VIII.
He comes home from his usual tutoring session at Annabeth's to an empty house. He locks the door behind him and lets his green penguin backpack drop to the floor. He's a little old for it now, and the penguin's orange beak is a little worse for wear but he likes it anyways.
The flat is lit up already, the lights in the hallway, kitchen and living room on. He wanders into the kitchen first, for a good sarnie, kicking off his shoes haphazardly. Papa will scold him later, he knows, but stomach wins over Papa at the moment.
He's nearly ten now, he notes absently as he reaches up to the top shelf of the fridge to grab the margarine. One more year at Harkness' accelerate courses and then he'll need to decide between going off to high school to take the national exams, and skip three years; or stay home and take online courses so that he can delay the national exams for later. He butters both sides of the bread and adds the fillings before lowering his towering cheesy masterpiece into the oven.
Harkness itself is fine. Sometimes people give him funny looks or Alexander Watson III gives him a glare and a pointed word - but he remembers how Percy Jackson's friends were. The way a beautiful girl called Silena used to smile so genuinely at people that they couldn't help but answer her with a smile. The way a bespectacled boy called Malcolm could always diffuse a fight in the Athena cabins, logic and reasoning and sharp as a whip. Some of the kids don't like him hanging out with them, or say that their parents told them to stay away from him. Their noses crinkle the moment they find out he has two dads or that he can't afford the latest gaming device, let alone receive an island named after himself for his birthday – at least at first. And then he tells them what Annabeth Tang, his tutor-from-across-the-street, told him about prejudice and bias and lean forwards like Clarisse La Rue used to (right in their faces so that they used to be able to see every freckle from bashing heads in the sun) and then he grins, like he knows something they don't (like the Stoll twins before a prank, all upturned lips and a flash of teeth).
He hopes that wherever Percy Jackson's friends are, that they were happy. Even if they don't remember, like his Dad - Adrian - or like Annabeth Tang. He remembers and he won't forget.
Tabitha-May will stomp over and swat him for trying to start a fight, and the rest of the Purple group will peer over curiously from whatever they're doing, scattered around the playground.
He sits down at the table, the perfect toastie on a plate, gooey and ooey with melted cheese dripping down the sides of the bread. Percy Lopez bites a hot mouthful of his sandwich.
It would be funny, he has to admit, if the Nancy Bobofit Percy Jackson had encountered is the cat he'd named for her in this life.