This Is Who He Is

Author's Note: This is another in what is probably going to be a long list of sad Cassidy fics, I'm sure, but my heart was broken with the season finale, and writing is how I heal a broken heart.

I do want to say that I don't forgive or excuse Cassidy. Wrong is wrong, but I spent two seasons falling in love with someone who, while he was a little broken, had a good spirit, a lot of intelligence, and a bright future. Then I found out that everything I could see him being was taken from him before he ever had a chance to have it, and that's such a tragedy that even though he's a killer and a rapist, I still feel a bit of pity for him.

When he is eleven, Cassidy dies.

After three years he finally tells his father he can't breathe. Each breath is sharp and short, pain stabbing through his chest, like he'd run a mile in gym class too fast for his body to handle. His father sends him to the family doctor, but nothing is found wrong with Cassidy. The next time Cassidy complains, his father ignores him. His mother's attention only lasts for so long, and in the end, Cassidy learns to hold his breath even though it makes his ears ring.

The first time Dick calls him Beaver, Cassidy hates it. He gives Dick an unhappy look and all he can think about is what the names mean. All he can think about is Dicks fucking Beavers, and he thinks about Dick fucking him, and he thinks about Dick being inside him,

and he throws up on Dick's shoes.

People stop calling him Cassidy after that, and after that all he wants is to be called Cassidy. He wants someone to look at him and see him and smile and say, "Cassidy," but no one does. Cassidy feels himself slipslip...slip so all that's left is an empty darkness filled with a sound like the wind raging. There's a high whine to it, and Cassidy thinks that if he listens to it hard enough, it might sound like screaming- or his ears ringing.

Cassidy stops seeing in color the day he stops being a virgin for the second time. Veronica's white dress slips up over her thighs and over his vision. He wonders through it all why everything seems so dark when she is so light: pale dress, pale skin, pale lips, pale hair. At the end, his vision goes white and then it goes black again, and by the time he's recovered from his orgasm, the liquor in his system has rebelled against his body, and he throws up on Carrie Bishop's shoes.

(Mac looks him in the eye and smiles and calls him Cassidy. For a moment there is silence and he knows the streak in her hair is blue. This is all there is.)

but)

The dead don't stay dead, not in Neptune, Cassidy knows, and lunch may take a while, but it will eventually come back up and you'll get it all over your own shoes. There's the slam and fall, skin abrading against concrete- new sensation; Cassidy remembers linoleum- and something in his chest has snapped. He still can't breath and the pain is there, but there's also silence.

Darkness creeps up in the corners of his vision and shadows streak across everything. Cassidy feels like he's going to throw up all the time, but he never does. He can't remember silence, but he never quite seems to hear anything either. This is how it is, and he's used to it, in the way that it is.

Where the black is, there's a sound like wind rushing. Cassidy recognizes it; it is himself.

Falling.

END