Percy Jackson x Male Reader The Lightning Thief

Making Things Right

Percy's POV

It's funny how humans can wrap their minds around things and fit them into their version of reality, Chiron had told me that long ago. As usual, I didn't appreciate his wisdom until much later.

According to the L.A. news, the explosion at the Santa Monica beach had been caused when an insane kidnapper fired a shotgun at a police car. He somehow hit the gas tank, that had ruptured during the the earthquake.

This crazy kidnapper (a.k.a. Ares) was the same man who had abducted me, Y/n, and two other adolescents in New York and brought us across country on a ten-day oddyssey of terror.

Poor little Percy Jackson wasn't an international criminal after all. He'd caused a commotion on that Greyhound bus in New Jersey trying to get away from his captor. And afterward, witnesses would even swear they had seen the leather clad man on the bus, one even said that she had seen him throw Y/n out the window. The crazy man had caused the explosion in the St. Louis Arch. After all, no kids could've done that. A concerned waitress in Denver had seen the man threatening his abductees outside her diner, gotten a friend to take a photo and notified the police. Finally, brave Percy Jackson (I was beginning to like the sound of that) and Y/n L/n. Had each managed to steal a gun from their captor in Los Angeles and faced off with him. Unfortunately only moments before police had arrived Y/n was shot. And in the spectacular explosion, that followed five police cars had been destroyed and the captor had fled. No fatalities had occurred, and miraculously Y/n, hardly sustained any damage from the gunshot (thanks to the ambrosia). And Percy Jackson, Y/n L/n and their two friends were safely in police custody.

The reporters fed us this whole story. We just nodded and acted tearful and exhausted (which wasn't hard), and played victimized kids for the cameras.

"All I want," I said," choking back my tears, "is to see my loving stepfather again. Every time I saw him on TV, calling me a delinquent punk, I knew . . . somehow  . . . we would person in this beautiful city of Los Angeles with a free major appliance from his store. Here's the phone number."

Y/n could barely keep himself from busting out laughing as I finished. But the police and the reporters were so moved that they passed around the hat and raised money for three tickets on the next plane to New York.

I knew there was no choice but to fly. I hoped Zeus would cut me some slack, considering the circumstances. But it was still hard to force myself on board the flight.

Takeoff was a nightmare. Every spot of turbulence was scarier than a Greek monster. Y/n, didn't do all that much better. He had never been near a plane, and like me his home turf was definitely not in the air. He was basically clinging to me and Annabeth the whole ride. But somehow we landed down safely at La Guardia. 

The local press was waiting for us outside security, I thought Y/n would faint from the amount of people getting in our faces.  But thanks to Annabeth who lured them away in her invisible Yankees cap, shouting, "They're over by the frozen yogurt! Come on!," then re-joining us at the baggage claim. We got away pretty smoothly.

We split up at the taxi stand. I told Annabeth, Grover, and Y/n to go back to Half-Blood Hill and let Chiron know what had happened. They protested, Y/n the most, and it was hard to let them go after all we'd been through, but I had to do the last part by myself. Besides Annabeth lightly reminded us that it probably wasn't the best idea to send a son of Gaia up to Zeus. You know the guy that kind of chopped up her favorite kid, and threw him into Tartarus. And adding on to that, if things went wrong, if the gods didn't believe me . . . I wanted them to survive to tell Chiron the truth.

I hopped in a taxi and headed into Manhattan.

Thirty minutes later, I walked into the lobby of the Empire State Building.