Chapter Text
Peter wondered if being acid-bathed by a Hydra wouldn’t be more merciful than trying to make it across the country with three trigger-happy demigods still jumpy from their near-death experience in Atlanta.
“Come on, Remus, just pick a damn path.”
“Shut up, and I will, Sirius.”
Remus went back to frowning at the two paths ahead of them, making Sirius even more fidgety. He paced the length of the circular room they were in with restless strides, agitatedly fingering the silver and bronze ring around his finger like he always did when he wanted to hack something to pieces.
“Left.” Remus announced.
He started down the cobblestone tunnel, his spear tip tapping the stones in a repetitive rhythm. The rest of them followed suit-- hands hovering over their respective weapons warily. They weren’t going to forget last night's experience any time soon.
After what felt like hours of walking, but was probably only twenty minutes, Peter began to get restless himself.
He kicked a small pebble against the wall. “Why’re we even doing this?” He complained. “It’ll be the dead of winter. We agreed not to go north in the cold seasons.”
Sirius whipped around. “You shut your fucking mouth Wormtail,” he growled. “You have no idea—“
“Easy, Pads.” James threw a comforting arm around his best friend. “We’ve had a long night, and we need to save our energy. You remember what happened last time, don’t you?”
Sirius grumbled under his breath, but let James tug him away from Peter with only minor reluctance. Peter swallowed nervously. He liked his friends, of course he did, but out of all of them, Sirius’ temper was the worst to be on the receiving end of. He had a brooding sense about him to begin with— and his anger was mean, sharp, and didn’t seem to care about anything when it was provoked. He and Remus’ squabbles felt like war zones sometimes.
“Just ignore him Pete. He hates going back home.”
James had hung back to walk beside him. Of all of them, James was the only one that could really match Sirius in terms of strength, and the only one that Sirius let himself be wrangled by. At least, without putting up much of a fight. James knew how to get Sirius to calm down without activating his spiky defenses, something that even Remus had trouble with. Best friend privileges, Peter supposed.
“If he hates going home so much, why does he do it so often?” Peter muttered.
James winced. The movement made the dark bruise under his eye twitch. “It’s complicated Pete.”
“We’ve got time.”
James sighed. His glasses slipped down his nose. Peter resisted the urge to push them back up again. He didn’t need any more “Mother Pete” jokes raining on his already soaking wet parade.
“It’s his brother.” James said finally, glancing at Remus and Sirius, who had started whispering to themselves ahead of them. Remus’ hand was on his shoulder. Sirius’ fingers kept clenching and unclenching.
“He worries about him. His mom’s kind of crazy, as you know. Plus…” James looped his thumbs under his red backpack straps. “He has these… suspicions.”
“Suspicions about what?”
“Come on, Pete,” James said, like it was obvious, “What could a demigod be suspicious about enough to check on his little brother’s well-being so often?”
Peter’s eyes widened. No way.
“He thinks his brother is a son of Zeu—“
James clapped a hand over his mouth. “Names, Pete!”
Peter felt his face redden. He pushed James’ hand off.
“Right. Sorry.”
James glanced at Remus and Sirius again. When he spoke, his voice was low. “He doesn’t think it’s him anyway. Sirius never met his dad, but his mom always called him ‘Orion’ whenever she talked about him. But she calls his brother’s dad, ‘Arcturus.’”
“But… that’s a star name too.” Peter said. Between Remus and Sirius, knowledge of the cosmos had become back-pocket knowledge for all of them. “So couldn’t it've been the same guy?”
James shrugged. “That’s why it’s only a suspicion. But he was twelve when the monsters started seriously attacking him, and Reggie turns twelve next month.”
“James,” Remus called. “I need your help.”
James gave Peter a grin, crooked, the way James Potter’s grins always were. “Coming, Moony.”
He clapped a hand on Peter’s shoulder and then made his way to Remus, who had gotten stuck at a triple crossroad this time.
Peter gripped his backpack straps tightly. Sirius was crazy powerful, he could summon lightning and ride the winds and even make it rain— so if Sirius’s brother was anything like him, Peter was going to be seriously outclassed on all levels. How embarrassing would it be to still be the weakest link when there was an eleven year old in the group?
James let out a hoot of excitement and pointed down the left-hand path, which Peter silently thought looked more like it led into a mine deep inside a mountain than a sprawling city, but onward they went.
James led the way this time, with Sirius close on his heels. Remus dropped back to walk with Peter.
“You good, Pete?” He murmured. “Yeah.” Peter murmured back. “You?”
Their mining tunnel turned into a low stone passageway, then an echoing concrete path, then a subway tunnel, before Remus answered him. “I got a bad feeling about all of this.” Remus’s accent mashed the last four words into something like alladiss.
“What, Sirius’s brother?”
“More like what we’ll find once we get to him.”
“You don’t think he’s…”
“No. It would’ve made the news. It’s just… something. I can’t put my finger on it.”
Peter swallowed. “You think Sirius knows?”
Remus snorted. His spear tip-tapped across the ground. “Why else is he acting like a corner-street crackhead that’s about to snap? He can shit on it all he wants, but family connections are a powerful bond. Especially for one of us.”
They continued on.
Peter had never been fond of Remus’s—and sometimes James too, damn New Yorkers— colorful metaphors, but he could appreciate Remus’s accuracy. Sirius was wound up tight. Peter really hoped this mysterious brother of his was alright just so they could pop in and out and be back in sunny Georgia by tomorrow.
“Guys.” James had stopped in front of a concrete door almost entirely camouflaged into one of the tunnel walls. “He says it’s here. Get ready.”
Peter swallowed. He didn’t need to ask who “he” was. James had a small army of ghosts that he’d charmed and flattered into being helping guides whenever Remus couldn’t decipher a path through the ever-changing Labyrinth.
He drew his bronze sword.
Remus flipped his spear up with a sharp swish of wind. In front of him, there was a quiet shink of metal as Sirius’s ring transformed.
James’s drakon bone was silent as it grew from a splinter to a sword, which in Peter’s opinion, made it all the more ominous when he held up the bone-white weapon and gestured them forward. “Come on.”
They pushed through the doorway and emerged on a long two-way street, coming straight out of the tallest peak on a low stone wall. It was night, and so dark, Peter almost ran into the speed limit sign a few feet in front them on the snow-covered sidewalk. The wall behind them seemed to be a property divider, but in between the snow and the trees, he couldn’t see the house.
Across the street, another house was sectioned off from the sidewalk by a delicate fence. There were tall snow-capped trees blocking his view of that house too, but one look at the ornate gate stretching all the way down the street was enough to know that he was in a neighborhood way out of his tax bracket.
He was also in a state way out of his temperature range, and it was freezing cold. Peter shuffled his feet, feeling the snow immediately began to seep through his sneakers. A sharp wind blew, and he hugged his windbreaker tighter around him. Goddamnit. Didn’t most filthy rich actresses live in palm-tree-and-beach states? What the hell was so appealing about living somewhere where it snowed?
They picked their way across the gray slush on the street (great, it’s not even nice snow) to the gate. Peter peeked inside, but all he could see was a small black building about three bus lengths from the gate, with tiny little windows and red tiled roofs. The big square doors lining the front almost looked like… garage doors? It looked like someone had mashed up Gothic and Mediterranean architecture and plopped it in a million-dollar neighborhood.
“Home, sweet home.” Sirius said poisonously. “You guys sense anything?”
Remus and James shook their heads. “We’ll have to get further than your garage, Pads.” James said.
Garage? Wait. That’s just the—
Peter’s crisis was interrupted by a bone-chilling roar that sounded from deeper inside the property. They all immediately tensed. Oh gods. That sounded big.
Sirius’s eyes got a wild look in them. “Regulus.” He said. And then, without hesitation, the winds were propelling him straight into the air, bypassing the gate and zooming over the garage towards the house. Remus raised his spear and made to follow, but James stopped him.
“No. This house is booby-trapped like you wouldn’t believe. Cover our exit, Moony.”
Remus didn’t look very happy about being sidelined, but then the monster roared again, and he nodded. He wouldn’t be able to sense the traps, and they needed someone to stay behind and secure their path out.
James held out a hand. “C'mon Pete.” Peter grabbed it, and the next moment, he was slipping through the shadows, silky smooth and cool.
They dropped into a scene of total destruction.
It was a dining room— had been a dining room, actually, because now it was a demolition site. Fine china plates were smashed everywhere. The giant wooden table was smashed in two, and there was a hole in the floor where something very large had burst through. Rubble and dust covered the slashed walls, and the four chandeliers— yes, four of them, wasn’t that overkill enough?— were in pieces on the floor, or in the case of one of them, smashed straight up into the next room. The walls were black with golden designs, which probably would have been more classy if they weren’t peppered with explosion marks and green ooze that was still burning its way through the fancy wallpaper. On either side of the dining room were small parlors/ foyers/sit-by-the-window-and-admire-the-view rooms, except the one facing the lake shore was completely smashed apart and was now more of a fall-to-your-death-from-this-jagged-edge room.
Somewhere upstairs a thunderous bellow shook the house, followed by Sirius’s shouts of rage, a woman’s voice screeching incomprehensibly, and the unmistakable voice of a terrified almost-twelve-year old.
“Upstairs!” James shouted. “Hurry!”
Peter ran towards the enclosed staircase, senses on overdrive.
First step. Compression-time activated taser. Longer than a brief step will activate it.
“Jump the first step!” He yelled at James. Better not risk it.
Left hand rail. Pull on it and darts will shoot from the walls.
“Don’t touch the left handrail either!”
Fifteenth step. Compression-activated arrow to the leg.
Portrait of a villainous-looking old guy. Will shoot fire if someone stands in front of it for more than a few seconds.
White gilded wallpaper. Secretes acid.
Second floor landing. Door to the left will crush whoever tries to open it.
Chandelier with poisoned spikes will drop on whoever steps on the floorboard under it.
Second staircase, third step. Bear trap.
“What kind of house is this?” He shouted incredulously.
“The Noble House of Black!” James shouted.
They reached the third floor and immediately dove to the ground as a giant scaly tail whipped around and crashed through solid walls, leaving a trail of smoking green ooze.
The third floor was worse than the dining room. It appeared to be a big library, or maybe a sitting room, but chairs, bookshelves, fireplaces, walls— everything was crushed into rubble or slowly being consumed by the fire escaping the fireplace and jumping from the destroyed books to expensive carpets and thick curtains.
The monster tearing up the room was about ten feet tall and so built, it made He-Man look like a scrawny teenager. It had leather rags layered on top of furs, giant deadly sharp claws, and reptile slit eyes. It’s teeth were triangular, like a shark, it’s skin was gray and it’s misshapen head was bald.
In the corner nearest to them, a woman was on the floor, wearing a cocktail dress and a look so murderous Peter almost raised his sword against her.
Walburga Black looked more intimidating than the monster, even with her bleeding hands and disheveled appearance. Peter remembered how he had once been enchanted by the actress’s red lips, pitch black curls, and soul-deep eyes— before he’d picked up the newspaper and read about how “‘Black Devil’ Walburga Black sent another director into a psychiatric breakdown.”
Yikes.
In the center of the room dodging flames and claws, was Sirius, with a wild gleam in his eye, and his bladed sword-whip in his hand.
Behind Sirius, crouched behind the Grand Piano which had somehow survived the invasion of Sharkageddon, was a boy that looked like a miniature version of Sirius, except for his chin-length hair, and his pitch-black uniform jacket and pants that looked like something out of a prince’s closet, or maybe just a pretentious private school.
Regulus Black. Walburga‘s youngest son's face was fearful and tear stained, and he kept covering his head with his arms and screaming every time rubble hit near him.
“Sirius!” Peter yelled. “Look out!”
Sirius had gotten distracted by the monster’s claws, and didn’t see the poisonous tail whipping towards him until it was too late. Peter’s heart jumped to his throat, but just as the tail was about to slash at him, James sliced clean through it, appearing out of the shadows in the nick of time.
The monster howled in pain and whipped its tail nub around viciously, causing the house to shake and more of the walls to crumble.
“James, you bastard!” Sirius yelled. “What took you so long?”
“Your house is a death trap, Pads!” James yelled back, grinning crazily.
Peter rushed forward and joined them, and between their slicing and stabbing, they managed to get a few more hits in before the monster screamed in outrage and sent them all flying.
Peter landed next to Walburga, who— despite literally everything else going on— still found time to scream insults at him and threw rubble at his head. Peter saw a whole galaxy-full of stars before he was able to get up.
Sirius had gotten thrown into a bookshelf, and was fighting his way out of the piles of heavy tomes that had fallen on him.
James had landed near Regulus, and was now shielding the boy from the raging monster that seemed intent on getting to him.
Regulus didn’t seem to know whether to cower in fear or stare wide eyed at James’ back.
“We need a better plan!” James yelled, narrowly missing being diced. “This is working! We can’t take him with just the three of us!”
“What else can we do?” Peter yelled, running up to the monster and slashing at its leg. “Short of bringin' the house down on him, he ain't going down!”
“That’s it!” James shouted. “Sirius! Blast him!”
“Are you fucking with me, Prongs?” Sirius yelled back, wobbling around on the weak winds that came through the smashed windows and aiming a swing at the monster’s head. “We’re inside! I’ll kill all of you!”
Peter slapped at his pant leg, which had gotten too close to the slowly growing fire, and dodged another claw-swipe. Gods, they were all going to die. And if he died for Sirius’s stupid, prissy, princeling brother he was going to enact his revenge from beyond the grave, Hades be damned. He wished he was anywhere else. Florida, maybe.
“Wait, what if we weren’t here?” He shouted. “James?”
“I can’t take everyone!” James stabbed at the monster’s chest and made it back up a little.
“You don’t have to take everyone.” Sirius shouted, coming down to the ground again.
“What?” Peter shouted.
“No!” Regulus yelled. “You can’t leave her, Sirius!”
There would have been no doubt who “her” was, even if she wasn’t the only “her” in the room. It was no secret how much Sirius hated his mother.
And apparently, how much Regulus didn’t. Talk about dysfunctional.
Sirius snarled and opened his mouth, probably to say something like “Watch me,” but James spoke first. “Sirius!”
Sirius clicked his mouth shut and sliced off a little more of the monster's tail. “How far could you take them?”
James dove to the side and then immediately rolled away from the fire he’d almost landed in. “Not very far.”
“Fine. As long as you're out of the house," Sirius grunted, blocking the monster's claws with his sword. “Peter! Go get her!”
Why me? Peter moaned inwardly.
He ran towards the seething woman.
“You are not putting one finger on me!” Walburga shrieked. “I am a woman of principle! Unlike my traitorous cowardly son, I will not lower myself to such—“
“Knock her out if she won’t go, Pete!” Sirius snapped, now clinging to the monster’s neck and attempting to choke it out with his sword.
“What?” Peter cried. “I can’t just—“
“Do it, Pete!” James yelled. He was clutching his sword arm and looking pained. Blood was seeping through his fingers.
Peter gritted his teeth. If James was saying to do it…
He jerked forward and slammed foreheads with internationally famous billionaire actress Walburga Black. She crumpled, and Peter caught her. Gods forgive me. He thought bitterly, picking her up like a potato sack and running back towards Regulus and James.
James had shrunk down his bone-sword again and was sprawled against a leg of the Grand Piano. He’d wrapped his bleeding arm in what looked like a ripped piece of expensive curtain. Next to him, Regulus was seething silently at Peter as he approached, apparently having forgotten all about being afraid.
“Sorry.” Peter muttered, avoiding Regulus’ death glare and kneeling next to James. Gods, the Black family had some scary eyes.
James gritted his teeth and leaned forward to take Peter’s hand. He held out his other hand to Regulus, looking far kinder than Peter would have been under the boy’s furious gaze. “Come on, Reggie.”
Somehow, despite the destruction and the roaring monster and the raging son of Zeus ten feet away, James’ voice was soothing and calm— the eye of the hurricane that was their improvised (and slightly-botched) rescue mission.
Peter felt himself relax, his every sense hyper focused on James’s even tone, his gentle eyes, his warm hand clasped in Peter’s. This wasn’t a demigod power, a side effect of being the son of Zagreus like manipulating bones or talking to ghosts. It was all James. Just James.
Regulus’s pale cheeks reddened. “My name is Regulus.” He snapped.
James chuckled, a bright sound despite the exhaustion and pain obviously weighing down his body. “Alright, Regulus, why don’t we get you somewhere safe, yeah?”
Regulus eyed him warily, but he took James’ hand after a moment’s hesitation, though he refused to meet his gaze and settled for staring angrily at Peter instead.
“All Clear, Pads!” James shouted. Then he closed his eyes and Peter felt himself slip sideways, falling straight into darkness.