(*crawls out of hole*) Hello, everyone ;-;

This is more or less a Cassie-centric extension of the scene with Cassie and Xara in Chapter 107 of Movie Mode, an awesome MCSM story belonging to my dear friend Toni42 – and he said I was more than okay to post this here, so big thank you to him. It's, well, super short (oh, the irony), but here goes nothing.

"That girl…she should be dead."

The words bungle out more than a little unsteadily. A far cry from the image Cassie has carefully cultivated inside her head – unshakeable, untouchable, unfailing, queen of her castle.

(…but does she want to be that person anymore? Really want to?)

That weird Xara woman looks at her for a few seconds, just looks, before her mouth moves again, forming yet more words. Something about a sister. Or the walls. Or both. Cassie mumbles a reply she vaguely recognises as agreement, unable to tear her eyes away from the photographed faces in front of her, suspended in time. If she could just have that picture, if she could take it somewhere and pore over it in private, without Soren or the blond idiot or someone else breathing down her neck-

Before she can lean forward and tug it out of Xara's hand, though, the woman casts it one last inscrutable look and then stows it away with a quiet "they should both be dead, then".

Cassie doesn't bother to ask what she means. Something's spilling through the pit of her stomach like liquid metal. Her body at least has the decency to wait until Xara's well beyond the corner, out of sight and earshot, to sag against the wall, nails digging into her palms.

She should be dead.

How many times had Cassie repeated that to herself, all those years ago? Forcing herself into that same old routine every day, angry at herself for the leaden weight in her chest and for not quite being able to ignore the empty space across the room, trying again and again to hammer the facts into her head. She's dead. She's dead and she's never coming back. That was the plain truth. From the moment those…those old witches dragged that girl away to The Room (even now, those two tiny words cause that same something to rise and thicken in her throat), neither Cassie nor any of the others ever saw or heard from her again. And somehow, she'd doubted that the girl had skipped off to some fairyland.

So then it can't be…her. It can't. It simply can't. There's- There's no way she could have gotten here. Especially not now, not after all this time. After...everything.

That's what Cassie keeps telling herself as her legs threaten to throw in the towel completely and send her sprawling onto the carpet like- like somebody who's just been swarmed by a dozen spiders, pinning her down, piercing her with their- no, enough of that, quite enough-

Fragments of memory - including ones she didn't know she still had - rise from whatever deep dark hole they've been dwelling in all this time, just waiting for the chance to taunt her. A narrow bed sitting next to her own in a bare, bleak room. Stained fingers working dye into hair as two voices talk over and around what it means to be alone. And...and the bucket of worms balanced oh-so-precariously atop the door, a screech falling like a death knell, demanding to know who's to blame (god, that stupid girl)…

For the first time in years, Cassie tries to summon up that long-ago face from where she shoved it into the back of her mind and recall exactly what it looked like. It comes up blurry, shrouded by haze. Apparently her attempts to forget it have been semi-successful.

Winslow gives a rusty meow, insistently butting her leg in a bid to get her attention. She automatically stoops to run a knuckle down his furry cheek. A shuddery breath heaves out as she falls to the recollection of the frozen smiles in the picture Xara was clutching.

The girl looked...happy. Hell, she looked alive. Alive. So different from the bruised, bloodstained figure who haunted Cassie's dreams for so long after the worms and the lie. And from the walking skeleton who's come into this goddamn mansion out of nowhere. The way she shuffles around with her eyes glued to the floor, attached to Jesse as though by some invisible string-

Cassie's head jerks. Jesse. An almost-forgotten whisper comes snaking out of her mind's maze. "Where's my brother?"

Brother.

Jesse.

Jessi.

Jessica.

She stares at the dust molecules spinning in the air without really seeing them, aware of nothing but a sudden nausea clawing at her gut. This is like Soren suddenly popping back up into her life all over again - but worse. A thousand times worse.

Cassie's well used to people leaving her behind in some way or another by now.

What she's not used to is people disappearing and then coming back.

Seriously short, I know ;-; I hope I did a decent job here, though! Cassie's one of those characters I just really like writing about.

(again, many thanks to Toni for his permission to post this. All credit for the 'universe' this story is set in and everything to do with it belongs to him ;-; And go check out Movie Mode if you haven't already; honestly, it's incredibly good.)

(*awkwardly tips hat*)

~ Rainy