Chapter Text
The words didn’t make sense, but they had a rhythm.
We regret to inform you. A sudden accident. There was nothing we could do.
They were something tangible and loud, booming inside his head.
The officer at the door had looked uncomfortable, shifting his heavy boots on the worn welcome mat of the Queens apartment, his voice droning like a dying television set. He had handed over a plastic bag containing a cheap watch and a ring that smelled faintly of sweet candy and copper.
Then he had left.
And the silence that rushed back into the apartment was violent.
Twelve-year-old Percy Jackson stood in the cramped hallway, the plastic bag clutched so tightly in his fist it cut into his palm.
He didn’t cry. He couldn’t. His lungs felt like they had been filled with liquid concrete, freezing him to the floorboards.
Sally Jackson is dead.
The words echoed in his skull, bouncing off the walls, rattling his teeth.
It was a lie. It had to be a lie. She was supposed to pick him up from Yancy Academy next weekend. She was supposed to make blue cookies. She was supposed to tell him that his learning disabilities and his hyperactive brain were just a quirk, a sign that he was meant for bigger things.
Instead he had been taken by an officer. The lady had been nice, helping him take his stuff out of his dorm and driving him home but she wasnt his mom. His Mom who seeped kindness from every pore. His mom who's smile made everything dark light up like a gazillion suns. His Mom who loved him no matter what. His Mom who was Dead.
The realization didn't hit him like a wave but rather with all the mercy and grace of a bullet - that is to say none. There was no pickup next weekend. There was no blue food. There was no warmth any more just cold, cruel silence.
From the living room, the heavy, rhythmic thud of a beer bottle hitting the coffee table shattered the stillness.
“Hey! Brat!” Gabe’s voice rasped through the haze of stale cigar smoke, thick and smelling of cheap liquor. “What did the cop want? If your mother is late with the rent because she’s slacking off at the candy shop, I’m throwing both your rucksacks down the incinerator chute.”
Percy didn't answer. He didn't move.
The only buffer between him and the rotting, abusive reality of Gabe Ugliano was gone, ripped away by a universe that had never once been kind to him.
He was alone now.
He looked down at his shoes. His scuffed, cheap sneakers.
He looked at the window at the end of the hall, where the New York rain was smacking violently against the glass, blurring the city lights into jagged smears of red and yellow.
He looked at his mothers empty room across the hallway and then to the still open door in front of him.
He was entirely, fundamentally alone.
A primal instinct - he very same that kept him awake during late-night panic attacks in his boarding school dorm - snapped deep in his gut.
It was a cold, sharp command: Run.
He didn't packs bags. He didn't grab a jacket.
Leaving Gabe’s voice shouting in the dark behind him, Percy turned his back on the apartment, stepped out onto the fire escape into the pouring rain, and let the city swallow him whole.
Tomorrow is another day
And you won't have to hide away
You'll be a man boy!
But for now its time to run, its time to run!