Who: Cass and Babs What: Bonding and clock-tower movings-in When: Oh god. Way backdated to when Steph and Eddie moved out and post fairytale-world vacay. Warnings: Nada!
Babs sighed as she stepped through the door of the clocktower, not bothering to hide the small smile that graced her lips as she came home. Home. It was a strange thought. When she initially came she dubbed it temporary. Just a place to hang her hat up while she got the lay of the land.
But she had grown pretty fond of the clocktower. She guessed it had helped that her predecessor had outfitted it to the way she (would have) wanted it to be. Everything was Babs intuitive, placed and set up right where she would have deemed it most logical. Everyone should have their other self furnish their home.
It was that kind of familiarity that had her stopping when she noticed there was something just slightly off. The clocktower was secure, a thousand times over, but one always had to be ready for that once in a blue moon chance and she put herself on guard, even as she walked as though nothing was amiss. She closed the door behind her and made her way to her computer station, all while keeping ears open and careful glances from the corner of her eyes for any subtle movements.
The clocktower was as achingly familiar as all of it. The security had been little more than a joke, Oracle had taught her the keys over and over until Cass could punch them in without thinking as to what they signified. It had been home for so long that Cass had slid with difficulty to the cosy on-top-of-one-another pop culture references slung over the cornflakes home that now was to deteriorate, until it had clicked like a missing piece of a jigsaw puzzle. It still felt familiar, like shaking off a dream, as if Oracle would wheel herself in around the corner and scold her for the state of her suit.
Because the suit was not in very good condition.
It had peeled off bare skin just above her hip, the fabric torn through and ripped free, and the graze beneath was raw, the skin raked up like sliding over gravel (which was entirely what had happened having fallen when the suit had torn). The mask was rolled up past her nose, and Cass was rifling the medical cabinet in search of the same box of kit Oracle had kept stocked under the sink when she’d been there before. Since the announcement, she had been running the rooftops for as long as she could, climbing back in through her window at the apartment to sleep a couple hours before going back out. Now adrenaline skipped her heartbeat, and Cass hissed through her teeth, pressing an antiseptic wipe against the broken skin.
Babs followed the sound of rustling, silent steps urging her deeper into the room until she could peek around the corner and see who it was. Thankfully, she spotted the familiar shape, the swath of black, and let her guard slip ever so slightly. “Cass?” It was impossible to keep the confusion and surprise from her voice. She had been at the tower for months now and while the invitation to return was always on the table, Cass had never taken her up on it. She assumed that if the younger girl would, she’d alert her first.
At least she wasn’t that unused to being taken off guard.
Her nose wrinkled as she saw Cass clean her wound, and she slipped inside the bathroom without hesitation. “Here let me.” Dressing them was always possible alone; Babs had years of it under her belt. It didn’t mean that having someone help would hurt, and she gingerly pushed away Cass’ fingers and grabbed the wipe herself. “Bad night of patrol?”
Cass froze. It was like a cat caught in a high-beam, pinned in place and motionless. She barely breathed, the shallow pant-pant-pant of her chest beneath the black was almost invisible. The clocktower had been abandoned. This much she knew; more than hours. More than a day. She knew it the way she knew the way to get a blade in between ribs, and the way she knew to snap the spinal cord. Oracle - Babs - was not meant to be here, but she was, and Cass blinked non-comprehension as Babs crossed the floor and pushed her hand aside.
The yowl was brief, sharp, indignant. Her fingers fastened around the sink, Cass glared at Babs like her return was an affront, when all she wanted to do was fix herself up and get back out there. “Stupid suit,” Cass muttered. It was all the suit’s fault. She’d fallen, and she’d fumbled catching herself and the stupid suit hadn’t kept its stupid self together. The mask hid the worst of the sallow shadows beneath her eyes, but the gloves were going ratty at the fingertips, up close, the suit had more than one night’s worth of dirt and mulch and Gotham rotten on it.
Babs could only smile wryly at her cursing. How often had she blamed her suit in a moment of annoyance. The glare she merely brushed aside. From what she knew of Cass, Babs wasn’t going to take it too much to heart. Instead she gave her a look, and continued her care.
“I’m surprised you came here,” she said idly, her attention clearly on the wound and the suit and making assumptions of Cass’ refusal to answer her question. So far, she was going to a guess not a woefully terrible night but one that shouldn’t have been that bad, otherwise she wouldn’t be blaming her poor, innocent, suit for her injuries. “I mean, you’re always welcome to. You know that.” Finishing her cleaning, she tossed the wipe into the trash and snatching up a bandage. “But, you know, I figured you had another place to stay.”
Cass knew Oracle’s looks. It looked the same way, serious and forbidding and ‘Cass don’t you dare’ on the same features no matter how old or young this Oracle was. It was comforting, even if she didn’t want to give one bit of thought to how that was, and Cass sniffed, and she turned her head allowing the woman access to her hip, and the line of her spine held taut like a wire the only sign that it hurt at all.
She had had a place. But she wasn’t going back to Stephanie’s - Cass had, in the interim, stopped calling it anything but, the brief period of assuming she had a home now lapsed as if there had been nothing in between - in the middle of a night if she could avoid it. The clocktower was a pivot to turn the night around by, Cass had measured too many nights by it for anything much to matter. “I did,” she said, with gritted teeth as the bandage laid pressure over the torn flesh, and she scowled back at the redhead as if daring her to ask. “You weren’t here.” The logical conclusion being, if Babs wasn’t, Cass would.
Well, she had her there. Babs hadn’t been there. But it was that sort of logic that didn’t really fly in the real world, even if some people found their world fictional. “Well, Dick and I went to Montreal for a bit.” She gingerly pressed at the sides of the bandage, careful not to hurt Cass but wanting to make sure the pressure was even. “And I had key for another door that I had to check out.” Another brush of her fingers across the edge and Babs was satisfied with her work, pulling back and giving it one more critical look before her gaze rose to Cass’ face.
“So you’re not staying with… Steph anymore?” It took her a moment to recall that yes, last she knew, Cass and Steph were living together but things changed and Babs was always quick to adapt. “I’ll probably head to the grocery store tomorrow then if there’s two of us.”
Montreal. What was in Montreal that wasn’t in Gotham? Cass loved Gotham with the fierce passion of an adoptee rather than a local. For all the dirt and grime, it was a city that had become hers in a way that all the ones previously, traveling temporarily through for a target or training, had not been. She hissed through her teeth as Babs poked at the bandage like it was anything more than something to keep the suit functioning, and glared at a totally innocent chair across the room. Stupid chair. Stupid wall. Stupid ground. “What key?” She didn’t know you could go in other doors. She just had this one, and the inky trails of the mind on the other side that made Cass dizzy if she tried to pay attention during it.
“No,” she said, of Stephanie. She swallowed against the thickening in her throat. Home was something to read about or to watch on TV. It wasn’t hers, but it had been. Couches and pop-tarts and watching Steph dance around her bedroom, and maybe the couch hadn’t been hers precisely, but it had felt like it. “Not any more.” Cass’s eyes were dark and wide -- was it that easy? Was this a joke? “Oh-kay,” she said cautiously, as if poking the acquiescence to a new couch to sleep on might break it.
“Oh, to the fairytale door,” Babs answered airily, her hand lifting from the bandage with a little wave. Montreal. Fairytale land. These places existed faraway, their appeal fleeting, and she said it with such a matter of fact tone. “Nothing quite like being hit on by a Disney villain.” She might as well have said she had coffee with a next door neighbor, given how nonplussed she was about it. “It might have been a little better if I visited in the spring but yeesh. The winter there was even worse than when Dick and I were in Canada. No talking animals either, but I think it was more that village than the actual world.” She offered Cass a smile, playful though small, as if gauging her sense of humor. She never knew where she stood with Cass, but it wouldn’t stop her from trying.
The smile, of course, faded as Cass spoke of Steph. Even in so few words, Babs could take a guess as to what was happening, and when the wide eyed expression was turned in her direction, Babs nodded, even if her expression was a little confused. “Of course.” As if to say, why wouldn’t she? “Dick comes around sometimes but he’s mostly splitting his time still between here and the manor. And little Dickie comes over whenever I can steal him away. Anything against cute, adorable little dogs?”
Disney, Cass now knew after several months on Stephanie’s couch. It was both things that sang at inappropriate times and cartoons, and there was a confused moment of Cass trying to align animated, singing animals and being hit on by a Disney villain - what, Ursula had tried tentacle-ing Oracle? - before she shook her head like a dog trying to clear water from its ears. “You were in fairy tale world?” Suspicion clung to the edges of the question; Cass did not trust any door but her own. At least the danger and surprise was a known quantity.
“He won’t bite me?” Cass’s experience of dogs prior to Eddie and Steph had been entirely limited to those lurking beneath windows and who yapped from the street below. She had infinitely preferred the aloof superiority complex of cats, but ‘adorable’ did not sound like ‘toothsome’. “Are you and Dick…” Cass’s voice upturned, the question sketched in where there had been absence before. That was not her Oracle, but then this Oracle was not on wheels. Everything changed.
“In the fairy tale world,” Babs laughed softly, the nod tossing strands of red hair in her eyes and she brushed it back with flick of her wrist. “I was half expecting it to be all animated. Like I walked in on Roger Rabbit and Toontown. But it was just a regular tavern. Gaston really does use a lot of antlers.” With one last lean back, Babs surveyed her handiwork and gave it a curt nod. The bandage was all set.
“He won’t bite,” the redhead said with an easy smile. “He’s a puppy and might try to gnaw on you a bit, but it’s all playful. He’s mouthy but he won’t bite down. He’s still learning so he likes to see where he stands with people. Just do your best Bruce impression.” Her smile quickly dropped until a more somber expression, no trace of merriment or teasing face. “Tell Dickie no and he’ll get the picture. He’s very good with no.” The smile returned once more, the seriousness disappearing now that the lesson was imparted, just how she knew it would be the little pup.
The next question had her grin turning a bit sheepish, though that didn’t stop her from nodding. “Yeah, we are.” Cleaning up the bandages that were strewn about, she started to neatly put them away in the medicine cabinet. “Not sure what exactly we are but that’s always been our problem. I don’t know. We have a dog together now. We’re something, all right.”
The bandage in place, Cass wriggled back into the suit, all snaking, non-existant hips and the shimmy into tight, sleek black suit. She pulled a face, all instant-serious and forbidding, the way she remembered her Bruce and this Bruce, and grinned, breaking the illusion completely. “Right. Dog doesn’t like Bats.” She leaned back against the lip of the sink and considered it. It wasn’t the way it was in her world. But her world was beginning to be nothing but memory, far off enough that it didn’t count. And Oracle -- Oracle had never grinned like that.
“Okay.” Acquiescence, stamp of approval or just agreement. Cass shrugged a shoulder like it was just that easy.
Babs only snorted. “This dog likes ‘em. He knows where the food is at.” Dick wasn’t hard to love and from the few times she knew the dog spent a good amount of time in the manner. She would bet the little guy loved Bruce too. Just the mental image of him - her Bruce, this Bruce, any Bruce in any universe - stoically looking at her dog and crumbling under the charms of an adorable pile of fur made her laugh softly.
The grin widened only a touch at the agreement they made before she cocked her head her head back to the rest of the tower. Cass was already settled in, at least a little, and Babs still had to unpack. “Come on. Let’s look at this dinner situation and then I’ll grab the little monster to introduce you too.”