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The gentle ticking of the clock in the corner and the wheezy hum of the ventilation system were usually a kind of soothing white noise, but today, in the early-morning silence of Sarah Lafayette's classroom, their rhythmic beat was starting to set her teeth on edge and impede her ability to concentrate.
Glancing down at the still-towering pile of essays that she still had to grade, she stifled a sigh. Being out of work for the two weeks she'd needed to fully recover from that fateful field trip to the Statue of Liberty meant that things had really stacked up in her absence. She usually prided herself on getting her students' work back to them in a timely fashion, so in the days since she had finally gotten back to work, she'd spent a lot of caffeine-fueled early mornings and late evenings alone at her desk.
The doctor at the hospital where she had been treated had been unmoved by her pleas to be cleared to return to work as soon as possible, stating (and then documenting in her medical record, the bastard) that, given the damaging effects of icy water on fragile organs, 'not taking the time to rest could interfere with and adversely affect her healing.' Perhaps anticipating that Sarah would find some kind of loophole to avoid his recommendations, the doctor had been firm and clear when he eventually discharged her: rest meant bedrest - no leaving her apartment, no strenuous activity, and no work for at least 10 days.
After the first week of laying in beds (at the hospital and then at home) and eating what felt like gallons of hot soup dropped off by worried (and morbidly curious) friends, she had thought that, having failed to drown in the Hudson, she might instead drown in broth.
She had spent most of the first half of the second week trying to convince those same friends to bring her some of her students' weekly essays to grade, and been shot down at each request with the reminder that 'bedrest does not mean set up a desk in bed so that you can keep working, you crazy woman!'
She knew that they had meant well, but it had been almost a month now since that nightmarish day, and she was just now almost caught up on her grading.
Taking a deep breath, she glowered at the pile of essays again. This was the last stack of old ones. She had a least another half an hour before the earliest of her early birds started showing up, and if she focused diligently - and tuned out the annoying ambient noise around her - she could get at least a few more done before then.
In the distance she heard the heavy double doors at the end of the hallway creak open and then fall shut with a muffled rattle.
It wasn't unusual for teachers to come in early to do exactly what she was doing, and so, absorbed in the introduction to that first essay, Sarah barely registered the initial noise.
What did catch her attention was the sound of a person stumbling into the bank of lockers just outside her door, the dull, clanging thud of their body against the metal making her jump in her chair. Before she could disentangle herself from the blanket she'd wrapped around her legs to ward off the morning chill, a shadow flickered across the frosted glass of the window in her classroom door, pausing for a moment before lurching further down the hallway.
Frown deepening and concern rising in her heart, Sarah cautiously got to her feet. In the brief moment that the person had been silhouetted in her window, she had thought she heard heavy breathing and what might have been a grunt of pain. If this person was ill or injured, why hadn't they just opened the door and asked for help? She knew her light was the only one on in this hallway, and they weren't likely to find help in the direction they were moving – toward the gym, which was always dark and empty until after 2nd period.
Unless it wasn't help they were looking for, but a place to hide.
Sarah paused, one hand on her doorknob as a shiver than had nothing to do with lingering chills ran through her. If they were trying to get away from her, was it wise to try and follow them?
Another thud further down the hallway, this time audibly accompanied by a choked-off gasp, made up her mind. If someone needed help, she couldn't just ignore them. Her courage may have taken a bit of a hit lately, but her compassion was just as strong as it ever was.
But by the time she got the door open, whoever it was was nowhere to be seen.
Sticking her head further out of the light of her doorway and into the dark hallway, she peered left and right, trying to catch a glimpse of movement in the shadows beyond the dim glow of the emergency lights.
Nothing.
But as her eyes fell on the bank of lockers outside her classroom where the first thud had come from, they widened in horror.
A long smear of blood, thick enough to start to drip down the dented metal, stained two of the lockers.
Sarah knew that she was no forensic examiner, but she had watched a lot of cop dramas. If they were accurate at all, then that much blood, splashed that high up on the lockers, meant that whoever had just stumbled down the hallway was very seriously injured - and definitely was in need of help.
Darting back into her classroom before she could lose her nerve, she grabbed her cell phone and the comprehensive first aid kit that all teachers were required to keep in their classrooms before taking a deep, centering breath and squaring her shoulders. It wouldn't do to get squeamish now, not when there was potentially someone's life on the line.
Stepping back out into the hallway, she played a hunch and examined the scuffed linoleum floor more closely. Just as she thought: there was more blood. Droplets of it had fallen haphazardly along the dark corridor, marking the path the person had taken away from her door.
Following the trail of blood deeper into the bowels of the old building by the light of her phone made her feel like she was in some twisted version of Hansel and Gretel, and she felt the hair on the back of her neck rise as the hallways continued to get darker and darker. There were no windows in the hallway that led to the gym - not that they would provide much light at this early hour anyway - since the athletic complex was partially built into what had been the basement of the old building.
When she arrived at the double doors that led into the gym proper, Sarah was surprised to see that they were totally free of blood, closed, and more importantly - still locked.
Sweeping her light across the floor, she realized that she had gone a little too far forward, assuming incorrectly that the gym was the person's final destination. In fact, the droplets had taken a turn down a side hallway just before the gym entrance, and had coalesced into a small puddle in front of what Sarah thought might be the swim team's side entrance to the pool.
Creeping closer, she felt her stomach churn as she stared at the door. A bloody handprint decorated the wood, as though the person had braced themselves against it as they tried to get the door open; the door handle itself was smeared with nearly as much blood as the lockers outside her classroom.
But the door was ajar, so whoever it was had managed to get inside. How had they known that this door would be open? Even Sarah hadn't known that the pool door was left unlocked this early in the morning.
Heart in her throat, she turned off her phone light and - carefully avoiding touching the bloody door handle - pushed the door open a little wider with her foot.
A rush of warm, chlorine-heavy air filled her nostrils as the dim room began to come into view, and for a moment, Sarah was confused: there seemed to be no one there. Had she somehow lost her quarry again?
But then, as her eyes adjusted to the soft, barely-there glow of the underwater pool lights, she heard a small splash, like someone coming up for air, and saw that a backpack, jacket, and familiar blue hoodie lay in a crumpled pile on the edge of the pool.
Her heart, already tight with worry, seemed to contract even further.
It couldn't be.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
But it was.
As a dark head emerged from the water to lean its forehead heavily against the concrete lip of the pool, eyes shut, teeth gritted, and familiar features scrunched up in pain, she had to cover her mouth to stifle a sound of dismay. Shrouded in the darkness of the doorway, she doubted she was visible to him; that would change if she gave herself away by gasping.
Of all the people she might have expected to find bleeding heavily in a high school pool in the early hours of the morning…well, if she was being really honest with herself and took recent events into consideration, it wasn't actually that shocking that it was Percy Jackson.
(It was just that she had never expected to find anyone bleeding heavily in a high school pool in the early hours of the morning, so she was a little unsure about what she was supposed to do about it now that it was happening?)
One of Percy's hands came up from where it was clenched around the concrete edge of the pool to rifle through the pile of clothes dumped unceremoniously next to him. Sarah squinted, trying to see more clearly in the dim light. Was that a gold coin he'd just pulled out of his jacket pocket? How on earth was that going to help him now?
Some of the warm, hazy air from the pool drifted up around him as he grabbed it, catching on the flickering underwater lights and the surface of the pool to form a faint rainbow. His eyes blinked open as the rainbow formed, and he took a long, careful glance around him that had Sarah guiltily shrinking back into the shadows of her concealed doorway. Something powerful and insistent within her was now practically shouting at her not to interrupt him, and she felt stuck in place, barely able to breathe, as she watched him.
Seemingly satisfied that he was still alone, Percy turned back to the rainbow around him and almost casually tossed the gold coin he was holding into it. Sarah expected to see it fall through the mist and plop into the water below, but to her shock, the coin seemed to vanish into the colorful haze.
"Hey Fleecy, can you do me even more of a solid than usual? Show me Annabeth, wherever the hell she is right now," he mumbled, voice low and pained.
Before Sarah could puzzle out what had happened to the coin, who Fleecy was, and why Percy thought they could show him Annabeth - his girlfriend, if she was remembering correctly - she had to clamp her hands over her mouth again to stop a yelp from escaping.
In the mist around his head, a…portal? a…hologram? had appeared, displaying a girl that Sarah recognized as Annabeth Chase.
The younger woman was curled up at a desk, blonde curls wild with sleep and propped up knees revealing checkered, ratty pajama pants. Her gaze was laser-focused on a notebook in front of her, and it was clear to Sarah that she was studying, maybe for a test that she had that day.
"Um, Annabeth…" Percy's voice was soft, and trailed off miserably as she looked up.
"Percy?" Annabeth had smiled when she heard his voice, but the smile slid off her face immediately as she took in his rough voice and strained expression. Uncurling from her study position, she leaned forward, eyes worried. "Seaweed Brain, what the hell happened?"
The pained look in his eye half-faded into a sheepish expression Sarah knew well; if she ignored all the impossible things happening around her right now, she might even expect him to be wearing that expression, having been caught in the pool before school hours. "A griffin tried to build a nest on my fire escape this morning, and she, uh…didn't exactly take kindly to me telling her to scram."
A griffin? Surely he didn't mean an actual griffin, did he? He could see them?
"Oh my gods, Percy." Annabeth's voice was an odd mixture of exasperation, humor, and concern, but she didn't sound even remotely surprised. She could see them too? "Only you, babe."
"It's not my fault! I wasn't even trying to make her mad! I was just really tired and probably didn't do a very good job of explaining to her that she and my mom couldn't be having babies in the same place!" Percy's voice got a little stronger as he got defensive, which made a tiny smile tug at the corner of Sarah's mouth, despite her shock and bafflement.
"That's probably why she was attracted to your fire escape to begin with - the maternal vibes that your mom gives off are even stronger than usual right now," Annabeth said, voice still laced with concern despite the amusement in her eyes. "How badly did she get you?"
"How d'you know she got me?" Percy said, trying for some bravado that he obviously wasn't feeling. As soon as his girlfriend had appeared, he had straightened his back and tried to smooth the lines of tension out of his forehead…but the effort of looking less hurt than he was had to be exhausting.
"You wouldn't be calling me from a pool looking like you'd just lost a fight if you hadn't actually just lost a fight. Be honest: how bad was it, Perce?" Annabeth said, voice still essentially gentle, but with an undercurrent of something sterner.
She was perched on the edge of her chair, muscles tensed and ready for action, and her serious gray eyes bored into his.
He looked away, clearly not wanting to meet her intense gaze, but just as clearly still wanting her to know what had happened. His voice was starting to sound strained again, the effort of talking making his breathing a little ragged. "Well…I thought I had convinced her to just leave so we wouldn't have to fight, but it turned out she was lying in wait for me when I left to get breakfast before school. I managed to draw her away from home and away from mortals…got in a couple of hard hits…but a few blocks away from school, right as I was about to finish the job, well…she, um, got in a pretty good parting shot before she disintegrated."
Only parts of that story made sense to Sarah - had he killed the griffin? and why had he said mortals as if he wasn't one? - but Annabeth just nodded along, her expression becoming pinched as Percy reached the end of his tale.
"Where?" she said, eyes briefly shutting, her voice deceptively calm.
He blew out a shaky breath, and Sarah noticed for the first time that his normally tan skin was very pale - probably from the blood loss, she thought nervously. "Left flank. Made it to school, made it to the pool…probably bled all over everything getting here, but not bleeding so much anymore."
Annabeth frowned, concerned look becoming even more pronounced. "Wait, you're in the pool and you still haven't stopped bleeding?"
Sarah had recently seen first-hand that Percy was able to do some pretty incredible things when he was in water, but was Annabeth implying that he could also heal himself with it when he was injured? But how was that possible? Didn't immersion in water usually increase a person's rate of blood loss?
As Percy began to speak again, she clamped down on her spiraling brain, which was now starting to feel overloaded, not wanting to miss a word of their conversation.
"Mostly, just not all the way. I dunno why, Beth, but I'm healing pretty slow today," he said offhandedly, though there was something uneasy in the way he shifted his shoulders and continued to avoid her eyes. He was worried, and trying hard not to show it.
"Show me." Annabeth slid forward even more, keen eyes trying to see beneath the surface of the water.
"I, ah, don't really wanna move at the moment," Percy muttered, eyes still on Annabeth's knees rather than her face.
"Bullshit. You just don't wanna show me how bad it is," Annabeth said, voice tight. When Percy didn't move, her tone sharpened. "Perseus Jackson, show me."
His eyebrows came together in a scowl at the sound of his full name, and he jerked his chin up defiantly, bright green meeting deep gray. For a moment they glared at each other…but Percy obviously didn’t have the strength to be stubborn for more than a few more seconds. Blowing out a resigned breath and shooting her one last grumpy look, he turned, carefully levering himself halfway out of the pool so that he could perch on the edge.
For the third time in only a few minutes, Sarah had to shove her fist in her mouth to stop herself from screaming - and she wasn't the only one.
Annabeth, similarly affected, put her head in her hands and swore loudly and violently - or, at least, it sounded like she was swearing, but the words were in a language Sarah didn't know. When her head came up again, it was clear that she was fighting down an even more visceral reaction so that she could focus on assessing the horrific scene before her.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Percy had apparently discarded the shredded remains of his shirt at some point around the time he'd gotten into the pool, which meant that the mangled, bloody skin on the side of his bare torso was on prominent display. He was right that it had mostly stopped bleeding, but the longer he sat on the edge of the pool, water dripping off of both his skin and his soaked jeans, the more the blood seemed to seep out of the four deep, jagged gashes in his side.
And though that sight would have been awful enough on its own, it was obvious that this was far from the first time he'd been seriously injured. Most of Sarah's students had a few large, visible scars - sad products of the rough lives that many of them had lived, or still lived, usually acquired through little to no fault of their own - but until now, she had never before seen a teenager whose skin was as heavily criss-crossed with the marks of past pain as Percy's was. What horrors had this young man - no, this child - been forced to endure over the years?
His shallow intake of breath snapped her out of her newest spiral before it could really get going. She could worry about his past injuries after the present ones had been taken care of.
He was doing his best to hold himself upright on the edge of the pool while Annabeth examined his wounds, her expression calculating, but before long he started to shiver, arms shaking and eyes becoming glassy despite his best efforts to focus.
It didn't take his girlfriend long to notice, and her eyes softened.
"Go on, get back in the water before you keel over, babe," Annabeth murmured, her tone far more gentle than it had been a minute ago.
A weak smile crossed his face at her fond tone, despite the stress wrinkling his forehead, and he gingerly scooted himself forward into the pool again. His eyes flickered shut as soon as the bloody gashes made contact with the water again, and letting out a sigh of relief, he let his head fall back against the lip of the pool.
As he carefully returned to the water, Annabeth bit her lip, eyes uncertain. "Percy…I don't know why you're healing so slow either, but I don't think this is really the moment to speculate on that. I'll do some research on griffin talons later. The gashes don't look poisoned or infected though, so ambrosia probably should heal them." He winced, just barely enough for Sarah to make out in the gloom, and Annabeth groaned. "Gods, please tell me you have some with you."
"Um…half a square," he whispered, eyes still shut. Sarah grimaced, not liking the defeated set of his shoulders; he didn't seem to have the strength to pretend it wasn't that bad anymore. What was ambrosia? Some kind of medicine that supplemented whatever it was he could do with water?
"Goddamnit Percy, you know that's not gonna be enough to fully heal those." Annabeth said, tone sharpening again - this time with worry, Sarah thought, rather than irritation.
"No shit, Sherlock. But I can't get more at the moment, and you know blood loss makes it hard to think, so if you don't mind, I could use a little help figuring out what the fuck I'm supposed to do!" He cracked one eye open to give her another feeble glare, low, tired voice laced with frustration.
Annabeth frowned unhappily, clearly not a fan of his tone, but nodded and backed off, probably accepting that he wasn't at his best right now. And, he was right: of the two of them, her brain was the one that was likely currently more functional, and therefore she had the best chance of coming up with an action plan that would actually help.
She worried her lower lip between her teeth, eyes glazed over as her mind seemed to click into gear, turning over possibilities. "How long do you think you can stay in that pool?"
"Probably not more than another half hour, maybe 45 minutes if I push my luck," he mumbled apologetically, eyes shutting again. Sarah winced. He was definitely going to be pushing his luck if he stayed in the water for that long - it was already 6:30, and the final homeroom bell rang in precisely one hour.
Her expression cleared a little, determination taking over and pushing fear away. "Okay…I think we can work with that, even with the slowed healing factor. You ready for the plan, Seaweed Brain?"
The tiny smile returned, and he nodded wordlessly, opening his eyes again.
"Here's what you do: stay in the pool for the next half an hour, then eat the ambrosia that you do have. Try to scrounge up a new shirt and some first aid supplies to wrap up whatever isn't healed yet, because I'm sure that won't be enough ambrosia to totally stop the bleeding. If you still are bleeding at all at midday, IM me and I'll sneak out with some more squares right after my test."
Sarah looked down at the first aid kit still clutched in her hand. She knew it was very complete, because it hadn't been used for anything more serious than paper cuts in the time that it had been in her possession. But would it have the things Percy would need to bind up wounds that large and serious? And could he even do it without help? He was obviously even stronger and more capable than she had suspected - and over the past month, she'd been suspecting a lot of things - but he just as obviously was weakened by blood loss and pain.
She had been so lost in worried thoughts - and self-recriminations on her lack of useful first aid training - that she had missed Percy's response. He must have agreed to Annabeth's plan though, because she was giving him a satisfied nod that didn't completely dispel the worry lurking behind her eyes. She frowned, a new thought lighting her face. "Do you think the cameras saw you tracking blood all over the place?"
Percy sighed, sounding even more exhausted. "I hope not. I was trying to snap at them as I saw them."
Sarah filed that new piece of strange information away. In maybe 10 minutes Percy had shown that he had the ability to create portals in midair, (apparently) fight creatures that most people didn't think were real, and (slowly) heal himself from serious, life-threatening injuries by submerging himself in water. Could he also disrupt electronics by…snapping at them?
Annabeth couldn't suppress a snort, which made him roll his eyes. "Yeah yeah, I know I'm not great at it. Is this really the moment to rub that in?" He shifted a little more upright in the water, groaning softly as he moved. "But shit, I probably do have to figure out how to clean up all that blood."
"Worry about healing first. If you took care of the cameras, they won't immediately connect it back to you."
Annabeth’s voice was matter-of-fact, and Sarah wholeheartedly agreed with her despite her still-somewhat-fuzzy understanding of what they were talking about.
But on that note: if she couldn't help Percy much with first aid, could she help him by cleaning up some of the more obvious splatters of blood? She wasn't sure when her mind had shifted from awe, horror, and disbelief into 'help the kid at any cost' mode - was this just her brain's way of delaying adding all the bizarre things she'd seen over the past few minutes to her mental rolodex of weird? - but she didn't think this was the time to ponder what was at the heart of the instinctiveness of that switch.
The conversation had continued without her again, and she tuned back in to hear Percy's dry voice. "Assuming they don't like, DNA test it or anything."
"That feels like it might be outside AHS's budget," Annabeth responded, just as dryly. The two teenagers snickered quietly, and Sarah was gratified to see that some of the glassiness that had appeared when he had hauled himself out of the water had started to fade from Percy's eyes.
As the little burst of amusement died away and the silence began to carry, Sarah sensed that the mood in the pool room had shifted in a more intimate direction. Percy, eyes a little more open now than they had been since she had first found him, gave his girlfriend a smile that was so sweet and apologetic and loving that Sarah felt like she ought to look away - so she did, guiltily.
Really, her eavesdropping on this conversation had been a pretty major violation of his privacy. Did the fact that it was wholly motivated by concern for his well-being make that any better?
"I love you, Annabeth," she heard him murmur. "Don't know what I'd do without you, don't ever wanna find out."
"It's a good thing you tell me you love me all the time, otherwise I'd be pretty worried about you making those kind of big declarations right about now," Annabeth said, trying for a flippant tone that wasn't quite believable. Sarah heard his quiet laugh and a tiny splash, as though he were gently flicking water at her.
"But I love you too, Seaweed Brain," she said a moment later, her voice now equally tender and maybe even a little teary. "And I don't wanna find out what life is like without you either, so don't you dare go anywhere."
"You're not getting away from me. Never again," he said, soft but firm, conviction strengthening his voice almost to its normal tone.
To Sarah, though she was an outsider in more ways than one, this sounded like a promise he had made before - and one that he intended to keep making for a long time yet to come.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
The teenagers seemed to end their conversation only a few seconds later, because the light that had illuminated Annabeth's face faded away just as surely as she did - as though she'd never been in the pool room at all.
The moment she was gone, Percy blew out all his breath in a ragged groan that reverberated around the pool room. The sound probably carried more than he'd meant it to, because he winced and ducked down lower in the water, head swiveling to check that he hadn't been overheard.
Sarah, still holding perfectly still, wrestled with herself internally. The moment he had mentioned fighting a griffin (she still couldn't believe they could be approached, much less fought) she had known that she wouldn't be able to offer him anything like 'normal' help. But was there anything she could do for him now, before quietly ensuring that his blood got cleaned up? Shouldn't she at least offer him her first aid kit so he wouldn't have to break into anyone's office for wound-bandaging supplies?
But revealing herself to him also meant that he would probably have to reveal himself to her - all that he was, whatever he was.
Sarah had spent many sleepless hours puzzling over his behavior on the day of the disastrous field trip, and had not yet been able to come up with a satisfactory explanation for how he had done everything he'd managed to do that day.
Her first, slightly delirious thoughts about angels had been dismissed fairly quickly; a useful starting point for her fevered imagination perhaps, but not ultimately that helpful in determining what his true nature might be. Sarah had noted in class that pretty much all of the biblical allusions in literature they discussed went over his head, and more than once she had heard him swear with 'god' in the plural, not the singular form.
Did he belong to a polytheistic faith then? She wasn't sure about that either, because he never seemed to skip school on the holy days of any major polytheistic religion that she knew, he didn't wear any kind of obvious religious dress or symbols, and the only time she'd ever seen his behavior approaching anything like reverence was when he met up with his girlfriend after school. (And last she checked, hedonism wasn't a religion, per se.)
But now that she had a whole 'nother set of pieces to add to the puzzle that was Percy Jackson, she was starting to wonder if the truth was that he was some kind of comic-book-style superhero, ridiculous as that was to even consider.
After all, who else fought off fantastical creatures, opened up portals to other parts of NYC, and had both strength and powers beyond the limits of standard human abilities?
Sarah had been a voracious reader of comics and graphic novels ever since she was a little girl, and those stories told her that superheros usually tried to hide in plain sight, maintaining their anonymity as long as possible and not revealing their identities unless absolutely necessary. If Percy was a superhero - and that was still just a working theory, though maybe the best she had at the moment - then he probably would not want her to know who he really was. Or, he would at least want to have the option of keeping quiet.
Could she somehow help him out and give him that option?
A light bulb went off in her brain.
Slowly, she began to creep backwards into the hallway, trying not to make a sound. Silently, she re-traced her steps in the direction that she'd come from, heading about halfway back down the hall that led to her classroom. Once she was a fair distance away from the pool, she stopped to turn on her flashlight again, spun around, and began heading back towards the pool - this time, making as much noise as she could.
Her shoes slapped against the floor and the light from her phone bounced from wall to wall as she got closer, and when she was right outside the pool door, she figured she'd better let him know just how close she was. "Hello? Is someone there? Do you need help?"
There was a soft splash from inside, big enough to indicate that he was still there.
Steeling herself, Sarah pushed the door fully open with her foot, and was again met with the deja vu of warm, hazy, pool air and no sign of Percy. For one wild moment she wondered if he could also make himself invisible, before she realized he was completely underwater, with his back pressed into the corner of the dim pool that was darkest.
Okay, so it looked like he wanted to keep quiet. A tiny part of her was disappointed that he didn't want to trust her with his secret, but the larger part of her recognized that he had no real reason to believe that he could trust her with it - yet.
Stepping into the room, she purposefully let her eyes skip right over him - he was hard to see in his shadowy corner - as she walked over to the bench next to the inner door that led to the swimmer's locker room. Lifting the first aid kit high enough so that he could (presumably?) see what she was holding, she set it down in the middle of the bench.
She cleared her throat, and tried to speak clearly and calmly into the quiet. "I'm not sure if you can hear me…but there's a lot of blood in the hallway. And a lot of blood on this door. I've left some bandages on the bench, but if you need urgent medical attention, my classroom is just down the hall. The light's on, and I'll be back there in a few minutes. I...hope you know that you can trust me."
She paused for another couple of seconds, swallowing down a sudden lump in her throat before shaking herself and moving towards the door. Percy and Annabeth had made a plan to help him heal earlier, and she had contributed to it as best she could.
Now to see about cleaning up that blood.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Whatever Percy had done to the cameras must have worked, because no one from custodians to administrators could figure out where all the blood had come from.
When Sarah had arrived back at her classroom to find a pleasantly baffled custodian attempting to scrub the drying blood off of the lockers, she had played dumb and said she'd looked for whoever it was and found nothing. The custodian, an oddly blank look on his cheerful face, had nodded and idly suggested that it was some probably some kind of hurt animal looking for shelter.
But when no one could find the creature and all the blood had finally been cleaned up, just before the final homeroom bell rang, it seemed as though any desire for anyone to investigate further had also been wiped away.
Despite the concerning implications of that decision - did no one at AHS care how and why blood had been splashed halfway across the school, up the walls and all over the floor? - Sarah wasn't surprised by it.
Investigations were tedious, and there really hadn't been that many people who had seen the full extent of the blood trail before it had gotten mopped up. So, few people knew that there had been way too much blood for it to have belonged to any of the small animals wild in this part of NYC, and the people who had seen it first hand had all seemed to (very conveniently) forget more and more of what they saw as the day went on.
Except Sarah, who remembered the events of that morning as clearly as the day wore on as she had in the moments after she had left the dark pool.
She had a pretty good idea of why her memory was proving to be less porous than that of the general population…but she also couldn't afford the luxury of following that thought to its completion yet when she had to focus on teaching the beginning of her Shakespeare unit.
Some of the other senior English teachers had chosen to begin the unit with Romeo and Juliet, figuring that their students might be at least somewhat familiar with the plot, but Sarah had found over the years that her young students connected better with the more comic-book friendly themes of scheming and revenge than they did with star-crossed love…so she was starting with Hamlet.
Like so much of the Bard's work, it was a difficult play for an audience of modern teenagers to understand, so helping her students to make sense of its plot, characters, and theme took a lot of mental energy that she might otherwise have used to worry about Percy.
But once each class was over, students dismissed to their next lesson, her anxiety would spike and her mind would remind her that she had left a grievously injured teenager to (mostly) fend for himself only hours before. What if she had been wrong not to go for more help, to let him dictate the kind of aid he'd accept?
It was this concern that pushed her to stand in the hallway just outside her classroom in the breaks between classes, on tiptoes, straining to catch a glimpse of him in the crowd of loud, boisterous hormones that surrounded her. He was one of her taller students, so there was always a chance she had just missed him in the crush of too-narrow corridors…but she never spotted him.
As the last class of the day approached, Sarah could feel her stomach contorting itself into knots. What would she do if he didn't show up? What would she do if he did show up?
Idly chattering students began to file into her classroom, yawning and slouchy from a long day of learning. Sarah briefly shut her eyes and forced herself to breathe slowly and deeply. No matter what happened, she could do this.
When she blinked them open again, there he was, anticlimactically sliding into his usual seat at the very back of her classroom, next to the window.
Percy was not normally particularly relaxed around his classmates - not that Sarah blamed him, since she had quite the crew of wannabe gangsters in this class - but he typically held himself with a kind of casual grace that she could see was missing today. If she looked even more closely, she could still detect a little bit of strain around his eyes, and there was a weariness and a stiff kind of guardedness in the slump of his shoulders.
But otherwise? She doubted that anyone else would have noticed there was anything wrong with him. Had he really managed to heal himself enough to be mostly functional today?
Her students were starting to get antsy as they waited for her to start class, so the time to dwell on how impressive that was would have to be later.
One of her tried and true tricks in getting kids with all sorts of attention dysregulations to focus on reading was to have the whole class read together, out-loud, round-robin style. Each student would read a couple of lines at a time, then the next student would get a turn. Hearing the words out loud helped her dyslexic students keep them straight, and she had long-ago established the policy that they'd take frequent pauses to check for understanding.
As her students slowly settled into the pattern, working their way through Act 1, scenes iv-v, Sarah kept a surreptitious eye on Percy.
He was curled in on himself, hunched over the desk, hood of a different hoodie than the one she'd seen that morning pulled up to hide most of his face. He did have the play open in front of him, pen slowly tracing the words as his classmates read, but she was sure it must have been even more of an effort for him to focus than usual. He was also stiller than she could ever remember him being - no tapping pen, no jiggling knee, no fidgety twisting.
When it was finally his turn to read, he raised his head, tired eyes flickering up to meet hers questioningly.
She gave him an encouraging smile, trying valiantly to keep her expression bland and unconcerned, despite the pang of worry in her heart as she looked at him. She wouldn't be surprised if he already suspected that she knew something, and she was determined to show him that he didn't have anything to fear from her. "Just the next two lines please, Mr. Jackson."
He nodded, and haltingly began to read, voice lower and little raspier than usual, but with surprising strength.
"...HORATIO:
O day and night, but this is wondrous strange.
HAMLET:
And therefore as a stranger give it welcome.
There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy…"
Well. She hadn't orchestrated it so that he would read those lines in particular, but they were certainly…appropriate.
He paused and looked up at her again, this time with a tiny glint of humor in his eyes that let her know he too had grasped the dramatic irony.
Suppressing a smile and what would have probably been a slightly hysterical laugh, Sarah nodded at him. "Very good, Mr. Jackson. Mr. Tarleton, the next three lines, please. No, at the end of page 28. No, starting with Hamlet. Mr. Tarleton, you need to pay better attention in the future…"
Sarah didn't know why, but the fact that Percy was able to focus enough to clearly read (and comprehend) a few lines of Shakespeare without faltering reassured her - probably more than it should have? - that he was going to be fine. Some of the tension in her back melted away, and the knots in her stomach began to ease up as Aaron Tarleton finally found his place and began to read.
The rest of the class passed quickly, and before she had really processed it, the final bell had rung and the tidal wave of students had swept out of her room and back out into the wider world.
She had hoped to catch Percy before he left - to say what? I promise you really can trust me? - but by the time she had answered a few students' questions about their upcoming poetry assignment, he had vanished.
But not completely.
Sitting on her desk chair was an unassuming white plastic box, emblazoned with a bold red cross. Stuck to the box was a post-it note, with six words carefully printed on it that made her heart leap:
I think maybe we're even now
What a wondrous and strange day, indeed.