Beating Hearts

To Sprout Wings of After

P.S. The rest of the Avengers movies after the point this fanfiction started after did not occur in this timeline of events.

~5 years later~

~Tony~

Tony touched down silently on the grass of a familiar hill. His armor retracted into the arc reactor in his chest, an update he'd installed fairly recently and that still made him puff out his chest with pride.

Natasha, Clint, Steve and Bruce walked up behind him, having left an hour before him to reach the camp by van. "Just us?" Steve asked.

"Point Break and Reindeer Games still won't communicate, so yeah," Tony said, breathing in the almost tangible nostalgia.

For the quintet, it had been months since they last checked in with the demigods, and years since they'd established strong connections with the campers and figured out just how amazing Percy was. Thor and Loki had been visiting the camp periodically every month up until this last one, when they'd spontaneously dropped off the grid. That, and cutting off all contact with S.H.I.E.L.D. for some sort of ceremonial mourning period.

Tony had no idea what happened, or if it had anything to do with the demigods, but he did know that he want to find out, and in any case, visiting couldn't hurt, right?(Oh, how wrong he was...)

"Let's get going," Natasha said.

They group walked through the barrier with no problems, and though the camp was still just as breathtaking as it had been the first time they saw it 5 years ago, something was...off.

It was 10 in the morning, on a day in the middle of summer,  a time when the cabins should be alive with noise and joyous laughter. Yet, the ring of houses was eerily quiet. A simple glance at the windows showed the same picture in each cabin- an unprecedented circumstance. Small flames by each bedside, lighting up the owner's face, alongside the stillness within the bunks. Each kid, every teen, even any young adults who had come in from college(which was apparently all of them?) was just laying in their beds. Quiet. Silent. Frozen.

No one was teasing someone else, no one was complaining about some silly, trivial competition, no one was battling each other during a race to breakfast(a monumental achievement in and of itself since it seemed that the meal was completely overlooked for the past few hours and the nymphs not even caring enough to clear the tables of uneaten plates) or planning pranks or solving complex equations or running on rooftops with another camper's nose. 

It was desolate, deserted even.

The few campers who were up just wandered around in a daze, most of them being newer campers, but no reports had come in of anyone being claimed after about a month ago, so whatever tragedy had happened to suck the life from all these kids had to be recent, but no older than a month or so.

Something else stood out as well. Natasha pointed towards the Artemis cabin, her breath slightly off-kilter as she tried to hide her uneasiness. "The Hunters are here," she stated.

As everyone else turned to see that she was right, Clint ran ahead, twisting and turning to look at each and every shell of a cabin left in the line. The same results. "What the hell is going on?" he panted out, just loud enough for Tony to hear and make out the words.

"We are mourning."

Tony spun around to face Nico Di Angelo-Solace, the boy out of time who had gotten married on his spouse's 18th birthday last year. He had grown into his surname(the first- it couldn't be called a maiden name if it was hyphened and he was a guy, right?).