Author's note: This section doesn't revolve as much around Percy and Reyna. I wrote it more for my own amusement and to play around with a concept I thought was fun. If you make it through, I hope you enjoy!

Act III

A Couple of Months Later…

Dr. Cenote gave Reyna and Percy a pleasant smile after she was done unwrapping her Christmas presents. From the size and shape of the packages—which she realized Reyna must have wrapped since they were covered in real wrapping paper instead of newspaper—she guessed these were wall art. After opening, she was impressed by their tasteful selection.

"Will and Nico helped us pick them out," Percy said.

"And Nico has a secondary part of the present coming on his Tuesday appointment," Reyna added.

A card slipped out of the wrapping paper: $20 to Pandora's Bakery: A Surprise with Every Bite.

"And that's for lunch today," Percy finished.

They were both too giddy. Percy, Nico and Reyna had been stacking their appointments for almost a year now, but Dr. Cenote grew suspicious when Reyna and Percy shifted their appointments to just before lunch and Nico had moved his to Tuesday.

"Oh, thank you. That was so sweet of you two. Though I'll have to use this tomorrow; I packed my lunch today." She pointedly set the card on top of the fire extinguisher mounted on her wall. For being a therapist, fire extinguishers were routinely used at work. The excitement of helping demigods.

Contrary to popular belief, she knew exactly how much her clientele wanted to set her artwork on fire and knew the kind of peril the relics would be in if she left. So, despite Percy and Reyna's looks of disappointment, she tapped the fire extinguisher twice and said, "Nice try, maybe you can break into my office afterhours, if you'd like to test our security."

Reyna smirked and folded her arms. "Is that a challenge?"

Dr. Cenote chuckled. She set the new art work under her desk. "In the meantime, I promise to rotate these out with the current artwork."

"At least we saved everyone's eyes for half of the year," Percy said with a shrug.

Dr. Cenote fished under her desk and withdrew two presents of her own: one neatly boxed and wrapped, and the other covered sloppily in newspaper and taped. She distributed them accordingly to Reyna and Percy.

Both blinked in surprise.

From the way Reyna glanced up suspiciously from the package, Dr. Cenote knew about Reyna's growing wonder: whether or not Dr. Cenote could tell the future and if that was how she knew that she would need presents for them. As a descendent of Prometheus and someone intimately knowledgeable of these two, she didn't need premonitions for proper predictions.

"Thanks, Doc," Percy said.

"Thank you. We weren't expecting gifts in return," Reyna said.

"Don't over-think it," Dr. Cenote chastised. "You can open them at home. Now, get out of my office. Don't you two have a romantic evening to set up?"

Percy beamed with pride. "Three month anniversary."

"Don't get too choked up over it, Jackson," Reyna said. Despite the firmness in her voice, Reyna could barely keep the smile off her face.

Dr. Cenote knew exactly how excited they both were for this. Hope seemed to be restored to Percy over these last three months. And Reyna seemed to finally find someone to trust other than Nico and Gleeson.

As they said their farewells to Dr. Cenote and left, they didn't hold hands like most couples would.

Reyna slapped Percy's ass, then looked away like nothing had happened.

Percy gave her a roughish grin and hip checked her.

When she shut the door to her office for her lunch break, Dr. Cenote smiled. While she tried not to actively match make amongst her clients, most of them were classmates around the same age. She understood why her ex-husband, a teacher named Eric Paine, would reassign students' seats to encourage a relationship.[footnote] She glanced at the artwork Percy and Reyna had given her, but they'd given her so much more. Those two happily together was a masterpiece that Dr. Cenote thought could last.

Dr. Cenote reached up to grab the edge of one of the paintings already hung up. The canvas depicted a horrifically bad illustration of an Egyptian griffin. Her smile softened as she thought about Huck, her and Eric Paine's former centurion and close friend, who hadn't survived his line of duty. He had given one to her every Christmas, promising she'd see improvement.

"I think you got worse," she said with a soft chuckle, as she often did during this season.

"You ruined it," someone hissed behind her.

Dr. Cenote snatched up one of Reyna's sharpened plastic knives and whirled on the intruder, only to be stupefied to silence.

There was a young woman lounging in the patient's bean bag chair like it was a throne. She had one hand under her chin, with a soft pout on her beautiful face. Blond tendrils were piled into a Victorian bun atop her head, the strands darkening and rouging in various locations. Under the billows of her slim, flowing pink dress, Dr. Cenote couldn't see her feet, just the outline of long legs, creating a ghostly illusion. The smell of roses flooded her office.

Dr. Cenote was so struck by the woman's sudden appearance, she found herself stuck in the defensive stance with plastic cutlery. Very threatening for an ex-Roman legionnaire.

"You ruined my perfect tragedy. I had it all set up for Percy and Annabeth and for Reyna and her next boyfriend. And you ruined it. And, as a good Roman, you should know how much I love tragedies. They get the highest ratings on GodTube." The woman sighed and leaned back into the bean bag in an overdramatic motion.

Dr. Cenote should have bowed or knelt, but she was so disenchanted with this goddess—having spent hours on unanswered prayers to this goddess and Hera during her failed marriages—that all she could do was exhale and collapse in her office chair.

Her impertinence didn't go unnoticed. Venus' perfect nails clenched into fists and she lifted her head. But what was Venus going to do? Give Dr. Cenote another divorce? Make her fall in love with a toaster? She'd survived past thirty as a demigod legacy with a lucrative, fulfilling job. She could handle a good bout with a toaster. Add that wedding photo to the collection in her attic.

"My job is to guide people to self-reliance in creating and sustaining their own contentment and fulfillment. Beyond guiding—" Like recommending Percy should wait on telling Reyna he loved her and recommending Reyna express her positive emotions for Percy. "—I cannot be held accountable for my clientele's decisions regarding what they believe will make them happy. I can't control people like you can."

When she thought about her failed marriages, with Eric Paine and Roger Gómez, Venus seemed to lose her luster and look more like a typical college student here for a session. Dr. Cenote wanted to groan. Of course a goddess had to crash her lunch break. She couldn't wait until the last session of the day so Dr. Cenote could leave work early and not do Carl's session. She hated Carl's sessions.

Venus scoffed. "Are you suggesting I was wrong about your involvement with them?"

"Are you suggesting I have the same powers as a goddess?" Dr. Cenote asked. She rose to her feet, refusing to let her lunch break be stalled like this. "What's your favorite tea?"

Venus temporarily looked as floored as Dr. Cenote had been. The anger flashed through her amber eyes almost as quickly as it was gone. The second question seemed to derail her wrath and confound her. "Passion flower," she said.

As Dr. Cenote leafed through the tea basket tucked in one of her bookshelves and turned on her hot water heater, she chuckled at the answer.

"How dare you!" Venus snarled. The lights in the room flickered with her rage and the walls trembled. One of Huckleberry's paintings slipped off the wall to crash onto the floor. "It's potent and it matches my dress!"

Although Dr. Cenote could feel her heartbeat pound at the blaze of energy around her, she focused on appearing calm. She had talked down crazed demigods that were three to four times her size. She was no foreigner to dealing with a powerful child's temper tantrum and knew the necessity to appear confident.

While turning back to Venus, who had begun to glow pink in her fury, Dr. Cenote gave her a calm smile and said, "I didn't mean the laughter as a mock. I think the tea choice is cute and fitting for you. I'm more an Earl Grey person myself. Now, would you like agave or honey for sweetener? I'm not particularly fond of sugar and haven't restocked for the clients."

The pink glow dimmed. The lights ceased flickering. Dr. Cenote finished preparing the tea and set Venus' mug on the stand beside the bean bag. The goddess looked irritated, but confused. That was probably about the best Dr. Cenote could hope for.

"Agave," Venus answered stiffly.

Dr. Cenote went back to her tea basket to withdraw a container of agave and her lunch box. She dragged her office chair to sit across from Venus, shifted the stand with Venus' tea closer, winced at the slipped disk in her back from her days as a legionnaire, and set her hummus, chips, and carrots on the table. There wasn't much in terms of a feast for a goddess, but it was at least a snack for two.

Venus lifted her chin at the meal, though she did pick up a carrot. She huffed. "It is a real pity. Percy and Annabeth were bound to become the biggest story for the millennia, I mean, they already are. But their passions weren't quite ripe enough for full disaster. And someone altered Percy's." Her now sapphire eyes narrowed at Dr. Cenote.

Dr. Cenote frowned. She didn't want to redirect Venus' anger at the couple now happily celebrating their third month anniversary. (For normal people, such a celebration might be absurd, but she understood demigods should celebrate each month they survived.) Nor did she want to redirect the anger at Annabeth, who—after crumbling with heartache—finally reached out for help. Not to Dr. Cenote. Therapy wasn't for everyone, and Dr. Cenote was happy to hear through her colleges that an anonymous blonde girl had been coming to some of their post-abortion support groups and that—from what Nico said in his sessions—Annabeth had taken time out of her schedule to spend more with Piper. From what Reyna said, because she and Percy waited an appropriate amount of time before dating, Annabeth and Reyna's friendship was able to survive, even if there was a rocky period.

They were all recovering and didn't need a goddess of love mucking up their lives anymore than the gods already had.

As though Venus could read her mind, she aloofly asked, "How is it that someone with two failed marriages thinks she knows the best things for love?"

Dr. Cenote grunted. She sipped her Earl Grey tea, enjoying the robust mix of bitter black leaves with the sweetness of her lavender honey. "Especially as someone who went through two divorces," she said softly, "I know the how much compatibility and open conversation are necessary for lasting love."

The goddess of love raised a critical eyebrow. Although hardly discernible, Dr. Cenote was pretty sure Venus had clenched her jaw. "Oh?" she asked politely.

Dr. Cenote wondered, if Venus really did make her fall in love with a toaster in an enraged fit, what type of wedding that would be and what sort of presents her colleagues would get her? Would small kitchen appliances be off limits since they might make the toaster jealous?

She set her tea down, pushing the thought aside. As she had many times before, she thought about how much she learned from her time with Roger and Eric. "Love needs to be on equal footing and conditional. Else it's worship."

Unlike discussing this with her friends or colleagues, Dr. Cenote recognized the difficulty in explaining worship as a bad thing to a goddess, especially to someone as vain as Venus.

"When you're worshipped, you're an object to that person. They don't love you, they love the idea of you. Their idea of you. A person who loves like this is a hollow shell. Their view of reality is warped, leaving their love less meaningful. There can be no 'I love you' without first having a full, confident individual to say the word, 'I,' else saying the phrase, 'I love you' to a person is the same as saying it to a rock. They need to view you as fluid, and view your actions as consequential, to have a real understanding of whether or not they can love you at that moment."

Dr. Cenote wished she'd picked Huck's painting off the ground and put it back on the wall. She was struggling not to look at it, but knew she needed to maintain attention for this conversation. "I feel, to fully be loved, you need someone you're compatible with. A full, confident person whose love you've earned through real effort; and they, yours. Someone you don't need to be afraid to talk through problems with, because you know they respect you, and you them."

Venus cleared her throat.

When Dr. Cenote examined the goddess's face, she found exactly what she expected: total and absolute confusion.

Dr. Cenote should have known better. She was, after all, talking to someone several thousand years old, and very set in her ways. However, love, or at least the Western concept of love, had altered throughout history, hadn't it?

She smiled. "I would like to hear your opinions on what love is, considering you are the goddess of love. And, until currently proven otherwise, I'm going to assume you're an intelligent, capable, independent adult."

Venus snorted. "I don't need to be an independent adult. People fight over taking care of me and giving me things."

There was no way Dr. Cenote could have this conversation in one sitting. She stood to stretch her back. If she didn't take a short walk before her next appointment, her back would be in for more pain than this interruption from a goddess. "Have you ever fallen in love with someone who only loved you once they got to know you? Someone that could see past your looks to your other character traits?" she asked absently.

"See past my looks!" Venus gasped, offended. "How could you suggest such a cruel thing?"

Dr. Cenote tried not to laugh again. The goddess's appearance seemed to settle into that of a young Grecian woman with curly, bleached blonde hair. Probably the closest thing Dr. Cenote would see to a pure form of modern Venus. She wondered, if Venus' appearance altered per personal taste, if her colleges in the anthropology department would see Venus as Venus of Willendorf and if that would alarm this version.

"I'd love to continue this conversation at a later date, maybe over dinner. I have other appointments that will be waiting soon, and it would be disrespectful and a violation of trust to let personal endeavors interfere with them in a nonemergency."

Venus's beautiful face contorted into a scowl. "I am a goddess," she snarled, apparently not finding Dr. Cenote's time management appropriate.

"I understand how you could feel slighted here, and I would like to hear your actual opinions on love. But, we both have our duties to attend to, as I'm sure you have other more pressing matters than talking to a mere legacy like me."

"Of course, I do!" she snapped.

"If you really wanted to put me in my place and show how much my actions don't affect you, you would prove that this conversation is so unimportant that you don't mind putting it on hold, until a later date. Say, until 8:00—"

Dr. Cenote glanced at the gift card on the fire extinguisher.

"—at Pandora's bakery."

"If I even decide to come," Venus said.

"If you do, I'll pay for your meal," Dr. Cenote offered, trying not to let her smile turn into a smirk.

"You had better!" Venus cried, outraged that Dr. Cenote would think any different.

And with those words, the goddess of love poofed in a furious blast of pink light.

Dr. Cenote exhaled in relief. From what she could tell, she didn't have an irresistible urge to seek out the office's toaster nor had she immediately fallen in love with some bull off in the distance. Instead of worrying over it, she walked over to Huckleberry's painting, picked it up off the floor, and hung the frame. She wasn't quite ready to put up Reyna and Percy's presents just yet.

Then she sat at her desk and opened up her calendar notebook. Under that evening's plans, she put 2000 hours. Pandora's Bakery. She hesitated before writing, Date with Venus to discuss our opinions of love.

She sighed again. Despite how bad she knew it would be for her back, she collapsed into her chair. And, although she strongly believed everyone was accountable for their own lives, she found herself muttering, "Reyna Ramirez-Arellano and Percy Jackson… What have you two gotten me into?"

Thanks for reading all the way through! This was the last, experimental installment for A Therapeutic Catastrophe. And thank you to all of you that reviewed! I hope the OC pov and story switch around didn't disrupt how much you enjoyed and that you were still able to have fun reading about Dr. Cenote and Venus's little encounter!

Footnote: This is a real thing some teachers do. And it is hilarious.