I do not own Young Justice or any of the characters.


Desperation

"So, what are these?" Cassius asked Strange as he stared at the contact lenses and earpieces.

"I call them Darkwear," Strange said. "The earpieces are linked to the contacts, which have basically every function of the Watchtower's computer besides Zeta-tubes, for obvious reasons."

"How's it work?" Cassius asked, putting his set of prototypes on, Cassandra and Rose both doing the same with theirs, the three of them having been chosen as testers.

Strange spent an hour walking them all through the functions, including a hands-free messaging system Cassandra could use to communicate without needing to try to speak or use sign language. After that, they spent about another hour getting the hang of controlling everything. Once they felt confident in their use, they took a Zeta-tube to the Batcave, then headed out into Gotham for a test run, Barbara monitoring them from the Batcave's computer to make sure the link function worked.

"So, Oracle, anything good for us to test these with?" Cassius asked.

"You could try advanced Hide-and-Seek," Oracle suggested.

"Perfect!" Cassius grinned, landing on a rooftop and releasing the girls. "I'll seek first. You two take off."

He closed his eyes and both took off instantly. After a few minutes, he opened his eyes again, focusing on the left side of his vision. Four icons were aligned there. At the top was his own, a bright green background with a splatter of black goo in the middle. When in use, the contacts turned the color of their icon's backgrounds, so his would be green, matching his form's normal eye color. Next was Cassandra's. A black background with a white katana diagonally up and left through it. Rose's was a circle with the same color scheme as her mask, including the white right eye. Her one contact lit up orange when in use. Oracle's icon was violet with an eye, however, it was currently just the Batcave's computer, not another set of Darkwear contacts.

"Alright," Cassius said. "Let's get started."

He turned toward the tracking signal for Rose and took off, flying quickly. As he landed in front of a small building abandoned, he blinked, his contacts' x-ray vision activating. The building turned a transparent grey, any metal turned a bright, clear white, as did the skeletons of people in the buildings around the one he was about to walk into. He smiled, walking through the front door and looking around until he found a skeleton crouched on the third floor. He made his way up the stairs quickly, then opened the last door as his x-ray vision deactivated and knelt, smirking as she glared at him from under a table.

"You better not have looked at me naked," Rose said.

"Relax," Cassius said. "All I could see was your skeleton. The x-ray and tracking software work perfectly, by the way, Oracle."

"Good," Oracle replied. "Now...hold on. Orphan's offline."

Cassius focused on the icons and frowned. He walked outside with Rose and used the contacts' tracker to find the last location hers had been transmitting. He picked Rose up and they flew to the location, landing and both looking around. After a few moments, a small glowing blue outline appeared around several small spots on the roof and his vision zoomed in on it. A small box of coding appeared beside the spots in his vision, the coding speeding up the text box before it was replaced by three images. A strand of DNA, a small text box for a description of the blood's contents, and an image of Cassandra.

"Cassius..." Rose trailed off.

"Go home, Rose," Cassius said.

"What!?" Rose asked. "No way! I'm going to help-"

"Go home!" Cassius snapped. "Rose, please. I'm going to be using my old skill set and personality for a while, and I don't want you to see me like that. Please."

Rose hesitated before nodding. "Okay. Bring her home safe."

"I will," Cassius nodded.

Rose left and Cassius waited three minutes before taking a long breath and shifting himself into his first normal appearance as Void. He looked around slowly, his contacts picking up traces of dirt, hairs, more blood, and finally another spot on the ground that it read as a toxic chemical. After a few seconds of analyzing, it had found its source, ACE Chemicals Processing Plant. Cassius began to fly toward it, only for a harpoon to spear him through the chest, the rope tied to it dragging him tot he ground. He stood, ripping it out and healing instantly, looking around at the Clowns around him.

"Void, do not kill them!" Barbara snapped, just as Cassandra's contacts came back online, along with a box containing a video feed from the micro-cameras in her contacts, allowing them to see what she did.

"My, what a little cutie you are!" Joker was grinning wickedly. "What was the name? Orphan? I remember you. You were there to help those pesky sidekicks stop me when I was controlling the plant attacks with the rest of the Injustice League."

Cassius exploded forward, beginning to drop Clowns rapidly, all of them swarming him, stopping him from being able to take off again and keeping him from making any decent headway toward the chemical plant.

"You were that goo freak's precious little girl," Joker continued, sharpening a knife. "You weren't that great a fighter, though. Last time or this time. I heard you could read body language." He turned to her. "It's probably hard to read mine with so many different personalities all trying to talk at once. But here. Let's see if you can read what I'm going to do to you next."

The screen vanished just as Joker reached toward her with the knife. Instantly, Cassius roared in rage, hundreds of spheres of goo exploding off of him and shattering bones, knocking all of the Clowns out but not killing any. Then, Cassius retracted the goo and exploded off the ground, his eight wings beating in a wave, sending him hurtling toward the plant. Before he could reach it, however, Nemesis exploded down on his back, sending him crashing down in the street.

"What a perfect opportunity to make you suffer!" Nemesis grinned, leaping backward as goo spikes erupted from Cassius's back. "All I have to do is stall you, and you lose one of the two loves of your current life!" He laughed. "It's perfect!"

Cassius stood, shaking with rage as Cassandra's screams echoed over her communicator. Then, Cassius roared, sounding every bit the monster he knew he'd have to be in order to defeat Nemesis in time to save Cassandra. He exploded forward, his eight fists exploding into Nemesis's own fists and forearms like a machine gun, only for Nemesis to still be able to counter every few seconds, every punch or kick rocking Cassius back a step. Finally, he managed to slam a solid punch into Nemesis's face, sending him staggering away before swiping his arms, a dozen goo spikes impaling Nemesis through the back. Then, Cassius stepped backward out of the goo, leaving two clones' worth of it as he turned, forming his wings and exploding into the air as his goo clone continued to fight Nemesis as he recovered from being impaled. Cassius pulled up Cassandra's vital signs and growled in fury and frustration. Her heartrate and brain waves were spiking sharply from pain, her breathing was erratic, and her body temperature was far lower than it should be. The window also read that she had some kind of drug in her system, but it couldn't identify it, and at the moment, he didn't care.

"This has been fun," Joker's voice said over the communicator, just barely carrying over successfully. "But it's time to go. I'll make it quick, though. I don't have much time to have fun with you like I did the last Robin."

Cassius activated his contacts' x-ray vision and found Cassandra and Joke. Cassandra was chained to a metal table set on its end, and Joker was in front of her, holding a crowbar. Just as he drew it back, Cassius exploded through the wall, his x-ray vision deactivating as a wall of debris crashed into Joker, sending him ragdolling off the platform they were on, Joker spinning and plummeting into a vat of chemicals. Cassius sent a strand of goo into the chemicals and yanked him back out by the ankle, dangling him over it from the ceiling. Then, he turned back to Cassandra and gasped harshly, instantly shutting off his contacts.

"Cassius?" Barbara asked.

"I'm fine," Cassius said. "Send the police to ACE Chemicals to pick up Joker." He glanced at his clone as he landed in the hole Cassius had made, shaking his head. "Make sure they bring a sanitation crew. Joker took a dip in the chemicals."

"Is Cassandra okay?" Barbara asked.

"No," Cassius said, reabsorbing his clone. "She's not."

He stepped forward, quickly using his goo to open the locks on her wrists and ankles' shackles, taking her into his arms instantly. Cassandra sobbed into his chest, trembling and bleeding, fresh gashes covering most of her bare body. He glanced to the side, at a small tray lined with knives, some smooth, others jagged, one of them more Sawzall than knife, all of them bloody. Sitting beside the knives was Cassandra's locket and moonstone bracelet. He grabbed both, along with Orphan's ruined costume, absorbing them into his body before using a third arm to splash bleach from a jug nearby, which he could smell from Cassandra's body, over the blood all over, stopping the cops from identifying Cassandra's DNA, then finally flew out of the building. He flew to an apartment building where he had a safehouse, using goo to open the window and slipped inside with Cassandra, closing and locking the window behind them before hitting a button to close steel shutters over them before heading into the bathroom and setting Cassandra on the floor of the shower.

"I need to wash the bleach off of you and out of your injuries," Cassius said.

Cassandra nodded, gritting her teeth and clenching his hand tightly. He reached up and turned the water on and Cassandra began to scream through her teeth and sealed lips instantly, sobbing anew. He worked as quickly as he could before shutting the water off and pulling her into his arms, feeling her trembling as badly now as when he'd saved her.

"What'd he do to you?" Cassius asked.

"Drug...feel...more," Cassandra sobbed out, barely even managing those three words through her impediment and sobbing both.

Cassius nodded, pulling out a small thumb-drive-sized device to analyze samples more in-depth than his contacts could alone. He used it to collect some of her blood and put the cover on it, which would automatically start the Batcave computer analyzing it. "Barbara, can you tell me how to counteract the drug in her system?"

Barbara was silent for a few moments before responding. "It'll have to wear off. It should be done within an hour. I'm sorry. Don't give her any pain medication. I can't tell what it'll react with."

"Understood," Cassius said before turning off his ear pieces, also turning off Cassandra's. "Come on. I need to treat your wounds."

Cassandra began to tremble again at the prospect of even more pain, but nodded. Cassius carried her to the bed and pulled away, inspecting her injuries. It looked like most of the injuries were shallow, more for pain than damage, but with as many as there were, she was bleeding heavily, and all of them needed stitches. He sighed, gently laying her on her back on the bed, then sat beside her, stretching his arm over to grab the needle and thread. Cassandra tensed instantly, and he swallowed hard, steeling himself before beginning to stitch the first gash. Cassandra covered her mouth to muffle her screams and sobs as he worked. He was slow and as gentle as he could be, but it was not a fast process. She had gashes up and down the front and back of both legs, particularly the inside of her thighs, then all across her hips, abdomen, chest, arms, back, ass, and neck. Joker had, fortunately, avoided her face, because Cassius knew she wouldn't be able to handle that. She'd never admitted to it, but he'd seen her gazing at her scars from time to time with a look of shame. If her face had been scarred by Joker as well, Cassius was almost certain she'd have broken.

Finally, after nearly two hours, Cassius finished stitching the last of her gashes and sent a fresh blood sample he'd taken just before hand to Barbara as he turned on his earpiece. After a few seconds of silence, she reported that the drug had run its course and it was safe for him to give her painkillers. He thanked her and shut the earpiece off again before grabbing some high-strength pain pills and giving them to Cassandra with a glass of water. She took them and drank all of the water before Cassius gently pulled her into him. He rocked gently, stroking his hand over her hair as she cried. Finally, she reached up, kissing Cassius. He kissed her back instantly, but felt a desperate, hungry need from her. She pressed into him, clinging to him, and pulled his hands to her chest, whimpering in need, only for Cassius to pull away, holding her back by the shoulders.

"Please!" Cassandra cried, tears soaking her face. "Doesn't...need...mean...anything! Can...go back...waiting after! But...please!"

"Cassandra," Cassius said, his heart shattering in his chest as he cupped her cheeks, wiping her tears away futilely. "It could never be meaningless. Cassandra, I love you. I love you more than anything in the world, and I'm not going to push you away anymore, but I'm not ready for...I still need time before we do that. But I'm done making you wait. You've waited long enough."

"Really?" Cassandra asked, regaining some semblance of control over herself.

"Really," Cassius nodded. "I'm ready."

Cassandra let out a half-sob and mashed her lips to his, kissing him passionately, though he could feel that the hunger was gone. He returned the kiss in kind, holding her tightly, though being careful to avoid aggravating her injuries. After a few seconds, he turned, laying back on the bed, bringing her with him, pulling her on top of him. He felt her hunger start to return, but she kept it under control, not pushing him for more.


Cassius gently set Cassandra on her bed, kissing her again before straightening up. "I'll be in my room once you're dressed. Are you sure you don't want any help?"

Cassandra smiled and shook her head. "Okay."

Cassius nodded, kissing her one last time before leaving, closing the door behind himself before heading to his room. However, just as soon as he was in the door, it swung closed and a pair of hands shoved him. He spun, expecting an attack, only to relax as he saw Rose, just in time for his legs to hit the bed, knocking him backward onto it. Rose sprang forward, climbing on top of him instantly, glaring down at him.

"I don't know whether to be excited that you're ready to be open about the relationship we've been in for years now, or offended that you didn't even wait to get back and let me join in when you fuck Cassandra the first time," Rose said.

"When I..." he blinked then shoo his head. "No, that's not-"

"I suppose I can understand, since Joker had her, but still," Rose continued, then grinned. "Still, I'm not going to let her get ahead."

"Rose, we didn't-"

Rose cut him off by mashing her lips to his, her tongue slipping into him mouth instantly and her hunger flooding him. he reached up to push her away, but she angled her body to make his hands land on her breasts, then moaned, rolling into him. He sucked in a breath as her hand dove into his pants, before regaining his composure. Just as he caught her hand and moved to pull it out of his pants, also pushing upward on her shoulder with the other hand, the door opened. Rose sat up, looking back in surprise, only to sigh as she saw Cassandra. However, Cassius used her distraction to slip out from under her, sighing and taking Cassandra's hand, guiding her into the room and closing the door.

"I'm sorry," Cassius said.

Cassandra shook her head. "You...try stop. Okay."

He nodded giving her a quick kiss.

"What, so only she's good enough?" Rose asked.

"As I was trying to tell you, Rose, we didn't have sex," Cassius said. "I'm not ready to go that far yet, but yes, I am ready to openly be with you both. And regardless of whether or not I'm ready to go that far, right now, I wouldn't even if Cassandra begged me to. She just got done being tortured by Joker. She's too badly wounded. That's why I stopped her when she tried as well."

"Wait, what?" Rose asked.

Cassandra lifted her shirt, displaying the bandages covering her entire torso. "Forty seven."

"Oh my God!" Rose gasped. "Are you okay!?"

Cassandra nodded and signed, "I'll heal."

Rose sighed nodding. "I'm sorry. I should have stayed with you when we went to hide."

"That wouldn't have tested the Darkwear, and then Joker would have captured you both," Cassius said. "I'm happy enough just being able to still hold you both."

Rose smiled and nodded, walking over and wrapping her arms around them both. "I'm sorry. I should have listened to what you were saying, and I should have been concerned with Cassandra's safety first and foremost."

"It's alright," Cassius said. "Just try to to better."

Rose nodded. "I promise to wait until you're ready."

Cassius nodded and kissed her, Rose kissing him back happily. After a few seconds, she pulled away, then turned, gently pulling Cassandra into a kiss, Cassandra sighing and kissing Rose as passionately as she kissed Cassius. Rose sighed contentedly, returning it in kind before pulling away and allowing Cassandra to kiss Cassius. Once Cassius pulled away, Rose gave Cassandra a concerned look again.

"You're sure you're okay?" Rose asked.

Cassandra nodded, smiling. "Cassius save. No need...worry or...afraid."

Rose smiled and nodded. "Alright. As long as you're sure. Now let's go to bed. It's later."

"Alright," Cassius nodded. "Go get changed into pajamas, Rose. We'll save you a spot."

Rose snorted. "Change into pajamas. That's funny."

Cassius frowned, until Rose dropped her costume to the ground, leaving herself in just a pair of panties.

"We're openly together now, so I don't have to wear pajamas to bed anymore," Rose said. "And you can't say anything about it."

Cassius groaned, holding a hand to his face. "You're going to be the death of me, Rose."

Rose grinned and kissed him before tugging both of their hands lightly, pulling them to bed before Cassius settled in to not be able to sleep for hours. He was most definitely not disappointed.


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