For Piper, her whole world came crashing down on her for the second time in the last century. She and Percy had been fighting side by side through the waves of monsters, and she had no idea how they had separated, even if it was only a few feet. She had been hacking and slashing with her daggers, keeping the monsters at bay, when she heard the cry of anguish that rocked her world. She sliced through the hellhound that had just launched itself at her, turning it to dust, and turned around to see what she was currently having a hard time processing.
Somehow, during the battle, she and Percy had been separated from each other by a few feet, and it allowed someone to sneak up on Percy, though it didn’t seem as if Piper being there would have done much to stop what happened.
“Percy.” She breathed, staring in horror at the scene in front of her, sadness, anguish, and heartbreak flowing though her, before all of those emotions were replaced by one massive emotion, of pure rage. Out of the corner of her eyes, she saw Zoë appear next to her, not seeming to notice what was going on. She took one look at Piper, and turned her attention to the scene in front of her, and she seemed to go through the same waves of emotions that Piper had, finally settling on one, just like Piper’s had.
Both of the female parts of the blessed now had an unimaginable amount of rage focused on the person with their sword through their companion, and with that anger, came an incredible amount of power, radiation off the two of them. So much power was radiating off the two females that the monsters in the immediate area seemed to be pushed back, stumbling and running away from the two beings, running either right into their allies, or running away into the forest and hills surrounding Camp Jupiter.
For the first time, Nyx seemed to be worried about what faced her. She had come to the battle to remove Peruses from the war, but as she stared at the two females, she had a feeling that if she didn’t leave soon, she would not be part of the war anymore. Even if she was a primordial, there were still ways to make a primordial fade, and by the looks she was getting, both of the females knew it.
“Now that your biggest star has a sword though his midsection, I will be leaving.” Nyx looked down at her ‘accomplishment’ to see him slowly loosing consciousness as he lost blood. She turned her attention back to the two females, smirked, and then flashed out of the battle.
Trying to get some amount of rage out of her system, Piper turned to the monsters behind her, and released a wave of emotion. This emotion seemed was directed only at the monsters, saving most of the demigods that were in the area. The monsters who were hit by the emotion immediately dropped to their knees, and began to wail as a wave of sadness hit them. For many of the weaker monsters, they all dropped to their knees, and a moment later all drew their weapons, seemingly as one, and ended their lives, the wave of emotion controlling their emotions.
Piper and Zoë ran to Percy immediately after Pipers release of energy, and both skid to a halt next to him. They both gasped at his current condition. His face was deathly pale, and his eyes were barley open. Both of his hands were covering his midsection, but his hands couldn’t cover the amount of blood that was spilling out of the wound. After a moment of staring at Percy, Zoë began to act, reaching to remove Percy’s hands from his wound, when she felt a bloodied hand reach out and grab hers before she could reach his hands. She looked up to see Percy’s eyes open a little bit wider than before.
“Zoë.” He whispered just loud enough so that only she and Piper could hear. “Piper, I don’t know if I will make it, if not, please don’t worry.”
“Don’t say that Percy, please don’t say that.” Piper said, holding back sobs. “You will make it.” Zoë didn’t say anything, but instead of talking, she just began to heal Percy. After a moment, Percy’s hand went slack, and he drifted into unconsciousness, though is pulse was still strong, but getting weaker. Piper began to cry, whispering Percy’s name between sobs. For a moment, nothing else mattered in her or Zoë’s world. For that moment, it was just Percy. That was, until a hand rested on Piper’s shoulder, and when she looked up, she saw the shocked face of Leo, with Reyna standing behind her.
“What do you mean?” Reyna asked. Piper and Zoë gave her a weird look. Seeing this, Reyna continued.
“What do you mean ‘Percy’, is that Percy?” She asked, her eyes showing some amount of hope; Leo’s eyes were showing the same thing. Piper was stunned for a moment, wondering how she was going to explain this, but she decided to just avoid the question for now.
“Right now,” She said, still choking on her words a little bit, “Right now, we need to heal him, then we can talk.”
Leo and Reyna looked like they wanted to argue, but when they looked back at Percy; they knew she was right, and nodded. They called a few of the Apollo campers over, and got him onto a stretcher, before heading back to the barracks, the battle being over after Pipers ‘emotion blast.’ The Romans walked back to the camp, happy now that they could live another day.
<-><-><->
Percy awoke to a bright light, and someone holding his hand. He slowly opened his eyes, before shutting them tightly while groaning. He felt the person holding his hand let go, and then was engulfed in a hug that rivaled Tyson’s. He heard some faint whispering, but couldn’t really hear much at the moment.
“Can someone turn off the lights?” he asked tiredly. After a moment, someone spoke, and he recognized it as Pipers voice.
“You can open your eyes.” Percy opened his eyes, and after a moment, his eyesight adjusted to the room. He looked around, and saw that he was in the infirmary at Camp Jupiter. Sitting in a chair on one end of the room, was a much relived looking Zoë, and standing next to him, was Piper, who had tears in her eyes. When Percy looked out the window, he saw that it was night outside, and that there was a full moon, which confused him, as he could have sworn that it was not a full moon the night before the battle. Apparently seeing his confused face, Zoë spoke.
“Percy,” She said softly, “You have been unconscious for a week.” Percy was absolutely stunned, and looked to Piper for conformation, who nodded.
“A week?” He repeated. Piper and Zoë nodded together. Percy immediately sat up.
“Did anything happen?” he asked, worried that he missed something important. Pipers shock her head.
“Nothing major, there were a few minor skirmishes, but no major injuries or casualties thankfully. Percy, there was nothing that you could have done, you were injured, don’t worry.” Percy slowly nodded, agreeing with her, but still annoyed that he let Nyx sneak up behind him. After a moment, he realized that there probably wasn’t anything that he could have done anyway, considering that Nyx is much more powerful that him, even with the Chaos blessing, so he just nodded, and accepted it.
“You recovered quickly, but you didn’t wake up. You had lost so much blood from your wound, that we weren’t sure if you were going to make it. Piper and I came every day to wait for you to wake up. We were worried, you were so pale…” Zoë said, trailing off at the end, showing that she had really changed from her time in the hunt, going from killing men, to actually caring about one, and Percy was grateful for that.
“Thank you for helping me though.” Percy said, and Zoë and Pier nodded.
Just as they nodded, the door flew open, revealing Leo and Reyna. They looked at Piper, who nodded, and before anyone could really react, Percy was tackled back into the bed he was sitting on by a hug from both of them. Leo was holding back tears m while Reyna was letting hers flow at the sight of their long lost friend. After a moment, Leo pulled away.
“Explain.” He said, and that is exactly what they did. They explained what happened at camp to Reyna, who hadn’t been there, and she was incredibly disappointed in the campers at Camp Half-Blood. They explained some of their experiences over the five years, and they explained the recent events with the war with Nyx, and the return of Zoë, explaining everything up to their appearance at Camp Jupiter. All of the explaining took about an hour, and when they were done, all of them were hungry. They all went out to dinner, and then Leo and Reyna returned to the senate, to discuss what ever needed discussing.
Instead of going back to a cabin, or even back to Camp Half-Blood, Zoë, Piper and Percy decided to find a secluded spot and just really talk about everything. They walked to the edge of camp, and walked through the forest that rings the camp until they found a nice clearing to sit down in. The three of them sat down for a moment, and for a little bit, they sat there, just enjoying the serenity that surrounded them, until Percy spoke.
“I never thought that I would be sitting here with you two, I mean, look how much has changed.”
“I know,” Piper said softly, “To tell you the truth, I still can’t believe that any of this really happened. It feels like just yesterday that we killed Gaea, and now we are the head fighters in another war.” Percy nodded, also not believing that they were here. When they defeated Gaea, he thought that he would be happy, and be done with wars, and then Nicolas happened, and he and Piper were booted out of camp. It still didn’t seem very real. After a moment of silence, Zoë spoke this time.
“I was happy to die in service to Artemis, but” Zoe paused for a second to find the words she was looking for, “I wasn’t happy with how I lived my life. I lived my life hating all men, and believing that all of them were horrible, and then I meet you, Percy, and you proved me wrong. Throughout the entire quest to save Artemis, I felt more and more terrible about how I had treated all the men that I had met over the centuries, and then when I died, I felt the worst, but what I said to you right before I died helped me with some of that guilt.” Zoë paused again, wiping a tear from her eye, her recounting how she felt influencing her emotions. “Now that I am back and alive, I want to make it right, help save the world once, and the fact that I get to do it with you Percy, and you Piper, helps me know that I can make up for those mistakes that I did before, and I want to thank you for that.” Percy and Piper both looked dumbfounded at what Zoë said. They looked at each other for a moment, and then stood up and pulled Zoë into a hug.
The three of them stood like that, Percy and Pipers arms around Zoë as she silently cried about how she felt. For the three of them, nothing else seemed to exist outside of the little clearing that they were in. A few minutes later, Zoë pulled back from the hug, gratitude shining in her volcanic black eyes, and after a moment, her eyes took on a mischievous glint.
“Now,” She said, “Tell me some of your adventures. I shared my feelings, now it’s time to share yours.” Percy and piper looked at each other, and seemed to have a silent conversation.
“The Hydra.” They said at the same time, causing Zoë to look at them weirdly.
“After about a year of wondering around, we had discovered most of our powers already. We would just wonder around the country trying to survive, while also using the monsters to train our powers and things.” Piper started, before Percy continued. “One day when we were in Colorado, we ran into a hydra, three heads and everything. The problem was that it snuck up on us. It snuck up on us, and then roared, scaring the pants off us as we walked. When it roared, Piper turned around and screamed. That’s when we found out about her emotion powers, because when she screamed, the hydra immediately stopped roaring, and looked like a dog being scolded, it was hilarious. The thing had huge puppy eyes, which was weird on a hydra. We just let it be, as it was too hilarious to kill.” By the end of that story, they were all chuckling.
“You guys never told me about how you got out of Alaska, after your crash.” Zoë said, curious, as they had never told them.
“We didn’t?” Percy said, surprised. “I thought that we did.” In response, Zoë shock her head.
“When I woke up after the crash, we were in a hospital in Alaska. Someone had paid for our bill and we were cleared to leave a soon as Percy woke up, which took a while after I woke up. After he woke up, we left the hospital and as soon as we walked out of the hospital, Percy was tackled to the ground. As it turned out, the Hunters and Artemis didn’t believe that we would betray camp, and had followed us from camp. When they saw that we were in a crash, they helped us to the hospital and used the mist to pay our bills. After that, we traveled with them for about a year, training and learning about our powers, and the prophecy that we were under. After that year, we stayed in touch with Artemis and the Hunters, who we had become very good friends; if we were ever in dire need of help, they would come and help us if they could. They were the only ones who knew about us being alive, and helped us keep that a secret, and then when we came back to camp, they helped us scared the campers when we first appeared.” Zoë nodded,
“So I assume that you are on friendly terms with Artemis Percy?” She asked. She was curious what Artemis thought of Percy. She herself knew that he was one of the only good men left in the world, and was happy that she got to work with him.
“Yeah, well, she doesn’t try to turn me into a Jackalope, so I can live with it.” Percy said while chuckling. Their conversation stopped for a while, while the all sat their lost in thought about their current situation and life, before Piper popped a question that had been in the back of all their minds for a while, even if they didn’t know it.
“What will happen when this is all over? What will we do?” She asked, somewhat of dreading the answer. She liked working with Zoë. Zoë was nice, and kind, but could be deadly if the situation needed her to be. She also loved working with Percy, but that is kind of expected in their situation, as they were in a relationship at the moment, even if they didn’t really show it. After the war, she didn’t want leave Percy, as they had gone through so much thought the past five years. Piper wanted to settle down after the war, and she knew that she wanted it to be with Percy, but she also didn’t want to leave Zoë, whom she had begun to love like a sister.
Unannounced to Piper, Percy was thinking basically the same thing, just from his perspective. He felt the same way about Piper, and also had begun to love Zoë like a sister. He didn’t want to lose either of them.
Also, Zoë was feeling the same. She loved Percy and Piper like they were siblings. They all had grown close over the time that they had been together, and were practically inseparable. They were always with each other, and constantly had each other’s backs, even if it put them in danger themselves.
All three of them sat in silence before Zoë broke them out of their thoughts. “I don’t know what will happen when we are done with it, but at least for me, as long as we are together, I don’t care.”
Percy flinched slightly the phrase that Zoë used, as he had used it with Annabeth. He tried to cover it up, but to his dismay, both of the girls noticed it. Zoë seemed to realize what she said.
“I’m so sorry Percy, I didn’t mean…” She started, before Percy interrupted her.
“It’s alright. It will just have a new meaning with the three of us than it did with Annabeth and I, but I agree, as long as we are together in the end, I don’t care.” Zoë looked relived that she hadn’t hurt Percy, and was happy that he felt the same as she did.
“I agree.” Piper said. They all smiled at each other, and then laid down next to each other, enjoying the peace and quiet for the moment, happy at the life that they were living, and looking forward to the live that they hoped to live after the war. The laid like that, lying on the ground staring up at the sky, until they all fell asleep.
When Percy woke up, he immediately shot up, waking up Zoë and Piper at the same time. Someone was shouting their names, seemingly in a panic.
A/N: Hey guys, thanks for reading. I just have one quick thing. In the second chapter, before it stated that percys mom and Paul died becasue of the gods. I have changed that as they are needed later in the book.
Thanks for reading.
Pierson Nyx