Disclaimer: Hahahahahahhahahaha... No.
Having Captain America living across the hall presents a wide assortment of new complications for Cassie to deal with. And if there's one girl on the planet who doesn't need new complications in her life it's her. As usual, the universe doesn't really care.
For one thing there's an uptick in traffic on the street. Black SUVs have never been so popular on their street. Which, by the way, seriously? The government wasn't even going to try dodging the cliche? Evidently not.
That doesn't actually bother her too much. Cassie doesn't have a car despite having gotten her license at sixteen. Being able to legally drive helped on quests involving cross country travel which all of them seemed to. Just once Cassie would have liked to have a quest that started at camp and ended somewhere in New Jersey. A quest she could drive to, complete, and drive back all in the same day. Unfortunately, all of the quests she'd ever been involved in had required hauling ass from one cost to the other on ridiculous time constraints.
Anyway, not having a car meant that Cassie didn't have to worry about traffic or parking. If D.C traffic hadn't been invented by a god who was feeling sadistic on the day of invention Cassie doesn't know what was. The presidential motorcade that seems to clog the streets constantly might also be a good contender. The point is Cassie doesn't mind the SHIELD cars so much.
What Cassie minds is the things that those cars represent. Cars needed people, or agents, to drive them. Agents did surveillance and took pictures or video of the people they were supposed to be watching. Cassie already lived in one of the most highly photographed cities in the continental United States. Living in a building that had extra surveillance on it wasn't good.
Living with agents is a particularly tricky concept when the agency in question work for had a building interest in enhanced individuals. Healing powers, photokinesis, audiokinesis, perfect aim, supernatural eye sight, augmented speed, and higher than average strength weren't exactly typical. Cassie isn't sure what kind of scale or profile or whatever is being used to determine what qualifies as "enhanced" but she's pretty sure being three quarters Greek and Roman god would put her on whatever list might exist.
That's not a list she's interested in ever being on. That would require her to give some kind of explanation for her abilities and of her existence. Doing that would mean explaining demigods in general.
Yeah... No thank you. Have a nice day.
There are agents outside pretty often. Cassie maps out their rotations and shifts in her head. She varies her schedule some but not enough to look suspicious. Being random on purpose to a minimal degree is complicated enough to make her head hurt. She cases the area more often and goes further away on her patrol nights.
Always she makes sure that she can watch the agents outside. There's some irony there or something, watching the watchers while they watch her. Well okay, they aren't technically there to watch her, but the end result is the same.
A new woman moves in on the floor above where Cassie and Steve live nearly a month after Steve shows up. She has blonde hair and brown eyes and introduces herself as Kate, a nurse working at GW Hospital. Contrary to popular belief, some demigods do have self-control and Cassie happens to be one of them. It's this self-control that keeps Cassie from verbally calling bullshit.
For one thing Cassie knows what nursing shifts are like and she keeps an eye on her neighbors which means she knows that "Kate's" schedule can't possibly be right for the job she claims to have. For another, Cassie knows both what nurses are paid and how much rent costs in the building they live in. Those two figures don't match. Cassie also knows that nurses have hands chapped and shredded like nothing else because of all of the washing they did. "Kate's" hand when Cassie shakes it is smooth with practical, short fingernails.
All in all, there is no way that "Kate" is actually a nurse. The timing of her moving in and the details she gives are too incongruous. So she's either a SHIELD agent, in witness protection, or a fellow on the run. It's theoretically possible that the woman is some combination of all three but Cassie's money is on her being an agent. Therefore she is not a nurse, and most likely not named Kate.
Avoiding the woman who is not named Kate and not a nurse requires some particular timing on Cassie's part. That's made a little easier to work out given that she's pretty sure the other woman is trying to avoid her to. The agent is living in their building to watch Captain America not Cassie, and Cassie is more than happy to keep life that way. Still, she avoids "Not Nurse Kate" in the hopes of keeping any government profile on her to a minimum.
Cassie also has to start being careful about smaller things, like doing her laundry. Explaining why most of her dirty clothes have blood and dirt on them isn't something Cassie thinks she can do believably more than once or twice. There's being clumsy and then there's straight up unbelievable and that territory isn't as far away as some people might think. She briefly contemplates buying a washer and dryer for her apartment but that kind of appliance is expensive and Cassie's job, scholarship, and stipend don't quite cover that kind of purchase.
So, Cassie starts doing her laundry late at night. It's inconvenient, but it's not like two AM laundry can really screw up her sleep schedule. At this point in her life, Cassie doesn't have a sleep schedule to begin with, so screwing it up would be kind of impossible. She explains it to one of her elderly neighbors by saying it's the only time she has to use the washing machine between classes and her job. Those poor, completely normal people probably think she works for some kind of evil slave driver.
Basically, being Captain America's neighbor pretty much sucks. It makes her have to completely alter her schedule to avoid being detected as non-human by the government. All in all it's a pain in her ass, but moving would be way more of a hassle and Cassie only has a year left before she's done with medical school and can go to work at a hospital far far away.
On the other hand, having Steve Rogers as her next door neighbor is actually really nice. Being from the forties and a general all around good guy makes Steve pretty much her number one pick for neighbor of the year.
He's quiet. There's no loud music and he doesn't throw any parties. Of course, everyone he might want to have a party with is probably either dead or in their nineties. Cassie doesn't have much of a sample to pull from but large parties seem statistically unlikely from a crowd of nonagenarians. Mortal ones anyway, Cassie knows people millennia old who still throw a great party. Of course, those people are gods, nymphs, and titans, etc.
Steve's nice in other ways too. The morning after he first moves in, he knocks on Cassie's door at eight thirty in the morning looking hesitant. In fact, Cassie gets the impression that if she hadn't opened the door as quickly as she had after the quiet knock she had heard while she was in the kitchen, he might have just walked away.
Her foot hasn't healed yet which on one level sucks because it seriously hurts despite the Advil and ice she's used on it. The fact that it's still broken is however, good on a different level because broken bones just don't heal overnight if you're a regular human being. Which is what Cassie's aiming to be in the eyes of everyone who isn't in the know about demigods and her particular flavor of crazy. So in the end it's good that Cassie had decided not to use the light coming in through the window to heal until after her morning coffee.
"Oh," she says. She's a little surprised. Honestly she hadn't expected to see her new neighbor again for a very long time. The last guy who had lived across the hall from her hadn't even introduced himself when Cassie moved in. "Hi. Good morning."
"Good morning," he replies. His hands are in his pockets, but he's standing up straight and his shoulders are set, though relaxed. It's a barely more relaxed version of standing at ease the way the military does and Cassie recognizes the base stance from her time with the legion. She thinks it's possible that Steve doesn't know any other way to carry himself. "I was uh..."
He goes a little pink around his ears as Cassie waits for him to finish his thought. "I was wondering if you needed any help this morning. With your foot and all," he gestures to where Cassie's toes are bare against the hard wood floor. She follows his line of sight and winces. The skin is kind of puffy and the bruising on it has turned a fun rainbow of nasty bluish purple colors tinged with yellow and green.
Cassie realizes that he's still waiting for an answer and Steve shifts uncomfortably. "I didn't mean to intrude on your morning," he says hurriedly. "It just- It seemed like I should offer."
"You're not intruding," Cassie tells him. She tries to shift her weight as she considers but when the bones in her toes start protesting she changes her mind. She quickly scans her mental itinerary. "I was planning on going to the grocery store in a little bit," she says. "A little help going back down the stairs would be nice if you're willing."
The truth is Cassie had been planning to just heal her foot and do her shopping unaided, but Steve's entire expression shifts and clears with her words. Having a job to do, having something be expected from him changes his very being. The effect is like catching a beam of sunshine with a magnifying glass. It's like he's pushed away a weight, or heavy thought in favor of knowing that there is something, however small that he needs to do.
"Of course," he says seriously. Steve then seems to notice that she's wearing leggings and a short sleeved shirt. Her hair is probably a mess too. In short, she doesn't look exactly ready to go anywhere. "Should I come back later? An hour from now?"
Cassie nods. "That might be best. I'm not quite ready to go yet." She pulls her phone from where she'd been storing it in her bras to check the time before stopping to consider the fact that Steve Rogers from the nineteen forties might not know quite how to handle that mentally. Whatever. If history is to be believed the man spent nearly a year on a USO tour full of showgirls and then had an epic romance in the middle of a war. Cassie will bet he's seen more than a bras before. "Want to come back at nine?"
Steve nods and then ducks away back across the hall.
Cassie goes back in to her apartment and takes a quick shower. She changes in to clothes more appropriate for interacting with the general public and tapes together the toes closest to her broken bones. When that's done she has enough time to bring the water back to boiling and make a pot of coffee before Steve knocks on her door again. She pours the coffee in to a travel mug, and then on a whim fills a second one.
She opens the door gingerly using her elbows. "Hi," she greets him. Cassie holds out one of the mugs. "I thought coffee was the least I could do for you acting as a human crutch."
Politeness seems to compel Steve to take the mug regardless of weather or not he actually wants it. He smiles in thanks and they go down the stairs together. They don't really talk because Cassie is focusing on not tripping and Steve seems okay with the silence.
To her surprise he doesn't leave her when they get to the bottom of the stairs and instead offers to help her get to and from the store if she shows him where it is. Cassie figures he's new to the neighborhood so he must not know where things are. He also doesn't seem likely to just look up where to find groceries online so she agrees to the deal.
Steve is unobtrusive as she shops and just leaves her to it as she limps around the store. He does some shopping himself and the store is big enough that they don't run in to each other much. By the time Cassie's done she finds Steve staring blankly at a shelf that seems to be filled with ice cream toppers. "What's Magic Shell?" he asks.
Cassie leans closer to look at the bottle he's talking about. "It's like chocolate sauce," she says. "You put it on ice cream and then it hardens. It kind of melts in your mouth when you eat it. It's good." She throws a bottle of the stuff in to her own cart and then holds another out to him. "You should try some."
Looking somewhat unsure, Steve takes the bottle from her and adds it to his shopping cart. It's considerably more full than Cassie's and she wonders if one of the effects of the serum jacked up his metabolism. Biologically that would probably explain his healing. It seems rude to ask about so instead she turns to the freezer near by and pulls out a tub of mint chip ice cream.
"Do you have a type of ice cream you like?" she asks.
In the end, he settles on a tub of coffee ice cream and the two of them pay and leave. Steve insists on carrying everything back to their building and Cassie protests but doesn't fight him on it. She knows that there are some battles you can't win, and stopping Captain America from being chivalrous feels like one of them. He helps her back up the stairs again and leaves her at her door.
"I'm excited about the ice cream," is his parting comment.
Cassie's foot is healed by that afternoon but Steve still helps her out a couple more times in the two or three weeks that follow, and Cassie thanks him with coffee and by showing him some of the shops around the neighborhood. Once or twice he even gets coffee where she works. They chat about things that don't matter when they pass in the hallways. In general they're friendly, maybe almost friends and Cassie thinks it's probable that he doesn't have many of those.
Time passes in days first, and then weeks, followed by months. She doesn't exactly see Steve often. Her schedule is almost a deliberate effort to defy the definition of sanity and Steve is sometimes gone for whole weeks at a time on missions.
They never exchange phone numbers. For Cassie it's dangerous to use the phone too much no matter how safe Leo might have made it and Steve can't seem to keep a phone for more than a few days without breaking it somehow. Apparently super strength is rough on technology.
Once Cassie shows him how to reset the wifi router in his apartment. She gets help from Travis Stoll over text, but in the end the internet at his place his working. Besides, it makes her not feel guilty when she asks him for help fixing her garbage disposal when it breaks down a week later. He's unfamiliar with the set up but seems to appreciate that she asks. He leaves for a while and comes back with tools and an instruction booklet. Eventually the sink is fixed and the next time Steve comes in to the diner she gives him a free bear claw.
They're neighborly and friendly Cassie settles in to her new equilibrium as well as she can. Though settling in isn't something Cassie is particularly good at. Normally when she gets settled things start going wrong. As improbable as it seems though, that doesn't seem to be happening this time.
In many ways Cassie's life continues on as normal. Her normal anyway. Which in terms of actual normality is probably still strange to a wide portion of the general populous.
Either way, Cassie finishes her third year of medical school with good grades. She gets a second job with flexible hours over the summer to make some extra money. A few times she gets together with her friends at both camps for both missions and social occasions and it's nice to see that she's not the only one whose working on building a normal life.
Leo and Calypso have opened their cafe/autoshop and seem to be doing pretty good business. Piper is in law school in New Rome and Rachel is working on a business degree much to the delight of her father. They plan to open an architecture firm with Annabeth who's working in San Francisco. Of course, Percy is staying in the city with her and working as a diver collecting water and fish samples for local scientists. It's a convenient job when you can breath underwater.
Jason is still doing his work in constructing and maintaining shrines at both camps. It keeps him busy and lets him spend time with Piper for more than half the year. Hazel is starting college and Frank and Reyna are attending part time when they aren't carrying out their duties as praetors.
Cassie's own little brother Will is following in her footsteps and getting ready to take the MCATS and apply for medical school. She gives him a few tips but Will doesn't really need them, and Cassie's incredibly proud. He and Nico are still together and Nico is as darkly clothed and reserved as ever. On closer inspection though, Nico's a bit more friendly and seems happy to be majoring in history with a minor in Italian.
They all meet up at camp for the fourth of July fireworks. While she's there Cassie makes sure to check up on both Jacob and Carmen. It turns out that she was right in her assumptions of their godly parentage. Despite being in different cabins, the two seem to have stayed close and they both seem to be adjusting as well as can be expected from demigods who've gone through what they have.
She goes in to Manhattan again in the middle of August for Percy's twenty-third birthday. They all eat blue chocolate cake with blue frosting and have fun and it's almost like being normal. It's a celebration in the best way because they're all still alive and none of them expected to be. Rosie's getting bigger and Percy is a wonderful big brother. Eventually, he might even get the chance to be a good dad and Cassie can see that Annabeth is thinking the same thing.
The next school year starts and it's Cassie's last year of medical school. They do procedures on cadavers a few times and Cassie understands the technical proceedings involved but she isn't wild on the process. She prefers her patients alive and kicking. Well okay not kicking. If they were kicking they probably wouldn't be her patients. Regardless the classes are interesting.
As a result of all of the work and studying she has to do to pass her end of year, end of medical school exams Cassie spends almost all of her free time studying. She cuts back her patrols some when the ouster activity levels seem low. Her sleep reserves are pretty dangerously low for a month or two. When she almost falls asleep studying in the sun on a park bench she concludes that it might be time to rework her mental schedule to include a bit more time being unconscious.
It's a good move and Cassie also makes sure she spends a little more time outside in the sun with her books. Her father might not be the most involved parent, but sunshine always helps her focus. The adjustments make her feel healthier and stronger and life's pretty good by Cassie's standards until November when the sun starts hiding and winter in Washington D.C comes knocking.
Winters in Washington D.C are, to put it gently, kind of gross. They aren't pretty, snowy white winters for the most part. Instead, they're slushy and wet and grey. Winters in Washington are some of the only factors that can make Cassie wish even briefly that she had stayed to do medical school in New Rome.
At least she's not the only one working crazy hours and sacrificing sleep for a higher goal as they approached the holiday season. Steve seems to be getting busier and busier as the months pass. He's hardly ever actually in his apartment and while Cassie appreciates the reprieve from the agents circling outside, she kind of misses the brief conversations she used to have with Steve as they passed in the hallways.
Cassie doesn't have any thanksgiving plans. Thanksgiving plans are really only possible to make when you have family or close friends who celebrate the holiday and live nearby. Cassie technically happens to have neither. Her friends all have family of their own that they see over the holidays and Cassie doesn't really want to crash in on any of them, despite the fact that they do offer and insist she won't intrude. Crashing a family occasion is still crashing a family occasion.
Will offers to let her come stay with him and his mom and Cassie seriously considers it. From what she knows about Will's mom the woman sounds nice. She's an indie rock singer and the few times they've met she's been pleasant. Still, Cassie's not exactly jazzed about the idea of sitting down to Thanksgiving dinner and trying to explain herself.
Hi. I'm your son's sister through his godly father. Sometimes monsters pop up and try to kill us. And hey! The odds of that happening only get more likely when more than one of us is in the same place! Great dinner! Pass the yams...
That kind of seems like it might kill the conversation a little. Therefore the idea of that dinner is a bit of a non-starter. She tells Will thank you but says she's got too much studying to do, which technically isn't even a lie. It'll be a quiet holiday with just her and her lecture notes.
The amount of studying she does is kind of enormous really, and she doesn't even have to do quite as much as some of her classmates because of her abilities. She can accurately diagnose any kind of medical problem with a touch and in theory heal it just as easily. She knows the exact structure of the human body, what can go wrong, and how they repair.
What she can't do by herself is explain medical treatments on paper or answer test questions about it. For that she has to study the material. Besides, if she wants to be a doctor for patients who aren't demigods or anything other than regular mortals she has to be able to successfully practice mortal medicine.
The Tuesday night (possibly Wednesday morning) before Thanksgiving she literally runs straight in to Steve as she's going in to the building and he's leaving. It feels a lot like walking in to a cement wall. And yes, she's speaking from experience on that comparison. Thankfully Cassie has generally good reflexes and Steve reaches out to help keep her upright as she bounces off of his chest.
Steve's hands are warm on her shoulders and there's a slight tug as one of his fingers catches a bit on a curl of her blonde hair where a few locks of it have escaped her bun. Cassie's been meaning to get a haircut but hasn't had time to get one lately. When free her hair hangs to almost below the end of her ribcage and if she doesn't at least trim it soon the weight will start to hurt her neck.
"Sorry," Steve says as he sets her back with a deliberate gentleness. "That was my fault." He manages a smile but it doesn't quite reach his eyes. It's an expression of politeness not happiness. His large blue eyes seem tired and sad. That's not different from normal though. Steve looks a little bit sad most of the time. His eyes are where he carries the weight of being a man out of time. Tonight, that weight seems to be etched all over his face.
Cassie waves off his apology. "No. You were fine. I was walking preoccupied." Generally, Cassie is one of those people who is completely capable of both walking, talking, and thinking all at the same time. However, at the moment she's less than a month from her midterm exams and roughly that same amount of time from the winter solstice which traditionally is when things start going very badly wrong for demigods the world over.
In theory, Cassie's old enough to have done her service and not worry anymore. Her Camp Half Blood necklace has fifteen beads, and her arm is stamped with bars representing seven years of service in the Roman Legion. She could be out and done, only killing the monsters who come after her and sometimes ferrying wayward demigod children to safety. In practice though, Cassie is able, strong, healthy, and powerful, and the world won't stop going crazy just because Cassie is tired of trying to fix it.
So, no matter how tired she is, Cassie doesn't stop.
She does her homework. She fights and trains. During her time off she checks in with Chiron and Lupa and Rachel and Ella. Sometimes she saves the world with help from her other friends. And, most crucially, Cassie makes sure she organizes her schedule so that she's never doing anything important during auspicious times such as equinoxes, solstices, and godly birthdays.
"Were you thinking about your Thanksgiving plans?" Steve asks.
Cassie sighs. "Not much to think about really." Steve's eyebrows go up and Cassie realizes that that statement might actually require some kind of background information. "It's just always seemed like kind of an odd holiday to me," she explains. "Like 'lets all get together and eat pie because a couple of centuries ago our ancestors accidentally wiped out an indigenous people with smallpox'. It's never really seamed like solid basis for a family party."
Steve's starting to smile a little. "Well hey, I'm Irish. My ancestors imigrated."
"Mine too," Cassie tells him. "Germany, Italy, and Greece." It's true, her great grandparents had moved to the United States from Germany. Her grandmother just so happened to fall for the Roman god Mercury, an affair that had produced her mother who had then had a thing with the Greek god Apollo and now Cassie exists with a great big complicated and generally hard to explain gene pool.
He cocks his head in consideration. "And yet you're blonde." She feels a gentle pressure as one of the locks of hair trapped below Steve's hands is twisted around one of his fingers. The pressure releases a moment later as he shifts his weight back and a little away from her.
"My last name is Morgenstern," she informs him. "The German blood is strong here. Besides, there are blonde residents along the Aegean. They just aren't the stereotype." She doesn't mention that both of the gods in her gene pool who contribute the Greek and Roman aspects are blonde haired and blue eyed most of the time. What Cassie would grow up looking like had never been something she had to ponder all that much.
Steve's smile had grown progressively as she talked and now it's big enough that Cassie can say definitively that it exists. "If you'd grown up where I had no one would have known which neighborhood to put you in. You might have been able to pick."
"If I'd grown up where you had I'd have been mocked and excluded from multiple ethnic groups and then shunned for being a child born out of wedlock to a woman with possible nazi affiliations for being half German and half Italian. Then I'd have been further excluded for being orphaned at age eight," she says practically. These aren't emotional things, just the facts of her existence, and that's how she tells them. Factually.
Unfortunately, that seems to have been just a little too factual for the mood they had been aiming for because Steve's smile falls away. "I'm sorry," he says seriously. The words are completely sincere and Cassie remembers a long ago portion of a history book she had read with Chiron that had mentioned that Steve Rogers had grown up poor and Irish with a single mother in the 1910s when the Irish hadn't been a popular ethnic group.
For that reason, Cassie doesn't blow past the comment like she might with someone else. Not many people are within their rights to apologize for how she grew up and truly mean it. She figures Steve might be one of the few. So instead she just nods. "Yeah. So, not really a fan of national Turkey Day. Besides I'm not a football fan, and I'm pretty sure that's the only other upside of the holiday if you don't have family and or like pie."
Steve pulls a face. "I prefer baseball actually."
Cassie throws him a smile in response. "I hear it's the American pass time."
"Stark told me I should watch the movie Bulldurham," Steve says conversationally. She stares at him for a moment, face blank. Then she starts laughing. "Ah," he says in reaction, rubbing the back of his neck. "I take it that might have been a joke?"
She chokes off her laugh by deliberately biting the inside of her cheek. "No," she says, a few more giggles escaping before she can reign them in. "No it's a good movie. Kevin Costner and Susan Surandan are both in and they're good actors. There's just kind of a lot of sex in it." She giggles a little more at the look on Steve's face. "Maybe start with Field of Dreams."
Steve pulls a notebook out of the pocket of his sweatpants and flips through a couple pages. "Do you have a pen?" he asks. The only one that Cassie has is the one she's using to hold up her bun but she pulls it out anyway and hands it over. Her hair spills as a warm weight down her back and she flicks a few wayward strands behind her shoulders. She notices that Steve's eyes track the movement and Cassie can see him swallow deliberately before he turns his attention back to his notebook. He crosses something out and makes a quick note. He hands her pen back after clicking it shut. "Thanks."
"No problem," Cassie says, sticking the pen in her pocket and then Steve slips sideways and lets her past him in to the building. "What about you?" she asks, durning to face him again once she's though the door. "Do you have Thanksgiving plans?"
Suddenly Steve's smile flashes back across his face like a lightning strike. "Oh yeah," he says. "Classified ones in a country I don't think existed when I was a kid."
Cassie smiles back at him. "Fun," she says. "Well, if you come back at the beginning of Advent needing to be patched up you know where to find me."
"So your problems with Thanksgiving don't extend to Christmas?" Steve asks.
Without being able to see it Cassie knows that her smile has turned a little bit more devilish. Sometimes the Mercury in her blood becomes more obvious, particularly when she's having fun with something. "Hell no," she says. "I'm one hundred percent in favor of presents, candy, and Paganism." With that she turns and takes the stairs at a jog, but Captain America leaves for his Thanksgiving mission in parts unknown with a smile on his face and Cassie thinks that that might just count as her patriotic service for the calendar year.
The first day of Advent dawns with no supersoldiers gracing her hallway, injured or otherwise, but she does notice a government type following her down the street as she makes her way back from the grocery store. She spots them because every other person on the street is reasonably dressed for the weather in down coats and snow boots. The man trailing her is in a suite jacket and loafers with an earwig and a shaved head. Blending in well he is not.
Cassie thinks about shaking him deliberately but happens to know that a normal person wouldn't know how to do something like that. Instead she walks up to her apartment to put away her groceries and then makes her way back downstairs. Once she's back outside she deliberates for a moment before picking the primary black van that's been circling the neighborhood for the last few months and walking up to it.
She knocks twice on the window and waits as the bullet proof glass is rolled down. The agent who had been following her is the one in the passenger seat and another who might be his twin is sitting on the driver's side cradling a large cup of coffee like it's his first born son. And Cassie is Greek. First born sons are a freaking big deal. "Yes?" the agent says.
"You've never followed me before," Cassie says. She figures a preamble is pointless for this conversation. "Do you want something?"
The agent looks confused. "What-"
Cassie rolls her eyes. "I'm a city girl. I know when I'm being followed around. Now, people in black vans have been living here since Captain Rogers became my neighbor. But you've never followed me while I shop before. So, I'm asking, do you want something?"
The agents look at each other and then shrug simultaneously. The agent who had followed her pulls a slightly crumpled looking envelope out of his pocket and hands it to her through the window. "Captain Rogers' assignment is going longer than expected," he says, sounding formal and agent-like. "He asked that this be delivered to you."
She takes the envelope. "Merry Christmas early gentlemen."
The envelope stays in her pocket unopened until she's taken off her coat and shoes and sitting at the end of her bed with the heat on and blasting. Inside is less of a letter and more of a note, written in the neat cursive of a man educated in a 1930s Catholic school on a piece of paper that looks like it was torn out of Steve's journal. She wonders where and when exactly he had the opportunity to write it if he's carrying out a mission in parts unknown.
The note is simple. No more than a few sentences and reads:
Miss Cassie Morgenstern,
Thanksgiving day is an arbitrary date. F.D.R changed it in '39 so more people would shop before Christmas. He thought it would help the depression. It was in the papers. They called it 'Franksgiving'. I remember people were angry about it. Enjoy your Advent.
Sincerely,
Captain Steve Rogers.
Cassie pins the note to her cork board above her desk and looks at it once in a while as she studies for her exams and passes them on December 9th. She gets until the fifteenth to relax and is then called in for the requisite time sensitive mission that has to be completed before the 21st lest the world be obliterated in a storm of mythological power. This year, it involves re-killing Caligula.
She gets to shoot him in the throat and it's viscerally satisfying in a way that a more psychologically healthy person might find questionable but none of Cassie's friends seem to mind given that they all help. Frank and Annabeth help coordinate the whole thing. Percy half-drowns the former emperor using a garden hose and Jason electrocutes him after he's soaked. Piper and Hazel use their combined powers to keep away the powers he had tried to summon.
All in all it's not the hardest thing they've ever done together. In fact, it's not even all that life threateningly difficult in the end. They grab hot cocoa and chat for a bit before they all part ways and everyone is safe and happy at home by the morning of the 22nd.
Steve shows up in the lobby on the same morning looking exhausted and carrying an army duffle bag. They have a brief discussion of their Christmas plans. Something flickers behind Steve's eyes when he says he's visiting a friend the next evening for an early celebration and then going to Manhattan for a party at the Avengers Tower. Cassie doesn't bring up the flicker or push about it because it's almost the holidays and for once everyone she cares about is alive and whole at this point in the year so she's happy and feeling the holiday spirit.
"I'll be in Manhattan too," she says. "The mother of a friend of mine throws a party and invites al of his misfit friends with nowhere to go for Christmas and Christmas Eve. They take the idea of a blue Christmas literally so it's always worth some pictures."
He looks confused. "Blue Christmas?"
The poor man is obviously tired and somewhat befuddled so Cassie takes pity on him. "It's a song," she explains. "If you make it to a store at some point in the next week or two you'll probably hear it. But that's not really the point." Steve isn't really looking less confused so Cassie continues. "My friend's family has a thing about blue food. Well, technically he and his mom do and his stepdad humors them." Yet more proof in Cassie's opinion that Paul possesses patience on a level unknown to mortals and immortals alike. "Anyway, they end up having a lot of blue things. Ornaments, tinsel, wrapping paper, ribbons, bells, pancakes, sugar cookies, cakes, ice cream, pretty much you name it."
The absurdity of the idea seems to appeal to Steve even if he is exhausted and possibly only hearing every third word she's saying. "That sound like it would be fun," he agrees. They start to go their separate ways but then he stops. "The other food isn't blue too is it? Blue turkey and mashed potatoes seem like they might be off putting."
"To my knowledge Sally Jackson has never in her life entertained the idea of serving blue poultry," Cassie reports. "Though I think one year there were blue eggs at breakfast. I've heard of people doing green ones before though so I guess blue isn't really that weird."
Steve looks confused all over again. "Green eggs? Doesn't that mean they've gone bad?"
Cassie grins. "When it's accidental yes. When it's on purpose it's normally in tribute to a man named Doctor Seus. He wrote kids books with weird rhymes and bright colors. You see them a lot when you learn to read." To be fair Cassie hadn't. The Lorax didn't have a latin translation, but Cassie appreciates the books anyway.
After her explanation Steve nods and adds a notation to his journal and then looks up at her as he lifts his back and heads back to his apartment. "You said you're taking the train up on Christmas Eve?" Cassie makes an affirmative noise and he nods at her confirmation. "Would you like to split a cab to the station?" he asks. "It'll be cheaper."
So that's how Cassie ends up sharing a cab and then later a train ride up to New York. Steve sketches and Cassie spends the trip happily catching up on the music she's missed. Her phone self-downloads new stuff so she always has something to listen to. They part ways at the station as Steve heads to the Tower and Cassie takes a cab to the Jackson's apartment.
Christmas is carried off without a hitch and Cassie returns to D.C on the 28th ladened down with several bags containing an assortment of every kind of blue candy in existence. The holiday passes completely free of monster attacks and everyone in attendance considers it a resounding success. She doesn't hear a word from her father or grandfather but she hadn't expected to in the first place. Greek and Roman gods didn't tend to keep track of pagan/Christian mortal holidays.
New Years comes and goes and classes pick back up again a few weeks later. Against all the odds, the world keeps spinning for the first month of the new year. Cassie marks her slander for all relevant dates in 2014 and thinks it's possible she might actually live to see those dates come. She doesn't go so far as to be optimistic about it, that way spells jinxes and sudden bouts of bad luck, but she also isn't necessarily certain that anything coming in the next twelve months will kill her either.
Things are looking pretty solid all the way up to Saint Patrick's Day. On the day of the holiday, she leaves for classes early and sprints home as quickly as possible when they're over in the hopes of avoiding crowds of drunk people. Her plan works fairly well and she's only catcalled twice. One drunk tries to get handsy and Cassie takes great pleasure in breaking two of his fingers before walking away.
"You aren't wearing green," is Steve's only comment when she passes him in the hallway. He's carrying an armload of groceries and is clearly unafraid of the Saint Patrick's Day crowd of drunks. She sees he's made his own concessions to the holiday by wearing olive green military cargo pants and a bottle green tee shirt.
The comment stops her in her tracks and Cassie mutters a swear. "I forgot that was a part of this holiday."
"What did you think it was about?" Steve asks. "It's an Irish holiday. Green is the entire point."
"And here I was thinking it was about alcohol and getting drunk," Cassie said conversationally. Steve shakes his head disparagingly and she raises an eyebrow. "The drunk guys outside agree with me. At least they seemed to around all the catcalling."
The last sentence is almost under her breath and more to herself than it is to Steve. He seems to hear her anyway because his forehead crinkles in a frown. "Are people hassling you?"
She waves the comment away. "It was nothing I couldn't handle." Steve's frown doesn't waver and Cassie is briefly and wildly tempted to tell him about the fingers she had broken earlier. Instead she chokes the words back and searches for something else to say. "So," she manages. "Tell me Fighting Irish, what penalty must I pay for failing to dress correctly for this most auspicious of days?"
There. That doesn't seem to bad. It's casual and joking and not at all insane or Steve-frown provoking. It also doesn't reveal Cassie's frantic mental search to figure out if she's incurred some form of horrific bad luck. Given her life, she really can't afford to be provoking the wrath of the whatever from high atop the thing. Not knowing what pantheon she might be dealing with makes it a good idea to be non-specific.
Steve's face relaxes a bit at her joke so Cassie figures it's had the desired effect. "I think somebody Irish is supposed to pinch you," he says.
Cassie decides to take a page out of her father's book and sighs dramatically. She rolls up her sleeve to reveal the pale tan of her forearm and takes a single skip towards him and. "Do what you must," she says, presenting the bared skin with a flourish. "Though I do ask that you be gentle."
Something flickers lightly behind Steve's eyes and it's an emotion or feeling that Cassie can't quite place. He reaches out wth two fingers and a thumb and gives the skin a gentle pinch. "There," he says. "You're bad luck has been canceled."
"Thank the gods," Cassie mutters. Steve looks at her a little oddly. "Oh come on," she says, moving to cover. "You're telling me there's nothing even a little bit pagan pantheistic about a troop of midgets in green outfits, weird hats, and buckled shoes?"
"You might have a point," Steve concedes. "Happy Saint Patrick's Day."
Cassie returns the sentiment and then ducks back in to her apartment. She spends the rest of the night in back alleys doing patrols. She figures if there's any night monster's might use as feeding-frenzies a day when everyone's drunk might be it. The hunch is proved right when Cassie is confronted with a veritable horde of nasties over the course of the evening. On the bright side, everything is relatively quiet for a few days afterwards.
Life goes on as usual until pretty much April.
Yeah, if Cassie had to pick a date for when everything went wrong she'd say it was in early April.
In early April everything goes to Tartarus in a hand basket. A nice basket to be sure. Maybe on nicely woven out of decorative wicker, but still it's a trip to Tartarus in a vehicle highly inappropriate for such travel.
Because in early April Cassie officially meets Natasha Romanov and her entire apartment building is invaded by secret government types. In early the Winter Soldier tries to kill her and Hydra as an organization comes out of the shadows.
Basically, in Cassie's book early April of 2014 seriously sucks.
A/N: So what did you guys think? The next update will be framed dominantly around the events of CAWS. However, I do plan to make adjustments to the movie plot to include Cassie more and work in Bucky differently from cannon for the rest of my story. I tried to write this in Steve's perspective but it wasn't really working so I went back and changed everything back to Cassie. Maybe I'll write some of Steve's P.O.V some other time or keep it like deleted scenes to show you guys later if you want them. Thank you all so much for the great support you've given me so far! It's been amazing! I wanted to use this chapter to set up the basis for a relationship and I'm interested in what you thought of it. Review for me! xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxooxoxxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxooxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxooxoxoxoxoxoxxoxoxoxxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo