The Fallen Hero (Percy Jackson x Avengers Crossover)

18: The Swimming Pool in the Bathroom

It all ran through his mind every night. 

Or close enough anyway; sometimes it was the other things. The wars. Tartarus. Bob. Either way, he always woke up feeling like he had dropped the sky and it was squishing him, blasting all of the air out of his lungs. 

Suffocating him.

He needed someone to talk to, or at least someone who knew about it, who he could sit with in silence, sharing each other's pain.

But that was the problem; no one knew about it. At least, not about all of it. 

Tony, he knew about the crash, to a certain extent. He knew who it was that Percy had killed.

Annabeth knew about the rest of it. 

The problem was the line. Annabeth stood on one side; the Greek side, and he couldn't let her cross over.  He just couldn't do that to her.

She thought that her father had been bringing Percy to visit her when a random drunk driver had hit them, and run. She thought that they were both victims; dead, but victims. Painful as that may be, it would be nothing compared to what they would go through if she knew it was Percy who killed her father.

Annabeth and Fredrick Chase had certainly had their ups and downs over the years, but in the end they had gotten back together and at last they had managed to patch up their relationship. 

But then Percy had come in and ruined it all.

And Athena had not been pleased, to say the least. The goddess still had lingering feelings for Fredrick, and Annabeth was her prize child; the demigod who redesigned Olympus, rescued the Athena Parthanos, and restored glory to her mother's name.

Annabeth belonged there; she was a hero on the Greek side of things. And the Roman side as well. She was the one who Percy could run to and confide in when his flashbacks and nightmares became too much for him to handle.

But she couldn't cross the line.

It would destroy her.

Tony was on the other side of the line. He knew about the crash, and Percy's relationship to Fredrick. He knew that the boy had trouble sleeping, that it haunted him, what had happened that day. 

If Percy needed to talk to someone about guilt and remorse, he figured Tony would be the perfect person to confide in. But when it came to monsters and wars and flashbacks...Tony had plenty of experience with those things.

But Percy should not have had any experience with those things.

Tony had to stay on the real side of the line. The side with aliens and supervillians and Nordic gods.

Percy wasn't about to add Greek and Roman diets to that list. These mortals were incredible, but they were only mortals, after all, and there was only so much they could take. They had enough to worry about. 

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Percy sighed and rolled over in bed. He had no idea what time it was, but based on how good his body was feeling, he guessed it was late. He must have slept off the rest of the effects from whatever enhanced cellular regenerate drug they had shot him up with. 

I should probably get up. See what I'm supposed to be doing, where I'm going.

He didn't move.

About thirty minutes later someone wrapped their knuckles sharply against his door. "You up in there yet, kid?"

Percy was startled out of a dream-like trance and jerked sharply to the side, getting his legs tangled up in his sheets and falling out of bed with a loud thump. "Up! I'm up...I'm--" he yawned loudly, "so awake right now..."