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“Alarms?”
“Nothing.”
“Any sign of a tail?”
“No.”
“Sightlines?”
“Clear.”
“Entries, exits?”
“Cuh-cuh-covered.”
“Okay, so we got a full Arkham Special. Two-Face, Joker and Poison Ivy.”
Tim blinked. “Does Poi... uh, Ivy count as part of a full Ar-Ar-Arkham Special? I thuh-thought that uh, would have been Skuh-Skuh-Scarecrow. Or maybe Rid-Rid-Riddler.”
“It does with the groupon code,” the cashier told them, and handed them their thickshakes. “That’ll be forty-four, ninety-seven.”
“Fifteen freaking bucks a milkshake.” Jason handed over his card. “And people are worried about mafia rackets.”
“I don’t set the prices, man, I just charge ‘em.” The cashier handed Jason his card. “What’s with the fancy get-up? Did you guys ditch prom or something?”
Jason slowly dropped his sunglasses over his eyes. “Nah, man. We’re on a mission from God.”
Tim snickered as she took the tray of enormous milkshakes, heaps of whipped cream, cookies and nuts piled atop them to create a ridiculous, wobbling tower, striped with syrup. Cass was sitting at the table she’d picked out, one with a sightline to the entrance while being close to the side door. Her crutches were leaned strategically against the wall.
“How long have we got, you think?” Jason asked Tim shrewdly as he slid the condensation-soaked glasses onto the table.
“I po-po-posted on Instagram four muh-minutes ago,” Tim shrugged, rose-patterned lace sleeves shimmering faintly. “Se-se-seventeen minutes?”
“Seventeen minutes, to take on one of these babies?” Jason scoffed. “Piece of cake. Here, Cass.” He shoved the blueberry-and-raspberry cookie bedecked one in her direction. “Got you a Two Face.”
Cass’ face lit up as she slid it in front of herself.
“Yep, you’ve never experienced Gotham until you’ve experienced a Rogueshake,” Jason held his up, piled with green pistachio ice cream, candy floss and pop rocks. It had a huge grinning face painted in strawberry syrup, which Jason stabbed through with his straw. “Take that, psycho clown.”
Tim sucked on her Poison Ivy drink, all lovely mint and dark chocolate with sugared flowers.
“...Good,” Cass declared after a minute of contemplation.
“Damn right! Want to try some of mine?”
Tim grinned as Cass obligingly sampled the Joker. She jumped when a pop rock went off in her mouth. “Strange,” was her review.
“Just like the Joker,” Jason snorted. “You want to try?” he offered Tim while Tim handed hers over to Cass for a sampling. “No-no-not that one. Pi-pi-pistachio,” she shrugged. “I’m allergic.”
Cass was nice enough to let her try a sip of the Two Face drink. “Mmmm, ras-raspberry.”
Cass made a waving sign between the two of them. Tim squinted at it, trying to parse it out. She knew Cassandra Cain had trouble with words; she sympathised whole-heartedly.
“You want to know how Tim and I met?” Jason guessed.
Cass nodded eagerly.
“Uh-uh, well…”
“You know the story. Boy meets girl,” Jason grinned. “Boy gets girl kidnapped…”
“A-a-attempted kidnapping!”
“Tia, it’s not attempted if the kidnappers actually get their hands on you!”
“No-no-not for lo-lo-long,” Tim shrugged. “Be-be-be-besides, you were their tar-tar-target!”
“Yeah, and you were the dumbass who pushed me aside and then got grabbed in my place,” Jason said around his straw. “Seriously!” He told Cass, who’s eyes grew as wide as saucers. “She literally stood there and practically said ‘take me instead!’ And she wound up getting shot too!”
“Oh-oh-oh-only a little bit shot! A graze!” Tim protested, blushing. “Robin came to geh-geh-get me.”
“God, that asshole,” Jason griped. “Don’t even get me started on that asshole.”
“He was nice!” Tim protested. “H-He told juh-juh-jokes! And he did re-rescue me!”
“He didn’t keep you from getting shot,” Jason said mutinously. “And also, who cares if he’s nice? I’m nice too. I got you thank-you flowers, didn’t I?”
“They cou-cou-couldn’t get the bo-boquet through my hospital door swee-swee-suite! I me-mean, it was very nuh-nice, but it was a bit overboard!”
“Uh, I’m pretty sure that one was from Bruce. The one with the chocolates was from Alfred.”
“I lu-liked that one.”
“Well, yeah,” Jason shrugged. “It’s from Alfred. So, there you go, Cass. We met during a gala, but were fire-forged friends via a kidnapping and subsequent days of hospital visits.”
Cass turned to Tim, enthralled. “You.” She pointed. “Good.”
Tim shrugged and blushed.
Jason beamed. Tim didn’t know it, but she’d just made a friend for life.
Tim’s expression suddenly changed. “Uh-Uh…” she pointed.
A mysterious figure had come roaring on a bike. Somewhere behind, an ominous town car followed.
“Shit! They tracked us quicker than I thought.” Jason hastily sucked down the last of his shake. “You grab the crutches!” He ordered Tim. “I’ll grab the Cass!”
He suited words to action and scooped up an amused Cass, before they made their exit giggling the whole way. Their getaway Uber was waiting for them.
“Okay, where to next, folks?”
“To the arcade!” Jason said dramatically.
“Wuh-wait! So-somewhere else first!”
*
The skate park was free, well-lit and a popular parking spot for the food trucks, and therefore busy.
Jason snapped a photo of him and Cass riding a Segway they had rented and posted it to his Instagram while Tim went to the wall of lockers tucked away from the main skate area. She came back wearing pads and a helmet, bearing a wicked-looking skateboard. “I keep mine here, but, uh, if you want to rent some there’s a place,” she pointed.
Jason was honestly game for anything and rarely backed down from a physical challenge. He got rollerblades and not a board, because, fuck, if he was going to suffer the indignity of training in the stupid Batskates, he might as well use it to have some fun.
Cass was stuck with the rented Segway, since her leg was still in bad shape. She didn’t mind it, though. She took on the new experience the same way she did everything else; with grace, poise, precision and childlike delight.
They had an enjoyable, sweaty hour tearing up and down the ramps and half pipes. For someone who didn’t do this sort of thing on the regular, Jason thought he did pretty well. He’d had to master a lot more challenging stuff than this.
The real surprise was Tim; she shredded up and down the pipes, a stone-cold pro in a fancy gala dress and a matching, shiny, silver formal leg brace. The helmet and pads could have been farcical, but she made them work.
“Okay, I admit it,” Jason said admiringly when they stopped at one of the trucks. “I’m am both impressed and really fucking confused. I hate to stereotype, Timmy, but this really didn’t strike me as your kind of thing.”
“If it wasn’t for this thing,” Tim tapped the brace ruefully. “I wouldn’t have been.”
Cass’ face screwed up in confusion. She pointed to it, a question in her eyes.
“Come again?” Jason said through a mouthful of fries.
“I was in a car accident when I was five,” Tim explained. “My leg was busted pretty badly. Like, the knee was shattered and everything.”
“Ouch,” Jason grimaced.
“Very much so,” Tim nodded. “So, you know how my parents’ company is the foremost medical hardware maker on the East Coast, right? Well, about that time they were investigating a line of cybernetic replacement parts, mostly for combat veterans, you know? Like prostheses, but, like, inside the body instead of just attached. My parents thought maybe I could test out their cybernetic knee joint, especially since they were making one that had the ability to grow with the patient, like a normal bone.” She took a mouthful of baked potato. “I was an ideal candidate to get fitted with a prototype, they said.”
Cass and Jason looked at each other. “Seriously?” Jason asked. “They used you as a lab rat?”
“Kind of. But it’s not as sinister as you’re making it sound,” Tim asserted. “No matter how much testing you do and simulations you run on a new device, eventually someone - an actual person - has to be the first to try it out in real time. It’s not like they just shoved me into a lab and told the doctors to go to town; it took a year's worth of surgeries and another three years of physical therapy just so I could manage to walk with a brace. They thought it was a better option than amputation. And also, it worked exactly as expected. They never thought my leg would be even remotely usable, it was so bad. The experiment worked.”
“So, how does this get you to being an amateur Tony Hawk?” Jason prodded.
“Well, the device worked, so they had to market it,” Tim shrugged. “They wanted to market it as a pediatric prosthesis for kids, since the big selling point was that it could grow with the recipient’s body. They signed me up for a couple of different ‘normal kid’ activities, to show I could do everything any other kid could do. So they put me into gymnastics, ballet, skateboarding, and a bunch of other stuff too. For testing and publicity. When the program was scrapped, I kind of just kept doing it.
“What, all that and they cancelled it anyway?” Jason blinked. “Why?”
“Money, mostly,” Tim replied. “The knee joint itself was astronomically expensive to produce, plus there was a lot of time and money spent in the years afterwards to calibrate it properly and make sure it was doing what it was supposed to do. I mean, we have that sort of money,” Tim owned her pedigree sheepishly. “But the average person on the street would never be able to afford it; not just the joint itself but all the other therapy too. They decided it wasn’t a viable product, so they scrapped it for alternative products that were less bespoke but far cheaper to make. It happens all the time in medical engineering. But I have the only one in existence, so I guess that makes me unique.”
Cass looked even more confused. She leant forward to a startled Tim and raised a hand, miming it speaking. Then she pointed at Tim.
For a minute even Jason’s Cass-translator drew a blank. Then it hit him. “Hey! You’re not stuttering anymore!”
“Oh! Right,” Tim sheepishly reached into one ear, pulling out what looked to Jason like a comm unit they used in the field. “I al-also wanted to cuh-cuh-cuh-come here for… this.”
Jason took it carefully. “What is it?”
“Core-Core-Choral effect implant,” she said, taking it back and repositioning it in her ear. “It’s meant to help with the stutter. When people with stutters sing or talk in tandem with someone, or if they can speak without actually hearing themselves speak, the stutter disappears. It’s called the choral effect. The implant repeats what I’m saying in my ear as I’m saying it, so I don’t stutter when it’s in. Mostly, anyway.”
Cass waved at her ear and then pointed at Jason’s chunky Omega watch.
“I’d like to wear it all the time,” Tim sighed. “My parents don’t want me to.”
“Why not?” Jason was baffled. “I mean, it helps. Why shouldn’t you wear it?”
“They don’t want me to… depend on ek-ek-equipment to fix it,” Tim shrugged. “Stutters are… mostly psychological.They think if I use the implant like a crutch, I’m just getting around the problem rather than solving it. The problem is up here.” Tim pointed to her temple. “Dad reckons I’ll be better off in the long run if I actually work on my emotional issues that cause the stutter. I mean, he’s not wrong, I guess.”
“But you still have an implant?” Jason asked, puzzled. “If your parents didn’t want you to use it, why get it for you?”
“My parents don’t know,” Tim grimaced. “I bought it myself. That's why I keep it in the park locker; so they won’t find it at home. I shouldn’t have,” she grimaced. “But I get so fru-frustrated with it sometimes. Please don’t tell them,” she added pleadingly.
Jason and Cass shared a look. “Your secret’s safe with us, Timmers.”
Tim smiled. “Thank you.
Cass smiled back, but then her face snapped into focus fast enough to give Tim whiplash.
“What?”
Cass pointed. “Enemy.”
Tim had no idea how she spotted it, but she was right. There were ominous figures getting out of cars near the skate park gate.
“To the Segway!” Jason cried. “We can make it if we go out the pedestrian gate!”
It should have been impossible to pile three kids onto a Segway with crutches, but they managed it, laughing all the way.
*
Tim discovered three things at the Newtown Arcade.
One, Cass had never been inside an arcade before.
Two, she was an arcade game prodigy.
Three, she and Jason both had a competitive streak a billion miles wide.
Tim was happy to hang back and watch them completely destroy high scores left right and centre. Jason liked the shooting games best but had a soft spot for the whack-a-mole. Cass seemed from of the racing games and looked wistfully at the DDR console from her crutches. They were both mad-eyed skeeball fanatics and had quite an admiring crowd gathered around by the time they called it a draw, much to the sweating prize counter attendants' relief. They ended up losing Cass to the claw machines, because she did not take losing through inept equipment well.
Tim and Jason took possession of an air hockey table where they both turned into steely eyed trash-talking warmongers. Jason had the reflexes and speed, but Tim had a solid understanding of angles of physics.
“Yes!” Tim slammed the puck into the goal slot. “Loser! Loooooser!”
“Ah, shaddap,” Jason huffed. “Prepare for a reckoning, Tim-bit-too.”
“So,” Tim started as they lined up for another round. “How did you and Cass meet?”
“Cass?” Jason turned towards the girl, who had a steadily growing pile of plushies, boxes and figurines piling up next to her. Tim tried to take advantage of his split attention, but he didn’t miss a hit of the puck, regardless. “We just kinda got thrown in together,” Jason shrugged. “Bruce adopted me ‘bout three years ago and then Dick adopted her about the same time, maybe a little after. Bruce and Dick don’t see eye to eye but they do, like, have regular meet-ups and stuff. Since that usually means B and D get into a snipefest of some sort, Cass and me just kinda got used to hanging out together until the other two finish being passive aggressive at each other.”
“Really?’ Tim was surprised. “You two act like you’ve been best friends for years. Even longer than that!”
Jason gave a faint smile. “Well, we got a lot in common,” he hedged easily. “We’re both street kids. We can always sit down and commiserate with each other over the face that Bruce has no idea how much a pint of milk costs. And besides,” Jason leaned in, grinning conspiratorially. “A little part of it is because Dick hates me. Me getting chummy with his precious Cass pisses him off to no end. It’s pretty fucking funny.” It was. For all sorts of reasons.
Tim was taken aback. “He doesn’t hate you, surely.”
“Doesn’t,” Cass called over, not looking away from the figurine she was currently scooping up.
“Uh, excuse you, he fucking does,” Jason retorted. “He does, actually,” Jason turned back to Tim, idly bouncing the puck back in her direction. “He thinks I’m street trash.”
“He didn’t actually say that, did he?” Tim asked, scandalised.
“Naw. But I can tell, Tiny Tia,” Jason sighed. “I know how to read people.” He knew how to read sounds. “I can tell when someone lies. And every time that fucker tries out his welcome to the family routine on me, I can smell the fake polystyrene bullshittery on it. He hates me.” Jason shrugged. “There ain’t much point arguing.”
“But… why?” Tim asked. “I mean, he must have an actual reason.”
Jason drove the puck into the goal slot. “Yes! Suck it! Honestly,” Jason added in a calmer voice. “Dick Grayson spent his whole life as an only child. Apple of his loving parents eyes,” Jason tried not to feel sour over that. “And then firstborn heir of Bruce Wayne. That asshole has never had to share space with another kid before in his life. Of course he’s shitty to me.”
“Not,” Cass announced, coming over with her crutches. She whipped around to glare at some of the people eyeing up the massive pile of prizes she’d left near the claw machine. They hastily stepped back. She turned to poke Jason on the forehead. “Dick.... just…. St-” her face screwed up as she tried to get the right word out.
“Stubborn?” Tim guessed.
Cass pointed at her.
“He’s really not, Little Mouse,” Jason smiled wearily. “Relax, I don’t measure my self-worth by Dick Grayson’s approbation, okay?” He returned the air hockey pegs to their box. “It’s fine.”
Cass made a face at him. He made a face right back.
Tim, not wanting them to fight, piped up. “Little Mouse. That’s cute!”
“Yeah, well, she’s always been as quiet as one,” Jason snorted, and then patted her on the head. “And as little as one. Hey!” He hastily drew his hand back as she tried to bite him.
“Him…” Cass pointed. “Fox. Silly Fox!”
“Hey! It’s just Fox. I’m totally foxy, I’ll have you know!” Jason protested. Then he turned on a startled Tim. “I just thought of something. Tim needs a nickname too. Whaddya think, Cass?”
Cass nodded.
“I do?” Tim blinked.
“Yeah! All our friends get nicknames!”
“We’re… friends?” Tim asked softly.
Cass and Jason looked at each other, baffled. “Uh, yeah? Why the hell wouldn’t you think so?”
Tim shrugged uncomfortably. “I’m sorry, it’s just… I was homeschooled a lot and I never really made many friends until my parents sent me to the Gotham Fine Arts School. But I started at Kane Institute For Young Women this year and…” she grimaced. “All the girls there know each other. Like, they’ve all been in the same Swiss boarding school and stuff. I don’t think they like me very much. Sorry, I don’t always know when someone wants to be my friend.”
“Tiamat Drake! You literally saved me from a kidnapping! I come over to your house to play video games all the time! I just staged a jailbreak and we’ve been running away from the wardens all over Gotham with you. Dude, we’re friends, okay?” Jason laughed. “Even if you are sometimes a dumbass!”
Cass clipped him over the back of the head for that.
“Oh,” Tim gave a tentative smile. “Okay, then.”
“Great! Now that that baffling little detail is dealt with… Names?” Jason and Cass both looked at her speculatively.
Tim shuffled back slightly.
Cass’ eyes lit up. She leapt for her prize pile and dug through a bunch of plushies until she emerged with the one she wanted. She brandished it proudly. “Tim!”
“Bird,” Jason took it. He looked at Tim, smirking. “Baby Bird.”
“Hey!” Tim protested stridently while the other two gave shit eating grins. “I’m not a baby!”
“You are twelve.”
Cass patted her on the head. “Small.”
“Ergo,” Jason finished. “You are a literal baby. At least to us geriatric fifteen-year olds. Welcome to the club, Baby Bird.” Jason ceremoniously handed her the bird plushie while Tim bemoaned her fate.
Jason’s phone started buzzing with texts in his tuxedo pocket. “Damn, I think someone has caught on, again,” he muttered, reading the texts. “Let’s go get our prizes at the counter while the getting is good.”
Cass and Jason had amassed enough tickets to get themselves a brand-new tablet and a phone, respectively. Tim good naturedly settled for a polaroid camera for her slightly smaller pile of tickets. Counting up the tickets took the poor attendants some time, so they chilled in the snack bar with sodas until the poor guys were done.
“So, uh, if we’re friends,” Tim piped up tentatively. “Can I ask about… um, your aphasia? I’m kind of an expert on speech pathologies at this point.”
Cass looked surprised but nodded.
“Um, so I kind of noticed,” Tim squirmed a little. “Your aphasia isn’t really aphasia at all, it’s more dysphasia? Like, your ability to comprehend language and body cues hasn’t been affected at all. You clearly comprehend everything people say and you read non-verbal cues with no issues, so, uh, what you’ve got is non-fluent expressive dysphasia. Like, your problem is just the output, right, not anything else. So, um,” Tim found herself going smaller and hotter under Jason’s and Cass’ unwavering stares. She forged on, since the pebble had been cast and the landslide was already rolling. “Um, that means there’s some kind of damage or atrophy going on in your Broca’s area, in the left hemisphere on the brain. Have you, um, always had trouble?”
Jason and Cass shared a speaking glance. “Since birth. She never really spoke,” Jason answered for her slowly. “That’s what she told me, anyway.”
Cass nodded.
“Right, so,” Tim picked up the thread again. “I thought that maybe your language ability might have been rerouted through your right hemisphere since your left isn’t, um, working so well. So, um, can I ask you some questions?”
Cass nodded, fascinated.
“Which way is Friday?”
Jason blinked. “What?”
Cass, however, surprised him. She pointed unerringly to her left back quarter, at about eight o’ clock.
“Okay, and which way is November?”
Cass pointed again, smiling slowly.
“When you think about numbers and distances, do you see them, like appearing in front of you? Some are close to you, some are further away?”
Cass nodded.
“What the fuck, really?” Jason asked. “Do you see them floating in the air?”
Cass wobbled a hand. Sometimes.
“Really?” Jason gaped. “You never told me that!”
Cass shrugged. She touched her temple and then shrugged.
“Oh. You didn’t know that wasn’t normal,” Jason beamed as understanding came. He totally got that. He had been seven before he realised other people didn’t see colours when they heard noises. He was eight when he realised that other people didn’t experience pain the same way he did either.
Cass nodded.
“Right, so, um, that was a part of my theory,” Tim nodded. “Your brain has rewired itself around the usual neural pathways it would use for speech, which has affected your sensory perceptions as well. In your case, Spatial Sequence Synesthesia. Your brain is perceiving time and space differently because of the rewiring. It’s kind of the same for me. There’s some damage up here from the car crash I was in.” she pointed to her temple. “So sounds become tactile sensations. I feel voices and music. I also feel ideas, too. Like, when I’m solving a math problem I might feel a tingling sensation in my fingers as my brain makes connections to get to the solution. Weird, huh?” She grinned.
“Dude, that is awesome,” Jason crowed, voice a deep red. He felt a wistful regret he couldn’t just tell Tim about his own synesthesia. Bruce and he agreed it should probably be kept on the downlow, since it was so rare. Secret identities and all.
“It’s useful for math class, sometimes,” Tim agreed. “And the sound-tactile thing was really useful for memorising music. Not so much fun at a heavy metal concert. Ugh. Anyway, if you are using your right-side brain for expressive output… have you ever tried singing?” Tim asked. “Because that’s governed more by the right-side brain than left-side brain.”
“Wait. Wait, wait, wait,” Jason said eagerly. “Are you saying that Cass might be able to sing, even though she can’t speak?”
“There’s one way to find out,” Tim replied.
*
In Gotham, they looked for ways - any possible way - to keep kids off the street and out of trouble. Which is why they had all-night milkshake parlours, all-night skate parks, all-night arcades and so forth. They couldn’t stop kids from going out, but they could, in theory, make sure they had somewhere reasonably safe and legal to go. If you had an idea for dry and drug-free entertainment in Gotham, the Wayne Foundation would pay a mint in grant money, so the amusements and leisure were a booming industry.
It was how they ended up with Madam Mimi’s Karaoke and Cupcake Bar. It was a ridiculous concept that wouldn’t work anywhere else, but it thrived in Gotham.
“O...kay,” Tim said slowly. “That’s a sampler platter and a ten-song round tag,” she took the tag. “Have you picked a booth?”
Jason nodded. “Cass picked one.”
Cass had chosen one fairly close to the stage, likely for the sake of her crutches. She was leafing through the song catalogue when they reached her, hands dancing over the laminated pages.
Cass, he realised, was nervous. That was such an unprecedented event that Jason just had to stare at her for a second. Cass didn’t do nervous. She didn’t do fear .
They sat and watched some guy do a painful rendition of Under Pressure, his voice green-yellow and and spiky. Then a pair of girls did a slightly better rendition of Unbreak My Heart, their purple and orange voices co-mingling into a orchey yellow well enough.
“Hey, don’t worry about it, Mouse,” Jason told Cass reassuringly. “Don’t worry about sounding bad. It’s supposed to sound bad.”
She nodded dubiously.
They sat through a few more rounds from other people, until their number appeared on the screen queue.
“Me first?” Tim suggested.
When it was her turn, she tapped her foot to the jaunty strains of piano music, and raised the mic. “They say times are hard for dreamers, but they won’t be hard for me…”
She sang her way through the song with ease and grace, her voice projecting in a multitude of crimson shades and swirls to the back of the room. She was good.
Jason said as much as she came back to the booth.
“I sure hope so,” Tim grinned. “I’ve had singing lessons since I was five and they cost a lot of money. It was supposed to be music therapy, to help with the stutter.”
Cass looked enthralled by singing, but by the time their number came up again, she still wasn’t sold on the idea of singing herself, so Jason managed a fairly professional performance of ACDC’s You Shook Me All Night Long. He was a theatre kid, so the performing didn’t bother him, and he liked a song he could more or less just shout over a pounding bass line. He was quite pleased with his effort.
When their number came up again, Tim had the brilliant idea that they could all go up and do a chorus. That way Cass could stick to the background and mouth the lyrics if she couldn’t get the words out. Jason picked Ain’t No Mountain High Enough.
Cass didn’t sing very loudly into the shared mic; she was usually drowned out by the other two. But Jason did hear her actually singing, very softly. She’d hear her own voice and then stop, astonished by the ease with which it suddenly worked, then try to catch up with the lyrics as Jason and Tim sang on without her. It wasn’t a full song, but by the time they got back to their table Cass was flushed with pleasure and seething with determination, flipping zealously through the song lyric book to find the song she most wanted to sing.
This, Jason thought, was a revelation for Cass. To effortlessly be able to express, rather than just observe. Cass could make herself understood to people who knew her -- Jason knew she was diligently practicing ASL with Dick and her speech therapist -- but to be able to use her own voice had been an impossibility throughout her life. She’d be taught not to speak. Not to scream. Not to cry.
Cass still hadn’t found her song by the time their number came up again, so Tim did an amazing rendition of Cherry Bomb and then Jason acquitted himself well over Life is a Highway. After that, they took a break because a platter of delicious, multi flavoured cupcakes had arrived.
“Hey, Erin!” Tim called their waitress. “Is Lune here tonight?”
“Sorry T, Lune’s out sick,” Erin replied cheerfully.
“Oh,” Tim’s face fell. “Okay, thanks anyway.”
“You come here a lot?” Jason asked, grabbing his first cupcake.
“My singing teacher brings the class here,” Tim yelled over an incredibly shouty version of Shot Through The Heart. “To get them over stage fright. It’s also where we hold the exams. The staff here knows us pretty well.”
“So this Lune’s a friend of yours?”
“Kind of,” Tim sighed. “I just wanted to ask them something about…” Tim hesitated. “Hey, um. You said we were friends, right?”
“‘Course we are friends Baby Bird. I already said that,” Jason replied as someone geared up to do My Heart Will Go On.
Tim fidgeted. “Have you ever… do you ever… I mean.” Cass looked up from the song book as Tim’s flustered fumbling. “Do you ever think about your gen-gender very much?” she ended the question in a mumble, but it wasn’t quiet enough to be misunderstood.
Cass reached over and patted Tim’s hand gently. Jason knew that soft look on Cass’s face. Flamebird got that way when she was trying to comfort a traumatised or frightened civilian. Jason himself could hear the angular pinkness of stress on Tim’s voice.
“I… don’t,” Jason said slowly. “Not about my gender. But, I am definitely pansexual.”
Tim’s face came back up. “Really?”
“Nobody who feels the way I feel about Roy Harper’s shoulders is even remotely straight,” Jason said dryly. “But I like girls too. I like who I like. Whoever and whatever they are or present themselves to be. Cass is…” Cass shrugged at him. “Well, she doesn’t really feel sexual attraction. We think she’s either asexual or demisexual, but she finds intimacy a bit… tricky right now. Her childhood was a bit messed up, just like mine. I’m guessing,” Jason continued shrewdly. “That you have been thinking about it lately, yeah?”
“Um… ye-yes.”
“Hey, none of that,” Jason gently tilted her chin back up. “This, right here? This is a judgement-free zone. You want to talk about it? Do you feel like, maybe, your birth gender might be a bit… off-target?”
“Um, maybe,” Tim admitted slowly. “But, like, not all the time? Like, I don’t mind being a girl, I don’t really mind my body, like, my curves and stuff don’t make me uncomfortable or repulsed or anything but um… sometimes, um, I feel more like… like a boy, than a girl. Only sometimes. Sometimes it’s the other way around. Like, sometimes I didn’t feel like myself and I’d wonder why and I never realised what it was until someone mistook me for a boy one day and… and I realised I didn’t mind that, because those times when I didn’t feel quite right was when I felt like a boy. So, um, that’s a thing?” she ended lamely.
“Hey, that’s a great thing,” Jason told Tim firmly. “So, you think you might be genderfluid.”
“Um, yeah. Probably,” Tim nodded, looking relieved this was going well. “I did some research, but a lot of people define it in a lot of different ways so, um, I guess I’m still figuring it out. I did kind of… label it? A little bit. Like when I’m a girl I’m Tia and when I’m a boy I’m Tim. But it changes a lot, you know. It’s like I’m a girl or a boy depending on what I’m doing or what challenges I’m facing. Like Tia, Tia is the one who sings. But, um, Tim is the one talking now, when I need a… a different sort of confidence. Tia is the one who diagnosed Cass with dysphasia, but Tim was the one who wanted to go to the karaoke bar to actually test it…. It’s confusing, I know.”
“No, I think I see what you’re saying,” Jason replied slowly. “Tia the girl handles certain problems, but Tim the boy handles others. You need each persona for different reasons.”
“Right, exactly,” Tim sighed. “And sometimes I’m just neither. In between. Sometimes, I just don’t know what I am. It’s very frustrating.”
“Baby Bird, you are literally twelve,” Jason snorted while Cass patted Tim’s hand some more. “You’re not supposed to have everything figured out yet. I’m amazed you’ve even figured that level of self-awareness out. Twelve year old me would never have been able to admit that. Mind you, twelve-year old me was a dumbass who tried to jack Bruce’s Wayne’s tires, so maybe I’m not the best example.”
Cass silently laughed.
“Just give it some time,” Jason told Tim. “You’ve still got all of puberty to slog through yet. Nothing’s been decided. In the meantime, you can always talk to us about it. We’re friends. That’s what friends do,” he declared while Cass nodded.
Tim flushed. “Thanks, guys.”
That’s where it all went bad, because Dick Grayson burst into the bar, looking fit to be tied. “Cass! There you are!”
“Aw, fuck,” Jason sighed. “I forgot to check the tracker.”
Tim grimaced. Busted.
“Where have you been? I’ve been chasing you up and down Gotham!” Dick fussed over her worriedly. “You did stay off your leg, right? And as for you,” he glowered at Jason. “Why do I get the feeling this was your doing?”
Jason’s hackles went up. “That’s some causal chain you’re laying out there, Officer Dick.”
“Dick,” Bruce Wayne himself came up from behind, surprising the hell out of the kids and the rest of the club. “Calm down. They’re fine.”
“Fine! Cass has a serious injury! Which she’s supposed to be resting,” he said pointedly to Cass, who scratched her head sheepishly. “Traipsing all over Gotham is not resting, Cass. And Jason should damn well know that, too! If he’s going to play hooky, well, fine, but he shouldn’t have dragged Cass into it with him.”
“Hey! I followed her, Dickface, not the other way around,” Jason snapped. “Which you’d know if you bothered to ask.”
“Hey, if I want your commentary, then I’ll ask,” Dick snapped back irritably. “You knew she was injured and you knew she was supposed to be resting. You just ignored it, because you’re a thoughtless brat.”
“Dick, that’s enough.” Bruce gamely tried to head off the coming argument in its tracks. “Jason, don’t-”
No dice. “God, your parents really knew what they were doing when they named you, huh?”
“What did you just say to me?!”
Tia slipped the implant out of her ear with stealthy fingers, because she didn’t want to risk even the slightest chance her parents would find out she had one. After all, they did talk to Bruce Wayne and she was pretty he’d be talking to them about tonight too. Cass, meanwhile, sighed resignedly at both of the stubborn idiots.
“It was muh-my fault,” Tim broke in before Jason could snap something insulting back.
They all turned to her.
Tia took a breath. “I wuh-wuh-was supposed to do the foun-foun-foundation speech before the actual spu-spu-speakers got underwuh-wuh-way. But I di-di-didn’t want to do it and no-no-nobody else wah-wanted to hear it, either. I muh-mean, who wah-wah-wants to hear suh-some poor kid tur-tur-turn a two muh-minute speech into a twen-twen-twenty minute one, huh?” Her words, while halting, were also really pointed.
Dick, of all people, flushed a dusky colour.
Jason’s eyes narrowed. Then the light dawned. “Fuck, really? Really, Dickhead?”
“Jason, language,” Bruce reminded him.
“Oh sure, my language is the problem here,” Jason snapped, infuriated. “I got out and had some fun like a normal teen and I’m practically a delinquent but Officer Dick here can go around insulting some poor kid’s speech impediment, no problem! Hey, Dickface, how about you say something about her weight next, then you can make her feel really self-conscious!”
Dick bristled at him. “I didn’t mean it like that!” He snapped, before looking at Tia, his face curdled with shame. “I really, really, didn’t mean it like that, Tiamat, and I’m so sorry you overheard it. I just meant it like, why are your parents making you do it when it clearly makes you uncomfortable. I just didn’t understand the logic and I was really sympathetic but… um, I didn’t exactly say it the right way.”
“I knuh-know,” Tia told him levelly. “You weren’t buh-buh-being mean about it. Bu-but there were plen-plen-plenty of pe-people there that wuh-were saying worse, and they muh-meant it. So I left,” Tim shrugged. “Muh-my puh-parents will pro-pro-probably ground me. Suh-seems like the pun-punishment will be a lo-lot easier than the cruh-crime, for me. At least I won’t have to do any spuh-speeches, with everybody uh…. stuh-staring.”
“Names?” Jason asked idly.
Tia shot him a wry look.
“I just wanna talk to them, Baby Bird.”
“No you don’t,” Bruce’s voice was dry. “And no, you won’t.” He slid into the booth. “And sit down and stop looming, Dick. We found them, they’re unharmed, and they’re very sorry for making us worry.”
Jason snorted. “Sure. That.”
Dick, the wind taken out of his sails, slid into the other side of the booth sullenly. The fact that he was sitting next to Jason didn’t do anything to improve either of their moods.
“I suh-said it was my fal-fal-fault,” Tim said quietly.
“You did,” Bruce said gently. “But Tia, honey, I know Jason. Nothing on God’s green earth would have stopped him from following you if he was determined to go.”
Tia went red.
“He still shouldn’t have taken Cass. She’s still on crutches!” Dick muttered.
“Yes, and you never did anything impulsive or reckless when you were fifteen and recovering from one of your many sporting injuries,” Bruce’s voice was dry as dust.
Dick shot him a look.
“Oh, stow the wicked witch vibes, Mother Gothel,” Jason muttered. “Cass could kick both our asses, on crutches or not. And, once again, for those in the back, she chased after Tim, not me. I just followed along,” he swiped a cupcake and chewed on it mutinously.
“Yeah, I could see you trying real hard to bring them back home,” Dick muttered back.
Bruce’s flat hand cracked on the table even as Jason’s mouth opened to furiously retort. “Enough, both of you! You’re brothers. Act like it!”
“Adopted,” the two chorused resentfully, then glared at one another.
Bruce sighed. Tim fidgeted at the tension.
“Hello darkness, my old friend… I’ve come to talk with you again..."
Tim blinked. Astonished, she looked up at the stage.
“I just wish you two would at least try to get along.” Bruce pinched his nose. “Dick, Jason is an intelligent and resourceful young man, hardly a bad influence on Cass. And Jason, Dick is not out to get you, okay? He worries about Cass, and believe it or not, he worries about you too.”
“Uh…” Tim said softly.
“Because a vision softly creeping… left its seeds while I was sleeping…”
“Pull the other on, B, it’s got bells on,” Jason muttered.
“He’s running all over Gotham - Gotham! - in the middle of the night! Intelligent, yes, resourceful, yes, but he’s not exactly mature, is he?” Dick pointed out.
“Uh….” Tim pointed.
“And the vision that planted in my brain… still remains. Within the sound… of silence…”
“I’m just trying to look out for Cass, to make sure she’s safe, okay?” Dick argued.
“Oh, and I’m not, is that it?” Jason snapped back hotly.
“You’ve yet to prove it through your actions, no,” Dick retorted.
“EXCUSE … me,” Tim held out her hands to get their attention. “But…” she pointed.
They all turned. Their jaws dropped.
Standing on stage was Cass, doing a wobbly but nonetheless perfectly intelligible rendition of The Sound Of Silence, gripping the mic with white knuckled fingers.
“Holy shit!” Jason crowed. “She can actually sing! You were right, Tia!”
“Tuh-told you,” Tim nodded. “Ruh-Ruh-Right side brain is fuh-fuh-functional where the luh-luh-left side isn’t. No-Non Fluent Expressive Dis-Dis-Dis-Dysphasia, Broca’s type,” when Bruce and Dick both turned to stare at her she shrugged uncomfortably and grabbed a random cupcake to keep her twitchy hands busy. “There’s not a lu-lot I don’t know about spuh-spuh-speech impediments.”
Cass’ voice was struggling by the end of the song. Tim added ‘possible vocal cord atrophy’ to the list in her head, which was likely, but could be fixed. By the time she reached “And whispered in the sound… of silence,” she barely had any voice left, but that didn’t stop her from getting a resounding round of whooping applause from their table, which made her flush with pleasure. Dick hurried over to give her a huge hug.
Jason had to grudgingly admit, Dick was good for Cass. Even with all they’d been through together, he’d have never been so quick to initiate that kind of contact and Cass would never have received it so easily as she did with Dick. It would take someone like Dick Grayson to teach Cass that touch was okay. Still, he couldn’t resist saying, with far more than a soupcon of smug, “So, I guess it was a good idea to come out tonight, huh, Bruce?”
Bruce raised an eyebrow at him. “Okay, I’ll give you that one, sport, but don’t push it.”
Tim just quietly shoved an entire cupcake into her mouth. This whole thing had devolved into a family thing, so it was probably better she stayed on the sidelines.
Then she froze. But it was too late. Even as Dick and Cass returned, she felt the telltale tingle on her lips and throat as the chopped pistachios on top of the cupcake set off her immune system like a molotov cocktail.
She grabbed for Jason even as Bruce and Dick started chatting. Cass met her eyes and Tim saw them widen. It was suddenly hard to breathe.
“Baby Bird?”
“Puh-puh-puh..s’tchos,” she wheezed out. “Ep-Ep-”
She got a good look at Jason’s horrified face.
Then... black.