Yay! Second to last chapter…and we got 100 reviews! Well, right now it's 102, but yeah. Over a hundred reviews, which is good, and thanks so much to everyone who did review, so yay. Fun.

Reader12859: Well, Piper doubted she'd get such good results. *cough* Or rather, she doubted it would lead to anything. *cough* But anyway, yeah. That sucks…technically, school started on Tuesday, but 'blended learning/CDL/whatever they call it' doesn't start until the fifteenth, so until then I am blessedly free…except for emailing the counselor about what they did to my schedule. But then they fixed it…I've found that listening to ambient music i.e. Ambient Worlds on YouTube, helps with inspiration…that may be just me. Internet crashes are terrible. People asking people to do stuff for them is also terrible. :/ Oof. Yeah, that sounds like a bit too much…oh, and you were the 100th reviewer! Thank you so much for all of the kind reviews! They really made my day. (Slash night)

ThatGirlWithaCat: Whoops. Well, sorry. Reader12859 got there first…but 101 is also a nice number. 101 DaLmAtIaNs? …eh. And yes, Piper is…'Piperesque', I suppose. Why can't they get what, exactly? Because…they're…them. That's a good answer. And Annabeth…she's stressed. After all, she…made 'mistakes'. Now, she's even more confused, I guess. OH well…good luck at school! #LilithIsAGrump

Aeufinger: Thank you!

Annabeth's POV:

Realizing what had happened, Annabeth wished she could melt into the ground. She also wished she could go back in time and learn how to fully control her traitorous mind, getting her out of the whole mess with Percy. Of course, she realized this had probably been what she'd been thinking ever since Percy arrived, but that was pretty much…it. Annabeth wasn't sure what to do now that she was here.

"Well, well…what do we have here?" Piper smirked victoriously at Percy and Annabeth. Annabeth wanted to close her eyes and, as stated before, melt, before she looked at Piper's killer smirk and Jason's raised eyebrow, Leo's and Frank's expressions of shock and Hazel fanning her face. Annabeth remembered the position they're in- she was against the counter, Percy leaning over…oh, schist.

Suddenly, Leo started to laugh. Annabeth pushed herself away from Percy and glared at him, but that only served to make him laugh harder. "You guys- aren't exactly…subtle." He chortled. "I mean, really…one year apart really does things to the heart, hmm?" Annabeth, who had remained surprisingly blush-free, felt the blood rise to her cheeks, her ears red. She crossed her arms and leaned away from Percy, who she hadn't looked at the whole time. She feared if she did, she'd do something stupid to her, funny to the others, and she didn't want to set Leo Valdez off again.

So she just glared at him with all the anger she could muster, which did the trick this time. Piper shook her head. "We'll give you two lovebirds some space." She pulled the others away, snickering a little bit, Annabeth shaking, from anger, from stress, from shock, she wasn't sure.

The rest of the Seven filed out, and Annabeth was aware of Percy looking at her after a moment. "What?" she snapped. This was because of him. Well, the whole mess was sorta her fault, but this moment? That was him, and she knew it. If he hadn't been doing his…thing…than there would have been no scene for their friends to walk in on and Annabeth would be back in her living room not embarrassed and having a semi-good time. She would not be embarrassed, laughed at, and wanting to melt through her floor into Mr. Barrack's, and that was saying something because Mr. Barrack constantly came up to her apartment with noise complaints, and he was a grumpy, morose old man Annabeth didn't really like much at all.

"I'm sorry." He said quietly. "I…messed up." Annabeth laughed hollowly. There was silence in the living room, and she got the feeling the other five were listening in, because they had no shame and less pride than Annabeth, after all.

"Yeah, you did." She said, not going to soften it and deny it for him, but she looked away and toward the living room. "I know you're listening," she said loudly, "stop it. This isn't your business, you know." A hurried babble of laughter and voices broke out, and Annabeth grinned despite herself at her friends' shameless antics. Percy smiled a little bit too. "But," she continued more quietly, "…I started this."

"You started this? No, I did." Annabeth wasn't going to let him take the blame this time.

"No, it was me-" It was hard to make out individual words after that. Annabeth was aware that once again, the babble of quiet chatter had stopped, but she was more focused on this. Why did he think it was him?

"Percy-" she said, the first time she had said his name, succeeding in getting him to stop talking and look at her intently. "We…we need to talk." He nodded. Annabeth looked around the corner. Everyone except Hazel- the saint- looked away immediately. Hazel just gave Annabeth a small smile, before nudging Frank and engaging her boyfriend in conversation. Annabeth, after a moment, took one of Percy's hands and guided him into her room. Percy appeared to flush a little but Annabeth just gave him a stony look.

"…it was my fault." She said after a moment, before talking over any and all protests Percy started to try to make. "I told you to leave, and you did, and it really wasn't your fault, and I think…that I should own up to it." For once, she pushed the pride out of the way. It needed to be said. Percy stayed silent for a few moments. Annabeth wondered if she'd scared him with that. But why would that have happened? She didn't know what to say, so she started talking again. "But, um, it really hurt when you left."

Percy chewed on his bottom lip. Annabeth tried not to look at it. "Then why did you say it?"

Annabeth wasn't really sure what the point was now, but she didn't say anything about it and just answered Percy's question. She had started this, and she had to finish it. Otherwise, it would just be a futile effort anyways. "Because I was mad. But I- I didn't think you would actually leave." She was being honest, and maybe that was the problem here. She could see in Percy's gaze, intently locked on everything but Annabeth, that she had said the wrong thing this time. Maybe she was always saying the wrong thing.

"And why's that, Annabeth? Because I'm supposed to come to and fro whenever you like? That I'm supposed to listen to you, but read between the lines? You call me a Seaweed Brain for a good reason." He quieted. "My girlfriend told me to get out, to leave, I did, and apparently I wasn't supposed to, so in what position does that put me?" Annabeth flared up for a moment, ready, but she didn't really want to fight. She'd done a lot of fighting with Percy Jackson since he showed up already, and she wasn't sure she needed to do any more.

She just sighed. She could feel the fight leaving Percy just as it did her, remained silent because she didn't want him to start up again, wasn't sure what she wanted. She wasn't even really sure why she'd pulled him in here except that she just thought she needed to straighten it out, really straighten it out, once and for all, before it was too late.

She was nineteen years old and she would be twenty in July. Maybe it was Aphrodite's doing, but Annabeth felt hopeful. She'd dated Percy Jackson for two years, and then they broke up, but that had all happened in the teen years. She didn't want to turn twenty years old without the same guy that had always been there, something which was oddly sappy for her, but she didn't really care about. After all, it was Percy. It was like that line, from that show:

Then you say that you have to go, because you don't wanna start the new year with me if you can't finish it.

Annabeth was pretty sure the show was called Friends, now that she thought about it. She'd watched the episode on her New Years, last year, with all of the Seven, in Jason, Hazel's, Leo's and Frank's apartment. (All four of them lived together in one of New Rome's 4 person suite things, and it worked out surprisingly well for them all.) It had been said by a girl called Phoebe who they all said bore some resemblance to Annabeth, who didn't see it. No one had commented that Phoebe had been saying that to the guy she was breaking up with on New Year's Eve, because he had to leave for somewhere.

Annabeth remembered bitterly thinking that her guy she should've spent New Year's Eve with that had to leave for someplace had left and it wasn't half as sweet as this. Scratch that, it wasn't a quarter as sweet, or an eighth…there hadn't been a sweet moment there, in her memories. It had been a shouting match that ended in a slamming door and Annabeth falling, sobbing, onto the cold floor of her empty, wintry apartment.

Her pride and him, had done it themselves.

Percy caved and spoke first. "I'm just…it hurt me too. You told me to leave, I thought that's what was going to happen, and then I'd come back, and we'd make up, but then I caught a plane to New York, and I didn't come back, and we didn't talk let alone make up until I went looking for Piper during Christmas Break and now we're here and it's even more of a tangled mess. There's no closure." Closure, Annabeth thought. So he wanted to end it all so that they didn't have to see each other again? He wanted to leave?

"I…I don't know what to do," she said. "Do you- do you think it's all…a lost cause?" she didn't want him to say yes. She couldn't let him say yes.

"No," he said finally. "But I…I don't think I know what to do either." That wasn't much of a surprise to Annabeth. He'd been so clueless, with Rachel, and the kiss under Mount St. Helens…Percy didn't have much relationship expertise if he had any at all, she knew. She'd had to initiate their first kiss.

Where do we go from here? Annabeth wondered, not saying the words out loud. She knew that Percy wouldn't know what to do either. She didn't really know what to do, the only thing to do now was to take the plunge and try.

"Do you…" Annabeth contemplated her next words, unsure of whether it was the right choice but knowing that Aphrodite had spoken true when she had spoken to her in the library that day, that Percy wasn't going to wait for her forever. And sometimes, you had to do the chasing. "Do you want to try again?" she pushed past her nervousness, feeling weak. She'd eaten, though. So it was just…emotion. The one thing in her mind that Annabeth hadn't been able to control.

Percy paused, looking at her. "Yeah. I think I do."

Annabeth watched him for a moment, considerably lightened, but her next words were still tentative.

"Boyfriend?" Percy considered her for a moment as if judging her.

"Girlfriend."

Annabeth smiled. "Okay."

Maybe they would be okay after all.

And hey! If you're still here, I have one more thing to say if you don't mind. I posted a poll on my profile page today, it will be at the top, it's multi choice, and I would really, really appreciate it if you would go to that and vote in it, thanks! The next chapter is the last one, and it will be out on Monday, September 21.