Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

If Percy had to put a finger on it, things started to change the moment that a woman named Doctor Leslie Thompkins showed up at Camp Halfblood, with a half-dead demigod in tow.

Percy had never met Doctor Thompkins– “Call me Leslie”–but Chiron and Annabeth and Clarisse all knew her. She was the great-granddaughter of some minor god or the other, and she was a doctor in New Jersey. 

Percy tried not to hold her state against her. 

Percy was a bit busy when she showed up, being underground in the Labyrinth and dealing with his kinda-sorta-let’s-not-talk-about-it grandpa hijacking Luke’s body and all. And then when he came back , there was a battle about to happen, and he wasn’t exactly going over to cabin eleven to introduce himself to some random halfblood. 

When he did spot her, on the edge of the preparations, the halfblood in question turned out to be a blonde girl who looked kind of ghostly pale and covered in scars. Even with a heavy application of nectar and ambrosia she was still barely on her feet, and didn’t seem to understand what’s happening, which Percy kind of sympathized with, if he was feeling honest.

He had to wince at the bad luck that she had, showing up right before the fight that might just destroy the entire camp, but he was kind of busy, so he didn’t spend too much time thinking about her and let the Stoll twins handle her, since she was still unclaimed.

He didn’t even catch her name until after the battle, when he found her helping an injured son of Dionysus after the battle, holding a busted celestial bronze dagger in one hand and a grim expression on her face.

Her name, he learned as he helped her move Castor towards the Apollo campers who were setting up triage, was Stephanie Brown.

She was here fresh from her own war, in Gotham City.

And now? She was here to help.  

Leslie was what some people might call a “legacy.” Her grandmother had been a daughter of Asclepius, himself a demigod son of Apollo and later the god of medicine. Leslie’s grandmother dutifully had attended Camp Half-Blood in her own youth, but she hadn’t been particularly powerful in her own right, and neither had been Leslie’s father. Leslie had things a little stronger, and when a few monsters had come sniffing around when she was a child, Leslie’s grandmother had taken her to Chiron.

Leslie had trained for years, becoming very well acquainted with fighting with a celestial bronze spear, chariot racing, and underwater basket weaving. But her true passion always lay with healing.

It was why, after a quest went horrifically wrong when she was seventeen and one of her friends died in her arms, she left Camp Half-Blood to pursue a career in medicine. She left her celestial bronze collapsible spear in the bottom of her bag, never to be touched, and went into the mortal realm.

There, she met Thomas Wayne, and later Martha Kane, Alfred Pennyworth, and a host of other people who she would grow to love. Thomas would present her with a squirming, red-faced bundle that was her godson, Bruce, and in turn Bruce would bring her sons and a daughter of his own. Richard, Jason, Tim, Cassandra. Selina Kyle, Barbara Gordon, Jean Paul Valley, Gavin King… all of them found their way into her world, slowly as the years went by, as her hair slowly went silver and she lived so, so much longer than she thought she would have at the tender age of twelve, when she’d beaten a magical snake to death in her childhood bedroom and her grandmother had been forced to explain to her what it meant to have godly blood, even in her meager portion. 

She didn’t abandon her home, her extended family entirely though. A real doctor wasn’t something the camp had much access to, especially the year-rounders, children who seemed to grow younger and angrier every year. So every few months, Leslie drove up from Gotham City to Long Island to conduct physicals, give vaccinations, and teach first-aid classes. And every time, Chiron, who had become one of her closest friends, gave her a thermos of nectar and a container of ambrosia. Just in case.

She’d never needed to use them.

Not until she met Stephanie Brown.

A long time ago, a mortal woman named Crystal Bellinger (who would soon become known to more people as Crystal Brown, when she finally married her on-again-off-again boyfriend, who was cooling his heels in jail at the time of this story) went to a bar to try and enjoy herself for just one night. 

There, she met a man with golden hair and sky colored eyes and a smile that made her feel warm and seen and beautiful…

He told her his name was Apollo, and it was so obviously a fake name, but she didn’t press it. Instead, she went home with him, to his beautiful apartment in a part of Bristol she had never seen before (or would see again), and they had a wonderful night that turned into a wonderful week.

Crystal was a nurse, was a healer, and she had lived a sad, short life, full of petty mortal miseries. But in Apollo’s little apartment, where he played her piano and ordered in great food and danced with her in the living room, whispering poetry in her ear… she felt like she mattered. Like she might be more than what everyone else in her life had ever told her she could be. 

There was nothing easier than believing Apollo, when he told her that she was special, that she was beautiful, that she was funny. Even long after he’d gone, she'd think of those words sometimes, and believe it. Less than she did in that moment, laying in a giant bed surrounded by pillows as fluffy as clouds in a sunbeam… but it was something she held on to, after. 

It ended, of course, because it always must. Arthur called her after getting out of jail, asking for a ride. Apollo told her she should go, with a sad smile and a kiss on the cheek. 

She went to Arthur, and Apollo faded from her mind as something impossible and far away.

Nine months later though, she looked down at her baby girl with hair that could have been Arthur’s, but could have been gold like sunlight, and there was a troubled sense in her stomach that there might be consequences for that respite that she didn’t yet know.

Leslie watched Bruce leave her clinic. Stephanie Brown lay there in the next room, the sound of her labored breathing echoing through Leslie’s ears, despite the din of the clinic.

“It’s not looking good,” she told him, the man she had tried her best to raise as a son. She reached up and touched his face. She saw streaks through the grime that coated him, and pressed her fingertips against the dampness, wishing he would take the cowl off so she could comfort him properly.

His fingers locked around her wrist gently, pulling her hand away from his face. No tenderness. Not for the Batman.

“I know.”

“I’ll do what I can to make her comfortable,” Leslie said. Because that was all she could say, when her clinic was overflowing with the injured and the dead. Cassandra was desperately fighting outside, trying to keep out any who wished to take hostages or use this place as a staging ground, but supplies were stretching thin, and there was no end in sight.

Gotham had not stopped burning to the ground just because a fifteen year old girl was dying, one room over.

“Go,” she said. “Stop this.”

He looked back at Stephanie Brown, through the glass door. He nodded. And then he was gone, melting through her fingers like a monster returning to the Mist.

She stepped back into Stephanie’s room, and she stopped in her tracks.

Her great-great-grandfather was there.

She had only met Apollo a few times in her life. His golden hair was pulled up in a ponytail, and he wore a yellow polo shirt and jeans. He was younger than her, handsome but oddly sorrowful as he looked down at Stephanie.

“Lord Apollo,” she said. She didn't bow. Something about the situation seemed too fragile for such gestures.

He looked at her with those golden-sun eyes.

In his hand was her thermos of nectar.

“You can save her,” he said. It was phrased like a choice. But in his words, there was a command of steel.

Leslie took the thermos, the same one that Chiron had filled, every year without fail, since she was thirty and returned to Camp Half-Blood for the first time, and she knelt by a teenage girl’s bedside, and poured the drink of the gods down the dying child’s throat.

Stephanie dreamed about sitting at the foot of three older women, allowing them to measure a skein of yarn by winding it around her hands.

One of them took out a large set of fabric scissors and smiled at her. It wasn't a kind smile. But it also wasn’t cruel. It simply… was.

Steph raised up her hands to allow the woman to cut the yarn more easily, but then something stopped her.

Strangely enough, it was the taste of chocolate on her tongue.

The three women nodded at each other and began packing up their things. One of them, with gentle, knobbly hands, took the yarn from Steph’s hand, and, with a flick of her wrist that Steph couldn't quite follow, tied it off into a ball.

Steph tried to watch, to see where they were going, but a strange, warm feeling filled her chest, and she looked around, to see if she could tell what was happening, and she lost them in the fog that was beginning to settle in.

“ Rest ,” a voice that was simultaneously strange to her but also the most inherently familiar thing in the world whispered in her ear.

And Steph was tempted to argue, but it was only for the sake of argument, and she was tired…

So she lay down on the ground and just closed her eyes, and let the warmth and the chocolate carry her away.

"Leslie,” Chrion said, surprised as the van which normally came at set times every year pulled up in front of the Big House.

“I’ve got a dying halfblood,” Leslie replied to the question that hadn't appeared yet.

Chiron’s expression hardened into that of a warrior and medic, and he summoned Argus to help Leslie bring the girl inside.

Between the three of them, they got her set up in the Big House’s infirmary. Chiron had seen many things in his long life, and he knew those weren’t wounds from a battle. Those were torture marks, marring the skin of a very young girl. 

There were, of course, monsters who indulged in torture. The Unkindly Ones delighted in torment, Procrustes, it could be said, had invented the torture rack. 

But some evils were very, unfortunately human in nature. 

“Do you know who she is?” Chiron asked Leslie.

Leslie was a rare wonder of his former students. She not only lived in the mortal world but flourished in an ordinary life. Her heroism was understated in some ways, compared to the mighty figures of myth and legend that he had mentored over the years. But she served mortals and demigods alike, fighting disease and poverty and fear in her everyday life, bringing small pieces of joy with her when she visited the camp. 

“Her name is Stephanie Brown,” Leslie said, smoothing down the girl’s blonde hair. “She’s from Gotham.”

“And… her parents?” he asked, mild. He watched her face. 

“I know her mother. She’s a good woman.” 

“And… her father?”

Leslie frowned, but then she shook her head.

“I’m not certain,” she finally said. “I have my suspicions… but I’m not sure .”

“And… your suspicions?”

She shook her head again, lips pursed. “I’d rather not say.”

Chiron frowned, and looked back at the young woman sleeping fitfully on the medical cot. “Then I’ll suppose I’ll gather my own evidence.”

Leslie nodded, and went to check on the campers. Even if it wasn't her normal scheduled visit, there were always vaccines to administer, scraped knees to inspect, and condoms to distribute. 

Stephanie Brown opened her eyes two days later. Her eyes were deep and dark blue, and her expression was one of stubbornness.

“Where am I?” she asked Leslie, the moment she sat up in her bed.

"New York,” Leslie said, because it was easier than the entire story.

Stephanie’s brow furrowed, and she looked around, obviously taking in that she was no longer in a hospital, but instead in a small infirmary. 

She glanced at Chiron, in his wheelchair, and then looked back at Leslie. He did not introduce himself, just yet. 

“Why?” Stephanie asked. Her voice cracked with disuse, and she coughed. Leslie handed her a bottle of water.

“Drink,” she said. “And I’ll tell you a story.”

It wasn’t exactly surprising that the Greek Gods existed, because, well, Wonder Woman. Steph hadn’t gotten to meet her personally, but she'd met Wonder Girl, and knew that Nightwing was friends with Troia. And Captain Marvel (who she also hadn’t met) called upon Zeus for… his… power? She wasn’t entirely sure which ability that Zeus gave him, it was less clear than some of the others. Also Hercules for strength, but if it was Hercules not Heracles, wasn't that the Roman version, like Mercury for speed? Atlas was in their too, for... stamina? She gave up trying to remember, because it really was too complicated.

So no, Greek Gods being real and affecting the world that she lived in? Completely tracked.

What was throwing her through a loop was what Leslie had told her about herself .

That one of the Greek Gods was very-likely-almost-certainly her parent. Bio parent? It wasn't like they’d been hands on at all. She certainly wasn't going to be calling some deadbeat “dad” or “mom.”

At least Leslie was fairly certain that it was Arthur Brown who wasn’t her biological parent. She didn’t know what she’d do if it turned out that she wasn’t really Crystal Brown’s daughter. Probably cry.

“So who’s my… donor then?” Steph said, wrapping her arms tightly around her knees.

“I don’t know,” Leslie said.

Steph looked at her, frowning. “Are you… lying?”

“No. I have suspicions, but I don’t want to tell you anything until I’m certain. If I’m wrong…” Leslie trailed off. She sighed. “I won’t lie to you, Stephanie. The gods are… not always kind to their children. It isn’t unheard of for children to go unclaimed.”

“Unclaimed?”

Leslie’s mouth firmed into a tight frown. “You are only a child of a god if the god declares you so. Otherwise, you are unacknowledged. The unacknowledged… they rarely come into their full powers. They often struggle with a sense of identity, a sense of purpose. It can be for many reasons; the gods might have forgotten, or have reasons it would be inconvenient for them to admit to the parentage of a child… or, in the case of the minor gods, they sometimes fear that claiming their child might lead to them becoming an outcast.”

“So you’re saying gods just… abandon their kids if they’re inconvenient, sometimes?” Steph asked, wishing she was more surprised than she was.

Leslie nodded. She looked old, at that moment.

“Well. At least that explains it,” Steph said, a little more honestly than she necessarily intended to. Leslie looked at her with sad eyes, and she knew that Leslie was hearing what she wasn't saying.

“Unfortunately, saving your life with the nectar and ambrosia woke up your latent aura,” Leslie explained. “Gotham is… a strange place, and it’s often very safe for demigods as a result, but you’ll be in danger if you return just now. You need training.”

“I have training,” Steph said, bristling. She went through Robin bootcamp, after all.

Leslie smiled at her faintly. There were deep lines of exhaustion under her eyes. “Not training like this,” she said. “Not that I don’t think you’ll have a head start over others your age.”

Steph bit her lip. “And… my mom?”

“She can’t come here, unfortunately,” Leslie said. “Camp Half-Blood is a place where mortals can’t visit. But you can call her. Tell her that I had to hide you for your own safety, and that you’ll meet up with her as soon as it’s safe.”

“Won’t…” Steph hesitated. “Won’t Batman track me?”

“He won’t be able to find us.” She paused thoughtfully, and amended. “Unless he happens to ask Princess Diana for help, which he almost certainly won’t. The fact that she would be able to open doors that are closed to him won’t occur to him. It will be better if you ask your mother to keep it quiet, to ensure that monsters don’t come looking for you, but the secret won’t last forever.”

Steph looked at Leslie. “How did you know? What I was?”

Leslie shook her head. “That’s a story for another time. Now, let’s get you to cabin eleven.”

Steph had never gone to sleep-away summer camp. It had sounded nice; she’d read lots of books about it, but the closest she’d come to summer camp was band camp, which she’d been on scholarship for, and had taken place at the high school. 

So there was, if she was going to be honest, a bit of excitement at the idea of being at a real summer camp. 

There was a lake, a forest, and stables, an archery range, an amphitheater, and a variety of training facilities that look like they were right out of those glossy photographs of Themyscira in the magazine articles written by reporters who were lucky enough to go. 

But Leslie told her she’d get time to look at those later, and so Steph reluctantly tramped past what looked like some very punchable looking training dummies, and followed her to the cabins. 

There were twelve, all together, forming a rough semi-circle. 

The cabins felt like someone had raided a dozen model villages from very different brands and styles and plopped them in the sandbox together, creating a discordant, if pleasant picture all together. 

Cabin one was the furthest away, a huge bulky neo-classical thing with huge bronze doors that had been shined so thoroughly lightning bolts seemed to flicker across the surface. Cabin two, its counterpart, was in a similar style, but with cleaner lines and neater proportions, decorated with peacocks aplenty to tell her who that cabin represented. 

Three was long, and low to the ground, made of some sort of limestone with visible shells imprinted in it. She thought, even from here, she could hear the sound of flowing water, when she focused on it. 

Number four appeared to be something out of an eco-fantasy, with walls covered in climbing vegetable vines and a rooftop garden. Large panes of glass interrupted the vegetation, giving it the appearance of a greenhouse. It had to be hot in there. Steph did not envy the inhabitants. 

Cabin five was decorated in a sort of Jackson Pollock inspired way, only it appeared that the only color available was red. Nevertheless, the decorators had taken the challenge with gusto, and closer examination revealed a variety of shades of red, cheerfully splattered all over each other in an almost competitive way. There was barbed wire on the roof, clearly trying to give it the look of a cool fort, because she couldn’t think of any other reason why there would be barbed wire on a roof, except for maybe pigeon deterrence. A mounted boar’s head was attached above the door, right above the brass number, which made Steph frown, because being exposed to the elements couldn't be good for taxidermy. 

Compared to the others, six was absolutely boring. It was a simple, gray building that wouldn’t be out of place on a fraternity row in any city in America. There was an owl above the door, and some nice curtains on the windows, but it was almost a let down after the try-hard chaos of cabin five. 

Seven… seven was glowing . Steph couldn’t help but flinch away from it; Gotham sensibilities and all. Once her eyes adjusted to the light, it was in the same kind of classical style as the first two, but on a smaller scale. There were pillars, and carvings of lyres and laurels everywhere. She didn’t like looking at it. Something about it set her teeth on edge. 

Cabin eight seemed to be seven’s mirror, only in a subdued silver. The walls were painted with frescoes of animals and the woods, which Steph kind of liked. She was a city girl, but she appreciated a good wildlife scene. 

Nine looked like someone took shop class and made it into its own building. There were smokestacks, and several teenagers her age or older were gathered outside it, holding weapons and arguing about sharpness and style and technique in a way that carries an obvious tension. Leslie hurried her past that one. 

Cabin ten looked like it could be featured in a spread about glamping or whatever the term was. It was a “cabin” in the same sense that rich people had cottages. The roof was painted blue, it had a wrap around porch, pillars, and a bright pink door. There were pots of flowers artfully arranged, and cushioned seats set up in a way that Steph, a veteran of house parties, recognized were very carefully just isolated enough from each other to allow for a little bit of privacy. Doves perch elegantly on the roof, occasionally cooing. Steph gave them a careful eye and a wide berth–she knew pigeons when she saw them. 

Twelve appeared to have been covered in grape vines so thoroughly she couldn't see anything else about it. She imagined that inside, it was like a hobbit hole. It certainly would be a smart air conditioning tactic–already the August sun was baking, and she hadn’t seen a window unit or an HVAC anywhere.  

Unlike the other cabins, cabin eleven looked like a nice, normal cabin in a summer camp that Tim might have gone to. Peeling paint, worn down floors and scratched doors, a caduceus over the door. 

Cabin eleven turned out to be Hermes Cabin. It was crowded, with nearly two dozen teenagers crammed into a space meant for a twelve, and from what some of the others told her, it used to be worse. 

Leslie handed her off to a pair of twins known as Conner and Travis Stoll, and then left, telling her that she’d see her again at dinner. 

And that was how her life at Camp began. 

She was given a sleeping bag, a toothbrush, a pair of sweats and a bright orange t-shirt that set her teeth on edge, but she wore it anyways, because the clothes she had been wearing in the infirmary were soaked in sweat after her coma.

Some of the campers in Hermes cabin, Steph identified quickly, had shared features or similarities that jumped across face to face. There was a smile that many of them shared, a tendency to sharp features and sarcastic eyebrow quirks. Those, she assumed from what she was rapidly gathering, were the children or likely-children of Hermes. She saw other groupings of traits throughout the cabins. Stormy gray eyes for Athena cabin, a tendency to short, muscled builds for Ares, and a propensity for freckles for the children of Apollo.

“Gods have preferred forms generally,” Travis, who turned out to be one of the head counselors of Hermes cabin, explained to her. “So there’s sometimes tendencies. But they also mix it up pretty often, so it’s not a guarantee.”

Steph, who lacked any of the stated traits, nodded. 

It would be nice, Chiron thought, if he could give his newest student time to heal, to recover, to find her footing. 

He learned, from her and from Leslie, that she was from Gotham City, a city that was known for being someplace where the Mist was…unusual. Thick in some ways, but thinner in others, making the line between the mortal and the godly unusually confusing, even for those who knew what they were looking for. 

Stephanie had found her own way to train, to hone her skills, in that city. 

The man who raised her was cruel, in a way that darkened the lives of too many of his students. But Stephanie had not run away, which was the most common answer for them. Instead, she had fought back. In her own way, with clever words and a cape. 

Superheroes. 

Chiron had little to do with those fascinating mortals; he was old friends with Queen Hippolyta, of course, and he’d known Princess Diana since she was a child. But apart from them, most of the mortals appeared to be firmly… mortal . They had genetic oddities or magic that came from non-divine sources, they were mortals armed with wits and armor, and then there were even aliens. Zeus had empowered a Champion, in cooperation with some other gods, in the form of the man known as Captain Marvel. But generally… he'd had very little to do with superheroes, until he met the girl who had been Robin. 

She was angry. It simmered, under her skin, the familiar kind of anger that so many of his students had, when they realized their heritage. The questions of whether or not they were wanted, of all the injustices and cruelties of their lives being reframed through this lens of a distant but divine parent, heightened by being unclaimed, heightened still more by the man who did raise her. 

Visibly, there were few hints. She had blonde hair and dark blue eyes, she was tall and broad and muscled. She was a gifted fighter, which made him compare her to Athena or Ares. She was gifted at stealth, which could lead him to Hermes. Things that were hard to place could easily make her a minor god’s offspring; perhaps Hecate or Nike. 

But he looked at her, sometimes, in the tense moments where they all gather around the fire, supposedly intending to relax and have a sing along, but in reality all of them quiet and scared as the war crept closer to their doors. He thought he saw something as she tried to comfort one of the youngest children, in the way she made people smile, despite the tension heavy in the air. 

It wasn't a side to the god Apollo many people thought of, those days. 

He could be wrong, of course. 

But he suspected…that he wasn't. 

He examined her and questioned her in the brief moments he had, but time slipped through his fingers as she limped towards recovery.  

Of course, it turned out that nothing was simple, not for Steph. They tried to conceal it from her as best they could, but it became quickly apparent that there was something deeper and darker happening. 

She had stumbled out of one war into the next. The Titans were rising, several Half-Bloods had turned traitor, the entrance to the Labyrinth was beneath their feet, and the enemy was expected to burst through it any day now.

There wasn’t much time for anyone to teach her how this world worked or how to fight in it. Clarisse La Rue, the head of Ares Cabin, grabbed her briefly and hit her with a sword a few times to test her reflexes. “I’d make Jackson do this normally, but we need to know what we’re dealing with here, and he’s gone again,” La Rue said curtly. Steph, who had never held a sword in her life, got her ass kicked.

La Rue wasn’t particularly impressed, and handed her off to a boy a few years younger than Steph named Sherman to take over Steph’s training after she picked up a sword from the armory.

Steph was…not particularly great with a sword, and Sherman obviously knew it. “You're not a sword fighter,” he said, apologetically. “But we don’t really have time to figure out what you are good at.”

Steph had asked. The armory didn’t have any Celestial Bronze bo staffs on hand. Which was a damn shame, because Steph would probably kick everyone’s butts with one of those.

Only a few days after Steph had finally managed to swing a sword without overbalancing, Percy Jackson came back.

Percy Jackson, who Steph had heard talked about in vague detail, turned out to be a shaggy haired kid with bright green eyes. He was fourteen years old, and scrawny, but he had a look about him that made her think that he might just be about to hit a growth spurt or three. 

Steph was (or possibly had been, which was a kick in the teeth that she didn’t linger on) best friends with Cassandra Cain, and knew that appearances could be deceiving. 

Percy, Steph gathered, even before the guy himself showed up, was a big deal. He'd been on multiple quests. He was a son of Poseidon. His brother was a cyclops. He was friends with a daughter of Athena, even though Athena hated Poseidon. He was one of the best sword fighters the camp had. He was extremely powerful, but he wasn’t a year-round camper, which apparently was really weird. 

But she shrugged, and didn’t think about him too long–she had other things to deal with. 

Steph had enough of a chemistry background that she'd been recruited by the Hephaestus cabin to mix Greek Fire. Charles Beckendorf, head of cabin five, had been surprised by Steph turning up to offer her services, since it seemed that demigods took cabin designations seriously, but she hadn’t spent a childhood sitting in her father's (step-father’s?) basement laboratory for nothing, and once she'd proven herself, another set of hands was always welcome. 

She wasn’t considered battle-ready, not just yet. She was still injured, covered in scars. No one seems to really know what to make of her, with her crooked fingers and existing muscle and a variety of torture marks criss-crossing her body. The nectar and ambrosia that Chiron and Leslie had given her have brought her back from the brink of death, restored her strength, and sped up the process, but it had turned months of recovery into days, and she was still in those allotted days. They’d given her armor, but suggested that she stay with Leslie, tending the injured campers. 

Chiron and the Stoll twins hadn’t really known what to make of her attempts to explain what she could do, and, in their defense, she was an urban fighter. The woods, monsters that weren’t humans, and swords? Not exactly her forte. 

No one knew what to make of her, period . These kids, and they were kids, almost without exception, were warriors, expecting to die young in a war that their parents had chosen for them. They were ancient, in some ways. But they were very young, in others.

So she sat with Leslie, lining up squares of ambrosia and thermoses of nectar, coiling bandages, and wondering if she was going to make it home to see her mother after all. 

And then the battle came. 

Steph couldn't stay away. Not really. Leslie took one look at her, handed her a celestial bronze knife, and told her to come back alive. 

Steph took a canteen of nectar with her, and did her best. 

After the battle, Percy walked up to the new girl. She was working with the doctor who had shown up, bandaging arms and shoving water bottles into people’s hands. 

“Hey,” he said, because he wasn’t entirely sure what else he’s supposed to say. “Nice job with the,” he gestured to try and encompass stabbing and saving lives and seeming like a pretty cool person.

She gave him a thumbs up. “You too,” she said. She handed him a water bottle. “Steph.”

“Percy,” he said. “Uh… do you guys need any help?” 

“Apollo’s cabin had most of the urgent stuff covered,” Steph said with a shrug. “It’s just the basics right now.” 

“You’re helping,” Percy pointed out, kind of feeling stupid the moment he said it. 

“My mom’s a nurse,” she said. “And uh… I’m used to patching people up. My teachers made sure I had the basics down, at least.” 

“Your teachers?” Percy frowned, because he wasn’t entirely sure what kind of high school made people know basic combat first aid. 

Steph got a weird expression on her face. “Uh… you’re from New York, right?” 

“Right,” Percy said. 

Steph pointed at herself. “Gotham.” 

Percy shrugged, because she had the accent. “Yeah?”

Steph stuck up her pointer fingers on both hands and held it up behind her head and scowled. 

“... a very angry bunny taught you medicine?” 

Steph laughed so hard and so loud she nearly fell over. 

And that’s how Percy learned that he was hanging out with a real-life superhero. 

Chapter Text

Steph rather liked Percy, once she got to know him. He was a dork, but a sweet dork; well meaning and a bit clueless at times, but with the biggest heart of anyone she’d ever met who wasn’t named Cassandra Cain. 

As life at Camp Halfblood stumbled back towards what appeared to be this place’s approximation of “normal”, she was signed up for a variety of activities. 

Percy was more than happy to help her with sword fighting, but she was mostly muddling through it. She was great at rock climbing, and progressing nicely at Greek and Latin, but despite Percy’s assurances that horses were great, actually, she didn’t quite trust them, and it took two weeks before Michael Yew, the newly appointed leader of cabin seven, could show up to give her an archery lesson.

Apparently Lee Fletcher, the previous leader, had been one of the people who had died during the Battle of the Labyrinth, which was… pretty awful, actually. 

Steph was a decent hand with a bow, as it turned out. Michael called her a natural, and there was something appraising in his gaze. 

It was a gaze she was getting used to; being measured, analyzed. They were trying to figure out not only what box she might fit in, but if she was going to claimed. Did Daddy Dearest love her enough to claim custody? Or was she going to be very obviously someone’s kid, but they’d never bother to put their name on the birth certificate? 

She wanted to call her mom, to find out if there was an easy answer. (Her mom’s word wouldn’t be enough to allow her to switch cabins, but it would help her , at least. Not that Steph had any thoughts about who the deadbeat might be; there were plenty of “minor” gods that could very easily be an absentee parent as easily as any of the big ones with cabins and thrones.) But the entire camp was on cell phone blackout, and the nearest payphone was a while away, so she’d need to wait for the next supply run to go, and given everything that was happening…it would be a little while. 

Nico was sleeping in the Big House, because Chiron had offered to let him, and he wasn’t about to go to cabin eleven, where everyone would look at him funny. 

Most people were at least respectful, because, well, son of Hades, but that didn’t mean that people wanted to be his friend. 

And he was fine with that. Really. He was only sticking around to keep an eye on things anyways; as soon as he was certain things were normal, he was going to go to the Underworld. He had ideas. Plans. 

He was hanging out in the woods, trying to find a place that didn’t feel bogged down by death, when someone snuck up on him. 

No one snuck up on him. Not anymore. He snuck up on other people. It was part of the whole mysterious aura of death thing. 

No one, it seemed, had told Stephanie Brown that. 

“Oh hey, I’ve been looking for you,” she said, sitting on a low hanging tree branch. 

He blinked.

“Why?” he asked. 

She frowned at him, as if he wasn’t making sense. “Because you’re sulking in the woods alone most of the time?” 

“I’m not sulking ,” he protested. 

“Sorry. Brooding? Skulking? Lurking?” She grinned at him. Her smile was wide and easy, at odds with the scars that he could see on her arms, and the haunted look in her eyes. 

“I just like being alone,” he told her. 

She gave him a look, and it wasn’t a very believing look. “Do you like being alone, or do you think you should be alone?” 

He flinched. He couldn’t help it. 

“Look,” she said. “I don’t know you. Hi, I’m Steph by the way, I’ve heard you’re Nico, sorry, I forgot to introduce myself and skipped straight to teasing you, that’s my bad. If you really want me to go, I’ll go. But I just…” she bit her lip. “Listen. You’re what, twelve?”

“... Eleven,” Nico admitted.

Something very sad flickered across her face. “Jesus. This camp is full of babies.” He bristled. “Sorry, that was condescending,” she corrected herself. “I’m just. Not used to this.” She gestured at herself. “People were always telling me I was too young for… well, what I was doing, and I was fourteen. And now I’m on the older end of things and it’s weird .” She shook her head. “What I meant to say is that if you really want to be alone, say the word and I’ll skedaddle. But like. If you just think you should be alone, that’s crap. And if you think I’ll ditch you because you’ve got a spooky vibe or whatever, I’m from Gotham where the good guys are spooky and the bad guys are clowns. I don’t scare easily.” 

Nico frowned at her. It had been a lot of words very quickly, and he wasn’t sure he understood all of them. “You’re… scared of clowns?” 

“Okay, when you say it like that, you make it sound like an irrational fear, rather than a very fact-based fear of one of the most prolific mass murderers in the country, who I watched get beaten to death once.” 

“I don’t think I understand you,” Nico said to Steph, feeling a bit disoriented. 

“Fair enough,” she admitted. “I get the impression that my life experiences are a bit weird, even for this camp. Want me to go?” 

Nico stuck his hands in his pockets and didn’t think about how he hadn’t felt quite as much like death was closing in on him from all sides since she’d started talking. He shrugged. “I mean, if you want to stay, I don’t own the woods.” 

Her smile was brilliant.

Steph’s first god was, of course, not actually her father, whoever he might be. 

Her first god was Dionysus. Or, as she was supposed to call him, Mr. D. 

He was gone doing… something? She honestly wasn’t quite sure what was up with that. But he had shown back up, apparently to do something with the satyrs? She was… not quite sure about it. Percy tried to explain the satyrs to her, but he kind of got distracted telling her about his friend Grover and the time he wore a wedding dress. 

Anyways, so she had heard that he was back at Camp (apparently… he was here because he was in rehab? And he was the activity director of the camp?) but she didn’t really spend much time thinking about it, because she was busy trying to convince Beckendorf to make her a Celestial Bronze bo-staff.  

“Sophie Bradbury?” The voice was deep and weirdly authoritative, and something in Steph made her turn around. 

The man had hair darker even than Tim, with watery blue, bloodshot eyes. His nose and cheeks were flushed in a way that Steph associated with being very hungover or unwillingly sober. His Hawaiian shirt was boldly printed with leopard print. 

But something in his gaze had her keeping very still. 

She was from Gotham. She knew danger when it stood before her, even in an unassuming form. 

“Hi Mr. D,” she said, offering him a smile. “It’s nice to meet you.” 

His eyes narrowed at her, as if he wasn’t sure if she was being sincere or not. Which, like, maybe she was, maybe she wasn’t, but she wasn’t going to be rude to a god who probably wasn’t her dad. Not when he radiated danger like that. It almost reminded her of the Joker. 

“Well,” he said. “So you’re the one who saved Castor.” 

Steph started. “Right! That’s your son!” 

He glared at her.

“Are you…” she hesitated. There was something in his aura that was familiar, in a way that she couldn’t place. Then she remembered. Rehab. “Are you okay? Do you need like. Water or something?” 

He stared at her. 

“What?” She said, “You’re in like. Detox, right? My mom did detox.” It was weird admitting it outloud, but like, he was a god. He probably already knew. “Not wine but like. It was pretty rough. And I know hydration is a big part of that, although I guess maybe that matters less for you because…immortality?” 

She got a strange feeling, like he was looking right into her soul, seeing all sorts of things that she wasn’t sure anyone should see. 

“I see,” he said, even though she hadn’t said anything of the sort. “Interesting.” And then he turned around and walked away. 

“Huh,” Steph said, and then went to go check on Castor and Pollux, because been there . 

In New Jersey, Leslie pulled in front of Crystal Brown’s house.

She’d already made her visits in Gotham City properly, to alleviate any of Bruce’s paranoia. She’d gone to Blüdhaven to fuss over Tim and Cassandra, and worried about Dick’s absence. 

Bruce was walled off and paranoid, although Alfred told her it had something to do with the Justice League and mind control, which… was less reassuring than it ought to be, but at least he wasn’t going to be drawing attention to Camp Halfblood by turning Wayne Enterprises’ considerable resources to tracking down Stephanie Brown. 

 She hoped. 

But for now, she went to visit Crystal Brown. In her bag, she had a letter that Steph had written. 

It still wasn’t particularly safe for Steph to leave Camp, not until she had considerably more training. A visit would be very hard. Phone calls were risky. But once Crystal was read in, Stephanie should be able to manage Iris messages, and there would be letters. 

It wasn’t perfect. It was far from it. But it was better than the alternative. 

She knocked on the door. 

There was a long, horrible pause, before the door opened. 

Crystal Brown did not look good. She’d lost too much weight in a short amount of time, and there were deep, dark circles under her eyes. Her hands shook and her eyes were bloodshot, and her clothes looked to be several days old. 

Losing a child was never easy. Leslie had seen this far too many times. 

“Leslie,” Crystal said, recognizing her. “I…” 

“I’m sorry it took me so long,” Leslie told her. “But I have something for you.” 

She held out the letter. 

Crystal looked at the envelope, with Stephanie’s obvious cursive handwriting on it. “Steph?” She asked, her voice small. 

“She’s alive, Crystal,” Leslie said. “I’m so sorry.” 

And Crystal collapsed, like a puppet with her strings cut. 

Percy told her his story of being claimed. It sounded pretty badass, if a bit stressful. Most of the other people she asked had similar, if less dramatic stories of being claimed. A few had always known, while others, like Steph and Percy, hadn’t even known about demigods until they had arrived. 

Well, okay, Steph had a bit better idea than most, but that was a superhero thing. 

(Was Wonder Girl a demigod? She hadn’t met any demigod who could fly, but according to Percy, Thalia, the daughter of Zeus could. She was now a hunter of Artemis and was stuck in puberty forever. A nightmare if you asked Steph.) 

Anyways! She was off-topic. 

Claiming. 

Everyone had a story about it. 

Unfortunately, she would too, by the end of the summer. 

It would have been really nice, in Steph’s opinion, if her godly deadbeat had decided to claim her, once her wounds were healed. Or after she did really well in one of her hand to hand matches, where she demonstrated to a group of twelve year olds how to flip adult men over their shoulders. Or when she did decently at archery, and Michael looked at her consideringly. Or when she did a really good harmony at camp sing-along. Or when Chiron told her she had a natural gift in the infirmary when she was helping Leslie restock. 

(Look, you knew who the god was. It felt a bit more obvious, in hindsight.) 

But no. 

Her “dad,” it seemed, wasn’t satisfied with any of those. 

Instead, he waited. 

He waited until the last day before Percy left at the end of the summer term, when he managed to finally convince her to show off a little. 

“Come on,” Percy said. “Batman’s a ninja, isn’t he?” 

“He’s not a ninja,” Steph said. “Although I think he dated one. Or she might have been a CEO. I was a little fuzzy on the details.” Steph hadn’t exactly spent much time dealing with Talia Head, but she was pretty sure the woman had at least some ninja training, because of the League of Assassins thing? They were ninjas, right? “He’s just… really sneaky. And wears black.” 

Percy looked confused at that, which, fair. Steph felt that way about Batman and his weird adventures too, and she’d at least theoretically been In The Know. 

Not actually, because it wasn’t like Batman trusted her or anything. But she didn’t like to think about that, because when she thought about that, she thought about being tortured, and that wasn’t a fun train of thought at all .  

“Fine,” Steph said, because she did miss doing some proper rooftop shenanigans. “I guess I can do a little parkour.” 

Percy’s grin was wide and goofy and adorable. 

She started on Cabin Three, since that was Percy’s home, and so they were already hanging out there. Limestone was familiar enough, and it wasn’t hard scrambling up the side of it. 

“What are you doing ?” Annabeth Chase demanded, having shown up to see what Percy was staring at. She was Percy’s friend, but Steph didn’t really know her all that well. She was around the same height as Percy, with blonde hair and stormy gray eyes, and Steph got the impression that Annabeth didn’t like her much. “You shouldn't be up there!” 

Steph peered down at her. “Camp rules, or are the gods going to smite me? I don’t think the gods should mind, given that they don’t seem to care what we do with the decor.” 

“It’s a respect thing!” Annabeth told her, hands on her hips. 

“Don’t worry,” Steph assured her. “I do parkour in a very respectful way.” 

And then she jumped. 

Steph made it onto the roof of Ares Cabin easily enough. She’d had plenty of experience navigating barbed wire without getting hurt.

She leaned up against the stuffed boar’s head. “Hey buddy,” she said, patting its head. “Clarisse! Does he have a name?” 

“Wilbur!” Clarisse shouted. “... wait, Brown? What the Styx are you doing up on our roof?” 

“Ninja practice.” 

A small crowd was gathering. Steph clambered up the chimney on top of Ares Cabin to survey her next target. Cabin Seven was Apollo. It was also very shiny. 

She squinted to try to make out the rough shape of the roof. Looking before she leapt was a bit of a cliché, but she did try to be responsible. The roof was slanted more than Ares or Poseidon, but she’d spent plenty of time on the roof of typical houses in suburban Gotham, including her own, so she figured she’d be fine. 

She took a running leap. Someone shouted from the crowd below, but she grabbed hold of the ledge and flipped herself up in a way that Nightwing would be proud of, managing to keep her grip okay. 

It was a bit steeper and slippier than she’d realized. What the hell was this roof made of? She’d never felt anything like this. 

But she turned around and waved. Cabin Five was all gathered, some of them holding things that suggested that they were considering throwing them at her. Several Hermes Cabin members were there, and the inhabitants of Seven were trailing out to see what the fuss was about. 

Maybe this was why Batman did this stuff at night. Steph forced a grin onto her face and scrambled up the roof to the pinnacle, where there was a weathervane with a large, stylized sun instead of a rooster. 

She blew a kiss down to the gathered crowd, and grabbed hold of the weathervane to dramatically pose with. 

That was her downfall. 

It turned out! Weathervanes in Gotham were unusually sturdy, or maybe this one was just crap. Or maybe Dad just had a twisted sense of humor. 

Because it broke off in her hands, and she went off balance. 

And, in case you’d forgotten who this story was about… 

Gravity was not Stephanie Brown’s friend. 

Steph went toppling down the side of Cabin Seven, to gasps and a few laughs of the crowd below. The slippery tiles? Hurt going down. 

Steph managed to catch herself, so she didn’t completely eat it, but she was dangling off the edge of Apollo Cabin, her back to Hephaestus Cabin, knowing fully well that she was never going to live this down. 

And that was before someone shouted. “Look!” 

Steph looked down. Percy was nearby, and he pointed over her head. 

Her eyes flickered up. And she no longer felt mortified and ashamed. 

Instead, she felt pissed . 

There was a small, floating, golden lyre over her head. 

She’d just been claimed. 

Great . 

Apollo really tried not to play favorites. It wasn’t a good look, honestly. And horrible parenting practice. At least that was what Hera told him, when she tried to lecture him and the others about their demigod children. 

Most of them tried not to pick favorites for similar reasons. Except Ares, but Ares thought competition encouraged the kids to become even tougher. 

Oh, Poseidon was all about Jackson, but it was pretty easy to pick a favorite son when you only had the one mortal one at a time. No offense meant! But if Apollo was Percy, he’d wait a few centuries to see if he still had the title. 

Sure, everyone knew the others had favorites; Hermes was all cut up about Luke for a reason, and it was pretty hard to argue that Athena preferred any child but Annabeth Chase. 

But Apollo really tried. 

But he’d always been fond of Crystal. And the daughter she’d had was so full of… light . Her mortal life was awful. She was angry and bitter and determined. She was scrappy and stubborn and… hopeful . 

Her adventures were wild and strange in their own right, even without the added strangeness from the monsters. She had wild friends, and she fought with her fists and anything else she could get her hands on. She played piano sweetly and she had a healer’s instincts and had great aim…

Okay, maybe he had a favorite. 

But don’t tell the others. 

When he spotted her on the roof of his cabin, he laughed, delighted. 

“What are you doing?” Artemis asked, petting one of her animals. 

“Parenting,” he said. He laughed as she overbalanced. He knew she’d be fine; sure enough, she caught herself easily enough. It wasn’t graceful, it wasn’t perfect, but it was sturdy and it would suffice. And she’d get right back up and keep going. 

“That’s my girl,” he said. 

And he Claimed her. 

Somehow, in all of the horrors that was realizing that she had a godly absentee parent, and the upheaval that was her life here at Camp Halfblood, something very important hadn’t even occurred to Steph. 

Which was the extremely high possibility of siblings . 

Half-siblings, to be sure, but all that did was make her more vaguely horrified at the prospect of her newly discovered father being a philanderer. 

Sure, he was a god, and the standards seemed to be different, but she was pissed on principle. 

Her first half-sibling who she was introduced to was Michael Yew, a dark haired, brown eyed, remarkably short teenager maybe a year older than her, who had permanent dark circles under his eyes, apparently from the stress of suddenly being elevated to head counselor. He was nice enough, she supposed, although she’d heard him arguing with Clarisse often enough that she suspected that there were layers to that niceness. 

Then there was Will, who was a fellow blonde-haired-blue-eyed, broadly built kid of maybe twelve, who was a little over-eager to help her with her sprained knee. Steph identified him as very much a caretaker, and resolved to not let him look after her too much. There was no need to let the thirteen year old baby her, even if she did have a banged up knee from her tumble on the roof. 

Kayla was ginger with green streaks in her hair, around Will’s age. The moment Steph put her bag down on her bed, she began immediately quizzing her about if she knew Green Arrow, or better yet, Red Arrow, or Speedy, or was it true that Cissie King Jones was Arrowette, did Steph know that Cissie King Jones was an Olympic Medalist? Steph managed to confirm that she had indeed met Arrowette, which resulted in Kayla being reduced to squeals, and Steph chose discretion, and beat a hasty retreat to continue down the line of siblings. 

Austin was tall for his age, with cornrows, and barely eleven, if that. He eagerly quizzed her if she played any instruments, and was delighted when she admitted to playing piano. Michael was an archery Apollo-ite, and Will was a healer, so he felt profoundly neglected on the musical scene. Steph found herself agreeing to accompany him on his saxophone, even though she’d never done anything like that before, and she was pretty sure she hadn’t spotted a piano her entire time at Camp. 

With Lee’s death, Steph became the fifth sibling. 

The inside of her new home was rather rustic, far at odds with the outside’s Golden Grecian Grandeur. There were bunk beds, and the smell of cedar wood. Things were kept pretty tidy–Michael’s hand on the reins–with weapons racked on the wall and window boxes full of golden flowers. A bookshelf was crammed full of medical literature. 

Austin and Kayla bunked together, with Austin’s musical instruments being crammed into the space beneath his bottom bunk. Michael had bunked with Lee, which meant that Steph could be a standoffish jerk and claim the unoccupied bunk which they all used for storage, or share with Will, since she wasn’t going to claim a dead boy’s bed. 

There wasn’t a ladder to the top bunk, because Will had moved it at some point. He said something about finding it, but Steph was too tired. 

Ignoring the complaint of her knee, she jumped onto the wall, grabbing hold of the rail of the bunk and hauled herself into bed, face planting into her new pillow with a sigh of relief. Even if it was no child support check, being given a bed was pretty nice, after sleeping on the floor since getting out of the hospital. 

Score one for the deadbeat, she guessed. 

“Aren’t you going to wash your face?” Will asked, concerned. 

“No.” Steph said into the pillow. 

“Brush your teeth?” Austin seemed fascinated by her unimpressive parkour. 

“Later.” 

“Take off your bra?” Kayla suggested. 

Without lifting her head, Steph reached under her shirt and unclasped the damned thing, producing it and setting it at her side. 

“I… guess you’re covered then,” Michael said, sounding a bit disconcerted. Probably the bra. Most teenage boys were a bit concerned by them. God knew Tim–nope, not thinking about Tim. Just going to pass out now, and try not to think about Gotham or Mom or Dad or the freaking god Apollo. 

She rolled over to pull the blankets over herself and breathe some of that fresh, cedar-linen-sage air, and then went straight to sleep.

And so ended Steph’s first summer at Camp Halfblood. 

It was all just going to get stranger from there.

Chapter Text

Annabeth Chase didn’t trust or like Stephanie Brown. 

No, she wasn’t being paranoid. Or possessive. Or—look, just shut up, okay?

Listen. The last person who had shown up to Camp and took an interest in Percy had been Quintus. It was normal to be suspicious of a new demigod with a few too many skills. 

And Stephanie Brown had weird abilities. She was a daughter of Apollo who barely touched a bow, and instead preferred hand-to-hand combat, stealth, and her parkour, which she had kept up through the branches of the trees in the woods, even if she’d sworn off the cabin roofs. 

Percy leaving for the school year eased some of Annabeth’s concerns. 

She chose not to examine that. 

Camp Half-Blood during the fall was a different beast than during the summer, Steph learned. Generally, it was only the more serious campers who were left; people with bad relationships with their parents, or a lot of inborn power, or both. The two often seemed to be correlated. 

Steph, who seemed to have a relatively low amount of power, was still on Iris-messages and letters only with her mother until she was considered trained enough to be allowed back into the mortal world. 

Apparently there were a lot of weird monsters in Gotham, and they were even more dangerous than usual. Leslie had some suspicions about certain villains, for starters. 

(If the Joker was an actual Monster with the capital letter, one of the first things Steph was going to do when she got back to Gotham would be to take her brand new Celestial Bronze bo-staff that Beckendorf had made her, and bludgeon him to death. After very carefully explaining monsters to Cass, of course. No need to make things awkward.

… 

Maybe she should make sure to bring Cass some celestial bronze of her own to deal with monsters. If any mortal could kill monsters, it’d be Batgirl.)

It gave Steph a chance to hang out with some of the other campers, the ones who she’d only gotten to know in passing during the business of her initial arrival. 

People like Silena Beuregard. 

Silena was one of the objectively coolest people Steph has ever met. 

First, she always had a ridiculous amount of chocolate on hand because apparently her dad ran one of those artisan chocolate shops, and Steph was not above raiding that stash. 

Second, she was smart, pretty, suave as hell, and gave great advice. And was also actually Steph’s age rather than one of the numerous tiny infants with swords running around the camp learning to stab things. 

Third, they absolutely vibed. If Silena wasn’t dating Beckendorf (and maybe also Clarisse? Steph was a little unclear about that one, but she definitely had walked in on at least one makeout session) Steph would be all over that. 

Steph was sitting on the roof of Aphrodite cabin with Silena, eating fancy truffles, when Annabeth climbed up to join them, seething. 

“Percy,” Annabeth Chase said, absolutely vibrating with teenage rage. “Has been hanging out with that mortal again.” 

Silena, who had been well-informed about all of these updates, immediately passed over the box of truffles. 

Steph, who had no idea who or what this mortal was, leaned forward, interested in the gossip. “I mean, you’d figure he’d hang out with mortals a lot, right? Since he goes to school with them?” 

Annabeth crossed her arms. “Not just any mortal,” she groaned. “ Rachel Elizabeth Dare .” 

“Ooh, triple names,” Steph nodded. “So is she a serial killer or a fancy person? Fancy person serial killer isn’t out of the question I guess, but that’s more of a Gotham thing.” She paused. “And is this like a “she’s an awful person who’s going to hurt Percy” kind of rage or a “Percy has a girlfriend” kind of rage?” 

Silena had sharp elbows. Steph, whose best friend had once given her jaw microfractures, was unabashed. 

Annabeth flushed, glared, and didn’t answer Steph’s actual question. But she did begin to spin the tale of Rachel, a mortal who could see through the Mist, who had led her and Percy through the Labyrinth. The story seemed to zigzag back and forth, talking about Daedalus and Kronos and Pan, and some guy called Luke, the mention of whom made Silena get very interested in the box of chocolates. But the main thrust of it all seemed to be that Rachel (Elizabeth Dare) seemed to be a mortal girl who went to Percy’s school, who could see through the Mist and was far-too pretty for Annabeth’s taste. 

Jealous. Definitely. 

That, or Annabeth really wanted to kiss this mortal girl herself. 

Pointing out the jealousy angle was probably going to get Steph shoved off a roof, either by Annabeth or Silena (who, like many of the Aphrodite campers, and some non-Aphrodite campers had some sort of twenty-step plan to get Annabeth and Percy to kiss, and maybe there was also a betting pool), so she decided to go for the second option instead. 

She nodded seriously as Annabeth wrapped up, cheeks bright with embarrassment or fury or something in between. “ Awwww , baby’s first bi awakening.” 

Silena spluttered.

“What?” Annabeth shrieked. This time she was absolutely blushing. “I don’t—”

“Listen, been there,” Steph said, inspecting her fingers for melted chocolate. “When I was your age—”

“You’re one year older than me ,” Annabeth seethed. 

“From what you all tell me, in demigod years that might as well be a decade.” Deliberately obtuse cheerfulness seemed to get under Annabeth’s skin.

Annabeth stared at her. 

“If you’re going to push me off the roof, let me put down the chocolates first,” Steph said. 

“I’m not going to push you ,” Annabeth said through gritted teeth, although she was clearly considering it. 

Steph smiled. “Listen, juggling crushes is complicated,” she said, going for a moment of honesty. “But you’re not actually dating anyone, so you’ve got the freedom to do whatever you want. And what’s camp for if not to… experiment.” She wiggled her eyebrows at Annabeth. 

Silena cradled her face in her hands. Steph could see her shoulders shaking with the effort of holding in her giggles. 

“What do you even know?” Annabeth snapped. 

Steph shrugged. “Eh, probably not that much. My ex-boyfriend and I never really got around to breaking up in so many words. He kissed some other people, I stole his job, we kept playing whatever the opposite of phone tag is, and then I died. Things happened.”

“You didn’t die,” Annabeth said, at the same time as Silena finally emerged from her giggles to demand to know more about Tim. 

Hmm, yeah she opened herself up to this. 

“So you know how I was kind of a superhero?” 

Annabeth looked really annoyed at this reminder. “Yes.” 

“So. I was Robin, right? But the girl one. Well. The previous Robin was my Robin.” 

“How many Robins are there?” Silena asked, frowning. 

“I think that’s proprietary information,” Steph said honestly. “I don’t think I’m supposed to know that, and I had that job for seventy-two whole days.”

“What?” Annabeth said, brow furrowing. Man, talking about Batman with people who weren’t from Gotham was hard . 

“Right, so there’s Batman.” 

“Yeeeees.” Annabeth definitely had been one of those people who wasn’t sure if Batman existed outside of an urban legend, even though he was in the Justice League. The big guy was probably happy about that. 

…Man, she might need to restructure who she called “the big guy,” since she wasn’t supposed to use the names of the gods all that often, and she was going to be thinking about the gods a lot , judging from the new turns her life was taking. 

“Right, so there’s Robin. There’s my Robin, and then there’s been other Robins, including me.” Annabeth and Silena both looked a bit confused. “I usually was Spoiler.” 

She tried her best to explain everything about Batman without giving away what few secrets she knew. It was shockingly difficult, even though she didn’t really know a lot, when you got down to it. Batman had never told her his name, she’d never even seen his face without that cowl of his (or bandages, or some other sort of mask). She knew Tim’s name, and she knew about another Robin named Jason, but that was a secret, one that she was pretty sure even Batman barely remembered that she knew, because it had been an accident and Nightwing had been beating the Joker to death with his bare hands, and no one really liked talking about that. 

She didn’t tell them about Oracle. She did tell them about Cass, and Young Justice, and the time a ghost tried to kill her, because that was the kind of story they were more used to. They weren’t used to the fact that the ghost had nearly killed her because of a crush, but they were still used to ghosts. Annabeth had apparently had an experience with the ghost of an evil king who ate Happy Meals. 

(Their lives, honestly.)

It was sometime around the part where Steph was explaining that Batman had been the one to tell her Tim’s name (without actually telling them Tim’s name, of course), when Annabeth finally cracked. 

“And you didn’t punch him?”

Steph waved her hand. “It sounds worse when you do it in bullet-point form. It wasn’t all that bad.” She popped another truffle in her mouth. Mmm, coconut.  “I mean, he was really sweet when I was pregnant, for starters,” she said with a shrug. 

“When you were what ?” Annabeth shrieked. 

Silena raised an eyebrow as well. Oh huh. That hadn’t come up, huh? 

“Oh. I had a kid,” Steph said, aiming for blasé. “When I was fourteen.” 

Annabeth, fifteen years old, looked terrified at that. Steph was…kind of used to that, if she was going to be honest. It was kind of a bummer though that even teenagers who risked their lives on a regular basis to work for arguably the most sexually promiscuous pantheon in history still reacted like that to a teenage pregnancy. Ah, America.

“Don’t worry Annabeth,” Silena said, with a smirk on her face that made Steph worried, even though she suspected that whatever was going to happen next would probably knock that expression off Annabeth’s face. “Aphrodite Cabin has plenty of condoms. And Plan B. You and… someone have nothing to worry about.” 

“That was not my concern!” Annabeth said, flushing approximately the color of a beet. “Don’t make this about me!” 

“No, it’s an important lesson,” Steph assured her. “Although…do condoms work for us? It obviously doesn’t for the glowy half of our parentage, otherwise I can’t help but feel like there would be less of us—” 

Annabeth took the chocolates out of Steph’s hands, which was enough of a warning for Steph to manage to land on her feet after Annabeth pushed her off the roof. 

Honestly, now that Percy knew a bit more about superheroes, he kind of was surprised to find them everywhere. 

Yeah, he probably would have noticed people turning into evil robots before, and Wonder Woman was kind of a big deal, even for half-bloods, so her going on trial for murder was something that he’d have noticed eventually, but like. There were so many ? 

And didn’t Steph know Nightwing? Nightwing was in New York now. Maybe two Nightwings? Honestly, Percy wasn’t sure. Superheroes didn’t make sense to him. 

He sent Steph an Iris Message. “So if I meet this guy do you want me to give him a message? He’s like. Batman-ish, isn’t he?” 

“Yeah, he used to be Robin,” Steph confirmed. She was on the roof of the Apollo cabin again, fiddling with what looked like an umbrella, but actually was a collapsible celestial bronze staff. Beckendorf had been a bit confused by that request, since most half-bloods tended to prefer things that stabbed or slashed or at least pierced. But Steph preferred her staff, and a fistful of Celestial Bronze throwing stars, at least according to Annabeth. 

“So…message?” He asked. Nightwing was active in Manhattan, so all he probably had to do was go out and fight a monster at night and a superhero would probably end up coming to investigate whatever the Mist made it look like. 

Steph looked kind of sad. “No,” she said, finally. “I didn’t really know him, we only really met the one time. And it’s probably not safe to ask him to pass something on to Batgirl or Robin.” 

“That sucks,” Percy told her. “I’m sorry. I know you miss them.” 

“Yeah,” she said. Percy pretended he didn’t notice that her eyes were very shiny. It was probably just because of the Iris Message. “But we’ve got other things to worry about.” 

“Your friends probably wouldn’t agree,” Percy said, because he was an idiot who sometimes thought way too hard about how Annabeth had looked at his funeral, burning his shroud. 

Steph frowned, and yeah, okay, that was a jerk move, because he knew she agreed with him. Only talking to her mom was hard for her, and even though she was listening when Chiron and Leslie told her that it wasn’t safe for her to go back to Gotham and that mortals shouldn’t know about Camp Half-Blood, she didn’t like it. “Sorry,” he said. “...But if I see Batgirl, should I say hi?” 

Steph’s expression was utterly miserable. “Yeah,” she said, hoarsely. “Do that.” 

Of course, Batgirl never came to visit Manhattan, and there were actually three Nightwings, and one of them turned into a pile of tentacles and ate some people (he had no idea what mortals thought was happening on the other side of the Mist), but it was resolved by the time Percy showed up, so he didn’t get to catch Nightwing and ask him to pass a message along to Batgirl, which had been his planned loophole. 

But the school year went on like normal. He had adventures with Rachel Elizabeth Dare, he Iris-called into meetings about blowing up the Princess Andromeda , and he waited in line for like three hours to see if he could catch a glimpse of Wonder Woman at the United Nations, but she got called away before he could get her autograph, which kind of sucked honestly. Princess Diana wasn’t a demigod, but she was empowered by the gods, even more than most Amazons, and Thalia had gotten to meet her a few months back with the Hunters (apparently the Hunters got to go to Themyscira about every four years for some sort of big festival to Artemis), and honestly Percy was extremely jealous.

Dad had offered to introduce him to Aquaman sometime, since apparently they were very faintly related through some distant ancestor, but Percy had been a bit too busy on the surface, even though it might be nice to commiserate with someone about how talkative fish were. 

Percy was very busy, all told! And then he went to Montauk to hang out with Rachel, and then Blackjack arrived. 

Steph learned a lot, over the school year spent in Camp Half Blood, but she took some time to do some teaching in turn. 

The homeschool modules Chiron had them running tended to be very classics focused; lots of Latin and Greek (which Steph was taking in stride, having always been pretty good with languages) and literature (all focused on ancient Greek stories). Other than those, classes seemed to be divided by what Cabin you were from. Demeter’s Cabin was doing a lot of botany and agriculture classes, Apollo’s cabin did anatomy, music, and some basic trigonometry (which seemed to help with archery), and Hephaestus had shop and chemistry, which mostly seemed to be about creating Celestial Bronze and other weapons. 

Steph, who had been about to take her GED before the whole War debacle, decided to skip out on archery practice one day and went to go hang out with Charles Beckendorf, who was teaching some of the younger members of his cabin how to make something called Greek Fire. 

Steph sat in the back, watching, mesmerized. 

Arthur Brown had kept a basement laboratory. Back before things had gone sour, before clues and spoilers and everything else, she’d spent happy hours there, watching things bubble and flame and react. Arthur would sometimes strap a pair of goggles onto her head and let her assist, holding her at the right height to play with the beakers. 

(Had he figured out that she wasn’t actually his? Is this why things had gone twisted and cruel? Or had it always been coming, no matter if she’d been his by blood?) 

The forge of Hephaestus Cabin was a reminder of the good times, shockingly unweighted down by the bad. Greek Fire smelled awful , but in the same kind of way that Gotham smog smelled awful. The kind of awful that got hold of Stephanie Brown’s brain and made her love it, even though everything in her should have gone running away. 

So she slid up to Beckendorf (no one called him Charles, apparently), after he was done. “Hey,” she said, grinning at him. “Mind if I help out some time? My dad—step-dad, I guess—was a chemist when he wasn’t being a supervillain or a game show host.” 

Beckendorf raised an eyebrow at her. “That’s... a combo,” he said. 

“Yeah, Gotham’s weird,” she said with a shrug. “But I do know a formula to disable firearms, and a few variants for smoke pellets...” 

“Disabling firearms?” He asked, curious. 

“Yeah!” Steph said. “I know it’s less useful here, since most of our enemies use swords and stuff, but Chiron had the whole speech about how we can be hurt by mortal weapons too, so it seems like it’s a good thing to have in our pockets?” 

He nodded, thoughtfully. “Want to take a look at the supply cabinet and see if we have what it takes to make it?” 

“Sure!” Steph said. 

She had to find a slot in her schedule to hang out with Beckendorf to work on combining Ancient Greek technology with Bat-technology, since Michael wouldn’t let her keep skipping archery practice, but Steph found it soothing, fiddling with formulas and trying to create versions that she can carry around in the old construction belt that she’d bribed the Stoll twins into getting her to work as a new utility belt.

Leslie hadn’t been able to salvage Steph’s old costume, and the Black Mask had taken her equipment even before she’d made it to the clinic. So Steph was kind of operating at a disadvantage here. It was like going out for the first time as Spoiler. The Stoll twins were a great resource, able to get her the basic things that she asked for, like rope, and a small grapple hook so she could make her own grapples. 

“What will you do if you’re not in a city?” Beckendorf asked her, looking as she started coiling the rope. 

“Smoke pellets,” she said cheerfully. “Then you sneak up behind them and get behind, and then—” she gestured, pretending to be hitting something with her bo staff. 

“Huh,” he said. “So you had a gun to fire those grapples, back in Gotham?” 

“Yeah,” she said, half-longingly. “It was a present from my ex. It was great .” 

“Hmm,” he said. 

A few days later, he handed her a grappling gun. It was clunkier than the one that Tim had given her, but it was lighter, and the hooks were made out of celestial bronze, so Steph could use it as a weapon in a pinch. 

“You’re incredible ,” she said, wide-eyed at him, and then tackled him in a hug. 

He grinned at her. “It’s neat,” he admitted. “Guess we’ll have to try to make sure to send you on a quest in a city.” 

Steph sighed. “Yeah, that doesn’t exactly seem to be par for the course, does it?” Every adventure she’d heard tale of seemed to involve criss-crossing the American countryside, hitchhiking and going by train, traversing oceans and forests and rivers. Although…Percy had blown up the St. Louis Arch, so all hope wasn’t lost. 

“Sorry, Stephanie,” Beckendorf said. “I believe in your smoke bombs though.” 

“I appreciate you,” Steph informed him with a grin. “Want me to take another pass at that bomb?” 

“Yeah,” he said, gesturing broadly at the prototypes he’d been working on. 

Steph fiddled with it, sticking her tongue between her teeth as she fiddled with the wires. Being from Gotham, she had a lot more practical experience with bombs than most Campers, even though her experience was with disabling bombs, rather than building them. It was her way of paying back Beckendorf for all his assistance with rebuilding her arsenal. With his help, she’d slowly gathered a collection of smoke bombs, fire-arm disabling grease, and goopy foam that could be used to bog down enemies, not to mention her new celestial bronze throwing stars. 

“I think we’re getting there,” she told him, after she’d finally given up. “But it’ll depend on the power we can manage to draw to see how big of an explosion we can get.” 

“I’m not worried about power,” he said grimly. 

She shook her head. “I know we need to keep the squad small for this one, but I still think I should come with,” she told him. “You could use another set of hands.” 

“You’ve just got cabin fever,” he said. 

“I don’t see why both can’t be true,” Steph pouted. 

He chuckled grimly. “We’ll see.”

For her seventeenth birthday Stephanie Brown walked into the Apollo Cabin and saw the god Apollo. 

She drew up short. 

None of her siblings were around, so it was just the two of them. 

She had, all her life, been told she looked like Arthur Brown, mostly because of the blonde hair. 

Now, looking at the god in front of her, she searched his face, trying to see any similarities to Arthur, to herself, trying to map them onto her own face, to explain the contours of herself. Was that her nose? Were those cheekbones what hers would look like, as she aged? 

She waited just a moment too long, staring, before she realized he was waiting for her to speak, to acknowledge him. 

“What are you doing here?” 

He gave her a smile. It didn't look like hers, which is a comfort; her smile was still Crystal’s. He’d uprooted her life, but some things were still the same. 

“Well it’s your birthday, isn’t it kiddo?” 

She didn’t know what to say. She’d planned, in her head, all the things she’d yell at him, when he showed up at last. The anger at a lifetime of neglect, of dumping it on her too late to do any good, of giving her nearly a dozen half-siblings and hundreds of cousins and all without bothering to explain himself to her. 

But a part of her, the small, sad, stupid part of her that had hoped every single time when Arthur Brown came home from prison that he would genuinely be fixed, be better, and things would go back to normal, felt like it was going to shatter. 

“Didn’t know you kept track,” she said, and her throat was tight, but the words came out, just the same. 

He looked at her, sad and knowing, and she hated him for it. 

She really should hang out with Percy less. Percy punched gods. Percy fought gods. 

Her hand curled into a fist. 

And then he held out something for her. 

Her breath left her body all at once. 

It was a purple cape. 

The fabric, as she reached out to touch it, was feather light but sturdy. Beneath it was armor, but not like any she had worn, at Camp. Leather and fabric made out the body of it, sturdy but flexible, meant for movement. Gloves , with good grips for scaling walls and holding weapons and gripping a grapple. And…a belt. Her belt. She didn’t know if it was the exact one that the Black Mask had stolen from her, a year ago now, or if it was just a replica so good she couldn’t tell the difference, but it felt right . 

The only difference, as she examined it, the familiar feel of it in her hands, is a new pouch, with a sun on it.

When she opened the pouch, in it, she found celestial bronze batarangs. Not throwing stars, which Beckendorf had made her indulgently, and she used to keep in practice, but batarangs . Weighted perfectly and balanced, embossed with the symbol of Hephestus’s armory, just small enough to see with the naked eye. 

She bent her head over this gift, trying not to cry, as the pressure in her chest threatened to crush her. She’d known, of course, that he must have known that she was Spoiler, because he’d rescued her, or at least told Leslie to save her. He had seen what she’d done, he’d known …he’d sent her away from Gotham, and Chiron had tried to remake her, mold her into the model of hero that the gods valued, rather than the sort she’d made herself…and he was giving it back to her. 

She felt fingers in her hair, phantom light and warm as a sunbeam. But when she lifted her head, unsure if she was about to burst into tears or try to, gods forbid, hug him …he was gone, and she was just clutching a Spoiler outfit to her chest. 

Look, Steph liked Michael Yew plenty, she really did. Great cabin leader, decent brother, only a few notes. 

The raid was a catastrophe . 

Michael was running the raid, so he was in charge. It was him, her, Will, and Kayla from Cabin Seven, and then Clarisse and three of her siblings; Sherman, Mark, and Lottie. A pretty overpowered raid, all told. 

It was a hit and run situation, stealing supplies that the Titan forces were gathering, killing a bunch of monsters, and then running away with whatever loot or supplies they could get their hands on. 

So on paper, the raid went well. And Steph had been pretty thrilled, getting a chance to leave Camp at last, even if it was in the sort of thing where she couldn’t take the time to find a payphone and call Cass or Tim.They killed a bunch of monsters, they managed to get their hands on nectar, ambrosia, and Celestial Bronze, which now wouldn’t be ending up in the hands of the Titans…

But uh. 

There were complications. 

Those complications were called War Prizes. 

This, Steph gathered, was a problem that was both new, in that none of the campers had experience with this, but old, because apparently this was something so deeply entrenched in Halfblood society that there were rules about it. 

When some monsters died, or quests were achieved, or something like that, sometimes big things got left behind. Cool things like mementos, or useful things like weapons or armor. And then sometimes they stole things off enemy demigods, which some demigods felt scummier about, but Steph wasn’t really one of them. Use the super-cool weapon to try and wipe out all mortals? You lose the right to have the super cool weapon. Hers now. Well, theoretically. She hadn’t done it yet. 

The point was, this hadn’t used to be a problem, because you usually only saw this sort of thing on quests, and quests were three people and half the time the people involved didn’t even make it home. Precedence and order of claiming and all that junk hadn’t really come into play since World War II, by Chiron’s admission. 

But there were rules! And it should be easy! Michael got first dibs, since he’d led the raid. Clarisse had won the highest honors on the field by killing the Cyclops who had been leading the enemy encampment, so she’d get second. 

(Side note, Steph felt really bad for Clarisse sometimes. Clarisse was like, obviously pretty much the best thing since sliced bread in terms of the battlefield. She was really good . Unfairly good. Every time Steph stepped into the ring with her, she felt like she’d gone a round with Cass when it was over. There was a title that had been used, back during the Trojan War, Aristos Achaion . “The best of the Greeks.” By Steph’s reckoning, in normal times, that title would have been Clarisse’s, easy. The problem was that Clarisse was at camp at the same time as Percy Jackson, who was an outlier and should not be counted. Kids of the Big Three seemed to skew the statistics. But during the school year, when Percy was having adventures in the mortal world? There was no one that you’d want at your side more.)

The problem had come when Michael had claimed his prize. Michael snagged a beautiful silver bow with a quiver full of arrows. Clarisse had taken a really cool flying chariot. 

(Steph ended up with a nice but non-magical helmet with a red feather plume, which she was pretty sure she could convince Beckendorf to help her swap for a purple one.) 

There was one slight hiccup in the division of prizes, though. 

The bow had been stolen. 

Specifically, it had belonged to a hunter of Artemis, a girl named Phoebe who was actually three thousand years old. She’d promptly shown up at camp demanding it back. Michael had tried to refuse, but Chrion had interceded, and forced Michael to give it up.

So he’d gotten pissed, and claimed Clarisse’s chariot. 

“You did what ?” Steph asked, incredulous. 

“I can’t have nothing for leading that raid,” Michael said. “It’s humiliating. I’d be losing honor for Lord Apollo and our cabin.” 

“So you stole it from Clarisse instead? Clarisse ?” Steph, for one, enjoyed being alive. “Michael. You’ve gotta give it back.” 

“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” Michael said. “You’re still reading through Homer, you don’t understand the importance of glory.” 

“I do understand the importance of not being a jerk!” Steph yelled at his retreating back. 

This…this was going to be bad. She could feel it . 

Only a few days later, Beckendorf called her. 

“Get ready,” he said, face grim. 

“Okay,” she said, drawing out the word. “You’re going to have to be more specific than that.” 

“Your argument was convincing for Chiron and Annabeth,” Beckendorf said. “Congratulations, Brown. You’re our demolitions and stealth expert. Are you ready to blow up a cruise ship?” 

Steph grinned. “You bet .”