Family Habits ( Percy Jackson and the Avengers)

The Other Scars

Percy stomps back to his room and slams the door. Actually it is much more than a room, more like an apartment that takes up an entire floor all by itself. He pushes his back against said door and slides to floor, passing a hand tiredly over his face. He wants to call Alicia, but she doesn't know anything about his demigod life or the scars. She just knows about his parents and his uncle. As much as he has come to rely on her, he hasn't yet found the strength to tell  her about all that stuff. What if she gets hurt because he drags her into it?

His next thought is Annabeth, but that's impossible now. He doesn't know how it happened, but sometime after the war she started to pull away. It wasn't noticeable to the others at first, but from the first time she hesitated to meet his glance he could feel something crumbling. At the time he was still frantic to find his mom and then he turned around to find that suddenly the girl he loved wasn't there to support him. He had felt like he was falling. 

Now they don't even talk. Whenever he sees her at camp, she avoids him. He wishes he knew what happened. They went through Tartarus together. He thought they could persevere through anything.

Now here he is, panicking because a couple of people have seen his scars from the Pit and he has no one to turn to. Well he has the rest of his friends from Camp Half Blood, but that means getting her involved. What is he going to do? The white lines winding up and down his body obviously aren't from getting in high school fights and even saying that he was in a gang is a long shot. If they get too suspious and start asking the right questions, things will take a turn for the worse rather quickly. 

There is a knock on the door, startling him out of his thoughts. 

"Who is it?" he calls.

"It's Bruce, " Comes the response.

"Nice to meet you. I'm Percy." They've already met, but right now Percy is hiding behind his sarcasm as a voice in his head screams 'Don't let them figure it out! '

"Percy," Bruce sighs, sounding slightly annoyed. It is tiring dealing with Tony's catty remarks for so long and now Percy is just adding to that load. "I just want to talk."

"Cool. Talking's fun. How about .........Wheather's a bit annoying lately. Sucks for the fooballers I bet. Oh soccer too. They must have it -"

"Percy," he can hear a soft thump against the door. Probably Bruce banging his head as if that will change anything. "You know that's not what I mean."

Percy's jaw tightens. "What do you mean?"

"I just want to talk about where those scars came from. I know that they are not from fights..."His voice seems to die in his throat for a second before he can continue. "Percy, did someone abuse you?"

Percy lets out a short laugh without meaning too, his thoughts going sourly to Gabe Ugliano. Sure Gabe caught him once with a broken beer bottle, but other than that he never did more than hit Percy. Which he punched like a girl anyway, so the only harm it did was to his ego. No. That couldn't even be called abuse. Percy had called the man some pretty nasty things and he kinda asked for it. The one who was abused had been Sally.

When he doesn't answer Bruce speaks again. "It's okay if someone did. We can deal with it, have them sent to prison and get you some help."

"You don't have to worry. I wasn't abused," he responds rolling his eyes slightly. 'Nope. Just killed a few bat hags and brought down a whole lot of curses onto myself. Oops.' But no way is he telling anyone that. She is the only one who knows.

"Then what?" comes the curious voice. 

The whole door-making-him-shout thing is getting on Percy's nerves. He stands and swings it wide open to face Bruce, who looks startled. He raises an eyebrow. "I got into a fight with some bats." 

Not entirely a lie. Those winged old ladies, the arai, really did look like bats on steroids. However his answer just seems to frustrate Bruce. Wonder why?

"You're going to tell me you got those scars from bats?"

"Uh yeah. Pretty much. Those bats were a pain to feed. You would have thought they wanted to eat me," he says with a hand to his heart in mock horror. 

Bruce narrows his eyes and glares at Percy, who returns the look with a smirk. Yep. Sarcasm feels great after days of keeping to himself. Like a breath of fresh air after spending a couple days in hell. It just so happens Percy knows that feeling.

They are interrupted from more debate about bats when a loud voice says, "Perseus Jackson. Bruce Banner. It is good to see you."

Percy makes a small exasperated noise in the back of his throat and shoots the approaching Thor a menacing look. He hates the use of his full name, something the oversized muscle of a man doesn't seem to understand no matter how much he is told. Also Percy is wondering why Thor is on his floor of the building and not in the kitchen or somewhere else. 'Did he come just to bother me again?'

The blonde returns his look with a smile. So clueless sometimes. But then he sombers quite suddenly. "I have heard that you, nephew of Tony Stark, bear a great many scars."

Percy does the one thing he had never dared to do before in his life, something he has always believed below him, something too horribly demeaning to mention. He turns around with a groan, stomps into his "room" and slams the door as hard as he can just like a dramatic teenage brat (and he suspects Zeus) would do.

Inside he lays face down on the bed and mumbles things that probably shoudn't be typed into this story. ;) His head hurts even more than usual. Since coming home to find his apartment destroyed and missing the key ingredients of loving, caring parents he has gotten headaches nonstop. This one is building up to be a really bad one and he moans slightly as it beats on the back of his eyes as if it were a sledge-hammer-wielding Clarisse. The memories from Tarturus rush across his closed eyelids as he tries to come up with a story to erase the suspsion he knows is building in the Avengers. They are the last people that should know the truth. The only way this can get worse is if this gets leaked to the media.

So far Percy has tried to avoid the media, but still going to school and hanging out with his friends has made it hard. Not to mention he has cut himself off from anything Greek just to be on the safe side. Still his name seems to be everywhere. 

PERCY JACKSON; THE MYSTERIOUS NEPHEW OF IRONMAN!

It gets a tad bit annoying.

Suddenly a sharp pain errupts behind his eyes and he curls into a ball clutching his head. Too many thoughts. So many of them painful. His mom and Paul gone, likely dead. Annabeth cutting herself off from him. Tartarus. The cameras that seem to be everywhere, wanting to pry into his secrets. His nosy new uncle and apparently "extended family" (AKA the Avengers). Tartarus. Them finding out about his scars. Tartarus. Being cut off from camp. TARTARUS.

TARTARUS! 

TARTARUS!!

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Since we have seen Percy's physical scars I wanted to show his emotional ones too. I don't want this story to be all about him finding himself or about him being mentally broken. He isn't broken. He's just scarred and he has to learn how to deal with the ache. 

I'm going to make this story about cleaning up the mess after the Giant War and building new relationships. It's going to be based on the theme of moving forward, one step at a time. 

Or something like that. I'm writing as I go here.

Please vote, comment and maybe possibly follow me. 

Don't forget to check out my other stories. I'm thinking about doing a Percy Jackson/ Supernatural one. (yeah I'm on a Percy high and I have been for the last month) Think I can handle it?

*to the side is Thor ;)