Barbara Gordon (
bodilesswarrior) wrote2015-03-25 04:27 am
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Video | Early Afternoon
[Her eyes are red, and her voice is flat.]
Cassandra Cain is gone.
Does anyone feel like sparring? [She wants to hit someone. She wants to sweat and ache and bleed.]
[Private to David Cain]
Not you. [Her laugh is low and choked.] It's funny, isn't it, that I don't want to hurt you? [But she's not sure she could stop herself from going for his throat, right now.]
Cassandra Cain is gone.
Does anyone feel like sparring? [She wants to hit someone. She wants to sweat and ache and bleed.]
[Private to David Cain]
Not you. [Her laugh is low and choked.] It's funny, isn't it, that I don't want to hurt you? [But she's not sure she could stop herself from going for his throat, right now.]
Private
Private
You know I don't know the first thing about her, Gordon, I couldn't even tell you how she kept herself fed after she left me.
Private
She did it on purpose. Someone - he rearranged her mind, gave her language but took...the way she saw the world. Shiva gave it back to her, for a price.
One year, and they would fight to the death. Cass expected - she wanted to lose. [She realises, distantly, that she's crying. But she isn't focusing on the present, right now; she remembers that last confrontation, trying desperately to stop her, to make her understand.]
Private
[For the most part he doesn't think about her. Iris has brought her up, but apart from those conversations, Cain has gone on seeing Shiva the way he always has: as a discarded aspect of a plan he now abhors.]
When did-?
Private
She didn't tell us about it, but we knew. I tried to stop her.
Private
When did you find out it was Shiva? And when did you find out Shiva was...
Re: Private
[She falls silent, for a second.] I had my suspicions. But I had 'em about a lot of things, and I didn't want to tell her anything if I wasn't sure.
But she figured it out herself. [Her lips curve again, sharper and cooler.] She did with you, too.
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Cassandra is the spitting image of her mother.
[it had made him laugh, actually, to see how much more dominant Shiva's genes had been than his own.]
Ah. Figured what out about me?
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...Yeah?
[He's not proud of it, not with the history behind it, but he is curious.]
What'd she say when she found out?
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[He tries to stop himself from asking, but every time he thinks of a change of topic, it just lands right back home again.]
Did you?
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I told her once - you remember that time she broke into Blackgate, to interrogate you? I was the one who told her it would work. I already knew you saw her as a daughter, as much as a weapon.
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...How'd you figure it out?
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It doesn't matter, now.]
She'd run away from you almost a decade ago, but you didn't shot her when she shielded my father. You broke into Europol just to find those tapes.
[Her voice lowers a bit, cools.] And there's what you did to Vesper.
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Vesper.
[He keeps his tone neutral, or as neutral as it can be considering. He's sure he already knows Barbara's take on that but he needs to hear it--to be sure, to know.]
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And Barbara knows what it is, to be a cog in someone else's grand plan. To be used and discarded, as if you don't really matter.]
You were testing him. In, I suppose, the best way you knew how.
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...Was Bruce like that with you and the rest?
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[She's quiet, for a moment, lost in a different sort of melancholy.]
He pushed everyone, and he didn't always know when to stop. He didn't always know when to say I'm proud or I love you. ...It was easier with Cass, since she could just see it, but - he still screwed up.
[So did she, sometimes.]
Me - I was never his kid, so it didn't... [A slight shrug.] And he was different, when I was Batgirl.
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Cassandra wasn't his kid either, was she? [For some reason--one other than the obvious--it bothers him to think that she might have been.] She was yours.
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She was both, really. But Bruce - he didn't really know how to be a father, any more.
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He never did. I mean...I knew him. He wasn't as bad as some but good fathers, they have something you just can't have if you're gonna be the kind of person Bruce is. [Or Cain, for that matter.]
It always surprised me about you, actually. Looking at your record as Batgirl and then as Barbara? You could do all the things Bruce does, but you still had...something.
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I still - [Her voice cracks. I still wasn't good enough, but she can't, she can't let herself drown in grief and guilt. It's not fair to the people who still need her, still love her.
It's not what Cass would want.
Instead, soft and strained: ]
I had a good example.
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[He can't discern the reasons behind her emotions but he can read them plainly, even a hint of the underlying ones. He's just not on sure enough footing to even try to ask about them.]
You mean from Bruce?
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You know, the one you tried to shoot. [She can't be too angry about it, any more; it's how Cass became Batgirl, after all.]
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