Author's Note: This was written as a prologue to a post of mine. It's one of the several histories that I've gone through with Cass and is currently the one that's canon for her.

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She sat straight up in bed, screaming her lungs out, tears streaming down her face. Cass quickly brought her hands up over her mouth to muffle the sound. She drew her knees up to her chest under the covers an held into them tightly, bits and pieces of the dream starting to come back to her and it was as if she were viewing events from a third person standpoint. There was a large family and they were eating spaghetti, passing around the garlic bread and sharing conversation. She swore that she could smell the garlic bread, the dream had been that vivid, as was the recollection of it. She watched in her mind as the family ate dinner. One of the boys threw a dinner roll at one of the younger girls, only to have it tossed right back at him, hitting him square in the center if the chest. Giggles ensued and that was the last thing that happened before it all went to hell. A man came through the front door and nearly all of the adults reached for their weapons. He had katanas strapped to his back and guns in his hands. It was complete and total chaos. There were shots being fired, children crawling under the table and people scrambling, trying to take cover. One of the older boys grabbed the redhead girl sitting next to him and started running, his body hunched protectively over her. He got about twenty feet before the man took one exceptionally well-aimed shot at him, hitting him in the neck. He went down hard, his body still covering, still protecting the little girl's even in death. She didn't make a sound, covered in his blood as the man made his way through the house, making sure that everybody was dead, killing anybody he had missed. He walked over to the little girl and bending down, he shoved her dead brother's body off of her. She was so small, so little. She was nine years old and covered in the blood of the heroic teenage boy who had just died trying to preserve her life. She couldn't speak, couldn't move, all she could do was lay there on the floor, shaking. The mysterious and deadly man who had just massacred her family came to a stop in front of her and crouched down. He picked her up, holding her tightly and started rubbing her back soothingly, murmuring to her in French in a comforting tone. Perching her on his hip, he slid one hand into his pocket, pulling out a syringe and quickly injected her with it.

Cass couldn't even comprehend what she had just remembered. It was, without a doubt, more than a dream. It was too real not to be and memories were slowly but surely starting to leak back into her mind. She sat in her bed, just staring at the wall as rage flowed through her veins. She wanted blood, she wanted his and she wanted it right now. And as much as the rage was clouding her thought processes, she was smart enough to know that confronting him openly about this without evidence, without anything was not the way to go. He would mop the floor with her unless she played this smartly. Standing up, she walked to her door and, opening it quietly, walked down the hallway of the enormous house. Her feet were bare and made no noise on the hardwood floor as she made her way towards his private study, knowing that the information she wanted would be found there. Her mind was racing, but her demeanor was calm as she opened the heavy wooden door. The carpet was deep burgundy and her feet sunk into it as she walked towards the huge, ornate mahogany desk with the laptop on top. Gambler, the man who had essentially raised her, who taught her everything she knew, he was a proud man. A cocky one, and that ego would be his downfall. He was comfortable enough in his own home that he left his laptop out in the open. He knew that nobody was getting past his defensive measures and that in the rare case that they did, they would meet their death at either his hands or her's. Jean never thought that the threat would come from the inside. She had been his good little soldier, doing exactly as she was told and never really thinking for herself. She wasn't surprised that he hadn't thought to protect his secrets from her. Again, his ego would be his own downfall. Sitting down in the antique chair, sinking into the cushioned seat of it, Cass powered up the laptop. She had no idea what she was looking for, but she knew that he kept encrypted records of everything, especially his kills. It was something that she would never understand. She remembered the face of every person she had killed, but she would never be foolish enough to keep traceable records of it. If what she thought happened, had actually happened, there should be some record of it.

After five minutes of hitting keys in a mad frenzy and hacking her way into something that was secured a lot better than was expected, Cass hit the jackpot. It was a list of names, dates, locations and prices. Hitting a few keys, she narrowed it down to all the names from eight years ago. She didn't remember anything from before the age of nine, so she figured if her theory was right, it would have happened eight years ago. She scanned the names, hoping that something would jump out at her, would jar her memory. There were surprisingly few names for that year as opposed to others and the vast majority of them were all from the same family, on the same day. She clicked on the file attached to one of the names, the one that jumped out at her most. Aidan O'Rourke. A picture popped up of a smiling teenage boy. Chiseled jaw, jet black hair and bright blue eyes with a mischievous twinkle in them. Her heart broke and everything came rushing back to her. Everything. She couldn't breathe, she couldn't think, she just sat there hyperventilating, remembering her childhood. "Oh my God. What did he do? What did he do? What did he do?" She muttered the words to herself over and over as she looked at the picture of the boy she now knew to be her brother. Grabbing the laptop up from the desk, she ran down the halls of the manor, one word going through her mind. Why? She didn't understand, she didn't understand at all. The man that she called Father, Pere, he had betrayed her, he had lied to her. It was the middle of night. He wouldn't be in bed, he would be in the training room, practicing, perfecting. She threw open the door, the laptop under her arm, tears streaking down her face. He had his kukris out and was slicing at training dummies like they were going out of style. The moves that he was using seemed eerily familiar and she was about to say something when he looked up at her. Judging by the look on his face, he knew that something was wrong. He looked mildly concerned as he grabbed a towel and wiped the sweat off of his brow, placing his kukris on the table on the edge of the room. Cass walked over to the table, her steps slow and sure as her body shook with unabated rage. Setting the laptop down she opened it, pulling up the files that she had previously hacked into. Stepping away, she let him take a look at the screen, at the picture of Aidan. He stepped away and before he could say anything, before he could do anything, she walked up to him and pounded her fists on his chest as hard as she could. He didn't try to stop her, he knew that now wasn't the time. She hit him over and over again, her small hands curled into fists. "I hate you. Why would you do this? Why?!?!?!?!?! I don't understand!!!! I gave you everything I was, I did everything you ever wanted me to and more. And this entire time...." She swallowed as bile started to rise in her throat and she backed away from him, a venomous hatred in her eyes. "You killed, no, you massacred my family. Everybody who ever loved me. You killed them all!" It was hard for her to get the words out, for her to even comprehend what she was saying. "Why would you do that? And why did you spare me? Why couldn't you have just killed me, too?!?!" I HATE YOU, I HATE YOU!"