Percilla Jackson

waking up alone

It's less a waking up than a slow clearing of her head. There's a gauze over everything she can't think clearly enough to analyze, but the words bob up from somewhere: drugs, hospital, hurt. And then, because she's a born fighter and even drugs can't dull her sensesthat much, alone.

Percie turns her head, pretending the blur of her vision is from movement and fatigue, not the pain that pushes through her. It's not a sharp, aggressive attack she could fight, but rather slow and heavy and passive, inexorable. She's hurt badly and she knows it, but there's no one in the chair beside her to tell her how or if it's permanent or even who she is this time. Just a single demigod after a failed quest, and how pathetic is that?

Her heart knows whom it longs for, even before her mind can summon images or names: Steve, sitting bowed but fierce, eyes pained but reassuring, presence solid. No harm can come to her when Steve is there. But he isn't, and percie feels more than vulnerable. She feels frightened, even though she knows steve isn't with her because he's out fighting  whatever it is that put percie here. Even though she knows steve would die before he'd let it get percie again. But that's part of the reason she's afraid.

And then there's the one percie expects to find beside het. A flop of blond, sleep-tousled hair, legs too long for hospital chairs, and eyes that can cut with their wisdom and softness. Her best freind learned defiance of fighing at percie's bedside, refusing to leave when percie was hurt, to leave her alone. She would stay to defend while Steve went on offense, and the first step in healing has always been the sight of her best friend waiting for, with her. Percie's strong when Steve is there because she borrows strength, and she's strong for annabeth because she lends it. Alone, there's not much to her, and no one to pretend otherwise for.

This time, she is alone.

She doesn't even try to remember why she's there, what combination of teeth and claws and horns and bulk and powers put her in the hospital. Percie concentrates instead on why her family isn't there, straining to remember if Steve had gotten hurt too, or, oh, God, annabeth.

But no, because memory returns unkindly. Steve yelling her name before percie passed out, rushing too late to the rescue. And annabeth…annabeth safe and on her own, across the country in school. She wouldn't be sitting in hospital chairs anymore. She'd left percie with tyson, not knowing or caring that, practically, that meant she'd left percie alone.

Percie curls clumsily, painfully on her side. There's nothing to stay awake for, nobody to be strong for, and her heart is as drained as her body. Crushing her eyes shut, she wills herself to go to sleep and escape this suffocating solitude.

It takes her a week before she's well enough to leave, even though her moms best friend she's known since she was seven ,bruce, shows up after two days and percie tries harder for him. Two weeks, and she's recovered enough that they're back on the road, or at least bruce has no qualms about giving her an assignment and taking off on a job of his own. Percie's left with a car and an address on a piece of paper and a weary, bruised body. She stares at the piece of paper until it blurs, then gets in the car and drives to Stanford.

She finds annabeth like a needle seeking out true north, shadowing her friend through a day of normalcy: classes, lunch, library time, dinner at home with her new boy toy, dancing. Annabeth looks up a few times, like she feels percie's eyes on her, but then lets it go. After annabeth  and the guy go to bed, percie finds a bar and gets drunk, sleeping it off in the car's backseat a block down from her freinds home.

The confrontation was, questionable, percie broke in, got stuck in a head lock by a half asleep demigodess, and then they had a beer while annabeths new boy toy cooked waffles, blue ones that were demanded,and after begging, pleading and a few tears, annabeth finally agreed to get an oracle to find steve,but that involved finding Rachel and ella, and possibly, hopefully, Steve.