chapter seventy two

sanctuary.season six, episode twenty three.

please refer back to the trigger warnings in the previous chapter

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Death was never something she ran from, or even went out of her way to avoid. Death lingered, she noticed. Crossing the road or walking to her car after dark, it was always there, watching, . Choking a bit on her food, dropping a knife while cooking, speeding to avoid being late to work, and every time, death followed. It was patient, picking and choosing when to make itself known. Bombs, ferry boat crashes, ignorant bus drivers, . Death was always there, one step ahead.

Death didn't stand for the elderly or slow for the children. Death didn't lend sympathy to grieving mothers, soldiers at war, or even at war with themselves. It came when it desired, and left when it was done. Death was brutal, and selfish, and .

But Cassie, for lack of a better word, couldn't find it in herself to give a fuck.

Perhaps it was her lack of religious beliefs. Or maybe, it was that she'd seen death, death, so many times, that the dramatic effect of had pretty much worn off. There had actually been times after Bonnie and Denny and George died, that she for it. Longed for a permanent escape from the whirlwind of emotions she felt, from the fear of continuing to live. Sometimes, her life was even scarier than the prospect of her death.

.

Well, she didn't used to be, at least.

Cassie didn't want to go to work.

It had only been a few days since she'd been banned from the OR, and already, she was growing the urge to quit her job, . Only this time, it wasn't out of guilt or grief, but rather due to the amount of sheer annoyance she felt every time she was forced to pass by Derek, carrying a stack of charts while doing post-ops, or pre-ops, or even post-ops. At one point, a new doctor had actually mistaken her for an .

Besides, Mark's bed was . It was only in his nature to splurge on things like expensive silk bedsheets and hand-stitched duvets, but Cassie never grew tired of the way they felt on her skin; of course, nothing beat the way felt while they were under them.

And as if Mark could sense her distain, he pulled her even closer into his chest, the length of her back now flush against his chest.

"We could call in sick," he mumbled into her ear, his voice hoarse and deeper than usual due to his grogginess. It sent a shiver down her spine, goosebumps rising on her arms and the back of her neck. "Stay here all day."

Cassie, who unlike Mark had been wide awake for about an hour, didn't respond right away. Her gaze fitted over the inevitability overpriced pieces of artwork that sat perfectly aligned with each other on his bedroom wall, silently wondering which of them had meaning, and which he impulsively bought on a whim.

They were all surprisingly , and suddenly Cassie realized that he'd purchased most of them after they'd broken up; she was also a bit jealous, as she definitely wouldn't mind waking up to art like everyday.

"I would, but Ethan said he'd let me sneak into his OR and watch his exploratory laparotomy," she replied, reluctantly removing his arm from her waist and getting to her feet. "He promised I wouldn't get caught, but honestly, I'd love to see the look on Derek's face if I did."

Stealing one of Mark's plain black t-shirts, of which he seemed to have an endless supply, Cassie tossed it over her head, simultaneously searching the floor for her pants.

Mark frowned at the mention of Ethan, which only deepened into a scowl when Cassie brought up Derek.

As much as it was a relief for Cassie to get everything off her chest, she underestimated the effect it would have on Mark; more specifically, how he would feel about Derek lying to her face for eleven years, and therefore lying to , too. Plus, she wasn't sure that he'd fully grasped the whole thing, not that she could blame him.

"Screw , Cass," Mark scoffed, moving to sit up against his headboard, but still refusing to get up. "The guy's a dick."

Cassie rolled her eyes. "The is your best friend."

"Yeah, my best friend who's a ."

With a snort, she didn't disagree, eventually finding her jeans strung over the top of a tall lamp in the corner of Mark's room (how they even there in the first place, Cassie couldn't remember, as she was a preoccupied at the time of the incident). Within just a few seconds, she was fully dressed and staring down at a shirtless Mark, who was staring right back up at her.

She couldn't help but to savor moments like these.

It had been so long, long, since they'd been able to just be . Mark and Cassie, cheesily and helplessly in love, intelligent when they were apart but completely and utterly when they were together; who they really were, and , Cassie missed it.

Only, she wasn't sure if Mark still felt the same way.

He'd been distant, unusually so, after they slept together for the first time since their breakup; after the second, and the third, and-- well, Cassie didn't have the energy to count time they were together in the past week, but it was safe to say that Mark hadn't exactly been verbal with his thoughts.

Cassie soon came to realize that must have been how Mark had felt, pretty much every single day in the past nine months, because of the way was acting.