She still feels naked. It's been days since Veronica found her trembling in a corner, held her in tiny arms, and clothed her in a bathrobe she found stuffed underneath the dresser. She felt like a fool, crying into the shower curtain, wondering what the hell she had done to make Cassidy leave her like that; even more foolish when Logan and half the hotel staff stood there staring as Veronica whispered into her hair, he's gone.

Mac still hasn't been able to connect the Cassidy she knew with the Beaver she has been told was a murderer, a rapist, a sociopath, a broken little boy. Hell, she can barely accept the fact that he took a swan dive off the roof of the same building where she tried to give him everything. Turns out she never would have had enough to make him whole again, no matter how hard she tried.

The world believes that she hates him, that she is better off with him free-falling to his death than remaining in her life. At least that's what the news says. Every time she dares to leave her room she catches her mother watching television, peering into the pictures behind the glass. Flashing lights reflecting off of windows at the Neptune Grand, ambulances and a body bag, how could no one have known the secret struggle within young Cassidy and Mac wants the reporters to stop asking the questions she can't even fucking bring herself to think. She slips back through the door before her mother can notice. She's not even really her family, anyway.

Actually, she hates herself. Blames herself for never being able to see into the cracks between all of his truths. She hates the world for refusing to look into the cracks between his lies. Cassidy, her Cassidy, the boy that would hold her hand and look at her with nervous eyes, bring her vegan cookies at lunch, run his fingers through her hair and ask her, please, dye it yellow next with a laugh. He can't, couldn't be the same person that blew up that bus and took everything from Veronica and lived with so much sorrow trapped inside. She hates herself even more for wondering what was wrong with her, why he had been able to make himself hard and push himself inside of Veronica and not her. She feels a twinge of jealousy turned nausea at the thought that Veronica had been unconscious, Mac was awake and willing and in love with him and he could barely even look at her that night, let alone be within her and fill her and complete her.

She throws up in the bathroom, her skin against cold tile, wrought between guilt and envy and disbelief at everything that has happened. There's knocking at the door but she doesn't reply. She's too numb to speak anything other than the strangled whispers that escape when she thinks about Cassidy, and sometimes she wishes he had taken her with him.

She wears her own clothes now, yellow shirt, yellow streaked hair, standing out from the mourners and reporters in black surrounding her, but she doesn't care. She stands before Cassidy's grave, wearing her own clothes, and she still feels naked. She says goodbye.