Disclaimer: Talk to Rick Riordan, Joss Whedon, and Stan Lee if you want to speak with the people who make money from these guys. I'm just doing the equivalent of renting for free, making no money, and doing it without permission or the knowledge of their rightful owners. Nobody sue me.
The part that sucks most about any battle isn't actually the fighting. It's not the smoke and the rubble and the enemies coming at you from every direction. It's not the physical pain of scraped knuckles, broken bones, strained muscles, blooming bruises, and popped joints.
No.
What sucks the most about any battle is the aftermath. Figuring out how to fix something and put it all back together is infinitely harder than blowing something apart or knocking it down to the ground. Cuts, breaks, and bruises can be inflicted more quickly than they can ever hope to heal, and psychological damage lasts infinitely longer than any of the physical results of a fight ever do.
In the aftermath you have to bury the dead. You have to treat the injured and try to help people find their loved ones. You have to watch them cry when the loved ones they're trying to find and the bodies that have to be buried are one in the same.
Yeah. In Cassie's opinion the aftermath will forever and always be worse.
This time though, Cassie's not one of the people who's lost something. All of the people she loves are alive and safe and as whole as they were when this whole mess started. The city she calls home didn't just float in to the sky and get pulverized to avoid a world ending dinosaur-asteroid style crisis. She has a home that she knows she can go back to at the end of the day.
Week? Hellish forty-eight hours?
Whatever, the Tower is still standing and untouched by this particular calamity.
So instead of crying or breaking down, Cassie cleans the blood off of her hands, pulls on her metaphorical white lab coat, organizes her medical supplies so that the mortal stuff is near the top, and goes to help however she can. And she's not alone. All of the Avengers and all of the demigods scatter across the carrier full of newly minted refugees to help.
Cassie and Will do their best to help the SHIELD medical teams in treating the injured. Piper uses the horn of plenty to provide a seemingly endless supply of fresh food and Percy uses his powers to magically filter every source of water on the carrier to make is potable. Leo and Tony vanish to the engine rooms to repair damages and Hazel and Nico grimly tap in to their extra senses to find the dead. Annabeth, Reyna, Jason, Frank, Steve, and Maria Hill form the six sided team of leadership to determine where all of the displaced citizens of Sokovia are going to go. Thor, Bucky, Barton, Natasha, and Vision spend their time acting as foreign language translators and the lifters of heavy objects. Wanda Maximoff doesn't leave her brother's side as he recovers.
However, there always comes a point where the people helping have no other choice but to stop. In this case, that moment comes about two hours after they've all gotten started. Really, given that they've been in battle for the last six hours and generally haven't slept for about two days, it's amazing that they last as long as they do.
From a personal view point, Cassie decides to call it quits when she stands up and almost tumbles sideways in to the wall. Her vision is swimming and black spots are dancing and expanding along the edges of her eyesight. Basically, her calorie count is probably at something like negative six thousand, she's sleep deprived, and if her clothes are any indication then at some point she sustained some fairly major blood loss without noticing.
Well, she's sure as shit noticing now.
Eventually she manages to drag herself over to a SHIELD worker who tells her that a lot of the team has been slowly making their way towards a private room turned in to a limited access mess hall. After getting directions, Cassie makes her way to it on shuffling feet that don't seem to want to lift very far off of the ground and gives the metal door two solid thumps. No one answers and Cassie spends a fleeting moment wondering if she needs some sort of secret knock no one told her about to get in.
Then the door swings inwards and Cassie nearly falls through it in to empty space. In fact, she probably would have face planted if Frank didn't manage to catch her and set her on her feet again. He helps her over the high threshold and in to the room and is too sweet of a person to bring up the fact that she's covered in grime and blood that doesn't quite all belong to her.
A space at the table clears for her between Reyna and Will and Cassie sinks in to it with a grateful sigh. Percy takes one look at her and shoves a pizza box her direction. Cassie gives him a nod of thanks in response and digs in. No one speaks and it's mutually understood that everyone in the room is in a state of zoned out exhaustion. Eating and breathing is about all anybody has the energy for.
She's eaten two slices of pizza and drunk about a liter of water by the time the door opens again and this time it's Steve and Natasha who make their way inside, Fury and Hill just behind them. Jason, being who he is, asks for a review of the situation and Cassie honest to the gods tries to listen but just can't make her brain obey her. Instead she focuses on Steve and the problem off not having enough chairs.
Steve solves that problem by the simple expedient of gesturing for her to stand up, taking her seat, and then tugging her down in to his lap. It's not the most dignified of positions to be in, but at the moment literally no one in the room cares. Besides, sitting across him Cassie can actually feel the steady pounding of his heart pumping blood through his chest and the steady expansion of the breath in his lungs, both natural patterns working in perfect life supporting rhythm.
That might not sound romantic to anyone else, but for a girl with a medical degree in their possession and a rhythm oriented god in their genetic pool, this was about as reassuring as things could possibly be. It also helps that her medical senses have expanded to analyze Steve on physical contact and everything she can find is telling her that he's more or less healthy. Sure his heart rate is elevated and his blood sugar is through the floor, bruises are covering most of his body and at some point he lost blood, but otherwise he's just as physically whole as he was before.
With all of that new information running through her head, Cassie leans forward and grabs the remainder of the pizza box to pass over her shoulder to Steve. "Have a couple thousand calories." He loops an arm around her waist and squeezes lightly in thanks before going to work on the food.
When he's done he puts the pizza box back on the table and shifts back in the chair, adjusting so Cassie can be more comfortable. "Are you alright?" he murmurs quietly.
Cassie almost nods without thinking twice but stops when she catches Steve's look of concern out of the corner of her eye. He's genuinely asking and genuinely concerned and right now he won't settle for a flip answer. She flips her hands palm up and let's Cassie see the faint glow of magic emanating from her skin. The magic takes a minute to scan her body but as it goes Cassie feels a few more bruises reduce in swelling and a few more cuts stitch themselves closed.
"Yes," she assures him. "A few fractures and cuts. Lots of blood loss to work out," she gestures at the front of her armor which is still spattered with the blood that should be flowing through her veins instead. "But nothing that can't be fixed with a little bit of time." Just then a yawn almost makes her jaw crack in half. "Maybe some sleep," she manages to add.
"Sleep," Steve tells her. Cassie feels a slight pressure against one of her curls and sees with a glance that Steve's just plucked a chunk of what probably used to be a building or a sidewalk out of her hair. "There's nothing anyone can do against an adrenaline crash and sleep deprivation."
A survey of the rest of their friends prove Steve right. Piper is passed out across three chairs with her feet in Leo's lap and her head in Jason's who's messing with one of the bright blue feathers in her hair. Leo is leaning forwards against the table over Piper's feet and quietly twisting paperclips together in an odd pattern that Tony is examining over his shoulder. Natasha and Barton are sitting back from the table angled towards each other, each using their partners seats as foot rests as Natasha casually stabbed pieces of pepperoni off of her pizza.
Thor is consuming what looks like an entire ham and showing no signs of stopping while Vision simply sits in a corner, watching everything with incongruously human looking eyes. Frank's entire body keeps flickering between human and bulldog as he does his best to fight off sleep. Hazel seems to have given up on that fight and is snoring almost silently with her head on Frank's shoulder. Will is sketching patterns in condensation from his water glass on the table top and Nico is twisting his ring around and around his finger. Thankfully no bones are present to stitch themselves in to moving skeletons.
Reyna is quietly demonstrating for Bucky the right way to use chopsticks. Bucky is looking at his sushi as though dubious about how much sustenance he can possibly get from something that small. Annabeth is reading some kind of SHIELD schematic on a tablet she's borrowed form someone and Percy is sitting beside her, staring at an apple in front of him with his chin on the table like it might hold the secret to life.
Seeing that everyone seems checked out for the next few hours, Cassie turns and buries her face in Steve's chest. She'll have to get up soon to shower and go help more, but right now her head feels like someone might have stuffed it with cotton balls. "Wake me up in like an hour, okay?" she mumbles. She's not sure how much of the request is discernible but she feels Steve nod up above her head so clearly something must have gotten through.
Then she lets her eyes drift shut, and everything fades gently and mercifully to blackness.
When she wakes up next it is unfortunately not because Steve has gently shaken her shoulder. It is also, even more unfortunately, not anything like an hour later if the fuzzy off balance feeling she has is any indicator. No, Cassie wakes up to someone shouting.
At her.
What a joy.
"Cassandra Melody Morgenstern!" a girls voice whip cracks at her through the air, jolting her back to consciousness. Cassie jolts and so does Steve and between the two shocks they both almost go spilling off the chair. Only Steve's impeccable sense of balance and both of their reflexes prevents an unpleasant collision with the floor.
Cassie has to blink several times before her eyes and her brain are capable of communicating with each other again. When they can, the person shouting at her is revealed to be a brunette girl about five years younger than her with large brown eyes hidden behind brightly colored plastic glasses frames. She's wearing black leggings, bright red high-tops, and a green top. Meg McCaffrey, Daughter of Demeter.
"Why didn't you call me?!" Meg shouts. Frank's body resolves itself to human shape and Hazel jerks awake, blinking gold, luminous eye. Piper gives a jaw cracking yawn and straightens up, scrubbing a hand over her face. "You people all left to go fight of a robotic armageddon and I had to hear about it from a freaking tulip plant! Do you know how humiliating it is to have a bulb no more about what's happening in the world then you?! Oh that's right, you don't! Because all of you talk to each other!"
Percy straightens up, taking the apple in hand and tossing it contemplatively. "I get my news from horses sometimes," he points out.
Meg refuses to be discouraged and waves his words away. "That's different. Your dad is the god of horses."
"Your mom's the god of plants," Leo points out. Meg glares at him with a look that could probably peel paint off of a wall and Leo throws up his hands, tipping his chair back to get out of the line of fire.
At that Meg turns back to Cassie and actually stamps her foot in frustration. "Why didn't you call me!? You have my phone number! Your dad still owes me a favor. I could have called him. Then you'd have had a god on your side!"
Will braves the redirection of wrath to raise one hand. "Um technically," he says, gesturing at Thor who's still working on his ham and showing absolutely no reaction to the fact that someone new just appeared in their midst to shout at them. "We did."
To her credit, Meg looks genuinely surprised and turns to face Thor. "Oh," she says. "Right." She makes an awkward sort of half-curtsey motion. "No offense or anything Lord Thor. You're incredibly powerful and definitely godly. Like wow," she gestures at Thor's biceps. "All god right there."
Thor swallows a mouthful of meat and waves a hand jovially. "Be assured there is no offense taken most lovely daughter of Demeter," he says. "The tales of your defeat of your hideous step-father Nero have been spread throughout the Nine Realms. Many a toast has been drunk to the name of McCaffrey in the halls of Valhalla."
"You helped," Piper points out to Jason, nudging him with an elbow.
Jason shrugged casually. "To be fair I spent like a third of that whole situation dead," he conceded. A few of the Avengers glance over at him and Jason pushes the edge of his tee shirt down and to the side to reveal a puckered scar over his heart. "I fought Nero. Got impaled. Not very heroic but I came back later so," he shrugs again. "Not too upset about it."
"Your last words were nice," Nico chips in from his seat beside Will. "Very inspiring. Trust me not everyone does as well." When the eyes of the room fall on him it's his turn to shrug. "Dad keeps records."
"And you've read all of them?" Hazel asks incredulously.
Nico rolls his eyes. 'Well obviously not all of them. Lot's of people die. But everything's alphabetized. I've looked up a couple famous ones." He gestures over at Hazel. "I'm sure he'd let you take a look too if you wanted to."
Hazel actually looks a bit nauseated at the suggestion and shakes her head. "I think I'll pass. Seventy years in the underworld was more than enough for me."
"Good choice," Nico assures. "Especially if Demeter is visiting. Unless you find you've got a really specific craving for shredded wheat cereal."
Meg makes a small whimpering noise. "Gods my cabin has soooooo much cereal." Then she shakes her head like a dog getting water out of it's ears and refocuses on Cassie. "Why do I not rank on the call sheet for Evil Robot Armageddon?!"
Cassie has to take another moment before she can formulate actual, you know, words. Words. Words are good. Sometimes. Probably.
She means to say something like why do you assume Armageddon has an organized call sheet? What makes you think anything to do with Armageddon has any organization AT ALL? but that's not what comes out. What she ends up saying instead is "How did you even get here?"
"About that," Leo says in a guilty voice. "See, my tool bag can hold literally anything in a machine shop, and since setting up with Calypso I carry around more plants sometimes. And like a month ago she gave me this like, succulent I think it's called. I stuck it in my bag and forgot about it. But I was digging around in there just now to find my pliers so I took it out and put it on the table."
At that Cassie glances down at the table top and sees a strange, somewhat spiky, mat-green, somewhat cactus like plant in a small reddish brown clay pot. She groans and turns back to Meg. "You plant traveled across an ocean and popped out of a succulent on a hellicarrier several thousand feet in the air to come yell at us for not calling you?" she says, trying to sound less impressed than she kind of feels. "Seriously?"
Meg glares. "The effects of my rage are less impressive without the visual element!"
"So, just to be clear, this girl is not someone or something that I should shoot?" Maria Hill checks. Cassie looks over at her to see that the woman has her gun locked and loaded and pointed at Meg.
"No shooting," Piper says soothingly. "This is our friend Meg. You can put the gun down now." It's not directed at her but Cassie knows her friend must be Charmspeaking because otherwise there's no way on this planet that Hill would lower her weapon that quickly.
Barton blinks at everyone involved but slowly lays the knife he'd had ready to thrown back on the table, light glinting off of the wickedly sharp edge. "Your friend Meg who just appeared out of a fern?"
Fury chooses this moment to enter in to the conversation. "It's a succulent," he corrects Barton casually. "A very young and healthy Echeveria elegans." Well, if he could have offered up any piece of random information to get everyone to focus on him, identification of plant types was probably it. "I'm allowed to have non-lethal hobbies," Fury shrugs.
"I'm pretty sure there are cactus and succulent varieties that aren't non-lethal at all," Natasha says.
Barnes nods. "She's not wrong."
"Fascinating horticultural revelations aside," Stark says. "Which, by the way we will definitely be diving deeper in to later," this part is addressed to Fury with the two fingered gesture for watching someone. Then he spins to look at Leo. "Your tool belt fits anything?"
Leo gives a crooked grin and it's the kind of expression that makes Cassie immediately start looking for the nearest source of cold water in case her friend suddenly bursts in to flames. Jason quietly inches Piper's cornucopia over to Percy and glances meaningfully from Percy, to the horn, to Leo, and back again. Percy takes the hint and grips the cornucopia in one hand just in case, gripping the apple in the other.
"Yeah man," Leo says. "Anything in a normal mechanic's workshop. Big stuff takes longer and the belt needs cool down periods. It's completely awesome! It's like, bigger on the inside."
Annabeth groans and leans forward, thumping her head against the table. "Who let him watch Doctor Who?" she groans, voice muffled by the table and her own hair. "I thought we had an agreement about this guys. No time travel machinery popular culture based phenomena for Leo until more highly qualified professionals with a more complex understanding of the spacetime continuum got the chance to try it first so that we could all avoid a potentially universe ending paradox. I know that we had this conversation."
Leo looked confused. "What's Doctor Who?"
Stark began to explain the premise before any one else in the room could make a move to stop him and Annabeth groaned again, smacking her forehead down on the table. Percy set the cornucopia back down and instead used his hand to rub his girlfriend's back in a soothing pattern. The entire population of the room falls on some spectrum between confused, mentally pained, overwhelmed, and furious and absolutely no one has any measure of control over how the situation is unfolding.
With that in mind Cassie elbows her half-brother lightly in the side. Will, bless him, looks over at her and raises his eyebrows, asking her what she wants done without saying a single word out loud. It's a method of communication they perfected together when she became the head councilor and he became her second with power to assume command in her absence.
"Whistle please," she requests politely. "If order can't be reestablished soon Reyna and Frank's heads are both going to explode."
Will tips his head and raises his fingers to her mouth, emitting a sharp whistle as though he's trying to hail a cab on a busy morning in the city. Nico covers his ears with both hands and looks over at Will with irritation. However, Will and Nico never would have begun dating at all if Will hadn't been immune to Nico's bad temper. True to form, Will just shrugs apologetically. "Not even Apollo can fix exploded cranium."
The rest of the room falls silent and Cassie turns to Meg who is still glaring at her, hands on hips. If Cassie's being honest, the glare is starting to lose it's potency. "Look, we're sorry we didn't call you. No one really called anyone actually. It was more just randomly showing up. Next time we'll make a group chat. Maybe we can even call it Apocalypse Now."
This at least seems to appease Meg who claps her hands together and examines the food on the table. "Good. I give name approval. Now where's the kitchen in this place? You all need food that didn't come out of a magic horn."
"What's wrong with my magic horn?" Piper protested.
Meg is saved from coming up with an answer when there's a hesitant knock at the door which she answers without bothering to check who's there. As it turns out, it's the Maximoff twins. Wanda looks drained and pale but otherwise healthy though her eyes are red and puffy from crying earlier. Pietro is leaning against the wall next to her looking wan and generally like someone who has recently suffered from major blood loss.
Personally Cassie thinks that's pretty good for a guy who was technically dead for a minute less than twelve hour ago.
"Come in," Barton tells Wanda. "There are folding chairs by the wall over there."
Seeing no outright disagreement or protest against it, Wanda slowly steps inside, half carrying her brother. Cassie moves to get up and help but Meg McCaffrey beats her to it, bounding to a stop in front of Pietro. She appraises him with critical eyes, taking in the bullet holes and blood. "Well you look terrible," she comments bluntly. Then she frowns and points at the chairs by the wall, drawing them up to the table and opening them without touching them. Apparently, her household magic is stronger now.
"Go sit," she orders. "You need food."
Cassie thinks Pietro might be about to argue but instead the young man just shrugs after a moment and rubs his chin through his stubble. "What kind of man would I be if I did not obey such an order?" he inquires of no one in particular. Then he goes and sits next to his sister.
Meg gets to work and in minutes the raw ingredients she can pull from Piper's cornucopia in conjunction with a good knife have been transformed in to a fresh buffet any good caterer would have trouble finding fault with. Stark makes eye contact with Cassie and Reyna. "I'm hiring all of your friends," he announces.
This gets a frown from Meg who immediately starts firing off questions with machine gun frequency about weather she's actually being hired. Principally she seems concerned about housing, insurance, and weather or not Stark will let her plant a roof garden. Personally Cassie likes her odds.
"Are any of your other friends going to jump out of the plants?" Steve asks quietly in to her ear."
Cassie shivers as the warmth of his breath prickles over the skin at the back of her neck. She leans back so that she can speak in to his ear in turn. "With Meg here, this is pretty much literally all of my friends except for like two people. I'll tell you more about her later if you want. For now just know that she's an amazing cook, and can make a fully grown plant out of any seeds you hand her. Plus the obvious travel skills."
Steve kisses the hinge of her jaw. "Everyone we care about in one place," he observes out loud. "I feel like I should take pictures. Last time-"
He goes silent abruptly and it only takes Cassie the span of a heart beat to realize why. She reaches up and cups his cheek, angling both of their faces for a gentle kiss as she squeezes one of his hands tightly in hers. Last time Steve had any sense of family he had almost immediately lost it. "When we get home we'll get you a new sketchpad," she tells him quietly. "You can draw this out. Remember it forever."
"Um, yeah," Percy says from the other end of the room, projecting his voice so that is carries throughout the space. "Remembering this forever would be good." Then he turns to Annabeth. "Uh," he says, sounding nervous. "Catch."
He tosses the apple lightly and Annabeth catches it automatically, then looks at it non-plussed. "I'm supposed to forever remember the day my boyfriend threw an apple at me?"
Piper makes a high squeaky sound probably audible to dogs that Cassie hadn't actually thought Piper was capable of generating. Piper just shakes her head when Annabeth looks at her in question and points at Percy. "Let him talk," she advises. "I'm just going to sit right here and cherish the moment." Then she shoots Percy a semi-covert thumbs up.
Cassie's confused too but probably a little less than Annabeth is. Most of the room is just shooting glances at everyone else to see if they have any idea what's going on. "Remember when we went on our first ever quest?" Percy asks, staring straight at Annabeth. "Argus dropped you, me, grover, and Cassie off at a bus that was supposed to take us to Los Angelos and because we got board waiting we played hackysack with an apple."
"I totally won," Annabeth interrupts. "Honestly you suck at that game."
"Why is the time we got board the part of this day that you people remember?" Cassie asks incredulously. "My memory focuses way more on the bus getting blown to hell in New Jersey and finding Grover's Uncle Ferdinand in Medusa's lair before she tried to turn us in to statues."
Steve's forehead wrinkles. "You blew up a bus? When you were twelve?"
Cassie shrugs. "Technically I was thirteen. Annabeth and Percy were twelve. And in our defense the bus blowing up had way more to do with the furies than it did us. Medusa was a lot harder to deal with. Honestly by the time we got to the insult sensitive poodle my brain was completely shot on the weird-o-meter."
"Insult sensitive poodle?" Reyna asks. "i don't think I've heard this story."
"He was running away from some rich people who had put up a reward offer for his return which he very nicely let us collect," Cassie explains. "His name was Gladiola."
"Guys!" Percy hisses down the table at them. "Not helping." Cassie spreads her hands in apology and gestures for Percy to keep going. He turns back to Annabeth and swallows. "Well Wise Girl, apparently back in Ancient Greece if a guy threw an apple at a girl it was considered a marriage proposal."
Annabeth's jaw drops so far Cassie worries if she might have cracked it on the floor. "Are you-"
Percy grins, the same crooked smile he's been giving Annabeth since both of them were twelve years old. "I figured I'd do it better this time," he says. "For one thing we've known each other for a decade and been dating for over half of that which means you definitely don't hate me anymore. Plus I've got a ring this time," he fishes a small blue velvet box out of his jeans pocket. " I wanted to ask in front of our friends," he says. "And they're all here minus Thalia, Rachel, and Chiron. But we've got some random super-powered Sokovian power twins." At that Pietro gives Annabeth a little wave which she actually returns in her state of shock.
"And we've got one of your personal inventing heroes, Captain America, and Bucky Barnes," he continues I checked with your parents too. Your dad said he's never been able to stop you doing anything before so why should now be any different, and I'm pretty sure your mom helped me pass my philosophy exam sophomore year of college so.."
"Stop babbling and give me the damn ring Sea Weed Brain!" Annabeth interrupts.
Percy gapes at her. "Is that a yes? Cuz you are so not making this asking thing easy."
Annabeth brings her hands up to her face to wipe away tears and Cassie realizes with a dull shock that this is the first time she's seen Annabeth cry since Percy got kidnapped by Juno all those years ago. "I'm never going to make things easy for you," she tells him. "Get used to it and give me the ring so you can marry me Kelp Head."
After that the two of them kiss and they're practically glowing with happiness so bright that it makes Cassie want to look away.
"There is a private bunk room reserved for you out of this door and down the corridor to the left," Wanda informs them.
Percy gives a thumbs up in her general direction and the two of them leave the room without breaking the kiss.
The door swings shut behind them and seals with a metallic click Cassie hadn't noticed before. The sound resonates in a momentary silence. Surprisingly Bucky is the one to break it. "What the fuck did I just witness?"
"Two of our best friends just got engaged," Reyna informs him. "We'll probably have to go to their wedding in a year or so. I'll make you wear nice clothes to it but I swear I'll make it seem worth it. Want a plum?" Apparently that's enough to satisfy Bucky's curiosity for the moment because he shrugs and takes the proffered fruit.
Stark is staring out the door contemplatively. "She's an architect right?" he verifies. "I might hire her to rebuild the place in Malibu."
"We're opening a firm together," Piper informs him, producing a business card from what might all be thin air. "I handle legality, Rachel Dare takes care of the business and some of the design stuff. Annabeth is the main architect. Our references include the majority of the Olympian gods." Piper taps the number on the card. "Call any time. You get to be our first completely human client."
Hazel is frowning a little. "Do we need to throw them a party? I think I remember going to an engagement celebration once in New Orleans when I was a kid. I had to wear a dress with ruffles and high shine shoes."
"On Asgard the union of two great heroes would be celebrated with the presentation of a great many gifts and a full month of night time merriment leading up to the wedding ceremony itself," Thor says helpfully. "Surely Greek custom is not so different."
At that everyone in the know looks at Piper who shrugs. "Don't look at me. Being the daughter of Aphrodite means I recognize love, not different marriage customs. Ask Jason, he's signature hero to the goddess of marriage. Who, by the way, hates Annabeth. We're probably going to need to do something about that before we hit the actual wedding day."
Jason sighs. "Calling me the signature hero of Juno is a bit of a stretch," he points out. "Jupiter had my mother sacrifice my life to Juno so that she wouldn't unleash her wrath on my mother for my existence. Then I was taken away to be literally raised by wolves. We never chatted about marriage ceremonies."
"Well that's," Hill stops, evidently searching for words. "A unique childhood. Seriously did no body call DCF for any of you people?"
Leo raised a hand. "My lovely auntie dumped me with them after my mom died." he revealed. "I shuffled around in the system for a bit before I ran away. Then the caught me and I ran away again, then again, then like, five more times before they gave up and sent me out to the Wilderness School in Arizona. That's where I met Jason and Piper."
Jason polished the lenses of his glasses contemplatively. "Did you really meet me there though? With the whole fake memory thing. I think you technically met me on a school bus on the way to the Grand Canyon."
"Annabeth, Percy, and I were all the subjects of a cross-country man hunt back in 2005," Cassie says. "That's the closest I ever got to being reported to DCF. By the time I left home there was nobody left to report me, Annabeth's dad I think always hoped she'd come back on her own, and Percy's mom is amazing so no DCF needed. Though looking back on it someone really should have reported his first stepfather because that asshole was definitely abusive."
Barton's eyes narrowed. "Do you have a name an address?" he asks, doing his best to sound neutral.
It's a good effort but Cassie has seen enough of Barton's file to know that talk of an abusive stepfather probably hits a little bit too close to home. "It got taken care of," Cassie assures him. "There was a thing with Medusa's head and now some gallery in Japan has some really weird statuary."
Barton holds her gaze for a moment and then nods sharply.
"Remind me to congratulate Sally next time I see her," Reyna requests around the peach she's eating. "Getting rid of my verbally terrorizing ghost dad was emotionally scarring enough that I held on to soul crushing guilt for like five years, and that guy was actively trying to kill me and my sister." She glances up and over at Hill. "No one called DCF for us either. We worked at a magic luxury spa for a while and then got kidnapped by formerly guinea pig pirates. Then i went and ruled New Rome and she became Queen of the Amazons."
Bucky shifts a little at that. "About this older sister of yours, is she going to try to murder me for dating you? Or am I just going to get gut punched or something?"
Reyna looks at him seriously. 'That depends, are you going to make me suffer mental, physical, or psychological pain?"
Bucky shook his head. "Wasn't in the plan."
"Then you and Hylla will probably get along fine."
Piper just shrugs and redoes one of the side braids in her long brown hair. "Well I never needed DCF. My dad shipped me off to the Wilderness School pretty much by himself because he thought I was a kleptomaniac and didn't know what to do with me anymore. Now we get along fine and he's directing plays out in San Francisco. Being an actor got less appealing at a point and we're all better off for it. He's got no idea about like seventy-five percent of the contents of my life but he definitely loves me."
The statement leads to several justified inquiries about how it can be possible for Piper's mother to be a Greek goddess without her dad knowing about it. The explanations are somewhat varied and a little rambling and Cassie is starting to find that just keeping her eyes open is requiring way too much effort. Steve seems to notice because Cassie can dimly make out his voice asking Wanda for directions to another empty room over the buzz of everyone else in the room speaking and talking over each other.
Wanda gives directions in her softly accented voice and Steve prods her gently to get her to stand. "Come on," he says. "We're banged up enough without trying to sleep in chairs."
Well, there's really no fighting a statement Cassie knows from her own personal experience to be true so she holds out a hand and lets Steve tow her towards the door. Suddenly she realizes that three people have been missing throughout this entire little powwow. "Where is Sam?" she asks. "I don't think he got hurt but I didn't see him or Rhodes in there. I didn't see Banner either. Did he change back from being the Hulk okay?"
Steve has the gentlemanly conduct ingrained in him enough to help her over a ledge between two corridors and then almost keels over from his own exhaustion. That worries her. The serum has made it so that Steve never trips or really makes any kind of accidental move at all. Without saying a word, Cassie steps closer to his side and tucks herself under his shoulder, both allowing him to guide her according to Wanda's instructions and taking some of his weight.
"Sam and Colonel Rhodes are busy calling people and coordinating. They came in at the second half of the battle so they've got a bit more steam left. Las time I talked to Sam he wasn't hurt but'll probably face an adrenaline crash sometime soon. Banner got changed back okay but wanted some space. Seemed like it might have been in the best interests of everybody on this boat to give it to him."
The fact that Steve is calling a freaking massive flying hellicarrier with the same capacities as a sea worthy aircraft carrier a boat is something that Cassie finds almost inexplicably hilarious. Clearly her post-battle exhaustion has hit the stage known by the parents of toddlers everywhere as 'punchy'. However, she hasn't actually got enough energy to laugh right now and some of her bruises tells her that the attempt might hurt her ribs.
Cassie lets the matter drop. If there is one man on the face of the planet who deserves to have their request for privacy granted, then that man is Dr. Bruce Banner. For now she's just glad that nobody she cares about ended up dead today.
They come to a stop in front of a metal door that looks exactly like every other door they've passed for the last five minutes. However, Steve leans over and pushes the door open so it must be the one Wanda Maximoff gave him directions for. Although in all honesty Cassie isn't sure she cares very much. All she really wants is four stable walls and maybe a mattress. Thankfully this particular box of steel has both plus a tiny shower which may actually be a sign that at least one of the gods loves them and wants them to be happy.
With an ungraceful slump, Cassie gives in to the forces of gravity and drops down to sit on the floor with her her back braced against the wall. "You should use the shower first," she tells Steve. "This armor has a lot of straps I'll have to deal with to get it off and you don't have hair to wash," she points out when Steve opens his mouth to form some sort of chivalry-based protest. "You'll be quicker than me."
The logistical accuracy of her statement is hard to ignore from a tactical viewpoint so she isn't surprised when Steve nods tiredly and heads in to the minuscule bathroom, peeling of pieces of his uniform as he goes. Suddenly it dawns on Cassie that he hasn't completely changed headspaces away from Captain America just yet. The part of him that is just Steve is hanging around somewhere nearby, but for the moment Cap still might be calling the more major shots.
She gives herself a mental shrug. Even if Steve is still stuck in Super Hero Mode there isn't much of anything she can do about it just now. Much as she loves her boyfriend she can't actually get inside his head. The best she can do is wait until he comes out of the shower and see where they're at by then.
In the meantime, Cassie gets to work on taking off her armor. Seriously, she hadn't been lying or exaggerating about the number of straps and buckles involved. Her fingers are uncoordinated in her tiredness but she's been able to handle taking her armor on and off since she was eight and the effort feels incredibly worth it once her body is free of the protective shell of leather and bronze. That relief is almost certainly based in the sudden and definitive reduction in the tacky sensation of dried blood on her limbs and midsection.
The next several minutes end up being devoted to trying to pick chunks of rubble out of her hair. A few of the pictures come away bloody and leave sore places along her scalp where they were previously embedded in her skin. She actually gives some serious thought to just flipping her head upside down and shaking it to let pieces of rock, cement, drywall, and the gods only know what else out of her hair.
The sound of the water shutting off prompts Cassie to move again and she starts thinking that it might be time to pull a Wicked and defy gravity but doesn't quite manage to get around to it before Steve walks back out of the bathroom wearing a pair of SHIELD issue dark blue sweatpants that must be leftover from before the organization fell. He's rubbing his head with a small white towel and looking decidedly less grimy and blood-soaked. He also happens to be carrying his shoulders at least two inches lower than he was before and Cassie supposes the hot water must have had had better restorative effects than simple cleanliness.
She wordlessly extends both of her hands in to the air towards him and wiggles her fingers. Steve, bless him, seems to understand what she's asking for because he crosses the room in three steps. Instead of taking her hands like she expects, he bends forwards and grips her gently high on her ribcage to lift her off the ground. It's a bit of a surprise move (though maybe t shouldn't be) and Cassie just manages to get her feet under her in time to stand on them.
"Thanks," she says, running her fingers over his shoulders where she had braced her hands for the lift. For some reason he hadn't bothered with a shirt after the shower but the view and sensation of bared muscle under her fingers is so incredibly nice that she doesn't bother questioning it. Steve nods silently, but doesn't back away, so Cassie leans back a little ways so she can look in to his face and not at his chest. She studies his face carefully. "You back?"
Steve blinks as though the question has surprised him but then his expression clears and he manages to give her about half a smile. His hands skim up her sides until he's cupping her face between them and then he's leaning down to kiss her. His lips are chapped and their pressure against hers sends a spike of heat straight down her spine and through every nerve in her body. His mouth against hers move almost roughly and the tone behind the sound that Steve let's out when they break apart a fraction for air is almost... restrained. Like he's caught between two things in his head and can't quite manage to break away from either.
Cassie nips one at his bottom lip to see if he'll make that sound again and is immediately successful. He pulls away at that, much to her disappointment, and rests his forehead against hers. "I'm getting there," he tells her between two shallow breaths. "Almost." He backs away by a tiny step but maintains a grip on her hands, apparently not willing to back away completely. "You should go enjoy your shower. It helps with almost everything."
Under better circumstances, Cassie might take this opportunity to tease. She might salute. Maybe she's even say something like 'aye aye Captain' and Steve might blush a bit and shuffle his feet. Then he might look at her with a wide smile and soft blue eyes.
On a better day.
Instead, she just nods and moves off to the bathroom, peeling off the remainder of her bloody, sweaty, clothes as she goes. The bathroom is less of a room and more of closet with nearly no space to move between the sink, toilet, and shower stall. If this space is cramped for her, how did Steve even fit in here at all?
Ah well.
Who cared about the laws of physics anyway?
Isaac Newton, Albert Einstein, some other important scientific and engineering people.
Let's forget about them for now shall we?
Steve's left a worn cotton tee shirt on the counter for her. It's the top half of the SHIELD sweatpants he'd worn out of his own shower. Cassie supposes that solves the mystery of why he'd forgone a shirt.
There are little bottles of soap, shampoo, and even conditioner balanced on a small ledge inside the stall and Cassie makes liberal use of all there products. They're borderline scentless and probably incredibly low quality, the kind of thing you might expect to get in a cheap hotel room, but Cassie doesn't care. She's spent enough time in cheap hotels and worse places over her lifespan to have absolutely nothing against them.
The soap stings in the cuts that haven't closed yet but Cassie would rather deal with the brief pain of cleansing now than the burning fever of an infection later. The shampoo hurts even more and Cassie is actually grateful for the small pain. It focuses her and gives her a way to clear her mind more fully. Besides, she feels a million times more human with the grime and gore off of her skin and out of her hair.
Cassie stays in the shower with the water as hot as it can possibly be for long enough that the skin at the pads of her fingers and toes starts to wrinkle. When she turns off the water and steps out the small mirror above the sink is completely fogged over and the walls themselves feel slick with accumulated moisture. She swipes some of the hog away with her hand and actually takes a moment to examine her face, tipping her head from side to side to see the different angles. Her conclusion is that she doesn't look great, but now it's just regular tired not great and not directly post battle shitty.
She dries off as well as she can with a rough towel and squeezes some of the excess water out of her hair before slipping the tee shirt on over her underwear. There's no way to get her hair properly dry or brushed out so she lets it dangle down her back and messes with the hair tie she's managed to keep around her wrist. Memories of drastic hair tangling and the impossible difficulties it presents lead her to begin the task of twisting the strands in to a braid as she walks back in to the room.
Steve looks up at her as she comes in and Cassie knows without asking that he's managed to shake off the Captain for now. His smile is soft and tired, but warm and genuine and reaches all the way to his eyes. He's sitting on the foot of the cot the room has and holds out a hand towards her. "I can finish the braid if you want," he offers.
Cassie considers for a moment but decides there's no way he can make the situation any worse so she crosses over and sits crosse legged on the ground with her back against his needs and passes the mass of her damp curls back to him. He combs through it a couple times with careful fingers, gently picking out some of the worse tangles, and then begins to braid. It's actually a wonderfully soothing sensation and Cassie leans back in to his touch as he goes, weaving the strands together without tugging them and deftly avoiding the scrapes and small bruises along her scalp.
"Hair tie?" he requests, gripping the end of the braid with one hand and extending the other down in front of her. Cassie drops the tie in to his waiting palm and he deftly fixes it to the end of the braid to hold it in place. "Done."
Cassie reaches back and traces her fingers over the familiar pattern of interlocking sections of hair. "You're good at that," she says, not able to hide her surprise. "How's that never come up before?"
Steve shrugs and helps her stand in front of him. With him sitting on the bed and her standing up she's taller than him by a little bit but they're pretty much on a level. "I guess it wasn't relevant." He tugs lightly at her hip and Cassie follows the motion, sitting on top of his legs facing him, bringing her toes almost to touch behind his back. "Bucky's better at it than me," he says. "He had a younger sister, Rebecca. It used to be his job to walk her to her school in the morning before he went to ours, but she always refused to leave the house unless her hair was braided. He got good at it." He rubs his palms over her back in wide circles, tugging the shirt up a little with the motion. "When I started tagging along with them I started helping. My hands were smaller than." He lifts a shoulder as Cassie drapes her arms lightly around his neck, wary of any damage the serum hasn't gotten around to fixing yet. "Seemed like the thing to do."
She leans up to kiss him gently. "You know of course that now that I know this, you are officially responsible for braiding my hair on the mornings when I'm too tired and lazy feeling to do it myself."
"I think I could live with that." He leans back down to kiss her again and this team it's deeper and longer and like melted chocolate or diving in to warm, deep, water. Her fingers bury themselves in Steve's hair and one of his hands dips down, sliding under the hem of her shirt to find warm skin. This time, it's her turn to gasp as she feels his palm spread against her stomach and sweep slowly upwards.
Cassie has to pull back for air and presses a flurry of kisses down his neck and along his bared collarbone. Steve groans when she manages to work her way back to a specify spot near the corner of his jaw and the sound is enough to make her stay there, lavishing the skin with attention. His other hand falls to her other hip and he shifts his weight backwards, moving them both farther up the mattress.
His tongue does something to her shoulder that makes her shiver as white heat lances through her and then he's turning them over, his arms first forming a cage around her and then propping him above her. He fills her entire field of vision, the pupils of his eyes almost swallowing the remaining velvety blue. She raises one hand to caress his cheek and those eyes fall shut at her touch.
Steve shifts his weight so that he's holding himself above her on one arm and uses his now free hand to hold hers where it is. He turns his head and kisses each of her finger pads in turn before kissing her palm. "I love you," he utters seriously. "There were so many times today where we both could've died. You got kidnapped and we were attacked and everyone we care about has been about to die all die but all I could think was that I hadn't gotten to tell you that today, that I might not ever get to tell you that ever."
Her heart feels like it might be breaking a little and she lifts her other hand to his cheek, wanting to comfort and be comforted all at once. "Steve-"
He deftly catches that hand as well and kisses it fiercely before letting her loop it up and around his shoulders. "Last time I was on a sinking ship I had someone I loved and was too damned scared to say it before it was too late. I will never let that happen again."
There's so little that she can possibly say in response to that pronouncement so she pulls him down to her to press kisses across every bit of his face she can reach. She kisses his cheeks, his nose, the hollow of his throat, and the thin skin of his eyelids. "I'm here," she whispers in to his ear. "I'm here. We are both right here. I am right here in this room, in your arms. And I-," she takes his face between her hands and makes sure he's looking straight at her. "I love you too."
His eyes shut again and Cassie sees him swallow hard in the dim light of the room as he nods.
Then his arms tuck themselves underneath her, fingers running between the material of her shirt and the skin of her back and sides. His mouth meets hers in a series of kisses that scorch her nerves from her head to her toes and everything around her above and below is Steve. The only thing left to do is reciprocate in kind. Every single pore of his skin and ripple of muscle- every movement he makes practically screams love and Cassie can only pray to every god she knows exists and some she has yet to meet that she is doing the same.
She doesn't have the breath to speak, he doesn't leave her the chance to take it so she tries to speak with her hands, and kisses, and the movement of her body.
I'm here.
I love you.
I'm alive.
We're here.
We're whole.
We won.
I love you.
We won.
I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you.
For now, these are the only words they need.
A/N: So that's a wrap on my version of AOU. What did you guys think of it? I know it took a little while but I had to move out, and then back in somewhere else, and then lost power for a little while and couldn't use the computer. Hopefully it was worth it in the end! I thought it was about time Annabeth and Percy got the happy relationship progression Uncle Rick seems so reluctant to right. I also tried to incorporate some elements from events in the Apollo books (partly to freaking fix them!) hence Meg. I've got some plans for her coming up. Possibly involving Pietro? Let me know what you guys would think of that happening because nothing's set in my mind with that quite yet. I also decided to keep Bruce on Earth which I was a bit up in the air about when I was writing this chapter. It just seemed like that's where things were leaning in my head during the writing process. Whatever you thought about any of it, I'd love to hear it. Review for me! xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxooxxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxooxxoxoxoxooxoxxo