{The Fifth Year}

{January}

[You think she's awake by now?]

[Only one way to find out.]

The last thing she remembered was making Wade bleed, his face looking down at her as she smiled up at him, cold snow surrounding her. She remembered using clones to beat him, the farthest she'd ever gone with her mutation.

And it seemed to be the limit.

She was hooked up to numerous machines, one beeping with her heart, another going with her breathing. She was wearing a hospital dress and underwear, and it was absolutely freezing in the room she was in. She moved, but winced when she felt the needles in her skin dig and wiggle. She ripped the IV's out slowly, her hands and arms aching from having fluid being pumped into them for God knew how long, and she struggled to sit up. Everything in her body felt like it hadn't been used in weeks, numb and tired.

She stretched shakily, taking a deep breath of air as her vision swam. She noted the slight but rank odor of Jimmy's cigars and smiled when she saw the hoodie and sweats on the table next to her bed. She yawned tiredly, limbs shaking as if she had a stroke or something, and struggled out of the hospital gown, flickering her skin to invisible weakly. It wasn't as easy as before, but it wasn't impossible. Obviously, she wasn't fully healed in the area of her mutation. She tugged on the hoodie, Bolt's smell invading her senses, the smell she linked to family, to an older brother of sorts. She had trouble getting on the sweats, but she managed. She was still desperately cold, shivering in the warm clothing, so she sank into the hospital bed, running a hand over her face as a yawn over took her, her limbs still shaking. It wasn't long before she fell asleep.

--

"God damnit, woman, you weren't supposed to take those out!" was the first thing she heard roughly an hour later. She looked up weakly, seeing Zero glaring at her with Wade, Bolt, and Jimmy behind him. "How the fuck is Stryker supposed to send you on a mission with us if you can't even fucking deal with IVs?!"

Obviously, Zero was either drunk or not a very happy man at the moment... or both.

"They're just IV's," she said. Speaking was a little difficult, but just a little. "H-how long was I out for?" she asked, getting up in bed. Bolt and Jimmy rushed to her, helping her up and puffing up a pillow, putting it behind her head. She smiled, then sniffled as she suddenly realized that she felt like she had a cold. "Thanks."

"Five days," Zero muttered, glaring at her as he started gathering the IV's together. She groaned.

"Five days?!" she whined, rubbing her eyes tiredly. "Why?"

"Someone pushed you too hard," Bolt bit out, glaring heatedly at Wade, who had stayed more towards the back of the room.

"But, he didn't-" she tried to tell them that it had all been her. She was the one who pushed herself too far.

"You had a fucking stroke. A fucking massive stroke, because he pushed you too hard," Jimmy growled. "He's lucky to be alive," he shot, the glare he gave Wade was crippling. She pushed herself up further on the bed and then jumped when Zero jabbed a needle back into her vein.

"Ow!" she hissed. "Son of a bitch!"

"Well, she has her reflexes," Zero mused in quite unamusing manner, then continued to stick the IVs back into their original places. She winced every time a needle went in to her.

"See? I'm fine," she insisted, then bit her lip when the biggest needle, the one for water, was shoved back into its place. "I'll be walking by tomorrow and fighting in a week. I promise." Then she looked at the medical papers taped to the side of her bed, squinting at the doctor's handwriting. "And, if I'm literate at this point, it wasn't a 'fucking massive' stroke. Tiny one. Barely caused any damage. I'm fine."

"You're anything but fine!" Jimmy roared, suddenly livid with an anger that rolled off him in tsunami-sized waves. "You could have died, he pushed you so hard! You could have fucking died! You were in a coma for five days!"

"But I didn't," she interrupted. "I'm alive, I'm breathing, I'm talking, and in a little while, I plan on walking."

"He-" Jimmy started, but she glared at him, making him shut up instantly.

"Wade didn't do anything other than help me train, Jimmy. I've been through worse than this, and you know that. You were there," she bit out. That made most of the men in the room shut up. The silence was awkward, only filled with the beeps of monitors and some sighs, until Stryker strolled in.

"Ah, Cassandra, I'm glad to see you're awake," he said fondly. "Well, other than the fact that you're awake and talking, we've got some other good news about your mutation."

"Really?" Jimmy asked, somewhat sarcastically. Stryker shot him a look and continued.

"We've learned that your mutation isn't invisibility," Stryker said.

"How?" Wade asked, opening his mouth for the first time, and nothing funny or sarcastic coming out. If Cassie had been paying attention, she might have fainted at the rare occurrence.

"Well, first off all, Cassie can turn anyone invisible," Stryker said, "and she doesn't have to touch them to do it. Though the first hint was when I noticed that whatever she was wearing turned invisible with her. When she started to do different exits and entrances, we theorized that she was simply manipulating the light around her to create images, or lack thereof. Manipulation of light waves explained everything, the sound, the ability to hide from heat vision, and the ability to hide more than just herself."

"Question: how does light waves explain the sound?" Bolt asked. Cassie thought back to all those science classes she had to endure and took a shot.

"Radio waves? It's the only possible way I could have... but wait, my screams?" Cassie said, looking at Stryker. He grinned.

"Radio waves. Correct, Cassandra. The screams were also radio waves, but you amplified them. You mute things out with silent radio waves, not by muting the actual sound waves," Stryker explained. "Either way, we weren't entirely sure about Cassandra's mutation until five days ago when she fought Wade. Thanks to the few cameras outside, we were able to draw conclusions once Cassie started to make 'clones'. The fact that they weren't stoic and moved around was incredible. It even impressed the President of the United States," Stryker said proudly, smiling at her.

"Welcome to the team, Cassandra."

{April}

"He'll never love you back," Jimmy said, claws out as she twirled a new knife, one that Wade had carved her initials into. She swiped at his arm, missing. He took her feet out from under her, and pinned her to the floor. She looked up at him, glaring.

"No one will ever love me the same amount I love them," she said, looking him dead in the eyes. "It's life."

Jimmy looked at her; she'd grown up right before his eyes. Five years. Five incredibly short years. She was still too young to know what heart break felt like. Barely seventeen. Never been on a mission. She should have had a normal life, Jimmy thought, one out of the military. She should be going to high school and making boys swoon and playing varsity volleyball or something. Instead, here she was, knife in one hand as she stared up at him, aqua eyes hard but still breakable, hair like dark brown fire, ivory skin over slender curves and bone. She shouldn't have liked/loved a man like Wade, so much older than her and so sadistic when it came to love. She'd only get hurt. He'd never be good enough for her. Then again, no man would ever be good enough for her in Jimmy's eyes.

"You're too young to understand," Jimmy said, shaking his head and then getting up, putting out his hand. She took it despite the fire in her eyes.

"I'll always be too young to understand," she told him, and walked out of the room.

{August}

The days she met Seth had been one of the days Wade had gone overboard on making her life a living hell. She'd walked into the kitchen, freshly showered after sparring with Jimmy for an hour or two, to find a pretty blonde woman wrapped around him, Wade pinned to the counter. It was a stab in the front, directly pointed at her heart. She stopped dead in her tracks, image flickering as she struggled to stay silent, to not say anything, to walk away like it didn't bother her.

Sure, she'd known that Wade had been seeing other women. After all, she was sixteen, and she certainly hadn't marked him as hers in any situation. But it still hurt to see him with a pretty little woman wrapped around him moaning his name.

God, it hurt.

She forgot how to breathe as she grabbed a bottle of water out of the fridge, her wet hair chilling as the cool air rushed out, waking her up slightly from her shocked and hurt daze. She moved slowly, feeling like everything was going in slow-motion as she shut the fridge and stood there for a minute, looking at him. His eyes were open, watching her as he sucked face with the blonde. She looked him in the eye for a second before she shook her head, turning and walking away. "I'm so stupid," she whispered as she left.

Wade watched her go, wondering why her reaction didn't make him feel like he ruled the world like it normally did.

--

She walked around the base, getting totally lost but not really caring. It wouldn't have surprised if she was walking around in circles, stopping every once and awhile to beat her fist against a wall or tug her hair and tell herself that she was stupidest little girl in the history of the universe for even liking Wade at all. She didn't cry, though. No, Cassandra Blake simply did not cry, at least not over a silly crush.

After what seemed like hours of storming the hallways, beating up her ego and slapping herself mentally and telling herself to get a grip but never doing so, she sunk to the floor, leaning against a wall and looked around. The good and bad thing about Stryker's base was that every hallway seemed to look the same. There was no differing wallpaper, no different carpets, no different anything. It all looked the same.

And she was hopelessly lost. Before, when she'd been walking, that hadn't bothered her, but now she found herself deep within the base and having no clue as to where she was.

Just. Fucking. Brilliant.

"Hey," an unfamiliar voice said, and she looked up, her having been in her hands, elbow resting on her knees. A guy stood towering above her, he was probably a little bit taller than Jimmy but not as tall as Wade. He had black hair that had a few layers in the front, black eyes, and a small beard on the point of his chin (black). His build reminded her of a mix of Jimmy and Wade: not lean, not bulky, but obviously strong. "You okay?" he asked, voice deep.

She rubbed her eyes, sniffed a bit, and shook her head. She was not crying over some dumb-ass like Wade. She wasn't. She looked up at him after taking a deep breath. "Yeah. I'm good, though I'm kind of lost. You know how to get to the testing rooms? I can find my way from there."

He smiled, and she felt her heart quicken just a little bit. He had a great smile. "Yeah, I can get you there. What's your name? I didn't know Stryker kept hot women stashed in the testing rooms," he said, smirking at the way her cheeks flared up just a little bit. She grinned, flattered, as he helped her up, pulling up her weight like it was nothing with one hand.

"Cassie. I didn't know Stryker kept hot guys stashed in the back," she retorted, grinning.

Holy hell. Was she flirting?

"What's yours?"

"Seth," he said as he started to lead the way towards the testing rooms. "So, if you don't mind me asking, what is a girl like you doing in a military base?"

"Employment," she said simply, not going into detail. "What about you? You don't look much older than me."

"Employment," he said. "How old are you? Eighteen?"

"Sixteen," she admitted, flattered by the fact that he thought she was older than that. "You?"

"Nineteen. I could have sworn you were older," he insisted. She shrugged it off.

"Sixteen. Seventeen in a few months. So what exactly is your employment?"

"Simple stuff," Seth explained. "Developing weapons for the military. Guys in the back call me Stark as a joke."

So he was hot and he could do her pre-calc homework?

Score.

{November}

"Where do you think you're going?" Jimmy asked as she walked into the rec room clad in those damn ass-hugger jeans he got for her that made Wade lose concentration on whatever he was doing.

"Out," she said simply, getting a quick drink of water. She had on a Led Zeppelin T-shirt, too, the neck stretched so that one of her shoulders and a bra strap showed. Jimmy noted that she had recently showered, the scent of sugar and cinnamon that he knew was hers drafting through the room.

"Out where?" Wade asked, suddenly involved in the conversation as well.

"To dinner," she said nonchalantly. Wade spit out the beer he was drinking, making Zero snort in laughter. Victor grinned.

"Where and with who?" Jimmy said, claws coming out just at the very idea of any man touching her in a way he didn't approve of.

"In Clearview," she said, talking about the closest town. "With Seth," she added, taking a drink of water. Her gut was doing flips, she was so nervous. First date jitters, even if she'd been talking and flirting with the guy for months.

"Who the fuck is Seth?" Wade demanded, saying his name like it was some sort of horrible disease. She glared at him, aquamarine eyes crippling.

"A guy I met when I got lost in the base awhile back," she said. "Jimmy's met him. He doesn't have a problem with him."

True enough, Jimmy really didn't see a problem with the guy other than the fact that he'd caught him making out with Cassie a few days ago. It was a traumatic event he doubted would ever leave his mind.

"How long have you known him for?" Wade asked. "A day? An hour?"

"Almost three months," Cassie shot back. "Longer than you knew that blonde whore you had in here awhile ago, that's for sure."

Jimmy suddenly felt the air shift from 'okay, we're having a little over-protective issue because Cassie's been attacked before' to 'Wade will fucking murder him if he even looks at her because, well, we're not really sure yet' in Wade and Cassie's conversation. Jimmy smirked.

Was Wilson, dare he say it, getting jealous?

"That was different," Wade defended, "and-"

"Bull crap," Cassie spat. "God, Wade, after four years of leading me on, you can't let me go on a date with a guy I'm interested in?"

Wade ignored the comment, using a different approach. "He's just going to fuck you over and then leave you, Cass-"

"And what do you do with your women, huh?" she demanded. "Make loveto them and then cook them breakfast? God, you are such a hypocrite, Wade," she said, starting to walk out. He was at the door in lightening speed.

"You're not going out with this guy," he stated, drawing his swords. She grabbed a butchers knife that sat on the counter.

"Yes, I am," she said through gritted teeth. "Move."

"No way in hell," Wade said simply. "You're not going off to make-out with some douche bag I've never met-"

"Too late for that one," she said, arms crossed stubbornly as she smirked at him. Wade felt his control slipping.

He was going to fucking murder this guy for touching Cassie, no matter how much she begged and pleaded for him to spare the jackass. He would decapitate this son-of-a-bitch as slowly as humanly possible and make sure it hurt as much as it possibly could.

No one touched Cassie. Ever.

Wade was so caught up in absolute fury that he failed to realize Cassie was gone until he came back to earth, seeing only Zero and Jimmy staring at him from the couch. Then he got a hard kick in the ass, sending him off balance, before Cassie turned visible again and walked away.

Wade watched her go with a glare and a sick feeling in his stomach. The glare was because she literally kicked his ass. The sick feeling... The sick feeling was because he knew she was trying to get even with him for all those years of leading her on and tormenting her. But worst of all?

It was working.