Disclaimer: Does anyone actually read this at this point? We're like, nearly 40 chapters in. Well whatever. In case anyone cares I make no more money from this chapter than I did from any of the others. Ditto goes for anything to do with ownership and intellectual property/copyrite laws. Someday I'll figure out how many disclaimers I actually have to put in to one work on this site, but at the moment I've got basically no idea. Can anybody out there fill in the blank? Until someone does one of these is still going to show up at the start of each chapter.
The flight to London is endured by all passengers in near silence. Everyone scatters in to small, semi-contained groups. It's rather like the sprawl of miniature constellations rotating around their fixed central suns. Not that the suns in question are all that shiny or radiant at the present, this is more just a breakdown in team structures.
Pepper sits beside Tony, quietly typing away on her computer. Cassie privately hopes that she might be in some kind of conference with the cadre of lawyers that work under the Stark Enterprises umbrella. If the sounds of irritation coming intermittently from Darcy where she sits with her back directly to Pepper are any indication, that is certainly the activity the Scientist Wrangler Extraordinaire is currently engaged in. Given that Bruce is still safely off the grid and Jane had been persuaded by Thor to retreat surreptitiously to Asgard shortly before the rest of them had taken off, the scientist at the moment with the most potential need of wrangling is Tony.
Rhodes had been sitting next to Tony but had abandoned that spot early in the flight to relieve the pilot. He had had the distinct air of a man who needed something else to focus on. Cassie isn't sure that that avoidance is strictly healthy, but right now she's not about to deprive anyone of their private ways of dealing with the circumstances.
Cassie herself sits beside Steve on the other side of the plane, listening to music with half an ear. Steve's hand holds one of hers on his knee and his thumb is making small patters on the back of her hand. He doesn't seem to be focusing on anything but is instead gazing abstractedly at some vision in the middle distance, like he's receiving an Iris Message only he can see. Bucky sits directly across from him pouring over a copy of the accords which are spread out over the armrest between him and Reyna. They're on different pages and Bucky is using his metal fingers to act as place markers as Reyna makes notes.
Sam isn't in Cassie's direct sightline at the moment as he's seated directly behind her, but she knows he sprawled out to get comfortable as soon as he had boarded and Cassie hopes he's getting some deserved sleep. Though with closer focus, his breathing pattern doesn't match that of a person deeply asleep. Sam hadn't bothered to read the Accords much past the Table of Contents (which to be fair, was about thirty-two pages by itself) and Cassie wonders abstractedly what that says about his mental state.
Natasha was farther down the plane, also busy with her tablet. Cassie's got no idea what she's doing on there, but she's willing to bet it's not a fun and relaxing round of Candy Crush or Angry Birds.
No one else had come to London. Wanda had stated that she needed a little time to separate herself from the malestrom of emotions being broadcast through the compound and Pietro hadn't wanted to be an ocean away if she needed him. Meg had offered to stay behind to look after Katya and would probably help keep Pietro from vibrating through the walls. As of two weeks ago, vibrating through walls and phasing through other solid surfaces does actually turn out to be something that Pietro is able to do when properly motivated.
Or frantic.
Will was managing the medical center and Nico had stayed with him to communicate better with both demigod camps as well as the Egyptian Magicians. They'd determined years ago that Nico and Piper was their best ambassadorial option a few years ago. Love and death were fairly universal concepts. Vision had elected to stay behind as well. Probably in order to oversee the others.
At another time, these observations might be funny if you considered the idea that they were all children in need of supervision. It could also possibly form the basis of an interesting paper on group structures and psychological dynamics. Right now though, Cassie can barely make her thoughts stay still long enough to process even one of them, let alone form the basis for an academic research paper.
The accords, their implications, and Peggy Carter's death swirl around and around inside her head like the waters of Charybdis (and she's speaking from experience on that comparison). She's not reaching any real conclusions, there are just a few things that she knows for certain. And she knows that there are a few things that she absolutely cannot do.
In theory, she could register herself and her powers with the government, She could. She could even agree to a certain amount of oversight on their field work. After all, MSF and the Red Cross each had bodies of oversight.
What she couldn't do was explain where her abilities had come from. Demigods had stayed a secret for nearly three thousand years. Cassie wasn't about to be responsible for breaking the trend just because her job had made some of her powers public. There were demigod kids all over the place that relied on anonymity for part of their safety, and the Mist will probably have helped obscure most of her uses of power. Also, godly will beat government decision every time in her book.
She also knew that there were things that she would not allow. Cassie had picked up the pieces of her life and made herself a home, the first one she had ever had that carried the weight of hopeful permanence. Zeus' sake, her wedding was supposed to happen in less than two months. She had her own house built and ready to be made in to a home. She had friends, and she had family.
Family, home, friends, love.
Cassie'd take on an army to prevent those things from being taken from her, in fact, she's done it a time or three.
And Peggy Carter is still dead.
Cassie turns up the volume on her music. She pulls her feet up underneath her and leans sideways to rest her head on Steve's shoulder. His only reaction is to extricate his hand from her to loop it around her and tuck her more securely in to his side. Cassie retakes his hand in bot of hers and shuts her eyes. She doesn't think she'll be able to sleep, but at this time it feels like it's worth a shot.
Anything to make the whirling in her head slow down for a bit. Maybe if she can fall asleep her unconscious mind will have the opportunity to sort through some of her problems without her having to stay consciously stressed about them. Maybe one of her parents will chip in on the brain storming and send her a helpful dream to sort some things out.
Right.
Because Cassie's life works that way.
Since never.
Is never a date on the calendar? Someone should probably look in to that sometime. It's a date Cassie'd be interested in finding. It would help her work out the timing on a few things. Unfortunately, the Lord of Time would probably be the person to talk to, and Cassie bears a fair amount of personal responsibility for dispelling the essence of that particular being in to the neo-classical equivalent of the pits of hell.
Her mind won't quiet and neither will anyone else's. The aura of tension in the plane is too strong and contagious for anyone to really relax. Cassie can practically feel the medical hypertension and high blood pressure issues developing in the arteries and organs of her friends around her. It doesn't exactly make for a restful environment.
So she doesn't sleep. She doesn't dream one way or the other, and the best thing to be said about that is that it means she doesn't have nightmares. Apart from the one that her waking life seems dangerously close to slipping in to if the Accords are taking them in the direction she worries they might be.
When they arrive in London Tony gets them all loaded in to waiting cars and gets them dropped off at a hotel near the center of the city and not far from the Cathedral where the service will be held the next morning. The drive is about as quiet and tense as the flight had been. Cassie doesn't think it's that no one wants to talk, but more that no one can think of what to say.
That she can understand completely. There are no words she can think of in any of the three languages she can somewhat speak that can sum up or help deal with the dueling scenarios they're facing. She personally can't wrap her head around half of the vocabulary involved in dealing with the Accords.
All of her experience with loss tells her that often words aren't the most important thing. The only remedy for loss is time and no one who needs it has had it yet. They might not for a very long time.
"We're next door," Bucky tells Steve quietly, laying a hand on his shoulder. His other hand trails behind him slightly and folds in to Reyna's. Steve swallows, opens his mouth to speak, then shuts it again and settles for a somewhat jerky nod. "C'mere," Bucky mutters, tugging Steve towards him, releasing Reyna's hand to fold his best friend in to a hug. Steve goes easily and his shoulders seem to droop as he exhales fully for what might be the first time since Ross had arrived.
Bucky tightens his hold and pats Steve on the back, swaying slightly back and forth. Bucky may be the shorter of the two of them in this day and age, but right now he's certainly still the one helping Steve stay upright. He steps back, still gripping Steve's shoulder and makes sure Steve is looking at him before speaking. "Right next door," he repeats. "Knock for anything." Steve nods and Bucky flicks his eyes to Cassie's. "Anything."
Cassie nods to and to her surprise Bucky proceeds to hug her too. Her feet leave the ground by an inch and her face end up buried in the material of his shirt. In the clear corner of her eye she sees that Reyna has leaned over to give Steve a brief embrace before stepping back and turning him over to Sam who gives him the patented guy slap on the back. "I'm across the hall man. I'l bring breakfast in the morning."
Then Sam slips away and Bucky lets go of Cassie. "Get some sleep. Both of you need it."
"You too," Cassie replies. "We'll all be better off tomorrow and...afterwards if we're less sleep deprived."
It's a sound enough hypothesis, especially from a medical stand point and Steve steps in to the room at her indication. It's a nice place, Stark can't book anything else, but one look at Steve;s face tells her plainly that her fiancé isn't noticing a single detail. She finishes moving their bags in and secures the door behind them with the automatic lock and the deadbolt slid in to place. It probably isn't necessary for safety, but the notion is one that attaches a feeling of security to the action.
"Why don't you go shower?" she suggests, riding the line between gentle and firm as closely as she can with her voice. "And I'll see about getting us some food. I'm sure a place like this does decent room service and the minibar must have something worthwhile in it. Even if we aren't aiming for the alcohol." Steve blinks at her for a second and then nods as the words penetrate.
He slips in to the bathroom and Cassie proceeds to find and order the room service menu. She's having trouble being in the mood for any one type of food and she imagines Steve is probably even less interested in the actual contents of his next meal than she is. However, she does know that her stomach is empty and that Steve must be hungrier than she is. The man on the other end of the phone when she orders is just polite enough not to sound skeptical over the volume of food ordered and informs her that the meal will be with them inside half an hour.
Cassie fills a glass of water from the tap in the small kitchenette and sips it slowly to kill the time. She considers trying to find something to watch on tv but that course of action seems just a few shades too normal for the circumstances. Unpacking doesn't seem like the way to go either when they won't be there for more than a few days. Still, the funeral clothes need to be hung up so that they won't be wrinkled or creased tomorrow so she chews through about five minutes digging out Steve's suit and her dress for the next day and shifting them in to the closet.
She's finishing this when she realizes that the water is still running in the shower and she knocks twice on the bathroom door before pushing it open. The shower shuts off as she enters and one of Steve's hands emerges from the glass cubicle to snag a towel hung on the outside of the door. He steps out with the towel around his hips a moment later and looks at her.
"I'm okay," he tells her when he catches her gaze. "Really. Just tired and thinking. Is there food on the way."
Cassie nods. "I didn't know what we'd actually want so I just ordered the whole menu. We probably have another fifteen minutes or so to wait. There's probably snack food around here somewhere if you're hungry now. I might even have an energy bar left in my bag. I promise it's not mint flavored. Bruce and I have given up producing those in large numbers for a while. Pietro has agreed to be our tasting guinea pig until we get it right."
He pauses in the process of rubbing a towel over his head to shake it in a way she can see. and drops the towel over a drying rack. "I'm not hungry enough that it can't wait." He steps towards her, followed by a trailing cloud of steam and gestures back towards the shower. "Why don't you have yours while I wait for the food." He bends down to kiss her cheek, the damp strands of his hair tickle against her skin and the smell of soap wisps over her as her eyes slip shut. "You were right about it helping," he murmurs as he passes out the door.
Cassie takes the suggestion and takes her own shower, trusting in the hot water to wash away some of the muscle tension caused by recent events. The hotel provided shampoo and conditioner isn't a brand she recognizes, but it smells pleasantly enough of some kind of citrus and she steps out of the shower reasonably free of hair tangles. She takes the time to brush out the strands to help them dry and notes that the tips of the mass can very nearly brush the topmost curve of her hips when the moisture weighs the curls down to straightness. She makes a mental note to trim it after the wedding and stretches a hair tie around her wrist to use later.
After considering her clothing options she decides to simply shroud herself in one of the towels instead of putting on her clothes from before the shower. This decision proves to be a slight miscalculation when the first thing she sees upon opening the door is a young man in the uniform of a hotel employee laying out their dinner. The young man stops cold a moment when he sees her, visibly swallows, and then turns back to hurriedly finish unloading the food when Cassie send him a vague smile. He nearly trips backwards out of the room and murmurs a hurried apology as the door shuts behind him.
Steve and Cassie exchange bemused expressions. "I don't know weather to feel complimented or indignant."
"He maintained most of his coordination," Steve observes fairly. "That's something. There were a few times I nearly failed on the stairs when I used to see you in hallways in our old building."
"I still think those stairs were very possibly demonic in origin," Cassie comments, leaning past him to grab a fry and pop it in to her mouth. "Have you dumped a shirt anywhere or do I need to go digging for some pajamas?"
Steve grins and promptly tosses her a tee shirt. Cassie pulls it over her head and releases the towel as the material of the clothes falls to near the tops of her knees. She tugs her hair free from where it's trapped under the collar and fastens it in to a hurried side braid to keep it out of the way while she eats.
When she looks up Steve is watching her, the blue of his eyes is a shade that resembles denim. She sets a hand on her hip and raises her eyebrows at him. "Well no stairs here. How's the coordination coming?"
"I'm sitting down," Steve points out. "I don't need to be coordinated right now."
"Tell that to your water glass," Cassie tells him as she takes a seat on the ground next to the coffee table to eat. Steve rescues the mentioned drink from potential upset and Cassie helps herself to a serving of shepherds pie. Steve opts for a sausage and potato based dish at first and has moved on to a Yorkshire pudding by the time Cassie has moved along to looking for a salad. She deliberately passes over one adorned with pomegranate seeds and instead lands on one with thin slices of green apple used for a garnish.
Once one of your close friends has spent a while trapped in a massive glass jar with nothing but pomegranate seeds to keep them alive as they drift in and out of a self-induced coma, you tended to go off them a bit. Omegas and other health benefits be damned. Of course, mythology and personal experience also gives her ample enough reason to dislike apples as well. Scars on Luke's face, eucalyptus, and Zoe Nightshade sketched in the stars flash through Cassie's mind and she sets the bowl aside.
"Pass the fries?" she requests instead and Steve pushes a plate bearing the item and a hamburger across to her.
"Ketchup too? Or are we doing the salt and vinegar English way?" It's a manner of eating french fries that Steve had developed a soft spot for when they'd gone on vacation here before.
Cassie's mouth puckers involuntarily at the memory of the tangy vinegar taste. "Ketchup please. If I wanted to go the English way I'd have asked you to pass the chips."
Steve passes the bottle with the hand he has free. "I'm still confused about why they call fries chips," he comments as Cassie dumps a pool of the substance on to her plate. "And then why they call chips crisps. The cookie versus biscuit thing isn't all that clear either."
"Cookies are soft and mushy," Cassie elucidates. "Biscuits I think are supposed to be something that you dip in your tea or coffee. Until a professional chef tells me the real definitions that's what I'm going with."
Steve nods and then gestures at the pomegranate salad. "Do you want that?"
"No thanks. In fact I think I'm instituting a no pomegranate policy. How's the kebab?"
He hands over the twin skewer to the one he's preoccupied with to try herself. He asks for clarification on the pomegranate thing and Cassie assures him that he doesn't really want to know if he wants to avoid the inclination to ask Nico questions that will make the guy literally melt through the wall. The Kebab turns out to be quite good as is the rest of their food and when she's finished Cassie stands and let's Steve pull her in to his chair. She stays still in his arms, content for now to be held and to hold.
Eventually Steve sighs and tucks his head down against the back of her neck. "Tomorrow is going to be... God, I don't even know what tomorrow is going to be."
Cassie lifts a hand and plays with the hair at the nape of his neck. "Awful," she supplies. "Tomorrow is going to be awful because someone you loved is dead. Everyone will be grieving, but you know what? You aren't going to be left to deal with it alone." She turns her head to kiss at the bottom edge of his jaw. "Never, never, ever, will you be alone with grief again."
Steve doesn't respond verbally. All he does is hold her a little tighter, and shift to pull a blanket over them where they sit in the chair. Eventually her eyes fall shut and don't open again. Steve must fall asleep too because they're both still lying there when Cassie wakes up with the neck cramp from Tartarus.
Sam knocks on their door a little after seven thirty with coffee as promised and the entire team meets for breakfast in the hotel restaurant. It's the kind of hotel so fancy that it has policies against allowing anyone to take photos within its walls so the meal is mercifully free of intrusions by the press. Even if a member of the paparazzi had managed to get a picture they wouldn't have been able to report any conversation because the meal is a mostly silent one. The only people who really eat are those with enhanced metabolisms and everyone else, Cassie included, simply picks at their plates without much enthusiasm.
They all retreat back to their rooms to change in to appropriate funeral attire and meet back down in the lobby before going to the cars Tony has hired for the occasion. Cassie and Steve ride in the back seat of one sitting across from Reyna and Bucky with Sam riding up front near the driver. It's another quiet ride with Cassie holding Steve's hand. He is mostly still apart from a near constant play of his fingers over the band of her engagement ring.
When they arrive at the church Cassie has to spend a silent moment trying to review anything Annabeth has ever told her about the differences between churches and cathedrals to see where exactly this structure falls on the spectrum of buildings used for Catholic worship. She thinks this might be more on the Cathedral side of things and not for the first time wonders exactly whose ass Peggy Carter saved in her career and how many there were. She's starting to think the number is higher than originally estimated.
They go in as a group to take their seats apart from Bucky and Steve who have volunteered as pall bearers. Tony and Pepper take seats towards the back in order to prevent any sort of stirring amongst the audience, not wanting to draw attention and Rhodes and Natasha go with them. Sam, Cassie, and Reyna trek up the aisle to take seats in the front with the Carter family and their close friends. Cassie feels a little awkward in their midst, but stabilizes herself with the thought that she's there to honor a truly amazing woman and to support her fiancé, not to make other people comfortable.
Darcy had remained at the hotel to continue her work on the accords. She hadn't known Peggy and it had been decided that her help would be unneeded at the funeral and wake. Hopefully, she'll have some good news for them by the time they get back to the hotel this evening.
They've been seated for about ten minutes when the funeral music begins and everyone turns to see the coffin brought in. It's the first non-Greek funeral Cassie has ever been to but she figures she can't go far wrong by following along with the rest of the church crowd. With any luck none of her or Reyna's godly relatives will take offense at their attending a Catholic religious service.
Gods, that's all they need. A massive lightning strike in the middle of Peggy's funeral because Zeus/Jupiter decided to get offended. Cassie makes a quick general prayer that goes something along the lines of don't smite us we're supporting the people we love. This isn't personal and hopes that'll be enough.
Steve and Bucky could certainly have managed the coffin themselves but it's born by six men all the same. They each take previously vacant spaces in the friends and family portion of the audience so Cassie supposes it's symbolic and about respect more than necessity. Steve takes Cassie's hand again as he sits and uses his free hand to rub surreptitiously at his eyes to catch the tears that have escaped.
A few errant drops have collected at his long, straight, nose and Cassie quickly reaches up a finger to help brush them away. He gives her a strained smile and squeezes the hand he holds before turning back to the front of the church. Cassie follows his lead and looks towards the front to see that Sharon Carter is making her way to the pulpit to speak.
Sharon's speech is a good one. It's poignant and personal and equal points stirring and sad. It's also just enough about making choices in the interests of what's right despite what others say to make Cassie think that the newest woman in the Carter line might know something about the Accords. It also gives Cassie some idea about what view she takes on the matter.
Cassie suspects that her words are at least in part for that purpose.
Sharon is followed by several other speakers including several religious officials who speak in a mixture of English and Latin that Cassie can actually just about follow. Quite a lot of it seems to come down to the fact that God has a plan that all mortals should trust. Cassie isn't so sure how she feels about that given her personal meetings with the literal embodiments of fate.
Maybe that's how it works. The price of knowing what waits for you and where you will go. The price of seeing what afterlife waits for you.
The price of knowledge might be faith.
Cassie doesn't know exactly how she feels about that either.
She realizes that her thoughts have wondered from the service when Steve squeezes her hand with more pressure than before. She bumps back to Earth and looks around to see that people are once more beginning to move and that the music has changed. Steve sends her a questioning look and Cassie shakes her head once. However she feels about faith and lack of choice, this isn't the time or place to worry Steve with it.
The congregation shuffles their way outside in some of black clad order to the sound of some wonderfully mood setting minor key organ music. She wonders if church organ players have separate music portfolios for different occasions, something for weddings, something else for christenings, separate category for funerals. How weird must it be to have an entire repertoire of music in your head specifically labeled For Mourning- Do Not Play at Happy Occasions.
Sharon drifts over to their group when people are breaking up at the end of the graveside portion of the service. She hugs Tony first which surprises Cassie more than it should all things considered. After all, she knows that the Carters and the Starks have been friends since WWII. However, it's still a little bit of a shock to see Tony ruffle Sharon's hair and call her "Share Bear" and "Little Cousin".
Sharon looks around at them all and takes the immediate action of suggesting a quite place where they can all get coffee without being disturbed. The place she picks is quiet and privately owned and when the owners gather that they're coming from a funeral they obligingly have a few tables pushed together and bring out a selection of pastries they refuse point blank to be paid for. Tony, being Tony, leaves an extra thirty pounds on the table under the salt seller before they leave regardless.
This portion of the grieving process is at least familiar to Cassie. This is the part that is truly for the living. The people who loved the person who died and knew them best share their best and strongest memories of the deceased. They get to laugh together and process their grief in a shared space amongst trusted friends. People cry, but they also laugh, and that's just as crucial to emotional progress as anything else is.
Cassie learns quite a bit about Peggy in her later years that she hand't known before given that Steve and Bucky hadn't known the stories either. Sharon confides that Peggy had been the one to encourage her to work at SHIELD and had given her her first weapons and instructions on how to use them. Tony confides that Peggy is the one who gave him the recipe for the hangover cure he uses to this day, and Bucky tells a few short stories. All of these seem to revolve around Steve doing risky things and Bucky and Peggy sharing eye rolls and exaggerated sighs.
One story involves Steve saluting Bucky for having covered him with sniper fire and Peggy giving him a dressing down for having revealed a good sharp-shooting position. After hearing this particular story, Cassie turns to Steve and gives him a brisk smack to the back of the head and a disparaging expression. This makes Bucky laugh and he shakes her hand for reinforcing a lesson learned seventy years before.
Eventually, Sharon has to leave to attend to family matters. She stands and pulls a business card out of her pocket to place on the table before she leaves. "This is how to get in touch with me," she says. "If any of you ever need to." A shadow passes across her face momentarily before she shakes it away. "I don't know exactly what's coming next, but well," she shrugs. "I think it's time to pick a side soon."
"This a war Agent Carter?" Sam asks.
Sharon pauses in putting on her coat to answer. "Don't you know Mr. Wilson? Nothing's really a war anymore." Then she looks to Natasha. "Ms. Romanoff, I've been assigned to make the trip to Vienna to be part of a task force for the CIA. How do you feel about keeping a former co-worker company on a round-robin train trip?"
"Delighted, naturally," Natasha says as she stands as well. The two women wait long enough to doll out a round of handshakes and hugs to the others assembled depending on their familiarity with those they're leaving and then slip out in to the swirling mass of London streets together. Cassie blinks once as they cross the street, and when her eyelids lift both are gone.
"I'd say that's the ground prep started," Rhodes murmurs in an undertone. "Counter-intel always goes in first." He stretches and gets to his feet as well. "Tony, Pepper, we set for that phone call?"
Pepper nods. "FRIDAY has a secure connection sorted out. We're scheduled to talk to the right people in forty minutes." She checks her watch and then raises her eyebrows. "We should get back to the hotel. That's where FRIDAY has the encryptions laid in."
Tony nods and pushes back from the table. "In this as in most other things, the Swiss have decided to stay neutral," he confides, a healthy dose of irony coloring his tone. "Gotta love the neutrality of money right? We've been making some calls and it turns out the Swiss government would love the honor of handling ours." He shrugs in to his mourning jacket and sighs. "A whole lot of critical Stark employees are being generously compensated to move their place of work to a land with good chocolate and healthcare."
"We've been looking in to schools for Cassie and we've found one that'll take her mid-term. Magnet school with advanced shop classes, and Camp has helped arrange a transfer of records and transportation for the summers," Pepper explains. "We're ready to have Darcy come to if it comes to that. Now it's just a matter of working on Visas for the rest of you if we can get them quietly."
Cassie frowns, turning all this over in her head. To her right, Reyna let's out an exhale of understanding. "This was the emergency plan wasn't it?" she says. "Getting us all out to neutral countries. No Accords signed means we aren't under government control. We'd have to get in and out quickly to be any help on missions and not get arrested, but we wouldn't be chained to the U.N either."
Steve nods. "Plan Noah," he says quietly. "Visas and citizenship changes are easiest to arrange in family units and spousal groups. We've been doing the paperwork and setting it up for processing two by two. But we thought we'd have more time to get it moving if we ever needed to use the plan." He brings his thumb up to the bridge of his nose and presses hard between his eyes. "Banner being off grid with Barton is good for now but complicated. We've got travel documents for them all to get through the Swiss customs department, but we might have trouble getting them out of the States." He lowers his hand and looks at Cassie. "We had to do families first."
The words are laced with something that seems almost like an apology. She wonders why for a minute before it dawns on her that Steve might actually think she'll care that he hadn't set up a safety net for the two of them first. "Of course you did," Cassie says, letting approval warm her voice. "Who else still needs Visas?"
"Wonder Twins," Tony says from the door. "Them being Sokovian is slowing things up. Vision because we don't know how to classify him on any of the forms. You four," he gestures to where Cassie, Reyna, Bucky, and Steve. "Wilson's got safe passage though, and we've got Meg on a work document prior to a citizenship change, that came through a month ago. Weirdly hers was the easiest one."
"Don't need to ask why mine's a bit complicated," Bucky comments. "And you wouldn't be able to get anything cleared for Rhodes without someone flagging it in the system. Why are Reyna and Cassie a problem?"
Reyna sits forwards, setting her hands on the table. "I was born in Puerto Rico and then dropped off the grid completely until college," she says. "Extra processing time. And Cassie'll have a similar problem. Plus, she's been very publicly linked to Steve for a while now. Any government that runs a search on her for anything is going to see that. There's no way Captain America's girlfriend applying for a change of citizenship stays quiet."
"Change of citizenship?" Cassie repeats.
Pepper sighs and shifts her shoulders as though they are suddenly bearing a hugely heavy weight. "Yeah. Just having Visas and being in Switzerland doesn't get us out of the Accords while we're still citizens of a country that's given its signature. According to every lawyer we can find, the only way out is to be a legal citizen of a different country."
"Switzerland was the best option," Steve says tiredly. "Ideally, we'd find a non-threatening non-signatory with no extradition, but we were having trouble finding one of them that wouldn't try taking advantage of us as a personal first strike force so.."
He makes a helpless gesture with his hands so Cassie fills in the blank. "So we're becoming Swiss," She considers a minute than shrugs and looks at Steve. "Maybe you should be taking my last name after our wedding," she says jokingly. "Mine might at least be German enough to blend in a bit," a thought occurs. "Shit, I can't speak French or German literally at all."
Steve cracks a smile and lifts her hand to kiss the back of it lightly. "We're not Swiss yet," he reminds her. "In fact, the five of us might need to be looking at a back up plan, and nothing Tony and I came up with is going to work as a fix."
Reyna stands up and grabs her purse. "Well then, I know how I'm spending the rest of my day. Cassie, I need your phone. Annabeth and I need to have a chat and it needs to be something no government agency will listen to."
Cassie nods and passes it over without question or complaint. "Tell Nico and Will what's happening while you have it," she says. "They're not on the official team roster and their names weren't on the Accords, but they have to know what's gong on." She looks between Steve and Tony. "Will we be able to pull them out later."
"With time," Tony says with a brisk nod. "Meanwhile, we better get back to the hotel and on to the phone or no one's in the clear at all." He nods to the rest of them and with that he and Pepper depart.
"Why won't the Swiss extradite us?" Cassie asks in to the silence that descends in the aftermath.
Sam is the one who answers which is surprising given that Cassie wouldn't have considered him the highest of legal scholars. "Lack of grounds," he explains. "The country that wanted us extradited in to their custody would have to prove we had committed a crime against their laws. And technically the Accords aren't law to any one country in particular."
Reyna nods. "Those accords take advantage of the fact that most of international law doesn't technically exist yet. Making us citizens of a neutral country means we can take advantage of that too. So long as we don't break Swiss law while we're Swiss citizens, we're good to go. Though I'd recommend avoiding getting involved in any Avenger business in the countries that sign the Accords until Stark's lawyers can prove just how illegal they actually are."
"I suppose New Rome is the fallback plan?" Cassie asks. "We disappear behind the borders and don't come out again for a year or two."
Bucky follows Reyna to her feet and holds out her coat for her to put on. "Let's call that plan X okay? Not that your magic god city isn't somewhere I want to live, but being not god-related makes me kinda worried about being smited for trying to be there."
Sam frowns. "What the hell is plan Z if that's plan X?"
"Asgard," Steve answers plainly. "Or the magic hotel in Boston. Anywhere that's running Yoga to the Death where people literally die doing everyday activities comes pretty far down the list for escape options. It might be somewhere we could hide for a few days though if we had to." He looks over at Cassie then to Bucky, Sam, and Reyna. "I've been turning it over in my head for days. It's this, signing, or running."
Bucky smiles and holds out a hand to pull Steve to his feet. "'Once you start running, they'll never let you stop.' Isn't that what you used to say?"
Sam stands too. "Like I've said man, I do what you do, but slower."
"I'm with you," Cassie says simply. She stands and leans up to kiss Steve on the cheek. "For better or worse."
"Gods know you won't pull this off without me," Reyna says brusquely. "And I've spent too long protecting the secrets of demigods and New Rome, not to mention children with powers to give it up now."
For a second Steve looks like he might cry, but then the mask of the Captain slips over his face and he nods, assuming command of the situation. "Thank you all," he says soberly. "You're my team and my friends and the people I love most. I won't let any of you down."
The silence stretches with the weight of the words and then Bucky breaks it. "Well good. Now let's get out of here. The owners of this place might be friendly, but the CCTV is making my skin itch."
Cassie remembers hearing once that the citizens of London are some of the most photographed on the planet and quietly wonders how that much constant technology doesn't just blow up whenever she, or any other demigod for that matter, gets too close. On the other hand, no other kind of technology does, even within the borders of Camp. It was much more normal to get bars of static or a busy signal.
They all make their way back to the hotel and spend some more time in their rooms bent over paper copies of the accords. The more they read the worse the documents seem. In fact they're starting to cross the border between unnecessarily harsh and what is purely unreasonable.
"Some of this has to be illegal," Cassie says, voicing the thoughts of the entire room. She's stretched out on the floor next to the coffee table with a book of multicolored sticky notes nest to her and an incongruously cheerful orange highlighter in her hand. If the rest of the room hadn't been full of her closest friends in similar states the situation would be giving her college flashbacks. "Like seriously, the things I'm reading right now cannot possibly be allowed by the U.S Constitution."
"They're not," Reyna affirms, making a meticulous highlighter mark on one of her pages. "A lot of it is in violation of free association at the very least. Also freedom of movement, and very possibly freedom of speech. Surely Stark has a lawyer who can spin that argument. I don't even think it would take that much effort to pull off. If I had a law degree I'd do it."
Bucky let his booklet fall closed on his chest and angled his head towards his girlfriend. "If we're not on the run sometime in the next forty-eight hours I will be fully behind you while you pulverize the bar."
Sam makes a small finger guns movement towards Reyna. "Swiss law school? That must be a thing right? There are lawyers in Switzerland. There have to be. How do you stay neutral without international litigators?"
"Noted one and all."
Cassie turns over three pages at once by accident and sighs, ruffling the pages back to try to find her place again. As she's flipping something jumps out at her. "Hey wait. Did anyone get to this bit yet?" She highlights quickly and passes the pages in to Steve's waiting hands. "I'm not nuts right? They're talking about monitoring kids. Anyone with abilities and any children whose parents have abilities. They want us to agree to register children?"
Her voice sounds strangely cold and icy to her own ears. She can hear the blood rushing inside her head as she waits for the others to confirm that she really has just read what she thinks she has. It's a plain sentence written in legally couched English in stark type face in the middle of the page. The absurdity of a government thinking this is something might agree to is frankly mind boggling, and yet somehow, there it is.
"As furious as that makes me," Bucky grinds out between clenched teeth. "We, unbelievably, have a bigger problem." As the rest of the room looks at him Bucky redirects their attention with a wordless nod to the wall mounted television. They had had it on mute before but the barrage of images passing across the screen merits the immediate return of volume.
Soon a flustered looking paid presenter is confirming the words that Bucky had spotted on the text crawl. It's a special report, breaking through the normally scheduled programming for the new cycle. The question of how any news cycle can have anything remotely resembling a schedule at all given the ever changing nature of the subject matter concerned is one that will have to wait for a different day.
The volume is restored mid-sentence. "...occurred just as the accords were being signed. The death toll is still uncertain but we are already hearing reports of multiple casualties suffered by members of international leadership and their supporting staff. Among the confirmed casualties is King T'Chaka of Wakanda who spoke earlier today urging patience from the assembled committee, and advocating a waiting period to allow the Accords to be reviewed and modified before their ratification. We have no news yet on who may have perpetrated this act of terror, but members of the FBI and local city police are on the scene."
From there the report swings to coverage of officials swarming a smoking building and the woman who had been reporting is replaced by a guy who looks to be in his late twenties and on the verge of a nervous breakdown. Cassie guesses he'd probably been stationed outside the building to talk to dignitaries on their way out. Being so close to actual action probably wasn't outlined as a possibility in his briefing memo from the station news director.
"Get Nat on the phone," Steve says, his voice slipping in to the clipped cadences that belong to The Captain. "Agent Carter too. Do it now."
A/N: So what did you guys think? This one was a bit shorter than what I usually do but I felt like this was a pretty natural stopping point. I know it's been a little while in coming but Junior year of college turns out to be one of those things that actually is as difficult to do as people say it is. I also seem to have injured my wrist today and I wanted to get this posted before going to the doctor tomorrow. It's very possible I'll be put in a brace or cast tomorrow and that'll make typing a whole lot harder. All I can promise is that I'll do my best to get the next chapter up before the end of this month. Maybe we can call it a Halloween treat? Anyway, review for me! xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxox