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Cassandra Cain became Batman on a night that absolutely blew ass. Seriously; she bet it was a really dramatic ceremony, touching and beautiful for the crazy family of vigilantes who regularly stood around in spandex and capes in -20 windchill, but Stephanie was freezing her tits off and if it started hailing, she was bailing.

Up top, on Wayne Tower, there were two Batmans. Batmen? Batmae? No, it's only -ae for a Latin root. 

One was the old geezer, Bruce Wayne himself, finally succumbing to arthritis or whatever old man problems he was getting that made him give up Batmanning, and the other, small in his shadow but striking in her posture anyways, was the best woman Steph had ever known. She wondered, vaguely, if there would be some kind of passing of the torch. Utility belt? Maybe Bruce would just clap Cass on the shoulder, nod approvingly, and jump off the roof. Actually: Steph tilted her head, thought about it, and revised that up to most likely , Bruce would just clap Cass on the shoulder and nod approvingly, then jump off the roof instead of facing down his greatest fear -- parenting his own children.

Instead of any of that, Cass kneeled, her fist to her chest. It looked like they were reciting something. Near her, ringing the two in the center, were four boys: four Robins, for two Batmen. Four sons, but one father and one daughter.

It would be touching if Steph could get over her own daddy issues long enough. But, well, if Steph could get over her own daddy issues, she certainly wouldn't be in this situation. Maybe she could even have been on that roof with them, in another universe where she made different choices. But in this current universe, she waited three roofs away with a mug of instant ramen and a pair of binoculars, like the world's most dedicated stalker.

Bruce suddenly brought his own hand to his own chest and pulled the bat right off it -- holy shit, that thing came off? -- to offer Cass, who took it gently. Her own outfit was more armored than Bruce's, all kevlar suit of armor, like a modern-day urban knight. Well, Steph considered, chewing on a rehydrated pea and watching Cass affix the gleaming yellow bat to her own chest, slotting the family coat of arms in like it was intended to hold it the whole time, that probably was why they called it the Dark Knight in the first place.

Finally, with the bat in place, Cass looked up. Out at Gotham, spread out below them like one great big pulsing mass of city, still seething with people even at ass o'clock in the morning. And then she finally looked out and saw Steph, which is what Steph was waiting for. She gave her new Batman a cheeky smile and a wave and then packed her shit up and hauled ass back inside, where they had invented central heating and used it liberally. She was sure Cass got the hint.

Sure enough, once Steph was bored of poking around the generic office building she had conned her way into and moved to leave, Batman was waiting for her at the front door. Steph paused, taking in the sight of a Batman that was even shorter than she.

"Bats," she greeted. "Might want to invest in some high heels, maybe platform boots."

"Please," Cass said. "Don't call me the same thing you call my dad. It makes it more Oedipal than it already is."

"I don't really think I'm the Jocasta in your life," Steph said, already falling into that familiar rhythm with her. "Maybe the Circe to your Odysseus."

Cass hummed. "Jason hasn't read that one to me yet," she said, walking next to Steph, "but he says Odysseus was an asshole."

"Smart though," Steph said. "I've always liked him."

Cass's new costume leaves her mouth free. Steph can see the exact twist it takes, the rueful grin. "I suppose you would," she said. "Maybe I would too."

Then, Cass turns a very familiar, very sharp smile on to her. "So," she said, "is that a clue for your next big project? Classic literature?"

Steph booped the terror of the night on the nose. "No spoilers," she said, smirking at Cass's scoff. "But I'll have to bring my A-game, now that there's a new sheriff in town."

Cass sighed. "Would it be too much to ask," she said, "to keep the property damage low?"

"Yup," Steph said, popping her p's. "I'll try to keep the body count to a min, though, just 'cause I like you."

Too far. She pushed a little too much; the reference to killing, that was probably it. Cass's mouth went all pressed up, thin little line, and there came back the prissy murder-is-bad Batgirl who foiled every plan Steph had made since they were teenagers on opposite sides of a neverending war, running riot over the city in the summer. The gentleness dissolved like cotton candy hitting water.

"Hey," Steph said, trying to back-peddle. "Look, I mean it. No killing. I promise not to make your job harder than it has to be."

"That's it?" Cass asked, the familiar argument rising back up in place. Steph had no idea why she thought it would somehow be different, without Bruce's shadow hunched like a gargoyle over their heads. Cass would be Cass, whether she was Batgirl or Batman. 

"That's the only reason you wouldn't kill someone? Not because they're a person, because they don't deserve that. Because it would make me inconvenienced in some way."

And Steph, because she was Stephanie Brown, Arthur Brown's daughter and much more successful successor, because she just had that much more killer instinct than her dear, dead dad, hit back exactly where she knew it hurt.

"Do you think you'd have been this sanctimonious about the specialness of life," she bit back, poison coming up like groundwater, "if you hadn't been raised to be a killer?"

There. Cass really went stone this time, shutting the hell up. Steph disappeared out into the night before the newly inaugurated Batman could react.

They met for the first time, oh, probably when Steph was sixteen? Yeah, it had to be the summer she turned sixteen. Nearly a decade ago. That was one of the hottest on record, at least at the time, and it seemed like every kid on the East End had an apartment with a busted AC, which meant packs of kids congregated outside corner shops and holding court at parking lots, piled into cars with the air blasting.

Easy pickings, really, if you knew where to look. And Johnny Rossi had exactly what Steph needed. The hard part was getting close enough to him to swipe that gun he kept flashing around, showing off to everyone else, telling them all: it's his older brother's, a big-time Falcone enforcer.

Steph doubted the "big-time" part, considering Rossi'd been a liar since they were kids in kindergarten, but the "Falcone" part? All she needed. A lifetime of growing up in Gotham had given her the kind of instinct for politics that Otto von Bismarck and Sun Tzu would have killed for, and a sensitivity to the delicate balance of power that David Hume could write another whole essay on alone.

And if she was going to kill her dad, an unaffiliated wannabe supervillain with vague ties to the Marconi, she'd like to do it with a weapon that would be registered to a Falcone power player.

She'd thought it through. She'd run her plan backward and forward in her head, over and over again, tweaking moves and playing them off each other like she was messing around on a chessboard or something. It came down to a few things, minor problems, but Steph was good at fixing her problems; an out of the box thinker, her teachers always said on those grade school report cards.

A little of that out of the box thinking got her pulling a hat on and swiping a fresh pie off the counter of the local chain pizza shop. She crossed the street with it, approaching the crowd of kids her age, and breathed in deep. Confidence was key, Stephie.

"Hey, any of you all want some pizza? The guy who called didn't pick it up for an hour, and my manager didn't want it to go to waste."

Johnny Rossi, clearly the guy in charge, snorted. "Hell yeah, you think we're gonna say no?"

He stuffed his gun into the waistband of his jeans, leaning over to inspect whatever Steph had pulled and plonked onto the hood of their car.

"Pepperoni?" He asked her.

Steph shrugged, already concealing the deadly weapon she'd just liberated off him. "It's a classic. Enjoy, guys."

Then she booked it before they stopped thinking with their stomachs and noticed their shiny new toy was gone. So, that was phase one.

Phase two was when she actually met Cass. See, she couldn't shoot a guy in her own home; Falcone hit or not, that was suspicious, and she wasn't stupid. So, she offered to drive her dad to the bar to meet his buddies, waiting out in the back in the warm night, car idling, gun in the glovebox, and a pair of rubber gloves in the seat next to her. It always paid to be careful.

She was drumming her fingers against the wheel, hopped up on nervous anticipation and all but buzzing with adrenaline when she saw Batgirl for the first time. She hadn't realized quite what she was seeing yet, barely able to pick out a black on black shadow, but when she heard the sharp report of a gun, she was out of the car before she even realized it. Running into danger; maybe her mom dropped her on the head a little as a kid, messed up her survival instincts bad or something.

She shouldn't have been worried. She cleared the corner and stumbled straight into a crime scene in the cleanup, Batgirl hunched and rifling through a downed man's pockets, her cowl and cape obscuring the rest of her. Then her head jerked up and they made eye contact in a back alley next to a bar that stunk of human urine and smoke. A love story for the ages.

"Hi," Steph said, a little strangled. "I uh, heard a noise."

Batgirl turned, fingered a hole in her cape -- oh my god, what? -- and then looked back at her. "Don't worry," she said, her voice husky and surprisingly deep, "They missed."

"Oh," Steph said. "Well. In that case."

Batgirl stood up, clearly having not found what she was looking for. She was a few inches shorter, Steph noted absentmindedly. "You shouldn't be here," she said, pulling handcuffs out of her belt. 

"Wow," said Steph, ignoring her, "Do you guys just carry those around? Ready to go?"

"It's always good to be prepared," Batgirl said to her. She kept working in silence, but she didn't protest to Steph's continued presence or seem to find it odd that a teenage girl wasn't running away at the sight of violence. 

"So, what were they doing?" Steph asked. "You know, to bring down the wrath of Batgirl. 'Cause, I'd imagine just regular scummy guy behavior wouldn't be enough to get this treatment, or else you'd be here, basically, for forever. Not that you shouldn't be stopping that when you see it! But also, like, we have supervillains. You know?"

Batgirl looked up from where she was flipping through a man's wallet. "You talk a lot," she said.

"You don't talk much," Steph rejoined, trying to crane her neck as subtly as possible, hoping to read the name on his license. She had a few suspicions, now, who exactly those men were. "Is this gang stuff?"

Now Batgirl looked suspicious. Steph consciously tried not to freeze up. "Why do you want to know?"

"Well," she said, reasonably, "I have to live here. I'd like some advanced warning if there's about to be some, you know, tension. If the Maronis and the Falcones start fighting again, I'd rather not get caught in the crossfire."

Technically not a lie. Clearly, Batgirl didn't clock it as one at least, though her suspicion didn't quite abate.

"A new strain of hallucinogenic drugs being distributed through the city. It has been putting people in comas. Trying to track down the source," Batgirl finally said, after one long pause.

"Hm," Steph said. She weighed her options against this new information. Then: "Word of advice from a Gotham local? That sounds more like supervillain stuff than gangs. Real drug dealers want returning customers; supervillains just want chaos. I'd look into Mad Hatter if I were you."

"Do you know something?" Batgirl asked sharply. 

Steph smiled and shrugged. She hoped she just looked mysterious, not sketchy. "Just a hunch."

There was a loud banging noise, then an overly familiar drunken shout. "STEPH!" her dad called, banging against the locked side of their car. "STEPH, WHERE'D YOU GO?"

Steph winced at Batgirl. "Gotta go," she said. "Good luck," she said, surprising herself with how she meant it.

The whole drive home, her dad in the backseat, Steph was turning that new piece of information over in her head. Fitting it into a couple of her plans. She had a gun with 15 rounds in it; that meant 15 shots she could take and frame on a Falcone, so long as she stayed careful about it. 

When she was a kid, before things turned bad, her mom and dad would sit down on the rug in the living room and have family game nights. Strategy games, usually. Lots of chess, sometimes mancala. They'd challenge each other all the time: can you win in 25 moves? 20? How about 15?

Steph always won.

Three years later, Arthur Brown's case has long since gone cold. Everyone was positive they knew who it was though; the cops thought it was the Falcones, the Falcones thought it was the Maronis, and the Maronis assumed it must have been intra-supervillain drama. Either way, after Cluemaster's body was fished out of the Gotham Harbor, cremated, and scattered back in the harbor by his grieving wife and daughter, the case was deemed dead. 

If anyone noticed that Crystal and Stephanie Brown were perhaps a bit less cut up about it than expected, nobody said anything. After all, Stephanie swore on the stand that she had driven her father to the bar for the weekly trivia nights he never missed, waited hours for him to come out, and discovered him missing from a bar known to be regularly frequented by all sorts of unsavory types. In the face of that, who would suspect the young-faced sixteen-year-old girl, all wide eyes and shaking hands?

"You know," Cass said, "I can always tell when someone lies."

"Oh yeah?" Steph smiled sardonically, leaning back in her armchair. "That hold up in a court of law?"

Cass glanced around the penthouse, taking in the various trappings of wealth and status surrounding the sole property owner, a nineteen-year-old. "Paper trails do."

"Good luck," Steph said, leaning forward and pouring a little more coffee into her cup from the fiddly French press that she had to Google how to use. "This is all perfectly above-board. I'm a legitimate businesswoman, I'll have you know. Forbes 30 under 30 and everything."

"A casino owner," Cass commented mildly. "That's a cash-intensive business."

"I have no idea what you could be implying," Steph said innocently. "And I certainly don't know what you could prove to a bench of jurors. Hypothetically. Hypothetical jurors."

"Is everything about being sued with you?" Cass asked, snorting.

"Just covering my bases," Steph said with a wink. "You won't believe how many times I've been audited. By, and this is somewhat curious, the Wayne Enterprises External Auditing division. I didn't know Wayne Enterprises even offered assurance services."

"It's been newly formed," Cass said neutrally. "When Tim took over as CEO."

"Ah," Steph said, like a little shit. "And that's the brother that hates me, no?"

"All my brothers hate you."

"Your brothers are sore losers," Steph shrugged. "More coffee?"

"I came here for a reason, you know," Cass said. She still let Steph pour her some coffee, though.

"Yeah, yeah, all work, no play, makes Black Bat a dull girl."

"Steph." 

Steph waited for just a second longer, only so she could see Cass frown sternly. Then she relented, getting up from her chair to go over to her overstuffed desk and rescue one slim manilla folder from the whole stack of them fanned out across the oakwood. She extended it out to Cass, only to snatch it away briefly when Cass reached out for it. Cass glared half-heartedly; Steph smiled in the face of it. A useful summation of their relationship.

"I do want something in return," Steph said. "I'm not exactly in this business out of the goodness of my heart."

Cass looked like she wanted to say something there. Steph was glad she held off.

"What do you want?" Cass relented.

"Tell Red Hood to step off in the Bowery. I'm thinking of, ah, expanding my services there."

Cass looked considering at that. "Jason won't like it. He's Bowery, born and bred."

"Well, that can be something to bond over at family dinner. For now, though, Red Hood is on his way out of that game, and I want in. It's just business; he shouldn't mind."

She wasn't taking it, so Steph tried the stick. "Also, if Jason could track down the personal finances and safehouse locations of each of the Penguin's lieutenants on his own, you wouldn't have to come to me." She shook the carrot in her hand, right under Cass's nose. "I even included their social security numbers and bank account routing numbers, just 'cause I like you so much."

Cass shook her head, taking the folder. "I'll talk to him."

"That's all I'm asking," Steph said, spreading her hands and smiling. "Hey, you ever read Sun Tzu?"

"My father is Batman," Cass said sardonically, popping a raspberry into her mouth. "What do you think?" 

Steph took note; she hadn't told Cass this, but every time they met up for a breakfast information exchange, Steph was the one who spent the morning trying to make something she thought Cass would like. So far, she'd figured that the other woman had a fondness for tart flavors, but not much of a sweet tooth otherwise. Steph thought perhaps blueberry pancakes might be in order next time they did this.

"It's easy to love your friend," Steph quoted, leaving her own plate where it was. "But sometimes the hardest lesson to learn is to love your enemy."

Cass's lips, berry-stained purple, spread into a slow smile. "I'm free Saturday night. I've been told I'm a good student."

"I'll see you then."

They don't talk about the year after that. When they were both twenty and Cassandra's second, better father was dead. When her family was falling apart at the seams and Steph by turns took advantage and offered comfort. After all, it was the first rule of war: if his forces are united, separate them.

Dick, whose take on Batman felt like a Dana Carvey-Bush the First situation with Bruce, left her relatively alone, and the new kid had apparently been warned not to mess with her -- or at least, not bring a katana to a gunfight. Tim was having some kind of breakdown, but he was mostly having it in Europe, so Steph didn't care. As for Jason, well. Steph was pretty sure he was having his breakdown right on her streets, but it didn't really seem like her business: plus, he'd more or less abandoned his own crime lord aspirations in favor of whatever sibling rivalry gone nuclear he had with Dick, anyways. Steph was deeply grateful she was an only child.

So yeah, some days, Cass would come to her for comfort, and Steph would drop what she was doing. Some days she'd stay the night in bed with her. They'd have pillow talk, like a real couple. Confess a few deep secrets; they both had plenty to choose from, so neither of them made any real missteps, accidentally handing the other a real key to their fragile heart. 

Once, Cass had asked her if her mother was still alive. Steph looked her in the eyes and told her the closest thing to the truth anyone on this Earth had ever heard; her mother was alive and well, under a new identity in a big empty home, so far from Gotham City that nobody would ever connect them again. Even this felt dangerous, but in the years that followed, Cass had never spoken a word of that to anyone. Not even her family. She never did say how grateful this made her.

Other days -- often, the next day -- Steph would wake up and tear another little piece off of Cass's father's abandoned empire, ripping a little inheritance away from each of his heirs. Cass never commented on this, either, but she certainly noticed. She certainly cared.

Steph would suspect for years that the straw that broke Cass's back was when she killed Black Mask. At the time, however, Steph had found herself knee-deep in war games, fending off attacks from all sides, only to discover through an informant that Black Bat had set up shop in Hong Kong of all places. It felt like a betrayal, though Steph could never figure out why; they'd hardly promised each other anything. Either way, it was a cruel piece of irony that the exact reason Cass left was the same reason Steph couldn't chase after her; in one stroke, Steph controlled most of the Gotham underworld, rooting herself in place forever. There was no running to the other end of the globe for her, not anymore.

"Do you want some free business advice?" Steph asked.

"No," Bruce Wayne -- the real one, not Hush -- said. He looked very tired. "You're not a real businessperson."

"Nobody can prove that," Steph said quickly. "Anyways, I don't think Batman Inc. is a good idea."

"I imagine you wouldn't," Bruce said. "It seems to run antithetical to your business interests."

" Antithetical to your business interests, " Steph mocked. "Shut up, dude, you're meeting me in a Batburger. Also, this isn't about my best interest. Well, not totally. Okay, it's kiiiind of about my best interest, but only because it's aligned with yours. Anyways. Batman Inc. is stupid as hell."

"Your acumen is astounding."

"Seriously," Steph said, slurping on her drink. "It's like, if he sends reinforcements everywhere, he will everywhere be weak, you know?"

"Yes," Bruce said, sighing deeply. Did he have grey hairs? Wow, he did. Steph idly wondered about the state of this man's knees. "I am familiar with the work of Sun Tzu."

"Just wondering," Steph said. "Because, you know. Whole point of Batman Inc. seems to be sending reinforcements everywhere. Like, everywhere. Seriously, you have one person covering all of Hong Kong? It takes, like, six of you just to keep Gotham from descending into hell."

Bruce narrowed his eyes. Whoops. Steph must have overplayed her hand there.

"Are you, perhaps, worried about Black Bat?"

Steph slurped her drink a little harder, just to see his eye twitch. "Nope," she said. "I've seen that lady fight. I'm not wasting my energy being worried for her. Just saying, we've dropped down to what, two, sometimes three vigilantes in Gotham? It's a delicate balance of power we got going on here, and I don't really think you want to rock the boat like this."

"Hm," Bruce said. He kept staring at her, and Steph was beginning to feel distinctly uncomfortable. "And this has nothing to do with my daughter."

"Pure self-interest," Steph said, because that wasn't really a lie. Either way, Black Bat was back in Gotham barely a month later. Bless the divine art of subtlety, secrecy, and getting what you wanted.

"Hey," Steph said, leaning over Cass's bedside. "Wake up, I made pancakes."

Cass's eyes cracked open, blearily gazing up at Steph. Then, she blinked and sat bolt upright.

"This is the Manor," she said, a little uselessly.

"Yeah," Steph nodded. "Good to see you weren't hit that hard on the head."

" You're in the Manor," Cass reiterated. "Did you break in?"

"Teeechnically, it's not breaking in if you give me permission," Steph said, trying on a winning smile.

"I can't give you permission after the fact. How did you even get in?"

"My natural charm and sparkling wit," Steph said. "Also, some free-climbing. Parkour. All the things I learned when we were kids and you were chasing me across the Burnside Docks. They're blueberry pancakes, by the way."

Cass slowly got up, pulling her own blankets off. "I didn't know you knew how to make pancakes," she said, gingerly testing her weight on her ankle. She really had taken a pretty bad blow to the head last night; Deathstroke had been in town, and there wasn't much Cass disliked more than fighting meta mercenaries. Felt like cheating.

Steph smiled a little secretively, which made Cass freeze in place. "Were you -- did you make breakfast all those times?" she asked, floored as she put the pieces in place.

"I can't believe you never noticed," Steph said, laughing. "There goes that psychic reputation."

"Please," Cass muttered. "I'm just a person."

"Mm," Steph said. "Still feels good to get one over the great and powerful Batman, Terror of the City, Demon of-."

"Stop," Cass said, fondly exasperated.

"Absolutely not. Demon of Darkness, Knight of all Nightmares --"

"The Spoiler," Bruce greeted from the kitchen table. He unfolded his newspaper precisely and sipped from his cup of tea.

"Okay," Steph said. "I promise your old man wasn't there when I was using the kitchen. What's up, Brucie Dubs? Want some pancakes too?"

Bruce made a face like he was sucking on a lemon. Cass giggled behind Steph's shoulder.

"I get the feeling my dad doesn't like you," she whispered into Steph's ear, tucking aside the loose hair.

Bruce cleared his throat. "I simply have concerns over my daughter choosing to date someone whose greatest goal in life is to rob the mayor after humiliating him with an impromptu trivia game show on Facebook Live."

"First of all," Steph said. "That was one time. Second, my greatest goal in life, actually, is to get played by Kate McKinnon in an SNL skit."

"Are we dating?" Cass asked, ignoring almost all the rest of that. Trust her to get right to the point.

"I can't tell," Bruce said, very precisely, "whether it would be worse for your girlfriend to be a crime lord menacing almost 30% of the population of Gotham in its entirety, or if the woman breaking into your room at night wasn't even dating you."

"I'm a legitimate businessperson," Steph protested.

"Honey, nobody believes you when you say that."

"Also," Steph said, pointing her finger at Bruce: "I've talked to Selina before. I know you don't have a leg to stand on."

"This isn't really about me," Bruce said.

"It's about Batman's romantic entanglements," Steph said, then felt distinctly ridiculous. "Cass is Batman. You are Batman."

"Dick was Batman," Cass added thoughtfully. Then she frowned. "I don't want to talk about my brother's dating life, though."

"But you're fine discussing mine?" Bruce asked. 

"You rebounded from Talia with Selina," Cass pointed out. "I think dating Steph is healthier."

"Stephanie," Bruce said, changing tack, "When was the last time you killed someone?"

"Oh, I have people for that now," Steph said. Then paused. "That wasn't very reassuring. Also, I don't kill people that often, because it's bad for business. That also wasn't reassuring; I'm cognizant of that. Honestly, I mostly just steal money from rich people nowadays, and I even offer to give it back to them if they can answer some trivia questions right, which I think makes me at least entertaining, if not harmless."

"Entertaining," Bruce said, breathing in deeply. "If not harmless."

"I really like her," Cass said. "When she doesn't kill people," she added, with a nudge, because Steph had started smiling a little too triumphantly. 

"I was joking earlier!" Steph protested. "I don't do that anymore!"

"Because I don't like it," Cass said. 

"Yes," Steph said, sighing deeply. "Because you don't like it."

"No, I'm making my case. It's good that I'm dating you, because it contributes to the overall lowering of murder rates in Gotham."

"I don't think I made that big a dent," Steph said. Cass glared at her. "But, I will accept that, because I love you and would like to date you, and your father's approval matters to you."

"Better."

Bruce was pinching the bridge of his nose by now. "You are aware," he grumbled, "that reforming a villain with love isn't a trope that works in the real world."

"Steph isn't a villain," Cass insisted. "She just made difficult choices at a young age."

"Sure," Steph said. "We can go with tha-- ow!"

"And I think we can be good for each other. We've already been good for each other, in all the years we've known each other. The wheels of justice grind slow but grind fine."

Steph couldn't resist. "I can think of another thing that grinds slow but fine."

"Please," Bruce said, gesturing ineffectually. "Not in front of me."

"The other option was a Wheel of Fortune joke. Anyways. Would you, uh, like some pancakes? I guess technically these are your pancakes, because I used your flour and blueberries to make them. But it was my labor. We can get into the theory of ownership over breakfast."

Bruce sighed. Cass giggled. It wasn't quite a new chapter in their lives or anything, but it certainly was the first time Steph had ever sat at this table, serving pancakes with the past and present Batman.