You were breathing too fast again.

She didn’t open her eyes yet—didn’t need to. She counted the length of your inhales, the twitch of your shoulder against her side. Still trying not to wake her, probably. As if she didn’t wake the second you shifted. She always did. Sleep was a calculated risk anyway.

Annabeth moved her hand along your back. Slow, steady. Not random. It never was. She traced the invisible edge of a colonnade, an archway, maybe a lintel. Something solid. Something that held weight. She couldn’t fix what haunted your dreams, but she could draw out something strong enough to hold you here. It helped her think. It helped you breathe.

You always came to her when it got bad.

And no one questioned it anymore, which was a relief. She didn’t have the energy to justify why she needed you in her bed at night. Why it had to be you, specifically. Why your absence turned her bunk into a hollow, echoing box that she couldn’t settle in, no matter how many pillows she stacked against the walls.

She opened her eyes just enough to see you. Moonlight caught the edge of your face. Your forehead just barely touched her collarbone. You looked like something claimed. Something placed carefully where it belonged.

“Your breathing changed,” she said, keeping her voice low. She didn’t ask if you were okay. You weren’t. That much was obvious.

You nodded a little, almost embarrassed. It made something in her tighten.

She hated when you felt like you had to hide things from her. Hated it more than she’d admit. There weren’t many things in this place that belonged to her—not really. Her bunk, her desk, her books… all of it shared, all of it temporary. Even her mother’s cap felt like a borrowed thing half the time.

But you weren’t. Not to her.

You were the one thing she’d let herself keep. The only constant since you were six years old and afraid of the same monsters. The only person who hadn’t left or betrayed or broken under the weight of what Camp Half-Blood turned children into.