If you recognise it, it's not mine.

When she was a little girl, she was scared of thunderstorms.

She didn't know why, exactly; something about the flashing lights and the crushing noise made her want to lean as far out of a window as she could and scream, and something about that was a little scary.

Her dad was nice about it, when he was around more, back when she was seven or eight. She'd pad into his bedroom, and he'd push his hair off his face and sit up.

"What's up, Pipes?" he say, that famous voice hoarse from sleep, squinting against the flash of light from the window. He certainly never looked like a movie star, a hero, those nights; he was just Dad, her Dad who slept with the windows open and made hot chocolate in the kitchen and told her stories about the Cherokee thunder beings until she was too tired to listen anymore. It stopped when she turned ten, the first time she was sent away to a boarding school, and after that, she sat on her bed with the covers wrapped around her and whispered the stories to herself until she believed them.

And then she met Jason, and that was like a storm, except instead of leaning out of a window she was flying, and instead of screaming she was laughing until her ribs hurt and tears streamed down her face.

She told him the old stories one night, when the camp was so quiet it was as if they were the only ones breathing. She expected him to laugh; he was the son of Zeus, after all. His father could call up storms as easily as she could blink. But he didn't laugh; he smiled a little when she told him that, and leant back against the wall of the Zeus cabin (they'd been sitting outside it, looking at the stars like some cliché out of a film, and they didn't care at all). He reached out a hand and closed it in a light fist, tanned skin gleaming like gold in the moonlight, and when he opened his fingers again, it was raining. They sat and they watched the water fall from the sky, turning the grass on the common to glass.

"I didn't know you could do that," she said, turning her head to rest it on his shoulder. Raindrops slipped down the back of her neck, cool and soft and silver.

"Neither did I," Jason murmured, one arm slipping around her waist. He paused. "You're getting wet."

"It's raining, dork," she said, rolling her eyes. "It'll be fine. These are only pyjamas."

They were, a pair of cotton shorts and an old shirt of Jason's, worn thin enough to be a little translucent through the water, but that didn't matter. It was Jason, after all.

"Are you crying?" he asked, turning her face to his with one hand.

She shook her head. "It's just the rain." She brought a hand up to her face, tracing the lines along her cheeks with the tip of a finger, and his palm stopped her.

"There's an easier way," he whispered, and kissed her gently on the mouth.

It kept raining, and by the time the Apollo cabin began to glow with the sunrise and they shook themselves awake and slipped back inside (because being caught by a dryad once before was embarrassing enough), Piper's hair was stuck to the back of her neck in a thousand tiny tendrils, and Jason's bare feet were covered in green stains from fidgeting in the grass, and they had never felt more alive.

He turned up at her apartment one day and offered to take her flying, and it was when she'd only just got in from work and she was tired, so it was a couple of minutes before she remembered.

"Our anniversary?" she guessed, although the look on his face said it for her. "Gods, I'm sorry, I forgot-"

"It's fine," he said, softly, gently, his words pulling her into an embrace just as comforting as the one in his arms. "I know you've been busy."

She nodded. "Let me put something a little nicer on, and then we'll go."

"You look beautiful," he said, like she knew he would, because if there's ever a day Jason Grace doesn't jump at the chance to be a perfect gentleman, then that's the day she'll start thinking the world might actually be ending.

"Jason, I've been dealing with kindergarteners all day. I've got smiley face stickers on my blouse and glitter glue on the hem of my skirt. Please, let me put on something else." She pulled a desperate face, and he laughed and let her go.

She put on a pair of leggings and a top which probably passes for a short dress; it doesn't matter. She knows she looks good in it either way. Neither of them have bothered with shoes.

"Where this time, then?" she asked, locking the door of the apartment from the inside and following him out onto the balcony.

He turned and looked at her, and smiled in that way which makes the little scar on his lip crinkle up until it's almost invisible. "You'll see," he said, and held out an arm, and she took it.

She kind of guessed what was coming when they touched down on the edge of the Grand Canyon, but she didn't say anything, because he looked at her with this little nervous tilt to his head and said there were supposed to be meteors tonight, he'd looked it up.

In the middle of the shower, he took his arm off her shoulders and fidgeted in the pocket of his jacket and fished out a little box. He got down on one knee and everything; he got halfway through his speech before he choked up, and she knelt down in front of him and took the ring and kissed him and breathed a shaking yes into his mouth as bits of the sky burned above them.

Then they sat there, a tangle of arms and lips and love. "Can you do that thing where you make it rain?" she asked after a while, and he smiled and snapped his fingers and then their tears were mixing with the water from the sky.

Being engaged didn't feel all that different to dating, except it hammered it home that they weren't teenagers anymore, and she's not sure if she found that scary or pretty damn impressive, considering the number of battles they'd fought.

It was over before she could really decide, anyway. They were still getting congratulatory messages from people they met or saved or lived near or whatever years ago. There was actually a small mountain of unopened letters sitting on the hall table, including no less than three pastel-coloured envelopes which Jason insisted smelt like her rose-scented shampoo, but when Piper held one, all she could smell was ozone, the calmest point of a storm before the lightning strikes. She had a feeling she knew who they were from, and she didn't know whether she wanted to open them or not.
She was about to say this to Jason, when they were walking home from grocery shopping, when his head snapped up and his eyes darkened and she sighed and let go of the shopping bag, because now she concentrated, she could sense it too, that little edge to the air when there's something not-quite-right, the calm before the storm, that moment she's been experiencing in the seconds before a fight for the better part of a decade now.

"Jason-" she said, and then there was a shout and a swirl of movement and a cracking sound that wasn't quite like thunder and a scream, and she realised she was lying on the side of the road and Jason was lying beside her, breathing heavily.

"There's a guy," he whispered. "He's got a gun." They were huddled behind a car, and she saw his muscles tense.

"Jason Grace, don't you dare-"

He had the audacity to shhh her before slipping out from beside her. She flattened herself against the concrete, watching a pair of pacing feet- the shooter, she assumed. There was a shift behind her, and she glanced round to see a little girl crawling in beside her, eyes wide, lips trembling, hair falling in her face as it twisted in a silent sob. When she looked back, the shooter's feet had been joined by Jason's scuffed blue converse, and before she could think of more than stupid fiancé, stupid hero complex, there was a cracking sound that definitely was thunder, and a flash of light, and when Piper looked up from behind the car, the man was lying on the ground, smoking slightly, and Jason was standing over him, one hand raised and shaking slightly.

She went to him; everyone else started to edge away, muttering about freak storms and crazy people and police. One woman sprinted across the street and caught up the little girl from the car, both of them sobbing hysterically by now. One man was shouting into his cellphone, his words mixing with sounds of the city around them.

"Is he dead?" Piper asked as they stared down at the man.

Jason shook his head. "Just unconscious," he said, weary, exhausted, wavering. He gripped her arm tighter. "We should go." He nodded to the man on his phone. "I think he's called the police, or someone will soon, and I don't feel like explaining." There was something in his voice, a wavering uncertainty like he wasn't quite sure if he really cared.

She laughed lightly, trying to shake the tension from the air like cobwebs off a branch, linked her arm in his, and they walked away like any other couple, disappearing into the city.

They'd just got to a quiet patch, a side street with nobody on it, when Jason collapsed, sinking against her for a second and then falling, knees, chest, shoulders, head, a heap next to an empty building.

Piper's heart skyrocketed, even as she dropped down next to him, taking his hand, checking for a pulse. "Jason? Jason, what happened? Are you-" Her voice caught in her throat as she turned his hand in hers, felt the stickiness of it, saw the red coating the jewel-bright ring on his finger. Her next word was a croak. "Jason?"

He stirred, his eyes cracked open like blue skies through clouds. "Piper-"

"What happened?" she demanded, not taking her eyes off him, asking even though she knew the answer, saw it in the stain on his shirt, his hand, her fingertips.

He shifted, and she pushed him down. "Lie still," she said. "Why didn't you say something?"

He closed his eyes for a second.

"Wake up," she snapped, terrified enough to charmspeak. "Jason, wake up."

"Too many people," he whispered, dragging his eyes open again. "I thought... thought I had longer. Thought we'd get home first."

She shook her head. Her hair had come loose from the braid it had been tied back in, and it swung in her face. "You're an idiot," she said in a voice that wasn't quite a sob.

Jason sighed, his face crumpling in pain like a tissue left in a downpour. "Piper-"

"Don't go to sleep," she snapped. "Don't go to sleep, Jason, because I know nothing about gunshot wounds and you're not bleeding out in a side alley when we have faced giants and monsters and won and I don't have any magical godly food on me because we were grocery shopping, so if you dare go to sleep I swear to the gods-" She swallowed heavily, her charmspeak wavering.

Jason's eyes were open, watching her, a small smile on his lips.

"Talk," he said. He twitched the hand she was still holding as she tried to compose herself. "No magic. Just you."

She took a deep breath anyway, shook her hair back over her shoulders. "I used to be scared of thunderstorms," she started. "And I never knew why. It was something about the air. I felt like I could run forever and never get caught, but there's something scary about forever, you know?" She blinked; Jason was still watching her, eyes tracing her every movement. "And then I met you," she whispered. "And gods, it was so, so terrifying, because everything about you was like those storms and I could have sat there and be with you forever, and then you go and turn out to be the son of the god of lightning and stuff and... and I guess it all makes sense now."

Jason squeezed her hand, the ring on his finger digging into her palm, and then let go, his hand falling flat against the ground, bloodstained fingers open.

"I was never scared of the storms, not really," Piper said quietly, forcing her voice to stay calm, not to scream. "I was scared of what would happen when they ended."

She took a breath, and when she exhaled it was raining, and Jason's eyes were closed, the edge of a smile crinkling the scar on his lip. She kissed him on the forehead, and sat there, and let the rain wash the blood from their hands, the tears from her face.