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Cassie woke up momentarily disoriented, and ran through her checklist as she tried to blink the dark room into focus. It’s 1959. You’ve been in the past for just over two years. You’re working as a nurse in the hospital. You’re in New York. You’re in Suite 607 at the Emerso-- No, that wasn’t right. She wasn’t at the Emerson at all, she was in… the house . Cole’s house. She could feel him stretched along her side in his tiny bed, breathing so quietly she could barely hear it, obviously dead to the world. Good . Cassie thought. Just stay asleep a few minutes more.
Cassie eased herself out from under the quilt and carefully swung her legs off the bed, wincing as her feet hit the ice-cold floorboards. It was so quiet--definitely not Manhattan--and pitch black this far out in the country, and she really needed to figure out where her underwear had ended up. She glanced out the window, twitching aside the somewhat-lopsided curtains Cole had hung, and was grateful to see the rain hadn’t turned to snow or ice overnight. But as soon as she realized there was enough light for her to see the yard outside, she knew it was later than she’d realized, the early-spring sky turning a dusty rose across the empty fields in the distance, and she swore bitterly.
“Cass?” She could hear Cole sit up in the bed, and she bit back another expletive. She should have known he was a light sleeper. Had known that.
“Go back to sleep, Cole.” She eased her way around the room and her foot hit a pile of what definitely felt like her clothing, and she began to haphazardly throw it on by feel, wincing again as her sore muscles bent and stretched. She could hear Cole fumbling with something, and then a click as he turned on his bedside lamp, and Cassie froze in the sudden pool of light, half-dressed and caught between embarrassment, exhaustion, anger… she didn’t know. Cole blinked at her in confusion.
“Are you leaving?”
“Uh… yeah.” Cassie snatched a shirt off the end of the bed and pulled it over her head, knowing it was Cole’s but too rushed to care. “I need to get back to the city.”
“ Now? It’s a three hour drive.”
“Yes now . I have a job, Cole. And--” she squinted at her watch, “I’m going to be late to the hospital as it is so… uh… bye.” She turned and fled out the bedroom door before he could say anything else, and found the landing, reaching out blindly until she felt the smooth wood of the banister under her hand and let the curve of it guide her feet smoothly down the stairs. She could hear Cole swearing and distentagling himself from the bed behind her, and quickly raked her eyes across the entrance until she could see her shoes and jacket through the parlour door, lying where they’d been thrown the night before.
Her breath caught, and for a moment she was back in the room, the same room but empty, hammering on the walls for the Witness to let her out. She still couldn’t understand what it meant for him to be here. It was wrong. It should have felt more wrong. And she didn’t know what to do about it except leave.
“Cassie, wait!”
Cole caught up to her as she stepped off the front porch, and she stopped, briefly considering running to her car without looking back, before she slowly turned.
Cole was standing silhouetted in the rectangle of light from his front door, an odd assortment of woolly socks, boxer shorts, and a moth-eaten sweater adorning his body as he looked at her beseechingly. The light was shining through his rumpled hair, causing the ends to glow, and Cassie’s stomach clenched as she felt how much she had truly missed him. She was furious at him still, she was terrified of what him being here meant, and she wanted him. So much.
Cole stepped out of the door and slowly walked to the edge of the porch.
“Do you really have to go?”
“I--yes. I still have a life, Cole. I had to make a life… without you.”
Cole looked angry for a second before he shook his head, features smoothing as he took a deep breath. “You came looking though. And you found me. You stayed. Last night you--”
“--I know.” Cassie interrupted. “I don’t regret it, James, it was… But I--”
“--have to go.” Cole’s voice joined with hers and he nodded. “I could come with you?”
“I--” Cassie considered it, leading him away from this house and back to the Emerson. Back to the room where they’d spent a year stewing in growing tension and resentment until they could barely look at each other. She looked up at the house-- his house--peeling paint and rotting eaves and waited for the feeling of dread to wash over her again. But it didn’t. In the rising morning light it suddenly transformed into just a house--almost a home--and for a second she could see it the way he must imagine it, with the bright paint restored, and lights in every window, the deep covered porch a welcoming retreat at the end of the day.
“...no. You can’t come with me.” Impulsively, Cassie moved back onto the steps and reached up to grab the front of his sweater, dragging him down into an intense kiss before she just as suddenly pulled away. “But I’ll come back.”
Cole blinked in confusion and his hands reached for her, catching her gently on either side of her face as his fingers tangled through her hair. “Will you?” He asked roughly, eyes searching hers earnestly.
“Yes. I promise.”
Cole searched her face for another second and then nodded again, and bent his head to kiss her once, gently. “Okay.” He let her go and stepped back, and Cassie turned once again toward her car. Half way down the drive she half-turned again, smile suddenly twitching around her mouth and called out “see you soon!” over her shoulder.
Cole threw his head back and laughed.
--
Cole lost track of how long they stood there, swaying together as Cassie laughed in disbelief in his arms.
“You’re here.” He smiled into her hair as his eyes took in the state of the house-- her house--white paint gleaming in the setting sun and looking almost exactly like he’d imagined it could look once, a different lifetime ago.
Cassie pulled back. “ I’m here? You’re here. I don’t understand how--”
“--I don’t either. Well, Jones changed something in the code, that’s what Jennifer said, or--”
“-- Jennifer said?”
“Yeah Jennifer picked me up in the Keys, then we flew to New York, and she gave me a car. I couldn’t believe it when she said you were here.”
“I can’t believe she never said anything to me. I’m going to kill her.”
Cole would have believed her if she wasn’t still laughing as she said it, her eyes shining with happy tears, and he couldn’t stop himself from leaning down to kiss her before he pulled back and tucked a piece of hair behind her ear. “I guess I’ll have to warn her to watch out for you.”
Cassie smiled as the tears spilled over her cheeks, and she wrapped her arms around him once more and buried her face in his neck. He could feel her shuddering, and wondered if her laughter had turned into real crying now. He wouldn’t be surprised. He felt like crying himself.
“It’s going to be dark soon.” Cassie murmured into his shoulder some time later, and Cole nodded and raised his eyes to catch the last glimpse of the sun sinking in the fields behind the house. She pulled back once again and reached down to take his hands. “Do you want to come inside and see?”
“It looks so good already. Like a home.”
Cassie tugged him toward the porch. “There’s still a lot of work to do inside. Some things haven't been changed since the 50s.”
Cole nodded as he walked up the steps, and could feel the familiar creak of the boards under their fresh coat of paint welcoming him home. “Maybe I could help.”
Cassie nodded. “I’d like that.” She nodded at the door in invitation, and stepped aside to let Cole reach for the handle himself, her teeth biting at her lip in anticipation as she watched him slowly open it.
“So. Is it like you remember?”
Cole stood in the entrance and let his eyes roam over the stairs, down the hall, through the parlour door where he could just make out the corner of the fireplace he’d once marked with those words, this was home . There was no dark wallpaper there now, just more bright paint, and a fresh smell, and the feeling of Cassie everywhere. If he blinked he could see it like it was on the day he had erased their home, or the way it had looked as it all burned to the ground, a final cruel ending to a life he would never get back. But here it was again. Here he was.
“It’s different.” Cole smiled at Cassie as she stepped through the door to stand beside him. “It’s better I think.”
“Do you want to keep looking around? I can show you my ideas--I think the upstairs needs a lot of work, or…”
“Yeah.” Cole reached out for the banister, his other hand tangled with Cassie’s. “Show me everything. We have the time after all.”
--
The End