Chapter Text
A small shape among the shadows. Shifting with the rhythm of the night. Darting just out of sight, alley to alley, searching for something.
She knew these streets.
She'd also never seen them before.
Bundles and streams of memories of a long life she'd lived, all crammed in a much smaller, younger mind.
The dumpster she crept behind was too big for her to jump, yet she remembered being able to launch herself on top and leaping up the side of the building.
Another dull throb pulsed through her head. She didn't wince. It hurt to remember, but she needed to.
This little body was running out of time. If she didn't find Him soon, she would freeze to death in the coming winter storm. Her energy ran low, her small limbs felt stiff, and the more recently healed wounds pinched in the cold.
She'd never met Him before. Yet he was — is — will be — her family.
How was it possible to miss someone you've never known before?
Pushing herself to her feet felt like a monumental task. The brisk winds stiffened her spine. The clouds hung low and fat, ready to layer the city with frost. Her fingers and toes hurt. Thin gloves, socks full of holes, and a pair of bright yellow Crocs tossed in the trash hardly did a thing against the dropping temperature.
The coat she'd found, at least, was big enough to fall past her knees. It wasn't very thick, but it kept the wind from tearing into her.
Still, it wouldn't be enough.
Gotham always opened warming centers for the homeless during harsh weather, but she couldn't risk the wrong adults finding her. Even well-meaning ones intending on finding her a home had to follow rules that would only lead Cain right to her.
No, she needed the only person in Gotham who could hide her away.
And one of the best ways of finding him, in her (future) experience, was by following the screams. He didn't tend be far behind.
A couple of kids scurried around the corner of her alleyway, scrawny and panicked. They ran deeper, not noticing the chained fence until nearly running into it. Shouts drew their gazes over their shoulders, bodies crying fear-dread-hurt as someone else entered the alley.
A stout man, wearing a ragged suit like he pretended to be wealthy. Anger-pride-disgust laced his movements, his voice. He approached the trembling pair, taking off his belt with full intent to use it as he threw insults at them.
Cass slid from her hiding place to the kids, humming to draw their attention. They each jerked in surprise, but nearly melted in relief-gratitude-awe when she peeled back a broken section of the fence large enough to fit a child. They wasted no time in slipping through.
The man bellowed in rage, quickly closing the distance as Cass replaced the chain link. She turned to him, pushing her lips into a smile she knew to be unsettling.
This man was weak, and everyone except him knew it.
Evading his first few swings was (heh) child's play. A small target, let alone one who could read your next movements, was no easy hit. And each bumbling, failed attempt to strike her further piled more and more anger-indignation in his clumsy arms. She might've laughed, toyed with him a little longer than she ought, if her body wasn't already consuming itself in hunger and exhaustion.
Unfortunately, at exactly the wrong moment, Cass forgot just how small she was. And hungry. Her reach drew short, her center of gravity off. She saw the line of the man's shoulders, the pivot of his feet, all guiding his belt-wrapped fist — buckle-over-knuckle — in one direction.
If she was about a foot taller, weighed at least another fifty pounds, she'd have dodged it.
Instead, she moved right in its path, immediately cursing the momentum she couldn't stop—
Oh. The stars looked nice.
No, not stars, of course you couldn't see the stars in Gotham. Streetlights were the next best thing. And they were much brighter than just a moment ago.
Other voices shouted at her, at the man — the kids? — and the rattling sound of chain link dug into her head like claws.
Her stomach heaved as her mind struggled to catch up. She rolled to her knees, trying to tuck the pain away. Drops of red in the thin layer of snow. Hers?
Filthy sneakers in front of her. They shifted — he picked something up from the ground — braced for a swing — crowbar? tire iron? — and she didn't want to look, she didn't want to see the putrid hate in the man's eyes again, the directionless anger narrowed to a pleasure in harm and hurt and pain.
She didn't want to, but she did anyway. Because she heard something else, under the seething huffs of the beast readying for the kill.
A whisper of thick fabric. The chink and hiss of a grapple line.
Cass lifted her head, squinting, the streetlights harshly blurring her sight. But there, where the light stopped — the darkness moved, descending upon His prey.
From the shadows struck an arm, clad with a familiar gauntlet, gripping at the wrist bearing down the crowbar. The colliding force produced a snap, a pained shout from the cruel predator.
The rest of the shadow followed the arm, seamlessly morphing into a man. Cass couldn't be certain if it was the concussion talking, but Batman truly made an art of shadow manipulation. A fundamental understanding of how humans perceived light lending to the greatest of camouflage mastery.
She caught herself cooing, just a little, as the faint lines of Batman's body — what little she could see in the painful contrast of bright florescent light and dark alley — screamed horror-rage-protect-protect.
Maybe it was strange to feel safe among Batman's fury.
The man went down in a single knee to the stomach, and an elbow to the jaw for good measure. Each motion blurred into another. It was beautiful and dizzying. Nauseating. She looked away.
More dark drops in the snow. A small puddle of red bleeding into white. Unthinkingly, she grabbed a small fist full of snow and pressed it to the hot, pulsing spot on the side of her head. It melted too quickly, but it felt amazing, so she grabbed some more snow.
A gloved hand — warm — gently covered hers, tugging it away from the weeping wound. Only then did she notice the wind had stopped. Or, rather, that something stopped the wind.
A soft voice — kind — with a deep, gravely rumble she'd recognize anywhere.
She knew the words he spoke — (did know… would know?) — but exhaustion leeched their meaning away. Her ability to translate sounds into ideas, concepts, felt trampled in the frost. Heavy eyelids kept her from seeing him, her Bruce, so she poured the last of her energy into pushing to her feet, blindly leaning forward.
A large hand steadied her, braced against her side. She almost laughed at how it nearly spanned her whole torso. Her fingers easily found the edge of his cape, and she used it as a guide forward.
It took just two and a half steps to tuck herself into his side. With his crouched position, the cape provided ample protection from the cold. She pressed her body against his, barely processing the brief surprise stiffening his posture.
The hesitation didn't last long and she breathed in such relief, as Batman wrapped a sturdy arm around her, that her gasp turned into a hiccup. Then a whine.
Her tiny body wanted to weep, cry, wail for her Bruce as he gently pulled her into his arms. Hot tears cooled on her cheeks. She wanted to tell him everything, how much she missed him even though she'd never met him before, even though he had no idea who she was.
"Mb-bh—" she tried, as Batman settled her against his chest, wrapping her in the cape. Her lips felt unwieldy, thick and numb. "Bhu— brr—"
But she'd practiced. She'd practiced his name so many times, every night since she fled the man who'd created her, since she saw the life she once had will have flash through her mind as though remembering a long, long dream. But it wasn't a dream. It was her past, and also her future.
She refused to wait for it.
Her undeveloped voice strained under the weight of all-at-once knowing how to use it. Her lips, tongue, throat, jaw, diaphragm— all muscles she's used already, but never all at once, never while focusing on the air passing through the vocal chords. Different lip shapes made different sounds. Tongue placement mattered. Consonants had assigned spots in her mouth, and it was so much to remember, to translate her thoughts into tiny muscle movements and produce sounds everyone except her understood intuitively.
And yet, her tired tongue couldn't remember how to form the R-sound right after the B. Panic pierced her chest.
All she had to do was say his name and he'd somehow understand, maybe not everything, but just enough that he was hers and she was his. What was the word?
Home.
"Bah—" she hiccuped, burying her face in his neck. "Bahb— Baah—"
Something soft pressed against the wound on her head, though she only noticed because of the sudden, biting pain. She didn't flinch. She'd forgotten how.
Batman made low, crooning sounds, in shapes she should know but could only hear as a murmuring stream of noise. The tone, however, was warm. Soft. A tiny echo of sad-hurt in his reassurances.
"Bah-ba," Cass quietly wept, wells of grief threatening to spill. It wasn't the right word, but it would have to be enough. "Baba. Baba."
And maybe, from how his arms tightened around her, his hand coming to rest on her head, maybe it was.
Unable to fight the creeping shadows any longer, Cass felt her body fall limp against him. Alarm colored the voice rumbling against her. She tried to mumble some sort of assurance, even as the wind rushed through her hair in his sudden, desperate dash. Only a sigh escaped her.
She didn't worry, though.
Nowhere was safer than in the arms of the Bat.