Disclaimer: Look, we've been doing this for like, actual years now. No. I do not make money here.
When the world reforms, there is both good news and bad news. The good news? Thanos is now gone and replaced by a somewhat smokey pile of ash surrounded by the melted metal remains of his armor and flecked with the powdered remnants of two crushed Infinity Stones. The other good news is that about eighty percent of his armies have collapsed Phantom Menace hive mind style.
The bad news? Luke's body is lying prone thirty feet from where he had last been standing.
Cassie doesn't bother thinking it through. She wrenches herself out of her spot in the grass and reappears kneeling next to him. "Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck," she mumbles as she takes in the charred holes in his clothes and smoke wafting up from his skin. "You had better be fucking alive," she hisses, reaching for his wrist.
A quick breath leaves her like she's just taken a sucker punch to the stomach as Cassie finds the rhythm of blood being slammed through his radial artery. It's feverish and skipping, and not much of an actual rhythm as rhythms go, but if there's a flutter there Cassie can work with it. She stretches her power in to the familiar pulsing pattern that is Luke's life and body and lets the magic flow along all the lines of it, tracing the lines and feeling for damage.
It doesn't paint a pretty picture. Two full layers of Luke's skin is burned through, but it's not the top layer, as if the power of the Master Bolt had radiated from inside Luke as much as the Bolt itself. Both of his eardrums are popped and his left retina has been clouded over with an instantaneous cataract. Every muscle in his right side is in spasm as the electricity overloads the motor center in his brain, making the neurons misfire and the nerve endings go wild. Cassie also counts no fewer than sixty-seven broken, fractured, shattered, and more or less pulverized bones, mostly the delicate ones in Luke's hands and feet.
All of that takes second priority to two other issues. One, if his heart beats any faster it will quite literally explode. Two, Luke isn't breathing. He hasn't been breathing for at least the last thirty seconds and if it goes on long enough they'll be dealing with full pulmonary arrest and hypoxia.
This all leads to another issue which is that what Cassie would usually do here is unleash a pulse of magic in to Luke's system and keep pushing until the extra energy pushes his body to repair the damage the way it would naturally if given more time. Here, adding any more of any kind of energy is likely to accomplish nothing except killing Luke faster. Instead, she's going to have to convert what's already there or ground the charge somehow.
Thinking quickly, Cassie taps her com and swears viciously when nothing happens. The electricity of the blast must have fried the circuits. Instead, Cassie projects her voice and bends the sound waves to amplify them so the sound will carry across the battlefield. "Someone who can't be electrocuted needs to get here stat," she snaps. "That's Thalia, Jason, or Thor unless someone isn't sharing something."
She gets double what she asked for twenty seconds later when Jason drops out of the sky with Thalia in his arms. Thalia's face is utterly without color and Cassie assumes she'd be throwing up if she'd eaten at all recently, but her steps are steady when she disentangles herself from her brother's grip and drops to her knees next to Cassie.
"What do you need?"
"Take his hand," Cassie instructs. "Reach for the electricity and pull it out. Go slowly and don't pull it in to yourself. Channel it in to the ground so it dissipates. I'll tell you when to stop. Take too much away and his heart will just stop for the opposite reason."
Thalia nods and takes his hand as Cassie had said. Her already electric blue eyes spark with additional power before they slide shut in concentration and Cassie allows her own to follow suit, fingers still pressed in to Luke's pulse. She forces herself not to press too hard, wary of the crushed ulna and radius bracketing the artery and veins.
Electricity fizzes and pops in her ears and the air is thick with the smell of ozone as Thalia goes to work. Slowly, slowly, far too slowly, it begins to work. As the power of the bolt releases its hold on Luke's brain, the spasming muscles release. His lungs are the next thing to unfreeze and Cassie nearly cries with relief at the sound of his ragged, gasping, breath.
It's the first one in nearly two minutes.
"Stop now," Cassie directs, eyes flicking open as Luke's heart slows and the internal pressure drops. "That's enough of the electricity out for me to switch to repairing the damage. Any further and his brain might go flat."
Thalia opens her eyes again and nods, her shoulders relaxing as the last of the syphoned electricity crackles its way in to the dirt and empty air. She doesn't let go of Luke's hand. Cassie doesn't ask her to.
Going as quickly as she dares, Cassie begins the process of feeding her magic in to Luke's body. She goes body part by body part, starting with the internal organs and slowly letting the magic bleed outwards. If she runs out of power, these are the places that will need to be fixed first.
And it is Cassie's own power she's using. She's not drawing from the sun or invoking her father. It would be safer for her, but those wells run too deep. The power would be a flood not a hose pipe and swamping Luke with magical force might well undo all the repair Thalia has just accomplished.
The liver and kidneys easier to repair than his appendix. The appendix has burst and collecting the waste from inside and putting it back where it belongs before it can spoil the other internals is an indisputable pain in the ass. The liver and kidneys just need to be pulled out of failure range. Cassie can come back to mend them properly another time. She repairs the crushed pelvis and lower rib fractures and spine before moving up to Luke's lungs and heart.
Both are inflamed and swollen and scared all to Tartarus and Cassie cleans up and reduces as much of that as she can. It'll take several sessions to get things truly working again, but Cassie knows that kind of work. She had been the one to treat Percy and Annabeth when they'd come through the Doors of Death. Inhaling acid smoke and drinking hellfire apparently had an oddly similar impact on the demigod body as cyclops forged lightning. She walks back the damage to the rest of his ribcage and spine while she's at it, pushing more for the damaged vertebra and nerves to straighten and un-crush themselves first.
She figures Luke won't care much if he can breath if she leaves him as a paraplegic.
Cassie moves up to his head next, leaving the bruising to heal on it's own but diving in to repair the fracture to his skull and the damage to his occipital lobe. The smashed eardrums are a fortunately easy fix as is the cracked tooth enamel. The cataract is a delicate issue to fix, but ultimately not a taxing one so she funnels the rest of the energy to healing the lenses and fried retina.
There's some scarring on Luke's brain and Cassie is suddenly grateful for the time she had spent with Bucky trying to get his memory back. She drops in one spark at a time, letting the magic zip along the surface of the tissue in agonizing increments. She leaves a faint haze of power behind to slowly work down the swelling and cool the tissue.
A single pulse of power goes in to each limb, untangling crushed limbs and pieces of the circulatory system. Lines of bones set themselves straight with wrenching cracks and a sickening hissing sound as she sets them to rights. Cassie is tiring quickly now, so she changes her focus from repair to reduction. She makes the bruises fade, the fractures bruises, and the breaks fractures, pushing the damage to a point of semi-healed, as if the injuries are weeks old and not minutes. She goes to his skin last, reducing the severity of the burns as far as her magic will bear.
That's where she stops it.
Any further and she'll be passed out right next to Luke.
Luke who is looking up at her with clear blue eyes. "Do you-" he coughs as his voice breaks. Cassie had reduced the damage to his larynx, but hadn't undone it completely. It hadn't been a priority next to all the other issues. "Do you think that counts for time number two?"
A broken laugh scrapes out of Cassie's chest and she lets herself lean down, resting her forehead on Luke's. "You didn't die that time," she informs him. "I wouldn't let you."
Luke shuts his eyes, looking as exhausted as Cassie feels. "And it was up to you?"
Cassie drops a quick, tender kiss to his brow. "Damn right it was," she says fiercely. "You, Luke Castellan, are never allowed to die on me again. Not when the rest of us have barely started forgiving you for the last time. You're just going to have to wait for disgustingly common old age to do it instead."
"Okay," he mumbles. "Am I allowed to nap though?"
"As much as you'd like," Cassie informs him, drawing back to lie beside him on the grass. Thalia has the watch and Annabeth will be with them soon. As if the last eighteen years have been a blink and nothing more. Her family is here, the only change is that it's bigger now. "if you behave during the recovery I'll get Sally to make you some chocolate chip cookies."
He makes a soft humming sound and Cassie thinks maybe he's already dropped off when he says, "It was the River, I think."
"River?" Cassie asks, twisting her neck to look towards him.
"Hmmm..." he responds. "I think that's why the gods put it back... So I could do this... and so Percy could do- do what he did. I think the gods saw something like this coming, and instead of helping they-" he breaks off to cough again and makes a low noise of pain as the movement contorts his body. "-They hedged their bets. Me and him as strong as possible. Both on the same side..."
His words connect in Cassie's head and she makes a sound that might be an agreement. "Maybe," she muses. "Could be anyway. Didn't exactly make you invulnerable this time though. Lots of broken bones and internal damage. Did what I could for it, but some of it's probably never going away."
Luke sighs. "I feel like how getting hit by a truck is supposed to feel," he mumbles. "If you're normal anyway. But not dead so..." his voice trails off and Cassie wonders again if he's fallen asleep. "The River and you," he says in a voice dull with fatigue. "My mom and you and Annabeth and Thalia, and here I am alive. All this family we've all got now."
Cassie makes herself sit back up and ignore the black that eats in on the edges of her vision. She pushes the hair back off his forehead and checks his temperature as she does. "I know what you mean," she tells him. "So many people to care for and to be cared about by these days."
Luke smiles. "It's enough, I think," he says, his voice the voice of the boy that had been gone before he and Cassie had ever met. "I didn't before. I took the Bolt then because I wanted more. I took it this time because I remembered... All of us safe. Happy. Everything I wanted. Everything important... That's enough."
Cassie feels someone approach from behind her and take a seat. Even before she sees the shield laid out in the grass Cassie can tell from the feel of the body that it's Steve. She lets herself lean back in to him, lets him take her weight and put his arms around her. She lets her head tuck in against his shoulder and the movement brings Annabeth in to her line of sight. Percy stands just over her right shoulder, right where he has been since they were all twelve and shorter and terrified of all the wrong things (and some of the right ones too).
"Enough," she agrees. "I promise." She squeezes Luke's hand one last time before she lets it go and withdraws her fingers so they can join with Steve's where they hold low and tight around her hip. "Annabeth will sit with you for a while," she says. "Thalia is still here too. I'm going to sleep for a little."
"Tally, Beth, and Cass, and me..." Luke mumbles in what's nearly a sing-song. "All of you here..." He lets out a long breath, then for a final time declares. "That's enough."
Then he does finally drift out of consciousness.
Cassie turns in Steve's grip, wiggling enough to face him so that their hearts can beat in to each other and her arms can return his embrace, reaching to slip them around his neck. Steve shifts, pulling her up and properly in to his lap, hands pressing against her shoulders and back like he wishes there was a way to fold her in to him completely. Cassie props her chin on his shoulder and turns her head to the side. "Everyone else okay?" she asks, watching her breath leave a trail of goosebumps on the skin of Steve's neck. "Does anyone need me? Haven't got much power left, but there's regular medical..."
She feels as much as sees him shake his head. "No. Nothing that needs you to look at it now." A kiss drops against her shoulder and one of his palms rubs a warm, wide circle in to her back. "You did good. You did so so good."
Cassie smiles and holds him a little tighter. "You too. Solid days of work all around."
He huffs out a laugh, the one Cassie likes best because it always seems like he's surprised himself and she's surprised him too when he does it, and buries his face in the top of her hair. It can't be very pleasant. There's no chance on earth it's clean or in any way fragrant any more, but Cassie decides that if Steve doesn't mind then she's not going to stop him.
They hold each other in silence for a moment before Cassie says. "Hey Steve? This is like, the fifth time we've publicly saved the world."
"I know," Steve replies. "Think we get a free coffee or something?"
"Like you'd ever take free coffee," Cassie mumbles, rolling her eyes even though Steve can't see it. A yawn that she can't fight back makes her jaw crack. "When we lived in D.C we all kept trying to make you take free stuff and you never did. Or you'd take it and then way over-tip."
Cassie feels him shrug under her. "That was a small business," he justifies.
"So you'd take a free Starbucks for life?" she checks.
He hesitates. "Well, I mean, I would still tip obviously."
Cassie smiles and turns her head to drop a kiss below his jaw. "I know you would. Hey Steve? I think I'm probably going to pass out now."
"No problem," Steve says. "I can carry you."
Little blue and purple stars are now dancing in the black field encroaching in to Cassie's vision. "Sounds good..." her voice trails off. "I didn't want you to worry is all..."
She feels her body being shifted as Steve adjusts their positions so Cassie is better cradled against his chest. "I appreciate the heads up," he says, chest now rumbling under her ear. "Still going to worry though."
Cassie frowns at that, wanting to do something to alleviate that. She can just picture the crease that must be formed between his eyes to match that tone. One of her hands reaches up blindly, her fingertips aiming for what she thinks is about the right spot. Steve catches her hand a lays a warm kiss over her fingers. "It's okay sweetheart," he says. "Sleep. I'll be here when you wake up."
And Cassie looses her fight with unconsciousness.
She wakes up later feeling much better (aside from the fact that her mouth feels like cotton) and makes three immediate observations. The first is that after she passed out, Steve located them to their apartment. More specifically, to their bed. The second, is that judging from the angle of the light coming through the gap in their curtains, they've been there for about six hours. The third is that Steve, as he always does, kept his promise to be there when she woke up.
He's passed out on the pillow right beside her.
Cassie let's him sleep, luxuriating in the rare opportunity to see him like this and in the knowledge that everyone they care about made it out of this day alive. She decides he should sleep as much as he wants to and carefully extricates herself from the duvet, padding across the floor on feet trained for silence and inherited from thieves. The bedroom door is shut behind her with as much silence as her steps and Cassie then turns her attention to coffee and breakfast.
On a whim, Cassie decides to make something nice and raids their fridge and cabinets to find the ingredients she's after. Steve is both an early riser and a light sleeper, so the fact that he doesn't emerge from the bedroom until coffee is percolating and Cassie is spooning batter in to muffin tins says very big things about how exhausted the fight must have left him. Cassie places a coffee mug in his hands and a piece of buttered toast in his mouth and turns to put the muffins in the oven before speaking.
"Eh wuvvoo," Steve says around the toast.
"I love you too," Cassie acknowledges after taking the millisecond needed to translate. "Want to cut up some fruit while I do the bacon?"
Steve finishes his piece of toast (which had mostly been offered as a stop-gap until the actual meal could be eaten) and takes out a knife and cutting board along with an assortment of peaches. "Just for us?" he asks. "Or should I do some strawberries too?"
"That depends on what you think the chances are of getting Bucky and Reyna out of bed in the next twenty minutes," Cassie replies. "I was debating texting, but I wasn't sure who in the building was up for visitors, or how many people we were up for seeing for that matter. If it's just them, we probably won't bring on a cascade of other people. Though with this group that's not a guarantee."
"I'll let Bucky know we're doing breakfast," Steve decides. "And I'll tell him to bring some extra supplies. If he's as hungry as me we'll go through what's already here way too fast.
Five minutes later a text from Bucky informs them that he and Reyna will be there with ingredients within twenty minutes. This gives Cassie enough time to run through the process of a shower and the procurement of comfortable clothes before their friends come through their front door nineteen minutes later. Incidentally, Bucky and Reyna were possibly the most punctual duo Cassie has ever encountered.
"We come bearing a very large loaf of bread and four types of jam," Reyna announces as she sets the aforementioned items on the table. "Also Sam and Agent Carter because they were both wandering the halls and this seemed better."
Sure enough, Sam and Sharon Carter both come through the door after Bucky. Sam looks as calm and collected as ever. Sharon looks like she's feeling a little awkward, but shoving it down like the first-rate operative her file says she is. Last time Cassie had seen her, the woman had most certainly been an ally if not necessarily a friend. Cassie can work with that classification.
"Hey," Cassie says with a little wave at both of them. "Welcome in. When did you get here Sharon?"
"I flew in this morning," the spy says. "Landed twenty minutes ago. I thought you all might need some help navigating clean up." She gives a little shrug. "I'm really good at making bureaucrats and politicians afraid of me until they give me things. Judging from the news coverage, it seemed like you all might have need of my services. Plus," she reaches in to her tote bag and extracts two bottles of Prosecco. "I brought alcohol? I saw it in the airport and figured someone would have a use for it."
"You aren't wrong," Cassie agrees. "I think there's orange juice somewhere. We can do mimosas."
As it turns out, Cassie and Steve don't have any orange juice, but Sam does and he makes a brief trip back to his apartment to pick it up. By the time he's back all the food is made and they're in the midst of one of the quieter brunches Cassie has ever attended. There's some combination at play of more or less introverted personalities, jet-lag, combat fatigue, and magic related exhaustion permeating the room that doesn't precisely invite chatter, but it's still undeniably pleasant for Cassie to just sit with a selection of friends and loved ones and enjoy a meal together after a battle.
Natasha and Barton slip in together when Cassie is finishing her first plate of food and contemplating seconds. Reyna is already half-way done with her second cup of coffee, and Steve and Bucky are getting thirds. Natasha has brought a tray of banana bread and Barton has a bag of what he confirms is Stark's fancy coffee.
More and more people filter in and out, both taking and bringing food. Everyone talks quietly, respecting the temporary peace of a quiet morning, in the quiet following the literal and metaphorical storm. Each time she sees one of her friends, Cassie indulges in a moment to relish them, to treasure their faces and savor the knowledge that, despite all the odds, they all lived.
Breakfast doesn't really end until lunchtime, and by then they've begun to collect in to groups based on their roles. It's similar to how they had begun things yesterday, only this time the abilities contemplated concern helping. Who can rewire electronics, knit flesh, purify water, and shift rubble become more distinguishing questions than the question of who can obliterate more enemies and who can protect more of their friend.
Cassie spends the say delivering the most mundane of mundane first aid, not touching on her magic at all after the gross over-uses yesterday. The farthest she goes is to allow a magical comprehensive scan of Luke's injuries three separate times over the course of the day. He's in and out of consciousness and only manages to get from his bed to the bathroom, but for a guy who got electrified the day before, he's doing remarkably well.
The next few days follow the same pattern, and that's only interrupted on day four when the international aid organizations arrive. Cassie gathers they'd been wrangled in to sending more supplies and volunteers than typical by Pepper, Reyna, and Sharon. Sharon confides to Cassie over a cup of chamomile tea on sixth evening after the battle that she's working on convincing the UN to pardon them all and repeal the Accords. She adds, smile vicious, that she doesn't plan on stopping until the repeal is issued with a public and vocal apology.
Cassie doesn't doubt she'll get it done. In the meantime, Cassie is content to heal here in Wakanda and help others to do the same. She has everyone she cares about, they're all healthy and whole, and her sleep is free of both nightmares and prophetic dreams. Rachel confirms that the spirit of Delphi is quiet within her mind with no dire predictions waiting to spill forth and destroy the tentative equilibrium they're trying to rebuild for themselves.
A week after the battle, the magicians of the House of Life take themselves home. They go in groups through swirling portals summoned in obelisks positioned in King T'Challa's throne room. Those who have the furthest to travel go first with those housed in the First Nome going home last. Given the cooling cycles necessitated by the obelisk, and the magical capacities of the portal summoners, the process takes an entire forty-eight hours.
The Kanes leave when the North American faction of the House depart. Jazz and Walt (who definitely seems more like Walt today than he did a week ago during the battle) go with them. Hugs and promises to be in touch sooner rather than later are exchanged before they go. Amos Kane is a shockingly good hugger. Cassie doesn't know what cologne he uses, but it's frankly amazing.
The Norse demigods go back to Boston, and by extension, Valhalla, on day nine. She catches Loki exchanging a few words with Samirah and Alex before they go. She looks away quickly and makes it a point not to listen to what's said. That's one situation she knows without double checking she wants nothing to do with. Magnus has several perfectly cordial conversations with his aunt while they complete healing rounds, their magic complimentary enough that they make a perfect healing team.
Annabeth and Percy leave with Magnus. Apparently, Mr. Chase is going to meet them in Boston to hear about the battle and take them both for dinner. It's possible her stepmother will be joining them. Their departure is accompanied by another round of hugging and Cassie has a text waiting for her telling them they've arrived safely approximately twelve seconds after their portal closes.
The contingent from Camp Jupiter take themselves home when the structural and irrigation damage to the battle field is repaired on day twelve. Everyone from Camp Half-Blood makes their way home curtesy of a portal from Dr. Strange on day fourteen. They're the last to go of the demigods. Cassie makes sure she sees each and every one of her siblings individually before they go.
The compound is quieter without them. Maybe that shouldn't be surprising, but it still takes Cassie a few days to adjust. She thinks the next people to go will be the SHIELD team from the Zephyr. That'll happen whenever they have enough political goodwill to get them official identities again.
So in other words... when none of them are technically wanted fugitives anymore.
Multiple people offer to transport Agent Sousa back to his home time, but all the man will say is that he "is where he needs to be." Cassie thinks that mindset might have a lot to do with Daisy Johnson. Steve lends the man a copy of his list of pop-culture things to get comfortable with. It's unlikely that the two of them will ever be best friends, but the two live by moral codes too similar to dislike each other.
In all, it's a day of departures, and that makes it hectic and emotionally draining in a whole different way from how the battle had been hectic and emotionally draining.
Cassie and Steve have diverging duties during the process as she's been mostly roped in to wishing people farewell and he's been volunteering to help with Wakandan rebuilding efforts. From Cassie's information, this largely means that he, as well as everyone else with superhuman strength, have been charged with shifting, stacking, and crushing rubble. This results in Cassie really only seeing her husband in the very beginning and very end of each day and sometimes at lunch, so she's more than delighted when the last leaving party clears out by one.
Cassie has taken approximately five steps back towards the housing complex and has just started to wonder if it's worth trying to locate Steve to take him a late lunch when Pietro scares the absolute shit out of her by flashing in to place directly in her path.
"Fucking hell Pietro," she swears, letting out a long breath to try to get her heart back under control. She releases the power she had instinctively called to life in her hands and drops them back to her sides. "Warn a girl next time!"
"Sorry," he says, not sounding all that remorseful. "My sister told me to find you. She was with Dr. Foster today and she says she believes the doctor is having contractions." Pietro winces and Cassie realizes that it's more than possible that Wanda is currently scolding him telepathically. "She is adamant that she does not have the requisite medical skills to deliver a baby and nor do Thor or Loki who are the only other two there."
Cassie winces and adjusts the strap of her bag over her shoulder. "It's a little early and this is a first baby. There's a good chance this might be Braxton Hicks, but given it's a demigod child and Jane's body isn't exactly playing by human rules I don't want to take chances with it." She gestures Pietro forward. "If you can, tell Wanda we'll be there as soon as we, well you, can."
Pietro nods, his face twitching in to an odd combination of furious concentration and hazy, distant, eyes. The look clears as Pietro steps forwards and scoops Cassie off the ground. "Wanda is relieved," he shares. "I told her we would be about twenty seconds. I want to see if I can beat it."
Before Cassie can inquire as to the point in racing against yourself that way when you're already a speedster, Pietro is moving, and Cassie decides that the better thing to do is keep her mouth shut until they've stopped. When that happens, her focus immediately switches to Jane. The astrophysicist seems to be in the process of pacing in short laps around her kitchen while trying to convince Thor to hover from a slightly greater distance away than two feet.
"Hi," Cassie greets as Pietro puts her down. Every face in the room shows some measure of relief at her arrival and Cassie notes that fact with something akin to dark humor. She crosses over to Jane and holds out her hands. "So, contractions?"
Jane makes a face like a sober person who just did a tequila shot. "A few," she confirms. "Nothing steady though. The last one was-" she checks the clock above the oven "twelve minutes ago. The gap between that one and the one before was eighteen minutes."
Cassie represses a smile. Of course Jane Foster would be carefully timing every contraction she felt. She wiggles her fingers, indicating for Jane to take them to make it easier for Cassie to check both her and the baby's blood pressure and heart rate. "Feeling okay otherwise?"
"I woke up with some back pain," Jane reports. At the words, Thor walks up behind her and splays one massive hand across Jane's back, digging in with his fingertips to ease the strain of a body the size of Jane's constantly hauling around the weight of a watermelon and then some. "But nothing that seemed out of the ordinary. There hasn't been a comfortable way for me to sleep in at least a month."
Cassie nods and lets her magic do a slow and thorough scan of Jane's body. When it's done she looks up at Jane and smiles. "Well I've got good news and bad news," she says, making her voice purposefully light and cheerful. "The good news is that you are, in fact, in labor!" She tries to make that sound cheerful, but the name of the process is working against her.
Thor frowns. "And the bad news Doctor?"
Cassie directs the same smile at him. "We're more or less at the very beginning of it," she shares. "This might turn out to be a very long day."
She's correct. The day stretches out long in to the night and Wednesday afternoon is beginning to bleed over in to Thursday morning before the real work of the process begins. That said, apart from the fact that they're pre Jane's due date by a few weeks, labor progresses in stages according to every textbook, lecture, and live experience Cassie has ever had the occasion to observe.
Thor helps Jane walk when that's what Jane wants, and Loki provides ice chips with a regularity of timing and tetchiness of manner that makes Cassie think there might just be something in the heart of the trickster god that is ever so slightly excited about the prospect of being an uncle, and perhaps a little nervous with his lack of knowledge on human birth. Freya plays doula, letting Cassie provide primary care for Jane's comfort. Cassie marvels a little internally at the fact that there's a god assisting a human woman with childbirth.
Their friends, teammates, and family move like the tides, ebbing and flowing in and out of the medical quarters in King T'Challa's facility at intervals that are both regular and randomized. Meg sets out a selection of light, high calorie, and easy to eat snacks that Jane can pick from as and when she feels up to it and shares that she's stocked the fridge at Thor and Jane's house so they won't have to cook (or attempt to cook as is more likely the case knowing Thor and Jane) for a while after the baby arrives. Tony, Steve, Bucky, and Sam dedicate themselves to finishing constructing all of the baby furniture not yet built under Pepper's supervision. Darcy stays through nearly the entire labor, only leaving for a few hours to complete the organization and ordering of more diapers and formula than Cassie had thought possible.
Wanda doesn't visit, the stress of a birth too difficult for her telepathy to take for hours on end, but she does check in at times to provide mental updates on the baby which is simultaneously helpful, cool, and creepy as Tartarus. T'Challa is preoccupied with relief efforts, but promises to come around to visit sometime in the next day or two, and Shuri is too uncomfortable with birth to stay, but does spend an hour optimizing Cassie's medical equipment and monitors. Natasha plays the role of go-between, carrying updates on the process to their waiting friends and returning with updates on everything being done to finalize preparations for the new arrival.
Reyna arrives at the very end, right when Jane is sobbing that this has all lasted too long, and she's ready to give up. Reyna quietly takes Jane's hands and lends the Doctor her strength, helping bolster her through the end of the birth.
And, at the end of seventeen very long and complicated hours, there's a baby. He's tiny and wrinkle faced and has a surprisingly large amount of fuzzy blonde hair on his head. He has ten fingers, ten toes, a healthy appetite, and judging by the volume of his wailing, a very strong set of lungs. His eyes are reactive, his babinski reflex is pristine, and nothing whatsoever is wrong with his hearing. He weighs seven pounds and five ounces, and he's eighteen inches long. It's a little bit on the smaller side of average, but bigger than a baby born three weeks early should reasonably be expected to be.
In short, the newest demigod is here in the world barely days after it all could have ended, and he is totally and completely perfect.
Cassie is the first person to ever hold him, and he is warm and ineffably delicate in her arms, a weight that means everything, and yet can barely be felt. As soon as he's measures, washed, and dried, Cassie hands him over to Jane, who despite her flush-faced exhaustion is sitting up and already reaching for her son.
"He's perfect," Cassie tells them, and not one single letter of the words are a lie. "A tiny bit small, but he'll grow. Perfect eyes, ears, lungs, fingers, and toes." She finishes entering the numbers that spell all of that our on to the electronic medical chart on her terminal. These are the first recordings of the baby's life, and Cassie takes an extra moment to make sure that each of them is nothing less than one hundred percent accurate.
She stands when she's done and steps over to the side of the bed, leaning against the foot. Thor is crowded in to the top of the bed behind Jane, bracing the weight of the rest of his family against his chest, his enormous arms cradling Jane's tiny ones where they are wrapped around their new child's minuscule form. Jane has always looked small next to Thor. Their baby is near microscopic.
Both parents are beaming down at their child, creating a private world of three, and Reyna quietly excuses herself from the room with shinning eyes. Cassie gives the three of them a few moments to relish in it before asking, "Does he have a name to go with all the hair?"
Jane looks up at her, beaming and smiling all at once, he glances up at Thor with a look of question and Thor does nothing but press a small flood of fervent kisses across her temple, brow, and cheeks. Jane beams and then directs her eyes back at Cassie. "Erik," Jane tells her. "After Dr. Selvig. Erik Charles."
"Erik Charles Thorson-Foster," Thor amends. "I know it is human custom to hyphenate names. Our child's surname will honor us both. He will always know he has a place, no matter the sphere he is in."
Cassie beams at both of them, letting the pure joy of the both of them wash over her, honored to be able to share in it, even just a little by being on the periphery of the occasion. "It's perfect," she tells them, adding the name to the chart. It's the first time that this name will ever be written down, and always will be. "Who would you like for his first visitor to be?"
"Loki," Jane says before Thor can speak, surprising everyone in the room. She shrugs, eyes not moving from baby Erik's face. "He saved me once from Dark Elves years ago. he saved us all again earlier this week. He should meet his nephew, and Erik should know his uncle. There are days to remember everything that a person has ever done and days to move on and look forward. This is a day to look forward."
Thor kisses her again, but is smiling so widely Cassie almost can't believe the expression fits on his face. "Darcy should come as well," he adds. "She is going to be-" Thor breaks off, forehead wrinkling as he looks for the word he wants. "I believe the common word is godmother?"
Cassie smiles, thinking about the kind of life that little Erik is going to grow up having, the childhood a son of the god of lightning and a brilliant scientist will have with an ice god of mischief for an uncle and Darcy Lewis, professional organizer and master of the tazer will have. "I'll go get them both," she promises, then slips away to do just that.
Loki is waiting outside, sitting sprawled on the ground with his back to the wall. It's a surprisingly human pose to take, and on another day Cassie might let it throw her off balance. Today, it's a smaller miracle than the others that have happened in the last twenty-four hours. More surprisingly, Wanda is sitting next to him, sitting quietly with a travel mug of tea in her pale hands. It smells of ginger and is hot enough to steam in the air conditioning. Cassie wonders if it's to to ward off the cold of sitting next to Loki or the nausea of sitting in the medical wing for so long.
"You have a nephew," Cassie informs the god, bypassing any other comments or news. "Erik. His parents would like you to meet him."
To his credit, his eyes only widen by a fraction before his face re-settles. It strikes Cassie all at once that Loki had merely been sitting there to wait for news without any expectation of being invited to meet the baby. She wonders how long he had expected to go without the encounter happening. Knowing how some gods manage whole lifetimes without ever meeting their own children, the answer could have been a very long time indeed.
Loki nods, but doesn't step forward. Wanda gives him a small push in the small of his back and a small smile when he shoots her a raised-eyebrow scandalized expression. "Go and see your brother and meet your nephew," she instructs. Then she turns to Cassie. "I will walk out with you and fetch Darcy. Clearly she had been listening to the thoughts on the other side of the wall.
"I can find Darcy," Cassie offers. "You don't have to worry about it."
Wanda shakes her head and takes Cassie's arm, leading her up the hall towards the waiting room with the others. "You can tell our family the news," she says instead. "So many happy people at once will be overwhelming. Like a contact high. I would prefer to keep a clear head. Besides, the rest of us have been able to take breaks today. You have been awake the whole time. You need bed."
There's no arguing with anything she's said, so Cassie doesn't.
Wanda slips away when they reach the group-appointed waiting room and Cassie delivers the news. Having gone almost directly in to private employment with Tony, she's very rarely had the occasion to play this kind of messenger. Still, she doesn't think she does the job badly when she lists of Erik's name and general measurements. She ends with a wide smile and the general pronouncement "The newest member of Team Avengers is a very healthy little boy."
The words are greeted with a small round of whoops and celebrations muted somewhat in deference to their location in a healing center. Hugs are exchanged indiscriminately and Cassie is tugged in to more than one of them. She goes happily in to each one and answers scattered questions about the birth as far as she feels she can until she's at the edges of Jane's privacy. The new parents can share more of the story when they want to.
The joy is infectious and Cassie marvels at how much shared happiness news like a birth can bring. She knows in her heart that her own birth had had no such crowd waiting for news of her arrival in the waiting room. There had been no heard of friends to make her baby furniture or stock her mother's refrigerator with meals for weeks. There had only been her mother, exhausted and alone, scared and determined... and her father. Her father had visited for a stolen moment to deliver his blessings. Blessings, and her lullaby.
The thoughts aren't as bitter as they might have been years or even months before, Cassie reflects, coming to rest in the final pair of arms to hold her for the evening. Steve's arms are warm around her and his heart beats a perfect rhythm under her ear as she is tucked in to his chest.
Her children will have more than blessings and a lullaby. They will have a crowd of aunts and uncles all clamoring to help take care of them, and love them, and teach them in whatever way they can. They will have Katya and Erik and doubtless a hosts of other children to come for cousins. A whole host of heroes will wait, just like this, for news of Them. Her children will be loved and held and cherished and taught and trained. They will be heroes - there won't be a way around that - but they will be her children first. They will get to be children, and they will never in their lives be made to feel that their childhood is a privilege they have to earn, instead of an inherent right from being born her child.
Cassie settles in to Steve's arms, full of a sense of contented accomplishment, and angles her face up to great his kiss. Cassie's gift has never been in prophecy, but in this moment, she is as sure of the future she sees as any Oracle.
The future does not prove her wrong exactly, but it is so, so, so much fuller than Cassie had ever expected it to be.
It fills when Pepper and Tony give Katya a little sister, a girl named Morgan who flied through life without needing the repulsors her father had invented. It fills when Meg and Pietro have two sets of twins, one identical, one not, for a total of three boys and one girl. It fills when Loki and Wanda give those twins and baby Erik a Cousin in common, a tiny girl with mischief in her eyes and power in her her pale hands that dances in the red-brown of her hair.
The future fills with more weddings (Reyna and Bucky have the smallest, but it's Cassie's personal favorite. Luke and Darcy have the most chaotic, and yet somehow the best organized Vegas elopement in history), more children (Cassie is honorary godmother to both Lucy Jackson and Michael Solas-Di'Angelo. Steve is delighted godfather to Riley Wilson, Sam and Sharon's youngest and Hope Barnes, the oldest of Reyna and Bucky's four children). There are more missions, and more near-misses. There are arguments and growing pains and deep debates. There's a move back to the U.S and new governments and a new version of SHIELD. There are more demigods and more full gods and heroes of every kind.
Steve and Cassie's first child is a boy who demonstrates a fantastic sense of dramatic irony by being born on the fifth anniversary of the signing of the Sokovia accords. Those same accords are repealed completely just months before Cassie gives birth, which means of course that the apartment is barely half unpacked when Cassie's water breaks in the middle of the night. As predicted, a whole horde of Avengers are ready and willing to spring in to action to rectify the situation.
When Steve asks in a shaking voice what they should name their own perfect baby boy, Cassie rolls her eyes at him. As if their first child was going to be named for anyone and anything other than their godfather, regardless of gender. After all, Jamie can be a unisex name these days. Bucky crying at the birth of his own children is expected, him crying when he holds his namesake for the first time is less so.
Liam, their second child is born in a much more quiet and sedate manner, and he goes on to live his life in much the same manner. He is two weeks past his due date, cries only when he needs something, and likes nothing more than for Steve to carry him around on his shoulders.
Their youngest child, and only daughter, is born without Jamie's sense of dramatic irony, but with considerably more fussing than Liam. She is born on her due date exactly. Exactly exactly, at flatly 12:01 on the predicted day of March 31. Ella cries often and eats fussily and only sleeps after Cassie has sung her a lullaby. Cassie gives her daughter the same song her father gave to her.
Cassie and Steve learn and teach and grow and love. Their friends and their family does the same. The world will say that their legacies are of heroic deeds and history making events. Cassie will say that their legacy is one of love and work and choices.
Their children will carry that on, but those stories belong on other pages. They would take too much time to tell.
After all, for all the love their is, the legacy is inarguably one of gods, and one of heroes.
And the Gods- Well.
Cassie has always thought, and will always think, that the Gods must be crazy.
Authors Note: Well holy shit guys. It's over. I want to say thank you all for sticking with this story all the way until the end. I started this story nearly six and a half years ago in the summer before I started college. Now here I am on Thanksgiving 2023 with half a year left of law school. It's been a wild ride with big time gaps when real life got a little too real and that you all kept coming back is just incredible. I am still working through Steve's POV as a pet project when I have time and that'll be around for you to look at eventually if you want to. I'm not 100% happy with the ending, but I sort of don't think anyone ever is? There's a small idea starting to grow in my head with a sequel focusing on Ella and Ikaris from the Eternals. I know he's not the most popular character from that set, but I am simply not immune to 'Richard Madden is Hot' disease. Let me know if there's interest and I'll see if I can't figure out some kind of plot. Thank you all again! Review for me one last time! All my love xoxoxoxoxoxooxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxox April 3