Cassandra Cain Head Cannons

Nightmares

Nightmares were nothing new to the Bat Family. Jason and Babs had nightmares about everything Joker did to them. Dickie had them about his parents' deaths. Tim's and Bruce's concerned harm befalling the rest of the family, while Damian's were of inflicting it. For Cassie, however, things were a little different. She had hers about her own father.

She would wake up crying, his face haunting her, and she couldn't even bring herself to hate him. In a way, she still loved him, which left her feeling conflicted and guilty. How could she love a murderer? A man who had forced her to kill? Sometimes she tried to avoid sleeping altogether, just to avoid the nightmares that made her feel so guilty. On this particular night, however, she had been too tired from patrolling over-time on account of a mission Jason, Tim, and Damian had gone on out of state. So, when she got home, the 15-year-old's natural reaction was to collapse into her bed and fall into a deep sleep. Too bad that didn't last long.

Cassandra had woken up in the middle night, again from a nightmare. She was sweating and shaking, tears running down her face. She wasn't sure if she'd made any noise or not before awakening, but she could make a pretty good guess based on the footsteps walking towards the room. She looked over at the cape Bruce had given her upon their first meeting, currently thrown over the back of a round-backed chair, but she didn't dare reach for it. She'd never made a noise in front of either Bruce or Alfred before, and she didn't know what their response would be. Her nightmare had given her an all-too-real reminder of what her father's response would have been, and she tried to calm herself by taking deep breaths.

The door creaked open, "Cassandra?" Bruce was standing in the doorway with a concerned look on his face, still in what she guessed were his pajamas: a pair of gray sweatpants and a loose black shirt.

He went to move by Cassandra's side, but first grabbed the cape off the chair's back. Upon reaching the 15-year-old, Bruce handed the cape to her and she gladly took it without a second thought. Sitting on the bed beside her, Bruce gave her a warm smile.

"Did you have a nightmare?" He asked her, and she nodded without a word.

The way the dark knight interacted with Cassandra still slightly confused her, and she was half-expecting some kind of set up. Her father once told her that empathy and trust were only weapons for the enemy, that they were used to trick and deceive and hurt. She didn't know if she believed as much, given her feelings of the Bat Family, but the information was always dancing in the back of her mind these days, or otherwise making itself known in her too-frequent nightmares.

"Everybody has nightmares sometimes," he assured her with another small smile, reaching up and brushing some of her hair back to help cool her off.

She looked at him with her brown-black eyes, a stare holding the same question all of his sons had asked him at one point or another.

"Even I have nightmares sometimes," he admitted to answer her question. Then, he told her something he had never told the boys before, "Even Jason has nightmares."

He wasn't one to share the things his sons confided in him, but he knew how much Cassie looked up to the boy. And anyway, she knew better than to share the information with anyone else. He could already see her face relaxing a little, but not by much. He wrapped an arm around her and felt her head relax against his shoulder. Bruce lay a hand against her forehead, pulling it away as soon as he felt the heat.

"Maybe you should take a cold shower," he suggested, but he felt her head shake against his shoulder as she made a small noise of protest. "You don't have to. Do you want to go back to sleep, Cass?"

She didn't answer.

"You can't work on no sleep," he pointed out, but knew that it wouldn't make much of a difference. "...What if I stayed here?"

In past experiences with his sons, they had always gone to his room looking for comfort, making this a unique situation. He knew that it would make her feel better, however, to have someone there when she fell asleep.

After a moment of contemplation, she nodded rather reluctantly before equally reluctantly pulling away from Bruce and laying back down. He pulled the comforter over her, but the 15-year-old kept the cape in her hands. She fell asleep to the feeling of him running his fingers through her hair.

For the first time in years, Cassandra had a peaceful night of rest.