Breathing
Summary: Holding her like this was normal. As normal as breathing. Cassidy realizes it eventually.
Set at a random timeline not relevant to the manga. No spoilers - only if you don´t know who Cassidy and Theresa and the hunters are.
Sequel to "Drowning", but can be read as a stand-alone.
Since I was unable to decide which oneshot I should post, I decided to go on chronologically - at least regarding my own oneshots^^ This story is supposed to help me get over the fact most of you guys already were able to read the third volume of Night School. Lucky ones!^^ Guess how much it helped me...
I don´t own Night School. I fear I have to buy a incredibly expensive book for my studies again this month and I don´t have enough money to pay for Cass and Rese as well...
„Cass? Dinner´s ready. Are you coming?"
Marina´s soft voice floated through the closed door of Cassidy´s room. Sitting on the window sill on the far side of it, Cassidy still was able to hear her quiet voice clearly. He shook his head in the dim darkness of the room and flinched when his shoulder burst into a flame of pain.
"No, thanks, Marina. I´m not hungry."
They were kids, even if already in their teenage years, and dinner normally was something they took turns preparing. If they had dinner. Mostly, when they went out for their nightly hunts, they slept during day and went out at night, but teacher had ordered them to stay at home today and tomorrow and they liked to pretend they were normal teenagers now and then. Sometimes, Jay and Jaq cooked French cuisine everyone liked, sometimes Ten prepared some sandwiches, sometimes Marina did pasta or Terrence prepared a Mexican dish. Whenever Rese tried to cook something, it usually ended in a disaster, but Cass was pretty sure she hadn´t been the one to prepare dinner today.
There was a short silence, then she asked: "Are you okay?"
"Yeah, I´m fine."
"…Okay."
She reluctantly left him alone again, sitting in the darkness, replaying the events of last night again and again.
Damn. Rese really should know better.
"This is so boring!", Jay moaned as they slowly patrolled down the streets of the city. It wasn´t sleeping, by far, lights and music and people still roamed the streets, and so their little group of hunters didn´t stick out majorly. Rese, normally always disagreeing with the blond man, nodded tensely.
"It´s too quiet. Something is wrong, but I can´t seen what. Damnit!" She squeezed her eyes shut and forced herself to listen. "This is so annoying! Why can´t teacher send us somewhere we don´t have to walk around like a bunch of drunk teenagers?"
Cass almost smiled, even though he felt the same tension his joint leader felt. He wasn´t as impatient as her, though. "It´s just a routine patrol. Calm down and watch your backs."
Terrence snorted in agreement. Jaq already was watching – he hadn´t contributed a word to their discussion for the last two hours. Ten was leading their little group, hands in her pockets, singing softy to herself.
"I wouldn´t mind a little bit of action", she called back over her shoulder and grinned. "It really is a bit boring out here today. No vampires to annoy, no rippers to stake, no demons to burn…"
A pair of teenagers, making out heavily in the entrance of a small alleyway, gaped at her in astonishment and she lifted a hand. "Beware the dangers of the night!", she called back mockingly. Cass slipped past them quickly, Marina stared at them curiously, Nadya mustered them with clinical interest, Jaq and Terrence didn´t deign themselves to look, Jay made kissing-noises and Rese snorted contemptuously as they passed the frozen couple. A few meters away, Cass sighed quietly. This was a nice, warm, normal summer night, there were no signs of danger in the territory they had been assigned to patrol today, nothing that happened here was out of place and everything was fine. It could have been a perfect night, them patrolling and then returning home tired and in a good mood, but of course, nothing in his life was meant to be perfect.
Nadya noticed first, with her perfect sense of smell. She stopped, shock-still, and sniffed. Rese froze, as did all the others. Ten sprinted towards them, her hands already in her pockets. Jaq closed his eyes.
"Behind us", he whispered, almost intelligibly. "In the alleyway…"
A scream of fear and absolute terror washed over them. They started running.
The teenage couple in the alleyway wasn´t there anymore.
"What are we dealing with?", Cass asked, trying to prepare a somewhat feasible strategy. Nadya sniffed again.
"Werewolves", she announced, deadly serious.
"It´s not even full moon!", Rese argued while they sprinted down the narrow alley. "What are they doing here? Why are they attacking humans?"
"There is a pack of them", Jaq said, his eyes still closed. Jay was leading him. The effortlessness both showed was proof to their bond. "It´s a pack of outcasts, I think."
"Renegade werewolves", Ten said, a mixture of tension and anticipation in her voice. "Doesn´t sound like they cared about the pact anymore."
"No."
They stopped dead, not even panting from the run, and found themselves in a dimly lit dead end, something like an inner courtyard, that had been converted to a camp for a pack of renegade werewolves. Oh yes, a pack. Probably twenty of them were gathered around the teenage couple, who both were shaking in fear, their faces a mask of horror. Cass couldn´t blame them for it: the sight of two dozen werewolves, mutated or half mutated, was a frightening one.
Rese gave a wordless scream of rage at the sight and didn´t wait for them to gather their senses. She attacked.
Two hours later, they were able to leave the sanctuary. Jay´s left arm was broken, Jaq had a deep wound in his side where a wolf had ripped out a chunk of flesh with his teeth, Marina was reduced to tears over their injuries but at least mostly unhurt, Nadya´s head was bandaged and she had been stitched up, Terrence had deep gashes in his arms and legs, Cassidy´s shoulder still hurt like hell and Rese generally looked like hell, blood in her hair and on her clothes and Cass wasn´t sure it wasn´t hers, like she had claimed. They hadn´t been able to save the teenagers, two wolves had ripped out their throats in front of their eyes. They had fought, being utterly outnumbered despite their brilliant fighting skills, and only the arrival of backup Cass had requested quickly had saved their skins. They went home, spent the day sleeping (most of them, anyway) and another day resting. Or at least, Ten, Marina, Nadya, Jay, Jaq and Terrence had rested. Cass had spent the time either cursing himself or Rese, and Rese had spent the time training.
Thousand things were going through his head, and he had needed some time to sort them out.
First, there was the effortlessness of him and Rese leading the hunters as joint leaders – normally. Working together with her was as natural as breathing; he had known her for such a long time he knew what she thought and likewise. Normally, their teamwork was flawless. But today, Rese hadn´t even stopped to look at him when she attacked, she had almost got herself killed in the fight and, what was even worse (at least when he saw it from a leader´s point of view and pushed aside his own feelings), she had almost killed the entire team. They only had been saved by the backup, and he knew as soon as teacher was back from his mission, he and Rese would have to go through a long session of what-ifs and no-matter-whats.
Cass knew why his friend had reacted like that: he knew her family had been killed in a werewolf-raid, he knew she had seen her parents´ throats being ripped out by those monsters. He knew she still had nightmares, he knew she wanted to find the wolves responsible for her families´ massacre badly. He knew she never had wanted to endanger the team, but he also knew she wouldn´t have cared if she had been killed, and that was what really, really irked him. After one sleepless night and another as sleepless day, he had made up his mind and went to look for Rese. She was in the training hall, of course, and seeing her go at the sand sack like a fury didn´t help to push away his anxiety. What he said was something like "You have almost got us all killed last night, you´re a danger to yourself", and, finally, something like "I´ll ask teacher to be transferred to another team."
Rese stared at him in shock, her dark eyes wide. He could almost see her expression fade from anger at his sight to absolute disbelief to the knowledge that he meant every word – and finally to sheer terror. It broke his heart. He didn´t take back his words, though.
He had thought about it closely. He could ask teacher to remove Rese from the team. But two things would happen: Rese would break (and he didn´t stand the thought of it) or, and more probably and, the team would break apart. They had been together for a long time, but it was Rese, Rese with her impatience and her silly arguments with Jay, her infectious laugh and her tenderness when it came to Marina´s nightmares and Nadya´s feelings of guilt. It was Rese who held them together. So rather than asking teacher to replace her, he´d have himself replaced, because he couldn´t stand and watch her destroying herself any longer. He just couldn´t.
He told her, turned and left the training hall, because he couldn´t face the look of betrayal on her features, and locked himself in his room for the rest of the evening, not even leaving it when Marina asked him to come for dinner.
After a few hours, the noises outside his door died down as his fellow hunters started to get ready for bed again. The last doors closed, the last voices died down, and he was forced to leave his room because he wanted to get something to drink. Cass opened the door and almost fell over a figure, sitting on the floor, her arms around her knees and her head on her arms. Black hair fell down her shoulders in dark, soft waves, highlighted by the soft light of the moon that shone through the hallway window.
Rese.
He hadn´t heard her coming. She didn´t look up at the sound of his door opening, she didn´t move at all. Cass felt his heart pound faster at her sight and tried to keep his voice level.
"What the heck are you doing here?"
She didn´t answer. He stepped over her, quickly went down to the kitchen to get a glass of water – he was dying of thirst – and returned, propping himself onto the cold floor tiles and leaning his back against the wall next to her. She hadn´t moved. If it hadn´t been for her shoulders rising steadily, he would have thought she was dead.
They sat there, without a word, for almost ten minutes.
Finally, Cass sighed and ran a hand through his short, orange hair.
"Rese, you can´t go on like this. You´ll get yourself killed."
She didn't answer.
"I know you want to find the wolves responsible for your parents´ death. But you can´t risk the entire team for your revenge. Have you seen what happened to them today?"
Her shoulders stiffened, and he knew she was blaming herself for everything that had happened, for every wound her friends had received. He continued carefully.
"I don´t say you should forget your parent´s murderers…"
Her head flew up. "That´s exactly what you´re saying", she hissed, her black eyes even blacker with fury. He held her gaze steadily.
"No, it´s not. I´m saying you have to live in the present, not in the past. You have to remember it´s not only your life that is at stake when you throw yourself headfirst into a fight. You are the leader of our team, teacher made you because you´re a great hunter, you really are. But because you´re good, you´re responsible, too. We could have been killed last night. Marina. Ten. Nadya. Jaq. Jay. Terrence. They all could have been killed. You could have been killed."
"I don´t care about myself."
She sounded defiant, and hated herself for it, because both knew she did care a lot about all the others. Cass breathed in deeply and prepared to use his ultimate weapon.
"I could have been killed."
Her breathing froze. Her eyes widened, like the eyes of a doe in the headlights of a car. Cass quickly pounded forward.
"And I wouldn´t care if I died, either. But it´s not only about you any me, Rese, it´s…"
He stopped, because both realized it was exactly about the two of them. They stared at each other in silence until Cass leaned back his head and sighed. Rese dropped her head to her arms again. They sat there, next to each other, but light years apart. Until Rese´s shoulders heaved slightly and Cass realized with a pang of shock that she was crying. Rese was crying. She hadn´t cried since she had been six years old. Awkwardly, he extended a hand.
"Rese?"
She just cried harder.
He rubbed her back, not knowing what to do. The only time he had seen her cry had been ten years ago, when she had woken screaming and crying from a nightmare and he happened to be in the room next to hers. He had tapped across the hall and peeked into her room, and she had been crying like her heart was about to break. Awkwardly, he had climbed unto her bed and held her, until she fell asleep exhaustedly, after telling him about her nightmares, and he had promised to stay with her. She´d never cried again.
Her sobbing continued. It was weird to see her like that: a seventeen years old girl, a tough hunter, who had killed more than her share of monsters, and now she looked so… so small. And vulnerable. Cass resisted the urge to wrap his arms around her. She said something, but it was drowned in her shallow breathing and the tears he knew that streamed across her face but he couldn´t see.
"What?"
"Don´t…", she whispered. "Don´t leave! You promised!"
Cassidy sat there, frozen.
"I promise I´ll be careful. I won´t ever do something like that again. But please…"
Rese didn´t cry. Rese didn´t beg. Rese didn´t… This wasn´t Rese, wasn´t the hunter he knew, the girl he had grown used to seeing the last years. This was seven-year-old Rese, still re-living the moment of her parents´ death in her dreams, too afraid to fall asleep alone in the darkness, but grimly determined to become stronger.
Finally, he gave in to the impulse and wrapped his arms around her, around her slim shoulders and her strong arms. Her hair tickled his nose. He closed his eyes, feeling her body tremble under the force of her sobs.
"It´s okay", he whispered quietly. "I won´t leave. It´s okay."
So he wouldn´t leave. He´d stay and have a look on her, guard her back in the battle and be there whenever she needed him. Maybe, this had been something they both had needed: A warning, a sign they couldn´t go on like they were now forever. Something had to change, something had to become different, so Rese wouldn´t go off charging at random groups of renegade wolf packs anymore and Cass would stop trying to look at the situation from a neutral point of view. Because Rese wasn´t an avenger, she was a protector, and he wasn´t neutral, he was part of everything.
And there it was, again, the knowledge that holding her like that was as normal as breathing.