Fandom: DC Comics, dystopian/end-of-the-world AU
Title: Simple Gifts
Characters: Cass Cain/Kon

Notes: Toast said she had an exam, but that she just wanted to read fic. I promised her that if she stopped procrastinating, she could poke me after her exam for some giftfic. Takes place in the same 'verse as this ficlet that she wrote.

Summary: Birthdays are important, even after the world ends. Maybe even doubly so. But gifts are hard to come by when the everything's gone to hell, so all Cass has are words.

Cass has never owned many things. At first it was because she didn't need them. Then it was by necessity. Now that she's free to own whatever she wants, she still doesn't own very much. It makes it easier to leave quickly. It makes it easier to run.

Lately, she and Kon have been doing a lot of that. A lot of leaving quickly. A lot of running.

But not right now.

Leaving and running, Cass is good at doing those. She's had years of training to ensure that. But this is newer. Familiar to her, but still new.

She's perched in the window of their latest hideout, flipping through a worn book. She's looking for a word. An important word.

At first, she hadn't understood the point of birthdays. What was their use? But now, looking down on the ruins of what was once a tall city, she almost understands it.

Sometimes you just need to take a moment to remember happier days.

A few days ago she had found a rare scrap of paper, mostly clean and completely blank. At the time, it had seemed perfect.
Now, she isn't so sure.

She's already crumbled the paper in her fist several times in frustration. It hadn't been crisp when she'd found it, but now the creases and folds seem to be mocking her and all of the things she's never understood. She isn't stupid, she can fight and protect and survive and right now that's almost everything that matters.

Almost.

And right now, it's the almost that she's struggling with.

It's not a feeling she feels often. It takes her back, reminds of her a bedroom far away and a simple demand she'd had to make because for once she wasn't enough.

"Read this," she had demanded then. Read this because I can't. Read this because people are in danger and I am wasting time. Read this because if you don't I will fail. And Steph had read it then, because all of those marks made sense to Steph. For Steph, those marks were letters and words and they were normal in her mind.

Normal like birthdays. Normal like the stories Kon would sometimes tell her. And those stories were the reason she knew that today was important to him, even though he had shrugged it off earlier before leaving.

Cass glances out the window. The sun is slowly sinking lower (everything seemed to happen slower nowadays) and Kon would be back from hunting for supplies soon.

She uncaps her pen and carefully writes on the paper.

Happy Birthday Kon.

Beside that sentence she draws a heart.

But the paper still looks too blank. Too empty. She wishes she had the right words to fill it. But they somehow always evade her, twisting and turning away from her grasp when she needs them to express her thoughts.

She reaches for the small, battered dictionary again.

She needs a word. A big word with a lot of meaning to it. Her lips move as she struggles to read over words with too many letters, too many syllables. Maybe she just needs a little word with a big meaning.

an intense emotion of affection, warmth, fondness, and regard towards a person or thing

She's considered it before. It hadn't seemed right then, but things were different now. The world was different now. It had ended over two years ago. Two years of running and fighting and protecting. Two years of getting to know Kon again, of cold nights huddled under falling architecture, of making this new place a home.

Could it really be that simple?

I love you.

Yes, yes it could.