Just Not Ready (A Female Percy Jackson/ Avengers Crossover)

XVIII

"Before we actually find her, there are some things you should probably know." Bucky really didn't want to be the one to tell the rest of the Avengers this, but he kind of owed it to Percy.

The Avengers were on their way to Percys last known address. Tony pulled some strings and hacked some things to get their locked up friends out of the raft prison. So now they were all in an aircraft on their way to a landing site in Richmond, Virginia.

Percy had been living with her boyfriend for a while and Bucky thought she might have gone back there, especially having re-experienced imprisonment for the first time since HYDRA. Humans are creatures of habit;it would be completely reasonable for her to have run home. But that wouldn't explain how she escaped. Bucky really couldn't figure that bit out.

"She's probably a little different from when you knew her last." Eyes glued to Tony, Bucky continued. "We met under... really awful circumstances and she experienced some... things- none of which I am at liberty to tell you. These things may have resulted in some mental health issues and she definitely has PTSD-"

"She already had that." Peter noted. "Tell us something we don't know."

Bucky considered his options for a moment before going into more details. Well, they asked for it. "Some time into her military service her camp was invaded by HYDRA agents, the Winter Soldier included." A cloud of shame passed over his eyes. "She and a few other soldiers survived and were taken captive. As prisoners, they were given exactly the treatment you would expect."  Towards the end, Bucky looked at Steve, knowing full well he was also thinking back to the second world war, in which Bucky had experienced the same treatment at the hands of the same organization.

"No, you don't get to leave us with that vague an answer!"  An angry voice rang out, Tony's.  "What the hell do you mean by 'treatment you would expect'?"

"Your tone of voice is telling me you already know what I mean."

And a long silence followed.

---

The demigods hadn't spoken much since Percy's outburst. Instead, they looked for a loophole or something to get themselves out of the situation and came up empty handed.

"You know what?" Percy suddenly stopped examining the boundaries and turned to her friends. "Get me some rocks." They have her confused looks, to which she returned a determined look. "If solving this is impossible, we'll try blunt force."

She picked up a stone, walked 10 paces from the border and pegged it. The stone bounced off, a crimson light rippling through the border, briefly dissipating the image of trees it displayed before it came back up. Conner walked over and placed a hand on the boundary where Percy's rock hit.

"Nothing's changed."

Percy shrugged and threw another. "Good thing I've got some pent up issues." It bounced off and landed dangerously close to Conner. "Watch it. I'm throwing here."

Nate smirked a bit before picking up a rock of his own to throw. Soon enough Conner had also begun throwing stones.

---
A

fter a while, it seemed no progress had come from throwing rocks.

"This isn't working." Nate said, knowing a lot of time had passed with no visible dents, so to speak, in the boundary.

Percy turned and pointed a finger at him. "Yet," she said simply before throwing another rock. "If we"re stubborn enough the fates will have to make our efforts work. Otherwise the world will end or something ridiculous like that. They have a schedule to keep up with."

"That's the dumbest thing I've ever heard you say." He replied.

"You haven't known me very long. It really isn't." She said, throwing another rock with much less force than she was using earlier.

"Look, I just think we should try something else. We've been at this for hours."

"And we walked for hours before that. Sometimes all we can do is put in the time and effort to get past our obstacles." Percy explained.

"That's rich, coming from the quitter." He knew he shouldn't have said it. Conner, of he hadn't dozed off taking a break would have stepped in, but that wasn't the case.

"That's not fair."

"Yes it is." He said. "We aren't playing a game, there are no rules. It's all fair game. And it's true that you're quitting on this quest and you're quitting on all of us, you're family."

Percy was tearing up at this point, but determined, she kept throwing rocks and speaking. "But they quit me first and frankly I don't think they were ever really my family so much as the family I worked for." She couldn't keep the quiver out of her voice and she couldn't help the way her voice sounded like an abandoned child still trying to bounce back.

"I still don't understand how-"

"Please, I don't want to talk about this anymore." Her voice was still shaky and vulnerable until she drew in a deep gasp and spoke again in her usual commanding soldier-like tone. "If you can come up with another plan, let me know and we can wake Conner and get to it. Until then, if you want to help me pass the time throwing rocks feel free."

Nate didn't want to break her walls back down again, so he didn't speak. He grabbed a rock and nudged Conner to wake him up. "Time to get back to throwing." Conner stretched, nodded, and grabbed a rock.

Nate glanced back at Percy, looking for any trace of the vulnerable girl he'd just spoken to and found nothing. It was unclear to him whether this was a bad or good thing. Maybe both, maybe neither. Either way, he was deeply hurt by having seen his hero, an inspiration to his entire generation, as nothing more than a wounded child.

---

P

ercy zoned out and lost track of time while her mind wandered back to the Avengers. She had a feeling in the pit of her stomach Pandora's metaphorical pathos had been opened with them. Now that she had been exposed to them, they would no doubt track her down as many times as she could run away, and their resources stretched past western civilization so fleeing the country was out of the question.

It was odd when the boundary went down and she hadn't been paying full attention, which made it all the odder. The three demigods had all thrown rocks, which made contact with each other and the wall at the same time totally by coincidence. At the point of contact, the stones had broken through the wall like it was made of glass. The red light from before spider-webbed over the entire wall and fizzled out of existence. The jagged glass hole where the stones went through displayed a regular street on the other side.

Percy approached the hole and used her shoe to break and knock away more glass. Conner and Mate followed suit. As the hole expanded, the sounds and smells, and sights became increasingly apparent. Once there was enough space for them to each climb through one at a time, they began to do so; unfortunately, they hadn't realized the glass edges were still sharp as glass and they all scratched up their arms pretty bad.

The road they came out on was virtually the same road they came from, only with cars and people and even a gas station across the street.

"So where's the car?" Conner asked. "And how did we even get in that?"

Percy shrugged and looked to re-examine the portal/doorway thing they had just come through only to see it had disappeared when they turned their backs to it.

"I'm sure we'll find out later in the quest." Nate said.

Conner nodded then turned to Percy. "So, do we part ways here, or once we get to Philly?"

"Here, I think." She said, eyes glued to a truck pulled into the gas station across the street. The back of the truck was facing the trio, giving Percy clear view of the Virginia licence plate. 

Thanks for reading!! Happy Thanksgiving to those who celebrate it, everyone else, you're missing out.