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“I’ve been meaning to ask you, Cass,” Stephanie said in between bites of her burger. “O mentioned something about you and Superboy the other day?”
Cassandra sat on the roof of an apartment building, after ordering takeout with Stephanie and Tim on a night their patrol routes crossed each other’s. Like her, Stephanie had pulled her cowl up, uncovering only her mouth so that she could eat and drink. “I visited him in Smallville a couple weeks ago,” she said, inwardly sighing. She had hoped that Stephanie would never find out about it.
“Ooh!” Stephanie said, teasing her.
“Wait,” Tim said, “so Kon wasn’t lying about a date?”
Stephanie’s head whipped towards him. “You knew?! Ugh, no one tells me anything around here.”
Cassandra smiled. She was amused to learn that Kon talked about her. “No.”
“That… must’ve been nice,” Tim said.
“It was okay.” Cassandra gave her smoothie a stir with its straw. “Bruce wasn’t happy about it though.”
Stephanie laughed. “Of course he wasn’t.”
“Is that why Kon is banned from entering Gotham?” Tim asked.
“Overreaction,” Cassandra muttered. Tim shrugged.
“So…?” Stephanie prompted her.
“So?”
“You and him?”
“Oh.” Cassandra said. “We’re friends now.”
She couldn’t help but notice that Stephanie and Tim, who had both leaned towards her in anticipation, relaxed at her words, their shoulders dropping in relief.
“Just friends?” Tim asked.
“Just friends,” she confirmed.
Cassandra thought that being friends with Kon was much, much better than dating him.
For one thing, they didn’t have to act so awkwardly around each other as friends. She did like him, incessant chatterbox and incurable flirt that he was, but he often said things he didn’t really mean because of those traits and ran into trouble. Like, she knew that he was attracted to her, if not from his words then from his body language, but in Smallville Kon admitted that he was terrified when they got serious. Cassandra felt its wrongness too, and not because she realized that a lot of it was misplaced affection for Tai’Darshan—because she never felt affection for the Black Wind either, did she? She admired his strength, and liked that he liked her, but that was it.
She returned to Gotham with Kon as her friend and had never felt lighter, not even when he was flying her around in the clouds.
Afterwards, Cassandra asked Barbara if she liked boys, hoping for… something. Advice, maybe, or validation, unlikely as that was. Well, Barbara might like them, Dick Grayson particularly, but Cassandra knew that she didn’t.
Cassandra and Stephanie still sparred every so often. Or rather: Stephanie still attempted to win against Cassandra every so often.
In between rounds they talked about anything and everything. Stephanie usually told her about school, and updated her on her mom if it was a good day, her dad if it was a bad one. Cassandra often found herself making mental lists of places to eat and things to try in Gotham, all recommended by Stephanie.
One night Cassandra decided to call it after eight rounds of trouncing the other girl. “You’re better,” she said, helping Stephanie up off the training mat, “but not better than me.”
Stephanie, still holding her hand, pulled her towards their drinks. She was smiling. “No one is.”
“What’s Wendy the Werewolf Stalker?” Cassandra asked.
Cassandra, Stephanie, and Tim were in Oracle’s clock tower helping Barbara reorganize old case files. Barbara had digitized them all ages ago, but still kept the physical copies around as a precautionary measure.
Both Stephanie and Tim looked up from the file cabinets they were rifling through to look at her.
“A TV show,” Stephanie said. “It ended a few months ago, I’m surprised you’ve never heard of it. Why?”
Tim sighed and pinched his nose bridge. “Let me guess. Kon? He wouldn’t shut up about the series finale for weeks.”
“He wants me to watch it. Thinks I’d like it.”
“Of course he does,” Tim muttered.
“You should give it a try,” Stephanie said. “It’s better than all those reality shows you watch, that’s for sure.”
“Okay, that I can agree with,” said Tim.
“Kon likes those shows too,” Cassandra said, a little hurt. Stephanie and Tim looked at each other, dismay written all over their faces. “Hey. I can see you two.”
“Sorry,” Tim said, and Stephanie grinned at her sheepishly. Tim continued, “You probably know about Kon’s VHS collection, so you could borrow from him. He might have the DVD box set as well.”
Stephanie snickered and held a hand up to her mouth, blocking it from Tim’s view as if she was whispering conspiratorially to Cassandra. “He says that like he didn’t personally tape a bunch of episodes for Superboy’s collection.”
“I told you, I just didn’t want to hear him whine about missing anything while he was stuck in hypertime,” Tim said, his face turning a curious shade of pink. His blush deepened when he noticed that Cassandra was staring at him. “It’s nothing, Cass.”
Stephanie rolled her eyes. “If you insist, Boy Blunder. Come on, these case files won’t sort themselves.”
Stephanie and Tim’s breakup was the worst, not only because two of her favorite people were upset, but they were upset with each other.
Their breakup left Cassandra in the impossible position of having to choose between someone she considered her brother and someone she considered her best friend. She couldn’t pick a side, not without hurting the other person’s feelings, so she had kept her distance from them both for the next week or so. She strongly suspected that they had avoided her as well, possibly with Barbara’s help.
Eventually they reconciled, and things returned to normal. Sort of. Cassandra didn’t know the full details of what happened between them, and if she was honest, didn’t want to know. The whole situation was painful enough without her asking questions and opening any freshly healed wounds.
Well, if she was completely honest, Cassandra didn’t mind that Stephanie and Tim weren’t together anymore.
Cassandra was in her apartment getting ready for patrol that night when she heard knocking, not on the wooden door that led to the hallway but the glass one to her balcony.
It was Stephanie, frantically waving to her and wearing Tim’s Robin uniform. “Do you like it?” she asked after Cassandra unlocked and slid the door open for her, gesturing at her body. “Tim owes me,” she explained.
“You look nice,” Cassandra said, heart suddenly racing. There was something so right about Stephanie as Robin that she couldn’t articulate.
Stephanie looked around the apartment and whistled. “Nice place you got here. B has good taste.”
“Alfred decorated.”
Stephanie laughed. “Suddenly it all makes sense.”
They stood in silence for a few moments as Cassandra wracked her brain, thinking of what to say next. How do people treat their houseguests? “Do you… want something to drink?”
“Oh,” Stephanie said. She smiled, though it didn’t quite reach her eyes, and shifted her weight from one foot to the other. Stephanie was unsure about something. “And here I thought we’d be patrolling tonight.”
“Right. Sorry.” Cassandra slipped her mask on, grateful that it would hide her embarrassment. “Let’s go.”
They left her apartment the same way Stephanie came, scaling walls and leaping from roof to roof. Cassandra admired the easy way Stephanie flipped and rolled, happy with how much she has improved since they first met.
Cassandra’s earpiece beeped. “Batgirl, what’s your status?”
“Oracle.” Cassandra landed on the nearest roof. Stephanie followed suit, and stood close to her so she could also hear Barbara. “Nothing to report so far. We’re going to circle Robinson Park.”
“We?”
“Robin’s here too!” Stephanie said into her ear.
“Robin… I see. I need you two by Trigate Bridge as soon as possible. It’s Penguin.”
Batgirl and Robin apprehended Penguin’s men, who were attempting to smuggle weapons into Gotham in trucks alongside their usual delivery for the Iceberg Lounge. Cassandra lost the bottom half of her cowl in the scuffle, the piece of black cloth sewn on to cover her mouth ripped clean off by a particularly lucky henchman—or unlucky, as he was punched directly in the face afterwards by her.
When everything was settled, Stephanie suggested that they climb the bridge. “We might as well since we’re here, and I bet the view is incredible.”
It was. Gotham was a nightmare of metal and stone, but oddly beautiful at a distance, the skyline studded with lights.
“I think I can see your apartment from here,” Stephanie said, pointing. She had taken off her domino mask at some point.
“Maybe,” Cassandra said, to humor her.
“Can I still come over sometime?” Stephanie asked, leaning in. “Get something to drink?”
Cassandra nodded. Stephanie smiled and leaned even closer towards her and suddenly she realized what was happening. “You’re about to kiss me,” she blurted out.
Stephanie backed off, surprised. “Uh… yeah,” she said, cheeks and ears turning red. “I was. Is that okay?”
Cassandra took the rest of her cowl off, aware that she was also blushing. “Yes.”
Stephanie smiled and leaned in again. “You can knock me out if you don’t like it.”
They kissed. Stephanie’s lips were soft, and her hands warm.
Bruce and Tim were out of the question. She’s tried asking Barbara already, and was acquaintances with Dick Grayson at best, so there was only one person left for her to talk to about Stephanie.
Cassandra hitched a ride on the train from Gotham to Smallville. At the Kent’s farmhouse, she climbed the tree outside of Kon’s bedroom and knocked on his window. It opened a few moments later, and Kon’s face peered out. His eyes widened when he saw her.
“Cass? You’re out of costume this time, at least.”
Cassandra gestured towards her backpack. “I finished Wendy.”
“What’d you think?!” Kon exclaimed, gesturing for her to come inside. “You could’ve given the tapes back to Rob to return to me… not that I don’t want you here, of course! Oh, don’t worry about Mr. and Mrs. K, they went out for a rare night on the town, romantic I know…”
Cassandra stood in Kon’s room, half–listening to him as she looked around. Not much has changed since she was last here, though maybe there were more posters on his wall now. She took a deep breath. “Kon.”
“Yeah? What’s up?”
“You like Tim.”
Kon stared at her, open–mouthed. Then his face twitched as he tried to decide what to say to her. Finally, he looked away, one hand on his neck. “There’s really no use hiding anything from you, huh.”
That wasn’t a no. Cassandra pressed on. “Cissie King–Jones is your friend.”
Kon turned to face her again. “She is, yeah.”
“In Wendy she plays Luella, who is… who has a girlfriend.”
“Right. Cass, what are you trying to get at…?” Kon shook his head, eyebrows furrowed. “Oh. Wait.”
It was his turn to study her. Cassandra thought about their own kiss, how they shared it after agreeing to stay friends. She hoped that he would understand.
He gave her a hesitant smile, eyebrows quirked. “Who’s the lucky lady?”