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Wayne Manor is known for a few things.
Its owner, for one, talk about the suave playboy billionaire spreading his name through the entire city and his children in the mainstream media every other day, the violent, constantly angry young boy who was probably a bad case of adoption-gone-wrong, and the smiling, perfect oldest son.
People are always gossiping and talking, Bruce Wayne did this, Bruce Wayne donated that, Bruce Wayne is such a gentleman, did you hear? Bruce Wayne… It’s always something. There’s often paparazzi outside the fence, always someone wanting the next big scoop (and rarely getting it).
There’s always a new story in the morning newspaper that turns into old gossip by the night the sun sets, the only good thing about this is that it’s easy to manipulate. To leave things behind, to give an interview that makes the person on the other side feel like they’re the smart one.
They’re not.
It always feels like you’re learning new things about yourself, just for a second. In the summer it’s worse, everyone is willing to go outside more. They act like people will shed their secrets like they do their coats.
Of course, inside Wayne Manor is a different story. The playboy billionaire turns into a man set on his idea of justice, his children are superheroes in disguise, that constantly angry boy is the best asset that the family has -he’s the little brother that everyone hates to love, and the smiling, perfect oldest son is the biggest support beam and the best detective, the best hero the family has.
That, however, is widely disputed.
Cassandra Cain is one of the ‘Wayne Children’ that the media sparks up over. Cassandra Cain is seen as Bruce Wayne’s perfect daughter, as Gotham’s Princess, as the sweet, caring one. Cassandra Cain is also Lady Shiva’s only child who is one of the best trained assassins. Cassandra Cain is known as one of Batman’s most dangerous sidekicks, as Gotham’s terror, as the silent, daring one.
Both of these are true. Both of these are things that she doesn’t know how to deal with.
Cass sees everything, she knows too much about body language. She knows when someone’s keeping a secret or having a bad day or hurt and trying to hide it. She immediately picks apart how to take someone down from their body before she ever learns their name.
She’s still used to being more familiar with killing people instead of getting close to them. She still feels dead.
That’s how she was raised; as a weapon, quiet, non-human, dead .
Some things can’t be untaught.
So let’s talk about the Cassandra who cried in the corner of the Batcave (under Barbara Gordan’s gentle gaze and Stephanie Brown’s comforting hands) after accidentally hurting a civilian on a mission, who broke down in the arms of her best friend (Duke Thomas), who cared so much about everyone in her family that it hurt, it hurt when they went on mission, when she saw their bruises, when they cried too and sometimes when they were perfectly fine.
Cassandra Cain cared and she survived Lady Shiva’s cruel jabs about a useless girl but a perfect weapon. She wept and she completed all her missions, kept up with her non-lethal training, watched her family scatter throughout Gotham every night without complaint.
She got good at wordlessly telling them how she felt and joined the Justice League against her mother’s wishes.
The Justice League told her to behave, ordered her to keep herself in check for they knew that she was dangerous, so she tried to behave and as Cass walked out into the streets at Batgirl she gracefully made a name for herself alongside Batman, Nightwing, and Red Robin.
But that darkness that was so common in Gotham homes was now spreading, and Cass walked out into the streets as the Orphan , and made a name for herself alongside Red Hood, and Robin. She was dangerous, she meant her threats, and made her warnings true.
Most of the older superheroes in the League told Cass that she might turn into a villain, might go bad like Jason, might be terrifying to citizens like Damian.
She laughed at them.
And then she cried.
After all, crying is for the living and despite all odds and imperfections, she was alive.
Integrity. Quietness. Honor. Dedication. Those were the things that she held close to herself, things that she’s been trained for, things that made them call an assassin a hero (called dangerous, called evil, called so many things that were never her own name).
They all forget that being brave was only one way to be a hero.
To Cass it’s more about knowing what’s going to happen, about planning, about working yourself up to do something because you already know the risks -not about bargaining into a situation because you think that it’s for the greater good.
When Duke had first drifted into Cass’s inner circle, she didn’t trust him. She looked to Barbara for advice, to Stephanie for smiles. He was there, he was happy and brave, a bit oblivious and brazen, and loud. He was everything that she couldn’t be, that she didn’t want to be.
The first time he found her crying, he sat down next to her and showed her a light show that danced between his fingers until she let out wet giggles. Alongside Bruce, he was the one that suggested that she learn sign language as a substitute for talking.
Talking out loud was always hard for Cass.
She didn’t know how everyone found it so easy.
Cass panicked the first time she won a fight against Bruce, because of the punishments her mother would have given her, or maybe because she just didn’t think herself as capable, maybe because it felt too heartbreaking -like surpassing someone who she didn’t deserve to.
I’m sorry, she signed to him, after helping the older man up from the ground. I didn’t know you didn’t see it coming.
“That’s the point.” Bruce chuffs out, accepting the hand up. “Never apologize for that, sweetheart, it means you’re learning.”
Bruce always did that, comforting her. Treated her like a little kid, he was overprotective and acted like a helicopter parent, and made sure she knew every detail of a mission he could provide before sending her out. In some ways, that infuriated her, in others, made her feel loved.
Because of this, Cass believed him when he said that. In fact, she believed Bruce no matter what he said, sleep deprived, injured, mad or not.
Can we go again? She asks, not letting her fear of hurting him show. I want to learn how to take someone like you down safe.
“Of course, get your stance ready.”
She does, and that’s it.
Cassandra isn’t like Duke or Stephanie, she can’t wear her heart on her sleeve and feel comfortable with it, she can’t make someone laugh or smile or comfort them when they’re feeling down. She can pick them apart to get to the problem, and do nothing to solve it.
And that is something she would always feel guilty for.
Alongside Dick, Cassandra was now one of the few members of the Batfamily that could take down Batman without help from technology (like Tim) or advanced weapons (like Steph). She didn’t doubt that Damian could, if he wanted to, but the problem was that he didn’t want to.
Dick had troubles too, he just solved them with a smile; he lived with a smile, lived through his little brother and best friend dying, lived through his parent’s death, lived through intense training and deadly missions.
Cass didn’t have that kind of grief.
Her grief came with still being alive, hers was the grief of the living, not of the one left behind. Her survivor’s guilt is not based on the demise of anyone but herself. She was just starting to talk and learning to be gentle in ways her mother was not, learning to love, and yes, cry.
Something her mother never did.
Sometimes growing up means grieving, sometimes it means speaking up and being gentle, sometimes it means accepting love even when you don’t think you deserve it and yes, sometimes it calls for tears. Her carefully constructed, strict world was shattered at the age of fifteen. It was weird learning that not everything has to be so constantly painful, but she grew used to it by the time she was seventeen.
Normally her learning curve is a lot steeper, but this took time.
Something that Cassandra will never understand, however, is how everyone- -Gothamites, the Justice League, Batman himself- -think that Jason Todd or Damian Al Ghul is the angriest Robin there was. They're not, they never have been.
Jason isn't angry.
He's devastated , he's hurt, he's still mourning himself.
He wants revenge and will get it by picking scum off the face of the earth one by one. He thinks about his actions, he plans in advance, he covers up afterwards and knows what he's doing. He knows exactly how much amo he needs, he knows when to bring guns and when to bring arrows or bombs or daggers. He is a mass murderer with a plan, not an angry impulse led spree killer.
Before that, he was just a street rat that Bruce brought in.
One that cursed and smirked, who bit and scratched and kicked when held, but watched you, perched from above, a calculating gaze too keen to be worn by a fifteen year old boy before taking you down with a perfectly violent plan. There's nothing angry about him.
And Damian, he doesn’t care at all.
He will slice someone apart with his katana if he’s allowed to, but even if he’s not he only stares down at his opponents with an indifferent, neutral scowl. He was practiced, he was a trained killer. He didn’t like killing, he didn’t hate it -it was just part of life, like it was a part of Cass’s life.
When he slits someone’s throat, it’s not because he likes it. When he stops it’s not because he wants to, it’s because Batman said so and a simple “No.” is enough for that. He tortured every opponent until Batman said that wasn’t how they did things, and he just nodded, and carried on without that added into his plans.
He’s not the angry one either.
The angry one is Dick.
The original Robin, the perfect and flexible Boy Wonder, the playful one.
Right from that start that was apparent as each Gotham villain realized they were hearing a high-pitched, childish giggle ring out from a dinky dark place or an echoey roof above -no place a child should be, before a yellow blur goes around and beats you up. He made everyone on edge, feeling unsettled. He was too fast, too good at it while maintaining innocence.
Dick does have that anger.
He has an uncontrollable temper he's never gotten over, simply because it doesn't come out often. But when it does... when it does, he flies into a rage and does things that he regrets. There were times he went too far, times he pushed even his own limits.
The time he killed the joker, when he beat an opponent a little too much, when he kept hitting them a little too long, when he broke the bones of someone because he could, or threw someone into water and watched them drown before saving them just because they’re the bad guy.
Jason wouldn’t do that, it’s either he kills someone because they deserve it or he finishes what he starts, he cares too much to do that and Damian wouldn’t do that at all, because he doesn’t care at all, doesn’t care to watch someone suffer whether he’s angry or not (he doesn’t really get angry in the first place).
But Dick would.
He has this smile about him that Cass has only asked Jason- -who's known him the longest- -about once. It's a concerning one that Cass had never seen on her older brother before, but once she picked up on his body language when he smiled like that, she never stopped noticing it.
The smile's different, it's discerning, and it happens far too often for her own comfort.
It's a crooked smile, unlike his other more 'perfect' ones, the ones that say I’m happy! or I love you or this moment is amazing and it's far too wide and far too feral. It's wild. It's something that's often found alongside bloody knuckles, an odd glint in his eyes and a harsh bark of laughter as he meets his opponents.
It's the cruelty of a trained predator toying with its prey, not trained like Damian and Cass; they don't smile, not like that. And it always, always happens when he's angry.
As an expert in body language, Cass knows that he gets angry far too often.
But she cries far too often for someone who people think has no emotion, so who is she to judge?
Dick isn’t just the angriest Robin, but the happiest -well, the happiest alongside Stephanie. Together they, Robin and Spoiler, make the faces of the team. The ones that civilians always know are okay to interact with, the ones who smile for the press and wave at reporters.
The good ones.
The scariest ones; the wolves pretending to be sheep.
Cassandra isn’t like Dick or Stephanie, she can’t smile and charm her way into people’s hearts and like it, she can’t make people feel good by just being around them and still be dangerous. She is not a wolf in sheep’s clothes, she is a wolf with matted fur, feeling bare and vulnerable and impenetrable. She can tear people down whenever she needs, and do nothing to build them up.
And that is something she would always feel angry about.
See, Cassandra built herself up on warm days, not on anger.
She built herself up with Alfred’s hot chocolate soothing down the sting of her mother’s acid in her throat, meeting Stephanie (who rolled her eyes at her ‘emo’ demeanor) for the first time in the training room and her being so, so different. She built herself up with Damian’s paintings, Jason’s sarcasm, Dick’s advice.
Mostly, she built it up under the guise of being best friends with Duke, best friends with Stephanie -though that’s something she’ll never admit out loud. She doesn’t know why that always feels so awkward to say. They talked often but never really shared a lot, she was grateful for the questions he didn’t ask.
She built herself up on her flaws too, because joy and sorrow go hand in hand and Bruce had to teach her that sometimes it’s okay not to do things right. Cass still remembers the day she sat down on Tim’s bed and watched him pull up failed mission after failed mission about all their teammates, proving it really was okay.
There’s days her and Duke go out to the apple orchard behind Wayne Manor and end up against the bark of a tree, her leaning against his side, crying as he rambled.
Days Stephanie has her snorting and rolling over herself as she attempts to catch her breath due to that perky blonde girl being the only one who can make her lose her composure.
Those are the days she ends up laughing alongside her teammates family while they watch a movie, sharing popcorn and sweets and cold drinks, this shining band of heroes who just wanted to save people in the only way they know how.
She was healing.
When she turned nineteen the most meaningful birthday present came from the boy who would swear on his life that there was no double meaning, that it didn't mean that he loved her.
Damian painted a picture of a raging ocean, crashing into a darkened lighthouse with the light shined out but behind, a calm, peaceful looking sky. in a curving, tan paint, he put what he called 'on of the most inquisitive quotes he knows' onto the painting.
It reads-
What I really wanted to say was that a monster is not such a terrible thing to be. From the Latin root monstrum, a divine messenger of catastrophe, then adapted by the Old French to mean an animal of myriad origins: centaur, griffin, satyr. To be a monster is to be a hybrid signal, a lighthouse: both shelter and warning at once .
To Cassandra, that is not what it means to be a monster human, that is what it means to find yourself in the darkness and still fight for the light.
Stephanie Brown died.
It made Cassandra feel numb and it seemed to reset her brain, her emotions, right back to the way they were when she first arrived at Wayne Manor. She didn’t know what to do about that.
She let Bruce drive her to the funeral, and staring at the coffin made her feel homesick for a place she could no longer be.
There would be no movie nights at Barbara’s house where her and Stephanie fell asleep on the couch together. There would be no patrol days where they sat utop Wayne Tower and dared each other to jump to random buildings, to see who would be willing to go the farthest (surprisingly, Stephanie won most times. She was braver than anyone would admit).
When Jason finds Cass standing awkwardly at the end of the coffin with a sunflower, Stephanie’s favorite, he drops Tim’s hand and hugs Cass tight, then leads her around like she was a child who didn’t know what to do until they could sit down. She was grateful for that, even if she hated the babying.
She was Stephanie’s best friend.
She was the one who is supposed to read her Eulogy, but like always, she couldn’t find the right words. It’s Tim who ends up giving it, and she cries the entire time in that silent, pitiful way of hers. Duke sits next to her and holds her hand, squeezing her every time he feels her starting to cry harder.
Cass wasn’t between her best friend’s arms right now, on the couch amused, rolling around with laughter or on the edge of Wayne tower, but it was as close to home as she was going to get.
She squeezes back.
In the year after Stephanie’s death, Cass watched her family’s relationships and friendships fizzle away one by one. Tim and Barabra stopped talking altogether, as when they did it was always with Stephanie at their side. Jason seems like he doesn’t know what to do with himself.
Friendships ended as falsely as they began, and she realized just how many of them had been held together by someone who is now all but a ghost.
But Duke stayed.
Duke- -who’s still tired and sarcastic, and loud, and reckless and a little bit oblivious- -stayed. Duke fretted over Cass as she refused to get out of bed on the days that she would have trained with Stephanie in the morning, Duke followed her out on patrol, to the hollow feeling Wayne family dinners, to the Batcave and Justice League headquarters.
Cass had felt like she’s been stumbling in place for a year, and Duke never let her fall alone. He was the only person who didn’t leave when she showed the first sign of weakness.
Well, she thought bitterly, the only person other than Steph .
Let’s talk about how the Justice League tried to get Orphan under control when she started being violent again, for making threats to everyone that had hurt her best friend, to those that threaten her family, threatening and snapping at everyone from Lex Luthor to innocent journalists.
Because how dare Cassandra not have their self control- -which was bullshit because Wonder Woman and Superman have killed too- -or their perfect circumstances to get over grief -because my god , don’t you know what the Arrow has lost?
How dare she go back to her basics in order to try and right things in her mind, and her emotions, and her body. How dare she try and gain the control her life once had. How dare she think about her own survival.
Every part of her felt lost. At twenty three her entire world shattered once again.
And they tried to strip her of her title because she almost killed someone?
The Justice League was supposed to be for the strongest, forbidding heroes, to teach people that there was someone looking out for them, that there was someone to fight wars so they didn’t have to, to protect people. And that’s what Cassandra was still doing, it just wasn’t in the way that they liked.
Cassandra was frightened, she was scared, she was mourning. She had another friend in the midst of a war zone, a family on the front line.
Black Mask, the Joker and Lex Luthor dropped threats beside the bodies of those whose lives they’ve already ruined and smiled, and grinned, and acted like they weren’t insane, like they weren’t the ones in the wrong.
“You would think that Clark Kent would understand,” Jason sighed. This was one of the things she wouldn’t talk about with Duke. He was too good to understand. “He’s the kid from Kansas who was left behind. You think he would understand the fear of losing someone, given everyone he’s known has died. Other than his family -who he’s killed for, if you didn’t know.”
You’d think he’d understand the terror of the monsters that look at you with a smile, instead of the almost-monsters who hide in the dark.
He’s just upset because he thinks that bravery makes a hero. She signs to him, frowning. He hasn’t lost enough to know what it’s like.
Bravery doesn’t make a hero, it’s just a privilege most of them can afford. Bravery is not a choice, you either have it or you don’t. There’s strength in bravery, certainty in bravery that makes others feel safe around you. She had bravery but not as much as Stephanie . Some days, she wishes she didn’t.
Because yes, bravery is earned, but integrity is a choice.
Cassandra choses it; she stands in front of the Justice League at the next meeting and dares them to strip her of her suit, her title for having the audacity to do what she’s good at to prevent future crimes, to save future lives instead of doing something after it’s already happened, after someone’s already dead like they’re all used to.
“You did good.” Duke says, pulling her to lean against him.
Cass wants to scream back don’t tell me that because she didn’t feel like she deserved it, because it didn’t seem like it was good to tell them people deserve it when I hurt them all because she’s good at it. She felt like a child then, and knew if Stephanie was there she’d be laughing and giggling and flipping her hair while exclaiming how she never saw someone stick up to Superman quite like that and get away with it.
At least Jason didn’t say that the reason he hurts people is because he’s good at it.
He’s too noble for that.
But nobody in that godforsaken place was really ever going to be as good as they wanted to be, none of them -not Cassandra Cain, not Jason Todd, not Dick Grayson, not Duke Thomas. None of them are ever going to be good enough to fix the way the world can shatter around someone.
They just get to live in it after and try to repair it piece by piece.
Everyone should know about Cassandra Cain who was not the emotional one that could put on a smile for the press, but she was the one who would be fighting for her world no matter the opinions of others. She is the one that smuggled different parts of broken families to the Underground Railroad for years, all while she manned the face of Wayne Industries that had Lex Luther’s face on the pamphlets at their front desk.
About how there have been times Tim Drake has spotted her crying quietly on the monitor in the back of Wayne Manor and how he, too, thought that this meant she was weak.
The Wayne Children rose in Gotham’s defense and Cass was among them, with the safety checks and moves that Bruce had taught her, and all of the killing tactics he had not.
So what if maybe her cheeks were wet, if maybe her eyes were glazing when they looked over the way Red Robin’s bloody body crumpled against Red Hood, but she stood tall, chin pointed, weapon raised, this child of Lady Shiva, prodigy of Batman, best friend of the damned and destroy and the lovely, and she fought.
When Superman called her brave at the next Justice league meeting, she laughed.
She laughed how she hoped Stephanie would have laughed.
Everyone needs to know about the Cassandra Cain who slowly gave up the mantle, rebuilding her life and mind with tired hands and an aching heart, the Cassandra who sat with Duke and let herself cry over Stephanie, who say with Jason, who didn’t cry at all, and signed all the names of the ones that they lost as he poured out a drink at their feet.
Cassandra had a good knack for noticing when people were about to cry, their body said it all. Jason needed to cry a lot, but she didn’t say a thing. The scars on Jason’s face were more petty than Batman’s betrayal ever was.
The scars were a child’s tantrum when the world refused to be as black and white as Bruce Wayne wanted it to be, the good and the evil not being in a straight, parallel line, the definition of ‘justice’ not quite sounding the same from everyone’s mouth.
About how when Batman and the scarred remains of the leftover Robin sounded the alarm, Cassandra came. She moved back into the Wayne Manor out of the apartment she, Barbara and Duke shared, though the space stopped feeling loving when her best friend had stopped breathing.
There, with Duke and Jason and Tim and Cass, they were only scared and rash and wise and selfish, and when this entire thing started they were all just children, they were only children but a childhood is not what they were expected to have.
And Bruce, aching from a long past loss, furious in ways he didn’t have a right to be, had tried to fix those stark, mix-matched lines of good and evil, and let the consequences fall onto the skin of the fifteen year old Jason Todd; onto the knuckles of the twenty-one year old Dick Grayson; onto the fingertips of nine year old Tim Drake; onto the back of sixteen year old Stephanie Brown; onto the mind of ten year old Damian Al Ghul.
There was never a time that Cassandra held this against him.
They have both been fighting the same war, because they have always been fighting the same war, the war that is laid out onto the bloodied pads in the med bay of the Batcave is the same war that is put out onto the dinner table of every home in Gotham.
Bruce is brave and Cassandra has integrity, but Bruce thinks that he has the right and wrongs figured out, thinks that he has infinite wisdom tucked under his tongue but Cass knows that she has hard-earned feelings in the pit of her stomach, thinks that she has deserved the right to say that she is not brave anymore.
Cassandra isn’t like Bruce or Dick, she can’t wear that mask over her eyes and feel comfortable with it when people call her a hero, she can’t save someone’s life and want a thank you or a hug or recognition at all. She can save the lives of countless people, but she will never feel comfortable with what that makes her.
And that is something she would always feel confused about.
So let’s talk about the Cassandra, with her skin carved and ruined and perfect, who helped win the war. The Cassandra helped show Jason how to heal the scars all over him, the same way that Duke taught her there was nothing undignified about how someone chooses to live or cry or laugh. The Cass knows you cannot choose your scars, but sometimes it helps to let them go.
That somehow, that was one of her only weaknesses, that she dared to stand beside a brilliant, fallible, magnificently bright girl and refused to mock her for her smiles and mistakes.
Integrity. Quietness. Honor. Dedication. Those were the things that she held close to herself, things that she’s been trained for, things that made them call a hero a sinner (called dangerous, called chaotic, called so many things that were never her own name).
They forget that being brave was only one way to be a hero.
So let’s talk about Cassandra in her late twenties, let’s talk about the Cassandra that was left after Stephanie’s death, about the girl left after the war and how she could never really leave it behind her.
She would go out to dinner with Jason and Dick, they talked of jobs and boyfriends and girlfriends and not about vigilantes and dead best friends and righteous fathers. Out of everyone, these two men knew the most about the line between courage and bravery, between honor and truth. They were the ones who raised an eyebrow instead of flinch when someone else slams a door.
Damian Al Ghul started hiding for hours in his room, the Kent boy pent up there with him as he created masterpieces on the newly painted white of his walls (and ruined his sheets climbing into bed right after. It amused Cass how he still could act like a little kid, hiding under the blankets as if they offered any real protection.
A few times, she visited him, and he taught her that there was more to painting than what she could ever know otherwise.
The hot chocolate they all drink together is good, rich and sweet and everything her missing childhood was not. It would remind her of Alfred whether she wanted to or not, despite the fact that she hadn’t truly grown up with him as her grandfather -just like how Bruce Wayne is not truly her father.
She had been so small the first time she tasted it.
Cassandra looked at Dick, blue eyes blazing with passion and lower lip being gnawed on as he worked through a new memo at work that would send half of the Wayne Industries staff- -and probably, hopefully, Tim Drake- -screaming into his reception box, stressing because tonight he can’t work on it, tonight he has to go on a mission to try and save someone.
He’s always been running around, acting like he can save the world even though he still feels like a little kid sometimes too. Dick had always been this brave.
Yet Jason would always be braver.
It has pushed him to scars and death and peace and ruthlessness, it has pushed him to his full potential and Jason didn’t waste an inch of it. And Cass wished that was enough to save someone (Stephanie would still be alive), she wished that that’s all it took to be enough (Duke would know that he’s worth it).
But that’s just not how it works.
Sometimes, especially after Stephanie’s death, she just needs to leave. She hops in a car, never one driven by her pseudo grandfather, and drives up to one of the safety houses that Bruce has bought as far away from New Jersey as she could make in one night.
She would just drive, drive away from the places where they call her an honorary Wayne and stared, reeling, when her mind reset itself to her own integrity and values.
Cass would go to different places civilians grew up with, to museums and parks and take long walks. She’d go to cafes that Stephanie would love and just close her eyes, stop reading the people around her and just listen. People liked to talk about animals and television shows and babies and politics, and not the hard things.
Nobody likes to talk about the hard things.
Some days, she wishes she could know everything about the world. Others, she wishes she didn’t know a single thing. Those are the hard days (and like she said, nobody likes to talk about that).
Sorrow is not isolated to the stories of heroes, Cassandra knows this because she isn’t one.
Cassandra can not take more brave best friends and those who want to be a hero without knowing what sacrifice really means. She needs friends who are kind and smile before they are righteous and snap. She wants someone, like Duke, who is loving long before they are certain they don’t have to be suspicious.
She needed time to know that sometimes, just keeping your mind steady and your heart open (even if you don’t think you have one), that just letting yourself cry just like you let yourself laugh is a much needed thing.
Life is equal parts thundering sadness and quiet hope. Tears, Cassandra has learned, are for the living-
She is alive.