Percy was eight, sitting on the couch to watch Gabe and his buddies play poker. Gabe was laughing, a burbled, echoing sound that made Percy nauseous. He pulled his knees to his chest and watched them sullenly.
"And then the kid says to me, then he says, he's just a sea creature! A really nice sea creature!" Gabe paused to cackle, chugged half his beer, and slammed it down. "He says, you can't destroy him!"
This time they all laugh with him, an awful, grating chorus of noise that pressed down all around Percy's head and shoulders and into his lungs.
"Gabe, man, take your damn turn," one of them said, nudging Gabe pointedly. Gabe waved his hand dismissively, tossed some bills in, and threw out two cards.
"And I say to the kid, I can do whatever the hell I want, and if you talk back again-" Gabe flashed a smirk, grabbed his bottle of beer, and raised it in a salute, and finished his punchline. "I'll punch your fucking lights out!"
They roared with laughter, clinking their beers as if in a toast, gulping them down greedily. Some spilled out of their mouths and down their throats.
"And then what, Gabe?" Eddie asked indulgently, passing his turn with a wave of his hand. "Did he keep his mouth shut?"
"Of course not," Gabe laughed, slamming the empty bottle down. "So then he says, The Ophiotaurus is innocent! Killing something like that is wrooong!" He drew out the last word mockingly, making sure to turn his head to make eye contact with Percy, smirking. "He says, You have to protect him."
"It's bad strategy to keep the animal alive," Gabe's other friend commented mildly, considering his hand before discarding three cards for new ones. "Or the boy."
"So what did you do, Gabe?" Eddie asked.
Gabe cackled again. "What do you think I did? I slammed his head into the wall!"
When his vision finally cleared, Percy was crying. Nothing dramatic, but he was gasping for breath, staring straight ahead with unseeing eyes. The contorted memory had caught him with his guard completely down, and he couldn't even make enough sense of the damn thing to feel anything but completely eviscerated.
He was sitting at the bottom of the pool, crammed into a corner, and someone was arguing on the floor above. Percy struggled to get control of his breathing, but his lungs didn't want to cooperate.
Finally, someone dropped into the water a comfortable distance away from Percy, still fully clothed. It was Sam, struggling a little to stay at the bottom, but he made his slow way toward Percy and held his hand out silently.
Percy took a deep, shuddering breath, reached out, and grabbed it. A moment later, he pulled an air bubble around Sam's head, and they both stayed at the bottom of the pool for a minute. Percy was shaking. Finally, Sam tugged, and Percy numbly followed him to the shallow end, then up the stairs and out of the water. Sam let go, stepped respectfully away, and turned to Percy. He wasn't smiling; he looked tired.
"You alright?" he asked quietly. Percy's breath hitched violently, and he forced himself to nod. Sam's voice stayed calm. "Okay. Clint took Wanda out of the room. Do you need anyone else out?"
Percy started to speak, but his voice caught in his throat, cut off by his spasming throat. He tried again. "'M fine."
"Percy, Wanda specializes in amalgams of trauma," Sam said, soft and patient. "She once took down everyone in the old team with that move. You're not okay."
Oh. Percy closed his eyes and forced himself to take another deep breath.
"Sorry," he said at last. He was trembling. "It would have been better for everyone if I'd never been born. I'm really sorry."
Sam cursed under his breath and turned his head. "Natasha, seriously-"
"Yes, alright," Natasha said softly. Percy flinched violently when she emerged from what turned out to be the slightly dispersed cluster of the rest of the Avengers, all tense and mostly angry. Natasha stopped beside Sam, who gratefully retreated, and met Percy's eyes evenly. "Come on, Percy, we're going to the kitchen."
Confused and still struggling to center himself, Percy followed Natasha out the door and down a couple of halls, and she really did lead him to a kitchen. She flicked her wrist toward the island, set with a row of stools, and he sat down, bracing his feet against the footrest and bouncing them anxiously.
"Pick a comfort food," Natasha said calmly. "Stark's stocked this place with more or less everything."
"...Blue candy?" Percy asked quietly, before he could get a chance to feel stupid about it.
Natasha just nodded, turned away, and started rummaging through the pantry. Within five minutes, she'd produced a half pound bag of M&Ms, a plastic pack of gummy sharks, two blue rock candy sticks, and a handful of various blue saltwater taffies.
She looked like she was prepared to go back in, frowning at the limited options, but she stopped when Percy reached for the pack of gummy sharks, ripped it open, and started eating. Instead, Natasha went to the fridge, grabbed out a fresh pack of blueberries, and sat down a few stools away from Percy to eat them. The sugar was soothing; the smell of candy always reminded him of his mother.
"Better?" Natasha asked after a while, when Percy had taken a handful of M&Ms and started sorting through for just the blue ones.
Percy snorted and managed to flash her a smile. "I still feel like shit," he informed her, "but I can hear myself think now." He was quiet for a moment. "Thanks. You didn't have to help."
"I'm sorry Wanda lashed out at you," Natasha said, instead of replying. "She's been struggling, between the loss of her brother and what happened in Sokovia, but we thought she had more self-control than that. What happened?"
Percy shivered, which was what it took for him to realize he'd stopped shaking.
"It was, um. It was kind of weird," he said quietly.
"Wanda showed me a ballet class," Natasha said without missing a beat. It took a moment before Percy understood, but then he swallowed and nodded.
"It was a poker game," he told her without looking at her. "Um, my stepfather, Gabe, he used to play poker and drink with his buddies. And he was telling a story, the, the kind of thing he used to tell so he and his buddies could laugh at me. B-but instead of anything from then. It was- it was about the Ophiotaurus, when I was trying to convince my dad not to let them kill him." Or me, he didn't say. "And. Instead of giving in, like my dad had. Gabe was laughing about how he shut me up instead."
Natasha didn't say anything right away. Percy exhaled, leaned on the counter, and rubbed his forehead with the heel of his hand.
"Fucker," he muttered viciously, ignoring the way his voice wanted to crack again. "This didn't have anything to do with that stupid piece of shit. As if he could even say the word 'Ophiotaurus.'"
"It's terrible," Natasha murmured, "the way that abusers can seem more powerful than gods to the people they hurt."
A sharp shudder ran down Percy's spine. Neither he or his mom had ever used the actual word before. It gave the memory of Gabe too much power – or so Percy would have said before today.
"I don't have time to be like this," Percy told Natasha impulsively. He ripped open one of the packaged rock candy sticks and stuck it in his mouth, holding it there for a minute before he continued. "There are real monsters to worry about, and titans, and Luke and Ares and-" He cut himself off, miserable. "I can't waste time feeling sorry for myself."
"You won't, when it counts," Natasha said, with calm certainty. "Until then, it's not feeling sorry for yourself. It's tending to the injuries that jackass left you with."
Percy was surprised to realize that he really did feel better now – not good, not even okay, but not awful either. "Oh."
Natasha gave him a brief smile. "You want to go play some more video games, or are big guys still a little much for now?"
That was... an embarrassing tic for an Avenger to know about, but not a surprise either. Not from the Widow. "As long as no one tries to sit with me. And, um. Can we stop talking about the fact that it would be safer for everyone if I was dead?" He saw Natasha frown, and added tersely, "I know it's true, okay? I'm not stupid. I'm just not usually that sensitive about it."
Natasha held his gaze for a long moment, and then nodded. "Why don't you take some candy with you?"
So Percy gathered up the remaining candy into a Ziploc bag, which he carried with him back to the TV room, where he took the same place on the floor. There was no awkward silence, which he was grateful for; he definitely didn't want to deal with that right now. Wanda and Clint were both still noticeably absent, and Steve was frowning at nothing in disapproval.
"Stop taking my damn coins!" Rhodey demanded of Vision.
"I will endeavor to," Vision said, dry as dust.
Tony, Vision, Sam, and Rhodey were playing Mario Party in teams, Tony and Rhodey against Sam and Vision. Vision did not appear to be incredibly invested, and readily offered his controller to Percy when he appeared.
"Is Wanda alright?" Percy asked without thinking, accepting it. All of them looked at him, and he winced and scooted back, glancing away. "I, uh. I don't know if the air bubble held after she hit me with the thing. I didn't mean to drown her or anything."
"She is fine," Vision assured him. "The air bubble did burst, but you also were no longer holding her, so she was able to surface easily."
"Okay, good," Percy said uncomfortably, turning toward the television. Natasha cleared her throat.
"Percy was surprised to learn that there were adult demigods," she announced.
"You know what, that's fair," Tony said before Percy could protest, apparently seizing on the topic. "I've only visited over the years, but I was actually a year-round camper as a kid- that was before Clint got there though-"
According to Tony, Camp Half-Blood had changed very, very little over the last few decades, and he spoke of it with the same love that Annabeth or Clarisse or Beckendorf did – all of the senior campers. It was weird to hear about Chiron playing the exact same mentor role to a man three decades Percy's senior, not to mention Mr. D, but it was also pretty cool.
Then Rhodey started comparing the place to a boot camp, mostly to laugh at the juxtaposition of the ideas, and he and Sam debated whether it would be more chaotic to send demigods to boot camp, or to have drill sergeants try and control Camp Half-Blood. (Percy thought both ideas were pretty funny, but the latter was more likely to end in blood. Demigods took insults to Camp Half-Blood very personally.)
They finished the game about two hours before Sam and Natasha had promised to have Percy home, but apparently it was obvious how worn out Percy was, because that ended up being the signal to wrap up anyway. Percy was plied with a bag of all-blue M&Ms, which he suspected had arrived while they were playing, and then bundled into the same car he'd been brought out in.
He passed out against the window somewhere on the way back home.
"That was an experiment gone moderately wrong," Natasha commented, when she and Sam finally got back to the compound. She settled back on the couch, and the console was turned off as the others drew their attention to the informal debrief.
"You think?" Sam said tersely. "He was apologizing for being born."
"I got the impression that he was already sorry for being born," Natasha said, "and Wanda just exacerbated the issue. At least, he claimed that he isn't usually so, and I quote, sensitive about it."
"And we have learned a significant amount about how he responds to stress," Vision pointed out. "The circumstances were most unfortunate, and the process unnecessarily taxing on the poor child, but we did get what we needed."
"What tripped him out so bad, anyway?" Tony asked Natasha.
"From the sound of it?" she said. "The image of being mocked and beaten for trying to convince his father not to let the other gods kill him."
"Yikes."
Natasha nodded. "He's dealing about as well as any fourteen year old could with the fact that his survival is a matter of constant debate. The main complication is that his history of abuse means that his self-esteem is completely tanked."
"No kidding," Sam agreed. "I don't even wanna count the number of things he apologized for, and- I don't know, something is bothering me about the way he talked about his quests."
"The fact that he took himself almost completely out of them?" Tony suggested. "So I took the sky so Artemis could do it. He's fourteen and he wasn't even trying to show off? In front of us?"
"It would help if we had any idea at all of what it'll actually come down to," Clint said dryly, leaning back against the side of the couch. "Who the hell knows. Maybe self-confidence would be counterproductive. It might not be as straightforward as a choice between Olympus and Kronos."
"What do you think, Miss Rushman?" Tony prompted Natasha, a slight quirk of his lips taking any heat out of it. Natasha considered carefully.
"He definitely understands the responsibility on him," Natasha said after a while, "which is honestly much more than I would expect of most kids his age, but that's demigods for you. He's soft – depending on what happens, that could be a problem."
"Not unusual for a son of Poseidon though," Steve contributed, with a slightly sheepish shrug. "Loyalty's a common flaw with them."
"Do they really all come out that similar?" Sam asked, bemused.
"Demigod children tend to heavily favor their immortal parents," Tony explained, "and of course, they all have their type too. From what I hear, Lord Poseidon likes his women clever, kind, and defiant, so..." He waved his hand.
"Gotcha," Sam said. "So we got a good read on the kid, but still have no idea how that's gonna pan out in the end?" He got a few sheepish shrugs in return. "Great. In that case, I got a suggestion for y'all."
"Of course," Steve said earnestly, meeting his eyes. Sam leaned back and crossed his arms.
"Focus less on the prophecy and more on the abused kid," he said. "He's insecure, jaded, and wary of authority figures, which isn't super promising for him or us in the long term. You want to keep him close, right? Start building trust with him. It'll do him good."
"Wait, do we want to keep him close?" Clint asked, startled, turning to frown at the rest of them. "I thought this was just reconnaissance on the prophecy kid."
"It can't hurt," Tony said, shrugging. "Just to keep an eye on him, maybe give him some training. He seems like a good kid, but he's a Big Three kid, and everything we've heard from camp describes him as the strongest in centuries, if not millennia. He might be a good Avenger candidate, when he's older, but one way or another we don't want him running completely loose."
"And you wonder why the kid has trust issues," Clint muttered.
"As long as we don't let something like today happen again," Sam said dryly, and then, to Clint, "What was up with Wanda?"
Clint grimaced and rubbed his face.
"As soon as she realized that Percy was only alive because his dad liked him, it was over," he said tiredly. "No Percy, no war, in theory; it makes it easy to lash out at him." He shrugged. "She's seen firsthand how ugly things can get, after all, and it's easier to make it all Percy's fault than to accept it as inevitable."
"She hasn't found herself yet," Vision said quietly, expression solemn. "Until she does, she will be as the injured animal, perceiving everything as a threat."
"Percy is fourteen," Sam repeated, exasperated. "Fuck's sake. He's still smaller than his mother. If she's got a problem, at least teach her to talk it out with Steve or Clint before picking a fight with a teenager."
"Wanda's a teenager too," Steve said defensively.
"Nineteen," Sam said flatly. "Steve, there's young and then there's young."
Steve tilted his head, granting the point with a grimace. "I'll talk to her," he promised.
"There was one other thing," Tony said suddenly, and when the others looked at him, continued, "I think I'll shoot Thor an Iris Message. I know he's worried about something-or-other up there, but a year and a half- that's nothing. We need him on Earth now."
"You aren't kidding around with this 'the big fight' stuff, are you?" Sam asked wearily.
"Kronos hasn't stirred like this in thousands of years," Tony said. "It's not good that he's so active now. This isn't the first Great Prophecy to hit the Greek World, but it's not shaping up to be an easy one."