Heroes and Dragons - An Avengers/PJO crossover

XI - Dragons like stars. Iron Man likes stars. Stars for everyone.

The tower

Dragon stood in the kitchen, eating a packet of trail mix. Tony walked up behind her, placing a hand on her shoulder.

“Hey, kid, I-”

Dragon judo flipped him onto the floor, her knife hovering just in front of his face. “Don’t touch me. No one touches me. Not ever.”

Tony froze. “Okay, okay. Let me up.”

She let him stand, and then threw the knife as his face. He tried to duck, but was too slow – and the knife flew through his face, landing harmlessly behind him.

“Do you listen to anything anyone else tells you? It’s Olympian Silver, genius, it can't hurt mortals, and I’m a Radical Pacifist.”

She walked away, leaving Tony more than slightly shaken by this strange girl. He remembered several occasions where she had touched Bucky, Steve, even Loki. So why the strong reaction?

Dragon gazed into the mirror above the sink, thinking carefully. She drew the glamour glyph, pushing her intention into the black ink on her skin, and adding the adaption she had used once before. Her face shimmered and changed, becoming, to her, featureless. This would be a very interesting experiment to discover more about the team she had to entrust her brother to.

She walked into the kitchen, where assorted people were fixing themselves lunch. She coughed quietly, and Percy looked up. “Annabeth – do you want some food?”

At the same time, Tony and Bucky looked up, Tony shocked and Bucky smiling. “Pepper? Why – why are you here?”

Bucky started to speak “St-” then broke off as realisation flickered through his eyes. “Dragon. What have I told you about that glyph?”

The figure frowned and tapped both wrists with the opposite hand. The glamour faded and Dragon gazed at them, the scar livid on her face. “I was just messing with them, snowflake. No need to be grumpy.” Annabeth walked into the room. Dragon gazed at her. “You’re lucky, Annabeth. Not many people have what you have.”

Annabeth looked at her curiously. “Have what?”

“A boyfriend, who loves you unconditionally and without limit. That’s what the glyph is for. It shows you the face of the person who you love most, a person you would be happy to live out your life with. Well, romantically anyway. That’s why it doesn’t work for me.”

Tony, eager to attract attention away from him, looked at Bucky. “Who did you see?”

Bucky looked uncomfortable. “I, uh, I didn’t, I mean,”

Dragon glared at Tony. “None of your gods damn business. Leave him alone.” She stormed out of the room, pulling Bucky with her.

“Listen here, James Buchanan Barnes. I know what you were doing to say, and you have my blessing. But so help me, if you hurt my brother, if we’re genocide buddies or not, you and I will have a reckoning.”

Bucky nodded. “I understand.” Dragon nodded and walked off, muttering something about an oh-tee-pee and a boat, whatever that meant. Modern people were very strange.

TIME SKIP

Dragon sat on the roof of Stark Towers. It was two am, but even now, at the darkest time of the night, the lights were all still on in the city.

Tony tripped over his feet as he stumbled onto the roof, smelling strongly of alcohol, and Dragon caught him and guided him to a chair. He looked up. “Look,” he slurred, “a star. That’s something you don’t see every day.”

She sighed, placing a hand over the place where his heart should have been and drawing a specific glyph onto the back of it. He sat upright, the alcohol gone from his bloodstream, and most of the liver damage fixed. She had the expression of one who had done this all too often for people who, like Tony, really should have known better.

“What did you do that for?” he growled. “It took me ages to get that drunk, kid.”  She sighed, slumping into a chair next to him.

“Alcohol isn’t the answer. It never has been. Not for anyone. Not that I can talk.” She looked up again at the lonely star. “Would you like to see them how they should be?”

She began drawing an intricate, beautiful glyph, taking up most of her bicep with spiralling black strokes. As she finished the final line, the air around them shimmered, and suddenly, they were in the middle of the Sahara desert, beneath an inky sky filled with infinite silvery stars; or so it seemed.

“This is one of my memories. It’s the Sahara as it looked late at night once, when I teleported there by accident. It was so beautiful. Just me, alone with the stars.

That constellation is Orion, once a friend of Artemis. His fatal flaw was hubris. He wanted to impress her, so he hunted every animal in the forest and brought them all to her, dead.

She is the goddess of hunting, but also the goddess of wild creatures. She was angry at the senseless slaughter. She stamped her foot and yelled at him, cursing him to a painful death. Unfortunately, this awoke the great scorpion, Scorpio-” here she indicated another constellation “-and he stung Orion, so he died. Artemis had been angry, but she didn’t really want her friend to die, so she placed him in the stars, to remind heroes of the danger of hubris, and herself of the dangers of fate.”

She looked at the billionaire, and saw in him something most people never would; she saw another human, with hopes and dreams and fears all of his own. Not money or fame, not an object of desire or an expensive, hi-tech costume, but just a person.

“I don’t know what happened between you and your ex-girlfriend, and I will never understand romantic love, but I’m always here to listen to you if you need someone. I think we got off on the wrong foot, so I’m sorry for trashing your cell block. And making you look like an idiot. And throwing a knife at your face.”

She stood up. “The illusion will remain until you leave. I’m going to bed.” Tony stayed there a while longer, thinking carefully and looking at the stars. He had never seen them so beautiful before. Or perhaps that was just the way Dragon saw them, spilling into her memories.