Disclaimer: I own nothing you recognize and never will. I don't have the money to buy them from their current owners and likely never will as I have never been nor ever will be paid to write this kind of story.
Quick Note: This chapter involves mass murder and quite a bit of darkness. I had to make HYDRA a more consistent major threat.
Thanksgiving with the Avengers is a big freaking event. Cassie hadn't been sure that it would be. Psychologically speaking the entire team is technically isolationist loner types. They all do better with the rest of the world held ten feet away. Even Tony and Pepper, the most social of the group, use deflection and polite public masks when interacting with the wider universe. On the other hand, maybe she should have expected that shared isolation would drive them all closer together.
Anyway, Thanksgiving comes and everyone who falls within the Avenger bracket receives a paper invitation in the mail from Pepper. The fact that most of them actually have places of residence where they and Pepper both work doesn't seem to matter. Cassie supposes that to someone running a multibillion dollar corporation, throwing out a couple dollars in unnecessary postage isn't much of a big deal.
For her part, Cassie simply meets Pepper for a nice lunch in the CEO's office and makes an RSVP for her and Steve personally. To cover the basis she tells Pepper that Bucky will be there too. She can't be certain, but she has the feeling that Bucky is the kind of person who sees an officially embossed invitation and treats it live a live explosive. Actually, Sergeant James Barnes the Winter Soldier is probably more comfortable with a live explosive than he is with a dinner invitation.
Thanksgiving dawns and Cassie spends the morning perched on the kitchen counter quietly munching a small pile of peeled carrots while Steve chops and mixes the different ingredients for stuffing. He's making two types, one vegetarian and the other not. Cassie laughingly asks why he bothers when no one at the dinner is vegetarian in the first place and Steve just shrugs and says there's no harm in giving people options. Bucky contributes to the dish by producing a massive pile of mixed diced vegetables.
Knives are apparently within his wheelhouse.
They all go to the apartment Stark and Pepper stay in at the very top of the building in the early afternoon with Steve responsible for the casserole dish of stuffing and Cassie in charge of opening doors. Bucky hovers just slightly on the periphery next to and a little behind Steve. It takes Cassie about forty seconds to work out that Bucky is protecting Steve's non-dominant left hand side, the place he might be weakest. Bucky may be lacking in specific memories, but the habit of making sure that Steve is alright is apparently one that just won't die no matter what biopsychological bull shit the Nazi scientific division cooked up.
The door opens seemingly of it's own accord when they reach it and Cassie wonders for about the thousandth time since moving in just how extensive JARVIS' programming actually is. She's not as antsy about technology as some demigods are, it helps that she's never had a computer explode in her face just because she entered the wrong phrase in to a search engine, but she's still not much of a techie. The fact that the building she lives and works in is solely run by an admittedly very realistic artificial intelligence isn't something she thinks she'll ever get used to.
Tony is sprawled comfortably on a couch in the middle of a wide open space the contains a state of the art kitchen, a plush living room, and a large wooden dining table set beautifully and surrounded with chairs. Cassie wonders if it's always there, or if Pepper just had it moved in for the holiday. There's some pre-game coverage of Thanksgiving football playing on a large flat screen T.V that Cassie suspects is more technologically advanced than any television she's ever seen before.
Dr. Banner is sitting on a couch near Stark with Sam by his side. Banner appears to be demonstrating something on a tablet and Sam has a pinched look on his face as he tries to understand what Banner is saying. Barton is perched not on a couch, but over the back of it silently sipping a drink Cassie guesses was probably prepared by Natasha given that the woman in question has taken up residence behind the bar and is busy manipulating various bottles. Thor isn't there having been called away to Asgard the week before, but Jane is there. At the moment she's bargaining with her assistant Darcy to get her tablet back. Darcy is refusing stubbornly and delivering a well practiced lecture on the importance of human social interaction.
Pepper is busy arranging a selection of trays and dishes at intervals along the table so Cassie liberates the stuffing dishes from Steve and brings them over to her as Steve gets called away by Sam to debate the merits of football versus baseball. Cassie's heard Steve go on mini tangents about the Dodgers more than once so she has a feeling she knows where that conversation will end up. Bucky wanders his way over to the bar and downs the vodka shot Natasha pours for him in a single swallow
Cassie puts the stuffing in the space Pepper indicates and takes a step back to examine the spread of food. Pepper had been adamant that every bit of dinner for today be produced without caterers which means that everything on the table had been produced by the people in the room. Barton had taken it upon himself to provide the turkey and gravy and Natasha had apparently arrived with two freshly made loaves of challah bread. Sam loudly claims credit for the green bean casserole and Banner had brought the mashed potatoes. Jane brought cranberry sauce and Darcy apparently whipped up some kind of dish involving sweet potatoes and mini marshmallows. Pepper and Tony have managed the salad and pumpkin pie.
All in all everything looks fantastic and Cassie debates snapping a picture on her phone. Actually, she kind of wants to document this entire night. She's had family style dinners with Piper, Jason, Annabeth, Thalia, Nico, Leo, Calypso, Reyna, Hazel, and Frank at both camps or the Jackson's apartment, but she hasn't ever had a dinner quite like this. She can't put her finger on why, but this feels different.
That feeling doesn't fade away as the afternoon and evening go on. Cassie chats with Pepper, Natasha, Darcy, and Jane, and once the game starts she deposits herself on the couch half on top of and half next to Steve. She doesn't follow the game all that closely (after playing Roman War Games and Capture the Flag at Camp Half-Blood regular football isn't very high stakes anymore) but the feeling of being curled up beside Steve surrounded by friends is a good one.
The football game plays out and ends without Cassie ever really tuning in to what's actually going on. Dinner comes afterwards and with minimum ceremony as Tony has thoroughly banned speeches, toasts, oratories, going around the table saying what they're thankful for, or anything at all resembling sappy public speaking. This rule is handed down the moment they all take their seats and Tony announces it to the entire room as Pepper roles her eyes and makes Natasha carve the turkey.
Later Natasha pokes Steve for a story on his past and when Steve refuses Cassie feels a sharp pressure on the top of her foot. She can take a hint but she isn't sure she wants to act on this one. Her policy on asking Steve about his past is generally that'll he'll tell her what's important and what he wants her to know and everything will eventually come with time. With that policy in mind Cassie casts a questioning look up at Steve and raises her eyebrows, letting him know she wouldn't mind hearing a story but also telling him she won't manipulate him in to anything.
He seems to understand because Steve leans down to kiss her. It's a quick thing, barely more than a brush of his mouth on hers, but Steve at his core is a fairly private person so any kind of Public Display of Affection means something extra. Then Steve looks at Natasha's expectant face, sighs, and then turns his attention to Bucky. "Remember Thanksgiving in 1930?" he asks.
Bucky tips his head and Cassie can practically see the gears in his brain spinning and stalling as he tries to work through the tangled and obscured semi-fried memory ends. "Maybe," he says slowly. "We snuck out of the house to check out the local Hooverville didn't we? We got in trouble for it right?"
"You could say that," Steve agrees. "Your mother smacked us both around with an actual wooden spoon."
This scrap of information joins the other bits and pieces Cassie has compiled about Steve in the picture she's painting of his earlier life. It also prompts a small outpouring of personal stories from the rest of the assembled group. Stark's Thanksgiving dinners were always catered and generally full of corporate types he didn't actually know. Natasha would be able to produce the entire meal by herself if she had to thanks to assimilation training and Barton once made a fryer with a turkey in it explode on purpose to create a diversion during a tricky assignment in Milwaukee. What could have possibly required the world's best long distance assassin in Milwaukee, Cassie was almost afraid to ask.
Cassie herself spent most of her childhood Thanksgivings at Camp Half-Blood where it hadn't always been celebrated. Before Percy's new deal with the gods, there hadn't generally been enough year round campers around during the holidays to make serving something different in the dining pavilion worth it. One particular dinner stood out to her though.
The year she had been eleven Chiron had decided to give familial americana traditional dinners during the holidays a shot. The only campers around to attend had been her, Clarisse, Annabeth, and Luke. Clarisse had spent most of the dinner violently destroying an excessively large piece of turkey. Luke, at that point a gangly eighteen year old had barely spoken a word the entire time. He was just back form his doomed quest and the scar on his face was fresh and shinning pink. Annabeth had just come back to camp after a failed attempt at living back with her father and step-family. Dionysus powered through four cans of coke, grumbling the entire time about how stupid the entire dinner was. Chiron had tried to get them all through it but to no avail.
Dionysus vanished- quite literally vanished- before the meal was over after being called to Olympus for a meeting. Once the meat course was over Clarisse had stormed out to go electrocute innocent rocks, and Chiron had had to leave soon afterwards. He hadn't said why, but given that he'd been muttering about wayward electric blasts setting trees on fire and panicking dryads it hadn't been hard to guess.
After the others had left Luke had thrown down his utensils, declared the entire business a bust, and begun to shuffle Annabeth and Cassie out of the Big House. He hadn't stopped until the two of them had been settles at the base of Thalia's pine tree. He'd told them both to wait there and reappeared after twenty minutes carrying a large pizza, a few water bottles, and a tub of chocolate ice cream.
They'd eaten it there on the hillside, protected from the November chill by the weather boundaries sound the property. Cassie had handled the residual temperature damage by focusing light to start a small, contained fire on the ground before them. Annabeth had sketched out battle strategies and chariot designs on the ground with a stick to ask for their opinions, and between her and Cassie they'd managed to make Luke smile. That good mood had continued as Luke produced supplies for amores as the light faded out of the day.
Not one of them had felt like returning to their cabins at the end of the meal, so they'd decided to camp at the base of the tree for the night. Luke had vanished and come back with supplies from the camp store and Annabeth had set up the tents, the poles and fabric leaping in to place beneath her fingers. Cassie made sure the fire kept going until they all went to sleep. She remembers the Luke sent her and Annabeth to bed and had stayed out sitting next to the fire, his face outlined in the cast of the flickering light. It wasn't until the next morning that Cassie realized that they'd never made a sacrifice to the gods.
Cassie tells that story when it's her turn to speak. It's not a perfect happy memory, but looking back on it it's still a good one. The darkness that would creep in on the corners of their lives had still been kept at bay. In fact, it had been one of the last times when Luke had simply kept her and Annabeth safe, standing guard between them and the rest of the world the way he had on their feverish dash to camp.
It's a good enough memory to pass muster and they move on to bothering Sam for details of his childhood. Steve wraps an arm around her, pressing the flat of his palm gently against her side. Something in her voice must have told him that the memory wasn't entirely a sweet one. Cassie reaches up to take his hand where it rests on her side and gives it a reassuring squeeze. "I'll tell you about it later," she murmurs in his ear on the pretext of kissing him on the cheek. Steve gives a nearly imperceptible nod and places his own kiss against her hairline.
Once the dinner is over and final desert has been had they return to their apartment. Bucky vanishes to his room after wishing them goodnight. They each return the words and Cassie sets up a small flame using the kitchen grill. She sacrifices part of the plate of leftovers with a short prayer. "Sas efcharisto ton patera Apollo. Tibi gratius avus Mercury." The sacrifice vanishes with a whiff of sweet smelling smoke and Cassie blows out the candle and puts it away.
"I understood the Latin part," Steve says with a casual tilt of the head as he takes a seat at the breakfast counter. "Thank you grandfather Mercury. Was the Greek for your father?"
Cassie nods and hops up on to the counter, kicking her heels fitfully. "As you've noticed it's not something I do all the time. But on days like this, ones where mortals have feasts, it's a good idea to do a small sacrifice to whichever gods you most want on your good side." She pauses for a moment and then shrugs and forges ahead. "The year I talked about earlier when I mentioned that memory, we didn't do it then. Luke never brought it up and Annabeth and I were distracted by other things. Maybe Luke had already started feeling bitter towards his father, we just- we couldn't see it."
Steve doesn't ask her to explain further. She's told him some about Luke, about Annabeth and Thalia and the tiny ragged family the four of them had made out of the broken pieces of themselves as children. She's told him a little more about the war against Chronos and the parts they all had to play. Her nightmares had required that much honesty, and Steve had returned it on the nights when he woke up gasping for breath, drowning in memories of slowly freezing in icy arctic water. Pain in the face of someone you loved brought about honesty faster than any other force ever could.
Instead Steve reaches out to place his hands on her hips and draw her across the counter to be closer to him. Cassie's noticed in the last months that he reaches for her unconsciously whenever they are close, but not close enough. It's as though she's become his touch stone, a teacher to keep him attached to reality when he allows his mind to wander. She supposes that there are girls in the world who might be annoyed or put off by that, but Cassie doesn't. Steve is so often intently concentrated in his presence of mind and mental and physical awareness, being the person he allows to keep a hold of him when he feels safe enough to drift away is a gift Cassie holds closely to her heart.
"Can I ask you a question?" Steve asks eventually, fingers stroking lightly along the sides of her ribcage.
Cassie's eyebrows shoot up against her will in her surprise. Steve rarely pushes for answers she doesn't want to give, but he doesn't normally shy away from asking questions either. Driven by curiosity as much as anything else, Cassie gives him a nod and waits to see what he will ask.
Steve waits another moment before whatever question he wants to ask makes it's way to his lips. "Do the gods love their children?"
It's such an unexpected question that Cassie has to do a double take. The gut response she wants to make freezes on its way to her mouth and she swallows it back, actually considering the question and the full implications of it. Maybe it's strange, but Cassie has never actually wondered about weather her father or grandfather love her. She's fought wars for them, but their love for her, or hers for them has never been something she's paid much attention to. Maybe she hadn't wanted to.
"I don't think they do- Not always or all the time. I don't think that they could." Steve opens his mouth with his face all ready to speak but she holds up a hand to forestall him for a moment. Now that she's thought about his question she finds she wants to voice her entire answer.
"The gods are old," Cassie says slowly, weighing the words she speaks as they greet the air. "So, so, old. They've been living and falling in love with humans for millennia. Then they have children with those humans and those children are like me, or Percy, or Annabeth, or Jason, or Hazel, or Reyna, or any of the others you met back in August. The blood of our parents leaves us with no choice but to be heroes and heroes often don't live very long. In fact, Percy is named what he is because Perseus was one of the only heroes not to die in pain and alone."
She takes a deep breath and then forges on, forcing herself to meet Steve's bright blue eyes as she does. "We die young," she states, and Steve does not flinch from her honesty. "We live our lives hunted and we fight to survive and the odds of us winning have never been on our side. And if our lives seem short by human standards, humans who live for eighty years on average, imagine how short they must seem to a being who have lived for millennia and will keep living for millennia more."
Comprehension duels with confusion behind Steve's eyes and Cassie continues on. "Loosing a child is supposed to be the very worst thing a parent can ever experience," she says, her own voice quiet and choked to her ears. "I've seen it-seen gods whose demigod children have died. I saw it from Dionysus when one of his sons died. He made Percy swear to make sure the other would live. My own father has mourned the death of two of my brothers, Lee and Michael. It caused freak weather patterns for weeks because the sun wasn't shinning the way it's supposed to. Hades froze his children in time rather than let them die and Zeus changed his daughter in to a pine tree to preserve her life force. Hermes mourned Luke when he died. I don't think-"
She pauses and has to swallow before she keeps going. "I don't think any being, even a god could survive thousands of years of loving their children, and losing them every time." Cassie reaches out and brushes the backs of her fingers along the smoothly shaven skin of Steve's cheek. "They do love us sometimes," she muses aloud. "I think they must. They need us definitely. In times of crisis they answer our prayers. They bless us with power and create safe havens for us. They check in on our lives when they feel that they can. Poseidon went to Percy's fifteenth birthday party. Hades gave Nico a skeleton chauffeur because he worried that Nico was lonely. Aries and Mars have both blessed their children with temporary battlefield invulnerability before. Athena sent help when Annabeth was kidnapped. They come to us in dreams sometimes. But that doesn't change the fact that we are powerful, and the gods have been using their kids as chess piece soldiers in their wars for too long to break the habit now."
Steve wraps his arms more firmly around her and draws her forwards so she's more in his lap on top of the island stool than she is on the island itself. Cassie gently frames his face with her hands as her mind ticks over her words. "When they love us, they love us like stars," she decides finally. At that Steve regards her with a question in his eyes and Cassie moves to answer it. "To the gods, we're far away pretty things that they can only really bear to look at from a distance. Getting close would burn us both and by the time they could get close enough to get to really know and love us the way mortal parents love their children we'd be gone."
These last words make Steve shudder in a way that echoes out of his body and in to hers. He bends his neck, pressing his face in to the space between her neck and shoulder before pressing a line of kisses to the skin there. Neither of them speak after that. Cassie knows that their is no good response for her words and she appreciates that Steve doesn't try to fumble his way towards one.
"I would hate to live forever," the words are a whisper, barely more than a breath of shaped air against her neck.
This time it's Cassie's turn to shudder and she wraps her arms more securely around him. She nods vigorously. "I know," she agrees. "Me too."
The conversation is emotionally draining enough that Cassie feels bone tired afterward. They go to bed early but their plans to sleep in and enjoy a long weekend are shattered when Steve's phone rings just after three in the morning with the news of a violent coup going on in a small African country Cassie refuses to try to pronounce without three more hours of sleep, at least two cups of coffee, and a phonetic break down in front of her. The mission is described as a straight forward peace keeping job to kick the unstable new regime from taking hold and getting the old government back in place before terror and confusion can grip the populace.
Steve grumbles and kisses her hair, telling her to stay in bed. Cassie grumbles something unintelligible back at him and gets up as well. It might be just slightly possible that she's doing it to be contrary more than anything else. Cassie can't decide. Her thoughts are foggy mush even to her before sunrise and with no coffee.
When they get out to the main room Bucky is already there. He's dressed in the high tech thermals he wears under his body armor during combat and muttering at the coffee maker like the machine has done something to personally offend him. Cassie fumbles half a loaf of bread out of a cabinet and starts mass producing toast. A moment later a cup of coffee lands on the counter next to her and Steve reaches across to drop in a few cubes of sugar. By the time she's three swallows in she's starting to feel more present and loads containers with thoroughly buttered and jam covered toast.
She deposits the toast in front of Bucky and leaves the other container for Steve who has ducked back in to their room to change. Bucky mutters his thanks and Cassie nods and takes another swig of coffee before turning back to the toaster to procure her own breakfast. It's obscenely early in the morning to be awake without the motivation of a war or actively running for her life, but she knows herself well enough to know that she won't be able to fall back asleep. Especially not with the first rays of the dawn sun creeping in through the windows.
It's as she contemplates what to do with the extra hours available in her day when her phone begins to ring. Surprised, Cassie fishes the buzzing device out of the pocket of her pajama pants and reads the alert blaring from the screen. "What's up?" Steve asks, reappearing in the doorway pulling on his own thermal shirt. Personally Cassie doesn't think he'll need it in Africa, but Stark's been working on new tech so for all she knows this new shirt is good for all temperature regulation.
"Apparently I've been added to the roster for this particular trip," Cassie tells him, dropping her phone back in to her pocket and downing the rest of her coffee. "Would you take over the toaster? I have to go change." Steve's face tightens ever so slightly and Cassie can practically see his worry-meter tick up by several notches, but he gets himself under control quickly and takes her spot at the counter.
Cassie moves past him in to the bedroom to change out of her pajamas and in to her armor. The mission details sent to her phone had described her role in this as being completely medical, but she doesn't want to take any chances. The beaten leather and finely worked bronze fits tightly to her body while still allowing freedom of movement and mechanically ties her hair back from her face.
As she gets ready her brain ticks over the flash of expression she had seen on Steve's face at the news that she would be going with the rest of them. Worry she realizes. That's what that expression had been. With a sudden shock she realizes that this is the first time she's walked in to a combat zone with Steve with both of them knowingly going in to the situation on purpose. With a shake of her head she sets that thought aside and falls in to the cold pattern of combat compartmentalization. She's done battle with her friends, and watches her friends go in to battle with the people that they love. If they can do it, she and Steve can too.
When she's ready she slings her field bag over her shoulder and ducks back out in to the main room. Steve and Bucky are both ready and waiting by the door, Steve holding out a third container of toast for her. She takes the container gratefully and leans up on her toes to plant a kiss on his cheek. Despite his best efforts, Cassie can still see worry lurking behind his eyes. She doesn't know how to ease it at the moment because that concern isn't rooted in logic or reason. Steve has seen her fight and knows what power she can hold in the palms of her hands, but right now all he's seeing is his girlfriend walking in to a potentially violent combat zone.
Cassie tries for a grin. "Lead on Cap," she says, injecting a teasing tone in to her voice.
The effect she achieves is very nearly the one she wanted. Steve makes a noise that's equal points laugh and scoff and shakes his head as he walks out the door and begins to make his way towards the roof where Stark has a specially designed high tech plane waiting. Cassie moves to go after him but is stopped by the cold pressure of a metal arm forming a bar across the doorway blocking her from passing through. She looks up to see Bucky looking down at her with eyes the same cold blue as a glacier. "Don't die," he says simply.
Cassie reads the unspoken end of his words in his face. He'll never get over it if you die. She nods once succinctly. "You too," she says. Then Bucky moves his arm and she leaves to join everyone in the helicopter, Bucky trailing behind her as she goes.
Stark's jet is the nicest vehicle Cassie's ever taken in to a potential combat zone. In fact, on review she thinks its possible that this jet is the nicest vehicle she's ever been in period. One section of the jet is set up as a fully stocked medical bay which Stark tells her is team use only apart from the general supplies. For this mission she'll be working out of a specially designed converted medical tent to administer aid to the injured populace. The main portion of the craft is team seating and equipment storage. The seats are reclinable and made of plush leather with built in individual heating and cooling systems plus cup holders. Cassie can also see a storage container designated for snacks and beverages.
Apparently the jet is also kitted out for supersonic flight because they land on the ground in six hours as opposed to the more averagely achievable sixteen. The jet lands with barely a jolt to show that its no longer airborne and everyone unbuckles their flight harnesses and gear up. They go a little lighter than they might normally considering this is supposed to be mostly a stabilization and peacekeeping mission. For her part Cassie loads up on on malaria pills, bandages, I.V bags, vitamins, and protein bars. She has her standard emergency trauma supplies to, but she figures she might as well do some extra good while she's here.
They drop in to a cleared space in a jungle area about six kilometers outside of the city capital and begin the hike towards their goal. Stark is in full armor with the visor down and Sam has his wings strapped to his back with the accompanying goggles over his eyes. The two of them occasionally take to the air to make area scans to check their position and ensure that they have no hostiles incoming. This strategy lasts for exactly three quarters of the trip before they get within what Barton and Cassie both agree is minimum safe distance for a well trained sniper.
They re-group at ground level, taking cover in the now thinned out tree cover. They aren't an invading combat force, but they also don't want to announce their presence early. The current plan for the group excluding Cassie and for the moment Banner is to get as close to the city capital as possible before going in to action. In this case Steve, Rhodes, Stark, and Sam will be acting as the main points of communication given that between Steve and Stark they anchor the best known symbols of Americana, and Sam and Rhodes have the most recently active military credentials.
"We need to work out the best way to go in without being seen as a threat," Steve states. "Now we can go with our original approach, it's the one Fury approved. But-"
"But Fury is occasionally an unthinking asshole," Stark finishes with the quirk of an eyebrow. "Right yeah we knew that. So what's option to Captain Spangles? Have the flyers go up over the city and make a big show out of it? Or are we going for the covert approach and sending Romanov to sneak sneakily as sneaky sneakers do to open the gates from the inside?"
Steve does his level best to respond evenly but Cassie notes that the back of his neck has stiffened at Tony's flippant attitude. "This meeting is to figure that out," he says. "Natasha, you have experience with unstable regimes. What's your take?"
"As far as routing out the capital and holding it we need to take the residential palace," Natasha states. "Once the chief target is out the rest of his troops should stand down. Most of them have been threatened in to helping and don't actually support the regime according to the intel I've got. If we go fast and hard we can clear the building and take it over."
Bucky leans over the small diagram Steve and Natasha have ben sketching in to the dirt. "It looks like the building can serve as a tactical position," he states. He glances at Barton. "Good sight lines." Barton responds to those words with a simple nod.
"Quick thought," Cassie interrupts stepping forward a little way. "Regardless of how you guys choose to get in I'm going to need to set up the medical center within easy access distance to take care of any injuries. Now, according to the intel I got there's a Red Cross outpost group stuck in this building here," she says sketching a hasty rectangle on their impromptu plan. "They aren't in danger, but they aren't going anywhere either. I was think ing Banner and I could move in separately and join up with them."
Steve considers her words thoughtfully, his mind ticking over the options and Cassie can practically see the gears turning in his head the way that Annabeth's, Jason's, and Frank's sometimes do. Then he gives a decisive nod. "Do you and Banner have your paperwork identifying you as medical personnel?" Cassie confirms that they do and Steve nods again. "Alright go. Stay on comms."
Cassie taps her ear where the communication bud Stark issued her on the plane is nestled. "Got it." She gives Steve a bright smile and adjusts her supply bag where it rests on her shoulders.
Banner just shrugs and picks up his own bag. "I'll do my best." No one has anything to say to that given the implications of Banner's own words. It's a good thing that no one in the group is particularly superstitious or Cassie suspects their would be a lot of fingers being crossed at the moment. No one, including Banner, is under the impression that the Other Guy would help anything in this particular situation.
She and Banner begin the hike in to the city, being methodical and fairly obvious. Banner isn't generally a big talker, and at the moment Cassie is alright with letting the silence exist between them. When they're just on the edge of the populated area Banner pauses which makes Cassie stop and casts a critical eye over her armor. "Is there anyway you can make the armor look less battle ready? We're going in to be medical help, we should try to look it."
Cassie hesitates and looks back at him, noticing for the first time that Banner himself is wearing casual khakis and a basic shirt. Of course, if Banner gets shot all that'll happen to him is a drastic transition in to a giant green rage fueled monster. If Cassie gets shot she'll end up bloody and in need of quite a bit of her own healing magic. She considers pointing at that they are playing this situation with slightly different risks, but thinks better of it.
With a nod, Cassie strips off the top layer of her armor and stores it in her gear bag. This leaves her legs still protected in her armor with her arms exposed. Her feet are encased in her combat boots but she doubts anyone will look at her feet. Besides, even if they do, the boots won't look too unusual in this part of the world aside from the fact that they're high quality.
"This is a part of Africa where Apartheid didn't occur so much and I'm a blonde white girl," Cassie points out. "Inconspicuousness isn't something I'm going to be able to pull off." Banner acknowledges this with a small nod and they hike the rest of the way in to the city towards the building holding the Red Cross group.
As soon as they reach the more built up populated area Cassie feels herself go on edge, and it's the complete lack of civilian presence that does it. There's no panic in the streets. There are no people in the streets and the whole place is eerily silent. By flicking and changing the parameters of her vision Cassie can see that every window for floors and floors is shuttered or otherwise blocked off.
With a gesture she disguises as a nervous brush of her hair, Cassie activates her communication unit. "Something is very wrong," she murmurs. "Sense recon is telling me that absolutely everyone for approximately a mile within the capital has either evacuated or been silenced. I can't detect any movement, hostile or otherwise but this can't be good."
"Agreed," Sam's voice sounds in her ears.
Banner dips his head to cover his mouth as he speaks. "Do you have any ideas on what might be going on?" he asks.
"None," Cassie says with a shake of her head. "The last time I was in a populated place this quite Chronos had the dream god Morpheus but the entire island of Manhattan to sleep so he could storm the city and annihilate Olympus while the gods were fighting the storm Titan. About forty of us demigods and some of the Hunters of Artemis took charge of protecting the city. A lot of people died."
A rush of fuzzy sound comes over the line that Cassie thinks is a sigh but she can't identify who it's coming from. "Just out of curiosity," Stark's voice says. "When exactly did the entirety of Manhattan become the battlefield for an entire pantheon of gods?"
"August of 2009," Cassie replies succinctly. "I was seventeen. Maybe if you're nice to me I'll tell you about it some time. Meanwhile this entire place is silent as the grave and that is the definition of not good." At that moment Cassie is seriously regretting taking off the top layer of her armor to blend in better. Her armor might be more conspicuous, but it's also definitely safer.
With that in mind Cassie summons her quiver by twisting the charm on her necklace, her only concession to Banner's concerned glance being to keep the weapon slung over her back instead of in her hands. For a moment she stands completely still, letting her senses filter out the normal input she gets and focusing in on the part of her that senses vitality and health. That's when she realizes that this part of the city isn't just silent. Its dead.
The certainty of her new discovery hits her like a sledgehammer to the gut, and Cassie's speaking from experience with that comparison. For a moment she can't breath, the world spins and dissolves before reforming and the oppressive force of the death surrounding her physically bends her over at the knees. Part of her wants to throw up and the other part wants to run away and not one singular iota of her being wants her to stay where she is and go further in to this city where no one besides her or Bruce is alive.
Speaking of Bruce, he's calling her name in concern and Steve is echoing that sound down the communication link in her ear. "I'm okay," Cassie manages, willing everyone involved to move past the fact that her voice is shaking and her breath is a harsh rattle. "Or I will be I swear." She tips her head back and focuses on the feeling of the sun on her skin, letting the energy and power of it absorb in to her blood. The feeling of dizziness and the nauseous twists in her stomach relax. "I think you can all give up on the sneaking or any kind of tactical approach," she says in to her comm link.
"Are you sure?" Natasha says with sharp concern and suspicion. "How can you tell it's safe."
For a moment Cassie fights the insane urge to laugh. "Easy," she says. "There's no one within a mile alive to shoot at you."
The line crackles again and Cassie has a feeling she knows what's coming before a single person at the other end of it speaks a word. Sure enough, it's Tony who speaks. "Yeah well that still doesn't answer Little Red's question Sunspot," Stark says flippantly. "How can you tell?"
And Cassie knows. She knows that flippancy and sarcasm are Stark's weapons and defenses. It's how he forms a wall between him and what they all do. Between him and the rest of the world. He deflects things and brushes them away publicly to try to let himself make them as minimal in his own head as he's making them out loud. However, surrounded by the force of the death of way must be hundreds of people Cassie's in no mood to handle it gracefully.
"You wanna know how I can tell," she spits down the line. "Fine." With that she focuses her mind, drawing the energy and power of the sunshine in to her body until her atoms have charged to the point where they feel really split. Then she channels that force and dissolves out of existence before reforming in the basement of the abandoned government building that the Red Cross had been supposed to have set up in.
Inside Cassie can see the sully set up skeleton of an actual medical center. There are cots and I.V bags set up at intervals. Folding desks and chairs are spaces around the basement and Cassie can see stockpiles of food and blankets along with medical gear and other miscellaneous supplies used for vaccination and care. Cassie's appeared in a single shaft of light streaming in through a partially blocked window and the cement blocks used to build the basement have done a good job of keeping out the heat.
There are dead bodies scattered throughout the space. They're cold, silent, and still and once more Cassie has to fight down the use to be sick or pass out. She fights it back and reins her supernatural senses further in the way she has to if she ever goes to the hospital morgue. Singular human death in her proximity is one thing. Mass death surrounding her is another. Apollo was a god of light and life and healing. Death was the antithesis. Frankly it was a small miracle to Cassie that Will and Nico were in love.
With her senses penned in Cassie steps forward and grips the back of the shirt of the closest body. She drags it backwards with her in to the shaft of light, doing her utmost to avoid looking down at the person's face. At the last moment she breaks her own rule and sees the face of a young man, a boy really. His eyes are shut and there's no blood or outward sign of harm. He could be sleeping apart from the fact that his heart is still and his body is cold.
It takes an effort, but Cassie manages to wrench her gaze away and dissolves on the spot. She allows her senses to drag her along the sound waves of Tony's voice and reappears barely feet in front of him. The others are assembled along with him but Cassie doesn't look at any of them, including Steve as she drops the body at Stark's feet. If the scene is a little dramatic, well Cassie really doesn't give a damn.
"There," she spits out, glaring daggers at Stark. "Look."
She moves her gaze deliberately from one person to the next. Rhodes looks sad though resigned, the image of a man who had seen too many people die to young. Sam is beginning to look angry and Barton appears calm apart from the fact that his bow has moved from being slung over his back to being gripped in his hand. Natasha gives nothing away apart from a minuscule tick in her jaw. Bucky is unreadable and Steve-. Steve looks a little like how she feels, nauseous and cold with shock.
Cassie points down at the body. "I can feel that," she grinds out. "For almost a mile around the capital the entire city is dead. And I can feel it like a gigantic twisting pit in my stomach. That's how I can tell."
This is when the mission changes from peace restoration, to reconnaissance and clean up. None of the locals come forward to claim any of the dead or share their burial traditions so Cassie takes it upon herself to carry out whatever funeral arrangements she can come up with. Every team member with a sealable suite or super serum at their disposal takes up the job of retrieving bodies from the surrounding buildings, verifying death, and wrapping them in whatever blankets or sheets they can find.
Natasha, Barton, and Sam retreat further out in to the surrounding area to cary out the reinstitution of the government they had come to find. Banner and Cassie together decided early that anyone without the use of air scrubbers or genetically superior immune systems should stay outside. The fact that none of the dead show any signs of outward harm likely means that whatever killed them was either completely supernatural or some kind of aerosolized poison. Because the bodies are dead Cassie can't tell and Bruce needs time to get a test result they can't be sure which means that proceeding with caution is their safest bet.
After everything is cleared out, Cassie performs the most comprehensive multicultural funeral right she can possibly think of and focuses the sun to create a mass pyre. The people here aren't demigods, and the sheets and blankets aren't burial shrouds, but it's the best Cassie can do for the poor deceased souls here. Maybe now they will at least be able to pass on to whichever afterlife they believed in a little bit faster. Steve runs through a few Catholic prayers in a quiet voice as well.
Bucky shudders as the ceremonial flame burns, the bodies vanishing in to the smoke without scent or ash. "All the burning bodies," he murmurs. "I just remembered- concentration camps."
There's nothing to say to that so nobody tries. Even Stark who has never been able to keep his mouth shut under any circumstances doesn't have a smart remark to make. He doesn't speak at all until his suite and JARVIS have finished analyzing several blood samples. "Well the chemical breakdown of the compound used isn't anything I've ever seen used before but from what I can tell based on structural similarities it's some kind of quickly dispersed aerosolized neurotoxin." Stark's helmeted head turns to Bucky. "He wasn't wrong about the concentration camp comparison. The closest match JARVIS can find to this is the kind of chemical used in Nazi gas chambers altered and refined to break down and act more quickly to leave no traces and ensure that the air is breathable."
Steve is looking down at the street appraisingly and without speaking to tell them what he's considering he drives the edge of his shield in to the ground, breaking away the earth and cracking through the surface until he reaches a sewer line beneath. "There," he says. "Plumbing and sewer lines connected to every building in the area. HYDRA must have pumped the gas in through the system."
"And you're sure it's HYDRA?" Cassie checks. She doesn't doubt Steve's words or his surety, but if they're dealing with this new incarnation of violent Nazis Cassie wants there to be no shred of doubt or misunderstanding of the situation. The look of in Steve's eyes is like broken glass, jaggedly focused and wickedly unyieldingly sharp.
"It's them," Bucky says tonelessly. "HYDRA wants you to know they're powerful. They orchestrated a scenario to draw everyone here. They wanted us to see this and know that there was nothing we could have done to stop it. More than that they want the world to see that we couldn't stop them."
Rhodes tips his head. "How can you be sure about any of that?" He sounds like he desperately hopes that Barnes' is wrong but knows in the back of his mind that he's not. Numbly, Cassie wishes she could still hold on to that vague denial too. As it is, she doesn't doubt for a second that Bucky is right. She grew up with Annabeth Chase, she understands malicious ruthlessness to prove a point in war.
When Bucky speaks next his voice isn't so much flat as it is completely dead. "It's what they could have had me do."
A/N: So what did you guys think? I know it's been a while since I updated this story but I've been swamped with school work lately. I wrote in this mission because I wanted Cassie more involved with the team and more of an equal member as opposed to just the medical help and researcher. Besides, I'm catching this story up with the events of Age of Ultron which opens with the team fighting HYDRA so I needed to keep them a serious and continuous enemy. Also I was pretty tired while writing this and had to do it in different chunks fairly far apart. I have re-read it to try to make everything line up smoothly but it's possible I missed some details or contradicted myself. If any of you lovely readers sees anything like that please point it out to me so I can fix it and post a better version of the chapter. Anyway, review for me! xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo