Cassandra returned to the Library almost a month to the day following her surgery. She walked into the Annex on Stone's arm, still slow but much more steady, and found Baird, Flynn, Ezekiel, and Jenkins all standing around the center table, waiting for them to arrive. A hastily thrown together "Welcome Back" banner hung behind them and streamers drooped from every elevated surface in the room. Cassandra couldn't help it; she saw the results of their attempt to decorate the room and burst out laughing.

"I told you she'd think it was stupid," Baird said, her welcoming smile dropping instantly.

"No," Cassandra laughed. "No, it's not stupid! It's wonderful. It's just a little…"

"It sucks," Ezekiel admitted. "You can't blame us. You're the decorator."

"You tried; that's all that matters," Cassandra asserted.

"There's a pie in the kitchen that might be more to your liking," Flynn admitted.

"Why didn't we start with that? It's never too early for…" Cassandra started. "Ooh!"

Her reply was cut off as the big clippings book across from where Cassandra and Stone stood started to rattle, the telltale sign of magical mayhem that needed containing. Cassandra's face lit up as her eyes grew wide with anticipation.

"That was fast today," Ezekiel muttered, walking around to the book.

"So where are we…" Cassandra started excitedly. She paused, her face fell, and she corrected herself. "So where are you going?"

"Belgium!" Ezekiel announced. He glanced at Cassandra for a second before he said, "It's not too late there for waffles, right, because Belgian waffles sound a lot better than pie."

"I guess," Cassandra muttered, looking a little gloomier than she had just a moment before. Stone shot Ezekiel a dirty look before looking to Cassandra with sympathy.

"Do you want me to stay here with ya?" Stone asked.

"No," Cassandra said. "Go. I don't need a babysitter anymore."

They, minus Cassandra and Jenkins, all headed for the Back Door, and Stone gave Ezekiel a shove.

"Do you have to be a jerk about it?" Stone asked.

They disappeared through the Back Door onto a street in Belgium, and Jenkins shut the door behind them. Cassandra sighed and let herself fall onto the nearest stool, her chin resting in the palm of her hand.

"Cheer up, Miss Cillian," Jenkins said with as much positivity as Jenkins could muster. "I, for one, am quite pleased to see you back within these walls, but don't tell any of the others I said that."

Cassandra grinned a little as Jenkins retreated back to his lab. She decided to give herself five minutes to wallow in her fear of missing out before rediscovering all of the wonderful things her home had to offer her. When her friends returned a few hours later, Cassandra was asleep on a couch amid a pile of books, as any one thing still wasn't able to hold her attention for more than a little while. She woke to the smell of warm, melt-y chocolate and freshly baked bread.

Cassandra shifted on the couch, let out a little moan, and sleepily muttered, "Smells like particle mechanics."

"No, Math Girl, I'm pretty sure it smells like waffles," Ezekiel said.

Cassandra opened her eyes and found Ezekiel holding a plate of fresh Belgian waffles with a chocolate drizzle and a dusting of sugar. She gasped and sat up, an opened book falling from her waist.

"Are these real?" she asked, making room for him to sit next to her.

"I'm not a complete asshole," Ezekiel admitted, taking the spot that had just been cleared of books. He handed her a plastic fork, keeping a second for himself, and said, "Found a place that serves 'em all day. Dig in."

A few weeks later, Cassandra sat at the center table in the Annex, dangling her feet from a stool and reading Baird's notes about cases she had missed over the past month. Suddenly, Baird and Stone burst through the back door. Baird was calling her name before they even made it back to the Annex, and Cassandra stood quickly.

"I'm right here," she said. "What's wrong?"

"It's a maze," Stone said.

"What is?" Cassandra asked.

"The village," Stone said. "It's a maze, and Jones and Flynn are trapped."

"Like the labyrinth?" Cassandra wondered.

"More like Harry Potter," Stone said.

Off Cassandra's confused look, Baird explained, "Flynn believes the artifact he's chasing is buried under the town hall, which is in the center of the village, but the artifact has turned the village into a giant maze, or it already was a giant maze…"

"We're not really sure," Stone said. "Flynn waited until Baird's back was turned and then took off without really knowin' what he was doin', and Jones decided to play Guardian and ran after him."

"And now they are in there somewhere and have no idea how to either reach the artifact or get out, and if we go in…"

"We'll probably get lost, too," Stone admitted.

"What can I do?" Cassandra asked. "I'm stuck here, remember?"

Stone pulled out his cell phone and pulled it into a laptop sitting on the table in front of Cassandra. He pulled up a series of images. "Jones hacked the nearest satellite and got these," he said. "They're not great, but it's all we've got."

"And these are the coordinates of the town hall," Baird said, pulling out a piece of paper full of Baird's scribbled notes.

"But how can I help if I don't know where they are?" Cassandra said.

Baird moved in front of the laptop and typed in a few commands. A map of the area appeared, a blinking orange dot in the middle. "I put a tracer on Ezekiel's cell a long time ago."

"Wh – did you do that to all of us?" Cassandra asked.

"That's not important right now," Baird said, pointing at the dot. "That's where they are. Flynn claims to have no idea how he got there."

"Couldn't you follow the trace to get to them?" Cassandra asked.

"And have four of us lost?" Stone asked. "Come on, Cassie, if anyone can make sense of this, it's you."

Cassandra stared at the materials in front of her for a few minutes, zooming in and out of the satellite images. "Yes," she finally said. "Yes, there's a pattern in the walls of the maze. It's…my brain know it's there, but I can't see…"

"Can you crack it?" Baird asked a few moments after she trailed off.

"I think so. I'm a little rusty," Cassandra said sheepishly. "Can you tell them to stop moving?"

Baird sent Flynn a text. The orange dot on the screen stopped moving about half a minute later. "Done," Baird said. "What kind of pattern?"

"It's complicated. I…I would do better if I were in it; my brain would be able to see it better if I were actually experiencing it, but…give me a minute."

"Take your time," Stone said.

"There are five…no…six…rectangular patterns in the walls of the maze repeating at rates varying between…" Cassandra muttered, the world around her disappearing.

Cassandra worked the mathematics in her head while numbers slowly filled the space around her, her fingers tracing the images as she went. For the first time in years, however, the numbers weren't flying in random floods around her head; they were structured and orderly…everything in its proper place, and she was focused, easily working through the equations and patterns she saw.

Baird and Stone waited cautiously as she muttered about vertices and rectangles, and as the cadence of her speech quickened and she sank deeper into the math, Stone instinctively reached out his arms, ready to catch her if the equations overwhelmed her. Cassandra visibly braced herself for the headache that never came. The headaches had stopped exactly eight days previously, exactly within the time frame Dr. Shepherd had given her for how long it would take for bone to heal. After a short while, Cassandra pointed at the orange dot on the laptop monitor, and the numbers that surrounded her faded away.

"I've got it," she said triumphantly. "I can get them out, or I can get you to them and then get all of you out." She paused and inhaled lightly. "Huh…blueberries…anyway, which would you prefer?"

"Cassandra," Stone said, a look of wonder on his face.

"What?" she asked innocently.

"Do you even realize what you just did?" he asked.

Off of Baird and Stone's delighted expressions, she paused and recognized what had just happened: complicated equations, no hallucinations, no crippling headaches, and math that still smelled like breakfast. Her hand instinctively flew to her face, brushing the bridge between her nose and her upper lip. When her fingers came back clean with no traces of blood, her eyes welled up with tears.

"Oh my god," Cassandra said softly. The scan Dr. Shepherd had brought in after the surgery showed her that her tumor was gone, but this…this had proved the tumor in her brain was no more. "Oh my god!"

The last exclamation came out as a squeal as she instinctively flung herself into Stone's still watchfully outstretched arms. The force of her body against his chest was so great and so unexpected that he lost his footing and they rotated just a bit, pivoting as his arms tightened around her middle. He returned her feet to the ground and she pulled back, blushing all over again. She instantly reached for the nearest seat, and he helped her sit down.

"Too much?" he asked.

"I'm going to learn to stop doing that eventually," she said, holding her head as the dizziness subsided. "I'm sorry; I got a little too excited."

"Nothin' to be sorry for," Stone assured her. "You alright?"

Cassandra nodded and looked at Baird. "Flynn knew that that's what it could be like, didn't he?" she asked. "The Library knew…that's what he meant when he said I didn't know…"

"You didn't know?" Baird asked.

"I haven't been able to do anything like that since I was twelve," Cassandra admitted. She snapped quickly back to the situation at hand and downloaded the images from Stone's cell phone. She passed it back to him and said, "Go. I can navigate from here."

As she was nearing two months post-op, Cassandra had officially gotten bored. Sometimes she got to help with a case, as she had helped get Flynn and Ezekiel out of the unexpected maze, and being at the Library all day was better than being stuck at home or stuck in a Seattle hotel room, but her part in a case was often short-lived and over quickly since she couldn't do much but listen to stories or answer STEM-related inquiries, leaving Cassandra with more free time than she knew what to do with. One afternoon, she was alone; they had all left early that morning on some mysterious mission they had refused to tell her anything about, and Jenkins had spent all day locked up in his lab (lest he'd admit to something he shouldn't, Cassandra suspiciously thought,) so Cassandra wandered through the Library, marveling at just how expansive the collection was.

She didn't think she had ever been this deep into the Library before. She didn't have a destination in mind; she wasn't looking for anything in particular, so it was almost becoming a game to her: seeing how far she could go. It had to end eventually, she thought. Instead of journeying to the ends of the Earth like her friends might very well be doing, she would just journey to the ends of the Library.

A section across the room caught her attention from the corner of her eye. She wandered over, feeling an instinctual draw towards the stack of old books. The nameplate at the end of the aisle labeled the shelf as being the home to books about magic. Cassandra peered down the seemingly endless aisle, shocked at its size and wondering if this is where the book she'd found in the bag Ezekiel had put together for her had come from.

"All of these are about magic?" she wondered out loud to herself.

She took a deep breath and forced herself to turn away, looking forward down the Library's center aisle again. The thought was preposterous; she was a scientist. Cassandra had been drawn to magic in the beginning because she had hoped it would cure her, but science cured her. She didn't need magic anymore.

But discovering magic was actually real was undoubtedly a highlight of her life. It was easier for her to accept than it probably would be for most of the people in the world who lived their lives for science and math, but she was never really like them anyway. Scientists and mathematicians, she found, liked concrete answers and solvable mysteries. They liked black and white, but Cassandra had learned early on that the world was filled with gray, and magic…well, magic was gray, green, purple, and every color in between.

But scientists and mathematicians…they also liked knowledge. They liked to be prepared, and, as soon as Dr. Shepherd cleared her for 'field work,' she'd be back out there, tracking down the magic that had escaped into the world. That thought, combined with the sudden memory of the little purple bauble of magic from a case full of fairytales still bouncing and floating in a mason jar in her bedroom, was why Cassandra caught herself peering down the aisle of magic books again. Personal need notwithstanding, magic was her life and her job, so, Cassandra reasoned, she should probably learn a little more about it.

She quickly glanced over her shoulder – she knew she was alone in the Library, but she felt the need to check anyway – and disappeared down the magic corridor.

The three-month post-op milestone had come and gone, and Cassandra had thrown herself into research. When she was alone, she read about magic: where it came from, when it had disappeared from the world, and, most interestingly, theories on how to harness it, but when someone was around, she worked out mathematical equations to keep her brain sharp and continually prove to herself that the tumor really was gone, or she read original notes for scientific experiments she had only read about in textbooks. She still missed the field, but she was due to see Dr. Shepherd in just three more weeks, so she knew she'd be back out saving the world soon enough. Until then, she had grown much more content with her life within the Library's walls.

Baird and Flynn returned to the Library from a case they had taken the day before, just the two of them. Stone and Ezekiel had also run off on their own that morning, refusing to answer questions when Cassandra remarked how odd of a willing pairing the two of them made, which meant Cassandra had been on her own for hours. Baird and Flynn made their way from the Annex to the Library to return a pair of swords that had proven mighty useful on their quest when they found Cassandra sleeping, her head lying on an open book at the edge of a long table.

"Oh, shh!" Baird warned Flynn as she rounded the corner and discovered the sleeping redhead. Flynn smiled.

"It's kind of cute," Flynn said. "How she's always falling asleep in books."

Baird let out a hushed chuckle and took a closer look at Cassandra, a sinking feeling in her stomach telling her something was wrong. She slept on a book among piles of other books, her hand resting on what looked like, from Baird's vantage point, a stack of papers on the table…the table with a rapidly growing brown puddle beneath it. Baird took a few steps closer and realized streams of colors were slowly dripping from the papers underneath Cassandra's hand to the floor beside her feet.

"Flynn?" Baird asked. "Why is the table bleeding rainbows?"

Baird turned to meet Flynn's eyes and found that concern had washed over Flynn's face. Realizing that magic was at play, they both raced to Cassandra and began trying to wake her, fearful that she was unconscious by something other than choice.

"Cassandra," Flynn called, shaking her gently.

"Cassandra, wake up," Baird ordered, shaking her just a little bit harder.

Their worries were temporarily assuaged as Cassandra easily, albeit grumpily, awoke.

"What's going…" Cassandra muttered, waking with a shock as Baird shook her awake. "Oh, hey guys."

"Are you alright?" Baird asked.

"Yeah, I'm just tired," Cassandra said. With a sigh, she added, "Like usual these days."

Her hand moved from the stack of papers that Baird had just discovered was actually a calendar, and the colored inks running off the pages seemingly disappeared. Baird swiped the calendar, and she and Flynn took seats at the table across from Cassandra.

Baird glanced at Flynn, and Flynn gave her a little nod, giving her permission to start the conversation. "What have you been doing today, Cassandra?"

"Um…well, I was charting stars. I wake up a lot in the middle of the night, and I usually end up outside looking at the stars, but I can't really just look at the stars because I look up into the night sky and see patterns…tons of beautiful patterns, so I wanted to get some of them down on paper," Cassandra explained. "I pulled the calendar off a wall to serve as a reference point for phases of the moon since the skies are in my head, but the dates are escaping me. I would put it back, but I'm not sure I quite remember where I found it…"

"That's alright," Baird said. "Keep going."

At this, Cassandra began to look a little nervous. She glanced back and forth between Baird and Flynn a few times, confusion filling her face, and continued, "Well, I eventually got bored with that since my attention span is still kind of all wonky from the medicine, so I started trying to read, but I kept getting distracted because the calendar is just all wrong."

"Wrong?" Flynn asked. "Wrong how?"

"Well, like…the blocks for this month are printed in red, but July's not red, and normally, I can tune stuff like that out, but today, it was really distracting me because it's just not right. July's not red. It's…" Cassandra started.

"Blue," Baird finished, looking at the calendar she had opened to July.

"Yes!" Cassandra said with excitement. "An azure blue, like the sky on a perfect summer beach day. How did you know that?"

Baird and the Flynn looked down at the opened calendar between them and then at each other. Baird flipped a few pages and said, "Just out of curiosity, what color is April?"

"Purple," Cassandra replied. "Kind of like a pastel lilac color."

Flynn flipped a few more pages and asked, "And October?"

"About the same color as my hair," Cassandra said. "Okay, you're scaring me. What's going on?"

Baird flipped the calendar back to the current month and turned it around so Cassandra could see what they were seeing. The red ink that filed the month heading and outlined the boxes that made up the days of July had begun running down the page, leaving Cassandra's azure blue in its place. Despite the ink that had been dripping from the pages just a few minutes before, the pages were dry. About three-quarters of the page had turned blue, while the lines that made up the last quarter remained red. Cassandra's eyes widened, and she lunged for the calendar.

"It's all right now," she muttered as she flipped through the pages.

"I think it's time you tell us what you've been doing with all of these magic books," Baird said. Cassandra looked up at her, shell-shocked. Baird nodded and said, "Yeah, we know about that."

"I was just reading," Cassandra said. "Studying, really. Why is nobody researching magic, exactly? I thought it might be a good idea to gain an understanding of what lies at the core of our work here. Math and science and history and gadgets and all of that good stuff may help us find what we're looking for or accomplish a task, but how can I hunt something I don't understand? Colonel Baird trained us by running field drills, and that was important for our survival, but…this seems important, too."

"Looks like you've got a pretty good grasp on things," Baird said, gesturing towards the calendar again. Cassandra froze.

"You think I did this? How…how could I have done this? I was just thinking that the colors were wrong, but I didn't…I didn't do anything," Cassandra rambled. "I…I wouldn't know how to do anything like that."

Flynn loudly cleared his throat and nodded toward Cassandra's arm. "Your hand."

Cassandra pulled up the hand that had been resting on the calendar as she slept. Her palm was filled with colors, stained by the ink that had instantly dried as soon as she broke the connection. Cassandra gasped.

"How could…I don't understand," Cassandra panicked. She nearly squeaked when she said, "I'm harnessing magic?"

"Unintentionally, but yes," Flynn said simply.
"How? I'm…I'm just reading," she repeated. "I didn't do anything. I'm just…trying to understand the origins, and…"

"The ability to do magic may likely come with gaining an understanding of it," Flynn revealed. Off Cassandra's confused look, he continued. "Magic has been popularized as something innate, something that requires native power and silly wands or absurd rhyming spells, but that's not true. That's not how it works. Magic can be learned."

"It can?" Cassandra asked quietly.

"Magic is not always cast in spells, Cassandra. Sometimes it acts upon the will of a sharp mind," Flynn explained. "It would seem that you have a natural predisposition for magical abilities, but with gifts like your enviable intellect, it might not take much more than the ability to imagine the effect you wish to achieve with magic and an understanding of how to control it to master the craft of using it."

"Okay, your words sound good, but your voice says bad. Am I wrong for thinking that learning how to use it so we can hunt it doesn't seem like the craziest idea in the world?" Cassandra asked hesitantly.

"It's not a crazy idea," Flynn said.

"It's not the best idea," Baird cut in.

"It's a smart idea," Flynn continued. "It just leaves you a little more vulnerable than the others if that's the path you want to go down."

"And you should really think about whether or not you want to go down that path," Baird said, the disapproval radiating off her face.

"Am I in trouble?" Cassandra asked hesitantly.

"No," Flynn said quickly.

"But you should be careful," Baird said.

"Right. Don't go delving too far into this without some guidance," Flynn commanded.

Cassandra nodded. After a beat, Flynn and Baird stood to return to their post-mission tasks, leaving a flummoxed Cassandra at the table, her eyes transfixed by her stained palm.

A few days later, Stone was standing in an aisle of books in the Library, casually leafing through a history book, when he heard a familiar voice muttering to herself. He thought he was alone in the Library, so, assuming she had made the same supposition, he pulled a couple books off of one of the shelves and peered through the newly created hole. Cassandra was sitting on a couch one aisle over, surrounded by books. The only empty space on the furniture was the place she was currently sitting in.

She had angled her body on the couch to be facing in his general direction, so he ducked a little off to the side, watching her with a fond smile on his face as she balanced a piece of paper on top of the stack of books next to her. The smile turned to puzzlement as she, with a touch of hesitation, put her palms, face-down, onto the piece of paper and pulled them back with a sigh a few seconds later. She repeated the steps, but this time, she pulled her hands away with a groan.

"Work," she muttered with frustration. "Come on…"

She held her hands out again, talking to herself as her palms lay face-down on the paper.

"You did it before, and you didn't even know you were doing it, so come on," she muttered, slamming her hands onto the page.

After another few seconds, Cassandra gave up whatever she was trying to do, and Stone watched as she balled up the paper and grabbed a book with a disgruntled sigh. The smile returned to Stone's face, and he replaced the books in his makeshift peephole. Stone returned to his history book, and the two read on opposite sides of the aisle, Cassandra none the wiser that she wasn't alone.

Cassandra's scream pierced the peaceful silence just a few minutes later, and, at the sound of a book slamming against the shelf, Stone snapped his own book shut and rounded the corner. Her head shot up at the sound of footsteps, and she looked at him for just a moment with wide eyes before dissolving into tears.

"What's wrong?" he asked her.

"When is this going to be over?" she cried.

He walked over to the couch and crouched down so he was more on her level. "When is what going to be over?" he asked softly.

"This," she said, pointing to her head with both hands. "I still can't read for more than a few minutes without getting distracted."

"That's the medicine, Cassandra," he told her. "Don't beat yourself up over that."

"Why is this taking so long? I can't do anything!" she cried. "I don't feel normal, Stone. It's been three months, and nothing feels normal."

"But you feel alright, though, right?" he asked with concern.

She nodded. "It's not like that. I just don't…"

"Things just don't feel normal; I get it," he replied. She continued to cry, and he placed a hand on her knee. "Hey, it's gonna be okay."

His initial attempts at comforting her only seemed to make her cry harder. Desperate to do something to help her, he stood up, scooped her off the couch, and sat back down with Cassandra on his lap. She instantly twisted her body and curled her arm around his neck, crying into his shirt. He held onto her and let her cry, rubbing small, soothing circles against the back of her sweater. Stone looked at the watch around his wrist. Jenkins had reported that Cassandra usually wandered off to take a nap about this time of day, so Stone knew she was probably tired.

"C'mon Cassie, calm down," he whispered after a few minutes.

She kept her head buried in his shoulder, but moved her hand from around his body to wipe her cheeks. "All I'm doing is crying in front of you guys lately," she murmured.

"That's okay," he assured her.

"No, it's embarrassing," she replied. "I should be feeling so much better by now."

"I don't think that's true, but you're going to see Dr. Shepherd soon, right? She can give you some answers," he said. His statement was intended to be reassuring, but based on Cassandra's reaction, it had the opposite effect. "What? You like Dr. Shepherd."

"She's gonna do an MRI," Cassandra cried. "It could be back."

"I watched you figure out some longitudinal…something in four seconds flat yesterday," Stone said. "You know it's not back."

"But it could come back, and I could have to do this all over again," she said. "I can't imagine doing this again, Stone."

"We're workin' on it; you're not gonna have to do this again," Stone said.

"What?" Cassandra asked, picking her head up.

Stone realized he had nearly broken the agreement not to tell Cassandra about the search for the Egyptian amulet until they had it in their hands. "I just mean you can't live like that, Cassandra. We can't let ourselves think something like that, but it's okay to be scared."

"Will you come with me in a few weeks?" she tearfully asked, thankfully not investigating further into what Stone had said. "To the appointment?"

"'Course," he promised. "In the meantime, how about I read to you? Close your eyes; just listen. Don't worry about followin' the story."

"Really?" she asked. He nodded. "Okay…just read me whatever you were reading."

She made no move to slide off his lap, and he didn't bring it up, either, as she sunk into his embrace and laid her head on his shoulder. He opened his book and started reading out loud. Once she had fallen asleep, Stone set the book aside and reached for the balled up paper next to him. He smoothed it out as best he could with one hand and frowned. The page was covered in numbers, written in Cassandra's handwriting in colorful inks, but none of them corresponded to the colors he knew she correlated to each digit.

Colonel Baird walked by about twenty minutes later. She noticed Stone and Cassandra out of the corner of her eye and abruptly changed course, making her way towards the couch with one eyebrow raised.

"It's not what it looks like," Stone whispered.

"Oh?" Baird asked, matching Stone's tone. "It looks like cuddling."

"She was upset; she fell asleep," Stone said. "Now I don't want to risk wakin' her up."

"Sure," Baird said, nodding knowingly.

Stone, deciding to ignore the teasing, held out the paper full of numbers. "Do you know what this might be about?"

Baird took the paper from the hands and examined it. "What is this?"

"I don't know, but those colors don't match how she sees those numbers," Stone said.

"What was she doing?" Baird asked.

"She just had her hands on there, mumbling something about how it wasn't workin'," Stone revealed. "Something that had worked before..."

Baird's face fell as she realized that their talk with Flynn had seemingly done nothing but spur her on, and Cassandra had been intentionally trying to magically manipulate the colors on the page. "Oh, crap," Baird sighed, clenching the page into her fist. She headed purposefully back down the aisle and turned towards the Annex instead of her former destination.

"Wait, what…" Stone started, feeling more out of the loop than ever. He sighed when he realized he couldn't exactly call after her. He glanced down at the woman sleeping on his shoulder and muttered, "What are you into, huh?"

The silence of the Annex was pierced by the rumble of the Back Door as it deposited Flynn, Baird, Ezekiel, and Stone back into the Portland base of operations. Dressed for a mission in the Egyptian desert, they came back covered in dirt and bruises. A gash on Stone's forehead bled down his tired face. Swords dangled from his and Flynn's hands. The Eye of Horus amulet rested protectively in Ezekiel's cupped palms.

"Everyone okay?" Baird asked, dusting off her clothes.

"Cassandra!" Ezekiel called. "Oi! Cassandra, where are you?"

"Miss Cillian isn't here," Jenkins said, entering the room. He frowned at the all of the dirt that had arrived through the backdoor with the foursome. "She left in a cab a few hours ago."

"Where is she?" Stone asked.

"She said she needed to lie down, and she wanted to do it in her own bed," Jenkins said.

"Well, somebody call her and tell her to come back here," Ezekiel said, his voice dripping with urgency.

"She can't drive yet, remember?" Stone said. "I brought her here this mornin'."

"Well, go get her, and bring her back," Ezekiel said.

Sensing a fight about to break out between the two men, Flynn stepped between them and said, "Guys, how about we go to her?"

Fifteen minutes later, they were clustered outside of Cassandra's apartment. Ezekiel immediately started banging on her door.

"Would you calm down? She's probably asleep," Stone asked. "I've got a key."

"Still?" Baird asked with yet another raised eyebrow.

"No time for that, mate," Ezekiel said, banging on the door again. "Cassandra!"

A feminine groan from behind the door filled their ears as the doorknob turned. Ezekiel lowered his hand and took a small step backwards.

"Oh my gosh, what…" Cassandra started in an annoyed tone as she swung the door open. She quickly took in the state of the four friends outside her door, her face filling with alarm, and finished with, "In the world happened to you guys?"

"Long story," Ezekiel said quickly. He held out the amulet and said, "Put this on."

"What?" Cassandra asked, making no move to take the amulet. "What is that?"

Flynn pushed his way to the front of the group and took the necklace from Ezekiel's hand. "Hello, Cassandra," he said. "May we please come in?"

"Sure," Cassandra said, her statement coming out more like a question as she stepped aside to let them in.

The four shuffled into Cassandra's apartment, and Cassandra ran her hands against her head, smoothing her hair down. She was dressed in pajamas and clearly not expecting the entire team to show up at her door.

"We woke you up, didn't we?" Baird asked. Cassandra nodded. "Sorry."

"Um…that's okay," she said. "But you've got me a little nervous, so if someone could please tell me what's going on?"

"We got this for you," Ezekiel said, taking the amulet out of Flynn's hands again. "And you need to put it on right now."

"Why?" Cassandra asked.

Flynn sat her down at the small table just outside of the kitchen and pulled out another chair, taking a seat across from her. He calmly explained what the amulet was and what it could do for her. Cassandra's face slowly transformed from confusion to astonishment as he spoke.

"So that's it?" she asked in a small voice. "It's that easy? Wear that, and no more brain tumor? Not ever?"

"There are no certainties with magic, of course, but yes, we believe that's how it would work," Flynn said.

She looked at the amulet in Flynn's hand. It looked old, and it seemed big, and it was going to be hard to match with her clothes, and wearing something like that all the time was going to take some getting used to, but she nodded. Cassandra tilted her head down and pulled her hair away from her neck, holding it in a pile on the top of her head. Flynn reached around and secured the amulet around her neck. A soft glow emanated from the jewelry as the latch was fastened, and Cassandra moaned slightly, gripping the side of the table.

"You okay?" Baird asked.

"Yeah, it was just this sensation," she said. "That felt funny; is that okay?"

Flynn nodded. "That's the influence of the artifact," he said. Cassandra looked slightly worried, and Flynn added, "Don't worry; they're not all bad."

Cassandra stared down at the symbol around her neck, her fingertip tracing it lightly. "Where did you say this came from?"

"Ancient Egypt," Stone replied.

Cassandra's head shot up and found Ezekiel. "You," she said.

"What about me?" Ezekiel asked.

"This was you," Cassandra said. "That's why you were reading about Ancient Egypt in the hotel in Seattle and why you kept flaking out on your turns to hang out with me, and that's why you lied that day. I thought you were being a jerk, but you're still trying to help me."

"Yeah, that's all true," Ezekiel shrugged.

Cassandra stood up, let an emotional sob escape her lips, and threw herself around Ezekiel. He briefly hugged her back but pushed her away after a few seconds.

"Okay, that's enough…" Ezekiel said. "I mean, it's pretty apparent how awesome I am; hugs aren't necessary." Cassandra pulled away from him with a small chuckle.

"He had help, you know," Stone grumbled, and Cassandra immediately turned to him.

"Of course he did. Thank yo…oh my god, you're bleeding," Cassandra started, reaching out to hug Stone as well. She stopped herself halfway as she noticed the gash on his forehead; her hands settled against his cheeks.

"I'm alright," he muttered.

"I'll get the peroxide," Baird said, wandering down the hall to Cassandra's bathroom.

Cassandra ushered Stone to sit down in the seat she had vacated and said, "Judging from your looks, I'm guessing this was a tricky one?"

"That thing's been lost for centuries," Ezekiel said.

"How long have you been working on this?" Cassandra asked. Much of her surgical experience ran together in her mind; she knew she didn't have a great sense of time for the past few months.

"Since the day you were discharged from the hospital and I learned the brain grape might come back," Ezekiel admitted. "Flynn helped me research artifacts to find something that might help, and we zeroed in on that one the next day."

Baird returned with peroxide, cotton swabs, and bandages, and Cassandra moved towards Stone to clean his wound. He reached up and told her he could take care of it. She slapped his hand away.

"You've been taking care of me for weeks; shut up and let me do it," Cassandra said.

"Yes, ma'am," Stone replied, prompting another look between Baird and Flynn.

Cassandra quickly cleaned and bandaged the wound on Stone's head and turned around to lean against the edge of her table. She had Stone on one side and Flynn on the other, with Baird and Ezekiel standing in front of them, all of them bruised or bloodied or looking like they'd just been through hell to procure this tiny bit of magic for her. Cassandra fingered the foreign-feeling amulet against her neck with one hand and felt her eyes well up with tears.

"What's wrong?" Stone asked as he gently gripped the arm nearest him with his hand.

"Nothing," Cassandra said, a glittering smile filling her face. "I just don't know what I did to deserve all of you."

A few weeks later, Stone and Cassandra were back in an exam room at Grey Sloan Memorial Hospital. The appointment had started, much to Cassandra's disdain, with a follow-up MRI scan. After the scan was over and Cassandra had re-dressed in her regular clothes, she took a seat on the exam table, while Stone sat off to the side, and they waited for Amelia to appear. A knock on the door came a short while later.

"How's my favorite patient?" Amelia asked, entering the room.

"We heard about your brother," Cassandra said, referring to Derek's sudden death just a few short months ago. "I'm so sorry."

Amelia took a deep breath and, after a few quiet moments, said, "Yeah. Me too." Eager to change the subject, she added, "Now…how have the last few months been for you?"

Stone joined Amelia and Cassandra for a conversation about the past few months. Amelia assured Cassandra that she was still doing wonderfully and everything with her recovery was going well. She gave Cassandra clearance to drive and to go back to work, eliciting smiles from both of the other occupants in the room. Amelia had then moved on to inspecting the surgical area. Stone sat off to the side as Amelia examined Cassandra, smiling in reassurance every time Cassandra glanced over at him.

"Okay, everything up here looks great," Amelia said, snapping her latex glove off. She turned to Stone and said, "If you could just wait outside while I have a minute alone with Cassandra…"

Cassandra swallowed heavily and glanced at Stone with fearful eyes. Both she and Stone were acutely aware of the fact that the new MRI had not yet been mentioned, and Stone instantly jumped from his chair, coming to stand by Cassandra's side. His hands immediately found her, one on Cassandra's back and one gripping hers.

"Why do I need to leave?" Stone asked firmly.

Cassandra squeezed Stone's hand. "Go," she said softly.

"What? No," Stone said. "I'm not leavin' you."

"It's okay," she promised him. With a shaky voice, she added, "I'm okay. Go."

With another squeeze to Cassandra's hand and a glare in Amelia's direction, Stone exited the exam room, strongly shutting the door behind him. Amelia flinched a bit at the force with which the door slammed shut while Cassandra's fingers played together against her chest, her eyes transfixed upon them.

"How big is it?" she asked quietly, her hands dropping to her lap. "The new tumor…how big is it? And…please don't relate it to food."

"What? Oh, no…gosh, no. Cassandra, if there were a new tumor, I would've started with that. I wouldn't have spent the past ten minutes telling you how perfect you are," Amelia said. "You're still tumor-free."

"I am?" Cassandra asked.

"Yeah," Amelia said. She pointed to herself and added, "Rock star, remember?"

"Then why did you…?" Cassandra asked, pointing towards the door that Stone had just slammed shut.

"Oh, I just want to know if he's kissed you yet," Amelia revealed with a grin.

Shock filled Cassandra's face as her eyes grew wide and she squeaked, "What?"

The smile on Amelia's face faded. "That must be a no, then."

"Why do you think Stone wants to kiss me?" Cassandra asked.

"You heard how hard he just slammed that door, right?" Amelia asked.

Cassandra nervously chuckled, looking towards the door. "That doesn't mean that he…he's very protective."

"He's been taking care of you," Amelia said.

"They all have," Cassandra shrugged.

"But him more than the others, right?"

Cassandra thought about the last three months for a moment and said, "Well, I guess maybe…he was probably there the most. How did you know that?"

"He just had that look when we took you to the OR," Amelia said. "That scared-to-death-but-oh-my-god-this-is-going-to-work look, and it's been my experience that you only get that look when you're facing an extended lifetime with someone you don't want to imagine living without."

"Really?" Cassandra asked. Her eyes kept darting to the door, as if she were looking for Stone to gauge his reaction to what Amelia was saying. She thought for sure Amelia was going to tell her the tumor was back; she knew Stone thought the same. He was probably pacing back and forth right outside the door.

"I thought for sure he'd kiss you as soon as you felt a little better," Amelia said. "There was nothing during the past few months?"

"Well, I don' t know…" Cassandra said, suddenly re-evaluating everything that had happened between herself and Stone. "We slept in the same bed a few times during the recovery, but so have Baird and I, since only Ezekiel insisted upon refusing my offer to share the bed, and he sent me these beautiful flowers, and he was so patient, and I guess we did end up kind of cuddling that one time in the Library, and…oh, there was that thing with the shower…"

"What?" Amelia laughed with a raised eyebrow.

Cassandra groaned. "It wasn't really like that. I got ambitious and stupid, and he was the one there, so he had to help me, and I…don't know why I'm telling you any of this."

Amelia shrugged. "We get pretty personal around here; it's normal," she said. Cassandra nodded, her mind racing, and grinned softly. Amelia caught her and said, "What is it?"

Cassandra shrugged and fingered the ancient Eye of Horus amulet that had been hanging around her neck for the past week. "Nothing," she said. "Just thinking."

"That's quite a necklace," Amelia said, her eyes drawn to it as Cassandra nervously played with it. "What's it mean?"

"Oh, thanks," Cassandra laughed, her cheeks flushing pink. "It's not really my style. It's an ancient Egyptian symbol supposed to bring safety and wellbeing."

"It looks old," Amelia remarked.

"Oh, it's uh…it's modeled after the original," Cassandra lied. "That probably seems silly to you, right?"

"No," Amelia said. "It's cool. And…" She hung Cassandra's latest MRI on the wall. It looked like the post-op one, normal and tumor-free. "It's working for you so far. Maybe you'll get lucky, and the magic will turn out to be real."

"There aren't any abnormal cells in there, right?" Cassandra asked, scrutinizing the MRI.

"Not that I can see," Amelia assured her.

Cassandra smiled knowingly and nodded, playing with the necklace again. "Then maybe it will."

Stone was, in fact, standing right outside the door when Cassandra finally emerged, her hair rearranged to cover the surgical side of her head. He desperately wanted to ask her what had happened after Amelia had thrown him out, but he fought his instincts and let Cassandra take the lead. They walked a few paces in silence before Cassandra grabbed Stone's hand and looped her arm through his, walking arm-in-arm as they headed down the hospital hallway.

"Are you okay?" he finally asked.

"Yes, but hospitals, even when I'm fine, have a tendency to make me a little unsteady," she replied. "If you don't mind…"

Stone rubbed his hand soothingly over hers and left it resting on the top of her hand, silently telling her he didn't mind at all. He couldn't take it any longer and asked, "So, uh…what'd Dr. Shepherd want to talk to you about?"

"Oh, that was…girl stuff," Cassandra said. "There's no tumor."

Stone let out a sigh of relief. "So you're okay?"

"I'm wonderful," she said, smiling at him. "Thank you, Jacob."

"For what?" he asked.

"For coming with me today and for comforting me a few weeks ago and for the flowers when I got home…for everything," she said. "I still don't quite feel normal, but I feel like this thing, the whole surgery thing, kind of this whole brain tumor thing, is actually behind me now, and I just wanted to tell you that you've been amazing, and I'm very appreciative of that, especially since I know you were scared, too."

He laughed, his nerves still heightened from the fear that came with Amelia asking to talk to Cassandra alone. "I can stop bein' scared now, right?" he asked.

"There's no tumor; I've got the amulet. It's over," Cassandra said in a low voice. As they approached the elevator, she returned her voice to its normal level and finished with, "But seriously, you dropped everything for, like, a month to take care of me, and I wasn't always nice, but you were. You were great, so thank you."

Stone unlinked their arms and reached around behind her to push the button when they arrived at the hospital elevator, his other hand gently gripping hers to maintain her sense of security. The hand that had pressed the button came to rest protectively on her waist, and he stood behind her, waiting for the elevator to arrive. When it did, he dropped her hand, they waited for the elevator to empty, and he ushered her inside with a hand on her back.

"You're welcome, darlin'," Stone said sincerely as they entered the vacated elevator. "But, just so you know, if keepin' you around meant a couple months of droppin' everything to take care of you…it was worth it."

She turned around to look at him, his words reminding her of what Dr. Shepherd had told her about the look on Stone's face when she went to the OR four months ago. Suddenly, when she turned, the hand that had been resting protectively on the small of her back was around her. Stone was already looking at her when Cassandra took a deep breath and allowed her eyes to meet his.

Neither of them knew who made the first move, but their lips collided in time with the elevator doors.