Yes, this is another changed chapter. Lololololmylifefails. Prz enjoy it prz.
Nick's POV
An obnoxious, insistent knocking jolts me out of my dreamless slumber. Instinctively, I Move a set of handguns I keep under my pillow to hover above the door. I've been waiting for the return of the Division for a while-it's been too quiet in Hong Kong for the last few weeks. At this time of the morning, I have little doubt that it's anyone else. My hand reaches tentatively for the latch, shakily undoing it while I try to make out the blurry silhouette on the other side of the door.
"Niiick," the familiar voice whines from the other side of the door. "Let me iiin. I come bearing gift." She smacks the door and it swings open without the bolt to keep it in place. And there she is, standing there like we haven't seen each other for five plus years.
"Cassie?" I choke. The guns fall to the floor.
"Who the hell else would it be?" She smirks and tosses me a small package, which hits my uselessly outstretched fingers and falls to the grimy ground. Cassie immediately makes herself at home. She pushes past my frozen body and goes straight to the cabinets, rummaging through them until she somehow manages to locate a stray granola bar that's probably been sitting in there since 1983. Cassie makes a satisfied noise at her discovery and peels back the wrapper as if it were a fifty-dollar bill.
"You really need to get better food," she says through a mouthful.
"You don't seem to be complaining much." I've somehow managed to collect myself enough to move from my spot in front of the door and collect the package lying on the floor.
"Harrharr." Cassie sneers at me. "It's a t-shirt." She jerks her head towards the package in my hand. "You're going to be needing it if you want to be halfway presentable." My fingers slide underneath the crude newspaper wrapping, but I don't finish opening it.
I'm thrilled to see Cassie, I really am. But I don't think I want her here. Things are heating up with the Division, and Cassie will only make it more muddied. "What are you doing here?"
"I was in the neighborhood. Thought I'd drop in on an old friend." She wipes her fingers on her grimy clothes. Still in the hood-rat Lolita stage; too-short t-shirt, way too short jean shorts, holey tights and knee-high boots. All of it looks ridiculous on her now that she's…grown up. Really grown up. "Is it too early to go out to eat?"
I'd like to deny her. Tell her that I don't want anything to do with her. That I don't want to get mixed up in her business anymore since I have my own business to worry about. But something about her hopeful air makes me change my mind. Grudgingly.
"Guess not." I pick the guns up off of the floor, turn on the safety, and stick them in the back pockets of my jeans.
"Good. I'm in the mood for shrimp.
The streets are just as bustling at this time of morning as they are at any other time. Instead of women with their children or men off to their jobs, there are shady drug dealers and criminals. Usually, I have no qualms about walking around Hong Kong this early; with Cassie here, I feel like we should be hiding back at my apartment until the sun is up.
"There." The only word Cassie says to me on our search for food. She points out a small stall down an alley with an array of steaming foods on display. I shrug and follow her to a crate posing at a table. I sit while she goes and gets the food.
I'm not sure what to make of her visit. It can't be for something positive, as this is the first time that I've seen her since she ran out on Kira and I. It doesn't strike me that Cassie would come back unless she needs something from me. Something that she can't get on her own. Something probably illegal.
"I didn't know what to get you so…I didn't." Cassie flops down across from me and digs into her food. I try not to get annoyed at how completely she's avoiding telling me anything about what's going on.
"So. Where have you been?" Since she's not talking about it, I will.
"Around. What about you? Tell me your life story." She pauses in stuffing her face to give me a withering look.
"Nothing interesting. Nothing you haven't already Seen." Cassie stiffens indignantly and turns a deep pink.
"I didn't-"
"Kidding. Chill out, kid." That wasn't the right thing to say. Cassie's face darkens dangerously. "I'm not a kid," she growls. "I'm nineteen years old." Her chopsticks tremble in front of her lips.
I laugh it off, waving my hand in an attempt to get her to cool down. "Already? I feel so old next to you."
"It's only an eight year difference," she refutes carefully, turning her attention to a piece of shrimp that's fallen onto her legs. I cough uncomfortably at the sudden silence.
The only sound for a while is Cassie's chewing. My fingers drum on the crate top. "How's your search been going?"
"Search?"
My eyebrows raise. "For your mother? I assumed that's why you left-"
"No, I left because your crazy fucking girlfriend forced me to." Cassie acts offhanded, but I can hear the venom in her words.
"I-what?" Okay, okay. Okay. What. Kira never mentioned…But of course she wouldn't.
"Nothing important any more." For a moment, Cassie holds my gaze. It's like she's trying to coerce me into saying something I'll regret until I realize that she's not looking at me but through me. Her fingers twitch and, as if moved by someone else, they begin arranging noodles from her food into a picture on the table. I stare in a silent fascination. Not the usual way documents what she Sees, but maybe this is a good thing. Maybe she's long decided to give up on artwork.
It isn't her noodles that have me rapt, though. It's her. She's definitely grown into a…woman. Her face has lost all of the baby fat, slendered out and hollowed, probably from lack of proper diet. There's a scar above her right eyebrow.
"Done ogling?" She asks, her eyes still staring through me.
"What are you talking about?" I scoff, returning my gaze to her noodle-art.
"Oh, I totally didn't see you staring at me or anything." My god, she's annoying. I don't know if I'm more annoyed at her for being obnoxious or for being…completely right.
"What are you making?" I ask, trying to change the subject. She squints one eye and adds a piece of shrimp to the picture.
"Nothing pleasant."
'Since when has anything you've Seen been pleasant?" I joke. My heart hums in anticipation. I don't want to get dragged into anything Cassie's Seen, but I can't help that it excites me that I might have no other choice. Cassie pauses for a fraction of a second. She blinks rapidly and comes back to this time.
"Hmm." She backs away from her picture and allows me to take in all of its glory. I can't really tell what's going on, to be perfectly honest. It looks like a bunch of congealed noodle splatters with some shrimp thrown in. "Can you not tell what it is?" I shake my head and she sighs heavily. "That-" she points at one blob, "is you. This-" another right next to the first, "is me. All these things around us are other people. That-" the sauce from the noodles, "is blood."
"So we're dead?" Why does that not surprise me?
"Not quite. Well. Not all of us." Cassie chews on a strand of her hair. "We are. You and I."
"How did it happen?"
"Some sort of fight. Against people." Her fingers prod idly at a shrimp. "I should draw this before we leave…" She reaches into the bag I hadn't noticed hanging at her side and extracts a professional looking sketchpad and a package of Sharpies.
While she's drawing, I consider running away. Right away. She'd probably be able to find me again, but maybe I'd put enough distance between us to keep the deaths from happening. More alarming than my own death is Cassie's. She's been missing for six years, but that doesn't mean that I've stopped caring about her. If me leaving her like she left me means that she gets to stay alive, I'll do it.
"I think we need to find my mother as well." Cassie's voice shocks me out of my thoughts.
"Why do you think that?" She turns the sketchbook around and shows me a scribbled picture of a woman with a thick X over her mouth.
"I've Seen her."
Herm, so now you know what Cassie Saw the first time. Funny how I decide to add things in the second time around. XD