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“--You can hear me, C, come on, let him go. We gotta get out of here.”
Cass swims towards awareness and the sound of Babs’s voice in her ear. Her hands are sticky with blood, and they’re clenched around a fistful of the front of a stranger’s shirt.
She’s been hearing humming in her ears for a while now, which she belatedly realizes had been her teammates trying to coax her back into her body. Cass hadn’t been overwhelmed by the scuffle she’d grappled down into, but it had been bad enough that she’d had to stop thinking like the socialized young adult she’s grown up into.
“Orphan, let go,” Babs says.
In Cass’s peripheral vision, someone is trying to sneak up on her.
Cass swings an elbow, startled, and hits them in the ribs. She hears a satisfying hiss of air leave their lungs, but she hasn’t hit them hard enough to break anything. Rearing her elbow back again, she takes a half-step in and shifts her weight to hit them in the face this time instead.
“C, hey, hey--!” they say, and Cass stops mid-jab because she realizes it’s someone she knows.
It’s Steph, one hand held up, the other holding the spot on her ribcage.
Cass blinks, then blinks again. Her hands spasm, then lose their grip on the shirt she’s holding, and the mercenary slumps to the floor and hits her head on the ground with a heavy thunk.
“We’re good. It’s over.” Steph tries again to approach, this time taking it slower. One of her hands slips under Cass’s elbow as an offer to support Cass’s weight. “Let’s go. The car’s outside.”
Cass allows herself to be pulled away, her feet carrying her after Steph. She steps over many fallen bodies, head turning left and right to check around corners as they stagger through the dingily-lit hallway of this hotel.
Her ears buzz. They keep buzzing, the sound getting a little higher and then sinking lower, as though someone’s radio is turned up high but it’s been sealed into a steamer trunk to make the noise indistinct. Cass irritably smacks at her ear to get the sound to stop, and finds her comm there.
Right.
“--She bleeding?”
“Yes, one of them got her across the back.” Steph yanks Cass outside, and the two of them emerge into the open night air. “I can’t see it here, it’s too dark.”
Police sirens are marking up the air, slicing in and out of Cass’s eardrums, and they’re getting closer. Steph keeps leading Cass along, even though Cass can see exactly where the Batmobile is, directly in front of them on the curb.
“Get in,” Bruce’s voice says over the comm, and Steph snaps, “No, really?”
The door is opened for Cass before she can understand how to hold onto the handle.
Cass gets into the backseat of the Batmobile and Steph gets in after her and slams the door shut. As soon as it clicks, Bruce punches the gas and they screech out of the parking lot.
The momentum of the car throws Cass and Steph back against the seats. Oppressive warmth shoots through Cass’s body, trapping her like she’s being sealed into a body bag. Cass twitches, groans, trying to peel herself back off of the seat.
Steph’s arm slides between Cass’s neck and the seat, easing her forward so her back is no longer touching anything. The warmth spikes, then begins to recede.
People are talking. Cass’s brain latches onto individual words, trying so hard to decipher them that she misses the sentence as a whole. As her eyes slide in and out of focus, she sees Bruce driving recklessly, Tim turned around in the shotgun seat to look back at Steph and Cass with concern marring his face, and Steph still holding Cass in an uncomfortable semi-upright position.
She looks back at Tim, because he’s the only one whose hands aren’t busy. Tim untangles one of his hands from the seatbelt and precariously balances himself on his seat. With both hands over his chest, he signs something like, BREATHE.
Cass, after taking a second to understand, takes a breath. The slam of her heartbeat in her palms ebbs just a little, appeased by the fact that she has time to get enough air now.
SAFE, Tim says. And then he has to brace himself on the seat and his next sign gets lost because Bruce performs a particularly nasty turn.
No danger, Cass tells herself, and keeps breathing. Steph’s hand doesn’t move, refusing to let Cass lean back. The car whips them back and forth. Tim has to turn around to say some sharp words to Bruce and he stops communicating with Cass.
No danger, she says to herself until she believes it. And then she catches her breath fully, and flexes her sticky bloodstained hands, and remembers that even though she’s just a weapon, she’s a weapon hosted in a body.
All at once, new aches and stinging scratches spring up across her skin. As does the sensation of one empty, echoing gash carving her back from hip to opposite shoulder.
Cass twitches, failing to suppress her reaction.
“I know,” Steph says so close to her ear, like she’s been trying to soothe Cass this entire time. Her words are just finally making sense again. “I know it hurts. We’re almost home.”
Cass’s eyes keep unfocusing. She reaches out towards the two Tims sitting in the front seat, and they both take her hand, solidifying back into one person. His face is still so concerned, with none of the irritation that would imply he hates twisting around in his seat like this.
“We’re just a minute out,” Steph promises.
Cass squeezes tighter as another shift of the car sends another electric arc of agony up her spine. Tim’s hand is too warm but it’s also Cass’s tether to reality right now. She decides not to let go even though he’s clammy with cold sweat.
The car is plunged into darkness as they enter a tunnel. That means they’re starting to enter the Cave, going through the security checkpoints and winding themselves underneath Gotham.
“Cassie, it’s gonna hurt getting out of the car,” Bruce says, eyes flicking up to the rearview mirror. “You want me to carry you?”
Cass shakes her head stubbornly. She can make it the forty feet to the table where everyone lies down to get their stitches. She made it out of the hotel, didn’t she?
Bruce parks. Steph reaches over Cass to open the door.
Cass lets go of Tim’s hand.
“You want me to--?” Steph starts to ask, but Cass just swings her legs out of the car and stands up, clinging to the top of the door to steady herself when dizziness rushes up over her ears.
She hears other doors of the car open. Cass steels herself and starts walking before anyone can catch her.
She thinks she’s walking in a straight line, but she nearly veers into the railing around the T-Rex pit and has to course-correct. People are yelling behind her, trying to warn her, but Cass just grits her teeth and charges onward.
The stairs are tricky, but she has enough momentum to get up them. Her knee only gives out when she’s two steps from the table, at which point she staggers and topples, throwing her arm out to try to catch herself.
“Careful,” Bruce says sharply, suddenly at her side, and he catches her by the arms, carefully avoiding coming near her back injury.
Her stomach lurches as her balance is corrected by a force other than her own. Finding herself back on her feet, the full weight of her exhaustion presses down on her shoulders. Cass sways, braced at the shoulder by Bruce’s steady hand.
“Just another step,” Bruce encourages.
Tim and Steph are rushing around the small medical area, clearing countertops and yanking supplies down from the cupboards. Cass gets dizzier watching them. Her hands and feet are filled with rapidly-hardening concrete.
“Come on,” Bruce says, and nudges her forward. He’s letting her be independent, because she said she wanted to be.
Cass stumbles over her feet, the toe of her boot catching the floor, but her hands find the edge of the examination table which means she’s finally reached her destination. Fatigue is starting to shut her brain down again. Cass crawls onto the bed and lays down on her front, letting the side of her face press to the plasticky surface.
“Comfy?” Steph asks.
Cass grunts.
“I'm cleaning this out, and then you’ll need stitches,” Bruce warns.
Cass gives a lethargic thumbs up. Despite the continual cycles of pain lancing through the slice in her skin, the satisfying ache of her muscles that follows a successful patrol is just as comforting as it always is. It’s the equivalent to a lullaby for her.
“Um,” Tim says, because Steph is always Cass’s moral support during stitches and Bruce will be the one administering the stitches, making Tim obsolete here, “I’m gonna get snacks. Cass, do you want anything?”
Cass pries open one eye and says, “B’s potato chips.”
Bruce says, “Excuse me?” and Steph and Tim both laugh the same horrible snorting laugh that one of them picked up from the other.
“I got you,” Tim promises, and jogs towards the elevator.
A washcloth dabs down onto the edge of the gash through Cass's back, and her breath hitches. Bruce's free hand lays flat on the back of Cass's shoulder, warm and solid.
“We kicked so much ass in there,” Steph brags to Cass, all proud like they haven’t done this a hundred times. “You want me to tell you about it?”
“Mn,” Cass agrees, one of her eyebrows twinging just a little when Bruce hits a deeper part of her wound.
A squeak of a plastic chair says Steph’s perched near the examination table. Bruce keeps up his diligent work, trying to be as efficient as possible. It’s nice to be safe like this. Cass is still getting used to the feeling of coming down from a violent rampage and not finding herself completely alone in the world.
While Steph begins her relieved brand of embellished storytelling, Cass tucks her hand under her face and dozes off to Steph’s familiar cadence. Bruce’s stitches begin to tug in an even rhythm, and Cass closes her eyes.