Serendipity // PJO

Swimming isn't always fun

"Why are you looking so worried?" Clarisse, Hazel, Pansy, Draco, Blaise and Gregory were contrasting darkly with the white background of the strangers. I smiled at all of them but it didn't seem to calm them, not at all.

"How are you?", Gregory asked timidly. Blaise was already opening the mouth to scold him but I was faster.

"Everything is great." Everything was great, my breath shallow and the grip around my heart hard and cold. The auroral clouds were getting darker but more translucent progressively, the tightness in my chest with it intenser. But everything was okay. Everything okay.

"That's sarcasm, isn't it?" Blaise gaped at me, his stunning eyes full of disbelief.

"You are soooo gorgeous, you look a bit like a statue. So pretty eyes." His eyes were slanting and of a light brown shade, which was contrasting with his dark skin. Just like my pain from the pure positivity of the situation. Because everything was okay, everything was great. Even though my body was screaming something completely different.

"So... thanks but..." Blaise didn't really know what to say. He shone out as a dark figure, even darker than Hazel, with burning, golden, hazel eyes of the multitude of white foreigners, as if he was a dark creature, a demon with silver tongue and golden heart.

Madame Pomfrey wanted voice something, she was wearing white. She doesn't belong to us!, my brain screamed and I bared my teeth aggressively. Not only the white were backing away.

"It isn't sure, if we will be able to help Mister Jackson so we wanted to give you the opportunity to say your good byes properly." Madame Pomfrey was speaking with calm but resigned voice.

I should die? How, when I couldn't?

The clouds which had filled my head weren't that auroral anymore, more smoky and shadowy, they were letting me surmise approximately what I had lost. My heart was tensing up.

"Have you already tried out water?", Clarisse asked harshly, however, she wasn't able to hide the panic in her eyes.

"Why water?", Draco wanted to know.

He had grey eyes. Grey like the haze in my head, which was vanishing now once and for all. Grey eyes but so different from Annabeth's.

~~~

Suddenly Percy writhed, doubling up. Nobody dared to move, not even the healers. The silence was too breathless and tense, everybody was dreading what might follow, if it was broken. Only when Percy started to flinch convulsively, the multitude began to move; the silence wasn't donating any guidance.

Clarisse ran away to find water, her shoes thudding on the stony floor, hard and booming, like gunfire they were ringing loudly and finally. At every step of hers the wizards were flinching.

Percy was still quiet, no noise leaving his lips while he was trembling, huddled. If possible, his skin had even turned more pallid, a sickly shade of yellow was influencing his teint strongly. And if you looked to a hair breadth, you could surmise subtle, black lines, pulsating maliciously.

Hestitantly, Hazel was approaching Percy, around her the healers were counselling hastily about what to do now; worried, desperate, helpless voices were raising to a cacophony of disability in Percy's head - his disability.

He, the oh so mighty hero of the Olympus, who hadn't even had the power to save one girl or the courage to notify his mother.

"Percy?", Hazel asked, uncertainty dropping from her sweet voice. She wanted to touch his shoulder but recoiled, aghast, when he was sitting up jerkily. Thin, black lines were covering him by now clearly visible, his eyes were glowing in an unholy fire, nourished of pain in its purest form. Sharp like shards of glass his gaze was boring into Hazel's, who was backing away even more, terriefied, and averting his gaze.

Never she had thought, that Percy would react like this on her - or anybody. Not Percy with the cheerful disposition, who was crazy for blue food and her friend.

But this Percy wasn't her friend. This Percy was a different one, a hostile one.

Defensively, the stranger was pushing himself against the head of the sickbed, showing his teeth aggressively like a wild beast, which was feeling hard-pressed and threatened. He sent cold shivers up and down everybody's spine, no matter if chief healer or matron, demigod or witch, young or old. Nobody was able to divest oneself of the terrifying aura of Perseus Achilles Jackson, even though they might try to convince themselves from something different. Who was afraid of a teenager when being a war veteran and caretaker of people with terrible mental illnesses? The first healers were disapparating, the barrier had solely for them been removed so they would save Percy.

Percy started to utter wails. His gaze was veiled and not burning with its brutal intensitiy into their souls, but he was still crouching against the wall.

The sounds, which Percy was creating, were raw and brute, cultrate clumps of sorrow and endlessly true. They were breaking out of his throat roughly, wreathing into the air and looping around everything they could find tightly, strangling and firm. They were transportating pure grief, as true as every grief, which had ever been sensed because no sorrow was wrong.

But Percy was swimming in a sea of loss and ache, which was ranging to the horizon and deeper than sun beams were able to reach, while others had to deal with lakes, ponds or glasses full of woe.

More healers were disapparating, too huge was the fright, the anxiety, the anguish. There wasn't any hope left for this boy anyway, he would die soon or drown in his cold sea.

The black veins were slowly getting thicker, they were lying on Percy's pale skin like a net of pulsating worms, the burning ache in his guts was spreading more and more, it was like wild boars were digging with rough fangs, dripping with poison, in his body. The agony was lurking into his wails, filling the tones with never-heard torment.

Gregory broke out in tears quietly, silently thick crocodile tears were rolling down his cheeks. It were tears of a sort he hadn't ever cried, full of mourning, loss, resignation, anger,... So much more than he usually was able to comprehend. After all he was Gregory Goyle and not known for his emotional intelligence. He did know this himself and regretting it with all depth he was able to muster.

Blaise stood next to him, stiff, Percy's voice was having him under control completely and he pressed his lips together, which were slightly trembling because of all the impressions assailing him, soaked in angst and guilt.

Pansy was stroking over their backs comfortingly but they were torn too much into Percy's dark world, his broken voice working like a spell, and they didn't notice anything except him. Pansy was struggling herself to sustain her composure not only because of Percy's frightening aura, his daunting and alarming looks and his ruefulness, which was piercing marrow and bone but also because as daughter of Eros was able to sense Percy's love and longing, directed at Annabeth. Love, which was able to move mountains and kill gods. Pansy was only enabled to hope that this love wouldn't turn into something dark.

Draco had goose bumps. He didn't exactly know if it was because of the insane anxiety, which Percy was causing in him, the eery sounds, he was producing, or because of the pictures, he was triggering. Pictures of green light flashes, with the laugh of maniacs or silence like lead. Pictures of snatching teeth, nidorious breath and deathly white skin. Cold sweat was covering Draco's body, as cold as the fear, which was pulsating through his veins.

Hazel's whole body was shivering, tears were leaving moist traces on her cheeks. She could only think, that this wasn't the Percy Frank and she had gotten acquainted with. Back then he had been completely different, also sorrowful, but he wasn't impending to drown because of it. Frank would have certainly known what to do to tear Percy out of his hole but Frank had vanished. He was away and she didn't know if he was dead, alive or hurt.

She didn't know anything.

Only, that Percy shouldn't be that sad when, he died. But the grief was also drawing on her, down to its dark depths.