The tide drags itself in and out like something exhausted. The ocean doesn’t roar tonight. It barely breathes.

Percy sits where the water almost reaches him, knees pulled tight to his chest, forehead pressed down, curls stiff with dried salt and darker things. The moon turns him pale. Hollow. Too young. He looks like the first day he arrived at camp.

You stop a few steps behind him. Sand sticks to the blood on your skin. Your arm hangs wrong. There’s a tear down your side that never properly closed. Every movement feels like it costs something vital. You don’t remember when the shaking started.

You were his first bully. You remember the way he looked at you back then—furious, confused, small but determined. You remember pushing him too far. Calling him names. Testing him. Hating how quickly everyone liked him.

He was golden boy. You were the warning story. And yet, every quest had paired you together. Again. Again. Again. Like the Fates had decided you were tied at the wrist.

This one had gone wrong from the start. The smell is still in your lungs. Iron and smoke. The sound is still inside your skull. Something snapping that shouldn’t snap. Something screaming that shouldn’t scream.

You don’t let yourself remember it fully. If you do, you’ll start shaking harder. You lower yourself into the sand beside him. It hurts. It hurts so much you almost laugh.

He doesn’t look at you. For a long time, neither of you move. The tide creeps closer. It touches his toes. Then yours. It washes over the red staining your skin and pulls faint ribbons of it back into the sea. The water turns pink around you both and then clears, like it’s pretending it didn’t see anything.

Your hands are raw. One of your knuckles is split open to the bone. There’s something dried in Percy’s hair that isn’t saltwater. You both look like monsters.

You think about Annabeth. About Grover. About the way Percy’s voice broke when he realized they were gone. You had never heard that sound from him before. Not even when you tormented him. Not even when you fought him.

Tonight he doesn’t look at you like an enemy. He doesn’t look at anything. You swallow. Your throat tastes like metal. You were worse off. Anyone could see it. You’re barely upright. You know if you tried to stand, you’d fall. But somehow you make yourself shift closer.

His breathing stutters. Yours isn’t much better. The moonlight catches the tear tracks on his face. They’ve carved clean lines through the grime. You hadn’t realized he’d been crying. You hadn’t realized you had too until the salt stings the open cut on your cheek.

The ocean moves in and out. In and out. He shifts. Slowly. Carefully. Like he’s afraid if he moves too fast, everything will shatter again. His shoulder presses back. Not pushing you away. Holding you there.

You stare at the horizon. At the line where the sea meets the sky. At how endless it looks. You think about how you used to hate him. You think about how you’d drag him into fights just to see if he’d break.

He never did. Tonight, he did. And so did you.