Disclaimer: Nope. I have nothing.
Several things happen all at once when the Winter Soldier appears on the free way.
One of those things is that Jasper Sitwell dies. Cassie doesn't get all that torn up about it. For one thing, the man is you know, a nazi. For another he helped to orchestrate the upcoming genocide of several tens of thousands of people. As far as she's concerned the only really bad thing about Sitwell's death is that they loose a potential resource for getting in to SHIELD.
The other problem with Sitwell's death is that the Winter Soldier is on top of their car and has just shattered the windshield with his metal arm. He's also demonstrated that that arm is capable of flinging a fully grown man nearly thirty yards. And in to the path of an oncoming semi-truck. Ouch.
Once Sitwell's been thrown from the car Natasha dives in to the front seat to cover Steve with her own body and Cassie admires the dedication as she herself drops to the floor of the car. Sam tries to maintain control of the steering wheel and Steve thinks quickly and hits the emergency break. The sudden stop throws the Winter Soldier off the top of their car and in to the road before them.
The man flips in the air and skids down the pavement, using his metal arm to create friction. The metal fingertips gouge furrows in the asphalt and send sparks flying out in to the air. Dark hair hangs in mailed curtains around his face which is covered from the eyes down with a black metal mask. It's disturbingly like a gag and Cassie has to shake that thought away because she's about to have to fight this man and a gag implies a repression of free will, an imprisonment.
Cassie can fight off an enemy combatant. She can use maximum force and have no regrets as long as she survives. Fighting a prisoner who doesn't have another choice is different.
The doctor in Cassie wonders about the prosthetic limb. She wonders how exactly it attaches, and weather the process is painful. In the back of her mind she wants to know if he feels phantom sensation in a limb that's no longer there. She wonders if it responds with a cognitive delay, if he has a full range of motion, and how much sensation he has in the fingers.
If she's being honest, the doctor in her isn't the only one interested. If she's about to go in to combat those same questions will help her assess her enemy. The question of weather the metal arm is a definitive weakness or a strength could be crucial.
There's one thing she's absolutely sure of though. No matter what else that arm is, it's somehow completely and inarguably wrong. Somehow it's disjointed, like it has nothing to do with the person attached to it. Cassie suddenly knows without a doubt that the if she could see the attachment sight, it wouldn't be clean and neat the way a normal surgical amputation and prosthetic replacement sight would. It's more likely to be a mess of knotted scar tissue than anything else.
When all of those thoughts come together in her head like puzzle pieces Cassie feels like she's been jolted with a high voltage cattle prod. And given that she's been on the receiving end of an electric spear before, she knows what she's talking about. In that moment, she's almost definitively certain that whatever the Winter Soldier is, he's not a person who's here because he's made any kind of choice.
The world just got more complicated. Again. Because why wouldn't it?
Cassie doesn't have time to ponder or share her new insight though, because at that moment she notices that they're still stopped in the middle of a lane on a busy highway with cars streaming all around them. More importantly, one of the other vehicles in their lane isn't swerving at all. This is a problem. Cassie is just going to classify it like that because she doesn't know what else to call a situation involving a truck bearing down on them at sixty miles per hour.
She opens her mouth to shout a warning but she's too late, and the truck slams in to them, crushing in the back of their vehicle. The momentum of the truck behind them bears the car forwards straight in to the Winter Soldier. Sam tries desperately to swerve away from the weight of the truck behind them but there's nothing he can do and in moments they'll be between a metaphorical rock and hard place.
At the last moment, the Winter Soldier launches himself up, flipping high over the front of their car. Cassie isn't sure if that's better or worse. On the one hand, they don't have a cyborg assassin coming through their windshield. On the other hand, said cyborg assassin is now behind them, squarely in their blindspot, and now they have no idea where he is or what he might be doing.
When a metal arm comes shooting through the sunroom and yanks the steering wheel clean out of the dashboard, Cassie settles on worse. Definitely worse.
However, Cassie isn't the lay down and die type. Especially on a day when she isn't carrying drachma or any other form of money she can use to bribe Charon the ferryman to take her over the River Styx. That particular river goddess also happens to have it out for Cassie and her siblings given the fact that Apollo happened to royally piss her off a few years ago.
Besides, Cassie can't remember who exactly makes up the panel of judgement these days, and that actually matters more than you might think when you're a demigod. For example, if King Minos is on the jury she's screwed. But, if Shakespeare's judging Cassie thinks she probably has a decent shot at a fair trial. It helps when your older brother is judging your case. Even if it's only your half-brother and your birthdays are four centuries apart.
The point is, Cassie is very unprepared to die today, so she'll have to take action. It seems obvious that the first step will be to figure out a way to get out of this car. Preferably, to a spot with some decent cover.
She's just trying to figure out how to do it when Steve's arm wraps around her waist and yanks her up over the seat divider and in to his chest. Natasha is pinned to his other side and he's got his shield braced between them and the passenger door. A moment later Sam is yanked sideways on top of her and Cassie feels all of the air leave her lungs at the impact.
"Hold on!" Steve shouts. Cassie can feel the muscles of his chest coil underneath her and she realizes he's about to throw his body weight against the door to break it open. Cassie realizes that and wraps one hand around his shoulder in a grip that would have broken bone on a normal person. Her other hand she snakes free from their mass of limbs and holds out with her palm against the door, pushing a concussive sound wave against it at the same time Steve rams forward.
The magic comes more easily than it might any other time thanks to the wave of adrenaline flooding through her body. It also helps that Cassie's not actually creating a wave. The amount of noise taking place in the air around her makes that unnecessary. What she's actually doing is redirecting a few existing waves. In simple terms, it's the difference between aiming a hose, and digging a well.
The door gives out against her and Steve's combined efforts and the four of them are thrown several yards, skidding along the pavement with only a sheet of metal between them and unforgiving asphalt. The experience reminds Cassie both of sledding (which she's never done) and of riding cross country on the back of a wild boar (which she has).
Sam rolls away first and the absence of his weight let's Cassie and Natasha spring to their feet. Verticality allows them all to see that the Winer Soldier is now approaching them with a really just absurdly large gun. Like really the size of the weapon is just excessive. Surely a smaller one would have worked just as well? Apparently not.
Steve to his credit reacts incredibly quickly and shoves Natasha sideways so that she's out of the line of fire. He moves towards Cassie to do the same but given the scope and probable range of the weapon their enemy has Cassie knows he won't have time.
To her back and side is the highway guardrail. Steve is on her other side and the Winter Soldier is advancing from the front. Below her feet is solid concrete leaving only one direction left for her to travel. Up.
Just as the Winter Soldier fires Cassie launches her entire body towards the sky, putting every ounce of power she can in to the movement. The height she reaches is impressive, even by demigod standards and the ground rapidly falls away beneath her. From her brief vantage point reveals that Sam and Natasha have taken cover positions behind separate cars. Steve seems to have been thrown clear by the blast of the excessively large weapon which Cassie can now identify as an RPG.
Her landing sight is compromised by a swerving truck and Cassie is forced to land on top of it. The good news about that is that she doesn't fall quite as far. The bad news is that she's unprepared for the impact and doesn't have quite enough time to distribute her weight and land correctly. She rolls as best she can and manages not to slap over the edge of the truck. It's a near thing though and the vehicle is still swerving crazily. The thing begins to tip and Cassie is forced to either throw herself free or be crushed by several tons of rolling steel and cargo.
The second harsh landing in so many minutes forces Cassie to take cover for a moment so that the sunlight can heal the torn cartilage and reverse the sprain in her knees and ankles. She's managed to land behind a flipped car which will provide some decent cover against most arms fire. That's a very good thing because her ears are picking up the sound of at least four machine guns being fired.
Apparently the Winter Soldier had brought back up. Of course he had. Why wouldn't he really?
She uses the time she needs to heal to try to come up with a game plan. She has her bow and quiver but she has to admit she doesn't particularly like the odds of her favored weapon against multiple machine guns and an RPG. Her armor and medical supplies are still in her backpack which has miraculously managed to stay on her back. Her armor is high-grade but she's never tested it against this kind of artillery and this doesn't feel like the best moment to try.
Natasha is up and moving, launching herself across several lanes of swerving traffic and over the side of the overpass. Cassie trusts she'll land on her feet without issue simply because Nat isn't suicidal so she wouldn't rick the jump if she didn't have a plan. Sam is sill pinned down nearly twenty feet away and Cassie can't see Steve from her position.
The Winter Soldier positions himself at the railing and swaps out his RPG for a specially modified sniper rifle. He aims it and scans the ground below with a precision that makes Cassie nervous. The other enemy combatants arrange themselves in a ring facing outwards to serve as defensive cover while the Soldier takes his shots. Several rounds rain down around her and Cassie forces herself to remain calm and count the period between deluges. The time it takes the men to reload.
While she counts, she fishes a flask of Nectar out of her bag and takes a careful sip. The godly drink burns through her, finalizing the healing in her legs, sharpening her senses, and leaving the taste of cinnamon and chocolate in her mouth. That'll have to be enough for whatever she does next.
A new shower of bullets peppers the metal body work of the car she's using for cover and Cassie casts about her, scrambling for anything that she can use as a weapon. Her bow won't be the most effective n this situation and she doesn't have a knife ready. She can't get to a gun right now so it'll have to be something else.
Right now her greatest advantage is the sun bearing down on them all from above, charging Cassie's abilities to full potency as the beams soak in to every inch of exposed skin. The heat also pours back up from the black pavement Cassie's sitting on from the light the asphalts absorbed throughout the day. The sunshine is also reflected all around, bouncing and multiplying off of every fragment of glass and broken mirror.
Cassie smiles grimly. This... this is something she can use.
The bullets pause again and Cassie acts immediately. Her window is here, she probably won't get another, and this one is closing rather quickly. What she does next also breaks approximately all of the top rules of demigoddom. These rules include: Try not to do things that increase your odds of dying. Don't use your powers against mortals. Don't draw attention to the fact that you are anything more than normal around mortals.
Yeah.
Cassie examines those rules. She admires them appreciatively. Then she packs them up in a box with some nice bubble wrap and tissue paper. The box is then sent to a far away storage facility Cassie doesn't have the address to via snail mail.
Those rules don't matter when balanced against the lives of herself, her friends, and all of the innocent mortals who will die here on this bridge if the Winter Soldier and his team are permitted to keep firing the way they have been. As far as Cassie is concerned, these people are the enemy. Men who will open fire on innocent civilians with no regard for the fact that they might kill someone other than their target, who relish in violence, who kill because somehow they enjoy it are just as monstrous as any beast from Tartarus in her book.
Once Cassie's on her feet she figures she has moments to do something before she's hit with enough bullets to turn her in to swiss cheese. She holds her hand out, palm up and focuses a beam of light in to the face of one of the enemy. Once he's hit the ground she flips her hand sideways and redirects the beam in to the eyes of his friend. They're both out, blinded and burned, possibly permanently.
Two down.
The other three start to realize that she's the cause of the incapacitation that has claimed their team members and begin to train their weapons on her. She uses the moment they take to aim to dive for new cover and lands in a crouch. A piece of glass slices the skin in her hand and Cassie looks down just as a literal spark flickers across the gash, stitching it shut as it goes.
The sight of the spark in conjunction with the sight of a flipped fuel truck maybe thirty feet away triggers her next idea. She's not as gifted with machinery as Leo is, and she doesn't have the same level of smarts that Annabeth does, but even she knows that fuel and most other chemicals are pretty highly flammable if they're exposed to enough heat. Heat is something Cassie can make happen.
She extends her arm with her palm held rigidly in the direction of the fuel that's already spilled out on to the road. Beams of sunshine seam to coalesce and focus, bending to obey her will, creating a high intensity beam. Her mind flashes back to a long ago lesson with Chiron during which her teacher had shown her how to set a piece of black paper on fire by focusing the sun in one spot using a magnifying glass.
Cassie fixes her mind on the memory now. She imagines her own palm as the lens and the fuel as the piece of paper. Heat builds through her fingers and spreads up her hand and through the rest of her arm. A half glance down reveals that her very veins have begun to glow. The heat builds and builds to such an intensity that Cassie thinks it either has to break or make her combust.
Then she feels the built up intensity roll down her arm like a wave, exploding out through her palm and launching at the overturned fuel truck like a missile of light. It strikes it's target perfectly. Cassie is a child of Apollo after all. When she wants to hit something, she doesn't generally miss.
The explosion the truck makes is loud enough and close enough that Cassie flattens herself to the ground and covers her head with her arms. A glance over at Sam reveals that he's done the same, reacting like a trained soldier. The enemies were closer, and not quite so lucky. One is thrown far away by the blast and slams hard in to the ground without getting back up. The remaining two are engulfed in a huge ball of flame.
Cassie doesn't know if what she's done is fatal. At the moment she isn't sure she cares. Maybe it'll hit her later and she'll feel guilt. Right now she's reacting instinctively to being under attack. Combat doesn't have many halfway options. Either you hit as hard as you can, or you don't. It just so happens that Cassie can hit differently than most people can.
The Winter Soldier doesn't turn to attack which Cassie had been worried about. Apparently she and Sam aren't high on his target list. They're just in the way between him and his target.
Sam and Cassie both leap forwards and Sam takes down the final remaining guard with military precision and confiscates his rifle. He loads and relies the weapon, shifting the scope to his preferences. Cassie is suddenly very glad that Steve and Natasha had decided to trust this man.
Cassie performs a three-sixty spin to reassess the situation. Between her and Sam they've cleared the overpass and gained the technical advantage of the higher ground. From here they have a good view of the scene unfolding below them. They also both have clear lines of sight and the chance that they might hit someone on their side while they try to help is minimized. Of course, that particular advantage is helped by the fact that their side only has two other people on it.
Is that still an advantage?
Cassie is willing to mark the issue TBD until she sees how this plays out.
Given that the whole things ends with them all arrested but alive, Cassie's willing to call it a draw. In the "That Sucked" column she has the fact that they're all arrested, Natasha might be bleeding out three feet away and Cassie's handcuffed so she can't help, and whatever Steve saw when the Winter Soldier's mask was removed has him seriously shaken. The mental pain he is in almost screams at her. It doesn't help that they're so cramped in the back of their prison truck that her side is actually crushed against his. Physical proximity to that much pain mental or otherwise isn't something she can ignore.
However, she also has a "Could Be Worse Column." There she has the fact that she can get out of her handcuffs fairly easily, her back pack is within a yard of her, and not once during the process of being taken captive did anyone take her picture, fingerprints, or name. Also, there was the fact that they were indeed alive.
See this was where a pessimist would add a very grim for now. Cassie sees that avenue and chooses not to go there.
"It was him," Steve is saying, having explained that the Winter Soldier is somehow also his long presumed dead childhood best friend Bucky Barnes. "He looked right at me, and he didn't even know me." The grief in his voice is palpable and Cassie wishes that her hands were free, or that she could come up with the right words to provide some comfort.
"How is that even possible?" Sam asks. "That was like seventy years ago."
Well, Cassie can think of a few theoretical ways, but they all involve the doors of death and godly interference. Neither of those avenues would have included brain washing, cognitive reconditioning, and metal prosthetic limbs. Okay actually maybe they would have. What had happened to Jason and Percy at Hera's hands four years ago was actually pretty close. However, the gods tended to avoid interfering, and generally steered clear of Nazis.
Steve thankfully has a different explanation. "Zola," he says bitterly, naming the Hydra scientist who designed the Insight targeting algorithm. "Bucky's whole unit was captured in '43. Zola experimented on them. Whatever he did must have helped Bucky survive the fall." Steve looks up, a look of dawning horror on his face. "Zola must have found him."
"None of that's your fault Steve," Natasha says from her seat next to Sam. Her words are starting to slur a little and she sounds exhausted. Cassie maps her vitals with mounting concern and commits her attention to escaping her handcuffs.
Steve doesn't seem to believe her. He looks down at the floor and says "even when I had nothing I had Bucky." His voice is quiet but it fills the entire space. Cassie is good at discerning vocalized emotion, and Steve's may as well be shouting his grief in to her ear. Below that though, Cassie can feel his anger. It's like a cold multi-edged weapon directed at Hydra, Bucky, SHIELD, and most plainly himself. It's a weapon with no safe edge to grasp but Cassie thinks that someone will have to eventually.
She wonders who it will be.
Just then Sam seems to realize Natasha's condition. "We need to get a doctor here," he says urgently, addressing one of the two armed guards in the back of the truck with them. "If we don't get pressure on that she's gonna bleed out here in the back of the truck."
What happens next is something Cassie doesn't have an immediate explanation for. One of the guards knocks out the other one with what looks to Cassie like a high powered taser. Then they remove their helmet with a relived exhalation and Cassie can just recognize the woman as Agent Hill, the one who had retrieved Nick Fury from the hospital and helped him disappear. "That thing was squeezing my brain," she comments casually. Then her eyes land on Sam and Cassie. "Who are you people?"
"I'm air support," Sam says. He gestured his head towards Cassie. "Pretty sure she's either medical or some kind of heavy hitter."
Cassie lifts a hand and waves. "Hi," she says. The metal loop of her handcuffs is still around the wrist of the hand she waved with and it jingles some with the movement. Her other hand is free but she had to dislocate her thumb to get the cuffs off and she hasn't popped the joint back in yet. "I'm Cassie, we met at the hospital. I helped operate on your boss."
Hill nods once in recognition. "Right."
Cassie gives her a benign smile as she pops her thumb back in to place and pulls her other hand free, tossing the cuffs in to the corner. Once she's free she moves across the van to Natasha and inspects the gun shot wound. It's a clean entry and exit and the bullet doesn't seem to have had the time to fragment before impact so that's good. It also managed to hit a fairly major blood supply and probably hurts like hell which is less good.
"Can you do anything about that?" Steve asks her as Hill undoes his and Sam's handcuffs with a complicated looking pass key. Cassie looks at the restraints and is glad hers were just standard metal. Sometimes being underestimated is handy.
She nods once in answer to his question. "I can heal it," she confirms. "But the angle is off. It won't work for what I'll have to do." She looks over at Hill. "Get her out of these?" Hill complies and Cassie takes a steadying breath, lining her hand up over the injury.
"What are you going to do?" Hill demands. Sam is holding her back pack out to her, having retrieved it from where the other guard had stashed it away. Cassie takes it from him but puts it over her shoulder unopened. Steve says and does nothing, just watches her.
"Heal her," Cassie says tersely. "It's going to hurt," she warns Natasha because it seems like a crucial detail to have. "But it's the fastest way and we don't have a lot of time." With that she lays her palm over the injury and does something she doesn't do very often, even when she's healing. She hums a hymn, a hymn in honor of her father, asking for his help. Immediately Cassie's palm warms, the temperature in the car goes up by at least five degrees and Natasha grunts in pain as the skin and muscle begins to knit back together.
When it's done Cassie sits back, panting. She's expended a lot of magical force today and healing a major injury on someone else is never easy. It's easier to destroy than it is to create or fix. Besides, they're inside a dark van with no sunlight which makes godly power harder for Cassie to access. Natasha looks dazed and on the edge of sleep but the wound is closed and Cassie knows that the internal damage has been repaired.
Cassie sighs as Sam and Hill move to check on Natasha. "She's okay," Cassie tells them. "Just sleeping. Right now I'm not strong enough to heal the blood loss. Her body needs time to recharge." Actually, Cassie wouldn't say 'no' to a nice trip to the land of the unconscious right now herself.
Natasha stays awake long enough for them to implement Hill's back up plan and switch vehicles. The dark van they get in to has very slightly nicer seating and they aren't handcuffed to anything which Cassie considers improvement. The transfer, covert and brief as it is also gets her enough sunlight for her previously dislocated thumb to fully pop back in to place and for the joint to repair.
They drive for maybe twenty minutes or so before the van stops and they all climb out. Natasha looks better if a little too pale and exhausted. Steve helps her out of the van with Sam following a hand hovering at Nat's side to catch her in case she passes out. Cassie is the last one out and is unashamed to admit that her legs practically collapse after the first step and she's damn close to face planting. She needs food, sleep, water, and possibly an ambrosia square before she fights or heals anyone or anything else.
Steve catches her before she can fall with his hands around her waist. With his palms spread they cover most of her ribcage, creating a warm pressure through her shirt. "Thanks," she murmurs. She looks up at him and the look on his face is one of concern. Cassie kind of wants to reach up and pat his cheek and tell him not to waste time worrying about her but they don't have time before Hill shepherds them in to the structure through a side entrance.
Her first impression of the space is that everything is dark and dingy and not just slightly damp. The second thing she realizes is that the structure is staffed. A man with grey hair and classes is running towards him and Cassie clarifies him as a doctor type. "What have we got?" he asks Hill.
"Healed through and through GSW," Hill reports. "Fixed it on the way here but she lost a lot of blood before that. Probably a pint."
"Maybe two," Sam chips in.
The doctor nods and gestures to Natasha who is still visibly gaunt and blood spattered. "I'll take her."
"Cassie too," Steve says. He'd stuck close by since they were brought inside and at this point his right arm has nearly wrapped around her waist. Cassie's a little too far out of it to check but she's pretty sure he's supporting the majority of her weight.
She opens her mouth to protest on principle but Hill is still forging ahead of them at a pace somewhere between a walk and a run. "They'll want to see him first."
Gears start to turn in Cassie's head as she puts the pieces together. Someone with a strategic mind arranged and prepared to execute their extraction. That someone had thought far enough ahead to arrange a safe house fully stocked with trained medical personnel. By the time Hill pushes aside a thick plastic curtain, Cassie isn't at all surprised to see Nick Fury behind it, lying in a hospital bed, eyepatch firmly in place.
The man stares them all down, taking them in almost impassively. Then in an almost bored voice he drawls out "Well it's about damn time."
After a moment of stunned silence Natasha allows herself to be steered in to a seat nearby as the doctor they had encountered on their way in starts a blood transfusion. The two of them have the only chairs in the vicinity so Cassie stays standing. She doesn't think Fury would appreciate it if she sat on the end of his hospital bed and the floor in here is as suspiciously damp as it is everywhere else.
"Lacerated spinal column, cracked sternum, shattered collar bone," Fury lists. "Perforated liver-"
"You forgot the level three concussion," Cassie points out, arms crossed over her chest. "I'm betting that's one mother of a headache."
Fury regards her for a moment with his single working eye and then nods. The man hadn't seemed at all surprised or taken aback by her presence but Cassie thinks it's just possible that she's the one thing in the room that he hand't been predicting. Nick Fury is just exceedingly calm and a very good liar.
The doctor working on Natasha chips in at that point. "Don't forget your collapsed lung."
Well... Cassie hadn't been going to bring it up. Everything else was kind of abuse enough without throwing in another malfunctioning major organ. "Let's not forget that," Fury says dryly. Personally, Cassie would be impressed if he could forget that. There's playing through the pain and then there's lung collapse. The two things do not belong in the same category. "Otherwise I'm good."
"They cut you open," Natasha protests. "Your heart stopped."
"No it didn't," Cassie says. "It slowed down, almost less than one beat per minute but it didn't stop." She looks at Fury with an praising frown. "What chemical did you use exactly?" she asks. "It's been bugging me. Some kind of tetrodotoxin?"
Hill, Natasha, and Steve are all looking at her with varying degrees of shock in their expressions. "You knew?" Hill splutters. "How-"
"I was in the operating room," Cassie says with a shrug. "I know when my patients die and he wasn't dead. Very very close yeah. But not actually ya know," she makes a chopping motion across her throat. "I figured you must have moved him from the morgue. Hospitals guard everything except the dead bodies. But he had to make it look close enough to fool a heart monitor," she continues. "A few chemicals mimic death but none of them are exactly safe." She levels her gaze at Fury. "So? What was it?"
He regards her steadily with a renewed interest. "Tetrodotoxin B," he says. "Slows the pulse to one beat a minute. Banner developed it for stress." Cassie nods. That would explain why she's never heard of the particular compound before. "Didn't work so great for him," Fury continues. "But we found uses for it."
"Why all the secrecy?" Steve asks. "Why not just tell us." His blue eyes settle on her and Cassie reads the message there. 'Why didn't you tell me.'
It's Hill who answers though. "The attempt on the directors life had to look successful."
Fury looks like he would shrug if it didn't hurt so much. "They can't kill you if you're already dead. 'Sides I wasn't sure who to trust."
Cassie supposes there's some solid logic to that and she takes the silence after the remark as her opportunity to speak. "I didn't know what was going on when it happened," she says quietly, flicking her eyes towards Steve. "All I knew was that someone had broken in to your apartment and killed a friend of yours. Then when he faked his own death I figured the reason was wrapped up in whatever was going on, and I wanted to know what it was."
"Curiosity killed the cat," Fury says neutrally from his bed. Cassie just shrugs. She's told the truth as best she can for now. Her explanation on everything for Steve later will now just have to include another chapter if he's angry that she's kept this to herself.
The break they take before they get down to planning is exactly as long as it takes for Natasha to finish her blood transfusion, Fury to get another round of meds, and for them all to eat something. Cassie isn't sure what she's presented can actually be called food, so lacking is it in anything resembling flavor, but she chews and swallows it anyway. Right now food is nothing more than fuel to keep going. She'd love to be able to squeeze in a nap, even twenty minutes would be better than nothing, but it doesn't seem likely she'll be getting it.
Hill and Fury lay out their mission and their plan. They explain how they'll have to link and take down the carriers before Insight's programming starts systematically killing off everyone that SHIELD or Hydra has ever identified as different or threatening. As someone who can be classified as both different and threatening to SHIELD and or Hydra, Cassie has a personal issue with that.
Besides, genocide is ya know. Bad. Generally speaking.
Steve is quiet through the whole thing until Fury mentions trying to salvage some of what's left of SHIELD. Then he shuts down the conversation completely. "SHIELD, Hydra," he insists, cutting off Fury's protests. "It all goes." There's no arguing with him and Cassie briefly wonders how this coldly determined man occupies the same being as the man who had blushed and stumbled over asking her out for coffee. Apparently she's discovered the cross-section between what makes Captain America feel determined to do the right thing no matter the costs, and what just seriously pisses off Steve Rogers.
It's a lethal combination and at this point Steve is less moveable than a really stubborn boulder. The fact that Fury starts looking between them all for backup isn't terribly surprising. What is surprising is that Hill is the first person to speak out in Steve's favor. "He's right," she says simply.
Natasha simply sits back with her arms crossed over her chest. When it's Sam's turn to answer he just shrugs with a shake of his head. "Hey don't look at me," he says gesturing at Steve. "I do what he does just slower."
Cassie sits forwards. "Well I'm in," she says. "From everything you've said this sounds like it could get ugly. People are going to get hurt. You'll need medical. Besides," she gives Steve a small smile. "I have a coffee date to get to. It would suck if I was the only one alive to make it."
Fury lets out a long sigh. "Well," he says. Then he makes eye contact with Steve. "It looks like you're giving the orders Captain."
The only reaction Steve makes is to slightly tighten his jaw. He shifts his shoulders and it's like he's physically taking on the weight of command, not just in terms of technicality. Cassie's seen what that weight does to people, she's even felt it personally. She's seen it on Percy, Jason, Annabeth, Reyna, and Frank and she's born it before. She knows the scars it leaves and the way it can crush a person.
It's that knowledge that makes Cassie follow Steve when he goes outside to the top of the dam. The fact that it is a dam makes her smile, makes her think about Thalia's laugh and Percy's smile, and Zoe's blatant confusion. Of course, that incident had also involved being attacked by skeleton soldiers in the cafeteria and fighting back with burritos before being whisked away by living bronze statues.
Okay so her life is weird.
She makes sure to make noise as she walks so that Steve won't be surprised. He seems to be deep in thought so Cassie doesn't push him to talk just yet. She just sits perched on the edge of the railing over the water, her feet don't quite touch the ground and she fights the urge to kick them back and forth like a little kid.
"My mom died when I was twenty," he says eventually. "I buried her next to my dad. We didn't have any money for a big funeral so it was just me and the local priest." Cassie turns to face him and waits for him to keep going. Steve shrugs. "I haven't visited. Since waking up in this weird fake room of Fury's I haven't gone."
Cassie shifts slightly, but doesn't really go to close the distance between them. "I cremated my mom," she says. "We were living in Florida at the time so I took her ashes out in a boat and put them in the ocean." She shrugs. "I didn't have much of a funeral for her either. It was just me. My grandmother was already dead so..." she doesn't know how to finish so she just lets herself trail off.
"Did doing something make you feel better?" he asks, looking over at her. His eyes are huge, blue, and compelling and Cassie feels like she hats answer honestly.
She shakes her head. "No," she says. "No not really. I was eight, and alone, and my mom was dead. The only thing that helps something like that is time to grieve, and I didn't get that for a while."
Steve tips his head, regarding her. "How long?" he asks.
At that Cassie really does knock her feet together. "Years," she says finally.
Steve nods. "Bucky offered to let me come stay with him and his family after her funeral," he says. It's a change of subject but Cassie rolls with it. "I told him I could get by on my own," Steve remembers. "He said-" he cuts himself off and then forges ahead. "He said that just because I could, it didn't mean I always had to. He said he was with me until the end of the line."
When he meets her eyes his look clouded over with emotion that might just spill over and this time Cassie doesn't check her impulse to reach out. She slides along the railing until she's almost directly in front of him and takes one of his hands between both of hers. His fingers are warm and his hand is clenched in a rigid claw. Keeping the pressure light but firm, Cassie rubs against the tensed muscles, trying to relax them.
A moment later Steve adjusts, shaking his hand free and placing it on the far side of her. His knuckles are white against the railing and Cassie shifts her hands to lay over his, wrapping her fingers over his wrists. She can't lean back because the only thing behind her is the railing, and Steve fills all other space. She's not really stuck, she can shift sideways and away, Steve's left her that option. She doesn't want to take it.
"We're not there yet," Steve says lowly. His voice is rough and there's an almost strained intensity to his words. It's like he's desperate willing her to understand what he's telling her but isn't sure how to articulate it. "I thought we'd passed it but we haven't. He's alive and it turns out the end of the line hasn't happened and I can't-"
"Shhh..." Cassie says softly, rubbing her thumbs in small sweeps over the backs of his hands. She doesn't say that it's okay. It's not. Maybe right now nothing is. Moving slowly, she moves one hand carefully up his arm and behind his neck. She allows her thumb to continue it's light back and forth motion and applies a bit more pressure when Steve begins to lean further in to her touch.
His head tips gradually sideways in to her hand until his jaw and cheek are pressed against her palm and she's bearing the weight of his head. She leans forwards a little more and Steve inclines his head until their foreheads are touching. A few moments later Cassie realizes that she's been humming. It's a lullaby she hasn't thought about for a long time, not since her youngest brother Austin had first arrived at camp. He'd been homesick and six years younger than her and Cassie had hummed the song to get him to sleep. To this day she isn't sure where or when she first heard it.
"We'll do what we have to do," Cassie tells him quietly when words seem like they might be necessary again. "Whatever that turns out to be. And if your friend is still alive then.." she waits until he's pulled his head back and is making eye contact with her. He needs to know that she means what she says and she knows not everyone hears emotion and truth the way that she does. For some people, they have to see to believe. "If your friend is alive then getting him back is one of the things we have to do."
Steve closes his eyes and swallows and rests his head back against her forehead. The contact lasts for one heartbeat, then two. "Okay," he says. He nods and says again more strongly. "Okay." Then he straightens and looks down at her. "Then that's what we have to do."
Cassie regards him for a moment, taking in the look on his face. Something has shifted there. He's completely serious and now he's committed. It's possible Cassie's started a fire she won't be able to put out. Then she nods once. That's all she needs to do.
Then she slides off the railing. It brings her closer to Steve without either of them taking a step and he doesn't back up. She reaches her hands up to his shoulders and levers herself up on to her tip toes, pressing a kiss against his cheek. Steve bends obligingly to help meet her lack of height, extending the contact. A shuddery breath stirs her hair against the back of her neck and sends a shiver down her spine as Steve exhales.
A moment later her toes begin to protest and Cassie has to drop back on to the flats of her feet. One of Steve's hands has migrated from the railing to cradle her spine and it serves as a barrier between her back and the railing. "We're going to have to have a conversation soon," he tells her. His eyes are wide and a deep, dark, blue.
"I know," Cassie tells him as she hears the sound of the door to the top of the dam opens. The sound of the tread, the fact that the tread makes a sound at all, tells her that it's Sam who's here. Chances are he's not there to talk to her. "But not right now. Later," she inclines her head in the direction Sam is coming from. "I think Sam might have something he wants to say."
Steve straightens up the rest of the way with a sigh that's so small she can barely see it. His posture shifts, tensing and his hand falls away from her spine. The lack of heat is noticeable and Cassie wishes the universe wasn't quite so hell bent on interrupting her life. She still manages to offer Steve a small smile and flips her braid back over her shoulder. "I'll leave you two to talk."
She ducks away and offers Sam a nod in acknowledgement as she passes. He returns the gesture, summing her up with new eyes. It doesn't take a genius to know that he views her differently after seeing her blow up that truck yesterday. It's possible he isn't even completely sure what she saw being a mortal and all. What he saw will depend on how much of the sight he might or might not have.
As the day and their possibly suicidal plan progresses Cassie doesn't see much of Steve. To be fair, they're both a little busy. He's got a full schedule what with robbing the Smithsonian, infiltrating the Trisk, and fighting his way on to the carriers. Oh, and avoiding death via brainwashed best friend turned killer soviet assassin. For her part, Cassie is more than occupied treating the waves of wounded who begin to arrive at the aid station she establishes with the ambulances she called for the second Steve's announcement stops echoing over the PA system.
He makes a good speech. It's damn compelling and if Cassie hadn't already been team SHIELD she would have been after that.
However, pretty words don't make the battles they lead to any less bloody.
The injured arrive and Cassie does her best to treat them as efficiently as possible. She doesn't use magic for all but the most hopeless of cases and that's a good thing because there are far too many witnesses here. She doesn't do anything drastic like repairing broken limbs or reattaching amputation, but once or twice she uses her abilities to manage bleeding, check vitals, and generally keep people alive.
Time passes, only barely trackable for Cassie because of the movement of the sun across the sky. Her hands are bloody and she has no idea what might have ended up on her clothes. She also doesn't have an earpiece (she couldn't concentrate with it in) so the only way she can track the progress of the battle is through the booms and explosions coming from the Trisk. She knows when the carriers fall, and she assumes that that might be the end of it. Hopefully the flood of injuries will be slowing soon and Cassie will be able to seek out Sam, Steve, and Natasha to make sure that they're still alright.
Well okay alright might not be exactly accurate.
In this case Cassie is willing to accept "passably intact".
Just not dead, alright?
That's all she wants.
The sudden cold chill running down her back like a bucket of ice water tells her she might not get what she wants. When Cassie cares about people she can normally tell when they've been injured or killed. That propensity increases with proximity and everyone she's currently worried about is less than a mile away.
The chill intensifies, persisting with every passing second, digging in to her like claws. The cold starts to feel like ice shards being driven in beneath her skin and the pain is almost enough to cripple her. Soon Cassie can't take it anymore and she once more allows herself to dissolve in to a beam of light with no real destination in mind. She'll just have to trust that the icy pain radiating under her skin will help guide her towards wherever she needs to be.
Besides, at this point she's almost willing to pray to her father if letting the sun absorb in to the spaces between her cells will help melt the ice out of her blood.
When Cassie solidifies again she's standing on a muddy riverbank beside the Potomac. In the distance she can see the smoking remains of a carrier floating in the river. Up close, she sees the Winter Soldier, standing waist deep in water. He's completely unarmed, and in his metal hand he's gripping the shoulder strap of an old fashioned blue and red uniform.
He's unmasked, staring at Cassie with an unreadable expression. His eyes are wide and blue and very very human. He doesn't look at all surprised by Cassie's sudden appearance and seems to scan her for weapons, assessing her completely within seconds.
Cassie holds her body completely still in a way that only a girl who has spent time being hunted and assessed by predators possibly can. Eventually, the Soldier must conclude that despite her surprise entrance on to the scene, she doesn't pose an immediate threat because he begins to approach. He strides through the water, apparently not caring about all of the muck and pollutants in the Potomac.
Cassie's spent long enough around Percy to know all about it.
More than she wanted to actually.
Don't ask Percy about balanced water ecosystems.
Steve is being dragged along behind the Winter Soldier and seems to be unconscious. Cassie sees that his head is lolling to the side and that his face is bloody. The chill in her body has intensified to a singular point and Cassie realizes that whatever has happened here, Steve must be pretty badly hurt.
And apparently the Winter Soldier is playing the gallant rescuer.
The Soldier reaches the riverbank and pulls Steve up and out after him. Then he dumps Steve down in front of her and looks up at her without a word. Then Cassie decides that it doesn't matter. If he was going to kill her he would have done it already.
She drops to her knees in the mud and examines the blood running down Steve's face. She places her hands on his head, fanning her fingers and cradling his head. Her senses scan over his body and she winces. He's not in good shape. There's a fracture in his skull, a concussion, a break in his collar bone, four shattered ribs in his chest, and enough water in his lungs to fill a pool. His pulse is slow and ragged and dangerously close to stopping.
Cassie doesn't even hesitate before sending a pulse of magic through her fingers and in to his skull. His mouth falls open and a stream of water and evaporated mist pours outwards as her magic clears Steve's lungs. The cut near his eye seals itself and through her powers Cassie knows that two chipped teeth have reformed in his gums as the skull fracture knits back together.
She sends a second pulse of magic forwards in to his chest and literally feels his heart jump under her hands as her power makes contact with the bruised internal organs. A new wave of fractures and breaks shift to set themselves correctly. They don't heal all the way though and Cassie knows it's because she's too tired to do anything more. Her magic has tapped out and Steve's own healing abilities will have to do the rest.
The healing has gone as far as it can and Cassie scans him with her magic to record his vitals again. She sits back with a sigh of relief and shifts Steve's still tender cranium in to her lap. Her fingers flicker through his hair, trying to comb out the mud and leaving streaks of blood in her wake. A glance at her hands reveal that they're covered in blood. With a start she realizes that she doesn't know whose it is. She probably should have worn gloves but she hadn't had time.
Then she looks up.
The Winter Soldier is still standing there, as still as a statue, stating down at her. His eyes go from her muddy face, to her bloody hands, to Steve's face, and then down to his chest. Cassie realizes a moment later that he's actually counting breaths. He dragged Steve from the river and now he's scanning his vitals. Whatever happened here, this man is somehow invested in keeping Steve alive.
Given that he tried to kill them all less than twenty-four hours ago, that's something like a serious attitude change.
When Barnes notes that Cassie's looking at him he gives a curt nod and spins on his heel. His movement is soundless, and eerily like a ghost. Cassie has met ghosts before. She can't say she's liked most of them very much.
"He'll want to look for you," Cassie blurts out. She isn't sure why she says it, but if Barnes has recognized his best friend enough to remember that Steve is his best friend, then maybe there's something worth saying. Barnes freezes at the sound of her voice, and slowly turns back to face her. His face is still blank but he hasn't disappeared yet so Cassie keeps speaking. "I'm going to help him," she says. "I said I would."
One of Barnes' eyebrows goes up almost imperceptibly. It's the first human reaction Cassie has ever seen from this man and she latch on to it. She scans this change in expression and reads it carefully. His eyes flick from her to Steve again and then looks towards the road as a knew ambulance screams by. Then he looks back at her.
Cassie suddenly realizes that he's asking if he can go. He's asking permission. Her heart breaks a little. This man would probably be able to kill er easily but he's so used to taking orders that instead he's asking for new orders.
She realizes that he's been living by other people's wills for too long. She won't subject him to hers. "He'll need to heal," Cassie tells him. "With this many injuries it'll probably take at least a week." She holds his eyes the entire time as she speaks. "That's how long you get to vanish if you want to before we start looking. I suggest you use the time to figure some things out. Do what you want. But be ready for us to find you eventually. Steve's missed you for too long to let you go."
Barnes stares at her for a moment and then gives her a sharp nod. He's heard her terms and found them acceptable. He turns to leave again and then Cassie remembers something. "There's a wall on you at the Smithsonian," she states. "Maybe you should start there."
A moment passes in a heartbeat and Barnes turns to face her again. Then he does something that honestly shocks her. He comes to military attention, and snaps her a crisp, formal salute.
She blinks.
When her eyes open again, Bucky Barnes, the Winter Soldier, is gone.
It's just her with blood on her hands, and Steve's head in her lap.
A/N: So what do you think? The next chapter is finally going to involve the rest of Cassie's explanation. Shits about to get seriously complicated for all of them. That should be fun right? Review for me! Tell me what you thought! xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo