A/N: Thank you for all the reviews, follows and favorites. As a reader requested, I added some details to the story. Hope you liked it.
Sad news though, this is the last chapter of this short story.
Also, sorry about the failed display of line breaks in previous chapters, I hope it appears here, because I've changed a kind.
Today was Percy's last appointment with Annabeth, but he felt like he had just gotten to know her.
"Annabeth?" He asked when she announced that their session was done as usual. She blinked and looked at him. He was still in his usual spot, but this time, instead of him standing at the door ready to leave, she was standing in front of her chair looking down at him, halting at whatever she was about to do.
"Please do continue speaking." She said after a while of waiting for him to continue, she was still patient.
"Am I allowed to come here at anytime I want in the future?"
"Why do you want to come back here?" She asked, cocking her head sideways, really curious, because he was the first person to ever say that.
"Because I want to see you."
"If that's the reason, then no."
"Then what about, I still want your help."
"Percy, you're no outsider, and you know about my history just as I know about your past. I am no help." She sighed, her own personal thoughts invading her rational and professional ones.
Percy stood there looking shocked, it wasn't normal for him to hear a dark comment coming out of the mouth of a therapist at work. He had seen all sides of her from outside of work via Piper, but she had never acted unprofessional in the clinic.
"You were never my patient formally anyways." Annabeth added. "So I guess you are not allowed to see me at work unless you have an appointment, in which I really wish you'd never consider booking. But, you are always welcomed to see me outside of work, during my leisure time." She said in conclusion.
He nodded in understanding of her words and reopened the closed door, before he closed it, he poked his head in. "You're a lot of help to me Beth." He said softly, but was audible. Before Annabeth could reply and recover from the nickname, the door clicked shut and she was alone in the lounge once again.
Ω¢Ω
"What have you done to Nico that day Annabeth?" Piper dragged her into the house when she got off work and headed to her friend's house for the first time after she took Nico to retrieve the letter. She was taken aback by the action of her best friend, but also touched by the worry in her voice.
"I've done nothing to him, I've only done my duty." Annabeth replied smoothly and calmly.
"He has been telling us stories of Bianca and even mentioned you." Piper gushed on.
"Tell me about Bianca." Annabeth demanded. "Wait," she interrupted Piper when she registered the second part of the statement. "What has he said about me?" Annabeth was suddenly alerted, because her secret and her past with Nico was not something that she'd prefer to go public, not even amongst her friends. She knew that Jason and Percy were well aware of their affair back in Vietnam, but they kept their mouth shut about it. Their secret affair would only happen once in a life time, and it was something neither of them were proud of, let along talking about it as an anecdote. She narrowed her eyes at Piper dangerously, not wanting to see the expression of 'I know something that you don't' on her face. "Tell me." She demanded.
"Why do you care about it so much all of a sudden, I thought you never get along with him, especially with the death of his sister." Piper taunted. "I seriously doubt your intentions in asking him out the other day." She continued to tease as she picked on the flowers in front of her on the kitchen counter absentmindedly.
"I am not, I don't even care about him. Never did and never will. Just tell me what he said and I will answer your question about Percy." She negotiated and taking a step back. Remembering the unanswered question on the changes with Percy that Piper had asked her a few days back, before she had brought Nico to the letters. Not wanting to reveal the rendezvous in her clinic during lunch time, she refused to answer the question, and pretended to not notice the change in the boy.
"Deal." Piper confirmed in a heart beat. "So you do know about Percy."
"Not the point." Annabeth once again, averted the topic and changed to the subject that she wanted to talk about. "Now, tell me, what had Nico spill?"
"What have I spill?" Nico swayed into the room just in time for Piper to talk, Annabeth was so ready to bump her head in to the wall next to her at the moment.
"Speaking of the devil." Annabeth muttered to herself as she heard Piper said, "you arrived just in time."
"What are you two talking about?" He asked, approaching Annabeth and slung an arm over her shoulder playfully. "What does this beautiful young lady want?" He turned to Piper, still asking for the same answer. Annabeth rolled her eyes and shrugged his arm off.
"Piper, excuse us." Annabeth requested a private moment with Nico away from Piper and outside of the house. After excusing themselves from Piper, she dragged him to the back garden of Piper's house. Stopping at the corner of the garden, in a very hidden place under a tree, she demanded Nico for an explanation of his behavior.
"I read the letter after I got home." He started to explain. It was very easy to get information out of him, and the easiness surprised Annabeth more than the confession afterwards.
"And?" She let him continued.
"She had told me that she'd die on the battlefield and predicted that I would blame you for it, so she had asked me not to put any blame on you. She explained that if you two were to be surrounded by enemies with no soldiers around to protect, you'd be the one to protect her, because you're the only one in the two of you that knows how to fire a gun properly."
"I am experienced with guns." She admitted blandly.
"So, I'm sorry that I blamed you and took out all my anger that should be aimed at Luke on you." He apologized. "I know you're doing your best to put on a smile for all the patients you have, Percy has speak highly of you."
Annabeth was first shocked by his apologies, and before she could tell him that she accepted it, he shocked him with the second statement involving Percy.
"Apologies accepted, and I will ignore the last part of the sentence that you said, because I really don't have anything to say about that. I asked to speak privately with you not because I want to hear about the letter, I only wanted to know what have you told Piper after getting back that day. Because I remember that you went back yourself and I walked around the cemetery alone for a while before heading straight back to my own apartment."
"I didn't tell them about our secret affair." He paused dramatically, making Annabeth fear of what might come next. "It should be kept private and it should never be mentioned again."
"Good to know that we held the same opinion on this. So we're still on the same page." She nodded slowly, letting out a relieved sigh.
"We were forced. We didn't have a choice didn't we?" He asked a rhetorical question and continued. "You know that I'm gay, and you know who I have laid eyes on before I left, because I told you about him once." Annabeth nodded slowly, trying to recall their conversation, and gradually, pieces of jigsaws of memories came back into her mind, and eventually, the outline of their conversation was clear.
When Annabeth stepped in, Piper was just in time to meet her at the doorstep of the garden. The next thing Annabeth knew was the fact that she wouldn't be let back in to the house for a while, because it seemed like to her, that everyone in the world was trying to talk to her privately in that back yard.
"Can I please speak to you alone?" Piper asked, mainly towards Nico to dismiss him. So before Annabeth could have the chance to answer, upon receiving Nico's nod, Piper pushed her friend down the steps.
"What now?" Annabeth asked, a bit annoyed.
"What about Bianca? How did you get to know Percy, Jason and Nico." She inquired, like a cop asking a criminal.
"I met Jason first, we met coincidentally at a bar again and he introduced me to the other two." Annabeth replied, simplifying everything, and filtering out every detail.
"What's with you and Nico? I have a feeling that between you two, it's not just over the death of his sister, there's something else." Piper asked, only curious at first.
Annabeth stared back, not sure how to put her words and phrase a response that would sound convincing but also without giving out much. "I, do admit," she said slowly, not meeting her friend's eyes and not intending to keep the conversation going, "that, there's more between Nico and I, but that's also something we'd like to keep it between ourselves and not share with others." She explained, hoping Piper would drop the topic.
"Not even to families?" Piper had her last attempt, and would give up if necessary, for now.
"Not even to families."
"Then what really happened to Bianca?" She asked. This question had been stuck in her mind for a very long time, but she had just remembered to ask.
"She was killed on a mission." Annabeth replied simply, really wanting to end the talk.
"You're going to have to tell me this sooner or later." Piper changed her attitude suddenly.
"Why?" Annabeth was out of patience, her tone was harsher than she intended, but she didn't regret using it at the moment. "You already know enough. We don't like to dig up the past, it's history, it's over, it's done, just forget it." She said sternly. "What happened to Bianca is nothing of your concern, we've told you enough. I don't want to talk about it nor do I want to remember it. The scene will forever be engraved in my mind, don't you think that punishment is enough?" She raised her voice, getting emotional with every word coming out of her mouth, her eyes reddened. "Nico didn't want to bring it up, neither do I. The version you know might not be the whole truth, but it's exactly what happened."
Ω¢Ω
Annabeth had spent more time in Piper's house ever since the twist in her friendship with Nico. She had showed up in their front doors more, giving the reasons that due to the decrease in her work load, she wanted to catch up with her best friend, however, deep down, somewhere where she didn't want to acknowledge, told her that catching up wasn't the only reason. She wasn't only there to see Piper, she was also there to see if the boys, Percy in particular, were there.
She had built a special friendship with the ex-army soldier. The young man had valued their special bond deeply, although his way of showing it might be different from what normal people would expect, but with a traumatized past, it was good enough for him to stay positive everyday.
"Now that you claimed to have less work in the clinic, will you spare a night for me?" Percy once cornered her in Piper's attic, just to ask her out. He had never stopped with his attempts in getting Annabeth's attention, and he unconsciously had done everything he could to be closer to her.
"I thought you ain't a fan of shrinks." She didn't protest when he stepped closer to her, really caging her against the closed door of the attic.
"And I thought you ain't a shrink." He smiled, brushing her nose with his.
"Then why have you visited me?" She pulled her face out of his reach instinctively. It was her natural reaction towards affection.
"You asked me to." He replied, taking a strand of her hair and locking it behind her ear.
"You said I'm not a shrink." She reasoned, knowing that their pointless conversation would lead to nowhere, but for some reason, she just wanted to prolong the time she had alone with him.
"Who said I went to see a shrink."
"You went to a clinic."
"Can't I have a friend that works in a clinic?"
"You sure as hell didn't treat me like a friend, but you did treat my receptionist well."
"Drew? She only likes my face darling."
"Oh and how can you be sure that I even like you?"
"Seeing you every once in a while taught me that you are attracted to me after all. I've told you, you've been really helpful for me." He whispered the last part, because he was now extremely close to her. The back of her head was pressed against the wooden material and his lips were now brushing hers, hovering above.
"And do you think I will spare time for you just by your mere observation?" She blinked slowly and whispered hoarsely.
"Yes, I am sure." He placed his lips on hers hesitantly, as he whispered back huskily. Closing his eyes to savor the moment of when his lips fully touched hers, he found himself unable to think. His mind went blank and when he felt that her lips pursed up to meet his, he knew that she was enjoying too. With that encouragement, he thought he would be disarming her just like she had done to him.
Ω¢Ω
Piper and Jason's home had became a constant meeting place for the veterans. They sat there with icy cold beers in their hands, spreading themselves out on the floor in front of the closed TV. Piper had always find them unbelievably uncivilized, because even Annabeth was somewhat a fan of beer.
"Stop giving me that kind of look, Piper." Annabeth scowled at her best friend. "After all, they're all healed."
"Without your help." Her friend answered with a huff.
"Yes, without my help." She rolled her eyes. "It's all your work." She let out a sigh, taking a sip from her bottle.
"I beg to differ." Percy threw his arms over the back of her chair. "I said you're a lot of help." He said to Piper, giving Annabeth a look afterwards.
With a scornful smile, she finished her bottle of beer and stood up to put it aside. Walking out of the living room, she stepped in to the back yard. Pulling out a cigaret. Lately, especially since Bianca's death, starting in Vietnam, she found smoking a great method to relief stress.
She took out one and lit it, but before she could take a second smoke, her smoke was suddenly been taken out of her grasp. She turned to the person that took away her cigaret and scowled.
"Quit it, it's gonna ruin you." The person whispered in her ear, making her shiver at the feeling due to his closeness to her body.
"I could ask you to do the same Jackson." She threw the cigaret on the floor from Percy's hand and stomped on it. "Why do you care?" She asked after kicking the roll away, dusting away the ashes on her cloth.
"What really happened between you and Nico?" He inquired.
"Nothing, nothing happened between us." She shrugged and shook her head, having an eerie feeling about the direction of the conversation.
"Where did you take Nico on that day?" He continued to ask questions, wanting to pry out some stuff from her, because he couldn't get any detail from his friend.
"To the cemetery." She kept her answers short.
"Why?"
"The anniversary of his sister's death." Still the short reply treatment.
"And?"
"What and? There's no and." She wanted to end the conversation desperately, because she didn't want to spill the beans about her secret affair with Nico.
"What happened in the attic that day?" He whispered, changing his tactic.
"I don't know." The thought made her shudder all of a sudden, for some reason, she wasn't in the mood to think about affection and the chemistry between her and Percy. The attic incident made her think back to Vietnam.
In a bar near the headquarters, it was where all off-duty Americans gathered. From high-ranked soldiers to generals and commanders; from high-ranked nurses to journalists. All people from the United State that was called to the battlefield was summoned without any previous consultant.
On two barstools at the corner, of the noisy club, two journalists were spotted sipping from two bottles of beer. One of the them had a cigaret in their hand, but none of them seemed to be interested in dressing up and making an effort to socialize. From their facial expression, it seemed like they were not talking about something serious, yet not something they'd like to share, they looked like they were enjoying themselves alone.
"You promised me." The brunette whined.
"I never promised when." The blonde retorted, flipping her hair feigning a proud demeanor.
"Fine, then what's happening between you and Luke?" She asked, wiggling her eyebrows. "C'mon Annabeth." The brunette begged when the blonde, Annabeth, didn't answer.
"What are you talking about?" Annabeth said after a while of contemplating for an answer.
"I saw you," the brunette said mysteriously, wanting to pry out everything from the blonde. "Going with Luke after hours." She said smugly, as if it was something that she wasn't supposed to know.
Annabeth rolled her eyes. "Bianca," she started in a very serious and stern tone. "If you insist. If you must make me tell, I will." The blonde said, irked. "But whatever you'll hear from me, keep the comments to yourself." She warned.
"Why?" Bianca questioned, suddenly turning serious, as if she had poked the wrong button. "I'm sorry if I struck on a sensitive subject."
"It's fine," Annabeth dismissed it softly. "Nothing happened between me and Luke that night, and there might be a slight chemistry between us, but it's soon gone. I went with him to meet someone, your brother to be precise." She paused, waiting to see Bianca's reaction. But she remained emotionless like Annabeth had asked, so she continued. "Nico's a friend of Jason's, whom we've met a few days ago. Then everything was bizarre to me, I don't know why Luke brought me there, there's only Nico, Jason, Percy and Luke, plus me, in a dark room with shots."
"So you got drunk." Bianca urged her to continue.
"Yes, naturally, because that's the most suitable way to get them to tell me more about the insight of a soldier's life." Annabeth explained. "Then everything just happened so quickly, they dared Nico to prove that he's not homosexual, because Nico keeps denying the fact afraid that people would tease him about it. So they dared him to seduce me."
"And you let them seduce you?" Bianca asked bewildered.
"I was drunk as fuck." She defended herself, "I have not a single idea of what's going on, just felt like it wasn't a bad idea to have a fuck, they're not bad people after all."
Few days later, just after Bianca possessed the information of her working partner's affair with her brother, an accident happened to her.
She went on to the field with Bianca to update on their information and knowledge of the war. Luke followed them with a machine gun in hand, he was the assigned protector of the two journalists. Annabeth herself had a gun tucked in her belt for emergency.
It was very hard to recall the details of the event, all she could clearly remember was the bullet that came right in front of her face, in which she moved aside just in time. Surprised by her reflex, she didn't let her mind linger on the shock, turning back to where the bullet came from, she fired her hand gun. Luke was nowhere to be seen as Annabeth saw a few enemy fall on their ass with bullet wounds oozing out blood.
Once the threat was gone with the backup coming from all directions, Annabeth turned around to find Bianca lying on the floor motionless. She had been shot in the head by the first bullet that Annabeth dodged like a miracle. Annabeth was too busy shooting people to find her unconscious partner, and when she found her, she was already dead. Luke appeared to carry Bianca away, to where Annabeth followed.
She stayed next to her bed the entire night. Holding her hand, recalling the last conversation they had. She remembered her last words.
"Annabeth, if I ever die on a mission, I want you to give my brother this on the first year anniversary of my death, Nico will find it necessary. I also want you to promise me that you'd put your psychology talent to good use, I want you to help the traumatized soldiers recover."
Ω¢Ω
"You do know that sometimes when you are physically devoted to someone, you might not be psychologically, mentally or emotionally devoted to that person right?"
"I do know that, and your point is? Miss Chase?"
"My point is that, Mr Jackson, this theory work in both ways."
"Are you suggesting that I'm not fully devoted to you? Or are you suggesting that you're not fully devoted to this relationship."
"I am devoted to you, but I still have doubts about this relationship."
"Why?"
"Because we don't exactly fit, especially our past."
"I don't see a problem."
"Because we have been through so much at such a young age, we no longer care about the outside, we only guard our heart and not our flesh. Am I right?" He nodded. "So that's what they say,
You can have my body, but you can't have me."
Author's Note:
Before I say farewell from this story, I have one last request, and that is- please, please, please, can someone, write a review/comment for the M-Rated story Love Can Be Frightening, I don't deny that the smut scene might not be as good, but the story line is better and I think it's great (at least I think so).