From rogueprincessdanie's prompt, "Cassandra has had alot of bad valentine's days and Jake takes it upon himself to change that." Got a little carried away with this one but I like it!

It's based part in knowledge I already had and part in research - but that said, there's only so much research I'm doing for a single fanfic oneshot. :P I've never been to Rome, and may have taken a couple liberties, particularly with the basilica. Hope you don't mind.

The week or so leading up to Valentine's Day had, for the most part, been fairly quiet around the Library. Since being restored to a state of wholeness, the Library had taken to decorating itself for the holidays, which Flynn insisted it had always done before as well. What was interesting, though, was that Ray seemed to know how Cassandra felt about holidays, so he always left the Annex undecorated, instead leaving a box of decorations out for her to hang up herself.

The Valentine's decorations had shown up on the table on the third. They spotted it when they were coming through the Back Door after a very long day in Greenland; everyone was bone-tired. It wasn't entirely a surprise that Cassandra didn't dive for the box immediately, or even the next day. They all needed a little time to recover.

Jake watched for a few days as the box continued to go ignored. At first he assumed it was due to her being tired and busy, then she got herself even more engrossed than usual in a project and he figured she was just distracted. But by the seventh he was really starting to wonder. Only a week left and she hadn't touched the decorations at all? Hadn't even mentioned the upcoming holiday? That was distinctly unusual.

"Hey, Cassie, how's it goin' over here?" he asked her casually one day, leaning on the back edge of the desk she'd adopted. "You've been awful wrapped up in whatever it is you're workin' on."

"Hm?" She glanced up at him in surprise. "Oh, yeah, I guess I have. Jenkins recommended me a few books on Atlantean science and they've been hard to put down. So many interesting threads to follow."

"Sounds just up your alley," he said with a nod. "So, hey, I've been wonderin'. You want a hand with those decorations? Seems like you've been reluctant to leave your work, so I thought maybe an extra set o' hands would help you take care of 'em faster and you can get back to your readin' sooner." He jabbed a thumb toward the box where it sat under the big table now, shifted out of the way when someone was spreading out some maps.

"Oh." Cassandra fidgeted awkwardly with her pencil for a moment, glancing down at her desk. "Well, um, I wasn't actually planning on decorating, to be honest."

"What? No way. That still our Cassie?" Teasingly, he put a hand to her forehead. "Skippin' a holiday? One all about love and good feelin's, no less?"

She smiled sheepishly as he took his hand away. "Yeah, I just, um… I'm not that big a fan of Valentine's Day any more. Never quite been a successful holiday for me. At some point I figured I'd just cut my losses and skip it from now on."

Jake glanced around for a minute and grabbed the nearest chair, dragging it over so that he could sit opposite her, elbows on her desk. Leaning forward, he asked, "How does a girl as upbeat and full o' life as you come to dislike Valentine's Day?"

She glanced down at her work again, feeling a little strange trying to explain it, but he didn't always ask her so directly about her life, and she knew from experience that when he did he was always a good listener. "Well, you know, when I was a little kid, it was fun. Exchanging Valentines with all my classmates was so exciting to me, even if I had to make my own out of notebook paper because my parents never wanted to buy the ones in the store. But after a while I realized that other kids celebrated at home too, not just at school – they got gifts from their parents and saw other people in their lives doing things for Valentine's. My parents never got me anything; as far as I could tell they never got each other anything either. As I got older it just got worse. Not once but twice in high school I was rejected by someone I liked on or around Valentine's Day, the first time for being a nerd and the second because she decided she didn't like girls after all." Staring down at the desk, Cassandra scribbled circles in the corner of her open notebook. "Even after high school it never got better. Mostly just feeling lonely in the face of everything around me, you know? It was hard to have a real, lasting romantic relationship given the… circumstances of the last half of my life." With her pencil she gestured vaguely at her head. "One year I did get asked out for a Valentine's date, but he got cold feet when someone mentioned the tumor to him, which honestly I had thought he already knew about since we worked together, but apparently not." She took a deep breath and then shot him another awkward smile. "I'm sorry. I just… yeah. My history with Valentine's Day hasn't been all that great."

"Damn, Cassie." Leaning back in his chair, Jake knocked one fist against her desk. "Well, I can't blame you for not bein' such a fan anymore. You deserve better than that."

"It's okay though!" she assured him. "Usually I just spend the evening with myself and some snacks and whatever TV show I'm watching at the moment. I've learned not to dwell on it."

"That's good," he said with a nod. "Best not to stew over these things." He glanced at the box on the floor again. "You want me to put that away?"

She smiled, this time without embarrassment. "That'd be great. Thanks for understanding, Jake. I appreciate it." Still a little self-conscious, she ran a hand back through her hair.

"Any time," he answered with a reassuring smile. He got up and hoisted the box off the floor, turning out of the Annex into the hallway.

It was a bit of a hike to the storage room where the decorations were usually kept, and as he walked, Jake thought. He had told her not to stew, but her story was weighing on him now. He hated the idea that a holiday he'd figured had Cassandra written all over it had been so thoroughly ruined for her. He'd meant it when he said she deserved better.

In the storage room he heaved the box onto an empty space on a hip-high shelf, then reached under the half-open flap and toyed with a garland of paper hearts. It was cheesy, but he wouldn't have minded it that much if Cassie had strung it up across the Annex. He expected that kind of thing from her. In fact, the more he thought about it, the sadder he was, knowing these decorations would stay tucked away in a box.

He stood idly for a few minutes, one hand still inside the box, deep in thought. Eventually he took a deep breath and let it out slowly, having come to a decision.

x

When Cassie strolled into the Annex early on the thirteenth, it was hard to miss the decorations. She wondered if Ray had decided to put them up himself after she chose not to. Strings of paper hearts criss-crossed the railings, and pink and red paper honeycomb balls hung from the ceiling even in the hallway. Vases of flowers were placed around the Annex in out-of-the-way corners where they were visible, but not likely to knock over in the usual Library hubbub.

She had to admit it was pretty, even if she wasn't a big Valentine's fan.

She'd assumed she'd be the first in that morning – usually when she arrived at that hour she was – but when she got to her desk she found a fresh breakfast muffin sitting on top of a piece of note paper. The muffin was her favourite kind; she smiled as she bit into it – it was still warm. Picking up the paper, she recognized Jacob's handwriting. Morning! Could really use you today. Grab your jacket and meet me? Almost as an afterthought, a set of coordinates was scribbled underneath, with the note, Just in case someone else uses the Back Door between us.

At a glance she knew the coordinates were somewhere in Italy. With a little more thought she could have figured out much more specifically where they led, but instead she shrugged her jacket back on, tucked the note in her pocket, tossed her bag over her shoulder, and headed for the Back Door, muffin still in hand. She glanced at the globe and saw it was still set to wherever Jake had gone, so she popped through and stumbled out into a crooked alleyway paved with cobblestone. The air was chilly but not unpleasant. She followed the alley into a bigger street and, with a smile, recognized Rome. That meant it was around 4:30 in the afternoon.

"I really like that coat." Cassandra looked to her left and saw Jake approaching her from the patio of a small café only a couple doors down. "Very seasonal." She glanced down out of habit at her red woolen pea coat and rolled her eyes.

"It's warm, too," she laughed. "That's more my priority. Thanks for the muffin."

"No problem," he answered with a smile. "I know you don't always eat before you come into work, and I wanted to make sure you had somethin' before you joined me."

"So what are we up to in Rome?" she asked, falling into step next to him as he began to stroll down the sidewalk.

"I wanted to show you somethin'," Jake told her. "C'mon, it's not a long walk. Whatever Jenkins did to the Back Door the other day, it's really workin'. We got pretty close to our destination."

She wondered why he was being vague, but if it wasn't a long walk she didn't see the harm in enjoying the cool afternoon. They walked side-by-side, elbows bumping, quiet while she finished her muffin. The silence was comfortable. After they rounded a few corners, Jake finally led her to the front of a smallish church with a pretty medieval façade and an impressive bell tower.

"The Basilica di Santa Maria in Cosmedin," he told her. "Not the biggest deal as churches go, but I'm fond of it."

"What's in here?" she couldn't help asking.

"You'll see in a minute," he answered. "C'mon." He led her inside and towards a side altar on the left of the church, set into a round, elaborately-decorated alcove. There were other people in the basilica, but most were paying attention to other objects around the walls. No one was currently standing where he was taking her.

Jake and Cassandra approached the small table draped with ornate red cloth. "Does – does that sign say what I think it says?" she asked, glancing up at him.

He nodded, smiling. "How much do you know about the legend of St. Valentine?" he asked, looking down at the relic before them. In a lavish golden box on the table, behind a pane of glass, was a skull wearing a dried floral crown.

"Um." She was still staring at the relic. "Not a lot, admittedly."

"The guy's shrouded in mystery. Almost nothin' is definitively known about him. Like a lot of relics, it's actually impossible to verify that this is really him." He glanced at Cassandra with a smile, but she was still watching the skull wide-eyed as if she expected it to do something. "There are other relics from him all over the place. Madrid and Dublin, most notably. All that's known for sure is that St. Valentine was martyred and buried on February fourteenth. But it might not even have been only one guy; there might've been a couple of Valentines."

"So how come the anniversary of this guy's death is now celebrated as the world's most romantic holiday?" Cassandra asked, turning her still-concerned gaze up to Jake's face. He grinned.

"That's where the legend bit comes in," he explained. "There are plenty of variations, but the core of it is still a good story. Sometime in the third century, story goes, there was a Roman Emperor who believed married men made bad soldiers, so he forbade his soldiers from marryin'. St. Valentine continued to perform marriages in secret, as well as minister to Christians, who were persecuted at the time. Eventually he was caught and imprisoned. While waitin' for his sentence, he fell in love with his jailer's daughter. Most o' the stories say she was blind, and many claim that before his execution he healed her blindness."

Cassie made a face, looking at the relic again. "Sounds unlikely."

"So do most of the things we do in a day," Jake teased her. "Before his execution on February fourteenth, he left her a letter signed 'your Valentine.' Hence his appointment as patron of lovers and happy marriages, among other things."

"Other things?"

"Beekeepers and epilepsy stick out in my memory."

"An odd mix," she answered, turning to him again. "The story sounds a lot more tragic than romantic, though. How did the holiday end up like it is?"

"The association with romantic love sprung up in the 14th century. Chaucer is sometimes credited, I think." Jake looked down at the relic again. "It evolved into somethin' you and I might recognize around the 18th century in England. Love letters, flowers, confectioneries, that kinda thing. And then just grew from there."

Cassandra seemed to think about that for a moment, then leaned down to look more closely at the relic. "I guess it's a nice story, even if it's sad," she said quietly.

"I always thought so," he answered, nodding. "Celebratin' a man who believed in love, in spite of adversity. A man who did what he did for the sake of other people's happiness."

"That's a really nice way to look at it," she agreed, smiling a little at him over her shoulder.

"Glad you think so," he answered. "Hey, it's gettin' busier in here. You wanna go for a walk?"

"Sure."

Jake offered his arm and Cassandra took it with a laugh. They slipped back out of the church and strolled slowly down the sidewalk, going nowhere in particular.

"I still haven't quite gotten used to being able to just walk out of our morning into someone else's late afternoon," Cassandra remarked as they wandered. "The light's already starting to go. I only woke up less than three hours ago."

"It's quite somethin'," Jake agreed. "How ya feelin' about our friend St. Valentine?"

"A little better, I think," she admitted. "Although it's hard to feel too negative about anything when you're walking around Rome with one of the most interesting people you know."

"Most interestin', huh?" he asked with a little grin, tucking his free hand into his coat pocket against the cool breeze.

"You're a lot of good things, Jake, but I feel like that's the best testament to your character," she told him. "You're one of the smartest people I know, but you already know that. And besides, at this point I think about 80% of the people I know contend for that position." She laughed. "I could call you handsome, but that hardly speaks to who you are as a person. I could say you're funny, but that's far from the only appealing quality you have. I could say you're safe, but that's very personal, and hard to really explain as a compliment."

"Well you're just full o' flattery today, aren't ya?" he chuckled.

"You've got me in a good mood," she confessed. After a short pause, she told him, "I thought you'd asked me along for a case, you know."

"Well, I might've misled you a little on that front. Didn't know if you'd come along otherwise."

"Me neither," she told him honestly. "I don't know. I'm not resistant to Valentine's Day, I guess. Just avoidant."

"Still?" he asked.

She thought for a moment. When she opened her mouth, though, what came out was not an answer, but a question. "What's that amazing smell?"

He breathed in and glanced around. "Bakery up ahead, across the street, I think," he replied, pointing.

She looked at him hopefully. "Can we go investigate?"

He laughed. "Yeah, sure." They darted across the street and into the little bakery, which smelled heavenly. They admired the tantalizing displays for a few minutes before making any decisions. Eventually Jake went up to the register and requested two pieces of a mouth-watering tiramisu, and a bag of the heart-shaped cookies that had just come out of the oven. "To take back to the Library for the others," he explained when Cassandra lifted a skeptical eyebrow.

They took their tiramisu to one of the bakery's small handful of little tables to eat. It was as delicious as it looked. "I love Rome," Cassie sighed happily.

"I love havin' a job that lets me drop in on Rome whenever I feel like," Jake answered.

"And visit the skulls of long-dead martyrs?" she asked with a laugh.

"When the occasion calls for it," he agreed. "I just wanted to reframe Valentine's Day for ya, Cassie. Give ya a reason not to dislike it so much. It seems like such a Cassandra holiday, and you deserve not to have so many bad memories tied to it."

She chased a chocolate shaving around her plate with her fork. "That's really sweet of you, Jake. This is certainly the nicest almost-Valentine's Day date I've ever been on." She grinned a little.

"So it's a date now?" He raised his eyebrows, the look on his face mostly amused but also, she thought, maybe a little bit hopeful, or relieved.

"Well," she answered slowly, "I figure it more or less qualifies. It has all the key elements. We're alone together, doing something fun. We even got tasty food." She lifted the last bite of her tiramisu to her mouth. "I think the only thing left is for both of us to agree it's a date. If you want?"

He just smiled at her for a second. "Yeah," he told her. "I don't think I mind that. You wanna explore a little more before we go home? I know it's February, but the public garden might still be pretty to visit."

"Yeah, that sounds nice," she said with a nod. He took their plates and forks back to the counter, stuffed the paper bag of cookies into his coat pocket, and offered her his arm again. She took it, smiling.

He seemed to still know where they were, so she let him lead her a few blocks over to a public rose garden. Not much was blooming yet, aside from a few pink buds, but the greenery was still peaceful and the landscaping was lovely, even in the darkening evening. "We should come back in the spring and see it when everything's blooming," Cassandra commented.

"Yeah, I'd like that," Jake told her. He was toying with something in his pocket as they strolled along the quiet paths. Staring absently into the bushes, he was apparently completely lost in thought.

After a few minutes Cassie slowed to a stop and Jake looked at her in surprise. "You seem distracted the last little while. Are you okay? This – I mean, it doesn't have to be a date if you don't actually want it to," she said hesitantly.

"No, Cassandra, it's – it ain't you," he assured her quickly. "I mean, it is you, but it – it ain't what you think. Uh – I did want to show you one more thing," he continued, stumbling over his words a little.

She smiled gently. "What is it?"

He stared distractedly at her face for a moment, then blinked, tearing himself back to reality. "Uh, listen," he started. "I meant it when I said you deserved better, an' I do think Valentine's Day is a very you holiday an' it sucks that you've got such a bad history with it. An' I did want you to have a better one, 'cause you… deserve that. Like I said. Uh. But I also… wanted to be the one to give you a better Valentine's Day." He hesitated, looking down, and then pulled something out of his pocket. As he held out his hand, she saw a pretty, antique-style metal key. "Cards and flowers and chocolates are nice, but I didn't want to just remind you more of all the crappy Valentine's Days you've had. So, uh. There's this small tradition in the Italian province of Padua where they give Saint Valentine's Keys as a romantic gift. They say it's to unlock the giver's heart."

Cassandra was absolutely beaming by now. Jake had been staring at the key in his hand for most of that speech, but finally he looked up at her face again and saw the enormous smile, and he smiled himself, a little nervously. After a moment she took the key from his hand and then, suddenly, threw her arms around his neck and kissed him.

He was thrown a little off-balance by her enthusiasm but he managed to catch himself, wrapping his arms around her lower back and kissing her in return. When she pulled back away, arms still wrapped around him, still smiling that huge smile, he blinked a couple times, trying to force the fog out of his brain.

"Hey, I have a question," she said casually.

"Yeah?"

"How come we're doing all this on the thirteenth?"

"Oh," he said, and laughed. "Well, partly because I knew the basilica would be way busier tomorrow. And partly so that if this was a spectacular failure, your actual Valentine's Day would still be salvageable, and you wouldn't have to add this to your laundry list of reasons not to like Valentine's Day."

Cassandra giggled and leaned her head down against his chest for a moment. "Well, your plan was a success," she informed him. "Hey, did you decorate the Annex too?"

"Yeah. I hoped by the time you got back you woulda warmed up to the idea a bit."

"I have," she answered. "I do have a suggestion though."

"Yeah?" Jake asked again.

She looked up at him again, still unable to contain her joy. "Can the thirteenth be our new Valentine's Day? I could start fresh."

Now it was his turn to grin uncontrollably. He couldn't resist leaning in to kiss her again. "Yeah. That sounds great."