Chapter 1: but at least the war is over
Chapter Text
The bats – they’re not really bats, they’re interdimensional monsters that bear a passing resemblance to bats, but that’s enough for irony’s sake – can’t bite through the layers of armor and kevlar easily. Emphasis on the word ‘easily’. At this point, all Eddie can do is keep running and swinging and hope he’s enough of a distraction to buy the others just a little more time to figure out which portal is the right one and close it.
He hears Spoiler shout for him from somewhere behind him. He has to ignore it. If he stops running, the bats will get him. If the bats get him, they might go after someone else. Dustin screams again. He can’t ignore it this time. He turns back.
There are so many bats. Their teeth tear into his uniform, even as Eddie tries to shake them off. There are too many bats, with too many teeth, and they’re breaking through the material. Eddie reaches the edge of the building he’s on and fires his grappling hook to swing to the next one, to get back to Spoiler. Pain blossoms on his chest, his neck, his legs. The bats pile on, and he feels a dangerous wrench in his shoulder.
Another scream from Spoiler as he falls. The bats don’t seem to care, too determined to get to his flesh.
Eddie hopes Steve, halfway across the country, is okay.
July 6th, 2012
Eddie wakes up slowly.
Hearing is usually the first thing to come back; he knows that from too much past experience, and it’s the same now. There’s the quiet, unobtrusive beeping of a heart monitor to his left and the occasional whisper of pages being turned to his right. The heart monitor indicates he’s in a hospital, but the lack of a harsh fluorescent hum above him and absence of the sharp scent of intense cleaners suggests a Justice League medbay instead of Gotham General. That means he’s got smell back too. The smoothness of the fabric beneath his fingertips lends credence to the current theory – the ones from civilian hospitals are always too scratchy. There’s very little of his body that doesn’t ache in some way, which… makes sense, given his last memory. Bats and falling.
Shit.
Eddie finally opens his eyes. Then he closes them again and opens them a little less, because while the medbay lights are softer than a regular hospital, they’re still a little too much. The beeping to his right changes, though, which alerts the person sitting on his left. Eddie squints at Wayne as his uncle closes the book he’d been flipping through and puts it down on the bedside table.
“Welcome back, Ed.” Wayne looks almost as tired as Eddie feels. It’s not the worst he’s seen him – that will always belong to eight years ago – but still rough.
Eddie exhales. “How bad was it?”
At least Wayne understands him without Eddie having to clarify. “Not too bad, in Gotham. You’re probably the worst off, seeing as how you decided to stand right at the mouth of hell and then lead the monsters coming out of it on a merry chase. The Henderson kid’s got a sprained ankle and a few extra bruises. Most of the citizens were smart enough to stay out of the way when a hole opened up in the sky.”
Eddie can’t help the snort that escapes him, even though his lungs protest mildly. “And out of Gotham?”
“More civilian casualties, and… a couple of hero ones.” The words leave Wayne’s teeth like they’re being dragged. The beeping of the heart monitor gets faster as Eddie’s sense of dread spikes.
“Steve?” he asks. The fact that he wasn’t here when Eddie woke up doesn’t mean anything, he tells himself. He could be helping with clean-up somewhere, or rescues, or a dozen other things that aren’t the worst thing Eddie could imagine.
Eddie knows better, knows that nothing could pull Steve from his side the same way nothing could have pulled him from Steve’s.
Wayne’s already grim expression grows grimmer. “Something big came out of the portal in Metropolis. He and Supergirl held it off as best they could, but it had a rider, apparently. He and Steve fought, and of course your boy gave as good as he got, but…” Wayne shakes his head once. “I’m sorry, son.”
Three words, and suddenly Eddie can’t breathe and it has nothing to do with the bat bites or the fall damage and the heart monitor is going crazy and other people are rushing into the room, but none of it matters.
Steve’s not okay. Steve’s gone.
He wears the new suit to the public memorial service two weeks later.
He has to tell Hopper he’s going to do it ahead of time – well, he tells Wayne and Robin, and Wayne tells Hopper – because otherwise he risks not being let in because no one recognizes him without the cowl and the ears and the big red bat on his chest. And wouldn’t that just be the bullshit cherry on top of the trauma sundae he’s already been served.
Maybe the cowl would cover his still-healing wounds better, but he can barely bring himself to look at it, let alone put it on. Even though it would be a spare suit, not the one he was wearing that day. He sees it in its case in the Batcave and he gets nauseated. Besides, Wayne’s been saying for years that he should have let Batman d–
Let Batman go.
This is just Eddie finally listening.
It’s not an ideal debut, let alone the intended one (Flamebird was supposed to be with him. Steve was supposed to be with him), but Nightwing gets photographed for the very first time standing between Spoiler and Supergirl while Superman eulogizes his… not son , exactly, even though that’s what Steve was biologically. Rex Harrington, for all of his (many, many) faults, has a slightly better claim to the title of ‘Steve’s dad’ in practice. But Steve and Hopper had been slowly working towards something that was miles better than where they’d been after their initial meeting, and now that was just… over.
Like a lot of things.
He tries not to twist the ring under his glove as he stands and half-listens; he probably shouldn’t have worn it, but he hasn’t wanted to take it off since he fished it out of the little dish on top of the dresser in his and Steve’s apartment.
He wishes the funeral was over. There’s a eulogy for every fallen hero, though the only one besides Steve’s that Eddie pays any attention to is Max’s (given by Will, because neither Lucas nor Jane, standing with Mike in the next row back, could bring themselves to do it). He can’t leave, even though he desperately wants to; he’s too close to the front and center both literally and figuratively to sneak off. It doesn’t help that while Eddie has gotten better at keeping still over the years (he had to, in his chosen line of work), there’s a big difference between a stakeout and an unpleasant outdoor event when he’s barely recovered from life-threatening injuries.
Not that he hasn’t also been on stakeouts too soon after life-threatening injuries.
Dustin made little fidget cubes for the two of them shortly after he became Spoiler, and Eddie misses his terribly right now. Odds are good it’s somewhere in Gotham, buried in the rubble where Wayne said they found him after the portal closed and all the bats died.
Dustin made one for Steve too. It’s sitting in the little dish on top of the dresser.
The sun is bright and harsh, and even if Eddie weren’t in costume he’d find it offensive. Steve had loved the sunlight, of course. He and Robin had spent entire afternoons just laying on the rooftop deck of Titans Tower in sunglasses and swimsuits. Eddie glances at Robin now, and he immediately feels guilty for not checking in with her when her loss was just as unbearable as his.
Like she could sense the path his thoughts had taken, Robin reaches for his hand and squeezes it. Though maybe that was because he had also started drumming on his own thigh with his fingers.
The sun was starting to set by the time all of the speeches had been made, including a final one from Wonder Woman for all of the civilians who’d lost their lives in Vecna’s attacks as well. Eddie zones out even harder during that one, for his own sanity. He focuses on Robin’s hand in his and Dustin leaning close against his other arm, grounding him on both sides. Once it’s over, most of the people leave – civilians and the press aren’t allowed into the Hall of Justice for what’s supposed to come next.
He thinks about standing in the Hall of Memories, of putting the photo of Steve as Superboy that Robin picked out onto its little stand, of her and the kids finally giving in to their tears instead of having to look brave and solemn for the cameras, and Eddie decides he can’t do it. His grief isn’t a display for other people, even if those people are his friends, and he’s not particularly eager to observe theirs. He thinks Robin gets it, when he squeezes her hand again before he slips into the crowd. He figures the rest of Young Justice will look after Dustin, and Robin still has her own family to go back to. Eddie does have Wayne, who’s probably waiting for him back at the Batcave, but that’s not where Eddie goes.
He goes home.
Home is the apartment in Gotham that doesn’t have the Munson or Harrington name on the lease, in a part of town that isn’t trendy or old money or anything that either of those names would have gotten them. They put Harrison on it instead, because they both thought it was funny, and it was somewhere just for the two of them. Even Robin spent as little time as possible there, even though she knew where it was because there was almost nothing that Steve knew or did that Robin didn’t, and vice versa.
He has to sneak into his own apartment, because he didn’t go back to the cave to change, but it’s not the first time and it probably won’t be the last. He slips in through a living room window, carefully disabling his own traps.
He ignores the guitar in her stand next to the couch, the notebook with scribbled love song lyrics (in both of their handwriting) still wide open on the coffee table.
He avoids the kitchen, knowing that Steve’s favorite mug is still sitting next to the sink, probably with nasty stuff growing in it by now. He goes to the bedroom instead.
This apartment is the one with the dresser that holds the repurposed ashtray where Steve and Eddie both always drop – dropped the contents of their pockets. Steve’s fidget cube is there, along with some loose change and an assortment of silver rings, two of which Eddie’s had since high school. A single d8 (black with red numbers) sits inside one of the rings.
This apartment is the one that still has most of Steve’s things, the ones he didn’t keep at the Tower, and they miraculously still smell like him. Eddie can’t find it in himself to feel ashamed for fishing a t-shirt out of the laundry basket to hold up to his nose, briefly, and he takes it with him to the bed. The comforter and pillows still smell like Steve too, and that’s where Eddie buries his face as he collapses onto it, not even bothering to remove any part of his costume.
He’s going to regret that later, probably.
He doesn’t know how he’s going to fall asleep when the smell fades.
He doesn’t know how he’s going to fall asleep now .
But he does.
Chapter 2: i can't stand to fly
Notes:
New chapter, new point of view! The chapters alternate between Steve and Eddie's points of view, so evens are Steve (the Evens Stevens joke is accidental), and odds are Eddie. Speaking of, Eddie is mostly Sir-Not-Appearing-In-This-Chapter, but he will obviously be back for the next one.
Chapter Warnings:
- Mentions of character deaths.
- Emotional abuse/neglect (Rex Harrington sucks, y'all; this is mostly mentioned and discussed rather than fully played out).
- Brainwashing (partially played out).
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
2004
The rain is cold, and it’s too loud in Steve’s ears. His hearing is the most sensitive of his enhanced senses, for some reason. The cape – he wears it, but he’s not sure he’s ever thought of it as his – is soaked and it’s not heavy, exactly (not to him, not anymore), but it drags and he can’t imagine the old Superman – the real Superman – ever felt like this, like he was drowning in the stupid rain, pulled down by his stupid cape.
He needs to get inside somewhere. He can’t stay out in this weather even if he doesn’t get sick anymore, but he doesn’t want to go home because it hasn’t felt like home in a long time. Definitely not for the last year and a half, but maybe even longer than that. The penthouse apartment on the top of RexCorp’s tallest tower might be the place where Steve Harrington grew up, but he’s not even supposed to be Steve anymore.
He’s supposed to be Superman.
He doesn’t want to be Superman.
The street is empty of pedestrians, because no one else is stupid enough to be outside right now. The rain is coming down hard enough to strain even Steve’s improved vision, so he hopes he’s got the right address in his head. He had to use the phonebook and a map at the library (and the librarian who helped him looked at him funny because why did Superman need either of those things, but if she called someone about it, she waited until he was out of hearing range, so he’ll take that as a win) to even figure out where he was going, since he’s only been there once.
He prays (to who? Who do functional gods on Earth pray to? Not that he asked to be one) that a year and a half hasn’t been too long and Jonathan Byers will still recognize him in spite of everything.
He finds the house, and it looks the way he remembers it, a narrow house on a street full of narrow houses with narrow front stoops and tiny front yards.
He’s lucky he remembers it at all, after…
It was sunny the last time he was here.
There are lights on inside, though Steve doesn’t know what time it actually is. He rings the doorbell and can hear the buzz of it echo through the house. He has to fight not to listen to the reactions on the other side, to just wait like a normal person. He’s still getting rained on.
Finally someone answers the door, but Steve figures it’s just his luck when it’s Will, not Jonathan. The kid’s grown a few inches since he last saw him, but he’s still all bad haircut and big eyes.
Those eyes get wider as he opens the door. Will gasps. “Superman?”
They stare at each other for a moment, because it’s not like Steve had planned what he was going to say to Jonathan either, and Will’s looking less like a kid excited to meet a superhero and more like one who got caught doing something he wasn’t supposed to. He outright flinches when Mrs. Byers’s voice sounds from behind him.
“Will? Who’s at the door?”
Steve really wants to ask what that’s about, but then Mrs. Byers appears in the doorway. She goes white as soon as she sees Steve, like she’s seen a ghost, for just a split-second before she’s pushing Will behind her.
“Will, go back inside.”
“But mom, it’s Superman.”
“He’s not Superman,” Joyce says immediately. “He’s Rex Harrington’s puppet.” The last part is directed at him, complete with a glare. “I don’t know how you found us or why you’re here, but you should leave.”
Ouch. Steve didn’t really expect her to recognize him, but the coldness radiating from her is so different from his last experience with Mrs. Byers that his protests about his father die in his throat. He swallows. “I’m sorry,” barely makes it out of his mouth.
“You should go,” Mrs. Byers repeats, and she’s right; he shouldn’t have come here in the first place. He takes a step back, and that’s when Jonathan appears behind his mom and brother. He’s gotten a little taller too, Steve thinks, though Steve is taller still, but Steve has stupid Kryptonian genetics and a state-of-the-art super suit.
“Mom? Who’s at…” Jonathan trails off as he makes eye contact with Steve. They stare at each other, and Steve hopes . Please, he thinks, let just one person–
“Steve?”
And then Jonathan’s pushing past Mrs. Byers and Will to pull Steve into a tight hug, literally pulling him through the doorway and Steve can’t lose control now so he just stays loose, which is fine because the hug really only lasts long enough to get him into the house.
He doesn’t remember the last time someone hugged him. It might have been his mom. Given she left his dad six years ago, that’s… something he’s not going to think about too hard.
Jonathan shuts the door behind them all, and Steve’s dazed enough that he doesn’t fully register Mrs. Byers and Jonathan talking – no, arguing – right away.
“– don’t need it on the news that we brought Superman into our house!”
“It’s Steve, Mom, and I thought he was dead!” Jonathan glances at him. “You look different without your glasses, dude.”
“Steve?” Now Mrs. Byers looks at him in horror. “You’re Rex’s son?”
So she does remember him. Steve winces. “Yeah. Sorry.”
Mrs. Byers is still staring at him. “They said you were a clone, last year, and you do look…” She frowns. “Except for the eyes. You have your father’s eyes.”
“It’s a long story,” Steve says. He realizes that he’s still soaking wet, and now he’s dripping on the Byers’ carpet. “Uh, can I… I didn’t exactly plan to leave, and I’ve kind of been wearing this costume for days…”
Will snorts, but Jonathan just reaches out. “Yeah, dude, come on. Let’s get you some dry clothes.”
They end up in the living room, once Steve has been given a towel and fresh clothes. Jonathan had offered his, at first, but the t-shirt started to stretch and the sweatpants weren’t happening at all. Mrs. Byers – “call me Joyce, please,” she insists – finds a different pair that are actually too big, but it’s better than the alternative. Joyce has him sit down on the single recliner, despite surprised looks from Jonathan and Will (whatever that’s about) and the Byers family sits on the couch facing him.
Steve twists the hem of his shirt a little. “I don’t know where to start,” he admits.
“You didn’t come back to school,” Jonathan prompts. “Tommy said you got sick again over the summer. I mean, he didn’t say it to me. He and Carol told everyone.”
“That’s what my dad had me tell them,” Steve says. “I guess it started a little before that, though, on the night Superman died.”
A lot of Superman’s fights, especially the ones in Metropolis, end up televised, even though it’s incredibly dangerous for the people trying to get the footage. Steve’s dad frequently watched them on the huge screen in the den, often with a glass of scotch in his hand. There’s no glass this time. It’s just the two of them (because they’d been watching something else before the special report interrupted; Steve doesn’t even remember what it was now) sitting stiff-backed, staring at the tv in shock like everyone else across America. Maybe across the world. The Justice League is moving in behind the reporter on the scene. Batman reaches the body first, and then the footage cuts abruptly back to the news studio. The anchors there don’t seem to know what to say either.
Steve’s dad gets up off the couch and goes straight to his office. He’s been on the phone in there most of the past week – something about a project going wrong at Cadmus, from what little Steve’s heard. Carol might know more, since her dad is on the board of directors, but she’s on vacation with her mom and sisters. Either way, Rex didn’t even arrange to send Steve to one of the science camps he hates this year – not that Steve’s going to complain about that.
He stays in the den. He doesn’t bother changing the channel; it’s going to be the same story on all of them. One of the anchors announces that the villain Superman was fighting has been defeated, and his co-anchor adds that the Justice League have confirmed Superman’s death. They ask for a moment of silence to mourn the hero.
The Harringtons have never been particularly religious – Rex is a loud and proud atheist, science his only deity, while Lana had never discussed what she did or didn’t believe in front of their son. Steve was very good at being quiet, though, so a moment of silence is nothing. He hopes that whatever afterlife there may or may not be is better to Superman than this one.
He turns the tv off after that and heads toward his room. His dad’s office door is open, for once, and Steve considers saying goodnight until he hears voices. He pauses a few inches from the doorway, just out of view.
“Projects 23 and 27 are still viable,” his dad is saying. “Activating 13 is a last resort.”
“23 has stopped responding and we’re on the verge of losing 27 as well,” a voice replies from the speaker phone. “We have to get ahead of this, Rex. The project was already in trouble and now this? You know S.T.A.R. Labs has something in their vault, probably ready to go.”
“The man just died, Paul.”
“And the world will mourn him. Someone is going to step up regardless. There could easily be players we don’t even know about yet, won’t know about until they put their piece on the board. Ours has to be the best. Project 13 is our only hope.”
Steve leans forward slightly to see his dad pinch the bridge of his nose. “Fine. Fine. How long will it take to get your tests ready?”
“We can have everything by tomorrow. Just say the word.”
Steve’s dad sighs. “The east end lab, then. I don’t want any whispers leaving Metropolis until we’re ready.”
“You won’t regret this, Rex,” the voice assures Steve’s dad.
“I already do, Paul.” Rex presses the button to end the call, his other hand still over his face. He starts muttering under his breath. Steve can’t catch all of it, though he thinks he hears a “goddamn it, Jim,” in there. He steps back as his dad moves, still not wanting to be seen, but his dad is just going for the liquor cabinet at the back of the office.
Steve goes to bed without saying goodnight to him after all.
“I didn’t know what all of that was about, obviously. The next day my dad sat me down and told me the truth. That I wasn’t Rex and Lana Harrington’s son, just one of several clones of Superman that Cadmus had been working on for years. All of the others were artificially grown and aged at an accelerated rate, but since they’d had to mix in human DNA to get it to work and my parents were talking about having kids anyway… My dad didn’t tell my mom, obviously. She found out when I was thirteen. That’s what the whole big divorce scandal was about.”
“I remember that,” Joyce says. “Everyone was sure he’d cheated on her.”
Steve shakes his head. “Only with science. And Superman, kind of. That’s what I am. Half Rex Harrington, half Superman.” All fucked up. “Me being sick freshman year was just a cover up for my powers coming in, but I didn’t know because of my glasses. I don’t know how much you know about, uh, kryptonite?”
Will and Jonathan shake their heads. Joyce presses her lips together. “I know enough.”
Steve tries really hard not to grimace. “The glasses were made to suppress my powers until they – Cadmus, and my dad – were ready for me to use them. Which they were, now that Superman was dead.” He takes a deep breath. “So my dad took me into one of the labs and they took away my glasses and then the tests started. Senses, speed, invulnerability, strength. All of it enhanced. The only thing they didn’t really have me do was fly, other than hovering. Maybe they were afraid I’d fly away and wouldn’t come back.” He says it jokingly, like that’s not what he did in the end. None of the Byers laugh. Joyce is sitting between her sons, squeezing their hands in a way that even Steve might have protested.
“I guess I wasn’t advancing fast enough, or something, because after about a month they brought out this… They called it a pod. It was supposed to, like, download information into my brain – stuff about how my powers worked, some of the research they had on Superman, things like that. I was never good at school–”
“You were fine,” Jonathan interrupts. “You weren’t stupid, they just had a narrow definition of intelligence. You were good with people.”
Steve bites back a smile. “Thanks. Anyway, they said the pod would be faster. A more efficient use of the time they had with me, since they were still trying to get out ahead of anyone else looking to replace Superman. And my dad agreed to it, so I figured it was fine.”
‘The pod’ sounds sketchy as hell when it was brought up the next day at the lab, but Steve knows that if his dad approves, it’s happening no matter what he thinks. A small part of him wonders if he could fight his way out of the building – they only started combat training a couple of days ago. The pod is a way for him to get all of that training and knowledge significantly faster as it gets downloaded directly into his brain.
He jokes that maybe they could add high school textbooks so he can do better during the next school year. (He knows he’s not going back to school, and no one laughs.)
Falling asleep in the pod is… weird. He’s too aware, at first, and afraid it won’t work. And then he isn’t aware of anything at all.
.
.
.
Superman wakes up.
His time in the pod has left him refreshed and relaxed. The scientists helping him out of it look a little anxious, for some reason. Maybe that’s because their bosses are here – not just Paul Westfield, but Rex Harrington as well. Mr. Westfield looks pleased to see him, but Mr. Harrington doesn’t. Well, that’s to be somewhat expected. It must be hard to overlook his relationship with Superman’s predecessor, even though Mr. Harrington is a big sponsor of the project that created Superman.
“Superman,” Mr. Westfield greets him, holding out a hand. “How are you feeling?”
Superman gives him a wide smile and a quick handshake in return. “Great. Ready to get going.”
“That’s just what we like to hear, isn’t it, Rex?” Mr. Westfield elbows the other man gently, perhaps a little too familiarly, judging by the responding glare.
“I’m really looking forward to working with you, sir,” Superman offers, hoping to ease the tension. He does get Mr. Harrington’s attention by speaking, but he doesn’t know how to read the expression that comes over his face before settling into something neutral but mildly disapproving. At least that feels familiar.
“I’m sure you are,” Mr. Harrington says before turning back to Mr. Westfield. “Paul, a word.” They exit the room, and one of the scientists taps Superman’s arm.
“We have a few tests to run, uh, Superman, before we can send you on?”
He smiles at them. “Of course, sorry.”
Superman lets the scientists do what they need to. He has real work to get to soon enough, after all. The world isn’t going to save itself.
“I went to sleep at the end of August,” Steve continues. “The new Superman woke up at the beginning of September. I didn’t know it then, but my dad announced my… my death in October.”
“We went to your funeral,” Will pipes up. “Jonathan wanted to.”
Jonathan shrugs when Steve glances at him again. “I wasn’t kidding when I said you were my only friend at school, dude.”
“I know,” Steve says. “A lot of what happened after I woke up is kind of blurry. What I know now is that I was given fake memories to really turn me into the perfect corporate Superman who would answer only to my dad and the project leaders. Rex hadn’t signed off on that, so he fired the guy who did as soon as he found out… but that’s all he did about it, because I was still useful that way. More useful than I would have been as myself. So for a whole year I thought I was a special Superman grown in a lab just to do RexCorp’s bidding.”
“What made you break out?” Jonathan asks. “The news said you were seen a lot more the last few days, at more natural disasters and fires and stuff, and that your dad declined to comment.”
Steve takes another deep breath. His throat is getting dry, though he’s not sure if it’s from talking so much or the emotion he’s still pushing down. “I hadn’t seen my dad that day. I knew him as ‘Mr. Harrington’ the whole time, but we still saw each other pretty regularly. He said he was going to be busy; he didn’t say with what and I didn’t ask because it was none of my business.
“I had a room at the lab the whole time I was Superman, and a couple of the interns would sneak me into a nearby break room for meals. They were nice, and they said the idea of me eating by myself all the time made them sad. The tv was on in the break room all the time, but that day when I went in there, the news was airing a piece about Rex Harrington and the ribbon cutting for the new hospital wing. That was the sort of event he had me at all the time, so I thought it was weird he didn’t take me. And then they said the wing was named after Rex’s son Steve, who had died a year ago. And I went ‘but I’m Steve’ and then I kind of blacked out, I think? The next thing I knew I was flying up to the RexCorp building and using the roof access to get into my dad’s apartment, because he hadn’t changed the pass codes. He hadn’t changed anything , even my room. I don’t think he even let the maid dust in there. So I sat there and I waited for him.”
Rex has the nerve to look surprised to see him. “What are you doing here? Sally said you broke through a window at the lab.”
“Hi, Dad,” Steve answers. He’s never seen a human turn quite that shade, something between chalk white and sickly green.
“Oh,” Rex says faintly. “How…?”
“I saw you on the news. Or I guess I should say that I saw what you were doing today on the news. It’s really nice of you to donate the money for that new hospital wing, Dad, but don’t you think it’s a little distasteful to name it after your son who never had cancer and isn’t actually dead?” He stands up. “Were you ever going to tell me the truth?”
“No.” At least he’s honest. Steve still hates it. “It was easier for everyone if you were… if there was only Superman.”
“It was easier for you ,” Steve spits. Rex doesn’t deny it. “Fuck that, Dad. What about if Superman hadn’t died? Would you have ever told me the truth? Or were you just going to find ways to keep me close for the rest of my life, just in case?”
“I was going to tell you when you turned eighteen and let you decide what you wanted to do with the information.”
“And if I’d wanted nothing to do with you?”
Rex pauses for a long moment. “That would have been your choice.”
There’s a yawning, gaping hole growing in Steve’s chest and a building pressure behind his eyes. “But since I was sixteen, it was fine to brainwash me and force me to do what you wanted? Because I was sixteen, it was okay to turn me into a Superman puppet designed to do your bidding? It was okay for me to lose an entire year of my life? I call bullshit, Dad.”
“It wasn’t…” Rex clears his throat. “Your memories weren’t supposed to be altered. Paul Westfield went behind my back. I fired him as soon as I found out, after you woke up.”
“But you didn’t do anything about it,” Steve points out. His eyes almost feel like they’re… burning. He blinks hard. “You were willing to let me lose my life, my self . You just didn’t want to be the one who got your hands dirty.” He reaches for the fabric around his left wrist, around his communicator, and tears it out. It’s meant to withstand regular wear, fire, and other natural forces. It can’t withstand him. He throws the communicator to the floor. “I’m done being your puppet.”
Heat beams come out of his eyes and fry the communicator. They cut off as soon as he blinks again and jumps back, but… that was new.
Rex looks just as shocked as Steve feels. Good. He goes for the door, and Rex scrambles to get out of the way. Steve shouldn’t be glad his dad is afraid of him now. God, the scientists would have been thrilled he finally developed heat vision.
Too bad they won’t get to study it.
Steve looks at his dad as he reaches the door. “Was I ever really a son to you, or just an experiment?”
“You are my son,” Rex says. Steve almost wants to give him another chance.
Almost.
“See you around, Mr. Harrington,” he says before he leaves the same way he came in.
“And then I just… went back to saving people, for a few days,” Steve finishes lamely. “I didn’t have anywhere else to go after… all of it.”
“I’m glad you came here,” Joyce says firmly. “I knew Superman, and he would have… he would have wanted you to come here.”
All three boys stare at her, and then they all speak at once.
“Mom?”
“What do you mean, you knew Superman?”
“You knew him?” Steve echos.
Joyce purses her lips. “I knew him before he was Superman; we went to high school together. Boys, you remember… Oh, you met him too, Steve. You remember Captain Hopper. Jim.”
Will’s jaw drops, while Jonathan’s face does something complicated. Steve remembers Captain Hopper – the ‘captain’ was a police captain – as a huge man who’d been fine with Steve being at the neighborhood block party right up until he found out what his last name was. Those apparent feelings had only been compounded by Steve’s dad showing up to take him home shortly after that. (Rex had told Steve he was never going to visit this house again; maybe that was part of why he’d come here too.)
Will tilts his head and looks at Steve again, considering. “You do kind of look like him, I think.”
“I don’t see it,” Jonathan says flatly, crossing his arms.
“The point is that you’re safe here,” Joyce tells Steve. “And I’ll tell you anything you want to know about Jim’s human side, so to speak.”
“Thanks, Mrs. Byers,” Steve says, so overwhelmed that he falls back on his manners automatically.
She gets up off the couch and walks over to the chair to brush a stray piece of hair out of his face. “We’re happy to have you, Steve,” she says, and then she pulls him up into a hug. “No matter what, okay?”
Then Will tackles him from the left, and Jonathan joins the hug from the right. Steve wants to cry.
“Okay.”
2005
Despite Joyce insisting otherwise, Steve doesn’t think he can stay with the Byers family forever.
(He wishes he could. Things would be easier if he could just be Joyce’s third son.)
As much as he’d like to pretend to be normal again, he knows he can’t. It’s only been a few weeks of him basically hiding in the Byers’ house and there have already been news reports asking where the new Superman has gone – they even tried to ask his dad, who refused to comment beyond saying they “were no longer working together.”
And wasn’t that the understatement of the century.
So after New Year’s, he flies to Titans Tower. It’s kind of weird flying without his costume on, but the red cape is like a target he didn’t want on his back.
No one has seen the Teen Titans out as a group in a few months, but Supergirl is one of the founding members. If nothing else, she shares Steve’s powers and might know more about the Kryptonian side of things – Steve’s own knowledge pretty much amounts to the story Superman shared with the public once, about being sent to Earth when the planet was destroyed. He met the Titans once, fighting aliens in New York, and Wonder Girl was the only one who’d talked to him then (though Shadow, Supergirl, and Aqualass had all seemed to be trying to make his head explode with their minds). He hopes things might be different now.
He spends way too much time wandering around the bottom of the building trying to find a doorbell or something before he spots a broken window a couple of floors up. It isn’t quite big enough for him to squeeze through, but, well… it already needed to be replaced, so why does it matter if he breaks it a little more? Maybe it matters in a legal context (who even legally owns Titans Tower?), but hopefully the Titans could be convinced to be a little more accepting now that he’s not working for his father, or…
Well, at worst, they’ll kick him out and he’ll go home back to the Byers. And then he’ll figure something else out. Captain Marvel is somewhere, and he’s always been really friendly. (Steve thinks it’s some kind of new guy solidarity, since they started being heroes around the same time, but he’ll take what he can get.)
Once he’s inside, it’s pretty obvious there’s no one home. He makes his way through the place, first down to the common areas, where the kitchen is empty of almost everything except some mold in the fridge and a few cans in one cabinet. There aren’t any personal touches in the living room, though there’s plenty of dust on the TV.
Steve has a bad feeling about this.
Upstairs there’s a long hallway of bedrooms. The first one is decorated (with metal band posters on the walls, black sheets on the bed, and weird-shaped little dice on the nightstand), but the air inside is stale. The next few rooms are free of personal effects, despite the same layout as the first, and they seem to confirm what Steve’s been suspecting for a while now.
No one lives in Titans Tower anymore.
Shit.
He keeps exploring anyway, though he’s pretty sure that at this point the best he can hope for is to stay the night in the Tower by himself, since there isn’t anyone here to kick him out. The place is pretty well-equipped, other than the lack of food. The electricity seems to still be running, which makes him wonder again who’s footing the bill. Maybe the Justice League? He wouldn’t feel too bad about that. Maybe he can join them now. (He has no idea where their headquarters is, so that might be a little harder.)
He’s in what appears to be a weight training room when he hears the thump on the roof, and when he steps out into the hallway, Supergirl is there. Her eyes narrow at the sight of him.
“Who are you? How did you get in here?”
“I’m Steve,” he says, surprised into blunt honesty. And then he realizes that means nothing to her. “Uh, Superman? Kind of.”
She gets the picture. “You’re the clone,” she hisses, and then Steve has to dodge a very good right hook.
“Whoa, hey!” He puts his hands up in surrender, backing away and out of immediate range. She closes the gap anyway. “I’m not here to fight!” he protests. She tries to punch him again. He has to keep backing off, and then they’re both in the air, flying down the hallways as he flees and she pursues. Finally he manages to grab one wrist and block the other fist with his hand, covering it to hold both of her hands still.
She struggles to get free. “Let me go!”
“Stop trying to punch me!”
“Make me!”
They both pause, because he’s literally already doing that. She recovers faster than he does and shoves him up against the wall. He doesn’t fight back.
“What the hell are you doing here?” she asks. Steve isn’t sure, but it kind of looks like her heat vision is building in her eyes.
“Hi, Superman,” he says sarcastically. “It’s nice to see you, Superman. How can I help you, Superman?”
Supergirl scowls at him. “I’m not going to waste my time being polite to you, Superdick. You broke into my house, remember?”
“Only a little, and it’s not like you were living here anymore!”
“And you’re not Superman,” she says like he hadn’t responded. “You’re, like, half his size. You’re a Superboy at best.”
He laughs. He can’t help it; she’s not wrong. She wrinkles her nose, but her hold on him is relaxing. She tosses her head and lets him go, crossing her arms after she steps back.
“I don’t have time for this. Seriously, what do you want?”
“To talk to you,” Steve says, cracking his neck.
“Why?”
“You’re kind of the only family I have left?” He doesn’t mean for it to come out like a question. Superman is dead, and Rex has basically declared Steve dead to him (and the world). That just leaves Supergirl.
“Just because you’re a clone of my cousin doesn’t make us family,” she points out. “Glad we had this talk. You can go back to your supervillain master now.”
Steve totally doesn’t flinch. “I’m not working with him anymore.”
“What, did you finally figure out what kind of man Rex Harrington really is?”
“What happened to the other Titans?” It’s a deflection, of course, but he is curious. Obviously she has some way to see if there are people at the Tower (maybe a proximity alarm? It wasn’t like he checked for a security system before he came in), but she was the only one who showed up.
She lifts her chin. “Who says they aren’t on their way?” He raises an eyebrow, and she looks away. “The Titans broke up.”
“Why?”
She glares at him again. “You’re really annoying, you know that?”
He holds up his hands. “Fine, don’t tell me.” They’re both quiet for a few seconds before she gives in – he didn’t expect her to cave that quickly.
“Shadow died,” she says. Steve remembers, vaguely, something about Batman retiring from the Justice League some time last year, though he doesn’t remember why. His sidekick dying would be a very good explanation. “That’s what happened. Shadow died, Wonder Girl retired, and Aqualass went back to Atlantis, so now there’s just me.” And then she walks off.
That’s… not the answer he expected. He follows her, of course, after a few seconds of delay. He uses his superspeed to catch up with her on the roof.
The roof has the remains of what might have been an obstacle course scattered across it, and four lounge chairs that would have looked more appropriate next to a pool. Steve barely has time to register those things before Supergirl takes off into the sky.
Maybe he should just let her go, but he doesn’t. He keeps following, and maybe that’s what she wants after all; she doesn’t look over her shoulder, but she does go slow enough for him to keep up.
Supergirl flies north. Steve knows the air is getting colder, but he can’t really feel it. Eventually there are fewer and fewer signs of people below them. He doesn’t know how long they’ve been flying when she starts descending, but his jaw drops open when he sees what she’s moving towards.
It’s like an alien castle made out of crystal, or maybe even ice. He’s never seen anything like it. She lands and waits for him, clenching and unclenching her fists as he looks around in awe.
“The Fortress of Solitude,” she says, waving at the structure. “Superman’s personal hideout. You said you didn’t have any other family left? This is all that’s left of him.”
There doesn’t seem to be a door, or at least not an immediately visible one. “How do we get in?” Steve asks as he reaches out to the nearest curved crystal beam. As he touches it, something shimmers and a door appears. “Oh.” He glances at Supergirl. She looks a little less hostile now, but only a little. She lifts her chin and enters the Fortress first.
“Welcome, Ro-Bin,” a robotic voice says as she passes through the doorway. “Welcome, son of Kal-El,” it adds for Steve.
Inside is like an Apple Store on steroids. The walls are still crystalline, and there are what appear to be screens everywhere. The largest has a floating, blue-tinted head pictured on it, watching the two of them walk in.
“It has been some time, Ro-Bin,” the head says in the same voice that greeted them. “I am glad that you are well.” The face looks at Steve. “Welcome, grandson. I am Jor-El.”
“Uh, hi?” Steve waves. Supergirl bites her lip, almost like she’s trying not to laugh, before she schools her expression back into something neutral. “He’s not really Superman’s dad, is he?” Steve whispers to her.
“He’s an AI programmed to act like Superman’s dad, and he can hear you,” she informs him. “Hey, Jor-El, what do you mean ‘grandson’? Can’t you tell that Superboy here is a clone?”
“His DNA is only partially copied from Kal-El, as a son’s would be,” Jor-El says. Supergirl’s eyes go wide, and Steve shrinks back a little. “I do not recognize the other parent’s bloodline.”
“Other parent?” Supergirl repeats, looking at him.
“Yeah… so you know how Rex Harrington had a son who died around the same time that I showed up?” He gestures at himself. “Not really dead.”
Now she’s outright staring. “Holy shit! I thought that was just a conspiracy theory! Like, there were some people on the forums who swore up and down, but most of us didn’t think that Rex would really… do that to his son.”
He grimaces. “Yeah.”
“Holy shit,” she says again. “That explains so much. God, now I almost feel bad for hating you.”
Steve shrugs. “I hated me too.”
“Ugh, you’re making it worse!” She grabs his hand and pulls him further into the room, closer to Jor-El’s screen. “I’m Robin, by the way. Robin Buckley.”
“Steve Harrington. But you already knew that.”
“Okay, Steve Harrington,” Robin says, a smile tugging at the corner of her lips. She hasn’t let go of his hand. “What do you want to know about Krypton?”
Steve looks at her, then up at Jor-El. “Everything.”
An hour later he’s sitting on the floor of the so-called Fortress of Solitude, staring at what amounts to a digital article on Kryptonian pop music, while Robin tells him whether each artist mentioned in the article was good or not.
Steve wonders how this is his life.
Notes:
Some fun notes:
- Rex Harrington is very much meant to be in reference to Lex Luthor. Kon-El, also known as Superboy, is (in more recent continuities) a clone created from Superman/Clark Kent and Lex Luthor's DNA.
- Paul Westfield was the director of Project Cadmus and the man originally behind the creation of Superboy (in the comics) when he was first created in 1993. The Lex Luthor-related origin was just more fun for me.
- Robin as Supergirl is very loosely based on Kara Zor-El, with regards to her backstory.
- The specific Teen Titans line-up as mentioned here never existed; while Wonder Girl, Aqualad, and Robin (who Shadow is this universe's version of) were original founders of the Titans, along with Kid Flash and Speedy, the full original group didn't quite fit my needs. Supergirl has worked with the Teen Titans but isn't usually seen as one of the regular members.Thanks for reading!
Chapter 3: the red bat
Notes:
And we're back to Eddie, this time featuring his backstory for this universe!
Chapter Warnings:
- Mild implied homophobia (Al Munson sucks, y'all.)
- Minor character death (technically off-screen but it's very clear what happens.)
- Major character death (but he comes back!)
- The Joker (related to the above.)
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
2012
Eddie throws himself into his nighttime work.
He knows it isn’t healthy. Not that the whole vigilante thing was a sign of great mental health to begin with, but he knew that too. It would have been easier, maybe, to close himself off from the world and refuse to leave his and Steve’s apartment. Plenty of people express their grief that way, and it’s not that Eddie doesn’t want to. He wants… it doesn’t matter what he wants.
Wayne’s worried about him but won’t say it, not yet. Eddie wonders how long he has before his uncle stages an intervention. It’s far from the first time there’s been a big loss in Eddie’s life. This is just… the biggest. Maybe second biggest, but he wasn’t actually around (at first) to deal with the other one himself.
Dustin is hiding from him, kind of. They’re still regularly patrolling together, but during the day, the kid is in the wind. Eddie gives him his space, for now.
His daytime identity is suffering from a lack of attention. His agent is going to drop him if he keeps ignoring her calls. She would understand if he told her that his partner boyfriend di–
She would understand if he told her. He’s just not ready to say the words out loud.
That’s probably not healthy either.
Unfortunately the nightlife is full of people he doesn’t have to tell, for all that they aren’t as connected to the larger world of superheroes.
“Nice costume,” Shade says when the group meets up to exchange information about a few cases.
“Shouldn’t you be on some kind of leave?” Signal asks, ignoring the elbow he gets in his side for his trouble. “Catwoman said she’s seen you out every night since the memorial.”
“Catwoman should mind her own business,” Eddie growls.
Hood puts a hand on his shoulder. Eddie shakes it off. “She’s just worried about you, man. We all are.”
“I don’t want to talk about it, okay? We have a job to do.” He snatches the flash drive Shade brought out of his hand and tucks it into a pouch before turning on his heel to grapple away. He’s going the way of exposure therapy on that one – something that his real therapist would probably rip him a new one for if he knew. Eddie’s decided that the adrenaline rush is better than feeling numb all the time.
“Speaking of jobs, don’t forget about the gig on Friday!” Signal calls after him.
In the meantime, there is crime, and there are villains, and Eddie is the Dark Knight.
It’s easy to get lost in.
2004
Eddie doesn’t like the new Superman.
He can only express these thoughts late at night in the common room, when it’s just him and Aqualass.
“Which one?” Barb asks dryly, turning the page of the book she’s got in her lap. It’s actually one of Nancy’s textbooks; only Wonder Girl could actually be bothered to bring her homework to Titans Tower for the weekend, and Barb didn’t grow up on land like the rest of them, so she’s probably the only other one interested in whatever subject it is. Eddie can’t even fathom it, which is probably part of the problem with his own grades, and not, you know, the running around every night as a vigilante.
Anyway.
“The one Rex Harrington’s pushing,” Eddie says, laying down on the couch to stretch his legs up toward the ceiling. “Something about corporate-sponsored superheroes rubs me the wrong way.”
“Wayne Enterprises literally funds Batman and Shadow, you hypocrite.” There’s no venom in her voice, which is why he’s saying it to Barb and not Nancy or Robin. Well, Nancy would probably have a similar response, but with more of a lecture. Robin would go off on a tangent about the variety of Supermen (at least three of whom are heavily featured in the media, including the robot, though there are definitely more) that have popped up since her cousin died last year and how much she hates all of them.
And she does truly despise every single one, bless her, with a level of passionate vitriol that others could only aspire to.
That makes the unintentional team-up (read: the Titans totally had the situation under control until he showed up, thanks) against some aliens attacking Jump City a few days later a little awkward.
Eddie wasn’t impressed with the guy before, but more importantly, right at this moment, Eddie doesn’t like the Superman that Rex Harrington grew in a lab because he will. Not. Stop. Staring.
He can probably see through Shadow’s mask (a problem the girls don’t have due to not fucking wearing one), because old Supes could, but Wayne trusted the old one. All they know about the new kid – and he is definitely a kid; he looks older on TV and at a distance, but up close he’s definitely of an age with the Teen Titans – is that Rex Harrington was involved in his creation and is managing the publicity side of his career in crime fighting. Given that the previous Superman hated Rex and foiled a number of shady plots by him, that’s not a point in Teen Idol Superman’s favor.
That’s the other thing: the guy is way too pretty. If it weren’t for the fact that he does seem to have actual Kryptonian powers (or something that can approximate them really well), Eddie would suspect he really was just created to be a poster boy. His predecessor was older, sure, but for someone who’s supposed to be a literal clone, Eddie thinks the resemblance fails upon closer inspection. He only met Superman a few times, even though he and Wayne were buddies, but the most obvious difference is that the old Superman had blue eyes.
New Superman’s eyes are brown.
Eddie was trained to notice key details like that, okay.
So the aliens have been apprehended and the Green Lantern who conveniently only showed up after everything was taken care of is taking them into custody. Wonder Girl and Superman are doing the talking-to-the-media part while Aqualass, Shadow, and Supergirl stand off to the side. Eddie’s not sure how much the reporter’s getting out of the interview, since Boy Band Superman is distracted by glancing at Eddie every five seconds.
Barb keeps whispering in Robin’s ear, a hand on her arm to keep her from letting loose on the imposter, even though they all know that if she really wanted to get out of the hold, she could. She’s settled for a death glare, and it just now occurs to Eddie that the frequent glances might be at Robin, who he’s standing next to, and not him.
That shouldn’t be disappointing.
The interview wraps up, and Nancy comes back over to her teammates. Superjock is still lingering, answering a couple of questions from the camera person. Eddie’s too caught up in his own staring to hear whatever Nancy says to Robin that has her shooting up into the sky rather than stick around any longer, but he figures that’s his cue.
Superdude looks over at just the right second, and their eyes meet. The corner of his lip curls up slightly and he gives a little wave, a waggle of his fingers that would be adorable if it were, like, a guy Eddie knew from school. Still risky if that were the case, but this is… this is Rex Harrington’s Superman marionette. Eddie isn’t allowed to like him, both out of loyalty to Robin and general self-preservation. So he doesn’t even acknowledge it; he just turns and walks off with Barb and Nancy.
He figures they’ll run into each other again, as superheroes tend to do in the advent of teams like the Justice League and even the Titans themselves. That doesn’t mean they have to be friends.
(Of course, he doesn’t know yet that this will be the Teen Titans' last mission together.)
Eddie knows when Al gets out of jail because Wayne tells him. Eddie doesn’t personally keep track of his father’s whereabouts (or, you know, the amount of time left on his sentence, since he knew where his deadbeat dad was), but Wayne keeps an eye on the status of a huge collection of mob bosses, gang leaders, and rogues. Adding his own brother to that list is nothing. Wayne mentions it casually, not in the Batcave after patrol where talk of criminals belongs but at the damn breakfast table. Eddie can’t even escape with the excuse of school because it’s spring break.
“I don’t care,” he tells Wayne, and he almost means it. He wants to mean it.
Wayne just looks at him in that way he has, like he can see right through Eddie. “No one said you had to. Just thought you might want to know.”
Eddie would have been fine not knowing. He would like to forget Al Munson ever existed. Wayne is a million times the father Al ever was. Eddie doesn’t need Al. “I didn’t.”
“All right, then.” Wayne takes a long sip of his coffee, and that should be that.
Suffice it to say, Eddie isn’t expecting the letter.
He’s operating on autopilot as he comes back to the apartment following some afternoon shopping (he went to his favorite local music store and spent an hour talking to the cashier about how disappointed they still are with St. Anger and Slipknot’s upcoming album), and he always grabs the mail before heading upstairs – Wayne may have access to the vast, inherited fortune of the Wayne family, but he’s never felt comfortable in that sort of lifestyle. So he and Eddie live in a very nice (meaning everything is up to code and there’s an elevator and a doorman) apartment building that Wayne technically owns (but pretends he doesn’t) in the heart of Gotham and most of the money goes into charity projects. Wayne even works as a consulting engineer for Wayne Industries instead of as the CEO; he insists he’s never had a head for business, but he likes having some work to do (and the ‘consulting’ part lets him keep hours more conducive to being Batman.)
Eddie doesn’t look through the mail until he’s back in the apartment, which is probably good since he sinks down onto the couch when he recognizes the handwriting on the envelope addressed to him. He thinks about throwing it straight into the trash, or even into the shredder in Wayne’s office. He should.
Instead he opens it.
It’s a quick read, and weird to notice the similarities between his father’s handwriting and his own. There are a few quirks Wayne shares with Al but not Eddie as well; that might be weirder.
Al wants to see him.
It’s a bad idea. Eddie knows that. Even so, if he tells Wayne about it, Wayne would offer to go with him. If Eddie wants. If Eddie wants to meet up with his father, and if he wants Wayne at his side.
If, if, if.
Al didn’t even leave a phone number or an address to reach him, just the name of a diner near Crime Alley and a date and time that he’s going to be there. The date is tomorrow.
It’s a bad idea.
Al seems smaller than Eddie remembers.
Some of that is that Eddie is seventeen instead of twelve, the age at which he’d last seen his father. When he was twelve, Eddie knew there were worse men than Al in the world (hell, plenty of them were in Gotham), but it was in an abstract way. Now, five years later, he’s met several of them in person. Add onto that the extensive martial arts training he’s had and over a year of keeping up with three girls with superpowers, and… there isn’t much Al could do to hurt him, if that’s what he’s planning. He doesn’t really look like he’s planning anything, but that doesn’t mean much.
Eddie is dressed simply, jeans and t-shirt and leather jacket, so he doesn’t stand out in the diner. There’s a few teenagers and more adults, but several of them are dressed similarly. He makes his way to the booth towards the back, pretending that the hair on the back of his neck isn’t rising out of a paranoia he’s going to blame on Wayne. When he was a kid, he wouldn’t have thought anything of being on this side of town. Though he wants to believe it’s more about Al than about the location.
Al spots him and he sits up straighter, breaking out into a grin. He’s a little gaunt and paler than Eddie is, but Eddie can still see himself in twenty or so years in his father’s face. He hates that. “Eddie,” he says, standing up when Eddie reaches him. He opens his arms for a hug, and Eddie’s tempted to dodge it and just sit down. He lets Al hug him, but his arms stay stiff at his sides. Al seems to get the message after a moment and they sit down in the booth.
“It’s good to see you, kid,” Al says. “I wasn’t sure if you’d show.”
“Neither was I,” Eddie says honestly.
“I heard you’re living with Wayne. How is old Moneybags?”
Eddie grimaces. “Don’t call him that. He’s been good to me.”
Al tilts his head. “Sure, sure. I’m glad he did take you in after what happened to your mom. He sure as hell didn’t show any interest in you before that.”
Eddie thinks of the carefully selected birthday presents he’d received every year with Wayne’s name on them until he was twelve, versus the whole lot of nothing he got directly from Al. “What do you know about what happened to Mom?”
Eddie knows something is wrong because the door to the apartment is open.
He’s never come home to the door open; it’s not something anyone in their building does. It’s not something anyone in their neighborhood with half a brain would do. So he slows down in the hall, slipping up to the door and pressing himself against the wall outside it so he can’t be seen by whoever is inside.
“Please, I don’t know where he is,” his mom says. She sounds like she’s crying, and Eddie’s blood runs cold. “Al hasn’t been home in weeks.”
That was true. Eddie wouldn’t mind if his father never came back, frankly. It wasn’t like he did anything when he was home except fight with Eddie’s mom over stupid shit and get drunk – which then made him either fall asleep on the couch or start throwing things. They were better off without him.
A phone rings, but it doesn’t sound like the one in the apartment. “Yeah, Boss?” a male voice says, like he’s answering it. “Uh huh. All right, then. What do you want us to do about the wife? Okay, Boss. Consider it done.” A click, like the flip phone has been closed. “Bad news, Mrs. Munson. It turns out your husband got arrested today.”
“Then you don’t need me,” Eddie’s mom says.
“You’re right,” another male voice says. “We don’t.”
Eddie’s never heard a gunshot so close before, but he lives in the lower income side of Gotham – he knows what one sounds like. He forces down the scream in his throat as he hears a thump from inside the apartment. He should move. He can’t move.
Two men exit the apartment. They’re both huge, over muscled, and dressed in black. The first one ignores Eddie as he walks by. The second one looks down at him, though, and smirks. Eddie doesn’t think he breathes again until the two men are in the stairwell.
Al hangs his head, like he’s actually sad about it. “Just that she passed. I was hoping they’d let me out early to take care of you, but then Wayne swooped in, of course.”
A waitress appears beside the table, and Eddie startles a half a second too late. He always has to remind himself that it’s weird to not act surprised when people sneak up on him. He does smile at the waitress anyway and orders a soda he doesn’t really want. Al actually orders food, and Eddie wonders which of them is paying. Once she’s gone, Eddie rests his hands on the table, turning one of the rings he picked out a few weeks ago around on his finger. Al notices and frowns, but maybe he really is trying to revive whatever relationship he thinks he has with Eddie, because he doesn’t comment on it.
Wayne has always encouraged Eddie to dress and accessorize however he wants. He puts an emphasis on the fact that he just wants Eddie to be happy.
“She wasn’t sick or anything,” Eddie says after a moment. “I don’t know who they worked for, but they were looking for you. They found her instead.”
Al sucks in his breath. Eddie looks at him, trying to see if whatever his father is about to say is true or just meant to placate him.
“I’m really sorry, Ed.”
He can’t tell.
God fucking damn it.
The waitress reappears with Eddie’s soda and his dad’s coffee, and Eddie offers her another tight smile that he drops as soon as she turns away.
“What do you want, Dad?”
Al leans back against the vinyl-covered seat. “Can’t a guy just want to see his son?”
Eddie fiddles with his still-wrapped straw. “Sure.”
They sit in awkward silence for a few seconds.
“So… how’s school? Is Wayne at least sending you to a fancy private school?”
“He tried. It wasn’t a good fit.” Not through any fault of Eddie’s own, and Wayne made sure he knew it. Rich kids – and the adults their parents were paying – were just assholes sometimes.
“You got a girlfriend?”
Eddie barely manages not to laugh. “No.” He thinks about his first kiss (in a dark hallway at Wayne Manor during his first big gala with a boy who, twenty minutes earlier, had punched another kid for talking shit about him and Wayne) and his most recent hate-crush on Superman. “No girlfriend.”
“What do you do for fun? Sports?”
God, his dad really didn’t know him at all. “I play Dungeons and Dragons with some friends, and Wayne got me a guitar last year. I’ve been doing karate for a few years, though.” He’s pretty much shredded the paper around his straw by this point. He’s definitely not telling Al why he got into karate or what he uses those skills for. He’s also not going to mention the gymnastics classes.
Al nods approvingly. Eddie doesn’t want his approval. “Your mom used to play guitar when I first met her. She sang too.”
Eddie bites back that he knows, that she played and sang for him all the time but Al wasn’t around to see it. “Yeah.”
There’s a shift in Al’s demeanor then, as the bell on the door to the diner rings. Eddie doesn’t turn to look – he clocked at least three mob guys and a few bruisers for hire in the place when he came in, and it makes too much sense for Al to be in trouble already even though he just got out of jail. Eddie sure isn’t going to stick around for it, though. He sighs loudly.
“Listen, this was great and all, but Wayne’s expecting me. So I guess I’ll see you around?”
Al blinks up at him. “Yeah, sure, kid. I’ll… I’ll call.”
He gives his dad a quick nod and slips out of the booth, heading out of the diner without waiting for a second attempt at a hug. He hands a few dollars directly to the waitress on his way out; he never drank his soda, but he doesn’t trust Al not to snatch the money for himself, and he doesn’t care if Al knows that.
Since he’s in the neighborhood, he walks past the old apartment building where he used to live with his mom. It looks the same on the outside. He doesn’t go in.
Wayne asks him what he did that day, at dinner. Eddie lies and says he went to the music store, then launches into an oft-repeated rant about St. Anger. They both know it’s a deflection, but that’s one of the nice things about Wayne: he’s going to pretend to believe Eddie’s bullshit until he thinks it’s really a problem.
A few nights later, Shadow’s patrolling through the warehouse district by himself when he sees Al skulking near one of the buildings.
The smart thing would be to stay in the shadows, watch which building Al goes into, if any, and call Batman to let him know what’s going on. He does the first two things, at least. The last one is probably the most important, but regrets are for later-Eddie.
It’s easy to follow Al into the building he eventually enters. It’s full of tall shelves loaded with boxes, and it’s child’s play to follow his father down the dark rows. Al keeps looking over his shoulder, but Shadow’s fast enough to duck out of sight every time. Finally they reach an office space near the center of the room (which seems like a weird set-up, but what does Eddie know?), where Al waits.
Shadow still has time to turn around, go back outside, and call for backup before whoever Al’s meeting shows up. Instead he steps into Al’s line of sight. “Hey, old man,” he calls.
No one has ever accused Eddie of being a polite kid.
His dad jumps, startled, and looks around frantically. Probably for Batman. Shadow moves closer and takes his mask off.
Al stares at him, horrified. Maybe what Al had written in the letter and said in the diner was true, and he just wanted to get to know his son again, and he’d be offended at the implication otherwise. Eddie’s certainly handed the guy a stellar piece of blackmail just now. “You’re Shadow?”
“Yeah,” Eddie says, not wanting to beat around the bush. “What kind of trouble are you in, Al?”
He tries not to let his disappointment show on his face when guilt flashes across Al’s.
“I’m not the one in trouble, kid. You shouldn’t be here. Not now.”
“Seriously, whatever it is, whoever you made a deal with–”
“I made a deal,” Al admits, “but it was just for you, not for Shadow. I don’t know–”
“Oh, Munsy, I didn’t think you were going to pull through like this!”
Ice climbs Eddie’s spine. That’s not a voice one can mistake for anyone else. He moves closer to Al but has his eyes on the shelves, looking for the owner of that voice. “What did you do?”
His father doesn’t get the chance to answer as the Joker steps out of the shadows. “Well, little Shadow, Daddy Munson here was going to sell me his son, but more importantly, Wayne Munson’s nephew for a nice chunk of change. Imagine my surprise when he really brings me Batman’s beloved sidekick!” Eddie is frozen as the madman paces around them, trying not to make eye contact when the man gets in his face. “Old Al here may not have fully made that connection, kiddo, but I rest assured that I have.”
The blood drains out of Eddie’s face despite his attempts to keep his expression completely neutral.
No.
He doesn’t even know for sure which part of what the Joker’s saying he’s protesting, really. He reminds himself that the Joker lies.
He has a nasty feeling the Joker isn’t lying right now.
Joker skips back, enough for Eddie to take a deep breath right before he gets sucker-punched in the stomach. He lashes out but Joker dances out of the way again.
“Hey, this wasn’t part of the deal!” Al protests. Eddie isn’t listening to him – to either of them – anymore. All he knows is that he has to keep swinging at the Joker, has to knock the villain out or…
He’s hit in the head this time, and he realizes too late that the Joker isn’t punching him anymore. The Joker has a crowbar.
“I’m changing the terms, bucko. Deal with it.”
Eddie thinks the Joker might hit Al with the crowbar too. He’s too disoriented to see, though he does manage to dodge the next swing with a somersault. It makes him want to throw up. He doesn’t have time to throw up. He has to keep moving, has to stay–
There’s not enough room to move, with all of the shelves. He gets hit in the head again.
And again. Shoulders. Back. Left leg, five times. Right leg. Right arm, then spine again to switch things up.
He cries. He’s sobbing, really, first for anyone who might come save him (Supergirl, who can’t hear him because she’s off-planet with Starfire, and even Superman, even though the real one’s dead and he doesn’t expect the new one to show up) and then just for Wayne. He doesn’t immediately realize he’s saying Wayne’s real name and then he doesn’t stop because the Joker already knows.
He shouldn’t have come in here alone. He should have called Wayne.
And then he gets whacked in the throat and is choking until he manages to turn on his side.
It takes him too long again to realize that’s the last hit, that he doesn’t hear the Joker’s laughter anymore.
He hears ticking.
He knows what that means and crawls around until he finds the bomb the Joker left. He finds Al too, unconscious but still alive.
He thinks, for a moment, about just leaving Al on the floor where he found him. It’s not like it’s any worse than what Al was going to do to him, really.
Except he can’t.
He’s a hero, despite what so many people who know him in his regular life have said. He has to be a hero.
There’s not much time left.
“I’m sorry,” Al repeats over and over. “I’m sorry, Ed, I didn’t mean for this to happen. I was meeting with him to say I changed my mind. I’m sorry.”
Eddie doesn’t want to hear it. He feels sick. (That might be the concussion he probably has.) He doesn’t have the energy to say anything to try to get his dad to stop either.
He tries to drag Al over to the door, or where he remembers the door being. It’s hard, between Al’s blubbering and how much every bone in Eddie’s body hurts. He thinks it’s too far until he actually reaches the damn thing. Not that it matters. It’s locked.
Of course.
The ticking stops.
Boom.
Dying sucks.
Eddie feels like that should be obvious, in what little capacity he has to feel anything other than searing, impossible agony. And for once he isn’t being overly dramatic about it.
He was flung against the door when the bomb went off. It doesn’t matter now, since there’s not a lot of wall left around it. If he could get up and walk away… well, he can’t. He doesn’t know where Al ended up. Probably not far. He can’t even lift his head to look.
Some of the pain is shifting to numbness, he thinks. Maybe that means the end is getting closer. He kind of hopes so.
Not that he wants to die – he doesn’t. If he could get up and walk away he would. If he believed in the kind of god they talked about in the church his mom would take him to every so often (the Catholic one on Bell Street; he spent most of the time checking out the truly gnarly stained glass instead of listening to the priest), he might try to bargain for his life. Promise to do his homework, to stop getting detention, to stop being Shadow, to listen to Wayne…
God, Wayne.
This isn’t fair to Wayne.
It’s not fair to Eddie either, but it’s not like Eddie is going to have to deal with anything that happens afterwards.
He should have just called Wayne.
He thinks he hears someone shouting his name over the crackle of the fire consuming the warehouse.
It’s the last thing he hears.
(At least for a while.)
2005
“Hey, kid.” Someone nudges Eddie. He doesn’t want to get up. They nudge him again. “Kid, you can’t be sleeping here.”
Eddie shifts slightly. Ow. He’s outside, for some reason, laying on the ground. His clothes are kind of itchy and… wait.
He doesn’t remember how he got here. He was on patrol, which should mean he would wake up in uniform if some truly bizarre circumstances had led to his falling asleep outside and Wayne not finding him before morning.
Also, he’s laying on grass with his head up against something hard. There’s not a lot of grass on his usual patrol routes.
“Seriously, kid, I don’t know what you took or whatever, but you have to get out of here before… Shit.”
Eddie finally opens his eyes and blinks a few times. His arms are curled up and around his face, so he can’t see much besides the fabric of whatever he’s wearing – it’s dark, maybe a suit jacket? Why would he be wearing a suit jacket? – and a little bit of sunlight. He tries to sit up, experimentally, to look at the hard thing near his head.
It’s a gravestone, and he blinks at it a few more times before the words on it fully register.
Edward Munson
November 2nd, 1986 - March 27, 2004
He scrambles backwards, falling back on the ground because his arms and legs hurt and won’t support him properly (which makes sense because they were broken before he died ). Distantly the voice of whoever was trying to get him to wake up and move earlier is apologizing to someone, but Eddie doesn’t care about that.
What the fuck, what the fuck, what the fuck, what the fu-
“Eddie?”
That’s Wayne’s voice.
It hurts to move so he can turn, but he does it anyway, because that’s Wayne, and whatever the hell is going on, Wayne can fix it.
And there Wayne is, holding a bouquet of white flowers that he drops as Eddie makes eye contact with him in favor of running to him.
“Ed, how?”
“I don’t know,” Eddie says, and oh, he’s crying. So is Wayne, as he reaches out and hugs Eddie. He doesn’t know if he’s crying from relief that Wayne is here or the physical pain or what.
“My boy,” Wayne says into his hair, holding him too tight (but Eddie isn’t going to tell him that). “God, Eddie.”
“I’m sorry, Wayne.”
“I know.”
It’s been a year. A whole fucking year.
Whatever magic brought Eddie back – because he was dead, dead and buried and completely gone – was kind enough to put him outside his grave so that he didn’t have to crawl out of it, but that’s about where that kindness ends. Wayne has the (very confused and a little shaken) graveyard caretaker call an ambulance. He explains while they wait that he’s been visiting Eddie’s grave every week since the funeral, that Eddie was buried next to his mom and Al (who didn’t survive either but Eddie can’t bring himself to feel guilty about it) was buried near his and Wayne’s parents across town.
That’s all Wayne has time to tell him before the paramedics get there, and then Eddie’s loaded up and taken to the hospital, where they find out he somehow still has a grade three concussion, multiple cracked ribs, a broken ankle (the right) and tibia (the left), a broken wrist (the left) and a sprained wrist (the right). He also has multiple bruises.
Apparently the magic brought him back in the condition he was in right before the warehouse blew up. Thanks, mysterious magic.
(But really, thank you, mysterious magic.)
The broken bones need surgery to fix, though the doctors are optimistic about stuff like potential nerve damage and physical therapy and all the things that Eddie is too concussed to really process. Wayne doesn’t leave his side unless absolutely necessary, and that’s the part Eddie cares the most about. He’s in the hospital for a week, and he cries again when he gets to go home and lay down in his own bed.
Wayne hadn’t moved any of his stuff.
He waits until Eddie’s back home and officially on the mend to explain that he’s retired as Batman, throwing himself into work at WayneTech rather than fighting crime at night.
“And the Joker?” Eddie asks.
“Arkham,” Wayne says. “In a coma. A couple of politicians tried to promise to pull the plug during election season.”
Eddie relaxes, losing a tension he hadn’t even realized his body was holding. “Too bad they haven’t followed through.”
“Not for a lack of trying.”
Eventually Eddie’s bones and bruises heal. Physical therapy is hard, but Eddie is determined to get back into fighting shape… even if he isn’t likely to be fighting any time soon. The Teen Titans have disbanded – supposedly Wonder Girl and Aqualass have both retired, while Supergirl has actually teamed up with Rex Harrington’s Superman, who ditched Rex and is going by Superboy now instead.
The media calls them the Super Twins and they have matching costumes. Eddie can’t help but think they look right together, even though he’s jealous as hell that one of his best friends got snatched up so easily.
The other difficult thing is figuring out how to explain Eddie’s resurrection. Neither he nor Wayne want to deal with the potential media frenzy if they just announce that he’s come back to life, and in the end they decide not to. Wayne has one of his contacts make up new versions of all the important documents he needs to get through life with Catherine’s maiden name as his new last name, except for a high school diploma; Eddie insists on studying for and taking the GED test himself. He wants to earn it.
2006
There’s a group of teenage vigilantes in Gotham now.
They call themselves ‘We Are the Knight’, apparently – one intrepid reporter got that much out of one of them before his friends called him away from talking to her. There aren’t a lot of them (at least three, as far as Eddie can tell, and they’ve mostly been stopping smaller crimes, but they wear dark clothes with homemade gray bat-shaped patches to mark themselves as a group.
They’re doing fine, so far, but it’s only a matter of time before one of the old Rogues breaks out of Arkham and decides to remind the kids what they’re really up against.
He doesn’t want to see that happen.
Eddie actually goes through a few drafts of the new costume and two Sabbath albums before he decides to ditch the cape.
He likes the cape. It is a big part of what makes Batman so dramatic and imposing, and both of those qualities are definitely appealing to Eddie’s theatrical nature. The biggest problem, at the end of the day, is practicality. And maybe that he finally watched The Incredibles.
So he sketches some extendable gliders on the arms of the suit instead. He can come back to that part of the design later.
The other issue he’s having was the color. Wayne, as Batman, had opted for a simple black and gray scheme that blended into the darkness of Gotham perfectly, and Shadow had followed suit (pun intended). Black is a given now, of course, but Eddie is planning to launch a new era of Batman with this, and he has already dropped the second-most iconic aspect of the outfit.
(The most iconic part is the ears, obviously.)
He picks up a red pencil and fills in the bat across the latest iteration’s chest. Yeah, that might work.
Now he just has to convince Wayne that reviving Batman is the right move.
“No.”
They’re in the living room, the tv muted on another news report about We Are the Knight. This time the reporter got the names the boys are going by: Shade (and that homage makes Eddie a little nauseated, even though it’s a little flattering), Signal, and Hood.
Eddie throws up his hands. “Those kids are going to get themselves killed, Wayne!”
“Like you did?” Wayne shoots back with pin-point accuracy, crossing his arms. It’s not like he’s wrong. That is a thing Eddie did. But he isn’t wrong either.
“I was stupid,” he says. “I had a support system and I didn’t call for back-up. They don’t have anyone to call.”
“It doesn’t have to be you, Ed.”
“If not me, then who? I’ve already got the training and I’m willing.”
Wayne shakes his head. “I don’t want to lose you again.” He takes a deep breath and lets it out slowly. “I can’t lose you again, kid.”
Eddie leans in for a hug. “I know, Wayne, but I think I need to do this. For them and for me.”
“Okay. There’s just one thing I need to do first.”
Notes:
Some fun notes:
- Signal, Shade, and Hood are the other members of Corroded Coffin (Jeff, Gareth, and Unnamed Freak, respectively). Signal is, in the comics, Duke Thomas, a Gotham native with light-related powers who was a member of the We Are Robin group, which We Are the Knight is in turn a reference to. Shade really just is a reference to Shadow, while Hood is a reference but not a direct parallel to the Red Hood, Jason Todd's current alias.
- I used Shadow instead of Robin for Batman's sidekick to avoid the confusion of two very different Robins, especially when they're on a team together, and also because it seemed like a name tween Eddie would have come up with.
- Eddie's backstory here owes a lot to Jason Todd, the second Robin.
- Catwoman is also a Stranger Things character here; she will appear again in an upcoming chapter.
Chapter 4: pride
Notes:
Welcome back! Since we've established backstories, this chapter is where things start to kick off. It was one of my favorites while I was writing, so I hope you enjoy!
Chapter Warnings:
- Mentions of character deaths.
- Secret identity shenanigans (derogatory; Eddie is an idiot).
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
2007
“Rise and shine, dingus!” Robin shouts, pounding on the door to Steve’s room in Titans Tower. “We’ve been summoned!”
The joke’s on her, of course; he’s been up for an hour and is already mostly into his costume. He fastens his cape and then hits the button on the wall that makes his door slide open, so Robin’s fist hits the air instead. “Summoned where?”
Steve is only a little disappointed that they’re at the newly-finished Hall of Justice and not Watchtower – three plus years of being a superhero and knowing that he’s half alien himself, and he still hasn’t gotten to go to space. He gets to go to Washington DC and walk past a bunch of tourists (that the place does even limited tours is… a choice) instead.
The conference room he and Robin are brought to reminds him way too much of the ones in the RexCorp building, but that’s probably not the Justice League’s fault – conference rooms can only be laid out in so many ways. This one features the ever-popular long table, with the bonus of heroes’ logos on the backs of most of the chairs. The two arranged across from the gathered heroes are pointedly blank.
It’s rude, honestly. It’s not like they don’t know what logo Superboy and Supergirl use; they could have at least gotten temporary stickers or something. He can only assume Superman’s chair is in storage somewhere.
The line-up they’re facing does have Steve a little concerned; Wonder Woman, Martian Manhunter, the Flash, and Green Arrow are all long-term League members that Steve’s rarely ever seen in person, and only at a distance.
“Did we do something wrong that I don’t know about?” he whispers, low enough that only Robin should be able to hear it.
“I don’t think so,” she replies at the same volume.
“Superboy, Supergirl,” Wonder Woman says, standing up. The other three stand too. “Welcome. Please, have a seat.” She gestures towards the blank-backed chairs.
Steve’s figured out what this reminds him of: it’s like the one time he and Tommy got called to the principal’s office in middle school. (Tommy had started a fight with another kid; Steve had finished it.) Everyone sits down.
“Thank you for coming,” Wonder Woman says, like they could have ignored a request from the people paying for their living space. “We have a proposal for you. Well, for Superboy in particular.”
Now that is interesting. He and Supergirl have become nearly inseparable (Robin still goes home to her adopted parents every other weekend, while Steve visits the Byers, though they’ve both met the other’s family), but they didn’t have much reason to think the Justice League cared, since this is the first time they’ve been asked to the Hall of Justice together.
Green Arrow slides a file folder towards them. “There’s a new vigilante in Gotham, sort of. Some people are calling him the Red Bat, but most people are calling him Batman.”
Supergirl flips the folder open; it’s thin, and the first page inside doesn’t have a lot of information on it. Superboy tries to read it, only catching a few words before she turns the page.
“If they’re calling him Batman, does that mean he’s helping them?” he asks, giving up on trying to read the file. Robin will catch him up later.
“He appears to have picked up where the previous Batman left off,” Martian Manhunter confirms. “However, his appearance did coincide with the deaths of a handful of high profile inmates at Arkham Asylum.”
Supergirl’s head shoots up. “Which ones?”
“Victor Zsasz, the Mad Hatter, Scarecrow, and the Joker. The Joker, in particular, was in a coma when he was killed.”
Robin relaxes slightly at the fourth name. Steve doesn’t think the others notice. He doesn’t know enough about Gotham’s villains to know why. “Do you think this new Batman did it?” she asks.
“We don’t know. None of the criminals he’s apprehended since have been killed, though he tends to use a little more physical force than his predecessor did.”
“So why are you telling us all of this?” Superboy asks. He glances down at the file, which mentions that the Arkham inmates were all shot in the head over successive nights. Oof.
“We’d like Superboy to make contact and ask him to join the Justice League.”
There it is.
“I’m not even a member of the League,” he points out.
Wonder Woman places a communicator – it kind of looks like a rounder flip phone – on the table. “If you can accomplish this task, you will be.”
He eyes the communicator for a moment. Wonder Woman was the one, back when he’d first become Superman, to reach out with an offer of membership. She hadn’t mentioned any kind of test related to it then, though he’d been brainwashed at the time and had told her couldn’t accept until she had spoken to Rex Harrington about it. Maybe that was why there was a test now.
“If you think this new Batman is dangerous, why–” Robin starts, but Steve interrupts.
“It’s not about him being dangerous,” he says. “It’s because he’s Batman.” Everyone looks at him. Time for the son of Rex Harrington, one of the wealthiest CEOs in the world, to shine. “It’s about optics, right? The Justice League has been around for, like, twenty years? It was founded by a big group of heroes, yeah, but Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman were at the front of everything. So you recruited and expanded and things were good.
“Then in the last few years, the original Superman died and the original Batman retired. So while the League is still large and well-known, the figureheads, the biggest draw in terms of publicity, are gone. But if we can recruit this new Batman…” He spreads his hands. “It would be better if Wonder Girl hadn’t retired, obviously, but there’s enough symmetry with ‘the Super Twins’ and a Batman to make it work. It’s just brand recognition.”
The Flash covers up a cough that sounds more like a laugh.
“Guess Rex taught you some business after all, huh?” Green Arrow says. Steve narrows his eyes at him. He doesn’t know the man’s identity, obviously, but the nature of what he does suggests a significant benefactor (if he isn’t his own benefactor, which he could be), and the familiarity with Steve’s dad makes the list pretty short.
“He taught me a lot of things,” he says neutrally. He picks up the communicator. At least it’s not attached to his uniform, unlike his last one. “So, when do you want me to go?”
“When do you want us to go?” Supergirl says pointedly. “We’re a package deal.”
The older heroes exchange a look. “We would prefer that Superboy completes this task alone.”
Robin opens her mouth to protest again, hands braced against the table so she can stand up and really let them have it, but Steve puts a hand over hers. She looks at him. He shakes his head once before giving the Justice League elders his best corporate tool smile.
“Of course. How soon do you want me to start?”
Superboy feels kind of stupid standing on top of the Wayne Industries skyscraper, looking out over the city. It’s not something he would have done in Metropolis, partly because the tallest building there belongs to his dad and partly because flying around is a better way to check things out. He and Robin have never done it in Jump City either. They don’t really need to patrol the way he’s heard Batman does; it’s easier to listen for people calling for help and fly to wherever they are. But Batman is known to patrol his city, and has often been seen on top of Wayne Tower – Steve doesn’t know how he gets up here without being able to fly, but it’s an impressive feat. This seemed like a good place to start his search.
He feels weirdly small next to the lit-up letters of the tower’s sign. Every part of Gotham seems to loom over him no matter where he stands, like the city was designed to remind people of their own insignificance. All of the buildings are either too tall or feature an unusual number of gargoyles (and since he’s used to ultra-modern Metropolis, any number of gargoyles is unusual); he’s finding that there’s no in between. The building he moved into this afternoon has three on the roof.
His lease, paid for by the Justice League, is for three months, so that’s presumably how long he has to find and talk to Batman. He even has a fake identity so he can do research in the daytime, or whatever: Steve Buckley, a freelance reporter from Metropolis (he got to choose the last name, at least). He doesn’t actually expect to make contact tonight, but at least he’s getting a better feel for the place. Gotham is also full of lead, making it harder for Steve to orient himself.
It’s also hot. Yeah, it’s summer, but he had no idea New Jersey was this hot. Though that could also just be Gotham; he doesn’t know. He just feels that when the sun goes down, so should the temperature.
“You lost, Big Blue?” a voice asks from behind him. It’s filtered through a modulator, but he can just barely make out the real voice underneath that. Superboy turns around slowly.
Sure enough, there’s the Batman he’s looking for: all black suit, covered from head to toe, with pointy ears on the cowl and a red bat emblazoned across the chest.
Steve crosses his arms. “I think I’m right where I’m supposed to be, actually.”
“Oh, that makes it sounds like you were looking for me.” He can’t decide if that was meant to be more of a purr or a growl – it’s very much the wrong animal, but the way Batman slinks forward is definitely cat-like.
Superboy tilts his head and smiles in a way that usually makes girls, old ladies, and reporters smile back (and makes Robin roll her eyes). “And what if I was?”
“Then you’re stupider than you look.” Batman leans closer. “What brings you to my humble abode, Superboy?”
“The Justice League,” he says. It’s better if he’s honest and upfront about it, right? Judging by how Batman immediately takes a step back, maybe not. “They’re interested in you.”
“It’s not mutual,” Batman says flatly. “Why did they send you?”
“Rude,” Steve huffs.
“You know how the old Bat had a rule about no metahumans in his city?”
“Can’t say I ever had the pleasure of meeting the guy, so, no. I didn’t know that.”
“Now you do, and I'm enforcing it. So get out.”
What the actual hell. Technically Steve isn’t a metahuman, he’s half alien, but he doesn’t think of that as a comeback.
“Make me,” Superboy says like he’s in middle school again. This Batman doesn’t have any powers as far as anyone has been able to tell, so what’s he going to do?
The sudden, sharp press of a piece of kryptonite against Steve’s throat answers that question. He only knows it’s kryptonite because he can actually feel it pressing into his skin. “I said leave, Superman.”
Superboy swallows, trying to lean away from the green crystal without moving too quickly and startling the guy holding it. “You were right the first time, actually. It’s Superboy.”
“I know. Weird way to downgrade, by the way.”
“Well, I changed it when I teamed up with Supergirl, so… not really a downgrade.”
Batman actually pauses, then steps back. Steve takes a deep, relieved breath. “Tell the League I said ‘no thanks’.”
A siren goes off somewhere in the distance, and Superboy automatically turns in that direction – it’s a fire truck headed for an apartment building, and he’s definitely going there to help as soon as he’s done here. He glances back at Batman, only to find him gone.
Sure, why not.
Steve sighs and takes off. He’s got most of three months to change Batman’s mind.
He doesn’t run into Batman again for almost two weeks, but he does get to meet his associates, who were definitely not included in the file the Justice League gave him. He’s starting to wonder how much investigating they even did before sending him in.
Shade and Hood seem to be mostly nocturnal, like Batman, and don’t speak to Superboy at all when they happen to turn up at the same crimes – Shade mostly shows up for smaller, petty crimes, and Hood’s stuff seems to be anything involving the significant mob presence in the city. Signal, on the other hand, appears to be the one who deals with most of the day time crime. He has light powers, which suggests that the ‘no meta rule’ is less about actual powers and more about people who aren’t Batman’s friends.
“You’re not going to change his mind,” Signal tells Superboy as he binds a group of bank robbers’ wrists with zip ties. They happened to arrive at the robbery together, and now Steve is keeping an eye out for the cops that should be turning up any minute. “He’s stubborn.”
“So am I,” Superboy says, finally hearing the cops leave the nearest station. Took them long enough.
Signal looks up at him, studying him a second before he grins. “Good.”
It’s a good thing the Justice League is paying for everything while Steve stays in Gotham, because he doesn’t think he could hold down a real job keeping the hours he’s been forced into. He doesn’t need as much sleep as a normal human, but he’s still running a little ragged fighting crime through the day and night – how does one city have this much crime? What are the police even doing? Like, the Wayne Foundation is pouring money into the lower-income areas, so what is going on? Is there something in the water? He’s stopped more costumed villains in Gotham than he ever even met in Metropolis or Jump City, and he’s starting to wonder if Batman is just… letting him deal with some of the really weird ones, because Calendar Man? What?
Maybe it’s all the lead.
“You really don’t know the meaning of ‘get out’, do you, Big Blue?” Batman asks him the next time they run into each other. Does it count as running into each other if one person is climbing out of the sewers after wrestling a giant crocodile man (why, Gotham?) and the other is just waiting there, casually leaning against a wall?
“I don’t know,” Superboy says, totally not out of breath (yes, he’s got tactile telekinesis to simulate super-strength, but the crocodile man had actual super-strength, okay; the important thing was that Steve won) and desperate to douse himself in three to five bottles of body wash, shampoo, and conditioner. “Gotham’s kind of growing on me.”
Batman’s disbelieving stare isn’t nearly as satisfying as it ought to be, but it’s all Superboy has to sustain himself as he flies off.
“You could come home,” Robin says during their daily phone call a little over three weeks in. “If he doesn’t want to join, he doesn’t want to join.”
“I can’t quit, Rob,” Steve totally doesn’t whine. “Then he wins.”
“Look, I know the League, like, made your membership contingent on this whole thing, which is absolutely ridiculous, but I’m already a member and they aren’t going to revoke that. Titans Tower gets paid for either way, and I’m sure as hell not going to kick you out. So what are you trying to prove, Steve?”
“That I can do more than just punch the bad guys,” Steve says without really thinking about it. He’s mostly trying not to yawn.
Robin is quiet for a long few seconds. “I didn’t know you felt that way,” she says finally, her voice small.
Steve sinks onto his couch. “Neither did I.” He pinches the bridge of his nose. “I’m sorry. I might not have slept in the last two days?” That probably shouldn’t have been a question. He definitely hadn’t slept in… possibly more than two days. Whoops.
“What the hell, Steve.”
“I knew Gotham sucked, Robin, I just didn’t know how much. Like, you know how they call New York ‘the city that never sleeps’? Gotham actually doesn’t. I think that’s part of the problem. Everyone is sleep-deprived. That and the lead. And it’s always cloudy, so no one gets enough sun either.”
“Are you getting enough sun?”
He sighs. “Probably not. It’s not like I can just rest on the roof here like at the Tower, and the windows in the apartment face north so that doesn’t do me any good either.”
“Dingus,” Robin says firmly. “Go outside.”
“I go outside all the time, Robin. I’m pretty sure I’ve spent more time outside than inside since I got here.”
“You have to take a break, Steve,” she insists. “I’m not saying you can’t go if you hear a real emergency, but just. Don’t go out for one night, please. You need to sleep eventually. Or just, like, explore the neighborhood as Steve instead of Superboy. Something.”
Steve tilts his head back to look at the popcorn ceiling. She’s right, of course. “Yeah, okay.”
There’s a coffee shop just down the street from his apartment building. Steve figures going in there, getting a drink, and sitting down for as long as it takes to drink it counts as doing something. So that’s what he does – he doesn’t normally drink coffee, since he doesn’t really get anything from the caffeine, but the barista looks delighted when he tells her to surprise him instead of ordering something boring or basic because he doesn’t know what he’s doing.
The result is loaded with whipped cream and multiple very artificially flavored syrups, but he put a smile on someone’s face, so it’s worth it.
The place is fairly busy for early afternoon. Steve manages to find an empty table and ends up people-watching for a while. He realizes, after about twenty minutes, that significantly more of the pairs at the other tables appear to be two men or two women than otherwise. Then he spots the rainbow flag decal in the window near the front door.
He smiles to himself. Robin’s going to have a fit when he tells her; he found what ended up being their favorite gay bar in Jump City by wandering in accidentally too.
After a while longer (and his drink getting cold, but it doesn’t really taste worse that way so he doesn’t care), he thinks maybe he should have brought a book or something. Listening to people talk about their lives is interesting, but it kind of makes him miss Carol (and Tommy), and that’s not a train of thought that’s going to help his general mood.
“Excuse me, sorry,” a low male voice says to his left, and Steve automatically turns toward it. The guy the voice belongs to is very much Steve’s type (and hadn’t that been a fun time with Robin, finding out that no, everyone wasn’t attracted to both genders but it’s okay that you are), with long curly hair and big brown eyes that Steve is pretty sure he could get lost in.
“Yeah? I mean, yes? Hi?”
The guy smiles, and oh, he has dimples. “Hi. Sorry if this is weird, but the other tables are all taken, and you just look really familiar. Do I know you?”
Steve doesn’t recognize this guy’s face at all, but something about the voice nags at his memory. He just can’t place it yet. “Not unless you’re from Metropolis,” he blurts, like a dumbass. “But you can sit here, yeah. I’m Steve.”
Another smile. “Thanks, Steve.” The guy slides into the seat across from him. “I’m Eddie, and I’ve never been to Metropolis before, sadly, though I am starting to regret that.”
Is Eddie flirting with him? Steve’s pretty sure Eddie is flirting with him. He doesn’t know why; he’s wearing a pair of non-prescription glasses that mostly just make his eyes look bigger and he didn’t do much to his hair before leaving the apartment. Sure, girls thought he was cute in high school, but that was a lifetime ago.
He wants to flirt back. He shouldn’t, because he’s only in Gotham for another two months. He’s here for a reason. But maybe… maybe he can have a little fun just this once?
He feels like he’s suddenly forgotten how to flirt. The only date he’s ever been on (thanks to his dad not allowing him to date during the time he actually went to high school) was when Robin tried setting him up with her friend Nancy. She was great, and totally Steve’s type on the surface, but they pretty quickly came to the conclusion that they both wanted different things (in that Nancy knew what she wanted and Steve didn’t). Then Steve had introduced Nancy to Jonathan (aspiring journalist and photographer seemed perfect to him; Robin was terrible at matchmaking).
“Do you come here often?” he asks, and oh god. Nope. Steve winces. “Sorry, that was dumb.”
Eddie laughs. “I mean, I came over here with the whole ‘do I know you’ schtick, so I don’t think I get to judge. I do come here every now and then; I like to support local businesses, you know?”
“So you’re local?” That was better, and keeping Eddie talking might help him figure out why his voice sounded familiar.
“Born and raised. What brings a Metropolis boy to our fair city?”
He really should have put more effort into his secret identity. It wasn’t his fault he hadn’t needed one… ever. “I was looking for a change,” he says vaguely. He can picture Robin face-palming now.
Eddie tilts his head. “Really? It sounds like a super place to live.”
“Well, I travel a lot, so I don’t get to spend much time at home anymore.” Not technically a lie; the only time he goes back to Metropolis now is to visit the Byers family.
“A jet-setter, huh? Do you travel for business or pleasure?”
“Uh, business. I’m a freelance reporter?” He should have called Nancy and gotten notes on what the hell a real reporter might talk about. She hasn’t finished her degree in journalism yet, but she still knows way more than he does. “What about you? What do you do for a living?”
Clearly his dad’s money was the only reason girls were interested in Steve in high school. It is a miracle that Eddie hasn’t politely excused himself. “Would you believe me if I said I was a rock star?”
Steve slowly, intentionally looks Eddie over, taking in the leather jacket (despite the summer heat; he was clearly hot in more ways than one), a hint of a tattoo near the collarbone his v-neck t-shirt is leaving exposed, the ripped jeans, and the combat boots. “I’d believe you try to dress like one.”
He’s going to go find Batman and ask him to stab him with that shard of kryptonite.
“Ouch, sweetheart.” But Eddie laughs again, and Steve wants to be called that again a little too much. He needs to calm down; he just met the guy. “Maybe ‘rock star’ is stretching it a little; I work as a session musician to pay the bills, but my band and I dazzle the local bar scene every so often. We’re going to be at Bar None a few blocks from here this Friday, actually. You should come. Maybe you’ll find something to write about.”
Steve does his best not to grimace. If Eddie’s looking for publicity, he’s not going to get it from Steve. “Technically I’m already on assignment. Music’s not really my, uh, beat.” The pun was not intentional, but Eddie seems to like it, if how hard he laughs is anything to go by. Steve wants to make him laugh again. “So what’s your band called?”
Eddie smiles. “Corroded Coffin.”
God, that sounds like it’s trying so hard to be edgy. Maybe Eddie is actually a giant dork too. Steve can work with that. “And what time do you go on?”
So maybe it won’t be just the once.
“So let me get this straight,” Robin says the next afternoon after Steve tells her about Eddie.
“There’s nothing ‘straight’ about it, Robin,” Steve replies, frowning at the shirts hanging up in his closet. Most of them were provided with the fake identity and the apartment; they’re kind of boring. He brought a few things of his own, though. He wonders if any of them are good enough to wear to see Eddie’s band play or if he should go shopping.
“I hate you so much,” she grumbles.
He smiles, even though she can’t see it. “No, you don’t.”
“Let me see if I understand you correctly, you gigantic dingus.” She’s over-enunciating, which is how he knows she’s really annoyed. “I told you to get some fresh air, and you decided to go to a coffee shop. You happened to choose a queer-friendly one, and then you got a date in less than an hour.”
He’s probably going to have to go shopping. “It’s not a date, he just invited me to see his band play.”
He can practically hear her rolling her eyes. “It’s not not a date.”
“Maybe.” There’s a polo that might be okay… no, what is he thinking? A polo to see a band called Corroded Coffin? Eddie would probably never want to speak to him again. Not that he fully believes Eddie wants to speak to him again now. Guys like Eddie don’t usually go for guys like Steve.
“So, what are you going to do afterward? Are you bringing him back to the apartment after the coffee shop? Are you going to try to hook up backstage after his band plays?”
“If we did, I wouldn’t tell you about it,” Steve says primly. Though he’s already thought about it. Having full and perfect control of his tactile telekinesis is a wonderful thing.
“Oh my god, I knew there was a slut hiding in there somewhere, waiting for the chance to come out.”
“I’m going to hang up now.”
“If you do, you better be going to bed.” It’s barely three o’clock; he wouldn’t be going to sleep even if he were back at Titans Tower.
Steve eyes his costume, already laid out on his bed. “Sure.” He’d stayed in last night and watched a movie – well, fell asleep during a movie. That was plenty of rest.
Besides, he’s a little too excited to stay in tonight. What Robin doesn’t know won’t hurt her.
Ten days after his last Batman encounter, Superboy catches a woman dressed in a skintight black catsuit (which she’s apparently taking literally) with little black ears on the cowl breaking into an art museum. She’s good at what she does, since he can’t even follow her directly past the alarms that she avoids setting off – he doesn’t think he’s seen that level of gymnastics outside of the Olympics. Since his only other option is causing property damage, he waits for her on the roof.
She smiles at him.
“So you’re the new guy in town, hm?”
“Superboy,” he says, watching for any indication she intends to run.
Instead she comes closer and holds out a hand. “I’m Catwoman.”
Steve stares at the presumably-ancient bracelet hanging from her wrist. “Um. Nice to meet you?”
“C, we’ve talked about this.”
Batman’s deep, modulated voice sounding from behind him saves Superboy from having to decide if he should shake Catwoman’s hand or not. He really wants to know how the other man manages to keep sneaking up without him hearing him, though.
“Spoilsport,” Catwoman says easily, sliding over to Batman instead. Her cowl, unlike his, has a cutout for her mouth, so Steve can see her pouting. “Signal got to talk to him.”
Superboy frowns. “You’re telling people not to talk to me?”
“I told you to get out of my city,” Batman says to him.
Steve crosses his arms. “Maybe I’m not ready to leave yet.”
“You can fly; it’s not like it’s hard.”
“He seems nice,” Catwoman says, smiling at Superboy. “I think he should stay if he wants to.”
“Or, if you want me to leave that badly, you could just agree to join the Justice League. Then everyone’s happy.”
“I won’t be,” Batman says at the same time that Catwoman squeals excitedly.
“You were invited to join the Justice League?”
“Yeah, but I don’t want to!”
It’s the first time he’s sounded like… well, like he could be Steve’s age, really. Probably not younger; the training it would take to be Batman would take years.
“Why not?” Superboy and Catwoman end up asking in unison. Batman rounds on Steve.
“Because when the previous Batman’s sidekick died, they didn’t do anything. Superman dies, five more step up and they get welcomed with open arms. Batman retires because his kid’s gone? Oh no, better leave him to grieve and let his city fall to shit! They act like they’re all about superhero solidarity until one of them needs actual help, and then they’re nowhere to be found.”
Steve blinks.
After a moment, Catwoman reaches out to the so-called Dark Knight. “Batman…”
He steps away from her. “Not now, C.” He meets Superboy’s gaze. It’s weird to look into those blank white lenses instead of normal eyes. Steve could probably see through the mask if he wanted, but it feels rude.
“I wasn’t even the one who stepped up to help Gotham first,” Batman continues. “It was a bunch of teenagers. So yeah, fuck the Justice League.” He turns away and stalks to the edge of the roof, this time not waiting until Superboy’s back is turned to make his exit. He leaps off the roof without hesitation, and Steve only stays put because he can hear the grapple connecting so Batman can swing to the next one.
Catwoman shifts. “So… are you going to turn me in?”
He’s still staring at the spot Batman had jumped from. “No,” he says finally, before rising into the air. There’s a mugging a few blocks away (in the opposite direction that Batman went) he can stop.
Friday night finds Steve wearing the fake glasses again, along with a simple white t-shirt and jeans combo that Robin said just barely kept him from looking like a giant dork, once he styled his hair. (If the League’s accountant or whoever wants to complain about the extra charge for sending her a photo when the bill for his cell phone comes, they shouldn’t have given him the phone in the first place.) She made him promise to not think about anything else for the night, to just live in the moment.
Bar None is small, appearing to consist of one main room with a dark and edgy aesthetic – what has he gotten himself into – that makes Steve very glad he decided against the polo. The stage is on one end and the bar on the other, with the entrance closer to the bar. There are doors on either side of the stage, suggesting more space behind it.
Eddie spots him as the band is setting up and shoots him a huge grin, and Steve can feel the heat rise in his cheeks. He hasn’t had a crush this bad in a long time, and he barely knows the guy. That little bit of practicality aside, Eddie looks hot. He’s just in a tank top and ripped jeans. Steve wants to rip them more. (He wants to rip them off.)
(He doesn’t necessarily want to lose his virginity in a back room in a club; he just hasn’t completely ruled it out yet.)
(He’s kind of hoping he’ll at least get to make out with Eddie.)
Corroded Coffin is pretty good, as far as he can tell. They mostly sing covers, and their sound is harder than the sort of stuff he normally seeks out for himself, but the rest of the crowd in the bar seem to be enjoying themselves. Steve kind of wishes normal earplugs worked for him; he can’t really turn off the super-hearing. He hangs out close to the actual bar, rather than near the stage, partly because he doesn’t need anyone bumping into him and getting knocked over (or worse, out; apparently running into him feels like hitting a brick wall) and partly because thanks to his enhanced vision, the view is just fine from where he’s standing.
There are boos when Eddie – who doesn’t do much of the singing, but has been leading most of the banter between songs – announces the last song of the night. “I know, I know,” Eddie says, grinning in Steve’s direction. “But we’ve talked about this, folks. You’ll see us again in a couple of weeks.”
Steve completely misses what the last song is going to be. He thinks Eddie maybe even dedicated it to ‘a special someone in the crowd tonight’, who could only be him, but it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter because Steve has just realized why Eddie’s voice sounds so familiar and why it took him so long to figure it out: he’s used to hearing it underneath a modulator.
Because Eddie has Batman’s voice.
Because Eddie is Batman.
Does he know who Steve is? Maybe not; why would he have approached Steve if he knew? But the original Batman was supposed to be a great detective (the best in the world, according to some) and the new one so far seems to be at least as good. So he has to know that Steve is Superboy.
Would he have approached Steve if he didn’t?
He even opened with ‘do I know you?’ Steve thought it was just a line. God, he feels so fucking stupid. He doesn’t know what to do. Should he still find Eddie after the set is done, like he’d been planning? Should he confront him? He wishes Robin were here. She wouldn’t know what to do either, but at least he wouldn’t be dealing with it alone.
He’s frozen in place through the whole last song and couldn’t tell someone what it was if they asked.
Then there are people crowding in around him as they try to get drinks between bands. Corroded Coffin is packing up, and Eddie keeps looking at Steve. He tries to smile back. His face probably does something weird, because Eddie closes his guitar case and goes to say something to the drummer. A few more things line up and click into place in Steve’s head.
The drummer’s about the same size as Shade; the other two band members match the basic physicality of Hood and Signal. What’s that one saying, about the simplest answer is the most likely one? Batman and his associates are in a band together.
It would be kind of funny… if Steve had been in on the joke and not the butt of it.
He manages to steel himself (pun landing somewhere in the range of that dude’s cat in a box with regards to how intentional it is) and move away from the bar as Eddie hops off the stage. He walks along the edge of the room so they don’t meet in the middle of the dance floor, but the house music is already loud and space is getting scarce.
“Hey,” Eddie says when they’re standing in front of each other. “Are you okay?” He’s sweaty, his curly hair a mess. He might be wearing eyeliner, because his doe-like brown eyes look even bigger. Really, Steve is just… still stupidly attracted to him. That makes it hurt more.
“Is there somewhere we can talk?” Steve asks instead of answering the question.
Eddie studies him for a moment before he nods and grabs Steve’s hand. “Yeah, come on.” Steve lets Eddie pull him back towards the stage. He probably shouldn’t be holding his hand. He wants to lace their fingers together. If he could go back ten minutes and unlearn what he knows now, maybe he would have. Eddie leads him through one of the doors beside the stage, into a hallway that leads to a dressing room that’s partly being used for storage. There’s a couch, a table with a mirror surrounded by lights, and several boxes. The noise of the bar dims slightly when Eddie closes the door, which means it’s probably soundproof for a normal person.
“What happened?” Eddie asks. His voice is perfectly concerned, and Steve hates that he doesn’t know if it’s an act or not. (He hates even more that he has to assume it is.) “You kind of look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
“Not exactly.” Steve takes a deep breath, his eyes locking onto the floor. “Why did you invite me here tonight?”
Eddie frowns. “Because I find you attractive? I thought we were on the same page about that.” He reaches out and lifts Steve’s chin, forcing (like anyone but Robin can physically force Steve to do anything he doesn’t want to do anymore) him to meet Eddie’s eyes. The dimpled smile makes a reappearance. “We are, right?”
Steve wants to believe him, and he surges forward to press their lips together. Eddie makes a small noise against Steve’s mouth at the impact, but his hand drops so he can put it on Steve’s back, pulling him closer. They end up sitting on the couch, eventually, or at least Steve is sitting on the couch. Eddie is on his lap, and he puts his hand on Steve’s cheek when they break apart to breathe for a moment. Steve leans into it, presses a kiss to Eddie’s fingers, and then asks, “It didn’t have anything to do with me being Superboy?”
Eddie’s hand drops, and Steve’s heart goes with it.
He looks up at Eddie, who has gone so very still. “In costume you keep telling me to leave,” Steve continues, “that you don’t want to talk to me, but then in the coffee shop, I really thought…”
“Did you say yes because of who I am?” Eddie’s entire posture has changed; he’s no longer the relaxed musician of just a moment ago. Despite the lack of a costume, he’s become Batman before Steve’s eyes.
“I didn’t know until about ten minutes ago,” Steve says. “I thought you were actually interested in me.”
Eddie finally stands up. “I thought you knew, at first. I go to that coffee shop all the time, and I thought you’d figured it out. By the time I realized I was wrong, it was…” He turns away. “It was too late.” A pause. “I’m sorry.”
Steve still, irrationally, wants him. “Yeah, me too.” The room is too small, all of a sudden, and Steve is done with this conversation anyway. He leaves, and Eddie doesn’t follow.
He calls Robin as soon as he’s outside the bar.
“I was almost asleep, asshole,” she says when she answers the phone.
“I need you to come to Gotham,” he tells her. His voice is as unsteady as the rest of him, and he can hear her bolt upright in her bed.
“What? Why? What happened? Weren’t you supposed to go see that guy’s band tonight?”
“Yeah. That’s part of…” Steve takes a deep breath and lets it out slowly. “I know who he is,” he says vaguely, not wanting to say ‘Batman’ or even ‘the Red Bat’ over the phone. There are only a few people hanging out in front of Bar None besides the bouncer, but he doesn’t need them overhearing either.
“Your date? I would hope so,” Robin scoffs, starting to relax again too soon. Okay, maybe he was too vague.
“No, Robin. I mean, yes, because they’re the same person, but I know who he is.” He starts walking in the direction of his apartment.
“Wait. He asked you out? And you went?”
“I didn’t know then!”
Robin is getting up, probably to grab her costume. “Does he know that you know? Does he know who you are?”
“Yes, Eddie knows,” he says quietly.
She’s silent for a moment. A siren sounds in the distance. Police, not fire. “His name is Eddie?” Her voice has gone high and tight.
Steve frowns. “Yeah? Didn’t I tell you that before?”
“You didn’t say his name. I’ll be there in an hour, okay? We’ll figure this out.”
“Okay. Thanks, Robin.” He closes the phone and tucks it back into his pocket so he doesn’t accidentally crush it when his hands start trembling again.
Notes:
Some fun notes:
- Traditionally Superman's x-ray vision doesn't work on lead; making that a little disorienting for Steve was extrapolation on my part. Gotham having lead all over the place isn't any kind of canon but makes sense given everything that is canon about Gotham.
- Calendar Man and Killer Croc are very real.
- Chrissy is Catwoman!
- I'm not sorry.
Chapter 5
Notes:
Welcome back! We're picking up right where we left off, but from the other side. Enjoy!
Chapter warnings are in the end notes this time, as they do contain spoilers.
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
2007
Eddie stares at the door Steve just left through.
Stupid.
He’s so, so fucking stupid.
The thing is (it’s not the worst thing, but it’s not great), Eddie didn’t clock Superboy – Steve – until after he was already sitting down across from him. He doesn’t normally go to Claire’s Coffee for hook-ups (not that he has a lot of them), and he wasn’t there for that on Wednesday. He just saw a hot guy who looked kind of familiar, and the guys have been saying he’s been uptight lately (what with the whole Superboy and Justice League thing), so he figured he’d shoot his shot.
He didn’t expect to be flirting with the guy he kept telling to get out of his city at night. He should have left as soon as he realized who he was talking to, but Steve was so earnest and awkward and (mostly) genuine and had no idea who Eddie was.
Inviting him to watch the band play might have been a dick move, in full context, though at the time Eddie had been more concerned with holding the pretty boy’s attention. He hadn’t thought Steve would actually come. He didn’t think Steve would stay for the whole set, he didn’t think Steve would follow him backstage when asked. He didn’t think Steve would be such an amazing kisser.
He didn’t think Steve would figure out that he was Batman while Eddie was in his lap, both of their lips shiny with spit and Eddie on the verge of really needing to decide how far he was going to let things go. Well, not ‘let’; Eddie was very much a willing participant in everything.
And then it all fell apart.
There’s a knock on the door of the dressing room, pulling him out of his near-blue screen. “Eddie?” It’s Jeff, because of course it is. “We saw your guy leave. You okay?”
Eddie fights the urge to laugh and instead opens the door. “Yeah, I’m fine. He just needed to get home.” He shouldn’t lie to Jeff, or the other guys. He just isn’t ready to tell them what actually happened yet.
Jeff looks skeptical anyway; how is it that Eddie keeps attracting all of these perceptive people? Why can’t he just have dumb friends who let him get away with shit? (He doesn’t actually want that.) “That wasn’t the face of a guy trying to beat curfew or something, man.”
“Drop it, Jeff,” Eddie says, his voice taking on a little bit of Batman’s edge for the second time in too short a period considering he wasn’t in costume. Jeff puts his hands up and steps back.
“Consider it dropped. We’re all packed up. Are you going out tonight?”
It’s on the tip of his tongue to ask when he doesn’t go out, especially in service of the fiction that nothing catastrophic happened in the last few minutes, but Eddie hesitates. He’s not really in a good headspace to be punching criminals. Jeff sees the pause and is smart enough to wait.
“No,” Eddie says finally. “No, I think I’m going to go home to Wayne.”
Jeff nods. “I’ll let Gareth and Frank know.” He turns away. Eddie lingers in the dressing room for a moment longer.
He’s still stupid, because he doesn’t go home. He goes to the Batcave, which is in the basement of a safehouse in midtown. He tells himself that it’s less about being in the cave and more about not being ready to talk to Wayne about Steve. He still sits down in front of the Batcomputer and pulls up the city’s public security camera feeds. He isn’t going out, but that doesn’t mean he can’t oversee communications among the guys for the night. He accesses their comms in another window.
Naturally, it’s a fairly quiet night.
He directs Shade and Hood to a suspicious gathering in the warehouse district and then ends up clicking through the cameras for a long while.
“Good call on the group at the old Matthews Factory,” Gareth tells him sometime after two in the morning. “The Falcones and the Bertinellis are working on some kind of deal; we got a lot of stuff on tape. Me and Hood are turning in for the night. Are you finally heading home?”
“Don’t know what you’re talking about,” Eddie says breezily.
Gareth scoffs. “Yeah, okay. Keep your secrets. At least get some sleep, asshole.”
“You too, dipshit.” He pauses on the camera overlooking Amusement Mile. The theme park there is being rebuilt, now that it’s… less likely to be taken over by a specific villain. But there shouldn’t be anyone moving around there right now.
Eddie glances at his suit, waiting in its case. He could call Gareth back, have Shade and Hood check it out.
That’s what he should do.
He stands up from the computer and goes over to the case.
While Eddie was Shadow, Wayne as Batman had used the Batmobile to traverse the city. It featured such important things as a passenger seat for Eddie and seatbelts for both of them. Since becoming Batman himself, Eddie found out the truth of what Wayne used to drive – or rather, ride, back when he was first getting started as the Caped Crusader. The Batmobile is retired; long live the (refurbished as an uncle-nephew bonding project) Batcycle.
It has its flaws, of course. It’s not the most subtle form of transportation for someone who values sneaking up on his enemies. But it is really cool.
It occurs to Eddie, when he’s almost reached Amusement Mile, that he could have just gone for a drive around the city to clear his head. You know, like a normal person. It’s too late for that now.
(Is it?)
He parks the bike outside the entrance. The people rebuilding the park have committed to cleaning up most of the graffiti first and foremost, but it’s still an empty amusement park in the middle of the night. Eddie’s current plan is to do a quick, careful check through the park. If he doesn’t find anything… good. He can just. Go home. If he does…
He’s going to call for backup and wait until it arrives before engaging. Because he has learned his lesson.
He hops past the broken ticket machines with ease and then he’s in the park proper. A skeletal Ferris wheel looms in the distance, high above the other rides and buildings. The whole place seems draped in a very atmospheric mist or haze, which is… weird. It’s making something itch at the back of Eddie’s brain, but then something clatters nearby, and he’s lost it. He moves towards the noise instead.
The sign on the building declares that it’s a mirror maze. Great.
He walks around the perimeter of the building, jumping over the fence that separates the main thoroughfare from the backstage areas to get to the back door. Ideally, whoever made the noise will try to sneak out the back and he can just catch them there. But of course that would be too easy. He waits for a few minutes before he hears another noise, not from inside the mirror maze but from the next building down. He’s only taken a step in that direction before there’s a louder bang from inside the mirror maze – not like a gunshot or anything, thankfully; just like something being knocked over.
He’s going to feel extra stupid if it’s just a stray cat or a few rats.
Another noise from the mirror maze and he gives in, going in through the back door so he doesn’t have to immediately face the maze itself. He flicks the switch on the wall inside the door, but nothing happens. He flicks it a few more times for good measure and then turns on his flashlight.
There’s what looks like a big helium tank sitting in the room he’s just entered. It’s hissing, and oh.
Oh, he is so stupid.
That’s not helium.
God help him if it’s Joker gas (the monster is dead, why can’t he stay that way?) and no one knows where he is. No one knows where he is and he’s going to die here and it’s probably not Joker gas, given how his heartbeat and anxiety have just shot through the roof.
He doesn’t want to know why there’s a canister of fear gas here; he’ll figure it out later when he’s not careening into full-on terror because he took too long to turn on the filters in his mask. He does so now, even though it’s almost definitely too little, too late.
Out.
Out, he has to get out of the room and into the open air, except what if there’s more because that could be what the mist was? Still better than the small room, so he stumbles through the door and into the apartment he lived in with his mom, before she died and he moved in with Wayne.
He’s twelve again, and she’s in the kitchen as he enters, dropping his backpack next to the couch like he always did.
“Eddie? Is that you?” Her voice echoes strangely. She’s standing in front of the stove, but the back of her head looks kind of wet. Eddie realizes why right before she turns around, right before he sees the hole in the middle of her forehead and then her skin shifts to grey and starts rotting right before his eyes, like the worst time-lapse video imaginable. She frowns, the flesh sloughing off her face as she does so. “What’s wrong, Eddie?”
He turns and runs back through the open apartment door.
Now he’s sixteen and being chased through Jump City’s streets by a gigantic alien scorpion, and he watches it grab each of the other Teen Titans – first Aqualass, then Wonder Girl, and then Supergirl, in its pincers, cutting each of them in half and dropping the pieces before picking up the next one.
(That didn’t happen. Supergirl found a weak spot and hit it with her heat vision.)
It reaches for him, and he runs between two buildings and
Wayne is in the Batman suit, laying on the ground unconscious. Eddie is still Shadow but he’s fifteen and Wayne won’t wake up, Eddie keeps shaking him and he won’t wake up and Eddie can’t lose Wayne, he doesn’t have anyone but Wayne he has to wake up wake up wake up.
(He did, he was fine, Eddie’s the one who needs to–)
The Joker laughs.
The Joker swings the crowbar, and Eddie screams. He screams for Wayne, for the girls, for Superman (Superman’s dead), for Wayne again. He keeps getting hit and he keeps screaming. He’s on the ground in the warehouse and yet he feels like he’s falling, failing, falling…
The warehouse disappears abruptly as someone grabs Eddie’s leg, dangling him upside down above… oh, god. The Ferris wheel is below, like he was on it and then… jumped. How did he get up there?
Fucking fear gas. Wayne’s going to be so pissed.
Wayne. Wayne is alive, Wayne is fine, and Eddie’s heart is still beating way too fast–
“Holy shit,” the person holding him says. Eddie shifts so he can see who it is, and the grip on his leg tightens. It’s Superboy, because of course it is. “What the hell were you doing?”
“Don’t know,” Eddie wheezes. He’s still being held upside down; the blood rushing to his head isn’t exactly helping. “Fear gas.”
“Fear–” Superboy cuts himself off and shakes his head. Eddie tries to bend so he’s more upright. It’s like trying to do a sit-up without any kind of support, and they’re still moving, so it doesn’t work well, and Eddie gives up after a few seconds. He can’t tell if that makes Superboy fly faster, but they’re definitely headed towards Gotham proper. It’s simultaneously forever and no time at all before they’re landing on top of a building (Eddie doesn’t have the brain power to identify it right now, even though that’s definitely going to matter when he needs to get home, since the Batcycle is still back at Amusement Mile) and Steve Superboy finally puts him down.
Eddie would really like to starfish out and focus on his breathing for a moment, but he doesn’t have time for that. He fumbles a little with the closure on the pouch that contains his fear gas antidote before managing to get it open and out. Then he has to open his cowl up just enough to stick the needle into his own neck – it’s a good thing he’s not afraid of needles. He ends up taking the whole thing down because it’s easier, and it’s not like he’s hiding his identity from Superboy anymore.
Naturally, someone else lands on the roof. “What’s he doing?” they whisper, presumably to Superboy. Great.
“I don’t know if we should do this tonight,” is the response. Even better.
Eddie puts his cowl back on, even though it’s too late now to hide from whatever flunky has arrived. “You called in reinforcements, really?” he says, pushing himself into a sitting position so he can see who…
It’s Supergirl.
For a split second Eddie thinks the antidote might not have worked, because he’s pretty sure his heart stops.
It’s weird to see the so-called Super Twins up close and together, now that he’s more used to seeing Superboy by himself. The costume doesn’t look like Robin’s old one at all; she ditched the skirt for a full unitard and cut her hair to above her shoulders. It looks good, and the two of them match perfectly.
He’s glad that she has that, and he’s also irrationally jealous that he died and she just… went and made a new friend.
“Supergirl,” he says, trying to force his voice to sound deeper even through the modulator. He’s pretty sure it doesn’t work, because he’s also trying not to hyperventilate a little bit. He doesn’t even manage a nice neutral tone. Eddie clears his throat, which would be a lot easier if all of the saliva hadn’t fucking vanished from his mouth, and takes his time climbing to his feet. “I assume Superboy’s already told you that your kind aren’t welcome in my city.”
That was a little better, but not much. He’s going to blame it on the dry throat.
Superboy’s eyes are locked on his partner’s face, like he’s waiting for her to react or say something. Shit. It’s bad enough that Steve knows that Eddie is Batman; Eddie didn’t want anyone else to know the rest (except Wayne, but Wayne was there for all of it). Even the band and Chrissy only know that he was Shadow, not why things changed.
Supergirl takes a step towards him, and Eddie automatically takes a step back. He can’t keep doing that; there’s only so much roof and he doesn’t feel up to swinging between buildings (or even just climbing down this one) yet.
“Shadow?” Supergirl says softly. It’s too gentle for Eddie to deal with. “How–”
Batman shakes his head. “I’m not who you think I am,” he interrupts. “Not anymore.” It’s only half a lie – being Batman has changed him, though how much at his core is questionable. It’s definitely harsh and more than a little desperate, because he’s still trying to believe it as much as he’s trying to convince them.
Superboy puts a hand on her arm. “Rob–”
“You were dead,” Robin says to Eddie, shaking her partner off.
Eddie doesn’t want to do this right now (or ever). He’s going to have an adrenaline crash any minute now, and he would really like for that to happen in the safety of the Batcave, not on a random rooftop with one of his former best friends and the guy who he can’t even call his ex because he fucked up their first date. (It wasn’t officially a date, but he wanted it to be. He can’t admit that out loud.) “I got better,” he says. “Look, I’m only about…” He looks at a watch that isn’t on his wrist. “Twenty minutes out from having experienced hallucinations of the scariest, worst things my mind could come up with thanks to a gas that a maniac left all over the city and someone else decided to set off, so if we could do this literally any other time…”
“Fear gas,” Superboy repeats, like he gets it now.
Robin scoffs. “Why, so you can just avoid us until we give up?”
“Yes!” he snaps. “Or was there some part of ‘leave me alone’ you didn’t understand?”
That actually makes her freeze. Superboy frowns and opens his mouth to say something, but this time Supergirl grabs his arm. He looks at her, takes in how blank her expression has gone, and closes his mouth.
“Fine,” she says, and Eddie already regrets this. “We’ll leave you alone. Come on, Steve.” She turns and rises up off the roof without waiting for a response from either man.
Eddie wonders if the two of them are equally careless about their secret identities under normal circumstances.
Superboy hesitates, glancing back at Eddie again. Eddie doesn’t know what he wants from him, but it must not be there, because Superboy sighs and then turns to follow his counterpart.
Eddie tells himself it’s a good thing.
He comes to consciousness slowly, and then all at once. His heartbeat only accelerates for a moment before evening out as he recognizes the Batcave’s ceiling above him and the very particular lumps of the shitty couch - which he and Jeff had hauled in and threw in the corner after Frank complained that the only place to take a nap was the medical bed - fucking up his spine. (Gareth had pointed out that they probably didn’t need to take naps in the Cave, but Eddie had gotten the couch anyway and it turns out Frank wasn’t wrong.)
(Did it count as a nap if one didn’t actually remember falling asleep?)
“Ed?” Wayne calls from the door that leads to the Batcave from the building above it. “Where are you?” He’s the only person besides Eddie who has the key to the storage closet that hides the door.
Eddie takes a deep breath and forces himself into a sitting position. He’s still in his costume, though at least the cowl is down. His mouth feels dry and gross too, with bonus points for a sore throat from the screaming, which suggests it hasn’t been too long. Still, his agent isn’t going to be too happy about that; he’s supposed to do some back-up vocals as part of a session tomorrow.
Later today.
Whichever.
Steve’s not the only one he fucked up with. Surprise, surprise.
He stretches a little and cracks his neck as Wayne makes his way over to the couch. Since he’s already got the cowl down, Eddie gets the full effect of the Disappointed Glare Mixed With Genuine Concern that his uncle had mastered by the time Eddie had been living with him for six months.
“What happened?” Wayne asks. “You didn’t call after the show, and then I get woken up by that stupid alarm of yours–”
“Fear gas,” Eddie says, figuring he’ll cut to the chase. He definitely cuts off the rant Wayne was gearing up to go on. “At Amusement Mile. I don’t know who put it there; I’m going to have to look into it.”
“You mean your friends are going to look into that,” Wayne says, sinking down onto the couch as well. “Obviously you got the antidote.”
“Yeah. I had some on me.”
Wayne grabs him and pulls him into a tight hug. “You promised me, Ed. When you decided to do this thing, you promised you wouldn’t…”
Fuck. Eddie clutches him back just as tightly, digging his gloved fingers into the flannel shirt his uncle perpetually prefers. “I’m okay, Wayne. I didn’t know until I was literally in front of a tank of the stuff. A… a friend got me away. I’m okay.”
“This time,” Wayne says, loosening his hold a little. “What about this friend of yours? Did he get hit with it too?”
God, Eddie can’t lie to Wayne. He just… hasn’t been telling him everything. “Uh, no. He can fly, so he… stayed out of it?”
Wayne frowns. “None of your band friends can fly.”
“... That’s because he’s not in the band. And not… really my friend. He was kind of… sent by the Justice League to try to recruit me.” All completely true. Wayne’s still looking at him like he knows there’s more to it.
“The way you said that suggests you turned them down.”
“I did.”
“Boy, what is wrong with you?”
“Why would I want to join them, Wayne? They’re a public face with no substance. They represent all the worst parts about being a hero.”
“Watch what you say about a group I co-founded, son,” Wayne chides before he sighs. “I’ll admit it’s not what it once was. But those changes didn’t come from the outside, and fixing them won’t either.” He eyes Eddie in a way that’s far too knowing, and Eddie has to fight not to squirm under his gaze. “Is that why Rex Harrington’s Superman has been in our news lately?”
“He doesn’t work for Harrington anymore,” Eddie says immediately. “He teamed up with Supergirl instead.”
“Good for him. Is he the other reason you tried to tell the Justice League ‘no’?”
Eddie leans back and slides down the couch a little. “Kind of. It’s worse than that, though.” He tells Wayne about meeting Steve in the coffee shop and inviting him to see the band play despite realizing who he was halfway through the conversation. He can’t see Wayne’s face in his current position. He doesn’t need to.
“Edward Thomas Munson.”
“I didn’t know!” he protests. “At first.”
“Did he know?”
“Apparently not.”
Wayne is quiet for a long moment. “You know I love you, Ed.”
“Of course, Wayne.”
“You do have a way of making things much more complicated than they need to be.”
Eddie sinks down more. “I know.”
“Then you also know what you need to do about it.”
“Yeah.”
The apartment is easy to find, two days and a full night of sleep later. It helps that Eddie’s had the address since he met Steve during the daytime, which… he feels bad about the level of stalking he sank to there. He’s trying not to dwell on it as he goes up the stairs to Steve’s place on the fourth floor – surely the Justice League could have sprung for somewhere with an elevator? Rex Harrington probably would have, and the cost of living is way lower in Gotham than in Metropolis. So someone somewhere is just being cheap.
As if he’d needed more reason to dislike them.
The door is open when Eddie walks down the hall, and his spine tingles until he gets close enough to see that it’s held open with a cardboard box full of stuff – that suggests it’s open on purpose, though even if someone had broken in, Steve is more than capable of defending himself. And he’s bulletproof. Eddie tells himself to get a grip.
Steve and Robin are both inside. It’s one of those open plan designs, where the living room and kitchen are pretty much just separated by a counter. Robin’s in the living room, while Steve is in the kitchen. They look like they’re putting stuff into boxes, rather than belatedly taking them out. Eddie frowns and lifts his hand to knock on the open door. Before he can do it, Steve spins around while Robin looks up. It’s a little uncanny how in sync they are.
“Eddie,” they say in unison. The only thing that saves it from being totally creepy is that they say his name in completely different tones. Robin is still seething, while Steve sounds relieved.
“Uh,” Eddie says intelligently. “Hi. Mind if I come in?”
“Sure,” Steve says quickly, despite the look Robin shoots him. “We’re just…” He gestures at the boxes around him. “Packing.”
“I’m going to take this box out to the car,” Robin says decisively, closing the box in front of her. It’s not even full and she doesn’t bother to tape it closed, but Steve doesn’t stop her as she moves to leave. She must be using a little of her superspeed or something, because Eddie very narrowly avoids getting shoulder-checked as he steps aside to let her out. He goes over to the kitchen.
“You’re leaving already?”
Steve shrugs and goes back to putting utensils in his open box, apparently. “You did tell me to get out of your city.”
“Yeah, when you first got here.”
Steve smiles ruefully. “I’m a slow learner.”
Eddie wonders what would happen if he asked Steve to stay. If he apologized to Robin, since they’re apparently a package deal and he can’t have one without the other. If he asked for a second date (would it count as a second one? It doesn’t matter).
They stand in silence for a few minutes while Steve fills up his box. Robin is taking a long time to come back, which Eddie probably shouldn’t be surprised by.
He takes a deep breath. “So how does one go about joining the Justice League, anyway?”
Steve blinks at him. “Really?”
Eddie tries to lean against the counter casually, even though it’s probably way too late for that. “I mean, if the offer is still open…”
“It is,” Steve says. “I don’t… You’ll probably have to come to the Hall of Justice to talk to people and get a communicator and stuff, but… We can exchange numbers, if you want. Or you can just go on your own and never talk to me again, that’s–”
“Not what I want,” Eddie cuts him off, pulling his phone out of his pocket and placing it on the counter in front of him. Steve gets his out too. Eddie’s a little surprised by the basic flip phone; Steve really seems like someone who should at least have a Razr. He doesn’t bother with anything clever for his contact name, since there’s only a handful of other contacts already in there. “Can I… is this just for Justice League stuff, or can I call you just to…” He glances up from the phone to meet Steve’s eyes. He has such pretty eyes.
There’s no harm in asking, right?
Steve bites his lip. (Eddie wants to bite it too. He should probably stop that.) “I’m not saying ‘no’,” he says after a moment, handing Eddie’s phone back to him. “I think there’s… a lot… between us, and with Robin. So it might be better if we’re just friends. Or even just ‘work acquaintances’, but I’d like to be friends.” He even does the air quotes for ‘work acquaintances’; it’s too cute. He looks so hopeful, even as he’s completely dashing Eddie’s.
That’s fine.
“Friends,” Eddie repeats, and holds out his hand to shake on it, like a total dumbass. He’s committed to it now, and luckily Steve smiles and they shake hands. Eddie even manages to make himself let go, though they both hold on a little too long.
Maybe he didn’t completely ruin things after all.
Robin is in the hallway when he leaves, after making a perfunctory offer to help with Steve’s packing (he’s torn between wanting to spend more time with Steve and not actually wanting to help him leave now; Steve saves him the trouble by gently turning him down again). She’s got her arms crossed, like she was waiting there just for him. Eddie has to assume she could hear everything, and that Steve still can.
“I’m still mad at you,” she says, moving off the wall she was leaning against.
“I know.”
“Why didn’t you… I mean, maybe you lost my number, I don’t know–”
“I was scared,” Eddie says. “It took months for me to get back to any kind of normal and I was scared of damn near everything for a long time. And then… it seemed like you all had moved on. So I told myself that that was okay and I should too.” It’s not nice, but it’s true.
Robin looks at him for a moment, less of a search and more of an appraisal. Then she steps closer, and Eddie manages to resist his urge to take a step back. “You’re an idiot. You have a week to call Barb and Nancy before I do it for you.” He flinches slightly, and then again when she punches his arm before throwing her arms around him in a brief hug. “I’m glad you’re alive, but if you hurt Steve again, you won’t be,” she whispers into his ear before letting go. She shoves him away and goes back into the apartment without waiting for Eddie to unfreeze.
“I missed you too!” he calls after a few seconds, recovering just a little too late. She sticks her arm out of the open door, middle finger pointed upward. He manages to hold in his laugh, but not his grin.
He probably deserves that.
2012
Robin’s sitting in the chair in front of the Batcomputer when he gets back from patrol, spinning around like Eddie used to when he was thirteen and new to Wayne’s version of the Batcave. Like any child does in their parent’s office chair, really. He’s not surprised to see her; his phone is full of unread text messages and missed calls. He doesn’t approach her until after he’s showered and changed into sweatpants and a Superboy t-shirt that’s been in the Cave for casual wear for a few years (it was actually a gift from Robin for one of his birthdays).
“I’m assuming Wayne let you in,” he says lightly.
“Bold of you to assume he had to.” Robin stops spinning and looks up at him. Her eyes linger on his shirt, and he resists the urge to cross his arms and cover it. “You haven't been answering your phone.”
“I know.”
“So I decided to come get you in person. We’re having a movie night.”
He raises an eyebrow. “It’s one in the morning.”
“Not in California.” Which means she wants to take him to Titans Tower, where he doesn’t want to go.
“And if I don’t want to?”
She grins, and it’s not even forced. “It’s non-negotiable.”
He knows how to disarm her, at least long enough to get to the cabinet where he keeps the one piece of kryptonite he has if he really wanted to. He just doesn’t think it’s worth the effort. He’ll probably fall asleep as soon as he’s on a couch anyway. “Fine. But let the record show that I went under duress.”
She rolls her eyes. “Yeah, okay.”
The common room in Titans Tower, with its way-too-big TV and proportional couch is empty, and Robin continues past it to another, smaller room. This one has a more reasonably-sized setup, but more importantly, Nancy and Barb are already sitting on the couch across from it.
Eddie stops in the doorway, a lump forming in his throat.
Robin settles on the couch, leaving a space between her and Nancy. “Come on,” she says after a moment. “I still have to fly you back in the morning.”
Eddie swallows before, just this once, doing as he’s told. Nancy tucks her arm in his, while Robin plops a bowl of popcorn into his lap. Barb immediately steals a piece, and something loosens a little in his chest. He takes a deep breath and exhales slowly.
“So, what are we watching?”
Notes:
Chapter Warnings:
- Hallucinations of violence, potential loss of a parental figure, and gore (nothing worse than on the show).
(I tried to add a link back to the top of the chapter, but the html did not want to cooperate for the "view entire work" version. Sorry!)No particular fun lore notes this time. Thanks for reading!
Chapter 6: superbabysitter
Notes:
We're almost halfway through! (And the next chapter we'll be more than halfway through. Shhh.) This might be the least angsty chapter of the fic, actually. Enjoy!
Chapter Warnings:
- Implied child abuse/neglect (mostly discussed/mentioned, never on screen).
- Implied child endangerment (teenage superheroes).
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
2007
“Starfire’s off men right now, but what about one of the Lanterns?”
“Ugh, no, Robin.”
Something that feels like an extra breeze blows past Steve as he and Robin return to Titans Tower, knocking him slightly into the open front door. At least, he thinks that’s what it was. He’s also carrying a ridiculous number of boxes, so maybe he just lost his balance for a second. Robin, a few steps ahead of him, doesn’t even pause, so obviously she didn’t feel it.
“Ooh, maybe Vixen!”
“I don’t want to date anyone else from the Justice League, Rob,” he protests. “I don’t want to date anyone.” He’s still thinking about Eddie, anyway. Not that he should be thinking about Eddie. There’s nothing to think about except how they’re going to be good friends (he lies to himself).
Robin sighs dramatically. “Fine,” she says, dragging out the word. “But if you change your mind–”
“You will be the first person I tell,” he assures her. “So Starfire’s not dating men right now, huh?”
“Don’t even, Steven.”
A few days later, he’s pretty sure that a ghost has moved into the Tower. He and Robin both keep seeing something move out of the corner of their eyes, only for it to be gone when they look directly at where it was. When they check the security cameras, only one of them had managed to catch a blur that’s almost out of frame. They’ve both felt a breeze like the one he felt the day he came back multiple times.
Robin’s the one who suggests it might be someone with super speed after they discover that their ghost has been eating their food – he and Robin can easily eat more than a regular human, what with their fast metabolisms, but they usually supplement their diets with a lot of time on the roof, soaking in the sun so that they don’t have to. (Being half-alien is weird.)
“I don’t think they’re eating enough, though,” she adds, “unless they, like, brought their own snacks too. Especially if they’re a teenager.”
“You think they might be?”
She shrugs. “I don’t know why an adult would sneak in here and keep hiding from us. Anyway, Hopper used to complain about how much the Flash ate, and he’s a full-grown man. Our ghost isn’t even taking enough for a regular kid.”
“They can’t be getting much sleep either, since we still can’t get them on the cameras,” Steve says. That’s the part that bothers him the most: someone who felt like they needed to sneak into Titans Tower to hide and still isn’t getting enough food or rest. If it is a kid, where are their parents? Are they hiding from their parents?
He starts making an extra plate at meals and leaving it on the kitchen table anyway. It’s clean every time he comes back for it.
In the end, they catch the speedster without any active effort on either Steve or Robin’s part. They find her sleeping on the common room sofa – Steve assumes the exhaustion finally caught up with her.
The girl looks young, probably in her early teens, with long red hair in two tight, slightly messy braids. Her jeans and red jacket are worn enough that Steve wonders how long she’s been running from whatever brought her here.
“Do we wake her up?” Robin whispers to him as they stand behind the couch, looking down at the girl. “I don’t want to wake her up, but I don’t want to lose her again.”
The girl’s eyes fly open with the worst timing, and they just barely manage to reach out to keep her from getting off the couch.
“Wait!” Steve and Robin cry in unison. The girl freezes.
“It’s okay,” Steve says, pulling his hand back a little. “We’re not going to hurt you.”
“Like you could,” the girl says defiantly. “You didn’t even know I was here.”
Robin snorts and Steve elbows her. “We had a feeling. What’s your name, kid?”
She appraises them for a moment. “Max,” she says finally. “And I’m not a kid; I’m fifteen.”
Steve remembers being fifteen. She’s still a kid.
“Where are your parents, Max?” Robin asks. Well, at least Steve wasn’t the one to say it, especially given the responding dirty look.
“My mom hasn’t noticed I’m gone, if that’s what you’re asking,” Max says, crossing her arms. “ She ’s too busy with her new husband. I’m pretty sure my powers are my dad’s fault, given how fast he left us.”
“Did you come here to be a superhero?” Robin and Max both look at him weird for asking that, which is kind of a relief. “Because we’ll teach you to use your powers, but I’m not going to sign off on a costume or whatever until you’re at least sixteen.” He would have said eighteen if he thought he could stop her.
“Like you could stop me,” Max says, and Steve has to fight the urge to smile. She tilts her head. “What do you even know about super speed?”
He shrugs. “Enough. Are you interested?”
Max hesitates. “Do I have to be a superhero to stay here?”
“No,” Steve and Robin both say immediately. “You can stay here either way,” Robin assures her.
Max looks them both over again. “On one condition. Race me.”
“Deal.”
Steve loses so, so badly. It’s only a little on purpose, and he thinks it was totally worth it later that afternoon (well after Max has picked out her new room and started taking her handful of belongings out of the backpack she’d kept hidden before) when she hands him a piece of paper. It’s a drawing of a weird, pink, hippo-like creature with a dopey expression wearing a red cape and with hair kind of like his, if he squints.
“Thanks?” he says, not sure what to do with it.
“That’s you,” Max says, her face deadly serious for just a second before she breaks out into a grin. “It’s a Slowpoke.”
That’s where he’s seen that thing before. “Like the Pokemon?”
“Yes, Slowpoke.”
He has a strong urge to reach out and ruffle her hair. He resists it. Barely. “I’m hanging this on the fridge.”
“Gross. I didn’t know you were such a sap.”
“Well, now you do.”
“I changed my mind; I want Robin to teach me.”
“I thought you wanted her anyway, since she’s faster than I am.”
“Whatever. Sap.”
(He does hang it on their fridge. It stays there for the next five years, until Robin carefully takes it down to frame it.)
Max has been living with them for two months when Nancy strolls into the Tower like she owns the place (which, to be fair, she kind of did, once), a tall, sullen-faced boy trailing behind her.
Robin and Max are up on the roof playing soccer (while they are both quick, a considerable amount of their game time is spent rescuing the ball from the ground or even the bay surrounding the island), and Steve has come down to the kitchen to get water to take back up to them.
“There you are,” Nancy says, pulling the boy over to where Steve is. He’s almost a foot taller than her, with a few shared features – particularly the dark, curly hair – and he’s looking everywhere but at Steve or Nancy. “This is Mike.”
“Okay…?” Steve has no idea what’s happening right now.
“He’s my little brother,” Nancy continues in a tone that is definitely part of why they didn’t work out romantically. “He has the same powers I do, and he needs a teacher.”
“I don’t,” Mike says. His voice is just as sharp as hers, though where Nancy’s eyes are as blue as the sky, his are dark as night. “I was doing fine.”
“You broke the dinner table last night.” Nancy turns back to Steve. “I would teach him, but I’m across the country for school and that’s not fair to anyone.”
Steve frowns. “What about Wonder Woman?”
“She didn’t want me because I’m a boy,” Mike snaps, clenching his fists.
Ouch.
Nancy presses her lips together for a moment. “Aunt Diana suggested that she might not be the best choice,” she says diplomatically. Mike scoffs but doesn’t add anything else. “So we came here. Robin said that you guys have taken in a speedster?”
“Yeah, Max.” He glances at Mike. “She and Robin are up on the roof, if you want to meet them?”
Mike’s eyes narrow. “What, just like that?”
“Yeah? I mean, my and Robin’s powers have a different source, but we’re figuring out how to train Max, so I don’t see why we can’t do that for you too.”
Nancy smiles. Mike still looks suspicious. “Why?”
Steve shrugs. “Because you deserve the chance to figure things out in a safe space? And the Tower is a lot more durable than the average house.”
“Fine,” Mike says, crossing his arms. “Thanks.”
“Thank you,” Nancy echoes more genuinely. She gives Steve a quick kiss on the cheek. “I’ll see you at Thanksgiving at the Byers?”
Mike scowls. “You aren’t coming home for Thanksgiving?”
Nancy sighs. “Mike…”
He throws his hands up. “Whatever. It’s not like you were around that much even before you started college anyway.” He stomps out of the room.
Steve’s instinct to follow (Mike’s never been in the Tower before and he’s upset, what happens if he gets lost?) is so strong that he doesn’t realize he’s started moving until Nancy gently touches his arm.
“Let him go. Getting lost might be good for him.”
Steve’s still looking at the doorway. “Are you sure?”
Nancy sighs again. “No. But he’s agreed to stay, so… Good luck with that.”
“I have a feeling I’m going to need it.”
“How do you talk to an angry teenage boy with abandonment issues?” Steve asks later that night. It’s only the third time he’s called Eddie since leaving Gotham, though it’s the first time it wasn’t related to Justice League business. Maybe he should have at least said ‘hi’ first. (Maybe he also shouldn’t be calling Eddie while laying in bed. Whatever.)
“I feel a little targeted with that question, not going to lie,” Eddie replies. “You might be better off talking to my uncle, though; it’s not like I had to talk to myself… like that. Everyone talks to themselves, it’s normal. Shut up.”
Steve presses his lips together to hold in the laugh building in his throat. “I didn’t say anything.”
Eddie huffs, but he doesn’t hang up. “Why do you ask, anyway?”
“Nancy dropped her younger brother off here this morning. He picked a bedroom and hasn’t come out since.”
“What?” The sound muffles a little, like Eddie had to shift his hold on the phone. “I thought Mikey was supposed to be the normal kid.”
Steve sits up. “Okay, what do you know? Because Nancy’s told me that her mom was an Amazon and married the most average man she could find, but that’s about it.”
“Same, unfortunately. She has a little sister named Holly who’s…” Eddie trails off to (presumably) do the math. “Eight, by now, maybe? Nancy said her mom expected her and Holly to have powers like her because the Amazons are all women, and that Wonder Woman promised to train them both when they were old enough.” He pauses. “Did Nancy ask…?”
“That’s why he’s here and not in D.C.”
“Ouch. Poor kid.”
Steve sighs. “Yeah.” He wonders if Eddie’s in the Batcave right now or still in his apartment – the background ambient noise suggests the Cave, since there’s fewer street sounds. It’s getting close to his patrol time, but Steve had had to watch a movie with Robin and Max before he could call. (He’d tried to get Mike to join them, only to be told to go away.)
“Weird question, but is my room still there? Or at least my stuff?”
“Huh?” Steve thinks back to the first time he explored Titans Tower and the one bedroom that wasn’t empty. “Yeah, I think so. Why?”
“Give Mike some of my CDs. An angry kid ought to have angry music to thrash around to.”
“If he breaks anything, I’m sending the bill to you.”
“And pass up the opportunity to make Oliver Queen pay for it?” He almost thinks he can hear Eddie smiling. He’s definitely imagining it, and his own lips curve upward in return.
“Fair point.” A pause. Steve shifts to stand up. “Thanks, Eddie.”
“Hey, it’s not like I’m using any of it. Let me know how it goes?”
“Of course. I’ll see you at the League meeting next week.”
Steve’s only heard of a few of the bands covered by Eddie’s old CD collection, but the offer gets Mike out of his room, so he’ll take what he can get. Then he has to introduce Mike and Max to each other.
The two don’t exactly hate each other. They just form some sort of rivalry that neither Steve nor Robin can hope to understand within moments of meeting each other. It seems, as the weeks go on, to be centered around their relationships with Steve specifically.
He’s kind of flattered.
He thinks.
Robin actually works on most of Max’s personal training, while Steve works with Mike, and they come together under Steve’s supervision for more basic training – particularly running and weight training without using either of their powers.
“Why do we have to do this?” Mike complains. It’s only partly because Max keeps outrunning him, even though Steve has tried to emphasize that speed is not currently the name of the game.
“For stamina, mostly,” he explains. “Being able to run really fast or throw around, like, a dumpster isn’t going to do either of you a lot of good if you can’t do it for very long.” He had learned that the hard way after he was no longer under his dad’s control. Rex had only allowed Steve out for specific missions, so when he started working with Robin instead, he didn’t know how to pace himself. It wasn’t much of an issue now, but he was still half human and did have (eventual) limits.
They talk about superhero names too. Max decides on Zoomer right away, like she’s been thinking about it for a while. Mike is more hesitant and (as Steve has noticed he likes to do when he’s getting defensive) turns the question on Steve.
“You’re, like, an adult, aren’t you? Why do you still go by Superboy?”
Steve shrugs. They’re in the middle of cool-down stretches after their individual training, and Mike can finally touch his toes with very little effort. “To go with Robin, mostly. Why? Did you want to use it?”
Mike’s cheeks turn red. “Why would I want your dumb hero name?”
“A lot of heroes have legacy names. You could too, if you wanted.”
Mike is quiet as they go through the last couple of stretches. “What if I wanted to be Wonder Boy?” he asks as they stand up. “Not because of Wonder Woman, but, like… in spite of her? To show who I am, even though it’s not what she wanted?”
Steve smiles at him. “I think we could work with that.”
“Do you think I should go back to being Superman?” he asks Eddie that night.
“Did you ask Robin that yet?” is the immediate response. It’s both nice and terrible to be known so well.
“No. I haven’t even been thinking about it for very long.”
There’s a slight rustling, kind of like Eddie shrugged and then remembered Steve couldn’t see him. “I mean, I think you can do whatever you want. It’s not like anyone else is using the name right now.”
“Yeah, I know. It didn’t really feel like mine the first time, you know?” If anyone’s going to understand taking a name that belonged to someone else, it’s Eddie.
“I still look over my shoulder sometimes when someone calls me Batman,” Eddie admits. “Like they’re really talking to my uncle, and I’m just standing in the way. I can play it off with the rogues, but it was really embarrassing that time it happened with the commissioner.”
Steve laughs. “See, that’s the kind of thing I’d be worried about. I don’t have the benefit of being brainwashed this time.”
“Ex-fucking-scuse me?”
Right. Eddie doesn’t actually know about all of that. So Steve explains, and it’s all out of order and probably paints his dad in a worse light than he means to, since the only other times he’s told this story is to Robin and the Byers family. Eddie is very quiet through the whole thing, to the point that Steve would wonder if he had hung up if he couldn’t hear him breathing.
“And then I came to Titans Tower and met Robin,” he finishes. He waits a few seconds, wondering if that was all too much for Eddie – not that Eddie doesn’t have his own tragic backstory, though most of what Steve knows about that comes from Robin. He hasn’t asked for the details because it’s none of his business until Eddie decides to tell him.
“Jesus Christ, Steve.”
At least he didn’t hang up. “It’s fine. Things are way better now, obviously.”
Eddie takes a deep breath. “So tomorrow I’m going to tell you about my dad, because I think hearing about yours tonight was enough, but I want…” He swallows. “I want to tell you, and you can tell Robin after if you want to because it’s actually going to be pretty impressive if I manage to tell the story once but I want to tell you. And then the next time we see each other we’re going to give each other the manliest of hugs and then never speak of it again, okay?”
Steve’s not about to turn down a hug from a friend, especially from Eddie. And he’s good at listening. “Okay.”
At Thanksgiving Nancy asks how Mike is doing, and Steve realizes she hasn’t called them at Titans Tower to talk to him directly. He (mostly mentally) grits his teeth and tells her about her brother’s progress anyway. Mike still has a major chip on his shoulder, but it’s mostly directed at the world and less at Steve, Robin, or Max these days. Jonathan and Joyce listen politely while Steve talks about his two… well, they’re kind of like his kids, aren’t they? Will is the one who asks even more questions, including if Steve’s going to start up the Teen Titans again.
“I don’t know,” he says honestly. “That’s up to them, really. I think they might want to come up with their own team name, though, if they end up making more friends.” The Tower is huge and could definitely house more than the four teens it was originally built for. The idea of it being full of life is kind of appealing to Steve, who grew up in a near-silent penthouse by himself more often than not. “Never say never, I guess.”
2008
“Hey, Superboy, can I talk to you for a minute?”
The Justice League’s first big meeting of the year has just wrapped up. Robin went to catch up with Starfire, after totally pretending she didn’t see the knowing smile Steve gave her when she said that’s what she was doing, and Steve had been about to try to get to Batman before Captain Marvel cornered him. Despite (or maybe because of) having similar power sets (one would think that enhanced strength and speed with flight was the standard or something), he hasn’t really talked to the other hero much before.
“Uh, sure? Where did you want to…?”
“One of the rooms down the hall is fine, I just… Sorry. I’ll explain when we get there.” Captain Marvel is a big guy, taller and broader than Steve is, and to see him fidgety and nervous is just weird.
Steve follows him to the conference room anyway, and once they’re inside, the two of them just kind of stare at each other.
“Are you okay, dude?” Steve asks.
“Sorry,” Captain Marvel says again. “I need you to promise not to freak out, okay?”
Because that’s always a phrase guaranteed to prevent freak outs. “Okay…?”
Captain Marvel smiles weakly before he begins to glow, and the light obscures his whole body as he… shrinks.
And then Will Byers is standing there, still smiling sheepishly up at Steve.
“What the fuck?” Steve says immediately. “No, how the fuck?”
“You promised you wouldn’t freak out!” Will protests, shifting back into Captain Marvel’s adult form.
“That was before I knew it was you!” Steve can see the resemblance now that he knows to look for it. “What happened, Will? Who did this to you?”
Will bites his lip. “A wizard.”
“That’s not funny.”
“It’s the truth!”
Steve puts his hands on his hips. “Does your mom or Jonathan know?” He already knows the answer, but he wants Will to say it.
“No. No one else knows.”
“Captain Marvel’s been a member of the League for at least two years.”
“I know.”
“You could have told me.”
“I had it under control.”
God. “It’s not something you should have had to have ‘under control’, Will. You’re still just a kid.”
“I’m almost the same age you were when you started doing this,” Will insists.
“And I wouldn’t have if I’d had the choice,” Steve shoots back.
“I didn’t ask a wizard to give me superpowers! It just happened! And that’s not really why I decided to tell you!” He takes a deep breath. “If you’re starting up a superhero team, I want to join. Captain Marvel’s an adult, so I know I can’t be a Teen Titan or whatever, but I could be, like, a League-sanctioned supervisor or something, and then I can at least spend time around other kids like me.”
Steve is also too old to be a Teen Titan; Max and Mike have been considering the name ‘Young Justice’, which Robin likes and Steve thinks sounds kind of pretentious. He can’t imagine being a superhero from the age of eleven by himself, and he wishes he’d known sooner so Will didn’t have to be alone. “You can spend time with them now, Will. I’m not going to stop you. But we have to tell your mom first.”
Will’s eyes are just as big, puppy-like, and impossible to refuse as they were when Steve first met him. “Really?”
“Yeah. Come on, I’ll take you back to the Tower tonight if your mom doesn’t ground you for the rest of your life.”
Max and Mike end up helping Steve, Robin, and Will fight off an alien invasion in April, before either of them have turned sixteen. After that, while they still do regular training sessions, Steve can’t exactly forbid them from going out in their superhero personas. Will figures out something with his magical powers that makes him look a little younger when he transforms, though still older than he actually is – somewhere around Steve and Robin’s age, which at least isn’t as awkward with the other two.
Steve does try to let them do their own thing, which is mostly focusing mostly on nearby Jump City while he and Robin venture further out.
This turns out to be a mistake.
Steve walks into the common room one day, fresh off a visit to Gotham (he and Eddie were going over a proposal for the League to start a fund for the loved ones of fallen heroes), only to find a fourth teenager on the couch. He pauses.
“Hi?”
The boy, dressed in pants that Steve recognizes as Mike’s and a sweatshirt he knows to be his own (which raises the question of who snuck into his room), waves. “Hi. I’m Lucas.”
“He goes by Arsenal,” Will says, always more helpful than the two other teenagers Steve knows. “We stole him from Green Arrow.”
“Is it stealing if I came willingly?” Lucas asks.
“Yes,” Steve’s three troublemakers chorus.
“Can we keep him?” Max asks, as if she and Mike aren’t practically sitting on the kid. They all look at him with the biggest, pleading puppy-dog eyes they can pull off. (Will does it best, but they all know Steve’s a softie.)
He pinches the bridge of his nose. It’s not like he’s against annoying Oliver Queen by stealing his sidekick, and it’s not like the kids are going to listen if he tries to say no after they’ve already done the thing. He sighs and puts on a smile. “Welcome to the team, Lucas.”
It turns out that in addition to training under Green Arrow (which is apparently justified to his parents as training for the Olympics) and saving the world with Young Justice on his few free weekends now, Lucas is on his high school’s basketball team. He cheerfully tells Steve about how he scored the winning basket at the last second during their championship game while they’re washing dishes together a few weeks after the other three kidnapped him.
Steve’s reminded of Tommy, a little, before other things got in the way of their friendship. (Tommy probably still thinks that Steve is dead.) “You know,” he says to Lucas, handing him a dish to dry off, “we could probably set up a hoop on the island.”
Lucas brightens even more. “You think the others would want to play?”
“Maybe, but I was actually kind of hoping you’d teach me. I’ve always liked watching basketball, but I never got to play as a kid.”
Lucas’ mouth drops open. “Not even in gym class?”
Steve smiles ruefully. “My dad got a special doctor’s note saying I couldn’t do any contact sports. It sucked. My best friend was on the team and he was always bugging me to ask my dad to change his mind.”
“That would suck,” Lucas agrees. Then he grins. “I can definitely teach you, though. It’ll be fun.”
Steve grins back. “That’s what I’m thinking.”
(It is.)
The day after Max’s birthday in July (they celebrated with pizza and an ice cream cake, and no one asked why she was at the Tower instead of with her parents), Batman arrives at Titans Tower in a mini plane with his logo messily spray-painted on the side.
He shows up while Steve is sunbathing (shirtless) on the roof – he and Robin trade off weekends home, and it’s her turn to visit her parents while Steve supervises the kids, who are down at the basketball court. (Max is running literal circles around Mike, but no one has hit the dirt yet, so Steve knows they’re fine).
He can’t see Eddie’s mouth because of the cowl, of course, but Steve is pretty sure the other man is grinning as he exits the plane – landing on the top of the Tower was unfortunately the best option, since it’s the longest strip of space in the immediate area.
“I hear you’re collecting teenagers,” Eddie says, and yeah, Steve can definitely hear the grin.
“Don’t say it like that,” he complains, putting his hands on his hips. (He is not showing off his abs, and Robin’s voice in his head can shut up about it.) “It sounds wrong when you say it like that.”
Eddie laughs. “Anyway, I’m here to help.”
Steve raises an eyebrow. “You’re here to help me babysit a bunch of kids with superpowers?”
Eddie shakes his head. “No way. I brought you another one.” A shorter person in black and purple, who should not have been able to completely hide behind Eddie and yet somehow did, pops out and waves. “He doesn’t have powers, but I promise he can keep up.”
“I’m Spoiler!” the new kid says, stepping forward and holding out a hand for Steve to shake. “You’re Superman, right?”
Steve shakes the kid’s hand. Spoiler seems to be… enthusiastic. “Uh, yeah? I just decided to change it back pretty recently, though.” He glances at Eddie, who must have told him. “So you’re interested in joining Young Justice?”
“Yes! I’ve been studying their past missions, and I think I’ve figured out how I can be a meaningful and useful addition to the team.” He’s practically bouncing on his heels.
Very enthusiastic. “That’s awesome. Do you want to meet the others? You came on a good weekend; they’re all here.” Which he’s betting is also something Eddie knew, though he doesn’t remember mentioning it.
Down on the ground, the concrete cracks, which means Mike probably tried to tackle Max. It’s audible even to normal ears, since Eddie and Spoiler both look in that direction. Steve winces.
“It might be better if I fly you both down.”
Spoiler stops bouncing. “You can take us both?”
Steve smirks. “What, like it’s hard?”
(It’s better that he carries both of them at the same time, so he can ignore the feelings that come up whenever he gets physically close to Eddie. Or talks to Eddie. Or thinks about Eddie.)
Once Mike is dusted off (and given a Superman band-aid that he complains about even though all of the kids get disappointed when Steve breaks out the plain ones), Spoiler takes off his cowl and introduces himself to the other kids as Dustin. They decide to head inside to the giant TV in the common room, where the boys show off the attached gaming systems while Max flops down on the couch to claim the spot she wants first. That’s going to start another argument, but it won’t get physical this time – it only took breaking the TV once and living without for a month for the teens to learn not to attack each other inside.
Eddie eyes the setup as they walk past it. “We didn’t have that when I lived here.” He might actually be pouting.
“I told the League’s accountant it was good for the kids’ hand-eye coordination and for cooperative teamwork,” Steve says. He starts to reach out to lead Eddie towards the kitchen before he thinks better of it and just walks. It doesn’t matter, because Eddie follows him anyway.
Batman and Superman just saw each other two weeks ago, at the quarterly Justice League meeting, where they finally presented the proposal for the fallen heroes fund. (Steve was the face of that, since people can see his, and did most of the talking, but he made it clear that it was a joint effort. It’s going to be worked into next year’s budget.)
They make a good team on the field too, the handful of times they’ve met up for more global crises.
Steve grabs them both water bottles out of the fridge, and they settle at the kitchen table. “You didn’t mention that you have a sidekick now.”
Eddie snorts, reaching for the back of his cowl to unzip it. “Don’t let Dustin hear you call him that. He’s been trying to insist on the term ‘partner’, like he’s been around as long as the other guys have.”
Steve tilts his head. “So how did that happen?”
Eddie pulls the cowl forward and tosses his hair a little. Steve doesn’t stare. Really, he doesn’t. “The little twerp started following me on patrol.” His voice is fond, the way Steve is pretty sure he sounds when he talks about his own twerps. “You want to know why he calls himself that? He said that he wants to ‘spoil’ the villains’ plans. Full emphasis when he says it, by the way. The pun is very much intentional. And then when I found out his name and looked into his background–”
Steve snorts. “Of course you did.”
“It’s part of the job, okay,” Eddie says, waving his hands. Steve totally isn’t fascinated by Eddie’s hands; he’s supposed to be aloof and distant with Eddie (or at least just friends). Even though it’s been a year and he has never been aloof or distant with Eddie. He has never been just friends with Eddie. Who is still talking. “Anyway, it all hit a little too close to home: single mom, dad not in the picture, too smart for his own good. At least the others were, like, close to my age when they started out and I became Batman. We learned together, you know? Meanwhile I’m learning all kinds of sympathy for Wayne, because I’m pretty sure the kid is smarter than me. His mouth definitely is, and Wayne didn’t get to send me home for someone else to deal with at the end of the night.”
Steve takes a sip of his water to hide his smile. “Sounds like a match made in heaven.”
Eddie leans back, tilting his chair in a way that would be risky for someone with worse balance. “A match made in hell, maybe. Heaven has no contact with Gotham.”
Steve leans forward, elbows on the table. “God, you’re so dramatic. Are you sure you don’t want to add a cape to your costume? I feel like you need one.”
Immediately Eddie stands up. “ I feel a movie night coming on,” he says, pulling Steve to his feet as well, “and not only will you stop asking me about adding a cape, you will be ditching yours.”
Steve wonders, as Eddie lets go of his hands, if he would hold them again if he asked. Not that Steve’s going to ask. It wouldn’t be fair. “Sure, Edna,” he says lightly instead. “Is this a group movie night, or just us?”
He probably shouldn’t have asked that, even though he wants it: the two of them alone in the dark together, preferably watching something other than a family-friendly Disney movie (but still something they wouldn’t have to pay too much attention to… if only).
He doesn’t breathe again until Eddie tilts his head and grins. “Well, I do have to make sure all of the children are properly educated.”
The kids have all seen the movie before, but no one suggests a different one, and it isn’t long before they’re all settled on the big couch (after a scuffle for the spot to Steve’s left, which Will took while Max and Mike were distracted), Eddie to Steve’s right with a bowl of popcorn between them.
It’s nice, and it’s almost enough.
Notes:
Fun notes:
- There isn't really anyone in the Flash family named Zoomer, but it was too perfect.
- While Nancy's Wonder Girl was meant to be inspired by Donna Troy (the original Wonder Girl), Mike as Wonder Boy does take a little inspiration from her successor, Cassie Sandsmark, specifically that at one point she was revealed to be a daughter of Zeus. That is the most likely source of his powers, but also something that will remain a family secret/mystery.
- Captain Marvel is better known these days as Shazam, which was originally the name of the wizard who bestowed powers onto young Billy Batson.
- Arsenal is the later identity used by Roy Harper, who started out as Green Arrow's sidekick Speedy. The name and primary weapon are the only thing he and Lucas have in common here.
- Spoiler is actually an identity of Stephanie Brown, who also briefly served as Robin and less briefly was Batgirl. Dustin using that name is partly to continue avoiding use of the name Robin, but also because he would.
Chapter 7: fathers and sons
Notes:
And now we're officially more than halfway through!
Chapter Warnings:
- Eddie is very much grieving and depressed and not dealing well with either of those things.
- Rex Harrington sucks.Enjoy!
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
2012
When his phone rings, Eddie assumes it’s his agent; he finally agreed to a session next week, and she’s probably calling with the details. Except it’s a female voice he doesn’t recognize.
“Hi, is this Edward Munson?”
Too late, Eddie actually looks at the phone number calling him. Local area code, which tells him nothing. “Uh, yeah?”
“Excellent. Mr. Munson, I’m calling from Rex Harrington’s office in Gotham. He’s asked me to set up a time for you to come in and speak with him.”
God, he forgot that there’s a RexCorp building in Gotham. It’s probably the only one in the world that doesn’t have the company name on the side, since it’s not far from Wayne Tower and that wouldn’t go over too well with the locals. Not that that’s the most important part of what this lady, whoever she is, just said, and Eddie is definitely quiet for a little too long while he tries to process it, because what ?
“Mr. Munson? Are you still there?”
“Yeah, I’m still… Why does Rex want to talk to me?” There was only one reason he could think of, and it wasn’t something he wanted to discuss with Rex Harrington of all people when he wouldn’t talk about it to Wayne or his therapist.
“Mr. Harrington would like to speak to you about a private matter at your earliest convenience.”
Jesus. Even Wayne’s most corporatized secretary had never talked like that… to their faces. Eddie should just say ‘no thank you’; the activation of his fight or flight instinct (which has always landed on flight more than fight) isn’t her fault. And yet. “I’m, uh. Not busy. So whenever is fine.”
“Great!” She sounds too chipper to be working for Rex Harrington. “I’ll put you down for ten o’clock tomorrow, how does that sound?”
“Sure.” He can always decide to skip the appointment in the morning. It’s not like Rex is going to send goons to drag him over to the RexCorp building if he doesn’t show – that would be too uncouth for him.
That night, Wayne is waiting for Eddie in the Batcave.
He’s sitting at the Batcomputer with the main camera feeds already pulled up. He’s alone, which at least means it’s not a full intervention yet, but Eddie’s pretty sure that’s on the horizon.
“Are you planning on running comms tonight, old man?” Eddie asks, trying to physically and metaphorically breeze past the impending conversation as he heads over to the lockers. The guys could be here any moment. (Dustin texted and said he wasn’t coming. Again. A few more missed nights and Eddie… might have to be a giant hypocrite about it, so that’s probably not going to happen.)
“I let Oracle know she could take the night off,” Wayne confirms, his eyes locked onto his nephew. Good; maybe Suzie will talk to Dustin so Eddie doesn’t have to. “I was hoping to talk to you before you went out.”
Eddie starts to strip out of his clothes, taking the moment when his shirt is over his head to decide if he’s going to play dumb or be honest with Wayne. “About what?”
Dumb it is.
Wayne sighs deeply. “I know you miss him, son. I also know that you aren’t really dealing with your grief.”
Eddie picks up the shirt he wears under his costume – the suit may have changed, but his undergarments didn’t really need to. “Then you should know that I’m not ready for this conversation, Wayne.”
“Are you ever going to be?”
No, he wants to say. Gareth’s arrival saves him the trouble.
“Hi, Wayne. Are you running comms tonight?”
“I am,” Wayne replies, shooting Eddie a look that says they aren’t done talking. Eddie pretends he doesn’t see it.
His patrol route takes him past Wayne Tower, as it often does. There’s a figure in blue with a red cape fluttering behind them standing on the top of the building, and Eddie has to remind himself that Steve hasn’t (hadn’t) worn a cape in years in order to catch his breath. He knows it isn’t Steve, and Robin’s cape is shorter. Which leaves the Super he wants to talk to the least.
He’s far enough away that he could just turn around and avoid this part of town for the rest of the night. And however many nights it takes before Superman goes the fuck away. The problem is that he already knows how well that doesn’t work. It’s better to get it over with and find out what the hell Hopper wants.
Without the buffer of another person, Eddie really doesn’t know how to deal with the man who provided the Kryptonian half of Steve’s genetics. (He can deal with Rex. He always expects Rex to suck. Jim Hopper was supposed to be a great guy.) He lands on the roof with practiced ease, and he isn’t surprised to immediately attract Hopper’s attention.
“Batman,” Superman greets him, nodding like they’re more than passing acquaintances.
“Jim,” Eddie replies, crossing his arms and leaning against the giant W. “It’s Nightwing now.”
Superman shifts uncomfortably. Good. “Right. That was one of the things I wanted to talk to you about.”
Eddie grins up at the man without any humor. (Sometimes he misses the full anonymity of the cowl rather than his new mask, but sometimes people need to see his expressions.) “Do you have a problem with it? Because I’m not changing it.”
“No, I…” Superman swallows. Eddie hates noticing that Steve would shift the same way when he felt awkward. “It suits you. I just wanted to ask if you came up with it on your own, or…”
And now Eddie is wishing for the cowl again. “Steve told me the story,” he says flatly. “Robin told him at some point. He was supposed to…” There’s a lump forming in his throat, as it always does now when he talks about Steve. Tries to talk about Steve. Which he doesn’t, if he can help it. “We had plans, before everything… happened.”
“Ah.”
It’s not the ensuing silence that Eddie has a problem with, per se. He spends plenty of quiet time with other people. His problem is the man he’s sharing it with. (Let it never be said that Eddie can’t hold a grudge, even after the person he’s holding it for has forgiven the person he’s holding it against. Which Steve technically did. Eddie just doesn’t think Hopper deserves that forgiveness.)
“I didn’t really get the chance…” Hopper starts before he stops. “I didn’t take the chance. I’m not good at talking about… feelings.”
Eddie is, for some reason, kind enough not to voice the ‘yeah, no shit’ that immediately springs into his head.
“It’s my own fault that I didn’t get to spend more time with Super–” Hopper stops and corrects himself again. “With Steve. I know that. I was hoping… I’m asking if you would… tell me more about him?”
It’s like a knife straight to Eddie’s heart. No, he can’t tell Steve’s deadbeat not-dead not-dad about him. (That’s not a fair or entirely accurate way to phrase it. Eddie’s not interested in being fair.) Worse, Steve’s not the only one Hopper hurt. “Why don’t you ask Supergirl? They were best friends.”
“I will. I owe her… a lot of apologies too. I still wanted to ask you.”
“I don’t know what you want me to say.”
“I know the two of you were close.”
“We were–”
No. Robin and Wayne are the only ones who know about that, and it’s going to stay that way for as long as he can keep it in. Everyone gives him enough sad looks without that coloring the whole mess.
“‘Close’ is an understatement,” he says instead. “Steve was…”
He hates using the past tense.
“He liked sports,” Eddie says lamely. “He never got to play as a kid, so I think he was trying to make up for lost time by watching and learning about anything and everything. Like, during the last Olympics he watched every event they televised. Not just the summer Olympics; he did it during the winter ones too. My uncle actually took him to a baseball game once? Like, that’s a stereotypical thing that dads are supposed to do–” He wasn’t trying to make Hopper flinch with that one, but he doesn’t feel bad about it “–and he took me when I was younger, but I hated it, so he took Steve even though they were both adults and they had a lot of fun. He was really into fitness and athletics in general, actually; I think he would have been a gym teacher in another life. But like, a good one.”
“He didn’t get that from me,” Hopper mutters. It’s too wistful for Eddie’s taste.
“He was good at strategy too. He thought he wasn’t smart because he couldn’t do complex math in his head or remember all kinds of chemical formulas like Rex wanted, but he was smart about other things. He was a great mentor to Young Justice. They idolized him, every single one.” Thinking about Young Justice, about Steve ruffling the kids’ hair, brings up memories of Max too. That wound isn’t as deep, but it’s there.
“He sounds like a great guy.”
“He could be an absolute bitch when he didn’t like something,” Eddie blurts, because he has to be contrary, “and he was raised as a rich kid, so there were so many things he didn’t like. He was a neat freak and found doing the dishes relaxing. Clothes weren’t allowed on the floor. His closet was organized by multiple different criteria that I never bothered to memorize. I liked listening to him complain about dumb shit.”
This would all be great if he was saying it to his therapist, probably. He can cry in front of his therapist. He cannot cry in front of the Superman that isn’t his Superman.
Worse, Wayne can hear all of this, because Eddie didn’t turn off his comm before approaching Hopper. Maybe he’ll finally leave Eddie alone about it.
“He and Robin had snippy little fights all the time, never anything serious. They used to listen to your old records, before you came back. Joyce gave them to Robin, and they would just lay on the floor for hours playing whichever one spoke to them that day. They spent a lot of time in the Fortress of Solitude, just the two of them, doing Kryptonian stuff. I never went; that was a thing just for them. Steve told me a few stories, or if he’d learned something really weird. He was trying to learn the language. Robin said his accent was atrocious, but she’s a polyglot as it is, so it probably wasn’t that bad, all things considered. He wanted to get to know you, and the stuff you left behind was as close as he could get for years.”
Hopper opens his mouth to say something, but now that Eddie’s finally letting loose, it’s like he can’t stop.
“You could have asked, after you came back. You should have asked after all that shit you pulled with Match. You could have known anything and everything there was to know about him. He would have happily told you.” The gaping pit in his chest, the one that’s been there since he woke up in the Hall of Justice’s medical bay is getting wider again, and Eddie is done with this conversation.
The guilt on Hopper’s face isn’t even satisfying anymore.
He doesn’t wait for Superman to say anything; he just turns and walks off the edge of Wayne Tower, and if he uses his grapple hook just slightly too close to the last possible second… well, that’s no one’s business but his own.
Eddie dresses in his most ripped jeans, an actual vintage Iron Maiden t-shirt, and his favorite leather jacket for the meeting with Rex, along with a thick silver chain necklace and all of the rings from the dish on his dresser. He has a legitimate appointment, after all; it’s not like they’re going to kick him out for being dressed inappropriately.
The receptionist on the ground floor of the building does wrinkle her nose a little at the sight of him, though, when he approaches her and says why he’s here. She checks a book in front of her and then makes a call (presumably to Rex or at least his secretary) to confirm. That's kind of fun. It’s been a long time since Eddie pushed conservative buttons just for the fun of it outside of the superhero persona.
Rex’s office is on the top floor, naturally, and the elevator attendant – because of course he has one of those too – keeps side-eying Eddie the whole way up. The elevator opens onto another waiting area, done up in the same white and chrome and leather modern style as the one downstairs. It’s a style that says nothing and everything about Rex Harrington. There’s another desk with a woman behind it, and Eddie wonders if this is the one who called him. The waiting area is weirdly big considering there don’t appear to be any other offices on this floor. He heads over to the secretary.
“Hi, I’m–”
The door behind the desk opens, Rex Harrington appearing inside the frame. “Eddie Munson,” he says, with suspiciously impeccable timing. He must have timed the elevator at some point and probably uses the knowledge to throw people off.
Eddie hates that he’s kind of impressed by it.
“Please, come in,” Rex says, stepping out of the office to leave room for Eddie to enter. “Hold my calls, Lucy, unless they’re on the shortlist.” He glances up at Eddie again. “Would you like anything to drink? There’s water in the office, but if you want something else, we can send for it.”
“I’m fine,” Eddie says. He’d rather just get this over with.
Rex tilts his head slightly in exactly the same way that Steve did when he knew Eddie was lying about being ‘fine’, and Eddie just barely manages to hold in his shudder. He steps past Rex and into the office.
It’s surprisingly plain. Not that Eddie was expecting anything really ostentatious, especially since it’s not Rex’s main office or whatever, but he kind of thought there would be more dark wood paneling and a portrait of Rex hanging behind his desk to really emphasize the corporate supervillain schtick. Not that he’s done a whole lot of that the last few years, either because of Steve or because it wasn’t as fun for him without Hopper or whatever, and then he was out of the habit. The room matches the rest of the building’s interior that Eddie’s seen so far, except for the big desk that’s the centerpiece of the room – it looks like it might be made of solid granite or some similar stone. The wall behind Rex is made almost entirely of windows, which seems like a risky move for the original Superman’s favorite antagonist, but again, maybe he’s changed since Hopper died and Steve took up the mantle.
Eddie sinks down into the round leather chair in front of the huge desk (it’s uncomfortable, and that has to be on purpose) while Rex sits down on the other side. And then they stay like that for a few minutes, just looking at each other.
It should probably be weirder, meeting Steve’s dad for the first time. Eddie’s heard so many things about him over the years, some good and a lot of it bad. The man in front of him is just a man, though. His hair is darker than Steve’s was, with grey at the temples. His eyes are the same color and shape, but colder, somehow. He seems to be sizing Eddie up. That’s nothing new.
“So, what was so important that you actually came to Gotham to talk to little ol’ me?” Eddie says after he feels the silence has lingered enough.
The corner of Rex’s mouth quirks up. That’s a little too much like Steve too. “What, I can’t check in on my son-in-law?”
Eddie’s heart stops beating. He’s not even being dramatic, for once. (It wasn’t supposed to be a secret by now; Robin had planned a big party and they were going to tell everyone at once and–) He doesn’t think he actually takes a breath until Rex rolls his eyes.
“Relax, Mr. Munson. Your secret is safe with me. Officially I’m in Gotham to sign a few deals with businesses based here in person, although there is–”
Superman bursts into the office through the unnecessarily large windows behind Rex. Eddie has to scramble backwards, turning over the shitty round chair as he stumbles over the back of it, to avoid getting sprayed with glass. He doesn’t think Rex is so lucky.
“Let the kid go, Rex,” Hopper growls, immediately grabbing Harrington by his lapels and hauling him upward. Eddie’s only frozen (again) for a moment before he climbs back over the chair and takes a few steps forward.
Superman glances over at him. “Go on, kid. Get out of here.”
Eddie doesn’t move, and Rex rolls his eyes again. “Honestly, Jim. You should have outgrown your tendency to jump in before you have all of the details.” One has to admire the balls of a man who calls Superman reckless while behind held up off the ground by him.
Figuratively. Figuratively admire.
“Why are you here, Superman?” Eddie asks so he never has to think further on that ever. He crosses his arms. “Isn’t there a cat you should be getting out of a tree or something?”
Hopper frowns, looking back and forth between Eddie and Rex. “Your heartbeat changed, and I tracked it here. I thought…”
“Young Mr. Munson was never in any danger from me,” Rex points out. “However, you might want to consider that anyone else might find your sudden and violent jump to his defense… unusual, considering the two of you have never met before. Isn’t that right, Superman?”
Well, that did answer the question of whether or not Rex knew Eddie’s secret identity… that Eddie hadn’t even thought to ask. He definitely knew Hopper’s, and he’d kept that secret for however long. So unless he turned around and tried to blackmail Eddie (for what? Eddie didn’t have anything Rex couldn’t get in some easier way), that was probably fine.
Hopper scowls and slowly sets Rex down, though he doesn’t let him go.
“Luckily,” Rex continues, “there is no actual record of a specific appointment taking place in this office at this time, so for all anyone who might have seen you fly in knows, you came here to confront me and me alone. Those people will, ideally, see Superman fly out of my office again in a moment, and everything will be as it was.” He pauses and purses his lips. “Aside from the unnecessary damage to my windows, of course.”
Hopper looks over at Eddie. “You really want to keep talking to him, kid?”
Eddie shrugs. “I came here, didn’t I? I just got surprised with some information. Everything’s fine.”
Rex sighs. “Is your sense of obligation satisfied now, Superman? This suit did cost more than six months of your rent.”
Now Eddie kind of wants Hopper to rip it, if only because he wants to believe that the tailor involved at least gets a good chunk of that change. Hopper kind of looks like he just wants to rip the suit to make himself feel better, but he finally lets Rex go. The businessman brushes himself off and gathers a few of the folders spread out on his desk before he turns to Eddie.
“I’m afraid we’ll have to continue this meeting elsewhere, Mr. Munson, given the current state of the office.”
Eddie grins, if only because the level to which Rex likes to troll Hopper is kind of hilarious. “Call me Eddie, please. Mr. Munson is my uncle, and only when he doesn’t like someone.” Wayne has never asked Rex to call him by his first name, and they both know it.
Rex just raises an eyebrow. “Edward,” he settles on. Good enough. He glances at Superman, who’s still standing there, watching them. “You can go,” he says pointedly.
Hopper glares at him. “I’ll be listening,” he warns.
“Of course you will.” Rex breezes past him and heads for the door. Eddie tosses Superman a careless salute and follows.
Lucy looks up from her computer (she’s playing Solitaire and doesn’t bother to close it out or even open another window – Eddie has to respect that) as they exit the office. “Did you need something, Mr. Harrington?”
“I’m afraid we have to move to Conference Room 1, Lucy. Superman has made something of a mess in the office.”
“I’ll call the contractors, sir.”
“Thank you.”
Conference Room 1 is on the next floor down, along with another room labeled Conference Room 2. The decor matches everything else, and it must just be for meetings of the highest-ups, since the main table only seats about six. Rex sits at the head, probably out of habit, and Eddie is tempted to find out how much of a power move sitting on the far end could be. He resists the temptation and sits in the chair closest to Rex instead.
“So…” he prompts. Rex hands him one of the folders he brought along with them. Eddie flips it open. It’s times that a specific server was accessed and a list of files that were copied from it.
“Someone recently hacked into my personal files and copied all of the information I had stored regarding Cadmus’ cloning experiments,” Rex explains. “Including details regarding the creation of my son.”
Eddie looks up sharply. Rex’s expression has gone very blank, like Steve used to when he was having strong feelings that he didn’t want to show. “It is my understanding that S.T.A.R. Labs has suffered a similar attack on a section of their database that has supposedly been out of use for a few years and was only stored for backup purposes. I suspect a single culprit is responsible for both.” He pauses. “I don’t believe I need to tell you what the combination of information could be used for.”
Eddie can read between the lines. He frowns. “Do you really think someone is trying to clone Superman again?”
“It would be a difficult process if they were, even with all of the data they’ve stolen. I am somewhat more concerned about the information being sold.”
Eddie glances down at the papers. “I’m surprised you didn’t copyright the process.”
“I did consider it,” Rex says lightly. He slides the other folder on top of the first. “I also wanted to speak to you regarding Steven’s trust fund.”
“Didn’t you donate that?” Eddie asks. He doesn’t want to touch this folder. It’s one thing to look into a crime that affects more than just the man sitting in front of him. He doesn’t want Rex’s money.
“The original was given to a cancer research fund, yes,” Rex says. “This one was established after Steven… left. Legally it belongs to you now.”
“I don’t want it.”
Rex sighs. “I don’t expect you to use it for yourself. Give it to the members of Young Justice, if you are so inclined. The transfer of custody has already been completed, so it’s in your name and will accumulate whether you take the paperwork or not.”
Eddie stares at the older man. “Why? He said you were distant as he grew up, and then you tried to turn him into a weapon. But you never… you let him go, when he decided to leave. Why?”
“Because he was my son, first and foremost. Yes, I felt the world needed a Superman when the original was gone. I thought I was prepared to sacrifice my legacy on the altar of heroism, but when the moment came… I suppose Paul Westfield did me a favor by replacing Steven’s memories. I still had to fire him for doing it without consulting me first, of course, but he did save me from having to make the difficult decision myself. It became clear rather quickly that I would have to let Steven go when – and it was always a when, in my mind – he chose to leave. He couldn’t really be a hero if he stayed.”
Jesus fucking Christ. Why couldn’t either of Steve’s fathers actually be this caring and protective when he was alive? Why were they pushing it on Eddie now? Steve had wanted it. Eddie didn’t.
“That’s… I don’t agree with you,” he says slowly. “I understand how you reached the conclusion you did.”
“I thought you might.” Rex didn’t need to sound smug about it.
Eddie snatches up the folders. “I still think it’s bullshit. Yes, the world was a better place because Steve became a hero. But all he wanted was for you to fucking love him and show it in a fucking normal way. You couldn’t even do that. So fuck you.”
Storming out would feel better if he didn’t have to stand in the elevator for several minutes after leaving the room and before he can leave the building, but Eddie’s pretty sure he got his point across.
He’ll ask Suzie to look into the stupid hacking thing; she likes puzzles like that anyway.
Notes:
No fun notes this time. Thanks for reading!
Chapter 8: superman returns
Notes:
It's here! This chapter features the beautiful art from hereforanepilogue, which can be found at the end of the chapter and also here. Thank you so much, Bríd!
Chapter Warnings:
- Steve's other dad is also an asshole.
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
2009
“Shit, shit, shit,” Steve mutters as he and Robin usher the kids (they’re all almost legal adults now, but they’re always going to be kids to him) into the Hall of Justice. It’s the first biannual meeting that Young Justice has been invited to, and they’re late. It’s not until they’re already inside the main conference room that he realizes how crowded it is – the kids will have to stand with everyone else, but he and Robin might have to fight a little to get to their seats at the table.
Batman appears at his side in the sudden way Eddie has that’s a lot more impressive in emptier spaces. “Is your phone dead? I’ve been trying to call you since last night.” His voice modulator is turned off, which means his words are muffled by the cowl and people around them can’t hear him as well as he and Robin can. Hell, Steve can barely hear him; everyone else is whispering and he’s trying not to focus on it. They got the kids here. They just need to get to their seats.
“Maybe?” Steve says as the crowd parts a little at the sight of the three of them together. “I didn’t have the chance to check it this morning.”
“Last night was movie night,” Robin explains, “and we’ve had to institute a no-phones policy because the kids were texting each other the entire time instead of watching the movie.”
“And then they fell asleep during the third one, so we had to move them from the common room to each of their bedrooms.” Mike had been the most awkward to carry, since he’s just had another growth spurt and is taller than Steve now. “And then we had to rush here because we overslept.”
Eddie tilts his head in a way that Steve knows means he’s frowning. “What, all of you? Never mind, not important. I’ve been trying to get a hold of both of you because he came to Wayne first, if you can believe that, but then he came straight here and I don’t know what they’ve told him–”
Steve doesn’t get to ask Eddie who he’s talking about because at that moment everyone stops whispering as a ghost walks into the conference room and answers the question for him.
Superman – because even with a beard and after a six-year-absence, Jim Hopper can be no one else when he’s wearing his suit and cape – strides into the room, a smaller figure in a deep blue hooded cloak that hides their face trailing behind him like a shadow. He looks around briefly before his eyes land on Steve, and immediately they narrow. He doesn’t actually use super-speed to get to him, and the League members standing in the way don’t actually part like the Red Sea before Moses, but it’s a near thing on both accounts.
(Dimly, Steve thinks he’s spent too much time talking to Eddie.)
Superman looks him up and down, and Steve is struck by the fact that because they’ve never been in the same place at the same time, it’s never been so obvious that he isn’t the perfect clone Rex always advertised him as. Steve is smaller – he’s a few inches shorter and while he’s very visibly athletic, he’s not the brick house Hopper is. And then there’s the eyes, of course. Hopper’s eyes are blue.
Steve has Rex Harrington’s eyes.
“So you’re the clone,” Superman sneers. His voice is like a rumble of distant thunder, much deeper than Steve’s own.
Steve’s spine straightens immediately. So what if he’s not Jim Hopper’s perfect clone? He’s still Rex Harrington’s son, and his dad sure as hell wouldn’t put up with this shit. “Yeah, I go by Superman,” he says as casually as he can. “‘The clone’ just doesn’t have the same ring to it, you know?” He walks to his chair at the conference table, people moving aside to make room for him to do it. Eddie and Robin move in perfect step with him.
Wonder Woman and the other older heroes are already by their own chairs, some of them having stood up when Hopper came into the room. It would be nice if any of them decided to defend Steve, but he’s not holding his breath.
This time he’s pretty sure Hopper does use the super-speed, because he’s suddenly in Steve’s space, pointing at the symbol on the back of the chair. “You see that symbol? That’s my symbol. My family’s symbol. My seat. Who do you think you are, trying to take my name and my place?”
Steve realizes, abruptly, that of all the people in this room, only he, Eddie, and Robin know the truth of his parentage. He also realizes that he’s not about to reveal it to everyone. Not here, not now. He doesn’t owe any of them that. On his right, Robin’s expression has darkened, while Eddie has gone extremely still. It’s like the whole room is collectively holding their breath.
Steve looks straight up at Superman, unblinking. “You said all of this is yours. So obviously I’m no one, sir.” He turns on his heel and walks out. No one calls out for him to stop, even though he feels eyes follow him into the hallway and hears two pairs of footsteps right behind him.
He can’t bring himself to go more than a few steps outside the room, though he yanks his cape off immediately and wads it up into a ball that he clenches in his fist as he starts to pace. “I’m not leaving until they send someone to kick me out.” The room is soundproof, even against his and Robin’s powers, so they can’t hear what’s going on in there.
“They’re not going to kick you out,” Robin says, “but I am going to kick my cousin’s ass.” She starts pacing too, moving in a perfect loop with him. “I almost forgot what a jerk he was.”
“I didn’t,” Eddie says, leaning against the nearest wall and crossing his arms. “I tried to warn you.”
The door to the conference room opens again. They hear Hopper shout “What the hell does that mean?” as Young Justice files out, and then the hallway is silent again. Steve pauses as Captain Marvel, Zoomer, Arsenal, Wonder Boy, and Spoiler all line up in front of him.
“You guys should be in there,” Steve says. His voice doesn’t even shake; good for him. “The real Superman is back now, and it was going to be an important meeting anyway.”
Max rolls her eyes. “Our Superman’s out here.”
Oh.
“Yeah, screw those guys,” Mike says, which of course he would. “We don’t need them.”
“They pay for our house,” Steve says dully. God, is he going to have to leave Titans Tower? Where would he go? Joyce had a whole thing with Hopper before he died; will she take his side when she finds out what happened? (He doesn’t really think so. Joyce loves her kids above all else, and for some reason she considers Steve one of her kids.) Oh shit, Joyce probably doesn’t know Hopper’s alive.
“Technically,” Eddie pipes up, “since I started sitting in on budget meetings, most of the funding for Titans Tower comes from Wayne Industries. So you’re good there.”
Steve does relax slightly, even though he can never repay Eddie for that. “Thanks,” he says anyway. He wishes he could see if Eddie was smiling back.
Robin nudges Steve’s shoulder. “You’re overdue for a weekend home, dingus. I’ve got the kids, if you want to go see Joyce.”
“Mom’s always asking when you’re coming to dinner,” Will adds. “She’ll be happy to see you.”
Going to the closest thing he has to a home other than the Tower does sound nice, right now. Steve agrees, though he doesn’t get to leave without being in the middle of a huge group hug.
Joyce is happy to see him. She’s always happy to see him, and after the disaster of today, Steve needs that. He especially needs the tight hug she greets him with. It’s still early afternoon, by the time they make it to Metropolis, so all three of them plan to make dinner together. Joyce even suggests calling Jonathan to ask if he wants to come home for a real family meal.
Steve loves being considered part of a real family.
He doesn’t want to trouble Joyce with what happened at the Hall of Justice, other than the biggest piece of information, but Will has no such reservations. He doesn’t get away with just telling her that Hopper’s alive after all, thanks to Will, and once Joyce has gotten over the shock of that, she’s completely on Steve’s side. And then it seems like that’s going to be that.
So naturally, there’s a knock on the door after they’ve moved to the living room to wait for the lasagna to bake (Jonathan’s supposed to be coming after he gets off work, bringing Nancy with him, and since Nancy’s coming Mike’s flying in for the meal too). Steve goes to answer it, because he’s the closest and he manages to get up faster than Will does, and there’s Jim Hopper, dressed in civilian clothes. He can only assume the teenager behind him is the cloaked one from before; she’s wearing a hoodie now, with the hood down to reveal brown curls and curious eyes. She looks like she’s around Will’s age, if not younger. Hopper is the more immediate threat problem anyway. Steve tenses immediately.
So does Hopper. “Here too?” he growls down at Steve. “Is there anywhere you haven’t infiltrated, you little–”
“Steve, honey, who’s at the door?” Joyce comes into the hall, and it’s a very strange twisted version of the scene from five years ago, without the rain. The only good thing about the way Joyce’s expression shifts is that it isn’t directed at Steve this time. “Jim.”
Hopper somehow doesn’t seem to notice he’s in deep shit, from her tone. “Hey, Joyce.” His own voice is soft in a way Steve hadn’t thought him capable of. When the only response is a glare and crossed arms, he frowns. “I kind of thought you’d be happier to see me.”
Will slips into the entryway behind his mom, and Steve retreats to stand with him. Joyce is eager to step in front of them both. “Well, Hop, I kind of thought you would be less of a jerk to your son, so I guess we’re both disappointed.”
“He’s not my–” Hopper starts. The girl in the hoodie’s eyes narrow, which is surprising. Hopper sighs. “Can we not do this here, where half the street can hear us?”
‘’Sure,” Joyce says, taking a step back (and closer to Steve and Will). “Come on in.”
Hopper does, and he seems like he takes up too much space in the small house. The girl follows, looking around once she’s inside. “This is Jane,” Hopper says, gently putting a big hand on the girl’s thin shoulder. “I found her… in the place I ended up.”
Joyce smiles at the girl, a sharp contrast from how she’s been looking at Hopper. “It’s nice to meet you, Jane.”
“I’m Will,” Will introduces himself, waving with a finger-waggle that he absolutely picked up from Steve (and that’s a weird realization in itself, that Will spends so much time with him that he’s picked up some of his own mannerisms). “Captain Marvel, though I wasn’t at the meeting long enough to–”
“What do you mean, you were at the meeting?” Hopper interrupts.
“You missed a lot,” Will says, his glare a passable imitation of his mom’s. Steve puts a hand on his shoulder (Will isn’t taller than him yet, thankfully) and the teenager huffs, but he backs down.
“Boys, why don’t you show Jane Will’s room?” Joyce suggests. “Hop and I need to talk.”
“Sure, Mom.”
Steve and Will lead Jane upstairs, Steve pausing when the other two have gone through the doorway to Will’s room. Will stops too when he notices that Steve has.
“Are you going to eavesdrop?” he asks. “Because you might not like what you hear.”
“You should probably turn up some music,” Steve says, which isn’t really an answer. He knows Will is right. That’s just not going to stop him. The last thing he sees before Will closes his bedroom door is Jane’s curious eyes on him.
He steps into Jonathan’s room instead. Well, it kind of became his and Jonathan’s room after Jonathan went to college, since they aren’t always at the house at the same time and it has a trundle bed because Will used to have nightmares, but Steve still thinks of it as Jonathan’s.
“What the hell, Hop?”
“What? No, you don’t get to ‘what the hell’ me. What the hell, Joyce? You let that thing in here and called him my son? Just because he’s made from my DNA doesn’t make him my kid!”
“It does when it’s only half your DNA, and he’s a wonderful young man!”
“What do you mean, ‘half’,” Hopper repeats flatly.
Steve was honestly surprised the Justice League hasn’t figured that one out. Maybe they just haven’t seen any reason to look – the public story of Steve being created in a Cadmus lab was good enough and didn’t have any obvious holes.
“Do you remember Rex’s son?”
“What does he have to do with… No.” Hopper sounds horrified… rightfully so, really. It’s not like he got a say in whatever Rex did to create Steve.
“Yes.”
“What the fuck.”
“He broke free of his father’s control and has been trying to live up to your legacy ever since.”
“Hard to believe, if Rex raised him.”
“Insult Steve one more time, Hop, and you won’t be welcome in my house anymore.”
“I didn’t ask for any of this, Joyce.”
“Neither did he. I’m sorry that it happened the way it did, and I’m sorry you only just found out, but that boy is the best of you and Rex, and you don’t get to make him feel bad about it.”
“I can’t… I need time to think.”
“So take it. Dinner isn’t ready yet.”
Hopper lets out a huff of a laugh. “I don’t think that’s going to be enough time.” A thump, like he’s sat down in the armchair Steve usually takes. “I don’t think another six years would be enough time.”
Steve’s heard enough. He goes back across the hall, gently knocking on Will’s door before entering. Will and Jane are sitting side-by-side on Will’s bed, some 80s song Steve only half recognizes blaring from Will’s laptop. Will pauses the music when he notices Steve and tilts his head. Steve shakes his head and sits down on the floor in front of them.
“So, Jane,” he says. “How did you end up with Superman?”
He needs to call Hopper Superman, so that he can get used to… it maybe not being his anymore. (He could always go back to being Superboy, since Robin’s never bothered to switch to Superwoman – she always said it didn’t roll off the tongue as well, too many syllables. He thinks it’s really that changing one’s superhero name is actually a very annoying process. Steve would know.)
“He saved me,” Jane says. “I was born in another dimension to become a key to open a portal to release a demon. Dad brought me here so I would not have to.”
Steve doesn’t know what’s worse: the fact that Hopper apparently also has a soft spot for kids (which means Steve might have gotten it from him – and he knows he had to have gotten a lot of his traits from his fathers, but right now being like either of them kind of makes him want to claw his own skin off), or that Jane calls him ‘Dad’. “That sounds… nice of him.”
“It was,” she agrees. Then she frowns slightly. “How he spoke to you today was not nice. I told him that I was mad at him.”
Steve looks down at the floor. “You didn’t have to do that. You don’t even know me.”
“I can see the truth of people. Hopper said he was the last of his people, but you and the girl were there, at the meeting. And he says the man who made you is bad. I do not know if that is true. I know that you are not. You are good.”
If teenage girls are going to keep making Steve want to cry (in a good way… he thinks), he’s going to have to start avoiding them like the plague. “Thanks, Jane,” Steve says quietly.
She looks at him like she can see through his soul. (Maybe she can.) “It’s the truth.” She turns to Will. “Tell me about Young Justice.”
Dinner is…
Calling dinner awkward is generous.
There are too many of them to be crowded around the Byers’ kitchen table, so they end up eating in the living room with the teenagers sitting on the floor. Nancy is the only one wearing a completely neutral expression – Jonathan keeps looking suspiciously at Hopper, even though there was no time to tell him about what happened at the Hall of Justice. Will and Mike both keep glaring at the older man too, though Mike does it between glances to his right at Jane. (Will also keeps glancing at Mike glancing at Jane, and Steve is trying not to worry about that until it really becomes something to worry about – Dustin’s five-minute-long crush on Max during one of her and Lucas’ off periods was bad enough.) Hopper is frowning determinedly at his food as he eats it. Joyce keeps trying to start conversations, but her questions are given short answers that don’t go anywhere.
“I would like to visit Titans Tower,” Jane announces once they’ve all finished eating. Mike looks at Steve, his eyes hopeful, as if Steve has any say in the matter (as if he would say she couldn’t). Everyone else looks at Hopper, who blinks at Jane.
“That old clubhouse Supergirl and her friends had?”
“Young Justice lives there now,” Jane informs him. “And Steve and Robin.”
Hopper grits his teeth. “Of course Steve lives there too.”
Steve bites back that he’s also been to the Fortress of Solitude; he has to assume Hopper hasn’t been back to it yet or he would have brought it up too.
“He trained us,” Mike spits, standing up to his full height. He doesn’t have the same weight to his frame, but he might actually be slightly taller than Hopper. “None of us would be half the heroes we are without Steve, so shut up.”
Hopper’s eyes narrow, and so do Nancy’s. Jane saves them from the building explosion, at least. “I would like to go,” she repeats, still looking at Hopper. “May I, Dad?”
Steve doesn’t flinch. He doesn’t, and even if he did, it doesn’t matter because everyone is looking at Hopper again.
“One night,” Hopper says finally. “And I’ll come get you in the morning.”
Jane’s smile lights up the room, and Steve can exhale.
The fact that Jane can fly makes going back to the Tower easier, though they don’t escape without Jonathan threatening to call Steve later for details on what the hell is going on. It’s a toss-up on whether or not Nancy will call and ask Robin first. The flight goes fine, with Mike doing a few extra loops to show off for Jane, while Will flies a little closer to Steve.
Jane is interested in the Tower itself because it’s somewhere she’s never been, but since she didn’t even grow up in this dimension, she’s never heard of the Teen Titans and is much more interested in being introduced to the other members of Young Justice and learning about the things they like. Max and Mike are already gearing up to fight over who gets to show her things first – Max has complained about being surrounded by boys before, despite Robin’s presence, so she’s just as eager for Jane’s attention. Steve decides to leave them to it, since Will and Lucas are usually pretty good mediators.
Robin is in the kitchen, flipping through a pile of takeout menus that she’s got spread out on the counter. She’s obviously been tuning the kids out, since she blinks in surprise when Steve walks into the room. “I thought you were spending the night at the Byers’.”
“Hopper showed up,” he explains, gently bumping her shoulder with his once he’s next to her. “With the teenage girl he’s adopted or whatever, so she’s here for a sleepover instead.”
Robin moves the menu to their favorite pizza place to the top of the pile. “Five larges, do you think? I assume Joyce fed you, but I also know Mike could put one away by himself.”
Steve grins. “Better make it six.”
He hears the Batplane land on the roof, and he immediately stands up straight. This is good. It doesn’t matter if Hopper – if Superman – hates him, because he’s about to be surrounded by his real family. He ignores Robin’s knowing look as he heads upstairs to meet Eddie on his way down. Dustin dashes past him halfway up, heading towards the living room. “Hi Steve!”
Eddie isn’t too far behind him, and Steve can’t help but smile at the sight of him. He didn’t bother with the full suit and cowl for the trip from Gotham to the Tower, and instead is wearing jeans and a t-shirt featuring Wayne’s Batman logo because he’s a giant fucking nerd, which one of the things Steve loves likes about him. “How are you holding up?” he asks as he and Steve meet in the hallway.
“Better now,” Steve says honestly. “I’m glad you came.”
Eddie grins. “I aim to please. Speaking of which…” He holds out a box, neatly wrapped in Batman-themed paper. “This was actually meant to be more of a fun birthday present, but given the circumstances, I think you should have it sooner rather than later.”
“You just have to slap the bats on everything, don’t you?” Steve teases as he takes the box. His birthday isn’t for another month. He unwraps the gift carefully anyway, like he’s going to save the paper. (He might.) The box itself is a white, nondescript clothes box, but when he opens it…
It’s a leather jacket, a little reminiscent of the one Eddie wears himself as a civilian. There’s a little Super logo patch on the left breast, except it has a black background under the red S. Steve’s logo in Eddie’s colors. Steve’s fingertips brush over it. “Eddie…” he breathes.
“I figured you deserved your own version,” Eddie says, “but also…” He reaches around Steve to turn the jacket over. The regular red and gold Super logo is emblazoned on the back. “You’ve been wearing this symbol for years now. No one gets to take it away from you.”
Steve wants to kiss him. He wants to throw himself at Eddie and kiss him until neither of them can breathe anymore, and keep going after that. It’s not a new feeling by any means, though it hasn’t been this strong in awhile. He thinks, by the way Eddie’s looking back at him, that Eddie wants it too.
But it’s been a very long, very difficult, very emotional day. So he shouldn’t.
“I got all of the kids Superboy t-shirts too,” Eddie adds, almost like he’s trying to ruin the moment himself. The joke’s on him, because his voice is still too soft and doing things for the kids makes Steve even weaker than doing things for him.
He smiles. “You assume they don’t already have one.” (It’s literally one shirt; Robin found it a couple of years ago and it travels through the Tower every few days. The last time Steve saw it, Max was wearing it with her Wonder Woman pajama bottoms.) The moment isn’t ruined, but it is broken, and that’s okay. Steve hugs the jacket to his chest. “I love it, Eddie. Thank you.”
“Of course,” Eddie says. He gives Steve one last long, lingering (longing? Or is that just wishful thinking on Steve’s part?) look before heading downstairs while Steve puts the jacket into his room.
The next time Steve suits up, he puts on the jacket instead of the cape.
Notes:
Some fun notes:
- Clark Kent/Superman was less than thrilled by the reveal of Conner/Superboy in the Young Justice cartoon, which did inspire some of Hopper and Steve's relationship here (with the caveat that I have not watched the first season of YJ in years).
- Eleven is this universe's version of Raven, who was my favorite character when the original Teen Titans cartoon came out. Raven is the daughter of a human woman and a demon named Trigon and has psychic and empathic powers.
- The Jacket is an iconic part of Superboy's original 90s look, and it was very important to me that Steve wears it.Thanks for reading!
Chapter 9: match
Notes:
Welcome back! Sorry for the delay on this chapter, a few things came up. We should be back to daily posting for the rest of the fic.
glitterchai drew a version of Steve from this fic here! Go check it out!
Chapter Warnings:
- Billy
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
2010
“I don’t like him,” Eddie says into the phone, keeping his eyes on the news program on his TV. Whoever is running it has helpfully titled the footage ‘Three Supermen?’, and Eddie watches as the aforementioned three men in Superman-esque costumes (does a t-shirt and jeans even count as a costume?) work together to help people out of a building affected by an earthquake. Well, Steve and Hopper are visibly cooperating because they both have practice working with other heroes. The new guy pretty obviously doesn’t (which isn’t his fault). There’s a loud crack and some screams in the footage, and as the building starts to collapse the new guy flies in and comes out with a small child in his arms just in time. He immediately hands the child off and grins at the camera. Something about him just rubs Eddie the wrong way.
“You haven’t even met him,” Steve points out. He sounds like he might be trying not to laugh, and Eddie wishes he could see it. Then he sighs. Eddie imagines him pinching the bridge of his nose. “Jane doesn’t like him either.”
“Vindication!” On the screen, the three Supers fly away from the scene. “That’s a major red flag, though, isn’t it?”
Young Justice were the ones to find the newest member of the Super family, deep in the bowels of a near-abandoned S.T.A.R. Labs site. They released him from his pod because of the S on his chest, and now Hopper has decided to welcome the clone – because of course he turned out to be an exact clone of Superman, with no other DNA mixed in – with open arms.
“She says he was ‘made wrong’, which… she also says she can’t explain it better than that, and Hopper–”
“Oh, she said it in front of Superdick?”
“You really shouldn’t call him that,” Steve says. He says that every time Eddie does it. “But yeah, he says Billy’s doing well so far, and we should give him the benefit of the doubt since everyone gave me–”
“Wee-woo, wee-woo!” Eddie imitates an alarm before covering his mouth and the phone receiver with his hand to sound like he’s speaking through a walkie-talkie. “Bullshit detected.” He goes back to talking normally. “You’ve already been approved by our favorite aura-checker.”
“Jane didn’t know me when I first became Superman,” Steve points out. “You and Robin both hated me back then.”
“Neither of us knew you then either.” And a not insignificant amount of Eddie’s ‘hate’ had actually been him being mad about how attractive he found Steve, but he’s not about to say that now. “Also, Billy?”
“Apparently it’s Hopper’s dad’s name? Hop asked if he wanted a civilian name and that’s where they landed. He’s still getting used to answering to it, though; he’s going by Match the rest of the time.”
Eddie presses his lips together. “Sure.” Of course Hopper let the new clone pick a name off his family tree. Not that Steve had needed a name. It was the principle of the thing. “Should have called him Mitch so he doesn’t get confused.”
Steve lets out the smallest huff of a laugh. “Hopper just wants all of us to get along. He was talking about Billy spending more time at Titans Tower the other day.”
Oh, hell no. Titans Tower is Steve’s home. “Steve.”
“I mean, he’s not that bad?”
“ Steve,” Eddie repeats.
He sighs. “Fine, I don’t like him either. He’s the kind of guy I would have been rivals with in high school, I think, and that’s not a compliment. He still acts like that’s what’s happening half the time, but only when Hopper isn’t looking and even though he’s trying, Hop’s not about to choose one of us over the other. Is that what you wanted to hear?”
“Only because it was honest.”
“Honestly, fuck you.”
“Any time you want, babe.” He really shouldn’t make jokes like that. Even though he doesn’t not mean it. It works, anyway, because Steve lets out a little snort. “Do you feel better now?”
“You always make me feel better,” Steve says, his voice gone soft in a way Eddie wants to listen to forever. Fuck. “I have to go, though, or I’m going to be late for dinner with Jonathan and Nancy.”
“Tell them hi for me.”
“Will do. Same time next week?”
“Of course.”
He’s so fucked.
Eddie’s used to coming into the Batcave to find Dustin at the Batcomputer, talking to Suzie. The two of them met when they were touring MIT at the same time, and while Dustin eventually decided to stay in Gotham for college (which Eddie feels guilty about, even though Dustin swears it wasn’t just for him), they stayed in touch. Suzie is a genius with computers and has offered her services to run team communications and keep track of files and cases, which Eddie was hesitant about at first, but she’s really become an asset in the last few months. She even picked her own hero name, Oracle – though she insists it’s a call sign, not a hero name, since she doesn’t go out in the field.
Regardless, Eddie expects to find Dustin at the computer when he walks in a few weeks after Match’s debut. He doesn’t expect Max sitting next to him, slowly spinning in her chair as Dustin and Suzie discuss a case.
“Hey, Red,” he says, approaching the two teens. “Not that you aren’t welcome, but isn’t it about dinner time at the Tower?”
Max lifts her chin. “That doesn’t sound very welcoming.”
“Lucas is in Star City, Mike and Jane are on a date, Will’s at his mom’s, and Billy’s an asshole,” Dustin lists off, typing something as he talks. Max shoots him a look, and he rolls his eyes without looking at her – they’re lucky she doesn’t have heat vision; her glares are blistering enough. “What? That’s why you’re here.”
“What about Steve and Robin?” Eddie asks.
“He keeps, like, taunting them,” Max says, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear. “Mostly Steve, because he just… takes it so that Hopper doesn’t hear they were fighting or something.”
The pulse of red hot anger is almost instantaneous, which isn’t something Eddie’s used to. He’s usually more of a slow-burn kind of guy. “You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.” Steve would have told him to watch his language around the kids, but Dustin is from Gotham and Max is at the top of the list for Young Justice Member Most Likely to Curse In Front of the Entire Justice League, and they’re legal adults anyway, so there are more pressing matters. “What exactly is Billy saying?”
Max huffs. “It’s stupid shit, really.” See, girl most likely. “Bragging about how many people he’s saved this week, mentioning that this member of the League said he’s doing a good job or that person mistook him for the so-called ‘real Superman’.” Her air quotes are delightfully sarcastic. “He just acts like he’s better than Steve specifically. He doesn’t say most of it in front of Robin. I think she would have decked him by now if he did. And when I tried to say that Steve should say something to Hopper it’s all ‘he’s trying to make up for how he reacted to me, it’s fine, I don’t want to make waves’, which is even more bullshit. So now Billy’s at Titans Tower, acting like owns the place, which is ruining it for the rest of us.”
“So you came here.”
“That’s the nice thing about super-speed; I can go anywhere I want. The boys have been talking about figuring out how to pay for an apartment in Jump, or maybe just setting up a new headquarters somewhere else, just so they don’t have to be around him either.”
“He also calls us names,” Dustin adds. “Not the way Steve does; when Steve calls us shitheads, it’s because he loves us. Billy talks to us like we aren’t worthy of the breath it takes.”
“But then if we leave the Tower, he gets to have it,” Max says. “Or worse, he’ll follow us.” She crosses her arms. “It just sucks.”
Eddie reaches out and pats her shoulder, even though she swats at his hand. “I don’t know what to tell you, Red, especially if Hopper isn’t even listening to how Jane feels.”
Max tilts her head. “How did you know that?”
“He and Steve have a weekly phone call,” Dustin says, still typing. Eddie ruffles his hair in retaliation, while Max’s eyes light up. Dustin scowls up at Eddie. “They talk for hours.”
“You really should–”
Eddie puts his hand over her mouth. “Nope.” She bites him, because of course she does, and he snatches his hand back. “I’m not talking about this with you two.”
“So talk about it with Steve,” Max says, sing-songing Steve’s name.
“Dustin, you need to start getting ready for patrol,” Eddie says instead of really responding to her. “Red, are you coming with us or hanging out in the Cave?”
Max huffs, temporarily thwarted, but her eyes suggest she isn’t really letting it go. “The Cave, I guess. You have a TV in here, right?”
“By the couch. Have fun.”
“Batman! Batman, please respond!”
Eddie groans and fumbles around for his alarm clock, only to realize that’s not what’s going off. There was an Arkham breakout last night and he fell asleep on the couch in the Batcave after an extra-long patrol rounding up the escapees. Dustin is with Young Justice for the weekend, so he, Shade, and Hood had had their work cut out for them. He doesn’t see the other two on the floor, so hopefully they stumbled upstairs before conking out.
The voice demanding his attention now is coming from the Batcomputer, with Oracle’s interface blinking across the screen.
He rubs his eyes. “I’m here, Oracle. What’s up?”
“Spoiler asked me to call you. There’s been a fight at Titans Tower.”
Now Eddie’s fully awake. He lurches to his feet. “A fight, not an attack?”
“Spoiler says Match and Superboy got into a fight. Superman and Supergirl arrived about an hour ago and now they’re moving to the Hall of Justice. Apparently Superboy is injured.”
The Batman suit hasn’t even been cleaned, and Eddie’s half tempted to just throw on a spare domino mask and call it good enough. (He can’t; he wouldn’t be recognized and then he wouldn’t be let in.) He winds up putting on the auxiliary suit, since he figures he shouldn’t need any of the features it lacks. “Let Spoiler know I’m on my way,” he says, heading for the Batplane.
The medical bay is deep in the bowels of the Hall of Justice, presumably to protect any injured or otherwise incapacitated heroes as much as possible. It still has a reception area and waiting room, like a regular hospital, and Eddie can hear raised voices as soon as he opens the door separating the medical bay from the regular hallway – the Justice League really does love their soundproofing.
“If you had just listened to Jane, this wouldn’t have happened!” Max shouts as Eddie rounds a corner. She’s yelling at Hopper, who has his hands on his hips and looks ready to yell back. Jane is at Max’s side, glaring at her adopted dad, while the boys are spread out across the seats of the waiting room. None of Young Justice are in costume, but Superman is. Max is a full foot and a half shorter than him.
All of them look as Eddie enters the room, and he doesn’t expect even Hopper to be relieved. And then the man speaks.
“Finally, someone who can talk sense into these kids. Batman–”
“I can’t talk to you right now,” Eddie interrupts, walking past Superman to the kids instead. “How is he?” he asks.
“Stable,” Will answers immediately, giving a side glance towards Hopper. “Robin’s with him.”
Eddie takes a deep breath. Robin won’t be any happier or calmer than he is, but it’s good that she’s with Steve. “What about Match?” He’s never going to call that fucker by his real-person name ever again.
“We put him in a cell on Watchtower,” Hopper says. “One designed to hold me.”
Eddie bristles. “Too little, too late, old man,” he tells Superman. Then he turns back to the kids. “What happened?”
They all start talking at once, of course, so Eddie has to hold up his hands to get their attention. (Steve told him once he uses a whistle.) “One at a time!” They shut up. “Spoiler, report.”
“We were having dinner when Match came in. He carved his name into the mirrors in the weight room with his heat vision yesterday–” Eddie frowns, because Steve hadn’t told him about that “–so we already didn’t want him there. Arsenal had gotten up to get more food, and he turned around for a second to ask if any of us wanted anything. When he turned around again, Match walked into him and shoved him, saying he should watch where he’s going. Arsenal tried to apologize–”
“Which he shouldn’t have had to,” Mike interjects.
Dustin tilts his head in acknowledgement and keeps talking. “Then Wonder Boy said that Match had super senses so the only way they could have run into each other is if Match was stupid or if he did it on purpose, which amounted to the same thing. Arsenal laughed, and then Match asked if he thought that was funny, and shoved him again and said–”
“‘You’re dead meat’,” Max interrupts in a voice that definitely can’t be an accurate imitation of Match. “And then Ste– Superboy comes out of the kitchen and goes ‘No, you are’ and punches him.”
“Then Match grinned and punched him through a window and flew out behind him,” Dustin continues, raising his voice every time he gets interrupted. “Zoomer went to get Supergirl, Captain Marvel went to get Superman, and the rest of us followed the fight. Wonder Boy tried to help, but Superboy was trying to protect him so that was just making things worse and then Match knocked him out. Ebony held Match still long enough for Arsenal to shoot him with a kryptonite arrow, and then Supergirl and Superman showed up.”
Later Eddie’s going to ask Dustin when he took the kryptonite out of the vault in the Batcave, and praise him for the foresight even as he tells him to never do it again. That’s later, though. Now he turns to Hopper. “So are you happy?”
Superman rolls his eyes. “Kid, you know I–”
“Don’t call me that,” Eddie snaps. “Just because you knew me back when I was one doesn’t give you the right to pretend like you give a shit now. You sure didn’t then, and obviously nothing’s changed. Everyone told you Match was a jerk. Your own daughter said she didn’t trust him, and you made Young Justice welcome him into their sanctuary anyway. You tried to pretend everyone was a big happy family, but only on the terms that were convenient for you.” He shakes his head. “Steve upheld your fucking legacy while you were dead, and you treated him like garbage. You keep treating him that way, even while you pay lip service to the idea that everything’s great. Fuck you, Superman.”
He turns on his heel and steps over to the reception area, where the nurse sitting there has been watching all of this with wide eyes. She points down the other hall without him having to ask, which he feels kind of bad about. Not bad enough to say anything but a quick thanks, but still.
The auxiliary suit has a fully-detachable cowl, and Eddie takes it off before he slips into the room he was directed towards. The thing in his chest rises again at the sight of Steve on a medical bed, even though it doesn’t seem to be doing anything besides keeping track of his vitals. Steve looks beaten to shit, and Eddie has to clench his fists to keep them from shaking.
Steve’s already turned in his direction when the door opens, like he heard him coming, and their eyes meet.
Robin, standing on the other side of Steve’s bed, catches Eddie’s eye for just a moment. Her responding smile is more of a grimace, before she nods decisively. “Took you long enough to get here.” She pats Steve’s arm. “I’m going to check on the kids, okay?” He nods and smiles briefly at her before looking at Eddie again.
Eddie’s pretty sure the last time someone was that happy to see him, he’d woken up on top of his grave and fallen into Wayne’s arms.
It’s a terrifying thought, let alone feeling. But it’s not a new one. Not really.
Robin shoulder checks him on her way out, more gentle than usual. “Take care of him,” she whispers, and then Eddie is alone with Steve.
“How are you feeling?” he asks, cursing himself for being awkward as shit as he approaches the med-bed. He wants to examine each and every one of Steve’s (extensive) wounds, which have barely been bandaged. He wants to take him home and gently soothe away the hurts. He wants…
“Like I got my ass kicked,” Steve quips, wincing as he tries to sit up. That, at least, gives Eddie something to do with himself, dashing the few remaining steps forward and using the control panel beside the bed to lift the back part so Steve doesn’t have to hold himself up.
He smiles. “You look like it.”
“Aw, am I not pretty enough for you anymore, Munson?” He’s teasing, he doesn’t mean it, and Eddie…
“You’re still the prettiest,” Eddie says way too softly, too fondly. Whoops. “Did they find any pain meds for you, at least?”
Steve groans and lays back against the raised bed. “No. I already knew none of the over-the-counter stuff would do anything, and of course they can’t use anything that requires a needle, so I’m shit outta luck on that front.” He points those big brown eyes at Eddie again, and he is weak . “Is this what pain feels like all the time? Because it sucks.”
Eddie chuckles. “Okay, Captain Hammer. Do you want me to kiss it better?” He’s teasing too, except for how he means it. Unless Steve doesn’t want him to mean it, in which case it’s obviously a joke.
Obviously.
Except this time, this time Steve breathes, “Would you?” while looking at him with those eyes. Eddie is but a man standing before a god. How can he do anything but obey?
He can stand there blinking at Steve like an idiot, that’s how.
“You don’t have to,” Steve says quickly after Eddie hesitates for too fucking long, looking away to hide whatever he’s feeling. “It was stupid, I’m–”
“I want to,” Eddie blurts. “I just don’t want to hurt your face more.”
Now Steve’s blinking at him. “Oh.” A beat. “I don’t care about that.” And then Steve is surging up to kiss Eddie.
(Later he’s going to admit that he had to use his tactile telekinesis to do it, but right now neither of them are thinking about that.)
It’s not quite what Eddie pictured in the fantasies he’s had over the years, since the first and last time that they’d kissed, because in those Steve was whole and hale and hearty, rather than sporting what’s probably the worst black eye Eddie’s ever seen. But his lips are still soft, and they’re both into it, and…
“I might have yelled at Hopper,” Eddie confesses as they part for breath.
Steve tilts his head. “What?”
Eddie pulls back a little. “Okay, not ‘might have’. I very loudly and intentionally blamed him for all of this.” He gestures at the room.
Steve frowns. “It’s not Hopper’s fault that Billy’s an asshole.”
“It’s his fault Match was in any kind of position to attack you – you or the kids. Especially the kids. Dustin didn’t give me all the details, but I’m pretty sure you could have died, Steve.”
“I hear it doesn’t stick most of the time.”
Eddie feels a chill sweep over his entire body. “That’s not fucking funny.” Normally he’s the first one to joke about his death (except around Wayne). Just not right now.
“Sorry. I just… He pushed Lucas and I lost it. He didn’t hold back, fighting me. He would have killed any of the kids if they tried to fight him. I couldn’t let that happen.”
“I know,” Eddie says. “The apple doesn’t fall that far from the damn tree, after all, though I think you missed a lot of the fault branches.” He exhales. “I was so scared of losing you, Steve.”
“You didn't, though.” Steve grabs his hands and squeezes them. “I’m right here.”
“You could have died, and you would never have known how much I love you.” He didn’t mean to say that. It was true; it had crept up on him over the years. He still hadn’t meant to say it.
Steve smiles. “And now I do. Well, since you told me. I was just kind of hoping there was still mutual interest, before.” He leans in and kisses Eddie again, so at least he hasn’t been scared off yet. Oh hey, now there’s tongue.
Eddie breaks the kiss and pulls back. “Wait, what?”
Steve pouts. “Dude, I’ve been flirting with you for years.”
“I mean, so have I, but…” Eddie shakes his head. “We’re idiots.”
“So Robin has said, yeah.”
“And I stand by it,” Robin says from the doorway. Eddie totally doesn’t jump, and the Super Twins totally don’t laugh at him for it. “You’ve got a few seconds to pull yourselves together before the hoard arrives.”
Eddie instead uses those few seconds to kiss Steve one more time, flipping Robin off when she shouts “Ew!” and tells the kids to cover their eyes. They’re going to have to get used to it.
Notes:
Some fun notes:
- The comic book version of Match was a clone of Superboy, and started out with pale hair and eyes before his DNA degraded. He wasn't made by S.T.A.R. Labs, but his actual creators weren't going to have a plotline here. The Young Justice cartoon apparently also made him a fully Kryptonian clone of Superman, which I didn't know before making that decision here.
- Eddie's "does a t-shirt and jeans even count as a costume" is a dig at the many versions of Superboy who wear exactly that. The 90s costume is vastly superior.
- Eleven's hero name (which I'm pretty sure only gets mentioned in this chapter) being Ebony has next-to no comic book relevance. It is instead a My Immortal joke.
Chapter 10: superbat
Notes:
I told my beta this was both the happiest and saddest chapter, and she agreed. Enjoy!
Chapter Warnings:
- This is the spicy chapter. Everything stays well within the M rating.
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
2010
Steve isn’t cleared to go home until the morning, because while the League’s doctor is pretty sure he’s just bruised at this point, he doesn’t have accelerated healing and the Kryptonians they know rarely get injured enough for it to show, so they want to keep him under observation. The kids end up spending the night in a few of the guest rooms the Hall of Justice has for visiting heroes (both international and interstellar), since Titans Tower still has a big hole in the living room, while Eddie and Robin fight over who’s going to stay with Steve. (Said fight consists of three fierce rounds of rock-paper-scissors.) Robin does win that one, with Eddie’s goodbye kiss in front of her almost feeling like a retaliation with how long it lasts (not that Steve minds).
He’s left smiling like an idiot as Eddie walks out of the room. Robin raises an eyebrow at him, but she doesn’t hold the unimpressed look for long before she gets onto the bed with him.
“I need details, dingus.”
“Do you?” Steve scoots over to make room for her. The sensors start going crazy until a nurse opens the door. Luckily, they’ve developed enough of a reputation over the last couple of years that she just comes in and turns the sensors on the medical bed off.
“Next time, we can just get a cot or put you in another room,” she informs them. Steve gives her a sheepish smile and wave as she leaves.
Robin settles next to him again. The bed is really way too narrow for both of them, but that’s never stopped them before, and Robin rests her head against his uninjured shoulder. “So who kissed who first?”
He wraps that arm around her. “I asked him to kiss me. He was worried about my face.”
Robin snorts. “Of course. Obviously you didn’t care.”
“Obviously.”
She’s quiet for a moment. “What happens now?”
“Well, we’re going to have to find someone to fix the broken window.”
She lifts a hand to smack him like she normally would, then puts it back down on his chest instead. “You know that’s not what I meant.”
He does. “I know, I just don’t have an answer for you yet. We didn’t get to talk about anything yet, really.” He hopes that the kissing and confessing means he and Eddie are (finally) done dancing around each other. He wants to take the other man on a date (many dates). He wants to do things with Eddie that will gross Robin out when he tells her about them, even though she’s going to be the one who asks, every time. He actually, for once, wants to think about the future and what it might look like, instead of an endless series of similar days (that he’s enjoyed, and he’s comfortable with, but this is going to change his life no matter how long it lasts).
It’s a conversation (or, more realistically, a series of conversations) that he’s looking forward to having.
It’s actually a few days before they get to see each other again, after another searing goodbye kiss before Eddie heads back to Gotham with Dustin. Steve complains about this on the phone to Eddie after the first night. (Robin insists, for some reason, that he’s not supposed to call right away, which is dumb because they already know each other and have talked on the phone almost weekly for years now.)
“I know,” Eddie says. “I’d rather just drop everything, but then Wayne would give me that disappointed look… oh my god, you haven’t met Wayne yet.”
Steve blinks, trying to figure out how it’s possible that he’s heard about Eddie’s uncle all the time and still hasn’t actually met the man. Then again, he hasn’t spent much time in Gotham since the mission three years ago. “Do you want me to meet him?”
“Of course,” Eddie says easily, and Steve could melt into his bedspread from how warm that makes him feel. Eddie wants him to meet his father figure. He sits up. Oh god, Eddie wants him to meet his father figure .
“I can hear you panicking, man.”
Steve scrunches his nose. “No, you can’t. And I’m not. You haven’t met Joyce yet either.” Eddie has met Hopper, obviously, but that doesn’t count.
“I’d like to take you on a real date before we start meeting the parents, if that’s okay.”
“When?” Was that too fast or too demanding? Steve doesn’t know; he’s never done this before. He hasn’t even been out with anyone since meeting Eddie – he’s found plenty of people attractive, but he wasn’t interested.
“Thursday? Or you can come to the gig Friday and we could go out after, but…” But that was what their original not-a-date first date had been. This is supposed to be a fresh start.
“Thursday’s great,” Steve says immediately. He’s smiling now; he can’t help it. He’s pretty sure that on the other end, Eddie is too.
“Great,” Eddie repeats.
Now Steve has to figure out what he’s going to wear.
The look on Eddie’s face when Steve arrives in Gotham (Eddie having texted him the address of the apartment a few hours ago) is worth every second of the two hours Steve spends choosing his outfit (with input of varying degrees of helpfulness from the other residents of Titans Tower and even Jonathan via text). He considered trying to cover up his black eye, which is slightly better than it was a few days ago, before deciding against it. It’s not like Eddie doesn’t know what he’s getting.
“Wow,” Eddie breathes as he looks Steve up and down, and it’s doing wonders for Steve’s ego (which Robin would say doesn’t need help, but Robin can suck it). Not that Steve isn’t just as dazzled; Eddie’s in a button-up shirt, for once, with his hair tied back for a more dressed-up version of his usual look. Of course, that could be related to the apron he’s also wearing. “You’re early.”
Heat rises in Steve’s cheeks; he is a little early, but he’s been very excited for this. “Should I not be? Do you need me to run around the block, or…?”
Eddie laughs and shakes his head. “No, come on in. Dinner just isn’t ready yet.” He steps aside to let Steve into the apartment.
“You made me dinner?” Steve follows him in, glancing around as he goes. It’s smaller than the one he grew up in, though it also looks a lot more lived in than the Harrington residence ever did. There are also photos of Eddie as a kid everywhere, and Steve pauses to look at one of Eddie pouting while wearing a baseball hat.
“Yeah, Wayne’s out of town and I figured we could…” Eddie realizes what Steve is looking at. “Oh god, that. That was the first and last time I ever went to a Knights game.”
Steve grins. “How old were you?” It says a lot about Eddie and Wayne’s relationship that this photo is even on the wall; Rex never took Steve to any games of any kind, and there wouldn’t have been pictures if he had.
“Ten, maybe? I remember hating every second of it, but I wore the hat for weeks just because Wayne bought it for me.”
“That’s adorable.” Steve sniffs. “Is, uh, something burning?”
“Oh shit!” Eddie takes off running in what Steve assumes is the direction of the kitchen. Steve follows more slowly and gets to appreciate the view of Eddie bent over to take something out of the oven.
“Super senses strike again,” Eddie says, setting the dish on the counter. “The timer hadn’t even gone off, and it looks fine, but I’m starting to wish I’d taken you to a restaurant just so I'd look a little more suave or something.”
“I’ve known you too long to ever think that.”
Eddie pretends to have been hit by a shot of some kind, dropping to the floor. “Your aim is as true as your face is fair, good sir,” he complains, sprawled on the tile as Steve peers down at him.
Steve is pretty sure Eddie’s posing, actually. He’s in so deep.
“You’re just proving my point, dude.”
Eddie props himself up with his elbows and grins at Steve – yeah, he’s definitely doing it on purpose. “But you’re still into it, right?”
So, so into it. “I’m pretty sure my type is ‘giant fucking nerd,’ so I think we’re good.” Steve knows what’s likely to happen when he holds out a hand to help Eddie stand up, and he’s not disappointed. Eddie takes his hand and tries to tug Steve down, but instead, Steve hauls him up with one hand (and a little superpowered help), putting a hand on the small of Eddie’s back as he pulls him into a kiss. It’s the same end result; they’re just upright instead of on the floor.
“Okay, that was really fucking hot,” Eddie says when they stop to breathe.
Steve smiles. Well, he maybe hasn’t stopped smiling since he got here. “You made me dinner.”
Eddie flaps his hand. “Wayne walked me through a casserole. I’m more interested in what’s happening now.” He pauses. “As long as you are too; if you want to stop and eat we can.”
“Well,” Steve says, loosening his hold on Eddie just a little, “we might need to eat so we have energy for… other activities.” He’s not sure he sounds as cool as he wants to. If he knew where Eddie’s bedroom was, he’s not sure he wouldn’t just pick him up and take him there.
(He is pretty sure Eddie would let him.)
Eddie stares at him for a moment, and then his face breaks out into that wide grin that shows off his dimples. “Food first,” he says decisively. “And then I’m going to make sure this is the best first date you’ve ever been on.”
(Later, Steve bangs his head on Eddie’s headboard, and Eddie actually falls off the bed, so in the long run, Steve’s choice to not correct him that it’s their second date and the competition is nonexistent seems like a good one.)
(Two weeks later, in the Batcave, Steve asks “So we’re, like, boyfriends now, right?”
Eddie stares at him. “We’ve been on multiple dates and your hand is literally on my dick right this very second.”
“That doesn’t actually answer the question.”
“Oh my god, yes!”
“... was that an answer, or because I did this?”
“Do it a third time and this is going to be over way faster than either of us wants it to be.”
“Hey, Eddie, Jeff wants to know – oh my god.”
“Get out , Gareth.”)
2011
The apartment is smaller than any place that Steve’s lived before (other than his little room at Cadmus, which doesn’t count), and yet he knows the second they walk in that it’s the one. The real estate agent knows it too, from the way her gaze sharpens as Steve passes her to check out the bedroom.
“It’s around the middle of your budget,” she says, speaking a little louder so Steve can hear her (because obviously she doesn’t know he has super-hearing; they’re pretending to just be a regular couple). “Just the one bedroom and bath, but there is an elevator and this building is practically at the center of the neighborhood.”
Eddie joins Steve in the bedroom and rests his chin on his boyfriend’s shoulder, wrapping his arms around Steve’s waist. The room is empty, of course, with walls that were painted recently enough that Steve can still smell it. “What do you think?”
Steve can picture the room furnished and filled with their things – well, some of their things; this isn’t supposed to be a full-time residence for either of them. They just wanted a place where they could be alone together. “Well, there’s easy access to the fire escape, so that’s good for you,” he says, putting his hands over Eddie’s. “Meanwhile the biggest windows face east and, by some miracle, the buildings on that side are short enough that we’ll get plenty of sunlight.”
“Which is probably why it’s available; no one likes to get woken up by the sun in their eyes.” A beat. “Except you.”
“Except me,” Steve agrees. “And Robin.”
“Robin’s not potentially living here part time.”
“We are, though,” Steve says decisively.
“Yeah, I thought so.” He can hear the fondness in Eddie’s voice, and he turns around to kiss him. (Which leads to the poor real estate agent walking in while Steve’s tongue is basically down Eddie’s throat, but he only feels a little bad about it.)
Steve thought living in Titans Tower had prepared him for living with Eddie. He’s wrong, and it’s probably good for both of them that they have other places to go to if they need it. They have stupid fights, about Steve’s stuff taking up all the space on the bathroom counter and how Eddie never picks up the clothes he throws to the floor after he takes them off (whether they’re his own or Steve’s). Thankfully none of their fights last longer than a few hours.
The kids and Robin aren’t invited to spend time there, for the most part, though Robin knows where it is and has a key for emergencies, and locks don’t stop Max unless she wants them to. They do invite Joyce and Wayne over for dinner (separately), and manage to set off the smoke alarm while preparing both times. (Joyce adores Eddie and talks music with him the way Wayne talks sports with Steve.)
They go on a double date with Nancy and Jonathan when they’re in town for an article, and then Steve gets to go home with his boyfriend. Home. Titans Tower was home for a long time, but this is different. This, like his relationship with Eddie so far, doesn’t feel temporary.
It might be Steve’s favorite place in the whole world, especially when he and Eddie are just relaxing in each other’s space at the end of the long day, whether it’s on the couch or in bed.
(Eddie is for sure Steve’s favorite person, and vice versa, and they tell each other so often.)
In November they celebrate Eddie’s twenty-fifth birthday by turning off all of their communicators and staying in. Suzie has an override if they’re truly needed, and Jeff is in charge of patrols in Gotham for the next few nights. (Steve doesn’t really expect them to be occupied for that long, because both of them have terrible hero complexes, but it’s the thought that counts.) Robin and Young Justice have also been told not to disturb them until further notice.
Steve makes dinner and they eat it early, since Eddie has specific plans for the rest of the evening. They still end up taking their time, chatting like they’re on a regular date about work (mostly Eddie, who always has a fun story about a session; Steve’s been considering trying to go to college to become a teacher as a day job, since he has so much experience with teenagers already and is probably going to need one eventually, but he never finished high school and only sort of exists legally through the identity the Justice League gave him a few years ago) and their friends (mostly Steve, who spends a lot of days in California with Young Justice and is luckily immune to jet lag so far – if one is at risk of jet lag when they do the flying themselves).
Eventually Eddie ‘convinces’ Steve, with a few kisses, to leave the dishes for now before hoisting him onto the counter. Displays of Eddie’s unexpected strength never fail to turn Steve on, and he follows it up by going at his neck with little kisses, licks, and nibbles like he’s determined to leave a mark – which he’s never managed before (thanks, Kryptonian skin), but Eddie remains optimistic. Steve moans and rests his head against the upper cabinets. Then he wraps his legs around Eddie’s waist and braces his hands on the counter to pull him closer. Eddie hums, pleased, and shifts his focus to swallow the next sound Steve makes.
He doesn’t know how long they make out in the kitchen; all he knows is he’s very hard and hasn’t gotten tired of kissing Eddie yet. (He’s pretty sure he never will.) Still, after a good long while Eddie pulls back just enough to say the word “Bedroom,” and it’s not even long enough for Steve to whine about the separation before he’s back again, slipping his hands under Steve’s ass to lift him off the counter. Steve tightens his legs and puts his hands on Eddie’s shoulders, using his tactile telekinesis to support himself because it’s better for Eddie’s back in the long run, even if it is really hot to be manhandled by his boyfriend. (They actually both have that kink, to an extent, but because it’s Eddie’s birthday, he’s in charge tonight. Not that Steve’s complaining.) He slides down slightly as Eddie ‘carries’ him to the bedroom, appreciating Eddie’s groan as their dicks are pressed against each other even more.
Once they’re there, Steve drops his legs so he can strip both of their clothes off at super speed before throwing himself back into Eddie’s arms.
“So impatient,” Eddie teases, pushing Steve up against the bedroom wall and lifting him again. “You didn’t even let me unwrap my present.”
“I could put, hng, my clothes back on,” Steve offers, even though Eddie has already started grinding against him.
“Nah,” Eddie says with a grin. He reaches around to squeeze Steve’s ass. He presses forward, grinding against Steve until it’s almost too much.
“Ed,” Steve forces out, “I’m gonna…”
“Go ahead, sweetheart,” Eddie breathes, tucking a stray strand of hair behind Steve’s ear. “We’re just getting started.”
Afterward (a few hours and two orgasms for each of them later), they lie in bed together, Eddie’s head tucked under Steve’s chin so he can tangle his fingers in Eddie’s curls. He’s never going to be sorry for introducing his boyfriend to better hair care products (no matter how crowded the bathroom gets), especially when he can smell Eddie’s shampoo.
He wants to do this forever.
Not just the sex part, or the living-together part, or even the superhero part (he knows Eddie only has so many years of that left anyway; only time will tell if Steve’s going to be more human or more Kryptonian with regards to aging in general). All of it, and everything else there is.
Eddie’s half asleep, and there’s a solid chance Steve will drift off himself before he can finish asking, but he wants to ask and he wants to do it now.
“Hey, Eddie?”
“Yeah?”
“I love you.”
“I know.”
He makes that joke all the time. Steve tugs on the curls wrapped around his fingers. “I’m being serious right now, asshole.”
“It’s my birthday,” Eddie whines, turning his face and squashing his nose against Steve’s neck. His breath tickles a little. “You’re not allowed to be mean to me on my birthday.”
“You like it when I’m mean, and I’m trying to ask you to marry me.”
Eddie goes very still under his hand. Steve frowns down at him. “Eddie?”
“It’s not legal here. Or in California,” Eddie says into his neck.
“Well, neither is being a vigilante, and that hasn’t stopped you yet,” Steve replies, still confused.
“I had a plan, Steve,” Eddie says slowly. “I bought a ring and I wrote a speech and I hid them both, thinking I had all the time in the world and could find the perfect moment and you just…” He waves one hand in the air.
“Wait.” Oh. Oh. Steve starts to grin. “Were you going to propose?”
Eddie sits up, pushing himself upright with one hand on Steve’s chest. “Yes!” He smacks Steve’s chest, right in the middle of his chest hair. “And then you had to go and just ask, just like that!”
“What I'm hearing is we’re on the same page, though,” Steve says, more than a little smug.
Eddie huffs. “Well, yeah.”
“Good. We can call Wayne and Robin with the good news in the morning.” Steve pulls him back down. “You didn’t even memorize the speech?” he asks once Eddie’s settled again.
“Of course I memorized it,” Eddie scoffs. “The written copy was just a back-up.”
“I want to hear it.”
“No,” Eddie says, pressing a kiss to Steve’s collarbone.
“What?” Steve makes an offended sound of disbelief. “Why not?”
“Because,” Eddie emphasizes with more kisses, “I still want to surprise you with it.”
Steve imagines Eddie getting down on one knee, for just a moment. It takes his breath away a little. “Yeah, okay.” Eddie keeps kissing his way down Steve’s chest, and Steve smirks. “Can’t believe we’re engaged now.”
Eddie pauses. “Excuse you.” He tilts his head to make eye contact with Steve. “You didn’t actually ask, and I didn’t actually respond.”
“You said ‘yes’,” Steve insists. “Yelled it, even.”
“That doesn’t count,” Eddie says dismissively, maintaining the eye contact. It shouldn’t; he was responding to a different question. But that’s part of the game.
“It does.”
“Doesn’t.”
“So, what, you don’t want to be engaged to me?”
Eddie is quiet for a long moment, during which Steve starts winding his fiance’s curls around his fingers again. “... You are the foulest of demons,” he says finally.
Steve smiles. “And you love me.”
“So, so much.
2012
“I think I want to retire Superboy,” Steve says one day in April. It’s pouring outside, and he’s just come out of their little kitchen, blueberry muffins safely in the oven for a little while. Dustin’s mom gave Eddie a cookbook for Christmas, after hearing he’d moved out of his uncle’s place, and Steve has pretty much claimed it for himself since he’s taken a liking to baking in particular. Blueberry muffins are the one thing he can’t get right, for some reason, so he’s determined to keep trying until he does.
Eddie’s taken over the couch with his guitar, at least three notebooks and various other papers scattered across it and the coffee table. He takes his pencil out of his mouth – he says he holds it there so he doesn’t lose it while he’s playing, but Steve’s seen the bite marks in a number of spare pencils around the apartment – as Steve sits down next to him. “Really?”
“I think it’s time. I’m about to turn twenty-four; not exactly a ‘boy’ anymore.”
Eddie tucks the pencil behind his ear. “Are you going to go back to being Superman, then?”
“I don’t think so,” Steve says. “I switched back because having two Supermen got too complicated, and Hopper will change his name when Hell freezes over.”
There’s a sparkle in Eddie’s eyes. “I mean, if you take Dante as literal rather than allegorical…”
Steve sighs. “I have no idea what you just said.”
“Literature joke,” Eddie explains quickly. “Dante wrote the Divine Comedy, in which he travels through Hell, Purgatory, and Heaven. Hell has multiple levels, and the deepest one is a frozen lake.”
That’s another thing Steve loves about Eddie; if he doesn’t understand something, Eddie will just explain it, no condescension or complaints. Steve does his best to do the same in return, though it pretty much only happens with specific sports stuff.
“If you’re not going to be Superman, I’m guessing you have something else in mind?” Eddie asks.
Steve bites his lip. “I do, but it’s not really a solo idea.” He asked Eddie to marry him in a haze of post-sex bliss; this should be easier.
Eddie looks down, his fingers shifting his hold on his guitar slightly. “Robin’s probably just as tired of being a ‘girl’ as you are a ‘boy’. It makes sense for you to change together.”
Steve snorts and reaches out to lift Eddie’s chin and make him meet his eyes. “Robin loves being Supergirl, and it wouldn’t be with her, if I did it.” He drops his hand, since he definitely has Eddie’s attention now, and he takes a deep breath. “So Robin is the one who told me about this, before I looked it up in the Fortress’ database. She said her parents told her when she was little, that it was a popular Kryptonian bedtime story, and maybe it was, but there are a few real records…” He’s babbling. He clears his throat. “Anyway. Hundreds of years ago on Krypton there were these two vigilantes called Nightwing and Flamebird. They were partners and lovers, with, like, a night-and-day theme, and… I don’t know, the whole thing kind of reminded me of us.”
“Yeah?” Eddie says, his big brown eyes shining. That’s a positive response.
Steve swallows. “Yeah. And, like, I know what Batman means to you. I would never ask you to give it up completely, or even right away. Nightwing’s not too different, though, and it seems just dramatic enough for you.”
“And you want to be Flamebird?”
“They go together. Like us.”
Eddie smiles. “Okay.”
Steve blinks. “Okay? Just like that?”
“I mean, like you said, it wouldn’t happen right away. That doesn’t mean we can’t talk about the logistics, maybe design costumes–” Steve cuts him off with a kiss. Just a quick one, because the guitar is in the way (and while it’s not actually debatable which one of them Eddie loves more, Steve doesn’t want to make him choose), but that’s easily remedied.
The first sketch of Nightwing and Flamebird doesn’t happen for a couple more weeks. When it does, Steve sticks it on the fridge.
(It stays there until they eventually move out of the apartment and into a bigger one, a few years later, and goes on the fridge in the new place as well.)
Jonathan and Nancy get married at the end of June in a nice hotel on the outskirts of Metropolis – her parents paid for the whole thing, and they got to choose the venue. The whole thing looks like an idealized movie version of a wedding, from the flowers to the room set up for the wedding and even Nancy’s dress. It’s not the version of the event Steve would have pictured for either of them if they’d gotten to choose everything – they threw a joint bachelor and bachelorette party a few nights ago, stating that there was no point in having separate parties when their friends overlapped so much. Something small and private would have made more sense, but this is what Nancy’s parents wanted.
Robin whispers that she feels like a phony in her dress as Steve walks down the aisle with her, while Eddie makes a face at them as they pass, careful to stay out of the videographer’s view. That makes it feel a little more real. Steve stands beside Jonathan with Will as Joyce and several other guests cry during the vows, though no one in the wedding party does – Steve kind of wants to when he risks a glance at Eddie, though.
Happy tears, of course. This could be – hopefully will be – them someday.
Between the ceremony and the reception, after the professional photographer the Wheelers hired has done all of his staged shots, Steve passes Jonathan the digital camera he’s had hidden in his suit jacket. Jonathan hugs him before snapping a few candids of his bride talking to her best friends, and for the rest of the night the only time the camera isn’t in his hands is when they’re dancing during the reception. Steve isn’t sorry.
(Jonathan takes pictures of everyone and everything, though he won’t get to develop them for at least a month, and he ends up crying when he does.)
Robin’s maid of honor speech had to be rewritten three times, with input from Steve, Eddie, and Barb to cover up the fact that she and Nancy met as teenage superheroes living in a T-shaped building rather than at a summer camp as she claimed. She ends up rambling about how great Nancy is after that – to be fair, there’s a lot for her to talk about – and wraps up with the fact that she doesn’t need to threaten Jonathan if he ever hurts her, because Nancy can take care of herself. Steve’s best man speech is easier, comparatively.
“Hi, I’m Steve,” he says into the microphone Robin passes him, smiling nervously.
“Hi, Steve!” Eddie, Robin, Mike, and Will shout, because they think they’re hilarious. Steve only laughs because he’s not used to making personal speeches.
“So, I’m Jonathan’s best man, obviously, and I want to apologize to Will for taking that job; he was Jon’s brother for years before I came into the picture and deserved this more. He definitely would have been better at this part.”
“I might forgive you,” Will calls, grinning.
Steve is used to a certain amount of heckling, at least. “Thanks, buddy. Anyway, Jonathan and I met in high school, where I was his only friend – and because I was fifteen when he told me that, my response was ‘that’s sad, dude’. Jonathan was the kind of guy who sat alone at lunch and spent way too much time in the school’s dark room… so I guess not much has changed.”
That gets a polite laugh.
“Most people didn’t get why we were friends, since I was one of the popular kids for a while, and he kind of hated me at first. We got assigned to be lab partners, and I just couldn’t believe there was someone who didn’t like me. It was the most effort I had ever put into making a friend, honestly. I guess you could say it paid off,” he adds with a grin, gesturing around him, earning another laugh. “But more importantly, Jonathan was the person I went to when my dad and I, uh, had a falling out, and he was the only person at that time who saw me for me. He’s really good at that, actually. It might be because he’s so used to looking at the world through a lens; he focuses on the important parts. I don’t know for sure if that’s one of the things Nancy sees in him, but it might be.”
He looks over at Jonathan and Nancy, who are smiling. Steve turns back to the room at large. “Now, Robin didn’t tell this story because it’s embarrassing for her, but I first met Nancy because Robin tried to set us up.”
Robin gets up and pulls the microphone towards herself, though she doesn’t take it away from Steve. “We all make mistakes,” she says, then lets him have it back and returns to her seat. He laughs.
“Nancy and I only went on one date,” he says into the microphone, “because she was way too good for me.”
“Damn right!” Eddie, Barb, and Robin shout.
“She was still in journalism school, then, and I went ‘hey, I have a brother who’s a photographer, do you want to meet him?’ And that is how Jonathan and Nancy met.” He turns toward them again and points. “You’re welcome.” That gets a laugh from everyone too.
“It’s been a privilege to not only watch Jon and Nance fall in love, but to also watch them work hard to keep that love going through all of the challenges life throws at them. Some people say that falling in love is the easiest thing in the world. What they don’t say is that staying in love takes a lot more effort. Jonathan and Nancy have put in the time, and I know they’re going to keep doing that for years to come.” He picks up the glass in front of him and raises it. “To Jonathan and Nancy!”
“To Jonathan and Nancy!” the crowd echos.
“Hey,” Eddie says, around three hours later as one song fades into a slower one and he steals Steve away from Robin.
Steve grins at him. “Hey, you.”
Nancy and Jonathan left the party at least half an hour ago, as have most of the guests over forty. The DJ announces that this is the last song, and Steve and Eddie sway together for a little while.
“Not that I don’t love dancing to Semisonic,” Eddie drawls, “but there’s something I want to show you, if you’re up for it.”
Steve laughs. “Yeah, we should probably get out of here.”
Eddie leads him out to the garden behind the hotel, where there’s a fountain with several lights trained on it. They sit on a bench near it. The lights are bright enough, and they’re close enough to the city, that even Steve can’t see the stars when he tilts his head back. When he looks back at Eddie, he’s not on the bench anymore.
He’s on one knee.
Steve blinks at him. “It’s tacky to propose at someone else’s wedding.”
Eddie rolls his eyes. “Only if you do it in front of everyone and make a big deal out of it. There’s no one out here but us, Stevie.” He reaches into the inner pocket of his suit jacket – Steve had thought, earlier, that it was a miracle he was still wearing it, though now he guesses this was why – and pulls out… a folded piece of paper. Which he unfolds dramatically before clearing his throat. “Steve,” he reads, glancing up with a twinkle in his eye after the first line before looking back down again.
“You said you had it memorized.”
“We’re going to be out here forever if you keep interrupting me.”
“Oh no, you’ve caught on to my plan,” Steve says dryly.
“ Steve,” Eddie repeats pointedly, though he lowers the paper and just locks eyes with Steve. “I never really thought about getting married, when I thought about my future as a kid, or even as a teenager. I especially didn’t think about it after I came back to life, because I was worried about other things. I just didn’t think it was important. Until recently, it wasn’t important.” He takes a deep breath. “I want to spend the rest of my life with you, however long that may be, given the whole superhero thing. I want to wake up next to you when the sun hits my face way too early. I want to argue with you about what we should order for dinner. I want to agree with you about what we should order for dinner. I want to get your opinion on the lyrics I write for fun, and the lyrics I’m thinking about using professionally. I want to make you laugh and I want to hold you when you’re sad and be there for you when you’re frustrated. I want to watch you teach kids, whether it’s how to fly or to throw a ball or something, because you’re good at it and it makes you happy. I want you to be happy.
“I know Robin is your platonic soulmate and I’m stuck with her forever, and I’m okay with that. She’s the second best person I know. You’re number one, obviously.”
“Obviously,” Steve says faintly.
Eddie smiles. “I love you, more than I love anyone, and that has thrilled and terrified me since I first realized it, by which point it was way too late to turn back. Marriage is, at the end of the day, mostly just a legal status, but I set up an appointment at a courthouse in New York City for Monday and told Robin she could start planning a party for the Fourth, so… Will you marry me?”
Steve pulls him up to kiss him.
(They end up paying for an extra night at the hotel and leave a very generous tip for the cleaning staff.)
(Later, Steve asks “Why is the party on the Fourth of July instead of, you know, the day we’re actually getting married?”
“What better way to celebrate America’s birthday than by celebrating gay marriage?” Eddie replies with a grin.
Steve can’t disagree with that.)
(Billy vanishes from his holding cell on Watchtower on Monday afternoon, and Jane wakes up screaming from a vision of her demonic father Monday night. In light of everything, Steve and Eddie don’t share their news, and Robin has to cancel the party.)
Notes:
Some fun notes:
- Nightwing and Flamebird, in their very first incarnations, were aliases used by Superman and Jimmy Olsen and inspired by Batman and Robin. Later retcons brought about the Kryptonian legend version, and Dick Grayson (the first Robin) eventually took up the mantle of Nightwing. He did/does have a Flamebird in Bette Kane, but he is the better known half of the pair.Thanks for reading!
Chapter 11: attempt 99 has failed
Notes:
We're getting closer and closer to the end!
Chapter Warnings:
- Eddie is still very (understandably) depressed in the 2012 sections.
- Questionably ethical science.
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
2008
“I’m just saying, you hooked up with the guy once–”
“Gareth, shut up for a second.”
Eddie would like Gareth to shut up for longer than just a second, because he has not been moping about Superboy Steve, thank you very much, but right at this moment he’s trying to figure out if someone is following them. It’s been six whole months since Steve left Gotham (and two weeks since they last talked, which is fine, really, Steve’s busy adopting/mentoring not one but two teenagers), and Eddie’s totally over it. This was supposed to be a normal patrol with his good buddy and bandmate, and it turned into Gareth complaining about Eddie’s moodiness. Which isn’t a problem.
He should have patrolled with Jeff instead. No, Jeff would have been too understanding. Frank would have complained too, probably. He should have patrolled solo, and then he would have been better able to hear the footsteps that he’s pretty sure have been behind them over the last couple of streets.
“You don’t get to tell me to shut up just because you don’t like what I’m saying!”
“Shut. Up,” Eddie hisses.
Gareth throws his hands up in the air in frustration, but at least he stops talking. Eddie waits. Silence. He takes a couple of steps forward. Still nothing. Damn. He turns around slowly, scanning the area. It’s Gotham, so there are plenty of places to hide in the dark.
“All right, come on out, whoever you are. We know you’re there.”
Gareth stares at him incredulously, while Eddie waits. It won’t matter if he’s wrong. If he’s not…
Finally a figure dressed head to toe in dark clothes emerges from the shadows. Their outfit is simple and nondescript, not unlike the stuff Shade, Signal, and Hood wore before Batman took them under his figurative wing, with a ski mask hiding all of their face except their eyes. The most interesting feature is the deep purple makeshift cape, which might actually be a blanket.
They’re also nearly a foot shorter than Eddie, which causes him to raise an eyebrow (even though no one can see it). He crosses his arms to convey the proper emotion instead.
“Aren’t you a little short for a stormtrooper?”
“Aren’t you a little skinny for Batman?” the kid – because by their voice, they’re definitely a kid – snarks back.
Eddie blinks; he wasn’t expecting the attitude. Also it’s not Eddie’s fault that Wayne used to pad the Batsuit.
“What are you doing out here, kid?” Gareth asks. It’s a bit rich, since he’s only recently eighteen himself.
“It’s Spoiler, not ‘kid’. And I’m patrolling, duh.”
Eddie shakes his head. Gareth is the youngest of the trio he’s picked up, and that’s bad enough. At least this Spoiler is smart enough not to announce his age, and Eddie really isn’t one to talk when it comes to teenagers trying to be heroes. “Following us around is dangerous, little dude. We just don’t want you to get hurt.”
“I won’t, and it’s Spoiler. Because I spoil the bad guys’ plans.”
“Yeah? How?”
Spoiler tilts his head in a way that Eddie is going to learn means trouble.
2012
Will and Mike are on the couch in the Batcave when Eddie walks in, both dressed in costume – Mike is going by Hercules these days, and there’s a lot more blue in his costume than before. He’s also added a jacket to the ensemble since the last time Eddie saw him, which Eddie isn’t going to dwell on. He really needs to change the biometric locks on this place so he doesn’t keep getting surprised by people who aren’t regularly supposed to be there. (He won’t.)
“Hey, guys,” he greets them, offering the best smile he can muster. (It's not great, but he tries.) “What’s up?”
“We were looking for Dustin,” Will says. “He hasn’t been to the Tower in a while.”
Eddie sighs. It’s bad enough that Dustin has been blowing him off. Young Justice were the tightest-knit team he’s seen, even closer than he and the Teen Titans were. He glances over at the Batcomputer, where a little green icon in the corner of the screen indicates that Suzie is active and listening. “Oracle, where’s Dustin?”
He doesn’t like the long pause that follows. “I can’t tell you,” Suzie says finally.
That isn’t the same as not knowing. There’s no way Suzie doesn’t know where Dustin is; keeping track of people is what she does. That means she knows and isn’t saying for some other reason.
Mike scowls. “Why not?” he asks, standing up and moving closer to the computer. Will follows.
“He’s currently unavailable,” Suzie says quickly. Too quickly. Suzie hates lying, so it’s just a matter of getting her into a corner where she can’t be vague anymore.
“Is he with you?” Eddie moves over to the computer. He can’t hear Suzie grinding her teeth, but he bets she is.
“No.”
“What’s he doing, Oracle?”
“I promised,” Suzie protests. “He made me promise not to tell.”
“Which means it’s dangerous and he knew we would try to stop him,” Will points out. Dustin’s plans are notoriously reckless for the most fragile member of a superhero team.
“It’s not dangerous, per se, there’s just a high failure rate and he didn’t want–” Suzie squeaks as she realizes she’s given away more information than she intended. “I can give you a location. I can’t tell you why he’s there or what he’s doing.”
“That’ll be enough,” Eddie says, and the printer next to the Batcomputer whirs to life as Suzie sends the information to it.
2009
“Don’t be mad.”
That’s not something he wants to hear when Dustin calls during what’s supposed to be a weekend with Young Justice. Eddie almost puts the phone down and walks away from it, honestly. “Give the phone to Steve.”
“What?” Dustin squawks. “Why?”
“Just do it, Spoiler.”
“Ugh, fine. Here, he wants to talk to you.”
“Hey, Eddie.” Steve sounds exhausted and maybe just the tiniest bit amused. That goes a long way towards making Eddie relax.
“Given that he’s the one who made the phone call, I’m going to assume his injuries aren’t life-threatening,” Eddie says.
“His injuries aren’t,” Steve confirms. “His sense of justice and tendency to stick his nose in other people’s business, on the other hand…”
Eddie exhales. Dustin is very much alive and well, and that’s what matters. (He doesn’t know how Wayne did this.) “It’s his tone, right? So what’s the damage?”
“A broken arm and a lightly bruised ego. The doctor gives him six weeks for the arm. Unfortunately his ego recovered almost instantaneously.” Steve laughs as Eddie hears Dustin shout ‘give me the phone!’ in the background, and then the sound dims, like Steve went into a separate space. “Seriously, he’s fine. I’m pretty sure Mike’s more shaken up than he is.”
Eddie frowns. “What does Mike have to do with it?”
“... I mean, isn’t the important part that he caught him?”
“Your sidekick dropped mine?”
“One, never let Mike hear you call him that. Two, you’re the one who never made sure yours had a healthy fear of falling. Or heights. Like, either one would have prevented all of this. He had to explain the whole ‘no collarbones’ thing to the people in the emergency room, but the bending like Gumbo part is neat.”
“Gumby,” Eddie corrects automatically. “Why are you at the emergency room instead of Titans Tower?”
“Mike and Max both have accelerated healing, so Robin and I have never had to set anyone’s bones before. We figured it was better to be safe than sorry. And you don’t have to worry about the insurance thing; the bill’s just going to the League.”
“Because I was totally worried about that,” Eddie says dryly. “Do you want me to come pick Dustin up?”
“I mean, you can come hang out, but I don’t think Dustin’s going to want to give up his time with his friends just because of a little accident.” Yeah, the invulnerable guy would think of a broken bone as a ‘little accident’. “They’re probably going to sleep in a pile together in the living room tonight, if we ever get out of here.”
He’s right that Dustin won’t want to leave, especially since the broken arm means no patrol for two full months at minimum.
Eddie wants to take Steve up on the offer to hang out. He would, if he didn’t already have plans. He’s still tempted. “Take pictures,” he says instead. That’s safe enough.
“Of course,” Steve replies. His voice is so warm that Eddie wants to wrap it around himself like a blanket. “I’ll see you in a couple of days?”
“Yeah.”
“Good.”
2012
The warehouse they’re given the address of isn’t abandoned, despite its dilapidated appearance. It is owned by what Eddie assumes is a shell company, because even if Dustin isn’t always thorough, Suzie is, and she definitely helped him with whatever this is. Her notes suggest Dustin wanted it for a safehouse, but it’s on an end of the warehouse district that they don’t have to go into a lot, and too large to just be a safehouse.
There’s a security system panel by the door, with a simple alarm of the kind Eddie’s been disabling since before he started high school. The entrance level, at first glance, just holds enormous metal shelves filled with cardboard boxes. Moonlight pours in from the high windows, at least until Mike flips on the overhead lights.
“Split up?” he asks Will and Mike. They nod and move in unison, heading in opposite directions. Somehow Eddie finds a set of stairs that go downward first. The space it connects to is similar to upstairs: wide and vast with cement walls, minus the windows. Instead of shelves, this area is filled with a series of tanks that seem to be filled with some sort of liquid. They aren’t huge; if pressed, Eddie might say they were big enough to hold… a person. Maybe that’s what it is about the whole set up that sends a shiver up Eddie’s spine. He walks past the tanks and finds a computer with a tv screen for a monitor. Dustin is sitting in front of it, his face buried in his hands.
Attempt 99 has failed, the screen reads.
Eddie stops a few feet away from him. “Dustin?”
The boy – god, he’s twenty now; he’s not the kid Eddie took under his wing anymore – spins around, slamming his hand on the keyboard without looking to make the screen go blank, like Eddie wasn’t supposed to see the message it had been displaying. Eddie’s probably not supposed to see any of this. “Eddie!”
Dustin tries to fake a smile, but it fails because it’s so obvious he was just crying. Why was he crying? Not that Eddie hasn’t spent the last few months feeling like doing nothing but crying. That’s just part of being an adult, right? You don’t always get to cry when you want to.
Attempt 99 has failed.
Big empty tanks.
Rex Harrington’s files being hacked.
Dustin started avoiding Eddie and his friends around the same time.
Suzie wouldn’t say where he was or what he was doing.
Attempt 99 has failed.
“Dustin,” Eddie says slowly, “what are you doing?”
He doesn’t want Dustin to lie to him. He just wants to be wrong. He wants so, so badly to be wrong.
“I know I shouldn’t have,” Dustin starts.
God fucking damn it.
His voice is as hollow as his eyes, raw like Eddie feels every morning when he wakes up by himself. “I knew it would be hard, because if it were easy there would have been more than just him and Match. I knew it wouldn’t… I knew it wouldn’t really be him. But part of me thought ‘I’m smart. I’m definitely smarter than those guys at Cadmus or S.T.A.R. Labs. I could do it.’” He looks back at the empty screen. “I was wrong.”
“Dustin…”
“I tried to clone Steve! I stole his hairbrush from your apartment, and I had Suzie get the files from Rex Harrington, and the ones about Billy, and I’ve been trying to clone him. Almost a hundred tries, and it didn’t work.” Dustin’s face crumples. “It didn’t work.”
Eddie just feels tired. “Yeah, I figured that out, buddy.”
Dustin stands up a little straighter. “If you’re going to yell at me, can you just do it, please?”
“I’m not going to yell at you,” Eddie says.
“I am!” Mike stomps forward. (Eddie hadn’t even heard him come downstairs.) “What the hell, Dustin? What the fucking hell is all of this? Why would you…” He shakes his head, clenching his fists. “Why?”
Eddie isn’t sure which of them to try to comfort, if he should try to comfort either of them. Steve would have known.
If Steve were here, none of them would need comforting.
“I just wanted him back, okay? I thought if we could have him back, everyone would be happy again.” Now they’re both yelling.
“We wouldn’t be happy, dumbass! Even if you managed to clone him, it wouldn’t be him.”
“I know!”
“Then why did you try to do it so many times?”
“Because I don’t know how to stop!”
The sound of breaking glass startles all three of them. Will is standing by the nearest tube, having punched and broken it. The liquid inside drains out quickly, and Dustin moves forward before being stopped by Eddie’s hand on his chest.
“You ask for help,” Will says, wiping his hand off on his cape. “You’re only alone if you choose to be, Dustin.”
That doesn’t hit home a little too hard for Eddie. Nope. Not at all.
“You would have told me not to do it,” Dustin points out.
Mike steps over to the next intact vat. “Yeah, we would have. Because you shouldn’t have done it. You don’t know how to stop?” He punches the tube, making a much larger hole than Will did. “We’ll stop you.”
“Okay, you made your point,” Eddie says, finally stepping in and putting a hand on Dustin’s shoulder. He squeezes it. “They’re right, though. So you’re going to turn that computer back on, and we’re going to get rid of all of this, okay?”
“All of it?” Dustin’s voice is small again, his eyes full of despair. It’s easily Eddie’s least favorite expression he’s ever seen on his protégé's face. He remains unmoved.
“All of it. Including the warehouse.”
2009
“So this is what the famous Batcave looks like,” Steve says, and Eddie almost falls out of the chair in front of the Batcomputer. Which isn’t nearly as embarrassing as the reason he doesn’t fall: Steve darts forward and catches him, gently pushing him back onto the chair.
Eddie gapes up at him. “What are you doing here?”
Steve frowns. “When did you break your leg?”
“Don’t answer a question with a question,” Eddie says, looking away and avoiding the question entirely.
“I mean, I think it’s a reasonable question, seeing as how we spoke on the phone just yesterday and you never mentioned this.” Steve gestures at Eddie’s right leg, the lower half bound in a black plaster cast. Then he turns back towards the entrance to the Batcave. “And neither did you,” he calls at Dustin, who is making his way down the stairs.
“Of course,” Eddie mutters under his breath.
“You didn’t ask,” Dustin points out. “Why did you think I called you to come patrol with me?”
“ Patrol ?” Eddie repeats at the same time that Steve shouts “To hang out!” Eddie shoots Steve a weird look.
Steve crosses his arms. “Lucas and Will call me to patrol with them sometimes,” he says, defensive in a way that Eddie immediately wants to soothe. “And obviously I go out with Max and Mike all the time. I thought that’s what this was.”
“It’s not not that,” Dustin backpedals. Good to know Eddie isn’t the only one weak to Steve’s pouty face – not that Steve would admit he’s pouting. And then Dustin launches into the fakest performance Eddie’s ever seen out of him, all ‘sad Victorian orphan’ in a way that would be impressive if it wasn’t out of fucking nowhere. “It’s just that Eddie doesn’t like for any of us to patrol alone, and if Gotham goes too long without a Batman sighting, things get… messy. So I figured you could…”
Steve blinks. “I could… what?”
Eddie gets it before he does. “What the hell, Dustin? No.”
“I think he could do it; he does a great impression of you.”
“Since when?” Now Eddie needs to know the context of that whole situation and why Steve had done an impression of him in the first place. Wait, no, he doesn’t. More important things are happening.
Whatever needed to click into place in Steve’s brain does so. “Oh!” He makes a face. “God, no, dude. The suit wouldn’t fit.”
“It stretches!”
“Not that much,” Steve and Eddie say in unison. Then they grin at each other, and Eddie has to look away first because now he’s thinking about Steve’s ass trying to squeeze into his Batman suit.
Jesus Christ.
“If you just wanted someone to be Batman, why didn’t you ask one of the other guys?” Steve asks. Which would have been the logical choice, since the cowl covers the wearer’s entire face. “Or you could have just told me that’s what you wanted.”
“Then you wouldn’t have come,” Dustin says. Eddie’s starting to get a sneaking suspicion about what’s happening here. Dustin sighs dramatically. “I guess I can go on patrol with the others… but hey, since you’re here, you can hang out with Eddie!”
Steve’s mouth drops open, and Eddie can’t even tease him about it because his does too. Obviously he and Dustin need to have a talk about subtlety, among other things.
“I’m sure Steve has other things–”
“I wouldn’t mind.” Steve’s looking at Eddie now, perfectly serious. (Perfectly gorgeous. Eddie would like his brain and other parts to disconnect, please and thank you.)
He can picture it, of course: the two of them in the Batcave all night, keeping an ear and an eye on everyone on patrol, feeding them information when needed and chatting with each other when they aren’t. Steve looking at him, pretty much the way he is now, and Eddie looking back, except they’re much closer and then one of them (or both) leans in…
It’s a nice fantasy. It’s just not one he’s going to ruin a friendship over.
“I think you should go on patrol with Spoiler as yourself,” Eddie says, because he’s a masochist. “And tomorrow night Jeff will be Batman, while Spoiler will be benched so Dustin and I can have a nice, long discussion about proper communication and how misleading your friends can have disastrous results.”
“Aw, man,” Dustin says, actually kicking at the ground like none of this is his own fault.
Steve frowns. “Are you sure? The cape is kind of hard to miss; people are probably going to ask why Superboy was in Gotham.”
“Let me worry about that,” Eddie assures him. “Patrolling with you is basically a right of passage for Young Justice, right? It’s only fair that Dustin does it too.”
Steve still looks hesitant. “If you’re sure…”
“I am. Go on. Have fun.”
They leave, and Eddie slips into the role he’s going to be stuck in for the next two months while his leg heals. It’s a slow night, which makes his boredom worse.
He wakes up on the couch a little after sunrise, with a blanket pulled over him and everything. Dustin couldn’t have moved him, and the guys wouldn’t have because it serves him right for falling asleep at the Batcomputer.
Which only leaves one person it could have been.
There’s a fluttering feeling in the pit of Eddie’s stomach. Fuck.
2012
When they’re done, Eddie has Will drop him off at a certain building in Metropolis. He promises to call when he’s ready to be flown back to Gotham or if he ends up with other plans. Then he texts Suzie to get the codes to get inside, citing the fact that after what he found out today, she owes him. It’s more than worth the surprise on Rex Harrington’s face when he sees Eddie appear in the doorway of his home office without having knocked on the front door.
Of course, because it’s Rex, he quickly schools his expression into something more neutral. “Edward, what a surprise. What brings you here at this hour?”
“What, I’m not allowed to check on my father-in-law?” Eddie quips. Rex is sitting at his desk and already has a glass of something clear in one hand, so Eddie walks over to the bar along the side wall and helps himself before settling in the chair across from Rex’s desk. It’s a lot more plush than the one in the Gotham RexCorp office, since Rex probably doesn’t host too many business meetings in his home. Eddie deliberately sits sideways in it, draping his leg over the arm. “I took you for more of a scotch man, honestly.”
Rex sinks back into his chair a little. “I am, usually. It’s been… a difficult few months.”
Eddie lifts his glass in a mocking toast. “Hasn’t it just.” He takes a sip. He’s not much of a top-shelf guy; Wayne’s never had anything but beer since Eddie’s known him, and Eddie’s own teenage rebellion took other forms. “I found out who hacked your system.”
Rex raises an eyebrow and takes a sip of his own drink. “Oh?”
“It’s been taken care of. The copies were deleted and the harddrive they had been stored on was destroyed.” Mike had taken a little too much pleasure in stomping on it until it shattered into irreparable pieces while Dustin hid his face in Eddie’s shoulder.
Of course, Suzie is very good at what she does. She wouldn’t have left a trail for Rex to follow in the first place unless she meant to, because she wanted to be caught so that Dustin would be. Eddie is pretty sure she’ll still have copies of the files. He’s not going to tell Rex that.
“That is good to hear.” Another sip. “I trust the culprit was apprehended?”
“In a manner of speaking. Why do you ask?” Eddie isn’t about to reveal the hacker’s identity to Rex, even if he had done as he was asked otherwise. He definitely isn’t going to throw Dustin under the bus for being the ‘mastermind’ behind it all.
The corner of Rex’s lips quirks upward. “Someone who can get into my system is at least worth an attempt at hiring, even if they aren’t interested.”
That makes an unfortunate amount of sense. “Sorry. They got away.” Saying he’d already called dibs would be too close to letting Rex know.
Rex sighs. “Shame. I trust this won’t happen again, regardless.”
“Of course.”
They sit in silence for a few minutes. By the time his glass is almost empty, Eddie has remembered where he is – he wonders if Steve’s childhood bedroom is still how it was left, or if it’s been packed away and cleaned out. He isn’t going to ask. He stands up and sets his glass on the bar. “Well, this has been… not fun at all. Let’s never do it again.”
Rex snorts. “Agreed.”
Eddie walks out and goes straight to the elevator. It’s not until he’s inside it with thirty floors to go down that he lets himself sink to the floor and bury his face in his knees.
He still doesn’t cry.
Notes:
Some fun notes:
- Tim Drake (Red Robin at the time, third Robin overall) did try to clone Kon-El/Superboy while he was dead in the comics. He wasn't successful either.
- Mike's "adult" hero name of Hercules is also a joke.
Chapter 12: welcome to the year 3000
Notes:
Chapter Warnings:
- Major character death (the one you all knew was coming).
- Descriptive body horror (nothing worse than season three).
- Minor character death (this one I didn't even know was coming like this until I wrote it. The character does know it's coming and asks for it, though it doesn't happen on screen).
- Very strongly implied suicide (not Steddie, see above).
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
Steve knows he won, and not just because Jane appears to have succeeded on her end. The portal has closed and the light of Vecna left Billy’s – Match’s– eyes. Even with Vecna’s power, even though Match was the pure Superman clone to Steve’s hybrid, he knows that he did beat him this time. That he wasn’t just good enough, he was better.
He also knows it was a very, very close match. (Ha!)
The last time he and Match fought, Billy had been out for blood while Steve was trying to protect the kids and (maybe stupidly, in hindsight) didn’t actually want to hurt him. Steve didn’t even remember the end of the fight, just waking up in the medbay at the Hall of Justice hours later. He’s beaten to a pulp again, he can feel it, but Match is… oh. Billy’s dead.
He hadn’t looked all that healthy when he rode out of the portal on a creature that could really only be described as a dragon (Robin was fighting that, where is she?), with greying skin and deep shadows under his eyes. It was such a sharp contrast to how he used to look (dangerously handsome in a way that had raised so many questions about Hopper’s younger years that Steve was never going to ask) that Steve almost didn’t recognize him. It wasn’t until Match leapt off the dragon and flew towards Steve that he saw the logo on his chest, and then Billy was barreling into him and the fight was on.
Now the fight is over.
He’s standing over Billy’s corpse – well, not exactly over; it’s a few feet away, though close enough that Steve can see the other man isn’t breathing anymore. He thinks he has a few broken ribs. He’s definitely got multiple broken bones, which is going to be interesting to deal with. He probably shouldn’t be standing.
Oh. Now he isn’t standing.
Steve’s fallen and he can’t get up.
Robin’s here, suddenly. That means she beat the dragon. That’s good. She’s crying for help. She’s just crying. Robin shouldn’t be crying; he loves when she laughs. She’s got a great smile and a ridiculous donkey-bray of a laugh and he loves her so much. She’s screaming for help now; did he say all of that out loud? He must have.
His chest doesn’t feel right. It’s getting harder to breathe. That’s a song. Eddie hates that song. He wishes Eddie was here. Eddie’s in Gotham, guarding it against the portal there. The portals are gone now, so maybe… if Eddie’s okay (he has to be okay), maybe someone can bring him here. Steve doesn’t think he can make it to Gotham right now, unless Robin helps him.
She’s crying again. She hasn’t stopped. And now Will’s here; he must have heard her calling for help. He’s upset too. Steve is dying and everyone’s upset and Eddie isn’t–
Oh.
He’s dying.
That sucks.
At least it happened while he was helping save the world. Sure, he would have preferred to be, like, really old and in a nursing home and just drift off to sleep or whatever. Are there nursing homes for superheroes? There might have to be, someday. Eddie will be a menace to all of the nurses.
He wishes Eddie was here.
Don’t cry, Will. It’s okay, Robin.
I love you.
(Robin screams. Will punches the ground so hard it leaves a crater. Mike lands nearby and drops to his knees, creating his own crater with the force of it, too late.)
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???
Steve feels like someone’s watching him.
He hasn’t opened his eyes yet; he’s mostly concerned by the fact that he’s any kind of awake at all. He was supposed to be… well, he didn’t want to be dead. He’s still pretty sure that he should be.
Deep breath in, slow exhale. He’s laying on something soft enough to be a bed, without any kind of blanket over him. Whatever room he’s in smells… completely neutral, something he’s never experienced before. There is definitely someone else in the room with him, and he recognizes the heartbeat. That has his eyes shooting open as he tries to sit up – his body is stiff, way worse than after the last time he fought Billy.
Max is sitting in a chair next to the bed he’s on, sipping a drink from a cup with a straw. She’s in her Zoomer costume, minus the goggles and with her hair loose around her shoulders.
“Hey, Slowpoke,” she says, before taking a loud sip of her drink.
No. No, Max shouldn’t be here. Max isn’t supposed to be dead. She was supposed to be with Jane, and Jane closed the portals, so Max should be fine.
“What happened?” he asks. Or he tries to; it comes out as a hoarse croak, like he hasn’t spoken in a very long time. (He’s starting to think, between the actual waking up and the pain of it all, that he might not be dead.)
Max picks up another cup with a straw off the table next to his bed and holds it out to him. His arm feels heavy as he takes it, but the cup is full of water and it might be the best thing he’s ever tasted. She waits until he’s done, in a show of kindness that would have him concerned she was an imposter if it weren’t for her use of the nickname.
“Vecna got into Jane’s head,” she says, fiddling with her straw. “I figured if I could go fast enough to disrupt the portal, I might also break the connection long enough for her to do it right.” She shrugs. “I wasn’t wrong.”
There’s too much she’s not saying. He learned a long time ago that pushing Max only makes her close off more. “Where are we?” he asks instead of the million other questions on the tip of his tongue.
(Among them is why she’s the only one here, if neither of them are really dead – it doesn’t matter that he doesn’t have superpowers, there’s no force in the universe that could keep Eddie from a room Steve was recovering in, short of… No. Eddie has to be fine.)
She grimaces. “Somewhere outside Metropolis, in the headquarters of the Legion of Super-Heroes. Which is a stupid name, but they didn’t really appreciate me saying so.”
Steve blinks. “Who?”
Max looks away. “They said we’re in the future. Supposedly it’s 3001 and the fight against Vecna was almost a thousand years ago.”
Oh.
That’s… a long time. There might be alien species who live that long, but Steve hasn’t met any of them. Humans absolutely don’t.
Max is the only one here because, somehow, she’s the only one left.
Steve puts the cup down on the table, slowly and carefully. Max glances at him, out of the corner of her eye, and he only has to open his arms for her to leap out of the chair and into them. She’s a little taller than when she was fifteen, but not much. He hugs her tightly.
She doesn’t cry, and he doesn’t expect her to. Max clings to him, and Steve realizes that he’s wearing his costume as her fingers dig into the material. It’s weirdly pristine, none of the rips and other damage that should definitely be there, and his jacket is gone.
He feels wrong without it.
“I didn’t even get to say goodbye to anyone,” Max whispers into his chest. “I just told Jane that she could close the portals, and then I ran. I don’t know where I was, but it was fast and it hurt and I knew I was there for a long time, but I didn’t…”
“I’m not going to lie to you and say it’s okay,” Steve says into her hair. “But we’ll figure it out.”
He doesn’t know how. Even Robin, who was supposed to at least last as long as Steve, if not longer, is long dead by now.
There’s a knock at the door to the room, which Steve hadn’t really paid attention to before now. It’s smooth, with a small panel beside it, like something out of Star Trek (which Dustin, Will, and Eddie all made him watch with them, except they all chose different series so he never really figured out what was going on, and the reminder of Eddie hurts too much to deal with right now).
Max sits up, though she doesn’t move away. “Come in,” she calls to whoever is outside.
The door slides open, revealing a dark-haired man wearing a black unitard covered in stars with white gloves and boots. He smiles at them. “Oh good, you’re awake. We were a little worried we’d taken you out of the regeneration chamber too soon.”
Steve wants to stand up, even though his limbs still feel too heavy. He has to settle for sitting up a little straighter. “The what?”
“The Kryptonian healing chrysalis deep in the Fortress of Solitude?” the man says, like that explains anything instead of just being a series of words Steve mostly knows in an order that makes a sentence. “It’s what brought you back to life.”
Steve would like for people to stop giving him answers that just raise more questions. “Okay. Who are you?”
The man shakes his head, still smiling. “Sorry. I’m Starman. I work with the Legion of Super-Heroes, and you’re in–”
“The future?”
Starman blinks. “Well, that too, yes. I would offer you a tour of our headquarters, but I think that would violate a few time travel laws, in the end.”
Max and Steve both frown. “What do you mean?” Max asks. “Aren’t we stuck here?”
Now Starman looks confused. Steve’s tempted to welcome him to the club. “Why would you be stuck? I was sent back in time to place Superboy’s body in the regeneration chamber so that he would be revived in the 31st century to help fight against the Legion of Super-Villains. You were pulled out of the Speed Force for the same reason. It was always our intention to send you back afterwards.”
Back. They would be going home after all. Steve’s head is spinning, though he doesn’t know if that’s just because of the whiplash of information and emotion.
“Why do you need us to help you?” Max’s asking the important questions, obviously.
“One of the members of the Legion of Super-Villains – which is vast, and they’ve never been aligned as they are now – also found a Kryptonian regeneration chamber. We weren’t aware of it until the person they’d put in came out, and then we discovered their chamber doesn’t work quite right. We aren’t sure why, and unless we actually find it, we may never know. At any rate, they’ve unleashed a monster. We think he began as the clone you knew as Match.”
“You think?” Not again. Steve doesn’t want to have to fight Billy again; the last time was supposed to be the last time.
“He has been absorbing the, uh, material remains of those he defeats. We have had trouble getting close, as he is disinterested in engaging in anything but direct and swift combat with those we’ve sent to fight him. We’re hoping he’ll recognize you and be distracted long enough to be stopped.”
“So we’re bait,” Steve says. “You brought us back to life to be bait.” He wants to punch… maybe not this guy, necessarily, but something. Not that he’d rather be dead. He just doesn’t like being used.
Some of that must show on his face, because Starman flinches. “That is… an unfortunate way to put it, but not entirely inaccurate.”
“And if we do what you want, you’ll send us home?” Max demands.
“We will send you back to your time regardless. That is not meant to be leveraged against your help.”
Steve slumps back onto the bed, while Max rolls her eyes. “Well, that’s good to hear,” she says in the bratty, sarcastic tone she mastered years ago. “So what are we waiting for?”
Steve doesn’t like this plan. He finally gets to go to another planet, and it’s not even for fun.
The Legion of Super-Heroes (Max was right, it is a stupid name) have tracked Billy here, and they have some sort of kryptonite laser or something designed to take him out as soon as Steve tells them to take the shot. That part’s… fine. What Steve really doesn’t like is that Max is supposed to go in first to try and lure Billy over to where Steve is waiting. He did at least manage to get her to agree to go to safety once she’s done her job.
They were teleported – another thing Star Trek was right about – a few miles outside of a city, near where Billy was last spotted. There’s enough space for Steve and Billy to fight without causing too much damage, as long as he doesn’t run towards the city, and Steve is ready for it. He isn’t sore from being brought back to life anymore, and he waits on the hill overlooking the city.
Not all that patiently, but he waits.
He doesn’t have to wait long.
Max zooms past him, hair streaming behind her, shouting “Incoming!” Steve has just enough time to hit the button on his communicator – gifted by the Legion and attached to his wrist, it was probably made just for this occasion since it’s audio only – that will send a signal for Max to be teleported out before he spots Billy.
Starman’s description had been kind.
Someone must have identified him early in his return, because there are very few of the features Steve remembers in the fleshy being that’s racing towards him. His skin ripples and expands and bubbles, like he’s several bodies melted together now and the others are trying to escape. There are extra limbs, too, the whole effect weirdly spider-like. Steve swallows down the urge to throw up. He can do this. He’s fought worse, nastier-looking things. He clenches his fists as Billy bears down on him, and then he has to dodge – he’s still fast, despite the extra flesh and limbs.
Now Steve can see that Billy’s face is the only recognizable part left. Barely.
The creature – it’s Billy, he knows it’s Billy, but now that they’re in front of each other it’s also not – skids to a stop a few feet away and looks at Steve. Billy’s eyes are still the same too. He makes a low, rumbling noise that might be a laugh. “So they dug you up too?” His voice is deeper, gravelly and grating and yet still familiar.
Steve braces himself, waiting for the predator to pounce. “Something like that.”
“Did they send you to kill me again?”
“Something like that,” Steve repeats. Maybe he should call the Legion now; it’s not like he really wanted to fight Billy in the first place.
“Good,” Billy says, and turns to face the city before dropping down onto the grass.
Huh?
“What?” Steve says out loud.
“You know, I never got the whole hero thing,” Billy adds, not looking at him. “You and Superman were so obsessed with helping humans, when they were ants compared to us. We could have crushed them and it wouldn’t have mattered.”
Steve still isn’t sure what’s happening. “It would have,” he says, taking a few steps closer. Billy doesn’t move. “I guess it helped that we grew up thinking we were humans, at first. I’m sorry you didn’t get that chance.” He’s thought about it a lot over the years, the differences between him and Billy. And the things that aren’t so different, in the end.
Billy scoffs, maybe. It’s almost closer to a bark. “I’m not. Jane said I was made wrong.” Steve shouldn’t be surprised that Billy heard her say that. “There’s always been something inside me that wants to break and tear and destroy. I was made to be a weapon. First for S.T.A.R. Labs, then for Superman.” Something like a face pushes against his shoulder before sinking back into his arm.
“He didn’t see you that way.”
“I know. He wanted me to be like you. He was wrong. Then Vecna pointed me at you again. I wanted it. To die, and to kill you. It felt like that was how it was supposed to be, didn’t it?”
Steve sits down next to him. It’s weird to sit next to a massive flesh monster, let alone Billy, the clone who was everything Steve was supposed to have been and nothing Steve was proud to be. They aren’t evenly matched anymore. “I don’t think it had to be that way.”
Billy makes the rumbling laugh sound again. “Then you’re as stupid as Superman was.” They’re both quiet for a minute.
Steve looks at the city below them. With his enhanced vision, he can see people moving on the streets, going about their lives. His hand hovers over the communicator on his wrist. “The Legion of Super-Heroes could probably find a way to fix you, if you wanted.”
“I don’t. I just want it to be over.”
“Okay.”
He calls Starman, and then in a matter of minutes, he and Max are back on the Legion’s ship, and Billy is gone for good.
Notes:
Notes of Interest:
- Kon-El/Superboy was revived in the 31st century after he was killed by Superboy Prime. Bart Allen/Impulse was also brought there, both of them to fight said villain.
- I don't know anything about Starman's personality, which is why he barely has one here.One more chapter to go!
Chapter 13
Notes:
And we're finally at the end! One more big shout out to hereforanepilogue and their art, and tinytalkingtina for beta reading. You both were wonderful to work with! Thank you to everyone who's been reading along as we go, and to everyone who reads it now that we're done.
Chapter Warnings:
- Nothing new; we're at the happy ending chapter!
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
2012
This time Eddie goes to Wayne.
He has Will drop him off on the top of his own apartment building, for appearances’ sake, then takes the bus over to Wayne’s. It’s easier to not think while he’s surrounded by people he doesn’t know, to focus on the little details and guesses he can make about their lives from those. (Sherlock can suck it; Eddie did it first and better.) The sun is just barely starting to peek over the edge of Gotham’s horizon, and there’s an equal mix of people on their morning commute and people who are heading home after their night shift.
Maybe Eddie should have gone home and gotten some sleep. He gets too little of it as it is, nowadays, and he knows Wayne’s going to say so.
(Wayne’s going to say a lot of things.)
He makes it into the building with a wave at Clive, the doorman, takes the elevator up, and lets himself into the apartment. Wayne’s at the kitchen table with his morning coffee; he says he started getting up earlier and earlier after he retired from being Batman. Then when Eddie took up the cowl, Wayne would wake up to greet him when he came in.
Eddie sits down across from his uncle without a word.
Wayne sips his coffee and studies Eddie for a moment before setting down his mug. He stands up and turns on the radio sitting on one of the shelves, keeping it low while he gets another mug out of the cabinet. Eddie closes his eyes and tilts his head back, just taking in the sound of Wayne puttering around and the soft background music.
Finally Wayne comes back and sets Eddie’s favorite mug (a Garfield one that Wayne’s had longer than Eddie’s been alive) in front of him, filled with hot chocolate. Wayne always used to make hot chocolate for Eddie when he was upset as a kid, and when he woke up screaming from nightmares as he got older. If anything is going to make Eddie finally break down and cry, it should be this.
He doesn’t.
He does pick up the mug to hold it; the warmth feels nice. It’s the kind with the tiny marshmallows. “Thanks, Wayne.”
Wayne sits back down. “You know I’m worried about you, Ed.”
“I know.”
“You’re still not letting yourself grieve, son. Which I suppose is a form of grieving, but…”
“I can’t, Wayne,” Eddie croaks. Oh, so that’s where the tears are. “If I… if I really stop and let myself acknowledge that he’s… that he’s gone, I don’t think I would ever get back up.” He takes a deep breath. “I don’t… God, I don’t want to live in a world without him. I’m trying. I’m not going to… there’s too much to lose, but I still just want to curl up in a ball and never move again. I miss him every time I take a breath, and I don’t think time is really going to ease that.”
“It might not,” Wayne says. “There is no easy way to get through this. I should know.” One of the reasons Eddie’s been avoiding Wayne is because he’s one of the few people he knows who can actually say he knows how Eddie feels.
Except Wayne got Eddie back.
“I think it might be better,” Wayne continues, “if you moved back home with me. I don’t like the thought of you rattling around in that little apartment by yourself.”
“So I can rattle around here instead?”
“So I can keep an eye on you,” Wayne chides. “I’d send you back to Titans Tower if I thought that would help.”
It would just be a different room for Eddie to lock himself into. He finally takes a sip of his hot chocolate. “It wouldn’t.”
“I know. Now, are you going to tell me what you were up to tonight? You didn’t come up from the Cave.”
“I found out what Dustin’s been doing,” Eddie says, and then he tells Wayne everything. The hot chocolate has gone cold by the time he’s done, and Wayne insists he at least take a nap in his old room before he leaves. It’s easier to give in than to argue, at this point, and nice to sleep somewhere that doesn’t have as many recent memories of what he’s missing.
If Eddie hadn’t taken that nap, he would be sure, once he walked into his and Steve’s apartment, that he was hallucinating. As it is, he’s still not sure he isn’t.
Steve is asleep on the couch.
Eddie freezes in the doorway. He doesn’t realize he’s holding his breath until he sees Steve exhale and automatically does the same. Steve’s wearing his Superboy suit, just like the one he died in, though without his leather jacket – that’s hanging in the back of their shared closet, behind all of Steve’s polos, still ripped and dirty because Eddie couldn't bear to do anything with it besides put it away. He looks so beautiful it hurts.
And then his eyes flutter open.
The illusory Steve smiles when he sees Eddie standing there and starts to sit up. Eddie can’t deal with this. That smile slowly fades into a frown as Eddie doesn’t speak to the hallucination (because it can’t be real, Steve is gone and he isn’t coming back, twice is only a coincidence), just walks straight to the bedroom to… look, locking himself in his room isn’t running. It’s hiding. There’s a difference.
He still has to catch his breath once he’s got the door closed, leaning against it because he doesn’t trust his legs to keep holding him up. There has to be a better explanation than his mind playing tricks on him. He already knows it’s probably not a clone, so maybe shapeshifter? But why? And how did it find this place?
“Eddie?” the Steve who can’t really be there asks from the other side. “Are you okay? God, that’s a stupid question. I got here this morning, but you weren’t home, and then I fell asleep… I know it’s crazy, but it’s me, Eddie. I got revived in the future and they sent me back, it was this whole thing. Eddie?” The doorknob rattles briefly. Eddie stares at it. Hallucinations can’t move doorknobs.
Steve sighs, and there’s a little thump. Eddie imagines him resting his forehead against the door. “If you need me to give you, like, time or whatever, I can… I can do that. Robin doesn’t know yet, unless she’s seen Max by now – Max is back too; it’s a long story, but I want to tell you–”
He’s cut off by Eddie throwing the door open – it’s a good thing it opens towards the bedroom and not outward. Maybe Eddie should ask for proof of some kind, but the look of surprise on Steve’s face as he stumbles a little is just so quintessentially him, and Eddie knows, okay? It’s one of the most beautiful things he’s ever seen, second to the way Steve’s eyes close when Eddie throws himself and his lips at him.
Of course Steve catches him in his arms and a kiss.
The kiss is wet, not just from them being gross about it, but because Eddie is finally, finally crying and then Steve is crying too. It’s awful and snotty and the only reason Steve won’t have bruises from how tightly Eddie is holding onto him is because he’s half-Kryptonian.
Eddie’s never been happier.
It’s hours later, after Steve tells Eddie about waking up in the future and they call Robin and she shrieks and flies over, and after they’ve told Wayne, who cries with Eddie when he starts crying again, and after Robin has reluctantly agreed to sleep on the couch instead of in their bed with them (who knew that time travel on one end and finding out your husband was alive again on the other could be so exhausting?). They’re in bed together for the first time in months, just laying on their sides facing each other. Eddie feels like he could stare at Steve’s face forever. (Eddie feels like he could fly.)
“I love you,” he whispers, face only inches from his husband’s and eyes for nothing else.
Steve smiles. “I know.” Then he leans in for a kiss before Eddie can complain about the betrayal of his stolen joke. The kiss becomes a deeper one, and hands start wandering. Well, it’s not really wandering when there’s intent.
“You guys better not be having sex while I’m out here!” Robin shouts after a particular intake of breath.
Steve lifts his head and frees his mouth, despite Eddie’s whine. “Go back to the Tower if you don’t want to hear it!”
Eddie laughs for the first time in months.
(They don’t have sex while Robin’s in the apartment, but as soon as she’s out the door the next morning Eddie shoves Steve against the closed door. Steve lets him.)
2013
“I’m serious, dingus, I will put a blindfold on you if you don’t close your eyes.”
Eddie snickers while Steve rolls his eyes. “It’s a Fourth of July party, Robin. We already know what it’s supposed to look like.”
They’re just inside the front door of Titans Tower, and were preparing to go outside and join the others until Robin stopped them. Despite everyone involved being adults now, the Tower is still the best place for everyone to get together space-wise; none of them have a big enough ‘yard’ for everyone to run around in. Besides, as Eddie knows from previous experience, the roof is a great place to watch fireworks. The party today is supposed to make up for how all of them very much weren’t partying last year.
Eddie has some suspicions about the connection between Robin and the two events, actually, and how she’d insisted they arrive the night before. It’s just a little more fun to let Steve and Robin bicker about it.
“Just close your eyes and hold your husband’s hand, okay?”
Eddie grins. “Yeah, babe, are you really going to pass up an opportunity to hold my hand?”
Steve huffs, and then he takes Eddie’s hand and links their fingers together. “Happy?”
“Eyes closed,” Robin insists, and they both do so. She opens the door, and Eddie’s tempted to peek, but she would know. She gently pulls them forward by their linked hands and through the door.
He can hear voices talking as soon as they’re outside, which dies down as Robin guides them closer. Finally she stops and lets go. “Okay, open your eyes.”
Eddie does, and he reflexively squeezes Steve’s hand as he takes in what Robin’s done. They’re standing at one end of an aisle formed between two groups of chairs that have rainbow streamers tied to them. The chairs are filled not just with the members of Young Justice, but also Corroded Coffin, Chrissy and Wayne on one side, and Hopper, Joyce, and Jonathan on the other. At the other end of the aisle is an arch covered in flowers, also rainbow colored.
Dustin is standing next to Robin, grinning.
“I need your rings, please,” he says, holding out a hand.
Steve grips Eddie’s hand harder. “Why? What is this?”
“It’s a vow renewal, since Wayne and I were the only ones there the first time,” Robin informs them, beaming.
“Robin,” Steve says urgently, grabbing his best friend and pulling her closer with his free hand, “I’m wearing shorts .”
Eddie can’t help it. He cracks up, regardless of the glare Steve directs his way. Everyone is very much staring at them now – not that they weren’t looking before, but they’ve probably been delayed in the doorway longer than expected.
Robin rolls her eyes. “So is everyone else. You’re not special.”
“You put this all together for us,” Eddie points out. “So I would argue that he is.” He turns to Dustin, who’s still holding out his hand expectantly. “You’re not getting our rings, self-proclaimed best man or not.” Dustin didn’t even have to say that was why; Eddie knew him too well.
He pouts, and Steve ruffles his hair.
“Are you guys gonna get up here and get married or not?” Max calls from the second row of chairs. “We’ve been waiting for, like, an hour already.”
“We’re already married,” Steve calls back.
“Technically death did you part,” Dustin says. “So you’ve been living in sin for the past year or whatever.”
Steve opens his mouth to argue, and to distract him Eddie lifts the hand he’s holding to his lips and gently kisses Steve’s knuckles. “Marry me again?” he asks.
Steve blushes and turns back towards Eddie. “Of course.”
Eddie squeezes his hand, and they get lost smiling at each other long enough for Dustin to slink back to his seat, while Robin also abandons them to walk to the front of the aisle. She waits there, and everyone looks at them expectantly.
As soon as they reach the end of the aisle, someone starts up a recording of the classic wedding march, which lightens the mood back up again. (Based on his grin, Eddie suspects Jeff.) They make it down the aisle, though, still holding onto each other. Eddie expects Robin to take the place of the officiant, but instead Wayne stands up and she takes his vacated seat. Wayne is wearing a tuxedo t-shirt that was either made just for this occasion or actually came from the 80s, and he’s taking a few sheets of folded paper out of his pocket.
“Surprise,” he says, looking way too pleased with himself as he takes his place closer to the arch.
“No need to be smug, old man,” Eddie whispers, though there’s no heat in it. He and Steve face each other, and it’s so very like the last time they did this, except better.
“Dearly beloved,” Wayne starts, reading from his notes.
He does the ceremony completely straight, though not straight-faced. Eddie isn’t sure if anyone else cries, but he’s definitely tearing up by the vows. So is Steve. They almost didn’t get to have this – to keep each other like this. When Wayne finally announces them husband and husband (again) and says they can kiss, it’s hard to say who throws himself at whom first. The end result is still a kiss that definitely isn’t appropriate in front of their friends and family either way. Eddie doesn’t care.
The rest of the day is a blur of music and dancing and outdoor games, with Hopper manning the grill. Robin also got a cake, a three-tier monstrosity that’s also rainbow-colored inside and out. Eddie shoves a piece in Steve’s face before taking off running, and the only reason he makes it more than two steps away is the element of surprise.
After dark, the whole party moves up to the roof. Joyce, Wayne, and Hopper commandeer the old deck chairs that the Teen Titans put up here when they first moved in, while everyone else crowds closer to the edge.
Eddie rests his head on Steve’s shoulder as the sky lights up, and he smiles as Steve turns to press a kiss into his curls.
2023
Steve finds Eddie in the nursery, sitting in the rocking chair near Sam’s crib (which is only slightly better than hovering over it). It’s not the first time; he’s still adjusting to the change in job hours, so to speak.
“You know, he’s not going to disappear if you come to bed,” Steve says softly, planting his hands on his hips.
“I know,” Eddie replies, even though he thinks there’s always going to be some part of him that fears exactly that. (According to Wayne, that’s not a feeling that goes away as one’s kid grows up.) The baby – their baby – is just so small (in the same way that all babies are small; he’s growing exactly at the rate he should be). “I just can’t sleep, and sometimes I can’t believe he’s real. Like, we made that.”
Steve steps over to the chair and ‘sits’ down on Eddie’s lap, wrapping an arm around him and using his tactile telekinesis to avoid breaking the chair; Eddie can feel the heat of him, but not the weight. “Us and a small group of very talented and dedicated scientists.”
Eddie flaps a hand. “Details,” he says, like they hadn’t searched very carefully for people who would be more interested in actually doing the work than selling the information obtained from it. (Eddie had been right that Suzie kept a copy of the files on Steve and Billy, all those years ago, and he was glad she was on their side.) “Our DNA, our kid.”
Steve’s arm tightens around him. Eddie gets it. He feels a little thrill every time he thinks about it too: excitement about the idea of being a dad and absolute terror of being a bad one. Looking at their son mostly calms him down.
“Speaking of our kids,” Steve whispers, “the invitation came today. I had to call Lucas to make sure that the plus one card with Sam’s name already written on it was a joke.”
“You know it wasn’t.”
Steve smiles. “Yeah, but I’m not taking a baby to a wedding. Especially not one attended by half the Justice League. They’ll all just have to settle for pictures.”
“His aunts and uncles will be so disappointed.”
There’s a noise from the crib, and they both freeze.
Samwise Wayne Munson (Eddie chose his first name, while Steve picked the middle one) has a full head of messy brown curls and brown eyes that thankfully stay closed as his fathers barely breathe. He’s all of three months old and already the darling of all his superhero family members. (His semi-reformed villain grandfather has not been allowed to meet him, though he did send congratulations and a promise to set up a trust fund before the official birth announcement was made, because apparently money and stalking are just how Rex shows his love now.)
Sam shifts a little, clenching his tiny fists, but stays asleep. Eddie exhales, while Steve stands up and reaches out to pull him out of the rocking chair. Eddie actually needs the help, loathe as he is to admit it. Being a vigilante since he was a teenager has never been easy on his body, and now he’s really feeling the consequences.
Which is why he and Steve decided to retire as Nightwing and Flamebird shortly before Sam was born.
They’d talked about it a lot, especially after the major attempted alien invasion a couple of years ago when Eddie had broken what felt like, at the time, about half the bones in his body. The ensuing healing and physical therapy had actually been worse, both for his pain levels and his mental state, than the time after he’d come back to life. The only good thing this time was that he had Steve. But the League’s doctors had been clear that if he kept going, things were only going to get worse.
(There has also been talk, not just between Steve and Eddie, of Steve becoming Superman again when Hopper decides to retire. Currently, Steve says he’d rather not. Eddie would also rather he not.)
The transition has definitely been eased by the fact that Robin is in Gotham now, living with Chrissy since they started dating almost eight years ago – they met for the first time when Robin invited her to the vow renewal party, and Steve’s still mad he never thought to introduce them. Eddie mostly thinks it’s funny. Between Robin and the Knights, who are a lot better at delegating than Eddie ever was, Gotham is well taken care of.
Steve makes sure the baby monitor is on before he and Eddie lay down in their bed. He’s the one who gets up, most of the time, when Sam wakes up in the middle of the night, if Eddie isn’t already in the other room, just because he can do it more easily. (Eddie has a picture of Steve holding Sam, taken around one in the morning a few nights after they brought him home, as his lock-screen.) Steve catches Eddie looking at him, and he smiles back. “What?”
Eddie pulls him into a kiss. They’re both still smiling when it ends.
“I love you,” Steve says.
“I know,” Eddie replies. “Me too.”
(the end)
Notes:
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