don't you forget about me
show: Young & the Restless
central character(s): Cassidy "Cassie" Newman, with mentions of every Newman family member in between.
summary: Perhaps, there are still streets of gold. / Or, Cassie Newman navigating the afterlife. Sort of.
notes: this is the sequel of Safe & Sound. And this is much longer than Safe & Sound. And this sort of explores how dark Nick got after she died from Cassie's perspective. It mentions Sharon and the rest of the Newmans but not as much as Nick. Either way, enjoy.
disclaimer: consider this disclaimed. All other unrecognizable characters are mine, such as Holly Jensen. She is another one of my brainchildren and it was fun to make her. Enjoy.
I.
Cassie cannot let go.
She cannot let go of her life.
She has no body, no breath, no life, and essentially, she'll be fourteen forever. Perception of time changes when she dies, and eternity stretches out for what seems like forever because it is: infinite.
She gazes her body in the morgue as it lies on the silver table, her skin pale with cuts and bruises that turn into a road map of what happens in those seconds before and after the accident. Her red hair is wrapped up underneath white bandages, and she can't understand. Cassie knows she's dead, because the never-ending sound of flatling weaves and curls itself into the memories that are locked within her after death. She still wears a hospital gown, yet she can't feel the ground beneath her bare feet.
Looking down at her own skin, it's flawless and skin with not a single scratch on it. Her copper red hair is loose are free about her shoulders. She flexes and unflexes her fingers – long and slender and there's no pain. Cassie walks closer, gazing at the body that once holds her: no breath, no steady heartbeat.
Cassie wants to reach out and touch it her own body. But can't.
The sensation of touching her body on the cool metal table makes her shiver and Cassie pulls her hand back as if being burned.
A nurse comes from behind a curtain and pulls the sheet over Cassie's body so it fully covers her now, whispering quietly that a girl this beautiful and this young shouldn't have to die.
"It's called being Earthbound," a matter-of-fact female says and Cassie nearly jumps a mile high. A woman of about twenty five stands there in a stark white off-the shoulder dress that stops at the knees and bare feet. She has side swept bangs with honey brown hair that teeters between blonde and brown depending on where the light hits her hair.
She smiles, dimples in her cheeks and light green eyes that glint.
"My dad has dimples," Cassie comments, stupidly and blinks.
The woman beams now, "Ah, Nicholas Newman – Cassie Newman, daughter of Nicholas and Sharon Newman, yes?" she looks around Cassie, at the body lying still on the morgue table. "Recently dead?"
"Yeah," she answers, and forces herself to stop staring by dropping her gaze. Yes, she's dead. Cassie is not alive. She is dead. Dead by vehicle with bright lights, tires screeching and the sound of a scream that rips from her throat so loud and blood curdling, it can't be her. But it is. It's hers. She looks up, lip trembling. "Car accident. But I was trying to help someone."
"I know that," the woman says, looking somber. "Cassie, I'm Holly Jensen. It's very nice to meet you."
Cassie blinks, forces a smile. "Hi, it's nice to meet you too," and then questions, with confused and a whole flurry of other emotions, running through her. "You said something about me being Earthbound. What does that really mean?"
Holly explains, "Basically, life and death is blurred. A person dies so quickly and abruptly – and this is at any age – that the way you were alive is still fresh so you think you have a body when you don't. Being Earthbound means you can't quite let go of living and accept that you're in fact, dead. You know it up there," Holly points to her temple, "but not here," she finishes and places a hand to her heart to prove a point. "It's something every deceased person goes through."
The teenager sighs, looking down at the ground where she still can't feel the ground beneath the soles of her feet when they're planted there so firmly.
"Do you understand?" Holly asks, gently.
No.
Yet Cassie nods. She has no choice but to understand.
.
"Dead people look asleep," Holly comments, as her face blooms into a light smile.
"Yeah, they do," Cassie answers, and shivers lightly when the cold air in the morgue goes right through her.
Of course, they do, Holly says. "Until the magic of rigor mortis sets in. Your physical body hardens and then you don't feel as strongly connected to your life anymore."
No, Cassie wants to protest as it bubbles in her, dead or alive. It's all still there, all of the sounds, and sights she's immersed in her fourteen years of living – more in the four years of getting a real family, the only family and home she fits into. She still smells the hay in the stables. Cassie still remembers the smell of her grandfather's cologne. She still sees the stars that liter a nearly black sky.
Cassie also sees the art her Aunt Victoria creates, bringing inanimate objects to life with paints and a few brushstrokes to a previously empty canvass.
Cassie questions, defiantly because she can't, won't let of those, "What about my memories?"
"Those are with you, forever. The good ones, the bad ones, and the ones that cause nightmares."
The way Holly speaks, Cassie wants to ask how she dies. Why she's so sad, but doesn't.
That's not very polite, anyway.
Cassie used to watch horror movies with Dad, while she was equally fascinated and scared all at once.
She would grasp Dad's arm with one hand and clutch Cindy in the other, tightly.
As Cassie left the morgue and her body behind with Holly (they can walk through walls and door knobs are kind of not needed at this point), an odd realization hit her: Hollywood lied; the dead didn't come back as undead vampires, or zombies either.
They just…stayed dead.
(Here's the thing that's made Cassie cry, and want to scream with frustration worse than when Mom and Dad grounded her over the stupidest things: she didn't how to stay dead. She only knew how to live—and she couldn't even fight her body hard enough to do that.)
II.
She's not wearing a hospital gown.
Instead, Cassie is wearing the last outfit she does before the accident before metal bends and glass shatters and it's all black with instances few and far between.
She looks down and there are ruby red shoes on her feet like Dorothy because there is no place like home. There really isn't, but Cassie's sad because she can't go back. She can't go back. It's something she has to tell herself.
Cassie looks up and sees Holly in front of her twirling in a bright yellow dress.
She laughs, and giggles but the hospital hallways are bare.
.
"God," Holly says, on a sigh and grins. She stops twirling, and she glows. "I loved this dress."
"Why?" Cassie asks, before she can stop the word from comes out. "Sorry. I just got curious."
The honey blonde tucks a lock of her hair behind her ear, as it falls down in gentle waves. She shakes her head, "No, no," Holly objects, and grins. "We're friends now. I'll tell you."
"I just met you two days ago."
"No," Holly playfully argues, with a smile – like they're friends for years. "I was sent to you because just like life, the afterlife is no picnic either, and I consider us friends."
Cassie chuckles, noticing her bangs and smoothes them out like someone will actually see her.
But no, the janitor and one or two nurses straggle by.
Sure, Genoa City stops because Cassie Newman succumbs to injuries sustained in a car accident and dies tragically at the young age of fourteen (note: the media's words, not hers), but as for the world, the jury is still out on that one.
Like an eight ball: all signs point to no (but, that's okay).
.
Holly's cheeks are painted pink as she runs her hand against the bright yellow fabric. She closes her eyes, and for a brief moment looks like an angel, something ethereal – probably reliving the memory of that bright yellow dress for a brief moment.
Cassie stares, as Holly's green eyes open again and are rimmed with tears.
"This was the dress I wear to my last birthday dinner. Damien proposed me there. And I said yes. It was one of the happiest moments of my life. It was my last instance of being happy."
"Oh."
"I'm pretty certain your life was filled with happy moments."
"Yeah," Cassie replies, fingering the gold necklace with the initials CN engraved on the back. "It was."
"Alright," Holly clapped her hands with a flourish. Her yellow dress still billowed around her knees and Cassie still wanted to get out of these clothes. "The next lesson in The Afterlife 101."
Cassie found herself in the park – where her parents took her all the time. There was the swing he pushed her on, and as Noah got older, Cassie tried to be a good big sister and pushed Noah on the swing. That made her smile. At least, the memory of it. The bright red twisty slide seemed so scary because it was really fast and had a lot of twists and turns, but Dad always slid down with her and it wasn't so scary anymore. Then, there were the two sets of monkey bars where she and Noah would race to see who reached the end first.
She had walks with her grandmother, just talking about girl stuff. And sometimes, it was just her and Grandpa where Cassie could talk to him about life, her general opinions, and the future (note: most of the time it was hers; he'd say he hoped to have her work at Newman when she was older, and Cassie would smile and say I love you but we'll see) and have a few laughs.
Her family had some of the best memories here.
The memories that played in front of her eyes like a really nice film dissipated and Cassie blinked, finding Holly in front of her instead.
"Have a nice memory?" Holly questioned.
Cassie started at her for a moment, realizing that Holly's dress was gone. It was replaced with a purple and black plaid button down shirt, dark blue skinny jeans and black and white Converse shoes.
"I was just reliving the times when my family and I used to come here. Especially when I was a kid."
"Ah," Holly replied, with an off-handed shrug of her shoulder. "I just figured since you zoned out. Your energy pulled away from me and I figured you were reliving a moment in time. We can do that."
"Really?"
"Yeah. I told you," Holly reiterates, running a hand through her hair. "Memories are always with you. Sometimes, we see our pasts, most of the time we see our present and in rare occasions, we get to see glimpses of our future. What we could have become. – even when our lives are either mapped out to be short or long."
Cassie just wanted to get out of these clothes and get over the crash that took her life.
But Holly was right about the memories: she was the star of her own automobile horror related movie.
.
"How did you lose your yellow dress?"
Holly glanced at the sky on the edge on a sunrise. "I lost it doing what you've been doing since you died. That's why you're wearing what you're wearing."
Cassie glanced away, tears filling her eyes before gazing back at Holly, hoping that she could tell her that was in limbo. That, this was all her imagination and that seeing her own body on a morgue table was just a product of a sick, desperate imagination.
"I'm wearing the last thing I decided to wear on the morning of my death. I'm reliving my death," and then Holly sat on the adjacent swing and sighed, "but not by choice," Holly visibly looked shaken. "Never by choice, Cassie. That's the next thing about being dead. There's no control over which memories you relive."
Cassie looked at her and visibly gulped. That was the question that always beat itself into Cassie's skull with a sense of curiosity that got heavier with every passing moment with this woman, forever trapped into being twenty-five. It was the same question Cassie always wanted to ask, ever since Holly showed up in the morgue.
"Holly," Cassie questioned, looking into Holly's green eyes, "how did you die?"
The honey blonde looked back at her with a sad smile. "Shot through the heart once," and then Cassie watched as the dark purple fabric of Holly's shirt became stained with dark red. The stain bloomed outward across her chest until Holly's rosy skin became a ghastly pale and dark circles developed underneath her eyes.
"Holly!" Cassie cried, genuinely worried. "Your shirt, and your face –"
Holly shook her head, voice above a whisper and tears streaming down her face. She offered a conciliatory half-smile, only one dimple visibly in her cheek, "Don't worry about me, Cassie. I was dead before I hit the ground."
III.
Cassie cannot do this.
She can't adapt to being dead, really, and she can't watch her family grieve: there's her mother who sobs over picking a coffin at the funeral home, there's Noah who tries to make sense of why he is an only child and he asks why Cassie has left him. He sleeps with Cindy the first night she doesn't get to.
Cassie watches Aunt Victoria – she puts her grief on the white canvass and the end product is a portrait of herself; the most beautiful portrait Cassie ever sees – yelling at her dad, frustrated and not sure how to deal with their own grief. Aunt Victoria yells not to let the grief overtake him, that he's her brother and they have issues before and a little after she returns from Italy but they have to come together.
"Nick, you know how I feel about Sharon, but she's your wife. You have to let someone in. Anyone. I know we still have issues with each other, but it's not healthy to be trapped in your head all the time."
"I'm sorry I'm not spilling my guts in public, Vick. We'll say goodbye to my little girl tomorrow, and then I'll deal in my own way, my own time, so back off," Dad replies, and Cassie wants to yell that she's right here, that she hasn't gone anywhere. He stalks right past her, through her and the house she grows up reverberates with a slam of the door.
And there is Grandma Nikki with tears dampening her cheeks, wondering on a whisper how this cracked family is going to survive this tragedy. Cassie sees Grandpa, the strongest and most resilient man she knows, enclose her in a warm hug and assures her that they are Newmans and they will survive because they are strong. They will bend, but they will not break and that she, Cassie, will always be a part of the Newman family.
"Oh, Grandpa," Cassie whispers, touched and heartbroken all at once.
A tear streaks Cassie's face and it breaks her heart when she sees her grandfather's eyes rimmed with tears of his own.
Somewhere in Eau Claire, Doris Collins misses her granddaughter – and Cassie feels that too.
No, she can't do this.
(She's ready to live. She'll tap her shoes three times like Dorothy just to live again.)
.
"This isn't Dawn of the Dead, Cassie. Accept that," says Holly's voice, resolutely.
She's trembling. Screaming that she's right here and that it's all a sick dream. Cassie wants to yell until her throat is raw and burning and she wakes up in her bed.
Cassie would give anything to be grounded now and on lockdown now.
"I can't. I won't," Cassie sniffles, and looks at Holly defiantly. "I don't have to accept anything."
"No, you don't," Holly argues, eyes snapping fire. She's actually angry. "But you listen to me – death is final. That is something you will have to accept. This right here," Holly says, with finality, "is something you have to accept. Without warning. Welcome to reality, sweetheart."
"Why?" Cassie shoots back, frantically. "Who says? How do you know?"
"Because," Holly's voice comes out as an angry exasperated hiss. Holly Jensen has been dead for three years, "that's the hand you are dealt."
The red head is shaking with a frustrated and desperate anger. "That's crap."
"Maybe. But it's true crap. Some people, like your brother Noah, are meant to touch people's lives in long stretches of years; get married and have some children. From birth, Cassie Newman, you were not meant to live long. Do with that what you will," Holly says, and disappears through the mahogany door of her house.
Cassie's anger dissipates, and she's left cold and alone.
(She's only fourteen. Cassie will forever be fourteen.)
Holly disappeared for three days.
In those three days, Cassie watched her own funeral service dressed in the dress she wore to her grandparent's wedding: the headstone and her light pink casket being lowered six feet into the ground as everyone she loved and cared about grabbed a handful of dirt before throwing it in the hole.
The most poignant instances was when Cassie saw her mother sob over the casket, and her father a quick speech but how Cassie changed his life – no, Dad, you changed mine, she said like they would actually hear her – and that the perpetrators will be caught and dealt with.
Cassie felt all of her Dad's energy ("We don't feel physically anymore. We pick up on the living's energies now," Holly had once said.) – his sadness, his anger, his despair, his grief; all of it – and she wanted to tell him to stop, plead with him and tell him that the blame should lay with her because her hands were on the wheel.
She saw her father rip Phyllis – Daniel's mom – to shreds and Holly appeared, smiling at her and cross-legged as she sat on the pew beside Cassie.
"Where were you?"
"Around," she answered, succinctly. She blinked her green eyes and took in the amount of people, and whistled lowly. "Wow, you're really loved, Cassie. I'm almost envious."
Cassie glanced down, and knew that. She had no doubt, in the least.
She glanced back up, eyebrows knitting together in silent question. "Didn't you have a big family?"
"Yes, and no," Holly shook her head. "A couple of parents that were divorced with new marriages and a whole set of half-siblings, my fiancé, both sets of grandparents, a few close family friends. Some friends from high school came, and then there was my best friend – my twin sister, Hannah."
"Twin?"
"Yeah," Holly nodded, with a full grin while wearing a red one shouldered dress that came from the memory of her high school senior prom. Her sister was the Prom Queen. "We're identical. Or, were."
Noah placed Cindy on her coffin and whispered an I love you Cassie truly felt because she loved him too.
"You have a good little brother. He'll live long."
Cassie smiled, feeling equal parts sad and equal parts proud.
IV.
"Your dad is in a dark place. I felt him grieve for you. It overwhelmed me and I had to find you."
"I know," Cassie answers, and fingers the headstone of her grave. It's a dark marble. She can't feel the smoothness underneath her fingertips anymore. There she is, buried. "So, how do I get him out?"
Holly looks away. "You can't."
"Why?" Cassie replies, growing tired of the limitations. "I have to help him."
"I know you do. Sometimes, I want to help my sister, but you have to let them grieve – and everyone's grieving process is different."
The older woman chuckles, runs a hand over the new grave as it goes through her hand. Holly clenches a hand into a fist before unflexing and stretching her slender fingers to their full length.
"Ever possess a body, Cassie?"
Cassie blinks, slightly dumbfounded, "No."
"Good, because you can't mess with the living's free will," Holly sighs, resigned. "Sometimes, a little darkness is what a person needs to find some light. At his core, Nick Newman is one of the good guys," she says, and nudges Cassie playfully, who chuckles lightly. "But you know this, rookie."
.
"Wait, have you ever messed with someone's free will, Holly?"
Holly coughs, awkwardly, covering it up with a tight lipped smile. "We're not gonna talk about that."
Sometimes, when a person that the dead loved while they lived were emotionally strained, their energies went through the roof and pulled their spirit closer to them for comfort, or clarity.
Cassie learned that this was true with Holly, after Hannah was her twin and twins were more connected in every sense: mind, body, and spirit.
"You have the closest emotional connection to Nick. Believe it or not. That's what I felt. He didn't have to cry or say anything for me to feel it. It's like I saw every moment he'd ever had with you like flashes," Holly explained, closing her eyes before green eyes peered at Cassie again. "In other words, if he actually is emotionally open, he can see you and feel like he wasn't losing his sanity."
The accident was never Daniel's fault. He was never the one driving. It was all her. All her fault.
It was one of the best things Cassie had heard from Holly: she had so much to say to her dad but I love you was enough for the moment.
V.
Cassie Neman remains dead three months and a half and is still a Rookie in the Afterlife Thing.
Her family still grieves
(by slowly imploding and she's completely and utter powerless.)
.
Sometimes, she expects to feel sunshine on her face as she tries to sneak in a few more minutes of sleep before school. Yet she's isn't that successful because every ten minutes after seven, her alarm clock reminds her to be up and ready.
The scent of her bubble bath – apple with an underlying smell of cinnamon – still hangs in the air around her. It's things like this that go back to when things are normal, and the only dilemma for Cassie is picking out the perfect prom dress.
.
Again, Cassie sees the little sister she will never meet but will love always.
(Hello, Faith.)
.
Here's one of the last things Cassie learns from Holly about the afterlife and a person's destination as they physically rest: heaven is subjective and anything Cassie wants it to be.
And for her, heaven is home.
.
Perhaps, there are still streets of gold.
(Fin.)
A/N: Okay, I'm done and I'm gonna take a breather to give my muse a break or she'll go nuts and make me not want to write anything.
I'm outlining three different oneshots and a chapter, too.
Feedback is encouraged and much appreciated. Thanks. Excuse any typos. I will edit in the morning.
-Erika
PS. Yay! Ronan Malloy will be back on our televisions next month. I'm excited because that man makes my ovaries tingle. SEXYBEASTRONAN, BABY! I don't care for Chlonan, Phonan…or whatever. But I'm excited for the character itself to come back and build relationships with people in GC, like his mama, Nina, for example. Jeff Branson coming back just made my SUMMER! Let's hope Chance comes back too to make my summer doubly good!