set before, and after, Casey's death.


Cadmus and the Dragon
part four: 28th December


The old superstition with mistletoe is that for each kiss, you steal a berry.

Casey was never exactly the most delicate, romantic of men, but April knew that he (by way of his mother) had always had some respect for the old traditions. So when he'd found some, he'd covered the base in it overnight, hiding it in plain sight. Hiding it everywhere.

But April has gotten wise to Casey's games, and manages to do a fairly good job of avoiding it all until her 1700 hour briefing with Leo.

Briefing is a fancy way of saying standing in the kitchenette drinking tea, but they discuss the last mission, swap ideas for new ones, and come up with a united front ahead of the next all-resistance meeting.

"Hey, Leo! Don't you be trying anything funny!" Casey smirks from the doorway. April realises first, glances up, and lets out an exasperated sigh.

Leo follows her gaze and looks mortified.

"Sorry, Leo. But it's bad luck if we don't." She reaches up and pinches off a berry with her smaller, delicate fingers, and passes it to him. "And I think we need all the good luck we can get."

"Sorry for imposing," Leonardo shifts in a way that reminds April that he's only just hit twenty, and in some ways he's still forever fifteen.

So April kisses him firmly on the top of his head.

"You, Mister, are never imposing." Casey makes a small noise of fake-jealous protest, and April rolls her eyes, dragging him closer for his own kiss. "And you are always imposing. Where did you find all of this stuff?" she asks, as Leo slinks away to heat the furnaces with his face.

"Park." He slings his arm around her and presses a soppy kiss into her cheek.

"The park. Right." She slides him a sceptical look, and Casey avoids her gaze. Park means black market, means Casey called in a favour - or now owes one.

"Besides," he says proudly, and steers her around to get a good look of the base's main room through the kitchen door. Even in the few seconds she's looking, someone sighs, someone else yells Jones!, but there is a hug, and a soft kiss, and affection. "I think we all needed this."

He says it with rare poignancy - one of the things that sold her on the whole Casey Jones Has Hidden Depths theory, that amid his obsession with sweatpants and very, very hypermasculine tendencies (she wondered, in the early days, about him and Raph, and still teases him about it sometimes), Casey wasn't the complete neanderthal he portrayed.

War goes on, but it can't consume them. Life, and love, have to go on as well.


Casey is killed in the summer, his throat torn out and his skull caved in, and April is a wreck.

She didn't expect to be a widow before she hit thirty, but she forces herself on, tight-lipped and straight-faced and she only cries alone.

Mikey shooes Klunk into their room on the worst nights, and Angel takes over more of Casey's old duties, including negotiations.

She drinks with Raph once a week, they grieve together, they reminisce for their lost one, and it starts to feel less like she's lost her arm and more that he's just… not there. Like she walks into an empty room after hearing a voice.


In December, Angel drops by her office. "You got a visitor."

Abdul is one of Casey's old contacts from when New York wasn't under occupation. He'd been a cab driver, back then, knew everybody who was necessary to know, knew where to get anything and sell everything. April had met him a few times, but once the occupation happened, Casey had taken over a lot of the messier dealings. "Delivery for Mr. Jones," he says, with a wry smile, and the knife in April's chest twists, because oh Casey. "There isn't a lot. This is all we could find. I don't think we'll have any next year."

He pushes a small box into April's arms, full with bright sprigs of holly, and four sprigs of mistletoe.

"No," April hears herself saying. "No, Casey's gone." It feels like she's speaking from beyond a veil, surreal and dreamlike. Angel's face twists in alarm and she hurriedly shooes Abdul out, closing the door behind them.


on the fourth day of Christmas... Four Tiny Branches
3am vigils
two brothers bonding, and
a Mikey sad his brother's missing...