TITLE: Leap of Faith
AUTHOR: Faith Alana Alastair (formerly published as Rick MacLeod)
DISCLAIMER: I'm not Michael Stipe, nor anyone connected with the movie Saved! I just love the characters, and these bunnies wouldn't leave me alone.
FANDOM: Saved! The Movie.
PAIRING: Mary/Cassandra
RATING: PG
SUMMARY/PROMPT: Mary's inner dialogue during her little chat with Cassandra in the bathroom.
SPOILERS: The movie. All dialogue comes from the movie, so it's heavy spoilery.
AUTHOR'S NOTES: When I first saw the movie, this wouldn't leave me alone. If I recall correctly, I wrote this in about ten minutes.
FEEDBACK: Please!
DISTRIBUTION: Want...Ask...Have
Lucky for me, at our school, teen pregnancy was about as common as the flesh-eating virus. No one really seemed to catch on. Except Cassandra.
I asked for a bathroom pass, to try and avoid her sideways glances and the crude hand-gestures she was throwing in my direction, but once in the girl's room, I couldn't think about anything else. Or anyone, for that matter.
I stared for a few minutes at the graffiti on the door to the stall, some idiotic marking another girl had made, with puffy paint, no less, trying to be cool. I didn't honestly think Cassandra had done it, although the Santa=Satan smacked of her sarcasm.
I flushed the toilet, and emerged, only to come face to face with the last person I wanted to see, and unfortunately, the only person on my mind. Patrick was nice enough, but he just wouldn't quit, and I couldn't very well tell him that I didn't want him because I wanted her, could I?
She was standing by the sink, smoking a cigarette, the smoke of which, she promptly blew in my face as I tried my hardest to ignore her. I pushed past her and washed my hands.
"It doesn't bother you to have people smoking around you?" She asked me. "It's so bad for the baby."
I panicked inside, not wanting to believe I'd been caught in one of my two transgressions.
I laughed half-heartedly. "I'm not pregnant, okay?"
"So what's your plan?" She sounded so cheerful it was sarcastic. I hated her so much. Trouble was, I wanted her so much, too. "It's too late for the big 'A'." She looked at me in the mirror, her phony conspiratorial smile irking me even more. I shook my head and rolled my eyes, wanting nothing more than to run out of the bathroom. "You look like a smuggler." She tugged at the stupid Santa sweatshirt my mom bought for me. "I know somewhere where you could sell it!"
Her teasing was real now, and I laughed, forgetting to deny my secret. "I'm not gonna sell my..." I remember trailing off then, realizing as she wiped her phony smile off her face what I'd just done. I took a deep breath, resigning myself to my fate.
To my surprise, she tossed her cigarette into the sink, and just handed me a paper towel. I fought back tears as I took it from her. She looked at me and asked, "It's Dean's, isn't it?"
I took another deep breath, and turned away from her, leaning against the sink, still trying my hardest to not have to face her.
"You can't do this on your own." She sounded almost sympathetic.
I took a chance with the truth. "Yes, I can." I still refused to meet her gaze. Looking up finally, I drowned in her eyes.
"No, you can't." She opened herself to me in that moment, giving all her love and trust to me. I had to look away, or I'd get lost forever, so I kind of huffed in disbelief, still shaking my head in denial, after all of this. "I thought I was helping him." And myself, though I wouldn't tell her that. I'd spent the past three years secretly lusting after Cassandra, and thought, finally, that I could cure Dean, and myself, having had my vision of Jesus. "I thought it was what Jesus wanted." With that admission, I couldn't hold back the tears anymore. "It's pretty stupid, right?"
"It's not stupid." She practically breathed the words.
"Yes it is." I couldn't stop crying if I wanted to, and I did. Cassandra, the one person whose opinion had always secretly mattered to me was in front of me, and I was sobbing like a baby.
"It's not stupid." She sounded forceful this time, raising her voice slightly, willing me to believe her. At that moment, I just wanted to be saved, to be truly saved by Cassandra Edelstein. I wanted her to take me away from there, from the bathroom, from the school, from Hillary Faye and her moronic Christian Jewels. She reached out and hugged me, pulling me into her embrace, and I knew I'd be okay. I don't think I knew how, or why, but I knew things wouldn't be so bad. I gingerly wrapped my arms around her, hugging her back, and felt safe in her arms. It was at that moment that I resolved to tell her how I felt.
"If you're interested, I know some people who would pay a lot of money to take naked pictures of you in a family way." Just not at that moment.
She grinned, and laughed at me, and I had to laugh too, it was so ridiculous sounding. Still, I needed to show her the real me, to give her my trust, the way she'd given me hers. "Oh yeah? How much money?" Her eyes widened, and I think I actually impressed her in that moment. Or at least surprised her. She sobered though, and looked at me seriously. "You need to get out of here." She must have read my mind. I took another deep breath, seriously believing I was about to lose everything I'd ever loved, known and believed, but at the same time, resolving myself to it. I followed her out of the bathroom, and although I said the first thing that popped in my head, "Are...are we cutting?" I knew that I didn't really care where I went, as long as she was with me.