Chapter Text
The air in Gotham City was entirely too dry. Percy Jackson stood on the pristine marble steps of Wayne manor, clutching a battered canvas duffel bag like a lifeline, and tried to fill his lungs. It didn't work. Ever since the doors of death had slammed shut behind him three months ago, regular oxygen felt light. Hollow. Empty. To survive the toxic, burning sulfur of the Pit, his body had learned to breathe a heavy, suffocating kind of weight. Up here on the mortal surface, every inhalation felt like trying to draw water from a desert.
He raised a hand, calloused fingers hesitating over the massive brass knocker. "Just a normal uncle." Percy muttered to himself, his voice a faint, rhythmic rasp that hadn't quite healed since he swallowed liquid fire from phlegethon. "He's just a rich guy from Gotham who adopts a lot of kids. No monsters. No prophecies. Just blue cookies and my senior year."
He knocked.
The door swung open almost instantly, revealing an impeccably dressed elderly gentleman with a silver tray and a posture that screamed military-grade discipline hidden beneath a butler's suit.
"Ah" the man said, his eyes sweeping over Percy with a quick, terrifyingly sharp assessment. "Hello, young master Percy. It's been quite a while since we last saw you, come in"
"Hey, Alfred." Percy said, offering a tired lopsided smile. As he stepped inside. "Sorry I'm late. The bus from new York had a... localized structural failure. A wheel fell off. Into as river. Long story."
Before Alfred could respond, there were fast footsteps, multiple different sets. It was demigod speed, there was no sense of danger, then three people ran down to the bottom of the grand staircase.
Percy's survival instincts, honed by surviving two literal world wars before his eighteenth birthday, flared instantly. His hand slipped into his pocket, his fingers brushing the cool, reassuring metal of the ballpoint pen, riptide. He assessed the people in front of him for a second.
The large brooding one in the middle he remembered as his uncle, Bruce Wayne. The man looked like a brick wall carved out of dark granite, his eyes shadows beneath a heavy brow. To his left stood, if memory served, dick grayson, a handsome shaggy-haired guy in a high end leather jacket who was looking at Percy with a mix of deep pity and intense curiosity. To his right was someone Percy vaguely remembered to be tim drake, a smaller, teenage boy around Percy's age, with sharp features and sleep-deprived eyes that were currently tracking Percy's duffel bag like a bomb sniffing dog.
"Percy." Bruce said. His voice was a deep, gravelly vibration that resonated in the floorboards. "It's good to see you again."
"Hey, uncle Bruce." Percy said, awkwardly shifting his weight.
His old worn sneakers made a shuffle sound against the floor, the atmosphere in the room shifted instantly. To the world's greatest detectives, Percy Jackson wasn't just a visiting nephew from Manhattan. He was a walking crime scene.
Tim adjusted his posture, his eyes narrowing as he clocked the anomalies. The kid was wearing a threadbare, aggressively orange T-shirt with ancient Greek letters printed across the chest: camp half-blood. But it wasn't the shirt that caught Tim's attention; it was the physical state of the boy wearing it. Percy's throat and chest rose and fell in a wet, scraping wheeze. His skin had the pale, translucent quality of someone who hadn't seen the sun in months.
'severe pulmonary fibrosis', Tim's brain automatically logged, his internal batcomputer running metrics in real-time. 'chemical burns along the respiratory tract. Prolonged inhalation of an acidic toxin. He's struggling to draw oxygen.'
"Let me take your bag, kid" dick said, stepping forward with his best non-threatening big-brother smile. He reached for the strap of the duffel bag, but the moment his hand neared Percy's shoulder, Percy didn't flinch.
In a fraction of a second, Percy had shifted his weight and grabbed dicks wrist with his free hand. The grip was absurd. It didn't feel like a teenagers hand; it felt like a hydraulic press.
Dick froze. His detective brain screamed. The block was instinctive, lethal and entirely built for combat.
"Sorry." Percy said quickly, his sea green eyes snapping back into focus as he released dick's wrist. He rubbed the back of his neck, looking profoundly embarrassed. "Sorry bad reflexes. My friends at camp... We do a lot of extreme tag. Uhm very competitive."
"Extreme tag." Dick repeated, his voice tight as he gently massaged his wrist. He looked down at Percy's exposed forearm.
The sleeve of the orange shirt was way too short to cover below the elbow, leaving a dark, jagged brand seared deep into the flesh of his inner arm. It featured an eagle, a set of letters, SPQR, and a single, brutal bar beneath it. It wasn't a tattoo. It was a fresh, medical-grade chemical burn meant to mark property.
Dicks heart broke into a million pieces. 'human trafficking', his mind whispered in absolute horror. 'that camp isn't a camp. It's got to be a cult or syndicate. They branded him. They mutilated his lungs. And he's so traumatized he thinks it's a game.'
"Your arm, Percy," Bruce said, his eyes locked on to the brand. His voice had dropped into a register that made the windowpane shiver. "Who gave that to you?"
Percy blinked, looking down at his arm, then back at Bruce's terrifyingly dark expression. He completely missed the protective, murderous rage building in his uncle's chest. He just assumed Bruce was a really intense history buff who hated romans.
"Oh, this?" Percy said casually, adjusting his duffel bag. "A bunch of important people in a big room filled with roman ghosts, had to almost die in Alaska and carry a old lady goddess across a river to get it though, really weird week."
A heavy suffocating silence descended on the Wayne manor foyer.
Behind Bruce, Tim slowly reached into his pocket and tapped in a command, activating a 40-page, deep Intel tracking file labeled: THE RECONSTRUCTIONIST SYNDICATE(UPSTATE NY/LONG ISLAND SOUND)
'percy exhibits severe narrative framing,' tim typed frantically under the cover of his jacket pocket. 'roman ghosts is a heavily coded metaphor used to cope with severe psychological conditioning and human trafficking. Percy believes a goddess forced him into an initiation rite. High threat of cognitive distortions.'
"Right" dick said, his voice cracking slightly with pure emotion. He stepped closer, gently placing a hand on Percy's shoulder. "A bad week. Well, you're safe here now, Percy. You don't have to carry anymore goddesses. You don't have to perform for anyone."
Percy blinked, totally baffled by the intense, tearful look in his cousin's eyes. "Uh, thanks dick. Honestly I'm just really tired, breathing is more exhausting now than it used to be."
"Alfred," Bruce said, his face a mask of absolute, unyielding stone. "Prepare the empty room in the family wing."
"Right away, master Bruce." Alfred said setting the silver tray of tea on the coffee table. He marched towards the stairs, his own British stoicism thoroughly unbreakable no matter how concerned he felt for the boy he so fondly remembered.
As Percy followed the butler up the stairs, dragging his duffel bag, he pulled out riptide in pen form and twirled it absentmindedly, completely oblivious to the fact that three of Gothams vigilantes were currently standing in the foyer below, silently drafting a tactical declaration of war against a non-existent summer camp in long Island sound.