PERSEUS MEANS DESTROYER

False Confidence

All that's left of myself,

Holes in my false confidence.

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He was shovelling cereal into his mouth when the first two of the day passed through—Natasha and Steve.

They walked in silence, and didn't bother stopping to say hi or eat breakfast.

It looked like they were both headed to the gym for a sparring session (or something along those lines. For all Percy knew they might be spotting each other for weight lifting).

He nodded to them when they passed, and Steve's head jerked back to look at him, as if double checking he was there.

"... Perseus, you do realise it's about five in the morning, right?"

Percy nodded, swallowing his mouthful of cereal before answering (as his mom would have expected him to do), "Yeah. You're the ones looking like you're about to deck each other. It's only five AM after all." Percy flashed a grin before turning his attention back to his food.

He heard Steve sigh, and figured he was rolling his eyes.

"When are we landing?"

Steve shrugged, but Natasha's voice cut through the quiet. "Tomorrow at latest, but probably by this afternoon. We turned around yesterday morning—the pilots thought it would be better to stay still overnight. I don't know why it's taking so long to get back."

"Prevailing winds. And sea storms. It's probably rougher than you were anticipating." Percy let the words fall from his mouth.

Natasha looked surprised. "How do you know that?"

Percy tapped his nose. "I just do. Thanks for the conversation. Goodbye."

Percy swore he wasn't trying to make drama but this woman had threatened to lock him up in a tower somewhere and he wasn't about to let it blow over. Give him another week and he would probably be over it enough to be civil.

But...

He figured it was probably just best to avoid Natasha for now.

"Do you guys have any comics that aren't about your lovely friend," he was being sarcastic, sure, but it was warranted here, "Mr Stark?"

Steve grimaced, "Sadly not."

Percy sighed. At least they would be landing again in a handful of hours.

He ended up back on his mattress, reading the comics again. He'd finished a few the day before (dyslexia's a bitch), but that was only about four of the dozens in the box.

Why did the gods want him watching Loki? Was it because he'd been pestering them about something to do, and they just wanted to get rid of him? Or was something going to happen?

If he was put here to get him out of the way, he was more than a little surprised he wasn't dead already.

He wasn't exactly the gods' best friend, or very useful to them anymore. He'd managed to get through two Great Prophecies, along with four others and a handful of scraps from Ella.

Win two wars for the gods, put your life on the line for their children again and again, and the minute you're off the field and injured, you're sidelined.

Useless, and therefore worthless to them.

He was useless. So fucking useless, so incompetent, situation they had given him an unnecessary job for a pantheon they didn't associate with much, protecting something— someone already pretty much trapped anyway.