A/N: I'M SO SORRY, I SUCK AT SCHEDULES! I PROMISE I'M WORKING ON IT AHHH. ANYWAY, HERE'S CHAPTER 8!

THANK YOU GUYS FOR YOUR ONGOING SUPPORT I LOVE YOU ALL!

DISCLAIMER: DEY AREN'T MY CHARACTERS, I ONLY OWN THE PLOT

PERCY

It was about 6:30 and I was sitting outside of Annabeth's house on the hood of my car waiting for her. I was wearing a jean jacket with white wool lining the edges, a white and black baseball tee, a pair of dark slim jeans, and my black and white vans.

I had gotten her some flowers and decided to surprise her. I wanted to ask her to drive her to school, but I forgot, so why not make it a surprise? Only problem, I was scared out of my mind.

Would she like this? Would she hate it? Would I hate it? I wouldn't hate it, I want to do this. I pulled out my phone and checked the time. It was roughly 6:44. She said she always came out of the house at 6:45 on the dot. I had a minute to decide of I wanted to do this. I ran my hand through my hair and started pacing.

"What are you doing? Come on man, man up, you got this. Breath, breath, you got this."

"Percy?"

I did not got this.

I turned around and saw Annabeth holding a cup of coffee, wearing black pants, and a white t-shirt that was tucked in. She had bags under her eyes, probably from long nights of studying, and frizzed up hair. To anyone else, she looked like a mess. To me? She looked amazing. The way her shirt was perfectly ironed, the way her pants cuffed up at the bottom, the way her converses were tied into little bunny ears. She was all around perfect. I on the other hand, forgot how do word good.

"Uhh… Duh.. H-Hi?"

"Percy it's 6:45," she said as if I was acting silly, "What're you doing here?"

"Oh!" I said turning around bending into the car pulling out a bouquet of flowers, and holding them out with straight arms. They were a bunch of white flowers, but the lady I bought them from said that she would love them. I wasn't sure and I felt sweat start to drop.

"Are… those for me?"

I nodded quickly, giving a small but wary grin. Annabeth walked over, grabbing them gently, and smelt them. She pulled them away and gave me a smile. She looks at me cheerily, then puts on a questioning look.

"Wait," she starts again, "Why are you here exactly?" It was at this point, I finally remembered how do word good.

"I wanted to give you a ride to school," I say finally speaking easily, "and hopefully I can continue doing so." I opened the door to my car, gesturing her to sit, and she laughed, but took a seat.

"We'll see," is all she said. And with that, we were on our way to school.

-You know what kind of break this is-

We walked into school together, our hands glued together like a kids take home project, neither of us letting go. Her bright blonde hair bounced as she walked, finally defrizzing. We take turns at our lockers, then make our way to the groups table. Jason was there, but he looked like he had been sleeping on a rock, but content. Piper was asleep with her head on his lap. Leo was talking to Jason about a homework assignment while fiddling with a piece of metal he had in his hand. We sat down and greeted the group, then split off into our own conversation, unaware of what was happening behind us…

RACHEL

I looked at them from the lockers. I was beyond angry. I could kill her if I really wanted to. I could kill him! They weren't supposed to get together. I did everything in my power to stop it, but no, life spits in my face. I picked up my bag and went to my locker, putting my books back into it. I wouldn't it need it today.

I walked back towards the group to set my plan in motion…

PERCY

"And then Leo pulled out his phone with a recording of what he just said!" Jason was retelling to Luke and Thalia. They were engrossed in the story. It wasn't everyday our Spanish elf acted all big and tough.

"No way!" Thalia said laughing, "You did that, Leo?"

"I don't like bullies," he said briefly, sipping on a chocolate milk, acting nonchalant, but we all knew him better. We knew he was soaking it in.

"Dang dude, I give you props."

"Thanks Luke," he said fist bumping said blonde. That's when she walked up.

"Hey guys," Rachel said sweetly. She was wearing a green long sleeve, blue jeans, and green vans. Her red hair was ever frizzy. Normally, she wasn't this happy in the mornings. It was a little odd to see her so cheery.

"Hey Rach," Jason greeted slightly questioningly, "Where's your bag?"

"At home," she said rubbing her head, "I accidentally slept through most of my alarms and ran out without it on accident. Speaking of accident's, Annabeth, can I discuss something with you?" Everyone sweat dropped at that. Either it was an insult, or it was a reference to something that happened between them, we were unsure. What we did know, is that Annabeth visibly tensed at Rachel's beckon.

I grabbed her thigh, but she shook her head. She stood up and went to talk with Rachel. Of what, I wasn't sure, but I trusted her. I started talking to Jason, but kept my eyes on where Annabeth and Rachel walked off to.

+Do I really need to explain this?+

ANNABETH

"Rachel, I'm not doing it."

"What was that, Annie?" she asked angrily, "Because it sounds a lot like you did exactly what I told you not to do." She did have a point, but her demands were unreasonable at best.

"I don't care," I said, standing my ground, "I'm not breaking up with him. Why can't you see that we're happy?"

"Oh I see it," she replied simply, "I just don't like it!"

"Well get used to it!"

"Then get used to this picture floating around!" Rachel held up a picture that I thought my parents had scrubbed from the world. We paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to get it off every website, every news outlet, all of it. We even moved to New York to escape it all. There was no way this could be real.

I lunged for the picture, knocking Rachel down, taking it in the process. With it in my hands, I tore it at every angle I could, making sure it could in no way be recognized. That's when Rachel started laughing. I looked at here only to see 7 more copies in her hand.

"You didn't think I'd bait you with my 'only' leverage, did you?"

I saw my world shatter. Percy would leave me, Thalia wouldn't trust me, the school would laugh.

"By Wednesday, the whole school will know about this! Good luck, Annie."

And with that, she walked off. I watched her walk away into the crowd, disappearing. I pushed back tears, and walked to the bathroom. I took deep breaths for what felt like hours, but in actuality, it was about 5 minutes. After I stopped crying, I started fuming. I was angry now. I started plotting and thinking. That's when it hit me. I had one plan, and boy was it a Hail Mary…

-Line blah-

The day carried on like normal, I acted fine, but I could tell Percy was aware that I wasn't completely fine. I put it off and wouldn't tell him anything, and kept to myself. Class had finished, and we were walking out. I looked around until I found the groups own Spanish elf.

"I'll be right back, Perce," I said, rushing off.

"O-Okay?"

I felt bad for sprinting away, but this was important. He couldn't find out, absolutely not.

"Leo!" I exclaimed. He jumped and turned with his hands in blades, looking ready to fight. That is, until he saw me.

"Oh, it's you. What's up Brainiac?"

"I need a favor that you can't tell anyone about."

"Sorry Annabeth, I ain't no homewrecker."

"What? No, I need you to hack into someone's computer to get rid of a picture."

"Oh, haha, yea of course. Whose computer is it?" he questioned curiously. That's when I froze. Rachel was a friend of this group, this is basically treason, asking him to betray someone on the group. I took a deep breath.

"It's… Rachel."

Leo went from curious to confused. He looked like someone had smacked him in the face.

"What? Why?" he interrogated. He looked ready to snap, to put me in my place for trying to meddle with another group member.

"It's… Personal…"

"No," he said shaking his head, "If I do this, I need to know why, you're not sending me in blind."

"She's blackmailing me with a picture from my past," I said, not wanting to reveal too much, "I need it gone before she shows it to everyone. Please, Leo, I'll do anything."

Leo was quiet for a long time. It looked like he was fighting with the idea inside of his head for a while. He kept going back and forth, trying to decide if I was telling the truth or not. For a second, I thought that my last chance, my hail Mary, was about to fall through my grasp.

"Fine," he finally said in a hushed tone, "But if I find out you're lying to me, I will tell everyone what you're having me do."

"Deal." I replied hurriedly. Leo nodded, then closed his eyes. When he opened them, he was back to his normal self, happy as can be.

"Come over tonight at around 6:30, yea? We'll sort it out then!" he said, giving me a grin, then making his way to his pick-up. I gave a deep sigh, then walked back to Percy.

"Welcome back, Wise Girl," he said with a tired expression, but a small grin nonetheless. I gave him a similar smile and pecked his cheek. We walked to his car, and drove home, forgetting about the events for the day.

-L B-

It had just hit 6:30 and I rung Leo's doorbell. When the door opened, a big man with grease stains on his overalls and hands opened the door.

"Oh, you're not my parts," he said upon lying his sights on me.

"I'm sorry?" I asked confused.

"Sorry," he said with a chuckle, "I ordered some parts for a project and I thought that you might be them being delivered. I guess that's what happens when you assume."

"Sorry to disappoint sir," I say with a chuckle, "I'm actually here to see Leo."

"Ah," he said with a smile, "In that case, I'm his father, Hephaestus Valdez. His room is upstairs on the left." He held out his hand for me to shake.

"Nice to meet you Mr. Valdez," I said shaking his hand, "I'm Annabeth Chase." I walked past him and upstairs. When I opened Leo's door, I was surprised to see it organized. There were tools on the wall, and a giant console for his computer.

"Annabeth?" Leo asked aloud, not looking up from his tool bench.

"Hey Leo."

"Be with you in a sec." It looked like Leo was soldering some metal, but I couldn't be sure. I decided to take a seat at his desk, looking at his beast of a computer. I was a giant tower with lots of wires and hardware and components in it.

"Alright," he said, plopping down in a chair next to me, "Lets get cracking." He began to get to work. His fingers were like lightning on his keyboard, flying through the letters. "I already got her IP, and broke through her firewall, now it's just finding the picture."

We were searching through files for what felt like 45 minutes when we can across a zipped folder titled 'Annabeth.' When we tried to open it, it asked us for a password. Leo began plugging a code into a command prompt to get it to open, which worked within 2 minutes. Inside the file, there was a picture, and a video. I assumed the picture was what I thought it was, but I had no idea what the video could be.

"Open them both," I told Leo, rising out of my seat slightly. I had to know what they were

"You sure?"

"More or less."

When the picture opened, it was the last thing I expected. Instead of what I wanted to delete, it was a picture of a troll face. I was in utter shock. My play had been called. I played into her hands. The video loaded moments later, showing Rachel with a wicked grin.

"Hey Annie and Leo," she said in a sing song voice, making both of us shiver, "I thought you'd try and get this deleted. What a shame that I don't have it backed up on my computer. If it's that important to you, I guess I won't release it on Wednesday. You obviously don't want me to."

"She's lying."

"I'll do it on Tuesday instead. I hope you like your last few days of being social. Tomorrow morning, everyone is going to know your dirty little secret. Percy will feel betrayed, Thalia with abandon you, Luke won't be able to stand sitting next to you. Good luck, Annie."

I shattered. My world was Torn in half. Leo was trying to talk to me, but I couldn't hear anything.

"Thank you, Leo, but I think I'm going to leave." I picked up my things quickly, then started for the door. I pulled out the keys for my dad's car, and got in. Before I could get away from the house, Leo ran up to the car.

"Annabeth, wait!"

"Have a good night," I said, peeling out of his driveway. I drove home in tears. I went inside and my dad saw me. He looked like he wanted to ask what was wrong, but I was already running upstairs closing my door. My night continued on a streak of crying until I fell asleep.

-Day Break?-

PERCY

I woke up to a text from Annabeth saying that she was gonna drive to school today. I asked why but she wouldn't budge. I didn't want to push further, so I let it be, and told her I'd see her in class. When I got to school, people were looking at me curiously, and then would split into their own convos. I was equally confused, but I didn't care. I went to my locker. I was spinning my combo in, when a bunch of varsity football players started laughing at me. Now I was really confused. I hadn't worn my lucky underwear, so there was no way for them to have known about that. I went to finish putting my combo in when Leo ran over, and put himself between my and my locker.

"Well good morning to you too, Flamo."

"H-Hey, Perce," he started with a small grin, but nervous look, "How's it goin?"

"Oh you know," I said, looking around, "trying to get into my locker."

"Ahh, well, how about we do something else, like go this way, and forget about your locker?" Something was up. I looked around, and people were holding pieces of paper. Correction, the same piece of paper. They all had the same thing.

"Sure," I said, willing to detach from my locker to figure out what was going on, "I'll come back later." Leo gives me a devilish grin, and starts walking towards the cafeteria. It's around then that I see the white paper in his back pocket. The paper looked similar to everyone else's. Without thinking, I plucked it out of his pocket and opened it.

"Percy, wait!" Leo shouted. It was too late though, I already opened the paper, and what I saw was shocking, terrifying even. There she was, sitting there in court, grey patch of hair. There were dates, and examples of trials, court dates, and a brief summary of what had happened. I was confused, and my head was spinning. Sure, it was a new relationship, and I wasn't expecting to know everything about her, but this is huge.

I ran through the hall to get to the front of the school when I saw it. On the wall there was a mosaic of different pieces of the story from different news outlets. I stopped dead in my tracks. It looked like an art piece. But it couldn't be just any high schooler. This was an expose in disguise as art.

"Oh my god," a familiar voice said aloud. I turn around and see none other than my girlfriend. We make eye contact, and she turns and runs.

"Annabeth!" I yell as I give chase, "Wait!"

She runs out to the parking lot , and I'm mere steps behind her. We get to her car when she looks at me, crying.

"Percy, please," she pleads, begging at this point, "leave me alone."

"This can't be true, right?"

"So what if it is?!"

I was taken aback. She saw this, shook her head, then got into her car. She locked the doors, and drove off as quick as she could, taking consideration not to hit me though. I was sad, angry, worried, I couldn't fit into one emotion. I was going to get to the bottom of this, I had to know.

I walked inside, a fury building up inside of me. I tore down every paper, got as many as I could from everyone, and trashed them. I was going to fix this, if it was the last thing I was going to do.

"Hey Percy," Rachel said cheerily, sneaking up on me, "It's a shame about what came up about Annabeth huh?"

That's when it clicked. This was planned, and looked like a atrocious masterpiece. Only person I knew had the skill to do this, and was as meticulous as Annabeth, and that was a certain red haired girl.

"You," I said, shock evident in my voice, "You did this?"

"Duh, I'm surprised you didn't realize sooner."

"How could you?"

"How could I?" she countered, stunned, "She hid this from you and your mad at me?"

"It wasn't your story to tell!"

"Well someone had to, and she wouldn't!" Rachel said practically yelling, "I did this for you, can't you see?"

"For me?" I say taken a back, but still angry, "Not only did you get my own girlfriend to run from me, I don't know if she's coming back, or if she'll want to talk to me. So thanks, Rachel, you've helped me so much."

"Why is this so hard-"

"No," I said, putting my hands up, "I'm done. Have a good life Rachel and stay out of me and Annabeth's."

"What?" she said, confused, "Percy, wait-"

"No!" I shouted, "Did you ever think of who you hurt from this? About how this would affect her? You're selfish, and I don't need a friend that only thinks for herself."

I walked away, leaving Rachel sputtering. And that was the last I heard from her all day. I had to sort this out, I just needed to find a way…

-Tragedy Break-

ANNABETH

I was sitting at a park bench, crying my eyes out. My life was pathetic. I couldn't stand up for myself then, and I couldn't now. I pulled out my phone and looked at my lock screen. Unbeknownst to Percy and I, Thalia had taken a picture of our kiss at the theater. That girl could be a professional photographer. Me and Percy were mere silhouettes, but the stage was lit up behind us, so you could still understand what was happening.

I was going to miss that dork. I planned to tell my mom tonight about transferring schools, but I hadn't gotten to it just yet.

I was about to put my phone away, when I felt it vibrate again. It was Percy again. I waited out the phone call only to see my screen flooded with texts.

Seaweed Brain~ : Wise girl? Are you okay?

Seaweed Brain~ : Hello? Annabeth, please answer me.

Seaweed Brain~ : I don't care if its true Annabeth please just call and text me back.

Seaweed Brain~ : Hello?

Seaweed Brain~ : I love you…

I closed my eyes and felt a tear slowly slide down my face. I took a deep breath, then slid my phone back into my pocket. I looked back over the pond in front of me and tried to think about other things.

-Time Skip-

It was 7:30 at night, and we ate dinner. I didn't talk to my mom about transferring yet, but I planned to after dinner. That was, until I got another text.

Seaweed Brain~ : I know you're reading these Annabeth.

Seaweed Brain~ : Come outside, I need to talk with you

My heart sank. He was here? Why? I opened the text and started to type when another one came in.

Seaweed Brain~ : Either you come out or I come in.

I swallowed the lump in my throat and took a shaky breath. I collected my thoughts and made my way out. When I opened the door, I saw Percy leaning against his car with a blue and grey ¾ tee on, as well as black jeans and matching Vans. He was wearing a hat which was new, but I decided to move past that. He was still looking at his phone typing up a fury.

"Why are you here, Perce?"

His eyes shot up. He looked at me and it was then that I really took in how he looked. The shine that was normally in his eyes was dim, he had worry plastered all over his face. When he saw me, he bolted, dropping his phone, embracing me in a hug. That's when it hit. I felt the warmth of his arms around me. I smelt his scent of ocean water and a hint of chlorine. I felt him grab on tight as if I was the last life jacket on a sinking ship, clinging for dear life, never to let go. I felt the sadness rolling off of him, and all I could do was cry.

I clung on to him and started crying. I can't tell you how long we were there, but it felt like an eternity. Everything stopped around us. It was just me and him. Then we broke apart. He pulled back, but kept his hands clinging onto my shoulders gently.

"No matter what happened in the past," he says, voice shaking a little bit, "I will always love you Annabeth Chase."

"I should have been more forth coming," I said, sadly, "I lied to you and created this mess. I'm damaged goods, Percy! You deserve someone better, someone who can stand up for themselves, or someone who won't lie about their appearance to you."

"The hair?" he asked, a small but caring smirk on his face, leaving me only to nod, "You really think that I like you just because of how you look? Annabeth, you're a sarcastic, smart, funny, spitfire who doesn't take flak from anyone. That's why I wanted to be with you. The looks are a definite bonus, but not the main reason. The way your eyes shine when you look at buildings, mentally deconstructing them in your head, the way your eyebrows crinkle when you read, the way your smile shines when you have that first sip of coffee. Annabeth, I live for all of your quirks. Besides, I think the grey hair is cool. It's like a highlight."

I was blown away. He was too good of a person to be real.

"And to prove that I like the grey hair," he said, stepping back ever so slightly. He took off his hat, and let his jet black hair fall forward. Correction, mostly jet black hair. A tuft of hair was now grey, falling forward for everyone to see…

I'm not typically a fighter. I like busywork, and I try to keep to myself, only pushing after I've been pushed. Why fight when I could be designing buildings? I only took challenges I knew I would win. Everything was calculated, I left very little to chance, or Lady Luck.

But with him? Calculated or not, I knew that we could overcome any challenge…

A/N: Little short, but I had to put something out. So sorry for the delay, lifes been rough. I promise to work on uploading more, but I won't give out specific dates anymore. Hope y'all enjoy this HELLA delayed chapter, and I'll (hopefully) post again soon!

-Rocke