Alone Again (Percico/Pernico AU)

Chapter 21

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TRIGGER WARNING: anxiety, sort of?

"Well," he started, "the story begins when I was at the Grace apartment."
*****

Percy quickly explained the situation to Grover, obviously leaving out a few details involving a certain one-eyed boy, before the two were separated. He decided that he already knew his fate. His suspicions were only confirmed when he was getting into an officer's car and heading back to the facility. However, he didn't believe that Luke, nor Ethan, were to have charges pressed against them. Ethan was in the hospital, and Luke had a way with words.

Percy already knew both of those facts.

After the ride, which seemed a lot shorter than it was since Percy was lost in thought, he was lead inside and back to the rooms, if that's what you wanted to call them. They were like cells with walls instead of bars. The facility was rather small, since there wasn't an extreme amount of child crime in the city. There were only about five to seven kids, anyways. It wasn't complete hell, since the people that worked there were more laid back than they needed to be, and they only locked the rooms at night.

The officer that drove him made sure that someone that worked at the facility had him registered and inside the building before just leaving Percy to his own devices. The worker took him to an all-too-familiar room, which he happened to share with none other than Luke himself before they were separated. Percy would most likely just be alone now. He remembered that the infamous (to Percy, at least) Clarisse La Rue was in the room closest to his, and he was pretty sure there were two brothers that were on his other side. Another boy named Chris Rodriguez, Ethan's old roommate, was somewhere in the building, and Clarisse's roommate, Nyssa, was obviously with Clarisse. Percy was near positive she had left a week or so after him, though.

Percy, not really wanting to do anything, just laid on the bed until he was summoned for dinner. The beds were uncomfortable as hell, though, so they did nothing to help his mood towards the situation. As he heard a bell ring through the hall, he rolled out of bed to get dinner. Upon arriving at the eating area- Percy was never really sure what to call it- he was greeted by a certain pair of brothers.

"Back so soon?" Travis, the older one, questioned him.

Percy shrugged. "Not exactly what I was hoping for."

The youngest of the three, Connor, took his own turn speaking, "It's not so bad, right? I mean, now you can help us make Clarisse mad."

Percy almost smiled at that.

Almost.

*****

After he was finished eating, Percy stuck around for a while to talk with the others at the table. Nyssa, as he suspected, was gone, so that just left the five of them: Connor, Travis, Chris, Clarisse, and Percy.

Once the clock reached 7:00PM, the five were all forced back into the hallway with their rooms. Until 10:00PM, they were free to visit each other or roam the hallway. After curfew rolled around, though, the guards went through and made sure everyone was in their rooms (even if "making sure" just meant that seeing if all the lights were turned off, the doors were closed, and nobody was in the hallway).