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The movie had been Estelle's choice. Some animated thing about talking animals that Percy wasn't really following. He'd agreed to movie night because Mom had asked, and because the hopeful look in his little sister's eyes made it impossible to say no. So here he was, wedged between Estelle's bony elbow digging into his ribs and Paul's solid, reassuring presence on his other side, pretending that he was fine. That everything was fine.
(It wasn't fine. It hadn't been fine in a long time. But he was good at pretending.)
Mom had brought snacks—popcorn in the big blue bowl, the one that had survived every apartment they'd ever lived in, and juice boxes for Estelle. But his little sister had insisted she was "almost eight now" and wanted a "real glass like the grown-ups." So Sally had poured cranberry juice into one of the nice glasses, the ones they only used when Paul's parents visited, and set it on the coffee table in front of Estelle.
Percy should have known.
Should have seen it coming.
Estelle was enthusiastic about everything, her hands always moving, always gesturing wildly when she got excited. The movie had hit some climactic scene. The music swelling, the characters in danger. Estelle had lunged forward, pointing at the screen.
"Percy, look! The tiger's gonna—"
Her hand caught the glass.
Everything slowed down.
Percy watched the glass tip, almost graceful in its fall. Watched the dark liquid inside slosh and surge. Watched it tumble over in what felt like slow motion, even though he knew—logically, distantly—that it was happening fast. Too fast for him to stop it.
The glass hit the coffee table and shattered.
Shards exploded outward like shrapnel, glittering sharp and deadly in the TV's flickering light. Red everywhere—spraying across the table, the carpet, splashing up onto the couch. So much red. Dark and thick and spreading in pools that reflected the screen's glow like—
No.
Percy blinked hard, his breath catching.
The glass hadn't shattered. It was whole, intact, rolling lazily across the table with a hollow sound. And the liquid—it wasn't spraying, wasn't exploding outward in arterial bursts. It was just spilling. Spreading in a slow, creeping pool across the pale wood.
Just juice. Dark red cranberry juice catching the flickering light from the TV screen.
But for a second—for one horrible, crystalline second—his mind had rewritten reality. Had turned a simple accident into catastrophe. Had seen violence where there was none.
Had seen blood.
Percy's hands were shaking. When had they started shaking?
The liquid spread like fingers reaching across the table, crimson seeping into the grain of the wood. Tendrils of red branching out like veins, like roots, like the way blood spread when it hit porous stone. It reached the edge and began to drip. One drop. Two. Three. Each one falling to the white carpet below with a sound that seemed impossibly, horrifically loud in the sudden silence of Percy's mind.
Drip.
Drip.
Drip.
The sound echoed. Reverberated. Bounced around inside Percy's skull like a ricochet. Each drop a hammer blow. Each splash a death knell.
(Zoë laying next to her lady. Blood leaving her body in dark rivulets that spread across the ground, pooling in the depressions, finding channels. Percy had knelt in it without realizing, his jeans soaking through at the knees while he'd held her hand. While he'd watched the stars come to claim her. And afterward, when he'd finally stood—when she was gone, transformed into constellation and memory—his hands had been stained red. He'd scrubbed them in a river for twenty minutes. The water had run pink, then clear. But he couldn’t look at them anymore because every time he looked at them he could see the stains, real or imagined, mapping out the exact place where the blood ran of another person who'd died while he survived.)
Drip.
(Silena. Beautiful Silena who'd smiled at everyone, who'd painted her nails different colors every week and left encouraging notes in people's cabin mailboxes. Who'd made the Aphrodite cabin feel less shallow, more real. The drakon's poison had worked through her so fast. Too fast. One moment she'd been fighting, and the next she was on the ground, choking, her lips turning blue while foam flecked with red bubbled at the corners of her mouth. The poison had liquefied something inside her because blood had leaked from her nose, her ears, the corners of her eyes like tears. It had stained the asphalt beneath her head in a spreading dark halo. Percy had held her hand—her fingers had been so cold, colder than they should have been, like the poison was freezing her from the inside out—and watched the light fade from her eyes while blood drew red lines down her face like war paint. Like the marking of a sacrifice.)
Drip.
(Bianca. The first one. The one who'd set the pattern for everyone else. The Talos prototype had crushed her inside its machinery, and when they'd finally pried the gears apart, when they'd extracted what remained, there had been blood mixed with oil, smeared across bronze that was never meant to hold something so organic, so human. Nico had been twelve. Just a kid when he found out. And he'd looked at Percy like Percy was supposed to fix it, supposed to rewind time or bring her back or do something because wasn't Percy the hero? Wasn't he supposed to save people? But all Percy had been able to do was stand there with bronze dust and blood on his hands and watch a little kid's world end.)
Drip.
Charles Beckendorf. Luke. Castor. Ethan. Lee Fletcher. Michael Yew. So many names. Too many names. Names that shouldn't belong to dead people, to people who'd barely had the chance to live. Their blood had all looked the same in the end. Dark and wrong and everywhere, spreading across battlefields and stone floors and bronze decks, seeping into places that should have been safe but weren't, could never be, not while he was around. Not while he kept surviving when everyone else didn't.
"Oops!" Estelle's voice sounded far away, muffled like Percy was underwater. Like he was drowning. "Sorry, Mommy! I didn't mean to—"
The juice was still spreading. Dripping. Each drop hitting the carpet with a wet sound that made Percy's stomach lurch. He could smell it now. Tart and sweet and wrong. It should smell like copper. Like iron. Like death. Like the way the air tasted after a battle when you breathed in and tried not to think about what you were breathing, tried not to know that the metallic tang coating your tongue was them, was all that remained of people who'd had names and faces and families waiting for them to come home.
"It's okay, sweetie," Mom was saying, already moving toward the kitchen. "Accidents happen. Let me grab some towels—"
But Percy couldn't stop staring.
The red was everywhere now. Pooling on the table. Dripping to the floor. Staining. It would stain. It always stained. Blood never came out, not really. You could scrub and bleach and pretend but the shadow of it remained, a ghost of violence that never fully faded. He'd never been able to wash all the blood out of his camp shirt after the Battle of Manhattan. The orange had turned rust-colored in places, brown-red splotches that looked like—looked like—
He'd stopped trying to clean it. Stopped wearing it. Shoved it in the back of his closet where he didn't have to see the evidence of everyone he'd failed to save. Where he didn't have to count the stains and remember whose blood had made each mark.
Drip.
The sound was getting louder. Or maybe everything else was getting quieter. The movie still played but Percy couldn't hear it anymore. Couldn't hear anything but the dripping and his own heartbeat—too fast, too hard, a frantic drumbeat that said danger danger danger—and the ragged saw of his breathing.
Piper's hands had been covered in blood after the battle with the giants. Not her blood. Not even from during the battle. But she'd found one of her siblings' bodies afterward, after the monsters had stabbed him in the stomach and dumped him, and she'd tried—gods, she'd tried—to move her, to carry her, to bring her somewhere safe even though safe was meaningless when you were already dead. Her hands had been red to the wrists when Percy found her. Shaking. Stained. She'd looked at Percy with eyes that were empty of everything except accusation and asked, "Why?" And Percy hadn't had an answer. Hadn't been there. Was never there when it mattered. Always too late or too far away or too useless to stop it.
He couldn't fix anything.
Couldn't save anyone.
Just stood there while people he cared about bled out and died and—
"Percy?"
—and left him behind with the stains and the nightmares and the sound of dripping that never really stopped, not even in his sleep, not even in the ocean where everything should have been washed clean but wasn't, could never be—
"Percy, hey, you okay?"
Paul's hand was on his shoulder. Solid. Warm. Real. But Percy couldn't feel it. Couldn't feel anything except the phantom warmth of blood on his hands, sticky and cooling and so, so heavy. The weight of it. The way it had felt almost alive when it was fresh, still warm from someone's body, and then how it cooled and congealed and became something dead, something wrong.
His vision was tunneling. The edges going dark and blurry. All he could see was the red. The dripping. The spreading stain on Mom's white carpet that she'd been so proud of when they first moved in, back when she thought they might finally have something nice. Something clean. Something untouched by violence and war and death.
(But Percy touched everything and it all ended up stained.)
The glass was still rolling. Percy could see it now—still whole, unbroken, settling against the popcorn bowl with a gentle clink. But his mind kept replaying that first moment. Kept showing him the shatter that hadn't happened. The explosion of glass like the way Beckendorf's body had looked after the explosion on the Princess Andromeda—scattered, wrong, too many pieces that would never fit back together. The spray of red that hadn't existed except in the nightmare landscape of his memory.
His mind was rewriting reality and he couldn't stop it.
Couldn't separate what was real from what his trauma kept insisting was real.
"Is he okay?" Estelle's voice, small and worried. "Did I—did I do something wrong?"
"No, baby, you didn't—Percy? Percy, can you hear me?"
Mom's voice. Closer now. When had she come back? Percy tried to focus on her but his eyes kept sliding back to the table. To the red. It was spreading. Why was it still spreading? Shouldn't it stop? Shouldn't surface tension or physics or something make it stop? But it kept going, kept reaching, kept dripping with that sound that echoed in his bones.
Drip. Drip. Drip.
His breathing was wrong. Too fast. Not fast enough. His chest felt tight, compressed, like someone was sitting on it. Like he was buried. Like he was back in the pit where the air was made of poison and screams and the weight of the earth pressed down on him from all sides. Where breathing hurt. Where existing hurt. Where every second was a choice to keep going when stopping would have been so much easier.
No. Not there. Not now. He was home. He was safe.
(He'd never been safe. Safe wasn't real. Safe was an illusion for people who hadn't watched their friends die. For people who didn't know that the world was full of things that wanted to kill you and the only question was which one would succeed first.)
"Percy, honey, look at me." Mom's hands were on his face now, tilting his head up, forcing him to meet her eyes. They were blue. Blue like the ocean that used to feel like home before Tartarus taught him that water could drown you from the inside out. Before he learned that even the things that were supposed to be part of him could be weaponized, turned against him, made into torture. "It's just juice. See? Just cranberry juice. Estelle knocked it over. It's okay."
Just juice.
He knew that. Logically, in the part of his brain that could still think, still reason, he knew it was just juice. But knowing didn't make his hands stop shaking. Didn't make the sound of the dripping stop echoing in his ears like a countdown, like a timer ticking down to the next disaster. Didn't make the images stop flashing behind his eyes every time he blinked—red, so much red, spreading and dripping and staining everything it touched.
Didn't make the false memory of shattering glass disappear. His mind kept showing it to him on repeat—the explosion of shards, the spray of liquid like arterial spray, the way it had looked so much like the aftermath of battle that his body had believed it was real. Was still believing it was real even though his eyes could see the intact glass sitting innocently by the popcorn bowl.
Drip. Drip. Drip.
"Can't—" His voice came out broken, barely a whisper. Shattered like the glass in his mind. "Can't stop it. It's—there's so much—"
And there was. Too much. An ocean of it. A river. He was drowning in red and he couldn't surface, couldn't find air, couldn't find anything but the memory of warmth turning cold on his skin.
"Shh, it's okay. Paul, can you take Estelle to her room?"
"Of course. Come on, stellina, let's go find that book you wanted to read—"
"But Percy's crying." Estelle's voice was so small. Scared. She'd never sounded scared of him before. Had never had a reason to be. Until now. Until he'd proven that he was exactly what he'd always feared. Too damaged, too broken, too wrong to be around normal people. "Why is Percy crying? It's just juice. I didn't mean to spill it. Is he mad at me?"
Percy's eyes burned. When had he started crying? He tried to speak, to tell her no, he wasn't mad, could never be mad at her, she was perfect and innocent and everything good in this world. But his throat had closed up. The words were stuck somewhere behind the panic that was climbing up his esophagus like bile, acidic and burning.
"He's not mad, sweetheart," Paul said gently. Percy heard him pick Estelle up, heard her small protest, heard the rustle of movement. "Sometimes grown-ups have bad days. Percy's just having a bad moment. He'll be okay."
(Would he? Would he ever be okay? Or was this just who he was now? Someone who fell apart over spilled juice, who couldn't make it through a family movie night without breaking down, who was so fundamentally broken that his six-year-old sister had to be removed from the room to protect her from his damage? From the sharp edges of him that cut everyone who got too close?)
The door to Estelle's room closed. The movie was still playing, but someone—Paul, probably—had muted it. The sudden silence was worse. Now all Percy could hear was his own ragged breathing and the dripping. That endless dripping.
And his heartbeat. Thunder-loud in his ears. Each beat saying failure failure failure.
"Percy." Mom's voice was soft but firm. The voice she used to use when he was little and had nightmares, before she knew the nightmares were real. Before she knew that monsters were real and gods were real and her son was going to spend his whole life fighting things that wanted to kill him. "I need you to breathe with me, okay? Can you do that?"
He couldn't. He tried, but his lungs wouldn't cooperate. The air wouldn't come. There was too much, too much red, too much memory, too much death following him like a shadow he couldn't escape. Like a curse. Like the inevitable result of being a demigod, of being a son of Poseidon, of being Percy Jackson who everyone looked to and expected miracles from and who kept failing, kept watching people die, kept surviving when he shouldn't.
When they shouldn't have.
When Zoë should have lived to see more stars. When Silena should have painted her nails next week and the week after and all the weeks that would never come. When Bianca should have grown up alongside her brother. When Luke should have—
"Yes, you can," Mom said, like she could read his mind. Maybe she could. She'd always been good at that. She'd known when Gabe had been worse than usual. Had known when school was bad. Had known when the monsters were circling even before Percy did. "In through your nose. Count with me. One, two, three, four..."
He tried. Managed a shallow, stuttering breath that felt like swallowing glass. Like swallowing the shards from his false memory. Each inhalation scraping against his throat.
"Good. That's good. Hold it. One, two, three, four. Now out. One, two, three, four..."
But the juice was still there. Still red. Still dripping.
Drip.
And Percy's hands, his hands were moving before he could stop them. Reaching out. Toward the table. Toward the spreading pool of crimson.
"Percy, no, you don't have to—"
But his fingers were already touching it. Making contact with the wet surface of the table. And the juice was warm. Body-warm from sitting out. And sticky. It clung to his fingers as he pulled them back, strands of red connecting his hand to the table like sinew, like tissue, like the strings that held bodies together before they came apart.
The juice dripped from his fingers.
Ran down his palm.
Pooled in the lines of his hand like a river finding channels, following the creases, the grooves, mapping out his life line and his heart line in red.
Drip.
From his fingers to the carpet. Red drops falling. And Percy couldn't look away. Couldn't do anything but watch the juice run down his hands, warm and wet and wrong, and see—
—Zoë's blood on his jeans, soaking through the denim, warm and then cooling as the stars took her away and left him kneeling in the evidence of another failure—
—Silena's blood leaking from her nose and ears while the poison ate through her, while she tried to smile at him and tell him it was okay even though it wasn't, would never be okay—
—Bianca's blood mixed with bronze dust and oil, unnatural and wrong, the mechanical death of someone too young to have any kind of death—
—Piper's hands red to the wrists, shaking, and the look in her eyes that said where were you, why weren't you there, why didn't you save them—
Percy's whole body was shaking now. Tremors running through him like earthquakes, like the ground breaking apart beneath his feet. The juice dripped from his hands and he couldn't move, couldn't breathe, couldn't do anything but watch it fall and remember.
Remember how blood felt. How it cooled. How it dried sticky and dark and left stains that never came out no matter how hard you scrubbed.
Remember the glass that didn't shatter but his mind insisted had shattered, kept showing him the explosion of it, kept rewriting the memory even as it was forming.
Remember how many times he'd washed his hands and still felt dirty.
Remember how many people he'd watched die.
Remember that his brain was broken enough to see violence where there was none, to turn accidents into catastrophes, to make him incapable of distinguishing between spilled juice and spilled blood.
Remember remember remember—
"Percy." Mom's voice, sharp now. Scared. She was trying to pull his hand away but Percy's muscles had locked. Frozen. He couldn't move. Could only watch the red drip drip drip onto the white carpet and see bodies, so many bodies, bleeding out while he stood there useless and alive. "Percy, let go. Let go, baby, it's just juice, it's not—"
But it was. It was blood. It was all of them. Every person he'd failed. Every death he'd witnessed. Every life that had ended while his continued because the universe was cruel and arbitrary and didn't care that he would have traded places with any of them.
All of them.
Every single one.
"Paul!" Mom's voice, higher now. Panicked. "Paul, I need—"
And then Paul was there, gently prying Percy's fingers away from the table, away from the juice, wrapping his hand in a kitchen towel that turned pink where it touched his skin. Pink like diluted blood. Like the water in the sink after he'd scrubbed and scrubbed and scrubbed.
"It's okay," Paul was saying, his voice low and steady even though nothing was okay, nothing had been okay in years. "It's okay. It's just juice. See? Just juice. Not blood. Not anyone's blood. Just cranberry juice."
But Percy could still feel it. The warmth. The stickiness. The way it had run down his palm like life draining away. Could still see the glass shattering in his mind even though it hadn't, even though he knew it hadn't, even though the evidence of its wholeness sat right there on the table.
His mind was lying to him and he couldn't make it stop.
Slowly, incrementally, the world started to come back into focus. He could feel Mom's hands on his face, warm and calloused from her writing and her painting and her life. Could feel the couch beneath him, solid and real. Could hear Paul talking quietly to him, his stepfather's voice calm and soothing even though Percy had just—
Had just what? Lost his mind over spilled juice? Proved that he was exactly as broken as he felt? Proved that his brain would rewrite reality to match his trauma, would invent catastrophes where none existed, would turn a simple family movie night into a waking nightmare?
But now he could see that the juice had stopped spreading. It was just a stain now. Just a mess. Not blood. Not death. Not the aftermath of battle or sacrifice or any of the thousand ways he'd watched people die.
The glass sat intact by the popcorn bowl. Whole. Unshattered. Real.
Just juice.
Blood