Nothing New
Summary: Nothing old, either. OneShot- Teresa, Cassidy. Wake up and everything is changed.
Warning: -
Set: Story-unrelated.
Disclaimer: Standards apply.
A/N: I haven't posted anything in ages. I haven't written much for Night School, either, but there are still some old stories left. For Snowlia.
The room was the same as always.
The white, barren walls of the sickbay were as impersonal as any hospital ever could be. The light was dimmed, night shone through the high windows like candle glow through glass. The sheets were cool on his bare skin. Blinking down at what he could see of his body, he took inventory. The list was short – no visible injuries, no excessive pain. His head didn't feel any different from other days, which meant the concussion was gone, too. Cassidy's lips tightened and he forced himself to release the pressure he held in his fists. One of them was right next to a mop of black hair. Teresa was asleep, her head pillowed on her arms at the side of his bed, her chest shifting slightly with every breath she took. Her position looked uncomfortable to him – half on the ground, half on the bed – but from his experience he knew she was able to sleep in the strangest places. They'd both learned to catch every second of sleep they could get. Except for them, there was no one else in the room.
Three windows closed with iron bars. A curtain that separated a cabinet with all kinds of medicines and medical tools from the sickbay itself, two other beds at his left side. One was unused, one empty – Teresa should be sound asleep in it. Hadn't he known where he was he wouldn't have been able to tell apart this special sickbay from the ones in every other safe hunter house.
Cassidy opened his hands, trailed his fingers through her dark locks.
Teresa's calm breathing stopped short, breaking the rhythm, and her head shot up. Cassidy watched her eyes latch on him, then immediately lose focus again as a wave of pain seemed to hit her. Her hands went up, cupping her head, her eyes screwed shut. For a few seconds she held her breath, then blew it out again carefully. Cassidy watched and felt another wave of inseparable anger and guilt crash over him.
"You okay?"
Teresa nodded, her eyes still closed. He lifted his right hand – the one he had been unable to move a few hours ago – and stopped himself right before he touched her hair again. It sank back onto the covers, its mission unsuccessful.
"Hm."
Her eyes opened slowly, finally focusing on her surroundings. When she found his gaze and read him, she sighed. There was no anger in her voice, no fire. It scared him, because she never was merely calm.
"Damn, Cassidy, stop it."
He grinned, a half-grin he knew only lifted the left corner of his mouth. He also knew it was painfully forced.
"I can't help it. I don't like this, Rese."
She brushed a stray lock of her dark hair out of her face with a careless gesture and glowered at him. It wasn't as effective as it could have been in broad daylight but he got the message.
"I would have done this for everyone. It doesn't make you special."
For once, the stab didn't make him wince.
"I still don't have to like it, do I?"
"So what was the choice?" She challenged, not half as poisonous as she could be. It showed him that she was both tired and hurting, and that she didn't have the energy for an argument right now. "Leave you there to die?"
"I wouldn't have," he protested. "It was just…"
"Shut up," she said and let her head fall down onto her arms again. "I won't discuss this now."
Cassidy leaned back against the pillows and watched her. Her eyes were closed again but he could tell she wasn't sleeping.
"That's not old," he finally said quietly, wordlessly referring to the way she had healed him.
Teresa didn't open her eyes. "It isn't new, either."
"You mean you knew you could do that? Just take someone else's pain away?"
"It's not always that easy."
"I saw that."
He'd woken from poison-induced agony just in time to see her kneeling over him, pale as a ghost, and then she went down writhing in the same agony he just had experienced but that now was miraculously gone. His concussion was gone, too. The nasty gash where the demon had clawed him with his toxin-infested incisors and that had bled all over the place now looked as if it was at least a week old. Whatever Teresa had done, it had pretty much healed and saved him but it had resulted in a few, endless minutes of pure agony for her and of sheer terror for him. He'd always known she was an empath. It was the only explanation for her weird behavior sometimes, for every time she had felt he was hiding something, every time she had come to sit with him as a child when he was so lonely he thought he would cry. It also explained why she never let anyone get close to her. Teresa was one of the strongest people Cassidy knew, but he also knew she was terribly lonely sometimes. And afraid. She'd rather cut off her one hand than trust someone she didn't know. But while he had grown up with her being like that he had never seen her touch someone and then collapse. Or, all the while, had never felt her touch ease his pain like she had done a day before.
"You want to explain?" He challenged her.
"Not really." Her eyes remained close.
"Does Teacher know?"
"He talked to me earlier."
"Rese." He touched her hand and she blinked up at him, still exhausted even after hours of sleep. "Since when did you know?"
"Remember Mar cut herself on those shards of the broken cup two weeks ago? You all said she had imagined it."
"Oh."
Well, that explained a lot. It didn't tell him what Teresa thought of it, though.
"You healed me."
"Don't get all stupid over it."
"It hurt you."
Finally she lifted her head, answered his gaze. "Nothing's for free, Cass."
He hated it when she went all reasonable on him. "Oh, shut it. If I'd known what you were about to do I would have stopped you."
"Yeah, only that's my decision, not yours."
He shook his head even though he knew she was right. Righter than him, anyway. "I don't…"
Her dark eyes drilled into his. He stopped short, the thoughts dying in his mouth. They stared at each other from across the bed, two pairs of dark eyes in a dark room, but both of them were able to see perfectly well. Cassidy was the first who looked away, his glance dancing across the room without an aim. Suddenly, he was acutely aware of how close she was, even if there still was enough space between them. His pulse quickened as he fumbled for words. "How much does it hurt?"
"It's manageable."
She sounded strange. Cassidy grabbed her wrist roughly and Teresa hissed in pain as he pushed up her long sleeves. The inside of her right upper arm was bandaged but he didn't need to see it in order to know what it hid: a long, bloody gash that didn't heal like normal hunter injuries did due to the demon poison inside. He swore.
"Calm down – Teacher took care of it." She sounded weary. "The poison's out. It just has to heal."
He let her arm go slowly, regretting his rough actions when she tugged down her shirt again and tried not to wince. His insides felt like ice. "I don't like this, Rese."
"You already said so. It's nothing I haven't dealt with before. Just suck it up."
Empaths didn't have easy lives, he had known that much. But her words told him it had been far worse than he ever had imagined. When anger again tried to overwhelm him he clenched his fists and looked into the other direction.
The same, old room. There was nothing new in it, nothing he didn't know. Same beds, same curtains, same sterile walls.
"Cass," Teresa said and touched his arm. He froze. Her hand was calloused and strong and yet soft on his naked skin. A tingle shot through him and all the way up his arm. She was leaning closer now, her face tilted up towards his. Deep brown eyes met his. She was so close he could see himself in her irises. "Nothing changed, okay? It's still not great to be an empath and it's not great to have your eyes. You look out for me and I do the same for you. We're still the same. I did nothing you wouldn't do for me. We're partners, remember?"
Cassidy swallowed hard. "Yeah."
Teresa smiled at him, a small smile that still was blindingly beautiful. "Fine. Now let me sleep. My head-ache is killing me."
"Okay."
The soldier she was, she was able to fall asleep immediately. Her soft breath was the only sound in the room. Cassidy sat and watched her, unable to form any coherent thought. He was still Cassidy, and she was still Teresa. They were still hunting partners, like they had been for the last six years. They were still hunters, their mission was still the same, their team the one they had started with. The room still was the same, the sickbay in their safe house. Even the night air that came in through the windows was the same, a mixture of gasoline, exhausts, wet asphalt and summer.
The only new thing was them.