[A/N: This is my first fanfiction for Push and it will be a twoshot, with some romance between Cassie and Nick. They're older now, they can do what they want ;) R&R? Oh, and of course I don't own anything. The formatting's all messed up. Sorry.]

"It's been five years, Cassie."

What the hell is she doing? Nick thought, pressing the phone even closer to his ear. He still couldn't understand much of what she was saying.

Her words came in snatches, obscured by static and, he assumed, great distance. "I'm sorry...couldn't wait...I'm in Hong Kong..."

Nick's heart leaped into his throat. "You're here."

Cassie's gasp was audible, far too loud for Nick to tolerate at such an early hour.

It was three a.m. and still dark as he paced the tiny confinements of his apartment, trying to block out all other sound as he focused on Cassie's voice. She sounded so much older. But, he reminded himself, it had been five years. Fleetingly, he wondered if Cassie still had those crappy splotches of color in her hair.

He decided that it was impossible. Hair dye wears off in six weeks, and she'd been running all the time. Running from Division, of course, but also from reality. She'd tried to escape. Nick could see that so clearly now. In hindsight, he realized that Cassie had left him because she just couldn't deal with the memories he brought up on top of everything else.

She'd run so far, only to end up right where she'd started, where everything had begun.

And in a selfish way, Nick was thankful for that.

--PUSH--

Cassie ran through the dark streets of Hong Kong, her feet pounding the pavement. That was her nightly ritual, her routine. When Cassie Holmes saw things that scared her, she did what her mother had not been able to do. She found comfort that wasn't bottled, a simple comfort that wouldn't eventually kill her.

It was either running or the alcohol, and she thought that at eighteen, she was smart enough to know which option was safer.

She'd seen the effects of it, not only in her mother's situation, but sometimes when she passed by random people in different cities.

No matter where you go, addiction looks the same. Cassie knew this, and she knew it to her core. She had memorized the ways addiction reared its ugly head. The downcast eyes, the far away gazes, the rotten teeth and the hollow stares.

It was always the same.

That was the other kind of monotony in her life, the kind that scared her.

But even fear wasn't enough to keep her from going back to what she knew. Alcohol was not foreign to her. It always perched on her shoulder, standing by as an aid that was willing to offer the clarity she needed to See, and the comfort she held onto as she Watched.

Running didn't quite offer that. It kept the nightmares and fright at bay, but it couldn't help her make sense of the visions she had. Over time, she'd convinced herself that she needed good Sight more than anything else.

Nightmares don't mean much when there's a planet at stake. At least, that was what Cassie kept telling herself. She repeated it mentally, a relentless mantra that she played over and over to make her growing addiction seem like an okay thing. It could be justified in her mind--she needed the alcohol to keep her Sight sharp. She was only doing her job.

No matter how hard Cassie tried, she couldn't pinpoint the exact date that her craving for vodka and tequila spiraled out of control, but it wasn't before she left Nick.

Maybe, she thought, that was why she couldn't remember.

Life without Nick wasn't something she wanted to think about, even though she'd been living that way for so long. It was somehow more painful to reflect on after so much time had passed, because she was older and had a different perspective on her life and the lives of others.

In a roundabout way, she'd become wiser.

Despite the fact that the days of her youth had taught Cassie more than she would have ever learned in regular school, she wasn't smart enough to leave the past behind.

That was why she was running in the dead of night. She was going home.

Home, for her, was wherever Nick happened to be.

--PUSH--

"I'm coming," Nick yelled hoarsely, jolted awake by Cassie pounding on the door. "I'm never awake before noon," he muttered, sweeping a hand across his tired eyes as he stood, following the noise.

He wrenched the door open, his jaw dropping as he stared at the stranger in front of him.

"Cassie," he stammered incredulously, "is that you?"

"Yeah, it's me. Surprised?" A smirk lifted the corners of her lips as she elbowed her way past Nick to get into the foyer. "I'm hungry."

He watched as Cassie walked into the kitchen, noticing the strangest things about her. She walked with a new kind of confidence. There was a bounce in her step that seemed to say, I'm tough, don't mess with me.

Cassie's hair was longer now, and a darker shade of blonde. The colored streaks had disappeared. Nick wasn't sure whether he liked that change or not.

He wasn't sure if he liked Cassie changing at all, come to think of it, but he was happy that she was with him.

"Well, I'm not surprised to see that your appetite hasn't changed..." he called, still able to hear her rooting around in the fridge. "And before you ask, I don't have anything with shrimp."

"Then take me to the market," Cassie demanded, placing her hands on her hips. Nick almost cracked a smile. This was the girl he'd lost five years ago. He was glad that her spunk hadn't disappeared after so much time.

"Come on, then," Nick conceded, pulling crumpled bills from his wallet. He counted the money in his hand, decided it was enough to pay for food, and walked stiffly out into the bright afternoon.