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Despite the fact that she didn't spend quite as much time sparring anymore, Clarisse still liked to spend time watching from the sidelines.
Today she was watching Percy and Jason beat the shit out of each other, neither demigod able to get the upper hand for long enough to win.
That wasn't usual for them, from what Clarisse had grasped, every time that she had spent an afternoon watching them (and yelling the occasional friendly insult at them), neither had been able to win, instead having to concede to a draw so that they wouldn't be sparring all the way until dinner.
It was the late afternoon, and Clarisse could tell that Percy and Jason were close to calling it for the day. She was quickly proved right, as the two set their weapons down, and hugged each other while slapping the other's back, in the weird dude bro way they tended to do.
The two of them went their separate ways, and Percy headed towards her.
Despite the fact that she had spent quite a lot of time bullying and harassing Percy, the two of them were actually quite close when there weren't any younger campers around that necessitated pretending to be enemies.
To preserve their images, or something like that.
They had been through the same horrors together, and as much as Clarisse hated to admit it, Jackson understood her in a way that few other campers couldn't.
Percy called out to her,
"Hey, La Rue, you up for me to wipe the floor with you in the arena?"
Clarisse wanted to, she really did, but she knew that today, her body wasn't good enough to handle a fight against someone as brutal and challenging as Percy.
A voice in the back of her mind that sounded suspiciously like her girlfriend's told her to turn it down. Clarisse had been making a conscious effort to listen to that voice more, so she shook her head and shouted back,
"Nah, I can wait to beat your ass for another day."
Percy had gotten close enough to sit beside her, so her did, stretching out his legs with a groan.
Clarisse's cane was set down beside her, and Percy looked it over.
"Sick cane. What's it for?"
Clarisse hesitated to respond.
She wasn't used to bringing up her…. Disability, she supposed that's what that was, with people who weren't Silena and Will. It wasn't was like she was worried that Percy would take it badly, she knew he wouldn't (Sally would have never raised him to be like that), but it was still uncharted territory that she wasn't particularly enthused to venture into.
"It's for my legs… and my balance, and a whole bunch of other shit. Silena and Will recommended it. Will said it was nerve damage, or something, from all the injuries I've gotten. Turns out getting stabbed on a daily basis isn't amazing for your nerves."
This relevation, for anyone else, would leave them reeling, or, at the very least, extremely surprised.
Percy, on the other hand, just nodded.
"Yeah, I swear to the gods, sometimes the worst parts your injuries don't show up until, like, months or years after the fact. Just when you think you've finally healed, you suddenly have to deal with all of these long term effects that are somehow more debilitating than the injury itself."
"Sucks ass."
"The understatement of the century."
Clarisse chuckled, and stretched her arms over her head, meticulously cracking her joints. As she was doing that, the sleeve of her camp t-shirt rolled up, revealing a palm sized patch applied to her upper arm.
On instinct, she pulled her sleeve back down to cover it.
Silena had been trying to work with her to "accept herself" more (Clarisse partially thought it was straight bullshit), but it hadn't gotten far enough yet for her to not want to hide the things that she believed made her look weak or pathetic.
Percy didn't notice her shame, or at least, he didn't bother to make a comment on it. In typical Percy fashion, he just smiled and told her,
"I guess we're matching, then."
He rolled up his sleeve, showing a similar patch on his bicep. There was a hint of a tanline surrounding it, where it looked like he had applied a similar patch in the same spot, across many similar instances.
He continued openly,
"Mine's for my chronic pain. Helps mostly. Better than Tylenol, at least. And the amount of ambrosia and nectar that I would need otherwise would turn me into my very own funeral pyre."
Clarisse would have never guessed that someone like Percy would need something like that. He was so put together, so likeable (unfortunately), and he never looked like he was broken.
He was everything that Clarisse was afraid that she wasn't.
Clarisse assumed that she looked as surprised as she was feeling, because Percy told her with a grim smile,
"I swear, with all the bullshit that the gods put us though, I'm surprised that more of us aren't fucked up like this. It's an occupational hazard, except I'm only getting paid in PTSD here."
She was surprised with just how much ease Percy talked about all of this. She would never have the balls to say all of this, even if she as forced to. And Percy was doing it of his own free will.
Tentatively, Clarisse added,
"Sometimes I wonder that, if it weren't for the wars, would I be like this? In pain a lot of the time and with a body that's actively working against me?"
"Even if it weren't for all the wars, I kinda think it was inevitable that I would have ended up like this. Y'know, with Gabe, and all,"
Percy got quieter, and picked at the skin around his nails, breaking eye contact with her.
"Gabe was a shitty person, to say the least. A lot of the injuries that he gave me never healed quite right. Because I couldn't tell Mom, because then he would hurt her too. So I suffered in silence then, and I get the gift of dealing with it now, too."
Clarisse nodded in solidarity. She'd had her own fair share of broken bones and bruises given to her by her father. At least she was lucky enough to get ambrosia sometimes after. After a nightmare, she sometimes could still feel the fractures splitting through her bones.
"No use dwelling on the past. I guess. Or, at least, that's what Silena would probably tell me if she wasn't too busy with her siblings in the Aphrodite cabin today."
She offered. She was, in no way, good at any sort of comfort, but she could try a little for Percy. Especially with how much he had divulged for her.
Percy nodded, looking back up at her again.
Clarisse hated herself for doing it, but she leaned over to pat Percy on the back.
Definitely not in a softer, slightly caring way.
Just in a simple, begrudging camaraderie sort of way.
Definitely just that.
…
If anyone ever asked, they would deny it in an instant.
But if you asked anyone who actually knew them, they'd tell you that they were some of the closest friends that either of them had ever had.