Chapter Text
Everyone knew that Cassandra could read body language and from that assessment could ascertain feelings or predict movements. She relied on it in the field and as she initially navigated her social interactions with the Bats. Reading them was easier than trying to find words and then having to communicate verbally.
However, as her spoken language skills improved and her understanding of the more nuanced emotions that were lacking in her upbringing, she began to dislike reading her family’s body language.
Batman–Bruce–Dad showed her love. Taught her it, really. He didn’t say the words, not to her, and she learned that he didn’t really say them to any of her siblings. But her ability to read his body language, to understand when he kissed her forehead at breakfast before helping himself to Alfred’s oatmeal or lingered after patrol to ask if she planned on riding back home with him; that this was how he expressed his love.
His simple and oh-so-gentle actions were nothing like Cain’s. When Bruce moved his hand to stroke her head she didn’t prepare to be hit.
With Tim, his body language was full of starts and stops, like he was never comfortable in his own skin. Cass found it intriguing to watch him because he moved with as much purpose and grace as the rest of them but it felt incomplete somehow. The only time his motions smoothed like rippling water was when he was unmasked and with family.
She noticed the difference immediately the first time she caught him with Bruce outside of patrol.
Around Bruce, Tim seemed to settle at his core and the simple action of walking or talking was relaxed yet confident. She saw the same change in him again and again as other members of their family popped up. Then she noticed how he changed even when it was only her in the room and understood that his love, the one that made him feel at home in himself, extended to her too.
Her youngest sibling and arguably the one most like her if she was feeling charitable, couldn’t hide his all-consuming love if he tried. Damian’s pride refused to acknowledge it but anyone, not only someone who read body language could see it. Age played a part in that, he hadn’t learned to turn his emotions off like the rest of them. So he continued to gush love in every breath of his being.
Maybe Talia recognized it too and that’s why she left him with Bruce, to preserve that unmistakable capacity for love.
Damian would curse and pout during patrols and debriefs and at the breakfast table. He’d get rises out of Tim and Bruce and admonishing words from Dick or be egged on by Jason. Through it all, Cass felt that monsoon of his love and watched on with a small knowing smile. She didn’t find it surprising when Damian started to goad her into sparring with him. His prickly words didn’t affect her when the line of his body spoke of his true feelings. She happily obliged, rising to the ‘bait’.
Dick Grayson took the longest to warm up to her, let alone love her like family. She couldn’t blame him really. Cass wasn’t like the other siblings he accumulated. Her skill and experience marked her as a threat in a way that had Nightwing’s guard up. He loved loud like Damian, but openly and softly. That type of love hurt the first Robin about as many times as it rewarded him.
When they met and he learned of her place in their family he’d been standoffish and distant. Dick’s love could only be whole. It meant giving another piece of himself away and inviting another weakness to his being. Unlike Damian, she wasn’t so young as to be forgiven for her sins.
The moment they set eyes on each other, he held a match in one hand and a stick of dynamite in the other. He needed to decide whether to let the flame burn down to his fingertips or light the fuze. He’d chosen the small, easily-soothed burn for a while. Cass held no qualms about his cold shoulder in their subsequent meetings because he could not invite a collegiate familiarity without accidentally setting off the explosive.
Cass accepted it because she’d gotten lucky already. What right did she have to more?
And Dick’s love, she saw it on full display around the others with such vulnerability and completeness that Cass was reminded of the plants in Alfred’s greenhouse. Dick chased the sun no matter how he had to contort to do so. He lived by his heart and watching his love from afar was enough.
Then Dick learned of her upbringing. He learned the details of an entire childhood raised in deficiency of all the things her new family considered important. Her utter lack of love.
Cass saw his body start to shift and contort towards her. His body language was heavy with longing to love her in abundance to make up for the love she was denied for so long. Cass avoided Dick for months after. She was afraid. He was the first Robin, the golden child, and the older sibling. She needed to protect him from her.
Not that her avoidance mattered in the end. Their work eventually forced them together. The second they’d set eyes on each other again, Cass saw it plain as day. Dick loved her. And she couldn’t do anything except let the weighty comfort of his love settle over her like a warm blanket.
Cass tried to let herself surrender to her family’s love. In all the different and beautiful ways they showed it in their bodies. But she couldn’t give in all the way and in the ease of reading their body language, their love began to overlap and sometimes overwhelmed her, to the point she needed to escape the incoming panic of whatifwhatifwhatif the love goes away?
She’d slipped out of the manor just as the sun began to rise.
Before Alfred would be up and preparing breakfast and before Tim would shake off his morning stupor to knock on her bedroom door. That would kick off a full day of growing suffocation from all the non-verbals and the toomuchtoomuch love directed at her.
She didn’t take a vehicle, the noise of the engine would tip her family off and she didn’t want them following her. Cass ran across the manor grounds, avoiding the many sensors, and slipped over the tall stone perimeter wall. Once safely on the other side, feet against pavement, she took off in a dead run, not worrying about the noise she made as her feet hit the ground or her breath struggling in her chest to get out.
Cass ran until her body forced her to stop and she doubled over to heave her empty stomach between trees on the side of the empty Bristol road. The pause helped her thoughts clear. She knew where she wanted to go. The same place she always went when she wanted to breathe and she wanted comfort.
She continued on to Gotham proper and didn’t stop until she trudged up a set of linoleum stairs and down a dimly lit hallway to stand in front of a dirty and worn apartment door.
Cass knocked twice. Solidly. Before she could psych herself out of it.
Normally she wouldn’t turn up at the crack of dawn.
Two in the morning with a broken foot? Sure.
Six in the evening to raid the fridge? Not a problem. She wouldn’t even knock.
Cass preferred the adage of what’s mine is yours where it concerned her family and would slip in through a poorly alarmed window to make herself at home.
But this time, with her frayed nerves and jangly thoughts, Cass couldn’t manage the kind of stealth required to break into the apartment without setting its inhabitant off in a violent way.
She waited patiently and listened to a couch cushion spring squeaking and then the slow shuffling of steps to the front door. The pause between the end of the footsteps and the door handle turning meant he checked the peephole to see who was visiting at this hour.
No sooner had the door opened, that the question tumbled from Jason’s lips. “What’s wrong?”
Jason’s dishevelled hair, half-alert eyes becoming sharper with concern, his rumpled black shirt, and the pants from his uniform he’d forgone changing out of only enhanced his non-verbals. Exhaustion. Surprise. Worry. Fond.
When he opened the door and spoke, her eyes had catalogued his whole being in response to seeing her at his doorstep unannounced at five in the morning.
Cass burst into tears.
“What the fu–Cass? What the hell happened?” If Jason was worried before, he was panicked now. And since he didn’t handle panic well, anger slipped out automatically to better deal with the situation. He wasn’t angry at her, could never bring himself to be rightfully angry at his sister but he could be fucking pissed at whatever brought her to him in this state.
“I–I–” She gasped out the syllables but each time she tried for words, her sobbing only increased. Cass grimaced in frustration past her tears. She should be able to control her body, to make it do what she needed it to do but it continued to rebel against her.
Jason moved automatically, sweeping her under his arm and pulling her against his side as he ushered her into the apartment. “Shh, I got you. Let’s go inside first.”
She didn’t resist his gentle guidance and allowed herself to be steered inside. Jason closed the door behind them and brought her over to the couch he’d woken up from minutes ago. A ratty blanket spilled halfway to the floor and the coffee table in front of it was a mess of guns, bullets, and other supplies he’d been cleaning before he fell asleep after patrol.
Cass didn’t mind the mess, barely registered it through her fog of emotions. By feel and Jason’s guiding hands, she managed to settle on the couch. Her sobbing quieted but the tears wouldn’t stop. Jason sat down next to her, not close enough to touch, he didn’t think she’d appreciate more physical contact.
He let her sit in silence to compose herself and tried to school his own body language. Jason didn’t want to overcrowd her senses with his worry or fear or anything else he was trying very hard not to show.
It took about fifteen minutes before Cass managed to look up and over to Jason. Her eyes were rimmed red and her cheeks flushed by her exertions. She didn’t look like an assassin trained not to think or feel or like one of Gotham’s protectors who could wipe the floor with him ten times over without breaking a sweat. Jason swallowed hard at how vulnerable she appeared sitting on his beat-up old couch in his dumpy apartment. Cass looked unbearably young.
“What’s up?” He asked lightly, in the most casual voice he could muster given his own thundering heart and spike of adrenaline.
She wiped her face and frowned. “Need to hide.”
“From who?”
Cass sighed and settled back into the couch. “Family.”
“Ouch. Not sure how offended I should be.” Jason cheekily joked as the pressure in his chest lessened knowing that he didn’t need to prepare for a showdown with a homicidal puzzle master or some other equally weird Gotham shit storm turning up on his doorstep.
She leaned over to poke him in the side. “Other family. They make me feel...scared. Not on purpose.” She tacked on the last part when Jason tensed next to her.
He didn’t relax. “What did they do?”
Cass frowned at him and his misconstrual of her words. “My fault.” Jason’s mouth opened to disagree but Cass held out her hand. “Hush.” She commanded authoritatively and his mouth clamped shut.
She took a deep breath and tried to search for the best words to convey what she wanted to say. “I’m not a good person. I hurt before. I see how to hurt before I see anything else. Even now.” Cass shuffled closer to Jason’s side of the couch and pressed a hand to his arm. “I see all the ways I can kill you.”
Jason stared down at her hand with a frown etched on his face. “You’d never hurt me though.”
“Still see it. Have to hold back. With you and the family. On patrol. In public. It’s so...” Cass pulled her hand back to her side. “Requires focus...I might slip. I might hurt again. They won’t love me anymore if I hurt again.”
“You mean Bruce and the rest?”
She nodded and her eyes pricked with fresh tears. Cass covered her face with her hands and tried to will the onslaught of pressure to go away.
“Hey, look at me.”
She shook her head violently and didn’t remove her hands from her face. “Fine. Don’t look. Listen.” Jason took a deep breath. “I get why you’re scared. Having people who care about you, and genuinely give a damn, can be terrifying. I know every scrap of affection you’ve had for most of your life had to be earned and I can bet sometimes in this family it feels like you still have to earn it.”
Jason’s hands gently covered her own and eased them away from her face so he could look her in the eyes. His expression was earnest and more vulnerable than she’d seen him look before. He smiled bereft at her.
“Being family means the love is unconditional.”
Her expression softened for a moment and Jason mentally cheered until her face scrunched up in confusion. “But you and Bruce.”
Jason sucked in a breath. “That’s...complicated.”
“He doesn’t love you?” Her forehead furrowed deeper as she regarded him.
He wanted to make a snarky comment but whatever goodwill he’d instilled in the concept of family would be lost and they’d be back where they started. Jason didn’t want to muddy the water for Cass with his own baggage. He would be lying to himself again too. Jason recognized unconditional love.
“I...I feel like I have to earn it too.” He admitted quietly.
Cass searched him with her all-knowing gaze and must have recognized the truth because she closed the distance between them and snuggled into his side like he was an oversized stuffed pillow. He didn’t mind and draped an arm around her shoulders to help her get comfortable.
“Anything else on your mind?” He probed gently.
“Why are birthdays celebrated?”
Jason’s eyes widened at the out-of-left-field question before he pondered it. He knew why the concept was foreign to her and that special sliver of hate in his heart for David Cain quivered but he pushed it aside. Considering all he knew of her upbringing, Jason doubted she had celebrated a birthday before.
“Some people use it to mark the passing of time and getting older. That’s what it’s about when you’re a kid at least. But people also celebrate because they’re grateful for that person’s birth.”
“Do you celebrate?”
If it were anyone else, Jason would swear these questions were meant to test him but Cass didn’t have ulterior motives, so he kept indulging her with his honesty.
“Not since before.”
“When is it?”
“September 17. Yours?”
He knew the answer before she spoke. “Don’t know. Maybe Cain or Shiva does. Maybe they’ve forgotten.”
Despite knowing already, he tensed with a white-hot flash of anger. Cass snuggled further into his side like she knew he needed that extra comfort. He relaxed into her warmth and appreciated that she was safely tucked in next to him away from the horrors of her past.
Several moments of companionable silence passed before Cass spoke again.
“I have a new one. Birthday. When I became Cassandra Wayne. I started living then.”
“When is it?” Jason asked past the lump in his throat. He should know the date she was adopted but he doesn’t and he hates that he doesn’t know.
“Today.”
“Is that why…” He doesn’t know how to finish his question. Cass nodded.
“Too much love today.” She explained.
He can’t help squeezing her shoulder. “You know I love you too, right?”
Jason couldn’t help the softness of his voice or the very real concern that she doesn’t know how he feels about her. Maybe he’d spent so much time keeping the rest of the family out that he’d unintentionally pushed his sister away too. He never wanted that. Cass was easy to love.
She didn’t know him before his death, hadn’t replaced him as Robin, and didn’t share Bruce’s blood. She was the only relationship in their weird found family that started with a blank slate.
When they first met, he’d admired her sheer skill and grace as a fighter, not yet knowing the cost of such feats. Then he discovered her knack for reading body language and it seemed pointless to hide the truth from her all-seeing eyes. She never outed him in front of the others when his mouth said something different from his body. It should have been unnerving and annoying to have someone see through the bravado but he felt relieved. Cass saw something besides menace and muscle under the red hood.
She saw Jason and she didn’t react with fear or pity.
Cass did small things to make him laugh.
They’d be briefing with the others before a mission and she’d catch his eye when Bruce was being particularly assholic. She’d stick out her tongue, roll her eyes dramatically, or make fake bat ears with her pointer fingers all without anyone else seeing. The first time she’d done it, Jason choked with laughter. Cass smirked as he got reamed out by Batman for not taking the mission seriously.
He often wondered if she purposefully did those small things to make him feel big things.
One time he’d been perched on the edge of his safe house smoking before patrol and she appeared from the shadows; he expected a lecture. Her eyes had narrowed on the cigarette pursed between his lips but she didn’t comment. She’d gone about her business; asking for information on some thug in his territory. He didn’t know much, told her what he could, and offered his assistance if her lead turned out the way things usually did with big explosions and gunfire.
She’d thanked him with a quick hair ruffle and while his mind reeled at her actions she managed to snag the half-finished cigarette from his fingers. Then she flounced away with that dancer’s grace over the side of his rooftop.
Others hated his smoking but their concern wasn’t welcome at the best of times. If they’d done something similar, he would’ve lit another smoke out of spite. With Cass, he knew her actions spoke only of her concern, not an expectation. He knew if he smoked in front of her again, she wouldn’t intervene. She’d let it lie because he was an adult who made his own decisions and she’d more or less said her piece on the matter.
He didn’t smoke again.
The small actions continued as their relationship grew.
Cass often poked his side when he was being particularly assholic for no reason other than having a bad day. It didn’t always stop him but it did give him pause to know she was bothered by his attitude. Sometimes he continued to rant and rave for the sake of his pride, he didn’t need the world or their family to know how much influence she had over him. It was bad enough that she knew.
The small actions built up steadily until she put their bond to the test.
The first time Jason didn’t kill when he felt justified wasn’t because of some promise he made Bruce. He happened on the remnants of a human trafficking ring. Turned out to be Cass’ case and she’d already freed the kids when he turned up on the scene.
They’d done their thing. Beating up the scum of the earth until every last one of the traffickers was unconscious in a pool of their own blood. They were still alive, waiting for the police to turn up to arrest them. Waiting until they used their power and influence to avoid a prison sentence and start their operation in some other city with fewer vigilantes.
Jason stood over the unconscious leader of the group. He didn’t pull his gun out or anything overtly telling. Not that Cass needed anything so obvious to read his thoughts. She appeared at his side in an instant and her small hand landed on his shoulder. Not squeezing or holding him back in any way.
They stood that way in silence for a while.
He tried to breathe past the cloud of fury hanging over his senses and her grounding hand helped. He knew if he drew his gun, she would intervene. She could incapacitate him a dozen different ways but Jason knew he could distract her long enough to carry out his deed.
He also knew that if he did kill, Cass wouldn’t stop sneaking faces at him during briefs or poking his side when he was being a smartass or crashing on his couch after patrol. Cass wouldn’t blame him, she’d blame herself for failing to stop him. She would continue to stand by his side and find a dozen new ways to seek him out when he needed a tether. Even if it meant taking on the guilt and contradicting her own moral code to do it.
He didn’t deserve her love.
But he wanted to.
That resolute thought made him turn away from the trafficker, toward her. Only then did Cass’ hand tightly grasp his shoulder and squeeze. They held an entire conversation, a debate even, without a single word. They walked away from the scene together and she only dropped her hand once his tears stopped falling.
Jason stared worriedly at his sister when she didn’t immediately respond to his question. “Cass?”
“Your love doesn’t scare me.” She smiled up at him.
Jason released a shuddering breath he didn’t realize he was holding. “Good. So then...what do you want to do today? We can do anything at all.”
Her nose wrinkled. “Too early. Sleep still.”
“Okay, sure. You can take the bed.”
Cass shook her head and pulled away from him. She moved to the end of the couch before slipping to the ground in front of it. “You sleep.” She patted the cushion behind her for good measure.
She must have read it in him, the sheer exhaustion accumulating over the week made all the worse from the years she shaved off his life after showing up crying at his door. Without reservation, he followed her directions and laid down across the lumpy couch with his head near hers. Cass shifted to face him and she smiled warmly at his already drowsy eyes. She lifted her hand and gently brushed her fingertips across the small line of fresh stitches above his eyebrow.
“Clumsy.”
He grumbled in the back of his throat but couldn’t muster the energy to bat away her hand or argue with her. She moved from the cut to thread her hand gently through his hair. Jason’s eyes closed at the warmth.
“Silly brother.” She cooed softly.
Before he drifted off to sleep, Cass leaned forward and pressed a kiss to his forehead. “Sweet dreams.”