He doesn’t know how they got here, but Jason’s thankful for it. It’s not often that he speaks to Cass, when Jason’s passions are words and righteous murder and Cass’s passions are distinctly not that, but when they do speak, they manage to get along. Somehow.
“So, why don’t you kill?” Jason leans back on the couch, his favorite mug filled with Alfred’s hot chocolate.
Cass is curled against the arm of the sofa. She looks at him, head tilted. Jason knows she’s reading him, but he’s not sure what she’s finding. It’s humbling, and intimidating, to know she sees more than what he allows to show.
“I can see,” she says. “That one time… I killed. I saw. Pain. Fear. Desp- des- not wanting to die.”
“Desperation?”
Cass nods. One of her fingers fiddle with the material of the couch. Jason knows she’s allowing him to see the motion. He knows it’s her silent way of showing him trust.
“There is more. To dying. Like… like they see their lives-They think- remembers. Loves. Their life- regret, love, everything. It goes through-” Cass taps her temple.
“Their lives are flashing through their heads?”
“Yes. Good. Bad. Everything. I see.” Quieter, Cass adds “I know. I know them, then. I killed a life that I know. They love. Everyone, have something they love. I kill, I kill that love.”
“That must suck.”
Cass leans back. She nods, neck releasing their tension and eyes less hunted, more accepting.
“Yes. I don’t want to- I don’t want to be the end.” Cass swivels her shoulders towards him, now. “Why… why do you?”
“Me?” Jason… hasn’t thought about it for a while, nor too deeply. But this is Cass. And her honesty deserves an honest reply. “I kill because some people shouldn’t be left alive to hurt and kill others”
“Not about… Bruce?”
Jason took a sip of his hot chocolate. Cass settled more into the couch, her eyes clear and watchful.
“It used to be,” he admitted. “About him, I mean. It used to be about vengeance. But then I came back to Crime Alley, and then I saw the kids getting hurt instead of being protected. They’re innocent. And then, it wasn’t about Bruce anymore. Killing is just the means to an end now, for me.”
“Do you- not regret?” She makes a gesture at his leg, where on a normal day, his holsters would be.
“I try to make sure I don’t kill people I’d regret, no. Like, you know how sometimes you guys arrest muggers?”
Cass nodded.
“Sometimes,” Jason said, remembering the days of digging through trash for food and the lingering hunger that rumbled through his younger self’s stomach. “They mug people because they’re desperate. I don’t kill those guys. But people deal to kids? Who hurt sex workers? Rapists? They’re doing irreparable harm, with full knowledge of their actions. For profit, mostly. If they’re willing to ruin lives, then they should be ready for their own to be ruined. It’s justice, for people like me.”
Cass studied him. “Justice…?”
“The only kind us Alley kids could ever appreciate. Arresting an abuser, a threat, and having that stick is for the privileged. Having that threat removed completely is relieving.”
“Can’t trust the world to be fair. But death, is fair.”
“Yeah. I think if I saw as much as you do, it’d be harder to do. But I think I’d still kill, because one person’s suffering after a life of being evil is worth the safety of so many others. To know… well, I guess I’m glad I don’t know what that’s like.”
“I see.”
“I know you do,” Jason grins at her. “But not killing is an act of courage too. Even if B makes it seem like it should come instinctually.”
“Yes. He does not connect, with Damian. Does not understand, fully, how hard. To unlearn.”
“Yeah.”
They sit in silence for a while after that, listening to the sounds of their family clambering around in other rooms.
“Hey, Cass?”
Cass turned back to him.
“I would kill David Cain for you.”
He would. It makes the Pit seethe when he thinks about how much David Cain and Lady Shiva hurt Cass for her to get this insanely good at reading people. He hopes she sees the pure honesty and sincerity he feels at that declaration
Cass puts a hand on his shoulder and squeezed once. Twice.
“Okay. Thank you.”
“No objections?”
“… would not feel too bad.”
Jason snorted.
“Yeah. You and me both.”
He doesn’t know how they got here, but he’s thankful for it anyways, because he understands his sister just that much more now.
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“He's more myself than I am. Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same.”
― Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights.
future WIP edit for @jaynotwayne's birthday: Robin's War Journals: Steph recovers from the worst of her injuries in Wayne Manor, wondering if the final price of admission to the bat's club might've been too high, when she stumbles upon the old diaries of a long lost boy she can't help but see herself in. At the same time, a new player comes to town, gunning for Black Mask.
Stephanie doesn't need to read the autopsy to intimately know each wound it details. Roman Sionis had branded them all over her body. Now, it was as if someone else had plucked from her skin each bruise, each scrap, each slash, and transferred into his marred body, culminating in a mirror gunshot to the chest.
Whoever did it gave Black Mask a chance when he called for an ambulance and confessed his crime. The same chance Stephanie had. For whatever reason, be it his injuries being inflicted in a much shorter time, or a lesser luck in doctors, the result was this: Stephanie made it. Sionis did not.
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