date posted: 2022-10-04
summary: They're both stuck in the past, but Jason figures she's probably worse off at this moment than he usually is on the regular.
word count: 1,498 words
notes: not sure how preboot canon goes with jason's revival but just pretend that he was revived around the time steph died for the sake of this fic. anyway i read batgirl (2000) and it emotionally wrecked me
“Why,” she starts, behind him and silent and unknown until she spoke. Jason still doesn’t understand how she manages it best, even better than Bruce. It’s a skill all of them have, but she always manages to maintain her lightfootedness, even in combat. He turns around to acknowledge her, but she’s already sat beside him before he can see where she was before.
Cassandra inhales sharply, fist clenched, looking down. “Why… me. Twice, I was brought back, and she… hasn’t.” Her eyes are scrunched shut. Jason looks away, because he barely knows Cass, let alone how to deal with her crying.
So he sighs, steels his gaze, and looks back at her. He pushes down the sharpness of another dead Robin and tries to project with his voice what he tells himself. “She… I never knew Stephanie,” and he tries to pretend he didn’t see Cassandra wince at the name, tries to pretend like he doesn’t know the feeling.
“You still have her, the memories of her,” he sighs, haphazardly choosing his words. “In our line of work, she might come back. You know how it is, we’re both proof of that.”
There’s a light exhale from Cass, light only in its sound, heavy in context.
“I was… lucky. I was gone, and then back, by Shiva’s hand. And again, by my brother and then… the Lazarus pit. I shouldn’t be here.” Cass’ fist was trembling and white knuckled. Jason only now notices her tangled hair, fallen out of a bun and around her face, her mask abandoned in her lap.
“I wanted to find Black Mask. Bruce… wouldn’t let me. I wanted to look, and find him. I saw her, Jason,” She hissed and spat out the last part. He’s entirely unequipped to handle an emotionally vulnerable Cass, not when she’s always kept him at arms length since he came back, guns in a belt and her fists prepared to disarm him at any sight of his hands to the holster.
“Why did you come to me for this?”
She ignores him. Not even a sign of an acknowledgement. “She… when I was gone, before the… Lazarus pit. She held me, told me that Blüdhaven was gone, that I was… gone. And then I burned, and was back, and she was gone, again.” He sees tears, now.
Cassandra’s hair is blowing behind her now, in the wind on the roof, Jason’s jacket flaring behind him and Cassandra clenching her mask so it doesn’t leave her as fast as his own vulnerability usually escapes him. He wonders if this is how it felt for her when she saw Stephanie before the pit brought her back. Jason wouldn’t know, but he does know how the pit felt. He looks away from her trembling form, and wonders if anyone has ever seen her like this. Barbara, at some point, probably. Maybe even Bruce at some point. He wouldn’t know when.
He doesn’t think about the logistics of Cassandra seeing her dead friend, Stephanie dead and gone but visible and full of words and almost alive. He doesn’t think about what that might mean for him, or even for Cass. He doesn’t think about any of that, but Cassandra seems to want him to. His voice felt hoarse now, for some reason.
“I remember the pit, the burning. I was gone and then back, but not fully back. And then she put me in the pit, and I remembered, and trained.” He remembers the sudden lucidity, how he was there but wasn’t there until the green waters reached him. He remembers seeing her, remembering how she pushed him in, and then how she pulled him out, and how his thoughts were about as coherent as Barbara after two days awake and her fifth cup of coffee, but he wouldn’t have been able to make that connection then.
There’s another sharp inhale from Cass, and he notices that her eyes are a little clearer, but her expression unreadable. She’s so much like him. Jason almost can’t stand it usually, but when she’s unlike him, it’s distinct enough to make him wonder how the same person reconciles that kind of contrast.
There’s an audible gulp, and maybe a suppressed sniffle, if he had to guess. “I was on fire. And… she was there, holding me. She let go, because of… the green fire. Her face,” Tears, again. Distraught, again. He really wasn’t good at this, but he’s never seen Cass like this. He could probably count on one hand the times he’s seen her in person. But he let her talk, didn’t stop her, because there wasn’t much else he could do besides let her vent or to leave her alone with her thoughts.
“The waters hurt. And then… Shiva was there, pulling me out. And we fought, again,” She exhales a breath he never saw her take in, and he connects the dots.
“So you’re here because we’ve both taken a dip in the life waters, right? We have that connection, if nothing else,” He keeps trying, but he’s not sure what she wants beyond that.
Cass is quiet, looking at her lap. “I just… I wish she had another chance. Like us.”
“I never asked to be brought back. You know how much that pit can hurt when you’re brought back. Hell, you just told me. Do you want Stephanie to go through that?” And he knows that she’s winced again, but he’s unwilling to comfort her with that, because if she can’t handle hearing Stephanie’s name, then there’s even less that he can do to help. But he’s making an effort, because she’s here, and he was here before, mostly calm, and now he’s trying to calm a volatile grieving girl.
He tries the only thing he can think of, because it’s what he’s good at, isn’t it?
“I could find him,” he tries, knowing how she’d probably react, knowing he won’t be able to diffuse it, when she’s this way. “We could find him, if you want.”
He starts to stand, hand to his helmet, and then she’s standing before him, eyes piercing right into his helmet and any proximity his hands might have to a weapon.
She’s standing there, threatening him without a word, and he’s trying to offer some sort of an olive branch. What a load of crap. He gives up.
“If I so much as breathe in the direction of violence, you start breathing down my neck about hurting anyone.”
Cass is tightening her fists again, but not distressed, not mournfully. He’s not sure how it is now though, because it isn’t her usual anger, the anger she shares with Bruce, because they’re the exact same way when they get in this fight with Jason and he knows it.
She’s her father’s daughter, in every way that Jason was never his father’s son.
“You don’t have the right,” she spits out, frustrated.
“I take care of the shit you guys won’t touch with a ten foot pole, except for when you’re taking out your anger, and then you pull back with your zip ties because you never want to do the job.” He’s always so clear about it, and yet they always get like this, always the same argument. He doesn’t even know why he bothers.
Cass looks like she’s fuming now, almost in the same way Bruce does, but Cass is more visible with her anger. Sometimes he wonders if she makes herself as readable as possible in case anyone else can read body language like she does. He’s not her, he’s not like that, but he’s also not stupid to miss the way she’s white knuckling her mask and clenching her jaw.
Maybe he looks about the same way right now. To hell with it all.
“You knew how this would end when you snuck up on me. You came looking for a fight and now you’re pissed that it’s gone this way. None of you bats have the capacity for honesty, I swear to god,” he hisses.
Cass is unreadable now, but in the way that her expression is confusing, a mix of emotions he can’t even begin to unravel.
“Why,” she says again, quiet as before, but with that tinge of fury. “Why are we here, and she isn’t.” Her words are whispered and said with all the will of a boiling tea kettle after the fire’s killed. He knows what she means with those words.
“Oh, so you wish she was here instead of me, with my bullets and none of your self-righteousness. I get the point. Fuck off with your bullshit, because you know I’m right–“
And he doesn’t even bother to finish, because he knows she’s disappeared in the middle of that sentence. She can deal with her own grief. Lord knows he hasn’t had anyone to help him through that.
notes: jason's definitely an unreliable narrator lmao i wrote it in unintentionally but like, cass is not reacting in bad faith here dude