Disclaimer: I own nothing.
"What?" Travis yelled, outraged, and he was not the only one: The entire group of campers that was gathered around screamed and banged their swords in fury and argued with Chiron, though a part of them knew that it wasn't worth it. Chiron's ruling stayed no matter what. He was the leader of the camp and everyone thought of him as a parent, and no one usually wins arguments with parents. Still, they tried, to prove they were better than the traitors on the other side. They didn't want them here and so they were going to try everything that got them to leave. They didn't like them and even with Percy Jackson on their side, they were no going to win.
Piper wasn't stupid. She knew that if she didn't fight back it would look suspicious. She had told Naden that when they were getting up from the traps and battles for getting the flag. She only hoped Percy wasn't choicing to be stupid today and he would play along. Throwing down the flag in rage, she and Naden yelled their own protests that they were the winners and this was completely not fair.
Percy, however, didn't say a word. He leaned against a tree that was near-by Piper and felt the world spin around him. His shoulder was in molten lava and he was so exhausted from using all those powers without training the Earth one too much- the water one was simply too tedious and there was so many campers to fight against. Add that to the fight with Annabeth and it was Percy had in him not to fall flat on the ground and be knocked out.
Chiron slammed the bottom of his spear down on the ground to get attention. It didn't exactly work all that well. The campers were yelling and then Piper and Travis got in an argument and Naden was trying to get them to not fight. The other campers were coming back from both sides and the rest of the Chaos crew came running in as well. It was absolute chaos, and the source of that word was not exactly pleased with it at all.
Percy tried to help, he really did, but everytime he moved, his vision blurred and everyone had three heads, except they weren't coming into focus. It's not his fault that he was extremely tired. And all of his limbs were too sore to actually move.
Piper looked up to see Chiron trying and failing miserably to get everyone's attention. She stomped her foot and made her thoughts go towards the Earth, feeling it underneath, wishing it to move and wanting to see the leaves quiver and the branches shake. An earthquake shook the land, throwing everyone to the ground and making them all shut up so that Chiron could demand attention long enough to say what he wanted to.
"Children! Children, please!" Chiron called as everyone started screaming at Piper (and Percy) for the earthquake. They quieted down quickly to hear if they had managed to change his mind and get him to say that the camp had won- which is respectfully did. And well too, since all the Chaos people looked beat up and worn out. "My decision is final! Both teams have crossed the border at the same time! It was a photo finishm and it pains me to say that I did not think this would happen so I did not come prepared. I may be old, but my eyes have not yet- nor have they ever- failed me."
"But Chiron, we were clearly here first!" Travis complained loudly. "We had the flag first so we got here first."
"How would you know? You weren't even with us! We probably got the flag first and we are here first!" She looked back for her teammate. "Percy will know. Where is he? Percy?"
He grunted and her eyes went wide. "Percy!" she cried, reaching out instantly to help him stand. "Are you hurt? What happened?"
"Fine," he replied. "I'm fine." He blinked at her. "Tired is all."
She grabbed his wrist gently. "You're not fine," she scolded. "Your arm is bleeding."
He looked down and sure enough, there was a gash on the inside of his arm that had somehow made it past the armor and make the cut deep enough that he guessed that was probably the cause of all his light-headedness. "Huh," he said, and his blinks were long and frequent. "I didn't notice that."
"Didn't notice it?" She shook her head at him and grabbed his good arm to put it over her shoulder. "We need to get you the infirmary."
He sucked in a harsh breath as he felt his lungs push painfully against his rips in some unknown way. She looked at him with concern written all over her features...Her beautiful, beautiful features..."Come on, we need to get you out of here."
"Peacemaker, what about the game?" Naden asked as Percy leaned heavily on Piper.
"It doesn't matter. Percy's hurt." Piper looked over at the campers. "You guys win. I don't care."
Percy shook his head. "No, Pipes...We have to...win...it's important."
"There's no point if I lost a guy on my team." She grunted under his weight and Bailey rushed to help.
"Well, congrats," Nico said dryly as the Chaos teams headed after them. "You guys won."
The camp was silent as they walked away, and then they all looked up to Chiron for what to do and what to say. He sighed and looked back towards the group who was helping get their hero back to safety and fix him up. "It has been said," he told the group down below, "by Chaos' second in command that the campers have won. And so it shall be."
"But-But-But-I wanted to win, but now..." Travis shook his head as he gently stuck the flag pole in the ground. The starry sky on the fabric continued to sway in the breeze. "It feels wrong," he told the camp. "The only reason we won was because Piper was taking care of her people."
"She...She just gave up the win for them," Katie said in awe as they stared after them. "I thought that if she didn't do make peace here, she'd lose her job and fail the mission?"
"She will, child," Chiron explained as he came down to face his camp, a camp working so well without him, he wouldn't be surprised if he wasn't needed in the near future. The thought didn't sadden him as much as it made him proud. He had worked with these kids and trained them to be the great warriors they are today. He had trained those who were training the new ones. "The only reason Piper is here is to make peace between all of us. That's the only way the Olympians will ever see it like how it's supposed to be and how it needs to be: Their kids living in peace and like family rather than letting some petty argument ruin their relationships. If she does not accomplish that...well, I'm afraid the Olympians won't listen to her and there will be a major civil war among us all."
The children let this sink in as they frowned deeply. Maybe winning this game wasn't such a good idea after all and they were starting to see that maybe Piper wasn't terrible after all- she had given up everything and a war that might end the world just because Percy was a little injured when he's probably handled way more and way worse. It was a bad thing and a good thing at the same time, but they were starting to see why Percy had sided with her.
Meanwhile, Percy was slowly fading as everyone worked on getting him to the infirmary. It didn't take them extremely long, but Bailey and Piper didn't speak unless it was to keep Percy awake and to check up on him. Percy wished they would just hug it out and get it over with so he didn't have the guilt riding on him while he has all this pain. Don't get him wrong, he's had a lot of pain, and he's almost died more times than any person can count, even Athena, and he bets the Fates will be very glad when they cut his string, but he doesn't know what is so bad about it this time. Maybe it was because he was using new powers that he hadn't tried until now, or he was overusing his water powers. Maybe it was because he had finally given up on any relationship involving Annabeth. Whatever it was, he was tired, and his arm and shoulder hurt. It was getting harder to breathe with his ribs hitting his lungs for some weird reason. He didn't remember getting hit at all, but maybe someone had snuck past his water barrier and accidently hit his armor against his chest or maybe Annabeth had snuck a hit in and he didn't know because he was too upset about how she talked about Piper.
Either way, as nice as it was being this close to Piper, he didn't really enjoy the occasion.
When they got to the infirmary,Percy was assigned a bed and Piper immediately started working on getting his black uniform hoodie up over his head. "I got this," she told the crews. "You guys go ahead and go rest. Great work today guys." She beamed at them, but it wasn't as bright as normal because she was just as exhausted as they were. "I'm impressed with all of you. That went way better than I had thought." She paused. "And thanks for helping me."
Nico touched her arm as she put Percy's shirt on the bed. "Hey, can I talk to you before breakfast tomorrow?"
She nodded and smiled at him. "Sure." Percy looked away, this pain spiking at him.
His lips quirked up and he grabbed an Ambrosia square and headed out of the room. Bailey, who was waiting by the door to make sure Piper didn't hurt Percy anymore with his feelings (people always start talking when they fix each other up, it was only common sense), huffed and glared darkly at the son of the Underworld god. He paused and raised an eyebrow. "What's your problem?" he asked, and she pursed her lips, turned her head towards the sunset over the beach that they could see and crossed her arms over her chest.
"Nothing," she answered simply.
He snorted and leaned on the wall. "There's obviously something wrong. What is it?"
"Nothing. I told you. I'm fine." Her voice was monotone and she didn't even glance his way, but she was glaring at the beautiful sunset taking place.
"Did I do something?" he asked, flipping his hair and he moved next to her, watching her carefully. He could read people like a book by looking at their face, telling what they wanted, who they wanted, and how they planned on getting it. He could tell how they felt about the situation and if they were actually within the conversation or if they were thinking about something else. But when he looked at Bailey, he couldn't see anything. She was so closed up, guarded, that he couldn't even take a guess at what her thoughts were. It frustrated him to no end. That's how he talked to people: he knew what they were thinking before they said anything. He didn't know how to talk to Bailey and it bugged him.
She remained silent, her eyes on fire and staring straight at the sunset.
He sighed. "Why do you hate me so much? Ever since I've said I was on Piper's side..."
She didn't reply. He groaned in frustration. "Whatever. I don't want to deal with you right now anyway," he snapped angrily and turned on his heel and stormed off.
Bailey gave a little smirk, and headed off on her own. If Piper hurt Percy, he'd tell her about it. Besides, sitting down on the couch sounding like a much better idea than standing here and listening into a conversation she'd probably hear about later.
Meanwhile, Piper was peeling off Percy's chestplate while he tried his hardest to stay awake. It was hard, but with Piper and her enchanting self, he managed to do it for a while longer. "Here, chew on this for a while," she said, digging something out of one of the many pockets hidden on the hoodie. It was a pink square the size of the fingerprint of your index fingers, and when Percy put it in his mouth and chewed, it tasted something like bubblegum and strawberries. His vision cleared somewhat and he wasn't extremely, extremely tired, but it was still hard to stay awake. "It's an energy reliever," she explained to him as she peeled off the undershirt he had under the chestplate so that the metal didn't hurt his skin too much. "As long as you chew it, you don't have to worry too much about getting sleep quite yet. I use it a lot on missions where Chaos sends me to more than one that are pretty close. Once you stop chewing, you're out like a lightbulb."
He grunted to show he was listening and watched her. They sat in silence for a few minutes as Piper applied the same green glop she used for his shoulder to the cut on his arm and wrapped it before working on his shoulder where there was a decent sized bruise with a brown substance. "What happened?" she asked quietly as she brushed her fingers like a breath over the hurt area on his ribs. The side of Percy's chestplate had somehow managed to dig into his side and something had hit it so it bruised a couple of ribs.
"I held the campers off," he coughed. "Then Annabeth was mad. I guess I was a lot more tired than I thought."
"You could've called for us to help," she said.
He shrugged with his good shoulder. "I handled it. It didn't really affect me until aferwards when we won." His eyebrows furrowed. "Why did you give up the win for me?"
She blushed, thankful for the excuse that it wasn't because she was secretly checking out how buff he was- enough to be overly strong and amazingly able to do mostly everything, but not enough that it was disgusting. It was hard keeping her face so that he couldn't tell she really appreciated his body; all these years of training really had done him good. "You were hurt. It was more important than some stupid Capture the Flag game."
"But it wasn't some stupid Capture the Flag game. We needed to win in order to complete the mission."
She bit her bottom lip and took out a white susbtance much like the one for his shoulder and arm, except this was liquid and it felt burning hot on his ribcage which made him hiss, and she put her palm on his abs to keep him sitting there. Their skins were engulfed in molten lava- the good kind. "Yeah, but it wouldn't have mattered. They would've thought I was horrible if I thought tha game was more important than you. And anyway, I need your help here and on Olympus and you can't help if you're hurt."
"Pipes...you should've stayed and fought over that win."
She shook her head. "No it's okay, Percy. We don't have to worry about that right now. Are you okay?"
He chuckled and suprssed the wince of pain. "I'm fine, Piper, really. The game was more important."
"Hey, don't say that," she snapped softly, grabbing his chin and pointing his eyes towards hers. "If we didn't have you, we couldn't have done anything to even get remotely fair into the game. Or even into the camp."
He smiled and she returned it, causing his eyes to dart down to those lips of hers. They were really close and she looked so inviting. It's not like kissing her would be a bad thing anyway: They were dating and couples usually kissed their partner. So it's not like it would be out of the ordinary or something, but this was their first kiss and he wanted it to be special. Was sitting in the infirmary after only finding out they were a couple special? Maybe he should kiss her at the date tonight, at sunset, you know to be romantic.
"Can I ask you something?" he breathed as he tucked a strand of her pretty, messy hair behind her ear.
"Anything," she replied, just as breathless.
"Can I...Are we still going for that picnic tomorrow?" Leave it to Percy to wimp out at the last second. That's how he rolls, don't you know?
Piper swallowed and nodded. "Of course. Yeah. We'll leave at the dinner bell?"
"Yeah." He watched her lick her lips. Chaos, she drove him crazy. "Can I ask you something else?"
"No, it's my turn." She ran her hand along his cheek and his heart fluttered incredibly long. "Will you...?"
There was a knock at the door and Piper jumped back as if on fire. Her face was beet red and it made Percy's heart swell in pride. Will Solace stood at the doorway and he was blushing a little as well. "Sorry," he coughed. "I didn't mean to interrupt something, but, uh, we have, uh, wounded campers..."
"Of course," Piper said while she got up and helped Percy. "Sorry."
Percy wrapped an arm around Piper's shoulders even though he could walk just fine and he felt much better with that stuff. She grabbed his clothes and helped him out. "What was your question?" he asked as he kissed her head and they started off towards the Chaos cabin.
She blushed deeply and shook her head. "Nothing. Nevermind."
He raised an eyebrow. "Are you sure?"
She nodded. "What was your question?"
He shook his head. "Nope. Forget it."
"Are you sure?"
He bit his lip. "Maybe tomorrow."
She looked up at him. "If I tell you my question tomorrow, will you tell me yours?"
He grinned. "Yeah." He pushed the door open, and there was no one in the living room; everyone had used lots of powers and were pretty exhausted because of it. They headed up the stairs to their rooms and headed to Piper's first. He put his hands on her hips and wrapped her in his arms. "Thanks for healing me, Pipes," he muttered into her hair.
"Thanks for today," she replied into his chest. "That was really impressive work. It took me a long time before I could do something like that."
He chuckled. "You controlled lightning. I doubt what I did was very awesome." He squeezed her. "Fight over the win tomorrow, okay?"
She shook her head. "No. I'm okay with them winning. I have to go make my speech for them working like a team though."
He smiled and pulled away, wanting to touch their foreheads but not knowing if it was too soon or wouldn't be right. "Things like that come naturally for you," he said instead watching her. "You don't have to worry about that."
She blushed. "Thanks, I guess."
He leaned down and kissed her cheek, watching with awe as her cheeks flared red and her smile was pleasant. "Goodnight, Pipes," he whispered.
She looked hesitant for a moment, then she gave him a quick hug and squeaked out, "Night, Percy," before disappearing into her room and closing her door to lean against it and let out a long breath because of how close her and Percy were to kissing and how he didn't ask about them dating and how she was pretty sure they had a date tomorrow night.
Percy touched the door before turning and heading into his, very pleased with how this day turned out. Maybe he could rub the fact that Piper was his into Nico's face tomorrow. He should've asked her about it, but they had a moment and he didn't want to ruin it so he was fine with not asking today. And he had almost kissed her. Gods, he can face every monster and titan, giant, magician in this millenia, but the one time he tries to gain the courage to kiss a pretty girl and he wimps out.
He sighed as he walked in his door and on his bed, sitting crisscrossed and observing the walls was Bailey. "What if I hadn't come in until way later?" he asked happily as he tossed his armor, undershirt, and the hoodie over onto the desk as he headed to go sit with her.
She beamed at him. "You seem happy. How'd it go?"
"We're dating," he said, but then his eyebrows furrowed. "I think. I don't know. She told Annabeth and most of the campers."
She tilted her head. "When'd you start dating?"
He shrugged. "No idea. I was going to ask her about it...but I almost kind of kissed her instead."
In a way very unlike her, Bailey squealed. "Really? What happened?"
Chuckling, he told her the story and in the end, her face was red and she slapped him. "You idiot!" she cried as he groaned. "Why did you wimp out?"
"I don't know," he replied pathetically. "I just...I was worried I was moving too fast or something."
She huffed and crossed her arms over her chest, glaring at him. "If you're dating, you're obviously not moving that fast if you kiss her. Honestly!"
He hesitated and her face softened. She touched his arm. "What? You know I didn't mean that right? You're not an idiot, Piper wimped on kissing you too, so you don't have to feel too terrible-"
"No, it's not," he said, and he sighed heavily. "I...What if we're not actually dating, B?" His eyebrows furrowed as he stared at the ground. "What if she just said it? We were all in the middle of the fight and Annabeth looked like she was winning against her. What if she was just...?"
Bailey shook her head and grabbed his hand. "No, don't think like that, Percy," she scolded, but her voice was gentle. "Piper wouldn't do something like that, especially when it would hurt people. She knew it would hurt Annabeth so she wouldn't do it on purpose. No matter what she says, she cares incredibly deeply for everyone who was in her past."
Percy nodded slowly. "Right. That makes sense. So, she didn't just say it to get out of the fight?"
She gave a negative and squeezed his hand. "Piper wouldn't do that. You know that."
He smiled. "Thanks, B. You know what? You're a great friend."
Bailey laughed. "I know." She squeezed his hand and got up. "I'm going to bed." She stood up and headed over to the door before looking back at him. "Hey, Naden said you have a date tomorrow with Piper, is that right?"
He beamed. "Yeah, it is. A picnic tomorrow night."
"Tell her then, Percy, before something happens."
"Yeah. I will."
She smiled. "Good. See you tomorrow, Percy."
"Night, B."
She headed out to her own room and Percy fell back on his back and stared at the ceiling, happier than he had been in years because Piper McLean was finally his.
Piper, despite knowing it was a lie, gave a squeal into her pillow once she jumped on her bed. She wished that Bailey wasn't mad at her because she wanted some girl talk about this, even though she wasn't supposed to act like an Aphrodite child. Maybe it was time she showed a little heritage in her ways...She'd start at her and Percy's date tomorrow.
Okay, I know this isn't the best chapter, but I've been working on this since 5 AM last night and I've been so freaking distracted today that it's taking me a lot longer than I wished. But I wanted to get something done by time the break ends. I have the end written and I know exactly where I'm going with this, but I have school on Wednesday and it's a new semester, new classes, and I don't like my schedule at all, so it'll take some getting used to.
Next chapter will be the date, hopefully, and maybe the confrontation on if Piper was lying or not. Send me reviews on how this should go because I might just change the end a little bit, but still fit it to the spoiler. Thanks for the reviews and favorites everyone! It's nice to know that not everyone hates me for being an asshole!
Well...Here it is. Do you:
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