Disclaimer: I own nothing you recognize.
It turns out that there are quite a lot of things that have to be decided on over the course of planning a wedding. As it turns out, Cassie is right in her supposition that the first question has to be when they're having it. Given that they have a tentative date (Mayish, probably early) the next thing that has to be decided is location.
Location is apparently subject to the variable of how many people are on their guest list. If Cassie and Steve were able to get absolutely their own way, the guest list in question could probably be kept to under fifty people. Unfortunately, the central theme to Cassie and Steve's lives separately seems to be that they will very rarely get everything that they want.
If the only people invited to the wedding were people that Cassie and Steve knew and liked personally then all of the invites could have been delivered in under ten phone calls and a team wide email chain. Barring that, it would have taken a few dollars in postage fees and about twenty minutes of walking through the Tower. Instead, it takes several hours of sitting around with Pepper, Darcy, and Reyna talking through long lists of people who's presence might seem politically advantageous.
Cassie did not know that many of the people on that list were people that existed on planet Earth, let alone that they were people who's opinions the Avengers as a group were at all concerned with. Apparently, not knowing a person existed until you're told their name is not a good enough reason for not inviting them to your wedding if you were marrying Captain America and the person you'd never heard of was Head of the Joint House Something Something. Life worked in weird ways sometimes.
Is it clear by her lack of knowledge when it comes to correct terms in these matters that Cassie isn't quite so politically savvy? She will fully admit that Senate meetings in New Rome just about bored her to tears most of the time. Okay not to tears, but definitely to the border of unconsciousness. Senate manipulation is probably the only thing that Cassie will freely admit that Octavian was better at than she was.
In the end they put a hard cap on the list at one hundred and fifty people and let their more politically savvy friends have free reign.
With that number in place they can move on figuring out their location. That part goes surprisingly quickly. It's quick because Steve loves Brooklyn more than any other place on the planet and Cassie wants light. Brooklyn has botanic gardens and they have friends who can get them reserved for them. There's going to be a Stark funded greenhouse dedicated to medicinal plants come 2017.
At least when it comes to the guest list and venue Steve and Cassie can work together to exercise their veto power to try to keep things a little bit under control. They can be a team of two and make a united front. Back to back protection as it were.
The matter of Cassie's dress is a different story.
For one thing, there's the little superstition hanging around weddings that grooms shouldn't see the bride's dress before the wedding. Cassie doesn't know where that superstition comes from, but given her history it's not something she's willing to take chances on. At this point she's willing to follow up on the whole 'something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue' rhyme if it'll help.
Basically, this means that Cassie is stuck trying to work out what wedding dress to wear with only the help of the opinions of her friends. This is fine, her friends are helpful. The problem she runs in to is the too many cooks in the kitchen problem and it quickly becomes clear that she'll need to whittle down her sources a little if she ever wants to get anywhere.
The other problem Cassie has is that she has no idea what she might like when it comes to fashion regarding incredibly fancy dresses. She never had much of an occasion to where one. It wasn't like demigods got to go to Prom.
Another factor is that as soon as the wedding is announced Cassie gets calls from every single high fashion designer she's ever heard of (and several she hasn't) telling her how thrilled they would be to have the chance to design her wedding dress. It's a lot of incoming information. Not having any idea how to field such calls and also lacking an assistant, Cassie is forced to borrow one.
Thankfully Jane is happy to lend and Darcy is happy to be borrowed.
And can Cassie just say that Darcy Lewis does indeed have a superpower, and that superpower is cutting through red tape and to-do lists like a machete through tissue paper. Cassie and Darcy start their day with a quick meeting and Cassie hands the other woman her phone. By lunch time Darcy is presenting her with a wide selection of what are called look books filled with designed sketches and fabric samples.
Cassie pays for lunch and spends the next two weeks making sure coffee gets delivered right to Darcy's desk. She also makes sure her table assignment is a good one. This means obeying Darcy's request to be seated with any of the single heroes Cassie can invite. She hopes she'll get along well with Connor Stole.
On reflection, maybe that seating choice is going to come back to bite her. Oh well. Too late to change it now.
Together Steve and Cassie can agree that the best part in all of their wedding planning is trying out caterers. It's amazing. Very well trained and incredibly amazing chefs send them plates upon plates of food for them to try, taste, and then review.
Steve has a surprisingly discerning palette. One misconception it was easy to develop about Steve was that he didn't care much about what he was eating. In actually fact, time and necessity due to metabolism had simply taught him not to be picky when there was no other choice. When choice was completely possible, Steve turned out to have a lot of different food opinions.
He's not the only one either. Bucky subs in for Cassie on one of the tastings when she gets called in to do an emergency surgery for one of their field agents and when she gets home the two Super Soldiers are having a lively debate over the correct ratio of chili powder to coriander in a certain chicken dish. Reyna informs her with a smirk that one of Bucky's hobbies is to watch Food Network for hours on end.
This is knowledge that Cassie treasures. She thinks she'll pull out that fact in her mind from time to time to re-examine. Frankly, she doesn't think it'll ever fail to make her smile.
Cake tasting is even better than picking a caterer. It's also simpler to a certain degree. Both of them want chocolate. Chocolate in extremely large quantities. After a single experience they can both also agree that fondant tastes disgusting and instead opt for buttercream. This makes choosing the baker they want a matter of simply eating a lot of chocolate cake with different forms of chocolate icing and deciding which one they like best.
The bakery they end up choosing is a family one run by a father and daughter team living in Queens. Both burst in to tears of happiness when Cassie and Steve tell them that they're who they've picked. Apparently, they'd submitted their cake sample on a whim and had never expected to be chosen.
They also get an invitation to the wedding. They've already invited nearly a hundred people they didn't actually want in attendance. The guest list can take two or three more people that Cassie and Steve actually won't mind seeing and speaking to.
Of course, all wedding planning would be easier if the people doing the planning didn't keep getting called out on mission to save the world. Or at least, that's what Cassie has to assume is the case. It has never been her personal experience and likely never will be.
As Cassie has said before though, the world doesn't stop needing to be saved just because she's too tired or too busy to save it.
2016.
Wow.
It's one hell of a year. Right from the very beginning it takes off and then just never stops. As far as years go, it seriously hits the ground running.
And this is coming from a girl who has had some fairly dramatic and extremely eventful years. She went to the underworld and saw the gods almost dissolve in to a civil war in 2005 and saw the Bermuda Triangle prove to be navigable in 2006. The years between 2007 and 2009 each involve so many disasters, catastrophes, discoveries, miracles, and world ending events that it's almost impossible to count them.
Cassie has seen years where death stopped, years where titans rose and gods perished. She's lived through years that had wars start and end within them and years where brave heroes died fighting for what was right and she's lived through years that allowed those heroes to slip in to the realm of the forgotten. She's lived through a year where the world found out that aliens were real and somehow managed to keep spinning exactly as it had before.
The near quarter of a century that Cassie has spent on this planet has been comprised of some truly incredible years.
2016 is a doozie.
Quite a lot of their time as the Avengers involves trying to help handle an outbreak of the Zika virus. Will, Cassie, Steve, Bucky, and even Banner have perfected immune systems and absolutely no chance of contracting the virus which makes them fairly ideal as aid workers. Will and Cassie together and working quietly are actually able to very quietly cure certain cases. They can't stop the whole epidemic, but they can definitely do more than the average person to alleviate suffering.
There's also pretty much a typhoon in Fiji that they do humanitarian missions to help deal with the fall out of. Before going Cassie makes several Iris Message calls to various godly relatives to verify that none of them have done anything to cause this particular disaster. Everyone comes up clean which tells Cassie that this particular disaster really is just a disaster and not a godly temper tantrum.
In an odd way, this is a kind of mission that Cassie actually can enjoy. There's no violence involved and no fighting to engage in. No one on her team is at risk of being shot, stabbed, maimed, drowned, buried alive, or infected with anything. The people here don't want violence, they just need help.
Anyone with a suit or super strength is immediately commissioned to clear rubble and rebuild houses, hospitals, banks, schools, post offices, and even veterinary clinics. All those with medical skills are pressed in to service just as quickly. Cassie finds herself busier on a more consistent level for a long period of time than she thinks she ever has been before.
Cassie gives more rounds of basic vaccinations and top up injections than she can possibly count. She also sets broken bones and dislocated joints and binds and disinfects cuts. She gives physicals to every individual she gets presented with and does her best to put everyone in the best health she can possibly manage.
She even manages to deliver a few babies.
And can Cassie just say that their was a reason she chose not to pursue the fields of gynecology and obstetrics. Sometimes she almost wonders what that reason was. Then she presides over a birth and all of her excellent reasons for that choice come rushing back all at once. There's a reason that they call the process of giving birth labor and it is a very well justified one.
Still though, there's a certain rush. It's a very particular feeling of accomplishment that comes with watching a new parent look down at the new reddish wrinkly person in their arms with an expression that says that a little piece of their universe now revolves around them. You don't often get to watch people fall in love.
Each time Cassie sees that expression on a new parent's face, she can't help but wonder if her father ever looked at her that way. She thinks that on some dim and unknowable level he might have. The earliest ever memory she has, the earliest ever memory of most demigods actually, is of a warm golden shine of light and brilliantly white smiles set in a kind face.
Of course, this mission with it's enjoyable factors is more of a rare exception than a common occurrence. Humanitarian aid is nice, in short supply, and very necessary but also not the primary working function of the Avengers. They are mostly an elite action strike force with independent funding and almost no government oversight which means that their job is to go in to nasty places and completely eliminate the forces occupying them.
Cassie and Steve talk about it a time or two. Steve also prefers any mission they can accomplish that simply helps people to the more frequent combat deployments. He's a truly individual man, a soldier who doesn't like violence.
One of the wonderful things about having a fiance is that it means Cassie always has a partner who can look at things from a different point of view to her own and help her to see a larger world picture. He tells her that he sees even their combat missions as life saving exercises. When they go in to combat scenarios, it means that other soldiers never have to. Soldiers and operatives may be highly trained, but there is just no escaping the fact that humans are more breakable. Regardless of how skilled they might be.
Two thousand and sixteen is the year that sees Iran have a successful nuclear power test. It's a year that involved ISIS and a million other terrorist groups all attacking people and taking innocent lives and constantly tripping over each other to claim the credit for doing so. It's a year where the entire Middle East seems to be going or staying completely insane.
All in all, it generates a remarkable amount to do when it comes to Cassie's day job. And her night job. And her extracurricular activities.
Monsters thrive on chaos, violence, blood, and confusion. Those factors draw the creatures of myth out and in to the world like moths to a flame. Human war creates mythological war and around and around the cycle goes in the most exhausting bicycle wheel of conflict and conflict resolution in existence.
The other thing that there's a lot of in 2016 is confusion. There can't help but be a lot of that in an age that can coin the phrase 'Fake News' and call it a real category. Steve would prefer to call it mass distributed misinformation for the purposes of causing sensation, panic, outrage, and fear mongering in a capitalist grab for power made by corrupted news corporations.
That rant gets longer and much more complicated and Cassie has listened to the entire thing. Multiple times. In several variations of volume and vocal tone.
She's also heard it done in multiple languages. Steve learns quickly and has made it a point to gain basic mastery of at least six major world languages including ASL. Clint's been helping him with that last one and he's been getting pretty good.
You haven't heard a rant until "hearing" it is done all through completely silent gestures you personally only partly understood and had no hope of responding to. Cassie can now say this from experience. In fact, she can say it from multiple experiences and not just a singular one.
2016 and the first few months that occur within it have prompted Steve, Captain Freakin' America to learn as many languages as he possibly can. From the outside this might seem like a gesture of world-wide outreach in the face of a shrinking and more closely intertwined global community on the part of a world famous national symbol. However, Cassie is in a position to personally know that Steve is learning as many languages as he possibly can in order to argue with more people more effectively on his own behalf without the aid or added trouble of a translator.
Reyna, upon hearing of this ambition, had cheerfully begun a refresher course in Spanish. Leo Valdez occasionally skypes in on these calls to lend a helping hand. He tells Piper who gamely plays her part by sending movies and other learning materials in French. This is all that's needed as Jones of the original Howling Commandos began the education a very long time ago.
Nico stops in a the tower with slightly more regularity than he used to and uses the time to mutter in discontented Italian within Steve's earshot. Cassie's not sure that she would quantify this as a language lesson, but Steve seems to be picking up a surprising amount. According to him, half of the battle is the right hand movements and body language.
SHIELD had had Steve learning Mandarin and Frank volunteers to help finish the job while Sam, Barton, and Rhodes bring him up to speed on Arabic. Steve had already managed to teach himself Russian a few years ago when he first began his search for Bucky and Wanda and Pietro Maximoff are bringing him up to date on modern Sokovian. For her part, Cassie helps explain and translate sections of Greek and Latin.
Steve is a passionate, intelligent, and stubborn person. He has a lot of well thought out and developed opinions. Now he can express them in multiple languages without necessitating a simulcast.
This is very helpful as 2016 also happens to be the year of an extremely tense United States Presidential Election.
So...
Okay...
Cassie really only has two words.
Here they are.
Holy Shit.
Just- Just-
Nope. That's all she's got. Seriously she has no words. Well maybe she has a few but none of them should ever be committed to public record.
Part of the Avengers press strategy developed by Pepper and Reyna is that for the entire shit storm that is the election no team member or team associate with any public ties to the team will publicly express their political opinion outside of actually voting or more indirect comments. This keeps everyone a little further out of the public eye. They have to make some kind of play at appearing to be politically neutral.
The problem is that no one in politics seems to want to see the Avengers as a neutral party. In fact, candidates on both sides of the political aisle seem to be perfectly happy to make all of the political hay they can out of trampling all over anything the team does. It's a little bit hard not to start taking things personally.
The other problem with that brilliant strategy is that no one on the team apart from a few notable exceptions can be said to have 'neutral' personalities. None of them are quiet or naturally cooperative people. They're stubborn and loud and larger than life characters who can only manage to exist in the universe by surrounding themselves with enough other large than life people to not feel so oversized.
Tony has been a media figure since the announcement of his birth hit newspapers. Everything from his first temper tantrum to his last press release is a matter of public record. He hacks government organizations to send insulting memes for gods' sake. His rant to Congress on having privatized world peace still has more hits on YouTube than almost any other Avengers related video.
Steve, as polite as he normally tries to be has never once hesitated to tell a member of the government to take their legislative agenda and shove it up their ass. If he thinks something is wrong he says so and isn't shy about doing it publicly or taking decisive action to counteract it. This is the man who ran around in the middle of a war holding a bright red and blue target on his back.
Thor is a godly prince who has never particularly needed to censor his thoughts. Loki had always been the brother to invest and master the political games of Asgard. The result of this is that if Thor is asked a political question he answers by saying whatever he thinks. If someone is being ridiculous or lying he announces it in a loud and deeply reverberating way. Seriously, his voice carries like nothing else.
Bruce is quiet. That's who he is. Still, no one in their right mind will irritate or argue with the Hulk. A gigantic green rage monster isn't exactly what you could call not-stubborn, talkative, or reasonable.
Pepper Potts is a woman who took great pleasure in pulverizing the glass ceiling so thoroughly that it turns back in to sand. She kicks through misogyny and the 'boys club' in a pair of fashionable stilettos. Following the new company policy about keeping mum is just as difficult for her as it is for Tony.
Darcy uses words as her own personal superpower and Jane (bless her) doesn't bother coming far enough out of her world of science and magic and where it collides to put on a verbal filter. Pietro and Wanda grew up in a society where political censoring was the norm and are too glad to be free of it to abandon the privilege for the sake of social ease now that they have it. Meg speaks at a million miles a minute about anything that crosses her mind and her worldly opinions are a prime example of this.
Bucky is quiet until he has something to say and then speaks the same way he shoots, directly at the vital spots. And Bucky doesn't not take opportunities once they're presented. That's not in his nature.
The only members of their team who aren't publicly very opinionated are Barton and Natasha. Barton's identity lives so far undercover that while the public is aware that the Avengers have an archer on their team, no one actually has his name or a picture of his face. Natasha depends on having as much ambiguity over her stance on most issues as possible to keep doing her job.
And Reyna. Gods. Reyna was a political leader of New Rome for a decade.
That says as much as there needs to be said on the subject.
Cassie isn't good about hiding how she feels about things. She never has been. Children of Apollo aren't very good at lying or keeping secrets. However, what they are good at is performing, at putting on a convincing show. That's probably the only thing that keeps her from retaliating to some of the things that the media keeps throwing her way.
The residents of the Tower start staying in more where possible and Stark hires some extra people for the mail room, cyber team, and PR departments to filter through their social media, correspondences, and appearance requests.
Still, by around Valentines Day Cassie is seriously considering completely disconnecting their television and canceling their newspaper subscriptions both electronic and paper. Listening to the radio has also turned in to a near daily exercise in teeth grinding. Unfortunately, shutting out the world and pretending that nothing is going on is the only sure fire method on the planet to be completely sure that you will be powerless to fix it.
The mythological struggles Cassie and the other demigods end up having to deal with still keep themselves mostly centered around the known key dates for potential planetary discussion despite her own predictions of thrown off swatchiness. However, monster activity and deployment picks up significantly. More and more demigods keep getting attacked as they try to live out in the world and higher numbers confine themselves to their camps, nomes, and halls (for their Norse friends).
It's no great shock when Cassie gets called out to Albany in March.
What is a great big huge enormous shock is the fact that the all powerful being creating a disturbance in the demigodly force isn't there to kill anyone or wreak any kind of havoc. In fact, the being that pops forth from a dramatically appearing crack in the ground of the back woods of Albany doesn't seem prepared to do any kind of violence at all. Cassie, with her drawn bow and quiver full of arrows is by far the best armed individual in this scenario.
That she also has two hunting knives in sheaths strapped in various positions on her body, her feet firmly laced in to combat boots designed for mobility and grip, a full supernatural first aid kit, and has been standing in the sun for literal hours in preparation for this actually puts her preparedness in to overkill levels. Nuclear bombing to win a water fight levels of overkill. Mailing a gorgon head to Olympus to make a point to an emotionally distant levels of-
Oh. Right.
Never mind!
So anyhow back to the story.
Cassie's levels of preparation for a brutal fight. Yes. That is the point the narration that has now been reached.
Of course, the one time Cassie has adequate prep time and manages to show up ready to kick a situations ass is the one time wherein nothing she's brought with her is actually necessary. This is the way that the world works when you are a probably overpowered demigod with blessings you didn't ask for placed on you by your relatives so that they can one day use you to bail them out of trouble. You spend over two decades consistently blindsided by fate and then when you finally think you have a handle on things smack fate gives you a completely concussive bitch slap by having absolutely nothing happen.
Well that's not quite true. Quite a few things do happen. The ground cracking open across nearly a mile of Earth forming a massive chasm fifty feet across and gods' only knew (maybe not even them given the likely origins) deep is definitely something happening.
The fact that a figure emerges from this fantastic new geological feature is another something that happens. That the figure is about forty feet tall, carrying a mop (built to scale), wearing a tattered janitor's uniform, carrying a semi-skeletal cat on each shoulder, is silver from shiny haired head to luminescent toes, and wearing a name tag identifying himself as 'Bob' is another thing that happens. Maybe several things actually.
Cassie has never actually met this particular Titan in person, but she has heard plenty of stories. This is Iapetus, father of Atlas, Titan of the moon, and piercing his enemies with a really large spear. The Titan Percy gave a liberal dousing in the river Lethe and rechristened Bob, the helpful janitor. An individual of great power who sacrificed his freedom so that Percy and Annabeth could utilize the Doors of Death to escape Tartarus.
They had all wondered before if and when this friendly Titan would ever manage to find his freedom. Apparently there is an answer to the question of how long it takes for one gigantically sized super-powered individual to escape the pits of hell. The answer is, apparently, sometime between five and six years.
Faster than most projections.
Cassie's pretty sure the smart money had been on 'never, probably'. By smart money she means Nico and Hazel's knowledge of the underworld combined with Annabeth's knowledge of pretty much everything. Cassie will never ever bet against those odds. Too bad, looks like she could have made some money.
She puts a lot of thought in to her opening line. "Holy son of a- wait no-not finishing that, this is Greek mythology the answer will terrify me. You're Iapetus right? Or Bob. Which one would you prefer Iapetus Bob? I can call you Iapetus Bob. I'm Cassie! Welcome to the topside! Oh dear gods please don't accidentally crush or purposefully impale me with your broom!"
So by a carefully thought out line, what Cassie means is that she opens her mouth and starts just hearing words come out of it tenths of miliseconds after she sees the words go floating across her visual screen. Funny thing, while in her head not a single one of them is in the slightest bit misspelled or floaty swirly mixed up. Note to self, dyslexia apparently didn't kick in until the words were physically printed or had to make their way on to the page in her handwriting.
A moment later the giant silver head cranes down to look at her. "You are very small," is the first thing out of his mouth. The bass reverberations of his voice are something Cassie can actually feel without resorting to her demigod senses. "Smaller than other small mortals I think."
"Yeah," Cassie says. "Yeah I get that pretty often. It's a thing from my mother. I can be taller in heels but they're not great for fights which I thought this was probably going to be and wow this is so not what we need to be talking about right now. What are your plans while on this plane of the mortal realm? Do you harbor any malicious intent towards the mortals or demigods who live here?"
Yes. Those are the right questions. She's supposed to ask that kind of thing.
Liquid mercury eyes the size dumpster lids blink at her behind foot long icicle lashes. Cassie hadn't known Titans could have eyelashes before. Cronus had obviously, but he had been in Luke's body not his own. Luke's eyelashes. That line of thought brings to mind alien gold eyes in a familiar face and Cassie has to give her head a mental shake to clear the image away.
"You are sad," Iapetus states. He says it in the same simply way that Tyson sometimes makes factual observations about the emotional states of those around him. What wth all the time they spent trying to kill her, it was easy to forget that most minor monsters, titans, and giants were to some degree empathetic.
"I was remembering someone I lost," she says. "Lost and loved, loved and lost. Either linguistic choice applies. Anyway, about my question? I can't help but notice that you never actually, you know answered it."
The massive eyes blink again and in the next moment the shadows shift and the titan is kneeling on the ground before her. "I mean no harm to any living thing," he says slowly and solemnly. "I wish only to walk below the sun and stars again. This I swear upon both the River Styx, and the life of Small Bob." One of the skeletal cats, who until this moment had remained still and silent gives a disgruntled mew as though irritated at being annoyed. Iapetus turns to look at it. "I apologize dear fluff ball," he says sincerely. "I also swear my vow on the life of The Smallest Bob. He dislikes being overlooked."
The cat, who is evidently named 'The Smallest Bob' wanders down Iapetus' shoulder, and down his arm before hoping in to the titan's lap before moving down to the ground. The minorly monstrous feline wanders across the forest floor over to her and before Cassie can react she has a semi-skeletal saber-tooth kitten winding it's way around her legs, purring all the while. The Smallest Bob really is quite little, she observes. Maybe it was the runt of the litter.
Could litters of monstrous kittens summoned with skeletal teeth by a titan lord in a possibly demonic ritual have runts? This far in to her demigodly life, Cassie isn't sure if it's a good thing that she still runs in to this kind of question. People say you should try to learn something new everyday.
Cassie quite often finds that she doesn't actually have to try.
"I know how he feels," Cassie comments, leaning down hesitantly and stroking a hand along The Smallest Bob's back. The ghostly feline's only reaction is to begin a full body rumbling that must constitute a purr. Cassie takes that as a sign that her fingers will not be devoured and continues to administer her petting. The fur below her fingers is surprisingly warm and soft coming from a creature who occasionally appears semi-skeletal. True the bones of the spine and ribcage under her fingers are a bit pronounced, but the head that nuzzles against her knuckles seems perfectly normal and fuzzy.
She looks up to see Iapetus watching her and comes to a decision, extending her hand to shake. "I accept your vow and hold you to it as binding," she announces.
The handshake is an offer that she begins to re-asses when the hand that reaches out to take her proves to be twice as large as her entire body. Handshakes are so awkward when you forget to calculate for size differentials. In the end, Cassie shakes Iapetus' pinky finger, and Iapetus shakes Cassie's entire body.
In honor of their new accord, Cassie makes a few suggestions about the size at which people begin to take exception and what the Mist is and is not able to conceal from mortal eyes. Once the titan has managed to shrink himself down to a relatively inconspicuous height of about six foot six Cassie makes a few tactful suggestions about clothing and demonstrates her point with a few helpful pictures on her phone. The titan takes it from her, squinting at the image for a moment, and after a few quiet heartbeats of contemplation she's looking at what for all the world appears to be a very tall man with long silver hair, an exceedingly shiny silver dress shirt, and stone wash jeans. His broom transforms in to a walking stick and after a brief wave of his hand there's a rucksack like the kind hikers use slung across his back which Small Bob immediately hops in to.
The Smallest Bob had been committed to whisker washing for most of the exchange but is now lying stretched across Cassie's feet with his tale looped around one of her legs, headless of her potential desire to maybe someday go somewhere. Cassie doesn't have a whole lot of experience with cats never having been in a position to have the time to care for a pet, but from what she's heard this is fairly typical cat behavior. Of course, she once heard a news story about a little old lady down in Tampa who's cat suffocated her in her sleep and then nibbled on her face for about a week before the body was found.
If that doesn't prove that cat's are a weird species Cassie doesn't know what does.
"If you walk that way for about three days at a good pace you'll hit the boundary for Camp Half Blood," she tells him. "If you go that-a-way for about three weeks you hit Camp Jupiter. If you stop a week or so early you'll be in some nice wilderness in the middle of the country. Lots of sun and stars there."
This leads the Titan to notice, apparently for the very first time that they're kind of in the middle of nowhere. "I have had godling friends before," he says. "Percy and Annabeth and Nico. All of them cared very much about home and friends. Annabeth and Percy wanted to get back to theirs, Nico felt that he did not have one. Do you have a home and friends?"
A lot of bizzare things have happened in Cassie's lifetime. Actually scratch lifetime. A lot of weird things have happened to Casie today. Having a titan known as The Piercer staring down at her with deep concern asking sincere questions about her personal life is just now topping the oddity charts.
A little non-plussed, Cassie never the less answers the question honestly. "Actually yes," she tells him. "I have lots of friends. I've known Annabeth my entire life and I've been friends with her and Percy for over a decade now. Nico actually pretty seriously dates my half-brother Will. I live with my fiancé Steve, we'll be moving in to our new home after the wedding."
She knows that she's smiling as she says it. She can't help it. The very idea of a future with Steve, of the fact that they can plan that future and will get to really live it together makes her unbelievably, undeniably, happy.
"There," Iapetus says, and the silver of his pupilless eyes seems warmer and softer than she's seen it so far. "You are not sad now. Having a home, family, and friends, makes mortals happy I think. You are all very much beings who need company."
"Do you not?"
The words are out of Cassie's mouth before she can hold them in but the titan doesn't look offended. Instead he cocks his head. "I have been alone for a long time now," he says. "I do not quite remember having much company, but I am not sure that I am lonely. I have Small Bob, and now I will have the wind and trees and birds and the song of the stars."
Cassie gives him a smile. "That is not one of the songs I often hear," she tells him. "My father is Apollo, god of the sun. Stars are lovely, but I don't hear them sing.
Iapetus actually smiles at her at that. "If there is something you cannot hear, then you most listen closer."
"I'll do that," she agrees. You do not argue with a titan when they are handing out sage life advice. This is a working policy Cassie lives her life working under. "Meanwhile, I should get back to my home, friends, and fiancé so that the people involved there don't start worrying about me. Steve knows about this part of my life, but it makes him a bit anxious that he can't help me with much of it. And if you would like to talk with another immortal being sometime, Thor lives part time in my building."
Her plan to make a polite exit at that point is somewhat foiled by the fact that The Smallest Bob is still lying firmly across her ankles. "Ummm... Do you want your cat back before I go."
Iapetus surprises her by shaking his head. Instead of leaving he scoops The Smallest Bob up off of the ground and shoves the purring though now disgruntled fluff ball in to her arms. "You will be wed soon," he states. "In ancient times it was custom to deliver a gift of great value unto the house of the bride. The Smallest Bob has already chosen you. He will protect you well.
The protector and gift of great value in question yawns and kneads the part of her shirt that pokes out from under her armor with tiny needle filled paws before resettling in to her arms. Cassie is about to try to protest again, but when she looks up next Iapetus is smiling benevolently and she finds she just can't do it. Hopefully the super serum will keep Steve from being allergic to cats.
And hopefully demonically summoned cats didn't need food or litter boxes.
She has a cat now.
That was unplanned.
"I will go now," Iapetus announces, standing to his full chosen height. Before he goes, he surprises Cassie one more time by placing a somewhat silvery hand on her forehead and speaking a short string of Ancient Greek. "Boreite na pate apo afto to meros prostatavmeno kai eftychismeno." She blinks as the words begin to translate. May you go forth from this place protected and happy... "Shield your eyes child," Iapetus says as he steps away. "Today you have been kind. I see why Percy and Annabeth so desired to get home if they sought to return to friends such as you."
"Thank you for making it possible for them to return to us," Cassie says formally. "They told us all of your sacrifice when they reached us. The demigods of both camps owe you a debt. Any kindness I have given today is merely a very small start in repaying it," she makes a blessing gesture of respect. "Go well and live happily. May the stars sing for you." With that Cassie turns away, screwing her eyes tight shut and covering the eyes of The Smallest Bob with her hand.
Theres a flash of light and a wave of blisteringly hot air washes over her back, whipping her braid around her face. The Smallest Bob lets out a surprisingly pitiful mew. When she turns around, Iapetus is gone and Cassie has been left alone in an empty clearing with a new and interesting massive chasm in the Earth and a purring possibly demonic cat.
Not the weirdest result to a conversation she's ever had all things considered.
Now she's just left with the question of how she's going to get home. She'd used the light falling through the living room window to travel to the detected center of magical disturbance, but she's not sure that it's a good idea to do that with a possibly demonic cat riding shotgun. Cassie lifts the aforementioned cat and holds it out in front of her, back paws dangling. "Any thoughts on this one Smallest Bob?" she asks. "Anything you want to contribute?"
The cat lets out a disgruntled meow, probably protesting the indignity of this position, and sinks his claws rather decisively in to her hand. It hurts about as much as being clawed by any cat does, which is to say like hell, but not literally. Cassie supposes she can't blame him. She knows from experience that being dangled by the arms by a creature at least ten times her size really isn't fun.
"Alright, alright, leave my skin on me please and thank you," she murmurs, cradling The Smallest Bob in against her chest again to support his little furry body. The cat immediately begins purring again. Apparently, this particular creature is both choosy about positioning, stubbornly unshakable, a seeker of comfort, and liable to lash out with whatever is at his disposal when angry.
Huh. Put like that, The Smallest Bob isn't all that different from a few people she knows. Maybe the Avengers can use a new mascot.
Well, if she can't teleport back home, she'll need a ride. A ride means a car, and a car means she needs to get back to the road. This involves about a five mile hike with The Smallest Bob riding along on her shoulder.
She takes a seat on the metal girder that runs along the highway to keep cars from veering off and transfers The Smallest Bob down in to her lap before digging out her phone to have a dig through her contact list. Steve and Bucky were both in D.C for the weekend to sort out the continuation of their wall a the Smithsonian. Tony had tagged along on the trip and brought Katya with them for some real world mechanical learning experience and Rhodes had accompanied them at Pepper's request to act as chaperone.
Reyna, and Pepper are swamped with work and Jane is lecturing in Norway with Thor and Darcy for company. The Hamlet jokes have been both prompt and bountiful. She debates calling Pietro Maximoff to give her a super speed lift, but doesn't know how super speed with a cat would go. In the end she calls Sam, who good man that he is, is out the door and on his way to pick her up before she can hang up the phone.
She settles in for her two hour wait by the highway and manages to spend a pretty good portion of it playing Candy Crush and listening to music. She's moved on to dangling a stick for The Smallest Bob to swat at when she hears a car honking at her from the road. Looking up, she sees Sam waving at her from behind the wheel of a sports car she's pretty sure normally belongs to Tony.
"You called?" he shouts over to her, pushing the door open as she approaches.
"Thank you so much," she says fervently, standing up and hiking over, slamming the door behind her and buckling up as they pull away again. "You are a true hero, and if it doesn't get me killed for blasphemy to say it, a god amongst men. And I have met both."
"Good. Bring that up next time someone asks for a performance review on me," Hill says with a wink as he puts his foot down, pressing the engine directly up to the speed limit and then past it. His prompt arrival is beginning to make a whole lot more sense. "And I hate to bring this up while you're complimenting me, but do you know that you're holding a cat right now?"
"This is The Smallest Bob and he was a wedding gift from a titan whose name translated out of Ancient Greek means 'The Piercer'. I didn't feel like rejecting the gift. In the stories, bad things happen to poor little foolish mortals who do that.
Sam glances down at the cat in her lap and hesitantly presents the knuckles of one hand for inspection. The Smallest Bob lazily extends his neck and sniffs before giving the back of his hand a single lick and curling back down in to Cassie's lap. Moments later he's fast asleep and purring like a freight train.
Sam shakes his head and turns back to the road. This is probably a good thing considering the speed at which they are now traveling. "I gotta say I'm normally a dog person, but the little guy doesn't seem too bad if all he does is sleep and vibrate."
"That literally might be just about all he does," Cassie admits. "He was skeletally resurrected using blood and saber tooth tiger teeth by one of the minions of the titan Atlas who was at the time trying to summon a relentless skeletal army to hunt us down and kill us so we couldn't go rescue Annabeth and my aunt. He's an undead kitten for eternity which probably means he doesn't need food or a litter box."
A glance to the side tells her that Sam is spending some quality time blinking as her information dump processes. "That'll make keeping him an easier idea to sell to Cap. Throw in the big blue eyed thing you got going and you're home."
Cassie's brow furrows. "I don't have a big blue eyed thing," she tells him. "I have eyes. I grant that they are blue and relatively large in proportion to the rest of my face. Are you implying that I use my facial features in order to manipulate my boyfriend?"
"Yes," Sam says blandly.
She purses her lips. "Well, you're not necessarily wrong. In my defense, Steve does it too. Telling him 'no' when he really cares about something is like kicking a golden retriever."
"You ain't kidding," Sam agrees as he slaloms through some of the traffic. Apparently, he's using the length of their drive to take advantage of his defensive driving training. "One minute, I'm offering the man a chance to come down and talk with a qualified therapist or something at the VA, and two days later I'm strapping on my wings and helping take down a terrorist network. When you two team up it's a nightmare. No wonder the media loves you."
"This is the kind of thing you should talk to Bucky and Reyna about," Cassie advises. "I'm sure they'd sympathize."
Sam raises an eyebrow at her. "How do you think we ever bonded?"
Cassie shrugs. "I assumed there was a lot of stoic silence and some multilingual ranting. Maybe some shooting of things near and far."
"We did that too. Barton came along for the shooting part. Not a lot of talking got done, but I think we became closer as people."
The mental image of the four of them camping out on a hillside in silence. Actually, given who they all are, that's probably an activity that they would all genuinely enjoy. Cassie and Steve have very strange and socially insular friends. It's probably a good thing that Sam and Pietro have both started working with them. Meg too. Talking is a healthy social activity to engage in.
"Steve does have a weird team building ability," Cassie muses. "Starting back with the Commandos, though to be fair I think Bucky met most of them by getting kidnapped by HYDRA the first time."
Sam makes a humming noise of confirmation. "Seventy years of intermittent tag teaming practice. Barnes scouts the people that might get on their side, the Captain actually brings them over. I figure it's because he makes people see that if you see something that needs doing, they should stop stalling and just do it. Pretty sure that's how I ended up here. Still not sure about you."
Cassie shrugs. "I still think the Fates might have been bored or something. I pulled some rebar out of his ribcage after the Battle of Manhattan. The odds of me walking in to the Shwarma joint the team crashed at afterwards as my last stop before going home must have been something like one thousand to one. The odds of ending up living in the same building as Steve in D.C are borderline incalculable. I thought about asking JARVIS to figure it out once, but I never got around to it before..." she makes a hand gesture that hopefully conveys with some accuracy their building A.I being transformed in to a magically powered android.
"You could ask Vision," Sam suggests. "Or FRIDAY if you want to know."
She does actually consider that for a moment before shaking her head. "No. No I don't need to do that. I met him. I fell in love with him. He fell in love with me. We're going to love each other until we're dead and possibly longer than that if what I know about the Underworld pans out. I live a happy life. I don't need to know exactly which twist of fate made it possible, just so long as it happened."
Sam seems to absorb that and their conversation on the way home is a bit more like small talk than they started. Sam continues to break speed limits and traffic laws with reckless abandon and explains when questioned that Tony gave him free reign in his garage upon discovering that he knew something about automotive engineering. This had come along with a dismissive promise to pay any and all incurred tickets. Sam is enjoying the free reign this gives him.
For someone who can fly using mechanical wings while taking heavy gunfire, a little bit of defensive driving is probably fairly dull. Cassie herself has participated in much less controlled modes of transportation. The Smallest Bob previously spent his time traveling via titan shoulder and seems thoroughly uncontrolled.
She's back in their apartment by three PM even after having stopped off for a coffee break on the way in. There's still about three hours to wait until Steve gets home and Cassie uses the time to take a nap. The Smallest Bob jumps out of her arms and streaks through the apartment in an orange tabby blur the second she opens the door and takes up residence in a pool of sunshine at the end of Steve and Cassie's bed.
It strikes Cassie suddenly that today is probably the first day of The Smallest Bob's little life that has been spent out of Tartarus and in the light. With that in mind, she takes the time to crack a window and put out a bowl of water on the floor just in case. She doesn't know if The Smallest Bob will need it, but she figures she better provide it just in case.
Then she changes in to her pajamas. This consists of an oversized tee shirt with Steve's shield on it in distressed print and a pair of shorts, both of which had been purchased for her as likely gag gifts from Natasha. With Natasha it's difficult to tell when interactions have turned the corner of genuine good will and incredible sarcasm. It's a very individual kind of talent.
Passing out is surprisingly easy to do and Cassie doesn't wake up again until the sound of the front door sliding over and FRIDAY's gentle chiming registers in her consciousness.
"FRIDAY," Steve is whispering at the ceiling in the kitchen. "Can we kill the beeping? I think Cassie's asleep and I'd like to let her leave that way."
"Of course Captain Rogers," FRIDAY says in her voice of cool efficiency. "I will certainly cease the beeping. However, you should know that Miss Morgenstern is-"
"Inncommingggg!" Cassie calls, acting on pure ADHD whim and sprinting full speed at her fiancé who very gamely catches braces himself to catch her launch to piggyback position. Then she cranes her neck around to kiss his cheek. "Thanks FRIDAY," she calls towards the ceiling. "How are you Honey?"
Steve grins and reaches behind him to cup the side of her cheek to pull her in to a deeper kiss. "I'm good. You're marrying a guy worth six complete rooms in the Smithsonian," he says.
Cassie smiles and lets herself fall in to the kiss for a moment and then pulls back to give him a high five. "Nice one." Then she hops down from his back and finds herself spun out and around back in to his chest, this time facing him. "You're marrying a girl worth one titan blessing and one possibly demonic cat."
She leans up to kiss him again and Steve's arms fold around her and this moment is coming home and everything she wants for the rest of her life. His mouth opens under hers and Cassie uses her grip on his shoulders to hitch herself closer. Steve's fingers trace a warm path up her spine below the edge of her shirt and pleasant shivers follow in their wake.
Steve pulls back. "Wait demonic cat?"
"Later Steve," Cassie tells him, shifting her fingertips through the short, downy soft hairs at the nape of his neck and shifting her body ever closer to his.
He swallows hard. "But-uh-"
Cassie plays a trump card and leans up to nip lightly at the lobe of his ear, taking pleasure in the way it makes his eyes glaze over a little. "Later Steve," she repeats. "For now Captain, your plan of action is to think about how your girlfriend you love and who loves you is kissing you and later you can mentally debate weather or not you think a cat named The Smallest Bob is an addition you can use in your life. Be warned, a titan gave it to us as a wedding present and returning him will not be possible."
Steve shakes his head and reached down, gripping her thighs and lifting. "Amended plan," he says. "Kiss you now, walk you to the bedroom immediately after, make love, order in dinner, then you can tell me about this demonic new pet of ours later."
"Good plan."
A/N: So what do you guys think? Personally, I very much like the idea of The Smallest Bob. I saw a bit of fan art online of Steve Rogers, Cat Owner, and I think it got in to my head. Look it up if you want to, it's adorable. My work is kind of nuts just now so it might take me a while to get up the next chapter, but I'm about to try cracking in to CACW. Obviously, there will be some pretty major cannon divergence coming up. Review for me! xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxox