The thick, slapping sounds in rapid succession filled the room as the cards rippled together into a singular deck, only briefly overshadowing the soft patter of rain on the window. It was gentle but left an echo, and had been doing so for at least an hour. Cassandra's fingers straightened the new deck of cards atop the bed tray before picking them up. As she sorted them into two piles, her eyes flickered up.
John watched as she dealt the cards with a tired, worn slump of his features. A hand remained absentmindedly resting over his abdomen—the place Cassandra knew to be an array of stitching and bandages. Every so often, he'd fidget with the cotton, poking and pulling with drawn eyebrows. He'd been given a considerable amount of pain medication but it seemed to only take the edge off. A vibrant heat was still there, pulsating and burning deep into the muscle.
It was to be expected, and more than understandable, considering his injuries—though, that didn't change it's annoyance. He'd only been awake for forty-eight hours, after two surgeries and much needed recuperation, but he was incredibly close to snapping. It drove him mad, the inability to quell the insatiable burn. "Give it time to heal," Cassandra said, as she straightened the two piles of cards.
John grunted, readjusting his sitting position. "Easy for you to say."
"Only because I've been there. Freshman year, Scott put us through one of his dumb lessons in the danger room-"
"Don't remind me," his nose wrinkled, eyes shifting away. "That wasn't my finest hour."
"Gave me a bomb-ass scar, though," Cassandra turned over her left hand, retracting her right into her lap, and gave a dry smirk.
John's eyes moved back hesitantly. They fell to her hand, hovering above the tray, with a heavy sigh. It had faded to a dull pink, noticeable at a first glance only at the edges, but it was there—a jagged scar easily spanning the length and width of her palm. The blemish looked exactly how it did all those years ago when he'd given it to her. It had been a rather fond memory they shared for quite some time.
He was relatively new to the school. Bobby and John had become fast friends, though John didn't socialize much with Bobby's friend group yet. They'd seen each other in the halls, shared a few classes even, but resided in different halls. Despite Cassandra's confident demeanor and flickering rage, she wasn't one for introductions. Finally, after a week of prodding to hang out together as a trio from Bobby, they all shared a danger room lesson.
The sparse students invited were split into teams of two for a control exercise. It was harmless, really—or so Storm thought. John's flames were ill-timed, the pair of teenagers completely out of sync, and the heat licked at the hand Cassandra had risen to protect herself. She insisted it didn't hurt, but she was forced to meet Jean in the infirmary to get it examined. The burn in her palm was nearly third degree. It was medicated, bandaged, and Cassandra was given the rest of the school day off.
Later, John appeared at her door, the room she'd shared with Kitty. He was an adrenaline junkie with an acute disrespect for authority who had never truly felt guilty for anything in his life. But that day, it was guilt that forced him to knock. From then on, he'd been fully adopted into the circle of friends, that group of moody and rambunctious fourteen-year-olds. John felt a twinge in his chest looking at the scar now. An ache ebbing deep into the muscle as an echo of adoration filtered through him like a ghost.
It paled his cheeks, his eyes shifting away, to the smattering of raindrops against the half-fogged glass of the window. Cassandra retracted her hand, pulling it into her lap as a different kind of ache blossomed within her. Her thumb absentmindedly slid over the scar, back and forth, with a heavy sigh. "You ever...ever wonder what might have happened if you'd gone with me? Back then?" John was caught in a thick cloud of thought, speaking quietly across the tray.
"We've been over this," Cassandra's thumb dug into the scar reflectively. "You know why I couldn't."
"But you showed up at camp later anyway."
Now, Cassandra's eyes fell. She'd often thought herself a hypocrite for that very fact. For denying John his request and staying with the X-Men when every ounce of her being had begged her to accept, only to side with Magneto two years later. Though, a lot had happened in those two years. She warred with herself internally, accusing herself of hypocrisy before arguing excuses, some almost strong enough to exonerate herself in her own mind. But they always fell just a little bit short.
If I'd gone with him, she proposed the question, what would have happened? She would have lost Logan. Jean's death would have all but been in vain. She would have never seen her brothers again. She would have never loved Kurt. Although, maybe that last loss would have been worth it? The thought pulled her stomach muscles tight, forcing her eyes to scrunch closed at the dull jab of a headache. "Do you regret it?" Cassandra asked, talking to avoid thinking. "Leaving?"
John shook his head with a brief glance in her direction. "Hell no. This place is a noose."
"It's suffocating," she bitterly agreed.
"Is that why you disappeared?"
She paused. A jab of heat behind her ears caused her to stiffen, and she shook her head. No, not entirely. It was a small portion of the reason in comparison to the catalyst, the final straw that sent her packing, barging into Xavier's office in a fit of frustrated tears. Cassandra could almost feel her blood thickening, solidifying in her veins as she suddenly felt so heavy, so stiff. The idea of opening such an old wound, the pain tucked into an old chest at the bottom of an ocean, was terrifying.
No matter how much she still cared, John did not deserve that heartache. To know her so intimately. To take part in something only three others alive knew about. Even still, she could feel it bubbling up her throat and she fought to swallow it, a sting drying out the surfaces of her eyes. She blinked and inhaled a deep breath, the prolonged silence finally bringing John's eyes forward. "Did they kick you out for helping us?" he questioned, curiosity beginning to trickle in.
Again, she shook her head, blinking a little harder as a fingernail stabbed the scarred flesh of her palm. "No, I left," she exhaled, eyes settled on the details of the backs of the card stacks on the tray, the game all but forgotten now. John was the last person she wanted to tell, but she wondered—could talking it over help her to finally let go?
Though it wasn't something a person simply moved on from, it would be nice to feel less of its weight. She would likely never see John again once he healed and left the mansion. It wouldn't be held over her, gawked on, and gossiped about by the adults. It would remain with someone naturally unreliable, unbelievable. If she wanted to attempt healing, this might be her only chance to start. Talking to someone else would be far worse—and next to impossible. But this? Her voice was already leading the way.
John sat silently, eyeing her with curiosity, but also concern. What could she have done? What could they have done? What was so bad that she finally loosed her iron grip on the X-Men and refused to return? Selfishly, he wondered, what was able to make her leave when he couldn't? "It was a lot of things. But mostly Alcatraz," Cassandra spoke slowly, as though she were uncertain of each word as it slipped from her tongue. "Do you remember what I did?"
He nodded once. "Put out an energy blast strong enough to incinerate solid metal? Yeah, I remember."
"I was pregnant."
Every muscle in John's body halted, lungs paused as his heart appeared in his throat. His jaw fell slack and his blood ran cold. "B-but you're…you're not-"
"Not a mother?" Cassandra swallowed thickly. "I was really weak after that night, and I had to be carried back. I passed out on the jet. When I woke up, I was in the infirmary. Storm said I'd be fine, but it looked like I miscarried. I didn't know I was pregnant until then. The longer I thought about it...the crazier it made me. I had to get out."
Water brimmed the edges, but did not pour out, kept back from the fall by a thin and fraying string. She held onto it tightly with bloodied and bruised knuckles turning white against the pressure as she spoke. John sat back against the pillows behind him, propping him up before the headboard, with a shallow exhale. It was a bitter pill to swallow for many reasons. Some entirely selfish, but most bred from an adrenaline rush of worry.
Silence settled in to hang between them like dry laundry on a line, fluttering and dancing, tugged by the turbulent whirlwind of emotions as pride-made clips kept it in place. Cassandra's nail dug lines of pink into the scar tissue but she only faintly felt the sting. The tissue and damaged nerves had been nearly dried up since the day they were marked—yet she pressed anyway, in search of a deeper kind of burn.
"It was that blue guy's kid, wasn't it?" John was quiet, voice rhetorical. Cassandra nodded numbly. "If...if things had worked out...would you have kept it? I mean, is that something you want?"
His eyes darted from the table to her face, gaze flickering, unable to stay but unwilling to leave entirely. It was something Cassandra thought about often for several years—would she have truly wanted to dive so quickly into motherhood? No. Would she have kept the baby, if she'd been given a choice? At the time, she'd reasoned with herself that it was for the best that she didn't have it. She was still so young, so fractured, so lost. She couldn't care for herself, much less a child.
Odds were, she knew, she would have ruined it somehow. Shut the child out like she'd done with everyone else until it resented her and left her behind. Still, a hopeful, childish part of her did consider the alternative. What if she'd kept it, and everything had gone right? What if having a child helped her realize back then what she'd only just discovered now? Her life would have been entirely different, but happier—with a small family of her own. Maybe that was what drew her to the idea, in all actuality? The foolish hope that one decision, as fake as it may be, could've provided some kind of quick fix.
That it would have solved unsolvable problems, mended broken bonds, and given her something she felt she never truly had. But the reality was much darker, much more grim. She would never know what really would have happened, because she was never given the choice—only a seed planted into decaying soil that slowly rotted, roots dead before they could take hold, and a plant of wishes that never had the chance to break ground. "I don't know. I guess I'll never know," she answered.
It was mid-afternoon. Classes were in session. The storm from the days prior had finally cleared. So, naturally, Cassandra was in the green house. She'd left the door open, a soft breeze drifting through every so often as she took to a plant with trimmers. The pot propped on a workbench near the back, she clipped away at the dead and gnarled leaves and buds, and it was easy to assume it'd never been done in the poor plant's life. Not much had been properly taken care of outside.
At least, the gardener wasn't as detailed and thorough as Cassandra would have hoped. Still, tools were misplaced, hoses left about, with plants unpruned and under watered—the green house was in shambles. Although, a part of her was grateful for it. The disarray gave her something to do, an excuse to be outside, away from the mansion crawling with children and old friends. Having a plant-related task to accomplish once more felt a little bit like before. Though it wasn't quite right, it was a small comfort.
Once trimmed properly, Cassandra lifted the watering can and tilted it, giving the plant a quick drink. Then she carried it in its pot out of the green house. It was a full-sun plant trapped primarily in the shade—it was no wonder the poor thing was half-dead when she found it. She placed it just outside, on the edge of an untidy flowerbed. A small sigh escaped her at the sight. The bed was fraught with large weeds, threatening to choke out the fairly healthy flowers residing amongst them.
There was no sense wasting time. She trudged back into the green house for a small shovel before lowering herself to her knees on the grass in front of the bed and wrapped her fingers around one of the weeds. The shovel was necessary, popping the invasive plants above soil with their roots intact. Then, she tossed it aside. That was the problem with weeds—once you saw them, it was impossible not to reach down and pluck at them until each and every one was uprooted and gone. Cassandra was a picker. She always had been.
When nervous, stressed, or angry, she picked. At herself, her clothes, objects—anything within reach. More often than not, the habit manifested itself in wringing her hands, or driving her nails into the scarred flesh of her palm. Now there was too much on her mind not to obsessively pick at the weeds in the flowerbed. She was amassing a pile of them, the corpses of dandelions and groundsel, as she inched along the front of the bed.
The sun's warmth on her back was soothing, a calm breeze against her cheeks pushed wisps of her hair across her vision. Combined with the feeling of accomplishment, giving into the compulsive need to do something, helped ease the tension in her shoulders. Her muscles were wound tight, held there by constant stress and a lack of sleep. But this moment of peace was enough to relieve some of it. She could feel a sigh of relief building within her lungs.
Then, a voice. "Red clover, red clover. Send Cassandra over."
Her brows knitted as she sat upright, twisting in her position to see behind her. Scott stood only three or four feet away, hands in the pockets of his jeans, with a calm and closed-mouth smile hanging from his lips. It was hopeful—his attempt at being lighthearted with her. Though, his sudden appearance only soured her mood, undoing the achievement of a good day. "What?" she questioned, uninterested as she squinted through the sun's rays.
"I didn't realize you came back to be our gardener," Scott took slow steps forward and her gaze eased into annoyance as she followed him. "Did Storm put you up to this?"
"I was a florist. Working with flowers is how I unwind."
Cassandra explained herself with a kind of pointing-out-the-obvious slowness, her tone marbled with dry sarcasm. He realized, then, just how poorly his words landed. Scott was never good at recovering from failed communication. He'd always ended up making it worse. But there was something heavier on his mind, a deeper meaning to his attempt at a conversation, and he wasn't about to be deterred. Not again.
Not just across the garden from Jean's grave. She would be rolling in it, he knew, with the way he'd ruined his relationship with Cassandra. And although that wasn't actually what hurt the most about this reality, it was a close second. If Jean were still alive, not only would this not be happening, but she would know just what to say. She would nudge or suggest and somehow things would get smoothed over, their brief rift mended. So, Scott cleared his throat.
"I'm sorry."
The words touched Cassandra's ears, but she paused. Scott's jaw was clenched, shoulders taut, as he struggled to bare his rawest emotions. Her initial silence was to be expected. Of course she would be confused, surprised, skeptical. Though it seemed at surface level an apology for his most recent comments, it felt much more genuine. The words were too heavy, too loaded. There was no way they were meant for something as small as a botched joke.
She stabbed the small shovel into the dirt of the flowerbed to hold it up and tugged at the gloves on her hands, pulling them off to expose the tired and clammy skin to the sun and fresh air, as she stood from the grass. "For what, exactly?" she asked, turning to face him fully. "Shutting me out? Treating me like an enemy? Abandoning me-?"
Scott nodded quickly. "All of it. I never meant...I took my grief and my anger out on you, and Jean would be ashamed of me. I don't hate you. I don't even dislike you. The truth is...you remind me so much of her. Maybe it's just because you two were so close? But I watched you out there, in the city—nothing mattered except helping people. You were strong and smart, and you were a confident leader. And for the first time in too long, I saw Jean in you, and I was nothing but proud."
Cassandra swallowed, but her throat remained dry. Her fingers wrapped tightly around the outsides of her gloves, nearly making a fist, and her other hand rested against the outside. They idled at the height of her stomach. Heart pumping in her chest, she refused to blink as a sting settled in. It was what she'd wanted to hear for so long. She'd wanted him to come to her, to apologize and admit he was wrong, to show he truly did want a relationship with her. But a part of her was bitter.
Why had it taken him this long to see who she truly was? It had been in front of him for so many years. And now here he was, come to grovel at her feet—and an urge in the pit of her stomach called for his persecution. Yet still, she wanted to believe it. To soak it in, to wrap herself within the warmth and fullness of his words for as long as she could, and cling to whatever happiness it could bring. The striking conflict was white hot, burning her lungs as they tried so desperately to keep up with her heart's increased rhythm.
Again, she swallowed, this time inhaling deeply. "You can't undo what you've done, Scott," she gave a faint shake of her head, an unintended rasp to her voice from the burn. "I appreciate the apology. But it doesn't change what's been done to me. To us."
Scott took another step forward, quick to respond, as he pulled his hands from his pockets. "I don't expect it to. I want to build a new friendship—a better one," he said.
Although the deep red of his glasses kept any emotion that might be in his eyes hidden, his voice carried it through. The words were laced with a desperate kind of remorse. His features drooped with guilt, with pleading—the only thing to complete this scenario would be if he were to get down on his knees. Don't, a voice in her head warned. He'll simply do it all again the next time he's hurt. Maybe it was right? Maybe he would abandon her again? But, what if he didn't?
"It's going to take time to forgive you," she told him. "But you have one chance. One, Scott. I mean it."
Relief rushed through Scott's limbs like novocaine, numbing the tight and aching muscles once fraught with stress. He surged forward with an audible exhale, his arms encircling her frame too fast to pull away, and he held on tight enough to bruise. Cassandra was stunned by the sudden action. Still, there was no instinct to run because of it. Instead, she was frozen, held still in his embrace. "I promise," he forced the words out, eyes brimming beneath the shadow of his glasses. "I'm never leaving you like that again. I promise. I'm so sorry."
The words hit the bottom of her stomach like rocks in an empty pool and she could feel the lump in her throat tighten. Somewhere deep within her chest, there was a child rejoicing. Overcome with happiness and relief. She could feel echoes of its emotions, searing bittersweetly into her bones, and she found herself wrapping her arms around his torso. Her cheek against the front of his shoulder, she exhaled a shaky breath. "I missed you," she admitted, however quietly.
"I missed you, too."
In truth, he'd missed her every day, even when she was right in front of him. It was his own doing, trapped by his foolish decisions—but he longed for a moment like this. It was in the few seconds she'd stopped breathing on the roof of Stark tower that he let go of himself. His pride, ego, and fear all subsided to leave him with one emotion. Irrevocable guilt. The insatiable kind. But he waited, watching for the right time to approach her as she settled back into her room at the mansion.
The change was like dropping a fish into new water, a deadly shock to the system, as it was. He didn't want to rush it, to add to her stress and inevitable pain from the fallout of New York, and risk losing her even further. But this was all he could hope for—a chance to do better, and a promise he would come through. It was a good start. After a moment, he pulled away, a hand darting up to swipe below the frame of his glasses as he gave a quick sniffle, as discreet as possible when right in front of someone.
Cassandra raked a hand back through her hair, pushing the strands out of her face as she exhaled deeply, the reality of the conversation taking its time to settle in. "I'll stop interrupting your unwind time," Scott stepped back with a nod, his tone casual. "If you want, maybe we could catch up over dinner?"
"Alright," she was hesitant to nod.
The uncertainty in her voice, coloring her features, was evident. But he took the win, her acceptance despite the reluctance a sign that perhaps she was truly willing to give him this chance. "Great," he smiled, hopeful. "I'll see you later, then."
She nodded again, before he turned on his heels and started for the stone steps. It felt like some kind of oddly specific fever dream. She stood quietly for a moment in disbelief, internally questioning the probability that Scott Summers swallowed his pride long enough to apologize. Though, it did happen—he apologized, she agreed to a new start, and they made plans to talk at dinner. Had she traveled to some kind of alternate reality? Was almost losing her forever truly enough to reset him?
As she knelt on the grass once more, she was slow to resume removing the weeds. Heightened emotions still lingered, her throat tight and slightly sore, but her shoulders had relaxed again. Cassandra wondered, the thought fleeting, if it was her head-on collision with death—though, for a much different reason. Maybe she had been reset? If possible, it would be difficult to prove.
In reality, resolution was nearly entirely foreign now. Her new life she'd created in the city was not a blank slate—it was simply a cover-up. A white sheet to hide the imperfections in the dining room table. None of it real. None of it permanent. There was no way to repair the table without surveying the damage and repairing each scratch, nick, and discoloration by hand. Some, she knew, would never be what they were. There was bound to be a spot or two that was beyond repair. And that was okay.
The table didn't need to be perfect and some damage, while unconventional, didn't hinder the use of it. They simply changed its shape, its color—and the user could adapt. Cassandra mulled it over, only vaguely telling her hands to move, plucking another robust weed from the flower bed. She tossed it into the pile she'd gathered and reached for another.
"Kid!"
Logan's voice was distinct, the gruff and perpetually disgruntled sound easy to recognize as it called out to her from behind. It was second nature, after all this time—she could pick him out of a crowd of strangers with her eyes closed, she knew, but it didn't feel obscure. It was so natural to hear him and turn her head, to look for him over her shoulder, even at the expense of adjusting her position to twist far enough.
He stood at the top of the stone stairs at the edge of the garden. Even from this distance, she could see the rueful slope, the angry undertone of his furrowed brow, and her stomach tightened. "What's wrong?" she called back, discarding the small shovel in favor of standing.
As she started across the grass toward the stairs, he answered. "Someone just pulled in the driveway," he sighed heavily. "You're not gonna like it."
"Who is it?" she paused at the base of the steps, hand on the stone banister. It was a mixture of curiosity and fear that drove her question. Who could have possibly arrived at the school that she, specifically, would not like? Was it someone she knew? A politician? The possibility of it all was biting at her ankles, pushing her up the steps, until she arrived at the top.
"Tony Stark."
