Chapter Text
Percy was seven when it all happened, when everything began.
Back then he had still been going to public school, his mom hadn’t thought to send him to boarding school just yet as the schools around their apartment were still taking him. Back then the monsters still stayed away for the most part. He was tiny then, as all children should be, but much too small for his age. No monster would look at him and deem him worth the effort of killing that he should be, not when one could easily see his bones through the nonexistent baby fat.
His mother was working just as much as ever back then, as many jobs and as many shifts as she could manage to keep herself and Percy afloat, as Gabe refused to do anything to help. Maybe if she had known what was to come she might have stayed home for that shift the night that it all started, maybe things would have ended kinder for them both if she had. Maybe things would have ended worse.
Percy would never know, and over the years he would lose the care to want to.
The past was not something that he could change after all.
Percy had just gotten home from school that day when Gabe had stormed towards the door the second that it had closed, the stench of alcohol radiating off of him despite it barely even being four o’clock that day.
Typical.
The large man grabbed the too small boy roughly by the meat of his arm, pushing the child up against the door that he had just come through as he held on with a bruising sort of grip. The young green eyes only went wide for a moment at the action before settling into something much too resigned for the years attached to the child.
“Got any money on you, brat?” The man that was supposed to be his step father asked, the words much too familiar to the boy.
The defiant gaze in the child’s eyes was much too familiar to the man.
“What do you think?” The younger of the two asked in turn, looking up at the monster before him with all the rage of the sea itself on its worst of days. It was the sort of loathing far beyond the child’s years.
The hit that came then, fiery and hard enough to make the boy’s head move to the side, hard enough that Percy would surely had fallen to the ground if Gabe had not been holding him up in the punishing grip that he was.
It would bruise.
Percy would say that he got in a fight with an older kid on the way home.
His mom would believe him because the alternative was not something that she could accept.
It was a song and dance that they had done far too many times before.
“Money,” the man growled like a monster just barely continued in human skin, holding out his free hand to the boy in a demand. It was enough.
Percy reached into his pocket and pulled out the meager amount of bills and coins that was within it, hardly anything at all, nothing worth what had just been done.
“There we go, ya just had to be a smart mouth didn’t yah?” The man asked as he finally let the boy go, counting through the bills that he had in his hand as if they meant much.
Percy knew that it wasn’t even enough to buy cheap beer from the corner store, that his step father had only done this to make himself feel powerful. Percy thought that this was somehow worse than him just wanting the money for money's sake.
“Remember, this is our little secret, yeah?” The man asked, leaning down much too close as he does so, his fist balled up at his side. “If it's not then I'll just have to knock your lights out, and maybe do the same to that whore mother of yours too.”
And even at the young age of seven, Percy would rather the hits lay across his skin than hers, so he nods as if this is a normal sort of promise to keep, because for him it was.
Gabe smiles then, something much too wide and cruel for a human to wear, and nods as well. “Alright, brat, go to your room then.”
And Percy? He doesn’t need to be told twice, not for this at least.
Percy’s room was small and smelled of beer even though he had only ever drunk the stuff on nights when the man that his mother had married was feeling particularly vindictive and made him do so because he found the reaction much too amusing to care about the liquor wasted on someone that was only going to throw it up.
There wasn’t much in the room either, just a mattress on the floor with no bed frame to it, some sketches taped on the walls, the clothes in the closet, and the stash of money that boy had been gathering in a zip lock bag in the space beneath a loose floorboard under his bed. There wasn't much in the bag, maybe forty bucks at the most, but he always stashed away what he could for field trips and things of the like. It was easier for everyone involved when he did so, a few skipped meals weren't going to kill him just yet.
He was sitting on his floor, homework papers scattered around him in something of a semicircle of paper and books and as he switched between one subject and another when the words began to swim a little too much, when he heard the front door open sometime later. He listened silently then, but the silence truly wasn’t needed as so many people began stumbling in, drunk and loud. Percy thinks about the options that he has right then, the things that he could do, and settles on one of the best and worst options that he has.
Scrambling just a bit, Percy moves silently up from his spot on the floor and lots up the thin mattress and the floorboard beneath it, grabbing the money stashed inside. He wouldn’t dare leave it to one of his step father’s rampages, with his luck the asshole would actually find it then. All that was left in his school bag right then was the sketchbook that his mom had gotten him when he started to see the things that weren’t there, the creatures that flew through the skies and roamed the streets but were gone the next time that he looked.
The next time that the front door opens and loud steps make their way inside, Percy opens the window to the fire escape right along with it, slipping outside onto the metal with nothing but the bag on his back and the book and money hidden inside of it. He knows that he’ll be found out soon enough, and that when he is he’ll pay for not being there to cater to their every need and whim during the poker games, but his skin was already throbbing like a second heartbeat in more place that one - the colors darkening there as the bruises already were starting to form - he didn’t want to stay and have to figure out just how much more his body could take.
Percy’s feet hit the concrete on the ground below only a minute or so later, and he swears that he can hear the sound of a door slamming from high above.
There is still daylight out when Percy starts walking through the streets of Manhattan, uncaring of just where he was heading but knowing even at seven that staying still would be something of a death sentence in a city like his. There had been a few too many straying gazes during his walks home for him to not know this. So, he stays to the areas that he knows then - even if they are becoming fewer and fewer still the more that he walks - and ducked quickly into alleys if he felt eyes on him for too long.
It takes a small while, maybe an hour or two, but darkness soon falls over the city and even then he doesn’t have it in him to stop or to try to go back to the apartment that night. He knows that he wouldn’t be allowed back inside the apartment that night after having snuck out. So he lets his legs keep carrying him forwards even as the ache and burn like some sort of avenging god was taking their anger out on him, and walks with the intention of finding a park if he could. He was still small enough that he could sleep in the bushes there till morning and then find his way back to the apartment in the morning, and then sneak in while Gabe is still passed out drunk.
(He didn’t let himself think about the fact that he had wandered so far since he left that he no longer knew where he was, that he very well might not even be in Manhattan anymore at all. He could find a map and make his way back. He would have to)
It’s a while more before he finds a park, a long while more of walking farther and farther away from the streets that he knew as the buildings around him blended just a bit too much in the dark of the night. It’s when he sees the park, just on the other side of the street - so close and yet too damn far - that he notices the thing following him.
He couldn’t quite see it clearly in the dark of the city at night, the thick clouds blocking out the moonlight, later he would wonder if this was by design. He wouldn’t learn the name of the thing - the monster - before him until later when he was older and had already learned of so many other creatures that this one hardly meant a thing at all.
It’s a green monster, almost sickly so, with sharp teeth looking to tear its prey apart and dye the cloak draped around it red with the blood of those that it had turned into one of the fallen.
Percy wished that he could say that he was still with fear as he stared up at it as the creature drew ever closer with a sword in hand. He truly did. But as he stared up at the being before him something like resignation settled into his bones, as if he knew that death was coming for him no matter what he wanted for life to do. He knew that he would never be able to outrun the thing on his weakened legs, and with its greater height even the thought seemed exhausting.
“Sorry, mom,” is all that the boy thought to say as he closed his eyes for what should have been the last time.
It wasn’t.
Amos and Julius Kane didn’t get to see each other all that often now that they were adults and each had their own responsibilities to attend to. Julius had two children at home, a five year old and a three year old that was just barely out of the terrible twos, and Amos had the Brooklyn House and all of the trails that it came with to care for, so when they did carve out time for one another it was often while doing something else at the same time. Though that wasn’t to say that hunting creatures, demons, wasn’t a fun pastime for the pair, sibling rivalry would always be a thing and that was a good way in which to do it.
All thoughts of competition go out the window though when there are others in danger, especially when that other is a child standing before a Red Cap as if waiting for it to kill him, his eyes closed in acceptance.
All it takes is a glance for the siblings to know what to do then.
They each move quickly then, like lighting, as Julius reaches out a hand into the air before him and pulls out a silver blade from seemingly nowhere at all, as Amos moves around the fair creature and goes to the child instead, placing himself between the creature and the boy.
The fight that follows doesn’t last long, if one can even call it a fight at all.
Distracted by the appearance of Amos, the Red Cap doesn’t notice the magician standing behind him, a blade running itself clean through the creature before it can make so much as a move at the pair.
When Percy opens his eyes once more, it’s to the vision of two men that he had never seen before.
The brothers look between each other and the child before them, all three of those present wondering just what they should do.
Logically, Percy knew that he should run, it was the smart thing to do when placed before two strange adults in the middle of the night that you did not know. But he had the feeling that they had just saved his life right then, that didn’t seem like something that someone who is a threat to him would do. So, he bites back his instincts and stays put.
The brothers were having a very different sort of whispered crisis.
The pair took a moment to look at the child before them, to peer at the state that the boy was in. There were bruises on his skin, fresh ones and only. Some of the marks were already overly defined despite how young they seemed, the shape of a large hand making itself known on the arm of much too tight skin. The blooming bruise on the boy’s jaw seemed to have been made by a hand of much the same size.
“We can’t take him in,” Julius whispered in a quiet sort of voice, no matter how much it hurt him to do so. Even the thought of something like this showing up on one of his kids made him want to kill most of those before him. “Look at the direction that he was coming from, you know that he is likely one of theirs.”
A child of the Greek gods.
Both of the brothers could all but feel the power radiating off of the small frame before them, the sort of pure power that only came from being as closely related to the gods as one could be without being a minor one yourself.
“If they were to find out that we stole one of their young…” the older brother starts, his words trailing off because the imagination was answer enough for the words left unsaid.
It would mean war between the Pantheons, this Amos knew.
“There are a lot worse things out there than mythical monsters,” is what Amos says in turn, knowing himself to be right. “What does their wrath matter if he never even lives to see that camp of theirs?”
And wasn’t that a question?
Julius takes a moment to look at the boy before them, to look into the sea green eyes that were studying him as if waiting to see if one of them would lash out now that the greater threat was gone. It was a calculating sort of look that soldiers wore before going into a fight, trying to see how much damage they would take. The bruises, the gaze, all of it was something that no one so young should be wearing.
“Let’s at least explain everything to him first,” Julius concedes, his younger brother nodding at the statement. “Then we ask, and if he says no then we help him back home and set up some charms while we’re there.”
Percy meets their gazes as they both turn to look at him fully then. He hadn’t heard much, but he had heard the word explain and that was enough for him to stay a few moments longer. Because right now he knew that the monsters that he had been seeing for a while now were real, and he really would like to know how.
Amos looks down at the boy and thinks about how to phrase it all, deciding for a more blunt approach. “The gods from all the old stories are real, and you are a child of one of them, most likely a Greek god,” the man says, quick and succinct.
Percy looks up at the man with suspicion clear in his gaze. “Say I believe you,” the boy started, his voice clear with disbelief because no one outright believes such a thing like that even with the proof of it having died right before you, especially not when you were so used to seeing things like that, “what does this have to do with anything?”
It's Julius that chooses to answer this time. “Because you are a demigod or something of the like,” the older man starts, the lecture something of a familiar one, even if the terms used were a bit different, “monsters can smell you and will come after you more and more as you grow older, especially if you are as powerful of a demigod as you seem that you might be.”
And Percy decidedly does not like the sound of that.
“Let me ask you this, child,” Amos starts once more, “do you happen to live with someone very disgustingly human? Someone that could mask any normal scent even by mortal standards?”
It was such a strange question to ask, but the way that the child touches his arm subconsciously, as he looks anywhere but the appendage itself, is answer enough long before he ever nods his head.
“Your parent likely knows what you are,” the younger magician continues, his voice not unkind but still very factual as he speaks. “They likely stay with this person because it covers your scent. A love for you and not for them.”
Percy can't help the guilt and resentment that rises up within him then in nearly equal measure.
“It really is my fault then,” the boy says in what is meant to be a whisper, but in the quiet of the night it is heard all too clearly by the two adults.
“It's not,” Julius is quick to reassure, because truly it wasn’t. There were other things that his mortal parent could have done to keep the boy safe, many of them just involved sending the kid away, something that they didn’t seem all that willing to do. “It's just how worlds like ours work. But if you are to stay with them, then they would need to stay as well to keep both of you safe.”
Percy touches the bruises once more as the words settle heavily in his mind.
“If?” The boy asks, catching onto the word quick. “What would happen if I were to go with the two of you, cause that's what you’re getting at, right?”
And Amos smiles at that, reminded that a child’s mind is always quicker than anyone wants to give them credit for.
“You would be trained somewhere safe,” the magician answers then, honest and true, “but you won’t be able to go home again until you’re able to handle monsters on your own.”
He doesn’t say that this is because his mortal parent would likely leave the person that they are with right now once the boy had been gone for so long. He doesn’t have to.
Percy thinks about it for a moment, looking at the place where the monster once stood only a few moments before. He can’t help the guilt that creeps up within his chest at the knowledge that his mother was only living with Gabe, that they were only in the position that they were with that man, for his own protection. It’s a cruel thing for a child to have to learn. But at the same time he couldn’t help but feel a small amount of resentment for her choosing Gabe and staying with him knowing what kind of person he was. He couldn’t help but think that it was unlikely that every parent of a demigod brought an abusive asshole into their home, with their child. He didn’t know what other options had existed for her out there, but he knew that the option before him was better than that.
For them both.
“Alright,” Percy says then, his voice small with age, but strong in the way that only a true Greek soldier could be.
The pair smile down at the boy, calculations of how they could possibly go about this without being killed running through each of their minds, as something entirely different runs through Percy’s own.
Percy thought that he likely wouldn’t be going back to his mother again. Bot as a son at least. He thought that he might just love her enough to stay away.
—
Life with Amos Kane in Brooklyn House was nothing like how Percy had lived for so long until then. He spent his mornings learning the things that he would have in school, math and history and science and English, along with the other sort of things that he likely would never have touched.
It only took about a week or two before Greek was placed before the boy for the first time in his new home, a children’s book of the watered down versions of the myths though they were all written in Ancient Greek. The boy had no idea where the other had gotten it, but he found that he could not have cared less as he opened it and the words didn’t swim on the page before him for the first time in his life. He thought that his worksheets likely would have been switched to Greek as well if Amos actually knew how to read it. Instead he was sled to complete them in English still, but was given a new book every week or so in the Ancient language to read from when his mind needed a reset.
Along with Greek, there were other languages that were taught to him starting in the early days. It took a lot less persisting than he had thought that it would to make Amos agree to teaching him hieroglyphics as well, the symbols much kinder on the Greek’s mind than the English was. Percy wanted to be able to read from some of the artifacts and old books that passed through the Nome just as his adoptive father did, no matter how twisted the information might be for a seven year old.
One flash too many of green eyes was enough to make the magician cave, carving out time with it as he added them both learning Latin together along with it.
It didn’t take Percy very long to piece together the existence of the Roman gods as well with that last addition, especially when Amos had him going over the differences between Greek and Roman personalities more and more as he got older, as if there was some sort of shift in the air that would one day make it a good thing to know beyond just the ways in which current human beliefs shaped the personalities of the gods and monsters of old.
He knew that there likely was.
The nights were spent training with weapons, Percy taking to it as if he were always meant to hold a blade in his hand. Amos didn’t have any of the traditional Greek weapons to give the kid, nor any ways of procuring one that would actually fit the needs of a demigod, but he did the best with what he had, bringing in skilled members from the House of Life to teach Percy on the weekends when they could with a straight bronze sword, having Percy practice on his own against dummies during the weekdays.
There were a few people that had raised a brow at the boy and his adoptive father when it had been the straight bladed weapon that Amos had wanted Percy taught in rather than that of the more popular Khopesh, but they had known better than to ask. Besides, Amos had brought in others on those weekend days too to teach the kid how to use a Bo staff so that Percy might have more reach should there be a fight that he finds that he needs it.
(A flash of a triton would come to his mind many years later as he watched as Percy spun around the training room with the weapon spinning through his hands just as naturally as a sword ever did. He would know then that this was the right choice, even if it brought the boy a bit thin at the beginning)
Amos largely let the boy do whatever he liked during the hours left between those two blocks of time, and on the weekends when the trainers had left. ADHD left the boy with a constant need to move, so Amos wasn’t all that sucrose when the boy started taking up solitary sports whenever he couldn’t wrap Khufu into learning a new one other than basketball (1 v 2 dodge ball had been an experience that Amos had refused to repeat with the pair, though he doubted that it went away altogether even if the number was more even now).
This need for movement and something to do was how Amos ended up finding himself at a skate shop one day with a eight year old Percy that had watched an anime on the sport and decided that he had to try it. It was also how he ended up at a skate park a few weeks after that once the boy had gotten the hang of riding the thing through the training room without falling even as he did some of the simpler tricks.
The first day that the pair make it to that skate park they are the only two there, the place empty of all of the other children that might have usually been filling it as it was a school day. Percy smiles then before taking off on the board, bright and so much more carefree than it ever was in those beginning days when they had first found the boy and Amos had taken him in, and makes his way over to the bowl, having wanted to try the thing ever since he had heard of it.
As he watched, Amos found himself wishing that they had brought the knee pads and things of the like as Percy tipped into the waterless pool without so much as a warning as the magician's heart nearly stopped. He watched as the boy made it to the other side of the bowl just fine, knees bent just as they were supposed to be from all of the videos that he had watched from inside the safety of Brooklyn House, but it was when he tried to turn that things went wrong, the board sliding out from beneath him as it didn’t move quite right.
Amos moved quickly then from where he had been standing, down into the bowl where the boy had crashed, water bottle in hand. He didn’t know if it would do much good for the way that Percy had managed to skin both hands on the way down but he figured that it wouldn’t hurt to wash away some of the dirt and blood now till they could get back home and clean it properly. He knew that it would be some time before they got to do that, as Percy was likely already ready to try again, crazy fool that he was.
“You know the drill, it’s gonna sting,” the man says as he unscrews the cap and Percy holds out both hands to him with a good natured roll of his eyes.
“Aren’t you supposed to say that this hurts you more than it hurts me?” The boy asked, a worrying sort of phrase that he should not know yet but he did, had likely heard the words pointed at himself more than once before.
“Nope, this hurt is all yours,” Amos replied, pushing down the spark of anger at the people that had raised the kid before, and pouring the water over the blood that had gathered atop the raw skin.
He had expected Percy to flinch then, the kid always did when they wiped alcohol over the cuts, but the reason for his flinching and Amos’s wide eyes had nothing to do with any pain that might be occurring. Instead the pair watched as the skin knitted itself back together before their eyes, something that should have taken weeks for it to do on its own.
Amos has a pretty good idea of who Perry's godly parent is then, even if it was only a hunch.
From then on Percy adds training his water control onto the list as well, he finds this one to be the most fun.
Amos finds it to be the most terrifying.
—
There was water swirling through the air as Percy fought the two brothers, a storm that was not his own crackling about the ten year old’s head as his dad moved on one side of him, Uncle Julius moving on the other, a wand in his hand. The magical weapon didn’t mean much when he was choking on the water invading his lungs that was made by no spell or curse, as Amos had been brought to his knees with a blade to his throat as his storm had been turned on him by the boy that he had raised. Julius found that he soon joined his brother on the ground, no longer having the strength or oxygen in his body to still remain standing just then.
Julius can’t help the way in which he looks up at the boy that so affectionately calls him Uncle with something akin to fear. The kid was only two years older than his own son and yet he didn’t know if Carter would ever be able to do such a thing like this. Didn’t know if Sadie would either, the girl soon to move to London with her grandparents as she was. It was why he was here after all, to give her a goddess disguised as a cat before she could leave and be without his protection. As he looks up at the oldest of the three children that he called family, he couldn’t help but think that Percy had the eyes of a killer.
The way that the boy looked down at him then was cold and calculating as he watched the man choke on the water that he controlled. It was as if he knew just how close he was bringing the magician to death and didn’t mind pushing it a bit further.
Everything changes then when Amos hits the ground with his hand twice like a wrestler in a match, a clear sign of surrender.
Julius watches with wide eyes then as the likely son of Poseidon drops both the sword and his heavy gaze, turning instead to look at his Dad as the man rose to his feet and patted the kid on the head in praise for a sparring well done.
Percy lights up then like a little kid and it's like that coldness was never there at all.
Julius knew then that if the pantheons were to ever cross more than they already had with the boy before him having lived in the Twenty-First Nome for three years now, that he wanted his children fighting alongside the cousin that they didn’t know of yet, never against him.
—
Percy was in his room at Brooklyn House one day reading through one of the issues of Young Justice that he and Amos had been able to find in modern Greek for him. He couldn’t read it as smoothly as he could the ancient source of the modern language, but it was still leagues better than any attempt at English had ever been, when there was a knock at his door. He didn’t have to ask who it was, there were only two beings in the house that could knock in such a way and only one that ever bothered to, the other just dribbling a basketball outside his room until he came out of it. That method, while annoying for everyone, was much better than the time Khufu has walked in while he had been asleep and had tried to pass the ball to him, only for Percy to wake up as it hit him, instinctively using the water by his nightstand to rip it to shreds like a very pissed off Katara.
“Come in,” Percy calls out then as he closes the comic issue and sits up from where he had been laying on his stomach on the bed. The way that his Dad walks into the room makes him glad that he had. “Is it time?” The now twelve year old asks, his voice becoming more serious than it had been before.
“It is,” Amos answers, watching as his son nods and stands up from his bed, walking over to the bookshelf that held far more comics and manga than it did books on mythology.
The magician could never blame the demigod for that, when one was a walking myth in human skin it often grew boring to read of the sorties that you had already memorized by the time that you were eleven. Though, Amos had always been more of a Marvel fan himself as the boy had pulled him into it all.
On the bookshelf there was a black leather box decorated with golden paint, the designs a seamless mix of both Greek and Egyptian designs. When the demigod places it on his desk and opens it, he reveals a few bottles of a shimmering black ink that shone just a bit golden in the early summer light. He knew that school would likely be letting out any day now, even if he hadn’t set foot in one in years.
The demigod grabbed two bottles of ink from the box and the nice paint brush that was set aside just for this many months ago when they had first come up with the idea of it all, turning back to his father as the man motioned for them to sit down on the ground. They both do just that.
Once there, Percy hands over one of the vials of ink and the brush to the man, opening the other bottle for himself, as Amos sat a piece of paper down on the ground between them both, an image drawn on it by a careful hand.
“Pull your hair to the side, Percy,” Amos instructs even as he knows that the other is already doing so, this was something that they had gone over time and time again before ever thinking of attempting it.
Amos nods when the boy turns to bare his neck to his father, the man dipping the paint brush into the magical ink and bringing it to the young boy’s skin, painting a symbol on the neck of the other.
The ink is cool against Percy’s skin as it is brushed on, the demigod fighting the part of his brain that wants to force his skin to stay dry as it is layered on. It wouldn’t exactly help with what they wanted to do if he gave into such a thought. It’s not long before the magician is pulling away though, examining his work with a satisfactory nod.
It’s then that Percy raises his own hand as Amos pulls his own hair out of the way. The movement that the demigod makes then is quick and precise, practiced, as the ink rises up into the air and settles itself on his Dad’s neck with only a flick of the boy’s fingers and little more, an exact mirror of what now stained Percy’s own neck.
Without so much as a word being spoken at all, the ink on both of their necks shines a bright almost blinding sort of gold, like that of the desert beneath the Egyptian sun, before drying instantly on the skin, seeping into in a way that only could remove.
It was the image of the Egyptian Ankh.
The symbol for life.
“So I might always know,” Amos says then as he moves to stand
Percy smiles up at him then as he stands as well, and for a moment Amos sees the boy that he first found on the street, beaten and bruised, thrown around like common trash, angry and cold because he had to be. The teen before him now was still a bit colder than he likely would have been, more serious than any child should have to be, but he was free and would live to come back to him, and that is more than he ever could have asked for that night.
He just hoped that Camp didn’t change that as he watched as his son moved to pack for the summer away.