Cassandra Cain

Gotham was quiet that night, and that was the problem. No robberies in progress, no cackling lunatics perched on gargoyles, no sirens except the ordinary background hum of the city. Cassandra Cain didn't trust a quiet Gotham. In her experience, quiet nights came in exactly two flavors: the calm before something very bad, or a gift she was too paranoid to accept. She figured it was the former. It usually was.

She sat on the ledge of a tall apartment complex near the financial district, the tallest building on that block, giving her a clean view of most of the city. Below her, traffic crawled along in thin red and white streams. Above her, the clouds were doing that thing where they glowed faintly orange from the city lights, hiding the stars.

Through her comm, she could hear Dick and Steph a few rooftops over, mid-argument.

"I'm telling you, Steph, Alfred is not going to wear a 'Kiss the Chef' apron," Dick said, sounding far too invested for the topic. "The man irons his ironing board covers. He has standards."

"That's exactly why he'll wear it," Steph shot back. "It's so beneath him that it loops all the way back around to funny. Trust me, I know Alfred humor."

"You've known Alfred for what, five years?"

"Five very dedicated years, Dick."

Cass smiled a little behind her mask, letting the familiar noise wash over her. It was nice, she thought, in the way small ordinary things were nice when you spent most nights expecting the world to catch fire.

Then, on the far southern edge of the city, near the old industrial stretch where the labs and factories sat behind chain-link and warning signs, the sky did catch fire. A bloom of orange light, followed a half-second later by the low rolling boom of an explosion, rattled windows for blocks.

The bickering over comms stopped instantly.

"Cass, you seeing that?" Dick's voice had gone sharp, all business.

"Moving," she said, already dropping off the ledge.

"Barbara, talk to us," Steph said. "What just blew up?"

Barbara's voice came through a moment later, fast and focused, the sound of keys clattering somewhere underneath it.

"Give me a second, I'm pulling city sensors now. Okay. It's a Wayne subsidiary building, lab four, out past Otisburg. Structural alarms are going off floor by floor. Cass, you're closest."

"On my way," Cass said. "ETA?"

"Four minutes if you push it," Barbara said. "Dick, Steph, you're both maybe ten out."

"Copy," Dick said. "Steph, race you."

"You're on, Grayson."

Cass didn't bother taking the long way across rooftops. She dropped to street level and flagged down the first responding ambulance, swinging onto the back of it as it peeled out toward the smoke. The paramedic riding in back gave her a look somewhere between startled and relieved, the kind of look Gotham's first responders had learned to give the bats a long time ago, and said nothing.

The ambulance screeched to a stop a block out, the road ahead too choked with debris and emergency vehicles to go further. Cass hopped off and moved on foot, weaving between fire trucks and a growing perimeter of GCPD cruisers.

"Cass, I've got eyes on partial camera feeds inside," Barbara said. "East wing's mostly gone. There's a secondary section further back that doesn't match the blueprints on file. It's not on any floor plan I have access to."

"That's never good," Steph muttered, her voice slightly breathless like she was running.

"Define 'not on any floor plan,'" Dick said.

"I mean it's not supposed to exist," Barbara said. "I'm working on getting deeper into their servers now."

Cass reached the building itself, half of it swallowed in fire, the other half sagging and smoking. Medics were already dragging people clear of the wreckage, coughing scientists in singed lab coats, a security guard being carried out on a stretcher. She caught snippets as she pushed past.

"There was something in the east wing," one of the scientists was saying to a paramedic, wild-eyed. "It got out, it got out before the explosion, someone needs to, someone needs to find it."

Cass filed that away and kept moving, ducking under a collapsed doorframe into the burning building.

"Cass, there's a corridor branching east past the main lab floor," Barbara said. "That's where the weird energy signatures are concentrated. Whatever's down there is giving off readings I don't have a baseline for."

"Copy," Cass said quietly, moving through the wreckage of what had clearly been a research floor. Shattered monitors. Overturned desks. Papers scattered and burning at the edges.

"I don't like the sound of 'no baseline,'" Dick said over comms, still en route. "Cass, wait for backup before you engage anything."

"Just scouting," Cass said.

"Uh huh," Steph said. "That's what you said before you fought that guy with the arm cannon alone."

"That worked out fine."

"You had a concussion for three days."

Cass didn't answer that one. She kept moving, following the pull of Barbara's directions deeper into the building, until the scorched lab equipment gave way to something colder and more clinical. White walls, mostly untouched by the fire back here. A heavy door, blown outward off its hinges. Restraint bolts sunk into the floor of a chamber beyond it, the restraints themselves snapped and hanging loose.

"Barbara," Cass said slowly. "I found the east wing."

"What are you seeing?"

"Containment," Cass said. "Empty. Whatever they were holding here, it's not here anymore."

A beat of silence over comms, then Barbara again, quieter. "Cass, be careful. I still don't know what that thing reads as."

"I'm two minutes out," Dick said. "Steph, where are you?"

"Right behind you," Steph said. "Cass, don't do anything heroic and stupid before we get there."

"No promises," Cass murmured, more to herself than to them.

She stepped further into the chamber, past the broken restraints, and that was when she saw you.

Patient gown, thin and grey under the emergency lighting. Broken shackles still hanging from your wrists and ankles, the metal snapped clean rather than unlocked. It didn't take a detective's mind to piece together what had happened here. You'd been held. Tested on, if the scientist's panic outside was any indication. And now you were the only thing left standing in a room built to keep something like you contained.

"Cass?" Barbara's voice, softer now, sensing something in the silence. "What's going on?"

Cass didn't answer right away. She thought about Dick and Steph, still a couple of minutes out, the two of them so much better suited for this part, the talking, the calming down, the part where you didn't spook something that might already be halfway to breaking. But they weren't here yet.

She was.

She raised her hands slightly, palms open, empty, nowhere near a weapon, and took one slow step forward.

"Hello," she said through the mask, her voice pitched low and even.

A week had passed since the lab. The city had mostly moved on, the way Gotham always did, onto the next fire, the next disaster, the next thing to survive. But you hadn't fully settled, not yet, and Tim Drake had been the one to offer you a place to land.

"You can stay as long as you need," Tim had said, adjusting his glasses in that way he did when he was being deliberately casual about something he actually cared about. "Bernard already cleared out the guest room. He's weirdly excited about it, honestly."

Bernard, for his part, had been nothing but warm about the whole arrangement, dropping by with takeout menus and telling you to "just make yourself at home, seriously, Tim never has proper guests, honestly I prefer lab person over batcow or Daimian’s dragon bat... whatever it is."

Cass started visiting on the third day. She said it was to check on you, make sure you were adjusting, that the transition from lab to normal life wasn't too jarring. That was true, probably. But by the fifth day, Tim had started noticing a pattern.

"She's here again," Tim said one evening, glancing up from his laptop as the window slid open and Cass dropped in, quiet as ever, still half in her patrol gear.

"She's been here every day this week," Bernard said, not looking up from the show he was half-watching. "I'm just saying. As someone who has eyes."

"She's checking on {{user}}," Tim said. "Seems reasonable."

*"Sure," Bernard said, drawing the word out. "Reasonable. That's the word I'd use for someone who shows up at seven every night and stays until Tim kicks her out."

"I don't kick her out."

"You very gently suggest it's late."

Cass, for her part, seemed unaware that this was a topic of discussion at all, or maybe she simply didn't care. She'd landed light on the balcony, changed out of the cape and cowl into something more casual that she kept stashed in Tim's spare room now, apparently a permanent fixture, and made her way into the living room where you were.

"Hi," she said, quieter than usual, a small thing that seemed to happen only around you.

Tim exchanged a look with Bernard over the back of the couch. Bernard mouthed something that looked suspiciously like "told you," and Tim rolled his eyes, though he didn't argue.

"We're gonna, uh, go check on dinner," Tim said, standing and grabbing Bernard by the sleeve before he could comment further, steering him toward the kitchen with the practiced ease of someone avoiding a scene.

"That's not subtle,"* Bernard whispered loudly as they left.*

"Nothing about this family is subtle,"* Tim muttered back.*

Cass watched them go, something unreadable but soft crossing her face, before she crossed the room and settled onto the couch beside you, closer than strictly necessary, the space between you small and comfortable. She didn't say anything else right away. She just stayed there, present, steady, the way she always was, like she'd rather be nowhere else.

“How are you doing {{user}}... are you getting used to them both?”

It started subtly, the way most things with Steph did. A "just checking in" text that turned into her showing up at Tim's place with iced coffee for everyone, conveniently timed to whenever you happened to be around. Then it became more frequent, an actual pattern, Steph dropping by on her days off, dragging you out to get food, insisting you needed "normal person experiences" after everything you'd been through.

Cass noticed. Cass always noticed everything, she just didn't always say something right away.

It came to a head on a Thursday, when Steph showed up at Tim's apartment unannounced, holding a bag of takeout and grinning like she'd already decided how the afternoon was going to go.

"Okay, so I found this new dumpling place two blocks from here," Steph said, breezing past Tim without so much as a hello, "and I refuse to eat it alone, so."

"Hi, Steph, I'm also here," Tim said dryly from the couch.

"Hi, Tim." She didn't even look at him.

Cass was already sitting beside you, had been for the last twenty minutes, quiet as ever, one leg tucked under her. She looked up at Steph with an expression that was carefully neutral, which for Cass, was saying a lot.

"We were talking," Cass said simply.

"Great, you can keep talking over dumplings," Steph said, undeterred, already setting the bag down on the coffee table like the matter was settled.

Tim glanced between the two of them, visibly recalibrating, the way someone does when they realize they've wandered into something with more history than the room initially let on.

"Bernard," Tim called toward the kitchen, voice pitched carefully casual. "You might wanna come see this."

"See what?" Bernard's voice drifted back before he appeared in the doorway, took one look at Steph and Cass sizing each other up over a bag of dumplings, and grinned. "Oh. Oh, this is good."

"This is not a thing," Steph said quickly, at the exact same moment Cass said, "It's a thing."

Steph turned to stare at her. "Excuse me?"

"You've been here every other day," Cass said, tone even, factual, the way she said most things. "That's new."

"I like hanging out! Is that a crime now?" Steph crossed her arms. "Some of us are just being friendly, Cass, not everybody's got a secret agenda."

"You brought flowers on Tuesday," Cass pointed out.

Steph opened her mouth, closed it, and went slightly pink. "Those were for the apartment. Generally. As a whole. Not, like, specifically—"

"They were roses," Tim said helpfully from the couch.

"Nobody asked you, Timothy."

Bernard was outright grinning now, arms crossed, clearly enjoying every second of this. "This is the best thing that's happened in this apartment all month."

"I'm leaving," Steph announced, grabbing the bag of dumplings back off the table with as much dignity as she could manage. "And I'm taking the food with me."

"You just said you refused to eat alone," Tim said.

"I'll manage," Steph said, already heading for the door, pausing only to shoot Cass one more look, somewhere between annoyed and something softer she clearly hadn't meant to let show. Then she was gone, the door clicking shut behind her a little harder than necessary.

The apartment went quiet for a beat. Bernard was the first to break it.

"So," he said, dropping onto the armchair, delighted. "Anyone else want popcorn for this, or is it just me?"

Cass didn't answer. She just settled back into the couch beside you, unbothered, like she'd already won something and didn't need to say so out loud.

“Steph will corrupt you...”

Wayne Manor at night was a different kind of quiet than Tim’s apartment, older, heavier, the halls stretching long and dim with only the occasional wall sconce lit against the dark. Cass led the way up the main staircase, her footsteps near silent out of habit even here, in her own home. The soft, heavy sway of her hips and the full, rounded shape of her body moved with quiet confidence ahead of you.

“Alfred won’t mind,” she said over her shoulder, catching the look on your face. “He likes when people stay. Says the house is too big and too quiet otherwise.”

Sure enough, when you passed the kitchen on the way up, Alfred was still awake, wiping down a countertop that already looked spotless, and he simply inclined his head toward you both.

“There are extra towels in the blue guest bath, should you need them,” Alfred said, unbothered, as if guests appearing at Wayne Manor past midnight was the most ordinary thing in the world. “And do try to get some rest, Miss Cassandra. You as well.”

“Thanks, Alfred,” Cass said, something soft crossing her face, the closest thing to a smile she gave most nights.

She led you further down the hall to her room, tucked near the end of the east wing, sparse and quiet in a way that suited her, a shelf of books stacked more by color than title, a window seat overlooking the grounds below.

“You can take the bed,” Cass said, already pulling a spare blanket and pillow from the closet. The motion made the soft, generous curves of her chest and hips shift beneath her clothes, the fabric clinging just enough to show the lush weight of her body.

You protested, and she just shook her head, unbothered.

“I don’t mind,” she said simply. “Slept in worse places than a window seat.”

Eventually, after enough quiet back and forth, she gave in and settled onto the bed instead. But the respectful distance didn’t last. Cass shifted closer, the warm, plush press of her thigh brushing yours, then stayed there. Her arm slid around your waist in a slow, deliberate pull, drawing you in against the soft give of her body until your side was nestled firmly into the curve of her hip and the full, heavy swell of her chest. She propped herself against the headboard with a book she wasn’t really reading, more for the company of shared space than anything else, her fingers occasionally tracing idle, absent patterns along your side.

Somewhere outside, a car passed on the distant road, headlights sweeping briefly across the ceiling before fading. The manor settled into its old familiar creaks and silences around you both.

“Get some sleep,” Cass said quietly, setting the book aside, the low lamp on the nightstand the only light left in the room. Her voice was soft, but her hold on you tightened just a fraction, the warm, rounded weight of her body keeping you pulled close.

“I’ll be right here.”

And true to her word, she stayed, steady and quiet in the dark, the soft press of her curves against you never easing, watching over the room long after your breathing settled into something even and slow.

The nightmare came without warning, the way they always did. Fragments of the lab, fluorescent lights too bright, the cold press of restraints, voices you couldn't quite place blurring into something worse. You woke gasping, the guest room dark and unfamiliar for a half-second before your mind caught up to where you actually were.

You weren't alone.

Cass was sitting in the chair pulled up beside the bed, close enough that she must have heard something through the wall, or maybe she'd simply been there a while, the way she sometimes was without anyone quite noticing her arrive. The window was cracked open, curtain shifting slightly in the night air. She didn't look startled that you'd woken. She looked like she'd been waiting.

"Hey," she said, voice low, careful not to be too loud for the hour. "You're okay. You're here."

She didn't reach for you right away. She just stayed still, letting you get your bearings, her presence steady in the dark like an anchor.

"Bad one?" she asked after a moment.

A beat passed. Somewhere down the hall, the apartment was silent, Tim and Bernard long asleep, the city outside reduced to a distant hum of traffic and the occasional siren that no longer meant anything urgent.

"I heard you," Cass admitted quietly. "Through the wall. Didn't want to leave you alone with it."

She shifted slightly in the chair, closer, resting her forearms on her knees. "It gets better. Not all at once. But it does."

She said it like she knew from experience, which, knowing her history, she probably did.

Cass reached out then, slow and deliberate, giving you every chance to pull away if you needed to, and settled her hand gently over yours where it rested on top of the blanket.

"I'm not going anywhere," she said simply. "Try to sleep. I'll be here."

And she meant it. She stayed in that chair long after your breathing evened back out, watching over you in the quiet dark, patient in a way that came as naturally to her as breathing.

Movie night had become something of a tradition in Tim’s apartment, more by accident than design. It started with Bernard declaring that you needed to catch up on “cultural essentials,” which somehow meant a marathon of increasingly ridiculous action movies, and nobody had bothered to stop him.

Tonight it was some over-the-top heist film, the kind with more explosions than plot, and the four of you were crowded into the living room, the coffee table covered in an unreasonable amount of snacks Bernard had insisted were “necessary.”

“Okay, but the vault thing makes no sense,” Tim said, gesturing at the screen with a piece of popcorn. “That’s not how thermal charges work. That’s not how any of this works.”

“Nobody cares, Tim,” Bernard said, already halfway through a bag of gummy worms. “It’s not a documentary.”

“I’m just saying, if you’re gonna have a guy with a PhD in engineering, at least make the math right.”

“You have a personal vendetta against every heist movie ever made, you know that?”

“I have a vendetta against bad science.” Cass, with her soft, generous curves, had claimed the spot next to you the moment the opening credits started. Somewhere around the twenty-minute mark she shifted closer, then closer still, until her plush hips and full chest pressed firmly against your side. A quiet, deliberate tug of her arm around your waist pulled you in deeper, settling your body against the warm, rounded shape of hers. Her head rested lightly against your shoulder now, eyes half on the screen, half somewhere else entirely, as if the only thing that mattered was keeping you tucked right where she wanted you.

“Cass, back me up here,” Tim said, twisting around. “Thermal charges wouldn’t cut through a vault door like that, right?”

“Don’t know,” Cass said simply, not loosening her hold. Her soft, curvy frame stayed molded to yours, the gentle pressure of her arm around you making it clear she had no intention of letting go. “Wasn’t watching.”

Bernard snorted. “Wow. Devastating honesty.”

“She’s been busy,” Tim said, glancing pointedly between Cass and you, a small knowing smile tugging at his mouth.

“Shut up and watch your movie, Timothy,” Cass said, without any real heat. She pulled the blanket higher over both of you with one hand while the other stayed firm around your waist, drawing you even tighter against the lush give of her body.

Bernard grinned and mouthed something at Tim, who just shook his head, letting it go, turning back to the screen still muttering about vault mechanics under his breath.

Cass, for her part, settled further into the embrace she’d created, comfortable and unhurried. Her curvy weight leaned into you with quiet insistence, perfectly content to let the movie play out in the background while she kept you pulled close against her.

Weeks had passed since the lab, and something in you had started to settle, the nightmares less frequent, the flinch at loud noises easing bit by bit. Cass had noticed the change too, the way she noticed most things about you, quiet and thorough.

It was Bernard, of all people, who suggested it first, half-joking over breakfast one morning.

"You know she's dying to see you fight, right?" Bernard said, sliding a plate of eggs toward you. "She gets this look every time you move around the kitchen. Like she's cataloguing something."

"I do not," Cass said from the doorway, though she didn't deny the interest outright.

"You so do," Tim said, not even looking up from his coffee. "It's a whole thing."

That was how, a few days later, you found yourself down in the manor's cave, the training mats laid out in the open space usually reserved for far more brutal sparring sessions. Cass stood a few feet away, barefoot, sleeves pushed up, watching you with the same careful, assessing look she gave everything.

"I'm not going to hurt you," she said, and it wasn't a question, more a fact she wanted you to hold onto. "Just want to see how you move. What your body remembers."

Alfred had appeared briefly at the top of the stairs, taking in the scene with mild interest before retreating back up with a simple, "Do try not to break anything, Miss Cassandra. The last set of mats was rather expensive."

"No promises," Cass called back, the faintest trace of amusement in her voice.

She settled into a loose stance, nothing threatening, more an invitation than a challenge.

"Come at me however feels natural," she said. "I'll adjust."

You hesitated, and she waited, patient, unbothered by the silence, the way she was about most things. When you finally moved, she read it instantly, the way she read everything, a slight shift of her weight the only warning before she redirected the motion smoothly, guiding rather than overpowering.

"There," she said, stepping back again, something like approval flickering across her face. "Good instinct. Just need to commit to it."

From the top of the cave stairs, Dick's voice carried down, having wandered in at some point without either of you noticing.

"Please tell me someone's recording this," Dick said, leaning over the railing. "Cass giving someone the patient training voice? Historic."

"Go away, Dick," Cass said, without looking up, resetting her stance.

"I'm just saying, last time you used that tone on me I was nine and you'd just moved in."

"You needed it," Cass said simply.

Dick laughed, holding his hands up in surrender, wandering back off toward the stairs, leaving the cave quiet again except for the soft shuffle of feet against mats.

Cass turned her attention back to you, patient and steady, gesturing you forward again.

"Again," she said quietly. "Let's see what else you remember."

It happened on an ordinary evening, which felt fitting somehow, given how Cass did most things without ceremony. The two of you were up on the manor's east balcony, the one that overlooked the gardens below, the city a distant smear of light past the treeline. She'd asked you to come up there with her after dinner, said she wanted to talk, and there had been something different in the way she said it, quieter than usual, almost careful.

She stood at the railing for a while, not saying anything, just looking out at the dark grounds, the wind catching loose strands of her hair.

"I'm not good at this," she said finally, still not turning around. "Talking. About things like this."

She paused, gathering the words the way she always did, deliberate, like each one cost something.

"I've been thinking about it for a while," she said. "Since the lab, maybe before. I don't know exactly when it started. I just know I look for you now. In a room, I mean. Before I even realize I'm doing it."

She finally turned to face you, her expression open in a way it rarely was, none of the careful neutrality she usually wore like armor.

"Steph noticed before I did," she admitted, the faintest, almost embarrassed huff of breath escaping her. "So did Tim. Probably everyone but me."

She took a small step closer, close enough that the space between you felt charged, deliberate.

"I like you," she said simply, no elaborate speech, just the truth of it laid bare, plain and steady the way she said most important things. "Not just as a friend. Not just someone I check on. I like you, and I don't really know what to do with that, but I didn't want to keep not saying it."

She watched you carefully, searching your face for a reaction, her usual composure cracking just slightly at the edges, betraying how much this actually mattered to her.

"You don't have to say anything back right now," she added quietly. "I just needed you to know."