Disclaimer: I am so impressed with the ethical codes and commitment to copyright law held by any individual who is still reading this part. For you lovely and upright literary people, I will do my best. Are you ready? I own none of the characters or plot lines here in that you can recognize from any other source. They belong to Marvel Comics, Rick Riordan, and any of those people associated who get paid for their work. I do not get paid for this.

Percy and Annabeth carry out their wedding in the same way that they do everything else. It's organization and chaos, nerves and confidence, a complex pagoda on a simple beach in Montauk, all of their friends in attendance and no fewer than eight monster attacks trying to ruin things. The most important thing is that they do it together and that there's love.

So, so, much love.

It flows through the events of the day like the water Percy directs and permeates the atmosphere like the wind Jason controls. It comes from all sides and from everyone in attendance. Just... love.

Chiron performs the wedding ceremony in full horse form while Thalia and Grover stand as maid of honor and best man respectively. Annabeth's dad walks her down the aisle while her step-mom wrangles her half-brothers with Sally and Paul's help. Percy's little sister is the single most adorable flower girl on the planet.

A familiar man wearing a Hawaiian shirt walks straight out of the ocean and on to the beach completely dry just as the ceremony starts and a large owl surreptitiously transforms in to a grey-eyed woman and takes a seat amongst the other guests. Cassie doesn't make eye contact with either figure and doesn't plan on stopping to speak to either of them and Ella the Harpy have a seating section reserved just for them. Grover's wife Juniper isn't in attendance as she's tied to her life source, but Gleeson Hedge and Mellie are there with their son Chuck.

Cassie walks up the aisle in a layered grey and blue chiton arm and arm with Leo just behind Thalia and Grover. Behind them come Piper and Jason, then Reyna and Nico who are followed by Frank and Hazel as Rachel sweeps up the rear accompanied by Annabeth's cousin Magnus who looks vaguely terrified and a bit confused as to how he got in to his current position. The Greek demigods in attendance are dressed about like Cassie while the Romans are in togas of the wedding colors. Those torn between the worlds had a choice.

Jason wears a toga, his various badges and medals pinned to the fabric and flashing in the light. Percy wears a Grecian tunic over suite pants, Riptide in sword form at his waist. Cassie chose to stick with full Greek for the day, complete with leather sandals and ribbon braided hair.

As Cassie takes the seat reserved for her, a look over the audience shows Calypso and Meg seated together. Pietro is next to Meg and looks like he's concentrating very, very hard on something. He's probably trying not to tap his feet.

Clarisse LaRue and Chris Rodrigez are being remarkably well behaved in the middle of the crowd. Clarisse is even smiling a little. Dakota the Cool Aide centurian keeps darting longing looks at the refreshment pavilion and Katie Gardner seems to be in charge of keeping the Stoll brothers in line. Will catches her looking and shoots her a thumbs up. Two figures in shimmering pink and green wedding attire sit together towards the back and Cassie's pretty sure that they came with Magnus.

Steve and Bucky are in the row directly behind her. Bucky seems to be watching the ceremony with interest and is idly playing with a bit of Reyna's hair where it falls over the back of her chair. Steve is grinning right at Cassie and she automatically finds herself smiling back. He gestures towards the front to direct her focus and Cassie follows the prompt, first dropping her left hand behind her.

Steve takes her hand with no further prompting and nets their fingers together. She's looking forwards at Annabeth and Percy now, but she feels Steve's fingers run over the ring on her finger, almost like he still can't quite believe it's there. Cassie squeezes her hand once, and then the ceremony begins in ernest.

Chiron does it beautifully. Parts are in Greek and Latin and Cassie keeps note of them as well as she can to translate for Steve later if he asks. It's possible he knows some of the Latin, it's all love and loyalty and promises. That with the English probably makes the Greek understandable, like a Rosetta Stone for weddings.

When the ceremony is over Annabeth all but jumps at Percy to kiss him. Percy stumbles at the impact but manages not to fall over, returning the embrace. They're both grinning so widely that it shows even at this angle. Supernatural eyesight not required.

"At least she didn't judo flip him this time," Reyna mutters, speaking directly in to Cassie's ear to be heard around all the cheering and wolf whistling.

Cassie grins and leans over to reply without stopping her clapping. "The odds were fifty fifty," she says. "It wouldn't surprise me if Travis was running a pool. We should have put some money in."

Reyna shruggs and goes back to clapping along with the others. "Would have, should have, could have."

Bucky leans forwards with his flesh and blood arm folded over the metal one along the back of Reyna's chair. "Would Travis happen to be one of the two nearly identical looking guys being managed by the scary lookin' brunette at the back of the tent?"

"The very slightly taller one," Cassie confirms. "Why?"

He shrugs, but the expression on his face is just a bit too innocent for Cassie to be completely unsuspicious. "No reason." At her skeptical expression he gives a crooked grin. "Just hypothetically speaking, how would you spend two hundred bucks?"

Just then Percy causes a distraction by picking Annabeth straight up off of the ground and in to his arms which in turn makes the crowd increase their cheering to new heights. Still, Cassie can just make out Steve giving a drawn out sigh in the manner that only long suffering friends can successfully affect. Steve and Bucky's is a friendship longer suffering than most.

Eventually the ceremony gives way to dinner which is an impressive affair. It manages to feed Steve, Bucky, and a whole hoard of demigods as well as a cyclops, Grover, Hedge, and a picky Harpy in addition to several mortals. There's a separate buffet for the vegetarians and plenty of pingpong balls as well as a platter piles with a number of peanut butter sandwiches that borders on being inconceivably large. A corner of one table is filled with cinnamon products and there's more blue food around than Cassie has ever dreamed to be possible.

'I'm still not sure food should be this color," Steve comments. "On the other hand, I'm starving, and nothing so far has been able to kill me."

Bucky has shown no such reservations and is efficiently packing his mouth with food. "'Tastes amazing."

Steve's not the only wedding guest with apprehension over the extension of the color theme in to the menu. However, most of them seem to be reassured by the fact that no one who has eaten has dropped dead yet and they're slowly beginning to tuck in to their own meals. Steve, brave soul that he is, merely shrugs and dives in. He and Bucky together eat through most of a buffet table before dinner gives way to dessert, cocktails, and speeches.

Grover and Thalia give speeches that are equal parts funny and nostalgic. Sally and Mr. Chase have both come prepared with tear jerkers. A few of their other friends speak, some poignantly, and some hysterically.

Every hour, two demigods break away from the party to do a sweep of the perimeter. There's a chart and a schedule and Jason generated them both which means they're color coded and non-negotiable.

Bucky is a surprisingly good dancer and from the expression on Reyna's face when she's dragged on to the floor with him it's a skill he's been hiding. However, the true star dancers turn out to be Leo and Calypso who salsa like they've been in training. Hazel attempts vainly to teach Frank how to Charleston and gives up when he almost takes out the cake with an elbow.

Piper and Jason manage to pull off something that looks fairly graceful but that's largely thanks to the fact that Jason is levitating them both a half an inch off of the ground, thus making it impossible for them to trip. Cassie thinks this might be cheating but doesn't have much room to talk. She's long since abandoned her shoes and is standing on Steve's feet as he moves them around the floor. It's how they've danced before and the position brings happy memories to augment the happy present.

A thought drifts across Cassie's mind as they sway which prompts her to lift her head from where it had been resting on Steve's chest. "Where do you want to get married?" she asks. "A church? I mean I know you're Catholic, but I'm kind of really not. We could still try to do it but I don't know if they'd let us."

There's more to her rant but Steve is already shaking his head. "I think at this point my Catholicism is what the Church would consider to be 'lapsed'. No churches. And I don't really care about what ceremony gets used either. I'd like to be able to understand all of it though so..."

Cassie leans up and brushes a kiss along his cheek. "I have absolutely no problem with it being in English. Or teaching you the Greek. I've got a translation of today's ceremony if you want to hear it later. But on the subject of languages, do you want any of it to be in Gaelic? I absolutely can't speak it, but if you tell me what I'd be saying I'll do my best."

"That's something to think about," Steve muses. "There are bits of Gaelic ceremonies that are really beautiful." He looks down at her considerately and Cassie can almost hear the cogs whirring in his brain below the wedding playlist. "Is there anything you absolutely don't want when it comes to our wedding?" he asks. "That might be an easier starting point."

She let's the question churn around in her mind, giving it the kind of consideration it deserves. The truth is, Cassie never thought she'd live long enough to get married. The question of how she might like her wedding ceremony to go has never played through her head.

"I'd like to be somewhere with some sunshine," she says eventually. "That doesn't mean it has to be during the summer or outside or at some location, but somewhere with light. And ideally I'd like it to be a kind of small guest list. Just our friends and family. But given the kind of paparazzi attention we're dealing with maybe that's not possible."

"Like hell the paparazzi are crashing our wedding," Steve says firmly, his voice edging unconsciously in to the tones of The Captain. "They can take pictures and wait outside. Maybe get a few interviews if we're feeling nice. Reyna and Pepper can figure out a nicer way to make it happen than telling them to just fuck off, but that's what's happening."

Cassie smiles up at him. "I like the plan Cap," she says, teasing him gently. Then she lets herself get a bit more serious. "I'm not saying I'll obey you," she states. "I know it's not used in weddings very much anymore anyway, and I don't think you'd want me to, but laying that out seems relevant to the conversation we're having."

Steve draws the palm he's holding up to his cheek and then turns his head to kiss her skin. The gesture is familiar now but the delightful shiver that sparks through her nerves that comes along with it could never be. "Sweetheart," he says, voice low enough to send shivers through her. "The day the fact that I am somehow lucky enough to have you love me makes me stupid enough to think you should obey me is the day you should absolutely hit me in the head with a large blunt object and drop me in a new block of ice."

"You say the sweetest things to me Steve Rogers."

They've taken a long weekend for the wedding and enjoy kicking around on the beach for a while. Neither of them has ever really had the opportunity to just enjoy the intrinsic combination of sun, waves, and sand. It's relaxing in a way that very little else is.

It's coming up on mid-September now, and by all calendar rules the Summer is over. However, the sun seems to be putting in it's last and best efforts just for them. Given who Cassie's dad is, it's possible that that's literally true.

Time spent sprawled on a towel on the sand soaking in the rays recharges Cassie's mental batteries and power reserves to peak levels and her skin picks up a golden brown tan within the first day and a half. Steve can't tan because the serum categorizes it as physical damage and repairs it before any effects can be seen. What the serum doesn't stop is his hair going nearly corn tassel blonde in some places.

They return just in time to help manage the freaked out whirlwind that is Tony Stark on his daughter's first day of school.

Steve drags Tony back to the Tower after dropping Katy off and then summarily dumps him off with Rhodey and a newly returned and centered Bruce Banner, both of whom were called by Pepper for the occasion. Rhodey is prepared with stories about his own kids and the things they've gotten up to at school and Bruce arrives with a tablet full of pictures of Clint Bartons' niece and nephews taken over the last few months at the farm. Cassie suspects it'll also have a few new mathematical equations waiting to be solved and can only hope they don't end up with a new murder bot.

She doesn't think they'll have a problem. Rhodes is a good supervisor and has experience Tony wrangling and Banner seems to be in a better place mentally than Cassie has ever seen him. The Barton farm would appear to have semi-magical Hulk calming properties. Oddly enough, Banner flushes bright red and mumbles at the ground when asked more pointed questions about Laura Barton in particular. Clint goes off muttering about figuring out a way to knock out the Hulk.

Pepper makes a good show of being calm. It's pretty convincing, but Cassie notices that she calls all of the available women in the Tower over for lunch and is even more glued to her phone than usual. Still, the food is plentiful and ordered in from a restaurant fancier than anywhere the majority of Pepper's guests have ever dared set foot in so the turn out is good and no complaining takes place.

When Cassie arrives Reyna and Wanda are already there and seem to have been recruiting in to helping shift all of the food to the table they'll eat at. Pepper probably picked them up on her way up to the residential floors of the Tower. The woman is currently setting out flatware, but waves a fork in acknowledgement of her arrival.

"Hi," she says. "Darcy just texted that she's on her way up with Jane. Apparently she had to call Thor to help detach Jane from her microscope, and having lived with Tony for this long I sympathize. Meg is through there in the kitchen getting the drinks. There's nothing alcoholic this time since we're all going back to work later, but there'll be plenty of water, soda, and coffee."

Cassie nods. "I'll go help ferry."

She's barely taken a step away when Pepper catches at her arm and pulls her back. "Oh no you won't," she says firmly. "I'm a new mom who just sent her child off for her first day of school. Her child who still sometimes catches on fire when she gets nervous. I'm exactly one bad parenting decision away from saying screw socialization with other children her own age and letting Tony hire someone to homeschool her. I need distracting. Come be a helpful friend and let me stare at your engagement ring while you tell me about the proposal."

There are gods living in the universe. There are demons and monsters and fates with incredible power. Cassie has faced them all and never once doubted her ability to win.

Nothing will ever defeat a determined Pepper Potts.

Knowing this is why Cassie quietly submits and allows herself to be parked in a chair across the table from Pepper and next to Reyna. You have to pick your battles and she's been drafted in to more than enough of them against her will to pick this one. Here's a hint, once was enough.

"So..." Cassie says, drawing out the syllable. "Where do you want this to start and how much detail do you want this to include?"

The grin on Pepper's face tells her that any and all details she's willing to provide will be examined from every angle and categorized the way a jeweler examines precious stones. She leaves out the words Steve used and what she said back apart from the most important question and answer. The rest of it feels to special to share. Maybe she'll tell the full story someday, but not yet.

Even this version of the story takes a while to tell because she has to keep stopping, rewinding, and restarting as different friends arrive with different questions. By the time everyone is satisfied they've killed about forty-five minutes of their hour long lunch and Cassie feels like she's going to need about a week before answering any other questions about her personal or romantic life. She loves her friends but she has some limits.

One of the reasons that she loves her friends is that as soon as they're in the know, they start offering help. Cassie is left with no doubts that as soon as she and Steve know what they want for their wedding, they'll get it.

Pepper can accomplish anything between her name, money, and sheer determination. Darcy is brutally efficient at getting shit done and Reyna commands legions. Meg has never met a challenge she didn't attempt, Jane is six feet of determination crammed in five feet of space, and Wanda has already promised to scramble as many heads as needed should anyone hold out and get in their way.

Add in any of the guys and everyone Cassie knows at Camp and she and Steve are going in to this wedding with a literal army behind them.

Hopefully they won't need it.

Still...

Demigod/Super-Soldier wedding with superheroes in attendance.

Anything's possible.

It turns out to be a very good thing that Cassie and Steve have so many highly organized, determined, and supportive friends. Much of the public is a crazed and shouting mass headed by the paparazzi. Not all the voices shouting are necessarily critical, but much of the public appears to be obsessive and consistently over interested in Steve's personal life.

Cassie is pretty highly aware of the fact that in many ways, she is Steve's personal life. Bucky is his best friend, but Bucky is also visibly terrifying and unapproachable and therefore generally left alone by the public. The press occasionally speculates over him and often gets his picture taken while he's out if someone notices who he is, which isn't often.

It used to be that Cassie could still go unnoticed if she was out in public alone or the members of her circle of friends who kept lower profiles. That had vanished for a while when people first figured out Captain America had a girlfriend and then died down. Any and all illusion of the public's mature disinterest in her vanishes faster than Cassie's grandad in a hurry the first time she goes out in public with her engagement ring.

"Hi Honey I'm home," Cassie singsongs as she comes through the door with a tray of take-away coffee from Starbucks and a wax pastry bag. She sets the tray down on the coffee table and collapses on the couch to stare up at the ceiling. Maybe it's a bit dramatic, but she figures she can blame her genetic components for the occasional indulgence. Today fucking deserves one.

She checks her watch and nearly groans. How can this day have already been this exhausting by twelve forty five? Nothing even tried to kill her that morning, and she's only been up for like four hours.

This is only going to support her theory that most of the paparazzi must be demons in disguise.

"Hey," Steve replies as he walks over to her couch from the kitchen. From her angle his head is upside down. "Everything okay down there?"

Cassie hums a bit at the back of her throat and then reaches up towards him. "Decent. You're a little too far away. It's a problem."

He grins, and a smiling Steve is just as amazing to see upside down as it is right side up. "I am known in certain circles to be an excellent problem solver." A moment later his face is just barely above hers, and by tipping her head back Cassie can see his arms draping lightly over the arm of the sofa above her head. He must be kneeling.

The kiss he gives her is somewhat limited by the logistics of the situation, but they make it work. The light touch of his lips on hers and the happy warmth it sends along her nerves settles the prickly feeling she's gotten from dealing with the press horde. She reaches a hand a bit behind her to brush his cheek and nearly smacks him in the face which makes Steve chuckle. He catches her hand to place it better and slides his own hand down her arm to cradle her jaw.

After a moment he breaks away a bit and tips his chin towards his chest, kissing her nose. "This angle is not entirely unpleasant but a bit difficult on a logistical level. I'm willing to work with it if you're determined not to move, but otherwise I'm gonna need couch space."

"So demanding," Cassie mutters, crossing her legs and pulling them backwards under her on the cushions.

The air around her shifts as Steve moves to fill the vacated space. He tugs on her feet lightly to get her to stretch her legs back across his lap. "Fortunately I'm a good conversationalist."

"I kinda like your personality too," Cassie tells him. "Plus you cook, you've got some money, and you're not hideous."

Steve quirks a smile at her but then makes his face deliberately impassive as he reaches for her and pulls her upright, his arm taking the place of the couch for spinal support. "Personally, I'm with you for the healing powers. Gonna need those." He reaches back in to her hair and pulls out the elastic so it falls over his fingers. "Besides you've got the brain power. Clearly someone in the relationship was going to have to be the smart one. Bucky always said it was never going to be me."

Cassie pats his cheek and rest her other hand along the arm attached to the hand resting on the side of her neck. "It's nice to have these talks. We should share in the positive reinforcement. We'll need the self-esteem for dealing with the outer populace." She reaches sideways for their coffee and hands Steve his. "Enjoy this. Starbucks is a death trap and we shouldn't go back without disguises."

He grimaces. "The only time I've ever tried being in disguise was right before SHIELD fell. I was on the run with Nat and she scared the hell out of me by kissing me after declaring that public displays of affection made people very uncomfortable. I had just finished agreeing with her when she grabbed me."

Cassie laughs. "Poor Steve. Had to deal with being kissed by what has to be one of the most attractive women on the planet. It must have been such a trial."

Steve's ears are starting to go pink in the adorable way that they have. "You laugh, but I spent a solid four hours wondering if Clint was about to shoot me from a mile away. Besides-"

He leans over to kiss her and his mouth tastes like black coffee and the taste that is all Steve and nothing else. Cassie hauls herself up and over in to his lap and flails a little to try to figure out somewhere to put her coffee cup down. Burning hot liquid spillage has a way of ending make outs. Eventually she gives up and simply shifts her grip to cover the opening in the lid.

Steve, who made the brilliant tactical decision to simply never pick up his coffee cup, has both hands free. He takes advantage of this in a manner that Cassie would applaud for it's brilliance if her hands weren't already occupied. His hands are always a little warm, but they never fail to make little shivers and goose bumps arch across her skin.

The kiss breaks and Cassie makes a little sound of protest. "Hey, I was enjoying that."

"I wanted to finish my sentence," he offers in explanation. "I got distracted though."

Cassie gives him a look that asks exactly who's fault he thinks that is completely without words. Steve doesn't speak yet so Cassie rolls her eyes and tips forwards to bury her face in the space between his collarbone and his chin. "Fine. 'Besides' what?"

His arms wrap around her more securely and tuck her against his chest. A puff of warm air skims the shell of her ear. "I was suppose to go on a date with an amazing girl who lived across the hall from me. I'd been wanting to ask her for a while and couldn't believe she'd said yes. Kissing someone else to not get killed in a shopping mall felt like moving the wrong direction."

She grins in to his chest and squeezes her arms around him a little tighter in a hug. "Good thing I teleported in to Sam's kitchen and landed in your lap then."

"I never did apologize for dumping you on the floor."

"That's okay. I get how it might have been surprising. Consider yourself very forgiven. Anyway," she gestures vaguely at their current position with the hand that is still miraculously gripping her coffee cup. "I'd say we've improved in our pairs lap sitting technique quite a bit since then."

Steve doesn't reply and the two of them sit like that together. It's a comforting kind of silence, the kind you can only sit in with certain special people. Steve's fingers are tracing little patterns over her back and shoulders. It doesn't feel completely aimless, but Cassie can't tell what designs he's making either.

"Cass?" he asks, suddenly breaking the silence. He's talking in his serious voice so Cassie leans back and sits up to look him in the eye, setting her cup on the ground to listen.

There's a frown slashing between his eyes and Cassie is tempted to reach out and smooth the wrinkles with her fingers. Mentally, she tries to do a quick overview of where Steve's thoughts might have gone to generate that expression. "What's up?"

He shifts a bit, moving his eyes off of the middle distance he's been focusing on and back to her. His fingers splay and brush along her back and sides. "What exactly are all those people shouting at you?"

Cassie opens her mouth to say "nothing", but Steve fixes her with his blue blue eyes and she lets her jaw snap shut. Lying to Steve is like lying to an ernest golden retriever puppy, and Steve has never enjoyed people trying to placate him. Honesty is going to be the only way forward.

Still, honesty can be presented in different ways.

"The public is apparently very concerned about the current status of my uterus," she relays. "Occupancy of and such. Also what message it was sending to people and teens about pre-marital slash safe sex if Captain America was doing it. They also seem to think that were I pregnant, I would be unaware as a medical professional that coffee is bad for fetal development. It's okay though." She says quickly as his expression goes dark. "I've got speeches planned. I'll run'em by Reyna and do a delivery next time I go out for groceries or something. Maybe we can add some of it to your vaccination talks."

Steve has yet to speak and Cassie is a little worried about the expression on his face. His eyes have gone about the same shade as the blue near the hottest part of flames. It's the dangerous kind of intensity that normally goes along with mission planning and dropping in to enemy fire. Basically, Steve is angry.

Steve doesn't normally get angry. Annoyed, pissed, irritated, all of these are things Steve sometimes is. Normally around Tony.

This is angry.

"Shoot them," he says, voice deadly cold. "I'm done being nice. Next time, just shoot them."

Maybe they're a little past angry.

He's gone stiff against her and the only thing harder than his voice are his eyes. His shoulders are set and back. It takes Cassie a second to realize what has happened.

She cups his cheek with one hand and angles his head to look at her, bracing her other hand against his chest with her fingers twisted in to the fabric of his shirt. "Put the Cap away Honey. We don't need him right now." Her own voice is a knife edge and for a moment she wonders if it's too far.

Then Steve blinks.

The ice shell cracks.

Steve's not calm. Oh no. They're nowhere near calm. The finger pads digging in to her hip bones are enough to convey that with absolute clarity. Still, she thinks she's backed him down from 'murderous' which a multitude of paparazzi should probably thank her for.

"Who tells them that behaving like that is okay?" he demands. "What makes a person think that? Is there a trade agreement when you start working for the press core? Credentials for your sense of human decency? What gives them the right?"

"One of the amendments," Cassie replies, answering only his last question and not attempting the others. She squirms a bit and his fingers constrict almost automatically so she stops moving. Were she human, that pressure might be enough to hurt. "The first one, I think. Meanwhile, handling this stuff is Reyna's job. Stark actually pays people to deal with it so let them. You and I'll do our jobs, they'll do theirs."

Steve seems to chew that over for a second, trying to get to grips with the fact that she is actually making sense. "I hate doing nothing," he says, almost spitting the words out before taking a gasping breath back in. "They're being relentless and vile," he says lowly. "I know logically you're right and that we can't let any of that," he gestures outside, "effect our lives. But my immediate reaction is that someone I love is being treated badly and there's nothing I can do to help."

Cassie has already figured out that this instinct is one that Steve has and that it probably kicks in to pretty high gear when it comes to her. She suspects that this same instinctive reaction is at least partially to blame for Steve's famous solo airdrop during the war. The thing is, Steve tends to let that instinct scream so loudly that it drowns out his own sense of self-preservation.

Hence arctic ocean and being frozen for seventy years.

"It seems to me," Cassie says slowly. "That the nature of the media is that it throws everything it finds at a wall to see what sticks. If nothing does, it moves on to the next thing. By next week they'll figure out that they want to be on our good side so they get wedding pictures/baby pictures were there to be any for them to see. Which there are not."

After saying that, she begins the project of very subtly working her fingers below Steve's so that he'll be gripping her hands instead of her hips. Her action seems to make Steve realize how tightly he's been gripping and manages a small, apologetic smile. It seems as though he's reached the stage of trying to relax on purpose and Cassie's glad he's on her side now.

He fiddles with her fingers a minute and then drops his head back against the cushions with a sigh. "Tony was right that first day we moved in," he says, angling his head to look at her. "We're going to end up with cherub children," he says in explanation at her raised eyebrows. "Blonde hair and blue eyes."

Cassie shoots him a crooked grin, glad for the subject change. "Takes the mystery out of things, but the certainty is good. Gods only know what our various genetic situations will combine to form. I've tried doing a bit of a genetic mock up with a simulation program and the results are all over the place. They'll probably be pretty damn healthy though if you look at our combined healing factors..." She trails off, noticing that Steve's gone still again. "What? What is it? What's wrong?"

Steve starts and then shakes his head, siting up a bit more. "Nothing. It's just- Before everything with the serum I had so many problems. That you know for sure- that you can already so for sure that our kids won't have to live with that..." he shrugs. "It's mind-blowing."

She can't help but melt a bit at that. She hadn't realized, though she probably should have, that that kind of worry would be bouncing around inside Steve's head. Cassie mentally kicks herself. She'd have shared the simulation data sooner if she'd known.

Her fingers brush along the curve of his cheek as she says, "I think you already know that most of those issues were environmental and circumstantial. Your mom didn't have the benefit of modern pre-natal care and your lungs weren't fully developed because lungs don't develop before the end of a pregnancy because babies breath amniotic fluid until they're born. You didn't have enough food growing up and you didn't have the immune system to handle germs and had no vaccinations. Medical care in the forties sucked Steve, sucked. I bet you were told to smoke to toughen your lungs or something weren't you?"

That actually makes Steve grin. "That. And I got opium cough syrup once. I was convinced I had a pet dog named Caboose. I did not have a pet dog named Caboose. I have never had a pet dog named Caboose."

"Is this you're way of telling me what to get you for Christmas?" Cassie asks. "Because we'll be moving upstate soon and from the blueprints we'll have the yard space, and the pet might be good practice."

He tips his head at her. "Have you ever had one?"

"A pet?" she verifies, and he nods. "Nope," she says, popping the 'p'. "I helped Percy with Mrs. O'Leary a few times, and Annabeth's family has a mastiff I used to hang with sometimes. I made friends with a demonic skeleton kitten once, but that was a really, really, really temporary thing."

Steve's eyebrows shoot up. "Demonic skeleton kitten?"

Cassie waves a hand. "Long story," she says. "Atlas tried to raise killer skeleton warriors. It's this ritual you can do if you plant dragon teeth, I don't really know the details. Anyway, his minion screwed up and planted saber tooth tiger teeth instead. Viola, demonic skeleton kittens. One made friends with an amnesiac titan and was named Small Bob."

"Was there a Large Bob?"

"That would be the amnesiac titan," she explains, shifting to sit sideways with her back against the arm of the couch. "Circling back for a second, any kids we have should be not just okay, but exceptionally healthy. Genetic coding has two levels. One set gets expressed no matter what. That's stuff like hair and eye color. The other set has to be activated by the right circumstances. Height and size is mostly like that. Part of what Erksine did with the serum is activate those genes in you."

She can't remember if she's told him this before, but she figures reinforcing it won't hurt. "If you'd been born in say the nineties, you'd probably look a lot like you do now. Maybe less obviously or perfectly muscled, but depending on your workouts and nutrition maybe not. Seriously, our kids might be short because I am, and so was my mom, but they'll be short and healthy."

Cassie wonders if that's true. She wonders about a daughter who grumbles at her for giving her the short genes when Daddy is so tall, and she wonders about a son who ends up taller than her by the time they're in high school. Maybe both of them together, chasing and teasing each other.

Steve's mind must be on a similar track to hers because the next thing he asks is, "How many would you want?"

"Less than a basketball team," she says immediately, and then pauses to actually consider. "More than one. My siblings, Annabeth, Luke, and Thalia, they made impossible things doable. Having someone instantly and automatically on my side for the big stuff was amazing. I think even way have chaos limits though, so less than five." A thought occurs to her suddenly. "Don't suppose you know if there's a history of twins in your family?"

Steve shakes his head. "No idea. Isn't your dad technically one of a set of twins?"

Cassie sighs. "Technically yes. Genetically- actually I have no idea. I'm ending that train of thought before my head explodes."

"Speaking of exploding," Steve starts. "Katya keeps doing that fireball thing, would our kids," he makes a little whooshing motion.

She grins, and she thinks this one is probably crooked too. More Mercury than Apollo. "Probably not. Not even I do that without trying. It takes a lot of energy and power. I can only do it because I'm seventy-five percent god not fifty. Our kids'd be mathematically thirty-two point five percent god. Lower power levels. Other part demigod children I've met get like, watered down abilities. They can see through the Mist. They're a bit stronger, faster, and healthier. They heal a little faster than mortal kids and can drink nectar. They handle weapons well and can normally read Greek and Latin. Sometimes they can do little stuff like make plants grow, play music without studying, pick pockets, charmspeak a little, that kind of thing."

"So our kids are going to be strong, fast, quick healing, mischievous, determined kids with musical and criminal tendencies who don't like bullies," Steve summarizes. He says it with a particular soft smile on his face and it's one she wants to see as often as she can.

Cassie waves a hand. "They'll run around and make us crazy," she says. "If Bucky and Reyna have kids they can all charge around in a hoard while we try to group parent and if we get the timing right maybe Katya can do some babysitting. Tony can be the fun uncle, Bucky can play fixer, he'll like that. Sam and Will can share the sage advice giving job. Plus they'll have at least a dozen aunties. Nat and Reyna will pass them cookies and stuff. Piper and Darcy can handle dating advice, and Banner, Jane, and Annabeth have got homework help covered. Pepper can schedule everything, it'll be great."

Steve kisses the palm of her left hand first and then between her eyes. "Guess we should hurry up and get married sometime soon then."

"I have it on good authority that the first thing to do when planning a wedding is to pick a date," Cassie says. "Then you figure out a location, then you do everything else. I have had many offers of help from very efficient people so organization won't be quite as much of a hassle as I've heard weddings can be."

His expression has changed in to a planning look. "I feel like we should probably wait until after the compound upstate is finished," he says. "The chaos threshold and everything. And it means we'll be able to come home to the place that's really going to be home. Not just somewhere we know we're going to have to move out of." How much he likes the idea of that, the idea of a place that's home for them, home forever is obvious in his words.

She nods in agreement. "That makes sense." She tries to do the mental math for a second and then gives up when there are too many unknown variables. "When does Tony think we can start moving in?"

"Technically speaking, we could move in now," he says. "It would just be moving in to temporary on-site lodging Army barrack style. I figure we've both lived in enough of those to last us for the next seventy years or so."

"At least," Cassie agrees fervently. "A decade straight was long enough."

Steve makes a face that pretty much sums up how Cassie feels. "I slept in a tent for two years. No more barracks if they're avoidable. Stark says construction on team housing is up and running but will probably slow down in about a month. Weather in upstate New York gets bad over the Winter. Once the snow starts they can't get the equipment in and digging can't happen if the ground is frozen. Right now the move in date is late March."

Cassie grins and does tiny jazz hands. "Happy Birthday to me. So maybe Mayish? Gives us time to move all of our stuff in and feel settled before wedding craziness can start. Plus it let's us enjoy married-ness before the annual threat of apocalypse at the end of June."

"You know, I used to think you were kidding when you told me you always kept that in your calendar. Sitting here nearly two years later, I have to admit it's a definite thing." He says it like he's trying to joke but Cassie knows he worries at the solstices and equinoxes every time her phone rings because it might be Camp and might be an emergency and it's been twelve years but this time might be the one that she doesn't make it back from.

This is the way they play it though. Life gets dark and frightening and both of them technically do jobs where either of them might end up prematurely dead and they ignore it and plan for the future that they hope they'll get to live. They ignore the fact that they've both learned that hope can be a heartbreaking thing to have.

They tell a joke.

Right now that's Cassie's job. "Ah yes, the Summer apocalypse. The good old staple of the year. If the world as I know it doesn't nearly end once every three-hundred sixty-five days, has the year even really gone by? Seriously, it's so punctual. The Rolex of catastrophic events. Then Tony showed up with the freaking robot army and everything got all out of whack." She perks up. "I'll tell you what the schedule of this year's potentially destructive times has become Steve. It's Swatch-like. Possible end-days and their timings are now a Swatch."

Steve is smiling now.

Mission accomplished.

Cassie leans down to kiss him. It's a nice change. This is so rarely their height differential.

She means it to be one of their lighter kisses, to match the mood she'd tried to set just a moment before. Apparently, Steve has other plans because the kiss deepens quickly and turns serious. His fingers twist in to her hair, locking them together and Cassie does her part by twining her limbs around him like vines around a tree. Cassie tips her head away to breath and Steve's head drops to her shoulder scattering kisses along the skin there.

Cassie moves her face to catch his mouth again and presses her forehead in to his. She's breathing a little fast, but so is Steve, and she can feel their hearts hammering along in time. One of her hands has migrated to resting over his and Steve extricates one of his own, sliding it to cover hers.

"So Mayish," Steve says, nose nuzzling hers. "We have a date."

"We have a date," Cassie agrees.

That date, general though it is sets a placemarker for the upcoming year. It hovers in a wonderful kind of way. Cassie marks it in her yearly planner with the same color of pen she uses to write in auspicious celestial dates. Gods' birthdays, solstices, equinoxes, feast days, and her wedding all written in in neon green.

Days of possible chaos should keep a consistent color.

It's the least they can do for her.

Life continues on in the Tower.

Steve goes on missions to try to clear up the messes of the world with the rest of the team and Cassie goes with them most of the time now. The violent missions have gotten more violent with higher potential for injury and the more humanitarian aid missions that come in the wake of natural disasters and acts of human cruelty are uglier and more bloody. On that kind of mission, Cassie has more to do than any of the rest of the team. Will starts coming along with them and they coordinate with the Red Cross and Doctors Without Borders.

Between missions, Cassie provides all needed healthcare to people in the Tower and does mass attacks of paperwork because it keeps piling up when she has to be out of the office. Steve, Rhodes, and Reyna keep having meetings with politicians that leave them all frustrated and in the mood to rant which means that she and Bucky are passingly informed and start an email exchange comparing the merits of different de-stressing teas. Piper runs Stark Enterprises and the labs are only ever a little bit destroyed in fiery explosions.

Cassie, Reyna, and Meg do rotational monster patrols with occasional help from Wanda and Pietro. It turns out that both Maximoff twins can see through the Mist. Cassie has been over their DNA and blood work multiple times and still can't figure out why. It's another mystery to unravel in the long term, the same way Hulk management techniques, overviewing Bucky's psychological reports, watching Tony's blood pressure, and getting to the bottom of the serum effects are.

Tony insists that Halloween be child appropriate so Katy (who is doing very well in school all things considered) can enjoy it. Cassie wears a black tee shirt with a name tag that says 'LIFE' and goes around handing people lemons. "What you do with it is up to you," she tells Darcy.

"So if I were to chuck it at Tony's head..."

She lets the suggestion dangle and Cassie laughs. "I'm sure he did something, at some point, to someone, over the course of his lifetime to deserve it. For what it's worth, you have my blessing to not miss."

Darcy's aim is fantastic and Cassie is incredibly proud.

Will and Nico are both invited along to the massive Avengers Thanksgiving dinner that Tony and Pepper throw. Their presence livens up the evening when Nico provides entertainment in the form of the spirits of a Native American man and a Pilgrim one at a time to relay their separate experiences of the original meal. Thanksgiving has never been so educational.

They also get to watch the mass hilarity of Thor meeting Nico and Will. The Norse god of thunder hails them both as mighty warriors, offers them some Asgardian mead, and regales them all with a long and complex story about a necromancer he'd met in the sixteenth century. He also insists on hugging Nico before he leaves which ends with a grinning Thor and Grouchy son of Hades.

Thanksgiving is followed by Christmas. Steve and Cassie spend Christmas Eve with Reyna and Bucky and have Christmas morning in private before dinner at the Jackson-Blowfish residence. Boxing Day is a fantastic British invention and one Cassie and Steve commit to thoroughly in the name of a day of peace and quiet before New Years Eve kicks in and they'll have to belong, at least a little bit, to the public.

Some deity up there must be on Cassie's side at least a little bit because apart from the occasional picture and mini-press story, they aren't being mobbed anymore. Reyna and Pepper are probably a whole separate level of superhuman. Cassie makes sure that their Christmas presents are fantastic.

Cassie could seriously live without the repeated baby speculation though.

On the evening of December thirty-first Cassie puts on a red dress that Pepper and Natasha deliver to her with bright, semi-maniacle smiles. The dress comes with spike healed shoes she thinks she could probably kill something with were they made of Imperial Gold or Celestial Bronze. She wears her normal necklaces, but in her ears she has a pair of gold arrow shaped earrings that were one of the presents she got from Steve.

Steve himself gamely puts on a suite and has his hair combed military neat. His own shoes are shinned to a ridiculous level, and he's wearing a tie which Cassie knows he hates. Someone has delivered a tie and pocket square that matches her dress.

They raise their eyebrows at each other and Cassie catches a look at their reflections, standing together in the mirror. The image they're projecting is obvious. Best behavior tonight. Tonight they'll have to be Captain America and Dr. Morgenstern.

Steve and Cassie are going to have to take a back seat.

He fiddles once with his tie and then takes a deep breath, squaring his shoulders. Cassie watches the role of Captain America settle over him and knows that at the end of the night, when champagne is drunk and the ball has dropped, he'll be shaken off and Steve will be back

"Are you ready?"

This is something Steve is better at than she is. He uses a defensive weapon for offensive attack and when he puts on the persona of 'The Captain' he's doing the same thing. Captain America can be the shield, the defensive layer, that protects Steve Rogers from the rest of the world.

It's a shield that protects the man she loves, so Cassie loves 'The Captain' too.

She lifts her chin and gives a smile edged in steel as the two of them prepare to walk in to a New Year. "Ready. Let's get this show on the road."

A/N: Happy New Year everyone! I was determined to get this published today as a New Years present to you all. I've finally recovered completely from a horrendous bout of tonsillitis and have spent the last week completely crazy with family stuff. My schedule for next semester is a bit in flux and might be busy but I'm going to try to put myself on a more consistent posting schedule once I figure out what's doable. Anyway, tell me what you thought! I can always go back and edit if people have particular thoughts or constructive criticism. Review for me! xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxooxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo