Chapter Text
Bruce knew what it was like to worry. He had grown accustomed to the all consuming feeling of anxiety as it grew in his gut, twisting his thoughts until all he could see was the worst possible outcome of any given situation. Having played a part in the upbringing of three boys and two girls did that to a person. He may not have been a legal father to all of them – but they were his charges, his responsibility. And he knew he had made a lot of mistakes. Adapting was important, and this third young lady certainly tested all of his limits.
With as much speed as he could manage he drove the Batmobile through the cave entrance, his hands tightly gripping the wheel. Before the vehicle was even fully stopped, Bruce was opening the door.
“Cassandra?” he called out, the second the engine’s roar had died down. “If you’re here, I need you to let me know. Now please.”
Instead of words, a crashing sound over in the medical bay sent Bruce running. The girl was like a wraith, sometimes more shadow than human and if she was hurt enough to be crashing around, he knew he needed to see her. With the lights still dim, Bruce could barely make out her figure as she moved to hide behind the central examination table.
“Cassandra?” he tried again, this time quieter as he pulled the cowl from his head and tossed it onto the counter. He hated the way she still hid from him sometimes, like she was worried what he’d do to her. “It’s okay,” he promised, holding his hands placatingly in front of him. “I’d just like to see you, that’s all.”
Slowly, the girl crept out from behind the main examination station situated in the center of the room. She had already stripped down to the tank top and compression shorts she wore beneath her uniform.
Bruce stayed where he was, allowing her to make her way carefully towards him, his eyes scanning her in the dim light. Cassandra held her left arm tightly to her chest, discoloration visible. If Bruce hadn’t been spending the last few months studying her every tick and movement, he might have missed the injury. The blank emptiness on her face, despite what must have been a very painful burn made Bruce’s heart ache. If he ever got his hands on David Cain, there would be hell to pay.
“I’d like to turn the light up,” he said simply, working hard to keep his own voice from betraying his worry. “Is that alright with you?” He made sure to keep every one of his movements deliberate and clear. The last thing she needed now was to be worried what he was going to do.
Cassandra nodded once, halting her progress forward so that the table still lay between them.
Without ever turning his back, Bruce walked to the dimmer switch and turned the lights up slowly. Being able to see her more clearly did nothing to ease the tension he felt.
Soot was smudged across the girl’s face; her dark eyes red as she continued to study his movements. In the light, Bruce could see the contents of one of Alfred’s carefully packed medical kits haphazardly scattered about the table between them.
“I can help you with that,” Bruce said, nodding to indicate her arm. He watched as the girl in front of him took a step back, pulling her injured arm in tighter to her body.
“Not weak.” Her voice was quiet, scratchy from what Bruce assumed was smoke inhalation, but it was still resolute.
“No,” he agreed. “You are not weak.” He wanted to move to her, hug her tightly to him and finish checking her for any other injuries, but instead Bruce stood still, letting her dictate the course of their interaction.
“I can,” croaked, gesturing vaguely with her right hand to the supplies.
“I don’t doubt that for a second,” he nodded. “But the point is, you don’t have to do this by yourself. That’s what it means to be a part of this team.” Bruce tilted his head to the side, making sure that he held her gaze. “It’s what it means to be a family. We help one another.” He hoped that she understood the depth of what he said – how much it meant to him to have her as a part of his family, as one of his children. And that even though he had been scared, he was still proud of what he knew she had accomplished tonight. Bruce wasn’t sure that even given a dictionary, he could correctly convey all of that with just his words.
Cassandra continued to study him for a moment, but what she found in his face must have been enough. She climbed up onto the table, one knee tucked to her chest as she offered him her burned arm.
Bruce whispered his thanks as he slowly turned towards the sink. “Give me a second to wash my hands,” he told her. From years of watching both Alfred and Leslie, Bruce had learned to announce everything he was doing. While he had always preferred to work in silence, his children had always wanted to know exactly what came next from disinfectant to the final doling out of medication.
He showed Cassandra the small, prepackaged towel before he touched it to her skin. “This will sting some, but I need to use it to clean out your burn,” he explained. “Then, I’m going to be using this cream to help with the healing process. It will tingle and I need you to let me know if it gets to be too much.” Cassandra’s only response was to raise her chin at him as if in challenge, as if something as mundane as disinfecting and cleaning an injury would be enough to bring her pain.
He worked methodically, occasionally stopping to adjust the light above them or turn her arm carefully between his fingers. Bruce would never be able to wrap his head around how so much strength could fit into such a small lithe form.
“So,” he ventured calmly as he finished wrapping her arm. “Barbara says you ran into a burning building?” He had to stop himself from smirking at the way her eyes narrowed and her lips twisted into a frown. “Don’t look at me like that,” he scolded. “She isn’t telling on you to get you in trouble. She was trying to make sure I knew how to help.”
Cassandra turned her head away from him with a heavy sigh, which turned into a small cough at the end. “She said wait.”
“Of course she did,” Bruce nodded. “The building was on fire.” He pulled away from her and allowed his eyes to track over her body, looking for any other injuries he might have missed. She was lucky. The burn on her arm had been bad, but it seemed to be the only one. “Barbara called me three times,” he told her. “She said you stopped answering your comm.”
“Angry?”
“No,” Bruce said thoughtfully. “She might sound like she is, but really, she was just scared.”
Carefully, Cassandra reached out to tap against his wrist. “Are you?”
“I’m not angry. And now that I’ve seen you, I’m not scared either. But I was.” He waited until she made eye contact with him again before he continued. “Cassandra, what you did was incredibly dangerous.” He watched as a tiny smirk settled onto her lips. She gestured delicately to the emblem on his uniform and then back to her own chest.
“More dangerous than usual,” he conceded, understanding her point. Dangerous was what they did on a regular basis.
“I helped,” she said, her voice strong and clear, proud.
“I know.”
“You would have.”
Bruce sighed, rubbing his hand over his face. Now that the adrenaline of being worried had fled from his system, he was beginning to feel drained. At forty years old, he could still keep up with the criminals of Gotham, but teenaged girls were their own special type of exhausting. “Probably,” he said at last, knowing it would be useless to try and lie to her. Her smile widened triumphantly and it was almost worth it, just to see that.
“But Cassandra,” he said, moving as close as he dared without trying to make her feel boxed in. “I need you to be smarter than me. I know what we do is dangerous, but in order for me to do my job, I need to know you are being as safe as possible. And that means listening to Barbara.”
In his years of trying to raise children, Bruce had used stern warnings, threats of grounding, and even the same disapproval he had leveled at adults in the Justice League. He had had varying levels of success and absolute failures. He tried not to think of his two eldest, but memories of Dick and Jason still came, followed closely by memories of Tim’s shattered looks and Barbara’s unimpressed derision when Bruce still hadn’t been able to communicate. He felt a heavy weight settle in on his chest, and no matter how good he was at schooling his emotions, he knew that Cassandra saw it too. It was what she did.
“B?” she whispered, reaching out with her good arm to touch his wrist. “It hurts?”
“Sometimes, yes,” Bruce agreed. He didn’t know how to explain to her how scared he had been at the thought of losing her. How the barely contained terror in Barbara’s voice when she had told him Cass had stopped responding to her comms. was something he had hopped to never hear. She was younger than Bruce had been when he had first brought Dick home, but he knew Barbara understood.
“You need to call her,” he said finally, slowly reaching out a hand to rest it gently against the side of Cassandra’s face.
“I should…” Cassandra paused, her bottom lip pulled into her mouth as she tried to find the right word. Bruce had to suppress a smile as he wondered if Cass knew she had gotten that particular look from Barbara. “Apologize?” her head tilted to the side in consideration.
“That’s up to you,” he said. “You should only apologize if you really are sorry, and you’re going to work to not repeat the action that caused pain.” That had always been one of Bruce’s flaws. He tended to repeat the same mistakes over and over again and he knew his actions had consequences.
“Sorry for not answering – not for helping people,” Cass said thoughtfully as she lowered herself from the table. “I will help.”
Bruce sighed, but he smiled all the same. “I understand,” he told her. “And Barbara will too. She would have done the same thing at your age.” Once again, memories of a different time, a different Batgirl flying around Gotham with Dick and Jason made Bruce’s chest ache. So much of their childhoods had been wrapped up in the danger he had brought to them and he wondered, not for the first time, if Barbara, now the one left behind, regretted the path she had taken.
He walked with Cassandra over to the computer station and handed her the tablet he knew she preferred. Barbara picked up on her end before the call could even fully ring once.
“Cass? Are you okay? Are you hurt?”
“Okay,” Cassandra responded, holding up her already bandaged arm so that Barbara could see it.
Bruce could feel the sigh of relief he heard from Barbara in his soul. “She has some second degree burns on her left arm, and a bit of a cough from the smoke, but other than that she appears to be alright,” he reported, anticipating Barbara’s next three questions.
“Thank you,” Barbara replied, but her eyes stayed glued to Cass. Bruce understood that as well. He knew Barbara’s nerves wouldn’t be fully calmed until she was able to see Cass for herself.
“Come home when you can, Alfred will probably have some cookies ready.” He realized his mistake as soon as he’d said it. The Manor had never been technically Barbara’s home, although there was a guest room that no one else had ever stayed in. And the older girl had chafed at the idea of Cass living there as well – going so far as to make sure there was a bedroom set up for her at the Clock Tower as well. But finally, her eyes lifted up to meet him.
“I’ll see what I can do,” she whispered.
Bruce could feel more than see Cassandra’s excitement at the prospect of Barbara coming over. He considered letting Tim know as well, thinking it might be enough to get him to stay the night too.
“Excellent,” he replied, still holding his hope close to his chest. “I’ll give you two some time.” He placed a kiss atop Cassandra’s smoke scented hair before turning to leave. As he walked away he could faintly hear Barbara calmly repeating some of the same things he had said earlier – that she wasn’t angry but scared but that she was better now.
He knew that there were pieces missing from his family; human sized holes that he couldn’t fill in with substitutes, but none of his children had ever been replacements. They were each their own people, complicated, complex individuals and he knew that he loved them. As he made it across the threshold from cave to home, he promised them silently that he would continue to work to prove that to them in whichever ways they allowed.