Disclaimer: I own literally nothing aside from Cassie. Everything else that any of you can recognize from absolutely anywhere else belongs to a different person who is not me. Those people (whoever they may be) should not sue me because I have no money and am not getting paid. However, if anyone would like to hire me and pay me money shouldn't be shy about reaching out and letting me know.
*Nervous laughter*
But no, seriously.
After Percy's birthday dinner Cassie feels like her relationship with Steve changes. The change is subtle, and she doesn't think its bad but it does happen and they don't talk about it. There isn't any kind of big dramatic signal, it just feels like things have lifted, shifted over, and settled on slightly different ground, like a wave on the shore as the tide comes in.
It takes Cassie a little while to figure out what this shift actually is, and once she's got it figured out it's another week or two before the feeling settles with her comfortably. The relationship is somehow more intimate now. After meeting her friends, her family really, Steve knows her better than he did before. He's got access to a part of her life that she hadn't exactly kept blocked off before, but hadn't really shared openly either.
Cassie decides that someday she might just have to figure out how to know Steve that way too. Unfortunately that's a little easier said than done owing to the fact that Steve's best friend has severe memory impairment issues and everyone else he grew up with is dead. Gods that's a horrible way to think about things. It's a thought that makes Cassie cringe at herself and automatically mentally retreat to rethink.
Still, life goes on and Cassie dives a little deeper in to her job as the Avengers team gains a little more traction and Steve's own job becomes more demanding and time consuming again. The thing is, once Cassie has her office set up and all of the paperwork figured out their often isn't much to do. Being an emergency doctor for a superhero team sounds exciting but the work is very much feast or famine. There are only serious injuries for her to deal with when something potentially world ending happens. Thankfully those world ending events don't actually happen every other week.
Instead of just sitting around twiddling her thumbs (a pastime that no demigod Cassie's ever met has ever been good at or able to stick with for longer than about ten minutes at once) Cassie starts looking for a project to tackle. The suggestion Stark made when he recruited her of curing cancer is plenty noble but not actually an area of study Cassie can make much progress in. She'll leave cancer to the oncologists.
The answer in her quest for a project comes to her one evening after watching Steve, Bucky, Thor, and Dr. Banner clear about six plates a piece after returning from a mission in Bolivia. Bucky hadn't even been on the mission for Zeus' sake, he was just that hungry. Thor was a god and he was eating, and Banner apparently burned calories like no tomorrow as the Hulk.
Apparently their in mission food supply had run low and it had turned in to a fairly serious problem. That's all Cassie has to hear before deciding that what she ought to do next is figure out a fix for the issue. The most obvious solution is to design some kind of protein bar, but working out the right substances to form in to a portable bar that also contain the right calorie to protein ratio is a tricky enough problem to occupy her time.
Working out this new problem in a lab also gives her more reasons to recruit Bucky in to getting to know her, and for her to get to know him. She needs a test subject with an advanced metabolism she can monitor to see if her formula and its variations are working. Surprisingly, Barnes is actually a pretty good sport about it and the grimaces and other faces of displeasure he pulls over flavor and consistency of her various attempts are incredibly humanizing to her.
She manages to wheedle out the fact that Barnes has a sweet tooth that's existed since before the Archduke got shot. The fact comes with a story Bucky half remembers and shares hesitantly about he and Steve pooling whatever pocket money they could scrounge together as kids and using it to buy chocolate bars they could share. When it's clear that she's a quiet and also willing audience Barnes warms a little about talking on the subject and tells another story about using lemonade powder from army K-Rations and mixing it with snow to make an army version of lemon sorbet.
After that Cassie starts keeping jars of lollipops and other candies around in her office and lab. It's good for a few laughs and typical doctor jokes and gets her some extra good will from the people who work for her. Plus it's incredible what you can find out about someone from their candy and junk food preferences.
Most people knew that Natasha Romanov could absolutely kick ass, but how many people on the planet were aware that the same woman could power through a handful of Wearther's Original Caramels waiting for her to stitch up a gash in Barton's thigh? Not many probably. In his own turn Barton eats about half a bowl of Reases Pieces by throwing them at the ceiling and catching them in his mouth while she treats Natasha for a bullet wound. Apparently he used to do it in his down time at the circus before he joined SHIELD.
Pepper comes down to visit her and leaves with a package of Fruit Snacks which she admits to Cassie are the same type her dad used to fill her lunch box with just after her mother had died before he figured out how to actually feed his children. Even Tony forgets some of his still low boiling anger with her when she offers up a large bowl of Skittles. He acerbically throws out a comment about dividing these packages in to color order and eating them one at a time while he was bored during lectures at MIT.
Banner on the other hand absently plows through a box of Junior Mints while he reads through some of the research Cassie's compiled on super soldier metabolisms and looks genuinely surprised when his fingers scrape the cardboard at the bottom of the box. Apparently the Other Guy finds the minty flavor calming and Banner has a week spot for all things chocolate.
Thor has a strange predisposition for blue raspberry lollipops that has Cassie genuinely puzzled for a few days. She has to say, after all of her previous experiences with Asgardians and Olympians in the past, she should stop being surprised by quirks. However, watching the Norse god of thunder wrestle with opening a DumDum wrapper without tearing it before happily depositing the candy in his mouth is one of the strangest things she's ever seen. The mystery gets solved when Jane Foster lights up at the sight of the same candy during one of her visits and it hits Cassie like a punch to the gut to realize that a god is eating a certain type of candy because his mortal girlfriend likes it.
It leaves her wondering if her father ever cared about her mother that much. Somehow she doesn't think so. That kind of hapless cutesy devotion didn't leave room for abandonment. Cassie isn't sure if that makes her own family history better or worse.
Sam Wilson is a fan of sour candies and Cassie wins his undying support by introducing him to Warheads. She's pretty sure the amusement he gets form the name doesn't hurt. Apparently he's loved sour stuff since childhood as a result of too much southern sweet tea. James Rhodes surprises her by admitting that he has a weakness for all things gummy. A single conversational poke has him telling her that this weakness was discovered during his wife's first pregnancy. Rhodes had shown solidarity by sampling each of her food cravings for himself.
Steve possesses a deep and abiding love for chocolate in almost any farm that he's kept under wraps from the general public and when Cassie finds out about it she doesn't hesitate to take shameless advantage of the opportunities it provides. One night she drags him to a fondue place Pepper recommends. The restaurant operates by having a flaming pot at each place filled with the ordered substance. They start with bread and meat dipped in to cheese. Then at desert Cassie orders a chocolate fondue pot desert that comes with fruit and marshmallows. Steve looks at her like she's just as much a goddess as her aunt is when he sees what they're concluding their meal with. It's a good night, filled with happy conversation, unchecked laughter, and wandering kisses that taste like chocolate.
Figuring out which sweet treat is Bucky's favorite takes longer though. It becomes a sort of auxiliary project to Cassie's endeavors with the protein bars and she experiments by having a different type of candy on display each time he visits. Idly she charts the varying results.
It almost looks like she's struck gold with the introduction of Snickers minis. Twix bars are a similar near miss and Kit Kat bars seem like they're nearly a winner. Nerds are treated with puzzled skepticism and Barnes looks at licorice and Twizzlers with an expression of thinly veiled disgust. He makes the mistake of reading the ingredients printed on a package of gummy bears and then refuses to even touch them.
Finally Cassie throws up her hands in near defeat and buys a large box of Fun Dip. This time she doesn't even bother waiting for Barnes to poke around to find the candy and instead throws it at him as soon as he steps through the doorway of her office. He catch it before the package can hit him in the face and examines it with an intensity that probably isn't warranted for the situation.
"What is this?" He asks it in a way that makes it seem like he might be looking at a newly discovered species. To a guy like him, this kind of candy might qualify as pretty much exactly that. Cassie wouldn't know.
Cassie shrugs. "Basically pure sugar with some other stuff thrown in," she says. "It's not ideal but I've run through most of the offers at the candy shop by now and I am determined to figure out what your favorite will be. Eat it for science."
Barnes looks at her skeptically but slowly sits in her spare office chair and pops open the seal on the package. He examines the contents warily and then looks back at her like he's trying to work out if this might be the moment she tries to poison him. Then he licks a finger, coats it in the sticky powder, and pops it in to his mouth and sucks contemplatively. "I can't decide," he says slowly after he's rolled the flavor across his tongue for a moment. "If this is an exact embodiment of what I fought for, or a perfect example of why the rest of the world seems to hate us."
The moment expands like stretched salt water taffy for several long silent seconds... then Cassie bursts out laughing. Bucky doesn't join her verbally, but he does duck his head and by angling her own Cassie can see that one side of his mouth is twitching up and down like he wants to smile and doesn't know quite what to do with the impulse. He quietly goes back to his Fun Dip and Cassie leaves the room for a moment. When she comes back Bucky is gone and the plastic package is empty. After that Cassie keeps that particular candy on hand in her top desk drawer and Bucky never outright asks for it but the packages deplete in number steadily after his visits.
In the end she gets the protein bars formulated and manages to steadily improve their flavor to the point where they're no worse in taste than the average Quest Bar. An offhand comment about childhood starvation in third world countries as Banner tells a story about the work he did in India sets Cassie's wheels spinning and the next project she decides on is tweaking the formula for easier mass production to be distributed by FEMA and the Red Cross. She presents the idea to Pepper who approves it sight unseen for a fantastic P.R opportunity and the chance to do some good before flying it by Tony who can't argue. Banner also agrees to help her with this part and donates his time with no argument.
Spending more time with Banner and getting to know the man better leads Cassie to her next project and results in her digging up all of her medical text books to find the sections on radiation poisoning and multiple personality and intermittent explosive disorder. She also gets on the phone to Piper who studied psychology pretty extensively in college and a few days later has a secondary stack of books and information to sort through. She also trawls the internet and contacts some old professors and walks away with pile after pile of printed information. For good measure, she goes through the entirety of SHIELD's medical files on Banner.
Cassie catches Banner looking at her questioningly a few times as she types away at her computer in one of their shared lab spaces, but he never says anything. He probably knows what she's doing, so either he thinks it would be pointless to try to stop her, or he's hoping she might be able to find what no one else has yet. Cassie doesn't bring it up with him. She doesn't know if her search will turn up what she wants it to, and until she's a bit more sure she refuses to hold up false hope.
All of the information on Hulk is a lot to comb through and Cassie does it in small, hopefully more digestible pieces. The main problem in this situation is that over half of the Hulk file has to do with Gamma radiation and nuclear physics, neither of which are areas Cassie actually have any training in. It becomes painfully clear about two days in to trying to muddle through everything that the only way she'll make any real progress on helping Banner is by changing that fact.
So, with a determination only half-bloods who kept themselves alive with nothing but a gritty determination to not die about eighty percent of the time, Cassie dives in to the world of nuclear physics. She starts from the beginning and moves slowly and methodically through mountain upon mountain of specialized obscure knowledge. Honestly thank all the gods in all the cultures for online classes and instructional videos on YouTube.
Over the days and weeks and eventually months that follow Cassie works together a patchy and loosely stitched together knowledge base and moves forwards to more advanced concepts and problems. In some ways it feels like being back in medical school. In some ways it probably is. Cassie has in essence started herself on a whole separate PhD program with no actual instructors.
In late October, Steve comes back to the apartment fairly late at night after another trip to Washington D.C he hadn't been able to get out of. A lot of the time dealing with the U.S government was left to him, Sam, or Rhodes. Since the downfall of SHIELD Natasha had been helping on that front as well. It meant that even when Steve wasn't on a mission he sometimes had to spend days at a time away from home, and almost without fail he came back spitting mad and bitterly frustrated with bureaucracy.
This time is no exception and Cassie's still awake and at home which she isn't always between late hours and monster patrols. Bucky is at the gym trying to exhaust himself in to nightmare free sleep which is a problem management strategy Cassie will try dealing with some other time. Anyway, she'd taken advantage of the emptiness to lay out a complex pattern of notes and texts around her on the living room and she sits with her back to the base of the couch. She's lost track of time and her hair is being held in it's bun with a yellow highlighter as she takes notes on a separate piece of paper using a cheep mechanical pencil.
"Hi," Steve greets tiredly, towing off his shoes near the door and picking his way carefully across to the couch to avoid stepping on her notes which Cassie appreciates. He crawls over the back of the couch where there's more floor space and flops exhaustedly behind her. She hears him take a deep breath and the pillows shift as he adjusts.
'Hey," Cassie greats without turning around. What she does do is reach behind her with the hand she isn't using to take notes and pat his knee. From the texture she can tell that he's still in the suite he had on during is meeting and must not have changed before coming back. "I'll turn back in to a good girlfriend and ask how everything went in like two minutes I promise, but if I stop looking at this now it's going to stop making sense and I'll have to start the whole chapter over again."
More rustling sounds as Steve shifts again. This newest shift brings him closer to her and Cassie feels his feet settle on the floor on either side of her. Warm fingers brush the back of her neck and the shell of her ear and a moment later her hair falls free of it's bun as Steve removes the highlighter and sets it aside. "Take your time," he murmurs quietly, fiddling with the ends of her hair.
Steve doesn't lie and doesn't bullshit around how he feels or what he wants so Cassie takes his words at their face value and pats his knee again before refocusing her whole attention on her notes. The minutes tick by quietly with Steve's nimble fingers sifting gently through the knots he finds in the gold strands that normally rest near the bottom of her ribcage. The only sounds are both of they breathing, the quiet rustle of pages turning, and the even quieter scratch of her pencil led over paper.
Soon enough she's done with her section and shuts her book with a satisfied snap. She arches forward and yawns, twisting her neck and extending her arms. Several of her joints pop audibly and she turns a little ways to smile in Steve's direction. He smiles back at her and his fingers migrate from her hair to her shoulders, digging in and carefully and methodically working through a series of tension knots that have built up over the last several hours.
Cassie makes a contented humming noise in the back of her throat and leans back in to his touch. She lets her neck relax and her head lolls back on to one of his knees. "All done?" Steve asks quietly. His voice is low and soft right next to her ear and the sound sends pleasant shivers up and down her spine.
Slowly Cassie nods and turns her head to look up at him. "All done," she confirms. "For now anyway. There'll be more to do tomorrow. Pretty soon I think I'll just have to suck it up and ask Stark for help getting through this. I'm not an idiot, but I can't teach myself PhD level nuclear physics in any real way. Not at the level I need to know it to understand that." She gestures vaguely at the overstuffed Hulk file in all of it's sticky note covered glory.
In a movement that displays the kind of casual strength that could be frightening Steve locks his arms gently but firmly near her arms and ribs and lifts her up off the floor and up to the couch so that she's sitting across his lap. A few more of her joints voice their objections at the change in position but Cassie ignores that in favor of situation herself against Steve's chest, reaching up with practiced hands to undo the tie still secured around Steve's throat. Once it's gone she undoes the stop few buttons of his collared shirt too and helps him shift to pull off his suite jacket.
Once the constricting clothes are removed the reduction to Steve's retained tension level is actually palpable. He sighs, relaxing further in to the couch cushions and Cassie resettles herself to comply with the position change. Steve sighs and reaches up, cradling her cheek in one hand, she turns her face a little in to his palm and a small smile pulls at Steve's mouth.
"What's funny?" Cassie asks, smiling in response to his calmed demeanor.
Steve's smile becomes full, certain, and true and he brushes his thumb over a space on her cheekbone. "Put it this way... a smoother guy would be able to spin a line about how you've managed to highlight what's really important."
Cassie lifts her own fingers to her cheek. It's not like she'll be able to feel the ink on her skin if it's already dried but she makes the gesture on instinct. "Oh gods, how bad?"
Instead of answering her question Steve brushes her hand away to replace it with his own and shakes his head in gentle reproach. He's looking at her with an expression Cassie's never quite seen before and doesn't know exactly how to name. It's a big look, deep and bottomless and Cassie feels like in that moment she could fall in to his eyes and happily drown there. "Beautiful," he corrects. "Not bad. And for what it's worth, I think what you're doing here is amazing. And not just what you're doing right now for Banner, what you've already done for the team. For Bucky, for me, for everyone. It's..." for a moment he seems lost for words, seemingly uncomprehending with wonder over her entire presence in his life at this moment. "It's incredible."
Well really.
After that Cassie really has no other choice but to kiss him.
Her boyfriend has been gone and now he's back and sitting there beneath her warm and moving towards relaxed and saying the most wonderful things he possibly could. And he's looking up at her like she's the answer to every question he can think of to ask in the entire universe and he can't believe someone like her is actually real. Cassie can't see her own face, but she hopes her expression is mirroring his as nearly as possible.
Steve's mouth is the perfect combination of firm and soft against hers and he sits up at the first contact to hold her more firmly against him. Cassie opens her mouth against his and Steve takes the movement for the invitation it is as the kiss deepens. In her turn Cassie takes advantage of the new space between Steve and the back of the couch and shifts to wrap her legs securely around his waist. The movement makes her shirt ride up and Steve's hands slide down to her hips and up again over the warm bare skin that stretched over her stomach and ribcage, pushing the fabric up and carelessly out of the way.
Dimly, Cassie thinks she can hear one of the seams rip and Steve murmurs a half formed apology against her mouth. Cassie shakes her head and breaks away slightly to regain her breath and press a line of kisses over his jaw and back along the line of it towards the small patch of sensitive skin below his ear lobe, hopefully expressing without words exactly how little she cares about a ripped shirt right now. Steve seems to understand because a flurry of kisses lands on her collar bone moving towards her shoulder as Steve noses the strap of her tank top out of the way and his breath fans out over her skin before he guides her mouth back to his.
An incalculable amount of time later, they are actually forced to separate far enough to draw more than one deep breath in a row. There is a dim light spreading through the room, illuminating everything in a buttery glow and Steve's eyes are a darker blue than Cassie has ever seen them, the color of his irises almost swallowed by his pupils. The moment is the most perfect one Cassie has ever lived, and being surrounded in that feeling is maybe what prompts Cassie to voice the words that have been lying unspoken on her tongue for a while.
"I love you." The words are said so softly that they only barely have sound at all, but in the silence of the room and how close they are together she knows that Steve can hear each and every syllable. It's possible that they are the most important words she's ever said, or will ever say in her entire life.
Steve's eyes shut, letting the words wash over him. Then he's kissing her again. Her cheeks, her nose, her eyelids, her lips. He's frantic, and tender, and so achingly loving that no matter whether he returns the words or not, Cassie knows what this moment means. Then he lays his forehead against hers and they're presses so closely together that Cassie can feel the sweep of Steve's eyelashes against her cheeks. "I love you," he replies.
Cassie is smiling, and isn't actually shocked to feel a slight wetness against her cheeks. She doesn't know if those tears are hers or his but the shared flood of emotions they've just embarked on means it probably doesn't matter that much. "Oh good," Cassie breathes without thinking before brushing her thumbs under his eyes. "Because I've never said that before and I didn't really plan it but we both do this stuff where we nearly die a lot and I just felt it right now so-"
The rest of her words are lost to Steve's next kiss, and that's probably a good thing because her mouth had been running without a filter there and needed to stop. Then Steve backs away slightly. "Could you say it again?" he asks hoarsely.
Her next smile opens and spreads against his mouth. "I love you," she repeats.
And for the next several hours, those word and each other's names are the only things either of them say. They say them in to warm space and in the gaps between kisses and they say so completely without words. If this is what being in love feels like... well... Cassie might owe Aphrodite a bit of a retroactive apology.
That year is one of the first times Cassie can ever remember having fun on Halloween. Through some small miracle she actually manages to get the entire Avengers roster to agree to participate. The job is made easier by the fact that she manages to get Pepper and Natasha on board by bringing up free candy and the potentially abundant blackmail material this night represents.
Pepper accomplishes things in broad strokes which in this case means that she makes attendance mandatory for all those who work at Stark Tower and this gauntness the presence of Jane which attaches Darcy and Thor to the event. It also means that Tony will be there because when Cassie has learned that when it comes to that man, Pepper will forever and always get what she wants. Banner and Rhodes are thus roped in for Stark Supervision, a job the two have learned to split and delegate with practice.
Natasha, ever the super spy, goes for a more targeted and individualized approach. To this day Cassie will never know what is said in the flurries of Russian the woman directs at Bucky and Barton in turn, but in the end both men have given in. Barton did so after approximately six seconds with a gusty sigh, evidently recognizing the signs of an argument he will not win. Bucky takes a little longer, and Cassie likes to think she helps things along by mentioning that she'll be asking Rachel to meet up with them over the course of the night. Cassie's father rescinded the ancient rules on oracle dating a while ago after a brief stint of being mortal and not liking the complexity of teenaged emotion very much and while Cassie has no desire to pull a matchmaker, she is willing to help shove things along sometimes.
By the time everyone is rounded up (though determined not to spend any time costume shopping) Pepper has gotten thoroughly in to the swing of things and dragged Tony along with her. Pepper takes over the costume planning and dispatches some of her many minions to handle everything and Cassie is perfectly willing to step back and watch the magic, helpfully providing clothing samples and sizes based on her medical files and open access laundry.
On Halloween evening when she returns to the apartment from her office a germ net bag containing her costume has materialized in her room. Cassie takes the costume out of the bag, sees what it is, and can't fight back the laugh it triggers. Apparently, tonight is going to follow a theme. When everyone assembles in the lobby, they are distinctly less superhero and much more Disney princess cartoon.
Thor's normal base outfit has been barely altered for him to play Hercules, his hammer magicked in to the form of a sword for the evening. Jane's clothing corresponds by being a classic Greek Chiton for Meg. Cassie takes a couple of minutes to help her pin it correctly.
Pepper and Tony have gone the way of Emperors New Groove with Tony as Cuzco and Pepper as Yzma. Rhodes shows up dressed in a dark suite and sunglasses to be Mr. Bubbles from Lilio & Stitch, accompanied by his daughter dressed as Lilo and clutching a stitch stuffed animal nearly as big as she is. Banner is dressed as the Beast which he gripes at for being too on the nose but doesn't fuss much, and Darcy seems happy as a prince-less Snow White.
Barton calmly shows up in his SHIELD tactical gear with a green hoodie over the top and special green fletched arrows to honor the occasion. Natasha has apparently borrowed his spare bow for the evening and spun her hair out in to the kind of curls Cassie's own hair will never be able to manage. With the addition of a lovely green dress and a Scottish accent so perfected Cassie thinks it might have been involved in a mission at some point, the Black Widow is temporarily transformed in to Merida.
Rachel Elizabeth Dare meets them just outside the tower. Her hair is straightened slightly for the evening using some kind of glitter ladened gel. A shimmery coating of some kind of similar substance covers all of her exposed skin, which in her outfit for the evening is plentiful. She's wearing iridescently scaled green-blue harem pants and a purplish tube top designed to look like shells. In one hand, she's clutching a fork and there's a bubble of water with a large yellow fish in it floating calmly at her shoulder level. Cassie suspects that that last bit is courtesy of Percy.
Bucky, whom Cassie ensured a few days earlier has watched The Little Mermaid at Peppers insistence, absorbs the outfit. Then he looks down at the white henley and black pants he's wearing and sighs. "I get what you're doing," he states.
"Thank me later," Cassie mutters back. Then Bucky scowls at her and begins to make his way down the steps towards Rachel. Sam shrugs and follows him at a distance. Sam is dressed as the guy from the Princess and the Frog this evening, in a white suite with a large stuffed green frog on his shoulder. By the end of the night Cassie suspects that Rhodes' daughter will have laid claim to it.
For her own part, Cassie is dressed like Briar Rose from the beginning of Sleeping Beauty. Steve is at he side dressed as Prince Phillip. Personally, Cassie suspects this costume is equal parts mockery and mercy. Mercy because Steve can recognize it without further explanation. Mockery because of the whole 'someone slept for a really long time and then woke up' element.
They all wander around throughout the night, separating, mingling, and mixing with the crowds. They chat and talk openly about things that have nothing to do with the end of the world and spend long hours accumulating small individualized mountains of candy. But when Cassie reflects on the night later and thinks about why it made her happy, she thinks the reason is that they all got to spend an entire night out in public without being recognized, bothered or harassed. In the seas of milling costumed people, they are for once, nearly indistinguishable from everyone else. Occasionally anonymity is a truly beautiful thing.
Time begins to slip by in the gentle, soft, melting wax way time sometimes does when nothing world ending interrupts life. Cassie's nutrition bar formula gets released to a few different world aide organizations and she manages to work out a word sequence that can get the Hulk calmed down. Banner and Natasha have a talk and it get's decided that that word sequence should be keyed to her voice. Apparently Hulk finds Natasha the least threatening person on the team when he's in primal mind.
Bucky spends a bit more time out in the world talking to people and eating at restaurants and in general being alive. From Rachel, Cassie knows that they've met up a few times but doesn't push for details outside of what Rachel's willing to say. Bucky tells Steve even less but they pool what they know enough to paint a rough picture. At first Steve has a hard time letting Bucky just... go by himself. Bucky's therapist tells him that it's good though and Cassie backs him with whatever knowledge she has and the combination along with a little time seem to be enough to sooth his nerves on the matter.
Even the arctic tundra landscape that's been the friendship zone between Steve, Tony, and Bucky seems to be slowly thawing out. They exchange polite nods and occasional small talk when they come face to face at any rate. There's also a distinct lack of open hostility and once or twice in the lab, Cassie catches sight of diagrams for an advanced mechanical arm on Tony's work surface.
Unfortunately, it takes a near disaster for the uneasy temporary truce to resolve in to an official end of conflict. They've made an Avengers wide trip out to Los Angeles for New Year. The team has to speak at a press conference and Pepper uses the opportunity to check in on how the company is running on the West Coast. Banner adds a sort of college lecture tour to his own itinerary. Cassie goes along to a few of those lectures, but she gets the feeling her name was mostly thrown on to the trip roster to keep the media attention from driving Steve completely insane.
Bucky is there serving a similar purpose, and getting his face out in to the world as part of the group before he ends up on CNN with news footage of the latest crisis. He's also taken up the habit of hovering near Cassie when Steve's busy and they aren't. Cassie has an inkling that he does it out of a floating misplaced protective instinct combined with the fact that she carries snacks and sometimes slips him candy.
The near disaster happens on December thirty-first well before the party for the evening is set to get underway. They're doing one last press event with Pepper presiding over everything from a podium at the front of the room. Cassie is sitting in the front row in front of all of the reporters and cameramen and thinks she might be half blind from all of the flashes. Tony, Steve, Thor, Sam, Natasha, and Barton are lined up behind her and each of them answers the questions directed at them with scripted pre-approved words. Banner had excused himself from the proceedings and everyone else had respected his privacy.
Halfway through Thor beaming his way through a question about an obscure Asgardian battle custom Cassie knows for a fact got discontinued a millennia ago, the unmistakable sound of a gunshot cracks through the space. There's the sound of shattering class and people screaming.
What happens next does so in the blink of an eye. Cassie is out of her chair and moving for the stage before she takes a breath. Thor has summoned his hammer and taken to the air, one hand pulling Barton with him as the person most likely to be able to track the shot. Stark activates his suite and Natasha takes up a defensive position, a baton crackling with electricity at both ends having appeared in her hands out of nowhere. Steve casts one frantic look at Cassie, sees that she's alright, and then shoots out of the room like a bat out of hell, Sam right behind him.
Cassie's aim is to get to Pepper who has sensibly taken cover behind the press podium. It's a good move, especially knowing what Cassie does. The shot had been aimed at Pepper.
However, Pepper herself isn't the person that Cassie is most worried about. No. What concerns her most is the fact that her vision had been good enough to process the image of Bucky being the one who had tackled Pepper to the ground, placing himself between her and the bullet. Now Cassie can see Bucky's legs splayed out across the floor, and a small pool of blood spreading and seeping over the tiles.
She works quickly to inspect the wound and stem the bleeding. It's a though and through that missed all vital organs which makes it not as bad as it could have been, and Cassie partially heals it with magic within minutes. Bucky is even conscious and mutters the occasional curse as she works, the healing magic stinging as it repairs the damage done.
After that they proceed with the New Years Eve Party as though nothing happened, an act of defiance on Tony's part though the security on the event triples in the space of an hour. Cassie kisses Steve at midnight like superstition says she's supposed to and fervently hopes for a good year. Later, out of the corner of her eye Cassie notices Tony showing Bucky a design for a new arm scribbled out and copied on to a cocktail napkin, belligerently picking his brain for possible additional features. She thinks that really, all things considered, the year that's ending wasn't so bad. Another one a little like it wouldn't be the worst thing.
Before the new arm is to be fitted Bucky comes to her and asks her the question she's been half expecting for the last several months. They're back in New York and it's the middle of January by then. The sky outside is grey and large white flakes drift periodically across the windows of her office.
"Could you heal it?" he asks. "My arm. Before I would have thought it was impossible, but I've seen some of what you've done since then."
Cassie slowly puts down the chart she had been examining and looks at Bucky with measuring consideration. He had come in to the room on soulless feet, and she'd only realized he was there because of years of intensive training to hone her senses. "I don't think so," she says eventually. "As far as I know, no one can actually grow back a limb. A full fledged god might be able to do it..."
A slight frown slashes itself between Bucky's eyes. "I've heard stories about you being able to reattach them before..."
He leaves the sentence hanging and Cassie hears the question in the silence that follows. "That's different," she explains. "It's- It's like, weaving two pieces of fabric back together. Only, picture doing that with fabric that wants to be whole." Bucky's frown hasn't lessened and Cassie gets the feeling she isn't explaining very well. She sighs and has to back up.
"From the second an injury happens, your body starts trying to heal itself," she says. "It's just that with most people, that process is so slow they can't feel it, and with serious injuries it doesn't happen quickly enough to save the injured person. With things like amputation, there's only so much that the human body can do. It wants to reconnect itself, but the amount of energy needed to make that kind of healing happen doesn't exist. When I reconnect pieces it's because my magic works as a kind of healing jumper cable. But regrowing a limb... that would take an entire city grid. No one alive has that kind of power." She shrugged helplessly. "If I had been there at the time with the arm I could have reattached it, but at this point, even your body considers the injury healed."
Bucky's expression clears. "Ah. I didn't actually expect that you'd be able to, but I had to ask."
Cassie casts him a small smile. "I might be able to heal the scar tissue?" she offers. "Before Tony's new mechanical arm goes on. I could reduce the injured tissue around the original sight. It could help with pain and stiffness, and might make the attachment easier."
"I thought people considered scars normal, or identifying these days," Bucky states with a raised eyebrow.
She cocks her head to the side as she turns her words over in her mind. "Sometimes they are," she agrees. "I have scars on my stomach, on my back and arms from battles. I've been fighting since age eight and they mark major events and the passage of time. But some scars, all they are is a record of pain. And people shouldn't have to advertise that kind of thing if they don't want to."
Bucky considers her words. "I don't mind carrying the marks," he says, deciding out loud. "But maybe you could drain the inflammation."
That's an easy enough thing to do and Cassie gestures for hm to sit on the spare office chair. Then she places her hand on his shoulder and concentrates, sending a controlled burst of power in to the scars. She goes carefully, only making the tissue reduce backward in to the rest of his skin. The lines of the scars are still there, pinkish white and twisted looking, but they are no longer raised to the touch. "There," she says, backing away.
Bucky thanks her and leaves the room and Cassie starts thinking over the kinds of scars that aren't so easy to see. In particular Cassie considers the shattered memory pathways in Bucky's brain. The brain was after all a physical object even if the psychological mind was not. With that in mind Cassie files a requisition for the files that SHIELD had seized from HYDRA on the programming Bucky had gone through.
It's a lot of reading material and absolutely none of it is pleasant. After two hours, the world is starting to go dark outside the window and Cassie makes the decision that the rest of the files will wait until the morning. Some of the details are ghastly and Cassie doesn't need extra material for nightmares.
Steve is already at home and is unpacking a large bag of take out on to the counter. "Hi," he greets as he leans down to kiss her. Cassie goes up on to her toes to lean in to it and grips his shirt to hold herself closer. The kiss breaks when her stomach growls and Cassie drops away with a smile. "I guess I made a good call on picking up dinner," he says with a smile.
"Definitely," Cassie agrees with a bright smile. "Set it up on the coffee table and we can eat on the couch," she suggests. "I'm gonna go change before we eat."
Five minutes later they're both states on the sofa. Steve is sitting at one end with Cassie's feet in her lap as she sits against the other. He's giving her the basic outline of his day and happily reports that Tony is speaking to him normally, or at least, as normally as Tony ever does. Sarcasm and thinly veiled contempt apparently still abound. "How was your day?" he asks, digging in to a carton of noodles.
"It was good," she says. "Bucky finally came to see me about his arm. I've been waiting for him to do it for a while now."
Steve nods. "He told me he was thinking about it," he confides. "I said I didn't know if you'd be able to do anything about it but that it couldn't hurt to ask."
Cassie greets this new bit of information with a half nod and shrug combination perfected during her teenage years. "Well you were right it didn't hurt anything. In fact I helped a little with some of the scarring and damage at the attachment sight. "I can't actually regrow the arm. I might have been able to reattach it if I'd had the arm and been there when it first happened. But without the arm and after seventy years..." she lets the words trail off and Steve doesn't push her to finish the thought.
"What would that have been like?" Steve muses out loud. "You said there were demigods involved on both sides of the war."
"There were," Cassie affirms. "I think I might have told you before that godly conflicts normally mirror human ones. All of the gods ended up picking sides. My dad and grandfather both allied with Zeus so that's the side their children ended up on." She takes another bite of her food and sets the carton aside. "I would have been on your side if it helps. Probably would have ended up being a nurse."
Steve smiles, and the expression is a little bit wistful and a tiny bit sad. "That's what my mom was."
Cassie leans forward and brushes the back of her hand along his cheek bone. "Some day you'll have to tell me about her," she says quietly. "I'd like to know about her if you feel like telling me."
His eyes shut, lashes almost brushing her skin and he sets aside his own food to pull Cassie in to his lap. Cassie goes easily and tucks herself against his chest, listening to the steady beat of his heart and feeling the rise and fall of his breath. She leans up for a kiss and lets herself melt in to the moment. A gust of wind whistles past the window with a sound almost like a shrieking beast and Cassie can only just feel Steve's shudder through her own as she breaks away.
A glance out the window shows her that the snow is now being blown past the window in almost solid white sheets of deceiving fluffiness. "You know," Cassie says, squinting out the window with marked dislike. "I met a snow goddess once. She was evil and helping the original earth goddess Gaea raise the giants to try to destroy the gods and al life as we know it."
"You know," Steve says, his voice vibrating through his chest and in to Cassie's own body. It sends pleasant shivers through her and she presses herself closer and plants a kiss at the corner of his jaw. "That is something that I can absolutely believe."
A/N: So what did you guys think? Time's a passing to get closer to AoU. It occurs in May so I'm working through time to get the story there. I honestly didn't originally plan for Bucky/Rachel to be a thing, but it literally came to me in a dream so I figured what the hell and threw it in there to see how it went. Anyway, I'd be interested to hear what you guys thought about it. If everyone agrees that they hate it I can always go back and edit it out. Anyway, I got Steve, Bucky, and Tony back around to being on speaking terms and I thought the whole Halloween bit was fun. Tell me what you thought! Review for me! xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo