we need to talk || cassian

[Kora Burke]

_{saturday, 8 sept 1973
late afternoon
quidditch pitch}

Kora was trying to stay away from the other Slytherins. Penelope Razi was making her life absolutely horrible. The girl was constantly teasing her about how she was a halfblood and would never amount to anything. She knew not to believe her, but she couldn’t help but to let the girl get into her head and invade her thoughts.

It was enough to drive someone mad, if she were honest.

But that was enough. It wasn’t quite dinner time yet, and Kora needed some fresh air so she found herself wandering around outside. She was lost in her thoughts, wondering what Brutus was doing and how Lucifer was. She knew she needed to figure out what to do once she was done at Hogwarts, but she honestly had no clue. She wasn’t as good as she wanted to be at hardly anything.

Kora took a drag off her cigarette as she entered the Quidditch pitch. She didn’t know why she had walked there of all places. It was her subconscious or something. She still hated the sport and blamed it for what happened to her mum. And yet, she couldn’t help but to find a spot somewhere in the middle on the grass to sit down. Lilith slithered off of her and into the grass, and Kora took another drag off her cigarette.

She could really use a drink right about now.

[Cassian McCormick]

He'd been up in the stands for hours just...staring out onto the pitch.

It didn't make his mind any clearer. The boy had read that looking at problems through new lenses or from different vantage points might help one come to a reasonable conclusion but his mind still whirled and his conviction was no further strengthened.

Cassian frowned down at the hands he'd clasped over his knees, his mind going back to the quidditch sign-up sheet. Summer quidditch should have been enough. After the horror of that harmless match at Camp Loki, the boy knew he hadn't been ready to face his demons.

It was Tristan's doing, no two ways about it. His brother taking him school shopping at the end of summer had instilled in him a new sense of curiosity. There was much he didn't understand--much he wanted to understand but, unlike his other pursuits, the answers couldn't be found with enough reading and perseverance.

It needed a different approach, another means of gaining understanding. Cass just...didn't know if he could do it again but he'd already signed up. The deed was already done.

The movement across the pitch caught his attention. Squinting Cassian could see, with some degree of certainty, that it was his sister making her way onto the well-manicured grass.

Kora? On the pitch? That couldn't be right.

Except, the longer he stared the more convinced he became. Cassian rose wordlessly from his spot and made his way down onto the pitch. The scent of cigarette smoke greeted him as he drew close.

The fourth-year hesitated silently. Much like with his brother during the summer...he didn't know what to say. Things between them had never recovered after she chose to leave the family. Even after he started Hogwarts and had his sister once again only a short walk away, things were never the same. Now, she was leaving. At the end of the year, she would disappear like the others had. The thought brought with it an unshakeable loneliness that the boy couldn't explain. It had been years of being home alone with their father and in many ways he was used to it...but it still felt like it mattered.

"Mind if I sit?"

[Kora Burke]

“Mind if I sit?”

Kora closed her eyes momentarily. “Sure,” she said in a sigh, all of the anger that she had built up just gone and in its place there was - what? Emptiness? Maybe some regret? Now that Cassian was sitting next to her, she couldn’t help but to feel like even more of a failure.

She took another drag off her cigarette and then produced another one from the pack she carried in her bag. “Want one?” she offered, though despite her mood she had a smirk on her lips. He wouldn’t. He was a good kid - better than she ever had been.

“Why are you out here?” Kora asked, her eyes falling on the snake that was slithering around just a few feet from them. She stuck her hand in her bag, replacing the pack of cigarettes, and grabbing her sketch pad and favorite sketching pencil. She preferred charcoal; it was messier, but she found the lines it made absolutely beautiful.

[Cassian McCormick]

His lips fell into a notable grimace as brown eyes locked onto the cigarette in his sister's hand. It felt like a taunt, creating a wider chasm between the siblings than the one that already existed. Kora wasn't the same girl who'd run away when their mother died. Life had changed her into an unrecognisable stranger who he occasionally ran into around the castle.

Cass must've seemed a stranger, too. The boy couldn't remember the last time they'd sat to have a conversation despite sharing the blood that ran through their veins. A smile here or there when they passed in the corridors...the odd hello in the great hall before they returned to their own worlds.

Yet.

Yet that smirk made it seem like she knew him. After abandoning him like all the others had, Koraline McCormick--or whatever she'd changed her name to--thought she could still read her little brother as if he were an open book she'd perused from cover to cover. The thought deepened his grimace, a small spark burning inside him to prove her wrong.

Brown eyes flickered between hers and the cig she offered, defiance rising up his chest. The hesitation that lingered a moment dissolved into determination. Cass reached across to take it, his eyes silently insisting she not make assumptions about who he'd become outside the line of sight of the siblings he'd once idolised.

The boy thumbed at the end of the cigarette restlessly. He'd never smoked before and didn't have the first clue but Cassian felt he had something to prove. He would if it meant getting her attention, really getting it. If this was what it took for them to come together, the price was small.

"I'm thinking of signing up for quidditch this term, he said. "But...I don't know if I can. I thought...maybe if I sat out here for a while...maybe...maybe it'd seem less...y'know." Cass ended with a small, uncertain shrug before looking to her again. "What about you?"

[Kora Burke]

Cassian took the cigarette and Kora was pleasantly surprised. She raised an amused eyebrow, impressed, and then produced her wand. She cast a quick creo fuoco to light it, then stuck her wand back into her bag and returned her attention to her sketch book. Her camera was in her bag too, as she never went anywhere without it – photography was another one of her favorite hobbies. Cass probably didn’t  know that.

She bit her tongue as he admitted considering signing up for quidditch, then let his question hang in the air. What was her reason for being out there on the pitch of all places?

“I… I dunno. Sometimes being out here makes me feel closer to her?” Kora didn’t need to explain the ‘her’ in the situation. There was only one person she could be speaking about. The beautiful woman who Kora had wanted to be just like, who she got her blue eyes and blonde hair from.

Now that Cass had mentioned it, the thought of quidditch was on her mind too. No, the game itself hadn’t been what killed their mother, but because Tristan insisted on playing it, she was in the wrong place at the wrong time, and never returned home.

That part of her heart that had shattered never returned. Brutus, after however many years before him, had been a good bandaid. She’d fallen for him hard and fast, and now his cousin – not Tigran, the other one. Penelope. His cousin was making everything difficult for her.

Kora considered, many times, hitting the girl. Or hexing her with an unforgivable. Crucio would be so satisfying. But she never did.

Kora took a drag off her cigarette. “If you wanna try it then you can,” she added, not looking at him. “Parker mentioned it too.” How did that make her feel?

She’d spent her entire time at Hogwarts despising the game, and now those who shared her blood were going to play. She used to know everything about quidditch because she used to be really close to their brother. “I dunno, made me kinda think about it too.”

The words left her mouth before she even really realized it.

[Cassian McCormick]

Cassian's eyes fell onto the burning ember at the end of his cigarrette, watching the thin wisps of smoke begin to rise. He watched them ascend, delaying the act for a moment more. He'd been set on proving his sister wrong but...

" Sometimes being out here makes me feel closer to her?”

So she was thinking about her, too.

Sometimes he was convinced he was the only one that still did. Tristan had shut down and Kora had left, distancing herself from everything and everyone. She'd chosen a different life, leaving the rest of them behind. Only their father remained--someone had to take care of him after all.

He didn't talk much about her either.

"I thought the same." In the interest of honesty. Cassian cast his gaze back to the stands, finally fitting the cigarette between his lips. He took a deeper drag than he meant to. The boy sputtered and coughed, his inexperience becoming evident as he struggled to acclimate to the unfamiliar sensation.

That hadn't gone anything like he'd planned and the boy could only grimace down at it, wondering what everyone had been so fascinated by. "I wish I knew what happened. It would make everything less...uncertain." The unknown terrified him as much as the game did. All he'd ever heard was that she went to a quidditch game and never returned. The rest was left to his imagination.

"You'll play?" Cass asked, an eyebrow raising at her admission. He didn't think he'd ever seen her play, not even at camp where the stakes were so low.

"It...it doesn't bother you?"

[Kora Burke]

The words had felt wrong on so many levels. And yet she didn’t take them back. Would it be the worst thing on Earth? Surely not. But had she ever been very comfortable in the sky? Not especially. Not lately anyways. Her mind went back to when her Aunt Serena taught Muggle Studies and they went up in a hot air balloon. She’d had a panic attack.

But just because she signed up didn’t mean she’d actually play. She could keep the bench warm.

Cassian took a drag from his cigarette and began coughing. Kora, despite her sullen mood, laughed in reaction. Her brother had tried to act so nonchalant about the cigarette, and yet he hadn’t smoked before. Just like she thought.

"I wish I knew what happened. It would make everything less...uncertain."

Kora nodded slightly and sighed. “I… I know it’s not his fault,” she said, referring to their brother Tristan. “But I just… really wish she had come home.” She was always excited when her mum came home from taking their brother to practice, and yet it had been different that time. That last time, she’d felt her world crumble and the sunlight fade away.

The world had been dark ever since.

“You’ll play? It… it doesn’t bother you?”

Kora’s stomach froze momentarily before doing a flip, making her feel uneasy about this. “I… I dunno, I mean, I can sign up but it doesn’t mean I’m gonna have to actually play… right?” She was unsure. She didn’t know much about the coach, and didn’t think he’d be the type to help her with this.

“Do you want to?” she asked, putting the ball in Cass’ court. “If… you do, then I will.”