Hey, Everyone!

DON'T HATE ME I'M SORRY! MY LIFE GOT A LITTLE OUT OF HAND AND I SPENT THE COUPLE WEEKS GETTING IT BACK ON TRACK!

But don't worry, I'm on track now, so you can all breathe easier and stop being mad at me.

Enjoy!

Chapter 31

Leo

Leo hadn't spoken to Hazel all afternoon.

He really wanted to, but the death glares from Frank made him think better of it.

Honestly, if you saw a guy like Frank giving a small guy like you a death glare for no good reason at all, you don't just go up to him and say, "Wassup?" or go about whatever you were about to do before you saw him glaring at you, do you?

No, you turn away and run.

And that was Leo's logic.

He couldn't help thinking, maybe the whole movie thing was a bad idea?

But Hazel seemed to have had fun, so it couldn't have been so bad.

Except at the end, when they saw the double-face in stars.

He needed to talk to her about that, whether Frank wanted him to or not, because she was the only other one who saw it.

He decided to man the ship for a while, first, and make sure Frank was gone before he asked her about it.

He felt like a weak boyfriend scared of his girlfriend's father.

When he made sure everything was in order, and there was nothing crazy on the radar, and that the switch to keep them concealed was firmly in place for the air, and he left the deck to search for Hazel.

Hazel had been stargazing on the deck ever since they saw the face, but today, she wasn't around.

Instead, Piper was standing by the railing.

He didn't want to disturb Piper, so he decided he would go and knock on Hazel's cabin door, when he heard Piper yell, "Leo, hey! Wait up; I have to talk to you!"

Leo turned and waited for Piper to run up to him.

"Listen, Piper, I'm really not in the mood for you're insults right now-" Leo started dismissively and he turned around to go downstairs, when she grabbed his shoulder and pulled him back with a force he wasn't expecting.

"I'm not here to insult you, Idiot," she began, and Leo threw his hands up in the air.

"I heard," she continued, "about what you told Jason about the double face in the sky."

Leo raised an eyebrow. "So? I thought you weren't here to insult me?"

"I'm not!" Piper continued. "I saw it, too."

Leo blinked. That wasn't what he had been expecting.

"I was looking out the window in my cabin, watching the aurora, and I saw the weird constellation in the sky that looked like two faces. I tried looking it up, I tried reading forums about stargazing, everything, but nothing came up about a two-faced constellation.

"At first I thought I was the only one, so I didn't bring it up, but I heard Jason talking to himself about it, and I had to come talk to you." She smiled at him, which wasn't a look he got very often from Piper.

"Hazel was with me," Leo told her. "And I wanted to talk with her about it, but Frank has a death sentence out for me, and for some reason she wasn't on the deck tonight."

"I've been wondering why she's been staring at the sky every night," she whispered.

"Would you go down to her cabin and get her for me?" Leo asked. "Just tell her we all need to meet on the deck."

"Will do," Piper winked at him and ran off below deck.

At least she didn't salute like she had started to do in sarcasm when he gave instructions.

After a couple minutes, Piper returned, alone.

"Where is she?" Leo asked.

"She's not in her cabin," Piper replied. "I wanted to check in with you before I went to the next place she'd be."

Leo nodded. "Okay. Um, did you see anything in her cabin?"

"Yeah, a bunch of diamonds and emeralds were scattered in a small circle on the floor in the middle of her room," Piper shrugged. "I assumed it was something she was doing. Was I wrong?"

She makes gems when she's nervous, Leo thought, alarmed. What could she be doing that would make her nervous?

"I'm not sure. You check where ever, but I'm going to check above deck," Leo replied.

Piper nodded and ran back below deck.

Leo ran across the deck to the front of Festus, but she wasn't around.

He ran below deck and into his room.

There was nothing there, and everything remained untouched.

"LEO!" Piper shouted. "LEO, HELP ME OUT HERE!"

Alarmed and scared, Leo ran down the hallway, following the sound of Piper's voice.

"This is completely unreasonable!" Piper yelled. "LEO!"

When Leo stumbled upon the scene, Frank had his back pressed against his cabin door, and Piper was screaming at him.

"We want to talk with her!" Piper said. "What can he do in front of me, anyway?"

"I'm not taking that chance," Frank replied. "You have to understand, I'm not hurting her or anything. I don't want to lose her!"

"If she wakes up, and she finds out we were here, and I will tell her, Frank Zhang, she will be pissed enough, and you may lose her!" Piper threatened. "Let her out!"

"What?" Leo asked.

Frank turned to him and his eyes narrowed and he glared at Leo.

"Stop it!" Piper smacked him on the arm. "Move."

"No!" Frank turned back to Piper. His eyes were pleading. "Please be quieter, I don't want her to wake up."

"What?" Leo repeated his question.

"Hazel's in there, sleeping," Piper informed him, anger tinged in her words, her glare never leaving Frank. "He won't let us in to see her."

Rage boiled in Leo faster than he could light a blowtorch, and he was tempted to burn the skin off Frank's face.

"Not if Valdez is involved," Frank spat at him.

His hand lit up. "Don't mess with me, Frank, just move. It's not like I'm going to hold her prisoner from her friends, like someone I'm looking at."

Frank pressed himself harder against the door. "Neither of you are coming in, and she's not leaving. She's sleeping, give her some space."

"This is important, Frank!" Piper threw her arms in the air.

"If it was really important, we'd be fighting something," Frank replied. "It's probably nothing."

The words spilled out before Leo could stop them, "When Hazel said she felt like you were holding onto her too tight, I didn't think she'd meant literally."

Frank's look of anger changed to a look of shock. "She…she said that?" Back to anger. "To you?"

"No, to Sammy," Leo pointed at the ceiling. "She doesn't know I heard. And that's how you know it's true."

Tears, of anger or betrayal, Leo couldn't tell, pooling in Frank's eyes.

He shook his head. "She wouldn't say that."

"But she did," Leo said through gritted teeth. "You don't want her to break-up with you? Give her freedom. Now, move, before I burn the door to ashes."

Piper didn't say a word.

Frank, head hung, and his body shuddering, moved to the side.

Leo just barely extinguished his hand in time before grabbing the doorknob, then he pushed the door open.

Hazel was asleep on Frank's bed, and Leo felt bad for disturbing her, but he whispered her name until her eyes fluttered open.

"Leo?" she whispered, sitting up. "What is it?"

"Piper and I want to talk to you on the deck," Leo whispered.

"Can't it wait?" she asked, rubbing her eyes.

"It's about the faces in the sky," Leo pressed. "Piper saw it, too."

"Let's go."

Guilt was eating Leo up inside.

What he'd said to Frank was beyond forgiving, and Piper wouldn't look him in the eye. He knew she felt it, too.

"So," Hazel was the first one to speak once they were out on the deck under the stars, "what's this I heard about Piper seeing the faces?"

So Piper quickly explained to Hazel how she'd seen it, too, not even acknowledging Leo.

Leo couldn't tell her, but if she was confronted by Frank later because of his actions…

Well, he'd want to know in advance.

"Um, Hazel," Leo started. "There's something I have to tell you."

"Sure, Leo, what is it?" she asked.

And he told her.

And as he explained, the color drained from her face with every word.

"You were listening to my conversation?" she whispered, so quickly it was barely audible.

"I didn't mean to, really, Hazel, it was a serious mistake!" Leo pleaded. "You have to believe me-"

"How could you tell him?" Hazel's glare felt like daggers in his heart.

"I was trying to get to you-" he pleaded, but she cut him off by putting her hand up.

"Not another word, Leo Valdez," Hazel sighed. "Now I have to go fix this with Frank." And she turned on her heel and stalked below deck.

"Smooth move, genius," Piper muttered.

"I thought it would be better if I told her now," Leo sighed. "That way the shock wouldn't be there when she went downstairs."

Piper shrugged. "I guess. But I think this whole scenario would have been better if you hadn't mentioned it at all to begin with."

Leo ran a hand through his hair. "Me too."

In a frustrated huff, he walked over to the control panel.

He checked the GPS and found they were only about eighteen hours from their destination.

"Um, Leo!" Piper hissed suddenly, and when he looked back at her, she was pointing at the sky.

He ran next to her, and looked where she was pointing.

Again, the pattern of stars in the sky shaped two faces, each on one side of the head.

Oh, Leo, you keep screwing up...

The face is back? *Gasp* What is it?

;)

Thanks for Reading!