A/N: This chapter has a warning that I HOPE YOU READ. Warnings: mentions of PTSD, descriptive panic attack scene, discussion of past murder/death/suicide. Please don't walk into this chapter unprepared! Also M rating for a reason. Also long chapter today whoops! I hope you enjoy!

PIPER

Piper's still coming down from what she'll never admit was one of the best orgasms she's had in years, and, if she had to explain why it was, she probably couldn't. "I appreciate your ability to get me off," says Piper. "That's it."

"Sure," says Reyna, and Piper's really not okay with how hard she's laughing at her.

"Shut up, Arellano."

This just makes Reyna laugh harder. "Ooh, look at the badass using last names because she doesn't want to admit I'm good in bed."

"Shut up!" Piper says, but she can tell that Reyna won't stop laughing until she is forced to. Which Piper is more than willing to take the bullet for.

Without a word she crawls over to where Reyna's laughing against the wall and straddles her, catching Reyna's face in her hands and pulling her in for a deep kiss. A spark floods through her as she tastes herself on Reyna's tongue, and she pushes the two of them tighter against the wall. She feels Reyna's hands scratching against her back, and another spark hits as she thinks about how, yep, that's going to leave a mark. Reyna's gasping against her now and it's slowly turning into a moan.

"Apparently that's all I have to do to shut you up," says Piper, locking eyes with Reyna. "A couple kisses and you're down for the count."

Reyna rolls her eyes. "This coming from the girl who jumps and knocks stuff off of bedside tables? Come on, Piper, all I had to do is touch your tattoos and you lost it."

"That's because my tattoos remind me of how awesome I am," Piper says, and Reyna turns them both so Reyna's lying down. "It wasn't you that was making me do it – I was getting off on how hot I am."

Reyna starts laughing again, and Piper's only reasonable solution is to lean down and kiss the laughter away until it's replaced by ragged breathing. Piper fumbles with Reyna's underwear, then gives up when she realizes it's trapped between them. Instead, she pushes the fabric aside and brushes her fingertips against Reyna, who lets out a high-pitched whine.

It's Piper's turn to laugh now. "Okay, then," she says, "someone's a bit worked up." Teasingly, she keeps brushing against Reyna, not giving her any of the relief she wants, but just making it worse and worse.

"Just do it already," Reyna moans, "please."

"I love it when you beg," Piper says, and obliges, slipping a finger inside of Reyna and watching Reyna's head fall back onto her pillow. She's still locking eyes with Piper, not letting her gaze fall in the slightest. It seems like a competition is beginning to brew, and Piper loves it. So she turns up the pace.

"Since we were talking about ink earlier," Piper twists a finger inside of Reyna, who looks like she's fighting the urge to arch against the mattress, "You'd look hot with a tattoo," says Piper, her eyes locked on Reyna's as she slides a second finger inside of her. She can tell that Reyna's fighting to keep her eyes open and keep her composure, but Piper, after whatever the hell Reyna tried earlier, is determined to get Reyna off her guard and off her typical stance of being such a priss. "I think you should get one right here," she says quietly, and runs her fingertips across the ribs right under Reyna's right breast, and Piper's sure Reyna's forcing back a shiver. "I mean," Piper continues, "you look hot anyway – I probably wouldn't have noticed you if you hadn't been wearing that damned near see through shirt that had your boobs on full display, thank you for that – but seriously, something right along here." As she spoke, she ran her fingertips again along that spot and twisted her fingers inside of Reyna in a slightly different way. This time Reyna can't hold herself back. Her eyes fly closed as she arches off of the mattress, and Piper leans forward to catch her lips.

"See?" says Piper. "It's better when you just let yourself – go." With the last word she presses her thumb against Reyna's clit and moves it as she moves her fingers inside of Reyna, causing Reyna to let out a high pitched whine and a gasp that sounds like she'll never be able to breathe the right way again.

A few more movements and Reyna's yelling, "oh, fuck," louder than she usually does, and Piper's kissing against her neck as Reyna comes down from her orgasm.

"You're really annoying," Reyna says, and Piper smirks a little bit as she realizes that Reyna's voice is still a little breathless. "Like, next time just shut up and get me off, okay?"

Piper laughs. "Coming from Miss 'What's this tattoo?!' for half a freaking hour, that's pretty rich." She holds her hand up to her ear in a makeshift phone. "Oh, sorry. I need to make this call. Hello, Pot? This is Kettle. I just wanted to inform you that you are, in fact, black."

Reyna rolls her eyes and pulls her pillow out from under her head and nails Piper in the arm with it. Piper, however, is not expecting this, and finds herself tumbling off of the bed and landing awkwardly on her arm.

It hurts. A lot.

"Oh, I think you just killed me," Piper whines, holding her arm to her chest. "Fucking hell, Reyna, if anyone could make pillows a violent and even lethal weapon, it would totally be you. Watch where you're killing people next time."

Reyna rolls her eyes and leans over the side of the bed. "Wiggle your fingers."

Piper pouts at her. "No," she says, "it hurts. I don't want to."

"Just wiggle your fingers," Reyna says, and she sounds exasperated enough that Piper does what she says. It hurts a little, but her fingers move and it feels different than it would if something was seriously wrong.

"Nothing's broken or paralyzed if you can move your fingers," says Reyna. "Plus, with the way you yell on a regular basis, I had a feeling there was no way it was a serious injury. You were too quiet."

Piper glares at her as she cradles her hurt arm. "It could still be sprained!" she complains. "Or maybe I split a tendon."

"Split a tendon?" Reyna says. "I don't even think that's a thing that can happen."

"It could," says Piper, her glare turning to a pout.

Reyna sighs. "You are such a little drama queen," she says, but there's an odd, unexpected level of affection that throws Piper off. "Come up here, you idiot, and get out your textbook. We have time to study before I have to head to my next class, and your arm will be alright once you stop complaining."

"Huh?"

Reyna smirks. "It's been scientifically proven that pain increases with the amount you complain like a little bitch."

Piper takes her good hand and whips the pillow at Reyna's shoulder. "Then you should probably shut your face because it's hurting me."

Reyna just stares at her and Piper wishes she could take back that horrible excuse for an insult. She ignores Reyna as she grabs her textbook.

"Oh, dear," says Reyna, "you tried so hard to be mean right there and it just so didn't work. Does wittle Piper have a boo boo and need to take a nap?" Reyna reaches out and pulls Piper to bed by the waist. Piper would fight her, maybe whack her a couple of times in the stomach until she let go, but with her good arm pinned and the other one held delicately and impotently against her, there's not much she can do.

"You are spooning me against my will," grumbles Piper, "I do this under extreme protest."

"Shut up and cuddle me, you moron," grumbles Reyna, and Piper feels her bury her face in Piper's hair. Piper relents and snuggles back into Reyna, but makes sure she's still actively frowning as she lets her eyes drift closed.

"You forgot to turn off the light," Reyna mutters into Piper's ear when she's just about to drift off to sleep. "If we were going to actually nap, you should have turned the light off.

"Go fuck yourself," Piper replies.

The two of them doze on and off for about an hour before Piper drops her textbook on the floor, waking both of them up in time for Reyna to head to her 4pm class and Piper to completely ignore all requests of Reyna to leave.

"I think I'll study in here until you get back," says Piper, nose in the textbook.

Reyna rolls her eyes and stops arguing once Piper makes herself comfortable with her legs up on Reyna's desk.

By the time Reyna gets back, it's time for dinner, then studying, and before they know it Piper's face down in Reyna's bed half asleep again. As Reyna tosses herself in next to her, Piper makes the effort to wake up and make some snarky comment, but all she does is fall asleep. Again.

Piper wakes up with a start somewhere in the middle of the night, but it's dark enough out in the hallway and out Reyna's window that she knows she didn't accidentally stay the entire night. She gingerly tests her arm – all better, apparently Reyna was right, damn it – and steps out of bed. Immediately she trips over something. "Oh, good," she says, "my shorts." For a few minutes she makes an effort to get into them while hopping around in the dark, but she quickly realizes that attempt is entirely futile. With a little more effort than should be necessary, she makes her way over to Reyna's desk and sits down, pulling on her shorts in the dark. She's not sure who turned the light off – maybe Gwen? She hopes Gwen didn't see her cuddling. That would kill her street cred – but the light is, indeed, off, and she doesn't want to wake Reyna up.

"Where the hell's my bra?" grumbles Piper in the dark, trying not to kill herself on all of these baskets of clothing. (Seriously, who the fuck takes this goddamned long to put away their freaking laundry?)

"What are you doing, Piper?" Reyna asks, voice thick with sleep. "Don't try to steal any of Gwen's Adderall – she needs it every day and she'll kill you if she's missing one."

"I don't steal Adderall!" replies Piper in a harsh whisper. "Mostly! Okay, it was one time and it wasn't for me!" Clearly too much information. "What makes you think I'd steal Adderall? It'd more likely be you, Miss Perfect Grades."

Reyna sits up in bed, and Piper feels an odd sense of pride fill her as she sees the hickey she left on Reyna's collarbone has built into a clear, light bruise. "My grades are all natural. No performance enhancing drugs needed for this perfection."

Piper, taking the opportunity, laughs a little bit to herself. "You've got that right," she mutters to herself, but she makes sure her back is turned to Reyna and that Reyna can't hear OR see her as it happens. She wouldn't want Reyna getting a big head.

"Why are you awake right now?" Reyna asks. "It's – three thirty, just stay here." Reyna turns her alarm clock to face Piper, and it illuminate's Reyna's dark eyes. "Go the fuck to sleep."

Piper laughs – that draws out a swear? "I am going to sleep," says Piper, feeling around under a chair, "in my own dorm."

"It's the middle of the night, you moron." Reyna sits up. "Seriously, this is a big campus. I don't want you to get hurt or something."

"I'll be fine," says Piper, "I carry a sharp blade."

Reyna, by the light of even just the alarm clock, looks startled. "You do?" she asks. "Since when?"

"My cutting wit," replies Piper. "Seriously, Reyna, calm your tits. It's going to be fine. People don't fuck with girls wearing combat boots and an undercut."

"That's what everyone thinks," says Reyna, "and then something bad happens and then we all tell you we wanted to keep you from getting hurt and you get upset because you don't want to hear 'I told you so' and then there's some weird soundtrack to the movie and then we all talk about our favorite teachers at the end of them movie and then yeah."

Piper just stares at her. "That was the most rambling rant I've heard in my life. Are you sure you're awake?"

"No," says Reyna, and it's true, there's an odd little glaze over her eyes that makes Piper strangely aware of how sleep deprivation makes this generally very smart girl kind of stupid, "but I'm pretty sure you should go to sleep nowish."

"I'm fine," Piper groans. "God, what the fuck are you, my mother?"

Reyna shakes her head. "No, you fuckwad, but I don't want you getting hurt."

Piper laughs. "You swear a lot more when you're tired."

"I make no sense when I'm tired," Reyna corrects.

Piper gets a hold of everything she needs. "I'm leaving now."

"Come on, just stay here," says Reyna, even going so far as to move over in bed to make room for Reyna. Piper can't do anything but stare at her as she realizes Reyna's serious and that she's not just fucking with her.

She's never slept in somebody else's bed the whole night before. At least, no one whose bed she just banged them into. "I can't," she says, shaking her head. "I've got to go to bed. In my own dorm. It's – Annabeth's going to be worried if I don't make it home tonight. I already texted her that I would be back soon, okay?"

Reyna sighs deeply and sets down the alarm clock, and Piper can no longer see her expression. Whatever she can imagine the expression is, she's pretty sure she doesn't want to see it. "Okay," Reyna sighs. "I mean, it's not like I can make you stay." She turns over in bed, her back to Piper. "Night, Piper. Text me when you get home – I want to know that you get home safely, okay?"

Piper shrugs on her hoodie and makes her way out of the apartment. "Goodnight, Reyna," she says quietly.

She saunters out of the apartment without a second glance behind her, but every part of her body is telling her she needs to head back. But she doesn't. And she doesn't actually want to.

She makes it all the way back to her apartment – safely, thanks, Reyna – and calls her by accident instead of texting her.

"Lell?" says Reyna. Piper can't keep herself from laughing.

"What does 'lell' mean?" Piper says through giggles.

"Said hello," grumbles Reyna. "I was asleep, you idiot. I said text me. Not call me."

"I did the wrong thing," Piper said, "I meant to call you and by accident I texted you."

Reyna laughs. "I think you mean the other way around, you weirdo. Now go to sleep. I've got class in the morning."

"So do I!"

"Oh, shush, eleven is not the morning. Eight is in the morning.""You should skip class," says Piper. "Just skip it. Learning is dumb. Come over here."

"I'm going back to sleep, Piper," says Reyna, and she hangs up the phone without another word.

Piper all of a sudden feels a bit odd until she realizes she's sad that Reyna didn't tell her goodnight.

Then she just gets mad at herself for feeling sad, and passes out in a huff, still wearing the outfit from the other day and hoping she didn't wake Annabeth up.

ANNABETH

She knew she should probably tell Piper to stop coming in without notice in the middle of the night, because it's starting to scare the hell out of her, but she's not exactly sure how to tell her "people opening doors in the middle of the night is a big trigger for me and I get scared when you come into the dorm in the middle of the night and being scared does not do good things for me."

But she's still not ready to explain any of this to anyone. Unfortunately, she hasn't heard from Thalia in long enough that the words are still bubbling up inside her.

She's up until 4:30, after Piper's come and gone, and then come back after a shower, thinking about Luke and Thalia and back when she was the idiot and not the pragmatic one, and she wonders if she'll ever be over what happened back then.

She cuddles up with the stuffed animals she keeps in bed with her and closes her eyes. She's not getting panic attacks as much anymore – her last one was a month before she moved in – so it's not like what Piper's doing is as big of a deal as it could be, but it's still startling.

She'll never stop hating the feeling of having your back to the door and not knowing who's standing in the door frame.

She sleeps and she dreams of a time when Luke, Thalia and she were their little idiot band of thieves, before Luke made the mistake that would steal Thalia away from Annabeth and would steal Annabeth's sanity away from her. It was a long time ago – about four years now – but it still feels new every once in a while.

She's better. A lot better – Vanden and Grover and everyone she met there helped her get through it all and process everything that happened, but she still sometimes, sometimes, gets these dreams and wakes up feeling like she's fourteen again. Like Luke's going to come into her room at night again and tell her about what he had done, and she'll never, ever be the same again.

She wakes up around eight in the morning crying, and jumps when she sees that Piper's sitting next to her bed on the floor.

"Annabeth," she says, and her tone makes it seem like she's been calling her name for a few minutes. "Hey, I woke up and I heard you crying – what's going on?"

"Ba-bad dream," Annabeth says with a pathetic hiccup attached. She begins trying to use some of the skills she was taught at Vanden, grabbing onto the comforter to ground herself, but it's not working. She moves to grab a tissue, but Piper holds the box up to her.

"I, um, saw you were crying and figured you might need one of these." Piper sends her a smile and Annabeth suddenly realizes that, probably, despite all the tattoos and the fuck-you attitude, Piper's one of those really unexpectedly nice people who's even nice to the weird kids that everyone else hates. She shakily reaches to grab a tissue and watches Piper's eyes lock on Annabeth's near inability to grab the tissue. Instead of commenting or saying anything, Piper pulls out the tissue and presses it into Annabeth's hand. Annabeth smiles at her gratefully, and dabs at her eyes. Annabeth's sick of being a weird kid, but it doesn't seem so bad when she's got a friend like Piper.

"Do you wanna talk about it?" Piper asks. "Or do you want to be left alone?"

Annabeth shifts so she's sitting up in bed and pats the foot of her bed. "If – if it's okay with you, I think I want to talk about it."

Piper tosses herself onto Annabeth's bed and smiles at her. "Lay it on me, roomie," she says, "what's cooking in that brain of yours?"

So Annabeth takes a deep breath and goes to tell her the story, makes like she's about to explain why she's so weird and such a quiet person half the time, but it all gets stuck in her throat. Instead, what comes out is, "One time a guy I was sleeping with killed the family of a politician because he got stuck in a weird anarchist anti-government cult and then he tried to make me and my best friend run off with him and then tried to kill us when we told him no so I told him I wanted him to die and he killed himself."

And in that very moment she is sure Piper's going to kick her out of the room and report her to the dean of students and Annabeth will literally never graduate from college or become anything but a lazy bum sleeping on her father's couch and, oh, god, this is the worst thing she could possibly have done and she's sure her life is over.

So when Piper just leans forward and hugs Annabeth, saying "People suck so bad," Annabeth's so startled she just sits there. Piper realizes that Annabeth's reacting a little differently than most people when hugged, and moves away from her.

"Are you – do you not hug?" Piper asks. "Like, do you not want – should I..?"

"No, no, that's okay," Annabeth says. "I just – I meant to say that in a much better way than I did. And then I said it really wrong and…" She sighs and looks down at her hands. "I expected you to think I was a lunatic or something."

"We're all lunatics," Piper says, brushing it off. "And it sounds to me like you didn't actually do anything. I mean, you couldn't have been more than eighteen. You were a kid."

"I was fourteen when it all went down, actually," says Annabeth, and she winces a little bit at how far Piper's jaw drops.

"Holy shit," says Piper. "That's – oh, god, you were just a baby." Then the next, inevitable question comes out. "Fuck, what were your parents doing, letting you go around with some loony like that?"

Annabeth shrugs. "My mom's never been really…There. She was a PhD candidate when she got pregnant with me and realized she didn't want kids. She and my dad were never together, you know? So she kind of told my dad 'take the kid, I don't want her' and only contacts me when she knows there'll be something on the news about her so she gets to tell me first."

"And your dad?" asks Piper. "I mean, I knew he was an absolute bag of dicks – pardon the French – when I met him, but I didn't expect this kind of thing."

"He and my step mom were too busy with the boys," she says simply. "They're twins, so they were kind of sick when they were born when I was five, so from about then on I guess I just was…an afterthought. My dad didn't realize what was going on with me until I ran away with – with Luke and Thalia."

Piper's looking at her, not in pity, but in understanding, and she's beginning to wonder if they have more in common than Annabeth ever wanted to admit.

"Do you want to explain it more?" Piper asks. "Or are you – is it…"

Annabeth shrugs. "I mean, he got wrapped up in this whole anarchist cult thing – lead by a guy who called himself Kronos, how stupid is that? – and was told he had to kill someone in high power to get show allegiance. Prove he was in it for the long haul, you know? So he went for it. And came to me, like, proud of it all." Annabeth closes her eyes, trying to keep any flashbacks from hitting. "To me and my friend Thalia, in the shelter we were staying at. Told us we needed to come with him, that he had a safer place for us." The familiar chill she feels whenever she remembers that night ravages her spine and she, horribly, like always, starts to shake.

"He – I – he took us to th-their headquarters." Annabeth closes her eyes and breathes deeply. She doesn't need another panic attack. She doesn't want to lose the progress. She doesn't want to screw up her record.

But, like always, it's going to happen. It's happening out of her control. The world starts spinning and her breathing is ragged and there's some block in her brain that's preventing the message of "hold your breath" and "grip the table" from reaching her body, and it all feels like a nightmare.

But then, suddenly, unexpectedly, someone's holding her hands and calling her name. "Whoa, Annabeth, open your eyes, look at me, okay?" says the voice, and she's dragged back to reality, she's here, at school, on her bed in her dorm. Her eyes fly open and she meets Piper's.

"Hey, are you with me?" Piper asks. "Do you have a worry stone or a grounding mechanism you use? Look at me, okay? I'm right here. You can squeeze my hands as hard as you need to. Just – let me know what you need."

Annabeth nods and holds her breath, counting to ten, then lets it out.

She does it again.

And again.

And each time she opens her eyes, Piper's still smiling at her, she's still right there, still holding her hands, even though Annabeth's squeezing them so hard they've turned white.

Then, as suddenly as it hit, it's over, and Annabeth's just gasping as the last few panicked tears fall down her cheeks.

"Panic attack?" Piper asks.

Annabeth nods. "How did you know what to do? You didn't even freak out for a second there."

Piper shrugs. "My best friend, Leo – the one with the stupid hair in that picture over there – he was in the house when a fire killed his mom when he was eight. He also had a bunch of bad foster home situations, and he got panic attacks a lot, too. I mean, it's different." Piper shrugs. "He's a guy and you're not, and he's a little bit more of an idiot than you are, because he usually tries to fight the panic attacks and goes and gets drunk or something, which only makes it worse, but, yeah." Piper gives her a smile. "I've got you."

Before Annabeth knows what she's doing, she throws her arms around Piper. "Thank you so much," she says. "God, how did they manage to match us up?"

"Lunatics tend to magnet together," says Piper, and Annabeth takes a few deep breaths before pulling away. "Are you feeling better?"

Annabeth nods. "A lot, actually. Are your hands okay?"

Piper flexes them a couple of times, and Annabeth notices her wincing a little.

"Nah, not because of you. Reyna and I got a –"

Annabeth just starts laughing, because of course that's Piper's excuse. "You guys seem to be having a lot of fun," Annabeth says, winking. "Are you guys making it official any time soon?"

Piper nearly falls off of the bed. "Oh, god, no!" she exclaims. "Ew, no, relationships are gross. Fuck bitches get the hell away from romance and all that."

"That is definitely not the phrase," Annabeth says. "But why not? I mean, you guys seem to like each other. A lot."

"So?" Piper replies, but Annabeth notices she won't meet her eyes. "I like pancakes. Doesn't mean I want to roll them up and put a ring on it."

"You also don't fuck them into oblivion and then flirt with them twenty four seven," Annabeth mentions. "Your analogy fails miserably."

Piper stares at her. "Hey," she says, "I just helped you through a panic attack and now you're making fun of me. I thought we were friends!" For a split second Annabeth thinks she's screwed up, but Piper's grinning so broadly she knows she couldn't have. "I'm kidding. Except for the pancake thing. I love pancakes. Do you want to go to the dining commons and get pancakes for breakfast? I'm totally prepared to wait in line."

Annabeth looks down at her pajamas – covered in owls with a pink background – and over at Piper, who's wearing a ragged hoodie that looks about 4 sizes too big for her and a pair of too-short shorts underneath it. "We're not even dressed," Annabeth counters.

"Come on, that doesn't matter," says Piper, grabbing her hand. "We're in college! Nobody actually gets dressed. Just put your hair into a ponytail and we're good to go."

"In a ponytail?" Annabeth asks, touching at her hair. "What's wrong with it?"

"You look like Cindy Lou Who getting stuck in a light socket," Piper says nonchalantly, and with a glance in the mirror, Annabeth realizes, whoops, Piper is very right.

"I'll – oh, gosh."

Piper laughs. "There you go. Now. Let's get our pancake on."