Who: Cass Cain and Stephanie Brown What: Batgirls be Batting. When: A while ago (all my fault) Where: Oracle's old apartment Warnings: NONE
Without Oracle in the apartment, it would have seemed empty.
Cass hadn’t ventured into the room beyond the door, the room that had a bed at exactly-the-right height for the shift from a chair, the room that wouldn’t (she knew, she knew the way all the others were the same) have any of Oracle’s things. People-things. The apartment smelled like neglect and discard, the couch was worn in the exact same spot it had been worn when she’d known Oracle but there wasn’t a blanket on the back of it and the carpet didn’t have an orange-juice stain from the first time she’d been sick, tiredly watching the TV flicker in front of her like any other kid.
Her stuff wasn’t there. And that said, more than the name, more than Stephanie a whirl of motion, more than a cadre of people who didn’t recognize her that the world was wrong. Because her things (there were few: Cass didn’t keep much) weren’t there.
The apartment would have been empty, without Oracle. But Oracle’s computer hummed quietly, lit up screen and holographs of holding patterns, streams of numbers and coordinates, the crackle of radio frequencies below it all. What Oracle could do with the computer had looked, to Cass, like someone playing music who was very good at it, like the Bat in motion. What Cass could do with the computer was a limping, lame thing, stutter-clusters of typing and the rush of holographic warnings a reddish haze in the corner of the screen. But. It was more than nothing. It was more than an empty apartment.
It was a comm frequency with familiar voices and she didn’t have to talk. She’d figured out the part that was coordinates sent in the computer’s text-to-voice speech, and she’d figured out the part that was fixing in on street names within the radio - the part Oracle had showed her, once, after Gotham’s streets had clogged with a wave of would-be criminals, when Oracle slept in short, one-hour bursts and she’d sat beside the computer, awe-struck silence and scared to touch anything.
Now the girl-in-front-of-the-computer was tired, skin sallow from poor light and exhaustion. Coffee - a mug of it, cooled greasily to the right of the keyboard. When movement near the window - half-open - rustled, Cass only half-turned.
Stephanie was fed up with the state Gotham was in, fatigued by the constant drum of death banging down the streets and proclaiming the city Bane’s. Gotham wasn’t Bane’s, and it goddamn sure never would be his. Not when she was around, or any of the other bats were either. Not even while Eddie was still alive and kicking. Gotham was theirs, all of theirs, and if everyone was willing to fight, Bane would go down eventually. He had to. So, Steph was glad that Cass decided to help however she could. With Oracle gone (for good, possibly, if not an undetermined period of time), the bats were in seriously desperate need of some sort of tech support. Ears against the ground and fingers to a keyboard and a voice in their ears. (Or, a jarbled computer voice, as it were.)
But, she knew she couldn’t leave Cass alone to it, not when she had barely been in this Gotham long enough to know up from down, and so Steph had lent her hand from afar. Sending her the comm device, suggesting what to do, winging some patches and fixes for the computer based on what she understood via Eddie. It was all very amatuer the entire thing, and she wondered if they were making a mistake diving into this at all. Barbara had trusted her enough to help months back, however, and at least they were doing something.
After a patrol, Steph decided to check in on Cass and see what she could help. Eddie was off somewhere in Old Gotham, and she had no desire at that moment to return to an empty bunker filled with dead silence and barely enough room to breath. Oracle’s headquarters, at least, felt familiar, and as she slid through the window in her full Batgirl regalia, she felt a tingling sense of home she hadn’t felt in ages. (Or, rather, a good sense of home. Dad drummed up plenty of home feels she didn’t want.) “Burning the midnight oils?” Steph asked brightly, smile turning up her mouth. She saw the coffee, saw the deep circles under the other girl’s eyes, and frowned. “Are you actually sleeping though? Jokes aside.”
Coordinates blinked red-orange on the screen behind Cass’s head. A far-spread cluster; Gotham spread them thin, stretched them beyond working together and pushed them to work alone and the coordinates twinkled like stars, all night and into the following day. They were all not-sleeping. They were all working too hard. Cass’s eyes, button-bright flickered from the window to Stephanie and lingered a little on the Batgirl insignia, centered on Steph’s chest. It was still weird, to see it mirrored on someone else. To see the persona put together that was all dark spaces and fitting into them, become something else.
“I sleep,” Cass said and it was the automatic defensiveness of a question from Oracle, there long after Cass expected darkened screens and quiet whirr of electronics silenced when she’d slipped in after dark. She grinned; all slant-sly and Cass uncurled, the dull prickle of protest from limbs that she’d sat so long. “Lot going on. All of it.” A hand. Waved toward a computer she’d fought with all day and long into the evening. “You?” Raised eyebrows. Folded arms. She knew exactly how long Steph’s comm had been online.
“I’m a bat. Bat’s are nocturnal creatures,” Steph teased with a light smirk that wasn’t all there. In all honesty, she was run the hell down and craved nothing more than a night or two tucked away from all the madness. But, she couldn’t exactly do that now, could she? Damian and Jason weren’t really up for fighting after being locked up, Dick was nowhere to be found, Helena was drugged off her ass, and Bruce had put his trust in her. It was what she’d wanted, that trust, but it came at a time when she didn’t know what to do with it. Regardless, she had to do what she had to do: wrangle up the Batfamily and try to help above ground while the Bat destroyed Bane’s fledgling empire from the heart.
“I was teasing. Insomnia’s a shared trait of everyone in the cowl,” she continued on eventually. She stretched up to her face, fingers catching on her cowl to tug it off, but froze at the last second. This Cass hadn’t seen Stephanie without her mask, and she didn’t know why that made her so uncomfortable, but it did. So, her hand fell away, fell to her side, and swung there for a moment before approaching the other girl and the computer. Full Batgirl costume still in tact. “What are you working on here?” she asked, pointing at the flashing lights across the screen. Stephanie hadn’t had much of a chance to keep tracking the goings-on of Gotham after she patched up with Eddie, choosing instead to patrol, mostly, or prepare for Bruce’s confrontation with Bane.
Cass watched as Stephanie’s fingers skittered up over mask material - she knew how that felt, the slide of your own fingers through the thin protection, knowing exactly how vulnerable you would be for the split-second the world was cool and air hit your face, until you adjusted to being yourself and not the symbol once again; she was not surprised when Steph’s hands went slack, she’d never seen the girl in black and purple, nothing but the bright sunshine of her hair to identify, but something (small, and hot, and disappointed) stirred itself in the back of her throat.
“It’s Oracle’s.” A tight, unhappy shrug. Cass fought battles down in Gotham, she didn’t mind wet and she didn’t mind dark and she didn’t mind fighting those greater or bigger than her, or those who knocked her down. She did mind the electronic stutter and start of Oracle’s computer beneath her fingertips, struggling with a system that didn’t just require words, it required Oracle’s own fluidity, the warm confidence with which she approached the computer. Oracle knew how to use it. Cass just fumbled in the dark. “Was set up to follow you. All of you. Any comm on frequency. Pulls from police scanner,” the hiss and crackle of the monitor in the corner, turned down to low. There was no point in listening if she wasn’t going out there herself, was she? The computer hummed, turned the buzz of words into locations that lit up on the map, flared quietly gold or red given severity. “Been sending you to these.” Cass tapped the screen, she turned to look at Stephanie, a small, rather tired smile.
“Figured it out. They talk. Computer translates. Wish it could work for me.” The smile slipped. “Been fighting?” Stephanie fought well. Just not as well as Cass herself; it was not pride, not particularly just then. Knowing where she was useful and where she wasn’t - without a mask, she would be useless.
Stephanie had seen Oracle at work before, seen her fingers run over a keyboard like a pianist at his favorite instrument, and had marveled at how the woman could work. It was similar, in a way, to watching Eddie work so effortlessly. It was like watching magicians at work as they tapped away at their keyboards working their best magic. She got it, some of it, but not at the lightning-fast speed Oracle or Eddie could perform. Cass, from what Steph had just seen, seemed to be sufficient enough, able to pick up whatever Oracle’s system was like in this Gotham. She looked impressed at the other girl, and she smiled over at her before coming forward to lean against the back of the computer chair to get a closer look.
“You’re doing a good job,” she assured the other girl. The blonde bat beamed down at Cass before turning back to the screen. There were clusters in certain places that she noted and familiar gangs that Cass and Eddie had alerted her towards while she was out and about patrolling. She nodded, then rolled her head away, a tired crack of her neck popping in the air. “Yeah, my rib hurts like a bitch, but I’ll be better once all of this is over. I’ve been trying to help Bruce prep for when he goes after Bane, too. Securing sewers and whatever.” She rubbed the back of her neck and closed her eyes with a sort of exhaustion surely Cass was familiar with.
It sounded like an old complaint, one that Cass had kept to herself and the bathroom mirror, the clouds of steam obscuring purpled bruises and broken ribs, the hot water running away long before it stopped aching. It was always ‘after the next fight’ until it healed the way it would. Cass curled one foot beneath her, her smile was knowing, rueful. The screen shifted, panning out until the whole of Gotham was shown on screen and then spanning through known hot-spots, zooming in. It was a program Oracle had had running, and once on, it kept going, making use of the police scanner and any camera whose digital signal could be ported through, all across the city.
“Rib hurts, strap it up.” Fighting with one side open - even unconsciously open - was worse than not fighting at all. It was a signal as easy to read as - Cass fumbled, those primers Oracle had tried to bully her into as ‘homework’ had not been easy in the slightest, but Oracle read books the way Cass watched people, effortlessly. “He likes you by his side then.” Non-committal. Non-judgmental. It stung, but only a little. This Bat wasn’t her Bat, after all. He didn’t know her to reject her.
Steph looked down at Cass with a sort of amusement one would hold for a best friend, but quickly squashed it knowing full-well that they weren’t really anywhere near there yet. (If, of course, they would ever get there at all.) Her blue eyes flashed again, that amusement flickering in and out, but eventually she settled into a sort of neutrality set aside for team-ups. Sure, Cass had entrusted her with the suit -- her Cass had, at least. This Cass, this Cass still instilled a sort of uneasiness Steph didn’t like. It left a weird taste in her mouth, a stiffness in her frame. But, the other girl had pushed Steph to be a leader. That had to mean something, right?
“Well, duh,” she said of the rib, poking her side for emphasis, then screwing her face up in reaction to the sharp pain. “Ow, damn. I’ve worked with worse. This is nothing. But, they can’t wait until I’m on a beach relaxing.” Stephanie could sense something was off about Cass’s comment, and she raised an eyebrow behind the cowl. “It’s not--we have a weird relationship. He and I always have.” A shrug because how else could she explain her relationship with the Bat? It was always precarious at best, even before this new Gotham. “He just started--this Bat just started realizing that he can actually trust us to help him.”
Cass was used to leaders and to following them. Once - once she had been independent shadow-streak against so much night-time but then had come the Bat, outline against night-sky as cruel and strong as Gotham itself - and Oracle, copper hair and the warm bubble of her voice a seam to mine beneath the words she’d not understood. No, they were not best friends, the girl coiled in the computer chair and the blond who smelled of night-sky, of the salt of the docks and of sweat - but for the first time since the abrupt torn-apart world Cass had found herself in, she vaguely considered it possible. She was steady dark eyes and sharp chin and then the shift of posture from stern, too-serious fighter to teenage girl with a roll of those eyes and Cass was out of the chair, the language of winces far clearer than any other.
“It’s not nothing.” She poked one small digit toward the affected area, neither gentle nor overly intent on causing pain, simply divesting the conversation of bravado. “Fight like that, make mistakes.” And her face only flickered, kabuki-mask difficult at the clarity about the Bat, the man behind the cowl so very different in this world. It was an ah, pursed mouth. Another roll of the eyes. “Stupid. Can’t do it by himself.” It was almost conspiratorial.
Stephanie didn’t move when Cass stood up aside from a raised eyebrow, but she did arched away from the pointed finger, a whimper on her breath that was masked by a rough cough. Which hurt like a bitch, too, and Cass could certainly see that in the way her face screwed up. “It’s fine,” the blonde bat snapped, swatting her hand away like a child, and crossing her arms over her chest briefly before letting them fall to her side again. “I fight my own way,” Steph murmured, rubbing the back of her neck. It helped in that church, didn’t it? The injury would heal once all of this was said and done, and the greater good, right? Yeah, the greater good.
She nodded in agreement, but she had more faith than most in the Bat these days. He reciprocated it, of course, which fed into it. She was a little girl who idolized Batman, who dreamt on days when her father was particularly vicious or her mother lost herself in her pills that she could team up with the Dark Knight one day when she grew up. Make the city safer for girls like her. She knew he was better than what everyone thought; it was only up to him to make it so. “He can if he needs to,” she offered, knowing that it was very un-Batlike to say that, but months of tangoing with a former rogue gave her a unique perspective on the Bat and her cohorts, too.
The blonde bat opened her mouth to say something, but the screen in front of them beeped an alert. Something was going down near the docks. With a couple clicks and a few tap, tap, taps on the keyboard brought up some cameras mounted out there. “Helps to date a computer geek,” she said over her shoulder with a bright grin, then turned to overview the mess going down. “Alright, let me check this out. I guess my invite to the party got lost in the mail, but I’ll crash anyway.” She stood up, turned, and smiled at Cass as she backed up to the window, grapple hook gun in hand. “Let’s do something normal. Once this is all done. No Bats or anything. Okay?”
There was no costume in the apartment to put on, when those alerts came in. There was nothing of the Batgirl she had been - nor even the Batgirl Barbara had been, and for a moment Cass wondered if she’d imagined it seeing Gotham flicker behind the curtains and Steph stood there in full regalia and ready to leave. For a moment, Cass wondered if Stephanie was better and the doubt was a flicker behind dark eyes and she didn’t say anything at all about the Bat and what he could accomplish, solo or otherwise. And then she smiled, a paler echo of Stephanie’s own and it looked shy on a girl who wasn’t. Something normal. Something that wasn’t coffee beside a computer, tracking fights she couldn’t fight for people she didn’t know.
“Like that,” she said, and a minute later there was nothing but the flicker of the curtains and the blue light of the computer itself and Cass with her arms wrapped around herself, hugging a little piece of hope tight.