Thoughts Can Hurt || Percy & Avengers Crossover

Now Would Be a Good Time to Be Anyone but Me

[One hour after the phone call]

tw blood

Darkness, that's the first thing Percy registered. He evened out his breathing, not sure if there were any enemies nearby. He listened closely to the air around him, trying to determine what was going on. Hearing nothing, he opened his eyes.

Darkness.

Even with his eyes open, he couldn't see a thing. He panicked for a moment, before he realized it was probably just a... very dark room? He sat up and moved his hand around, trying to feel something. He breathed in sharply when his hand touched something wet and he slowly lifted it up to his nose. He smelled it and immediately wiped his hand off, trying to get rid of the creeping urge to barf.

Blood.

There was blood all over the floor and he didn't know whose it was.

Even worse, he didn't know if it had come from him.

He shivered and used the desk (it might have been a counter or a table, but desk sounded better at the moment) to stand up. He used the edge to guide himself to the wall, and then he slid his fingers along the wall. He looked for a door.

Well, felt, more like.

He stops when his fingers brush against something metal. He slowly feels along it, trying to determine if it's a switch or a lever. He hopes it's something that will turn the blasted lights on.

He freezes when the metal moves.

He knows it's metal.

He's worked with Leo enough to know what metal feels like.

He can feel the coldness radiating from it, and the divots in the metal. It chills him to the bone, because it's the same metal he felt along to get to the wall. His thoughts speed up and he tries to get himself under control but he can't get it out of his mind that it wasn't a desk he was feeling.

He lets out a shaky breath.

Metal does not—should not—move. Unless it's a dragon that is. But whatever he's touching is too small to be a dragon.

His brain finally catches up with his hand and he jerks it away like it was burnt.

A thousand thoughts fly through his head as he tries to figure out what's going on before the most prominent one catches his attention.

This is an arena, isn't it.

The blood on the floor is from the hundreds of other people brought in before him to face the metal... thing.

The experiment the woman who had him escort her was talking about—he was the latest in a long line of subjects, wasn't he?

A low sound fills the room and Percy backs away from... from whatever that thing, if it even... was a thing. It wasn't human, that much was sure. No human he'd ever met had ever made that sound.

No in-human, superhuman or... any human variant (heck even the things that weren't human, yet had intelligent thought, did not make sounds like that).

He was tempted to scream, yet he knew that would only draw its attention. Besides, his throat had long closed up due to fear.

He'd faced down the earth itself, and even it had not made him tremble so.

The sounds it made reminded him of the only other thing that made him freeze in fear.

Tartarus.

Surely... his captors hadn't captured Tartarus?

He brushed away the thought with a mental shake of his head. There's no way. Tartarus is locked away so far, so deep within the underworld, that he will never again see the light of day. Let alone a human. Besides, even if Tartarus had managed to escape his flesh prison, someone would have realized.