Chapter Text
So, it turns out that they don’t let you keep being a paramedic when you’re blind even though you can see beyond the human confines of visual sight.
Which means Cassie needs to find a new job because, unfortunately, being a clairvoyant crime fighter doesn’t pay the bills, especially now that she has three more mouths to feed.
It starts when Anya moves out of her apartment that she can’t afford into Cassie’s. The landlord doesn’t question it much, just glad to get her out so he can get in an actual paying tenant.
Julia moves in next after sneaking into her dad’s home while everyone is out to get her things. Of course, Cassie and the other girls help.
Mattie is the last to move in, still attached to the empty home she’s lived in for years and reluctant to live with someone else for the first time in a long time.
It’s cramped at first, the four of them in a place that isn’t meant for four, but they make it work. Once Cassie gets a steady job, she knows the next thing she’ll do is pay for a nicer place.
To her surprise, money becomes her least worry when a letter comes in the mail of Ezekiel Sims’s will, leaving his entire fortune to her, citing his close friendship with her mother when they were research partners.
Attached is a small note in handwriting she doesn’t recognize.
“I’m sorry,” is all it says. She knows it’s not from Ezekiel and she can guess it’s someone who got caught up in his crimes, finally free because of her and the girls. And, well, she’s not going to look a gift horse in the mouth, even if the gift was obtained with blood covered hands.
Her first big purchase is a new four bedroom place which is, as you’d expect in Queens, exorbitantly expensive. But, she now has so much money that she’s starting to understand how Mattie turned out the way she did.
Then, of course, she pays to furnish the new place however the girls desire.
Mattie pours some of her father’s money into it, mostly out of spite, while Julie and Anya are much more reluctant to spend so much money, especially on themselves, and it’s Mattie that helps them feel more comfortable at the prospect, mostly with the mindset she sees her own parents’ money: it’s taking money from people who don’t deserve it.
And sure, it’s Cassie’s money now, but it was once Ezekiel’s and there’s something so satisfying about pouring the wealth the man had gained through years of venomous crime and evildoing into pink beanbag chairs and fairy lights.
Thirdly, she settles guardianship for the girls and Anya’s citizenship.
With Anya, it involves lengthy hours with Immigration Services as well as Child Protective Services. Cassie reaches out to her past foster parents for not only advice but references. Since Anya is still a minor and Cassie is a natural citizen, the process is, though still difficult, easier than she expected.
For Mattie it’s easy, her parents seeing Cassie as free childcare and gladly sign the papers required for Cassie to be guardian while they’re out of the country. Of course, during the investigation to deem her fit as guardian, she and Mattie let her previous living situation slip to the professionals. Full guardianship is easy to get once Mattie’s parents offer to pay hush money. Cassie doesn’t need any more money, though. She just wants Mattie safe and happy.
For Julia, it’s the most difficult. Both of her parents are living, one not mentally well enough to fully consent to anything. They have to settle with it being unofficial for now, though Julia says that once she’s an adult, she wants to cut ties with her father permanently. Cassie is just proud that Julia is able to acknowledge that she deserves more.
The last big purchase Cassie makes isn’t a purchase at all. It’s a college fund for Peter.
Mary and Richard try to decline it but Cassie reassures them that it barely dents into her bank account and also she owes them for Mary’s disastrous ride to the hospital.
They finally relent and Ben gives Cassie his usual bullshit about her actually having feelings and for the first time she doesn’t deny it.
Speaking of Ben, she did sit down with him and tell him the whole story. He was already being more trusting than she deserves protecting the girls while she was gone but after getting attacked by Ezekiel, he was left with even more questions than answers.
It’s a tall tale that he probably wouldn’t believe if he hadn’t seen it with his own two eyes.
The whole her having powers thing is a little harder for him to wrap his head around and he wants to run many tests on her — ”For science!” — and as much as she wants to protest, she does want to test the extent of her powers, especially with someone who is not just a licensed paramedic but also not a teenage girl.
Their series of trials not just explore her powers but also the physical effects they have on her and she learns her limits and how to expand them. It brings her a newfound confidence that she didn’t realize she needed.
Confidence is something she never thought she was lacking, but when faced with the unexpected, she realizes that she had resigned herself to a lonely fate, afraid to make true connections and to care for anyone but herself.
But now she has three beautiful girls that she loves more than she thought possible.
Their odd little family they’ve made is not something Cassie ever expected for herself. If you would’ve told Cassie a few months ago that she would’ve lost her job to be makeshift mother to three teenagers, she would’ve never believed you.
Well, that and the whole superpowers thing too.
But she thinks that she would’ve been more shocked at the idea of her as a parent.
That was never something she saw for herself. She has never known how to act around kids, Ben pointing out with glee how awkward she is around kids on call, and she may still not totally know how, but when before she could barely exchange small talk with a kid, she finds herself in lengthy conversation about the boys (and girls) that Mattie finds hot at school or deep conversations about Julia’s insecurities and her years of bullying or rambled infodumps from Anya on whatever she’s hyperfixating on at the time. And she loves it. She loves it more than she’s loved anything else. She loves them more than she’s ever loved anyone else.
And as she sits at the dinner table — because she finally has a reason to have a dining table — eating shitty Chinese takeout because she burnt the Stouffer’s lasagna when they all got distracted playing Uno, her three girls cackling about some Badger animation that Cassie doesn’t quite understand, Cassie realizes that for the first time in a long time she’s happy. Not just content, not just fine, but actually, truly happy.
Mattie throws a fortune cookie at Cassie’s forehead and she catches it before it impacts, a quick vision warning her milliseconds before.
She opens it and turns it to the girls. “What does it say?”
“Your future is,” Julia reads.
“Is what?” Cassie asks.
“I don’t know,” Anya says. “It’s smudged.”
Cassie laughs. “They still haven’t fixed that printer, huh?”
“Guess not,” Mattie says. “Who cares what some shitty cookie thinks anyways? I choose my own fortune, thank you very much.”
“Uh,” Anya says. “Fortune cookies are not shitty.”
“They’re barely flavored cardboard!” Mattie exclaims.
“I think fortune cookies are delightful,” Julia pipes in.
And as the three girls devolve into raucous debate, Cassie sits back with a smile, happy that her future took a turn she never expected.