Disclaimer: Refer to the first chapter.
Chapter 8
Cassie?
xxx
Her knuckles taut, she rapped on the door of her home three times, pausing briefly between each of them. It had been so long, would anyone even be there? She knew there was still a cloaking spell on the house, that was obvious. Her father, the paranoid maniac that he was, wouldn't risk being exposed to the outside world, especially not after Malachai. She could feel the magic bouncing off of the house as she stood on the doorstep, patiently waiting for it to open. As she stood there, she looked down at her hair and reached up, attempting to rid the crusted dirt that was caked into her strands. Just as she put her guard down and relaxed for two seconds while trying to fix herself up for her father, the door suddenly swung open.
"Who—?" Joshua Parker answered the door, stopping cold as he saw his daughter on the doorstep. Cassandra froze and observed her father go shell-shocked, his breath taken away when he saw the ghost of his child standing a few feet away from him. There were no words for the first moment, but then Cassandra swallowed and tried to smile at him.
"Hi, Dad," she said slowly, cautiously watching his reaction. Joshua was slow in coming up with a response, so she took a deep breath and added, "Yeah. I know. I'm not really sure what to say, either. But can I come in? I could really use a second to wash up."
"I...I..." Joshua stuttered for a moment before finally stepping aside for her without saying a word. Cassandra nodded to him thankfully, walking into the home that she grew up in. The bloodstains on the wall had been scrubbed off since the last time she'd been in her home, and there was modern, contemporary furniture around the house—things that she had never seen before. Cassandra gulped, trying to wrap her head around the future. She'd jumped ahead twenty years, it was understandable.
"The bathroom is—"
"I know where it is," she said softly as her father moved around, still eyeing her curiously, as if she were some demon sent from hell to torment him. Straightening, she moved over to the other hallway and opened the door to the bathroom, where she stood over the sink for a few moments to collect her thoughts. Well, what did she think would happen? Her father would welcome her with open arms? He was the one that put her in that hell, not that it was really his choice. Still, she didn't know what she expected from him. She didn't know what she expected from anything anymore. She was in Portland where she'd gotten sent to the prison world, that meant that Damon was most likely in Mystic Falls where he and Bonnie had been sent to that life as well. Even if she wanted to make an escape, she wouldn't know what to do.
After washing her face and scrubbing some of the grime off her hands and in her hair quickly, Cassandra stepped out of the bathroom to find her father pacing in front of the door. She closed it carefully and stepped forward in the living room, sitting down on one of the new couches, her head pounding. Joshua stopped and stared at her, shaking his head.
"How are you here right now? Unless you're not really here."
"Trust me, I'm here." Cassandra scoffed and leaned over on her knees. "I'm here because...because something happened a few months ago. Other people came into the prison world. One of them was a...was a Bennett Witch."
Joshua's eyes widened. "No."
"D-Don't freak out, okay?" She held up a hand and lifted herself from the couch, her hand shaking. "Kai's not here. He's trapped in there still."
"And the witch?"
"Um, she's..." Cassandra swallowed and hung her head. "Probably dead right now, I don't know. She was hurt pretty badly before we got out—"
"We?" Joshua repeated, crossing his arms over his chest, almost as if he were interrogating her. Cassandra sighed.
"It's complicated and, to be honest, not exactly relevant." She nodded at him. "The important part is, Kai's not with me. He's still there. I promise."
Joshua shook his head. "No. No, if Kai is in that prison world with a Bennett Witch—"
"You know..." Cassandra raised a very heavy breath in her chest as she scoffed at her father. "When I thought about getting out of that hellhole, this wasn't exactly what I was expecting that was waiting for me on the other side. Aren't you the least bit happy to see me after all these years, Dad?"
He paused, staring at his daughter for a moment or two. Cassandra waited, practically tapping her foot at him impatiently. As more time passed, she grew more and more disappointed, and finally, after a minute or so, Joshua sighed.
"Of course I am. Of course." He took a half-step forward, almost as if to hug her, but then he stopped short in his tracks as if it were a bad idea. Cassandra waited for him to make the next move, watching as he made the situation more painfully awkward that it should've been. "I just...don't know what to do, Cassandra. You being here is proof that Malachai has an opportunity to escape."
She shook her head. "I don't think that he can."
"But you're not sure?" he clarified. Cass was quiet, causing her dad to nod in confirmation of his statement. She could see his hands shake for a moment before he started to walk towards the doorway between the living room and another room. "Okay. Okay, stay right here. We're gonna do a spell."
"Dad—"
"Stay here, Cassandra."
Cass watched as her father fled the room to get something, but she was conflicted. After turning away from the other doorway, refusing to watch after her father for a second longer, Cassandra spotted something in the corner of the room. It was a desk, one that she used to play with all the time before she was shipped off to boarding school. She used to hide things in the desk, things where no one could find them. Granted, those hiding spots were somewhat crafty at best, but she mostly just taped weird notes underneath the surface of the table as if waiting for someone to find them and read all of the 'funny' things she wrote on them. It reminded her of a much simpler time.
She walked over to the desk, feeling nostalgic. Her hands glided underneath the wooden top of the desk, and she could feel the small slips of papers tucked into the cracks. Then, as she ran her hand along something else, she felt that it was too big. It was taped underneath the desk, loosely, but it was too large to be one of the slips of paper she wrote notes on. Curious, she curled her fingers around the edges and tore it off of the surface, bringing it up to eye level. It was then when she remembered what it was.
A small photo, somewhat like a Polaroid, was staring her right in the face, reminding her of something she promised to herself a long time ago. Something that she vowed to do the moment she got out of that hell. Her hand curled around the picture and she looked around. One part of her was angry at her father; honestly, what kind of dad was barely even happy to see his own daughter after twenty years of her being trapped in a prison world? She didn't do anything wrong, she had the right to be back in the present. But on the other hand, she could see where he was coming from. He was just as worried about Malachai getting out as she was.
But did that make it right? Could she not escape her psychopathic brother for two whole minutes to reunite with her father? It seemed hardly fair.
So as she heard Joshua's footsteps as he hurried down the stairs, she had to make a quick decision. Was it right of her to stay? Or was it completely unnecessary to abide by her father's rules any longer after what was done to her? She could hear him approaching faster, and the moment he entered the living room, she decided.
"Cassandra—" Joshua stopped short as he looked around the room to find it empty, his eyes going wide. He looked all around him, but there was no one to be find. "No! Cassandra?"
Cassandra watched her father from behind the desk, her magic shielding her with an invisibility cloak. She swallowed thickly.
"Sorry Dad." Her head hung as she opened her palm and stared at the picturesque photo of her, smiling like an innocent teenager, accompanied by a young teenage boy smiling equally as joyfully. Cassandra took a deep breath. "I have a promise to keep."
xxx
To be completely frank, she had no fucking idea where to start.
The world was full of people. People that looked alike, people that had the same names, people that had similar names, people that had changed their names from their original names...it was too much. Cassandra sat in a car she had hot-wired to start, staring down at a huge, outdated phonebook she had taken from a gas station off of the highway. There were at least ten Ethan Davenports in Oregon alone, and that was just to start with. She was no longer in the prison world—there were highways with other cars and too many people and places to sort through. How did she know that he was even alive to begin with?
Cassandra leaned against the steering wheel to try and calm herself. Before she did anything, before she even thought about contacting Damon and driving back to Mystic Falls, she had to do this. It wasn't an option for her. He deserved to know the truth—and she deserved to be able to tell it.
Frustrated, she chucked the phone book to the side and grabbed the photo from her pocket, along with the small Italian lira that contained all of her untouched, concentrated magic that had just been darkening over time. With a deep breath, she pressed the lira to the photo and her breathing hitched as she could feel the magic, the uncontrolled substance, take over her body completely, consuming her into a vision. A great big house in the middle of the suburbs...sprinklers nurturing a mint green grass lawn...a UPS carrier dropping off a package...and then the address: 5414 Chrysler Lane, Ross, CA 94957
Cass lifted her hands off the lira and the photograph, causing it to fall in her lap as she reeled over the powerful surge of power running through her. It died out eventually, of course, because she didn't hold onto any of that magic, but it was so powerful, it nearly overthrew her. After collecting herself, she slipped the lira and the photograph back where she had pulled them from and took a moment to think.
The next thing she knew, she was rifling through the glove compartment for a map. Maybe she could find it from there, she thought, but instead of a map, all she found was a beaten-up, neglected square box with a prong on the back that looked like a suction cup. She stared at it in wonder and looked around the edges. She found an "on" button and watched as she screen glowed to life, challenging the dust on the screen. She jumped back, confused at the phenomenon, but watched as there was a prompt on the screen, asking for directions. She tapped the screen and it turned, giving her an electronic keyboard and a prompt for a house number. Straightening in her seat, she complied with the request, entering the same address she had seen on the package delivered to the house the picture had sent her to. After many times hitting the "enter" button, she was finally finished entering the address, only to be scared when the GPS started to talk to her.
"Drive 0.5 miles, then turn right."
She stared at the screen, noticing the sidebar. It said that it was 636 miles to her destination. She looked at the clock on the dashboard of the car she had stolen to see that it was almost midnight. If she drove then, she would get there in ten hours, it said. Her ETA was 9:49AM the next day. Cass looked over the steering wheel and debated for a moment. Should she or shouldn't she?
After a second of debating, she realized that this was something she couldn't stop. This was something she could not go back on. So she set the weird device in the cup holder of the car and began to drive.
xxx
11:30AM
Fucking traffic.
Cass let out a relieved, thankful sigh as she finally came upon the house she was looking for. The stupid talking device beside her, as unhelpful as it was, decided to announce, "You have arrived at your destination!", and it only caused Cassandra to get even madder at the device and shove it back in the glove compartment when she stopped the car at the curb. Nearly eleven hours she'd been driving and she was hungry, she had to use the restroom, and she was practically dying of thirst, since her last rest stop was at 6AM. But regardless, she took a moment to herself in the driver's seat, relaxing for just a moment as she rubbed her eyes rid of the sleep she had been deprived of.
But it was time. Time to face the music. Time to tell Ethan what happened and time to finally explain herself after two whole decades. She didn't know what had become of him since her departure from their world, but she hoped that he had done something with his life. From the looks of it, he hadn't done too bad.
She climbed out of the car, her hands practically shaking. Still, she held herself high and moved towards the driveway of the affluent home. But just as she had crossed the street to the curb before Ethan's driveway, she saw the front door of the home open. Her heart stopped as she watched Ethan walk out. He was different, that was for sure, but she expected that. The years agreed with him, however. He stepped out of the house with a suit and tie, a coffee cup in one hand and a briefcase in another. He nearly got two steps before the door opened again, and that's when Cass realized that under no circumstances had her absence affected him.
A tall, olive-skinned blonde stepped out of the house with two children tugging on her fingertips. The blonde stopped Ethan in his tracks with his name and he turned around to accept a small box that Cassandra assumed was a phone, as Damon and Bonnie had explained to her once. Ethan slipped it into his pocket and the tall, leggy blonde leaned down and kissed him on the mouth quickly just as the children walked out and hugged Ethan tightly. He smiled down at them and Cassandra watched, heartbroken, as the blonde smiled and reigned her kids into the affluent home and shut the door. Ethan walked away from the front step towards his car, presumably to go to work. Cassandra just stood at the end of the driveway, frozen, but the moment she saw Ethan's eyes lock with hers, she widened her own and whipped around, suddenly walking into the middle of the street, despite the luxury mini-van that nearly trampled her over. Her legs were shaking as she rushed over to her stolen vehicle and climbed inside, about ready to make a getaway.
Instead, life surprised her.
Ethan stepped in front of her car, his eyes wide as if he'd seen a ghost. It seemed to be a recurring theme, she realized, though it wasn't far off. She was, on some level, practically a ghost.
Cassandra sighed in her seat. Shit, she thought as she watched him narrow his eyes at her through the windshield, and unfortunately for her, the windows weren't tinted like she'd seen some cars. He saw her clearly, though she didn't doubt that he still didn't understand how it was her that he was seeing. Ethan walked around the car to the driver's side and Cassandra, having no other choice, stepped out of the vehicle having been made. She stared at him as she lifted herself from the car and stared at him over the door she was about to close. His mouth nearly dropped open.
"Cassie?" he whispered, amazed.
Cass's heart nearly fell apart. Cassie. Every time Kai'd called her that, it reminded her of Ethan, which was why she hated it so much. The name just reminded her of all the terrible times she'd spend in that hellhole.
"I...really shouldn't be here right now." She scoffed, looking back at the house where she had seen what she could only assume to be his wife and his children. "I-I'm sorry."
"How the hell...how the hell are you alive?" He stepped closer and noted her appearance. "How do you still...still look so..."
"Eighteen?" Cassandra filled in with a small laugh. "That might have something to do with the fact that I've been frozen in time for the past twenty years."
"I...don't understand."
"You don't have to." She gave him a soft smile. "I think I'm gonna go now. I'm sorry."
"No!" He stepped forward and stopped her from opening the car door that she had shut. She looked back up at him, waiting for him to speak. She could tell he couldn't come up with words, his mouth dry as he licked them so he could speak. "I want to know what happened."
Cass raised a sigh. "Look, I don't really want to ruin this whole...perfect life you have. Just forget that you saw me."
"Cassie," he scolded, causing her to look up at him again, this time more frustrated than before. He stepped closer and shook his head. "I think I deserve to know what happened. You owe it to me to tell me what happened."
She frowned, but she knew he was right. After all, that was what she was there for in the first place.
He took her to a coffee shop a few miles away from his home. A 'Starbucks', apparently. Though it didn't seem much like a Starbucks...it was all modernized and things of that nature. They sat outside in the perfect California weather, the sun looming over them as it reached high noon. Ethan shrugged.
"I'm assuming that this obviously has to do with magic," he observed. She nodded. "And your psycho brother? The one that murdered your family?"
"You know about that?"
"It was hard not to. It was in all the papers back then." Cassandra took a small sip of her coffee and avoided his eyes. "What happened? Did he hurt you?"
She shook her head. "He didn't get a chance to. My parents were picking me up from the airport that night, remember?" Ethan nodded and she leaned forward, running a hand through her hair. "He...he made me go with him to...to a prison world. An alternate dimension where no one existed, where Kai could wallow in an eternal misery of solitude. But when he took me, no one did anything to stop him. It wasn't my choice." Cassandra looked up at him involuntarily. "I promise I was going to come back."
He stared, but didn't say anything. It was almost as if he wasn't saying anything on purpose, like he was biting back what he really wanted to say. Eventually, he cleared his throat and inquired, "What happened there? In this...prison world?"
She traced her finger around the rim of the coffee cup she had in her hand, but she didn't answer the question. What was the point? What would she gain out of telling him her misery? Empathy? Pity? She didn't want any of that. There was no point in him pitying her for something that was out of her control.
Cass looked up at him sharply. "So the blonde? The kids? I'm assuming this isn't a big misunderstanding and she's really your secret sister who likes to kiss you on the mouth?"
Ethan was silent for a while, but even before he admitted to it by hanging his head, she knew what she was saying was right. They were quiet for a long time, but finally, Ethan looked up at her and said in a soft voice, "It was twenty years, Cassie."
"I know." She gave him a soft smile. "I didn't expect you to wait. Honestly, I didn't know what to expect. But I would like to know something." He waited as she looked into his eyes seriously, cherishing the moment for a while before finally asking lightly, "Are you...are you happy?"
He swallowed, but it wasn't a tough question. She didn't mean to make him question his entire life, she just wanted to know honestly. But like before, even without the admission, she knew already. She knew that her absence had no effect. She didn't want there to be.
So she lifted herself from the chair, deciding to leave. Ethan jumped up and stopped her. "Where are you going?"
"Ethan, you're...what, thirty-nine now?" Cass scoffed. "I'm still eighteen. It was twenty years ago, I realize that. I don't know what I wanted when I came here, I just...after seeing my father this morning, I wanted to feel like nothing had changed since I left. But it has. Everything has...has changed. There's weird box devices in cars that can tell you where to go and there are...phones and Google and...and I can't be here anymore. I have somewhere else to go."
"Cassie!" he tried, but she walked out of his sight, and he didn't follow her. He wasn't exactly sure why, and she wasn't exactly sure why she walked away, but they both knew, subconsciously, that it was for the best. Ethan gave a sigh of defeat and Cassandra merely just climbed into her car and left the Starbucks parking lot.
xxx
From Ross to Mystic Falls was a drive that Cassandra was not willing to make again. Instead, she decided to go to the airport, where she purchased a ticket with spare cash she had found in the car she had stolen. Truth be told, she was ashamed of herself for stealing a car, but what else could she do?
The plane ride was about 7 hours, most of which she had slept for. When she had gotten to Richmond, she took a train to Whitmore College, where Damon and Bonnie had mentioned multiple times during their weekly lectures on what the real world was like. It didn't help much in preparing her for her adventure, but it certainly did help telling her where she needed to go.
When she arrived at the Whitmore College train station, she realized she was in the middle of the college town, which was extremely convenient. Most likely, the train was for the college students looking to head into the city at a convenience, and she didn't blame them. As she walked the sidewalks of Whitmore College, trying to figure out what the hell she was going to do to find Damon from then on, she finally came in front of a public facility, one that had a lot of people inside. Maybe one of them knew about Damon, Elena, and the lot of them, she thought. Going inside, she also realized that she needed food. Her stomach growled, but she had limited capital left. She would have to find Damon soon.
There were menus at the bar that she spotted, so she started to walk towards it. Just as she did, someone suddenly spun around after downing a shot and accidentally spun into her, nearly knocking her over.
"Oh, my God, I'm so sorry!" the guy apologized, trying to steady her. "I didn't see you."
"It's...fine," she muttered as she stabilized her body and tried to ignore the light-headedness from the lack of food in her stomach. But when she looked up at the guy that had stopped her, she instantly recognized her. She gasped, causing him to knot his eyebrows. She couldn't help herself, she let out yet another sigh of utter relief. "Oh, thank the fucking lord."
"Excuse me?"
"You're Stefan, right?" she breathed happily. He looked at her, surprised. "Stefan Salvatore? Damon's brother? I...could really use some food right now."
Sure enough, it was Stefan; and he stared down at the tiny, dark-haired girl with nothing but confusion.
Thanks for reading! Please review!
thisdarkpassenger: Hahaha nope not dreaming! But yeah it was a long time so I don't blame you. Thank you! Drama will start up next chapter, this was more of just exploring Cassandra's past. Thanks for the review!
queen ares: Thank you!
RHatch89: Thank you!
jordanjanellejoy: Thanks! Yep, it'll definitely get interesting from here.
CWTV-TeenWolf-Lover: Thank you! She will...eventually.
HALEBTRASH: Ew no. I have characters that like Elena because Elena didn't really do anything to them but Cass is too smart for that. She's sort of like a challenger when it comes to Damon and Elena's relationship because she'll play devil's advocate a lot and will make Damon really question his relationship with Elena and how valid it really is. Elena will eventually, yes, learn that there is something going on with Damon and Cass but I don't think she'll notice all that soon.
LMarie99: Thank you! Here's the update!
HippieLove1312: Well here you go! There will definitely be more of them in the future. Thanks for reviewing!
SomebodyWhoCares: I know right! Thanks for reviewing!
Guest: So you're talking about 6x11 and 6x22, right? So for 6x11, I'll say that Cass is going to be taken by Kai, yes, but it'll be a lot different than with Elena just because Kai and Cass have this very complex relationship and Kai is sort of obsessed with her power so it will be a very interesting interaction. As for 6x22, I think I've got a pretty good idea what's going to happen at the end but I'm not entirely sure so I can't give a definite answer right now. Thank you for the review! Here's the update!
GoingClassic: Haha thanks! Yes, they really are ugh.
Guest: Here's the update!
Guest: Here's the update!
piper: Here's the update!
