Disclaimer: Nope. None of this mess belongs to me if you can recognize it from absolutely anywhere else. If someone has been paid for it they should definitely be sharing it with me, because this Christmas season has been expensive my dudes. I could really use the cash. What was I saying? Oh right. Don't sue me. I haven't stolen anything to begin with and it would not be worth your time.
Eventually, the thing that Cassie had known would happen- must happen, does.
Luke wakes up.
She knows he's going to before it happens. She's left her magical senses in tune with his vitals for the last six hours by the time it happens. They pick up on the subtle changes in his theta brain waves, heart rate, and respiration when he begins to make the shift in to consciousness.
Cassie could leave the room and let Luke wake up alone, let him wander his own way back on to the front deck of the Big House so that the responsibility of this first contact with the land of the living will be passed on to Chiron or Annabeth or Thalia instead. A really, really, really, big part of her wants to do exactly that. She'd like to be irresponsible and not an adult for just one current crisis.
She doesn't.
Instead, Cassie sits up straight, neatens her ponytail, and folds her hands tightly together in her lap to keep from fidgeting. She'll stay professional, or close to it, for as long as she possibly can. It's likely it won't make this process any easier, but it's all she's got, so Cassie's willing to give it a shot.
Luke blinks.
Cassie waits until his eyes have focused on her before she speaks.
"Hi," she says, and is mildly impressed with herself when her voice doesn't tremble or break. "Long time, no breath. At least in your case."
He blinks again and seems to be trying to figure out whether he remembers the way his tongue and lips have to move in order to form words. "I was dead."
Cassie can't tell if that's a statement or a question. They haven't worked their way up to patterns of inflection yet. She decides to treat it like it's a question for the sake of keeping the conversation alive. "Very dead," she confirms. "I was there. I felt your heart stop." She tightens her grip oh her fingers and feels the bands of her wedding and engagements rings dig in to her finger. "I also watched your body burn."
Luke swallows audibly. "Okay," he replies.
They lapse in to a new period of silence and Cassie can't help but feel that, recently revived or not, Luke really isn't doing his part to keep up the conversational flow. "Want some water?" she offers. "There's a jug in here."
He nods and Cassie stands, making her way to the plastic carafe she had been referring to. She pours a glass and passes it over. "Drink slow," she advises. "In fact, I'd just take everything slowly for a while."
She sits back down and can't help but feel somewhat gratified that Luke is obeying her instructions without question. Not that she couldn't kick his ass pretty easily right now if need be. In fact, she could probably manage it without standing up.
Cassie takes the glass back from him when it's empty and sets it on the bedside table. "So," she says, and leaves the word hanging as a question in the air.
"How am I alive Cass?" Luke asks.
She barely manages not to swear under her breath. She's less successful at not flinching at the long remembered sound of Luke's voice shaping the familiar nickname. "We were kind of hoping you knew."
"Fuck."
"Well put." She leans forwards and props her head on her hand, her elbow on the arm of the chair. "Is there anything you remember?"
Luke frowns in deliberation, and Cassie is grimly satisfied to know that he is genuinely considering the question. "Blood," he says, voice still rasping. "Lot of it. I remember the battle in the throne room like a movie or something. Like I was watching it all happen, but it wasn't really me." He looks up at her sharply. "Annabeth. Is she-"
"-She's fine," Cassie interrupts quickly. "She ended the battle with you with a broken arm. My father healed it himself when the gods all showed up three minutes later. I'd imagine she's outside with Chiron and Thalia."
"Thalia," Luke says distantly. "Right. I remember she was there when I woke up."
"It's very possible she's going to try to electrocute you a few times when she sees you," Cassie tells him frankly. "I don't think it'll kill you if that's any consolation. From the test I did in New York, dying doesn't seem to have erased the invulnerability. You and Percy can try to beat each other to pulp as much as you want and still come back to annoy everyone else about it later."
Luke's face transitions in a wave from being the ashy grey of the ill, to the paper-whiteness of utter shock and apprehension. "Percy's here?"
She shakes her head. "No. Annabeth asked him to stay in San Fransisco until- well, until we figure out a bit more about what's going on. He's been listening for now, but that'll probably wear off sometime in the next twenty-four hours. You'v got about that long to figure out the right way to beg for forgiveness. Personally, I'd start your apology tour with someone easier. Always assuming," she adds contemplatively, "that apologizing is something you plan to do. If you have Titan War Part Two on the brain I'd hold off."
He's gazing at her now, brow knit with confusion. He opens his mouth and shuts it without speaking twice. Then, "If I apologize, would you forgive me? The war I started, it killed two of your brothers. Their blood is on my hands. Does any apology undo that?"
Cassie does him the courtesy of giving the question the due consideration he has given each of hers since regaining consciousness. "No," she decides out loud. "No. No words are ever going to be good enough. Not for that. Not with me."
"Then why are you still here?" the question is blunt and bewildered and very nearly angry. "Why bring me back here of all places? Why wait until I woke up? Why not just kill me again when I was unconscious and save everyone the trouble?"
The questions are impossible to ignore now that they have been spoken because they are the same ones that have been revolving through Cassie's brain for hours. She sighs and spreads her hands. "Maybe because I figure that if whatever brought you back the first time could do it once, it could do it again? Maybe because Annabeth has already forgiven you whatever she says, and an apology probably will be enough, and I love her enough that I wouldn't take her older brother away."
None of those options seem to be getting her anywhere and Cassie simply rolls her eyes and lets the other reasons flow out. "I've also never killed a living person before, and I decided eight years ago that if that's going to be a thing I start doing, it's not going to be because of you."
Luke flinches and Cassie stops speaking. "Eight years," Luke breaths. "Gods, I didn't realize. You don't look much older. I thought-" He cuts himself off abruptly and Cassie watches, feeling oddly detached as she watches him struggle to swallow and breath more freely. Finally he looks back at her, and his expression is dearly close to begging. "Cassie," he wrenches. "How much have I missed?"
Cassie tips her head as she thinks it over. "Not that much in the grand scheme of things I guess." Her voice is still that eerily flat-sounding thing it was earlier. "A few highlights; Hera kidnapped Percy and swapped him with Thalia's not-dead little brother at a camp for Roman demigods. We all spent about a year at war with giants during which the gods all got schizophrenia and Percy accidentally resurrected Gaea with a nosebleed. We put her back to sleep, my father became a teenager, we fought some previously dead emperors, Jason died and then came back. I went to medical school, helped stop an alien invasion, and joined a superhero fight team to defend the planet. Percy and Annabeth got married, the Norse gods turn out to be a thing, a titan gave me a skeleton monster cat as an engagement present, and I got kicked out of the country with most of my family because the U.N turned in to a great big conference of illegally inclined dickheads."
Luke is staring at her like his mind might be about to snap under the tension of the influx of information and Cassie decides she may as well fill in the last major puzzle piece and finish the job. "Oh, and I got married too," she completes, lifting her hand and drawing his attention to the paired rings on her left hand. "To Steve Rogers."
"A different Steve Rogers?" Luke asks, sounding numb.
"Nope."
He blinks. "So he's not dead either then?"
"Decidedly not," Cassie says firmly. "Just frozen in an ice flow in the arctic for seventy years. The eight you missed really isn't so bad by comparison." Luke looks as though his vocal cords may now have been irrevocably paralyzed and Cassie suddenly decides that enough is enough. She stands and gives her head a small shake to flick the wayward strands of hair away from her face. "I should go tell the others you're awake," she says. "They've been waiting."
She's at the door when Luke's voice rings out behind her, stronger than at any point earlier in their talk, making her stop in the doorframe. "Why?" he asks. "Why are you still being kind?"
The question startles a brief, harsh, laugh out of Cassie's throat. "This isn't kindness," she tells him flatly. "It's honesty. Possibly mercy. Maybe the right thing to do, if that's something that exists." She turns his eyes to his face and really lets herself look at the face of the boy who was her brother. "Call it pay back if it makes you happy," she tells him. "You kept me alive when I was a child and would have died without you. I couldn't do the same for you before. I can now. The debt is done and I have honored my vow to Asclepius. These things are more important to me than the question of weather or not I've forgiven you.
With that, she turns on her heel, and leaves the room.
In the hallway she catches her reflection in a mirror and is so surprised at the lack of change in her face that she stops for a moment to look. Her eyes are maybe a little wider than they normally would be, but they are the same familiar shades of summer blue. She's a little pale, but the spots of pink in her cheeks don't present any kind of alarming contrast. The loose hair around her face frames it the way it always has and seems to absorb the golden sunlight slanting in through the window.
Cassie takes the time she needs to braid it away from her face and secure the plait. Then she makes her way back out on to the deck of the Big House.
"He's awake," she announces without preamble. "And able to speak." She addresses her next words to Chiron. "You can ask whatever questions you like, but he says he doesn't know how or why he's back, and I believe him." Chiron nods and Cassie turns to look at Annabeth and Thalia where they stand together at the railing. "If anyone's planning acts of violence, I'd appreciate a heads up. I've only just finished deciding I haven't forgiven him yet. It'd be a shame for him to die again before he gets the chance to do some begging."
She doesn't stick around to see what reactions her words cause. Instead, she jumps down from the porch and begins to make her way down to the omega of cabins around their central fire. Hestia isn't there.
She checks.
The Apollo cabin is mercifully empty and Cassie is gratified to see that the things she's left there since her last visit all that time ago with Steve, Reyna, Bucky, Pepper, Tony, and Katya have been left undisturbed. If anything, they've been dusted a bit and her bed has been made up with fresh sheets and blankets. The bed is really the more important observation.
Cassie crawls in to it gratefully and pulls the pillow over on top of her head, her only goal being to temporarily block out the rest of the world. Then, without any warning, she begins to cry. Tears flood silently down her cheeks and in to her hair and pillow. Her shoulders shake and it's all very distressing because Cassie isn't even entirely sure what she's crying for.
When the flood seems to have finally run its course, Cassie shudders as her strained muscles loosen and she wipes her face with the hem of her tee shirt. Now that she's done crying, she thinks maybe it was more important that she needed to cry and did it, than to figure out why she needed to. She feels wrung out and exhausted and absolutely emotionally done.
She pulls the blankets a little more firmly around her and squeezes her eyes shut tightly. Sticky, complex, messily emotional questions of things like forgiveness, mercy, justice, and debt, can all wait until she wakes up to deal with. She has a feeling she'll be dealing with them for a very long while after she begins.
Maybe she should be back at the Big House, staying by Thalia and Annabeth. Maybe that is what a good friend, a good sister, would do. But Cassie faced her reunion with Luke alone. She was allowed to have, and burdened with, that experience. Thalia and Annabeth will have each other and Chiron for support, and will be allowed to orchestrate their individual encounters with him for themselves.
As she drifts in to dreams, Cassie thinks that she does not need her father's gift of foresight to know that despite anything she said to Luke earlier, someday she probably will forgive him, she also thinks that that day may be quite a long way off.
Her sleep is disrupted by disjointed dreams that don't make sense. They're not the prophetic type. For once they're just the normal run of the mill expression of her subconscious trying to process the day she's had. The fact that they're fitful and dizzying and Cassie wakes up twisted in her blankets says a lot about the past twenty-four hours.
Cassie's personal sense of the movements of the sun tell her that it's still in the process of setting so the showers should be empty. She makes her way there, taking a slightly more covert route than she would normally go for to avoid campers with questions. For one thing, she doesn't know what Chiron might want to tell them. For another, Cassie doesn't know how she would explain what's happening.
At the showers she raids the cabinet where they keep toiletries for new campers and spends so much time under the spray that her fingers and toes begin to prune. The conch horn to call the camp to the dinning pavilion sounds just as she's wringing her hair out with a towel. She debates going to join her younger siblings for the meal, some barbecue would really hit the spot right about now, but she's not sure she feels up to handling crowds.
Instead, Cassie pulls her old clothes back on, she doesn't really have others with her, and picks her way slowly back to the Big House. The porch lights have come on with the dipping of the sun over the hilltops ringing the valley and moths are fluttering around the bulbs. Cassie watches them spin and cloud for a few minutes and thinks to herself that it must be such a strange thing to have your most primal instincts be a pull towards a force that can't help but destroy you regardless of any intentions to one way or another.
She's right in the middle of these rather maudlin thoughts and making a face at herself for having them when she's interrupted by Thalia appearing on the steps. "Watching the moths?" she questions, hopping down to the ground to stand next to Cassie. "I remember you doing that as a kid," she continues. "When we first found you. We'd all be sitting around as the sun went down in whatever little hovel we'd managed to hide out in for the night, and you'd do that trick where you catch a little bit of light in your hand and make it stay. All the little moths would come fluttering, and you always shut your hand around it if they got too close because you didn't want them to burn."
"I still don't," Cassie admits. Acting largely on impulse, she focuses on the light inside the glass bulb and tries to imagine that she had the dimmer switch for it and is dialing back the brightness. Normally, controlling artificial light isn't something she's particularly good at, but this time it works and the light flickers in to blackness.
Thalia's face, feet away from hers, is plunged in to shadows but Cassie can still see the raised eyebrows the display of power gets her. "Didn't know you were doing artificial light sources these days," she says in a faux casual kind of way.
"I'm not usually," Cassie confirms. "Though I've redirected a few laser blasts in recent history." She shrugs. "I think it's all to do with the connection between light and energy. The two things work pretty much according to the same rules of nature. It's not totally cocoa for cocoa puffs that I can bend one a little if I can manipulate the other. Plus, you know, we don't exactly have a template for me and my potential abilities."
"True," Thalia nods. "And these days I'm hardly the girl to complain about it getting dark out," she nudges Cassie's arm with her elbow. "Any other big life developments I'm missing out on with you? Other than the marriage thing."
Cassie shakes her head. "No, I think the marriage was the big one." They lapse in to silence for another moment before she ads, "My dad came to the wedding."
Thalia visibly double takes and her eyebrows shoot up. "No shit."
"Yeah."
"Like, to watch the whole thing?"
She shakes her head. "No. He just showed up for a few minutes right before I walked down the aisle. Said he loved me, and had always loved me, changed all my flowers, then popped right back out again."
Thalia gives a low whistle. "Makes you wonder what he saw coming."
"I try not to think about that too hard," Cassie says, shuddering. "The future-telling bit of my dad's powers have always been my least favorite. Probably explains why I don't have very much sense of it. Kinda like how you can't fly because you hate heights, but Jason can. Self-actualization I think is what the therapists call it."
Thalia hums and crosses her arms over her chest. "So is he as hot in person as I think he probably is from pictures?" This time it's Cassie's eyebrows that hit her hairline and Thalia shrugs. "What? I'm a sworn maiden, not blind."
"I find him pretty attractive," Cassie says neutrally. "Which, ya know, is pretty fortunate since I did marry him." She scrubs her palms over her face. "He's back in Switzerland worrying about me right now and probably refusing to take care of himself like he should until I get back. Hopefully Bucky can brow beat him in to doing something healthy and productive."
"Percy is apparently not doing any better," Thalia says. "He wanted to come, but Annabeth thought that might not be a good idea given their last interaction was a fight to the death."
"Wasn't that the last interaction we all had?"
"More or less."
"Right." Cassie kicks one of her feet along the ground, scuffing a path with her shoe. "What the fuck are we supposed to do with him Thales?" She asks tiredly. "He can't stay at Camp- at either Camp. Too many people know too much about what he did, and too many demigods are way too unforgiving. And that doesn't even touch on whether we should be forgiving him in the first place."
A spark of electricity flashes off of the end of Thalia's sleeve. Her friend doesn't move, but it's still a very explicit sign of Thalia's agitation. "I honestly don't know if we should forgive him at all. Mostly because I don't think forgiveness happens on mass. I figure each one of us is going to have to figure that one out for themselves. But to do that we can't just leave him out in the world to get swarmed by angry gods and monsters."
Cassie sighs. "That doesn't change the fact that we can't leave him at either Camp either." She cranes her neck from side to side to try to release the tension that's been building along her spine since this conversation started. "Could we send him to Lupa?" She wonders aloud. "That way he wouldn't be roaming free, but he wouldn't be in either camp either. Plus we wouldn't be leaving him to the mercy of our parents."
Thalia chuckles without humor. "What mercy?"
Those words dangle in the air between them and Cassie can feel them turning over and over in her mind. She doesn't like them. She doesn't like their implication and she doesn't like their veracity. She hates that among her entire family where in each member is so explicitly different from every other, that the trait they all share is a complete and utter lack of forgiveness.
Way back when, Luke had been right about one thing, even if he'd gone about it all wrong.
They need to do better than their parents.
"I need to make a phone call, I think," she finally says. "I might have a way, but it's not just up to me. I have a family I'll need to ask before I drag somebody new in to it." She forestalls Thalia's next words by holding up a hand and saying, "Go inside and take care of Annabeth while I do. This is harder for her. And tell Chiron I'm borrowing his office for the privacy."
The phone call is not a fun one. She gets Steve on a video call after the connection rings twice and asks him to get Reyna and Tony so she can talk to the three of them about something important. Steve does as she asks without comment, but her husband has absolutely no poker face and his worry for her is practically radiating off of him like heat off a stove.
She sees Tony roll his eyes as he makes a disparaging comment about "Luddites and their inability to use the technology I give them. Honesty, what's the point in updating everything if you won't-" The words trail off as Tony commandeers the phone from Steve and fiddles with the settings.
A moment later, Cassie can see all three of them sitting in her and Steve's living room and gathers that whatever Tony did to Steve's phone has her side of the call projected on the wall. She spares a moment to try to remember if Tony had been in Wakanda when she had left and comes up empty. Maybe he was gone and came back after she left? Either way, Cassie doesn't spend much time on it. He's there and that's a good thing.
"My-" Cassie starts, and then stops when the word 'friend' refuses to form on her lips. "Luke Castellan is back to being alive," she says instead. "No one knows why, including him. Our Camp director is trying to figure that out up on Olympus to see if any of the gods are responsible. For now, we need somewhere to put him."
Tony's eyes narrow. "This is the guy who betrayed you all and started a major war?"
"Yeah," Cassie confirms. "And in case you were wondering, that betrayal was most definitely the key interaction of my formative years."
"And you want to bring him here," Tony surmises, skepticism dripping off of every syllable.
Cassie suppresses her eye roll but doesn't stop herself from raking the hair back from her face or the air of frustration that accompanies the gesture. "What I want is to be home with my husband and for this not to be my problem," she says sharply. "Since that doesn't seem possible, I'm trying to figure out a workable alternative to ditching a boy who saved my life and took care of me when no one else did in the wilderness to be eaten by monsters or smited by one of our relatives taking revenge. This is one of them and I'd appreciate it if we could talk it over as if it's a serious problem if that's alright with you."
"Hey, I made peace with Barnes didn't I," Tony snaps back. "And he's the one that killed my parents. We're all traitors to something by now. I'm just asking if we really want to make Mr. McTraitor-WorldBreaker our newest team member."
"He can't stay at either Camp," Reyna breaks in. "There are too many in New York who lost someone and may want vengeance, and it'd be pretty hard arguing that they wouldn't be justified. And Lupa eats traitors to Rome, so Camp Jupiter is out. Luke is mortal so he can't be left on Olympus and he's alive so we can't have Hades, or Pluto, keep him imprisoned in the Underworld."
Cassie can see the cogs in Reyna's brain whirring as she works through the same alternatives that Cassie has been pouring over for the last several hours and lands mostly on the same conclusions. "It's pretty much Cassie brings him back with her or they dump him in the woods to fend for himself," she summarizes. "And not to be blunt about it, but Luke being abandoned is pretty much where all of the problems started in the first place."
"If he's with us we can monitor him," Cassie puts in. "Meg knows how to do magical tracking and monitoring and I'm sure you can think of something technological to do the same thing Tony. We'll make sure he knows it's play by our rules or else."
"What would that else be?" Steve asks, a military man wanting to know about all potential courses of action before weighing in with his final choice. "And why isn't that option viable on the list of original alternatives?"
"Because it's medically and ethically questionable and might not be possible in the first place," Cassie says frankly. "The gods have this trick they can do where they put mortals to sleep. I've seen it happen and it's what Hera did to Percy the winter he and Jason got swapped. We'd have to take the idea to one of the Olympians to make it happen, and then we'd have to put him somewhere while he was out anyway."
Steve's face hardens, and that's about the reaction she had expected before she floated the idea. "Like Bucky in the cryo-pod," he says. "No. We're not doing that to someone just because we're worried about something they might do."
Cassie nods. "That's part of where I got the idea from," she admits. "It would only be viable in the short term anyway. The spell the gods tend to use prevents physical deterioration, but I have no idea what it would do to him psychologically." She switches her focus to Reyna. "I don't suppose the Roman aspects of the gods are being any more helpful than the Greek ones?"
Her friend shakes her head. "If they are they aren't talking to me, and the person they are talking to is keeping quiet about it. I guess that's the other reason not to put Luke in some kind of stasis isn't it?"
Cassie nods but Tony interrupts with a question before she can talk. "What? You're folks aren't talking so you can't make important decisions about your own safety."
Surprisingly, Steve answers before Cassie or Reyna can. "People don't come back from the Underworld," he explains. "A few of the living heroes managed to get out alive, but they never actually recovered anyone who was already dead. It's implied in the myths that it's possible for a god to do, but it never actually happens. If this guy is back, it's for a reason."
"Exactly," Cassie agrees. "I'm not normally one for just sitting back and trusting that the gods have a plan, least of all a good one, but if one of them has put something in motion with this then the safest thing to do is not interfere. If whatever it is wants Luke alive and active, then it's probably smartest to keep him that way."
There's a slash through Steve's forehead as he thinks everything over and Cassie wishes she was with him in person so she could reach out and smooth the lines with a thumb. "Is he dangerous?" he asks finally. "In your judgement, is he a threat?"
Cassie forces herself to take a mental step back and answer that question objectively. "Honestly? Yes he's dangerous. He's the one who taught Percy to sword fight and was the best swordsman at Camp for five years. He's resourceful and adaptable and clever. He can beat most locks, picks up languages quickly, and once stole two sacred objects out of the throne room of Olympus. Is he a threat? No, I don't think so. Not to us. And if we get him fighting on our side... well we'll be that much stronger."
Steve nods at her words and then looks across to Tony who catches his gaze and then throws his hands up dramatically. "Fine! I'll tell Pepper to set up a room. But it's on you Morgenstern." He jabs a thumb at the screen. "He does anything, it's your responsibility. And I'm figuring out that electronic tracking and telling McCaffrey to figure out the magical version."
"Wanda is interviewing him when he arrives too," Steve chips in. "If she picks up on anything that even hints at him plotting against us that's it." He watches Cassie's face for a reaction at those words and Cassie makes sure that he sees her nod.
"I'll go tell Chiron what we've decided. Then i'll fill Luke in. We probably won't leave until tomorrow moring at dawn. It's just me making the jumps this time so Nico can stay here and recover, so I'll need the full day to get back."
Reyna excuses herself then to start filling people in and Tony goes out after her, once again muttering in a distracted, malcontented sort of way.
"I'll be home this time tomorrow," Cassie tells Steve when they're alone again. "I'll call you, on the phone or with an Iris Message when we're half way through the journey."
He accepts that and Cassie sees him reach for the phone before her view shifts to being of just him as he holds the phone and her image stops being projected on to the wall. "Okay, and if you need to take longer to get back here then do it. You can't afford to be exhausted if you're escorting someone. Be smart about it and take your time. I know the travel makes you tired."
Cassie allows her mouth to twitch in to the ghost of a tired smile. "I'll be careful," she promises. There's a noise from elsewhere in the house and she turns towards the sound. "I'd better go now," she says to Steve. "I love you, and I'll see you tomorrow."
"Can't come soon enough," Steve says fervently. "I love you too."
Cassie blows him a kiss and then ends the call.
Almost immediately there's a knock on the door of Chiron's office and Cassie calls for whoever it is to come in without thinking. Annabeth stands in the doorframe looking about as unsure and shaken as Cassie has ever seen her. Her face is pale and her lower lip looks like she's been biting in to it on and off for the last two days.
"I heard what you said," she says. "The end of it anyway," she shifts her weight to her other foot and then manages to spit out the words she's struggling with. "Cassie are you sure?" she asks in a rush. "I know it's not an easy thing, and gods, Luke killed two of your brothers. I can't even imagine-"
Cassie cuts of Annabeth's flood of words by stepping forwards and drawing her friend in to a tight hug. "I made my choice about it already," she says in to the space past Annabeth's left shoulder. "It was hard enough to do once. Don't ask me to rethink it now, okay? Luke will leave with me and between me and the rest of the team we'll be able to keep an eye on him without monsters or gods interfering until we can work this out. You're the strategist. You know this is the best move we've got."
There's a garbled sound from over her shoulder and Cassie can actually feel Annabeth swallow around a lump in her throat from where their hug is still pressing them together. "Okay," Annabeth says after two deep breaths. "Okay. Cassie... thank you."
Cassie squeezes once before taking a step back and holding her friend at arms length. "No thank you required," she promises, doing her best to smile in to Annabeth's cloud grey, red-rimmed from emotion and exhaustion, gaze. "I probably won't ever forgive Luke for the war," she admits. "Or what it cost. But before a few days ago, I thought it had taken three brothers from me instead of two. Maybe, with a little effort and time, you, me, and Thalia can each get a big brother back."
Annabeth smiles back tentatively and then nods in decision and sets her chin. "We'll just call that the best case scenario."
Cassie makes it a point to not bring up how very rarely that ever pans out for demigods like them.
The next step in this whole mess is to explain their solution to Chiron. Cassie is responsible for most of the topic since the solution is both her idea and ultimately, her responsibility. However, Thalia and Annabeth stand on either side of her as she talks and Cassie takes encouragement from their presence and proximity.
Chiron sits in his wheelchair in the living room, brown eyes watching her, plaid blanket over his lap, and Cassie feels eight years old again. He hears her out and continues to watch her for several moments after she subsides in to silence. Finally he asks, "Are you sure, my dear? However Luke was revived, monitoring his recovery and actions hereafter is not a responsibility to enter in to lightly."
Cassie holds his gaze and inhales deeply before her answer comes out on the exhale. "I'm sure. You're right it is a big responsibility, but after everything," her hands flex aimlessly as she looks for the right words. "Well, it belongs to one of us doesn't it?" She asks rhetorically, looking from Annabeth to Thalia. "One of us, all of us. We were- are, a family. We know that whatever else, that still means something."
Chiron nods solemnly. "I will inform Luke. I had planned to converse more with him before this evening regardless."
The words are a relief and Cassie is grateful to hear them. She's planning to push herself quite a bit the next day and isn't particularly in the mood to string herself out emotionally another time before then. Seeing Luke again before their all day teleport-a-thon with no one else for company until it's over tomorrow is something she'd rather avoid. She also can't say she's particularly amped about the idea of trying to explain Luke's newly decided living situation to him.
Instead of having that hideously fraught conversation, Cassie does something she hasn't gotten to do in a very long time. She goes and has dinner with her sisters. Not the sister she had by blood, but the ones she was granted by fate and choice.
The three of them leave the porch of the Big House together and Thalia tells Cassie and Annabeth to wait for her under her pine tree at the top of the hill. They do as she said and use the time while they're waiting to gather together the supplies they need for their own, smaller campfire. In the distance they can hear singing where some of Cassie's younger siblings are leading the rest of the Camp, but for the moment Cassie is happier with this one.
They have the fire structured and lined with rocks by the time Thalia reappears with a picnic hamper and a ragged flannel blanket. Cassie lights the fire using matches and a tiny bit or magical encouragement while Thalia and Annabeth spread out the blanket and unpack the food. In the space of about ten minutes the three of them are all set up to have a picnic dinner under the stars.
By unspoken agreement, they don't talk about anything that's going on in their present lives. Instead, they talk about other nights they spent like this one. Nights where they made themselves feel safe and comforted despite the night closing around them, deep and dark and maybe full of monsters, just with the sound of their own voices.
Cassie can't tell time from the position of the moon the way she can with the sun, but she knows purely from the height that it must be late by the time they all begin to run out of words. Annabeth had laid down on her side with her head on Thalia's knees some time ago and the fire is beginning to gutter. Cassie herself is doing battle with her eyelids and poking somewhat listlessly at the remaining embers, wondering exactly how worth it it would be to try to stumble back to her Cabin for the rest of the night.
"Here," Thalia says, and Cassie barely gets her hands up in time to catch the jacket she's thrown at her head. "Might as well crash here. We're on the right side of the border and there's no point having to sneak back in to your cabin at this time. You Apollo kids are early risers. Better not to wake anybody up in the middle of the night."
The jacket is the parka of one of her aunt's hunters, all silver black and grey shadows. It's not the light leather jacket Thalia was wearing earlier in the day and Cassie realizes that she must have brought it out with the picnic blanket. She also realizes that she must have brought it out for her or Annabeth. The summer night is fairly mild and the blessing of Artemis means that Thalia can deal comfortably with temperatures much more severe than these.
The gesture makes her feel taken care of in a way that doesn't happen very often because despite all appearances these days, Thalia is still older than she is. In all the ways of habit, time, and familiarity, Thalia is the older sister Cassie doesn't have. It's a kind of unconsidered care that only comes from siblings and provokes emotions that only siblings can.
"Wake me up a little before dawn?" she requests, wadding up the jacket and curling down on her side with it under her head. "I'll probably make it up with the sun anyway, but I'll need to get going as soon as I've got the light."
Thalia nods without taking her eyes off of the stars. She has her head tipped back, taking in the moonlight and glowing slightly under the stars. "I'll be up. I'm not planning on going back to the Hunt until tomorrow night. I'll sleep in the morning."
"You're turning nocturnal," Cassie mumbles in acknowledgement, already feeling sleepy and far away in the dark.
Thalia reaches out and ruffles her hair before smoothing it out and resting her hand along Cassie's shoulder blade. "And you're our little early bird," she teases affectionately. "You've even got the fledgling feathers."
Cassie makes a face at her but has a feeling the impact is probably mitigated by the fact that her eyes are pretty much already shut.
Thalia laughs quietly and combs a few curls back over her shoulder. The gesture reminds Cassie of being eight years old. Thalia and Luke had taken it in turns to make sure that she and Annabeth had their hair snarl free and tied up whenever they'd needed to venture in to populated areas. They'd both been clumsy and inexpert in their efforts, but it's a bit like the jacket.
The gesture is about being taken care of, not about perfection.
The last sight Cassie has before drifting off is of Thalia staring out in to the night, silhouetted by the light of the dying fire, leaning back against the tree that had once held her spirit, staring in to the night as she kept watch, while Annabeth and Cassie sleep.
Her eyes pop open again just as Thalia is starting to reach for her. Instead of letting her friend shake her shoulder to help speed her in to consciousness, Cassie high fives the extended hand and sits up. "I'm good," she assures. "Thanks though."
"Great," Thalia replies. "I thought I'd get you up first and then wake Annabeth. She'll want to say 'goodbye'."
Cassie sits up and yawns expansively in to her palm. Her jaw is too busy popping for her to answer with words so instead she just nods at Thalia and shoots her a thumbs up. Her eyes shut as she rubs at the corners of them and Thalia is still working on waking up Annabeth without triggering a threat response of some kind.
"Give her a bit more time," she suggests as Annabeth mutters something in her sleep and curls in to a smaller ball on the ground. She squints up at the sky and judges the density of the darkness above them. "We've got about twenty minutes until sunrise. I need to pick my bag up at the cabin and brush my teeth. We can meet back at the Big House to say goodbye."
"Sounds like a plan."
Cassie quick times it back to the Apollo Cabin and utilizes all of the training she has to move lightly and silently inside to retrieve her things. Next she makes a short stop back at the bathrooms to change in to fresh clothes, brush her teeth, wash her face, and put her hair in to some sort of order so that it doesn't look like she spent the night sleeping on the ground. She's a more experienced out-door sleeper than she'd like to be, but it still invariably turns her hair in to a rat's nest and leaves odd red impressions in her skin.
With that done she's back at the Big House with what her internal clock tells her is six minutes to spare until sunrise. Chiron is there in centaur form, bow in hand. Annabeth is perched on the railing and Thalia is standing beside her, apparently casual but with her shield active and radiating power strapped to her forearm. Luke is on the other end of the porch both hands propped on the rail.
A glint of bronze around his wrist catches Cassie's eyes and she points to it as she approaches. "Mythological tracking anklet?" she guesses.
"Nearly," Annabeth acknowledges, stepping towards her. "Got any room left on your wrists?"
Cassie holds her hands up in front of her to asses the situation. Her camp necklace long ago morphed in to two bracelets, one on either side due to too many beads and far too many magical uses interwoven in her other necklaces requiring easy access. "Nothing that can't be juggled," she judges. "Left or right?"
Annabeth shrugs. "Whatever's going to be less in your way. You draw with your right hand so left would probably be more convenient on your end."
"I didn't get that option," Luke mutters, interrupting the discussion.
"Shut up," say three female voices in perfect unison.
Cassie turns purposefully back to Annabeth. "Left it is then," she decides, stripping the camp beads off and stacking them on the other arm. Annabeth clips a matching circle of bronze in to place and Cassie feels an odd shiver of warmth move up her arm and settle at the nape of her neck. "Tickles," she says by way of explanation.
"Daedalus' notes mention that as a side affect," Annabeth says. "Don't worry. It's just the tracking spell settling in to place. It's keyed to your magical signature. They come in pairs. The one on you is the 'Alpha' of the two. You are now the only one who can remove either. They also read intention." She shoots a look at Luke. "If he tries to run or in anyway bring harm to you or the people you care for, it'll go cold."
Cassie nods. "Alright, got it." She holds out her arms and lets Annabeth walk in to a hug. "I'll call you when I get back home, okay? And you call me when you're back in New Rome. Give Percy a hug for me?"
Annabeth nods as she steps back. "Yeah of course. And you say 'hi' to Steve and tell Tony I'll get back to him about those plans he sent over in th next couple days."
Thalia is next and the hug she gives is brief and tight. "See ya squirt. Smack a kiss on the hot hubby for me." Cassie gives her friend a look. "What? I'm sworn to a tribe of eternal maidenhood. Not blind. That man has an amazing shoulder to waist ratio."
"How about I kiss him extra but not mention it comes from you so he doesn't leave the interaction afraid?"
"Where's the fun in that?"
Chiron leans down to hug her with his free arm. It's an awkward angle and Cassie has to lean up on her toes to make the angles work, but it's a very nice hug. "Keep in touch my dear," he says to her. "You are always welcome here."
"I'll Iris Message more often," Cassie promises. "When we have our big wedding you're totally walking me down the isle."
"It will be my genuine pleasure."
Having said her goodbyes, Cassie steals her nerves and approaches Luke where he's still standing against the porch rail. "Well?" she asks. "Ready to do this?" the sun has just risen over the top of the hills rimming the valley. Cassie gestures towards the spill of golden-red flame. "We're on a bit of a clock."
Luke holds out his left hand, bronze bracelet glimmering in the dawn light. "Ready when you are Cass."
Cassie lifts her hand and moves to drop it in to his. Her motion stutters halfway through but she catches sight of Luke's raised eyebrows and brings her palm down. Luke's skin is warm and calloused under her fingers and feels exactly the way it did the first time he had pulled her out of a swampy puzzle at age eight.
She draws the first sunlight of the new day in to her skin and lets it overflow inside her cells. When she opens her eyes next, her vision is tinged with gold. "Next stop Wakanda," she says, and turns to give a last wave to Thalia, Annabeth, and Chiron. "Teleport departing in three, two..."
Now.
A/N: So what did you guys think? I made it in time for this to be a nice little advent present. Oh! and a very happy Hanukah to all those of my readers who celebrate it. Either way, I hope you all liked the chapter. I have a bit more written of the trip back to Wakanda and the hijinks involved, but having that part in pushed this thing in to the 12K range and I felt like that would over stretch it without quite a lot of careful editing. I decided to cut things off here instead and start the next chapter there instead. What did you guys think about the characterizations and character interactions in this one? I hope I did okay but it's a lot to balance with multiple characters in. I wanted to make sure I included a sense of Cassie's memories and nostalgia. Anyway, review for me! xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxox