Timeline: ten years post-#54
Dark and Silent Out
Sometimes, when it's particularly dark and silent out, Cassie thinks of Jake.
Tonight in particular is one of those nights. She stands naked and strong on the balcony of the home she shares, currently, with Curtis and lifts her face to the sky, eyes closed, arms braced loosely on the railing, and wonders where he is, if he's okay. Marco, too, and Tobias, and often Ax. The sky is big and bright, the breeze a cool caress. She wonders if they lived. She wonders if she'll ever know what happened to them.
When she refused the military's offer ten years ago, it was understood that neither of them owed the other anything nor ever would—she'd wanted it that way—and so, two years after Jake had last come to her, when she went to them for answers they were polite, conciliatory, but told her in effect it was none of her business anymore. He was the boy I loved, she wanted to scream, but nodded and thanked them and took her anger out on an empty, open field, loping as a great cat across it's expanse for the full two hours, changing to herself and back, over and over again, until she was too exhausted to melt her skin into fur.
Such a frivolous use of an amazing gift, she thinks to herself, and it was. It always is. She hadn't changed, hadn't needed to—never needed to—for months and months before, but it wasn't as if one forgot how. She had forgotten how she missed it, and wept for that part of her life she had repressed as much as for the dark-eyed boy whose fate she'd never know.
Now she stands, waiting for her breathing to calm, peripherally aware of Curtis as he approaches behind her.
"Cassie? Everything alright?"
"Just stretching," Cassie says, leaving her eyes shut and lifting her arms above her head. "I needed some air."
His hands smooth down her arms, over her breasts, and he tenderly wraps his arms around her waist. She lowers her own to rest her hands where his forearms cross protectively over her belly. She shifts, glancing at him over her shoulder, and realizes at once and for the first time that he reminds her of Jake: the serious turn of his mouth, the depth of his eyes. The concern for her behind the wire rims of his glasses.
"Just having one of those nights," she clarifies, leaning back into him because he is solid and strong and needs her to. She's lost other men over less.
"Come back to bed," he says.
Largely her life is full of other things. Largely her days are easy, and her nights too. It is only once in a while she feels like this, like the sky is calling out to her, like she is so small now, like there is a life she is missing living. It doesn't matter what that life is—she knows this one, the one she is in, is the one she wants—but it haunts her, sometimes, a silent ghost repeating her every step.
She wishes for someone to talk to, someone who understood. She'd assisted for a while in the homes where they cared for those too damaged by the yeerks to function in the world anymore, say with them while they ranted, raved, looked up at her with frantic eyes as if she was their savior—and in their more lucid moments, begged her to change, to morph, to show them the hope she represented of an escape they'd now never be able to make—but it hurt more than it helped. She discovered an end to her compassion, a bottom to its endless well, and that was the worst. She didn't have enough to give these people what they needed. So she drew back to what she knew she could do. She saved the planet, one species at a time.
She imagines sometimes what would have happened if she'd gone with him—if she'd left Ronnie there on that hillside, leapt into Jake's arms, laughing, and let him take her away. She wouldn't have. But what if she had? Where would they be now? Together? Dead? Better off?
In bed again, covers tossed off in the heated upstairs bedroom, summer still coming in through the open balcony doors, she lays her head on Curtis's chest and listens to his heart beat.
"I love you," she says to him, and he pulls her close.
She closes her eyes. She wonders if it's dark and silent out where he is, too.