Hello, fanfictioners! I am, in fact, not lying dead in a ditch somewhere! Finally! Its good to be back!:D
*please ignore the lack of apostrophes at the end. Its late and my ipad is being dumb.
Percy stared at his hands. His mind was completely foggy. Nothing registered except the ever resonating fact that Smarts had died in his arms and he hadn't been able to save her.
Trays of food were backed up, reminders of the hours—days even— he had been like this. The closest to him was probably a few days old—a pile of rancid Mexican food.
With the distant metallic sound of a key and a soft sound of plastic chafing against tile, another tray was shoved under the door, forcing the others back again so that the closest tray now pressed against Percy's feet.
The soft voice came in over the loud speaker trying to persuade him to eat something.
He didn't think the voice had been there before... But it was here now.
The tone seemed fluid, no voice completely established and the words didn't matter. Soon it was Smarts speaking to his tired, fevered and starved brain. Her voice and smile continued to echo in his mind long after the speaker had shut off and the lights had faded into utter blackness once again.
Utter blackness save for the blinking red light from the camera they had mounted on the wall. They had been putting it up when he had returned. The two disciplinarians had sat him on the white couch and taken his tie then the jacket and shoes from the corner of the room.
"Take care of yourself," one had said in a gruff but well-meaning tone.
"Don't cause any trouble," the other had said in a much less sympathetic tone.
Percy fell back onto the couch and stated at the red dot until it blurred and started to swim across his vision.
He hadn't slept since they had brought him back.
Since Smarts had died.
Some still sane part of him knew that if you went long enough without sleep or food that you would just pass out.
But the rest of his mind didn't care. Because, to be honest, he didn't care of he lost consciousness forever. At least then he wouldn't be haunted by the thought that he might have been able to save her.
He had a pounding headache like a knife in his temples.
The red light seemed to drift toward the ceiling like a laser pointer.
-I'm losing it.- Percy thought.
Then the light blinked out.
Percy woke up with a needle in his arm. He was in a reclined hospital bed. The walls were decked with grainy pastel wallpaper; one of those cheery boards on the wall listing the doctors and nurses hung below a broken clock. The clock was frozen at midnight, or maybe noon.
Grey light filtered through grimy threadbare curtains. It could have been just before sunrise or a rainy afternoon.
He wasn't tied down and there wasn't a troop of disciplinarians watching his every move.
Maybe he had gotten so sick that they had taken him to an actual hospital. After all of this he was finally–
"Hello, Mr. Jackson," A nurse in flowery scrubs walked in and started taking down numbers from a machine on a pole next to his bed. "How are you feeling today?"
His throat was dry but he made an effort to speak. "Where am I?"
She smiled, a hasty facade thrown up over confusion and slight nerves. "The doctor will be in to see you later. And I hear you've got visitors in the waiting room." She smiled far too cheerily for the occasion. "Your mother is worried to death but due to your... Ah, condition we thought it best to limit contact."
Percy's jaw dropped. "My mother?"
"Yes, dear. I imagine you'll be able to see her la–"
"I want to see her now."
She froze. "I—"
"I want to see my mother."
She smiled nervously and hurried out.
A few minutes later he heard voices outside the door.
"-still be weak."
"...see him now. My gods I'm so glad."
The door opened and in stepped the nurse with Mandy Shultz.
Percy couldn't even form words.
Mandy rushed to his side. "Oh honey how are you?" she made a big show of dabbing at her eyes and fussing over his hair.
The nurse clasped her hands to her chest and said, "I'll leave you to it." she winked and slipped out the door.
"Percy Jackson I assure you if you ever pull a stunt like that again you will not wake up." Mandy said through gritted teeth.
Percy called her a few choice names but her eyes just hardened.
"You'll be going back into the masquerade as soon as we return."
"Why am I here?"
"Because you decided to not sleep for four days and not eat either. Your self inflicted condition was too much for my amateur physicians and their lack of equipment."
"Four days," he repeated.
"Yes, my incompetent help believed that eventually if they shoved enough food in your room you would eat eventually. And despite the security camera no one was concerned." She leaned closer and looked him straight in the eyes, her voice dropped to a controlled hiss. "You will be watched so closely that you will wish you had behaved in the first place. So help me if you ever try to escape again you will have a bullet in your head before you can blink."
Something told Percy that she wasn't bluffing.
There was a tapping sound at the door.
Mandy reconstructed her concerned-loving-mother look and called, "Come in," in a cheery tone that made Percy want to strangle her even more than he already did.
A man in a black suit with a pink tie walked through the door.
"Ah, Doctor Madison, it took you long enough," Mandy said, her voice tight with irritation.
"Ms. Shultz." He gave a stiff half-bow, or possibly an over zealous nod.
"Do you have the papers?"
"Yes, we can get him out in two hours."
"It is a three hour trip back. I need it to be sooner."
He handed the director a clipboard with release papers. "I'll see what I can do." He nodded curtly and left the room.
Percy squinted at the board on the wall. He thought his dyslexia was acting up or he was just misreading it; but his doctor's name was listed as Dr. Watson, not Dr. Madison.
"Who was he?" Percy asked Mandy.
"A member of my inept medical team whom I employed here to occupy your doctor and obtain release papers so that we could have you discharged as soon as possible," she said in a bored tone as she scanned the pages.
"Why? Afraid they'll recognize my face from a "missing person" report?"
Mandy backhanded him, a bejeweled ring scraping his cheek. "If you value your life—"
"I'll keep my mouth shut," he muttered, not even paying attention to Mandy any more. "What floor is this?"
"The tenth. I knew you would invent some escape plan. Well, patient, the only way out is through a few hundred medical staff members on nine floors. But first you'd have to get through me."
The nurse came back in and asked Mandy for the papers. "You don't have todread every word. It's just general stuff about treatment," she said cheerily.
"Just making sure we're not selling our souls to the devil or anything." Mandy signed so hard it cut through the pages.
The nurse looked a little scared, she took the clipboard and hurried out of the room.
"Stand up," Mandy ordered.
Percy stood shakily.
"It's a miracle your knees didn't buckle," she mused. She took a bag from the floor and threw it to Percy. "Go change, we're leaving soon."
It was another tuxedo. Not that Percy was thinking about that for long. Now that the shock of the change of scenery had passed his thoughts were back on Smarts.
As soon as he got changed Doctor Madison came in and told Mamdy there was a car waiting at the north entrance.
Mandy took an iron grip on Percy's arm, her nails dug into his skin. They walked down the hall with Doctor Madison and emerged in... The main lobby.
Percy's eyes widened. "You said I was on the tenth floor."
"A precautionary measure to make sure you didn't get any hair brained ideas. Everything we do is for your safety."
"Which is why you kidna–"
Doctor Madison clapped a hand over Percy's mouth. "That's enough, kid."
The car was a white delivery van with blacked out windows. Mandy went to the driver's side and ordered the disciplinarian driving out of the seat. He tried to argue that she had told him to drive.
"Out!" she yelled. "Now!"
He circled round the van and climbed into the back next to Percy.
"Hold on tight, boys," Mandy muttered then floored the accelerator.
Three hours, two helicopter rides and a black blindfold later, Percy was sitting in Al's office waiting for her to get back from some emergency protocol meeting.
At last, she strode in and fell back into her chair. "How are we doing, love?" she asked staring at the ceiling.
Percy wasn't quite sure if she was talking to him, or to herself. "Uh..."
Al sat forward quite suddenly. "I asked how are you doing? You're supposed to respond, you uncivilized—"
"Fine," he muttered. "Doing just fine."
"Great! So glad to hear it! Let's see, I've got aa letter here from Mandy..." she started pushing around stacks of paper on her desk. "Somewhere... Oh... Here! "Perseus Jackson in the care hereof this institution-" blah blah blah "-recently discharged-" oh come on! Let's get to the important part!" Her eyes scanned the page. "Here!" Al rolled her eyes in disgust and then wadded up the paper and tossed it over her shoulder. "Basically if you breathe a word about any of this to anyone..." she let the threat bang in the air.
"How are you going to stop me?"
"I'm so glad you asked." Mandy said, walking through the door. "If the threat of your death isn't as heavy anymore... We have other methods." She threw a photograph onto the desk and pinned it there with a knife. "You wouldn't want her to come into the program, would you?"
Percy looked down at the picture. It was Rachel Dare.
"If you touch her—"
Mandy sneered. "Behave, little hero, and we won't have to."
87
That was his new room number. Second floor at the very end. As soon as he walked in, his roommate, a small fellow with curly hair that hung into his eyes, dropped from the top bunk and hurried out.
Percy sat down on the bottom bunk and put his head againg the wall. Back to square one.
The room was even smaller than 215. The bunk bed was the only piece of furniture and the four walls were painted a shade of cranberry that looked like christmas candles.
A moment later, the boy walked back in. "I guess I should say hello. Im not particularly overjoyed to have company. I was hoping the room would stay empty for a while."
A black mask studded with gold covered his face, it was smudged with finger prints like he had been rubbing his eyes, or trying to pull the mask off.
"Don't expect me to tell you my name. I don't plan on asking yours." He pulled himself up onto the top bunk.
There was a scratching noise, then he spoke again. "They cancelled class today and the place is crawling with disciplinarians. I guess you don't know the drill yet though." He paused for a moment. "What month was it when you got taken?"
"I thought we weren't supposed to talk about it."
"New kids," he muttered, "always so paranoid."
"It was April."
He went silent again. "Get anything past the check?"
"What?"
He cursed and punched his pillow. "OF COURSE NOT!"
Percy was really confused now. He could imagine Mandy laughing at him, stuck in a room with a weird antisocial kid who couldn't carry on a conversation for more than 3 seconds without dramatic pauses or picking a new topic.
"What time is it?" the kid asked.
"I don't know,"
"Me neither..." He sighed in exasperation. "Why dont you ask for a clock?"
Lunch was a painful endeavor consisting of cold soup and a bruised up apple.
Percy's room mate wasnt helping the matter. He kept thinking aloud, making random observations about pretty much everyhing and everybody in the room.
Percy ran into Veggie on his way out while trying to avoid the kid.
"Blue!" he said. "You're not dead after all!"
"Close enough," Percy muttered.
"What?"
"Oh, nothing..."
"So... Is anyone else back? The girls from 600?"
"Uh, not sure. I haven't seen them since," he cleared his throat and hoped he could lie ro Veggie. "Since the day we... You know."
"Everyone knows."
They stayed silent walking the rest of the wAy to class.
Mrs. A greeted them at the door and pulled Percy aside.
"Dear, Im so glad you're back!" she sounded cheerful enough, but her eyes looked like she was on the verge of tears. "The plays are going to be performed today and since you— youve been gone so long and— and you p-partner hasnt returned, youll be a supporting role in another play."
All he could do was nod. The love goddess of a teacher was crying over... What? Him? Smarts? The fact that the play they had written had been so horrible?
He sat in one of the plastic chairs in the back, mindlessly watching amateur clichè stories unfold. His lines sat in his lap unread.
Mrs. A finally called his group and he saw a girl dejectedly walk to the front and stare at the ground. She was holding a set of lines too. At least he wouldnt be the only one who looked dumb and didnt want to be up here.
She had long black hair that was straightened but flipped out at the bottom and was a mess in the back, like it was naturally curly and quickly straightened.
The play started. Characters exchanged half-hearted dialogue and poor grammar, they could have won the Emmy for worst acting ever.
Percy was the distant friend of a friend/ innocent bystander who somehow got pulled into the plot. The whole thing was way too complicated for a school project.
The girl with the black hair was playing the best friend who was on the losing side of a love triangle. Her mask was grey, black and white which looked faded against her tan skin and vibrant blue dress.
The main girl character was gushing about how wonderful her boyfiend was to the girl with black hair. Then she says something about a phonecall and runs off stage.
Percy caught his cue a few second too late and sprinted to the center of the floor. "Hey," he read. "What's going on?"
"Nothing," the girl read flatly. Her voice sounded familiar to Percy but he couldnt place it.
"You look crushed. How could nothing crush you?"
This group also had stellar writers in it, Percy noted. No one actually talked like that.
"What I want to know is—" She glanced down at the page. "What I want to know is why I always get the cold shoulder"
"Im sure—" he started but she cut him off, now adlibbing.
"Nothing ever lasts for me and just when there's hope it gets crushed again. The only ray of sunlight turned to rain." She sounded like she was crying. "They take it all from you in the end." She looked up at him and a jolt went down his spine.
Her eyes were startling grey, like storm clouds. But they were full of anguish, grief and despair. In that moment when their eyes met it all clicked–her voice, the loss monologue.
Her jaw dropped. She tried to regain her composure but it didnt work very well.
"Im sure it'll all be fine in the end. And I'll be here to help you work things out." It was ironic how well that line was placed.
She crushed him in a hug and in a choked up voice, whispered, "It's me, Seaweed Brain."
Clichè and fluffy, sure. I hope you got who the girl was. I really hope...
Please slap me with a brick for taking so long to update. Im terribly sorry and I have no excuses. I had sO much fun writing this so i hope you liked it!
Quick update:
Demigod Diaries is out. Go buy it. Like now. GO! SHOO! CHOP CHOP! (if you need further persuasion, PM me)
They started character reveals for MOA. (heroes of olympus website) :))))) *excited*
In other news i started school and my teacher love homework. Ugh...
Finally, review, por favor! :)
Peace Love 36-Freakin-days-til-percabeth-reunites
StarrySea