who Cassandra and Stephanie what reunion~ when Before Bludhaven. where Old Gotham alleyway. warning nothing!
Crunch.
“Next time you’ll learn to play nice, huh?” Batgirl cocked her head to the side, blonde hair spilling over her shoulder, as the man doubled over with a wail of pain. Feeling some thug’s nose break underneath her fist was a sick sort of satisfaction she needed these days. Between her father reappearing, Eddie being Eddie, and the seemingly asinine problems of school and midterms, patrol helped her mind go blank in a way that even Eddie couldn’t make happen. And, yeah, some of it was damage control from the leftover vestiges of whispers caused by Siobhan and Breeze. Gotham didn’t really know how it felt about that blonde bat anymore. If she was fraternizing with (supposedly former) supervillains, what was to say that she couldn’t turn at the drop of a hat? And, that was without knowledge of her past, her real past, with a wannabe, C-list villain as a father and a blind, violent streak of her own.
Another goon lunged at her, but she dispatched him with a swift kick to the head. She’d found herself in an alleyway of Old Gotham again, sniffing around for leads on her father’s next move and trying to connect the dots between him and anything or anyone else. These guys were less than cooperative and thought because Batgirl had been seen with Riddler that meant she would let them get away with whatever they wanted. They wanted to play that game? Sure, she could teach them a lesson or three, and leave them sniffling messes. It weaved a message for all of the city to hear. Let Old Gotham know Batgirl wasn’t soft.
Stephanie Brown, of course, was a completely different story, but they didn’t need to know a damn thing about her.
There was no differences in Gotham for everyone else. The rooftops were the same calculated gray line against the darkened sky; perhaps a tower or two had risen or fallen but construction work was frequent in Gotham and Cass paid no attention at all to that. The smell was the same, unease and trash piled up in alleyways, the slow-sweet scent of rot and ugliness and the brine-and-salt smell of the port. Crime was the same; Cass Cain was a black outline and the gleam of dark eyes from a particular vantage point, oh crime never changed in Gotham the way rats continued to scuttle in the black. But who fought it - contemplating that and where and when she was supposed to be and now wasn’t, that felt like words dancing in and out of other languages and scripts, myriad shades of deepest black through white. She had no costume here; she had no apartment to retreat back to. She had a sleek device that hooked up to a thousand voices that told Cass how wrong she was, how out of step, how out of time and when the Batman had chimed in (she could imagine the flattened sound of it as though he disliked words as much as she did) Cass had no intention of seeking out a familiar window and trying out knocking at it.
The mansion was not empty, as she expected it to be, it was loud and it was full and bright and so out of her time that she’d found Alfred’s room and slept that night under the bed, curled into the shadow of it with her knife tucked to her chest like a teddy-bear and silent as if she had never appeared at all. Now she found rooftops and she found the knitted-Gordian-knot of Old Gotham alleys with the unclenching of her gut that meant satisfaction. There was at least, a handful of things that Cass knew about this Gotham and she still had her own abilities.
A bright flash of gold hair below and Cass peered, black sweater over black jeans and gloves curled around the ancient iron rail of a fire-escape. There was no screaming - Cass was doubtful when there was no indicative screaming - but the heavy and distinctive sound of flesh hitting street said fight.
Cass swung, and the ominous creak of rusted iron was audible, and she was soft cat-feet on dirty pavement behind a cluster of men all fighting with a blond dressed - in a ...costume? With a bat?
Cass hit the nearest goon with feeling and expression and heard the tight gasp of breath that was someone sucker-punched in the kidneys feeling it and felt, if not better, then at least a little more normal.
The blonde bat was busy, that was for damn sure. She didn’t hear the creak of the catwalk above, and she didn’t think anyone else would join in on the little party she was hosting in nook of Old Gotham. “C’mon, boys,” she said, voice cloying. You could hear the smirk bleeding into her voice. One of the goons grabbed at her shoulder, and she turned around with a punch to his nose. “I just wanted to play story time. Didn’t Barney ever teach you sharing is caring?” A long extension of her legs comically tripped another thug onto that dirty alleyway concrete. “‘I love you, you love me’? Anything? Man, PBS funding is failing.” Stephanie Brown fought the way she lived -- mouthy, bright, and with a bit of sass that peppered her words and bled out of her tongue without a second thought. Queen of Bat-themed word vomit in purple, gold, and black, thank you very much, and it was enough blabber to distract another one of those idiots so she could elbow him in the face. She grinned, and this was exactly what she needed to distract herself from Dad and from the bruised-up Eddie holed away in the Riddler lair.
She didn’t notice their new guest, not at first, but when she did, she stopped cold. Cue Batgirl freak out in 3, 2, 1. She stared at the other girl wordlessly, mouth open in a perfect little ‘O’ and blue eyes wide in shock. Okay, she had spoken to Cass on the journals, but that couldn’t be her, right? Especially in such a meager excuse for a disguise. Blink, blink, blink, and she almost uttered the other girl’s name. “O?” she said, pressing a finger to that comm in her ear, but nothing came back. What was she expecting? Oracle hadn’t been around in weeks. She couldn’t necessarily talk to anyone else about this either, especially Eddie.
In the time she spent capitulating, one of those stupid thugs came behind her and whacked her across the back of her head with a plank. “Son of a bitch,” she yelped, doubled over as she saw stars in her eyelids. That was going to be a mild concussion. Swinging around, she ignored the figure of black tucked away in the shadows of the alley. “Pretty sure Bert and Ernie taught us that hitting a gal when her back is turned isn’t cool either. Or maybe that was Big Bird.” She made a exaggerated thoughtful sound before kicking the jackass in the chest. Serves him right.
Cass did not recognize the blond girl and she did not - entirely - recognize the costume. Even in the street-light, the amber-dim haze of it, she could see quite clearly, the purple streaked across its sides. She stared back, round dark eyes in a pale face, cast into shadow by the peak of her hood. It was a nod toward disguise, as cursory as it got; hooded sweatshirt, zipped up to her chin and the black softness of its hood pulled forward over her hair. She stared, the bat at the very center of the costume pulling in Cass’s attention like a beacon, a tired sense of misery enfolding her like the fine mist before rain fell. She winced as the blow fell; a cringe that rippled across muscles coiled ready - not a cat but a calculated spring wound tight in preparation. The hit to the back of the head looked painful.
And yet -- Cass wrinkled her nose; the girl talked too much, the stream of words tired Cass before she had even begun to try and untangle the flippant pop-culture references that had never made sense to her until she treated them like mathematical equations, to be studied fiercely behind closed doors and used with all the sulky pride of a teenager displaying good grades. She noted too, that with the heft of all those words, whoever she was gave away the hitch of breath that came with positioning oneself ready for a hit, for throwing one with emphasis.
“Less talking,” she said firmly; if the girl was wearing the bat, she should know how it worked, “More hitting.” The word was more solid, lower in register; Cass had put her weight behind the word and punctuated it with feeling. The thug who felt it, sagged like a bag of flour slit open.
The blow to her head left Batgirl a little dizzy, and after she dispatched that loser, she doubled over again, hands on her knees and breath a little jagged. Damn, that smarted, and she kind of hoped Eddie could ice the knot that was already forming, even in his worse condition. She regretted coming out here just enough to let the taste simmer in her mouth before she swallowed the bile. “Seriously, dude, how am I supposed to do this with a splitting headache?” she asked as she looked over her shoulder to the guy doubled over in pain as well. “Thanks, jackass.” She wiped a gloved hand over her mouth, and then stood up straight to take on the next buffoon. Her blonde hair whipped around just like her cape as she turned on her heel to give the next guy a good hit in the gut.
“Talking is my thing. I can’t help that I’m a total blabbermouth, but it’s also their fault for not knowing vital lessons from PBS! Who doesn’t know Barney, huh?” Steph was a sloppy fighter much of the time, never looking before she leaps, and her style dove into that all the time. Blabbering off, throwing punches that might hurt her as well as the target. Where Cass was precise and head-conquers-all, Steph flew by the seat of her ass and kicked when she couldn’t think of anything else. Cassandra Cain was all finesse. Stephanie Brown fumbled, but got there eventually.
Talk, talk, talk. Cass eyed her skeptically, and she looked at the blow as it landed with the critical assessment of a connoisseur. Sloppy. Cassandra was neither biased (the bat on the costume made her smart, and her eyes sting but they were sharp and bright and she didn’t look as though she had noticed the bat at all) nor emotional in her assessment; the power in the blond girl’s movement was being lost in translation. All that noise just telegraphed where she was coming from. Cass was a sleek, clean efficiency of movement; she turned without looking and she swept the feet out from underneath one idiot who thought he could catch her, and with the smooth use of his own momentum and crouching at the last second, left him twisted, with one arm almost certainly broken in the oily liquid of the grimy alley.
“Me,” she said, simply. There was no Barney, no PBS - Cass had acquired a taste for television watched hanging over the arm of the couch, watching Barbara watch television - the news, flickering pictures of destruction elsewhere, crime, elsewhere. She observed the criminals still willing to do battle, two girls rather than the one they’d begun with, and with unerring aim, kicked one in the back of the knee; he went down and hard.
“Talk is distraction,” she understood the method. Just not how well conceived it was.
“Whoooops.” Steph let out a sharp, awkward breath, because, yeah, Cass wouldn’t know all about a lot of this stuff, but the little blonde bat couldn’t help it. She was one of the biggest blabbermouths this side of Nightwing, and it was just her thing. Like being a little brat was Damian’s or killing criminals was Red Hood’s. The chatterbox was part of the blonde bat stamp. That was just the way it always was. In a sea of grumbling, dark nocturnal animals, Stephanie was that strange, rare ray of hope and sunshine that permeated Gotham if she tried. “Don’t worry, there’s still hope for you yet. Youtubing clips. That’s what you should be doing.”
There were only two thugs left; the others were smart enough to retreat or writhing on the slick concrete in pain. Dammit. She was never going to get even a nugget of information from these assholes. As Steph blabbered on, the taller one edged closer to her, but she caught him out of the edge of her eye. That blinding anger that pulsed through her recently shook her again, and she ignored Cass for the moment, and the other fool, too. This idiot seemed to be the leader, or at least he thought he was. Either way, it didn’t matter to Stephanie. So, when he swung at her, she caught his arm and twisted it behind him and slammed him into the nearest wall. She sighed dramatically. “See, I was trying to do this the nice way, sunshine. But since you guys didn’t pay attention to Barney and Friends....” He whined and wiggled, but her gloved hand dug her grip deeper into his forearm. “Arthur Brown,” she growled. “Cluemaster. What do you know?”
“Nothing! I don’t know nothi--.” Steph twisted his arm back to produce a yelp. “Nothing, nothing! Nothing!” She snarled, then let the guy shot off like a bullet, and as the blonde bat braced on hand against the wall, she pinched the bridge of her nose with a sharp sigh.
There was, Cass decided, with the oblique interest of the observer rather than any sort of emotional investment (as she watched Stephanie pause, interpreted pain, as well as suffering in much the way one might read subtitles at a movie; there was no empathy to Cass stood, breath evening as if she’d been for a light jog rather than throwing men at least double her size around) some reason other than simply tidying up Gotham a little, to this blond girl. She disregarded the bat on her chest with the same, careful distancing and she looked at the blond would-be bat with wary interest.
“What is Cluemaster?” Cass blinked, round brown eyes and perfect, wary curiosity. She looked at the girl and she wondered if (with edgy uncertainty and ultimate dislike) this was one of those moments in which one was supposed to comfort, to say something. Or maybe it was a headache. She could have a headache.
“You hurt?” Grouchy attempt at comfort. Grouchy.
Stephanie was breathing harder, having been at it tonight longer than Cass and with unforgiving anger coursing through her veins. The black and purple frame shook and shook, and she looked down at the slick ground before squeezing her eyes shut. “Huh?” she asked at first when Cass’s sharp, clipped voice vibrated into her and shaking her out of her reverie. “Oh, he’s m--a new third-rate criminal playing with the big boys. Getting involved in mob stuff. We’ve got...history, to say the least.” After a couple more seconds to center herself, she pushed off the brick wall and turned to face Cass.
And, she couldn’t help the twitching smile seeing her. Maybe she wasn’t her best friend anymore, maybe she didn’t remember a damn thing about her, and maybe Cass wanted to snatch back the Batgirl mantle. Whatever the case, she was here. “No, I”m not hurt. ‘M shocked you aren’t. That’s hardly something to go out patrolling in. Believe me, I know.” A pause, then an appreciative smile. “Thanks. For the help, thanks.”
Cass gave an expansive little shrug, all tight jerk of small shoulders and the sleek control of muscle beneath all that black. She looked ordinary, in the dull orange glow of the street light, the plateaus and angles of her face smoothed out to something almost normal, and the casual air and the clarity of her dark eyes on Stephanie’s made it entirely too obvious how little Cass thought of harm or hurt. A costume was, other than the mentor that came with it, just a costume. Just something that was sleek enough to aid in velocity, in movement, secure that nothing would weigh you down. (She ignored the twinge, the dull ache in the back of her throat and above her breastbone at that thought; just a costume. Just a mentor. But neither was hers, in this version of Gotham and that didn’t make Cass Cain any different, any less trained.) “It’s fine.” She flashed a grin, all very white-teeth in olive-dark skin beneath the black hood. “Don’t get hurt.” It was not entirely truthful and it came out like a boast; Cass did not care if she got hurt.
And then, head canted, lips pursed as though trying to read an especially difficult book - “History?” The energy the blond girl - Stephanie, Stephanie B, Batgirl for everyone except Cass herself according to a reeling list of names she couldn’t attach herself to - made sense, then, perhaps. You got sloppy, if you thought too much. If you tangled yourself up in what it meant, rather than what you were doing.
“How new if history?” Cass said bluntly.
That grin sent a warmth through Steph she hadn’t felt in some time. Even without this new Gotham, it’d been years since she’d seen Cass Cain, happy or otherwise, and the little blonde bat felt like they were back to their old selves for a moment. Spoiler and Batgirl, bonding over shitty dads, over crime fighting, over what made them them. She owed so much to the girl standing across from her in that dirty alleyway. Her fighting skills, her costume, her friendship. The twang in her chest, somewhere by her heart, was a sudden reminder of how much she’d missed her best friend. Between Cass coming back and Kara apparently barrelling her way through Gotham, she didn’t know where they stood. But, she knew where she wanted them to stand.
“I, uh. He’s my dad. You’d know that if you remembered me. We kind of bonded over that. You’re my best friend, y’know. Were, sorry.” The smile tugging across her lips fell then, and she looked at her wringing gloved hands. “He just came back into this Gotham and immediately started stirring up trouble. Like Browns are wont to do.”
Cass set elbows back against the dirty brickwork of the wall, until she was tilted into shadow, black as the sweater and the jeans. Her hair fell forward, across her face - only her eyes were a gleam at ‘best friend’. Cass hadn’t had one of those; she’d seen people talking, clustered tightly in groups like beads strung on the same chain, bright and glossy. She’d seen the way their heads tilted together as if they were holding something between them, talking as they walked and it didn’t matter what they said, it was what was in the slant of their shoulders, in the way they swung into step together as if there were music they’d been choreographed to. Friendship.. Cass looked at Stephanie thoughtfully, and her teeth set against her lower lip, working at it. She hesitated on ‘were’. Were was recrimination, even if it wasn’t something missed, something she could have prevented. Were meant something wrong.
“Cain too,” she offered up, the abruptness of speech quiet but not without fervor. Bonding, was that what she’d called it? Over dads. Fathers. Cass was skeptical; her nose wrinkled. “Why you get in more trouble?” Because fighting - for them, for the excuse for fatherhood that Cain and Brown were, that was lying in an alley, catching your breath as someone else won. Emotions, Cass knew, made you weak. “Send him back.” It wasn’t a suggestion, it played mildly at being a threat and wound around playful. Cass retreated from the shadow, street light played across her face; her eyebrow was uptilted. Maybe a suggestion.
Stephanie hadn’t meant that were in an insulting sort of way. It stung something vicious to say, but this Cassandra had no idea who Stephanie Brown was. Who Spoiler was. She didn’t team up with the blonde bat when she ran around in her eggplant purple or as the girl wonder. None of those memories were tucked away, waiting to be unlocked for the other girl; they simply didn’t exist. It hurt her to say it, but she couldn’t necessarily consider the other girl her best friend when she had no idea Stephanie existed. Just like she couldn’t say the same for Kara, who probably didn’t know anything about Earth. Steph missed her lady bros, but she didn’t want to force it. That would be worse. She had Eddie, and she had Damian, and if that was it, then that was it.
The little blonde bat laughed. “Yeah, I know.” She stepped further into the light as well, highlighting the purple skirting up her sides and the gold bat emblazoned across her chest. The beginnings of a faint bruise puffed out her cheek, tears up her legs exposed blinks of her pale skin, and the back of her head hurt like a motherfucker, but there was a bright look in her blue eyes. A hopefulness that Cass just being here boiled up in her stomach. “It’s not that easy?” It sounded more like a question than anything. If Steph knew it was that easy, she would just do it. Maybe. “We can’t just send people back once they appear, if that’s what you mean? And, I--he’s my dad, Cass.” She sighed, rubbing her cheek and hissing. Yeah, that was gonna leave a mark. “I know I should be able to just throw him away, but--yeah, I dunno. He’s moving out though. Or he’s moved out already, and we’re trying to track his movements.”
She recognized hopeful. Cass had seen it enough in the catch of glass rolling by, windows reflecting empty stores, the sweep of ink-black cloth, the stoic outline of a figure who didn’t say anything except - occasionally - a grudging ‘good’. She’d felt it, a shadowy figure this time, dreamed of. Sometimes, he had the paraphernalia of a childhood with him, sometimes she felt like he was entirely dreamed up. Hope. Cass felt at once both helpless and abrupt, and she wanted to laugh, like the blond girl but she couldn’t, it stuck in her throat. “I can make him,” she said, brash and confident, with the cant of her head like a bird, quick, watching Stephanie for a reaction. She could, she knew she could. No one was Shiva, other than Shiva. She looked at the mark on Stephanie’s cheek, dispassionately, bruised-red and brilliant, even in the half light. That was the kind of thing Barbara made noises over, hissing-tutting noises, like she was calming a cat. “If you want.” She didn’t mind. Sometimes things were better, if the world boiled down to you and one other, some kind of path, some kind of person that was just an elimination, a goal.
“Who we?” Cass said it delicately, aware of the cosmic knit that was the Bat family by now, well aware of voices and names and jokes that flew past like so many birds. She’d stayed under Alfred’s bed an entire day the first time, listening to voices rise and fall, like music. But who Stephanie was tied to, linked to -- Cass shrugged; the costume meant she was part of it, didn’t it?
Stephanie smiled at that confidence, that cant to Cass’s head. “I know you can,” she replied with that same sort of confidence Cass exuded because Steph had that kind of confidence in her in spades. She was still a somewhat bumbling blonde bat, working her way through the motions until she could figure out which way was best, but Cassandra Cain? That girl was a certified bad-ass, and if she put her mind to it, Steph knew Cass could do anything. “I can deal with it though. I think. It’s kind of a family issue. My fight to lose.” The blonde bat shrugged then, a simple shift of her shoulder like she shook off the weight her father laid on her, even if it would be there for long after all of this was over. Long, long after Arthur Brown settle into his cell in Blackgate. Her blonde eyebrow quirked up, and she didn’t know exactly how to approach this. The rest of the Batfamily had been present while her relationship with Eddie developed. But, Cass didn’t even know her. How could she trust her to not flip the hell out over the fact that Batgirl was dating the Riddler?
“My boyfriend,” she said after a moment. “He’s involved in all of this, too.” She crossed her arms over her chest, black covering the gold bat there, and her head tilted to the side.
Fights won and lost that you decided where and when they were fought; Shiva was a gleam in Cass’s eyes, a decided upward tilt to her chin and it didn’t matter if Stephanie shrugged off family like it was a weighted cloak that would slide silently to a puddle at your feet or if it was something that would help you fight it, family was fastened around your wrist until you fought it, soundlessly in your dreams. Stephanie had the faint ring of hope already lost that Cass didn’t need to hear to understand.
“Your boyfriend?” Cass’s face was a picture, all wrinkled nose and quirked mouth and they were an echo, negative and photo print - blond and blue and brightly colored and dark and slight and mostly shadow, stood there with arms folded, heads cocked in tandem. “What does boyfriend do?” It could be one of the boy - birds, the Catwoman called them, the boy birds. There was noise at the mansion, lots of squawking. Cass wasn’t sure she liked any woman who called herself Cat and she definitely didn’t like criminals, but she liked the idea of them being birds. “Is Robin?” Cass’s face said she wasn’t sure about that.
If someone told Stephanie a year ago that she would be standing in a dirty alleyway of Old Gotham talking to Cassandra Cain about her father and her boyfriend, the Riddler, she probably would have punched that person in the face. That Cass was even around was astounding enough, and that didn’t even take into account what she thought of Eddie Nigma before this door. But, things were different, and it was kind of amazing to see how much changed in a year. How different this Gotham made things. Stephanie shook her head at Cass’s assumption. “Not anymore,” Steph said, and there might have been a hint of sadness buried underneath all that bravado. Despite all the drama and such that happened with Tim, she missed him some days.
She swallowed hard. “He’s--uh, a detective of sorts.” Which wasn’t a lie. Eddie was thinking of that. It certainly wasn’t any birds, not anymore. “He’s got history with my dad, too. But, we’re figuring things out. No need to worry.” The blonde bat grinned because she was sure she and Eddie had it under control. No need to drag other bat members into their mucky past. “Are you--uh, have you been patrolling like this?” She waved a hand over the girl’s frame, and suddenly felt the sharp guilt of taking the girl’s mantle away from her. Not enough to give it back, but enough to know what kind of bitterness Cass must have felt.
“Detective?” That had all kinds of connotations. Of darkness and of vast, sleek metal equipment, of the drip-drip-drip of water a nigh constant (and then comforting) background noise. Of the hum of computers. Cass’s eyes had brightened; it wasn’t the Robin, but it might be enough like the Bat that it could be understood why Stephanie would prefer him. Cassandra did not think the Batman himself was anything other than human - she had fought him in training rooms and seen him drip with sweat, just like her, until their holds were slick-grasped and breathing hard. “How he know your dad?” It was not unimaginable that Stephanie now was part of a unit that fought against the shadows, family a tidal sweep that rolled into them.
Cass rolled thin shoulders underneath the black sweatshirt as if to say so what? Barbara would have a great deal to say, but Barbara - Cass’s mouth pulled mulishly - was not here to say anything. Barbara, if she showed up, might not even be her Barbara. “Is just costume. Not necessary.” It came with an edge of pride, as if Cass mattered more than the mantle, as if she perhaps doubted it, but was determined to believe in it.
Stephanie hummed, and that was all Cass got as an answer to her first question. He was a detective of sorts, wasn’t he? Sure, he was a hacker with his hands elbow-deep the shady dealings of Old Gotham, and he could teeter back into something a little more sinister if pushed the wrong way, but she would call him anything except supervillain or former Arkham patient. “They used to work together,” Steph said honestly of her father and their boyfriend. There was no way, at least, to dodge that.
The blonde bat quirked an eyebrow. “I know--I know that, Cass. You’re way more than the costume. But I just mean protection-wise? A hoodie isn’t going to stop a bullet ripping through your chest, y’know.” It wasn’t meant to be an insult, just a frankness knowing first-hand what happened being a teen vigilante. Just like Cass should know.
“Worked together?” Cass wasn’t having trouble with the words right now; they came easier when she was surprised or she was angry, and she was a little of both. Stephanie wore the Batgirl mantle and she was out fighting and if she wasn’t good the way Cass and the Bat and Lady Shiva were good, she was good, like training fitted around living instead of the other way around and that was fine. Cass folded her arms tight across her chest; it only served to pull at the shoulders of the hoodie, to cast light across a face folded into hurt, surprise. “He is bad?”
She flapped a hand; it was short and it was cursory - the costume didn’t matter, none of it mattered. “Why you with him?” Cass was to the point, no time to waste words if someone of the bat mantle was screwing around with the crazies. Perhaps this universe, this world (she had seen only inches of it, the fluff and dust beneath Alfred’s empty bed were at least now, comforting) was madder than she’d thought it was.
The judgement in Cass’s face left a bad taste in Stephanie’s mouth. She’d seen the displeasure on others’ faces, heard the distaste spat through people’s words, and felt the judgement without even knowing full-well that they were. Snap judgements were a specialty in Gotham, and while she wanted Cass’s friendship, the other girl didn’t know Eddie the way she did. Where did she come off with all that sullen frowning and twisted expressions? “He’s not bad,” Steph whipped back before she could help it. Things always felt touchy when it came to her question-marked man, and she knew by now that her relationship would not garner any sort of respect or trust from the family. Still, it stung in the worst way, having the girl who used to be her best friend express such reproach in so little words. “He’s gotten better,” she assured firmly. “And, I’m with him because he knows me in a way most people here don’t, and because I love him, and because we’re good for each other.” Stephanie blinked, then frowned. “Things aren’t black and white. They’re never just black and white. I hope you remember that one day soon.”
Cass knew nothing of this Gotham. It looked the same and it felt the same - the same dull, greasy pavement and the same skyline against gun-grey sky. It had the same kind of thugs in the shadows and it had the same array of people - even if they were not her people - ready to fight them. But a man who worked with a criminal? Cass registered Stephanie’s dismay unblinkingly, and her mouth set in in the same determined line when it came to being told no to just about anything. “He not bad, why work with your father?” she said, her chin up-tilting in the challenge and very teenager in the hoodie and the set of her jaw, looking back at Stephanie. Because if a single person worked with Cain, that was enough for Cass; battening down the hatches and calling it.
“I know things grey,” and didn’t she? Cass stared at Stephanie; if they were best friends, if they knew each other enough to know Cass had done more than enough prior to taking up the mantle to find comfort in the shades on the spectrum. “Don’t get mad at me because boyfriend not a Bat.”
“He was--it’s complicated.” Complicated. To say the least. Steph tried to placate Cass’s justified curiosity with that one simple word -- complicated. But, that would never be enough, not for someone as stubborn and steadfast as Cassandra Cain, and the blonde bat opened her mouth to clarify a little more. Her mouth screwed up, however, with slightly narrowed eyes behind a cowl and knitted eyebrows Cass couldn’t see. She spluttered a little. “I dated someone in the family. For a long time. I know Eddie isn’t a Bat, and I’m glad for that.” She fished around for her grapple hook, feeling for some reason that this might not last much longer. She was sick and tired of trying to justify her love for him to people who didn’t understand. “People can change, right? We both did. So can Eddie.”
Complicated. Gotham, the city of spilled blood in the streets outside benefactors’ events, the place where the diamonds knotted around the throat of the coolly elegant women who donated to childrens’ hospitals and the poor were purchased with blood money, by the mobsters who kept the poor downtrodden. Cass understood complicated just perfectly, even without the four syllables to click behind her teeth like gunfire; comp-li-ca-ted. She didn’t like long words - still, even after language knotted itself through her mind and undid itself easily when she needed it - but she liked that one. Stephanie was scowling at her; the material of the cowl wrinkled, Cass recognized it by the way it felt, cool spandex-material shrinking, pulling at the bridge of her nose.
“He changed enough?” Because that was the important part. Bats could become not-Bats, they could disappear and they could return. They could be missing important memories and they could never have met at all. But Eddie - Cass wrinkled her own nose - might not be one of them. It didn’t mean he couldn’t be. They seemed to have expanded vastly. She watched Stephanie reach, the giveaway pull of her shoulder (she needed to learn, Cass decided, to not make her movements so predictable) and she thought that was it, that was conversation done. The Bat did it the same way, only it was soundless, subtle, unpredictable. Cass stepped back, the shadows swallowed her whole, her hoodie and her pointed, disappointed face until there was nothing visible in the shallow, yellow light of the alley.
Steph felt frustrated, frustrated in a way she hadn’t felt in some time. It was like how she and Tim were constantly at each other’s throats, constantly misinterpreting intentions and inflections and words and actions. At least Tim remembered her. Cass looked at her like a complete stranger, and it built up an angry sort of knot in her stomach. One that had her looking up at the dark twilight sky as the other girl spoke. “He’s changed enough for me, Cass, and he’s trying. He’s trying, and no one understa--Cass!” She finally looked down, only to see she’d been left alone. That? That was not how she wanted any of this to go. She called out her name again, desperate and kind of sad and with a forced anger that didn’t sound right in her voice. After standing there for a moment, she sighed and aimed her grapple hook up to the nearest rooftop. Maybe with a fresh perspective and a little time, she could convince Cass to trust her. Until then, she could punch some of her pent-up fury on a few more of Dad’s thugs.