You Can Change. You Can.

-

Shiva took a breath and looked her daughter up and down, a small smirk on her face. She was anticipating a wonderful battle of course, but for a brief moment she was curious to see how she’d grown in person over the years; images just didn’t have the same impact.

She reached up and undid the harness holding a sheathed sword at her back. With a gentle reverence she placed the blade on the ground beside her, running her fingers over the worn leather; the weapon had been with her for several years, longer than her daughter had been in the world.

Her gaze flicked up and she elegantly rose to full height. Within seconds she’d taken up a fighting stance and was charging towards Cassandra, her fingers extended as she made a few testing jabs at her daughters throat and stomach.

The lingering sluggishness of sleep fled her immediately. She’d seen her mother ready to move before she ever took that first step, and the initial few blows she threw, Cassandra weaved away from like water. Her defense had always been her strongest point. It had to be. There were nearly no situations in which she had the height or strength advantage - she could not go into fights that way. She had to maintain control, use her opponent’s momentum against them, but the tactic didn’t hold against her mother. Not for either of them.

Rather than speak again, she only moved. Using the side of the manor for leverage, Cassandra let her feet catch the rough bricks and launched off of them, arcing her body in a way that let her flip over Shiva and make a grab for her neck on the way. 

He nodded. “Yeah. But sometimes it just feels so open out here. And hot all the time.” He missed home sometimes, in spite of himself. He was fairly sure they all missed it in their own way. Not because Gotham was a city where most people wanted to be, really. Most people wanted to steer completely clear of it. But they weren’t most people, were they? And there was a siren song to that grimy city. He just didn’t think they’d be looking at going back for this reason.

“Agreed. I guess we’re all basically nocturnal at this point, right? Except Duke.” Duke was, after all, the only one of them who worked during the daytime. Most of them operated under cover of night. He supposed they had gotten that from Bruce.

“I still haven’t gone to the beach. I promised Stephanie,” she shrugged. “I feel like a...transplant here.” There were good things about Star City. Beautiful things. She could appreciate several of them. Mostly, though, she did feel homesick. She’d seen the worst parts of Gotham, lived them, but couldn’t help but miss it just the same. Now, especially, it felt like perhaps she should be there instead. 

“Yeah, of course.” Dick was glad to sit, even if that didn’t mean he would actually be able to relax. There would be time to program his new phone later. Everyone else was either asleep or had retreated to their own rooms. The manor was quiet and, for once, he didn’t have to worry about what the others were getting up to. Alfred’s request that they all stay in the manor brought him some relief, too. The painful reminder of Bruce’s morality made Dick all too aware that a similar fate could befall any one of his siblings, and he wasn’t ready to let go of that paranoia quite yet.

He watched the scene on TV for a few seconds before smirking. “I love this one.” It was the “Vitameatavegamin” episode and Lucy was already getting drunk. “Have you ever seen it?” Dick left behind several of his classic VHS boxsets when he’d moved out of the manor - over a year ago now - and he wondered if I Love Lucy was with them. 

Cass drew her legs up so that they were pressed to her chest and she could wrap her arms around them. She sat like that, perched, with her chin resting on one knee. “I think I’ve seen them all,” she confessed. “When I got the words in my head at first and I could speak, I watched a lot of,” she made a little gesture toward the television. “I didn’t know many people to talk to. Barbara told me to stop watching..The Love Boat.” She grinned against her knee, laughing quietly. “And Miami Vice. People don’t...talk like that.” I Love Lucy had been one of the series that she’d sat through, then. She hadn’t really had a life outside of Batgirl for a long time or even really tried to make one. It was hard to miss something she’d never known.

Tony didn’t make it a habit to pick fights with just anyone off the street, especially anyone’s who looked like they could hold their own in a fight - even when they were young women, young enough to be his kid, if he had any. There was no surprise that someone of her age knew the the moves she did, not with the way the world continued to evolve and favor the fame - and infamy - that came with vigilantes and superheroes. It wasn’t a surprise, just a shame.

That didn’t mean he wouldn’t kill her if necessary. The only problem was that he couldn’t necessarily gauge her moves ahead of time like with everyone else. There were tells, especially in combat, that exposed a person’s next move - or even the entire hand. With his current opponent, Tony wasn’t sure where she was going to move next. It made it difficult to match her fighting style up until the very last second when he recognized the move.

He felt as if he were fighting in the dark with nothing but half a foot of light around him. The sweeping leg was one thing, and the block was a small victory, but he was already thinking of where to block the next one. And the next.

Cass’ greatest strength had always been her defense. She couldn’t match most of her opponents in size or brute strength, though she wasn’t exactly lacking in the latter on a whole, but she had many ways to make up for it. There was nothing superhuman about her abilities, but when she slipped into the language of her body, the language of fighting, that was difficult to tell. For every move that got made by an opponent, she seemed to be a second ahead. She knew what they meant to do before it was done. That was her dance. 

It was rare that she got the feeling that someone was trying to do the same to her. Only her mother shared the same language. It was just theirs. But once in awhile, someone got close. She’d thought that Rose might be like her the first time they fought, but she’d been wrong. This man was trying to match her. It took her several more moves before she realized what was really happening.

Kate nodded a few times. That was a sentiment that she could relate to. It did feel like such an incredibly simplistic way for Bruce to have gone out. The kinds of situations their entire family dealt with on a near-constant basis and something as mundane as a bomb detonation was the victor to take him away from them? It was a twisted trick of fate. 

“Yeah. I’ve spent long enough keeping my distance from everyone and trying to go at things on my own. I think it’s beyond time that I start making an effort to be here for you all… far beyond time.” The woman sighed quietly. If Bruce’s death had stirred up anything within in that hadn’t instantly been swallowed back by her father’s reflexive coping habits, it was that she should have made more of an effort to be part of the family even if she had disagreed with Bruce’s methods. Now, it was too late to have that kind of closeness to Bruce. All she could hope for was a chance to form a better relationship with his children - her family.

None of them were immune to the touch of death, and that wasn’t exactly a secret. She’d tasted it herself, if only for a few seconds, at her own mother’s hand. It was a possibility every day, and certainly every night, but that didn’t make it less surreal that Bruce was gone. It certainly didn’t lessen the strangeness that he’d been taken the way he had, either. Maybe she should be grateful, maybe they should all be grateful, that it had been instant. Quick. Probably even painless. Given how likely it was that they would or already had met violent, brutal ends...maybe Bruce was lucky. It just didn’t feel that way.

Slade nodded. “I was training,” he answered simply. “But it’s fine. I was done anyway.” Not really, but he had decided he was finished the moment David Cain’s kid was confirmed to be sniffing around his place. “I’m going to make lunch. This way.” He wasn’t going to leave her sitting around his house. Slade knew he could beat this kid if he needed to, but he didn’t think Dick would take too kindly to it. He didn’t have any plans to do anything rash, but he was never going to be comfortable leaving one of the Bat’s kids alone in his place. 

“Don’t suppose you’re hungry?” There. He’d offered. Dick would appreciate that he’d bothered, right? Casual socialization wasn’t exactly something he did often or gravitated toward. But he was trying to get better at it for Dick’s sake.

She looked at him for a beat. “Could train...with you,” she said, not particularly convinced that he’d been finished. He didn’t look tired enough. It wasn’t as if Cassandra actually knew his routine, but she knew her own, and Bruce’s, and her brothers’. None of them stopped after only a little sweat. It sounded better than food. She hadn’t come there to eat, and her stomach had been doing flips anyway.