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Batman knew someone was here before she even heard the footsteps land on the rooftop behind her. She had perched herself on her usual gargoyle for far longer than usual—because although the whispers in the underworld made her restless, what they were actually saying had her stay anchored to her spots for longer than she did every other night. It set her patrol schedule behind, but there was still something in her that stalled, waiting for something in the whispers to catch up.
And it did.
Batman did not say anything, only turned her head a fraction to acknowledge the newcomer.
“Slow night, Batman?”
Batman waited until the footsteps stopped before she turned. “Deathstroke.”
Deathstroke cocked her hips, placing her hands on them. Batman gave a cursory glance over the new outfit, and felt a small spark of delight that it had not been changed to look closer to the last Deathstroke, but rather to Jericho’s colours.
“You heard the news,” Deathstroke said, and she pulled off her mask, her hair shining in the moonlight as silver as the gleam of her own blade. Batman didn’t return the courtesy, but Rose Wilson knew that would happen—it’s the reason she took off her mask in the first place, because she knew it unsettled Batman to be on uneven footing with her.
“Took us a few years, but I got the drop on old pops in the end, didn’t I?”
The whispers in the underworld said that the Ravager put Deathstroke’s head on a pike and stuck it in the middle of his compound, in front of a couple dozen men from Deathstroke’s own militia. The whispers said the new Deathstroke killed her father in cold blood and took his name for her own.
But the whispers couldn’t read the lines of her body, the weight of her foot, the blatant lie in the tilt of her head. Rose knew that as well, and her smile was a challenge in itself.
Batman responded with her whole body, turning and slipping down to stand across from Rose. She allowed relief to show in her own body, even when every inch of her skin was covered by the armour, knowing Rose would be able to see it even then.
If anything, Rose’s smile became even wider. “Oh, I wanted to. I would have, actually, if I got the chance, but – beggars and all that.”
Batman shook her head, a question in a language Rose had long learned how to read.
“Tara Markov,” Rose said in reply. “Resurrected again. We had to get into the compound somehow. Oh, don’t bother, she’ll be long gone. No one’s going to find her ever again unless she wants them to and – well.”
Batman stopped before she could key the name in for an alert to Oracle. She lowered her arms.
Then Rose stepped closer. Batman did not back up, knew she’d be stuck on the gargoyle, and instead stayed right where she stood with ample space around her. Rose closed that space between them anyway.
“Wanna play hooky?” Rose asked, that carefree tone in her voice the same even after all these years.
There had been a time when all there had been between them was rage and teeth and violence. Sometimes, even now, Rose greeted her with a sword, falling into a spar just as easily as a hello. But the bitterness, the anger—it had been years since Rose directed any of that burning rage inside towards her.
There was this instead:
“Come on,” Rose said, and she was close, so close Batman could see the light of the city behind her reflected in the dark brown of Rose’s one eye. Scars flecked across her face, most familiar and some too raw to be anything but new, and this close she could see the ruin of flesh at the corner of her eyepatch. “Every Batman needs a Catwoman, doesn’t she?”
Batman turned her head a fraction away, a refusal. She had learned what she needed, she had greeted the visitor in Gotham, and now she would go back to patrol. She was the Dark Knight, not Cassandra Cain—the One Who Is All, assassin-bred of David Cain and Lady Shiva, raised in silence, a living weapon—nor was she Cassie Wayne—elusive, long lost daughter of Bruce Wayne, a real person with a birth certificate and social security—no, she was Batman, myth, legend, legacy.
Then Rose puts her hand on Batman’s side.
She couldn’t compartmentalise the same way her predecessors had. Not like Bruce, who could flip between masks like it cost nothing, like there wasn’t really anyone beneath it. Nor was she like Dick, who would slowly shed the pieces of armour and with it the weight of the world that left him exhausted. Even if she could do that—flip between identities as if who she was was not in constant flux from the moment she killed a man in cold blood—she didn’t have the desire to be anyone other than Batman; sometimes she could go days without ever being Cassandra and she wouldn’t even notice.
But then Rose Wilson touches her like she’s human and suddenly the cowl was just another mask, and she didn’t feel like a myth as much as just a girl. She was, all of a sudden, something soft, something melting, something that was wanting and solely at the mercy of Rose Wilson’s hands. Her name was no longer a placeholder for Batman, but rather a prayer that she had no choice but to answer.
“Cassandra,” Rose said her name low in her throat, knowing full well the effect it had on her as Rose’s hands slid to her waist, an anchoring hold preventing her from stepping away. Even through the layers—through her Batsuit and Rose’s gloves—Cass burned at the touch, and she could imagine the phantom warmth of bare skin against hers as she leaned into the hold.
Rose’s other hand came up to the cowl, to the line in her suit that would open her up, and Cass’s hand shot up to grab it, stopping it from doing so.
“Come on,” Rose crooned, and Cass tried to think back at the point in their history where Rose realised she had Cass completely in ways that no one ever had before, and at which point Rose started using it to her advantage—such as now. “It’s a slow night. Just us here.”
Cass was Batman, and she had a duty. Like any Batman before her, her duty came before everything else, and she was unbreakable. Batman had no exceptions.
Rose pulled that hand back and around Cass’s body until she was encircled, trapped between her arms. Cass distantly registered the sound of her gloves dropping to the floor, overwhelmed by the shape of Rose’s hand against her side.
One hand was still holding her, pushing her towards Rose until they were pressed together, not a fraction of space separating them. The other returned to her throat, and Rose’s bare fingers slipped beneath the cowl.
Cass let out a soft gasp at the touch that felt like a brand, allowing herself a flinch. She allowed herself many things when it came to Rose Wilson.
“What if I did, Cass?” Rose said softly, and she pulled the cowl slowly up, the cool air striking Cass’ sweat-soaked skin.. “What if I had just killed him, and I came straight here to confess? Would I still be touching you?”
Cass, like the Batmans before her, detested killing. It was her one rule, her final line—the taking of a human life, innocent or not, was not tolerated. She’d had this rule for longer than she’d been Batman that it was a part of her whether she was wearing the cowl or not, and she had enforced it with the same—if not fierce—iron fist that her predecessors had. Batman had no exceptions.
But the answer to Rose’s question would have been yes, because Rose Wilson had always been Cass’ exception.
Cass wouldn’t watch as she killed someone of course, but there was still that knowledge that the Ravager was a murderer, that Deathstroke would continue to kill people. Maybe that’s why Rose was here—to get that same confirmation she’d had over and over again that no matter what she did Cass would still—
Rose had pulled Cass’ cowl up to her nose now, and her eyes dropped to Cass’ mouth.
Her scarred fingers touched her gently, and her thumb came to rest at Cass’ bottom lip. Rose was touching her, leaning forward, and Cass wanted.
The only thing holding her up was Rose now, because Cass had already been ready to drop to her knees the second her name left Rose’s mouth. She wanted the warmth of Rose’s bare skin over her, covering her, suffocating her. She wanted to feel the sharp angles of their body fit together, wanted burning hands imprinted on her hips, wanted Rose’s mouth over her, wanted Rose’s head thrown back and the tanned column of her throat exposed, bared like a surrendering predator animal. She yearned for teeth on her skin and nails at her back and to be buried so deep within Rose’s skin that no one could find her again.
All of Gotham be damned, Cass wanted so badly that her teeth ached.
Rose hovered, her lips barely touching Cass, and when Cass tried to close the inches between them, she froze.
Rose’s finger dug into her jugular, a bare moment away from piercing into it. The Cain inside her screamed at her complacency for letting a threat get this close to her, but Cass was not scared. There was not a line of threat in Rose’s body.
“Yeah,” Rose spoke against her skin, her breath brushing over Cass’ yearning mouth. “That’s all I needed.”
And Rose was stepping away, but Cass was still entangled, her body following her as if of its own will, gravity to a celestial body. She was left stumbling as Rose extricated herself and then they were steps apart, which might as well have been lightyears because the sudden absence of that touch left Cass as cold as the distance between stars.
“That’s all I needed to know,” Rose repeated as she pulled up her own cowl and Cass read the intention in her body.. Cass was reaching out before Deathstroke even moved.
“Wait,” she gasped, “wait—”
But Deathstroke was gone. Just like that, after taking her apart in a matter of minutes and leaving her scattered in the Gotham wind.
Cass stood there. Alone, and half-freed from the cowl.