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They were whispering again.
Percy could feel their stares on the back of his neck as he strode through the center of camp. Eyes followed him from the windows of cabins, from benches near the hearth, from the volleyball pit, the strawberry fields. Whispers dogged at his footsteps, always too soft for him to hear, always cutting off abruptly when he entered a room.
It was maddening. And it had only been getting worse as the part-time campers had flooded in as the school year ended, and the rumors that had finally begun to fade resurged with a vengeance.
But just because he couldn’t hear what they were saying didn’t mean that Percy didn’t know exactly what was being said. Who was being talked about.
He’d taken to hiding in his cabin whenever possible, bringing food from the dining pavilion back with him in order to avoid eating with their withering stares drilling a hole in his back. Going around in short sleeves was also a definite no, as all it did was draw attention to his scars.
Not that scars in and of themselves were out of the ordinary for demigods. Practically every kid in camp had at least one or two from an unlucky encounter with a monster or an accident during training or capture the flag. Most had more. It was normal.
What wasn’t normal was the thick ring of scars encircling both of Percy’s wrists. Neither was the burn on the back of his shoulder, which, despite the best efforts of the Apollo cabin last Christmas, still bore the unmistakable shape of a wickedly curved scythe: the symbol of Kronos.
And Percy had to walk around with it branded onto his skin. Had to deal with the memories of feeling the scalding metal being pressed into his back, where he would never be able to see it but always know that it was there, gleefully letting anyone who saw it know just how weak he was.
That’s not all it represents, a cold voice whispered in his mind, a voice he heard every night in his dreams. You’ll always belong to me, Jackson.
Percy flinched at the thought, shaking his head as if he could dislodge the voice from his mind like a dog shedding water from its coat. He pointedly ignored the glances the action gained him as he continued his path towards the training arena, still half-absorbed in his own mind.
Five months, and the voice of Kronos still haunted him constantly. He’d lost count of the number of times that he’d awoken in the middle of the night, memories of his time as a prisoner leaving him with skin slick from sweat and hands that trembled and shook. During the school year he’d managed to stifle any sounds to avoid disturbing his mom. She worried enough about him already and he refused to put more on her plate, not when she finally had a semblance of a normal life between her new boyfriend Paul and the progress she was making on her novel.
He'd left for camp as soon as he could, even going so far as to skip the last few days of school in order to arrive early and see Annabeth when she arrived from San Francisco. He’d left his mom with a promise that he’d come back for his high school freshman orientation in a few weeks, but he hadn’t been able to wait. Though he and Annabeth had IM’d several times a week over the semester, seeing her again in person had been too tempting. There was something about her that managed to calm the voices in his head in a way that nothing else could.
But now Annabeth was off on a scouting mission for Chiron and wouldn’t be back for at least another week. And in her absence, the nightmares and voices had returned with a vengeance, making him hyperaware of the stares and whispers from the other campers.
He only just barely held himself back from sprinting the last hundred feet of ground to the safety of the empty practice arena.
Or, at least, it was supposed to be empty. Chiron had told him that they would be getting a new swords master this summer, but that he wouldn’t arrive for another couple weeks. As such, lessons had been put on hold, and the arena should’ve been vacant.
But instead, Percy found Clarisse inside, her spear flashing in the sunlight as she sparred with an imaginary opponent. The girl’s choppy brown hair was plastered against her forehead with sweat, telling him that she’d definitely been here for a while.
Percy almost turned around and left as he watched the daughter of Ares. Their relationship had improved significantly since their first meeting, but Percy was still hesitant to call the other girl a friend. Especially since the majority of their interactions were primarily made up of insults and glares.
In the end, it was the idea of going back outside the arena and facing the stares and whispers once again that had him descending the stadium’s steps and crossing the sand to the dummy across from where Clarisse was practicing. He had just drawn Riptide when he noticed that he couldn’t hear Clarisse practicing behind him anymore. He turned around to see the older teen looking at him with an inscrutable expression in her eyes. Percy could feel his shoulders starting to creep up defensively, but he forced himself to relax and turn away and return to the dummy and begin his practice.
For a few minutes he was able to lose himself in the dance, allowing his movements to flow from one stance to the next, Riptide cutting effortlessly through the straw and canvas of the dummy. For the first time since Annabeth had left, the voices in his head grew quieter, the lingering anxiety from the now-daily nightmares faded. He finally felt like he was in control.
He felt like himself.
Then he heard a noise right behind him. Without thinking, Percy spun around, Riptide cutting through the air in a deadly arc that would have sent any monster back Tartarus in a heartbeat.
Instead, it was blocked by the spear of an unimpressed Clarisse, who stood just a few feet away, stance and weapon ready. Percy blinked, then scowled as he lowered Riptide.
“What do you want, Clarisse?” he asked, not making any attempt to hide how not interested he was in talking right now.
For a moment, Clarisse just maintained the same searching expression she’d worn before, looking at Percy like he was a complex battle plan that she was trying to piece together. Percy did his best not to fidget under the intense gaze. He wasn’t used to such calm calculation from the daughter of Ares who was normally so expressive and passionate.
Instead of answering, Clarisse instead spun around and moved into the center of the arena before turning back to him and settling into her battle stance. “Get over here, Jackson,” she called, her voice firm. “We’re sparring.”
Percy’s mood darkened immediately. He’d come here for mind-numbing practice, not a beatdown. “I’m really not in the mood, Clarisse,” he replied, turning back to his own dummy. “Find someone else to pick on.”
A rush of air behind Percy made him tense before he immediately threw himself to the side. He landed in a roll that left him standing just a few feet away from the tip of Clarisse’s spear. It would have gone straight through his head if he hadn’t moved.
“Are you crazy?” he cried, his eyes now flashing in anger as they locked on Clarisse. “I told you no!”
“Well too bad, punk,” Clarisse growled back, a satisfied smirk spreading across her face as she reset her stance, her spear leveled at him. “You think Kronos will care if you’re ‘not in the mood’ to fight him? This is war. We don’t get to just say ‘no’.”
Percy bit back an audible growl before raising Riptide into a guard position, knowing that more arguing was pointless. Clarisse was every bit as stubborn as her father. He wasn’t getting out of this fight.
They circled each other for a minute, alternating feints in an attempt to get past the other’s guard. Percy was at a severe disadvantage when it came to the reach of their respective weapons: his sword compared to her spear. But they both knew that one wrong move on her end could allow him to neutralize that advantage by getting in close.
A trickle of anxiety formed in the back of Percy’s mind as Clarisse lunged forward in an experimental strike, the flash of the spearhead bringing uncomfortable memories back to the forefront of his mind. Memories that had been brought back to the surface of his mind the night before.
Percy growled in frustration as he retaliated, shoving the anxiety away as he parried Clarisse’s thrust, deflecting it off to the side before grabbing the shaft, gritting his teeth as the weapon lightly shocked him. He kept hold of it in one hand as he moved into his own strike, trying to prevent Clarisse from swinging it back around at him. She responded by blocking his swing of Riptide on her bracer, shoving him backwards and forcing him to let go of her spear or else risk being pulled off balance.
He could feel the memories pressing harder against his mind as he recentered himself, the electric spearhead before him splitting into three and then merging back into one. He stumbled in his footing during Clarisse’s next attack, and when he glanced down he half-expected to see dark rubble scattered across the arena floor.
He continued to give ground before Clarisse, struggling to maintain his footing as she pressed her advantage. He backed into one of the pillars that surrounded the arena, blinking furiously as he blocked another blow. Was it growing darker? He could have sworn it was late afternoon but now all he could see above him was darkness.
In desperation, Percy lunged forward, trying to force Clarisse to back away and give him room to maneuver but he couldn’t move he had to stay and defend Nico he couldn’t let them hurt—
Clarisse changed. In that moment, instead of the tall daughter of Ares, Percy was again facing three dracaena, pinning him against the rubble of a fallen pillar. Nico was behind him, the stars sparkling in the sky above him, cuffs tight around his wrists, each still trailing several links of chain. He stood there, frozen in place after his lunge, a desperate attempt to strike the right-most dracaena, but she’d retreated too quickly, leaving him open. Vulnerable.
The left snake woman took her chance, hissing triumphantly as she darted forward and—
Percy cried out in terror, wrenching himself out of the memory to find himself on his knees, one hand holding Riptide out towards Clarisse, its tip wavering as his hand trembled, the other clutching his left side. The scar beneath his hand seemed to burn in tandem with the brand on his shoulder blade, leaving him gasping for air that struggled to make its way into lungs that felt as though they were clamped in a vice.
His cheeks were damp.
Clarisse was looking down at him with a guarded expression, as though he were a feral animal two seconds from attacking, her spear was planted in the ground at her side.
Then, without saying a word, she turned and began to walk away.
In a heartbeat, the lingering fear and panic from the memory evaporated, turning into pure fury. How dare she walk away? How dare she push him to this and then try to act like nothing had happened?
With a roar of rage, Percy sprang to his feet before charging forward, his vision tinted red. He swung at Clarisse’s back, only for the older girl to pivot sharply, catching Riptide easily with the shaft of her spear.
Percy wanted to scream in anger when his eyes met hers, because there he saw the same thing he’d seen in the eyes of every camper since he’d come back.
Pity.
He hated it.
“Don’t look at me like that,” he growled, fury laced tightly in each word as he strained against the other girl, trying to break the weapons lock.
“Like what, Jackson?” Clarisse demanded, her voice infuriatingly calm as she pushed back, not letting him disengage.
“Stop looking at me like I’m weak, like I’m broken,” Percy shot back. “I get enough pity form the rest of this camp, I won’t take it from you too, I won’t!”
Clarisse actually stopped pushing for a moment, looking at him with pure shock, allowing Percy to shove her backwards. She recovered swiftly, bringing her spear back into a ready position, though her expression was still incredulous as she looked at him. Absently, Percy realized this was the most emotion he’d seen from her so far. Unlike most of their duels, today she was calm and collected, her expression guarded. But now that mask was cracking.
“Pity?” she asked, her voice aghast. “Is that what you see?”
“Of course it is!” Percy cried as he ran forward, forcing Clarisse to defend herself from a flurry of slashes from Riptide. He continued as he pushed her back across the arena floor. “I see it in their faces, hear it in the whispers that follow me everywhere I go! I know what they’re saying, how I’m the idiot who got himself captured and let two Hunters die saving him because he was too weak! They all pity me, I know they do!”
His voice broke at that last bit, the sound echoing across the empty arena for a moment before leaving the two demigods in silence. Percy just stood there as his anger drained out of him in a flood, allowing Clarisse to disengage from the fierce contest as his mind stalled, six months of bottled emotions finally pushing their way forward and refusing to be ignored any longer.
“And why shouldn’t they?” he said to himself, his voice now a broken whisper, his body and mind numb. “I’m supposed to be the prophecy kid, the hero that saves them all, and look at me. I couldn’t even save myself.”
A moment of silence followed his admission, before Clarisse let out a sharp bark of laughter. Percy startled, looking back at his opponent who he’d honestly forgotten was there for a moment.
“Wow,” the daughter of the war god chuckled, still grinning, “I can’t believe it, but you actually are as stupid as you look.”
Percy looked at her in disbelief. “What?”
He didn’t have much time to think, though, as a swift attack from Clarisse now had him once again on the defensive as he stumbled back under the assault. There was no more humor in her eyes, only fiery rage and anger that almost made him flinch.
“Get out of your damn head, Jackson!” she yelled at him as she rained blow after blow on him, taking advantage of her immense height to batter him into submission. “Are you really so dense as to not see what you mean to this camp? Can you not see how they look up to you?”
“What are you talking about Clarisse?” Percy demanded, narrowly avoiding a jab that would have sliced open his arm.
“Get it through your brain Prissy,” Clarisse growled in frustration. “They don’t pity you, they admire you.”
Percy froze, nearly allowing Clarisse’s next lunge to hit. He stumbled away from the lancing spearhead, his head reeling.
“They what?”
Clarisse sighed, frustration and anger radiating off of her in palpable waves. There was a furious fire in her eyes when she looked at him, but for the first time he wondered if maybe that fire wasn’t actually directed at him.
“They’re not whispering behind your back about how weak you are, they’re in awe that you went against Kronos and beat him.” She emphasized that last point with another jab, pressing her advantage as his mind was reeling from the information she was giving him.
“But I didn’t beat him!” he cried as he used Riptide to deflect Clarisse’s next attack off to the side. She kept coming, a storm of jabs and thrusts. He was so focused on them that he didn’t realize what was coming out of his mouth.
“I didn’t beat him, Clarisse, I only barely escaped him thanks to Annabeth and the others. While they were fighting, while Zoë and Bianca were dying, I was chained like a dog, unable to do anything to help them! Kronos tortured me Clarisse! He turned my mind against me, pushed my body past its limits and then forced nectar down my throat just to keep me going!”
Despite the intensity of their contest, Percy could still see Clarisse’s eyes widen in surprise as he spoke. He hadn’t shared this with anyone, not Annabeth, not his mother. He’d hardly spoken two words about what had happened to him.
Percy could feel his hands trembling again, his breathing starting to pick up as the memories started to press up against his mind once more. He continued in a shaky whisper. “I… I can’t even trust my own thoughts anymore, Clarisse. All I hear is his voice taunting me, reminding me of the pain, the memories, of how close I came to breaking—”
“But did you break?” Clarisse’s words were a dark growl, and Percy realized with a start that the butt of her spear was now planted in the dirt. He slowly lowered Riptide.
“W-what?”
“Did. You. Break?” Her tone was less harsh now, but every word was a slow, careful thrust of a spear, each one far more dangerous than the one she was holding. This entire fight Clarisse had been trying to pummel him into submission, but this attack was different. These words were carefully aimed at the small gaps in the armor that Percy had been trying so hard to keep together. And he could feel himself cracking as they slipped through and took his breath away.
He stood there in silence, unable to process the daughter of Ares’ words. Eventually, she grew sick of waiting for him to answer.
“No. You didn’t break, Jackson, and somehow you don’t understand how much that means to these kids.” She swept her hand around them, gesturing at the rest of camp beyond the arena walls. “Everyone’s scared of what’s coming, of who’s coming. Kronos, a being so powerful that even the gods are pissing themselves. We lose more campers every day, whether it’s to the increased monster attacks or Kronos’ army itself. And these kids are terrified.”
She leveled her spear at his chest, but Percy didn’t raise Riptide.
“But here you are, alive and standing despite everything Kronos threw at you. I wasn’t here when you went missing, but I saw the aftermath. I was in the dining pavilion when Chiron announced that Chase had found you. I saw the change in everyone’s faces when they heard the news. It was like someone had flipped a damn switch. The atmosphere immediately changed from hopeless to euphoric. You may not realize it, but the very fact that you survived what he put you through gave these kids more hope than anything else we’ve tried.”
Clarisse stepped forward and jabbed her finger into his chest as he looked up at her, dumbfounded.
“You gave us a fighting chance, Jackson. An army that doesn’t believe it can win is worse than no army at all. So long as you keep fighting, so will everyone else. So don’t you dare give up now, not before we make Kronos and Luke pay for everything they’ve done.”
For a moment, Percy couldn’t do more than continue to stare at Clarisse in total shock. Never, since the first moment that they had met on his first day at camp, had she given him any reason to suspect that she held more than a deep-seeded resentment, if not outright hatred, towards Percy. True, their quest to the Sea of Monsters had helped somewhat to ease the tension between the two of them, but Percy would never have guessed that Clarisse would go out of her way like this to literally knock some sense into him.
And somehow, that helped. Her words reached the root of the issues deep inside of Percy in a way that Annabeth, Grover, and the rest of his friends had all failed to do. Deep down, Percy had been viewing everything that had happened last winter as a series of horrific failures, where he’d been out-smarted and out-maneuvered at every turn by Luke and Kronos until all he could do was wait to be rescued like some helpless damsel in distress.
Logically, he’d known that his actions had helped save Nico and Bessie the Ophiotaurus, but it hadn’t sunk in emotionally until now.
He hadn’t just survived, he’d won.
He wasn’t broken.
Clarisse was watching him carefully, and gave a satisfied nod as she saw her words sink in. She switched her spear to her non-dominant hand and extended her arm to Percy, and he knew what it meant. He reached out his own hand and grasped her forearm tightly, trying to convey his gratitude to her through the contact. Her own grip tightened in response, and without another word she turned and walked out of the arena, leaving Percy alone. They weren’t friends, per say, and probably never would be. But they were allies, and for now, that was enough.
After a moment of silence, he turned back to the original dummy that he had been using to practice, considering whether or not he wanted to continue. At that same moment, he heard the sound of the conch horn summoning everyone to dinner. He hesitated, before capping Riptide, squaring his shoulders, and following Clarisse out of the arena.
The stares and whispers still followed him; if anything they grew louder when campers noticed him remaining in the dining pavilion throughout dinner and joining the rest of camp at the campfire for s’mores afterward. Even still, he found himself smiling as the Apollo cabin tossed marshmallows into the open mouths of campers with amazing accuracy. He even caught himself laughing as Travis and Connor managed to turn the whole thing into a competition complete with a points system and a betting pool.
He wasn’t stupid. He knew that he wasn’t fixed. The nightmares would keep coming, the war would continue. Nico was still missing, and Percy knew Luke was planning something big for this summer.
But for now, sitting among his friends, seeing what he could now recognize as hope shining brightly in their eyes, Percy let himself just exist as the laughter of his friends around him worked to quiet the voices in his mind.