A/N: So, this is my FIRST FIC OF LIBRARIANS FIC WEEK. YAY! And this one is important to me guys. Firstly, because this was actually the first work I ever started for The Librarians. I finished it with a couple of paragraphs last week but a lot of this was written immediately after Horns of a Dilemma aired. (I hadn't even learned the right names of all the characters yet, until I edited it there was a reference to Ezekiel that called him Ezra, lol). Secondly, because I love Cassie. My precious cinnamon roll baby who deserves all the love and concern but never believes she'll get it. I just adore her and want to hug her and hide her away from the world and people who may hurt her. And this fic is all about her, pretty much. Anyway, HAPPY READING AND WELCOME TO LIBRARIANS FIC WEEK!

angellwings

Was Almost

by angellwings

Cassie had a brain grape. She didn't have time for this. Resentments, grudges, unresolved tensions were all a waste of the valuable time she had left. Much like mazes. Yes, she knew what she'd done was terrible and at night when she was all alone it plagued her.

The Library was lost because of her. Flynn almost died because of her. Wild Magic was released into the world because of her. She'd fallen for the idea of a "cure." She should know at this point in her life that if it seemed too good to be true it probably was. But still she hoped and prayed.

She wanted to grow old and gray. She wanted a life full to the brim of experience and wisdom. She seemed destined not to have it, though, just as she was destined to be recruited by The Library.

Her grape, as Ezekiel called it, confused and exhausted her more often than it helped. Or at least it seemed that way to her. The most clarity she'd had in a long time had been because of Jake and he'd made her brain grape feel like more of a gift than a curse. It made his resentment even more hurtful.

Not that she didn't deserve it.

It wasn't until they had all made their way out of the Maze that she found out there was a larger problem than resentment. Because Jake didn't. He didn't resent her. In fact, he liked her.

He just didn't trust her. Not any more.

He did, but then she sold them out and she lost the little of his trust she'd gained in their short time together. It was almost worse that there were no hard feelings when the soft feelings were absent too. She was left with indifference. Indifference was worse than hatred. Indifference meant you were invisible.

She didn't want to be invisible to anyone. Not anymore. Flynn had taught her that. When you had a higher calling there was no time to mope or fade into the shadows. There was work to do and lives to save. But it seemed that even while saving lives she would still be invisible to at least one person.

And he just happened to be the one person who'd been able to really help her focus the powers of her Brain Grape.

God, even she was calling it that now. She really shouldn't be calling it that. It didn't feel…serious enough. Like someone was making a joke out of her tumor and it just wasn't funny to her.

Not in the slightest.

And yet the nickname allowed her to distance herself from it too. She could almost pretend it wasn't there. Or that it was happening to someone else. At least until her next headache or nosebleed.

You know, the more she thought about Jake not trusting her the angrier she became. Everyone else got over it. Flynn got over it and he was the one who almost died due to her idiotic mistake. At least Ezekiel trusted her. She couldn't even explain in words how much their conversation in the Labyrinth had meant to her.

There was absolutely nothing more frustrating to her than being stuck on one problem for too long. She could always work them out. But Jake…

Jake was going to take a while to work out. There were too many unknown factors for her brain to try and calculate. She didn't have enough to work anything out. He wasn't going to tell her and she wasn't going to pry. She may have betrayed him for a cure but invading his privacy was something she refused to do. The way he'd talked to her in the mezzanine, though, basically told her enough for now. His family expected him to be one person and he didn't want to disappoint them by being another. He didn't trust them to respect what he knew and who he was. They'd done something to cause that in him.

And now so had she.

She was probably doomed to know only half the man. It saddened her because really she was fascinated by him. He was so different than her. His knowledge was based on stories and people and creativity and expression. It was the warmth to the cold she'd grown up with. He almost felt like her counterbalance in a way. When he spoke his voice seemed to pierce through every thing. She could hear him above everything else. Even when he wasn't in the room. That was a big reason why she froze up in the Labyrinth. His voice calling her unreliable rang in her ears and echoed all the time. Why did she care what he thought? Why did she even want him to trust her? She barely knew him and her life was already too short to waste time trying to win over someone who'd already made up his mind.

But she couldn't help it. She wanted him to like her. Really like her.

Because she very much liked him. Even after he found out about the tumor and the hallucinations he didn't treat her like she was fragile or as if she didn't have any value. He didn't dismiss her as over dramatic when she got lost in her own mind. He saw beyond her condition. Beyond the brain grape. The others did too now, but he was the first. The very first.

Of course that struck a cord with her. Of course she'd want to return the favor. But he didn't trust her and he seemed content not to try.

He was an equation she would, most likely, never solve. She was a stupid girl, who'd made a stupid mistake and now she was paying for it. Because she really felt like the two of them could have had something. Something. She wasn't sure what, but the nagging feeling in her gut told her it could have been important.

It was almost important.