Oh how long has it been?

by ratking_withnotail

Summary:

Time travel was chaos—Percy knew that like he knew the feel of salt spray on his skin or the ache of old battles in his bones. It wasn’t just complicated. It was unruly. Time itself didn’t follow rules; it bent and snapped and stretched like something feral. No matter how many brilliant minds tried to tame it, it remained exactly what it was: unpredictable. Dangerous.

He shouldn’t mess with it. None of them should. Why do they mess with it?

~~~

Percy wasn’t one to get his hopes up. In fact, he was probably the exact opposite—practically a professional at bracing for disaster. Where some people clung to optimism like a lifeline, Percy curled himself around the worst-case scenario like armor. He’d gotten good at imagining the things that could go wrong: a missed call becoming bad news, a quiet moment becoming goodbye. And if things didn’t fall apart? Great. That was the bonus round. But hope… hope meant lifting your heart just high enough for reality to break it.

Notes:

Title from Eternity by Alex Warren

Chapter 1: epilogue (I don’t know)

Percy wasn’t one to get his hopes up.

In fact, he was probably the exact opposite—practically a professional at bracing for disaster. Where some people clung to optimism like a lifeline, Percy curled himself around the worst-case scenario like armor. He’d gotten good at imagining the things that could go wrong: a missed call becoming bad news, a quiet moment becoming goodbye. And if things didn’t fall apart? Great. That was the bonus round. But hope… hope meant lifting your heart just high enough for reality to break it.

So he didn’t reach for it anymore.

Because he knew what it felt like to hope too much. To dream in color and be left in grayscale.

He had hoped for a life with James—full of domestic quiet, laughter in the kitchen, holidays where the chaos felt safe instead of overwhelming. But that life ended in a blink. Just like that, James was gone. Another empty space in Percy’s memory. Another ghost whose absence screamed louder than any thunderclap. Percy hadn’t just lost love—he’d lost a future he’d dared to believe in.

And that wasn’t the end of it.

His mortal parents followed soon after. Sally, Paul—their warmth carved into the corners of his soul, and then suddenly… gone. Grief had carved him hollow. And into that hollow space, a tiny voice had emerged: Estelle. His baby sister. Now thirteen. Vibrant, brilliant, chaotic. Still growing. Still healing.

She should have been raised by Sally and Paul. She should have had a mom to brush her curls before school, a dad to teach her how to fix bike chains and write essays. Percy should’ve been in the background, grinning like an overprotective older brother, groaning when she played his music too loudly.

Instead, he was both.

He packed lunches. He gave bedtime pep talks. He stood in school conference rooms pretending he felt grown-up enough to be there. Five years of it. And the road ahead stretched longer still.

Some days he stumbled through the motions, wondering if this was what survival looked like—steady, relentless, aching. Other days he felt the weight in his chest press so hard it threatened to break ribs.

So no. Percy didn’t let himself hope.

Hope felt cruel. Untrustworthy. It dangled possibilities and then yanked them away. It whispered promises he couldn’t afford to believe in. So he chose realism. Expectation tempered by memory. A quiet kind of resilience that didn’t shimmer but didn’t shatter either.

But every now and then—when Estelle danced across the room, when Morgan giggled and reached for his face, when Tony or Pepper wrapped him in a hug and murmured “thank you” like it mattered—Percy felt something unfamiliar creep in.

Not hope exactly. But maybe something adjacent. Something like a heartbeat. Something like belief.

The kitchen smelled like memory. Steam curled upward from the pot, fragrant with rosemary and thyme, blending into the crisp winter air that trickled through a cracked window. Percy stood at the stove, stirring absently with a wooden spoon worn smooth from years of use—a piece of his childhood wrapped in every groove. The soup simmered low, rich and earthy, the recipe one Sally Jackson had whispered over his shoulder when he was fifteen, laughing softly as he burned the garlic. That was before everything started breaking—before the world came unstitched.

Now, at twenty-nine, Percy felt like he’d been dropped into a time loop of his own. His body aging, yes. The calendar changing, certainly. But his soul? Still twenty-four. Frozen in the aftermath. In grief. In exhaustion. In the dust that hadn’t quite settled, even years later.

The phone rested on the counter beside the cutting board, speaker on, Natasha’s voice crackling faintly as Percy ladled broth into a ceramic bowl. Estelle would be home soon. He needed dinner ready. Needed the ritual of feeding her to feel like enough.

“Nat,” he sighed, voice weary but holding the shape of affection beneath it. “You seriously can’t believe this wack job idea that time travel is actually possible.”

He wiped his hands on a dish towel and shifted the phone away from a lemon slice.

“I’m not a scientist,” Percy continued, “but that seems nearly impossible.”

“It wouldn’t be nearly impossible if we got Stark on board,” Natasha countered. Her voice was firm, but not hard. “If anyone could do it, he could.”

Percy’s hand stilled above the pot, spoon hovering in midair. He didn’t say anything right away. Just stared into the soup, letting steam brush against his lashes like an echo of something once warm. Slowly, he lowered the spoon.

“You’re only calling me so I can try to convince Tony after you failed,” he said flatly.

Silence answered.

He pressed the heel of his palm into the counter, grounding himself.

“Natasha,” he hissed, quiet but sharp, “Tony is happy. He has a family. He has Pepper. He has Morgan. If he doesn’t want to do this—if he doesn’t want to destroy time—I won’t make him. It will be his decision.”

There was a rustle on the line, a shifting of breath and guilt.

“Percy please,” Natasha said, softer now. “This could be our chance to bring everyone back. To bring Bucky back.”

Percy sucked in a breath that scorched on the way down. His grip on the counter tightened. The soup hissed faintly, like it felt the shift in the air.

“That’s a low blow,” he snarled, voice rough with restraint. “And you know it.”

He turned slightly, leaning against the counter, staring at the windowpane where frost curled like veins across the glass.

“You were the one who told me to move on,” he whispered, the memory of James heavy in his ribs. “You told me I deserved to build something new. That he wouldn’t want me to drown.”

“I know,” Natasha murmured. “I know. But what if… what if we could do it? All of it. Bring them back. Fix all of this.”

“Don’t.” Percy’s voice broke mid-word, caught between fury and grief. “Don’t give me hope. I barely survived losing him the first time. I won’t survive it again. And I have Estelle. I have a child to think about.”

Another beat of silence. The soup bubbled quietly, comforting and cruel all at once.

Then Natasha sighed. Soft. Defeated.

“Okay… okay.”

Percy stood in the dim light, staring at the soup that had once made him feel close to his mother. To stability. And for a fleeting second, he wished he believed in time travel—not to fix the universe, but to step into the kitchen at fifteen again. Just to hear Sally say, “careful with the rosemary, baby,” and laugh like the world wasn’t ending.

 And Percy wished he was more like his mama more than ever.

Chapter 2: It Feels like an eternity

It was 3 a.m.

Which meant Percy should have been halfway through the thick, dreamless sleep his pills usually delivered—the kind of chemical quiet he’d grown dependent on in the years since everything fell apart. He should've been gone to the world, cocooned in a silence thick enough to keep grief from clawing up his spine. But instead, he lay awake, staring at the ceiling like it held the answers to every ache.

Outside, the night was motionless. Inside, the only sound was Estelle snoring softly in the next room, her breath even and safe. It was the rhythm Percy clung to most nights. Proof he hadn't failed in the one thing that mattered.

But tonight, even that wasn’t enough.

His body stayed still, tucked beneath the comforter that didn’t feel remotely comforting. But his mind moved with terrible speed—anxieties flooding in from every direction, sharp and relentless and familiar. Natasha’s voice echoed most clearly, her insistence that time travel was possible, that all they needed was Tony. That if they went back far enough, if they got the stone, they could bring everyone home.

Everyone.

The thought wrapped itself around Percy’s throat.

James.

That name alone was enough to rip sleep away.

James, with his quiet steadiness. His laughter that filled up the corners of Percy’s heart. His hands, gentle and grounding, trailing up Percy’s spine in moments that felt infinite. James had been the first place Percy had ever considered safe. Home. Whole.

And now—maybe—there was a chance to bring him back.

Percy hated the sound of hope when it slithered through the cracks. It felt like betrayal. Like weakness. But it whispered anyway.

You could have him again. You could be loved again. You could be whole.

And Percy curled tighter into himself, pressing his knuckles against his mouth to keep it from shaking. The ceiling above him offered no comfort. The pills hadn’t helped. The silence hurt. He hadn’t felt safe in years. Not truly. But tonight, the ache was different. Because he wanted. And wanting… That was almost worse than grief.

They were dangerous thoughts—like jagged glass glittering in the moonlight, beautiful until you touched them. Percy knew better. He’d learned the hard way that wanting too much, too deeply, only ever led to the kind of pain that didn’t bleed, just settled like ash beneath his ribs.

This will only end badly, he reminded himself. Again. Like a mantra that had long lost its power. But it was the only shield he had against the torrent of longing that wouldn’t let him sleep.

Still, that traitorous little voice in the back of his mind wouldn’t shut up. It kept crawling out of the dark, whispering in his own tone, You could have it all again. If you just convinced Tony. If you just tried.

But Tony had his life now. A family. Laughter with Pepper that didn’t sound broken anymore. A daughter who dragged paint-smeared papers into his lab and called his armor “Shiny Dad.” Tony had found his rhythm again. He was breathing—really breathing—for the first time in years.

And Percy… Percy was still drowning.

It wasn’t fair.

He couldn’t ask Tony to reopen wounds that had finally scabbed over just because Percy’s never had the chance to heal. He couldn’t rip joy from Tony’s hands to chase a dream that might never be more than smoke. James was gone. And the idea of getting him back—of holding him again, of being whole again—was beginning to taste like poison disguised as promise.

Gods, he thought bitterly, he hates hope.

Hope was cruel. It looked like James’s smile in the quiet of morning. It sounded like laughter beneath their shared breath in kitchens and battlefields alike. It smelled like the jacket Percy still kept tucked behind the coats by the door. Hope hurt because it remembered too much, and refused to let go.

He turned over, one arm tucked beneath his pillow, the other curled against his chest like it could press the ache back into submission. But the silence of the house didn’t ease him. It just made the thoughts louder. Hope didn’t save people. It tricked them into dreaming—and Percy had run out of dreams.

It was the kind of noise that didn’t belong in the sacred stillness of 3 a.m.—a shrill, obnoxious ring cutting straight through Percy’s spiraling thoughts like a knife through silk. His phone blared from the bedside table, the sound violent in the hush, and Percy jolted, startled and instantly irritated, every nerve in his body flinching.

He groaned aloud, muscles stiff as he curled onto his side like a wounded animal, stubbornly facing away from the offending device. His blankets were too warm, wrapped around him like a second skin, heavy and stifling, but he couldn’t summon the energy to peel them off. He burrowed deeper, hoping that the noise would disappear if he just ignored it hard enough.

The ringing finally died.

Percy sighed, the kind of breath that came out ragged, more like resignation than relief. His pillow cradled his face, muffling the echoes of his frustration as he let himself drift—just a little—back into the soft, aching quiet.

And then the phone rang again.

Percy’s face twisted like he’d been physically struck, disbelief warping into fury. “Are you kidding me?” he muttered, voice sandpaper and venom, as he yanked the spare pillow from beneath him and slammed it over his head. The ringing persisted, insistent and mocking, like it knew exactly what it was interrupting.

He waited. Again.

It stopped.

And for one blessed second, Percy let himself hope—foolishly—that the silence would hold.

BRRRRNG.

The sound was an affront to decency. He launched the blankets off with all the vengeance of a man wronged, limbs flailing, hair in chaotic tufts plastered to his forehead with sweat. His eyes squinted against the dim light, barely open and bleary with exhaustion, as he reached toward the bedside table on pure instinct.

His fingers grazed the phone, knocking it off the edge with a sharp thud. It clattered to the floor, and Percy let out a groan that sounded more like a growl, dragging himself halfway off the bed to retrieve it.

Finally—after an awkward shuffle and a few muttered curses—he swiped it up, thumb fumbling against the screen, sluggish and clumsy from sleep-deprivation. He slapped his thumb against the answer button, heart pounding with more irritation than concern.

Percy’s voice lashed out with sharp, sleep-starved fury. “What?” he snapped, the single word more declaration of war than question—weighted with perfectly reasonable rage for someone whose phone had rung three times at an hour when even nightmares had the decency to lie low.

On the other end, Tony’s reply came with the kind of manic glee that made Percy’s skin prickle. “PJ!” he crowed, bursting with so much electricity he might as well have lit up his own lab. “I did it!”

Percy blinked hard, trying to force clarity into a mind that still felt half-drowned in the fog of interrupted sleep. He sat up fully, sheets tangling around his waist, the room tilting with vertigo and disbelief.

“Did what?” he growled, voice rough as gravel, scrubbing his hand down his face in frustration. “Tony, it’s three a.m. You should be asleep. I should be asleep. Why the fuck aren’t either of us asleep?”

There was a pause then—a kind of pregnant silence that Tony clearly crafted on purpose, dramatic enough to make Percy want to reach through the phone and throttle him.

“I discovered time travel.”

Time stilled.

Percy didn’t move. Couldn’t. The phone stayed clutched against his ear, mouth parted just slightly, as his brain scrambled to compute the words that had just shattered his night into shards of possibility. The wind whispered against the window like the universe itself leaned in.

“You… what?”

“I did it,” Tony repeated, but softer this time—reverent, like someone whispering at the altar of scientific divinity. “Actual, functioning, mapped, contained time travel. Controlled dimensional shifts via quantum phase alignment. It works, PJ. It works.”

Percy’s breath stuttered.

The ache that had been clawing through him just minutes ago—the thoughts of James, of hope, of what could never be—shifted, warped, and now stood up, tall and trembling, under the sheer weight of could.

Percy pressed his fingers hard against his temples, thumbs digging into the headache blooming behind his eyes. The phone, jammed awkwardly between his shoulder and cheek, felt heavy—like it carried far more than just Tony’s voice. His tone was fraying, brittle around the edges, sleep-deprived and raw.

“Tony,” he said slowly, voice cracking like old wood, “why would you do that? You told them you wanted no part in this. You told me you were out.”

There was a pause on the other end—not the cocky silence Tony usually wielded like punctuation, but something quieter. Hesitant. Almost guilty.

“I…” Tony began, voice dropping into something less manic, more human. “I knocked over a picture of me and Peter.”

Percy closed his eyes.

“It reminded me,” Tony continued, softer now, the excitement bleeding into something else—grief, maybe. Regret. “Reminded me of everything we lost. Peter was just a kid. He deserves more. A second chance. Barnes too.”

Percy collapsed back into the pillow, every muscle surrendering to exhaustion and disbelief. His chest tightened as tears pricked at the corners of his eyes, unwelcome and familiar. It felt like pressure building in a space too small to hold it. Like the gravity of the moment refused to stay contained.

“Tones…” he breathed, voice thick with ache. “You don’t have to do this.”

He tried to sound firm. Protective. But even he could hear the falter in his words—the way his argument trembled like scaffolding in a storm.

“You could put it away,” Percy offered, pleading in the undercurrent. “Forget it works. Just… forget. I won’t tell anyone. You can stay safe. With Pepper. With Morgan. With the life you finally let yourself have.”

There was movement on the other end—an intake of breath, a shift—and Percy could practically hear Tony shaking his head.

“You know I can’t,” he said quietly.

Percy bit down a curse, knuckles pressing against his mouth to stave off a sob. The weight of it all slammed into his ribs like a slow-moving train—unstoppable, aching, inevitable.

“You’re insane,” Percy muttered, voice barely above a whisper, exhausted and furious all at once.

“I’m a genius, PJ,” Tony replied, and there was that flicker again—of humor, of fire, of the man Percy had watched patch the sky back together more times than anyone should be asked.

“Those aren’t mutually exclusive,” Percy mumbled, and the words held both resignation and love.

The silence wasn’t just quiet—it was oppressive. A suspension of breath, of thought, of reality itself. It hovered between Percy and the phone resting uselessly on the edge of the pillow, heavy with possibility and dread. The air in his room felt thick, unmoving, like time had frozen under the weight of that one terrible, beautiful word: hope.

He curled in tighter, pressing his forehead to the damp warmth of his blanket, as if he could disappear into the cotton weave. His fingers gripped the edge of the sheet so fiercely the fabric wrinkled beneath his knuckles, bunched and trembling with the effort to hold something—anything—together.

His heart thundered in his chest, too fast and far too loud. Each beat was a hammerstrike against his ribs, resonant and jarring. It didn’t feel like his body anymore—it felt like someone else’s panic, someone else’s longing, someone else’s threat of unraveling.

And yet, it was entirely his.

The emotion rising inside him had no proper name. It was grief diluted with yearning. It was anger blurred by tenderness. It was the possibility of undoing everything, of rewriting tragedy into reunion, of reaching through space and time for him.

James.

Hope clawed its way up his throat, sharp and uninvited, a living thing composed of memory and desperation. It spoke in a voice he recognized but hadn’t heard in years—his own, younger, still believing: You could get him back. You could have another morning. You could be loved again. Whole again. Safe.

Percy squeezed his eyes shut, hard enough to see stars behind his lids. He bit the inside of his cheek, trying to stay grounded, trying to resist the betrayal of his own imagination. He didn’t want to hope. Not anymore. He had built his existence on a foundation of realism, of caution—of never expecting anything good, because good things always got ripped away.

Hope wasn’t gentle.

Hope was cruel. It was the feeling that had once told him his parents would come back. That James would wake up. That he’d survive all of it and still get to keep the people he loved.

But hope had lied.

And tonight, under the fractured moonlight that spilled like silver dust across his blanket, hope came creeping back. Soft. Insistent. Wrapping its hands around Percy’s throat and whispering, But what if you could?

He didn’t want to believe it.

But the ache in his chest told him he already did.

“Pick me up before you go over,” Percy says, voice rasping like it’s been dragged through gravel. The words scrape out past the knot in his throat, fragile and earnest. “I’ll help you.”

There’s a beat of silence—then the reply hums softly through the speaker, gentle and solid. “I already have the gear and a new brace ready for you.”

Percy lets out a breath like it’s been caught behind his ribs for days. It leaves him in a rush, too sharp to be called relief and too sudden to be comfort. He folds backward into the mattress, limbs surrendering all at once. The bedsprings creak under his weight like they’re bearing more than just his body—like they’re cradling a man who’s carried the world too long.

His legs snag and twist in the sheets, wrapping around him like vines that won’t let go. One arm drapes over his eyes, useless, shielding him from the unforgiving ceiling that looms overhead like it’s watching. Judging. Daring him to hope again.

Percy didn’t know what to feel. The idea of being picked up—of trusting someone to meet him at the edge, to help him cross back into the world—felt foreign. Strange. Like touching an old wound and realizing it wasn’t bleeding anymore, just aching in ways he hadn’t named yet.

Part of him wanted to move. To get up. To prepare. But something in his bones rebelled, locked in place by fear and the dizzy echo of possibility. His heart kicked against his ribs like it had somewhere to be.

The ceiling didn’t blink. The quiet didn’t break. Percy stayed tangled in cotton and uncertainty, listening to the promise hanging in the air like an unopened gift.

 

~~~

 

Percy arrived at May’s apartment just past twilight, the sky a dusky canvas of lavender and fading gold. Streetlights flickered to life with a soft buzz, casting long shadows across the cracked sidewalk. Estelle’s small suitcase thumped rhythmically against his leg with every step, a gentle reminder of the weight they carried—not just the clothes tucked inside, but the years stitched into each corner, each zip.

Her fingers were curled tightly around his, a firm grip—not clinging, not tentative, but assured. She didn’t fumble or grasp at only a few of his fingers the way she used to when her hands were half the size and her trust, though fierce, was still learning how to anchor itself. No, this was different. She held his whole hand now, her thumb resting against the inside of his wrist like she knew his pulse by heart.

The apartment hadn’t changed much. The same dent in the doorframe where Percy had once slammed it shut with his shoulder, too numb to notice. The same smell of thyme and old paper drifting through the hallway like a ghost. Yet everything felt alien. The last time he’d walked away from this building, Estelle had been seven years old, sobbing into his shirt about their parents turning to dust.

Back then, Percy had been terrified—barely feeling old enough to raise a child, with grief clawing up his throat and the responsibility of raising his kid sister pressing down on his shoulders like wet cement. The world had been splintering apart after the Snap, and Percy had stood on the fault line, trying to shield her from the cracks.

Now, she was thirteen. Her hoodie was oversized, sleeves pushed up to reveal bracelets made of elastic and faded string. She walked with quiet certainty, eyes scanning the horizon like she expected it to meet her gaze and flinch. Percy swallowed hard, the lump in his throat sharp with the realization that she wasn’t the little girl clinging to his leg anymore. She was growing faster than he could catch up with—outpacing his fears, his plans, even the promise he made to always be ready.

She still fit into his hand.

But it was her choice now.

Percy glanced sideways at her, just to make sure—just to reassure himself that she was real and here and still his. Her jaw was set in that determined way she’d inherited from their mother, and a soft breeze caught the strands of her hair, making them dance like flame. He squeezed her hand once, gently.

Estelle squeezed back.

And suddenly, the future didn’t feel quite so impossible.

The sky outside was the color of cooled iron—an ash gray canopy stretched tight across the horizon, heavy and still, like the universe itself was bracing for something it couldn’t name. The air smelled faintly of rain that hadn’t yet arrived, a tension clinging to every breeze, too delicate to be called wind.

Percy climbed the last stair slowly, the rubber wheels of Estelle’s suitcase thunking softly against each step, rhythmic and grounding. She walked beside him, fingers interlaced with his, her grip steady but quiet—like she sensed what this moment was meant to hold.

Before they could reach the door, it creaked inward.

May stood in the threshold as if she’d been summoned—not by noise, but by the tremor in the air. Her silhouette was backlit by the apartment’s warm glow, casting a soft halo around her shoulders. She didn’t speak. Didn’t blink. Her eyes locked onto Percy’s face, searching the ridges of emotion pressed tight behind his expression.

Her breath caught—just once. Then she shifted aside, wordlessly widening the doorway like an offering.

Her arms opened, instinctive and immediate. Not tentative. Not performative. Just...ready. She leaned forward slightly, not toward Percy, but toward Estelle, who stepped forward without hesitation. The moment was silent and sacred. Estelle fit herself against May’s chest with the same ease she’d had as a toddler diving into blankets—like she remembered this embrace even though years had folded themselves between now and the last time they’d shared it.

May held her close, chin resting lightly on the crown of Estelle’s head, one hand splayed across her back as if grounding her. And Percy—Percy stood still, not because he wasn’t ready, but because he didn’t know how to be anything but overwhelmed. The apartment behind May was the same—the chipped paint near the coat hooks, the faint scent of rosemary and citrus—but it felt different now. Not like the place where he lost everything. Like the place where something might begin again.

The hallway glowed in the warm spill of lamplight from May’s living room, golden and familiar, like time hadn’t dared touch the quiet inside. Percy stepped aside to let Estelle walk forward first, her suitcase bumping gently against the doorframe, mismatched socks peeking out beneath the hem of her hoodie. She looked up as May crouched instinctively—then froze, realizing she didn’t need to crouch anymore.

“I made lemon bars,” May said softly, the words lilting with the gentleness that always lived in her voice, even when the world was falling apart. “And the guest room’s stocked with enough books to build a fort. You can stay as long as you want, sweetheart.”

Estelle’s eyes lit instantly, bright with the kind of joy that could still spark through the cracks. She threw herself into May’s arms, arms that wrapped around her like memory—like muscle memory, really. Not even hesitant. May didn’t have to learn Estelle again; she already knew how to hold her.

Percy watched the way Estelle melted into the embrace—her frame taller, stronger, but still soft. Her smile buried in May’s shoulder, her hands loose at her sides the way she used to hug when she was small enough to fit on Percy’s hip. It was still her, just longer now. Lanky and fast-talking and carrying thirteen years of grit and grace stitched into her bones.

And when that hug ended—when Estelle pulled back and disappeared into the kitchen, already chattering about cinnamon tea—May turned toward Percy.

She didn’t speak. Just looked.

The glance wasn’t casual. It cut clean through him. Her gaze was steady, not demanding, but sharp—like someone trying to read the fine print hidden behind a smile. Percy didn’t shrink from it, but he didn’t meet it fully either. He just let her look. Let her see.

She didn’t know everything.

But she knew enough.

She knew that Percy’s voice had been just a little too quiet on the phone. That his text had come late and without emojis. That when he’d said thank you earlier, it had carried something behind it—something older than gratitude. Something closer to surrender.

She saw the weight on his shoulders, the way he’d pressed his thumb against his collarbone like he was grounding himself. The edges of exhaustion etched into his face. The tension in his jaw that didn’t belong to someone who was simply dropping his sister off for the night.

And she didn’t ask.

Didn’t push.

Just nodded.

Percy’s throat tightened, but he swallowed it down, murmuring a soft, “Thank you,” as he reached up to fix the crease in Estelle’s coat on its hook.

The porch light hummed gently behind them, casting soft halos onto the carpet of dew-glossed grass and making the air feel sacred—like the moment deserved its own kind of hush. Percy knelt, his knee pressing into the worn boards of May’s porch, settling beside Estelle with the gravity of someone kneeling before something holy. The cool breeze tugged at the loose curls around her face, stirring them like breath across the pages of a well-worn book.

Estelle looked up, her chin tilted in that determined, defiant way she inherited from Pepper but softened by Percy’s gentler grief. Her brows knit together, freckled skin drawn tight with a kind of ache that kids shouldn’t have to carry. But she did. She always did.

“You’ll be safe?” she asked, voice no louder than a leaf falling. “You’ll come back?”

The words threaded their way through Percy’s chest and tied knots he’d been trying not to acknowledge. They scraped against old wounds—the kind no medic could stitch shut. There was a rule, a sacred one, written between the lines of every unsent letter and goodbye wave held too long: Don’t make promises you can’t keep.

Percy had obeyed that rule like scripture. Had rehearsed his exits with clinical precision. No false hope. No soft lies.

But this wasn’t protocol. This was Estelle.

She clutched the stuffed pegasus tighter to her chest, its wings now frayed and dulled with love. A white thread dangled from one seam—loose, fragile, familiar. James had stitched it for her before he died. Six years old, she’d been. She didn’t let it out of her sight now. Percy wondered if she knew it was more than fabric. A tether, maybe. A legacy. A silent guardian.

And Percy broke the rule.

He smiled—gently, like laying a blanket over something precious—and let himself lie, just a little.

“Of course I’ll be safe,” he said, voice steady despite the tremor he buried. “I’ll do everything I can to get back to you.”

It wasn’t a promise. Not really. It was a vow made to the universe under breath. A prayer tucked into the folds of his jacket.

Estelle studied him—like she could see the fracture lines behind the calm. Her nod was slow, hesitant. Not convinced. But needing to believe enough to pretend she did.

Percy opened his arms, and she moved into them without hesitation. He wrapped her close, tucking her under his chin and breathing in the sun-warm scent of her curls and soap and lemon bars. He hugged her like a keepsake. Like something he needed to carry with him even if he couldn’t keep it.

May stood in the kitchen doorway behind them, one hand curled around the edge of the counter, eyes glassy. She didn’t interrupt. Didn’t wipe away the moment or try to ease the tension. She just watched—quiet, reverent. Bearing witness.

And when Percy stepped out into the morning, the door closing behind him with a final, gentle click, he let himself hope—for once—that maybe he hadn’t just made a promise he couldn’t keep.

The sports car gleamed under the faded amber glow of the streetlamp, its paint job pristine enough to reflect the cloudy sky like a mirror. It was one of Tony’s older models—a low-slung, impossibly sleek machine with chrome detailing and quiet menace beneath the hood. Percy recognized it instantly, even from across the sidewalk. Stark Tech v2, custom alloy chassis, and a control panel that probably held more memory than Percy’s entire childhood apartment.

But more than that, it was a relic. One Tony hadn’t driven in years.

Not since Morgan was born.

Percy remembered the last time it’d been out—Morgan still tiny, babbling through naps and drooling on everything within reach. The car had been voluntarily exiled to a private garage, because as Tony had once declared dramatically, “No toddler’s juice box is worth this upholstery.” Percy had agreed at the time. But now, tonight… the rules were different.

Tony leaned against the driver’s side door with his arms folded tightly, head dipped low beneath the line of his collar. He wasn’t in a suit—just a hoodie under a leather jacket, sneakers that looked worn and incongruent with the car’s polished image. His posture was taut, purposeful. But his eyes, when he saw Percy approach, flicked up with a tired kind of clarity. Wordless. Honest.

Percy adjusted the straps on his duffel bag and stepped into the streetlight, its glow carving out the edges of his jaw and casting faint shadows across his cheeks.

Neither of them spoke at first.

Tony moved toward the trunk with practiced precision, no theatrical gestures, just the quiet weight of a man who’d loaded gear like this more times than he cared to count. The lid creaked upward—a sound that Percy had come to associate with goodbyes and bad beginnings. Inside: a brutal kind of bounty.

Knives, their handles gleaming and balanced perfectly. Two sleek swords nestled in velvet-lined sheaths. Sidearms calibrated for speed, accuracy, chaos. Modular armor—some classic, some experimental. It looked less like a weapons cache and more like a grim care package.

“Your brace is up front,” he said, voice matter-of-fact. “Figured you’d want to throw it on during the drive. I made literally as many knives as I could—I may have blacked out during the design sprint, so there’s plenty. Take what you need. I know you’ve got your own kit, but upgrades never hurt.”

Percy didn’t respond right away. He stepped forward slowly, eyes scanning the array like he was choosing words instead of weapons. His fingers brushed against a blade, one with a curved hilt and a weight that felt familiar. He added it to his duffle with a kind of reverence—as if each piece were less equipment and more talisman.

He packed quietly. Deliberately.

Tony didn’t move. Just waited.

Percy finally reached for the last throwing knife—light, balanced, etched with a tiny phoenix on the grip—and zipped his bag shut with quiet finality.

He turned toward Tony and offered a pat on the shoulder. Not hard. Not dramatic. Just grounding.

“Thanks, Tones,” he murmured, voice low but sure.

Tony glanced at him, something unreadable flickering behind his eyes. A worn kind of affection. Tired loyalty.

“Not something you have to thank me for,” he said. “I’d do it even if we weren’t heading into something that could kill us.”

There was no bravado in the words. No quip. Just truth.

They stood there for a few more seconds—Percy with his bag slung across his back, Tony with his hand still resting on the edge of the trunk. Two soldiers with different scars, unified by the fact that they’d stopped pretending this kind of preparation wasn’t personal.

The car door creaked open with practiced ease. Percy slid into the passenger seat, bag between his feet, fingers wrapped tightly around the seatbelt as if anchoring himself. Tony settled in beside him, hands on the wheel, expression blank but focused.

The engine hummed to life—a low growl, elegant and restrained.

And then the silence took over.

The city moved past in a blur of neon signs and blinking intersections. Percy watched the lines of light stretch into haze, every stoplight flickering like a countdown. He wanted to speak, maybe joke about how out of place they looked, two men haunted by possibility in a car made for adrenaline. But the words tangled in his throat.

Neither of them were ready.

Not for the decisions ahead. Not for the gravity of timelines rewritten and lives that might—might—be restored. Percy felt it in his chest, a pressure that didn’t let up, heavy with grief and half-buried hope. Tony didn’t fidget, didn’t fill the quiet with nervous commentary. He just drove. Headlights cutting the dark like a promise unspoken.

Percy didn’t dare think of what was ahead, instead going through the familiar motions of putting on his brace.

 

~~~

 

Tony drove faster than was strictly necessary.

The sleek car carved through the early dawn like a blade through silk, its engine a soft hum of power barely contained. Streetlights flashed in rhythmic blinks across the windshield, reflecting in Tony’s steady eyes as he adjusted the grip on the wheel—not because they were late, but because it was easier to keep moving than sit still with what they were about to do.

The air conditioning roared to life, colder than comfort, slicing through the quiet like a challenge. Percy sat curled in the passenger seat, tucked small despite the bulk of his frame, wrapped tightly in the folds of James’s old leather jacket. The familiar scent—weathered leather, faint sea salt, something like pine—was a ghost pressed against his skin. He hadn’t worn it in years. It had hung, motionless, beside his bed like a monument to the life he never got to finish building.

At first, he’d tried to leave it untouched out of respect. Then he’d tried to wear it every day, hoping the grief would fade through repetition. Then—after too many panic attacks, too many nights staring at the ceiling with tears he couldn’t name—he folded it quietly and hung it up, trying to pretend it no longer mattered.

But it did.

It always had.

Now, as Tony weaved through sleeping roads, Percy clung to the jacket like armor. His knees were pulled to his chest, his hands buried in the lining, fingernails worrying the seams. James had loved this jacket. Had worn it with that effortless cool Percy never quite mastered. It felt too heavy on him now. Like it belonged to someone who hadn’t vanished.

He hadn't let himself feel the weight of it—not really. Not for two years.

Two years of avoidance. Two years of brushing grief off with humor, with distraction, with parenting and caretaking and wars that kept his heart busy enough to not break again. Two years of telling Estelle he was fine, telling Pepper he didn’t need to talk, telling himself that being strong meant not collapsing under the loss.

But now… now his stomach was twisting with the possibility of undoing that loss.

Now he was barreling toward a compound filled with whispered theories and dangerous hope. And the jacket pressed against his frame like a promise he wasn’t sure he was brave enough to touch.

Tony didn’t speak. Just glanced sideways once, catching the way Percy’s fingers curled into the collar like he was holding James’s hand through layers of time.

They didn’t talk about the speed.

They didn’t talk about the fear.

And Percy didn’t talk about the grief that was finally, slowly, clawing its way up from where he’d buried it.

The jacket still held James’s scent—leather and pine and faint gunmetal, like memory sealed in fabric. Percy pulled it tighter around his shoulders, not out of cold but out of need. It was too big for him now, had always been a little too broad in the shoulders and heavy in the lining, but that only made it feel more like James. Like being held.

The dog tag nestled in his palm, smooth and cold at first, but warming as Percy rubbed his thumb over the etched letters. James Buchanan Barnes. Each curve of metal bore the weight of familiarity—his name carved into steel, yet somehow still softer than the way Percy spoke it. He repeated it quietly, a rhythm just beneath breath. Not a mantra. Not a plea. Just something to keep James close.

The tag clicked gently as his thumb passed over the last letter. Again. Again. Again. Every pass was a heartbeat. Every indentation a bruise that hadn’t faded. Percy wasn’t ashamed of the way he reached for comfort. He wasn’t trying to hide the way he closed his eyes and let the scent wrap around him like muscle memory—how it felt like a hug, like reassurance, like maybe James was still watching, still anchoring him even in silence.

Missing James was never sharp anymore. It was dull. Unrelenting. Like phantom pain—the kind that didn’t scream but lingered. A limb he’d lost but still felt every time he tried to reach. Some days, Percy almost fooled himself into thinking he’d just forgotten to call. That James would walk through the door with that crooked grin and a six-pack of terrible beer, like no time had passed at all.

But it had.

And Percy didn’t try to force the grief into something poetic. He didn’t glamorize the ache. He just held the jacket tighter, let himself sit with the absence, and accepted that this was the shape of coping. Not fixing. Not healing. Just surviving. With every breath scented like James. With every letter engraved into cold metal.

With love that hadn’t gone anywhere. Just changed form.

The trees outside blurred into watercolor streaks of green and gold, the early morning light slicing through the windshield in fractured lines. Percy sat with his bag tucked between his boots, watching the road unfold like a ribbon stretched too tight. His mind was cluttered—static and storm. But he pressed the thoughts down, folded them small, and turned his attention to Tony behind the wheel.

Tony drove like the world owed him the right of way—knuckles loose on the steering wheel, sunglasses perched despite the overcast sky, one foot always just a little heavier on the gas than necessary. The Stark-modified vehicle purred beneath them, too smooth to be legal, too loud to be ignored.

The road to the Compound was long and familiar—gray stretches and winding turns leading to the heart of every catastrophe and every rescue plan they’d ever launched. It felt like approaching the center of something sacred, or dangerous, or both.

“Don’t be mean to them because they didn’t get it right,” Percy said, cutting through the hum of the engine. His voice was even, but carried weight. “At least not too mean.”

Tony scoffed and sped up, leaning into a curve with theatrical flair.

“I discovered time travel,” he said, throwing a hand toward the dash for dramatic effect. “Time. Travel. I’m allowed to be at least a little smug when Steve gets that ‘1940s dad disappointment’ look.”

Percy didn’t flinch as the car tilted through the bend. He just stared out toward the Compound gates growing larger on the horizon—where Steve Rogers stood like a monument to exasperation, arms crossed, brow furrowed, body language pure you could’ve just listened to me the first time.

“Don’t be cruel,” Percy murmured.

It wasn’t a reprimand. It was a reminder.

Tony’s mouth twitched—almost a smile, almost guilt. He didn’t answer, but his foot eased up just slightly on the gas as they approached the entrance.

Inside the glove compartment, a set of backup schematics shifted with the momentum. In Percy’s bag, blades glinted through folded canvas like truth waiting to be wielded. Ahead of them, Steve raised a hand slowly—not in greeting, but as if bracing for whatever mess Tony had dragged home this time.

The compound rose into view like an iron promise, all sharp lines and no-nonsense architecture, but the tension in the air was anything but clinical. As the road curved in a wide arc around the perimeter fencing, Tony eased the car out of the turn—then punched the accelerator just enough to let the tires hum in protest.

They shot past the gatepost and, more importantly, past Steve Rogers.

Percy blinked, registering Steve’s silhouette—arms crossed, shoulders rigid, jaw locked in a textbook expression of this better not be another headache.

Tony slammed the brakes without warning, the car jolting with a stubborn squeal before settling into a rumbling idleness a few feet past Steve. Without a word, Tony threw the gear into reverse. The wheels rolled backward with clinical precision until they were lined up perfectly with Steve, now glowering beside the driver’s window like some unamused sentinel of dignity.

Tony didn’t just roll down the window—he reclined his seat halfway to horizontal, elbow hanging out like this was a beach cabana instead of a federal installation. He tilted his head lazily to make sure Steve had a clear view of Percy sitting quietly in the passenger seat, duffle between his feet and restraint bundled tight behind his eyes.

Steve arched a brow. Slowly.

It was not the indulgent kind. It was the you woke me up for this? kind. The you could’ve just pulled up like a normal person kind.

Tony flashed a grin with all the subtlety of a man who’d once introduced himself to Congress in a weaponized suit.

Steve let out a breath, slow and deliberate, his gaze sliding past Tony to linger briefly on Percy. The twitch of his eyebrow betrayed him, just slightly.

“Why the long face?” he asked, voice startlingly sincere. “Let me guess—he turned into a baby?”

Steve didn’t dignify it with more than a single nostril flare. His frown deepened as he turned slowly, gaze sweeping over Tony before landing briefly on Percy.

“Among other things,” Steve said, tone clipped, as if the morning had already been too long. “What are you two doing here?”

Tony was already half out of the car, boot hitting pavement with soft finality. Percy followed wordlessly, shoulder brushing the doorframe before he leaned against the car, folding his arms as his thumb resumed tracing the dog tag strung around his neck—James Buchanan Barnes glinting briefly in the sun. It was a motion of habit, not distraction. Like grounding.

“It’s the EPR paradox,” Tony said, casual in a way that meant trouble. “Turns out, instead of pushing Lang through time, there’s a possibility you wound up winding time through Lang.”

He paced a half-step, hands gesturing like he was sculpting his theory mid-air.

“It’s slippery. It’s dangerous. Someone should’ve cautioned you.”

Steve’s brow lifted so subtly it felt like a warning.

“You did,” he said.

“Oh did I?” Tony’s mouth twitched into a smirk. “Well, thank god I’m here now.”

He raised his hand, palm outward, revealing the sleek band splayed across the back. It shimmered slightly—a microcircuit maze set into graphite plating.

“Fully functional time-space GPS,” Tony said, voice low and smug, though only Percy could detect the edge of pride behind the bravado. “Calibrated for temporal drift and quantum instability.”

Percy let the words wash past him, eyes flicking to Steve just in time to catch the restrained eye-roll. He said nothing, but his posture stayed taut, like he was bracing for the conversation to twist into something heavier.

The breeze that tugged at their jackets had the edge of a late spring storm—warm but unsettled, curling through the trees behind the Compound like the world itself was holding its breath. Tony dropped his hand to his side, the gesture finished, and shifted his weight with the ease of a man who’d been bracing for tension but was met with reluctant camaraderie instead.

Steve’s mouth twitched—barely. A flicker of a smile fought to push past the exhaustion on his face, but he swallowed it down. Even his posture softened by degrees, one brow raised in a way that suggested he wasn’t exactly amused… but he wasn’t angry either.

“I just want peace,” Tony said, lifting two fingers in a loose, unflashy peace sign. “Turns out resentment’s corrosive. And I hate that.”

Steve let out a breath that sounded like gravel turning over. “Me too,” he muttered.

They stood like that for a beat. Just long enough for silence to settle—not heavy, but thoughtful. The kind that comes when years of conflict don’t quite dissolve, but start to lose their bite.

Then Tony took a step forward, shoulders still squared but eyes steady.

“We’ve got a shot at getting these stones,” he said, tone quieter now. More measured. “But we need to be clear on priorities. Bring back what we lost—we hope, yeah.”

Percy nodded, his arms folded across his chest, the dog tag still clutched loosely in one hand. He didn’t speak, but his silence wasn’t passive. It was listening. Processing. Steeling himself.

Tony glanced at him, then back to Steve.

“But we also have to keep what we found,” Tony continued. “We have to. At all costs. We both have families. We’ve got kids to come home to. That has to be non-negotiable.”

Steve's expression darkened with memory—loss curling just behind the eyes. But he nodded slowly, jaw tightening in agreement.

Percy shifted slightly, the thumb of his right hand brushing over James’s name again—his voice cutting in with soft finality. “And maybe not die trying would be nice.”

Tony let out a low breath that could’ve been a laugh. Could’ve been regret.

Steve’s gaze flicked between them, lingering on Percy for half a heartbeat longer than expected. Then he stepped forward, closing the final few inches of distance, and extended his hand.

“Sounds like a deal,” Steve said.

Tony took it. The handshake wasn’t just symbolic. It was a boundary drawn in ash—a promise that whatever they were about to unravel, they wouldn’t let go of the things they’d built to survive this far.

The late afternoon light caught the faint scuff marks on the trunk’s surface, warm rays flickering across Tony’s face as he gave a short, decisive nod to himself—more reflex than ceremony. He glanced over his shoulder, a flick of the eyes that Percy had come to recognize instantly.

Without a word, Percy stepped forward. His gait was casual, but deliberate, hands slipping beneath the lid and popping the trunk with the kind of reverence reserved for heirlooms rather than hardware. Inside, nestled among tactical gear and a scattering of hastily folded blankets, lay the shield—curved metal, gleaming softly, as iconic in rest as it was in battle. Percy lifted it out carefully, his fingers brushing over the star at its center like he was grounding himself.

Tony accepted it with a quiet nod, weighing it in both hands before turning to face Steve.

Steve stared at it like it was something half-remembered and wholly feared. His breath caught, a flicker of conflict shadowing his features—the kind of emotion that couldn’t be reasoned away by strategy or duty.

“Tony, I don’t know...” he said, eyes locked on the shield, voice low.

Tony didn’t flinch. “Why?” he asked plainly. “He made it for you.”

Percy leaned against the edge of the car, arms folded, tone breezy. “And he’s gotta get it out of the garage before Morgan takes it sledding off the porch again.”

That earned Tony’s huff of a laugh, more breath than sound, his head bobbing in amused defeat. Without further ceremony, he stepped forward and pressed the shield into Steve’s hands. No room for negotiation. No room for guilt.

Steve’s fingers curled around the grip slowly, like muscle memory was arguing with restraint. Tony guided it into position, sliding it gently onto Steve’s arm. The way Steve held it—reverent, reluctant—said everything. He wasn’t sure what he was protecting anymore. Legacy? Family? Regret?

“Thank you, Tony,” Steve said, sincere enough to settle the dust.

Tony waved it off with a flick toward the shield. “Just keep that one low profile, alright? Didn’t bring enough for the whole class. Don’t want to start rumors about favoritism.”

“I am definitely his favorite,” Percy chimed in, stepping up beside Steve and patting his shoulder with mock solemnity. “Guy went full mad scientist on my brace last night. I’ve got hydraulic joints now, I think. May start leaping buildings.”

“You’ll never catch me admitting it,” Tony murmured, not quite hiding his grin, as he shut the trunk with a solid thunk.

“We are getting a whole team, right?” he asked, gaze flicking between them.

Steve nodded, eyes still on the shield. “We’re working on that now.”

 

~~~

 

Time was something fragile—Percy understood that in his bones.

Not just in the abstract way people talked about childhood passing too quickly or memories warping at the edges, but in the way reality actually split and buckled when Kronos had twisted it around his golden fingers. Percy had felt time unravel under his feet before—rushing backward, doubling in on itself, slowing to a crawl during moments of near-death clarity. And maybe that chaos had marked him in some way, made him suspicious of how easily time bent when power pressed against it hard enough.

So yeah—Percy knew time was messy. And dangerous. And never to be trusted with ego.

At least when it was magic, when gods were involved, he could feel his footing. There was ritual and rhythm in divine power, some cosmic order to its madness. That was his language, his battlefield.

But this? This was a team of mortals building a time machine in a garage.

The wires, the calculations, the cooling units, the quantum mechanics—all brilliant, sure, and impressive in ways Percy wouldn’t pretend to fully grasp, but it felt... exposed. Vulnerable. Mortal. And that’s what rattled him.

Tony might have had a mind like a supernova, but he wasn’t born of Athena’s logic or Hephaestus’s craft. He was human. Brilliant, flawed, endlessly determined—human. Bruce, too, despite the green complication. Rocket was some kind of chaos-coded raccoon creature, but he still had blood that could be spilled, bones that could be broken. Even Nebula, for all her biomechanical precision, carried trauma in her programming.

Percy didn’t mean it arrogantly—he hated even thinking it that way—but it was true. They were bound to rules he’d spent his life breaking just by existing.

Which was why he was happy—relieved, honestly—to let them do the heavy lifting.

He wasn’t built for blueprints or algorithmic timelines. He didn’t speak in tech-speak or quantum predictions. Percy knew stories, knew battles, knew how to anchor someone through grief and fire—but threading the needle between past and present to recover what they’d lost? That required another kind of hero.

So he sat back. Watched. Listened to Tony and Bruce argue over projections, watched Rocket toss tools over his shoulder with zero concern for where they landed, saw Nebula's eyes scan patterns no one else could see.

The conference room looked less like a hub of strategic genius and more like the aftermath of a particularly ambitious group project. Papers were scattered across every available surface, some crumpled, some stained with cold coffee. Holographic charts flickered on the far wall, half-deconstructed equations and tangled timelines swimming across the display like digital chaos. Someone—probably Bruce—had scrawled coordinates on the whiteboard in increasingly frustrated handwriting, now slanting downward as if giving up halfway through the math.

Percy lay on the floor, back pressed against a worn couch cushion, legs stretched out and head tilted toward the ceiling like it held divine inspiration. Tony was sprawled in one of the wheeled office chairs, spinning lazily between every other sentence. Natasha had her feet propped on the edge of the table, arms crossed over her chest as she stared up at the timeline projection with the quiet ferocity of someone willing it to make sense. Bruce sat with his hands steepled, eyes darting between notes and nothing, muttering what sounded suspiciously like curses in Latin.

It was late—too late—and exhaustion clung to all of them like humidity. Percy could feel it behind his eyes, in the weight of his arms, in the way even snark felt like too much effort.

None of them were speaking with any logic anymore. They’d crossed the threshold from strategy into delirium.

“We could go to, like, ancient Norway,” Bruce offered suddenly, rubbing at his temples. “The stones were probably worshipped. Or buried. Or thrown into a fjord for emotional symbolism.”

“That is... both wildly improbable and weirdly poetic,” Natasha murmured.

Tony made a noise that might’ve been agreement or indigestion, hard to tell. “I’m not ruling out any era that had swords.”

Percy exhaled deeply, thumbing the edge of James’s dog tag—a quiet, grounding gesture amid the swirling absurdity. The metal was cool against his skin, anchoring him in grief and grit as he tilted his head and muttered, “Someone said ‘Stone Age’ earlier and no one followed up. Just saying.”

“I think that was me,” Tony offered, voice muffled as he reclined dramatically across two wheeled chairs. “I also suggested Atlantis and the Moon, which I stand by. Very mystical. Very underused settings.”

Percy snorted, a dry laugh escaping as he shook his head. “I’m the prince of Atlantis. I think I’d know if my family had cosmic relics tucked away in the royal cutlery drawer, thanks.”

That brought the room to a pause, silence settling over the group like a fog. Tony blinked, then squinted as if trying to squint the memory back into place. “I totally forgot about that.”

“He only told Bruce and me in Wakanda, right before the snap,” Natasha said, leaning forward with that sharp, deliberate cadence she used when facts mattered. “His whole appearance shifted. Formal. Regal. It was weird.”

Percy rubbed the back of his neck, almost sheepishly. “My father insists I look presentable in Wakanda. Political optics. Diplomatic respect.” He gestured vaguely toward his usual hoodie and scuffed boots. “Not exactly my default mode.”

Tony squinted again, as if trying to mentally Photoshop Percy into flowing robes and ceremonial jewelry. “I cannot for the life of me imagine you as a prince,” he muttered, sounding like it physically pained him to entertain the notion.

“That’s only because you’ve seen me play tea party with Estelle and Morgan,” Percy replied with a raised finger, his tone proud and unbothered.

“That’s fair,” Bruce snorted, not even looking up from the mess of papers he was drawing circles on.

Tony perked up, gesturing animatedly. “Hey, you haven’t seen him during tea time. This guy? He goes all out. Mini sandwiches. Glitter crowns. He even narrates in fake British accents.”

“I do,” Percy hummed in agreement, the corners of his mouth tugging up. “Best uncle-slash-older brother there is. It’s documented.”

“I’m still the best older sister you and Estelle have,” Natasha said, her smirk sharpening with playful challenge.

Percy turned to her, his expression softening in that way it always did when affection passed through his chest like sunlight. “No one said you weren’t.”

It was absurd, this conversation. Ridiculous, even. But underneath the banter was the ache—the shared knowledge that none of this was guaranteed. That the last time they’d gathered like this, half of them had been lost. And if time travel had taught them anything, it was that grief made strange bedfellows, and strange hours made for tender confessions.

Ideas were flying like sparks—bright, frantic, and mostly useless. The room had long since crossed from strategy to delirium, slipping into the kind of late-night chaos where logic tapped out and imagination took over. Every suggestion felt half-impossible, half-inspired: half-whispered legends and half-baked science jammed together like puzzle pieces that didn’t quite fit but still made a picture if you squinted. They weren’t solving anything. But maybe they weren’t supposed to—not yet. Maybe this was the prelude. The part where madness stirred genius into waking up.

And so they kept going.

Each myth and maybe tossed into the air like dice, hoping chance would turn one of them into revelation. Ancient Norway. Lost tribes. Moon temples. Atlantis, again. Someone—Bruce, probably—muttered something about Viking burial stones and fractal energy signatures, which prompted Tony to declare he was “ninety percent sure that was a plot point in Thor’s autobiography, volume two.” Natasha didn’t even blink. Percy did, but only because he’d read volume two and found it “surprisingly tender.”

Eventually, exhaustion won.

The migration to the horizontal began with a sort of unspoken surrender. Tony was first, stretching out across two conference tables like a dramatic corpse in a Renaissance painting. Natasha claimed the third table, arms folded beneath her head, boots dangling over the edge like she was daring someone to start a conversation. Bruce melted into the carpet like it was memory foam, limbs askew in every direction, mumbling something about spinal alignment and defeat.

Percy claimed the couch with the quiet efficiency of someone who’d had a plan all along. It was worn, threadbare at the corners, still vaguely smelling of lemon cleaner and adrenaline. He curled into one side of it, letting the cushions cradle his aching body. When Tony groaned theatrically from his table-top throne—“Why does he get the couch? I'm literally funding this madness”—Percy didn’t even sit up.

“My leg’s killing me,” he said flatly, shifting to exaggerate the stiffness.

Silence.

Tony grumbled into his jacket. “Fine.”

Natasha smirked without opening her eyes. Bruce made a sympathetic noise and slid a notebook under his own neck like a pillow. Percy, victorious, tugged a nearby throw blanket over himself like a crown. They were brilliant minds. Strategic leaders. Heroes. And tonight, they were just tired bodies sprawled in a too-bright room, surrounded by chaos and companionship and the quiet hum of “we’ll figure it out.”

The room had long slipped past coherent strategy and into the soft static of shared exhaustion—the kind that made conversation loop and fragment like static-filled radio signals. Natasha tucked an arm behind her head, twirling a pen between her fingers like she was prepping for a mission that involved precise wrist control and sheer willpower. Her voice cut through the murk like a blade made of dry wit.

“That time stone guy,” she prompted, eyes flicking toward the ceiling as though it might cough up the name.

Bruce, barely lifting his chin from where it rested on his folded arms, yawned so hard it cracked his spine. “Doctor Strange,” he muttered, sluggish and vaguely annoyed that words still existed.

“Yeah, what kind of doctor was he?” Natasha continued, almost rhetorically, her pen still spinning like an orbiting satellite.

Tony didn’t even lift his head. Just rubbed his eyes with the heels of his hands and said, “Ears-Nose-Throat meets rabbit-from-hat.” His voice was scratchy, half-choked with fatigue and sarcasm. “Bit of a stage flair. Some decent hand choreo.”

Bruce gave a sleepy chuckle. “Nice plays in the village though,” he tagged on, voice trailing like he was half-remembering a review he read ten years ago.

Tony nodded slightly, eyes closed like he was narrating a dream. “Yeah... on Sullivan Street?”

Bruce shook his head without lifting it. “Bleecker.”

Percy, curled against the couch cushions and mentally trying to track the threads of logic now tangled like yarn in a toddler’s grip, frowned. “Wait... he lived in New York?”

Bruce cracked one eye open and blinked slowly. “Uh, yeah,” he confirmed, voice dry.

Tony’s sarcasm sparked like a match. “No, no—he lived in Toronto.”

Bruce didn’t even flinch. “On Bleecker and Sullivan,” he continued, unfazed and weirdly confident.

Tony scoffed. “Have you been listening to anything this entire time?”

Percy sat up slightly, lips parted like he’d just realized he was holding an answer in his hands this whole time and hadn’t noticed the shape of it. “Guys...” His voice was low. Measured. A warning and a revelation stitched into one. “If you pick the right year, there are three stones in New York.”

Time paused (haha).

The room, once alive with the murmur of collapsing thoughts and nonsensical suggestions, went still. Natasha’s pen dropped into her lap with a soft clink, her eyes widening as if the words had pulled her into sudden awareness. Bruce jerked upright, glasses slipping down the bridge of his nose, pupils sharp now. And Tony—Tony’s eyes snapped to Percy with the sudden precision of someone who’d just had the coffee finally kick in.

“Shut the fuck up,” Natasha breathed, reverent and shaken, the way someone speaks to a miracle in disguise.

 

~~~

 

The shift in energy was palpable.

Before, the room had pulsed with static—ideas sparking off dead ends, voices low and unsure, timelines fragile beneath the weight of grief and desperation. But once Percy uttered the words “Three stones. In New York.” the fog seemed to lift. Focus sharpened like a blade pulled from rust. They had a map now. Not perfect, not guaranteed—but a direction. A rhythm. A purpose.

Suddenly everything felt possible.

Blueprints were finalized. Gear was calibrated. Chronometers blinked steadily with green light, signaling readiness across half the compound. The machine itself—compact and deceptively quiet—stood like the eye of a storm in the center of the lab. And while Percy still couldn’t shake the feeling that time was made of glass held too close to a flame, at least now they knew which window to aim for.

All that remained was the test.

Clint offered. Quietly. Firmly. The words weren't dramatic, but they landed with weight. He stepped forward without ceremony, a duffle already slung over one shoulder and that slightly haunted gleam in his eyes—the one that said he’d lost too much and was willing to risk whatever remained.

Natasha went still.

She didn’t argue. Didn’t scold. Just looked at him with something carved deep—pain and pride, tangled like ivy. Percy saw it in the way her jaw tightened, the way her hand hovered briefly near Clint’s arm before pulling back like touching him would break the spell of permission.

“I’ll bring it back,” Clint said, voice low but steady. “Just a few seconds. Enough to prove it works.”

Natasha nodded, but her gaze lingered longer than necessary. Percy caught her eyes just briefly—saw something he couldn’t name, but understood. Not fear, exactly. Not doubt. Just… hope. Sharp enough to cut.

As Clint stepped into position, the air around the platform seemed to vibrate, humming with anticipation. Bruce murmured last-minute calculations. Tony tapped commands into the console with clinical precision. Percy stood in the background, fingers resting over the dog tag around his neck, watching the seconds stretch.

If this worked… They could finally go.

The room was holding its breath.

They all stood clustered around the quantum platform, the light overhead flickering in brief bursts like the circuitry itself was bracing for what came next. The machine hummed with quiet, rising energy, casting a low blue glow onto their faces—each one drawn tight with tension.

Clint stepped up to the platform, boots heavy against the metal grate. His silhouette looked both too confident and too small beneath the weight of the test. The sleek helmet slid into place with a soft hiss, locking around his jawline. His eyes flicked toward the console, toward Bruce and Tony, then toward Natasha—nervous, but resolute. This was happening.

Bruce’s fingers moved quickly over the control panel, flicking switches and adjusting dials like he was coaxing time itself into cooperation. “Alright, Clint,” he said, voice steady despite the fatigue. “We’re going in three…”

Clint rolled his shoulders, grounding himself. Natasha took a half-step forward, her hand latching onto Percy’s arm—tightly, instinctively. He didn’t pull away. He just shifted closer, sensing how much this moment was etched into her bones.

“Two…” Bruce said.

The grate beneath Clint’s feet began to spin, softly at first, then with more momentum. Lights flared across the platform, illuminating the veins of technology threaded through its base like the roots of something ancient and impossible.

“One.”

The air cracked.

With a shimmer and a sudden collapse of light, Clint vanished—sucked downward as the wormhole opened beneath him. The quantum vortex swirled in place for a heartbeat longer, a blur of particles pulled into compression, then stilled. The platform went quiet.

Silence filled the room—thick and brittle, like glass waiting to shatter. They stared, unmoving. Natasha’s hand remained on Percy’s arm. Tony didn’t blink. Bruce leaned forward, eyes fixed on the console as if will alone could summon Clint back.

Only five seconds, Percy reminded himself. He repeated it like a prayer. Five seconds.

But five seconds had never stretched so long. Not across this kind of distance. Not when time itself was flexing, unpredictable, dangerous. Percy’s hand crept to his chest, fingers curling around the dog tag resting there. The metal was warm from contact, but it felt cold in his palm. Somewhere deep inside, hope stirred—a fragile, aching thing. The kind that lived in the silence before proof.

The air snapped open with a thunderous crack, and Clint reappeared like a body flung from time itself. One moment, silence—and then sound and mass and motion exploded into presence.

He landed hard, knees slamming into the platform, shoulders curling inward with the force of reentry. His head hung low, helmet half-askew, breath clawing its way out of his lungs in wet, ragged gasps. A deep groan reverberated from his chest, not pain exactly—but disorientation, shock, a return too heavy for muscle memory.

Natasha and Percy were already moving before their minds caught up. The ramp clanked beneath their feet as they rushed forward, followed in quick succession by Tony and Lang. Natasha dropped to her knees beside Clint, her voice low and urgent.

“Hey—hey, look at me,” she said, one hand cupping his cheek and the other steadying his shoulder.

Clint’s eyes fluttered open with effort. “Yeah,” he rasped, voice gravel-scraped. “Yup…” His fingers twitched, trembling, and he lifted something in his right hand—a worn, dusty baseball glove clutched so tightly his knuckles were white.

He stared at it for a beat like he'd forgotten it was even there. Then he blinked, swaying slightly, and began to push himself upright. Natasha helped him, bracing against the weight of his trembling limbs.

Percy stood just a breath away, visibly anxious, carefully searching Clint for any sign of injury, any clue of what had just happened in those collapsing folds of quantum time. “You okay?” he asked, voice taut with worry.

Clint nodded slowly, still orienting himself. “Yeah,” he exhaled, gaze drifting like he was trying to anchor himself in the now. He looked down again at the glove—then up—and pressed it gently against Natasha’s chest.

“It worked,” he said, voice cracking around disbelief.

Clint’s eyes found Tony across the ramp. The disbelief gave way to something sharper—triumph.

He tossed the glove, a soft arc through the air, and Tony caught it with practiced ease. “It worked,” Clint repeated, firmer now.

And for a moment, none of them spoke. Just stood there, surrounded by flickering lights, cooling metal, and the echo of possibility. What Clint had returned with wasn’t just proof—it was hope made tangible.

 

~~~

 

The calm that followed Clint’s return lasted all of thirty seconds. Then, the room erupted into motion.

The team surged into activity like a tide breaking open—voices overlapping, boots pounding across concrete floors, hands grabbing at gear and tablets and suits as decisions unfolded in real time. Assignments were given, alliances drawn. Each pair was designated a mission, a moment in history, and the place they’d need to be to retrieve their fragment of the Infinity Stones. Time had become a battlefield, and they were suiting up like soldiers of the impossible.

Percy moved through the chaos like a steady flame—focused, fluid, already halfway geared up before some had even found their suit cases. He’d long mastered the art of preparation: this wasn’t adrenaline, it was ritual. The suit itself, red and white with threads of tech laced through its veins, clung to him like second skin. But Percy’s version told a story that stretched further than quantum mechanics.

Over the uniform, he pulled on James’s enchanted leather jacket—well-worn, impossibly strong, and humming faintly with protective runes sewn into the lining. It fit him like memory, the collar folding just so over his shoulders. At his throat, the dog tags lay cool and heavy against his clavicle, one etched with his name and one with a date only he understood. Legacy wrapped in steel.

Every movement was efficient: knives slipped into hidden sheaths at his hips and forearms, a pair of modified pistols settled into twin holsters beneath the jacket, and tucked inside the seams were tiny pouches and pockets—each holding a secret or a solution. Percy didn’t carry weapons. He carried readiness.

Finally, the twin swords came last—gifted to him by Tony in a rare moment of unspoken trust. Their hilts gleamed as he strapped them across his back in an X that felt like armor and intention. The weight was familiar, grounding. They weren’t just tools; they were promises. To protect. To endure. To return.

Around him, the others buzzed—Lang cracking jokes to mask tension, Rocket barking instructions while typing furiously, Nebula checking calibrations with eerie stillness. Natasha met Percy’s gaze briefly, gave a small nod that spoke of trust, and continued pairing teams.

They weren’t just heading into the past. They were threading needles through time with the hope that the world could still be stitched back together.

The common room buzzed with muted tension—stray conversations, footsteps echoing off steel, the distant hum of quantum tech still settling into its bones. In the midst of the noise, Lang sidled up beside Percy with all the subtlety of a man who’d never quite mastered silence. He gestured vaguely at Percy’s leg with a flick of his chin, eyes squinting like the question had been puzzling him for hours.

“So,” Lang said, voice awkward and a little too loud, “what’s with the fancy gear on your leg? Is it to help you kick better or something?”

Percy didn’t even look directly at him—just gave a slow, unimpressed side-glance that somehow communicated a full essay’s worth of sarcasm. Around the compound, Percy was known. Not famous, not showy. But recognized. A few had seen him walking the halls with a faint limp, the brace visible beneath his pant leg. Fewer still knew the story behind it. He’d almost forgotten some people wouldn’t.

“It’s a brace,” Percy said flatly, voice stripped of emotion. “A while ago, some people broke and rebroke my leg so many times it was impossible to fix. I walk with a permanent limp without it.”

Lang blinked, momentarily deflated. “Oh… damn. That sucks.”

Percy tilted his head, the corner of his mouth twitching with mischief. “My life sucks,” he responded, deadpan. It wasn’t self-pity—it was theatrical. He said it intentionally, dragging the moment out, watching Lang squirm like a puppy caught in a laser tripwire. Percy needed something to laugh about, and watching Lang flounder in social discomfort was turning into today's personal highlight.

From across the room, Natasha’s voice rang out like a disapproving older sister. “Jackson,” she scowled. “Stop being an ass.”

Percy raised an eyebrow, a sharp, unbothered arc that practically shouted, Have you met me?

Natasha sighed, pinching the bridge of her nose. “Fair point.”

Lang glanced between them, still halfway trying to figure out what just happened. “He didn’t say anything.”

“He didn’t need to,” Clint chimed in without missing a beat, stepping into the conversation with a theatrical widening of his eyes. “It was all in his eyes.”

The room rippled with quiet amusement, tension defused for a breath. Percy didn’t smile—but the glint in his gaze lingered like sunlight behind storm clouds.

The platform was quiet—its polished metal catching the low gleam of overhead lights like the stage before a performance no one wanted but everyone knew they had to do. One by one, they stepped into formation, the last shuffle of boots echoing in the hush. The air held weight, solemn but electric, like lightning coiled inside silence.

Percy stood between Natasha and Clint, shoulders squared and spine tall, his twin swords crossing at his back like a vow carved into steel. The enchantment threaded through James’s jacket hummed faintly against his ribs, protective and intimate. His brace clicked softly as he adjusted his stance, the motion habitual, mechanical, grounding. The dog tag at his chest felt heavier than usual. As if it knew what was coming.

Steve stepped forward into the center of the circle—his posture straight, commanding without force. Strength radiated off him not in bursts but in steady waves, like something earned through survival, through scars.

“Five years ago,” Steve began, voice steady, pitched to reach every ear, “we lost.”

He looked around the circle as he spoke—at Nebula, quiet and coiled with tension; at Rocket, who rolled a piece of scrap metal between his claws like he couldn’t bear stillness; at Bruce, expression taut despite his gentleness. And then, Steve’s gaze drifted to Percy.

“We lost friends,” Steve continued, “we lost family... we lost part of ourselves.”

Percy didn’t flinch, but the words threaded through his chest like a phantom ache. A part of himself. James. He could feel the name stir beneath his skin, curled into memory.

“Today,” Steve said, voice sharper, “we have a chance to take it all back.”

He stepped up beside them, confidence carved into every movement. “You know your teams. You know your missions. Get the Stones. Get them back.”

The circle tightened. One by one, fists reached into the center and touched. Not aggressively—not with bravado—but with quiet resolve. Percy added his last, the black leather of his glove pressing against Natasha’s knuckles, against Clint’s. Against the choice to fight.

“One round trip each,” Steve said. “No mistakes. No do-overs.”

Beside Percy, Natasha drew a slow breath that barely moved her chest, but her fingers curled a little tighter.

Steve glanced around again. “Most of us are going somewhere we know,” he said evenly. “But that doesn’t mean we’ll know what to expect. Be careful. Look out for each other. This is the fight of our lives.”

Tony’s smile was soft and sideways—more understanding than smug—as he met Steve’s gaze across the circle.

“And we’re gonna win.”

Steve’s final words hung in the air, braided in every heartbeat and breath.

Tony stepped back with quiet authority. “Whatever it takes.”

“Good luck,” Steve said.

A beat of silence followed.

“He’s pretty good at that,” Rocket murmured, looking up at Lang with an oddly reverent twitch of his whiskers.

“Right?” Lang replied, eyebrows raised, earnest awe tucked into his grin.

The subtle whir of the Quantum suits hummed through the air, faint and constant, like a heartbeat waiting to thunder. The platform, sleek and matte with its glowing rings pulsing softly, now felt more like a threshold than a machine. One by one, everyone drifted toward the edges—pulling inward with quiet tension, not out of fear, but ritual. Bracing. Preparing. Backs straightening. Hands tightening around gear. Silent goodbyes tucked into movements.

“Alright, you heard the man,” Tony called, breaking the charge of stillness with practiced swagger. He spun toward Bruce, who stood poised at the control panel, fingers hovering over keys like a pianist before the downbeat. “Stroke those keys, jolly-green.”

Percy snorted softly through his nose, elbowing Clint with a dry grin. “That sounds horrible.”

Clint bit hard on the inside of his cheek, shaking with barely contained laughter. Natasha didn’t bother to hide hers—just rolled her eyes with the long-suffering fondness of someone used to their nonsense. “You two are ridiculous.”

Percy’s smile lingered, but it frayed at the edges as he glanced down at the tiny model plane cradled in his hands—Rocket’s engineering, half genius, half madness. A miniature vessel capable of navigating space and timelines. He turned it over with care, thumb brushing the delicate wing.

Rocket stomped closer, arms crossed like an offended raccoon god. “You promise to bring that back in one piece.”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” Percy said, brushing him off with a smirk that didn’t quite reach his eyes. “I’ll do my best.”

Rocket narrowed his gaze, tail lashing. “As promises go, that was pretty lame.”

Bruce stepped forward then, silent until now, positioning himself beside Steve and Scott Lang. He glanced once at Percy’s hands, then at Rocket, and wisely said nothing.

Across the platform, Natasha shifted her weight—barely a movement, graceful and instinctive—and looked toward Steve. Her expression was unreadable at first, then softened into something tender.

“See you in a minute,” she said quietly.

Steve’s smile was subtle but steady, the kind of smile that said I believe you even when he couldn’t promise anything back. He gave a small nod—permission, hope, maybe a prayer.

The platform thrummed to life beneath their boots—quiet at first, like the low murmur of promise on the horizon. Rings of light shimmered in blue and white, pulsing upward in rhythmic waves, coaxing time itself to bend. A soft breeze lifted around them, not from wind, but from the friction of reality beginning to loosen.

Percy stood tall, a still point in the storm of possibility. For years, hope had been a brittle thing—distant, unreachable, almost offensive in its fragility. But now, standing on the edge of this impossible gamble, he felt it bloom—slow and unfamiliar, like green sprouting through scorched earth.

So close. He was so close to bringing James back. To hearing the soft lilt of his voice, feeling the weight of his touch, reclaiming the future that had shattered like glass.

Percy’s fingers brushed the dog tag hanging around his neck, the metal cool against his skin, as if time recognized the name engraved on it. His grip on Rocket’s tiny ship tightened—fragile and ridiculous and utterly vital. He tilted his head upward, eyes catching the shimmer of the containment field overhead, and a small smile bloomed across his face. Not wide. Not bold. But real. Gently defiant.

The others braced themselves. Natasha reached out and gave Clint’s wrist a squeeze. Bruce checked the coordinates one last time. Tony adjusted something on his chest plate with a precision that looked practiced, but carried the weight of goodbye.

And then—with one final, electric snap—the light collapsed inward. It swallowed them whole, brilliant and thunderous.

The platform emptied in a blink, leaving behind only silence, the hum of residual energy, and a shimmer in the air where seven hearts had just leapt into the past.

Notes:

I have a question. I know this is like the end, but would people like a version of this were every installment is put into one entire book thing. Like would that be something you’re interested in or would have preferred? I prefer a bunch a one shots sometimes which is why I did it the way I have. But would some people like a full thing or would have preferred it? It wouldn't be much of a big deal to put the installments into a couple of full books, just a bunch of copy and pasting.

I rewrote this a lot which is why it didn’t come out when I wanted to, that and I had work. I have certain breaking points and what I want each chapter to focus on, but I want the chapters to be long, so I had to find ways to make the chapters long while not going passed where I wanted them to end. I ended up liking the rewritten version a lot more anyway.

I'm very excited for the next chapter!!!! Because I've had one scene written for a very long timeeee!!!! I'm sure some of you have noticed a pattern when it comes to me saying that. It means nothing good.

Chapter 3: Since I had you here with me

Notes:

Hey, so this came out quick.
This is a double update in a way. posted same day as the last chapter.

Time fractured around Percy like a kaleidoscope set on fast-forward—fragments of color, light, memory, and motion pulled into a whirlpool he couldn’t see but could feel. Traveling through time was disorienting on a good day, and this was something far more vicious. Every nerve in his body screamed as they were pulled into the quantum stream, compressed into an instant, stretched across decades, flung through constellations of what-ifs and almosts.

It was worse than shadow travel.

Shadow travel at least had rhythm, had the cold hush of magic stitched into its bones. Percy had learned to ride the shadows like waves, to brace for the twist of space folding in on itself. But this—this felt like tumbling blind through a hurricane spun by science instead of sorcery.

And being blind did not help.

He could feel every shift, every centrifugal lurch in his gut as they were hurled toward their destination. His equilibrium reeled with each hard snap of momentum, his stomach swooping and dipping like gravity couldn’t make up its mind. The world around him was both too much and not enough—a storm of motion with no image to anchor him.

Then—impact.

Not a crash, but the subtle thump of reality catching up. Time spit them out like chewed gum, and his feet hit dry ground with a crunch. He bent his knees automatically, bracing against the shock, breaths coming fast as the world steadied beneath him.

The air was thin. Grains of dust scraped against his tongue.

The planet smelled like ruin.

It was desolate. Barren. The kind of place untouched by light or warmth, where wind was just the ghost of movement and silence reigned like a god. Every footstep echoed too loud, every breath stirred sand that clung to his skin like ancient memory. The terrain felt more dead than dormant—rock fractured into spires, sand stretched out in sheets of lifeless grey.

A wasteland.

And maybe that was the point.

Percy flexed his fingers around the hilt of one of his knives, pulse evening out. Of course this was where the Stone had been left. No one would look here. No one would want to. It was a graveyard without bones. A holding place for power too dangerous to be remembered.

And now, they were walking into it.

The air on the launch deck was tense—thick with gravity that had nothing to do with mass. Time heist or not, there was no mistaking it: this was a war mission dressed in lab coats and quantum tech. And war had its own quiet rituals.

Rhodey’s voice cut through the hush like a scalpel. “Don’t do anything crazy,” he said, serious and grounded, eyes locked on Percy. There was no humor in it—just the weight of experience behind the words. The kind of tone worn thin by years of firefights and too many funerals.

Percy nodded once, a silent promise etched in the set of his jaw.

Rhodey’s gaze flicked to Natasha, steady and familiar. “Get that Stone and come back,” he added. No need to elaborate. Vormir didn’t need explaining.

The pairing felt deliberate. Natasha’s silence held the edge of someone walking into something she already understood too well. Percy felt it—the ripple in her stance, the quiet acceptance of cost. They were the ones heading to Vormir. The others—Rhodey, Nebula, and Clint—would go after the Power Stone.

There was something poetic about that. Something sharp.

Rocket’s ship sat waiting like a coiled metal beast, its curves gleaming dully under sterile lights. Percy and Natasha moved with unspoken coordination, climbing aboard with packs slung tight and expressions unreadable. No one asked why Percy looked more focused than nervous. Maybe they’d all learned not to question calm in people who’d lived through chaos.

As the door hissed shut behind them, Rhodey called out across the deck—part command, part prayer.

“You guys watch each other’s six.”

It was a soldier’s send-off. Short, sharp, and soaked in trust.

The engines hummed. The launch lights strobed. And Percy felt the familiar pull in his gut—not from the ship, but from the ache of knowing they weren’t just jumping through space. They were diving into sacrifice.

 

~~~

 

The ship skimmed low over the jagged horizon of Vormir, its hull catching the pale glint of starlight refracted off grit and memory. Through the front viewport, the landscape unfolded in eerie quiet—rolling dunes of ash-colored sand, interspersed with narrow ribbons of stagnant water that shimmered like mercury under the moon’s muted shadow.

Natasha stood at the helm, one gloved hand braced against the metal frame, her eyes fixed forward. The window did little to soften the view—it only sharpened the contours of desolation. She breathed in softly, almost reverently.

“Wow,” she murmured. Her voice wasn’t full of wonder. It was something quieter—a kind of awe laced with dread.

Behind her, Percy tilted his head slightly, sensing the gravity that hung around the planet like a mourning veil. Vormir didn’t feel empty—it felt abandoned. Even without sight, Percy could feel it pressing against his ribs like a warning carved into air.

“In different circumstances,” he said, voice low, almost thoughtful, “this would be totally awesome.”

He meant it, too. The planet had scale—towering spires of stone like forgotten gods, sweeping valleys etched with wind-carved scars. It felt ancient. Sacred. But it also felt wrong.

There was no warmth in the starlight, no breath in the wind. Vormir’s star sat cloaked behind its moon, casting the entire surface in perpetual twilight—an unlit theater for sacrifice. For Percy, who depended on sensation more than sight, the dimness stretched even further. His blind eyes caught nothing, but his skin told him everything he needed to know.

It smelled like death.

But not home death. Not the grounded, comforting stillness of his uncle Hades, whose presence always felt like earth and marble. Not the gentle floral perfume of Persephone, whose endings always held seeds of renewal. Not even the soft, shadowed silence of Nico, who carried grief like a lullaby.

No—Vormir’s death was alien. Detached. It reeked of rot, of old blood dried into the cracks of stone, of promises broken so long ago the echoes had fossilized. It was unwelcoming in its silence, and cruel in its isolation.

A chill traced down Percy’s spine. He shifted instinctively, his shoulder brushing Natasha’s. Just enough to remind himself he wasn’t alone.

They stepped out from the ship and began the climb toward the mountain that loomed in the distance—the tallest point on the planet, its peak carved into jagged splinters like bone jutting from a wound. The sand crunched faintly beneath their boots. Wind whipped through the valley below, hollow and aimless.

Percy pressed closer to her without thinking. Not for comfort. For grounding. Vormir was not meant to be navigated alone.

The path wound upward with steady cruelty, each uneven stone demanding caution and balance. The terrain wasn’t just rocky—it was jagged, like the planet had been scraped raw and left to heal crooked. Gravel crunched underfoot, echoing faintly into the silence that clung to Vormir like a second skin.

Percy and Natasha moved in quiet tandem, their rhythm unspoken. They didn’t waste words—not here. Every sound felt like a trespass, every breath like a challenge. When one stumbled, the other offered help wordlessly: a hand braced under an elbow, a steadying touch at the small of the back. Nothing dramatic. Just enough to say I’m here, if you need it.

The cold was relentless—not violent, but insistent. It didn’t howl or bite. It crept. It settled into the hollow places, numbed the edges of ears and cheeks. Percy could feel it threading through the air like static, prickling his face with each gust. But James’s jacket, stitched with Aphrodite’s enchantments, held firm against it. The magic wasn’t flashy—no glowing warmth, no illusion of tropical comfort. Just subtle resistance. The wind pressed and clawed, and Percy stayed steady, insulated by threads kissed with divine gentleness.

There was something ceremonial about the quiet. Not awkward, not tense. Intentional. As if the planet itself demanded reverence. The mountain loomed ahead, dark against darker sky, and each step toward it felt like moving deeper into something ancient and unforgiving.

Natasha occasionally scanned the horizon, her jaw tight. Percy could feel her tension through the way she moved—not fear, exactly, but readiness. That silent calculation of risk. Her presence, solid and sharp beside him, was like steel wrapped in resolve.

Percy pulled his collar higher against the wind, one hand brushing the charm sewn just under the lining. Aphrodite’s magic didn’t speak, but it remembered. Protection, not comfort. Armor disguised as affection.

As they continued their ascent, the silence thickened. Words had no place here—not until the summit, where decisions awaited like ghosts behind the veil.

The wind cut sharp between the jagged peaks, threading through the silence like a needle. Natasha exhaled a huff of breath that curled and vanished into the bitter air, her boot crunching against a loose rock.

“Bet the raccoon didn’t have to climb a mountain,” she muttered, brushing a strand of hair from her face with a gloved hand.

Percy let his hands settle on his hips, fingers tapping against the worn leather belt in idle frustration. His body ached, not just from the climb but from the weight of the mountain’s aura—the lingering press of grief and expectation. He extended his senses, letting his power ripple out like a net cast across the terrain. A silent warning to anything that dared stalk them from the shadows.

“Technically,” he said, voice dry and tugged with exhaustion, “he’s not a raccoon, you know.”

The magic flickered softly through the stone, whispering nothing hostile yet, but the mountain itself felt... alert. Watchful. Percy’s jaw tightened.

Natasha rolled her eyes, throwing a halfhearted shove into his shoulder—a gesture that lived somewhere between affection and sarcasm. “Oh whatever. He eats garbage.”

Percy stumbled a step, catching himself with a ghost of a grin. “And steals prosthetic limbs.”

She snorted, and the sound fell out of her like a relief valve, slicing through the otherwise suffocating quiet. For a moment, the mountain didn’t feel quite so oppressive. They trudged onward, boots scuffing against the wind-chiseled path. Around them, Vormir loomed like a forgotten cathedral, and even the stars above seemed to mourn.

The moment came like a fracture in time—clean, silent, final. A sudden chill knifed down Percy’s spine, bypassing flesh and burrowing into instinct. He stopped mid-step, his breath hitching as though the air had dropped in pressure. The kind of drop that meant something was watching. Not stalking. Not approaching. Already there. The mountain—once vast, oppressive, but lifeless—seemed to exhale.

“Welcome,” said a voice.

It echoed impossibly, a soft ripple of sound without source or edge. It wasn’t carried by wind or reflected off stone. It simply was—coating the air like fog. It reached into Percy’s ears and settled beneath his ribs, threading through his senses like a strand of ice.

His reaction was instant, practiced: the sword was in his hand before the word had fully faded. Steel hissed into readiness as he spun toward the direction he thought it had come from, but his body betrayed him. There was no pull, no trace, no shape to hunt. Beside him, Natasha moved in mirrored instinct. The twin hum of her pistols clicking into place was sharp and final, slicing through the fading echoes like blades through silk. The air around them lost its lightness. What had felt like tension now felt like gravity.

Fear didn’t shake Percy—it anchored him. And that was worse. He hadn’t sensed it coming. Not even a whisper in the stones. No ripple in the air. No shift in energy. His powers, stretched and vigilant, had found nothing. And even now, as he stood with blade ready and senses cast wide, there was no heartbeat to latch onto. No soul. No presence. Just the voice.

“I’m fully blind here, Nat,” Percy murmured, teeth barely unclenched around the words. His voice didn’t waver—but it held weight. A confession offered only in shared danger.

Natasha didn’t respond, not immediately. She simply shifted—almost imperceptibly—her stance narrowing, her shoulder brushing his. A silent acknowledgment. A tactical adjustment. A promise. They stood together, backlit by nothing but the sickly twilight of Vormir’s moon, blades and breath held in tense communion.

The mountain air shifted. Not like weather—but like presence.

“Natasha, daughter of Ivan,” the voice murmured, soft as smoke and twice as untraceable.

Percy felt her tense beside him, her muscles locking beneath the layers of tactical gear. She didn’t flinch, but her posture sharpened—shoulders angled, stance widened, every inch of her responding to something ancient and cold.

“Perseus, son of Poseidon and Amphitrite,” the voice continued.

It wasn’t a greeting. It was a summons. A naming. And Percy felt it settle into his bones like frost. His breath stilled. Not from fear exactly, but from confusion—his senses still netted wide across the summit, tangled in enchantment and stone, returned with nothing. No footsteps. No heartbeat. No soul. Just a sound suspended in air, everywhere and nowhere.

He let Natasha guide him forward, her gloved fingers brushing his forearm in quiet direction. She moved like she’d done this a thousand times—like battlefields made her fluent in silence and tension.

Percy’s jaw clenched, frustration burning beneath his ribs. Whatever this thing was, it didn’t follow any pattern he knew. He was blind here, literally and magically. The voice felt like mist—present, invasive, and impossible to hold. It might’ve been a spirit. But if it was, it was unlike any he’d ever met. No death magic stirred near it. No Olympian resonance. No Underworld imprint. Just... cold.

“Who are you?” Natasha demanded, her voice stripped of anything but steel.

“Consider me,” the voice intoned, layered and distant, “a guide—to you, and to all who seek the Soul Stone.”

Percy curled his fingers tighter around his blade. Guide, his ass. A guide would’ve given them something to track. A pulse. A presence. Hell, even bad vibes. This thing gave him nothing. And for Percy, that was worse than danger. That was unknowable.

“Oh good,” Natasha said, voice dark and dry as the wind. “You tell us where it is, and we’ll be on our way.”

A pause. Then—

“Oh,” the spirit breathed, and Percy felt it again: that unnatural wind sweeping past him, brushing against his cheeks like the sigh of something long buried. “If only it were that easy.”

The breeze carried no scent, no warning. Just emptiness. Percy shifted half a step closer to Natasha, instincts flaring. Vormir didn’t welcome visitors—it tested them. And whatever this spirit was, it had already measured them once. Now it was just watching to see what they'd give.

The path narrowed as they continued to ascend, the slope steepening with every step. Shadows seemed to stretch longer here, slithering between cracks in the stone like whispers trying to find a voice. Percy’s grip on his sword never relaxed, fingers taut around the hilt as he moved in lockstep with Natasha.

Ahead of them—just visible to Natasha’s sight—the spirit floated. It wasn’t walking. It wasn’t breathing. It simply hovered in the cold twilight like it had always been there, waiting.

Percy leaned slightly toward her, keeping his voice low. “What are we working with here? I can’t figure out where this guy is.”

Natasha didn’t look away from the specter. Her eyes tracked every flicker of motion—or what passed for it—her breath shallow but steady. “He’s right in front of us,” she murmured. “Looks like the average grim reaper stereotype. Hooded. No feet. No face. Just… void beneath the cowl.”

Percy exhaled slowly, trying to orient himself to what she saw. But the spirit gave him nothing—no energy signature, no magical weight, not even a gravitational tug. It felt like a hole in the universe, and Percy didn’t like walking toward holes.

“Threat level?” he asked, jaw tight.

“Unclear,” Natasha answered, stiff and clipped, like her spine had turned to steel. “But he hasn’t blinked since he showed up. Or moved. Or breathed. That’s either very reassuring… or very bad.”

The spirit—if it had ears—gave no indication it heard them. It continued its slow drift across the stone, leading them toward the summit as if it were escorting condemned souls to their final judgment. Percy extended his senses again, casting them across the mountain like a spider’s web, hoping for a catch. Nothing. No blood, no bone, no breath. Just cold. And still, the guide led on. Not hostile. Not benevolent. Just inevitable.

They came to a halt at the edge of a cliff that looked as if the planet itself had split open to reveal a hollow heart. The drop was dizzying—a sheer cut into the stone that plunged into the mist-swept plains below, where the horizon bled into endless gray. The wind howled through the abyss, threading through cracks in the cliffside like whispered warnings.

Two stone pillars loomed behind them, impossibly tall and jagged like giant ribs thrust skyward from the planet’s spine. Their surface was rough and pitted, carved by time and something deeper—ritual, perhaps, or reverence long since turned to dread. They marked this place as sacred. Or cursed.

Percy could feel the spirit now—not see, not sense, but locate. It hovered near the brink of the cliff, the vibrations of its voice etched in the air like runes on glass. That bone-deep chill had rooted itself again in Percy’s spine, icy fingers trailing down from neck to heel.

“What you seek lies in front of you,” the spirit said, voice empty of tone but heavy with meaning. “As does what you fear.”

The air felt thinner here, like even oxygen hesitated to enter the space. Natasha stepped forward, her boots grinding against loose stone, eyes narrowing as she peered over the edge. Her silhouette stood sharp against the dim sky, outlined by tension and silent resolve.

“The stone,” she said, gaze locked on the swirl of shadows below, “is down there.”

“For one of you,” the spirit agreed, as if stating a fact of nature, not fate. “For the other… to claim it, you must lose that which you love. An everlasting exchange.”

Percy flinched. Not visibly—he’d trained past that—but inside, a tide surged upward and crashed against the walls of his chest. His heart stumbled, thudding against ribs too tight. Those words didn’t just echo; they seized him. The concept was simple. The price was not.

“A soul,” the spirit continued, drifting closer, its form bleeding into the shadows. “For a soul.”

The last word rang out like a bell, reverberating through the space between them. It wrapped around Percy’s throat like a thread drawn too tight. He glanced toward Natasha, her face carved from steel, eyes unreadable, but her fingers curled slightly at her side. She felt it too. There was no path forward here that didn’t cut deep.

The silence after the spirit’s pronouncement wasn’t empty—it was thick, stifling, like the mountain itself held its breath.

They did nothing. Because what else was there to do?

Percy paced between the stone pillars like a caged storm, his boots leaving shallow scuffs across the dust-choked stone. He wasn’t restless, not exactly—it was more like his body refused stillness, refused to let the weight settle without resistance. His movements were rigid, calculated. Every pivot and turn a distraction from the whisper echoing through his mind: a soul, for a soul.

The wind had quieted as if unwilling to intrude.

Natasha sat a few feet away, perched on a jut of rock like a statue carved from purpose. Her eyes weren’t on Percy, but on the abyss beyond the cliff’s edge. Her hands rested on her knees, fingers twitching just slightly—like her instincts begged her to reach for her weapons, even though they’d do nothing here.

Neither spoke.

The mountain, the pillars, the yawning chasm below—it all watched them, patient and cruel. The silence stretched long. Not awkward. Not dramatic. Just the stillness of people counting breaths, hoping one would reveal a loophole they hadn’t seen.

Percy paused mid-step, head bowed as he tried to make sense of the ritual. His powers skimmed the rock again, stretching for secrets in the stone. But Vormir gave nothing. No hidden path. No magical escape. Just the altar, the stone, the price.

This was one of the worst outcomes they’d never thought to prepare for. A choice like this wasn’t tactical—it was mythic. And Percy’s mind raced: had Tony known? Had Strange? Had the raccoon?

The idea of sacrifice had never felt so literal.

One of them. Gone. Forever. Not for glory. Not for revenge. Not even for someone they loved. For a stone. A piece of cosmic power so unfeeling it demanded blood and gave no comfort in return.

Percy’s hand drifted toward the charm stitched inside his jacket—something Aphrodite had tucked there with gentle fingers and no explanation. He didn’t even know if it would help now. Nothing divine could rewrite what Vormir demanded.

He looked to Natasha then—her shoulders squared, her profile rigid with thought. She was already weighing the calculus. Already dissecting love like it was just another variable to account for. But Percy knew her too well. That stone face didn’t mean detachment—it meant she was already afraid of what she might be willing to give.

And beneath it all… the cliff waited.

The cliff seemed to breathe beneath them, ancient and still. The wind no longer stirred—just hung suspended in the air like a held breath, as if the mountain itself waited for their choice.

Percy circled back around the clearing, his boots dragging slightly now, too tired to pretend calm. He came to a slow stop in front of Natasha, who hadn’t shifted in minutes. She sat hunched on a half-splintered log, elbows resting on her knees, chin tucked into her hands. Her posture wasn’t casual—it was carved from tension. Her eyes hadn’t left the horizon since the spirit faded back into silence.

Percy watched her for a moment, the back of his neck prickling. The sky behind her had dulled even further, the veil of clouds bleeding violet across the plains below.

“Maybe…” Percy said at last, trying to summon some flicker of logic even he didn’t believe, “maybe he’s making this shit up.”

The words felt hollow coming out. He knew the truth before they left his mouth—but saying them aloud was an act of desperation. Hope, even flimsy, was better than silence.

“No,” Natasha said, voice barely touching the air. Her head moved slightly, a dull shake. “I don’t think so.”

Percy frowned, his pacing resuming in tight loops until he crossed to the opposite pillar. “Why?” he challenged, almost pleading. “Because he knows your dad’s name?”

“I didn’t,” Natasha replied, almost too softly. Her words landed like a blow—flat and cold and final.

Percy stopped mid-turn and looked over his shoulder. His stomach dropped sharply, a leaden weight forming in his chest. She hadn’t said it dramatically. She hadn’t even looked up. But her voice carried the kind of truth that rewrites things.

And she wasn’t talking about the spirit anymore.

There was a pause before she continued—voice steadying as it found resolve. “Thanos left here with the stone,” Natasha said. “Without his daughter. That’s not a coincidence.”

Percy exhaled shakily, finally letting himself stop pacing. He planted his feet, chest rising and falling in slow rhythm, and stared out toward the ledge. Vormir stretched endlessly before them, shadowed and quiet, and the void at the cliff’s edge gaped with expectation.

“Yeah…” he whispered. The word tasted like surrender.

A moment passed. And then another.

Natasha didn’t shift, didn’t blink. But her voice broke through the stillness once more—low, certain, and gutting.

“Whatever it takes.”

Percy turned toward her, his gaze lingering on the outline of her jaw, the steel in her shoulders. She wasn’t joking. She wasn’t bluffing. She was preparing.

He looked back out over the edge, the stone wind biting softly at his cheeks, and echoed her words with slow devastation.

“Whatever it takes.”

Percy had never needed to be told what he was. He’d always known.

Not from words spoken aloud, but from the weight of every choice made around him—every time someone else was saved because he stepped forward. Every time the danger didn’t ask if it was his turn, only when. It was in the way people looked at him with gratitude and guilt, like loving him was a prelude to mourning.

He was the designated offering. The lamb cloaked in borrowed armor. Not a weapon forged for war, but a sacrifice cultivated in silence.

The mountain didn’t surprise him. The cliff didn’t surprise him. The soul-for-soul didn’t surprise him. The universe, it seemed, had simply taken a shape he already understood.

Of course it would be him.

Of course fate would hang the price around his neck.

This was what he got for hoping—for imagining that this mission would be different. That he’d walk away. That he’d bring something back for once instead of leaving another piece of himself behind. That maybe, just maybe, he wasn’t designed only to be mourned.

But hope had always been treacherous.

He looked out over Vormir’s endless horizon and felt the truth settle beneath his ribs like something sour and old. It was never going to let him survive. Not the prophecy. Not Olympus. Not the quests. Not the ache in Estelle’s eyes when he promised he’d come home.

Because Percy Jackson was not a survivor. He was a solution.

And right now, that meant being the answer to Vormir’s cruel equation.

He clenched his hands tightly enough that his knuckles went white. Behind him, Natasha didn’t speak, didn’t move. But he knew she was weighing the same grief. Only one would leave this mountain. And he’d always been the one made to fall.

The wind seemed to shift the moment Natasha moved. She rose fast, like a breath held too long finally being exhaled, boots scraping stone as she stepped sharply in front of Percy. Her eyes burned—not with anger, but with resolve, stormclouds bottled behind them, ready to break. Percy had seen that look before. It was the one she wore when she stopped pretending the world played fair.

“If we don’t get that Stone,” she said, voice like flint sparking against steel, “billions of people stay dead.”

It wasn’t theory anymore. It was a cost stamped into reality.

Percy nodded, slow and steady, but his eyes stayed on the jagged cliff behind her. “Then I guess we both know who it’s got to be.”

“I guess we do,” Natasha echoed, the words clipped, heavy. Not agreement—confirmation.

He took a step forward and reached out gently, fingers curling around hers. His palm was warm, steady despite the tremor coiled in his chest. He stared down at their joined hands for a long moment, as if trying to memorize the shape of it—her calloused grip, the way her knuckles had always felt like armor.

Natasha didn’t look away. She brought up her other hand and gripped his wrist, anchoring him like she knew he’d drift if she let go.

Percy sighed, not from fatigue, but from the weight pressing in between them. “I’m starting to think… we mean different people here.”

“Natasha…”

She cut him off, fast and trembling. “The last five years, I’ve been trying to do one thing. Get to right here. That’s all it’s been about. Bringing everybody back.”

He felt the words lodge somewhere deep. They weren’t just intent—they were desperation shaped into purpose. And now that she'd made it here, it meant something had to give. It meant she was willing to break the final glass, light the last match.

Percy felt his throat tighten. His voice shook as he tried to keep it light. “Don’t you get all decent on me now.”

Natasha laughed quietly—but it was broken, like glass cracking under the surface. “What, you think I want to do it?” she murmured. “I’m trying to save your life, you big idiot.”

That landed. Hard.

Percy’s grip stiffened, eyes searching hers. “Well I don’t want you to,” he said, sharp with grief and fear. “Natasha… you know how I’ve been. I’ve barely been holding on. I won’t survive another loss.”

Natasha’s expression softened, just a fraction. Her voice dropped. “You’ll get through it.”

She said it like a prayer, not a promise. Like she knew it might never come true, but she needed to believe someone could.

“You’ll have Bucky.”

Percy let out a strangled breath that might’ve been a laugh. Might’ve been a sob. “You’re a pain in my ass, you know that.”

The grip between them stayed firm. But the silence that followed felt final. Because somewhere in it, they both understood—Vormir wouldn’t let them leave together. And loving someone meant standing at the cliff’s edge and refusing to let them fall alone.

Natasha’s smile broke quietly across her face—sharp-edged and hollow, the kind that hurt more than it soothed. It wasn’t false, but it wasn’t hopeful either. It was the kind of smile born from truth too bitter to swallow, carried by the weight of a choice no one should have to make.

Percy moved forward slowly, his body aching from restraint and dread, until he was close enough to feel her breath hit his collarbone. His head dipped, quiet and deliberate, and he rested his forehead gently against hers. It wasn’t a gesture of comfort—it was connection, carved from urgency. Like he needed to feel her, just once more, without the world clawing at them.

The air between them was warm, stilled by the hush of grief. Natasha didn’t move away. She leaned into it, letting her eyes close for the briefest second. Percy raised his free hand, fingertips brushing softly against the curve of her brow. His palm pressed there, steady and grounding—like he could memorize her pulse through touch alone.

They both inhaled deeply then, almost at the same time. Not to steady themselves. Not to steel their resolve. But to live inside that breath—to stretch it, fill it, let it linger before the world resumed its merciless countdown. For just that second, there was no mountain. No stone. No spirit. Only them. Standing still at the end of everything.

Then, with a shared breath exhaled like surrender, they stepped back. No words. Just motion. Just the quiet gravity between two people who knew that one was about to fall, and the other would carry that weight forever.

Natasha blinked—her bitter smile still flickering when Percy shifted, the motion so quick and controlled it felt like muscle memory etched in crisis.

“Okay,” he said, nodding slowly. “You win.”

But his smile didn’t reach his eyes.

In a flash, Percy swept his leg low and sharp, hooking beneath Natasha’s ankles. Her balance crumpled with a startled grunt, and she hit the rocky ground hard, dust scattering beneath her like a breath exhaled too fast. Before she could react, Percy dropped with her—gripping her shoulders with uncharacteristic force, pinning her flat against the stone. His fingers dug into the fabric of her jacket, not out of anger, but desperation. A last stand. A final goodbye forged in muscle and instinct.

Natasha stared up at him, breath caught, eyes wide with fury and heartbreak. But her body didn’t fight. Not yet. Her heart raced beneath his palms, sharp and ragged as if trying to plead with him through skin alone. Percy leaned closer, their foreheads almost touching now, the wind whirling around them in silent fury. His voice came softly—not a whisper, not a cry, but the kind of truth meant only for one person.

“Tell my family,” he said, chest trembling with restraint, “and James... that I love them.”

The moment shattered like glass.

Natasha’s eyes flared—storm-dark, betrayal swimming in the depths of her fury. Her scowl wasn’t just anger; it was heartbreak shaped like defiance. She didn’t hesitate. Her hand shot up to Percy’s shoulder and clamped down hard, fingers curling with a fighter’s instinct sharpened by years of surviving impossible choices.

Then—motion. Fast. Fluid. Brutal.

She drove her knees upward with practiced precision, slamming into Percy’s sternum. The breath left him in a sharp grunt as she used his own weight against him, flipping him hard onto his back. The wind beneath them scattered dust and silence, and for a moment, the mountain felt like it had stopped spinning.

Percy hit the stone with a dull thud, sword skidding from his grip and clattering across the uneven ground.

Natasha surged to her feet, all grace and fury and purpose. She didn’t stumble—didn’t shake. Her hand snapped up instinctively, knuckles bracing against her wrist as the Widow’s Bite pulsed to life. A faint glow illuminated her skin in pale blue, whispering electricity into the air. It hummed like righteous fury.

She leveled it at him without apology.

“You tell them yourself,” she said, low and furious, voice trembling with the weight of all the losses she’d never had time to grieve.

And then she fired.

The energy burst out in a sizzling arc, slamming into Percy’s chest. His body jolted sharply, limbs flinching in involuntary protest as the electric surge knocked him flat against the rock. The light flickered and danced across his jacket—Aphrodite’s enchantments doing just enough to dull the pain without protecting him entirely.

It wasn’t meant to kill him. Just to stop him.

Natasha stood above him like judgment personified, shoulders squared and eyes glinting with something beyond rage—love turned brutal, the kind that fought to keep someone alive even when they wanted to fall.

Natasha turned on a dime, her boots scraping against the stone as she launched forward with sudden, devastating clarity. Her silhouette blurred for a moment in motion—sharp as instinct, fast as heartbreak—as she sprinted toward the edge. The wind tore at her jacket, howling like a warning too late to matter.

But Percy was already rising. Barely three breaths after her escape, he was up—his chest still stinging from the Widow Bite, his limbs trembling—but driven by something deeper than pain. His fingers went to his belt, fluid and practiced, and two knives spun free with a metallic hiss.

He didn’t shout. Didn’t plead. He aimed.

The blades arced through the air with grim precision, whispering past starlight and silence. One caught her low on the ankle, the other embedding just behind her knee. Natasha staggered, gasping in shock, her stride crumpling as she tumbled sideways across the rocky cliff’s approach. Dust burst up around her like a breath from the mountain itself.

She flailed as she fell, arms clawing for traction, pain blooming sharp and raw across her leg. Percy’s heart clenched—but he didn’t stop.

He surged forward, boots pounding against cracked stone, breath burning in his lungs. And in that half-second—the moment before the void swallowed him whole—he caught her eyes. She looked up from the dust, from the ache, from the fury that blurred with grief. Her gaze locked with his—and there was no rage in it. Just devastation. Just the silent, soul-splitting no that her voice couldn’t form in time.

Percy didn’t say goodbye. He didn’t scream or cry or tremble. He took a breath—deep and final, the kind you only make peace with in the moment between choice and gravity. And then he leapt. His body curved into the abyss, framed by starlight and the soft shimmer of the Soul Stone waiting below. The wind caught him. The silence embraced him. Vormir exhaled. He fell.

For an aching instant, Percy was weightless.

The wind swallowed him whole, and the stars above blurred into memory. The air felt thinner here—like the world itself had paused to watch him fall. And in that breathless silence, Tartarus surged forward in his mind like a cold tide. He saw Annie. Her hand clasped in his. The abyss beneath them, endless and screaming. The way they’d held on too tight, too long, and still weren’t enough to stop the descent.

But then—

A blur of red and black struck his back like a missile.

Natasha collided into him with brutal force, arms wrapping around his waist in a desperate, calculated grip. Her momentum yanked them both into a violent spin mid-air, gravity no longer a clean fall but a chaotic whirl of limbs and breath and urgency.

She didn’t hesitate.

With a grunt and a practiced snap of her wrist, Natasha launched a grapple upward. The wire screamed, taut and trembling, before latching onto a jagged outcrop along the cliff face. It caught—barely—and the sudden tension cracked like thunder through the canyon.

They slammed into the cliffside.

Percy’s shoulder hit first, ricocheting off the rock with a sharp grunt, followed by Natasha’s knee scraping painfully against jagged stone. Dust exploded around them, rock splitting beneath their bodies, bruises blooming like fire across skin and bone. The wire groaned, straining under the weight of two lives dangling above oblivion.

Percy gasped—lungs seizing, heart thudding erratically—and reached out, instinct overriding agony. His fingers closed around Natasha’s arm, locking in tight, anchoring her as her body dangled loosely in the air. One hand gripped the wire, the other curled around hers, his own wrist trembling beneath the weight and strain. She looked up—face pale, eyes electric—and gave him a nod.

A moment of connection. Of trust. Of survival born from chaos. The mountain held them, barely. Beneath their boots, silence. Above them, stars. Below—

The stone waited to take what was owed.

Percy’s muscles screamed with the effort, wrists burning against the strained wire, but he barely registered it. The pain was nothing compared to the fire blooming in his chest. Below him—held by a thread, by his hand—Natasha’s fingers clawed upward, scrabbling against gravity as she fought to reach his other arm. He twisted, teeth gritted, desperate to angle his body—just enough, just enough to get both hands on her. But the way they dangled, half-suspended against the cliffside, didn’t allow for mercy. One wrong move and the wire would snap. One shift too far and they'd both fall.

“Damn you,” he breathed, voice hoarse and cracking with fear. His free hand trembled, reaching for her, stretching like willpower could defy physics. Her fingers brushed his wrist—just the edge—and tried again, wiggling upward, slick with sweat and blood and grit.

She looked up. And smiled. It wasn’t victorious. It wasn’t brave. It was soft and sad, the kind of smile reserved for tired souls and parting glances. Her eyes shimmered—blue threaded with grief—and she let out a breath like it was the last secret she’d ever tell. Percy’s grip on her hand locked tighter. He could feel the bones of her fingers beneath his own, fragile and firm all at once.

“Nat, I’m not letting go,” he insisted, voice low and raw. “I’m not. I swear to the gods—I won’t.”

Her gaze held his. No flinch. No fear.

“You have to get back,” she said gently, like she was steadying him now. “You need to see Bucky again.”

Her voice curled at the edges—like she was already saying goodbye. Percy shook his head violently.

“You don’t get to do that,” he snapped, eyes burning, fury pouring out through tears he wouldn’t let fall. “You have someone. You have us. You have me. We don’t even know if it’s going to work.”

She gave a ghost of a laugh—just air, just ache.

“You still have to take care of Estelle either way,” Natasha whispered. “She needs you.”

Percy’s jaw clenched. His arms trembled with effort, veins bulging as the wire creaked ominously. Wind howled around them like the world itself was mourning.

“It’s okay,” she added softly.

And that—that wrecked him.

Because she meant it. Not as surrender. As grace.

The wire groaned—taut and trembling—as Natasha shifted her weight against the cliff face, trying to push herself free from Percy’s grip. Dust loosened beneath her boots, crumbling into the abyss below, but Percy didn’t budge. His arms locked around her wrist like anchors, every muscle trembling, refusing to let go.

She shoved again, knees bracing against uneven stone, but his grasp only tightened.

No. Not again.

The ache in his shoulders was nothing compared to the phantom echo in his chest—those days in Tartarus, clawing at crumbling stone as Annabeth slipped through his fingers. The cruel twist of memory, the weight of failure. Of helplessness. Every second since then had lived in his bones, haunting him in nightmares and fights and far too many sleepless watches. And now the gods were demanding another sacrifice. Another almost. Another not enough.

He wouldn’t let it happen.

“Nat please…” the words cracked like a fault line, torn from somewhere deep. His breath hitched—a sob caught between panic and heartbreak. “I can’t lose anyone else.”

Her hand flexed weakly in his grip. And then she looked up.

Her face was streaked with sweat and dust, blood trickling near her temple—but it was her eyes that wrecked him. That impossible calm. That aching resolve. She was offering grace again, the kind that shattered you.

“It’ll be okay, Perce,” she whispered. The words were feather-light, as gentle as they were cruel. “Let me go.”

It hurt more than a blade. More than Tartarus. Because she said it like she meant it.

Percy clenched his jaw, fighting back the blur in his eyes, the panic that clawed at his lungs. “Clint will kill me if I even thought about that.”

It was desperate. Stupid. Anything to stop this.

But Natasha smiled, soft and wry and broken at the edges.

“You don’t have to,” she said, voice like a parting gift.

There was no warning.

No flash of anger, no final plea—just Natasha’s eyes, steady and soaked with sorrow, and the ghost of a goodbye carved into her silence. Her free hand moved fast—faster than Percy could process—slipping down to the boot tucked at his ankle where his knives were strapped tight.

He felt the shift before he saw it. The soft pressure of her touch. The scrape of leather. And then—

Steel.

Her fingers curled around the hilt—a tiny phoenix peeking between her fingers—like second nature, and with one brutal, jagged motion, she dragged the blade up along his wrist. Not clean. Not calculated. Desperate. Sharp enough to slice deep but shallow enough to betray intention: she wasn’t trying to kill him. Just force his hand to fail.

Pain exploded up Percy’s arm, white-hot and laced with shock. His gasp shattered through the canyon like thunder. The blade skittered free, tumbling end over end into the void as his fingers spasmed involuntarily.

“Nat—!” he choked, the name ripped from his throat like a prayer and a curse all at once.

His grip faltered—just for a heartbeat. Just long enough.

And she moved.

Natasha braced her boots against the cliff face, shoved against him with every ounce of her strength. A burst of kinetic force. The wire shrieked in protest. Percy lunged, blood slicking his hand, trying to grab her again.

But her body had already shifted beyond reach. Already falling.

The last thing he saw was her hair whipping around her face, red and wild against the wind, eyes locked with his. Not terrified. Not regretful. Just fierce.

A quiet kind of love in the way she let herself go.

She plummeted.

Below—rocks waited. Unforgiving. Ancient. Vormir held its breath.

The sound wasn’t loud.

It was worse.

It was final—the sickening, hollow thud of bone striking stone as Natasha’s body hit the ground below. Percy couldn’t hear the wind anymore. Couldn’t feel the sting in his wrist or the ache in his shoulders. All sensation narrowed to that single impact. That single, irreversible moment.

He let out a strangled gasp, pain throttling his lungs as he collapsed to his knees against the cliff’s ledge. His fingers dug into the rock like they might hold him back from following. But they were trembling. Useless. Betrayed by grief.

Blood pooled slowly beneath her, dark and vivid against Vormir’s pale dust. The glow of it shimmered eerily, like even the planet had no idea how to receive this loss. Her limbs were folded, broken in stillness. Her chest didn’t rise again. Her hair, wild from the wind, draped across her face like a curtain drawn closed.

He swore he could feel it. The exact breath where her life force slipped free. The second her soul was no longer here.

The air shifted.

Energy surged around the mountain—violent, radiant, raw. Light erupted upward in spiraling bolts, thunderless but terrifying, crackling with celestial force. It wasn’t beautiful. It was overwhelming. A storm of magic and sacrifice detonating into the sky, announcing to the cosmos that the price had been paid.

The wind whipped through Percy’s hair, lifting strands around his face like threads caught in mourning. But he didn’t move. Didn’t blink. He could barely breathe.

Because she was gone.

His vision blurred—not from tears, but from the sheer collapse of everything inside him. He reached toward the ledge again, one hand outstretched, as if the mountain would give her back.

But Vormir didn’t return what it claimed.

And then— Everything fell silent.

The wind died. The light vanished. The energy collapsed inward.

And Percy was gone.

It wasn’t water.

Not exactly. It was too thick. Too cold. Too quiet. It clung to his skin like regret and shimmered faintly with a color he couldn’t name—something halfway between amber and grief. It swirled gently around him, rippling with his breath but never breaking the surface tension enough to feel cleansing. Whatever it was, it didn’t sting, but it didn’t soothe either. And the cut across his wrist kept bleeding, slow and stubborn.

Percy groaned, dragging himself upright. The liquid slipped off his chest and arms in sheets, pooling beneath him as he braced on shaky elbows. His heart hammered, not just from exertion, but from everything. From the memory that slammed into his body before his thoughts could catch up.

The Soul Stone pulsed in his palm—small, hard, alive in a way that made him hate holding it. Its edges dug into his fingers, and still he couldn’t let go. Not after the cost. Not after the exchange.

He sucked in a ragged breath and looked around. The world around him wasn’t Vormir. Wasn’t anything he recognized. Just miles of that not-quite-liquid stretching in every direction, faint mist curling along the edges of the horizon like the memory of breath. No stars overhead. No sun. Just a colorless sky—soft and endless and silent.

And through it all, one thought tore through him with relentless clarity:

Natasha pushed herself away.

She didn't hesitate. Didn't scream. Just gave him one last, burning look—too tender, too brave—and shoved off the edge like her life had already been spent.

Falling. His hand had reached. Too slow.

Falling. Her hair a blaze of red against the wind.

Falling. The Soul Stone screaming with light before it landed in his palm.

And fading. Her voice didn’t echo. Her body didn’t return.

He gripped the stone tighter, nails biting into his own skin, as if he could trade again. As if another offering might pull her back.

But Vormir had rules.

And Percy had nothing left to give.

 

~~~

 

Percy didn’t walk.

Not really. His boots scraped the stone, his legs moved in the shape of movement, but it was closer to drifting than returning. Each step happened without choice. Like gravity was guiding him somewhere he didn’t want to be, but couldn’t resist.

The ship loomed ahead—oversized, untouched, patient. It looked like it had been waiting for him in silence. He raised one arm, fingers twitching against the button, and with a thought too dulled to feel amazed by the tech, it shrank. Metal folded in on itself with practiced precision, compressing into its travel size with a shimmer of gold and a whisper of tech.

He caught it in one palm. Stared at it. And remembered nothing about the flight that brought them here.

His mind blurred—washed in static, like the aftermath of lightning. Thoughts flickered in and out, none with enough shape to hold onto. Natasha’s name rang like a bell just struck, reverberating through the hollows of him, but even that sound felt distant. Bleached by shock.

Her face— That final look, full of sharp grace and unbearable warmth— Kept flashing behind his eyelids like memory wouldn’t stop trying to make sense of it. But it couldn’t. Because it wasn’t sense. It was sacrifice.

He paused mid-step. The idea surfaced: go back. Grab her body. Bring her home. Let someone hold her hand who knew it before this war.

But Vormir was quiet.

And the air didn’t hum with her anymore.

It was like reaching for something that should be there—like a jacket you swear you left on the hook, a voice you were certain you heard—but coming up empty.

He couldn’t feel her. Not even the residual warmth of her aura, the way he'd once been able to sense people in the blood and salt of the sea.

Just absence.

Crushing, cosmic absence.

Percy clenched the Soul Stone harder than he meant to. It bit into his skin, pulsing like a heart that didn’t belong to him.

He kept walking. Ship in hand. Sky pressing down. His chest a room with no lights on.

And this grief—a tether tied to nothing.

The sand doesn’t care that he’s bleeding.

It drinks it in without judgment—grain by grain, drop by drop—as Percy sits motionless beneath a sky too vast to offer comfort. His wrist aches, the cut stubborn and raw, leaking slow ribbons of crimson between his fingers. But he doesn’t move. Doesn’t flinch. Just watches.

Each droplet glides down the curve of his hand like it’s tracing time. Like it’s trying to map the moment everything broke.

He’s vaguely aware of the heat pressing into his back, of the ship’s compressed form humming quietly at his side. But the world feels distant—blunted. Like he’s underwater again, but without breath. Just suspended.

The sand shifts beneath him as the breeze picks up. It scatters Natasha’s name across the dunes, syllables he doesn’t speak aloud but hears anyway. Over and over. His throat tightens, and the thought comes fast and sharp:

He can’t stay here.

Not because he wants to leave. He doesn’t. Not really. The idea of movement feels hollow. The idea of survival feels worse. But the echo of her fall is still burning in his bones.

She gave everything.

And if he let himself die here, if he folded under the weight of grief and magic and loss—he’d be undoing it. Undermining it.

He wouldn’t just be gone. He’d be betraying her.

Percy shuts his eyes and leans forward, forehead nearly touching his knees as the air whistles low across the sand. When he finally moves, it’s slow. Reluctant.

His fingers clutch at the hem of his shirt. The fabric tears unevenly—rough and haphazard—and he winds it around his wrist in tight, shaking loops. Crimson seeps through instantly, but he keeps going, pressing the makeshift bandage down until it holds.

The pain is sharp. Grounding.

He exhales once. Shallow. Then stands.

Vormir stretches behind him, grave-silent. The Soul Stone hums in his pocket like a curse that won’t fade.

Gods…

Percy couldn’t breathe through it. Not grief—guilt.

It clawed up his throat with every thought of Clint. Of Estelle. Of the look that would split both their faces when they realized she wasn’t coming back. That he came back without her.

How was he supposed to explain it? That Natasha gave herself freely? That he reached too late, moved too slow, couldn’t—didn’t—stop her?

That Vormir had taken her, and all he’d done was watch.

His hand shook over the console, sweat slicking his palm despite the chill that had settled deep in his body. He stared at the return button like it might open its mouth and scream at him. Like pressing it would make it real. Make him complicit.

Percy swallowed a sob, sharp and thin, pressing fingers against his lips like he could keep the sound inside. But it broke free anyway—raw, fractured. He doubled over for a heartbeat, chest burning with the effort not to come apart entirely.

He saw Clint’s face as it had been the day they launched—easy grin, hard eyes, Natasha’s name always safe on his tongue. Percy saw it shatter. In advance. Imagined every inch of devastation Clint would try to hide and fail. The way he'd wait, because Natasha always made it back.

Until now.

Estelle, young and stubborn and dazzling with that Romanoff fire she picked up from being around Natasha so much. Percy remembered her arms flung around Natasha’s waist, remembered her braiding red hair with military focus, giggling at their matching freckles. How was he supposed to stand in front of her and say—

“She’s not coming back. Because of me.” Because I held the Stone. Because I didn't fall.

His breath hitched. Everything inside him recoiled.

He let his finger hover above the return button. One second. Two. Long enough that the ship seemed to listen, holding its silence like even it knew better than to rush him.

Then—barely conscious of his own movement—he pressed it.

The world twisted.

Colors warped. Edges blurred. Time convulsed around him like a wave breaking on bone. He barely felt the lurch of reentry, barely registered the shifting gravity, the way space folded and refolded into the shape of Earth.

He wasn’t there.

His body braced. His chest expanded. But his mind was fractured—floating somewhere between past and pain, suspended in the memory of her fall and the moment everything stopped being whole.

Disassociation made it bearable. Or maybe just possible.

They reappeared in a breath—a flash of light, a flicker of cosmic displacement, and then the hangar came into focus around them: metal floors, fluorescent haze, the faint scent of coolant and ozone clinging to everything. The silence that followed wasn’t normal. It was weighted. Unnatural.

Percy barely registered it.

The moment his boots hit the ground, his legs buckled. He dropped to his knees like gravity remembered him too soon, like the universe wasn’t done punishing him. The Soul Stone dug into his palm, searing through skin and bone with a heat that didn’t burn, but burdened.

A blankness filled his chest—vast and consuming. His breath stuttered. Not shallow, but aimless. No tears yet. No scream. Just the heavy, hollow beat of absence.

The others turned instinctively. Rhodey blinked, eyes sweeping the group like he was counting. Rocket’s ears twitched. Carol furrowed her brow, already calculating. Bruce stepped forward slowly, lips parted like he was afraid to speak first.

But it was Clint who broke the silence.

His voice didn’t carry. It cracked.

“Perce,” he said, inching forward from where he'd landed beside Rhodey. “Where’s Nat?”

The words hit the hangar floor like a dropped glass. Everyone froze. No one moved.

Percy didn’t look up. Couldn’t.

His shoulders trembled, but his face was slack. Staring at nothing. All he could feel was the blood soaked through the makeshift bandage around his wrist. All he could hear was her laugh—from before—soft and biting and entirely gone.

Clint took another step, urgency laced in every inch of him. His voice grew tighter.

“Percy,” he says again. “Where is she?”

Percy opened his mouth. Closed it. The Soul Stone pulsed again, a sick imitation of heartbeat. The silence that followed wasn't forgettable. It etched itself into the air.

The silence was the loudest thing in the room.

Not the hum of the hangar’s overhead lights. Not the shuffling boots or the slow shift of metal as someone moved instinctively, hesitantly. It was the silence—the absence of her—that pressed in from all sides, thick and suffocating. The air felt wrong. It ached.

Percy couldn’t speak. Couldn’t breathe the words. She’s dead. Because of me.

The thought repeated like static in his head, looping so hard it drowned out everything else. But he didn’t say it. He didn’t have to. His silence screamed.

The others felt it.

He felt it in the staggered rhythm of their breath, the sudden uptick in heartbeats that pulsed like distant drums. He felt it in the way every eye in the room flicked toward him and then froze—searching for red hair, for a blaze of motion, for Natasha’s steady, grounding presence. She wasn’t there. And no amount of looking would make her be.

Clint stumbled toward him first. His boots scraped against the metal floor, urgency crackling like static in the space between them. For one fractured second, Percy braced. Hands curled against his knees. He thought maybe Clint would hit him. That grief would lash out the way grief sometimes does—fast, furious, unforgiving.

But Clint didn’t raise a fist. He dropped. Right in front of Percy. Knees crashing to the floor, breath choked and uneven. And he pulled Percy into his arms.

Percy didn’t resist. Didn’t move. He just folded, bones loose and heavy, clutching Clint’s shirt like it was the last anchor he had left. Tears fell silently, soaking the fabric between them. Neither spoke. There was no language for this kind of loss.

Bruce collapsed next. His legs gave way, muscles barely holding. He didn’t look up. Didn’t say a word. Just lowered his head and punched the ground once—hard, sharp, brutal in its finality. The echo rang through the hangar and died quickly.

Everything dulled. Percy’s feeling. His hearing. Even his pain. It was like his senses had flattened under the weight of grief, like they couldn't process the world without her in it. His grip tightened. His shoulders trembled. But he didn’t sob out loud. Didn’t scream.

Because no one did. No one could. And still, the hangar held them all in quiet mourning—like the walls themselves knew better than to interrupt what could never be undone.

 

~~~

 

The dock was quiet. Not peaceful—just hushed. Like the water itself was holding its breath for them. Wooden planks creaked gently beneath their weight, aged and sun-warmed, stretching out into the tide like a place meant for remembering. The air carried salt and something softer—warm wind tugging at collars, stirring the fringe of old wounds. Percy sat near the edge, legs dangling over the side, the gentle lap of water brushing against his boots.

He’d dipped his wrist into the water hours ago. Let the liquid coax the cut closed, watched the blue-gold shimmer of his powers stitch the skin back together. But healing didn’t erase the truth. The scar remained—jagged, pale, puckered like guilt itself had branded him.

Clint hadn’t looked away from it once. His gaze locked onto Percy’s forearm with the kind of intensity that didn’t demand answers but refused to forget. Every so often, his jaw would clench, a muscle jumping just beneath his cheekbone. He didn’t say anything. Didn’t need to. His silence told Percy everything.

Percy’s own fingers drifted to the scar again. Muscle memory. Habit. A motion carved by ache. He dragged the pads of his fingertips across it slowly, tracing its edge like maybe it would map meaning he hadn’t understood yet. Each pass sent a dull ache spiraling up his arm, but he didn’t stop. Pain felt appropriate here.

Behind him, Bruce stood with arms crossed tight, eyes distant, lost in calculations that couldn’t undo what had been done. Thor sat slouched nearby, hair tangled from windy air, eyes shadowed—not with tears, but with a quiet kind of mourning the gods didn't often share aloud. Tony, unusually silent, had his elbows on his knees and fingers threaded together as if that posture might keep him grounded. Steve lingered beside Percy, one hand resting gently on the dock’s railing, the other curled like he wanted to offer comfort but couldn’t find the shape of it.

No one spoke.

But they were together in it. Held by proximity. By shared loss. By the echoes of Natasha that hadn’t left the wind.

A bird cried overhead, and Percy’s grip on his wrist tightened.

The bench groaned softly beneath Tony’s weight as he leaned forward, elbows on knees, fingers laced tight enough that blood didn’t quite reach the tips. His voice broke the silence—not loud, but deliberate. The kind of voice meant to cut through fog.

“Do we know if she had family?”

It wasn’t callous. Not exactly. More like Tony was clutching logic the way some people cling to wreckage. Searching for something categorical, something that could explain the ache in his ribs without admitting it was grief. Steve turned slowly from where he stood near the edge of the dock, water lapping just below.

“Yeah,” he said, bitter and bruised. “Us.”

The words dropped like a weight. Thor’s head snapped up, eyes narrowing. His posture shifted, tense and volatile, like grief was a lightning bolt coiled behind his ribs.

“What?” he demanded, brow furrowed.

Tony blinked at him, confused.

“Huh?”

“What—what are you doing?” Thor stepped forward, voice pitched sharp enough to sting.

Tony straightened slightly, confusion bleeding into defensive posture.

“I just asked him a question,” he replied, stiff and clipped.

“Yeah, and you’re acting like she’s dead,” Thor hissed, biting each word like it tasted wrong. “Why are you acting like she’s dead? Why are we all acting like she’s dead?”

The dock vibrated beneath his rising anger. The sky overhead flickered faintly, clouds pulling tighter.

He turned on Steve, eyes blazing.

“We have the Stones, yeah? We have them. As long as we have them, Cap—we can bring her back, isn’t that right? That’s what we do! So cut the shit,” he spat. “We’re the Avengers. Get it together.”

A silence followed that wasn’t still. It rattled.

Clint lowered his gaze to the scar still etched across Percy’s wrist. Bruce tensed, spine straightening. Steve didn’t flinch. Tony’s throat worked around unspoken words, a rare flicker of grief settling behind his eyes.

But Percy…

Percy stared down at the water—where the ripples caught reflections that didn’t include her.

And Thor’s desperation hung in the air like thunder that hadn't broken yet.

Clint didn’t speak. His face was carved from stillness—blank, unreadable, save for the tightness in his eyes and the way his mouth stayed pressed in a line that looked too tired to tremble. He lowered himself to sit beside Percy at the dock’s edge, boots just shy of the water. Sunlight scattered across the surface, golden and careless.

Slowly, Clint reached out. His fingers barely touched the scar. Just a ghost of pressure, like he didn’t trust himself with weight. They traced the curve of it with aching precision—the ragged edge that spoke of magic and blood and sacrifice. The scar was pale now, nestled in the crook of Percy’s wrist like a cruel whisper of what had been traded.

Percy flinched. Not outwardly. Not visibly. But inside—he shattered a little. Because Clint’s touch hurt more than the original wound ever had. There was no accusation in the gesture. No heat. Just a kind of quiet reverence, like Clint was trying to find her in the scar. Trying to read some part of her story Percy couldn’t bear to say aloud.

Percy’s breath hitched as another ache spread up his arm, dull and hollowing, threading through bone like grief in motion. But he didn’t pull away. Couldn’t. Letting Clint touch it was like punishment and permission all at once. His fingers twitched against his thigh. He wanted to say something—to explain, to apologize, to name the moment Natasha jumped and how time didn’t catch her—but his voice was locked beneath layers of silence.

Clint’s thumb paused over the deepest ridge in the scar, and for a moment, his eyes softened. Not with forgiveness. Not with fury. Just knowing. And Percy looked down at the place Clint had touched, the way his chest felt stretched too tight and hollow all at once—and still, he let him stay.

The wind off the lake snapped like a whip, sudden and stinging, as if reacting to Percy’s voice before he even raised it.

“We can’t get her back,” he snapped, the words cutting clean and cruel. His voice was raw—grief-sharpened, soul-weary.

Thor blinked. His mouth opened, stuttering half-started syllables, sentences collapsed before they could form. His eyes flicked to the edge of the dock, to Percy seated beside Clint, feet dangling above the water like children pretending they weren’t grieving.

Percy’s body was taut. His shoulders hunched forward, his hand clenched against the dock’s old wood, his knuckles pale as bone.

“It can’t be undone,” he said bitterly, voice thick with everything he couldn’t name. Then, softer. Smaller. More broken than angry. “It can’t.”

The lake rippled. Thor laughed—a brittle, hysterical sound that didn’t suit him. It cracked in the air like bad lightning.

“I—I mean no offense,” Thor managed, voice unsteady. “But you’re… you’re a very earthly being.” He gestured helplessly, as if the dock and grief could be waved away. “We’re talking about space magic here.”

Percy turned. His motion was sharp but controlled, careful not to shake Clint’s grip still ghosting his wrist, still grounding him in silence. But his gaze burned. His voice snapped like a thunderclap on saltwater.

“I’m a demigod.” His snarl was low and lethal. “I’m more divine than you are, fake god. I have more ichor running through my veins than you could dream of.” He stood with deliberate restraint, just enough to tower but not enough to untether. “You bleed red. I bleed gold.”

Thor surged to his feet, cape snapping in the breeze. His fists clenched at his sides, and his jaw locked like he might crush stars between his teeth.

“Fake god?” he snarled, incredulous and incensed. “How could you possibly know that?”

Percy didn’t blink. The wind kicked up again—violent, rippling across the lake’s surface in jagged lashes. Waves splashed violently against the dock, salt and spray catching on skin and boots.

“Because I’ve met people,” Percy said, voice low and lethal, “who have met the real Thor.”

He stepped closer, power ringing quiet in the air like distant bells. “And the real Thor definitely ain’t you.”

The lake howled—a crash of tide against timber, like the elements themselves agreed.

Behind them, Clint didn’t move. Bruce glanced up with dread stirring beneath his ribs. Tony watched with wide, calculating eyes. And Steve turned his body slightly—ready, if not willing, to be the balance between pantheon and prophecy.

The dock groaned under the weight of divine tension. And somewhere, beneath the fury and ache—Natasha’s name pulsed unspoken, still the center of it all.

The dock snapped into silence so suddenly, it felt like the world itself flinched.

Clint’s voice broke through first, dull and brittle.

“Plus… she still ain’t here, is she,” he said, barely lifting his gaze, fingers still pressed to the scar that marked Percy’s wrist like it might give up a secret if held long enough.

Thor’s breath hitched. The sting behind Clint’s words cut deeper than anger—they stripped away every layer of denial. And for a moment, Thor softened. His shoulders dropped. His cape settled against the wood. The fury behind his eyes dimmed just slightly.

“No,” he murmured, voice quieter now. “That’s my point.”

But Percy was already unraveling.

“It can’t be undone,” he rasped, voice tight and cracking along the edges.

And then—fury.

“Or at least that’s what the weird floating spirit guy had to say,” Percy snapped, his tone like thunder shoved through a cage. He flung his free hand outward, water surging in its wake, lashing out violently against the dock and making Thor stumble back. Droplets slapped the wood, hissed against boots, soaked into old scars.

“Okay?” Percy spat. “Go grab your hammer. Go fly into the void and talk to him! See what you get.”

The air went still. The tide paused. Everyone stared—Tony mid-rise from the bench, Steve frozen halfway between stepping forward, Bruce with his arms half-crossed, unsure if holding back or holding on. And Percy—

He stood near the edge of the dock, trembling, tears clinging to his lashes like they’d been denied too long. They didn’t fall yet. But they hovered. Threatened.

“It was supposed to be me,” he whispered, voice wobbling like a snapped string. “It should’ve been me.”

His grip on Clint’s shirt tightened reflexively, as though letting go would make it true.

“She sacrificed her life,” he said, louder now, fiercer. “For that gods-damned Stone. She bet her life on it.”

The sound Bruce made wasn’t human.

It tore from his throat like something that had been caged too long—wild, broken, primal. His body moved before anyone could react. Hands gripped the edge of the bench that had been beneath him for hours—silent witness to grief—and with one vicious twist, he ripped it clean off the dock.

Wood splintered. Bolts screamed.

And then, Bruce hurled it.

The bench crashed into the lake with a hollow, echoing splash, sinking halfway before it bobbed violently, caught in the rhythm of Percy’s storm-whipped waves. The surface frothed around it like the water itself rejected its intrusion.

Bruce turned slowly, breath heaving.

His shoulders slumped like the act of destruction had sapped whatever strength he had left. His face—once taut with rage—was now hollowed by sorrow. Eyes glassy, unfocused. Mouth parted in silent apology to no one and everyone.

“She’s not coming back…” he said, voice dim, like it had traveled a long way just to break in the open air.

No one contradicted him.

“We have to make it worth it,” Bruce murmured again. “We have to.”

He wasn’t pleading. He wasn’t angry anymore. He was resolute. Cracked, bleeding, grieving—but grounded in the truth of it. Natasha was gone. The Stones hadn’t shifted. The universe hadn’t bent. Vormir’s price remained unchallenged.

Steve rose slowly.

He straightened, gaze sweeping the dock like he was counting who remained, who broke, who still believed. His silhouette caught the fading light—dignified, worn, steady in a way only grief could mold.

“We will,” Steve said quietly.

Not loud. Not for ceremony. But as a vow.

Clint blinked slowly, his fingers ghosting Percy’s wrist again. Tony didn’t move, but the line of his spine eased just barely. Thor looked down, the fury in him flickering with doubt. Percy shut his eyes.

And for a moment, the lake stilled.

As if Natasha’s sacrifice had been accepted not just by the cosmos—but by the people who bore her memory.

 

~~~

 

The hallway was quiet in a way that pressed on the ribs—dim lights humming overhead, the distant murmur of voices muffled by concrete and grief. It was late, long past the chaotic hum of returning missions and debriefs. Most doors were shut now. Even the walls felt heavy, lined with reminders of people who weren’t coming back.

Percy stood just outside one of the storage alcoves, his shoulders tense, fingers twitching like they couldn’t decide whether to curl or claw. The hallway stretched ahead like a tunnel, empty but for Clint, who leaned against the wall with his head tipped back—eyes closed, breath held too tightly.

They hadn’t planned to speak. But silence had teeth. And guilt didn’t wait for invitation.

“I’m sorry,” Percy said suddenly, words tumbling out with no grace. “I’m so sorry—I tried everything… It was supposed to be—I really wanted it to be me—”

His voice cracked halfway through the sentence, too much pressure behind it. The admission clung to the air, echoing like he wished someone would contradict it.

Clint opened his eyes slowly. His gaze was red-rimmed, exhausted. But when he looked at Percy, he didn’t flinch.

“Percy,” he said softly, cutting through the ramble like it was smoke. “It’s… it’s not your fault.”

His voice faltered. Just enough to break.

“Nat…” He couldn’t finish the thought. It broke off in his throat. He didn’t even try to swallow the tears that gathered—just let them blur his vision, let them be.

“She made her decision,” Clint said, voice raw and steady in equal measure. “She was… is… was too stubborn to let anything change her mind.”

Percy winced. The correction gutted him. The shift from present to past—casual, forced, final. He stepped forward, guilt pooling deep in his chest.

“I still should’ve tried harder,” he said, more desperately now. “I didn’t even try to use the water—I forgot, I completely forgot. I didn’t try hard enough.”

Clint didn’t argue. Not right away. He studied Percy—studied the way his hands trembled at his sides, the way his boots didn’t seem to trust the floor to hold him, the way his eyes kept flicking to that damn hallway as if replaying a thousand what-ifs. Then he pushed off the wall and stepped closer.

“You jumped after her,” Clint said quietly. “You bled for her. You begged the universe not to take her.”

He hesitated. The grief clawed deep now. “You tried. Maybe not everything. But you tried. And she still chose.”

Percy lowered his head, fists clenched, mouth trembling with a reply he couldn’t shape.

The air in the compound hallway felt thick—like the walls themselves had absorbed too much grief and didn’t know what to do with it. The hum of overhead fluorescents was low and steady, but it made Percy feel like he was underwater again, like something was pressing down on him that he couldn’t swim free from. Clint leaned against the wall, his shoulders heavy and hunched, rubbing his eyes with the heel of his hand like he could scrub away the ache buried behind them.

“It sounds like you’re trying to convince me to hate you,” Clint said finally, his voice gravel-soft, somewhere between exhaustion and disbelief.

Percy flinched. His gaze dropped, shoulders curling inward.

“You should,” he said, words barely more than a breath. “Why don’t you? She was your best friend.”

The pain in his voice was raw, too sharp to conceal. He sounded like he’d already decided he deserved the hate—and maybe needed it, just to make the grief feel earned.

Clint exhaled slow, lips twitching with something too sad to be a smile.

“You’re my friend too, Perce,” he murmured. “I’m not going to wish death on one friend just because I wish the other was still here.”

Clint swallowed. “The only ideal way this ended would’ve been if both of you came back. Not if you died and she brought us the stone.”

That hurt to say. It cracked the silence open, left Clint standing in the wreckage of that impossible trade. He stepped forward and gently took Percy’s face in his hands, grounding him with the contact.

“I don’t hate you, Perce. I couldn’t ever. I just wish…” His voice trembled. “I just wish both of you came back.”

That was all it took. Percy broke. His sobs came fast, hitched and uncontrollable, like something inside him snapped loose and spilled forward. He collapsed into Clint’s arms, grief-stricken and shaking. Clint held him instinctively, arms wrapping tight around his trembling frame, head bowed to shelter Percy from the weight of the moment.

“I still wish it was me,” Percy gasped between sobs, voice soaked in regret.

“I don’t,” Clint said immediately, firm but not cruel. “And I don’t like the way you’re talking. It’s too self-sacrificial.”

Percy gave a humorless shrug, eyes swollen, expression vacant. “I’ve always been like this. Raised to be a sacrifice.”

Clint’s jaw tightened, his grip reflexively stronger like he could shield Percy from the past itself.

“That’s horrible,” Clint muttered, voice thick. “I hope you know that. I really hope you know.”

Silence crept between them again, more intimate this time. Not an absence of words but a presence of grief. Of understanding. Of everything they couldn’t undo. Clint didn’t let go. Before Percy could pull away, Clint’s arms squeezed around him like he meant it—like he couldn’t afford to lose another person tonight.

“We’re gonna be okay, kid.”

And Percy heard it, felt it, wanted so badly to believe it. But all he could do was nod into Clint’s shoulder, fingers clutching the fabric of his jacket like a lifeline. And quietly, bitterly, he wished he believed him.

 

~~~

 

The room was awash in a sterile glow—white overhead lights casting pale shadows across metal tables and scattered tools. Every breath felt suspended, like the compound itself was holding still, afraid that even the sound of exhaling might throw off the balance of something impossibly delicate.

They all stood in a half-circle around the main workstation, the glove—the glove—resting atop a reinforced platform like it was holy and cursed in equal measure. Rocket and Tony worked in near-perfect synchrony, their movements quick but precise, voices low and clipped as they made final adjustments to the nano-conductors and power regulators. It was strange, really—how well the raccoon and genius meshed when the stakes were unspoken and absolute.

No one spoke.

Not Steve, whose hands were clenched at his sides.

Not Thor, who hovered near the back, his body coiled, unreadable.

Not Banner, who stood with his eyes locked on the glove like maybe, just maybe, science would make sense of sacrifice.

And not Clint, who didn’t move from Percy’s side.

He lingered close, one shoulder angled protectively toward the boy who had survived when another hadn’t. Percy barely noticed anything outside of Clint’s presence—how his gaze kept flicking toward him every few seconds, like a pulse of concern Clint couldn’t quiet. It wasn’t frantic. It wasn’t judgmental. It was gentle. Constant.

Percy wished it didn’t comfort him. Because comfort felt wrong. He stood too stiffly, arms crossed like they could hold himself together, throat dry, eyes stinging from hours of trying not to cry. Each glance from Clint made something unravel a little further inside him—he didn’t deserve to be checked on, didn’t deserve the quiet solidarity.

But gods, it helped. Just a little.

Behind the hum of technology and whispered calculations, Percy caught a moment when Clint’s hand nearly reached out—then hesitated, closed into a fist, and stayed at his side. They didn’t speak. Not yet. But Clint didn’t leave him, not even when Tony barked something snide or Rocket swore about flux ratios.

He just stayed. Like worry was a kind of faith. Like grief could tether two people even when neither knew what to say.

The moment Rocket spoke, the tension in the room crystallized.

“Alright, glove’s ready,” he said, snapping a small torch shut and stepping back. His voice was uncharacteristically solemn. “Question is, who’s gonna snap their fingers?”

Silence fell sharp and immediate. Eyes shifted toward the gauntlet resting ominously on the workbench. It glowed faintly, a swirling pulse of destructive power barely contained, waiting to be wielded.

Thor didn’t hesitate.

“I’ll do it,” he said, raising his hand like it was the most natural thing in the world—like offering to die was simply a duty.

Clint turned with quiet fury. “Excuse me?” he bit out, stepping instinctively between Thor and the glove.

The others moved just as fast. Steve’s arm shot out, blocking Thor’s path. Bruce stood taller, shifting to intercept. Even Rocket bristled, claws flexing over his tools. They all converged, bodies forming a wall between god and glove.

“Wait, wait,” Steve said, firm but calm. “Thor, just wait. We haven’t decided who’s gonna put that on yet.”

“Oh, I’m sorry,” Thor replied, voice sharp with irritation, frustration bleeding into sarcasm. “We’re just sitting, waiting around for the right opportunity?”

His words landed with a sting, but Lang piped up before the tension could boil over.

“We should at least discuss it,” he said, not unkindly.

Thor’s posture shifted slightly, trying for placating—but still teetering toward desperation.

“Look, look,” he said, palms out. “Sitting here staring at the thing isn’t going to bring everybody back.” He exhaled hard. “I’m the strongest Avenger, okay? So this responsibility falls on me. It’s my duty—”

Percy heard the words but barely processed them. Everything was blurring now: voices overlapping, Thor’s tone rising, the air vibrating with emotion and power.

Then Tony stepped in. He didn’t yell. He didn’t shove. He simply walked into Thor’s space, calm and deliberate, placing a hand on Thor’s chest with just enough pressure to stop him. Thor faltered mid-sentence, eyes wide with pleading.

“Stop it,” he hissed, voice cracking. “Just let me.” He grasped Tony’s hand with trembling fingers, desperation laced through every syllable. “Let me do it. Let me do something good. Something right.”

Tony didn’t flinch. He just looked at Thor like he understood the weight of failure—intimately, irrevocably.

“It’s not just the fact that that glove could light up a continent,” Tony said, voice impossibly gentle. “I’m telling you, you’re not in any condition.”

“What do you think’s coursing through my veins right now?” Thor demanded, eyes blazing.

Percy blinked. “Cheese whiz,” he said flatly.

Rhodey nodded solemnly beside him, as if confirming a diagnosis. Thor froze, turning slowly to stare at Percy like he couldn’t quite comprehend the joke. But Percy didn’t smile. He looked tired. Hollowed out. After a pause, Thor pointed at him, brows furrowing in confused disapproval, then turned back to Tony.

“The lightning,” he breathed. “Lightning.”

Tony didn’t move.

“Yeah,” he said, tone resigned. “I know.”

And that one word held it all: the grief, the futility, the understanding that power alone didn’t make a hero. Not now.

“Lightning won’t help you, pal,” he said bitterly, eyes fixed on the gauntlet with a stare that had no room left for denial. “It’s gotta be me.”

Thor’s jaw flexed. He held Tony’s gaze for a heartbeat longer, then released him, stepping back with a disbelieving shake of his head that sent strands of unkempt blond hair flicking across his face. His cape dragged against the floor as he pivoted, staring at Bruce like the man had suggested surrender.

Tony didn’t move right away. He glanced at Thor, then turned toward Bruce slowly—his expression unreadable, lips pursed like he knew the argument was coming before the words even left Bruce’s mouth. Bruce stepped closer to the glove, his movements measured, deliberate, like every step forward was pulling him closer to a fate he’d already accepted.

“You saw what those Stones did to Thanos,” Bruce said, voice firm now, reverberating through the tension. “It almost killed him. Burned half of his body from the inside out. None of you could survive that kind of blast.”

His words lingered in the air like smoke. Steve furrowed his brows, gaze locked on Bruce.

“How do we know you will?” he asked softly, a thread of concern wrapped tight around every syllable. “We don’t.”

Bruce nodded, the line of his jaw tightening, his shoulders rising slightly as the weight of the moment settled over him. His eyes didn’t leave the gauntlet. His fingers flexed once, then stilled.

“We don’t,” he agreed, voice taut. “But the radiation—it’s mostly gamma.”

He paused, exhaling through his nose, lips curling into a bitter smile that didn’t reach his eyes.

“It’s like, uh…” He stopped, words faltering before he could shape them properly. “I was made for this.”

And he meant it. Not as bravado. Not as ego. As inevitability.

Around him, the room held its breath. Thor clenched his fists but didn’t interrupt again. Tony folded his arms and turned slightly away, his gaze drifting toward a corner of the room where blueprints lay forgotten. Clint stayed at Percy’s side, hand ghosting near Percy’s shoulder like he wasn’t sure if touch would help, but couldn’t stop himself from being close.

And Percy—Percy watched Bruce with a distant numbness, unsure if this moment felt like salvation or surrender.

No one needs much more convincing after Bruce’s quiet declaration—it lands like a final note in a symphony of grief and resolve. One by one, they step back, wordlessly ceding the moment to him. The glove waits in its cradle, humming faintly with power, light flickering across the polished metal like it knows what’s coming.

Bruce reaches out with steady hands, fingers curling around the edges of the gauntlet with reverence and grim familiarity. It’s heavy, not just physically—its weight is memory and consequence and hope, all layered atop the burn of incoming radiation.

Tony’s voice cuts through the silence, low and precise.

“You good to go?”

Bruce gives a slight nod, his eyes never leaving the gauntlet.

“Yeah…” he says with quiet conviction. “Let’s do it.”

Tony steps back, leaning one arm against the table beside him, eyes sharp beneath furrowed brows. He speaks like a man trying to thread the needle between desperation and control.

“Okay, remember. Everyone Thanos snapped away five years ago—you’re just bringing them back to now. Today.” He pauses, letting the weight of that land. “Don’t change anything from the last five years.”

Bruce nods again, slower this time, his jaw set as he looks down at the glove. “Got it.”

The air shifts. Tension thickens like fog. Every sound becomes sharper—the hum of the lights overhead, the faint buzz from the gauntlet’s circuitry, the sound of someone swallowing hard in the background. Bruce positions himself, the glove held close but not yet donned, like he’s waiting for the air itself to grant permission.

Clint edges subtly closer to Percy, one step at a time, boots silent on the lab floor. Percy doesn’t look at him, but the water begins to stir around their feet anyway—responding to emotion more than command, curling upward in quiet arcs like a protective spell. Clint’s fingers brush against his bow, not drawing, just... remembering. Preparing.

Bruce inhales deeply, filling his lungs, grounding his body.

Tony straightens suddenly, voice crisp. “Friday, do me a favor and activate Barn Door Protocol.”

The reaction is immediate. Metal plates slide across windows with a deep, magnetic groan, sealing off any view of the outside world. Doors lock into place with hydraulic finality, and the overhead lights dim slightly as reinforced walls drop from the ceiling like the compound itself is holding its breath.

A single, contained space now. Shadowed, humming. The chamber of a final gamble.

Bruce exhales one last breath before moving—low, almost inaudible, a quiet murmur that sounds more like a prayer than anything scientific. Something only he hears. Something that steadies him.

Then he reaches forward.

His fingers slide into the gauntlet and the nanotech responds instantly, flaring to life with unnerving precision. Segments shift, curl, and lock into place, stretching and reconfiguring themselves to accommodate Bruce’s larger frame. Metal plates slither across his knuckles, glowing seams sealing tight with a hiss like the tech itself recognizes him—not as a threat, but as a necessity.

And then the stones awaken.

Light bursts outward. Not clean, not beautiful—violent. Uncontained. Blinding arcs of energy pour from the glove, dancing across the lab in chaotic flares. Sparks scatter like embers from a forge, and the sudden force knocks Bruce slightly off balance. He doubles over, a guttural yell tearing from his throat as his entire body contracts inward.

Power surges up his arm, a cascade of brutal heat and radiant intensity. The gamma radiation latches onto him, coursing through every vein, rewriting pain into purpose—but it hurts. It hurts like being broken open from the inside. His skin glows in pulses, bright and sickly, like he’s seconds away from combustion.

The glove trembles against him, thrumming with a frequency that’s barely perceptible to the others but deafening to Bruce. He groans, jaw clenched, muscles spasming as he begins the impossible task of closing his hand. Each finger feels like it’s resisting him—stone by stone, nerve by nerve, agony stacked upon agony.

Trembling, drenched in raw energy, Bruce fights through it.

His fingers twitch. Then curl.

The air is thick with ozone and tension, every molecule charged with dread as Bruce’s body trembles beneath the gauntlet’s merciless grip. Sparks dance across his shoulders, gamma pulses crawling up his spine, and though the nanotech conforms perfectly to his form, the power doesn’t. It resists. It punishes.

Thor stares in horror.

“Take it off,” he pleads, voice cracking through the chaos. “Take it off.”

But Bruce doesn’t flinch. Can’t. His arm jerks violently, the glove seething with energy that barely contains itself—glowing stones embedded like stars too eager to burn. Steve steps forward, palm raised, eyes locked on Bruce.

“No, no,” he cautions, voice tight and urgent. “Bruce, are you okay?”

But Percy already knows. He can smell it. The acrid, metallic stink of burning flesh—sickly and unmistakable. It curls in his lungs, makes the back of his throat taste like ash. Bruce isn’t okay. He’s surviving on sheer will and pain and a lifetime of learning to endure.

Tony’s voice cuts through the haze like a scalpel. “Talk to me, Banner.”

Bruce’s eyes flutter. His jaw slackens briefly, then tightens again in a grimace. He nods. Just once.

“I’m okay,” he mumbles, the words slurring together like molasses, barely coherent but impossible to mistake. It’s a lie—but it’s his to tell.

Then he lifts his arm. Slowly. Staggeringly. The glove groans against him, metal plates flaring with light, stones thrumming louder than heartbeat. His skin glows—uneven, blistered, shimmering with gamma veins. He screams. Loud, guttural, primal. And with one final, agonized push—his fingers curl inward. And—

SNAP!

The sound detonates like thunder in a cathedral. The glove flares once—bright and searing—and then the light dies. The racing energy vanishes. Silence crashes down. Bruce collapses. His knees give out first, then his whole frame crumples to the floor in a heap of smoke and heat and unspoken agony.

The moment hangs suspended, every second stretched to the breaking point as Bruce crumples to the scorched floor, the remnants of the SNAP echoing through the silent room like a war drum fading into dust.

“Bruce!” Steve's voice cracks, desperate and ragged, as he breaks into a sprint—shield abandoned—eyes locked on the fallen scientist.

The others surge forward. Clint’s face is a mask of fury and dread. He doesn’t hesitate. With a swift, brutal motion, he drives his boot into the scorched gauntlet, sending it skidding across the floor in a trail of glittering ash and ruined metal. The stones are dim. The damage isn’t. Thor drops to his knees beside Bruce, grasping his unburnt hand in both of his own. His knuckles are white, blood hammering in his ears. He can feel every tremor run through Bruce’s exhausted frame.

“Don’t move him!” Steve barks the order, authoritative but laced with fear. “We don’t know the extent of it—just hold steady!”

Tony’s hands flick fast and sure, the quiver in his mouth masked by muscle memory and tech protocol. From a wrist-mounted compartment, he ejects a dense mist—bluish and viscous—that fans out across Bruce's charred arm like a living bandage. It hisses as it makes contact, a soft sizzle as it coats the burns in a regenerative compound designed for combat trauma and gods alike.

Bruce twitches, jaw clenched so tight it’s a wonder his teeth don’t shatter.

“Did it work?” The words are pushed past lips wet with sweat and blood. They’re quiet. Fragile. And sharp enough to gut them all.

Thor doesn’t answer immediately. He reaches up, fingers trembling, and brushes damp strands of hair from Bruce’s brow. His thumb lingers there for a moment—gentle, grounding, human.

“Uh… sure,” he murmurs. Not because he believes it. Because Bruce needs something to believe in.

“It’s okay,” Thor adds, softer now, anchoring Bruce with warmth more than words. “You did it.”

Bruce’s breathing stutters, then steadies—shallow, but present. And no one dares to break the silence yet. Not when the cost is still sprawled on the floor, pulsing under every strained breath.

The security systems finally disengage with a distant hiss and metallic sigh, like the compound itself is exhaling after holding its breath too long. The lights shift from their emergency red back to a dim, familiar warmth, casting long shadows across debris-swept floors. Somewhere above, the hum of machinery resumes—routine, restored. But nothing inside Percy feels normal.

He trails behind Lang, barely registering the man’s muttered curse or the way he squints against sunlight bleeding through the cracked windowpanes. The sky outside is bruised purple and orange, the kind of light that makes aftermath look beautiful. Percy hates it.

From deeper within the compound, Clint’s phone starts ringing—its shrill tone cutting through the quiet like a thread snapping. No one moves to answer it.

Then Percy's phone vibrates against his thigh. He freezes. The opening notes of If We Have Each Other trickle out, soft and haunting, like memory pressing a thumb to his throat. His mom’s ringtone. His mom. The sound feels too gentle for this place, too kind for this moment, like it belongs somewhere safe.

His fingers fumble against his jeans—too shaky, too slow—and he finally pulls the device free. The screen glows with her name. His lungs tighten.

He answers.

“Mama,” he whispers, voice already broken by the time it escapes him.

It’s not just relief. It’s everything. It’s the guilt and the terror and the smell of Bruce’s burnt skin still lingering in his nostrils. It’s the silence of a compound that almost wasn’t. It’s every second of not knowing if she had made it through. His knees nearly buckle.

The air still hums with the quiet aftershock of cosmic violence, but Percy barely registers it now. The lockdown lifts in stages—metal doors unlatching with soft groans, lights flickering back into normalcy—but the shift that matters most happens inside him. His phone’s pressed to his ear, hands trembling, knuckles white. Sally’s voice crackles through the line, breathless, tinted with panic.

“Percy?” she gasps, rushing the word like it might vanish. “Do you know where Estelle is? I swear she was just here…”

He blinks hard. His throat tightens. But the answer comes—crooked and raw.

“She’s with May, Mama,” he chokes, swallowing around a lump that won’t budge. “She’s okay. She’s safe.”

There’s a pause. Long enough to make his chest tighten.

“Percy, baby…” her voice softens, fragile and afraid. “Are you okay?”

He nods instinctively, even though she can’t see it. His lips twist into something that feels like a smile—not a grin, but a breaking open. The kind that comes after surviving something unimaginable.

“Yeah.” He exhales, words barely a whisper. “Yeah, I’m great.”

And it’s true, somehow. In the shaky aftermath, in the ash-tinged silence, he is great. Outside the compound, life stirs. Birds rise in song—clear, light, oblivious. A breeze flutters through a fractured pane, carrying with it the distant rustle of leaves and footsteps and laughter. Percy can feel it in his bones: the world returning to itself. Slowly. Miraculously.

Somewhere behind him, Lang’s voice threads through the hush.

“Guys,” he breathes, reverent. “I think it worked.”

Percy presses the phone tighter to his ear, as though trying to stretch out one last moment. He closes his eyes.

“I gotta go, Mom,” he says, voice cracking under the weight of everything unsaid. “I love you… So much.”

She doesn’t hesitate. “I love you, too…”

And it’s more than enough.

Percy’s boots crunch gently against the gravel as he stands beside Lang, the air still shimmering with the quiet aftermath of what should have been the end. The compound behind them breathes again—lights steady, systems humming—and overhead, the sky is pale and gold, like the world is trying on peace for the first time in years.

Lang’s arms are crossed, brow pinched in thought, but Percy is smiling.

A real smile. It blooms slow across his face, tight at first, then soft. He feels it unfurl in his chest like sunlight cracking through stormclouds—hope. Not the kind that demands action, but the kind that makes you pause. That makes you believe, just for a second, that maybe the scars will fade and the silence won’t always hurt.

Percy inhales deeply. The air tastes clean. Sharp with the scent of soil and greenery, tinged with the electric residue of what they just survived. He can hear birds in the distance, chirping like nothing ever went wrong. Life is beginning again. And Percy lets himself feel it—the ache of relief, the warmth of survival, the stunning fragility of everything still intact.

A ripple cuts through the silence. The ground lurches beneath him like the earth forgot how to stand still. Light fractures—sharp, blinding—and heat blossoms in all directions as the sky turns white. The explosion tears through the moment like a scream. Percy barely has time to turn, heart stuttering mid-beat, before the shockwave slams into him. His body arcs backward, limbs loose, breath stolen. He sees Lang—just a blur of motion and panic—and then nothing.

Percy hits the ground hard. His back skids against rubble, head snapping to the side. Pain flashes once, bright as a flare, before the darkness swallows him whole. His smile disappears with him.

Notes:

Oooooo cliff hanger. Kinda. We all know what happens next.

Sorry not sorry. I was going to try and figure out a way to get around Natasha’s death, but I just didn’t like how any of my ideas were. They were very hand wavy and lazy. So yeah… I made her important in Percy’s life then killed her. What can you do?

Everyone else’s time travel moments stayed the same, the only difference was who went with who. Percy and Natasha’s thing was almost the same as Clint and Natasha, I just add more and changed stuff to make it more them.

Clint lost Natasha, he doesn’t want to lose Percy too.

You know all those stories where Percy and maybe some other demigods get god hood. I always through Nico would be the god of grief. I’ve never seen anyone say that before. It just seems so fitting. Anyway, that was my train of thought when I was writing about what Vormir smelled like and comparing it to Nico, Persephone, and Hades.

Chapter 4: What I wouldn’t sacrifice

Lightning arced through Percy’s nervous system the moment consciousness slammed into him—sharp, searing, jagged. His back bowed instinctively, muscles spasming beneath layers of grit and blood as the world roared around him.

Water came first.

It rained down in thick, pulsing sheets, warm with engine heat and tinged with the metallic taste of broken pipes and scorched wire. It didn’t just fall—it assaulted. It lashed across his face in heavy, uneven slaps, surged down his chest like it was trying to erase him. His skin stung, each droplet abrasive, filled with grime and flecks of soot.

He gasped—lungs catching on bruised ribs, the breath itself slicing up his throat.

His eyes snapped open to a world that blurred and spun. Too bright. Too wet. Too loud.

The compound overhead was fractured, chunks of ceiling missing, sparks dancing from torn conduits. A pipe jutted from the wall like a shattered bone, disgorging a deluge of water that struck Percy in pounding waves. The noise was constant—a roar punctuated by distant yells and the groan of shifting wreckage.

His body was half-submerged, wedged awkwardly between collapsed support beams and twisted rebar. The metal dug into his side, the sharp ends grazing skin and muscle in cruel, deliberate pressure.

For a breathless moment, Percy couldn’t tell if the weight crushing his chest was concrete or fear.

Was he underwater? Or just drowning in pain?

His fingers scraped against the floor, nails biting through standing sludge and shrapnel, searching for leverage that didn’t exist. His head throbbed. His stomach felt like fire—raw, torn, electric.

The flood kept coming.

Relentless. Smothering. And Percy—gasping, flailing, blinking through fog and pain—still moved.

Because even here, in ruin, in agony, in the aftermath of a miracle turned massacre—

Percy refused to stay down.

Percy’s body rebelled the instant he tried to move—a gasp, a crunch, a warning.

His muscles flared with effort but went nowhere. Something jagged and immovable ground into his chest, stopped him cold. Concrete chunks, twisted beams, bent support struts—layered over him like armor forged in hell. The weight wasn’t passive. It pressed. It shifted. It dug. Every shallow inhale scraped along bruised ribs and torn muscle, each breath a war fought in fractions of oxygen.

His lungs fluttered. Struggled. One breath. Then two. Then a third that hit like broken glass.

The world tilted.

Percy’s vision spun into chaos—colors bleeding into each other, light distorting, everything glossed in red and brown. Blood trickled into his eyes, mixed with grit and sludge, forming a sticky film that blurred shapes into shadows and shadows into ghosts.

He blinked again. Harder. But clarity didn’t come.

The ruined compound around him registered only in slivers—a buckled wall to his left, shards of glass above, something burning in the distance. The acrid scent of scorched electronics and melted plastic filled his nose, layered with the tang of copper and something more human.

His stomach throbbed. Not a dull ache, not even a sharp pang—a scream. It felt split open from the inside out, like something had tried to carve through him and stopped halfway. Heat radiated outward, wrapping his torso in fiery bands that licked up his spine and curled behind his ribs. Internal bleeding, torn tissue—he didn’t know the name, only the agony.

He couldn’t lift his arms. Couldn’t call out.

His fingers twitched—barely—and scraped against broken tile slicked with grime. The surface gave nothing back. Just cold. Just wet. Just the gritty kiss of ruin. A sound slipped from his throat, low and unformed—a breath too close to a sob, too hoarse to be a scream.

Pain. Panic. Exhaustion. And somewhere beneath it all—

Refusal.

Pain was no longer a sensation—it was a location. Percy existed inside it.

His limbs trembled with a deep, uncontrollable shiver, muscles misfiring beneath a patchwork of abrasions and blooming bruises. Skin scraped raw, mottled in blue and crimson, stung with a chemical burn that clung like wildfire—an acidic smear from ruptured coolant lines, blistering in a pattern that smelled like corrosion and death.

Every movement was met with protest: bones grinding, nerves sparking, tendons screaming.

Static crackled inside his skull, louder than the flood cascading from shattered pipes, louder than the alarms howling across the compound. It reverberated through his jaw and behind his eyes, a high-pitched keening like some internal frequency had been reset wrong—like his own heartbeat was trying to drown him.

Somewhere nearby, Bruce was breathing. Labored. Ragged. The sound caught in Percy’s ears like an anchor, barely separating reality from shock.

But even buried in twisted steel, soaked in runoff and blood—

Percy was alive.

Barely.

The fact shimmered in him like a curse and a command. Alive meant hurting. Alive meant stuck. Alive meant not done yet.

Collapsed beams arched over his frame like industrial ribs, their weight splintering around him, iron and concrete pressing against bone in an intimacy that felt personal. The aftermath wasn’t silent—it screamed. Alarms sliced through the thick air with a banshee's pitch, and every pulse of sound peeled away another layer of calm.

The compound exhaled chaos: ruptured gas lines hissed like serpents, high-tension wires sparked like fireworks against metal, water rushed in unpredictable sheets across shattered floors. The walls themselves seemed to breathe—groaning and shifting, shedding chunks into the slurry below.

And beneath it all, gasps—Percy’s, Bruce’s, others—too broken to carry, too jagged to mean safety.

Percy lay there, lungs catching in bursts, body shaking beneath the wreckage—

but still breathing.

Percy shoved his trembling hands beneath the wreckage, fingers clawing at sharp edges that bit back with every nerve-ending scream. His skin split on impact—scraped raw by rusted metal, torn tile, and the jagged anatomy of a battlefield gone silent. Pain surged up his arms in electric bursts, each motion a declaration of defiance against a body already pushed past its breaking point.

He called the water.

It didn't just come—it answered. With the intimacy of breath, of memory, of battle-worn instinct, it surged toward him in a rush that felt like his own heartbeat magnified. It wrapped around his forearms in a shimmering coil—not gentle, not soft, but solid. Reinforcement. Bracing. Like armor drawn from the marrow of Poseidon’s legacy.

His yell split the air—a sound dragged from bone and grief and fury. It wasn't a battle cry. It was survival.

He pushed.

The world shattered.

Rubble exploded upward in a violent bloom—steel shrieked, concrete cracked, gravity reversed its grip for a breathless second as Percy tore himself from the wreckage with brute elemental force. Fractured beams snapped like twigs, support struts buckled outward, and debris arced into the chaos above.

But agony followed.

The rebar struck with surgical cruelty—a jagged spine of rusted iron slicing through his abdomen, carving a path so precise it felt personal. Raw. Merciless. Real.

Percy gasped, the sound ripped from lungs too tired to scream, too stubborn to quit. His body folded in on itself, torso spasming around the intrusion, mouth gaping in a sharp, guttural choke that ended in nothing.

Blood bloomed through the water, billowing outward like ink dropped in flame. It spiraled in ribbons—red, impossibly bright, darker than shadow, brighter than pain. The water bore witness. It carried the color, held it, magnified it. There was no hiding here.

His vision whited out—not from unconsciousness, but from impact. From overload. From the body’s failed attempt to contain the moment. Light eclipsed shape. Sound tunneled. And through it all:

Percy did not go under.

He remained.

The wound was cavernous—an open, mangled cleft carved deep into Percy’s abdomen, its edges ragged and uneven, torn by rust and brute force. Flesh hung in ruined strands, slick with blood and slurry, muscle ripped apart like fabric strained past its limit. The opening yawned wide, dark and wet, just shy of catastrophic—missing his spine and vital organs by a margin so narrow it felt like a taunt from fate itself.

His hands trembled as they pressed into the torn landscape, fingers slick with gore, slipping on ruptured tissue that refused to hold. Blood poured around them in thick, syrupy waves, pulsing with each fragile heartbeat—impossible to stanch, impossible to ignore. It surged upward between his knuckles, staining his wrists, trailing down his arms like accusation. Every second was a countdown. Every breath felt stolen.

The smell was sharp, metallic, and layered with something sickly—burnt skin, chemical runoff, the copper tang of deep injury. Percy’s stomach spasmed beneath his grip, muscles contracting uselessly around the intrusion. It felt like fire licking through him—heat not from power but from damage, the kind that didn’t relent.

A strangled sound escaped him, half-growl, half-gasp—a guttural response born of pain and desperation. His jaw clenched. His shoulders shook. And his eyes—glazed, wide, rimmed in salt and blood—refused to close.

Percy’s hands shook as they hovered over the wreckage of his own body—not with fear, not even with pain, but with something sharper. Focus. He wasn’t reaching for strength. That had bled out with the worst of the damage. No, this was something more deliberate. More desperate. A plea for control.

And the water responded.

Not in a roar. Not in a battle cry. It came in soft waves, luminous and tender, sliding over his skin like the breath of a lullaby. It shimmered against his broken flesh, cradling torn muscle with the precision of memory—like it remembered the shape of him before the agony, and was trying, in its own quiet way, to coax him back into that wholeness.

It pressed against the wound—not to seal, not to fix, but to steady. The pain didn’t vanish, but it dulled beneath the touch. A balm. A brace. A whisper of comfort in a world that had screamed too long.

Percy didn’t hesitate.

Didn’t calculate odds or weight survival against logic. His body moved like it had decided long ago that breathing, hurting, living—those were non-negotiable.

He staggered upright.

Lungs clawed for air with brutal insistence, ribcage too tight to expand properly. He gasped—a raw, fractured sound—and nearly buckled again, knees crashing toward the tile. But his hand shot to his stomach, pressing hard, and the water wrapped around his torso like a second skin.

It held him.

A spiral of motion wrapped in power, coiling around the gaping wound and shimmering with tension, like even the ocean didn’t want to lose him. Like it refused to let him fall.

Tony’s voice cracked through the chaos like a beacon—raw, desperate, utterly unfiltered. “PJ!” he shouted, stumbling over fractured tile and live wires, half-falling as he skidded to Percy’s side.

Percy’s head flickered upward in response—barely. His neck gave a trembling spasm, eyes unfocused, lids drooping like gravity had turned against him. His chin collapsed back to his chest, shoulders curling inward protectively, breath fluttering and thin.

Tony dropped to his knees with no ceremony, one hand cradling Percy’s face, the other tapping his cheek—firm enough to jolt, gentle enough not to hurt. “Hey, bud,” he murmured, eyes scanning every inch of Percy’s ruined form with practiced terror. “Focus on me, yeah?”

Percy’s lips moved, the sound escaping like vapor—broken syllables, maybe his name, maybe I’m trying. But his head lolled again, dropping heavy into Tony’s palm like even that act had cost too much.

“Yeah, yeah,” Tony breathed, panic riding low in his voice now—stripped of bravado, down to bone and instinct. “I’ve got something for you, alright? Remember?” His hand trembled slightly as he dug into a scorched vest pocket, fumbling past tools and plating until he pulled out a sealed metal capsule, pried it open, and revealed the thing Percy had entrusted to him months ago:

A single chunk of golden ambrosia.

Tony held it up like a sacrament. “Emergency stash,” he whispered, inching it toward Percy’s face.

The shift was near-invisible—but immediate. Percy’s eyes, dull and distant, snapped into clarity at the scent. His fingers twitched. His whole body seemed to lean subtly toward the offering, as if the memory of warmth had reignited something crucial. Chocolate chip cookies. His mom’s recipe. A taste sewn into his childhood like safety.

Tony grinned—strained, watery. “Yeah! Yeah, that’s right,” he said, the words spinning into something more like prayer the more he repeated them. “Eat up, buddy.”

Percy opened his mouth slowly, lips cracking, throat convulsing as Tony slipped the ambrosia in. Percy hummed. Grateful. Wrecked. The moment lingered between them like gravity had reversed.

Heat spread immediately—radiating from his chest outward, soaking through torn skin and shredded muscle with a glow that felt like belonging. The pain didn’t disappear, but it softened. The agony bled into warmth. Breathing became possible. Then easier.

Tony curled one arm around him, pulling him gently upright, the other rubbing slow circles into Percy’s back like he used to do with Peter after panic attacks. “There ya go, PJ,” he murmured. “Breathe. I’ve gotcha. You're alright. You're alright.”

And for the first time in what felt like hours, Percy believed him.

For a moment, Tony just let him breathe.

He crouched beside Percy in the hushed wreckage, one arm still braced around the demigod’s trembling back, the other hovering protectively as the heat of ambrosia worked its slow miracle. Percy’s chest rose in uneven waves, each breath gaining weight, shape, presence. His color was still wrong—ashen, blood-streaked, sweat-slicked—but there was clarity in his eyes now. Lucidity fighting through shock.

Tony didn’t rush him.

He gave Percy space, the kind that said I’m here, but I’m not pushing. And when Percy finally shifted with a wince, knees drawn under him like a foal learning to stand, Tony moved with him—silent but sure, one hand locking around Percy’s arm as the other gripped his waist, steadying them both as they rose from the ruins.

They stood, swaying slightly.

Steel groaned somewhere nearby. Smoke curled upward in hesitant tendrils. But the two of them stayed upright—Tony half-shielding Percy with his body, half-holding him up with nothing but resolve and silent dread.

Tony’s gaze swept down Percy’s form with a medic’s urgency and a friend’s terror. Nervous energy radiated from him—his eyes cataloging blood loss, posture, breath rate, the too-red water still clinging to Percy’s side. His fingers fluttered once in hesitation, then moved forward, brushing damp hair from Percy’s face with a gentleness that felt almost reverent.

He nodded, jaw tight. No sense waiting for miracles.

“This is as good as we’re gonna get, huh?” he muttered, half to himself, half in surrender to reality.

Then louder, firmer: “Alright.”

Tony shifted his stance, glanced toward the smoke and flickering hallway lights beyond them.

“Let’s find some others.”

His voice carried weight. Not bravado. Not command. Just a quiet promise—thin, but enough.

Percy moved like gravity had a vendetta. His steps were uneven—more drag than stride, each footfall interrupted by tremors that pulsed through muscle and memory. He leaned heavily into Tony’s side, one arm slung across the older man’s shoulders as though the air itself had grown hostile. His ribs ached with every jostle. The water clinging to his skin shimmered faintly, holding him together more out of loyalty than strength.

Tony kept pace without comment, one arm braced around Percy’s back, the other ready to catch him if he collapsed. Their movements were quiet—tired echoes through the compound’s fractured corridors. Smoke drifted in languid spirals overhead. Somewhere in the distance, pipes still screamed, alarms still begged, but here in this hallway… there was only aftermath.

They found Steve slumped against the far wall, half-shadowed by a collapsed beam. His shield lay discarded nearby, half-buried beneath rubble—its surface marred with soot and blood, its gleam dulled. Steve’s head was bowed, shoulders sagging as if he’d folded under the weight of his own history.

Tony blinked hard, then crossed the distance in three rushed steps. He dropped to one knee beside him, snatching the shield up with a reverence that felt earned, and grasped Steve’s shoulder with steady urgency.

“Come on, buddy. Wake up,” he said, voice low but laced with charge. He shook gently—not to startle, but to summon.

Steve groaned, a sound scraped from the bottom of a very long fall. His eyelids twitched. Then opened.

Blurry blue met Tony’s gaze, confusion swimming just beneath the surface.

Tony exhaled sharply. Relief wrapped itself around him like armor. “That’s my man,” he murmured, smiling as he pressed the shield into Steve’s chest with both hands. “You lose this again, I swear, I’m keeping it. No tradebacks.”

Steve blinked again, hands curling around the familiar curve of vibranium as instinct took over. “What… happened?”

Tony huffed, helping ease Steve upright with a grunt. “You messed with time, Cap. And you know what time does when you mess with it?”

Steve stared.

Tony gestured around them—collapsed walls, flickering lights, Percy half-sagging against a cracked beam. “It messes back. You’ll see.”

Steve’s eyes finally found him. Slow at first—drifting past Tony, past the destruction, scanning through smoke and broken walls in a half-conscious haze. But then they landed. Solid. Unmistakable. And something in Steve stilled. Percy felt it. Saw it. The stutter of Steve’s breath, the sudden hitch in his chest, the subtle tensing of his shoulders. His gaze locked onto Percy like he’d stumbled across a ghost—one he hadn’t dared to hope survived. Percy knew what Steve was seeing. And gods, it wasn’t good.

He was barely upright, more slumped against to nearby rubble than standing, one arm clutching his midsection where blood still seeped in sluggish rivulets through the partial healing. The gaping wound across his abdomen wasn’t closed—not really. Torn muscle glistened wetly beneath the shredded edge of his armor, and his fingers, slick and trembling, pressed against the worst of it in a losing bid to stem the flow.

His shirt—what remained of it—was soaked through, blood-stiff and scorched at the edges. Armor plating hung loose, warped by heat and impact. His skin, visible in streaks beneath the destruction, was matted with grime and soot, patches of ash clinging to him like shadows. Dirt coated his arms, darkened the creases of his neck, and his hair—usually tangled with intention—was plastered to his scalp, thick with dust and damp from the flood still trickling through fractured pipes.

His breathing was ragged. Sharp. Every inhale a fight, every exhale a surrender. The sound tore from him in broken gasps, chest rising too fast, rhythm erratic and shallow. He looked as if he’d been dragged through the remains of a battlefield and barely won the argument to live.

And still—Percy wore James’s jacket. It was untouched. Charcoal black with silver trim, its fabric gleamed beneath the layers of filth with quiet resilience. It hung off Percy’s battered frame like defiance incarnate, the enchantment humming softly with Aphrodite’s protection. No scorch marks. No tears. Just warmth and magic and memory.

Steve stared. Because what stood before him wasn’t a soldier. Wasn’t a demigod. Wasn’t even a man. It was a survivor wrapped in war, stitched together by grief and power and divine favor. And still—trying.

Steve’s breath hitched, barely audible over the distant groan of crumbling concrete. His boots crunched through soot and gravel as he stumbled closer, wide-eyed and pale. “Perce,” he whispered, voice cracking with disbelief and relief and everything in between.

His gaze raked over Percy’s battered frame, frantic and unyielding—like he was trying to memorize every wound, every inch that still bled, still breathed.

“What happened?”

Percy blinked, his eyelids sticky with soot and sweat, and lifted a shaking hand coated in blood like paint across marble—thick, dark, half-dried along the creases of his fingers. He gestured vaguely to his body, to the wreckage he’d become, voice hoarse with overuse and pain.

“Rebar through the stomach,” he rasped, each word dragging out like gravel. “Couple broken ribs. Legs are—fucked. Head too. Pretty sure if you name it, I’ve got it.”

Steve’s jaw clenched. His knuckles went white around the strap of his shield.

“Hypothermia,” he added softly. It was almost a joke—almost. A weak thread of humor thrown into the silence, like an anchor to something normal. But tension still rolled off him in waves, shoulders locked, eyes haunted.

“Fuck you,” Percy muttered without bite, the corner of his mouth twitching in a flicker of exhausted defiance.

Steve huffed out a brittle breath. Not quite a laugh.

Tony approached behind them, his gauntlet low and glowing faintly, not for offense now but stabilization. He glanced over Percy like he’d run calculations in his head already and didn’t like the odds—but still trusted the outcome.

“He’ll live,” Tony said, voice firm. Not casual, not dismissive—certain. “He’s got places to be after this. Family to see.”

And that—that—was the thread Percy clung to as the world tilted again. Not the pain. Not the blood. But the promise buried in Tony’s tone. That this was aftermath, not ending.

The hallway narrowed into twisted metal and fractured stone, opening at its far end into the edge of a jagged overlook. Smoke billowed up from the chasm below, curling in tired plumes like the earth itself was exhaling after screaming too long. Scorched walls framed the scene like a war memorial, and the light filtering through the cracked ceiling painted the space in shades of ash and ruin.

Thor stood at the precipice. His silhouette was carved from stillness—not the silence of peace, but the silence of coiled purpose. His back was straight, arms at his sides, fingers slightly curled as if resisting the urge to grip something that wasn't there. The wind tugged at his shirt, torn and singed at the hem, but he didn’t react. Didn’t flinch. Didn’t blink.

His eyes were locked on the figure below. The Mad Titan sat a few hundred feet away—too far to speak, too close to ignore. He was slumped in the wreckage of what had once been battlefield and temple, resting like a monument to ruin. His armor was cracked, his posture unyielding, his expression unreadable. But Thor watched him with a gaze that could flay galaxies.

He didn’t look human. Not in that moment. He looked like a sentinel carved from myth—an ancient storm bound in mortal form, guarding something sacred and perilous. The veins at his neck pulsed with restrained power, jaw locked in place. His breathing was deliberate, but each breath sounded like it cost something. Rage lived just beneath the surface, tempered by something far colder.

Tony arrived first, boots crunching against the debris as he slowed to a halt beside him. He didn’t speak. Just glanced from Thor to the Titan, eyes flickering with calculation and something quieter. Steve followed, shield still slung over one arm, dirt streaking his cheeks and tension riding high in his shoulders. He came to stand on Thor’s other side—three legends side by side, united by silence.

Behind them, Percy held back. He lingered just within the broken archway, shadows cast long across his frame. His breathing was shallow, quiet—still recovering, still trembling—but his focus was absolute. He watched the trio ahead with something like reverence, something like dread. His fingers curled instinctively at his sides, water slicking the floor beneath him in low, shifting pulses.

He didn’t speak. He didn’t need to. Here, silence was sacred. Waiting was a form of respect. And Percy felt the gravity of it pressing into his bones—past pain, past exhaustion, into the marrow of legacy. They weren’t just watching Thanos. They were preparing to end something.

The air hung heavy, vibrating with heat and dust, the acrid stench of scorched metal clinging to every breath like a warning. Amid the wreckage and ruin, a hush had settled—not the peace of victory, but the tension that lived between two breaths before a final charge.

Tony didn’t blink. His eyes stayed glued to the figure hunched among the fractured remains of the battlefield, posture deceptively relaxed, like a god pretending to be a man pretending to be finished. His voice sliced through the quiet—low, edged with something sharper than sarcasm.

“What’s he been doing?” Tony asked, not bothering to look away.

Thor’s gaze didn’t shift either. His shoulders were braced, taut like a bowstring that had been pulled and never released. He answered with a voice like cracked granite. “Absolutely nothing.”

The words landed hard, and they didn’t settle. They lingered—unfinished, unsettling, accusing.

Behind them, Percy stepped closer, his boots skimming over loose gravel and ash. The glow of distant flame caught in the water pooling beneath him, casting flickering reflections against the dark. His brows were furrowed, his mouth drawn into a tight line, calculating.

“Where are the stones?” he asked, voice steady but laced with fatigue.

Tony turned at that, briefly, his profile sharp in the dim light. He swept an arm toward the chaos around them—cratered ground, collapsed towers, what might’ve once been part of a throne now cracked in half.

“Somewhere under all this,” he said, grim. Then his gaze locked back on Thanos. “All I know is he doesn’t have them.”

Steve stepped forward, his stance solid, expression carved from conviction. Dirt streaked his armor, bruises bloomed down one arm, but he held himself like an anchor.

“So, we keep it that way.” He said it like a vow.

Like keeping the Infinity Stones buried beneath twisted steel and shattered memories was no harder than breathing. Thor tilted his head just enough to regard him.

“You know it’s a trap, right?” His voice carried weight now, not the weight of fear but of understanding—of a soldier who’d stood in the teeth of too many storms.

Tony’s response was immediate. Blasé. A shrug of posture more than word.

“Yeah.” His lip curled, not in amusement but in defiance. “I don’t think I care much.”

A beat passed. Then Thor nodded, slow and deliberate, like thunder rolling in the distance. “Good.” But something had shifted—the edge in his voice glinting like blade exposed just beneath skin. “As long as we’re all in agreement.”

The sky split with a shuddering roar.

It wasn’t just thunder—it was something older, deeper. A sound like the world remembering its gods. The clouds churned overhead, black and blistered, spiraling like smoke drawn into a divine inhale. Percy flinched instinctively, the vibration of it humming down his spine and into his heels, echoing like a warning across the damp steel underfoot. The air changed. Not just in pressure, but in presence.

Thor raised his arms. Not slowly, not ceremoniously—like a king summoning his weapons as naturally as breathing. His hands opened to the charged air, fingers spread wide. The moment hung for less than a heartbeat before they came. Stormbreaker whirled in from the east like a comet, Mjolnir from the west like returning thunder. Both weapons landed with heavy thuds into his grasp, metal singing as it collided with flesh that had held galaxies.

Lightning exploded over his body. Not around him—through him. It crawled over his chest like living armor, veins of white-blue electricity carving divine paths across his skin. His ruined leathers melted into new form, stitched from power and woven thunder. Gleaming plates replaced shredded cloth, and that crimson cape flared with renewed fury behind him, no longer tattered—majestic. His beard braided itself, guided by nothing but will and storm, tight and intricate with silver gleams braided through sun-blond hair.

Percy whispered to himself, almost reverent. “Okay, that’s cheating. That’s really cheating.”

But even as awe prickled across his skin, he didn’t miss the intensity in Thor’s eyes—or the way the alien’s chest rose and fell like someone preparing to march straight into prophecy. Percy stepped back, water rising at his feet in slow ripples, responding to his pulse. The storm wasn’t just in the sky anymore.

It had a face. And it was looking straight at destiny. The wind answered with a low howl, curling through the hollowed-out ruins like an unseen witness. The sky above flickered violently—white bolts dancing between black clouds—and for a moment it felt less like weather and more like something alive. Watching. Waiting.

Thor didn’t lower his weapons. His body crackled with power, arcs of lightning still dancing across his frame like restless specters. His voice was low and unyielding, gravel sharpened by fury.

“Let’s kill him properly this time.”

The words dropped like a battle standard. Not shouted. Not snarled. Declared. The weight of them turned the space electric, as if the storm itself paused to listen. His gaze didn’t waver from Thanos, who sat unmoved amid the destruction—serene, monstrous, daring.

Tony's reaction was immediate. He spun toward Percy with a swiftness that revealed just how frayed his nerves truly were. His armor whirred with the motion, joints flexing like a warning, but his tone carried the subtle cadence of care—not a barked order, but a protective calibration.

“I get that you’re tough and shit,” he began, eyes flicking over Percy’s uneven breathing, the tension still carved into his posture, “but take a breath right now.”

He stepped close enough for Percy to see the grime on his face, the blood spatter across his gauntlets that hadn’t been cleaned. Yet beneath it all was a glint of something familiar—urgency laced with respect. Tony didn’t belittle him.

“Step in only when strictly necessary,” he added, quieter now, like he wasn’t just giving instructions but offering insurance. “We need you the best we can get you.”

Percy didn’t argue. And that was its own statement.

His throat tightened, but no retort came. No witty comeback or flippant deflection. Just a nod—short, weighted, worn. He turned and eased himself down against a slab of half-melted stone, legs folding awkwardly, arms resting loose over his knees. The rubble still radiated faint heat from the blast that had cracked the earth hours earlier. It didn’t matter. It held him.

A droplet of water rolled from his temple to his cheek, and he didn’t know if it was sweat, rain, or grief.

His fingers absently brushed the edges of his thigh, where pain still bloomed beneath damp fabric. The ache reminded him of how far he’d pushed—past exhaustion, past limits, into the realm where instinct overtook thought. He leaned back slightly, letting the coolness of the ruin press against his spine. From here, the others looked like warriors cast in myth, sculpted from rage and resolution.

The three moved forward, each step dragging the moment tighter, threading tension through air already choked with smoke and silence.

And Percy felt it all. It wasn’t just awareness—it was immersion. His senses stretched too far, too deep, until the boundary between his body and the world dissolved. The air shifted with each footfall—Thor’s strides steady and storm-bound, Tony’s lighter but mechanically amplified, Steve’s firm, deliberate. Percy could feel it in the weight of the pressure changes, like a tide rolling just beneath his skin.

Every heartbeat rang through him—low vibrations carried by the remnants of shattered stone and water pooled at his feet. Thor’s thudded like war drums, primal and ancient. Tony’s skipped and recalibrated, fast but rhythmically off-center, wired and wary. Steve’s was even, a soldier’s cadence, steady and grounding—but Percy could tell it was elevated, just enough to betray the stakes.

Each inhale scratched against his senses, raw and sharp. He didn’t know how he was tracking it this intimately. His powers were usually responsive—tethered to intent, activated by need. But now they were wide open, exposed like raw nerve. It was unnerving. Painful. Too much.

He pressed his hands to his thighs, fingers twitching against the soaked fabric. The water around him shivered in response, thin ripples spiraling outward even though he hadn’t moved. His jaw clenched. The connection felt like standing in the center of a hurricane with nothing to hold onto—his focus the only thing keeping the current from taking him.

He was aware of everything. Of the tension in Thor’s shoulders as power built. Of the calculation in Tony’s silence. Of the conviction etched in Steve’s spine. It wasn’t just proximity—it was vulnerability. The hyper-awareness felt less like a gift and more like a warning. A reminder of just how easily he could lose control.

And with control, everything else. A single misstep, a moment of distraction, and he could drown the battlefield—or shatter it. This wasn’t just sensory overload. This was prophecy breathing down his neck. Consequence laced into every breath. The storm ahead wasn’t the only one worth fearing.

The words didn’t boom—they coiled.

A whisper that slithered through Percy’s thoughts like silk-wrapped steel, brushing the edges of his mind with cold intent. It didn’t echo so much as invade, gentle and malicious, slipping past defenses honed by war and wave.

“You can only escape me so many times, child of the Sea.”

The voice was ancient. Smooth. Unhurried. Like it knew endings intimately and never felt the need to chase.

Percy tensed. He didn’t just hear it—he felt it. A chill swirled down his spine, not from fear but recognition. The kind of dread born not from surprise, but inevitability. His skin prickled as water around him stilled, as if even the tide feared what stood before him.

Thanatos emerged from the shadows like a truth too heavy to look away from. He stood tall—regal, yes, but it was the kind of royalty that didn’t need ornamentation. His posture was precise, unmoving, and yet he carried the weight of all movement ceased. His suit rippled like smoke, threads of shadow peeling away at the edges in slow, elegant wisps that never touched the ground. His form was humanoid in theory, but nothing about him was quite mortal.

His presence was not oppressive—it was soothing. A cold balm poured over raw nerve. Like the hush that follows grief, like the first breath in a funeral hall. It did not ask for permission to exist. It simply was.

And his eyes—if they could be called that—burned not with heat, but with a steady, unforgiving flame, cool and blue, like the last ember before night swallows the hearth. Percy could feel them pressing against his chest, measuring him, weighing not just strength but deviation. Every slip, every defiance, every breath stolen from beneath the waves of fate.

The god of peaceful ends did not radiate rage. He radiated certainty. And Percy? Percy sat half in shadow, drenched in water and sweat, bracing himself against the memory of every moment he’d cheated death.

The chill lingered long after the voice faded. Percy’s breath hitched as Thanatos’s words brushed against him like frostbitten silk, soft in tone, cruel in content. His chest tightened, not from pain alone, but from the ache of knowing he agreed. Somewhere in his bones, in the exhausted rhythm of his blood, the truth settled like silt—he was running out of time. Or worse, being warned that time had already begun to turn on him.

“I know,” he mumbled, voice barely more than vapor. It curled upward like a surrender, lost quickly to the cold.

His hands hovered above his wound, fingers trembling—not from shock, but restraint. His skin ached around the gash, raw and red, but the pain felt secondary. Like his body had become a satellite to his thoughts, orbiting but unmoored. He hunched in on himself, spine bowed like he was trying to make himself smaller than fate would notice.

Thanatos’s gaze—unblinking, eternal—rested on him with a quiet intensity. There was no triumph in it. No threat. Just observation, the way one might regard a flower blooming too far out of season. A thing beautiful, but temporary.

“Death is inevitable,” the god said, voice a breath against Percy’s ribs. “Everyone shall face it. It is destiny. It is fate.”

Percy exhaled shakily, moisture beading on his lashes that could’ve been rain. Could’ve been grief.

“You cannot avoid it,” Thanatos continued, gently now. Not mocking. Not cruel. Like an old friend reminding him of a forgotten rule. “Lest you become something you dread.”

Percy felt that sentence like a blade skimming just beneath his skin. Because he’d seen what became of those who ran too long, twisted too far from mortality. He’d fought them. He’d pitied them. He’d nearly joined them.

“I know,” he said again, barely louder. “But I just got everyone back… I—I need more time.”

Thanatos tilted his head, the shadows of his suit trailing behind him like memories unwilling to let go. His presence was not invasive, but inevitable—like the silence after a funeral hymn.

“Time is a gift you have already been given, demigod,” he replied, not without kindness. “You have reached an age most demigods only dream of reaching. Thirty years is quite the feat.”

Percy looked up, eyes glassed with something older than sorrow.

“I need more,” he whispered, pleading now, raw and naked beneath the weight of the moment. “I still need more.”

Thanatos watched him for a long, unbearable moment—no movement, no breath, just gaze. The kind that felt like judgment and mercy rolled into one. The kind that didn’t strike… but waited.

“You have only made it this far,” the god said finally, voice low and resonant, “because the Ladies Fate have loved you so…”

He turned, cloak whispering away from his form as he began to recede. The light dulled in his wake.

“You may make it another thirty years, yet,” he added, half-musing, half-declaration. “We shall see, changer of fate.”

And then he was gone.

No flare. No fanfare.

Just absence.

The cold stayed. A thin film of ice settled along Percy’s shoulders, and the air tasted like snow before a burial—clean and unforgiving. The only proof he’d been there at all.

Percy snapped back to awareness like a lightning strike to the spine. The crunch of vibranium shattering reverberated through his bones, and the image seared into his vision—Thanos towering above Steve, shield reduced to metallic confetti, glowing edge of the double-bladed sword raised again for a final blow.

There was no pause. No calculation. Percy launched to his feet, body screaming in protest. Pain flared across his abdomen like someone had dragged fire through his veins. His legs buckled, ribs groaned beneath the sudden shift, but he didn’t stop. He shoved past debris, ignoring the roar of every torn ligament, of bruises blooming freshly under his skin. He didn’t even glance down at the trail of blood he left behind.

He sprinted toward Steve, raw power threading through every battered muscle. The air rippled around him, water responding to his pulse like it could feel the desperation bleeding through his skin. He moved faster than pain could catch him.

Thanos’s arm swung. Percy threw himself forward. The blade met resistance not in metal—but in wave.

A shield of water surged upward, condensed mid-air into a wall of shimmering force, catching the massive blade with a deafening crack. The pressure slammed into Percy’s braced frame, legs skidding, wind knocked from his lungs—but he held.

Water roared and writhed between them, dense and humming like something alive. Steam hissed off its surface where power collided. Percy’s arms trembled, the protective shield pulsing with every heartbeat, but he didn’t flinch.

Thanos snarled. His blade pressed down harder, his massive frame looming, eyes alight with disdain and fury. The weight of him was monstrous—like a continent trying to break through Percy’s will. But Percy stayed rooted, bracing his feet against shattered stone and pushing back with every ounce of divine inheritance he had left.

Percy’s voice shredded through the chaos, ragged and urgent. “Steve—move!”

It wasn’t a command. It was desperation. A lifeline thrown across the battlefield.

Steve staggered back on instinct, still clutching the shattered remnants of his shield, lungs heaving like his ribcage had forgotten how to breathe. But his eyes stayed locked on Percy, awe blooming wide across his bruised face. The kid shouldn’t be standing—shouldn’t be alive. And yet, there he was.

Percy surged forward, limping through the blast-scorched terrain with single-minded force. Water coiled around his hand, responding like muscle memory—like loyalty. It gathered in spirals, compressing into the shape of a sword with a whispering hiss, blade forming where steel had once been. His celestial bronze had been swallowed by rubble and flame. This—this was raw will.

Thanos rotated with casual menace, blade glinting, stance like a wall you couldn’t climb. Percy didn’t flinch. He twisted, water trailing in an arc as he lashed out at the Titan’s gut with lethal precision. The attack carved the air, but Thanos sidestepped effortlessly, massive frame rolling like a planet in motion.

Percy followed without hesitation—his feet slipping on shattered stone, blood painting his path—but he drove forward again. His water-forged blade sliced outward, relentless, and this time the momentum hit. Thanos stumbled a half-step back, the impact forcing him away from Steve.

Thanos lifted his own sword to block, expecting metal. But water was not metal. Percy’s blade slithered around the defense, splitting like a river around a stone. The edges reformed mid-swing, reshaping faster than Thanos could react, and slammed full-force into his abdomen with a resounding crack. The water didn’t pierce—it pounded. It curled and condensed like the ocean remembering how to destroy.

Thanos grunted, mouth twisted in fury, stepping back with a hiss of breath. The battlefield stilled for a fraction of a moment. Not in peace—but in recognition.

Thanos let out a guttural, wrathful howl as the icy blade struck home—staggering back with a grimace twisted in disbelief. Power laced through the wound like venom, and Percy was already moving.

His blade dissolved into vapor mid-spin, then reformed—not as a single weapon, but as hundreds. Shards of ice spiraled around him in a flurry, each one thin as a needle, sharp as betrayal. They hovered for a split breath, catching the light like diamonds before Percy hurled them forward with a flick of his hand and the fury of a sea god unchained.

The shards shrieked through the air. Several embedded deep—one caught Thanos’s shoulder with a wet crunch, another driving into the thick muscle just above his knee. The Titan bellowed, body jerking as the impact drove him into a crouch, pain snarling through his face like something he wasn’t used to feeling.

His hand shot out, grasping for anything to retaliate. Fingers closed around a slab of broken concrete—cratered, jagged, still steaming from the last energy blast. He flung it like a meteor.

Percy twisted to dodge, instincts sharpening, but his injuries betrayed him. His heel clipped a fragment of rebar—too slow. The rubble slammed into his shoulder with brutal precision.

There was a sickening crack. Percy crashed to the ground in a mess of limbs and steam, his sword scattering into vapor around him. The breath left him in a shuddering gasp, and pain exploded behind his eyes. His fingers clawed at the dirt, trying to rise despite the screaming joint.

Everything in him trembled. But he rolled—dragged his body back through dust and shattered stone, inching toward where Steve still stood, half-lost in shock.

His shoulder hung wrong. There was too much heat in his mouth. Something tasted like copper. Still, Percy pushed upright, teeth clenched, eyes bright with fury and focus.

Steve stared, stricken. His voice broke out, half-panicked and half furious: “Jesus, fuck, Percy—your shoulder!”

The joint hung wrong—angled, swollen, bruises blooming across the skin in shades of red and stormcloud violet. Bone grated under the skin like shattered porcelain shifting in a velvet pouch.

Percy didn’t flinch.

“Ignore it,” he said, tight and clipped. His face was smeared in ash and blood, jaw locked in the kind of restraint that bordered on reckless.

His hand lifted, fingers trembling from the aftershock of impact, and called. Water surged inward—not from the battlefield or broken pipes, but drawn through him. Pulled from the marrow. His pulse stuttered as moisture bled from his bones, concentrating in a cool stream that twined around the broken joint like living thread. The liquid twisted into filaments, sharp and precise—healing with violence.

Then with a breath barely deeper than a wince, he snapped the shoulder back into place. The sound was sickening. A pop and crunch that made Steve stagger, eyes wide.

Percy gasped—but didn’t break. The water held the fractured bone together, wrapping the injury like frost over cracks in glass. It shimmered faintly, glowing with the same stubborn intensity in his gaze.

His voice was low, somewhere between fury and focus. “It’ll hold.”

And already he was turning back toward the fight, steps uneven but relentless. Like every injury was just another wave he’d decided not to drown in.

Thanos’s gaze narrowed, expression carved from volcanic stone. His posture was composed, deliberate, but it pulsed with restrained violence—like the slow coil of a predator before the strike.

“In all my years of conquest… violence… slaughter…” His voice was low, nearly reverent, each word rolling out like thunder buried in smoke. “It was never personal.”

The quiet that followed was sharp enough to bleed.

His eyes found Percy—then Steve—then the broken remnants of the resistance that still dared to breathe in his presence. And something shifted. Not rage. Not cruelty. Something colder. Satisfaction.

“But I’ll tell you now…” he continued, stepping forward with deliberate weight, each footfall echoing through the ruined earth. “What I’m about to do to your stubborn, annoying little planet…”

A breath. A pause.

“I’m going to enjoy it.” His smile was slow. Terrible. “Very… very much.”

Then the sky responded.

A deep, mechanical whine vibrated above, followed by piercing beams of alien light cutting through the clouds—like judgment. Hundreds of them.

From the ships that had hung dormant in the atmosphere, thousands of portals activated in synchrony. Harsh red and violet hues bathed the battlefield as figures began to descend. Uniformed bodies, insectile shapes, mechanical war beasts—each more grotesque and efficient than the last.

The ground quaked beneath the collective march. Steve took a half-step back instinctively, mouth tightening. This wasn't just Wakanda’s force doubled. It was exponential—beyond scale, beyond logistics. A living tide of death.

The army unfurled like a banner of inevitability. Behind Thanos, formations reassembled, weapons charged, aerial creatures cried out as they dove. And in front of it all stood Percy, bruised shoulder glowing faintly with frost, water rippling at his heels, heartbeat syncing with the tremor in the earth.

Thanos turned slightly, just enough for the army to see him—like a god inviting worship.

Percy had faced the impossible before. He’d walked into nightmares and come out breathing—had stood alone against armies of monsters, clashed with gods who spoke in thunder, battled giants whose steps cracked mountains, and Titans who called themselves eternal. He’d faced prophecy, betrayal, loss. And won. Every time, he’d found some sliver of strength to burn, some untapped fury to wield. He’d been lucky. He’d been good. He’d been stubborn.

But this? This was different.

The battlefield stretched endlessly beneath a sky choked in ash. The sheer volume of enemies blotted out the horizon—rank upon rank of soldiers and creatures, armed, fast, brutal. More than he’d ever seen, even in the worst days of Olympus. And this time, they weren’t just coming for him. They were coming for everyone.

Beside him, Steve looked just as wrecked. His breaths came in ragged bursts, posture tight, blood matting his temple. The shield was gone. The super-soldier strength that had carried him through wars was dimmed—not extinguished, but worn. They were barely upright.

Percy’s legs trembled beneath him, every bruise and fracture screaming for attention. His shoulder throbbed where bone had cracked and been shoved back into place. His head swam, his lungs scraped with dust and ozone. The water inside him was tired—sluggish, strained. But still it answered him, curling like a wounded animal, ready to strike.

There was no backup. No clever trick. Just the two of them standing between the world and oblivion. And yet—Percy didn’t back down. Steve squared his jaw. They leaned into the ache, into the fear, into the knowing. Because sometimes heroism wasn’t about winning. It was about choosing to fight anyway.

Even when the odds were laughable. Even when your knees buckled, and your hands shook, and everything in you screamed to stop. They didn’t stop. Not when the sky broke. Not when the army advanced. Not when hope felt like a distant memory.

Because if they didn’t hold the line—no one else could.

And whatever pain it cost… whatever blood they gave…

They would pay it. Anything to keep the world safe.

Steve braced one hand on his knee, chest heaving like it had forgotten rhythm. His shield—fractured, dented, barely more than a curve of memory—hung from his forearm, trembling under its own weight. The straps had frayed, slick with sweat and ash, but he tightened them anyway. One tug. Then another. Like ritual. Like promise. He straightened slowly, bones groaning beneath muscle, and took his place beside Percy. No words passed between them. But the space they occupied crackled like lightning just before the strike.

Percy’s hands trembled, fingers twitching from exhaustion and pain, but he lifted them with purpose. The air shifted—moisture answering the call like it had been holding its breath. Twin torrents spiraled upward, twisting into blades as sharp as loyalty. The hilts settled into his grip like they’d been waiting for him, glowing faintly blue, edged in frost and fury.

Above, the sky fractured. Worm-like aliens twisted and spun through the clouds, slithering in aerial formation, their shrieks like metal tearing over bone. Ships dropped from the heavens in thundering crashes—massive and brutal, shaking the ground like judgment. Dust spiraled upward. The battlefield screamed.

And still—they walked. Shoulders squared. Heads high. Steps slow, and so goddamn heavy, but certain. The earth seemed to lean into them, drawn by gravity or resolve or both. Every inch forward was a declaration. Not of strength. Not of immortality.

But of defiance. Steve’s gaze scanned the impossible horizon. Percy’s lips parted, breath shallow but steady. Their silhouettes cut through the chaos like myth—bloodied, battered, but unbowed. Two men. One broken shield. Two blades of summoned sea. Marching into extinction like it was just another fight worth losing.

The static cut through the coms like a blade—rough, glitchy, but familiar.

“Hey—Cap—you read me?”

Percy and Steve both halted mid-step, exhaustion burning in their lungs, sweat streaked with ash trailing down their faces. Percy tilted his head instinctively, brows furrowed, trying to parse through the fractured signal. Steve straightened, shoulders pulled tight, glancing around like his ears had just betrayed him.

Then it came again—clearer this time. More real.

“Cap, Perce—” the voice crackled, threaded with urgency. “It’s Sam. Can you hear me?”

Percy felt something stutter in his chest. A heartbeat. A breath. Hope.

The battlefield blurred around him for a second—just noise and motion—but that voice carved through the chaos like dawn through stormclouds. Sam. Sam. His voice held that signature edge of calm under fire, that grounded lilt that Percy hadn’t realized he was desperate to hear until this very moment.

Then the sound shifted again. Crackling sparks. The air behind them shimmered. A golden flare split through dust and shadow, swirling like embers caught in wind. A portal bloomed to their left, unfurling with grace and momentum—a hole in space forged of magic and memory. The edges rippled outward, casting light that bathed the scorched earth in warmth.

Sam’s voice smirked through the coms. “On your left.”

Steve whipped toward the portal, eyes wide. Percy turned too, heart thudding against bruised ribs. They didn’t breathe.

Then—movement. Three Wakandans stepped through the glowing gateway, shoulders squared like kings reclaiming ground. Okoye’s spear gleamed despite the grime, her stance sharp and protective. Shuri followed, fingers poised near her gauntlet triggers, scanning the battlefield with intelligent fury. T’Challa strode forward, panther-like and regal, every step radiating command.

And overhead—Sam. He zipped through the portal with practiced speed, wings extended, banking hard with wind trailing behind him. He shot across the sky in a tight arc around Percy and Steve, dipping low enough that the gust from his flight stirred the dirt around their feet. His silhouette against the storm felt like punctuation. Like arrival.

Percy’s lips parted. Steve blinked.

Because just like that—the odds had changed. And they weren’t alone anymore.

The sky tore open in bursts of gold. One portal became a hundred, blazing like firework flares against the bruised clouds. They flared outward from the horizon and soared into the sky above, spiraling in clusters and arcs until the battlefield was rimmed in light—glorious, defiant, impossibly alive. Dust scattered at their foundations, wind sweeping across the broken earth like joy made tangible.

Figures stepped through. Hundreds. Thousands. Each one a miracle made flesh.

Some Percy knew immediately—by posture, by silhouette, by memory etched in the marrow. Others were unfamiliar but unmistakable, their presence weighty with purpose. Wakandans in formation, Asgardians armed to the teeth, sorcerers cloaked in flame and starlight. The Dora Milaje gleamed in armor against the haze, Kamar-Taj monks walked as if gravity were irrelevant, Ravagers filed in with crooked grins and cruel tech. The cavalry didn’t just arrive—they marched like prophecy fulfilled.

And then—

A blur shot from one of the portals, arcing like a comet. Peter.

Swinging high above the fray, suit catching the flickering light, arms flung wide with the ease only someone that young and that brave could manage. He twisted mid-air, somersaulting with a laugh Percy didn’t hear so much as feel. His heart soared—pain momentarily eclipsed by something sweeter than relief. It was delirious joy, aching in his ribs. He grinned wide and feral, tears threatening at the edges, throat tightening without words.

Peter was here. They all were.

Then—an explosion rocked the right side of the clearing. Stone and steel burst upward as if the earth itself was glad to fight back. Dust mushroomed in a cloud, then cleared, revealing a shape too large to be real—Scott, now towering in his massive form, pulling himself free from the debris with careful, practiced chaos. In his hands—Bruce, sagging but grinning; Rocket, snarling and clutching a gun twice his size; and Rhodey, armor damaged but dignity intact, visor reflecting the golden glow around them.

Percy laughed—hoarse and broken, but real. His knees nearly buckled under the relief. This wasn’t just hope. It was every reason he fought.

The ground trembled—not from the enemy, but from the rising fury of allies.

War cries rang out across the field, fractured but resolute. Wakandan chants pounded like drumbeats against the air; Asgardian cries echoed with ancient cadence, vibrating in the bones. The Guardians whooped with reckless joy, Sorcerers lit up in arcs of elemental defiance, and Ravagers clanged their weapons in arrhythmic bravado. Even the quiet ones—the ones who didn’t shout—readied themselves with silent vows etched into their posture. Shoulders squared. Feet braced. Eyes locked forward.

It was chaos, yes, but coordinated chaos. A chorus of defiance.

And at the helm stood Steve Rogers. He was still—impossibly so—while the world roared around him. Mud caked his boots, his suit torn at the seams, a thin trail of blood running down from his brow. Yet he looked unshaken. Unbreakable. His gaze swept the horizon as if memorizing it one last time.

The shield was slung at his back. He didn’t reach for it. Instead, he lifted one arm, palm open, and the world seemed to pause.

Lightning crackled overhead—not summoned, but responsive. The clouds split with a sharp intake of breath, and through the golden flare of portals, Mjolnir answered. It streaked across the battlefield like a comet, spinning with wild promise before smacking into his hand with a satisfying thrum of power.

“Avengers—” Steve bellowed, voice cutting clean through the storm, through the cries, through the ache in a thousand grieving hearts. He exhaled. One word left. One sacred word. Mjolnir gleamed in his grip. “Assemble.”

The front lines shattered as the charge began. A thunderous wave of bodies surged forward—war cries erupting like volcanic force. Wakandan chants harmonized with Ravager howls, Sorcerers spun magic into ribbons of light, and Asgardians roared with ancestral fury. The battlefield lit up in flashes of steel and flame, every movement desperate, sacred, alive.

Percy didn’t run. He launched himself skyward—body whip-fast and precise—clearing the crush of allies with one reckless burst of power. The moment his boots left the ground, the atmosphere bent around him like it recognized who he was. The storm obeyed without hesitation.

A hurricane unfurled around him—not summoned, unleashed. The air cracked, pressure dropping with sudden violence as wind spun in a cyclone of raw, defiant rage. Water from the shattered earth leapt upward, pulled into motion by his will alone. It turned jagged, feral—ribbons of ocean slicing into the alien hordes with merciless accuracy.

Those who got too close didn’t stand a chance. The hurricane became a living weapon, grabbing Chitauri by the limbs and launching them backwards, bones cracking midair. Others were torn apart mid-motion, bodies flung like debris. Screams vanished beneath the roar of wind. Mud and stone churned with unnatural force, giving Percy a launchpad with every spin.

His swords whirled around him like extensions of thought. Not held—commanded. Bloodied water flashed in tight, brutal arcs as he twisted through the battlefield, pirouetting in sync with the storm. Every movement was deliberate: a leap, a slash, a burst of water driving back a thrashing beast. He didn't land—he crashed, feet skidding through rubble before he vaulted again. He barely touched ground, riding the wind like a current.

Alien flesh tore apart in glittering sprays. Limbs fell. Claws missed. Percy moved too fast, too furious, too free. His face was locked in focus—jaw set, eyes blazing with something primal. Not just determination. Not just vengeance. This was wrath made grace.

He wasn’t tethered to a formation. There was no choreography to his path—only instinct. Where the cries were loudest, he turned. Where the wounded stumbled or fell, he rushed. Percy didn’t move like a warrior bound by duty. He moved like a storm bound by purpose. It didn’t matter whose colors someone wore, whether they were gods or mortals, aliens or augments—if they were fighting for the light and faltering, he was there.

His power responded not just to his command but to his care. Thin sheets of ice snapped into existence around crumbling soldiers and overwhelmed civilians, forming shimmering domes in the chaos—glacial-blue shields that held firm against lasers, debris, and claws. Steam curled where fire met frost, water surging in liquid rings that snapped closed around the wounded in cocoon-like bursts. It gave them seconds. It gave them breath.

He skidded low beside a collapsed Wakandan scout, one hand raised—water surged from the ground, forming a pressure dome around their body, oxygen rushing back into fragile lungs. He darted toward an injured sorcerer and wrapped them in a torrent of mist that hardened to frost when the next blast neared.

The battlefield blurred around him, but he didn’t seem to notice. He was everywhere at once—a hurricane with a healer’s touch.

And the water? It loved him. It coated his skin like armor and salve, sweeping over him in translucent waves. Mud vanished from his limbs, blood spun away in crimson swirls that melted into the earth, grime and exhaustion lifted from his frame like reverence made physical. Minor wounds stitched themselves closed under the fluid's touch—a cut across his temple faded into nothing, bruises dissolved beneath ripples of movement.

It was more than power—it was sanctuary. And Percy wielded it not just to fight, but to save.

There was no room for memory—no ache for the past, no reach for the future.

Percy was present, entirely and utterly. Every breath he took hummed with the battle’s rhythm, war drums thudding in his pulse, adrenaline sharpened into instinct. The clash of metal and roar of magic blurred at the edges of his senses, distant as dream noise compared to the sheer focus that overtook him. It wasn’t just fight or flight—it was flow, elemental and fierce. The storm didn’t just answer to him; it sang with him.

Power laced through his bloodstream, ancient and undeniable. His hair drifted upward in weightless defiance, caught in the cyclone of his aura—sea-salted strands lifted by wind that pulsed with intent. Water threaded itself through the air like breath made visible, coiling around him, misting at his fingertips and crystallizing mid-spin before vanishing again. His veins glowed faintly beneath the skin, bioluminescent blue-green like moonlight filtered through ocean depths. It moved with each heartbeat, with each flick of a blade, with each whispered promise to protect.

And his eyes—

Bright. Unyielding. Ocean-lit. Against the bruised canvas of the cloud-shadowed day, his gaze pierced like a beacon. Not wide with fear or frenzy—but sharp. Clear. The color of open water at twilight. It wasn’t just light that made him glow—it was purpose. It radiated outward from him, casting shimmer over the fractured ground, catching on the weapons he spun like extensions of breath and thought.

He looked like he belonged to no one.

He looked like a god who chose to fight.

The battlefield trembled beneath a new kind of storm. Percy’s hurricane raged unchecked, its fury sculpted by instinct and will—whipping waves torn from the fractured ground, spiraling with elemental precision. Thor’s tempest bore down from above, lightning splitting the bruised sky with the roar of a thousand storms. And somewhere in that chaos, their powers collided.

Water met lightning. Storm met storm. Stormbreaker and Riptide.

They didn’t speak. They didn’t need to. Back to back, they moved in perfect synchrony—two sons of primal forces, spiraling in a cyclone of destruction and defiance. Lightning arced through the torrents Percy conjured, crackling in water that became weaponized current, illuminating the whirlwind in flashes of electric blue and sea-glass green. The storm didn’t belong to either of them anymore—it belonged to the dance.

Percy ducked low just in time, feeling the static bite of Thor’s axe sweeping overhead—Stormbreaker whistling through the air, inches from singeing curls already floating with power. His boots skidded across slick stone as a geyser surged behind him, lifting him into a spin, blades flashing. At the same moment, Thor launched into the air, cape crackling, muscles taut as he vaulted over the crest of one of Percy’s waves—not dodging, trusting.

It was choreography by chaos. A lethal waltz, guided by centuries-old instinct and a thread of something deeper—respect. Confidence. And destruction.

Aliens that ventured too close were flung back by the collision of powers—some electrocuted mid-scream, others cleaved apart by spinning waves and flashing blades. The earth beneath them was cratered and scorched, the storm amplifying with every movement. Wind tore at fabric, light flashed without warning, and the vortex they created pulsed like a living thing.

Everyone kept their distance. Even allies glanced over and recalibrated their footing, inching back from the spiral. Their circle was holy and hostile. To enter it was to gamble with annihilation.

Percy caught Thor’s eye mid-turn—just for a second. They didn’t grin. Didn’t speak. But something passed between them, wordless and fierce. This is what it means to be a storm.

The news hit mid-motion—passed to Percy like a battlefield secret, breathless and urgent.

One of the soldiers he’d encased in an ice shield grabbed his wrist before he darted off again, voice hoarse with desperation. “They’re playing keep away. Gauntlet. From Thanos. He’s close.”

That was all Percy needed. The tide shifted in his chest—not fear, but a sharpened edge of focus. The battle wasn’t just chaos now. It had become a pattern. A pulse. The gauntlet moved like a torch in a relay race, each carrier trusting the next to run faster, hit harder, survive longer.

He hadn’t seen it handed off, not exactly.

But he felt the moment Peter passed it on—the sorrow and determination like threads unraveling across the battlefield. The next wielder blazed overhead like a comet, bursting through the haze with burning hair and cosmic eyes. Percy didn’t know her name. Didn’t have time to learn it. All he knew was she radiated like a dying star that refused to go quietly, and the gauntlet flared brighter in her grip than it had with anyone else.

Supernova woman, he thought, with a kind of reverent desperation. So he guarded her. Guarded all of them. Every time the gauntlet switched hands, Percy adjusted. He redirected his storm, reshaping waves to slam into charging Leviathans, crafting spears of pressurized ice to pierce through alien armor. He fought like his limbs were smoke—here, there, everywhere. Each twist of water wrapped around allies like breath, each surge of magic sent enemies sprawling.

He didn’t need a map. The gauntlet’s energy sang to him faintly, like a sonar in his veins. He followed that tune and chased proximity like a shadow. But the battlefield didn’t pause for his purpose. It clawed and screamed, demanding more of him than he had left to give.

His heart pounded, his lungs scraped raw. Bruises bloomed across ribs and shoulders, water barely keeping up with the damage. He splintered himself into too many pieces—protector, fighter, storm—and the seams began to rip.

He crashed to the ground after a particularly brutal blast, the pressure of a collapsing alien tank fracturing the air behind him. His hair clung to his cheeks, his arms shook with overuse, and the sea-light in his veins flickered. Just briefly.

The hurricane faltered. He gasped—one breath, sharp and panicked—as he pushed back to his feet. And still, even then, he turned toward the next flare of the gauntlet like gravity itself depended on him. Because it did. Even if he broke.

The explosion sounded like the sky had ruptured.

Far off near the lake, light bloomed in a violent, searing flash—followed by a concussive boom that rolled across the battlefield like thunder unleashed. The ground trembled beneath Percy’s feet, forcing him to stagger sideways, shoulder slamming into the edge of a fractured boulder. Dust rose in thick plumes, and somewhere above, the clouds briefly parted from the shockwave.

His com crackled with static, then sharpened just enough for a voice to cut through—frayed, sharp with concern.

“Uh…” Pepper’s voice rang out. “Is anyone else seeing this?”

Percy didn’t wait for a consensus.

He was already sprinting—boots sliding through mud and ash, water swirling in spirals at his heels as if rushing to keep up. The blast had torn a hole through the craggy rim of the broken dam, rubble shearing downward into the riverbed below. From that wound, a flood burst loose, rushing forward like vengeance, foam and debris caught in its wake.

It didn’t flow.

It crashed.

Percy reached the lakeside just as the roaring surge descended, launching himself in a reckless arc toward the edge of the deluge. He landed beside Strange, his body still dripping steam and fury, a swirl of water already rising around his outstretched hands.

With a shoutless command, he pulled.

Water answered.

The flood twisted midair—stopped in motion, reshaped into a whirling pillar that corkscrewed upward, siphoning mass away from vulnerable ground. The column spun like a cyclone, mist refracting sun through shattered clouds, a monument to control carved from chaos.

“Hey,” Percy muttered—half greeting, half exhale—as he flicked both hands outward.

The spiraling pillar froze.

Solid ice arched upward like a spire, shimmering faintly under the fractured daylight. The flood below halted, redirected into smaller tributaries and swept to the sides—contained. Beneath it, the wreckage of battle remained untouched.

Strange was still blinking at him.

Brows raised. Head tilted. Watching Percy like he was some rare elemental anomaly conjured by the convergence of magic and storm. There was no fear in his gaze—just quiet, academic awe.

“Hello,” Strange replied coolly, nodding once. “Fascinating timing.”

Percy grinned, ragged and breathless. “What can I say? I like making entrances.”

Percy pivoted mid-stride, ready to dive back into the fray—but the movement stalled, seized by a brutal revelation.

Thanos was no longer just close to victory.

He was claiming it.

The Titan loomed ahead, monumental against the fractured horizon, and Percy’s breath hitched as he caught the glint of something terrible in Thanos’s grip. His hand was lifted, silhouetted against the smoky sky, fingers curled around the final Infinity Stone—the last fragment of impossible, universe-bending power.

Percy froze.

For a heartbeat, everything else blurred: the screams, the clashes, even the blood pounding in his own ears. All he could see was color—a blinding aurora veining up Thanos’s arm the moment the stone made contact. Energy surged like wildfire, rainbow streaks of raw, elemental force burning along his skin, carving paths of pain that made Thanos’s massive frame convulse, just slightly. Not with weakness—but with transformation.

His body arched, spine drawn taut as the gauntlet whined with power, metal grating under the strain of near-divine energy pouring into it. Percy's stomach dropped.

It wasn’t just the pain Thanos endured.

It was the acceptance.

The Titan pressed the last stone into place with grim finality—fingers trembling from the torrent surging through his bones, lips curled in something between a snarl and a smile. The gem locked into the gauntlet with a sound like glass cutting through silence. A radiant pulse flared outward, tinting the air with an unnatural hue.

Percy’s gut twisted.

Dread spread cold and slick through his chest, sinking like lead behind his ribs. Not fear for himself—but for everything, everyone. He’d faced monsters. Gods. Armies. But this was something deeper, older. A power meant to reshape existence, now nestled in the palm of someone who had already chosen who was expendable.

Percy was already moving before conscious thought could catch up—instinct overruling strategy, desperation eclipsing caution. His boots tore across scorched earth, every step landing hard against the fragmented ground. Shocks of pain radiated up his legs, sharp and jarring, as if the earth itself resented his defiance. Charred rubble splintered beneath him, dust kicking up with each pounding stride, but his focus didn’t flicker.

He saw nothing but Thanos. The world around him dimmed—no cries, no chaos, no wind. Just the Titan, towering and terrible, fingers poised to press the stones together in the gauntlet with catastrophic resolve. The last stone still pulsed with unstable light, trembling against its socket like it knew what was coming. Percy’s breath was a broken rhythm, rasping past his throat in choked gasps. His lungs burned. His body screamed. But he flung himself forward, closing the final inches with reckless speed—

And grabbed Thanos’s hand. Their limbs locked in a brutal tangle, Percy’s fingers clamping down around the massive wrist just before the gauntlet could seal. His grip was feral, born of pure dread, nails digging into unforgiving skin as he channeled every ounce of power he had into the clash.

Water answered his panic. It surged up from the shattered terrain—slammed into the stones like a living net, coiling around them in fierce, binding ribbons. Percy concentrated, tightened the grip. The water didn’t just contain—it constricted, pressurized, strained against the force blooming from within.

And then he touched the stones. A jolt of energy lashed through his bones like lightning. He cried out without sound, muscles convulsing as arcs of multicolored power skittered across his arms—purple, gold, green, jagged blue—each pulse a distinct flavor of agony, cosmic and cruel. His body wanted to recoil, to release, to survive.

But he didn’t let go. He gritted his teeth and grasped harder, arms trembling with effort as water kept thickening around the gems. The sting of the contact sharpened with each second, like biting into live wires—but beneath it, beneath the pain, was something deeper.

Thanos hurled Percy backward with monstrous force, one titanic arm cleaving through the tension like a blade. Percy’s body flew—an arc of blue and gold against the smoke-stained sky—before slamming into the ground with bone-rattling impact. Gravel scraped through cloth and skin. Cracked pavement shattered beneath him. The breath tore from his lungs in a jagged gasp as stars danced behind his eyes.

The Titan stepped forward, massive and methodical.

That grin—arrogant and hollow—curled across his face like prophecy already fulfilled.

“I am inevitable,” he announced, voice rumbling like tectonic plates shifting, finality etched into every syllable.

He snapped his fingers.

…

And the universe held its breath.

No surge. No rupture. No cosmic unraveling.

Only silence.

An unnatural stillness descended, thick and electric. No wind. No rustle of debris. Not even the distant hum of destruction. Just quiet—complete and paralyzing—as Thanos’s expression twisted in real time. Confusion first. Then disbelief. And finally, a deep and creeping horror.

Because Percy was rising. Slowly. Trembling. Smoke clinging to his limbs like ghosts. He turned his bloodied hand, just enough for Thanos to see. Water curled along his fingers—twisting, shimmering, alive—and at its center, orbiting like tethered stars, spun the six Infinity Stones. Their light surged in defiance, held together not by circuitry or celestial design, but by sheer elemental will and raw desperation. Behind each gemstone, faint glimmers of eyes—Percy’s eyes—flashed within the aqueous prison, reflecting pain, memory, and unstoppable intent.

His breaths came in shards now, every inhale carving fire through his throat. The pain was not abstract—it was real, searing like lava across his veins, burning up his arm, peeling skin in flaking layers as the gauntlet’s power tried to unmake him from the inside out.

But Percy smiled. Lips cracked, face streaked in blood and soot, one eye half-swollen shut—and he still smiled.

“You really aren’t,” he rasped. It wasn’t just defiance. It was grief braided with fury. Hope welded to sacrifice.

Then he snapped his fingers. The world didn’t shatter. It illuminated. Light exploded outward in a white-hot corona, drowning the battlefield in incandescent radiance. Not destructive—but redemptive. As if the universe had rewritten its heartbeat around that single act.

Percy didn’t just change fate.

He stole it back.

 

~~~

 

Pain was the first thing Percy remembered.

Not a distant ache or the kind that faded with breath—this was raw. Consuming. It blazed up his arm like fire given purpose, like the universe had turned its wrath inward and poured it into every nerve ending. His fingers twitched violently at his side, muscles spasming of their own accord as he gasped in air that tasted like ash and ozone. Each breath sliced through his chest like glass.

He didn’t try to move.

Couldn’t, really.

His body felt too heavy to lift, too broken to bend. So he lay there—curled slightly on his side amid the cracked battlefield, ribs screaming, vision swaying, flesh half-burnt and half-frozen—relishing in the cruel miracle of being alive.

It made no sense.

The stones alone should have unmade him. Should have carved through his soul like they had threatened to do to Banner. And Banner was strong. Whole. A god inside a man’s skin.

Percy was neither.

He was injured beyond measure, scraped down to the bone. His powers stretched thin, magic fraying at the edges like fabric worn too many times. His body bore the signatures of every blow, every sacrifice leading up to this moment. He was running on fumes—on stubbornness. On love. On will.

And yet, somehow...

Here he was.

Still breathing.

Still there.

He turned his head just enough to see the battlefield.

It was quiet now.

Eerily so.

Ash drifted like snowflakes through the devastated ruins. From the edges of his blurred vision, Percy watched Thanos’s army crumble—massive silhouettes dissolving into dust, vanishing in clouds of soft gray. Their weapons clattered to the ground with finality. Even the monsters went still, fading like smoke after a burn.

And then—Thanos.

The Titan was the last to go.

His body fractured like stone under pressure, shards of power peeling away from him in shimmering waves before his form buckled and fell into nothing. No scream. No fury. Just silence.

Percy exhaled, long and ragged.

The pain was still there—his arm seared and ruined, his veins scorched—but he gripped onto consciousness as tightly as he had the stones. Not because he should have lived. But because some part of him had refused to let go until it was done.

Until it was undone.

Pain rolled over Percy in waves—deep, guttural, all-consuming. He lay sprawled on the fractured ground, the dirt scorched black beneath him, ash flecking his face like war paint. His left arm was stretched uselessly at his side, fingers twitching erratically as if his nerves hadn’t yet caught on that he’d survived. Steam hissed gently off the damaged skin, the tendons beneath scorched and trembling.

“Fuck,” he gasped, voice thin and raw. “Gods, that hurt… That really hurt…”

Each word was broken glass between his ribs. He didn't move—couldn’t. The pain had settled deep, curling into every joint and muscle like a parasite. Just breathing felt like punishment. Footsteps pounded toward him, uneven and frantic.

“PJ!” Tony’s voice was ragged, half-sob, half-relief as he dropped to his knees beside him. His suit hissed as panels retracted from his gloves, metal cooling against the heat still radiating from Percy’s skin. “Oh my gods… Are you okay?”

Percy cracked one eye open, squinting up at the wrecked skyline. “Stupid question,” he gritted out, jaw clenched tight against a groan.

Tony barked out a wet snort, part laughter, part relief. “Fine,” he muttered, brushing soot off Percy’s shoulder with shaking fingers. “Will you live?”

Percy turned his head slightly, wincing at the stiffness that radiated from his spine to his toes. “You told Steve I would,” he rasped. “Wouldn’t want to make you a liar.”

There was a beat.

Then Tony laughed. It was loud, unguarded—so out of place in the quiet aftermath that it stunned the others nearby. Peter froze mid-step. Rocket blinked. Even Valkyrie glanced over, brow furrowed at the sudden release. Tony's laugh cracked through the silence like sunlight breaking stormclouds.

A few feet away, Steve crouched beside them, gaze locked on Percy’s burned arm. The skin was raw and blistered, scorched along the forearm and hand, but not completely ruined.

“Your arm looks better than Bruce’s,” he murmured.

Percy rolled his eyes and—against every protest in his body—gritted his teeth and pushed himself upright. The movement was slow, trembling, but he managed it, shoulders sagging forward like the weight of survival had doubled instead of eased.

“Take a guess as to why,” Percy mutters.

Water shimmered faintly across Percy’s skin, responding not just to his power but to the bone-deep ache that pulsed through him like a second heartbeat. It curled gently along the scorched lines of his arm, lacing over burns and torn muscle like living gauze. The glow wasn’t just elemental—it was familiar. A soft pulse against the agony, a quiet hum in his blood that reminded him of salt air and lullabies.

It felt like his mother’s voice, telling him to breathe. It felt like his father’s presence, heavy with command but threaded with pride. It felt like Triton’s gaze, assessing and begrudgingly protective.

It felt like home.

“Right,” Steve muttered nearby, catching the shift, the way Percy seemed to settle even in his ruin. “Demigod…”

Percy offered a lopsided smile, teeth still bloodstained. He turned his gaze slowly, blinking past the sting of healing magic and battlefield smoke.

“Someone help me up?” he rasped.

Steve instinctively stepped closer—then hesitated, eyes flicking to the scorched skin, the tremble in Percy’s limbs. “We really should not be moving you.”

Percy rolled his eyes, or at least half of one—his face still swollen where pain hadn’t fully receded. “If you don’t help me up safely, I will get myself up unsafely,” he warned with dry defiance. “And let’s be real—I could use a dip in that lake right now. Might die otherwise.”

Pepper’s eye twitched so hard he thought he heard it. Her arms were crossed, but the only thing keeping her from smacking him upside the head was how pitiful he looked right now.

Peter crouched beside him, expression taut with concern. His voice was quiet, tired, threaded with fear masked by irritation. “Don’t even joke about that,” he mumbled. “You aren’t funny.”

Percy reached out—pain slicing through the motion like thread through skin—and ruffled the kid’s hair with one trembling hand.

“No,” he said, the grin creeping back despite the wince, “I’m hilarious.”

It was almost embarrassingly easy, getting Percy on his feet—but that might’ve had something to do with the fact that he contributed approximately zero percent of the effort. Steve and Peter moved around him like practiced medics, all quiet coordination and absurd upper-body strength. Percy mostly focused on not blacking out while they hooked their arms under his and hauled him upright, careful not to aggravate the worst of the wounds. His knees buckled once, but Peter’s grip was like iron—unwavering, resolute.

Between them, Percy was more suspended than standing, a limp bundle of sarcasm and seawater.

They guided him toward the lake’s edge with slow, stilted steps, his boots dragging through churned earth. The water met him like a living thing. Not just wet—but welcoming. It curled up over his ankles like hands smoothing cloth, cool and coiling, a careful weave of motion that said I’ve got you.

Steve and Peter eased their hold, hesitating as if releasing him too soon might send him toppling. But the lake didn’t let him fall.

The moment they stepped back, the surface tension thickened under Percy’s soles—not unnaturally, not jarringly, just enough. Enough to keep him upright, to let him breathe.

He stood in the shallows, battered and barely stitched together, but steadied by a force ancient and instinctive. The lake held him like lineage. Like legacy. The ache in his chest didn’t vanish—but it dulled, soothed by cool rushes of water against burnt skin and fractured joints.

And in that stillness, Percy exhaled—fully, finally. A slow release of tension and pain and something close to gratitude.

His breath fogged the air like a promise.

The lake held him like memory—cool and constant, steady beneath his feet, wrapping gently around his knees in a silent kind of reassurance. Percy had been so tuned to it, to the water’s pulse and hum, that he almost missed the voice at first.

It cut through the haze like moonlight through mist. Low. Familiar. Calling out to Steve.

Percy’s breath hitched.

He didn’t register the words. Not at first. Just the cadence. The timbre. The way it rang against his ribs like an echo he hadn’t realized he’d been chasing. His fingers curled slightly, water lapping against them as he braced—not against pain this time, but against something far more unbearable. Hope.

And then it clicked.

James.

The recognition slammed into him like a riptide. The quiet roar of his heartbeat suddenly matched by another—steady, strong, achingly known. The dull ache of the world sharpened, sensations rushing in like floodlight through a cracked dam.

He smelled lemon and cedar, the sharp bite of James’ favorite soap, half-worn from missions and mornings too early. He heard the stride—James’ boots hitting the earth with their own stubborn rhythm, the slight drag in his left foot from that old injury Percy had cataloged years ago without meaning to. He felt the atmosphere shift, like the air itself recognized James and leaned toward him.

Percy stood there, half-healed and half-held by the lake, and everything else fell away.

It was like emerging from grayscale.

He knew the metaphor was flawed—he was blind, colors didn’t hold meaning the way they used to. But it didn’t matter. The feeling was real. The shift inside him. The spark that turned static into signal, silence into symphony.

James wasn’t just a presence. He was pattern. Anchor. Home.

And Percy, surrounded by water and worry, finally felt the edges of himself come back into focus.

Percy spun, reckless and unsteady, water sloshing violently around his knees with the sudden motion. The sound of James’ voice—his voice—cut through him like heat through fog, low and familiar and immediate. And there he was. Wading through the shallows without hesitation, soaked to the thighs and utterly indifferent to it, his focus locked on Percy like the world behind him had ceased to matter.

Tears welled fast, unbidden. Percy didn’t blink them away. Didn’t move. He just stared—arms limp at his sides, breath caught somewhere between a sob and a prayer. His body refused command, too overwhelmed by the ache and the disbelief and the visceral need to reach out, to touch, to confirm this wasn’t just another hallucination born of blood loss and exhaustion.

James. James was here.

And he was so impossibly real. Dripping, steady, eyes scanning Percy’s wrecked form like he was trying to memorize him again from scratch.

“Gods, you look horrible,” James murmured, voice rough with concern and disbelief.

Percy let out a broken sound—half laugh, half gasp. He probably did look horrific. The wound in his gut still oozed sluggishly, ringed by ragged bruises and torn skin where the rebar had missed anything vital only barely. His shirt had long since given up, clinging in wet, filthy strips. Dirt and ash clung to every inch of him, smeared into cuts and dried blood, mixed with lake water that tried valiantly to clean what magic hadn’t yet mended.

His hair—longer now, tangled and plastered to his skull—dripped muddy rivulets down the curve of his neck, curling around his ears like shadows. His lips were cracked. His body hunched in exhaustion. Every inch of him screamed aftermath.

But James didn’t flinch. Didn’t falter.

He just stood there, chest heaving, gaze warm and furious, like he couldn’t believe the universe had let Percy break like this. Like he planned to take it up with the gods personally.

And Percy still couldn’t speak.

Couldn’t move.

He could do nothing but stare.

It was all too much—too vivid, too impossible. Bucky stood before him, not as memory or hallucination or desperate hope masquerading as a face, but solid. Real. Breathing.

Alive.

Percy’s eyes burned with the pressure of unshed tears, the kind that claw at the back of your throat and coil in your lungs like vines. His entire body trembled—not from pain, but the sudden collapse of grief into relief. He wanted to move, to say something, anything, but the words wouldn't come. All he could do was lift a hand, hesitant and aching, and reach.

The leather of Bucky’s glove met his palm first, but then—then the glove shifted, peeled back, and Percy found himself touching skin. Soft. Pale. Warm. Stubbled with faint pricks of hair that scraped lightly against his fingers as if to say yes, you’re not imagining this.

Bucky leaned into the touch without hesitation, eyes gentling in that quiet way Percy remembered from nights spent curled together in silence. His own hand rose, slow and deliberate, to cradle Percy’s—thumb brushing over the swollen joints, anchoring him with each motion.

Percy could feel everything.

The pulse beneath Bucky’s skin, steady and strong, matching the beat Percy thought he’d never hear again. The heat radiating from him, not ethereal, not fading—alive. The weight of Bucky’s gaze, locked onto his as if afraid that looking away would shatter the fragile moment between them.

Percy let out a strangled sound—a sob, maybe, or laughter, or some mix of breath and disbelief. His fingers curled slightly, pressing into the curve of Bucky’s jaw, tracing the slope of it like he was mapping the geography of resurrection.

And Bucky didn’t flinch. Didn’t pull away. He simply was.

Fully here. Not crumbling beneath Percy’s hands, not vanishing like smoke.

His heartbeat drummed against Percy’s skin in quiet proof: I’m back. I’m real. You can stop breaking now.

Percy let out a sound that barely qualified as a sob—shaky, raw, broken wide with relief—and collapsed into James’s arms like gravity had finally remembered him. His body hit James’s chest with a gentle thud, damp from lakewater and trembling from more than just pain. He buried his face into the crook of James’s neck, breath hitching hard as he inhaled.

There.

James still smelled like lemon soap and old leather and faint gunpowder—the exact mix Percy had mourned, memorized, and tried desperately to forget. The scent hit him like muscle memory, and he breathed in as though his lungs had just remembered how.

James wrapped his arms around him without hesitation, firm and grounding. One hand curved over Percy’s spine, the other coming up to cradle the back of his head. Percy melted into it, clutching at the soft fabric of James’s soaked shirt like it could tether him to this fragile sliver of reality.

“Jamie…” Percy choked out against the skin of his throat. His voice cracked halfway through the name, tangled in disbelief.

James didn’t flinch. He leaned in closer, lips brushing Percy’s ear as he whispered low, warm, aching, “Hey, dragostea mea.”

Percy shuddered.

“You’re here,” he gasped, fingers flexing against James’s shoulder like he still wasn’t convinced. His heart beat furiously in his chest, desperate to map the rhythm against the one he could now feel beneath James’s ribs.

“Yeah,” James murmured, threading his fingers gently through Percy’s wet hair, dragging the pads of his fingers over tangled curls and scars. “I’m here. I’ve got you.”

And Percy believed it—not just because he wanted to, but because he felt it. In the grip around his shoulders. In the steady breath against his cheek. In the bone-deep knowing that James Barnes had always been the place he returned to.

He pulled back just enough to let their foreheads fall together, breath warm between them. Eyes closed. Skin clammy and bruised. Still clinging.

“Hang on,” Percy whispered, fingers fumbling up to James’s collar. He reached for the dog tags still looped around his own neck—James’s tags, the ones he’d guarded like relics of a life too sacred to lose. He tugged them over his head, letting them fall heavy and familiar into his palm before lowering them toward James.

They dropped into place with a soft clink, metal cool against his chest. Percy pressed them gently there with the flat of his fingers, reverent.

“I do believe I was supposed to get those back to you,” he murmured, lips twitching into the smallest smile.

“I believe you were,” James replied with a chuckle, soft and hoarse. “And I think I have something for you as well.”

His hand dipped briefly to Percy’s throat, where worn, faded camp beads hung in a slack tangle against his collarbone. Carefully, deliberately, James untied the string, fingers deft despite their tremble. He pulled it free, letting the beads rest for a heartbeat in his palm before looping them gently back around Percy’s neck.

Their weight settled against his skin like muscle memory.

Like home.

Notes:

Next chapter is the epilogue! So that will be me checking up on a few characters to finishes out the story. It’s crazy to think this is almost over. I’ve worked so hard on this over the past sevenish months. Thank you to all those who’ve stuck around this entire time! I hope you enjoyed this as much as I have!

I couldn’t kill Tony as you can see. I just love him too much, he one of my favorite characters. Him and Peter and Bucky are my top three. Tony because we have the same humor, Peter because I want to be him, and Bucky because I want to be with him.

Percy grieving and Percy fighting are a bad mix. He tends to get very self destructive and little give no shits about his well being as long as literally everyone else is okay.

Just fyi I’m not sure how long it’ll be before the next chap comes. I have little bits and pieces, but it’s just no quite clicking the way I want it to. So it may be a bit, or it may be tomorrow. Who knows.

Here I am again, to show my skill of writing action without actually writing any action at all.

Nothing will beat Tony’s version of the snap, and I didn’t even try to.

Thought of this while writing Percy and Bucky’s reunion scene. Natasha and Tony knew about Percy’s grief surround Bucky the most. They had seen him crumble and rage and cry and just come apart at the seams. But not only Tony gets to see them come back together. Natasha won’t ever get to see that. That broke my heart just a little.

Translations

Romanian
dragostea mea = my love

Chapter 5: Epilogue (Of the only life I know)

Notes:

Remember when I said the chapter may come in a bit, or tomorrow. Well apparently tomorrow is today. But oh well.

The world after the Blip wasn’t broken so much as fractured—like a mirror glued back together without quite matching the edges. Life returned in a rush, jolting back as if the pause button had been slammed off without warning. People landed mid-step, mid-word, mid-wound. For them, five years hadn’t passed. But for everyone else, five years had carved grooves too deep to smooth over.

Someone might open a door expecting their quiet evening—and find a husband on the porch, unchanged. Still wearing the hoodie she donated to Goodwill the week after his memorial. He’d blink at her like she’d just turned away for a second. But she’d already remarried. Her child was old enough now to remember only the stories, not the man himself.

Across the street, teenagers stumbled back into homes where they’d once been twelve. Their bedrooms had become offices, or shrines, or guest rooms. They reached for toys that no longer sparked joy and schoolbooks covered in dust, their names written in handwriting they didn’t recognize—because grief had aged everyone.

Even the light felt different. The sun warmed faces that remembered loss. The air hummed not with celebration but confusion. Supermarkets ran out of food in days, because population numbers doubled overnight. Lines stretched for hours outside clinics where patients brought forward records five years expired, asking for refills on prescriptions their doctors had stopped writing.

And every reunion carried the shadow of dissonance. Friends tried to smile through the gaps, inventing words for a grief that reversed itself. “I missed you” didn’t mean what it used to. “You’re back” didn’t erase the absence. Some welcomed loved ones with open arms. Others hesitated—because they'd spent years learning how to let go.

The five-year difference felt trivial on paper but unbearable in practice. Cultures had shifted. Politics, language, even humor—none of it synced anymore. People laughed at old references that drew blank stares. They cried over songs that hadn’t played since the Snap. They sat at dinner tables where chairs had been added, subtracted, and now awkwardly rearranged.

And beneath it all pulsed the question nobody wanted to say aloud: Were we supposed to move on? Or wait?

Because waiting implies hope. Moving on demands release. And now, after five years of heartbreak and hollow days, the world was told to do both.

It didn’t know how.

For Percy, the world could be crumbling in a hundred new ways—housing shortages, grief rewinding itself, governments unraveling under the weight of the returned—but none of it pierced the cocoon that had formed around him the moment James stepped into view. It wasn’t denial. It wasn’t ignorance. It was relief so fierce it bordered on disbelief.

He had James back.

The fact should’ve been impossible. The physics of it, the morality of it, even the cosmic cost—but Percy didn’t care. Not in the way people were supposed to. Not in the way those Blip support groups on every corner wanted him to process. All he could feel was breath—actual, deep, chest-clearing breath—for the first time since everything had shattered.

When James reached for him, it wasn’t dramatic. It wasn’t slow-motion or perfectly timed. It was slightly clumsy, rushed, too tender. Percy had braced himself for numbness, for the grief to rear back and demand proof. But all he felt was warmth. The curve of James’s shoulder beneath his palm. The brush of knuckles down his spine. Familiarities resurrected. Memories stitched to skin again.

He hadn’t known how much of himself had been buried with James until he felt that piece slot back into place.

The chaos around them—sirens, reunions, people sobbing over gravestones made obsolete—became white noise. Percy tuned it out like static, because his world had narrowed to one heartbeat. And for once, it wasn’t just his own.

Even in sleep, Percy curled toward James like he was trying to memorize him again. The cadence of his breathing. The slight kick of his left leg when he dreamt. The way he whispered nonsense under his breath at sunrise, like the day couldn’t start unless it had been properly greeted. Percy soaked in every second like it might vanish again. He was terrified of blinking and finding that this, too, had been a dream.

But James stayed.

And Percy, though he knew rationally that the world had tilted off its axis, couldn’t bring himself to care—not when he was finally upright again.

Percy hadn’t expected the house to look so… untouched. As if time had brushed past it but never stepped inside. The paint was a little sun-faded, the garden wild with overgrowth, and one of the porch lights hung at an angle like it had been knocked loose and forgotten. But the door—solid, weather-worn, familiar—still stood where they'd left it, closed like a held breath.

He stood there in the late afternoon light, Bucky’s hand warm in his own, grounding him. The key felt too heavy in Percy’s palm, and he hadn’t put it in the lock yet. Just stared. The last time he’d turned it, they were running late, laughing and frantic, tossing duffel bags into the car. He remembered James yelling something about socks and Percy teasing that if the world was ending, socks could wait. Then they were gone—off to Wakanda, off to war, off to silence.

“I haven’t…” Percy swallowed. The words were barely more than a sigh. “I haven’t been back since that day.”

Bucky didn’t flinch. Just blinked slowly and nodded, his expression softening into something quiet and sad, but steady. No surprise. No judgment. Only that deep, bone-level understanding Percy had come to rely on more than he ever admitted out loud.

Bucky reached up, curling an arm gently around Percy’s shoulders. The kiss he pressed to Percy’s temple was featherlight, a tether more than an answer. His voice came low, a rumble of comfort.

“It’s okay,” he murmured. “We’ll clean what we need to. Together.”

Percy breathed out slowly—felt the tension in his chest start to loosen. He leaned into Bucky’s touch, letting himself believe it. Together. That word still felt fragile some days, like glass trying to become stone. But here, with dust gathering under the doorframe and the sky turning golden above them, it felt real. It felt possible.

He turned the key.

The hinge groaned like a memory unfolding, and the air inside was stale with disuse—paper and sunlight and the faint scent of a jacket James had left draped over the back of the couch. Percy stepped in, each movement deliberate, as if his body remembered the layout better than his mind did. He paused by the hallway, glancing down at the shoes still tucked into their cubby. He blinked hard. Bucky’s hand slid back into his, warm and firm.

“We’ve got time,” Bucky said gently.

Percy nodded. Just once. He didn’t say thank you. Didn’t need to. The way he squeezed Bucky’s fingers said enough.

The moment Percy stepped across the threshold, he braced instinctively—ready for the stale air, for the blanket of dust, for the smell of time left untouched. But the house defied all expectations. It was clean. Immaculately clean. The kind of clean that didn’t happen naturally, not after five years of vacancy. The floors gleamed faintly in the afternoon light. No cobwebs cluttered the corners. The bookshelf was still perfectly alphabetized, cushions fluffed just so. Even the air smelled fresh—like lavender and lemon polish lingering in the air.

Percy blinked, disoriented. He turned slowly in place, hand still loosely looped through Bucky’s. It was almost eerie, this untouched stillness. A snapshot preserved rather than abandoned. Time hadn’t waited here—it had been curated.

A breath caught low in his throat. Then he sighed and murmured, “My dad sent someone.”

Bucky nodded with quiet understanding, his thumb tracing slow circles into Percy’s knuckles. He didn’t say anything, just looked around with the same unspoken awe Percy felt—this house had been held, guarded, like it mattered. Like they mattered.

Percy didn’t try to push away the rush of gratitude that welled up—warm and prickling, settling in the hollows of his chest. His parents hadn’t asked. Hadn’t called. But somewhere between grief and hope, they’d made sure the door stayed ready. The fridge even hummed gently, stocked with the essentials. The thermostat had adjusted for their arrival.

And just like that, the tension eased. There was nothing to scrub away, no detritus of time to sweep from the corners. They didn’t need to reclaim this space. It had waited for them.

Percy breathed out slowly and leaned his shoulder against Bucky’s as they stepped further inside, the soft creak of the floorboards beneath them sounding almost welcoming.

“We don’t have to clean,” he said, more to himself than anything. “We can just… be.”

And that was more fragile, more terrifying, and more beautiful than any return he'd imagined.

 

~~~

 

The hardest part of life after the Blip wasn’t the bureaucracy, or the strange quiet of once-packed streets, or even the dissonance of walking beside people who had grieved his absence and moved forward. It was the sudden emptiness of habit—the quiet erosion of a role Percy had built himself around. Estelle.

For five years, she had been his axis. His rhythm. His purpose.

Each morning during those first few weeks back, Percy would jolt awake, heart hammering, eyes wide and grasping for the nearest clock. Panic would bloom hot behind his ribs—he’d missed the alarm, he hadn’t packed her lunch, he’d forgotten dance class registration, left laundry in the dryer, skipped the dentist appointment, lost a sock from her recital kit again. The thoughts came like muscle memory, frantic and unyielding.

The bed was too warm. Too still. And for one fractured moment, he’d forget what had happened—forget that it was over, that they weren’t alone anymore.

Then James would stir beside him, his voice groggy and soft, wrapping sleep around the words he barely managed.

“M’okay. You’re okay.”

A lazy arm would curl around Percy’s waist, anchoring him back into the present. Back into a body that wasn’t mid-flight anymore. Percy would exhale shakily into the early light filtering through the blinds, letting the tension leak out of his chest. Slowly. Carefully.

Estelle had her parents again. She had Mama, soft-spoken but fierce, and Paul, always a little too serious until he was around her. They were the ones tying her dance shoes now, coaxing her through homework, making her grilled cheese with the crusts cut off. They remembered her stuffed animal’s name and argued over how much glitter was too much for school projects. Percy didn’t need to do all of it anymore—not the lunches, not the alarm clocks, not the laundry folded into stars so she’d laugh while getting dressed.

And yet… his body hadn’t caught up.

He’d still glance toward the hallway expecting her light footfalls. Still reach for the grocery list with Estelle’s quirks in mind—extra apples, no purple yogurt, the granola bars with the silver wrapper, not the red. His hands knew how to braid her hair without looking. His heart knew how to fold itself around her joy, and her tantrums, and her sleepy 3 a.m. questions about space and loss and dancing on the moon.

But now the house held different rhythms.

Percy wasn’t sure what to do with his hands anymore. What to anchor his mornings to. How to let himself rest without guilt curling in his stomach like forgotten appointments.

So he let James hold him longer. Let the silence stretch. Let the world readjust around the ache of love no longer required in the same way.

It was grief, but gentler. Grief, but hollowed out into space that—maybe—could hold something new.

Percy sat at the kitchen table, fingers drumming anxiously against the surface, a printed color-coded schedule spread out in front of him like it was a battle plan. Estelle’s week—school drop-offs, piano lessons, Tuesday tutoring, Saturday dance, Sunday movie nights—mapped out with precision borne of long habit. He went over it in a steady voice, but each word felt strangely misplaced, like he was playing a role that had quietly shifted without him noticing.

His parents nodded along, scribbling notes as if this were a logistics meeting. Mama asked whether Estelle still liked the blue lunchbox or if she'd switched to the fox-patterned one. Paul adjusted his reading glasses, noting times with the quiet seriousness he reserved for tax documents. They listened kindly, gently—but Percy couldn’t shake the feeling that he was handing off something too personal, too delicate. Like he was trusting them with a living part of himself.

“I know she’s gotten better about brushing her teeth without being reminded,” he said, barely concealing the tremor in his voice. “But you should still check. She hates mint. The green one makes her gag.”

They murmured thanks, asked if she'd outgrown her love for bedtime stories (she hadn’t), and if she still hummed when she did math (only multiplication). The conversation ended on a warm note, with hugs and reassurance and shared gratitude—but Percy walked home with a weight on his chest that hadn’t been there before.

He hadn’t needed to make the schedule. They’d had Estelle for a week already, settling back into parenthood with grace and instinct. Still, he’d made it. Still, he’d recited it. Because some part of him hadn’t caught up. Some part of him didn’t know who he was when he wasn’t her primary caregiver.

That night, the guilt bloomed fast and vicious.

The thought had been harmless: It felt like handing her off to babysitters before a vacation. But it lodged deep, turning sour in his mind. Was that what he was doing—leaving her, letting go, enjoying comfort when she'd once been his entire gravity?

The panic attack hit fast. Breath short. Chest tight. He curled in on himself at the edge of the bed, hands pressed to his ribs like he could hold himself together. He couldn’t speak. Couldn’t name what was wrong. Only that something inside him felt wrong for breathing easier.

James stirred the moment he noticed. No questions, no startled noise—just presence. Warm arms anchoring Percy from behind, grounding him through the spiraling storm. One hand on Percy’s chest, the other firm at his back. Gentle pressure. Steady voice.

“Breathe with me,” he whispered. “You’re not abandoning her. You’re letting yourself rest.”

Percy shuddered, tears gathering like shame behind his eyes. He didn’t want to rest. Not if resting meant feeling this hollow. But James kept murmuring, kept holding him like he was fragile and whole, and slowly—slowly—Percy’s heartbeat returned to something manageable.

He didn’t speak again until the sky began to lighten.

“She still needs me,” Percy whispered.

James kissed his shoulder and replied, quiet and sure, “She does. Just not in the same way anymore. That’s okay.”

And Percy believed him—if only a little.

The house felt too quiet at first. Too curated. His parents tried to fill it with warmth again—with casseroles and her favorite music humming low from the kitchen, with folded laundry and a stack of new sketchbooks on the table. But their voices were thinner now, stretched taut over five years of missing her. And every time Estelle bounded down the stairs, a little taller, a little louder, their expressions faltered.

It wasn’t grief, exactly. It was the aching whiplash of time passed too quickly.

She’d grown in the gaps. Not just her height, though that alone had them blinking like they’d woken up in someone else’s story. No—Estelle had grown into herself. Her thoughts had sharpened, her boundaries clarified. She spoke with the surety of someone who had learned how to self-regulate joy and disappointment without needing parental mediation. When she asked to go over to “Uncle Tony and Aunt Pepper’s” to play with Morgan, it was casual. Confident. A teenager claiming her routine.

They didn’t know those names. Her parents blinked, paused, nodded politely when Percy quietly filled in the context—how Tony had taught Estelle to use a soldering iron, how Pepper once patched up her scraped knee with a gentle efficiency that rivaled Mama’s. It was like meeting distant relatives of a child who’d grown up in a parallel timeline.

She’d braided her own hair now. Chose her outfits with precision. Wore mismatched earrings because Morgan thought it was “more expressive.”

And yet… when Percy was nearby, when the room got a little too loud or a choice became slightly too complicated—her eyes still flicked to him first. It was instinct, not conscious decision. A glance that asked: Is this okay? Am I safe? Will you catch me if I stumble?

Percy would nod. Or raise an eyebrow. Or if she seemed unsure, lean in and murmur, “You’ve got this, jellybean.” His voice still had weight in her chest, even if she didn’t lean on it as much now.

His parents noticed. Every time she turned to him. Every time she bypassed their suggestion for his nod. It wasn’t resentment—they understood. But Percy could see the melancholy bloom in his Mama’s eyes, the tightness in Paul’s jaw. They’d missed chapters. Missed practice drills and lunchbox notes and the thousand little cues that build trust.

They were parents, but they’d stopped being her everyday. And that absence left a bruise behind every proud smile.

Some nights, Percy found Paul lingering by Estelle’s door, listening to her hum while she texted Morgan and watched videos about dance techniques Percy had bookmarked for her two years ago. Mama folded laundry that Estelle now insisted on doing herself. It was bittersweet, watching her advocate for independence while they scrambled to hold what pieces of the past they could still reach.

Percy didn’t know how to fix it. But he stayed in the room. Passed the baton gently. Gave her space to choose—and gave them space to catch up. Because she was thirteen now. And some part of her still remembered how Percy carried her through the dark, but another part was learning how to walk beside those who used to cradle her before she even knew what walking meant.

It twisted in his chest—the guilt. The nausea. The feeling that he’d overstepped something sacred, even though it had never felt like a choice.

He’d become her everything in the silence after the world cracked open. Brother, caretaker, walking lighthouse. Not because he wanted to replace their parents, but because there was no one else. He remembered the weight of those first nights, how she’d curled into his side with her fingers tangled in his shirt like lifelines. How he’d taught her to make grilled cheese with one hand and keep the fire extinguisher nearby just in case. How she’d cried and clung to him during thunderstorms, and how he’d made up new constellations on the ceiling just to get her to sleep.

It was survival dressed up as routine. Love bent into necessity. And he did it all telling himself she deserved stability, deserved softness, deserved someone who’d never let go of her hand. So he didn’t think too hard about what he was becoming—not at first. Not when her hair got longer and her voice steadier and she started asking him if her outfit was okay before school. Not when she called him “Percy” in front of teachers but still whispered “Bubba” when she got hurt.

But now… now their parents were back.

And every time Estelle turned to him instead of them, every time she asked him if she was allowed to have ice cream or if she should call Morgan first before going over—he felt like he was trespassing.

Like he’d stolen years from them.

He couldn’t stop replaying the moment in his head: her mother trying to tuck her in only for Estelle to gently shift away, already used to doing it herself. Paul offering to help with homework and her politely saying, “Percy already looked it over.” Her parents watching, trying to find their way back in, while Percy stood in the middle of it all—holding pieces of a life he’d built on their absence.

It made him feel hollow and heavy. Because for five years, he told himself this was forever. That the grief would harden, the responsibility would normalize, and maybe—maybe—it wouldn’t hurt so much to know his parents weren’t coming back. He didn’t plan for reunion. He planned for resilience.

And now, he didn’t know how to give her back.

He wanted to. Of course he did. But there were bruises that had shaped into muscles—reflexes built around comfort and consistency. He had become her safe space. Her warning system. Her answer key. And watching her parents try to reclaim that felt like watching someone reach for a door that had quietly been locked while they were gone.

He couldn’t undo what the years had done. He could only try to step back without letting her fall.

Eventually, they learned to manage. Not perfectly—grief and change never allowed for perfect—but with enough softness to thread the edges of discomfort together into something livable.

Estelle, ever perceptive in ways far beyond her years, figured it out first.

It came slowly—her reaching out to Mama when she wanted help with her hair before school, texting Paul to ask about her science homework rather than defaulting to Percy. She started saying “Can I go?” instead of “Should I?” and stopped glancing sideways for Percy’s nod when her parents said yes. The shift was subtle, not cold. It wasn’t rejection. It was an unspoken kindness: a quiet acknowledgment that Percy didn’t live with her anymore, didn’t wake up three doors down in the middle of the night, didn’t rummage through the fridge to check whether she had enough snacks for dance.

She was recalibrating. Letting her parents step back into their role. And Percy… Percy was learning to let go without folding into himself.

It wasn’t easy.

Some mornings, he would shoot awake in a panic, heart pounding against his ribs, body already halfway to standing before he realized there was no alarm set. No early bus to track. No sandwich to make. No backpack waiting by the door. The panic would bloom fast and suffocating: I forgot. I failed. She’s waiting. Only it wasn’t true anymore. She wasn’t waiting.

And that knowledge came with guilt so sharp it lacerated. He’d fought for her. Bled for her. Became something else for her—protector, guide, brother-father hybrid who carried every responsibility on shoulders far too young to bear it. To let go now felt like betrayal. Like he was abandoning a battlefield where he’d once stood alone.

But that was between Percy and Bucky.

It was Bucky who held him through the panic. Who woke when Percy did, even when the sheets hadn’t rustled. Who slid a hand over Percy’s chest and whispered You’re safe, she’s okay, over and over like a rhythm of reassurance. Who didn’t press when Percy couldn’t speak, didn’t offer solutions when he needed silence—only presence, and warmth, and the kind of love that wrapped around aching ribs without asking for explanation.

Bit by bit, Percy learned to live inside the shift.

He learned that Estelle still loved him fiercely even if she didn’t check in about the color of her socks before rehearsal. That being her safe space didn’t mean being her emergency contact. That trust could expand, not just shrink—and that his own life didn’t stop mattering the second she didn’t need him every day.

He learned to exhale.

And when Estelle called one evening just to ask about her solo—how to angle her turn, if the music timing felt off—it meant the world. Not because she still asked him. But because now… it was a choice.

 

~~~

 

It took time—more time than Percy wanted to admit.

For so long, help had meant weakness. Meant delay. Meant dragging someone into a moment that might be too sharp, too messy. He’d spent five years in survival mode, shoulders hunched and breath held, moving through life like balance was something you clawed back one task at a time. Relying on someone else wasn’t just unfamiliar—it was unnatural. The reflex had been carved out of him by repetition and necessity.

So even now, in a house that hummed with warmth, in rooms echoing with shared quiet and sunlight on wood floors, Percy would sometimes stand from the couch, grab the laundry basket, and limp toward the hallway without a word. Not because he wanted to be alone—just because his body still assumed it had to be.

It usually took Bucky’s voice to reel him back.

“Percy,” he’d say softly, not scolding, not urgent, just… reminding. “You don’t have to do that yourself.”

Percy would freeze for a half-beat, already halfway to lifting something heavy with a wince. And then the truth would crack through him again—he could ask. He didn’t have to carry everything in silence. Not anymore.

Sometimes he asked aloud, tentative: “Can you grab that for me?” Sometimes he just looked over, opened his mouth, and Bucky was already moving.

But the hardest part wasn’t the forgetting—it was the guilt that came after.

Late at night, Percy would lie in bed, the room dim and quiet, listening to Bucky brush his teeth two doors down. And the thought would sneak in, low and acidic: Why didn’t I remember sooner? Why do I still act like help is a luxury?

On those nights, Bucky would always return with soft socks and a warmer blanket, ease into bed beside him, and slide an arm around Percy’s waist like the answer was in the contact itself.

“You don’t have to do everything alone anymore,” Bucky would murmur, his breath warm against Percy’s cheek.

“I know,” Percy whispered, though it always took a second longer to believe it.

Learning to ask for help felt like learning to speak again with a mouth full of old scars. But with Bucky beside him—patient, steady, listening even when Percy hadn’t spoken yet—he was relearning fluency. Slowly. Gently.

One breath at a time.

Before the Snap, Percy’s voice reaching down the hallway was all it took—“James?”—and Bucky would appear in the doorway within seconds, towel in hand or shirt half-buttoned, ready to help, to listen, to hold space. That kind of trust had been seamless, instinctive. It hadn’t needed explanation.

But after, the rhythm was broken.

For years it had just been Percy and Estelle in the house, moving through quiet days marked by distant phone calls and chores done without backup. Percy had learned to fill in the silence with steadiness, learned to lift things one-handed, to open stubborn jars with a dish towel and grit, to prop open doors with his foot when his balance faltered. He didn’t ask for help because there wasn’t help to ask for. Even now, with James back and warm dinners simmering in a shared kitchen, the habit clung to him like an old injury.

James noticed. Of course he did.

It was in the way Percy gritted his teeth and shifted the laundry basket with his hip rather than calling for support. It was in the quiet wince that passed over his face when reaching for the top shelf. It was in the way he sometimes said “I’m fine,” before anyone had asked.

Bucky didn’t push. Didn’t lecture. That wasn’t his way.

Instead, he threaded his presence into the architecture of Percy’s day. He kept talking as he moved room to room—his voice trailing from the hallway into the living room, narrating his thoughts as if Percy had always been meant to hear them. He’d read aloud from whatever book they were working through together, even if Percy hadn’t technically requested it, his voice anchoring them both through chapters and drowsy silences. He’d talk gently through the bathroom door as Percy showered—no urgency, just presence. Sometimes he’d hum old jazz standards while he folded towels on the bed, low and steady, like the music itself was a memory being re-knit.

And at night—when Percy’s exhaustion folded into guilt, when his body ached not just from the day but from the effort of relearning trust—Bucky would slip beneath the covers, arms looping carefully around Percy’s waist, their breath syncing slow. He’d whisper the last lines of the book into Percy’s shoulder. He’d kiss the top of his spine, just once, just enough.

Not once did he say: Why don’t you ask me? He didn’t need to.

His reminders came wrapped in softness, not demand. In constancy, not confrontation. In making sure Percy knew: You’re not alone anymore. And you don’t have to pretend you are.

 

~~~

 

Sleep used to be a mercy—when the world was heavier than his bones and silence felt easier to bear than memory. But now, with James back and the night soft around them, Percy clung to wakefulness like it was a lifeline.

He didn’t dare close his eyes.

Because if he slept, he might dream. And if he dreamt, he might wake up to find the warmth beneath him gone, the steady heartbeat beneath his cheek nothing more than echo.

So he lay there, barely breathing, chest curled tight against James’s ribs, ear pressed to the rise and fall that proved this wasn’t a hallucination. James’s heart beat slow and even, a rhythm Percy had memorized long ago and was terrified to forget. The smell of clean cotton and cedar shampoo anchored him, and still, it didn’t feel safe to surrender to sleep. Not yet. Not while his own body was still wired for loss.

James shifted, just slightly, brushing knuckles against Percy’s shoulder in sleep. A comfort in motion, automatic and unconscious. It made Percy ache.

He remembered the years between—the ache of empty rooms and voicemail static, the sound of Estelle’s laughter echoing too loudly in a house built for more. Back then, sleep had meant hours alone with the memory of who wasn’t there. He’d learned not to expect answers in the dark.

Now James was here. Real. Breathing. Solid beneath him.

And still—Percy couldn’t trust that permanence yet. Not fully.

He knew the shock would fade. That one day he’d wake up and it wouldn’t feel like standing on the edge of a miracle. That James’s presence would be familiar again, folded into routine, not surreal in its gentleness. He knew, intellectually, that his heart would stop bracing for grief every time he woke up to warmth instead of absence.

But tonight?

Tonight, he stayed awake. Not to guard. Not even to think.

Just to memorize.

The weight of James’s arm over his hip. The quiet puff of breath against his hairline. The sound of a heartbeat that didn’t belong to him but somehow felt like home.

He didn’t want sleep to steal it, even for a moment.

The room was heavy with quiet—a midnight kind, not just late but deep, where even the air seemed to hum low around the edges of stillness. The only light came from the sliver of moon caught on the windowpane, casting silver lines across the sheets tangled around their limbs.

James stirred like he’d felt the tension in Percy’s shoulders before consciousness had caught up. His brow furrowed in sleep, lashes fluttering like he was trying to open his eyes through molasses. One hand curled more firmly around Percy’s waist, palm sliding over the hem of his sleep shirt as he shifted underneath him, breath hitching in a groggy inhale.

Then, with a stretch that rocked both of them gently on the mattress, James let out a low, slurred murmur—words thick with sleep and familiarity.

“Why you ‘wake?” he breathed, barely lifting his eyelids.

Percy’s fingers, already wound in the cotton fabric of James’s tank top, clenched tighter as if to say don’t move. His voice was small but raw with truth. “Couldn’t sleep. Didn’t want to.”

James didn’t ask why. Didn’t press for explanation. He simply rolled onto his side, arms guiding Percy with him until Percy was tucked fully against his chest, nose brushing the hollow of James’s throat. One leg hooked lazily over Percy’s, the other tangled in the blanket like it was stitching them back into the night.

Percy didn’t resist. He melted. Slid his hand beneath the tank top, fingers splaying over James’s ribs like he was trying to memorize each one by touch. His breath came in shallow pulls, not from panic anymore, but from need. From the sheer ache of proximity. Of reality.

James dropped a kiss to Percy’s hairline, lips grazing curls damp from sweat and tension. His voice was barely audible, raspy and warm as his thumb swept over Percy’s spine.

“’m not goin’ anywhere,” he whispered into the dark. “Go to be’, love.”

And Percy did—not all at once, not completely. But he softened. He let out a breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding for five years, and felt James’s heartbeat under his ear like the most stubborn kind of promise.

 

~~~

 

Percy’s hair had grown longer than he ever imagined it would—long enough that the front strands brushed just below his chin when he leaned forward, curling slightly with humidity or sleep. In the back, it grazed his shoulders in soft waves, loose and untamed in a way that felt almost defiant. It wasn't a decision he'd made with intent at first—just neglect, inertia, the quiet rebellion of survival when so many other things had been taken away during the Blip.

He’d gotten a few trims here and there, mostly out of practicality, but he never let it go short. Something in him resisted that—viscerally. Cutting it felt too much like erasing the years he’d lived without James, too much like trying to reset time that couldn’t be undone. So instead he let it grow, and grow, until it became its own kind of archive. A timeline etched in curls and tangles and changing texture. The way grief and waiting had rooted themselves into each strand.

But now, with James back—real and present—Percy had a reason to keep it.

Because Bucky loved his hair. Not just in passing or with offhand comments, but in the way his fingers sought it out without thinking. Whether they were curled up together on the couch or lying in bed with nothing but moonlight between them, Bucky’s hands would find their way into Percy’s hair like it was instinct.

He braided it absentmindedly, thumb smoothing out snarls with the kind of reverence that made Percy go still. Sometimes he’d mutter quietly about needing better combs or fidget with the part until it lay just right. Other times, he'd rebraid it three times in a row—not because it looked bad, but because the act itself soothed him. The feel of Percy’s hair beneath his fingers had become something gentle they shared, unspoken but constant. A tether.

And Percy… Percy found it calming too. The tug of Bucky’s fingers through his hair, the quiet hum of concentration when he braided small sections, the occasional soft kiss pressed to Percy’s scalp when he finished—it was all grounding in a way Percy hadn’t known he needed. It reminded him that his body wasn’t just a vessel of old injuries and instincts. It was also a place Bucky chose to care for.

So no, Percy wasn’t cutting it anytime soon.

It wasn’t just hair. It was history. And now—touchable, braidable proof that someone still knew how to love him with their hands.

The day Percy asked Bucky to dye his hair had started like the worst kind of repetition—a morning that didn’t feel like morning at all, just another stretch of gray strung between survival and disbelief.

He’d woken drenched in that cold, breathless panic. The kind that didn’t announce itself, just unfurled quietly in his chest like smoke. His fingers clutched at the sheets before his eyes even opened, and the thought had landed like an old wound pressed too hard: It’s not real. You imagined it. He’s not here.

Percy had shaken Bucky awake with hands that trembled so badly he could hardly grip the edge of the blanket. His voice was more breath than sound, ragged around the edges, as he stammered out the request—“Can you dye it? Please—just, I need—can we?”

Bucky didn’t hesitate. Didn’t ask for context, didn’t blink sleep from his eyes in confusion. He simply murmured, “Yeah, sweetheart,” voice thick with sleep but steady, and pushed himself upright, already reaching for his sweatpants as Percy hovered near the bathroom door like it might vanish if he let it out of sight.

They had a habit—one born of comfort and chaos and the strange magic of shared survival. There was always dye beneath the bathroom sink, a messy box full of half-used tubes and crumpled gloves, extra mixing bowls, and a handful of stained brushes Bucky refused to throw out because “they’ve got character.” It wasn’t organized. It wasn’t pretty. But it was theirs.

That morning—or was it barely dawn?—they didn’t have much left. The supply had dwindled in recent months, and the last grocery run had been more focused on essentials than aesthetics. So Bucky crouched low, bare feet cold on the tile, and began sorting through the disarray. Percy knelt beside him, quiet and rigid, his knuckles white against the rim of the sink.

Blues first. Cerulean. Sky. Something that might’ve once been teal. Bucky mixed them into a shimmering swirl of stormwater. Then greens—mint, lime, two tiny tubes of jade—and turned the bowl to moss and seafoam. Pinks and reds were a gamble, but he blended the strawberries with crimson and fire-engine gloss until it looked like candy melted in sunset. Purple, somehow, was stocked in abundance. A riot of violets, amethyst, lavender and grape, untouched as if saved for some sacred moment.

“You hoarding purple?” Bucky teased, just barely, just enough to make Percy blink at him.

Percy shrugged. “Maybe.”

The routine came next—ritual, almost. Bucky filled the basin with warm water and coaxed Percy to sit on the counter, legs dangling, head tilted back into the sink like he trusted the angle more than his own spine. Bucky washed with slow hands, fingers carding through curls that had grown longer still, and murmured nonsense as he worked—something about Estelle’s school trip and the weird thing Sam said last week about alpacas.

Percy didn’t speak, but his breathing eased.

Then came the dye. Bucky selected two colors at random—sunset pink and sea-glass green—and layered them in sweeping strokes, the brush painting stripes like soft rebellion across Percy’s scalp. His hands were precise, but gentle, his focus absolute. He wiped stray smears from Percy’s ears with his thumb. Massaged conditioner into the ends with reverence.

They did this at least twice a month. Always bright. Always loud. Always defiant.

Because that was the rule: Obnoxiously colorful. No apologies.

And when Bucky rinsed it clean an hour later, towel-drying the brilliant mess with a grin and kissing Percy’s temple just once—Percy looked at himself in the mirror, eyes glassy but steadier. He didn’t recognize the panic anymore. Just the color. Just the love.

It soothed Percy in a way he couldn’t quite articulate—the meticulous rhythm of Bucky’s fingers as they worked through his hair, separating the streaks of white from the deeper black with gentle precision. It wasn’t just practical. It was intentional. Reverent.

He sat still, legs tucked beneath him on a folded towel in the bathroom, steam fogging the corners of the mirror while the dye bowls lined the counter in mismatched colors—seafoam and plum, strawberry and cobalt. But none of that mattered right now. Right now, Bucky was kneeling behind him, sleeves pushed up, comb in one hand and gloved fingers sliding expertly through Percy’s thick strands.

The white patches were stubborn. They always had been—porous and difficult, the kind of hair that resisted routine, clung to ghost pigment like it had something to prove. Percy had thought about bleaching it all, evening out the canvas, but Bucky had insisted they keep the texture as it was. “It’s yours,” he’d said simply. “We work with it.”

So he did. He separated each chunk of pale hair like it mattered, like it deserved its own attention. He gently tugged sections aside, clipped them if needed, and dabbed dye into the roots with care so focused it felt almost sacred. Percy watched his reflection, chin tilted slightly forward as dye began to streak through the white—soft emerald curling into bone-white strands, violet feathering into silver like dusk creeping across snow.

It was calming. Grounding. Like he wasn’t just being dyed—he was being seen, strand by strand.

And Bucky knew how long to let it sit. The silence wasn’t tense—it was comforting, full of the soft sound of gloves stretching and the occasional hum under Bucky’s breath. A jazz tune. Maybe one of Estelle’s favorite covers. Percy didn’t ask. He just breathed.

Then came the rinsing, warm water pooling around his neck and trickling down his spine, Bucky’s hands still so careful it made Percy ache. He carded his fingers through with patient ease, checking for residue, massaging conditioner along the ends, and smoothing curl after curl until they gleamed with color and closeness.

The new color clung to the white beautifully—bright, loud, and defiant, just as Percy liked. And as Bucky towel-dried each section, Percy leaned into the contact, body swaying slightly toward him like a sunflower chasing heat.

Neither of them spoke much.

They didn’t need to.

Bucky’s fingers said it all—I’ve got you. You’re here. You’re mine to take care of.

 

~~~

 

The porch swing creaked gently beneath their weight, rocking in a slow, steady rhythm that matched the hush of waves brushing the sand just beyond the back steps. The breeze that rolled in off the water was crisp, carrying the scent of salt and earth, soft against the skin and threaded with early sunlight. It was the kind of morning that didn’t ask for anything—just quiet companionship and the warmth of skin against skin.

Percy was folded into Bucky’s side like a starfish clinging to rock, limbs tucked at angles that would’ve made most people wince. One leg looped over Bucky’s thigh, the other bent against the swing’s armrest, his head burrowed beneath the crook of Bucky’s shoulder, breath warm against cotton and old scars. His fingers idly traced the hem of Bucky’s shirt, not with intention, just movement—habitual, grounding.

Bucky’s arm was draped lazily around Percy’s shoulders, fingers curled against the curve of his collarbone, the pressure light but certain. His chin rested atop Percy’s head, breath ruffling the longer strands of dyed hair that shimmered faintly in the shifting light—purple streaks catching gold, pink blushing into lavender where the sunlight hit. Every so often, Bucky’s thumb would slide in slow arcs along Percy’s arm, tracing silent reassurance into muscle and memory.

Mrs. O’Leary lay at their feet, curled protectively beside the swing with her massive head tucked over Percy’s boots, tail flicking lazily whenever the wind changed. She exhaled a low huff of contentment that rattled the boards beneath her. Alpine, meanwhile, was wedged impossibly into the narrow wedge of space between Percy’s hip and Bucky’s stomach, her fluffy body stubborn and immovable, eyes closed in smug satisfaction. A faint purr trembled through her fur, vibrating against Bucky’s ribs.

The ocean was slow that morning, gentled by the tide. Soft slaps of water against sand filled the air with the sound of breath. Seagulls wheeled high above the shoreline, cries distant and serene. Somewhere in the distance, a boat engine murmured. The trees rustled like they’d just woken up.

Percy sighed softly, his breath catching against the worn fabric of Bucky’s shirt. He didn't speak. Didn't need to. The porch smelled faintly of cedar and old varnish, and Bucky’s arms felt like permanence.

Here—tangled up in dogs and cats and salt air—Percy didn’t need to be anything but held.

The porch swing swayed gently as the words settled into the air like dust motes caught in light. Bucky’s fingers never stopped their quiet, rhythmic tracing across Percy’s shoulder—steady as heartbeat, soft as intention. The motion was barely noticeable, but Percy had long since learned to read touch like language, and Bucky’s fingers were spelling something permanent.

“We should get married,” Bucky murmured, voice low and unceremonious, like he was offering to split the last slice of toast.

Percy’s fingers stilled where they’d been absently toying with the hem of Bucky’s shirt. His breath hitched—not with shock, exactly, more like hesitation caught between disbelief and the ache of finally being seen. “What?” he asked, not in protest but in disbelief. “Why do you say that?”

Bucky shrugged, the movement tugging at the fabric beneath Percy’s fingers, as if the answer were so obvious it didn’t need dressing. “Because nothing’s promised, and you’ve waited long enough.” There was no declaration, no grand gesture. Just truth spoken plainly and a warmth in his eyes that made Percy feel like home was something he could hold.

Percy huffed, soft and fond. “This is a pretty lame proposal,” he teased, voice still cracked around the edges from surprise.

But Bucky just leaned into him, grinning into the tangled strands of Percy’s hair. His breath was warm where it ghosted against Percy’s temple. “You haven’t said no. So, I’m taking it as a yes. Will you marry me, Percy Jackson?”

Percy shifted, just enough to meet him properly. The swing tilted under their movement, Alpine grunted in protest and Mrs. O’Leary blinked up from her sun-drenched spot with a grunt that might have been approval. Percy reached up, fingers cupping Bucky’s jaw as he kissed him—soft, deliberate, and threaded through with every morning they’d sat like this without saying it.

“Of course, James Barnes,” he whispered against his lips. “Gods, what took you so long?”

Notes:

My one note for the end of this entire thing was “Bucky proposes to Percy at the end”. Like that has been written out before the first installment even dropped.

That’s it. The story’s finally finished.

And that is absolutely insane to think about.

It don’t really have much to say. I might come back to this whenever I feel like writing some more of Percy and Bucky. Just a few oneshots here and there. And I’ll probably do a few more things of art.

My next stories are probably going to be 9-1-1 related. And there might be a 911/PJO crossover. But I’m still not 100%.

Love you all! Thank you for reading!

Notes:

And here it is, the final story. This is exciting!

Series this work belongs to:

• Part 42 of What could they do? (Army Dreamers)