Demigods singing {PjO/HoO fanfic}

Epilogue

It has been a week since the contest and the days were returning back to normal. The stage around the amphitheater has been taken down and the equipment for the sound and lights were carefully stored in a room inside the big house where Chiron was protecting it. Making sure Hermes children didn't mss with it and prevent the controls to mess up when they were needed again. The blue prints for the stage were also being kept in the big house, stored safely in a vanilla folder in a file cabinet under the name 'Chase, A—Stage design.' Annabeth smiled brightly when Chiron showed her the folder dedicated to her blueprints and stored it securely in the top drawer of the unit. (Only the most important documents get put in there.)

Percy, though not wanting to perform for others, wanted to clean up his piano skills. So, in the week that has passed, he obtained a spare keyboard from the Apollo cabin to keep in his own cabin, a thick packet of loose sheet music that said Apollo cabin gave him so that he has music to play, and cleared out the space atop the desk that the cabin came with. The chair was a bit uncomfortable, but it would do for now. It was enough while he made more room for the desk he and Leo were gonna build.

The keyboard was nothing special. Kinda janky and some of the keys were sticky, the volume button had no low option so it was either loud, kinda loud, not loud, or off. It didn't bother him though. He played it on the lowest setting it could and practiced when it was off most of the time. No one complained, but if they didn't like it, they sure didn't tell him. Percy kinda hoped they liked his music. A change of pace from how the reactions were long before the contest.

"What's the next song on the chopping block?" Percy pulled out the next couple sheets of music. At the top of above the measures was the title. "The Sound of Silence. A meme song? Really?"

He scanned through the pages, debating on whether or not it was worth the hours of practice to learn a meme song. It wasn't necessarily hard to play. A few key changes here and there, a difference of tempo towards the end, and there were about five quick key changes sprinkled throughout the piece. "Alright, I'll bite, let's play the Sound of Silence."

It took Percy roughly about three days to learn the piece, both piano and the lyrics. Between the two, Percy had to say that the lyrics were harder to learn than the actual accompaniment. Lots of words that was difficult for his dyslexic brain to read, much less remember, and all the lines confused him. One line went to one verse and others went with others that if you scramble all of them and put them in new verses, it would sound roughly the same.

Percy looked out the windows of his cabin before sitting at his janky keyboard setup. It was almost time for the sing along and the cabins area was fairly quiet and away from the amphitheater that Percy felt comfortable enough to try and combine both parts of the song together. He took a deep breath and pressed the first keys of the beginning measures. With the deepest he could go, Percy sang, "Hello darkness, my old friend. I've come to talk with you again."

"Because a vision softly creeping, left its seeds while I was sleeping," Percy sang as he played the soft solemn notes. "And the vision that was planted in my brain, still remains, within the sound of silence."

As he played, Percy didn't notice his friends walking to the cabins area where they knew Percy was. Yes, he did tell them that he wasn't going to be at the sing-along because he was tired and wanted a few extra hours of sleep, but they didn't believe that. No. Not one bit. So they snuck out from the campfire where the bright green flame shielded the rest of the camps eyes when it roared bright, allowing a few seconds for them to slip away. When they got closer they heard him.

Leo, the closest to cabin three, stopped the group the moment he heard Percy. "Stop."

"What why?" Annabeth asked.

"Be quiet and follow me," Leo crouched down and quietly made his way closer to the cabin, the others following his footsteps. Well, except Frank. He turned himself into a little yellow budgie and flew to the top of Leo's head to that he could both see and hear the music that floated out from Percy's open window.

"And in the naked light I saw, ten thousand people, maybe more," They heard Percy sing. His eyes focused on the black and white plastic, sticky keys in front of him and the black and white lined and dotted sheet music resting on the wall behind the keyboard. "People talking without speaking. People hearing without listening; people writing songs that voices never share, and no one dared, disturb the sound of silence."

"Is that," Hazel asked from the left side of Annabeth. "Is he singing?"

"I guess he wanted to keep playing music after the contest," Jason said aloud. Mostly to himself, but also for others to hear.

" 'fools,"'said I, 'you do not know, silence like a cancer grows. Hear my words that I might teach you.' " The ones closest to the window kneeled high enough the see through the window were able to watch as Percy poured his heart out on to the keys. His baritone voice reaching the lowest bass notes very well and giving the tone of the song a vengeful feeling. It was inactivating to watch him play, even to Leo, Frank, and Jason. Percy's lean shoulder muscles moved with every slight adjustment to his fingers and arms, strong arms, bounced from side to side gracefully along the electronic instrument.

"And the people bowed and prayed, to the neon god they made," Percy gave an angry fire to his words. A fire and passion that wanted justice, that wanted those who were blinded to see the truth. "And the sign flashed out it's warning, in the words that it was forming, and the sign said—" He rose his voice louder, angrier, more resentful with every word. As if he's the prophet whose words were never heard, wishing and hoping that others aren't forgotten like his amongst the never changing, deafening and mad-filled, silence. " 'The words of the prophets are written on the subway walls, and tenement halls!' And whispered int he sounds," The music cut off.

Everyone watching from the window stayed as still as they could be. No one moved or even breathed, except Frank whose little bird body as freaking out causing his little bird heart to beat fast. But with an impossibly soft, and heart-wrenching voice, Percy sang the last two words, "of silence." His fingers continued to play the rest of the piece and they listened as it grew louder before dying off into the silence it was named after. They looked to one another and decided to clap for the son of Poseidon, which freaked him out.

"What are you guys doing here? I though you were at the sing along?" Percy asked turning off his keyboard.

"We were but we decided to come over here hoping that you were asleep so we could draw on your face," Piper smiled and hopped onto the edge of the window. She slid her legs through and jumped into the cabin. "And yes, I knew there was a door but I didn't want to walk all the way to the front of the cabin to walk in, very rude to do that when talking to someone."

"Yo Perce," Leo called. "Why'd you learn 'The Sound of Silence' anyway? Were you paid to learn it? Doing it for the vine? For Nico and his obsession with being a real life emo-meme?"

"No," He answered. "It was the next song that I pulled out of this stack—" Percy lifted the very thick pile of sheet music the Apollo cabin gave him. "And I wanted to do it."

"Can you play Allstar next?"

"Why?"

"So you can play it the next time I walk into the big house for a counselor meeting."

"Oh that's a good idea, I think I might do that."

"Really?!" Leo smiled and stuck half of his body through the window .

Percy gave the son of Hephaestus a bored look before replying, "No."

Words: 1447