Credit to the idea of a new earth version of Duke as Cassbat's Robin goes to cleromancy. It really set the tone to a lot of my headcanons for him in this timeline.
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Cassandra Cain met Duke Thomas in dance class.
It started as one of Tim’s initiatives, the last before promptly quitting because “one more day, and next time I fall off that ugly tower, it’ll be on purpose.” A handful of buildings were remodeled in areas alternately labelled “impoverished” or “working class” by the press, offering subsidized after-school activities for children.
Tim asked her to coach a few, as a favor. It confused her; what she did, she just… did. Cass, remembering those disastrous sparring sessions with Steph, had little confidence in her ability to teach.
Bit by bit, she got the hang of it, taking a strange sort of pride in slowly building a skill. Years later, although jobs or bank accounts still felt, at their core, superfluous, the volunteer gig became a nearly regular thing, alternating between neighborhoods as it struck her fancy.
Once, Cass was told teachers shouldn’t have favorites; a nonsensical notion: everyone had favorites, and Duke was one of hers.
He often arrived early, carrying a book of puzzle games, like crosswords. Cass was ludicrously bad at them, but whenever they made each other company before the others arrived, she amused him with… creative alternatives.
Duke was quite sharp; kind, and just a bit of a troublemaker, in a way that made other kids gravitate towards him. His coordination absolutely sucked at first; he got some special prescription glasses, and steadily improved since.
He was just a normal kid who smiled brightly when his step-dad arrived to take him home at the end of each lesson.
And one day, he stopped coming.
The Bat met Robin –the Robins – in the middle of another attack.
She knew of them. They started stopping petty crimes shortly after Damian shed the colors and left for Blüdhaven. Tim wrote a report, and Helena called her once to ask “are these yours” in a deadpan, judgemental tone, after an encounter that involved a nasty encounter with the Ratcatcher. Downright sweet, next to the recorded message Jason hacked into the batcomputer (“Keep an eye on this, will you? No need to follow the old man’s steps in everything, if you know what I mean”).
Cass was not Bruce. She hadn’t agreed to watch over a bunch of untrained vigilantes bound to get themselves killed. Especially not then. For weeks, people gaining strange powers, seemingly from the same source, had started sowing chaos around the city. Cass couldn’t see the pattern. Tim would’ve; Bruce would’ve. But Gotham was hers, now. She resented the idea of asking for their expertise.
Whatever it was, it was certainly out of those kids’ league. She might bring out the good ol’ jaw pinch to safely take them out of the way, after dealing with the attacker.
But when she took the lead Robin by the scruff, she almost dropped him out of shock.
The dollar-store mask, the hood, the red jacket with the hand-sewed “R” on it… immaterial. She recognized the slope of those shoulders, the arch of that frown, the bow-like curve of those legs.
“Duke?!”
A bright light blinded her, and when she finally regained her senses, all the kids were gone.
Cass and Duke talked much, much later.
“It’s my father. My biological father,” he clarified. “He’s why I do… this.”
With one gesture, he submerged both of them into a sea of darkness.
“I can stop him. I know I can! I must.”
Cass listened to the despair of his voice, observed the conviction of his gaze. She’d hear about that day in the circus. Was this how Bruce felt then?
“Okay, Robin.”
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A/N (c&p): In one future-canon series I plan to write... eventually, I borrow more stuff from Duke's canon backstory (like Joker's venom), and Cass is still a long way from this role when that happens, so I took the opportunity to make something different here, something I'd thought about before, with Duke's bio-father taking a significant role as his original villain. Something for him and Cass to bond over, as you will.
The title is from one of the pieces in Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake, which Duke and his friends (maybe also future Robins...) should totally perform.![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
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delphi
