Hi! This chapter is A Lot of filler, but it does set us up for the fourth and final arc of this fic, which means that we are (very slowly) coming to an end of glass figures.
Coulson and his new team of agents (we'd been replaced) took me to what appeared to be a hospital for dead-people-that-aren't-actually-dead, judging by the fact that Fury was in the room two doors down from me, having some more shrapnel removed after he'd helped out at SHIELD HQ.
I wasn't too impressed as soon as I was conscious enough to realise what the implications were.
Coulson just smiled in my irritatingly enigmatic fashion. "Did you really think that Fury thought that you were dead anyway? He hasn't been seeking you out, but he's always suspicious when they don't find a body, especially when it's the body of one of his very best. This will just be confirmation for him."
Coulson really needed to stop referring to me as 'one of the very best'; it really felt like he was lying straight to my face (also, I didn't exactly have a good track record for staying in one piece for long, did I?).
"He is going to kill me."
Coulson laughed for real at that, a slightly derisive sound that cut the still air. "You don't know the Director nearly as well as you think if you honestly believe that."
My slightly drug-addled brain faltered. "But there's a shoot-on-sight order on my head that Fury authorised. And once labelled 'rogue', agents tend to have a bad habit of shooting first and not bothering with questions." I raised an eyebrow at Coulson (even that tiny action was painful, but I had to show him how unimpressed I was). " And I've never heard of the Director bending the rules for anybody before, either."
Coulson's eyebrows twitched slightly, which I took to mean that he was amused (you get good at reading him after a while; trust me). "Just because you've never heard of it happening doesn't mean that it has never happened. You of all people should know that."
Okay, so whatever that meant, I wasn't entirely sure. "Still. Shoot-on-sight?"
"Fury is not going to be in a position to shoot you, Agent, even if he wanted to. And he won't start looking for where you're hiding, either. Although he may have a few questions regarding the apparently-impossible happenings that seem to follow you around these days."
Oops. I forced my face to remain neutral as I deadpanned, "I don't know what you're talking about," in a nice and suspicious manner.
Coulson's eyes crinkled as he smiled. "Good to see that a few years living on the run hasn't changed you too much, Jackson."
"It doesn't matter, because Fury definitely knows what's causing all of that stuff anyway." I sighed as I recalled how matter-of-factly Jason had dropped the teensy bombshell that SHIELD recruited directly from Camp Jupiter on me. "And I imagine you do as well."
"Well," Coulson began, leaning back in his chair slightly. "From that fact that you seem to have crossed paths with Jason Grace since making your exit, which, I might add, was quite impressive, slipping the net like that, I'd say that you've got new ties to where he comes from. That might lead me to assume that part of the reason for your flight was manifestation of demigodly powers, but what bothers me is that the magnitude and the timescale don't quite match up."
"The more powerful ones display powers at a younger age," I finished for him.
He nodded. "That remains a mystery."
I smiled. "Childhood trauma. You know, the typical explanation."
"The abuse you suffered at the hands of your stepfather caused you to repress your powers without realising," Coulson filled in. "So when they did manifest, it happened all at once, rather than gradually like you might expect. I suppose that makes sense."
I must say that I didn't like how much he knew about my childhood. I definitely hadn't written all of that down on any forms, and I was at least mostly sure that I hadn't told anyone at my psych evals either (I mean, they were supposedly confidential, but then again they supposedly didn't put anything weird in their water which was definitely not the case).
It must have shown on my face, because Coulson picked it up. "I did my research before I even considered recruiting you, Percy. You shouldn't be so surprised."
I must say that it was strangely touching that he could still read my tiniest, most subtle tells, even after not having seen him for literal years. It showed just how good a handler he was, to know his agents after so much time.
He stood up, quite suddenly back to his robotic self. "You should get some rest, Agent. And don't think about trying to escape, not that you'd get far in that much plaster." I opened my mouth to complain, but he cut me off. "You will leave when the hospital staff are satisfied that you are safe to be discharged, and not before. You might as well spend the time resting instead of hatching increasingly ludicrous escape plans."
I leaned back into the pillows again, sulking somewhat.
Coulson smiled as he turned to leave. "I'm not going anywhere just yet, Jackson. And I promise that you're safe here."
Yeah, right.
o0O0o
Okay, I'll admit that it was kind of disappointing that there was only one assassination attempt during my stint in the not-dead-person hospital.
Plus, it was really shoddy; HYDRA should try training their agents before sending them into the field.
Anyway. I digress.
After around thirty-six hours in the hospital (I think), I finally managed to bother Coulson enough to let me get a phone call to Annabeth, who, as I had suspected, was simultaneously beside herself with relief that I was, you know, alive, and absolutely furious that I'd left her hanging for so long.
In my defence, the cell service underneath collapsed buildings is pretty poor (she didn't see the funny side of that one, either).
After about fifty-two hours, all of the anaesthetic and sedatives and shit started to wear off, which basically meant that I started to get more and more insufferable as a patient. Look, hospitals are boring. I'd much rather recover in a comfy bed in the Poseidon cabin (okay, maybe 'comfy' is pushing it somewhat, but you get the idea), or at home, where people I actually like can offer me cookies and I can sleep without the eerie, machine-punctuated whisper of the ward (not to mention the nurses who wake you up every four hours to check you're still alive).
I asked Phil if I could leave (read: whinged). He told me to be patient, with a smile on his face that said that he knew that he may as well have been talking to a brick wall if he actually wanted a positive reaction to that.
He did, however, let me phone Annabeth again.
I asked her to come and pick me up.
Coulson took the phone away.
I got a visit from Fury, in all his eye-patched glory, swaddled in bandages and looking about as murderous as I felt.
He was very nice about the whole situation, though, and didn't ask me where I was hiding or order me to be shot, so I counted the encounter as a win.
Then he was discharged, which was a little galling after hearing that he'd been medically dead for a while.
Anyway. It gave me something to stew about while I started to hatch escape plans, which, unfortunately (as Coulson had predicted), were somewhat hindered by the fact that I was pretty much in plaster up to my eyeballs.
Time began to melt and flow in that weird way that it does when the hospital get so sick of your whining that they bust out the sedatives again (I think one of the nurses called them my 'relaxing juice', which wasn't at all ominous, but I wasn't in a position to complain and he looked extremely done with life anyway), but I think it had been about a week by the time that they finally bundled me into a wheelchair and set me free(ish - Coulson was in charge of propulsion since I only had one functioning arm).
Coulson pushed me through the sliding doors into the open air, and I breathed a sigh of pure relief to finally be out of that god awful stuffy hellhole.
We went around the corner, only to see a terribly familiar-looking Mazda parked (slightly crooked, as always) on the side of the road.
Someone else waltzed out of the shadows from where she had been leaning against the wall. "Thank you so much for this, Phil. You don't mind returning the wheelchair for me? We've got one where we're going."
Phil let Annabeth take the wheelchair and help me into the car, then turned to head back, but not before taking Annabeth aside and giving her a quiet talking-to (as well as a bag full of useful things like replacement bandages and drugs).
Not sure how I felt about my boss and my girlfriend being pals, but I guess we have to go with it. I must admit that I was touched that she'd turned up (and that Coulson had facilitated it).
After three minutes of driving, Annabeth turned to me and said, "Well, you've had a busy few days, haven't you?"
No shit.
o0O0o
It didn't occur to me until three days later that when Nat released all of SHIELD's files into the aether, she did actually mean all of them.
"Wow, that's interesting," Annabeth remarked dryly for the fifth time in as many minutes, which wasn't the response that I was desperately waiting to hear from the person casually surfing the internet and reading all about the numerous skeletons that were apparently no longer in my closet.
We were sitting in the front room of the Big House, mostly because I was trying to hide from the mid-teenage campers who all had internet access and now thought that I was some sort of semi-resurrected cult celebrity. Annabeth, meanwhile, was doing 'research', which basically meant that I had nothing to do except sit there and try and read her ever-pensive expression as she sifted through the data dump on her laptop, one earphone in as it read out the bits she couldn't read so easily.
"SHIELD really do keep records of everything," she commented. "You broke three toes whilst 'allegedly falling from the Room 27 assault course'?" she asked, complete with air quotes.
"I told the nurse that was what happened," I replied evenly.
"Was it? The quotations suggest that you weren't very convincing."
No, of course it wasn't. "Nat was trying to teach me to do pointe," I admitted. "My sense of balance is good, but standing on a gabled roof and balancing on the area of your big toe are apparently very different things."
She raised an eyebrow, amused.
I huffed and crossed my non-cast-covered arm against my chest. "Clint almost broke his arm, and he used to walk the tightrope for a living," I defended.
"Uh huh," she countered, clearly unimpressed, and continued to read my medical record. "Ouch; fractured sternum? Was that your first field mission?"
"Yeah, SHIELD doesn't do training wheels." I winced. "Actually, they do; our's just went to shit."
"No kidding." She scrolled down. "How long is this file?"
I shrugged. "Probably longer than the rest of them. My missions reports tended to be on the brief side, and almost all of them also have an admission to the infirmary attached."
She shook her head. "Between death-defying stunts on your missions and horsing about back on base, I'm honestly surprised that you've yet to pick something up that prevents you from getting back in the field again."
I laughed. "Yes, that evil nurse always used to joke that I was made of plasticine. Easy to remould, difficult to break forever. It kind of felt like she wanted me to break permanently just so that I would stop coming to the infirmary." I paused. "Wait, maybe she was just HYDRA. I should check that out later."
Annabeth nodded thoughtfully (obviously no longer listening, which I guess was fair enough), and kept scrolling. It took her another half hour to reach the end of that file alone.
"Jeez, Jackson. And to think I thought you were reckless at first." She closed the lid of the laptop. "Anyway, I think that's enough for now. I guess I could probably hear some of those mission reports from the horse's mouth instead of whatever censored crap apparently passes for a SHIELD mission report."
Great; storytime. "Only if you ask nicely. Also, coffee. I really want coffee."
"No mixing of drugs, remember? I could probably get you a decaf, but I'm not sure there is any."
"Ew." What was the point of coffee without the jitters, anyway?
"Well alright then; no coffee for you."
Ugh.
o0O0o
"If this hurts, we're going to stop," Annabeth instructed clearly.
Wow, how boring.
"Whatever happened to 'no pain, no gain'?" I grumbled, shivering slightly in the morning chill and kind of wishing that I'd worn something a bit warmer.
Annabeth laughed. "I'm not sure that saying applies when you're trying to walk on two broken legs, Percy."
"They're not broken," I retorted.
Annabeth shot me an incredulous look. "Your X-rays say otherwise."
"My X-rays from five weeks ago say otherwise. It'll be fine."
She sighed deeply. "For the record, I still think this is a bad idea. I don't think you should be putting all of your weight through that arm yet." She gestured to my right arm, which was still admittedly in a support bandage, even though the wound from the rebar was mostly healed (keyword there being mostly).
I shrugged my left shoulder and picked up the crutches before she thought better of it, carefully prying myself upright so that I was just about standing, if a little bit wobbly. Annabeth hovered nervously, wringing her hands a little.
"Don't look so terrified; it's not like I'm about to step on a bomb or anything."
I shifted the crutches forwards and tried to take a hobbling step, before my right arm decided it wasn't having it and gave way under me, sending me crashing into Annabeth, who darted in just as she had been expecting to in order to keep me from eating the archery range's dirt.
"I told you this was a bad idea," she bitched, slinging my arm over her shoulder and wobbling the whopping one step back to the wheelchair, depositing me back in the seat with very little ceremony. "You have to take these things slowly."
I leaned my head back as dramatically as possible and slumped in the chair as if it was the end of the world. "Fine. Can you please let me go for a swim later, though?" I grinned up at her. "I promise it will help me heal."
"I would love to, but that arm isn't supposed to get wet and I fear that you'd drown."
"I can't drown," I pointed out.
"Oh, trust me, you'd find a way." Well, I'm glad to see that she had complete faith in me.
"I'll get Will to help me instead, then," I declared. "He'll understand the usefulness of low-impact exercise on regaining lost strength."
"Yes, and he'll also understand that you're not supposed to get your arm wet. He'll say no."
"Will he, though?"
He said no. Annabeth gloated, and I resigned myself to another two weeks of boredom.
o0O0o
Truth be told, Annabeth had probably been right about pushing myself too hard, I mused as I cautiously prodded the extremely-swollen lump that had been until this morning vaguely resembling a knee.
The girl in question walked into the Poseidon cabin, where I was sitting and feeling sorry for myself, and threw a pack of frozen peas at me, before wandering over and sitting down on the bed next to me.
"I don't want to say it, but I told you so."
I rolled my eyes, extremely grateful for the peas. "You don't have to rub it in."
Annabeth scooted a little nearer and placed an arm around my shoulders. "Seriously, Percy. You have to take it a little bit easy. These may not have been the most serious injuries that you've ever suffered, but they have been the most debilitating. You've got to be a bit kind to yourself. Healing takes time."
"I've never been good at being patient, though."
"Why are you pushing yourself so hard? In all seriousness, why?"
I dropped my gaze to my lap. "Everything about me is out there now. Dozens of governments will be after me; in Turkmenistan, I'm probably public enemy number one. People will be trying to hunt me down, and when they fail, they'll go after my family to try and smoke me out." I curled in on myself a bit more. "I need to protect Mom and Paul, and I can't do that if I'm here, injured."
"You'll be no use to them if you keep hurting yourself more, though," Annabeth reasoned, voice soft. "You have to slow down a little if you're going to regain your strength fully."
I nodded miserably. "It's just that now, with everything out there, they're properly in danger for the first time. Before this, not as many people made the link. I mean, they did their research and everything, but now it's so easy for them so work out which buttons to push; which weaknesses to exploit."
I looked back up at Annabeth, rocking slightly. "I'm scared, Annabeth. And the longer I'm here and off the radar, the more desperate they'll get, and the further they'll look. And Mom is the conclusion that they will come to, in the end."
Annabeth's eyes darkened slightly. "What are you planning to do, Percy? I don't like the way you said that. You've spent the last years of your life trying to keep off the radar."
"Look, the only way to take the heat off the people close to me is to turn up myself." At her horrified look, I hastily added, "not that you have to actually turn up. The idea of you does, though. Rumours here and there. The odd CCTV capture that looks suspiciously like you. You know, breadcrumbs. I'll do a bit of travelling and tie them up in so many knots that they think I'm simultaneously in China and Ohio. It'll be fun," I tacked on the end.
I'd always wanted to do more travelling, I supposed. Now seemed to be the opportunity.
Annabeth wrinkled her nose, clearly thinking that my plan was stupid, but unable to articulate how or offer an alternative.
Eventually, she came across an obvious flaw. "How exactly are you going to pay for this? I thought that you were broke and your account was frozen? You know, on account of you being legally dead and all that?"
A good point. "I'm sure there's details for some of SHIELD's rainy-day accounts somewhere buried in the data dump. I guess I'll have to look and hope that they haven't already been completely drained."
She snorted. "It's been months, Percy. If there are any bank details buried in that mess, I can guarantee that they've been found."
"So how do you propose that I raise the funds? It doesn't have to be private jets or anything, but I probably can't hitchhike all the way across the globe without getting stabbed."
"I could always call your boss and ask him."
My head jerked up. "You have Coulson on speed dial?"
She shrugged. "Someone has to liaise with him to make sure your dumb ass gets found before you die. Who else?" She took her phone out of her pocket and, after a worryingly short amount of time scrolling through her contacts, dialled. "Hi, yes, Agent Coulson. Yes, it's nice to hear from you as well." Annabeth pursed her lips. "No, he's not dead or dying, but he does have a hare-brained scheme." She tilted her head slightly as if willing Coulson's tinny voice to be any louder. " Yes, yes. Of course. No, I can't see another way out of this mess. Yes, I agree, total shambles. Yes, well-"
Was my girlfriend making idle small talk with my boss? Not sure how to feel about that, if I was perfectly honest.
"Yes, I actually think it might be the best idea we'll ever come up with in this situation. Is it dangerous? Oh, absolutely. There's just one thing missing, Phil, and that's capital."
Phil? Gods, this was bad.
She turned to me. "How much?"
I shrugged. "Few thousand? I'll need several plane tickets."
She sighed. "And I quote 'several plane tickets'. He thinks that's a few thousand. Really? That's great to hear. Thank you so much for this. Yes, I'll keep an eye out. Yes, I think you ought to be keeping an eye out as well on this one. He might appear on your radar a little, and I don't think he'd like you to bury the signal too much, if you get my drift. Yes, of course. Perfect. Thanks again, and good luck!"
She tucked her phone into her back pocket. "You're meeting Coulson in Pittsburgh two days from now. He said you'd know where to meet him, so I presume you're probably familiar with the usual SHIELD haunts there. In the meantime, I suggest we try and get you ready for a little adventure, don't you think? Why don't I go to the Hephaestus kids and ask if they've got a full-body brace that you can wear?"
I glared at her, and would have given her a playful shove, except that she'd got up and was out of reach, and my knee was still killing me.
She turned around to grin at me. "Are you coming to get some weapons or not, Seaweed Brain?"
o0O0o
Two days later found me on a train to Pittsburgh with a bulging duffel sack full of everything I could want for the next year.
Annabeth had been joking about the full-body brace, but it hadn't actually been so bad an idea after all. After asking nicely and a good few hours for them to come up with something, the Hephaestus cabin had really come through with a set of leg braces that were thin and light enough to fit underneath my clothes without anybody noticing, but also supportive enough for me to walk without a limp, even on my twisted knee.
Obviously Annabeth recommended that I still used the crutches when I could (and since they were metal I would have to stow them on planes), but at the very least it made her happier to know that I probably wasn't going to cripple myself before I even started.
The train took a while, to say the least, but I was restless the entire way, even vigilant and scanning the carriage, suddenly nervous that any of these seemingly ordinary people could recognise me from the news, or from a mission brief.
Despite my misgivings (and jitters), I was still very much alive by the time the train pulled into the station in Pittsburgh, and there was no incident as I stood up, shouldered my bag and alighted, carefully keeping my head down to avoid staring the CCTV cameras dead-on (didn't really want to get caught this early in my trip).
Fortunately, all of the pictures in the SHIELD release were several years out of date (perks of being legally dead, I guess?). Sure, I hadn't changed that much, but the years out of the assassination industry and in the sun at Camp had allowed me to (finally) fill out my permanently-gangly frame somewhat, and my hair was longer now that it didn't have to be cut to regulation length. Sure, it wasn't a full transformation, but hopefully it would mean that anyone sifting through the data would have to look twice before realising it was me if they didn't have a facial capture.
I was meeting Coulson a short walk away, over the bridge in a tiny old safe house that we'd been forced to stay briefly in ('we' being myself, Nat, Clint and Coulson). Sure, it hadn't exactly been comfortable (a two-bed studio flat containing four very dirty and tired people never is), but it had certainly been memorable. Coulson went out in the morning and bought us all pastries before we'd even woken up, allegedly to 'stop any complaints' due to the seemingly never-ending task ahead of us, but I was fairly confident that old Phil was more of a softy than he let on.
The door to the flat was closed when I arrived, but I knew that I wouldn't be the first there, and knocked twice, sharply.
"Do you come bearing gifts?" came Phil's unmistakable voice.
"Just coffee," I replied, mimicking the conversation that we'd had on that day long ago. "And maybe I stopped by the bakery, but you'll never know if you shoot me through the door, will you?"
The door swung open, revealing Phil in his customary suit, perhaps slightly more rumpled than usual. "Come in, then."
It was only after he'd shut and bolted the door behind me, and we were both safely sitting down in the uncomfortable chairs in the main room, that he dared to speak freely. "I must admit that I'm surprised to see you on your own two feet so soon after that accident, Jackson."
I grinned. "Well, nothing that a couple of weeks' rest couldn't solve, I don't think."
He chuckled. "I saw your X-rays, so don't give me any of that crap. Seriously, how?"
I rolled my eyes and lifted the hem of my trousers slightly, so that he could see the bronze of my brace glinting in the dim light. He whistled softly. "Now I'm really impressed. That's some craftsmanship there. You've got some skilled friends."
"Yes, I do."
Phil sensed my unease, and changed the subject swiftly. "I've raised the funds that you need. Unmarked bills, but the amounts are still quite high. You'll need to change some of the hundreds to avoid suspicion, but don't do them all at once."
Now it was my turn to smile. "I've done all of this before, you know. I didn't realise that this was bothering you so much." I mean, I'd almost be fooled into thinking that he was concerned.
"Be careful," he said gravely. "You've done a good job these last few years. Don't slip up now; not while the whole world is hunting for you."
I nodded. "I'll be careful. You should too."
"Don't you worry about me. Just know that you're on your own, now. I'm not sure that even Fury's so-called 'Avengers' would be able to help you, and God only knows where Barton and Romanoff have got off to. If I didn't already know that your heart was set, I'd tell you to follow their lead and go to ground for a while, until all of this blows over.
"Now is undoubtedly the most dangerous time to start showing your face again. Just… be careful."
He stood up, gave me a pat on the shoulder, and left.
And just like that, I was alone.
Well, time to get on the road.
Thanks for reading! See you next month! Leave a review if you enjoyed it!
