The New Avenger

Luck

Percy's POV:

I can feel the boys gaze on the back of my neck. I can feel him watching this moment, this moment that I'm not ready for. Part of me wants to turn around, ask him what he's looking at. Except I can't. I won't. Because I've been gone a long time, to long. Way to long. Sometimes you change and that's alright. This change though? This is a bad change. This is a coldness and a darkness that comes with the job. Knowing without a shadow of a doubt that if the evil in the world could get organized for two seconds they could crush us under their heel. 

Before I'd left last time my mom could see right through me. If I was lying or if I was telling the truth, if I was  alright or if I was upset, if things were really going to be okay or if I was just saying that. But that was before I met Lupa, before I changed. Now I can hide anything and I'm not sure that's a good thing.

Actually I do. I do know it's  bad thing. It's not something I change though, or at least not something I should change. My mom has been through enough without me causing her more problems. So I have to hide, hide how I've changed and hide why I've changed. That;s something my mom doesn't need to know, doesn't want to know. Nobody in their right mind would want to know about that.

But then door swings open. it might be my imagination but I'd swear the place already smells like home. Except there, framed in the doorway, stand my mother. Older, more grey in her hair, more lines on her face, more beautiful than any goddess. 

For a moment she just stands there, staring at me.  I do the same, trying to remember the last time I saw her, the last time we spoke. The her hand flies to her mouth, a sob still escaping. 

"My baby." She murmurs, taking those two steps towards me. Wrapping her arms around me. Falling into me. Me falling into her. It's been so long. To long. It wasn't Hera's place to do this to her, to do this to us.

She did though. It's our job now to pick up whatever pieces of ourselves might be left and pretend it's the whole thing. Safe here in my mothers arms though it seems like wholeness isn't really that far away. 

Safe in my mothers arms I just sort of lose it. For the first time since the Giant war I let myself cry. Instead of trying to fight the tear, I let them flow. She's crying too. Even though I'm almost a foot taller than her now, even though I'm practically an adult, even though I've avoided her for months, I let the tears flow into my moms shoulder. She lets me. So we stand like that. 

I let this moment anchor me, the here and the now.  Not looking back is hard, sometimes its like I'm reliving it all. But right now all I see is right here, right now. Its a relief. When my mom finally leads me inside I don't want to let go of her. It's as if she might be made of smoke, here one moment, gone the next. Of course, that isn't true, she's the only thing that hasn't disappeared. As I sink down on the couch I brace myself, because I will have to look back. Sure, what I'm going to tell her will be an extremely watered down, non-scary version, but I'll still have to look back. Backwards is hard. Sometimes, forwards is harder.

"What happened to you Percy?" My mom asks the dreaded question.

"In short," I try to start but my mom interrupts.

"No Percy, not in short." 

"Well you know Hera," My mothers says some very unladylike words under her breath, "She decided that the only way to save the world from Mother Earth was to unite the two groups of demigods, Greek and Roman, so she picked each of the camps leaders and swapped them. Of course, she didn't really tell anyone about this and she wiped both our memories but her intentions were good, I guess.

"Anyhow, in New Rome, which is exactly what it sounds like, I met these guys, Frank and Hazel. Frank's a son of Mar's but a legacy of Neptune and can turn into a dragon and other cool stuff. Hazel's a daughter of Pluto, you know, the god of Death but also riches under the earth. Except she was born in 1928 and died in 1942 and was dead until Nico brought her back to life a little while ago." I can see my mom about to ask a question but I stop her, "That not important right now. Anyway, we went on a quest to Alaska, were I drank some gorgons blood to help me regain my memories, which is when I called you. Except at that point we realized that Hera was actually right and that Mother Earth was going to basically destroy the world unless we stopped her. So then we joined up with Annabeth, Jason, the Roman guy. He's really nice, and Thalia's full blooded brother. Well, sort of. They have the same mom but Thalia's dad is Zeus and Jason's dad is Jupiter. It's confusing. Then there's Leo, who's a son of Hephaestus. Basically a Latino elf who loves playing pranks and can control fire. Trust me, not a good combination. And Piper, whose the nicest daughter of Aphrodite in the universe but can also make you do anything she asks.