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I. Superhero
Steph's been Robin for four years now, since Batman took her in after he put her dad in Arkham, and this is the first time she's thought that maybe she isn't supposed to be doing this. The fight itself wasn't difficult, but when the boy they were supposed to be saving pieced together how to destroy the mind control ray before she'd even realized there was a mind control ray, she started to wonder.
Because there's something about the kid, Tim, who is skinny and gawky and makes offhand references to Monty Python every three seconds, that makes her think someone else should be doing this job.
Stephanie hasn't been low on self-esteem in years.
She could kick his ass into next week, which makes her feel a little better, but when he makes that "neighbor" comment, it's suddenly obvious that he, this fifteen year old nerd, has figured out what nobody else could, and Steph wonders why he hasn't done anything else about it.
Later, she will visit him out of costume and introduce herself as Julia, a new girl in the neighborhood. He'll arch an eyebrow and ask her why she didn't think he'd know she was Stephanie Brown, the newest broken-winged bird that Bruce Wayne has taken in. The look on his face is pointed, and the word "bird" comes out so strongly she wants to cry.
"Why do you care?" she asks.
"It's what I do," he says, and he looks so happy that he's right that Stephanie wants to punch him in his geeky, smirking mouth.
"What do you want from me?"
And he's serious and sincere for once when he answers her with his own question. "How do you get to be able to do this?"
Tim Drake doesn't want money or shiny new equipment or five thousand pounds of chocolate or anything. He doesn't ask to join, but he wants to help. The wideness of his eyes is enough to tell Stephanie that.
She asks for a pen and scribbles down a phone number on a post-it. "You're good with computers, right?"
His eye twitches at the corner, which tells her how little he wants to tell her how good, since she's a superhero and all.
"We're not Superman here, Tim," she answers, and favors him with a grin. His responding smile is small, but genuine. "Call this," Steph says.
"I. Thanks," Tim answers. He shouldn't be thanking her. Oracle will run him through the wringer before she'll trust him to help at all, but another brain at a computer certainly couldn't hurt, right?
Stephanie is a good judge of character.
Which is what she's thinking when she leans in to kiss his cheek.
II. Legacy
Dad isn't one of the big guns, not really, but he helps. Sometimes he works as an assistant to the police, which Stephanie thinks is about the coolest thing in the world. Sure, her dad's kind of a square when it comes to the whole drinking, drugs, premarital sex thing, but the successful capture of twenty villains (so what if they were small time) is pretty freaking cool. He even helped Batman in his latest imprisonment of The Riddler by a stroke of his own ability to relate.
She sees the pills Dad takes every morning, and how he washes his hands a little too often, his compulsion to have everything in order. Symmetrical. It isn't so bad. Luckily, taking his pills gives him all the sense of order he needs most of the time, and it helps him understand. He's usually quiet about it, so Steph doesn't mention it.
When she turns fifteen, she begs Dad to let her help, and the next day there's an eggplant colored cape made of some sort of fire-resistant bullet-resistant material in a plastic wrap on her bed. Apparently Batman owed Dad a favor.
It's not like she's really able to just go over to the Batcave and say "Hey, Robin. Wanna go down to the burger joint for a Coke?" but she's a superhero like her Dad, which is the coolest, and every Thursday she gets blindfolded and driven to the Batcave for training. Every Thursday the path winds a little bit differently, but there's always a very long, slightly curving path at the end. She hasn't broken out the maps of the city - yet.
Robin's better than her at just about everything, but he's a bigger superhero than she is and he trains, like, every day, and works with the Titans and Batman and Nightwing and The Flash and, like, everybody, and Steph's some little girl taking self defense classes by comparison. She kicked a bad guy in the kneecap once, and she's very, very good at dodging, which she figures is a good thing. Mostly. Especially if she's someday capable of actually hurting someone.
Batman makes talking noises about starting some weight training, and she can tell he doesn't really like her, but Dad helps Batman out sometimes, so maybe that's the important thing.
This Thursday, she and Robin are sparring, and Robin's not going as easy on her as usual. He's actually starting to sweat, for once, which gives Steph a little gleeful feeling inside that she tries to ignore since she's supposed to be fighting not squealing like an eleven year old at a concert.
Kick.
Robin dodges, using the motion to put some momentum behind a punch aimed at her ribs.
Blocked, and twisted.
He escapes her hold easily, sliding beneath her to trip her up.
She jumps, ball of her foot connecting with Robin's shoulder, which is when his hand comes up to catch her ankle, and the weight throws off her trajectory, and wow. Mat or no, this ground isn't soft, and also there's a Robin on top of her. A heavier-than-he-looks, wide-eyed Robin on top of her. With a very nice bottom lip. A Robin who, in fact, is breathing.
"Scout," he says finally, and his voice sounds different than usual, but that's possibly because it's his "lying on top of girls" voice, and Steph hates this secret identity thing, wants to rip off her stupid mask and push back the hood of her cloak and say 'My name is Stephanie,' but instead she just answers,
"Robin." It comes out more breathily than she'd intended, and Batman clearly isn't even paying attention anymore because armor or no, there's definitely a Robin on top of her, the lenses on his mask aren't up, and his eyes are really really blue. He moves a little against her, and that was definitely his (very well toned) thigh brushing against the inside of her (not quite as well-toned) one, and he's looking at her.
He's actually looking at her kind of a lot.
"I. Um." He starts, and then stops and goes back to just looking, like he expects to find the secret to life in her cheekbones. Or maybe her mouth, which he's staring at pretty intently. Like maybe her upper lip is secretly a super villain or something.
"You um?" Stephanie replies.
Robin's eyes are fixed on hers now, and Steph's fairly certain she's crazy because otherwise Robin's blushing. "I." His arms twitch, and she thinks for a second he's going to reach to feel some part of her. She really hopes he goes for a good part because she's starting to thrum with something just from the way he's been looking at her.
Instead, he pushes himself up a little. "I should. get up."
And he does, leaning over and offering a hand to help her up.
They go back to practicing forms after that.
Robin says he'll teach her some of the meditation things he learned in Europe.
Maybe it isn't Dad keeping her in training with Batman after all.
III. Debutante
The Elias School for Girls is intensely boring. It was intensely boring on her first day, and it, two years later, continues to be intensely boring. This is possibly because, by their very nature, all-girls boarding schools don't have any boys at them, and, possibly also by their very nature, have really stuffy teachers who make random bed checks, just in case anyone was having any illicit fun.
Which is not to say she doesn't appreciate it. Three years ago, she was in a public school where half the kids couldn't write their own name. Then Mom met Jack at the hospital, back when he was still a quadriplegic and suddenly Stephanie was moving all her boxes into a museum next door to Bruce Wayne's. She's not going to argue with that.
Elias is still mind-numbingly dull sometimes.
For one, it doesn't have the thrill of trying to track her freaky step-brother when he sneaks out of the house at night, which is one of her favorite summer pastimes.
However, it does have evening phone calls to said freakish step-brother, which do have their own vague charm.
Cissie's engrossed in her math homework, her headphones leaking some sort of bizarre techno that Steph wouldn't listen to in a billion years. She reaches for the phone.
"...Hello?" Tim sounds groggy on the other end, and she always forgets that Brentwood's a couple time zones ahead.
"Heya, favorite brother," she says, voice so falsely perky even she wants to punch herself.
Tim just snorts non-commitally, and answers, "Only. Also, step. So to what do I owe the pleasure?"
Which would be more of a sarcastic remark if Stephanie didn't know he secretly loved her calls. "Just calling to let you know mom and Jack's anniversary is in a few days, and that you need to send them a card."
"Mm-hm," Tim says, and Steph has the vague feeling that he's going to actually get out of bed to make a note of this. Tim's like that.
"So how's your roommate? Still giving you the happy gay sex?" She asks.
"We don't actually carry any gay sex here. I'm afraid you'll have to special order that," Tim replies, and it's so offhanded Steph wonders if he practices this stuff.
"Then those boys boarding schools have been terribly misrepresented."
"Honestly, Steph. This is me not minding the false advertising."
Steph lies back on her bed, stretching her left arm up to press fingertips against the headboard. She smiles. "Okay, okay. So your roommate's not hot. Chemistry professor?"
"I'm taking physics," Tim answers automatically. Steph waits. "Also, not sleeping with my professors. Or my roommate. Or, for that matter, anyone."
"Shame."
There's another pause before Tim says, "I'm going to take that as a compliment." He acts like he's so traumatized by their conversations, but his responses are so glib, Steph's fairly sure she's not saying anything he hadn't thought of by himself. The corner of her mouth twitches and she bites her lower lip for a moment to keep from giggling. She hears the soft sound of Tim typing on the other end of the line. "So. Anniversary. You going for a funny or a serious card?"
Steph lets up on the pressure on her lower lip and lets the giggle out because Tim's like sixteen going on fifty over there. "You were actually born forty-five, weren't you?"
"Nope, thirty."
"Good to know. Also, funny. Also, not your physics teacher? Well is he at least hot?"
Tim laughs. "I'm pretty sure he's a bit too rotund to fall under the classification of 'hot.'"
"English professor?"
"So I hear."
"You're no fun at all."
Tim just makes a detached sound and asks, "So what about you? Hot physics teacher?" And Steph can hear the challenge in his tone. It makes her want to laugh again.
"Chemistry, and the embalmed look doesn't do it for me."
"Ew."
"Now my roommate on the other hand..." Steph trails off, and can practically see the teenaged boy on the other end of the line perking up.
"Your roommate." Okay, so maybe he wasn't perking. Or interested at all.
Sometimes Steph hates Tim. "You're totally missing the lesbians over here."
"That might be a large part of the reason I'm going to a boy's school."
"Dad afraid you're going to assault the lesbians?"
"That may have not made any sense."
"'Fraid not. But yes. Lesbians."
"You seem awfully interested in my, might I remind you, non-existent, sex life for a lesbian." Seriously. Hatred. Tim doesn't make things easy for her.
"I'm just trying to be helpful, Tim."
"Right."
Stephanie grins and glances over at Cissie, who's humming along with her headphones and kicking her toes to the beat. "I should probably... Oh, hey, baby." She giggles low in her throat, and arches back, gasping into the phone.
"Um," Tim says.
"I told you you were," Steph forces her breath to hitch and lets a moan develop low in her throat. "missing the lesbians."
"... I think I'm hanging up now."
When she hears the click on the other end, Steph chuckles before hanging up the phone. Cissie glances over at her, and Steph wonders exactly how much attention she was paying to her conversation. Ah well, makes things interesting. Cissie pushes back her headphones. "Step-brother?" she asks.
"Yeah."
"You should tell him I say 'hi' next time you call."
Steph catches herself grinning at Cissie. "Oh, I will." She thinks for a moment that she sees a replying smile on Cissie's mouth as she goes back to her homework.
IV. Paradox
He has thirty-two scars on his legs alone, and is excited about getting some more from the way he twists against his bonds. She hasn't taken off his tunic yet to count the scars on his arms. She imagines his shoulders will be a hassle to count, but knowing, the knowing will be so nice.
Paradox leaves him in her bedroom, and wanders into her bathroom. Eddie uses bar soap which makes Paradox want to gag. She hits the dispenser of the soap container with her elbow, turns on the faucet with her wrist. Rub together, twist, scrub between the fingers, under the nails, deep at the creases of her palms.
Over the rush of the faucet, she can hear him fighting against the manacles some more. The metallic rattle makes her smile, but she mustn't rush this job. What if she got sick and couldn't play with her present? Eddie got her a present, and it's the best present in the world. Sure, Eddie can be a pain most of the time, thinking he's so much smarter than her, obsessed with his little games, never shutting up about her father, always getting her dirty, but this time he brought her a present. Paradox doesn't argue with presents. Especially not ones with scars to count and skin to expose who rattle so fascinatingly.
She's saving the mask for last.
Hands clean, Paradox steps back into the bedroom where Robin has given up fighting against his bonds, and is now merely eyeing them, concentrating so hard it's almost like his mask narrows. She stops her movement to watch him. He's bending his wrist at the oddest angle to brush fingers over the clasp of his manacles. Paradox smiles and swoops back into the room.
Robin's wrist unbends and he looks at her, jaw set. "What do you want, Paradox?" He asks. She likes him a lot. It's a shame he's working for that do-gooder, Batman.
Paradox just smiles, and brings her finger to press to her lips. She moves forward to begin removing the tunic from Robin's arms, and oh because he has a bruise so dark it's nearly black on his shoulder, and a scar from nearly his collarbone down his arm. Another scar. Another. These smaller, maybe from scrapes or knives and she focuses, counting them, labelling what they were probably from.
"Fifty-seven. eight. nine. thirty-four. twelve. one-hundred-thirty-four."
She slaps her hand over his mouth, and she has her gloves on she has her gloves on she has her gloves on and he's good and he couldn't get her sick or dirty and he's a hero not Eddie. His lips pull into a smirk under her hand. glove. "Do you want me to gag you?" She asks.
He responds by licking the palm of her glove. Paradox yelps and pulls back, and Robin, tied up and half-stripped is laughing at her.
She has her knife in hand before she even thinks and it's already sliced the skin of his thigh open before she has a chance to stop herself. Bright, bright blood, and Robin isn't laughing at her anymore. "Thirty-three," she says, and she isn't scared of him. She's not scared, so she can touch the blood, get that brightness on the tips of her gloves, the oily red slicking over the violet vinyl.
"You need help, Stephanie," Robin says, and she can hear pain in his voice. That's good. Her knife presses against his neck this time, but she does not cut. She doesn't need to anymore.
"Paradox."
"Stephanie, it's okay. We don't want to hurt you. We want to help you. The Riddler's using y-" She has to slap her hand over his mouth again. It's the glove with the blood on it because the other one is busy holding the knife to his throat and Paradox really likes Robin a lot. Eddie's so good to her.
"He brought me you," she says before she lets go of her knife, clatter on the floor, dragging her fingers up to slip vinyl over PVC of his mask. Robin twists his head away, and she can't get a grip with her gloves on. It makes her want to cry, but he's good. he's good, and his blood is on her glove anyway, and she can wash her hands later. She hasn't counted the scars on his arm yet, but she needs-
Paradox unlaces the glove on her right hand, folding the vinyl into a tight roll before moving her bare hand to the edge of his mask and pulling.
When he opens his indignant eyes, they're so blue.
"Stephanie, we'll get you help, I promise," he says, but what Robin means is that Batman's going to come save him. That's what Eddie's for. He's taking care of it.
She goes to get bandages for his thigh, twisting her feet to step in the only safe pattern. As she pulls the peroxide and gauze out of Eddie's first aid kit, she thinks of Robin's eyes. His blue, angry eyes. She smiles and hums to herself as she makes her way back to her bedroom. She has Robin, and one day, he'll be good for her too, she just knows it.
V. Epimetheus
He's twenty in two and a half weeks, and right now, Tim's out with Dick and Tanner at the Gotham Zoo. Good old dependable Uncle Dick. Steph smirks and carefully folds another tee-shirt.
After all those fights she and Tim had about the baby, back when they were so young, she still hadn't been able to say no to Tanner when he was born, and she made Tim understand that if he thought the baby needed a male influence so much, why didn't he help? Steph's fairly sure that Tim gets extra hours in all his days. That's the only possible way he makes all this work.
Stephanie gets a check from Wayne Enterprises every two weeks. It's not a lot, and surely petty change to Bruce, but it keeps Tanner in clothes and stocks their fridge.
She opens the closet to hang up the sundress, and at the back of the dark room is the sharp eggplant of her old cloak. She never could bear to throw it out.
It's not as though she's a bad mother, but she got her GED and forgot about school. She works as a secretary downtown, and she cooks for three at night now. Tim's studying criminal justice at university and comes home just long enough to eat and do boy things with Tanner before he excuses himself for bed. "Bed" of course meaning suiting up and chasing criminals through the streets of Gotham.
About sixty per cent of the time, Stephanie wakes up to Tim's arm flung around her waist as he snuggles into their bed at five or six in the morning. The other forty, he doesn't make it home before she goes to work. She knows that sometimes he has to be at the Cave, or has things to work out with Nightwing, or research to do.
Tim does important things.
Stephanie reaches into the closet and pulls out the plastic wrapped cloak. Her ragged fingernails rip through the plastic, and she's barely thinking as she pulls the cloak from its hanger.
Tim overloads on credits every semester and takes two classes during the summer session. He'll have his bachelor's in another semester, and then he can start working on just enough grad work to get him where he wants to be.
Tanner was so excited about seeing the pandas. He doesn't know that his daddy isn't his daddy. He doesn't know that his daddy is a superhero, or that his "uncle" is neither his uncle nor a civilian. Tim lies smoothly and believably.
Tanner does know how to hurt an attacker and how to avoid bad people already.
And Stephanie loves Tim, and she loves Tanner, and she knows that Tim only does what he feels is expected of him. She knows that he tries so hard.
The feel of the air around her as she swung over Gotham. The feel of her knuckles connecting with the hard suit of an attacker. She can't forget those things.
She thought this was what she was meant to do, mothering. She thought this was what she was supposed to be doing and it all was so easy that she almost believed it.
The cloak is security around her, and she's put on a little weight, but nothing she can't lose after a few nights of crime fighting.
They'll be back from the zoo soon, and Tanner will want to tell her all about the pandas. Tanner loves pandas. Dick will grin and offer to cook for everyone, and Tim will just smile and kiss her. Stephanie will want to scream.
She ought to have left a note, she thinks as she drops out her back window and onto the grass behind her house in the dim early evening light.
Stephanie loves them, but this is what she should be doing.
She does not think about how Tim will explain to Tanner that mommy is gone.