Disclaimer: I do not own Treasure Planet

A/N: I'd like the thank SmileyMe01 for her/his review I appreciate the review and the fact that you called it amazing after the opening chapter really gave me a buzz. Cheers. (Yes, I am British)

star145 thanks for alerting and favouriting my story and to talktoangels77 for alerting my story too.

A Meeting with Destiny

For star145

6 months later...

He knew he shouldn't be leaving. He felt like he was abandoning her. He was just going to be pushing her even further away from him but he couldn't stay at home much longer. He had to go out to space again. Not just because he missed it but they were all beginning to feel like he was being what his was daughter was being like. It was still a foolish thing for him to do considering the position his daughter was in at the moment. He still felt like he needed to be there for her at this crucial point in her life. Yet he still had to bring money back into the house. Even if he wasn't going to be there to help the family he was at least going to keep supporting it. She couldn't talk to anyone about what she was going through. She was still behaving like she was fine. Or more that she was still honouring her mothers memory when she was actually doing the exact opposite. She would want her to carry on living as she once did. Not dwelling in this existence. He had hoped that she made at least a little progress before he left. Yet from what Gina had told him she was still in denial. There was no surprise there though. It was going to take a little while for him to be able to get over this tragedy.

"Sir?"

He turned round a warm smile suddenly appeared on his face. He at least had one little comfort in his life at the moment. He knew he should have been ashamed but Gina had become someone who had been able to comfort him in the times when they were no one else to be the shoulder to cry on. Even though their relationship was also an intimate one it didn't mean that she meant nothing to him. She now meant everything to him.

"Gina." He greeted with a smile.

He reached out and brushed a strand of hair which had escaped from her cap. She suddenly went all shy and blushed.

"Thank you, sir."

"Xavier." He corrected.

"Xavier." She repeated diligently.

He took her face and cupped it in between his palms. "Will you be alright without me?"

"I only have to run the house and the two little misses. What I do every day more or less." She replied confidently.

"I was talking more about us, darling. I'm going to miss you."

She looked down shyly and then finally replied. "Of course I will miss you...Xavier."

~ (***) ~

"Now, Jim have you got everything?"

"Yes, Mom."

"Are you sure?"

"Positive."

"Sarah, we really need to go."

Jim really did want to go. It made him wonder whether it was going to be this hard when he would eventually leave home and whether she was going to be this reluctant to let him go then.

Sarah put her hands on her hips and gave Doc the most intimidating glare she could give. "I'm just making sure he has everything. Sometimes anyone can over look some things. It's just a-"

"Mom!"

Jim grabbed her by the shoulders and stared intently into her eyes. "I'm going to be fine. You have to trust me on this one alright?"

She sighed and when she looked up she knew she had to give into those big blue eyes of his. It reminded her of when he was a little boy begging for a new pet or another chapter before bed time.

She sighed. "There are those big blue eyes of yours again."

"Huh?"

Jim gave her a look and glanced over at Delbert who was equally as mystified at her sudden calm demeanour. The one thing he could never understand about his mother was that she was so up and down about all her emotions. One minute she was happy and the next she looked like she was about to chase him out the house with a saucepan. It was just plain weird. It almost put him off women altogether. Not that he had met anyone who he was interested in yet but she was really putting him off. And sometimes she said the strangest things as well. Like the whole big blue eyes comment. What did she mean by that? It wasn't like he had used that method recently. He couldn't remember the last time he had made the puppy eyes in order to get his way. It wasn't like it was a good way to get her to forgive him for being brought home by the police for the fifth time. All he was asking her was to just let him go. Why was that so hard? Why was she being so weird about it? He knew he always used to do it as a kid but surely he stopped using the puppy eyes as they are actually called, opposed to big blue eyes. He had to do this if he was going to make it up to his mother. He knew he was always letting her down and now he was going to set things right for her. She never had an easy life and he didn't make it any better. But he wasn't just doing this for her. He was doing this for himself. He wanted to prove to himself that he could do better...

She shook her head. "Never mind, Sweetie. Just come back safe okay? Delbert I'm going to look after your place while you're gone."

"Wonderful!"

"Now I might start cleaning in the library if you don't mind because I really noticed that it was getting a little messy and then I thought I might go on to dusting and sorting through the things in your study to make things more organized..."

~ (***) ~

Cassandra had never seen anything like it. She had read book filled with wonders of the seven corners of the universe. Her father had told her many memorizing tales of her travels but she never expected anything like the spectacle that she now beheld. Solar ships flying above her head soaring across the sky. It all seemed so overwhelming, she clutched onto the skirts of her nursemaid, Gina who had a younger sister cradled in the crook of her arm. Cassandra had never seen so many people before. She had never attended the balls her father went to as she was not yet old enough. Once she enjoyed the pleasure of nature and still did but her childhood passions had somewhat sobered after the death of her mother. She still walked out in the fields amongst the flowers and butterflies in summer. However she no longer chased after the butterflies. She would still swim through the damp, tall grasses in the fresh spring air. She would still linger in the woods with smoky sunlight shining through the autumn trees. Yet she would be in no hurry to run from its bitter winds which seemed to have no affect on her. Or under the grey skies and gentle snowfall of winter. She peered up at the infant that was wrapped around Gina's arm with a look of indifference and coldness. She was never going to love that child. Ever.

The child caught sight of her older sister and reached out for her. For some reason, despite Cassandra's indifference to her she seemed to form an attachment to her. This was something which baffled all of the servants and including Cassandra herself who had not time for the child. It fidgeted in her embrace as if struggling from Gina's grasp. She had a thought that it would escape fall to the ground and crush its skull if she wasn't careful. She shuddered at her own making and turned away from the child and thought. She found it amazing more than frightening that she was capable to conjuring up such a dreadful thing, it was enough to know that Miss Cassandra had such thoughts herself. Even when people offered her to hold her younger sister but she declined in even carrying out her sisterly duties. Some thought that it was out of jealousy although she had a suspicion people were beginning to understand her motives for her actions. She was doing it because she thought she might be betraying her mother's memory. She held the little girl close to her knowing that her own actions was betraying that woman's memory. She was always such a good mistress. She was always fair and good but there was a part of her which told her that even her own actions was a disrespect towards her memory. She was gone but it didn't mean that she had to right to become her husbands mistress so quickly.

The child stared down at her emotionless as it blinked, Cassandra quickly turned away. She probably wondered why she had such an expression on her face. She reached out a hand to her but she ignored it and eventually Gina had to take it and coo the little girl before she got upset over the fact that she wasn't being entertained. Their father had announced a few weeks ago that he had been called on a voyage to the Lagoon Nebula. He had been there before and Cassandra remembered it as the place where their father got his scar on his right shoulder curving down in the direction of his chest. Gina remembered tracing her fingers over that curve one night after their love-making. It was a thin line now but once it was something which seemed rather terrifying, apparently. Her brothers Fredrick and George were absent at their fathers first departure since the death of their mother since they were still at boarding school. Cassandra was somewhat disappointed by this as she would've thought they would've been allowed one day away from school. George had just begun his first year with a terrible start at the death of his mother and leaving his home for the first time made him the most miserable boy in the year let alone the whole school.

"Are you going to miss your father, Misses?" Gina inquired.

~ (***) ~

"So father..." Cassandra greeted when she found him packing. "Is this goodbye?"

He looked over his shoulder and smirked. He knew there was no way to fool his daughter. She was always a quick one. Just like him. He didn't know whether he was going to be able to get away with anything without her knowing about it.

"I suppose this is...Unless you don't want to come with us?"

"Isn't all the places on the ship filled out?" She said distractedly fiddling with a room ornament.

"Yeah but...Wouldn't it be good for ya...To come out into space. Get ya mind off things. Wouldn't it be a good idea?"

She sighed. "Oh Father..." She walked over to his and put her hand on his cheek. "I don't think she's ever going to be far from my thoughts...Is she ever far from your thoughts?"

After she finished talking she instantly regretted it from the look on her father's face. He quickly pushed her hand away and continued packing.

"I'm sorry, I didn't mean..." She scratched the back of her head. There was an uncomfortable silence for a while until her father spoke again.

"I thought you would know better than to talk about her."

"I feel like I can never talk about her." She argued. "Why can't we talk about her? After all she was my s-"

"I SAID NO MARIANNE!" He roared.

She shook all over. Her father was one of the most feared space pirate in many of the galaxies but he seldom talked to her this way. She backed into a corner and sat there for the remainder of when he packed his bags. She watched him throw one thing in after another and wondered whether she should help him but a second thought told her she should know better than to try and interfere at a moment like this. It was like she wasn't allowed to have existed any more. You couldn't just wish away someone like that. Especially from everyone else's thoughts. She could do nothing but wish him luck for trying to try that out with Murat. The moment she left them it was like all memories of her to be chucked away. It was cruel. None of it was her fault. The reason why she 'left' wasn't out of her own choice. She died and that was that. She died in the most horrible way but the tragedy was that she died for something. She actually was the only person in their family who would actually marry for noble reasons. Her father was behaving like she had run away from them, betrayed them in the most heinous way. Then again she was always fathers favourite. What didn't help was that Marianne looked so much like her. It wasn't like she was doing it on purpose or anything...

"Father...I heard an inn was burned to the ground last night." She said, she was thinking out loud and it was a dangerous thing to do but... "You had nothing to do with it did you?"

"Please Marianne I don't have time for this." He growled.

She didn't have any time for this either. It was a place she once called home. Not until he came crashing into her life and she had to throw all of that away. She was a pirate now. At first she loved the idea. It was a way of escaping but now after living for as long as she had as a pirate it was a place where she was still innocent...

"Answer me." She insisted.

He turned around and marched over to her. He was inches away from her face and could feel the hot breath on her face.

"Do you even remember it?" She whispered. "Did you remember what that place meant to me? It was my home."

"Lass...Pirates don't have homes..."

~ (***) ~

Cassandra, still looking out on the open sky and up at the sky ships launching off into space, pressed her lips tightly together and nodded. She knew she would miss her father. She was sure that it would be more than Gina. She knew about her and her father. She saw them kissing one night in the corridor but she never mentioned it to either them. With the way that they behaved around one another it was meant to be a secret. She was fine with secrets. Anyway, she liked Gina. There was something inside her telling her that she was being to cruel and tried to remind her that she couldn't possibly be the only one in mourning. It wasn't all about her. She saw her mother, so light and pure and there was she. She had witnessed the horrors of childbirth and her mothers bloody exit from life and her sisters bloody entrance into it. No one else could understand. She glanced away from the port and saw a young man, probably around the age of fifteen with a ponytail and a earring in one of his ears. She frowned, wondering whether he was a pirate. He didn't seem like one. His face was too kind to be a pirate. She had never met one before and sometimes they could be deceptive but there was something about his eyes which told her that he wasn't...

There was something which stirred something inside her. It frightened her. She hadn't felt anything in years and now there was something so violent inside her trying to escape. It was something which was struggling to break free, she was even beginning to shake just from him standing near her. He looked around Montressor Spaceport with the same miraculous gaze she had. She almost felt like he was a twin spirit to hers. There was something about him which made her feel like she could empathise with him. His eyes were the deepest blue which she recognised from a summer afternoon sky. She missed her summer afternoons but she felt she could never go back. He had a kind, handsome face which reminded her of her father. He looked more like the young men who helped her father on the ship voyages however there was something of an adventurer lying in his eyes. Her father always used to say that you could tell a free spirit or an adventurer if their eyes remind you of the open sky. Her father always used to say that about her. He was somewhere close to the age of her father so in his late-thirties or early forties at least and looked more of a scholar than an adventurer. Cassandra resisted a smile or a laugh which she had yet to have since the passing of her mother.

The young man caught her glance and she gasped and looked away. He gave a warm smile and walked up to her.

"You enjoying the take-offs?"

She looked up self-consciously and tried looking away but still found herself looking back at him. She nodded finally, afraid of seeming rude.

"Do you have a father on board one of the ships?" She nodded again.

"He's a Space Captain." She answered.

"You must miss him when he's away, huh? What about your Mom?" He asked glancing up at Gina. Instead of correcting him she told him out right.

"My mother is dead." She replied stonily.

The boy's smile fell and he looked away quickly. "Oh, I'm sorry. I guess it must be really lonely for you."

She nodded. "What's your name?"

"Cassandra." She replied timidly.

He smirked and held out a hand for her to shake. She glanced at it, it was the first time an older person offered their hand for her to shake.

"Nice to meet you, Cassandra. I'm Jim Hawkins."

She took it not taking her eyes of him. He nodded to her and walked off into the crowds. She watched him until he disappeared not knowing that one day she would see him again...

~ (***) ~

Marianne watched the take off. Of course she was going to. Even though she and her father left on terrible terms but she was never going to miss any of her fathers take off's. There wasn't one which she had ever missed if memory served her correctly. She had to admit as she watched it take off her heart sunk a little. She did secretly wish she was going with them. She missed that open sky...Out of the corner of her eye she saw a little, dark haired girl. She looked so serious and solemn. Then she glanced up at her with her bright green eyes and then she remembered. She froze on the spot not knowing where to go but found herself accidentally bumping into a woman.

"Oh!"

Marianne took her by the arms as she helped her to her feet. "I am sorry!"

She waved her hand. "It's fine. I was just seeing my son off. Even though he doesn't know that I'm here..." She said giving her a tired smile.

Marianne looked her over and read her in a second. "First time away from home."

"Er...Yes." She said finally. "For the both of us."

Marianne nodded knowing how hard it was to let your children go. It was difficult to let them go. It wasn't fair that you had to let them go. Sometimes you had to though since it can be better if you do...

"It's hard not being able to go home..." She murmured.

Marianne nodded. "I see. Yeah, I heard some people got chucked out of their house because of the rise..."

"Oh no it was nothing like that." The woman said with a little chuckle. "Um...It was destroyed. Not only my house but my livelihood. I owned an inn."

Marianne felt herself go cold. It was her...She looked back at her and tried to see if she wasn't just jumping to conclusions. No. It was definitely her. She was so different now. She looked like Hell but she didn't blame her considering what she had been through in the last forty-eight hours. And she had a kid as well. Then again there was always scum passing through the Benbow Inn every now and then and was bound to get their claws on her at some point. Then again she always thought it would be her sister who would have gotten mixed up in that sort of thing. She didn't know what it was but she always seemed like she would be the type to attract the wrong kind of man. Never Sarah Hawkins. She had a no-nonsense attitude, that was how Marianne knew that she would like her if she ever had the chance to get to know her. She hadn't seen her in years so of course she was never going to be able to recognise her. She was bound to look different to when she was a ten year old girl. She could see that she didn't recognise her and to be honest she didn't blame her either. She was probably unrecognisable from her attire and from when she was no older than herself. She shifted from side and to side and looked down at the ground. She was now really self-conscious of the fact that she might recognise her at any moment.

Sarah laughed. "I'm sorry." She said rubbing her eyes. "You don't want to hear me babbling. You're a complete stranger..."

Marianne waved a hand. "No, no. Please. In fact, can I buy you a drink. You kind of look like you might need it."

Sarah hadn't had a drink in years. Even when she used to sell it she never drank any of it herself. She didn't have the time or resources to become an alcoholic despite all her problems...

She threw her hands in the air. "What the Hell! Why not?"

Marianne patted her on the back and led her to the nearest pub. "Don't worry, love. As my father says, there's nothing that can cure a small spell of depression like a good pint."