Push & its characters are © David Bourla. I am just taking it for a wee spin, so no suing plz k thx.

000

Best Laid Plans

They were in Seoul.

It was hot, it was raining, and Cassie was in a bad mood.

She had been morose on the plane, brooding on the ferry; by the time they crashed into their cramped, tiny hotel room, the girl looked ready to tear somebody's head off.

Maybe it was because they hadn't had a decent night's sleep in nearly a month. Maybe skipping dinner almost every night to stay on the move wasn't helping either. Then again, maybe it was just some weird girl thing that Nick couldn't possibly begin to understand. He was a loner for the most part, after all, and the majority of his associates were fully-grown or at least semi-mature men. Psychoanalyzing adolescent girls was not exactly his forte.

Yep, Nick thought to himself, glancing over at his young companion, this pretty much spells good times.

The scrawny blonde caught his stare and scowled at him. "What?" she snapped, halting her pen's furious dance across the page of her sketchbook.

He held up his hands in surrender. Her blue eyes narrowed, but she said nothing. The pen started scratching again, with unnecessary force. Nick carefully moved his gaze elsewhere.

Seoul. They hadn't planned it, but a booming city of over ten million people seemed as good a place to disappear as any. They still had the syringe, tucked safely away in Cassie's bag. Okay, so it wasn't the most secure place to stash a glass instrument that was worth a fortune, let alone a victory for freaks everywhere. But it was a hell of a lot more discrete than toting around some shiny plastic suitcase. Having thrown Division off their trail back in Hong Kong, the two were looking to lie low for a while and think of a way to bust Cassie's mother out from under government custody.

Striking a blow that big would not only help cripple Division in robbing them of their top Watcher, but it would also give her daughter some much-needed peace of mind. Sometimes the Mover had to forcibly remind himself just how young Cassie really was. With all the things she had seen, everything she knew in that flamboyantly-dyed head of hers, it was a miracle that she could keep it all together as well as she did. The way she carried herself, it was easy to think of her as a tough, savvy, world-weary young woman.

Except for her hair. That was her inner preteen shining through.

"Hungry?" Nick finally asked, standing up from the edge of the mattress. With their cash running low, they could only afford a one-bedroom suite, but he had nobly opted to sleep on the floor. She probably wouldn't let him. There had been that time in Shanghai, just a few weeks ago, when they had both been so exhausted that they collapsed on the same bed. It hadn't been a big deal then, and likely wouldn't be a second time. Still. Propriety had to count for something. As often as he found himself forgetting the gap in age between them, others (namely the hotel owners they were guaranteed to meet) would definitely not.

She slammed her book shut and rose to her feet. "Why not? I'm paying anyway."

He frowned at her. "What's the matter with you?"

"Nothing." She positively spat the word out.

He shrugged with unconvincing bravado. "If you say so." Then, after a moment of tense silence, he couldn't resist adding, "But if I did something to piss you off, you'd tell me, right?"

"It's not something you did," she replied tersely. "It's something you'll do."

"Well that's not exactly fair, is it?" he protested, holding the door open for her. They were immediately greeted by a wall of odours wafting in from the market down the street. "I mean, you can't blame me for –"

"I'm not blaming you," she cut in as she breezed past him. "I'm just mad. I'm allowed to have feelings, right?"

"Look," he said swiftly, grabbing her arm and whirling her around to face him. He was trying to keep his voice down to avoid drawing any attention to them, but a few heads in the crowd turned anyway. "Being upset it one thing. Giving me the silent treatment and then snapping at me for something I can't apologize for is another thing entirely. Cut me some slack, okay? What am I gonna do that's so terrible?"

She glared up at him from under her pale eyebrows. "You're going to marry Kira."

Nick froze in his tracks. "W-what? No, I . . . that's crazy."

"Is it? That's what you do when you're in love, Nick. You get married." She yanked her arm out of his grasp and kept on walking, her steps quick and resolute.

He blinked after her for a moment before jogging to catch up. "You saw it? Our . . . wedding?"

"Oh yeah," she deadpanned, ducking under a paper banner and into an open-air restaurant. "Not exactly traditional. Looks rushed. But she's there, and you're all smiles and sunshine about it."

Nick followed her to a small, rickety wooden table and sat down in a bit of a daze. He didn't know why, but he couldn't seem to get the image out of his head. He knew he loved Kira. She loved him back. Things were a little complicated right now, with her being so deeply embedded in Division as a double agent, but still . . . they had each other to hold on to. Marriage seemed like the next logical step. Just not for a long time. But then again, if he hadn't already made the decision to do so, Cassie wouldn't have seen it, and they wouldn't be having this delightful conversation right now.

"Well, what's so bad about us getting married? I'd make you my best man. Tradition be damned."

She hoisted up a menu in front of her face, blocking him from sight. He poked her in the side.

"Hey. Come on, Cass, talk to me. What's the big deal?"

"The big deal," she finally snarled, shoving the menu back down, "is that it's gonna be on my birthday! And you're not gonna tell me, so you'll leave me hanging while you go running off to play groomsman! I'll be waiting for you, and you'll be gone."

He sighed. "You're being ridiculous. I'd never ditch you, you know that."

"It's her, Nick," she shot back, wrenching the menu open and scanning it contemptuously, even though neither of them could read Korean. "She makes you do these things, without question. You'll say 'Okay, let's do it, let's get married', and she'll say 'Now, today'. And you won't care that you had plans to take me out to dinner. You won't care that I'll be sitting there, looking like a complete idiot."

"We can solve this problem right now," he said quickly. "Tell me your birthday, so I can avoid making other plans for it."

She rolled her eyes. "April 3rd."

Only four months? It was hard to keep his heart from skipping at the thought of being reunited with Kira so soon. I can remember that.

"Okay, April 3rd. I'll take you out for a huge dinner, and you'll get so full that you won't be able to walk. I promise. I'll carry your fat ass home myself."

Cassie gave him a somewhat pitying look, which was pretty impressive in that it actually made him feel kind of stupid. "You don't get it. Kira says jump, you ask how high. That's just the way it's gonna go down, and I end up alone for it. Again."

His brows furrowed a little. Cassie had said that the wedding looked rushed. Maybe they were running from something and didn't have time to reschedule? The only way he could ever see himself hurting Cassie like that would be if he didn't have any other option. And it would tear him up to have to do it. 'Smiles and sunshine'? Really?

"You didn't think we'd be together forever, did you?" she resumed bitterly. "You and Kira belong with each other. She's your girl, not me."

Something in Nick's throat clenched up at the way her eyes started to glisten. Her anger had given away to pain, and he learned, only once before in Hong Kong, that she had a way of crying that made other people feel it too. And he really, really didn't like either of them feeling this way. Especially not her.

Suddenly, he wasn't so sure he really understood the problem. Eloping is one thing. Eloping on her birthday and leaving her hanging is definitely something. But there had to be something else. He knew her. There was more that she wasn't letting on.

"Cass," he said quietly, "what's this really about?"

She swiped at the corner of her eye and tried to shrug. "I told you."

"Not everything. Come on."

It seemed like she was trying to look everywhere and at everything but him. "It's just . . . there's always something about my birthday."

"What do you mean?" he asked, leaning forward on his elbows.

She drew in a deep, shaky breath and settled on staring down at her hands. "Division came and took my mom on my sixth birthday, and I had to run with my dad. Three years later, on the same day, he dumped me in some cheap motel in Tucson, and I never heard from him again. Then on my eleventh birthday, my grandparents died in a car accident. They were on their way to pick me up from the sheriff's office, in some small town in Idaho that I'd run off to. T-boned by a pickup truck."

In the month they had been traveling together, Nick had never thought to ask her about the rest of her family. They had been so focused on her mom, and bringing Division to its knees, that the idea of her having once been just a helpless, lonely kid seemed to have eluded him somehow.

He sat now, staring at her as though he had never seen her before. No wonder she had been mad. It was easier than feeling hurt and abandoned, or perhaps even responsible. She was doing what he would have done – what he had been doing, for years now, having found himself lost and alone too. She was trying not to care. Daring her feelings to try and unbalance her.

Sniffling, Cassie stood up and threw a few bills on the table. "I'm not hungry anymore."

She made it about half a step before his hand reached out and closed around her wrist, pulling her back. He then stood up and drew her into his arms, pressing her tear-stained face into his chest.

"You listen to me," he said in a strangely tight voice. He didn't care that people were watching. "We haven't known each other that long, so I'm gonna forgive you for being so dumb." He pulled back just far enough to force her eyes to meet his. "I'm. Never. Leaving you."

She gave a muted little sob, and he pulled her closer again.

"Ever. So you can stop trying to push me away to make it easier on yourself, 'cause it's not working. You're stuck with me. Got it?"

He felt her nod weakly against him.

"And did it ever occur to you," he went on with a faint smirk, "that I might just have two girls instead of one?"

She finally hooked her skinny arms around his middle and hugged him back. "Two girls?" she queried, her voice muffled by his shirt. He could tell she was smiling, though. "That hardly seems fair."

He dropped a light kiss on the top of her head. "I'm greedy like that."

After a long moment, she finally pulled back from him, just enough to be able to beam up at him through her tears. "So," she cleared her throat. "April 3rd?"

"It's a date."