Chapter Text
The world shudders.
Cass pauses, crouched on the rooftop of the computer sciences building, counting seconds in her head. For the next thirteen seconds, the world tilts further and further, as if everything in the entire world is slipping sideways; about to fall apart. Then, just as abruptly as it started, the sensation fades again.
All that’s left is the strange, dull sense of something deeply and terribly wrong.
It’s been like that for a week now, this background hum of dread. Almost exactly the same amount of time as it’s been since Cass last spotted her current assignment. She hates it, hates the way it feels like the very universe itself is off-balance, spinning around an axis that’s suddenly more wobbly than it’s supposed to be. B had addressed it three days ago, said the Justice League was looking into things; trying to determine the source of the feeling. But they had nothing more to go on than a vague feeling, and even that wasn’t being universally felt, so it would take some time to identify the problem, let alone determine solutions.
Cass had nodded silently at the announcement. B already knew that the rogue risk she’d been shadowing had gone missing, and he’d said nothing to her. Which meant he either had more information that he wasn’t sharing, and knew she wasn’t connected to the reality-slips, or that he was too distracted to consider a potential connection. And Cass had no way to know which it was. Probably, one of the others would have mentioned it, in that casual, unconcerned way they all could muster. Maybe cracked a joke about weird coincidences and waited for the others to ask further questions.
But Cass wasn’t much of a talker, and as Black Bat, she never said anything that wasn’t important, so any attempts to bring it up casually would be responded to with immediate alarm. And she doesn’t want to fuck over her mark’s life that badly if she really is uninvolved.
“Fuck,” someone mutters on the street below.
Cass goes still, even though they have no way of seeing her. She’s not at the edge of the building, and though this spot is pretty well positioned to see the majority of the quad (the all-encompassing view had been why she chose it for her nightly stakeout, after all), she’s carefully tucked up against one of the dormer windows. Between that and her dark suit, she’s almost completely invisible.
Still, that voice. It was familiar.
It also sounded…. Bad.
Cass doesn’t have the right words for these sort of things, has never had the skill to explain all the things she notices in any sort of concise manner, but Cass is alone. It’s just her and a series of simple observations cascading out of a single moment.
A hitch in the breath. The catch that means a voice is trying desperately not to break. A soft undertone of gravel that wasn’t there before. The tapestry of a woman’s emotional standing splayed out across a single spoken word.
Cass doesn’t even need to look to know that this woman is in significant distress.
She looks anyway.
Everything about her appearance mirrors what Cass heard in her voice, from the collapsing tension in her shoulders, to the way her feet aren’t quite lifting high enough to avoid dragging on the ground. The sound of tennis shoes scraping against pavement echoes its way up to Cass, dancing around her like an omen.
Jasmine Fenton is back in Gotham.
Cass frowns.
On the ground below, Jasmine pauses. She glances around, tense and aware, an obvious act of observation. Cass tilts her head and observes Fenton’s position. Out of view of most of the field; off the main pathway; out of sight of any cameras. Whatever the woman is about to do, she doesn’t want to be seen.
Cass tenses, preparing to leap from her spot; to deal with whatever threat her mark is about to unleash.
Jasmine Fenton whirls around, faster than most people could manage, and with an inarticulate noise, she slams her first straight into the stone wall beside her. The cracking sound rockets towards Cass, and she can’t help but wince.
“Goddamnit!” Fenton shouts. “Fucking-” and then her voice is breaking again and Cass can do nothing but stare.
Next comes the crying.
Little hitching breaths, and a sound like she’s trying to keep the noise in, and Cass finds herself caught; strung up between warring needs.
She wants to comfort the woman. Distress is never easy or comfortable to see, and it pulls at that something within Cass, the drive to help that she nurtured and fed, that led her to the Batcave in the first place. And yet, there is also the need to protect the city, the world, and Cass is more certain now than she was before, that Jasmine Fenton knows something about the strangeness of the last week.
Above that all, there is also the knowledge than any attempt to approach Fenton would surely go terribly.
First, the wariness which Jasmine had displayed before allowing herself to express these emotions. She hadn’t wanted to be seen. It’s entirely possible that her avoidance of cameras was a coincidence, but the rest of it certainly wasn’t, and she’d managed the feat with an impressive subtlety; the kind that even Cass hadn’t noticed until moments before the woman released that iron grip on herself.
Second, the circumstances. Regardless of everything else, Fenton was her mark. Her job had been to observe, to determine if her personal history was simply the usual Gotham resident misery or a greater cause for concern. Cass was not supposed to engage with the target. And now, with this timing, observation had become more critical, not less.
Because it could easily be that this distress is the result of failed experiments with something terrible. It would not be shocking – individuals like Doctor Fries, who cause great harm out of desperation, are far from uncommon. And while Cass can feel for someone in such a terrible position, it is her job to ensure that their suffering doesn’t echo into actions that bring yet greater suffering.
Emotional people are not always good people.
Beyond that, there’s the simple truth of the matter. Even if it were a good idea for someone to offer Jasmine comfort in this moment, Cass would be the worst possible choice. She isn’t good with people; doesn’t like being touched; can’t speak well enough to offer verbal comfort. Cass is the kind of hero that’s good for protection and observation, but not much else. And what’s more, Jasmine has displayed a marked wariness at the presence of vigilantes.
The few occasions Cass has seen her spot one of the other Bats, she’s stopped dead in her tracks. She’ll stand and stare and square her shoulders, like she’s preparing for a fight. And more than anything, Cass does not want to fight this woman.
So instead she waits, frozen, as the woman on the ground below breaks and shatters and cries.
Cass’ own heart cries out in response, with each gasping breath. And it hurts to stay still, but she has to, until finally Jasmine manages (or decides) to pull herself together, and return to her path towards to the dorms, a presence once more returned to Gotham’s miserable soil.
Cass stays there, unmoving, as minutes tick by. She wages a mirrored war against her own self control; fighting to steady her own breathing, to become normal, to seem unaffected. Because there is possibly no worse fate than to return to the cave and her family with signs of distress. No worse fate than the inevitable, well-meaning interrogations that always follow. The relentless investigation; the desperate way they all try to fix each other, as if everything to ever exist is a problem to solve.
And with the dread that’s currently blanketed over everything. With the way her family has all been feeling it more acutely than even most of the other heroes. With the way B has refused to let any of them be involved in the investigation into the matter, they’d only push harder. Because all of them are desperate for a problem that can actually be solved.
And Cass doesn’t want to become that problem.
So she takes as much time as she needs to steady and ground herself. And once her breathing is even and calm, she grapples off into the night. Leaving behind the University, and those complicated feelings, and her own desperate desire to fix the distress that Jazz had displayed.
And in the quiet solitude of a late Gotham night, the solid wall of the ancient communications building groans, one more crack in its aged, stone exterior.