In which I am nostalgic.
Dec. 10th, 2004 06:00 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
holliI've been reading a ton of Young Justice lately, and, well, I totally miss Greta and Cissie and Traya and Anita. Like, a lot. Someone remind me again why they aren't in any comics? I think Greta and Anita, in particular, could bring a lot to the table in terms of decrazying Tim.
"...so Diana totally chewed me out over it, and in the process she *somehow* managed to segue into how she deeply disapproves of my 'dalliance' with Kon, because apparently we're all suddenly characters in a Jane Austen novel. And I-- Greta?"
"Hmm?"
"Did I mention the part where I traveled to Antarctica and the penguins made me their queen?"
Greta frowns distractedly. "Huh? There were penguins?" Okay, so maybe she hadn't been paying attention.
Cassie laughs, and rolls her eyes at Greta. "Way to listen."
"Sorry. I've got this stupid essay-- and it's not like stranger things haven't actually *happened.* I think I'm safer assuming you weren't making *any* of it up." Just a short list of things Greta herself had actually *participated* in with the rest of YJ would beat that, and Cassie's been coming back to school on Sunday nights with even *weirder* stories, lately. As much fun as some of it had been-- well, Greta's secretly, and perhaps a little shamefully, relieved to only have essays to worry about again. "I mean, would your coronation as Penguin Queen be a whole lot weirder than baseball on the planet Myrg?"
"Point." Cassie grins at her. "And hey, doesn't Cissie have Art History with you? Why isn't she hip-deep in textbooks, too?" Cassie leans back against Greta's wall, twisting and untwisting her lasso.
"You'd think she'd be, but she's been done with this paper for weeks. I wish I could figure out how she does it," Greta says, sighing. "It's very impressive." And terrifying, but that's Cissie. She and Traya might actually take over the world with their giant brains and terrifying competence someday, and Greta has a feeling she'd end up a not-very-reluctant Henchman No. 1 if it ever happened.
Cassie tugs out a neat chain of slipknots. "Cissie's, like, the girl of Tim, remember? I bet she's ahead in *all* her classes, and she's using the extra time to teach herself basketweaving or high-energy physics or something." Pulling out the last knot with a sharp yank, she adds, "Whereas I'm hanging on by my *fingernails.* You'd think our teachers would accept 'forgot all the material while fighting my evil self in the future' as an excuse, but nooo."
"The're funny like that. Remember all the placement tests I had to take?"
"Yup. There's probably a little note in your permanent record somewhere. 'Has no transcript before the tenth grade on account of being dead.' I don't envy you the college application process." She says it nonchalantly, but there's something a little... wistful, maybe, like she actually does.
Greta puts down the textbook she's been paging through, and turns to face Cassie. "You're really not thinking about college?"
"Not seriously, no." Cassie looks down at her hands. Greta notices her bitten fingernails-- she'd always had them back in the wig-and-goggles days, but lately Cassie's been turning into a girly girl. The four of them, her and Cassie and Cissie and Traya, had even given each other manicures a few weeks ago. "I mean, maybe a year or two after I graduate, but... I know what I want to do already, you know? And college isn't gonna prepare me for it. And it's not like Kon or Tim or Bart are planning for it, as far as I know, and none of the older Titans went." She frowns. "Well, I think maybe Nightwing."
"I bet Tim will. I mean, I can't see Batman letting him skip it." Greta hasn't actually seen Tim in-- god, ages, now. And, okay, it's possible she had on crush-colored glasses back then. But, as Kon always loved to remind everyone, Tim was trained by the World's Greatest Detective, and Greta can't imagine him passing up any opportunity to learn. "And he always said he wanted to have a life apart from Robin, right?"
"Oh, jeez, Greta." Cassie looks really pained, and guilty, which can't be good. "I never told you, did I? About all the stuff that's been going on with him." From the look on her face, Greta can tell the news isn't about him opening up an ice cream parlor with adjoining toy store. Not that there's any reason for it to be-- actually, that would probably be weirder and more upsetting than whatever's really happened, because it would mean some kind of brainwashing was involved. "Kon hasn't told me everything, but you know he and Tim always have weirdo boy secrets. But I know he's had a really rough couple of months. His dad found out he was Robin, and made him quit, and then that Spoiler girl took over for him--"
"She did? Really?" It's not at all fair for Greta to still dislike the girl, since she only met her once and was kind of insane with jealousy at the time, but-- still. On Greta's mental list of really inappropriate Robins, Steph would probably rank somewhere close behind Bart. But before Cissie, now that she thinks about it.
"Well, yeah, but only for a little while. Kon went looking for Tim in Gotham, because he totally just failed to show up at Titans Tower without saying boo to any of us. And he ran into her instead, and-- well, I think he was pretty pissed off about it. But she quit too, or got fired, and then I think she got *killed*--" Now Greta has guilt, which is just wonderful. "--And now Tim's Robin again, but then his *dad* got killed, and now I don't think he's even *speaking* to Batman anymore, and I'm actually really worried about him. I think Kon is too, but he won't say, and Tim won't talk to any of us, and he's spending way too much time with that creepy Batgirl." Cassie finishes her litany by throwing her lasso across the room, frustrated by the knots she's put in it.
"That's-- wow. Do you think he's going to be okay?" Greta can't help but remember that Cissie snapped with far less reason, and Tim always seemed like he was keeping an awful lot of stuff bottled up. In kind of a sick way, it was part of why she'd liked him so much-- he seemed like the only person who she could ever safely tell even a few of Secret's secrets. Not that she ever *did,* but still. And she wouldn't wish the amount of tragedy Tim's had to face on the most able-to-cope person in the world, much less someone who, as far as she could ever tell, confused "cope" with "never, ever think about again."
"I really don't know. I hope so. But he scares me a little bit, now." Cissie's working on the knots in her lasso, again, looking at them instead of Greta. "When we landed in our own future by mistake, I didn't think I could see anything of ourselves in the people we were there. But now I can see some of what he was like as Batman. It really makes me miss the old Tim, you know?"
"Yeah." Looking back, it's easier to see how *hard* Tim was trying, how he'd had to work to be part of the group maybe as much or more than she or Empress had. "I wish I could talk to him. I remember when my dad died. It's hard, especially when you feel like it's your fault." Which, you know, it had been, but Greta's dealt with that. She only has *screaming* nightmares once or twice a month now, unless there's something Cissie's not telling her.
Next: Greta tells Tim "You know, I just had this horrifying mental image of my mom and your stepmom doing Tuesday arts-and-crafts at Mental Acres. I'm so sorry." And Timmy LAUGHS.
Also I realized just now that my Cassie voice sounds an awful lot like high-school-age Buffy, and Greta is very Willowesque.
"...so Diana totally chewed me out over it, and in the process she *somehow* managed to segue into how she deeply disapproves of my 'dalliance' with Kon, because apparently we're all suddenly characters in a Jane Austen novel. And I-- Greta?"
"Hmm?"
"Did I mention the part where I traveled to Antarctica and the penguins made me their queen?"
Greta frowns distractedly. "Huh? There were penguins?" Okay, so maybe she hadn't been paying attention.
Cassie laughs, and rolls her eyes at Greta. "Way to listen."
"Sorry. I've got this stupid essay-- and it's not like stranger things haven't actually *happened.* I think I'm safer assuming you weren't making *any* of it up." Just a short list of things Greta herself had actually *participated* in with the rest of YJ would beat that, and Cassie's been coming back to school on Sunday nights with even *weirder* stories, lately. As much fun as some of it had been-- well, Greta's secretly, and perhaps a little shamefully, relieved to only have essays to worry about again. "I mean, would your coronation as Penguin Queen be a whole lot weirder than baseball on the planet Myrg?"
"Point." Cassie grins at her. "And hey, doesn't Cissie have Art History with you? Why isn't she hip-deep in textbooks, too?" Cassie leans back against Greta's wall, twisting and untwisting her lasso.
"You'd think she'd be, but she's been done with this paper for weeks. I wish I could figure out how she does it," Greta says, sighing. "It's very impressive." And terrifying, but that's Cissie. She and Traya might actually take over the world with their giant brains and terrifying competence someday, and Greta has a feeling she'd end up a not-very-reluctant Henchman No. 1 if it ever happened.
Cassie tugs out a neat chain of slipknots. "Cissie's, like, the girl of Tim, remember? I bet she's ahead in *all* her classes, and she's using the extra time to teach herself basketweaving or high-energy physics or something." Pulling out the last knot with a sharp yank, she adds, "Whereas I'm hanging on by my *fingernails.* You'd think our teachers would accept 'forgot all the material while fighting my evil self in the future' as an excuse, but nooo."
"The're funny like that. Remember all the placement tests I had to take?"
"Yup. There's probably a little note in your permanent record somewhere. 'Has no transcript before the tenth grade on account of being dead.' I don't envy you the college application process." She says it nonchalantly, but there's something a little... wistful, maybe, like she actually does.
Greta puts down the textbook she's been paging through, and turns to face Cassie. "You're really not thinking about college?"
"Not seriously, no." Cassie looks down at her hands. Greta notices her bitten fingernails-- she'd always had them back in the wig-and-goggles days, but lately Cassie's been turning into a girly girl. The four of them, her and Cassie and Cissie and Traya, had even given each other manicures a few weeks ago. "I mean, maybe a year or two after I graduate, but... I know what I want to do already, you know? And college isn't gonna prepare me for it. And it's not like Kon or Tim or Bart are planning for it, as far as I know, and none of the older Titans went." She frowns. "Well, I think maybe Nightwing."
"I bet Tim will. I mean, I can't see Batman letting him skip it." Greta hasn't actually seen Tim in-- god, ages, now. And, okay, it's possible she had on crush-colored glasses back then. But, as Kon always loved to remind everyone, Tim was trained by the World's Greatest Detective, and Greta can't imagine him passing up any opportunity to learn. "And he always said he wanted to have a life apart from Robin, right?"
"Oh, jeez, Greta." Cassie looks really pained, and guilty, which can't be good. "I never told you, did I? About all the stuff that's been going on with him." From the look on her face, Greta can tell the news isn't about him opening up an ice cream parlor with adjoining toy store. Not that there's any reason for it to be-- actually, that would probably be weirder and more upsetting than whatever's really happened, because it would mean some kind of brainwashing was involved. "Kon hasn't told me everything, but you know he and Tim always have weirdo boy secrets. But I know he's had a really rough couple of months. His dad found out he was Robin, and made him quit, and then that Spoiler girl took over for him--"
"She did? Really?" It's not at all fair for Greta to still dislike the girl, since she only met her once and was kind of insane with jealousy at the time, but-- still. On Greta's mental list of really inappropriate Robins, Steph would probably rank somewhere close behind Bart. But before Cissie, now that she thinks about it.
"Well, yeah, but only for a little while. Kon went looking for Tim in Gotham, because he totally just failed to show up at Titans Tower without saying boo to any of us. And he ran into her instead, and-- well, I think he was pretty pissed off about it. But she quit too, or got fired, and then I think she got *killed*--" Now Greta has guilt, which is just wonderful. "--And now Tim's Robin again, but then his *dad* got killed, and now I don't think he's even *speaking* to Batman anymore, and I'm actually really worried about him. I think Kon is too, but he won't say, and Tim won't talk to any of us, and he's spending way too much time with that creepy Batgirl." Cassie finishes her litany by throwing her lasso across the room, frustrated by the knots she's put in it.
"That's-- wow. Do you think he's going to be okay?" Greta can't help but remember that Cissie snapped with far less reason, and Tim always seemed like he was keeping an awful lot of stuff bottled up. In kind of a sick way, it was part of why she'd liked him so much-- he seemed like the only person who she could ever safely tell even a few of Secret's secrets. Not that she ever *did,* but still. And she wouldn't wish the amount of tragedy Tim's had to face on the most able-to-cope person in the world, much less someone who, as far as she could ever tell, confused "cope" with "never, ever think about again."
"I really don't know. I hope so. But he scares me a little bit, now." Cissie's working on the knots in her lasso, again, looking at them instead of Greta. "When we landed in our own future by mistake, I didn't think I could see anything of ourselves in the people we were there. But now I can see some of what he was like as Batman. It really makes me miss the old Tim, you know?"
"Yeah." Looking back, it's easier to see how *hard* Tim was trying, how he'd had to work to be part of the group maybe as much or more than she or Empress had. "I wish I could talk to him. I remember when my dad died. It's hard, especially when you feel like it's your fault." Which, you know, it had been, but Greta's dealt with that. She only has *screaming* nightmares once or twice a month now, unless there's something Cissie's not telling her.
Next: Greta tells Tim "You know, I just had this horrifying mental image of my mom and your stepmom doing Tuesday arts-and-crafts at Mental Acres. I'm so sorry." And Timmy LAUGHS.
Also I realized just now that my Cassie voice sounds an awful lot like high-school-age Buffy, and Greta is very Willowesque.
