Friends With Mental Issues (Percy Jackson Fanfiction)

Endings (And Beginnings)

"That's the end?"

Mr. Brunner nodded once, closing his leather bound journal. "That's the end."

Will Solace, a caretaker who currently worked at the nursing home Mr. Brunner lived in, blinked, breathing out a breath he didn't know he'd been holding. And then he smiled. "Well, Mr. Brunner, your story is amazing. It may sound rude, but I didn't expect something so great." Mr. Brunner laughed, the wrinkles by his twinkling eyes bunching together.

"It's alright, Will. I'm an old man now, so I've got quite used to low expectations." Will laughed nervously, shifting in his seat.

"But before I go back to work," Will started, leaning forward in his seat, "I have to know if Percy ever came to visit everyone." Mr. Brunner leaned back in his wheelchair, smoothing down the blanket over his legs. He seemed to think back, and for a moment, he seemed to be lost in his thoughts.

"Well, my dear boy, Chiron was Percy's uncle. It would've been quite rude if he hadn't come to visit every once and a while."

Smiling, Will stood up, brushing off his uniform. "That's good to hear." He gave Mr. Brunner a pat on the shoulder as he walked away. "Well, I better get back to work." Mr. Brunner nodded, once again lost in his thoughts as he ran his wrinkled hands over the cover of the journal.

When Will returned to the front desk, a woman Will only knew by last name, Ramirez, took Will's hand before he took her post. "I'm glad you listened to his story. He really needed someone to listen." She was a woman in her late twenties, with tan skin and brown hair she kept braided to the side. After hearing Mr. Brunner's story, Ramirez reminded Will of Reyna, a girl in the story.

"It's not that I didn't like the story, I'm just wondering why you couldn't listen to it," Will said, shrugging his shoulders as he took her place at the front desk.

Ramirez turned back, giving Will a soft smile. "I've heard the story before. I'm sure Mr. Brunner wouldn't want an audience who already knows what's happened." Will nodded, even though he didn't understand. Mr. Brunner had said that he was the first to hear the story he'd been writing for the past couple of months.

An hour or so passed without much incident, and, despite the fact that Will loved his job, working at the front desk was always so boring. It was a sad thing to say, but people rarely visited the elderly. And then. A man with black hair and sea green eyes walked through the front door, a woman with blonde hair and stormy gray eyes walking by his side.

The man was confident as he walked to the front desk, and only when he had to speak did he seem nervous. "Uh, hi, I'm - we're - here to see Chiron Brunner, my uncle." The woman beside him suppressed a laugh, and the man blushed, looking down at the floor.

Will was dumbstruck, to say the least. The woman fit the description of Annabeth, and the man fit the description of Percy. And the man was here to see Mr. Brunner, who's first name was Chiron, which Will had no idea about until now. Quickly gaining his composure, Will handed them the sign in clipboard and a pen. "Right. All you need to do is sign in with your full first and last name. Mr. Brunner should be in the main room you'll find if you walk straight ahead and take a left."

The man signed his name, then passed the clipboard to the woman, saying his thanks to Will. As they walked away, he heard the man say, "I wonder if everyone else is coming."

Before their voices faded away, the woman responded with, "of course they will."

As soon as he couldn't hear their voices, Will flipped the clipboard around looking at the most recent names. It was strange thing, really. The man had signed his name as 'Percy Jackson,' and the woman had signed hers as 'Annabeth Chase.' Within the hour, five more people arrived. A beautiful woman with eyes that seemed to change color, a man with shocking blue eyes and scar above his lip, a man with curly hair and hands that couldn't keep still, a woman with a quiet and sweet voice, and a tall man with a large smile.

The names they'd used were as follows; Piper McLean, Jason Grace, Leo Valdez, Hazel Levesque, and Frank Zhang.

When Will's shift at the front desk was over, he hurried over to the main room, when the seven who had arrived had surrounded Mr. Brunner in a crowd of laughter and smiles. Will leaned against the wall, breathing out a laugh. Of course Mr. Brunner had told a story of these people. They were dazzling. And Will saw Ramirez in that group, a smile on her normally blank face, and Will realized what her first name must be. Reyna. No wonder she knew the story Mr. Brunner had written. She lived it.

"They're almost too bright to look at." Will almost jumped out of his skin, whirling around to find a man only and inch or so shorter than he was, wearing a black leather jacket and a small smile. The man had dark circles under his dark eyes, and, it may sound silly, but Will immediately knew who this was. "I'm Nico di Angelo," the man said, offering Will a hand.

Will smiled, shaking his hand. "You're here to see Mr. Brunner, aren't you?" Nico dropped Will's hand, looking back at the group with a strange type of wistful look in his eyes.

Nico didn't answer Will's question, instead stuffing his hands in the pockets of his jacket. "There are so many memories in those assholes. And it's really something strange on how they all seem to connect with each other." Nico looked over at Will, raising an eyebrow. "Don't you think?" Will didn't answer, letting Nico get his thoughts out. "What's even more strange is how okay everything seemed to go, despite how un-okay everyone was."

"Mr. Brunner wrote a story about all of you. Everyone had their own little part dedicated to them, and the only one who didn't actually have one was you." Nico nodded, pursing his lips. "Why did Percy never have a session with you?"

"There are some things that shouldn't be talked out. There are some secrets that shouldn't be revealed. Isn't that what the story was trying to portray?"

"I took it as a story of unlikely friendship. Because, despite everything, they still managed to be friends." Nico laughed, and Will blushed, suddenly very embarrassed. "That sounded corny."

"Corny or not," Nico said, pushing himself off the wall and starting to walk toward the group, "it's true. Isn't that strange? We all had friends with mental issues." And then Nico joined the group, sitting down beside Mr. Brunner and taking the journal from his hands. He carefully set the journal down on the table, giving it one last glance before joining the conversation.

Will wished, for only a split second, that the story Mr. Brunner had written hadn't ended. He wished that he could know more about what happened after the perpetual ending. He wished he could laugh more at the antics in the club room, and he wished he could see them play a game of mythomagic together. But then he remembered what Chiron Brunner had said. Nothing lasts forever, and there are going to be endings you won't like simply because you don't want to leave anything behind.

A burst of laughter came from the group surrounding Mr. Brunner, and Will smiled, turning around to return to work. However, memories last forever and it would be a shame not to create happy ones...

~

A day or so later, as Will was fixing the sheets on Mr. Brunner's bed, he saw a framed picture of a door. The door had writing on it, old lyrics, doodles, and names. So many names. There were the seven original names, with Percy's, but there were many other names Will didn't recognize. And, for some reason, that made him happier than he could ever imagine.