Two weeks later.

"I don't understand." He furrowed his brows. It made absolutely no sense. None. Zip. Nada. Zilch.

The other mans lips quirked upward, sharing a quick moment of amusement with himself and himself alone. 

"Nothing you said made any sense, you are crazy." That seemed to amuse the other man even more, which made for an infuriating burn in his chest.

Then the other man spoke, voice smooth and words like acid, but like arsenic which was tasteless, colorless. Words that would kill you without a sign and with no mercy. "I have a feeling that you don't have room to talk in calling me crazy."

"Do you even know how many people you killed with your little rampage all over the city? And what? You plead that you were being controlled?" Loki's nostrils flared, which gave him more satisfaction then he was hoping for. "I'm sorry Mr. Malfoy, that Voldemort's whims were too strong."

It gave him even more satisfaction when Loki gave him a confused expression. He didn't know many pop culture references himself, but he was pretty sure Harry Potter was universal by now.

"I have no idea what you speak of, but I can tell you everything I spoke of was the truth. I was controlled by the Mad Titan with the mind stone's corruption. Now that my brother and his merry band of costumed glory seekers have the scepter, I am no longer under it's influence. Now that my brother thinks I am dead, no longer am I bound by any sort of man or stone."

"You destroyed the city, invaded aliens and killed hundreds, if not thousands, of people," He gritted his teeth for a moment before he yelled to loudly and caused them to be kicked out of the diner. "And for some goddamn reason my mother doesn't remember who I am."

Loki shifted in his seat. Good.

"She was too vulnerable, the Mad Titan has allies who can sift through memories and destroy everything you hold dear. That was for your safety along with your mothers. I did what I had to, to keep you safe." Loki trailed off.

Percy's eyebrows rose. He was still angry. He burned with it. A constant tug in his gut that made it feel like everything was wrong. Like he had stepped into an alternate reality where he was sitting in a café with a Norse god who was begging for his forgiveness for a reason which was still very unclear. Though, not much had changed, the only thing was that it was Norse this time.

"Please then, tell me why protecting me was so important in your impaired, mind controlled state where you can conveniently no longer be held against for your actions. Please I'd like to know." He practically growled.

Acting particularly ungodly, he slumped in his seat and taken a large gulp of the ice water placed on table. A bead of condensation traveled down the glass cup, his eyes following it's movement. Loki set the glass and avoided Percy's prying eyes.

"It's not important." Percy's frowned deepened.

"Like hell it's not important. It's the most important part of this entire conversation. How the hell you know who I am, why you care, and who the hell you think you are budging into my pitiful burnout life."  In all honesty, he had had enough of the gods meddling with his life before he even took a step into camp.

He chuckled, which was sort of unsettling on his face, like he didn't know any form of laughter other than snorting or sinister grins. "You are not a burnout, Perseus Jackson."

Percy leaned forward, bracing his elbows on the table. "If I'm not a burnout, a loser, than what am I? I peaked in my teens, it was shit then and it only went downhill. I certainly not important enough to save, not anymore."

The other man regarded him for a moment, pursing his lips. Well, it seemed to him that the great Loki, master of lies, was at a loss of words. He didn't blame the man though, if there was one thing that he kept in his skillset it was the fact that he was great at pissing people off. 

"One thing that you taught me is everyone can be saved. Some can have redemption..." The other man trailed off, still not meeting his eyes.

"How would I teach you anything? We've met once, maybe twice before." Everything about the god of lies was confusing. He thought his life was fuck up...well it still was, but being controlled sucked and he knew it. Like when Leo had fired upon the roman camp possessed by a spirit. 

"You are not just known among the Greeks, Perseus. Your adventures have traveled far beyond the nine realms. There have been plays in Asgard depicting your victories. You can never disappear fully, you have etched yourself so deeply in the fabric of life that you can never stop being a part of it." Loki stopped there and then stared at him, and Percy really wished that he hadn't, because he had nothing to say. He was staring with this look of expectancy, like he was waiting for some marvelous show of humility and power. The humility that was etched away by years of death and suffering and the power that he did not feel that he deserved.

"I haven't taught anyone anything for a long time, Loki. I'm not the hero I used to be, not anymore. I can try and I can suffer and I can die for what I think is right but none of that can make that feeling inside me go away. I think everyone I love is nearly gone now, and it's not even their fault. I pushed them all away." He swallowed.

"You are a hero." Loki responded, not all unkindly.

"I was offered immortality once. After I helped in the defeat of Kronos. I turned it down, and I'm still glad that I did, but I wish I had known that whether I did or not, it would turn out just as miserable. So what, I'm a hero, fine. What does it matter?" I slammed my fist against the counter, making it jump and Loki nearly flinched.

"It matters because you saved the world twice, and I was hoping that you would be willing to do it again." 

They both stared at each other for a long time. Percy's face went stony, cold. Loki for once in his life showing some manipulative vulnerability.

"Why?" The other man swallowed, like he didn't expect it to be this hard.

"I figured you wouldn't be able to stay away for long, and would like a head start." With his smooth voice, but with words like arsenic. Poisonous, deadly. 

Percy stood up abruptly, the chair screeching on the floor, and walked out. Loki's eyes following his back. The other man sighed, muttering about dramatic humans (though he had no room to talk) and paying for the meal than leaving a considerably large tip. He may have been a liar, murderer and overall generally an asshole, but he wasn't a monster. 

-

Percy couldn't remember the last time he had saw the ocean, it had been a while. He could go on and make some connection to homage and the meaning of his existence in connection to the sea, but he was too tired. He wondered when his life stopped making sense, when it stopped having meaning, but thinking meant that he had to suffer the woe of his damnable stupidity. So he didn't think, he just watched the waves ebb and flow from the shore. Maybe if he did that ling enough, he would forget the world. 

He didn't want to be a hero anymore, but it seemed that he didn't have much left in him to be anything. Not doing anything had left him empty and most importantly, drunk. Even when he had gotten hurt, suffered at the hands of helping people, it made him feel more alive than he had been since his friends died and he disappeared from the world he held to his heart and risked his life to protect. 

He hadn't been in water in a long time, maybe it was because he thought that he could escape himself if he scratched away the part of him that mattered the most. The immortal blood that had gotten  him into more trouble than he could bare. 

The cool breeze caressed his skin, it felt like home. He hadn't had a home in a while. He stuck his hands in his pockets to fight the cold seeping into his fingertips, and his fingers brushed the edge of Riptide. That had never left him, and he knows why know, because the part of him that was a hero never really left. If the world was in danger, than who was he to refuse to help it. 

The dug his toes in the sand and started to walk forward, toward the waves. He felt the water, freezing and amazing around his ankles, the small crushed sea shells pressing into the heels of his feet. He kept going until the water was well above his head, and then he closed his eyes and felt the rhythm of the waves and undercurrents pull him out to sea.

"You are a hero ." 

He breathed in the water. He would admit, Loki was an asshole, murderer, and everything in between, but he was also right. He wasn't going to be able to stay away for long, he had been away from home long enough.

For the first time in a long time, he prayed.

-

He packed his shit up in a beat up duffle, the origins of said duffle he couldn't remember with a gun up to his head. Clothes, shoes, toothbrush, shampoo. He didn't have a phone and sold his couch on Craigslist for 100 bucks from an account made on a library computer. 

He said one last goodbye to his shithole apartment. That was a lie, he slammed the door and flipped it the bird on the way down the hall. 

He didn't know where he was going, he didn't care, but he wasn't going to be this enigma of hate and loneliness anymore. He let his feet carry him around the city, and he must have been walking for hours when he finally stopped and sat down on a bench in central park. 

He remembered when Nico had brought him here to enter the underworld, receiving the invulnerable skin. Nico... He wondered if he was still alive, overcome with an unbearable amount of shame because if he would have been around he would know. 

He didn't know how he could walk back into their life and a be friends again, not after leaving them. He couldn't just turn up on the doorstep of Camp Half-blood and pretend he never left, but one could dream. So yeah, he was ashamed of himself, because he was supposed to be a hero and the only person he saved was himself, and he didn't even do that right. Fate said that one day loyalty would one day kill him, but how could he live with the fact that he had only been loyal to himself?

"There is no way-"

"He looks so similar."

"Oh come on guys, it's not him, don't kid yourself, he's been gone for years."

His head snapped up as he trailed the end of a group of tree teens having a conversation, two girls and one boy. He made the mistake of making eye contact with one of them and she turned pink and averted her eyes. 

"If your so sure, why don't you ask him." One of them suggested, whoever it was he hoped to god it was the one whose ideas were usually ignored, like him.

"Fine then!" The other teen snapped, she was the one who he had made eye contact with earlier. 

He knew that this was not going to be a nice experience for him, oh gods...

She made a step towards him before shooting a scathing look back at her friends. She bore an uncanny resemblance to a daughter of Athena, which he tried to ignore the twinge I his heart at that.

She approached with all the confidence of a socially awkward teen, so to say, none, sitting next to him on the park bench. She opened her mouth twice before closing it again and biting her lip. He decided to take pity on her.

"I don't think I've ever met a daughter of Athena so hesitant to ask a question." He commented with his lips tipped into a grin. Her trepidation turned into outrage like a strike of lightning.

"Well excuse me, that is a horrible stereotype. That's like saying all children of Ares are bullies or all  sons of Apollo are airheads. I resent that. I have social anxiety, fuck you." She looked mad at his amused expression before realizing what she had just said to him.

"I mean-sir. Fuck you sir-I mean not fuck you-well," He cut her off with a chuckle.

"I have been called sir twice in my life and in both times it was by people attempting to kill me. My names Percy, but, well it seems that you already knew that." He cocked her head at her. "What's your name."

She shifted, embarrassed. "Antigone, but people call me Tig."

He nodded and smiled. "It's a good name to have. Tragic origins, but remained with loyalty and integrity till the end. Wish I could say the same."

She grinned at him, he felt a thousand times better. "My dad was a history professor, named me after her thinking that I would have a better luck living life on my own terms."

"I think my mom had the same idea when she named me, a hero with a happy ending. I haven't died yet so that has to count for something." He remarked sliding his eyes over to her. "Say, I've been out of the loop for a long time, call it running away, being an asshole, idiot, and any other horrible synonym. Think you can loop me in, Tig?"

She looked at him for a moment, quizzical, before turning to her friends standing off to the side and waved them over. The other two looked at each other surprised before hesitantly coming to stand beside Tig. 

"This is Nox," she gestured to the other girl with dark eyes, Asian tan skin and ebony hair which was cut pixie style. "and this is Marcus." Then to a dark skinned boy whose keen blue eyes seemed to bore into everything. 

"Hello Nox," he gave her a nod. "Marcus."

Nox tilted her head to Tig in question, Tig answered.

"It's him."

"And you know that for sure?" Marcus' eyebrowed were raised. "He could be lying."

"How could I possibly be positive? He looks like he did in the pictures, he answered with the correct name. I don't know him, so I couldn't possibly know. You want me to ask for him for his social security number?" 

Nox looked like she could be considering it. He decided to cut in.

"I'd venture a guess with your parents." He didn't try to hold back a grin. "But I've already learned from you friend here that in doing it I could be very offensive."

Nox didn't look impressed, but answered nonetheless. "Aphrodite, and he's a son of Mercury."

He nodded. "Glad I didn't venture a guess, I was never really good at it." He shrugged. "So, like I said to Tig, you could say I've been out of the loop for a while, I was hoping you might be able to fill me in."

Marcus looked to Tig, who looked to Nox, who nodded. "Sure, whatever." He didn't miss being a teenager.

He grinned. "Let's take a walk, yeah?" He stood up and dusted off his jeans, picking up his duffle. He started to walk and didn't look back to see if they followed. If they didn't, well he was a bit of an asshole. 

Tig took a step to be beside him, and Nox and Marcus on the other side. "Anything big happen in the years I've been gone?" 

Nox shook her head. "I'm not sure how it was before you left, but in the years we've been there it's been pretty quiet, at both camps. New Rome has Reyna and Frank as elected praetors and then there's Jason who does a program to provide transportation to kids who want to travel between camps to see their friends. He was your friend right?"

He swallowed, hard. "Yeah, yeah he was." 

"There was that drama with Demeter a couple years back, when she turned that daughter of Apollo into a nightshade plant because he called her an old hag." Marcus commented, grinning. "That was hilarious."

He could imagine it, Demeter being called an old hag while eating a bowl of cereal. He snorted.

"Do you know anything about Nico? Nico DiAngelo? I-I-didn't exactly leave him on the best of terms. I actually recall him calling me a coward, but with that dark glare that he gets from his father, the one wher-" Tig cuts it.

"You feel like your being dragged into hell?" He grinned so hard his face hurt.

"That's the one. I take it he's doing ok?" He didn't deny he sounded hopeful.

"He and Will got married a few years back, Nico still teaches sword fighting and Will's the camp head Medic." She answered.

"Good....that really good." He looked down, trying to imagine what he looked like now. Less like death, more like deadly. Older, stronger.

"Percy." Marcus called his name. "I couldn't help but notice the bag. Headed somewhere?" 

He shrugged, "I don't think I'm going anywhere, just wondering for now. Attempting to get my head out of my ass and do something about it."

Marcus didn't comment on that with pity, but with excitement. "Well you see, we are going to camp tomorrow, school ended last month but we were holding off going to spend some time with our families. Did you want to come with us? "

Nox, shot Marcus a glare, but Tig squealed with excitement. 

He wondered whether it would still be his home after so many years away. He knew it wouldn't be the same, nothing would ever be the same, but it didn't have to be. It just had to be his. 

"You know what? I think I might take you up on that."

-

"I told you so." That asshole. 

He looked to Loki, how had appeared next to him, smug. 

"Yeah, you did."

Loki looked please, which contrasted with the knife he was cleaning his nails with. 

"I'll be in contact then, the worlds going to need a hero after all." He vanished. 

Such an asshole, whatever.

He picked up the duffle from where he had dropped it on the ground and swung it over his shoulder, walking towards the teens. 

For once in his life, things were looking up.

Let me just start out with I'm sorry, it's been months. I'm a terrible person. Peace offering!

Also, fuck timelines, they're to hard.