A Horrible Day: Pt. 2

That took a lot longer than expected. Was playing Cyberpunk 2077, and I've already started thinking of a new crossover for it.

Which is bad, because I haven't even started working on the Elden Ring crossover I talked about.

Or even the RWBY crossover that I've teased since 2015.

Goodness, it's been over seven years since that chapter in Backup Plan.

Disclaimer: I don't own PJO

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Piper walked about two steps before she thought it'd look weird if she just went calmly strolling out of the woods when she was supposed to be running from a bear. Granted, anything anyone could come up with in terms of conspiracy would be stretching it.

Like, what?

The bear was a paid actor? It was a trained bear? A really good puppet/animatronic? All for what, a publicity stunt?

Actually, the more Piper thought about that, the more it made some kind of sense. Disgraced actor Tristan McLean orchestrates an event to get his daughter in the spotlight so that he can get rich again off her success. What didn't help was that the bear had disappeared. If the authorities found the tracks, they'd trace them to where they suddenly disappeared in a disturbed plot of land that looked like something large and heavy had landed there.

Damn it.

What looked like a simple bear attack was shaping up to be even more of a mess than Piper originally thought. Even she was starting to convince herself that the whole thing could've been some kind of stunt. It really didn't help how there was no more bear, though even if the corpse remained that would've resulted in a bunch of questions, namely how a several-ton animal was seemingly killed by a single application of extreme blunt-force trauma across the muzzle.

In other words, who hit a bear so hard in the face that its neck broke?

Piper sighed and pinched her nose. Things just couldn't ever be easy for her, could they? Then again, maybe she was just overthinking it. After all, if that bear was a fake, then it was a pretty damn good one. The way it moved, the way its muscles rippled, the sounds it made—Piper had a dad who worked in Hollywood; she had seen some of the behind-the-scenes stuff before, and the level of realism of that bear was beyond anything a fake could produce. The argument of the bear being a pet also didn't make much sense, because who had the time or money to domesticate a grizzly bear?

Tristan certainly didn't.

The Cherokee tribe? Eh, claiming that the tribe had a domesticated grizzly bear just hanging around bordered on a racist stereotype about Natives and their connection to nature. Or something like that.

Whatever the case, Piper figured she'd been standing there in thought long enough now. Whatever happened would happen, and she just had to be on her toes. She debated looking for a sharp enough rock to gouge lines in her arm to make it look like she hadn't gotten away completely unscathed, but concluded that was way overdoing it.

And also painful.

Once upon a time, when Piper had hit a serious low point after breaking up with Jason, she had grabbed Katoptris and did something with the knife that she hated recalling. A bite of ambrosia and a sip of nectar had removed all physical evidence of her deed, but the memory was fresh as ever….

Piper broke into a sprint, mentally retracing her path through the woods until she came bursting out of the foliage, and she instantly had her hands up. "Woah! Woah!"

"HOLD YOUR FIRE!" shouted the police chief, since every policemen there had big guns trained on Piper, and the animal control personnel had their tranquilizer guns pointed at her.

Piper was honestly impressed with the massive response that had arrived in her temporary absence. She didn't see any news vans, so that was awesome. She guessed it hadn't even been fifteen minutes since she ran from the field, but there were at least a dozen police vehicles parked on the grass, with caution tape keeping the masses a certain distance away.

Well, most of them.

"PIPER!"

Dad actually tore through the tape, and bowled through two policemen in full riot gear, and Piper went running towards him, already having worked out an explanation of what happened. Father and daughter reached each other, and Piper let out a very undignified eep sound when Dad scooped her off the ground like he had when she was a little girl.

And like a little girl, Piper's arms and legs wrapped around him on instinct. It made Piper feel warm and fuzzy on the inside, her dad showing her this level of affection for the first time in what felt like forever.

"What were you thinking?" Dad demanded without a degree of heat in his voice. "I've been worried sick!"

Piper was touched, really, and she also found it impressive that her dad was still holding her off the ground like this. He hadn't set her down yet. Granted, she was actually a few pounds underweight for the average girl her age. The average seventeen-year-old girl weighed about 120lbs, and Piper, last she checked, weighed only 105.7. A vegetarian diet and exercise would do that for you. Tristan himself had put on weight and lost muscle during the defamation, and working three jobs hadn't left him a lot of time to get back in shape, so Piper did consider it impressive that her dad could hold her aloft like this despite her weight and size.

"Well," Piper started, "I'm here. And I'm alive."

Someone cleared their throat, and Tristan set his daughter down. "Sorry about your men."

The chief shook his head. "I'd do the same for my daughter." He looked at Piper. "Is it following you?"

Piper shook her head. "I climbed a tree and it got tired of trying to get me. It walked off, then I waited, got down, and bolted. I've got no idea what direction it went or how far it got."

The chief just nodded. "We've got a helicopter combing the woods, and teams on the ground. I'm honestly surprised you didn't run into any of them."

Piper just shrugged, not really able to come up with anything.

"Well, glad to find you like this and not in any of the other ways you could've been found."

"That's the truth," Tristan muttered.

"We're still going to need a statement from you, and the EMTs will want to look over you."

"Of course," Piper said. "Let's get started."

"Oh, take your time," Tristan said. Piper looked at him with a raised brow. "When we get home, young lady, you're grounded for life."

The chief snorted and Piper cracked a grin.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

The EMT looked over Piper before she got to make her statement.

Just routine medical stuff. Piper honestly felt like she was at the doctor's for her yearly checkup. A woman looked over her, checking her temperature, eyes, ears, pulse, blood pressure, tapping her knees with that little rubber hammer, checked over her arms and legs, and offered a bottle of water.

"Everything looks good," the EMT said. "That was very brave of you, you know, saving your cousin like that."

Piper shrugged. "Didn't really think about it. Just…reacted, you know?"

"Some sharp reflexes," the EMT observed. "Weaving through a bear's swipes—not to mention you've got some legs on you, running away from it. You must be the star of the track team."

Piper laughed. "Nah. I moved here from California about a month ago. Missed tryouts, unfortunately."

"Well, after today, they might open a position for you."

Piper's laughter gained a nervous tinge to it. "M-Maybe."

Oh, gods, that was one of the last things she wanted. The student body fawning over her after news reached them of her fight with the bear. No doubt the videos taken would be shared all over the place, gaining millions of views on the various social media platforms. Piper had grown out of her meek "please don't notice me" phase a year and a half ago when she got the confidence boost she needed coming back from her first quest, but that didn't mean she wanted to be drowning in people and eyeballs.

"Have you ever considered a career on the force?" the EMT asked.

Piper's mind had been running so wild with potential school encounters that she hadn't heard the EMT correctly. "Sorry, what about the Jedi? I heard something about the Force."

The EMT snickered. "Not the Force," she said. "The police force. Or even the armed services. If you're that quick and that fast, I bet you could do a lot of good for a lot of people."

Piper was glad her pulse and blood pressure had already been taken, they just spiked in that moment.

Do a lot of good for a lot of people.

That was a line of thinking that Piper almost made conscious effort to avoid because of how uncomfortable it made her.

Thursday morning, after the nightmare, her accident, and her long shower, Piper had arrived at school in a foul mood. As she looked over the cafeteria, bustling with the conversations of over four hundred teenagers, her thoughts had taken a dark turn. She looked over her peers with disdain, observing how she had saved all their pathetic lives and how she got no credit for it, only sneers, jeers, and lustful glances. Piper had loathed herself then, thinking for a brief moment that she should've let Gaea win in order to spare herself the people she had saved.

Of course, she berated herself for such thoughts, attributing them to her moodiness, and discounted them, but what the EMT had said was the opposite to this line of Piper's thinking.

Where she had looked over the cafeteria and felt disdain for the people she had saved, whenever she made the mistake of watching the news, she wondered if she had really saved anything at all. Piper and her friends had defeated Gaea, yes, but had that stopped crime? Did people suddenly stop murdering each other? Stealing from each other? Did rape, prostitution, and slavery come to an end? Did every sick person become well? Did the poor receive enough money to get a life going? Did dictators fall? Did employers become fair? Did all the socio-political upheaval get resolved?

Piper and her friends had saved the world, but what had they really saved?

Do a lot of good for a lot of people.

It was something Piper had started to struggle with when she moved back to California. She had powers, she had used them to fight rogue gods, monsters, Giants, the Earth Goddess, and evil emperors, but…was that all she was supposed to use them for? Mythological threats? Piper was no stranger to superheroes and the overarching theme of power and responsibility, having seen some of the classic shows, like the animated Batman, Superman, and Justice League shows, the live-action Spiderman trilogy with Tobey Maguire, and others.

Did that principle…apply to her too?

It made Piper uncomfortable because she wasn't sure it didn't.

"I mean, I can't dodge bullets," Piper laughed.

The EMT laughed too. "Nope. Guess not." She stood. "Well, I'm done. You're all good to go. To the next gal, anyway."

"Thanks."

Piper's statement was less thought-provoking. She gave her name, and answered some simple questions. It was another woman, like the EMT had said. It was short, sweet, simple, with the officer being sympathetic and gentle. Of course, she was, though. It wasn't like Piper was in any trouble for saving her cousin from a bear, then baiting the bear into following her into the woods, and then escaping it.

"Is that it?" Piper asked after not even half a dozen questions.

"That's it," confirmed the officer. "A grizzly bear wandered all the way down here from the North for reasons we can only guess at, was bold enough to attack a large group of humans, and was led away from everyone by an exceptionally brave sixteen-year-old girl who escaped it by climbing a tree. After some time, the bear gave up and lumbered off in an unknown direction, and said girl made a break for it, making it back to safety in one piece. Not much else to say except good job, kid. We'll get that bear and take it back North."

"Good luck," Piper said. "It was a really mean bear."

The officer laughed.

Piper was finally able to rejoin her dad, and she was yet relieved to note the absence of any media vehicles. However, she also noted the absence of two people she thought would've hung around.

"Where're Aunt Tanya and Tsula?"

Tristan's broad smile dimmed. "They…left."

"Left," Piper repeated. "I guess they were spooked and shocked?"

"Yeah."

"Okay."

Was it that Piper expected a great big hug and thank you from her aunt and cousin? No. She wanted to talk to Tsula and make sure she was okay. Being rushed by a bear like that was horrifying for anyone. Piper had been through more than her fair share of nerve-racking horror, and she figured she could've helped her cousin with any kind of trauma she might be stuck with, however small and slight.

"Wanna get lunch?" Tristan offered.

"With some freaky grizzly bear roaming around?" Piper asked, crossing her arms with a smirk. "Sure that's safe?"

"Definitely. If it comes for us, you can distract it, and I can hit it. I figure that you got your run-from-a-bear genes from your grandma, which means I must've got your grandpa's punch-a-bear genes."

Well, that was ironic.

Piper giggled at her dad's brave face, finding his façade to be endearing. His nerves were just as shot as ever, and he was just trying to soothe calm himself back down with a distraction. "Sure. Can we get pizza?"

"Whatever you want, Pipes."

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

They went to Pizza Hut, and the whole drive there, Piper noticed the bead of sweat on her dad's brow, the way he gripped the steering wheel, and the panicked look still in his eyes. She had really scared him almost to death with that stunt she pulled, but it was a necessary stunt. If she hadn't run off and taken the bear with her, there's no telling what kind of destruction would've ensued. Dozens of innocents might've gotten hurt, and Piper might've been in hotter water than what she kind of already was.

Right now, everyone thought she had been extremely lucky to have escaped the bear. If they had seen her actually fighting it around One Fire Field, hitting it and killing it, then things would've been a lot dicier.

Though she had worried her dad sick, she had done the right thing.

Piper couldn't help but appreciate the irony in her dad's hair turning grey over her taking on a bear; imagine how bleached his whole head would become if he knew about her world-saving mission/quest/war, and her battle with Caligula.

Piper noticed how her dad was still a little shaky when he used his fork to eat his salad. "Dad…? You okay? You're still shaking."

Dad paused, stared at his appetizer for a few seconds, and then set the fork down and shut his eyes tightly. It occurred to Piper then that she had just opened a can of worms.

"Pipes," Dad started, and then he hesitated and his words. Finally, he opened his eyes and looked his daughter square in her ever-changing ones. "You're scaring me. I don't know if this typical teenage behavior or what, but you are making me very concerned about you."

"Dad, wha-?"

"First, you broke up with Jason. You told me so much about him, how great of a guy he was, and I thought he was too. It honestly broke my heart when you broke up with him, and he moved out of the house to the boarding school. Now, I asked if he had done something, ready to have him buried alive for hurting my baby, but you told me it was all you, that you weren't happy with him anymore and you didn't want to keep lying to him by pretending to be happy. I'm still confused about that, and I'm still confused about why you still spent so much time with him after the fact if you didn't love him anymore."

A lump formed in Piper's throat as she listened to her dad pour out his own heart to her. Her vision started to blur as her eyes welled with tears, and she summoned all her will to not cry here in the pizza parlor.

Dad continued, "And then you lied to me. Piper, you lied to me. You told me that you and your friends were going over to someone else's house to study, something I should've seen through right away because you weren't even in school anymore because of the move, and you instead went out surfing with Jason in the dark—Jason, the boy you broke up with, and you were lucky to live through that. He…he…"

Even Tristan started to choke up as he recalled Jason's corpse on the beach that night.

Yes, when he said that Jason had moved out of the house, that was because when Jason and Piper moved back to California and started going to school together, Jason had nowhere to live. Being Piper's boyfriend, and a good young man at that, Tristan had welcomed Jason with open arms and gave him a place to stay. Well, several places, what with all the places Tristan had owned. Granted, Jason's room was on the opposite side of every mansion from Piper's, but still. Tristan had come to love Jason, and Jason had developed a very high respect for the man, so when Piper broke up with him, even Tristan had been crushed and confused because, like Jason, he had seen his daughter spending the rest of her life with the blue-eyed blonde.

Jason's death had hit Tristan only a few notches shy of how hard it had hit Piper.

"You were both lucky to have made it back to shore," Tristan finally managed to say after getting his throat cleared. "You could've gotten stuck under the waves, or you could've hit the rocks too—harder than you did, you poor thing—or sharks very well could've detected the blood in the water, and thought that was the dinner bell. And then today, you…decide to fight a bear. I'm proud of you, I really am, but Piper…you're scaring me. You broke up with the boy that you loved so much, and loved you back so much, and then I noticed how you never smoothed things over with him, and then you lied to me to sneak out of the house to go nighttime surfing, Jason died, you were lucky to get to the beach alive, and today you through yourself in front of a grizzly to save your cousin, and were lucky to have escaped with your life."

Tristan was gripping his fork so hard his knuckles had turned white. "Pipes…are you okay?"

Piper was not okay. In this moment, chiefly because couldn't breathe right now. Her throat felt like there was a bowling ball in it. Hearing Dad talk about Jason, revealing his point of view on everything that had went down, his own confusion, his hurt feelings that she had lied to him that fateful day, and how it appeared that she was a suicidal nutcase throwing her life away.

"I…I…I…" Piper tried to speak, but for once, she couldn't get her voice to work.

Then the waitress appeared. "Uh…here's your food…"

She set down the medium cheese pizza and quickly left.

Piper reached for a slice and practically inhaled it, and then guzzled her soda. It was enough to get her vocal chords working again. "No," she said in a quiet voice, "I'm not okay. There's just been…a ton of stuff going on, and you…"

Piper reached over to grab her glass, tilting it up so that several chunks of ice slid into her mouth. She crunched them all and swallowed the ice.

"When we get back home, we'll talk about what I wanted to talk about before we left."

Dad nodded in acceptance of this, and the rest of lunch, and the ride back home, was conducted in silence.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

Piper sat at the dining table on the other side of the kitchen. Dad came through the doorway, two tall cups in his hands. He sat down next to his daughter, setting the cups down. Piper saw they were filled cranberry juice, Cran-Strawberry to be precise, from Walmart. Some ice floated along the top.

Dad put his arm around her and pulled her close, kissing the top of her head before letting her go. "Whenever you're ready," he said.

It was so quiet in the McLean house that the ticking clock sounded like gunfire. Piper wasn't sure how much time had passed before she finally got her thoughts together. It was funny: she had spent two hours this morning prepping for this conversation, ready to knock it out of the park, and then she'd been thrown the curveball of Tsula's blowgun competition, which was followed by the probably life-changing encounter with the demon bear and whoever that Incognito guy was. Then Dad had unloaded on her, and now her nerves were shot.

Two hours of practice wasted, and so Piper improvised.

Everything she said came from her heart.

"Dad…you're my favorite person in the whole world. If I ever have free time, I want to spend it with you. I've always wanted to be with you, the person I love more than anyone. When you got your big break and you weren't there for me anymore, it broke me. It shattered me. I couldn't understand it then, that you were protecting me from the dangers of your new world, like the cameras, the stress, the politics, and all those Hollywood predators that like screwing little kids, and so I acted out. I stole things. I stole things because that was the only way I could get you to pay any kind of attention to me."

Piper sipped her juice and continued.

"Then you took your big vacation and did your own soul-searching while I finally found a good school for me, and we started reconnecting. Things got better for a while, and then life started hitting us both in the face. You know, like the song goes? And it came upon me wave on wave. Jane and her damn gremlins destroyed the career you spent ten years building, and me? I…" Piper snorted derisively at herself. "My dad's whole life was falling apart and woe was me because I was having boy trouble. Priorities, right?"

Dad put his hand on her shoulder and shook his head. "Wrong. That's an unhealthy way of thinking, Piper. For you, what you were going through with Jason was just as huge as what I going through with my finances. Don't belittle yourself or whatever struggle you're facing because you think someone is going through something worse."

Piper felt there could be a debate about that, allocating importance to a problem based on its personal severity, but she sipped her juice again and continued.

"I don't know what happened between me and Jason. I met him at the Wilderness School, we heard about Delphi Private School, looked into it, and Leo, Jason, and I all transferred together. We made some awesome friends, and went on that huge vacation across Europe together. I thought Jason and I were going to be together forever. He was everything I thought I wanted in a boy: smart, funny, cute, handsome, strong, loyal, brave, and not afraid to share his feelings and open his heart up. He wasn't afraid to talk to me about what was really bothering him. And then we got back home, came back here, started school together, and…I don't know. It didn't feel the same anymore. He didn't change or anything. He didn't cheat on me or hit me or treat me unfairly. He was just as awesome as he ever was, it's just…whenever I was with him, whenever we were holding hands, or hugging, or sharing a kiss, I always felt dirty…yucky…icky…like I was doing something wrong. I finally realized that I didn't love Jason anymore. Not romantically. Not anymore. I just said that."

Piper took another sip of juice, and then another after that to help with her drying mouth.

Dad remained completely silent, not snorting, twitching, or even narrowing his eyes as Piper mentioned her intimate moments with her dead ex-boyfriend.

Piper took a third sip of juice and started talking again.

"That's why I broke up with him. I wasn't going to force myself to stay in a relationship I wasn't happy in, and I wasn't going to keep lying to Jason. I guess just like some people just can't help but fall in love, I'm one of those that couldn't help but fall out of love. And everything was just downhill from there. Jason couldn't understand what had happened, and I couldn't explain it myself, and then the bankruptcy happened, and whenever I tried to hang out with Jason, and try to build a new relationship with him, one as friends, he just wouldn't put the past behind us. Everything was stressing me out, and since Jason wouldn't let it drop, I started using him as my outlet. Dad, I…" Piper choked. "I was so horrible to him, Dad. I—"

Piper couldn't finish because she burst into tears.

Tristan instantly maneuvered his chair so he could pull her out of her own and into his lap, and Piper sobbed into his shoulder with her arms around his neck. Tristan held her tightly, gently rocking her back and forth while patting her back.

Piper didn't care that she was sitting in Daddy's lap, crying into his shoulder as he patted her back like he did when she was little and had a nightmare, or got a boo-boo. Hell, at this point, Piper was feeling so vulnerable that if he asked her if she needed to go potty she might just say yes and let him carry her to the bathroom. However, she was not feeling so vulnerable that she would let him undress her, and certainly not help her wipe.

She did have boundaries, after all, and where Little Piper had always been ecstatic to show off her successful use of her little training potty by running naked from the waist down around the house, usually with her pull-up flopping around her ankle, Teenage Piper was decidedly mortified at the sheer thought of showing her dad what she left in the toilet, and certainly at the notion of him cleaning her privates.

Amazing how perspectives shifted with age.

Funnily enough, that stream of consciousness helped Piper calm back down, because the mortification and embarrassment counteracted the shame and loathing.

She pulled away from her dad and wiped her eyes.

"Do we need to take a break?" he asked. "Continue this later after a power nap or something?"

Piper shook her head. "I need to get this out of me. Now."

Dad nodded, and Piper slid out of his lap and got back in her chair.

She took a deep breath, wondering where to go from here. Continue with Jason, or open up about her confused sexuality? Piper decided to ease into the bomb later.

"I was so awful to Jason. I used him as my emotional punching bag. Then, that day, it was supposed to be our last day together. You know, whether we ever saw each other again after moving back here, that was going to be our last day, and I didn't want us to end on bad terms. I wanted to finally get things smoothed so we could at least part ways as friends. We made…some good…progress, and then I suggested surfing. Yeah."

"Yeah," Dad drew in his own shaky breath.

Piper's eyes darkened. "But that hasn't been the end of it. Two weeks ago, the 14th, the nightmares started. Almost every night, the same horrible nightmare. It's about Jason, the night he died. Every time, his rotting corpse screams at me, yelling at me that it's my fault he's dead, and that I'm the one that killed him after emotionally abusing him his last three months of life. It's gotten so bad that Wednesday night, I mixed in four of my wine coolers and a can of Sprite, drank the whole thing before bed hoping I'd get drunk enough to sleep through the night, ended up having a nightmare anyway, only this time with the added humiliation of actually peeing in my bed. Yes, for the first time since I was six, I wet my bed."

Piper didn't even look at her dad to see his reaction, and just kept talking.

"School isn't any better. You know social media? Well, my time in the Wilderness School somehow followed me from California. Everyone at school knows I was once klepto, and their favorite way of making fun of me is grabbing their stuff and smirking at me whenever I'm near. And I'm still dealing with my ADHD and dyslexia—and I refuse to take any kind of meds for that. I don't have any friends—well, I have two. The first one's been my friend for a while, but I was too stuck up to notice, and the second one I made yesterday."

Piper guzzled the rest of her cranberry juice.

"So, yeah. I still feel horrible because of how I treated Jason and I never got to resolve anything with him, get some closure, and now his ghost or something is haunting my dreams. I'm bullied at school—minor, yeah, they just make fun of me, but still—I'm still struggling with my disabilities, I'm still trying to figure out who I am as a Cherokee, and-" Piper caught herself before she spilled what she considered to be the biggest thing about her right now.

But why?

Why was she so nervous and hesitant about telling her dad that she was confused over her sexuality, and that she might be gay?

Well, it was a simple answer: the basic, primal, human fear of the unknown.

Piper had no idea how her dad would react if she told him about her confused sexuality. She racked her brain for any instance in the past that gave any indication as to how her dad felt about such matters, and she was drawing a blank. She could not recall any conversation, she could not recall any such time that the news was on, or an ad on the TV, or a show or a movie, that had such material, and what her dad's reaction was.

Piper could recall no derisive snort, no muttered quip, no sad or sympathetic look—nothing.

Piper had zero data on how her dad viewed gay people, and the fear of the unknown gripped Piper's tongue. In all honesty, Piper preferred negativity to nothing, because at least then she would know how her dad would react about her potentially being gay, and would know not to ever say anything and keep it a secret until the time was right.

"-and you know the biggest kicker to it all?" Piper asked rhetorically, getting her bearings back after her brief internal struggle. "You're not there for me, just like before."

"Piper, I-"

Piper was on a roll now. She bolted to her feet, her voice rising. "There you go, making excuses again! Dad, I get what you're doing. When you got your big break, you threw yourself into it for the money so that you could always provide for me, so that I never had to grow up poor like you did. Now, you've thrown yourself back into work for the same reason, and just like before, you're never there for me! After all this time and all the progress we've made, we're back at square one! Only this time it's worse because I'm not a little girl that misses her daddy; I'm a teenager that's actually going through some shit!"

Piper chuckled mirthlessly. "It's ironic. During that whole debacle in California, there was good thing I saw that was going to come out of it: you and me were finally going to be able to really spend some time together. We were going to be to really get to know each other again. And then…you willingly throw yourself back out of my life based on a misguided sense of responsibility. Dad…thank you, really. Thank you for working so hard for me, thank you for trying your damned hardest to take care of me, but can't you see? Of course you can't see because you're never here. Dad…I feel like I'm falling apart, and you're not there for me. All that I'm going through right now wouldn't mean a fucking thing if you were there for me, being my shoulder to lean on, but you're not. You're working seventeen hours a day for barely $1500 a week. Dad, we don't need that much money. We don't need you working three jobs, sleeping half the weekend away. I need you in my life right now."

Piper's fists were clenching and unclenching at her sides. She was struggling to keep her lower lip under control, but it was trembling anyway. She had to blink the collected tears out of her eyes so her vision would unblur, and she saw her dad was staring at his hands in his lap, his expression unreadable. Piper had no idea what was going on in his head after all that she had confessed, and as she listened to the clock slowly ticking away, whatever hope she might have been holding onto about him standing up and declaring that he was going to quit one of his jobs, preferably the nightguard one, so he could be there more for her, rapidly dwindled.

Then it totally evaporated when Dad let out a heavy sigh.

"That explains why four beers vanished in one day." He stood up and gently pulled Piper into a hug, but she barely put her arms around him. "I'll call the school about this bullying, and make sure they put a stop to it. I had no idea you were going through so much, Pipes, and I'm sorry I haven't been there for you, but now I know. The rest of today, tomorrow, and every weekend-"

Piper jerked backwards. "Every weekend?"

Tristan's eyes hardened, his jaw set, his back straightened, and his shoulders squared. He tilted his chin slightly up and looked at Piper down the length of his nose. This was his King of Sparta act. Obviously, being a king, he had to be firm, stern, uncompromising, unyielding, unwavering, and authoritative. Though an act, the energy had remained, and he went into this "mode" whenever he was putting his foot down on something, whether that something be about whatever was happening on the set, or his daughter.

"You are young, and one day, when you have children of your own, you will understand that you have to make sacrifices for them, and find compromises with them. You can't see it yet, but I'm not misguided. We do need the money I work for, and if it requires that much time, then so be it. That's what we have to live with until things are better. That's the sacrifice I make being your father, the man that is responsible for your wellbeing. The compromise I'll make is that during the week, I work, and during the weekend, I'm here for everything you need."

Piper just stared at her father, a few more tears going down her face. "I can't believe this," she said. "Everything I just told you, all that I'm going through right now, and you're not even going to try to be there more?"

"You're being irrational," Tristan asserted. "I'm all yours Saturday and Sunday-"

"After you wake up halfway into the afternoon," Piper cut in bitterly.

"I'll set my alarms that way you've got me all day," Tristan reasoned. "But I need to work. We need that money. That goes to bills, groceries, emergency expenses, savings, whatever we feel like splurging on, and your future."

"My future."

"Yes. You're going to take driver's ed one of these days pretty soon, and you'll need a car. One of the things I'm saving up for is your first car. I've been doing some looking online, and I've found some good ones. In just a few more weeks, I'll have enough money to-"

"Shut up," Piper said hollowly. "Just…please…shut up."

She started backing away, heartbroken and horrified beyond words that money was still the number one thing on his mind after she'd poured her heart out to him.

"Piper," her father sighed in frustration. "I know you're upset-"

"Upset?" Piper hissed.

She turned and went flying out the door. With a running start, she vaulted the fence and took off in a sprint down the road, tears flying through the air in her wake.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

Whose side are you on?

Are you with Piper, that she's going through some serious stuff and she needs the support of her dad, which entails him quitting one of his jobs to make more time for her?

Or are you with Tristan, in that sacrifices have to be made right now due to how tight the circumstances are?

There'll be a timeskip next chapter, because the current day of this story is April 30th, the last Saturday, and day, of the month, going off the 2022 calendar. However, I need to be careful with my dates. I've based the times of the story on real-world info, and the real-world Tahlequah school calendar, for '22-'23 anyway, has the Spring semester ending on Thursday the 18th, but following the idea of school ending on a Thursday, using the May of 2022, that would be the 19th.

Which is only about three weeks from the current day.

Granted, this is a fanfiction, so I can do whatever I want with the dates, but I like to maintain accuracy.

That being said, expect some creative liberty in the future, because I've got big plans for Billy and Shel, and three weeks is not enough to tell them, especially not in conjunction with Incognito's role, and how Piper's says she's in "early days" with her relationship with Shel when Apollo drops in during the approximate last week of June.

So I've got to stretch things out.

Fav, Follow, and Review please! I'll try to make the next update not a month away this time!