Percabeth at Stark Tower

23. Decisions

Annabeth's POV

"I'm heading up to talk to Tony about something, do you want to come?" I call to Percy from the front door. I don't know what he wants to talk about, and he did say it could wait until I was free, but I should still hurry up. I am free after all, and if this is more serious than I originally thought then it needs to be taken care of quickly.

"Wait for me," he says and comes running out of our bedroom with only one shoe and his hair mussed..

"Don't worry, I'm not going to leave," I say. "Why are you so worried?"

He pulls me in for a hug. "I was dreaming that I didn't catch you in time. I jumped after you of course, but when I reached the bottom, you were gone. I kept searching, but I couldn't find you."

"It's okay Percy, we're both here. It was just a dream," I say as I wrap my arms around him. "You got to me in time and we found a way out. You've always gotten there in time."

"But one day I won't." he says quietly.

"I can take care of myself." I say.

He nods desperately. "I know that, but I still can't deal with the thought that you might need me one day and that I won't be there. You've rescued me a lot, but I've done my share of rescues as well."

He seems better, so I decide to raise the mood. "When?" I ask with a raised eyebrow.

"Well there was that time you jumped off a cliff with a monster and I had to cross the country to rescue you. And that time I rescued you from dying of boredom at camp. And-"

"Fair enough," I say with a laugh. "You've rescued me often enough but right now we need to go. You should fix your hair and finish getting dressed, then we'll head up."

Five minutes later we're up to their floor, and Steve opens the door just seconds after I knock. "It's good to see you both, please come in." he says politely, pulling the door open in front of us, and shutting it once we're both through.

"Nice to see you as well, now, what's going on?"

He looks down at his feet. "It's...complicated. The rest of the Avengers are in the meeting room, perhaps it would be better to talk in there."

"Okay," Percy says with a shrug.

"Hello everyone," I say as we walk in and look for our seats. There's two empty right next to each other, so they did remember to leave space for my Percy. I sit down and look at them.

"Good evening," Bucky says and the others nod and mumble hello as well.

"So, what did you want?" I ask because I'm not in the mood for pleasantries.

"We wanted to know what would happen if we reforged the cursed items in the junkyard of the gods." Tony says.

"Are you crazy?" Percy shouts, "That place is a death trap!"

"Maybe, but right now we don't have proper weapons. Vibranium works pretty well, but Steve's shield is too important to be melted down for the rest of us to make weapons out of. We can't really get metal in other ways, and if we melted it down the curses might leave."

"What do you think?" Bruce asks me. "In theory as the curses were created while the stuff was being made, unmaking it should unlatch the spells."

"Maybe, but the problem is getting to the metal. I've never been there, but it's really dangerous. No one alive could get something out without getting killed unless they're immortal, that's the way it works."

"But they got out," Natasha says, pointing at Percy.

"And Bianca died." he says harshly, "which of you will die if you go in? We had magic, and Zoe had trained for thousands of years, and we still didn't all get out. There wasn't even a body to recover."