FANFIC: we are lion's cubs (DC comics / Batgirl)

[queenslayerbee]

Another fic from Cass Cain Week 2025.

Every deviation from comics canon was done deliberately and maliciously. Sometimes canon events do happen but they wrote them wrong.

Title: we are lion's cubs.
Fandom: DC comics (Batgirl / post-Batgirl 2000).
Character/Pairing: Cassandra Cain & Helena Bertinelli.
Rating/Warnings: M, none.
Summary: Cass Cain Week, Day IV: Quotes | Comic Panels.
Word count: 400.

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You gotta learn to read. You’ll never take over for him if you don’t, Barbara once said.

Cass no longer deserved that, but the urge to learn remained. She wanted things. Her new life in Blüdhaven, even with capes no longer allowed within its bounds. And this. An act of defiance against her upbringing, perhaps.

So she listened to Tim’s recommendation.

Helena Bertinelli never showed impatience towards Cass’s limitations, much as she searched for it. Her sole reaction when Cass explained… herself, was glib surprise at a bat sharing their identity. I’m not anyone, Cass didn’t say.

“Here, I brought you something.”

Helena plugged a drive in Cass’s tablet. Cass had set it to large yellow letters over a dark purple background, inciting no more than a single raised eyebrow.

Helena skipped ahead –“nobody reads the introduction” she said once. “Nobody” excluded Helena. It was a “generalization.”–; Mothers, it read, taking the air from her lungs.

Shiva lived. Cass knew this. Black Canary got her to join Barbara’s team. Cass hadn’t killed her for long.

But that hadn’t been her intent. She searched the globe for a mother, and found her opposing a group like the ones Cass fought every night. Except Shiva wasn’t holding back. When Cass intervened, it came down to Shiva’s life, or her own. And Cass wanted to live. Because she wanted things, now.

Intent. Cass finally understood what a difference that word made. How little responsibility the girl she once was bore. She could forgive the child now, but not the woman. She had Shiva to thank for both.

Cass cleared her throat. “It’s… small.”

“Everyone starts small, you’re not special,” Helena retorted. “Small doesn’t mean simple. Grown adults struggle with poetry: double entendres, hidden meanings, references… And there’s a rhythm, a lyricism to it. I think you’ll like it.

Dubious, Cass began to read. “A mother... sometimes dreams of an old age, made safe...”

She stopped at though she sees, she must ignore a daughter’s tears.

It didn’t fit; nothing she read did. It was just the word mother. The word daughter.

“Everything alright?”

Cass looked up. Once, Huntress found out who her own father was. An evil man. Huntress killed him; not with her own hands, face to face, witnessing the life bleed out of his gaze, but killed him nonetheless. Could she understand–

“I am,” she lied, and returned to the lesson.

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A/N (c&p):

-The book Cass is reading is Hope Mirrlees's "Collected Poems." I literally just started it, so I won't swear by it, but I did love her novel, "Lud-in-the-Mist." The title of the fic comes from that first poem, "Mothers."

-In this fic I went with Devin Grayson's intended vision for Blüdhaven, before editorial intervened: instead of being bombed and destroyed, Dick managed to strike a deal to keep it free of both superheroes and supervillains.

-I recently began thinking of scenarios where Cass did kill Shiva, just differently (still temporarily, let's imagine one of Shiva's worshipper-simps was around to bring her back), and the idea of Cass having to do it in self-defense (because Shiva is that much of a threat) entices me, so I decided to touch upon it here.

-That last reference comes from Batman/Huntress: Cry for Blood, which is an excellent comic I wholeheartedly recommend, if you want to get into Helena.

-I think paring this down to 400 words took years from my life (there was more! Cass's observations on the Helena-Huntress dichotomy! Vis a vis Bruce-Batman and her own lack of double identity!), but I'm committed to this theme now xD