Chapter Text
A¢Ͳ III: ¢яєαтιηg Rιρρℓєѕ Ͳнαт Єχραη∂є∂ συтωαя∂ Ιη Ρєяƒє¢т ¢ιя¢ℓєѕ
𐤠.Ƙ.𐤠 ǶⰙⱲ ƬǶƸ ƑƖⱤⳜƬ Ꝓȴ𐤠Ɲ ƊƸⱤ𐤠ƖȴƸƊ
There are very many things the Sun is forbidden to witness. With it’s jubilant energy and affinity for truth- honesty in the form of haikus no less- it makes the more clandestine activities of men hard to hide.
That is why they decide to strike at night, when the settling of darkness over the valley is thick and protects them from lurking eyes. Where there isn’t a sound disturbing the quietude. Except the measured and muffled panting of two boys who are trying really hard not to wake up the rest of the house.
Percy looks at Tyler.
“How-” he paused to swallow a breath, “how have they not- woken up yet?”
Tyler shrugs from where he’s sitting by the wall opposite, attempting to breathe silently. It’s not working- he sounds like a dog under the summer sun.
“Why did you-” a breath, “run to the stables-“a pause and a swallow, “when the arts and crafts room is much closer? I thought she was going to shank you.”
Percy pushes to his feet using the foyer wall, sounding like a malfunctioning vacuum cleaner himself.
“I- am not going to take advice- from someone who climbed onto a roof- to escape flying monsters,” Percy pants. “Do you have any brain cells up there?”
Percy can’t see Tyler’s face in the dark but he can tell he’s scowling from the energy in the atmosphere.
“Whatever,” the other boy mutters, “I was scared. It’s hard to think when you’re scared.”
“Only when you’re scared?” Percy asks sarcastically.
He steps down the hall without waiting for a reply and turns into the living room, feet as muted as a cat’s on the wooden floor.
Tyler pulls up behind him with a grumble, his footsteps eliciting creaks from the aged floor-boards. The younger boy tries not to snap at him for it- that would only make more noise. The fireplace is crackling with low flames and softly spitting embers. It doesn’t do much to illuminate the room. It does however, make two beady eyes glow green at them like something from a budget horror movie.
“Creepy,” whispers Tyler.
Underneath the glowing green lights appear a set of white teeth. It growls warningly.
Percy shivers.
“Really frickin’ creepy,” he agrees. It was all the more terrifying in the dark where they couldn’t see the rest of the leopard’s head to place the floating teeth in.
“You have the goods?”
Tyler pulls a packet of Snausages out and the both of them wince at the crackling of the packet in the silence. Then Tyler rips it open.
It feels like a gunshot probably would have made less sound. Seymour the probably-a-leopard snarls at them. It sounded like the ‘you have one minute to convince me not to bring Mr D crashing down on you’ snarl.
“Hurry up,” whispers Percy.
Tyler inches a little closer and tosses a Snausage at the leopard. Percy can’t see much but the dark silhouette of the snack sailing past and bouncing off the big cat’s snout is unmistakable.
Gods, they were going to die here weren’t they?
Seymour growls lowly.
“Tyler,” he begs, trying not to scream. “Please. Be competent.”
The air feels distinctly apologetic and a tinge fearful as the boy inches even closer. He knocks the edge of the table as he goes and the scrape of the leg against wood makes Percy want to curl up into a ball until the fiery heat death of the universe.
There’s the sound of a jaw snapping and a happy whine. He looks up to see Tyler petting the big-cat.
“There’s a good boy,” the boy praises. The leopard purrs.
Percy blinks a little. Okay, sure, whatever worked.
He goes off to the table and hovers his hand over it to try and find the phone.
“How long do we have?”
“Until I run out of Snausages,” the boy answers, extremely unhelpfully.
Percy sighs and keeps searching. There’s really no reason for the table to be this big.
His hand finally smacks against the plastic casing of the landline.
“Yes,” he whispers triumphantly, plucking it up and placing it at his ear. Dialing the number in the dark is no problem. The digits of Bruce’s number will probably be seared into his head for his next ten lives.
He clicks them in and waits.
“Pick-up, pick-up, pick-up-”
“The number you have dialled-” the phone explodes into static in his ear.
“What the hell?!” he yelps, dropping it like he just got hit by wattage. It smacks onto the table-top.
Glowing eyes turn to him accusingly, nostrils underneath flaring.
From beside them, Tyler asks, “What happened? You okay?”
Percy swallows.
“Frickin’ static.”
“Oh.”
A thin sliver of panic starts to settle near his heart. No, he says to his mind. Think Percy. He already knows there’s something funky going on with Gotham. Who else can he call?
One to Dick and if that doesn’t work, a non-Gothamite. He’d really prefer he got a line to Dick though.
He dials a number he’d probably remember for his next twenty lives.
The dial tone rings in the silence.
“Heck yeah,” he celebrates.
Tyler tosses another Snausage at Seymour, this time getting it in his mouth, and the leopard goes back to ignoring him.
“Who is this?”
Dick’s voice is strangely muffled, like he’s trying not to make sound as much as Percy is.
A rush of relief and love so potent it threatens to make him cry hits him with all the forewarning of a lightning strike. Thank the gods that Dick picked up unknown calls.
“Dick,” he croaks.
There’s a beat of silence.
“Percy?”
There’s a voice crack through his name.
“Dick, yeah, it’s me.”
“Uh, I only have six left,” Tyler cuts through their teary reunion like the utter douchebag he is.
He’s lucky it’s night-time because the glare Percy shoots in his direction is scathing enough to strip paint.
Before he can say anything, Dick speaks again.
“Percy? It’s you? God, Percy- Are you okay? What happened? I’m coming-”
“Dick,” he interrupts, “I don’t have much time.”
“What do you mean-”
“Look, there are- well- it’s complicated, but I found a phone and I’m getting out and I’ll meet you okay-”
“Where are you?”
“You need to pick me up-”
“Percy.”
Percy ignores Tyler.
“Bring a vehicle or something-”
“Percy,” says Tyler more insistently.
“Just outside L-”
“Percy!”
Percy looks up, scowling, although a part of his brain registers the waver in Tyler’s voice.
“Shut up, Tyler,” he snaps.
Tyler has moved closer to him, his figure lit up by the firelight. His face is wearing an expression that is already too familiar to Percy, the packet of Snausages abandoned by feet. His eyes are looking over Percy’s shoulder.
Percy sighs.
“Well, crap,” He says, tiredly. “It’s behind me isn’t it.”
He turns around to see which bus the universe has thrown him under this time.
“What is? Percy. What happened? What’s going on?”
Percy wants to answer Dick, he really does. But his brain is buffering and on the verge of shut-down.
“What,” he starts, trying to keep his voice from rising ten octaves, “in the ever-loving Hades is that?”
He bumps into Tyler as he staggers back, who is heroically using him as a shield. Neither Sally nor Bruce raised him with Christian spirit but Percy feels the sudden and strong urge to hold up a cross.
The figure in front of him tilts its head. The curtain of black hair shrouding her face sways with the action and Percy hears a whimper. He can’t tell who it’s from.
“Percy? Tell me a location. Come on, Perce, I’m coming for you, I promise.”
Percy knows he’s the one who called and he loves Dick very much. But he kinda wishes his brother would shut-up. This is really feeling like a don’t make a sound and it will leave situation. The thing steps forward, lifting its arms. The skin hanging off its arms shakes with the action. Percy is pretty sure Tyler has stopped breathing completely.
Damn it, he really was going to die here. He pulls the phone back to his ear.
“Dick, I- I love you. You know that right?”
Dick’s reply is utterly panicked.
“Obviously! Percy, please. Just give me something-”
“Dick, I’ll call you back, don’t panic,” he mutters, which historically isn’t a statement which worked well.
“Percy, don’t hang up. Percy- I love you, too. I’ll find you, please-”
“I’ll come back to Gotham,” he says, hoping sheer will alone will ensure it’s not a lie.
“I promise I’ll come home. Always.”
Then he drops the phone back into the receiver, steps forward and raises his fists.
“Bring it, zombie-head.”
Tyler groans like his plan of cowering in a corner was working any better.
The thing tilts its head even further in response, long hair parting to reveal a face with thin white skin wrapped around a bony skull, souless marble-eyes in the zombie’s sockets. Even more horrendous than her corpse like stature, Percy decides, is the crime against fashion that is the faded tie-dye sundress wrapped around her body.
“Is hipster-chic the new thing in the Underworld?” he asks.
He feels an incredulous set of eyes turn to him, but his focus is kind of trapped by the abomination already in his eye-line.
The ghoul, unsportswoman-like, doesn’t answer. Her jaw unhinges and Percy feels chills shoot down his spine. He imagines he’s about to be eaten like in one of those Blood Bath 2: Alien Takeover movies Dick likes where the alien swallows the human in one entire gulp.
His moment of terror abates for a second when he realizes the jaw doesn’t expand an unreasonable amount. Then the green mist starts curling out like a particularly nefarious tongue and he takes everything back.
“Oh, I’m so going to die.”
“At least we’ll die together,” comments Tyler, fear turning to resignation awfully quickly.
Percy snorts. Then he says, “Run for the door?”
“Duh.”
They take a second to make commiserating eye-contact. Then book it for the hallway as the green mist pours out like some manky air-based edition of elephant toothpaste, settling over their feet in a toxic blanket.
Tyler reaches the door first and makes a strangled sound in the back of his throat as it slams shut in front of him.
“Crap, crap, crap-”
“Oh, what in the horror movie is this?” bemoans Percy turning around to see the demon-ghost-mummy lady has turned to face them once more.
The mist coalesces into tendrils, hissing like snakes.
Tyler yelps and jumps onto the leather sofas.
Leaving him the only thing on the floor.
“Gee, thanks for the save dipstick,” Percy cries, scrambling back from the mist-snakes.
“Leave us alone, woman,” Tyler tries, which is better than nothing.
“Yeah,” Percy adds. “The power of Christ compels you!”
Which might have been a stupid thing to say to snakes from another pantheon because the snakes start hissing louder and they lunge at him. Percy picks up an umbrella from the hanger and smashes through them, dispersing the air. The snakes reform in seconds. Yeah he didn’t think that would work either.
Though he seems to have inspired Tyler to use gesture based tactics because the boy raises a hand in a three-fingered claw, placing it to his heart before pushing it outward to the woman. It looks similar to what Grover did on the bus.
The curtains flare inward and a breeze sweeps through the room. Percy waits for something more substantial to happen. The universe does not answer.
He wacks another snake.
“Thank you, Tyler,” he praises dryly, “for that completely redundant show of power.”
Tyler pouts. He’s managed to retrieve his Snausages at some point and is using them as protein missiles.
Abruptly, a voice starts booming in their heads. Tyler clamps his hands over his ears. Yet another thing to add to the list of useless tactics, from what Percy can tell, because the noise originates inside his mind. One week and he’s already had three people too many inside his sacred space.
“I am the spirit of Delphi, speaker of the prophecies of Phoebus Apollo, slayer of the mighty Python. Approach, seekers, and ask.”
Yeah no, there would be no approaching here. Percy was completely fine where he was. One foggy reptile tries to be sneaky and comes at him from behind. Percy opens the umbrella right in its face.
Tyler seems to be on the same wavelength as him on the ghoul’s deal because he raises a hand like a school-kid in homeroom and asks, “Can I opt out?”
The misty snakes explode into green and curl further up in the room swirling all around them.
No, Percy assumes that to mean. Okay then.
He tries to back up further, but it’s no use. The mist swirls near his face. It smells… ancient. Which wasn’t really a smell, but somehow the mist managed it. It also didn’t feel particularly malignant. Then again, neither had the dream god and he wouldn’t call that a pleasant experience. The room is so saturated he can’t even tell where he is anymore. Well, there was no other way for it.
“What do you want us to ask?” he inquires warily. He had learnt his lesson with Dodona and Morpheus.
“Your destiny,” booms the voice.
Percy groans. He wasn’t particularly interested in that anymore. Before he can list 101 reasons why he was doing totally alright thanks, a voice from the left cuts in.
“Oracle. What is our destiny?” Tyler asks, sounding like he didn’t think it was a good idea but was curious anyway. You know, like a doofus.
Percy sighs loudly, completely over his earlier terror at this point.
The woman, well looks is a strong word for someone who doesn’t have pupils, but she turns her head from Tyler to Percy, as if waiting for him too. He was glad she needed his verbal consent.
Given that he felt it wasn’t optional, he just sighs even harder and asks, “Sure, screw it. What’s our destiny?”
Saying the words themselves are trippy. What has his life become? Just over a week earlier he was a completely normal kid. Or well, a relative meaning of normal.
Without any warning at all, the mist coalesces into Gabe Ugliano. Because of course even rock bottom has a basement.
Percy’s body turns suddenly leaden. He tries to convince himself it’s the woman’s doing. But fear runs thick through his veins.
“You shall go west, and face the god who has turned,” he intones, in that same raspy, booming voice of the Oracle.
It’s an illusion, he thinks. Just an illusion. Breathe.
The illusion shimmers, Gabe’s ragged vest glitching into- armour?
“Oh, motherf-”
“You shall find what was stolen, and see it safely returned,” continues the mist, wearing Bruce’s face.
Percy thinks the image flickering between Gabe and Bruce- the man he despises and the man he loves- is going to haunt him for the rest of his days.
The mist shrinks into Dick’s colorful form.
“You shall be betrayed by one who calls you a friend,” he says with a smile. Percy crosses his arms and represses a bitter laugh. Yeah, right. Jokes on you Oracle, Dick would rather die. The words, so polar from reality, helps him snap out of it and focus.
Just in time to hear the worst line.
“And you shall fail to save what matters most, in the end,” finishes the wavering form of his mother, her hands wrapped around a bowl of cookie dough.
Percy stares at the blue batter, once a fixture of his life. His eyes sting.
The mist recedes back into the husk’s mouth, but his eyes stay where they are. He knows the Oracle is the mist. Can tell the woman is dead- has been dead for a while.
Still.
“I think I’m going to murder her again,” he says hoarsely.
Tyler is sitting on the couch, something like sympathy on his face (which was a weird look on him).
“Yeah, that’s fair.”
Before Percy can enact revenge, the mummy turns and leaves through the unlocked door, gliding with an unprecedented speed. Percy feels too fragile to give pursuit. Neither does he really want to.
The other boy coughs.
“That was a prophecy,” he says, trying and failing to mask the shock in his voice.
“Probably.”
“You’re a quest leader.”
“Me? She said ‘our destiny’.”
The boy raises a brow.
“Do I look like quest leader material?”
Tyler’s jeans were sodden from running by the lake and his hair stuck to his forehead in greasy bangs from all the fear-induced sweat.
Percy looks down at himself where his new camp half-blood t-shirt is covered in mud from his stumble in the stables and his pants are missing a scrap that became harpy breakfast.
“And I do?”
The other boy crosses his arms.
“You’re right. I’d be the one who deserved quest leader,” he says, reclining in the sofa.
“But I don’t have big, strong daddy to give me anything important,” he finishes resentfully.
Percy rolls his eyes.
“Oh no, the fate of the world isn’t in my puny, infantile hands. My crops are too many, my harvest too bountiful. Whatever will I do?”
Tyler’s lips twist.
“Puny and infantile sounds about right for you.”
“People have died by umbrella before,” Percy shoots back, raising the implement threateningly.
Tyler pauses.
“They have?” he asks, sounding curious.
“It happens in Gotham. Well. A lot happens in Gotham.”
“Huh.”
Percy exhales and goes to sit down on the other sofa. He was way too tired for this.
“What happens now?” Tyler asks, pulling at his wooden pendant nervously.
Percy looks at the door, waiting for anyone to come crashing in because of the undoubted commotion. When no one does, he assumes some magic voodoo stuff was going on and they, somehow, miraculously, haven’t been caught yet.
“What we planned,” he says. “You can come if you keep your mouth shut till Gotham. I’m getting out of here tonight. Prophecy be damned.”
Tyler cannot keep his mouth shut. But he does refrain from screaming until they make it to the West border.
Apparently even the harpies don’t try their luck there. Which forecasts great things for their continued survival. Tyler shoves through a net of brambles with the most dejected expression Percy has witnessed on a human. And he’s seen criminals on death row.
“I’m gonna need so much Cera-ve to get rid of this redness,” he grumbles.
“We ain’t stopping for Cera-ve.”
“Maybe if you did you wouldn’t be so grouchy all the time.”
“Maybe if you stopped breathing it would have the same effect.”
The brunette trips over a tree-trunk.
“That’s a bit excessive no?”
Percy only keeps marching forward.
“I’m tired. And covered in mud. And weighed down by ancient, goddamn prophecy.”
His stomach rumbles to punctuate the statement.
“Ohh,” says Tyler, enlightened. “You’re hangry.”
Percy looks at him surprise.
“Huh. Yeah I don’t think I’ve had proper food since break-fast.”
Tyler catches up to walk behind him, pointing the umbrella he stole from Percy at the trees whenever they rustle, like a miniature Oswald Cobblepot. Tyler really liked his blunt-force melee instruments.
“I think there’s a diner a few roads down.”
“Sure. But you’re paying,” replies Percy.
Right between their ears, a distinctively female voice advises, “The diner on East Street sucks. You’d be better off getting Wendy’s.”
…
Both boys throw up their hands and shriek like cats at the gate of a doghouse.