People who knew of her would probably claim that Cassidy ruthlessly pursued power. This was not on the fundamental level quite true, or even fair. What Cassidy needed, what always seemed to elude her once she reached out her hands greedily for it, was perfection. She was always ruthlessly honest with herself - made a masochistic hobby out of self-analysis, in fact, terrified of making another error like the ones that had haunted her - and she knew this to be true of herself. She needed to achieve everything asked of her, to be praised for being clever, for being beautiful, for being efficient, for being... herself, just as faultless as she could become. Given different parents, a different background, a different chance at life, she might have become a Pokemon Master, and spent the rest of her life waiting for some new trainer to topple her from her throne. Instead, she had joined Team Rocket, and concentrated on becoming just the best villain she could be, Giovanni's praised darling. It might have been a twisted ideal of success, but it had served as the necessary ego prop. She had been happy, for a while... At least she had woken every morning to the comforting knowledge that she was the best of the worst. She had lost her throne in only a few short months. First Ash Ketchum and his damned Pokemon had come along and ruined her good record of evildoing. And then little Domino, barely more than a child, had tumbled Cassidy from the pinnacle of Giovanni's approval. She had been relegated to second-best... flawed, and acknowledged to be so. Cassidy lay awake, trying to make out the ceiling in the darkness, and realised that for the first time in weeks, the sharp twisting pain in her breast had eased, and along with it the self-hatred. The awareness of her own failure was still there, but it had ceased to hurt her. The absence of pain gave her a strange feeling that something was missing... That she had been reborn, and was still a egg-shell skinned, helpless baby. She was all too vulnerable to being dropped and damaged but, now, just for now, she felt warm and cosy and loved. It was enough. She rolled over to ease a cramp in one leg, moving awkwardly to avoid waking the other occupant of the bed. Not that Jesse, as a child, could usually be woken by anything short of an avalanche, and there was no reason to suspect she had changed now. The bed had somewhat uncertain supports, which had creaked and plunged ominously earlier in the night, and the mattress was not exactly what Cassidy was used to laying her pampered frame on. They had managed to kick away the undersheet at some point, too, which only made the situation worse. Cassidy had deliberately booked a room towards the lower end of what she considered acceptable, afraid of provoking damaging jealousy in her lover if she had displayed what she was used to, and then winced as Jesse's huge eyes had widened still further at the luxury of booking a hotel room at all. Cassidy supposed that if she spent her life sleeping on the ground, in balloons or on benches in Team Rocket shacks, she would have been impressed too. At one point she would have taken a hurting revengeful pleasure at the idea of the hell that was Jesse's life. Now all she felt was an oddly aching, protective pity. As far as Cassidy herself was concerned, the room was an almost-unbearable tip. She badly needed a shower, too - her skin was clammy with sweat, and the blanket was too rough and too heavy on her delicate skin. And Jesse was not a particularly delicate sleeping companion. She snored like a piloswine. And yet... For the first time in her life, Cassidy felt free of the prickling awareness of imperfection. There was not a thing in the room she would have changed, for fear of sacrificing it all over one negligible detail. Although, to be honest, she could probably do without the cramp in her leg. She sat up and began to flex her foot, carefully, trying to tease out the pain, and distracting herself by picking out her new lover's face in the blue-shadowed darkness. A heart-shaped face, with feathered lashes and a small mouth, gaping and drooling slightly in sleep. Cassidy, fastidious woman that she was, should have been horrified. But ... after all, it was kind of cute. Jesse did everything, even sleep, with complete abandon, like a child. Even to a perfectionist like Cassidy, it was oddly endearing. She wasn't used to feeling warm and tender like this, and it was nicer than she would have imagined. But as the blonde smiled fondly down, Jesse snorted and turned over onto her side, and Cassidy's indulgent mood suddenly, brutally, crushed. Under this light, Jesse's hair looked almost purple, and her profile was too close to that of her mother. Cassidy had hated Miyamoto, hating her at first with a childish passion that was all the more intent because she only dimly understood why her own mother cried at night, and why it was Miyamoto's fault. Later, she had understood slightly better, and her hatred had become so strong that she had thought it would kill her. Miyamoto was everything Cassidy despised, someone who had so little respect for herself that she would give herself to Giovanni or Madame Boss or anyone else who would pay her for the use of her body. To Cassidy, already bent on becoming her own mother's little angel, Miyamoto's willingness to degrade herself so intimately for something as paltry as cash was utterly incomprehensible. Especially as Miyamoto never seemed to gain anything concrete from her relentless obsession with money... Jesse was half-starved and wore rags, while even Cassidy's mother could dress and feed her own daughter. Even as a child, Cassidy had sensed something ugly and very very wrong in her best friend's home. She had responded by taunting Jesse with the knowledge that her mother didn't love her, not even enough to give her food, that her mother was a whore who cared only for men, that her mother was a failure... The cruelties slipped from her lips like honey, and burned into her best friend like acid. And Cassidy had almost been glad to hurt the friend she had loved and ruin their friendship, as if somehow by doing so she could do justice for being unable to stop her own mother's tears. Still later, Cassidy understand that Miyamoto's relentless accumulation of unspent wealth had been not a sign that she didn't love her daughter but of some deeper, darker disturbance. By then it was too late. Miyamoto, buried under her mountain, was beyond the reach of help or hatred. Cassidy's own mother had died quietly, the failure Cassidy had promised herself never to become - Domino or no Domino... And Jesse, the only true friend Cassidy had ever had, hated her bitterly. She hadn't joined Team Rocket only because her own mother's death had left her destitute, and Giovanni always extended a hand to those with both talent and desperation. Joining Miyamoto's organisation had been penance of a kind, as well as a hopeless gesture towards those she had once loved, Jesse as well as her mother and in some strange way Miyamoto herself. And Cassidy had found her second true friend and kindred spirit in her partner Butch, and been damned good at her job. When her path had crossed with Jesse, though, she had retreated instinctively into childhood enmities again. If hatred blazed in Jesse's eyes, at least it hurt less if she was doing something to deserve it... And now... Suddenly, in the space of a heartbeat, it was over. She would make it up to Jesse if it killed her. And make it up to herself, who had probably suffered far worse in the end. Ridiculous that it was that detestable brat Domino who had inadvertently caused the miracle. Cassidy had no doubt that it was at Domino's spiteful instigation that Giovanni had decided to remove the dead weights from his team, and included his former darlings Butch and Cassidy on the list. Jesse and James' places had been taken for granted. Old resentments had faded in the heat of a common grief and common enemy, but not enough. The alliance to mutually revenge themselves on Domino had disintegrated into the women fighting about their childhood, old slights and quarrels and hurts, and Jesse had started to cry with the uncontrolled bawling of a little girl... And suddenly it was there, staring Cassidy in the face, what should have been obvious all along. She had caught one brief glimpse of the boy's shocked faces as she had wrapped Jesse in her arms and soothed her hot wet face with kisses, and then, oh then, there had been nothing in the world but the two of them. More words, heard with understanding this time, and more kisses, and finally this hotel bed. And now... She was lying in the darkness, and feeling more dizzy than anything. Hatred melting back into the love it had sprung from was... disorientating.
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