kinesicist | (no subject)

For years all I wanted was for my father to place his hands on my shoulder, to feel his rough worn hands go soft and gentle in quiet, silent praise. Now, I didn't want his respect or praise and I certainly didn't need it. He was my father, I had loved him but he had turned me into something I hated; a killer, an assassin. I still think about his face sometimes; the way he was so scared, the way his life left his eyes, the way I had looked to my father and the pride I found there and the revulsion I felt. My father had turned me into a killer but it was Batman who saved me.

Bruce... he was hard, he was demanding. He never asked but I always knew what he wanted, I could always find it in me even if I thought it wasn't there. Even when I thought for a moment he had abandoned me and left me to die, I knew that he was testing me and I knew he trusted me to survive. Bruce didn't just save me, he made me save myself. In his eyes, in Barbara's too, I could be redeemed. I could be saved, made worthy again. I... liked that, I loved that.

But the island, the island is a challenge. It's not Gotham and while there are dinosaurs beyond the fence, there are no gangs or crimelords or escaped Arkham patients or... well, crime. I almost wish Penguin was here up to his old tricks as Barbara would say, influencing those around him into a life of crime. Almost. It's hard to train, to continue to train and patrol when I know each night will be a slow night. But I do because that is what he would do, that is what he would want me to do. I won't disappoint him.

Like now. I know he's there watching me, I know he's been watching me for a while now whilst I move across the ground quick and agile, hitting each target precisely with a a destructive force. I do not need to see him to know he's there. I do not need to hear him to know he's there either. He's waiting but he won't stop me. Would he ever stop me? Hnnn, I'm overthinking.

I let my mind empty, aware of his gaze as I move to the punching bag. Each punch, each hit, each kick is quicker than most meta's but I know I could hit harder and faster than this. I could but I don't, I won't... if I was as good as I could be then I could kill someone and I'm not that person anymore. I won't kill. I want to make him proud, not my father.

I only stop when my fist punches through the bag and the sand spills out onto the floor. I hadn't felt it weaken. A mistake.

"Sorry. I'll be better." I direct it at him, turning to face where I know he will be.

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"I don't doubt that you will."

Vengeance can stem from any number of sources, but there are times when I can't help but believe that the emotion holds true and steady in every one of us, no matter the cause. Anger has bled away in both of us, replaced by redemption, the desire to make up for the shortcomings of others by pushing ourselves to our very limits. The desire to keep the world from creating more of us, our very souls like piecemeal, pushing wherever we feel that the world needs us most. Protecting against crime, against loss, and keeping anyone from stepping over the line of no return— I see a drive similar to my own in Cassandra, and perhaps that's why I feel an increasingly lessened need to keep such a close eye on her. And I'm sure she understands.

I've left both cape and cowl behind tonight, letting shadows hide my presence to others, although I'm unsurprised that it doesn't manage to fool her. Seated on a fallen log, I rise to my feet when I hear her address me, and the slow spill of sand over the ground. "Did you want an active partner?" I ask. I can't go all-out on her, not while I need to keep an ear open to any passerby, but it could be a decent challenge for the both of us.

The smallest flutter of emotion flickered across her eyes, her fingers as she stood alert and waited for him. Her body poised for action, a tightly drawn bow waiting to spring as she watched him rise. Sand spilling behind her like an hourglass running out of time, she placed her feet and shifted her weight until she was steady, firm.

An unstoppable force meeting an immoveable object.

Taking a breath in slowly, mouth softening as she looked at him and acknowledged his offer with a barely discernable nod of her head. Unwrapping her hands, Cass extended her fingers and clenched them into tight fists before discarding the wraps to the ground. Messy as always, her fighting was one of the few things that was clean.

"Until the sand runs out," Cass replied, not waiting for an answer on her lips before she is moving.

Edited 2011-12-02 22:51 (UTC)

My eyes narrow at the warning— not one that I needed, and I can't decide whether or not she's simply given it out of courtesy, or if she believes that I have somehow slowed from my time. Regardless, I meet her first blow with the side of my arm, wordless as I duck to sweep out of the way of the brunt of the force. Her strength has always been in her speed, her stealth, and so I try my best to parry that by predicting her movements. For someone who's watched her fight for some years already, it doesn't prove too difficult. Most people wouldn't have this advantage. That said, most people would be trying to use deadly force on a young woman like her.

I'm not.

"Surprise me," I instruct her, waiting for something new. If we're looking to a fight of endurance, she has a fair chance of eventually weaving in through fatigue, but with my being on the defensive, I'm expending far less energy than her. I would probably outlast.

There are few people she trusts enough to take the force of the blows she is delivering, still not enough to kill but hard enough for him to feel if caught by her fists or legs. She is not holding back, she loves him too much for that. When he meets her first blow, she attacks with the other watching as he ducks, sweeping out of the way of her blow. Defensive.

Watch him Cassandra, watch his body and learn.

Head tilting in the barest hint of acknowledgement, he wants surprise then she will do that. She strikes, moving in close to his body using her momentum to propel herself forward as her lips brush his cheek before she drops, ducking beneath him. Striking with her leg towards his back. She had trained to fight Shiva for a year, it showed.

"Almost," I grunt, because the kiss surprises me. It's the type of showmanship that one wouldn't expect from Cassandra, having been trained all her life to narrow everything down to its essence, to not move a single muscle more than necessary in getting the job done. And I have to commend her for that, and for the idea to come to her so quickly— I wonder who the inspiration was. It could be any number of the people that we faced every day, villains, the deranged being convinced that they could show off with all manner of bravado and escape unscathed. Some even purposely putting on a show, no worry or concern over the rest of the outcome. Just wanting a rapt audience.

She could have picked this up from them.

But the movement, for all that she's pushed outside her boundaries, has relied on the brunt of the surprise rather than the complete transition to the following action, which allows me to move in conjunction with her leg. The strike lands, but not in full. It might bruise, but it won't keep me out of commission.

Whirling around, I try to grip around her ankle with every intention of flipping her onto her back, maybe knock the wind out of her. I don't know that I'll be entirely successful. She's a fast learner.

He speaks even though he does not need to; not with her, not when she is watching him so closely. He is surprised, the showmanship is not her. Not the Cassandra he knows now anyway but as a child, he would have been surprised to see how affectionate Cassandra was at least in the only way she knew how to be affectionate. For Cassandra, saying 'I love you' as a child meant a hand wrapped around her father's windpipe, feet planted on his chest as she slammed Cain to the ground before kissing him quickly on the cheek. Fighting with Bruce now was the only way Cassandra knew how to tell him she loved him the way a daughter should love her father.

That didn't mean she held back, she didn't hold back because she knew she could trust him to stop her and she knew he could take the force of her strikes. She knows the foot hasn't landed in full, she can feel his body twist to take her foot and she strikes moving suddenly. She uses her momentum, throwing her weight forward and lifting her feet- both of them. She soars, free foot poised to strike him hard before she slips out of his grasp and lands, lightfooted, on the floor. She hadn't spent the last year just studying Lady Shiva but Bruce, Barbara, Dick, Tim, etc. She had wanted to be the best of them before she died.

Pushing up into a backspring, she twists the way Nightwing would and lands away from him before beckoning him with the turn of her hip, shoulders. The familiar gait of Lady Shiva and for one unknowing moment Cassandra looked like the mother she didn't know.

Baiting. Showmanship. "It's good that you can learn from the others," I tell her as I decide to go with her plan for the moment, feet surprisingly light on the ground as I take off after her. Some of her hits have landed, but it's nothing that would slow me down, nor leave bruises that would persist for all that long. But that's only because of who I am. How long I've trained. There's no way to build oneself to the point where no injury would land, but it is possible to grow accustomed to a certain level of pain, and to learn how to carry it well. A lesser man would easily be felled by Cassandra.

The problem being that I'm not holding her to the standard of defeating someone average. It's not being able to face the petty criminals that matters. She needs to be capable of facing up to people who have trained themselves in the art of deception, manipulation, and for years. People she was trained to become.

"But your time is running short, and you know that I can recognize their styles in a second. You have one chance. What do you do?"

Cassandra had learned that lesson by the time she was six, by the time she had left her father she could withstand the pain of gunshot wounds, knife wounds and the punches of men four times her size. Now, she was older and hardened to the pain, she felt the hits but they did not slow her or stop her. She was stronger than that.

Time was not on her side, she could hear the sand in the bag slowly slipping away to the ground. She had to be quick, she had to use her strength and speed and past to win. One chance to take him down.

His neck was exposed, vulnerable without the protection of the suit. The suit that protected her doing this to him before. She moved, as fast as a meta human, running towards him and dropping at the last moment sliding beneath him before she attacked him from behind. A chokehold, not her usual frontal assault which was lethal but one from behind that she could use to take him down with.