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“Nooooo” she howled in frustration.
She was done. She couldn't do it anymore. She grabbed the cards on the table and shoved them onto the floor. They were stupid, she knew they were stupid, and yet she didn't even know what stupid really meant.
“Done!” she screeched
“Done! Done! Done! Done Done!”
“Cass! Cass no, this isn't okay!” Babs yelled after her but she wasn't listening; she just wanted to get out. She grabbed the handle of the door and pulled until it popped out of the frame fleeing into the dark night.
She didn't know where she was going, and she didn't really care. She just needed to get away. They expected too much. It had been only weeks since that man “fixed her” and 2 days since her mother tried to reverse it. Everything was moving so fast. She couldn't catch up. So she ran. She ran until her surroundings were a blur, just a fast moving image flashing past her. Like her thoughts used to be. God, she couldn't even be alone in her own head anymore.
Everywhere she went he followed her, clinging to her and pulling her back down into the water. Or above it as they would say.
The wind hit her face, blasting her tears right back into her eyes, and chilling her nose until she couldn't feel it. That was good. She hated feeling things.
She stopped and climbed up onto a roof, clearing the fire escape in a single bound. She was somewhere in the narrows. She thought. She couldn't be too shure, Babs said it was a part of the city, the wrong part of her mind said it was a small space, and her, the real her, said it was a loud cramped place with short building and lots of crime, And it smelt like falafels. That meaning seemed the rightest to her but the edges of it were sharp now, not smooth, and it made her head hurt to think about it.
She hated it, what he did to her. He took her thoughts and made them make sense to him, and now they were all out of order. Worse, they were just wrong. She wanted it to go back to the way it was before.
She had tried to be happy, happy like they wanted her to be. But it hadn’t worked so she did something else. She tried to fix herself. Meta humans, telepaths, martial artists. No one could read bodies like she had once before, and no one could teach her how to do it again.
Finally, she had turned to her mother, Shiva, a name that had crept in the shadows of her youth watching, watching and waiting. She asked her mother to fix her, and she failed, the woman who had never failed before. She went through days of brutal training for nothing.
It still hurt to think. It hurt to read, to write. He stranded her in a sea of pain and the people she loved cried tears of joy for her newly found normality.
She hated them.
She loved them.
She cried in her sleep and Babs said she was ”adjusting”. She had grabbed batman by the shoulders and yelled and yelled and he...He smiled like this was the best thing that had ever happened to her. Before he would have known she was screaming “FIX ME! FIX ME!”. But now he ignored it, and acted like she was confused.
So she left.
And yet they wouldn't leave her alone.
She turned around and there he was -Batman in all his freaking glory; she could throw up.
“I brought fries!”
He held the bag up and her stomach growled. They had been going through the stupid cards for so long that Babs forgot to get dinner.
She was hungry.
She was getting soft.
She turned back and ignored him, it would be a good lesson in restraint. But he seemed determined to feed her, coming down and sitting right next to her. He spread out fries, milkshakes, and bat burgers between them.
“Babs said you might be hungry”
she snarled and grabbed a packet of fries. Well, when in Rome.
“Babs also said you'd probably be upset”
“mph”
“I know kiddo”
Now she was mad, he didn't know! He just pretended he did! He just pretended that she was frustrated she wasn't getting it but she wasn't! She didn't want to get it!
“NO!” she screeched
“NO! You don't know. You don't know. I hate it.”
She grabbed his hand and pressed it against her head.
“This doesn't make sense! It used to make sense!!”
She released him and fell back onto her but; sitting dangerously close to the edge.
“What did he do to me? Why are you happy he did this to me?”
A million emotions flickered across his face, hurt, anger, fear, despair. All these emotions, all these words, they didn't match! Before she would have known what he was thinking. But now….. now she just couldn't.
“Cass…” His voice broke and her anger wavered
“I just wanted what was best for you, I didn't know you felt this way.” He was sorry.
“Sorry” Her mind whispered
“Sorry. Sorry. Sorry. Sorry. Sorry. Sorry. Sorry. Sorry” But what did it mean?
“I..I..I.. He was right''
She gasped for breath. Desperate to string together sounds as she forgot the meanings of them. ”He was right. My mind was an ocean. It was filled with images, sounds, and smells. And they all liked to blend together. It was messy but it made sense, Batman. Bats, it made so much sense!”
She couldn't breathe. Oh god she couldn't breathe!
“No-Now”
Gasping, gasping for air.
“Now it's wrong. It's wrong and I can't fix it.” There was a pause and then he was moving towards her. Before, she would have been on the other side of the roof already. But now...now she was trapped in a bone crushing hug, feet dangling over the edge of a building, in the most dangerous city in the world.
“What did he do to you Cass?”
He whispered; like if he talked any louder she’d crumble. Frankly, she just might.
“He broke me.”
“He took the waves and made them still, froze them, like ice. Then he shattered them and pieced them back together, but there all wrong! He put them back together wrong!
And he stamped words on them, but the words don't make sense. Before it was all blended together and he couldn't separate them right.”
She took her finger and placed it on his forehead.
“And he didn't know what you and Babs knew, just what just what he thought was right. So what I think something is, and what Babs says it is doesn't match up.”
She paused, but she couldn't stop now. Everything she learned, everything he made her learn was falling out of her mouth.
All the pieces in her head were less sharp and it felt AmaZinG.
“I can't write, I can't read, I don't think correctly, and to speak….to speak….”
She was gasping again and he held her tighter.
“To speak it's like…….”
She thought of when she was a little girl, when things made the most sense and everything was just action and noise. There was a beach in those memories…. A place….maybe it was Nanda Parbat like in the stories Alfred tells her. She played with her father there.
No...Wait….No…
She was shuddering, something was wrong, it wasn't working, the pieces were sharpening and……..
Relief...Relief...She hadn't played with her father. She fought with her father, the thoughts settled in her head and she relaxed...these thoughts, these words they were like….
“To speak, It's like standing on sand. It's not sturdy, it shifts when you walk, and when you run, It tries to swallow you whole.”
Oh she was tired, so tired of trying to run on a ground that wanted to eat her. She wanted to go back to the beach, when she was a child and things seemed so simple.
“Home” she said in a small voice
“I want to go home” he looked at her
“okay kiddo”
She expected to be let go, to be told to walk back home to the clock tower. To the flashcards, and the angry Babs, but that was not the case. As soon as the words left his mouth he gathered her up in his arms, the burgers long forgotten. He took her to the Bat-mobile, leaving her in the backseat meant for scared children, he drove her off into the dark.
She didn't know where to, and she didn't care, she just let the darkness take her.
When she awoke she was in the manor. Tucked under heavy blankets in the biggest bed she had ever seen; Bruce sitting next to her at the bedside. Yellow flames illuminating his face.
She would have been concerned if she was awake, but the emotional turmoil of the past few weeks, the physical exhaustion she experienced with Shiva, the blow out fight with Babs, and the breakdown with Batman had left her exhausted and barely conscious.
“Bats” she croaked out.
She was tired, oh she was so bitterly tired, and the darkness was oh so sweet.
He looked up from his book. His glasses were too far down to be that useful, and they sat crooked on his broken nose. She laughed deliciously, huh, she must have caught something in the cold.
“What's so funny Cass” his deep baritone rumbled so she laughed some more.
“I'm so tired Batmern” he looked troubled
“Then sleep”
“I can't, it hurts.”
“Then let it go Cass, just let go.”
“but what if there's nothing left?
She was scared. So very scared. She couldn't bear the thought of being nothing but a hollow shell.
“Then we'll rebuild Cassie-o”
“Okay”
Her voice was small but it moved mountains. There was force behind it, a strength that came from her whole being.
She tried, she tried to let go, but it hurt terribly, It burned and she could faintly hear someone screaming. She wondered who it was. There was blackness all around her, and silence apart from the screams. It felt like an eternity but it must have been seconds.
She reached out grasping at the sheets, searching for a familiar hand. A cold touch pushed her hair out of her face.
She realized that it wasn't the hand that was cool but her that was hot.
Finally after what felt like years of screaming into darkness a light appeared. It was a beach, one on which a girl played with her father. She tried to swim towards them but the tide pulled her away.…..she wanted too….she wanted to….
A voice whispered in here ear, faint and far away but still clear
“let go Cassandra”
So she did, she let herself be pulled out by the tide. And watched as she was pushed further and further away from the sad little girl, the slippery sand, and the angry man. She let herself wash out to sea, and felt relief when she realized it was over.
This was her ocean, it was still here, she wasn't empty now, her mind had been waiting for her all along. She was free, she was oh so totally free.
Yet she still felt sad, she had let go of the past her father forced upon her. And The future the man made for her.
She was free and she was terribly lost.
She panicked, if she was not the little girl who was she? She had never been someone else before! She was drowning, the waves were huge and pushed her under so she couldn't breathe. She started to tremble and the world flickered.
It was a dark ocean.
It was kind eyes.
It was air leaving her body.
It was a cool touch.
It was a little girl drowning.
It was strong arms.
It was strong arms.
It was still strong arms!
It was strong arms reaching into the water and fishing her out, breathing life back into her.
It was a voice whispering to her, telling her it was alright, that she could hang on for now. They had all the time in the world.
It was a voice
It was a voice
It was her father.
“You can be a little girl for now Cassie. It's okay. Worry about being strong later.”
She woke up gasping for air hacking up red water- or blood she was coughing up blood.
The fire was dying now, only embers remained, casting a warm glow on the figure holding her. “How long?” she whispered her voice hoarse from screaming.
“Long enough”
“I'm so tired so very tired”
“Then sleep class. I'll be here when you wake up.”
The darkness could come now she was ready for it
“g’night batdad”
“goodnight Cassie”