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Cass didn’t speak. It was an established fact. Her childhood was devoid of spoken words, her father an architect of her silence. Words were a foreign land. Their imposing walls of structure and mountains of consonants and vowels kept her far, far away. Instead, her world became one of gestures and expressions, silent, yet potent in its own right.
She possessed an unmatched ability to read body language and anticipate her opponents' moves. In a game of chess or poker, she was unparalleled, her eyes sharp and calculating. There was no question of her intelligence, but few seemed to notice it so long as she didn’t talk.
There was a reason the word ‘dumb’ represented both those unable to speak and those deemed idiots. If the world thought she was stupid, that was alright. She could prove them wrong. If there was one thing her father had taught her how to do, it was fight.
She could fight to be respected, and she didn’t need, didn’t want, words to do it.
Dick, in stark contrast, had a relationship with speech that was nothing short of voracious. He craved verbal reassurance from others, and his talkative nature made it abundantly clear that he had a lot to say. To him, words were like the threads of a safety net, keeping him from falling into the terrifying pit of silence. He and his ever-running voice box couldn't fathom how someone could find happiness without pouring out their emotions through speech.
Dick’s determination to help Cass find her voice became evident early on. He would sit beside her, day after day, attempting to engage her in conversation. "Hi," he'd say, his voice gentle and encouraging, but all he received in return were timid smiles and hesitant nods. Dick, ever patient, didn't mind.
Dick sat beside Cass at the dinner table. He pointed at her plate and then to his own, attempting to strike up a conversation about their meal. Cass resisted at first, her fingers tracing the edges of her plate nervously. She wanted to understand him, to be understood by him. That didn’t mean she wanted to speak though.
Why couldn’t people just understand her as she was?
She knew he meant well, but he just kept asking questions.
“How was your day? Did anything exciting happen?"
Her frustration began to simmer beneath the surface. Her eyebrows furrowed deeply, and her leg started to bounce faster. She clenched her fists, her eyes welling up with frustration. Her lip began to tremble as she felt her cheek grow hot and tears build up in the corner of her eyes.
Undeterred, Dick pressed on. "Wanna tell me about a case you’re working on? I could help out or you want. We haven’t done a mission together in a while. Just let me know. Oh, and I was thinking, we haven’t done anything with the whole family in a while either. We should do something. Is there anything you’d wanna do? "
She let out a deep sigh. Dick looked up and finally noticed the girl he’d been talking at for the entire meal. He shrank in on himself a bit. “Oh,” he said. “I’ll stop.” He stopped talking then and reached across the table, gently placed his hand on hers, a silent apology for not understanding sooner. Cass, still upset, nodded slightly, appreciating the acknowledgment. He stopped pushing her and started listening to her—or, rather, he started seeing her.
Dick was not a genius of body language in the way Cass was. He might be considered that by others with less, more normal, abilities, but he wasn’t. He could try to understand the meaning of the furrowing of Cass’s eyebrows and the minuscule way her foot tapped when she was excited. Sometimes he was right, but most of the time he had to guess.
She didn’t mind. He was trying to understand her, just as she tried to understand him. He was attempting to connect with her on her terms. Cass didn’t have to talk. She knew that. No one could ever make her talk, but for as long as her brother tried to communicate with her language, she would try to use his.
The next time Dick tried to engage her in conversation, she opened her mouth. A quiet noise, a little mouse popping it’s heard around a corner to see if it was safe, left her throat. That was as far as she got, but it didn’t stop Dick from grinning and nodding, understanding all that she meant through her little squeak.
Cass continued to try, and, eventually, she got results.
Dick was absolutely overjoyed the first time he heard her voice, even if it was just a simple "hello.” That made the heart pounding and thoughts of failure all worth it. He then grinned and showed her how to form simple words, using his excellent words to guide her tongue and lips until the sounds emerged, hesitant but genuine.
"Hi, Cass," Dick would say, a warm smile on his face. "How was your day?"
Cass would hesitate, her fingers fumbling as she tried to form words. Her voice was barely a whisper, but it was a start. "Good," she managed to say, her eyes meeting his with anxiety and relief.
"Great!" Dick would reply enthusiastically. "Mine was awesome too. Let me tell you all about it."
And he would. He would chatter away, sharing all the details of his day, his dreams, and his hopes for the future. He spoke of the world in vivid colors, painting pictures with words that Cass had never heard before. She listened, captivated by the way he wove stories and emotions into his sentences.
She didn’t understand how he could do that. Dick said that was just fine though.
Case knew it was just fine. She didn’t need to speak. She never needed to speak. But now, she could– even if it was just a little bit, she could. She was fine on her own, but, for her brother, she would try to learn more each day.
They would go out for dinner and practice speaking often, Fridays especially. Cass liked Fridays. They were difficult, but they were good. They made Dick smile and made each Friday worth the frustration her hard work would bring.
They sat down at the bar, waiting for their food, Cass’s eyes were drawn to a television up on the wall. The left screen showed a football game which most of the other patrons were engrossed in. Cass didn’t spare that screen a glance. She only had an eye for the right one. It displayed reruns of a ballet performance. It was some news segment about a famous dancer who had died.
The graceful dancers glided across the stage in their pristine white dresses in perfect unison. Cass was entranced. Her eyes, usually so reserved, sparkled with a rare light as she watched the dancers twirl and leap. It wasn’t often that body language was presented in front of her as an art, not something to study and extract information from.
It was beautiful.
Dick smiled as he saw her enraptured expression and made a mental note to explore this newfound connection.
Cass didn’t forget the dancers as the news anchors moved onto a different topic. She didn’t forget them as she ate or that night when she walked home in silence with Dick. Buried snug under her covers, she watched ballet videos for hours on her phone, her eyes following the graceful movements of the dancers.
Dick, eager to connect with her in a way that made her comfortable, found the instrumental music that accompanied the most well known ballet dances, a well worn book in the Wayne Manor library that he’d loved and forgotten years ago, and started making little notes in a small book that Cass never seemed to notice.
Some three weeks later, he led her to an empty room in the Manor with promises of a surprise. It was a room bathed in the soft glow of dimmed lights, with a large mirror on one wall. Dick had spent the entire previous night setting up the space.
"We're going to dance together. I’m going to teach you," Dick said, his gaze filled with warmth and encouragement. He had researched beginner ballet moves and spent countless hours practicing the movements he used to know as a boy, when he was looking for ways to glide and bend in a way that only acrobatics bring to him.
There was more than one mode of expression, more than one way to give yourself an energizing bust of pure joy that others could understand. Dick knew that well. Acrobatics was his joy. Speaking was his joy. Cass needed to find her own. Maybe this was it. Maybe it wasn’t. Either way, he would introduce her to this world of expression, of her language.
He took her hand, in silence.