AS FOR ALL GIFTS

for Whitney

by Te

Cassie's restless a lot.

Too much, she thinks -- sometimes. Most of the time she doesn't even register it until she's already flying, moving, *doing*.

She's got a theory that most people don't really notice restlessness -- in themselves *or* others -- unless they're bored, too.

Cassie doesn't get bored.

There's just...

There's too *much*.

Not in a bad way, because she *likes* having powers and *using* them, even if she's only doing it because some supervillain jerk is making a mess. Sometimes she's a little worried about *that*, because, well, it's probably pretty much completely wrong to be happy (just a little) that there *are* so many supervillains out there, that she really *can't* just stop, and...

Well, maybe 'can't' isn't the best word for it. She's thought about it -- a few times -- and she's even *done* it.

(Tried to.)

But...

She can't really get past it -- *it*. Sure, she chose to have these powers, asked for them and fought for them and *took* them, but that just makes it *more* important that she actually *use* them. For the right reasons, of course, but also just...

She spends most of the time -- most of her *life* -- in a world where people start talking about 'paganism' and 'lesbian-related superstition' as soon as she mentions the very real, very *true* things she knows, but she can't actually do more than pretend she doesn't hear it, and give people the facts when it seems like they'll listen.

She can't just go *along* with all the ignorance, and all the *lies*, and *one* of the reasons for that is that it's just a really freaking bad idea to scorn gifts from the gods.

She took this -- it was *her* choice -- and now she has to live with it.

And that means... this. The roof of her dorm, the smell of burning leaves from somewhere --

Or, at least, this, too.

Flight whenever she can manage it, or make the excuses, or whenever she just plain *has* to -- there are always emergencies.

She *isn't* like Diana. She doesn't worship, or make offerings, or whatever.

(Most of the time)

But she *also* really does.

Every time she flies.

Every punch she throws. *Every* one.

She kind of thinks *that*, more than anything else, is what makes her weird. She knows tons of metahumans, and even a few aliens. None of them feel like they're connecting with something larger, something vague and important and strange, every time they use their powers. And while she has just a few questions about the speedsters that she'd like to ask Bart one day...

Well, none of them feel that way because none of them are *doing* it.

And sometimes it's a little confusing to look at all of these people who just kind of *have* powers -- huge, *wonderful* powers that don't actually *mean* anything, or even *connect* to anything, but...

Mostly she doesn't think about it.

She *likes* living in a world -- and being the kind of person *in* that world -- where everything she does is about more than just justice. Where 'the right thing to do' *means* something.

And *that* makes it even better that she'd chosen this, doesn't it? That she'd chosen it and *kept* choosing it, no matter how screwed-up it got, no matter who died or who... left.

Another good thing about flying -- high enough now that the air is cool and thin and wet against her cheeks, like laundry day on Themyscira -- is that she can get high enough to scream *exactly* as loud as she wants to.

Because...

She *likes* this school. It's good, and her English teacher throws in stuff like science-fiction and really cool poetry along with all the usual Shakespeare and whatever, and the campus is pretty and quiet whenever she needs it to be, and she's *glad* to be able to see Cissie (and Greta, yes, but sometimes she still feels like Suzie, like she should *be* Suzie, if not Secret) almost whenever she wants to, as opposed to whenever her life opens up enough that she can remember to call and see if *Cissie* has time.

It's just that sometimes she's not so much 'restless' as having yet another freaking *argument* about this, about the *life*, with Cissie.

And having it in her *head*.

Because it's not like Cissie yells at her or anything, or even does more than nod at her when she talks about her *doubts* -- she *does* have them, sometimes, she just doesn't ever want people --

She doesn't want Cissie to *agree* with her about them, or try to convince her to actually *stay* retired for more than a few weeks at a time.

And Cissie... well, she never does. Ever.

She just...

She totally doesn't have to.

Cassie flies a little lower. Not much -- pretty much no one *but* a metahuman would be able to see more than a little smudge of red in the sky, assuming they could notice her at all -- just enough to see if there's anything...

Her senses aren't as good as Diana's, or even Superboy's. (She likes 'Conner,' a lot, but it doesn't quite feel *real*, yet, and she's kind of hoping to find a way to *make* it feel real, and she really, really seriously has a few ideas there.) But... sirens *carry*.

She heads east and *down*, and it's a fire.

She actually...

Well, it's not that she *likes* fires. They're terrible, and the people always look so hurt even when she can get everyone out uninjured -- even when she gets there before the freaking *goldfish* get a chance to boil. It's just that it's not a supervillain, which means that the damage is almost *certainly* going to be localized -- she's only a few minutes ahead of the fire trucks, she thinks -- and...

There's something...

Something *old* about this, and she knows it isn't the word she's looking for, but it works. Something so *incredibly* right about the sound of a little kid crying and coughing somewhere behind a wall a fire, a wall that just skins right over like a hand, kisses her all over, and she's too fast for it to even *singe* her uniform, for the fire to even *try*.

And it's -- it's *more* than even that, because the little kid is a *girl*, and it's not like she was raised on Themyscira -- total re-freaking-lief -- but it's still so *much* when the girl looks up, when her so-brown-they're-black eyes widen and she reaches up with her soft, chubby little hands.

Not even to be rescued -- Cassie's got her, anyway -- just so she can *touch*.

And Cassie says, "you're all right, now," and she flies through a wall that was going to crumble anyway, and the smoke clears like an omen, like a *right* thing, and Cassie *doesn't* hold the girl up to the sky for the gods to see, but...

She wants to.

(And they can see, anyway.)

And then it's normal again -- as normal as it ever gets, anyway -- and there's a father who snatches the little girl from her arms almost before she can think, "maybe, maybe I don't *have* to..." and then there's a lady who has a photo album she *needs*, and another with a necklace.

And when she leaves again, the firemen look up and wave and smile as she rises.

*Rises*.

There's the moment there *always* is for fires -- when she has about twenty seconds to wonder just *when* she'll be far enough away to stop smelling the smoke, after which she realizes that, no, it's just her.

Her hands are blackened and her hair...

Cassie starts to make a face, and then decides to save it for later. It's just one of those things -- people are *going* to give her funny looks when she hits the showers looking and smelling like she does, and the RA is going to pretend Cassie doesn't really exist -- and certainly isn't wearing *that* -- and... it's just always better when she can make herself look disgusted about it.

A wordless sort of "yeah, I know I'm rank, you're right, it's freaky."

Even though it's kind of a lie.

*They* all want her to think her whole *life* is freaky and disgusting, as opposed to just the crap that means she seriously does *need* every strong-smelling hair-care product she can find.

All of them.

Even... no.

Cissie doesn't. Cissie doesn't look up from her notes -- she *always* types them in at night -- just sniffs the air.

"Where was the fire?"

"About twenty miles that way," Cassie says, and waves toward the window. She needs her robe. She *doesn't* need to talk about the little girl, or the way the edges on the pages of the photo album were just starting to curl up, or how the firemen probably would've appreciated Cissie's help with the emergency services stuff. She just needs her robe.

Cissie makes a small, non-committal noise and keeps typing.

She doesn't ask if there were any injuries, and it *isn't* because she doesn't care. It's because she knows Cassie would've told her. 'I miss you,' Cassie doesn't say, because there should be a 'still' in there, and also because whenever Cassie *does* say anything like that...

"Check the laundry pile," Cissie says without looking around. "The other one."

"It's not --" It totally is. Under the flannel pajamas that are actually too warm for Cassie to wear most of the time, but really are too cute to just shove in a drawer somewhere.

As opposed to winding up in the perpetual laundry pile (Cissie has, and actually *uses*, a hamper), because every time Cassie *does* wear them, she winds up...

Well, they're pretty rank and sweaty. Again.

The robe's fine, though.

And the shower's fine, too -- she'd stayed out just long enough to avoid the girls on this floor who play field hockey, and not long enough to get the night-shower types. She has the showers to herself, and it's warm and echoey and Cissie should be next to her, right now.

Cissie should be using Cassie's conditioner, because her own isn't tough enough to handle post-fire scrubbing trauma, and being all hardcore about whatever bruises she'd come home with, because her uniform wasn't nearly as well-armored as it could be.

There's a story she hasn't told Cissie -- for a lot of reasons. Robin (and he's going to feel like 'Tim Drake' pretty much *never*.) had left this notebook... well, he *hadn't* left it lying around so much as left it on the table when Superboy had grabbed him and started a tickle-fight. And Cassie hadn't really *meant* to eavesdrop -- is that even the word when you're just reading? -- but it had been right there, and open, and she'd only had to flip a *few* pages to find sketches of them.

*All* of them, really. Their uniforms, and incomprehensible -- Robin's shorthand pretty much *had* to be Bat-standard -- notes on them, or maybe just on their powers or something.

The page for Cissie, though, was covered in all sorts of additions and question marks. Robin had pretty much redesigned her uniform from the ground up, and, well. It's Cissie.

She *would've* taken Robin's suggestions, because it was Robin, and never mind the huge freaking crush she had on the guy -- and Cassie remembers when talking about things like that was just what they *did*, and now they just don't, because Cassie can't tell the football team apart from the soccer team, and Cissie, of course, doesn't seem to *care* -- it was *Robin*.

And Robin... He probably would've made the new suit himself. It was just the kind of thing...

Cassie wishes she *had* told Cissie about it at the time, because it was pretty much *right* after she'd quit, and Cissie had *let* her do stuff like that back then. Just keep talking and complaining and *wishing* at her until it was out of Cassie's system.

Until Cissie had decided it *should* be.

And there isn't... there isn't even anyone she can *ask*. Robin *had* quit to be Tim Drake, but *everyone* knew that it wasn't really his choice, and, anyway, he's *back* now.

And Cassie *does* get it. Cissie hadn't chosen the life in the first place, and she didn't have any powers it would be wrong for her *not* to use -- and there *is* a difference between 'talent' and 'power' -- and Cassie has never...

She's never had one of those moments. The kind the older heroes never talk about and the kind Superboy had told *her* about after Cissie had left. Just a day in the woods and two murderers full of arrows and Superboy had been so frightened and...

Cassie *knows*. Cissie could have -- and would have -- killed them. (She had every right, and none of the gods *she* knows would've said different.) And it's not like Cassie's ever killed anyone, or even really wanted to, and she doesn't think it's *wrong* or anything that Cissie freaked out. ("She was... she'd *tortured* them, Cassie...") It's just that it seems kind of wrong that she hasn't, well.

"Get over it," probably isn't how she really wants to put it, even in her own head.

Especially since Cassie really was right the first time they'd really -- *really* -- talked about it. About how much of how Cassie feels is all on *her*, and what she wants, and how this life isn't the best thing ever even though it feels like it more than it doesn't. And how it could be even worse than that for someone like Cissie.

Cassie frowns and turns the water off, wrapping her own towel around herself and using one of the cheaper school ones for her hair -- blow-drying at this point would just piss her hair off more.

This conversation -- this *argument* -- she's been having with Cissie in her own head is long past old, and there still isn't any real way to have it out loud, much less to stop having it like *this*.

Cissie's not *like* her, and that's obvious in so many damned ways that it really *hurts* that Cassie keeps tripping over it. *Smacking* into it like a wall that's actually hard enough to stop her.

Cassie *should* be able to talk to her about this, and do it in the *real* way -- to *convince* her. *She* knows where the old Arrowette suits wound up, even if Cissie's managed to make herself forget. Cissie is...

She's still on the computer, but it looks like she's just surfing, at this point. Checking the stats for the few other archers out there who are actually good enough to matter, or maybe just searching for .mp3s.

Not crime statistics, not articles about the rest of them, not *anything* like what she should be doing. The monitor casts a faintly blue glow on her face, and sometimes Cassie just stares and watches and *wants*.

The old Arrowette cowl would be a little tight if Cissie didn't take the scrunchy out of her hair. The one Robin had designed would've hidden Cissie's eyes behind lenses like his own.

Cassie doesn't remember everything about it -- she hadn't been able to read the notes, after all -- but she remembers *enough*. And Robin would've...

Would he have kept it?

It doesn't really matter if he had or not. He's Robin, and he'd remember it. He'd probably fax the designs directly to their *room* if Cissie ever went out again, and not just because he'd probably always *meant* to do it anyway, and *not* just because the new suit would be safer, and better, and more *practical*. He'd do it because *he* knows that you never really leave, even when you think you have to, even when you maybe -- *maybe* -- should, even when you haven't really gotten over anything at all.

Because your *real* friends are in the life *with* you, and they're the only ones who *get* it.

The door bangs open, and it's Greta with a stack of notebooks and a few CDs in her hand and, "Found it! You *have* to put this one on *now*, Cissie, it's -- hey, Cassie! -- like I told you. He sounds *just* like that guy from Creed."

Cissie turns in her chair, resting her elbow -- she still has the best biceps Cassie's seen *off* Themyscira -- on the back and grinning. "That still doesn't make me eager to *hear* it, Greta."

Cissie never has a problem calling her that. And she shouldn't, because it doesn't actually matter who she *should* be, Greta *is* Greta now.

And no one else.

She doesn't move like anything but a teenaged girl, and she doesn't say things that give you nightmares, and she pushes on Cissie's shoulder to shove her out of the way of the CPU just as if *Cissie* isn't...

It's a little hard to be around Greta.

When Cassie had first gotten here, she'd thought it was just one of those things. Cissie and Greta had been together at this school for months, and had spent more time just *talking* than either of them had done -- or done with *her* -- back when they were all in Young Justice.

But it *isn't* just about two people getting closer without the third, and it *is* about...

Sometimes you only think you know a person, when really all you know is what they've told you, and shown you, and *let* you have. And it doesn't have to be a big, nasty shock when you find out the truth -- at least, Cassie's pretty sure it doesn't have to be that way -- but sometimes it just *is*.

The music starts -- it's loud, but not ugly or anything -- and Greta pulls Cissie out of the chair and dances her around the room. Cassie has to fly up a few feet to avoid getting trampled -- or bruising Greta and Cissie when they hit her -- and, when she lands, it's just a better idea to relocate to the bed.

Greta is giggling, and Cissie is smiling at Greta, and daring her to try this in those new heels they'd picked up at the mall, and Arrowette is in the flex of Cissie's arms, and the tiny scars showing beneath Cissie's sleep shorts, and the sweep of her hair.

Except for how she really isn't there, at all.

Anywhere except in *her*, anyway, and that doesn't really count.

Even when the smile fades off Cissie's face when she looks at Cassie, when Greta's busy with the next CD and there's no one to see but the two of them. Everything Cassie hasn't said out loud is in Cissie's eyes, because she's Cissie, and she *knows*.

She just can't -- won't -- do anything *about* it.

"Okay, wait, I think it's the fourth song. Or the sixth. Or... gimme a sec..."

"Sure, Greta," Cissie says, and moves until she's standing in front of Cassie, hip-shot like she's about to shoot on the fly.

Or like she's about to just start dancing again. Her gaze drifts to Cassie's pillow, where she'd shoved the lasso before taking her shower, and then back to her again, and she says,

"Going out again tonight?"

Cassie has to. "Yeah. Probably just a flight." She isn't going to ask if Cissie wants to come, because she always says no.

Cissie nods at her, and the smile on her face should be the one on Robin's whenever Superboy starts talking about how he always knew Robin would be coming back, all tight and small and agreeing and just a little pained.

But it's just a smile, and a,

"Have fun," and then Cissie shuts the door -- Greta always forgets -- and the music starts up again.

Cassie puts on one of her spare suits, and smiles back when Greta smiles at her, and heads for the window.

She can give this to the gods, too, even though she isn't sure whether they're listening *that* closely.

She doesn't, actually, want to be sure.

The sky is dark and cold and the air is thin the way it should be, and in a few days it'll be time to head back to the Tower and the *real* world.

Even though there's another real world out there with music and smiles and people who don't believe in anything, because they don't *have* to. A world that's five miles behind her and receding, just waiting for her to... no. It isn't waiting for *her*, at all.

She's okay with that, most of the time.

There's a darker patch of sky to the west that means there's a storm coming, or maybe one already there. There are parts of herself which reach out at times like these, and they're the same ones which make her want to hold little girls up to the sky and *need* to fly through fire. She isn't close enough to really feel the storm, though, or even smell it -- yet.

But she can be, easily.

And she will.

end.

... For this gift, as for all gifts, you must
suffer: those from the underland

you will walk wrapped in an invisible
cloak. Few will seek your help
with love, none without fear.

- From "Procedures For Underground" by Margaret Atwood

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