Hades

I mean, he deserved it.

For interrupting a probable date and cutting into the middle of their conversation?

Zeus deserved every word he got out of Percy. And it pissed him off, he wasn't happy coming back to the table.

Of course, he turned to Poseidon.

"Why isn't he at Camp Half-Blood?"

Poseidon rolled his eyes, as tired of this as we were by now. That's all Zeus talks about anymore. How much he doesn't like the demigods. Even his kids.

Were all annoyed with him. It's not just Percy. And I don't know who Percy was with, the person's back was to us and I didn't care to look as we walked in from the other way.

At this point, we pitied the kids who were stuck at camp without choice. We were here to discuss that, and about how Zeus has gone downhill as the 'King' of Olympus. He didn't know that. Poseidon and I organized the meeting.

"Well, first of all," Poseidon explained to our brother. "It's really none of your business. But, simply put, he's no longer there for medical reasons. He couldn't be kept at camp. I talked it over with Chiron and Dionysus, the three of us agreed that it wasn't suitable for him to remain there."

Zeus asked Dionysus if this was true, and he backed up Poseidon. Saying they met like 3 weeks ago and Percy was sent home the next morning.

"For medical reasons?"

"Yes." Dionysus confirmed. "Medical reasons. You don't have control over them, Zeus. Chiron and I do, when they want to be at camp. If they aren't at camp, it's up to their parents. Both mortal and godly. If you felt Thalia wasn't safe at camp, say she wanted to kill herself because of a situation at camp, would you want her there?"

He shrugged, which put me in disbelief. It's his kids. They die, sure. But not like that!

"She's died before."

Everyone blew up on him.

After everyone going back and forth until our waiter arrived, we ordered our food and Zeus asked what these medical reasons were. Which, it was a good question. They have a medical team there.

Both Dionysus and Poseidon agreed, it wasn't Zeus's business.

So, with a pissed off Zeus, we moved on with other business.

Percy

Once school started, life wasn't too bad. And we got a writing assignment for Paul's English class. Now that I have his class.

"It's the first day of school, Blowfish." Quinn Madison remarked. He's the quarterback for the football team. And he's not the smartest. Worse than I am. And he isn't dyslexic and doesn't deal with ADHD. "Your kid is in the class. Just let us off for a day."

"No, I've done this for the last three years." Paul insisted. "It's not changing yet. It'll be fun. It's not even a research paper."

So he totally got this idea from my family and me being a demigod and all. The timeline of how long he's been doing this even said so.

Write a story about yourself if you were the child of a Greek or Roman god. We aren't allowed to research. He wanted to see what we knew beforehand. It was due Friday. 10 page minimum.

You want to know what I wrote about?

I wrote about the giant war. And it was basically a book. Because it wasn't just what happened in the war.

It was everything that went in my head during it. When I woke up, and I was furious when I found out that my dad was okay with placing me in the middle of a stare down with death. The betrayal I felt when I got my memory back. The happiness when I saw Grover and my brother. And the pain and hell that was Tartarus.

And a month later, when the paper was due, we had to have peers evaluate it. Three of them.

This was worth 200 points. It was over half of our grade because we had like another two weeks for editing and another two weeks to rewrite and turn in. The top like 5 of our grade would be sent to a state wide writing contest for a huge scholarship.

I need this scholarship.

The first person to look at mine was Tyler Mason. He's a theater elitist.

Tyler

You know, for being a teacher's (step) kid, I always cut Percy out as pretty stupid. And it wasn't always his fault. He has dyslexia. I stay out of his way. We've never crossed paths outside of a class.

He never reached me out to me, I never reached out to him. He does swimming, I do acting. That's how it is.

But if he could put the emotion he does in writing, into acting? He'd be better than done celebrities, and I'm not joking.

Percy had me in tears at home because he didn't go the way everyone else.

Most people did that you were raised by a god. You're life was amazing. You had cool powers and the whole package.

He did not do that.

Percy wrote a story with a back story that was important. Because the story itself was him and 6 other demigod's thrown into a war, to defend the gods, at anywhere from. 14 to 17. And he did out Nico di Angelo, a new junior to our school, in this story. But Nico was a little different. He also put a famous name in there. Piper McLean, the daughter of Tristan McLean. Percy had been the son of Poseidon, which seemed obvious. Nico was the son of Hades. Piper was Aphrodite's daughter.

But the back story is what killed me.

The story behind this was that the gods did not raise their kids. They were left with their mortal parent. And being the child of such a powerful god, Sally, Percy's mom, had to marry a guy who smelled like ass. And he abused Percy. He raped Percy. If Sally wasn't home, Percy was his slave.

And there was one part of the paper book thing that just... It got to me.

Percy was in his head and he's stuck in Tartarus with his girlfriend who was on the verge of death and he was getting to where she was and there's a whole scene about this. She was asleep. And Percy has this thought:

Well, it's not like my dad ever wanted me in the first place.

And he tries to kill himself.

Because of neglect and depression and the horror that was Tartarus, Percy wrote a scene about him trying to kill himself.

The attempt fails, and nobody ever finds out about it. They get out of Tartarus, they fight Gaea, and get to New York to a civil war between the Greek and Roman demigods and that's settled and it's just...

You're left to dwell over this. Over the massive amounts of death and despair that weighed over these... These kids and teenagers.

But they would leave and they wouldn't say anything. Because they can't. Even if their parents have nothing to do with their lives, they know when somebody has overstepped a line.

The punishment is death.

I graded it with a 200/200 and went to class the next day and walked up to Blowfish. Telling him it was perfect and there was nothing to be fixed.

He saw it was written by Percy.

"Are you sure?"

"Yes." I told my English teacher. "Okay, I don't cry when I read. And I balled for like ten minutes last night because of this. It was an emotional roller coaster from start to finish."

The first thing I did when I saw Percy was give him a hug and tell him how amazing his writing was.