V.

It's late January when Percy has the worst day at school ever. It begins with waking on the wrong side of his bed, pajamas clinging to his skin uncomfortably, a horrible foggy feeling in his head and a persistent itching feeling in his too dry throat.

He attempts to sit up, swaying dizzily as the red digits of his turtle clock dance in his line of sight. He's woken up a little later than usual, Daddy must have left for work already although Papa is probably still in bed.

He manoeuvres himself gingerly into his uniform, changing by half sitting, half-leaning on the bed. He can't afford to stay home today, not when Daddy is due a promotion at the garden centre and Papa's cars await him downstairs in the garage. His thoughts are strangely fluid and distant, intangible like trying to catch smoke with your fingers, but he manages to pull himself together and stumble out the flat and downstairs to the bus stop. His usual bus left ten minutes ago, so the chatter on this bus is marginally quieter without his friends from the neighbourhood and in the window seat he leans his face against the cool glass, uncaring of hygiene.

All day at school, he tries his hardest to sit up and pay attention as his vision gets blurrier and blurrier and sweat begins to build up on the back of his neck. There's a dull cramp in his stomach and an ache in the back of his eyes but he screws his eyes tight, leans forward onto his desk and focuses as best he can because Percy Jackson fought his way out of Tartarus and faced monsters on the daily so what is one little cold in the face of all that.

Tabitha-May Grant – the girl he sits next to in class this term – eyes him with distaste and wrinkles her nose. "You should really go to see matrons, you know?" She whispers and nudges him, not unkindly but enough to jostle the precarious position of his arms trying to keep him from keeling over in the middle of the spelling test. "If you faint, I'm not going to catch you and I do not want to get sick." She states with feeling.

"Shhh, Tabby," He hisses back as he wobbles for a moment, before regaining some semblance of balance and hunkering down lower over his paper. He just has to make it through the day and then he can go back to bed once he's home. "Some of us are concentrating on the test."

"Don't call me that!" She scowls and then sinks lower in her seat as Ms McPherson whips round to glare in their direction. "I was just trying to be nice."

"Onomatopoeia," Ms McPherson says as she paces towards them, "Miss Grant and Mr Lopez this is a test! Not recess!" She eyes them sternly for a good moment, and Percy's fingers tighten around his pen clammily in embarrassment. The teacher sighs and turns to resume the test. "Onomatopoeia, comic books often use onomatopoeias to create sound effects, the word is onomatopoeia."

Hurriedly, Percy spells the words out, his joined-up-handwriting shaky and he dreads handing this in with the amount of ink splotches smeared on the page.

At recess, the playground is too loud and chaotic. Everyone is running and screaming and so he hides in the boys' toilets, and presses wet, cool paper towels to his forehead, leaning over the sink. In here, Tabby can't come in and nag him and the rest of the class are too busy playing outside to come in too. In the mirror, his face looks sallow and pale, slightly off colour and his whole body feels sticky with sweat. Right, only an hour and a half until lunch time and then two more hours until home-time. He can last that long, surely?

The bell rings shrilly somewhere outside, signalling the end of their break. He steadies himself against the sink and then makes for the door.

He does manage to last the whole day, miraculously, but not before Tabby squeals to Ms McPherson in front of the whole class and its only his quick thinking and poker-face that manage to keep him out of a trip to the infirmary and a call to his parents. Luckily, she believes his bare-face lie as the room around him kind of spins, but keeps an eye on him suspiciously for the rest of the day while Tabby shoots him glares that, if he were well enough to care, would probably have him cringing.

When it's time to go home, the distance between school and the bus stop never seems to end. Gravity weighs down his legs, like his shoes are treading through thick treacle and his head stuffed with cotton.

Climbing on the bus feels like scaling a mountain, his legs wobbly beneath him. The bus is jam-packed with people, and its only through sheer luck, and lack of balance that he manages to fall right up against the glass window when the bus takes a corner. The cool pane is a blessed relief against his too hot body, and Percy sighs against the glass, vision swimming.

.

He wakes to Papa leaning over him, face close. There's a cool cloth on his forehead.

He tries to look around, but his eyelids feel weighted and heavy. A hand clasps his cheek, calloused but comforting against the fever. "-Pa?" He tries.

Papa frowns at him, dark eyes looking tired, but fond. "You stupid boy," He says, "Why didn't you tell me you were feeling ill this morning?"

Percy leans into the palm of his hand, just glad to be home. "M'school" He murmurs through a sigh as the damp cloth is replaced by a colder one. "'s'espensive." Everything was too hot, and too close.

"That's for us to worry about, silly," His voice sounds odd, Percy thinks whimsically, kind of croaky and sad.

Papa shouldn't be sad, he has Percy and Daddy, and Annabeth and Percy's going to find everybody so that someday he'll have Nico too, and Bianca and Tyson and Grover and no one will be lonely or sad again. "m'sorry," He gasps desperately, and reaches to clutch Papa's hands, "…gonna find them, promise."

"Shhh, shhh," Papa says, his voice a low, soft hum, "It's gonna be okay, Perce, you're going to be just fine…"

Distantly, he hopes Nico and Bianca had this, if not in Percy Jackson's life, then he hopes they and all his friends have this wherever they are in Percy Lopez's when.

"It's gonna be okay…you're gonna be just fine…"