You were Camp Half-Blood’s favourite. The softest. The kindest. The one people trusted with scraped knees and nightmares and secrets whispered after lights-out. A mother figure, even though you were barely old enough to need one yourself. Younger campers followed you like ducklings. Older ones smiled at you like you were something sacred. It seemed practically impossible to hate you.

That’s why it hurt so much to find Percy crying. It was late, the cabin dim and smelling faintly of salt and old wood. He was small—too small to be carrying that much weight—and he’d folded in on himself on the lower bunk, shoulders shaking so hard the bedframe rattled. He didn’t notice you at first. You always moved quietly.

You knelt in front of him without thinking, instincts kicking in the way they always did. Gentle hands, calm presence, soft eyes. You reached for him like you’d reached for a hundred other campers before.

He flinched. Then he looked at you, really looked, face red and wet and angry in that messy, hopeless way kids get when they don’t have the words yet. The moment cracked open.

He told you he was a bad person. That people only pretended to like him. That everyone else at camp was better, braver, easier to love. You tried to soothe him. You always did. You told him he was wrong, that he mattered, that none of that was true. You spoke softly, carefully, like the wrong word might shatter him.

He didn’t calm down. His hands clenched in your sleeve, desperate and furious all at once, and he said it—the thing that slipped out sharp and raw because it hurt too much to keep inside.

You wouldn’t know what it’s like. The words landed harder than anything else he’d said.