Less than a week later, Fury found Jackson sparring with Steve Rogers. They were trading stories between blows and blocks, breathless laughter and the occasional half-choked sob echoing off the dusty rafters.

"So we get done with this mission in literal hell," Jackson grunted, a slight grin on his face, "and she turns—" he ducked under Rogers swing and attempted to retaliate, "to me and asks if I wah—NT—you know, I don't like being caught by your blows," he wheezed, "asks if I want burgers at McHale's."

Rogers laughed, right before he got an elbow to the solar plexus. "And you're still—" he danced out of the way of Jackson, "you're still in hell?"

"Hell, we're still in Hades's palace," Jackson laughed, stepping in and trading quick blows and blocks with the older man.

"Well, I never—oof—actually went to hell," Rogers said, panting.

"It's actually really boring," Jackson said. He dodged a blow, angling his body so that Rogers's swing glided by barely half an inch away from its target. "Definitely not prime vacation spo-ot."

Rogers laughed, both at the sarcasm and the successful jab. "No missions in hell, but there was this one thing in Minsk, HYDRA had some kind of zombie dinosaur thing."

"Oh, the things that Nico could do from that idea," Jackson sighed, gracefully twirling out of the way. "Never tell him this story, by the way. We don't need a zombified Jurassic Park."

Rogers swung low, kicking out with his feet. "Well between HYDRA forces and that—" Rogers hit the floor, away from Jackson's spinning kick, and twirled in a way that definitely imitated a breakdance move, "—stupid dinosaur thing, we were losing rather badly until Dum Dum somehow got ahold of the tank—" Jackson broke, staggering away to laugh, "—that they had." Rogers backed off and tossed a bottle of water to Jackson. "I later found out that he had Howard on the radio who walked him through how to control it."

"So here I am, standing in the middle of this warzone with at least six different things going on right in front of me and another dozen behind the scenes and I have absolutely no idea of what's going on," Rogers laughed. Jackson almost spewed his water. "Next thing I know, I'm on the back of this dinosaur and I just about knock my own teeth out trying to hang on. So Bucky comes up to this dinosaur and we managed to wrestle the head to the ground, where he proceeded to sit on it like it was a damned throne."

Jackson was laughing for real now, to the point that tears streamed down his face.

"And that jerk turns to me and said, 'See, punk, what healthy eatin' will do to ya?'"

And then Rogers collapsed into laughter as well. Jackson was just about dying. Fury personally didn't think that it was that funny, but maybe he missed something from the conversation from before he walked in.

Fury shifted to announce his presence. The two tried to sober up and stand up straight and amazingly failed.

"Sorry, Director," Rogers said, still grinning. "You got a mission for me?"

Fury tossed him the file, the pages fluttering. "How do you two know each other?"

"We don't," Jackson said. "Not really."

"I knew some of his siblings," Rogers said. "And Thor told me to go pound on this guy instead of the poor punching bags."

Jackson tapped Rogers's bicep. "You know, with as much muscle mass as you have, I kind of expected you to move slower."

"Let me tell you about Bucky and moving fast, sometime," Rogers said, a lopsided smile tugging at his lips.

"Only if I get to tell you about Kampé," Jackson retorted, leaning against the corner of the ring as Rogers ducked out.

Rogers saluted with the file and a mischievous grin.

"Are you done being a Seaweed Brain yet, Percy?"

All of the hairs on the back of Fury's neck stood straight up as a woman with blonde hair in a wheelchair rolled into the light, a tired smile on her face.

The look on Jackson's face was…ecstatic. He went from looking twenty-five to sixteen in an instant, leaping over the ropes gracefully. "Hey, Wise Girl. You feeling better?"

"You being a dork always makes me feel better," she said affectionately.

Jackson scooped her out of the wheelchair with an ease belied by his physical stature: all limb and lean muscle characteristic of still-growing men. Fury wondered what exactly this woman was capable of healthy, if she was setting off his alarms half-dead.

They whispered together for a moment, Jackson swaying a little and head bent to rest on the crown of his wife's. Knowing what had just gone down—pieces of it, very confusing pieces of it—it was a heart-wrenching slice of demigodly life.

Jackson turned back to Fury, his wife still in his arms.

"Hi," she said, smiling. She poked her husband's ribs with an elbow. "I'd offer to shake your hand but Seaweed Brain won't let my arms loose enough to do much of anything with them. Annabeth Chase-Jackson."

Jackson, for one, looked completely unrepentant. "You died, Annabeth. There was none of the 'almost' shit that gets thrown about every other day. You actually died."

"I did, and I had a grand old time in Elysium, too," Chase-Jackson said calmly. She looked at Fury. "I promise, whatever my husband told you, it wasn't that bad."

Fury privately thought that actually dying was pretty bad, but then, he wasn't a demigod.

"About that," Fury said. "Could you provide me with something…a little less garbled?"

Chase-Jackson looked at Jackson questioningly. Jackson shrugged. "Um…when exactly did you get the spiel about life and death and getting kidnapped somewhere in there?"

"About four days ago," Fury said.

Chase-Jackson looked at Jackson a little harder. "Percy, don't tell me that you talked to the poor Director while running on six hours of sleep that you'd gotten three days before? While doped up on painkillers, your ADHD going wild, injured, and struggling through the various paperwork necessary to undo my legal death?"

Well, shit, no wonder Fury was confused.

Chase-Jackson sighed at Jackson's shrug. She looked at Fury. "Well, the short version, then. Amora is an Asgardian that is better known as the Enchantress, and long before any of us were born, Thor had what probably amounted to an Asgardian one-night-stand with her, and she's been carrying a torch for him ever since. Enter Thor's banishment, his newfound lover and loved, and their collective love-hate relationship with SHIELD."

Fury snorted.

Chase-Jackson grimaced. "Now, Amora was originally going to kidnap—Jane, was it?—and hold her hostage until Thor agreed to Heimdall-knows-what, through a strategically placed intern who was willing to get Jane out of the more heavily-secured places. Only said "intern" was actually a SHIELD agent, who was actually one of HYDRA's fanatics. So Percy here calls you up and tells you to clean house and accidentally and effortlessly unravels her plans for Thor domination."

She sighed. "So, yes, she put out a hit on me, and then doubled it when she realized that I was the wife of the Perseus Jackson, and no, Percy, I didn't know that your mythological fame had made it off-world, either. So, one fell swoop—boom. Savior of Olympus, Prince of the Sea, a whole bunch of other titles that makes Seaweed Brain here sound as pompous and arrogant as Zeus, brought to his knees, and kicking Thor in the solar plexus via his own respect for Percy's deeds and occasional misdeeds. Two birds with one stone." She cocked her head. "Then, of course, the gods did stupid things, as is their wont—I won't go into it, since it isn't applicable anymore—and Amora decides that I make just as good leverage as Thor's lady love, and kidnaps me—as in, my soul—from the Underworld."

"How does that work?" Fury asked.

Chase-Jackson shrugged helplessly. "I don't know. I do know that it set off a whole stew of intergalactical diplomatic relations between the gods—apparently there was some kind of pact between death gods to not interfere with the other realms? Honestly, I was dead and without a corporeal body and it gave me a headache."

Fury's lip twitched.

"But she ended up doing some kind of magic to shove me back into my miraculously whole body again and holding me hostage. The cavalry came running, kicked Amora around Central Park like a soccer ball between two players with a grudge, locked her up, shipped her back to Asgard, and I was sent to the nearest hospital for emergency treatment." She paused. "It was a rather dramatic month."

"And that's the short version?"

Chase-Jackson looked amused. "I could have made it shorter. It would have been along the lines of 'scorned lover, ruined plans, unexpected pitfalls, I die, 'oh, I can work with that', I get magicked back to life, and Hurricane Percy', but I thought you would like it to make more sense than Percy's garbled version of a story."

It was definitely appreciated. Then Fury studied the two of them a little closer. She looked inordinately comfortable in Jackson's arms, Fury noted.

"How long have you two been working together?" he asked, giving into his curiosity.

"Seven years," they both answered simultaneously.

"And…training?"

They both looked at each other. "I've been being trained since I was seven, but Percy's been trained the same amount of time that we've been working together," Chase-Jackson said. She looked vaguely uncomfortable. "If you want to be technical, I've been trained to Roll With the Weird since I was born."

Jackson snorted.

Fury looked at them both. "Why is that statement funny?"

"Considering that she was born from her mother's split skull and delivered to her father via a floating, golden cradle?" Jackson said.

"Percy!" Chase-Jackson hissed. "I swear to Pallas, I will throttle you enthusiastically if you bring that up again!"

Pallas?

"Yes, dear."

She elbowed him hard enough that he wheezed, but didn't drop her. The look on Jackson's face was unrepentant and mischievous.

"But seriously," Jackson said, sobering. "Her family is like a mythological magnet. She's a demigod, her cousin is a dead warrior for Valhalla, her uncle wanted to experiment on both her and her cousin, and her younger twin brothers hang out with Puck and an Aztec goddess whose name I'm unable to wrap my tongue around. Her father had a mind-meld with a goddess, her Aunt died to defend her son—who is now that dead warrior in Valhalla—and I'm certain that I've missed someone on the family tree."

"Literally, the only normal person on my family tree is my stepmother," Chase-Jackson said. "It's also the only reason why I hyphenated my name, because if someone needs my help, they'll be looking for a Chase and not a Jackson."

Fury closed his eye. "Jackson…one day, you'll introduce me to someone normal, and I'll finally die."

Of course, the husband and wife couple immediately began bickering over who might possibly be considered normal. Apparently, Jackson's mother and the Oracle were immediately discounted on the counts of raising Percy to be a decent human being as opposed to his various half-siblings or creepy green smoke and snakes reminiscent of Harry Potter.

He would get used to this, Fury promised himself. He'd survived World War II and all the inanities the world had thrown at him since. He could survive a demigodly duo whose match was made in the Underworld—almost literally.

Um...hi? Sorry that this took so long to get out. Next week is finals week for my latest semester, so wish me luck! I do have something in mind for the next installment, but I've yet to write it, so don't hold your breath waiting for it, please. The next two weeks, minimum, will be absolutely cray-cray for me, but I'll see what I can write whilst travelling.

In related news, I've started an account on AO3, under the name of CrimsonWriter. I've set a personal goal to post something every Friday on there. Maybe (probably) not for the same story, but something. Then, when it's finished, I'll post it here. Although, the actual posts might be a bit wacky. I haven't figured everything out yet...

Anyway. Toodles!

-Ruby