Chapter Text
Stephanie Brown was a Gotham girl to her core. She was so born-and-raised, she could even sort of remember a time before Batman -- or at least if she really thought back, she could kind of remember the first time Batman started showing up in headlines. He wasn't front page at first. It was tabloid shit at the beginning, the type her mom always flipped through in the checkout line of the supermarket. People were convinced the Jersey Devil had come back to roost; by "people," Stephanie generally meant the three guys who hung around in the parking lot of the 7-11, always bumming cigarettes and telling anyone who'd listen (or wouldn't) what they thought about rich jackoffs getting everyone else involved in war in the Middle East.
It was a month later, when someone caught a better-than-usual photo of the Batman, that all hell broke loose well and truly for good. Caped superheroes came with caped supervillains to fight them, and no place on Earth was quite as bad as Gotham City when it came to sheer ridiculous mayhem. It ended up being such a fact of life -- be careful with what you grow, the zoo's a lost cause, and Halloween's just asking for trouble -- that new Gothamites couldn't even begin to imagine the city BC, Before Costumes. But Steph remembered. She still remembered when people told stories about the Jersey Devil in Gotham City, not the Batman.
Crime was a steady background hum in her life, especially in the East End, but recently it'd graduated from hum to straight-up ominous horror movie soundtracking. Steph's mom started talking more and more about moving back to Bridgeton after their lease was up. Steph had been reacting with less and less disgust to the idea. Bridgeton was safer, and with more cousins and aunts and a tribal headquarters full of potential babysitters there, it'd probably be easier on a newly single mom to raise a teenage daughter. Crystal would love for Steph to spend more time with her uncle and less time worrying about her father.
Her father, who now lived on the other side of town and was a supervillain.
She knew a few things about the whole fiasco. Not as much as she'd have liked, but she knew her mom was in on it once, and she knew that the whole supervillain thing probably led to the divorce -- how could it not? -- and finally, she knew her dad was the Cluemaster.
Honestly, she felt a little annoyed. Not only was her dad a supervillain, but he was also a shitty one, too. Her father was a Riddler knockoff, and even the Riddler was only a second-rate villain. Definitely one only people from Gotham, maybe from New Jersey would know about. The Riddler was the Golden State Killer of Gotham City supervillainery, and her father was his copycat. She could never attend Related to A Psycho Anonymous, she'd get bullied by all the other kids.
And, if she fucked up one more time on the seam of this hood, she'd get bullied by the superhero kids too. She had just managed to stab herself in the thumb with a sewing needle for the third time in as many minutes and had to take a few deep breaths before pausing the YouTube video she was hunched over watching. With that breath, she sat up straight again and arched her back; her spine let out two satisfying cracks. The paused video meant that her phone had exited fullscreen mode again, and she could see that she'd been at this sewing project since well past midnight. It was now closer to 3:30 than 3 AM and definitely edging past the point of no return. Another hour awake and she'd might as well make an all-nighter out of this.
She leaned back and then looked out the window. Her view was on the side of the apartment with a straight shot to Crime Alley's Italian quarter, and sometimes she thought if she kept watching, waiting for her eyes to adjust to the night, she might catch a glimpse of one of the city's fearless protectors swooping down from above to stop, she didn't know, a mugging or something.
It had happened once or twice, rare as watching the sky and waiting to see a meteoroid streak across it, but still. It had been a few years ago, so she probably had seen that second Robin at work. The silhouette was definitely too small to be the big old Bat himself, and Batgirl usually operated in Midtown. Stephanie knew that that Robin had moved on to Bludhaven -- in her more uncharitable moments, Steph was sure Bludhaven was swiping Gotham's homegrown heroes with a pay raise or something so they could keep their own city safer and the property taxes higher -- but in her mind, he'd always be the "new" Robin to her. The new-new Robin, this most recent one, well. She didn't know what to think of this one.
What she did know was this new-new Robin didn't think it was all that worth his time to go after the kind of small-fry that liked to plague the East End. Batman and Robin, way back in the beginning, used to spend all their time fixing up Crime Alley and the new Robin even had that accent that just screamed for the world to hear that when he was tossing around goons in the avenues, he was there to take care of his own. Nowadays though, Batman and Robin III moved down to where Batgirl usually operated, even to Lowtown. And Steph got it. It made sense. Villains had been getting bigger and badder, and they'd been turning their gaze away from the little island city of Gotham, getting international with their exploits. Stopping Scarecrow from fear toxin-ing the entire eastern seaboard, or those crazy assassin people from killing the president of the US, on balance, probably mattered more than stopping some washed-up game show host from playing a very violent scavenger hunt in the most lost-cause part of a city of lost causes. Hell, Steph definitely only cared because that game show host happened to be related to her, and also she had to live in this stupid lost-cause city.
Steph sighed and checked her phone again. 3:32 AM. She only had a little hemming to go before she was done with this outfit, but it was a Tuesday night and she was still at least pretending for her mom's sake to be interested in not being a high school dropout. She could catch three hours of sleep and work on this when she got back from school.
Stuffing her little project into the garbage bag under her bed, Steph took one last glance out the window. Then, she closed the blinds and collapsed into her bed, shutting eyes that had gotten scratchy and dry from being awake for so long.
The thing about her father was that he wasn't always bad. Most days, in fact, he was fine. He was never the most caring father of the year or anything, and Steph rarely saw him for years of her childhood, but sometimes that was because he was going down to the docks to get a paycheck for eight hours of honest work. And fine, sometimes it was because her father had a tendency to spiral due to a good amount of narcissism, egomania, and what Steph would armchair diagnose as "the obsessive need for everyone to think he's the smartest guy in the room," but here's the thing: she remembered being seven years old, and her dad reading to her.
He never read fiction; that wasn't a thing in the Brown household. His whole adage was that "Truth will always be wilder than fiction could dare dream," which Steph was now old enough to think was a pompous bullshit way to phrase it. But he'd read stuff out loud to her, tell her about Gotham's history, or long term potentiation in the prefrontal cortex, or common typographical tools, from a book he checked out (or probably stole) from the North Gotham Public Library. She and her father, they both had a brain for that kind of thing. A head for useless trivia, her mom called it.
And sometimes, very very rarely, her father would sit down to do a puzzle like he usually did in the evenings, pause, and then turn slightly so Steph could see from her orthogonal end of the dinner table. And he'd go through the puzzle out loud, explaining his thinking: when to use algorithms to systematically eliminate answers, and how to use a heuristic to narrow the field. She was never allowed to ask questions, but she had been allowed to listen: if only because he liked a captive audience.
It wasn't much, but it was enough to plant seeds, and with an internet connection and the free time of an elementary-school-aged kid, Steph could practice on her own. Sometimes, she'd do it for hours; so long that when she went to sleep, she'd still be playing back a game of sudoku in her dreams.
She wouldn't claim to be all that good with people -- another thing she probably got from her dad -- but she did know how to put together a few clues. Two years ago, when delivery drivers were talking about their trucks getting knocked over by a gang of masked robbers, the Gotham PD was checking the Warehouse District to catch them before they could fence their loot. But Steph knew it wouldn't be in the Warehouse District at all. The robbers made a habit of cutting open the locks in a distinctive triangular motion, then wrenching it open through the corner.
It was obvious to her that the robbers were hiding their stolen goods somewhere in the piers and hangars of Tricorner Yards, right under the PD's noses, a pictographic clue that trained detectives just weren't picking up on.
Then, when her father would return with paychecks from a new job with details he was cagier than usual about, Steph crept out of her room one night to look at the checks. It only took a moment looking at the routing number for her brain to engage and crack the hexavigesimal code -- 18964803666892 became CLUEMASTER and as hard as she tried, she couldn't go back to three seconds ago, when it was just numbers.
When she went to sleep that night, she kept playing back numeral codes in her dreams.
Steph woke up that morning groggy, with a migraine and a hellishly dry mouth. Her body was punishing her severely for even thinking she could stay up late with no consequences, and it didn't intend to stop until she got some coffee right into her body. There was just enough time, too, for her to make one scalding cup of coffee to gulp down and burn her esophagus on, and still catch the train. Her mom, similarly bleary and with a similar idea, simply nodded at Steph as she got the electric kettle to heat up.
While Steph lived on the south side of East End, just barely off of Crime Alley, she got districted into one of the schools on the north end. It was right in the Little Saigon neighborhood, and close enough to Gotham Village that the rich kids and their rich kid houses with rich kid property taxes made up for having to wake up at 6 AM every day just to make it to the light rail for a school that started an hour and a half later. Plus, two blocks over from the Ridgeview High was an Asian bakery with some great bánh mì for only a buck fifty. Steph spent the whole ride mindlessly staring out her window and soothing her empty stomach with promises that it would soon get fed.
Then, Steph got to the bakery, a block away from the train station, and forgot totally and completely about her hunger. There was a girl standing just outside the door to the bakery, and Steph had never seen her before. Or really, anyone like her. She was pretty, a few inches or so shorter than Steph but with more muscle to show off in a tank top, and stick-straight, shiny black hair. Her spine was perfectly straight, with her broad shoulders back like a dancer's. Her gaze was fixed on the alleyway between the bakery and a bike repair shop, watching two swallows give each other a birdbath in one of those omnipresent puddles in Gotham alleys -- it didn't even matter that it didn't rain last night. Something about the way she held herself was fascinating to Steph; it reminded her at once of those documentaries her dad would watch at the end of the day, images of big cats in parts of the world that were only real to Steph in her books.
"Hey," Steph said, flashing her a smile. She wasn't usually this forward, but there was something about the shorter girl that had immediately fascinated her, and the part of her brain that was driven by curiosity alone refused to let go.
The girl turned to look at her and, wow, that was an intense gaze. Her eyes were black-hole-black.
"Hello," the girl said.
Steph blinked. There was no way her accent was real. She sounded straight out of an old-timey American radio show, all rapid-fire Mid-Atlantic Movie Accent. It wasn't bad though; Steph could kind of dig it.
"Never seen you around before."
"I'm new in town."
"Well hey, 'new in town'. I'm Stephanie," Steph said, leaning forward to shake hands. The other girl had the slightest hesitation before she also leaned forward to take Steph's hand. Her grip was callused, on the pads of her knuckles rather than the tips of her fingers. Probably didn't play an instrument, but she could definitely throw a punch.
"Cassandra."
"Cassandra," Steph said, testing the name out, "are you gonna get anything?"
She looked a little startled, glancing back over her shoulder at the shop like she hadn't smelled that it was a bakery she was standing in front of.
"I'm not sure," she said.
"Ever had bánh mì? I'll get you one, on me."
Cassandra looked briefly very perplexed. "On you?"
"Yeah, you know, on me. My treat. I'll pay?"
"That's not necessary," Cassandra quickly assured her, but she didn't make a move to go inside. Steph weighed the odds in her head, then decided to take a reckless plunge and bodily pulled the girl into the store.
"You can pay for yourself, but it is so obvious you've never been here before, and it would be a crime to let you leave without knowing how great the chà bông in this place is." As an afterthought, Steph asked, "Are you vegetarian and/or in some way unable to have pork?"
Cassandra bemusedly shook her head. She seemed okay enough with being pulled along, but at some point, Steph's own sense of overfamiliarity pushed her to drop the girl's arm.
"Oh cool. Alright, see, the Nguyens do pork bánh mì the best. That one," Steph pointed at the display case, stacked with premade sandwiches, "is the bánh mì thịt nguội. It's good, so long as you're okay with mystery meat. My favorite, though, is that one." She smiled at Mrs. Nguyen behind the counter and held up two fingers. "Can I get two bánh mì bì, please, one for my friend here?"
Mrs. Nguyen nodded, bagging them up. "Three twenty-seven," she said, and Steph handed over a fiver. As she pocketed the change, she jerked her head and did a thing with her eyebrows at Cassandra to indicate that the other girl should pick up the bag. Cassandra did so, cautiously pulling one sandwich out and sniffing at it. It was a birdlike movement, graceful even in its jerkiness.
"It's pork in fish sauce," Steph explained after she had jammed all her loose change and receipts back into her wallet. "Ever had it before?"
Cassandra shook her head again, though this time with less bemusion and more skepticism. She had very expressive eyebrows. Well-groomed, too. Did "new in town" mean Mainland Gotham, or should Little Saigon be worried about gentrification?
"Then this is your first!" Steph said, her mouth running away with her a little as she got more comfortable talking to Cassandra. For once, the relative silence from the other person in the conversation didn't make her nervous and desperate to fill the void; Cassandra had put her at ease in the first five minutes, somehow. "That's pretty exciting, it's like I'm popping your cherry, but for food. Your food cherry. Well, cherries are food."
"Okay, I know what popped cherry is an idiom for." She said, wrinkling her nose at Steph. Steph privately thought it was adorable as hell.
"Oh my god, less whining, more trying."
Cassandra took a hesitant bite, chewing softly with her mouth closed. Good manners on her part; unlucky for her, Steph definitely didn't have those. Steph ducked her head, leaning in comically close to watch her frustratingly blank face. A few seconds after swallowing, Cassandra nodded her head to herself and then made eye contact with Steph again. "It's good," she said with absolutely no emotion in her voice.
"It's good! That's it? Oh come on, give me a little more."
"Smells like fish, tastes like pig. Weird, but good."
"Wow, don't stop on my account, you New York Times food critic, you."
Cassandra didn't quite smile, but her eyes crinkled up just the slightest bit. She took another bite of the sandwich, so Steph counted it as a victory.
Instead of walking off with her new sandwich, as Steph kind of expected her to do, Cassandra took a seat outside the shop window, where thin wire chairs were set out in a haphazard circle around an equally thin metal table. The table had only one leg and shook violently when used and it would overturn if any one person set their elbows on it, so it went ignored for the most part, though Steph did still notice stray springs of cilantro on the surface and other indications that someone else had sat and had a meal there. She dragged one of the chairs out and plopped down, then regretted that as her tailbone protested the hard metal of the chair.
She instantly forgot about her discomfort when Cassandra dragged her own chair over and settled next to Steph, shoulder to shoulder.
They spent a few minutes like that, enjoying their breakfast in companionable silence before Cassandra turned to Stephanie. "Will you be here tomorrow?" she asked.
"Yeah, I always get breakfast here before school."
Cassandra smiled, for real this time, before getting up and dusting off her leggings. "I'd like to try the thịt nguội tomorrow then."
"It's a date!" Steph called out, mostly to see what Cassandra would do. Cassandra didn't turn back, but she did wave her hand, which seemed both like a friendly gesture and one that showed off the muscles in her back.
Steph was grinning a little stupidly as she tracked the other girl's exit with her eyes. The smile slowly dropped off her face when Cassandra turned the corner left, and she noticed graffiti in her peripheral vision. In that alley between the bakery and the bike repair shop next to it, there was a mural of stylized lotus blossoms painted across the wall. It had been there for years, and it was what Steph had assumed Cassandra had been looking at, aside from the now-gone sparrows which had been having a little sewage water slip-and-slide in the alley as well.
However, as Steph got up and walked a little closer to the alley, it was clear that someone had recently defaced it, sometime in the twenty-four hour period since she'd last been to the shop. Splashed across the mural, in handwriting that Steph had a sinking feeling she recognized, were three words.
NINE DOWN: FABRYKA