Chapter Text
You probably want me to explain how I ended up in Gotham. The short explanation is that the Greek gods wanted me dead. I mean, not all of them. Just, like, a lot of them.
That in itself is nothing new. Gods have wanted me dead at least since I was twelve, and probably since I was born, what with, y’know, the whole oath thing. Despite their best efforts, I survived two point five wars plus Tartarus, and here I am: 23 years old, with a bachelor’s degree and a beautifully terrifying fiancée, still alive and kickin’.
The actual problem, this time, was that the gods disagreed about wanting me dead, and not in a polite, “Should we kill Percy? Vote yea or nay!” kind of way like they’ve done in the past. This time, my dad was massing armies along the east coast and making alliances with the other Olympians, while Zeus stared down at me with his master bolt in hand and, like, probably a godly nuke-launcher at the ready.
I’m touched by how far my dad is willing to go to keep my sorry soul from a permanent vacation with Uncle H, but I also won’t kid myself that his anger is all about me. As much as he might love me, Poseidon’s rivalry with Zeus is about three thousand years older than I am. I know I’m his son as much as I am a valuable piece on the divine chess board of sibling squabbles.
So yeah. The whole deal started, as all my problems do, with a prophecy. We got the prophecy first, and the trouble between Zeus and Poseidon started when the gods found out about it a few weeks later.
I really wish I had been at Camp when Rachel delivered the prophecy, because as soon as Chiron and Annabeth figured out what it meant they decided I wasn’t allowed to hear it. Then they announced a quest that I wasn’t allowed to go on. If it were just Chiron who didn’t want me involved, well… it wouldn’t be my first time sneaking my way onto a quest. But Annabeth also insisted, and there is no defying Annabeth Chase. Plus, Annabeth’s plans are notoriously awesome, and I wasn’t about to ruin one just because I wanted to help.
Sue me, though, I still wanted to at least know what was going on. When I said as much, Chiron gave me one of his classic non-answers disguised as wise life advice.
Apparently because I “can be impulsive when it comes to entering the fray for the people you care about, Percy,” Chiron claims that “it is for the best that you stay far away from the quest, as a mother sparrow stays away from the nest so as to keep the eagle’s eyes from finding her hatchlings.” Which. Cryptic much?
I couldn’t get Annabeth to tell me, either, even with my saddest puppy dog eyes, but at least she had a better explanation. The gist of it is that the new prophecy describes a “traitorous son of Poseidon” with the potential to, depending on the wording, either kill a god or overthrow Olympus. At the very least, the prophecy was clear that having a son of Poseidon along on any mission to resolve the issue was a bad idea.
Have I ever mentioned that I hate prophecies? Because I hate prophecies. That’s what they’ll put on my gravestone. Here lies Percy Jackson, Hero of Olympus, husband of Annabeth, hater of prophecies. Let’s be honest—a prophecy will probably be the reason I need the gravestone. In fact, just the summary of the latest prophecy might have caused my death right then and there by giving me an aneurysm.
“Annabeth! Annabeth, what if I turn evil and crazy and destroy Olympus? You have to stop me.” I might have been slightly hysterical, but to be fair, anyone would be rattled by learning that they were maybe fated to be “traitorous.” Plus, my fatal flaw is personal loyalty. And you can’t betray someone if you aren’t loyal to them first! I didn’t want to turn on the people I care about! And the whole betrayal-and-overthrowing-our-parents thing may have, perhaps, just slightly reminded me of a certain son of Hermes.
Who was I going to hurt? “Can I avoid the prophecy? Oh gods, Annie, what if I end up like Oedipus?” The New Rome curriculum had forced me to read every Greek tragedy ever and was now the perfect fuel for my very reasonable meltdown. “Oedipus did everything to avoid his prophecy and then he still married his mother! I don’t want to gouge my eyes out and live in exile, Annabeth!”
“Percy.” My beautiful fiancée (!!!) took my hands in hers, calloused and warm, and our fingers slotted together like worn puzzle pieces. Her steel eyes were softer than usual as they met mine.
“We don’t even know that the son of Poseidon is you.” Her voice was just a little too soothing to actually be reassuring, but I wasn’t going to complain about Annabeth trying to make me feel better. “Really, it’s much more likely that it isn’t you. I mean, we’ve fought evil brothers of yours enough times that I just assume any new mythological son of Poseidon we meet is going to immediately go for fratricide. I mean, Procrustes, Polyphemus, Orion, Antaeus, the Aloadae? No offense to Arion, but you and Tyson are the only sons of Poseidon I trust at all.
“And if the prophecy is about you, Percy… I know you. You would never betray someone unless it was somehow the right thing to do. If you end up overthrowing Olympus, and it’s for good reason, I’ll be fighting alongside you.” Thunder rolled in the distance and Annabeth rolled her eyes. The petty posturing of the gods (ahem, Zeus) stopped fazing us after Tartarus.
“Besides, you seaweed brain, I doubt you could overthrow, let alone kill, a god without my help,” Annabeth said teasingly. Her light tone didn’t match the worry still lurking in her eyes, but I appreciated what she was trying to do. “I’d at least get to choose the target. How about Hera?” I snorted at that. Annabeth had nerves of absolute steel to continue her feud with the literal Queen of Olympus.
“And come on, I doubt you’d ever do… that” she waved her hand around to signify the destruction of Olympus, the murder of a god, and/or the end of life as we know it “without letting the group in on the fun! We’d be by your side and would keep things from going in a direction that could hurt the people we care about. Even if the prophecy is about you—which I still highly doubt—there’s still no way it means you’d turn evil. I don’t think you could be evil if you tried.”
“You sure about that, wise girl?” I grinned and tried to yank her into the water with me. We devolved into giggles and wrestled until she let me tip both of us into Little Tiber Lake with an undignified splash.
Before our swan dive, we had been sitting on the retaining wall beside the lake in New Rome. It had been my go-to study spot during college, and after my graduation this spring I’d spent more and more time there. Often, friends would join me or fish would stop by to chat, but sometimes I just sat with myself, dangling my feet in the water and trying to figure out what I was doing with my life.
I was the last of my friends to graduate, courtesy of my status as the gods’ favorite Pokémon.
The spring semester of freshman year had been a casualty of the solo quest I’d gotten roped into (literally) and the nonsense with the centaur factions. New Rome wouldn’t let me make up the missed credits with summer courses, because, apparently, “it is an honor to be roped into godly nonsense every summer of your life since middle school, Percy, and you should not seek to avoid quests.” Ugh. Romans and their respect for the gods.
In sophomore year, Annabeth and I had ended up doing three (extremely involved) favors for Dionysus. That one was actually worth it, since Dionysus had healed the worst of our PTSD as a “thank you for dealing with several cults and fighting drunken mythical beasts” gift. Less helpfully, New Rome counted the Dionysus situation as a valid elective for Annabeth’s degree but not mine, and the questing pushed my grades below failing in half my courses.
Then there was Hera’s “revenge quest,” as Annabeth and I like to call it, which kept us from registering for spring courses. It also gave me magical third degree burn scars and perma-frostbite, and took Annabeth’s left pinkie and ring finger above the first knuckle. We lived, though, so enough said there.
Poseidon, Athena, and some other gods were apparently pretty annoyed at Hera after that, and the Olympian council begrudgingly agreed not to harass us or any of the Seven “too much” with quests.
After that, the only godly nonsense that cost me NRU credit-hours was my quest for Apollo, and I can’t complain because that was entirely my idea. I did twelve errands for him during my junior fall in exchange for Apollo healing Annabeth’s lingering post-Tartarus health problems. Apollo ended up helping both of us, even though I wasn’t part of the deal. It was probably the nicest thing a god’s done for me.
He couldn’t get rid of all the effects of the Pit—a Primordial’s damage can’t be totally erased by a god, so there’re still a few scars in our lungs and aches in our bones—but Apollo also treated a lot of the non-Tartarus consequences of constant monster-fighting and war. He even fixed my perma-frostbite, and Annabeth got her missing fingers healed back, enough to wear the engagement ring when I proposed right before senior year. Also, we could move without pain for the first time in years. I still add a dinner sacrifice to Apollo almost every night.
In the end, it took me a whole extra year and a half to graduate, even with the course overloads I was taking. I don’t really mind that much, I guess, even if 17 year-old Percy had hoped that whole “champion of Olympus” thing would just be a really involved high school job that I got to grow out of in college. I wish I could just retire, but maybe the best I can hope for is to survive long enough to marry Annabeth and watch my friends build lives. I can retire when I’m dead.
Some days, sitting alone by the Little Tiber Lake, I get pretty fed up, maybe with the gods, or maybe with myself for letting them turn me into their tool. I haven’t done anything about it, though. Yet. My mom says she’s proud of me for protecting my friends the way I have, and most days it’s enough. Mom also says she wishes I didn’t have to be the one to protect them, especially from the whims of the people (gods? beings? jerkwads?) who are supposed to be our parents.
I kinda wish that, instead of Perseus, son of Poseidon, Hero of Olympus, Survivor of Tartarus, Slayer of Monsters, I could just be Percy, son of Sally.
Wishing doesn’t change the fact that I’ve got people to protect.
—-------------
An hour later, Annabeth and I came up for air (metaphorically, what with my mermaid powers). I knew she had to go back to camp with Nico that night to prepare for the quest. Basically everyone was going except me: Annabeth, Jason, Piper, Leo, Hazel, Frank, Nico and Will. Even Thalia and Reyna were on standby as backup. I got why I couldn’t be involved, I totally did, but I guess that didn’t stop me from wishing I could help. Logically, I knew they were the most talented group of demigods in centuries and could hold their own against any threat, but it also wasn’t comforting that the threat was apparently big enough to require the whole group. A threat that I wasn’t allowed to know about. A threat that might actually, somehow, be me…
Annabeth smacked me lightly on the shoulder. “Stop brooding, anemone head. I know you’re worried about the quest—”
“I’m not worried!” Annabeth raised an eyebrow at me and continued.
“--But I’ve got everything under control. All you need to do to help is stay in New Rome and look pretty. I’m sure they’ll want your help as a former praetor, too, when Hazel and Frank leave.”
The Fates were probably laughing, because I did not, in fact, stay in New Rome or help out as a former praetor. I didn’t even look pretty while failing to do the other two things. (My good looks were marred by a black eye and a split lip the day after Annabeth left for CHB. I wish I could say I got hurt while heroically defeating a monster or at least from a cool fistfight or something. The truth is that I wasn’t looking where I was going and I tripped down the stairs of the coliseum.)
Four days after Annabeth’s visit and one day after Praetors Hazel and Frank left to join the questers, everything went to schist.
I won’t get into details, mostly because I don’t know them, but the gist of it is that the Olympian gods found out about the prophecy and decided to A) kill me, B) kill me but creatively, or C) hide me in Atlantis while waging war on proponents of A and B.
Unfortunately, instead of just getting on with killing and/or hiding me, Uncle Z and Daddy P decided to have a pissing contest all over the Roman camp. The Twelfth Legion and the Senate may or may not have become aware of this via a freak lightning storm that destroyed the Senate House and other Important Buildings. There may also have been significant flooding of the Little Tiber.
By the time we figured out that hiding me in an underground bunker would cause Zeus to chillax with the zaps, most of the Senate had been informed of the general situation with the gods and decided to do something about it. And by “do something,” of course, I mean hold a very long, very formal meeting while I hid underground and had an existential crisis about putting people in danger and being the cause of a war.
In the end the Senate issued a decree that, when translated from politics-speak to English, basically said: “Percy, we’re not exiling you, but we’re not not exiling you. Yes, we feel very bad, given all your service to Rome yadda yadda yadda, but we also value our families not getting blown up. We packed a bag for you already. Please leave immediately. Sorry again and we hope you don’t die. More importantly, please try not to cause another war. Best of luck, SPQR.”
Honestly, I was way more relieved than disappointed that they were kicking me out instead of trying to protect me. Staying would put everyone at risk, and there was no way in Hades I was letting the Legion kids and all the families in New Rome be collateral damage in my latest clusterfuck. The problem was, I wasn’t sure about where I could go without putting more people in danger.
—-----------------
The first thing I did—--after high-tailing it across the Little Tiber, getting a taxi, realizing my taxi driver was a monster, killing the monster, sulking through an upscale LA neighborhood while spattered with gold dust and a little of my own blood, dodging a lightning strike, and promptly hiding from Zeus’ renewed pettiness in the basement of a random building—--was call Annabeth.
“Oh, thank the gods! Percy! I heard what happened! Are you alright?” Even though the Iris message I could tell she was stressed. Annabeth looked so beautiful when she was stressed, but she looked even more beautiful when she wasn’t.
“Don’t worry, Annie! I’m fine. Everything’s all right. No one in New Rome was badly hurt, except that one Senator who uses poetry as a rhetorical device in speeches, and he’ll be fine. Probably. But, anyways, I left the Roman camp an hour ago—they sent me with drachmas and ambrosia and stuff, which is really good—and I haven’t had much trouble, and I’m totally alright.”
I knew I was rambling, and, worse, my words couldn’t even smooth the lines of worry etched between Annabeth’s eyes. Her beautiful grey eyes…. gods, get a hold of yourself, Percy! Now is not the time to be mooning over your fiancée. (Fiancée!!) No, Percy. Think. Why did I call Annabeth? Oh, yeah. I was fleeing for my life.
“Wise girl, I was wondering if you had any ideas about where I could go? I- uh- I don’t want to start a war, y’know? Getting killed would be… not great, but if I go with my da– with Poseidon, I’m guaranteeing another war, a civil war this time. You know there’s no way the camps won’t get roped into a war if it comes down to one, and we— we just— we’ve lost— we— y’know— we’ve really had enough wars already, Annie.”
For some weird reason my face was wet by the time I finished talking. I wasn’t embarrassed, and Annabeth had seen me cry plenty of times, but I scrubbed tears away quickly and willed the lump in my throat to get lost. We didn’t have time for my blubbering if Annabeth was going to figure out what to do.
“Yeah,” Annabeth said softly, “we have.” Then, with more steel in her voice to match her eyes, “Okay. Lemme think.”
She squared her shoulders and scrunched her eyebrows like she always did when she was planning battle strategy. After a minute she continued. “Here’s what you’ll do. The first problem is transportation. You need to travel quickly while hidden from the gods in general and Zeus in particular, so the Labyrinth is the best option. It’s underground plus Daedalus used it to hide from the gods for two millenia. I don’t think it’s a good idea to stay in the Labyrinth, though, since they’re actively looking for you in a way they weren’t looking for Daedalus, and we know that Hera, at least, is able to track movement there with some accuracy based on that weird luncheon we had our first time down there… So. Basically. The next problem is: where to go?
“I would say Alaska, but our intel says the Labyrinth may not have consistent entrances or even any entrances north of Washington and especially not along the coast. I don’t like the idea of you having to cover that much ground unprotected for as long as you’d have to do to reach the safe zone. Plus, as much as Alaska is “beyond the gods,” it borders a lot on your dad’s territory, and I wouldn’t put it past him to just send someone to kidnap you.
“So. What we want is somewhere directly accessible by the Labyrinth but either invisible or hostile to the gods—preferably both—with very minimal or polluted sky and water. And habitable long-term, so no, like, caves.”
I must have made a face when she said “long-term,” because Annabeth rushed to clarify.
“You wouldn’t need to stay there forever! As soon as this prophecy gets resolved, there’s no pretext for Zeus to justifiably kill you without losing the support of his Olympian allies, especially–” Annabeth grimaced “-my mother. Wish I could say I was surprised she sided with him on this, since I thought we were past her wanting to kill you, but honestly…. Um, anyways. So. I think I know a place that would work.”
“Wait, really?” I knew Annabeth was a genius-level strategist, but I wasn’t expecting her to have a tailor-made solution ready within a minute of hearing my problem. “Is this going to be another place from an obscure Greek myth?” I teased.
“Not exactly.” Her mind was somewhere else, probably fine-tuning the rest of her plan. “Hmm. Perce, you should— no, wait, lemme go get Rachel. Also— No actually— you’re somewhere safe right now, right?”
“Uh.” I looked around, paying attention for the first time to the boiler room I’d sorta, kinda broken into. It was empty of monsters, people, and sheltered from any not-so-stray lighting bolts.
“Yeah, I should be good here for at least a few hours, I think?”
“Great. Won’t need to wait that long. I’ll be back soon with Rachel and then I’ll explain the next part. Love you, dumbass.”
“Love you too, smartass.”