While getting the cure into the CDC and having it distributed was their main focus, Cassie seemed dead set on having a plan first, and telling each other what had happened after they were split up two weeks ago. Cole finally gave in, a small, selfish part of him wanting as much time with her as he could get before handing the cure over, knowing full well that once he does and they're on the road to success, he'll disappear on her again, this time for good. He deserves some time with her before his death, so to speak, and she was handing him a solid reason for holding off on his impending demise. Again, so to speak.

After a short drive, Cassie pulled into a 24 hour coffee shop not too far from the CDC. It was fairly empty inside at this hour, perfect for the weird and seemingly insane conversation they were about to have in public.

Cole couldn't take his eyes off of her the whole way there, making Cassie glance at him from the corner of her eye, trying to contain a blush. Having him back was surreal. She was so sure she wasn't going to see him again after he splintered, leaving her in that crumbling building to die. Only she hadn't.

Cole went and sat at a small corner table while Cassie ordered them coffee, still keeping his eyes on her as she talked to the lady behind the counter. She turned back to look at him while waiting for their coffees, but quickly turned back around with an embarrassed smile when she caught him staring again. Cole smiled, watching her fiddle with her hair and straighten her shirt. He couldn't believe she was alive. He'd mourned her painfully after splintering back to 2043, sure she had been buried in the 12 Monkeys compound, having nightmares about her being trapped by falling debris and taking days to die, calling out to him.

"You okay?"

Cole looked up sharply to see Cassie looking at him with concern, a coffee cup in each hand.

"Yeah, just…thinking."

"That's dangerous." Cassie joked lightly as she carefully placed the cups on the table, moving to sit down across from him.

"I just…" Cole sighed, reaching across the table to hold one of her hands in both of his, rubbing her knuckles with his thumb. "I spent days back in my time thinking about the situation I left you in. Some of the scenarios that ran through my head turned into nightmares…Never in my wildest dreams did I imagine you getting out of there alive." His voice trailed off, looking down at their joined hands.

Cassie sighed too, loving the feel of his rough hands on her skin. "When you splintered, I thought I was going to die down there. And I was…strangely okay with it at first." Cole's grip on her hand tightened and he opened his mouth to talk, but Cassie cut him off. "I mean, I thought that we had won, and the world was saved. And you…" She paused, bringing her other hand up from her lap to rest on top of his. "You were gone, and we were both sure you weren't coming back. Whether it was because we really had won, or because you were out of trips didn't even occur to me at that point. I knew I couldn't even come find you in my time because you weren't going to know who I was, not to mention you're like, how old right now? In my time? You're just a kid. But this version of you was going to grow up in a world that wasn't ripping itself apart, and that brought me some peace." Her voice trailed off again, and Cole could see how sad she was just thinking of this. "So, selfishly, I didn't have the fight left in me to get out. I didn't…see the point."

Silence came over them for a solid minute before she spoke again. "Then I…" she laughs softly, squeezing his hands and looking up at him. "I thought of how pissed off you would have been if I'd said any of that to you at the time. You would have told me I was being stupid, and that I hadn't fought so hard to save the world just so that I could die and not enjoy the rest of my life."

Cole smiled at her then. "You're right, you know."

Cassie smiled back. "So I got up, went over to the exit door you'd been trying to get me to, and started climbing the stairs. It was slow, the building kept shaking and there were spots where the stairs were crumbling, but I made it. Barely. If I'd sat there feeling sorry for myself any longer I would probably be dead right now."

"I felt the same way when I was back in 2043. For a few long days, actually." Cole started, letting go of her hands to lean forward, elbows on the table and his hands running over his face once. "When I splintered back, it was some of the worst pain I'd ever felt from a splinter. I briefly thought that was the trip that was finally going to kill me. But it didn't. And then I realized where I was and what year it was and that nothing had changed…"

Cole sighs and crosses his arms over his chest, a few goosebumps raising at the back of his neck. "I thought you had died, again, for nothing. The virus had still happened, the future was still a wasteland and I couldn't go back to save you or fix it and I…I nearly went out of my mind. I didn't leave my bunk for days, mostly because my body was so beat up from the jump that I couldn't move, but also it was the relentless depression. I kept thinking about you, and how I'd left you. I had nightmares…"

Cassie stands up suddenly, grabbing Cole's attention. Moving her chair over to his side of the table she sits back down, quickly pulling on one of his arms until she can hug it to her body and rest her head on his shoulder. Cole can feel his muscles relax as she shifts closer to him, her presence reassuring him once again.

"Anyway, once I was able to get around again, I went to Dr. Jones to try and figure out if there was any other options left, or if the mission was entirely over. Do you remember what I told you about what happened at Spearhead, almost a year ago now?"

Cassie nodded numbly. "That's where all those people were killed so that you could get a new energy core and keep splintering, right?"

Cole nodded too, resting his chin on the top of her head. "Yeah. Well, I thought back to how the man who ran Spearhead, Foster, had come up with a cure for the first strain of the virus. It was useless in my time, because the virus had already mutated a few times, but in your time, right now…that's the cure for the virus we're trying to stop. So I went with Ramsey and we managed to find a few vials of the cure that hadn't been destroyed when…anyway, I knew if I could get back to this time, one last splinter, and get the cure to the CDC, maybe they can reproduce it and distribute it fast enough to cure and vaccinate people of this strain of the virus, and then it will never exist long enough to mutate."

Cassie pulled away to look up at him, her arms still lightly wrapped around his. "Cole, that just might work. The virus…it's already starting to spread, but if we have a cure for it now, we can stop this from getting out of hand!"

"Cassie, how did the virus still…We were positive that we had destroyed the last of it! I don't understand how-"

"When the compound we were in was set to self-destruct? The code used to initiate that self-destruct was also rigged to remotely detonate a container of the airborne virus into the air conditioning system at an airport in Manhattan. I saw it on the news once I was cleared at the hospital and got home. Thousands of people were infected that day, and didn't even know it until they'd gotten on their flights, or home to their families…Since then I've been at the CDC every day, trying to help figure out a way to beat this, even though I knew deep down it wasn't going to happen."

They both fell silent. Cole subconsciously leaned over to run his free hand over the top of the briefcase, reassuring himself that it was still there.

"Cassie, we have to make this work."

"We will, Cole. But can we just…sit here, and be us, for a little while longer?"

Cole leaned back over, softly kissing Cassie's forehead as she snuggled back into his side, his free hand coming over to rest on her arm.

"Okay. Just for a bit."