Chapter Text
“You two went viral,” Nat said the next morning at breakfast.
“Viral?” Cass asked.
“It means famous on the Internet,” Clint said.
“I know what it means,” she snapped. “I know words.”
He held up his hands placatingly. “Sorry,” he said. “Don’t know what you do and don’t know. Robin said you hadn’t learned to speak until you were an adult. I figured…”
Cass buttered her toast aggressively. Damian eyed her.
This was not the plan.
“Why did we go viral?” Damian asked. Good. That was what Cass had been trying to ask.
“Everyone thinks you are new Avengers!” Shuri said excitedly. “There were already many videos of you two fighting the lizard monster, and then fighting Black Widow and Hawkeye, so now when you are seen with us, people think you have joined the team!”
“We haven’t,” Damian said flatly.
“We know, kid, it’s just what people are assuming,” Tony said. “We’ll clear it up at the press conference.”
“Press conference?” Cass asked.
“Having one later today. Gotta explain you two.”
“You categorically do not,” Damian said. “Our presence is no one else’s business.”
He shrugged. “People are asking questions. Gotta answer ‘em.”
“Could ignore it,” Cass said.
“That’s not really how I roll,” Tony said. Steve rolled his eyes.
“So what do you kids wanna do today?” Steve asked.
“Not a kid,” Cass repeated.
“Right, sorry.” He didn’t sound it. “What do you want to do today?”
“Work on getting home,” Damian said. “How may we assist you?”
“Leave that to the a—Leave that to us. You two just have fun.”
Cass decided Steve was her enemy.
“Sparring sounds fun,” she said. “You have a gym?”
Tony scoffed. “’You have a gym.’ We have the best gym.”
“I highly doubt it. It cannot rival my mother’s training arena,” Damian said.
“Oh, we’ll see about that.”
Their gym was pathetic. It was just a regular gym, like any civilian could go to. Sure, it was top of the line, finely calibrated tech, the latest and greatest machines, but there wasn’t even a trapeze set up. The obstacle course had no flame jets whatsoever, nor any swinging blades. Even the pool lacked artificial waves and robotic sea life. Damian was not impressed.
He let it be known.
“Does Batman’s gym have all that?” Tony asked, miffed.
“No, but my mother’s does,” he said. “I insisted that Father upgrade his facilities when I came to live with him, but he refused several of my recommendations.”
Understanding seemed to dawn on Sam’s face. “You didn’t always live with Batman,” he said. “Your mother was the one who trained you as a toddler.”
Damian frowned. Hadn’t he already explained that the other day?
Whatever. He turned his attention to their piss-poor obstacle course, which was basically an adult-sized version of a children’s playground. Not that Damian had ever been to such a thing.
He slapped the timer at the start end and began running.
Cass hopped over the ropes into the ring. She steadied her feet, raised her fists. “Fight me,” she said.
The Avengers present exchanged glances. Eventually Sam shrugged and joined her in the ring.
No one called out start, which Cass wasn’t used to. Sam just took a hesitant swing at her out of nowhere.
Cass let him come at her for about thirty seconds. He made very little moves or progress. He did not want to spar with her.
She sighed internally. This wasn’t a real fight. This wasn’t even sparring. It certainly wasn’t exercise.
She grabbed him, flipped him, and wrenched his arm behind his back, sitting on top of him. Sam made a choked-out noise. He tapped out on the floor with his free hand.
Cass let him up. “Fight me for real or don’t bother,” she said. “Don’t waste my time.”
Sam’s eyes flashed. “Alright,” he said. “Alright, let’s go again, Batgirl. Square up.”
Finally.
She grinned.
She fought Sam, Steve, Clint, and Nat. Nat was the most fun by far, a distorted mirror image of her, of what she could have been.
“Have you ever considered ballet?” Nat asked, currently holding her in a head lock. Cass elbowed her in the gut, slammed her foot down on top of hers, and scratched at her arms in a way that left Nat hissing and bleeding.
“Do it,” she said. “Prima ballerina of Gotham City Ballet.”
“Really?” Nat asked, sounding impressed. She nailed her in the side with spin kick. “I dance too.”
“I know.”
“That obvious, huh?”
She nodded. She punched Nat across the jaw, snapping her head to the side. “You dance while you fight.”
“Thank you.”
“Not a compliment. A weakness,” she said. “You are… too good. Not used to fighting someone on your level.”
Nat smiled wryly, blood on her teeth. “I’m guessing you run into a similar problem,” she said. “Maybe we can help each other out.”
Cass considered this while executing a leg sweep. Nat jumped over it and went for her solar plexus, which gave Cass the idea to do her favored nerve pinch. Nat cried out and fell to the ground.
“Nat!” Clint called out, running over. Steve and Sam followed close behind.
“She’s fine,” Cass said. “Will be able to move again in five minutes.”
“What’d you do?” Sam asked.
“Nerve pinch,” she said simply.
“I’m fine,” Nat gasped out. “Wow. That was best fight I’ve had since… Hong Kong. You and me, we’re sparring daily now. That was fun.”
Cass nodded. It was… fun.
Nat was fun.
Damian spent all day trying to beat the course record on the obstacle course. It was currently held by Spider-Man, who was very much a meta and had near-speedster moments when it came to his reflexes. Cass left him to his fool’s errand.
Her brothers were so stubborn. They always needed to prove something. To who was a mystery.
She wandered back onto the main communal floor in search of something else fun to do. She might raid the lab later. She had—of course—run out of her antidepressants while stowed away on the cargo ship to America, but after arriving back on land, it had been easy work to rob a pharmacy and find the right dosage. Though those had run out by now too. Cass was on Day Three of being off her meds, currently.
The lab was her most promising location to restock. She now knew that Stark Tower was, in fact, mostly labs. One of them had to be biomedical or pharmaceutical in nature. It would just be a matter of finding the right floor.
“Batgirl,” a Black man with an eyepatch greeted her. Cass’s mood immediately soured. She had been in the middle of plotting. “I’m Nick Fury, Director of SHIELD.”
She nodded. So he was the guy who fucked up. His fault.
She moved to walk around him. Fury blocked her path.
“I’d like to ask you some questions.”
“Okay.”
“Great. Why don’t you follow me?”
He was already walking. Cass planted herself where she stood. The presumption of this man. “Didn’t say I’d answer.”
He turned around to face her. He was smiling, slightly. The way that Dad did when he was pissed off or trying to scare people. The Batman™ smile.
“Why wouldn’t you? These are just some friendly questions.”
She channeled her father at his pettiest and asshole-est. She folded her arms. “I am not an idiot.”
He nodded slowly. “Alright, Batgirl,” he said. “I’ll level with you. We need to do a full debrief and exploratory interview to assess your threat level, and that of your universe.”
“Why should I cooperate?” she asked. “What’s in it for me?”
“For every question I ask, you get to ask one of me. For every question you answer, I’ll answer one too.”
“Deal.” She held out her hand. They shook on it.
She followed Fury into a small office. They both sat down on opposite sides of a little wooden table.
“What is your name?” Fury asked.
“No. Why were the Avengers never investigated when Hydra’s infiltration came to light?”
“It was not necessary to re-investigate the Avengers as we had already thoroughly looked into them before they were recruited,” he said. “You owe me an answer now.”
“So ask me a question.”
“How does Batman interact with your world’s law enforcement and government?”
“That’s two questions.”
“It’s two-pronged, but it’s a single question. And you owe me.”
“Fine,” she said. “Batman is a vigilante. Unsanctioned. Works with our home city’s police commissioner, him alone, no other cops until the past few years. One of the leaders of the Justice League, like your Avengers, but no government oversight. Independent.”
“No government oversight,” Fury repeated. “And we’re just supposed to trust that your “Justice League” is a group of kind-hearted good guys who always do the right thing?”
“Better than SHIELD,” she said. “There’s no Nazis in the Justice League.”
“No Nazis, that’s your standard?”
She shrugged one shoulder. “Low bar, but at least we rise to meet it.”
Fury smiled sardonically.
“Now you owe me,” Cass said. “You pull strings on the Avengers. What is their purpose?”
“To act as a planetary security force,” he said. “What is the Justice League’s mission?”
“Defend Earth,” she said. “Defend other planets too, when they need it.”
“Other planets? You have the firepower for that?”
“Between core members and the reserves, yes.”
“How many members, total, between both?”
“Don’t know. Over a hundred,” she said. “It changes every year. Do the Avengers have a charter?”
“No. They act as a task force more than anything. A semi-independent branch of SHIELD. Tell me about the Justice League’s charter.”
“That counts as a question.”
“Course.”
“It’s over 90 pages. Code of conduct for heroes. Members sign on, agree to follow it. Can be court-martialed if they break the code. Every member has to sign fresh every year. Agree to answer the call. Signing on as a member means the Justice League is your top priority. The reserves… have other priorities. Still follow the code. Still answer the call, if they can.”
“If they can,” Fury repeated.
Cass nodded. “Who investigated you, when the Hydra invasion happened?”
“The Department of Justice and the Department of Defense. You can verify this with them. I’ll get you contacts,” he said. “It’s not just the Justice League on your world, is it?”
“No. Many other teams. Birds of Prey, Outsiders, family teams, Green Lantern Corps, Titans, Young Justice, Outlaws, Doom Patrol…”
Fury whistled. “That’s a whole lotta heroes. And with the Justice League at the top,” he said. “What do you mean by family teams?”
“Like us, the Bats. There’s also the Arrows. The speedsters. The… Wonders. Supers. Marvels.”
“Not much of an explanation, there. I don’t think you’ve earned another question yet.”
“Generational heroes,” she said. “A mantle passed from parent to child. Children trained by their parents, working as sidekicks as first, like… training wheels. Families as teams, protecting their home cities.”
Fury nodded.
“Was Strange lying to us?”
“I wouldn’t know. I don’t fuck with magic.”
“Not good enough. Yes or no.”
“I. Don’t. Know.”
“Seems you haven’t earned another question, then.”
“Alright. Ask me something I can answer, then.”
“What happened to the X-Men?”
“They disbanded, after the Sokovia Accords. Would rather run than follow the law. Guess they had something to hide,” he said. “They were never exactly the A-Team. They haven’t been missed. How young did you start?”
“I don’t remember. I was too young,” she said. “First mission, though, I was eight. Why do you hate metahumans so much?”
“Metahumans?”
“Mutants.”
“I don’t hate ‘em,” he said. “I just don’t trust anyone with too much power and no accountability. I’ve always believed that if you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear. What was your first mission for the Bat?”
“Run oil to the hospital. They were out of fuel for the life support.”
“What the hell was going on that—”
“Not your turn,” she said. “Is anyone looking for the X-Men?”
“Maybe Magneto and his crew. A small task force on SHIELD, but it’s not a major priority. We want these mutants tracked and documented, but if they aren’t making waves? We have bigger problems to deal with,” he said. “Now. Explain what the ever-loving hell was going on in your town that the hospital had no power.”
“No Man’s Land,” she said. “There was an earthquake. US government cut us off. Told us we were on our own.”
Fury stared at her.
“Some world you got there. Sounds like a lovely place,” he muttered.
“It is,” she said. “It’s ours. Can’t wait to get back.”
“Of course,” he said. “We’re working hard on getting you there.”
“Good.”