Him or her? (A Pipabeth story)

Chapter Twelve

A/N: Short chapter with little action but a lot of suspense. Have fun reading! And fun tip, don't wait till 10:15pm to get ready for a Camp you're going on the next day XD

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Piper's POV

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The first thing that Piper was aware of when she started to wake up was how sore her head felt. She groaned, attempting to sit up, when she felt a hand on her shoulder.

"Piper! You're awake!" Opening her eyes slowly, Piper saw Annabeth standing next to her with a worried look on her face. Piper smiled, looking around and seeing she was on a bed near the furthest wall in the Camp's infirmary. None of the Apollo kids were in the infirmary — which was confusing considering there was almost always one of them in the infirmary when there was an injured camper there too, not that Piper had been there enough to know — And the only others in the room were Annabeth and Percy. She reckoned at least one of her other friends would be here had she been unconscious for long, meaning it hadn't been very long since the incident and Percy and Annabeth hadn't had time to tell the others. See, she could be smart too.

Before she could open her mouth to speak, Percy started talking.

"I'm so sorry for not being able to block—"

Annabeth interrupted him, sending him a mock glare. "Seaweed-Brain, I'm the one that got distracted and block the strike."

"Getting distracted by me, am I right?" Percy smirked, earning him a soft punch from Annabeth.

Piper rolled her eyes, ignoring the disappointment and hurt she felt at their bickering, and spoke up. "Not to purposely continue on this chain of self blame or anything, but I am the one that jumped in front of strike. And anyways, you would have gotten injured instead of me, Annabeth, had I not intercepted."

"True, but now you're the one injured."

"Not normally the reasoning one in a conversation, but at this rate we will all get into an argument about which one of us is the most apologetic and who has the most self blame," Percy said. Annabeth sighed.

"True. Though it's still upsetting seeing you hurt because of my own mistake." Annabeth gave Piper a guilty look.

"I'd defend you and talk about how you shouldn't feel guilty and all that stuff, but that would be exactly what Percy was talking about. So you're safe for now, Annabeth." Piper smiled when Annabeth laughed.

"Alright McLean. I'll keep that in mind."

"Well," Percy spoke, clapping his hands, "we should probably leave you to rest or we'll feel the wrath of the Apollo kids for disrupting one of their patients. Plus," he added, "none of the others have seen me yet so I want to greet them."

"Yeah, we should probably get going," Annabeth agreed, with a look on her face that suggested leaving was the opposite of what she wanted to do right now. "Let's go Percy."

The two of the them said goodbye to Piper, promising that the Apollo kids should let her out sometime soon anyways, and walked towards the door. Piper went to lie back down and almost, almost but didn't, miss Annabeth quickly turn around, mouthing the words 'talk to you later' before walking out the door.

Piper sighed. The guilt was threatening to wash over her again. The amount of arguing and worrying that must have been going on in Annabeth's head must have been driving her crazy and it was all Piper's fault. She just had to come around and get feelings for her, ultimately making Annabeth choose between her and Percy. Her actual boyfriend.

Had Piper just left things as best friend feelings for Annabeth, things might not have been so bad for Annabeth. Of course, she hadn't done that because she wanted more than that, and was ruining another relationship. First her and Jason, then Annabeth and Percy.

Thinking about Jason brought another pang of guilt and sorrow. She had been so distracted by what was happening with her and Annabeth, that she had completely forgotten about Jason. Move on but don't forget, literally everyone at Camp had been telling her for ages. At least, when all she was, was a wandering sorrowful zombie on autopilot.

Moving on didn't seem so hard now, if she forgot about the whole trouble with Percy of course, but because everything had distracted her she had literally done the one thing everyone said not to do. Forget.

How had she been so selfish as to forget about Jason? Or at least not think about him? It was worse than constantly thinking about him before. Now, it seemed as though he had just slipped her mind. Why would someone she had been constantly thinking about, and feeling guilt about, leave her mind for ages?

Annabeth. Piper screamed at herself for the selfish thoughts creeping into her brain. Telling her all these problems were Annabeth's fault. It wasn't. It was Piper's fault and she had to acknowledge that. Annabeth didn't know she was the one distracting Piper from thinking about Jason. Piper did.

Piper swallowed down her guilt that was threatening to override her. Not the previous guilt; from forgetting about Jason, and messing with Annabeth's feelings and disrupting her and Percy's relationship.

No, this was a different guilt. All her current problems and all Annabeth's current problems came from the same sole issue. Their 'relationship'.

Had Drew or her other Aphrodite friends heard about what Piper had to do, they would have cheered her on, claiming she 'was becoming a true daughter of Aphrodite'.

Her soon-to-come talk with Annabeth suddenly seemed like a movie scenario. One in which a villain does something 'for the greater good', and everyone in the audience is screaming at the villain who's about to make a drastic move that harms the hero. A move the villain doesn't want to make but does anyway, and in a sick twisted way, ends up saving everything but harming them self and the hero in the process.

A scenario in which she is the villain and Annabeth is the hero.