

The snow from two days ago was clearing from the alcoves and roofs of buildings, leaving small, pale patches in shadowy corners but revealing most of the muted color underneath. It was no longer melting, however, seeing as the warmth of the day hung around no longer now that darkness fell. On the narrow lines of streets far below, what snow left was dingy and almost unrecognizable from the dirt in the small piles left by plows. Still, the sound of countless cars splashing through semi-solid slush could be heard, even from this height.

I picked apart detail after detail, trying my best not to break focus.

Every time my mind slipped into a place even slightly darker than the world outside, I focused on that repetitive sloshing from below, and I returned to my task. I concentrated so intensely, I almost didn't notice my eyes drifting shut hours later, but even as I tried to pry them open again, the darkness returned with a vengeance, seizing the moment of weakness to send me drifting into unconscious thought. When I opened my eyes again, with significantly less effort, I was standing in a kitchen, all too familiar to me with its worn floors and peeling plaster.

My apartment.

Mom and Paul's.

That feeling of ice-cold fear crept back into my throat, just like it had done so many times before. I didn't want to turn around. To see them again, on that carpet, gone before I could reach. But I knew I had to turn. I couldn't live the rest of my days with my back to them. And so I turned, slowly, the dread tightening its chokehold until my eyes fell on the place I knew they'd be.

Except they weren't there. A man, tall and lithe, wearing a suit of all black stood in their place, a wide brimmed hat hiding his face and gloves hiding his hands. Though I couldn't see his mouth, I could hear a smile in his voice when he spoke.

"Perseus. So nice of you to finally join me. You know, I was starting to wonder if you'd ever show up, or if you'd watch those city lights forever." I took a step back. Demigod dream this time, not a nightmare. This was new.

"Who are you?" I asked the man warily.

"Names have power, Perseus, you know that," he chided. "Just know I'm someone who's been dying to meet you."

I put a hand to my pocket, out of instinct, but my fingers found no purchase.

"Looking for your weapon? Sorry, I have all the power here. And we can't be wasting time with pointy little blades when we have important matters to discuss." Before I could make another move, I was sitting in a chair at my mom's chestnut table she'd gotten at the thrift store down the street from her job, across from the man. His hat was still angled low, and the lights had dimmed somehow in that blink of an eye. He folded his carefully gloved hands across the table.

"Now, that's a bit better, wouldn't you say?"

"Why are we here, instead of your secret lair or something? Trying to scare me?" I quipped, trying to keep a hand on the situation.

"Straight out of the gate with questions, huh? Well, I'll tell you this one. Keep it fair, obviously. I brought you here, Perseus, because I wanted to show you where I did it."

Just like that, the dread was back. An ugly, creeping thing, sliding in behind my eyes and beneath my fingernails, a frostbite of apprehension and unease that pulled the air from my lungs. "Did... what?" I asked, though even my jaw was stiff with the movement, and I knew what he was going to say right before the words exited his lips.

"Where I killed your parents, of course. Sorry about that, I know you loved them. It's just... Perseus, you took something I loved from me, too."

The end of his words trailed away into grating silence, and something new fizzled in my chest. Fiery anger throbbed in my ears, beating back the chill.

"Angry, are we? I was too-" I broke from the chair, hurtling toward the man with speed unmatched, and as I grasped at his form, the hat tumbled from his head. The man beneath was less a man and more a shadow, shifting darkness filling his form into a misty amalgamation of a face, complete with half-formed eyes, which flashed with shock for a moment before returning to their comfortable placid smugness. Tartarus. The incarnation of the Pit.

As I pinned him to the floor, sending his hazy form from the chair, his foggy mouth continued its monologue.

"I did love her, you know. Gaea. As a dog loves the hand that feeds it. As Hell does its supplier."

And just like that, my muscles seized, forcing me into a rigid stance. Tartarus rose to his feet, brushing off any trace of dust from his impeccably black suit. When he deemed it appropriate, his eyes resumed their almost vicious arrogance, and his gloved hand shot forward, catching my throat and forcing me to the table.

"You've got spirit, I'll give you that." His voice seemed strained now, almost unhinged in its measured tone. I tried to struggle under his grip, but his control over my movement never twitched. "Don't worry, I'll pry that from you soon enough."

I gasped for air, the edges of my vision tinged with darkness, as if the shadows of his form were overtaking me.

"I'll see you soon Perseus, I'll see you soon."

With that, I shot upright in bed, chest heaving, trying to bring the air back into my lungs. I was back in the Tower room. My eyes trailed to the window. In their glared reflection, I could see the red imprint on my throat where Tartarus' glove had been a moment before.

Chapter Text

In the hour or so until the sun rose, I sat awake and still, my mind searching desperately for meaning in the dream.

Demigod dreams were odd things, usually laced with symbolism or metaphor ridden speech from disembodied deities, but this one had seemed fairly straightforward. Tartarus had revenge to pay after the war, and apparently, that revenge fell on me. I'd killed Gaea, who he'd loved in a more monstrous way, and in return, he'd killed Mom and Paul.

Maybe I should've been scared, seeing how much power he'd had over my dream self, but that was wrapped in anger, which itself entombed itself in an odd numbness. I was so tired of feeling angry and ruined, something I felt guilty for but yet was tired of in and of itself. Infuriating myself with Tartarus, and Gaea, and the gods wasn't going to bring them back any more than asking politely would. And so the numbness crept into my limbs and I distracted myself with the thoughts of my dream, the question nagging again and again: How could he have reached my physical self, leaving an imprint that faded over the course of an hour. And after the time had passed, the sun rose, and my thoughts trailed into nothing, I rose to my feet, showered, changed, and headed downstairs.

I remembered well enough now how to find the common floor, and I stepped from the stairwell into what seemed like an empty room, an impression I soon found was incorrect.

When I crossed into the kitchen, blinking the light from the windows away, I found Nat, the red-haired woman from last night, perched on the counter with one of the infamous peach yogurts she'd kill you over. I paused on the threshold, debating whether or not it was too late to turn around and leave. I was probably interrupting some morning routine she had, maybe they all had that I wasn't aware of.

Before I could start to backtrack, however, she met my gaze with a casual but authentic smile. "Morning, Percy. Sleep alright?"

I shrugged, the question was almost ironic. "Alright, yeah."

She slid off the counter, heading towards some cupboards. "Hungry? Stark only stocks this place up when he knows we're coming, you should see the pictures Bruce sends me when we're on longer missions. You're in luck, though. Looks like he's got some actual loaves of bread, Pop-Tarts, some pancake mix, so take your pick."

Maybe I was feeling particularly brave, but thinking of Mom for longer than normal this morning had given me this sense of homesickness I hadn't felt in a long time, so I found myself saying, "Pancakes sounds good. Does he have any food coloring?"

A curious expression came over Nat's face, something like intrigue mixed with sudden interest. "Yeah, why?"

I crossed the kitchen, a glimmer of something new sparking in my chest. "Well... I haven't had them in a while, but when I was little, my mom used to make me blue pancakes. Defiance of my stepdad mostly, but I still think they taste better that way." I don't know why I felt like sharing this with Nat when I hadn't told anyone else, not even Tony, but something lifted from me when I spoke.

For what it was worth, Nat was a good conversation partner. We fell into the process of mixing and cooking the pancakes easily, with the occasional point of conversation not requiring as much from me as it had before. She didn't try to pry any more about Mom or my family from me, and about halfway through, I realized I was smiling. I felt the urge to run from this, from all this newness, but this morning, I was being brave. So I didn't.

We finished a small batch of pancakes, doled them out between the two of us, and settled down to eat, Nat on the counter again, me opting for a chair.

I learned that Nat was usually the first one up, besides Steve, who went out for a run at the crack of dawn (like an idiot). She usually had the kitchen to herself, but it was nice to have company. Clint always stumbled out of the elevator last, still rubbing sleep from his eyes around ten. He was up on time for missions, but on off days, forget it. After we'd finished the last of the pancakes, we were jerked from our moment of peace by the all too loud voice of Tony, stepping out of the elevator.

"Romanoff, get your ass off my counter!"

Nat rolled her eyes with a smile. "Only if you haul your ass to bed more than once every two weeks instead of crawling from the workshop for coffee."

She slid from the counter, tossing her plate in the sink as she headed towards Tony, who looked mock-offended at her remark.

"Hey, my ass is a working man!"

She stepped past him into the elevator with a smirk.

"Sure, and my ass is the president of the United States." She gave me a two-fingered wave. "Duty calls."

Tony waved her off with a grin, heading over to the coffee machine when he noticed me, then my empty plate. "What, you and Romanoff had breakfast without me? I guess I know when I'm not wanted."

I opened my mouth to apologize when I saw his eyes shining. "I'm messing with you. Hey, I'm glad you're catching on here." He gave me a small smile, genuine, not joking.

"Want to come help out in the workshop again?"

Chapter Text

My footsteps echoed in the stairwell as I traced a familiar path up them.

I had spent a good portion of the day working with Tony, but as the coffee began to wear off, I noticed his exhaustion. Noting Nat's off-handed joke of only getting sleep 'once every two weeks', I took a step back and let him nod off. I guess no one really had everything together here. Maybe this wasn't such an odd thing, after all, given the couches present in the workshop where they once would have seemed out of place.

All this aside, I began to head upstairs to the common floor with the hope of finding Bruce to ask him for a blanket. Luckily, upon opening the door to the floor, I did find him. Unluckily, he wasn't alone.

I entered the room to a slight wave of sound emitting from the four other team members, who were arranged around a low table in the corner engaged in some board game. I walked over as quietly as I could, so as not to disturb them, and Bruce, noticing me, got up to pull me aside.

"Hey Percy, what's up?" He sounded concerned, which was odd, seeing I hadn't said anything yet.

"Uh, do you think there's any blankets I could have? Not for me- for Tony... he kinda crashed downstairs."

Bruce deflated a little, but a smile hung in his eyes, something like disappointment but affection ringing in the same expression. "Of course. I'll grab some and head down there." He steered the pair of us back towards the group, hand on my shoulder. "You can play for me. Unfortunately, I'm losing miserably.”

My head was spinning a bit with this change in plans; it looked like there was no easy escape from this one. Addressing the group, as he turned to go, Bruce continued, "Percy's taking over for me. Tony's being... well, Tony." With that, the elevator doors slid shut, the light behind them vanishing.

I turned back to the game, which I now saw was Monopoly, feeling out of place in the moment of silence that had fallen. However, Nat gave me a smile and patted the empty space next to her, and conversation started again, the game a background lull. Something had changed, and maybe it was that mark of bravery earlier, or the time in proximity to the group, but this night, instead of letting everything fade away, I started to listen. When someone rolled straight onto Bruce's double utility set and began to agonize, I even felt the corners of my mouth turn up. When Bruce came back, he told me to keep playing, so I did.

Clint was the first to lose, throwing his last couple bills at Nat as she, with a smirk, filed them away in the bank. He got over the loss quickly, talking about his kids wanting a visit, and settling with Bruce what time would be best. I ran out next, my last 2k going straight to Nat's deadly hotel-ridden Boardwalk.

In the minutes to midnight, the intensity ramped up, and Nat landed in jail as Steve began to approach that fated blue corner. Finally, he had an unlucky set of rolls, and landed right on not one but both Boardwalk and Park Place one after the other, leaving him with nothing and Nat the victor.

The group fell into a raucous smattering of cheering and groans, which fizzled after a moment to heated conversation.

"Steve, I thought you played this back in the 40s. What happened?"

"Just because I've played for a hundred years doesn't mean I can beat Nat... when she cheats."

Nat gave the pair a mock offended look, "Hey, I don't cheat! You just can't stomach the fact that I'm better than you."

"All I'm saying is, watch that bank."

Conversation dwindled after a few minutes, and exhaustion began to creep in. While the group piled into the elevator, I let them leave before opening the door to the stairwell again. There was a buzzing in my fingertips I hadn't felt before, but I felt light, something sort of airy, despite not having spoken much a word in the hours earlier. My head felt clear and quiet, which was something entirely new. It was a curious sort of thing, too tired to really ponder it.

And if I had seen Nat's hand slide out of turn into the bank a few times? My lips were sealed.

Chapter Text

The next day dawned shockingly bright, as I opened my eyes to the blinding streams through the uncurtained windows. My dreams had gone graciously uninterrupted, and for the first time in a long time, I felt well rested, the exhaustion ebbing from my limbs.

Rolling over, I checked the time. 8:03. Well, I had certainly slept in.

A bundle of panic struck in, jerking me into a sitting position. Would Tony be mad that I wasn't ready to work? On top of leaving the workshop early last night, another unacceptable thing. I swung my feet over the side of the bed, changing at remarkable speed before beginning at a brisk pace towards the stairwell. Thoughts raced in my head, fear of disappointment or anger I knew was soon to come. My breath had begun to catch in my throat by the time I made it to the doorway to the common area, and I steadied it, relaxing to a normal rate. I had to keep control. With a final, steeling sigh, I pushed open the door.

As expected, Tony stood alone by the kitchen, turning to me as I entered. I hadn't even begun to string together an apology when he began to speak, and I prepared for the worst.

"Morning, kid. How'd you sleep?" I froze for a second, caught off guard by the casual tone. Was this a lead in? Ask me a kind question, then take the opportunity to bring it back?

I ducked my head, in a half-nod. "Alright."

He also gave a nod, looking at me a bit curiously. "Good, glad to hear it. Here, catch."

He threw me a small object, which, after I caught it, I noticed, was a package of Pop-Tarts. I guess Nat was right about Tony's food supply. Just then, Bruce stepped in from the hallway, a small smile on his face.

"No need to test Percy's reflexes first thing in the morning, Tones."

I paused. Their tone was passive, not the angry one I was expecting. This seemed a bit lengthy for exposition, too. Were they not upset? Tony cleared up the suspicions once again when he turned to me and grinned, his face excited and maybe a little mischievous.

"Well I'm glad you're up, Percy. I've got a little suprise for Legolas upstairs, and I was just about to call everyone to get on up here. And by everyone I mean Nat and Steve, who I will bet myself they're down in the training room like a couple of gym fanatics at this hour." He paused, as if waiting for something that didn't come. "Honestly, the two of you. I don't even know why I try. JARVIS, tell Steve and Nat to get up here or I'll set DUM-E on them."

"Yes, sir."

I don't know if I was imagining it, but the AI's voice sounded excited to deliver the threat. Well, however, it was delivered, Nat and Steve appeared in the elevator a little over a minute later, both seeming sweaty and mildly annoyed.

"What do you need, Tony?" Steve asked with a slight sigh. Tony pulled a dollar from his pocket, flashed it to me, and replaced it, in a 'told you' gesture, before responding.

"Well, I have a little surprise for Birdbrain upstairs, and I thought you all might want to bear witness. You know, in case waking up Barton at this hour results in a court case or something."

Steve looked doubtful, and exchanged a look with Nat, who shrugged. "Let's hear it."

Tony's face lit up as he turned once again to the ceiling. "JARVIS, if you'll do the honors..."

He trailed off, tone dramatic, before letting the room fall silent, waiting for any sign of Clint. A crash from upstairs. Moments later, the ding of the elevator punctuated the air, opening to reveal a bedraggled, angry Clint standing in the door, almost silhouetted in the sunlight outside. He stepped just enough into the room for the elevator door to slide shut.

"You've got 30 seconds, Stark, or I swear you won't leave this room alive."

Tony held his hands up, but it seemed he couldn't help the grin that crept onto his face. "Come on, Barton, I've got some news that might cheer you up. So I pulled a few strings with Fury, and by that I mean went behind his back, and I have managed to arrange a little surprise..." He paused for dramatic effect. "Laura and the kids are coming up for the day. They'll be here in about... an hour?"

He could barely let the last part of the speech out before Clint was barreling towards him, and for a moment, I thought he was going to follow through on his promise, and it seemed Tony thought the same thing, with the way his eyes widened slightly. However, when they met, Clint's face broke into a smile, wrapping Tony in a hug. The rest of the group, especially Nat, also split into excited smiles, and I couldn't help the sway the joyous air had on me, too.

"Thank you, Tony, really." Clint said after he broke away. As everyone split off to complete their morning with a newfound anticipation, I found myself lingering a bit longer, before trailing back up to my room, secondhand joy still sitting lightly in my chest. I'd let them have their day. I was a stranger to Clint's family, after all.

Chapter Text

For the rest of the morning until the Barton kids arrived, the team ended up just hanging around the main common area, something I didn't mind sticking around for. The whole group dynamic I was still a little uncomfortable with, but I guess that was self-centered of me; it's not like a was a permanent part of it, and soon enough they'd be continuing on like normal.

It was this thought I was left with as JARVIS notified the room that the Barton family had arrived downstairs, covertly of course, and the mood in the room brightened with excitement. I took this as my cue to leave, as they were distracted, each with an eye on the elevator. There was no way I could sneak back upstairs, to the privacy of the room I'd been given, but I could vanish into one of the offshooting hallways from the main communal area, into more unexplored, hopefully more quiet spaces.

This hallway seemed to have rooms of all purposes from storage to extra living space, holding tidbits of hobbies I guessed belonged to some of them, although I could never begin to guess who. Along these lines of hobby projects in a room, I found the perfect spot to spend the day: a taller space which I guessed took up not only the space on this floor but also the floor above it, with two full walls of windows, making this one immediately the brightest around.

Stepping into the room and silently clicking the door closed behind me, I gazed around at the work. All around the unwindowed walls and spotting more than half of the floor, plants of all shapes rose in their greenery. The floor had been renovated so it resembled a stone pathway, and the space around the pathway was covered in a level of soil, springy and not at all like that which you'd find outside at the moment. The greens and warmth of occasional blooms seemed to glow against the pale grey of the city outside, making the whole room feel like a different world. There were a few chairs mixed throughout the room, but I opted for the solid floor, in one of the corners where window met drywall, with a full view of the room on my left and a partial of the city below on my right.

It was then I realized I had nothing to do. Bringing Riptide from the pocket of my jeans, I fiddled with the pen in my hands, careful not to remove the cap, but instead just passing it back and forth, my mind trailing.

It had been with me for so long... and when I glanced back down, I threw the pen from my hands, sending it clattering across the room. I blinked hard, feeling its familiar weight assume itself back in my pocket. When I reopened my eyes, my hands sat as normal, if a bit shaky. I must have been imagining it, but for a moment, I had seen them drenched in blood, dripping steadily across the tile, staining it a glaring crimson. It was a trick, a too convincing one.

I'd almost persuaded myself to get up and leave when I heard a clattering in the grate diagonal to where I sat, adjacent to the door. Just then, the plate covering the vent was lifted aside, and a girl, maybe middle school age, jumped out into the dirt, replacing the metal behind her. Our eyes met across the room, and she froze, before relaxing.

"Phew," she said, in that exaggerated way kids do. "Thought you were my dad for a second." She walked over to where I was, sinking down to the floor in a mimic of my position. "Who are you? What are you doing in here?"

After a moment of hesitation, I proceeded. "I could ask you the same thing."

"Hey, I asked you first!"

"Well..." I thought for a second, "I'm Percy. And I'm hiding."

Her face brightened. "Me too! Well, I'm not Percy, I'm Lila."

"Who are you hiding from?" "My dad. Whenever we come here, he always lets us play vents hide and seek, which is just hide and seek but we get to use the vents too. Just this floor, though, or Dad gets scared." Dad, which meant Clint's kids. I'd suspected, but now it was confirmed.

Just then, before Lila could even take a breath, two more kids, this time a third or fourth grade boy and one who was perhaps just old enough to be a high school freshman clambered into the room, the younger from the door and the older from the same vent Lila had come from. They noticed Lila first, then me, and I saw the interest spark in their eyes.

"Guys, come here! Percy's hiding too!"

Well, I guess there was no escaping here now. The younger boy, a bit clumsy on his feet, scrambled over and quickly let me know his name was Nathaniel, even though everyone in the whole world called him Nate, and he was eight years old. The older boy, Cooper, seemed to be trying to act mature, dusting off his pants and striding over, as if he couldn't be caught taking the game seriously. I was surprised how easily they seemed to befriend me and integrate me into their little group. Not to say I didn't like being around the team, but it was refreshing, and there was almost this level of instant comfortable that came with interacting with other kids. It reminded me of opening up with the younger, mostly scared half-bloods who came into camp, telling me about their days and all the things they found interesting. It was something I didn't know I missed, and it sent a pang of homesickness through me that I tried to squash as soon as it arose. It was no use dwelling on the past, and they didn't want me there anymore. Besides, there were kids right in front of me I could help and befriend, and I didn't need to be anywhere else.

I mentioned Stanford and Cooper began a spiel, followed by Lila professing she now hated school, and Nate bubbling up about the cool things he learned in a book last week. They seemed to forget the game entirely, at least, until Clint burst into the room, giving us all a jump.

"Found you... and you..."

His eyes trailed over the scene as all three kids gave their dad tragic, defeated faces and began loud exclamations. They all hurried over (Cooper sure to not do so as excitedly as his siblings), Lila giving me a quick wave goodbye, insisting as she made her way out, "Dad, can Percy play every time?".

Clint hung around in the doorway a little longer as the kids proceeded down the hallway, watching me curiously. The smile fell from the corners of my mouth a little. Had I done something wrong?

But all he said was, "How'd you learn to be so good with kids?" That was a question I decided to answer with a quick shrug. Where could I start with the truth?

Chapter Text

The sky never really gets dark in New York City. It was one of the things I missed about camp, even if they still got some of the runoff light pollution. I couldn't get lost in the stars, and let them, just for a moment, become my whole world. Some nights, from before, I would try from that rooftop, but it was something I had tried fruitlessly. I couldn't spend my life looking up, not when there was so much life down here.

I turned the thoughts over in my head as I gazed out the window, waiting for sleep to come like it had promised. The rest of the day had gone surprisingly well, I thought. It was a welcome lapse from the quieter days, having younger kids around.

I'd gotten to meet their mom, Laura, after the hide and seek incident. They'd asked me to join, but I declined. Despite Clint's reassurances, I didn't want to step on the time the kids got with their dad, disrupt that all too brief, fragile ecosystem with another, older, out-of-place presence.

Instead, as the kids ran off with Clint momentarily following, a younger woman, around Nat's age, with tawny brown hair came over to talk with me. From her resemblance to Lila, I could guess she was their mom, and in spite of my earlier refusal to intrude on the family's time, she seemed adamant to talk to me, a gentle persistence you could always find on mothers looking for the left-out kid at the birthday party. She talked with me for longer than it felt like in the moment, about Clint and his habits and the kids' weird interests on the farm and her indecision about homeschooling. Maybe it was just the tone I mentioned, that gentle coaxing, but I found myself sharing little things I probably wouldn't have now, the weird interests and habits some of my friends had from camp (not mentioning which camp or the magical parts, of course), the things my mom used to get annoyed with me over. She took everything with that knowing maternal gaze, and the winter sky had darkened before I realized it.

Later, we had dinner, me, the team, and the Barton family, after which Cooper, Lila, and Nate insisted upon challenging me to Mario Kart, something I accepted with the prerequisite that I'd never played before. This seemed an affront to just about everyone in the room, which I had to awkwardly excuse away. At least I knew what this one was, unlike the Avengers.

With some hesitancy, I played a few rounds with the kids, coming up from a miserable last place to a reasonable seventh by the end of our fifth round.

I'd tapped out then, as the TV had already had several glitches which caused Tony to lightly kick the tower. Clint took over for me , promising revenge, and he'd decimated them, with the promise that they'd beat him one day.

When the kids were sufficiently exhausted, Tony, Clint, and Laura brought them upstairs, with Tony showing them which of the guest rooms they could choose from. I guessed they would be splitting the floor with me, something I didn't mind, although it meant I'd have to stay a little quieter from now on. Not that I was loud in the first place, which meant virtually no change.

Afterwards, the mood settled down, and the remaining adults and myself lingered in the living room, talk exchanged around the group. This, I was silent in, and after a few moments, I asked Tony if I could head upstairs too, to which he responded, "'Course, kid. You don't have to ask."

And that was what brought me here, lingering on the past brought up by Laura's conversation, my emotions on the subject spent. I pushed them back into the darkness, determined not to ruin this feeling. I gave the barest hint of a smile in the dark, knowing no one could see. It felt good to forget. It was good to finally be around kids again, and for what it's worth, this visit had gone better than I could have ever expected it to.

With these last moments dancing lazily around my head, I fell into a dreamless sleep.

Chapter Text

The Barton family left after another day spent at the Tower, which was far too soon, a sentiment shared by everyone, it seemed. Still, the brief visit left a lasting sense of high spirits, which was emphasized by the impending holiday season.

It seemed one morning, a few after they'd left, the world transformed into a wonderland of multicolored lights just beyond the windows, and inside, an explosion of garlands and mismatched decorations. Despite his architectural prowess, it seemed Tony was not the best interior designer. Still, the cluttered feel was comforting, in a sense. It made it feel like a real home, instead of some minimalist haven.

The others rushed around too, seemingly reinvigorated by the rush of energy brought by Clint's family. In the two weeks I'd stayed here, it had never felt so real. However, there was only so much winter they could take.

One day, a bit after I'd picked over Tony's breakfast options, Steve, Clint, and Nat dashed through the room, exiting from the hallway, armed with towels and bathing suits.

"JARVIS, let Tony, Bruce, and Per- Oh, hi Percy -forget that last part, just Tony and Bruce know we're having a mandatory team bonding day at the pool," Clint called. He broke off conversation with the AI and turned to me, slowing pace only by a bit. "Grab your bathing suit, Percy, or come in your clothes if you want. I'm sick of all this winter grey."

Nat gave me a slight grin as she stepped into the elevator, Steve and Clint on her heels. "Yeah, and the mandatory part is only a half-joke." The doors slid shut behind her.

I paused in the kitchen, trying to quell the excitement that rose in me from the moment they'd mentioned a pool. I shouldn't go, though. I didn't have a bathing suit, and even if I did, there would be a whole host of other problems, including to the array of scars I kept hidden. But... Clint had said I could come in my clothes, and besides, it was semi-mandatory... I'd convinced myself enough. A smile tugging at the corners of my mouth, I headed towards the door to the stairwell, asking JARVIS for directions to the pool.

And when I saw it, I knew my excitement was not for nothing. The smell of chlorine wasn't overly pungent when the glass doors slid open, and it seemed Tony was rich enough to have a clear, clean pool without the rigorous chemicals running through it, at least not to the degree of other ones I'd seen. Pale, hazy sunlight floated through a set of windows on one wall, setting the room awash in a more natural light, supplemented by the warm glow of electrical lights far above.

I was taken aback, caught in a semi stupor, until a spray of water caught my shins. I glanced down, feeling the tingling power spread through my body as it hit. Tony gave his best shit-eating grin from the edge of the pool, the source of the splash.

"Come on Percy, what are you waiting for?"

Needing no further encouragement, I lost my already sodden shoes and socks, and jumped into the water, splashing Tony as I did. When I resurfaced, he was wiping his face, grin still firmly planted.

"Payback," I noted, my veins buzzing with adrenaline as the water surrounded me, filling me with a new energy I hadn't felt in ages.

Tony met my eyes. "Oh, it's on."

Before I could process his words, I was hit square in the face with water, Tony beginning to laugh. Before I knew it, we'd looped in Clint, Steve, Nat, and even Bruce, who had been calmly watching us from the safety of dry ground, to our full scale war, which devolved into laughter and lighthearted jabs. And yeah, maybe I'd cheated a bit with my powers, but still, it was small enough that no one would notice. I felt like I was glowing, the way the water seemed to awaken every last note of life which had laid dormant for who knows how long. I wished I could stay here forever. Maybe it was stupid to keep ruining these kinds of moments with memories.

So in between moments of quips and splashes, I made myself a resolution. It was going to let myself swept up in this joy, this exuberance, despite its newness. No more dampening, nor reminisce. I'd stamp them out, and let the forgetting come. It was getting easier and easier. And the present? It could be everything.

Chapter Text

It was eight days to Christmas when Tony made his grand announcement. (Yes, another one. He seemed just about full of those, in fact.)

The day had been a quiet one, everyone off working detached from the others. Me, Tony, and Bruce took up time in the workshop together, at least until Tony shooed us out under the guise of wrapping presents. Bruce took the opportunity to show me around the medical floor more in depth, explaining some of the work they were doing in the labs. Most of it sailed clear over my head, but the way Bruce talked, it was so obvious this was where his passion lied. I couldn't help but nod along as he gave me the grand tour.

Clint and Nat had been forced out by someone named Fury, who was unfamiliar to me, but by the context I'd been given over the last few weeks, seemed like a manager of some sorts. "Fury's given them work detail. No fun," as Tony had explained briefly this morning when I asked. As for Steve, he seemed put out by everyone's busyness, and had taken the opportunity to pass the day down in the gym. Tony seemed amused by this, but didn't comment further.

By the time the sun had set, which was obnoxiously early, mind you, it seemed like I hadn't seen much of anyone all day. That's when Tony took it upon himself to bring us back together with a grand announcement, summoning everyone back to the common floor with JARVIS. Me and Bruce exchanged a similar glance, somewhere between exasperation and amusement. There was never a boring moment around here, it seemed.

When the pair of us arrived back upstairs, Bruce taking the stairs with me, Steve was already settled in a chair, and Nat and Clint were just arriving on the elevator. I gave them a small smile when I saw them; in truth, it had seemed too quiet around here without them.

Tony clapped out attention to him as soon as the elevator doors slid shut. "Alright, alright, settle down folks. It's time for my great Christmas announcement. Yes, hold your applause."

Bemusedly, the four of us arranged around the seating area with Steve. Tony strode dramatically over until he was in front of us, a grin on his face. "From today until the fabulous day itself, we will be holding, right here in the tower... a Christmas movie marathon!" He paused for a moment, before whispering, "You guys can clap now."

A few scattered claps and laughs were given, but it was mostly just to appease his joke. Clint stood up, a grin crossing his features.

"Tones, you should just make it a tradition now. She thought it was going to be a twelve days of Christmas marathon. I betted you would forget. Suppose we were both right, in a way."

Tony and Clint both gave small laughs, and the group devolved into some mixed conversation, mostly on Tony's forgetfulness and what movie to choose first. As much as it had gotten much easier for me to talk with the group, especially since the day at the pool, I felt like the odd one out, not knowing the Christmas traditions. Would I even be expected to be included?

As if he could read my mind, Tony called out over the group, "Hey, hey, hey. Because you guys can't agree for shit, Percy's gonna pick first. No complaints. Can't get out of this one, kid."

I smiled, pleasantly surprised by his inclusion. He wanted me here, no doubt about that. And by the way everyone else seemed to accept it wholeheartedly, they wanted me here too.

A few minutes later, everyone split off. Tony allotted a half-hour for everyone to change into comfortable clothes and take showers, if they needed. He had ordered a pizza while we were gone, and by the time I stepped out of the stairwell, a few boxes were stacked on the coffee table in front of the TV. I heard the faint sound of popping popcorn coming from the kitchen, and I headed over.

"Ah, hey kid. You all set?"

I gave a nod. "Yeah, I'm good."

I wore some of the clothes he'd given me, both branded with the Stark Industries logo; a pair of sweatpants and a sweatshirt. That had been most of my wardrobe, as I didn't really have many clothes of my own. Tony turned around, giving me a smile. "Can you take this over to the table for me?"

Tony dumped bag of popcorn into a bowl and handed it to me. I nodded again, heading back towards the living area. Just then, the elevator doors slid open, and Nat and Clint filed out, both having taken showers from their days on "Fury work detail". Moments later, Steve, and finally Bruce, stepped into the room, heading over to the common area. As he arrived, Tony snapped his attention to me. "Quick, before we get distracted. You got a movie in mind, Percy?"

I paused. I hadn't thought this far ahead yet. What movie did I like for the holidays, that everyone else would like too? I didn't want anyone to be bored with my choice. Unsure of what to say, I blurted, "Uh... Home Alone?"

Tony flashed me a grin. "A classic. Good one, you've made the people happy."

I took a breath. Even though it was a joke, his wording reassured me. As the lights dimmed, the opening credits started, and low conversation fell to a silence, I settled onto the couch. Beside me, Clint and Nat were tucked beneath a blanket together, and on my other, Tony reclined in his chair, eating a slice of pizza. I could see, faintly, from the corners of my eyes, Steve and Bruce had taken up armchairs, looking with pleasant distraction at the screen. I felt my muscles relax, and I took a breath, absorbing myself in the movie. I never wanted to leave this moment, not ever.

Chapter Text

Five days went by before I was reminded of that other part of Christmas I'd almost forgotten: the gifts.

Nat was the one to bring it up, inviting me out to do some shopping with her, because, after all, "No one else had bothered to ask", and besides, she "needed a shopping partner anyways". Both were jokes, of course, and I gave a smile as she reprimanded the others for their lack of effort. In truth, I wasn't really sure how I was going to afford anything, as I had next to no money, but I was grateful for the offer. The fact that she actively wanted to spend time with me felt like a barrier to friendship I hadn't thought I'd crossed yet, but it seemed Nat felt otherwise.

That's what led to us strolling the streets of midtown Manhattan, the sky overcast and the air carrying a winter chill. Nat wore a half-hearted disguise, which consisted of a simple hat and glasses, and insisted it was just a formality. "Fury doesn't like us out without at least something, and this usually works fine. Keeps the press away."

We poked around a few department stores, Nat perusing some aisles and running gift ideas past me. She picked up a waffle maker for Tony first, because "no man that rich should be without one." She'd soon regret that decision, as she then had to carry it throughout the rest of our day. I offered to carry it for her, but she insisted it wasn't a burden, just a bother.

After we'd cycled in and out of a store or two, Nat asked me if hadn't seen anything I liked.

"Oh, no, I just don't want to spend your money. It's just nice just being out, honestly."

She shook her head. "Percy, you don't need to worry about that." She handed me a credit card. "Tony gave this to me earlier, I completely forgot. It's for you, buy whatever you'd like. And it's his money you're spending, not mine, and he's got too much of it to spare."

"Oh...okay." I took the card hesitantly, unsure of how I felt about spending Tony's money, even if he'd granted me the all clear. Whatever gifts I ended up getting, I'd make sure they were cheap. Having grown up... inexpensively, I doubted I'd ever get used to just being able to spend money without a second thought. Still, as we headed over to the Holiday Shops at Bryant Park, I was grateful for the opportunity to pay the team back a little bit, after all they'd done for me.

When we arrived, the market was crowded, though maybe less so than it would have been in the evenings. Though the lights were lit, they were dim in the hidden afternoon light. We headed around a few stalls, Nat picking up some other gifts and me making my first few purchases, feeling awkward the whole time. I picked up a magnetic sorter for tools for Tony, having seen the disorganized heap of items strewn about in the workshop. It always seemed to take him an extra minute to find something, so I hoped it went over well. Recalling Steve's penchant for running and Bruce's fondness for aromatics (I'd accidentally found his secret candle collection one morning as I was fetching materials for Tony), I bought some comfortable insoles and a butterscotch candle. I found myself at a loss for Clint, until I noticed a pair of compression gloves and remembered his complaints of aching hands after practicing archery for too long.

Finally, it was down to my gift for Nat and hers for me. Agreeing to meet in 10 minutes by the back of the Public Library, Nat checked the time on her phone and we split off, but not before she told me that she might run late because she always lost track of time. I gave a laugh, and headed down a line of stalls.

What was I going to get her? What gift could I give that conveyed just how grateful I was that she'd volunteered to spend time with me, especially today, taking me to see the city?

I sidestepped a crowd, looking over various vendor's items without too many ideas. Though there were so many nice things, nothing felt... right. Jewelry was nice, but Nat didn't seem to wear too much of anything that got in the way. I needed something functional, but also something that said thank you.

Before I could turn around and head into another section, a flash of metal caught my eye. In a less travelled corner, a display of watches ticked on, watched over by a tall Asian woman who was bent over a worktable. As I approached, she looked up warily, her eyes darting around as if there were something else hiding just beyond sight.

"Good morning-er, afternoon, are you here to buy something?" Moving a bit closer, I noticed that she'd been working on a miniscule engraving on the back of a watch, reading "Let each second be a begininn", with a g halfway carved.

"I think I'm just going to look for now."

The woman nodded, her eyes not leaving me except to jump furtively.

"Is... everything okay?" I asked, hesitant.

She gave me a small, but exhausted smile. "Oh, I'm sorry. I'm not usually like this, it's just, well, just lately some kids have been stealing things off my displays. They know the police never listen when I report them, and I'm usually too caught up in my work to stop it."

I felt a pang of sympathy for the woman, and a beat of silence passed, as I pondered what to say. After a moment, I looked down at the worktable, smiling faintly at the inscription. "Is that one for sale?"

She gave a slight nod, finishing the engraving as I spoke with a steady hand. I took out the card Tony had given me, holding it carefully. "How much?"

She turned the watch over, revealing the pale face and softly ticking silver hands, bordered by a fine black leather. "This'll cost you 189, but of course I can make it cheaper!" She said it in a bit of a rush, as if people often contended the price. "I wouldn't mind, you're such a kind boy."

I smiled, warmth filling me at the compliment. "Make it 200, and you've got a deal." I didn't like the expense of Tony's money, but the woman had struck me with her story, and her work. She looked at me a moment, as if she wanted to protest, but no words would come, so instead she drew out a card reader, entering the amount into her phone. After I'd paid, she shined the inscription with a cloth, before placing the watch gently into a box, closing it with care.

"Thank you... may I know your name?" She seemed, again, hesitant to speak.

I smiled again. "Percy. And thank you too."

The woman returned my smile, and some of the exhaustion seemed to creep from her face. "You can call me Mrs. Huang." She handed me the box, and I tucked it, along with Tony's card, carefully away into one of my other bags.

"Have a good rest of your day Mrs. Huang. I'll see you around."

With that, headed back towards the library, hoping I'd not overstayed my time, thinking of Mrs. Huang's predicament. Luckily, I was not late. A few minutes after I'd reached the steps, Nat stepped forth from the crowds, heading towards me. Her grin was contagious.

"Now that that's settled, what do you think about lunch? I don't know about you, but I'm starving."

It wasn't difficult to find a place to eat, and it seemed we shared a taste for carb-filled Italian food. She deemed it okay to take off the disguise while we were in the diner, and made a joking show of exasperatedly putting it back on before we left, laughing a bit as we headed back onto the streets. However, before we could make much headway back to the Tower, Nat paused. "Oh, Percy, there's one more thing we still have to do. After seeing you in all those Stark Industries clothes, I think its about time you get some real stuff in your wardrobe. Stark can't brand you like he does everything else." After a protest, she obliged me to accept.

And so, we spent the rest of the afternoon in and out of stores, Nat insisting I needed a bit more each time I thought we were good. Although I stuck to the cheap stuff, Nat promised if I didn't start getting some clothes with "character", she'd have to pay for it all.

By the time we made it back to the Tower, a light snow had begun to fall, turning to slush on the sidewalks. Our arms were laden with bags, but I felt myself laughing easier than ever. A warmth fizzled in my chest as we stepped into the building, Nat exaggeratedly complaining about Tony's waffle maker. Maybe this is what they meant all along about the Christmas spirit.

Chapter Text

The day before Christmas dawned with a chilly brightness, the cool light streaming in through the cracked windows as I rose for the day, not wanting to escape the pillow of warmth under the blankets. Not that the Tower was cold, of course. Tony's heating system was immaculate, keeping every room perfectly comfortable, unlike any other place I had lived.

A few minutes later, I was downstairs, waking myself up with the descent down numerous flights, before reaching the common floor. It was around 8, so I wasn't sure exactly who'd be in. Steve was probably already out, it was late for him, and Clint probably wouldn't be up for another few hours. The other three, though, were eligible candidates, and, sure enough, my predictions were right, as I pushed through the door.

Standing by the counter, an empty yogurt container beside her, stood Nat, who was frowning down at something on her phone. When she heard the door, she looked up, and her expression changed almost instantly, breaking into a smile as she put her phone down. "Well, good morning to you. Happy Christmas Eve."

"Morning." I returned the smile without even realizing it, as I crossed the room towards her. She washed the container and dropped it into a recycling bin, as I began to toast a bagel.

"So, Percy, you want to join me in wrapping gifts today? I kinda forgot to do it yesterday, maybe you did too. 'Course, you can't see me wrap yours but still."

The toaster made a small ding, and I pulled my bagels out as I answered. "Sorry, Nat, I did it with Tony yesterday. He set aside some lab time for it, I should have had him invite you."

Nat shrugged off my apology. "You're all good, just checking. I'll see you later, okay?"

She began to head over to the elevator, and I waved goodbye. Just then, however, I noticed her phone still sitting on the counter. "Wait-" The doors were already sliding shut.

Dropping my bagels onto a plate, I grabbed her phone, heading over to the stairs to rush it down to her. However, halfway over, I noticed her screen was still on, and I glanced down, meaning to turn it off, not wishing to pry. But something about those words caught my eye, and I read, a horrible pit building in my stomach. It was an article, the blazing headline reading, "The Avenger's Resident Tease, Secret Child?" Underneath, sat a picture, staring up at me accusingly. It was me and Nat, as we sat in the Italian restaurant, her caught mid-laugh as she rested one hand on the glasses we joked about being ineffective to disguise her. Before I could tear myself away, my eyes caught other words, snippets like, "affair gone wrong", and "mystery fling".

I shut off the screen, beginning to move again, this time more slowly. What had I done? I felt anger brimming at the author of it, who were they to say such horrible things about my friend? The way the paper talked about her like she was some object, as if her life was a scandal, in a way I knew they'd never talk about any of the men in the group. But beyond the anger, that pit stayed rooted, because I knew it was my fault. I was the one there, in the picture with her, putting her there on that headline. They'd only said these things because I'd chosen to go out two days ago with her. I picked up my pace. I had to get to Nat. I had to make her understand that I didn't mean it, that I wouldn't do it again. What if she didn't actually want to be around me anymore? All that this morning, it was her waiting to say she wanted me to stay away? I had to find some way to fix it-

And then I was there, after pushing open the door to every floor, standing in framed in the doorway like a criminal as she headed down a hallway on a floor I'd never been on before. "Nat," I called out, my voice sounding odd even to myself. She turned around. "You- you forgot your phone."

I felt guilty just being there as she watched me, heading over.

"Oh, thanks Percy-"

Before she could finish her sentence, I cut her off. "I'm so sorry. It's my fault you were out there, I put you in that position, I should have known better. And I completely understand if you don't want to be around me any more, or if you're upset, or-"

It was her turn to cut me off. "Percy, no." she gave an exhausted smile as she dropped her head for a moment. "You read it, huh? I never read them, not all the way. Tend to stay away from the news in general."

I shook my head. "It shouldn't be there at all, if only I'd thought a little bit-"

"No. You don't have to apologize. See, here's the thing. If it hadn't been you, it would've been Steve, and us going to grab a coffee after running together. It's me and Clint going around to stuff all the time together. Hell, it's even just me going to some Fury conference in the Black Widow suit that they get like teenagers over. Tabloids, and men, are going to write, it's what they do. I can't change my life for them, otherwise I'd just be a hermit, hiding out in the Tower and never going out and having fun with anyone. But I don't give them that power. I'll do what I want, and the story will fizzle away in a week, they won't even remember it." She gave me a smile. "No reason why I wouldn't want to keep going out and doing stuff with you, Percy, just like everyone else."

I hesitantly returned the smile again, worry still obvious in my expression. "Okay. Are you sure?"

She gave a small laugh, putting her phone in her pocket. "'Course I'm sure, now come on. I'll tell you about some of the other wild stories they've printed while I wrap. Stay away from the news, okay?"

Chapter Text

I didn't realize until I was climbing the stairs afterwards just how comfortable I'd gotten with Nat. As she wrapped up the gifts we'd bought the other day, we'd had moments of conversation but also moments of silence, but it wasn't awkward, more like that quiet moment of pause that just feels easy and right. I'd left as she told me she was going to start with mine, and not to spoil the surprise.

I'd resolved to find Tony in the lab, but was surprised when JARVIS told me he was upstairs on the common floor. Maybe it was one of those rare times he came out of hiding during the day for a coffee refill, or maybe to bother Steve. I gave a smile unconsciously thinking about that last one. However, the smile was replaced with a sudden jolt of concern as JARVIS' voice came through the ceiling, announcing sternly "Unauthorized entry on floor 90. Backup on standby." That was the common floor. I began to ascend faster, nerves thrumming under my skin, trying to keep the what if scenarios from my head. It could be a mistake, anything really, but I heard the distinct sound of scuffle, then raised voices.

The door I needed came into sight around the corner, and I placed my hand on my pocket, pushing it open to see-

"Get off me!"

To my left, just beyond the elevator, Steve was grappling with a very familiar black-haired girl with shockingly electric blue eyes, struggling to hold her back from advancing further into the room. Thalia. And behind her, a boy with raven black hair, looking around furtively, his eyes steely and dark. Nico.

"Where is he?" Thalia spat, looking furious at Steve's valiant efforts to keep her contained.

Just then, she locked eyes with me, as did Nico. In a blink, she'd shoved Steve away, and was racing towards me, almost as if she was gearing up for an attack. Just beyond her, fear flashed through Steve's eyes, and I knew he was thinking the same thing, but before she could strike, her arms wrapped around me, and then she was hugging me, fiercely. "We've been looking for you everywhere, Perce."

She pulled away, and then Nico was there, hugging me too in a very un-Nico-like way.

"Thank the gods for that article, it's the only clue we had."

I blinked, still reeling from the experience of seeing them again. "You were looking? Why?"

"We wanted to see you, Seaw- stupid. We went to Sally's months ago, but for some reason the apartment was closed, and we tried to go to Grover but he said the empathy link wasn't working, something about it being closed off from one end, so you were pretty much missing. At least until Neeks found a newspaper with a picture of you on it with some woman. All he had to do was pretend he didn't speak English and ask about her, and it got us here. Speaking of, what are you doing here?"

I remained silent for a second, looking up at our audience. Steve still stood where he'd been before, suddenly unsure at the center of the room. Behind him, towards the kitchen, Tony still had hands next to some robotic glove parts, which looked like they were definitely made for doing something other than welding. Nat had come up from downstairs, probably when the alert went off, and was standing with Steve, closer to the elevator. Clint too, looked like a new addition to the room as he stood even closer to the elevator, and Bruce was looking from around the hallway corner, all eyes on me and the two "unauthorized visitors".

"We need to talk," I said lowly, my eyes hardening. "Not here."

I stepped back out into the stairwell, letting them follow me before the door closed behind. "JARVIS, disable audio in here."

"Yes, sir."

Thalia and Nico looked confusedly at the ceiling, and I almost smiled, remembering how similar their reactions were to mine when I first came here.

But then they turned to me, questions hanging in the air, and I knew I'd have to explain some of the story that I'd been trying hard to forget. It was better to get it out quick, then. "My mom's- uh, my mom's dead. Paul too."

The image of their bodies came rushing back, and the shake in my voice I'd been biting back collapsed, and the air in my evaporated. I felt my eyes grow hot with tears, and I closed them tight, trying to blink away the dampness even as my body went weak. I could vaguely feel Nico and Thalia next to me, holding me even as I fought to retain control of my strength, the apologies and the sympathy in their voices suddenly far away. I drew the air into my lungs with a rattle, and I could feel the three of us sink to the floor as I fervently tried to look anywhere but at them. A few moments passed wordlessly, as the world slowly circled back to something real, and Thalia spoke again.

"You can come back. To camp, I mean. You'll be safe there."

I stared up at the grey underneath of the staircases winding up to the floors above. "Not sure Chiron would be all too into that one."

"Come on, Percy, 'course he would. He does care, you know."

"I don't think coming back would be a good idea, Thals."

I knew my voice was a bit harsh with that one, but I let us trail into silence again. "Doesn't have to be camp," Nico said. "We could find somewhere else."

I shook my head, gaze lowering down to the ground. "I've been here, for a while, with them. It's not permanent, but I like them, I think. I need to stay away from all those memories. If I came back, I'd just be remembering again, and I can't do that. Not anymore."

I closed my eyes tight, pushing back those unwanted memories as they crept forward in my mind, spurred on by my words. When I reopened them, Nico and Thalia were exchanging a look. Thalia turned to me.

"Percy, I need you to look at me." I blinked hard, warning my mind to stay away as I met her eyes. "That's not the way to go. We can't just forget them. I mean, they were alive once, right, just like you and me? They were your friends, your family Percy. We can't just forget them. We have to remember who they were, and keep living for it. I don't know, I'm not explaining it right, Nico?"

Nico spoke from my other side. "I know grief, Percy, I know it well. I've seen this before, it drives people to some messed up lengths because it always comes back, and it doesn't end well. Don't go this way, we're here to help you."

I closed my eyes again, shaking my head. No, they weren't getting it, I had to do this, I was doing so well, why was everything coming back now, and they just had to understand-

I stood up suddenly. "Neither of you get it!" I hadn't meant for my voice to rise, but I needed to talk over my own thoughts, which were whirling around at violent speeds. "It has to be this way! Can't you see I'm happy? I can't live if I think about them, the forgetting is the only thing that helps!"

Thalia and Nico stood up too, trying to get closer to me as I pushed them away, looking anywhere but their faces etched with concern. "It's gonna be hard, but we can help you." Nico's voice was gentle, but I suddenly felt a coldness.

"No, you can't. I don't want you here."

"Come on, Percy. You know it's true, we're just trying to help you."

"Go. Please."

I knew I was being unreasonable, and there was a part of me that begged for them not to listen, to stay anyway, or to take me with them as they set out back into the streets. But I knew them too well, and they did me, and so they retreated, heading towards the stairs to go.

"IM me Percy, soon, whenever you need anything. I don't know what you're doing, but it can't last."

Thalia's voice echoed a little bit in the endless column of the stairwell, and then they were gone, and the door was opening, and Tony was there, looking worried, asking me if I was okay because he heard raised voices, and I didn't have a word left in me, so I turned and began to climb the stairs, back to my room, nothing real but the uncontrollable shake in my hands and the buzz in my head.

Chapter Text

Though it had barely breached the afternoon, I stayed in my room until the sky darkened. Nat came upstairs for a bit to talk to me, at least, according to JARVIS, but I couldn't face her, not now, and after a while, he informed me that she'd left. Another pang of guilt struck when I heard the words, becoming lost in the rapidly growing pit of guilt that had burrowed into my mind earlier, now only intensified by the events of the day.

I spent the rest of my daylight trying to sooth that pounding ache with forgetting, something I hadn't even realized had become a habit until now, when it was quickly revealing itself to be ineffective, filled with holes and cracks from overuse. There was a leak, and I had to repair it, and fast. Sitting by the window in the pale fragments of winter light helped some. At least in the day, there were things to watch and things to see, a minute distraction from myself. I fought the urge to reenter the cold, knowing I would only be snitched on and it would lead to only worse.

However, when the light began to trickle away, dying under the heavy weight of grey clouds which pushed it out of sight, below the horizon, my distractions rapidly disappeared, reduced to sounds without visuals. It was then that JARVIS alerted me that dinner had been made, and I remembered it wasn't just any dinner but Christmas Eve dinner, and I shouldn't put any more of a damper on the day than I already had. Their holiday shouldn't be spent worrying over some teenager, it wasn't fair.

So I rose, rather reluctantly, to my feet, joints aching with disuse. "Let them know I'm coming," I murmured, pulling the door open to the dark hallway beyond, which crackled to light-filled life upon the sign of movement.

Reaching the common floor, I was greeted by a warm sight, making the common floor seem even more homely than it normally did. The lights had been allowed to lower from their usual LED-white, casting the room in a softer yellow-orange. Everyone was either in the kitchen or dining area, as opposed to the typical scattering of movement across the entrance to various areas of the room. Tony was fiddling with the oven, trying to find the best way to maneuver a tray of cookies from it. Nat was slicing what appeared to be a store-bought rotisserie chicken, the closest attempt to cooking it seemed we'd get. Steve and Bruce were helping to bring items to the table and back again, while Clint, adjacent to the refrigerator, was taking drink orders and pouring glasses of various beverages. He was the first to notice me as I paced across the room, trying not to dull the mood or seem too hesitant. "Percy, just in time. What do you want to drink?"

I paused at the quick question, scrambling to come up with an answer. "Uh- water, I guess."

He gave me a thumbs up as Bruce took away another of the cups he'd poured, placing it at the table. I approached a little further, hands fiddling with the ends of my sleeves, as the others acknowledged me in turn.

"Glad to see you, kid. Want to help put the silverware on the table?"

Grateful for something to do, I nodded, heading to the drawer and collecting what we'd need.

Looking back, the dinner was good. The others seemed to really enjoy themselves, and I was glad they did, though I talked very little and smiled even less. They seemed put at ease with the very notion that I was there, and this, at least, was one thing I didn't mess up somehow. Afterwards, everyone settled in for a movie, the alleged last of our Christmas movie marathon, though I had an inkling it would drag on a little longer. I chose a seat by the edge so no one would notice if I left, which I did about halfway through, unable to compete with my own spiraling thoughts and the headache that had begun to build further.

Reentering my room and turning the lights off, I resumed my post by the window, hoping it would dull the tension in my mind a little. Far below, the natural light had long since vanished from the streets, replaced now with the glare of headlights and streetlights and Christmas lights too, a symphony of artificial white against the cool of the evening. Resting against the glass, I watched as a few dizzy flakes began to fall, thin and blustering in gusts of wind. I hoped it might last until the morning.

Suddenly, a knock clattered at the door, startling my quiet, racing observations. Before I could ask JARVIS, the source of the knock answered my question for me. "Kid, it's Tony. Can we talk for a sec? Please?"

For a moment, I wondered if it would be easier to let him wander away after some time like Nat earlier, but then my head pounded with the guilt of the memory, and I replied, my voice sounding strange to my own ears. "Yeah."

The door clicked open, and I turned to look, fully this time, blinking against the ache behind my eyes.

"Wow, is it dark in here."

After a pause, and realizing the joke was lost on me, he continued. "Okay, look, I'm not gonna try to pry into your life or anything, but I'm just looking for some answers. We all are, I think, a little confused. Who were those kids earlier? Friends of yours, or something?"

I should've guessed this question was coming. "Not friends." My mouth felt bitter on the words. I'd never called them anything else, but it didn't feel right. Not now. "Cousins. Just.. cousins."

"So... what's their deal? Are they... like you, need a place to stay? I've got rooms in the Tower kid, just say the word. Or are we not cool with them...?"

I just shrugged. I couldn't exactly explain who they were, not fully, or what they were here for without dropping a lot I didn't want to all at once. "It's fine. They're fine."

A silence fell for a moment. "Look, they seem to want to see you, so- not saying you have to, by the way -but if you want, you can have them over. Anytime. My home is your home, kid. Just a- maybe a heads up next time. For Steve's sake."

He laughed a little, and I looked down with a nod. "Okay."

Wringing his hands together, Tony stood up. "Alright, I'll leave you be. Get some sleep, kid. I'll see you in the morning." And with that, he was gone.

Chapter Text

Time passes strangely at night.

I rested against the windowsill, peering out at the city, listening as the Tower slowly went quiet beneath me. The hum of voices and clatter of the elevator and gentle thuds of footsteps trickled away into nothing, leaving me with no sound but the near silent rumble of the heating emanating from the vents.

With nothing else to hear, my mind grew a little louder, thoughts refusing to race by and instead opting to taunt me with their slow, grating movement. My friends. Bitterness and resentment fought against guilt for quite some time until guilt took over, in the end. Sure, maybe they didn't understand what I was going through, but that didn't change the fact that they were trying to help. They'd looked for me, for so long. And now that I'd been reminded of them, I missed them, so much it hurt.

I stood, the sudden urge to IM them surging through me in an instant, and I began to cross the floor to the bathroom where the sink lay, but I never made it there. They probably wouldn't be up, and besides, what would I even say? Sorry for sending you out, and thanks for the tips, but I'd rather forget it? That wouldn't even make sense, or go over well. Besides, the forgetting was starting to slip from me, little by little, even as I tried to gloss over it, and the cracks were beginning to appear in the perfectly sealed glass. I turned away, back to the windowsill, a new weight to my steps.

Despite the dark, empty silence of the Tower, the city outside stood adamant in its attempts to be anything but. The sound of car horns sliced through the night, as the clatter of the street floated up, strange and echoey, to my vantage point high above. Christmas lights, concentrated from parks but also strung haphazardly from building windows, twinkled back at me, almost mockingly, accusingly, raring their cascade of technicolor winter. Look at what you've done here.

I blinked, eyes falling back down to the street. What had I done? Well, so far, I'd disrupted Tony, Steve, Clint, Bruce, and Nat's lives, gotten in the way of Tony and Bruce's work, made Tony worry, weirded out Clint's kids, caused that article with Nat, and royally screwed up Christmas Eve with the appearance of Nico and Thalia. The team was still nice to me, but I certainly didn't deserve it. They'd given me so much, and what had I done but take? It wasn't fair. And I didn't even know how to start making it up to them.

My thoughts began to twist, a harrowing replay of all the inconvenience I'd caused. Tony's yell in the workshop. Steve's struggle against Thalia. Nat's grimace at her phone. None of it would've happened if it weren't for me. And still, they, Tony, let me stay here in the Tower, away from the winter's chill outside. Was it pity? Did they feel this obligation to do it? That only made me feel worse, the thought of Tony regretting the decision to offer me a place to stay, growing annoyed with my being here every day.

I hugged my knees to my chest, blinking hard and raising my eyes once again to the lights blinking away, stretching on into the distance. Somewhere out there, I could've stayed. Stayed with my mom and saved her. Stayed for my friends, instead of letting them fall at Gaea's hand. I could've stayed out of the team's life, if I had just stayed. But that wasn't the way it was now.

The sun didn't rise until eight, and the first glimmers of light stayed hidden away behind the grey blanket of clouds until they no longer could. My limbs felt achey, but somehow, I wasn't entirely exhausted. I rose to my feet after a moment of deliberation, deciding to head to the shower and face the morning. I had messed up enough alright, might as well try to be pleasant and unobtrusive as possible today. I wouldn't want to ruin Christmas for them, too.

Chapter Text

My now-familiar descent down the stairs was not as quiet as I expected it to be. A few floors down, the silent stupor was broken when Tony stepped into my line of vision, shooting me a smile. "Morning, kid. Merry Christmas. Figured I'd join you for once, see what I'm missing out on with the stairs." I fought my instinct to recoil, and instead nodded, returning his smile with what I hoped was the least amount of awkwardness possible.

Our walk, consisting of about five minutes, was an odd one, the weight of the air broken only by the dampened clatter of the metal steps and the occasional quip from Tony, for which I once again mustered the least-strained smile.

When we reached the communal floor, he turned to me. "So, would you like to watch a master at work in the kitchen, or would you like to sous chef? Either way, breakfast has to be made for those sleeping slackers upstairs."

"Oh, no I can help." My answer was fast, I knew it was, but there was no contest in my mind. It was the least I could do, after everything.

Tony clapped his hands together. "Sweet. Okay, so, do you know how to make scrambled eggs?"

With that, we were off, working in a quiet sort of harmony, the sounds of the sizzling stove in front of me while Tony mixed up a batter on the counter behind me. We'd laid down some bacon and sausage to cook, too, so I was keeping an eye on those as the eggs turned over in their pan.

"Would you like to do the honors?" Tony asked from behind me, and a pivoted, a bit confused, to see him holding out a small bottle of blue food coloring. I blinked. "Well, I didn't just forget about that morning with Nat when you guys ate without me." He looked mock-offended, and I paused, before giving a hesitant smile. It was a joke, I remembered, as I thought back to the day. "Well, I figured... maybe everyone can try some. They probably taste better this way anyway, you're the expert," he finished.

I took the bottle carefully. "If you're sure." I said, and hesitated, before letting a few drops of startling blue fall into the pale beige canvas of batter.

Tony grinned. "Thanks, kid. You know, you'll have to tell me one day the secret of the blue pancakes." I felt some of the air leave my lungs, wondering if he meant one day as right now, before we were interrupted by the thud of footsteps entering the room. Popping into the kitchen together, Steve and Nat looked on at our setup, Nat giving a nod of approval.

"Glad you decided to listen to Percy's tastes, Stark."

Tony rolled his eyes, turning to me. "She has zero faith in me. Zero, I tell you."

Steve popped a few pieces of bread in the toaster, and began laying out plates. "Need a hand?"

Tony shooed him off. "Out of my system, Stevie. Me and Percy here have got it all covered, right kid?"

I blinked, turning back to the stove. "Yeah, uh, all covered."

"See?" Steve held up his hands in an innocence gesture.

Just then, Bruce stepped out of the elevator, and Nat, noticing that there was still someone noticeably absent, nodded to Steve. "We're down a man. How 'bout you make yourself useful upstairs? Barton's gotta wake up somehow, and he can't kill the both of us."

All three of them disappeared from view, Nat and Steve behind the metal doors and Bruce down the hallway after a tired "good morning".

Tony began to drizzle batter onto a waffle iron, then some more on the griddle. As the smells of crisping cakes filled the air, I pulled the bacon from the stove, then the sausage, laying them on two of the plates Steve had gotten down from the cupboard. The toast popped up in the toaster, and Tony pulled his first round, and laid down another on the heat. Bruce emerged from the hallway, laying the toast on a plate and setting it aside so he could put his own bagel into the toaster and fill the water for the coffee machine, before flicking on both machines. A hum filled the air, the ticking of the toaster and the bubble of coffee and the sizzle of the heat. Tony pulled his second round, and laid down a third with a blue hiss. Bruce exchanged a few words with Tony, and brought his bagel, newly plated, over to the table, along with Steve's toast. I took the soft yellow eggs off the heat, hoping they were cooked the way Tony hoped, placing them over a cloth on the counter. I switched off the stove, just as the coffee machine beeped and the elevator doors slid open, revealing a self-satisfied Nat and Steve, and a Clint trying, and failing, to seem irritable.

As Tony served up a last round of pancakes and waffles, everything seemed to fall into place. Dishes were grabbed, food was served, the table was laid as pleasant bickering commanded the room. They all seemed to slot themselves into this life, while I stuck out, a quiet figure smiling a little too late at everyone's jokes and trying to stay out of the way.

It wasn't until Tony said, "Come on Percy, you can grab a plate, too," that I spurred into action, stifling down the tense feeling that crept between my ribs. I wouldn't let that ruin my day, and especially not everyone else's. Nodding, I gave another smile, and served myself a helping of the fresh-cooked dishes, a slight pride rising when I passed by what I had done.

And when we moved to the table, I tried to stifle the sudden apprehension of being seen, blinking the tiredness from my eyes. It was Christmas, was it not? I could let myself have this one day.

Chapter Text

The sky outside grew bleak and grey, but in here, as everyone gathered about the living area, it seemed our own little safe haven. The lights had been switched on though it was midday, casting the room in a soft light. The twinkling of far-off lights in the cloudy mists were matched only by the patterns the ornaments hanging off Tony's artificial tree cast on the walls, the ceiling, the floors. I hugged my knees close to my chest, a smile ticking the corners of my mouth in spite of the gentle gnawing at my ribs.

After breakfast, everyone had hung around in the kitchen for a little longer, locked in conversation and laughter even as dishes were stacked, the sink was run, and utensils were slid into the dishwasher tray. Then, like a natural migration, the group had shifted and settled into the couches and chairs of the common area. Blankets were passed around, but before we could get too comfortable, Tony clapped his hands for attention.

"Okay guys, it's time for the main event." He gestured to the sizable pile of gifts scattered haphazardly about the tree. "One at a time, we're not animals, and we can do the order thing like last year."

Clint rolled his eyes, "Ah, that takes forevvver," he complained, but didn't seem all too upset by it, smiling when Nat looked at him with annoyance.

"Looks like someone's not going first. Percy, you want to?"

I looked up with surprise, then shook my head. "Uh- no, one of you guys can go."

Tony shrugged. "Whatever. I'm going last anyway."

Nat scoffed. "Yeah, right, Stark, like I'm letting you have the dramatic finish."

"Fine, Romanoff. Rock paper scissors, that fair?"

Nat won, naturally, but Tony insisted she cheated. In the end, we decided on an order that started with Steve, then went to Bruce, Clint, me, Tony, and finally, the winner herself.

Steve, looking dignified, but sheepish to be first, stood up, and rustled around for a moment under the tree before finding a gift that belonged to him. Settling back down, he read. "To America's Golden Boy, from Your Landlord." He looked up with a deadpan, but his eyes were lit in an unshed grin. "Thanks a lot Stark." He peeled back the paper to reveal a leather finished bag, which unfolded into a circular shape.

"For your shield, so you don't draw suspicion in the airport. It'll mess with the metal detectors, all they'll see is a heavily packaged set of vinyl records."

"You know that's illegal, right?" Steve answered with a smile. "Thank you-"

"Anyways, onto Brucie," Tony cut his thanks off with a showmaster's direction, and Bruce had his turn.

It continued on like that for quite some time. Clint was right, this method did take the longest, but the time was almost better, drawing out the mirth for over an hour of laughing, and modelling clothes, and trying gadgets. My gifts seemed to go over well, Clint and Steve looking impressed at my attention to detail to find exactly what they needed. Tony, too, shared the impressed look, after he'd gotten through a joke about my gift being me 'trying to say the workshop needed some cleanup'.

Bruce was delighted with the candle, murmuring that he didn't have butterscotch in his collection yet, and when it came to my turn, I found that he'd given me one too. It was a sandalwood, one Bruce said he'd thought I'd like, and when I smelled it, I felt the thing nestled between my ribs give a sharp jab to my lungs, stealing the breath from me for a moment. It smelled like the sea and the house on Montauk I always used to go to with Mom, and the memory there hurt. I mustered a smile though, telling him it was perfect as I closed it quickly, trying to regain the wind.

Somehow, I hadn't expected the gifts from the others. Well, I knew Nat had gotten one, but Tony and Bruce had already done enough for me, and I didn't think Clint and Steve should have bothered.

But they did, all of them, and I opened a small mountain of things I didn't need; besides the candle from Bruce, Steve and Clint had gotten me clothes; Steve a navy blue set of sweatshirt and sweatpants, more comfortable than anything I'd worn in a long time, and Clint a pair of swim trunks and a towel, saying I was "gonna need some of my own for next time".

Nat had gotten me, from a vendor, a set of paintball tickets, promising she'd take me sometime, alongside some new blue food coloring. We had begun to run low on it, especially after this morning, but the tickets, I felt guilty for. They were probably the most expensive thing anyone had gotten me thus far, and I was taking more of her time. I should've known Tony's gift was going to one-up Nat in its expensiveness, but I didn't expect the crushing realization of opening the small package to reveal a phone, stamped with the Stark Industries logo on it.

"I can help you set it up later, kid, I noticed you didn't have one, and, you know, every teenager nowadays can't live without one of these things, adults too, I had some of the configurations and stuff custom-done so it can do more than normal, plus-" he continued on for a little, explaining his gift. I noticed he had a habit of doing that.

I smiled politely, quietly scolding myself for wasting his money, and trying to avoid touching the device for fear of breaking it. When he fiddled with some buttons on the side and placed it eagerly in my hands, I tried not to act like he'd just handed me a bomb, smiling still and gingerly holding it at the edge of my fingertips until he looked away, and I dropped it in its box like it had burned me. "Thank you, Tony, really." I nodded, my fingers still tingling.

I had a sinking feeling in my chest that I tried to bite back as he opened his last gift and Nat moved onto hers, the last of the day.

"To Nat, from Percy." She read it carefully. "I've been waiting for this one."

She tore the wrapping, and grinned at the box, carrying on the mystery, before sliding it open. Nerves hugged my stomach, worried that she wouldn't like it, and they spiked when her smile fell a little, taking in the timepiece and its inscription. She looked up, and I prepared for the worst, scrambling for an explanation like Tony or maybe an apology.

"So much for all you losers, looks like Percy won best gift."

"Well, uh- you said you always lose track of time so I thought this might help?"

She grinned. "Always so thoughtful, huh. I see you, Percy, thank you." I smiled sheepishly, looking down.

But before I could think of the right thing to say, though, a shudder suddenly crept through the building, causing the lights to flicker and everyone's eyes to shoot up in alert. JARVIS sounded over the room.

"Sir? It appears there has been a small explosion."

Chapter Text

Suffice to say, Christmas was put on hold.

I sprung up, hand flying to my pocket. Tony and Steve did too, as Tony called, "JARVIS, get me eyes on it." He pulled a plastic video screen from the side table, and a video feed began to play at once, which the others watched with sharp attention.

I, on the opposite side of the room, didn't dare move closer, as the feed was already blurry enough, but I could see what was on it, and what I saw made my heart stop dead as my nerves gave a final clamp. There, rippling in the Mist, was a monstrous woman standing outside the building, a car overturned and burning behind her, a monster I'd prayed I'd never see again. Kampê. The jailer of Tartarus, and the most fearsome monster of the Pit. A scratchy audio feed fuzzed over our heads, "I know you're here, little half-breed, you can't hide-" then the video cut out.

Not a beat of silence passed before Steve called to attention. "Alright, you know the drill. Seems a terrorist threat type C, possibly HYDRA or former HYDRA. Don't know who she's talking about but it doesn't really matter, she's got a car bomb and a belt full of animal heads so I wouldn't rule out mutant possibility. Bruce, stay here unless we call. Me and Nat will take the front, Tony and Clint, you stand by for aerial backup." Tony looked a bit more stunned than the others, but I couldn't stay to diffuse that situation. As if just noticing me, he added, as the others sprung off, heading in different directions, "Oh, and Percy, stay calm. Stay here with Bruce. We'll be back soon."

I didn't hear him, though. I watched helplessly as the others began to split off, unable to do anything to stop them. I just had to get there first. Keep everyone out of the way. They didn't know what they were dealing with, and they wouldn't until it was too late. Setting my eyes, I shook my head, heading with increasing speed towards the stairwell.

"No, Percy-!" I heard him start for me but the door slammed shut before he could. I flew down the stairs, skipping what I could. A few times I landed odd on my ankle, but I could hardly feel the sharp wave that sprung up through the adrenaline. Far above me, I heard Steve shout, then call over his intercom, something like, "Stop him.. bottom of stairs."

The elevator hummed to my right through the wall, but it only made me move faster. I cleared the sixty flights in what felt like an agonizingly long minute and a half, throwing open the ground floor door, only to slam right into Nat, a militant bodysuit in place of what had minutes ago been holiday sweats. "Hey, Percy, stop-" I caught sight beyond her, Steve already exiting the elevator in a spangled armored outfit, beginning to approach Kampê with set shoulders.

"No! Stop- call him back," I clawed at Nat desperately, watching in horror as she turned, her monstrous form already tearing through the once sleek lobby. I don't know what Steve was seeing, but I could tell the Mist was struggling to conceal her scales and venomous thorns, along with every other horror along her bestial form. Mortals who hadn't already fled were cowering behind desks, screaming when something near to them was shredded. I couldn't hear what Steve was saying to her, but when her mouth turned up in a mirthless, derisive smile, and Steve yelled something through his comms device, I knew I couldn't wait any longer.

Bursting forth from Nat's hold, I darted forward, drawing Riptide from my pocket and, letting the sword assume its glittering Celestial Bronze length, shouted, "It's not them you're looking for!"

Kampê's eyes turned up with a hiss, meeting mine. "Perseus Jackson... how lovely to meet again." Her voice was serpentine and ancient, awful in its familiarity.

"Can't say the same. Look, I'm going to ask you just once to leave, after that, you're getting the same treatment as anyone else."

"Ah, is that so? The same treatment you gave my mother, is that right? I do miss her awfully."

I bared my teeth, rage coming over me. Kampê, daughter of Gaea and Tartarus. "Enough," I growled out, lunging forward with Riptide.

Dimly, I heard Tony's voice, somewhat electronically, call out "Percy!" The others, who had been shocked to a standstill at our conversation, began to reanimate, and I cursed in frustration.

Kampê sidestepped my strike, swiping at me with her barbed thorns, which I narrowly rolled beneath. I had to keep her away from the others, and end her. I could come up with an explanation later. Kampê, somehow, still managed to monologue while I sent strike after strike after her, some of which she dodged and others of which bounced off her scaly armor, hardly piercing a few inches.

From the corner of my eye, I saw Nat rush forward, her gun brandished, as Tony and Clint swept in from above, and before I could muster a "No-!", Kampê turned to me.

"Hmm... perhaps you haven't quite gotten what it feels like yet. To lose."

Before I could lunge forward, do anything to stop her, Kampê had swept out her tail, and in one move, all four of the others had hit the ground with a crunch. I heard a groan, and hoped beyond hope they hadn't been struck with any of the venomous barbs.

With a yell, I leapt up onto Kampê's back, trying to drive Riptide forward into a soft plate at the base of her neck, but one of her clawed arms closed around me and brought me forward, facing her. My arms were pinned to my sides, as Riptide clattered to the floor, out of reach. "What do you really want? Tell me." I spat, mouth stinging with the taste of copper.

When she smiled, it looked so much like Gaea's that my veins burned with hatred. "It doesn't feel good, does it. No friends to help you this time. My father wants you to know this feeling, he wants to remind you that you will feel it for a very long time. It seems your own parents weren't enough to teach you-"

I stopped hearing her over the rush of blood in my ears, in my head. A violent fury thrummed like water just beneath my skin, I could sense it, beneath hers too. A monster, with trace amounts of liquid flowing through her body, monstrous blood. It was her lifeblood. In my head, I reached out, grasping it between invisible fingers. She stopped speaking, eyes buckling in confusion. I let the tiny fraction of water content filter from every other horrible dark substance, honing in on it, holding it tight. Then, with a squeeze, I pulled. Hard.

The water in her veins froze at once. Viscous grey monster-blood, something I'd never seen before, began to ooze from the in-betweens of her scales. Her face, ironically, froze, and she dropped me, staggering on her feet. "You- can't- how?" She choked and gasped. It must have been an agony, as the greyish sludge leaked from her mouth and her eyes, dark tear tracks covering her vision. She fell to the ground, and I felt a sense of reverent satisfaction.

"I'm stronger than last time. Tell him that, and tell everyone you see. Don't come back here again."

She crumpled with a silent shriek, and I almost didn't notice her venomous barbed tail come down until it was too late. As it plummeted towards Clint, I swiped Riptide and darted before it, slicing the thorn off with one heavy swing. The barb came down, swiping my forearm, then hit the floor. It began to dissolve into a fine gold powder, as did the tail I'd cut it from, and I stood before Kampê, refusing to think about the poison that began to sting in my arm.

"My father will see you soon," she murmured, then she was gone in a burst of glittering gold wind.

Chapter Text

The minutes following Kampê's dissolving were a hazy blur. With the adrenaline still running but fading by the second, the pain in my arm began to articulate itself in a more unpleasant way as I stood there, breathing heavily, unable to force myself to do anything but cap Riptide and try to formulate a plan for how to fix all this.

My arm sent another pang through me, and I winced, pulling my sleeve down quickly over the injury. That needed to be dealt with first, before any kind of fixing. I needed water.

But before I could get myself away, upstairs, to maybe a sink or something, the others were headed my way, blocking my escape route. Tony landed his robot suit, damaged and sparking in the front from Kampê's sweep, and it clanked loudly on the floor before dismantling itself and allowing him to step out, unprotected. Steve stood up, dusting himself off with a slight wince. Nat helped Clint to his feet, who grimaced a bit, touching his side gingerly. He held his hand to it as Nat supported him when he needed it, and they proceeded over to me, too, a bizarre kind of meeting in the aftermath of a fight.

"Alright, Clint?" Steve called, with a glance at his awkward position.

Clint brushed him off with a grin, "Yeah, yeah, something's bent or broken. Nothing new, I'll be good after some Bruce TLC."

Nat shot a look over to Steve, who seemed to be launching into business mode. "So she just disappeared. Mutant power, maybe? Not any registered one, though, I doubt we'd be in the dark of someone with that many powers."

Steve nodded grimly, glancing at me. "She seemed to know you, though, Percy. You know her too? What was that stuff about her mother-" he started, and in my slow mind, I felt myself admit defeat, how was I going to get out of this one, but Tony cut him off.

"Hey, how 'bout we save the debrief/interrogation for later, Spangles. All of you are required by your landlord to visit Brucie-bear upstairs, now." He ushered us towards the elevators, which, surprisingly, Kampê hadn't reached in her tirade.

I stopped when the doors parted. Tony turned around. "Come on, wise guy. You've got to come too," he joked, beckoning me on, but I shook my head.

"I'll meet you guys up there," I replied, trying to summon as much casual pep into my tone as I could muster, and Tony sighed, before waving his hand for me to go on. The doors slid shut, and I slipped into the stairwell with a sigh of relief. I'd dodged another interrogation. Now it was time to dodge my impending doom.

Clutching my arm as tightly as I could to stop the bleeding, which began to trickle through the fibres of my shirt, I started up the stairs as fast as possible. I just had to make it to my room, or at least the common floor, those would both be empty. Even as every lift of my legs felt like lead as I could feel the poison spread in my shoulder, killing my cells, infecting me, I had to keep going. I had to just make it there. 30 more levels to go.

20 more.

15.

12.

10.

9.

When I hit 7 left, my mind emptied. I could feel my pulse slowing, and I knew I couldn't keep up this movement if I wanted to live. The pool. That was closer, and that would have to do.

I pushed open the door with my free arm, unclasping it from my persistently bleeding shoulder for just a moment, to reveal the low-lit level and the gentle sounds of tanked water. I stumbled across the tile, relief falling over me at the vacant room and all that water, and when I reached it, I near-collapsed to the floor, submerging my infected arm as far in as I could reach. Almost immediately, my mind cleared, and my pulse stuttered to life. As I breathed in and out, I felt the poison retreat from my wrist and forearm and chest. The bleeding stuttered to a halt, and my skin started to try and knit itself together, though it struggled over the piercing entrance wound. Color rushed back into the world, and some of my energy came back, just enough to keep exhaustion at bay. I scrubbed some of the blood from my hands, then purged all the infected scarlet from the pool with a quick tug on my powers.

I let myself bask in the low light for a moment, feeling some rejuvenation wash over me as I thought about Kampê's warning, feeling dread nestle itself back into its comfortable spot in my ribs, before a whirring and a hiss from the elevator stirred me from my repose. I shot up, drawing my arm from the water in an instant and drying it with a blink. My other hand shot to my pocket, high alert running through me, before I relaxed a little; it was Tony, shooting me an accusatory look.

"You said you'd go to the med level, but tell me why JARVIS said I'd find you here instead. You better not have been bloodying up my pool."

Even though his tone was unserious, I felt defensive, and I gave a shrug, unable to conjure a proper explanation that wouldn't immediately implicate me. "Look, Tony, I'm fine, okay?"

Tony raised his eyebrows, shooting a look at my bloodied shirt. "Then what's that?"

He headed towards me, and I glanced down, cursing myself for not trying to clean that out with water too. "It- nothing, okay. It's hers, or something."

Tony gave me a sardonic look. "Or something? Come on, medbay with the rest of us."

"Wait, no- look." I shot back desperately, and I raised my tarnished sleeve, hoping, praying the water had done its work. Tony glanced at my shoulder, and I did too with equal curiosity and concern, but sure enough, the skin had hastily patched itself together and was left unbroken. Lucky the light was low in this room, though, as I guaranteed it did not have the color of healthy flesh; the poison was still festering in the spot, just under the surface.

Tony gave a resigned hum. "Alright kid, I guess you're fine. Still want to check you by Bruce, but seems that can wait a little since you're moving fine. Impressive, by the way, coming out fine after your little hero moment. You going after that mutant alone with your pen-sword was not on my Christmas agenda, I'd actually kinda forgotten about that thing. What's your deal with her?"

I bristled as he continued, knowing I was getting backed into a corner. Just then, Nat and Steve exited the elevator, momentarily saving me from the question.

"Came to check on you Stark, making sure you didn't get distracted. Fury's on his way, so we're all in trouble. What's taking you so long?"

Steve addressed me with an overly kind beckon, and I could see the curiosity Tony had in his eyes too. This was not good. "Come on, Percy, I think you missed the medbay floor. Just want to check you over and ask a few questions."

Nat's gaze pivoted over to me, and I could tell her interest was on those 'few questions' too. I needed a plan, and fast. But my mind, which had been just a minute ago revitalised, was slowing again, not with pain but with tiredness. Not sleeping the night before was taking its toll on me, especially after the strain of a battle. I couldn't formulate anything under these conditions, it was either a talk in the pool or option two. I took option two.

"Um, okay, look... I'll tell you everything, but it's been a long day, and I'm really tired. Maybe I can get checked over and we can talk in the morning?" I mustered the calmest smile I could manage, hiding my staggering panic. Evasion, my specialty.

The three exchanged glances, then Tony answered. "Guess I can't say no to letting you sleep, that's like a Geneva violation or something. But you promise you'll talk in the morning? We're on your side, you know. You can trust us."

I felt awful knowing I'd have to lie to him again, but I gave a nod. "Promise." The word stung in my mouth.

With that, I weaved around him and headed towards the door for the stairs. "'Night Percy," Steve said with a nod.

Nat added a quick, "And Merry Christmas to you, too." She gave a chuckle at the irony of it, and gave my shoulder a playful squeeze. And just like that, the door closed behind me, and I had delayed the inevitable, once again.

Chapter Text

As I made my way up the seven flights, I tried to force my mind to focus on designing a cover story, something so elaborate and convincing it could convince everyone without a doubt, but my already unfocused mind was growing more and more sluggish with exhaustion the more I climbed. See, I just wasn't creative like that; I could come up with stuff on the fly that was funny, but never something sufficient to defend myself completely. For that, I needed Annab- no, I couldn't think of her now. Sleep. It would clear my head. I'd just wake up early and come up with something then.

When I reached my room, I just about collapsed into bed, only managing to pull my shoes off before slipping into a heavy sleep.

My eyes shot open again all too quickly. I blinked in the low light; I was on a fog-ridden maroon-grey plain, uncomfortably warm, and my whole body ached. "Alright, Percy?" a scratchy, dehydrated, exhausted, but achingly familiar voice came to life beside me. I turned. And there she was, blonde hair limp and mussed, shirt torn and spotted with dirt and blood. Annabeth. I gave an automatic nod, squeezing our intertwined hands albeit weakly. The trek across Tartarus was nearing its worst, but at least we had each other, I remembered it now.

However, just as my mind began to wander back to Annabeth, the ground beneath us gave a shudder, like something monstrous taking a breath of life. We stopped and reeled on the unstable ground, our hands severing for a moment as we caught ourselves. I looked away from her, behind us, as a deep groan began to resonate across the landscape, and a shadow fell, enveloping us in further low light.

"Clever, conniving little demigod," the voice, deep and guttural and awful rung out like an earthquake.

I grasped for Annabeth's hand again, trying to take her behind me, but I couldn't find it. I turned back to where she'd been a moment ago. The space was bare. Only a bubbling, hungry ground indicated where she'd gone. "Annabeth!" I howled, though my parched throat screamed and cracked with the effort, calling out desperately for her.

The massive figure continued to advance, and I whirled around towards him, my hand scrabbling at my pocket for Riptide, but, with a shot of dread, I realized it was empty.

"You got good at it didn't you? Evading me, and all that hurt. Too bad you had to forget about her, all of them, to do it. But you, of people, should know, Perseus, that I never give up a chase once it's started." He shrunk down to size as he approached me, still looming but not quite enormous. Light filtered over his figure, lithe and snake-like, with a wide-brimmed hat and a black suit, gloves falling over the darkness incarnate that lied beneath. I gave a snarl, feeling like an animal caged, as that familiar fury boiled in my trembling chest. My body was reacting with instinctual fear, but I had to fight it.

"But vacation's over! Sorry to cut it so short, it's just, I've missed you, and I couldn't wait to give you the proper tour of, well, me." He swept his arms wide in a showman's stance, gesturing to the brutally disfigured landscape me and Annabeth had been walking over for who-knows-how-long.

Except, we hadn't. It was a dream, part-memory, that couldn't be real. I couldn't be back here again, no matter how much it looked or felt like. "You can't hurt me, Tartarus," I spat, still retreating back into the mist as he advanced. "It's a dream, I know that. None of this is real."

Tartarus placed a gloved shadow-hand over his heart in mock hurt, and when he spoke again I could hear the smile in his hidden face. "Oh, forgive me, I must have forgotten. But what is real? Let me think... where to begin? Well, there's the part where all your friends die, but not you, who couldn't manage to save a single one. Then you kill my beloved, so I trade that for your parents. That's real too, seems fair to me." I bristled at his callousness, but with a flick of his hand, he'd frozen me in place again, and he continued his list in a constant advance. "Then you crash into the lives of five stable adults, make them accommodate you with their house and their friendship, and in exchange, you spend their money, waste their time, worry Tony half to a heart attack, and get Natty on the cover of some scandalous tabloid? Oh, and you ruin their Christmas by leading my lovely daughter right into their expensive and personally designed building, before you kill her! I should probably make you pay for that one, too, but it seems like you've done enough damage already."

I knew he was trying to get in my head, I knew it. But that didn't stop my heart from sinking every time he listed something new, and I knew it, I knew it was my fault.

"What's the matter, Perseus, don't want to hear more? I suppose I wouldn't either if I'd been as ungrateful as that."

I gritted my teeth. No. I couldn't let him get to me. I couldn't. "You're. Not. Real."

There was a pause, and the air seemed to crackle with tension. A breeze swept by, angry and uncomfortable, pushing around the oppressively warm air against my battered side.

I blinked.

In an instant, white-hot pain shot through me, stemming from my shoulder, where Kampê's barb had pierced through my skin. Tartarus was behind me, his hand ungloved, the shadows clamped on my injury, piercing, tendrils of darkness snaking across my skin. I gasped sharply, throat trying to cry out but sapped of all moisture to make a sound with. Tartarus' voice was low and sharp enough to cut, a harsh whisper in my ear laced with fury. "I'll show you real."

The last thing I saw before my eyes clouded over in the haze of agony was the marooned plains of Tartarus, pulsing alive almost as if they were an eager audience left waiting for the spectacle to begin.

Chapter Text

My eyes shot open in the darkness.

I breathed in heavy and fast, my chest feeling like it was about to explode, as the air felt thick, as if I'd never left Tartarus. I was coated in a sheen of sweat, but despite that, I was shivering, struggling to ground myself to where I was, slowly growing aware of the white-hot pain in my shoulder. The water should have fixed it, at least for now. I sat up stiffly, raising a trembling hand to my sleeve, and pulled it back to reveal the festering skin, puffy and red around the puncture, which had reopened and was oozing and shining in the low light. There were dark webs, like veins, extending out from the point, now that was new. As I reached up to gingerly test one with my fingertip, a jolt of agony coursed through me, and I gritted my teeth, lowering the sleeve with a hiss.

The dream, it couldn't have been real, right? But here it was, evidence that he'd been close enough to touch me, and really, here it was all around me, the team stuck in the medical wing, the evidence that he wasn't ready to go just yet. His voice still echoed in my ears against the sullen silence of the building, a steady hum, "ungrateful".

I blinked hard, swinging my feet over the side of the bed and scrubbing my shaking hands over my face. He was trying to get in my head, but that didn't mean he was wrong. I'd barged into their lives, and sure maybe it had been entertaining for a little while, but I was still the kid everyone had to account for, accommodate for. They had to put up with me landing Nat in the tabloids, and interrupting their traditions. Just today, they'd had to put up with me putting their lives at risk, I'd drawn Tartarus here, they wouldn't have had to end up in the medbay or even had to fight in the first place if I hadn't overstayed my single-night offer. And gods, it was Christmas. I'd ruined it for them, completely. After they'd gone out of their way to get gifts for me, wasting money that could be used better, this is what I'd done in return.

It was lucky no one had gotten seriously hurt. This time. Tartarus knew where I was now, he didn't want them. He could find me wherever I went, it's just a matter of time. Who knows who, or what, he might send next? Well, I wasn't going to let it be at Tony's doorstep, that's for sure.

My mind still racing, I stood up with sudden purpose, gathering up my backpack and stuffing it again with my ambrosia, nectar, all the things which had found their way across the room. This wasn't even my room, and here I was, treating it like one. I felt disgusted with myself.

The bag half-packed, I turned with trembling hands to the bed, which I made in a fervor, and set everything how it had been before I'd gotten here. Then, I returned to the bag, scouring it for any leftover money I'd had from before. Well, a few dollars could take me somewhere to start.

I turned to the last few items in the room that hadn't been here when I arrived, considering the clothes that Steve and Tony and Nat had given me for a moment, before I dropped them, filled with guilt that I'd even considered bringing them. It felt like stealing. I couldn't have them spend their own money on clothes for me and then saunter out of here with them.

I tugged on my old T-shirt and jeans, still dirty and worn from those months ago. I pulled my torn sweatshirt over my head, hating how I knew the cold outside and the scant material at the elbows, but it was a selfish thought, I knew it. I shouldered my backpack on my good arm, letting the other one fall limp at my side. But before I could push open the door, a voice called out, startling me.

"Percy? You know I must inform Sir if you leave this building, correct?" Just JARVIS. I let out a sigh of relief. He couldn't stop me, just maybe lock some doors and make it tricky.

"Look, JARVIS, I'd really appreciate if you didn't," I answered, trying to keep the involuntary trembling in my body from reaching my voice.

The AI paused for a moment, then said, "The temperature outdoors right now is dangerously low. I will not stop you, but I will ask that you take another jacket with you."

If I didn't know any better, I'd say he almost sounded concerned. I sighed, and considered it. I'd never hear the end of it from him if I didn't, and he may even wake up one of the others. "..Fine," I muttered, taking off my bag for a moment as I pulled on one of Tony's fleecy Stark Industries sweatshirts, the inviting material feeling wrong against my skin.

"Thank you." JARVIS's voice was quieter than normal, but when I went to push open the door, he didn't say another word. Shaking my head, I hurried down the hallway, pushing open the door to the stairwell and beginning my descent.

The building was curiously silent, even the most active floors falling dormant in the dark of the post-midnight hours. The only noise I could hear were the faint sound of car horns on the street below and the slight creak of the steel stairs as I stepped on each one, echoing up in the dark. It certainly was not an environment to distract me, and in between the creaks, I swore I could hear whispers, jeers in Tartarus' voice, surrounding me everywhere. He wasn't here, not physically, but it was like a fragment of him existed in ever dark corner, every shadow just out of sight. I had to keep these shadows from the others, now. It was the least I could do for them, any of them.

When I finally stepped into the bare lobby, damaged sections plastered over with plastic sheets, I felt another pang of guilt. I hoped it wasn't too much for Tony to fix. Another debt I couldn't hope to repay.

I pushed past the plastic, onto the street, the bitter wind lashing my face with sudden urgency like it was welcoming me home. As my body quivered, I couldn't tell if it was residual from the nightmare or pure cold this time. But no matter. Without hesitating, I headed off down the semi-vacant streets, becoming invisible to the couples and drunk college students who wandered by. And not once did I look back.

Chapter Text

I awoke from another nightmare-riddled night with a start, burying my face in my numb hands. My body was trembling, but I couldn't tell whether it was residual fear I couldn't quite shake or just shivers from the cold. I drew my damp hoodie closer around my shoulders, ignoring the sharp jabs of pain which shot from my hungry stomach, probably rotting shoulder, and my head. Yeah, that's right, on top of everything else, my brain was deciding to have a migraine now of all times, though whether it was from dehydration, stress, or whatever else, I couldn't tell.

The only thing I really could tell was the fact that the sun was beginning to slant through the alleyway, which promised a little bit of warmth, and a new day to figure out.

My limbs still unsteady, I pushed myself to my feet, checking to make sure the bag I'd slept on was still accounted for. Ambrosia, nectar, photographs, seventeen dollars cash, handful of drachmas, the SI sweatshirt relatively untouched, a change of clothes, basic essentials, and a couple of cans of baked beans. Look, you can't blame me for those; they keep well, have good nutrients in them, and don't need to be warmed up, not really. Good for on the go, and dirt cheap too if you knew where to look. I'd finish the can I started last night later today, maybe around the early afternoon. I couldn't afford to start eating breakfast, too.

Closing up my bag and slinging it across my sore shoulder, the good one at least, I stepped out from the alleyway into the slow streets. It was still about an hour out before it would get to be real-New-York busy, but I let the sound of horns in the distance and warm air rushing from the subway vents lead me forward.

For the past two days, I'd been on the move. Once I'd found a place to sleep until morning on the 26th, I'd spent my days walking, heading up to Morningside Heights before tailing back over to the East Side. I'd been heading back towards the old apartment building, doubting it would still be an option for me, but curious anyway, especially seeing as I had nowhere else better to go.

To my unsurprising disappointment, it was not. I was just about to press open the door into the lobby when I found it was locked, and the doorman inside looked at me with a flash of recognition. I turned heel and ran before I could see him do anything else. With my luck, he'd be calling the landlord right now, or worse, the police. Best to stay off the main streets up here.

So, I did. I'd stopped by a late night grocery store off the beaten path, picked up my baked bean dinners, slept behind their dumpsters, and decided to head back South, out of uptown. Maybe I'd find a good spot down in Soho, or East Village. Either way, it would probably have less police risk than here, even if I would have to give Avengers Tower a wide berth in Midtown.

I'd spent my next day heading back down through Central Park, starting at the North end and making my way down. It was more fun, I thought, than the street, and it would probably keep me more off the radar.

I'd meant to take my time there, and I did, in the lower parts at least. The upper sections were quieter, shaded by trees, populated by bikers and skaters and mothers walking with their kids. I walked as fast as I could out of there. It was these parts that my mom always used to take me to as a kid, teaching me about the birds we heard and the trees. She said she liked it better here, in the shaded, half-forest. Away from the tourists who came here to spend money.

I'd stamped those memories down as deep as I could. I didn't want to think about her, not right now. I'd almost visited her apartment, before deciding that was a laughable idea. I had to focus now, stay in the present. I couldn't let her keep creeping in on me.

The lower portion of the park was alright. It was brighter, with wide open spaces, people playing games of basketball and catch in the shallow winter sun. It was louder here. It was a welcome relief.

I hadn't left the park until late, when I tailed back into Midtown and crept into an alley for the night, an alley I'd just woken up in, ready to face another day of walking, despite my legs' protesting.

I let myself fade in the light of day, a face among many as the streets slowly filled with their morning commute.

Chapter Text

Without a goal in mind besides south and visual distraction becoming one great blur of pedestrians and expensive storefronts, it was a task to keep my mind from wandering. When it wasn't bristling against the icy wind which somehow managed to cut through every layer I was wearing, it lingered on times of better, times of summer and laughter. The faces, names, memories I had tried, and nearly succeeded, at keeping locked away far beneath surfaced with a new vengeance like ghosts newly awakened from a thousand year sleep.

And, as much as I struggled in vain to distract myself with anything else, keep them back, I was haunted. Every instant I dare wished for warmth, my mind trailed back to crisp August mornings on the Argo II, the familiar clanking of Festus followed by Leo's annoyed grumbling creating a rooster's call all our own. Annabeth's phantom hands reached out to hold mine from every alleyway, but they passed through with a ghostly shiver, and I only felt colder than before.

I shoved my hands deep in my pockets, trying to stave off the numbness that set deep into every limb, as the grey sky above threatened to let loose another flurrying spell.

I paused over every grate, spewing warm air from the subway beneath, and several times I considered venturing down below for a chance out of the wind, but I reconsidered before giving in. The respite would only strengthen the ghosts in my heat more before anything else.

After an hour or so of walking, some of it back-and-forth as I attempted to form a cohesive plan for skirting around the Avenger's Tower, I found my path leading past Bryant Park, still arranged in a Christmas wonderland. My mind shot back to Nat, and when we'd come here, but I swallowed the memory with a hard blink. It was no use reminiscing on times from before. Besides, everything was tainted by the damage I'd caused, even from that day alone, leading Tartarus --and the press-- straight to the team's doorstep.

I averted my eyes instead, following the perimeter of the park. It would do me no good here. I was better off just heading straight south, stop wasting time and get away from anything that could possibly hold new ghosts in it.

Just as I passed the corner, however, I heard a scuffle, and a yell.

"Stop it, you- no!" Two teenage boys vaulted over a fence, something shiny dangling from their pocket. They exchanged a grin, and began to dash off, whizzing past me.

I shot a look over to where they'd come, my mind racing to put the pieces together; sure enough, Ms. Huang, the watch seller from before, stood desperately against, it, looking with vitriol towards the retreating boys. I turned back, ready to pursue, but they'd already gone from sight.

Feeling now more helpless than ever, scolding myself for not having settled it faster, I tailed back to the fence. Ms. Huang's eyes filled with recognition, and they softened a bit. "I'm- I'm sorry. I should've, uh, gone..."

She cut me off with a simple shake of her head. "It's not your fault, dear. Just... they can't seem to let up this year, I've lost so many good projects this year alone. I just hope they don't come back until tomorrow, at least."

Still stinging with guilt, I let her words sit in the air. "If- you want, I could stay. Until you pack up, to make sure... you know."

"Well, I certainly wouldn't mind, and the company would be nice, but won't your parents worry?"

I smiled a little, the irony creeping in my skin almost humorously. "No, I don't think they'll mind at all."

Chapter Text

There was only one chair at the stand.

This was unsurprising; it wasn't like I'd seen her with company before, and I suddenly felt a pang of sympathy for her. It crossed my mind if she'd ever gotten lonely, sitting long days here in a tucked away corner.

Still, when I approached, I assured her I wouldn't need one, it didn't bother me to stand, but she shook her head vehemently. Gesturing me to stay a moment, she bustled off down the line of shops, inquiring at each one before returning to view with a folding chair over her shoulder.

I shot up, feeling an instant of guilt ripple over me, and took the chair from her shoulder. "I could've done it, I'm not a frail old lady," she huffed, but shot me a grateful smile, before shooing me back to the table.

When we returned, she settled back down into her own chair, and I carefully unfolded mine, setting it adjacent from hers and sitting down, feeling my aching legs thank me for the relief. Then I felt suddenly nervous, wondering if she expected me to talk, and rid her of the silence, but she did a remarkable job at filling it herself. It seemed she may have been looking less for conversation-company, and more someone just to talk to, which I didn't mind at all. It was nice to just be able to sit, for once, and listen, without being expected to contribute or hurled questions.

I wondered if she had anyone else to talk to, or if it was just the way she was, but I didn't ask. It wasn't my place to, but if I could be of some use to someone without endangering them by knowing me, I'd count that as a win.

She rambled as she worked, pausing only once to make a transaction with an uppity customer who tried to negotiate the prices with her, which she quickly shut down with a few polite choice words. She told me about how she learned to make, repair, and engrave watches from her father back in China, and how she immigrated here with her late husband, who taught Spanish, of all subjects, at an American high school. She told me about her daughter, now studying political science out at UC Berkeley, who she knew was working hard but couldn't help wishing she still had time to come home, at least for the holidays. She told me about the old friend she'd run into at the grocery store, and the funny story someone had once told her after she'd waved goodbye to her daughter in the airport, and the scary man on the train who turned out to not be quite so scary after all, after he showed her the right way to feed birds in the park. And all the was expected of me? To stay, to listen. Maybe even nod along a few times, when she glanced up for my reaction.

And the sky grew dark, and the bitter wind picked up, and when she rose at last to pack up the stand, I stayed too, breaking down the chairs and table as she tucked the watches neatly away in a case.

"Do you, uh, want help... carrying anything?" I asked, though I noticed all she really had were her handbag and the case itself.

Her eyes crinkled, a bit amused. "Really? No, xiǎo xīshuài, you've done enough."

I blinked. Had she mistaken me for someone else this whole time, or forgotten my name? "Oh, uh, it's Percy, ma'am."

She gave a subtle nod, catching my eye as if exchanging an inside joke I didn't get. "Ah, yes, I remember now. Have a good night, Percy. Get home safe."

As she disappeared into the night, I watched her go. Huh, cryptic, I thought, but I couldn't help the smile which tugged uninvited at the corner of my lips. Maybe I had a reason to stick around for a little while after all.

Chapter Text

Annabeth's voice was calling for me.

My eyes struggled in the murky darkness, peering around dimly as if she would suddenly come into view. She wouldn't, of course. I was dreaming, and she always called for me here, only to find nothing but air and fragmented memories of the places we'd been.

Still, as I listened on in the shadows, the tone of her voice changed, became more urgent, more real, somehow. I faltered. Maybe, somehow-

I began to follow it with a cautious earnestness, prying my way through the damp shadows as if they were more solid than they seemed, clinging to me like a shockingly cold slime.

There, a cliffside. Her voice was louder there, she'd be just beyond.

I nosed my way through the last layer of smoky darkness, before my eyes were blinded by a sudden flash of white. Annabeth's face, the image of it, burned into my retinas for a fraction of a second, but it was wrong, the proportions distorted and twisted just enough that I cringed backwards, a sense of the uncanny valley sending me into fight or flight.

As I tried to take in my situation, persisting through the urge to lash out, a figure suddenly came into view, his hands resting outwards just beyond where the imprint of Annabeth's distorted eyes were burned into my mind. And when he spoke, I suddenly understood exactly where I was, and another icy jolt of fear shot through me, though this one was paralyzing, my mind churning alarmingly as he strode closer. Tartarus.

"Lovely to have you back, Perseus. You really are too easy to lure, aren't you? Just a twinge of the old girlfriend, and bang, you're right back in my house.

I blinked stupidly around myself, at the light that doused the space. "How-"

"Ah, demigods. Always able to tell when I'm playing tricks. Fine, game over."

He snapped his fingers, and we were suddenly hurtling through the darkness, as pressure closed in around my wrists. I blinked, my eyes adjusting to the sudden plunge back into darkness. I was curled on the ground, and when I tugged at my hands, I realized they were bound in some kind of metal that kept me from moving more than a couple inches. I peered up at Tartarus, who was now looming over me, his smoky-black face seeming to shift faster in delight. I struggled against my bounds, glaring and spitting. "How dare you use her voice. I'll kill you for-"

Tartarus cut me off with a laugh that echoed around the tiny space. "It really amuses me, Perseus. The way you think you're the one who's been wronged, been slighted, when I lost the woman who kept me by even though the gods abandoned me, cast down their abominations, treated me as nothing more than their garbage disposal. I was feared, cast as nothing but dirt, but she took me, elevated me. I had purpose for her, and she doted on me, fed me with the blood of greater things. And you, Perseus Jackson. You took that from me. That is a crime greater than a couple lives could recompense for, even if they covered some of your debt to me. Her life, Gaea's life, has been avenged, but the hurt it gave me has not."

I glowered up at him. Great, another guy with issues traced back to a vendetta against the gods which now I, somehow, got the punishment for. "Look, Tartarus. It's not me you've got the problem with. It's not my fault the gods neglected you for eons so you latched on to the first thing that cared. But you killed my mom. That makes it my problem. You're going to pay for that one."

Tartarus' grin grew wider, if that was even possible. "Maybe you're right, Perseus, maybe you're right. But I can't get at them. I can get at you. So, hell's got to pay. Quite literally."

One of his hands shot out, and I flinched away, but before he could touch me, I felt a white hot pain erupt on my shoulder blade, blinding me temporarily as I doubled over, biting my tongue to keep from screaming. "Goodbye Perseus. Trust you will see me soon."

I awoke with a start, sitting up so fast my head collided with the metal of a dumpster and I collapsed back down, trying to suck the air back into my lungs as my skull and shoulder continued to erupt in throbbing pain. I thumbed my skin through my jacket, then reached inside, feeling my shoulder blade for signs of damage. My hands met tight, blistered skin, as if I'd been burned. As I felt along, my fingers danced painfully over some raised sections, and I ran them over one more time, carefully, tracing the raised points from left to right. It was a monogram, singed into my skin so deep I knew the scars would never truly heal. A neatly embellished T.

Chapter Text

As I rose to my feet, the sky still early-morning dark, my joints and limbs screamed against the movement in a frozen agony.

I winced, gritting my teeth. The cold had never been this bad when I'd been on my own before, even in early November. It almost made me wish for the comfort of my warm bed in the Avenger's Tower. Almost. Still, I had to get moving. If I stayed down like this, my body might just freeze to the sidewalk.

Rubbing my eyes against the sleep, much to the disapproval of my stinging shoulder blade, I crept from the alleyway, feet stumbling a bit.

Numb. That wasn't good.

My clothes were already damp with slush, if hypothermia set in, well, let's just say, the odds weren't pretty.

I spotted a cafe open just across the way, empty except for a couple teenage baristas behind the counter and a middle-aged man in a suit, headed off to who-knows-where Wall Street. Pretty dead for Manhattan, but then again, it was pre-sunrise. The tourists and the usual crop of residents were all still safely snug in their heated apartments, and in this cold, even the joggers were scarce. I rubbed my hands together, trying to blow some warm air into them, before shooting a glance left and right and darting between the mumbling taxi traffic.

I approached the door just as the businessman was walking out. I held the door for him, despite my trembling hands, and he avoided my eyes, tucking his collar against the freezing wind. Rude. Another shiver coursing through my body, I pulled myself inside.

The interior of the cafe was bathed in patchy warm light. It smelled like slightly burnt coffee, and the counters and tables were scratched with plasticky wear, but in that instant, as the humming heaters blasted me with warmth, it felt like heaven. I stepped aside into a booth, sitting down and letting my joints settle into a relaxed throb. One of the employees shot me a furtive glance, but after that, none of them made a move towards me. I felt a pang of gratitude for the teenagers; most of these places probably had some anti-homeless loitering policy, and it wasn't like they had to let me stay. It took me another second to realize that I was kind of the homeless those policies were talking about. I wouldn't stick around for too long, then. Wouldn't want to get the poor kids in trouble. I'd just take the time I needed to start feeling all my digits again, then I was clear out of there.

I gave my limbs one last glorious stretch as the numbness gave way to soreness. And with that, I was back on my feet, shooting the kids a grateful half-smile, and out the door.

Reintroducing myself to the cold was like introducing a first-time boxer with the division champ: it was a straight punch to the ground, all the wind knocked from your chest in an instant. I heaved in my second breath as I trudged down the street, which was not so barren now with the sun's rays beginning to peek from behind the skyscrapers. It was ice in my lungs, but I bit the inside of my cheek, hugging my suddenly thin sweatshirt to my arms. Just keep moving, blood flowing. It would get better soon.

I didn't have a destination in mind. Midtown was pretty familiar to me, but all the streets started to blend together as I wandered aimlessly up to Central Park, then around and back down to Penn Station, then started west.

My mind spiraled slowly, the cold making everything seem trancelike, snagging on thoughts of home. I missed camp. More than I'd admit to anyone, but not because of the place itself, but because of the people. I missed having my mom and Paul to come home to. I missed Annabeth's constant knocks on my cabin door and her late-night IMs and her smile. I missed all of their smiles.

I knew it would be easy to see them again. I certainly wasn't immortal, turned that one down, and there was no shortage of ways out. I mean, take a glance at the thermometer, or at the plethora of buildings staring down at me. But I didn't deserve to be with them, not when I'd gotten them all killed. With my luck, I'd turn up at Hades' gates, and they'd all beg to get me sent to the Fields of Punishment. That wasn't true, I knew it, they were all far to nice and forgiving for that, but I didn't deserve their forgiveness. Not now.

I was so lost in thought, I almost ended up strolling straight past Avenger's Tower, the hazy blue "A" bearing down on me from less than a block away. Blinking fast, I turned heel and crossed the street, my adrenaline rising. Far too close a call.

Luckily, in Manhattan, no one second-glances a homeless guy. No one really glances at all.

Chapter Text

I almost didn't realize where my footsteps were drawing me back to until the tinny sound of Christmas music interrupted my haphazard thoughts. I was headed past the New York Public Library, right about to round Bryant Park and the holiday shops, which were well into their bustle despite it being around noon on a weekday.

I shouldn't go back to Ms. Huang though, I didn't want to seem desperate or anything. Wouldn't want her to start getting attached to me either, you know how that goes. I thought back to Kampê and shuddered. No, best to watch from afar.

I shoulder my way past a wall of tourists on the sidewalk and headed to the street corner beyond her stand, peering around for the best angle. But before I could select one, I heard my name by a familiar voice. Well, there goes that.

"Percy. Shouldn't you be at school, young man?"

Mrs. Huang gave me a disapproving look. I paused. "Uh- no ma'am. School's out. Holidays."

She smiled. "I'm teasing you, xiǎo xīshuài. Now, come. Sit. You look tired."

Really, I should have argued. But I couldn't think of a way to say no, and she looked lonely, a whole other seat with no company, and by the time I thought of saying an excuse, I had hesitated far too long for it to be any degree of convincing. "Okay, a few minutes," I murmured with a nod, before turning back the way I'd come for the entrance into the park.

This was a bad idea. I should've just said something, anything, kept myself away. I needed to have more control than this. Besides, a scrappy looking guy in the Winter Village was going to get a lot more looks than it did on the street. This was high-visibility, lots of tourists. In other words, bad news. But I couldn't just disappear now, I'd said I was going to sit down. I just wouldn't stay for long, that's all. Few minutes, then I'd drop out, find a nice spot to keep an eye on her stand from afar. Useful, but not dangerous.

I was so lost in thought that I clipped a guy headed the other direction, my shoulder meeting his and sending us both off-balance a moment.

"Sorry," I mumbled, but before I could disappear into the crowds of tourists again, he grabbed my wrist, holding me in place.

"Hey, hold up, kid. You got a problem?"

My eyes caught up to him finally, and I grimaced. Flash of a badge, heavyset build, holstered belt. All too eager to misread disrespect. Cop. I felt panic rush through me, and I tried to pull away. "N- No officer. Good."

I gave another tug, but his grip tightened. My breath came a little faster now, as I felt my heart constrict. The world felt like it was closing in around me, and I had to escape, I had to.

"Why don't you look me in the eye and tell me where you're headed," he shot back, eyes narrowed.

Gods, that made sense. He thought I was some kind of addict here to "terrorize the good people of Manhattan", and I probably looked the part, with my sunken eyes and battered clothes. He couldn't arrest me for walking though, could he? Though prison would probably be warmer...

I struggled harder, trying to keep my instinct to blast him with water from the nearby hydrant and run. Even though he had my wrist, it felt like it was my throat. I couldn't answer him, I couldn't-

"What are you doing to my assistant?"

Her voice broke through the noise with startling clarity.

"What- your- what?"

I glanced up, registering the scene. Mrs. Huang had approached us, her arms crossed, at the edge of a small crowd who'd turned to look.

The cop gesticulated for a moment, before registering his audience too. He huffed, and dropped my wrist. I shook it gingerly, watching as he cleared his throat, sending me one last withering look. "As you were."

He ducked off into the crowds of people and quickly fell out of sight.

I shot Ms. Huang a small grateful smile as she turned back to her stand, indicating I follow.

"Now, xiǎo xīshuài. I think you owe more more than a few minutes."

Chapter Text

My next few days fell into a strange sort of routine: wake up from that night's bout of nightmares, try to warm up while loitering in some nearby shop or hotel lobby, before making my way back to Bryant Park to sit by Ms. Huang, who'd made me promise to come back until the end of the shops to "keep the little rascals away".

I knew a part of it was probably that she liked the company, too. Which was dangerous, but most likely nothing personal. As long as I didn't show any kind of attachment, she wouldn't either. It was transactional, nothing more to it. And I was holding up my end of the bargain; I'd spotted the teenagers from before a couple more times, eyeing the stand from the street over, shooting each other an annoyed glare when they spotted me and eventually disappeared again into the crowds.

That was the other interesting thing I had to keep thinking about, the crowds. I was sure that Tony, with all his tech stuff, was trying to find me. I wasn't about to flatter myself to think that he would exhaust every option, and the more time went on, the more he'd forget, but to be safe, I had to consider everything. Every flash of a tourist's camera, every security camera and police officer bodycam, every cell phone with its microphone on. He could probably access it all, and this was camera central, but in a paradoxical way, I wondered if it was safer. There was such an oversaturation of information, it would be damn near impossible to sift through every technological eye in this place in a day, especially to search for someone who looked and dressed nondescriptly. Compared to the alternative, I'd take those odds. And besides, it felt good to be useful to someone; someone he could offer something to without the extra stipulation of their watchful eyes, their asks if I was okay, if I needed medicine for the dry cough I'd developed, if I'd had enough to eat. Just someone who took what I offered, and didn't expect anything more.

At the end of the nights, we went our separate ways, or, at least, we usually did. On New Year's Eve, though, after the third consecutive day of my newfound routine, she broke it a little.

"Xiǎo xīshuài, would you carry my case for me today? My shoulder has been giving me these pains, you know, and I think all this back and forth may have something to do with it."

I blinked, hesitating a bit. Helping her bring these back meant leaving the swarms, exposing myself out in the open. But as long as I kept my head down, it should be fine. Besides, it wasn't like I could just say no to her. "Sure, okay," I murmured, my throat sounding hoarse and pained. I tried to clear it, sending her a half-smile in reassurance.

"Thank you. I hope it won't be too out of your way."

I shook my head, lofting the case. "No, ma'am. It's okay."

With this, she gave me an approving nod and began to walk for the subway station. "Well? Keep up, xiǎo xīshuài."

"Yeah, sorry." I faltered a moment, before following her, my eyes wandering for any latent cameras as I went.

We took the train downtown into Soho, then east to the Lower East Side. It had been so long since I'd been on a train, and the glaring white lights and rattling compartment had never felt quite so claustrophobic. Ms. Huang talked, as she usually did, to fill the space, something about a drama between her upstairs and downstairs neighbors which kept her up at night. I was glad when the doors finally slid open and she stood to leave, eager to escape the surveilling eyes of the other riders in the cramped car.

I followed her carefully down several blocks, before she turned into a weathered brownstone. I hesitated. How far exactly did she want me to come with this? I didn't want to overstep. She noticed my hesitation with a small squint.

"I'm just the fourth floor. Not far."

I nodded, stepping forward again as she opened the door, directing me to the stairs. "Don't like elevators," she commented, which I cracked a small smile at. Something we had in common, it seemed.

We climbed the stairs, and found her apartment, room 417. She unlocked the door with a slight rattle to her hands, and flicked on the lights to the sparsely furnished room, cramped but cozy. "You can set the watches down there," she said, bustling about towards the kitchen with a wayward gesture at the table in the room stacked with mail. I laid the case down carefully, feeling awkward and out of place in the space that was so clearly home to someone. I glanced up, beginning to formulate my goodbye when I noticed her returning to me, a bowl of something in her hands.

"Now, xiǎo xīshuài, don't think you can go that quickly. You are an awfully skinny boy, don't your parents feed you enough?"

I froze, gaze halfway between the kind insistence in her eyes and the now clearly bowl of soup she had lofted in her hands, steam wafting dimly upwards. "At least let me thank you. You know why I call you xiǎo xīshuài? You remind me of my daughter, like a little cricket, always so jumpy, looking for everything."

She tried to pass me the bowl, a stubborn sentimentality on her face, but I was already gone, turning tail and all but sprinting from the room. I had to get out, get away. Even as she called after me, I pushed into the stairwell, the world going blurry.

Gods, I should have guessed this. How could I have been so blind to let it happen again? I'd let somebody else care, missed it entirely, and it could kill her. I didn't get to have anyone, I should have learned that already.

I would never forget again.

Chapter Text

By the time I hit the pavement outside at a dead sprint, the only sound I could hear was my heartbeat, loud and racing at an irrational pace. I couldn't think, I couldn't breathe, I couldn't do anything besides run in the first direction I saw, the sudden onset of freezing rain pelting into my grimy sweatshirt, my vision dialing narrowly as I ducked into an alley a few streets down.

Throwing my hand against the neglected brick of some apartment building, I fell into a crouch, the world suddenly spinning.

I panted, trying to draw the air back into my lungs, my heart still running wildly out of my control. Was this Tartarus, somehow choking me while I was awake? Or, rather, stepping on my chest, that would feel somewhere closer to the truth. I felt sick, there was nowhere left to go, all I wanted was to go somewhere that meant home, but every one of those I'd killed, just by stepping foot into them. Maybe I was the one who should die, maybe that's what the universe was telling me, that with me gone, they'd all be safe, the equation was remarkably simple after all, if you just removed the variable that screwed it all up. But gods, if I was wrong, then I'd be leaving so many defenseless, helpless, if Tartarus decided it wasn't me he wanted his revenge on, it was the world. I could never forgive myself for being wrong. Why couldn't this just be easy?

Somewhere below, I dimly registered a groan and snap of metal, and water began to well rapidly from a drain by my feet. I shot up, suddenly taking in everything around me. The rain that was pelting down from the sky, soaking me cold to my bones seemed to not be coming from the sky at all, rather condensing and lashing me from all sides in a miniature storm. Feeling stunned, I forcibly eased some of the tension in my gut, extinguishing the rain in a blink. And not a moment too soon.

A portly, set-mouthed man stormed around the corner to the alley, looking sourly resigned at the pooling water as if they confirmed his greatest fear. "Just what I fuckin' need, a goddamn water main break." He snarled at the ground, suddenly noticing me, standing stock-still as if the man were trained to only recognize movement. Then he spat, with enough venom to make me wonder for a moment if he knew it was really me who'd done it, "What does this look like, a fuckin' homeless shelter? Get the hell off my property!"

I hated the way I cringed at the hurled curses. It was like I was looking at Smelly Gabe's slightly less-ugly but same-level-mean landlord twin, and I gladly took his orders, hardly pausing to collect myself as I darted from the alley, head down, walking swiftly away down the street.

I had to get a grip. I hadn't been that out of control since... well, I couldn't remember when. It was dangerous. It was terrifying. It had to stop, before anything worse than a water main broke. Still, even this was pretty bad. That break would probably shut down water for at least a few hours in that whole building, if not all the buildings in a few block radius. I felt a sudden pang of guilt for Ms. Huang, followed by a rush of breathlessness. No. Control. I wouldn't think of her anymore, there was nothing good left there.

Hide. Blend in. Move to familiar territory, take stock, and plan a way out. It was sentimentality keeping me in New York anyway, a change of scenery would do good to put distance between me and the people I could hurt. Maybe upstate. Maybe Connecticut. Maybe New Jersey, now that wasn't such a bad idea. I'd decide once I evaded the fallout of this disaster, and maybe after a few hours of well-needed sleep.

I thought logistics as I followed a winding path uptown out of Soho, sticking to the crowds which magnified as I moved further into Midtown. It was a good distraction from the biting winds and the subtle flurries which had started to fall (independent of my influence, I was sure to check). It wasn't until I'd absentmindedly followed a massive pack of tourists into Times Square that I realized what was going on.

The tide was packing itself into the crowded mob in the square, which was flashing with cameras and lights. I blinked, tightening my hood around my head as I ducked into the crowd, but my eyes had caught the explanation: it was plastered on every screen in the Square, "Happy New Year, 2013!".

Or, rather, a jumble of sliding letters, and 2013. But I got the gist.

Gods, how had I missed that? I hadn't been keeping track of the days all that much, but I guess it explained the high traffic at the Winter Village today, all the tourists flocking to ring in the new year in perhaps the most obnoxious way possible. I suppose, in a way, I should be grateful for the whole spectacle, though. It was an excellent place to hide, as long as he could keep his face out of some overcostumed selfies. But right now, I was coming down with a pounding headache and the exhaustion was starting to wear thin. There was an alley no one usually checked on the other side of the Square. I just had to thread my way through the throng and I'd be home free.

I'd just made it a little over halfway through when the voices started to rise up around me in a thunderous countdown.

"Fifteen. Fourteen. Thirteen."

Great, attention shifted, faster maneuvers. I ducked behind an eager couple and picked up my pace.

"Ten! Nine! Eight!"

A hand with a phone shot up in front of me, and I caught my startled face looking back at me. I bumped the guy with my shoulder, knocking his phone for a moment long enough to avoid the picture. "Sorry," I mumbled, through the chanting crowd, but my heart sank as what I'd seen caught up with me.

"Five!"

The face taking the photo. Achingly familiar, glasses, a goatee.

"Four!"

He grabbed me by the shoulder, and I spun reflexively, my shaken green eyes meeting his disbelieving brown ones.

"Three!"

"Percy?" I heard Tony gasp, in the pause of the numbers.

"Two!"

I couldn't move. My heart had stopped, frozen.

"One! Happy New Year!"

The crowd erupted and confetti rained, falling fast and blinding in the snow. I wrenched my shoulder away in the explosion of cheers, taking advantage of the sudden distraction to spur my legs to a sprint for the second time this night. I knocked aside a kissing couple in my haste, who shot me a poisonous look.

Faintly, I heard Tony call after me, sounding strained and desperate, but I ignored him, letting the cry and his subsequent attempt to follow me be swallowed by the deafening crowds.

Sidestepping face-locked couples and overexcited tourists, I fled, fighting with all I had to escape the man I'd prayed I'd never see again.

Chapter Text

I ran until my vision spun, and then I began to walk, and I walked until my legs felt ready to give out. It felt good, in a weird, backwards way, to do something until you couldn't anymore. It meant I wasn't pretending.

I'd ended up in the trainyard by Hell's Kitchen, where the unused subway trains sat like menacing phantoms in the dark. It was poorly lit, just by a couple floodlights, and about the only place I could think of that would be still on New Year's Eve in Manhattan. If the MTA Police caught me here, I'd be a goner, but unluckily for them, I was good at not getting caught. So I found myself a train, one sufficiently rusted and miserable-looking that I was sure it was disused, and dropped to my knees, holing up beneath it and thanking the gods for the small reprieve from the endless freezing wind.

I curled myself up, as small as I could, trying to restore some feeling in my limbs, forcing my fingers to move in my pockets as they turned over the meagre possessions I had left. Three dollars and sixty-two cents in mortal money, the photos I didn't dare look at, though the corners were waterlogged and worn with the amount of times I turned them over in my pocket. Half a square of ambrosia, the last of my godly rations.

And two drachmas. I'd considered on my walk over here, shivering and desperate, if I should just pawn them off to some shop. I had no one to call, and I could get a couple hundred bucks for the gold, have myself a proper room for the night, or maybe something to eat that wasn't food of the gods. As much as the little kick of warmth to my frozen body and the immediate disappearance of hunger pains, as well as a brief relief from the aching in my shoulder, was nice, I was quickly running out of it, and I'd rather have something on hand in case a monster tried to finish me off. But almost as quickly as the idea formulated itself, it trickled away. I couldn't just toss a mortal drachmas, even if I had no use for them anymore. Besides, a still larger part of my mind scolded me for even considering a lightened load, a relief. It wasn't something I deserved, not after ruining so many lives.

Hands falling still, I pulled my legs closer to my chest, nestling in against the cold under the train, and before I could think to do anything further, my eyes drifted shut, and I slipped into sleep.

I dreamt of warmth. My eyes fell open on a beach dappled with sunlight. I was running, the sand under my toes, blonde hair streaming in front of me. We splashed into the water, it rushed in to welcome me, clearing a path as I grabbed Annabeth around the waist. "Gotcha!" I was saying, and we were both laughing, though for the life of me I couldn't remember what was so funny. "See, Wise Girl, now you have to stay."

Annabeth eyes met mine, a clever spark nested in grey sincerity. "I'm not going anywhere, Seaweed Brain."

And then I blinked, and the scene changed, and I was nestled in blankets on a couch, Tony scolding me for how cold I'd let myself get, while Bruce, Clint, and Steve watched on fondly from their places around the room. I glanced up, looking for Nat, and there she was, a mug of hot chocolate held firm, nestling it in my hand.

"Come on kid," Tony said, arm thrown around my shoulder, "I'll let you pick the movie."

And then I was crying, and their arms were around me in a hug, and then they turned into one, and it was my mom, and I was crying harder, and she was rubbing circles into my back as we sat at our little perch on the fire escape, where Smelly Gabe never thought to look. "I would never let anything bad happen to you, Percy. Promise. Anyone ever tries to hurt you, they have to answer to Mom-zilla."

And I was laughing, just a little, then gasping, as the hold around me turned suddenly bladed, sharp, cutting into my arms, constricting. My eyes, blurry with tears, blinked a few times, trying to clear in the sudden darkness.

Tartarus' face loomed suddenly, peering at me with a deranged sort of delight. "How sweet," he cooed, simpering, before shooting a hand out, catching me in my injured shoulder, and sending me doubled backwards, back hitting the ground as the pain from the poisoned barb exploded to redoubled life.

"So sweet, in fact, it's given me a new inspiration for your final days. That poison will run its course, by the way. You've managed to slow it, with your water-meddling and that diet of desperation, but it moves still. Every day it inches closer to your heart, if only you weren't so numb you could feel it... well, I've gone and fixed that for you. Now, where was I? Ah, my plan for you. I think it only right that I give you a little taste of the pains others have gone through for you, most of them to their end. What do you think?"

I felt the blood rise in my throat, coppery taste familiar, as the full inferno of pain from the poison sank in, numbness from the cold stripped away.

"Go..." I spat the blood onto the dark ground, and it seeped in, scarlet and bubbling. "...to hell."

Tartarus' grin grew impossibly wider, eerie in the dark. "Oh, dear. I'm afraid we're already there."

Chapter Text

The next four days passed like sleepwalking, dreamy and difficult to comprehend the passing hours, but without the typical numbness which accompanied sleep.

Despite my expectation of at least the pain dialing down under the barrage of cold, Tartarus hadn't been bluffing, and it actually seemed to do the opposite, my extremities long past numbness and instead turning to a deadened sort of tingling ache. It couldn't be good, but with the white-hot stinging radiating out from my shoulder, I couldn't much be bothered about that.

The poison seemed to have no upper limit to what it could inflict on me; I took ambrosia before dropping off to troubled and restless sleep every night to dull it a little, but when I woke up, it seemed to have intensified somehow more than the previous day. It was a pain that made me want to just curl up and waste the days away, but dimly, I knew to stay alive, I needed to keep moving. The blood had to keep moving through my veins, and besides, I had to dodge the inspectors which dropped by periodically throughout the day.

Luckily, in these spiritless attempts at jogging, I'd managed to find a slightly better shelter than simply the exposed underneath of a traincar: an open, empty boxcar, sitting vandalized and rusting on an old section of track. Its door had long since been severed from its track, but the roof and shadowy insides were enough to feel like luxury. During the days, I'd search for scrap pieces of crossrail that were still wooden, newspapers, and other flammable unwanteds that were strewn about the trainyard.

Lighting them when I'd collected enough was a much harder challenge; in the frustrating hours I spent sparking the wood against sharp pieces of scrap metal with shaking fingers, I couldn't help but think with a grief-spiked pang of Leo, and how much I wished he were here. Even though I'd only known the guy for--- what was it, a week? ---he'd latched into my memory, as Jason and Piper had too, with a siblinglike affection, and even if he didn't have his fire, a joke from the inventor of the Argo II would have warmed me so much I wouldn't have needed one. But I'd failed Leo, like I'd failed the rest of them. I hadn't moved fast enough, and the consequence of my mistake was their deaths. I had no right to remember them without remembering that, and I definitely didn't have a right to forget them. I would never fall into that again, I wouldn't let myself.

When I did get the fires to burn, I only let them go until they consumed everything I'd managed to find, which never exceeded ten or so minutes. I reasoned anything longer would send up enough smoke to alert somebody to my presence, and that ten minutes was usually good enough to warm up the boxcar a little bit against the lashing cold outside.

That was the other thing that managed to separate the days from each other, besides the mounting pain from my shoulder spreading ever closer to my heart: as if in punishment, a bitter cold front moved into Manhattan, stinging Arctic air whistling through the artificial tunnels of the buildings and paralyzing the city in a single-digit freeze. When the sun did creep out during the day, it offered little solace, and what glimmers of warmth it did manage were swallowed up by the early sunset. Chunks of ice floated down the Hudson, getting stuck in the docks which lined the water's edge and only adding to the sense that the city was frozen.

Practically, I knew winter couldn't last forever. I didn't think much of the future, but when I did, it was visions of isolation, dismal and lonely but at least warm. I could never place where my visions were, but sometimes, the vague scenery darkened until it resembled someplace familiar. My mind moved slowly, but sometime later I realized that it was the Underworld.

Still, the Underworld sounded like a Miami vacation compared to the sights I really did see when I closed my eyes for the night. Tartarus had taken to nightly appearances, something he seemed to be very excited about. While he usually stuck to his tactic of manipulating my memories and visions of my friends and Mom, he stuck true on his promise, and every night had its "theme", a pain I'd inflicted on others. So far, I'd felt the betrayal Nico had felt when I came back without Bianca, Hazel's drowning in the muskeg as she went after me to save me, Beckendorf's fiery death, and the devastation Annabeth had felt when I'd disappeared. Each one left me waking with a racing heart and heaving breath, exhausted but far too wired to fall back into sleep, which of course was in some part due to the good morning wish of electric-hot pain flashing through my shoulder once again. And like that, my day would begin again.

Chapter Text

I should've guessed this routine couldn't last me wrong.

The first sign of impending disaster, and, rather, the last too, before true disaster, came on a Friday (or was it a Saturday? The only difference was the timing and look of the few pedestrians that passed by the yard). It came in the form of the snowflakes which began to drift from the churning sooty clouds high above, late in the daylight.

They came slowly at first, then all at once, thick, sticky flakes falling too fast to melt, and I began to hurry my hobbling pace a little, gathering what scraps I could from the ground, and bundling them together in a corner of the trailer. It was a meagre supply, I knew that. Not nearly enough for more than fifteen minutes of warmth, maybe a half-hour if I pushed it and settled for moderately less cold. But before I could even think of starting up my nightly fire, an icy wind blew in, rattling the back wall violently and sending a flurry of snowflakes into the trailer. There goes that idea for today.

My body was far too cold to shiver, but I drew my numb limbs in on themselves, tucking myself into the corner. The hood and shoulders of my sweatshirt were damp, but luckily, I hadn't been out there too long, otherwise it would've been worse. Tomorrow would be better. It had to be. I'd rebuild my stock, find something to burn (as the train yard was running thin), and keep going on in better conditions. I'd have to skip on ambrosia today, I hadn't burned enough calories to need it.

It was this thought, and my body's exhaustion, which lulled me into an uneasy sleep, pressed awkwardly against the trailer corner, and I prayed my dreams would be slightly more merciful tonight.

It wasn't long after my eyes drifted shut, or so I thought, that they were wrenched open again by a loud, metallic clattering.

My eyes shot open, vision hazy, my hand fumbling, trembling to my pocket, out of habit. The sound, it seemed, was no monster, but instead, the rattling of the back wall of the trailer, the bolts holding it in place at the top having at some point been knocked loose by the wind. It swung wildly for a moment, the bolts at the bottom straining, before another massive gust of wind pealed through, cleaving the sheet of metal from its frame and sending it crashing almightily to the ground outside.

I sat, stock-still, almost in shock, as the tide of snowflakes, now smaller and icier, swarmed into the space and bit at me. Then, I heard a low, ominous creak of the metal of the roof, and I knew only two words: get out.

Cupping my arms around my head, I rolled, once, twice to the left, straight out to the open air, dropping onto the ground square on my injured shoulder. The pain lit up like a flash, so white-hot it temporarily blinded me. For a moment, there was nothing but me, my shoulder, and the flames of Tartarus-poison that licked it, bit through it, like my very arm, all the way down and up through my collarbone, was being cut from me, all at once. If there had been moisture in my throat, I would've screamed, but the only sound that drifted out was a jagged inhale, followed by a violent expelling of all the air in my lungs as I lay, prone, for well over a minute.

In that minute, I was dimly aware of the roof crashing down through the trailer above me, the place I'd dared to call a makeshift home collapsing to useless plates of metal.

The only thing that got me to stir was the crossing in my mind of the cops; surely, they'd be called soon, someone hearing the collapse and calling them to investigate the scene. I needed to make myself scarce. Maybe find a homeless shelter, just for the night. The chances of one having a bed open at this time was slim, but they usually opened up more space during snowstorms, so it was worth a shot. Besides, as long as I got out first thing in the morning, there was no way any of the Avengers would find me that fast. Especially after over two weeks of me being gone, they couldn't be looking that hard anymore.

I dragged myself, painstakingly, to my feet, feeling cloudy and slow as my body fought itself to stay conscious, awake, and moving. I rifled through the wreckage for a moment, finding my pack, and slinging it with a soft thud across my good shoulder, wincing at the weight. Then I began to trudge, one foot in front of the other, through the blistering wind, tiny flakes lashing my face, hands, and every other flash of exposed skin.

Eventually, I made it to the outer gate. Pushing through the hole in it, I methodically lifted my legs, bracing my fingers against the fence to keep balance. Just when I'd gotten my second leg through, a flash of red lights set off every alarm bell in my head.

Police. Go. Go. Go.

My mind told my body to run, tried to kickstart something, but it ended up being something close to a loping jog, which exploded my vision into a cloud of black spots. My limbs, while heavy before, suddenly dropped to several tons, and before I could even think to reassess, a snowbank was cupping my head like an icy, jagged pillow, and I ceased to realize anything at all.

Chapter Text

I awoke from the uneasy darkness to the methodical sound of beeping, high-pitched and repetitive, sounding off every second. My body felt heavy and my head clouded, as the world swam into place. Before I could start to put the space together, my mind fighting to think, I became aware of a voice from just up and to my right, the figure of a man in dark blue adjusting some of the machines behind me, which were hooked into my arms and chest. Hospital, then. Or maybe just an urgent care place. Either way, it was medical, and professional.

"Hey, you're waking up. Glad to see it."

The voice was slightly accented, maybe Dominican? "I'm Marcos, by the way. Sorry to scare you with the lights, don't worry, I'm not a cop. I'm usually just working as an EMT in the ambulances, but when I found you out there, it seemed like they needed all the extra hands they could get in here. You know, storm and all that. And good thing I found you when I did. Had to get you warm, fed, rehydrated. And we cleaned up some of those nasty scrapes, but there's a couple guys who want to take a closer look at the shoulder when they've got a second. We'll have you all good in no time."

I shrank back a little in the bed, registering the heavenly feeling of warmth in dry clothes, and the dullness of the pain, no doubt some painkillers they'd put me on. My mind stuttered. This was going to be more trouble than it was worth, though. They'd want information, name, insurance, to cover everything, which on top of me not having, was going to lead the Avengers straight to me, if they hadn't already been alerted.

Marcos seemed to notice my apprehension, and somehow read my thoughts. "Hey, hey, hey, no need to freak. I'm not going to ask for your name, or anything you don't want to give me. Like I said, I'm not a cop. This is a volunteer crash center, we see people of all kinds. And they won't notice if every once in a while we misplace a bed and work you into our schedules until you're good to go. Just... don't go spreading that around, alright? Don't want this place getting shut down."

As he spoke, my mind slowly began to return, taking in more of the room with sweeping glances, lifting my head up as far as I could drag it. The room itself was small and cream-colored, a little worn but clean, illuminated by a couple pale, rectangular fixtures casting a low light. To my relief, my pack sat within sight, looking wet and worse for wear but luckily undisturbed, and next to it, my clothes, folded and dry. There was a wide window to my left, with open blinds, revealing the still-darkened sky outside and a sill piled with snow, which appeared to be still piling under the rage of the storm outside.

As nice as this place felt, I needed to think. I needed to regain my energy, go through my things, and make a plan for getting out, and afterwards. Through my dry and scratchy mouth, I managed, "Can I... have some water?"

Marcos seemed to relax a little bit at the idea that I'd spoken, and he immediately turned, grabbing a full cup off the side table. "You're probably hungry too. For real stuff, not just that nutrition liquid that's in your IV. Want me to grab you something from the vending machine?"

I nodded gratefully, more at the prospect of getting a moment alone to think. With a quick, "I got you," he was off, headed into the hallway and down the stairs, which I could see just beyond the half-opened door.

Alright, exit plan. It wouldn't take too long for the Avengers to find me in a place like this, even if I was off the record. Tony hardly knew what the words "off the record" meant, and there were far too many constant faces who could start to recognize me from something. I probably had the night to rest and recover a little, but by the morning, when the storm fizzled out, I should definitely think about sneaking myself out as quietly as I could. From there, probably walk and cross one of the rivers? Brooklyn was definitely closer, but if I took the longer way up and crossed into Jersey over the Washington, I could head south, further from camp.

As I sat going over the options, I heard Marcos' voice on the stairs, laughing quickly, intermingled with another voice I couldn't quite make out. "Yeah, he just woke up, so you're just in time."

The other voice responded, and this time I could make it out, and it was unmistakable. Tony. My heart dropped into my stomach. "I've been all over the city the past few weeks, different hospitals. Every spot that calls in for an unidentified guy of his description, I'm there. I've shocked a lot of random teenagers, I'll let you know that. But if I can find him in the end, it'll be worth it."

I could hardly hear his last statement over the racing of my heart. Knocking back the cup of water and feeling a sudden surge of energy match my adrenaline, my eyes found the window. No time for anything else. I tore the IVs from my arm, feeling them catch my skin and tear, blood pooling from the sites.

The machines began to give a long, constant beep, and I heard the footsteps pick up in speed. I scooped my bag and clothes from the floor and reeled up the blinds with one fell movement. I unlatched the window, forcing it up. Third floor up. This would have to do.

The cold wind blustered into the room in an icy blast, riddling me with a burst of violent shivers. This is what I'd have to get used to. Then I threw my full weight against the screen, feeling it give way and tumble down with a clatter to the pavement below.

Then, slinging my pack over my shoulder and tucking the clothes inside, I jumped.

My hands found a pipe on the side of the building with an icy grasping, as I tried to slide down to lessen my fall but only succeeded in reducing a bit of the free fall at the expense of the shredding of my hands on the rusted and ice-coated metal. I hit the snowbank hard on my side, sending pain exploding out from my shoulder. Guess those painkillers wouldn't take too long to wear off after all.

Biting the insides of my cheek to keep from crying out, I scrambled to my feet in the snow, barefoot and shivering, not pausing for a second to listen to the shouts from above me. Clutching my pack and stumbling, I began, once again, to run.