[ CW ] `` Save yourself . '' - use this line of dialogue in a story without using action movie tropes

Cassandra's fingers traced over the leather binding, the ages of her life creeping back to her from the pages of the diary. She smiled; Hank had found it, stuffed behind dusty photo albums while they packed the rest of the old apartment. He had been re-stationed over in California, and though he was hesitant, he'd eventually asked Cassandra to move with him. She'd smiled then; and she still smiled, as they left that cramped apartment just east of Brooklyn, and took his beat up Subaru across I-80 toward the sunsets and beaches of Southern California, and she laughed when he'd found her diary, and read it the whole trip west. 
 
 And now Hank was overseas, deployed out of his Reserves. Again. And Cassandra would sit at the small table in the kitchen, trying not to think about when he would call, or if she should check her email again, or that jumping every time a car seems to stop in the street outside did n't mean it was two officers in uniform come to deliver her The News, and that Hank was fine. And that she would be fine. That this would all end okay. 
 
 `` Come home,'' she would whisper every morning, to the empty pillow beside her in their too-small bed. It seemed cozy with him there; alone, it was a sea of blankets, and she could n't help feeling she would drown if she stayed too long within them. So she did her best. She worked, went to class, tried to have friends. And she was always excited when Hank would call, or Facetime with her. The time changes might have proven difficult, if it were n't for her determination. And the weeks passed. 
 
 A black car was parked outside that morning. Cassandra had spoken with Hank the night before; something about a big day today, she remembered. He could n't say; he never could tell her much, except not to worry, and he'd be fine, and she would see him soon enough, and that he loved her. And when she saw that black car, with its government plates, it was n't real to her. It could n't be real, not with Hank's laughing voice still speaking to her on her way out to get to her Spanish midterm. 
 
 Two men in uniform climbed from the front seats of the car, and Cassandra stood on her porch, with the wind in her hair and the sun clearing the hills along the eastern skyline. They did not approach the house; one opened the back door, on the far side of the vehicle, while the other moved to the trunk and, popping the hatch, began to pull something from it. 
 
 A brief memory came to Cassandra, in the rushing inside her ears, in her mind, in her heart. The man had moved from the trunk, a wheelchair pushed in front of him toward the far side of the car where the other officer waited. The words in Hank's handwriting floated to her, right after the last entry before her seventeenth birthday in that old, leather-bound diary. About her doubts, how she felt that she had been alone, desperate, a lost cause. How she'd been weak. Worthless. 
 
 And meeting Hank, had changed all of that. Four months into her twentieth year. She'd grown since her diary, yes. And when he'd found her diary, three years after that, she'd thought little of it, until she'd reached the last page, and her last entry, last Thursday after Hank had n't been able to call. She read to the end, her words still burning before her as Hank was wheeled up to the front steps before her, his eyes blank, his skin pale, his frame seeming to deflate even as he would have stood a head over her before. And her words came back, how `` I am worthless, and it does n't matter anymore, and I just want this to be done. I ca n't fight my depression anymore, and I ca n't keep going. Life ca n't be worth this. I ca n't be worth this life. I wish someone would save me, because I do n't think I can do it myself anymore.'' 
 
 And Hank had written below it, before returning the diary to her. His straight, neat print below the curly script of her teenage years, so stark in contrast, and seeming so full of strength and stability...'' You are worth everything. and that is what matters most, to me and to everyone you know. Depression is a terrible spectre, but it is not all you are, and you can beat it. You are strong, so strong, Cassie. And I will always be here, to show you every day how worth everything you are to me. And you are strong. So please, save yourself. Save yourself, and prove to yourself what I already know you can do.'' 
 
 And Hank finally looked up at her, and Cassandra looked down at him, and she tried to smile. She had saved herself, because of him. The sun beat down from above, and she ran down to Hank, his angel descending to save him, as best she could.
