Casey brought her brush through her long, dark brown hair, counting to herself softly as she did so. It had been three months since the dybbuk had taken Mark's body. She had begun to lose faith he was still in there, somewhere, and that she just had to figure out how to get the dybbuk out. She didn't say any of this to the dybbuk, who was still awkwardly adjusting to Mark's body - to a life. It was not going well. She set her brush down and rose from her vanity, walking to the door of her room. She stared at it for a few moments before deciding to push it open and try to locate the dybbuk. She exited, padding down the carpeted hall and to the top of the stairs. She could hear the television on, but couldn't see him, and so she took a few steps down the stairs. She gasped when she did see him, but only because he jerked his head up and narrowed his icy eyes at her as he stared. She turned and darted away in a huff.

The dybbuk rolled his eyes to himself as he heard her go back up the stairs and shut her bedroom door. He had enjoyed frightening her many times, and occasionally he still got the gratification from it, but it had begun to grate on him as of late. He knew that she was trying to believe her once-boyfriend and father of her children was still lurking inside the body he'd stolen somewhere, but it was very untrue. The body had been hollowed out like a husk to make room for the dybbuk. Mark had been weakened to the point where the dybbuk could move his soul with no resistance at all, and that was exactly what he had done. This body was his, and when the girl's children were born, he would shed it and move into one of those. She was stupid to have ever thought that she could alter the outcome of any of this, and he wished that she would stop trying, unaware that the idea slipped further from her mind as the days passed by.

It was only the two of them in the house by this point, which made random moments of irritation unavoidable. It only took a week after she had brought him home for her father to pass away, but it could not be helped. The dybbuk could not risk the man trying to feed Casey any ideas about her pregnancy, which was aside from the fact that many people just tended to die around a dybbuk. He seemed to bring death to the equation whether he willed it or not sometimes, though he had to admit he had willed that one quite a bit. The man's death was masked as natural – he was older, had high cholesterol and a stressful job. Finding out Casey was pregnant just tipped him over the edge, though it had put her in a great state of distress which had only caused complications medically. The dybbuk did not worry for her well being as a general rule, but she would not be able to provide him his next desired body if she had too many of those so-called complications, and he was forced to consider this out of necessity.

The problem was that attempting to ensure her survival was somehow causing him to have to emote, even if they were things he had to fake; in turn, Casey sometimes treated him as though he were human. She began speaking to him, asking him things, asking him to do things such as go to Mark's classes, to go outside in general, to shop? He had been around since Lucifer gave his place in heaven, and never in all his thousands of years had he been hindered with such mundane things. If he didn't want that body so badly, he would kill her himself, but when she begged him to stop choking the life out of her, he realized that he could use the situation to his advantage. He had not realized that it would be such a trivial task he'd undertaken, the babysitting of the fragile spirit she held. She acted as though she were made of glass some days, as though if he touched her she would shatter. His reverence in her terror had begun to pass, leaving in its place irritation at her constant flinching. Very recently, however, she had begun to withdraw again - reverting to peeking at him from the stairs, so to speak.

The door of the bedroom opened again, and he watched the girl's form shadow the stairs as she descended, breaking his irritated train of thought. She looked into his eyes for a split second, and then began her nervous slink to the kitchen. Since his presence in the house, her sleeping schedule had been abnormal. She had stopped sleeping at night almost completely. Oh, she would go into her room and shut her door, but he had gone in once out of curiosity and found her to simply be staring at the ceiling or the wall. He said nothing, and she never brought it up, but he felt that she would damage the child he wanted to take if she kept her actions up, so eventually he would have to step in. He wagered, of course, that it was related to stress, but since he had made no move to hurt her, and had actually tried to help her in some instances, he couldn't understand why she wouldn't drop the idea.

He heard something in the kitchen and tilted his head. It was the sound of tiny capsules rattling around in a bottle as feminine hands struggled with a child-proof seal. He often wondered if Casey would attempt suicide, though she didn't strike him as the sort, but things like that made him as close to nervous as he was physically able to become.

"What are you doing?" he demanded, suddenly just appearing in the doorway. His voice was hollow and strange, as though he were using vocal chords he had not quite adapted to.

Casey's head snapped up, and the bottle fell from her hands. Little round blue pills spilled forth onto the floor, scattering like a sea of dots around her feet. She looked so utterly exhausted that she almost didn't look herself for a moment. Her eyes had dark shadows beneath them, her skin was more pale than normal, and she even looked emaciated somehow beneath her white cotton dressing gown, despite the growing baby bump.

She didn't seem to know how to respond, because the dybbuk so rarely spoke to her (he would just stare, mostly), so her mouth hung open for a spell while nothing but an unsure noise came forth. Finally, she looked away and managed a real phrase.

"I can't sleep," she admitted.

"You cannot have these tablets," he stated firmly. He picked the dropped bottle up with one hand, and one of the pills in the other. He rolled it between his fingertips, examining it. Then he directed his attention to the label on the bottle.

"I can't sleep," she repeated, her voice taking a desperate, nasal tone to it. She shifted uncomfortably amongst the tiny blue dots that surrounded her.

"It says right here that these can harm your children. It says right here," he said. He pointed at the label, and then looked at her like she was insane for not reading. "Or are you trying to harm them?" he asked, the question very pointed, very obviously insinuating that she was by proxy attempting to harm him.

"What? No!" the girl exclaimed to him. She reached out to take the bottle from him, but he stopped her, catching her hand in his. It unnerved her, but she pressed on. "I would never try to hurt my babies," she insisted softly. She tried to step back, but he still held her hand, his grip cold. It felt tensely firm, as though if she tugged to urge a release, he would break her fingers with but a light squeeze.

"Then why?" he demanded. He found her stupid worries so trivial, and wondered what idiotic reason she could provide him this time.

Casey sighed, closing her eyes and finding that they burned horribly. Could she even dignify this with an answer? She didn't know, and so she just stood there, her head tipped back as she tried to quell her anger at his demands.

"If I wanted to kill you, you would be dead. You would be dead several times over," he told her matter-of-factly, because he could not understand why she even made such an accusation, something she could do without speaking a word, and did often with her eyes. Wasn't it obvious he was not going to kill her for the time being? "Why do you not understand this?"

"Is that supposed to make me feel safe?" she snapped, her eyes popping open. She tilted her head like a bird as she looked at him, her mouth open in shock. "Is that supposed to make me relaxed and calm?"

"It should," he retorted. "I do not lie," he added. He was almost indignant, and his tone caused Casey to turn her head in anger.

"Look at me," he said. When she would not, he grabbed her face by the chin and turned her head to face him. He locked eyes with her, his icy stare effective in causing her fear. For once, his intent was not to terrify her, but the dybbuk suddenly realized he wasn't precisely sure how to vocalize or convey compassion. He began by releasing her hand, which she hugged to herself. His grip was so hard on her face that her eyes had welled up with tears, and he removed his hand slowly, bringing his other up to lightly trail his fingers across where the red marks he'd just left were on her jaw.

"Cassandra Tamar Beldon, by my word, I will not let anyone or anything harm you under my watch," he said. He spoke softly, but firmly. It had been a long time since he'd sworn such an oath, and it made something inside him stir. He was unsure of what, and thus pushed the emotional flicker aside to be ignored.

"But why do you make me have the dreams?" she asked, voice on the verge of breaking as her watery eyes searched his blank face for answers. "It's over. You won. Why are you torturing me?"

The dybbuk was genuinely surprised. He'd been doing his best not to torture the girl. Some days were better than others, and they actually held conversations - mostly about the doctor appointments or things that were needed for the house. He had tried very long not to concern himself with stupid human things, but found that he could not avoid them if he were going to remain for the term of her pregnancy. He had driven to the store a few times to get groceries she requested, because he had to accept the fact that she couldn't vomit and drive at the same time, nor could she drive herself to the hospital when her children were due. He'd attended some of Mark's classes before telling Casey that he wouldn't go unless he were allowed to kill his classmates for their stupidity, and she'd suddenly become interested in keeping him in the house after that.

But dreams? If anything, he had tried to turn his dark radiating energy down to a tone that she could tolerate. It was true, he could ooze evil and drive her insane over the course of a few weeks - he had once, obviously - but if she were crazy, she could become suicidal, and that would mean he wouldn't get a new body to leap into for a new cycle. It would be utterly counter-productive. The dreams she cried about bothered him, not only because she had not said anything when he specifically asked her every few days if she was well, but because he wasn't causing them, and if they were truly disturbing her, they were the coming from somewhere.

"What dreams?" he asked. He took her hands and lead her to the kitchen table, where he pulled out a chair for her and bade her to sit down.

Casey looked away, rubbing her eyes. She muttered something that he couldn't hear.

"Tell me," he said. He was trying to come across as compassionate, but he was beginning to get aggravated. He scanned the kitchen for something for him to do, something to make him seem more human. His eyes fell on the tiny blue pills that still remained resting on the tiles, and he knelt down and began sweeping them up with his hands. He funneled them back into the bottle, and then threw it into the trash, right in front of her. When he was done, he got her a glass of water, and then sat down across from her, attempting to rest his hand on her own in an effort to appear concerned.

It must have worked, because she took the water and drank some of it. She laid her head down on one of her arms, which was flat on the table and crooked at the elbow. Her other arm was stretched out, and her fingers twitched when the dybbuk put his hand atop hers. "They're - " she stopped short. "They're terrifying," she said quietly. She didn't know how to explain them - sometimes they were abstract, and sometimes they weren't. She looked back up at him, but she just gave a shrug. "I don't want to think about them."

He watched her silently, and then after a few moments, simply nodded. He pushed his chair back and stood, walking to where she sat and placing a hand on the back of her chair. "Very well. You will tell me if you have more, correct?" he asked. She acknowledged with a noise and a nod of her head, and then a deep sigh swelled her chest and she sagged forward on the table as though she were trying to settle in to go to sleep. "Come, I will walk you to your room."

She didn't argue with the command, and rose on her own, glancing at his hand, which had been held palm-out to her as she stood. She was showing in her pregnancy, but she didn't have trouble standing yet. She found the gesture odd and out of character, but it was not dissimilar from the last ten minutes that she had experienced. She couldn't determine how she felt about any of this right now, because she couldn't think clearly. She began the trek to her room, her ascent on the stairs wobbly until the dybbuk took her by the arm to steady her. She opened her mouth to protest, but found she was too tired to bother. It had been too long a day, and equally too long a night.

She laid down in her bed, and he leaned in the doorway and watched her, arms folded. She had such strange mannerisms. She pulled her blankets up a certain way, then moved her pillows around to select the most comfortable. He didn't understand how it could be a different pillow every night, but he knew that it was, as he had drifted in during her sleeping hours before to check on her. He noticed she had not turned on the small light by her closet; the night-light, she'd called it. He thought it was the stupidest thing he'd ever heard of, honestly. What person needs a light to sleep in the dark? Did that not defeat the entire purpose of turning the lights out? She expressed her fears about her dreams, though, and he ventured that he had been the thing which caused the terror for so long that the concept of being scared was lost to him. He turned on the small star-shaped light without her asking him to, and then sat down at the edge of her bed, pulling the soft blanket up over her shoulders once she'd stopped moving around.

"I don't understand you," she said, her eyes half-lidded. It was such a simple statement, but confessed so much. Why did he act as though he cared now, when all he had done for the last sixty or so years was plan for the exact moment to overtake her? He had taken the body of her great uncle, then attempted the body of her brother, then her own - and this was before he'd taken the bodies of the child she watched, her best friend, her boyfriend, and several others over. And now he was in Mark's body. She wanted to believe that Mark was still in there, but it was becoming harder. The dybbuk did not even bother to mimic Mark to give her comfort; he was his own individual, with his own mannerisms and quirks.

"It is not for you to understand," he said lightly. He looked around her room, his white-blue eyes scanning for any sign of... anything. He couldn't sense anything, and he couldn't see anything, so he could only determine the dreams were compounded from Casey's stress.

"See the Rabbi tomorrow," he told her, smoothing down her hair gently.

"You told me not to anymore," she protested, her voice quiet in the darkened room. She didn't react when he touched her, but only because she was too exhausted to flinch.

"I did," he acknowledged. "But perhaps he can offer comfort I cannot." He paused, and then started again. "Cassandra, I am an agent of the dark. This is true, and will not change. However, when I said that I would not let anything happen to you, I meant it. I realize that the situation is... as it is. You haven't seen the Rabbi in three months. I think it would be good for you." It wasn't necessarily against his better judgment to suggest this, either. He was aware that the Rabbi had very strong feelings about the situation Casey was in - Sendak knew that Mark was gone, and would try without mercy to make her accept and understand it. He would inadvertently push her into trusting the dybbuk, if only because he would attempt to appeal to her sense of rationality, which was being destroyed rapidly by her fear. When Casey would try to defend her choices, she would feel badgered and misunderstood, and she'd come home to the dybbuk, who would try to remain as cautiously understanding as possible.

"Can you call him and make the appointment tomorrow morning?" she asked, glancing up. He wasn't sure if she was testing him, but he wagered she was not thinking clearly.

"I can," he said. It would please him to call Sendak himself, to rub this victory in his face. Now that Casey had accepted him, the Rabbi couldn't just try to barge in and push him out (not that it would work). It was something worth savoring, despite the pettiness of it.

She said something that he did not hear, and then her eyes were closed. He sat in silence with her until he was sure she was asleep, and then a while longer. He was intensely curious about the dreams that had made her so upset, but he couldn't just intimidate her into telling him. He left her room as silent as death, and walked down the hallway and back towards the couch. He found her phone and dialed the Rabbi's office number as he sat, leaving a brief message that instructed the Rabbi to pencil her in for noon and not to dare refuse her appointment. He tossed the phone aside and leaned back, staring at the infomercial that had come on, but paying attention to none of it. His thoughts were feeling scattered and he was becoming irritated by the entire idea of his situation. He closed his own eyes and tried to rest for a while, knowing that it would be easier to clear his head after a few hours of not thinking anything at all.