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There’s a shitty action movie playing in the Titans Tower.
Tim’s out in Gotham. Bart’s not usually one for movies at regular-speed. Cassie’s mostly been working on a paper for finals while Kon’s been alternating playing candy crush and checking the news on his phone (a little. kind of. the tab is open and he’ll get to it when he gets to it, okay?).
But he’s vaguely aware of what’s happening onscreen. The lead action guy is the usual “blow stuff up and put sunglasses on while walking away from explosions.” He’s got a crew of dudes who want exactly three things in life: to drive fast cars, throw explosives at the bad guys, and drink beer.
Actually. Hm. The one woman on the team pops up on screen, and Kon ups their three desires in life to four.
She’s bleeding... but in a sexy way. Her hair is messy... but in a sexy way. There’s dirt on her like she got caught in an explosion or maybe got in a fight – you guessed it - in a sexy way. But hey, in case all that wasn't enough of a clue: She’s got cleavage out the wazoo, high glam makeup, and is the only one on the team whose uniform fits like a catsuit instead of practical workpants and storage for all her gear.
The thing is, Kon doesn’t know when he got out of the habit of staring.
But he looks away.
Busies himself with actually opening the news and scanning a few paragraphs. But he feels weird about it, suddenly.
On impulse, he suddenly turns the TV off.
“I was watching that,” Cassie says, not looking up from her homework.
“Oh,” Kon says, and turns it back on. “Sorry.”
He’s trying to look at Cassie, but Cassie’s between him and the TV, and every time he looks, he’s getting an eyeful of the TV screen. The action girl is back on screen, and now she’s advancing toward the camera. For some reason, the lens is more focused on her cleavage than her face.
Kon’s sure he’s always noticed that, about action movies. He remembers it used to titillate him instead of bother him.
“Was it giving you a headache or something?” Cassie asks, still not really looking up.
“No.”
“Then leave it on. I need background noise to concentrate.” She vaguely gestures at it. “And there’s nothing better than a mindless action movie without a plot.”
“Sure there’s a plot,” Kon says. “They’re saving the world.”
“And they’re doing this how?”
“The great American tradition,” Kon says. “Driving fast, blowing stuff up, drinking beer, and-”
“And?” Cassie prompts.
Kon busies himself in his phone. “-Blowing stuff up.”
“...You already said that.”
“Whatever.” Kon scans the headline for a third time. Hm. There’s no national disasters currently hitting, but if he finds an excuse to make an exit right now, surely Cassie won’t mind. He could probably find some poor baby seal to rescue from an orca. “I’ll go, so you can keep the TV on.”
“Or you could stay and leave the TV on,” Cassie says. “Why are you being so weird?”
“I’m not.”
“Yes, you are. You do this every time there’s a hot girl on TV,” she says, and Kon’s face bursts into flame. “Ever since you came back from Gemworld.”
Kon’s head feels like it’s recalibrating. “What?”
“You totally do. It’s weird,” she says. “You used to always try to pause it in slow-mo running scenes to get a better look at the action girls' boobs. Now you turn it off?”
“What?”
“That’s what I’m asking you,” Cassie says. “Why are you suddenly being weird? You’re not Match again, are you?”
“That’s- You know he’s dead,” Kon says, and feels an unpleasant twinge in his stomach. “And besides, Match was evil. He’d probably have been- you know. All for ogling hot girls.”
“Not really,” Cassie says. “To be honest, I never got that vibe from him? It just wasn’t his thing.”
“What, was he gay?” Kon asks, and isn’t that a fun question. Would that answer the age-old question of genetic variability and the gay gene? If Match was gay, did that mean Kon was?
“No, he liked me.”
“Oh.” Right. Kon kept forgetting that. Cassie technically kissed Match before Kon did.
“Aside from getting me to have feelings for him – which, ew, manipulative, false premises, gross – he was actually weirdly respectful. No comments about the kind of bikinis he liked to see me in, or how I would or wouldn't fill them out.” Cassie says it so casually, but Kon feels hot shame creep up his spine. She doesn’t seem to notice even though she’s looking at him now, her homework long forgotten. “I probably should’ve realized something was up when ‘you’ didn’t talk about ‘honeys’ for a full week. Of course, his whole respectful spiel, getting me to think he just valued my opinion over Rob’s… That was his real mission. Just wanted to pit us against Robin.”
Cassie shakes her head ruefully.
After a minute, she looks up at Kon, like she’s expecting him to have commentary, too.
Kon swallows. “Yeah,” he finally says, several beats too late. “Well. I’m not Match.” He pauses. “You’re not going to pull the whole, ‘aha! that’s just what Match would say!’ thing, right?”
Cassie eyes him for a second. “Nah,” she decides. “I believe you.”
“Great.” Kon tries to drop his eyes back to his phone again.
But there’s that shame in his stomach again.
He’s avoided it like the plague, this subject. Too embarrassed at what he used to be. But what he used to be was so much of his life.
Unlike little kids, for Kon, there was no innocent youth corrupted into some evil parody of itself at puberty. Kon had no childhood. If he was gross at sixteen, that was his entire life, until he finally stopped at…
He’s not exactly sure when it stopped, actually. He tries to think. To catalog his arc, to see if there was a definitive moment he stopped, or if he's been growing this whole time. If he's still growing. Has he made it yet?
“…It wasn’t just when I got back from Gemworld,” Kon finally says. One flimsy defense. “Just so you know.”
“What?” Cassie had gone back to her homework, but now she looks up at him with furrowed brows. When Kon takes too long to answer, she frowns further. “What wasn't when you got back from Gemworld?”
“Just- Not wanting to… The whole…”
The words die in his throat.
He rubs the heel of his hand against one eye. God, he’s so screwed now that he's brought it up. There’s no non-shitty way to talk about this.
With his other hand, Kon gestures at the TV. It’s not the best example, because the action girl isn’t the focus of this scene anymore. It’s an ensemble shot.
But then, somehow it’s still answer enough, because she’s the only one with a tank-top and cleavage out in the middle of a shootout.
Cassie raises a brow. "Turning off my action movies right in the middle of the best part?"
"Looking away," Kon says, and Cassie bites back a grin, like she meant to aggravate him by forcing him to spell it out. “I'm trying to be serious, Cassie, stop. I started looking away when we were dating, after we joined the Teen Titans. When I was getting my newer powers. When I was getting x-ray vision."
"...Okay," Cassie says. "Are you going somewhere with this?"
“Yes. No. I don't know." Kon sighs through his nose. "It doesn't matter, I guess. I didn’t want to tell you that I looked away, because I didn’t really want to talk about how I was getting all these new powers anyway, because it was stressing me out and I didn't want to think about it. Plus it felt weird to tell you that I’d wanted to look but didn’t, and what kind of a pat on the back would I even be looking for, right?”
“Dude. X-Ray vision lets you see bones,” Cassie says. "Was my ribcage that sexy?"
“Mine was… I had a little more, um, control over the layers I could see through than just bones,” Kon hedges. He still remembers how he felt while dating her. Being intimate with her. He remembers every touch and kiss and naked embrace. And more. There’s a part of his mind even now that is remembering exactly how she looked underneath him. “But I’d look away when my powers flared up and we were out in public and you didn't know I could, um, look at you. It wasn’t just Gemworld when I stopped looking. It was before.”
Cassie narrows her eyes. "Seriously? You expect me to believe that?"
"I. Yeah. My powers could do that. Can do that."
“No, I mean the fact that you weren't doing it,” Cassie says. “No offense. When we were Titans, you’d still talk about Kory’s chest, or stare at her with Garfield. Or laugh along if other people told shitty, sexist jokes. So... Bullshit. You definitely looked.”
“I didn't," Kon insists. "And I wasn't - even with Bart, at least I wasn’t the one telling those jokes anymore.”
Cassie raises her brows. The judgmental way, not the surprised way. Kon realizes a beat too late that was the wrong thing to say. He looks up at the ceiling.
“And I don’t like those jokes at all anymore, thanks,” he says. Defensive. It feels like pulling teeth to even talk about this, and Cassie is not making this any easier. “But it wasn’t only after I got back from Gemworld, okay? It was… It took a lot of time. But I was working on it for a long time. I was trying, am trying, to be different.”
“...Okay,” Cassie finally says. Kon looks back at her, almost pleasantly surprised - until he sees the look on her face. “You say you didn’t tell those jokes. So what was up with you pulling your usual locker room talk with Bart and telling him all the intimate details when we hooked up?”
“I didn’t…” He pauses, remembering. "It wasn't like that."
“Nah. I heard you,” Cassie reminds him. “With Bart. And you're saying you changed before all that? No offense, but no way.”
“I guess... I still don't... Part of me doesn't get why that counted.” Kon quiets for a moment, head bowing. “I guess you and I fought about it back then, too. But... I really was going to him for advice. It's just- we talked about other stuff, too.”
"Funny how you didn't actually ask him any questions, then. It was just you saying how we were having sex and how it was going before we were interrupted. And how disappointing or annoying it was that we didn't start back up again. And you were talking about it with the same guy you regularly compared notes and 'to-do lists' with about supermodels. When you talk like that about whatever pin-up girls you're obsessed with that week, your girlfriend isn't suddenly different. Except unlike girls in magazines, I had to hear myself getting talked about that way by my boyfriend." Cassie looks at him, and the ire in her eyes is devastating. "So yeah. Pretty sure it counts.”
The room’s silent for almost a full minute as Cassie makes him sit with that.
Finally, Kon sighs, cheeks and lips puffing out with it. “I don’t know what you want me to say. Aside from sorry. Which I am.”
And that helps me how? Kon can almost hear Cassie's response back then, too.
Cassie looks at him for a while. Really considers him. Kon wonders what it is she’s seeing, when she looks at him. If there’s any part of her that still likes what she sees, or if she’s looking right through him like Kon fears she is. Kon wonders if she's remembering what she said back then, too.
“Okay,” she finally says, and pats her knees with an audible clap as she starts to get up. “I guess we’re finally doing this.”
“Doing…?”
“This,” she says. And she puts her homework fully aside, flipping the notebook shut along with all her worksheets. Then she hops up on the couch next to him, nudging him to move his legs to make room for her. Wordlessly, he does. “The sexism talk.”
“The sexism talk?”
“Mm-hm." Cassie gives Kon a look that reminds him why she's the leader of their team, for her sheer force of will. "It's probably overdue. But if you say you've changed, then maybe you'll actually be able to understand."
Kon feels - shame, maybe. The same discomfort he felt earlier, with the movie. But now, instead of something he could switch off, avoid, ignore, Cassie's sitting right in front of him. There's no getting out of it. "If it's just 'don't be sexist'... I'm not totally stupid about it anymore, Cassie. I was, before. You're right. But-"
"Nope." Cassie cuts him off. Her eyes are intense. "I mean no, that's not what the sexism talk is. I’m actually going to give you the talk I got from Donna. You’re going to sit where I sat. And you’re going to hear what it is, what it’s like. Because you saying sorry doesn’t mean much if you don’t really understand what you’re sorry for.”
Kon’s stomach flips. He thinks maybe he understands a little of it, actually. But it feels presumptuous to say that.
But he doesn't get up. He's not sure what would happen if he did. Cassie would probably be upset, obviously. And it feels like the coward's way out, somehow. Like she's taking a risk with him. Like she trusts him, even if she's mad. Visibly, actually mad.
But Kon's not actually afraid of Cassie being mad.
So he nods. Hesitant, but listening.
And Cassie begins.
“The first thing I’m going to say is that it’s still worth it, because everyday, we get to help people. Real people, who need our help. There are all kinds of monsters and aliens and cults and robots that want to take over the world, and we’re responsible for protecting the Earth and everyone on it. That’s a big responsibility. The criticism we get from the world, the intrusion on our personal lives, the sacrifices, the friends we lose – sometimes that’s what happens when you’re responsible for protecting the world. The working conditions aren’t great.” She pauses. “But that’s the job. If you can’t take it, this isn’t the field for you. No matter the powers, if you can’t handle using them, if you can’t trust yourself to use them for good, and not evil – if you can’t work with others for the greater good, no matter your differences, then it’s better for you to not use your powers at all than to risk using them to put more evil in the world.”
The words themselves might be Donna’s. Kon can’t tell, he wasn’t there, doesn't know if anything's being added or embellished. But the tone is all Cassie.
There’s this gravity to Cassie’s voice when she gives speeches, Kon remembers. The way her voice becomes so commanding, pinning him to his seat. It’s not the way she gives orders – those are a different kind of authority.
But when it comes to her speeches, the tone she takes when she knows she has the room and she’s got something to say… he’s never known someone else with that kind of commanding eloquence. He knows she can’t actually give speeches just at the drop of a hat – but it’s a near thing. She just has the kind of voice that when she speaks, you know you need to listen.
“What they don’t tell you,” Cassie continues, “Is that other heroes can make working conditions just about as bad.”
“Donna said this?”
“Some of it,” Cassie says. “She was the one girl on a team with four guys when there were almost no adult woman heroes. Black Canary, Zatanna, even Batgirl – they were later. We had Wonder Woman and maybe Hawk Girl if memory serves. It wasn’t that long ago, but sometimes it feels like a totally different world.”
Kon has more questions. For now, he shuts his mouth, realizing it’s still open from his outburst. And Cassie continues Donna’s speech.
“The vast majority of the guy heroes we work with care about the greater good. Remember that. We have it in common, so no matter how bad anything gets, think back to that and focus on what actually matters: Saving the world. And remember that there are real people whose lives are in the balance if we mess up. Or if we put our feelings over the greater good.” Her eyes get a little more intense. Kon wonders how this conversation would have felt to a fourteen, maybe fifteen-year-old Cassie Sandsmark. One who barely had a relationship with Donna. One whose training was mostly completed by Diana and Artemis who… for as mission-driven as they are, Kon can’t imagine them giving this speech. They never would have told Cassie to just put up with it. Right? “And there will be times when you’ll want to put your feelings first," she continues. "When you feel like they don’t see you as a real person. When you feel like you're just there as an option for them, romantically. Or something nice to look at. Do not let them put you on the shelf, though, or prevent you from doing your job. Ignore their overprotectiveness, ignore them telling you that you can't do something. Do your job, and do it well, because any mistake you make will be judged ten times harder than the boys.”
Kon feels dread pool in his stomach. Not just for what it would feel like - but because he remembers early on, with Cassie and Cissie. Thinking they were too inexperienced. Feeling like it was a drag to include them.
“You’re also going to work with heroes that have no tact. Most people with magic powers or superpowers don't exactly come from normal society. So a lot of them - especially some of the most powerful guys out there - don’t have the best understanding of social cues. So always assume ignorance before you assume malicious intent,” Cassie continues, and now she’s got more of Donna in her voice, no longer trying to make the speech sound like it could be from her own head. No more tomboy assertive; it’s all feminine empathy from here. “And for the ones that act like that even without social issues… Well, aren’t you lucky? You have the chance to prove yourself to them. That you're worth your spot on the team, that you can pull your own weight.”
Kon can’t help but squirm. It sounds a little too close to home, in those early days. “Cassie… I-”
“And hey!" she cuts him off. "If proving yourself doesn’t work, find some good humor, and always, always care. You might be the only girl with the power to change their mind about women. And you’re in a great position to do it, because like it or not, your teammates will look to you before they look to anyone else for emotional advice.” Cassie’s eyes blaze, and she can’t quite keep the anger out of her voice, mimicking Donna or not. “And if they’re having emotional trouble in the field, trouble you’re not helping them figure out, then they’re going to get hurt. This goes double if they’re upset with you, or you haven’t made time for their feelings, because they won’t have the emotional capacity to figure it out themselves. Why would they, right? Some other girl has done that for them their whole lives, babysat their emotions for them. But holding grudges on a superhero team is the surest way to get someone killed. Whatever problems you have with a teammate, deal with it – whatever that means to you. If it means forgiving and forgetting, confronting and hashing it out, seeking restitution – get it done, and get it done the same day the problem starts. But if you confront a teammate about how they’re treating you, you better trust that teammate is capable of growing the hell up. And no offense, Cassie,” she mimics Donna’s cadence, this time nailing it almost eerily. “But you work with teenage boys.”
Cassie doesn’t follow it up immediately. Kon’s still pinned in place, feeling a strange mix of shame and guilt.
The room goes silent for a long time before Kon realizes Cassie’s probably waiting for Kon to say something.
“I didn’t expect...” he finally starts, “-I didn't think that Donna would tell you something like that. She always seemed…”
“Perfect?”
Kon winces. “I don’t know. The older Titans just talked about her so reverently. And then she died, right as…”
Cassie looks away suddenly, embarrassed. “...I know,” she says. “It was before that. Obviously. It was when we were just starting Young Justice. I didn’t really want to listen to her, back then.” The rest is unsaid. Of course she would’ve taken it to heart more after Donna died. The advice of a dead mentor means something else. You’re never going to get another heart to heart; it’s all you can do to remember what advice they could give you.
Kon pulls his knees up to his chin. He thinks hard about it for a long minute. “I think the ‘that’s unfair’ goes without saying,” he finally says. “I’m… I’m sorry. That was a lot to put on you.”
“It was a lot to be put on her.” Cassie pulls her knees up, too, mirroring Kon’s position. She sighs through her nose, then presses her forehead to her knees, letting out a frustrated groan. “She didn’t even have advice for the real stuff on our team. Like, no offense, but you guys didn’t even come to me with emotional stuff. It was mostly just the weird sex stuff. And I know she was on a team with Beast Boy and Red Arrow, so why didn’t she talk more about that?”
It’s an unfair question, Kon thinks. Being angry with Donna for not giving better advice for how to deal with shitty teenage boy teammates. But Kon knows that she’s not just mad at Donna or blaming Donna for the issues Young Justice had. The withering glare she’s giving from under her hair tells him that she’s not quite forgiven-and-forgotten his role in all of this.
"It sucked, by the way," Cassie tells him. "Just so you know."
Kon's shoulders creep toward his ears.
“It sucked coming back to HQ and seeing your posters of girls in bikinis on the wall,” Cassie says. “It sucked hearing you constantly talk to Bart about hot girls and which celebrities you’d have sex with and how. It sucked seeing you go on missions and peel off with people we just rescued and get their numbers like that was really the time or place. It sucked hearing you joke about how annoying it was when girls complained about guys who act like you. It sucked standing up for myself and seeing you and Bart instantly think I was a huge bitch any time I disagreed with ‘the boys.’ The way you talked about ‘the Mighty Endowed’ sucked. The way you talked about a lot of evil supervillainesses sucked. You and Bart, and even if Lil’ Lobo and Slobo sucked worse, you sucked first. But that stuff? That was just making it a shitty environment, Kon. You know what sucked worse?”
Kon looks down. He has a feeling he knows what’s coming next.
“What sucks worse is knowing you have TTK which tells you exactly which rooms are occupied. What sucks worse is having you barge in with a camera crew to the locker rooms when you had to have known I was in there and in the middle of changing,” Cassie says, and she’s not pulling any punches. “What sucks worse is when you stole all of the underwear out of my room. I don’t care that it wasn’t your idea. I don’t care that you regretted it immediately and returned it. I care that you did it. And-”
“I’m sorry. For all of it,” he says, and he means it.
“-And for talking about my boobs when you'd been sleeping in the fucking bathtub. ‘I see why they call you Wonder Girl’?” she mimicks, real anger in her voice. “Under what fucking circumstance- How the hell did you think that was okay?”
“I’m sorry,” Kon says again. “It was awkward, I thought it was funny, but I was wrong. Obviously. I don’t know what else to say, Cassie, I don’t know if there’s a way to make it right, but I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that. Done any of it. I didn't realize it then, but I do now. I wish I'd realized it then. I don't know why I didn't.”
Cassie’s nostrils are still flared. Her face is flushed with anger. And Kon is getting the feeling that this is maybe a necessary catharsis for her.
“I’m sorry,” he says again. “You can stay mad, I'm not asking for forgiveness. And you can say anything else you need to say. I’ll hear it. I really am different. And I'm sorry. I wish there was a better word than sorry. If there was, I'd use it.”
Somehow, that’s what makes some of the anger leave her. Cassie lets out a slow, frustrated breath.
"It sucked," Cassie says again. Kon doesn't disagree. Cassie runs a hand back through her hair, looking away from him now. “The worst part is I still liked you,” she admits. “I hate it. I hate that I was willing to ignore it that easily, like it was okay. I hate that I was so desperate to be liked by you that I brushed all of it off. You’re better now – but you weren’t when we dated. Not as bad as you were during all that, but you weren't... you hadn't gotten where you are now. And I hate that I was okay with being disrespected.”
Kon closes his mouth. Cassie hasn’t really answered his apology, forgiven him or told him he’s not forgiven, so he figures – this is closure, maybe. For her. Maybe it’s not even about him apologizing. It’s about Cassie finally getting to say it, instead of just keeping it to herself and dealing with it.
“Did…” Kon trails off. “Did you ever tell Donna about that stuff? Or Diana? Or your mom?”
“What, and give my mom another excuse to pull me from the team?” She huffs a bitter laugh. “No way was I doing that. I’d just made a best friend in Cissie, and I had a crush on you. Nope. I was a big girl, I could handle it.”
Kon bites the inside of his cheek. “Yeah,” he finally says. “I. I get that.” Not wanting to elaborate, he shakes his head. “I’m sorry. You don’t have to say anything, I just – I am sorry. I wish I’d been different. I didn’t know how to be different yet, back then. I should’ve been. But I wasn’t.”
Cassie sighs. Finally, she picks her head up and rests her chin on crossed arms, looking over at Kon with a glare. But it's lost most of its power. “I know. I hate that part, too,” she says. “It almost doesn’t feel fair being mad at you. You probably had the sexism beamed directly into your skull, right? By CADMUS? And then you literally didn’t have parents and some random asshole named Rex Leech was responsible for you for like a year, and you were with... you know." The elephant in the room. Knockout, Tana. "How fucked up is that?”
“...Pretty fucked up,” he says. “But... It also doesn’t un-fuck you up?”
“I know it doesn’t un-fuck me up,” she says, a little annoyed. But she softens just a little, wiping at her eyes, not really crying, but annoyed that there's any moisture at all. “Ugh. I hate this. We’re not doing the Barbie movie here, though.”
“The…?”
“You’re not going to get me to say sorry to you for how you treated me,” she says.
“I’m not… asking you to?” Kon feels bewildered by the premise. “Did you think I was asking you to say sorry?”
“No. Yes. It always feels like it’s what I’m supposed to do. But I’m not sorry,” she emphasizes. “And I can still hate the stuff that happened to you. It sucked. What adults did to you sucked.”
“Yeah,” he says. Uncertainly. “I guess it did.”
"But it also sucked being on a team when you did all that to me."
Kon nods. He doesn't disagree.
There's more he could say. Excuses he could make. Most of what happened on Young Justice... It was long after Tana and Knockout. But - it's not... He doesn't think it would help, saying anything. The elephant is already in the room, anyway. And what is there to say? 'Sorry I was an absolute pig. Did you know encouraging a teenager to be aggressively sexual is like, a super common tactic for groomers?'
But Kon doesn’t — he doesn’t actually want to think about that right now. There’s a time for it, but he doesn’t think this is it. He thinks it might make it worse if he says anything about it.
So he stays quiet, not sure what he’s supposed to do here.
The room is quiet for a long while. There’s the faint hum of electricity. If he uses any of his power to listen, he can hear things all over the world. Anything would probably be easier to stomach than this talk. But though he could tune out, could use the excuse of listening for a crisis to respond to, he doesn’t. Cassie matters to him. So as out of his depth as he feels, Kon doesn’t tune out. He stays present, right here.
Finally, after almost two minutes of complete silence, Cassie looks at him again.
“...Did you actually have sexism beamed directly into your brain?” Cassie asks. “Or did I make that up trying to make it make sense how you came into existence and were hitting on women within like five minutes of being alive?”
Kon feels his face burn. He presses the heels of his hands into his eyes. The ghost of Paul Westfield appears in his mind. Bet you’re quite the ladies’ man. Really enjoy the girls, don’t you? That’s from me. Kon breathes in, out through his nose. “Maybe,” he says, oh so decisively. “Does it actually matter?”
“Maybe,” Cassie says, just as definitively. “Do you think it matters? Is it what made you like that?”
They look at each other for a long while. Cassie’s intense stare dares Kon to give a real answer. But he doesn't know. Even if he did know, does it matter? At a certain point, Kon would need to be accountable for his own actions. It's just - he doesn't know when that would've been his responsibility versus when he was allowed not to know better. Even if Westfield had uploaded sexism directly into Kon’s brain, how long could that excuse last before it should’ve been Kon’s responsibility to teach himself, like, better morals?
His brain feels like it’s in an endless spin cycle. He was definitely given sexist info, yeah. But does it even matter? It’s nothing but, ‘it happened – now what?’ on loop.
Finally Kon breaks. He holds his head and leans back, draping over the edge of the couch.
“I don’t know,” Kon finally admits, peering through parted fingers, only succeeding in half blocking the overhead light. His voice sounds louder to him than before. He’s getting a headache from thinking in circles. “I don’t know. I don’t know where Westfield and CADMUS ended and I began. And I don’t know when I should’ve started learning for myself. And I don’t know who would’ve been responsible for teaching me. And I don’t know if any of that matters, because I obviously still hurt you.”
Kon’s still half expecting Cassie to be mad. But to his surprise, he hears her flop backward, too, adopting a similar position of staring up at the ceiling like there are any answers up there. “I don’t know either,” she says, and despite agree-ing with him, it still doesn’t sound like agree-ment. There’s still anger. Blame? Maybe, maybe not. “This fucking sucks.”
“…Is it wrong that I kind of wish it was that easy?” Kon asks. “To just say, ‘Yep, it was all him. Then it was just a good old Sisyphean task, trying to un-sexist myself and spring fully-formed out of the ultimate male feminist forehead.’” Kon hears Cassie snort, so he counts the metaphor as a win. “...But it doesn’t un-fuck it up. It was still me. I did all that. That sucks.”
“It does,” Cassie says. She sighs. “I don’t know enough about the very first few weeks of your life to say anything about what you learned or what you were like. Sorry. I don’t have answers. And we don’t have like- a way to see what you would’ve been like otherwise. Obviously. No one gets to know that.”
Kon makes a vague noise.
Cassie furrows her brows.
“Match,” Kon says.
“Oh. Hm.”
“If he got the same training, he would’ve been the same, right?” Kon asks. “Or maybe he got different training and downloaded info. I don’t know.”
Cassie looks like she’s still thinking it over. She doesn’t answer, which Kon can’t really blame her for. It’s a pretty big philosophical question to tackle in the middle of everything else they’re trying to figure out.
“You and Match kissed before we did,” Kon says, before she can find her words. “Is that weird, for you? Was he-? Did he also… Was he a jerk to you, too?”
“No,” Cassie admits. She says it like an admittance, too. Like it’s a secret that’s been weighing on her. “That’s… Part of it, I guess. He was a manipulative creep pretending to be you, which sucks so bad in its own way. I hate that my first kiss was with a guy just trying to trick me. But he did it by making me feel… important. Smart.” She shrugs. “He liked my ideas. I liked that he had nice things to say to me. That he didn’t seem to think I was annoying or a buzzkill. That was different to most guys.”
Kon wants to say, I didn’t think you were annoying. You were fun sometimes. But he remembers being sixteen. And regardless of how he felt, he didn’t always show it. And it’s the negative that sticks out, to everyone. “I’m sorry,” he says instead. “I got there, too, eventually. But when I said them, I meant it.”
I don’t think you’re stupid. I think you’re beautiful.
Kon doesn’t know that he’d say it the exact same way if he had to do it again. He remembers early on, when Cassie resented the idea of being pretty. Of ‘pretty’ mattering. But she’s changed her tune. Her outfits alone… They’re a far cry from the girl who insisted on wearing biker shorts as a uniform. Kon doesn’t think about how girls think about beauty standards very often, but if he had to wager a guess, Cassie actually had it right the first time.
“I don’t think you’re stupid,” he says again, and Cassie sits up, brows furrowing. He can’t tell if she remembers what he told her before their first kiss or not. “I think… you’re a great leader. And I think being your friend was one of the best things that ever happened to me. I wish I'd been a better friend. I want to be one now.”
Cassie looks at him. She does it for a while, something uncertain in her eyes.
Again, he can’t help but wonder what it is she’s seeing.
Is he still the same immature, horny, inappropriate mess of a teenager he’d been back then? Is he still someone who makes her uncomfortable, who makes an environment where she feels like she has to fight extra hard just because she’s a girl? Or like she's being judged, constantly evaluated about how pretty she is compared to Cissie, Greta, Anita? Does he make her feel like she has to water herself down to avoid being seen as a bitch?
What version of him is the most crystallized in her mind? Is he forever-sixteen again, this time in Cassie’s feelings toward him? Is he doomed to be someone she’ll always harbor resentment toward?
“Thanks,” she finally tells him. “That’s…” She bites her lip, chewing on his words, and hers. “Just— Thanks, for saying that. I think it’ll help me figure out how I feel about… All of it.”
It answers none of the real questions Kon has, but he tries to make peace with the fact that this closure isn’t for him. It’s for Cassie. He’s not going to push it. They’re teammates, and despite what advice Donna gave her, Cassie’s not actually obligated to make nice with him after the shit he pulled. Even if it was years ago, it wasn’t that long ago. And she was hardly the only girl he owes an apology to.
He thinks, after this, maybe he needs to-
“You’ve changed a lot since then,” she tells him, interrupting his thoughts, and Kon stops, looking up at her in surprise. “I mean, I already told you that, since I told you how weird it is that you don’t even rewind action movies to ogle at the girls anymore.”
Kon glances over at the turned-off TV. “You can tell just from that?”
“Nah,” she says. “There’s more. You just… don’t do any of that stuff anymore. Not since Gemworld. And even before that, it was getting less frequent.” Cassie’s tears have fully dried by now. and she’s looking at him with naked curiosity. “...Can I ask what changed? I mean, if you even know. Maybe it was just growing and up and getting more mature, what do I know.”
“Moving in with Superman’s parents,” Kon says, no hesitation. “They had actual, like. Stability. Rules. Expectations for me. Sometimes they didn’t even have to say it out loud when I messed up. I just got to see how they did things. What they watched on TV, how they watched it. How they talked to each other, about each other, about other people. I started to change for the better.” Kon could probably gush about them for a while longer. It’s embarrassing, and he doesn’t really want to get into how nice it was to have real guardians who cared about him. Examples for how to act. Some semblance of what a normal life would look like. "...I learned a lot from them."
"Huh." Cassie asks. "Okay. I mean, that's great that you started to change. But you were definitely still openly ogling Starfire's chest while we were dating, and you'd lived on the Kent farm for a bit by then. I mean, Garfield and Bart were worse, but you still did it too."
"I know," Kon says. "I... It took a while. To be honest, I don't think... I mean, even dying was a fresh start, but I wasn't a totally different person when I came back. I had a lot of the same bad habits. I was trying to just pick up where I left off, be a better version of the old me." Kon rubs the back of his neck. "...But," he continues, finally answering Cassie's question. "The old me needed a lot more work than just that. So the last piece was Lophi. Um, the woman I was sort-of married to on Gemworld."
"That's... pretty recent." Cassie's mouth doesn't say it, but her eyes ask another question. "...Why her? I mean. We... dated. So I'm just curious why she..." Cassie's foot starts to enter her mouth, and Kon thinks he knows what she's trying to avoid saying.
"Why her when I could've gotten my act together for you?" Kon asks, and Cassie winces.
"Yeah," she says. "Pretty much."
"I don't know. Her situation was kind of... more extreme? So I couldn't not notice it."
"Remind me what was going on, on Gemworld?"
"She was being harassed by some soldiers," Kon says, grimacing as he remembers his first few hours on Gemworld. "And it just had this overtone of... They were sexist, and threatening some pretty dangerous stuff. It sucked. And yeah, Gemworld doesn't have the exact same type of sexism here on Earth. Different stereotypes, different issues. But it was the same in a lot of the ways that mattered. And she was dealing with all that, alone, while she had a kid to protect. She needed my help. And..." Kon looks down at his hands. "I could help. So I did. It felt... It felt good, to just be a protector, and a friend. I mean, she helped me, too. It wasn't totally selfless, it was a partnership. She helped me blend in so I didn't get outed for being an off-worlder. She was also grieving her husband, which would've made me back off even if I'd wanted to hook up. And after she was doing better, I didn't want to pressure her since we were already fake married and I didn't want to force her into anything. So we got to be just friends. And I was there for like, a year, you know? So I had time to change. And I did."
"I guess you did," Cassie says. Her voice is neutral in a way that Kon thinks isn't actually all that neutral. "Huh."
“Sometimes..." Kon starts before he can stop himself. "I know this is going to sound like like a cop-out answer, but... It feels like I was someone else before."
"You're right," she says. "It does."
"Just hear me out," he says. "Please. I know it’s not fair to say 'I was a different person before' like it stops me from being the person who did all that. It doesn’t stop you from remembering that it was me doing all that. So I’m not going to act like learning better means it never happened. It did.” He takes a breath, then looks at her, properly. “What I really regret is that you had to date a guy who did all that to you, and then died before he got his act together, and only got better after getting stranded on another planet for a year. And I regret not knowing how to make it right. No one ever talks about how to make it right. All you can do is say sorry, but that's... How does that help you, right?” He thinks, for one stomach-churning moment, of what it would take to make it right, if he was in her shoes. He thinks about being in her shoes. About if it would matter if Tana said sorry. If Knockout said sorry. And he swallows hard. "I don't think that's enough, you know? But I don't really know how to do more. I will, if I can figure it out. But I want to tell you I'm different enough that I feel like puking when I think back on it. I want you to know I'm not like that anymore. You don't have to trust me, I get it, but whether you trust that or not, I'm not going to do any of that to you again. That's what I'm trying to say."
Cassie looks at him for a long, long time.
Every time Kon thinks she might answer, she doesn't. Finally, Kon resigns himself to the fact that she’s going to need time to sit with everything he's said. And despite knowing that he's said it the best he knows how, Kon still fights dread. He's not nearly as eloquent of a speech-giver as Cassie is. He feels his stomach twisting, churning, as he wonders whether or not she'll ever accept his apology, or if this is just going to fester between them. He'd thought they were fine before, more or less. Thought that a breakup was the worst thing they needed to weather. But now that this is here, and her anger has been here, just under the surface, this whole time...
He doesn't know what to do.
All he can do is hope. And, like he said, let his actions show that he means it from here on out.
Cassie finally, finally, opens her mouth to say something - maybe to condemn him, maybe to forgive him, maybe ask to clarify something, Kon isn't sure.
But before she can say a single word, Kon’s super hearing picks up an explosion about a dozen miles away.
His head swivels in the direction, and the huge windows in the Tower show them both that it’s not a false alarm. Smoke rises from a warehouse across town; they catch the tail end of a massive fireball. Kon swears and pulls off the sweatshirt he’s wearing over his uniform, and Cassie does the same.
“Raincheck,” Cassie says as she steps into combat boots, velcro-ing them in place. "I still want to talk."
Kon nods.
“But, Kon?” Cassie says. Kon looks up, and feels kind of like puking from nerves. “Hey. Relax. The person you’ve turned into— He’s a better person. You grew up. And I'm really glad you did. I like the person you're turning into.”
He can feel his cheeks pink. “Oh. Thank you.”
“We're still friends, okay? We were friends before, and we're friends now. So don't get anxious in the field about it. We're going to be fine.” She sounds determined, like she's going to brute force friendship even if Kon does get weird about it. Then, she tosses Kon’s communicator from where both were sitting on the edge of the coffee table. “Got it?"
"Yeah," Kon answers, picking up the communicator, and answering her question. "Yeah. I... I got it. Thank you."
"And for the record, when you were punted across the universe, right after we saved you from Gemworld? I still missed you. Even when I hadn’t gotten to know the new you very well, even when I didn't know you’d changed. Even when I thought you probably still sucked a little and were probably still kind of sexist, I cared about you. You’re not just your worst moments, Kon. Or even your worst traits. So don't get in your head about it. I care about you now, I cared about you then. It's just now you've got the benefit of being less sexist so we can actually talk about it and clear the air. Okay? We're probably going to be way better friends after this. Be prepared. But we still need to talk, so we're saving this for then. Okay?”
His brows raise.
"Okay?" Cassie repeats.
"Okay," Kon says, and lets out a breath he hadn't realized he'd been holding. "Okay. Ready."
You're not just your worst moments, he repeats in his head. Huh. Somehow, hearing that… it’s more of a relief than he thought it could’ve been.
But before he can answer, or say something more meaningful to the words that might’ve just patched some of the shame that’s been sitting loose and heavy in his chest for the last few years, Cassie finishes putting on her communicator and goes fully into Leader Mode.
“Explosion sighted between ten and fifteen miles to the south-south west of the Tower," she says into the communicator, before blasting off through the open skylight. "Calling all Titans. Supernova and I will check out the site of the explosion. Meet us there.”
With that, Kon shelves the personal crisis and gets to work, blasting off just behind her. He'll have about sixteen crises about this later. But now? Now, there’s a lot more work to do than just on himself.