#Batfic: Promises

[brb-on-a-quest]

(So there's more and maybe more additions to the post because @walkthruthewords and I keep springboarding each other into more chaotic Batfam and DoctorWho headcanons so I might throw a couple of extra updates as soon as I can stop writhing with giggles and pain. Inspiration kills like having a bunch of anvils fall on your head, loony toons style. @igotthisaccountunderduress tagging you again bc you were the original inspiration, appreciate it, I blame you for this, but also thank you it's been such a wild ride. Probably going to have at least one more addition of Bruce meeting Doc at some point because that will be so absolutely wild to me. Stay tuned!).

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“What’s that noise, Pennyworth?” Master Damian looked up from his snack of tiny sandwiches as his ears heard a whooshing noise. 

“I believe that would be the guests that I called in.” Alfred smiled. “Would you like to come with me to greet them, Master Damian?” “You invited guests?” Master Damian furrows both of his eyebrows and scrunches up his little nose, a habit that he picked up from his father, which makes him look even more like a younger version of Master Bruce. “Pennyworth, we are in the middle of an alien crisis-”

“These guests are more equipped and knowledgeable about the extraterrestrial forces than we are, Master Damian. I thought their wisdom might be helpful.” Alfred gently places all the dirty dishes in the sink. They’d have to get done later with the arrival of the Doctor. 

Damian crams the rest of his ham and cream cheese sandwich into his mouth and swallows, dabbing his face with a napkin with trained elegance. “Let’s go, Pennyworth.” 

Alfred nods and the two of them traverse across the manor to the back gardens, where they see a blue police box smashed into the bed of red and yellow tulips. Oh, dear. Alfred sighs internally but doesn’t let it show on his face. 

The Doctor stepped out of the TARDIS. “Alfred Pennyworth, by God, I’ve missed you so much. It’s good to see you.”

“Likewise, sir.” Alfred’s smile stretched from ear to ear. He was about to introduce the young robin by his side when the Doctor cut him off.

“And you must be Bruce! It’s been ages since I’ve seen you, and you haven’t aged a day.” The Doctor was shaking Damian’s proffered hand. “Alfred, is that normal?” 

“I’m afraid, there’s a misunderstanding.” Damian cut in first before Alfred could correct. “Bruce Wayne is my father. I am Damian Al Ghul-Wayne.” 

“Blimey, so you are.” The Doctor paused. “You look just like him.” 

“That is evident.” Damian nodded. “Who do I have the honor of speaking to? I assume you are a friend of Pennyworth’s?” 

“He’s the Doctor, and he’s going to help us with our little problem here in Gotham.” Alfred jumped in. “Traveling alone, are you this time, sir?” 

“Yes, Alfred. Look, if you still want to come with, the spot’s still free.” 

“As kind as the offer is, Doctor, my place is here at the manor. My gallivanting days are through.” Alfred’s heart felt much lighter than usual. Things were going to be okay now.

So, I got the idea from (@igotthisaccountunderduress), so I humbly submit another one-scene Batfic idea that I wrote almost entirely at 2 A.M. It's the first time I've managed to sit down and write so many words at one time so I'm taking it as a win regardless. (Thanks, Iggy, for live blogging all the Dr Who specials, it's been entertaining).

_____

“Master Bruce, with all due respect, may I recommend you finish for the night and get some rest, sir?” Alfred Pennyworth doesn’t even knock as he walks into the Bat cave. Young Master Bruce (not so young anymore with a brood of his own, but some fatherly part of Alfred can’t see him any other way) is still pacing in front of the bat computer, sweat racing down his forehead even though the temperature is quite brisk. 

“Alfred, you know I can’t.” Master Bruce says, his tone sounding much more snippy than usual. Must be the stress. “I don’t need you anymore for tonight.” He adds, tongue more in cheek this time. “Get some rest. No use in both of us clucking all night like mother hens.” 

“Master Bruce, I must protest. It’s been over twenty-four hours. Master Dick-”

“Names, Alfred.” Master Bruce protests. “We’re in the Bat cave.”

Alfred exhales but nods. Wayne Manor, Wayne rules. “Robin, Signal, and the girls are out on patrol, bringing on both Nightwing and Red Hood for assistance. Red Robin’s doing everything he can research-wise, and all the bases have been covered, sir.” Although Master Bruce’s back is turned to him, Alfred grins behind his closed hand. “If I may be so bold, there is no reason for you to not take care of yourself anymore.” 

“I should be out there with them.” 

“If I can remind you, Master Bruce, I haven’t given you a clean bill of health yet”

"I should be finding more leads.” Master Bruce sat down in his spinny office chair and started twirling towards the Bat-Computer. 

“Let Miss Barbara and Master Timothy work on that, it’s part of their strengths. They’ll find something. You’re not going to be any sort of help to any of your children if you are passed out on the floor of the bat Cave, sir.” 

“What would they say?” 

“I think Master Jason would try and knock you out himself, Master Dick would fight you all the way to your bedroom while boring you with puns, Master Timothy would try some shenanigans neither one of us had thought of yet, and Damien will just yell at you until something happened. Not to mention what any of the others would do-- please, sir, just go to bed.” 

“Someone should let the Justice League-”

“You did that earlier, sir.” Alfred was beginning to wonder if he should call in one of the robins for backup. “Really, Master Bruce, I-”

“Fine. You’re right, Alfred.” Master Bruce smiled wryly as he stood up from the chair, pushing it back into the desk. “I’ll go to sleep.”

“You have a bath drawn in your room, sir. And there are tea and cookies placed on the nightstand if you have a smattering of hunger before sleep.” Alfred smiled in victory. 

“Did you lace them with Doxepin or something so I’d fall asleep better?” Bruce chuckled.

“Master Bruce, I am not as low as all that. It’s just lavender and strawberry tea, sir.” Alfred sniffed, feigning hurt. 

“Ok, ok, just checking. Can’t be too sure about anything anymore. G’nite Alfie” 

“Sleep well, Master Bruce.” Alfred smiled, relishing the sweet taste of victory as he saw the pieces of the black suit get dismantled. Alfred handed Master Bruce, now looking more like Young Master Bruce, his robe and watched as the very tired man stumble towards the stairs. 

“Allow me to escort you, sir.” Alfred slipped underneath Master Bruce’s arms before he could fall. 

Master Bruce didn’t protest.

After Alfred Pennyworth was satisfied that Bruce Wayne would sleep, he walked down to the bat cave, being careful to avoid the one creaky spot on the front stairwell. By his calculations, none of the children would be back yet, and he had a small window of opportunity.

He was not wrong. Alfred Pennyworth is rarely wrong. 

On the darkened edge of the Bat cave, a landline phone hung on the rocky wall. Its original function was to connect Wayne Manor with the cave if Alfred needed Master Bruce or Master Dick for something or vice versa. They had since upgraded the technology, but since it was more work than necessary to uninstall the landline, Master Bruce just kept it there, just in case.

Alfred smiled as he picked up the receiver end. He had the phone number he needed etched into his memory for all time. 9-9-9. 

One ring goes by, then three. Alfred isn’t worried. The individual on the other end was known to be not the least organized of persons. 

By the end of the sixth ring, a sliver of doubt passes through his mind What if-, but then there’s the click of someone else picking up.

“Hullo?” It’s a man’s voice, with a delightfully Scottish accent that Alfred sometimes missed when he felt older than usual 

“Hello, this is Alfred Pennyworth of Wayne Manor-” Alfred starts but doesn’t get three seconds in before the other person goes “ALFIE! Oh, Alfie, you old bean, it’s so good to see you.”

Alfred Pennyworth smiles. “It’s a pleasure to hear your voice again, Doctor. Now, if you would be so kind as to jump the pond and come drop by the manor, I think we have a little problem that would be your cup of tea. It's Gotham, June 7th, 2023, at approximately 10:43 A.M. I trust you still have the Wayne Manor address? You can park your Tardis in the back garden. Master Bruce will be delighted to see you again.”  

"I'll be there in a jiffy." With the Doctor's promise assured, Alfred hangs up the landline and goes to alert the others of the new force in Gotham.

[jesterraconteuse]

Hey so a lot of you follow after seeing my Batfam headcanons and stuff so would you read actual batfic if I wrote it? They kinda explode in popularity in a short amount of time so I'm wondering if I should take the opportunity to practice writing and give you guys some reading material. I can't promise consistency, talent or motivation. But I can promise you love and care towards the characters

[ladytauria]

wip ask game

tagged by @anawrites3 <3333 thank you!!

Rules: Reveal the titles of the documents in your wip folder and tag as many people as there are documents. Let others ask questions about the ones that interest them and post snippets or explain the contents as you see fit!

i will not be tagging as many people as i have wip documents <3 i simply shan't

also i'm including what ship each of these fics are for because if i were to include the full title it would look something like: [batfic | ship] wip name. so xD

(edit: OOPS i missed some)

(gen) needing and wanting

(gen) pack

(gen) red hood's robin

(gen) rr vampire au

(brucatherine) i just want your hands on me (prompt fic)

(dicktim) lap kisses (prompt fic)

(jay-centric) jason sexploration

(jaycest) untitled

(jaydick) a small kiss (prompt fic)

(jayroman) pre-aftermath

(jaysteph) a kiss that tastes of the food/dessert they were eating (promptfic)

(jaysteph) meet-cute (prompt fic)

(jaysteph) untitled smutfic

(jaytalia) untitled oxa fic

(jaytalia) public sex + trans jason

(jaytimsteph) falling in love with your best friend's partner (prompt fic)

(jaytim) 5+1

(jaytim) aftermath

(jaytim) another night, alt

(jaytim) arms

(jaytim) as you are

(jaytim) baby bird

(jaytim) bratty alphas

(jaytim) discoveries

(jaytim) empty promises p. 2

(jaytim) do you love me? (prompt fic)

(jaytim / gen) double mer

(jaytim) drake industries mer rescue program

(jaytim) ghost hunters

(jaytim) got your back

(jaytim) hope one day i'll be enough for you to stay

(jaytim) icy hands, icy hearts)

(jaytim) if you keep looking at me like that (prompt fic)

(jaytim) jtw2024 wingfic

(jaytim) leave the world behind

(jaytim) neither a bang nor a whimper

(jaytim) slip of the tongue

(jaytim) surprise, surprise

(jaytim) teenage fantasies side a

(jaytim) teenage fantasies side b

(jaytim) the color of hope (canary yellow)

(jaytim) the sweetness of honey, chapter 9

(jaytim) the tenderest of touches (break the hardest of hearts)

(jaytim) to be yours

(jaytim) used to being lonely

(jaytim) you try so loud to love me (i cannot seem to hear)

(sladejay) post-fight (promptfic)

looking at this list and crying TuT

no pressure tagging... @lollilollipop99 ; @paprikadotmp4 ; @n1ightw1ng ; @this-was-a-terrible-idea ; @bi-bats ; @jpeg-dot-jpeg ; @generatorcat ; @glaciya &... anyone else who looks at this list and wants to do it <3

[cephalog0d]

Batfic - "Catch!"

Rating: General Audiences Category: Gen Characters/Relationships: Dick Grayson & Jason Todd Additional Tags: Canon Adjacent (mainly to Nightwing Year One with some Robin Year One in there, too), Jason Todd is Robin, Dick Grayson is Nightwing (specifically Discowing), Sibling Bonding Words: 1,197

There was a small collection of batarangs spread out on the work table; nothing about them was obviously different from the ones Dick remembered, but maybe Bruce was just messing with composition again in his eternal quest for perfection. Dick picked up two of them and inspected them, absently testing the weight and balance. They felt the same as always to him, although in fairness it had been a bit since he had actually used proper batarangs. He smiled lightly, grabbed another one and idly started juggling them in a wide, easy loop. Good to know the important skills hadn’t faded with disuse.

In which Dick teaches Jason how not to lose a finger juggling batarangs.

Full text under the cut or over on AO3!

It was weird being back in the Cave. Most of it was exactly what he remembered, all the computers and scientific instruments, the trophies and training equipment, but there were little changes that made the whole thing feel a little uncanny. Upgraded gear laid out for repairs or maintenance, smaller pieces of equipment that had been moved around, little things like an unfamiliar sweatshirt and a new coffee mug sitting around. The whole effect was vaguely disorienting.

Dick did his best to push all of that aside, idly picking at some of the gear sitting on the prototype work bench while he waited for Jason. At least he could be almost positive he wouldn’t have to interact with Bruce. Alfred hadn’t offered much detail for exactly what Batman was up to this weekend, but it was apparently big enough to keep him thoroughly occupied, giving Alfred the opportunity to gently suggest that Dick come for a visit, both so Alfred could see him and so he could spend some time with Jason. Considering no amount of stubborn obstinance on Dick’s part was ever going to stand up to Alfred, here he was.

(Alfred may also have promised crab-stuffed mushrooms for dinner, because the man was not afraid to play dirty.)

There was a small collection of batarangs spread out on the work table; nothing about them was obviously different from the ones Dick remembered, but maybe Bruce was just messing with composition again in his eternal quest for perfection. Dick picked up two of them and inspected them, absently testing the weight and balance. They felt the same as always to him, although in fairness it had been a bit since he had actually used proper batarangs. He smiled lightly, grabbed another one and idly started juggling them in a wide, easy loop. Good to know the important skills hadn’t faded with disuse.

Dick decisively did not startle when he heard a voice behind him on the stairs. Apparently the kid had been practicing his stealth.

“What are you doing?”

Without losing the rhythm, Dick swiveled in place to face Jason.

“Practicing,” he said breezily. He let two of the batarangs fall into his hand and, without looking, flicked the other one towards the training dummies. It didn’t quite hit the bullseye, unfortunately, but it did get pretty close, which was a relief since he was sure if he had missed entirely Jason would never have let him live it down.

“For your big debut as a party clown?” Jason asked with a smirk. “Guess you’ve already got the costume.” He made a gesture with his hands up from his neck, presumably indicating the collar of Dick's Nightwing suit, which, rude.

"First of all," Dick pointed one of the batarangs at him and then drew his arm back, broadly telegraphing his movement before he tossed it lightly. Jason startled a little, but recovered quickly and caught the batarang easily enough. "Being a clown is a perfectly respectable profession anywhere that isn't Gotham. I know plenty of clowns who are good, hard working people. Second of all,” Dick raised his remaining batarang and tossed that one, too. Jason was more prepared this time and spun the batarang between his fingers in a little flourish after he caught it, grinning. "I don't think the kid dressed as a human traffic light gets to judge anyone else's suit."

"That's your costume-" Jason started indignantly, but Dick just talked over him and kept going.

“And third of all,” he grabbed one more batarang off the table and held it up, wiggling it back and forth without making any move to throw it, “I can teach you if you want. Part of the non-Batman training curriculum.”

Probably not remotely what Jason had in mind when Dick offered to teach him things Batman wouldn’t, but not everything had to be serious vigilante training, and Dick did like the idea of having a chance to share a little part of his old life, before Bruce and Batman and Robin.

Anxiety flickered very briefly across Jason’s face before it scrunched up in a defensive scowl as he set aside the batarangs he was holding and crossed his arms over his chest, side eyeing the projectile in Dick’s hand.

“Not with these, obviously,” Dick clarified, dropping the batarang back on the table and moving to rummage through one of the drawers. “I am not explaining to Alfred why we have to go to the ER to sew your finger back on.” He found a few slightly worse for wear tennis balls stuffed in among the various odds and ends they used for training exercises and held them up as a heads up before tossing them to Jason underhanded one after another. Jason was still frowning, but he did unfold his arms and catch all of them.

“When am I ever going to need to know how to juggle?” he asked, looking like he would rather throw the ball he was holding at Dick’s face than anything else.

“Probably never, although in Gotham you never know.” It wasn't like it would be the weirdest thing any of them had ever had to do for their night job. Gotham was a unique city. “More importantly, it’s good practice for reflexes and coordination and timing. A bad guy is probably never going to challenge you to a push-up competition, either, but there’s still benefits to doing them, you know?”

“That...actually makes a lot of sense,” Jason conceded.

Well he didn’t need to sound quite so begrudging about it.

“Of course it does!” Dick said brightly. “I am full of wisdom and you should listen to me.”

“You’re full of something.” Jason rolled his eyes hugely and did, in fact, throw the ball at Dick’s face with surprising force, although not hard enough that Dick couldn’t catch it before it clocked him in the nose and not hard enough to stop him from elaborating.

“Wisdom, talent, good ideas, joie de vivre-” He deliberately overexaggerated his accent on the French, waving his empty hand theatrically.

Jason hefted one of the other tennis balls as a threat and Dick laughed, tossing him the one he was holding and turning back to the table.

“Besides, you said you wanted to beat all my records,” he continued, collecting up more of the batarangs and starting another easy loop with them. “My record for these is five, after that I always seem to lose track of one of them.”

He heard Jason make a vaguely affirmative, thoughtful noise and caught a flash of a grin right before a fuzzy yellow projectile interrupted his careful rhythm, making him scramble to not slice his damn hand (or face, or foot) open. He refused to acknowledge the strangled noise he may or may not have made, although judging from Jason’s cackling he was definitely not going to do the same.

(Although the way he yelped when Dick tossed a (deliberately aimed wide) batarang back at him was also pretty funny, so maybe they would just call it even and not mention either.)

(...that or they would end up playing projectile tag until something or someone got broken.)

((This definitely doesn't end with any broken equipment or anyone needing first aid, they're fine. Hiding injuries and/or things you broke from your adults is a critical part of sibling relationships, anyway. It's a bonding experience. (Jason does eventually learn to juggle and then proceeds to practice with single minded determination in an attempt to manage six and beat Dick, because he is motivated by like 80% pure spite. And maybe also a little just wanting to impress Dick but shhhh.) (Also specifically referencing the end of Nightwing Year One where Jason says he's going to break all of Dick's old records and that panel in Robin Year One of Dick juggling batarangs like a very normal child.)))

[susandsnell]

Hey love, hope you can get some sunshine in today! Was wondering if u'd seen the lovecraft batman animated movie and if u had any thoughts for how a similar (but better lmao) au narrative would be crafted for a gotham-based dracula retelling? Also I think we got a Battinson sequel confirmed--ignoring the obligatory postcredits joker, what would you want to see from the next film?

Hi dear!!! There was some sun (albeit humidity + quickly turned to rain), but I did have a nice walk today, thank you. <3 I haven't had the chance to see the Lovecraft animated Batman flick (I'm quite behind on the animated movies, on the basis of having a love/hate relationship with DC Animation...Mask of the Phantasm and Return of the Joker absolutely rock but between the animated Killing Joke, Batman: Year One and Gott im Himmel, that horrendous 2009 Wonder Woman flick, I have my reservations about a lot of them.) I do know of a Batman vs Dracula story that happened but had?? Carmilla Karnstein??? Of all people??? As Drac's lost love/wife??? And I couldn't overlook it lol. I actually have, in my shit billion Batfic WIPs, a Gothic thriller retelling of The Batman 2022 set in the late 19th century and based very heavily around the style/structure of Dracula since Battinson even has the diary entries that lend themselves well to the epistolary style! It's still very WIP, but it's there! Likewise, for a proper crossover, I think the best way to craft the narrative would be to have Bruce more in detective mode investigating the newcomer to Gotham City. The docks feature quite prominently as a location, so perhaps some iteration of the Demeter would wash up there, and Bruce could make use of both being Bruce Wayne and Batman to help solve the mystery of some of Gotham's socialites being drained. I'd love to involve Andrea Beaumont somehow, and some of Gotham's lawyer characters, but there have been some neat discussions on here otherwise on how Jack Seward's subplot could map neatly onto Arkham Asylum and its various suspect staff members (fun could be had with Crane, Strange, or any of the Arkham heirs alternating in this role!). I feel as though more than one Renfield might be found in the ranks of Gotham's rogues and civilians alike, which could make for some tragic intrigue. And of course, lots of fun could be had with the obvious bat imagery/vampiric parallels to Bruce's lifestyle and manner of dress. And I'd actually like to see Leslie Thompkins or Dr. Leland in the Van Helsing role! Do forgive me if this isn't quite so fleshed out as I'm kind of worn out today, but there are a lot of opportunities! And yes, I'm very aware and glad the Reevesverse is (for now) safe! I recall Matt Reeves outright said he probably won't focus on the Joker as the primary villain for the mainverse sequels, which led to some amusing speculation that he'll just show up to befriend every other Rogue and not do much else. I believe Clayface is announced, but I would absolutely love to see another tragic Harvey Dent take, and my fingers are forever crossed for the Scarecrow spinoff we've been promised. There's also rumours of Poison Ivy getting a Rappacini's Daughter-inspired entry into this universe which. Good gravy. Yes please, and let's have her be as canonically and openly queer as possible while we're at it.

Thanks so much for sending this along! <3 I hope you had a great day/evening.

[renaroo]

Promises (12/30)

Disclaimer: Batman and associated characters are the creative property of DC Comics. Warnings: One Year Later/Evil Cass allusions Rating: T Synopsis: For an entire year after the Crisis which threatened to wipe everything they knew and loved off the Earth, after so many hardships and loved ones lost, Cass and Tim find themselves battling on different sides of the globe not only for the fate of what’s left of the world, but for the sake of once again feeling purpose. [A One Year Later fixer upper]

A/N: I would give a big long explanation as to why this chapter took so long to publish but, in all honesty, I’ve probably ran the full gambit of excuses at this point for this poor neglected story. My only real explanation is a significant lack of free time lately this year. Man 2018 sucks eggs.

Special thanks to Aingeal98, @secretlystephaniebrown, @mitchthebat, and kiyomisa on tumblr, ffnet, and AO3 for the feedback and support!

Children of the Revolution

Cassandra didn’t have all that much use for the BatCave — at least not when she compared her methods to Batman or Robin or even Nightwing. And she was certainly nowhere on Oracle’s level. And Cass was constantly comparing herself in the hours and nights after crossing paths with Two-Face at the scene of the most recent murder.

So even without knowing how to use it in the inventive and perfect ways that the other, better vigilantes did, Cassandra stood at the cave’s center, mask in her hands, and looked toward the equipment, vehicles, and computers that were of no use to her at all.

Her clutch on her mask only tightened all the more.

When the door behind the grandfather clock opened, Cass only mildly listened, just long enough to verify that it was Alfred’s familiar steps, then she began to pull the cowl over her head. Her lone batcycle was waiting for her and she had a patrol to do. A patrol that was unorganized, without map directions, and without consideration for the so-called gathered evidence.

For all intents and purposes, Cassandra was off the case.

Batman — Bruce — had made clear where his faith lied. And it was not with her.

It might have never been with her.

And there was something about that information, learning it and letting it break down in her very soul, that made the symbol on her chest burn with scorn. It was like the suit itself did not want her to wear it.

“Miss Cassandra,” Alfred called, halfway down the stairs. He was carrying a silver tray with food cold enough that its scent barely wafted Cass’ way. “I cannot help but notice that you did not eat your dinner. I would shudder the thought that you would think of going on your nightly excursion without so much as your basic calories.”

She glanced back at him, her apologetic look lost beneath the barrier of her mask. “Not hungry.”

“I am not hungry,” Alfred corrected lightly.

Eyes squinting slightly, Cass tried to ignore the ferocious instinct to snap back. Even in her foulest moments, snapping at Alfred seemed unfathomable and unforgivable. “I’m not,” she insisted.

“Then perhaps you are feeling ill and should stay in for the night,” the butler urged.

Biting back on her molars, Cassandra was too angry to speak. All she could hear from Alfred’s pleading was that Gotham didn’t need Batgirl. Because, surely, if that was what Batman thought then it was what everyone who she believed to have faith in her must have thought as well.

Her blood boiled even as she quickly made her way to the waiting cycle.

“Miss Cassandra, please consider it. You have not had any break since Master Bruce and the boys left,” Alfred continued, putting the tray of cold food down and walking toward the carport behind her. “I worry for you.”

“Don’t,” Cass finally snapped, slinging her leg over the cycle and immediately revving it once her computer connected gloves gripped to the handles.

In the rearview mirrors, Cass could see the despondent look on Alfred’s face, but Cassandra was nothing if not highly committed. And she wasted no time in pushing herself forward with the same  powerful anger and scorn which was still heating her chest.

And with that, Batgirl was on her way to Gotham, without any tactics or plans other than to punch every person in the seedy underbelly of the city. There was no one to give her guidance or to have her back. And the further she drove, the more she felt that ominous pressure.

Without much of a plan and without a partner directing her through the commlink in her cowl, Cassandra was moving from rooftop to rooftop rather pointlessly, loathe as she was to admit it.

Petty crimes in Gotham were not difficult to locate, even without a centralized location, but the more she found, the more Cassandra could not ignore that the bigger crimes, the ones that would be the focus of Batman’s night, that were what the signal was reserved for, were piling higher and higher without solution.

At least, without Cassandra providing a solution.

Her mind rattled with anxiety over that failure until she found herself landing on the decorative, garish architecture of Gotham’s highest sanctuary. Then she was paused, stopped in place with no ability to move. She was locked in, staring at the city below with the abject sense of failure. She was failing. She was a failure, and it made her throat and mouth dry and wither.

Cassandra could hardly breathe as she put her head in her hands and curled toward her knees.

What was she doing? Why couldn’t she do better?

The ache in her chest only grew stronger with the internal demands when she heard a snap in the air.

It was a crisp night, cold, and leather was tight and pulled more, resisted movement more. And when rope or the like were pulled taut, that signature snap of the line was unmistakable to Cassandra.

Uncurling from her insecurities, Batgirl looked to meet the source of the sound and found someone rather unmistakable in the wait.

Catwoman.

It had been a long time since Batgirl and Catwoman met in Gotham, last time had been unpleasant and after Catwoman had been framed for the shooting and attempted murder of Barbara’s father. The time before that, Catwoman worked with Batgirl to stop some of the Penguin’s improprieties during Gotham’s reconstruction.

There was almost no telling what the circumstances were for the current meeting.

“Hey there, Kitten,” she said lightly with a familiarity that wasn’t quite earned. She brought her hands up to the sides of her head and pointed upward with her pointer fingers. “Saw those long ears and thought you were someone who could use a break from brooding.”

A little confused, Batgirl knitted her brows together and stared suspiciously at the thief. “Wasn’t…”

“Honey, as long as you wear that,” Catwoman pointed toward Batgirl’s chest, “then you certainly were brooding, ‘fraid to say.”

There was something light and teasingly warm about Catwoman’s tone, but it only served to bother Cassandra more. She didn’t know what brooding was or if she was doing it. And not knowing only made her feel all the more sour.

“Go away,” Batgirl said flatly.

“Fine, was a boring conversation anyway,” Catwoman shrugged. “I’ll just have to find someone else that can explain all of these murders going on recently.”

Snapping back to attention, Batgirl got to her feet and looked in surprise Catwoman’s way. “You know… the murders?” she tried to clarify.

“Read about them in the paper,” she answered. “Some of them were taking place in the East End. That’s my neighborhood. I’m not a fan of things happening in my territory that are outside the bounds of hard living.” She paused and looked curiously at Batgirl through her shade heavy goggles. “Do you have anything to go off of?”

Defensive to a fault, she stood warily. “Maybe.”

“Quite the conversationalist,” Catwoman sighed. “Seriously, though, if you have anything that’d be helpful for calming my nerves, I’d appreciate it.” She waited for a moment more. When Batgirl wasn’t responding, she gave a long sigh. “Good ol’ silent types it is then. I don’t know what it is that attracts the to me.” She began to walk away casually, a sly glance over her shoulder. “Still, I take some comfort knowing you are behind some of this stuff and not just that backstabber former-and-ever-current Harvey Dent. Never did trust lawyers.”

For as dumb as Cassandra felt she was, there was one thing she was always confident in, and that was her ability to read people. And that included reading people when they were purposefully manipulative.

With a curl of her nose, Batgirl leaped forward, somersaulting over Catwoman’s head to cut her off.

The sudden change in atmosphere seemed to give even Catwoman pause.

“You… know about Two-Face!” Batgirl hissed. “Who… told you?”

Catwoman blinked in surprise before attempting a causal shrug. “Isn’t it common knowledge by now?”

Not at all amused, Cassandra took a threatening step forward which immediately forced Selina to step back herself.

“Calm down, kid,” she warned. “I’m a friendly. Ask Oracle, she’ll vouch for me. Most likely.”

It all clicked together at once, like a jigsaw puzzle coming to completion.

“Oracle…” Batgirl huffed angrily. “Of course.”

Turning, Cassandra faced over the edge of the building. The sweeping depths of the city below her, her emotions roaring inside, Cassandra felt as unsettled and insignificant as the traffic below. Untrustworthy. Not smart enough. Not good enough.

Not anything…

“Okay, look, I came as a favor to a kind-of-friend,” Catwoman admitted, stepping forward and reaching for Cassandra’s shoulders. “And I did it because I knew that that person, as much as we may not get along, obviously really worried about you, and needed to know that you would be okay. I think that’s something a lot of people would want. That means something. Don’t… don’t you think?”

Eyes narrowing, Cassandra lowered her head. “I… I think,” she hesitantly said, then turned angrily and smacked away Catwoman’s hand in one motion. “I think… adults suck!”

With that, Batgirl pulled out her grappling hook and took off in a well positioned dive. Her motions were so quick and natural it would have been difficult for even Catwoman to follow if she had tried.

She didn’t try, though.

And Batgirl went to practice her brooding, as it were, elsewhere.

Gotham had never been lonelier in Batgirl’s eyes.

She stood solemnly and without direction.

There was crime to stop, there was a serial murderer to be found, there were villains and horrors beyond imagining that should have been her responsibility that night.

But all she could think to herself was how… how those things weren’t her responsibility. Not really.

For the first time since the time she had left Gotham, Cassandra truly felt as though she did not belong there. They were not hers to care for anymore. But if they weren’t, then where was she meant to protect?

The thoughts were so confounding and so stark in her mind that she almost missed the whispers of an approach.

Almost.

With a hiss, she ducked beneath the swing of a sword, buckled her knees and rose up with a push of her hands against the rooftop’s concrete. It was a swift, brutal full body kick that would have hit another challenger squarely in the chest.

But her opponent wasn’t any other challenger. It was Deathstroke, and he twisted with the kick to decrease its impact and land a body length away from Batgirl’s new position.

They stared at each other silently.

“You haven’t lost step,” he announced, less than impressed. “You haven’t improved either.”

“For you… don’t need to,” she spat back.

Batgirl readied herself for a retaliatory attack at any moment. She had only bested Deathstroke before twice — once by surprise, secondly by proxy through Ravager. And Cassandra was not eager to see what her prospects were without those two counters. Her old self would have valued the opportunity to fight a genuinely impressive fighter, someone who had the capacity to best her skills.

Old Cassandra had not been given life by Shiva for the third time yet, though.

Readied as she might have been, she could not have expected for Deathstroke to completely relax his muscles, sheathe his weapon, and straighten up to stand.

She did not move, fists still up, legs spread, but her head tilted in confusion.

“Believe it or not, I am to here to fight today,” Deathstroke announced. He then looked over her. “Obviously you are going for not.”

“Why?” Batgirl snapped. “Wait… Don’t care. Just leave.”

Just beneath his mask, Deathstroke grinned. “That’s why,” he declared at once.

Cassandra squinted in confusion.

“You’re confused, I understand,” he continued, nearing  her step by step. “I want to help you. I want to help you be better — be as strong and as lethal as you were meant to be.”

The words rang in Cass’ mind, her heart pounding. They were familiar words, words she had heard before even if it had been ages ago.

“This? Being a sideshow to a freak like Two-Face is not what you were meant to be. You’re limited by his ideals. By his sheltering. He sheltered you from this opportunity to prove yourself, and  he shelters you from the rest of the world. The real world, outside of Gotham,” Deathstroke commented lowly. “And beyond that? He’s kept you like a child — naive and ignorant. Unable to read even. Others — people like me, we wouldn’t keep you like that. We would teach you in every art that he refuses you now.”

There was a tremble in Cassandra’s body that she couldn’t suppress no matter how much she felt it coming on.

Deathstroke saw it and he acted on it immediately, feeling he had won the ground he was seeking.

“It’s true. We have an entire organization now—“

With one swooping open palm, Batgirl nailed an uppercut just beneath Deathstroke’s jawline. His teeth crunched together and his head snapped back, though non-lethally.

It was a cheap shot, but Cass felt so rewarded by it as she stood over Deathstroke. Her third victory was through deception, continuing the trend of them being less than how she would consider wins to be respectful.

“Reading… better now,” she informed him as she stood. “Also. Tell Nyssa… it was better speech first time.”

Heart still pounding, Batgirl left the rooftop with her grappling hook, ready to call this particularly awful night to an end.

[lurkinglurkerwholurks]

Shout out to the stranger on AO3 who left a novel-length comment on this Jason fic and its sequel which made me reread all the other comments and remember how many people claimed to have cried while reading.

It’s a good feeling.

[iowriteswords]

I miss writing fanfic.

Which, like, to clarify: I haven’t stopped writing fanfic. I mean, I have for right this moment. I have a couple big projects I just really need to focus on right now, and I can’t let myself be distracted by writing other stuff in between.

If I stick to my schedule I’ll start writing my next fic in April. Which means I can start posting it in May. Which just seems so far away right now.

I’m really enjoying my current projects. I love writing things that are mine, and I love that when they’re done I can actually make a profit on them. (Although I am a little concerned, because I know a lot of people who’ve read my fic might be interested in my books, and I really need that audience, like, financially, but it would require telling all of you my real name, which is - well, I have to make that choice in the next couple weeks, because I am almost ready to release my novel!)

Anyway. I love my original work! I was writing my own stuff long before I started fanfic, and I’ll be writing my own stuff long after I lose interest in Batman (though I don’t see that happening anytime soon). But fanfic is just so gratifying. I post it, and people read it immediately. And within a few hours ten or twenty of them have taken the time to say something really, really nice about it. That instant gratification is just unbeatable, and I spent a lot of time last year putting off my original work so I could keep on getting it.

I just really miss knowing that dozens of people are reading and enjoying my writing.

I’m looking forward to having the time to start my next fic, though I haven’t decided which one it will be yet. Options are Jay and Tim as Arkham Roommates, It’s Not That Funny Sequel, and Flightless Birds Part III, in which the Bats from Tim’s original world adopt a couple baby Talons from another world (possibly featuring Genuinely Brucie!Bruce).

So I know I don’t have a big audience on this tumblr, probably because I rarely use it. But if you see this post, please do let me know:

1. Which of those 3 fics you’d like to see first

2. Whether you’d be interested in buying my novel if I told you the name I’m publishing it under

[bigskydreaming]

For the fic ask meme, either 7 or 8?

Eh, why not both, lol. 

(Going with Batfic stuff mostly at the moment but I’m happy to answer specifically in terms of Teen Wolf fic or various other things I’ve written, if anyone specifies that’s what they’re most interested in.)

Umm, for 7

Share a snippet from one of your favorite pieces of prose you’ve written and explain why you’re proud of it.

This is a bit I literally just wrote earlier today, for a Batfic where Gotham itself is kinda a character. It’ll no doubt end up tweaked and rewritten in parts by the time it gets posted, since as people might have noticed, I am a Wordy Bastard and thus all my first drafts are an embarrassment of excess that pretty much end up losing half their overall wordcount in edits, lol. 

Also, I tend to go overboard on the purple prose, as evidenced here, and then take the editing shears and prune things down into tolerable in edits. I’d rather have too much on the page by the time I get around to editing, than not enough. Its much easier for me to cut than it is to add.

Anyway, I’m going with this because I’m a) too lazy to try and think of something else to pick here, and b) pretty fond of this so far, overwhelming purple hue notwithstanding, as I think I did a pretty good job of imbuing character into the inanimate here.

____________________________________________________________

Dusk dawns as the daylight dies, not that the latter goes gently. It lances forth from the horizon in one last desperate sally. Broken shards of red, orange and yellow pierce the underbellies of the cloud cover and then ignite, making a mockery of the promise of rain as the heavens rage and churn like a roiling inferno instead.

Gotham’s skyscrapers - archaic, iconic and hostile all at once - add their own violence. Stabbing upwards and scratching sideways with sharp spires and menacing gargoyles; the sky bleeds dark shadows. They spill forth from weeping wounds ripped all across its canvas, and down they seep, down, down, and further down still. Thick and all-consuming, they slowly spread and drown everything in reach, like voracious ink blots that finally, victorious, deepen into night.

____________________________________________________________

And then for 8:

Share a snippet from one of your favorite dialogue scenes you’ve written and explain why you’re proud of it.

This is from Chapter 3 of my fic “Born Under a Bad Sign,” set in the Young Justice universe but drawing heavily from the comics. So trigger warnings as the whole context of the conversation is Dinah speaking to Dick about what happened with Tarantula, though there’s nothing explicit or even specifically about sexual assault in this snippet. 

It remains some of my favorite dialogue I’ve ever written, because its pretty much the place I most feel I managed to encapsulate my view of trauma in a way that sounds true to character voice, rather than just me inserting myself into a fic.

__________________________________________________________ 

“This has nothing to do with Jason!” Dick ground out, heated.

“It’s not about Jason, Dick. It’s about you. Because your brother had a hard life, yes. It’s true. He suffered terrible traumas before Bruce found him and adopted him. And not a single one of those things are made less true, or invalidated or in any way threatened just because terrible things happened to you too. So why do you insist your pain was less than his? That yours didn’t matter just because his existed?”

“It’s not the same thing,” Dick insisted stubbornly. “You can’t compare what happened to my parents to the twelve years of shit Jason had to live through.”

“I’m not though, Dick. You are. You’re the only one saying one must be worse than the other. All I’m saying is both existed.”

She sighed. “Trauma isn’t a scale to be measured on. It doesn’t require a minimum threshold, and it doesn’t have a ranking order. It’s not about how much harm was caused or how much damage someone did, because at the end of the day, trauma is transformation.”

“What do you mean?”

Dinah held up his broken escrima stick, still cradled in her hand. “Trauma is force that causes change. It’s not about the act of damaging. It’s about what’s left behind once the damage is done. I could break this stick into two pieces. It would take a certain amount of force, a certain amount of damage. And once that was done, we’d be left with two pieces here instead of this one. But then give me another stick the same size, same dimensions, only made of metal instead of wood. I could break that in two as well. But it would require a whole different kind of force, a whole different order of damage. Still, in the end, once it was done, we’d be left with two pieces of that too, instead of the one we started with.”

“Two different sticks,” Dinah continued. “Two different traumas. Two different applications of force. And the only thing in common is in the end….both sticks would be transformed. Neither would be what they were originally. Not less. Not more. But different. Changed by the trauma they endured. You want to quantify that trauma? You probably could. It’d be arbitrary, but you could do it. You could calculate the force used, define parameters for the damage it caused. But what would that mean? What’s the outcome? What happens because you decided one trauma was greater than the other? How does that alter the fact, the reality, that in the end, the survivors of those two different traumas are changed? Something different from what they started as?”

“But it is different,” Dick insisted. He looked confused though, rather than forceful. “Context matters. The situations matter.”

“Yes, they do,” Dinah agreed. “But it’s a question of focus, not degree. Which trauma was worse only really matters when you’re focused on the trauma. When you’re looking at what the trauma leaves behind though? When you focus on the survivors? If you ask me, what really matters most is…how are they different? How were they changed?”

[ladytauria]

20 questions for fic writers

tagged by @zeroducks-2! thank you <3

How many works do you have on AO3?

90 total, with 8 of them for my original fiction pseud.

What’s your total A03 word count?

266,163. however, i like to subtract 2 of the original works i wrote, 'cause most of the writing is no longer canon to the project it was written for xD so, 198,925. still impressive!

What fandoms do you write for?

whatever fandom i'm obsessed with at the moment.

in the past, that's been super robot monkey team hyper force go!; how to train your dragon; ghost hunt; percy jackson & the olympians; legend of zelda; and ducktales (2017). there are a few other fandoms but those works never left my drafts xD

currently, it's DCU, & mostly bats at that <3

What are your top five fics by kudos?

in a diner at midnight (1,161 kudos) -> first story in my reverse robins series, as well as the first batfic i ever published lol. Tim catches Jason stealing the Batmobile's tires after he was sent back to the car, and does what any good Robin would: laugh his ass off and then buy him dinner.

you know just what i need (1,158 kudos) -> Tim is an omega. Jason is an alpha. Jason likes him, but he knows he blew his chances at being with Tim years ago. That changes, after he finds out that Tim has experienced a string of rejections, as he prefers to dominate alphas in bed. Jason is... entirely unopposed to this.

early confrontations (814) -> another part of the reverse robins series. When Jason finds out that Tim might be alive and operating as the Red Hood, he decides the best course of action is to break into his apartment.

inquiring minds (794) -> the only non-DC fic on this list. Ducktales (2017). Penumbra wants to know how Donald didn't burn up in Earth's atmosphere.

held together (792) -> another part of the reverse robins series. After Bruce accuses Jason of killing Garzonas, he goes to Tim for comfort.

Do you respond to comments? Why or why not?

There for a while I was only responding if someone had a question, but now I do try to respond more, even if just to say thank you, or send back a heart emoji in return xD

What’s the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending?

Hmmm. I don't write a lot of unhappy endings xD But "empty promises" is probably the angstiest ending I've written. Maybe "twenty to one."

What’s the fic you wrote with the happiest ending?

Hmm…

Edit: I didn’t realize I forgot to finish answering this one!! Most of my fics end happily so I’m not sure which one has the happiest 🤔 I will have to look through and edit again with a proper answer lmao

Do you get hate on your fic?

Not in a while. Only once on AO3. Twice on FFN. Some people weren't very happy I wrote genderfluid Link :) And then prior to that-- I mean. It was hate, I guess, but it was more funny than anything else. Guest account was upset at the length of my oneshot collection entries and started advertising for a date, lmao. Ah, trolls.

Do you write smut?

Yes. Usually with feelings, and on occasion, with plot.

Do you write crossovers?

Hmm, I have had a conversation about crossing over my first fandom with DC, but idk if that will ever actually leave my drafts ^^;

That said, I do like the idea of writing fusions?

Have you ever had a fic stolen?

Not that I know of.

Have you ever had a fic translated?

No.

Have you ever co-written a fic?

Not in a very long time! And the two I was co-writing never did get finished, lol.

What‘s your all-time favourite ship?

I hop fandoms and multi-ship too much to have an "all-time" favorite ship. But currently I vibe hardest with JayTim.

What’s the WIP you want to finish but doubt you ever will?

Hmm...

So I tend to either plod along at WIPs until they're either finished or I've moved fandoms xD Every now and then I will scrap one, but for the most part, there's a pretty good chance of me finishing the fics I start.

That said...

I don't know exactly what the problem is, but I've been having a really difficult time working on the tenderest of touches. Stray!Tim x Hood!Jason teaming up to kill the Joker, and as they're waiting for their plans to come to fruition, they end up having lots of ill-advised kinky sex... which slowly causes their feelings for each other to deepen and reveal themselves.

There are also some identity shenanigans, as Jason never learned Tim's secret ID and Tim has no idea that Hood is his dead first crush :)

What’s your writing strengths?

I think I'm good at conveying emotion. I also think I do alright with dialogue :) And, hm, metaphors / imagery?

What’s your writing weaknesses?

Character voice. Not so much in dialogue, but in the prose? I tend to stick to 3rd Person Limited, and I feel like my personal writing voice tends to come out too strong & overwhelm the character's.

Endings. Sometimes I find the right one, but other times I meander for a while, or just. Decide to stop it at a certain point, which can be a little abrupt.

Juggling more than so many characters. This one hasn't shown up so much in DC fics because I don't think I've really written much with more than 3 characters, but that's about my limit. After that I end up forgetting people / certain characters end up kind of disappearing.

Thoughts on writing dialogue in another language for a fic?

A word here or two, yes. A couple of lines, maybe. But any more than that... not likely?

First fandom you wrote for?

Super Robot Monkey Team Hyper Force Go! An old Disney cartoon from the early 00s. It was... mecha-anime adjacent, centering around a human and his five cybernetic monkey teammates trying to stop their planet from being (destroyed? ruined? corrupted?) by the Skeleton King.

Favourite fic you’ve ever written?

Hmm...

Okay, actually my favorite fic I've written hasn't been posted yet. I was persuaded to make it longer and--well. I had ideas, so. That's what I'm doing :)

But of the ones I have posted...

It's a toss-up. Because like... I have two that I genuinely enjoy re-reading because (at least for the moment xD) I have no complaints. And then there are two I'm just. Genuinely proud of the concept and the outcome, even if there are areas I might want to fix, I think I did a good job anyway.

And then there's one that I'm genuinely just proud of finishing bc of how much trouble I had with it xD

Anyway. Um.

I'm gonna go with the two i enjoy re-reading the most---

drape me in your warmth // patience is a virtue (rewarded by sin)

no pressure tagging... @paprikadotmp4 // @kieran-granola // @generatorcat // @disniq // @enak-s // @glaciya

[renaroo]

Promises (11/30)

Disclaimer: Batman and associated characters are the creative property of DC Comics. Warnings: One Year Later/Evil Cass allusions Rating: T Synopsis: For an entire year after the Crisis which threatened to wipe everything they knew and loved off the Earth, after so many hardships and loved ones lost, Cass and Tim find themselves battling on different sides of the globe not only for the fate of what’s left of the world, but for the sake of once again feeling purpose. [A One Year Later fixer upper]

A/N: Ohhhh boy. So, I didn’t have the opportunity to update this fic prior to my big move which has kept me pretty busy and my life completely consumed until about this week, unfortunately. But! I’m back now and more than ready to give my writing the attention it really deserves, I’m glad to say. Thank you to everyone who was so patient in waiting for this update and I hope that it’s worth the time you’ve been waiting! 

Special thanks to @mitchthebat, @go-wandering, @pullinajalonzallnite, @secretlystephaniebrown, and Kiyomisa on tumblr, ffnet, and AO3 for the feedback and support!

The Family Affair

Tim had always hated engaging in the high society and unknowable nuances of formal dinners. The few times his parents traveled with him had meant a risk of causing incident with international archeological diplomacy on the line.

It made Tim worldly and terrified of social conduct well beyond his years.

Those long buried memories were the only ones in mind which could even come close to his discomfort at the feast tent, sitting beside Dick on pillows which Talia’s guard had set up for them — Talia at the head of the gathering and Bruce sat across from them.

Though, of course, Tim also supposed that awkward was a close enough sensation to it as well. Maybe that should have been his first instinctive association.

And by maybe, he of course meant most likely.

“I am afraid, Robin, that we only have access to local cuisine,” Talia spoke lightly. “My resources are stretched thin as it is at the moment, I have various assets in the region requiring my…” Talia trailed off, looking toward Bruce meaningfully, “guardianship.”

Bruce took another drink prior to returning Talia’s gaze.

“There are many things in this region which require my attention as well,” Bruce replied. “Direct or otherwise.”

There was something in his tone that made both Tim and Dick glance to each other, like they couldn’t tell if it was something they alone had heard. But it wasn’t.

There was a context to the conversation utterly lost on them.

Talia looked to Tim again, her gaze all but freezing him in place. “Robin, if you do require something, however, you have only to ask.”

It was becoming obvious to Tim that he was encroaching on rude behavior, and anxieties buried with childhood began to fester once more.

He looked at the Ethiopian food, something he actually had liked for most of his life, and felt his stomach betray him with a sickly turn. It wasn’t made better by imagining it as American fast food either.

It was like Tim’s appetite had gone on strike and he only just realized how little hunger had motivated him at all in the last few months.

The connection as to why seemed obvious, but Timothy Drake had made himself familiar with denial since the first moments of realizing his heroes were only human in every way that hurt under their masks.

“Thanks, but I’ve not had much of an appetite today. The food looks… great though,” Tim fumbled through his words.

Considering the looks he received, Tim wasn’t sure if his explanation was completely accepted at face value. Fortunately, though, no one seemed all that interested in testing him either. Soon Talia turned her full attention back to Bruce and to the strangely stilted conversation that had been carrying on between them.

“Last we spoke I had chosen the side of my sister, as I recall,” Talia continued. “It was important to me that you understood my adherence to family. Even when that family no longer held the guidance and instruction of my father. I would assume that you still feel very much the same when it comes to family.”

“Of course,” Bruce answered. “And considering you and your sister’s hands in Ra’s no longer being the head of your family, I suppose my own part in the destruction of the Lazarus Pits is not held against me or mine.”

Dick wiped the corners of his mouth with a napkin, slowly eyeing the two adults. “Well, this isn’t uncomfortable at all,” he muttered.

“Of course, my Beloved,” Talia answered simply. “If either Nyssa or I felt different you surely would have been made aware. The problems with my father’s inheritance have mostly to do with those who have taken pieces from his legacy for themselves in some banal attempts at a rebellion.”

Bruce seemed interested, folding his hands together. “Whisper A’Daire and her anthropomorphic followers, I’d assume.”

“How did you know?” Talia asked genuinely impressed.

“She had been the lead in the attack on Gotham after its recovery from the No Man’s Land sanctions. Her addiction to the poison which turned her and the others in that sect of your father’s empire was matched only by her servitude to him. Your insurrection along with your sister would not be conducive to her already unsteady loyalty and she and the other members of that sect following the word of the Book of Cain were still active in Gotham despite your sister’s promise to me as lately as the Gotham Gang Wars,” he concluded strongly. “My only question is why Nyssa would be against you meeting with me when I can assume we all similarly would like to see an end put to the Cult of Crime.”

“She is confident that its conclusion will come at the hands of someone you left in Gotham, my Beloved,” Talia explained. “Her concern comes only from how much control you can maintain from where you are now.”

Tim frowned, putting the pieces together himself. Bruce was concerned about Gotham, second guessing their journey, he could already tell. But Talia… she was speaking in half truths. And Tim wasn’t sure if Bruce was in a mind to see it after she had already helped them out.

So, against those instincts of self preservation, Tim coughed into his fist and drew attention to himself. Good children were seen but not heard. And Tim had always found a way to not be a good little child.

“Nyssa’s attention would be less on Gotham if she was worried about a different insurrection right under her nose,” Tim pointed out. “And I have it, from a few little Birdies, that she no longer has Lady Shiva supporting her claim. That would mean she needed someone else to support her who would have either a legitimate claim or was respected by the League of Assassins.” Tim squinted at Talia. “Wouldn’t you have both of those in check if you were behind her?”

“Tim,” Dick muttered lowly toward him.

Talia smiled. “Robin, you are becoming quite the detective yourself.”

“Are you turning against your sister, Talia? Do you need our help?” Bruce asked a little too freely for Tim’s tastes.

“Your concerns are noted, my Beloved. And appreciated. But I am not taking claim against my sister, merely removing a chess piece from her set,” Talia answered. “Some would claim that to be even worse.”

“What could be more important than a blood heir like the two of you?” Dick asked in concern.

The smile that sat flatly on Talia’s face was unsettling to Tim. “Perhaps it was impolite to bring such matters to the table. They are better for another time.”

“And when would that be?” Tim pressed protectively.

“Tim,” Bruce said, a cautious furrow in his brow. It was still enough to make Tim back off. At least for the time being.

Dick began wrapping some of the food in a napkin. “For when you get hungry tonight,” he said to Tim.

The rest of the dinner was quiet and cold.

There were small, private tents available but Talia and Bruce were in the main tent where they had ate well after Tim was ready to sleep.

That, of course, ended with Tim laying on his back, staring at the tent above him and anxious about what could be keeping Bruce up and with Talia rather than conferring with them in the private tent. There was a third place made for Bruce, but hours later it still wasn’t filled by him.

Dick, to his credit, had came along not much later than Tim had, but he never fully laid down to sleep.

Even with one arm in a cast, Dick was determined to exercise his body with his usual routine. It was the kind of dedication to exercise that Tim might have found inspiring for himself if he wasn’t thoroughly uninterested in maintaining his own shape at the time. Instead, he was just watching the tent, the ripples in the fabric as it rolled with the desert winds.

“What are you thinking, Tim?”

After a few moments of silence, Tim turned his head enough to look at Dick as he continued his one armed pushups. He frowned a bit more. “What am I thinking?” he parroted.

“You’re quiet and you weren’t stuffing your face with food,” Dick pointed out. “Very unlike you. Plus you kept looking at Talia like you were going to leap over the table and tackle her at a moment’s notice. Pretty sure that she was prodding you for it.”

“Was she?” Tim asked before looking back at the ceiling. “I don’t think she’s being fully honest with us.”

“Not surprising,” Dick countered.

“And neither is Bruce.” Tim added it before he could even think over the words, realize what he was saying. But the moment they left him, he knew that there wasn’t any taking them back. He glanced over to Dick a little sheepishly, unsure of how he’d react to the statement.

Taking a deep breath, Dick finished a last push up before dropping to his knees and rising up to sit back, legs folded beneath him. There was a light sweat on his brow as he looked at Tim, which only served to distract Tim from the tight frown for a few seconds.

In the silence, Tim’s heart was pounding, threatening to break free from his chest at a moment’s notice.

“Fair,” Dick finally said, reluctantly like Tim was all but pulling the word out of him. “There’s something strange going on. But do we have any idea what?”

Too relieved to really give Dick’s question that much thought, Tim melted into his pillows and shrugged slightly in return.

“I don’t know, but Bruce hasn’t been big on providing answers lately,” he said back to Dick.

Nodding, Dick began to settle down in the cot laid out for him. “That’s fair.” When he settled, Tim could hear the breaths he took with a regular rhythm.

Somehow, the sound of it settled Tim’s nerves, began to lull him into a gentle rest.

“Are you hungry?” Dick asked without warning. “I still have the rolls from dinner.”

“Mmebeem lahturrf,” Tim tried his best to answer, but an unnatural tiredness was overcoming him. And even then, Dick was snoring before him.

The moment Tim woke up it was to a clatter of metal and the shine of a sword inches from his face.

It was a startling moment, one that nearly froze him in his cot, but as deadly as hesitation could often be for them in their line of duty, it didn’t cost Tim his life yet. Not because the sword had been stopped by his prepared hand or because of anything he did to save himself, but because a second blade wielded by none other than Talia al Ghul herself was bracing over Tim’s head, fighting back the sword meant for his neck.

For a moment, Tim wasn’t thinking about anything — a bleary haze in his brain trying to process what the hell had just happened. Then his first coherent thought bubbled to the surface, a nagging question of why as he looked at the ferocity on Talia’s face.

“Tell your master that the sword has been drawn,” Talia hissed at the cloaked dervish.

For a moment, Tim was just impressed more than anything else, but before the dervish could back down and run off, there was a flurry of movement and the dervish’s feet were knocked out from under him. The dervish flung backward onto his back but did not get far before the same flurry of motion knocked him out with the same viciousness that Talia had been using to defend Tim earlier.

When the moment was over and Tim could clearly see Dick was the blur, he felt even more relief, able to breathe easier.

Talia seemed less impressed. “He was to deliver a message for me,” she snapped at him. “Now it shall be delayed.”

“We need to interrogate him and find out who he is and why he was after us,” Dick snapped back.

Feeling a need to do more than sit dumbly in his bed, Tim pushed himself up onto his knees. “Yeah, I’d be interested in that, too.”

“Apprehending the warrior was not necessary for that endeavor!” Talia defended. “I can recognize the elite guard of my own family. And now our time is cut shorter due to the politics at play.”

Getting to their feet at the same time, Dick and Tim glanced toward each other questioningly.

“Your family’s? So that means…” Tim got out slowly just before the flaps of their tent were blown open.

“The dervishes are from Nyssa Raatko, she has decided to make her move,” Bruce said as he entered, a strangely familiar, stoic expression on his face. It was as if he had slipped back into an old hat, an old cowl in those moments.

“Dervishes? Plural?” Dick asked before heading toward the edge of the tent and raising the flap open himself.

Sure enough, there were multiple similarly dressed warriors left strewn across the dark night sands of the desert. There were more without slashing wounds than there were with, but Tim could still see them clearly, and when he reexamined the blade in Talia’s hands he could see a matching sight of gore.

But that meant that she had been fighting with Bruce while Tim and Dick had not even woke yet. That meant that his unnatural tiredness was—

“We were drugged,” Tim deduced.

“Not all these dervishes appeared out of nowhere,” Dick equally deduced, a furious glare on his face as he turned back to face Talia and Bruce.

Bruce had no reaction but Talia… Well, by Tim’s estimates she almost seemed pained.

“I have declared war on my family,” Talia stated without remorse, no matter her expression. “The repercussions of such will go beyond me.” Then, to Tim’s surprise, her Lazarus green eyes turned squarely onto Tim. “They already have once tonight. And so I must see to it that others are not harmed likewise.”

To that, Tim squinted uncomfortably. He wasn’t sure what she meant.

“You can’t leave alone, not after this,” Bruce said firmly.

Talia looked over her shoulder and almost tisked him for the concern. “Beloved, it is not a decision for you to make. Not when my own have betrayed me once tonight already. I will not have them endangering my heart as well.”

Surprisingly, at least for Tim, Bruce didn’t seem to have any visible reaction to Talia’s claims. Instead, he merely watched her as she left the tent as mysteriously as she had come into their journey back at the market, and it left an unsettled, confused feeling in Tim’s stomach. He could not shake the same sense he had at dinner that something larger, something more pressing, was going on, and he was maybe the only one who was blissfully unaware of the remaining details.

It was not a feeling Tim appreciated, not when the last few times he had been removed from the grander details it had all led to him losing things he would have never possibly thought he could afford to lose.

“Are the two of you alright?” Bruce finoallyasked, turning back to Dick and Tim.

“Groggy, but I’ll power through it,” Dick said firmly before glancing to Tim. “What about you, Timbo?”

“Fine. What are we doing next?” Tim asked, more that happy to change the subject. “We can’t just leave this stone unturned—“

“It doesn’t have to do with us for now,” Bruce said firmly, surprising them both.

“It… doesn’t?” Dick pressed, brow raised suspiciously.

“No, and we don’t have the time to spare. Talia can reach me if she needs to,” Bruce continued, pushing forward.

“Where do we have to get that is so important?” Tim asked, gathering his stuff as quickly as possible.

“Nanda Parapet,” Bruce answered. “To meet a friend.”

[renaroo]

Promises (10/30)

Disclaimer: Batman and associated characters are the creative property of DC Comics. Warnings: One Year Later/Evil Cass allusions Rating: T Synopsis: For an entire year after the Crisis which threatened to wipe everything they knew and loved off the Earth, after so many hardships and loved ones lost, Cass and Tim find themselves battling on different sides of the globe not only for the fate of what’s left of the world, but for the sake of once again feeling purpose. [A One Year Later fixer upper]

A/N: Thiiiiisssssss was an emotional chapter to write, not going to lie. I have a lot of Feelings about the Infinite Crisis/52 era and what things happened there. Obviously. I’m writing this fic. But this one’s where we’re finally getting to the... well, super painful stuff on Cass’ end. My poor darling. 

Special thanks to @mitchthebat, @secretlystephaniebrown, @chimerakitten, Osamatsu, and kiyomisa on tumblr, ffnet, and AO3 for the feedback and support!

A Detective’s Currency

“Lacerations found on victims showed identical stroke patterns. Blade is believed to be a dual edged weapon, not a carving knife or other appliance. Exact centimeters of length of chest laceration over the sternum from Victim One to Victim Six include: thirty-five centimeters, thirty-four and a half centimeters, thirty-four and a quarter centimeters, thirty-five and—“

Cassandra sat, perched like a bird on the edge of the computer seat. She was looking at the main monitor of the Batcomputer with some amount of apprehension, her brain mulling over the facts being read to her from the scanned police files over and over again.

She was still in her suit, cape draped over her, elbows firm on her knees. But she’d pulled her mask off some time ago. The sweat on her brow was getting to her and it was easier to hear the computer without the distraction of her cowl.

But it was still a monotoned computer droning over very flat, though detailed, notes on the cases which the Commissioner had asked her to look over. There was no difference in tone, no hesitation before particularly dire details for Cassandra to clue in on.

Just the words. And the words were both descriptive and terrifyingly brief for someone whose relationship with words was still strained at best.

To try and concentrate even more on what she was hearing, Cassandra closed her eyes and leaned toward the speakers, forcing herself to only listen to the computer.

It wasn’t helping.

“My word,” Alfred declared as he walked down the steps from the Manor. “These crimes seem positively gruesome.”

Eyes snapping open, Cassandra glanced over in Alfred’s direction and she tilted her head at him curiously. He hadn’t even heard most of the details that she had but his ashen face seemed to tell he had more of an intimate reaction to the cold facts than Cassandra had had yet. Her frustration, as a result, only mounted.

“Have to solve it,” Cassandra explained determinedly before looking back to the screen and waiting for the words to escape the speakers.

Quietly, Alfred set down a tray of food on the console to Cassandra’s right — it smelled like a wonderful soup, some oyster crackers, and an orange juice. Smells that weren’t strong enough that Cassandra could immediately identify them, of course. But when her brain was desperate for anything else to occupy its time with other than translating words into visuals, it suddenly became all she could think about.

“Gah!” Cassandra cried out angrily, grabbing at her hair and squeezing her eyes shut. “Why’s… it so hard!?”

“I fear that, for whatever faults in corruption it once had, the Gotham City Police Department still has capable detectives and officers in its ranks,” Alfred offered, patting Cass’ shoulder tenderly. “Whenever they have asked for Master Bruce’s help or the help of the others, it has been only in the most dire of circumstances. Or with foes whose tactics are frightfully familiar and require their… unique attentions.”

With a whine from the back of her throat, Cass buried her face further into her hands. “I just want that one,” Cass groaned. “I just want them to say it’s Killer Moth. Then let me punch.”

“That does sound as though it would have some appeal toward you,” Alfred replied crisply. “But I am afraid this case looks to be quite the former. A dangerous and unknown culprit with nails ensnared in the city. Difficult. Very difficult.”

Cass looked back up to the words printed out over the screen, her frown only growing as she watched the letters and numbers bleed into each other. “I need to see… If I’d been there… at crime scenes. Seen bodies. I could read them. I could tell what happened. That’s… That’s my detective work.”

“Which Miss Barbara says you more than excel at,” Alfred continued reassuringly. “But hopefully your wit and skill will prevent the necessity of finding a crime scene which is fresh on this case. Instead, you will stop the perpetrator by learning from what you read here and save even more lives—“

Immediately enraged, blood boiling like the green pools that had once overtook her veins, Cassandra got to her feet, kicking the chair out behind her and slamming her palms against the surface of the computer console hard enough to dent its hardy metal. “I CAN’T!” she roared viciously. “I’m stupid! I’m dumb! I can’t learn — words… words aren’t real. They aren’t things! They don’t mean anything to me!”

As quickly as the flash of anger had come, Cassandra felt it begin to wane, her eyes losing a heated glaze and leaving her instead to look at a stunned Alfred whose brows were high and lips pursed in silence.

Heavily breathing, Cassandra looked down to the damage she had caused, then back up to the computer screen where the mess of words and the dullness of their arrangement brought tears to her eyes all over again. “I can’t be a detective,” she admitted, biting her lip. “I’m not… I’m not smart. Everyone is smart. But not me. Not… Not me…”

“Oh, child,” Alfred’s soothing voice called. Cassandra looked up to him and he gently held her chin with one hand as the other gently wiped the streaks of tears from her cheeks. “You are the furthest person I have ever met from stupid or dumb, and I almost would shame you for even using such terrible terms against yourself. You are far too smart and beautiful and promising to feel such heartache.”

“I’m not good… at this,” Cass argued through her sniffs, hands waving to the screen. “They… They want me to learn. But I can’t. Words aren’t real.”

“And what do you mean by that?” Alfred asked. “You cannot form a story in your head from hearing them out loud?”

For some reason, Cassandra’s memory drifted to Dick and stories of Cinderella. The story that had no meaning until he acted it out for her, gleefully and with great expressiveness. “Sometimes…” Cass admitted. “But not like this. Not… without help.”

“Well, then, help has arrived,” Alfred offered.

Cass was less than thrilled at the proposition. “Batman doesn’t need help.”

To that, Alfred looked genuinely offended. “Well then, young lady, I would dare you to explain how — if the Batman needs no help — the rest of us all fit into this grand picture of his?”

At first Cassandra opened her mouth to protest, but she wasn’t sure how she could.

Fortunately, Alfred’s snark was somewhat contagious.

“Right now?” Cass clarified. “So he can… go on vacation.”

Alfred stood still, looking at her levelly, but his mustache took on a certain amused twist at the notion. One that was enough to inspire Cassandra’s own broad smile.

The butler then opened his arms to her. “My dear Miss Cassandra, I do believe that all of this hard work and intensive thought you have put forward on the family’s behalf is most deserving of a hug. Don’t you?”

Tearing up again despite herself, Cassandra stepped forward and tightly hugged Alfred as he returned the same. She sniffed and buried her face closer against his chest.

“Do not forget, Cassandra,” Alfred said down to her gently. “I am also here, to provide you as much help as you need. We all are. For we all have our strengths and our weaknesses. Don’t you believe?”

“Yes,” Cassandra agreed. She then looked back to the computer screen. “Been listening for a while… still not getting the… the bruises.”

“They’re fairly gruesome attacks,” Alfred noted. “Wouldn’t you believe bruises would be a natural sign of defense.”

Releasing herself from Alfred’s hug, Cassandra looked back to the screen and shook her head, though hesitantly. “Don’t… know. Need to see bruising. Then I can tell… but… cuts are on chests…. also bruises across chest. Why all that? You don’t defend with chest against… knives.” She pursed her lips and remembered the description of the blade. “Not daggers.”

“You believe it’s a dagger?” Alfred asked curiously. “Using a dagger to make a superficial wound on—“ He paused, eyes widening. “Chubala.”

Cassandra looked back at him, eyebrow raised. “Chu…ball…uh?” she repeated.

“One of the master’s first cases, from so many years ago. Not even Master Richard or Miss Barbara were around to help in those days. It was only the two of us and…” Alfred put a thoughtful hand to his chin. “You wouldn’t know of the connection, how could you? Those files are ancient, so old and disconnected from most of the cases solved since that I would be doubtful if even Master Timothy read into them.”

“Alfred?” Cass questioned, not following hardly at all.

Alfred then looked seriously to Cassandra. “Those bruises… they could be from other hands holding the victim down. The cut is sacrificial — part of a ritual. Master Bruce solved a case, many many years ago, which involved a growing cult in Gotham’s elite circles surrounding a mystical and devilish figure called Chubala. He solved it and stopped the practices, but its roots were deep within societal elites. There has always been a darkness capable of roosting in its place ever since. Especially when so few of the cult members other than the heads themselves were properly prosecuted.”

“It’s connected now?” Cass asked, almost hopefully.

“Unfortunately the similarities are stark, even to me after all these years,” Alfred conceded.

Not wasting another moment, Cassandra pulled down her mask over her face. She paused then leaned over to press a kiss through the mask’s fabric to Alfred’s cheek. “Thank you,” she said sincerely.

Then, before Alfred could get another word in, Batgirl raced to the platform where he bike was waiting and she quickly jumped onto it to race back to Gotham.

“Chubala.”

The word has escaped her lips nearly fifty times on the drive between the Batcave and Gotham Central. She uttered in under her breath two or three times more as she ascended to the familiar window to Jim Gordon’s office and slipped in without further invitation.

When he entered his office and closed his door, oblivious to the way she waited for him in the shadows, Cassandra said it one last time, boldly and clearly.

“Chubala.”

Gordon fumbled with his keys for a moment, looking to the shadows with surprise. He obviously was not expecting her — at least not her her. Maybe more of a him’s voice. But Cass was seemingly just full of surprises that night.

“What is that?” he asked after the shock wore off.

“Chubala. The cult,” Cass clarified, heart pounding a bit in her chest. She really hadn’t allowed Alfred to get much further in his explanation and she should have. But judging by the expression on Gordon’s face, he knew what she was talking about.

“That case is from… well almost twenty years ago now,” he revealed, eyes wide behind his glasses. “You really think that it has something to do with the current murders? I don’t even know if you’re old enough to know about the murders yourself.”

Regaining the confidence of Batgirl, Cassandra tilted her head. “Read records.”

“I suppose so,” Gordon continued, putting a hand to his chin as he walked across the room and turned his attention to his desk, fanning out the papers that were there and almost humming to himself over the casework. “I remember when that happened. He— The Batman hadn’t been around for that long. Horrible stuff. Didn’t end well for most people involved. But also didn’t go much our way either. Most of the people in that society were more concerned about the impact of their reputations to their stocks than they were about ever getting legally implicated.” He looked back to Cass with a furrowed brow. “Gotham was a much different place at the time. I wasn’t even commissioner yet. The city had… problems at the top. Believe it or not, crazy colored goons and all, from an enforcement perspective it’s better than it once was.”

Though she knew it would not pass through the cloth of her mask, Cassandra softened her expression. “Thanks to… you, Commissioner.”

“Only in part, if I even deserve that much,” Jim replied. “I’ll pull the old records and get my men on that direction… The previous detective on it… Yeah. Dammit. It was Bullock. Well, I was hoping to find a reason to get to him anyway.”

Feeling that her part was done, Cassandra began to sink back in the shadows, but almost as if he had a sixth sense toward the motion at that point, the Commissioner’s head snapped back up.

“That’s good work. An angle we weren’t going to be looking at for sure,” Gordon answered. “That’s a hell of a lead, thanks to you.”

Thinking back to Alfred, Cassandra reserved her bodily flinch. “Only… part,” she assured him.

“I knew we gave you quite a load last time so I didn’t light the signal yet — at least, I hadn’t gotten around to it,” Jim explained, pulling a pen from his pocket and grabbing a sticky note from his desk. “Turns out, we found another murder that fits the profile. Woman. Mid-twenties Same marks. Same general location. I just got back from sending a few people out so if you hurry you might get there before they do and… well, I know Batman likes to be early and catch things before we leave the crime scene. Maybe your fresh eyes could use the jump on this, too.”

Heart rate increasing, Cass bit her lip and looked at the sticky note as Gordon wrote out the address. She recognized a few letters but then the scribble was as foreign to her as any other written word. Her throat grew tight and painful. “Time,” she blurted out.

That made Jim stop and look up at her over the rim of his glasses. “Hm?”

“Need to… get there. You can just… tell me address,” Cassandra tried, hiding the shakiness in her voice by going as deep as she could, almost gravely.

“Are you… alright?” Jim asked, clearly confused.

“Wonderful,” Cass coughed. “Address?”

“Central Heights,” Jim answered, slowly lowering the sticky note and his pen. “Kane Street. Old condemned apartment building — thirty-fourth on Kane. Do you know where that is?”

“Already there,” Batgirl answered, heading out the window as quickly as she could manage. She had no idea what the Commissioner would make of her behavior or of anything, really, but she was almost too relieved to have avoided the situation of finding out all the same.

She focused instead on his thanks and his trust in her.

Then, slowly, as she got to her motorcycle and began to drive toward Central Heights, it hit Cassandra like a ton of bricks.

Another person was dead. Another life was lost. On her watch. In her city. Because she wasn’t figuring things out quickly enough.

For a moment, she almost got ill, but the second the wave of nausea passed, Cass took a breath and reminded herself of two important things: she would stop these murders because she was a detective, and also Bruce would not have left the city to her care and to her skills if he did not have faith in them both.

And with those cold comforts, Cassandra took off, heart heavy and brain pounding.

Lives were on the line.

Despite a break, the blow still felt devastating to Cassandra when she reached the building the Commissioner had given her long before the detectives.

She pushed through the emotion of the very thought of a life being lost due to her ineptitude and determinedly kept to the shadows, parking far enough away she was not seen by the officers already on scene. Then she used the building next to the condemned apartment, crossing its roof, and then carefully leaped down to the building’s rickety fire escape.

The crime scene was already cordoned off, which was good for Cassandra as it was easy to identify and also meant that there were no officers around until the detectives were there to call the room.

It gave Cassandra the moment to slip in and do what only she — as a detective — could do.

The broken glass of the window was scattered on the floor just beneath the window sill and not scattering too much further. The intruder — or intruders — had broken the window from the outside, but had also done so at a speed and angle that indicated they had used the roof across the alley just as she had.

But that left Batgirl — and by extension, the GCPD — the question of how someone could break through a window in that way and not land hard enough to make an impression in the floor’s carpet or to crush the glass.

It was an anomaly that Cassandra would not have been able to maneuver herself, and she had been trained for such things from literal birth. That meant there was a possibility that the attacker had never touched the ground at all despite leaping through the window.

That left the possibility of someone flying, or at least hovering. Which made the case infinitely more difficult by Cassandra’s estimations.

Once more dwarfed by the enormity of the situation at hand, Cassandra reached to her forehead and took a deep breath. She was doing it. She was proving herself. She just needed to keep going.

Further into the room, the body was laid out over a few milk crates, arms crossed over her head, feet crossed at the ankles.

When Cassandra examined closer, pulling out her pen light, she could see the patterns of rope in the skin. She had been tied, for sure. Tightly and without a way to escape.

Which brought the question of why anyone would go through the trouble of untying her and taking the ropes with them. Most murderers, cultists or not, would find rope disposable.

Cass brought a hand to her chin and thought on the detail. Something might have been special about the rope, then. Something might have been related to the rituals.

But what rope could be that special?

The cuts were the same as the ones before, over the sternum, single blade that was dual edged. Ritualistic. Barbaric.

For a moment, Cassandra found herself not investigating with her limited time, but just looking into the poor woman’s eyes. They were glossy and rolled back, bulged with terror but frozen without life or feeling. They were the kind of eyes that would have been beautiful while alive — dark, endless pools to emote through. Cassandra’s stomach twisted at the painful thought that it was a life that was gone before she could personally have ever known her.

And that was sad.

By instinct, Cassandra began to move her hand toward the woman’s face, to close her eyes out of respect, when she heard the rumbling, dry voice of a man.

“Don’t. The police detectives need their turn.”

Without a moment’s hesitation, Cassandra leaped over the crime scene, barreled through the apartment door and tackled the man who had been watching her at the waist. He must have been there before her in order to have not been noticed, but that also meant he had been hiding in the shadows from the other police officers on the scene in order to have seen her.

There was a very short list of people who would be in the room still after the police came to a clime scene.

The man was frightfully strong. Though he was taken down by the tackle and didn’t seem to have a particular fighting style to go off of, he was quick to rely on muscle memory for a swinging punch back in Cassandra’s direction.

When the man jabbed with his right fist it was tight and controlled, carrying the momentum all the way through. When he threw his right fist, it was quick to withdraw and go for a second punch she also evaded. His footwork changed, being quick and swaying.

Batgirl didn’t have to think for too long about who it was she was fighting.

Without another moment’s hesitation, she grabbed the bolas from her utility belt and in a blink of an eye threw both — wrapping around the man’s torso and ankles. He let out a grunt before falling.

Cassandra stood over him, eyes narrowed. “Two-Face.”

“Not anymore,” he grunted in return, struggling against the ropes. The normal face looked back at her from beneath a toboggan cap. “Just Harvey Dent now. Now let me go.”

She narrowed her eyes. “Why?”

“Because I’ve not done anything wrong,” he argued.

“No. Why here?” she demanded.

“Because I heard about the murder from the police scanner he gave me so I came to work the case before they got here and the evidence was away from me for good,” he answered.

Confused, Cassandra tilted back away from him. He wasn’t lying… “Who gave you it?”

“Batman,” he answered. “When he told me I had to protect the city. You can ask him yourself if you don’t believe me.”

“You?” Cass asked, heart thumping in her chest. “You… He left you the city… to…”

Police were racing up the stairs and Cassandra’s opportunity to further examine the crime scene was gone. But she wouldn’t have been able to do more even if they hadn’t been barging in. With a few quick steps past Harvey Dent, Cassandra was out the window of the adjacent room and grappling to the rooftop of the nearby building.

Unlike her beauty and grace before, however, she wobbled carelessly and once she was at the top of the roof, she slammed into the cement hard, rolling over the tarmac top until her momentum gave way and she stopped on her stomach, face buried into the surface as she tried her hardest to sob, to scream, but only came out with dry heaves so painful her lungs felt like they were going to swell and burst.

He didn’t leave her the city.

He just left.

They all just left. And she had nothing. She wasn’t even a detective without help.

Her heaving continued, her whole body shuddering with them, as the large feathers and plumes on the surface of the building blew around her in the wind.

[renaroo]

Promises (9/30)

Disclaimer: Batman and associated characters are the creative property of DC Comics. Warnings: One Year Later/Evil Cass allusions Rating: T Synopsis: For an entire year after the Crisis which threatened to wipe everything they knew and loved off the Earth, after so many hardships and loved ones lost, Cass and Tim find themselves battling on different sides of the globe not only for the fate of what’s left of the world, but for the sake of once again feeling purpose. [A One Year Later fixer upper]

A/N: Once again I’m apologizing for a long wait and thanking you all for the support and patience! We’ve got a Tim chapter but I think everyone’s in for a surprise with the directions it will go ;  ) 

Special thanks to @gordon88, @mitchthebat, @secretlystephaniebrown,  @chimaerakitten, @the-gible-squad and Kiyomisa on tumblr, ffnet, and AO3 for the feedback and support!

The Desert of Fools

At some point in his life, Tim had stopped asking what his destination was when he got on airplanes with certain people. He accepted his ticket, got on the WE private jet, followed Bruce and Dick down the halls of international airports, and took his ticket for the next connecting flight as they got on smaller and smaller passenger planes.

He only read what their next point was when he got the ticket in his hands.

When he was younger and he still lived in a world where Jack and Janet were Dad and Mom still, the idea of how they could go weeks or even months without stopping their travels, even if it was for work, was utterly baffling to Tim. He was young, and he could not imagine wanting so badly to be away from home and from Gotham that he wouldn’t even register how long it had been since he saw his family.

A part of him, leaning against the smallest passenger plane’s window, looking out into the night sky, couldn’t help but wonder whether it was a good thing or a bad thing that he felt closer to his parents in death than he ever had in life.

He wasn’t paying attention when Dick’s elbow nudged his arm, drawing Tim’s attention from the window at last and instead to the magazine that Dick was holding up to Tim’s face. It was such an unexpected interaction that Tim could only blink a few times at his mentor and brother.

“You look like you could use some reading to put you to sleep,” Dick explained, handing the magazine over.

“Reading doesn’t make me sleepy,” Tim informed him, looking to the page Dick had left the magazine turned to all the same. He paused and looked suspiciously at the former Boy Wonder. “Why do you want me to see an advertisement from Lex Corp that they’re artificially giving people super powers?” he asked.

“Is that the page I left it on?” Dick hummed, leaning back and closing his eyes. “Hm, dunno. Quite a mystery to keep us preoccupied with, though, isn’t it?”

“It’ll end in disaster, what’s the mystery about it?” Tim asked, eyebrow raised as he looked the page over. “Everything Lex Luthor touches is warped and doomed.”

That got a laugh out of Dick, though he didn’t open his eyes.

Tim was filled with relief that the other vigilante hadn’t looked at him, else he might have seen the full body flinch Tim said after the words left his mouth. Everything he touches is warped and doomed.

For the first time in his life, Tim felt like he had something in common with the world’s greatest criminal mastermind.

The last place in the world they probably should have been was Morocco. There were tensions heating up around Biyala and Black Adam had taken over Khandaq as well as made a family to match Captain Marvel’s. And that was just what Tim could gleam from his broken broken French and the headlines on a magazine stand.

“Has Bruce said why we’re here yet?” Tim asked Dick without really turning away from the newspapers. “He’s not really the type for spontaneity. Usually.”

Everything about the trip, about the location, about them was obscenely off and Tim didn’t know how he felt about any of it. In truth, he probably should have felt a touch worse about the circumstances.

Should have. Would have.

Cassandra had been left alone with Alfred in Gotham, and really not given a proper reasoning for it. Yet Tim continued to feel the twist and turns of his stomach wishing desperately why couldn’t that have been him.

He heard a noise like something ruffling from a nearby stand and he turned enough to see a floor-to-ceiling high bird cage made of wood, filled to the brim with exotic birds, all clamoring and fighting each other.

There were too many of them.

He focused on the red breasted bird with black wings and knew, somewhere deep down, that the answer as to why it was Cassandra in Gotham and not him was because if he was alone, if they let him be, he could go back.

He was at the point where it was still a possibility. Without Kon without Steph without his father or anyone else in the entire damn world, the question became a matter of when he would quit and not would.

Tim, the boy who asked to be Robin, who begged to be Robin, to bring his hero from the brink of the darkness he had sunk into over the desert fields that were only part of a continent away from them right there and then. And he couldn’t remember why he would put on the cape without Batman’s urgings.

The joy was gone. Tim’s joy was gone.

And he couldn’t understand how anyone else around him could still have their own.

After a few long moments of waiting for an answer that didn’t come, Tim turned around finally and looked for Dick and his signature blue cast and arm sling. Dick was also looking at something — or, rather, someone. That someone being Bruce on the other side of the market. Tim walked up to Dick’s side and looked at him for a moment before tilting his head and squinting. “Did you hear me?”

“Hm?” Dick asked, looking down to Tim. “Sorry, Li’l Bro. I was just… well, looking out for Bruce. He’s off his game.”

Leveling an even glare at Dick, Tim waited for the irony to watch up with him. It never did and he sighed, crossing his arms. “Really? Hadn’t noticed…”

“Really?” Dick asked back. When he finally looked directly at Tim, Dick furrowed his brows and looked rather displeased.

The concentration on him made Tim feel a weird itch through his body and he rubbed at his neck awkwardly. “What?”

“Are you feeling okay?” Dick asked seriously. “You’re not acting yourself either. And… I guess the funeral wasn’t that long ago and…”

Before Tim could filter his own mouth he glanced back to the newspaper stand. “Which funeral?”

There was a heavy silence for a moment then Tim looked back to Dick, regretting his gruff commentary.

“Tim…” Dick said, voice haunted with concern.

“Please. Just… Can we please not do this right here right now?” Tim all but begged.

“Do what?” Dick asked critically. “Tell you I”m worried? Tell you I’m—“

“Yes. This. Whatever this is,” Tim snapped back.

“When then?” Dick asked. “You were a complete shut in back in Gotham, you ignored Bruce and me on the flights.”

“Dick,” Tim began in exasperation, running his hands down the sides of his face. “I cannot begin to express how much this can’t happen right now.”

“That’s the problem, you can’t express. You can’t express anything,” Dick retorted, waggling a finger in his face.

“You’re making a scene,” Tim fought back.

“Someone has to,” Dick snapped.

“Then go try to make Bruce express himself,” Tim growled.

Dick shook his head. “Sorry, but I’m well aware of lost causes, believe it or not. I’ve been working on cracking that nut for the last, what, almost twenty years now? I make progress with Bruce. You? You I’m making preventive measures.”

“Yeah, those would have been helpful before this last year,” Tim responded coldly.

He immediately regretted the words as they escaped his mouth, but at the same time, the flicker of guilt and plain hurt that shone in Dick’s eyes for a moment when he heard that response almost made Tim want to savor it all.

They stood together awkwardly, looking at each other with a loss for how the conversation could possibly continue when they were saved by the most unexpected of things.

Bruce.

“Dick,” Bruce called in his very Broosiest voice, carrying it over the crowds in the bizarre. He even gave a dramatic arm wave as if they weren’t all incredibly aware of each other’s positions at all times. “Come over here and tell me what you think of this rug! I think it’s authentic!”

“What the hell?” Tim asked, squinting his eyes. “That’s… weird.”

“Very,” Dick agreed. “Stand around here a bit, there must be a reason he wants us canvased.”

“Sure,” Tim replied as Dick walked away. There was some disappointment in Tim’s chest, realizing they weren’t going to come anywhere close to finishing that conversation — that whatever genuine emoting Dick was giving him in that moment could drop the second Bruce needed something even it was a nut he’d been trying to crack sine he was eight years old.

Tim also wished his emotions could straighten themselves out enough to at least be consistent.

Instead he pinched the bridge of his nose and took a deep breath. He had to center himself. Or something like that. Something basic that would put the whole world back into order.

He just had forgotten whatever that basic thing was.

After he gathered enough of his senses, Tim looked to Bruce and Dick again. They were huddled over the rugs that Bruce had mentioned but Tim knew better than to believe that they were talking about thread count while basically over top one another. There must have been something that got Bruce’s attention.

Maybe it was the reason they were there.

The times were hard, difficult even. And more than a little crazy. And Tim was considering what an awful time it was for the most visible heroes in the world — Batman, Superman, and Wonder Woman — to all be unseen after such a Crisis, after so much death and destruction. It was hard to consider who the normal people were supposed to look up to in the times.

Which was why Lex Luthors were making headlines about creating new superheroes and Black Adams were being hailed as saviors instead of tyrants.

When he looked back to the newspapers almost subconsciously, Tim noticed a figure slip behind the cage of exotic birds in a rather quick and intentional fashion. If it was meant to not draw his attention, it desperately failed.

Tim studiously looked at the newspapers in French and Arabic, but his attention was on his peripheral vision and the man standing just on the other side of the birdcage watching him. And he was definitely watching Tim.

Trying his best to look the part of the bored, jaded modern teenager, Tim adjusted his baseball cap and reached into his pocket to pull out his cellphone. He made it seem as though he was scrolling through his options, but in reality he was setting up a secure connection to Bruce and Dick’s similarly supped up cells. He would be quick to tip them off to the fact that someone was scoping them out when he slowly stopped.

Staring at his phone, Tim almost could hear a ringing in his ears as he put the pieces together, painfully slow. Then he looked toward Bruce and Dick and how they were looking his way but not at him as they talked.

They knew. Somehow they — or at least Bruce — had spotted their tagalong before Tim. And beyond that, they had gone away from him to discuss what to do about it. Away from Tim. But why?

He struggled with the full picture until someone bumped against his back and rather than move away immediately stood there. Tim’s skin crawled at his space being so closely invade and he couldn’t help but tense and try to lean forward, away from the person, but a thin hand with ornate, painted nails held onto his shoulder. Unlike most women in the bizarre, however, there were no rings or bangles.

“Easy, little Robin,” a familiar voice said softly.

Talia al Ghul.

“Okay,” Tim said softly in return.

“My beloved and I cannot be seen together in public. Not here where the eyes of the serpents come from any separate heads. Some my father’s. Many not,” she informed him in hushed tones. “So please let him know, I will be where the moon touches the dunes at midnight, in the same tent where we spoke eternal vows.”

Tim absorbed the information. “So you’re still not with your father?” he asked.

“Things have not changed between any of us since last we met,” she answered. “You have protective instincts. That is admirable for a man your age. It will keep you alive.”

“Guess we’ll find out,” Tim replied, glancing over his shoulder the moment Talia released his shoulder. He watched her, in full dress, disappear into the crowds. His eyes only narrowed as he strung things more and more together.

Bruce and Dick moved quickly to rejoin him after that but Tim was beginning to feel himself boil.

“Thank you, Tim,” Bruce said in hushed tones. “Dick and Talia do not have the fondest history with each other.”

“In so many terms,” Dick muttered sourly.

Tim looked at both of them for a long moment then pulled down his cap to hide his eyes from him. He could feel the quiver in his lips about to give too much of what he was feeling. “I want to be notified the next time I’m used as bait,” Tim said darkly. “It’s the least you can do.”

“Tim, if we thought there was danger,” Dick began, but Bruce stopped him.

“It was a split second calculation, Tim. It won’t happen again,” Bruce promised.

Tim nodded, but inside his blood continued to boil.

It was going to happen again. It happened all the time. And he was tired of it. As tired as he was of everything that had to do with his double life anymore.

It shouldn’t have surprised Tim that what they found in the desert was a fight. And yet he was taken aback.

Reaching the exact spot where the moon touches the dunes at midnight was apparently a cryptic way of leading them to the center of a desert with only the supplies that they could carry with them. Which was suspicious itself before Bruce raised one arm and halted Tim and Dick behind him.

Tim struggled a bit with his camel, but with a single pet from Dick, the animal finally obeyed and left them both standing side by side on the edge of a dune as Bruce dismounted and walked to the center of a suspicious looking plain of sand.

Barely containing himself, Tim kept from mentioning that it wasn’t a good idea for Bruce to walk where his feet sunk into the sand halfway up his shins. It was something he shouldn’t have had to tell the Batman — about how sand traps and even quick sand worked. Especially at night where what water was in the desert would collect in its barren lands. He shouldn’t have to. But lately…

Both Tim and Dick jerked back in surprise when Bruce dropped to his knees, digging through the sand, as if he knew exactly what to expect. Then, he let out a grunt of satisfaction, slowly getting back to his feet with a scimitar in hand.

“Oh, of course. Of course there would be a sword hidden in the sand in the middle of the desert. How could we not see that coming,” Dick muttered sarcastically. He took pause and glanced around. “Wait… I remember this place. This is where—“

They emerged so suddenly that Tim had hardly turned from looking in Dick’s direction to see how they came out of the sand. There was half a dozen of them, cloaked from head to toe in rags, their hands extended toward Bruce showing off the eyeballs which stared at him from their finger tips.

“What the hell?” Tim asked out loud.

“For what it’s worth, I didn’t get it when I was Robin either,” Dick offered.

“No, that’s not worth much, because this is weird,” Tim argued just before the men began fighting Bruce. “Talia set us up! We’ve got to help him—“

Before Tim could do anything drastic, Dick grabbed him by the shoulder and pulled him back. “Talia doesn’t work that way, loathe as I am to say it. And if Bruce came all this way… well, he came for something and we’re not ones to tell him what he does or doesn’t need.”

With only a moment’s hesitation, Tim jerked his shoulders back away from Dick, shaking his head. “You’re wrong. Robin’s whole job is to tell Batman when he’s gone the wrong way. It’s our job to set him right when he’s wrong. The light to Batman’s darkness— that’s what you called Robin, remember?”

Dick seemed unsurprised and rather impressed. “And as a Robin it’s your job, then,” he said, not questioned. “And you have to have faith he won’t let you down either. Sometimes you have to have faith that he’s already doing the right thing.”

“i can’t,” Tim said simply. “I don’t have that faith. I’ve been let down.”

A pained expression crossed Dick’s face as he heard Tim’s response. “Oh, Tim,” he said with such weight and gravity.

It was all for nothing, though, because Tim turned in time to see Bruce’s devastating victory against the strange, ten-eyed men. He was breathing hard, but for the first time in months, Tim could see a smile on Bruce’s face as he dropped down to his knees and leaned his head back to face the cloudless sky. “The darkness is gone,” he said, voice level and normal despite his words being something that Tim would have pegged on hysteria. “I am reborn.”

Tim looked to Dick who was also raising a brow at the statement before snapping his head to look across the dunes. When Tim followed the look, he saw Talia and her guards as well, on horses, watching over Bruce.

“I must know, Beloved,” Talia called down to him as she steadied her steed. “Was the man or the bat reborn? And are either the keeper of my heart?”

Bruce looked in her direction but said nothing.

Dick sighed and rubbed his face with his good hand. “Just say yes, Bruce. Don’t drag us all the way into the middle of a desert for a fight with the League of Assassins.”

Tim tried to have faith that that was not going to happen, but it was as difficult as what Dick had asked of him before.

And if Bruce was reborn as someone even more unfamiliar to Tim than the Bruce of the last year, well, that was a whole new set of issues.

[renaroo]

Promises (8/30)

Disclaimer: Batman and associated characters are the creative property of DC Comics. Warnings: One Year Later/Evil Cass allusions Rating: T Synopsis: For an entire year after the Crisis which threatened to wipe everything they knew and loved off the Earth, after so many hardships and loved ones lost, Cass and Tim find themselves battling on different sides of the globe not only for the fate of what’s left of the world, but for the sake of once again feeling purpose. [A One Year Later fixer upper]

A/N: This chapter took a while but Cass chapters always come out a bit thicker and more in-depth than Tim chapters. CAN’T IMAGINE WHY. But it’s finally here and I can’t thank you all enough for your patience!

Special thanks to @mitchthebat and @secretlystephaniebrown on tumblr, ffnet, and AO3 for the feedback and support!

A Detective Without Words

There was no confidence in Cass’ own voice as she read out the words. There should have been. After all she had struggled through, after how hard they had worked in the last few days to make up for all the time they were about to lose — Cass should have found confidence in her own words. But still the tremble remained. The thoughtful pauses.

“She… sells… s…s…seeeeeshells… at the… seeeeee… sh… sh…” Cass stopped herself and took a breath, closing her eyes. She knew those letters. She could put them together. She could parse the sounds, but when put together it was so hard. So hard to— Her eyes snapped open and Cass looked reluctantly toward Helena.

The Huntress was taking notes, eyes on her clipboard rather than Cassandra. In the first few lessons that hadn’t been the case, she was very firm in watching Cassandra, encouraging her whenever necessary. And Cass used that to her advantage — reading Helena’s responses so carefully and so quickly she hardly had a stutter in reading.

Somehow Helena caught on. Cassandra hedged her bets on Barbara informing her of Cass’ abilities and how Cass could put them to creative use in order to avoid the frustratingly difficult tasks awarded to her.

It was such an annoyance to be known so well by someone so determined to parent her where Cassandra’s own parents had never even bothered before.

Resigned to the fact that she was not going to get a response from Helena until she was done with her reading, Cass took another breath and read the sentence again, out loud. But faster, to make up for the waver that existed no matter what efforts she put into subduing it.

“She sells s-seashells at the… seashore,” Cass finally read out loud.

“Very good, Cassandra,” Helena finally said, snapping her pen closed and uncrossing her legs as she looked up to meet Cass’ gaze. “You just have to keep reminding yourself, this isn’t a race. You can take your time sounding things out if you have to until you’re more confident saying them. There’s no problem with doing that.

Cass scowled. “Do… you sound it all out?”

“No, I don’t,” Helena responded flatly. “But I’m not you. I have been reading and writing for much longer, which means I have a lot of practice. It would be like—“

“Someone in self-defense wanting to train with Shiva,” Cass sighed, her eyes rolling all the way back in her head as she fell back and rocked against her chair. She had heard that particular sentiment at least a thousand times in the weeks that she had been tutored. And hearing it on the very last night that she would have with them was more aggravating than anything else.

“You might be tired of hearing it, but that doesn’t make it less true,” Helena answered. “Learning language arts isn’t a race, and that’s the bottom line. As you get better, you’ll become faster, just like anything else, but the important part isn’t that you read at a certain speed right now, it’s that you understand the content of what you’re reading. It’s just another way to communicate — with others, with ideas, with… just about anything.”

Folding her arms, Cassandra looked skeptically at Helena. “Who is she?”

Helena blinked. “Who is who?”

“She?” Cass stressed.

“She who, Cassie?” Helena pressed.

“She! She—“ Cassandra picked up the workbook she had been reading from and pointed at the sentence they had been practicing. “Who is she? Why… sell seashells? Is she important? Why do we need to know?”

For a moment, Helena looked utterly baffled. “Cass, there’s no… This isn’t about a person. It’s just a sentence that’s meant to challenge how you read.”

Throwing her hands in the air, Cass let out a growl. “You said… the important part is… understanding what it’s about! I thought—“

“It’s about learning,” Helena argued. “Sometimes when you read, yes, it gives you information you need and it might be about people or cases or anything else in the world. But the purpose of what we’re doing is that I’m teaching you so you’re learning. That’s the only thing you’re supposed to learn from the sentence.”

Annoyed and exhausted mentally, Cass threw back her head. “I’m done,” she declared for the night.

“But we’ve only gotten through…” Helena paused and began gathering her books. “Okay. You’re right. We should break. You’ve done very good lately and I know you can get discouraged when we move up reading levels. Which is fine, I promise you. I’ll just adjust the lesson plan I’m leaving for you while we’re away.”

While Cass knew she should have thanked Helena for understanding, she didn’t feel the sentiment enough to give it. She only watched her instructor quickly gather her things before glancing off toward the cockpit’s door. The massive jet had been much homier before they were making sure to buckle things down and hide things away for inevitable travel.

Rising to her feet, Cass looked back to Helena and pointed toward the door. “Oracle?” she asked.

“Barbara is in there, yeah,” Helena replied with an arched eyebrow. “You two… okay?”

“We’ll see,” Cass said before marching toward the door.

Barbara was the same as always, sitting in the navigator’s chair with her eyes locked on the screens around her. Her eyes were fierce and thoughtful — plotting. There were so many words and so many of them moving so fast on the screen that had it been anyone else, Cassandra would have not believed they were reading a single one of them.

Thoughts of how much of a liar Helena had to be to say that speed didn’t matter with reading. It was amazing how inadequate a few moments with Barbara could make Cassandra feel after even hours of drilling.

It didn’t take long for Barbara to finish up, however, and the scrolling stopped as she turned in her chair to face Cass.

“I was hoping you’d stop by before leaving. I was going to have to come to the Manor in the morning if you didn’t,” Barbara greeted her with a genuine, though tired, smile. “Probably still will.”

Cass looked at her before glancing toward the maps around Barbara’s work desk. “Not the one leaving… just everyone else.”

When she looked up, Cass could see how hard the words had hit Barbara she was looking off, chewing on the knuckles of one of her fingers. But it wasn’t going to be the kind of guilt that would make anyone change their plans. And Cass wasn’t even sure she wanted the plans to be changed.

She just needed it to hurt someone to leave her as much as it hurt her to be left, just for once.

“I didn’t know about Bruce’s plans to leave. And I definitely didn’t know he planned to leave you here,” Barbara assured her. “I don’t know what he was thinking. Or even if he was thinking. He’s so… off lately and I can’t…” She stopped herself and shook her head firmly. “No, this isn’t about Bruce.” Her eyes shot back up to Cass, holding Cass’ gaze with their intensity. “It’s about you, Cassandra. The way it should be. And… I’ve been thinking about it… You should probably come with us. You’ve never really been part of a team long term before. I know Dinah would love to have you, and it’d be easier for both you and Hel to continue your lessons if you stayed with us. It’d be good for you to see more of the world than just Gotham—“

For a moment, Cass was surprised. She had not been expecting the offer. But whatever emotion the offer should have given her was obviously not there. And without those flighty emotions, she could cut through to the meaning of the over abundance of words everyone used. Even quicker than she used to.

“If I go… Shiva would never learn,” Cass pointed out, eyes hardening on Barbara. “You would… have to take her off the team. That would break our promise.”

“Cass,” Barbara sighed, taking off her glasses and pinching the bridge of her nose.

Slowly, Cassandra blinked at Barbara. Took in the heaviness of her sigh, the weariness in her shoulders. There was disappointment there. She had wanted Cassandra to go with them, she really had.

She had also wanted the relief of not taking Shiva as her responsibility.

“It’s a promise,” Cassandra reminded her.

“Your need to make Shiva see the light is going to leave you bitterly disappointed, Cassandra,” Barbara argued, looking back up at Cass fiercely. “She isn’t half the person you are.”

“Every person is the same,” Cass argued, eyes narrowed. “She can change. Because… I changed. Okay?”

“Not everyone makes the choice to change, Cassandra, and it has to be a choice,” Barbara pleaded. “I know you believe everyone deserves a second chance. You helped me to believe that everyone deserves a second chance. But if you don’t grant people the autonomy to make that decision themselves, then when they don’t meet your expectations, it’s going to crush you more than if you had never tried. And you can’t believe that what you did — which was not your fault — could ever measure up to the conscious death and destruction which Shiva knowingly unleashes on everyone—“

Taken aback, Cass opened her mouth but found no words to match the surprise which overtook her with Barbara’s words. Not until her mentor stopped and Cass felt the one thing that always stirred itself back up from the numbness.

Rage.

“So… now promises don’t matter? Because they’re… hard?” Cass demanded angrily. “Because… people aren’t as good as you and as good as Bruce. We can forgive you… and me… but we’re exceptions.” She squeezed her eyes shut. “I’ve seen death, Barbara. It doesn’t have… exceptions. Only life changes.” She looked at Barbara at last. “That’s what… I want you and Batman to change.”

Barbara’s eyes were moving the same way they did when they read quickly on a screen, as if even her brain could write out a response without paper while Cass struggled to make letters and numbers face the right way.

“You think I’m judging you,” Barbara finally surmised. “You think Bruce is judging you, and that’s the reason we’re going away. That it’s because we’re disappointed or think you’re wrong. And that’s not the case, Cassandra. I’m not judging you. And I can’t speak for Bruce but I fully believe that his actions lately… they’re because we’re flawed, Cass. Because we make mistakes and have to be forgiven for them too. And I’m sorry that you feel like we need to learn this lesson from you — and maybe we’re right. Maybe we do. But it’s not because we’re judging you. It’s the opposite. It’s because we love you, Cassandra.”

“You love me. You just won’t keep your… promises to me,” she folded he arms and looked away.

“No, I’m keeping it,” Barbara sighed, sounding worn down and resigned more than pleased about her circumstance. “I’m keeping it. I’ll oversee Shiva becoming a better person and… and leave you here. To protect Gotham.”

Cass glanced back at her. “Good.”

There was still a frown on Barbara’s face. “Shiva doesn’t deserve the sacrifices you’re making for her, Cass. I don’t know that you can fully comprehend how different the two of you are.”

“You’re wrong,” Cass said firmly. “You… don’t know how… much we’re the same. Trust me.”

Inhaling sharply, Barbara forced a nod. “Okay.”

Cassandra ignored the way tears were welling up in Barbara’s eyes as she leaned forward and kissed her mentor’s forehead. “Okay.”

Before the signal was even lit for the first time that night, Cassandra felt the length of her patrol catching up with her.

She had known of emotional baggage and how exhausting it could be prior to the Lazarus Pit, but since her revival it seemed as though any forceful emotion that bubbled its way to the surface was equally exhausting. Emotions could make tired what bones and muscles never did for her.

Still, the moment she saw the signal in the sky, her heart pounded with the knowledge that it was for her. That it was her signal to answer and that her first opportunity to truly prove herself as Batman’s stand in had come up.

She swung through Gotham with somewhat reckless abandon, growing more eager as the familiar path to the police department opened itself up to her.

Forty feet away and swinging through the sky, Cassandra could already make out the figure of Jim Gordon standing in front of the signal, stalwart and stiff. He was making a show of standing without a cane those days and his fingers twitched at his side without a cigarette. But taking back his position as a leader in the GCPD had come with requirements he was forced to fulfill once again.

Cassandra could very much sympathize.

She landed as silently as she could on the rooftop, her grappling hook recoiling quickly before she tucked her arm under her cape and the grappling gun into her belt under its cover. She slowly rose to her feet and stood at full height in front of Jim Gordon, keeping her gaze narrowed on him and trying, desperately, to not think of him as the man who made a production of getting mashed potatoes stuck in his mustache at Barbara’s Thanksgiving dinner last year, or the kind man who continued to thank her for saving him during the No Man’s Land crisis that felt like just so many, many years ago.

Behind his glasses, Jim raised a heavy eyebrow at her and looked her over. He was expecting something, perhaps an introduction or a clarification as to why she was there instead of anyone else since they had never interacted like this without someone else to buffer before.

No Batman. No Robin. No Nightwing.

Only…

“Batgirl,” he finally broke the silence. “Thank you for coming.”

She nodded carefully. There was a word — a title she was supposed to call him by. All the others did. She knew it was important. That it… was respect and trust. He wore it the way she did her mask. But her brain still ached from all the vocabulary earlier in the night and she was tired and her brain hurt from searching for the proper word.

“Right,” he said, reaching up and fiddling with the glasses on his face. “Is… someone else…?”

“You have me… Sir,” she attempted to assure him.

“Okay,” Jim continued, mustache twitching in discomfort. Not from mashed potatoes. “We have a string of murders we have been dealing with. Our people are stumped, and since they seem fairly ritualistic we’re already negotiating with the Bureau to have some specialists look things over. Obviously, I’d still like for your own special perspective… since you work with Batman. And he usually has a larger thumb on the pulse of the Underground than anyone from the capital is going to.”

Beneath her mask, Cassandra exhaled sharply and couldn’t help but form a frown. Yes. Words. So many of them.

After an uncomfortable silence, Jim straightened his glasses again. “It’s… pretty gruesome stuff. I’m not sure if you’ve worked on something like this before… but we need to find who’s committing these murders. And we have to stop them.”

A smirk finally found its way back to Cass’ face and she punched her own palm. “No worries,” she promised him. “I’m… a detective.”

That seemed to do little to appease Jim as he reached out with a file he had been keeping in his free hand. “Right. Well. I know you aren’t really… I mean you’re kids. But you’re trained by him. So I trust…” he trailed off. “I’d still like your opinion on the case.”

Cassandra reached out and took the file, flipping it open with her thumb and glancing at a lot of the pages.

Lots of words. More on a page than even Barbara had been reading on her screens. Words longer and with more syllables than Helena had even begun to teach her. The sort of thing that, once confronted out in the wild, caused Cassandra’s insides to twist in discomfort and inadequacy. Maybe she should have stayed for the whole lesson with Helena after all.

All that out of the way, however, Cassandra buried the feelings and took a breath. She was prepared, as Batgirl, for difficult measures. She rarely worked with others in the past, and to confront such issues was not new either. She hid the file beneath her cape.

That seemed to make Jim’s eyebrows raise in alarm.

“I am on it,” she assured him, switching out the file for her grappling gun and turning to leave the rooftop.

“I… Well I figured we could go over the case together…” Gordon was continuing, a little more than confused by that point. “You seem to be doing things differently.”

“No time,” Cass half-lied, shooting off her grappling hook and leaping off the rooftop, files held close against her side.

“Those were the only printed copies. Everything else is digital. It was for me— Ah, alright then,” Gordon tried uselessly to call after her. “I suppose I was going to have to get used to using computers for everything at some point.”

The homing beacon on her newly customized Batcycle worked with the sort of efficiency that Cassandra was sure Tim only dreamed of with his Redbird. It was already pulling around the corner and into the alley she had directed it toward by the time she was landing down within.

With the motor rumbling, Cassandra glanced down to the files she had taken from Gordon. For a moment, she considered flipping through the files more intently, actually soaking in the words that she could, trying to work them out. It was enough to make her hesitate in her step before she shook her head and moving toward the back of the Batcycle.

Part of the modifications that Barbara had built into the bike for Cassandra involved a file scanner, something that was supposed to accurately digitize the letters and numbers of any papers or clues she would find. With them in the database of the Batcomputer, Cassandra would only have to go to the Cave and have the monitor read them out loud for her.

It was the best solution, she told herself constantly.

Swallowing dryly, Cass fit the file into the compartment of the Batcycyle which immediately lit up in the signature Oracle green. It brought almost as much comfort to Cassandra as it had shame, still she closed her eyes and took a breath. She was a detective. She was going to be able to do this. Alone.

She just needed to do it her way.

Just as Cassandra prepared herself to get on the Batcycle and race back to the Cave and whatever snack that Alfred had ready for her, Cassandra was pulled away from all her thoughts by a mortified, blood curdling scream only a short distance away.

Alarmed, Cass moved fast, shooting her grappling gun before her body had even turned and double pulling on the trigger to send herself jettisoning up past the building’s edge. She flew through the sky a short distance before ending her arc, right foot extended first to land in the opposite alley.

Her speed and precision were beyond compare, but the screaming had already stopped, and the woman who had unleashed the scream was already at the edge of the alley as Cass landed.

Confused, Cassandra took in the sight.

There was a husky looking man, laying in a heap on the alley’s pavement, moaning and groaning, with his face already swelling and red from a hit. A nearly perfectly delivered punch directly to the corner of his jawline, surely shattering it given the amount of pressure that it apparently had had.

When Cass looked back to the woman in the alley, it was clear even with a casual glance that the petite woman shaking and nearly vomiting had not had the training or power to deliver such a hit.

Cass could hear her motorcycle rumbling on idle just an alley away, scans no doubt completed, but for her, she knew that Batgirl had just found a second mystery to test her detective skills on.

It seemed that she was not patrolling Gotham alone…

[renaroo]

Promises (7/30)

Disclaimer: Batman and associated characters are the creative property of DC Comics. Warnings: One Year Later/Evil Cass allusions Rating: T Synopsis: For an entire year after the Crisis which threatened to wipe everything they knew and loved off the Earth, after so many hardships and loved ones lost, Cass and Tim find themselves battling on different sides of the globe not only for the fate of what’s left of the world, but for the sake of once again feeling purpose. [A One Year Later fixer upper]

A/N: Alright, so I took something of a sabbatical for the last week and a half. For those who aren’t familiar, there’s a convention in Austin, Texas called RTX for fans of Rooster Teeth productions, and I was blessed with the chance to go and reunite and meet for the first time so many of my friends. I think it’s given me more than enough time to recoup and get back to working on everything I can get my hands on~

Special thanks to @chimerakitten, @secretlystephaniebrown, Onceuponymous, XaoOfTheMists, KiwiBat, FanOfYourWork, and Kiyomisa on tumblr, ffnet, and AO3 for the feedback and suppot!

Picking Up the Pieces

If Tim hadn’t been there himself, he might not have believed that it had happened. His bag was setting next to him on the floor, ready to go, when he watched Cassandra tear off up the stairs and out of sight.

He had seen Cass through some low spots — Blüdhaven had been a low spot for both of them — but he had never seen such a cruel look in her eyes as the one of betrayal and disgust she threw their way once it was clear she was not invited on their excursion.

Tim’s insides twisted mercilessly at the realization that, before that moment, it hadn’t really crossed his mind whether or not Bruce intended to bring Cass along with them.

Despite being a team, it had always felt like Cass had done her own thing, so far and away from the rest of them.

Except, of course, when they had looked out for each other at Blüdhaven. Which made the guilty twisting of Tim’s insides all the worse.

He looked desperately toward Bruce. “We’re not actually going to leave her, are we?” he asked worriedly.

“If this is something to get all of us back to form, it would make sense to let Cassie come along, Bruce,” Dick said in an even more reasonable tone.

“No, she’s not coming,” Bruce said decisively.

Amazed at Bruce’s brutally blunt delivery, Tim let his jaw hang for a bit while Alfred cleared his throat to get Bruce’s attention once more.

“Sir, even beyond your reasoning for leaving behind Miss Cassandra — if indeed there is reasoning — you still have not explained to myself or her just what destinations your trip happens to entail,” Alfred reminded him sternly, almost angrily. At least, for Alfred by Tim’s estimates.

Bruce’s scowl was set, his singular protective shield from the butler’s scrutiny. “Not all of the destinations have been decided yet, Alfred.”

“And those that have?” Alfred demanded.

Silence met the question for an agonizingly long twenty seconds. Tim could not help but count them purely from how awkward it made him feel.

Getting the hing, Alfred took a deep breath and held up his hands. “I am afraid that this is once more somewhere I should firmly put my foot down. But seeing as how you cannot be so kind as to tell me where to place it, I will move on to more important matters. Matters like attending to a young woman who may not know it yet, but absolutely deserves a cup of tea.”

“Alfred,” Dick called out as the butler turned and marched off in the direction of the kitchen.

The former Robin’s upset was clear on his face, even as he looked back worriedly toward Bruce. There wasn’t the clear anger and frustration that Tim was almost expecting from Dick. He just looked like he needed answers.

Maybe for so many different questions even Dick didn’t have the words to start.

“Please say it’s true that you need Cass here to look after Gotham,” Tim begged before the silence could carry on as it had with Alfred.

Bruce’s sharp eyes shifted to him almost instantly, but he didn’t speak.

“Bruce, Cass… She’s not like the rest of us. She needs Batgirl, and to protect Gotham, and… she just lost everything she was only starting to build before,” Tim tried to explain. His hands motioned slightly with his rambling but once he caught how little impact his words were having, he grew subconscious of it and dropped his arms to his sides.

“That’s why,” Bruce answered. “Who are you, Tim?”

Caught off guard, both Tim and Dick ended up looking at each other.

“I don’t understand,” Tim responded.

“Since Superboy’s funeral, don’t think I haven’t noticed how neither of you have been asking to patrol,” he continued, as if the point was made in that simple fact.

“I physically can’t at the moment, Bruce,” Dick reminded him. “Yours and Leslie’s orders, as I remember it.”

“But that has never stopped either of you before,” Bruce pointed out sharply.

Dick’s face made it clear that he wanted to disagree more, but he held back. A sour look developed instead which, for Tim, did feel very much unlike the Dick Grayson he knew.

“It is not an indictment,” Bruce clarified. “I have found my aspirations as Batman in question these past weeks as well. I no longer can clearly see the mission in the midst of my many mistakes.”

A ping of pain hit Tim in the chest at that point. The mistakes. Like Brother Eye. Like all that led to Superboy Prime. To the things that almost destroyed all of reality as they knew it and ripped so many good, courageous heroes from them right in their primes.

The anger and blame that the community held for them all in response.

“The three of us are on the same path. We need the same healing,” Bruce continued finally. “What Cassandra needs is… something else. Something she will get in Gotham.”

Dick looked suspiciously at Bruce, putting his good hand on his hip. “Let me guess, you’ve made plans for that to happen for her? And you just couldn’t bare to share with her or us any more than you could share this trip before springing it on us?”

“I’m doing what will be right for everyone, Dick,” Bruce argued back stiffly.

Having heard enough, Tim clenched his fists and headed toward the stairs. “You’re right, Bruce. You always do what’s right for everyone.”

The sudden outburst didn’t seem to surprise Bruce, but deep down Tim was certain that it did.

“Where are you going, Tim?” Bruce asked sternly. “We’ll be leaving in half an hour—“

“I need to grab some other things, I’m sure you can wait,” Tim snapped, unable to keep the sourness from his voice.

Neither Bruce nor Dick attempted to stop him after that. And Tim had a feeling it was because their own anger at each other in the disagreement was bound to only grow after dear impressionable Tim wasn’t around anymore to get affected by it.

He didn’t care. He really did have something he had to do.

He knocked even though the door was open. It was the polite thing to do, or so he’d been told.

Cassandra was sitting on the window seat, legs pulled up, arms crossed over her knees, and face buried within the nook of her elbows so that all Tim could really see from her was the jet black hair reflecting the beams of sunrise hitting them.

When she didn’t move, Tim took the initiative and stepped into the unpersonalized yet still very Cassandra room. “This whole thing sucks,” he said to her sorrowfully. “You don’t deserve to be treated like this. I’m… I’m sorry it’s going on this way.”

For a moment, it didn’t look like Cass was going to react to his words at all, if she was even awake, but then, slowly, she withdrew more into herself, hiding in her suit as much as possible even without her mask on.

She wasn’t crying, though. Her shoulders did not heave, she was not breathing hard.

It reminded Tim of the night of the funeral. And that alone made him feel knotted up inside.

“Bruce still doesn’t know,” he tried to explain his rationale for bothering her after how horribly everything went on downstairs. “Cass, I didn’t tell him anything. So he doesn’t know about… about…” he lowered his voice and walked more toward her, just in case. “He doesn’t know about the Lazarus Pit from me. He doesn’t know that… that you’re numb. Or how you feel about… everything. I’m sure he knows something’s up. He has to. He’s… Well, he’s the world’s greatest detective. But he’s got. A blindspot. A few of them. And I think you’ve always been in his blindspot in some way. He doesn’t… he doesn’t always like to accept that you’re not…”

Trailing off, Tim rubbed at his neck. He was getting nothing from Cass and he wasn’t even sure if he was supposed to or not, given the circumstances. She was hurt and he was part of the problem. He just couldn’t stand the thought of not fixing some things before they all got up and left.

“Not?” Cass said hoarsely.

Tim looked up and met Cass’ dark eyes. He had been wrong about her not having tears, even if the rest of her face was blank.

“I’m not…?” she urged.

Feeling even more awkward and on the spot, Tim shifted slightly and coughed into his fist. “Well… Bruce sometimes just… I think he doesn’t always accept that you’re not… really perfect. That you can have mistakes or make them now or that you aren’t one hundred percent okay even if you run yourself into the ground working too hard. He just has to think you’re… okay.”

Cassandra squinted at him, roughly rubbing her tears away in one swipe of her gauntlet. “I’m… not perfect?” she clarified.

“Uh, no. I mean. You’re close. No, I don’t mean that. Not that—“ Tim face palmed and took a deep breath, collecting himself. “Cass, what I mean is that no one’s perfect. We’re human. That’s… part of life. I mean, you know that more than anyone—“

“I make… too many mistakes?” she asked almost angrily.

“No! I mean, you know more than anyone that everyone deserves a second chance,” he explained. “You know that life only means something if we’re allowed to work through our mistakes and make up for them. Right?”

She blinked at him before a broken little smile formed on her face. “You… learned that from… me?”

“Still trying to learn it,” Tim admitted. “But I see it because of you. Which is why I know that if you just explained to Bruce what’s going on with you right now, he’d understand why you need to go with us—“

“No,” Cass said firmly.

“What?” Tim asked with a blink.

“I’m staying. Here. In Gotham,” she said poking her finger out at the window. “Gotham… needs a Batman. Bruce is right.”

Shifting uncomfortably, Tim exhaled sharply through his nose. Well… you keep saying that…”

“Because it’s true,” she stated.

“He’s human, too, Cass, but look, I don’t want to fight with you over him and methodology again,” Tim said, shaking his head. “We got into it more than enough when we were working in Blüdhaven. Let’s not revisit it.”

Cass’ all-seeing eyes were firmly on him, however. “You. You’re still mad at him,” she assessed.

“Yeah,” Tim admitted almost subconsciously. “I mean… yes, I am. But.” He looked down to his hands, closed his eyes and pretended he could still feel the debris he had lifted on that first night he wore the suit. “I think it’s my job to be mad at him sometimes. To be frustrated with what he does and how he does it.”

“It’s a stupid job,” Cass said flatly.

“Ha, well, there’s no one who knows that more than me, you can guarantee that,” Tim answered with a deep sigh. “But I get the hero worship, I get the inability to see when he’s wrong because that used to be me with Bruce, and with Dick. And with Barbara. I just had to grow up myself, see everyone around me as being imperfect and really understand what that meant. What it meant for all of us.”

There was still a lack of understanding in Cass’ eyes. She peered into Tim like he was a book written in esperanto. “You loved them less?” she asked. “Because of… mistakes… of… being human?”

“No,” Tim answered almost too quickly. He shook his head for good measure. “No. I… I love them so much more. Because I know when they make mistakes… it’s just because that’s what we all do at the end of the day. Because that’s what makes them human.” He looked at Cass curiously. “How, after everything, is that not how you see the world, too? I mean… Barbara told me about how you’re making them rehabilitate Lady Shiva. If they can. And you don’t…”

“I think that,” Cass corrected, hugging her knees. “I… know that. I see that… but…” She looked back at Tim. “I see you. I see…Shiva. And I see… people.” She lowered her head, chin barely above her knees. “But… I don’t see… me. And other people, you and others… No one sees like me. No one but Shiva. No one but Cain. And they never saw me… human.”

Tim’s eyes widened with understanding. “Cass…”

“There is… a little voice inside your head… who tells you that you can be good… that you can be smart… that you can be… worthy,” Cass continued. “Sometimes it is… very quiet. But now… I don’t hear it at all.”

He looked at her intently. “I think you should tell someone this, Cass,” he urged. “I think… I think you might be… depressed… or the Lazarus Pit… I mean, haven’t you felt this before? Is it like anything else?”

Cass stared off, eyes overcast with an emotion unclear to Tim just yet. “Losing Steph,” she answered. “And Brenda. And… yes. But now it’s been longer. And I have tried very hard to make people… happy with me. But. I don’t think it will ever work now.”

Tim felt a lump in his chest and he approached Cass even closer. “Can… Is there anything I can do?” he asked her very softly.

“Yes,” Cass answered before looking back at him with a very small but still wry smile. There were tears carefully held back in her eyes. “What… you’re doing. Right now. Thank you,” she answered.

Once again that week, Tim had no idea what was the right response exactly, but he caved to his first emotional drive. And he hugged Cass so tight he might have bruised another person.

“Cass?” he asked gently.

“Yes,” she answered.

“About your scars… you being worried about them being gone,” he continued. “I was thinking… you know chalkboards? Like what people write on?”

“No,” she answered quickly but curiously.

“Well… they’re these boars and they have… words or drawings — whatever people want on them written in chalk,” he explained, poorly. “But the thing about chalkboards is that sometimes if you write too much on them, you run out of room and you have to turn the board over, to the clean side without any marks on it. Then you can start writing something new.”

Holding Tim back slightly, Cassandra squinted at him. “Why…?”

“Because maybe you shouldn’t think of it like you lost your scars, just that you’re starting new, the board’s clean, everything is still there, they still happened, you just don’t need them around anymore to remember them by,” Tim explained. “So… you know, don’t be too torn up about it. Or something, I’m mumbling,” he laughed awkwardly before rubbing his eyes.

“A second chance,” Cass clarified.

“Yeah, that’s what I mean,” Tim responded, looking at her. “Does… does that help?”

“You help, Tim,” she smiled at last. “Like always.”

By the time Tim was making his way out of the Manor, Bruce had apparently already loaded the Mercedes they were taking and had it running in the drive. He was sitting with his sunglasses on despite the fact that the sun had only barely begun to rise in Gotham. The entire scenario was almost too surreal for Tim to take as real. But it was the life he had chosen to enter what seemed like years and years ago.

Dick was pretending to be a bit more civil in the matter, sitting back against the door of the passenger side and waiting with eyes trained on the door. The moment he saw Tim approaching, he uncrossed his ankles and straightened up his own jacket.

“Hey, did you get what you needed?” Dick asked, trying for almost too casual given the circumstances.

“Not really,” Tim answered, tightening his grip on the drawstring bag he had pulled over his shoulder mostly for show. There were only a few spare items he quickly grabbed from his room and none of them were necessities. “Got enough.”

There was a look of understanding in Dick’s eyes as he nodded his head. It was more compassion and understanding in a gesture than Tim would have been able to manage with years of practice. “It’ll work out, no matter what you remembered or forgot,” he assured Tim, walking with Tim around the car as if to get in the back with him.

If Bruce cared about the gesture he didn’t let it show at all.

“If you say so,” Tim said back lowly. He paused once again and bit his lip. He studied Dick rigorously before the older vigilante could get around to looking back at him. “Dick, are you bringing your suit?”

“Yeah,” Dick said reflexively. “Aren’t you? I mean… what else could this be about?”

Tim frowned. He wasn’t sure if there was even an answer to that question. He tugged on his bag’s drawstrings. “Bruce isn’t. I know all the ways he packs for equipment and it’s… none of it is coming with us. It’s weird. How can I bring the Robin suit if… I mean what else is this about if it’s not…”

He could not finish any of the questions as the mere idea if them not having answers was enough to send a chill through to Tim’s very core.

“I… well. I mean, we can’t get too ahead of ourselves,” Dick assured him. “Besides, if it’s not about what we are with the suits, it’s still about what we are without them. And that’s the sort of thing that actually matters.”

Taking a deep breath, Tim opened his car door and slid on in. There was no good way to break it to Dick that he was not so sure what any of them were to each other without the suits anymore. Not as long as Bruce was in whatever funk was making him act the way he was. And that was simply the end of that.

[renaroo]

Promises (6/30)

Disclaimer: Batman and associated characters are the creative property of DC Comics. Warnings: One Year Later/Evil Cass allusions Rating: T Synopsis: For an entire year after the Crisis which threatened to wipe everything they knew and loved off the Earth, after so many hardships and loved ones lost, Cass and Tim find themselves battling on different sides of the globe not only for the fate of what’s left of the world, but for the sake of once again feeling purpose. [A One Year Later fixer upper]

A/N: This chapter was slightly hard to write because Cass is my girl and any emotions she feels just get me unlike few characters I’ve ever written, so putting her through the ringer right now is a test on my own writing fortitude lol

Special thanks to @secretlystephaniebrown, @slytherinkyuubi, @chimaerakitten, and an Anonymous fan on tumblr for the feedback and suppot!

Hurt

Cassandra could feel herself drowning again.

The water boiled around her, ate through her skin and bone. She couldn’t move, even thrashing seemed to only encourage her body to stiffen tighter and tighter in the coils of death. Her throat burned, and she wanted to scream not because she was dying, but because against her will, against her sense of peace, her body was being willed to live again.

She was utterly ensnared in the waters of the Lazarus Pit, kicking and screaming, until finally she tore her way through and clambered to her feet, breathing heavily and holding back the tides of the Pit from trying to wash her back down again.

Only, there was no Pit. There were no waves, no currents, no boiling fires or the smell of death and sulfur.

Clenched in her fists were the two sides of a bedsheets torn in two. And her feet rested not in the banks of sand but in a mattress that was far too accommodating for someone who had shot out of it like a slingshot.

Cass continued to breathe heavily, looking around her room as her eyes tiredly adjusted to the change.

It wasn’t even dark, at least not anymore. Sunlight was attempting to pour into her room despite the obstruction of the curtains. And outside her door the Manor’s halls were apparently lit as the light was brightly shining through the cracks.

She hadn’t been revived again. She wasn’t suffering in the pools of green hell water. She wasn’t drowning.

It had been a dream.

Except for the part where all of it had been utterly, truly, overly real just days before.

Exhausted before even starting her day, late as that day may have already gotten without her, Cass dropped the remains of her bedsheets and hopped down from her bed. The baggy I bat Gotham shirt hung halfway down her thighs, and her loos drawstring pajama pants far from matched, but Cass had never been one for fashion all the same.

She walked toward the door, rubbing her face and leaving her hair to stick up on ends that she wasn’t aware she had grown back yet, and opened herself and the room up to the world of the living.

From the first step on, things were startlingly routine.

Cass maneuvered silently through the mansion on instinct, arriving in the kitchen and perching on a seat by the island that let her pull up her feet into the seat and rock steadily back and forth on it as she yawned and rubbed at her eyes again.

Somehow, magically, Alfred came along and was already halfway through making her a breakfast of her favorite things.

“Look as though we will be out of cereal soon between you and Master Richard,” Alfred said, though there was a curl to his nose as he examined the box of sugary treats.

“He here?” Cass asked, leaning her cheeks into her hands as she watched Alfred.

She already knew the answer.

“I am afraid he and Master Tim are both at the hospital. He is determined to talk some one who did not earn their doctorate into taking his cast off early. I am assured that Leslie and Master Tim will put a stop to it before he comes too close to sawing it off himself,” Alfred announced, pouring milk in a bowl then orange juice in a cup.

“Bruce?” Cass asked.

She already knew that answer, too.

“I am afraid he is at work this morning, Miss Cassandra,” Alfred said before putting her tray before her. “But, as always, I am here to serve, Miss Cassandra. Happily, contently, forcefully,” he joked before poking at her nose.

Despite herself, Cass laughed at the affectionate gesture and picked up her spoon. She was two scoops in before she looked warily in Alfred’s direction. “Alfred?”

“Hm?” the butler hummed as he turned back to her.

“I tore my sheets in half again,” she informed him, beginning to gulf down what was left of her cereal. “Third time. Let’s just not change them anymore. S’not working.”

A worried look crossed Alfred’s face and then he sighed heavily. “You absolutely will have new sheets, Miss Cassandra. There will not be a charge in my home without proper covers. But I once again must urge you to seek out someone to talk to about why you continue to have such violent nightmares, dear girl.”

Cass finished her cereal in record time and gabbed her orange juice to take with her, pushing off from her seat.

“Not just dreams,” she said as she walked off. “Me. I’m just… violent.”

Alfred let out a discouraged noise but Cass couldn’t bare to witness his disappointment in person. Instead she headed for the Cave.

It was time to train and hope that, eventually, her demons could simply be fought away.

By nine, Cassandra still had not seen Bruce, Dick, or Tim, but she also did not bother Alfred with any questions as to why that might have been. In truth, it was difficult for Cass to get past the numbness that overtook her throughout the day’s routine, as the rawness of waking from her nightmares grew more and more distant to her.

She trained and she ate and she spent all of it alone where once it might have felt like an intolerable amount of time.

For Cassandra, it was old hat.

At nine, there were still a few hours before peak patrol time, and the Manor was growing more unsuitable for the restlessness Cass felt after hours upon hours of numbness. So she suited up and went, without warning, to the small, private airfield in Bristol where the Aerie One was currently grounded in secret.

Though, considering a suited up Batgirl was heading toward it in the dead of night while on a Batcycle probably brought into question just how firmly kept that secret could be.

Still, for as unconventional as Cassandra could sometimes be, she was not refused in the slightest as she came on board.

And more than that, she was expected.

Helena Bertinelli — the Huntress, as Cassandra knew her better — was in a purple sweater with black leggings, holding a smoking cup of coffee that must have been freshly made as its smell permeated the entrance of the plane. “Hey there, didn’t realize we were doing this in costume. I would’ve been dressed more appropriately.”

Cass gave a small shrug and came on into the plane. “Going to patrol. After.”

“Makes sense,” Helena said, shutting the door behind her and following Cass to their usual spot. “Did you pick up the book I recommended to you? I know it’s in Bruce’s library. I called to make sure.”

“Not yet,” Cass said, pulling up into the desk chair and drawing her legs up to hug against her chest. “Phonexes today. Yes?”

“Phonics, yup,” Helena replied, settling down beside Cass with her coffee, taking a sip. “Have you been practicing on your own?”

“Yes,” Cass lied easily.

“Mmhmm,” Helena said before pulling out the phonics cards they had been using for the last week. “Well, going through these will be pretty easy tonight then, right? We’ll get you right on out to patrol before the Scarecrow can split a hair.”

“R-right,” Cass said less confidently, arching her shoulders forward in a way that draped her cape to cover more of herself.

The numbness ebbed away for the first time that day since it had arrived uninvited, but feeling was not always better than not feeling. Embarrassment flushed her cheeks and flustering caused her brows to wrinkle as she studied cards with ridiculous rules.

Part of wearing her costume was because of her anticipation for an upcoming patrol, but another part of her costume was the importance of her mask. It shielded her face in ways few things could, keeping Helena from seeing her full reactions to being told no and try again over and over.

It also hid the genuine excitement and relief that crossed her entire body as a correctly pronounced card was placed in the good pile, that was done for the night.

In a way, Cassandra hated how learning made her feel. And she hated how ds and bs were not interchangeable but sometimes cs sounded like ks until chs and ths came by to also confuse her. And then as sometimes on cards in certain fonts she could mistake for qs and it was so hard to remember z at all because she saw it so little.

Cass hated it so much.

But she hated even more that the emotional exhaustion she went through while Helena’s steady, calm demeanor was as practiced and poised as ever. She lived for teaching, Barbara had once said. It was as natural to her character as putting on a cape.

And that made her particularly frustrating for Cassandra, just like the rest of the family. Because it meant Cassandra’s struggles — if she let them be seen without her mask — were quick to be judged. She was certain of it. Even when Helena assured her otherwise.

“Well, I think it’s safe to say you didn’t actually practice on your own since last time,” Helena said, putting down the cards after what felt like ages to Cassandra.

Shame came down, crushing Cassandra as she buried her head in her knees. “Mmsorry,” she muttered.

“It’s alright, but you need to remember that learning is just like anything else. You get out of it what you put into it. Even if you sometimes have to put in a little more effort for something like reading than you think others do, it’s no bigger of a deal than them having to put in extra work in order to fight as well as you do,” Helena said as she put up her teaching materials.

Cass’ frown only grew and she narrowed her eyes as she looked at Helena. “No one… feels this bad about not having good enough kicks or punches. Not like I feel now. For reading and for… just talking,” she pointed out sharply. “And no one… thinks Tim’s stupid because he kicks too slow!”

Helena’s brows furrowed in response and she set aside her coffee mug. “Wait a second, Cassie. Who’s calling you stupid?” she demanded.

Immediately, Cass curled more into her cape, instant regret coursing through her. Barbara’s words were still there, in the back of her mind, vicious and unthinking in a way that Barbara almost never was. It was the first thing that came to her mind, like always, but it was far from the last or only.

Truth was, she had seen the flicker of resentment from many faces, many times over the years.

“Everyone,” she finally answered. “They… think it.”

“And they’re wrong,” Helena said firmly.

“No,” Cass said, hugging her shoulders. “Nyssa… she said she could teach me… Told me I was… broken to everyone else. That’s why no one tried—“

“Hey, isn’t this trying right now?” Helena pressed, tapping her finger on Cass’ books. “There’s nothing broken about you, Cass. You’re different. You’re amazing… and not everything can come as naturally to you as fighting and reading people. That gets you frustrated and makes you not want to try. I understand that more than almost anyone else. That’s why we’re working together.” She then turned to gather some of the items on the desk together. “That’s why I keep telling Barbara you would be better off coming with us when we take off. But even if you don’t want to, then you and I are going to make a schedule and keep in contact on Skype or phone — however we can get it to work so you’re still tutoring—“

Caught off guard, Cassandra perked up and looked Helena’s way with wide eyes. “Take off?” she repeated, startled.

Helena looked at Cass warily. “Yeah, we’re leaving next… Oh, for godsake, she didn’t—“

Getting to her feet so fast, Cassandra accidentally sent her desk chair flying back into the wall behind her. “Where’s Barbara?” she demanded.

Covering her face with her hand and sighing deeply, Helena pointed toward the cockpit. “Damn it, Babs.”

Furious, Cassandra took off for the front.

Cassandra nearly burst down the door in her anger and she wasn’t even sure if she would have cared had it happened. Instead she just barreled on through to where Barbara was sitting beside Zinda at the helm with a large projected map of the east coast out before them.

Both women looked back in surprise.

“Easy on the Aerie, she’s a sensitive lady!” Zinda admonished, pulling back on her cap.

To her credit, Barbara seemed more expectant. “Cass, how did your lessons with Helena go—“

Ripping off her mask so that Barbara could see exactly how upset she was, Cass glared at her mentor. “You’re leaving? You’re leaving again!?” she cried out in anger.

“Whoo boy,” Zinda muttered, looking less comfortable by the minute.

“Yes,” Barbara replied. “Dinah is taking time off to retrain and—“

“And?” Cass asked, nose curled as she got in Barbara’s face.

“The Birds are needed elsewhere,” Barbara fought back stubbornly. “Our main headquarters is a plane, Cassandra. We operate across the world. We don’t belong only to Gotham anymore. We can’t stay in one place. It’s… Well, it’s dangerous.”

Narrowing her eyes, Cass clenched her fists so tightly she could feel the knuckles popping. “It’d be with me,” she hissed. “You promised—“

“I’m keeping my promises,” Barbara assured her holding up her hands. “I am, Cass. I never lied to you.”

“Then why can’t I go?” Cass demanded.

“Because I’m keeping my promises,” Babs replied in frustration.

Easing back, Cass felt like she could breathe again. “You’re… She’s going with you?”

“Yes,” Barbara said, though her expression could not have looked more soured if she tried. “Sandra Wusan is a probationary member of the Birds of Prey. She’s getting her second chance… though I’m not taking her out of her cell until I’m sure we can push her off the plane at about a thousand feet first if we need to.”

Relieved, Cass tilted back her head and smiled. “Good. This is good,” she said firmly.

Zinda looked back and forth between them before scratching at her head. “It is? Well I hope someone bothers explaining how!” she groaned. “We’re keeping a murderer on the Aerie One… and then there’s the Lady Shiva business!”

“I can hear you,” Helena called as she came to the cockpit’s door. “Babs, are you honestly telling me you were going to leave without even offering to bring Cassandra with us?”

“It’s okay,” Cass assured her tutor. “Understand now.”

“Understand what?” Helena demanded, still eyeing Barbara for answers.

“Cassandra and Shiva cannot be together,” Barbara said firmly. “First off, I wouldn’t allow it after what she put Cass through over the past two years. Second off, it’s… It’s Shiva’s only motivation. She says she will keep her promise to Dinah for the next year, but it’s Cassandra… Cassandra is going to be the only thing that truly motivates her to stay on this path. They both have something to prove to each other.”

Helena looked to Cass sympathetically. “Isn’t that something that would be easier to prove if you were allowed to work together?” she asked Cass gently.

“No,” Cass said. “She would want me to… kill her. It’s what she… really wants.”

At that, Helena and Zinda looked at each other equally perplexed.

“We’re gonna get a woman to change her mind about not killing other people for a year so that she can ask her daughter to kill her at the end of it?” Zinda asked.

“Shiva is not Cass’ mother,” Barbara said firmly. “She gave birth to Cass. That’s it. And I still haven’t ran the DNA test so it’s taking Shiva at her word—“

“Yes,” Cass answered more simply.

“Helluva year it’s about to be, isn’t it?” Zinda asked Helena.

Reminded of just how long it was going to be, Cassandra looked back at Barbara. “I… I won’t see you?” she asked.

“Of course you will,” Barbara promised. “Maybe not always in person but…” Babs reached forward and tenderly cupped one hand against Cass’ cheek. “Cass, you’re everything to me right now, you understand? You’re…”

“Batgirl,” Cass completed.

“You’re Cassandra, and even if you don’t know it yet, that is a thousand times more important to me than even Batgirl,” Barbara answered. “I want to do right by you… to make up for all the big and small mistakes over the years and more. I’m doing this for you… no matter how hard. I’m going to try to show Shiva she has a second chance — that she doesn’t deserve. And that it’s because of a daughter — that she really doesn’t deserve… that doesn’t belong to her.”

Cass wanted to find the words within her to dispute Barbara, to remind her that everyone had the opportunity — the second chance — for anything. And that if they did not believe that for the likes of Shiva, how could they begin to believe in it for themselves.

For their relationship.

Reaching down, Cass cupped Barbara’s chin in her hands and offered a small smile.

“Thank you,” she said instead. “Thank you for helping Shiva.”

Letting out a frustrated sigh, Barbara’s smile came through and she pulled Cass by the waist into a hug. “It’s for you, but alright.”

Closing her eyes, Cassandra tried to imagine that hug could last them more than only a moment in time.

Patrol, if it could even be counted as patrol, was mercifully short by the time Cassandra had made her parting words and embraces with the Birds.

As Barbara had wanted, she never saw Shiva in that time, and in a way Cass thought it was best. Knew it was best. Because as much as Cassandra wished to help the mother who birthed her find reformation, the rest of the path had to be Shiva’s or it was not going to be true at all.

Afterwords, Cassandra did not detect anything unusual until she pulled into the cave on her bike and found no one else coming in for the night.

It wasn’t unusual for Cass to be the last to call it quits on patrol, but the Redbird and the Batmobile looked practically undisturbed when she passed between them. She even reached down and placed her hand on the hood of the Batmobile and found it cold. It had been sitting there for a while — if it had been used at all that night.

And more alarming was that Batman was not sitting at the computers, filing away his findings of the night, updating files, doing basic casework. Which, in truth, he had been doing more than actual patrolling for the last week or so by Cassandra’s estimations.

Her heart began pounding in her chest. Something was dreadfully wrong.

Without even changing at her locker, Cassandra ran up the stairs to the Manor, ripping off her mask and all but kicking down the grandfather clock in her desire to get to the others of the Manor and fast. She did not know what was wrong, but she knew it had to be something.

Even the Manor air felt stale and choking as she raced through.

She desired to shout out for the others, but she couldn’t even fathom what names to call, what danger could be available. Not until she reached the foyer and found four surprised expressions meeting her.

“Miss Cassandra! Thank goodness you’re here,” Alfred said, putting a hand to his chest as he breathed with relief. He then looked to Bruce, Dick, and Tim. “I suppose you were about to surprise her with this announcement as well, Master Bruce?”

Breathless, Cassandra tried to calm herself down — everyone was fine, everyone was alive. But there was an unmistakable tension between all of them. Alfred’s anger was hardly subtle, which was a rarity for the butler. Tim was to the side, further from Bruce than from Dick, the same deadened expression he had worn since Superbly’s funeral clear on his face. Dick was limited in movement due to his injuries, but he kept on the balls of his feet all the same, shifting uncomfortably under Alfred’s gaze and Cass’.

Bruce was… Bruce was walled off and not looking at Cass completely.

When there was no cowl, it was his greatest tool to keep her from reading him like a book.

“You shouldn’t be upstairs in uniform, Cassandra,” Bruce said first, because of course he did.

Cass’ brows furrowed and she stood her ground, glancing across all of them. “What’s wrong?” she demanded.

It was then that she noticed the packed suitcases and totes behind them. It was then that Cassandra’s teeth began to grind as she worked desperately to refute her own conclusions.

“Nothing’s wrong, promise, Li’l Sister,” Dick said with his own note of desperation. “We just… Well, not we,” he said with a flicker of resentfulness in his glance toward Bruce. “It’s been decided that the three of us are going on a trip.”

For a moment, Cassandra stared at all of them in disbelief. Then she produced a scowl to rival the Bat’s.

“You’re leaving me too?” she demanded angrily.

“Too? What do you mean? Cassie, it’s just—“ Dick began.

“No,” Cass said, holding up a hand to silence Dick. Her full glare was on Bruce. He finally returned it. “Why?” she demanded.

“You’ve not been honest with me recently,” Bruce surmised. “I don’t know what happened in—“

“Not your business,” Cass snapped.

“You are my business,” Bruce retorted.

“Master Bruce, really?” Alfred cut in before Cass could shout back. “I believe we are all speaking out of turn and without enough thought. If we could only take a moment to talk this through and not last minute go on a cross world tour—“

“It has been decided, Alfred,” Bruce continued. “It’s necessary. Just like it’s necessary for Cassandra to stay—“

“Why!?” Cass demanded.

“Because Gotham needs protection,” Dick answered for Bruce. Cassandra looked into his eyes and, as usual with Dick, they were open with honesty. “It needs it, Cassie. It needs someone to be the Bat in town while Bruce is away and… and I’m not in condition. It’s why I’m going, too. Isn’t that right, Bruce?”

Cassandra looked squarely at Bruce — at Batman — but… she did not find either. The man who stared back at her was… vacant. Injured. He hurt in a way that bent his character and confused his soul to an unrecognizable fashion. She wasn’t sure who he was anymore.

And the same judgment, the same view, was looking back at her.

Bruce didn’t know her anymore either.

“Gotham needs Batman,” Cass said, breaking the silence. “That’s… what you wanted me to be. Isn’t it? That’s why… It’s why I’m learning to read. Isn’t it?” When he didn’t immediately answer, she stomped down her foot. “That’s why I’ll do it. That’s why I’ll stay. If you still want me to… be you when I’m gone—“

“You should want to read because it’s a necessary skill for your independence and livelihood, Cassandra,” Bruce interrupted.

She couldn’t cry, it wasn’t like the other night with Tim. But she certainly felt like it.

“You should want to be Batman again,” Cass retorted angrily, “because… Because Bruce Wayne sucks!”

With that, she stormed off to her room, ignoring the calls after her.

She slammed her door behind her and covered her mouth with her forearm as she squeezed her eyes shut and bit back a scream. Her blood boiled like Lazarus waters and she, for a moment, missed the numbness in exchange for the rage and upset that pumped through her veins instead.