Chapter Text
Lady Shiva was used to incompetence. Many of the ninjas and assassins she had trained had come to her undisciplined, or incapable of holding their own against her. She took the weak and unskilled and formed them into weapons.
She was exceptional at it.
So when Bruce Wayne contacted the Tibetan monk she’d been staying with, asking if he could send his newest addition to him for training, she hadn’t expected much. The other two were different. One was an acrobat, the other a street brawler. They came from backgrounds where physical agility, speed and swiftness, strength, and resilience came as do or die. From the information Batman had mailed, Timothy Jackson Drake was a small, relatively rich child with no fighting experience.
He hadn’t given any rundown of how they had met or how he had become Robin, but she expected there might be more than meets the eye. Nonetheless, it was hard to see beyond his physical appearance when he arrived with a duffle bag thrown over his shoulder, dressed in slightly baggy clothes. He looked like the wind could whip him away.
She had destroyed men five times his size with her intelligence alone.
In some ways, he walked in like Brucie Wayne, all playboy slow-wide steps and relaxed shoulders. Like a boy who masqueraded as a man but had the money to back himself up.
But he was still thirteen and alone.
It wasn’t until she found him fighting King Snake's criminal organization, the Ghost Dragons, that she decided he was worthy of her time. She’s well aware that it is unlikely Batman ever expected her to take an interest, let alone insist she train him, but that’s neither here nor there. It’s not her fault Timothy caught her eye.
When she asks him to choose a weapon of choice, he picks a bo staff. Something inside her rises to the urge to mock him for picking such an unassuming and non-lethal weapon. When he shoots right back, “That’s why I chose it,” she can’t help but feel the bite in his tone.
Their first session is strange. She blindfolds him. “This will test how well you utilize your senses. If you cannot see, you must rely on everything else to defeat your opponents.”
For a child who is untrained in her brand of fighting (i.e., assassination), he takes to listening well. She realizes very quickly that while he is not perfect and has work to do, he’s far more advanced than he appears. He can most certainly utilize his other senses, and she can tell Batman wasn’t fully honest about the boy she sent.
And his experience.
He moves like someone well-acquainted with darkness. Someone who lurked in the shadows and relied on the anonymity that night brought.
He was still unsure, unsteady with the bo staff she had thrust into his hands. That’s until she ramped up the training. As the day passes, she pushes him to move with the weapon, to allow it to become an extension of his body, like a longer limb he could use with direct precision.
He takes to her suggestion like a dragon to fire.
He pushes himself, rising back up when she knocks him down. He takes her lesson and gives it back tenfold. He learns on the spot.
She knows there’s something different about him. She finds him…familiar. The way he moves and responds to her instruction, though less swift and exact than she is used to, reminds her of Cassandra, of the child she has only seen in fleeting moments when David Cain makes his presence available to Ra’s al Ghul at the same time she does. Timothy’s eyes, when she could see them, narrowed and scanned a room with a gaze that could pin butterfly wings to the wall. And yet, the fluidity and intellect to think seven steps ahead in all directions is not something David Cain could even produce. Rather…she finds he’s like a mix between her controlled comprehension of body language and someone capable of anticipating someone’s thought process even without really knowing them.
That’s when she remembers a deal she had made over a decade ago. Something about providing security and DNA for a young Gotham woman in exchange for an exorbitant amount of money. Almost more money than she would have ever needed.
It wouldn’t be…it couldn’t have been.
But the more Shiva thinks about it, the more she sees herself in the boy. He clearly is made up of another person in the shape of his eyes and the flush of his cheeks. But his nose must be her own.
After training, she has him cook, interested to see what he will make of the ingredients she provides. Realistically, it is just another test.
At first, she worries he’s inept. She assumes he’s probably had nannies and cooks his entire life, similar to Batman and his butler. She also knows that while Janet and Jack Drake are never home, Janet’s an ice queen in the boardroom. She’s never met a deal she couldn’t make, especially when it comes to international antiquities and archeological digs. Her need for excellence in everything is unparalleled.
So when Timothy takes one look at the fridge filled with vegetables and seafood, she expects him to pause. Instead, she finds he neatly takes out ingredients one by one, as if strategically recounting recipes in his head.
Instead of watching him, she takes a seat at the table, cleaning and sharpening her weapons as she goes. It’s almost rhythmic, the way the sound of cooking sounds against the abrasive noise of sharpening her sword. Though she can smell some familiar things, she continues to face forward, waiting. It doesn’t take as long as she had expected. One moment she’s sharpening her favorite dagger, and the next, Timothy is plating a combination of Haemul Pajeon, Spicy Tteokbokki, and Sigeumchi Namul.
He even brings her a glass of water. She hadn’t even known she’d made ice cubes.
They sit in relative silence, just eating. It’s strange, to look down at her food and smell similar to home-cooked food. She hasn’t eaten food like this in a while.
“So Lady Shiva,” Timothy begins, interrupting their relative silence, “Will you teach me 52 ways how to kill a man?”
She chokes out a surprised laugh, almost in disbelief at his comment, especially considering his perversion to non-lethal weaponry. It’s galling that he has the audacity to ask so much so that the laugh escapes her mouth. She hasn’t laughed in so long – it feels foreign to her. Everything about this moment feels both uncomfortably strange and wildly nostalgic.
Instead of letting her answer, he starts in on the ways he’d most like to learn. Usually, she’d never take this kind of conversation from someone she’s training, but clearly, this boy is nothing like those people because she lets him.
She lets him talk her ear off, discussing fighting techniques and his information on King Snake, whom she had been looking for in her quest to master of the art of empty-handed fighting. He talks at a mile a minute, so much so that she has trouble keeping up, though he somehow manages to rope her into a full-blown discussion.
It’s…nice, she supposes. But all it does is warrant a deeper curiosity into who Timothy Drake really is.
The DNA test comes back five minutes after she sends him to bed the next day. What she finds is mindboggling. Not only is he her son, but he’s got two other DNA strands woven into him. She’s not sure of the science around it, but it rings like Lex Luthor’s signature sneer. Something with that awful cloning machine. Of the two other parents, the only name she’s able to access information on directly is Janet Drake, formerly Janet Yi-seul Lee of the Jeonju Yi clan of South Korea.
Her marriage certificate lists Jackson Drake, but their son, Timothy Jackson Drake’s birth certificate seems inconsistent. She digs deeper into the file only to come up with the strangest thing she could find: a real birth certificate. Which may seem like it should be standard, but what isn’t standard is that it lists all three parents.
- Biological birth mother: Janet Yi-seul Lee, born in Seoul, South Korea, Naturalized US Citizen
- Biological mother: Sandra Wu-San, born in UNKNOWN, People’s Republic of China, UNKNOWN
- Biological father: Bruce Thomas Wayne, born in Gotham, NJ, USA, US Citizen
She reads the document twice. Then four more times. And another six after that.
It can’t be real, she thinks, jaw slack. She feels off-balance, like the words are shifting under her feet. Batman would not send me his own son – our own son to train if he didn’t know.
But– the traitorous part of her mind chimes in, he wasn’t sending the boy to you. He was sending him for training with a Tibetan monk. He never knew you’d find him, know him, train him, let alone realize he was yours.
She pauses, looking up at the child sleeping across the room from her. She stalks over to him, hand still holding onto the tablet that has upended her entire world. He’s curled onto his side, still facing the room with his back pressed up against the wall.
In the dim light of the room, the shadows falling across his face only serve to make him appear younger than he is. If she tries hard enough, she can find herself in his face, in his hands, and in his build. She wonders if she had spent more time with Cassandra, if this was how she’d feel, the gnawing pit in her stomach at the thought of anyone knowing her the way her sister had known her.
It was uncomfortable.
Yet, when he scrunches his nose–that’s Carolyn.
It’s not even her face, it’s her sister’s. If Shiva had been honest with herself, she would have noticed that Timothy was her kid sooner. That he was supposed to be Carolyn’s nephew. But everything about Carolyn was supposed to be in the past. Everything about the Wu-San sisters had died when Shiva had found the body. That life was gone.
And yet, Shiva can’t help but look down at the boy and see all the ‘what ifs’ play out in her head. Even when she turns away from him to go lie on her own bed, the thoughts gnaw at her. The possibilities of what her life could’ve been. The part of her who had a twin wants to spiral, to lash out, to track David Cain back down and finish the job. The part of her who reinvented herself to stay alive needs to make a plan. Needs to sit with this information.
When she looks back over at Timothy Drake, she can’t help but wonder.
She spends the next few weeks getting to know Timothy beyond just his fighting style. Don’t get her wrong, she still trains him until his hands can’t hold a bo staff anymore, but she finds she enjoys their quiet moments together, too. The way he moves in tandem with her is eerily similar to how Carolyn moved. Always in step, always there.
Her heart aches. She believed she had stopped caring about her twin years ago, that when she died, the last bit of Sandra Wu-San that loved had died too. But this pesky little boy who challenges her boundaries and pushes her training further than she expected is nearly her undoing. She finds that when she catches a glimpse of him from the side, she can almost imagine it’s Carolyn next to her.
There are moments with Timothy where she forgets. Where she goes to call her sister’s name. She hasn’t done anything of the sort in over a decade. She never thought she would again.
But Timothy is a persistent little shit.
He tests her boundaries and pushes on his own limits. Under her watchful eye, he gets quicker, stronger, and smarter. He learns how to bend both of their rules. It’s a reward in a way Shiva’s never truly experienced. Just these small acts. Usually, she’d get satisfaction from training assassins who finish her tests by taking lives. She feels little for their footwork changes or their comfort with their chosen weapon.
She decides to vary his training partway through. He wants to use the bo, it’s fine. But she makes sure he knows how to throw a knife the way he does a batarang. She forces him to duel her with blunt-edged swords. She makes him disassemble and assemble pistols, revolvers, and AK-47s.
“Why would I ever use a gun?” He asks one day as she’s making him disassemble, clean, and assemble one of those standard police-issued glocks common with Gotham police as fast as he can.
“Never say never, little bird,” she chides. “You might never want to, but in a world in which it is do or die, you need to know how.”
His lips purse, and he gazes at her with curiosity. “You want me to be prepared for anything.”
“Correct. Your weapon can break. Can be stolen. You can be taken without it. You have to be able to use alternates. Improvisation in combat is proof that you can be versatile enough to survive a stronger opponent who has a tactical advantage over you.”
He nods at her words, continuing with his task.
After seven straight attempts in under one minute, she lets him rest. He continues to look over her armory of possible weapons before asking his question.
“If I don’t have a weapon–”
She cuts him off. No need for him to wonder. “You become the weapon. Your body is short and small, and weaker than many you may face. They will underestimate you because of your size. You can build muscle and strength, but you can use agility and swiftness that men like Batman lack. He is a brick wall, an immovable force for someone of your size. Momentum will be your ally in a fight like this.”
“Can you show me?”
She does. He hits the floor hard, over and over. But each time he gets back up, he improves. Hand-to-hand is not his strongest skill set, yet. Maybe it won’t be, but she can see the way he tracks her movements, anticipating them far in advance of her executing them.
As the days pass, split between bo staff training and hand-to-hand combat, he gains momentum. He still makes small mistakes, but those are few and further in between. He’s an adept student, she’ll give him that.
The last day of their training before heading out to track down King Snake is pivotal. Up until now, Timothy has been able to land hits, to push back, but he’s never been able to beat her.
Until the moment he can. Until the moment he does and she’s flat on her back, bo staff at her throat. From this angle, she could theoretically push herself up, to clamor back to her feet and finish him off if she had to survive (she’s done it before), but this isn’t a fight to the death. This is a battle where the terms are surrender are clear: risk permanent injury and the fight is over. If she were to move, he could easily crush her windpipe at worst or collapse it at best.
“You finally beat me.”
“I guess I did,” he whispers, sounding more surprised than he looks. At her nod, he pulls the staff away, extending a hand to her. In another other instance, she’d yank him down, cut his throat, and move on. But she knows his kindness for her isn’t weakness. It’s respect. It’s honor.
It’s only fair that she gives it back the same.
She allows him to pull her to her feet before moving swiftly to the pile of weapons in the corner. She can see his shoulders tense in the corner of her eye. Good, she thinks, still careful, still watching.
She leaves her body language relaxed and as gentle as she’s ever been when she turns back, collapsible bo staff in hand. It’s a sleek and powerful weapon, and she can only imagine how well he will fare in Gotham in the dark. His head is tilted, eyes analyzing her like he’s never seen her before. It’s such a Batman action that she wants to shout the truth at him, to let him know what he’d be returning to.
But she doesn’t. At least, not yet.
For now, she’s handing him his new weapon, explaining how to conceal it, the basics of its care. He soaks up the knowledge like a sponge. A little bird-shaped sponge who has taken to her training like it is second nature. Sucking in a breath, his smile nearly knocks her back onto the ground because that isn’t her little Robin grinning back at her, it’s Carolyn.
Shiva and Timothy are on a plane to Hong Kong when it hits her: she will have to let him go, to return him to Batman, and allow the world to keep him from her. She has no legal claim on him. It would be absurd of her, to stroll into Gotham, steal the Drake heir, and walk away with no issues. People would think she’s crazy, considering the boy came directly from the body of Janet Drake. They’d never believe her story, even with the DNA.
Janet Drake’s signature icy glare was far too powerful to be replicated by anyone other than her own son. (She had gotten it fixed on her a week into training because she tried to get him to switch to a blade.)
And she’s not even sure she could be a mother, let alone anything other than a mentor to this boy. She might be fond of him, sure, might enjoy his company and find him a worthy challenger–but she had already given up one biological child to a man who trained children as weapons. She wasn’t sure how she could do it a second time.
What’s worse is what would happen to him should anyone other than Batman find out Timothy is her son (and his own). She knows the lengths Cain took to draw her out, to trap her in her blind rage to avenge her sister. She walked right into the trap the League of Assassins had set. She had a child to escape, but at what cost? To her? To the child she left behind? From what she can tell, Cassandra is the “One Who is All,” the perfect weapon with no voice. What life had she given her only daughter?
She has no desire to find her son in the same situation.
The thought of him in Ra’s al Ghul’s clutches has her stomach rolling. The man is already so obsessed with Batman, already lives for the tales of Cassandra’s training, it would be his perfect fantasy if he could find those talents in this boy. In her boy.
Absolutely not. If the al Ghul’s weren’t so obsessed with people with talent, this would be a non-issue. But no, they had to lust after power.
Timothy’s face is pressed against the window, and it’s almost like she can see the gears turning. He still doesn’t know that she is his mother. That Batman is his father. He must suspect something. As much as she is good at concealing anything and everything, her body language likely gives away some semblance of what might be nerves and most certainly isn’t anxiety. She knows that learning this information will be a massive task to cram into his head. Because she knows what he thinks of Batman…and what Batman thinks of him.
The Batman who lovingly raised a child he stole from a circus and carefully handled the boy he plucked off the streets is not the one who would have sent a thirteen-year-old child to Europe and not checked up on him once. No letters. No texts (she checked). No phone calls. Only some from Nightwing, a couple from someone named Oracle, and some from his civilian friends. None from the Drakes.
It shouldn’t make her upset, but she’s watched him check his phone over and over again. The yearning in his soft sighs and the dip in his shoulders each time he comes up empty is nearly enough to make her want to take Batman to task.
No matter. Batman will adjust to having another son. Lady Shiva will ensure this.
But like this, with Timothy’s eyes already tracing scenarios out in his head, she can’t help but wonder if Batman is capable of stepping up. Yes, he has before, but the reports Timothy had provided on his reasoning for picking up the Robin mantle are cause for concern. Shiva had been a weapon long before she held this name. But the nature of her home had made that a requirement. Timothy was supposed to be the only darling son of wealthy socialites. She can recognize that perhaps what happened to her shouldn’t be the norm for other children.
It might make her a hypocrite because she sold her firstborn for her freedom, but there was a lot less choice in it than she cares to analyze at this current moment.
“Do you think I’m prepared?”
His voice is so soft, she has to strain her ears to hear him above the roar of the plane’s engine. He turns to catch her eyes, and she’s blinded by unfamiliar urges to comfort and soothe. She hasn’t done so since Carolyn. Since Cain ripped the opportunity to ever again from her hands.
“For this fight? I believe so.” The truth spills out of her lips before she can stop it. “The effort and dedication to the craft is often the hunger that people who are naturally well-equipped lack. What you do next will define who you are as Robin.”
“And after?”
She arches an eyebrow at him. He can’t possibly have figured it out. There is no way she was as obvious as Richard Grayson. She cannot afford to be that transparent. “What are you referring to?”
“Will I see you after this? Will I be able to find you for more training?”
The pang in her chest is visceral. She hasn’t had anyone so earnest in their quest for her company. People sought her out for selfish reasons. To be trained by the best. To earn a reputation. To try and defeat her. None had ever wanted to stay. To engage with her again after they’d left.
“Yes.”
She means it. He doesn’t know her thoughts on his future, and to be fair, she hasn’t made up her mind on what she’d like to do next. But she knows she will see him again.
What happens next will determine the relationship they will have. If she will become his greatest antagonist or if she’ll be something worth keeping. Someone worth missing. Batman’s current ignorance of this Robin will work to her advantage if she wants to see him again, on her own terms.
The plague virus, the Ghost Dragons, King Snake, and Rawlins are all at the back of her mind. She can’t worry about them. She has to make a plan before this plane lands.
Looking at Timothy, looking at this boy who refuses to kill and become the weapon she demands of him, she sees the path she could’ve taken if David Cain hadn’t killed her sister. If she’d been allowed not to be Lady Shiva, and instead just remained Sandra Wu-San, mother of two. Her story has always been portrayed as the inevitable, even in her own head. The story is always the same: he sister dies, she has no more worldly ties to morality or love, and she becomes one of the greatest martial artists to ever live. She becomes a master-class assassin whom people fear.
But her youngest child is looking at her with his jaw set, his shoulders tight, and the grip on his bo so hard his knuckles are turning white, and all Sandra Wu-San wants is to do this all over.
She can’t undo her bloodstained past. She can’t escape her bloody future either. But she can help Timothy escape his. She should’ve known that she had to make a decision before she engaged in battle. The instincts cloud her judgment, blinding her to the end result. She hadn’t wanted to ask him to switch to lethal methods. She distinctly knew he wouldn’t, and yet–her mouth had been moving, demanding, before she could take it back. This moment will be burnt into Timothy’s mind when she tells him the truth, how she turned on his word and challenged him to do something he never wanted. To be her. But it doesn’t matter, he will remember the next moment more.
With a swift kick, she knocks King Snake out cold, a foot from the edge of the ledge. She moves swiftly, binding his hands and feet in a way she would struggle to escape from. And she does it a second time for good measure.
Robin is still standing behind her, confusion evident in the quirk of his lips. She’ll explain, she just can’t do it here, where anyone could overhear what will be a life-changing conversation. After King Snake is trussed up like a turkey, she turns to Robin.
“Robin, come.”
His body follows her word before his mind catches up. They’re halfway across the roof when he suddenly stops to ask, to question. She shakes her head at him, indicating that they need to speak privately, without an audience or any possible eavesdroppers. His respect for her is a little tattered by her insistence that she kill him as his final training step, but she knows his curiosity will only drag him to her.
They leave. Travel a few days until they’re out of Hong Kong and roaming the Chinese countryside, only the sounds of nature at their heels.
Each time he’s tried, Timothy has struck out on conversation.
It isn’t until they reach a secluded part of the Shuidishan hot springs that she stops. She forces him to sit, to eat, to drink, and to let her explain.
He’s perched on a rock, mask off and chewingly slowly on a bag of nuts. Without the white-outs, he looks his age. He looks even younger, if she’s honest with herself. And the little looks he’s giving her beg for answers in a way his mouth refuses to. She disarms herself, leaving her weapons to the side. Rooting through the bag at her lap, she finds the printed copies of the records she ripped from Lexcorp. Timothy is still chewing, though it’s slowed, and he sips his water slowly.
It’s time to be honest.
“I DNA tested you.”
He arches an eyebrow at that, swallowing his last sip of water, the question clearly etched into his face. He wants to know why she would DNA test him, for what purpose, and what this has to do with her sudden shift from ‘murder King Snake and become my weapon’ to ‘we need to leave immediately before we speak.’
“After your first night with me, I knew you were something else. That you weren’t who you said you were, or at least, who Batman thought you were. So I checked.” She hands him the report she’s been carrying around for weeks. He begins to poke through it, eyes immediately finding his real birth certificate and the strange breakdown of his DNA. “You moved like me. You sounded like my sister. But you had Janet Drake’s glare. And I know this might be hard to hear, but you’re nothing like what I’ve seen of Jack Drake. You analyze everything the way Batman does. Ten steps ahead, in all directions, at all times. And you’re more charming than either Janet or I could ever be, endearing enough to be the son of socialite Bruce Wayne.”
His chest still rises slowly, breathing through the information overload.
“Before you were born, but after I had given up my first child, I had a contract with a wealthy Gotham woman for protection. It was meant to be benign, a short request with a massive payout. But after meeting this woman, she offered me a larger check if I provided her with my DNA. I was still gaining my ground in this world. It was more money than I’d needed, but it set me up with security. So I said yes. I left soon after, and I heard she’d become pregnant with her then-fiance’s child.”
Timothy looked up at her, hands trembling over the pages that changed her life. His big blue eyes pin her to her seat, all wide and watery.
“I didn’t think much of it. But you came to my attention and I just knew. It must be Lex Luthor’s doing, since I have no other logical explanation for how you have three parents. Three fully biological parents at that, but you do. I am your mother. Bruce Wayne is your father. And Janet Drake, it seems, is the mastermind who managed to merge three DNA strands into one. I am telling you this because I need you to return home.”
“Lady Shiva–” His voice is raw.
She cuts him off with a simple look. He folds in on himself, clutching the paperwork to his chest. “It is not because I do not want you or am not fond of you. But there are things I must do in order to ensure that those who sought me out, who killed my sister, do not seek you out. Additionally, there is no one else I could trust to take my daughter.”
Timothy’s big blue eyes blink at her with an uncanny clarity. “My sister. I have a sister. You want me to take her with me? To keep her safe?”
Sandra hums, pleased that she doesn’t have to waste time on too many words when her little bird clearly can discern things for himself. “Yes. Her name is Cassandra. She is the daughter of David Cain.”
“You’re going up against the League of Assassins.”
“I am. I need you to take Cassandra, to teach her to speak, to read, and to keep her safe from her father until I can dispose of the threats against you both.”
The twist to his mouth loudly displays his displeasure at being left behind, but she knows she cannot bring them. Whatever he sees in her face seems to assuage his concerns for now. “Okay. I can do that. But the first question is, how do we even get Cassandra from him? Do we even know where he is? And if she’s with him.”
She sighs as he continues to plot out loud, discussing what to do as soon as they find her daughter.
They spend the rest of the day talking. She asks him bluntly about his parents, about Janet. About why they are never around. About how Bruce treats him.
He tries to lie, at first, but as soon as she sniffs it out, he stops. That first lie to her, that they left him with a nanny and he has someone to go home to, is so blatantly wrong that she stops him in his tracks with a simple raised eyebrow. So he tells her the truth.
He loves his parents, but they’re busy with work. His mother is brilliant in the boardroom and social scene, and at pretty much everything she’s ever done. His father lives for travel and his archeological adventures. They love each other, but they’re distant from him by virtue of never being home. He started following Batman and Robin around at age eight and figured out who they were by age nine. He blackmailed Batman into being Robin.
But he never actually wanted the role, just wanted Bruce not to die. To not tarnish Jason’s memory.
Bruce is a little bit of a drunk, but he’s been getting better. Kind of. He loves the Waynes, but he thought this would all be temporary, because he has parents he loves and a life outside of being a vigilante. He never thought that Jack wasn’t his father, but he isn’t surprised by the news.
He has a lot of friends, none of whom currently know either a) who Timothy Drake is or b) that he’s Robin. He loves skateboarding, and rock music, and photography.
When he asks about her life, she wants to lie. But he really proves to be her son when he tosses the same arched eyebrow back at her. “I thought we’d agreed not to lie to each other now.”
So she tells him about the little village town where she and her sister grew up. How they trained her to defend them. How she and Carolyn moved to Detroit. How she knew she could be Lady Shiva, but having her sister allowed her to remain Sandra Wu-San. At least until David Cain murdered her and propelled Sandra to become Shiva. She reveals the pitfall that was her rage, how it led her straight into a trap set by Ra’s al Ghul and Cain. How the only way to survive was to have Cassandra and let her go.
The way it felt when she let go of her daughter. The wish to undo her mistakes so that none of this would’ve happened like this.
Timothy listens with rapt attention. She can tell he’s likely just as vengeful as she is. That he’s already plotting ways to take down Cain and Ra’s one step at a time. Unlike her, however, he’s strategic and thoughtful. He won’t get caught in a trap unless it’s part of his plan.
Night falls, she makes him eat and sleep while she looks into Cain’s location.
“But I can help.”
“You can sleep.”
“All I’ve done is sleep.”
“You can sleep willingly. Your will or mine.”
He huffs, pouting in her direction, big blue eyes vying for her attention. She refuses to give it. Little master manipulator could probably trick her if she wasn’t careful.
“Fine. But you have to wake me up when you find her.”
“If you don’t sleep, I will put you through six more rounds of the Kata you’ve been working on so you drop to the ground unconscious.”
“You’re a worse mother hen than Nightwing.”
“If you don’t take that back–”
“Stab me, I don’t care, I just want my sister.”
Her heart pounds in her chest. It’s something she said to the person she thought had killed Carolyn before she found out about Cain. “You will meet her soon enough, Timothy. But she needs you to be on your A game. You can’t do that for her if you are exhausted.”
His sigh is softer, like he can tell he’s hit a sore spot. “Okay, okay. I’ll sleep. Just this once.”
“For Cassandra.”
“For Cassandra,” his yawn nearly cracks his jaw wide open as he settles into his sleeping bag. Shiva turns back to her computer when she hears his sleepy voice whisper, “and you too.”
Left alone with the sound of the birds and bugs, her son burrowing into his sleeping bag, she wonders how her life has changed so much in such a short span of time. It’s almost like when Sandra Wu-San became Lady Shiva, this shift that happened overnight. Like she’s climbed out of a deep, dark cave, eyes blasted by the sun for the first time in so long that her eyes strain with the change. Last time, she descended into the darkness. And yet, with the children she never had the chance to watch grow up on her mind, she was able to crawl her way back out.
Maybe it’s time to let Timothy call me Sandra, instead.
Surprisingly, David Cain has taken her daughter to Hong Kong. She is supposedly on a mission of great importance to the League. Sandra cares not. She will be taking one more child and putting the pair of them on a plane to Gotham as soon as possible.
She knows this will be an act of war against Cain, against Ra’s, against the League. Whatever. She will do this for them, and then she will clean house. Rid the world of the people who wish to take what is hers. Cain had years with Cassandra. Had years to train her, teach her, and he’s only shown to be a terrible man who never even taught his own daughter how to speak. Her lack of autonomy is too close to how her own pregnancy felt. To be bound in her body with no way out.
It was demeaning to a woman who fought so hard to be free.
Perhaps she has more to unpack in this category, but for now, the focus is on her children. She refuses to allow Timothy to come with her. She knows she is stubborn and has faced Timothy’s stubbornness before on King Snake. But this, well, his story of how he became Robin is much clearer. Bowling over Batman’s will is truly a feat, but it is frustrating to be on the end of Timothy’s insistence.
“You are staying here.”
“You can’t stop me.”
“I can. Forcibly. I assume you don’t want to meet your sister that way.”
“I can get out of it.”
“I’ll make sure you can’t.”
“The Gotham rogues say the same thing, and I still do.”
“If you compare me to that filthy riff-raff, I will force you to train with a gun.”
He pauses. “You wouldn’t dare.”
“I would.”
“I’ll just become gun-Robin then.”
She presses her hands to her eyes, a migraine building in the front of her skull. “Timothy.”
“I can take care of myself, Shiva–”
“I am well aware of that.”
“Then why–”
“David Cain has Cassandra. He has her because he took an interest in me and wouldn’t let me leave the League without a child of mine. If he finds out about you, figures out that you are mine or that you are Batman’s or even that you are just interesting to him, he will never let you leave. He will tell Ra’s, and then the Demon’s Head will never let you go. They will spend time and money and an inordinate amount of effort to trap you, to keep you, to train you until you are exactly what they want. You will no longer be Robin, you will never be Timothy Drake again. I had to subject one child to that fate, I will not exchange your freedom for hers when I have other options. Did I make myself clear?”
His silence speaks for itself. When she turns to look him in the eyes, he’s watching her with a complicated expression on his face. Something between the agony of being left behind to wonder and wait, and this soft understanding of her concern.
“I will not lose you, Timothy. I will return, Cassandra in hand, but you need to trust me to do my job.”
“I do trust you.”
“Then why–”
“I don’t trust them. What if they hurt you or Cassandra, or something happens and I’m not there? Do I just live with the wonder? Do I move on like none of this happened? ‘Cause I won’t. I’ve always wanted a family that loves me, one that wants me. The not knowing would kill me if I didn’t kill someone first.”
“Timothy,” She says quietly, reaching out slowly to put her hand on his shoulder. “I will bring Cassandra back. There is no other option for me. But I need to be sure that if anything goes awry, then someone is on the outside to get us out. You are the contingency here. You need to be here. You need to be alive and safe. You need to be prepared to get us out.”
It seems to hit him, even after a week of arguing, that she has her plans in place. That he is not a footnote, but part of the battle plan.
“Oh.”
“Yes. I am not leaving you behind because you are weak.”
“It’s your ‘what-if’ worst-case scenario.”
“Yes.”
“I understand now.”
She hums, squeezing his shoulder and moving to push his chin back up to face her, having turned away from her gaze as the realization set in. “Do you promise me that you will stay?”
“I promise.”
“I intend to hold you to this.”
“I know. I intend to hold you to your promises, too, you know.”
Leaving Timothy and assuring herself he won’t follow her is nerve-wracking. He promised, but while she’s hoping he’s going to keep his word, the tag she slipped into his uniform and the one she clasped to his hoodie are her way to verify she doesn’t have to worry about David Cain finding out about him.
Since she and Timothy had been surveilling them for a week, they’d found that Cassandra was almost never alone. That Cain was an annoying little parasite who watched her missions from the sidelines like a coward. Never engaging, even when he should. But he does leave when he speaks to the League or to his Hong Kong contacts. For a world-class assassin, he is stupidly predictable about his meeting cadence.
No matter, if his fuck-ups are her wins, this just makes it so much sweeter to steal her daughter back right from under his nose.
It’s during one of these outings when she climbs into Cain’s cheap hotel room and finds Cassandra. Something in her daughter must instinctively recognize her because she doesn’t go for the kill. Instead, they circle each other. Sandra keeps her body loose, relaxed.
“Hello, Cassandra. I am your mother.”
Even though she betrays no acknowledgment of what Sandra says, she moves to strike. Sandra meets her halfway, knocking the baton out of her hand, keeping them far enough apart that she can keep things quiet and not escalate them.
Cassandra is rather startled by her approach. It’s likely none of her previous targets have attempted to disengage from combat.
“I am here to bring you home.”
Her daughter once again moves to take her down. Sandra simply keeps her head, remembering that Timothy had mentioned it is likely that showing restraint in combat will increase her odds at a productive conversation since simply knocking Cassandra out and bringing her back leaves them open to misunderstandings and questions of autonomy. (“She needs to be able to make a decision for herself, for once. If she’s never gotten the opportunity before, she needs to have one now.”)
“I am not here to fight you.”
She dodges the next few attacks. It becomes incredibly harder to tame the instincts that cling to her bones that tell her to fight harder, to land hits instead of just avoiding them. But the part of her that has always been Carolyn’s sister recalls the first time they’d ever watched a ballet. How the dancers twirled in the air like they were one with it. How their bodies bent to the music with all that delicate self-assuredness. It was only now, fighting with her daughter, did she move with no malicious purpose. Just spinning around the hotel room as her daughter learns her body language.
“I am here to help you. You have been a hostage for far too much of your life.”
Cassandra’s head tilts. The questions flow through the tightening of her spine and the rising of her shoulders. Help? What home? Where? Without Cain? Why now?
“I am sorry I have not come sooner. I discovered your little brother and believe he will be the best person to help you. To protect you. He is from Gotham.”
Brother? Gotham?
“Yes, a little brother. He is a warrior, like you and I. He is protected by other warriors. He will be able to train you, to teach you to speak. He is eager to meet you. He was very upset he couldn’t come with me and requested we return to him as quickly as possible.”
Cassandra’s eyes are flitting around the room, the air rising in and out of her chest faster.
“Cassandra,” Sandra whispers, holding out a hand to her daughter. “I will not hurt you. I will not be like Cain. You have a chance to be free, now. You need to decide if you want to leave this life behind. If you want more than dirty hotel rooms and blood on your hands.”
Both of their hands are shaking.
“I should’ve come for you sooner. I should’ve protected you from this. No one did for me. But finding Timothy gave me perspective. I failed you by letting Cain take you away from me, from never killing him, and running. I do not want to fail you again. I want you to have the life your aunt would’ve dreamt up for us had your father not killed her.”
Cassandra’s hand reaches for her own.
“I want you to live the life I had before losing my sister. I want you to be able to feel the sun on your face with your sibling by your side and feel happy. I want you to grow up and make friends. To fall in love. To break someone’s heart because no one is allowed to break yours. To spend holidays with family. To choose whether or not you have to take a life. To be able to decide what name you go by and who you really are. I took your opportunity away when I didn’t fight for you the first time. I refuse to do that a second time, Cassandra.”
Her daughter’s hand is small and cold, but Sandra can feel the tension in the space between them.
“I am not a liar, Cassandra. You know that.”
And Cassandra most certainly understood. The woman in front of her did not move like she was hiding something. She did not cower from Cassandra’s attacks. She kept herself at arm’s length until Cassandra had no reason to believe she would attack. There was no deception in her tone, in her stature. Just honesty, and surprisingly, fear. Not of Cassandra, but of herself.
So Cassandra allowed this woman to pull her face between her hands. They locked eyes for a moment, and when she smiled, Cassandra couldn’t help but smile back.
“Timothy,” she calls, seeing his head pop up from behind the couch at the hotel she had him rent with one of his fake Robin aliases so that no one would think to connect him to her rescue mission. “Come.”
He hops right over the couch, moving swiftly to stand in front of them. He smiles at Cassandra, something so soft and gentle. Cassandra’s lack of speech will be difficult, though she has been training Timothy in sign language for a week now. She has no doubt he will master the language enough to be able to teach his sister in due time.
Turning to her daughter, Cassandra’s discomfort is obvious to perhaps no one but herself and Timothy. They both keep their body language loose and lax. She introduces Timothy as Robin, the partner and son of Batman. While he still starts at the language, he recovers enough to remain calm. She explains that Timothy is her younger brother. That he must return to Gotham. That he will be taking Cassandra with him.
“You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do,” Timothy butts in, cutting off Sandra’s spiel. “You don’t have to fight if you don’t want to. Batman would actually prefer ‘no killing’ since it’s kind of his whole moral philosophy as a vigilante. And you don’t have to stay with him if you’re uncomfortable. I live next door and since my, uh, parents, I guess, are never home, we’d have the whole place to ourselves.”
He launches into a whole tale about Batman and the former Robins and how much he’s always wanted a sister.
To anyone else, Cassandra would appear bored, completely in control. But to Sandra, she’s nervous, scared, and apprehensive. But the more Timothy speaks, the more those fears are belayed. The more she’s able to relax. Perhaps it is a Bruce Wayne thing, because Sandra knows neither she nor Janet Drake are that disarmingly earnest. Perhaps it is just a Timothy thing.
She lets Timothy take over, guiding his sister over to the couch so he can show her Gotham on his tablet.
As Sandra prepares their bags, she takes a moment to watch them. Timothy is talking with his hands, expressive and open. He’s launched into this vignette of the first time he ever scaled a Gotham rooftop to take photos of Batman and Robin (the first version). How he almost broke his leg jumping down. Sandra lets out a sigh, wondering how deep those stories go. Batman clearly did not notice this child stalking him for years on end. It is either disappointing that Batman is either losing his touch or shocking that a nine-year-old Bristol boy was so good at blending into the shadows that even Batman couldn’t see him.
She wishes–well, it’s much too late to wish for anything different. But it is inevitable that she imagines what it would’ve been like if she had this change of heart, discovered her son, and saved her daughter sooner. She pictures the house she and Carolyn lived in while they were in Detroit. If Carolyn hadn’t died, if she had these kids normally, she wonders how different she would’ve been. If Carolyn would’ve helped her raise them, would’ve taken Cassandra to ballet and Timothy to the skate park. If Sandra would’ve traded long nights of training for family trips.
It’s plausible, but Sandra doubts she would’ve been that good of a mother. Especially without Carolyn.
She knows if Cain hadn’t killed her sister, someone would’ve found a way to exploit them. Would’ve taken one look at Cassandra and Timothy and known they were special. Knew they were worth the price on her head, or theirs.
As she’s watching them, she can already tell she’s done something right. Cassandra’s shoulders have loosened, and she leans into Timothy’s space like he’s not a threat. She knows he’s got training, will eventually have the skillset of a weapon, but the underlying tone in his voice is delicate and bright. He won’t hurt Cassandra. He would’ve never hurt Sandra, even as Lady Shiva.
Unless he had to. Unless he had no choice. For now, Sandra knows he’s got his morals. But if he’s anything like her, those will fade with time. With a major loss. With torture. Sandra held back because she loved her sister. Without Carolyn, that morality dissipated. Sandra suspects that Cassandra will be the opposite.
Cassandra has been stripped of the option to have morality. Under Batman, she’ll get it back and build it up. She will be so rigid in her understanding that she will likely be the most like the Bat when she grows up.
But at the end of the day, Sandra notes as she watches Tim plait little braids in his sister’s hair so she can try it on him, if someone were to take the other away, it will likely turn them into me.
Well, with that brilliant thought, Sandra shakes it off and continues to shove Timothy’s clothes back into his bag. He’s most certainly not assassin-raised. She supposes there is no decorum when a latchkey kid travels across the globe to train to become a better fighter. Janet Drake, if she had been around for more than a couple of months at any given time, would have been appalled. Too bad she won’t get the chance.
Dinner is a quiet affair. Timothy plates the food, teaches his sister about Korean cuisine, and talks their ears off. When he goes to change, Sandra is suddenly left alone with her daughter again.
The two of them size each other up. Cassandra is looking for Timothy in her face. In her shoulders. Her hands. He’s there for sure, but Sandra is still bloodstained. Timothy is not. Will never be, she hopes. Cassandra is different. She is saturated with the sanguine history David Cain has forced upon her. The two of them, mother and daughter, are too alike. Kindred killers. The two of them might never get along the way they both do with Timothy.
Even now, with Timothy in the next room, the tension has seeped back into her daughter’s shoulders. And her own. Sandra understood, though it did pain her. She was another parent who killed, who trained killers. There’s a world in which Sandra never went and took Cassandra back, one in which she left her to Cain until Cassandra was old enough to leave on her own accord. And by then, Sandra would’ve never had a chance at the relationship she’s hoping to build now.
But it will take time. They don’t have time because she needs to get them out right now.
That night, as they board the plane, she pushes her two children into the window seats. Their hair has been cut at about the same length, colored contacts in, and hats on to cover their faces. It’s the best she can do on short notice, but it fools plenty of people, including the two assassins she spotted in the security line.
She mediates throughout the ride, trying to plan out her big speech to Batman, when a head droops onto her shoulder. It takes every ounce in her not to jolt and attack. But it’s not her left shoulder, not her aisle-side. Instead, she finds Timothy has fallen asleep, Cassandra curled into his arms, like she’s always been his sister. It shatters her heart and puts it back together all in one go. With the cabin lights low, they look like twins. They look like Carolyn and her. She lets them rest. She knows they will have plenty of time to work on situational awareness when she gets them to Batman.
When she lets them go.