Death and Champagne

Chapter I:

When the doorbell rings at three o'clock in the morning, it is never good news.

Percy was woken from his dreams by the first chime, his eyes flickering open from where he lay, sprawled on the beaten-up futon. For a moment, he stayed still, believing that what he had heard was just an aberration, but then it rang a second time,

Ring!

Rolling off of the couch with a groan, he rubbed his eyes with both hands as he blindly made his way towards his apartment door. The bell chimed a third time, and before it could annoy him for a fourth, he opened the door, not bothering to check through the peephole. He expected to find one of his old buddies in need of a place to crash, but instead found himself staring dreary-eyed at a woman doused in blood. He thought himself hallucinating at first, until he blinked, and realized that yes, she really was still standing right in front of him.

"Uh…"

"Thanks," the roughly same-aged woman said quickly as she pushed her way past him, slamming the door behind her before gracelessly collapsing on top of the futon where he had just been sleeping.

Percy, suddenly realizing that this was definitely not normal activity, reached for Riptide in his front pocket, but stopped short of drawing the blade when he saw her.

She was wearing a military jumpsuit that may have once been white, but was now bloodied red and looked like it had been siphoned through a blender, leaving gaping holes in the Kevlar lining. Visible portions of her skin shone through said holes, caked in soot and grime as if she had just run through a burning building. Her dirty blonde hair was the best off, which was not that high of a bar to clear as it was still fraying out of her bun, looking more like a peacock's tail than anything else.

"Ermmm," he drawled, still mildly delirious from what had been a rather rude awakening. "I think you got the wrong apartment?"

The woman, visibly heaving from exhaustion, lifted her head up to expose an unintentional double chin.

"Sorry, didn't have much of a choice."

He knew he had his fair share of questionable moments, most of them deriving from his early demigod years back at Camp Half-Blood, but he was not nearly dull enough to believe what she had just said. His first thought was that maybe the Stoll brothers—who mind, he had not talked to since he had left camp five years ago—were pulling a fast one on him. After all, it was close to Halloween, and you could never rule out a child of Hermes to pull out some outlandish prank.

"I'm sorry," he blurted. "Are you some sort of… escort?"

The woman scoffed at his suggestion and sat up, giving him a first-class view of her rigid face. Despite all of the visible carnage, her features were extremely arrestive; her eyes especially, sharp black surrounded by wild brown that could have belonged to a wolf.

"If I was, I'd be the world's worst escort." She pieced together in a Russian accent, like she was alluding to some sort of inside joke.

He aptly wondered what she had done to look the way she looked, while simultaneously considering how much of a lunatic he was for letting her stay this long. Hell, she was leaving blood marks all over the damn carpet flooring, how was he going to explain that to the landlord?

"Listen," he started slowly, making sure to keep his voice level as she already looked threatening enough. "I don't know who you are, but if you could leave that'd be great, fantastic even."

"Yelena Belova." The woman grunted as she fished an unfinished bag of chips out from underneath her bottom. "Now you know."

"Percy Jackson." He felt obligated to say back, biting the inside of his cheek as he did so.

He was positive this was just another one of his fever dreams. As a demigod, he experienced plenty. In fact, just before she had arrived, he had dreamt of himself dining at an Italian restaurant with Thanatos, the Greek personification of Death. Definitely on the crazier side when it came to even his dreams, the god had extended to him an offer, a chance to undo what was his life's greatest failure. It was rather simple. All Percy had to do was choose to drink between two glasses of champagne. Champagne roulette, if you will.

Of the two glasses that had been sitting on the table between them, one had the potential to bring his loved ones back to life. The other, a wildcard, contained an infinite amount of possibilities within it, good or bad. He had chosen to drink out of the glass on the left, and whoever this Yelena character was had come ringing his doorbell right as the fizzling liquid breached his lips.

"What flavor is this crisp?" She asked casually, examining one of the triangle chips from the bag in the dim lighting.

"Chips, you mean?"

Yelena gave him a dangerous look.

"Cool Ranch." Percy answered, bewildered, reading off the blue bag's label. "You can keep the rest on your way out."

She frowned at his hospitality, or lack thereof, as she proceeded to slide the foreign chip into her mouth.

Was it possible for eating chips to be... erotic?

"I can't leave… yet." She mused

His half-baked conscience did not yet possess the necessary bandwidth to understand a statement such as that.

"But... why?"

"They're after me." She offhandedly replied after biting down on another chip, like he was supposed to automatically know who 'they' was.

"Who?" He asked helplessly, feeling like the odd man out in his own living space. There was something about her gravity that kept him on a knife's edge.

Glancing at her again, he was starting to think that maybe she was a demigod as well, which would have explained her appearance to some extent, and who 'they' was. Perhaps she had been chased over here by some rabid monster. Why she had arrived at his doorstep? Well, he could easily chalk that up to the Fates deciding that his boring life needed a little bit of extra spice; Cool Ranch-flavored spice, apparently.

Yelena tipped the remaining crumbs into her palm as she said informally, "the Avengers."

"Who?" He asked again.

Percy felt his eyes narrow with genuine confusion, to which she stared at him like he had sprouted a third eyebrow. Either she was on drugs, or he was, and at this point he was willing to concede to a coinflip to decide.

"The...Avengers." She reiterated bluntly, this time a lot slower, but enunciating the syllables did not do anything to help him.

"I don't know who that is." He answered back with his own mundane bluntness.

The Avengers? That sounded like some knock-off superhero show that he would see playing on Cartoon Network in the doctor's office; if he was lucky, that was. Usually all they had on was the Disney Channel.

"Doesn't matter I guess because I was kidding." She quipped with a frown, crumpling the bag inside her meaty fists before standing up. "It was some damn aliens."

The more she talked, the more certain he became that he had somehow overdosed on the bottle of one-a-day multivitamins sitting on his small kitchen counter.

"Let's slow that roll," Percy held up his hands. He was beginning to wake up now, his dry humor activating. "What is this? Some sort of sick joke? Aliens? Are you kidding me?" He then exclaimed.

"Look," Yelena gave him an unnecessarily aggravated sigh, "I'm not sure what boulder you hit your head on, but unless you can somehow help me fight, which… I'm not sure you can," she gave him another once over, making him subconsciously flex his abdomen in spite of himself, "I need to hide out here for as long as possible."

"Well…" he started to say as he chewed on his thumbnail—a bad habit he had picked up as of late—while trying to think of a way to rebuff her without sounding too rude.

Yelena walked forward. Percy took some steps back.

Before she could get any closer to him, a shuddering boom suddenly rattled the ceiling, causing both of them to jump in their place.

"Shit, nevermind! They're here now!" She cursed in both English and what he guessed was Russian, as she reached behind her back to produce two black sticks which resembled oversized police batons.

Percy, with the two hemispheres of his brain still living in dysfunctional cohabitation, reached into his pocket to reveal his own weapon, not wanting to be left out of whatever was about to go down. Riptide's celestial bronze sprung to life in between them, the pen transforming into a wicked sword in a blink.

Yelena paused mid-stride, her now frenetic eyes ogling at the bristling metal.

"Wha—we'll talk about this later." She declared.

Promptly, another massive boom shook the ceiling, this time causing cracks to form near the upper corners of his small apartment. Percy cringed, hoping that his renter's insurance would be enough to cover the cost. This was not how he imagined a girl spending the night at his place would turn out.

Clearly not a fan of explanations, Yelena took off towards his door without notice, and thankfully opened it normally by the knob instead of drop kicking the entire thing, which was what he had expected her to do if he was going off this very brief time he had gotten to know her.

"Follow me!" She ordered over her shoulder as she sprinted down his front steps, activating something within her batons that saw them spark with electricity.

"My life is a simulation." Percy was left to mutter to himself as he quickly slipped on his shoes, pausing briefly to look off to the side. "It's almost like… I'm in a story."

-Ω-

It was still two months away from Christmas, yet somehow Santa's elves were already out in full force.

"Who the hell even are these guys?" He yelled over the raging commotion that had overtaken the parking lot they were fighting in, as he sidestepped to the left before swinging Riptide down with full force, absolutely obliterating one of his adversaries in the process.

So far, a couple things had already been made very clear; Yelena was definitely not a demigod, this was for sure not his apartment building they had just stepped out of, and the aliens she was talking about were some vile combination between what he always figured Santa's elves would look like, mixed with a farm pig.

"Dark Elves!" She grunted back while electrocuting one of the Elves in the groin, causing them to fall flat on their face.

"They couldn't come up with an edgier name?" Griped Percy in reply, causing the elf in front of him to snarl viciously and rend the air with some unintelligible war cry.

"I don't think Baconator here likes me." He then concluded, before swinging Riptide around in a circle, consequently sending the elf's head into near-Earth orbit.

Yelena could only roll her eyes back at him as she fought off another two.

Even after next to no practice with sword fighting in the last however many years since he had left camp, the demigod still effortlessly wielded Riptide, the celestial bronze coated from tip to hilt in thick blackish blood.

Yelena, whoever she proclaimed herself to be, was no slouch either, fighting with the gusto of a child of Ares and the brains of an Athenian, her two electrical batons wreaking havoc amongst the pack of roughly thirty Elves that were on top of them.

Slowly making his way closer to her, catching another handful of Elves off guard in the process, he then asked,

"Why are they after you?"

"I got framed! They think I killed their king or whatever."

"Did you?"

"Of course not!"

Percy recalled the blood he had seen on her when she first entered his apartment, and apparently his facial expression revealed exactly what he was thinking.

"I was on some other stupid mission," Yelena then admittingly clarified, adding on to her previous statement, "and they just so happened to be there with me."

"So you did kill Santa Claus?"

His terrible joke expectedly flew right over her head, her visible confusion causing her to almost get clobbered by an approaching elf's sword.

Rearing the brunt of his attention back to the more important matter at hand, away from his foul attempts at getting some cheap laughs, Percy twirled his wrist and clashed blades with another incoming elf, who had clearly never fought somebody the likes of himself before. With a simple flick he disarmed the elf, and reversing the motion saw the alien cut down to the asphalt.

The last three Elves that remained tried to run away, having just seen how easily their brethren had been defeated, but barely got more than a baseball throw away before Yelena whipped out a pistol from her waistband, and with three pulls of the trigger sent them on a one-way ticket to Hades realm.

"That's not fair." He exclaimed after taking a moment to catch his breath, the ebbs of adrenaline slowly seeping out of his body.

He was sweating like a pig. For late October, the night was swelteringly hot.

"What are you talking about?" She questioned as she holstered her firearm.

He pointed his sword at her gun, making her stiffen for a second, before relaxing.

"Can't bring a gun to a swordfight, that's cheating."

She picked a piece of elf bone out from her hair, and flicked it onto the pavement before spitting on it. "You're weird."

Brushing off the snide comment, Percy turned to look back at his apartment—or more accurately, what should have been his apartment. Instead he was standing here looking at a completely different building, one that was green instead of blue, about twenty years older, seemingly abandoned, and was lacking the twenty stories that were supposed to be stacked on top of his bottom floor room.

To put it simply, it was nothing short of impossible. He had somehow stepped out of his door into a different world.

"Shit, there's more up ahead," She cursed with an unnervingly intense expression crossing her face, leaving him no time to ponder any further.

Right on cue, a futuristic looking spaceship in the shape of a 'T' flitted overhead, the harrow slicing through the dead of night and descending into the nearby forest that had replaced what would have been a grocery store outside his original apartment complex.

Without so much as a verbal warning, Yelena bolted towards where the ship had landed, and Percy took that as his signal and followed a few steps behind. Descending into the thicket, the sound of shouts and heavy steps drew closer as they approached, and it did not take long before he could begin to make out the spaceship through the festering tree line, with what looked like a hell of a lot more Elves crowded around it.

Once they were some hundred feet away, she crouched and he reacted accordingly, following her lead, the two of them perfectly concealed in the bushes that were sprouted just outside of the rough clearing.

"What do we do now?" He whispered, a hint of excitement noticeable in the spaces between his words.

After so many years of down time, these past thirty minutes were like a breath of fresh air in his life, a nice long stretch after a hard workout. He could not remember the last time he had felt this wired up and ready to go; the sensation was scarily addicting.

She gave him the universal sign for silence, two fingers to the lips, before starting to crouch walk to their right, relocating them towards the rear of the ship, away from the congregation amassed in front of them.

Percy still could not make out what the Elves were talking about, but if he had to place a bet off just the tone of their agitated voices, they definitely were not planning anything good.

Luck soon ran dry, as a fatally loud snap coming from a twig broken underneath Yelena's combat boot ruined any chance of them making it behind the Elves. She cussed again in Russian, the curse word sounding horrendously vulgar. Almost immediately the Elves reared their ugly heads, their ears twitching at the sudden sounds.

He took careful note that these Elves were significantly larger than the ones from before, wearing masks and insectoid armor that showcased bulging biceps, making them appear like a set of action figures instead of Santa's little helpers. Apparently the first Elves had just been the tutorial, these guys were the real Dark Elves.

"Maybe we should b—" Percy was about to suggest a temporary tactical retreat, but Yelena had other plans, springing up from the bush to reveal their location.

The woman clearly had a penance for death greater than his.

The Elves hissed in surprise and focused on her as she was first up, unveiling their weaponry, which just so happened to be massive rifles that had been taken straight out of a Halo 4 game lobby.

"Oh great, they got guns now too?" He groaned, realizing he was now the odd man out in that department. "Where's mine?"

Yelena could only do so much as squint her eyes at him before the Elves opened fire.

Demigod instincts still on point, Percy instantly reacted with a roll and ducked behind the closest tree, as an elf took aim and reduced the bush where they had just been hiding into burning atoms. Daring a glance, he could barely make out Yelena on the other side of the fire that had sprouted between them, her face filled with gritty determination as she took out her pistol and returned fire.

The elf that seemed to be acting as their leader, pointed a gloved hand towards their position and barked an order in a foreign tongue. The words were indecipherable, but the intent was: kill. Not like he did not already know that.

Another war cry erupted as the Elves then formed a horde and charged, closing the distance between them at a breakneck pace.

Despite them having no prior experience fighting together, they timed their attack perfectly, both of them leaping back out from the exposed tree line in unison. An elf was the first to strike, trying to sweep Yelena off her feet with a brutal kick to the legs, but she moved like a gazelle, easily avoiding what would have been a low blow by hopping over the elf's flying limb, punishing their decision to attack by smashing their head in between her batons, like chopsticks did with sushi.

Percy, with Riptide already drawn, alerted the elf closest to him. Too close to use the gun effectively, the elf tried to rear back and use it as a club, swinging the gun at him like a baseball bat. He dodged and jammed his sword underneath the elf's chin, a fountain of black ichor spouting from the wound once he retracted the blade.

The hot air ruptured with the cadence of shrieks and cries, making the battleground a scene straight from a 1980s action flick.

While the first Elves he had fought easily fell, he could not say the same for these ones, their massive size fooling him with their almost inhuman reflexes. It was like fighting the Manticore all over again, except this time there were over fifty Dr. Thorn's frothing at the opportunity to blast him to smithereens.

Twisting to check on his new partner, Percy saw her in the midst of her own battle, standing atop a fried elf carcass as she locked arms with another one that was hellbent on revenge. Color him impressed; Yelena was a badass.

"Stop looking!" She berated when she caught his glance.

"Sorry!"

He thereby honed in on his senses, instincts overriding his intuition as he focused solely on himself, slowing the battle around him as he dodged, weaved, and swung as fast and accurately as he could. For a death defying experience, it was all going swimmingly, but as the battle continued to rage on, Percy's lack of training slowly started to get exposed. Too often did he allow himself to take unnecessary blows to the rib cage and back, strikes that his younger-self would have avoided without a mere thought.

With more than double the amount of soldiers than before, the Elves began to direct him away from where Yelena was fighting, isolating the two of them so that neither could come to the other's aide. Grunting from exertion, Percy swung and missed at his next target. Through the mask, he could tell that the elf was smiling as it shot at him, the laser emitted grazing the side of his abdomen, sending up a flare of instant fiery pain.

Forcefully, he swung again and this time connected, ending the last of the enemies close to him while ignoring his burning ribs, and the blood that had splayed the insides of his throat.

"Percy!" He heard Yelena cry.

A chill of dread sank into his spine as he turned towards the sound of her voice. The leader of the Elves was on top of Yelena, the mask on their face burnt off to reveal a set of gleaming silver teeth that came together to form an evil smile.

"You can run as much as you want, Terran." The Elven Leader declared, sounding like Morgan Freeman and Optimus Prime's illegitimate son. "But death would've found you soon enough."

Taking a chance, knowing that Riptide would come back to him if he missed, Percy threw the sword without hesitation, aiming straight for the elf's thick head.

For one feverishly long second he watched as it twirled through the air.

An audible thunk followed by a meaty thud greeted his ears as Riptide exacted his wrath, skewering right through the elf's skull, killing the leader instantly and freeing Yelena from their grasp.

Percy ran to her as she stubbornly tried to rise back up to her feet, and prevented a collapse on her side by easing her gently back down to the ground.

"Woah there," he said cool, calm and collected as he checked to see if she was bleeding. "Take it easy."

She spat blood from her own mouth, which managed to find its way onto his own face by accident, a moment that definitely was not one for the scrapbook.

"Thanks," she mumbled as she rolled off his arms, her eyes fluttering as she mumbled again, "did we win?"

"Uh yeah, about that."

The Elves, which were now down to less than ten, their leader currently a Percy-style shish kabob, had regrouped at the other side of the clearing, but for some reason had started cheering, raising their guns up above their heads as if to declare victory.

Staggering to her feet successfully this time, Yelena pointed upwards, her awareness directing Percy towards the sky where they saw a cluster of black harrows descending, ready to disgorge more armed Elves upon them.

"You know, if you got any superpowers, now would be the time." She laughed at herself, shaking her head. "If not, we're so dead."

He blinked, the pain in his ribs suddenly disappearing at the thought.

"Oh."

"Oh?" Yelena stared at him unabashedly. "Oh, what?"

Percy gave her a sideways glance.

"I got superpowers."

Even Yelena's snorts had a matter-of-fact delivery to them. "I can't tell if you're kidding or not."

To answer her question, the area of forest behind them began to rumble profusely, and from the tree leaves emerged a roaring wall of water which he had commandeered from a river closeby.

"I uh, I can control water." He explained for good measure, patting the churning mass with his hand, feeling the healing strength flow into his body.

She did not even try to resist the urge to punch him, hitting him directly where he had been shot with a solid blow.

"And you waited until now to tell me?"

Percy raised his arms defensively, flinching at the pain. "Okay, oww, and to be fair—"

Yelena cut him off with what he assumed was a trademark glare for her, before turning to wave her batons at the Dark Elves, which seemed to be her attempt at becoming an air traffic controller. For reasons unbeknownst, the Elves were still patiently parked on the other side.

"Hey guys!" She yelled at the Elves. "Thanks for waiting while we sort this out!"

"Can the others understand English?" He whispered out the side of his mouth.

"Probably not."

"Are we fighting?

"Absolutely not." Yelena gritted her teeth and spat more blood into the grass. "Just cover us until we can get to their ship."

"What?" Percy gave her a crazed look, not his first of the night. "Why!?"

"We need to draw them away from Earth!" She shouted again over her shoulder as she had already taken off, leaving him with no choice other than to follow.

The sight of the two of them sprinting towards their ship seemed to do the trick for the Elves, the moving shield Percy had crafted out of the water awaking them from their trance as they opened fire, their reinforcements emerging from their neck of the woods at the same time.

Using Riptide as his magic wand of sorts, the son of Poseidon maneuvered the water easily to block their shots, the red lasers swallowed up by his watery force field as Yelena safely sprinted up the ramp and into the heart of the spacecraft. Trailing close behind, Percy let out a loud yell as he sent the water flying outwards towards the Elves, surely buying her enough time to take off as he too ran up the ramp, disappearing into the dark interior.

For his first time inside a spaceship, it was strangely barren, and he fumbled his way into the cockpit where she was already strapped into the pilot seat, impatiently waiting for him.

"Finally," she complained as her hands flew across the alien interface, pressing what seemed like random buttons to Percy, "took you long enough."

He shook his head in disbelief at everything that had just occurred, and let out an embarrassing yelp when they suddenly took off, Yelena pulling the throttle all the way back as they shot away into the sky.

"Who the hell are you, again?"

-Ω-

It would be difficult to describe the feeling of traveling through space. Being that he was a son of Poseidon, Percy had never flown in anything other than the Argo II, and while that voyage had been tumultuous in its own right, flying in a spaceship was in an entirely different league. Nothing could have prepared him for the mind-bending maneuvers that it entailed. Yelena being the pilot probably did not help either, given that he was not quite sure if she was all that comfortable with the Dark Elves' controls.

Sure, they had somehow managed to fend off and finish the Dark Elves that had been pursuing them in the other ships, but he was more than certain that had been thanks to a combination of pure luck and dark magic, rather than skill. On the bright side, however, all their time spent cursing at each other had allowed them to finally start getting to know the other.

"So you're a demigod." She stated, wiping the sweat from her forehead as she finally relaxed into the pilot's seat.

"And you're supposed to be some secret Russian spy." He said in return, not allowing himself to relax quite yet, his blood still pumping from what had been an absolute rollercoaster of a night.

She regarded him in displeasure, switching the ship to autopilot so that she could give him her full attention.

"Supposed? And it's ex-secret Russian spy to you. I'm an Avenger now."

"Right, the group of superheroes you recently became a part of. Why weren't they there to help us?"

Percy saw Yelena frown, worrying at her lower lip, and could all but see the thoughts racing through her head. Several long, tense moments seemed to pass as she considered what he had told her, before she met him once more with an unnervingly intense expression.

"Well, they're not alive yet."

He stared back at her enigmatically, not for the first time sure if he had heard her correctly.

"What? How does that make sense?" He asked, his hands finding the underneath of his seat as she unnecessarily pulled the throttle back again, retaking control of the ship.

"I'm not from here either, just like you." She started to explain, punching in something into the console as she spoke. "Only, I was sent back in time. While you just seemingly… appeared here."

Percy swept his hands through his unruly hair.

"This just keeps getting better, huh?"

"You Greeks never had to deal with beings that can control time?"

He recalled his bouts with Kronos, "Actually yeah I did, but I don't think any of them could ever go back in time."

"Well, in this universe, my universe, there are some that can," Yelena made clear, "and that's the reason why I'm here. Because you see, currently, we've got a big, bad primordial on our hands that wants to kill us all."

That was certainly nothing new to Percy. If there was anything that he could relate to, it was that.

"Which one is it?" He asked, intrigued. "Gaea? Nyx? Tartarus?"

"Dormammu." She said instead.

The name sent a slight shiver running down Percy's spine in spite of himself. There was something about the way the syllables rolled off her tongue that made the temperature in the cockpit drop.

"The Destroyer of Worlds. He's attempting to merge my world with the Dark Dimension," she continued, her brow furrowing further with every word spoken.

"Why does everything have to start with dark?" He joked, trying to lighten the mood somewhat, even though this was clearly a lot more serious than what she was putting on.

Yelena looked at him confused. "Huh? What do you mean?"

"You know, Dark Elves and now Dark Dimension." Percy counted using his fingers while he spoke. "What's next? Dark Pikachu or something?"

Yelena's eyes momentarily became slits. "Did I tell you that you're weird?"

Percy shot her a sly smile back. "May have mentioned it once or twice, amongst other things."

"I hate you."

"That was one of those other things."

"Good."

Not wanting her to think that he was a complete idiot, Percy picked up where she had left off.

"So the Dark Dimension, what is it?" He asked honestly. "Sounds pretty bad."

"It is," she responded. "It's an alternate reality, Dormammu's domain, and if he's able to fully bridge the gap between his and our's, then it's game over. We're done."

"And that's why you've gone back in time?"

"Yes," Yelena then sighed as she put the ship back on autopilot. "I'm here on a time heist; I need to find six of the most powerful objects in existence."

She spoke as if that were no big deal, but he knew good and well that it was the other way around, if the nervous bouncing of her legs was anything to go by.

"Only with them, do we have a chance of stopping Dormammu," she finished.

"So the Dark Elves that were chasing us?" He asked.

"They were guarding the Reality Stone," she further explained. "One of the six Infinity Stones that I have to collect and bring back, before Dormammu consumes everything."

At the behest of Yelena's fingers, a helpful graphic appeared on the monitor in front of Percy, showing six glowing rocks that were perhaps no bigger than a walnut. She pointed to the red one, indicating that it was the Reality Stone she was talking about. And after taking some more time to explain to him the Infinity Stone's origins, what each one meant, and could do, Percy then finally popped the big question.

"So you're doing all of this, by yourself?"

Yelena nodded her head sullenly. "I was the only one they could send back, before Dormammu began his attacks. Everybody else… ran out of time."

There was a hitch in her speech that made Percy want to reach over and give her a hug, though smartly, he refrained from doing so.

Staring at the distraught expression that had crossed her face, he struggled to find the correct words to tell her that he could relate to some degree. Having fallen into Tartarus with Annabeth, and tasked with a nearly impossible mission to reach the Doors, he knew better than most what it felt like to have the fate of the world on your shoulders.

"Well Yelena, you're not alone anymore," Percy declared as he offered her a fist bump, to which she surprisingly returned, even though doing so looked like the last thing she wanted to happen. "I guess I'm stuck with you, now. Fates be damned."

"Great, that was the last thing I needed," she playfully retorted, before genuinely giving thanks. "Thanks, Percy."

They sat in a relatively peaceful silence afterwards, watching the stars slowly trickle by as they flew off towards wherever Yelena was leading them. In movies, space had always been portrayed as this crazy, inhospitable atmosphere, but sitting here right now, Percy could not stop himself from taking in the serenity of it all. It was beautiful, unlike anything he had ever experienced; almost akin to the first time he had seen the crashing waves of the ocean.

Looking over, he saw Yelena taking it all in as well.

She certainly had the most attractive dirty blond hair he had ever seen, and he secretly watched as the hair swayed and bounced as she breathed, her chest rising up and down with steady breaths. He watched, captivated, utterly drawn into the way the light from the stars reflected off her wolfish eyes. Like the gleam of a twilight over mid-morning, they stood out from their surroundings in stark contrast.

"Wait," he blurted, dragging himself out of his trance, "so you said the Dark Elves were guarding the Reality Stone, but we just killed them all, so where is it?"

To answer his question, she produced an armored, luminous red vial from seemingly out of nowhere, whose dull shining light emitted ominous undertones. The temperature of the air dropped even further.

"The Reality Stone." She declared.

"What the hell?" Percy exclaimed. "That was in your pants the entire time?"

"Where else was I supposed to keep it?"

"I don't know, maybe in like a metal suitcase or something? You were just telling me how much shit that thing could do!"

Yelena carefully slid the vial back into whatever pocket she had been keeping it in, before shooting him a shrug.

"I guess I'll keep that in mind for next time."

"Hold up," Percy raised his hands up for a second, trying to slow everything down. "Why couldn't we have used it back there to kill the Dark Elves? Surely that thing has some secret button that can just blow anything up."

She shook her head vehemently before responding,

"Not even they could use it. The last one that tried was consumed by its power."

"Are you talking about Santa Claus?"

"I can't believe you're not done with that stupid joke," Yelena deadpanned.

Now it was Percy's turn to shake his head. "My bad humor is here to stay, sunshine."

"Don't call me that, I'll turn your testicles into cow leather."

"I've had worse things done to me."

Yelena bit her bottom lip. "Whatever you say."

"Okay seriously though," Percy gestured to the graphic that was still being displayed. "Why are we getting these stones if it might kill us to use them? How can you be so sure that this is going to work?"

"I'm not sure," was her answer, "but the Avengers have done this once before, now we have got to do it again."

The way she said the word 'we,' made him feel slightly warm and fuzzy inside. Excitement had overtaken his psyche, knowing that he was now back in the fray. He was positive though, that there were going to be plenty of moments in the future where he would regret every decision he had ever made.

"But right now, the Avengers don't even exist." He said for clarification purposes.

"Correct." She responded.

"Then how was I expected to know that back at the apartment, if I were an actual person living in whatever year we are in?"

Yelena frowned. "That's the first good point you've made."

"I can tell that you really don't like guys." Percy retorted.

She lightly elbowed him again in the ribs, causing him to flinch, since the wound from the shot he had taken was still tender to the touch.

"What made you think that?" She puckered innocently.

"Not a clue." Percy mumbled in return, carefully rubbing the sore spot. "Do you even know what year it is?"

Yelena shook her head once. "Strange didn't have time to tell me—"

"Time, that's ironic." He joked.

"You don't ever shut up, do you?"

"No," Percy grinned. "Not really."

Yelena sighed. "As I was saying, Strange didn't have time to tell me. One second I was fighting, and the next I was standing right next to an altar, which just so happened to be where the Dark Elves had been storing the Reality Stone."

"Strange, he's the guy that controls the Time Stone?" Percy asked, recalling what she had told him earlier.

"Yes."

She stayed quiet for a while after that, making Percy question whether he had said anything wrong. And for the first time since he had met her, she looked almost… vulnerable, afraid of what might happen next. Even though he still barely knew her, and had next to no connections with this new world he had been thrust into, he silently swore to himself that he was going to do anything in his power to help her. Evidently, his days of being a hero were not gone just yet.

Santa Claus, Dormammu, it didn't matter. Percy Jackson was here to kick some major alien ass. Turning his attention back to the six stones on the screen, he built up the courage to ask,

"So, which one are we going to get next?"

Yelena blinked and stiffened, before answering.

"The Power Stone," she said, pointing to the purple one, which just so happened to also be right next to the Reality Stone. "Then Space, Mind, Time and Soul."

"Any reason why?"

"Not really," she shrugged. "Well, except for the Soul Stone. Strange did tell me that it should be the last one I get. Other than that, I've got nothing."

Percy let out a low whistle and scratched the back of his neck.

"Do you have any idea where the others are?"

"Only for some of them," Yelena admitted, before inputting something into the console.

A picture of a planet replaced the stones on the screen. It looked like Earth, except that it was almost entirely made out of water, with seemingly only one body of land present on its face.

"Morag," she revealed. "This is where the Power Stone should be, if my sources are correct."

"So that's where we're heading next?"

"Not yet, we're getting food first."

Percy raised his eyebrows. "What? Why?"

Despite what he had just said, he was not against the notion, but were they not on a time crunch?

Yelena patted her abdomen as she said, "I may not have uterus, but I have a stomach. And unless you want to eat whatever crap is in the back of this ship, we're stopping for food."

"Wait, you don't have a uterus?" Percy questioned, absolutely abhorred at the prospect.

A grin reappeared on Yelena's face. "We'll talk about it while we eat."


Author's Note:

A concept-one shot of a story idea that I may revisit in the future.