Chapter 18: The First Language of Cassandra Cain
Cassandra closed her eyes, and took a deep breath.
She imagined herself picking up all of the things she had been thinking about, putting them into little boxes, and walking away.
"Once you lock all that stuff away," her actor friend Kevin Ulrich had once told her, "then you can do the job with purity."
Don't act, Cassandra thought. React.
She opened the door to her apartment.
"Alfred, lights."
Illumination followed.
Stephanie Brown did not have the aspiration toward grandeur that Ra's al Ghul had when he had broken in the night before. She did not sit at the head of the kitchen table, rather opting to sit in the middle chair on the left side, her back toward the rest of the apartment. Her black pea coat was draped over the chair to her left.
Cassandra took a brief measure of Stephanie's posture and attitude before she did anything else. Stephanie was wearing a green t-shirt tucked into a pair of loose-fitting jeans, with a studded black leather belt to round it off. Her boots looked like they were made for kicking ass, and if the audio feelers she had set up on the roof of the Klayman Dairy Plant were any indication, then that is precisely what she had done at the meet.
She was hunched over, elbows on the table, hands folded, staring at the wall across from her.
Cassandra closed the door behind her, and leaned against the wall next to the door frame.
"Stephanie."
Steph didn't even bother looking at her. "Cassandra."
A silence followed.
"So in addition to doing grunt work on arms deals," Cassandra said, "now you add B&E?"
"I entered," Stephanie said, "but I didn't break."
She opened her hands, revealing a key.
"Kate gave me this key," Stephanie said. "Back in the old days. In case I wanted to have a girl over when she wasn't in town."
Stephanie threw the key near Cassandra. It bounced off the wall next to her neck, before it rebounded off her left shoulder, and fell to the carpet.
"Change your locks, you jackass," Stephanie said, before she resumed her last position, hands folded, staring at the nothing in front of her.
More silence followed. After a while, Stephanie broke it herself.
"Do I need to tell you how fucked I am after the stunt you pulled tonight?"
"Go ahead," said Cassandra. "I wasn't doing anything else this evening. By all means, tell me how much you think I suck."
Only now did Stephanie deign to look at her.
"I operate under an assumed name," Stephanie said. "Natalie Venora. Natalie Venora has developed a reputation all over the world for the services she rendered for going on thirteen years now. That reputation is now in the shitter after she ran from a six million dollar payday at the first sign of a Bat. How am I gonna square that with future clients, huh? No matter how much they pay me, it's conditional as long as a cape doesn't show up?"
"You were doing dirty in Gotham City," Cassandra said. "You had to know this was coming."
"It wouldn't have come," Stephanie said, "if you had trusted me. But you didn't trust me, did you? You put a tracker in my fucking coat!"
"You're right," Cassandra said. "I didn't trust you. Would you like to know why?"
"Because being the head Bat in Gotham means you have to develop a holier-than-thou streak?"
"Oh, I could have put up with the arms deal," Cassandra said. "Bruce put up with Selina for over a decade for doing a whole lot worse."
Cassandra took a few steps into the apartment.
"I put the tracker on you because you lied to me."
Stephanie sniffed, and Cassandra could see she was trying to mount a defense. "You know it's funny? I leave here and you could barely say a word. I come back fourteen years later, and nothing but bullshit comes out of your mouth."
"Back in the old days, you hid a lot," Cassandra said. "You dissembled, you omitted, you obfuscated, sure.
"'Obfuscated?'"
"But you never lied to me," Cassandra said. "You never looked me in the eye and told me something you yourself knew wasn't true. Until Dick's wake. Until today. You desperately tried to make it as though that deal wasn't your problem, and you tried to torch yourself in my eyes to do it."
Stephanie just sneered, and looked back at the wall.
"Now," said Cassandra. "Would you like to know what happened after you left?"
"No."
"Tim was confused," Cassandra said. "So was Harper. But at least they had each other to fall back on. In the first few days after you left, Kate went on a shopping spree for clothes and food. The stuff you liked. Because she was convinced you were coming back, and she wanted to make you nice and comfortable when you did."
Stephanie didn't say anything. Cassandra walked right behind her chair.
"And then… there was Selina."
Stephanie craned to look at her. Something was about to come out of her mouth, most likely profane. But in the end, she choked it back, and stared at the wall some more.
"Selina didn't say a word," Cassandra said. "She'll go on and on about stupid bullshit, but when something really fronts her, she'll keep her mouth shut. I know that's how she is… and so do you. That is how much you hurt her. And when Bruce adopted me, it was like some of her spirit left her body. Because her husband got something that she didn't."
She saw Stephanie clench a fist.
"And let's not forget," Cassandra said, "your best friend. The one who couldn't write? Could barely read and talk? The one who didn't have a single fucking clue what was going on? The one lugging that book of Shakespeare around and waited in that Goddamn mansion for days hoping you returned? Yeah, she did just fine. You ditching her didn't fuck her up at all."
Cassandra walked into the adjacent kitchen to get a glass of water. She had gotten a small glass out of the cabinet above the sink when Stephanie decided to speak again.
"So if I stayed, what would have happened?"
This struck Cassandra in an odd way. In a way she didn't feel as though she could be struck. The answer was so obvious, but Stephanie just didn't get it.
Cassandra turned to face her. "We would have helped you, Steph. The same way Bruce helped me. We brought Jason Todd in from the cold after you left. I see no reason why you'd be any different."
And with that, Cassandra turned and put her glass beneath the ice dispenser in her fridge. The cubes were done hitting glass when Stephanie spoke yet again.
"That's right," she said. "I'm not the only murderer in the room, now am I?"
Cassandra had frozen, her hand an inch away from the water dispenser on the fridge.
"We both killed and ran," Stephanie said. "The way I see it is… when I ran off, it was after I stopped the bad guy. Not before. You killed someone, and instead of stopping your father, you ran in fear."
Cassandra's chest was a forge, boiling molten anger. Images of the man in Macau whose throat she had torn out, on her father's orders when she was nine, emerged from their shallow grave.
"You ever get to thinking about what would have happened if you stopped your dad?" Stephanie asked. "Put him in jail? You ever get to thinking how different things would be if he wasn't one of Harmonia's recruits before the Battle of Founders Island? Think Aquaman would still be running around? How about Beast Boy and Miss Martian? Knight and Squire? Blue Devil? You think the Amazons of the Bana-Mighdall would look kindly on you, knowing your inaction when you were a kid would eventually cost them Artemis?"
No, she had not, in fact, thought of these things. But she was thinking of them now.
She turned to look at her, and the quivering of Stephanie's brow told Cassandra one thing.
That not even Stephanie believed what she was saying.
More lies. Jesus.. .
But Cassandra made a conscious decision to pour a rapid of water over that furnace in her chest, Stephanie was trying to bait her into a screaming match. And she wasn't falling for it. She put her glass under the water dispenser, and got her drink in silence.
The stomping of boots came from behind Cassandra, and stopped a few inches away. Cassandra turned around to see Stephanie Brown as a wall of fury. The vein in her right temple was throbbing, her blue eyes burnt cold.
Apparently, having failed in her prior attempt to force conflict, Stephanie had decided upon a new tack.
"You wanted to help me, huh?" Stephanie asked. "I don't need your fucking help. I never have. I wasn't kung-fu Jesus like you were. I didn't have Tim's detective skills, or Harper's head for machinery, or Kate's military training. But I laid that piece of shit Damian Wayne out by myself, when everyone would have tried to stop me. I beat the man who beat The Bat."
Stephanie scratched her nose, still keeping unblinking eye-contact.
"Everyone tried to protect me from myself," she said. "Because I was the one who didn't have the advantages everyone else did. Spoiler was the one who sucked, and everyone knew it. It wasn't true then… And it isn't true now."
Cassandra tried to peer through her. "You feel better now?"
Stephanie didn't say anything.
Cassandra rolled her eyes. "Go run, Steph. It's what you're good for."
She raised her glass of water to her lips…
...only for Stephanie to snatch it out of her hand and fling it at the kitchen wall. The air came alive with the sound of shattering glass, falling ice cubes, and splashing water.
There was a brief moment of shock, but that cooled as Cassandra realized something.
This fuming, furious woman in her kitchen… was the Stephanie Brown who left fourteen years ago.
Cassandra had no idea who the stranger at Dick Grayson's wake was, nor the charlatan who had tried to bait her with lies mere moments before, but this ball of anger before her was her old best friend.
And even in the thickness of tension, even with dragging personal topics into the light, even with the threat of violence… It really was nice to see her again.
Stephanie opened her mouth and said… something. To Cassandra's ear, it sounded like Russian.
"Russian proverb," Stephanie said. "'Underestimating an enemy is the last thing a stupid person does before they die.'"
Oh… So it's like that, huh?
"As I seem to recall," Cassandra said, "we used to spar all the time back in the day, and you never once landed a shot on me. Stephanie… is this really a road you want to go down?"
Stephanie leaned in.
"Yup."
Something clattered on the floor. Cassandra, in the moment, thought it might have been an ice cube, which had landed on the sink but finally made its journey to the linoleum… but it sounded too small for that.
She looked down.
There was a small black pellet between her two moccasins.
It almost looked like a flashb-
FWOOM!
Yep. Flashbang.
Cassandra's ears started ringing. Her vision became a field of white. And through the ivory blindfold, a fist came crashing into her jaw.
Normally, it would have knocked her back. But being as she'd been leaning against the sink, there was no back to be knocked to. Her lower back seemingly wrapped around the counter, and onto her ass she went.
The white started to gray out, but she still couldn't see Stephanie's boot come in and kick her in the forehead so hard that her cranium rocked back and shattered the wood of the cabinet door beneath the sink.
She'd sparred with Stephanie for years without her once landing a blow on Cassandra, only for her to come back after a fourteen year hiatus and get two successful shots off in less than five seconds.
The white pall had cleared enough for her to see Stephanie (having tucked her ponytail into the back of her t-shirt, which was a smart move) coming in for another field goal.
Cassandra got out of the way in the nick of time, leaving Stephanie to get her boot caught in the hole that Cassandra's head had left in the cabinet door.
Still on her ass, Cassandra launched her left foot hard into Stephanie's midsection. Stephanie doubled over to the extent that Cassandra sent her right foot into the side of Stephanie's face.
Stephanie's right shoulder collided with the wall, but she did not go down. She used the momentum to roll herself down the wall, still standing, and further into the apartment, right in front of the kitchen table.
Cassandra got up, careful to mind the broken glass on the kitchen floor. This was ugly now, but she didn't want this situation to get grotesque.
She pursued her quarry, and threw a right that Stephanie blocked. She read Stephanie's body language, saw that a right hook was coming…
...only to be completely surprised by Stephanie's left knee driving directly into her gut.
As she gasped for air, she was shocked by the fact that she didn't see that one coming.
And that gasping for air cost Cassandra a left hook to the temple that drove her to one knee.
With all her might, Cassandra sprang up, putting considerable weight and speed into a right punch.
And that punch Stephanie dodged, in so doing grabbing Cassandra by the collar of her flannel shirt with one hand, and the waistband of her sweatpants with the other. She used Cassandra's momentum to send her through the kitchen table.
The table disintegrated in a shower of cheap wood. The impact tremor knocked four of the eight chairs over.
Stephanie came in with a stomp, only for Cassandra to wrap both of her hands around her ankle, and twist.
She yelped, but Stephanie gave up the high ground to roll through it, diving to the floor to somersault through the shards of what used to be a table.
They both struggled to their feet.
Cassandra got to a standing position first.
She brought a fist down, aiming for Stephanie's head. Stephanie brought up her forearms to block the shot… leaving most of her upper body exposed. Cassandra dropped a hard left right into Stephanie's upper sternum, the thump sounding like a bomb going off.
Stephanie almost wrapped around Cassandra's fist, and Cassandra used this split-second of down-time to deliver a lunge kick into Stephanie's forehead.
Stephanie did not collide with the apartment door.
No, Stephanie went through the apartment door.
There was now a Stephanie Brown-shaped hole in the door, with Stephanie prone on the carpet of the well-lit hallway outside.
Cassandra ducked through the hole, ventured into the hallway, and looked at what she had done.
Stephanie was on her knees, holding her recently dented ribcage.
"Oh, Jesus…"
Cassandra walked to her. The closer she got, the more she could hear the pathetic gurgling noises that Steph was making. She reached out.
"Steph? Are… Are you…"
And that strange phenomenon of not being able to see Stephanie Brown's moves in advance occurred again.
Stephanie had put so much of her energy into ostentatiously shaking her shoulders down there on the ground that Cassandra was unable to read that she would crane her neck upwards and bite down hard on the pinky and ring fingers of Cassandra's left hand.
Cassandra cried out.
Not in pain.
In shock.
"OWWWWWWWW! FUCK-FUCK-FUCK-FUCK-FUCK!"
Cassandra was at a loss as to how to proceed. It wasn't though as though she could punch Steph in the face to make her let go. She was dug in deep enough that she could lose those two fingers if she did that.
It took a second to solve the puzzle.
She reached back into the back of Stephanie's t-shirt, grabbed a handful of brown-dyed ponytail, and started dragging her toward the door of the apartment across the hall.
Cassandra figured that Stephanie knew her well enough to know that she was physically capable of scalping Stephanie with one bare hand. So, in a different but no less precariously positioned canoe on Shit Creek as Cassandra was at present, opted to move with her.
In hindsight, though, it could be theorized that if she had known what was in store, Stephanie would have stayed put and took her chances.
Because Cassandra knew something Stephanie did not.
Cassandra knew that, because all of the other apartments on this floor were unoccupied, all of the apartment doors were unlocked.
She reached out and opened it.
Stephanie bit down a little bit harder when she realized what was coming, but it was too late.
Cassandra brought her knee into Steph's to set her up, whereupon she started slamming the open apartment door on Stephanie's head.
It took one…
WHAM!
...two…
WHAM!
...three shots…
WHAM!
...before Stephanie finally let go.
The blows to the head dropped Stephanie to one knee. Cassandra used a bit of what she thought was down time to attempt to look at her recently masticated fingers.
She saw that they didn't look too bad, before she paid for her foolishness with a right to the gut.
It doubled her over, before Stephanie landed a palm strike right to Cassandra's forehead.
That palm strike hurt.
The back of her head colliding with the door frame hurt worse.
Cassandra didn't wait for the stars to clear. She put her weight into a haymaker that Stephanie ducked, before Stephanie countered with a heavy fist to the mush that knocked Cassandra to the floor of the unoccupied apartment that was lit only by the yellow street lights outside the building.
The apartment door closed halfway.
As she pulled her sweaty, sore face off of the thick beige carpet, Cassandra tried to remember if Stephanie had been this strong or this fast when she was a teenager.
No.
No, she wasn't.
She heard those stomping boots behind her, and instinctively rolled, putting a foot out.
It was schoolyard, but it would do. Stephanie tripped, and fell on her face.
They both tried to get to their feet.
It was a tie this time.
Cassandra unleashed a side kick into Stephanie's ribs. Stephanie grunted, and revved up her left shoulder for a punch. Cassandra saw it coming…
...only for that right steel toe boot of hers to come crashing into Cassandra's left knee.
There it was again!
Between the knee to the gut in her apartment, the bite in the hallway, and now this kick to the knee, one thing was now completely evident:
Cassandra Wayne's ability to read body language to correctly and unerringly anticipate moves in a fight was, against Stephanie Brown, completely useless.
Were body language literature, then Stephanie's would read like Charles Manson song lyrics: Towering, window-licking insanity that submitted to the self-administration of thumbscrews for the sake of the occasional rhyme.
Stephanie had trained her body to evade Cassandra. She had, in essence, formed her own martial art to combat just one single human being on the planet.
Stephanie Brown had been theorizing about tonight for the past fourteen years.
But even in the moment, even in voluminous pain from that kick to the knee, Cassandra found this fact… kinda flattering.
And insane.
And also… yeah, still flattering.
Cassandra favored the knee, saw the kick coming, and blocked it with both hands. She drove an elbow into Stephanie's side just above the hip, leaving her open for an uppercut that jacked her jaw.
And while Steph was looking up, Cassandra wound up a lunge kick that connected with Stephanie's chest, sending her sailing into the abandoned kitchen, whose only ornamentation was a dust-covered toolbox that some inattentive handyman must have left there years before.
Cassandra advanced on Stephanie. Stephanie kicked her leg out, and Cassandra dropped back a pace to dodge it.
And immediately cursed herself for doing so. It was a diversion, just like a lot of Stephanie Brown's repertoire this evening.
Because not only had Stephanie Brown found that dusty tool box, she sent it sailing for Cassandra's head.
It was not thrown hard, and it didn't hit flush, but the contact with Cassandra's nose and left eye socket sent her to the floor.
Cassandra opted to turtle up, and check her nose with both hands. It wasn't broken, but Cassandra saw blood pooling in the palm of her right.
She got to her feet, and immediately threw a spinning backfist out of both instinct and desperation. Stephanie, now also on her feet, blocked it with both hands.
Stephanie used her grip on Cassandra's arm to spin her around. She was off balance, struggling to both breathe and see, and was unable to block Stephanie using the edges of both her hands to land simultaneous blows on either side of Cassandra's windpipe.
Breathing air was now as hard as sucking down motor oil. Even as Stephanie landed a punch to the right side of her face and a roundhouse kick to the left, Cassandra still had enough presence of mind to realize what Stephanie's modus operandi was.
She had centralized her plan of attack on Cassandra's nose, stomach, and throat.
Stephanie was trying to make the act of breathing as difficult as humanly possible.
Cassandra Wayne had been trained from birth to fight. She was the most dangerous hand-to-hand combatant on planet Earth. She could fight blind. She could fight deaf. She could fight blind and deaf.
But she still needed to breathe.
The need for air meant all human women, even Cassandra Wayne and Stephanie Brown, were created equal.
Stephanie landed a lunge kick to Cassandra's chest. Turnabout being fair play, Cassandra turned the door of this second apartment into a hail of splinters as she went through it.
She immediately got on her stomach, and started crawling into the hallway. Not in retreat, but in pursuit of more friendly terrain. She could do more damage in a hall than in a doorway.
Cassandra got on her back as she heard Stephanie's bootfalls coming toward her.
She figured that the game of robbing people of their air was best played with two participants.
Stephanie raised her right foot to stomp on Cassandra's stomach, but Cassandra had it scouted. She kicked out and found Stephanie's left knee, which brought her to a kneeling position.
And now that she was down there. Cassandra wrapped her legs around Stephanie's midsection, and started squeezing.
Stephanie gasped, and wriggled, but soon started turning red in the face. She landed two right hooks in the side of Cassandra's face, but Cassandra squeezed her thighs tighter around Stephanie's abdomen with each strike. Stephanie stopped fighting when she realized what was happening.
Cassandra saw that Stephanie's face was now turning purple. The whites of her eyes were turning pink. A small trickle of drool was leaking from the corner of her mouth.
But she had this look in her eyes.
It seemed to say "Alright, fine."
Stephanie arched her upper body forward, putting the crown of her head beneath Cassandra's left armpit. Now that there was daylight between Cassandra's back and the floor, Stephanie took advantage by wrapping her arms around Cassandra's back.
With that, Stephanie began to dead lift the smaller and denser Cassandra off of the floor.
When Cassandra began to wonder how badly this could go, Stephanie, still holding her, performed about three quarters of a front flip.
This meant Stephanie landed on her ass.
This also meant that Cassandra's head was spiked into the thinly carpeted hardwood floor.
As Cassandra ragdolled at the point of impact, the one thought that she could collect was:
Who would even think like that?
Who would think of the most inelegant, ungainly solution to any given problem? And who in God's name would have the confidence that it would work?
The obvious answer to this question was, of course, Stephanie Brown. And as her thoughts seeped back in, as she heard Stephanie take ragged gasps of air, the full breadth of Stephanie's talents became known to her.
Stephanie Brown was a master theoretician, and an improviser whose only peer just might have been the late, great Dick Grayson. And even then, comparing the two would have been close.
Cassandra hated improvisation. In crimefighting, in hand-to-hand, and on stage. Especially on that last one.
She had no idea what to do with her hands.
And the further this fight went into the weeds and the more opportunities for Stephanie to play to her strengths that presented themselves, the more Cassanrda saw but one outcome to this conflict.
I am going to lose this fight…
The two of them began the long journey to get to their feet.
This time Stephanie won.
She drove a hard elbow into the side of Cassandra's face, dropping her back down to a knee.
But Cassandra used her position to spring up, and get behind Stephanie, whereupon she wrapped her arms around Stephanie's lower ribcage, locking her forearms just beneath Stephanie's two full and…
...and, uh… ample…
Oh, Christ, Cassandra thought. NOW I notice them…
Cassandra paid for her momentary diversion with a backswinging forearm to the side of the face (which, we can all agree, she had coming). Now that that woke her up, Cassandra squeezed hard, locked her hips, arched her back, and swung Stephanie over her head in a German Suplex.
Stephanie bounced off the floor from her neck and the back of her head, sprung up a couple of inches from the strength of the impact, and landed on her stomach. As Cassandra got up, she could hear Stephanie groaning.
She was on Stephanie as she was getting to her feet. Cassandra sidekicked her in the stomach, sending her into the long steel handle of the metal door leading to the stairwell.
She leaned against the door, opening it, and disappeared inside.
Cassandra followed.
She opened the door and ate a lunging kick to the side of the face. Stephanie tried for a follow-up, but Cassandra caught her foot and gave a sharp tug to take a little of her balance from her.
Mission accomplished. Cassandra pressed her advantage with a palm strike to Stephanie's forehead. Stephanie teetered…
...above the concrete steps.
Cassandra, in a sudden fear of what was going to happen, reached out and grabbed Stephanie's shoulder to steady her.
Stephanie grabbed Cassandra's hand, looked at her, and used all her teeth to smile at her with a near-demonic glint in her eye.
Oh, no…
Stephanie fell back, and took Cassandra with her.
They tumbled over each other down the short set of concrete steps, before they fell in heaps on the landing below.
For a long few seconds, neither woman moved.
Cassandra's breathing felt like a rusty fan blade pitifully spinning inside her chest. A rib, or maybe even two, might have been cracked.
She got on all fours, only to see that Stephanie had done the same. The steps had apparently caused a cut over Stephanie's right eyebrow. Drops of blood were collecting on the concrete landing along with the beads of sweat.
Both women, without consulting one another, moved over to sit on the bottom step of the stairwell, both silently wiping the blood off of their faces, catching their breaths, and getting their pain under control.
Cassandra looked at Stephanie. The words were on her lips that maybe, yknow, we should call a truce?
When, without even looking at her, Stephanie punched Cassandra in the face.
She went for a sitting kick, Cassandra caught it, and returned the favor with a right elbow.
The force of the blow, as well as the trajectory, sent both Cassandra and Stephanie to the floor again, each landing on their fronts.
Slowly but surely, the two of them got to their knees.
And there they were, across from one another. Kneeling and sweating and bleeding and staring through each other.
The two of them gasped for breath, preparing themselves for what was coming.
Stephanie used a healthy portion of her strength to raise her right hand and rain a blow on Cassandra's face.
WHAM!
Her ears started to ring. She took a second to inhale, raised her own right, and…
WHAM!
...sent it to the left side of Stephanie's face. The force sent a rain of sweat and blood from that cut above her eye onto the brick wall. Stephanie breathed in a snortful of air and…
WHAM!
...another right. The pain screamed in the side of Cassandra's face. She let a fleck of spittle fly as she exhaled and…
WHAM!
...another right cross.
Thus were both women near-totally sapped of their energy. They both fell forward into each others' shoulders, forming a human teepee.
They both exhaled stale breath, seeped sweat, poured blood into the left shoulders of each others' shirts.
Cassandra felt pressure building into her shoulder from Stephanie's head, and decided to apply some of her own.
Both women used their heads as leverage on the others' bodies to bring themselves to their feet.
Then they pushed off, each taking a wobbly stance. Both of their shirts were soaked in sweat, both of their faces were dabbed in blood, and both looked at each other through half-closed eyes.
Cassandra seemed to come to an understanding. And she could see that same understanding in Stephanie's eyes.
They each had one more move left in them.
But when it came to sheer strength and speed… Cassandra Wayne would win every time.
Cassandra broke into a sprint with her forearm up before Stephanie could even lift her hands. They collided, and Cassandra slammed Stephanie into the brick wall behind her.
She pinned Stephanie against the wall, and Stephanie clawed at the forearm at her collar bone.
"Stephanie," Cassandra said. "It's over."
Stephanie put her foot against the wall for leverage. She groaned as she tried to push off, but Cassandra shoved her back.
"Enough!" she said.
Stephanie turned red, and started screaming as she tried to push herself against Cassandra's forearm, but Cassandra shoved her against the wall yet again, silencing her.
It seemed that there was simply no defeating Stephanie Brown. At least not all the way. Cassandra could break all four of her limbs, and Stephanie would use her chin to crawl toward her and escalate things.
There were people who would destroy themselves for no greater reason than simply to prove a point. Stephanie Brown was one of those people. And Cassandra Wayne was not.
So, after a brief consultation between herself and the congressional leaders and Joint Chiefs of Staff in her mind, Cassandra opted to drop an atomic bomb.
She leaned in next to the ear of the struggling Stephanie, and in as even and level a voice as she could manage, said:
"Steph… We both know that you're fighting me now because you couldn't fuck me when you were eighteen."
It was a low blow, to be sure. And unlike Stephanie's accusation in the apartment above about how the world would have been a better place if Cassandra had just dropped her father when she was nine… this was the God's honest truth. Or at least the truth as far as Cassandra saw it.
But it ended the fight.
Stephanie's hands dropped from Cassandra's forearm. And as soon as Cassandra was satisfied that there was going to be no more further violence, she stepped away.
They took this opportunity to use the sleeves of their shirts to mop up the blood and sweat on their faces… and pointedly not look at each other.
The screaming match stage had ended. Now, too, did the fist fight stage. Which meant that both Cassandra Wayne and Stephanie Brown were firmly in the clutches of the mortifying embarrassment stage.
Cassandra felt every last bit the cad. The heel. The moustache-twirling villain who tied chicks to railroad tracks and popped childrens' balloons with lit cigars. She had just wadded up fourteen years of Stephanie's frustration and regret, and threw it back at her in the form of a ninety-mile-an-hour slider.
But it needed to be done.
And now that it was out in the open air, hopefully… hopefully… Stephanie would be able to see that.
They were both silent for a long time. But it was Cassandra who chanced the initial glance, and spoke first.
"Steph?"
Stephanie neither looked at her, nor said anything.
"Steph," Cassandra said again.
Stephanie chanced a glance out of the corner of the eye that had a fresh bead of blood coming from the eyebrow above.
Cassandra closed her eyes, sighed, and collected her thoughts.
"I didn't know I had it in me to be interested in another person," Cassandra said, "until I was seventeen years old, and I had a sex dream about Dick Grayson. I asked myself some questions, and I got myself some answers."
Stephanie gave a small, near-imperceptible nod.
"And I didn't know I could be girlfriend material," Cassandra said, "until I was eighteen, and Conner Kent sat on the couch in the top floor of the Clock Tower and told me I had a nice ass."
Stephanie let off a grunt of laughter.
"I asked myself some more questions," Cassandra said, trying not to smile at the memory. "And I got myself some more answers."
More silence from the both of them as Cassandra wound herself up.
"Then I turned nineteen," Cassandra said. "And Selina tells me that that the best friend I ever had, then or now, that Stephanie Brown was in love with me."
Stephanie took that as her cue to look at the floor again. Cassandra took a step toward her.
"Steph… What questions do you think I asked myself? What… what answers do you think I got?"
Stephanie took a deep breath, and chanced another look at Cassandra.
"I met your ex-girlfriend," Stephanie said. "At the wake. Violet Paige."
Cassandra instinctively said what she always did once she heard that anyone had met Violet.
"Yeah, I'm sorry about that."
Both women let out lame gusts of laughter before they found the floor the most interesting thing in the world, they both kept staring at it so much.
But Cassandra chanced the glance again, and took a step forward.
"If anyone were to ask me," Cassandra said, "what the most pivotal point in my life was, it wasn't killing that man in Macau. It wasn't becoming a superhero. Christ, it wasn't even being given The Bat."
Stephanie made tentative eye contact.
"It was the first time Babs took me down to the Batcave," Cassandra said. "I was small, I was malnourished, and my arm was in a cast from punching some dude too hard."
Progress was being made. Stephanie actually smiled. Cassandra took another step forward.
"I walk in with Babs," Cassandra said, "and there was the present and the future of the people who protect and defend this city. They all knew me just as 'Orphan.' They were all scared of me. They all pitied me… Except one."
Stephanie made full eye contact now. She stood up straight as Cassandra took another step.
"The most… signature moment of my life," Cassandra said, "was when Spoiler, when Stephanie Brown stepped out of that crowd… with a smile on her face, without a care in the world… and signed my cast."
Now it was Cassandra's turn to avert her gaze. She'd given away too much.
"You, uh… You made an impression… A big one… Is what I'm saying."
Cassandra felt fingers softly touch the side of her face. Stephanie had closed the gap between them without Cassandra even hearing or sensing it. As Cassandra turned her head to look Stephanie in the eye, Stephanie's other hand gently touched the other side of Cassandra's face.
Stephanie leaned in with her eyes closed.
Cassandra had no game plan.
And their lips met.
Any token bit of protest on Cassandra's part vanished in an instant, if it had even been there at all. Every molecule of Cassandra Wayne's conscious being dashed itself into non-existence against the fullness and warmth of Stephanie Brown's lips.
The kiss broke, and the two of them rested their foreheads against one another, breathing into one another's mouths.
And that's when Stephanie went in for seconds.
This second kiss was harder than the first. Stephanie's tongue broke into Cassandra's mouth and conducted a full inspection. Cassandra's tongue aggressively followed it around, asking for the search warrant.
The hands that had been gently grasping the sides of Cassandra's face turned rigid. They trailed down her cheeks, down her neck, down to the collar of her shirt. With a sharp tug, Stephanie ripped open Cassandra's button-up flannel.
Buttons flew everywhere. One of them hit the metal railing of the stairwell with a PINNNNNNGGGGG! that echoed off the brick walls.
Cassandra took a moment to reflect that she really liked that shirt, before she figured out that it was soaked in blood and sweat, and probably ruined anyway.
Stephanie looked down at Cassandra's chest, and Cassandra's eyes eventually followed.
What was there was a taut grid of abdominal muscles glazed with a near-mirror shine of sweat, dotted here and there with a larger pearl of perspiration. Angry red welts that would be turning purple soon enough… and two small breasts whose modesty was protected by a forest green bra.
That neither the Good Lord Jesus nor the Great Old One Cthulhu had seen fit to stock her top shelf all the way was the only source of Cassandra Wayne's physical insecurity. So the fact that Stephanie was just staring at her tits… and not saying anything… did not do wonders for her self-esteem.
Maybe… Maybe if I stand up straight and take deep breaths, they'll just look bigger?
Finally, Stephanie said something.
"Where'd all the scars go?"
Cassandra sighed with relief. "I got them removed."
"You did?"
"Yeah… I mean, my dad gave them to me and they just weren't me anymore, y'know?"
"Chicks dig scars, though."
Cassandra blinked at her uncomprehendingly. "Wow. If only there were a lesbian handy in the last fourteen years who COULD HAVE FUCKING TOLD ME THAT!"
Stephanie shrugged. "Eh, to Hell with it."
She bent her head down, and started licking the sweat off of the meager plushness of Cassandra's right breast mere centimeters above the bra line.
It was at this point that it occurred to Cassandra that normal people did not act this way, and that maybe the two of them would be better served to discuss their unanswered questions and pent-up passions that spanned a decade-and-a-half over a simple conversation.
But they weren't normal people, and all that came out of Cassandra's mouth was a low, husky "Huhhhhhhhhhhhh."
Stephanie drew both the shirt and the bra strap down around Cassandra's right shoulder, and started dragging her teeth along the now fully exposed collar bone toward the throat. Cassandra reached out for Stephanie's belt buckle, and tried to gain entry into Fort Knox.
But her fingers were being COMPLETE FUCKING IDIOTS RIGHT NOW! The index finger of her right hand tried to dig in between the steel buckle and the leather strap, and it just… wasn't… working!
Cassandra cursed her unlearned and ignorant digits. She needed to get into Stephanie Brown's pants! She was on official Gotham City crimefighting business! The antidote was in there! The launch codes! A LONG LOST SILVER NITRATE PRINT OF LON CHANEY'S SILENT MASTERPIECE LONDON AFTER MIDNIGHT!
She gave up. She let out a frustrated grunt that was not at all cavemanly, thank you very much, before stooping down. She wrapped her right arm around Stephanie's firm, muscular thighs and hoisted her up over her shoulder.
Stephanie let out a pathetic groan. "Uuuuuuagggghhhhhh."
It occurred to Cassandra far too late that the two of them had spent an ungodly amount of time using each others' stomachs as punching bags and soccer balls, so resting Stephanie's gut over Cassandra's lean, muscular shoulder just might have been a bit on the painful side.
"You okay back there?" Cassandra asked.
"No," Stephanie said weakly.
Whereupon Cassandra felt ten fingers snake their way beneath the waistbands of both her dirty gray sweatpants and her sweat-sogged white underwear, followed by two palms resting on both sides of her rear end.
"I'm better now though," Stephanie said. "Just in case you were curious."
Cassandra nodded in satisfaction. She began her march up the hard concrete steps that the two of them had tumbled painfully down just minutes before.
She stopped halfway.
"Why'd you stop?" Stephanie asked.
Cassandra was so… everything … that she was literally panting. She had no faculty at present to lie, or to make herself appear any less the dumbass than she felt.
"I… I, uh… I forgot where my apartment is."
Don't worry.
They made it to Cassandra's apartment.
Eventually.