Title: Hidden
Author: Cassandra
Rating: PG
Classification: The Librarians; Cassandra/Jake
Spoilers: 1x01-1x03
Disclaimer: The Librarians and its endless fun belongs to Dean Devlin, John Rogers, and all the wonderful others that make the show possible. Not me. No infringement is intended.
Written: December 2014
Summary: Cassandra wants to belong, to have a purpose, but she wants a certain someone to accept her, too. Breaking Jake down may be harder than she thinks.
A/N: I have been waiting for a redhead Cassandra to dance across my screen pretty much my whole fiction-loving life. We share those traits, but Cassandra is not only far smarter, but far more optimistic than I. And yes, it as surreal as it seems it would be to have to fic your own name. I'm hoping I'll get used to it, and I hope you enjoy and feel free to share. :)

Cassandra had been tiptoeing around Jake for days, and she was tired of it. She was tired of people looking at her like she was crazy because of what she could do, or worse, like she was sick because of what she had. These things were part of her, but she did not want them to define her. She wanted to be a whole person, and she wanted to be seen as one.

When Jake had told her he liked her – even though it seemed to be in spite of himself – she had felt like for the first time in, well, a long time, that someone truly liked her for herself. Not because they felt sorry for her, or wanted to try to reign her in from being who she really was. She had felt warm inside, and suddenly shy, and she didn't know what to do with those kind of feelings for a man she knew might never trust her again.

For all that those feelings confused her, she had felt heartbroken for him for a different reason altogether. She had struggled with her gifts half her life, and at least part of them had come to her unnaturally. Jake was a genius without brain tumor enhancement, and he had been hiding it from everyone he had ever known, all his life. Something about that made her so indescribably sad that every time they came across each other in the Library, or her eyes sought him out across the room, she could barely look at him.

They had both been hiding for too long.

She cornered him late one night when they had both stayed too long to do research, of which there was always too much. He looked up with an inquisitive glance from the tome he was holding, and she took a deep breath and started in before she could chicken out again.

"I've been thinking a lot about what you said the other day, and I just wanted to tell you that I think it's incredibly sad that you've felt you have to hide who you are all this time."

Jake shook his head as if he were coming out of a fog. "Look, darlin', you don't have to feel sorry for m-"

"No!" Cassandra interrupted. "Don't do that. Don't condescend to me, don't distract me... I'm not your..." She licked her lips and shook her head. "Darlin'," she finished with a roll of her eyes. "I see the way you're unsure of yourself because you're not used to doing this out in the open. I see the way you stop and contemplate your words because you're afraid you'll sound too smart. Well, you can't sound too smart here; look at where we are, and who we're with. You can say anything you want and be anything you want, and I don't know much about family, but if they don't love all of who you are, what kind of family is that, anyway?" She stopped for a breath, and she was embarrassed that her eyes were welling with tears. And now she was angry that she was embarrassed and about to cry in the first place.

"Are you about done?" he said, shuffling papers on the huge table in front of him.

Not even close. She stomped to his side of the table, jerked out the chair beside him, and sat down harder than was necessary. "Don't you even see what you're wasting, Jake? The world needs people like us. There's so much evil and ignorance and ugliness in the world, and we've seen that just in the few short weeks we've been here. Why would you want to hide that? Why wouldn't you want to share your incredible knowledge with everyone you meet? How can you stand it?"

"I don't owe you an explanation, Cassie. We've already been over this."

"You don't have to trust me, Jake. You don't," she said, staring him down defiantly. "But I'm going to prove to you that you can anyway. And you know why? Because I'm tired of lurking in the shadows and worrying about what people are going to think of me. I've been on my own for ten years because my parents thought I was going crazy, and they just couldn't handle it anymore. The breakdowns, the seizures, the babbling... even when they knew why, even though they knew how intelligent I was before, they couldn't handle it. So I faded away so they didn't have to. Maybe I get why you're scared to tell people you know, but at least you had a choice. I couldn't hide anywhere, falling on the ground, shrieking about colors and smells and tastes and sounds, but God knows I tried. And I failed, because this Library found me, and it found you, and it wants us to accomplish things, Jake. It wants us to do things no one else can do."

He was looking at the table instead of her, and she still didn't know why this meant so much to her, but she had to go on. "I want you to trust me, Jake. I can't make you, but it's what I want. And I want you to share your thoughts and ideas with me, and I want us to do great things. For some reason..." She was wringing her hands in her lap. "I know we've already had this conversation, but I just want to really get this out." She cleared her throat and blinked her eyes, warding off tears again. "I hope you never know what it's like to be desperate to live, like I have."

Jake opened his mouth, but she stopped him. "No. I don't want you to feel sorry for me. None of that."

He nodded.

"I sincerely hope you're never looking down the barrel of a gun, knowing there's no hope and you have to make a difficult choice. I've been terrified of this thing inside me half my life, but I've decided I'm not going to be scared anymore. I have a purpose now. Someone needs what I can do. I have a gift, and as long as I'm here, I'm going to use it. There is magic and wonder in the world, and I have to hope that maybe one day that will save me. But if it doesn't? It doesn't, and I have to accept that now.

"But I want you to know, whatever you think of me now, I would never, ever betray you or Ezekiel, or Baird, or Flynn, or this place ever again. Not for anything. You'll see. You'll believe me eventually." She put her hand over his before she realized what she was doing, effectively stilling it.

"Cassie, I'm tryin' here," he said when he figured he could finally get a word in edgewise.

She blushed and averted her eyes.

He squinted at her. "What?"

"Um, nothing." She pulled her hand back as casually as she could. Now she was just going to feel like some stupid school girl with a crush on the jock. Wait, she didn't have a crush on... Did she? She cleared her throat and forced herself to look back up. "It's just, uh, no one really ever calls me Cassie." Which was not what this was about, and why had she opened her mouth?

He still looked confused. "Oh, okay, well, I won't -"

"No, no, that's okay," she said with a watery smile. "I, um... I'm okay with it."

"Okay," he said, sounding skeptical. "Look, it's late, and we're both tired, I know, so what do you say we just call it a night?"

"All right," she agreed, afraid to go any further than the boundaries she had already far overstepped. "But you'll think about what I said?" she asked hopefully.

Maybe she had worn him down. Maybe it was just the late hour. "I'll think about it. I meant what I said about liking you before. You make it damn hard to hold a grudge."

She tried not to look smug at that as they stood up to leave. He chucked her on the shoulder as he passed, turned around and said, "Goodnight... Cassie." She swore she saw the flash in those blue eyes, and the smirk on his face as he turned to go. She didn't know what was such a big deal about him giving her a stupid nickname, but she suddenly felt like she had bitten off more than she could chew. That or it was her extremely vivid imagination playing tricks on her.

Either way, she stood stock still until she could no longer hear his receding footsteps. So much for coming out of hiding.

Finis