Disclaimer: I own absolutely nothing except Cassie and the shenanigans she gets up to that you can't recognize from any known Marvel or Percy Jackson media source. Everything you might recognize belongs to other people much wealthier and more legally well armed than I am. In short, suing me would really not be worth it. Thank you. Read on.
Getting out of New York City isn't difficult for Cassie. As it turns out, having a god from Norse mythology invade a city with an alien army doesn't do any favors for that city's desirability as a location in which to live and work. Cassie is by no measure the only one leaving and her academic advisor at Columbia doesn't even seem all that surprised when she asks for the transfer paperwork. On the contrary, she hands it over with a harried sigh and shuffles her out the door to get to her next appointment after telling Cassie that this is her third repetition of the same meeting.
Despite having both the ADHD and dyslexia typical of a demigod, Cassie actually has good grades. It helps that her mother homeschooled her until she was six and then Chiron had picked back up again when she had arrived at camp at age eight. She had gone to college in New Rome which had catered to demigods and it helps that a large percentage of medical school involves both Latin and Greek. Those grades combined with great MCAT scores and a few connections afforded her through the Twelfth Legion and Cassie has an acceptance letter to Georgetown by the end of the month.
Having lived most of her life either nomadically, or in a cabin with a minimum of three other people, Cassie has never really been a packrat. In fact, she's not really any kind of "rat", pack or otherwise. Basically she just doesn't have stuff. Put in very simple terms, Cassie manages to get everything she owns out of her apartment and in to three large duffle bags, one backpack, and her purse in less than six hours.
The train ticket she buys is outrageously overpriced but she supposes the rates are jacked to the "a massive alien invasion just happened and everyone wants to get out of this freaking nut box disaster zone" levels. If invasions are good for one thing, it's the public transportation system. If Cassie knows mortals, everything will normalize in another few weeks and the world will continue on as usual.
It isn't hard to catch a cab from the station to her apartment and when she tells the cabbie she's moving for school the man doesn't hesitate to strike up a conversation about his youngest daughter who wants to be a surgeon someday. The man is lovely and takes a few nice shortcuts to get her to her apartment building without being trapped in traffic. He even gives her a few pointers on how to avoid getting stuck behind the endless motorcades in the city.
Cassie makes sure to tip him well but doesn't let him help her unload her bags when they get to her new building. They're heavier than a mortal girl her size might be able to handle at one time and she doesn't want to deal with any odd looks or fumbled explanations. She's good at lying but she doesn't like to do it if it can be avoided, and right now it can be.
She waves Benny the cab driver back down the block with a bright smile until the cab turns the corner and then begins to haul her bags inside. A look around the small lobby of the building and sighs. It's a pleasant space with decent lighting and a non-hideous paint job. The floor doesn't even look to horribly scuffed up or grungy and those things alone put it a mile ahead of some of the places she's called home.
There is no elevator.
Of course there isn't.
Because that might actually be a convenient thing for her or something. And the gods know if life were suddenly convenient for Cassie the world might actually stop spinning as everyone knows it and start rotating backwards. Right.
In that case, death to convenience she says.
...
...
But would an elevator really have been too much to ask?
Apparently the universal answer to that question is yes so Cassie resigns herself to the fact that she'll have to make multiple trips. She's already paid first and last month's rent so she picks up her keys from the landlord first. The landlord is an elderly women named Eloise Graff with long, red painted nails. She wears enough perfume to make Cassie want to sneeze and uses a cain Cassie suspects is probably more for poking people with than walking.
"I thought you'd be older," is the first thing she says when Cassie introduces herself and explains why she's there.
Cassie fixes a polite smile on her face and nods. "I get that a lot. Mrs. Graff I just came to pick up my key and move in. If it's an inconvenience to you I can come back later."
Eloise waves away her words and starts rummaging through her desk drawers. Cassie signs her name on the remaining pieces of paperwork the woman presents her with and takes the key she's handed. When she answers Mrs. Graff's question about where she's from the woman sniffs. "Alien's falling out of the sky," she huffs. "If you'd told me that story back in the seventies I'd have told you to lay off the special sauce."
The comment brings a genuine smile to Cassie's face and she lets the woman lead the way back out in to the lobby to pick up her bags. She slings her backpack over her shoulder and grabs one duffle to haul upstairs. To her surprise, Eloise leads the way up, moving slowly and determinedly.
"You're moving out here for school I take it?" Eloise says.
It's more of a question than it is a statement so Cassie treats it that way. "That's right Ma'am," she says. "I'll be starting my last two years of medical school at Georgetown in the fall. I was at Columbia, but after everything..." she paused and shook her head. "It was time to get out of New York."
They arrive at her floor and Eloise pauses to rest against her cain. "And I suppose your parents were alright with you just picking up and moving far far away for the next few years?"
Cassie fits her key in to the lock in the door and pushed it open. Then she turns and makes herself look Eloise Graff in the eyes. She knows, even without being able to see it that her smile is fake again and not genuine. "No parents Ma'am," she says lightly. "It's just me."The door swings open lightly under her palm and Cassie moves to slip inside when she's stopped by a papery hand on her arm.
Mrs. Graff's grip is surprisingly strong. Looking at her knobby fingers and the pronounced blue lines of the woman's veins Cassie is able to diagnose arthritic without much trouble and her powers confirm it with skin to skin contact. "My sons both died in the war," she tells her. Her eyes are hazel green and completely aware. "Vietnam took them both. My husband went from old age seven years ago." Eloise pats her arm twice. "It's just me, too."
With that she turns and moves off back down the stairs. Cassie blinks after her and lets the new information resettle in her head. Then she rolls her shoulders back, resettling the bags she's carrying and opens the door to her new home.
The apartment is nicer than she expected and probably nicer than she deserves for what she's paying. All in all that's a good thing though because while the Legion is paying for her tuition and housing, other critical living expenses like food, books, transportation, and furniture aren't part of the deal. Speaking of expenses she'll need to look for a job if she wants to avoid running out of the savings she managed to put together working in New York and earlier in New Rome. She has inherited money from her mother as well, but she also has hang ups about using it.
It takes her longer to move in completely than it took for her to move out. Getting her bags in takes a matter of minutes but setting it up the way she likes is a different matter. She starts her adjustments by going down to the store on the corner and picking up cleaning supplies for the windows. The blinds had been stuck shut when she arrived and opening them reveals that the glass is grimy. Cassie likes direct light so forty-five minutes, half a bottle of windex, nearly a dozen paper towels, and a risky maneuver with the window ledge later her windows are clean.
Next she assembles her bed to her standards with the blue and white sheets, pillow cases, and duvet she's had since she was thirteen. The cloud-like effect is somewhat cliche for a child of Apollo but the linens were a Christmas present from Chiron and while Cassie isn't all that attached to material things she is a little sentimental. That sentimentality is also the reason that a small stuffed black and white sheepdog her mother bought for her during a short trip in Boston when she was four is placed near her pillow. If that's childish well... Annabeth Chase still sleeps with her childhood teddy bear and she's the toughest person Cassie knows.
The apartment comes with sparse furniture which includes the bed, a night stand, a chest of drawers, a kitchen table, and a closet. She unloads her clothes in to the dresser and hangs what needs to be hung in the closet. Her medical kit goes under the bed like always and she stows her armor with it because she can't figure out a way to conceal it and still have it easily reachable in her closet. The five pairs of shoes she owns go in a neat row below her clothes.
For the moment she just stacks her text books and laptop in the corner of her bedroom. Most demigods don't use laptops but Leo has configured hers specially using celestial bronze and some magic from the Hecate cabin so that the signals won't draw monsters to her location. It's one of the most valuable things that Cassie owns given the amount of school and research she's signed herself up for with her career and education choices.
Cassie's actually incredibly busy over the next few months between moving in and the beginning of school. She registers for classes and gets a job at a coffee house that's roughly half way between her apartment and campus. It's a twenty-four hour joint and Cassie is used to working strange hours so she's able to schedule her shifts around her classes. Plus she makes a great cup of coffee. Proper caffein preparation is right below monster fighting in the demigod handbook.
Buying and assembling her furniture becomes her project in her spare time. A part of her knows she should probably buy IKEA furniture in the cheapest style possible. If a monster trashes her apartment it would be best not to care too much about whatever she has in there. On the other hand, she doesn't actually like much IKEA furniture and she can't figure out how to assemble it correctly anyway. Reading the instructions never helps and somehow Cassie always ends up with at least two extra screws that look important but don't seem to go anywhere.
Over time, she manages to find furniture she likes and can afford, mostly from second-hand stores around the city. Classes start while she's in the process and all in all Cassie is happily busy. It takes a lot to keep her over active mind occupied but she feels like she's doing a pretty good job.
Her classes progress well and Cassie's apartment gradually fills. For the first time in her life she has a couch, coffee table, and reclining arm chair that are mismatched in a homey kind of way. She gets a desk with a lamp and ergonomic chair to do her studying at and a book shelf she fills with everything she's ever read and enjoyed in Greek, Latin, and English. A coffee maker and a toaster are added to her kitchen along with a pressure cooker and most of the time she even has food in her cabinet and refrigerator.
She patrols at least three times a week and kills anything that comes after her with extreme prejudice. There's more monster activity in D.C than there was in New York but Cassie figures that's because the city is farther from the gods. She chooses not to think too much about the fact that monstrous activity is high in the nation's capitol. There's a few too many ironic jokes and sarcastic comments to make with that particular line of thought.
A few times she spots potential demigods and reports them back to Chiron or Lupa depending on weather she thinks they're Greek or Roman. There's a boy in forth grade with a head full of cowlicks and sleepy eyes who she thinks is probably destined for the Hypnos cabin. A girl with a cool aid and sugar addiction is probably headed for the legion. Cassie watches the both of them until they are picked up by for their respective camps. Neither are older than eleven and Cassie is glad that no matter how much they may hate it, the gods seem to be keeping the promise they made to Percy six years ago.
The April after she moves to D.C is slushy and rainy and the cold of the winter is just barely beginning to break. It's about a week short of being a year since she moved in and Cassie feels remarkably settled. She's signed on with Eloise to stay during the summer and in to next year.
Then she meets Jacob Calloway and Carmen Hollow. The meeting happens when she saves the two of them from a nasty snake demon behind a local bodega by shooting it through the eyes. It hisses in death and Cassie winces a little at the swears the snake uses. Sometimes she really hates that an understanding of snakes is one of the areas in which Apollo and Mercury have overlapping spheres of influence.
Jacob is a boy with a Boston accent and grey eyes that look like Annabeth's. He's blonde like Cassie herself and tall for fourteen. Carmen is eight with thick brunette curls and eyes the green shade that belongs to new growth. They're orphans who were thrown together in foster placement and ran away after being attacked by monsters one too many times.
It's too late at night to get in tough with camp and Cassie won't leave them out over night so she invites them back to her apartment. Jacob doesn't really trust her she can tell and Carmen clearly goes where Jacob does. However, both kids are clearly hungry and exhausted and it helps that Cassie entered their lives by saving their assess. Carmen falls asleep on Jacob's shoulder on the bus ride home and the older boy carries her all the way in to the apartment.
Cassie gestures for him to set the small girl on the reclining chair. "Can you cook?" she asks quietly. Jacob regards her for a moment and then shakes his head. It's what Cassie expected so she grabs all the extra pillows and blankets she can find and hands them to him. "The couch pulls out," she explains. "Get it set up and I'll make us some dinner." She shrugs towards where Carmen is sleeping. "Don't wake her up. We'll save her something."
She's not a fantastically inspired cook, but she can follow instructions so she makes a very large pot of macaroni and cheese and preps vegetables for a salad. While she does that she makes a rare phone call to Chiron and explains the situation so they can work out a game plan. When the food is ready she hangs up and dishes out several large portions. That proves to be a good move when Jacob inhales his entire bowl in five minutes flat. His eyes wander over to the serving dish and Cassie barely resists rolling her eyes as she spoons out another portion.
When Cassie's just finishing her salad Carmen wanders in looking blurry eyed and groggy. Cassie doesn't actually have more than two kitchen chairs so she gets up and finishes her dinner leaning against the kitchen counter so the younger girl can sit down. Carmen eats a little bit slower than Jacob had but not by much, and that clarifies what Cassie had suspected about the situation these kids are in. It's a situation she's been in before, and she knows that they're tired, scared, and have been on the run for too damn long.
They need help, and as Cassie watches the two kids huddled together at her slightly wobbly kitchen table she knows that she's going to provide it. Gods they look so freaking young Cassie almost has trouble wrapping her head around the fact that roughly a decade ago she was basically their age. A big part of her wonders what her life might have been like if an adult demigod had found her and helped her. On the one hand she might have been safe a little sooner. On the other, she wouldn't have joined up with Luke, Thalia, and Annabeth, the first real friends she had ever had.
With a little prompting from both herself and Jacob Carmen gets through what Cassie deems to be a decent portion of vegetables after the macaroni. Once that's happened Cassie pulls out a large bag of M&Ms and sets it on the table between them. Once the deserts out of the way she gets going on the explanations and the kids take the idea that their missing parents are Greek gods like champs. After everything they've been through, Cassie's pretty sure any explanation is welcome no matter how strange at the outset. Plus it's easier to absorb the younger you are, and as they say seeing is believing.
Demigods see a whole fucking lot. No matter how old they are.
"For tonight, you two can take turns with the shower," she tells them. "I'll find you both something to sleep in and get your clothes washed for the morning. Then tomorrow we'll get you to camp."
"What happens then?" Carmen asks, green eyes wide.
Cassie leans across the counter and speaks to her honestly. "Then you start training." She looks at them both. "I won't promise you that you'll be safe because I don't want to lie to you. You're demigods which means you might not ever be completely safe in your entire life. But you will be trained. You'll learn how to fight."
Jacob regards her with serious grey eyes and Cassie recognizes the look in them. If Annabeth doesn't have a new little brother in this boy Cassie'll voluntarily take Cerberus to obedience training for a month. "So we won't have to run anymore?" It's a question and a calculation all in one.
"No," Cassie tells him. "No you won't have to run anymore."
The night passes without incident which Cassie can testify to in person because she stays up sitting at the kitchen table holding her bow and facing the door the entire time. Three demigods under one roof sends out enough godly aura to make her edgy about monsters and not one of them is what you would call "minor" in power on their own to begin with. For all the battles they've handled and the monsters they've already faced, Jacob and Carmen are still kids.
Carmen is the age Cassie was when she met Luke, Thalia, and Annabeth in Florida and ran away from foster care. Jacob is the same age Cassie was when she went to the Sea of Monster. However, having grown up that way doesn't mean that Cassie likes that other kids are.
Maybe it's reckless. Maybe it's stupid and impulsive that Cassie cares this much.
But there's a pattern she can see between herself and the two kids passed out in her living room, and Cassie is determined to do all she can to break it.
That's why she stays up all night sitting in an uncomfortable kitchen chair with a weapon in her hand while Jacob and Carmen sleep. It's also while she reserves three train tickets to Grand Central instead of just two and calls in sick to work and class at five AM. Well, technically she invokes the almighty power of the family emergency and really that's not even a lie.
At seven she gets up, all of her joints clicking in harmony. She stows her bow in necklace form and goes in to the living room to wake up her guests. When she had first sent them to bed Carmen had been tucked in to Cassie's own bed and Jacob had been on the pull out couch. Now, Carmen is on the pull out and Jacob is sprawled in a nest of cushions on the floor at the side of the couch like a guard dog.
She wakes them up carefully, wary of sporadic fight/flight reflexes and gets all three of them ready to go. Breakfast is cereal and fruit with hot chocolate for this too young to vote and a large mug of black coffee for her. They then take a cab to the train and Carmen and Jacob look some combination of surprised and happy when she gets on board with them. She takes care to seat herself in the aisle where she can see and defend against anything coming at them and Jacobs storm colored gaze takes in her placement and Cassie knows he recognizes the intent behind it. If she hadn't earned their trust before she thinks she's well on the way. The snacks she provides mid trip might seal the deal.
When they pull in to the station Cassie shepherd the kids off of the train and almost directly in to the Delphi Strawberry Company van parked out front. The parking place is one off the benefits afforded by Mist manipulation from the Hecate cabin. Sure enough, when the door opens Cassie sees Mary Whitely, head counselor for Hecate sprawled across the back row of seats. Meg Caffrey is driving and a slightly ashen faced boy from the Hermes cabin who Cassie thinks is names Toby is gripping a map.
After a few words have been exchanged Cassie waves the van off with a smile. Before the door shuts Cassie leaves Carmen with a package of sunflower seeds and a smile and hands Jacob a piece of paper with her phone number written on it. "If you want to talk call me," she tells him. The boy nods and then Cassie steps back and the van is gone.
The next train back to D.C leaves in just under an hour so Cassie thinks she'll use the time to get herself lunch. It's a good plan in theory. In practice, like many of her plans, it doesn't exactly go that way. She gets attacked by a vampusa outside of a nearby Starbucks and she's tired enough that the beast gets closer to doing damage than it should. Cassie isn't hurt but her shirt gets ripped.
Swearing makes her feel marginally better but after running form the vampusa to get it away from the rest of the cheerleading team it had been traveling with, brushing herself free of the monster dust, and fumbling with her jacket for a while to cover the torn fabric, her time gap is pretty much blown. Pieces of purple hair ribbon and the smell of perfume clings to her even after a hurried sponge down in the bathroom and in the end Cassie barely makes her train. Cassie makes a face as she drops in to her seat. She generally tries not to use stereotypes, after all she falls victim to the "dumb blonde" profile all too often. But gods, her experience has made it really freaking hard not to hate cheerleaders.
Exhaustion weighs heavily on her eyelids but Cassie can't make herself comfortable enough to actually sleep and trying just leaves her with the mother of all neck cramps. Hypnos, god of sleep, apparently hates her and at this point in her life Cassie's pissed off enough gods that she can't be bothered to take the time she would need to figure out why. She thinks about giving studying a shot, then remembers that she doesn't actually have her books and ends up staring blankly out the window instead.
All things considered it's almost a miracle that she manages to get off at her stop and not at some random location in Philadelphia.
A cab ride, a harpy attack, and a probable fractured metatarsal that she's too tired to heal later, and Cassie is back at her apartment regarding the stairs like they've mortally offended her. However, stairs are inanimate objects and as such Cassie can't actually kill this particular set of them. At least she thinks it might be difficult. On the other hand they probably won't put up much of a fight.
Or will they?
It seems unlikely but in the life of a demigod you can never be one hundred percent sure.
Is there even a god of stairs?
Cassie is contemplating calling Annabeth to check. It's four o'clock in the afternoon so chances are good that she'll answer. Besides, it seems like she should maybe check it shooting the stairs will mortally offend any powerful cosmic beings. She's reasonably certain it'd be okay but Cassie thinks it'd be a shame to have to deal with a lifetime of twisted ankles just because she couldn't be bothered to make a phone call.
That's when the door opens behind her. Cassie turns to look because she might be exhausted but she isn't suicidally reckless enough to not check when someone with unfamiliar sounding footsteps is walking up behind her and getting closer every second. Unfortunately the quick movement of the turn drops a solid portion of her weight rather suddenly on her damaged foot and sends a startling amount of pain shooting up her leg.
It dawns on her pretty quickly that with her balance as compromised as it is at the moment she'll either need to sit down or fall over. Sitting down seems like it might have a little more dignity so with that in mind she makes a stunted hop backwards and sits on the bottom step of the possibly hostile staircase. She gives herself a moment to see if the stairs are about to attack and counts to five without incident. For their lack of murderous animation the stairs get an appreciative pat on the bannister.
A shadow falls over her and Cassie looks up in to a pair of ernest blue eyes. "Are you alright Ma'am?" asks a male voice.
Those eyes are really distracting and when Cassie's vision focuses correctly around the blur of tiredness she realizes that they're framed with unfairly long dark lashes and set in a pleasantly handsome structure. If apple pie all-American is your thing. It's never really been Cassie's before, but she thinks she could probably be persuaded.
Also... Ma'am?
It takes her a moment to locate her tongue but when she does she finds to her pleasure that she can in fact, remember how to form words. As long as she doesn't have to spell them. If someone asks her to spell right now all bets are off. She thinks for a moment about what she could stay but gives up on that pretty fast and sighs. "Would you believe that my day has been completely fucking insane?"
"Um..." the man rubs a hand against the back of his neck and with some amusement Cassie notes that his ears have turned pink. He looks like he isn't completely sure how to answer. "I don't know. Has it been?" Cassie nods silently and then lets her head fall against the wall. The man shrugs. "Well I'd never accuse a lady of lying."
That gets Cassie to smile a bit. "Nice of you," she comments.
The man ruffles his own blonde hair and smiles back. "I'm sorry I should have introduced myself. I think I just moved in across the hall from you." He extends a hand to her. "I'm Steve."
Suddenly Cassie can place his voice. It had tickled at the back of her mind when he has first spoken but Cassie's mind is operating on very little sleep and not moving at full speed. But she's the daughter of the god of music, in essence sound, and the granddaughter of the god of communication. She recognizes vocal patterns, and this voice was in her ear for hours on end during the Battle of Manhattan.
"I've met you before!" she blurts out. He looks taken aback and Cassie kicks herself. Startling people. Great way to make friends with the new hot neighborhood super soldier. She backtracks quickly. "We'll maybe not like met you met you. I pulled a piece of rebar out of your rib cage at a Shwarma restaurant and then I think I ate some of your chicken kebab."
She extends her hand to shake his. "We didn't really get to names then. I'm Cassie."
Steve's face had cleared as she talked and his hand is warm around hers. "Then I suppose I owe you a thank you. I should have said it then but I guess I was pretty out of it."
He releases her hand and Cassie drops it in to her lap and twists her fingers together. "You had an excuse," she reminds him. "You had three inches of foreign metal in your side. And I was only doing my job."
"You did plenty more than that," he says firmly. "I remember plenty of people in the war- medics who did everything the soldiers did and did it unarmed. You went above and beyond."
Cassie decides that this isn't a good time to tell him that she was armed each and every minute of her medical tour around New York. In fact, she's pretty sure she hasn't so much as tied her shoes unarmed since her tenth birthday. Still, explanations of her weaponry are a long story and she can't tell it without talking about gods and demigods and a million other things that aren't her business to talk about. Instead she meets his eyes and says "I wasn't the only one," and leaves it at that.
She thinks it's enough, and the expression on his face tells her that she's right. The Avengers fought and were given public recognition for it, but Cassie's pretty sure that most of the people who form that public don't actually understand what fighting a battle entails. There's no way that they could. Having aliens invade is traumatic no matter who you are, but unless you actually fight or otherwise see those aliens and the fallout of violence up close, you just don't get the same nightmares.
Too few people get the thanks they deserve for what they do.
Thousands of soldiers, medics, priests, volunteers, and even reporters walk in to war zones and die trying to do something good. Very few of their names were ever recorded and shared with the rest of the world. Hell, Cassie and her friends had fought three wars before being able to vote, and they had done it all completely without the notice of most of the world.
The words that can articulate all of that feel too big and too complicated for Cassie to try to say. Besides, it feels too... personal. Gods it's strange that trying to say something as simple as "thank you" feels as complicated as this.
The silence seems to have gone on for long enough to be awkward and at that moment Cassie realizes that she's blowing the stairs and it's possible that Steve Rogers might want to try to get past but is too polite to tell her to move. "Oh sorry!" she says, gripping the banister and pulling herself to her feet. "Sorry I'll-" Of course, during that brilliant maneuver, the thing that she forgets is that a bone or two in her foot is still broken.
On the bright side Cassie is coordinated enough to catch herself on the closest solid feeling surface and avoid either face planting or falling back on her ass. On the not so bright side, the closest solid feeling surface turns out to be an arm that Rogers throws out to help catch her. Cassie manages to feel both grateful that he bothered and appreciative of the sheer amount of muscle mass suddenly at play beneath her fingers.
"Sorry," Cassie says with a grimace as she shifts her weight to something that resembles balance without putting too much pressure on her broken foot. "Broke a couple toes. All part of my insane day."
There's a small frown throwing a wrinkle between Steve's eyes and in her tiredness Cassie feels a sudden urge to reach out and smooth it with her fingers. A lifetime of curbing ADHD related impulses makes her able to resist, but only just. "Do you break toes... often?"
"Only on insanity days," she tells him. "Thanks for catching me."
He nods gesturing. "Would you like some help on the stairs?" he gestures to them with the arm that Cassie isn't currently using as a support bar. "It's on my way after all."
The offer is made politely and a polite rejection is on the tip of her tongue on principle when Cassie chokes it off. A pulse of dull pain fills her foot and her shoe is starting to feel claustrophobic and tight which probably means her foot is swollen. She's walked off bigger injuries without help before. In fact, she's done heavy combat with a sprained wrist and a broken rib. But right now she really just wants to get to her bed in her apartment and sleep for a minimum of eight hours.
And in complete honesty, she's still not convinced that the stairs won't attack her halfway up. Even if Steve Rogers can't actually help save her from demonic stairs she can at least use him as a human shield so she can get away. Knowing what she knows about him, that seems like the kind of play he might actually be able to get behind.
She finds herself nodding in agreement. "Yeah, thank you. I'll just keep borrowing your arm until we get up to our floor?"
"Sounds like a plan," he agrees and pivots so that they're both facing the bottom step. They begin to hobble up the steps and Cassie mostly watches her feet so that she doesn't trip and pull them both down. She's not normally uncoordinated, but an unplanned fall doesn't feel too far from the norm that day. "Do you need to stop for a minute?" he asks when they've gone two flights in silence.
Cassie shakes herself out of the dreamy thought stream she had been floating in. "What? Oh no I'm good it's just..." she trails off, glancing up at him and then figures she might as well say screw it. "If I trip I'm not going to crash us both in to the floor am I?"
"Uh, no," Steve answers as they start on the next flight of stairs. "My coordination is a little better than normal. I'm hard to knock over by accident. You would probably need to be trying."
That turns over in Cassie's mind. Most demigods had pretty good coordination by default but they also spent between three years and a decade with Chiron or Lupa training to fine tune it. She wonders what it would be like to essentially go to sleep and then wake up with your entire center of gravity completely altered and your sense of balance forever changed. "Huh," she says. "Helpful."
He shrugs one shoulder which Cassie thinks is fairly considerate given that shrugging both might have jolted her sideways given that one of his arms is bearing a fairly large percentage of her body weight. Well, he's Captain America. Super-consideration might have been part of the cocktail. "It can be," he says. He doesn't expand on that any further and Cassie doesn't feel like pushing. She's not even sure she'd know how to push if she wanted to.
Moving slowly but steadily they eventually make it up to the floor where they now both live. By the time they make it to her door Cassie's entire foot feels like it's puffed up to twice it's normal size and she's kind of wishing she'd just bitten the bullet of extra exhaustion and used magic to repair the breaks. Well, hindsight is always twenty-twenty and Cassie has considerably better vision than most people.
Steve steps away as Cassie displaces her weight to her doorframe. "Thanks again for all the help," she tells him, looking up in to his face.
"It was no problem," he says. His hands are in the pocket of his tan leather jacket and he looks like he isn't sure weather he should keep talking or politely excuse himself from the entire conversation. "I'd never leave a dame in trouble."
Cassie pulls a face without thinking about it and quickly moves to apologize. "Sorry," she says. "It's just no one says dame anymore. Not that you don't have a good excuse not to know that. As excuses go yours is pretty unasailable. In this situation 'girl' is more colloquial and 'person' is best unless you're sure the girl your talking to isn't twitchy about feminism and the english language."
That little wrinkle reappears between Steve's eyes and the look on his face is an adorable mix of concerned and confused. "Is that likely to be a problem?"
She shrugs. "Probably not with most people. But this is D.C so some people might be a little more politically sensitive than others."
Steve's shoulders slump and suddenly he looks younger, less like a super soldier, and more like regular guy. He also looks about as tired as Cassie feels. "Sometimes it really hits me all at once how much the world has changed."
He looks so... lost in that moment that Cassie reacts without thinking and reaches out, placing a hand against his elbow. "Hey," she says as gently as she can manage. "If it makes you feel any better, you aren't the only one that feels that way. Six years or sixty-five, almost everyone feels like the world's changing too fast. And let me tell you, it absolutely scares us all shitless. I'm serious. Most of us operate on a low level of panic every single day because we've got a tiny voice screaming in the back of our minds that the entire world is shifting and there's nothing we can do about it. I don't know for sure because I'm not you, but at least in this situation, I think the only difference between us and you is that we've had a little bit more time to get used to it."
For a long moment after she's finished speaking, Cassie thinks it's possible that she's said the absolute worst thing she could have. Then Steve smiles. It's small and hard to make out, but it's there, and it changes his entire face. "It was good to meet you- again." he says. He takes a half a step back and pulls a key out of his pocket to open his front door as Cassie nods in agreement. At the last moment as he's about to step through he turns back to her and inclines his head. "Good night Miss Cassie."
The adage is old fashioned and kind of lovely and makes Cassie smile. To her own shock she feels some of her blood rush up and color her cheeks. She reaches in to her bag to retrieve her key and gets it turned in the lock without looking down at it. Oh yeah, that's godly coordination right there. "Good night Steve," she calls. Then she pulls open her own door and ducks inside, shutting and locking it behind her.
It takes her some time to get ready for bed because moving around is harder than it normally is. She showers and puts on her pajamas of sweatpants and an old tee shirt and brushed her teeth sitting on the edge of her bathtub, mulling over the events of the day in her head. Cassie doesn't know about other people, but she always finds she gets a lot of thinking done while brushing her teeth.
Is it really possible that Freaking Captain America is now her next door neighbor? It doesn't seem like it, but at the same time stranger things have happened in her life. She's not sure weather or not that thought is depressing. She decides not to think about it for now and instead turns her focus to deciding between weather she should risk the liver damage of swallowing a handful of Advil, or risk the more godly damage of taking a sip of nectar.
She settles on the handful of Advil and swallows it with a mouthful of water straight from the sink. Liver damage will kill her slowly and knowing Cassie's life some sort of monster will probably eat her before that's a concern. Nectar on the other hand, might actually be able to melt her alive.
Then limps her way in to the kitchen for an ice pack. Upon arriving at her freezer she realizes that she doesn't actually have a real ice pack. What she does have is a large bag of frozen corn, so that'll have to do. She double wraps the bag first in plastic, and then in a dish towel. There's a better than fifty percent chance that she'll fall asleep with the pack on her foot before it melts enough for her to return it to the ice drawer. She'd rather not wake up to a pool of cold water.
Finally she collapses on to her mattress and flops on her pillows. She grabs one and shoves it under her foot and positions her bag of cold corn so that it can numb her foot. That'll have to be enough until she wakes up and can think clearly.
She's got a lot of things she'll have to figure out tomorrow morning. One of them being her new neighbor situation. Steve Rogers actually seems like a nice guy, but Cassie isn't naive enough to believe that the U.S government is just letting Captain America live in some random apartment building in D.C without people (read: agents) watching him. And for a girl whose existence requires a certain amount of secrecy that's a problem.
That's how she falls asleep. Icing her foot and wondering what bizarre godly manipulation of fate ended up with her in this position where she's trying to keep a low profile and Captain America is living across the hall. She's not good enough at math and doesn't have enough background information to work out what the odds were of this happening, but she has a strong inclination that they must be pretty astronomical.
Cassie's never spent time chatting with the fates, but the last thought that goes through her mind before she falls asleep is to question weather or not this might be their version of attempting to have a sense of humor.
A/N: So what did you guys think? I got some great support so I thought I'd give a second chapter a shot. If you guys like it, I have a rough idea for a third chapter. Did you like Jacob and Carmen? I thought I might try to do some in Steve's perspective to show what Cassie is like from the outside and not inside her head. Besides I think it might be interesting to try to get inside the mind of the Good Captain Rogers. If I try writing that way and it doesn't work I'll shift back to Cassie. Are you guys liking the story so far? Review for me! xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxooxoxoxoxoxxoxoooxxxooxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxox