Hello again! My cat clawed me and it will be slower typing while the wound heals so this chapter might be out later. If it is I apologize in advance. This chapter: Jasper's wedding! I don't know why I decided to include Jason and Piper but I did. Also, a surprise at the end. Read the whole thing though.
If I owned PJO, I wouldn't be writing this fanfiction, now would I?
Annabeth almost ran into Tristan McLean in the hallway.
Piper's dad had flown in for his daughter's wedding yesterday, while a little jet-lagged, his eyes were crinkled at the edges from smiling. Annabeth hadn't seen Jason yet, but Percy, Leo, Frank, and Coach Hedge were with him, and Hazel, Reyna, Calypso, and Aphrodite gushed over Piper in the next room. Annabeth, as the matron of honor, had not only complimented Piper on her nymph-like wedding dress and floating veil, her hair which she'd grown out a little past her elbows, now styled up in a beautiful half-up, half-down, and the light blush Aphrodite had applied to her cheeks, she was also supposed to check on the boys. She wasn't sure where they were in the beautiful church Piper was being married in, but it was lovely. Tall, gorgeous stained-glass windows, a royal blue carpet on the floor and the pews shiny and obviously recently renovated.
Jason's room was a little more than hectic. He was frantic. "Annabeth! Thank Zeus! Thank Hera! Thank Aphrodite! You need to help me with this bow tie!" Annabeth almost choked on laughter, but she did gag. The nausea had been with her for a while now, almost since Piper's wedding dress shopping. Her ankles still hurt, and she was suspecting it wasn't just from dancing anymore, but she hadn't gone to the doctor yet.
"Oh my- oh my gods, Jason," Annabeth managed. "You need help putting on your bow tie?" she snickered. "All you boys are hopeless. Percy, how did you manage to put on yours at our wedding?"
Percy looked downwards. "Paul did it." That in itself was enough to make Annabeth lose it, but she fastened the bow tie around Jason's neck. "Wow. We'll get you ready yet!" Jason choked. "No, no, you're definitely going to be ready by the time Piper's walking down the aisle in that knockout dress." Annabeth narrowed her eyes at him.
"How do you know about Piper's dress?" Percy smirked at her his green eyes bright with adrenaline. Weddings were very, very stressful and very busy, especially on the day. Annabeth had learned that at hers firsthand.
"Piper sent me a picture so I could match it up with Jason's taste." Leo smiled. "And I may or may or may not have shown it to Leo and Frank." Frank nodded.
"It's a great dress. But, if you don't mind Annabeth, we need to finish preparing Jason to marry Beauty Queen!" Leo whooped.
"I hope he looks presentable by the time Tristan McLean is walking his daughter down the aisle towards him." Jason choked.
"I forgot Tristan actually did come down for this." Annabeth furrowed her brow. Jason and Piper had, of course, spent the night apart to ensure good luck for their wedding, but it wasn't really her place to wonder about Jason's communication with his bride. "But, anyways, make sure Piper's okay, and, that, you know, she still wants to marry me after all this."
"I don't think you need to worry. She's smitten with you, Jase." Leo said. "Beauty Queen's fallen into the sinkhole of love and she can't get out." Leo smirked at him, and Jason just gawped at him, looking like a big bundle of nerves.
On the way back, Annabeth bumped into her own mother. "Mother." She tried to be respectful and polite, not knowing if she was supposed to be 'Lady Athena', when she'd technically given Annabeth life.
"Annabeth." Athena raised an eyebrow, looking disdainful. "Still with the sea spawn, I see. He hasn't inherited his father's trait of getting tired of his pretty woman?" Annabeth's fingers curled, clasped in her other hand, trying not to let her mother's words get to her. Percy would never cheat on me. He couldn't. His fatal flaw is personal loyalty, he'd choose me or any of his friends over the fate of the world. I'm glad it wasn't a problem when we were still heroes of Olympus. Not that there's been another Great Prophecy besides Apollo's Trials since then, but still. It worried me when we were younger. But now, I just know that Percy is never going to leave me. It's…Percabeth, as the Aphrodite cabin and Aphrodite herself likes to say.
And after Annabeth had gotten Piper fully ready and walked down the aisle with Leo, as matron of honor and best man, and lined Hazel, Calypso and Reyna up next to her, and Percy, Frank and Coach Hedge were next to Leo, she heard Tristan McLean's footsteps and the lighter ones of his daughter.
Jason looked like a fish, gaping and in shock that thisnymph-like, woodland creature was the girl he was to marry. Annabeth could see a single salty droplet fall from Piper's eye and she smiled at Jason, who smiled back. Annabeth barely heard the wedding vows, her nausea returning again, and her ankles ached. I'm not even thirty yet, why am I so…so nauseous, and my ankles have been swollen for a week. It's not like I've gained any weight, right? I've eaten exactly the same, and we used a condom…
"Do you, Jason Grace, accept this woman to be your lawfully wedded wife, in sickness and in health, until death do you part?" it was a regular wedding, the start of a normal life for Piper and Jason.
"I do."
"Do you, Piper McLean, accept this man to be your lawfully wedded husband, in sickness and in health, until death do you part?" Piper might've been crying, her face was shining, but Annabeth suspected Aphrodite had applied waterproof mascara. In the front row sat Tristan, Aphrodite, Zeus, Hera, and Thalia- the other Olympians were in the stands around there, but Thalia was Jason's big sister, even though she was still sixteen-looking and Jason twenty-five, nine years older physically.
Annabeth remembered going as a Greek serving-girl with Piper and Jason up the mountain with Jason as an old man, how his mother's shade burned up his disguise. He would've loved for her to be here, to have memories of her, of Beryl Grace like Thalia did even if the memories weren't happy, even if it was only her leaving him to the wolves, quite literally, and him losing her. Piper, at least, had Tristan, her mortal parent. Jason's mother's spirit had burned away into a chittering, crazy shade. Annabeth had witnessed it along with Piper, Jason being entranced by a woman who was no longer Beryl Grace. It had killed him more than the Imperial Gold sword in his stomach, to see a woman who had mothered two powerful children of Zeus/Jupiter, ruined like that.
"Then by the power vested in me by the state of New York, I now pronounce you husband and wife! You may kiss the bride." Piper almost knocked Jason over, practically leaping at him and bowling him over and Annabeth was hit again with nausea.
"Keep it PG, guys!" Leo shouted at them and Piper looked at them like a deer in headlights. "You shouldn't be making out in front of us. Isn't that supposed to just be a sweet kiss? Wait for tonight, yeesh." The audience laughed good-naturedly. Jason's face turned cherry red and Leo smirked at him.
Annabeth's head was aching from the loud music by the time they got to speeches, where Leo started it off with a best man speech. Annabeth was next, followed by Thalia as Jason's big sister.
"I didn't actually meet Jason until six months after I thought I met him," Leo said. "Piper, though, she was a real memory- speaking of that, Hera, why was that necessary? – but anyway, when I did meet him, he was a role-model, a leader of a big organization of crazy teens- in the best way- and, sadly, he didn't remember Piper. But a few weeks later, after our big endeavor to keep Queen Dirt Face in the ground, they were dating- again. I was kind of peeved, to be honest. When they fake dated, I was the third wheel. When they dated, I was the third wheel who often burned up everything but his underpants in the forge and that was awkward when they visited!" the audience laughed. "but they had some ups and downs…blah blah blah responsible best man speech, I'm not one of those…but, today, Jason was a wreck. He couldn't put on his bow tie without help from the lovely Annabeth Jackson. But what everyone else knew, which was NOT how to put on a bow tie, those things are strangulation devices, was that when Piper walked down the aisle an hour ago, she was going to say 'I do' and so would he and they'd start making out- Hazel, you owe my five bucks, they aren't all as innocent and 1940's as you- and they did. Cheers, to Jason and Piper Grace! Wow, she sounds like a ballerina. Cheers!" needless to say, Leo's was a comical best man's speech, and even the most stoic gods were laughing, and now it was Annabeth's turn. She stepped up to the microphone. Her back ached now. Why was she so achy today? Headaches, ankle aches, stomachaches, backaches…
A suspicion nagged at her mind but she couldn't remember what it was- she was familiar with something about her symptoms and something but she couldn't remember what it was she was chasing after.
"Annabeth Jackson!" Leo's voice in a singsong tone irritated her. She was having some mood swings, too, but it had been a stressful day.
"The first time I met Piper, I took her up to a secluded part of a special camp for crazy kids, as Leo said, so that she could cry over the boyfriend that didn't exist until today and didn't remember her name. I had also lost my boyfriend, but we're married now and this isn't about me." Piper smiled good-naturedly. "Piper was clinging to every bit of hope that the relationship she'd shared with a fake memory boy was real- and, with time, it was. More recently, when I was going shopping for my wedding, Piper, as my maid of honor and wedding planner, was with me. She broke down into tears that weren't even because of my wedding and confessed that she feared that Jason didn't want to spend the rest of his life with her."
"And now, it's very obvious that he does, because those kisses were very, very passionate, if you didn't have as good a view as I as matron of honor did." Piper was blushing but her eyes sparkled and her head lay on Jason's shoulder. "I'm excited to spend the next chapter of both our lives together, even though I'm not married to her, but, congrats! To Jason and Piper!"
"It's Jasper!" was that Lacey? Or Mitchell? Some of Piper's decent Aphrodite siblings, at least. Annabeth gave Thalia the mic and sat back, a little apprehensive of what the Hunter of Artemis was going to say.
"Firstly, no, I am not sixteen, I am Jason's big sister. I know I may not look it, but hey, maybe I'm just blessed with everlasting beauty." Thalia smiled. "I don't honestly know much about Jason. We were siblings of the same mother and father, but we have a jealous stepmother who took Jason from me and my mother at a very young age- he was two. But never fear, I still have all of Jason's embarrassing baby stories."
"Once, when he was two, he ate a stapler. It gave him a little scar on his lip and he stood by the pain, as a brave little toddler. I know there were some moments when Jason must've called Leo or Percy in drunken tears because he was at a bar and Piper had fought with him, but he got through that, and he'll probably get through this. At least I think so. The divorce rate is going up, but hey, Jason just married Aphrodite's daughter. They'll probably get through this. I already said that. To Jason and Piper!"
Annabeth smiled and hugged Piper, and then hurried to the bathroom.
"Annabeth! Come here a moment." Aphrodite. One of Annabeth's least favorite goddesses. "Here. Take this." There was some concern in the goddess's voice. "And schedule an appointment."
Annabeth stumbled into the bathroom, where she proceeded to look at the object Aphrodite had given to her.
"A pregnancy test? Seriously? That's definitely not true." Take it, just to be sure. A voice in her head.
She waited.
Two pink lines.
Oh, my gods…gods, I'm pregnant.
