The remainder of the flight after Cassie has explained what is going on is not exactly restful. Granted, any given flight from Germany to Switzerland isn't really long enough for anyone to slip in to a restful sleep. That said, Cassie is absolutely dying for a nap and is having a really hard time reconciling the number of events that have taken place in her life with the twenty-four hour time period they've happened in.

Under other circumstances, Cassie might have tried for a nap. Twenty minutes of sleep that left her a little groggy still would have been rest-time worth having. Cat naps were, in Cassie's opinion, a thing of beauty. However, the circumstances she's in aren't nap conducive.

As good a pilot as Barton is, he is not impervious to turbulence. He's flying at top speed at low altitude and that means that the plane will vibrate by default. They also can't really get in to the protected jet stream utilized by commercial flights.

Even if they'd had zero air turbulence to contend with, Cassie still wouldn't have managed to sleep. Despite how physically and mentally exhausted she is, her magical abilities are still pinging off the metaphorical walls. The damaged physical status of many of the other passengers on board keeps catching at her senses, begging her to do something about it on an instinctual level despite the fact that her power reserves have to be running in the negative numbers.

Here is a short list of the things she medically knows for certain purely because she can't help but pick them up:

One, Rhodey is going to be out for at least the next eight hours as his body finishes repairing the damage done to it by the energy burst and his fall. Cassie's magic had prioritized it's work and looked to address the most serious damage first. She'd saved him paralyses, but not bruises, residual pain, or fatigue. She also knows the man won't die. His breathing and pulse are both steady and fairly strong.

Two, Reyna is exhausted. Her friend has spent nearly the entire day funneling her strength to others. First to her, then to Wanda, and that was on top of trying to keep herself aware and functional. Like Cassie, Reyna is dehydrated and bordering on hypoglycemia.

Three, Wanda is feeling nauseous and is teetering on the edge of a migraine. Cassie can't really do anything about the physical symptoms, and couldn't even if her own abilities were running at their full capacity. They've been brought on by Wanda's own telepathic abilities and energy expenditure when she had formed the initial shield around the plane.

All Cassie can do for her is advise them all to think very, very, quietly. And stay very, very calm. Regulated emotions are the name of the game right now.

Which is super easy for them all to pull off right now of course.

Cue the hysterical laughter.

Or rather, don't.

Hysteria is bad right now.

Even if Cassie could ignore this entire inundation of constantly updating information, she'd still have her own awareness of herself to deal with. When Cassie is healthy, her magic lives inside her as a dormant force unless she calls it up on purpose, or she's in imminent danger. When she's less than healthy, her magic acts independently, drawing power from her own reserves or from the sun to repair the damage. Right now there is no sun, and Cassie has nothing left in terms of energy that can be converted to healing power.

In light of these circumstances, Cassie's magic has reverted to a system very like that of a computer running automated virus scans that keeps telling the user to update their software to ensure safe processing. Cassie is doing the magical healing equivalent of consistently hitting the 'Remind Me Later' button. Which means that she keeps on getting notifications and reminders telling her to fix a problem she doesn't have the time, energy, or capability to deal with.

All this to say that the influx of information being pinged through her head by her abilities is making it impossible for her to get the sleep that she probably actually needs to get better. More food with a high protein and calorie content would probably help too, and about three more liters of water, but they don't have those on board. More Nectar or Ambrosia isn't a good idea either given that Cassie would rather live with all her other physical problems as opposed to burning herself to death from the inside out by consuming too much godly food.

They touch down on Swiss soil with barely a bump thanks to Clint's piloting. The silence in the room when he shuts off the engines is deafening. For a minute, they all just sit still, stewing in the new stillness of the air inside the plane.

Wanda makes a quiet noise of distress and cradles her head in her hands. Pietro rubs her back in sympathetic circles, making tiny, concerned, Sokovian noises. Cassie winces in sympathy. Now that they're sitting still for the first time since this all started, the magnitude of everything that's happened in the last twenty-four hours must be hitting everyone at more or less the same time. Cassie has no doubt that that kind of mass mental trauma might be hard for a telepath in proximity.

Cassie lowers her own head in to her hands and pulls in several deep breaths through her nose, letting each one out through her mouth in steady eight counts. She allows herself to have three of these before she pushes herself to her feet and makes her way over to Wanda. Her legs go wobbly on the first step and her vision swims, forcing Cassie to press one hand in to the wall of the fuselage as she goes to keep herself upright.

Sam takes a half step towards her like he wants to help but Cassie waves him off and takes the last few steps towards Wanda. She sinks gratefully down to the floor in front of the other girl and reaches one hand out to her, resting it on Wanda's knee. A wave of second-hand nausea sweeps through her and Cassie can only hope she's not too tired to show the effect of it through her Doctor Face.

"Alright," she says, keeping her voice calm and as professional as possible. "You'll be okay Wanda. Deep breaths. We're all alright here," she looks up at all the others in a sweeping gaze and gets small nods from each of them. It's odd, but she can almost see it as everyone makes there own small efforts to shuffle their thoughts and emotions in to a more orderly mass. It probably won't be emotionally healthy for any of them in the long term, but for now it'll let Wanda get herself off the plane without throwing up or blacking out.

Cassie moves finding an impartial therapist of some sort up on her mental priority list.

Wanda takes a deep breath and Cassie feels it shudder through her narrow frame. She seems to be settling herself somewhat, but they probably need to be moving a little bit faster to get out of here in time to let in paramedics to get Rhodey. With a sigh Cassie lifts her free hand to Wanda's temple and summons up the last spark of magical energy she can find in herself today, dredging it up and pressing it through her fingertips in to Wanda's brain.

The spark shines faintly against Wanda's pale skin. It twists, winding it's way lazily along the veins closest to the surface, traveling towards the middle of her forehead. It stops between her eyes, glows brightly, then sinks backwards, burrowing in to Wanda's skin.

Wanda expels a long breath, and then slowly raises her head.

"Okay?" Cassie asks, studying her face.

"I will be alright," Wanda confirms with a nod. "Thank you." She looks up at her brother. "I may need a little help to whatever car it is we are about to get in to."

Pietro gives his sister a bright smile, the dimples prominent in both cheeks. "Of course, Little Sister."

"By ten minutes only," Wanda protests.

"Twelve!"

"You were dead for a few minutes. It let me catch up."

Clint stands and leans in to the doorway between the cockpit and the cabin to stretch out his arms and back. "We got paramedics on the tarmac. We ready to let'm in?"

The question is addressed to the room at large. Cassie decides that she's too tired for this one to be on her. Besides, she's trained to be a medic, sniper, or solo operator, not a unit leader. So she does what she's been conditioned to do by eighteen years of conditioning, and defers the decision to a commanding officer, team leader, person known to make good decisions in times of crisis on behalf of the group.

She makes eye contact with Reyna.

Reyna glances around at the rest of them to see that the rest of them have taken Cassie's lead, including Sam and Natasha, the other two contenders for the position of group decision maker. She doesn't stand up, but Cassie sees her position shift as she sits up straighter and raises her chin. "We're as ready as we ever will be," she declares. Reyna makes eye contact with Clint. "Open the door."

Clint nods and ducks back in to the cockpit to the control panel. A moment later there's a pneumatic hiss as the door opens, letting in Cassie's first breath ever of Swiss air. It smells like jet fuel, and hot cement. and the warm metallic scent of handfuls of change that have spent the day inside someone's pocket.

That's good enough for Cassie.

Warm cement means sunshine.

The second and third things through the door after the initial gust of air is two paramedics and a gurney. The paramedics are professional and attentive and speak essentially unaccented English as Cassie runs through Rhodey's current stats and whatever prognosis she can give them. When she's done, they strap Rhodey to the gurney and carefully maneuver him off the plane to a waiting ambulance.

They're all moving slowly enough that one of the paramedics has the time to circle back around and re-board the plane. "Should anyone else be going to the hospital?" she inquires. The question is to the plane at large but seems to be largely addressed to Cassie. This is unsurprising since Cassie had introduced herself as Doctor Cassie Morgenstern, but might also be owing to the fact that Cassie has no doubt that she currently looks about as pale as Wanda.

Cassie looks assessingly at Wanda. "Do you want to go?" she asks. "I'm not necessarily saying you really should because of the crowding, but they'll probably have some dramamine for you if nothing else."

Wanda makes a face and shakes her head, reaching automatically for Pietro's hand with one of hers. "No," she says fervently. "Hospitals have many stressed and afraid people in them. I would prefer somewhere very, very, quiet," she meets Cassie's eyes and tips her head in consideration. "Perhaps one of the kinds of rooms where they put people with very bad migraines far from other people?"

Cassie blinks, and then realizes that she had been considering just such a place in the back of her mind moments before Wanda had spoken. Her friend had clearly plucked the thought directly from her mind. Either that, or Cassie is projecting her thoughts at a considerably louder volume than she had always thought she had.

She turns to the paramedic. "Can you make that happen?"

The paramedic nods. "It is a private hospital. We can arrange for an available room on the top floor with empty rooms below and to either side for Miss Maximoff's use. The rooms on that floor are also sound proofed, reinforced walls."

Wanda tips her head in consideration. "I think that that would be alright." She looks up at Pietro and then back at the medic. "My brother will stay with me. And," she looks over at Clint with a question on her face and Barton nods. "Mr. Barton too."

Wanda had mentioned to Cassie before that Clint has a very calm and orderly mind. She is probably making an effort to fence herself in with mental calm. Bucky probably would have been a good choice to go with her too if he were available.

Best to not think about where Bucky is right now. Because thinking about where Bucky is means she has to think about where Steve is. And thinking about where Steve is means she has to think about everything else that's happened recently which is... not a good move with a queasy telepath in the vicinity.

Pietro scoops Wanda up and makes to follow the paramedic back off the plane. Barton ducks back in to the cockpit to murmur something to Natasha. Cassie catches a glimpse of him leaning down to kiss Nat goodbye, and looks away to grant them privacy. Barton and Romanov are not people for PDA, no matter the circumstances. A moment later Barton is leaving the plane too, a small duffle bag over his shoulder.

Cassie moves to stand up. It's a real struggle, and she ends up compromising with herself and taking Wanda's recently vacated seat instead. She let's her eyes slide shut for a moment and tries another deep breath to get the black spots to clear out of her eyes.

"Wow, wow, wow," Sam's voice says above her. Cassie feels a warm hand on her shoulder and opens her eyes to see him looking down at her with an expression of concern that he should probably patent one day after all the times he's used it on Steve. "What're you trying to do?"

"I should go with them," she explains. "To keep an eye on Rhodey. Right now I'm the Treating Physician."

Sam rolls his eyes. "Only reason you should be going to a hospital right now is to get yourself a bed," he says. "Now you can try to be stubborn about this, or you can let me, Reyna, and Nat get you to a hotel room so you can crash out for twelve hours."

Cassie sighs, but gives in. She's in no particular condition to engage in a battle of wills at the moment. "Fine, let's get out of here. I'll go check on Rhodey and Wanda as soon as I wake up in the morning."

"That I'll live with," Sam concedes, and hold out a hand to help her stand.

The hand moves from her hand to her elbow while Cassie's feet spend a minute deciding if they want to hold her weight or not. There's a tricky moment of hostage negotiation, but Cassie has enough strong Opinions on being hauled around by other people to stubborn her way in to verticality. She's spent nearly a quarter of a century training to be a hero, she has substantially less practice at being the damsel.

There's actually a whole lot of truth to the saying that doctors make for shitty patients.

So yeah, she's opposed to being carried off the plane, despite the fact that she can tell Sam is exactly one stumbled step away from offering. Or possibly just skipping all words and tucking her over his shoulder despite all forms of articulated or silent protest. However, she is in no way against leaning when necessary.

A fair majority of Cassie's friendships have involved her supporting or being supported by one of her friends directly after injury, fighting, healing, or other instances of excessive power usage or exertion from one party or another. Sam is very solid to lean on both literally and figuratively and doesn't say a word about the double handed strangle grip she's got on his arm. He has a lot of arm, he can live with it.

Discordantly, the sun is actually still up outside which seems all wrong to Cassie. Surely this day has dragged on for long enough that her dad should be wrapping up this whole daylight gig? If the laws of drama were being factually obeyed it would be dark out by now, maybe with rain, and possibly lightning too. Every movie, book, and television show to ever exist has evidence to back her up on this point, and her father is literally the guy in charge of this sort of thing.

Then again, there's absolutely no reason for Cassie's life to suddenly start making sense now.

She also shouldn't complain about sunshine. Quite apart from the fact that not complaining about sunshine EVER is like, in the top ten rules in the code of conduct for cabin seven denizens, Cassie can feel the UV light doing her good. Warmth absorbs in through her hair and twines down her spine like roses up a trellis. Tipping her head back lets the rays seep in to the skin of her face and neck and Cassie steps away from Sam to roll up her sleeves and increase the surface area.

An appreciative sigh makes it's way past her lips as the sunshine banishes the creeping nausea and dizziness that have been swamping her in washes like ocean tides since boarding the plane in Germany. The heaviness chases down her limbs and drains away in a rush, leaving Cassie able to move more freely and focus her vision without having it filled with a dazzling array of black spots.

It's a temporary fix, like putting a band aid over a bullet hole, and the effects will likely drain most of the way as soon as she gets inside. She'll still take it. The first rule of pain management is to treat the pain itself first and then deal with the underlying causes. Cassie will absorb the sunshine happily for now to catch a quick reprieve, and sleep for fourteen hours and have a decent meal later.

Sam let's out a low whistle and Cassie opens her eyes to shoot him a questioning look. "That's one hell of a trick you got," he says by way of explanation.

She manages to give him a tired smile. "It's a temporary effect," she explains. "I'm not actually injured so there's no real damage to repair. Right now, it's physically kind of like I'm taking an artificial stabilizer for my blood sugar plus a few shots of espresso. Soon as I'm out of the sun it'll wear out, but it's nice for the moment."

He seems to consider this for a moment and then tips his head towards the black SUV pulling up to the tarmac which Cassie guesses is the ride out of here for the two of them, Reyna, and Natasha. "That mean you'll pass out as soon as you're in that thing?"

"Probably not," Cassie offers with a shrug. "Based on experience, I'm not going to feel any worse once I'm in than I was on the plane."

"I'll check with the driver about weather we can ride with the windows down," Reyna says, clearly having heard Cassie and Sam talking and now making her way towards the vehicle. She grips Cassie's shoulder lightly on the way passed. "Stay here with Sam while Nat and I go see. I'm tired enough I'll need help with the head bashing if that's what it comes down to."

Cassie doesn't try to stop her. Stubbornness is encoded in godly DNA, and in Reyna that gene runs parallel to a vein of deep protectiveness for her friends. Cassie also understands that this is Reyna's attempt to exert some control over a situation where she can't find very much, so she just nods and pivots on the spot to watch her go. Natasha follows at Reyna's gesture without question which tells Cassie that she has heard the conversation as well.

As it turns out, no head smashing is required. Natasha and Reyna aren't more than half way to the car before the passenger door opens and a very familiar women with brilliant red hair and a killer pair of heels steps out. Cassie has never been happier to see Virginia "Pepper" Potts in her entire life.

Pepper hugs Reyna and Natasha in turn, exchanging a flurry of words that even with the sun shining down on her Cassie is too tired to strain to hear. Whatever they say, the important details must be successfully conveyed in the end because under a minute later Pepper is striding across the tarmac to pull Cassie and Sam in to their own hugs. Maybe her tiredness is making her sense of time blur, because it seems to her that bare moments later she's being swept along in to the car to sit on a warm seat made of soft black leather with the window next to her all the way down.

Natasha, Sam, and Reyna give Pepper the details of the events of the past few days. Cassie only contributes when she's the only one with the required information to fill in the narrative and otherwise concentrated on holding very still in her seat and expending no more energy than is absolutely necessary for basic function. Reyna is only slightly less tired than Cassie and trails off in her explanations about ten minutes in to the drive, letting Sam and Natasha take up the threads of the report as she lets her head tip back against the seat.

Switzerland slips past as they make their way further in to the city and Cassie watches it go with mostly unseeing eyes. She gets the impression of small and lovely buildings in a charming array of the modern mixed in with the old fashioned, but she doesn't strain herself to absorb too many details just now. She'll be living here, if not in this city then in this country, for what is likely to be several years at the least. There will be time for her to explore.

Hopefully with Steve.

Don't think about that right now.

Wanda around or not, Cassie doesn't want to focus on that train of thought. It's not one that brings her any comfort or any peace and she has too much else to worry about today. She can't make an impact on this situation where Steve is concerned one way or the other, so she has to think about other things.

Don't borrow trouble. That had been a saying that Cassie's mother had liked. She could remember her mother saying it to her over lunches or while they sat together in the big green arm chair that had stood in their living room when Cassie was small, but not small enough not to worry about what the future might hold when the present was starting to feature so many monsters.

"You never need to borrow trouble Sweetheart. There's plenty enough of it to go around."

"What if you don't have any trouble?" Cassie had asked.

A quick silver twinkle had flashed across her mother's eyes then, a flash of Mercury dancing in the blue as she had leaned down to kiss Cassie's bright gold hair. "Well Honey," she had said. "That's when you steal it from someone, of course."

The memory stirs feelings of safety, of warmth and comfort, and Cassie lets it warm her mind for a moment the way that sunshine warms her skin. Her mother had been a true child of mercury. A skilled thief, a clever liar, a fast runner and faster talker, and a woman who picked up most skills she tried and wanted to keep with relative ease.

Cassie had looked decently like her mother, but with somewhat different coloring. Her mother's hair had been of a darker blonde, more honey brown than Cassie's sunlit gold. The blue of her eyes had been paler and more tinged with grey. Cassie's lack of height is a purely Morgenstern inheritance though.

Her mother's height is something Cassie has only ever been able to approximate later in life. As a child, Cassie had always thought her mother to be tall owing to her perspective. She'd only worked out the truth of it at age fifteen when Chiron had given her a salvaged box of her mother's old things.

There hadn't been much there. A heather grey zip up hoodie, a half used bottle of perfume, and a few pairs of earrings. Those she still wears occasionally, though the bottle of perfume has remained forever unused. Sometimes she'll open it to draw in the smell, but she's never put any on, trying to save it for however long she can.

Cassie had pulled the sweater on and found that it had fit her almost perfectly. The sleeves had come down over her fingertips, but the waist of the garment had fallen just as it was supposed to. It had been a slight shock to learn something new, to have a different piece of the memory of her mother after seven years of nothing ore than memories.

The hoodie had faded to complete grey and dropped nearly to bits from long wear by the time she had started medical school. She had started wearing it in times of stress shortly after getting it, and the gods new times like that had been plentiful during the Titan War, the Giant War, and college in New Rome. That the cloth had held out as long as it had was frankly incredible.

The talking in the car dies off and the vehicle slows to a stop outside of an understatedly expensive looking apartment building with STARK written in ornate gold wire along the edge of the roof.

"It's like the Tower back in New York, but smaller at the moment," Pepper is explaining. "We were hoping for more time to make expansions and renovations for living space, but we paid to relocate a lot of employees when we moved operations here. S.I is renting out hotel rooms in blocks until we can get some housing built and help people find apartments and houses. Darcy deserves a raise, I've had her managing most of that."

Their party of four makes their way in to the lobby with Pepper in the lead and Natasha hanging back to bring up the rear. There isn't much talking amongst them beyond Pepper handing out a round of room assignments and a second round of electronic key fobs. "FRIDAY is in all your apartments and in the elevators," Pepper says. "The keys are to get in to the elevator and through the front door."

This news is greeted by a chorus of nods and brief mumbles of understanding. Clearly the weight of the days events is starting to hit everyone more heavily. Cassie is sure she'll have some emotional trauma to try to work through after she's had some sleep and the physical trauma has drained away some.

Cassie, Reyna, and Sam all disembark a floor below the top of the building when Nat and Pepper keep riding. The arrangements make Cassie smile. Clearly, Reyna and has been delegated to this floor on the assumption that she will be joining Bucky there to aid in keeping Steve reasonable. This floor will probably house Wanda, Pietro, and Meg eventually as well. It amuses her to see that the team seems to be divided by floor between those who orbit around Tony, and those who orbit Steve.

Pepper had told them on the elevator ride up that she and Tony, Barton and Natasha, Jan and Thor, Darcy, and Banner, all had rooms reserved on the top floor. Vision had a designated space on that level as well, ensuring that all those who could fly would have roof access. Pepper hadn't said anything specific, but Cassie wouldn't be at all surprised that Laura Barton and her kids had room on that floor as well near Bruce. Weather or not any of those people ever actually move in.

Sam finds the door with the number that matches the one on his key fob and hesitated outside it long enough to give Reyna and Cassie each a brief hug. Then he gives a small salute, and ducks through his door. They can both hear him exchange greetings with FRIDAY as the door swings shut.

Reyna and Cassie reach the end of the hall where two doors stood next to each other. Each of them stand near their respective room number, exchanging glances in the hallway. The moment stretches and then-

"Well," Cassie says. "I guess we should each go get some sleep."

Reyna nods wearily. "And a shower I think."

"Hmm, and a pizza."

They exchange nods, a last wan smile, and then push open their doors at the same time.

The first thing that hits Cassie about this apartment is that it's not supposed to be her apartment. It's too big for that. The windows are too big and there's too much space. This isn't an apartment for one person, it's for two. This is the apartment that is supposed to belong to her and Steve.

Cassie had thought that she was too exhausted to cry. She had thought everything in her had been scooped out and she was too hollow after the last few days. She had thought that she was too drained, too tired, and too well trained.

She hadn't assumed she wouldn't cry at all. Cassie knows that tears constitute a perfectly healthy emotional response to severe circumstances, and she knows that those are what she's in. She had just assumed that the crying would happen later.

Evidently, this assumption had been incorrect, because the tears are here and ready to roll. Roll they do. Tears poor down her face and drip lazily down her chin in to the neckline of her shirt and run sideways in to her hair. The strands begin to soak and stick to her face and neck.

When the tears show no sign of stopping, Cassie makes the really impressively rational decision to give in to the physical impact of this kind of emotional outpouring and just have a seat until things run their course. She leans back against the door and presses her face against her knees. The armor she's still wearing makes the position uncomfortable so she goes through the trouble to undo the straps and buckles that hold it on before letting the protective garb fall to the sleek hardwood floor.

She pushes her shoes off using her toes and then wrenches off her socks too because why the fuck not?

It's about ten minutes later according to the automatic clock on the stove when the crying tapers off. It's possible she's cried herself out, and equally likely her tear ducts have just decided that they need a break. Cassie gulps down a few breaths and waits a few minutes to see if she's about to start sobbing again. A few tears leak out but that's it so Cassie decides that it might be safe to get off the floor.

She debates over trying to find a water glass in the unfamiliar kitchen and eventually decides not to bother until after she's managed to stagger to her way through a shower. The bathroom takes a bit of poking to find, but that's mostly because the bedroom that the bathroom is off of takes a little bit of poking to find. She strips off while the shower warms up and steps in to the enclosure after the stall has filled with steam.

The hot water goes a long way towards easing the tension in her muscles which in turn helps the headache building behind her eyes. The grimy feeling on her skin slides away which helps her feel more human as the sweat and dried tears are swept away. The soap and shampoo on the shower shelf is the brand she's been using since she was thirteen and the familiar smell inexplicably causes more tears to leak from her tear ducts and mingle with the hot water already on her face.

Cassie gets out of the shower and wraps a towel around her head turban style while she goes in search of some clean clothes. The first door off the bedroom she had tried when looking for the bathroom had yielded a partially stocked walk in closet and she heads back to it now. The first drawer she pulls out yields underwear and socks and she pulls those on before snagging a men's sweatshirt off of a hanger. It's grey, hooded, made of soft fleece, and has the old S.S.R insignia printed high up on the left side of the chest.

What matters to Cassie more is that it's warm and roomy and smells impossibly like Steve and the laundry detergent that the two of them use back in New York. Clearly someone had been shipping spare clothes from New York as well as doing some shopping. The level of preparation is higher than Cassie had expected, and it makes her wonder a little just how long this contingency plan has been in development for.

Once she's clothed, Cassie unpacks what few possessions have made the trip with her and then actually does locate the dishes to find a water bottle. She drinks down a liter sitting curled up on the couch and trying to think what she should do next. The knock on the door saves her from having to make a choice and drags her off the ground to go answer it.

The door swings open easily under her touch and finds Reyna standing on the other side, hand raised to knock again. A quick glance shows her that her friend has gone the same direction she has when it comes to sartorial choices and has opted to wear a Henley that Cassie knows for a fact she's seen Bucky in recently over a pair of purple Camp Jupiter pajama shorts and fluffy grey socks. She's also holding a thermos in her free hand which Cassie points at.

"Please, please, please, dear gods tell me that's Puerto Rican hot cocoa."

Reyna proffers the thermos. "Well your wish..."

Cassie takes it and steps to the side to gesture Reyna in to the apartment past her. Reyna picks a stool at the breakfast bar and Cassie institutes another brief hunt to locate the mugs. When she finds them, she notes that Tony must have had a hand in choosing them because a freakish majority of them are decorated with old style cartoon drawings of Captain America.

Given the events of the last week, Cassie avoids those and pulls out two plain white ceramic mugs and fills both with steaming cocoa before taking a seat across from Reyna. They sip their drinks in silence for a minute or two without speaking. It nearly burns her tongue but Cassie doesn't really care because it's a distraction and it taste like chocolate, sugar, cinnamon, cayenne, and comfort. It's not exactly the kind of cocoa that her mother made her when she was a child, the kind that Cassie's Nectar tastes like, but it's sure as shit close enough right now.

"So..." Reyna says, breaking the silence. "This week has pretty much sucked. And I say this as someone who has both had bad weeks, and witnessed some of the bad weeks you've had."

Cassie sighs and stares down in to her cocoa, watching the steam rise up off of the surface of the liquid. "We've fled the country and both of our significant others were last scene boarding a plane to Siberia to hunt down a whole army's worth of super soldiers. The government has gone absolutely bat shit, and we don't know when, if ever we can go home." She rotates her cup once more and then looks up at Reyna. "To cap it all off, I was supposed to be getting married four days from now in Brooklyn. Doesn't look like that's gonna happen now does it?"

Reyna takes back her thermos and refills her own mug. "Realistically? Yeah. That wedding is either moved or off the books." She refills Cassie's mug too and cradles her mug as Cassie mirrors her. They lapse back in to silence for a few more minutes, alternately sipping and blowing on their tea to cool it. "We may need to develop a word that means something more than 'totally sucks'. Maybe Annabeth can come up with something."

That surprises a very short laugh out of Cassie and she shakes her head. "Nah. For this we need Rachel. She knows way more words than the rest of us, and she can even spell most of them." She looks over the top of her mug at Reyna. "So what do we do?"

Reyna shrugs. "Normally I'd suggest either crashing, which we probably both need to do, or training until we can pass out. Either one might make us feel better but..."

"Yeah," Cassie agrees. She's so tired she doesn't think she could even walk to a gym let alone train after arriving, but she also isn't sure she can reasonably drop off to sleep under any circumstances that don't involve somehow being knocked unconscious. She looks over the top of her mug at her friend and notes her slightly puffy eyes and the redness at the end of her nose. "Did this week make you cry too?"

Reyna stiffens and her hands clench on the mug before Cassie can see her practically forcing herself to relax and acknowledge that the only other person there is a friend. "Yeah, in the shower. You?"

Cassie nods and jerks her head towards the front door. "Right over there in front of the door. Just sat down and cried. Lasted about ten minutes solid," she takes another sip and then leans forwards on to the counter. "It's weird. Last time I cried I was seventeen and one of my brothers, several of my best friends, and a boy I'd considered my family for a decade were all dead. People I've cared about have died and been in danger since, my life has gone to shit since, but this was the week that made me cry."

"We've got more to loose now," Reyna says calmly. "Not that we didn't before. Before we lost people and family and it was terrible, but we never lost the whole structures of our lives before. Or at least," she ads. "Not ones we really loved. Ones we worked to build, put time and effort in to, and then had ripped away without warning."

This is so completely accurate that Cassie can only nod. Reyna nods back and the two of them go back to their cocoa and exchange occasional quiet murmurs. Eventually Cassie raises the issue of food.

"We could try to order something together?" she offers. "Unless you just wanted to go crash. I know neither of us speaks German, French, or Swiss, or any combination there of, but we've both got phones so we could probably figure it out."

Reyna hesitates in answering and fiddles with the loose sleeves of Bucky's shirt around her fingertips. "The apartment feels too big," she says, voicing another one of Cassie's thoughts out loud. "I wouldn't mind hanging around to eat here before trying to crash. Pepper said this place has FRIDAY. Maybe we could try-"

She's cut off by a knock at the door and Cassie goes to answer it for the second time that afternoon. Pepper's ears must have been burning because she's standing right outside the door. The CEO is in leggings and a mens white dress shirt with her hair loose around her shoulders and bare feet. Cassie can see deep green polish on her toes. It's the least put together that Cassie has ever seen her look and also the most relatable and approachable and Cassie waves her in to the apartment without a second thought.

"I brought take-out menus," she announces, holding them up. "i thought maybe we could all use some company. Katya is happy in her work room with FRIDAY babysitting and some snacks so we're in the clear until her bedtime. I was thinking of some sort of movie marathon and a whole lot of carbs and or sodium."

Which is really the short version of how Cassie, Reyna, Pepper, and eventually Natasha, Darcy, and Meg end up having an impromptu slumber party complete with Pizza, Rom Coms, hair braiding, and an improbably fluffy duvet spread over an assortment of couch cushions on the floor of what will for some time be Cassie and Steve's living room.

Darcy turns out to be the best with a hairbrush in is designated as the group's chief hair-braider. "How did you learn how to do this?" Cassie asks, examining the two long French braids Darcy has managed to twist her hair in to. Cassie can braid, but never bothered learning to do anything more complicated than a standard plait.

"My high school had a decent theater department," Darcy explains, now parting Pepper's hair with what looks like a knitting needle. "You needed art credits to graduate and I can't draw or sing for shit, but you got a half credit per show if you helped out backstage. I signed up to be one of three hair and make up girls in my freshmen year thinking I would knock out the requirements early. I ended up enjoying it and it got teachers off my back about extra curricular activities, so I kept it up."

"Theater people are a special kind of crew," Cassie acknowledges fervently. Her brother Lee had been the biggest performer in their cabin, and Cassie's never had much of a taste for it, but she's also never met anyone involved in theater that wasn't willing to sit down and talk or listen. It was truly a community where anyone with something to contribute would be welcomed and valued.

She puts the mirror down and pulls her legs up underneath her to get more comfortable. "Did you ever have a director give you the speech about the Horseshoe Nail?"

Darcy grins. "Nah, that was always the stage manager at my school shows. He was a guy in his late sixties, and the husband of the director. He told it right before every opening night."

"Horse you nail?" Pepper questions. "Is this some kind of theatre cult sex story?"

That gets a smile out of Cassie. "Horse shoe nail," she repeats, separating the words to make the meaning clearer. "You know horseshoes. Those metal rings that go on horse's feet to protect them."

Pepper nods which forces Darcy to give her hair a small tug to make her go still again. "It's a story about how even the little factors can cause big things to go wrong," she explains as she begins to braid. "About how everyone has a part to play that's crucial no matter what it is."

Reyna rejoins them from the kitchen, expertly balancing several bowls of the ice cream they had somehow gotten delivered to the apartment. "Well, let's hear it then," she says, passing out the bowls. "Maybe I can relay it to Frank and he can use it on the Legion during teamwork exercises."

Cassie and Darcy exchange looks and Darcy indicates the hair she's braiding by way of saying that she had to concentrate so Cassie should go ahead. Cassie puts her bowl on the coffee table and frowns, trying to make sure she's got the rhythm of the lines down right.

She clears her throat. "Right. Here we go. The story of the horseshoe nail; Because the nail was lost, the shoe was lost. Because the shoe was lost, the horse was lost. Because the horse was lost, the rider was lost. Because the rider was lost, the message was lost. Because the message was lost, the battle was lost. Because the battle was lost, the war was lost. And all because of a horseshoe nail."

"DO NOT BE THE HORSESHOE NAIL!" Darcy bellows, concluding the last line of the little speech with so much enthusiasm that it makes Pepper jump.

"That's more violence than I normally associate with the theater," Meg comments around her spoon.

"Tell that to President Lincoln," Reyna mutters in to her bowl.

The group disperses at around eight o'clock with the exception of Reyna and Cassie who camp out together at Cassie's apartment and share the nest they've created on the floor. It's partly for old time sake, and partly because Cassie is not alone in thinking that her apartment feels far too big to be comfortable when she's in it on her own. Half-bloods were generally raised to be self-sufficient which Cassie and Reyna both are, but they've also learned to lean on others, and they've both long since adapted to having someone else in their space all the time.

When they both wake up fourteen hours later Reyna drags herself back to her own room to brush her teeth and change and Cassie retreats to do the same before they all regroup for the first day of the rest of their lives.

Over the next five days, the shape that those lives will take begins to form more completely. Everyone has a job to do and being busy seems like a good thing. Pepper recruits Darcy in to helping run Stark Enterprises and Meg takes over responsibility for getting new and transplanted Stark employees settled in and adapted. Reyna goes back to work by beginning to attempt to wrangle the world wide press without speaking to them directly.

Rhodey is discharged to Cassie's care, an apartment in the building, and the extremely grateful arms of his wife and children who shower Cassie with gratitude she doesn't quite know what to do with. They say they'll have her for dinner sometime which is a proposal Cassie quickly accepts before retreating to give the family time together. Everyone shares a silent agreement to leave him to it on the assumption that there is possibly no one on the planet more deserving of a vacation after twenty-five years spent wrangling Tony Stark.

Sam, Natasha, and Barton fall into their own group huddle with Lang and by day two the man's girlfriend and the girlfriend's father have joined them in Switzerland two floors down from the rest of the team. They also arrange a secure phone line to the states so that Lang can speak to his daughter and ex-wife. Cassie doesn't know what strings get pulled with who, but the last thing she heard from that little group was that they'd started the process of getting both Lang's daughter, his ex-wife, and her new husband moved to the now vacant Barton Farm under the guise of amazing new job offers and cheep housing offered by a family who had had to leave suddenly on a family matter in exchange for housekeeping.

Cassie doesn't know what that particular trio is planning to do next, but she has a feeling that whatever it is will get done with exactly the same level of ruthless efficiency.

Vision joins them on day two but vanishes for long stretches of time that Cassie personally chooses not to question.

Wanda is discharged when Rhodey is and leaves the hospital looking somewhat paler than before, but basically none the worse for her efforts in Germany. She and Pietro take over the job of looking after Katya, keeping her entertained, and orchestrating her homeschooling. Wanda seems happy with the arrangement but Cassie worries about what might happen when Pietro gets board.

Cassie herself launches herself back in to her work. All of her files had been transferred over but her lab needs to be completely reset and she needs to hire some new employees. She also has to stay in contact with Will and Nico and is instantly relieved when her brother tells her that they've both moved back to San Francisco and the safety of New Rome while they work out travel arrangements to come and join the rest of them in Switzerland. They'll be safe in Camp, and the rest of Cassie's siblings and friends are all safely tucked away as well, including Sally, Paul, and Percy's little sister as well as a variety of other parents of half-bloods.

She tries more than anything to not think about the way that the days without hearing a word from or about Steve, Tony, and Bucky are now piling up towards the point where she'll need to start counting weeks.

Cassie's wedding day comes and everyone in the building gives her her own space as it passes.

For the first time in Cassie's life, she wishes she knew how to cause the dreams that bring her visions of the future. More than that, she wishes that she could control them and make them show her something useful. She wishes for something to pop in to Rachel's head from the spirit of her father's Oracle...

It's no use though. The voice of Delphi remains silent, and Cassie bitterly reminds herself that if wishes were Pegasi, mortals would fly.

So it's a complete shock when on the evening of day eight, or maybe technically the start of day nine since the clock on the oven in the kitchen is reading that it's past one in the morning, FRIDAY tells her that Tony has just called Swiss authorities to register entry in to Swiss air space.

Cassie, who hadn't been asleep anyway, pauses just long enough to shove her feet in to some shoes and pull a coat on over her pajamas before sprinting out the door and over to Reyna's room. Reyna's door opens before she reaches it and Reyna shoots out in a blur of grey sweater and black hair. They exchange equal wordless, wide-eyed looks, and then each sprint for the elevators.

They pace anxiously together in opposite directions before deciding that the process is taking too long. Cassie meets Reyna's eyes. "Starts?" she suggests.

Reyna nods. "Stairs." The two of them take off for the emergency stairwell and pause at the landing. "Think we can jump it?" Reyna asks.

Cassie assesses the distance. "I've done bigger but only in an emergency and with space to roll," she looks around for anything she can use to rappel and then back at Reyna. "I've had good luck with bannisters before."

"That will not be necessary" says FRIAY over the speaker. "Miss Potts is in the elevator and is holding it at your floor."

Reyna and Cassie beat a hasty retreat back to the hall where Pepper is indeed waiting with the elevator door open. "What were you doing at the stairs?" she asks as they dive in. The door slides shut with a merry ding as they start going down.

Reyna shrugs. "We thought gravity might be quicker."

Pepper seems to decide that she's happier without further explanations and the rest of the ride down takes place in anxious silence. This is also the case for the car ride to the airport. Cassie thinks that it's less a case of not wanting to speak, as it is one of not knowing what would be helpful to say.

Half way through the drive, Cassie feels Pepper grip her hand. A glance over shows Cassie that she has hold of Reyna on the other side and Pepper's lower lip has gone white from being bitten. Cassie gives her hand what she hopes is a reassuring squeeze, and maintains her grip all the way to the tarmac.

Pepper lets go when they arrive and Cassie feels a tingle rush up her hand as the blood begins to return to her fingers. She wiggles them surreptitiously on the way out of the car and pulls her sweater tighter around her. The day had been a clear and bright summer one, but the wind still provides a chill now that the sun is down.

The temperature is something she can ignore right now though because there is a plane less than a hundred feet away and she doesn't need her improved vision to see that the door is opening. Steve, Bucky, and Tony emerge through it at more or less the same time and Cassie feels as much as hears Pepper's relieved exhale. Then she doesn't notice anything because she's moving.

There's no magic involved, but Cassie won't say that her demigod abilities don't play any kind of minor part in the speed she achieves on her way to get to Steve. Fortunately for her, Steve is also moving to meet her. Fortunate because other than the lovely romantic movie moment, the engines are still cooling on the plane and getting too close could end a reunion via third degree burns.

Cassie notes that Steve is moving slower and more stiffly than he would have normally and there are cuts scattered across his face. If Cassie were in the mood to make a visual survey of the three men, she would have seen that they were all a little worse for wear. Cassie doesn't care right now.

After days of no contact, upright and breathing is about as much as she was hoping for.

Steve makes a quiet grunt of pain when he catches her, but he does catch her. Her feet part company with the ground and lock together behind his back. She's hugging him like a koala and probably looks ridiculous, but at the moment she absolutely doesn't give a shit.

Around her, the others are having their own reunions. Pepper and Tony are somehow already bickering. Reyna is talking at Bucky in a long (and to Cassie incomprehensible) stream of Spanish. Every few moments Cassie hears Bucky respond. The same three Russian words over and over again. Cassie doesn't have to speak the language to know what they mean.

Cassie blocks it all out and stops focusing on anything other than the fact that Steve is here. Here, and warm, and holding her. She buries her face in his neck and feels one of his hands tangle in to her hair to cradle it there. His other hand is clenched in the material of her coat and Cassie can feel his whole body shudders as he exhales gaspingly in to her hair.

They breath each other in.

It lasts for seconds.

It lasts centuries.

And for the very first time, Cassie understands what her father had meant when he had told her that time is perception, an intangible thing measurable only in mortal heartbeats, and nothing else.

Eventually, Cassie leans back to kiss him. It's messy and inelegant and the tears on Cassie's face could belong to either of them. Time slips away from her again when Cassie needs to breath and Steve occupies himself by pressing further kisses across cheeks, forehead, throat, and collar bones. She tips his head back up to hers again and let's time and the real world fall away from them for a little longer before Steve eventually breaks away far enough to press his forehead against hers.

"Is this my sweatshirt?" he asks, and it's such a mundane and domestic question for the circumstances that it makes Cassie let out a shaky laugh.

"Yeah well, you've survived a gauntlet of Siberian super soldiers. I think you can live without your hoodie. Comfortable as it is."

Steve grins, and there are definite damp spots on his cheeks on moisture on his eyelids. "I love you," he tells her and it sounds like a promise.

"I love you too," she replies.

The rest of the recent past will wait until tomorrow.