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No one was really surprised the first time that Cass went down with a bullet in her shoulder that had been meant for someone else. This was the Bat who had let herself be shot multiple times to save the life of an assassin; it made complete sense that she’d do the same for her younger brother.
Damian scowled as he sat by her side while she recovered in the infirmary, growling about how he could have handled it. Cass patted him on the cheek when she woke up, and she ended up with a new sketch of his pinned to her bulletin board.
All in all, a ‘fairly normal occurrence.
Cass and Damian didn’t patrol together all the time; Damian usually ran with Bruce or Dick, while Cass’s most frequent partners were Steph or Tim. And she was often busy with the Titans and the Birds of Prey.
But when they did team up again, and Cass ended up with a bullet in her arm and a knife between her ribs, Bruce was concerned.
“You let them hit you,” he told her, frowning. “I watched the security tape. You had ample time to roll out of the way of that.”
Cass’s face was pale and sweaty, and she gritted her teeth as Alfred stitched her up. “Might have hit Damian if I moved.”
Steph, who had been lurking in the background, chatting absently with Dick, looked up at the sound of that.
Bruce’s mouth tightened, but he left Cass alone after that.
Steph, however, was determined to keep an eye on this.
Cass went back to Hong Kong with Azrael for a ten day Batman Inc. business trip, and returned glowing with the news that she’d managed to shut down an entire crime family and also accidentally become a champion prize fighter in an illegal underground club.
She also didn’t have a single injury of note.
Three days later, Cass went on patrol with Damian again.
She showed up at Leslie’s with a large gash in her side and a bullet graze on her arm.
“What’s gotten into you lately?” Steph asked Cass, holding her hand tightly while Leslie prepared to give Cass stitches. Damian had been sent back to the Cave, while Steph had shown up to offer Leslie assistance, since she’d been visiting with Nell in the area anyway.
“Just got unlucky,” Cass said, rolling her eyes. “It’s no big deal.”
Steph’s brows furrowed. “Cass, unlucky is when I fall down a construction site without my grappling hook. Unlucky is when Tim’s computer crashes in the middle of his big paper—or, more likely, in the middle of his gaming session with Kon. Unlucky isn’t you getting injured like this. You’re Cass. This is the third time you’ve been injured in two months!”
“It’s nothing,” Cass insisted. “I’m fine.”
Steph grimaced at her best friend, but dropped it.
Cass went on two more patrols with Damian, and nothing of real note happened. Steph’s shoulders were less tense and Cass also seemed relieved.
At least until Cass went on another patrol with Damian, only for Damian to get stabbed while Cass ran ahead.
Cass’s reaction was horrifying. No one could remember seeing Cass this angry before; she had to be pulled off the hapless henchman, snarling and fighting them every step of the way. Damian hadn’t even been that hurt, but if one had to judge only by Cass’s reaction, one might assume that the guy had managed to kill him.
“Cass, calm down, please,” Babs begged over the comms. “Cass, listen to me!”
Steph and Dick jointly dragged Cass to the Watchtower, where Cass immediately broke down, sobbing and crying and screaming.
“I didn’t—” She began, eyes wide with fear.
“No, no!” Steph grabbed Cass’s hands. “The guy’s fine. He’s alive. He’s in the hospital, but there wasn’t any permanent damage. You didn’t kill him.”
Cass slumped, breaking into a fresh round of sobs, and Steph desperately tried to comfort her, even though she had no idea of what was happening.
Babs ran every test that she could think of, but there wasn’t anything that she could find in Cass’s blood that indicated that anything was wrong.
“It doesn’t make sense,” Babs told Steph, who was sitting on her desk while Cass slept fitfully on the nearby couch. “I haven’t seen her like that before. Not while she was in control of herself, at least.”
Steph kicked her heels in the air, frowning. “I didn’t—I didn’t see her like that. I mean. She told me about it. But.”
“It was bad, Steph. That’s all there is to it. What she told you is what you need to know,” Babs said harshly.
Steph raised her hands in the air. “I wasn’t trying to pry, honest!” She bit her lip. “But it’s… it’s only when Damian’s involved that she gets like this, y’know?”
“What are you saying?” It was Cass, awake, standing behind them. Her expression was carefully blank, but she was standing so stiffly that she looked like she was about to put down roots.
“Well… you’re the One Who is All, right?” Steph hedged, looking down at the floor. “You were… you were supposed to protect the al Ghuls, right?”
Cass froze. “You… you think… you think that there is something in my head? That makes me protect Damian?”
Steph shrugged. “I don’t know! I just think it’s really weird that you of all people flipped out like that over a tiny little cut! Cass, you broke my jaw for talking too much once!”
“It was only a hairline fracture,” Cass correct automatically, but she looked like she’d been smacked in the face with something unpleasantly cold and damp.
“And like, I know Damian’s young, but you don’t…. you don’t coddle. You never did. He’s trained better than any of us—except you of course—but you don’t dodge basic things because they might hit him. You took a shot that would have grazed him in your shoulder.”
Cass closed her eyes and pressed her hands against her forehead. “I… I…”
“Cass.” Babs reached out for her. Cass flinched away.
“Talia… showed me his photo,” Cass muttered, almost too quiet to hear. “Said he… he was important. Said a word. He… I was supposed to protect him. Afterwards. I… I forgot.”
Steph and Babs both made small jerky movements, restraining themselves from reaching out.
Cass’s hands fell down to her sides.
“I didn’t know you’d met Talia then,” Babs said quietly.
“She visited,” Cass muttered, eyes far away as she tried to remember. “After I—” She flinched. “After I ki—killed. After I killed Nyssa.” Cass was crying, shaking in place as she stood, ramrod straight.
“Cass,” Steph breathed. “It’s not—”
“I forgot,” Cass said, lowering her hands to her side, clenched tightly into fists. “I forgot because I—I didn’t want to remember.”
“Cass, it’s not your fault,” Babs almost yelled. “What you went through—”
Steph had had enough, pulling Cass into a hug, yanking her down so that Babs could wrap her arms around Cass as well.
“Not. Your. Fault.” Steph said quietly against Cass’s shoulder.
Cass stopped going on patrol with Damian after that, but she sparred with him, trying to overcome the flaring instinct to throw every match, to just let her hands fall to her sides, the fact that her arms got heavy whenever she lifted a finger against him.
She forced herself to watch the others fight with Damian: mainly Tim and Damian’s matches, which tended to start out as a serious exploration of martial arts and end with hair pulling and insults. She sat in a folding chair nearby, holding seat as tightly as she could, trying not to fly into the fray and pin Tim to the ground.
Bruce ran more tests, and confirmed that the impulse was an aftereffect of Deathstrokes’ drug. Cass beat her way through every punching bag and training dummy that she owned, until her knuckles were bleeding messes. Babs made a few phone calls and started Cass on sessions with a hypnotist and a kind of herbal tea medication that Zatanna swore by.
The hypnosis sessions were supervised by Bruce in full costume.
Three more latent programs were found, and Cass threw up until there was nothing left in her stomach. She wanted to scream. She wanted to hit something. She wanted to track down Slade Wilson and beat in his face until his own daughter couldn’t recognize him.
Time passed. Cass learned to punch Damian without wanting to scream. She watched Jason pin Damian in a headlock without feeling the urge to break his arm.
She went on patrol with Damian and they both returned completely unharmed. Bruce smiled at both of them, and placed a warm, comforting hand on Cass’s shoulder.
Months later, when they were fighting the newest villain and her army of henchfolk, Cass and Damian were fighting back to back when she spotted the sniper on the roof.
She pushed Damian down without a thought, but this time there was no rush of need, no strange feeling in the pit of her stomach that the world will end if she doesn’t do this.
This time, it’s her choice.
And the bullet only grazes her anyways.