heroes get remembered (legends never die)

Fitz has been in the Big House a handful of times before, when Trip has dragged them over to play ping pong in the rec room, but that’s always been during the day. He’s never been in the house alone, or above the first floor. Every time a stair groans under his weight, he shrinks into the shadows at the side of staircase, holding his breath, though he doubts it will do him much good if Mr. D or Argus comes to investigate the noise.

When he reaches the green trapdoor at the top of the four flights of stairs, Fitz takes a moment to catch his breath and more importantly, to try to calm his nerves. It doesn’t work very well, since his hands are still shaking when he pulls the cord to drop the trapdoor. He barely manages to catch the ladder that starts to fall, lowering it to the floor slowly to keep it from making too much noise. Forcing himself to take a deep breath, he climbs as fast as he can, tugging the ladder up and the door closed behind him.

He can’t see anything until he lets his hand flare to life, and he suddenly wishes May had snuck him in during the day. The attic is full of what he assumes are trophies from past heroes, which mostly seem to be dented pieces of armor and body parts belonging to various monsters, all of which look terrifying in the dim firelight. Fitz steps around a table covered in jars he tries not to look at too closely, moving towards the window cautiously.

There’s enough moonlight coming through the window that, with the fire in his palm, he gets a pretty good look at the Oracle, and he swallows hard against the urge to be sick. It’s a mummy, wearing a tie-dyed dress and sitting on a wooden stool. The flame in his hand dances and flares as he tries to keep himself from shaking; Fitz forces himself to breathe deeply despite the overwarm, musty air of the attic.

“Hello,” he starts, feeling foolish, “I’m Fitz. Um, Leopold Fitz. Melinda May thought you might, um, want to talk to me,” he says, then sighs when nothing happens. There’s a moment of relief, that May was wrong, that the Oracle can’t tell him anything about his destiny, and then a voice fills his head: I am the spirit of Delphi, speaker of the prophecies of Phoebus Apollo, slayer of the mighty Python. Approach, seeker, and ask.

The mummy is sitting up now, green mist pouring from her mouth and pooling around his feet. It feels ancient and powerful, and it’s all Fitz can do not to sprint for the trapdoor. May’s voice mingles with the Oracle’s in his head: You’re brave enough to walk up a set of stairs. Now all he has to do is keep himself from running back down them.

The mummy’s mouth doesn’t move, but he knows that it’s the Oracle speaking, that the body is just a receptacle for something else. The voice seems to come as much from inside Fitz’s own head as it does anywhere else.

The forge god’s child holding flame, comes with dark-eyed wisdom’s daughter.

A  titanic escape the gold one makes, the forged trust breaks, a hero’s sixteenth birthday dawns, the father of the sun moves his pawns.

Five stand by the fire’s chosen one, by whose sword and heart battles lost or won.

The green mist swirls around him with enough energy that the fire cupped in his palm flickers. Terrified of being left in the dark with the Oracle and the mist, he pushes the fire up his arm, far enough that it brushes against the sleeve of t-shirt. For a moment, the mist hangs silently in front of him, and then it’s retreating back towards the mummy, which slumps back against the wall. It looks for all the world like it had never moved, like maybe he had hallucinated the whole thing, and like it never plans on moving again.

Fitz stands there among the mementos, staring at the Oracle, fire stretching from elbow to palm. The light seems to be catching on all the most terrifying things in the attic, of which there are many, including what looks like a huge snake head with shark teeth. He can see a label underneath it, but he doesn’t want to venture any deeper into the attic. In a daze, he lowers the ladder down as quietly as he can, then scrambles down it and the stairs; he knows he’s probably making too much noise, but he thinks he’s about to be sick, which would probably be louder and inevitably messier.

Stumbling outside, Fitz ends up on his knees, shivering, dry heaving, pressing his knuckles down into the dirt. It’s a few seconds before he can force himself to take deep breaths and lower his head to the ground to rest it against the cool grass. He rolls over, sitting up and then curling back down on himself, elbows resting on his knees, running the words of the Oracle’s prophecy through his head, trying to think logically.

It doesn’t have to be about me. Whatever May thinks, it doesn’t have to be about me. Why would it be about me?

Fitz looks down towards the cabins, considering going down and waking someone up; Jemma or May or Coulson or anyone, just so he doesn’t have to sit here on the grass, alone with the things he’s just heard. Someone to tell him what it means, or more accurately, to tell him it doesn’t mean what he thinks it does, what May thinks it does, that it’s got very little to do with him, if anything.

Instead, he makes himself stand, takes deep breaths until his legs stop shaking, then heads back towards the strawberry fields. He doesn’t think he’ll get much sleep, but it seems like a better option than sitting on the ground outside of the Big House, waiting to be caught. While no one has ever really said anything about the fact that he doesn’t always sleep in his cabin, Fitz doesn’t think they’ll be quite so willing to look the other way about this.

He lies awake for a long while, curled up under his blanket, watching the stars. When he finally drifts off, his dreams are filled with dark laughter and green smoke, and he wakes up throughout the night. By the time the sun rises, he’s given up on getting any sort of actual sleep, and he stops by the cabin to drop off his blanket before heading to the dining pavilion. There’s already food sitting out, which is surprising, since it’s barely half past six, but Fitz just tosses a piece of toast into the fire and sits at the Hephaestus table.

A few minutes after he’s started eating, he looks up at the sound of arguing to see Ward and Garrett come into the pavillion. Ward opens his mouth to say something, but Garrett puts in elbow into his ribs when he sees Fitz, and the younger boy falls silent.

“Morning, Fitz. Little early for you, isn’t it?” Garrett says, grabbing three pieces of toast, tossing one casually towards the fire pit. Fitz gives him a small smile, but doesn’t say anything. He’s not really surprised to see either of the Ares boys already up; their morning training sessions are kind of legendary around camp. “You’re welcome to join us at the arena, if you want to get some extra work in.”

“Um, I’ll probably just go work in the forge.”

“Good. Where you belong anyway,” says Ward from behind him where he’s gathering his own breakfast. Fitz feels a flare of anger and opens his mouth to respond, though he’s not sure what to say, but Garrett beats him to it.

“No need to be rude, little brother,” he says, laughing a little.

“I just meant- I wasn’t trying to be rude,” Ward responds.

“That’s the kid’s problem most of the time. Not trying to be rude, and yet he can’t seem to help himself. Gets it from dad, probably,” Garrett says, and Ward scowls behind him, but blanks out his expression when his older brother turns towards him, “See you later, Fitz.”

He watches the two of them leave before turning back to finish his breakfast. When he’s done, Fitz heads towards the forge, figuring that he might as well get some work done if he’s going to be awake at this ridiculous hour.

——————-

May gives him the day off. He sits up in the second row of the arena, watching the two girls go back and forth across the arena floor. Jemma still isn’t anywhere near May’s level, but she’s gotten better in even just the short time they’ve been working with her, and Fitz is pretty sure May likes training with her a lot more than she likes fighting him. He doesn’t really mind that much.

The fact that he’d only gotten a few hours of real sleep is catching up with him, and he starts when he realizes May is sitting next to him. Jemma’s nowhere to be seen.

“I told her to go ahead to dinner,” May explains, “It wasn’t easy to convince her to leave you behind, even just for a meal. She knows something was off with you today. You should tell her soon.”

“How do you even know she’s involved?”

“Because it took me five minutes just to convince her to go to dinner without you,” she says, and he sighs again, “Dark-eyed wisdom’s daughter. Forge god’s child holding fire. Does that sound like anyone else in camp?”

“That’s just the first part. What if we’re just the signal or whatever, that the prophecy is starting and we should look out for the fire’s chosen one?”

“You might be right. Or I might be right. One of us has a lot more experience with prophecies though.”

“Why does it have to be me? Why isn’t it you? Or Coulson or Ward? Or anyone else? Why would it be me?” May looks like she wants to say and then decides against it, turning to look out over the arena floor as he continues, “I mean, it took a month for my father to even claim me. I’m not a hero.”

“By virtue of being here, you are.”

“I don’t think that’s really how it works. And I don’t think you think it works that way either.”

That actually earns him a smile. “Someday, I’m going to be right, and you’re going to have to save the world. I know you’re scare-”

“I’m not afraid,” he says, the words coming out in one breath.

It’s a lie. He knows it’s a lie, and what’s more, May knows it too. The fear has been sitting like a weight in his stomach since the night before, but there’s a difference between him knowing he’s scared and having someone else actually say it out loud. Fitz expects her to contradict him, to call him out on the lie, but instead she just stands.

“Come on,” she says, hopping over the wall down to the arena floor, waiting for Fitz to follow her.

“Where are we going? Dinner?” he asks hopefully, and May rolls her eyes, drawing her sword.

“Not yet. You’ve still got training to do.”

“I thought I had the day off!”

“Whatever gave you that impression?”

“You said ‘Fitz, you look ill, take today off!’”

“I was lying. Come on, sword out. No, no, other hand,” she says, when he moves to draw Pyrrhos.

“I’m right-handed.”

“I know. But if we’re going to expect you to save the world, the least we can do is make sure you have every advantage possible. So, left hand.”

“Who knows about the prophecy?” he asks, drawing Pyrrhos and then switching it into his off hand, “Do they know I know?”

“No one knows you know, but I’ll have to tell Coulson soon. I don’t like hiding things from him. And then Chiron and Mr. D.”

“You’ll get in trouble.”

May shrugs, “What can they do, give me extra chores? I made my choice, Fitz.”

“We should tell Jemma, before you tell Coulson. She deserves to know too,” he says, shifting his grip on his sword, trying to feel more comfortable with it in his left hand.  May nods.

“Night after tomorrow. I’ll tell her I need to talk to her, and take her up to the Big House after everyone has gone to sleep.”

“You think the Oracle will speak to her?”

“I’ll wait and tell her myself if it doesn’t, but I think it will.”

“Are you and Coulson the only campers that know about it?”

“John Garrett was with us when we heard it. We were doing inventory for Chiron in the attic last fall when the Oracle started talking. As far as I know, he hasn’t told anyone else, but it’s kind of hard to predict what John will decide to do on any given day. Now come on, we’d better get started or you’ll never make it to dinner.”

——————

Fitz hadn’t been able to sleep, despite being exhausted from the night before and his workout with May, and he’d wandered down to the forge without realizing where he was going until he was already there. There’s not much he can work on this late without getting yelled at by someone for making too much noise, but that’s not really why he’d come.

His siblings sometimes talk about how they feel closer to their father at the forge, and he supposes that he came down here looking for that. Even when Hephaestus had claimed him, he hadn’t felt any particularly strong presence beyond the glowing hammer above his head. Fitz wonders if he knows about the prophecy; probably, with him being a god and all, but there are some things even gods can’t do. That’s why they need heroes in the first place.

“He knows. That’s why he claimed you when he did.”

Fitz looks up at the source of the voice, surprised to see a little girl sitting next to a small fire in the middle of the forge. He’s seen her a few times before, usually tending to the huge firepit the cabins are built around, and he’d always assumed she was a camper; she can’t be much older than nine or ten, dressed in a soot stained brown dress with a scarf wrapped over her hair, but there’s something in her voice that doesn’t quite match up with her appearance.

“Sorry to have startled you,” she says with a small smile, poking at the fire with the iron rod in her hand, “I just thought you might like an answer to your question. You usually do.”

Fitz stands, crossing the forge to sit cross-legged on the other side of the fire, “How do you know that?”

“I’d like to think that after millenia, I know my nephew fairly well.”

It takes a few moments for his brain to engage completely after realizing that the little girl sitting in front of him is a goddess, to run through what he knows about the Olympian family from Jemma’s book and Chiron’s classes. When it clicks, he scrambles from his sitting position up on to one knee, earning a laugh from the girl.

“Hestia,” he manages after clearing his throat, which earns him another laugh.

“You are very sharp. The kneeling is nice, but unnecessary,” she says, and Fitz settles back down across the fire from her. This close, he can see that her eyes aren’t a reflection of the flames in front of her, but are themselves burning, warm and soft. A goddess, disguised as a little girl, spending all her time at a camp for demigods.

“I like it here. That’s why I stay. I gave up my throne, and I’m not needed at Olympus unless there’s a meeting or a dispute of some kind. I’d much rather spend my time here; Mount Olympus is a seat of power, but Camp Half-Blood is a home.”

“Home is where the hearth is,” Fitz says.

“Exactly, Leopold.”

No one has ever called him by his first name except his mum, but he doesn’t think it’s a good idea to correct a goddess. Besides, it’s almost nice to hear it again.

“My father only claimed me because he thinks the prophecy is about me?” he asks, and Hestia’s silence answers for her. Fitz sighs, “Guess I shouldn’t really be surprised. Spent most of my life thinking or saying mean things about him.”

“The flaw is with him, not you,” she responds, “Waiting for you to show off your pyrokinesis to claim you was a mistake, although I’m not sure it can be considered surprising. My family has quite the flair for the dramatic, you may have noticed.”

“Yeah, well, the joke might end up being on him, you know. The prophecy doesn’t have to be about me, right?”

“No,” says Hestia, although she sounds about as convinced as May had, “It doesn’t have to be.”

Fitz doesn’t say anything in return, but after a few seconds he reaches forward to skim his fingers across the top of the small fire she seems to have brought with her to the forge. Warmth spreads up his arm and into his chest; he takes a deep breath, and scoops some of the flame into his palm. It’s a darker red than any flame he’s seen before, and he’s seen a lot.

“I’m the one who taught your father that trick, you know,” Hestia says, and the fire jumps from his hand to hers.

“Really?”

“Yes. A gift, from me to my nephew, which he has occasionally seen fit to pass on to his children.”

“Thank you, I suppose. It’s gotten me out of a couple of bad scrapes,” he says, and Hestia tilts her head, like she’s considering him. Fitz ducks his head, lets a flame of his own spring to life in his palm, carefully tips the bright yellows and oranges to mingle with the deep red of the campfire.

“If your father hadn’t claimed you, I would have,” she says, and Fitz looks up at her in surprise, “Is the idea really so shocking?”

“No. I mean, it’s just- can you even do that?”

“I have no children of my own to claim. Not so long ago, it wasn’t that unusual for demigods to go unclaimed for a month or more. Some of them were never claimed at all. Occasionally, I would claim one of them as my own. Family is more than blood, Leopold.”

“Why claim me though? My own father couldn’t even be bothered t-”

“Well, I can. And I do.”

“What?”

“I claim you. Leopold Fitz, son of Hestia.”

The forge is suddenly bathed in soft orange light, and Fitz looks up in awe at the flame-like symbol floating above his head. Warmth fills his chest, like when he’d touched the campfire and, he realizes, like when he’d seen the image of it in his dreams.

“The dreams of demigods are more than just dreams,” Hestia says, and Fitz wonders how she keeps doing that, seemingly reading his mind, before he realizes she’s a goddess and things like mind reading probably shouldn’t surprise him all that much. “What else do you dream about?”

“I used to dream about this place. Camp. The sound, and the smell of strawberries. Somehow I knew it was, um, a place for us, I guess. Jemma and me.”

“What else?”

“A house on fire.”

“The one you rescued your friend Skye from? When not many people notice you, you learn a lot of things,” she continues, when he looks at her with the question clear on his face.

“Yeah. The fire that day, it felt wrong. It didn’t burn me, but it almost did. It stung, and concentrating on not burning gave me the worst headache I’ve ever had. It felt wrong. Fire’s never felt like that before,” he says, unconsciously ghosting his fingers over the red campfire to send the feeling of warmth rolling up his arm and into his lungs. Hestia just nods for him to continue.

“But I haven’t dreamed about those things in months. Not since we got to camp. There’s just been you and-”

“And what?”

“A man. Or, he looks like a man. He’s huge though, and he’s wearing golden armor, and he’s chained to… something. I can’t ever see more than just him. He’s laughing sometimes, or screaming. I can’t decide which is worse,” he says, and then looks up from the fire at Hestia, who is giving him a strange look, “What?”

“Nothing. I just wish that the heroes we so often need weren’t so terribly young,” she says with a sad smile, “You should get some sleep. You’re telling Jemma about the prophecy tomorrow, yes?”

“Yeah. And then May will probably tell Coulson, who will tell Chiron and Mr. D, most likely.”

“Tomorrow will be a long day then. You should sleep.”

“Not sure I can.”

Hestia scooped a handful of flames out of the campfire, and then held them out to him. Puzzled, he reached for it, letting the fire flow from her hand to his. The warm feeling that he’d gotten touching the campfire rolls up his arm and into his chest, moving out from there. Suddenly, Fitz is having trouble keeping his eyes open.

“That’s, uh- wow,” he says, shaking his head, and Hestia smiles.

“The power of home. You’d better get back to your cabin, or the strawberry fields. Probably won’t be on your feet for much longer.”

“How will people know? About-” he’s interrupted by his own yawn, “About you claiming me. Or is it, um, secret?” Another yawn.

“Dionysus will know, and I suspect he’ll tell the others, and Chiron. Once two people know something in this camp, it’s hard to keep it a secret. People will know. Now, sleep, Leopold.”

Fitz manages to make it up to the strawberry fields and stretch out under the stars before he finally can’t keep his eyes open one second longer. He doesn’t dream of anything that night.