Percy Jackson meets the Avengers [VERY SLOW UPDATES]

Chapter 5 (unedited)

Percy's POV

At 1am I was still wide awake. Annabeth had decided to stay the night - she practically lived with us at this point - and was fast asleep, nestled into my side. I absentmindedly traced patterns on her back, re-assured by the warmth of her body against mine. As much as I tried to keep my mind on the facts - that Annabeth was safe, and that we weren't in Tartarus anymore - I couldn't stop thinking back to the dream I had earlier. Actually dream wasn't the right word for it; it was a memory, one of the worst ones I had. Even though I had only managed about 3 hours of sleep earlier, I was too scared to fall asleep again. I didn't want to find myself in another memory where I had to watch the woman I loved be brutally tortured in front of me. I decided to run through what I knew for finals, surely that would bore me to sleep.

I lasted till 4am. I had been staring at the ceiling and trying to remember everything Annabeth had been teaching me about math. Once I had covered what I could remember - a surprisingly large amount, considering my aversion to numbers - I went on to history. Mentally running through all the dates I had to remember took me to 4am, when I finally gave up on sleep. As I slowly slid my body out of bed, trying to avoid waking Annabeth, I bumped my hip on my nightstand. Cursing under my breath, I looked up to see that Annabeth was stirring, expectantly reaching out for me. Ah, Crap.

"Percy?" Annabeth sleepily whispered. "What time is it?"

"Four AM. I can't sleep, I was going to go for a run. You go back to sleep, you can get two more hours." I watched as my girlfriend rolled off the bed next to me, pressing a quick kiss to my cheek. "I won't be able to fall back asleep without you here. I'll join you on your run." We quickly got ready as quietly as possible - Mom and Paul were still asleep in their room next door. Honed by years of unexpected battles it only took us a few minutes to slip on some work out clothes in the dark, and find my keys. We headed out of the apartment, silently agreeing to take the stairs. Neither of us were big fans of elevators anymore, plus the exercise would count as our warm up.

After a quick word with the doorman James, who promised to let my mom know where I was, if I wasn't back by half 6 - when I would normally wake up- Annabeth and I headed down the street. It was still early enough that the sun hadn't risen fully yet, and we would be running by the light of streetlights and glowing advertisement boards. It didn't bother me too much, this was my usual routine since Tartarus, but I wasn't used to seeing anyone else out at this time. "Annabeth" I muttered, having just seen a familiar figure in my peripheral vision. "I think someone is watching us." I saw a moment of tension in my Wise Girls shoulders before they dropped back to their normal place. "Where?" she asked, her hand finding mine as we walked to the park we usually ran in. " Woman with red hair. I'm sure that she was outside school yesterday, and that she followed us a little way before she headed back. I didn't say anything yesterday because I'd never seen her before, but its not exactly party central here, especially at this time in the morning." I could practically see the gears in her brain whirring as she formulated our plan of action.

"Lets go through our normal routine - walk to the park, run for an hour, you can mess about on the swings, then we'll go back to yours. If she's following us she'll probably expect us to split up so I can head back to mine for clothes, so lets stick together - we can always head over tonight to pick me up some stuff. We should just be more aware of our surroundings for the next few days, see if any other people are constantly turning up. Only an idiot would try to follow two people on their own." As Annabeth finished outlining our plan we reached our usual park. We fell into a steady jog together, for one lap of the lake, before upping the pace to near a sprint. We carried on alternating between a fast jog and sprint for the 37 laps that followed, stopping when my watch began to beep at 5:30 AM.