#Like a full proper incoherent stream of thought ramble wow it's been a while

[aingeal98]

The thing about Cass is that the law holds very little value to her sense of right and wrong compared to Bruce. She's like oh the government thinks this man should die? Let's break into the execution chamber and break him out. Tim wants to call the police? That's stupid when I can just keep fighting bad guys until I get the answers I need. A assassin hesitates before killing a kid? Projection levels firing high today let's break into the CIA baby.

But then you bring up the one area of life where there are no easy feelings, where everything is complicated and it hurts: Her childhood with David Cain. He shot her for fun and she loves him and he loves her and showed her stars and constellations as a kid and he made her kill a man. And no one will understand that for the longest time the only part of her childhood that felt clearly deep bad wrong was the kill. The rest of it was... Not fine but something she misses sometimes. And no one else will ever understand why because it doesn't make sense to anyone except Cass.

So you bring 17/18 y/o Cass a case of child abuse, especially one that's not as clear cut as physically violent parent, where the father is a good man but a criminal by law, and the mother is cold, neglectful and uncaring, and that's the one time where Cass will rely on the law. David Cain is a bad man because he made her kill. He loved her but he was a bad father because he made her a criminal. Cass sees this man who is a thief (neutral to Cass, bad to the law) who loves his daughter, and her projection levels go through the roof. Yes the woman is abusive but Cass hasn't processed her own abuse. David is bad because he's a criminal not because he hurt her. She can't make the decision who the good parent is. She can't even decide how she feels about her own father.

Except it's not true, she does make the decision. On a different day, one where Cass was not reeling from the revelation of David cain being her biological father, she might very well choose not to let the man get arrested, to help him with his daughter. The law is something Cass falls back on only when her sense of purpose is in disarray. Twice we see her falter, when she let's the father get arrested and earlier in another issue when she puts the man back on death row. Both cases she projects hard, on the death row killer and on the daughter of the thief. Both times she ends the story miserable and with a deep sense of wrongness. She followed the law, she followed their version of justice.

And her gut tells her that this is not right. This is not how things should be.

Cass believes in herself. Cass believes in gut instinct for right and wrong.

Cass believes that she is an evil murderer, not someone who can ever fully belong with the actual heroes. There is something rotten inside of her, and when the situation is too similar, when she's reminded that she was raised to be a killer, a weapon who can never truly be good, just desperately trying to prove herself while feeling she never can...

Cass deferres to the law. And she hates every second of it almost as much as she hates herself.