another night alone, a temporary dream

[lucubrare]

WHO: Cassandra Cain | Marta Cabrera | You?
WHERE: All around New Amsterdam! Maybe elsewhere, we'll see!
WHEN: April 2512
WHAT: A catch-all featuring midnight vigilantism, healing folks in underground fighting rings, Red Wings bartending, hospital work, shopping, and various other things! Closed & open headers in the comments!
NOTES OR WARNINGS: Some generalized violence but otherwise nada. Will edit once some come up.

Comments

[hierophante]

[It's difficult to know when the dam will break. The cracks don't always show; the creaking isn't always audible. That Cass has something on her mind is obvious, but there's a lot to mull over here -- the eventual opening of the floodgates isn't a surprise, but there was no knowing when it would happen. No perfect moment, and therefore all perfect moments.

OA's brow furrows with sympathy and then smooths: to hurt for Cass is the easy answer, and she does, and she will. To listen, really listen, and then identify how to offer some certainty -- that's harder, and also more worthwhile. It takes her a moment, a few moments of thoughtful silence before she reaches out to place her hand palm-up on the table between them, to be taken or left. Either way, what she means is: You do not repel me.]

I tried to kill a man once.

[She squeezes her eyes shut for a moment and shakes her head.]

Twice, I guess.

[The details don't matter right now. She's only saying it to drive the point home: if there's a moral high ground to take, this isn't the source of it.]

It's a cruel thing to ask of a child.

[Another pause; OA's gaze searches Cass's face, her mouth set in a grim line.]

That must have been lonely, not being able to share in a way that people could understand. Overwhelming.

[She gives a little huff, a humourless laugh.]

And then overwhelming in a different way once you could.

[lucubrare]

[ Cass makes a soft snorting sound. ]

It's not how I would do it.

[ Parenting. Raising a child. Starting an assassin army (though she doesn't think she'd do the latter at all). She sighs and takes OA's hand, smiling just a little. She likes OA - she makes Cass feel like there is a window into the inner workings of the universe and OA has looked through it. Across the empathy bond swells Cass's positive feelings towards her roommate, plus her anxiety at trying to hold this conversation in the first place.

It's dumb, maybe, but there it is. Cass continues holding OA's hand and clears her throat to try speaking for a while. ]

It was hard, I guess. I didn't think about it then, I just wanted to survive. I got to Gotham and my father tried to kill someone, a good man, and I had to stop him.

He's kind of a terrible parent. [ She rolls her eyes. Understatement, to be sure. ]

It's easier here. To read, I mean, and understand others. Things are just...there, I don't have to fight with the letters jumping around. Speaking is still hard. I feel bad at it, and I don't know the things people take for granted about...anything. Everything.

[hierophante]

[There's a rush of dark amusement in response to Cass' not-quite-laugh; it's crested and begun to ebb by the time the empathy bond begins to swell between them. OA worries at her lower lip with her teeth, ducking her head for a moment. When she meets Cass's gaze again she's smiling, tenderness crinkling the corners of her eyes and bleeding through the bond.]

Like you're from another dimension?

[Her tone is gentle, but the question is accompanied by a pointed quirk of one eyebrow. The pointed look persists a moment, unelaborated-upon, before OA gives Cass's hand a gentle squeeze.]

It is hard. It makes everything just... a little slower. A little harder to take.

[There's a pause; a chill dart of sadness slips across the bond. Sadness, affection, shame. It was easier for her than for Cass. Whatever OA has experienced since, at least she was, for a time, able to be a child. She looks down at their joined hands and sighs softly.]

When I got my sight back it was like... like going to another planet, like I was suddenly coming to know all the things other people already knew. What my friends looked like, what I looked like. How to read the way other people do. It's still hard. I still feel like there are parts of the world that other people take for granted which I can't understand, things I should know but I don't.

[OA pauses again. She's saying this not to redirect the conversation, but to make a point. A joyful point: a sliver of mischief shows in the faint smile that comes back to her features, in the almost coy glance she shoots Cass through her eyelashes, at once childlike and self-assured.]

But I know lots of things they don't. I know how to get around in the dark. I know that it's even better to feel the sunshine than to see it. You know things too. Don't discount that.