Chapter Text
Percy Jackson was in sixth grade, his best friend was Grover Underwood, and his Latin teacher was lying to him about something. He just couldn’t figure out what.
Mr. Brunner had seemed to be watching him since day twenty of the school year when he took over from the old Latin teacher. And he always seemed to be in his office, meaning Percy needed to work harder to find out the questions on tests before he had to take them, which sucked.
Worse, Mr. Brunner also seemed never to believe Percy when he lied. Percy could run faster than most kids, but it didn’t mean he wanted to race to class. It was much easier to come up with an excuse for why he was tardy. He had a “naturally believable voice,” and Mr. Brunner was the first teacher to ever push back about it.
So Percy did what any self-respecting underking of sixth grade would do: He made Mr. Brunner’s life much, much harder.
Percy did his best to annoy the man through the year, rearranging the papers on his desk to making sure the cafeteria never had the salads Mr. Brunner liked. His magnum opus, the thing Percy had been working on for the whole year, was a plan to steal Mr. Brunner’s pen, the one he never let leave his body.
Percy was pretty adept at pickpocketing, he had learned as a kid to get money to buy candy from a nice store owned by a friend of his mother's who he didn’t want to steal from, so he just needed to get close enough right? Wrong. Mr. Brunner didn’t look like much, a middle-aged guy in a motorized wheelchair with thinning hair, a scruffy beard, and a frayed tweed jacket, which always smelled like coffee, but he had always noticed exactly where Percy’s hands were whenever Percy had tried to get the darn pen. Which, of course, made Percy want to steal it even more. All he needed to do was make a distraction so he would be too busy to notice Percy.
So he planned, procuring fireworks and setting the scene in his mind over and over until he was sure it would go the way he wanted. He’d never brought in fireworks before because they were too risky; candy and test answers were all fun and games, but explosives? Those could get out of control. So, two weeks before the end of school, Percy Jackson set his plan into motion.
The plan was far from simple, but Percy had called in his favors and bribed just enough for the scene to play out.
The courtyard next to the Latin classroom was full of noise, enough excitement for Chiron to feel pushed to investigate. He quickly searched through the crowd for Percy Jackson but saw no sign of him.
Chiron probably shouldn’t have let his guard down, but he’d spent the last six months since Grover called him about a problem in New York keeping two eyes open at night, trying to make Percy learn something and not just memorize the answer keys that the boy stole, all while trying futility to not get too attached to the kid. He knew all too well how little the boy appreciated his efforts, but Achilles had never appreciated running drill after drill until he was out in the real world, so Chiron didn’t mind too much. Still, he was tired of fending off Percy’s attempts to annoy him.
Putting the demigod whose parentage he, unfortunately, had a guess on out of his mind, Chiron wheeled over to the crowd where an explosion had just sounded and purple sparks jumped, only to find another lit firework in the center. Well, this day would be exciting, at least.
As though there had been any doubt.
“Step back!” he commanded, taking a deep breath when several students seemed to take this as a command to step back into him. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw a blur but didn’t turn, focused on getting the students to move out of his way long enough for him to put the gods be damned firework out. Then, he noticed a sudden change in weight in his breast pocket.
He didn’t have time to deal with that, so Chiron chose to focus on disposing of the firework, and gathering as many of the students who had been on the scene as possible to try and get a somewhat clear idea of what happened in the courtyard. He had a suspicion, of course, that it had something to do with a certain puckish demigod who was now in possession of a sword.
And to think, there were still two weeks left in the school year.
Percy waited till he was back in the classroom he had commandeered in fourth grade to admire his prize, an expensive-looking ballpoint pen. He felt slightly bad for taking the pen— he knew teachers were underpaid, and wheelchairs weren’t cheap but reminded himself that he still planned to give it back, he just wanted Mr. Brunner to experience some of the panic Percy had felt as he tried to study while all the names moved around on the page. Normally, teachers accepted the fact he had dyslexia and lowered their standards for his spelling, but Mr. Brunner pushed him. He did make Percy feel like he was believed in, and the tournament days were fun, but some things could never be forgiven.
He uncapped it, planning to write the man a note ostensibly from the pen itself, detailing its travel, only for the last thing he expected to happen.
Percy had prepared for if he got caught, he’d prepared for if the room was locked, he’d prepared for every scenario except the pen turning into a literal sword, the one Mr. Brunner had on tournament days.
Well.
Percy had played at sword fighting as a kid, hitting sticks with the neighborhood kids, but in real life, a sword seemed… well awkward. The grip felt just slightly off, the blade both too heavy and too light. He swung it in an arc but it pitched forward as he did, and he had to drop it before the natural arc of the swing finished and the sword buried itself in his leg.
That would have been hard to explain to his mother.
He looked down at the sword that had clattered loudly to the floor — he couldn’t just walk around the school halls with it. Would he be able to make it turn back into a pen?
Percy touched the cap of the pen to the top of the sword, feeling thoroughly ridiculous as he did. Still, the sword shrunk into itself until he held a small, innocuous, pen.
He put it back in Mr. Brunner’s office, resting on the table as though it had been forgotten.
The pen/sword/terrible demon creation was back in his pocket when he woke up, his mother in the kitchen making breakfast, his clothes from the day before haphazardly tossed near the laundry bin. He’d put his hands in his pockets as he got out of bed only to find the pen back somehow, as if haunting him.
He was finally going to be caught with a stolen thing and it was barely even his fault!
He didn’t realize he was mumbling to himself until he went into the kitchen and his mother was standing there, worried.
Percy looked like a younger version of his mother—albeit a version of her who was a bit more impish. The mischievous smile that marked him a troublemaker stood against her warm brown skin and dark eyes. Percy didn’t want his mom to ever worry about him. He was a troublemaker and a prankster, but he knew his mom deserved a better kid.
Sally had been stressed when he was kicked out of the first two schools he went to and stressed when he got caught running a betting ring in fourth grade before he moved to the new room. So, Percy had stopped getting expelled and stopped getting caught. Percy loved his mom, so he made sure to not cause her stress by getting in trouble, which included demon pens.
Besides, his mom didn’t condone breaking the rules unless it was a stupid rule.
Hermes had fallen in love with Sally Jackson because of her charm, her wit, and the unbelievable amount of tax fraud she committed. It’s not every day a mortal puts herself through college solely by scamming the American tax system into believing she donated fifty times her salary. Many people committed tax fraud, but Sally Jackson not only wasn’t a billionaire, Hermes was pretty sure she was trying to take billionaires down.
She was also beautiful.
Sally was Yemeni, with long wavy black hair and deep brown eyes, but what stood out most was her smile. When he managed to make her laugh he felt like the funniest god in the heavens.
So, he broke his oath, and Sally Jackson suddenly had a little bit of help as she figured out how to get the government to pay for her new son. She greatly appreciated his help when her uncle died during her first year of college — she was pretty sure she would have had to drop out if not for him — especially after her son came into the world.
Hermes hadn’t expected Percy to even be born, normally the fates took care of his oath, but he treasured every moment until Percy was at the age where he would begin forming memories. He stayed with her until then, treasuring every moment, and doing everything in his power to support her. Sally was a special woman and Hermes felt it was his duty and privilege to laugh with her and hold her when she cried. After he had to leave he made sure to pay his child support, depositing a few hundred dollars in cash on her desk once a month.
Percy was going to have to talk to Mr. Brunner. It wasn’t his first choice, but neither was a demon pen. His mom had never been religious — whenever he tried to bring it up she had always grinned to herself at some joke that she always refused to tell him — but this was enough for Percy to start believing in demons at least. He’d tried everything he could think of, but even giving it to someone else to keep in their pocket hadn’t fixed things. So, he was going to the source.
He waited. Until the school year ended, until all the flowers were blooming and everyone else in the school had bought a pass off of him to a pool or went to go buy ice cream. Then, he went to talk to his teacher.
Mr. Brunner was a good teacher, Percy’s year learning Latin from him had shown that— even if his spelling tests had broken Percy’s straight-A record. He was always cracking jokes in class and letting them all play games. Still, ever since he cursed Percy with his demon pen, Percy had been a little warier of the man.
Mr. Brunner seemed to sense Percy. He was uncannily good at noticing Percy, which really wasn’t fair because no one ever noticed Percy!
“Well, Percy, what’s bothering you this fine afternoon? I’d have thought you’d run off to the pool all of your classmates love.” Percy was pretty sure that was Mr. Brunner’s way of saying he knew Percy sold stolen or forged pool passes, but honestly, how was anyone who wasn’t rich supposed to get entrance to a pool?
Percy and his mom weren’t poor, but they weren’t rich either. His mom worked on her books when she got home from her office job of the year, but the jobs never paid that well and his mom was always donating to people who needed money more than they did. His mom had the worst luck at job searching; She’d always work for a company for a year or two then suddenly the company would go under and be revealed to have been corrupt and hurting customers. Sally never seemed sad when she had to hunt for a new job, and Percy admired that about her, the way she was always happy and ready to take on whatever life would throw at her.
He turned his attention back to the teacher in front of him, “I found your pen in the courtyard over there and thought I’d return it to you.” It wasn’t technically a lie.
Mr. Brunner hummed and held out his hand. “Thank you for returning it, Percy. A long time ago this pen was given into my care, I would hate to have lost it.”
Percy walked over to give the pen back, “The pen seems hard to lose. I was sure it had fallen out of my pocket after lunch but then I checked and it was back.”
Mr. Brunner smiled at Percy like his mother did, a twinkle in his eye. “Yes, the pen has a funny way of always coming back to its owner,” was all he said, before pausing as if considering something. “You know, Percy, you should get on with your summer, but I have a–” Percy had already sprinted away, glad to be free of the pen and school.
Grover was waiting for him before the walk home. He was twelve, like Percy, and always wearing a hat even as the summer drew nearer. His skin was a lighter brown than Percy’s, and he used crutches to help him walk due to some muscular disease. Percy and Grover went the same way home every day after school, winding through the Manhattan streets until they arrived at Sally’s apartment where they dumped their bags before heading out into the city to cause mischief or just hang out. Percy never asked why Grover stayed out so late, if Grover wasn’t going to say anything about his home life then Percy wouldn’t pry.
When Grover’s crutch slipped on something and he started to fall towards the stairs they’d been walking past in the mall, going to the elevator, with Percy waiting ahead for Grover and buying some gum from the nickel machines, talking all the way. Percy had had both too much and too little time to think before he acted. He ran to catch Grover, ran in the way that seemed too fast for anyone to see, letting a yellow thread fly from its spool in his core.
Grover was shaky after Percy caught him, shakier than Percy had ever seen, even when his crutches had been stolen by some kids earlier that year.
(Percy ensured that those kids wouldn’t come back to their school. There wasn't much that made Percy truly angry, but hurting the people he cared for was the number one ticket to his bad side.)
The two of them sat in Sally’s apartment. It was cool enough to enjoy the air conditioning, but Percy felt sure that Grover was not enjoying himself.
The blood had drained from Grover’s skin, leaving him ashen. He kept adjusting his cap and seemed to be mumbling to himself. Percy just did the best he could to take care of Grover. He hoped this wasn’t because of his speed. He’d never run that way in front of Grover before.
In elementary school, Percy had tried to do as his mom said, ‘stick out enough to be liked, blend in enough to be underestimated.’ He was able to succeed at it, for the most part, but the breaking point for seven-year-old Percy’s normalcy had been when he was racing against some kids on the playground and he had felt something open up inside of him, like a yellow-gold spool of thread had started to unroll. He had run faster than the wind, ran so fast he was at the end of the section marked out with sticks in the dirt before the other kids had done anything more than take their first strides, breath coming evenly.
Percy had expected them to cheer for him, or be in awe, but none of the kids seemed to even notice. He’d moved through first grade like a ghost, kids never seeming to even see him. After that year, (and his expulsion for shooting a cannon at a school bus at the end of it,) he’d done his best to never let that spool move. And he’d succeeded, until that day at the mall.
Sally felt as worried as Grover looked when Percy regaled the story to her. She had her suspicions on who, or what exactly, Grover was, and she had known someone was keeping an eye on Percy, she had just hoped—.
Hermes had said Percy’s smell wouldn’t be strong until his teen years, she had hoped for one more year with him as her baby son. She had hoped to have another year of coming home from helping customers keep their wits in the face of the corrupt company of the year to find her son waiting with a story about his classes, to watch him pretend to be diligently studying, to lightly poke him about the shirt he had that she knew she hadn’t bought. She had hoped to have a kid instead of a half-blood born of a broken oath for just a year more.
But then, life never did go as you wished, and Sally had always been good at shouldering her burdens.
She thought all this as she stood in her kitchen, on the yellow checkered floor that had withstood years of wear and oak cabinets she’d gotten off a man who definitely stole them. She straightened her spine, squared her shoulders, and steeled her nerve. Lying to Percy would be a laughable endeavor.
“Percy,” she’d rehearsed this speech many times in her head, every time that Percy got home from talking his way out of being found in a locked room or accused of stealing an answer key. “Remember when I’d read you stories about the Greek gods?” Her son nodded. Percy had always been so attentive during those stories, as though he’d known his life would depend on it. “They’re real.”
“Okay,” Percy said. He could tell she wasn’t lying, even if he didn’t know how in God’s name— in the gods' names maybe? he was supposed to process this information. He knew his voice shook but it was the best front he could put forwards. He focussed on staying in control of his face and breathing.
“Your father is one of them.”
Sally told Percy all she could, that his father was a god, that there was a summer camp designed for people like him, that she loved him very much, but it was probably best if he went there because they would be able to teach him how to survive. She told things as carefully as she could, with Grover being there. Sally knew Percy would know when she wasn’t being truthful, but he knew that some things were important to keep secret. She told Percy and Grover that she didn’t know who Percy’s father had been and that she’d assumed he was a minor god. She told them that he had been kind and sincere. She told them that he was an honest man and that he loved Percy very much and hadn’t wanted to leave them. That last part, at least, wasn’t a lie. Most importantly, Sally told her son “You won’t need to keep any of this information hidden,” hoping he caught the undertones of please make sure everyone believes this. Percy took it all in, nodding as though this happened to him every day, although she could see his internal wheels turning franticly.
She wished she could tell him all of it.
He would be okay, he had to be okay.
Percy had had a weird day. He could handle the “your father is a Greek god” speech, he could handle when his mother told him she was going to drive him and Grover to a summer camp, he could even handle when Grover had taken his hat off to reveal goat horns. What he couldn't handle was:
- The fact the car trip was taking too long.
Normally, Percy and his mother were able to find all the best routes, and always catch traffic lights when they were green. His mother had joked about him being better than any good luck charm, but today everything seemed against them. It was six by the time they managed to leave New York, rain pouring down forcing the windshield wipers to do double time, sheets upon sheets, their tires slipping on the roads. Percy felt a strange tugging in his gut, and he could have sworn the landscape changed around them, but it was too hard to see anything through the rain, and he dismissed it as stress-based.
2. Something big and bellowing chasing them as his mother drove through the woods on dark country roads.
The wind slammed against the car, Percy didn’t know how his mom could see anything, but she kept her foot on the gas.
The car ride hadn’t been quiet. As they piled into the car Percy asked, ‘So, you and my mom… know each other?’
Grover laughed, voice strained. “I didn’t know that she knew I was a satyr. I knew that your mom knew someone was watching you.”
“Watching me?”
“Keeping tabs on you. Making sure you were okay. But I wasn’t faking being your friend,” he added hastily. “I am your friend.”
Percy nodded. He had spent a year knowing Grover was keeping something from him. This was at least better than the ‘maybe Grover is just pretending to be my friend to get me to protect him’ theory.
Sally made a hard left and the car swerved onto a narrower road, racing past darkened farmhouses and wooded hills. Percy knew they were on Long Island, somehow, though they hadn’t passed any bridges. It was like all of his luck with traveling had condensed into one burst, something big enough to jump islands. He felt like he could run a marathon, even as he sat in the car. He felt like he could see the yellow-gold thread inside of him.
Then, the hair rose on the back of his neck. And he added number three.
- There was a blinding flash, a jaw-rattling boom!, and their car exploded.
Percy felt both like he was being crushed and he was weightless. The car’s lower half was stuck in a ditch with its doors held shut by the mud and the top cracked open, letting the rain pour in. It was hard to get a grip, especially while his head hurt like this.
Grover was knocked out, bleeding from the side of his mouth. Sally was trying to throw her body against her door but wasn’t having any luck. Percy did the same and his door opened.
“Percy,” his mother said, deadly serious. “Get out of the car.”
“What—”
“I need you to listen to me, climb out your door!” his mother told him. “Percy – you have to run. Do you see that big tree?”
A flash of lightning illuminated it, a giant pine at the top of the hill.
“That’s the property line,” Sally said. “Get over that hill and you’ll see a big farmhouse down in the valley. Run and don’t look back. Yell for help. Don’t stop until you reach the door.”
“Mom, you’re coming, too.”
Sally looked sad as she stared at Percy, but she pushed through the door and tumbled into the rain.
The two of them got out and carried Grover, still unconscious. The thing that was chasing them was closer, almost there, and with another flash of lightning, Percy could see every detail.
A minotaur.
“Is that a min—”
“Don’t say his name,” Sally warned. "Names have power. Call him Pasiphae’s son.” His mother’s lips were drawn tight. “I wish I’d known how badly they want to kill you,” she said.
The pine tree was still way too far – a hundred and fifty-four yards Percy would guess. The minotaur had come closer, sniffing around for them. He added, ‘I wish I’d known how badly they want to kill you’ as number four on his list of things he couldn’t process.
“He has terrible eyesight, he uses his sense of smell, but we don’t have long before he catches ours,” Sally said. Grover moaned, and the minotaur’s ears swiveled towards them uncannily. He picked up the car and threw it, Sally’s beautiful blue car that she’d scrimped and saved for crashing in a heap of sparks. “Percy,” his mom said. “When he sees us, he’ll charge. Wait until the last second, then jump out of the way – directly sideways. He can’t change direction very well once he’s charging. Do you understand?”
“How do you know all this?”
“I’ve been worried about an attack for a long time. I should have expected this. I was selfish, keeping you near me.”
“Selfish? But –”
The minotaur interrupted Percy by charging at them. He felt the same tug in his gut that he had on the ride there, the string begging to unspool so it could weave into some unseen tapestry. Then, he sidestepped. Percy wasn’t sure how but hew, he must have been running on adrenaline, but he fully shouldered Grover’s weight as he ran, going faster than even the raindrops. He could see the farmhouse as he reached the pine, a soft glow 54 yards away. He’d be able to make it, even in the rain. But what about his mother?
Percy turned back to see Sally, face set and hands shaking.
“Percy, I can’t make it any further— go!”
The minotaur turned to her and charged. She tried to sidestep, to do what he did, but the minotaur stuck out his hand and grabbed her. He closed his hand and Percy’s mother disappeared like the last ray of sunshine, leaving them in darkness.
Percy wanted to run at the minotaur. He wanted to destroy it. But he was twelve years old and alone in the dark, his best friend on his shoulders.
So he ran. He let the thread unspool, twelve years of unused energy propelling him to the porch.
Percy collapsed on the farmhouse deck in exhaustion, yelling for help. The last thing he remembered was a dark-haired boy running towards where Percy left the minotaur, a bronze sword in his hands.