A Walk Down Memory Lane | Grant

[Cassandra Cain]

There should have been some guilt doing what she did. Being who she was there was always a different set of rules that she might follow. The one rule that she kept to heart was never to kill no matter what. There was too much history that seemed to just make sense, make her cave and live as a frightening killer. It was not what she wanted, it will never be what she wanted. She knew that even her family found her rather scary having gone against how she was nurtured. Blood, sweat, tears all trained to kill. When she left David, it was on her terms. She had never wanted to see him again. It seemed he did not agree with this and continued to make attempts which would just make her feel as if she wanted to fall apart into the free fall that she had done so many years ago. Her eyes closed for a moment as the emotions began to stir up and tightening within her trying not to feel the disgust, nausea and bile that threatened to come up.

It had been several nights after the infiltration of the secret society that she had the opportunity to give Grant his knife back but intact was a GPS marker that allowed her to keep tabs on him. Twice now he managed to find her, but instead of getting in her way, he even managed to help and even protected her. She needed to know why. It seemed like he knew her, but she did not know enough about him. The man's playfulness also bothered her. He kept flirting with her with that kiss and his mention of her ass.

She would not think for a second that there was any sort of real emotion, but just a way to get under her skin and manipulate her. If he did it again, Cass figured that she would respond with a fist to break his nose. This was not Black Bat business and she had put on a dark pair of cargo pants, a dark blue tank top and black hoodie to snoop around in the assassin's residence. Her hair was twisted into a bun and secured with a rubber band and looked more like a jogger heading home. The hood obscuring her face and she still fell into the shadows not wanting anyone to think she was prey coming into a rather rough part of town.

The security system is high end and rather impressive, but having been taught by one of the best hackers in the world along with the knowledge of lock picking had her inside of the warehouse in a few minutes flat. That thought did manage to make her smirk, but already she had allowed her eyes adjust to the lighting or lack there of. She began to look around first at the surface. There were a few pictures of a young child standing next to Bialyans holding an assault rifle and a bandoleer. A frown appeared as she continued to deepen her search on her quest to find out more about the assassin that had managed to get away twice.

Fingertips slid over the Ravager helm and the cage that was set up much like a shrine to worship death and destruction. She was methodical from the desk, computer, to eventually find more pictures and a small projector and screen. The frown never left her lips as she searched for the film that went to the projector putting one in watching the images dancing across the screen and all she could manage was a gentle shake of her head. The other pictures that were found as well as a file that looked interesting were all there scattered on the floor as she watched the screen not quite believing her eyes as her breathing heightened when it did in an emotional upheaval with a past that so matched her own. The blood rushing in her ears as the adrenaline pumped through her veins and she shook with anger re-living a bit of her own life. Why would he keep this with him? She wondered knowing that her own father had recorded many of her training sessions not knowing where they were now. Not caring and still that tightening started in the pit of her stomach and the hatred clutched at her.

[Grant]

Grant Wilson had in the meantime collected the bounty required of him for a job he had done in the interim of the meeting with the black bat and the time he'd been alone to collect himself. The water that caressed his form, massaging it, beating down upon it was soothing, hot and steamy, like the gentle fingers of a lover pressing ones skin, smoothing it out and wiping from it the excess sweat, moisture and toil accrued throughout a day.

His own hands pressed to face, neck, down the stream lines of his form scrubbing away the black tar, dust, dirt, grime and chaos that any given job caked him in, dry blood scraped from his form as if it were a a malicious aura he found himself ensconced in. There were some nights it had been so smothering, so plentiful even the marble had been died an unnatural color, red of the blood, black of ash, brown and earthen of dirt, all mixed together to make some bland yet effusive igneous shade. Steam curled off his muscled, dripping form as a serpents tongue might from it's maw as he stepped out of the shower wrapping himself in a towel, his blonde hair heavy with water and yet so pale even so sopping.

When he'd heard something then he'd cracked the door ajar only ever slightly after dousing the light and seeing what seemed to be the darkened figure of some..one... and when he headed out carefully, lithely and stealthfully he'd heard what surprised him more than he could hope to say, it seemed as if she might've been moping, or even sobbing, and he could hear the old projector, the spinning of the reels, the hum and whoosh of the fans in it's innards.

The form in and of itself seemed to be, from what he could tell from behind both tiny and unassuming, hooded, obscured from identification because of the coverings she wore in such a way. His approach was as silent as a man naked and in a bath towel could hope to be, arming himself with a concealed weapon beneath the Ottoman nearby he let out a low "What the..." whether this was to himself out of shock that the state of the art security system could be so rendered useless or that there seemed to be a woeful trespasser on his premises ogling photos of his formative years, only he could say.

"What's going on here?" was all he could say as he approached, though he was now within perfect range of his trespasser, too close to miss a flanking shot and too far for her to hope to wrest the gun from him, he found himself oddly not drawing up the weapon and instead moving hand to lax cloth covering himself. And yet, yet he was ever leery knowing full well anyone who so haphazardly and skillfully bypassed his security measures was not some home invasion idiot looking to rife through a jewelry box with an empty gun hoping for a quick score for his drug habit. This person was a professional, and as he flanked her from behind he knew he should be ever careful, absent armor, weapons and nearly in his birthday suit. There was a measure of cocksure ego here to be had, though not wholly from his skill but that knowing he had been taught to survive with tooth, nail and brain (not in that order) before he could lift a gun, it was only a fool who would entrust his life to a weapon, armor, anything other than his own wits and mind, his father had told him long ago.

It had been those words and only those words as he'd thrown him into the fray before he knew how to fight, before he could hope to fend for himself. And yet he had, and he had been a ravager, a nickname the other boys had called him, such a frank and cold hunter, as if he hadn't a soul or sympathy at all, a living, walking null. And for the first time he saw in this person a mirror of himself as the images of his first kills, blowing a man's head clean off with automatic weapon fire; danced on his naked form between the projection equipment and screen. It had been a scene not wholly dissimilar to what she'd experienced, and yet it had painted him in a way it had not her, he hadn't the ability to run as she had. He was a different kind of monster.

[Cassandra Cain]

Cassandra did not know what she was thinking when she put a GPS marker on the assassin’s Nth blade that he stuck in her on their first encounter. Seeing him a second time was a coincidence and she never believed in them, but it gave her an opportunity to give him back his weapon. She figured that she would be in and out immediately before anyone was aware of her presence except for what she found. The petite girl sat there staring at the flickering screen oblivious to the other sounds trying to make sense of it all.

She heard someone crying, sobbing, but did not realize that the sounds were coming from her as her eyes never left the projector screen. Her oval shaped eyes never even blinked as scenes passed before her eyes one as brutal as the next. One of the things she did while she was searching Grant’s place was removing the firing pins from all of his firearms. There was not much she could do with the blades that he had about the place, but moved them around and out of reach making a firearm the more desirable choice.

Whether she heard his question or not, the hooded figure did not make any move to answer or even acknowledge his presence so entranced by what she was watching and yet disgusted and reminded of past hurt and pain that she made sure to bury deep down and chained in the darkness. A monster. I am not a monster.

The reel reached its end and began to flip over and over again as the light continued to shine that made her eyes meet the angry half naked man dripping wet from a shower standing before her. She exhaled a cleansing breath processing a lot of what happened and not entirely sure if she wanted to know now that she did. It was not something that could be easily erased and she was a fount of emotions because that flame burned too close to her. Still seated, she finally asked, “You had a choice. Everyone has a choice. I chose to run away despite every instinct that my father claimed was my destiny and everything that my mother believed.”

“Why do you keep these? Are they your trophies?” She asked still trying to figure out the man that was so similar to her in background and yet turning out exactly how his sadistic father wanted him to be molded into.

[Grant]

Grant hadn't realized how the scene had affected him so, he hadn't looked to the reels and yet he knew every second of every piece of footage as if he had committed them all to memory. The truth was he didn't forget any of it, any moment of the torture that being Slade Wilson's son was, he knew the man thought that hunting trips and returns to his mother later made up for being thrown into a live battle field before he knew how to fight. He remembered the adrenaline surge and the near fugue state he'd been in a catatonic killer who's higher functions remained in tact though his conscience and personality seemed ever absent. They'd called him nothing, a null, because he seemed so vacant when he made the kill, so absent yet his prowess was omnipresent.

And so, when he saw that small asian girl on his floor weeping as a child at the reel as it came to it's ultimate end, he surprised even himself when he murmured "I'm a monster. It's all I've ever been. All I'll ever be. Killing is the only thing The only thing I was ever good at." his voice carried perhaps a measure of sympathy, or empathy for the girl, and after he pulled the trigger feeling the weight disparity in his hands of a gun missing a firing pin, he let it fall to the ground with a resounding clank.

"It's a nice thing to say, a choice. Nice on paper. My father threw me in the middle of a minefield before I knew how to fight; with nothing to defend myself against the Bialyans but a field knife that wouldn't make a decent can opener. I killed or I'd be killed. Not even a choice when you think of it." and while his tone carried with a measure of stark, if not warm sympathy by the end of the tale he'd taken a hard line of an austere growl, as if he'd defended his actions numerous times, a thousand times, a million, more, every second of every day.

And he did.

To himself.

"I kept these to remember what he did. So that when I found him again, someday I would pay him back for everything." his voice was much more gruff now and weathered, angered even as he found himself standing, looking to the reel as it flipped, looking to the photos as he could, his glaring ice blue eyes traced over every single photo and seemed to dart from one to the other frantically, others he lazed about on, deliberating as if summoning from the ether, the zeitgeist. He knew she wouldn't, couldn't understand what it was like to want one's father dead, what it was like to have beaten him, bloodied him, to have raised a blade greatly with the intent of bringing it down and cleaving his head in two as if it would save himself and bring about a better, greater world, one absent slade wilson.

He didn't realize just how similar they were, and how they were their own entities and he knew not how to relate to what she was, what she had been through, because he knew looking at her as she looked at him that she saw what the rest of the world saw in him, what he saw in the mirror every single day: A monster.

He stooped again after drawing a tissue from a nearby ottoman, tracing her tear lines if slightly harshly before offering her another to do so herself. As it were, he knew that he was presenting a much more vulnerable side to himself, but for once, he didn't much feel like fighting right now.

[Cassandra Cain]

Cassandra blamed the shock of it all to her tears which were rather traitorous when she often tried to keep a cold, detached exterior. Each image seared into her mind, but all still so close and familiar. Children should not have grown up in such an environment. There was a time when she thought it was love. She loved her father who provided for her, protected her and trained her. Then he demanded things from her thinking it was a game, a challenge to overcome all the while basking in the glow when she was being praised and dealing with the shame when she did not meet his goals.

Her stomach twisted at the memories of her first kill when she was eight. She thought it was a game like all the others never realizing that she had been the one to end the man’s life. The eyes still glistening with unshed tears met Grant’s gaze as he said he was a monster and that it was all he had ever been. “Killing is easy to do. Resisting is a lot more difficult.” She was trying to get herself under control and was not started as he discovered what she did to his concealed weapon just watching it fall to the ground in a clank.

“My father made me kill someone when I was eight without a weapon and no knowledge that is what he wanted me to do. I thought it was a game until…until there was nothing.” Her eyes went back to the reel understanding that the choice was different for her. “I left then and there never to look back changing my life entirely because of it.” His tone was not lost and she did not rise to defend herself. It was what it was. He took one path while she ran down the other. Fathers. Mothers. They were meant to nurture and love their children and in the end they were just experiments to twist and manipulate as their life’s work. Frankenstein’s monster that is what they were.

She could not forget what Slade did to manipulate her, controlling her mind to do things that she would not have normally done. Even while she was being controlled by another, killing under another’s name, she still felt remorse that people have fallen due to her expertise. It was only when she was saved by being given a serum, but the memories were not completely scrubbed from her memory. After that entire ordeal, she wanted to rid the world of the man that controlled her. She kept running away from her own father, thwarting his own plans and contracts as well especially when he tried to kill Commissioner Gordon.

Her eyes widened in surprise as Grant did something completely unexpected as he drew closer to wipe the tears away that traitorously marched down her cheeks. She studied him for a moment as he offered her another tissue and tried to figure out what the next step was. Bruce was better at conveying such things, words were never her strongest, but she let her heart talk for her knowing her brain would just jumble up the thoughts to be spit out incredibly awkwardly. “You will continue to be a slave to your father’s will every time you take a life, each time you take a contract. You continue to perpetuate his legacy by being an assassin, by believing that killing being your only winning skill.”

Then she changed the subject completely knowing that it might piss Grant off. “Your security system needs some work.” She said rather uncharacteristically and then gave a timid smile, “Got any food in your kitchen?”