Chapter Text
It begins with a dream.
“Wow. That looked like it really hurt.”
“Forehand? Or backhand?”
Thud.
Thud.
Crunch.
Thud.
Crack.
“A little louder, lambchop.”
“Please tell the big man I said hello.”
Beep.
Beep.
Beep.
Whoosh.
Percy wakes up screaming, hideous laughter echoing through his head and one question burning like a brand on his soul:
Why didn’t you save me?
****
For a week, Percy doesn’t sleep. Every time he closes his eyes, his dreams are immediately plagued by white faces and green hair, by crowbars and laughter and hopeless death. Mom is worried, he knows she is. She has been since she woke him that first night, when his terrible screams had turned immediately to horrified sobs as she hugged him close.
She thinks the pressures of this year, the war and the prophecy and Percy’s most likely imminent death have finally gotten to him. She thinks he’s cracking.
Maybe he is.
Because, frankly, Percy has dreams like this all the time. He has visions of the past, warnings from the present, messages from gods, all crammed into his head like candy in a pinata and he’s always been fine. Normally, the dreams help, give direction and instruction and hope.
But this...
It was death. Horrific death. Cruel death.
Meaningless death.
Percy wonders if for once he’s seen the future.
He wonders if this is the fate Kronos has planned for him.
***
“What,” Percy begins hesitantly the next time he sees Annabeth. He clears his throat. “What do you know about the Joker?”
They’re sitting together on the dock at Camp Half-Blood. Percy’s been idly creating whirlpools in the lake, while Annabeth leans against his back, a half-woven basket in her hand. She sits up and turns to face him, eyes thoughtful.
“What do you know about Atlantis?” Annabeth counters, and Percy frowns.
“Uh, my dad lives there? It’s an underwater sea kingdom?”
Annabeth moves herself to sit next to Percy, her legs dangling off the dock next to his. She continues weaving her basket as she explains.
“That’s the first Atlantis, the real one. The city that was banished to the bottom of the sea after her people lost the favor of the gods. But everything adjusts to the gods’ seat of power, you know that. Mount Olympus is the Empire State Building, the Bermuda Triangle is the Mediterranean, and--,”
“Gotham is Atlantis,” Percy says quietly.
“Gotham is a godless place,” Annabeth agrees. “A place all demigods should do their best to avoid. Without the gods, it’s a city overrun by all sorts of monsters; the human ones there are arguably even worse than the normal ones. At least the normal ones can be killed. A sword can’t smite corruption or greed.”
“Or madness,” Percy adds. He bites his lip. “So, what’s the Joker?”
Annabeth shrugs. “I don’t know. I don’t think anybody knows. There were rumors once that he was a son of Eris, but,” she shrugs again. “He might just be mortal. Mortals can be monsters all on their own.”
Percy remembers alcohol and bean dip, smoke-filled Cameros and red marks on his mother’s cheek, purple bruises up and down her arms.
I know, he thinks. I know, I know.
No matter how godless, though, Gotham has never been alone.
So instead, he says, “Mortals can be heroes, too.”
And Annabeth smiles, just like he knew she would.
***
***
***
It begins with a nightmare.
“Let me out!” Percy screams into the pitch, his mangled fists pounding on the wall above him. “Help! HELP! HELP ME! Somebody please!”
Everything is black and everything hurts and he is trapped trapped trapped dying again alone unloved--
“Dad! DAD! PLEASE!” Percy shrieks. There is no answer.
So, this is it. This is how he dies.
Drowning on dry land.
It’s not as though the world has use for him anymore. He’s done his job.
Maybe he can finally rest.
“NO!” the voice shouts, but it’s not Percy, but it is Percy, it is, and he’s grabbing his belt buckle and scrabbling with his nails and it’s wood, it’s wood, he can do this, they can do this--
Dirt and mud fall into his mouth, choking him, and he digs and digs and digs, climbing up, swimming up to...
Rain.
Water.
Percy wakes, and instead of screaming, he thinks of Prometheus. Of Pandora and the amphora and Elpis, who would not abandon humanity.
He thinks of hope.
***
***
***
Who am I?
Who am I?
Who am I.
***
***
***
It begins with a John Doe.
“Annabeth, it could be nothing,” Jake warns her, looking up from the ancient computer in Chiron’s office, from the files they’d found using a dangerous combination of hardware, spyware, scrying crystals and prayers to Iris. “Percy has Achilles’ blessing; you and I both know this shouldn’t be possible.”
From the photo of the boy, the bruised and swollen-faced, black-haired, sixteen-year-old John Doe with catatonia who’d been admitted to the Gotham rest home a month past.
From the very distinct streak of gray in his hair.
“Jake, it looks just like him. It’s the best lead we’ve had--,”
“It’s Gotham --,”
“I have to find him; I have to try. It’s Percy, Jake. He’d do the same for me.”
Jake Mason sighs, eyes heavy with regret as he prints off the address. “Be careful. We can’t lose you, too.”
***
Annabeth flies with Blackjack to Gotham that evening. She lands on the roof of the rest home, armed only with her knife and her Yankee’s cap. She jimmies the lock on the door to the roof, puts on her hat, and skulks down the halls, invisible to all until she reaches her destination.
The boy in the bed looks simultaneously everything and nothing like Percy Jackson.
He’s emaciated. His hands are bandaged and splintered, the nails bloody and ruined. Beneath his hospital gown, Annabeth notices the beginning of a thick and ugly scar running down his torso.
He has Percy’s jaw.
He has Percy’s eyes.
They blink, unseeing, at the ceiling above, and Annabeth chokes on a sob, rushing forward, scrabbling through her pockets to find the ambrosia she’d brought along. She needs to fix this, she needs to fix Percy, she needs to get him back, he’s--
Annabeth takes a shuddering breath, and picks up both of the boy’s hands, looking carefully at the back of them. She sets them down gently, and leans forward, raising the hospital gown as much as she dares to look at the burn scars on Percy’s shoulders.
The missing burn scars on his shoulders.
And this boy was never stung by a pit scorpion on the back of his hand.
He’s not Percy.
He’s not Percy.
He’s not Percy.
Annabeth gives herself a moment. She sits in the chair at the boy’s bedside, hides her head in her hands, and she cries. She cries because she misses her boyfriend, her best friend in the world, her Seaweed Brain.
She cries because she’s lonely and lost and frightened. She cries because she almost killed a boy, almost burned alive an innocent and defenseless kid in her desperation to find what she’s lost.
She cries for the boy, because for some unfathomable reason the world has left him alone and unclaimed, a fate no one has ever and will ever deserve.
Annabeth sits in the chair and holds the boy’s hand.
“I’m sorry,” she whispers, because she is. She is so, so sorry.
But then, she leaves.
And two weeks later, when she tries to check up on her John Doe again, he is gone.
Annabeth says a quiet prayer and hopes her John Doe has found peace.
***
***
***
It begins with green.
It’s dark. He is lost.
He is alone.
And then. And then...
There is light.
There is light and green and water, and it should be good, it should be right and healing and everything he needs but it burns. It burns and burns and it is acid, he’s dying, he’s drowning again and again and again and everything hurts and there is laughter and light and echoes and pain and--
Find your anchor.
Find your anchor, he whispers to no one. To everyone.
To anyone who will listen.
Find your anchor, he says, and the world around him stills. A cord latches on the small of his back, and he thinks of blonde hair and gray eyes, of blue cookies and open seas on sunny days.
He thinks of wry smiles and cool caverns, of fast cars and tea and scones and warmth.
Of drafty apartments and crushing hugs, of freedom and flying and life.
Life.
I give you my blessing, she whispers, her voice barely a dream.
It begins.
***
***
***
It begins with a newscast.
“We’re reporting live from Wayne Enterprises headquarters in Gotham where during a press conference this afternoon, CEO Bruce Wayne announced the return of his once legally-declared deceased son, Jason Todd-Wayne. Todd-Wayne was reported dead after a tragic climbing accident in the spring of two-thousand sixteen, during a vacation with his father in Ethiopia.
“Today, however, very unexpectedly, Mr. Wayne announced that his son is now alive and well. He said the climbing accident was in fact staged by a Middle-eastern terrorist cell, who kidnapped Todd-Wayne with the intent to hold him for ransom. The then fifteen-year-old managed to escape his captors, but acquired amnesia after a head injury, and has spent the last four years traversing southern and Eastern Asia alone.
Until, of course, one month ago, when Todd-Wayne was recognized by friends of the Wayne family on a humanitarian aid trip to Nepal. Jason Todd-Wayne has, according to his father, been returned safely home to Gotham, where he is recovering steadily, surrounded by friends and family. Mr. Wayne and the Wayne family as a whole ask for privacy during this healing time. I’m here now with...”
Paul shakes his head as he bounces Estelle on his lap, eyes wide.
“Now that is a wild story. I can’t even imagine...” Paul trails off, stealing a glance Percy’s way.
Percy succeeds in quelling the urge to apologize for disappearing again. It was three years ago, and it wasn’t his fault. There’s nothing more he can say or do to take away the pain he caused his friends and family. He’s back now. He’s home.
At least he wasn’t declared dead. At least there wasn’t a funeral.
Not this time, anyway.
“I remember when he died,” Annabeth says to his left, where she’s slumped into the couch. “Or, well, fake died now, I guess. It was a big news story that year. Some assholes tried to spread conspiracies that Wayne did it, or that it was the older brother who didn’t want to share the inheritance. Those got shut down pretty quickly though.”
“He looks so familiar,” Paul says, tilting his head at the school photo of fifteen-year-old Jason Todd-Wayne now being shared on the TV screen.
“He looks like Percy,” Mom says from the doorway. Her voice is quiet and slightly shocked. “He looks exactly like Percy.”
“I mean, not exactly,” Percy argues half-heartedly. He looks back to the screen for comparison, but the shot’s returned to the news correspondent standing outside Wayne Enterprises.
“I don’t know, kiddo,” Paul adds, looking down at his iPhone, where he must have googled the Wayne kid. He holds up the screen, and Annabeth leans forward with a framed school photo of Percy from the side table for comparison.
Paul whistles.
He says, “You sure your dad doesn’t have any other kids he forgot to tell you about, Perce?”
Annabeth drops the picture with a gasp; it knocks against the coffee table before falling face up on the floor, a new crack splitting twelve-year-old Percy’s face and torso cleanly down the middle.
***
***
***
It begins with a question.
“Can you get us in?” Percy asks. His eyes are tired.
Rachel bites her lip. “I mean, probably? My dad doesn’t do a lot of business in Gotham, but he’s worked with Wayne Enterprises before. We should be invited. I’ve met their family at some of the stupid New England high-society shit. The oldest one’s super-hot, and Tim’s kind of weird until you catch up with his sense of humor, and the little one--,”
“What about Jason?” Annabeth interrupts, and Rachel sighs. So that’s what this is about.
She shrugs. “I dunno. He’s our age. Mr. Wayne adopted him when he was twelve, he was homeless before that. He died young. Now he’s back.” It’ll be gossip-fodder for a year at least in the old money circles. “Why do you ask?”
Percy clears his throat. “We think he’s one of us.”
Rachel thinks about all the demigods she’s ever met, and the sharpness of their souls. The hardness in the back of their eyes they all seem to share, no matter their story. The fight for survival stamped on their hearts.
Rachel remembers meeting twelve-year-old Jason Todd for the first time.
She says, “You’re probably right.”
***
***
***
It begins with a party.
A gala, according to the invitation, hosted by the Wayne Foundation. One that’s simultaneously a fundraiser for Gotham Youth Shelters and the reintroduction of Jason Todd-Wayne to high society. Everybody who’s anybody on the Eastern seaboard has been clamoring for a ticket in.
The Dare family received one. And, as luck would have it, so did Tristan McLean.
“Okay, so, I’m not saying I disagree. I think you’re right; I think this kid probably is a half-blood,” Piper says from the backseat, currently preoccupied with mussing Rachel’s hair. Percy doesn’t miss the way she avoids saying Jason’s name. “But, like, what’s our purpose here? Are we storming the castle to say ‘hi, yes, hello sir, everything you’ve ever known is a lie, please use this weird bronze knife if a monster attacks you and try to avoid cell phones?’ Are we trying to get him to come to camp? I mean, he’s an adult now, he’s managed this long. Won’t he be safer if we just leave him alone?”
Annabeth looks at him from the passenger seat. She looks beautiful, her dress a soft sky blue, her hair pinned back from her face, long curls tumbling in a golden wave down her back. She takes one deep breath before turning to face Rachel, Nico and Piper in the backseat of Paul’s Prius.
“Percy and I—we think there might be more to this than meets the eye.”
“You think he’s powerful,” Nico guesses. He’s traded his leather jacket in for a tuxedo tonight; Rachel forced Percy and Nico off to the tailor last week and Percy’s rather sure he’d puke if he saw the final bill. “Big Three powerful?”
“I think he’s my brother,” Percy replies.
The silence in the car is deafening as they putter along the New Jersey tollway.
“I mean, he looks a lot like you, Perce,” Rachel finally begins with a frown, “but so do Nico and Thalia.”
“You and Thalia have always looked more like siblings than Thalia and Ja—our Jason,” Piper continues, voice going soft at the end. “He could be Zeus’s.”
Annabeth reaches into the beaded clutch in her lap and pulls out two photographs; Nico grabs them from her and stares.
“Oh, wow,” Nio says softly. “This is—oh.”
“That’s Jason Todd,” Piper says. Percy watches her finger lightly trace the photo in the rearview mirror. “Who’s the girl? Is that his mom? He has her smile.”
“She looks...” Rachel begins, before trailing off, her green eyes wide. “Oh, holy fuck. Fucking hell.”
Percy nods. “That’s my mom when she was fifteen.”
***
***
***
It began with an ultrasound.
“Twins,” Sally repeats, staring dumbly at the doctor. “I’m having twins.”
“Fraternal by the looks of it, but both boys. Two healthy baby boys.”
“Twins,” Sally whispers, feeling herself turn green. Dr. Haywood lifts up the bin just in time to catch Sally’s vomit.
Twins. Twin boys. Oh god. Oh god.
What the fuck is she going to do? No money, no degree, barely a job, and the lease at her uncle’s place is almost up and--
“Sally,” Dr. Haywood says softly, handing her a paper cup of water before carrying away the kidney dish. She returns quickly and rolls her seat forward, sidling up to Sally’s bedside. “Honey, you have some options.” Gently, the doctor holds out a few pamphlets. Women’s shelters, abortion clinics, adoption agencies.
“Is the father in the picture?” Dr. Haywood asks, when Sally doesn’t make any move to grab the pamphlets.
Oh gods.
***
“Twins? You’re sure?” Poseidon asks, his gaze up to the sky, out to the horizon, anywhere and everywhere but her face.
Anger bubbles up inside her, hot and fast and thrilling. He did this to her. He made this happen as much as she did. She doesn’t care who he is, the power he has, she deserves for him to look her in the fucking eye when she tells him about their children--
As though reading her thoughts, he looks down, his green eyes piercing, nearly glowing in the haze of sunset.
“Yes,” she finally says. Poseidon's frown only grows. He runs a weathered hand through his beard and closes his eyes.
“This is not good, Sally. One child of mine was going to difficult enough to raise, difficult enough to hide, but two? Twins no less? The power they’ll have together...” He rubs his eyes with the heel of his hands, looking suddenly and frighteningly human. “If monsters don’t kill them first, my brothers will be sure to finish the job.”
Sally sits in the sand beside him. Her pinky finger traces a figure eight in the sand between them, while the other hand rests on her slowly swelling stomach. She looks out at the ocean and feels one tear slowly trail a line of heat down her cheek.
“They cannot be raised together.” The finality in Poseidon’s voice leaves Sally bristling.
“What?”
“If you want to live, if you want our children to live, they cannot be raised together.”
“But where—I don’t--I’m their mother,” Sally says stupidly, still unsure the point he’s trying to make. “How can I--,”
Gently, Poseidon takes her hand. “You can’t. You can’t have them both.”
Sally pulls her hand out of his reach and makes her way to her feet. The five-year-old orphan inside her, the lonely and lost child who never really left or had a chance to grow up the way she should have weeps.
It’s funny. She’d been so frightened when the doctor told her it was twins, so hopeless and unprepared. But the moment someone decided to threaten her child, to threaten her babies, the mother she never expected to become pokes her head out and roars.
Poseidon can’t have them. The gods won’t take them away.
Sally will protect her family. She’ll save what little is hers in this unkind and unjust world.
“Watch me.”
***
***
***
It begins with a child.
“Tt.”
Percy looks down to find a dark-haired boy at his elbow. He blinks twice, and his new companion makes his little annoyed tut again.
“Uh, hey kid.” Percy finally says, re-settling himself against the pillar at the back of the ballroom. They’d decided early on that Percy, due to his resemblance to their quarry, should hang back and scout while Rachel and Piper, paired with Nico and Annabeth respectively, went to mingle with the crowd, on the hunt for their in to contact Jason Todd-Wayne.
The dark-skinned child looks up at Percy and rolls his startlingly green eyes. “Father says you need to stop hiding in the back and talk to someone.”
Percy pauses for exactly three seconds, until the kid continues, voice clipped. “If you don’t come with me, he’ll send Grayson next, and you know the scene that will cause.” The kid honestly shudders before reaching up and gripping Percy’s arm.
Grayson.
Father.
Huh.
“Damian!” Percy yelps slightly at his epiphany. The kid mistakes it for indignation and continues to tug at Percy’s arm, attempting to guide him around the crowd to the head table.
The kid thinks he’s Jason Todd-Wayne. His brother.
Percy can work with this.
[“What do you think of the Waynes?” Percy had asked Annabeth the week before. “Seems like they’re in Gotham’s headlines all the time, and not always for great reasons. You think they’re involved with the mob or something?”
“The opposite, actually,” Annabeth had replied, a wry smile on her face.
“What’s the opposite of the mob?”
“In Gotham? What do you think?”
Percy’s eyes had widened. “No. No way. Bruce Wayne is such a goof, there’s no way--,”
“Wouldn’t that be the best cover, though?”]
He reassesses his opinion of Bruce Wayne immediately upon meeting the man’s eyes. Tiny little chipmunk-cheeked Damian Wayne still has a firm hand on Percy’s arm, dragging him forward with a huff.
Bruce Wayne, the supposedly kind-hearted, slightly idiotic philanthropist and reformed playboy glares at Percy with the blue-gray eyes of a thunderstorm, and Percy wonders for a long moment if perhaps the gods have abandoned another child to Gotham.
In a blink, the storm is gone, replaced by a handsome, guileless smirk. Bruce Wayne steps forward and an arm like steel reaches around and traps Percy’s shoulders, guiding him out a side door to the garden.
Let it never be said that Percy Jackson doesn’t know how to improvise.
Wayne guides him along the garden path to another section of the house. There aren’t many people out and about in the roses and greenhouse, but enough that Wayne keeps up his farce; Percy notices the man’s knuckles turning white where they’re leaving bruises on his upper arm.
Little baby Damian Wayne trots along behind them, giving his Father a running commentary of all the intelligence (i.e. gossip) that he’s gathered at the party so far. It’s immediately and painfully obvious the kid is desperate for his dad’s undying approval.
Aren’t we all , Percy thinks, as Wayne finally pushes them back into the house. They waltz through a half-lit, enormous yet inexplicably cozy kitchen, then up a short staircase, before Wayne shoves Percy into some sort of study and shuts the door quickly behind.
“Who are you?” Wayne’s voice, like Damian’s, is clipped. The thunderstorm is back. From behind his father’s elbow, Damian’s mouth gapes.
“But that’s, what--,”
Bruce Wayne is an impressive man; in size, in wealth and, if Annabeth’s theory is correct, in courage and intelligence. Everything about him in the moment oozes intimidation.
Fortunately, or perhaps unfortunately, Percy Jackson defeated the God of War when he was twelve. He’s slain monsters and killed Titans and been offered godhood before he could legally drive a car.
So, Percy sticks out his hand and pastes on his most winning smile. “Name’s Percy Jackson. I was hoping you could introduce me to your son, Jason.”
***
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***
It began with a promise.
“You will see him again, Sally. I swear. I swear on the River Styx, you will see him again in this life. You will see him and you will remember.”
“Please, please, please, no,” Sally moans, clutching both babies desperately to her chest. “Please, you can’t, Poseidon you can’t, please, they are mine, they’re my babies, you can’t you can’t you can’t--,” She begins crying so hard she can’t speak, face splotched red with tears and absolute exhaustion, hair wild and sweat-slicked.
Poseidon looks away.
“Sally, my brothers will kill them. They’ll kill you without a second thought. It’s--,”
“At least then we’d be together.” Poseidon looks away.
“Take them both.” Sally finally whispers, voice wrecked. The baby in her left arm has begun to whine. “Let them be together, they deserve each other at least, I can’t, I won’t--,”
“That’s the problem, Sally. Them, together, it’s--,” the baby in Sally right arm begins to slip. Poseidon reaches forward instinctively to catch the child, and Sally flinches, hard.
Poseidon doesn’t move.
Sally gently re-settles both babies closer to her heart.
“Promise me he’ll live,” Sally finally whispers. “Promise me he will be loved. Promise me someone will ache the way I do right now, at just the thought of ever losing him.”
“I swear it on the River Styx.”
***