date posted: 2023-01-12
summary: She wonders, she wonders, then she wonders about Cass.
word count: 1,498 words
notes: set during that time when cass was training steph in batgirl #28
Their heartbeats thump like some stupid form of background music to their sparring. Steph’s is right in her ear, but she’s long learned to compartmentalize that sound and push it under whatever becomes the new priority in the immediate moment.
She can’t hear Cass’ heartbeat from here, under all the wind and thumps on the floor. Steph wonders how close they’d have to be to hear each other’s heartbeats, how much louder it’d make the background noise. Heartbeats and pulses are a constant in these moments, sparring and post-sparring and rooftop tag and post-patrol debriefing.
Steph hasn’t paid attention in biology class in a long time, but there’s something about heart rates and strain and pulses. Blood, pushed around the body by the heart’s fluctuations. Blood rushes to her head when Cass knocks her backward, blood to a bruise from an underhanded punch to Cass when she’s going easy with Steph.
Blood to and out of a cut, a papercut when Steph is mindlessly handling paperwork for Babs. (What does she even need to do paperwork for? Forging fake identities? Birds of Prey’s dirty work, maybe. Joint projects with Bruce. Civilian records for Cass.)
It’s one damn uppercut that Stephanie doesn’t anticipate, and she’s knocked right on her back. She loudly exhales and stares up at the ceiling, until she sees Cass leaning over her, with some godforsaken mix of curiosity and smugness.
Stephanie shifts so that her arms are behind her back and propping her up, stares straight at Cass, and responds with her own shit-eating grin.
“Y’know, that one felt a bit like a cheapshot. I got a hit on your leg and you immediately throw a fist to my jaw? Truly, truly cold, Cass,” and she punctuates with a dramatic hand to her chest, over her heart, shit-eating grin exaggerated.
Cass’ own smirk grows, and then she’s crouching in front of Steph, looking up at her as Steph has her head tilted back.
“Not cheap. I’m fast. You’re… not slow. Improving,” Cass decides, smirk relaxed into a light smile. Her hair’s long since fallen out of the lazy bun it’s usually pulled into before sparring, scrunchie forgotten somewhere on the floor. Cass’ hair is jagged and split at the ends, but it hits her shoulders now, little pieces at the front piecing apart from the sweat.
Steph’s own hair is probably just as split at the ends, a haircut long forgotten and lost in her day-by-day list of priorities and future to-dos. She thinks about Cass cutting her own hair, on the streets, with dull kitchen knives and a lot of practiced, reckless effort.
She wonders if her own split ends could look as lively as Cass’ split ends, even after a sparring session, with both of them disgusting and in desperate need of hot water and some shampoo to give their hair a break.
She looks closer at Cass from where she is, glancing at the various scars on her shoulders, knowing there’s more the lower she looks, but she chooses to keep her frame of reference small.
Cass has scars that look like a frustrated third grader’s bored margin scribbles during a slow period. Cass has scars that look deliberate and balanced, carefully aimed. Careful pressure on a trigger, Steph imagines. A small Cass, standing, waiting, expectant but dreadful and maybe a bit more prepared, if Steph wants to hope.
Steph blinks, blinks again, glances upward at Cass, who’s cracking knuckles and side-glancing towards Steph.
Her voice is a little hoarse, breathless.
“Hey,” she starts, apprehensive but seeing this through, refusing to trail off and shake her head and get up and leave. “Do you think we could be more? Something other than – no, not besides. A step up from Spoiler. From Batgirl,” she breathes out.
Cass does that little scrunch of her nose she always does when she’s confused. Steph sometimes wonders if Cass is conscious of her own body language, if Cass could read herself in a mirror and find it to be the one true representation of her feelings.
She wonders how Cass reconciles her own body language with the thoughts she’s found herself with in the past year, seventeen years until a thought in words.
Steph clarifies, as best as she can when she’s thoughtlessly wondering out loud. “Sometimes I wonder if Spoiler is all I’ll be, how I’ll keep going with the cape and all until I throw up my hands and decide I’m done, one day. I can’t imagine that day right now, but I don’t know, maybe present-me doesn’t want to. Maybe that day will be a month from now, or next week, or tomorrow. I… I just,” she pauses, closing her eyes, and slides her hands in front of her so she can lay on the floor.
“Sometimes I think I won’t find much if I hang up the cape for good. There’s too much of Spoiler in me, as Stephanie. And the same the other way around, too much of Stephanie in Spoiler. It’s all personal, you know?” and Steph looks up at Cass again, who’s shifted to a half-sitting position on the floor, legs to the side and an arm to lean her weight on.
Cass looks… pensive, as much as she looks understanding. Perhaps introspective.
Steph stares up at the ceiling. She doesn’t know how it’ll come out. She doesn’t know if Cass will agree, if Cass follows her train of thought. If Cass would follow, in words and maybe in her steps, in their own paths if they somehow, hopefully, keep intersecting in the future.
“I… I know that Batgirl is important to you. But… promise me that you’ll find something more than Batgirl. Something for yourself. And not in the way Babs puts it. Just… tell me you’ll find something that belongs to Cassandra only, something that isn’t all cape.” She looks away, nervous, but continues.
“Even if it’s a deli you always go to in the afternoon after you wake up post-patrol, for some shitty coffee or a chocolate bar that really shouldn’t be $3.” Something, anything for them to have for themselves. Anything away from the mission.
A Stephanie with something that doesn’t share space with Spoiler. A Cassandra with something that’s even briefly separate from Batgirl.
She sharply exhales, a piece of hair in her face falling to the side. “You get me?” She tilts her head, feels her hair tangle underneath on the scuffed floor.
She briefly wonders if there’s anything on the floor to get caught in her hair, something other than dust. She wonders if Cass has ever felt dirt and dust in her hair, from a floor that hasn’t been vacuumed in days, rather than concrete that hasn’t seen a broom and dustpan in months. She wonders, she wonders, then she wonders about Cass.
Cass is looking down, at the gray floor, maybe where Steph’s legs fall from her current position. Her eyes are closed, lightly, tired and considerate. Her smile is just as light when it starts, and when Cass’ eyes open, Steph is looking forward, telling herself she’s looking at one of Cass’ scars even when her mind is going on about Cass and her brown eyes, always full of grief and regret but with an ever-present optimism.
Cass’ voice rasps a little when she speaks. “I am Batgirl. I… Cassandra is Batgirl. But… you’re right. That I can be more than Batgirl sometimes.” Cass shifts closer to Steph, half-leans over her, but it’s really her head dipping down that is immediately apparent to Steph.
Heartbeats, slow, calm. Less audible but still present. Blood in the both of them, warm and fresh.
Cass inhales. “I… promise. I’ll find something for myself. For Cass, alone,” she smiles, calm and understanding, but still inquisitive.
Steph has her hand to her side and her guard’s low enough to barely notice Cass sliding her hand towards hers. Steph grabs it, shifts to sit up, but doesn’t pull on Cass’ hand for weight. She only grips her hand when she’s fully sitting up, eye level with Cass.
Cass is glancing at their hands, and then glancing at Steph. “If… if I find something for Cass,” she blinks, but it’s a moment too long to be unconscious. “Promise me that… that you’ll be there, with me. When I find something, for me,” she decides, and smiles, fingers between Steph’s fingers.
Steph notices how her shoulders are relaxed and maybe a little unsure, but Steph realizes how happy she is to see that, to see a Cass not on guard.
She looks down at her lap, with a breathless chuckle, and smiles, looking back at Cass, squeezing her hand. Cass’ smile is relieved as much as it is unsure. It’s new for her, and Steph wonders how much of this is new for Steph herself.
She decides that newness doesn’t matter. Present, future, present. She – they can be who they are now. Steph and Cass. Hand in hand.