Her room is dark and cool as she slips through the window, landing silently on the carpeted floor. It's way past midnight—close to dawn actually, because she the horizon had been brightening on her flight home—so she knows her mom's asleep, probably passed out in front of the TV. Unlike the other members of the team, Ms. Sandsmark knew full well about her daughter's extracurricular activities. It had taken some doing to convince her to let Cassie join the team, but no one made a better negotiator than the Princess of Themyscira. So her mom had given in, but she still worried, often waiting up nervously until Cassie got home or anxiously watching news broadcasts to make sure things went well on missions. Cassie knew she had probably stayed up until she'd seen the news, that the Justice League had defeated the war machine and the earth was safe, before at last allowing her self to stop worrying.
How could she have known that that was when she should have started?
Cassie still feels like she's in a waking dream. Nothing seems real—not the posters on her wall, her unmade bed or the homework that lies sprawled across her desk, hopelessly unfinished. They're all remainders of a world that no longer existed—a world where Jaime Reyes was a shy, kind, smiling boy, her friend and her teammate and the person she trusted the most. A world that had just been irrevocably shattered.
She doesn't know how long she stands there, unseeing, before at last her body gives into exhaustion. She sinks onto the edge of her bed as if the weight of the world is pressing down on her. Like the weight of the alien body that had pressed down on her in the cargo bay, crushing her, forcing the breath from her lungs, rendering her helpless, useless—
She gasps suddenly, forcing herself to clear her thoughts. Her knuckles are white; her whole body shakes. She shuts her eyes tightly and concentrates on her breathing: in and out, in and out, the way Diana had taught her. She knows the Amazon tricks to fight the battle-shock. At last, when the blood is no longer pounding in her ears she leans back, stretching out on her bed and staring blankly at the ceiling. She fights the memories, but they come to her anyway, in quick, terrifying flashes like visions out of Hades.
There's the sound of the rock hitting Bart's skull, a blow so powerful he hadn't even had time to utter a cry before collapsing to the ground. The eerie glow of the gamma rays as they ploughed into her teammates, tearing through their insides and mowing them down like paper. Robin, trying to fight; Arsenal, shaking in terror; the horrifying, sucking sound as the cargo doors opened up to space like a gaping maw. The sound of Connor's voice as he'd asked the question that had been flashing through all their minds in those swift, nightmarish moments.
Why.
It's the same word that kept repeating now, over and over in her head, filling her mind like an echo in an empty cavern.
Why, Jaime? She couldn't understand. He would never betray the team. She remembered the day she had recruited him, the look on his face when he saw what it was like, that moment he'd first realized what kind of world he could be a part of. She remembered because she knew exactly what he was feeling. She'd felt it too; the first time she'd seen Diana in action. And again, the first time she'd flown beside her. It was that kind of feeling—a feeling that you had the power to make a difference—that had made her so sure of Jaime. Because how could you ever betray a feeling like that?
But she was strong, not stupid. She knew what Jaime had been worried about. After all, his main confidante had been a speedster who pretty much gave new meaning to the term "motor-mouth". Bart hadn't meant to let it slip, but Cassie could be pretty convincing. Especially when she got her lasso involved.
The concept of a Post-Apocalyptic-Tyrant-Jamie had been pretty shocking, she had to admit. But still, her faith in him had stayed strong. Cassie was the type of girl who trusted her gut, in battle and in life. And she had trusted her gut feeling about Jaime.
Right up until the moment that he had crushed her under a two ton alien and pinned her writss to the floor.
Anger boils up in her stomach, hot and powerful. She turns suddenly, slamming her fist into the mattress beside her with a cry of rage. An explosion of feathers greets her, accompanied by the snapping of wood as the frame of her bed snaps in half.
Then the tears come, too powerful and too swift to fight them off.
She had been stupid. Stupid and naïve. She'd made another dumb mistake like the rookie she was. The others had trusted Jaime too, sure, but they hadn't been as close to him as she had. They hadn't recruited him. She should have seen it, seen the signs of a traitor, warned them all before it had been too late…but she'd been too busy mooning over some"feeling". She'd thought that she and Jaime had been the same. But she couldn't have been more wrong.
The tears have dried now. She roughly wipes what wetness remains on her eyelashes and cheeks away with her palm. Her jaw is set as she stares outside, watching the sky as it starts to lighten with the new day. And as the first rays of dawn stream into her room, she makes a vow to herself, swearing on the shafts of light shot straight from the bow of Apollo.
She would never make the same mistake again.