Summary: Holding that strange, kind man as he died was the end of something inside of Cassandra. That was the moment her fears found strength. Fear of dying alone in a room full of strangers, no one knowing her name...
Cassandra's life going full circle.
Notes: Cassandra says, when reviewing the recording of the party where she eventually dies, that was the last time anyone called her beautiful. Every time I watch New Earth, I always wonder if that means Cassandra-Chip was the last person who called Cassandra beautiful... and why that might be. The Doctor took Cassandra back to that party as an act of kindness to a bitter, dying old woman. But what impact did that moment - which is rather traumatic, having a stranger die in your arms - have on the younger Cassandra?
Cassandra
"Someone get some help! Call a medic or something, quickly!"
Her world ends with the strange man dying in her arms. Cassandra just doesn't know it yet. She doesn't even know who he was. He should be no one to here, but instead her makeup is ruined as she cries for his death.
He seemed so kind. Soft spoken. Something strangely insistent and earnest about his eyes when he said "you look so beautiful." He was no one to her, yet telling her that had been important to him in those last moments of his life.
She caught him when he fell, holding him - cradling him - on the floor. Calling for help while the others shuffled awkwardly around her.
The doctor didn't arrive in time.
"Not that it would have helped the poor soul if I had," they tell her. "Their heart gave out and the rest of their organs were failing too. Nothing to be done. Do you know their name?"
"No. He just... came up to me, out of nowhere. Called me beautiful..." and Cassandra stares at the body bag. A previously unknown fear mounting in her chest.
To die alone like that... surrounded by strangers, no one who even knew his name. Was anyone even looking for him? Did anyone miss him?
Cassandra watched in quiet shock as the body was taken away. Her husband standing beside her, gazing at her in concern.
What if she died like that? Alone in a crowded room full of strangers?
"Come along home, dear." Her husband's hand reached for hers.
She wanted to remember him. Yet even then she knew that, eventually, she'd forget altogether. She'd have to, for her own sake.
But it never fades completely, from the dark corners of her mind. So, in that moment is the beginning of the end.
She wakes up nearly every night with the spirals on the dead man's face and arms spinning like fractals in her nightmares. She can't sleep. She's not hungry.
She's afraid to die and afraid to live. When did this become her life?
"You're so beautiful," her husband tells her, but she hears the words coming from a dead man's lips.
"Don't, please don't," Cassandra sobs. In her husbands arms, on the couch, alone in bed...
He stops saying the words. But not hearing them spoken somehow makes it worse.
"I'm fine," Cassandra insists.
"You're not well, sweetheart. Please," he begs. "For me. Do this for me."
Cassandra scowls and looks away. She refuses the offer of therapy. She's not ill, she doesn't need help.
(She does need help, she's drowning. But every life preserver tossed her way is ignored.)
Finding her husband in bed with his secretary is the final straw. They have an open marriage, but Cassandra never really had to meet her husband's other paramours before. And Cassandra kept hers separate from him as well.
But his secretary is younger than her. Prettier. Blonder. Perkier boobs. Thinner.
He calls her beautiful. He never calls Cassandra beautiful anymore.
"I'm on a diet," Cassandra lies. "Thin is in right now." Her life is falling apart and she's still not hungry.
Cassandra doesn't know who she's lying to anymore. Her dwindling pool of friends, or herself.
She's afraid to die alone, unknown and unloved. So why is she like this? Why can't she stop pushing away...
The woman gets up from the table, a stony look upon her face. And Cassandra knows she said too much, went too far... they're not friends anymore.
Glancing at the window, Cassandra stared at her own face. Gaunt. The fractals of the storefront design swirling in her sight as she gazes until it looks like the patterns are part of her own skin.
She's so alone...
She used to care. Used to be kind. Used to give money to people like this, fallen on bad times on the streets.
Now Cassandra walks past without a thought. She needs her money for herself. Beauty is thin and thin costs money.
She's running low on money. Maybe... maybe she needs a new husband.
Cassandra buries her husband. Two dead in a row. Does that make her a black widow now?
It doesn't matter. She can afford the surgeries now.
No one thinner than her. No one more beautiful. Everyone will know who she is and love her.
She'll never be alone.
Some past version of Cassandra would be appalled, perhaps.
But when her eyes open after the latest surgeries are done... she looks in the mirror. All that's left is skin stretched taught over a frame, eyes that aren't even her originals, but cloned eyes grown in a vat... and she smiles. Her brain safely tucked away in a chemical vat beneath her frame.
She could go on for centuries like this. She'll never die.
"Moisturize me," she commands. For the first time.
Not the last.
Force grown clones have patterns on their skin. Cassandra doesn't pay attention to the why. Something about the speed of growth causing the natural creation of fractal patterns upon the skin.
There's one pattern in particular that's familiar. Somehow... soothing. Nostalgic.
She'd seen the pattern before, Cassandra eventually realizes. But its been so long, she can't remember.
Part of her longs to reach out and hold the clone in her arms. But Cassandra hasn't had arms for a very long time. And before that her arms had become frail and withered and useless anyway.
She'd been so old, on the verge of death. Going thin had been her salvation.
(She could have died, surrounded by her family. But they wanted nothing to do with her anymore. Some suspected her of murder. She could have died, surrounded by friends. But her insults and slights and petty jealousies created a wall around her they gave up on bypassing long ago. She could have died amongst people who knew her name... but nearly everyone has forgotten Cassandra these days. Even the survivors of Platform One no longer care who she is.
Sometimes Cassandra wishes she was already dead. Then she wakes up and keeps fighting to go back, one last time, to her glory days. To hear someone call her beautiful again.)
"No, I just wanted to say, you look beautiful," Cassandra tells herself.
Tells herself because no one else will, after tonight.
"I mean it. You look so beautiful."
"There you are, I've got you. It'll be alright... there, there, you poor little thing..."
Such a terrifying thing to die alone, unknown, unloved, in a room full of strangers...