Chapter Text
Gotham City.
It's an ugly metropolis of gray stone walls, caricature carved into the cornices, melancholy written into the sky. If it wasn’t raining it was with life-draining heat and if it wasn’t with heat, then it was icy enough to conserve bodies where they fell. That was without even touching on the permeating ever-present smell of carbon and carcinogens.
Still, Annabeth found it oddly beautiful. The kind of beauty you can only see when you look at something through a frame, or lens- a charm in the painstaking design, in the preserved history, in the unapologetic collision of modernity with heritage, glass skyscrapers making way for gothic arrangements. The city was an iron skeleton holding up the burdens of a millions lives through a hundred years.
They’re sitting in the living room of Mr Wayne- or the Batman’s- safehouse, watching Percy line up weapons and tactical gear on the table like it’s any other Tuesday. In a way, she can see it in him too. The distinct mark of Gotham. The collision of the ancient with something energetically new.
Annabeth stares at the sword resting beside the mortal equipment. She wonders if she should ask where it came from. Percy certainly isn’t going to just tell her himself.
The crumpled freight bill from Medusa’s Emporium has been pinned to the wall. One look at the organized armory and she imagines this quest isn’t going to be typical in any sense of the word.
Tyler is still staring at one of the batarangs, looking like a kid who’d been told the moon wasn’t actually made of cheese.
“Your dad is Batman,” he says flatly. Percy flicks open a bo stick which extends forcefully in the air.
“Yes. He is.”
Tyler turns to her, pointing both hands at Percy. “His dad is Batman,” he emphasizes, like she might not have heard.
Annabeth rolls her eyes. “Obviously. Do you know you have eyes and ears to use them Tyler?”
Tyler scowls at her, “And when did you figure it out?”
Annabeth picks up a pair of nunchucks, examining the metal.
“I’ve known since I met him,” she says, with a nod to Percy.
Percy blinks in surprise, turning to her with betrayal in his features. “You what?”
“Normal people don’t test their drinks before having them. Or don’t fight the minotaur on their first day at camp. Or don’t have a bullseye aim and be able to disarm Luke. Or can’t take out 4 other people and perform 3 types of martial arts in 20 seconds,” she takes a breath. “And normal people just don’t come from Gotham.”
Tyler raises a brow. “Just say you’ve had your eye on him.”
Annabeth scowls. “I can’t help being observant.”
Percy crosses his arms. “Okay but a weird kid to a Gotham Vigilante is still a jump.”
At least he didn’t deny being weird. She shrugs. “Every kid in the Athena cabin has a Justice League Hero they fixate on. So far we’ve found the identities of Wonder Woman, Martian Manhunter and Green Lantern. I chose Batman. It was only a matter of connecting the dots after I had my suspicions. A man can only have a skiing accident so many times.”
Percy squints at her. “Just my luck you chose Batman. Why not Superman?”
Annabeth purses her lips. “All the other leaguers have powers. Batman’s just… rich, sure, but his real power is his mind.”
Percy sighs. “Of course you knew. I don’t know why I expected any less.”
Annabeth crosses her arms. “Why else do you think I was so adamant about hiding the demigod stuff from him? What I admire about your father is also what I fear Percy. He doesn’t like not knowing stuff.”
“Bruce wouldn’t put children at risk,” defends Percy.
Annabeth shakes her head. “Not intentionally, but once the information is out there? Once there’s a record, no matter how benign? It opens us up for exploitation. Demigods have survived this long precisely because the least people that can know about it know.”
Tyler sits down, sinking into the sofa. “Not like we survive long anyways.”
“Hey, wait a second. If you knew this whole time,” Percy starts, pointing at her, “You laughed at Kingfisher on purpose!”
Annabeth isn’t fast enough reeling in her smile. “Is it true you locked yourself in a dumpster?”
Percy pinks. “The dumpster shouldn’t have been there in the first place!”
“And you say I’m the stupid one.”
“Don’t give me that, Mr. Are There Two Bruce Wayne’s In Gotham!”
Annabeth snorts. “In his defense, Tyler had other priorities whilst the Batman hugging you thing was going down.”
Tyler gives her a look. “I did. Eating fries is a crime now?”
Percy sighs and sits next to her. “What are your priorities now? Coming with or taking your chances here? Let me tell you, in Gotham, sometimes it feels like existence is a crime.”
Tyler looks at him. “Why have you switched up?”
Percy sniffs. “I’d like the world to exist in 10 days. I do live in it after all.”
“After all the talk about how it could survive without you?” the boy asks, skeptical.
Annabeth watches Percy herself, wondering what changed. What got him up at 2:45am in the middle of the night and made him race down to the Narrows of all places?
Percy's eyes tighten around the edges. “I had a dream," he confesses.
He turns to Annabeth like he's waiting for her to call him crazy.
"What did you see?" she asks instead.
"Two men fighting. Poseidon and Zeus, I think. Zeus thinks Poseidon stole the bolt."
Annabeth purses her lips. "I knew it," she says. "It is the bolt."
She stands up, pacing. "If Zeus, thinks Poseidon took it- gods, this is worse than I thought. A war between two of the Big Three," she turns to look at both of them in the eyes. "That could spend the end of the civilisation, itself."
Percy and Tyler share a glance, something unspoken passing between their gazes. Then Percy cuts off the stare. "There was another thing. A voice, from below. Someone calling me down."
"A voice?" she asks. "What did it sound like?"
Percy shrugs. "Evil."
That wasn't very helpful. But evil and from below...
"Hades," Percy suggests at the same time Annabeth says, "The Lord of the Dead."
"Why can't we ever go up against the Lord of Sunshine and Rainbows?" sighs Tyler. "Are we sure? Can we guess again?"
"No. It makes sense," says Annabeth. "Think about it. The god in the West. Who do we know is in the west?"
They all look up to the freight bill at the same time. Tyler sighs despondently. "Yay."
Percy stands with a faux-cheerful clap. "Right. Now that we've figured that out," he walks over to the duffel he brought. It’s filled with black clothes.
He tosses a pair to each of them. “If we’re leaving, we need to evade the Justice league. That’s stealth-wear. Fair warning, I can offer you the attire but the skills don’t come with them.”
Annabeth unfolds the clothes, feeling the material. Kevlar weave. And there’s a pair of glasses inside the bundle.
“What’s this?” she asks.
“Anti-surveillance tech. It’ll stop face-rec from picking us up.”
“We’re gonna look like the Men In Black,” Tyler comments.
“So you’re coming?” Percy asks, raising a brow. “Cus I remember something about leaving in a week.”
“What the heck, I might as well. I’d like to see you fail your quest in high definition.”
Annabeth huffs. “You’re both pretty boys, will you stop arguing?”
Percy turns towards the wall. “Fine. What’s the plan, Wise Girl?”
Annabeth picks up her notebook and walks up beside him, ripping out a page and adding it to the wall.
“Diplomacy.”
She turns to Percy. “You have any experience talking down aggressors?”
Percy smirks, “A stroll through Gotham will get you that.”
She nods. “This might be a little harder. We go to Hades, request the bolt, convince him a war isn’t in his best interests. Then return it to Zeus.”
She considers for a bit before scribbling something down and adding another page. “Three tickets for three days. A connection in Chicago. From what I remember, that’s the fastest route.”
“The Amtrak won’t hide us from Batman,” Percy reminds. “We need something less obvious.”
He stares at the wall, thinking. She got the strangest feeling he wasn’t completely on board with the plan. That there was a parallel thread running in his mind. Why did Percy pick up the freight bill anyways, if he hadn't planned on going on the quest?
“Zeta,” he says, finally, cutting through her musings.
“What?”
He turns to them, meeting their eyes. “Zeta Tube. Justice League teleportation device, straight to LA. We can finish the quest with time to spare.”
Annabeth can’t help her spark of intrigue. “Teleportation device? How does it work? Atomic re-configuration or the exploitation of subspatial planes?”
Tyler puts a hand to his chin, looking into space. “Wouldn’t it make more sense to use a device that could warp space-time? Atomic reconfiguration would have a high rate of failure I’d suspect, which would be dangerous during experimentation.”
Percy blinks at them. “Are you speaking in English?”
Annabeth sighs, deciding to move on. “Right. So teleportation devices. If the JLA owns it, won’t we be giving them a big red flag that says ‘COME FIND ME’?”
Percy shakes his head. “I can crash the system after we use it. Not something that could stump Bruce for very long, but enough to give us a headstart. He wouldn’t be expecting it, not from me.”
His voice quiets a little at the end there and Annabeth wonders if she should reassure him but she doesn’t know what to say. Don’t worry, betraying your father is a rite of passage? She’d certainly feel no lost love in throwing her father under the bus, if push came to shove.
“Okay. I’m assuming there’s one in Gotham then?”
Percy nods. “But that wouldn’t give us a headstart. Bruce can get there easily. We have to take one further down. Then we get out at the Premiere Building and I’ll upload a system shutdown virus. It’ll keep the alerts from going off for a few hours and by then we’ll be in the Underworld.”
“If everything goes to plan,” says Tyler.
“Sure. That’s what we’re aiming for.”
“From LA to Underworld to Empire State,” outlines Annabeth. “What could go wrong?”
Percy looks out of the windows, where Gotham stares back, amber streetlights and dark sky. If you tilted your head at the right angle, you could make out the edges of the Batsignal through the clouds.
Tyler follows his gaze. “We really are going on the quest, then.”
“Can I say it now?” Annabeth asks.
Percy turns to her. “What?”
“I told you so.”
“Whatever, Chase.”
He’s smiling as he says it though, fair acceptance of his defeat.
Even prideful that she is, Annabeth can admit she doesn’t feel good about winning this challenge.
Percy ends up wearing his Kingfisher suit underneath a lead-lined vest, then pulls his sweater and flight jacket on top of it all. Supposedly to stop Superman from hearing his heartbeat, because he wouldn’t put it past Batman to make his friend memorise it after the kidnapping. Annabeth’s just wondering if having lead that close to skin is healthy.
Looking at the knitted turtle on his top, you were more likely to mistake him for some old woman’s soft, perfect, grandchild- not a pre-teen armed to the teeth.
“None of that’s going to work against monsters,” she reminds.
He twirls a smoke canister with a smirk. “There aren’t only the Greek kind of monsters out there, Annabeth.”
Tyler looks all too happy with the mace he’s been given.
“Why does Batman even have that?” she asks distastefully. “It’s not his style.”
Percy shrugs. “Preparation. He makes us train with household tools sometimes. I did a training exercise where I had to beat him with nothing but a bookshelf and a bedsheet in the room.”
“How did you do it?” she asks, curious, as they descend via fire escapes. She hadn’t noticed it before but it’s obvious in the waiting night, how quiet Percy’s steps are. Especially in contrast to the hard creaking of Tyler’s attempt. Percy’s tread blends into the small sounds of the night, virtually inseparable from its ambience. He was hard to stalk too, even with the invisibility cap. She’ll admit, it fascinated her.
“I tried to trip him with the bed-sheets. And use the books as projectiles. At least until I could remove one of the shelves to knock him out.”
“You knocked out Batman?” Tyler asks, impressed.
Percy makes a vague sound, checking the roads and the skyline, before beckoning them forward, directing them through the dark.
“I had to hit a few vital points. I didn’t actually knock him out. Besides, it was training. Never met someone who knocked out Batman. Although Aunt Diana insists it’s happened.”
“Are you sure Batman’s going to be happy about you revealing all his classified training secrets?”
“What he doesn’t know won’t hurt him,” dismisses Percy, pulling up a map on his communicator.
A gunshot rings through the night and Annabeth flinches, grip tightening on her dagger as her heart rabbits in her chest.
Percy just looks a little annoyed.
“Turn around,” he orders. “That avenue’s out, the Bat will turn up now.”
He plays with his earpiece a little before letting out a curse. “Batman’s fighting Ivy. Robin’s in Tricorner.”
He looks between the road where the gunshot came from and the both of them standing there.
“Go,” Annabeth tells him.
Percy pulls off his coat and sweater and runs.
Annabeth catches them, looking down into the eyes of the turtle.
“Can we watch the fight?” Tyler asks, looking hopeful.
Annabeth sends him a look.
They end up running after Percy.
No one is dead, is the first thing she observes, and is grateful for. She’s seen the walls in this city, traced the boulevards with her eyes. Some of the stains had been unmistakable.
She pulls Tyler with her to kneel beside the gargoyle on the opposite roof as they look down on the altercation.
Percy is unequivocally different in his home turf. Even more so in his suit.
He walks onto the scene like someone who knows the story will wait for him to play his role, dark blue-white domino stark against his face.
It’s a girl, on the floor. Maybe a child, maybe just about an adult. It’s also a girl standing opposite, hand white around the grip of a pistol that couldn’t possibly be standard. It’s been modded like a gaming console, electric blue, with a scope and a laser and frankly lots of things which were too flashy to be anything but superficial, especially on a pistol. Nonetheless, the smoking divot on the floor by the older girl’s feet was evidence that the gun worked well enough.
That was another thing. Annabeth is the last person to say women couldn’t fight- she’d fought against too many and fought herself too many times to even fathom it, but statistically, however it came about, violent crime was more likely to be committed by men. And one was more likely to attribute the role of the aggressor to the older person, with greater stature. Gotham flipped all those rules on their heads and slingshotted them out the window.
“Hey ladies,” says Percy, voice slipping into a more performative tenor. “Tough night?”
“Stay out of this, Kingfisher,” spits the armed girl.
Percy raises his hands. “Of course.”
He crosses his arms. “Please, carry on your conversation. Pretend I’m not here.”
The girl glares at him. Her hand twitches on the handle, like she can’t decide if she should shoot him or take his directions. She ends up taking them.
Percy himself has his heel bouncing lightly on the road. His body is tilted slightly sideways so he can watch the opening of the alley, and he occasionally sends a flash glance upwards like he’s waiting for Batman to descend on his back.
“You piece of crap,” the girl sneers. “I can’t believe you told him. I trusted you. All because he what? Called you pretty, cow?”
“Woah, hey, let’s tone it down with the name calling, yeah?” Percy interjects. The woman raises her gun at him again and he doesn’t blink, somehow managing to convey an unimpressed look through whiteout lenses. He turns away from the loaded gun- Tyler blows out a breath. “Is he stupid?” he asks, like he’s pretty sure the answer was no but his visuals weren’t helping confirm it.
Annabeth shrugs. “It’s working.”
And it was. The woman wasn’t pulling the trigger. Perhaps he could tell she wouldn’t through some vigilante instinct.
“All this over a man? Come on guys, you know the men aren’t worth it,” he chides, leaning down to help the other girl up.
“He’s mine!” screeched the gun woman. “He was supposed to be mine!”
“What’s so special about this dude,” Percy asks, leaning against the wall like he had all the time in the world even though he distinctly didn’t.
The girl with the gun starts tearing up. “He’s nice. And he’s sweet. And he’s perfect. And she took him from me!”
She shrieks and lunges forward.
Percy goes for the gun first, kicking it out of her grip and using his other leg to spin and get her across the gut. The woman tries to punch him but he catches her forearm with both arms and twists it behind her arm, slamming her against the wall. “Hey, hey, we were having a nice conversation there Jenny. Can I call you Jenny?”
“My name’s Valerie,” the girl sniffles.
“Oh. Okay. Hey, Val. How old are ya?”
“Sixteen,” the girl admits reluctantly.
“And how old is this guy?”
“Seventeen.”
Annabeth tenses suddenly putting her leg on the ledge. She doesn’t know what she was going to do. Jump off a building?
But the click of a gun safety turning off makes her hackles rise. The woman on the floor is holding the gun and aiming it at Valerie’s head.
Percy looks to the heavens. “Jenny, are we being serious?” he says, tilting his head a little.
“She was going to kill me,” the other woman defends.
“I’m trying to de-escalate,” he complains.
“Gilbert deserves better than you, Valerie,” the girl says, not lowering the gun. Percy drops who he’s holding for a few split seconds, stepping sideways and smacking the woman (Jenny?) right in the solar plexus with the ball of his foot. She doubles over, coughing and the gun’s barrel falls downward. He returns to Valerie, who’s only just turning around, and shoves her into the other woman, before cuffing them both together.
They look at him in utter betrayal. “What are you doing?”
Percy ignores them and cuffs Valerie’s ankle to the drain pipe. Then he zip-ties their free arms to the cuffs as well- which Annabeth suspected was more petty annoyance than for functional deterrence given the drain pipe looked stable enough.
“I think you guys need to have a long conversation about your feelings. Seriously. All this over a guy named Gilbert?”
He pulls the unnamed woman’s phone out of her pocket, dialling a number.
“Hello, this is the GCPD. What’s your emergency?”
“I got two women here by Hardy street, Narrows. Gun altercation. Weapon’s been neutralized.”
“Um. Neutralized how?”
“I broke it. And stole the bullets.”
“... Is this the Kingfisher?”
Annabeth wonders how often the GCPD’s had similar phonecalls to narrow it down to the right vigilante in two answers.
“Just a good Samaritan,” deflects Percy. “Come get your order whilst it’s hot.” Then he cuts the line and throws it at a seething Valerie.
“I’ll be disappointed if you find a way to kill each other whilst waiting for the cops,” he warns them. Then dusts off his hands and leaves.
“I hate you!” shouts Valerie, at his retreating form.
“Shut your face, Val,” spits the other woman.
Percy doesn’t turn, just raises his hand as he keeps walking. “Thanks Jenny.”
He beelines straight for their building and then looks up, a certain confident flush to his skin that she hadn’t seen since the fight with Clarisse.
“You guys know how to get down?” he calls. Annabeth huffs and goes to leap onto the next building, which has a convenient outdoor step rail.
She jumps the last few steps and knocks Percy in the shoulder.
“Aren’t you a cool one?”
He scratches his neck, still grinning. “Being Kingfisher just hits different.”
Annabeth laughs. “I can see that.”
Tyler joins them on the road. “I see why people don’t connect your identities now,” he says.
“Haha,” says Percy. “It’s not an insult if it’s intentional.”
“Mhm. Could have used that confidence when you were screaming at the Oracle.”
“Because jumping on the sofas was so helpful.”
Annabeth throws his clothes at him. “I’m not coming on the quest if I have to play chaperone.”
Percy finds his way out the sweater, giving a sloppy salute. “Yes ma’am.”
“Sorry, ma’am,” Tyler adds with a grin.
Annabeth sighs. She was going to have to restock her well of patience for this one.