Chapter 19: The Cure for the Common Motherfucker
"I'm sore," Cassandra said.
"From what?" asked Stephanie.
"Pick … literally anything that's happened over the last two hours, and you'll have your answer."
After Cassandra Wayne and Stephanie Brown had their anxious, sweaty, marginally painful, neurotic, long-in-the-offing ways with each other on the hallway floor...and again on Cassandra's living room floor… and yet a third time on Cassandra's bed just to lend the proceedings an air of authenticity, they both decided that a bath was in order. After the mutual applications of both Neosporin and Band-Aids, Cassandra filled the tub, and in they went.
It would be the second time Cassandra bathed that evening.
Cassandra had had Kate's old tub moved out, and a five thousand dollar black freestanding tub moved in. It had been advertised "for the larger bather," but Cassandra just wanted the extra room. Both for her own comfort and, well, for nights like these, should they happen.
The water was just this side of too hot for both of them. The window behind the tub as well as the bathroom mirror had fogged. The perfunctory reciprocal scrubbing and cleansing over with, the two of them just sat and soaked. Cassandra was the little spoon in this equation, sitting in front of Stephanie in water that came halfway up her sternum. She luxuriated in feeling the slick warmth of Stephanie's chest against her back, and successfully fought off the temptation to just fall asleep.
"Even if I didn't know you had an ex-girlfriend," Stephanie said, "I'd be correct in assuming I wouldn't be the first woman you slept with, wouldn't I?"
"Indeed you would."
"So… How deep in the batting order am I, if you don't mind my asking?"
Cassandra sighed, and said "Fourth."
"Not entirely unimpressive."
"I'd like to think so."
"You mind on spilling on one-through-three?"
"As long as it doesn't leave this tub."
"Like I'm gonna tell on the only person who's beat me in a fight in fourteen years."
Cassandra stretched her back against Stephanie's chest, heard her spine pop, and then resettled.
"One-through-three," Cassandra said. "Bear in mind this is not in chronological order."
"What order is it in?"
"Ascending quality."
"I can dig it."
Cassandra rubbed the side of her sore nose before she began.
"Coming in dead last," she said, "was the first girl I ever slept with. I'd been broken up with Conner for a few months, and I was in LA on Justice League business, scouting out some shady Cadmus activity. The order came down that I be partnered up for the night, which meant I had to share a hotel room… with Crush."
Stephanie gasped. "Nice. She was fine back in the day. I saw her at the wake today, and by God she's fine now, too."
Cassandra shrugged.
"What puts her dead last, though?"
"Crush," Cassandra said, "is gentle."
"Hmm," said Stephanie in reply. "Are… are we thinking about the same Crush?"
"There's only one."
"Half-Czarnian? Daughter of Lobo? White skin? Red eyes? Black undercut? So burly and butch that… that…"
"That every time she cracks her knuckles, a U-Haul repairs itself?"
"Exactly," Stephanie said. "Gentle? Her?"
"Dare I say a cuddler."
"That is… that is actually distressing. This place have a fainting couch? A fan? Some pearls to clutch?"
"Don't get me wrong," Cassandra said. "She wasn't bad. She does gentle rather well and the scenery was incredible, but… You know that old saying? 'I ordered filet mignon, and got a burger instead?' Well, with Crush, it was the opposite. I got filet mignon. Filet mignon's great. But there are days when you just need that burger."
"I have a couple of hours experience that tells me Cassandra Wayne does not do gentle."
"Oh, Cassandra Wayne does gentle," she said. "I just need to be in the mood for gentle. But when you buy a ticket for a Quentin Tarantino movie, a G rating is gonna put you off."
"Fair," Stephanie said. "How long did the Crush experiment last?"
"Just the one night."
Cassandra could feel Stephanie nodding behind her.
"Okay," Stephanie asked. "Who's next?"
"Violet's next."
"Burly pale brunette with black undercut part two."
"I don't have a type, if that's what you're getting at."
"How did that whole thing get started?"
"She fought crime in my city," Cassandra said. "But she didn't like the support system that was in place. Didn't like what me and The Signal were trying to build. She tried to start shit, I kicked her ass, and then she just started… following me around."
"Don't make me identify with Violet Paige."
"I dated her for eight months," Cassandra said. "The longest relationship I have ever had with another human being that isn't named Conner Kent."
"And what puts her on this spot on the list?"
"Violet is a badass," Cassandra said. "And one hell of a Cape. But she was born rich, and it shows."
"How does it show?"
"It showed," Cassandra said, "when she just kept lying back and expecting me to do all the work."
"Oof."
"When she was motivated, she could be inspired, but when she wasn't she wasn't, she was the next best thing to a mannequin. Again, beautiful girl, tall, fun to play with, but it would have helped if she decided to play with me back. Y'know, you'd think a six-foot-tall Goth chick with super strength and a chip on her shoulder would have a power game, but it just shows to go you."
"How did the relationship with her start?" Stephanie asked.
"She followed me around," Cassandra said. "Like a puppy. Kinda hard to resist."
"And what ended it?"
"Also like a puppy, she kept shitting in my shoes. Not literally, but… it was like she was trying to upset me. Just so I'd go away, and then she'd make a big deal of how she was martyring herself to get me to come back. I just had enough of it after eight months. I swear, she's gonna find herself up against someone who's hard to piss off, and she's not gonna know what to do with herself."
"And we're down to contestant number three," Stephanie said.
Cassandra leaned forward a little bit to look back at Stephanie, before leaning back again.
"Wow," Stephanie said. "This oughta be good."
Cassandra took a deep breath… then another… before she said:
"Harper."
She felt Stephanie go rigid behind her. Cassandra leaned forward again, craning her neck to get another look.
Stephanie's face was a mask of pure shock.
"No… fucking… way," she said.
Cassandra leaned back again, and pinched the bridge of her nose… but her nose was still sore from the toolbox, and she stopped.
"Please tell me it wasn't while she was married to Tim."
"Two days after the divorce was finalized," Cassandra said. "She came over because we hadn't hung out in a while. We sat, we drank, we watched TV. And I noticed that she kept getting closer and closer on the couch, and…"
"And?"
"And… I didn't want to be rude."
Stephanie giggled. Some silence before she asked:
"Was she any good?"
"Oh, hell yes."
Stephanie broke into full-throated laughter.
"Now Harper," Cassandra said as she fought the smile on her own face, "Harper has a power game."
"So… So that only lasted one night?"
"Yeah," Cassandra said. "I think she wanted to get back to being single as soon as possible, and I was the nearest warm body that she trusted."
"So things weren't weird for the two of you after that?"
"It was only weird," Cassandra said, "in that it wasn't weird."
"What does that mean?" Stephanie asked.
"She never mentioned it. Not once. Everything went back to normal the next time I saw her. If the nail marks on my back didn't take three weeks to heal, I would have sworn I dreamed it."
Silence followed, though not an awkward one. Stephanie took this pause to run her fingers through Cassandra's short wet hair. Were Cassandra a cat, she'd have purred, but she was human, so it was a near-run thing.
"So I take it Conner was your first time?" Stephanie asked.
"Yeah."
"What was it like?"
"Mind if I ask why you're curious about any human being losing their virginity to a dude?"
"When it's you," Stephanie said.
Cassandra thought that was fair enough.
"It, uh… It happened a couple of months after you left," Cassandra said. "He was… the best boyfriend. He gave me all the time I needed. He took me to a Smallville Crows football game to take my mind off of it. Then we went driving in his pick-up to take my mind off of it. We parked on top of this hill and looked at the stars in the flatbed."
"And then he… did that to take your mind off of me?"
"No," Cassandra said. "I made the first move."
"Really?"
Cassandra nodded.
"Why?" Stephanie asked.
"Because I wanted him, I knew he wanted me, and I saw no reason to put it off any longer. I got some protection from Harper beforehand just in case. Just in case happened."
"How does sex with a half-Kryptonian clone even work?"
"Same way it does with a human," Cassandra said. "We used two of the three condoms."
"I can tell you're more into marathons than sprints."
"It was more of a tactile thing, y'know? Just… initially feeling each other out. We got better the more we asked what the other wanted. Anyway, I got no complaints from him," Cassandra said. "Or you."
Stephanie leaned forward a bit, and lightly kissed the back of Cassandra's slick right ear.
"We were beneath blankets in the flatbed of the truck," Cassandra said. "We spent all night under the stars. I woke up with the sunrise, and saw that the truck overlooked this massive field of tall, yellow, dying grass that came up to my shoulder. It was warm in Kansas that December, so I get out from under the blankets and walk into the grass. Not a stitch on me. Because I didn't want anything getting between me and that… that flat expanse of infinite golden nothing."
Cassandra closed her eyes, chased the memory, and sighed when it got away.
"When I get too old or too broken down to put a cape on," Cassandra said, "I'm retiring in Kansas. It's the most beautiful place on Earth."
Stephanie flicked her index finger up and down in the water next to Cassandra's elbow. "So… Do you still love Conner?"
"Yes."
"Okay… Are you still…"
"In love with Conner?" Cassandra asked. "We needed watch other to become who we needed to become. Then we became who we needed to become, and we didn't need each other anymore. No, I am not in love with Conner Kent."
Stephanie was quiet for a bit. Cassandra wanted to turn around and see the look on her face, but even practically sitting in her naked lap in a bathtub, it seemed like an invasion of privacy.
"So you got one of those magical first times I hear so much about," Stephanie finally said.
"I know how lucky I am," Cassandra said. "How about you?"
"My first time?"
"Yeah."
"It's not much."
"Don't care."
"Okay," Stephanie said. "It was about… month four in England. I was nineteen, but all my Natalie Venora paperwork said I was twenty-one. I go to this punk show in Sheffield…"
"You like punk?"
"Not really. But it was something to do. I go inside and see this bored-looking chick about my age wearing these plaid pants with straps on them, ass-kicking boots. Nothing on upstairs except a cheap black bra, and she had a green mohawk. She's standing at the edge of the mosh pit looking bored, and… and her version of pretty. I walk up to her, she takes my hand, and she leads me to the foulest-smelling ladies room I've ever been into. She locks the stall behind us, and we each do a line of coke off the lid of the toilet tank. And while I'm still reeling from my first-ever experience with hard drugs, she unbuckles my jeans, pulls down my panties, and makes me see stars."
"What was her name?"
"Didn't catch it," Stephanie said.
"Oh."
"Don't get mopey," Stephanie said. "It may not have been magical Kansas fields, but at least it was fun. And it was a learning experience."
"What did you learn?"
"I learned," Stephanie said, "to be picky."
And the hand that had been scratching Cassandra's head left her scalp. It reappeared before Cassandra, the index finger coming down on her forehead where her hairline began.
Down it came, tracing a path down her moist forehead, down to the tip of her tiny nose, down to her lips, and Cassandra reflexively kissed it. Further down now. Down the throat. Down to that little hollow where the left and right sides of her collar bone met.
She's… She's not going for Round Four, is she?
The journey of Stephanie's finger continued south. Beneath the hot soapy water and between Cassandra's breasts. Down the latticework of abs.
Well, if there's gonna be a Round Four, there's gonna be a Round Four. I didn't let her beat me in a fight, and she's not beating me here, either.
The finger circled the navel before it decided to descend. Cassandra's body loosened. Her eyes rolled back in her head.
Please let there be a Round Four.
Down that short and smooth patch of skin beneath the belly button that leeeeed toooooo theeeee…
"I'm hungry," Stephanie said.
Then she got out of the bathtub.
Cassandra instantly went rigid in the water. A war crime had just been committed. And should The Hague find Stephanie Brown guilty of the atrocity in which she had just engaged, then Cassandra Wayne was bound by honor to be the one who pulled the lever on the guillotine.
She jerked her head to the right, and saw that Stephanie had already left the bathroom. Cassandra had been robbed of seeing her toned, wet, naked body leaving through the door. It was something that Cassandra would have considered a consolation prize.
Stephanie came back in with a burgundy towel wrapped over her chest, and working yet another burgundy towel through her hair to dry it out. That second towel must have concealed Stephanie's vision, because she started asking questions like nothing was wrong.
"Is Tammy's Diner still open?" Stephanie asked as she dried her hair. "You know, that place on…"
The towel parted, and Stephanie saw her.
"What's wrong?" she asked.
Cassandra's face just… felt like it bore a pathetic expression. Her mouth kept opening and closing as her brain tried to settle on something to say, be it "Dude!" or "Bitch?" or "ROUND FOUR!"
But nothing came out.
At which point Stephanie smiled, and knelt down by the rim of the tub, grunting in soreness as she did so.
Cassandra noticed the smile on Stephanie's face. It… did not bode well for her.
"Aww," Stephanie said, "it breaks the heart seeing a girl dying of thirst like that."
Stephanie reached out and turned on the water.
The cold water.
"GYAAAAAAAAAAH!"
Cassandra scrambled out of the tub, her naked, pruny, bruised, drenched body hitting the tile floor with a Looney Tunes SPLAT!
She groaned.
And Stephanie laughed.
TAMMY'S DINER
Stephanie's clothes being in the state they were, coated in blood, sweat, and splinters, she had to make do with what Cassandra had around the apartment. Or at least what she had around the apartment that fit her.
She did not mind wearing a pair of Conner's old jeans. She did, however, mind wearing a pair of Conner's old boxers, facilitating her decision to grab a pair of Cassandra's gray gym shorts as a substitute. Up top she wore a baggy yellow and white hockey jersey that Cassandra had in her bedroom closet, bearing the logo of the Letterkenny Shamrockettes.
Completing the ensemble, she wore Cassandra's Pittsburgh Pirates baseball cap.
Cassandra herself in a pair of black slacks and a loose yellow sweater beneath her black leather jacket, they both left the RH Kane Building and marched the two blocks down Founders Island's foggy streets to Tammy's Diner.
Tammy's Diner was a diner that knew it was a diner. It had found that difficult middle-ground by looking like it was trying to hard to be 50s retro, while the light air of genuine shabbiness lent it some semblance of authenticity. Tammy's Diner had the ambiance of an abandoned theme park ride that had never seen a paying customer. Thus, anyone with taste found it interesting.
Over in the far booth at the front of the diner, next to the window, Cassandra and Stephanie sat. And Cassandra was tuning up a small black gizmo no smaller or less sleek than a Zippo lighter.
"What's that?" Stephanie asked.
"This," Cassandra said, "is the Cone of Silence."
"'The Cone of Silence?'"
Cassandra nodded. "It dampens sound three feet outside its radius. You and I can hear each other, the waitress can hear us when she takes our order, but no one outside of three feet can hear whatever we talk about."
"Nifty," Stephanie said.
They both retrieved menus from the little nook at their table next to the napkins. Cassandra got her Reading Glasses out of her leather jacket, put them on, and weighed her dinner options.
"That's nice to see," Stephanie said.
Cassandra looked up at her.
"You," Stephanie said. "Reading."
Cassandra smiled, took off her glasses, and handed them to Stephanie across the table.
"Try them on," she said.
Stephanie took the Reading Glasses and put them on. At first Stephanie's eyes went wide, then they closed in pain.
"Ow," Stephanie said, handing the glasses back. "What the fuck?"
"I have dyslexia," Cassandra said, taking the glasses from Stephanie's returning hand. "WayneTech mapped the speech center of my brain, and those glasses unscramble all the words I have a hard time reading. The lenses in my Black Bat mask have the same software. No more letters moving around, no more reading the same line of text over and over. But it looks like ass to anyone who isn't me."
Stephanie, rubbing her eyes, said "Sweetness."
"This tech is gonna help kids with their disabilities the same way it helped me with mine," Cassandra said as she put them back on. "Being patient zero for this really is one of the highlights of my life."
"And to think, I learned the other four languages the old fashioned way."
"You speak five languages?"
Stephanie nodded. "English, Russian, Mandarin, Arabic, and French. A couple of those were a pain in the ass. How 'bout you? You still speaking the one?"
"Oh, I'm bilingual."
"English and…"
"ASL."
Stephanie blinked at her.
Cassandra put the menu down on the table, freed up her fingers, and signed:
"Fuck you, it counts."
Just then, the waitress appeared at the table. Cassandra looked at her, and she looked back.
The waitress (whose teal uniform bore no nametag) put her pad and her pen in the side pockets of her white apron, and she signed the words:
"You have a dirty mouth."
"I can't dispute that," Cassandra said aloud.
The waitress got her pen and pad back out, and blew a lock of mousy brown hair out of one hazel eye. "Do the two of you mind if I asked what happened to you before I take your order?"
Cassandra and Stephanie looked at each other's lumpy, bruised faces.
Stephanie, looking down at her menu, said "We got mugged."
"Don't worry," Cassandra said. "We mugged them right the hell back."
The waitress didn't say anything, other than "What can I getcha?"
"I would like," Cassandra said, "the double decker cheeseburger with fries, and… a chocolate milkshake, please."
"And for you?" the waitress asked Stephanie.
Still with her head down, Stephanie said "Waffles with a side of bacon and an iced tea, if you'd be so kind."
Cassandra and Stephanie said their thank-yous, and off the waitress walked across the black and white tiled floor. Cassandra noticed that Stephanie still kept her head down, looking at the table.
Then Stephanie collapsed into a giggle-fit.
"What?" Cassandra asked as she took off her Reading Glasses and put them back in her jacket.
"I…" Stephanie began, trying to get a handle on herself. "I didn't brush my teeth before we came here…. I had to fight off the urge to get in that waitress' face and be all 'Hhhhiiiiiiiii.'"
More giggles. Cassandra, however, was confused.
"You didn't brush your teeth?" she asked.
"Nope."
"Why not?"
"Because you only have the one toothbrush in your apartment."
"And?"
"And you know where my mouth has been."
"Objection withdrawn."
More giggles from Stephanie. Even Cassandra had to smile.
Once she got herself under control, Stephanie asked "So what other WayneTech toys is the Black Bat of Gotham playing with these days?"
"Well," Cassandra said, "Luke Fox is trying to sell me on using a nanite slime."
"A what?"
"It starts in the form of this cylinder," Cassandra said, "about the size of a tube of tennis balls. Once activated by fingerprints and a verbal command, it collapses into a thick liquid state and bonds with the wearer, spreading all over them, becoming a skin-tight suit of armor with radio capability. Waterproof, bulletproof, radiation-proof. Electricity's a little iffy, though."
"Sounds cool," Stephanie said. "But… do you have to be naked to use it? If you put this nanite slime on, what happens to your clothes?"
"Actually," Cassandra said, "It… um…"
The waitress came by with Cassandra's shake and Stephanie's iced tea. They said their thank yous, and the waitress departed.
Cassandra took the wrapper off her straw. "The slime compresses clothes down to the molecular level, maps them, and then decompresses them once you give the command to remove the slime. No, you don't have to be naked."
"Tight."
"I don't want to use it, though."
"Why not?"
Cassandra swallowed some thick, chocolatey goodness. "There's this saying Bruce has. 'It's justice. There is no cheating.' But that slime pushes it. It makes you stronger and faster. But the body I have, I worked hard on."
Stephanie fingered the Band-Aid over her eyebrow and said "I have noticed so many ways that that's true."
And Cassandra didn't know whether or not to be embarrassed. Or by what.
"If I had something like that," Stephanie said, "I'd use it in a heartbeat. It's like… It's like a Venom Symbiote."
"Don't call it that."
"But it is, though."
"I know, but don't call it that."
Stephanie smiled. She gripped the straw of her drink between her index and middle fingers, as though it were a cigarette, and drank some tea.
"You said working on those glasses was a highlight of your life," Stephanie said. "Care to name any others?"
"How about you?"
"Fourteen years of hotel rooms and bodyguard duty… There. All done."
Cassandra smiled.
"Okay," she said. "Ummm… I made it to outer space."
"So did I," Stephanie said. "Aquaman's wake on the Watchtower, remember?"
"Yeah, but not to another planet though."
"Which one?"
"Rann. Power Girl and I tracked down Rogol Zaar. She beat the shit out of him. I watched. It's pretty. The planet, not Power Girl. Although..."
"Anything else?"
"Became an actor."
"That you're going to have to explain to me."
"You have a theory?"
"I theorize," Stephanie said, "that you spend so much time skulking in the shadows that you want a safe way to be the center of attention."
"Nope."
"Then by all means elaborate."
Cassandra shrugged. "Acting," she said, "is an act of forced understanding."
Stephanie furrowed her brow. "Hmmm."
"A couple of years back," Cassandra said, "I played Harley Quinn in a show we did over at the Beacon. Now I don't know if it's occurred to you, but I am nothing like Harley Quinn. So I have to do guesswork. I have to do research. I have to be creative. I have to have empathy. I have to understand. Because if I can understand someone like Harley Quinn…"
She pointed out the window to the foggy bit of street outside.
"...then I can understand any one of them."
Stephanie had a ponderous, serious look on her face as she said "I'm sorry, I'm still stuck on you playing Harley Quinn."
Cassandra wadded up her straw wrapper and threw it at Stephanie.
"Yeah," a smiling Cassandra said. "I got nominated for an award for it, and…"
"So when you played her," Stephanie said, "did you…"
"Have to wear hot pants, platform boots, and a halter top? Slather my face in clown makeup? Yes I did."
"I see," Stephanie said. "And are there pictures of this?"
Cassandra made like she was going to throw her shake-slathered straw at her. Stephanie held her at bay with her two index fingers pressed against each other in the form of a crucifix.
"Okay," Stephanie said. "Pie-in-the-sky pick for character you've always wanted to play. Go."
"That's easy," said Cassandra. "I have two."
"Lay 'em out."
"The first is Richard III."
"I saw the Ian McKellen movie in history class one time."
"Did you like it?"
"Couldn't understand a word."
"And the second one," Cassandra said, "is The Fool."
"The Fool?"
"From King Lear."
"Didn't I see a King Lear poster on your living room wall?" Stephanie asked.
Cassandra swallowed some shake. "You did. I played Goneril."
"I hear there's medication for that."
"Yeah, I made that joke too."
"So what makes The Fool so appealing?"
"Because he's the smart one," Cassandra said. "He walks around, telling Lear how bad he's fucking up to his face, and they keep him around because he's just The Fool. There in his funny shoes and his motley. They just think he's funny, when what he's really doing is telling the truth."
Stephanie stared at her with a concerned look on her face.
"It's a jester's hat," Cassandra said. "With the little bells."
"Yeah," Stephanie said. "I know what a motley is. It's just…"
"What?"
Steph, still with that concerned look on her face, said "I'm not Harley Quinn."
"Dear God, I hope not."
"But I'm gonna attempt some psychoanalysis anyway."
Cassandra succumbed to the strong suspicion that Stephanie had something interesting to say. "Okay. Shoot."
Stephanie opened her mouth, then closed it. She repeated the act twice more as she fished for something to say.
"I've been away for fourteen years," Stephanie said at last. "I leave when you're one way, and I come back when you're another. I missed the subtle gradients of change, the gradual, um… whatever, right?"
"I'm with you so far."
"That means," Stephanie said, "I see things about you that others might have missed. Because you changed so gradually over the years that they just didn't notice."
"What, um… What do you see?"
"Well," Stephanie said, "I saw your GED on the wall in your living room. You got that when you were twenty-nine."
Cassandra shifted uncomfortably in her seat. This could go somewhere she didn't like. "Yeah?"
"But when I met you," Stephanie said, "you couldn't read, speak, or talk. And you were seventeen."
"Okay."
"Which means… technically… that you got your GED when you were twelve."
Cassandra blinked.
"This also means," Stephanie said, "again technically… that you're a fucking genius."
Now it was Cassandra's turn to gulp like a fish. She had no idea what to say.
"But when Bruce, Selina, Tim, everyone else looks at you, they don't see that, do they? They see Little Miss Badass who can't read or write or talk, no matter how much you improve. Think you might be drawn to The Fool in King Lear… because you are The Fool in King Lear?"
Cassandra tried to filter her thoughts, but nothing particularly enlightening or even legible came to the surface.
"If I say yes," Cassandra said, "that's gonna sound fucked up in ways I can't even comprehend."
"Okay," Stephanie said, before taking a draw off her tea. "Tell me something else that happened to you."
"Alright," Cassandra said. "Umm… Tim and I found the bunker I was born in. The place David Cain… trained me."
"You mean 'tortured and abused,' right?"
"I do," Cassandra said. "There were some rudimentary files in there. I found out my actual birthday, which is January twenty-sixth."
"Happy shitload of birthdays."
"And it's just nice to know the actual place I was born."
"Which is?"
Cassandra knew she'd have to get here eventually, but it made the disclosure nonetheless embarrassing. She felt the heat rush to her cheeks.
"What?" asked Stephanie. "What's wrong with where you were born?"
"I was born," Cassandra said, "in Moscow."
Stephanie scrunched up her face in confusion. "You're Russian?"
"No," Cassandra said. "I was born in an underground bunker fifteen miles outside of Moscow… Arkansas."
Stephanie just stared at Cassandra.
And that's when the laughter started.
Huge peals of near-deafening laughter that caused Stephanie Brown to turn red instantly. She put her head down on the table and started banging on it with her fist so hard that little drops of iced tea spilled from her glass.
"Stephanie…"
More laughter.
"Stephanie, it's gonna be weird for our waitress if she looks over here and can't hear you acting a damn fool because of the Cone of Silence."
Agonizing seconds later, Stephanie had calmed herself enough for some simulacrum of conventional speech.
"Oh… Ohhhhhh my Gooooooooood, you're a hillbilly!"
"I am not," Cassandra said. "I'm a classically trained Shakespearian actor who's the adopted daughter of Bruce Wayne."
"You're right," Stephanie said. "I'm sorry… You're a hillwilliam!"
Yet again, more laughter.
Cassandra rolled her eyes, and tried to wait her out.
But dear God, it went on a long time.
"Stephanie," Cassandra said. "If you don't stop laughing, I won't tell you about how I met my birth mother."
Stephanie stopped laughing. Her eyes went wide, and her mouth went into a perfect O shape.
She put her forearms on the table. "Details," Stephanie said. "I demand details. How did you find her?"
"I didn't," Cassandra said. "She found me."
Stephanie narrowed her eyes in apparent curiosity.
"My birth mother," Cassandra said "was born Sandra Wu-San. I did some digging, and she's of Chinese descent. Just in case you were wondering the answer to the Cassandra Cain Nationality Question."
"Huh," Stephanie said. "You know, I never asked that question at all? I… I have no idea what kind of white person that makes me."
"Anyway," Cassandra said, "Sandra and her twin sister Carolyn were born in Detroit."
"Wow. That's two generations of women with just… just embarrassing places of birth."
"Stephanie…"
"I'll laugh at you later, go on."
"They were martial arts prodigies," Cassandra said. "They toured the country from a young age performing sparring exhibitions of their skill. One of the people who attended these exhibitions was an assassin named David Cain."
"Shit."
"David Cain saw something in Sandra. So one night, he snuck into the hotel the Wu-San sisters were staying at, and murdered Carolyn Wu-San in cold blood."
Stephanie hunched over the table, getting into it.
"Sandra went on the path of revenge," Cassandra said. "Cut a bloody swath through criminal underworlds across the entire globe. Dozens, hundreds of goons and assassins died by her bare hands, until one day she got word of David Cain staying in a cabin on the banks of the Pardu River in Estonia."
Cassandra took a sip of her shake.
"Off to Estonia Sandra went, trudging through waist-deep snow. She found the cabin where Cain was staying, and turned the door to splinters with just one punch. Sandra saw David Cain sitting in a chair by a roaring fire… got down on her knees… and thanked him."
"Thanked him?" Stephanie asked, her voice almost cracking from the incredulity.
Cassandra nodded. "See, Sandra learned something killing all those people. Training with Carolyn had held her back. It took murder to make her truly great, to make her a warrior beyond her wildest dreams. She had gotten down on her knees as Sandra Wu-San, but she got back up again… as Lady Shiva."
Stephanie just… turned… white.
"You… You're Lady Shiva's daughter?"
Cassandra nodded yet again. "I see you've heard of Lady Shiva."
"I've heard horror stories of Lady Shiva," Stephanie said. "I've heard of her slaughtering entire platoons of armed commandos with just a sword. I've heard of her sending the severed heads of people sent to kill her back to the men who hired them. There's an unwritten rule in my line of work: Money's well and good, but if you see Lady Shiva, you run. She's… She's the fucking Boogeyman!"
"The Boogeyman is real," Cassandra said. "And The Boogeyman found me."
Another sip of shake. "She was waiting for me outside of rehearsal for a play one night. Said she knew from just looking at what little video footage there was of Black Bat that I was of her blood, and that she had spent years issuing challenges to the greatest fighters on Earth. Fights to the death. Because only in her death would she accept that her training was complete. So she made me a deal: Meet her at midnight on the roof of the Ace Chemical building and fight her until one of us stayed down for good, or she would kill ten citizens of Gotham City for every day I refused. So… of course, I accepted."
Stephanie's eyes were still wide, and almost unblinking.
"We met on the roof of the Ace Chemical building at midnight," Cassandra said, laying on a bit of flourish to her voice. "We stared each other down. We got into our stances. We charged each other. And then…"
Stephanie was into it. She leaned forward. "And then?"
"And then… Conner flew up behind her at eighty miles an hour and slapped her in the back of the head."
Cassandra had to smile broadly at how obviously let down by this story Stephanie was.
"She was unconscious for ten hours," Cassandra said. "Lost six teeth… She's still in Iron Heights…"
She lost her composure, and now it was Cassandra's turn to start laughing like a crazy person when she said "I don't feel bad at all!"
Her face felt like it was about to explode from the laughter. She managed to open her eyes wide enough to see Stephanie looking at her funny.
"Dude."
"What?"
"The biggest fight of your life, and you had your boyfriend fight it for you?"
"Yup."
"Why?"
Cassandra wiped a laughter-induced tear out of her eye, and said "I thought it would be funny."
"You didn't care to find out which of the two of you was the better fighter?"
"No," Cassandra said, having finally calmed down. "Why would I give a shit about something like that? She was going to kill people and needed to be stopped. I don't care if it was me who stopped her, or if it was Conner. There's more to life than fighting, Steph. It took Mister Mxyzptlk telling me that there were infinite versions of Cassandra Cain out there in the Multiverse for me to realize that I can be and do whatever the hell I want. The world doesn't end at my fist. I didn't become Black Bat to get into pissing matches with every jackass who wanted to test me, blood relation or not. I became Black Bat to help people and save lives."
Stephanie looked like she still had trouble swallowing this.
"Okay," Cassandra said. "Let me put it this way: Lady Shiva was in that bunker in Arkansas giving birth to me thirty-three... almost thirty- four years ago. She knew what was going to happen in there. She could have saved her daughter from years of torture and abuse… and she did nothing. When was the first time I met her? In my late twenties. When she fucking wanted something from me. Killing me or getting killed by me would have given her satisfaction that I was neither obliged nor inclined to give."
She could see that Stephanie was still having trouble with this.
"Still," Stephanie said. "Your mom, and all?"
Cassandra shook her head. "Barbara Gordon is my mom."
And she said it with a finality that impressed even her.
"Look," Cassandra said. "I don't know if all those years spent in that bunker gave me these skills and abilities. And I don't know if I somehow got them genetically from my birth mother. That was David Cain's line of thinking when the two of them conceived me, after all. I live on a planet with Animal-Vegetable-Mineral Man, so I've heard weirder. But what I do know is that Barbara Gordon taught me to read. She taught me how to write, how to talk, how to pick up after myself, how to eat without getting food in my hair, how to use a tampon, and how not to give in to the shitty and angry parts of myself. She taught me how to be a human being. I owe Babs everything. And I don't owe Shiva shit."
And this, seemingly, satisfied Stephanie Brown. She nodded and said "I get it."
"Good."
"You're sassy."
"Thank you."
"You're Arkan-Sassy!"
"Listen here, bitch…"
Stephanie snorted, before she drank some more tea.
"Okay," Stephanie said. "One more thing I'm curious about, before we can talk about… I dunno, movies or whatever."
"Alright."
"You said you became Black Bat to help people and save lives."
"Uh-huh."
"You became Black Bat."
Cassandra nodded.
"But… why not Batman?"
It took a second for Cassandra to register this. Unintelligible words came up her throat, and refused to go any further.
No one in her life had gotten to the heart of the thing she had been thinking about for years. No one except Stephanie.
And Cassandra had to remind herself:
Don't act. React.
"I thought," Stephanie said, "that I would come back here, and Cassandra Cain would be Batwoman… but then I realized you'd never do that. Kate didn't give you Batwoman. Bruce gave you Batman."
She looked out the window and paused for a while.
Still looking, she said "I think… that by the time this city was ready to stop grieving over Game Seven, Batman had gone. Black Bat was in his place. There's a… a hole here that needs to be filled. Black Bat, no matter how amazing she is, ain't gonna cut it. And I think you know it, too. There isn't a whole lot of footage of you out there. Not a lot of stories. You're trying to stay hidden. You're not only not Batman, you don't want anyone else seeing you not being Batman. So the question I have is…"
Stephanie looked at Cassandra.
"What's it gonna take?"
Cassandra Wayne wanted to tell Stephanie Brown the entire truth.
Both of them would have to settle for a sliver of it.
Cassandra just shrugged, and said "When I act like it, I guess."
It was then that their food finally, mercifully, arrived.
"Sorry it took so long," the waitress said.
THE FOUNDERS ISLAND WALGREENS ON PUCKETT STREET
After they were finished eating, Cassandra and Stephanie asked for separate checks. Upon Stephanie's request.
They walked three blocks over to the Walgreens on Puckett Street, so Stephanie could pick up provisions.
A toothbrush, of course.
A tube of lipstick for whatever reason, Cassandra didn't see the color.
And then they went to the liquor aisle.
"Tequila?" Cassandra asked.
"I want to make a margarita before I go to bed… And there's the mix, right there. You like 'em?"
"I'm unopposed."
"Good," Stephanie said. "So you said you have charities?"
"Yup."
"Plural? As in more than one?"
Cassandra nodded, and they began their slow walk down the aisles looking for either nothing or everything.
"There's The Pennyworth Fund," she said, "offering arts education for disadvantaged kids."
"High-minded," Stephanie said.
"I gotta leave the ladder down after I go up," Cassandra said. "And then there's the EMGU."
"'Em-Goo?'"
"The Effort to Map Gotham's Underground," Cassandra said. "This city is old, and a lot of it has been forgotten or lost. Most of it comes from beneath. Because this city just builds over the shit it doesn't like, pressing it further underground."
"And this is… what?" Stephanie asked. "Like a historical preservation thing?"
"Kinda. It's interesting."
"I wasn't the best history student in school."
"History is the God's Honest Tits. Were I ever an actual school student, I'd have been into history more than I would have been drama."
"What's the pull?" Stephanie asked.
"It's what happened," said Cassandra. "Like, I read books on Gotham City history for fun when I'm not reading mysteries. Old dossiers on the supervillains that used to be around here. I'm particularly interested in The Joker."
"Why The Joker?"
"The Joker had this thing," Cassandra said, "where he'd do something horrible, get arrested, and only then would the terror start. Like he needed to get caught and confined in order for his plan to work. And I keep thinking to myself 'Why can't the good guys do that?'"
"And you share this little fascination of yours with Bruce?"
"Hell no."
They both smiled at this, as they turned the corner and entered the toy aisle. The speakers above started softly playing Automatic Driver by LaRoux. Cassandra wondered who got paid to compile Walgreens playlists, and whether or not she could send an email to the corporation, begging that this person get a raise. 'Cause God- damn, that was a deep cut from years ago.
"I have a question," Cassandra said.
"I guess I should see to that, then."
Cassandra took a deep breath and asked:
"Why didn't you come out?"
Stephanie stopped walking. She looked at Cassandra placidly. Like she fucked up in so obvious a way that it had to be on purpose.
"That the kind of question you drop on a girl at midnight in the middle of a Walgreens?"
Cassandra reached into her pocket, and pulled out the activated Cone of Silence.
"Why I do believe it is," Cassandra said.
Stephanie shrugged, and they recommenced their logy circuit of the Walgreens aisles.
"Let's go down the list of most common reasons for a person-a girl, in particular-not to come out," Stephanie said.
"Okay."
"First, there's The God Question. Won't the all-powerful deity in the sky be cross with me for digging girls? Even though the Bible doesn't mention lesbians, so I can rock as many ladies' worlds as I want, and none of that goes in the sin column. But apart from that, though? The God Question doesn't apply to me."
"You don't believe in God?"
"I don't believe the existence of God is really any of my business."
"That has to be the weirdest answer to The God Question I have ever heard."
"I don't bother Him, and He don't bother me," Stephanie said. "So let's cross it off the list."
"Crossed."
"Moving on," Stephanie said. "The Family Question. Will my family get mad at me? Again, non-applicable."
"You don't think your mother would have cared?" Cassandra asked, deftly dodging the issue of Stephanie's father altogether.
"My mom was hooked on prescription pills," Stephanie said. "And even when she was clean, she wasn't particularly sharp. It isn't so much a matter of her not caring as it is a matter of her not noticing."
"It was that bad?"
"You never met Crystal, did you?"
"No," Cassandra said. "In fact, I think you took great pains to keep yourself from introducing her to any of us."
Stephanie sighed. "Let me put it this way: I could have been stark naked on the living room table, with Tessa Thompson screaming my name as I ate her out, and mom would have aimed the remote over us to change the channel to Wheel of Fortune."
"Wow."
"And now you know."
"Crossed."
"And moving on," Stephanie said. "Then there's The Professional Question. It was hard back in the day for folks who were out to get employment and stay employed. It's only a little bit easier now. But again, it doesn't apply to me."
"Right," Cassandra said. "Because your boss at your day job was Selina."
"Exactly," Stephanie said. "It's hard to get fired for being gay when your boss tells you stories about how she tried to put the moves on one of The Riddler's henchwomen back in the day. And it was only a matter of time before I got into the Justice League anyway. Get that stipend coming to me?"
"Right," Cassandra said. "Crossed."
They made their way to the register. Stephanie paid for her stuff with cash, and Cassandra noticed that she used a fake ID with the name of Natalie Venora to buy her tequila.
Cassandra and Stephanie walked out through the automatic doors and into the mist-smeared streets. The traffic was light, and echoed from the blocks beyond. The only other sign of life were two men animatedly conversing next to a vehicle outside a bar.
"Where was I?" Stephanie asked.
"You just left off on The Professional Question."
"Right. Then there's The Safety Question. There are a lot of men out there who get all hand-throwy at either the sight or the mention of women who have absolutely no use for them. Yet again, this really doesn't apply to me."
She reached out, took Cassandra's hand, and pointed the the Band-Aids covering the bite marks on the pinky and ring fingers. She took a momentary break from hanging on to to every word in the conversation to reflect that Cassandra's fingers were the least interesting part of her body to wind up in Stephanie Brown's mouth that evening.
"In case you haven't noticed," Stephanie said with a grin, "I am The Cure for the Common Motherfucker. You really think some jagoff with '1488' tattooed on his dick is gonna last more than a few seconds with me after I beat Damian Wayne into a red puddle?"
Cassandra nodded, grateful that she did not also mention she took Black Bat to the distance. "Crossed," she said. "Anything else?"
"Well, yeah," Stephanie said. "The issue of my partner's safety. Now that would apply to me… if it weren't for the fact that my partner in all these imaginary scenarios was you."
"You're not worried anyone would pick a fight with me just because I'd be dating a girl?" Cassandra asked.
The two of them looked at each other with stony faces for a second… before they started laughing.
After the laughing quelled itself, Cassandra and Stephanie just stared at the sidewalk.
"Shit," Stephanie said. "If I were going out with you back in the day, I'd have started shit with people like that. Just to see the looks on their faces when they got destroyed. Hand to God."
"You gave me all the reasons why not," Cassandra said. "You feel up to telling me the reason why?"
Stephanie went from looking at the sidewalk, to looking at the sky, before she settled back down on Cassandra with a far-away expression.
"Would you believe me," Stephanie asked, "if I said it was a matter of honor?"
"Honor?"
"Yeah," Stephanie said softly. "Honor. Us ex-superhero types are big on it. See… All these thoughts and emotions I had were about you. Now a decent person, an honorable person, she, um… She would have told you first. Before anyone else. Because it wasn't anyone's business but yours. I would have. I could have. But…"
Stephanie squinted a little bit, and huffed. Telltale signs of the conscious mind in the rough act of self-interrogation.
"But then a strange fear gripped me, and I just couldn't ask," Stephanie said. "You should have been the first to know. You weren't. It wasn't the way I wanted it to pan out, but…"
The act came back. Paper-thin bravado. Stephanie shrugged her shoulders, spread her arms, adopted a goony grin.
"But oh well, right? I grew up. It happens. A little less drama in me. Replaced by about a gallon of piss and vinegar."
"Less drama?"
"Sixty-eight percent drama-free."
"You entered my apartment with the intent of getting into a fistfight with me."
"I said sixty-eight percent. There's still thirty… thirty- two percent left over from the good ol' days."
She shrugged.
And Cassandra became vaguely aware that the two men across the street, wearing horizontal-striped t-shirts that emphasized both their brawny arms as well as their expanding guts, were looking at them.
Madness overtook Cassandra. She was imbued with the berserker spirit of Viking ancestors that she wasn't sure for a fact that she actually had.
She stepped forward. She grabbed both sides of Stephanie's face. She got on her tiptoes for leverage. And she planted the kind of kiss on Stephanie Brown that would have been the centerpiece of a Douglas Sirk movie. The kind of kiss that made one feel their pulse in their lips after it ended. For when the kiss ended, that was precisely what Cassandra felt.
Stephanie looked at Cassandra with open-mouthed shock. She looked over at the two dudes across the street (who were definitely looking at the two of them), before casting her stunned gaze back.
"Cass, what the fuck are you doing?"
The right side of Cassandra's lips listed off in a sneer. There was a lock of black hair in her eye that she refused to remove. She cracked her knuckles.
"I'm sorry, I have no idea what's coming over me."
One of the guys across the street, the one on the right, yelled out "Hey!"
And that's when the pre-fight buzz started. If these two had a problem with Cassandra kissing the girl she liked in public, then their problems would multiply once she bent them over backwards and jammed their heads up their asses. It would have been her third fight of the evening, and she was feeling fresh all of a sudden.
When the guy on the right called from across the street:
"Are you Cassandra Wayne?
Her heart stopped. She… was not expecting that.
"Umm… Yeah!" Cassandra called out."
"What?" the guy on the right said.
Cassandra muttered "Shit…" to herself, reached into her jacket, and turned off the Cone of Silence that she had left on.
"Yeah!" she called out again.
The two men quietly and quickly conversed with each other, before the one on the right called out again.
"Can we come over and talk to you?"
Cassandra looked at Stephanie, who seemed even more mystified about the recent turn of events she was.
"Sure!" Cassandra finally said, and waved them over.
The one on the right looked both ways before crossing the street. The one on the left did not. The closer they got, the more she saw how bro-ish they were. The red blossoms on their pink faces denoted at least light drunkenness.
"Hi," the one on the right side said. "I'm Chris, and this here is Luther. I just gotta say, you were really good in that show where you played Harley Quinn."
Cassandra just blinked, stunned, before she said "Wow, um... Thanks. Though I hope you don't mind my saying, but you guys don't look like the theater crowd."
"We ain't," Luther said. "Our kids go to the same school. Us, the kids, and the wives went to the show because our kids' history teacher was giving out extra credit if they brought in ticket stubs."
"Oh."
"But we enjoyed it," Chris said. "Didn't think we would. Like we said, we're not theater people. Best extra credit my daughter ever got. Look in the program after and I say to everyone 'Holy shit, that's Bruce Wayne's kid!'"
"Glad we helped."
"You gonna be in any more shows?" Chris asked.
"Yes," Cassandra said. "I'm gonna be auditioning for this show adapted from a video game that came out about fifteen years ago.
"A video game?"
"Yeah. It's about this drunk detective who wakes up with amnesia and all his emotions start talking to him. They want me for one of the emotions. They want to cast me as Physical Instrument, but I think I'd make a better Inland Empire."
Chris nodded and said "I don't get it." at the same time.
"It might be one of those things you have to see to get."
"Guess so."
"Before we go any further," said Luther, "you mind if I ask just what the hell happened to you two?"
Without missing a beat, Cassandra touched the side of her bruised face, and asked "You ever race mopeds?"
Luther nodded, smiled, and said "Say no more."
Chris got his phone out. "Mind if we take a picture?"
"Sure," Cassandra said.
Chris started to move forward, but stopped when he saw Stephanie.
"You must be the girlfriend," he said.
Stephanie looked like she'd been accused of a crime she did not commit, even though Chris and Luther had to have seen Cassandra and Stephanie kiss from across the street. And all that came out of her mouth was "Uhhhhhhhhhhhh…"
"You want in the picture?" Chris asked.
Cassandra didn't let her answer. She reached out her hand with a shit-eating grin on her face and said "Come on into the picture, doll!"
Because she thought it would be funny, you see.
Stephanie got close to Cass. She had a smile on her face that enabled her to clench her teeth. And in a low voice, Cassandra heard her say "You little shit…"
To which Cassandra replied, in an equally low voice through equally clenched teeth, "Bitch, you broke my kitchen table…"
Chris and Luther got their selfie with Cassandra and Stephanie, before stepping away.
"Thanks," said Luther.
"You're welcome," said Cassandra. "And tell your kids Harley says Hi."
"We will," Chris said. "You two have a good one."
"We'll try."
And off Chris and Luther went, back across the street. Cassandra looked at Stephanie.
But Stephanie was staring off into space. The look in her blue eyes was a strange one. Like her world went from 4K to 8K, and she was looking for differences in the shadows and textures.
"What is it?" Cassandra asked.
After a moment of looking around, Stephanie said "This was the dream. You know that, right?"
Cassandra tilted her head. "The dream?"
Stephanie didn't say anything for a moment. She was still looking around.
"When I was a kid," Stephanie finally said, "I wanted you to talk to me so bad. I wanted to talk to you. I wanted us to understand each other. And this… This is the dream."
Cassandra nodded. There was an enormity to this with which she did not want to grapple. If there was a spell at work, she did not want to break it.
"Do I live up to the hype?" she asked.
Stephanie looked at Cassandra for less than a second. Her face had the stillness of utter and aching sincerity. But her face looked down at the sidewalk yet again.
When it came back up, her eyes were scrunched up and her lips were done in an exaggerated frown. She held her hand out flat, and wavered it.
"Ehhhhhhhh."
Cassandra lightly kicked her in the shin.