Ninteenth Unused Utility Belt | Video, backdated to after the breach ends (cw: fire damage)

[hellofist]

[The feed comes on to show Cass... well, she kind of looks like crap. But more than that, behind her her room, her real room on the Barge, seems to be confused about what it wants to be. In some places it's a replication of what Merlin's room looks like - there's his bed in one corner, a large wooden table with a red rose in a pot, for example.

Other parts are what the inside of a burned down building would look like. There's smoke damage, blackened walls, the remains of a dresser. The big computer is halfway melted and warped, the screen cracked and beyond repair. Looks like the Barge couldn't recreate what home is for Cass because she doesn't even know herself anymore.]

I'm back.

[There's not... that much to say after that, really. She's back, yay, no she doesn't want to talk about it.]

It was... about a week? I think. Learned... lots of things. About me, about... what I'm for. Why I... was made. It's funny, how you can... be so sure, who you are, but be... completely wrong.

Anyway. Back.


[Private to Merlin]
Are you... working? Or in room?


[Private to Dean, Chris, and Cassel, sent separately]
Have... to give you something. Can I come over?


[Private to Stephanie]
I understand, now. Why... I'm not Batgirl. Why you are. I didn't really, before. But... I'm glad you are.


[Private to Kon]
[After far too long passes with no answer to Steph, Kon gets a slightly panicked message from Cass.]

Where is Stephanie?


[Private to Dick Grayson and Tim Drake]
I know... that you won't see this. You can't. I just miss you. I shouldn't, but I wish... you were here.

Comments

[ Spam ]

[hellofist]

[She stays close, stays under his arm and partly against his side. Her head is fuzzy and weird still, not all of this feels real, but Dean is safe. He's always been safe.]

Not hungry. Soda would... be okay. Um...

[She'd kind of folded it up in her hands, but she unfolds it now, smoothes out the lump of black fabric and fixes the ears, so they stand up the way they're supposed to. For a moment Cass just looks down at the stitched up mouth and the blacked out eyes, but then she holds her cowl out to him, hand steady and expression stony.]

Put that... with Sammy, for me?

[ Spam ]

[surfaceshine]

[There's the part of Dean that is instinctive and geared towards taking care of others; he's honed it on a lifetime of raising his kid brother, being singularly, intensely focused on that one task to the sacrifice of all else. Cass has never needed Dean's protection, not like Sam did, not like others, but he keeps her close now anyway, and the weirdness draws his eyebrows together slightly in unacknowledged empathy.

He's about to break away to get the soda when she starts moving and he pauses, waiting, watching... her cowl unfold. Now he's actively frowning, hand lifting reflexively to take whatever she's offering him, but he doesn't pull it back to him just yet.]

Cass?

[ Spam ]

[hellofist]

[Once it's in his hand, she lets go. Not fast, like it burns her or like she can't handle holding it, she's just... ready to let go, now.]

I'm not that anymore.

[ Spam ]

[surfaceshine]

[He knows how important being Batgirl is to her; she hasn't ever expressly told him so, or why, but he saw her with the other Batfamily, saw how comfortably she wore it. He'll never understand it - he's just Dean, he's always been just Dean and always will be just Dean - but he knew Dick, too.

He fingers the material of the cowl and shakes his head, arm tightening around her.] What happened?

[ Spam ]

[hellofist]

Everything.

[That's not enlightening at all, but it's very true.]

I have... brothers and sisters. He made more. One of them... Mad Dog, they called him. He broke, inside. His mind, it wasn't right. He... killed me.

[ Spam ]

[surfaceshine]

[Ironically, Dean understands that. It's kind of how he felt after coming back from his own trip home - three days and everything later and he was back in his cabin and not sure what to do with himself.

What she says next, though, is like a punch to the gut, and not because he didn't know. He did.

He didn't want her to know.

Dean's arm tightens even as he looks quickly away, like she won't see.] You gonna hate me if I say I... wait, what? [That's when the last part registers and his eyes are drawn unwillingly back, eyebrows pulled together in reflexive, protective anger and legitimate concern.]

[ Spam ]

[hellofist]

[It isn't a surprise that he knew, she was aware he probably knew more than she did, considering he had her father's file. It's not his fault, she hadn't want to know those secrets and part of her wishes she still didn't, but she can't blame Dean for not telling her. When she sees his guilt, she reaches up to turn his face back towards her.

Turns out that's not needed, he's looking again anyway.]

Mad Dog killed me. There was... a group of us, trying to escape. He was attacking someone, and I... jumped in front. He got me with knife. Straight through here.

[She taps herself in the middle of her chest and they both know that's an injury there's no coming back from. Of course she died.]

I saw snow. And then... woke up on fire. Shiva- my mother, brought me back.

[ Spam ]

[surfaceshine]

[Dean doesn't know how to feel about that, and it would be obvious even to anyone who wasn't Cass. He's angry about it, he can't help but be, he loves her; he wants good things for her, not stabbed through the chest. And the stabbing doesn't help either: he remembers the sound knives make punching through flesh, remembers watching Sam crumple into the mud, remembers watching a stranger make a run for it because his job was done.

A strange kind of empathy, because Dean doesn't remember dying but he remembers waking up, back in that hospital in Missouri, long before he knew anything about the Barge. He remembers being confused, and he remembers thinking he missed something, something important, and he remembers knowing he should be dead.

Relief, because she's back; the guilt, because he didn't want to be this deep into her life, not until she told him, but he promised; anger again, washing fresh over his distaste for Cain, for willfully doing this; the creeping, bile-raising horror that anyone could do this to kids, distant and vague but present from the core of him. It's all there in the pause before he speaks.

The nameless dread that he knows how people are brought back in his world, and it's never good.

He frowns, goes with the empathy and the protectiveness.] How?

[ Spam ]

[hellofist]

Same way as Jason. Lazarus Pit. It... People shouldn't come back, that way. Messes them up.

[She hadn't had the memories to compare at the time, but it was just like the illness on the barge that made people go crazy and hurt people. She'd lost herself, the only thoughts were jumbled together urges to kill and not stop.]

She brought me back... so I'd kill her. She told me, after I... calmed down, was myself. That's what I was for. It's why... she had me.

[Now she steps back, out from under the protection of Dean's arm.]

Snapped her neck. Left her... hanging from hooks, over pit. She thanked me, while she died.

[ Spam ]

[surfaceshine]

[Dean doesn't know what a Lazarus Pit is and he's not sure whether to be relieved or not; the name itself is, of course, probably meant to inspire the crawling discomfort down the spines of whoever hears it. Dean himself is familiar with the Biblical reference, of course, given his line of work but there's no such thing in his world that he knows of.

He believes her, though, and he believes her when she continues. And it makes him mad.]

What the actual hell.

[Shitty fathers are one thing; Dean gets that more than he'd like to, and he has Cain's file, he's getting to know Cain whether he wants to or not, so he gets that a little bit as well. But two shitty parents? There's a bit of a kneejerk reaction here, revulsion at the very idea that a mother could agree to the sorts of things that had happened to Cass, could want to build on that. He knows he's biased. He doesn't care.

Cass steps away from him and Dean resists for a moment, but in the end doesn't force her to stay. He does try to keep his hand on her arm, though, still protective, still angry, and maybe a little bit of that is a hard-eyed kind of distaste for Cass having actually done it.

But mostly, he's pissed at whoever this mystery woman is.]

Cass, listen to me. That's not what kids are for. That's not what people are for. If she wanted herself dead, there are so many other ways to do it, so many shorter ways than having a kid and raising it and teaching it how to do what she ain't got the guts to do herself, if it was that big of a fucking issue. No.

No. You don't owe her anything, you don't owe him anything, you're not anything but who you are and who choose to be. You hear me?

[ Spam ]

[hellofist]

[There's a point here, something he's trying to say, and she sees it. She understands that he wants her to know that she's more, she can make herself better than her parents and their wishes for her, but... something else catches when he speaks. She focuses in on one part.]

She didn't raise me. She had me, then left... when she could walk. Don't think... she even held me.

[She had never even met Shiva until she killed her the first time.]

[ Spam ]

[surfaceshine]

[Dean waves a hand impatiently, dismissing the misunderstanding. He's never been good with words. He'll be surprised, later, that suddenly she's the one nitpicking his word choice and not seeing what he meant.

Maybe she doesn't want to.]

That's not... I know who raised you. But if that's what she said then either she meant for it to go exactly like it did, or she was lying.

Either way, that's not a mother. That's not what mothers do. You wanna talk about mothers, you talk to me about Babs.

[ Spam ]

[hellofist]

[There's a flash in her eyes at the mention of Barbara, the sound of her name. Everything about her expression, from her wide eyes to the slightly parted lips, the quiet gasp, it's all something you'd see on a caged animal, something small and weak that wants to escape because it knows it can't survive.

But it's gone as fast as it comes, not pushed down so much as dragged back deep inside where no one can see it. She won't be that. She's not a dancing hunter, she's not a bat, she's only a girl, but she's not weak. Whatever it is that's wrong in her now, she'll figure it out. She has to.]

Just wanted to... give cowl. Put with Sam?

[ Spam ]

[surfaceshine]

Fine.

[Dean doesn't know what to do with what he saw for that moment, though there's a part of him that wants to chase after that gentler, more fragile person and reclaim her. He'll stand guard jealously, protectively, viciously over Cass for any reason, from any threat, and there's nothing at all - nothing - that can change that. But he can't stand between her and herself.

Or maybe he can. He already has the cowl in hand, and his concession is less an admission of defeat as it is a hedging tactic. He'll keep it safe, anyway, which is more than he can say if he tries to tell her no and she takes it back with her. He'll keep it for when she needs it again. He's confident she will.

And when she needs him again, he'll still be right here, too.]

Sweetheart, I... [But he doesn't know what to say that he hasn't already, that she doesn't already know just by looking at him. He wants to help. He'd do anything to help. He doesn't know how, though, or what.] I'm sorry. I'm sorry I can't do more.

[ Spam ]

[hellofist]

[She nods, reaching up to touch his cheek as some way to show him it's okay, she understands, please don't blame yourself. It's nothing to do with him, all of the things that are wrong are hers, hers to carry and hers to fix.]

I just... need to figure me out, now. Figure out... what I am, without a cowl.

[ Spam ]

[surfaceshine]

Who you are.

[But Dean gets it. He doesn't know what he would do without hunting, he doesn't know who he is if not Dean Winchester, son of John, brother of Sam, lifelong hunter of the supernatural. She touches his cheek and he doesn't flinch, doesn't look away, though something in his expression softens the way it only does for his close friends. Those who know bits and pieces of who he really is, some of them more than he does.

He lets out a slow breath and nods.]

Alright. I just... ...if the Admiral won't do it, I can at least fix your room. Otherwise what good is being head of freaking maintenance around here?

[He can't do this for her, though he promises himself he won't be far away if she needs him. He trusts she'll already know that without him needing to say it.]