Disclaimer: Nothing is mine. That's really all I have to say on the subject.

The Hypnos cabin sometimes got a bad wrap around camp and with the Legion. The reasons for this were fairly obvious. By nature, they were left with genetics dictating conditions nearing diagnosable narcolepsy. By extension this made it impossible to entrust them with any job involving any object or surface that was hard, sharp, on fire, etc. In conclusion, generally useless for combat either in teams or one-on-one.

However, Cassie is of the opinion that sleep is a wonderful thing.

She wakes up what she guesses is probably about six solid hours after she and Steve manage to drift off. Her mental and physical states are both improved immensely given that her head no longer feels like some small demon has dedicated time to filling it with cotton wool. Her mood is further improved when she notes that the thing that's woken her is a narrow shaft of sunlight falling through a tiny porthole in the steely wall on to her face.

Cassie roles over in the light, moving gingerly as some of her remaining bruises twinge as a remembrance to what she's pretty sure was some nice family's poured cement wall. With a bit of maneuvering she manages to prop herself up against the wall behind the cot and takes the time to thoroughly embrace the buzz of energy seeping through her pores and in to the rest of her system. Her own senses tell her that this influx of power is finishing the work of knitting together the last of her damaged skin, muscle, and tissue.

With the last of the damage healed, Cassie luxuriates in stretching her arms and fingers out in front of her with a yawn she tries to keep quiet but doesn't quiet manage to. She probably would have managed it if her jaw hadn't cracked. Unfortunately, one of the small side effects of rapid healing was joint stiffness, making the popping adjustments par for the course.

The sound ricochets up from her mouth to her ear, which just at the moment doesn't feel quite far away. Wincing, Cassie raises one hand and massages the protesting hinge socket. Logically she knows that the pop is no different from a cracked knuckle or back, but there was really no stomping instinct sometimes.

A mumbling sound beside her alerts her to the fact that Steve is now awake too. The murmur of sounds continues a moment, but is made unintelligible by tiredness and the relatively thin material of the mattress Steve's face must be flattened against. All Cassie can see of him is the blonde hair sticking up and ruffled from sleep on the back of his head.

Actually, the whole visual is adorable.

One of Steve's hands extends over the mattress, patting and stretching along the space, clearly looking for her. "'Ssie?"

Oh. He's trying to get to her name. Who really cared about clear articulation at a time like this.

Cassie reaches out and takes his hand between both of hers. "I'm here," she assures. "It's still early."

At that he makes an undignified and indistinct sound that comes out as "mph" but could mean anything. Then he shifts his body across the mattress and stretches one arm over her hips, resting his head in her lap to use it for a pillow. "Somethin' wrong?"

Cassie lowers both of her hands to his head and strokes her fingers through his hair and over his scalp. "No," she nearly whispers, lowering her head a little closer to his. "Nothing." She ducks down, bending nearly in half and drops a kiss against the bare skin of his shoulder blades. "Go back to sleep."

A gratifying shiver coasts along his spine and Steve turns his head towards her stomach, burrowing further in to her body. "'ats good," he mumbles, and this time it's Cassie's turn to shiver as the vibration of his voice presses directly in to her. Both of his arms loop around her back, one propping her up and the other holding her against him.

She feels the more deliberate pressure of lips against her navel and applies gentle pressure along the back of his neck near his hairline and the edges of his ears. Steve sighs contentedly and Cassie finds herself echoing the sound, leaning in to the unconscious support of his body and letting her eyes slip shut. She continues the slow, steady, movements of her fingers through the softness of Steve's hair and small kisses land against her skin intermittently.

For a while, time passes on like this. Like dragonflies in amber. The impression is only heightened by the soft golden light filtering in to the small space.

Eventually, Steve sighs again, but this time the sound is more resigned. Then he rolls over, looking straight up in to her face, blinking sleepily. Cassie let's her hands fall back, resting against his shoulder which is no longer around her waist and instead propped behind his head along her thigh. "Good morning."

His voice is roughened by sleep and probably the battle and Cassie finds it unnamable sexy as a vocal tone. "Good morning."

He smiles up at her and takes one of her hands, kissing the fingers and then cupping it against his chest over his heart. Cassie spreads her fingers to absorb the rhythm of his heart echoing through his ribcage and chest. A moment later, Cassie feels the beat shift subtly, pausing before the start of a new phrase to align with her own.

The pressure over her fingers increases slightly as Steve's hand tightens on hers. She feels as much as she hears or sees his sharp intake of breath. "I'm not sure I'll ever get used to that," he says, almost to himself. Cassie looks at his face and sees that his eyes must have shut again. They open again as she watches as though he can feel her eyes on him. "Do you feel what it's like when you do that?"

Cassie frowns briefly and actually thinks through the feedback of sensation she gets when Steve's heart beat changes to match her own. "It's difficult to describe," she admits. "It's settling. Like hearing a set of notes played the right way in a song." She shrugs. "Your heart is very steady. Constant. Why? What does that feel like to you?"

Steve reaches up with the hand not holding hers, twining around the end of the braid he had fixed there the night before. "It's like everything that's out of rhythm just stops for a moment, then restarts better," he says. The look on her face must leave some kind of evidence that he's not explaining things the way he wants to. The hand at the end of her braid reaches up farther and cups her cheek. "It's like I can feel you," he says. "The rhythm of you."

The blue of his eyes is deep and calm, like still water at the base of a cliff. It's also desperately sincere and concentrated, willing her to fully understand what he's saying. Cassie's pretty sure she does. She smiles again and dips her head to kiss him. Steve seems to grasp what she's going to do on the way down because he grins and shifts his hand to cup the back of her neck and pull a little.

The kiss is warm, and deep, and lazy. The way morning kisses are supposed to be.

Somewhere in the midst of it, Cassie's hand trails away from his heart only for Steve to tug it back again. Then he pulls away from the kiss but keeps his forehead pressed against hers. The change happens more quickly this time and Cassie feels his brief shudder as the rhythm of his heart clicks in to hers. "There," Steve smiles again and tips his head up a little to kiss her forehead. "People tell stories about the people they love making their hearts skip a beat. But mine actually does sometimes."

Well really, for that she has to kiss him. She has absolutely no choice in the matter. None at all.

This kiss is longer, messier, and more feverish. It's perfect and utterly consuming and all in all they're well on their way to shutting out the rest of the world for the next several hours when their preserved slice of peaceful happiness is shattered by a knock at the door. The reminder that the rest of the world won't just go away and leave them alone just because they helped save it yesterday is jarring to say the least.

Cassie groans as Steve makes a rather vocal and yet completely inarticulate noise of displeasure. She doesn't understand the words, but finds herself thoroughly on board with the sentiment. Cassie gives his shoulder a half-hearted shove which Steve allows to shift him slightly. "Go answer it," she tells him, attempting to get up.

"Why?" he grumbles, and Cassie is forced to purse her lips to keep herself from laughing. For a super soldier national icon, her boyfriend sometimes pouts like a young child, and that fact is frankly hilarious. It's also something Cassie plans to forever keep to herself. She isn't necessarily a possessive person, but she still likes the fact that there are some pieces of Steve that only she will ever see.

"Put it this way," Cassie says, attempting to move his arm from around his hips. He isn't pressing her down really, but he's bracing it a few inches above her hips and the effect is not dissimilar to a steel safety band on a roller coaster. "Between the two of us, you are the one who has pants that will actually fit."

Steve narrows his eyes up at her and then casts a meaningful glance down at the rest of his body. "Not at the moment."

Cassie rolls her eyes but can't actually argue the point. "Let me rephrase," she says. "Between the two of us, you are the one who has pants that will fit them located somewhere within the confines of the particular metal box that we have been so graciously allocated within the slightly larger metal box we're flying around in."

This time it's Steve's turn to let his eyes rotate in their sockets. "Your dad's not also the god of lawyers is he?" He does push himself up though, releasing Cassie who rolls sideways to let her feet land on the floor before he changes his mind. The pounding on the door is starting up again and Cassie won't have the self-control to pay attention to it if Steve decides he doesn't care. On the distraction scale, her hot boyfriend wins out against anonymous door knocking every day of the week and twice on Sundays.

"Not law," she corrects. "Oratory. Themis is the goddess of law. She's technically a minor goddess. I met her on Mount Olympus once. Interesting conversationalist, though it's really hard to avoid an argument. You have to pick your moment, and make sure Nike's not around. Goddess of victory," she adds at Steve's confused look.

Steve looks like he might have something he wants to say but then thinks better of it and shakes his head. "Remind me to start a new list. I need to look up more stories about your family. Otherwise I have the feeling I'll end up spending the rest of my life confused."

The casual mention of the rest of their lives makes Cassie grin and she braces her hands on the mattress to plant a kiss on his forehead, smoothing the crease of confusion lurking there. "Part of the fun of a relationship is learning new things. With me, we'll never run out of them." She straightens up and scoops the shirt she had been wearing the night before from off the floor, pulling it over her head on the way to the bathroom. "Get the door. I'll see how much salvageable clothing we've got."

She slips in to the bathroom and feels more alert and awake after using a finger and some generic provided toothpaste to scrub her teeth and splashing her face with hot water. Then she goes on the hunt for clothes. This proves a little more difficult as body armor may be protective, but it generates and traps sweat like nobody's business.

A brainwave washes over her and Cassie pulls the under layers from both of their sets of armor. This leaves her with jeans and a close fitting tee shirt and Steve with what essentially amounts to a set of under armor. She upends the remaining shampoos and soap on the fabric and rubs it around to help it soak in. Then she blasts everything thoroughly with the shower head.

Now everything is clean and smells much better, but given that it's dripping wet it isn't exactly wearable. After a moment to consider she figures anything is worth trying once, and holds out her palms. After a moment to concentrate she feels her palms heat, and a strong current of warm air flows from her hands and out over the fabric. Within a minute, the clothes are dry and at least in the short term, completely wearable.

She slides on her own clothes and then ducks out of the bathroom, taking the dried inner layer of Steve's clothes with her. Steve is standing in the doorway talking to Maria Hill. To the woman's immense credit, she appears to be looking studiously in to his face instead of at his bicep, abdominal, or pectoral muscles. It's a truly exceptional display of self-control as Steve's still shirtless and all of those muscles are bared and on full display for the interested individual.

"Here," Cassie says, walking up behind Steve and holding out the undershirt and the tee shirt she had worn out of the shower yesterday. "Both are clean-ish. I did my best to wash the armor in the shower. The regular tee shirt might be your better option. I put it on right out of the shower and was only actually wearing it for like, ten minutes."

Steve's face quirks in to a small smile as he reaches out. "I think I'll go with the tee shirt until I can get this through a fully modern washing machine. I did all of my probably unnecessary repeated wearing of battle clothing in 1944." He leans down to kiss her temple and then lifts a shoulder towards Hill. "I'll go get ready. Hill'll fill you in."

Cassie shrugs and tosses the shirt she's holding at the bed. Steve turns from the door and heads toward the bathroom to do his own morning washing up. Cassie turns expectantly to Hill. The woman is holding a styrofoam cup with a brown plastic lid in each hand and Cassie raises an eyebrow at it. "If one of those cups holds coffee you intend to give to me I might actually give you a hug."

Hill makes a face like she had just suggested sacrificing a small animal to appease a Christian Satanic being. "Well now I'm questioning giving it to you."

"Fine," Cassie relents. Then she brightens up, changing tactics. "If you give me the coffee then I swear I will never initiate contact with you ever so long as we both shall live unless explicitly granted permission to act otherwise."

Hill makes an impressed face as though in appreciation of her negotiating skills. "I respect your bargaining skills," she acknowledges, passing Cassie a cup of steaming caffeine. "I'm considering that agreement binding," she warns as Cassie takes her first sip.

Cassie inclines her head in understanding and swallows down a mouthful of coffee, letting the molecules buzz through her system. "So what are we doing?"

She can almost visibly see Hill switch over in to mission mode. "We've spent most of the night getting in touch with customs and immigration offices in the E.U. to see which of them would take in refugees from the disaster and how many. Anyone with family members is going to join them in the rest of Sokovia. Everyone else is being dispersed between Spain, France, England, Switzerland, and Italy. We've also been getting damage reports. The property damage is of course, irreparable. But the good news is that we got enough advance notice to evacuate roughly eighty-five percent of the inhabitants before Ultron showed up. Another twelve percent of the population is on board here." At that she gave Cassie a searching look. "Your friend Piper has some serious mojo."

Cassie keeps her face neutral while at the same time mentally celebrating the fact that the fatalities were likely confined to double digits. Maybe that doesn't sound so fantastic, but given what could have happened she'll take it. "I was kidnapped while the evacuation was happening," she says lightly. "From what I've heard, Wanda Maximoff and Piper together got the job done."

Being a high level secret agent, Maria Hill must understand the value of keeping things close to your vest because she seems to accept that she won't be getting any more information out of this conversation. "We've gotten reports of hundreds of injuries. The Red Cross and Doctors Without Borders are going to be working over time on a lot of the survivors, but there were surprisingly few that'll require real long term care or surgery."

At that Cassie nods and takes another sip of coffee before passing the cup back to Steve as he makes his way out of the bathroom fully clothed. and looking like he combed some water through his hair. "I used most of my energy last night on Pietro Maximoff, but get me a few more thousand calories and some vitamin E to kick off my morning and Will and I can get that number lower. Can you get me some kind of list prioritizing the worst of them? I should probably start there."

Maria nods economically, all business. "The carrier came with a few minions. I'll have one of them get you something to work off of."

Steve comes up behind Cassie, brushing one hand over the small of her back. "Food first," he tells her seriously.

Cassie rolls her eyes but cuts any hostility out of it with a small smile. Steve's been so good about reigning in any of the overprotective instincts he has when it comes to her. And that isn't just now or facing Ultron, it's everyday when he now knows she might get attacked by a monster in the street, and each night when he watches her go out on patrol alone. He cares so incredibly deeply about his friends and loved ones, and that he can't really protect her during most of her every day life is probably disquieting on a level bordering on painful.

"I believe you did hear me say that the consumption of a few thousand calories is first on my to-do list," she reminds him, using his shoulder to tug herself up on to her toes so she can kiss his cheek. "I'll even let Will make sure the nutrition levels are balanced and take a multivitamin." She drops back down off her toes and takes his hand. "There are literally several hundred people on this boat who need you worrying about them more than I do today. Okay?"

Steve sighs and leans over to kiss her hair. "Fine. I'll multi-task."

That's not quite perfect, and it's on the tip of Cassie's tongue to tell Steve about the study she had once read concluding that it takes a human brain approximately three thousandths of a second to switch from one thing to another. However, she thinks now might not be the time to get in to it. Steve's impossible to shift once he's chosen the hill he wants to die on and they don't have that kind of time.

Hill turns and begins to make her way down the hall. "If you'll follow me, I'll show you where the mess hall is on this thing."

Five minutes and several identical corridors later, they're in a very large room that could have belonged in any public school on the planet. It's fairly crowded with displaced Sokovians, but they find Reyna and Bucky holding down a table in the corner farthest from the door. Leo is sitting with them, covered in engine grease, clothing singed, as he contentedly munches on a breakfast sandwich.

The Maximoff twins are huddled together a little apart from the other three, murmuring to each other in hushed Sokovian. Pietro has a frankly inconceivable amount of food piled on a tray in front of him and seems to be trying to convince his sister to try something that may or may not be oatmeal. He must not be making very much headway because Wanda is picking away at a singular muffin without much enthusiasm.

Cassie and Steve load up their own plates and go to join them. Steve sits down beside Bucky and Cassie sits between him and Wanda and across from Reyna. "Where's everyone else?" she asks.

"Annabeth and Percy haven't shown up yet," Reyna says. "I for one, am not about to go looking for them. What I might see if I do is not something I'm interested in having clarified."

"Fair enough," Cassie concedes with a shudder. She pokes a spoon in to a slightly dubious looking strawberry yogurt. "I'm guessing from the food quality that Piper is also unaccounted for at the moment?"

Leo swallows his mouthful and then chips in. "Actually, she, Meg, and Frank are up top distributing food to the people who couldn't come down here and entertaining some of the kids. Last time I saw Jason he was trying to explain to Thor that he was not his son."

Reyna almost spits back out the bite of breakfast she had just taken and almost chokes. "Seriously?"

"Oh yeah," Leo says casually. "So like first thing this morning the big guy just walks up to Jason and then gives him an electric zap as a greeting. And well, you know that doesn't really work on Jason, but he'll definitely feel it. So he jumps like eight feet off the ground and zaps Thor right back on some sort of instinct thing. Then Thor just kinda stops and looks at him, then next thing you know he's grabbing Jason's face in both hands, tipping his head around, and then asks 'if he fathered this one'. Apparently it's taking him a little longer than it should to explain that he is not."

"Please tell me that this got recorded," Reyna says fervently. Leo grins wickedly in response and wiggles his phone at her with the hand not clutching his breakfast and Reyna smiles. "I expect you to send that too me."

"Ma'am yes Ma'am," he replies with a mock one-handed salute.

"Anyone who worked overnight is crashing now," Bucky informed them. "I think that includes Rhodes, Wilson, Levesque, and DiAngelo. Last time I saw Stark he was on the phone talking with Pepper. Barton and Romanoff are up on the bridge with Fury and Banner's talking to Doctors without Borders and the Red Cross." He inclines his head towards Cassie. "Your brother left about five minutes before you got here to stock up on medical supplies."

Cassie nods and indicates her breakfast. "I'll head up and join him once I finish this." A thought suddenly occurs to her. "Is this thing taking us home eventually or are we going to have to fly commercial? Because we might have gotten some good will from Zeus lately but Nico, Percy, and Hazel all in his domain at once might be pushing it."

"Thor and Vision have agreed to help out on the flying thing," Reyna informs them. "Our bigger problem on all this is going to be the media."

The reminder makes Cassie groan and have to fight the urge to bang her head in to the table. "Exactly how much of us battling a robot army with demigod magic made it on to the internet?"

Reyna shrugs and pops a grape in to her mouth. "Not as much as there could be. All the magic being used completely shorted the cellphones in the area so the only people who can actually see what happened are eye witnesses. What with the Mist, the shock, and the language barrier, I'm pretty confident the exposure won't be too severe. Unfortunately reporters are starting to swarm the area and anywhere we might drop off refugees. We should probably keep the others hidden when we land. They've already seen you and me so that ship's probably way out of the harbor and sailing away."

This time the groan isn't something Cassie can repress and she drops her head in to her hands. She feels Steve reaching an arm around to rub her back in a gesture he's clearly hoping is soothing. "Wait," he says. "If the- the Mist," he stutters over the vocabulary and Cassie knows that for as well adjusted as he is conceptually, his brain is still trying to grasp a lot of the details. "Can cover up all of your friends, why isn't it hiding you?"

"Exposure," Cassie mumbles at the table. She turns her head and looks up at him through one eye. "Remember when I explained about how you could already mostly see my abilities and me because you'd already met Thor?" he nods so she continues. "Right. Well. The public already knows who Reyna and I are. If someone who already knew looked at us using our abilities, they'd see us more clearly. They might not have seen all of the magic we were using, but they'll know we were here and fighting and helping you all somehow. It's not a catastrophe, but there's gonna be questions we're gonna have to answer."

Bucky tips her head down in to her field of vision. "Or we could just... not?"

Reyna rolls her eyes as Cassie straightens up and pats Bucky on the shoulder. "I'll explain to you why ignoring the media and letting them draw their own conclusions is a bad thing later. Meanwhile, no one talk to anyone until someone from Stark's legal department goes over some of what the press are saying."

Leo lets out a laugh that Cassie personally thinks is closer to a cackle. "Your dating lives are hilarious."

"Leo," Cassie says conversationally. "I suggest taking a moment to consider who you're mocking." She points at each person around the table one by one. "Me, Reyna, Captain America, the Winter Soldier. How many of us do you want to piss off and who do you think will punch you first?"

The question manages to shut Leo up in a way that no other inquiry ever has before, eating quickly and taking off after, muttering something about the engine room. It probably helps that Bucky makes direct eye contact with him and flexes the articulated metal plating of the fingers on his left hand, making a fist and casually examining it. Whatever else Bucky knows how to do, he has clearly mastered the completely non-verbal threat. Really non-verbal everything. If he could ever work out the kind of mind reading Wanda Maximoff is capable of, Cassie isn't sure he'd ever speak again if he didn't absolutely have to.

Just as the thought articulates inside her mind, she looks up and catches sight of Wanda's tiny smile. It's barely existent, but it's there. It's more than a little bit disconcerting to think that the girl had probably overheard her thought and found it amusing, but this is the most positive expression of emotion Cassie's ever seen from her so she's willing to roll with it and maybe give up a little mental privacy for a while if that's what it takes to earn the girl's trust and get her out of her shell some.

With that in mind she turns and faces Wanda directly. "I don't mind if you listen to my thoughts," she says calmly. "But I'm warning you now that there is a lot of crap in my brain you don't want to see. Also, if we're setting ground rules, I would prefer you to stay away from my memories. And generally speaking, eavesdropping when you don't have to is kind of rude."

Wanda starts as though surprised at being addressed. "It is not on purpose normally," she says slowly, her accent making the words a little stilted. "What I hear is like... a low buzz. Sometimes a thought with a louder voice, from a stronger mind will become clearer. Listening to minds- it is not the main thing that I do. It takes quite a lot of effort. Normally I need contact unless I know the person well." She bends a warm smile on her brother. "I can always hear Pietro if I want to."

Pietro pulls a face that makes him look every inch the beleaguered brother. "It is inconvenient," he mutters. "I have been able to get away with nothing for over a year."

Cassie brandishes a spoon at him. "If I were a more in your face personality type I would now deliver a lecture on the dangers of signing up for questionable scientific testing without knowing what the experiment will actually do."

"Uh," Steve hums, rubbing the back of his neck awkwardly. "I signed up for questionable scientific testing without knowing what it would to me."

Bucky punches him in the shoulder. "And you ended up fighting a war, getting frozen for seventy years, waking up in modern day, destroying the government agency your first ever girlfriend built, horrible stage punching Hitler every few days, and selling bonds in a USO show with dancing girls and tights. If all of that doesn't spell unforeseen consequences I don't know what does."

Steve sighed. "I really thought we'd reached a point in time where we could forget about the tights."

"No one is ever forgetting about the tights," Cassie tells him. "They're on vintage posters and actually printed in history books. Those tights are literally, preserved for all time. Get comfortable with it."

"Banner performed his own scientific testing and ended up with the Hulk," Reyna muses. "I think that beats out knitted blue tights on the unforeseen consequences scale."

Wanda flinches at the reminder of the Doctor. "I would like to find Doctor Banner at some point," she says determinedly. "I owe him an apology, I think." Then she looks around the table, locking eyes with Steve and Bucky. "I owe you both apology. The rest of the team as well. What I put you through was nothing short of cruel, and I apologize."

"Well I can't speak for any of the others," Steve says. "But if you're dedicated to making different choices now, then all I care about is what you do next." He moves his gaze over to Pietro. "As far as I'm concerned that goes for both of you."

Both twins nod and Wanda looks to Bucky next who shrugs. "I don't judge people forever based on their worst selves. Hypocrisy isn't my thing."

With those words out Wanda's shoulders visibly relax and Wanda takes a deep breath. Then she surprises Cassie by leaning over quickly and giving her a hug. Cassie returns it after a moment to adjust. She can't help noticing that the girl is almost painfully thin, her bones sticking out against her skin. "Thank you," she says fervently. "My brother is alive because of you." She pulls away and takes her brother's hand as she stands up from the table. "Neither of us will ever be able to repay that."

Pietro sketches a bow in her direction. "If ever you need to get somewhere in a flash. I am ever and always at your disposal." Then he winks and scoops up his sister, and both twins are gone in a blur of color and a burst of wind.

The rest of them disperse not long afterwards. Even a super soldier with a hyper metabolism could only ingest so much mass produced government ration derived breakfast before reaching the conclusion that the calories weren't worth it anymore. Considering that both of the soldiers in question lived of of World War II army K-Rations for two years, that was seriously saying something about the quality of the food involved here.

Reyna borrows Cassie's monster-proof phone and gets on the line to talk to Pepper about handling the media. Bucky and Steve take over reuniting scattered family members. Bucky speaks both Russian and Romanian and apparently between them there are enough loan words for him to work out Sokovian. Steve's a natural task master and organizer so between them Cassie has no doubt that things will get done.

Cassie herself heads off in search of Will. She finds him in the process of setting a broken arm for a grey haired woman up on the deck of the helicarrier. He looks haggard and exhausted it suddenly strikes her that her brother probably worked all night, took fifteen minutes for breakfast, and then got right back to work. Will perfectly typifies the cliche of good doctors being bad patients.

"Go sleep," she says, shooing him off. "You worked all night so I could sleep curled up with my boyfriend, let me take the day shift so you can go see yours." Will opens his mouth to speak but Cassie holds up one hand to stop him. "I am not accepting arguments right now," she declares in the voice she used to use when she needed something done as the head counselor for the Apollo Cabin at camp. "I am officially invoking my Big Sister status and ordering you to go find Nico and get some rest."

Will deflates and turns a tired smile on the woman he had been treating. "You're going to be just fine," he says soothingly. The lady probably can't understand his actual words, but his tone is the reassuring pattern of medical professionals the world over. "My sister is going to finish your arm." He stands up and Cassie moves to take his place and accept the extra bag of mortal supplies he scrounged from the Red Cross earlier. He puts a hand on her shoulder and leans down to kiss her forehead. Her little brother has always been taller than her. "Thanks big sister."

She grins and gives him a small push towards the door leading down below deck. "You're welcome little brother." She watches until he's around the corner and out of even her line of sight and then turns back to treat the broken arm. She does a cursory exam of the two pieces of bone and gives a warning that what she's about to do will hurt. Again, she's not sure the words are understood but her voice must make the message clear. The woman nods at her to do it and grits her teeth. Cassie holds up three fingers so she can see and counts them down one at a time before yanking the two pieces of bone in to alignment.

At the moment she doesn't have the materials or the time to make a plaster cast. Instead she makes do with a more basic splint and uses a scarf to tie her arm up in a sling. She reaches in to the it to measure out a painkiller, estimating the woman's weight. However, the woman reaches out and closes her fingers over the pills before she can hand them over. She shakes her head firmly. "No. Not me."

She's refusing medication. Cassie stares at her for a long moment then nods and puts the pills away. She won't force anybody to medicate if they don't want to, and their supplies aren't unlimited. Still, she makes a mental note to come back and check on this woman later if she has time. Maybe she'll offer again if any of the medication remains.

Unfortunately, as the day continues it starts to seem less and less likely that she'll have any supplies left at all. She sets bones and fractures and braces sprain after sprain. She relocates so many joints she looses count and disinfects and bandages innumerable cuts and scrapes. She uses magic more sparingly and only on patients who won't be able to remember that it's been done. Most of those sufferers come off of a list of prioritized urgency delivered to her by one of Maria Hill's underlings about an hour after she gets started.

One of those injuries is a severed spinal cord and the reversal process is long, draining, and complicated. She has to weave back together the tissues and nerve endings and melt and re-fuse the bones and vertebrae using magic. It takes her about twenty minutes to do, but by the end of it she thinks she's probably saved a twenty year old man from living the rest of his life as a quadriplegic.

She's just catching her breath from finishing up with that when Hazel comes sprinting around the corner. "Cassie!" she exclaims. "Come quick. There's a little girl-"

Cassie doesn't wait for him to finish. She's in motion before she can think twice. Hill's list can take a little hiatus for now. Damaged kids will forever and always be her own priority. "Show me!"

Hazel sprints out in front of her, heading back the way she'd come and Cassie keeps pace, turning where she does. They end up in a secluded room sealed off from the rest of the ship and Cassie realizes immediately why they've called her. The girl is maybe four years old on the outside and there's blood running from a hundred small cuts all over her arms and legs.

That's not why they called her.

No.

Cassie's been called because this little girl has fire shooting out of her hands. She's crying and hysterical and clearly unable to control it. But there's fire rolling off of her palms and spraying from her fingertips in streams. Whatever this little girl is, it's not fully human, and no one else will be able to get close.

"Okay," she mutters to herself. "Problem solving." Problem one is getting past the fire and close enough to the little girl to help her. Getting her healed is, for now, problem two. Finding her parents will be problem three. Always assuming they're still alive.

She squares her shoulders and steps forwards directly in to the literal line of fire. She throws up her hands like she's catching a ball not a shoot of flame and hopes like Hades that this is going to work. Fortunately, the flames stop, collecting in the space between her hands. She concentrates and imagines sucking all of the fire in the space in to one concentrated ball.

Then she begins the arduous task of picking apart the molecules of energy that make the fire sustainable. The only time she's ever done anything close to this before was when she'd defused Tony's repulser blast right after he learned about Bucky. This time is easier, and Cassie doesn't know if it's because she's tried it before or because flames are more within her natural power scope than synthetically generated energy is. Regardless, this isn't a skill she particularly wants to practice.

By the time she's done, she feels tired and buzzy all at the same time. It feels like she's been running for twenty-six hours on espresso shots. Weirdly, her hands feel kind of numb and burning, like she used one of those prank iPods that zaps you with electricity when you hold it for too long.

The little girl isn't shooting fire any more, but she is still crying. Cassie sighs and does the only thing she can think of doing which is to move forward, sit on the room's small cot, and scoop her small form up in to her lap for a hug. "Shhhhh," she hushes in what she hopes is a soothing voice. "Hush. You're okay. It's all going to be fine." She funnels some of the excess energy out of her body and in to healing the cuts that cover her body.

The little girl buries her face in Cassie's shoulder, whole body shaking with her sobs and Cassie just holds her, rocking back and forth. She looks over the tangles of dark hair surrounding the girls face to see Frank and Hazel standing in the doorway. "Do we know anything?"

Frank shakes his head. "Not much. She was with a bunch of other kids we were bringing food to. She was still crying then, but the fire didn't start until a couple of the parents came to pick up their kids. When the thing with the fire kicked up I got her here where there wasn't anything flammable and Hazel went to find you."

"And the cuts?" Cassie asks. She's never seen using an ability cause physical damage to the wielder like this before, and she knows Hazel and Frank would have both tried to find her sooner if they'd seen the injuries. That leaves her wondering where they'd come from.

Hazel frowns. "She was wearing a sweater earlier. The fire burned through it. The cuts were underneath."

That at least makes sense and Cassie nods. Before Leo met Calypso and started wearing only her specially woven fire proof fabric, he had burned through his clothes pretty often by accident. A quick glance tells her that the little girl only looked like she was wearing shorts because the material of her pants had been burned away from the knees down.

"Hey sweetie," she says, addressing the little girl. She looks up with huge brown eyes, tears still streaming from the corners and down her little cheeks. "Hey," Cassie faces a smile on to her face though she doesn't much feel like making one. "Do you understand us? You can just nod or shake your head."

The girl nods several times, still managing to look at Cassie. She's almost holding her breath like she doesn't want to keep crying. Cassie rubs her back in big circles and keeps up a small back and forth rocking motion. "That's great," and she says it sincerely as the job of figuring out what to do with and for this girl is going to be hard enough without a language barrier. "I'm Cassie," she says. "That's Frank and Hazel. Can you tell us your name?"

"Katya," the girl says, swallowing hard like she's still trying not to cry. "Mommy says Katy."

"Mmhm," Cassie says, untangling a few of the tangles in the girls hair with her fingers. "Can you tell me where your mommy is Katy?" She asks it as gently as possible but the little girl's lip trembles and she starts crying again, pointing out the tiny porthole in the carrier's wall towards the ground. "Right," Cassie breaths, she'd been hoping for a different answer but expecting this one. She tucks the girl in to her shoulder. "Okay honey. That's okay. You're safe. We'll figure out what to do."

She looks over at Hazel and Frank again. "I don't want to leave her but there's a lot more injured to treat. Can you guys run out and find one of the team to come be here?" Hazel opens her mouth to offer to do it herself but Cassie intercedes. "You've got to get out there and run Mist intervention," she reminds. "Try to find Leo. He can entertain Katya and besides, he's fireproof."

They nod and go off, but the person who comes through the door next is Tony not Leo. "I hear we need someone to come play babysitter?"

"I sent Hazel and Frank to try to find Leo," Cassie says. It's not that she thinks Tony Stark is incapable of caring for a small traumatized child, it's just that Tony Stark is not who she would choose to even try it. Really, she doesn't think she'd put Tony in charge of caring for a child, or someone in trauma. The cross section of the two doesn't up the odds.

Tony shrugs. "Well they found me instead." He pushes off of the doorjamb and makes his way over, sitting on the ground in front of Cassie and the girl. "So? What's the damage Roman Candle?"

"Now's not the time for a nickname Tony," Cassie hisses.

"Not talking to you Little Miss Sunshine," Tony says' Cassie notes for the first time that he's looking at Katya not her. "So," he raises an eyebrow. "What gives?" Katya sniffs and rubs at her eyes with a knuckle but amazingly the crying seems to be slowing down. She watches Tony with huge eyes, not blinking and eventually Tony shifts and pulls a few tiny pieces of metal out of his grease stained pockets. "Why don't you climb down and play with me. I need to finish off these things." With a squint, Cassie can see that the objects are minuscule wind up toys.

Katya turns and looks up at Cassie as though asking for reassurance. Despite her misgivings, Cassie can't ignore the fact that Tony and his little toys might be distracting for Katya if her dad is who Cassie thinks it is. Besides, she's stopped crying since Tony had come in and hasn't picked it back up again. She smiles and nudges the girl forwards. "Go on," she says with more confidence than she feels. "Tony will look after you."

She doesn't know how good four year old comprehension is, but Katya seems to understand because she releases her handfuls of Cassie's shirt and climbs off her lap and on to the floor to sit across from Tony. She examines a few of the toys with careful deliberation, and then selects what looks to her like a life-sized replica of a monarch butterfly. Her fingers run over the shape and dart to a small switch in the antenna. The butterfly hums to life and suddenly the delicate metal wings begin to flap and the toy takes to the air, saying in a small circle before landing back on Katya's palm.

The girl giggles around the last of her tears and Cassie sees Tony give a tiny smile, like he's glad he can still make something that causes innocent happiness after everything that Ultron has done. He picks up a minute metal bunny rabbit and twitches it's ears, bringing the critter to life as it begins to hop in circles across the floor. Then he extracts two water bottles and a half-crushed bag of crackers.

Cassie stands quietly, and makes her way out of the room.

She gets back to work treating the injured and keeps Hill's list of necessities on hold a little longer to treat more children. Then she gets back to her prioritized list and is in the middle from moving from a woman with an almost pulverized femur to a Red Cross volunteer who judging by appearances is doing this as a gap year between high school and college. His left foot is nearly severed and Cassie prays to her father as she repairs the tattered bones and sinew. She doesn't try to replace the lost blood. She doesn't have the energy left and with the wound sealed the boy's own system will take care of it in due time.

She spins, thinking longingly of finding a bottle of water and wondering if she should report Katya and her predicament to Hill when she runs smack in to Steve. "Wow," he catches her as she regains her balance. "Are you alright? I've been looking for you."

Cassie nods. "I'll be fine. I've left Tony Stark babysitting a four year old girl with magical fire powers. But yeah, everything's fine."

Steve lifts a hand, looking commiserating and brushes his fingers over her cheek. "I just checked in on them. Not a fire in sight. Romanov pulled up some information on the girl. Turns out she's five years old. Her mother was Iliana Kovatva born in Sokovia but went to school in the states. According to hospital records, she came back home to Sokovia to have Katya. We don't have the mother anywhere in the records for the refugees. It's still possible she'll show up but..." he trails off helplessly.

Cassie sighs and tips her head in to his palm, lifting her own hand to hold his. "But it's more likely that that poor little girl is an orphan now," she says, completing the grim thought. "There's no mention of her father anywhere is there?"

Steve shakes his head. "I figured she might be like you."

"Probably," Cassie agrees. "Possibly more like Leo than like me, but the same basic idea."

This time Steve nods. "I saw some of what Valdez did during the battle. Does that make Katya his half-sister?"

Cassie considers for a moment. "That's the most likely scenario. She might be a child of Vulcan and not of Hephaestus. That would make her Roman instead of Greek, but with a kid that young..." She trails off, shaking her head. "Gods Steve she's five," she blurts out. "That's so young. Even for a half-blood. WE can send her to either camp we want to, and they will take care of her, but five is so little. Annabeth was seven when we got to camp, I was eight, and we were the youngest half-bloods to attend in years. Jason went to Camp uniter when he was four and that's the youngest I've ever heard of."

Steve catches her in to a one armed hug and presses a fervent kiss against her forehead. The arm he's hugging her with is still bearing his shield and she can feel the pressing rim of metal against most of her back. "I'm sorry," he tells her.

Cassie sighs and nuzzles her head in to his chest. The shield is the only piece of his uniform he's still wearing and Cassie wonders if he's holding it for identification rather than protection or combat. "It's not your fault," she tells him. "It's the fault of gods, and monsters, and Ultron, but it's not your fault. I just- I know where that little girl's life is going, and it's really not so bad. There are worse ways to grow up I know- I just wish that there was something I could do to help her."

His arm tightens around her and Cassie let's the sound of his breathing and the warmth of his body soothe her fraying nerves. The shield blocks her from view completely, providing a welcome barrier between them and the rest of the world. She'd never been one to enjoy fighting with a shield. You couldn't use one with a bow and that was by far her best weapon, but now she feels like they might be becoming her favorite type of defensive armor.

Suddenly, Steve stiffens and pulls a few inches away to look down at her. "Katya's like you," he says slowly. "And she hasn't got parents.

"Uh," Cassie says, wondering where he could possibly be going with this. Steve's staring at her intensely and she can almost see the cogs in his brain spinning. "Yes. Legally she's an orphan. There's probably paperwork that has to be done by whichever camp she ends up going too. She probably won't be claimed for sure for a few years. Maybe when she's eight or nine."

Inexplicably, Steve's face splits in to a grin and he drops a fast, hard, kiss against her mouth. "I have a plan."

Cassie feels her eyebrows shoot up. "And you are a man who is star spangled. Are we about to burst in to a spontaneous musical number? Because I have to say, the impact without music and background dancers is going to be significantly less impressive."

"No," Steve says shaking his head. He leans down and kisses her again and then backs away. "I've got to go. I think I have an impulsive genius to emotionally manipulate."

He takes off at a jog and Cassie blinks after him. She opens and shuts her mouth twice before shaking off the weirdness and making an attempt to get back to work. The question of what Steve could have possibly meant churns away in the back of her mind for the next few hours as she treats more of the injured, wondering if she should be asking each woman she sees if they're missing a five year old girl with dark hair and big brown eyes.

And Steve had said he was manipulating an impulsive genius.

She assumes that that means Tony, but what is her boyfriend planning on getting him to do? Steve isn't incapable of manipulation or persuasion, it's just that he doesn't normally see the point. If he's changing his tune now well, suffice it to say she's a little bit worried about where this chain of events is going to end up.

Four hours later, the place where this situation turns out to end up is with Anthony Edward Stark sitting on the floor with Katy asleep in his lap surrounded by wind up toys in various stages of assembly and coloring paper. He's using the holograph feature on his phone to absorb all of the information in existence on Katy, her mother, Greek mythology, child care, and most shockingly, international adoption law. He's also got a file up there accessed, compiled, and sent by Jason, Reyna, Frank, and Annabeth, on demigod psychology and trauma and Cassie knows he's watched the Camp Half-Blood orientation film.

On the middle of the screen is a projection of Pepper Potts sitting curled up on her couch wearing leggings and cradling a mug of tea. It's the most casually dressed Cassie has ever seen her, though the look on her face is closer to CEO than every day person. "So to summarize," she's saying when Cassie enters the room. "I left for one week and you created a homicidal AI, gave JARVIS a body, saved the world, levitated and then blew up part of a city, recruited two new team members who used to be on the same side as the homicidal AI because someone used Stark Enterprises weapons to kill their parents, and to cap it all off you'd like to adopt a little girl who blows fire when she's upset."

"Yes," Tony confirms. "All correct. And who better to handle a spontaneously combusting child than people with an entire tower full of droids that can be programmed with fire extinguishers?"

Pepper lifts one hand and rubs at the crease between her eyes with her thumb. "I don't know Tony," she says tiredly. "You said she's like Cassie and Reyna. Maybe they would know somebody-"

Cassie chooses that moment to intercede slightly. "Technically yes we do," she says. "Either one of our camps would be able to take care of her, but it's not like growing up with parents. She'd have elder siblings and teachers, but not a mother or really a father either." She shrugs and makes sure Pepper can see it. "Don't get me wrong, this might be insane. But- well," she shrugs again. "It's not the worst plan ever."

Pepper tips her head, considering. "You support this?"

Cassie catches sight of Steve sitting with Bucky in a far corner giving her a not-so-covert thumbs up sign. She looks back at Katy's sleeping face, Tony's determination, and Pepper's worried apprehension. "I think you start with temporary fostering," she says. "It's easier to arrange legally. It would give you both time to try out the idea of parenting and give Katya time in a safe, secure, space to grieve her mother and adjust to what her life is going to be now. Reyna and I can take her to different camps for short visits so she'll feel more comfortable if one of the camps ends up needing to be her permanent home." She spreads her hands. "If you feel up for it- I don't know. It might end up being.. emotionally healthy-ish for all three of you."

With that said she feels like she's thrown in her two cents and all of the relevant information she can possibly provide and backs away towards her boyfriend who is either brilliant or insane for coming up with this. Based on his history, maybe the answer is both.

"She's a genius Pep," Tony adds. "You'll love her. She's bright and smart and already stronger than a kid should be." He's seizing whatever tiny advantage he thinks he can find. "She built the entire animated cast of Bambi with real moving joints and wind up springs out of scrap engine metal and paper clips. Plus we've got two demigods in house to help handle the curve balls. Where else on this entire fucking planet is all of that gonna be true."

From her angle it's hard to tell, but Cassie thinks Pepper's face might be softening. She sighs. "Let me see her again?"

Tony immediately reaches out and tips the camera of the phone down so that Katya's in the scope of the image. "Since yesterday she's got no one Pepper," Tony continues, voice softer and more pleading than she's ever heard it. "I- I screwed up on something and now she doesn't have parents or a home. She lost it because of me. I can give it back. We've got space, and money, and time to do what we have to to give her everything she needs in a way no one else can. But c'mon Pep. You know what I've got to work off of you know what my parents were like. You know I can't do it without you. I wouldn't even know how to start to try to do it without you."

There's a long moment of silence and Cassie sees Steve crossing his fingers. Tony looks like he's holding his breath. Then Pepper sighs again. "Alright," she says finally. "I'm not saying it's all going to work long term but we can try. I'll talk to some of our lawyers and have the fostering paperwork drawn up for us to go through all together when you get home tomorrow morning. I'll talk to Reyna about a press release so we can control this. Do we want to let her pick and decorate a room or should I call a kids decorator?"

From there the conversation dissolves in to the technicalities of what they're about to do and Cassie turns to look at Steve. "You did this?"

He shifts and almost blushes. "I made some suggestions," he murmurs. "About how Katya would need somewhere to go where people would understand her, and that Pepper might like a little girl and how Howard would have wanted to see him to do better than he did with more than just weapons and business. Turns out more of it stuck than I thought. Fifteen minutes later he was hacking websites and calling everyone he could think of for information before calling Pepper." He sits down against the back wall with his shield beside him. "It all kind of spiraled."

Cassie takes a deep breath and slides down the wall beside him. She lays her head on his shoulder and takes her hand between both of hers. Soon they'll both get up and get back to helping the apparently never ending stream of people that need them. In about three hours they'll make their first landing and the refugees who had no family to go to in Sokovia will begin to disembark. Life will continue to go on and evolve with them as they live it.

"Yeah. Well what else is new?"

A/N: So there it is guys. Sorry it took a bit but I've had some family stuff to deal with. My sister is going through some stuff and needing a lot of support right now. If anyone out there has any advice on how to help a loved one with an anxiety disorder I would really appreciate hearing it. Anyway, tell me what you thought! Do you guys like the plot line with Katya? I know it's a big change from cannon, but her inclusion is part of the idea I have floating around for how to adapt CACW. Plus Tony and Pepper as parents is something I think could be endlessly entertaining if I get it right. Anyway, review for me! xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxooxoxoxxoxoxooxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxooxoxxoxoxoxxooxxoxo