shobogan prompted: If you don't have too many prompts - Cass reacting to Kon's death in Infinite Crisis.
I apologize for how last minute and crappily written this is : ( MY BAD but I had a cross country drive between writing and posting this so that's my excuse for now haha
Batman, Superman and related properties © DC Comics
story © RenaRoo
Too Young
Gotham is barely held together by the end, but it is over. They survived, as best they could.
Cassandra holds the last sleeper agent in her arms, watching the shock leave their system as Brother Eye is made no more. As the calamity settles. As the universe falls back into its disjointed pieces.
She's struggling with making sense of words in her exhaustion, but even without thinking through the vowels and whispers, she knows that the voice over the communicator is beckoning her home.
And so Batgirl drives away from the city. What's left of it. And hopes that the damage to her loved ones who had to leave Gotham during this Crisis is more manageable.
Bruce and Barbara, from what Alfred tells Cass, have been constants at Dick's side since his release from surgery. Not many - even heroes - can say that their transport from a hospital is escorted by a majority of the current Justice League members and then some.
As such, Cass doesn't take long in her brother's room. She leaves her Get Well card (Alfred helped her spell out her message) on the bureau with the others, she kisses his forehead and gives small greetings to both Barbara and Bruce.
Then she wanders.
It's been a while since she first came to Gotham, but the Manor still remains somewhat new to her. More than a little daunting. She needs to explore it more, which may be at least one advantage to everyone's current concentration being elsewhere.
Her new room, still more than a little barren, is across from the other guest room that Tim used to stay in when he was over too late to return home or on the weekends away from Brentwood.
Cass isn't really expecting either of them to be occupied, but especially not Tim's. But she can instantly feel there is something beyond the door.
Manners as honed as always, she welcomes herself inside and finds Tim on the floor, head buried in his hands, lights off.
Shaken, Cass comes to him immediately.
"Tim?"
Jarred slightly, Tim looks to her, mouth dropping as Cass gets to her knees. He looks pale and shaken - horrific realization is all over his face.
"Oh god, Cass," he whispers.
Sympathetically, Cassandra reaches to Tim's shoulders, rubs them, forcing a soft smile. "Dick… he's okay. Through the, uh, worst of it now. We can. Breathe." Alfred had said as much to her on the subject as he briefed her in the cave, got her ready to see what was waiting for them upstairs. It had helped. A little.
But Cass knows she and Tim are different than the others. They share a lot more, have lost much the same.
When Cassandra was carving her father out of her life, Tim had his own taken from him. Then… they both lost Stephanie, and that's rawer than either of them know how to express for now. If they both hadn't been in Blüdhaven afterwards there's no telling if either of them could have bore all that weight at once.
Then their dynamic duo, their Batgirl and Robin, lost their city. Something that is still just vaguely dawning on them in the mess of everything else that has happened with this crisis and collisions of worlds.
She reaches for the quilt on the guest bed and begins to turn back to Tim, to wrap him up in it, when she sees the torment written over him.
There's something else.
Reluctantly, Cass tries again. "Tim?" she asks. "You're… not worried about Dick?"
"I… I am," Tim says, fingers digging into the skin of his arms, he drops his head. "Cass… Cass, I'm so… I didn't want to be the one to tell you…"
Quietly, Cass withdraws physically, pressing the quilt against her own stomach. She's had this conversation a few times too many in the last year. She doesn't know what Tim will follow up with, but she can assume the nature of the conversation.
No one told her when she started that death would be so hard to fight.
"Who?" she asks finally, quiet and uncertain if she even wants the answer.
Tim chokes, hugging his legs tighter to his chest. "Kon."
Superboy.
For a moment, she can't begin to process it. Superboy was… a friend. Both of their friends. He was terrified of Batman but, for them, he braved coming to Gotham against orders. Kon-El liked her, and she liked him. They loved in a confusing way (friends? boyfriend-girlfriend? family?)
He wanted to grow up to be Superman. It's all he wanted. Just like Cassandra wanted nothing more than to be Batman. Kon, he got that. He understood and didn't joke about it or laugh. He said it was "cool."
Superboy was Tim's best friend. But he was also Cass' first love - in whatever way it ultimately had meant.
She hasn't shed tears since Stephanie's funeral - since watching Ms. Brown cry and Tim standing so far away with no more emotions to give, a little like now - but Cass cries now.
Covering her mouth, Cassandra sobs, hiccups some. Her eyes squeeze tightly shut and she braces against Tim's side.
They don't say anything else, Tim quietly taking the quilt from Cass and wrapping them both in it.
They're shaking and silent long into the night, already having lost more people they love than most suffer in a lifetime.