The Weight of The World

"When someone cries so hard that it hurts their throat, it is out of frustration or knowing that no matter what you can do or attempt to do can change the situation. When you feel like you need to cry, when you want to just get it out, relieve some of the pressure inside - that is true pain. Because no matter how hard you try or how bad you want to, you can't. That pain just stays in place. Then, if you are lucky, one small tear may escape from those eyes that water constantly. That one tear, that tiny, salty, droplet of moisture is a means of escape. Although it's just a small tear, it is the heaviest thing in the world. And it doesn't do a damn thing to fix anything." - Chase Brooks

Tony's POV

Percy's screams were absolutely haunting. I had heard her scream before, she had woken up several times from nightmares of her life, memories that had dug their way into the surface of her mind. But these screams? They held a lot more than just pain. They held resistance and fight and anger and sadness. They sounded tortured and the pain it caused could be clearly seen.

But even more haunting than her screams, was her eye. Only one was visible and I could practically see something being ripped from them, taken by force. Percy had gotten a look in her eye that told me that she was no longer Percy. She was now PAB-24 again. I could see that everything she had worked to remember about herself, all of the nights waking up from nightmares, all of the stories she had shared, all of it was gone.

And suddenly, Percy not being able to remember her life made perfect sense to me. Why she couldn't remember her childhood, why she only knew herself to be PAB-24. Because they took all of it away from her! Through her screams, I could see that she was crying, a few tears making their escape down her face. Gradually, the screams faded and the tears stopped. And I could see through Percy's eye that she was blank. Empty. A soldier ready to follow orders.

The man still in the room said the same series of words to her that had gotten her to wake up and she said the same response as last time. Only, Percy had started teaching me a few Russian basics, and I could recognise some of the words said. Longing, seventeen, nine, homecoming, one. Those were the words the man said that I recognised. I understood what Percy said completely though. Ready to comply. Three simple words that had so much meaning. Whatever they did to Percy, it took all of her away from herself and stuffed in an emotionless soldier.

The man spoke in words that I couldn't understand, and I'm positive that they weren't Russian words, and then he turned to Yinsen and I, spoke more words and then left.

"He wants us to rid her of her restraints and then get back to work," Yinsen translated as he cautiously moved to free Percy's face from the chair. I didn't hesitate, I freed Percy's arms. Over the few weeks that we had been in this cave with her, both Yinsen and I had grown to like her. She was really less a soldier than a victim from what we learned about her, and from what we had just seen. She didn't deserve what's happened to her.

I remember the first dream that she had woken up from pretty clearly, she had told me all about it.

I had just gotten to sleep. Yinsen had decided to get some sleep immediately once Percy had drifted off, and I joined them. I had already been up for almost two days working on plans that neither of them knew about, I needed the rest. It felt as though I had been asleep for only thirty minutes when I woke up to Percy, yelping loudly and falling off of the mat that she had fallen asleep on. She woke up and almost at once, she started crying, though I could tell that she was suppressing most of her sobs. I looked to Yinsen to find him still sleeping, she hadn't woken him up.

So since I knew that I wouldn't be getting back to sleep any time soon, I decided to see what was wrong. I know that she was only there to keep us in check, but after finding out that she was more than just a soldier for the enemy, I had kind of just accepted that she was like us, here not because she wanted to be, but because someone else had messed with her life. Not as a real soldier, but as a toy soldier instead. She didn't even react when I got closer to her, it was like she couldn't see me.

"Hey," I whispered in an attempt to let her know I was there. She looked up at me and I stared back, finding a truly broken person, not at all like the curious, childish girl that had first been brought into this cave.

"S-sorry, I'm s-so sorry..." She tried wiping away her tears, but I took one of her hands and just held it. It was heavily calloused and I could feel the scars littering her hands.

"Don't apologise. Even the strongest of us need to let ourselves be weak for a little while." Even if I was taught something different when my dad was still around, I knew that this was better advice than to 'Quit your whining, no one will care for you for long if you don't stop being a little spoiled brat. Tough it out and be a man for once.' I had just broken my arm then, but that was what I had been told. Not exactly the best fatherly advice I had been given. He had been drunk too, so that may have swayed his words.

And she broke down, using my shoulder to cry on. I didn't complain, she needed that shoulder at the moment and so she would have it. After around thirty minutes, her tears started to run out and her sobs became little hiccups.

"Thank you..." She whispered to me, looking up into my eyes. Her own were puffy and red, but she had just gotten done crying, so I could understand that.

"Was it a nightmare?" I asked her, concern coating my voice as I spoke as softly as I could. She nodded and looked down. "It was more of a memory, but it was a terrible one." Her voice was thick with her tears and cracked when she was saying 'terrible' so I nodded, knowing a bit of what bad memories were like in dreams.

"Do you want to talk about it?" She looked at me and I saw someone who had been completely shattered, scrambling and doing her best to gather the broken pieces and put them together again. "You don't have to if you don't want to, but it might help," I tried coaxing it out of her, but made it known that she didn't have to if she didn't want to. It was just from my experience ,when Jarvis was raising me, that it did help.

She nodded her head and took a breath. "Um... I was maybe fourteen, and it was almost christmas. I would usually disappear during summers, but that year I had to disappear in winter. My friend had found two people, they were supposedly my cousins. But it was after that and one of my cousins, a girl named Bianca." Her voice cracked on her cousin's name, and I could tell that this wasn't going to be happy.

"We-we... Bianca, my other cousin Thalia, my friend Grover and a girl named... A girl named Z-zoe. We were traveling a-across the country, to a mountain in California and we had made it to Texas. We had gone into a junkyard. It was called the Junkyard of The gods, supposedly it was a place where Hephaestus threw down all of the things that weren't wanted. Projects that were defective, weapons that didn't turn out as planned, items that the gods no longer wanted.

"There was only one rule to the junkyard. Never take anything from it, or you would pay the price..." She took a shaky breath before continuing, and I could see that she was back there, with that memory in this 'Junkyard of The gods' with her friends and family. "We had made it through to the other side, the road was right there... and that was when we all heard a loud noise from the junkyard. We... We looked back, and there, standing tall, was a giant." I didn't expect that.

What kind of memory is this?

"The giant was made of metal, an automaton. It was in Greek battle armor and Zoe said that it must have been a prototype for the Talos giant that walked the shores of Crete. Someone had taken something. Thalia didn't, Grover would never even think to take from it, I hadn't taken anything and Zoe - well, Zoe was about as Hellenistic as you could get, if a Junkyard was labeled the Junkyard of The gods, she would never dream of taking anything from them. It was Bianca. My little cousin, her little brother was into the Greek gods, he had collected a bunch of cards for a game of them.

"The giant started attacking us because she had taken a little statue of a god for him. And we were doing pretty well for a handful of kids. I had seen, on the giant's foot, a maintenance hatch. I pointed it out to the others, and Bianca shoved the statue into my hand, told me to take care of her little brother and she ran right under it and it stepped on her... She... Must have made it into the hatch because a few moments later it started to act strange. And then it walked, right into a powerline..." Well sh*t. More tears started to flow from her eyes as she continued on. "M-metal is a p-powerful con-ductor for e-electricity... We-we never even found her body... She died and it was my fault! She was only twelve!" Double sh*t.

I took her face in my hand and wiped away her tears, shushing her. She brought her hands up to my own. "It's my fault, she died because of me, it should have been me-"

"Percy," I cut her off. "You listen to me. It was not your fault, you did not kill her."

"But I promised her brother, I promised him that I would protect her! I promised him that and I couldn't even keep it! I saw that hatch, I could have gone into it instead, it didn't have to be her."

"Percy, look at me." She did and I could see that she was failing to piece herself together again, she blamed herself and it wasn't even her fault. Her cousin had made her choice, it wasn't Percy's idea. "It wasn't your fault, it wasn't your choice, and it wasn't your idea for her to go in there like she did. She chose to have you continue on and it was her choice. It may not have been the nicest one, and it may not have been a choice everyone agreed on, but it is the very reason that you are the person you are today. You are not to blame for her actions, so don't go putting the weight of the world on your shoulders. You've already had that weight and you got rid of it. Now try and do it again like I know you can."

She looked at me and a small, broken smile made its way onto her face. "I... I'll try..." I calmed her and she placed her head on my shoulder, me wrapping my arms around her in a comforting hug. We stayed in each others company, just like that. Soon, her breathing evened out and I knew that she had fallen asleep. Somehow, I was able to fall asleep too, and that night, I dreamt of metal giants and a junkyard made for gods.

It had only been two weeks since that night happened, but Percy and I had gotten closer since then. She shared with me all of the stories and pain and nightmares and memories she found and remembered, though, sometimes she would edit them slightly. I could tell that much about the memories of her going across the country and to other places around the world as a teenager. So seeing her like this right now, it was hard for me to not see what had just been taken from her again. She suffered through a big portion of her life, she didn't deserve to become a puppet.

"Percy?" I tried speaking to her, to get her to remember some of her life again by using her name. She turned her head to me, so I knew that she knew I was addressing her. She looked confused though.

"PAB-24."

I shook my head and a clear picture of sadness shown on my face. "No, you're Percy."

"Am I?"

I nodded. "Yeah, you're Percy, not PAB-24."

"Why do you know if I am Percy and not PAB-24?"

"Because, you remembered things. Your life, the one you had before you were forced to become PAB-24 and you shared those memories with me." I explained this to her as best I could, hoping that it might be able to reverse the memory wipe they had just performed on her.

"I am without orders. So can you tell me? About those memories I shared?" She asked this of me and I smiled. I started to get to work as we had been told and had Percy sit nearby as I told her about all of the memories and stories she had shared with me of her life. I could tell that Yinsen was listening to these as well, Percy had made sure that Yinsen didn't hear them before, she didn't fully trust him. But I do, so I still shared them all with her.

I shared her childhood stories, her brother and her best friend, her life at that old summer camp, even the stories that she edited for me to not know all of the picture. I continued to tell her the stories even after I stopped working for the night, and I could see that with each story I told her, her eyes started to rebuild into the ones I had known before. The eyes that were broken but still there. As opposed to the eyes she had after the memory wipe that held nothing at all. It's better to be broken and know who you are, than to be empty, and a readily used puppet, who knew nothing of who they were.

I felt bad about when that look started coming back. Because like that night with the first nightmare she shared, she got that look. The look of someone who was trying to find a way. A way to get the weight of the world off of their shoulders.

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