PERCY'S P.O.V.

I had been on my way out of the hospital when the alarms went off. Everybody had jumped at this, but it was pushed aside, that was at least until I heard gunshots. People started running and screaming. While most people ran out, and security tried to keep them contained, I ran towards the desk. The man on call was frantically typing away, a phone at his ear and an earpiece in the other.

"What happened?" I asked, shouting over the screams and shouts of patients and visitors.

"Shots fired in surgery," He said dismissively. "Yes, hello we have a 974 emergency at Sacred Heart Memor- good a team is already on its way?" I stepped away from the man, putting the pieces together.

"Annabeth." I gasped the word, it was the only word that mattered. I took off running, faster than I ever had, peeling through the crowds. Looking back on it, I was surprised I wasn't tackled by a security guard for the determined look that had been on my face. I knew the basics of this hospital, and I went with my memory. I arrived at surgery, five floors above where I had been, breathless and sweating. It was a zoo, security was sectioning it off and the friends and family of people in the waiting room were mostly crying.

"Sir, you can't be up here." A security guard told me.

"No, I need to get in there. My girlfriend, she was called up here she could be hurt - " I paused, trying to move past the guard.

"Sir, I'm going to have to ask you to step back, we can't let anybody enter or leave at the moment unless they get express permission." The guard held a sorry look in their eyes, pity.

I ran a hand through my hair in frustration. I continued to plead with the guard for what felt like hours, searching over the guards shoulder for the sight of Annabeth or another doctor I knew. I was just considering just pushing past the guard.

"Percy? El let him in. His girlfriend was injured." Coming to the rescue was Olivia, one of the nurses, having just noticed my plight. The guard stepped aside reluctantly as panic raced through my body, running rampant.

"How badly?" I asked, my breath catching in my throat on the last word, making my voice raise an octave higher.

"She got grazed by a bullet and was pushed through a window. Then, you wouldn't believe it, apparently she jumped up onto a medical cart and back through the window, a good ten feet in the air, and she caught the edge and pulled herself up, she's getting the glass removed from her, cuts all over, glass embedded in her hands . . ." Olivia trailed off. "Annabeth is one tough cookie, and she's not in surgery or else she might actually have a problem. She should be fine Percy." Olivia patted my shoulder comfortingly as we walked down the hall.

"What happened?" I asked, focusing myself on anything but Annabeth.

"Not sure, but a man stuck a gun into the hospital. Maybe it was random, maybe not. The boy got a bad gunshot wound to the stomach, and the glass to the room was completely shattered, and the girl in surgery was contaminated, they had to close her up and she has to go through decontamination before she can go into surgery, which might kill her. Who knows what that sicko's intention was." Olivia said with a shrug. She paused at a door and it swung open. Several people sat inside, small wounds being tended to.

Annabeth was the worst. Blood matted in her hair and was smeared over her clothes. One cut was on her neck, and one on her eye. Small cuts peppered her arms, and there was blood bleeding out of her hands as somebody carefully picked glass out of them.

"Percy!" Annabeth sobbed the word out. She couldn't move, so I rushed to her and wrapped her in a careful hug from the side. She still winced.

"How did you get past security?" She asked, her voice shaky.

"I barely got him through, you're lucky El was on the job, otherwise this one would've been stuck out there until I turn 19," Olivia said wryly, her old eyes twinkling as she walked past us.

"I was just leaving the hospital when the shooting started. What happened?" I asked Annabeth.

She sucked in a breath and her eyes seemed caught in another world. "I'm not sure. I got there and the gun was already going off, and the glass shattered. I got knocked into the surgery room and I just knew I had to get back up there, I jumped up and Michael was already shot, and the man who took him out was gone." Annabeth gave a half-choked sob.

I wrapped Annabeth in a hug and murmured comforting things in her ear as sobs wracked her body.

"Annabeth? The police want to take your statement." A nurse touched Annabeth's shoulder gently.

She nodded and took a deep breath, wiping her eyes. "Thanks, Nina, I'll be there in a minute."

I quickly wiped her eyes with the sleeve of my shirt and smoothed her hair. "I'll go alone, I can handle it," Annabeth said. She gave me a quick kiss and walked over to where to police officers were standing.

Annabeth talked to them for about ten minutes, and she then sent me a look as if to say 'wait there'. She came back about ten minutes later, coat in hand.

"They took my statement and told me to go home. The uh, the managers of the hospital are only giving me the rest of the day off, I have to be back in tomorrow." Annabeth supplied.

I furrowed my brow. "You don't get any more time off? You almost got killed." I told her.

Annabeth shrugged. "There's not much I can do," she said. "Besides, I would probably go crazy if I waited for long periods of time."

I wrapped his arm around her. "Fine, let's get out of here."

"Michael is going to be okay," Annabeth said quietly. "I asked one of the nurses that was in his surgery, she said he'd be fine. But they're not sure for Jamie…." Annabeth trailed off, and I could see the worry in her eyes.

"Hey. It's going to be okay." I told her as we walked out onto the street. I began to hail a cab but Annabeth shook her head.

"I drove," she told me.

I shook my head. "I can't drive, and you're in no state to. You can just hail a cab tomorrow as well." Annabeth wasn't up to protesting. I hailed a cab and quickly gave the address. As soon as Annabeth got in the back of the cab what little resolve Annabeth had been using to hold herself together faded. She leaned against me in the back of the car. She didn't have any words. I didn't feel the need to fill the silence.

When we got home I made Annabeth a cup of tea and we sat on the sofa in silence. Annabeth was one of the strongest people I knew, but she was shaken to the bone. Soon enough she began to cry, silently at first. I wrapped her in a hug, not saying a thing as she soaked through my shirt. I texted Piper when Annabeth was in the bathroom, and soon enough Annabeth's step-sister arrived at our door.

As soon as she was there I quietly made dinner for the three of us. Piper and I didn't need to talk, we both understood that right now, Annabeth couldn't take care of herself and that she needed us. Eventually, she fell asleep, and I began to carry her into her bedroom but Piper shook her head. "In your room. Annabeth could do with somebody to be there. I'll take her room." I nodded, and set Annabeth in my bed, then went back to Piper.

"One of us needs to be with Annabeth for a while, I haven't seen her like this in a long time. I'll call Peri, see if she can get a flight out." Piper said in a quiet voice.

"She has work tomorrow, how are we-" Piper held up a hand, interrupting me.

"She has work tomorrow?" Piper asked in a hiss. I nodded. "Did the hospital say she couldn't take time off?"

I shrugged. "She said she had to go in tomorrow."

Piper shook her head. "Give me her phone." I gave Piper a puzzled look but grabbed Annabeth's phone from the dining room table and unlocked it, handing it to her. Piper scrolled through her contacts and copied a number into her phone and stepped outside.

When Piper stepped back inside she had a determined look on her face. "Her bosses are complete assholes. I had to fib a bit but I got her some time off."

"Okay, good. You're calling Peri, right? I'm not sure how useful she'd be, she seems a bit over the top." I said. I was a little doubtful Peri could be serious.

Piper gave a small grin. "That's what people always think. They see fun Peri, not disaster Peri. She's surprisingly good in a tough situation. She also knows Annabeth better than anybody else."

I thought about how Annabeth acted with Peri. They really did seem at ease with each other at all times. There was no tenseness, no awkward between them.

"Call her. I think between us we can help Annabeth through this funk." Piper shook her head at my words.

"It's not a funk. This is what happens when you overload Annabeth. I've only seen it happen twice. She can handle a lot, but somethings are just too much for her. When she can't deal with it, she just . . . shuts down." Piper looked saddened by memories. She shook her head as if to clear it. "No matter. I don't have work tomorrow, so I can stay with her. I'm not sure about you, but you've been popping up everywhere, so I assume you're on some sort of publicity run?" Piper asked.

I nodded. "My manager has been going crazy. I was supposed to go to Taylor's yesterday to write a song, but now I guess I'll have to reschedule, I'm doing a live morning show, and a radio show in the afternoon and a gig at night as well as about forty other things I'm supposed to do. I'll probably be home late if at all tomorrow."

Piper pulled a face. "You should get to bed then. It sounds like you have an early start."

I rubbed my eyes. "I do, but I'm not sure. Maybe I should just cancel it, I don't want to leave Annabeth…." I trailed off.

"No, you don't want to incur the wrath of your manager, I've seen Jason's when he misses something. Don't worry, I can take care of her. Do your shows. Worry about your publicity, I'll worry about her." Piper's eyes filled with determination. I realized she wasn't going to let me skip out.

"Okay." I conceded. "Just, call me if anything happens."

"Stop being such a good boyfriend and go to bed." Piper pushed me towards my bedroom and I laughed. It was the last time I was going to laugh in a while though I didn't know that yet.

Y'know, honestly I'm more pissed at myself than anything for not updating this sooner. At least this time, it's only been a few months. My laptop broke (R.I.P Evangeline :/) and I had to transfer all of my files onto another computer and I found all of my old FF stories and I realized that a good margin of my stories hadn't been updated in well over a year, and I realized I would never update a lot of them so I ended up deleting a bunch of the unfinished crappy ones that I just posted. IDK my brain. WE ARE ONE REVIEW AWAY FROM 300! And I plan to continue this story soon, I'm going to be editing the previous chapters, as I have 90% advanced classes, so I have a pretty heavy workload right now. I don't have time to be writing a lot but I can do small-scale editing :D

I just really wanted to say thank you, everybody. Happy (belated) holidays! I hope nobody else is dying after exam week like me.

Special thanks to: MAL-DaughterofChaos, Zutaraxxx, Banana, Princess Andromeda Ii, Zeus' Underpants, MysteriousFreaks, Scott, & ifoundalaskay for reviewing! Means the world, mwah! XOXO