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Cassandra Cain looked at her hands. They were streaked with the blood of an innocent man.
It had been an accident, truly. She and Batman had taken separate routes in a rickety, dilapidated old building, as was traditional for crime lord hide-outs, and the mind-controlled, civilian quasi-army was at the ready when she busted through the windows to pinpoint the criminal. She just hadn’t been expecting that one would jump in front of her fists, their face connecting with her knuckles.
She was used to victory. The smell of success was the same as iron, when she wrecked her body to neat perfection through blood. But it had always been her own.
The civilian, his eyes glowing from whatever liquid the crime lord had used to hijack their minds, fought back with worrying intensity. She tried to throw him out of the way, but he didn’t budge.
It took a few strikes to shove him off. A few more to dizzy the crime lord shielding himself behind the victim. It took just a minute to fully tie him up and alert Batman, who arrived in just under thirty seconds to her call.
But the civilian, with his face puffy and irate, concerned Cassandra. Not because he was injured, but because she knew she should have maintained complete precision and control.
Had that not been what her father had installed in her? From such a young age? Before she could even talk?
The blind rage with herself lasted a brief second, before she tossed over to the other side of her bed.
That had been hours ago, but she was safe back at the Manor. Her fairly bare room left nothing to distract her mind with. She had been almost perfect in matching the Bat, in keeping up with him and his brutal workouts and rituals, his nightly training and endeavors, since she had arrived. She had been clean, in that she left no error in her wake.
But tonight, she had failed. Cassandra Cain had harshly injured a civilian.
She turned again in her bed. As much as she tried to close her eyes and sleep away the pains and aches of anxiety and overthinking, she couldn’t. She tossed once more, and then another, back to where she started. She wanted to throw something at the wall, in anger, as if that was what was disrupting her slumber.
The Manor was her protective bubble. Training was her haven. The slightly plush mat beneath her feet, the humid air in her tired lungs, the sweat dripping down her brown, to the edge of her eyes that she would quickly blink away, the heaviness of her arms, the itching of her legs to kick and swipe, her feet always ready to pounce– that was what gave her life, hope, a sense of strength.
No, Bruce installed that hope and strength within her.
She did not fully comprehend the others. Dick, who zipped between his million and a half responsibilities, but considered Bruce and his role as Nightwing in Gotham as just one of them, Todd for his fool-hardiness in blazing about at the Red Hood, Drake for his tunnel-vision, Damian for his mostly-loyal behavior, though his mother and maternal lineage still posed a heavy sense of self on him, and even Steph, for her personal issues bleeding into the field. Barely, Cass knew, but she was perceptive enough to catch when on the nights Steph was back at home, she threw harder punches, or the nights where she would be more abrupt, more impulsive, Cass would later find out that that night, Stephanie had been contacted by her dad, or reminded of him in some hefty way.
Cass had Bruce. Orphan had Batman. Cassandra Cain, missing even a legal middle name, or truly any legal paperwork surrounding her existence, was missing a self.
When she looked into the mirror, the stitched, black latex Orphan mask was superimposed onto herself. When she trained, she didn’t think of such frivolous things. When she was with Barbara, high up in the clocktower, reviewing files, or even just talking about the minute details of life, she didn’t need to introspectively contemplate her existence.
But her existence was carved from an expectation of perfection. What was meant for her if she hit a civilian? What would Bruce think? One hit was an accident, but four hits? Two was a mistake (and one that, Cass felt deep within her father’s training, would mean heavy punishment), and three was something she would have kicked herself out of the Manor for. That meant she didn’t have the natural, near-mythic instincts drilled within her polished to a fault.
But four strikes? Four hits to a near-unconscious civilian, one whose status she followed, finding out he suffered a severe concussion from following his hospitals’ later, and very much hacked by her on behalf of Barbara’s, diagnosis? Four was enough to make her want to jump off Gotham Bridge.
When she and Bruce returned from their mission that night, he congratulated her. Put a heavy, amiable, trusting hand on her slim shoulder. Made sounds and noises of praise, but it was all water rushing past her ears. Her blood roared.
She slashed and hacked and hit and kicked and utterly demolished the training dummy back in the Cave. They had come back from the mission at nearly 2am.
Tim put a hand on her shoulder and guided her away from the mat, from the cave, back up to her room, when he went to fetch some papers from the Bat computer at 6 am the next morning. Cass argued with him over his being in the cave at such an hour, when she knew he went to sleep around 4 am, but he had only squashed her complaints, and offered no explanation of his own.
So here she was, in bed, tossing and turning, her stomach curling in on itself, her mind whirling, vibrating and overheating from working overtime dissecting her every move, every twitch of her muscles, and the clock on the wall didn’t even read 9 am.
She pushed her eyelids shut, counted sheep, imagined herself falling asleep on a hammock in a slight breeze, or weightless upon an ocean wave rocking her to sleep, but to no avail. The civilian, the four punches, the scent of innocent blood, was hot upon her mind, commanding her cognizant presence.
Cassandra Cain did not cry. Could not cry. What would Bruce think, when he, when looking upon the files of last night’s exploits, see what Barbara would report on from the hospital? That the civilian (slowly coming down from the mind-control injection– his name was Carsen Brown, she had learned), was concussed from her doing? Bruce, the sharp mind that he was, would surely put together that if Cass was capable of this, unable to control her own fists, that this would mean the next mission more damage could be done, and then the next, and so forth, and so forth–
What would happen if she accidentally killed a man?
Cass felt her stomach tighten its ropes, her lungs crushed, her mind stop. She curled in on herself, the blanket and duvet swarm around her figure as she clutched the edges of it closer to her body. The heat furthered itself from comfortable to suffocating, but this was a punishment, wasn’t it? The overheating of her mind in wrapping itself up in the situation was being mirrored by the slow overheating of her body underneath the fluffy cover and doughy duvet. It was far too comfortable of a punishment, but any minute now, Bruce would slam her door open and demand her resignation.
What would she do then?
Cassandra Cain was not one to cry. She simply didn’t. Why did her face feel so sore then? Where was the salt that her lips and tough tasted coming from? Why did her cheeks hurt, and ache, and her chest heave with bitter heaviness, and her sternum want to collapse onto itself?
The door opened. She stilled. Her father would be beyond furious if he saw her in this state, even on a good day.
Cassandra Cain wasn’t weak.
Cassandra Cain didn’t cry.
Cassandra Cain didn’t fumble on missions, or miscalculate hits.
“Shh, you’re okay.” It was unmistakable Bruce’s voice, with its rumbling quality, like the overmath of thunder. She felt the mattress dip beside her, just feet away from her head.
“Cass, what’s wrong?”
She didn’t answer. No air found itself into her lungs that would permit her to even answer. Her chest coiled tighter, and tighter. Her face scrunched up, and she couldn't bear to look at what expression possibly graced his face, be it utter disgust or, to the worst of her imaginative pains, disappointment.
The thought of it made her instinctually curl in upon herself. A rough hand reached out to her head, waver, and then made contact with her hair, stimulating a petting motion.
“You’re okay, you’re okay,” Bruce whispered, and Cass inched herself, eyes squeezed shut, towards the warm voice. How could she be okay? She had failed. Nothing else than 110% was acceptable, and she had performed sub-capacity. Surely this was part of her punishment– a moment of comfort, warmth, just to be ripped out beneath her, turned against her psyche.
“I’ve got you.”
Cassandra heaved, and felt the sobs shudder her body. She felt the red-hot tracks of tears pour down her soft cheeks, felt her eyes heavy with the weight of salt, her legs shake, her head dip in further towards her sternum, her body curl and twitch and whine and let go.
This was a weakness, she knew. She had been in deep shit before, but a small part of her brain chewed on this display of immaturity, as her father called in. Unculled children cried. Warriors, assassins, daughters born of violent and victorious blood, daughters raised as mechanical weapons, daughters brought up as unrelenting machines, vigilantes trained as defenders of the night– they didn’t cry. Crying was not something Cass was familiar with.
And yet her body and mind betrayed her, and a warm hand was placed on her back, having wormed its way below the covers, and steadily placed itself directly on her spine, and rubbed soothing circles into her thin pajama shirt.
She had so slowly inched herself closer to the velvety, stormy voice, or perhaps it had met her in her delirious state halfway, and inches itself closer to her, that her head met Bruce’s leg. A hand came up to her head, gently placed itself on the back of her head, and she didn’t resist when her head was laid upon Bruce’s thigh, tears surely flowing onto his pants.
If only David could see his sorry excuse for a daughter now.
“You’re fine.”
“I’ve got you.”
“You’re going to be okay.”
“I love you.”
The words were etched into her consciousness, words she couldn’t bat away, and yet they firmly rooted itself into her ears, her mind. Bruce was lulling her into a false sense of safety and security, she wanted to believe, and she hated herself more for thinking that maybe, just maybe, he wasn’t.
The sting that was to come would only hurt worse, she told herself. But the blows, the deception, never came. Bruce kept rubbing small circles into her back, his fingers parting the strands of her jet-black hair, shushing her sobs, keeping calm as she broke down.
Was this not what an imperfect machine was? When rust formed on emotions, when leaks appeared? He would throw her out, and her sole purpose, the one thing that gave her hope for morning, would be brutally ripped away from her.
But it never came. He wiped the fat tears beading at her eyelids, told her he was proud of her, murmured appreciative comments, that he didn’t blame her, that she was just as worthy to be on the team as anyone else.
Cass didn’t know what to think. Her frontal lobe had been numbed, it felt like, and her whole brain was shutting down. Her body, her voice, her face, was tired, pinched together and ready for relief, for the pressure to unwind itself.
She felt her body calm itself down. She had no knowing of what time it was.
“Go to sleep,” Bruce suggested. Not commanded, not ordered, not belittled her for– suggested. Subtle, looking out for her best interests, wanting her to be rested.
She couldn’t shake that he would be furious at her waking up. But she was too tired to fight against the idea. She was too ready for sleep to overcome her sorry body to refute.
“I love you,” she faintly heard, as her mind slowly shut itself off, and let her mind find peace in sleep.
In the faintest of moments, a slight whisper before sleep overtook her, she could almost feel her body fully relax at the idea of it. That even her most instinctual of mannerisms knew that she would be safe, welcomed, and warm when she woke up.
For the first time in her life, despite her fuck-up, Cassandra, Cass, a Wayne, if she indulged herself, felt like no torrent of abuse, no harm, no harsh repercussion, would come her way when she awoke.
For the first time in her life, Cass felt safe. At ease, head on Bruce’s lap, her body slowing itself down as if to reiterate his words. She was safe, she was safe.