Clarisse la Rue could do with fewer fucking dreams. If there were a way to knock herself out every night without being rocketed back into the hellscape that is her past, she'd do it instantly. She'd be lying if she said she hadn't tried drugs, but the downside of living in a magical strawberry field controlled by a man who's half horse and guarded by a golden fleece is they know the minute you're abusing NyQuil in order to get through the night.
She can have some drugs if she wants to, as a treat.
Tony Stark's Tower of Infinite Mayhem seems to be a bit more lax in terms of nefarious deeds. She's seen that stash of Everclear squirreled away in a cupboard in the communal kitchen, and the bottle is mostly empty. Stark goes hard; she wouldn't expect anything less from what she's seen (and heard) of the man. She doesn't doubt that he has coke somewhere in the place. There's no other way he could stay awake for so long.
Cocaine doesn't help keep the dreams away. Trust that she's tried.
She saw visions the same as Percy did when taking the potion, but she's more reticent when it comes to relaying what transpired. She has a fair amount of kills under her belt, most being monsters that were threatening her life or those of her friends, but she never expected half of those kills to be other demigods. For all of her put-upon bravado, she loves her friends. She even loves her enemies. When Percy showed up back at camp, sure, she was pissed, but she also felt relieved. She'd missed him; life at camp wasn't nearly as interesting as it was with him there.
It's difficult for her to admit her failings. Children of Ares are quick to anger and even quicker to cover up any mistake they make. They're perfect; they have to be.
So there she sits, the mostly-empty bottle of Everclear in one hand, her legs dangling over the edge of the uppermost balcony in the tower. The alcohol sloshed as she took a swig and grimaced, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand. Clarisse knew better than to stew in a mess of emotions of her own making, but Percy had left for that art thing and she didn't know anyone else in the tower. She couldn't burden Flora with this— she was just a kid. Hell, they were just kids when all of this happened.
A rush of dread hits her as she thinks about Flora going through the training they were forced into at the mountain. This was why she was the head of training: she protected those kids, no matter what. The minute she gets back to camp, she's going to punch Chiron right in the jaw for putting those kids at risk. Demigods deserved a childhood. They deserved to live.
"This seat taken?" Natasha Romanoff slips her legs off the side of the balcony as well, leaning on the railing to look at Clarisse.
"It's a free fucking country." She scoffs and drinks from the bottle again. Amazingly, a buzz is beginning to build. Next time they should figure out how to make it taste like something other than the distillation of desperate sadness. Mango, maybe.
Natasha raises an eyebrow and looks out at the city. "The Everclear is Bucky's. He discovered that it's the only thing that can get Steve drunk and stocked up for nights where we want to be dead to the world. It works on Percy, too."
"Cool," she says flatly. "I'll make sure to send him a fruit basket."
Natasha swallows a smile. She pulls a pack of Marlboro Lights from her back pocket and offers one up to Clarisse. "Light?"
Clarisse looks at the pack and figures, fuck it, the night can't get any worse. She takes the cigarette with a muttered thanks and fumbles for her lighter. Natasha is ahead of her, lighter already in hand. She flicks the lighter and looks Clarisse in the eye as the tip of the cigarette glows a deep orange.
The lighter snaps shut and Natasha pulls away.
A puff of smoke emits from her mouth as she smokes her own cigarette, blowing it up towards the sky.
"Want to talk about it?" She asks lazily. Her red hair spills over one shoulder, bright as bronze in the twinkling lights of the city.
Clarisse snorts. She puts the bottle down to focus on the cigarette. "What makes you think I do?"
Natasha shrugs. "It helps, sometimes. Clint and I used to trade stories back when he first brought me over from the dark side."
"It— demigod stories are a little hard to stomach." She worries away at her bottom lip.
"Yeah, like I'm going to buy that excuse," Natasha laughs. "I've heard Percy's stories over and over. The man has such a mouth on him…" The satisfied sigh that follows betrays more than simple interest in war stories.
Clarisse snorts. "He gives too much away."
"Always." Natasha looks over at her and blows smoke rings between them. "Not much of a sharer?"
She shrugs. "Never have been. We have to be pretty secretive, comes with the territory."
Natasha blinks slowly. Clarisse has a feeling that she would wait eons for Clarisse to be comfortable opening up.
"Suit yourself." Natasha puts her cigarette between her lips again. "Do you think he'll be okay?"
Clarisse frowns. "No. None of us will be. But we can stop it from happening again."
She thinks of the carnage on the mountain, the hands used to tear each other apart. Her hands feel slick with their blood. She doesn't think she'll be able to escape that feeling for the rest of her life.
"Did it help?" Natasha asks. "Are you any closer to having a suspect?"
She shakes her head. "No. Everyone was a villain in what happened back then. At the end—" Her voice catches in her throat. "It was five of us. Me, Percy, Jason, and the Stoll brothers."
"Travis has a brother?"
"Had. Connor died that day." Clarisse laughs humourlessly. "Not even sure what he died for, honestly. Not sure why we were all fighting— they didn't even give us the prize in the end."
"So, of those that survived, it's just you, Percy, and Travis." Natasha looks out over the city as she thinks. "Huh."
Clarisse turns to look at her. "What?"
"What happened to Connor?" she asks. "Who killed him? You?"
She shakes her head. "No. Pretty sure it was Percy."
Natasha hums to herself.
Clarisse sighs. "C'mon, out with it."
Natasha smokes her cigarette down to the filter and puts it out. She pulls another from the pack before answering. "The way I see it, Percy has killed a lot of people. He killed for what he thought was a worthy cause. Monsters, nightmares, traitors— he did it to protect your world, at the behest of the gods. He and Jason are the only two who continued whatever training you guys had. Despite that drug they had him take, he was always a good man at heart. I've seen the way he behaves around Travis; that's not the behaviour of someone who killed the man's brother."
Clarisse blinks as she absorbs Natasha's words. Blindly, she grasps for the Everclear and takes a long swig. "You don't understand what that day was like. We weren't ourselves."
"You're right, I don't." Natasha goes silent for a moment. "Did you see it? Connor dying?"
Clarisse nods. "Percy and Connor were fighting. I'd been thrown somewhere into the dirt, too far and too injured to join in. They were rolling around, Percy grabbed a sword in the dirt and then—" She gestures vaguely.
"Then?"
"Then I woke up. I don't even know who grabbed the prize in the end."
"Hmm." Natasha mulls it over as they sit on the edge of the tower. She lights another cigarette and passes it to Clarisse without being asked.
"At least, I'm pretty sure that Percy killed Connor." She rubs her temples. "I saw the sword go through his ribs. It—"
It came from the other direction. The memory flickers in her mind and she sees it now, clear as day. Percy was holding the sword, but the blade came from behind Connor, spearing him in two. It almost got Percy before he shoved Connor's body off of him, wrenching the sword from the attacker's hands.
Clarisse's eyes go wide. "Fuck. Fuck." She jumps up, stumbling away from the balcony. Natasha grabs her shoulder and steadies her. "We have to go. We have to get to that gallery."
Natasha tilts her head to the side questioningly.
"It's him." Clarisse's eyes are wild. "Travis is going to kill Percy."
—
Despite years of being in war zones, Perseus Miguel Jackson has never been in the blast zone of a bomb. He's ignited bombs, but never been a victim of them himself. His conclusion is that they suck. It's not a well-articulated opinion, but he was never one for waxing poetic anyway.
Percy is thrown away from the sculpture of Jason's death. He hits the ground before the shrapnel from the sculpture can hit him, but other guests aren't so lucky. Metal gears embed themselves in soft flesh, painting the bright white floor of the gallery red. The bomb was inside the body in the sculpture, the stomach a gaping maw of burned skin and muscle.
He can't hear, that's the first thing he notices. His world slips sideways as he struggles to stand and he slips back onto the ground, mind muddled. He's vaguely aware of shouts of pain, but they sound far away, his ears ringing loudly.
Clint. He needs to find Clint.
Percy swears as he finally gets his bearings. He sees the other gallery-goers laying injured and he feels the urge to help them, but he knows paramedics must be on their way. Swallowing down his own pain, he lurches in the direction he last saw Travis go.
The gallery is pandemonium. Smoke billows from burning pieces of wall, people scramble away from the blast. Somewhere, an alarm blares through the chaos. Percy's suit is scorched and ripped, superficial cuts staining it with red. He must look a mess, but he doesn't care. His mind is focused on one thing.
He goes towards the far side of the gallery and nearly stumbles over Clint, lying prone on the floor. Percy swears and drops to his knees.
"Fuck," he mutters, frantically trying to stem the flow of blood from Clint's leg. Metal gears from the sculpture are embedded deep and he appears to have a broken a bone.
"No," Clint grits out through his teeth. He moans in pain. "I'll be fine. Get Travis."
Percy clenches his jaw and shakes his head to ward off the protective instinct that creeps up on him. "Where did he go?"
Clint hisses as Percy uses his belt to apply a tourniquet. He indicates a side door with a jerk of his head. "That way. With a girl. I assume that's the mysterious artist."
Percy swears. "I should have fucking known."
"Percy," Clint catches his gaze. "Go. Before he gets away."
He swears again and presses a kiss to Clint's forehead. "I'll be back, I promise. Here—" He tugs off his jacket. "Use this to wrap your leg."
Clint nods and pushes him away. "I'll hold you to that."
Percy spares a single glance back at Clint and dashes through the side door.
It was too easy. Travis's back was to him and Percy launches himself at him with a roar, tackling him to the floor. He pins Travis's hands to the floor, his knees holding his body down. He looks into Travis's eyes and realizes he has no idea what he wants to say to him. Even if he could think of something, he's not sure he even could in his current state. The past few weeks flash in his mind, the friendship they'd rekindled goes sour on his tongue. Percy grips Travis's wrists until they bruise.
"Why?" Percy's voice is rough. He can feel tears pricking his eyes.
Travis laughs, a terrible, boisterous thing. The jovial twinkle to his eye holds a steel edge now and Percy wonders what he hadn't seen it before. It was all there, he was just too involved to realize the whole picture.
The forest for the trees.
"You've always been oblivious, Percy Jackson." Travis grins like a shark.
He twists one arm out of Percy's grasp and elbows him in the stomach. Hermes's heraldic rod appears in his free hand, the snakes hissing and coiling around the neck. Percy recoils but tries to regain control of Travis.
"What a waste," Travis says, his voice dripping with malice. With a wink, he tilts the rod and disappears.
—
When Clarisse and Natasha arrive, it's already too late.
Natasha makes a quick call to SHIELD to dispatch a team of medics and secure the crime scene. Amidst all the carnage, they still need to interview all of the victims to see if they can glean any information about what transpired.
The priority now is finding Percy and Clint.
"Gods." Clarisse stares at the mess of bodies and blood in horror. "This— Travis wouldn't—"
"He would and he did." Natasha's voice is steadfast, but not unkind. She crouches next to a few of the gears from the main statue and tilts her head to the side. "There are things within people we'll never understand. It's not your fault that you didn't see it."
Clarisse digs for the phone she keeps on her for emergencies and dials Percy's phone with shaking fingers. The ringtone blares from somewhere deep in the gallery. Laughter almost overtakes her uneasy panic when she realizes he's made her ringtone a snippet from "War, What is it Good For?" She'll have to get him back for that.
She and Natasha exchange a glance and she nods.
"I'll stay and secure the scene," Natasha says. "Go."
Clarisse is hesitant to leave but pushes away any thoughts of needing to help the innumerous victims of the blast to search for Percy, if he even was still here. She wades her way through twisted and smoking patches of metal arms and sculpted heads. She wonders what the purpose of this art even was anymore, or if it was just fuel for a fire that Travis was eager to light.
Percy's phone continues to ring as she gets closer. It's on the far side of the gallery that she finds it, the screen smashed as it lay on the floor, abandoned. Clarisse swears under her breath and picks it up, shoving it into her back pocket.
The gallery is functionally destroyed. Whatever Travis had planned turned the room into a blackened hull of itself, but didn't bring the building down on top of them. He may want to kill Percy, but he doesn't want to do it just yet. He's always been clever, that one. She should've seen it coming. She knows she couldn't have, but the sharp stab of guilt embeds itself into her gut despite her attempts to logic herself out of it.
"Fuck—"
She hears muffled noises from behind a door.
"Could you just stay still for one fucking second—"
Clarisse throws the door open, startling Percy as he attempts to bandage Clint's wound. Blood covers his hands, slick and dark as it soaks into the jacket of his suit. His shirt is torn to shreds by the shrapnel that glanced off his chest. A shallow cut mars his cheek, leaking bright red blood.
"Thank fuck," Percy says. "Help me get this idiot to stop wriggling so I can make sure we don't have to amputate his damn leg."
Clint rolls his eyes at Percy in response. "He has terrible bedside manner."
Clarisse crouches next to them and supports Clint's torso so Percy can finish his work. "Trust me, I know. I experienced it many times when we were kids. I thank the gods every day that Will Solace has him banned from the infirmary."
Percy scowls and rips a strip off his sleeve off to finish the makeshift bandage. "When did you become Will's number one fan?"
She bites back a smile. "He creeps up on you. It's the relentless optimism."
Clint hisses in pain and clenches his hands into fists hard enough to turn his knuckles white. "Tell me that you called for a med crew."
She nods sharply. "Natasha is securing the scene. She called for SHIELD and civilian ambulances. It's a war zone out there, guys. What happened?"
"Bomb," Percy says tersely. "Inside a body inside a sculpture."
"Ouch."
"Yeah. Ouch."
There's a tense slant to Percy's shoulders that betrays his fear. Fear of what, Clarisse couldn't pinpoint, but she has some ideas.
It's only minutes later when Natasha finds them, a SHIELD medic in tow, and Clint is hoisted onto a stretcher. Percy shrugs off the medics and instead holds a hand out expectantly to Clarisse. She digs into her pocket and produces a square of ambrosia.
"What now?" she asks. She's not sure if she even wants to know the answer.
Percy goes as if to shrug, but the fight drops from his shoulders. He seems like he's about to collapse, his eyes staring off into an unknown distance. "I don't know."
He sags onto her shoulder and she wraps an arm around his waist. It's Percy that pulls her in for a bone-crushing hug a time later. A ragged sigh escapes from his lips.
"I have to kill him, don't I?" He asks, voice muffled in her hair.
She doesn't want to face the truth, instinctively ducking her head to bury it against his chest. Her voice cracks when she speaks. "Yeah. I think you do."
—
He remembers a time when he was happy.
He can't quite remember when that was, but he knows he's felt it before. It lived in the shine of Annabeth's hair, how it brushed against his lips; it clung to Jason's body as he took it apart achingly slow; it rested heavy around Clint's neck, settling in the dips and grooves, traveled like a scar down towards his heart.
Sometimes, Percy wonders if he will ever capture the carefree feeling he had when growing up at camp. That sort of ecstasy was hard to bottle. It was even harder to see the way it was tainted by the touch of the gods. He wonders if he ever was happy, or if he was just deluded.
He wakes slumped over in the chair next to Clint's hospital bed.
He remembers hearing Clint protest as the doctors fussed over him, the funny little wrinkle he got between his brows when he was lying. He helped his hand until he fell asleep against the wishes of the hospital staff. Clint is still sleeping, painkillers strong in his veins. The shrapnel hadn't hit anything important, but he'd lost a lot of blood and would need to be off of that leg for a while until it could heal.
It could have been worse. It could have been so much worse.
Percy slumps back into his seat and checks his phone. Ten missed calls. He should have expected as much, but he's too exhausted to bother returning all of them. He scrolls down to his texts and is about to respond to one when his phone begins ringing.
Nico.
He glances at Clint, still slumbering in his hospital bed, and ducks out of the room. He accepts the call with shaking fingers.
"What?" He doesn't mean for it to sound so harsh.
"Where are you?" Nico doesn't seem to mind his tone.
"Hospital." He rubs his forehead. "It's… well, it's been a shit show so far."
"Which one? I'm headed your way."
Percy blinks. "No, don't. There's nothing you can do."
"You need to tell me what the fuck happened, Percy," Nico replies. "And that's not the kind of conversation we should have over the phone."
Percy lets out a short breath. "Fine. I'll text you the room number."
—
"You look like shit," is the first thing Nico tells him when he sees Percy sitting outside Clint's hospital room.
"I feel like shit," Percy replies. The circles under his eyes are pronounced, his hair a mess of blood and sweat. He hasn't even cleaned up since they brought Clint in— he should've asked Nico to bring him a change of clothes.
Nico looks him over and sighs. "Let's take a walk."
He takes them to the Long Island Sound and Percy lays down by the shore. He's too tired for a walk— too tired for much of anything.
"Where do you want to start?" Percy says after a minute of staring at the overcast sky.
Nico sits next to him and crosses his legs. "Is it Travis?"
Percy swallows and nods slowly.
"Fuck." Nico swears under his breath.
"The last body— we don't even know who it was. But he got his third quest member." Percy's voice sounds hollow. He can't bring himself to colour it with any emotion. His voice drops to a whisper. "It was Jason— sort of. He made it look like Jason's death."
Nico takes in a deep breath and lays down next to Percy, staring at the same bleak sky. "Do you know why?"
Percy closes his eyes. "Connor. The mountain. It was me."
Nico turns his head sharply. "You killed Connor?"
Percy presses his lips together. "I think."
"You think or you did?"
"You weren't there. You don't know."
"No, I wasn't." Nico leans up on one elbow to look at Percy. "But if I'd killed my friend, I'd have remembered."
"Stop it, Nico." A growl builds in Percy's throat. "We— it's not like that. We were on some kind of godly drug they made us take. We tore each other apart."
Nico can hear the pain in Percy's voice and decides to let it go for now. He lays back down.
"And Travis decided to go Hannibal Lecter on us and kill demigods."
"Again, Will showing you cable television was a mistake."
Nico laughs, but there's no humor behind it. "He's got a sense of timing, that's for sure."
"What do you mean?"
"He staged that body on Jason's birthday."
It shakes Percy out of his stupor. He'd avoided celebrating Jason's birthday the year previous; it's not as if Jason had even made it to 27 the way he had. It felt cruel to do something for the day, as if Jason were there. Instead, he found a bottle of something that tasted like gasoline and drained it on a beach so remote that not even the fish came near him.
Blow out the candles, your boyfriend is dead.
Yesterday was Jason's birthday, and he hadn't even noticed. It feels as if Jason slips from his hands a little bit every day. In the beginning, he clung far too hard to his memory, but now he wonders why. Why even try? It will all go to the wayside whether you like it or not.
Percy sits up, his hair wild, and looks out across the water. He'd spent many an evening on the shores of the Long Island Sound with Jason when they were younger. He couldn't exactly say they were happier, but they felt more whole. Pieces of them had yet to be hacked away. He shivers in the cold of the wind.
"Percy?" Nico leans forward to look at Percy's glassy expression.
"I—" his voice catches in his throat. A single tear escapes, forging a trail through the dirt and blood on his face. "I forgot."
Silence stretches between them, a gaping chasm that Percy doesn't even try to cross. He twists and tears at the ruined sleeve of his shirt between absentminded fingers. A sob chokes its way out of his throat.
"How the fuck did I forget?"
It hits Percy all at once: the remnants of Jason's death, the sculpture, Travis's betrayal, and the explosion that caused all of it to rocket back to the forefront of his mind. He can't stop the tears from coming unbidden, despite his desperate attempts to swipe them away with the heel of his hand. Nico tugs him into a hug, which is when Percy lets the dam burst. He can count on one hand the number of times Nico has initiated a hug with him, but he found himself craving the closeness that they had once had. Percy clings to him, sobs wracking his body. Nico holds him, ever the protector; it was a shame Percy was lauded when Nico was the best of them.
"Why—" Percy's voice cracks. "Why didn't you let me see him?"
Nico tenses for a moment. "What do you mean? In Hades?"
Percy nods against Nico's shoulder. He's not sure he even wants to hear the answer.
"Oh Percy…" He rubs Percy's back in a comforting gesture that does nothing but make him cry harder. "He was already gone."
He's quiet for a small, hiccuping moment, pulling away from Nico's shoulder to look at him. The twisted expression of pain evident on Percy's face pierces Nico the way nothing ever had. He can almost feel the ghost of his younger self in Percy when, years ago, he broke the same news to Nico about his sister.
"He went for reincarnation. Just like Bianca did."
Percy goes still and looks back out at the water. There's something different in his eyes, something strange and numbing. He's stiller than Nico has ever seen him.
"Did—" Percy wipes the back of his hand across his face, smearing blood and soot in a gruesome swirl. "Why? Did he tell you why?"
"You know it doesn't work like that." Nico tries to catch Percy's eye. He touches his arm and Percy jerks away like his touch burned. Nico sighs and leans back.
"He wouldn't want to see you like this," Nico murmurs. "He'd want you to be happy."
Percy swallows back another breakdown, his voice thick. "I know."
They sit in silence again. Nico wishes Percy would speak, do anything more than sit in this horrid silence like the statues he so reviled.
"What do I do?" The question comes from Percy before he even realizes he's asked it. He thinks of his same conversation with Clarisse and whether or not Nico would arrive at the same outcome. His world is a strange landscape now, his knowledge upturned.
"I can't tell you that." Nico brushes his shoulder against Percy's. "Only you can."
His breath lengthens, returning almost to normal. "I wish he was here."
Nico puts his arm around Percy's shoulder, hoping it wouldn't make him pull away again. "I know. Me too."
The sun shimmers across the sound, taking advantage of a rare break in the overcast sky. Percy looks skyward and thinks for a moment that it's Jason moving the clouds apart. The sunbeam slides over them. Percy pulls his knees up to his chest.
"If I give Travis over to Chiron, what will happen?" He looks sidelong at Nico.
Nico blinks. "I— I don't know. Really. He'll probably go to a tribunal with the gods, who will decide his punishment."
There was a time when it was Percy and Jason doling out that punishment. He'd lost track of the demigods, godlings, and mortals they carried out that justice on, unthinking of any nuance that may have helped the situation. The gods would think of something terrifying for Travis, something befitting a kin killer. Killing him by his own hand would be a mercy, a kindness he's not sure Travis deserves.
Percy nods. He stands from the sand and offers Nico his hand, the fingers no longer shaking.
Nico doesn't ask what he's decided. He doesn't want to know.
But Percy knows. He knows with a sickening darkness the deed that can only be carried out by him.