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“It’s just…I’ve never even been kissed,” she tells Stephanie on the rooftop. She’s all of eighteen years old. She doesn’t know much, but she does know that most people at least have some experience with romance by this time.
This is what she gets for having been raised with only the touch of violence. It had been a form of love, back then. She could read it — read when it was meant to be hate, and when it was meant to be love.
It was rarely meant to be love now.
She trains largely against simulations. They act the same way as people, fall in line predictably like people tend to do, because they’re just based off of real fights. She can read them. There is no affection in their actions, only coldness.
Steph’s response — the words are harsh, but her body portrays lightness, teasing. They’re friends. She should be able to take this. And so she does, and something pulls them away from their conversation anyways.
But it sticks with her.
It sticks with her all the way to the cruise ship.
There are plenty of people around — people that she can acknowledge are attractive from some sort of objective outlook. She doesn’t know this sort of language, the language of beauty and sexiness. She’s not shaped for that sort of communication. She can still read the intent, but it feels like a dialect of her native language, just different enough that it sits differently on her skin.
This whole world since she escaped has been foreign. Gotham’s been the most familiar place to her since she arrived. The language they speak there is closer to hers. Batman understands her in a way that no one else has in all her time here. The way he speaks is rougher, but every word rings clearly, and he at the very least is one of the few people that can engage her in true conversation.
He tells her that his name is Carl. She can read the lie, easy as breathing, easy as throwing a punch. The way he moves and the way he carries himself — he’s not even trying to conceal himself, really. He moves like he’s always flying — not like how Nightwing flies, the sort of flight driven by superpower, not willpower.
The way he looks at her makes something crawl up her spine. She’s seen it a million times on the streets — it’s the way some men look at some women, objects of desire instead of people. She doesn’t like this outfit. It exposes too much of her, and it’s not on her terms. It’s not practical for what she’s doing right now. It clings too tightly to her form, makes her feel like something she’s not. She knows what the confidence is like, she knows what it’s like when she wants people to look at her like that. Putting on Barbara’s old costume had felt like that. This…does not feel like that. She doesn’t feel confident in this bikini. She just feels exposed. And she wants him to stop looking at her like that.
The easiest way to do that is just to get out of his sight.
Barbara is disappointed in her, later on.
So it’s expected of her to reciprocate.
I haven’t even had my first kiss yet. Steph…she’s done so much.
And yet where is she? She’s so inexperienced. She’s found herself constantly off-balance from the start of this. Easier to react to what she was trained for. Easier to fall back on what’s familiar. But…she should try something new. She has to sometime, right? Babs says that she needs to break out of her comfort zone. Relax. But that’s the opposite of relaxation.
A fight is relaxing. At least they’re all speaking the same language in a fight.
And a fight is what she gets.
“No, wait — I get it,” Superboy says, with a smile that’s more at ease than his body language portrays. He clearly recognizes her, and that’s obvious from his next words.
She’s fought a lot of different people. She doesn’t want to fight Superboy. Not because it’s impossible, but because it’d be…a shame if they ever had to.
“So how come I only recognize you with a mask on?” he asks.
The tone of his words contrast with everything else about him. The question is casual, but something tells her that the answer won’t be. That he’ll take it seriously.
The thing is — the answer is fairly simple. She’s more herself when she’s Batgirl. Cassandra Cain is a person, but she’s more convenience than identity.
She rescues Black Wind.
Superboy is just as affable coming to save them. He nearly slips with her identity, but she thinks he might understand. Just from what little she knows about him. He didn’t have an identity at first either. He didn’t have another name. He had just been Superboy.
Easier to just be one thing.
He’s attracted to her. She knows it, has known it this whole time. Attracted to all of her, the awkwardness that he had seen earlier and the fluid motion of her fighting. She doesn’t mind that as much as she had before. She likes it better now that she knows he’s attracted to her more with the mask on than off.
Actions have always been her language. How she speaks.
So she kisses him. Something that will be understood better than if she spoke — she can’t trust that the words will come out right.
But it’s not anything. It doesn’t really make her feel anything. Shouldn’t it make her feel something?
She will seek him out again. That much is obvious. She has to, just to know that if she can feel something.
“How do you feel when you kiss Tim?” she asks.
“Um. Where is this coming from?” Steph asks. She’s genuinely confused — the way she just barely tilts her head and grows slightly defensive says it all. “Have a good time on that cruise? Oh my God, you totally found some guy — is he cute? You have to tell me everything. Girl code.” She smiles.
“If you think Superboy is cute,” she answers, which is as good as telling.
Stephanie gasps. “Cass! You did not.”
“I did,” she answers. She can feel smug about this, at the very least. “He gave me his number.”
Steph scoops her into a hug. “How does it feel?”
She frowns. “I…”
“It’s okay.” Steph lets go. “Try to tell me?”
“Nothing,” she answers. “That’s all.”
Steph frowns. “That’s not how I felt.”
That’s what she was afraid of. That she wasn’t supposed to feel nothing about it, that it was supposed to be exceptional.
He was the safest option there, though. If she was going to kiss someone, it was always going to be someone that knew all of her, every part, that could appreciate the language she spoke.
She’s frustrated. There are all these couples and— and she just needs to know what it feels like. What it would feel like. To be a part of that. To be something like that.
So she goes to Smallville and kisses Conner Kent, and pretends that she feels something at all.
He takes her up to the clouds — the sight of the sky is breathtaking. She’s never wondered before what it might be like to walk on a cloud. Cities are usually too polluted for the clouds to be worth walking on, but here the air is clean and clear, and the clouds are fluffy and white.
He talks too much. Then again, he always has. She can understand him without hearing what he has to say. She doesn’t need words.
He might, though.
The way he acts — she can feel the trepidation rolling off him in waves.
She’s not sure how much she wants this either, though. She gets what he had wanted by taking her up here — he had intended to impress her, and wanted someplace private.
She can’t do that. She can’t take that step. She knows it’s what comes next — first the kiss, then the first time.
Fighting alongside him feels good, sure — but it feels the same fighting with him as it does fighting with Steph or Tim. Just about as good as most other fights, but it’s fighting alongside a friend.
And it relieves her to hear that he’s just as unprepared as she feels. Even though she had seen the uneasiness, she probably still would have said yes if he had asked before the fight.
He takes her home.
It’s where she belongs.
She’s never going to find her home with another person, really. Her home is with the symbol that adorns her chest.
Superboy is nice, and they have a decent amount in common, and they can be friends. But there’s never going to be anything more than that.
She wonders if it’s just him, or if that encompasses everyone. She doesn’t think she could be with anyone else. It just wouldn’t…
She’ll never have that typical experience of kissing someone and feeling the spark of something new blossom in her chest. She feels it.
“See ya,” he says, dropping her off towards the edge of the city. He fires a little salute off to her. She smiles and waves back.
When she pulls on her mask, she feels like she’s herself again.