In her half-lifeless state, Cassandra's mind wandered through a mire of memories. She'd felt the burn and ache of poison before. It was long ago, in those times she wanted so desperately to forget.

She had no word for the man who was the consistency of her first eight years. Since she'd come to know those she loved, she knew the technical term for him was probably, "father." And without his teaching her words or even compassion, she supposed she loved him, at that time. Sometimes he hurt her, but only when she was too slow to stop him. Sometimes he made her take things that burned her stomach and made her sick, but enough times and the pain was eased. In a life of no one else and nothing else, his admiration was all that made her happy.

As she grew more skilled, he brought in others for her to fight. Grown men with brass knuckles and swords were like playmates to her as she beat them down, one after another.

And one night, on their first trip into a big city, he led her into a high-rise apartment. They slipped inside without making a sound and approached a brick wall of a man seated half-asleep on a couch. Empty brown bottles surrounded him. Her father gave her the signal as she stepped in front: all she had to do was win their little game.

The big man opened his eyes as she fixed her grip around his neck and squeezed. First she saw confusion. Then she annoyance. He grunted and wheezed in pain and raised his hands toward her, but he was too disoriented and her grip too rock-solid. Soon his expressions twisted and his teeth grit. She looked up at her father, who nodded to her to keep going, just keep going. Her thumbs pressed deeper and deeper into his windpipe. The big man's struggles started to weaken; she was about to win. She gave his throat a last wrench.

The look in his eyes, the struggle in his body, everything went out like a blown candle. What felt like a struggle to just win a game to her was gone, and as the flame died out, she sensed devastation. Cold, not the temperature cold, but some whole feeling of cold, overtook the big man. And in an instant, it overtook her as well.

Her father laid an approving hand on her shoulder, but seconds later, when some sense of feeling recovered from the numbness, she jerked away from him. That caught him off guard for a moment, but then the approving look on his face returned.

She keeled over and threw up. Her whole body froze and burned all at the same time. Experience gave her no frame for the agony that racked through her. And as her father placed his hand on her shoulder again, she realized this would only be the first time he'd make her do it.

Again, she jerked away from him, and as he tried to approach her she put up her fists. He gave her his most condescending glare, as if asking how she could possibly think she could make it past him. But as she struck him with a furious flurry of hits in his pressure points, he was forced to remember, as he his the floor with paralyzed agony, that he'd made her far stronger than himself.

The girl leapt from the building's open window. It was instinct more than will to live that caught hold of a fire escape before she hit the ground. And when she did reach the street, she ran, hard and fast as her legs could take her. She didn't know where she was going, she didn't care, she just needed to get away from him.

Everything changed again on a January night cold enough to frost the pond in Kane Park. She was ten years old, bundled from head to toe, and lived most consistently behind the building people came in with their clothes, because something within made it blow warm air around the back. When she ate refuse, she always tried to find one of the buildings with a six-pointed star in the window. Those people only threw out food with other food, so she didn't have to sift through as much garbage to find a half-eaten bagel or some bits of chicken. The buildings with crosses on their signs were sometimes good for free, hot meals, but she was always careful to not be spotted at the same ones too often. She didn't have any friends among the destitute, but none of Gotham's other downtrodden objected to her when she tried to blend into their groups as they went to a soup kitchen. And though her confrontations were very rare, everything her father had taught her remained hardwired into her brain. If she had to fight, she could, and she would emerge victorious.

She was huddled up for the night when she heard a cry of pain from the opposite side of the warm building. Screams were not so uncommon in Gotham, but something moved her that time.

She ran to the opposite alleyway and saw as a pair of young men knocked down and beat the old man from one of the cross buildings. Her heart skipped a beat, this was one of the same men who made sure she was fed whenever she came in. For long enough, he had done much for her, now she could at last do something for him. She rushed into the alley, leapt, and knocked one attacker away with a flying kick to the face. He shouted something, she didn't know what, and his companion swung a baseball at her. She dipped and weaved around the attack, grabbed the lid off a metal trash can, and knocked them upside the head with it, one after another. Both men yelled in pain and ran, she cast off the lid, turned to the injured man in the alley, and offered her hand. He stared at her in shock for a few seconds, made a sign of the cross, and accepted it.

Some time, not so long after, he took her to a small house and seated her in one of the wide chairs. There was another little girl seated next to her as he spoke with the girls' parents one room over. From what she would learn later, he was asking if they were serious when they said they'd like to be foster parents years before.

The other little girl looked her up and down and asked, "My name's Lucy, it's short for Lucille. What's your name?"

She just starred at her.

"Come on, you can tell me."

"…"

"Do you have a name?"

"…"

"I think Uncle George is talking about you staying here. If you're gonna do that, you'll need a name."

"…"

"I've seen Mom and Dad's baby books before. If they have a say, they'll give you an old lady kinda name." Despite that, Lucy smiled. "But most of those you can cut down. Like going from Lucille to Lucy."

"…"

"You could be Bernadette and we could call you Bernie. Or Margaret and we can call you Maggie. Or…" Lucille stopped and thought for a moment. "I don't know what Ruby's short for, but we could call you that."

"…"

"Or what about Cassandra? And then we could call you Cassie."

More than anything else, it was the realization these people meant to keep her that made a smile cross her face.

"Yeah? You like that one? I think I do too, you look like you'd make a great Cassandra!"

So the years passed in the Lorenzo household. For the first time in her life, Cassandra always had a warm bed, plenty to eat, and those around her who made her feel loved. In time there came a pair of twins, an anxious little girl, and a boy whose parents had crossed boarders to give him a better life. And she loved them all.

And while she never came to understand everything, she came with her new family to the building with the cross every Sunday. Father Ryan, now an honorary uncle to her, sat down with her in the evenings after every week and tried his best to speak of their faith in a way she could understand. And in time she knew: knew that there was another father than the one who forced her into those graphic deeds, one who knew her, loved her, and had even died for her.

But that he was also one whom expected that for one much was had been given, much was to be expected. An idea reinforced when she started to see news of that incredible who fought criminals and rescued the innocent at night.

Monsignor Ryan approached her one day, a nervous, frenetic energy about him. He said he'd had an idea, but he wasn't sure he could go through with it. And beyond that, he knew how she could help him, but he didn't know if he could ask it. As he wandered round and round the point, she placed one of her hands on top of his to assuage him he could just tell her.

There came revelation about the basement. Then a rented truck. A discrete building a state away. And then the first attack by those men in green and white, all of them taller and heavier than her, and each that she knocked out one after another. And, at last, all the money she and the monsignor were coming back to Gotham with.

Cassandra rose from unconscious when she heard the slam of steel. She sat in a cold of a small, enclosed space, her arms and legs taped down to a chair bolted into the floor. And opposite her, with a black eye on his face, stood her cousin, George Ryan.