Disclaimer: I do not own Percy Jackson or any of it's characters

Percy was always the type of guy that smiled when he saw you in the hallway, remembered your name after the first time meeting you and laughed even when your jokes were terrible. But one day it was like his ability to be happy shut down and his entire being just went out the door leaving an empty shell.

"It's Veteran's Day." Was the reply the school was given by his friends, the blonde that no one really knew because she was in advanced classes and went to tech, and Rachel who everyone thought was his girlfriend no matter how much both of them denied it. "Just leave him be, he'll talk when he's ready."

So everyone did, everyone left him alone as he sat in the back of the room with a notebook not for any of the classes he was in and writing names that no one knew. They left him alone as he walked the halls with his face in his phone, sending texts faster than anyone had ever seen him before. He always he had to go really slow so he didn't mess up the words with his dyslexia, but now I wasn't so sure. Not about the dyslexia part, he very clearly struggled with reading and writing English but maybe there was something he wasn't telling us.

"Today is just hard for us, we'll explain when we're ready." Annabeth snapped at a guy who was bothering her in the hallway about why she wasn't smiling. It was like she'd finally cracked, all of her happiness leaking out over the floor and evaporating. Her eyes went from silver to storm clouds, her smile turned into a snarl fiercer than any animal known to man or god, her fingers curling themselves into fists at her sides as if she was holding onto her last shred of sanity. "Leave me alone asshole."

Rachel was at her side in seconds like she was called to the angry and broken, wrapping the girl in a hug so tight she might have been hoping to force her back together. "I know honey, I know. I don't understand what you're going through but I can see it, I can feel slivers of pain wafting off you like you're wearing spikes. You look like Thalia in her punk phase."

Annabeth's laugh was like an old track that you heard being played on TV shows when something funny happened. She was supposed to laugh, maybe she really found it funny but there was something off about not being able to tell. "Thalia didn't have a phase, she's always been Punk." The words were newspaper clippings arranged into sentences, you understood what they meant but they weren't supposed to go together that way. They had other letters and other means hid underneath them, they were part of secret sentences you would never know. "Can you walk with me to class?"

"Of course." The girls walked away with their shoulders brushing and stained glass eyes.

When he spoke in class it was like he was talking to the Face Stealer from Avatar, his eyes only on the spot in front of him and you would almost believe his lips were the only thing he was able to move. But when he was asked to read aloud what he had written about what Veterans day meant to him, he took a shaky breath as he stood. "Today is a special day because everyone is celebrating what you did for us and they don't even know it. They don't know about how you got on that ship or that you didn't ever leave. Today is a special day because when I get home we'll have chocolate that I agree tastes like cardboard. It's special because I will play mythomagic and we both know I have no chance, but I won't be able to touch the Hades card. Today is a special day because it means something different for everyone else but it means nothing to you because by the time it was meant for you, you weren't here." There were tears in his eyes as he sat back down before wiping them away and staring off into space again/

So everyone whispered about how Percy had lost his dad and that's why he can't look at Paul. People try and tell him they understand now and how sorry they are, but he shakes his head. They don't. "What is it then? Why are you texting like you're going to die if you don't?"

"Because I had a cousin named Bianca and I still have one named Nico. I had a mentor named Beckendorf, one named Luke and I don't have one now. Because every name in this damn book was a Veteran and the people I'm texting lost them too." He wasn't a storm on the ocean, he was the quiet signs of a drought that no one listens to and then cry about when it comes. He pulled all of the happiness out of the air and out of the ground, throwing it away because it was worthless to him. He needed to be sad today. For them.

People scoffed because there had to be at least fifty names in that book but they saw the way Rachel watched the two of them leave school. Hands brushing as they moved together step for step, talking quietly with faint smiles no one had seen all day. "He wasn't friends with them all, but they either went to his camp or were the siblings of one of his friends." She was talking to no one and everyone all at once, her eyes a brighter green than before. Almost like she was possessed. "He wasn't close with his cousin but he was with her when it happened. I didn't know her, I didn't meet most of them. Percy never lies about who he's lost, he's not that type of person and anyone who thinks differently doesn't know him. This day is for them too."