Chapter Text
Most people would probably be in agreement that swords can’t talk. If someone happened to tell people they could understand their sword, people might start preparing them for a grippy sock vacation. Percy Jackson would have said the same thing before his new sword decided to tell him how little he knew about the world.
The first time Percy heard a voice that flowed like a tide commenting on the monster he was facing, he didn’t think anything of it. After all, his inner monologue frequently interjected a sarcastic commentary when weird things were happening around him. Why would it be any different when his pre-algebra teacher turned into a creature from hell? He figured everyone had a sarcastic voice making everything more interesting. Sometimes the voice in his head was the only fun interaction he had in a day.
Giving the pen, that had just turned his teacher into gold dust, back to Mr.Brunner felt like sending away his longest friend with no idea when he would see them again. It hurt so much, but Percy couldn’t think of a valid reason that would let him keep it. From that day forward the voice making the sarcastic commentary on his life slowly changed to sound like the tide, if the tide was sassy and sarcastic. As everyone around him held firm in their stance that Mrs. Dodds never existed, Percy spent more and more time talking to the voice, which he decided to call Tide. It was a sad state of affairs when the only place he could talk about what happened was inside his head.
Feeling isolated while surrounded by people was not new to Percy Jackson, but this time was both better and worse. Better because the voice in his head seemed to be present more than before. Worse because he thought he had finally found a friend, but that friend was now lying to him along with everyone else. If Percy had had a friend to talk to he might have questioned the fact that he was having full conversations with a voice inside his head just a little bit more. As it was, he was just grateful that there was someone who believed him.
When the end of the school year came around, it was already obvious Percy wouldn’t be invited back for the next year. What a shocker, the kid who had never been at a single school for longer than a year was getting expelled again. Not that Percy was bitter or anything, that would be ridiculous. Most of the things that ended with Percy being expelled weren't even his fault, so why was he always the one who was punished? Whoever was in charge of the universe clearly had it out for him and nobody could convince him otherwise.
Even though Percy knew he wouldn’t be coming back to Yancy Academy the next year, he at least wanted to do as well as he could in Mr. Brunner’s class. When he went to ask his teacher for help, he overheard a conversation he probably wasn’t meant to hear. While the conversation was weird, it wasn’t the weirdest part of the experience. That honor would have to go to the feeling that overwhelmed him as he got close to the classroom. The Tide inside of him seemed to be pulling him along, and the voice got stronger the closer he got.
After what he heard, Percy wasn’t very happy when Grover insisted on riding the same bus as him to get home. With all of the conflicting feelings Percy had towards Grover at that time, it’s no surprise that he didn’t notice Tide speaking less and less frequently as the bus moved away from the school. Even though he was feeling betrayed and hurt by Grover, Percy still thought of him as his best friend. The problem was that he wasn’t sure if Grover actually felt the same about him, which was an idea that made his eyes sting in a traitorous way.
Riding back into the city with a jumpy and on edge Grover made Percy’s instincts go haywire. The hairs on the back of his neck were standing up as if he had been electrocuted and he couldn’t help looking around trying to find something chasing him. Not seeing anything that was obviously after him did not make Percy feel any safer. In fact, it made him even more uneasy. Could one of the other passengers be a creature like Mrs. Dodds? That thought made Percy want to ask the voice in his head that seemed to be the only one on his side. This was when he started to realize he couldn’t hear Tide anymore. The voice that had been nearly constant since the trip to the museum was no longer offering a sassy commentary on his life. Did Tide realize he wasn’t worth their time too? Did he have anyone in his corner at all besides his mom? Maybe he really had just gone insane and imagined some other voice talking to him.
After seeing the old ladies at the fruit stand cut the yarn and Grover acting even more paranoid, Percy decided to put the thought of Tide out of his mind. It would be just like him to create an imaginary friend to talk to as he was losing his mind. But then…what about the conversation he overheard between Grover and Mr. Brunner? He knew he definitely didn’t imagine that. That’s completely different than imagining a voice in his head though. Maybe his brain decided to make his internal monologue sound like someone other than himself so he could believe he at least had one friend. Deciding not to dwell on whether he really was hearing voices or not was for the best as Percy ditched Grover and made his way home alone. If nothing else, Percy knew he needed all his focus to be on dealing with Smelly Gabe. He didn’t know it at the time, but he would get to talk to Tide again soon, and he would soon have an unbreakable connection with the owner of the voice.
