Chapter Text
Bruce had been trying to make weekly family breakfasts a thing for a while now.
That was to say, Alfred thought it was a good idea to get all the kids back in one place every once in a while and Bruce acquiesced before long.
The breakfasts rarely went according to plan, there were so few of them permanently living out of the Manor nowadays, mainly just the kids—Duke and Damian. Tim would stay, on occasion, when he was too exhausted (really, homesick, but Cass wouldn’t tell) to make the trip back to his apartment for the night. And Cass had somehow become a permanent couch surfer to her various friends and family at some point, but never felt the urgency to stop. She came and went, basically wherever she pleased, and nobody seemed to mind all that much.
The rest of the family was so spread out and so busy that, really, the only time everyone got together as of late was on major holidays.
But it was 8:30 a.m. and the only kids at the table were Tim, Duke, and Damian, leaving Bruce to wonder when exactly all his kids had grown up.
“Cassandra stayed the night, didn’t she?” he asked no one in particular. Alfred flitted around the kitchen behind them, stalling and finishing up details as he pretended the food wasn’t getting cold.
Tim shrugged and Damian kept his eyes on the untouched plate placed in front of him.
“Her light was still on by the time I got up this morning,” Duke offered helpfully.
Bruce asked, “What time?”
He must not have been expecting the question, because Duke sucked his teeth and hid a small wince as he said, “Maybe around five?”
Bruce stared him down until Duke had to look away, tipping his head back and looking at the bare ceiling. His solidarity with Cass seemed no match for his need to please Bruce — that would be examined at a later date. “Okay, ah, closer to 6:30. But I’m sure she had a good reason.”
Bruce only shook his head and scraped his chair back against the hardwood floor. He really couldn’t scold anyone for staying up too late, not when Alfred was so constantly on Bruce for doing the same. A man could dream, though.
“I’m checking up on her,” he said. “Don’t start without us.”
Damian made a quiet sigh as he left, but no one said anything else.
The hall around Cass’ room remained quiet, though her bedroom light still clearly peeked out from under the heavy door.
He knocked.
No response.
“Cassandra,” he asked the silence. “Breakfast is starting.”
More silence. Not that Cass was a very chatty person, but not a single sound came from behind her door. Odd.
“Cass,” he said, more gruffly this time, letting Batman bleed into his normal voice. He knocked once more. “I’m coming in.”
The room was a disaster zone.
Strewn across every available surface wer papers of various lengths and contents. Some heavy novels, some picture books, essays of every length. Half scribbled-on printer papers. Bruce had never seen the room in such disarray.
But no blood. At least there was no blood.
Beneath all the mess sat Cassandra, slumped over her desk with the lamp still on.
Breathing. Not dead. Asleep.
Bruce sighed and put a soft hand on her shoulder. “Hey.”
She stirred under his touch. “Bruce?”
“What’s all this?” he asked, smiling through the confusion.
“Homework.” She didn’t have it in her to be embarrassed, she was still a bit out of it from her grogginess. She pulled all the stray pages she could into somewhat neater piles on the desk, though the rest of the room still remained. “I need study.”
“What for?” He looked over some of the closest papers to him, clearly confused. Cassandra wasn’t enrolled in any formal education, never had been, but Alfred let her hang around him and learn a few things—though his preferred areas of expertise tended to be in household duties and survival skills, nothing that assigned homework. Especially no homework to this degree.
She made sure to meet Bruce’s eyes.
“Gala next week. I…” She took a moment to think. “Nervous.”
A heavy exhale left her, at that. She’d been more nervous to admit that than she’d thought.
Bruce’s eyes conveyed a profound empathy that told her he’d not only knew her meaning, but deeply understood what she was going through.
Bruce didn’t need many words to speak either.
“What’s so important about this gala?” He asked, all business, now, as he knelt beside her desk and placed his folded arms over the mess of it. He would talk her down from her worries, they would deal with this like professionals. “You’ve attended one before, you don’t need to study in advance.”
She frowned, deciding on how to phrase her biggest concerns.
It would take more than a few words to convey the deep, harbored feelings of embarrassment and shame she got from attending these things. To explain to Bruce that she didn’t want to let him down, ever, even at a dumb, glorified publicity stunt that no one cared about.
“You’re very charming, Cass,” he talked her up, in the meanwhile. “All the old ladies love you.”
That was one way to put it.
She latched onto his phrasing: “Old ladies make fun of me.”
“They make fun of you?” This seemed to be the first time Bruce was hearing of this. Which wasn’t odd, he’s always busy at galas charming ladies, young and old, with his Brucie Wayne cover—he wouldn’t very quickly catch wind of the crotchety old women giggling about his new daughter’s poor manners and poorer English. “Who was it?”
She opened and closed both palms atop her desk, but the words wouldn’t quite reach her tongue.
All the old couples whose kids grew up and left them sour and miserable and alone. All the middle aged parents who wanted to raise their kids to become “a bit brighter” than her. All the kids of these rich assholes who thought she wasn’t watching while they made fun of her monotonous voice and mismatched grammar.
Everyone. It was everyone.
“All,” was what came out of her mouth. It wasn’t enough, but Bruce always understood. “I talk bad. Think I stupid.”
And that’s the crux of it all. She had all these illustrative and well thought out concepts in her head, but all that came out of her mouth was a couple of sentences that she knew weren’t enough.
“You speak wonderfully,” Bruce said in the interim. “You don’t need to do all this extra studying for a boring gala. You don’t even need to go, if you don’t want to. It’s not a big deal.”
“Yes, big deal,” she frowned. “Need go.”
“Is it because your brothers are going?” She brushed her feet against the carpet beneath her as Bruce decided his next words. “Jason never went to any of those, he didn’t like them, either. I’m sure you two can hold down the fort while we’re gone.”
“No, listen. I want go.” She took a breath. “I want make you proud. I want look good. Make people like you.”
She put her hands in her lap and sat up straight. Words spun in her head and she wasn’t sure they’d come out right, but she didn’t care. A fire sparked in her throat and she needed to say her piece and she needed to say it now.
“Bruce Wayne looks irresponsible. Bad parent,” she said, and balled her hands into fists. “We are different different. Dick left young. Jason died. Damian angry, I am bad. Need work harder. Make you not look bad.”
Bruce waited a few seconds after she’d finished before taking his turn.
“You don’t make me look bad,” he admitted. “I do it to myself, and on purpose, most of the time.”
“No good.”
“It’s easier, if I act like an idiot. That way, no one ever expects anything serious out of Bruce Wayne,” he said. Cass knew that, but him tarnishing his own reputation was different from his kids doing it for him. “I didn’t realize how it would affect you though. For that, I’m sorry, Cass.”
She nodded, and his eyes moved away from hers, curiously scanning the papers on her desk another time. He paused at the topmost paper of the nearest stack, a sheet full of her messy handwriting.
She cringed inwardly at the thought of him reading it. It wasn’t anything special, just her name several dozen times before she’d gotten bored and written out her siblings’ as well, to the best of her ability.
If she’d had the choice, she wished he would’ve found the page where she’d practiced full sentences. At least that paper had been meticulously thought out and corrected, not some warm up activity that was half made up of scribbles and nonsense.
She’d improved a lot since he’d last seen her, but that paper wouldn’t prove anything.
“I know I don’t say it enough,” he said, breaking her worried train of thought. “But I’m proud of you.”
“Proud?”
That was not where she thought the conversation had been going.
She was too caught up in her own thoughts that she missed the blatant pride and love on Bruce’s face as he looked over her work. A proud father. That’s who he was. And Cass was his daughter—legally, emotionally, in all the ways that mattered.
“I’m surprised that you went through all this trouble—all this extra work, cramming, staying up late—just to impress some old people at a charity gala on my behalf. You care so much, about something I barely gave half a thought towards. I’m grateful, I truly am. Thank you.”
She smiled softly, unsure of what else to do.
“You’re welcome,” fell smoothly off her lips. A memorized phrase. She had a few of those locked away in her brain somewhere. Though most of them were from old movies her brothers had made her watch.
“You know,” he said, in a conspiratorial tone of voice that sounded much more fitting for Dick than Bruce. “There’s still quite a bit of time before the gala. Would you like to have some practice conversations with Alfred and me until then?”
Cass gave a wide grin and nodded.
“Perfect. Now—” Bruce rose from his knee and jerked his head to her open door. “There’s some perfectly good breakfast downstairs about to get cold, and some brothers of yours already complaining about it. You ready to go?”
She nodded a second time, and followed him on his way out.
And it was a good breakfast.
They all remembered to thank Alfred for it, as always. And Cass let her voice raise a bit higher than usual, so it blended in with the others’ instead of hiding behind them.
She lingered around the dining table, helping with the empty plates and glasses.
“Alfred?” she asked, remembering to raise her tone at the end to make it sound like a question.
“Yes, Miss Cassandra?”
“May I have your assistance?” She tapped her fingers along the countertop, celebrating another memorized phrase for the morning. “Help prepare for gala. Please.”
He set down the damp glass in his hands and smiled at her. “It would be my pleasure.”
He was wrong, really, because the pleasure was all Cassandra’s.
The three of them spent evenings planning out endless types of conversations, from weather, to food, to politics (“which should, typically, be avoided”), to fashion designers. Cass already knew the dress she’d be wearing, and prepared several “thank you”s under her belt for the compliments she expected to receive.
It wasn’t being arrogant, it was being prepared. Alfred hadn’t let her leave their first practice session until she accepted three compliments.
And all their practice paid off—the gala went off without a hitch.
Until news came that Scarecrow broke out of Arkham for the third time in as many weeks, and the family had to say their goodbyes early. Which still counted as a win in Cassandra’s book.