A/N: Rewatched Season 3 recently and got inspired by the last two or three episodes. I don't care what anybody else thinks, I'm going to keep on shipping Jacob/Cassandra :)

Disclaimer: All recognisable characters and dialogue from The Librarians belong to people who aren't me.

Chapter 1

"Master, please, it can't be done. I've not even been here two months."

It sounded so desperate, the way he said it, and then so stupidly vague. Jacob Stone was rarely either of those things, and wondered too late if his Sifu could see through the lie of it all.

"Time is not the measure of man, Jacob," the Monkey King told him with a smile. "Only what he achieves. Monkey King earned the staff of Shangri-La. Your destiny lies elsewhere."

Jake already knew that was true, and it was part of the problem. A very small part, actually. The larger issue wasn't his destiny as a Librarian and whatever came with that. No, his issue was human and female, with beautiful red hair, hypnotic blue eyes, and a brain that could calculate faster than all the world's greatest computers combined.

"The Library was right to send you here to complete training," the Monkey King continued, "but I have taught you all that I can."

His training was over and Jake already knew it, long before he was told. Fighting was in his blood, in his heart and soul. A boy from Oklahoma, raised on bar fights and such, all he really needed to learn was a little technique and control. Baird already taught him a lot and swore he was a natural. The Monkey King had trained him intensely and for such a short time, but apparently, they were done.

The problem was, Jake wasn't ready. Sure, he could fight now, he was prepared for the upcoming battles that were bound to come, but there were other things that he was terrified to face. That same smiling red-head whose face was forever present inside his mind, she was one of the scarier things, or perhaps moreso his feelings for her.

Almost two months he had been away. Seven weeks, five days, nine hours, and twenty-two minutes to be exact since he said goodbye and walked out of the Library in pursuit of Shangri-La and all the Monkey King could teach him, and still he wasn't ready to go back and face reality.

"Come on," he urged his Sifu, "there's gotta be something else you can teach me."

"Well," the Monkey King considered, "there are magical techniques..."

"No. No magic."

Jake made a cutting motion with his hands to match the words. He was not getting mixed up in one more thing just bound to have unpleasant consequences. Not now, probably not ever.

"And I respect that decision, but it means from now on, your lessons must be ones you teach yourself. That is your practice."

The way the Monkey King looked at him when he said those words, the more Jake believed he saw the truth within his eyes, within his soul. Coming here was never all about learning martial arts techniques, the skills he would need for upcoming fights, both physical and otherwise. There was so much more to face.

Patting Jake on the shoulder, the Monkey King left him alone with his thoughts, something the Librarian almost wished he didn't have to deal with right now. The view over this strange and magical place was beautiful and it was impossible not to think, one more time, how much Cassandra would love to see it.

Jake smiled just thinking of her, but that happy expression soon gave way to a frown. She was barely out of the hospital when he left. That was planned. Though the Library had sent him to Shangri-La specifically, Jake already had a mind to run and hide long before Cassie returned to work. His feelings for her, they had always been there, but now, the whole situation was messing with Jake's head way too much.

It had been easier when they first met. It took all of an hour to realise she was the type he could really, seriously fall for, and then when she betrayed the team, it had cut Jake to the quick. Cassie wasn't perfect, but she could've been perfect for him, he was sure on that. To have to realise he could love her but not trust her, it was tough.

Of course, they had to work through it, to get the job done, if nothing else. He came to understand her better, they got to know each other as colleagues, as friends, as close as family, and yet he couldn't ever make her a sibling as easily as the others. Baird was big sister from the get-go, and as much as it pained him to admit it, Jones was the little brother Jake never had. Cassie was different. She was amazing, smart, brave, and beyond beautiful, both inside and out. Not that he ever told her any of that.

For the longest time, Jake told himself he was better off keeping his mouth shut. The couple of times he dared to make any kind of suggestion of taking Cassie out, being more than friends, it seemed as if she either didn't notice or didn't want to get involved that way. Better to be friends than screw up the whole group dynamic, Jake figured, so he didn't say a word, but things were different now. So different that his head felt like it was about to explode.

There was the irony. His own brain felt fit to burst, and yet it was Cassie who got rushed into the hospital a few weeks back, her own head literally overloading with the pressure of the tumour on her brain. Jake thought he had been scared in his life, more than a few times, more than he would ever be willing to admit, but sitting in that hospital, waiting on news of Cassie's operation, that was just about as terrified as Jacob Stone had ever been.

The thought that kept on popping up and wouldn't quit, amongst all the general worries and fears for Cassandra's health and survival, was very clear. 'What if I never get to tell her?'

It was selfish and stupid, and the ironic twist was that when Cassie pulled through, Jake still kept his silence, and he wasn't exactly sure why. He had reasons, he could list them now, and did so out loud, stood alone in the training room at the Monkey King's home, but did they really matter that much?

"She was in the hospital, she just had brain surgery, and she was vulnerable. Not a good time for a confession," he muttered to himself. "Then she was in recovery and getting to grips with her gift, and even if... even if I got up the nerve, she didn't... she couldn't..."

Jake closed his eyes, braced his hands on the rail and forced a breath through his lungs. That last one hurt. A lot. Even if he had gotten up the nerve to tell Cassie the truth of how he felt, he knew she couldn't feel the same, not after the conversation he overheard the day before he left for Shangri-La.

It wasn't deliberate. He wasn't Jones, running around in silent steps, eavesdropping on everybody's private moments. Jake was on his way to The Annex and stopped short of entering when he heard Cassandra's name in whispered tones. Jenkins and Baird were in deep conversation and he couldn't help himself, he just had to listen.

'Without wishing to sound conceited, I suppose her feelings were understandable,' Jenkins had said. 'We've spent rather a lot of time together, and we do get along very well. Plus, I'm fairly certain much of my attraction for her was the immortality angle, given her own situation.'

'Oh, poor Cassandra,' Baird had sympathised. 'Well, you handled it beautifully Jenkins. I don't think we can thank you enough for saving the day like you did.'

'I assure you, Colonel, I would've done the same for any one of this family,' the Caretaker told her kindly. 'But Ms Cillian is very special, and I shall admit to being very much flattered by her advances, even if I could not return the kind of love she was looking for.'

Jacob had been stuck to the spot by the realisation of what Jenkins was saying. Cassandra was in love with with Jenkins, with Galahad, Knight of the Round Table. It didn't matter that he couldn't or wouldn't feel the same, Jake knew that. Knowing she couldn't feel the same about him certainly hadn't changed his feelings at all, so it had to be the same for her. What stung was knowing he was out of chances before he ever spoke a word to Cassie. His pride was dented, and that last flickering flame of hope he'd held onto that maybe, just maybe, she did feel the same, went out in an instant.

So, yes, Jake had jumped at the chance to come to Shangri-La and learn everything Sifu could teach him. Yes, he wanted to stay here to learn more, at least partially so he could avoid what, or rather who, was waiting for him back at the Library. Yes, he wished he knew how he was going to handle this situation, but no, so far, he had not figured it out.

Cassandra walked down the steps and stared into The Annex, empty as it was. She loved being back here, and couldn't wait to escape the hospital and enforced R&R to return to the job she loved so much. Unfortunately, a return to The Library was not a return to what she knew and yearned for. Her family felt different now, she felt different, and it wasn't all about the tumour, or lack of same.

When Eve stepped into view and asked how she was doing Cassie smiled. They all cared so much, made such a big deal over her condition, and yet all without smothering her. It was like having brothers and sisters, maybe even a mother sometimes with Baird, and Cassie loved that. She had been far too long without a family. Still, there was one in the group that she had come to feel close to for a long while, who she had probably started to take for granted, however inadvertently. With Jacob gone, Cassie felt lonely, a little lost, and particularly out of her depth with the new expanded powers of her mind.

"When I got out of surgery, I was so grateful that I still had my gift," she explained to Eve, "but it's not the same."

"Right, you said. It's... bigger."

"It's a lot bigger," Cassie emphasised, not sure she ever could properly convey the magnitude to anyone, except maybe Stone, if he were here. "And it does different things. It affects people. I don't know how to control it. It's scary."

She knew tears were forming in her eyes and she hated that. Cassie wanted to be strong, she wanted to be bigger and better than this. After all, she had lived all those years with a death sentence inside her brain and she had survived. The surgery had saved her and she no longer had to fear her own mind in a physical way. Mentally, she wasn't so sure.

To have the power to see things the way she did, to calculate and figure, it was a lot to handle. Her synesthesia was intense at times, even when she got a handle on it, and when it all ran away from her, it was Jacob she turned to. Actually, she didn't even have to turn, he was just there. He would take her hand, talk her down, help her find a way through the panic, the tangle of numbers and colours and memories, through the pain. She needed less help as time went on, but now with her new expanded gift, she was wary. She felt the loss of his presence even more keenly than she might have done otherwise, though Cassie was quickly realising it was easy to miss Jake for so many reasons.

"When we first met, you weren't in control of the gift you had," said Eve kindly. "You thought you'd never get a handle on it, but you did."

"Yeah, but that's the thing," Cassie countered. "I'm afraid to try it. What if I hurt somebody?"

She meant to listen to the answer Eve gave. In fact, Cassie did take in pieces of what Baird said about training the guys to fight but being of no use to someone who's power was well beyond the understanding of a Guardian. Cassie new she would help her if she could, and not just because it was her job. She also knew she was absolutely right in saying she wasn't able to be of assistance, but Cassie knew someone who would be.

Two months felt like forever already. Actually, it was seven weeks, five days, ten hours, four minutes, and eight seconds, nine, ten, eleven... Cassie shook her head to keep herself from counting. She caught herself doing that a lot lately, and at the same time, trying to calculate how much longer it might be before Jake came home to them, to her.

Of course, as much as she wished he was there to help when her mind got away from her, when it was all so overwhelming and she begged for a grounding rod to keep her stable, she missed him for other reasons too. Cassandra was amazed to realise how many times she had things she wanted to say to Jacob, to share with him, even to argue with him about. He had just always been there before, and now he wasn't. Somehow the hole Jacob had left in her heart felt much larger than any space in her cranial cavity. That probably wasn't a romantic thing to say, but Cassie had an urge to tell him anyway, to tell him a lot of things, if only he were around to hear them.

"And when the time comes, I know you'll do the right thing."

It was the last thing Eve said as she smiled at Cassandra and patted her knee.

"Thank you," she replied automatically, though she was unsure what else the Guardian had told her.

She really had to find a way to concentrate until the return of...

"Stone?" she gasped, as the Back Door flew open and Jacob himself stumbled into the Annex.

There was the briefest moment when their eyes met but they shared no smile.

"Shangri-La is under attack," he explained, looking shaken to the core.

It seemed they would both have to wait for another time to talk.

To Be Continued...