Chapter Two: Red Scare
A/N: Woah uploading one chapter and then coming back three months later for one more chapter what a mood
SOUNDTRACK: "I Took Your Picture" by Cults
Darkness. Swirling, empty, beautiful darkness. I cannot see my hands, I cannot see my body, I cannot see anything at all except for darkness. The beauty of emptiness fills my every pore and I am encapsulated within the void. I am the nothing, and the nothing is me. I smile, even though I cannot feel my face. I laugh, even though I cannot make a sound. I feel happy. Until, slowly, out of the corner of my eye which cannot see, I begin to realize that there is something else in the void with me. There is something in the darkness, something that I should not be able to detect. There is something in the nothing with me. Terror grips my every bone as somehow, I know that it is coming closer. And closer. I brace myself.
And then it kisses me.
I wake when she wakes, stirring in my arms. She- Annabeth- turns around and stares me in the eye, more intense and haunted than I remembered from last night. She smirks, like everything was just a ploy to get me in bed and then crack some joke about it. But I already know that's not her game. I open my mouth to speak, but she beats me to it. "Lunch?" she asks in the most innocuous way you can to somebody you just spent a night with. I stare at her, then, almost unconsciously, I work my hand into her thick blonde hair and pull her closer to me. Her breath heats the top of my lip. I stare at her for a second- comprehending. Then I breathe "Yes", quickly and quietly, and pull back. We just woke up. I've probably got morning breath.
We change with the tired enthusiasm that comes from having a pretty bad hangover and also a whole lot of desire. I catch her looking at me, yes, in desire, but there's something more behind that, a deep sadness that I get the sense I shouldn't even try to understand.
I take extra care to brush my teeth.
We wind up in a small internet cafe, depressingly similar to American ones. We get coffee. We need it. We sit down at a small table with our drinks and eye one another with mock suspicion.
"So, who are you, exactly?" she begins, surprising me by taking initiative.
"Isn't that a question you should've asked me before you snogged me?" I snap back, joking.
"I've done a lot more and known a lot less", she says. "At least I know your name. Piper, isn't it?"
"You've got a good memory", I say. She does. "Well, I'm Piper, as you know."
"And?" she asks. "Why are you here? What are your hopes? Your dreams? Where do you come from? What do you do for a living? Just give me something here."
I smile. "I was getting to all that stuff, I swear".
"I'll believe it when I see it", she says.
I take a deep breath. "I'm Piper… Laurence." I tell her, trying to be as straightforward as I can without saying too much and spilling my identity. "I'm here to get away from my family. I'm kind of here to figure stuff out, so I don't have a ton of hopes or dreams. I suppose I hope I'll figure out what I want to do with my time on earth. Twenty years old and an existentialist already. That's basically it."
Annabeth sideyes me. "You and I both know there's more to you than a girl who wants to get away from the big city and find herself.", she says. "You're a person. I know that you're not telling me something. And that's fine. Gods know I have enough stuff I can't say."
I look at her, this woman, this person, who I don't know, who I never have known, who I may never know. I look at her entirely, as a whole being, as a mind and a group of thoughts entirely separate from my own, as someone who has been put on this earth independant of me, and through a million tiny choices and decisions and coincidences has wound up across the table from me, choosing to spend the precious moments in her constantly shortening life with me. I look at the crinkles at the ends of her mouth, the endless gray eyes I could fall into, the ones I somehow know conceal secrets greater than anything I could ever keep, the hair that cascades down the sides of her face. I see the way she completely let me keep my secrets. And viewing her completely, I have no choice but to decide to tell her everything.
"My name is Piper McLean", I say. "And I just got dumped."
A peal of laughter erupts before I can continue. Annabeth sits with an amused expression, She holds up her hands in mock surrender, caving to my apparently furious look. "I'm sorry," she says, "but you just stared at me for like two and a half minutes and then just kind of started speaking out of nowhere. And so dramatic, too. Continue confessing please."
"I'm not sure I want to anymore if this is the reception I"m going to get" I say in mock haught.
She laughs. "Alright, your highness.", she says, "May thou doth continue? I beg that thou shalt."
I laugh and roll my eyes. "Alright.", I say, getting the conversation back on track. "Like I said, I'm Piper McLean. As in daughter of international superstar Tristan McLean. I left because I needed to get the fuck out of Hollywood, and because I hate my fucking ex. I hope that I can find something, anything, that can give my useless, self-indulgent life meaning.".
Annabeth narrows her eyes. "I hope this isn't weird for you", she begins, "but full disclosure I had a poster of your dad on my cabin wall for a couple pubescent years."
"One." I say. "It's not weird. It's really fucking weird. Is that why you've basically been trying to jump into my pants? Two, is that the takeaway you're going to get from that story?"
"One", she replies, "Give yourself credit; you're way hotter than your dad. Two, who exactly is jumping into who's pants, little miss get me all hyped for a steamy kiss and then back out at the last second."
"You're just baiting me now", I say, semi-incredulous.
"Yes." she says. "Yes I am.". And then she kisses me. Hard.
We break off. I go in for another one, but she stops me with her hand. "Let me tell you about me first.", she says.
I stare. "Now who's Miss hype?"
She relents. "Fine, but just-"
I cut her off, the kiss evolving into more kisses, into grasping at one another and moving closer together, until I become sober enough to realize that we're having a full-on makeout session on top of a table in a coffee shop and care enough to stop. An elderly couple at another table gives me a thumbs up. I smile.
"I have to say", she says, once we've gotten re-settled into our seats, "you sure to kiss better than that poster of your father."
I simply shake my head, and she laughs, which makes me laugh. I look at her with a suppressed grin. She winks at me. I roll my eyes. We're high-schoolers, trying to eyefuck one another across the classroom. "I'm Annabeth Chase", she says, finally. "And I'm a servant of Karl Marx and the Hungarian Comunist uprising."
I take a second to stare at her. She's fully stone faced. "What are you-" I begin to say until her laugh cuts me off.
"I'm fucking with you", she says. "It's ex trouble too."
"You got dumped too?" I ask, with the sweet tone of a sympathetic sister.
"Worse", she says with a sad smile. "He died."
"He died?" I ask, incredulous, curious, and sad at the same time.
Her face grows a lot sadder, and tears begin to pool in her eyes, seemingly just out of the emotion of memory.
"He died saving my life" she says, choking up. "So I can't exactly fucking resent it. But we were- we were so fucking close. To the end of it all, to the end of all the trouble and the conflict, and the dying. We could've started a family. But he was a hero, he was a goddamned hero to the very end. I guess somebody's got to be a hero. But I don't know why it had to be him."
She's fully crying now. I come over to the other side of the table, and I hold her, and I rock her back and forth, because what else can I do? It's not like I understand her pain. "What was his name?" I ask, once she's calmed down just a bit.
"Percy Jackson".
A/N: Another chapter soon or in three months or never it depends but be nice or be mean as long as you review I don't really care love you bye.
