A/N: I know, I know, I'm HORRIBLE! I'm terrible at remembering to update and at finding time, since I'm already up till 10:30 pm due to homework. Next semester I'll have no math, so maybe I'll update more often? Hopefully? Anyway, this chapter is dedicated for all those readers who have kept with me and not given up on me, despite my horrible updating habits! Anyways, review and enjoy!

Piper POV

When they were done putting everything on the lower level back together, Nico asked Piper to get everyone else to the dining room. He said he had something important to say. Piper wondered if it had anything to do with why the son of Hades had bolted to the hospital room.

Coach Hedge told Leo he'd take the wheel, and though he looked a bit doubtful, Leo followed Piper as she, Annabeth, and Frank made their way to the room.

Annabeth sat at her normal place at the head of the table, and Piper was glad to see that her friend was feeling more herself. But it was an obvious sign of how wrong things were that the chairs to the right and left of her, normally filled by Percy and Jason, were empty. Nico remained standing.

"We have a problem," he said quietly. Piper could tell that the others were thinking the same thing she was. To which problem was he referring? The expression on Nico's face, and Hazel's, stopped anyone from voicing anything. They looked nervous, and Hazel was looking around, eyes darting from one person to the other. Piper thought she noticed a sad expression on her face when she looked at her and Annabeth.

"Percy and Jason aren't going to wake up on their own. Not for a long time, anyway." Nico lowered his head as he spoke, so he ended speaking at the floor. Everyone just stared at him. Piper was the first to speak. "What do you mean?"

"Percy and Jason's bodies are fine," Hazel spoke up quietly. "But as far as things go . . . it's like they're in a coma. Except . . . it's a little more severe. As far as we can tell they're fine, but . . ." Here, Hazel looked up at her brother, who shifted uncomfortably.

"I saw Jason and Percy on deck. Just out of the corner of my eye."

"So that means . . . ?" Frank asked, voice small. Piper didn't even want to think of the implications of what Nico had said, and one look at Annabeth's face, she knew she wasn't the only one.

"They're not dead . . . but their souls have left their bodies." Piper's breath caught in her throat. Her heart was thumping erratically, and her mind went blank. "They aren't dead," it was Hazel's voice, but how? If their souls have left their bodies, how could they be alive? But . . . Jason couldn't be dead. He just . . . couldn't. It simply wouldn't happen. Of all the times Jason had almost died, it had never just, well, now it refused to register.
Piper distantly heard a chair tip over and a door slam, but she didn't realize what it meant until she looked up from where she had burried her head in her arms. Through the fugue, she noticed that Annabeth was gone. Hazel's hand was on Piper's arm, and she noticed that Hazel had been speaking to her.

"Piper? You okay? Jason's gonna be fine, but we need to be able to help him and Percy. Jason needs you to be on top of your game." At the mention of Jason, Piper's mind was snapped out of it's fugue. Frank was sitting in his chair with a dumbstruck expression on his face, Hazel right next to her, Nico still propped against the wall. Both Annabeth and Leo were gone.

"Please tell me Leo's not trying to comfort Annabeth." She muttered. Hazel laughed a little.

"I actually don't know. Possibly. He's the only one not shocked out of his mind right now, and he's been a little odd since Kione sent him . . . wherever she sent him."

"True . . ." And it was true. Ever since Leo had disappeared, only to turn up later on the end of a dock, he had been . . . not quite as crazy as normal. Which, honestly, had unnerved everyone a little bit. Piper stood, wiping her eyes on her sleeve. She knew that, daughter of Aphrodite or not, she looked a mess. "I'm gonna go find her."

Hazel looked relieved that Piper was no longer crying, and smiled as Piper left the room. The sound of voices, or, more acurately Leo's voice, told her where Annabeth was. She slipped past the foot of the Athena Parthenos, idly wondering when they'd be getting rid of it and how. Annabeth was sitting, once again, on Percy's bed, running her fingers through his hair. Leo was sitting on the chair near-by, speaking to Annabeth with a sincere expression on his face. Piper couldn't make out the words, but the tone was gentle.

Annabeth looked up as Piper walked closer, and Piper noticed how disheveled Annabeth looked. Not quite as bad as she had looked when she came out of Tartarus, but her hair was tangled from the fight, the bruises and other injuries she had sustained in Tartarus were only just fading, and her eyes were red and puffy. "I'm alright," she said quietly, her voice a little thick. "I just panicked. After . . . that place . . . it's hard. Last time he was unconscious, it was due to the Curses."

"The what!?"

Annabeth laughed quietly. "The Curses. Every time someone curses you, the curse comes to life in Tartarus. Every time Percy killed one . . . a curse came to haunt him. Well . . . one was apparently left by Calypso that caused me to go blind and be unable to find Percy-"

"That's odd," Leo muttered to himself. Annabeth looked at him as if confused. "Actually, you know what? I'm not really that surprised . . ."

"-anyways . . . he got, well, I have a question for Hazel when I see her again. 'Cause Percy, he ended up being poisoned with Gorgon's blood."
Piper glanced at Percy where he lay, as if dead, on the hospital bed. "How did he survive that? Isn't Gorgon's blood deadly poisonous?"

"Yes, but Bob and Damasen helped."

"Wait," Piper muttered in confusion. "I know about Damasen, the anti-Ares I think, but who is Bob?"

"The titan Iapetus, but he had his memory suppressed in the Lethe. He remembered, but helped us anyway. He chose to be Bob, rather than Iapetus. He and Damasen fought Tartarus so Percy and I could get through the doors. They healed Percy."

Piper was reeling from shock. "So that's . . . that's the part of the prophecy . . ."

"Foes bear arms to the doors of death," Annabeth continued.

"What about the rest of the prophecy?"

Annabeth sighed. "If there is another part that took place down there, Bob apparently made an oath to Nico to protect us. If he died, he kept his oath with his final breath."

"That still leaves to storm or fire the world must fall," Piper murmured.

"Well, let's hope we have a long time till then, 'cause storm is kinda out of it at the moment," Leo said, the ghost of his old self coming back to haunt them yet again.

"Hopefully, storm will be better soon. Until then, you should get some sleep, Annabeth," Piper muttered.

"She tried to get the girl out of the hospital room, but Annabeth shook her head. "I don't want to leave him. I know it's irrational, but I just . . . I can't."

Piper didn't judge her, not by a long shot. If she and Jason ever had to go through something like Annabeth and Percy had, she doubted she would want to leave Jason. "I'll make sure Hedge stays on deck tonight. Wanna Join me Piper? Give the others some rest?"

Piper was exhausted, but she knew she could keep going for a few more hours on adrenaline and the practice of the last few days. "Alright," she agreed with Leo. "You'll be alright?" she asked Annabeth as Leo sat her in the chair he had vacated.

"I'll be fine," Annabeth murmured.

Piper couldn't help but hope against hope that she was right. They all deserved a break, but Annabeth and Percy more than any of them. Annabeth deserved at least a night off.