I wanted to make it longer. Ended up cutting a piece out for later.

As always, I have my beta to thank for putting up with my procrastination. Enjoy, many new elements are introduced here.

DISCLAIMER: I am not aware of the lifestyle in Crete, but just so you don't get confused, I do not portray the country or the place as a third-world country. Also, I don't own Marvel or Disney. Heh.

…

"Then what am I, Hestia?"

Chapter 10 – A Pause

Calypso Valdez was sleeping when the Ghost King came to her.

She did not wake with a start. Rather, her eyes merely fluttered in mild confusion, and she budged ever so slightly to look up at Nico standing above her. He was silent as a wraith. His hand left her shoulder and he brought a finger up to his lips to encourage silence.

This Calypso heeded, but hesitated as Nico gestured for her to follow.

Sitting up, Calypso cast a glance down at her softly snoring husband, and stole herself a soft kiss to his temple, trusting that his hair wouldn't start to smoke. He stirred groggily, but did not wake.

Then she gazed at the slender form between them, lost in slumber.

Their daughter had Leo's latin brown hair, but with Calypso's banana curls and luscious breadth. Her face was round and sun-kissed to a tan shade, and a smile played on her lips even as she slept. Anastasia Valdez was kissed next, and then her mother was gone.

Calypso froze for a fraction, remembering that she was in naught but her rather revealing nightgown, showing a good deal of lush skin and ample cleavage. However, Nico seemed not to care as he slid from the bedroom. Intrigued, Calypso snatched her husband's army-green jacket and wrapped it about her shoulders, her caramel hair tucked into its collar as she padded after the dark angel.

Outside, the moon was new, the stars winking down at earth almost mischievously.

"Nico," Calypso hissed after her friend, who hadn't bothered to slow his stride. "Nico di Angelo."

The shores of Crete, with the sea of its namesake, glistened with the stars like laughing diamonds. Calypso stepped over a tortoise who inched his way madly for the Sea of Crete, seeking refuge in the safe depths. Nico stopped when she called his name, and he turned.

This enigma of a boy had come to them weeks before, restoring their memory of who he was. Of course, Calypso had never known him beforehand. She hadn't even the knowledge that Hades had a son. But Leo harbored a history with the shady boy, and they got on well.

"Just follow, Calypso," he said softly, "I don't—…" he took an exasperated breath, "I can't explain."

And with that said, he swept back around and broke into a loose trot, ascending stone steps that led to the town.

The town, as both she and Leo calls it, was a mass of low buildings squatting among large, rolling hills, a mush of adjoined apartments with interconnecting tin roofs that, in some cases, served as walkways for second story dwellers.

Nico guided Calypso through a narrow alleyway, where which an elderly man smoked some sort of drug, tendrils of smoke curling upwards. With the pungent smell, the Titaness wrinkled her nose and coughed. They came to a flat building pressed between two others. A woman stood in the entryway to the right, wrapped only in a small towel. Her hair was wet and dripping, fresh from the shower, and she held the green towel to her bosom, backlit by candlelight.

She called out in an exotic tongue, her smile pure sultry, cocking a hip. Nico snapper something back in Greek. Flabbergasted, she watched as the two entered the housing beside hers. Calypso caught a glint of jealousy in those brown eyes.

"Excuse Pamela," Nico pushed aside the curtains which hung where the door should be, kicking aside empty cans of Coke. "She's, for lack of a better word, a slut."

Calypso grimaced. "Harsh." She commented.

"Yeah."

"So… why do you whisk your only friend's wife away at the dead of night, hm?" Calypso crossed her arms, pulling Leo's jacket tighter around her. It smelled of smoke, coal, and body odor. Exclusively, Leo's body odor. The only kind she preferred.

"Why did you follow?" Nico rose an ebony brow, but before he could answer in earnest, there was stirring—a shuffling of sheets and a muzzy groan.

"Wuzz… wuzzgoinon?" Percy Jackson sat up from the couch, on which he buried himself under a hill of blankets. His black hair stood up in perpetually mussed shocks, eyes dimly aglow.

He saw Calypso, blinked incomprehensibly for a moment, and then laid back down. "I'll wake up in a few minutes and she will go away," he seemed to mutter to himself.

A dozen heartbeats.

"I suppose you think I should be surprised," Calypso stated to Nico, in eerie absence of emotion.

"Are you?"

"Not really. Not where Perseus is concerned."

"Huh," both of Nico's brows rose this time, "I could have sworn you would—"

"What the Hades is he doing here Nico?"

Percy yelped back awake and fell off the couch, dragging half the blankets with him.

"There we go."

"What is he doing on your couch? When did he arrive? Gods, Nico. It's Perseus!"

As she freaked out, Percy Jackson sat on the floor, staring up at Calypso with ever mounting shock. "Oh my gods," he muttered, then said louder, "Oh my gods. Calypso!"

Calypso rose her hand, "Save it, Per—,"

"How did you get off that island?" He stood, the wheels in his head cranking, "How could you…"

His eyes fell upon the bronze band around her ring finger, and realization dawned. A smile crept across his face. "Leo… Leo Valdez, that sly basilisk."

He was laughing now.

"Hah! I freaking knew it! Where is he now?"

"In bed, sleeping," Calypso hesitated, "With our daughter."

"Daughter? Ohmygods, daughter?"

"Anastasia Esperanza Valdez."

Percy held his head, his beam wide and ecstatic. "I can't believe this. Leo got married. Leo is alive."

Calypso's own smile came to claim her lips, but it faded almost as swiftly as it came.

Perseus.

"Cal, a trusting husband shouldn't have to wonder where his freaking wife is at 1 am in the morning," a fiery voice interrupted the reunion.

Leo Valdez stood in the doorway (or curtain-way), seemingly enraged and befuddled simultaneously. At his side, just barely tall enough to pass up his waist, stood a slim little girl. She still seemed drowsy, even after the walk up to Nico's apartment. Anastasia Valdez rubbed an eye, a little frown on her lips as she looked from her mother, to Nico, then to the man standing beyond the both of them.

Her father's eyes had already found Percy, and now he was frozen, agape, his face blank for a millennia. Then he scowled. "Jerk," he said.

"Jerk? Me?" Percy put his hands to his chest, "Dude, you faked your death."

"Nope," he rose a nimble finger. "I did die."

Percy blinked. "The Physician's Cure."

"Yep."

Silence between them all, and as it finally grew to an unbearable peak, Percy shifted from one foot to the other and said at last, "So… how you been?"

Leo grinned elfishly. "Lemme show ya."

…

The shores of Crete were calm and tranquil, but that serenity was shredded as a plume of green fire streaked over the white sands and slammed into a lone mound. What ensued was an explosion of scorched sand and greedy-green flames.

Leo let out a low whistle as he stood a little behind Percy, who was lowering a smoking fist.

"Hot diggity dang, boy. That's new." Leo rubbed his nose, taking a sip of a bright orange smoothie, "Stealing my moves."

"Wasn't intentional," Percy said, raising another hand. A slender expansion of green fire slithered from his palm, and he enclosed his fingers around it so that he was holding a fiery whip. "I was… I don't know… I was lost for a time. Something… someone invaded me, and he traveled over the world, collecting forgotten powers dropped here and there. Tombs, pyramids, under the oceans, above the skies…" he trailed off, eyes on Nico as the Ghost King approached them. "Chaos changed me. Something like him changed Nico to."

"Really?" Leo's own hand came ablaze with flames, tossing the ball of the element up. "He seems like the usual ball of joy he always is." He caught it, then resumed his one-handed, gracefully casual juggling.

"I can't help myself," Nico muttered wryly, turning to Percy, "My deity… she took me to places beyond earth. Svartalfheim, Jutonheim, Muspelheim…" he drew his shoulders in closer. "Even a place called Knowhere. The point is, these things inside of us Percy… they have been deprived of human treatment for so long, they forgot what it means to be alive. They just remember their pain, their imprisonment."

"Since this conversation has taken a turn into nighttime Chicago," Leo rose a finger and began walking off toward his family hut, "I'll be paying my wife and daughter a visit. You guys coming? We're off to the family business."

"Family business?" Percy echoed in question.

"The Valdez Garage: Auto Repair and Cafe."

"That's a mouthful."

"A tasty one. Come on."

"We'll catch up, Leo," Nico said, crossing his arms.

Looking to each of the two, Leo conceded with a nod.

The transition Leo had made from a goofy-elfish-teenage-twig into a goofy-elfish-grown-up-twig was unsettling. Now, his jaw with dark with stubble, he had smile lines in the corners of his eyes, and although he was barely in his twenties, thistles of gray marked his chin. But his smile was as contagious as ever.

"Leo's alive," Percy said to himself, then chuckled almost stupidly.

The two stood there for a long while, just basking in the morn light glow. Percy's own eyes washed over the sea, the domain of a father he once knew. A part of his mind ventured there, to the deep and dark places of the sea where old, powerful beings lie in wait for this age to rot away and begin anew. To undersea palaces, to mermaids and water spirits. To hippocampi and orphiotauri. To the dormant gods belonging to no mythology, to no memory, in deep, fading slumber.

"What do you think of it?" Nico asked softly.

Percy banished his dwellings and turned to his friend, "Of what?"

"The knowledge that there is more," said the Ghost King, lifting his arm and spreading his fingers, reaching out for the rising sun. "The stars're home to thousands of worlds, places where even our gods know nothing of."

Perseus Jackson looked down at his fiery whip and let it sputter away. "Kind of scary, I guess."

"We are a part of it all," Nico said. "We're more than demigods now, Percy. We have aliens inside us. But… that's not why I want to talk with you."

"Then what?"

"The war, Percy."

Percy faced away, the scowl etched in his face. "What about it?"

"The gods gave you back Riptide to fulfill a duty they thought you owed."

The arrogance numbed Perseus' mind. He shook his head. The sand around his feet began to tremble. "Athena came to me. She told me to follow myself. The gods aren't my problem anymore."

"Percy, you need to know that the gods aren't all who are at risk," Nico gazed over the sea, then up at the pink-hued clouds that drifted in wayward leisure. "They're… Percy, the gods are dying. Cursed one by one by the things that emerged from Tartarus after you escaped. The second time. One of those things is inside of you. Another…" he tapped his own chest.

Percy soaked this in, and it took a few moments before he spoke at last in an unsettlingly soft voice. "Are you saying that I doomed the gods?"

"I'm saying that you must face the brutal facts. You didn't bring these heathen invaders, but they came through the path you carved."

…

Tony was anything but cheerful. Quite the opposite, rather, and he didn't bother to have Happy assume otherwise. It was 'Mall Day,' as Pepper put it, and while she had intended to work on the same desk at which he sat now, Tony had implored her otherwise.

"You," he had said as he stepped in what had used to be his own office, once upon a time, "need to go. Go and be free with your, um," he coughed into his fist, "physically appealing female companions."

Pepper Potts' eyes flicked sharply from the monitor and up at her middle-aged high-school boyfriend, "I am going to pretend you did not just say that."

"Mh," Tony stopped at her desk and plucked a mint from its glass bowl, the plastic wrapping crinkling as he began peeling at it, "There you go, the eyes. Many a man's knee was set a-quivered under such an," he narrowed his own eyes behind his red tinted shades, "such an intense manifestation of—,"

"And I'm going to ignore whatever you say next because I am working, and distractions—give me that," she leaned over the desk and snatched the obnoxious mint from Tony's fingers, "Distractions, I just—I can't afford right now."

Pepper dragged the bowl of mints closer to her and out of Tony's reach. With flustered fingers she began to frantically attack her keyboard, pointedly zoning her boyfriend out. Tony inhaled and exhaled, both through his nostrils, then set both his hands flat against the desk, peaking at her from over the monitor.

"You're stressed."

She stopped typing, and for a length of time she was very still. "Stressed," she stated emptily, then blinked and looked up at Tony, "Stressed. For the love of God, Tony! I am running the single-most financially tipsy company on earth, and I have been since before you even promoted me to CEO. We are the wealthiest, most successful technological industry around the globe, and if we want to keep it that way, I need," she clasped her temples, "I-I need my soft music playing. I need my-my, um, my privacy. Basically, what I'm saying is-,"

"You need to rest," Tony finished. He took off his annual douche-bag shades.

Sighing, she leaned over and cradled her face in her hands. "Dear God, Tony."

"I know me being serious can be a," he coughed, "laughable perception. But please take me seriously when I say you've need to rest those scary eyes before they kill your poor intern."

They stayed that way for some time, with the Stressed Pepper Potts studying the billionaires' vibrant blue eyes that were so often concealed behind tinted lenses. "I believe you," she reluctantly conceded.

"Good," Tony chirped, then went for one of the mints.

"No," Pepper slapped his hand away, but couldn't keep the smile from stealing across her face.

"Go," was Tony Stark's immediate reply. "I noticed the calendar in the kitchen. The kitchen we share, mind you. Mall Day," he sniffed, as if the idea of shopping an entire day intimidated him. "You tried covering it up some red marker, but I saw it."

Pepper stared at him. "But who would manage the company while I'm gone? Richard?" She referred to her young intern.

Tony blinked. "Whose name is this company named after again?"

"I did consider changing the name."

"To what?"

"Does' Potts Does All The Work' sound enticing to you?"

"That doesn't seem fair."

"It's not."

"Hah. But I'm being serious. Go. Leave. Frolic with your fancy friends," he wrinkled his nose. "I'm sure that's from some literary doodad that I'll never recall."

"I'm sure it's not."

"You're late, you're late. You're late for a very important date!"

Pepper then stood, laughter now unhindered as she swept around the desk and wrapped her Tony Stark in a tight embrace. "Thank you, sweetie. Are you sure you want to do this?"

Not really. "Of course." But for her, anything.

And so she was off.

First came the phone calls. A sea of voices screaming at him from both the computer and the actual phone. Of course, they stopped and stuttered uselessly when they found that they were speaking to THE Tony Stark. Then would come the apologies, the polite complaints of certain details, the requests for Potts.

But not all were so tender in their approach.

There was a knock at the office door. Tony jerked, startled, his hand straying for the watch that would activate his "Iron Glove." He had been playing some Galaga, to his guilty pleasure, and he was glad that Thor had gone, otherwise the demigod would have laughed at his doe-like antics.

Two sharp knocks, and before Tony could even verbally admit the visitor, the doors were flung open, and a stunning young woman stomped for the desk. Her terror-inspiring eyes put Pepper's to shame, the way they gave the impression of a crackling storm hovering about her blonde head.

This woman's rage was akin to a hurricane, but Tony Stark played it cool, repeating again and again in the privacy of his mind that he had created monsters and nuked an invading alien species by flying through a hole in the sky.

It didn't help much.

"I have a bone to pick with you, Mr. Stark."

So, she knew who he was. This fact didn't seem to intimidate her in the least bit. The same couldn't be claimed for Stark.

"A bone?" He didn't move from his position, feet up on the marble desktop, leaning back in the comfy business recliner. Annual tool shed glasses resting over his eyes.

"A big bone," she slammed a stack of papers upon the desk, "Gargantuan."

"You know what they say; Big is good."

She leveled him with a cleaving gaze, which readily snapped Tony's attempts to any light-heartedness.

"This," the woman snatched a cluster of papers at the peak of the stack, practically shoving them in his face, "is impossible."

Tony rose his hands in defense, taking the papers and shooting her a look, which deflected off her steely person.

God, this lady.

He went to read it for a moment, then he paused to look back up at her. "I'm sorry— who're you again?"

"Director of Architectural Advancements of Stark Industries."

"Mh, so you're out there with the hardhats?"

"Sometimes. Please read the file, Mr. Stark."

He did. The first two pages of paper displayed constructive blueprints, just without the blue paper. The figure he depicted there the outlines of a building, the new suite he had ordered. He had forgotten about it entirely.

As Tony flipped through the outrageous scriptions he hadn't recalled sketching, he sought causality in their predicament. There was this game he used to play years back before he'd even dated Pepper. To guess the surname of a woman he found attractive. Stark told himself that it wasn't flirting, though it most certainly was flirting back then, at least for him. And while he had to admit that this woman was indeed a specimen to behold, too him, she had nothing on his Pepper.

"Lemme guess," He murmured, grimacing at another computer sketch, "Meyers? Audrey, no, Aubrey Meyers."

The woman rose a brow. "Are you flirting with me, Mr. Stark?"

Drat.

"No," Tony persisted as he swiped off his glasses and set the papers down, "I'm not. How close was I?"

She smirked, the curve of her rosy lips inviting, whether she meant it to be or not, "It's Ambrose, actually." She fixed him with those steely, storming gray eyes. "Annabeth Ambrose. I'm a married woman, Mr. Stark."

He stared at her for a fleeting moment, before scoffing and removing his feet from atop the marble desk. "Now you're just tugging at slack strings, Mrs. Ambrose."

Mrs. Ambrose set her hand upon the stack of papers, all playfulness a mere memory. "What are you going to do about this, Mr. Stark?"

Me? "First off," he pointed, "I find your attitude questionable."

"Are we really going to start beating around the bush, Mr. Stark? Because, unlike yourself, I have a real job to get back to."

Tony tried to interject at that stab, but Annabeth Ambrose was on a roll at this point. She rose a hand with sharp indifference, raising her voice to overlap his.

"A real job, Mr. Stark, yes. Not all of us have the financial support to turn robot- building into a hobby."

"Saving lives, mind you."

"Destroying more, mind you," she rose her voice even higher, maintaining her dominance in the room. "Mr. Stark, 1.2 million hard-working individuals labor under your name, but we answer to Ms. Virginia 'Pepper' Potts."

Damn. She had him there.

"We cannot afford," Annabeth Ambrose crossed her arms, "We cannot afford little leaks that resemble the doodles of an elementary schoolgirl."

Stark, shockingly reserved, sat further up in his girlfriend's desk chair. He could see where Mrs. Ambrose was coming from, as much as he'd hate to admit so aloud. Even as his father died, the greatly acclaimed Howard Stark, Anthony Stark had never been so directly connected to the company. He had always left that to Obediah, to his pretty (albeit stressed) assistant. Hours spent in his workshop, listening to alternative rock and tinkering away at hundreds, dare he say thousands, of projects, less than a fifth of which made its way to the board and passed through. Obe had encouraged the young Stark's venture into the darker side of technological development. He supposed that he has that big bald lunatic to thank for the creation of the Iron Man.

What irony. Heh. Irony, you're so funny, me.

"We can track the order," Tony said at last, "It came from me, initially, but the order itself goes through some apparently either lazy or mischievous computer interpreters. Basically, they type down a bunch of codes, and the computers turn those codes into shapes, forms." He squinted at the paper, "Somebody's keyboard was…. misbehaving."

A diamond-tipped detail snagged Tony's attention. A golden watch was clasped snugly to Mrs. Ambrose's wrist, and it shone with a pristine perfection. The hour, minute, and second fingers ticked along silver roman numerals. But what scorched its imprint in his mind was the face symbol of the wristwatch, an olympian Omega. Something about the device, the symbol, it unnerved Stark. It set alight a candle of inexplicable caution in the back of his mind, and suddenly, Tony Stark was on edge.

A presence had been haunting him. Even in the safety of his fortified home, he felt that a pack of wolves was grinning just outside his door. A mad terror would besiege his senses in the twilight hours of night, unspeakable nightmares orbiting around one image. The Omega on her wrist now.

"Mr. Stark?" Annabeth Ambrose prompted hesitantly, and when no response came, she snapped her fingers just under his nose. Tony blinked, glanced up at her warily, then cleared his throat.

"I'll, uh, mention the problem to Ms. Potts," he said, rather absently.

Mrs. Ambrose studied the multi-billionaire with a calculating stare. "Are you okay, Mr. Stark?" As she said this, the woman's hand strayed—seemingly by instinct—to the wristwatch. She had noticed his steadfast gaze fixated upon the golden gadget, and her own suspicion arose.

Rather than answering, Tony cleared his throat and yet again fixed the shades over his eyes. "Will that be all, Mrs. Ambrose?"

Again, with that steady gaze, she studied him coolly. Her hand left the watch, but not without her thumb tracing the Omega. "Yes, Mr. Stark."

He said nothing.

"Thank you," her eyes narrowed just a tad, lingering on his person for an extension of time before whipping around and exiting from whence she came. Ambrose left the stack of paper behind.

The very moment he was secluded, Tony's hand flew for his own wrist watch and he activated FRIDAY.

"Good evening, Mr. Stark."

"FRIDAY, show me profile records for Stark Industries Annabeth Ambrose."

"Will do."

Holographic images sprung from the watch's face; Annabeth's polite smile, a bio, short video clips of her standing at a laser-drawn digital board in a conference meeting, and many other details.

He skimmed the top of the bio, murmuring a few phrases "Twice engaged, married once… elementary-kid runaway... Top of her class at some prestigious college…" Tony squinted at the name stationed at the top of the semi-translucent document.

"Annabeth Chase."

…

Plenty more to come. I have so many ideas.