Chapter Text
Wednesday, May 17th, 2018
7:25 PM
Stark Tower, NY
Natasha’s not quite sure what made her put down her book.
She’s sitting, curled up in the cushy armchair that sits in the corner of her bedroom. Natasha runs the pad of her thumb over the page number of her novel, balanced on the sturdy arm she’s leaning against. She snaps it shut and unfolds herself to stand.
It’s quiet, but that’s not quite unusual—well, for somebody without superhearing, that is. Still, Natasha feels unease roll down her spine as she pads towards the door.
Without thought as to what leads her, Natasha finds herself in the elevator. Only when the doors close behind her, and she’s yet to move, she realizes she doesn’t have a destination in mind. “Friday?” She asks upward.
“Yes, Ms. Romanoff?”
Natasha wants to bite at the corner of her thumb. It’s a nervous habit that she doesn’t let herself indulge in. Friday’s voice is soft and pleasant, as always, but it doesn’t soothe Natasha’s sudden nerves. She’s not quite sure what to ask, sinking into the feeling that something just isn’t right.
On the panel, the button for the 91st floor lights up, and with only the gentlest of starts, the elevator begins to move.
There’s a soft chime as the doors open again.
“Thanks, Friday.” Natasha says softly before stepping out.
The common rooms are empty. Not deserted—the fluffy throw blanket is in an unfolded heap at the edge of the chaise, there’s an empty coffee mug on one of the tables, and the carpet is covered in Mrs. O’Leary’s fur—but empty. The aftereffects of occupation, of living, don’t make up for the fact that it’s still silent.
Natasha wanders down the hall. It’s the middle of the afternoon, which isn’t anyone’s preferred time to workout, so she drifts away from the gyms and in the opposite direction.
The sound of water running meets her ears.
The door to one of the bathrooms is open. It’s Bucky, she realizes. He’s hunched over the sink, viciously scrubbing at his hands. Hesitantly, Natasha leans against the doorframe.
She catches a quick flash of red in the mirror. “Barnes?” She calls.
The water running off his hands is pink. Natasha takes a step into the room, then another. Gingerly, she lays a hand on his shoulder. “Bucky?”
He looks up to meet her eyes, and she almost takes a step back. For a second, it’s not Bucky. The blank look on his face, the emptiness, reminds her of the man who’d almost killed her in DC. Then, he blinks and turns away.
There are long smudges of blood, dried dripping down his wrists. His hands are red, rubbed raw from scrubbing.
It’s then, she remembers, since she’d gone the opposite direction of the gym, she was now closer to the medbay.
“Bucky,” Natasha’s voice is sharp. “What happened?”
He turns off the tap and doesn’t look at her when he answers. “Percy had a seizure." He's staring at his hands. "Nosebleed.”
“A seizure?” Natasha repeated, straightening. Percy didn’t have any preexisting conditions, she’s certain—as certain as she can be, of course, because she’s learned over the last two years that he’s quite adept at hiding things from her. There’s a million things she wants to asks, starting from why and ending with you look fucking terrified, but she settles on, “Is he alright?”
“He’s asleep in the medbay.” Bucky scratched at the base of his nails with a paper towel. “He’s never had one before. It…” He trails off, shaking his head, and Natasha is hit with the growing feeling he’s hiding something. “I’ve got to go back.”
“Can I come?” She asks without thinking.
His eyes flick up to meet hers. “If you want.”
And she does—without thinking.
There’s really something about Percy Jackson, Natasha muses as she trails after him. Something that inspires this level of immediate care from people like her.
Mrs. O’Leary is curled up at the foot of Percy’s bed. Her massive head is resting on his thighs, eyes droopy and sad as she looks up at him. His hand is in her fur, stroking right behind her ear. Percy’s eyes are lidded and he’s sunk into the bed, and the trashcan at the bedside is full of bloodied wet wipes. The half-empty package is on the nightstand.
Tony looks up at the two of them when they enter. There’s something dark, hallowed out, in the warm color of his eyes.
Natasha swallows and looks away, back at Percy.
Bucky seats himself at the edge of the mattress, next to Percy’s pillow, and Percy rolls his head just a little so his nose presses into the side of Bucky’s thigh. Bucky pushes Percy’s hair out of his eyes. “Hi, baby,” He whispers. There’s a hitch in his voice.
Percy’s eyes flutter and he mumbles something in response.
Bucky’s hand slides from his hair to cradle his face. “How are you feeling?”
A small exhale. “Head hurts,” Percy croaks. Already, Tony is up, heading for the medicine cabinet. He returns with two pills, and Percy swallows them dry.
“What happened?” He asks hoarsely.
Bucky and Tony look at each other over Percy’s head. Tony drops his gaze, a trembling shudder in his words. “You tried BARF so we could run some tests. And, uh,” He’s chewing on the inside of his cheek. “You had a seizure.”
Natasha tries not to let her emotions reach her face. BARF? What for?
“Seizure?” Percy repeats.
Bucky nods. “Two and a half minutes.”
Percy squeezes his eyes shut.
“I gave Cho a call,” Tony says. “She’ll be here the second she’s available.”
Percy nods, a small dip of his head. His phone buzzes on the nightstand and Percy winces, pressing the hand not petting Mrs. O’Leary to his temple. Natasha reaches over and silences it. It’s only then does he seem to notice her.
“Hey, Nat,” He says quietly.
“Hey,” She returns, forcing her voice level. God—Gods, now. He looks so drained. “You worried me. Saw Bucky cleaning up blood and thought he’d finally had enough of Tony. I was about to start apartment hunting.”
Miraculously, that gets a tiny laugh out of him. “I’d give them at least a few more months,” he replies. The pain meds seem to be kicking in, his voice drifting a little.
Cautiously, she reaches out and squeezes his knee. “Yeah,” She agrees quietly. He drops his head back down onto the pillow, eyes going distant. Bucky’s never let go of him. Tony’s checking his phone seemingly every minute for a response from Dr. Cho.
A few more months, Natasha thinks.
What would this look like, then?
Percy’s eyes slip shut, his breathing deepening as he leans his head against Bucky, who runs his thumb across his cheekbone as he drifts off.
There’s always been a quiet sorrow to Bucky Barnes, but looking at him now, shoulders drawn in, spine curved into a hunch, Natasha thinks it’s never been louder. His hair hangs low over his eyes, and for that, she’s grateful—she can’t bear to see the look in them.
Once again, her eyes drift to Percy’s face. “It seems so weird to me, now,” She says softly. “Him. Divine.” Tony looks at her, and she shrugs a single shoulder. “Godly.”
Jackson, the infallible agent who knew too much. Jackson, Tony’s faithful shadow. Jackson, who wrote back and forth to her and saved Barnes’s life and got her to New York and survived, and survived and survived.
She couldn’t stop thinking about it. The way he’d shrugged off hits during SHIELD ops, how quickly he’d pulled Tony to safety during the Expo, the strength in his shoulders and the steel in his voice and the storm in his eyes.
Godly.
Bucky was staring down at his face. “Not really,” He says quietly. “He’s still Percy.” Again, he swipes his thumb across his cheek. “You know, he couldn’t afford braces as a kid. You can see his crossbite a little, when he smiles. One of his bottom teeth is a little chipped at the corner—he used to skateboard. He’s got sunspots on his forearms, and, if you look close enough, you can see his acne scars.” A soft, pained huff of a laugh. “Seems pretty human to me.” From the way Percy’s head is leaning to the side, she can see the subtle, dark marks, one or two pockmarks near his temples. They’re faded enough she’d never really noticed them, but as Bucky brushes away the hair curling around his temples, they’re all she can look at.
Huh, she thinks.
A God with acne scars.
“I just finished up,” Lee’s voice is tinny over the phone, subdued. “All the direct vein draws were a match to Percy. The samples from the biopsy had three different matches. One to each body.”
Bucky leans his head back against the wall, closing his eyes. “So, we were right?”
“Seems so.” Through the weariness, there’s a hint of wonder in her voice. “It’s a protective layer. The blood pools somewhere under the dermis layer as a buffer over his tissues and vessels.”
“Not hurting him,” Bucky concludes quietly. “But that’s not necessarily a good thing.”
“...No.” Lee says, reluctant.
Bucky presses his knuckles against his lips. “You know,” He manages, “Earlier, I’d been thinking—that, the carvings into the bodies were warnings. Messages, maybe, to Percy.” He bites down on his tongue to keep a sob from crawling out. “They’re not, Lee. They’re not messages or notes or warnings, they’re like fucking cards attached to giftwrap.”
There’s a soft breath over the line.
Then, “Oh, my God.”
There’s not a trace of humor in Bucky’s responding laugh. “Gods.”
It’s raining again.
The wind is a bit colder than normal. It stings the sides of Percy’s face, the back of his exposed hands, the bit of his ankles peeking out between the cuff of his sweats and socks. He rests his chin on his arms, folded across his knees.
The sky is dark, something in the clouds rolling and heavy.
The pain pressing between his temples has faded, chipped away by the heavy duty painkillers Tony had handed him earlier.
They used to work better, didn’t they?
He feels like they did.
Nausea is settled in the pit of his stomach—it’s been there since he woke up. Every little shift sets off pangs of soreness across his shoulders to his ribs, down his torso to his legs. Percy tries to breathe, slow and steady, but his breath keeps hitching, sweat sliding down his clammy palms.
That’s how Bucky finds him, back pressed against the wall, sitting on the floor of the balcony, door open behind him. It makes the curtains lash at Bucky’s legs as he walks out to join him.
“Percy?” He asks, soft and cautious. Percy hates it.
“Hi,” He responds.
“What are you doing out here?” Bucky crouches down next to him.
Percy can hear the waves again. The rivers aren’t far, but where it’s miles before their connected bays turn to open ocean. His hearing isn’t that good. Is it?
They roll back and forth through his head, in time with the air that comes and goes from his lungs. He can taste sea salt on his tongue. When he closes his eyes, he can almost feel the grit of sand being picked up by the wind, brushing against his exposed skin.
He’s always liked the feeling of rain hitting the open ocean, the joining of the two. Storm meeting sea.
Thunder rolls above, and it blends with the cresting waves.
“—cy? Percy, babe?”
He blinks. Bucky is right in front of him, now, both hands on his shoulders.
“Percy?” Bucky’s voice is tight.
“Hi,” Percy says again. “What’s wrong?”
There’s a strangled pause. “Baby,” Bucky says. “Did you hear me a second ago?”
“Calling my name? Yeah, why?”
“Before that.” Why does he sound like that?
“Oh,” Percy says. “You asked what I was doing out here.” He shrugs. “Just…needed some air, I guess.”
Bucky’s staring at him. He knows he is, can almost feel the weight of his eyes.
In the end, Bucky just lowers himself the rest of the way down and sits next to Percy. He lifts and arm and Percy burrows into his side, pressing into the softness of his sweatshirt and the warmth emanating from his body.
“You’re freezing.” Bucky notes quietly.
“‘S cold.” He mumbles in reply.
That gets a slow, hesitant nod. Bucky doesn’t bring it up again, leaving Percy to his thoughts.
He’s never had a seizure before.
Passed out, sure. Been knocked out, most definitely. Magic comas, poison, hits to the head. Things that had been done to him. He could wake up and point at a what or a who to blame.
Bucky told him he seized for two and a half minutes. How serious was that? Is it worse than thirty seconds? Does it matter? How long of a seizure is a long seizure?
He exhales quietly through his nose.
The air pressure is high and heavy. Each little plink of rain feels like pins and needles across his skin.
His eyes start to droop, and, for the third time that day, he slumps into Bucky’s side.
His skin feels too tight for his body.
It’s like there’s something writhing underneath it, pushing and tugging and, eventually, ripping its way out, if he’ll let it.
He should let it, shouldn’t he?
Everything’s hazy.
His head feels blurry.
There’s a puddle of blood under him. He’s not wearing shoes, not even socks. It’s coating the bottom of his feet, and it makes the softest splashes with each step he takes.
It hurts.
It all hurts.
Everything, oddly enough, except the soles of his bloodsoaked feet.
The air around him is burning, flecks of ash and soot. Redhot embers land on his skin, but they feel more like little firecrackers.
He drops to his knees, palms hitting the ground. He rolls onto his side, curling up. Blood soaks through the thin material of his clothes, smears across the side of his face.
There’s no iron.
The cloying, metallic taste and smell—
A trembling hand reaches out. He rubs two coated fingers together.
It’s thicker.
Ichor.
Percy coughs raggedly, something beating at the inside of his ribs, pushing outwards from a spot next to his pulsing heart.
He’s lying in a puddle of ichor.
No, it’s not just a puddle.
He’s laying on something elevated, really, really, elevated. He can feel the sea level, thousands of feet below him. Ichor runs down towards it on one side, runs down to something else on the other. There’s so much of it.
His throat burns with the air.
His skin feels like it’s splitting apart.
It’d be so easy to make it stop.
So, so easy.
Why does he feel like he shouldn’t?
Why does something feel so incredibly wrong?