disclaimer: i don't own the copyrighted material within. lyrics by fall out boy

she's in a long black coat tonight / waiting for me in the downpour outside / she's singing "baby come home" in a melody of tears / while the rhythm of the rain keeps time

The first time she's five and her cat Pancake (her cat, always little Cass's kitten because Pancake might be older than Cass but the second she came home from the hospital, Pancake was putty in Cass's outstretched arms) gets flattened into a pancake by a speeding truck.

There are no pet cemeteries in San Fransokyo, but she insists on burying Pancake anyway because Pancake lovesloved being outside, lovesloved the falling leaves and sakura blossoms in the park, why can't Pancake sleep there forever.

oh she knows that pancake didn't go to sleep like mae said, she was there when pancake pancaked remember

So her daddy buys a shovel and her mommy buys a box and the policeman already wrapped up Pancake like a jelly-stained Christmas present, all that's left is for Mae to hold Cass's hand as they put Pancake in the ground. Cass bawls because now who will scratch outside the door on cold nights and who will burrow against their knees when pets are required and why mommy why daddy why did Pancake have to die?

pancake pancaked but it wasn't like in the cartoons where they just lie down flat, pancake splattered jelly and golden brown on the front of cass's shins and her socks are still stained

Cass cries and her mommy carries her home and she has an apple juice while mommy goes back to work and daddy goes out, and she sings "Pancake, pancake, Pancake come home" while Mae does homework and what else is there to do?

years later pancake is still there under the sakura tree in cass's favorite park, right next to peaches (feline aids) and souffle (nasty halloween prank)

The next time she is eight and her best friend Kylie (very very best friend, they pinkie swore on the swing sets that they'd be best friends forever and Cass sleeps over at Kylie's more often than she sleeps to the sounds of her parents fighting) can't shake off her leukemia in time to see age nine.

It's funny, Kylie's been sick for over a year now but this is so sudden, just yesterday Cass was setting braids into Kylie's favorite wig and making sure that her protective mask and smock didn't make those annoying crumpling sounds that set Kylie's teeth on edge. Kylie's small in her casket, and while everyone keeps saying how pretty she is how much at peace she is, Cass only smells the formaldehyde seeping from beneath Kylie's nails.

kylie always hated nail polish, said she hateshated the harsh smell, and it does smell the same doesn't it?

Cass tries to be strong like Kylie's mom but she falls apart, and her mom has to take her outside and calm her down but she can't stop crying can't stop screaming because Kylie promised that they'd be best friends forever, she promised and now Cass has to cut her finger off and make her swallow a thousand needles but then the embalming fluids will get everywhere and Kylie's not pretty she's dead!

her skin is gray gray like the sky like kylie's mom's pearls gray like pancake's eyes when the truck sped along and gray like the hollow where cass's best friend used to be

Cass's mom can't deal with it and sends Mae out instead, and Cass cries into her sister's protective arms until the tears run out, and in the quiet of the coming night sings "Kylie, Kylie, Kylie come home" to Mae's breathing and what else is there to do?

years later another one of cass's childhood friends dies of lung cancer, and the formaldehyde doesn't seep from his nails but instead wafts from forever openclosed lips

The next time she's eleven and her maternal grandparents (they always let her and Mae sleepover when her parents got too violent and threw the vases too close to their heads, they might be Rudolphs by name but they were Franceschis by blood and they spoiled Cass so much that she didn't feel unwanted around them) finally wear down to nothingness within a week of each other.

Cass doesn't know her Franceschi relatives, as she's been raised isolated in her little nuclear meltdown family, so she tries to cling to Mae. But Mae's a chief mourner, working in place of her mother who locked herself in the bathroom and no matter how many slurred insults by their father won't come out. So she stands alone in the crowd, aware of the morbid curiosity of the not!Franceschi girl with the too light hair and the horrible parents.

And bites on her lips and digs raw halfmoons into her palms and presses her shins so hard to the chair legs that her nylons snag and tear

and she sobs as her grandparents' wedding video plays, a vision of the people she wantswantedwants to live with so badly and can only say goodbye to.

Mae doesn't cry, her face is like their grandmother's porcelain plates in her serene blankness, and Cass chokes down her tears. Her mother is hiding and her father is drunk and if Mae strong beautiful dependable Mae won't cry then Cass will follow her example.

her grandparents never cried in front of her either, not even when mae came over with finger paint bruises on her wrists; cass cried over those for a week such a baby

She fails during the service but it's a starting point, as by the time her mother comes out to throw the entire bathroom cabinet at her father she's got herself in enough control to watch blankly, and under the chaos din sings "Grandma, Grandpa, Grams come home" to Mae's unease and what else is there to do?

years later the franceschis are dead to her, no graves to mark their passing but just as final

The next time she's thirteen and one of her high school classmates (his name was Ichiro Igawa, if no one else will remember his name after this then she will because she saw him tend to the school garden when the gardener was off sick and he was such a gentle quiet person) stands up in the middle of the pep rally and blows his brains out.

His parents and the school play hush-hush about the whys and the hows, and clean up the aftermath so nicely that Cass wonders how many times they've done this before. The funeral's halfway over when Cass finally tracks it down, with Mae idling in the car and Cass with a fistful of daffodils

daffodils arewere his favorite, she remembers this and she remembers that his name was ichiro igawa not the weird silent trans kid who splattered himself on all the cheerleaders

She lingers in the back, hair over her face onryo-style and she watches them gloss over Ichiro's sadness Ichiro's joys Ichiro's imperfections, only the urn where an entire human being once was and will forever remain. Such a small urn, just enough for the daffodils, and Cass feels her tears sear down her cheeks once twice three times as many screams in the pep rally because the gardener quit and who will tend to the flowers now?

who will grieve for the boy that will never get to be, the earth still staining his shoes when they soaked through with blood

Cass wipes those useless tears away because she could've done something, could've reached out but stayed silent and she better remain silent now. So she stops crying, waits for everyone to leave, and leaves the daffodils by his urn, and sings "Ichiro, Ichiro, Ichiro come home" to Mae's silent support and what else is there to do?

years later cass holds a fundraiser in ichiro igawa's name at the lucky cat cafe for trans kids because now she remembers a lot more names than one woman ever should and none of them will ever be forgotten

The next time she is fifteen and her mother (mommy to mom to mother by age eleven, maybe once Cass saw her has the entire sky but now it's just mother, just another adult that's filled Cass with so much disappointment) is pushed? down the stairs by their father and breaks her spine.

Cass is high, Mae too and they giggle throughout the entire service because it's too hilarious, the flowers are these big ugly petunias that their mother would've hated and these stuffy black dresses that their mother would've exchanged for business pant suits and the priest's up there blowing smoke about how virtuous their mother was when Cass knows better, their mother was a piece of work.

is it abuse when she gave as good as she got? cass saw them both bleed and stopped wondering why they stayed together

Their father glares at them the whole time but whatever he must be jealous, Mae's little heart squeeze Takeo scored them this weed pro bono and Cass is riding the toke train past grief gorge. She can hold the heavy sadness in her hands like a psalm book and tear out the pages, let them disappear into her mother's grave. Mae sings along with the procession and Cass leans on her shoulder, they sing together and tear out pages and laugh until Cass's eyes tear up and droplets catch in waterproof mascara

better than blood, it took weeks for cass's black eye to fade away and she hatedhates her mother since

Their father storms out to go sob i whatever dive bar, and Mae drives Cass and herself to Takeo's to chill until things settle like the churned earth at the funeral grounds. Mae and Takeo have annoying loud sex until Cass throws shoes at the wall to shut them up, and she eats a whole gallon of Neapolitan and laughs at crappy TV, and sings "Mother, Mother, Mother don't come home" to Mae's moans and what else is there to do?

years later cass avoids that section of the funeral grounds, always casting unsettled grief over the cast iron fence to flutter to the earth like tattered prayer books

The next time she is seventeen and her father (drunk bastard violent bastard unloving bastard beloved bastard how dare he do Cass and Mae so dirty the bastard how dare he up and destroy their family so completely the bastard) passes out by the fireplace, knocking over his liquor into the flames and setting the house on fire.

Everything is lost, everything that proved the nuclear meltdown Rudolphs existed, that Mae escaped to the Hamadas in a marriage fundamentally different than their parents', that Cass only has a long black coat to her name instead of Kylie's braided wig.

she'd say dammit daddy for the alliteration but she hasn't had a daddy since she was five and he washed pancake jelly from her socks

And the Hamadas adopt her the night before the funeral. She's Cass Hamada now, with parents that wanted her enough to take a too loud too scatterbrained too broken teenager as a daughter, and it's enough to make Cass want to cry. But she hasn't cried at funerals in a long time and she doesn't want to start now, she she simply leans against Mae and Takeo and observes.

They're really the only ones here so the funeral is short, and they don't bury Cass's father by Cass's mother oh no, they can't do that to the graveyard keepers who will have to deal with fighting ghosts for the rest of forever.

pancake is at peace, kylie is at peace, ichiro is at peace, but the rudolphs will never know peace not noworever that's why cass is a hamada now

So Cass keeps her chin up, as if it's a challenge, and throws down the bouquet as needed and goes out to dinner with her new family, and sings "Father, Father, Father don't come home" to Mae's bathroom mirror reflection and what else is there to do?

years later cass forgets where her father is buried and doesn't bother to go looking, not when she has another funeral to go to on the other side of the grounds

The next time are blips on Cass's radar. Distant cousins, coworkers, homeless people in need of witnesses, Cass's wardrobe is filled with black and she doesn't have her goth aesthetic to blame anymore. What's more important is the living world, with her little nephew Tadashi and her brand new kitten Mochi and Gerard, Gerard Li is the love of her life and her fiance and the father of her little walnut bloating up her stomach.

But then his car is T-boned on a bright sunny Saturday morning, and when Cass gets the phone call her little walnut drops out of her stomach to plop in pieces on the bathroom tiles.

This next time is combined, and Cass is a vision in black. Mae cries, Takeo cries, their parents cry, everyone cries except for Cass because she is calm, she is contained, she is serene blankness, even behind her veil her cheeks are dry.

her cheeks are dry and her eyes are empty, like her womb and her shared apartment and her heart

And all throughout the service, Cass remains lofted in almost widowed grace. She plans how to sell the apartment and undo her unnecessary plans for a unnecessary wedding and what kind of dietary plan Mochi needs to grow up strong.

When the funeral ends and the incense blows out, Cass lingers in the heat heavy smoke and remembers how Gerard lovesloved incense, sayssaid that it clearscleared his mind. She rubs a hand over her flattened stomach and wishes for the incense to clear her mind of everything Gerard, and sings "Gerard, Gerard, Gerard come home" to Mae's shaking hands and what else is there to do?

years later hiro asks cass if she'll eve get married and have babies of her own and she smiles and says someday, maybe someday as she lights incense around the house

The next times roll out quickly. Cass's adopted parents (hibakusha don't always live to tell a thousand tales), Kylie's younger brother (fix your carbon monoxide alarms), the cheerleaders from the pep rally (drugs, drugs, car accident, drugs, obesity-influenced heart attack and more drugs, so many drugs), and Cass never ever cries.

Then the next time comes because Mae and Takeo (she loveslovedloveslovedloves them endless) die in a car crash, and Cass wants to cry.

But she can't because she has Tadashi and Hiro to care for now.

She hasn't cried in a long time, why would now be different, sad little orphan Aunt Cass.

So her boys cry and the people stare and she wears all black and they cuddle with Mochi and her hearts never ever heals, and she sings "Mae, Takeo, please come home" to Mae's ghost and what else is there to do?

years later cass finds mae's diary in the attic and tries to cry out her agony, she tries to hard to push past the block in her heart but only throws up for her troubles

The next time she's not too old to be Tadashi's mother but too old to be so heavy in her stomach, and Tadashi (her boy, her joy, Takeo's son with Mae's smarts and Tadashi is such a good boy such a good son) burns to death in the so-called safe place of SFIT's auditorium.

She looks down from the endless rain to see Hiro staring at Tadashi's headstone, and his cheeks are dry

he's learning fast

and Cass squeezes his shoulder and despairs, because it hurts so much to be so blank and her baby is only fourteen Cass still cried at her mother's funeral when stoned and giggly out of her mind, Hiro isn't crying and the days weeks months years ahead will be a burden unending on his soul.

So she takes him home and watches him close away from the world from her and for the first time in years feels her eyes water fill up and overflow, and she sings "Tadashi, Tadashi, Tadashi come home" to Mae's absence and what else is there to do?

years later she's in her overused long black coat on a violent night, kneeling over hiro's explosion torn body in the fiery downpour outside

and she sings "Hiro, Hiro, baby come home" to Mae's dying son, and what else is there to say—

and that's why there are no other hamada/rudolph/franceschi relatives in bh6 lol

note: Michael Franceschi was Cass's animator in the movie, so I gave her mother's maiden name his surname