Title: Casualties

Genre: Angst/Drama

Rating: K + as always. Nothing intense curse word wise, but still rather depressing.

Summary: Cassandra Frasier can't let them see her go crazy. Part of my MULTIPLICITY storyline.

Please read at least the first three chapters of Multiplicity. Otherwise this will be very confusing.



Cassandra Frasier excused herself from the first of what she was sure would be many, many planning sessions over more of her life than she'd care to think about, possibly until her death. Then again, who knew how close that could be from this moment.

She entered her sleeping tent and laid down on the rough pallet of pine needles covered in linen they'd scavenged from town earlier. But after she'd lain there for at least an hour, her eyes opened and she immediately began to cry. Turning onto her stomach, she pressed her face into her makeshift bed and let it out. It was all she could do after the first seven times that month. She couldn't control when it would happen. She didn't even need to be tired, or sad, or angry. She'd actually burst into hysterical tears while watching some of the refugee children playing, something she'd been so happy to see after three weeks of running.

Since then, she'd learned when they were coming. She knew when the sudden urge to sob would climb up her throat, and every thought she had would fizzle out and drown in a rush of agony. It made her feel useless in what was now the first mutterings of resistance.

But more than then that, she knew what a few of the marines were saying about her. Cassandra of Troy, one man had called her behind her back. The orphan girl, driven made by grief. She would not give them any more proof.

She would not give them the satisfaction of being right.

She'd been losing her mind since she saw them,their faces pale and covered in ash and dirt, only their wedding bands still shining. Sam's wounds were hidden, the burn that marked the killing blow only largely apparent on her back. But Jack..she could see how he died, the blast wounds ugly and red under the tattered remains of his light blue uniform shirt. The man who'd bought her her dog—which was sleeping right outside, ever vigilant—and the woman who'd once decided to die with her rather than leave her alone, dead and bloody in front of her.

She'd screamed, screamed until she could not remember blacking out, until upon waking she could not remember anything of her flight from school to Colorado Springs, nor the phone call that had woken her up in the early morning from Sam to get there.

And that why was, even as she lay there knowing the rumors were still going around, rumors so strong not even Feretti could quash them, Cassandra couldn't find it in her to be angry about them. They were true. But none of the rumors, nor the truth that she really was mentally screwed up, would incapacitate her like they all assumed. She was going to see Ba'al's corpse at her feet and Earth free. Even if it cost her the last of her sanity.

Cassandra rolled over on her back and closed her eyes. She had work to do before that happened. Much work.


Hope that was creepy enough for you all. XD