For Querencia's Quarter Quell Round 2
Prompts:
[Character] Prompt 3: Octavian
[Character] Prompt 12: Piper McLean
[Character] Prompt 18: Thalia Grace
[Pairing] Prompt 19: Grover/Juniper
[AU] Prompt 20: Mental Institution!AU (I don't own the prompts or PJO/HoO)
The ward was painted warm homey colours, looking a mix of fire, air, water, earth, electric, magic, dragons and forest all at once. The other kids in the ward were just as diverse as the colour of the ward, a multicolour magnitude of eyes and hair all facing her. Well… all somewhat facing her.
"Welcome to the suicide ward," the blond haired boy smiled wryly at her, spreading his arms wide in a mockingly welcoming way. "Enjoy your stay."
Piper figured her shock and confusion must have shown on her face because the girl with frizzy hazel hair laughed. "Ignore Jason, he's a drama queen-"
"Hey!" Jason complained, cutting in.
"-And its not called the suicide ward, its just a nickname for the Emily Krooked-"
"Emil Kraepelin," another blonde haired girl corrected instantly.
"-Ward. Besides, you shouldn't stay too long if I'm reading you right…" she continued, ignoring the previous girl, before muttering the last part to herself. Her voice brightened up with false cheerfulness again as she continued. "Us? We're just… constant patients whose guardians eventually just gave us up and chucked us here because we come back so often anyway."
"Lucky me," Piper drawled with slight poorly hidden delight. "Because my dad just did the same thing."
"Well then, important introductions are due, aren't they? Since we're living with each other for a long time, at least. My name's Percy," a boy with raven black hair and sea green eyes, who simultaneously sent her a small smile.
"And I'm his best female friend, Annabeth," the girl with wavy blonde hair and sharp grey eyes from before added.
"Leo, Percy's adopted brother," a boy with curly brown hair and warm chocolate eyes mumbled while looking up from working on… whatever he was working on.
"I'm Jason, both Percy's and Leo's best male friend," the blond boy with sky blue eyes from before cut in.
"I'm Thalia, Jason's brother," the girl with short spiky black hair, a blue streak and electric blue eyes smirked.
"Frank, Percy's… really really distant cousin?" The Chinese-looking boy shrugged.
"I'm Frank's girlfriend, Hazel," the girl with frizzy hazel hair and stunning gold eyes smiled.
"Nico, Hazel's brother," the dark haired and dark eyed boy mumbled.
"I'm… Piper," Piper introduced herself hesitantly. "With currently no relation to anyone here."
"We should change that soon, shouldn't we?" Annabeth grinned with a twinkle in her eye that Piper found strangely amusing for someone in that… condition.
No more than a week in, and Piper felt like the group from the "suicide ward" were her family already. They stuck together and didn't let other outsiders get on each other's nerves. They teased each other and bantered like siblings. They were a group of brothers and sisters, blood related or not, and everything was per-
Boom.
"LEO VALDEZ! WHAT WAS THAT?"
"Nothing, Annabeth! Just another experiment gone wrong!"
"How was that nothing?!"
…not so perfect. However, their messy ragtag group they called a family was more than they could have ever imagined it to be like.
"I'm sorry," Piper gasped as she bumped into a tall blond with blue eyes (not Jason) in her hurry to get back to her ward.
He chuckled coldly at her, before his eyes met her kaleidoscope ones, after which his laugh turned even colder, if possible, and his crazed eyes scanning over her body with lust.
"There are twenty alphabets in the alphabet, right?" He asked, a smirk adorning his features.
"There's six more," Piper replied in confusion.
"Sorry," the teen continued. "I must have forgotte T."
"There's one more," Piper added breezily, not really getting it.
"I'll give you the D later."
Piper's eyes widened almost comically as she realised where this was going.
"Fuck off," she gasped, kneeing the teen in the groin and escaping, yet still feeling his gaze burning into her back.
"Your ass is pretty tight, want me to loosen it up?" He called after her.
Piper only shivered in disgust and scampered off even quicker.
"Who's the blond with crazy blue eyes?" Piper asked later that day at mealtime, before taking a bite out of her plate. "Uh, not Jason or the dude with the scar."
"Octavian?" Leo asked curiously at the sudden question. "Whatever made you want to know about him?"
"Bumped into him and two volunteers, their names start with a G and a J or something like that, I think," Piper shrugged nonchalantly.
"Oh, you mean Grover and Juniper? Like, the two nature-obsessed volunteers that are in a romantic relationship together? And Grover has a muscle disease or something! …Right?" Hazel gushed.
"Yes…?" Piper murmured in slight confusion, shocked at the younger girl's enthusiasm.
"They're the nicest volunteers ever!" Percy added instantly, then stopped talking almost as quickly with more than a light blush over his cheeks. "That's kinda biased though, since Grover was my first ever friend."
He sighed wistfully, spacing out, and pretty much everyone else rolled their eyes at him, Thalia and Annabeth even smacking him upside on the head lightly and playfully.
"My point still stands, who's Octavian?" Piper pushed.
The table fell silent and everyone around it turned and stared at a quivering Percy, silently awaiting the outburst that was almost definitely to come.
"He's the guy who-" Percy started angrily.
"-has hallucinations and delusions and stole Percy's stuffed pegasus, Blackjack, and ripped its insides apart as an 'offering to the gods'," Annabeth cut in patiently, complete with the finger quotes and all. Then looking at the confused teenage girl, she amended her statement to simplicity. "Percy has a grudge against him."
"Rightfully so," Jason grumbled, Nico, Frank and Hazel nodding along, making sounds of agreement. "Tempest didn't deserve his fate."
"He ripped Arion to pieces!" Hazel wailed.
"Don't forget Gray," Frank added in frustration.
"Cerberus," Nico murmured.
"You can't possibly be encouraging this!" Annabeth complained in frustration, pulling her hair while everyone else laughed at her expense, the dark mood lifting slightly.
"THALIA I-DON'T-KNOW-YOUR-MIDDLE-NAME GRACE!"
"Piper Hope McLean," Thalia taunted back. "Really, there's no need to pull out the full names. Well, in your case, attempt to, at le-east."
"What. Did. You. Think. You. Were. Doing?!" Piper hissed at the older girl.
"Setting you up with Octaaaavian~" Thalia all but sung with amusement.
"He's sick and crazy. Second thought, you're crazy too."
"We aaaalllll areee~"
"I hate you."
"Ho-oney," Thalia hummed, throwing her arms around Piper in a sloppy and kind of drunken embrace and nearly collapsing onto the younger girl. "We both know that you re-eally don't."
"… I hate that you're right," Piper groaned, then snapped to attention as Thalia's mannerisms rang alarm bells in her head. "Now, tell me if you've either been drinking, haven't been sleeping or have a concussion, because I'm sure that something along those lines happened."
Thalia sent a small drunken smile at Piper. Piper would actually figure it out (unlike Percy) yet take just enough time for it to be too late (unlike Annabeth). Perfect for her needs.
"Wait a second…" Piper murmured, her eyes widening as she figured out what all the signs pointed to, just as Thalia collapsed.
They weren't in a mental institution for no good reason at all, and they definitely weren't in the Emil Kraepelin Ward for no good reason either. The nickname for their ward was "suicide ward" for a good reason. Piper could have torn up her hair in frustration. All the signs were right there…
"Too late, Piper," Thalia whispered as her eyes fluttered to a close. "Dun blamee yeerseelfff…"
"Thalia! Thalia! THALIA! Oh gods… Stay awake! Please! Stupid drugs… Stupid pills…! Open your eyes, please… Please Thalia! Just… Please just hang in there, please! Help's on the way, I swear it is… Why didn't you say anything before? PLEASE! NO! THALIA! Think! What about Jason? Your little brother!? You… You... You can't just leave the rest of us behind like that…"
Not an hour after Thalia had been officially declared dead, Piper stabbed herself in the heart due to grief and regret.
Another hour and Jason had left to be with his sister too, his body hanging limply from the noose.
Annabeth, who had grown to be Piper's closest friend, died the next day, her body twisted, crooked and shattered as a result of her jumping down from higher ground.
Hazel and Frank were next, two weeks after Annabeth, the same way Thalia left.
Nico jumped off a building the next day.
Leo slit his wrists and bled himself out two months after Thalia died.
Percy, who was the first to find his adopted brother's cold and dead corpse, stabbed himself in the heart not even an hour later.
They were in the "suicide ward" for a good reason after all.
Not many people dared stepped foot or associate themselves with that very mental institution much anymore. Nine patients committed suicide and one patient (Octavian, to be specific) died of completely unnatural causes.
Of course, being pinned to the wall by his arms and legs using arrows and daggers, his heart carved out using a carving knife later found on the floor next to him, head stabbed through on both sides using two swords, one gold and one bronze, couldn't possibly be a natural cause. It didn't help that through the surveillance cameras, the only thing seen and heard happening were creepy voices teasing the psychopathic teen and Octavian being pinned to the wall by weapons that moved on their own, including two bows that shot the arrows. Not to forget the crazed laughter after his death.
Dangerous? Of course.
Also, not many people dared stepped foot or associate themselves with the Emil Kraepelin Ward for a decade after that but it didn't matter. No one wanted to be around the spirits of the nine teenagers who killed themselves that were said to be hanging around "their" ward. No one wanted to be haunted by the spirits with unfulfilled lives, spiteful ghosts. No one wanted to lose their lives.
Rumours, that's what they were, but they were reasonable. The last two people (two volunteers, to be specific, by the name of Grover and Juniper who apparently wanted closure for their friends' deaths; specifically Percy, Annabeth, Thalia and Nico) to ever enter the ward after the nine suicide fiasco had their bodies found just outside the ward, rope around their necks and bodies hanging limply from the ropes, yet hands intertwined. Together in life and together in death.
Cheerful echoing laughter sounded from inside the room when the two bodies were found.
So everyone else started to avoid the ward for a good reason after all.
(And those nine teenagers used to be in the mental institution for a good reason after all.)
Word Count: 1800 words
(A/N: I think I am extraordinarily cruel. Okay, once again, for Querencia's Quarter Quell Round 2 and wait-oh-gods-I-can't-breathe. Nerves are killing me. Okay, prompts. Character prompts are Piper, Thalia and Octavian. Pairing prompt is Grover/Juniper, aka Gruniper. AU prompt is Mental Institution!AU. I honestly had no idea where Octavian fitted in and how come he became a sick bastard. Or how this turned into a suicide fic.
Um… I swear I'm working on Facades as much as my writer's block allows me too. I'm so sorry. What kind of writing was that I used to write anyway? Ugh. Remind me to rewrite it sometime.
Side note… Querencia's awesome, go visit it and don't kill me for this story's ending!
Peace,
Summer)