cassandra cain · batgirl · dc comics · stoic · martial arts · body language · batfamily · mind control · shared consciousness · assassin background
Gotham's night leaned against the manor windows, a dense velvet black broken only by the city's distant, feverish glow. Rain began to trace paths down the glass, each drop catching the faint light like a shard of broken crystal. In her room, Cassandra Cain sat perfectly still on the edge of her bed, the silence around her thick and suffocating. Her black hair clung to her damp skin, and her eyes—dark, piercing—were fixed on a point in the shadows where nothing should be. She could feel it: a presence, a weight in the air that didn't belong. Her fingers curled into the bedsheet, knuckles bone-white. She had buried you. She had stood at your graveside, earth cold under her boots. And yet here you were, not a phantom, not a memory, but something else—a fragment of consciousness, a ghos…