#she couldn't control the psychic accident that rewrote parts of her brain

[mzminola]

So follow-up thought to the Cass vs Jason Battle for the Cowl What If:

Once the battle is over, Cass is now Batman. That was always a given. She’s taking over in a situation where Bruce is presumed dead, Oracle & the Birds of Prey are mostly off doing their own thing, Dick is Nightwing, Tim is Robin, Stephanie is still Spoiler for now, and Damian is choosing between staying in Gotham with the Bats or leaving with his mother and presumably returning to the League of Assassins.

Cass & Damian together is a good set-up for the story to explore concepts of upbringing, personal agency, loyalty to a person vs loyalty to an idea, and people’s ability to change.

In canon, Dick!Batman decided to take Robin from Tim and give the mantle to Damian, with his stated reasons being that he’s uncomfortable having a Robin he views as an equal, and he thinks Damian needs it.

Cass!Batman is not going to do that.

Firstly: In this era of continuity, Dick set the Robin mantle aside and became Nightwing, and the problem (aside from all the reasons why he left) was Bruce giving Robin to Jason without asking. Not from having Robin taken. And this was about a decade ago in-universe. Cass had the experience of Bruce taking the Batgirl mantle from her while she was active in the role, with pretty much no explanation, within a couple years of BftC. She’s not going to take Robin away from Tim.

Secondly, and where we really dig into the themes: Cass and Dick have fairly different life experiences that are going to lead them to different views of what Damian needs, and what about himself Damian is responsible for.

Cassandra and Damian were both raised in the League of Assassins. Damian within the main bases surrounded by lots of people, Cass in an isolated base with her dad bringing people in for short periods of time.

Cass, at age eight, killed one man and decided to never do that again.

Damian at age ten, has killed multiple people and only stops because his dad told him to.

Cass is loyal to the idea of Batman. The Bat represents ideals Cass already held, and gave her a practical model and support network to uphold them.

Damian is loyal to Bruce. He’s at a point in his life where he wants to get to know and learn from his father, and as far as I can tell in canon decided that with Bruce dead, learning from his senior-most student, Dick Grayson, is as close as he’s going to get.

Cass likely has sympathy for Damian and understands his fears, but she’s never going to take his upbringing as an excuse for his actions. She’s not going to take it as a reason to go easy on him. She’s never going to say “He doesn’t know better.”

Because she was also raised to be a killer, and chose otherwise.

At a younger age than Damian is now.

Why would she think he needs extra help learning right from wrong? Why would she think he needs incentives for ‘good’ behavior?

At the same time, she’s never going to give up on him. More than anyone else, Cass is going to have unshaking faith that Damian can change. Cass’s Batgirl run’s biggest theme was people’s ability and choice to change. The idea that no matter what wrongs you have done before, you can always choose to stop, choose to do better.

~

Whether Damian sticks around…if this were a contemporary story he’d probably decide to learn from Cass for the same reasons he decided to learn from Dick. She’s a student of his father.

If this was the Preboot era writing though? That version of Damian was misogynistic as hell. He didn’t even respect his own mother half the time. He would not want to learn from Cass. He’d either decide to learn from Nightwing, or go back to the League.

It’s definitely a more interesting story where he decides to learn from Cass, because otherwise it’s just a couple pages of discussion and then they split up. Him sticking around is what’s needed to explore these themes rather than just passingly mention them, and also?

It be a chance for Cass to see where the League upbringing has influenced her aside from killing by seeing pieces of herself reflected in Damian’s mindset and behaviors.