holdmypoodle | all of your flaws and all of my flaws are laid out one by one;

The alcove is remote, and Helena insists on driving the two of them there. The truck is stolen but it has many miles left to its name before they will be caught with it. It's time enough to breathe on this venture, and it's time enough to take a break. Helena's a speed demon with a good eye for cops, so they arrive at the beach relatively smoothly. In the back are various crates of things strapped down, amongst them newly acquired food, new clothing from one of the thrift stores, even a bottle of vodka Helena had lifted from a liquor store while Cass was in the bathroom.

They agree not to start a fire and draw attention to themselves, subsisting off canned ravioli from their food haul instead. It's quiet, it's calm, it's a moment of kinship between them that doesn't need dialogue to be construed as bonding. Helena, as per usual, eats savagely, scooping with her fingers and licking at the sides of the can in order to get all of the sauce she can manage.

After dinner is a world of opportunity, and Helena is at once standing from her spot by the lake water. Methodically, she starts to untie one of her boots and tosses it unceremoniously behind her. "Well," she finally broaches the subject - broaches any subject tonight, she's been quiet lately, quieter than usual. Her fingers start to get to work on her other boot. "Are you coming?"

She gives no indication as to what for a long moment, not other than a mild shift of her eyes towards the water itself.

"I have never been swimming in lake before."

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But it's Cass, so spelling things out isn't really necessary. She's already copying Helena and tugging her own shoes off, eying the water a little warily. It's going to be cold and they have no fire, so she's a little worried for Helena's safety.

"I have. Will be cold." And only one of them will feel it, but she doesn't think either of them will really mind it much. And then she's right beside her friend and stripping her own shirt off, letting it drop into the sand.

"I do not mind," she breathes out, and her shirt's right off with Cass'; she unhooks her bra and sets free her wings, stretching her arms wide under the moonlight and inhaling deep the scent of the air. It doesn't even smell particularly good. It just smells like outside, like rain, like something earthy and primitive and exactly what she needs right now.

She starts to move past Cass, stepping out of her pants and remaining in only yellow boxer-briefs before she starts wading towards the water. Only enough to let her feet sink in.

As tempted as she is to just drag Helena into the water and dunk her and splash her, it's the state of her back that has Cass holding off on that. She takes the moment to look, at the scars and scabs, and any desire to shove or be forceful is forgotten.

The rest of her clothes come off and she's not wearing a stitch of clothing when she goes sprinting past Helena, splashing up water on the way and diving under once it's deep enough. She can feel that it's cold, but it's refreshing more than anything else. After she surfaces, she looks back to where she left Helena on the bank of the river.

"Do it fast. Will adjust sooner."

Her eyes drink in hungrily the sight of Cass' retreating back and she can pinpoint why she finds the view so interesting, if the interest is not typical in nature. Cass is riddled with scars, lacerations, bullet wounds, just as she is, and not for the first time in her life she thinks something selfishly, with a swell in her chest: Someone like me.

With a brief interlude to strip off the last of her clothing - somehow, strangely, that much is shyly, almost mortified to be doing so for some reasons she doesn't answer or describe. She's quickly diving into the water with a less than graceful leap forward, immersing herself completely for a few long seconds.

She resurfaces and throws her hair back with a spray and a throaty laugh. "I do not mind the cold," she explains cheerfully, splashing a bit of water Cass' way - playfully, innocuously - as she wades her way over. "In Ukraine, the ice could stick to your shoes, it would be so cold." She sighs softly. It's like home and not all at once.

Helena's hair does a funny kind of puffy yet half deflated kind of thing when it's wet and honestly, there's just no stopping the urge to reach out to touch once Helena is close enough to her. She gently rubs the strands between her fingers, then gives a gentle tug as she smiles at her.

"Won't have to... deal with ice cube Helena, then." She says, and then splashes back. The connection, the closeness, it's not one-sided. All Cass really wants to do in this moment is protect and care for her new friend, so water fights? She can do water fights if that's what makes Helena happy.

There is a very small category of people allowed to touch Helena without some of her skittishness coming to light. There's something freeing about touching people, about personal space and invading it - control comes with it, and with control, power. When the tables are turned and she is no longer in charge of the situation, it becomes different, not intimidating but uncomfortable. Cass is one of those few people, and when her hands go to Helena's stringy, flattening hair, she beams.

"It has been a very long time," she admits freely, before she sinks under the surface again, shooting up with a spray of water out of her mouth as though she's a whale. She smiles, but she sinks further down into the water just enough for her nose and eyes to be visible above the surface. She's watching, and then she's lifting her chin and speaking.

"What keeps us from ice cube Cassandra?"

Throughout her life, Cass hasn't seen very many children doing childlike things. There was her, and then there were the children in Gotham who played with rats or hid away from the horrors of their city, and in Bludhaven she hadn't seen any at all. So there's something... soothing, almost, about watching the way Helena acts, the things Helena does because they make her happy.

Maybe Cassandra just likes the way it feels to watch someone who has endured so much feel so free. Maybe it feels like looking in the mirror sometimes and if she just gets a little closer to Helena, that happiness will rub off on her.

Either way, Helena is a bright light to Cass and it earns her honest answers where she might obfuscate with other people.

"I don't feel it." She says, and then her lips tug into a thoughtful frown. "Well, feel temperature change. But no pain, so... can endure longer."

No pain. No pain and it's freeing in a way, it's the reason for the starburst gunshot scar to her chest, the rebar in her stomach, the wings - this water is so cool and gentle against them, though the cuts are shallower by the day.

She's drifting again, a little backwards, and she dips down underwater for her own private moment, perhaps to ponder this question or to just wade while she ruminates upon the same thing Cass does: The similarities with what they say to each other, sometimes.

By the time she comes up, it's just to her chin again, head tilted upward so she can ask Cass with her first surfacing breath, "Why is it for you?"

When Helena's head pops out of the water again, Cass is floating on her back in the water, content to just relax and float. Every now and then is a small kick to get her moving, but she stays close to where Helena disappeared.

"Training. Was... conditioned, not to feel it."

She hums thoughtfully at first, brushing her hair out of her face and gathering it back into a tangled bundle.

"Tomas would burn my fingertips so they could not find my- prints," she adds passively, holding up flat palms and sighing as she wades further into the water. "Someone did such things to you."

"My father." That should be harder to say, but it's just not anymore. Cain might have been her father by blood and as much as she wished he had loved her the right way, he doesn't deserve the connection that comes with that title. That belongs to Bruce.

"My parents made me... to give away. To make me best assassin, then give as body guard. Pain is weakness, so..." She shrugs, and it makes her sink a little in the water. It's impossible to ignore how much easier it is to explain this to someone who won't burst into tears immediately, and it lets Cass push on. "It was beaten out. Two for flinching."

She nods enthusiastically; though what Cass is saying is difficult, Helena can agree with it whole-heartedly, and there's something of a kinship in learning that what your norm is suddenly becomes less strange when others have shared it, when she doesn't have Sarah's and Felix's whispers behind her back, all these pressing questions. What happened to you, Helena?

"My mother gave me away as well," she replies sullenly, huffing in frustration in the water and making bubbles. So she gave Amelia darkness. She leaves that part unattached. "And when I was found-" Well, their stories almost match. She touches each part of her body with light fingers to match what she's saying.

"Sewn lips for lying, cursing; lashes for disobedience. Mm." Her hands smooth across her back briefly and she kicks wildly in the water.

all of your flaws and all of my flaws are laid out one by one;

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