Tower of Secrets

Percy Jackson

I ended up having some nice conversations with Dr. Bruce. At least, when I wasn't hacking up my internal organs.

By that evening, I had totally recovered. Peter returned with all my missed schoolwork which ended up taking me several hours to complete, even with Pete teaching me the new stuff. I was just grateful it was Friday and the first week of school was behind me. Once my books came in, I knew it would be a lot easier to keep up with school.

Eventually, Peter and I were just hanging out in my room. We searched for copies of some of his favorite books that were in Greek so that I could read them as well. And, with some money from Mr. Stark, we decided on a few to order.

Peter was in the middle of explaining the plot to a book called Peter Nimble and His Fantastic Eyes* when Natasha knocked on my open door.

"Can I come in?" she asked. "I'm not interrupting your homework, am I?"

"Nah, we finished up a few minutes ago," Peter answered. "Do you want me to stay, or...?"

"Why don't you go help Stark work on his new prototype?" Natasha suggested. The teenager nodded.

"I'll tell you what happens later, Perce," Pete waved. When he was gone, Natasha looked at me, dead serious.

"What's up, Natasha?" I asked nonchalantly as I stood to clean up from the recently ended study session.

She let a hint of amusement creep into her stoic face. "I can see you're taling me up on the whole 'you can call me whatever you want if you beat me in hand-to-hand combat' thing."

I sent her a happy smile. "Yup."

She paused for a moment, letting me finish putting everything away. I flopped back on my bed with my hands behind my head. She sat down at the foot of my bed, her back turned from me. "I asked Bruce about why you couldn't stomach this morning's breakfast."

I nodded, having expected as much. "And?"

"He told me that you mentioned having gone to a terrifying place last year," she remembered. "He also mentioned that you didn't get to really eat normal food whilst being there."

"Yeah," I confirmed, my voice suddenly growing darker.

She seemed to brace herself for her question. "What did you eat while you were there?"

I bit my lip as memories came flooding back. Every sip had felt like death, like my insides were being burnt alive. Yet, somehow, Annabeth had survived it. It broke all the natural rules I had studied in science classes prior to the experience. I clamped my eyes shut, trying to forget and yet force the word out of my mouth.

"Percy?"

I opened my eyes to see she had turned around to make eye contact with me. I mouthed one syllable: fire.

"What?"

I sat up and walked to the door, stopping just outside in the hallway. "Fire," I croaked. "My girlfriend and I survived on almost nothing but freaking fire." I didn't look back to see her bewildered reaction and I certainly didn't look back to watch it morph into one of pity. I took a deep breath and cleared my thoughts. I rubbed my sleepy eyes with my palms. "I think I'm gonna go swim." Having announced to the assassin where I was heading, I walked as fast as I could to the stairs. My walk quickly turned into a job which quickly turned into an all out sprint which became a dive once I finally reached my destination.

The water churned with my emotion and I struggled to contain myself once again. Gods, Tartarus sucked. After about half an hour, I had pulled myself together and the water finally calmed. I climbed out of the pool and willed myself and my clothes dry.

"Jarvis, where is everyone?"

"Dr. Bruce Banner, Tony Stark, Peter Parker, Natasha Romanoff, Clint Barton, Steve Rogers, and Wanda Maximoff are currently in the medical center," Jarvis announced.

"What are they doing?" I wondered aloud. The question wasn't exactly directed at Jarvis, but the AI answered anyway.

"They appear to be discussing you."

I raised an eyebrow at that. Me? They were discussing me? I soon found myself just outside of Dr. Bruce's medical lab, listening.

"He acts normal at school," I heard Peter say. "For the most part. Sometimes he gets frustrated at his dyslexia. He's also totally oblivious to the attention he gets from girls. At least, the reason why. He thinks there's something on his face or shirt or something. Hasn't even considered the fact that he had half the school crushing on him from day one."

I choked on my own spit. That was why people stared at me? Oh gods.

"I mean, sometimes he can be intimidating. He's saved me from Flash Thompson several times already with his scary glares!"

"I can see why that would scare Flash off," Tony chuckled. "I don't know how he does it, but he freaks me out more than Fury sometimes!"

"I think the kid has seen some pretty dark times," Natasha deadpanned. "You should've seen him earlier. The guys survived off of fire in, well, wherever he was with his girlfriend."

Silence.

"I think he loves his girlfriend," Dr. Bruce commented after a moment. "He had the look when he described her to me."

"I wonder just how dark his past is, since he refuses to let me look," Wanda sighed.

"He barely sleeps," Mr. Rogers pointed out. "That's really alarming."

"Not as alarming as watching him practice archery," Clint joked. Peter laughed and I muffled a chuckle myself.

"Now, to address Fury"s question, can we trust him?" Mr. Rogers asked.

Silence.

"I think so," Natasha said after a minute. "He has issues, sure. But, I don't think he's the enemy. I'm gonna contact Fury and tell him that it's time."

"Besides," Wanda suggested, "if we tell him more about ourselves and what's really going on, maybe he'll come out and trust us more with what's happened."

"I can't wait to tell him I'm Spiderman!" I could feel Peter's grin from the hallway.

"Do you think he'll treat us any different once he knows that we're Avengers?" Mr. Rogers asked.

"Definitely," Tony answered immediately. I didn't have to look to know he was smirking. "We saved the world from aliens, remember? If he has any sense of normality, he'll practically worship us like any other New Yorker."

I chose this moment to make my grand entrance. "And why in the world would I worship you?" I drawled, standing in the doorway with my arms crossed on my chest and a sarcastic smirk gracing my features.

Needless to say, they were shocked to see me.

*a great book if you ask me