Sadie sat with her sketchpad on her lap. Sometimes she looked out at the square and basilica outside the adjacent window, sometimes she looked down at a guide to the Vatican that rested on the arm of her chair. The words were all in Italian, but the art of sculptures all throughout the Chiaramonti Museum spoke a language she understood well. The visages of Apollo, little cupids, and Minverva, queen of the gods, all made her stare and draw in wonder.

"I didn't even think I was a sculpture fan," Sadie said. "But I'm dying to see these for real."

Cassandra nodded solemnly. "Glad you're having fun."

Sadie frowned, set her sketchbook aside, reached to the chair next to her, and patted Cassandra on the knee. "Hey, you okay? Is something bothering you? Apart from all this danger, I mean? And Tim and Steph. Okay, yeah, there's a lot to be bothered by. But anything else?"

With a deep breath and a slow exhale, Cassandra said, "This place. It disappoints me."

"Really?" Sadie said. "I know I'm the artsy one here, but come on, even just looking out there—" she gestured toward the window. "The craftsmanship— the history—"

Cassandra pointed at the guidebook she was flipping through. "Not even my God. Why are they here?"

Sadie frowned. "It's a museum too, this stuff is history. Even if nobody's groveling at their feet, they're still great works of art."

Cassandra shook her head and started to say, "Not what I meant—"

"You guys have always been surprisingly good about that though. I mean, sometimes," Sadie said. "Catholic missionaries writing down old legends for lingual context is the only reason we still know Norse myths at all—" she paused, then said, "Sorry, were you going to say something else?"

"Just... how many museums in Rome?" Cassandra said. "Dozens? Hundreds? But they're keeping them here. This is supposed to be a holy place."

Sadie grappled with how to respond to that for a moment. "I mean, you don't think it can be both?"

"I just... where are the people being cared for?" Cassandra looked out at the tourists in Saint Peter's square. "The statues should be somewhere, I know how nice they look. But why are they covered at night when real people don't always have cover on cold nights." She rose, stepped up to the window and motioned at the basilica. "How much gold is covering that church? How much is inside? How many people could be fed and housed with that decoration? How many could be in this building? It's almost empty" Cassandra shook her head. "Maybe it's not so different from Dad at home with his cars and buildings, maybe always should have thought about that more. I don't know."

Sadie put on a half-smile and chuckled. "There's an old joke about a guy waiting in line to get into Heaven. And he starts sweating bullets because, Mother Theresa's right in front of him, and Saint Peter's telling her, 'You really could have done a lot more good down there, you know.'" Sadie laughed. "That's how it is talking to you sometimes."

The joke got a little chuckle out of Cassandra, but the discomfort still hung in the air between them. Eventually Sadie asked, "Is that all of it?"

"Disappointment. In a lot of people." Cassandra looked down and scratched the back of her head. "Father Ryan was always good to me, but everyone since we left home—" she stopped and thought for a moment. "Not everyone, but too many. The people helping us don't want us being together, the people hunting us…" Cassandra trailed off and shook her head. "They're worse, I know that. But I've fought extremists. They weren't like this."

Sadie bent her head and pinched the bridge of her nose. "Please don't tell me you're sympathizing with the people trying to kill me."

"I can fight them and still feel for them," Cassandra said. "I just said they're wrong. But you told me what they lived through. And how they keep saying they don't want a fight—"

The mounting frustration within Sadie bubbled up again. "Sure, they don't want to fight. But that freaking woman you were playing nice with was perfectly happy to screw around in my dreams. In my head!"

Cassandra clenched her hands tight. "I know that. I know all of it. I just—I understand. In a way you can't."

A few seconds passed between them after she'd said that, as if neither was sure if the tension was dissipating or mounting again. After the silence stretched, Sadie eventually let out another heavy breath and said, "Then help me understand it like you do."

Cassandra looked at her, eyes widened with surprise. "What?"

"You're seeing something here I'm not. Or appreciating something in all of this I can't." Sadie shrugged. "Something like that, right? Because of some part of your past? Or something you picked up while you've been a superhero?"

It took Cassandra a moment to consider, but she nodded.

"Explain it to me. I wanna understand. Not them, not really. But I wanna understand you better."

The two held eye contact with one another briefly, then Cassandra bit her lip and looked away. She considered saying, "I'm too tired," or, "Not the right time." But eventually she just asked, "Now? You're sure?"

"I dunno, maybe?" Sadie took one of Cassandra's hands in her own. "If now works for you. I don't wanna force it, but, well, I'm supposed to understand you, right? All of you?"

Cassandra's body tightened as she lingered on that. In a monotone that betrayed just how much the prospect weight on her, she asked, "What if you don't love, 'all of me?'"

"Cassie come on." In spite of those grave words, Sadie managed a little laugh. "You still saved my life before I even knew you." The chuckle dissipated and, stern and serious, she said, "You can trust me. Have a little faith."

Cassandra looked deep into Sadie's eyes for a moment, they seemed as determined as her voice. She shut her own in prayer briefly, and took in a deep breath for mental clarifying. Then she began.

The story Cassandra told concerned an evil man who served other evil men, and wanted to offer them his own child in tribute. She told of his youngest daughter, who he educated only a language of violence, but whose obedience he lost the very first time she did exactly as he taught her to do. A few words were given to years as a runaway on cold nights, scrounging for food. The girl arrived in Gotham just before an earthquake shook the city and, in desperation, she pinned her hopes for help on a redheaded woman in a wheelchair. Through her—someone who would become mother and sister to her as needed—she met others. The kinships that came were not all immediate, but with time wearing costumes, their bonds were forged in fire. Those gifts her father gave her that so horrified her gave her a way to be a companion to them. In time she had brothers, she had a best friend, and a new father took the place of the old. But underneath all of those wonderful new relationships remained an undercurrent: that these people didn't understand her, how could they? And with the feeling laid dread: that all she was, all she'd ever be, was a legacy written in blood.

Once in a while in the past she'd practiced this moment with Stephanie, since it seemed apparent the time would come for it sooner or later. That might have made things easier, but Cassandra still wondered if the events she described constituted the most talking she'd ever done in her life.

For her part, Sadie remained almost wholly wrapped in silence for the whole telling. Cassandra's furthest memories with her father made her go pale with horror and confusion. That look turned to discomfort and concern when the years as a runaway came along. The early days as one of Batman's disciples put an uneasy smile on her face. Once in a great while, Cassandra said something so blunt and outlandish it actually made Sadie giggle a little. And, just for clarification, questions came now and again.

"You went to meet Superboy to do what?!"

"You have a sister?"

A few times a particularly hard memory stood out and Cassandra was interrupted by a lump in her throat. Each, as she fought against a croak, Sadie interlaced their fingers or pulled her in for a hug.

One night on patrol, the girl came across an old man being attacked in an alleyway. She fought back against his assailants, but the man—a priest, though she didn't know the proper meaning of the word—pled she show them mercy. She would have let up anyway, but the way a man who'd been victimized asked for it got her attention. The young woman accompanied him to the hospital that night and soon met with him again. Religion never had a place in her life, no one ever suggested to her it should. She already knew of aliens and magic, the divine wasn't so strange a thing to learn about. It wasn't always easy, with assistance she learned of the priest's holy book and sometimes she didn't like it at all. But as they came to the savior of the faith, everything started to fall into place. He taught that life was precious, and that forgiveness must be part of human nature. To a young woman struggling to forgive herself for her transgressions, even those she committed in ignorance, and always grappling with the idea anyone could love her if they knew her at all, the thought changed everything.

It didn't cure all of her struggles, of course. Some emotions bubbled to the surface that complicated things. A madman proclaiming himself a savior captured and tortured her, but Sadie already knew a lot of those details. And, not so long after that, a monster seeking revenge on her bloodline arrived in Gotham, a sinister reflection of her father's horrific intentions in tow.

"I know I said I wanted everything." Sadie spoke in a whisper, a few tears of her own in her eyes. "But if this part's too hard right now, it's okay."

"No." Cassandra shook her head and cleared her windpipe. "Everything. I want to tell everything." Still, she hesitated another moment before she said, "This was the same time as… you know… we fell out."

"What? Oh God. I'm sorry but—oh God." Sadie pressed her hand into her face in frustration and something similar to, but more severe, than embarrassment. "Cassie I… if… if I'd known anything close to all this stuff, I wouldn't have broken up with you. You were obviously going through enough already." The more she said the faster she spoke. "I'm sorry, I'm still so sorry about all of that—"

"No." Cassandra reached out and rubbed her back. "It's okay. We got past it." A little shudder ran through her. "But things got worse for a little longer."

Sadie swallowed hard. "Steph told me you were in a bad place after we split up. You… you don't have to tell me anymore if you don't want to—"

Cassandra pulled back her hand so she could cling to herself. "Wasn't just the breakup. Other things too, so many. But it was one more. Almost lost my faith because of how I feel love. Thought I could lose the way I love if I buried myself in my faith. For a little while, I was cruel. Fought harder to punish enemies." As she spoke, her voice and body grew shakier. "Was so upset, so angry, so lost… he was a madman. Broke into a house, killed four people already." Tears started to leak from her eyes. "Said again and again I didn't mean to do it, but I don't remember what I was thinking then anymore. Just that I hated him. I hated him so much—"

Sadie wrapped her arms tight around Cassandra and pulled her into her shoulder. Somehow, someway, Cassandra had ended up sobbing over that night all over again, almost exactly like that last confrontation with Victor Zsasz.

"It's okay." Sadie stroked Cassandra's hair and whispered, "It's okay. You're past it now."

After a minute to struggle for stabilization, Cassandra looked up at Sadie again, her eyes still wet. "I've done horrible things because of how I was raised. And later, because I wanted to follow my faith the right way."

The implications of what Cassandra said dawned on Sadie. And, however slow and reluctant, she began to nod. "You think it's the same with these guys chasing us?"

"You've seen them in your dreams," Cassandra said. "Pulled myself out of those two evils. And if I can save anyone else…"

She trailed off, but Sadie finished for her. "If you can save anyone else, you feel like you need to. Okay, I get it. I don't love it, but I get it." Another brief silence passed between them, interrupted only by a little sniffle or two from Cassandra. When Sadie spoke again, she said, "As long as I've known you, I've said I thought we'd all be better off living in a world with more people like you in it. And it feels like every day you just keep proving that to me all over again."

"Can you forgive me for that part too?" Cassandra asked, still struggling. "That I wanted you to love me when you never really knew me all this time?"

To Cassandra's surprise, Sadie uttered a little chuckle. "I think you've asked me something like that a couple times now. Or at least to forgive you for lying about the secret identity thing. Cassie, don't you get it? Of course I really knew you this whole time. Okay, maybe not the specifics, but I knew how much you cared about other people, how much you dared to believe in them even if they might let you down. That your faith is important to you, even if you can't agree with what it teaches all the time." Sadie clasped one hand to one of Cassandra's. "That you still struggle with if you deserve to be loved. Maybe I didn't pick up on the costume and the katana and the kung fu, but those parts aren't what matter most." She lifted Cassandra's hand to her lips and kissed her scuffed knuckles. "I already knew the parts that matter most."

It wasn't easy to smile again after all she'd described, but as Cassandra looked back up at her girlfriend, something like one did slowly turn her lips upward again. For a few seconds, they just lingered in that new, more honest place they'd suddenly found themselves in.

Eventually, Sadie said, "Well, since we've already gotten so deep into your brain, I think I might know something else. Something about you I don't think you know."

Cassandra mustered a tired, "Hm?"

"One of my classmates said this thing and I wondered if it would resonate with you. So, there's been me. You said you think you could have been with the younger Green Arrow back in Star City, under different circumstances. And Superboy, but that didn't work out. Anyone else?"

Cassandra turned away, some redness in her cheeks for a moment before she said, "I'd have… liked to have been with Stephanie. If she wasn't with Tim. And if she felt the same way."

"It's always people you already feel close to then, right? Our friendship stage got rushed, I know, insane circumstances." She chuckled and shook her head. "And, again, I did drive you into a friggen final battle with that one maniac."

"People I care about first, yes."

"There's a term for that, you know," Sadie said. "I used to just call you bi in my head, for a bit after that I thought maybe you were pan. But the whole, 'emotions first, everything else after' thing? That makes you demisexual."

Cassandra went quiet for a few beats, as if she was mentally rolling the word off of her mind's tongue. "You said it means I need to care first, then I can feel attracted?"

"Yeah, basically."

"I, ah…" Cassandra scratched the back of her head. "Everyone isn't like that?"

The last of the tension that hung between them shattered like glass. Sadie sputtered for a moment before she slipped into a full-blown laughing fit. When Cassandra frowned in confusion, she said, "It's okay, it's okay. It's just—for all the stuff you've been through, you're still such a normal person after all. Because that's what everybody thinks about how they feel."

As Sadie laughed and Cassandra considered what she'd just said, a contented smile finally crossed her face again.

"You can do whatever you want with that information," Sadie said. "If you don't feel like you need to put a label on it, that's okay. If you want me to buy you a T-shirt after we get home, I will. Gotta warn you though, it's a lot of blacks and whites and just a little purple." After a second of consideration, she giggled. "Well, without your golden bat symbol, that's a lot like your uniform anyway. Damn."

In the midst of Sadie tying all those details together, Cassandra rose from her seat, took a step in front of Sadie's, and wrapped her in a tight embrace. It surprised Sadie for a moment, but when that moment passed she wrapped her arms around her as well. The term didn't mean all that much to Cassandra, but to be shown in one more small way how much Sadie cared to know her meant the world.

Sadie asked, "Hey, you gonna be okay?"

It was almost a whisper when Cassandra said, "Thank you. For knowing me. And for loving me."