Percy was midway through penning a particularly challenging schematic—and struggling against the still-more-challenging task of warding off sleep in a dimly lit room that radiated warmth no matter how cold the winds were outside the castle walls—when a knock at the door dragged him out of his own mind. He blinked, bleary-eyed, at the door for a moment, finally settled on Cassandra being the most likely to interrupt him at this time of night, and said, his tone as gentle as he could make it, "Yes?"

There was a pause. The door creaked open. On the other side was the single person who was as far from his sister as it was possible to get.

Grog, wearing an uncharacteristically blank expression, said, "Hello, Percy."

Percy blinked, and instinctively went through the Grog-proofing workshop checklist in his head. Nothing outright dangerous within reach, but a couple of temptingly grabbable objects with just enough acidic residue on them that they might prove educational. Good. "Grog. This is certainly unexpected."

"Couldn't sleep," said Grog, shouldering his way into the room. He stood with a slight hunch whenever he was in a place built for humans, Percy noted, even when the ceilings were high enough to permit him to stand upright. Habit, maybe, after living with gnomes for so long.

"All right," he said, and made a couple nervous strokes to touch up the shading of his schematic before glancing up, dropping the pretense. There was no sense in worrying about tact with Grog. "Why exactly are you here?"

"Figured we should, like, have a little talk." Grog nudged his elbow back, nonchalantly, and the door creaked shut behind him with a finality that made Percy's skin jump. "Since you were the one who gave me Craven Edge and all."

"Ah," Percy said, and took a deep, calming breath. "Right. I understand if you're upset, Grog, but I—"

"Nah," Grog said. After casting a distrustful eye at the nearest clean edge of the workbench, he leaned back against it and crossed his arms. "Nah, I get why you did it."

Percy blinked. "You do?"

"Sure." Grog shrugged. "I did some thinking, after I died and all, and it seemed pretty obvious."

Bracing himself for the latest pearl of Groggish wisdom, Percy said, "Do tell."

"Well," Grog said, staring at the ceiling, "I figure it's like me and the skull, right?"

Percy had to grab at the bench behind him to steady himself.

Grog kept talking, scratching at his beard. "I mean, I understand why you wanted to keep the skull away from me. I get why all of you were scared. I mean, I think I do. But I was even more sc—" He paused, then shook his head like a dog shaking water out of its fur. "Angry. Just, like, super super angry about those dragons. And I thought that was the way out. I figured even if it was bad, it was worth the risk, because what was happening now was so much badder. And I guess that was you with Craven. You figured I could do something so good with it that it made all the bad stuff about the sword seem not as bad."

Percy groped for words for a full minute before he managed to say, "You've given this some thought."

"Well, I am known for my thinking," Grog said, without a hint of irony.

"It's," Percy said, and pulled off his glasses to rub at his eyes, which had gone gritty hours ago with exhaustion and the irritation of fine particles in the air. "It's a kind reading of the situation, Grog. I appreciate that. But in all honesty, I was curious more than anything. I wanted to see what would happen. If there was nobility in what I did, I assure you, it was entirely accidental."

Grog squinted at him. "So you're saying it's all bullshit."

Percy sighed, heavily, and had the feeling he was treading out to the center of a lake that hadn't quite frozen over yet. He edged, a little nervously, towards the fireplace. "Yes, Grog, it's all bullshit."

"Good," Grog said, in a stage-whisper. "Because here's the truth: I wanted to find out what was in that skull even before the dragons came in and fucked everything up."

Percy paused midway through repositioning himself so he could make a dash for the fireplace poker if need be. "You just said—"

"I know what I said. I thought you were smart, Percy, keep up." Grog went back to staring up at the ceiling, punctuating each statement with a raised finger. "I mean, there's the stuff you do when you're not thinking straight, which is sometimes good but usually bad, and then there's what you do afterwards, like, the story you tell people, which is always good. And that's okay. And then there's the stuff that happens because you maybe didn't tell the truth, which is always bad." He paused, staring at his hand, then said. "I know this one. That's like. Three versions of what happened. And that's hard to keep track."

"Okay," Percy said, with the resigned air of a man knowingly descending into the utter chaos of the Abyss. Conversations with Grog had that effect on people.

Grog said, "And I came to you because I was a little fucked up for a bit, trying to figure out my three versions, so I thought you might, too."

Percy stared, felt the cogs turning in his head, and finally blurted out, "Good god, you came here to comfort me?"

Grog shrugged, glancing away again in what Percy was beginning to recognize as embarrassment. "I wanted to make sure you weren't fucked up like I was, is all. We're cool." He finally looked back at Percy, gave him a somewhat pitying once-over, and added, "I mean, I'm super cool and you're... real good at math. So there's that."

Shaking a little with relief, Percy leaned back against his workbench, running both hands back through his hair. "Right. Well. Thank you, Grog. I appreciate it."

"Sure," Grog said. "Bet I'll be able to get to sleep now, no problem. I mean, whenever I have trouble sleeping the best fix is to talk about something I've been thinking about just to get it out of my head, but I guess the other thing that knocks me out, if there's no one around, like, is to just—"

Percy held up a hand. "I cannot express how much I do not want to hear about that, Grog. Good night."

Grog snorted a laugh. "Good night." He paused at the doorway. "And Percy?"

Percy was already leaning back to his schematics. "Yes?"

"Pike told me something, once, about how being strong wasn't that important and even thinking wasn't that important if you couldn't also be kind. And it made a big difference, because she said if I didn't at least try to be kind, like, some of the time, she didn't even want to know me. Nobody worth knowing would. And, like, it's easier than I thought, being kind."

A sharp inhale. His hands, he noticed distantly, were trembling. "Good night, Grog."

With a wave, Grog stepped out the door, leaving Percy to shiver at the fresh chill in the air and slowly, deliberately, turn back to his work.