So I actually wrote this a loooooong time ago - shortly after episode 3 aired. But I sat on it. Because I wasn't sure how it'd be received. But I love it too much to let it sit on my hard drive forever, and I think putting this out in the world might be kind of cathartic for me this week, so here we are. As always, I own nothing but the joy reviews bring to me.
The little feline-themed clock in her kitchen was rapidly approaching the midnight hour when Cassandra Cillian heard the hasty rapping at her apartment door. She turned to look at the closed door, a confused look on her tired face, before shaking her head a little and turning back to the dishes she was almost done with. Nobody would be coming to see her at midnight. Whoever was knocking on the wrong door outside would hopefully just scurry away when she didn't respond.
But her late night visitor didn't go away when she failed to respond; instead, she heard another knock, this one with a little more force and urgency behind the action. Cassandra let out a little sigh and grabbed a towel to dry her hands, intending to creep over and peer through the peephole to see who was disrupting her peace and quiet without actually making her presence known. That's when the person outside grew tired of their knocks getting them nowhere and called out her name, leaving no question as to whether or not the visitor was in the right place.
"Cassandra!" the male voice called as he knocked again.
"Jacob?" she called back, bewilderment coloring her face.
She threw the towel down on the counter and hurried over to her front door. Cassandra placed both palms against the wood and looked through the peephole, confirming it was him before she unlocked the door. The little gasp that threatened to escape her lips as she swung it open and got a good look at him was a struggle to contain.
Cassandra had showered as soon as they returned from Oklahoma, exchanging her skirt and sweater for pink Minnie Mouse pajama pants and a cream-colored, lace-trimmed camisole. Her hair hung in a loose side ponytail draped against her left shoulder. Outside of her door, Jacob Stone stood before her, still dressed in the day's dirt-covered clothes, looking a little worse for the wear. She expected he would have a rough night; the case wasn't easy for him, for more reasons than one, but she didn't expect to see him outside of her door in the middle of the night, and she didn't anticipate just how troubled he'd look, either.
"Are you okay?" she asked. Clearly, he wasn't.
"We have to talk about it," he said firmly.
"Okay," she agreed. "Talk about what?"
"What you said down in that cave," Stone said. "About knowing your day."
Cassandra took a deep breath and stood up a little bit straighter against the edge of her front door, her hands clasping the wood on either side. She thought he had shown up at her door wanting a friendly ear to continue the discussion they'd started on the site about his family. She didn't expect the source of his midnight troubles to be her doing.
"I said forget it; it's not today," she repeated.
Cassandra mentally scolded herself as she tried to come up with a way out of the conversation. If he wanted to talk about his father or what had happened with the shape-shifter, she was more than happy to listen, but she didn't want to talk about this. Why had she even said what she said down in that cave? Why had she told them that, of all things? There were a thousand different tumor-related truths she could have shared. Why did she have to choose that one?
Deep down, she knew why; they determined that truths had to have emotional weight, and what was more emotional than that? She'd never told anyone, but Stone and Ezekiel made her feel safe, so she blurted it out. She'd felt relief immediately after the words left her lips, her deepest secret finally out into the world, but then she'd caught a glimpse of Jacob's face, and she knew she'd shared something she probably shouldn't have.
"I can't, Cassandra," he said. "I can't just…"
"Stone, it's late," Cassandra interrupted. "Can we please deal with this tomorrow?"
"No," Stone said, putting his hand against her door as she tried to swing it shut again. "You can't…" His face contorted into an expression she couldn't quite pin down. Sorrow, dread, desperation, and anger all mixed together on his weary face, and Cassandra wasn't sure if he was going to yell at her or just break down in her doorway. "How am I supposed to just forget that? Cassandra, you can't say something like that and not expect me to have a reaction."
Cassandra sighed and let some of her weight fall against her door. "Okay," she whispered. She didn't want to talk about it, but the look on his face was killing her, and suddenly, instead of hating herself for sharing her secret, she hated herself for being the one that put that expression on his face. "Okay, you're right. Come in."
She grabbed his hand and gently pulled him into the small apartment. Cassandra shut the door behind him, not bothering with the lock, and led him over to her couch. Their hands fell apart as she fell to the furniture, bouncing against the cushion. She curled her legs underneath her body and crossed her arms protectively against her chest. Stone sat down next to her. He was slightly tilted towards her, and she sat facing him. They looked at each other in silence, both hoping the other would be the first to speak. Stone took the leap.
"I know you don't want to talk about this," he said.
"Not really," Cassandra admitted.
"And I was tryin' to respect that," Stone said. "Really, Cassandra, I was."
"I thought you'd have a rough night because of what happened with your father, not because of…" she said, her voice trailing off.
"Believe me, that's there, too," Stone said.
"Are you okay?" she asked softly, half out of genuine concern and half in one last attempt to change the subject.
"That is what it is," Stone sighed. "Nothin's ever gonna change with that. Not sure I really accepted that until today."
"The tumor kind of is what it is, too," Cassandra muttered.
"Yeah, but what you said…that was new," Stone said.
"But it's not today, so can we please just…" Cassandra started.
She didn't want to discount his discomfort, and she knew he had every right to have a reaction, but despite the newfound life confidence the Library and her role within it had granted her, talking about this still scared the hell out of her.
"No," Stone said again. "I can't just forget about it because I was headin' home and thinkin' about what you said, and…we live in Oregon."
So he's put that together, Cassandra thought. "Yeah," she said in a small voice.
"And there are…things…" he said delicately, not sure how to vocalize what he was thinking. "Things that you can get here that would facilitate…what you were talking about…that you can't get in other states."
"I'm familiar," Cassandra murmured.
Stone felt his stomach sink. "So that means you've…" he started.
Cassandra nodded her head slowly, unable to bring herself to look at him. "There's been a discussion or two," she confirmed.
"So that means…" Stone started. He was suddenly having trouble speaking. "That means the doctors, they don't think they can do anything. Because they only give those to patients, to people who…"
"Jacob, I've had this tumor half my life," Cassandra reminded him. "If there was something to do, don't you think we would've done it by now?"
Silence fell over them again. He knew she was right, and she didn't know what else to say. Cassandra hugged herself a little bit tighter before letting her hands fall to her lap on a sigh.
"You're gonna tell us, though, right?" Stone finally asked. His voice grew harder and faster, and Cassandra knew he was getting himself worked up over the 'what if's' swirling around his head. "I mean, I'm not gonna have to walk out of the Library every night wonderin' if you'll come back the next day? You'll say goodbye?"
"Jacob…" she said softly.
Her hand settled on his knee, a gesture meant to bring him back to reality, and it almost made him feel worse. He was making her talk about the hardest thing she had to talk about, and she was comforting him. He knew his emotional reaction to what Cassandra had said was likely exacerbated by the emotions his father had brought to the surface, so he took a calming breath.
"You don't have to tell me right now which arbitrary day you've picked; I'm just sayin' that I'd like to know…" he started, his voice a little more composed.
Cassandra's face immediately furrowed in confused, and she pulled her hand away from his knee. "What? Arbitrary?" she asked, cutting him off before he could fall further down the rabbit hole. "No, I think you've misunderstood."
"You said you picked a day," Stone said.
"Yeah, a day, Jacob, not a date," Cassandra clarified.
Cassandra shifted a bit closer to him on the couch as she felt her spirits lift. She knew she couldn't make the anxiety that either of them felt concerning the topic at hand go away completely, but maybe she could make him feel better, if nothing else.
"I never thought I would live this long when they told me," Cassandra explained. "If fifteen-year-old Cassandra had picked a date and actually stuck to it, I probably would've been dead…I don't know…seven or eight years ago."
"Then what did you…" Stone asked.
"I know the limit," Cassandra said softly. "I know what's going to happen to me as the tumor progresses, and I'll be able to predict and calculate how frequently the seizures will come and how fast the deterioration of my mind will occur, and unless the rate of growth rapidly increases, and everything suddenly happens all at once, and the choice is taken away from me, I know when I want to make it stop. I know it sounds extreme, but I don't want to reach a point where I can't…function. Where I can't…my parents aren't going to take care of me, and I never really had anyone else, not until maybe recently."
She looked him right in the eye at that point, the first time she'd done so since he knocked at her door. He immediately nodded.
"You got us," he said. "You got me, at least."
She let her lips curl into a brief, small smile before her face grew somber again. "I just…don't want that to happen to me," she said. "I know I can't stop it, but I don't want to get so bad that I require constant care, or that I don't know what's going on, or that I can't recognize myself or my world or my friends. That's not life, Jacob, and you…well, you don't really want to see me like that, either, do you?"
"It'd be better than not seeing ya," Stone whispered honestly.
He'd said it on an instinct, but the look on her face upon hearing his words nearly crushed him. It was a look of surprise and fear and absolute heartbreak all rolled into one beautiful, crestfallen picture in front of him, and in that moment, looking into her teary blue eyes and watching as she tried to keep her face from crumbling apart, he understood.
"That was a real selfish thing I just said," Stone realized.
"Yeah," Cassandra nodded, the tears pooling in her eyes. "Yeah, it was…and I know I'm being selfish, too, but…I'm the one with the tumor in my head, so I get to be selfish."
She blinked then, calm tears rolling down her porcelain cheeks. Cassandra pulled her hand up in an instant, using the back of it to brush the tears from her face as she turned her head away from him. He wanted to reach out and hug her; he felt awful for making her cry, but even though they were apparently close enough for his remaining presence in the rest of her life to be a barely-acknowledged afterthought, something kept him in place on the couch, his arms at his sides. Finally, she turned to look at him again, her face clean but her eyes still glassy.
"Stone, what made you come here tonight?" Cassandra asked.
"I like you," Stone admitted. "I like you a lot, Cassie, and being reminded that you have that tumor in your head like I was in that cave today…it's just so easy to forget."
"But that's why you don't need to worry about this yet," Cassandra said. "I'm doing well, Jacob. There's nothing they can do, but there's nothing happening right now. The symptoms I've already had are being managed, and it's still just a grape, and I even seem to be able to control the wonky synesthetic hallucinations now, so please trust me when I say it's not today. It's not next week. It's probably not even next year or the year after that. Can you believe that?"
"Yeah," he nodded, finally allowing himself a little grin. She returned the gesture as she saw some of his worry wash away.
"Do you have any more questions?" she asked.
"Do you already have the drugs?" he asked after a long pause.
She shook her head. "No," she said softly. "No, the condition has to lead to death within six months for a doctor to prescribe that. I'm not there yet. But when I get there, Jacob, when that time comes…"
"I know," he whispered.
"I just want an ending," she said softly. "It might not be the happiest of endings, but I want it to be my ending…when I'm ready to let everything go after I've lived the life that I've chosen."
Her eyes were brimming with fresh tears, and it was his turn to comfort her again.
"I understand," he said, and, as much as it pained him to think about, he really did.
"Anything else?" she whispered.
"Can I ask where it is?" he asked carefully.
She could've just pointed, used her own hand to show him which part of her skull housed the offensive cells, but instead, she took his hand in hers and gently touched it to the left side of her head, a few inches back from her hairline.
"About there," she whispered as she felt his fingers sink slightly into her hair as she moved hers away.
He took in a deep breath, almost as if knowing where the tumor was made it even more real, more so than the conversation they'd just had. Cassandra waited for him to make the next move, again unsure of what else there was to say. Stone ended up slowly lowering his hand from her head. His thumb trailed through the red ponytail against her shoulder, and, on impulse, he wrapped his fingers around her hair just underneath the band, giving her tresses a tender tug. The gentle touches nearly made Cassandra tear up again.
"Are you okay?" he asked softly.
She nodded. "Are you okay?" she replied kindly. His answer wasn't as quick, but he finally nodded, too. "I'm sorry I scared you today."
"I'm sorry for makin' you talk about it," he replied.
She shook her head as if to tell him not to be sorry. "I don't want you to be freaked out," she insisted. "Sometimes talking about it helps me, too."
Stone nodded, glad their conversation wasn't only cathartic for him. He wanted her to know she wasn't alone anymore; the case back home had brought his new found family to the light, and he wanted her to know that she had them, too. He hadn't understood her confession, her decision, when he'd walked into her apartment that night. He knew he'd be walking away with a deeper appreciation for what she was facing, but still, despite her reassurances, the thing that scared him most still gnawed at his stomach.
"Cassie, you are gonna tell me when, right?" he asked.
A silence settled over the pair again, but this time, the silence wasn't charged with sadness. Her head tilted up, her blue eyes met his.
With a soft, coy smile and a small shrug to her shoulders, Cassandra told him, "Something tells me you'll be the first to know."
Thanks for reading! Review, please?