Chapter Text
The first time Jason's comms buzzed, it was by accident, he was pretty sure.
Somebody, though he wasn't entirely certain who, had dropped comm links at the door of his warehouse only days after he had last spoken to Dick.
It wasn't Dick, he was pretty sure, or it would have been on the landing outside of his apartment. It certainly wasn't Bruce, either, and that left a depressingly low number of people who could have left it.
The first buzz-in left him a pretty good idea, though.
He had thought he hallucinated the noise, at first. It had been quick, a gasping breath that came across extraordinarily clearly through the line. But it was followed closely by another heaving breath, a squeak, and a loud whine.
"Hello?" Jason asked, fumbling to turn up the volume on the comms. "Hello, does anybody copy?"
"Hello..?" A voice whispered back, frail and quiet. It sounded like a young girl. "Need help."
"Where are you?" He asked, blunt and suddenly alert. "Do you have a name?"
There was a short hum, and another whisper chirred over the line. "In the Alley. By the water."
"By the docks?" He asked again, trying desperately to glean any more information. "I'm nearby, alright? I'm on my way. Do you know which port?"
Silence from the line.
No dice, then.
Instead, Jason swung around on patrol, peeling into a full U-Turn and hurtling back towards the docks.
—-
He didn't hear any more words from the comm, but he heard the occasional gentle grunt or groan from the other side of the line. He tried a few more times to get the girl to speak to no avail, and instead had to deal with the painstaking process of stalking through each individual docking bay and each boat within it, all the way until the third to last boat in the second bay.
He heard a whimper from the line and his head snapped up as he heard it echoed in the silence of the bay.
He stilled.
He heard breathing, faintly, from one of the boats barely tethered to the side of the bay. It didn't sound like multiple people, just one labored pattern of breathing, heaving in and out steadily.
"Hello?" He called, voice still near silent. He only heard another whimper in return.
He followed the noise, down through the entrance to one of the boats, and into the ship's cargo hold. The stairs creaked as he crept down them, noises slow and long and impossibly loud in the otherwise silent boat.
As he hit the bottom of the stairs and slipped through the open door, he heard the filters on his mask engage. He flipped through the settings on the visor until he could observe the pale green fog typical of the Scarecrow's fear toxin.
He charged through the door regardless, plowing through as another quiet whine echoed through his comm and the room in tandem. And as the door slammed open, he saw a shadow skitter backwards across the floor, and felt as much as he heard the wall of the ship slam against the girl's shoulders.
"Shit," he hissed, and cursed again as his voice modulator distorted his voice. "Shit, wait- wait, kid, hold on."
He contemplated for a moment before he began to fumbled with his helmet, tugging it off as quickly as he could and setting it aside. He pulled up his undershirt over his face, trying to breathe as shallowly as he could to avoid the fear gas sitting heavy in the air of the ship's hold.
One hand around his nose, keeping the shirt pinned, he reached out carefully towards the girl in the corner of the ship.
"Hello," he whispered, near silently and gentle as he could manage. "I'm here to help, huh? You alright?"
The girl peered up at him, eyes practically glowing in the darkness of the shadows. She didn't answer him, but she did glance down towards his hand when he extended it.
"Hey, so-" He paused, realizing how gravelly and unused his voice was now he heard it outside a voice changer. He cleared his throat before he tried again. "Kid, I don't wanna keep breathing this gas in. I'm sure you don't either, huh?"
The girl, still tense, shook her head slowly.
Jason nodded at her, just once, and reached his hand out a little closer. "Alright! So, just take my hand."
The girl flinched back even more and Jason cursed. Then, slowly, he crouched to sit himself criss-cross on the ground in front of her.
"I'm real sorry, kid, but we gotta go. Like, now." He slid closer, slowly, and finally reached out to brush against her knee. "I need you to come with me, okay? We absolutely can not stay here any longer."
The girl whimpered as he brushed against her, only to relax into him as soon as his hand settled. Then, quick as a shadow, she scrambled to curl into his lap, eyes wide and scouting wildly around the room.
"Oh," he said, bringing his hand up to steady her back. "Okay, kiddo, yeah, I got ya, don't even worry."
He closed his eyes and cursed under his breath.
Then, refusing to let her clinging hinder his mission, he reached up to readjust his shirt, handed the girl his helmet, and rose in one fluid motion to his feet.
The girl screamed, because of course she did, and clung somehow tighter around his neck. The shirt began to slip-
And Jason booked it up the stairs.
The girl screamed again, sudden movement likely scaring the ever-loving shit out of her, but Jason plundered on. He managed to make it out from under the shirt before she pulled his shirt all the way down, which wasn't entirely ideal, because they were still right next to the cloud of fear gas emanating from the cabin.
Finally, though, they were in the open air. He readjusted his grip on the girl, made sure she was still holding on to his helmet, and fumbled for his grapple. He swung his arm up, aimed for a nearby rooftop, and braced himself for the impact of his feet on the roof.
As they landed, Jason tucked the grapple gun away and struggled to pull the girl's arms away from his neck. Cursing, he ducked behind a large air vent and sat down.
Then, in as hushed a tone as he could manage, he spoke. "Hey, there, kiddo. Hey, you got a name?"
The girl looked up at him, eyes glistening with tears, and sniffled. She nodded ever so slowly.
Jason waited.
Then a second more.
"You wanna tell me? Or.." He trailed off as she began to sniffle once more, seeming to tear up again. "Oh! Okay, yeah, no problem, go ahead, take your time.."
The girl opened her mouth and closed it a few times, as though she was willing her voice to come out. All she could do was make a high pitched whine.
She shook her head at him and collapsed back against his chest.
"What, can't get the words out?" Jason asked, half-exasperatedly. The girl nodded into his chest. "Oh."
He cleared his throat.
"Okay, we can take it slow, huh? Start with just one letter?"
The girl nodded almost reluctantly, and pulled back to open her mouth again. Still, no words came out, and her eyes began to water again.
"Hey, hey, that's alright, hun, you're okay. How about - I'll start listing off letters, alright, and you just nod when it's the right one, okay?"
The girl nodded once more, firmly this time. Determinedly.
"Alright. A, B, C-"
The girl nodded at him, grasping tightly at his wrist as she did. She shook it once, as if telling him to stop.
"Alright, first letter "c". Next letter, you ready? A-"
Immediately, he was cut off again. Jason smiled at her.
"Great, another one! We'll keep going, alright?"
The girl nodded, a smile barely gracing her lips.
They repeated this one more time, and Jason got all the way until "S" before she stopped him again.
"Okay, C-A-S-" He paused. Squinted at her.
The suit she was wearing, which he had paid barely any mind to in his mad dash to get away from the fear gas, was black and yellow, woven carefully with deep purple threads that made it seem like the night itself. He reached, carefully, up towards the back of her neck, and pulled the hood out to see little bat ears, full of equipment and attached to the otherwise soft cowl.
"Wait a minute," he said, and the girl looked up at him. "You're Cassandra. Cain, right?"
His sister nodded her head in clear relief, then let out a pitiful sniffle as she wrapped her arms back around his waist. He brought his hand up to ruffle her dark hair gently.
"Still fighting Cain's programming, then? The whole - body language, spoken language thing?"
Surprisingly, Cassandra shook her head and let out a miserable sob.
"No?" Jason asked, and he fought the urge to coo the words because of how sad she looked. "But you understand words so well. I thought for sure you were beating that whole communication bullshit."
At once, it felt like the wrong thing to say. Why the hell would she want him to question her progress? But -
But surprisingly, at least to him, she sniffled again and sat back on her haunches to stare at him. She tilted her head, reminding him at once of a bird and of Bruce, when he had the cowl on. She stared at him, something akin to hope in her eyes, and nodded just once.
"Yeah?" He asked, encouraged by the odd emotions she was cycling through. "Getting through it after all, huh?"
She nodded again. "Understand," she croaked out, voice finally making sense of itself and crawling its way out of her throat.
I understand, she was saying.
Jason brought her back in for a hug. "Look at that!" He practically cheered, then clasped her hands in his. "Feeling a little better, then? World's less scary?"
Cassandra nodded again and croaked out a word of agreement, and Jason whooped into the night air. Then, he straighted the two of them up, setting Cassandra on her feet and dusting invisible dirt off of her shoulders.
"Ready to call up ol' Babs, Cassie?" He asked, and she nodded once more, timid. "Alright. Wanna grab my helmet?"
She handed it over, and watched as he fumbled to get it on. He turned away from her as he spoke to Barbara, unwilling to let her take the full force of the menacing ass voice-mod, and yanked it off as quicklly as possible once Barbie confirmed that Dick was locating them for pickup.
—-
By the time Nightwing arrived to exchange custody of the girl, Jason had guided her all the way back to his warehouse. He led her up the stairs, into his apartment, and sat her down on the couch.
After a couple minutes of asking and playing charades with her still only half-complete sentences, he had badgered a favorite food out of her - and luckily enough, it was incredible simple.
Dick was let in to the sight of Cassandra curled up on Jason's couch, huddled underneath a mound of blankets and oh-so-carefully slurping spoonfuls of tomato soup into her mouth. The smell of bread - storebought and freshly reheated - wafted in from the kitchen area as Jason waved Dick in, directing him to sit cautiously on the floor in front of Cassandra.
"She's still twitchy," Jason warned, cautious of Dick's closeness despite his being seated half a room away. "Hold on, I'll get you some soup. Sharing food is like, a pack bonding thing, right?"
"I think so," Dick offered offhandedly, staring at Cassandra with a measure of love that only a vigilante could scrounge up in this type of situation. "She's so sweet, isn't she?"
Jason hummed in agreement. "Quiet, too. Not like you, chatterbox."
"She isn't usually. Usually she's got more sass than you did at your first gala."
"Yeah, well. She's scared, fear does things to a person." He paused for a moment, locking eyes with Cassandra as he passed a bowl of soup to Dick and curled up on the couch beside her. "Besides, she could be the loudest person in the world and I'd still prefer her company to yours."
Dick squawked loudly at him, gasping dramatically and pretending to fall forwards at Cassandra's feet. "Cass! You can't take him from me, not like this! Not my Little Wing!"
Cass stared at him, looking a little bewildered, and Jason wrapped an arm around her shoulder.
"Too late for that, right, Cassie?" He askedm and she turned to look at him.
When she nodded, firmly and with more vigor than he had seen from her the entire night, he threw his head back and laughed.
"Glad you called, kiddo," he said, suddenly soft, and settled back against her as they watched Dick eat soup morosely on the floor. "Do it whenever, alright?"
Jason felt her nod against him one last time.