Chapter Text
In Percy's defense, it isn't like he didn't understand the dangers of moving to Gotham- vigilantes, criminals, all of it Annabeth had drilled into him the second he even thought about the city in passing. But honestly, Percy didn't mind them much. He's not particularly scared of the average mortal, after all he'd experienced, and unless he completely let his guard down it'd be hard for anyone to get the jump on him.
Besides, he had distractions a'plenty to keep him from messing with anything he shouldn't. The job, for one. His mom had thought working a normal job for a bit would help him, especially after the war with the Giants. The job itself had been a lucky break— a result of a Wayne program that put "troubled teens" into basic programs so they didn't end up stuck their whole lives, and he's still pretty sure he only got it because Annabeth teamed up with Leo to wipe most of his criminal record. Terrorism really messes up job opportunities, apparently. That aside, he took good things where they came these days, and how could he pass this one up? Gotham is dangerous, sure, but it's also interesting. Percy isn't quite as inquisitive as Annabeth, but he's only a little less curious about the city's reputation. Not many places existed that drove away both monsters and demigods, and the combination meant Percy had an actual chance of peace while he was there.
The reason behind that is still a little unclear, though as far as he knew a theory was being figured out now that the wars were over. Something about a thicker type of mist native to Gotham? One that hid mortal and demigod magic alike— if the place wasn't riddled with criminals, it'd be perfect. Even with the criminals, he was happy to embrace the lesser chance.
Then there was the uncle thing. He doesn't really remember how it'd come up in conversation with his mom, but she'd mentioned that she was actually adopted very young when Percy and a few other demigods were hanging around her house— and from there it had devolved into speculation on who she was originally related to, somehow, and then it had devolved into testing, and, finally, they had a match.
Demigods are quick when they're curious.
Neither Percy nor Sally had really been prepared for the name that popped up. Bruce Wayne. He can still remember the sound of Annabeth cursing when she read the text, and how his mom had let out a surprised sound, but he hadn't had time to really process that whole fiasco since they'd been interrupted by an iris message just a few seconds later.
It all lined up too well. Not that Percy has plans to go confront his human uncle— It's too likely he'd drag his issues into the man's life, but it can't hurt to check out the man's city.
Plus, Percy didn't exactly have a great record of not pissing extended family off.
The only problem was that he'd be away from Annabeth for the entire year as she finished her year at New Rome. She had a holiday coming up— he still found it weird, actually, for the Romans to have things like break periods during Halloween or Easter, but he'd never had the chance to ask— but for now his only solution was an Iris Message before bed on bad nights. It kept both of them sane.
His apartment, too-
"Jackson!"
Percy doesn't startle. Or, he does, but he keeps it mostly out of his movements, pretending to have been actually paying attention to the meeting instead of narrating to himself. He really needs to kick that habit. "Uhm, yes?"
"You're fine with heading that project, correct? I know you're new, but the usual guy who heads it, Rogers, is currently on vacation."
"Uhhh. I mean, yes sir. Of course!"
"Good. Then Jackson will be in charge of our tour project over the next month. Moving onto-" As the man- his boss- moved onto talking finances, Percy zones right back out.
Tour Project?
He really should've paid more attention.
-
He doesn't stop by his apartment for very long that night. From what his boss had mentioned as he left, it seemed this project would take a lot of work, and while his apartment certainly had character (and quite a few rather nice rats), what it didn't have was WiFi. This had been a conscious decision— Monsters hated Gotham, but Percy also apparently smelled good enough for them to try anyways, so they'd opted for the solution that wouldn't drag more monsters to his exact location.
That solution of course being as little technology as possible. He had a phone and a laptop, both really only used for work and messaging people, he used them as little as he physically could. It was usually something he could work around, but times like these, well…
Thankfully, after three weeks of living there, Percy had found most of the best 24-hour spots in Gotham. One of them was a local coffee shop, just a block from his apartment, and he'd become practically a regular there by now, so the worker didn't even really react when he walked in and ordered his usual drink. Well, she did react a little when she heard "water" for the fourth night in a row, but she gave him a glass and let him situate himself in the corner without protest, so he counted it a win.
The actual work is tedious. It always is. No matter how often he messes with his laptop's settings, or shifts in his chair, his brain really never manages to focus. It's only been worse without Annabeth near, even if they've managed to stave away most of the nightmares with iris messaging, and— he forces his attention back to his work. The words are slowly focusing, just slightly less jumbled, and he takes the chance to try and focus again.
Of course, with his luck, this is when everything goes wrong.
He knows something's off when the man who enters does so without a word. The man, dressed in an outfit that screams robber so desperately it's almost cliche, storms inside and right up to the barista—He doesn't even bother shouting, just pulls the gun from his side and aims it straight at her head.
Percy shifts imperceptibly, hand settling on his pocket. He's tired of playing hero, but that doesn't mean he's fond of watching someone pull a gun for no real reason. Riptide won't do much against a mortal, and the man is mortal, it seems, but a weapon is a weapon. Slowly but noisily, as to purposely alert the man to his presence, he stands.
"Hey, man, can we not do this tonight?" He keeps himself slower on his feet as he analyzes the robber, trying to keep his eyes on him. Tall, maybe an inch or two shorter than Percy, with short brown hair under his cap and shifting green eyes. He's a bit scrawny, enough that Percy is sure he can probably win any fight that occurs even without using a suspicious amount of strength. Still, he needs to stall him until the barista gets out.
And she's trying, it seems, backing up towards the wall that opens into what he presumes is their storage room, but he can't keep his eyes on her very well without alerting the man to exactly what he's doing. "I mean, I have so much work to do, and this is the only place so close to my apartment with free WiFi. Please, dude-"
The man's hands twitch on the trigger of the gun, which Percy only now realizes is pointed straight at his chest. He's half sure the Gods wouldn't let him die like this, but he also knows the Gods are petty assholes, so he'd rather not play the fates(again). Instead he switches tactics and lunges forward near the second the barista ducks out of sight, one wrist clamping around the man's hand and yanking right as he pulls the trigger. The bullet tears into his side like fire, and while it's not the worst thing he's ever felt it sure as Hades doesn't feel good.
He lets out a slight groan of pain, ducking slightly to ram his shoulder into the man hard enough to send him stumbling backwards into the counter. "C'mon man, you shot me but you still won't talk?" Percy is a little annoyed, actually. Even monsters are more chatty on average, and he's a lot more used to fighting something that hates him enough to taunt him.
For now, Percy forgoes drawing Riptide in favor of trying to wrench the gun out of the man's— now a bit weaker— grip. He's shoved off, but not without a semi successful tug at the gun that sends it scattering to the floor right as someone else enters the cafe.
He spots a leather jacket, and then some sort of red… helmet? It takes Percy a second to register what's happening.
Oh. A vigilante, then. The barista had probably hit a panic button, or someone had heard the shot. Which vigilante, though? He remembers Annabeth mentioned two with the word "red" in the name, so it's probably one of those… He ponders the thought as he allows himself to slouch back into the booth by his laptop, hand pressed to his still bleeding wound. Annabeth will probably kill him, but he should be safe with a vigilante present. For now.
The name comes to him right as his eyes close.
Red Hood, that's right. But isn't the thing he's wearing a helmet? Why isn't he Red Helmet? Percy's thoughts really don't help the woozy feeling that washes over him as he drifts from consciousness.
Gods, he's so screwed.
-
Percy wakes up in a hospital bed. It's not entirely unfamiliar, but it is rather disorienting— he's never been a fan of fluorescents. That disoriented feeling means he actually startles when his eyes land on the man at the end of his bed.
Bruce Wayne. Photos hadn't prepared him for the resemblance the man had to his mother— It really was much more obvious in person. Like this, he could see the little wrinkles around the man's eyes, the downturn of his lips, things that tabloids tended to edit or alter.
The man isn't looking at him, not yet, instead conversing with an older nurse. Percy settles on not catching either's attention, settling his eyes closed to fake sleep and eavesdrop.
"I can tell you're awake, Perseus."
Percy jolts— he'd not expected to be caught so quick— eyes flicking open to meet the man's own.
Behind him, the nurse makes an apologetic noise. "I'm sorry, Mr Jackson, I was distracted. How are you feeling, now that you've woken?"
"…sore." He says, voice a bit raspy. "How long was I asleep?"
"Unconscious." Wayne corrects, making a visible effort to soften his appearance. "And two days."
"Gods." Percy mutters, "Annabeth really will kill me." When that earned him a raised eyebrow, he gave a stilted shrug. "Where am I?"
"Gotham General Hospital. The Red Hood brought you in a few nights ago with a bullet wound." The nurse sighs, glancing down at her clipboard. "We couldn't find any ID on you, so after a failed attempt to run your face through any databases we could find, we took a DNA sample and referenced that."
Oh. Probably not good, but Percy would leave that disaster alone unless something happened.
"We couldn't get in contact with any of your emergency contacts, but the DNA pulled up a match to Mr Wayne, and he was available when we called him."
Well that's a stroke of luck, isn't it? The guy's a billionaire. Percy glances at him again, and suddenly he's struck by the idea that it was probably less that he had time and more that he had made time.
"Oh." Percy says, brilliantly. "I'm related to Bruce Wayne?"
He tries to ignore the look that that statement gets him from both people in the room.
"Yes, on your mothers side. The DNA suggests he is your biological uncle." The nurse supplies, after a tense moment.
The door opens, sparing him, and Percy is half tempted to thank the nurse who steps in.
"Mr. Wayne, the paperwork you need to sign is ready, if you would."
The man nods, looking back at Percy as he stands like he doesn't know if he's meant to say something.
Then, after a moment, he says, solemnly, "don't sign anything while I'm out of the room." And disappears out of the door.
Percy stares after him.
"…Mr. Jackson," the nurse begins, "while it is only us, I'd like to inform you that we analyzed your dna."
Percy pales, and she gives him a sympathetic glance.
"We didn't tell him, don't worry." She says, softly, handing him a sheet of paper. He can tell it's a scan of his DNA, if only because he's seen scans of other demigods now and then, and it's kind of hard to miss the giant missing column.
"Tell him what?"
"That you're an unregistered meta." At his blank look she frowns, continuing "It's rather hard to miss, Mr. Jackson, considering the state of your DNA. By law, I should have reported it the second it registered in the scan, but… my niece is a meta, and I can understand why you wouldn't want that. For that reason, I didn't document anything past your relation to Mr. Wayne."
Percy highly doubts she actually understands, but he nods his head anyways, wracking his brain for what a meta even was. He's still a little out of it, and it'd probably take him a second if he wasn't anyways, but the term eventually figures itself out. He can hear Annabeth's explanation in his head, now.
Mortals with a mutation that gives them some sort of enhancement, she'd said, you won't find many weak ones outside of Gotham. They tend to be weaker than demigods, and some of them smell the same as us. They're not targeted as much, but monsters can still pick them off— she'd been cut off there, though Percy can't really remember why. He'd been distracted by fondly watching the focused expression on her face as she'd explained, and…
Oh, right.
"Uhm, thank you?" He finally manages, unconvincingly, and she takes the paper back carefully.
-
Bruce Wayne does not like surprises. This can likely be attributed to what his children may call his "unrelenting paranoia", but the exact term isn't needed.
He especially doesn't like surprises that go against prior belief. The boy was, needless to say, that type of surprise. Bruce had tested his own DNA many times— not always to check for relatives, but he'd done more than one scan for them before. He doesn't have any, living at least, besides his cousin and her family, and he has made sure of such a thing extensively.
He hadn't been pleased when Alfred had first handed the phone over to him with the explanation that it was Gotham General, but that had been aligned moreso with the idea one of his children had gotten themself into danger and had not thought to tell him or go to Leslie first. He had been far less pleased when the woman on the other side of the call had told him a name he didn't recognize as family.
DNA results had marked him as the child's uncle, somehow. It should be impossible— Bruce knows he doesn't have a sister. He knows his parents had no reason to give one up for adoption, too.
So he'd run another test. A quick one, but a test none the less.
His DNA pinged a match. Not the boy— there was no DNA currently on record for him, but for Sally Jackson. It's easy confirmation, almost too easy, but he doesn't suspect alteration, either.
If only because that would be sort of stupid, on their part. A single glance at Percy Jackson's file tells him the boy is trouble on his own, but both have been laying relatively low for the past year or so and the last way to keep such a thing was to fake a relation to a billionaire and get yourself shot.
Whether or not Percy had let himself be shot is still up to debate. Jason had mentioned he was a good enough fighter for it to be a possibility, but there weren't any actual cameras in the cafe, and he'd only gotten there near the end of the fight.
Speaking of Jason, his next surprise came in the fact Percy Jackson could be his sons twin. Bruce knows Jason looks like him, and the resemblance should just be that they both look like Bruce, but it's almost uncanny. Percy is leaner, his eyes a different shade, but everything else is eerily similar, down to the white streak in the front of his hair. Bruce knows it's likely coincidence, but something about it is also rather endearing.
Percy is asleep for two days. It's enough time for Bruce to get things mostly situated— he's already decided on getting him to stay at the manor for at least a week or two, if only because it'll be easier to figure him out if he's kept in close quarters. It's not much of a plan, to Bruce's own annoyance, but anything further requires actually speaking to the boy and assessing threat levels. He can only get so much out of crimes he's technically been acquitted of for now.
That doesn't mean Bruce isn't on edge. The brief meeting, if one could call it that, when Percy first woke up wasn't exactly enlightening, aside from the new fact that his nephew was rather bad at faking being asleep. The nurse had pulled him aside before Bruce could deduce much else— suspicious, he notes, considering he'd thought they'd given him all the paperwork earlier. They should have, at least— so he resolves to wait. He's missing too much to put a puzzle together, so he needs to find the pieces, even if waiting makes him slightly uneasy.
-
Percy counts the minutes until Wayne re-enters the room. He'd figured it would only be one or two, but it takes at least ten. It's odd, but it isn't like Percy has much experience in hospitals— infirmaries, definitely, but the one at camp didn't require paperwork at all, which means it's probably not a good frame of reference. He doesn't know what kind of papers the man must be signing to take so long. He makes a point of pretending he hadn't been bored out of his mind once the man returns, though.
From the blatant look Bruce gives him, he doesn't seem convinced.
"Perseus—"
"Percy." Percy corrects, "nobody calls me Perseus." Unless they're trying to kill me, he doesn't add.
"Percy. You've been discharged, albeit with the condition someone keeps an eye on you until your wound heals well enough." Bruce's voice is calm in a way that reminds him of Zeus, though he pushes the comparison out of his mind as quickly as it comes. He doesn't have anything against his human uncle yet, and he shouldn't sour that with bad comparisons. From what he'd heard of Bruce from Annabeth, as well as a few Aphrodite kids, he was decent, if airheaded.
With what Percy has seen so far, he doesn't quite know about airheaded. Bruce Wayne doesn't carry himself in a way that suggests it.
"What?" Percy asks, not quite following, "Isn't there something I have to do? I figured there'd be— oh shit, money! This is going to cost so much, isn't it?" The thought comes with a little dismay. Percy isn't quite as bad as he and his mom were, when he was little, but that didn't mean he'd suddenly forgotten old habits. Money was money, and he wasn't stupid enough to think a multiple day trip to the hospital was cheap.
"Don't worry about it." Bruce says when Percy gives him a frantic look. It hadn't been intentional, but it's beginning to seem like nothing gets past Bruce Wayne, "I've already had it paid for, as well as accommodations made for your next few weeks so you can stay around someone to keep an eye on you."
Percy hates that more. He tries not to let it show on his face when he croaks out an "Excuse me?"
Bruce's lip quirks, like he's seeing someone else, but it's gone just as fast.
"I don't expect to be repaid," He clarifies, "at least not in any other way than giving you a chance to heal. I have the money to pay anyhow. To be clear, I don't expect to be repaid for allowing you to stay in the manor, either."
Percy blinks at him. He should probably try to say anything but a question— Definitely a thank you, but instead, he stares at Bruce Wayne and asks "The what?"
-
"Good afternoon, this is Nurse Mercer at Gotham General Hospital. You are receiving this call as you are listed as Perseus Jackson's emergency contact.
He was left with us last night by a local vigilante after being shot in a robbery. His condition is currently stable, but it is still recommended you visit. You can find the hospital…"
Annabeth curses. Percy hadn't IMed her last night, but she'd been expecting that— he'd told her he had a project he'd probably be working on overnight, and she had been helping clear out a few monsters for camp anyways after her classes. She listens to the voicemail again, retroactively wishing she'd brought her emergency phone with her last night. She can't remember why she hadn't actually, but that isn't important.
Percy is injured. She's almost surprised that it took him this long living in Gotham, but it was annoying he'd chosen the one night she'd not been around to pick up. Not that he could have known. She stares down at her class schedule— one week until break. She's not fond of missing classes, even if she'd done most of her midterms early, but it seems like she'll need to.
Annabeth closes the binder she's tucked her schedule in, glancing out of her window at the rest of New Rome. Her professors probably won't mind her missing this week— even if they did, there wasn't much they could say to the two time savior of the world— but she should at least mention it to them. She needs to head out and buy a train ticket to Gotham, anyways.
Percy will be fine. After two wars, there's no way he goes out to a bullet, and even if he does, Annabeth will drag him back from Elysium herself. It's the least she can do for her boyfriend other than maybe kill him herself.