Fic: In From The Cold (Batgirl)
Jul. 21st, 2008 07:22 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
seriousficTitle: In From The Cold
Fandom: Batman
Rating: PG
Word Count: 5,459
Timeline: The new Batgirl mini. I saw scans of it and my friends’ reactions and basically said to myself “Yeahhhh… this needs more hugging.”
Characters/Pairings: Cass, Tim, Steph, Bruce, Dick, Barbara, implied Tim/Cass/Steph and Dick/Babs.
Summary: For Cass, the road to redemption is paved by people she knows.
“Hey, Tim.”
“Sup, Dick?”
Tim slipped his mask on. The order had come in for costumes and callsigns, but he thought that was just Bat-Coach in action. He had no idea the entire clan was showing up. Dick was just the first out the gate, and he already has his domino mask spirit gummed as he pulled on the top of his wetsuit-like costume, one sleeve still dangling from the waist. The chill of the Batcave turned his nipples into top hats, which Tim tried not to laugh at. No one looked imposing between civilian identities and superheroism.
“Toss me my sticks?” Dick asked, pulling his last hand through its cuff.
Tim, pulling on a boot, grabbed Dick’s escrima sticks and tossed them to Dick. Dick held them in his teeth as he pulled on his gloves. “So, you got any idea what this is all about?” Dick asked, muffled through the sticks.
“Nada. Bruce’s been in lockdown since… hey, your girlfriend’s here.”
“She is not my girlfriend,” Dick said as he hurried down to the garage.
Dinah had parked the Porsche and was helping Barbara into her chair. She wore slacks and a blouse, which while comfy-looking, didn’t project as much menace as the darker armor the men wore.
“Batman said costumes,” Robin said, because Nightwing was too lovestruck to remember the rules.
“This is my costume,” Dinah said. “I’m changing costumes.”
“So, next time you go on patrol, it’ll be in open-toed sandals?”
“I might change my costume again. I might not.”
“Pity, I loved the fishnets,” Dick said. He was relaxing against a stalagmite near to Barbara. “Hey Babs.”
“Dick Grayson… they’ll just let anyone into this cave, won’t they? Any reason this had to be face-to-face? I was gaming.” She took a privately cathartic pleasure in going on Second Life as [Batgrrl] and player-killing all the “Jokerz” who dressed up as their idol.
“Don’t look at me, I’m as in the dark as you are.” Dick looked over the laptop Barbara had on the side of her wheelchair. “For once.”
Barbara took off her glasses. “Don’t sell yourself short in the dark, man wonder.”
“You were no slouch yourself. Still aren’t, I’d bet.”
Dinah leaned over to Tim. “Are they talking about crimefighting or…”
“Do you really want to know?”
Steph was next up, riding bitch on Helena’s motorcycle. “Tim, you were supposed to pick me up! It’s not like I know the way to the Batcave on my own, geniuses!”
Tim slapped his forehead. “Sorry, I forgot. You were dead; I got out of the habit. And you haven’t been un-dead long enough for this to come up…”
Steph leapt off Helena’s motorcycle. “Don’t call me un-dead. That makes it sound like I’m a zombie. And you know what that would make you? A necrophiliac.”
“Hey Huntress,” Dick said awkwardly. “This makes everyone, right? Or are we going to wait on Batwoman?”
“Batwoman wasn’t invited,” Batman said, stepping out of the shadows with a operatic flourish. He stood on a ledge above them, amidst teeth-like projections of rock from the ledge and ceiling. “This isn’t for freelancers, it’s for my inner circle.”
“Hey, you’re part of the inner circle,” Dinah said sotto voce to Huntress. “Hey, so am I.”
“He probably just wants more smoochies. Tease.”
“Shush, both of you,” Barbara said harshly. “There’s no small-talk in the inner…”
“There something important you’d like to share, Oracle?”
Barbara didn’t meet Batman’s eyes. “They were… never mind.”
“Good. At 1800 hours, I received a communication. It was from Cassandra Cain. Some of you may better remember her as Batgirl.”
“Is she alright?” Tim piped up.
“More than alright. She wants to come back to Gotham. I said yes.”
“Whoa whoa whoa!” Dick said, standing aggressively. “She’s a killer, right?”
“Not by choice,” Barbara said. “We’ve all done things we aren’t proud of.”
Dick didn’t want to argue with her, so he crossed his arms and shut up for now. Batman could tell he hadn’t heard the end of this, though. He deepened his voice to the this is the way it’s gonna be tone that made everyone stand a little straighter. “I told her she was welcome back. I’d like to think you all agree with me.” He headed Dick’s incredulous expression off at the pass. “But this isn’t a democracy. You’ll treat Cassandra with the respect due any member of this team.”
“And trust?” Dick asked, growing colder by the minute, to the point where he looked like a shadow cast by the Batman.
Bruce leapt down from his pulpit, cape flaring, to land in front of Dick. They stared each other down. “Both Diana and J’onn have checked her out.”
“But do you vouch for her?”
Batman turned around, to look at his team. The Birds were carefully composed except for the way Huntress hitched up her crossbow belt like she was touching a fetish. Marked her as agitated. Tim had a hangdog expression, mirrored by the way Steph was chewing the inside of her cheek.
“We all have a dark side. But Cassandra’s is blacker than most. We knew that the first time she came on this team and we should remember it now.”
Dick crossed his arms. “Neither the lasso or the Manhunter are infallible,” he observed.
Steph watched Tim nod pitifully. “So, wait, are we saying Cass isn’t allowed to join in our reindeer games? Because I’ve been there and I’m not letting you do that to Cass. How many lives has she saved and how many times has she been strong while you guys were weak? I’m not blacklisting her and neither is Tim! Uh, right Tim?”
Robin ran a hand through her hair. “Yeah. She’s either on the team or she isn’t.”
Batman did something surprising. He didn’t stalk around or bark orders. He just stood there like a statue and let his voice drop a few octaves. Like he was backing down. “I’m not asking for you to blacklist her. Just keep an eye on her.”
“She can’t be trusted,” Dick echoed.
Barbara threw her hands up. “Dick, I swear to God, sometimes…”
“She used your name while she killed people, Barbara.”
“What would you have preferred she called herself? Renegade?”
The temperature in the cave went to liquid nitrogen. Steph tried to ask what the big deal was, but Tim held up a hand in front of her. Taboo subject, like pills or bank heists. Steph could understand that.
“That was low, Gordon,” Dick said, softly enough for only her to hear.
Dinah leaned in between them. “Maybe you deserved it.”
“He didn’t,” Barbara whispered, pulling Dinah back.
“Oh.” Dinah realized people were starting to stare. She pushed a strand of golden hair behind her ears. “So what’s the story on Cass anyway? Some of us weren’t getting the newsletter during all this.”
“I was faking my death,” Steph said brightly. “Top that.”
“Studying with ninja master.”
“…well-played.”
“Can we please cut the chatter?” Dick asked, falling into his old role of Bruce’s right hand. He was in sudden motion, cutting through the stock-still people. He only walked, ignoring the stirring in his limbs that drove him toward the balance beams, the gymnast rings, the yawning abyss and the slice of safety above them. His brisk stride would have to do. “This is a mission briefing, not a social club.”
“And Cass is the mission,” Steph groused under her breath to Tim.
Batman caught up to Dick, stopping him with a gloved hand on his shoulder. Dick paused, taking a calming breath, although he seemed to draw most of his peace from the quick pat Bruce gave him rather than the stale air.
Batman delivered the information on Cass’s background with no inflection whatsoever. It was the same way he talked about his parents’ death. He didn’t face his troops, instead keeping his eyes squarely on the back of Dick’s head. “All of you are aware of Cassandra Cain and her… what a valuable asset she was. A little over a year ago, Cassandra left Gotham to pursue a normal life. Her father, David Cain, and a mercenary named Slade Wilson…”
Dick tensed again. Batman reached for him again, but Dick broke away, shaking his head. The motion was hidden from the rest by Batman’s cape, but Tim could read the situation well enough. It made his jaw clench like he’d just been forced to swallow something unpleasant.
Batman continued: “They brainwashed her in a Machiavellian scheme to gain control of the League of Assassins. Under their power, she killed two people. But,” Bruce’s voice broke a little, letting in a note of hope, even pride. “She escaped. And went off the grid.”
“And now the prodigal daughter returns.” Dick snorted with derision as he turned to face Batman, all of them. “You don’t have to worry about keeping an eye on her. I’ll keep two. Where is she now?”
***
The breakfast nook was one of the many areas of Wayne Manor that had benefited from Bruce adopting Tim. The Kubrickian stainless steel kitchen, once as imposing as a suit of armor, now had news clippings on Bat-rescues attached to the refrigerator by magnets alongside reports of Bruce Wayne’s philanthropy and A+ high school essays. There was a bowl of fresh fruit on the island alongside reading material that ranged from The Rise And Fall of the Roman Empire to Scrooge McDuck comics, along with a plethora of snack food in the pantry to compliment the Gatorade in the fridge. Alfred would just as soon flush all that rubbish down the garbage disposal, especially when Tim wouldn’t share his Fruit Roll-Ups.
He set a stack of hotcakes in front of Cass, who was sitting at the island and calmly categorizing the reading material like before selecting one of the Disney comics.
“Anything else, ma’am?” Alfred asked solicitously. Cass looked downright skeletal and she had her fork and knife held upright like a cartoon of a starving man. All she lacked was a bib.
Cass tore herself away from the adventures of McDuck to give the matter some serious consideration. She figured out what she wanted and, more importantly, what its sound was. “Syrup!”
“Most certainly.” Alfred brought out a holder of maple syrup, which he poured out over her pancakes.
Cass’s eyes lit up with joy. “Thank you!” she said. Then, liking the sound of that: “Thank you, thank you, thank you!”
“You’re quite welcome.”
***
Steph blurred up the stairs, followed closely by Tim.
“Hey, wait up!” he called as the cave’s stone walls gave way to the mansion’s foundation.
“Race me, boy-toy wonder!”
“You’re not supposed to wear costumes in the house. Steph, it’s a rule.”
“Screw the rules, I have money.”
“No, you don’t.”
“I’ll borrow it from you. You can ask Daddy Bats for an advance on your allowance.”
“Do you know what he’ll do if he catches you calling him that?”
“Fire me as your girlfriend? Ooh, secret love affair! The sex’d be fantastic.”
“Or if he knew we were making W-H-O-O-P-I-“
“Whoopie cushions? We should give one to Cass.” Steph disappeared out the opening grandfather clock and Tim had to stop on the landing below it to search the incongruous wardrobe for regular clothes. Sometimes playing by the rules sucked.
***
Steph popped into the living room.
“Cass?”
***
Steph popped into the rec room.
“Cass?”
***
Steph popped into the smoking room.
“koff koff Cass? Oh hai Selina. No, they be taking mah Wayne Diamonds!”
Selina sighed and blew out cigarette smoke in a luxuriant French New Wave way she wished Bruce was on the ball enough to see. “Tell the Bat that I’ll give these back at the next big meet he invites me to.”
“Will do.” Steph ran off. Then poked her head back through the doorway. “So… you can has invitation?”
Selina sighed dismally. “Do want,” she confirmed.
“I’ll pass that on to the big scary ceiling bat.”
***
Steph finally caught up with her in the kitchen. “Cass!”
“Steph!” Cass moved so fast that the clippings on the fridge flapped. Before she knew it, Steph was wrapped up in a hug so tight that if it were a seatbelt, Steph could’ve easily survived a hundred MPH crash. The poetry Cass recited was a much more pleasant sound than that hypothetical impact.
“I missed you! I love you! You’re my best friend!”
“You can talk!” Steph looked over Cass’s shoulder at Alfred. “She can talk, she can talk, she can talk… now’s the part where she’s supposed to say ‘I can siiiing.’”
“Very droll, Miss Stephanie.”
Tim ran in, dressed hurriedly in jeans and one of Dick’s T-shirts that hung down to mid-thigh. “C’mere, Dr. Zaius.” He wrapped them both up in a hug that finished off Steph’s chances of breathing properly. “Wasn’t the same without you, Cass.”
“She learned to talk,” Steph said proudly. She credited herself with moral support.
“I’ve always wondered what you would say if you had the ability!”
“Alfred made me pancakes. They were yummy.” She kissed them both on the cheek. “I wasn’t… me… without you two.”
Steph smiled and wiggled free before they could hear her sniffle. “So, pancakes! Alfred, hope you made enough for the rest of the class.”
“I could so with some pancakey goodness myself,” Tim said. “If it’s not too much to ask,” he amended.
“Serving you three will never be too much to ask.”
***
There was no way Steph was letting Cass out of her sight after all they’d been through. It reminded Tim of Steph’s first night back in Gotham, when she’d wanted to spend the whole night talking and when they ran out of things to talk about in the wee hours of the morning, Steph had just wanted Tim to hold her as sleep caught up with the both of them. Tim had been happy to oblige.
Now Steph and Cass had pushed the twin beds of the guest room together and were sleeping side by side, hands still clasped together. Tim watched them sleep, feeling a stir in his chest. For the first time since Kon had died, he felt kinda… good.
“Close the door,” Bruce whispered gruffly. Tim thought it was to avoid waking Cass with the light from the hallway, but then he saw the look in Bruce’s eyes and realized this was one of those times that Batman needed a Robin.
“I wish I could trust her,” Bruce said once the door was shut. “But I’ve had operatives go rogue before. I can’t afford that now. I can’t… bear it again.”
“If you think she’s anything like Jason, you’re fooling yourself.” Tim fingered the scar winding down his clavicle. A kris… hurt like hell. “Jason was a bad apple before you ever met. But Cass made a choice. She was walking your path long before you showed her the way.”
Bruce was leaning against the wall with his entire forearm, had been crumpled there ever since he heard Jason’s name. Tim watched his back knot in tension. “If she did something suspicious, would you tell me?”
”It depends.”
“Depends on what?”
Tim steeled himself. This was the feeling he got before diving into a burning building. “No, I wouldn’t tell you. Unless she put on a shirt that said ‘World’s Best Sleeper Agent,’ I wouldn’t tell you. Even then, I would ask if she was being ironic. But I won’t sacrifice her to your paranoia.”
Bruce started to walk, neither purposeful gait of the Batman or the carefree stroll of Bruce Wayne. He walked like an old man, bowed over by weight. He trusted Tim to follow and Tim did, giving Bruce plenty of lead to work out his feelings.
Bruce stopped on the staircase and slumped down on the bottom step, taking a moment to sit up straight, then patting the ground next to him. Tim aloofly leaned against the banister.
“Cassandra… was my mistake. Jason and Damian burned me, so I wrote her off without a second thought. All my guilty instincts tell me to welcome her back with open arms. And I want to. I want to make up for the time I let monsters take her innocence.” He looked up at Tim, beseeching condemnation from the young man he trusted as his conscience. “I couldn’t do anything the first time Cain had her in his clutches. But the second time, I practically gift-wrapped her for him.”
Tim sagged down beside him, unwilling to put himself above Bruce when the older man had the decency he lacked, the decency to hold himself accountable for what had been done to Cass and not… masquerade as her friend. Like he had done. Because it felt good. She’d hugged him when she should’ve broken his goddamn jaw. “You did what you did based on my report. And I should’ve known something was wrong. Her fighting style was sloppy, her voice was all wrong, but I took it all at face value. You trusted me to be your eyes and ears. I failed you. And I failed her.”
Bruce stared out at that distant bedroom door. “I’m giving you a second chance. Be her shadow. Partner up with her on all patrols. Bring her back to us.”
Tim nodded slowly. “I won’t let you down, sir.”
“Concentrate on not letting her down, son.”
Bruce retreated up the stairs. Tim waited until he left, then went back to the guest bedroom. Cass had kicked her covers off; her scarred body drowned in sweat, gripped by a nightmare. Tim carefully pulled Steph’s arm over her, watched as Cass relaxed into the skin contact like a baby with a bottle. Steph let out a loud snore. Tim smiled as he pulled the cover over Cass.
This time, he wouldn’t let her go without a fight.
***
Dick watched Cass shadow-boxing, thrashing invisible enemies. Some had called her poetry in motion… Bruce called her that… but all Dick could see was the serpentine efficiency of a trained killer. Night wrapped up in human form, she flowed from light to shadow, like a strobe-light was catching different beats of a dance. She made violence look so… beguiling. But then, Tarantula had never looked better to him than when she had Roland Desmond’s blood on her hands. Maybe that’s why he had fucked her instead of getting Desmond to a hospital. Or better yet, turned himself in.
He walked toward her, careful to stay out of the shadows and the dangers they hid. She took no notice of him, even when her movements blew a cool breeze across his face. Even when her cape brushed across him. It was soft like silk. For some reason that infuriated Dick. He threw a punch and in the same instant she had sprung ten feet away, to stare at him from a shadow that concealed all but the yellow outline of the Bat on her chest. And that really pissed him off.
“Nice reflexes. Thought you might’ve gotten soft, firing sniper rifles at people from miles away.”
Cass looked at him. She was the only one whose eye-lenses didn’t give a clue what she was thinking, not letting out a shred of light. They were black as the pits of hell. “I’m not soft.”
He held up his escrima sticks. “Care to put that to the test?”
She crooked her fingers, gesturing for him to come closer. Dick tossed her a pair of her own. They bounced off her chest and clattered to the ground. Once they had come to a rest, she kicked them aside.
Dick heard their landing off in the shadows as a starting pistol. He rushed forward, consciously keeping his style loose, improvisational. She could read his body language, but that was just like being able to speak English. Just because you could understand it, didn’t mean you could predict what was going to be said yes. He would just have to give her gibberish.
Cass was backpedaling a little, cape concealing her arms like a poncho. Halfway to her, he jumped up and came out a whirling ball, escrima sticks circling him like electrons ‘round a nucleus. She caught one with her forearm, a blow that should’ve cracked bone, but before he could figure out how she had done that without giving an inch, Cass had her fist in his face. He backed up, spitting blood.
“You think it’ll go back to the way it was? You think people will look at you and ever forget what you’ve done?”
“Don’t think,” she said, and swooped.
He backflipped, one step ahead of her volcanic punches, her scimitar kicks. At the speed of thought he reversed himself and sprung over her, landing a glancing heel to her head as they passed. It sent Cass into a roll. When she came up, dirt muddied her sleek black contours.
“I don’t like hurting people,” she said. “Usually. Do you?”
“In this case? You tell me.”
He ran toward her, making up his strategy as he went. His arms and legs seemed to operate independently of each other, four cobras striking at will. Cass tumbled around him, deflecting solid hits into glancing blows, accepting the punishment as she danced around him. Finally popping up behind him, giving him a hard shove between the shoulder blades. He sprawled on his face.
“You don’t enjoy hitting me,” Cass said. She pulled off her mask. Underneath, a bruise spread across one eye like a solar eclipse. “So why are you doing this?”
Dick pushed himself up. “Oh, I enjoy hitting killers very much. Maybe you should read me again.” He spun his escrima sticks. “Watch closely now…”
“Dick!” It was Robin, watching with a truly ghastly expression on his face. “What, uh… hey… you wanna spar with me?”
“I’m fine here.” He ran at Cass. This time whatever fighting style his subconscious had erected was completely torn down. He was pure rage, swinging, kicking, and Cass took it like a punching bag. Capillaries burst, skin bruised, and bones creaked threateningly. “C’mon! Where’s that killer instinct? Show it to me!”
She caught both of his arms at the elbows, stilling him before he could clang his sticks like cymbals, and tapped his chest.
“You bitch.”
“It’s here too,” she said, tapping her own chest. Her own Bat-symbol.
Dick swung, but a shuriken sliced his escrima stick in half. When it embedded itself in a limestone column, Dick saw it was in the shape of the letter R.
“I really don’t think we have to tell Bruce about this,” Tim said, leading Cass away. “Yet.”
A hot flush of embarrassment just pushed Dick further over the edge. “Some people you can’t save!” he shouted after them.
“Not if I don’t try,” Tim shouted back.
***
Barbara carefully applied the make-up with familiar hands, although Tim supposed it was awkward for her to do it on someone else instead of in a mirror. But then, he supposed it was a mirror anyway. He stood there in the bathroom, watching the door and occasionally touching Cass in a hopefully reassuring manner -- he kept flashing back to the time he was eight and petting the family dog as it was put down – but when he self-consciously decided to stop Cass grabbed his hand and held it against her shoulder. The look she gave him was thanks enough.
At first, Cass hadn’t understood why Tim had wanted her to cover up her bruises when she’d never had to before, but Tim had eventually explained to her that it was like putting on a mask and she’d agreed. He thought she’d keyed on that it was about keeping a Bat out of trouble while they sorted him out, which she was unfairly keen on. She’d practically dragged him away from the door when he’d gone to tell Bruce about what had happened.
“You just keep your distance from Dick,” Barbara said, applying one last little Band-Aid to the cut on Cass’s skin. “I’ll have a talk with him.” The way her voice dipped on that last sentence was enough to make Tim wonder if ‘talk’ was an euphemism for ‘torture as in medieval.’
“Can you get her out of the house for a bit?” Tim asked Barbara. “You don’t wanna be cooped up in her, do you Cass?”
“Yes.” Cass hugged herself. “Safe here.”
Tim hesitantly touched her again. She was bent forward to let Barbara touch her face, making her T-shirt ride up in the back. Tim rubbed the exposed small of her back. It made Cass coo and lean against him. “You don’t have to worry about them,” Tim made a gesture so angrily dismissive it could only refer to everyone who’d seen the beautiful girl under the mask and decided to hurt her anyway. “I’ll protect—“
He stopped, because he hadn’t, and so he couldn’t promise. His hand stopped rubbing.
“I want to stay with you,” Cass said simply, as if confused that she was able to fully articulate herself and yet people still didn’t go along with her request. It wasn’t her fault they didn’t understand, was it?
“Cass, how about you come with me to the library,” Barbara said. When Cass’s face remained blank, she added “You learned to read, right?”
“Made me a better assassin,” Cass mumbled.
“This won’t make you a better assassin. It’ll make you a better person. And we can stop by the market for some fresh fruit. What would you like? Strawberries?”
Cass decided that as long as she was being bribed, she might as well milk it. “With whipped cream?”
“Uh-huh.”
“And you’ll cut the green parts off?”
Barbara made a don’t push it expression.
”I’ll do that,” Tim said, patting Cass on the back.
Cass hugged him. “You’re the best big brother ever.”
The mirror was fogged up from the hot water they’d been running to wash Cass’s face, but Tim could still see the look of guilt on his face when he looked into it. As soon as they were gone, he called Steph and told her his plan. By the time he’d hung up, the guilty look had turned into a grin.
***
Cass walked the shelves of the library with Barbara, her arms quickly filling with books.
“Harry Potter, you’ll love that,” Barbara said, pulling books off the shelves like there was no tomorrow. “Ooh, The Lion, The Witch, And The Wardrobe. We’ll give that a shot… The Phantom Tollbooth, you’re going to love this.”
“Does it have big words in it?” Cass asked, teetering with the weight of the books piled high in her arms. “I get confused by the big words sometimes,” she confessed, shame-faced.
Barbara got a text message. Not now, she thought, praying she wouldn’t have to wheel her way into the ladies’ room and coordinate disaster relief from her laptop. Thankfully, it wasn’t a Delphi alert. It was just Steph. Barbara’s face lit up.
“You won’t have to worry about that for long,” she said.
***
The weirdest part was after Barbara telephoned her request to Dinah, who had promised to fulfill this most serious of missions forthwith. Barbara had found a dog-eared copy of The Little Prince and gotten so excited that Cass had supped from her excitement and demanded that Barbara read it to her on the spot. She pouted mightily when Barbara asked if she didn’t want to read it by herself, so Barbara took her into the study hall where diligent college students were tapping away at word processors, hid by the microfiches, and settled down to read. As the chapters rolled from one to each other, Cass (who’d been sitting on the floor) slumped against Barbara’s wheelchair and then laid her head down on Barbara’s lap. And Barbara held the book with one hand and stroked Cass’s hair with the other.
Barbara trailed off, realizing that Cass was asleep, lulled there by the gentle river of Barbara’s hand in her hair. Barbara’s thought on the matter, aside from the one about having to teach Cass about conditioner, was that though she’d never put much thought into being a mother before, Barbara was pretty sure this was what it felt like.
Darkness had fallen outside and the only light came from the computer monitors, one by one blinking into screensavers as they were abandoned by their students.
“Once upon a time, there was a girl,” Barbara said, “and she lived happily ever after.”
Being a mother wasn’t half-bad. Even if you had to lie about some things.
***
There have been many surprise birthday parties in history. But it would be safe to say that none came as more of a surprise than Cassandra Cain’s seventeenth birthday party, which was not thrown on her birthday (that had happened while she was with David Cain. He had ordered her to kill Supergirl. As a present). It was even more shocking because Cass had never had a birthday party before. She’d had a birthday, the year before last when Steph had spent a week’s wages of her crappy summer job to buy them sweets and tickets to every movie in the theater that day and they’d eaten cupcakes until they were sick to their stomachs. But she’d never had a party before.
“Happy belated birthday, Cass,” Tim said, crowning her with a party hat.
There were presents and cake and balloons and a piñata that Cass destroyed with one katana-swift stroke of her bat and Selina, who’d been invited, gave Bruce some jewels that he hadn’t noticed were missing and only Cass heard the argument between Dick and Barbara, in the way Barbara rolled into his room and the way Dick stormed out. She slipped away in the shadows – Cass was good at that – and followed him out onto the terrace. The moonlight gleamed in the water on his eyes.
“What do you want?” he asked when he noticed her, as she stood in the dark and waited for the right words to say. It was easy for her to talk now. Just hard to know what to say.
“I don’t know. That’s why I came back. To find it.”
“You’ll ruin everything,” he growled, turning to face her.
She walked closer to him, heedless of the aggression tensing his muscles and narrowing his eyes. A hand she laid on his bicep, squeezing gently as if she could milk out the anger knotting it. “Someone made you a killer too.”
He slapped her hand away. “I’m not like you.”
“I wasn’t like me either.” She hugged him. “It wasn’t your fault.”
He tried to push her off, but she was persistent. She held him until she’d squeezed the tears from his eyes and felt them fall on her shoulders, paving the way for the arms he wrapped around her.
“I’m sorry,” he said, when he ran out of sobs.
“It’s okay. Families fight.”
They went back inside to open presents. Cass got an expensive leather-bound dictionary from Barbara. She hugged it to her chest and at night, when the nightmares stalked her because it still wasn’t alright and wouldn’t be for the longest time, she paged through it with a flashlight clutched in her teeth. She looked up Family. Pictured was a father and a mother and a son and a daughter.
Cass took a Polaroid that Dick had taken, of her and Tim and Steph and everyone, and set it on the page where Family was defined. She thought it was a much better fit than a bunch of people who’d happened to be born to a bunch of other people.
Cass wondered where she’d find her picture in it. Not under Killer, certainly. Maybe under Happy. Or Batgirl. Or Loved.
She wanted it to be under Loved.
Fandom: Batman
Rating: PG
Word Count: 5,459
Timeline: The new Batgirl mini. I saw scans of it and my friends’ reactions and basically said to myself “Yeahhhh… this needs more hugging.”
Characters/Pairings: Cass, Tim, Steph, Bruce, Dick, Barbara, implied Tim/Cass/Steph and Dick/Babs.
Summary: For Cass, the road to redemption is paved by people she knows.
“Hey, Tim.”
“Sup, Dick?”
Tim slipped his mask on. The order had come in for costumes and callsigns, but he thought that was just Bat-Coach in action. He had no idea the entire clan was showing up. Dick was just the first out the gate, and he already has his domino mask spirit gummed as he pulled on the top of his wetsuit-like costume, one sleeve still dangling from the waist. The chill of the Batcave turned his nipples into top hats, which Tim tried not to laugh at. No one looked imposing between civilian identities and superheroism.
“Toss me my sticks?” Dick asked, pulling his last hand through its cuff.
Tim, pulling on a boot, grabbed Dick’s escrima sticks and tossed them to Dick. Dick held them in his teeth as he pulled on his gloves. “So, you got any idea what this is all about?” Dick asked, muffled through the sticks.
“Nada. Bruce’s been in lockdown since… hey, your girlfriend’s here.”
“She is not my girlfriend,” Dick said as he hurried down to the garage.
Dinah had parked the Porsche and was helping Barbara into her chair. She wore slacks and a blouse, which while comfy-looking, didn’t project as much menace as the darker armor the men wore.
“Batman said costumes,” Robin said, because Nightwing was too lovestruck to remember the rules.
“This is my costume,” Dinah said. “I’m changing costumes.”
“So, next time you go on patrol, it’ll be in open-toed sandals?”
“I might change my costume again. I might not.”
“Pity, I loved the fishnets,” Dick said. He was relaxing against a stalagmite near to Barbara. “Hey Babs.”
“Dick Grayson… they’ll just let anyone into this cave, won’t they? Any reason this had to be face-to-face? I was gaming.” She took a privately cathartic pleasure in going on Second Life as [Batgrrl] and player-killing all the “Jokerz” who dressed up as their idol.
“Don’t look at me, I’m as in the dark as you are.” Dick looked over the laptop Barbara had on the side of her wheelchair. “For once.”
Barbara took off her glasses. “Don’t sell yourself short in the dark, man wonder.”
“You were no slouch yourself. Still aren’t, I’d bet.”
Dinah leaned over to Tim. “Are they talking about crimefighting or…”
“Do you really want to know?”
Steph was next up, riding bitch on Helena’s motorcycle. “Tim, you were supposed to pick me up! It’s not like I know the way to the Batcave on my own, geniuses!”
Tim slapped his forehead. “Sorry, I forgot. You were dead; I got out of the habit. And you haven’t been un-dead long enough for this to come up…”
Steph leapt off Helena’s motorcycle. “Don’t call me un-dead. That makes it sound like I’m a zombie. And you know what that would make you? A necrophiliac.”
“Hey Huntress,” Dick said awkwardly. “This makes everyone, right? Or are we going to wait on Batwoman?”
“Batwoman wasn’t invited,” Batman said, stepping out of the shadows with a operatic flourish. He stood on a ledge above them, amidst teeth-like projections of rock from the ledge and ceiling. “This isn’t for freelancers, it’s for my inner circle.”
“Hey, you’re part of the inner circle,” Dinah said sotto voce to Huntress. “Hey, so am I.”
“He probably just wants more smoochies. Tease.”
“Shush, both of you,” Barbara said harshly. “There’s no small-talk in the inner…”
“There something important you’d like to share, Oracle?”
Barbara didn’t meet Batman’s eyes. “They were… never mind.”
“Good. At 1800 hours, I received a communication. It was from Cassandra Cain. Some of you may better remember her as Batgirl.”
“Is she alright?” Tim piped up.
“More than alright. She wants to come back to Gotham. I said yes.”
“Whoa whoa whoa!” Dick said, standing aggressively. “She’s a killer, right?”
“Not by choice,” Barbara said. “We’ve all done things we aren’t proud of.”
Dick didn’t want to argue with her, so he crossed his arms and shut up for now. Batman could tell he hadn’t heard the end of this, though. He deepened his voice to the this is the way it’s gonna be tone that made everyone stand a little straighter. “I told her she was welcome back. I’d like to think you all agree with me.” He headed Dick’s incredulous expression off at the pass. “But this isn’t a democracy. You’ll treat Cassandra with the respect due any member of this team.”
“And trust?” Dick asked, growing colder by the minute, to the point where he looked like a shadow cast by the Batman.
Bruce leapt down from his pulpit, cape flaring, to land in front of Dick. They stared each other down. “Both Diana and J’onn have checked her out.”
“But do you vouch for her?”
Batman turned around, to look at his team. The Birds were carefully composed except for the way Huntress hitched up her crossbow belt like she was touching a fetish. Marked her as agitated. Tim had a hangdog expression, mirrored by the way Steph was chewing the inside of her cheek.
“We all have a dark side. But Cassandra’s is blacker than most. We knew that the first time she came on this team and we should remember it now.”
Dick crossed his arms. “Neither the lasso or the Manhunter are infallible,” he observed.
Steph watched Tim nod pitifully. “So, wait, are we saying Cass isn’t allowed to join in our reindeer games? Because I’ve been there and I’m not letting you do that to Cass. How many lives has she saved and how many times has she been strong while you guys were weak? I’m not blacklisting her and neither is Tim! Uh, right Tim?”
Robin ran a hand through her hair. “Yeah. She’s either on the team or she isn’t.”
Batman did something surprising. He didn’t stalk around or bark orders. He just stood there like a statue and let his voice drop a few octaves. Like he was backing down. “I’m not asking for you to blacklist her. Just keep an eye on her.”
“She can’t be trusted,” Dick echoed.
Barbara threw her hands up. “Dick, I swear to God, sometimes…”
“She used your name while she killed people, Barbara.”
“What would you have preferred she called herself? Renegade?”
The temperature in the cave went to liquid nitrogen. Steph tried to ask what the big deal was, but Tim held up a hand in front of her. Taboo subject, like pills or bank heists. Steph could understand that.
“That was low, Gordon,” Dick said, softly enough for only her to hear.
Dinah leaned in between them. “Maybe you deserved it.”
“He didn’t,” Barbara whispered, pulling Dinah back.
“Oh.” Dinah realized people were starting to stare. She pushed a strand of golden hair behind her ears. “So what’s the story on Cass anyway? Some of us weren’t getting the newsletter during all this.”
“I was faking my death,” Steph said brightly. “Top that.”
“Studying with ninja master.”
“…well-played.”
“Can we please cut the chatter?” Dick asked, falling into his old role of Bruce’s right hand. He was in sudden motion, cutting through the stock-still people. He only walked, ignoring the stirring in his limbs that drove him toward the balance beams, the gymnast rings, the yawning abyss and the slice of safety above them. His brisk stride would have to do. “This is a mission briefing, not a social club.”
“And Cass is the mission,” Steph groused under her breath to Tim.
Batman caught up to Dick, stopping him with a gloved hand on his shoulder. Dick paused, taking a calming breath, although he seemed to draw most of his peace from the quick pat Bruce gave him rather than the stale air.
Batman delivered the information on Cass’s background with no inflection whatsoever. It was the same way he talked about his parents’ death. He didn’t face his troops, instead keeping his eyes squarely on the back of Dick’s head. “All of you are aware of Cassandra Cain and her… what a valuable asset she was. A little over a year ago, Cassandra left Gotham to pursue a normal life. Her father, David Cain, and a mercenary named Slade Wilson…”
Dick tensed again. Batman reached for him again, but Dick broke away, shaking his head. The motion was hidden from the rest by Batman’s cape, but Tim could read the situation well enough. It made his jaw clench like he’d just been forced to swallow something unpleasant.
Batman continued: “They brainwashed her in a Machiavellian scheme to gain control of the League of Assassins. Under their power, she killed two people. But,” Bruce’s voice broke a little, letting in a note of hope, even pride. “She escaped. And went off the grid.”
“And now the prodigal daughter returns.” Dick snorted with derision as he turned to face Batman, all of them. “You don’t have to worry about keeping an eye on her. I’ll keep two. Where is she now?”
***
The breakfast nook was one of the many areas of Wayne Manor that had benefited from Bruce adopting Tim. The Kubrickian stainless steel kitchen, once as imposing as a suit of armor, now had news clippings on Bat-rescues attached to the refrigerator by magnets alongside reports of Bruce Wayne’s philanthropy and A+ high school essays. There was a bowl of fresh fruit on the island alongside reading material that ranged from The Rise And Fall of the Roman Empire to Scrooge McDuck comics, along with a plethora of snack food in the pantry to compliment the Gatorade in the fridge. Alfred would just as soon flush all that rubbish down the garbage disposal, especially when Tim wouldn’t share his Fruit Roll-Ups.
He set a stack of hotcakes in front of Cass, who was sitting at the island and calmly categorizing the reading material like before selecting one of the Disney comics.
“Anything else, ma’am?” Alfred asked solicitously. Cass looked downright skeletal and she had her fork and knife held upright like a cartoon of a starving man. All she lacked was a bib.
Cass tore herself away from the adventures of McDuck to give the matter some serious consideration. She figured out what she wanted and, more importantly, what its sound was. “Syrup!”
“Most certainly.” Alfred brought out a holder of maple syrup, which he poured out over her pancakes.
Cass’s eyes lit up with joy. “Thank you!” she said. Then, liking the sound of that: “Thank you, thank you, thank you!”
“You’re quite welcome.”
***
Steph blurred up the stairs, followed closely by Tim.
“Hey, wait up!” he called as the cave’s stone walls gave way to the mansion’s foundation.
“Race me, boy-toy wonder!”
“You’re not supposed to wear costumes in the house. Steph, it’s a rule.”
“Screw the rules, I have money.”
“No, you don’t.”
“I’ll borrow it from you. You can ask Daddy Bats for an advance on your allowance.”
“Do you know what he’ll do if he catches you calling him that?”
“Fire me as your girlfriend? Ooh, secret love affair! The sex’d be fantastic.”
“Or if he knew we were making W-H-O-O-P-I-“
“Whoopie cushions? We should give one to Cass.” Steph disappeared out the opening grandfather clock and Tim had to stop on the landing below it to search the incongruous wardrobe for regular clothes. Sometimes playing by the rules sucked.
***
Steph popped into the living room.
“Cass?”
***
Steph popped into the rec room.
“Cass?”
***
Steph popped into the smoking room.
“koff koff Cass? Oh hai Selina. No, they be taking mah Wayne Diamonds!”
Selina sighed and blew out cigarette smoke in a luxuriant French New Wave way she wished Bruce was on the ball enough to see. “Tell the Bat that I’ll give these back at the next big meet he invites me to.”
“Will do.” Steph ran off. Then poked her head back through the doorway. “So… you can has invitation?”
Selina sighed dismally. “Do want,” she confirmed.
“I’ll pass that on to the big scary ceiling bat.”
***
Steph finally caught up with her in the kitchen. “Cass!”
“Steph!” Cass moved so fast that the clippings on the fridge flapped. Before she knew it, Steph was wrapped up in a hug so tight that if it were a seatbelt, Steph could’ve easily survived a hundred MPH crash. The poetry Cass recited was a much more pleasant sound than that hypothetical impact.
“I missed you! I love you! You’re my best friend!”
“You can talk!” Steph looked over Cass’s shoulder at Alfred. “She can talk, she can talk, she can talk… now’s the part where she’s supposed to say ‘I can siiiing.’”
“Very droll, Miss Stephanie.”
Tim ran in, dressed hurriedly in jeans and one of Dick’s T-shirts that hung down to mid-thigh. “C’mere, Dr. Zaius.” He wrapped them both up in a hug that finished off Steph’s chances of breathing properly. “Wasn’t the same without you, Cass.”
“She learned to talk,” Steph said proudly. She credited herself with moral support.
“I’ve always wondered what you would say if you had the ability!”
“Alfred made me pancakes. They were yummy.” She kissed them both on the cheek. “I wasn’t… me… without you two.”
Steph smiled and wiggled free before they could hear her sniffle. “So, pancakes! Alfred, hope you made enough for the rest of the class.”
“I could so with some pancakey goodness myself,” Tim said. “If it’s not too much to ask,” he amended.
“Serving you three will never be too much to ask.”
***
There was no way Steph was letting Cass out of her sight after all they’d been through. It reminded Tim of Steph’s first night back in Gotham, when she’d wanted to spend the whole night talking and when they ran out of things to talk about in the wee hours of the morning, Steph had just wanted Tim to hold her as sleep caught up with the both of them. Tim had been happy to oblige.
Now Steph and Cass had pushed the twin beds of the guest room together and were sleeping side by side, hands still clasped together. Tim watched them sleep, feeling a stir in his chest. For the first time since Kon had died, he felt kinda… good.
“Close the door,” Bruce whispered gruffly. Tim thought it was to avoid waking Cass with the light from the hallway, but then he saw the look in Bruce’s eyes and realized this was one of those times that Batman needed a Robin.
“I wish I could trust her,” Bruce said once the door was shut. “But I’ve had operatives go rogue before. I can’t afford that now. I can’t… bear it again.”
“If you think she’s anything like Jason, you’re fooling yourself.” Tim fingered the scar winding down his clavicle. A kris… hurt like hell. “Jason was a bad apple before you ever met. But Cass made a choice. She was walking your path long before you showed her the way.”
Bruce was leaning against the wall with his entire forearm, had been crumpled there ever since he heard Jason’s name. Tim watched his back knot in tension. “If she did something suspicious, would you tell me?”
”It depends.”
“Depends on what?”
Tim steeled himself. This was the feeling he got before diving into a burning building. “No, I wouldn’t tell you. Unless she put on a shirt that said ‘World’s Best Sleeper Agent,’ I wouldn’t tell you. Even then, I would ask if she was being ironic. But I won’t sacrifice her to your paranoia.”
Bruce started to walk, neither purposeful gait of the Batman or the carefree stroll of Bruce Wayne. He walked like an old man, bowed over by weight. He trusted Tim to follow and Tim did, giving Bruce plenty of lead to work out his feelings.
Bruce stopped on the staircase and slumped down on the bottom step, taking a moment to sit up straight, then patting the ground next to him. Tim aloofly leaned against the banister.
“Cassandra… was my mistake. Jason and Damian burned me, so I wrote her off without a second thought. All my guilty instincts tell me to welcome her back with open arms. And I want to. I want to make up for the time I let monsters take her innocence.” He looked up at Tim, beseeching condemnation from the young man he trusted as his conscience. “I couldn’t do anything the first time Cain had her in his clutches. But the second time, I practically gift-wrapped her for him.”
Tim sagged down beside him, unwilling to put himself above Bruce when the older man had the decency he lacked, the decency to hold himself accountable for what had been done to Cass and not… masquerade as her friend. Like he had done. Because it felt good. She’d hugged him when she should’ve broken his goddamn jaw. “You did what you did based on my report. And I should’ve known something was wrong. Her fighting style was sloppy, her voice was all wrong, but I took it all at face value. You trusted me to be your eyes and ears. I failed you. And I failed her.”
Bruce stared out at that distant bedroom door. “I’m giving you a second chance. Be her shadow. Partner up with her on all patrols. Bring her back to us.”
Tim nodded slowly. “I won’t let you down, sir.”
“Concentrate on not letting her down, son.”
Bruce retreated up the stairs. Tim waited until he left, then went back to the guest bedroom. Cass had kicked her covers off; her scarred body drowned in sweat, gripped by a nightmare. Tim carefully pulled Steph’s arm over her, watched as Cass relaxed into the skin contact like a baby with a bottle. Steph let out a loud snore. Tim smiled as he pulled the cover over Cass.
This time, he wouldn’t let her go without a fight.
***
Dick watched Cass shadow-boxing, thrashing invisible enemies. Some had called her poetry in motion… Bruce called her that… but all Dick could see was the serpentine efficiency of a trained killer. Night wrapped up in human form, she flowed from light to shadow, like a strobe-light was catching different beats of a dance. She made violence look so… beguiling. But then, Tarantula had never looked better to him than when she had Roland Desmond’s blood on her hands. Maybe that’s why he had fucked her instead of getting Desmond to a hospital. Or better yet, turned himself in.
He walked toward her, careful to stay out of the shadows and the dangers they hid. She took no notice of him, even when her movements blew a cool breeze across his face. Even when her cape brushed across him. It was soft like silk. For some reason that infuriated Dick. He threw a punch and in the same instant she had sprung ten feet away, to stare at him from a shadow that concealed all but the yellow outline of the Bat on her chest. And that really pissed him off.
“Nice reflexes. Thought you might’ve gotten soft, firing sniper rifles at people from miles away.”
Cass looked at him. She was the only one whose eye-lenses didn’t give a clue what she was thinking, not letting out a shred of light. They were black as the pits of hell. “I’m not soft.”
He held up his escrima sticks. “Care to put that to the test?”
She crooked her fingers, gesturing for him to come closer. Dick tossed her a pair of her own. They bounced off her chest and clattered to the ground. Once they had come to a rest, she kicked them aside.
Dick heard their landing off in the shadows as a starting pistol. He rushed forward, consciously keeping his style loose, improvisational. She could read his body language, but that was just like being able to speak English. Just because you could understand it, didn’t mean you could predict what was going to be said yes. He would just have to give her gibberish.
Cass was backpedaling a little, cape concealing her arms like a poncho. Halfway to her, he jumped up and came out a whirling ball, escrima sticks circling him like electrons ‘round a nucleus. She caught one with her forearm, a blow that should’ve cracked bone, but before he could figure out how she had done that without giving an inch, Cass had her fist in his face. He backed up, spitting blood.
“You think it’ll go back to the way it was? You think people will look at you and ever forget what you’ve done?”
“Don’t think,” she said, and swooped.
He backflipped, one step ahead of her volcanic punches, her scimitar kicks. At the speed of thought he reversed himself and sprung over her, landing a glancing heel to her head as they passed. It sent Cass into a roll. When she came up, dirt muddied her sleek black contours.
“I don’t like hurting people,” she said. “Usually. Do you?”
“In this case? You tell me.”
He ran toward her, making up his strategy as he went. His arms and legs seemed to operate independently of each other, four cobras striking at will. Cass tumbled around him, deflecting solid hits into glancing blows, accepting the punishment as she danced around him. Finally popping up behind him, giving him a hard shove between the shoulder blades. He sprawled on his face.
“You don’t enjoy hitting me,” Cass said. She pulled off her mask. Underneath, a bruise spread across one eye like a solar eclipse. “So why are you doing this?”
Dick pushed himself up. “Oh, I enjoy hitting killers very much. Maybe you should read me again.” He spun his escrima sticks. “Watch closely now…”
“Dick!” It was Robin, watching with a truly ghastly expression on his face. “What, uh… hey… you wanna spar with me?”
“I’m fine here.” He ran at Cass. This time whatever fighting style his subconscious had erected was completely torn down. He was pure rage, swinging, kicking, and Cass took it like a punching bag. Capillaries burst, skin bruised, and bones creaked threateningly. “C’mon! Where’s that killer instinct? Show it to me!”
She caught both of his arms at the elbows, stilling him before he could clang his sticks like cymbals, and tapped his chest.
“You bitch.”
“It’s here too,” she said, tapping her own chest. Her own Bat-symbol.
Dick swung, but a shuriken sliced his escrima stick in half. When it embedded itself in a limestone column, Dick saw it was in the shape of the letter R.
“I really don’t think we have to tell Bruce about this,” Tim said, leading Cass away. “Yet.”
A hot flush of embarrassment just pushed Dick further over the edge. “Some people you can’t save!” he shouted after them.
“Not if I don’t try,” Tim shouted back.
***
Barbara carefully applied the make-up with familiar hands, although Tim supposed it was awkward for her to do it on someone else instead of in a mirror. But then, he supposed it was a mirror anyway. He stood there in the bathroom, watching the door and occasionally touching Cass in a hopefully reassuring manner -- he kept flashing back to the time he was eight and petting the family dog as it was put down – but when he self-consciously decided to stop Cass grabbed his hand and held it against her shoulder. The look she gave him was thanks enough.
At first, Cass hadn’t understood why Tim had wanted her to cover up her bruises when she’d never had to before, but Tim had eventually explained to her that it was like putting on a mask and she’d agreed. He thought she’d keyed on that it was about keeping a Bat out of trouble while they sorted him out, which she was unfairly keen on. She’d practically dragged him away from the door when he’d gone to tell Bruce about what had happened.
“You just keep your distance from Dick,” Barbara said, applying one last little Band-Aid to the cut on Cass’s skin. “I’ll have a talk with him.” The way her voice dipped on that last sentence was enough to make Tim wonder if ‘talk’ was an euphemism for ‘torture as in medieval.’
“Can you get her out of the house for a bit?” Tim asked Barbara. “You don’t wanna be cooped up in her, do you Cass?”
“Yes.” Cass hugged herself. “Safe here.”
Tim hesitantly touched her again. She was bent forward to let Barbara touch her face, making her T-shirt ride up in the back. Tim rubbed the exposed small of her back. It made Cass coo and lean against him. “You don’t have to worry about them,” Tim made a gesture so angrily dismissive it could only refer to everyone who’d seen the beautiful girl under the mask and decided to hurt her anyway. “I’ll protect—“
He stopped, because he hadn’t, and so he couldn’t promise. His hand stopped rubbing.
“I want to stay with you,” Cass said simply, as if confused that she was able to fully articulate herself and yet people still didn’t go along with her request. It wasn’t her fault they didn’t understand, was it?
“Cass, how about you come with me to the library,” Barbara said. When Cass’s face remained blank, she added “You learned to read, right?”
“Made me a better assassin,” Cass mumbled.
“This won’t make you a better assassin. It’ll make you a better person. And we can stop by the market for some fresh fruit. What would you like? Strawberries?”
Cass decided that as long as she was being bribed, she might as well milk it. “With whipped cream?”
“Uh-huh.”
“And you’ll cut the green parts off?”
Barbara made a don’t push it expression.
”I’ll do that,” Tim said, patting Cass on the back.
Cass hugged him. “You’re the best big brother ever.”
The mirror was fogged up from the hot water they’d been running to wash Cass’s face, but Tim could still see the look of guilt on his face when he looked into it. As soon as they were gone, he called Steph and told her his plan. By the time he’d hung up, the guilty look had turned into a grin.
***
Cass walked the shelves of the library with Barbara, her arms quickly filling with books.
“Harry Potter, you’ll love that,” Barbara said, pulling books off the shelves like there was no tomorrow. “Ooh, The Lion, The Witch, And The Wardrobe. We’ll give that a shot… The Phantom Tollbooth, you’re going to love this.”
“Does it have big words in it?” Cass asked, teetering with the weight of the books piled high in her arms. “I get confused by the big words sometimes,” she confessed, shame-faced.
Barbara got a text message. Not now, she thought, praying she wouldn’t have to wheel her way into the ladies’ room and coordinate disaster relief from her laptop. Thankfully, it wasn’t a Delphi alert. It was just Steph. Barbara’s face lit up.
“You won’t have to worry about that for long,” she said.
***
The weirdest part was after Barbara telephoned her request to Dinah, who had promised to fulfill this most serious of missions forthwith. Barbara had found a dog-eared copy of The Little Prince and gotten so excited that Cass had supped from her excitement and demanded that Barbara read it to her on the spot. She pouted mightily when Barbara asked if she didn’t want to read it by herself, so Barbara took her into the study hall where diligent college students were tapping away at word processors, hid by the microfiches, and settled down to read. As the chapters rolled from one to each other, Cass (who’d been sitting on the floor) slumped against Barbara’s wheelchair and then laid her head down on Barbara’s lap. And Barbara held the book with one hand and stroked Cass’s hair with the other.
Just so, you might say to your adults: "The proof that the little prince existed is that he was charming, that he laughed, and that he was looking for a sheep. If anybody wants a sheep, that is a proof that he exists." And what good would it do to tell them that? They would shrug their shoulders, and treat you like a child. But if you said to them: "The planet he came from is Asteroid B-612," then they would be convinced, and leave you in peace from their questions.
They are like that. One must not hold it against them. Children should always show great forbearance toward grown-up people. But certainly, for us who understand life, figures are a matter of indifference. I should have liked to begin this story in the fashion of the fairy-tales.
They are like that. One must not hold it against them. Children should always show great forbearance toward grown-up people. But certainly, for us who understand life, figures are a matter of indifference. I should have liked to begin this story in the fashion of the fairy-tales.
Barbara trailed off, realizing that Cass was asleep, lulled there by the gentle river of Barbara’s hand in her hair. Barbara’s thought on the matter, aside from the one about having to teach Cass about conditioner, was that though she’d never put much thought into being a mother before, Barbara was pretty sure this was what it felt like.
Darkness had fallen outside and the only light came from the computer monitors, one by one blinking into screensavers as they were abandoned by their students.
“Once upon a time, there was a girl,” Barbara said, “and she lived happily ever after.”
Being a mother wasn’t half-bad. Even if you had to lie about some things.
***
There have been many surprise birthday parties in history. But it would be safe to say that none came as more of a surprise than Cassandra Cain’s seventeenth birthday party, which was not thrown on her birthday (that had happened while she was with David Cain. He had ordered her to kill Supergirl. As a present). It was even more shocking because Cass had never had a birthday party before. She’d had a birthday, the year before last when Steph had spent a week’s wages of her crappy summer job to buy them sweets and tickets to every movie in the theater that day and they’d eaten cupcakes until they were sick to their stomachs. But she’d never had a party before.
“Happy belated birthday, Cass,” Tim said, crowning her with a party hat.
There were presents and cake and balloons and a piñata that Cass destroyed with one katana-swift stroke of her bat and Selina, who’d been invited, gave Bruce some jewels that he hadn’t noticed were missing and only Cass heard the argument between Dick and Barbara, in the way Barbara rolled into his room and the way Dick stormed out. She slipped away in the shadows – Cass was good at that – and followed him out onto the terrace. The moonlight gleamed in the water on his eyes.
“What do you want?” he asked when he noticed her, as she stood in the dark and waited for the right words to say. It was easy for her to talk now. Just hard to know what to say.
“I don’t know. That’s why I came back. To find it.”
“You’ll ruin everything,” he growled, turning to face her.
She walked closer to him, heedless of the aggression tensing his muscles and narrowing his eyes. A hand she laid on his bicep, squeezing gently as if she could milk out the anger knotting it. “Someone made you a killer too.”
He slapped her hand away. “I’m not like you.”
“I wasn’t like me either.” She hugged him. “It wasn’t your fault.”
He tried to push her off, but she was persistent. She held him until she’d squeezed the tears from his eyes and felt them fall on her shoulders, paving the way for the arms he wrapped around her.
“I’m sorry,” he said, when he ran out of sobs.
“It’s okay. Families fight.”
They went back inside to open presents. Cass got an expensive leather-bound dictionary from Barbara. She hugged it to her chest and at night, when the nightmares stalked her because it still wasn’t alright and wouldn’t be for the longest time, she paged through it with a flashlight clutched in her teeth. She looked up Family. Pictured was a father and a mother and a son and a daughter.
Cass took a Polaroid that Dick had taken, of her and Tim and Steph and everyone, and set it on the page where Family was defined. She thought it was a much better fit than a bunch of people who’d happened to be born to a bunch of other people.
Cass wondered where she’d find her picture in it. Not under Killer, certainly. Maybe under Happy. Or Batgirl. Or Loved.
She wanted it to be under Loved.
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Date: 2008-07-21 02:53 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-07-21 07:26 pm (UTC)I loved his talk with Bruce.
“No, I wouldn’t tell you. Unless she put on a shirt that said ‘World’s Best Sleeper Agent,’ I wouldn’t tell you. Even then, I would ask if she was being ironic. But I won’t sacrifice her to your paranoia.”
So honest about being dishonest. Or secretive. Wonderfully Tim. And Bruce's reaction--thinking "He's got a point. I am paranoid." instead of self-riteous fury... loved it.
Cass's characterization felt right-on as well. Reading words is still a pain, but reading people gives her incredible insights and sparks compassion.
Lovely work. ♥
no subject
Date: 2008-07-22 11:12 am (UTC)And can we just notice what a landmark this is? The Bats all talked about their problems instead of drowning in angst. And things were solved! And I love Bruce trying to be better and Alfred quietly happy and Babs as a mother and and and...
no subject
Date: 2008-07-22 01:56 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-07-26 05:54 pm (UTC)The Selina parts were my favorite.
Scans
Date: 2008-08-21 06:16 am (UTC)Re: Scans
Date: 2008-08-21 11:18 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-11-09 01:18 am (UTC)