Disclaimer: Nothing you can recognize is mine. I only own Cassie and to say I own her is a bit of a stretch. Quite often, she just does thing inside my head and I transcribe them here for your enjoyment. All this to say, please no one sue me. I do not have the money for it to be in any way worth your time, effort, or lawyers.
The elevator music for the day is Mama Mia. No one who has ever ridden this elevator has been able to explain why the tunes involved can't seem to make it past the 1980s. It wasn't like Olympus had been enjoying any particular kind of heyday in the disco decades.
"Here we go again," Cassie murmurs, keeping her eyes fixed on the reflective ceiling. "Irony, prophecy, or just really unfortunate, do you think?"
The blurry form of Nico's shoulders shrugs in the polished metal. "Knowing your dad is probably the one picking it, could be all three."
Mama Mia! Does it show again? My my! Just how much I missed ya? Yes I've been broken-hearted! Blue, since the day we parted...
"Very true," Cassie concedes. "Could be worse I guess. Gregorian chanting or something. Or maybe whale calls."
I've been angry and sad, about the things that you do... the voices of ABBA warble.
"Then again," Nico mutters.
The music cuts off with a cheerful ding! Cassie has personally never been happier to step out on to the floating walkway leading to Mount Olympus. And not just to escape the music.
She sees Nico stand up straighter out of the corner of her eye and turns to face him. He catches her eye but shakes his head and holds up one finger to indicate that he needs a minute. Cassie nods to show that she understands and spins the charm on her necklace to activate her bow. She doesn't really think she'll need it, but she feels better with the familiar shape of her favorite weapon in her hand.
"We need the throne room," Nico tells her before she's managed to count to forty in her head. "There's a pull that direction. Like a disturbance in the normal life and death currents."
Cassie tips her head and lets her senses expand over the mountain side. Sure enough, there's a sort of disturbance in the normal flow of energy she can feel when she searches for this sort of thing. Only she wouldn't describe it the same way that Nico has. To her, it's more like a spike in energy, glowing and brilliant as a sudden solar flare.
Cassie has been noticing more and more since Nico and her brother have been together that her powers and Nico's seem to work this way. There's an odd duality between them in the way she can sense life or vital energy, for lack of a better term, and Nico senses death. Quite often, they were recipients of the same information, but processed it differently. The best way that Cassie can think of to describe it is like photos and photo negatives.
The brightness of the energy flare Cassie is perceiving is almost disorienting and Cassie blinks as she reigns in her senses. A faint glow remain before her eyes, forming an unmistakable path towards the Palace of the Gods. The glow is faintly purple, like the images left behind eyelids after staring at the sun.
"You're right," she tells Nico. "I'm seeing a trail all the way there." Cassie eyes up the distance and makes a few estimates. "We should get there fast, but we need to reserve some energy. Feel like a nice, dignified, demigodly jog?"
Nico shrugs and twists his ring so that his Stygian sword pops back in to existence. He has spent the last several minutes letting it spring in and out of existence as a nervous tick. It's a look back at the nervous, anxious, exited little boy Cassie had first met eleven years ago in Maine and it almost makes her smile despite the circumstances.
"After you," Nico says with a slight smirk that for a moment is almost eerily reminiscent of his father.
Cassie roles her eyes as she knocks an arrow and shifts the bow down to run with it armed. "Such a gentleman," she comments dryly.
"I am very technically of that generation."
"You and my husband both."
They both shift smoothly in to a steady jog. To Cassie, the pace is relaxing. Her grandfather was a messenger god, and she knows that Nico can keep a much faster pace than this without trouble when he needs to. Death was often said to move on swift wings after all.
All that said, they're going uphill at a speed most professional runners would envy over flat ground.
As they're passing through the lower gardens and streets of the city. It strikes Cassie just how quiet the godly city actually is. The muses aren't playing in any of the parks and the few minor godlings who are out and about don't seem to be stopping to chat. The ambrosia vendors who normally hawked their wares like the hotdog cart owners on the streets in Manhattan below aren't advertising the way Cassie's seen them do before either.
True, the city still isn't soundless, for which Cassie is grateful. She had seen Olympus and Manhattan both silences by the Titan War and by Morpheus during the battle of Manhattan and the memory of it is still sometimes enough to make cold shivers run down Cassie's spine. Every once in a while, her sleep is still disturbed by muted nightmares where she walks alone through silent, lifeless, cities.
The thought of those nightmares is what makes Cassie look for something more to say as they move. She knows well that Nico isn't normally a chatter, but she's hoping he might indulge her just this once. His own anxiety will either make him more accommodating or utterly silent spiky.
She decides she might as well test the waters. "I find it vaguely amusing that mortal parents warn their kids not to run with scissors these days," she observes aloud, nodding to the weapons they both have drawn and prepared for deadly action. "My mom showed me how to get to the bronze knives when I was five after my first monster attack."
"Is that when she told you about the whole demigod thing?" Nico asks.
Good. So willing to talk a little. That would make things easier.
Cassie shakes her head. "No not really. She just told me that the two of us were special so people might want to hurt us. And that if they ever tried, I should run to one particular closet in the hall, pick up a knife, and lock the door behind me until she came to get me. I was young enough not to question what she told me. She waited on the god thing literally until her death bed. Left me a video file and told me to run and get to Camp. Course she didn't say which one. Or that there were two, for that matter"
Nico's brain is almost audible in it's whirling. She imagines he might be trying to pick which question he wants to ask as they move. "How did you ever work out your mom was a demigod too then? You didn't know about Camp Jupiter until Jason showed up in New York."
"Chiron," Cassie explains. "I think I confused him pretty badly when I showed up. You know Hermes' kids. I don't look unlike them and some of them even have minor healing abilities. Most of my other powers hadn't really manifested yet, but nothing could really explain the aura that the satyrs were getting from me. Then I got claimed. You should have seen the faces when both signs popped up to glow over my head."
She gives a half shrug as they continue their jog. "I think Chiron probably guessed then and there. I mean, we know the gods don't really share DNA but they do tend to avoid hooking up with their 'cousins'. My mom being a daughter of one of the Roman aspects made a lot more sense, but he didn't say so."
"What did he tell you instead?" Nico asks. His tone isn't quite one of curiosity and Cassie thinks she knows why. Nico doesn't customarily mind keeping secrets or even deliberate deception, but he prefers his lies to be ones of omission and not ones of straight out dishonesty. He also has strong views on which lies were acceptable and tends not to appreciate the unacceptable ones being leveled at himself or those he cared for.
"Mostly the truth," Cassie acknowledges. "Chiron said that my mother had probably been a child of Hermes with minor enough powers to live a pretty much normal life and that her mother likely didn't know her daughter's father was a god. It happens sometimes. Chiron said at the time that his best guess was that my mother only learned that she was a demigod after meeting my father, that Apollo might have only told her about herself when it got obvious that she would be having me. It wasn't really a lie since it could have been true for all Chiron knew for certain, and it wasn't worth risking a second Civil War to confirm a suspicion."
Nico huffs in an unimpressed kind of way. "Because that line of moral justification isn't based on any kind of shaky logic at all."
"Yeah it's a little wobbly," Cassie agrees. "Kinda like a Jenga pile actually. I was pretty pissed off with him when I figured out the truth, but the fact that we were at war with Gaea and a race of giants completely dedicated to our utter obliteration from existence kind of took top priority at the time."
"I could see that," he nods.
The two of them reach the doors leading in to the hall of the gods a few moments later and come to a stop. Cassie spares a moment to stop and turn to look out over the city. It's both the same as it has always looked, and somehow utterly different. One the one hand, the gods hadn't been kidding when they'd given Annabeth carte blanche to redesign the city in the wake of the destruction of the Titan War. On the other hand, an architectural overhaul could only change so much when it came to eternal design elements.
Annabeth's personality is everywhere in the city now. The designs that surround Cassie now are the same ones that she used to watch Annabeth whip up on her sketchpad, watching her friend's pencil flick across the paper and make her ideas concrete. It hasn't escaped Cassie that the number of Zeus and Hera statues has taken a dive, their empty niches filled instead with effigies of the formerly underrepresented minor gods.
She takes a breath and turns back to lift her hand to the polished bronze. "Ready?" she asks Nico.
Nico nods and moves to mirror her, placing his own palm against the doors. "Do we want to be dramatic and count to three or are we just getting this over with like the adults we legally are?"
"Shut up and shove the door," Cassie mutters. Nico makes a face, but for the most part he does, in fact, shut up and shove the door. They time it right so that both panels push inwards at the same time.
The doors part more easily than she had expected them to. They are, after all, twenty feet tall and three inches thick of solid celestial metal. But they give below her weight and Nico's without all that much trouble. Maybe Leo could explain the engineering involved, but Cassie doesn't feel like hunting him down to ask right now.
Instead, her attention is pretty well fixed on the three figures arranged by the central hearth at the base of the throne of Hermes. She's half way across the massive throne room before she can think about it which is no easy feat. The throne room of the gods is not a space designed to make people feel comfortable or allow them to forget where they are.
The seats of power for the Olympians were meant to make the mortals near them feel every bit of their relative insignificance. The range of twelve ornate thrones meant for beings who towered over two stories tall formed their traditional curve around the constantly smoldering hearth. The constellations still shine in the ceiling and Bessie still swims in his glowing aquarium.
Cassie doesn't really see any of it and only stops when she reaches where Thalia is standing guard from a distance near the throne of her father.
"Cassie!" her friend exclaims, dropping her spear and shield with a clatter in favor of dragging Cassie in to a hug. Thalia hugs like she always has, just on the safe side of too tight, and she smells like she always has when Cassie breaths in. Like pine needles and snow and the faintly acrid tang of ozone.
"Hey Thalia," Cassie says, squeezing her back before stepping away. "You haven't changed a bit," she observes out loud.
It's more than an idle statement. Thalia looks the way she has for over a decade now, poised forever just scant hours before she would have turned sixteen. Her hair sticks up in the same jet black spikes circled with the silver woven tiara that marks her as Artemis's lieutenant. Her eyes are the same electric blue and her face is flecked with the same spattering of freckles across her nose. She's wearing her silver and black hunter camo and a tee shirt bearing the words "Oh for Fox Sake" with a small drawing of a cartoon fox.
Thalia laughs. "I could say the same about you. I'd say that these," she reaches out to tap her forefinger against Cassie's wedding and engagement rings, "are the only new things Dr. Morgenstern."
Her grin is like a lightning strike and Cassie can't help but return the expression with one of her own. "That's Dr. Morgenstern-Rogers now," she replies. "I hyphenated. Wanted to acknowledge being part of a new family."
The smile vanishes off of Thalia's face as fast as it had appeared. "Well, your old one just threw you a curve ball."
"I'd noticed," she gestures towards where Annabeth is huddled on the floor. "Should I go have a look at it? See if I can straighten the curve?"
Thalia nods and ushers Cassie around her towards the throne of Hermes before she turns to greet Nico. She hears Nico protest against being hugged, but is willing to believe that Thalia will ignore him. This is born out when she hears Thalia tell Nico to get over himself and the sounds of a ribcage being compressed.
Cassie drops to her knees beside Annabeth and pulls the strap of her medical bag over her head so that it sits on the marble floor next to her. She lets her bow revert to necklace form and then nudges Annabeth's shoulder with her own. "Nico and I got here as fast as we could," she offers. "Has he moved at all?"
"Not an inch," Annabeth reports with a shake of her head. "He's just lying here. Obviously breathing and I can't see any wounds, but he won't wake up and we don't know how he can even-" she makes a gesture which supposedly covers Luke's resurrection and appearance on Olympus. "I mean, it's just not possible, right?"
"I'm not even sure what 'impossible' even means as a word anymore," Cassie admits tiredly. Then she nudges Annabeth's arm again. "Scoot over. The fastest way I'll figure out anything is by doing a scan, and for that I need contact."
Annabeth nods and moves to shift out of the way. She keeps Luke's head cradled in her hands until Cassie has settled in to her previous spot and lowers his head down to rest on Cassie's knees. Cassie flexes her fingers in preparation for the magical scan and Nico and Thalia end their reunion to come and take places closer to where the three of them are huddles on the floor.
For a moment, Cassie is barraged with a vividly unpleasant wave of de ja vu. Suddenly, she is seventeen again and her joints ache with the effects of a week of constant magic use and fighting. Thalia takes the place of the Percy in her memory and is a match in temperament right down to the chaotic energy and hyperactive readiness to act roiling under her skin.
For a fleeting second, Cassie can feel the stickiness of Luke's blood coating her hands.
Her stomach is swamped with the remembered swirl of nausea, grief, pain, and sheer emptiness of Luke's death on her already frayed magical senses. The burning, feverish, fatigue of over reaching her heeling powers flickers through her veins as the ghostly helplessness of knowing her former friend would die and attempting to pump him full of healing energy regardless haunts her thoughts.
Luke exhales, shifting ever so slightly against her and the sensation is enough to banish the memory. Cassie shakes her head to clear away the last scraps and empties her mind of the past in favor of focusing on the present. Those memories will need to be dealt with in a more thorough fashion eventually, but today is not that day.
Gingerly, Cassie places her thumbs against Luke's temples. Then she spreads her fingers along the lines of cheekbone and jaw until she has his skull cupped between her palms. The process forces her to actually look at Luke's face for the first time since coming in to the throne room and his familiar visage is like a punch to the gut.
He is just as unchanged as Thalia.
Then Cassie does something that she normally avoids unless she has absolutely no other choice, and carries out a deliberately over thorough scan of Luke's medical status and health history. It's an incredible invasion of privacy which is why she normally doesn't look that far, but Cassie figures coming back from the dead counts as an exigent circumstance. Apart form the privacy invasion, there are also some things that Cassie would normally prefer not to know.
Her magic spreads out through Luke's magic and scans deliberately back in towards her, building a full mental picture in her awareness. She detects a long childhood history of stubbed toes and skimmed knees. She learns about a nasty fall down the stairs sustained the first time that Luke had ever seen May Castellan go in to one of her trances. A revised history of every injury Cassie had ever healed for Luke from the time he was fourteen until he had betrayed hem all and left Camp at nineteen flits through her awareness.
Cassie also lives the searing pain of a dragon claw across the cheek. She feels the crippling headaches of Kronos pushing at Luke's mind and an echo of the unimaginable agony of the Styx against his skin. She feels the echoing lack of any pain at all afterwards and the blinding sensation of Kronos's possession and the impression of being squashed inside his own skin by a presence far too big for a human body.
Cassie feels the history of Luke stabbing himself in his Achillies spot with Annabeth's knife. The one he had given her. She feels the heat of her own magic second hand as it courses in to Luke's veins and the way it flows back out again as it hits the ice-like blocks of blank white pain filling his body.
She feels the way that melts away to nothing and the lurching emptiness as his heart stops beating.
It's not any better the second time she lives it.
Then she feels the way everything re-starts as he comes back to life. Weirdly, this is something she's actually felt in a friend's medical history before. She ran a full medical check on Jason when he had revived after two days of being dead and has done scans on Hazel before. Feeling someone come back from the dead isn't actually something you can avoid when doing a medical check even slightly more invasive then a basic surface scan.
After a few moments, her scan catches up to the present day.
Nothing at all is wrong. Nothing is even slightly unusual. Luke's apparently in nearly better health than she is at the moment after her light/shadow travel across over half the globe.
Luke's breathing is even. His O2 levels are perfect and his blood pressure is virtually non-existent and his pulse is steady and even. His blood sugar is nothing short of ideal. For Hades' sake he's not even dehydrated.
Cassie blinks and pulls her hands back to break the connection. She looks up at where her friends are gathered around. Nico is frowning down at Luke with an abstracted expression and Cassie supposes he must be doing his own magical scans. Annabeth is paler than Cassie has ever seen her and Thalia's electric blue eyes are stormy with emotion.
"He's fine," Cassie says. Her voice is so steady and neutral that it almost surprises her to hear it. "Nothing's wrong at all. According to my magic, he just seems to be asleep. I can't explain it. You got anything Nico?"
Nico, ever so helpfully, just shrugs. "He's not dead. That's literally all I've got on the subject."
"Thanks Neeks."
"I live to help."
The silence that rings through the space next is more deafening than a siren.
Or at least the way Annabeth has described the sirens sounding to Cassie. She had taken the wax-in-your-ears-and-don't-dive-off-the-boat option during that particular chapter. It had seemed like a really great idea at the time and to this day Cassie has yet to regret it.
Cassie eventually decides to break the tension. "Soooooooo..." she says, letting the word stretch out like taffy. "Should I, like, wake him up?"
Thalia frowns. "Can you?"
Cassie restrains the urge to give one of her oldest friends the most epic eye roll of all time. Honestly, she's just told them all that she actually has no idea how any of this is possible. She doesn't really know why they'd expect her to be able to answer these questions.
Well actually, the medical degree and the literal decades of demigod healing magic based medical training was probably why they expected it.
Cassie feels like her point probably stands up somehow though. She'd like it to anyway. There's gotta be an argument to be made in her favor somewhere in all of the uprecedentedness (new word, she's keeping it) of this situation.
"I don't know, maybe?" she bites out, trying her best to avoid sounding snippy. "Like I said, there's nothing actually wrong with him. I could pump some magic in him and see what happens. That might do the trick. Alternatively, we could just have Thalia zap him with a nice electric shock and see if the lightning strike fires up a couple of synapses!' Her volume goes up as she speaks until she's shouting by the end and doesn't really realize it.
That's when Luke groans and his eyes flutter open.
"Or Cassie could just shout a bit and we could see if that works," Annabeth offers.
"Wha-" there's a coughing sucking sound from the floor and all the focus in the room immediately drops to Luke's face. He makes a feeble effort to sit up and Cassie reacts on instinct. She places both hands firmly over his shoulders and pins him back down.
"Don't move!" she snaps. "We have no idea what in Hades is happening and until we do, you had better do your best impression of a paralyzed freaking box turtle or I will find the nearest heavy object to knock you over the head with!"
Luke, gratifyingly enough, goes still. Mostly. "What's going on?" he asks, voice a hoarse rasp.
"You're not dead," Nico tells him bluntly. "Congrats. We don't know how."
Cassie uses the time to do another scan with her magic and bites down on her frustration when the results come back through her extended senses with the same alarmingly average conclusions as before. Seized with a sudden thought, she reaches for his left hand and flips it over in her grip.
There, right on the back of his hand. In a place that would be perfectly protected by his armor. The place that had ultimately killed him.
The skin over Luke's former Achillies spot looks like melted candle wax. It's shiny pink and puckered, like a very angry scar. The tissue looks almost like it's newly healed.
Acting on instinct, Cassie pokes at the mark with her fingers. Luke jerks up and then collapses back against her. Following her hunch, Cassie gentles her touch and runs one fingernail delicately over the raw skin. A faint shudder coasts down Luke's spine and Cassie moves her fingers away. She presses again just over his pulse and gets absolutely no reaction.
"Does your skin happen to feel like you just took a bath in battery acid during which you used steel wool in place of a luffa?" she asks.
Luke frowns and coughs weekly. "Around the feeling of being hit by a semi-truck and then used as a hellhound chew toy?" he asks. The frown deepens as he seems to take stock and consider how he's feeling. "Now that you mention it..."
Annabeth has been watching her like a grey-eyed hawk since Cassie started part two of her examination. She seems to come to the same conclusion that Cassie does a single step behind her on the timeline. "Does that mean what I think it means?" she asks seriously.
"Probably," Cassie confirms. "I'd test it but my medical kit doesn't have any safety pins. I don't want to take any chances with using something bigger or sharper."
"Hypodermic needle?" Annabeth suggests.
Cassie thinks it over and then nods. "Yeah. Grab one out of my bag would you?"
Annabeth moves to comply. Her friend has seen the inside of her medical bag enough times that she finds the needle quickly and presses it in to Cassie's free hand. Thalia is moving around in her peripheral vision, probably trying to secure the room.
If Cassie had the mental bandwidth, she'd probably wonder what exactly Thalia thinks she's securing. The only people allowed in the throne room of Olympus are gods and demigods and Cassie doesn't think it's in their best interests as a group to keep the gods out of their own hall. No other demigods are likely to know that they're there and come looking.
Nico just sits beside them. A quick glance tells Cassie that his eyes are closed and the speed at which he's spinning the skull ring around his finger is only getting faster. Cassie supposes that his senses must be pinging nearly as much as Cassie's are.
Cassie takes a deep breath and pokes the hypodermic in to what should be the most easily accessible vein in Luke's arm, just at the fold of his elbow. Ideally, the needle should sink below the skin, enter the vein, and Cassie could extract a blood sample. These circumstances are not ideal.
The needle shattering in her hands is not exactly unexpected, but is still far from comforting.
"So still invulnerable," Thalia concludes from across the room. "Great."
Cassie looks up in time to see Thalia removing a stray piece of hypodermic syringe from where it has ricocheted and embedded in her knee. She winces in sympathy. "Sorry Thales," she says. "Want me to get that?"
Thalia waves her off and pulls a canteen of nectar out of her bag instead. "Nah thanks, I got it."
"Nectar might be the way to go," Cassie says, thinking out loud. "There's nothing to heal, but a normal demigod sized portion probably couldn't do any harm." She looks down to find that Luke's eyes have closed and taps his cheek lightly with her thumb. "Hey." She waits for him to make eye contact before saying "Think you could keep down some Nectar?"
Luke nods and Cassie leans to the side to fish the canteen out of her bag only to find Annabeth already holding it out to her. Cassie nods her thanks and holds the flask to Luke's lips. The rest of them watch as the godly drink slips down his throat and Cassie carefully counts his swallows. After three she pulls the flask away and Nico lets out a sigh.
Moments later he's dropped back off to sleep.
"I vote we leave him this way until we can get him back to Camp," Annabeth puts in. "Awake there's an extra variable and we don't need that right now."
They all exchange glances and then nods.
"Okay," Nico says. "Agreed. Point of technicality, how do we get him anywhere without waking him up?"
That prompts another round of glances, but this time no nods.
Annabeth turns to Thalia. "How's your levitation these days?"
In the end Cassie shamelessly (and potentially unethically) makes use of several ccs of Morphine mixed with nectar and administered orally to keep Luke unconscious for the trip out of Olympus, down the elevator, and back in to the lobby of the Empire State Building. Thalia does manage to levitate him so they aren't forced to carry or drag Luke's body, but the journey isn't exactly smooth. Levitation isn't the calmest mode of transportation at the best of times and frankly Jason has always been better with those particular sky god powers than Thalia has.
Though Thalia is honestly infinitely more precise with electricity and calling down lightning strikes.
Argus is waiting for them with one of the Camp's cover industry vans at the curb. He explains through a text to speak program designed by Leo that Rachel had called to say that they'd be needing a ride. The information forces Cassie to marvel at the fact that Argus: 1. has a cell phone, & 2. Rachel has the number for it.
The ride back to Camp Half-Blood is a really quiet one. Like, really quiet. Like, the way people who have never seen the afterlife think the dead are, quiet.
They fold down the back seats to Lay Luke across them and Cassie climbs in after him to curl herself in to the space near his head. It's the best way for her to monitor his vitals and she's not sure she can possibly stand the rolling tension in the front of the van if she has to be any closer to it than she currently is. She spends the ride periodically trickling measured doses of nectar and water in approximately equal measure in to Luke's mouth and making sure he swallows it. For the three hours that doesn't occupy she listens to her playlists on shuffle and wonders how risky it would be to contact Steve, and if she did, what she would say.
The words for summing up the last few hours possibly don't exist in English. It's also pretty possible that they don't exist in Greek or Latin either.
She'll have to ask Reyna if there's a way to say 'my longtime friend-turned-traitor-turned-back-to-friend-again-right-before-he-died-to-save-us-all really is alive like we thought he might be and he may or may not remember what happened or regain consciousness again if I do this right and I'm still not sure where he's at on the villain/hero scale these days which is really important because he might try to end the world if he lands on the villain side of that fence and I want to give him a hug and cry and scream and maybe start laughing all at once' in Spanish in a concise fashion.
Cassie's money is on probably not.
She'll look in to German. That seems to be a language with a knack for summarizing big messy emotional things in neat phrases. Steve speaks it. She'll ask when she gets home.
Thalia and Annabeth murmur back and forth to each other for a good half of the trip at increasing levels of tension until Nico tells the both of them to shut up in the pointed way that only he can. Given that the whole car drops about four degrees in temperature when he does snap, the other two do listen to him. The silence doesn't stop the static electricity rolling off of Thalia in waves.
Cassie notes the hairs on her arms standing up and takes care to not scuff her shoes on the van carpeting or touch anything metal.
That extra concern does not do anything positive for alleviating the tension.
By the time the van pulls up at the base of Half-Blood Hill, Cassie feels like her nerves have been put through a cheese grinder for two hours. From the stormy and ominous looks in the eyes of the van's three other conscious passengers, that feeling seems to be universal. Even Argus looks a little twitchy when he climbs out from behind the steering wheel.
Still, he gestures Cassie out of the way and scoops Luke up to carry up the hill and over the border before Thalia can even gesture toward levitation. Given the sparks now literally jumping off her skin, that's probably a smart move. Thalia's levitation isn't the most controlled thing in the best of times, it certainly won't be any better after what has to be in contention for the title of the tensest car ride in history.
Chiron is waiting for them on the porch in his wheelchair form.
"My dears," he greets them. "I see it's true then. Luke truly is returned to the land of the living?"
"So far as we can tell," Cassie tells him, still in doctor mode. "I knocked him out for the car ride here. The morphine's keeping him down but I'd like to get him inside and set up and stable before it wears off." Normally, she'd have more faith in her ability for anesthesiology, but it's hard to gage how mortal drugs will interact with demigod physiology.
Chiron waves them all swiftly in to the house. Cassie follows Argus as he carries Luke in to on of the downstairs bedrooms of the Big House and thanks him as he ducks his way back out of the room. He's back in ten minutes with extra medical equipment from Cassie's cabin before retreating again. She sets Luke up with a heart monitor but doesn't have very much else that might be helpful at the moment.
At the bottom of the second equipment bag Argus had brought her, she finds something that makes her pause. He's included a set of the kind of cloth medical restraints used in mental hospitals and on patients who may represent a danger to themselves or others. Cassie considers the straps for a long moment. Then she drops them succinctly back in to the bag and shoves the bag itself under the bed and out of sight.
Cassie rejoins the others in the Rec Room to find them all gathered around the ping pong table, the customary place for big Camp meetings. There's a platter of grilled cheese sandwiches and grapes in the center courtesy of Mr. D who is now sitting in residence, looking bloodshot and irritable as ever, next to Chiron. The only person who looks less thrilled to be there is probably Nico who seems to be contemplating if he has the energy to actually make the shadows under the ping pong table swallow him and take him somewhere else.
"Is anyone else eating the sandwiches?" Cassie asks, suddenly starving at the sight of the food. No one answers so she just shrugs and sits down in an empty seat next to Nico and drags the plate in to herself along with two plates. She puts a grilled cheese on both and drops it unceremoniously in front of Nico. "Don't argue, just eat it," she says flatly. "I am prepared to verbally destroy all argument right now, and I can tell from here that your blood sugar is tanking."
Nico stares at her for a moment, then he picks up the sandwich and takes a pointed bight. He quirks an eyebrow as if to ask happy now?
"Good boy," Cassie says with a nod, then she starts in on her own food. She takes setting a good example for her friends very seriously. Besides, the sandwiches may be magic, but if no one is going to eat them then it'll still be a waste.
Chiron clears his throat to bring the meeting to order. "These circumstances are unusual to say the least," he states. "But it seems to me that the first order of business is to determine Luke's condition."
There's a long moment of silence as all the heads in the room apart from Mr. D's turn to Cassie and Nico. Cassie gives herself time to swallow before speaking. "I don't actually know how to help much there," she admits. "He definitely died seven years ago. He's definitely not dead now. He breaths. His heart works. That's all I've got."
"I've got less than that," Nico says around his grilled cheese. "Not dead. That's as far as I got."
"So what you children are blathering about," Mr. D starts. "Is that between my niece, whose favorite child father is the god of healing and never lets me forget it, and my cousin, the son of Uncle Corpse Breath, we know nothing about the unprecedented resurrection of the invulnerable upstart who orchestrated a war that nearly ended the world."
"I feel like 'unprecedented' is a really important word there," Thalia points out.
Cassie points at her and nods, mouth once again full of grilled cheese. "Exactly," she says around her mouthful. "Like, in terms of things that are new and weird to me, this is right there at the top."
"I think everyone here understands that perfectly well, my dear," Chiron says placatingly. "For now, knowing his medical condition is enough. However, I will ask if perhaps you can attempt to make contact with your brother Asclepius. He did invent the only known cure for death after all."
"I can try," Cassie says doubtfully. "But if he's not taking Iris Messages, we're pretty much shit out of luck there."
Their mentor nods. "Understood. Nico, would you be willing to make some inquiries with your father."
"I'll go tonight when it's dark," Nico replies. "I was planning to anyway, but I need a nap before I try jumping again." Cassie gives him a sharp look around her newly lifted water bottle and Nico rolls his eyes a second time. "I'll go tomorrow morning early," he amends. Cassie raises an eyebrow. "Tomorrow night?"
Cassie goes back to her meal.
"Now that that bit of pointless byplay is over," Mr. D begins ever so promisingly. "Does anyone happen to know if Mr. Stab-Happy in the other room is planning to resume his attempts to resurrect dear old Grandpa? I have a pinochle tournament next week and would hate to cancel."
"It's Luke," Annabeth says, speaking for the first time since the meeting had started. Her voice is the coldly certain one she uses when explaining battle plans. It is the voice that says that she is right and sure of it and therefore not to be argued with. "He woke up for a few minutes after we found him," she continues. "He knew us, and it was him." She levels her steely eyes at Chiron. "Just him."
Chiron looks at her for a long moment, assessing her. "Thalia, Cassie, you agree with Annabeth's assessment?"
The two girls exchange glances.
"There's no sign of Kronos possessing him physically," Cassie says slowly. "I used to be able to feel it when he was. Like there was a secondary current under his skin. It's not there now."
Thalia shrugs. "For the two seconds he was awake he didn't seem likely to try to murder us," she concludes. "He seemed more confused than anything else."
"That does seem to be the most common sentiment at the moment," Chiron summarizes. Rather accurately Cassie thinks. "Very well. If you are all in agreement that Luke currently poses no threat, then he should of course remain here until he has regained consciousness and can safely travel." He looks at Cassie. "Perhaps you should take up a room here as well my dear. It will allow you to oversee his recovery more closely."
Cassie nods her agreement. It's a good plan on a few levels. For one, she is the one most familiar with Luke's medical condition. Which as she says it is actually a very sadly true statement. Plus, keeping Luke here through his recovery will keep him out of the Apollo, Hestia, Hermes, and Hypnos Cabins where they might otherwise treat hurt campers. And considering that they teach the campers Luke's story these days, that's probably a good idea.
Mr. D sighs as the Diet Coke pan before him glows and crumples to shape itself in to a holographic pass card. "Father summons me," he says in a put upon voice. "I suppose now it will fall to me to explain out utter lack of information. I do so hate these impromptu council meetings." He glares balefully at Annabeth. "I've had to go to so many more of them since your annoyance of a husband Peter arrived in this place."
"His name is Percy," Annabeth corrects automatically.
"Yes, I said Perry you silly girl. Honestly, your mother is supposed to be so smart. Is that all talk? Or did she simply not pass any of it along to her spawn?" He waves a dismissive hand to cut of her response as the card in his hand glows more brightly. He examines it and sighs. "Hermes is normally one of the few sane and entertaining ones at these things. I suppose that will be all out the window this time."
Cassie thinks privately that any parent would have the right to be a little less than sane on a day when their child unexpectedly returns from the grave. A lifetime of dealing with Mr D means she doesn't bring it up. Thalia however, has less of that experience to go off of.
"His kid did just come back form the dead," she snaps, sparks now actually flicking off her clothes. "One of your kids died too. Try getting a little sympathy."
The air in the room goes dangerously cold as Dionysus narrows flaming purple eyes at Thalia. "Watch yourself Little Sister," he warns darkly. "Your mistress's blessing in no way protects your sanity. To live forever without your mind is a fate far more interesting than death. I would think twice before reminding me of my son's death on the day that the one responsible for it returns from his."
With that chilling statement, Dionysus snaps his fingers and vanishes, leaving nothing but the smell of grapes and scorched earth behind him.
Chiron turns to Thalia in the aftermath. "I'd be careful my dear," he warns gently. "Dionysus is never the most emotionally secure of the Olympians, and you will have to live with his ire for far longer than most."
Thalia scowls and shoves back her chair. "I'm going to Cabin 1 to pick up a few things I left there last time. I'll come back later so we can talk about how to break all this to the other campers." She pauses on the point of leaving. "Should I send an Iris Message to Artemis? She'll be in the meeting. Maybe I should keep it to Phoebe."
Annabth considers. "I'd go for option two," she advises. "Interrupting an Olympian council meeting won't earn us any favors, and we might need as many of those as we can get our hands on soon."
Thalia nods and leaves the room.
Cassie nudges Nico in the ribs. "Take your sandwich and follow her lead," she instructs. "Get some sleep and call my brother. He'll help get some of the information passed on to Switzerland."
Nico mutters something about hating his cabin decor, but does what she's told him to.
"He seems to do what you tell him to more these days," Annabeth comments. "I remember when we could barely get him to fly back to New York with us after everything with the Labyrinth."
"My status as his future sister in law seems to help a lot with him doing what I say," Cassie muses. "Nobody's proposed yet, but they've moved around the world together, been dating a decade, and have an in with a monarch who can definitely marry people legally." She throws a grape at the ceiling and catches it in her mouth. "And I should know."
Chiron smiles at her. "Come here and let me congratulate you. I must say, you look splendid. Married life seems to suite you wonderfully."
Cassie can't help but smile back. She's married! To Steve! The thought of it has her positively beaming whenever it goes through her head.
She gets up and goes around the ping pong table and steps in to Chiron's arms for the hug he offers. He smells like coffee and vaguely of horse conditioner and the familiarity of it makes her feel safe in a way that very little else ever can. These are the kinds of hugs she got when she was a child with reason to be afraid of the world.
"I do understand that you couldn't exactly send around invitations," he says past her shoulder. "But I do hope for the sake of my desk that you took pictures."
"I'm sure someone did," Cassie says. "Darcy probably has them. I'll ask her to send you copies."
Chiron pats her on the shoulder and Cassie pulls away. "Speaking of me being married," she says. "I think I'll go call my husband now and tell him I won't be home until tomorrow."
That excuse isn't fabricated. She really does want to call Steve now that she's had a minute to process what's been going on. But she also thinks that Annabeth might really need some time with Chiron herself. With that in mind, she extricates herself from the room as gracefully as she can and retreats to the hallway.
There she moves down the hall to a window seat and climbs in, tucking her legs up against her chest as she pulls out her phone. Steve is speed dial number 2 because the protected line here at Camp is unalterably number 1. Leo had programmed it that way on her father's behalf and Cassie has never been able o change it despite her best efforts. She's asked Leo about it before but he'd flatly refused to alter the programming.
Steve picks up less than halfway through the first ring.
"Are you okay?" are the first words out of his mouth.
The sound of his voice is enough to make Cassie smile. "Hi Honey," she says in an over the top sugary tone. "Just calling to let you know not to wait up tonight." The comment doesn't draw any form of laugh so Cassie sighs and falls back in to being serious. "I'm okay. You don't need to worry about me I promise. I'm back at Camp with Thalia, Nico, and Annabeth."
She can almost here Steve's eyebrows of concern across the phone coverage. "And your other friend?"
"Alive," Cassie confirms, feeling suddenly exhausted. "Not sure yet how friendly, but definitely alive. He recognized us for the twelve seconds he was awake, so that's something." Cassie leans back against the wall and rolls her neck from side to side to try to relive the tension built up in to a knot between her shoulder blades. "Right now, we're just kind of waiting for him to wake up again. Then... we'll see where we're at I guess."
"Do you want me there?" Steve asks, and the offer rings with the sort of 100% sincerity that really only he can seem to pull off.
Cassie smiles again and lets her eyes shut. "No. Seriously, I love you for offering, but we're trying to keep things as small as possible until we have this more figured out. Percy and Will aren't here either."
She doesn't bring up the fact that Steve's not allowed in to the country, can't get here in any amount of time under ten hours if he was, and is lacking an immediate means of transport in the first place. She knows that none of those things would matter. If she said she wanted Steve to come, he would find a way to be there.
"Any timeline on when you might be home?" Steve asks.
"Not yet," Cassie admits. "More than twelve hours but less than forty-eight? I know it's not exactly precise, but no one's dealt with this before." She twirls a piece of hair around her fingers. "I don't know what we're going to do when he wakes up."
There's a rush of static over the line. Cassie doesn't think it was a sigh so Steve must jus be pacing as they talk. With her eyes shut, she can just about picture the scene.
"I see how leaving him at either one of the Camps might not work. What with-"
"-the giant hideous war that almost destroyed all of Western civilization?" Cassie completes. "Yeah. It kinda didn't happen that long ago so the best we can hope for in terms of re-introduction here is 'horrendously awkward' and we're far more likely to be dealing with 'hugely violent' in a place where even the first graders walk around armed."
This time the static that comes down the line seems to emanate concern. "Cassie," he says. "You know I trust you when you say you're okay, so I'm just going to ask the one extra time. Are you okay?"
Tears spring suddenly in to the corners of her eyes and Cassie brushes them away with her sleeve. "'Okay' might be stretching it," she conceded, voice brittle. "I'm um- kinda crying now, I guess? Just-" she sniffs and pulls her knees closer in against her chest. "The war Luke was- is- maybe still was- my brother. He took care of me and protected me when I was small and was my big brother in all the ways that matter. But his war killed two of my actual brothers, plus so so many other people." A sharp pain from the bit of hair she's been twirling makes her jerk and let it go. "I guess," she says as she resettles. "I guess, when he was dead, I didn't have to think about whether I'd forgiven him or not."
"First step is seeing if he wakes up and what he's like when he does," Steve reminds her. "And no matter what, remember I love you and I'm only a call away."
Cassie sniffs and manages to clear her throat. "I love you too. Listen, I can't be on the phone for too long while I'm here. Monsters and everything. I just wanted to hear your voice and tell you what was going on. I'll call you back when I know when I'll be home."
"Okay," he responds. "I'll see you soon."
Cassie hangs up and cradles her phone in her hands for a few moments. She takes the time to settle herself and times her breathing so that she's inhaling and exhaling on a count of eight. Then she stands up, puts her phone back in her pocket, and goes to see whether or not Luke is awake.
A/N: So what did you guys think? I'm really interested to know what you guys thought about how I wrote Dionysus and Chiron. I haven't done much writing for either one of them before and I'm kind of worried I haven't quite nailed their characterizations and vocal patterns. If you guys have suggestions on that I'd love to hear them. I'm also trying really hard to convey just how confusing all of this is to Cassie as well as Thalia and Annabeth who knew him well and considered him family. Nothing like what they're going through has happened to me so I'm doing my best to balance all of the conflicting emotions. Anyway, lots to go through for you guys! I seem to be looking at a kind of one update a month schedule while school is going on so that's probably about how long it'll be until next time. Review for me! xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxooxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo