First New Story | Video

[hellofist]

[She knows that it's a cruel trick to do this now, in the middle of the night in the middle of a flood where people may or may not have their original memories. Everyone is too busy dealing with their own things, and so that's why she does this now.

It's underhanded, but it's happening. She's broadcasting from inside her room, a cramped, run down little thing with cracked plaster and a beaten up dresser and a bed and nothing else. She sits on the bed, cup of tea balanced in her lap, and tries not to think about what she's saying as she says it.]

Figured, should... do this, officially. My name is Cassandra Cain. I was here, before. As a warden.

[Still hurts to admit that, but she charges on through as best she can.]

I'm not anymore. Don't remember everything, just that... I was here. Some things came back, memories of... some people. Some places. Mostly, it's new.

That's all. [Except maybe she'll inject something in there to make it seem like she's trying.] Good luck, with new bodies. Shouldn't last long, don't worry.

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[hellofist]

[Cass can't help but ask the obvious question.]

Are you happy now?

[exnihilo]

No.

[No.]

Sometimes. Briefly.

I think my default state is - disengaged.

[hellofist]

[She wants to say welcome to the club, but it doesn't seem particularly helpful at the moment.]

The things from here, then. Are they... good memories?

[exnihilo]

[It might be. She thinks of it as a consequence of her manufacture, as something that precludes her from personhood. She's drawn to passion, because her own surges and then runs dry; the people in her life are without exception forcefully and entirely themselves. It's a high bar she doesn't realize she doesn't have to clear.]

Some of them.

[hellofist]

[It's a little eerie, looking at Mira and seeing herself reflected back. She's thought of herself as little more than a knife in the past, just a thing with a purpose and no real idea what it's for beyond that purpose.

As Batgirl, and then as Cassandra Cain, she had broken free of those feelings. Her own hopes, her own desires, they had started to come to her. She felt like a real person, and now she's gone back to square one and the knife has no one to wield it.

She understands manufactured, blankness. It's partly what keeps her asking questions.]

What's the balance?

[exnihilo]

[Balance makes her think of Harvey, his obstinate insistence that everything tallies out to exactly zero. She doesn't believe it - the world is too arbitrary, and too intentional at once. The law of averages only applies to random chance, and the history of the universe is the history of matter learning how to heft itself out of randomness. She loves him anyway, with a quiet fiery fondness, maybe loves him a little more for being so truculently wrong.

It's hard to love a man who's right all the time. (The bitterness is momentary; she thinks of Darling barely and faintly, these days, except when she dwells, thinking him safe and faded, and the memory rips her open again, inexplicably clear without the Gods scrubbing her gradually in the luxurious twilights between missions, siphoning detail away.)

So - she tallies.]

Positive, I think. So far.

[hellofist]

[Curious.]

Why just think?

[exnihilo]

Some things I don't know how to count.

[She learned the truth about - some of her past, not enough. And it hurt so much, but hadn't she wanted to know? The Gods aren't here, and that's exhilarating and terrifying in equal measure, spiritual vertigo.]

[hellofist]

[That makes more sense than it doesn't, to Cass at least.]

Do you just... leave that out, then? Or find out... how to count it?

[exnihilo]

I just...guessed. I guess.

[Flip the coin.]