Chapter Text
(Everyone expected the worst from Stephanie Brown.
Bruce Wayne chose to start the stories with her father’s dramatic reveal. Once checked into Arkham, while the staff tried to keep any records from leaking, every villain got their identity revealed one way or another. Sometimes, it came from the fluttering of journalists. Other times, it came from some ‘vigilante’ taking to the internet and exposing them.
Arthur Brown chose to unmask himself in a fit of rage. As they dragged him to Arkham, he threw down the yellow bandana around his mouth, and he called his name to the rooftops. Let the world know, he declared, Cluemaster and Arthur Brown were one and the same. Let Gotham know, he said with a fiendish smile, how much it failed its children.
After that, things changed for Stephanie. The adults in her life tried to be subtle about it; they masked their sudden scorn with awkward laughter and turning the other cheek. The other kids made no effort. Her locker got graffiti calling her every name in the book, and more than once, they stole her backpack from her while walking in the hallway. She would stare at the teachers, waiting for them to help.
Help never came.
Tim Drake would start the story much, much earlier than that.
He would start it with a failing game show host. He remembered watching the show from his empty manor, watching the blond host lose more and more composure every episode. On one of the few times Jack Drake came home, Jack noted the show would soon be shut down. Viewership dropped; paychecks stopped coming. The host, apparently, threw one of the biggest ‘hissy fits’ in Gotham history after hearing the news.
It failed early in Tim’s childhood, which meant it failed even earlier in Stephanie’s. She must’ve been young, and he found himself wishing it meant she would be too young to remember her father’s insanity.
Stephanie told Tim she didn’t remember. She learned how to lie young.
Her father never was insane, though. He was desperate, and Stephanie learned desperation was the catalyst for most bad decisions.
Her father got into petty crime long before he became Cluemaster. He used to take Stephanie with him, convincing her to smuggle out cans of vegetables under her bulky jacket. Once, the police caught her, and when she went to look for her father, he had disappeared to let her deal with the consequences.
She managed to escape from them before they could bring her down to the station, and she lived in fear of the police for years. Her father told her she would be locked up, unable to see her friends or her family. Now, Stephanie knew they wouldn’t have imprisoned a six-year-old, but it felt so real back then.
Stephanie wouldn’t know where she should start the story.
Some versions would start with Arthur Brown because she could never avoid that blemish in her history. She only ever suited up because of him. It worked on two levels. If her father had chosen not to be a criminal, she would never have become Spoiler to stop him. At the same time, if her father had been a real father to her, she would have lived in the Bowery, happy and oblivious to the politics of being a vigilante.
She can never see a reason to imagine realities where her father stayed, though. Something would always go wrong; it felt like an inevitability in the life of Stephanie Brown. On bad days, though, she would imagine taking Bruce or Tim’s life. She could handle not having any parents. She thinks she’d rather have no parents than bad parents, but she could never say that to Tim or Bruce.
Other versions of the story would start with Bruce Wayne. It would start with the way he could never see past her childhood, forever framing her as the daughter of a supervillain. Even when Stephanie tried to hide her true identity, she could tell he knew from the way his eyes followed her everywhere.
Once, he cornered her, and he told her to stay away from Drake. Drake was young and impressionable and couldn’t see a bad influence when he saw one.
She wanted to spit in his face. She was young and impressionable, but she could see a bad influence when she saw one. She grew up around bad influences; was she supposed to be shocked she became one?
But maybe the story started so much earlier than that.
Everyone expected the worst from Stephanie Brown the moment she was born. She was born in the Bowery, not in Gotham City, not in the manors. She was born to a woman who never wanted to be a mother and a father who would rather sacrifice everything for himself than for her.
People waited on pins and needles for Stephanie to start haunting the streets just like her father. They wanted to see her as a thief or a killer or something worse. The questions surrounded her wherever she went. Whoever she became, it couldn’t possibly be good.
She told this once to Tim, back when she was Spoiler and he was Drake, back before he died and she lost the only family she really had.
“People don’t expect the worst from you, Ste—Spoiler.” He struggled the most with the no-names rule Batman implemented. Stephanie never understood it, not when they sat this high above the city.
She laughed and continued throwing the ratty ball into the sky. Up it would go, almost close enough to touch the stars but never getting there, and down it would come, landing into her hand with a wet smack. Tim tried to snatch it from her a few times, but she always wiggled away from him.
“You wouldn’t get it,” she told him. “Or, maybe, you’ll understand when you’re older.”
At that, Tim tried to wrestle the ball from her again, but she caught it and moved away again. “I’m older than you, Spoiler.”
“Yeah, but… you know.”
“You know what?”
“Everyone always expected the best from you. You’re a Drake,” she said simply. “And I’m a Brown.”)
+++
“Sorry!” someone cackles over her head.
Stephanie grimaces into the tiled floor. They must’ve just cleaned it because the smell of wax floats up to her, somehow stronger than the throbbing in her cheeks. As she gets up on her hands and knees, someone’s boot knocks into her ribs and sends her crashing back to the ground. They call out an apology again.
The teachers will break it up after thirty seconds; the school implemented that rule years ago. All physical fights could be allowed for thirty seconds because they needed to determine whether it was just ‘horseplay’ or actual violence. Stephanie wonders if she should start using that rule when she sees them getting mugged outside of the classroom. ‘Oh, sorry, didn’t you know? Robbers have thirty seconds to take everything from your purse before I’ll try to stop them. Sorry again.’
Stephanie takes a moment to feel sorry for herself. She lets her sore muscles relax on the waxed floor, and she stares into the fluorescent lights of the hallway. The custodians will need to replace those later. She wonders if it will be Derek or Jerry; she likes Derek more, but she can’t deny Jerry has a better reach, being six foot something.
Then, she gets up, ignoring the giggling around the hallway. She gathers her textbooks back into her arms and uses the locker as leverage, boosting herself back to her feet. When she glances over at her bullies, she flashes them a bright smile. “Apology not accepted, asshole.”
“Language,” Dixie says back with the same saccharine smile. “I’d hate to tell a teacher on you.”
“What a coincidence. I’d hate that too.” She thinks the teachers let girls get away with more. The tripping and the accidental kicking and the hairpulling get excused more than boys sending flying punches and bloody curses. Of course, Stephanie could beat almost everyone in this school in a fight.
Scratch that: she could beat everyone at this school.
She turns before the jeering contest can finish, and she goes straight to her next classroom. Her AP Psych teacher looks at her for a second, noting the black eye, before going back to scribbling something on the chalkboard. She dredges her notebook out from under her textbook, and she starts flipping through the pages and the doodles and everything else.
“Stephanie,” the teacher starts.
“Yes?”
“How’s life going?”
She blinks, resisting the urge to laugh. “Great. Thanks. Good talk.”
“And your mom?”
The golden question of the week. Somehow, even Damian, who can rarely drag his head out of his own ass, managed to ask about her mom. Maybe he senses how little she wants to talk about it; he’s good about that. He can always pick the most sensitive topic and make everyone in the room squirm.
She shrugs, leaning back in her chair. “Same as ever.”
“And that means?”
“That she is the same as ever. I know you’re not an English teacher, but come on, dude, don’t make me do all the work.” She flashes a toothy smile before going back to flipping through her notebook. She needs to find that last page she worked on before she forgets the vague new idea forming.
There it is: possible new names.
Most of the scribbles deal with broader ideas. She always wears purple as a superhero; as Spoiler, she wore that obnoxious purple cloak-scarf combination, and as the Dragon, her undersuit is a dark purple even if her cloak is now black. Colors pop up in superhero names all the time, don’t they?
Well…
Maybe they don’t, but it seems essential to her personality, so she doesn’t cross it out.
She could do something with woman in the title. After all, Bat man, Super man, and Wonder Woman are all part of the Justice League— were. Shoot. Batman used to be part of the League.
Superman would’ve let Damian come on as Batman, but Damian insisted Batman belonged to Gotham and Gotham alone these days. He didn’t want to travel out of state; he didn’t want to deal with the rest of their issues. Obviously, dealing with Superman’s issues got Bruce killed in the first place. It got Superman to flinch (and Stephanie doesn’t think she ever saw him flinch before), and Damian took it as a victory.
She remembers when Damian’s not-boyfriend, Jonathan Kent, snuck in to try to convince him otherwise. Stephanie had been living at the Manor back then, trying to help Alfred wherever she could so he would have a chance to mourn Bruce as well, and she had been privy to all kinds of conversations she definitely shouldn’t have been.
“Bruce would’ve wanted—” Jon started to say in that bubbly voice of his. Even upset, Jon managed to make things sound brighter.
Damian cut him off. His voice never sounded bubbly, and back then, it sounded dead. Bruce’s death stole Damian’s laughter and his smiles, and none of the others knew how to get it back. “Bruce does not get a say in my life anymore, Jonathan.”
“Dami,” he said.
And Stephanie let herself out then, unwilling to hear whatever soft nonsense they’d have going on. Instead, she went to the roof and stared at the stars, wishing she would’ve remembered to grab her rubber ball from Tim’s room. It didn’t seem like the best time, though. If he had been asleep, it would’ve been one of the few times he slept since Bruce died. If he had been awake, they would’ve talked about their feelings.
No, Stephanie would rather not talk about those.
She strikes the idea of putting woman somewhere in her name off the list. Wonder Woman can have that category on lock; Stephanie wouldn’t try to compete with her anyway. If she did, she thinks Jason would’ve attacked her.
She just…
She wants a new name. A new start.
+++
“You’re not doing great at this whole cooking thing,” Steph says through a mouthful of pizza.
The whole situation keeps unraveling, and Stephanie can’t quite understand what happens. Damian invited her over for a ‘home-cooked’ meal, but she arrived to find a bare fridge and a grocery bag full of Cass’s favorite foods. When Damian tried to find his wok to make fried rice, he ended up knocking down every pan hanging above his stove.
“He’s in a weird mood,” Cass signed at her from the couch.
Damian snapped something about being fine, and he went back to destroying his kitchen to make this meal. In the end, after Steph stepped in to sweep the shards of a plate off the ground, he compromised and ordered a pizza.
Now, he stands opposite her, a paper plate with a greasy slice of pizza dissolving on it. He doesn’t try to eat it. He just stares at her whenever he thinks she looks away. A crease stays between his eyes as he tries to decipher her, and Stephanie pretends not to notice. She’d bring it up if she understood it, but she doesn’t.
Cass kicks her. “You need to start the conversation.”
Steph sticks out her tongue; why does she always have to deal with the emotionally constipated Waynes?
Still, she puts down her pizza and leans across the countertop. “Seriously. Is this, like, an intervention? Or a parent-teacher conference? I’m a little confused about what you need advice for, and I’m a little confused why you need my advice.”
Cass kicks her again. This time, when Steph swivels around to give her a dirty look, Cass signs ‘trust’ as subtly as she can. Damian notices, though, and his cheeks darken as he looks away from the two of them.
She gasps as loudly as she can. “You trust me, Dami? That’s so cute.”
“Brown, if I had someone else I could have asked, I would have.”
“I’m, like, ninety-nine percent sure you have a whole manor full of people who can give advice.”
“You’re graduating soon.” He fixes her with a look, and she struggles not to squirm under the intensity. “Judging by the hours you’ve put into Thompkins’ clinic, you intend to go to university and later medical school. That would include years in a residency program, and I am not even considering a possible specialty.”
“Are you my guidance counselor?” She holds up a finger. “Follow-up question, do you want his job? Because he never talks about this with me.”
Her guidance counselor tends to start rambling about reach, target, and safety schools. Schools like pre-med programs like Johns Hopkins and any of the Ivy Leagues should be considered reach schools. It would take a lot of financial aid, whether from scholarships or from the FAFSA or a loan, in order for her to attend those schools. Target schools would include schools with her interests and her price range, and has she ever considered Gotham University? It would do wonders for her, and with her GPA, she would get in.
When she sat there, listening to the rant, she couldn’t stop thinking about Damian. Damian attended Yale (because of course he did), and she never heard him talking about safety schools. She never heard him talking about money.
Of course, the whole Wayne legacy seems to be doing wonders for him.
“I’m not here to joke with you.” He sighs. “I’m here to ask if that’s true.”
Cass nudges her, looking at her with those imploring eyes of hers. She always can sense when something is wrong with Stephanie; sometimes, Stephanie thinks she must be some sort of metahuman. Cass once tried to explain the importance of body language to Stephanie, but it reminded her too much of AP Psych, so she zoned out.
“How many years would it be?” Cass signs.
“Okay, so like, I have to get into these schools and programs first. Am I going for that? Yes. Is it definitely what I’m going to do? I don’t know, I’m seventeen, stop asking me questions about my future.” She takes a huge bite of her pizza to keep herself from being able to field any more questions.
Cass still stares at her. “Local school?”
“I don’t know,” she says, her voice muffled by the sheer amount of cheese in her mouth. “What part of this is advice?”
Damian thrusts a napkin in her direction, and he stares somewhere in the distance, not quite making eye contact with either of them. “It’s about leaving Gotham. How could you leave without feeling guilty? How could you leave knowing you were hurting so many people who depended on you?”
Her thoughts grind to a stop.
She swallows hard. “Is this an attack?”
“These are people you have grown up with. They have helped raise you.” He pauses. “Tim depends on you more than anyone else. If you left, I don’t know how Tim would react, but I can’t imagine it would be good.”
“Excuse you?”
“You could just leave without any guilt?”
He still doesn’t look at her. Usually, when he lectures her, he fixes her with a look she can’t run away from, and her temper rises in response because she hates feeling like an insect under a magnifying glass.
Then again, her temper seems to be rising right now anyway. “Is it wrong of me to want to leave Gotham? It’s just a city!”
“Everyone is here,” he reminds her.
“Do you want to leave?” Cass asks, something fragile in the delicate way she signs each word.
God, she hates when Cass is vulnerable. Cass isn’t vulnerable very often, and every time Steph sees her drop a wall, she just wants to hug her and reassure her the world will, one day, be kind enough walls won’t be necessary.
“I don’t know yet,” she says, hoping it won’t hurt.
Cass still looks away.
“What will Gotham do without you?”
“Gotham will go on. It isn’t going to miss little old Stephanie Brown.” It might miss the others; it would notice if any of the infamous Wayne brothers left. She remembers how long the city mourned Tim Drake, and she remembers how big a hole Bruce Wayne left in their city. When Damian went to Yale, people threw going-away parties like they knew him well. Gotham views the Waynes as their little celebrities, their little piece of the world, and they celebrate every success they have.
Of course, if Damian chose not to come back, she imagines the press would’ve had a field day. If Stephanie left and chose not to come back, she thinks the only people who would miss her would be the Wayne family.
Every time she gets invited to galas, she can see other people’s disbelief. She bonded about it with Jason, once upon a time, but as Jason grows older, people accept him more and more because he took the last name.
Bruce never even offered his last name to her.
“What about the Dragon? Will you leave us to deal with the criminals? We wouldn’t have enough people for our patrol schedule if you left.”
“Is this about the patrol schedule? I’m sure you can go adopt another kid! You’re good at that!” The words sour as soon as she says them, and she hates what they mean. She doesn’t like being jealous of Dick Grayson of all people. She springs off her stool, slapping her hands down on the granite countertop. This gets Damian to refocus on her face, and she leans closer to him. “I’m allowed to leave.”
“Of course you are,” Cass hurries to sign.
It should make Stephanie feel better, but somehow, it makes the pit in her stomach grow. “I don’t need your permission to leave and go to med school. God, Damian, you went to university!”
“It’s different!” he shouts, and Damian never shouts. “Everything is different now.”
“It’s different,” she hisses, “because it’s me. You’re allowed to go gallivanting around the world! You’re allowed to go to whatever university you want! You’re allowed to leave Gotham as much as you want, but I’m not?”
“What are you even talking about?”
“You’re not interrogating anyone else about this, and I know for a fact Bruce never interrogated you—”
“Don’t bring him into this.”
Cass tries to grab at Stephanie’s arm, trying her best to diffuse the argument, but right now, it billows too vast between them. If Stephanie doesn’t say it, she thinks she’ll never step foot in this apartment again. She’ll stew on these words and remember what she should have said, what she wanted to say, and was forever too much of a coward to say.
“Bruce would’ve let me go.”
“Bruce would’ve pushed you out a long time ago. He never wanted you.”
It doesn’t sting as much as Damian wants. She can tell by the way he swallows hard, his Adam’s apple bobbing, as he scans her face for a trace of hurt. She doesn’t let it show. She knows she is— was— Bruce’s least favorite. She was the only one he never wanted as a sidekick; he took everyone else, but he pushed Stephanie away like she was trash.
“I’m allowed to leave,” she repeats.
“It’s selfish.”
“Well, then, I’m allowed to be selfish.”
Something flickers in Damian’s eyes, and right as she thinks she might be able to analyze it, it flickers shut. “Nobody in this family is allowed to be selfish. This family has always been about sacrifice—”
“Sacrifice?” She can’t stop laughing. “The Wayne family is built on sacrifice? The generational wealth family is built on sacrifice?”
“If you think of us like that, then you don’t understand us. If you want to be considered part of this family, then you won’t be selfish.”
“I think,” she says, forcing her words to be light, “you just said I was never wanted in this family anyway.”
+++
The Dragon goes on patrol that night, but she keeps her comms turned all the way down. She doesn’t want to talk to anyone, not really.
+++
The next day, as she walks out of school, she finds one of the bougiest cars in the parking lot. Some of her classmates whisper about it, speculating how fast it’d be and how well it’d fare in a street fight. Steph knows it depends more on the driver, and if the driver is the one she thinks it is, they’d win in every fight.
She refuses to head in its direction. Instead, she starts walking towards her house. Since she only lives a half-hour walk from the school, she never bought a car. Why waste the money when she could save it? People tend to be surprised Steph knows how to save money, but she knows how to stretch a dollar thin. She should, honestly, start a masterclass for that and overcharge every student.
By the time she leaves the school’s parking lot, the car has pulled up next to her, and she can hear the clean hiss of the window rolling down. “Stephanie.”
“I can’t hear you,” she says. “I have my headphones in.”
“Stephanie—”
“Did you know the beginning of that one Harry Styles song sounds exactly like the theme song of A.N.T. Farm? I actually can’t unhear it after someone pointed it out to me.” She sticks her hands in her sweatshirt pocket and starts walking faster. Unsurprisingly, the car can keep pace with her.
“I don’t want to shout this out the window,” Tim tells her, fully leaning out the window. He must be going two miles an hour at this rate, “because people are going to think I’m crazy, and I’d rather avoid that.”
“You already look crazy. I’m shocked your car didn’t get keyed.”
“I’d win in a fight with any of your classmates.”
“Oh, you’d be shocked. Dixie plays dirty.”
“Didn’t you say Dixie is, like, four feet tall?”
“I don’t know. I don’t measure my classmates.”
“Can you stop?”
Stephanie debates stopping. Then, she speeds up again, and she turns up the Harry Styles song until it almost manages to drown out Tim’s voice. He growls and speeds ahead of her, probably annoyed by all of the high schoolers honking behind him. It’ll cause problems tomorrow. Someone will say something about Stephanie having a sugar daddy, and she’ll have to come up with a clever retort like ‘you wish you had a sugar daddy’ except not that one because it’s awful.
She makes it the rest of the way to her small house before she sees Tim’s car lurking in the parking lot. Oh, he’ll definitely get keyed now. Actually, she might be able to key his car if she can find a good set of keys to do it. Somehow, keying someone’s car with her house keys feels anticlimactic.
Tim leans against it. “Can I talk to you now? Or do I have to go say hi to your mom?”
“My mom hates you,” Steph reminds him.
He grins, somehow looking years younger. “She loves me. She always said I was a ‘sweet young boy’ and it was ‘so nice to see her Stephanie hanging out with a good influence.’ Remember when I brought her flowers that one time?”
She thinks about reminding Tim her mom still thinks he’s dead, but she thinks better of it. She can never tell when he’ll be comfortable joking about his resurrection, and since he decided to follow her the whole way home, she thinks this might be one of the worst days for Pit Mania. She used to be able to track it.
Then again, she used to be the one following him, so maybe, she can’t be shocked she can’t gauge it as well.
“Get in the car, Stephanie. I have something to show you.”
“You know, that’s what all kidnappers say.”
He rolls his eyes before grabbing her arm and tugging her towards the car. She rolls her eyes back at him before sliding across the hood to get to the passenger seat. “Just so you know, I work today.”
“No, you don’t.”
“Do you have my schedule memorized now?”
“I’m a good friend like that. I like to make sure you don’t get abducted on your walk home.”
“Do you follow me from the clinic?”
“Well, Tim doesn’t. The Red Hood might.”
She sticks out her tongue as she jerks open the door to the passenger seat. As soon as Tim sits down, he presses a button to get a computer screen layered over the windows. Wherever she looks, she sees a new line of data or a video screen. When she tries to tap at it, though, she can only feel clean glass beneath.
“It’s not a touchscreen,” he tells her, almost absently, as he reaches over to start digging through his glove department. It exposes way too many wires for a glove department, but he pulls out two bulky sets of headphones. He slides them on, and she snorts.
“You look like a nerd,” she tells him.
He laughs as he puts the headphones on her. “You do too.”
There is a dull hum in the back of the headphones, but she doubts it’s anything important. She ducks one side behind her ear, and she goes back to looking at the screens. Most of them seem to be body-cam footage, probably from someone’s suit, and if she had to guess, she would assume it comes from the Batman suit. The thought of discussing Damian with Tim leaves a sour taste in her mouth.
(“Tim depends on you more than anyone else!”)
“Okay, I’m going to say something,” Tim says, “and you can’t make a face.”
“I never make faces—”
“I don’t think Bruce is dead.”
She makes a face.
Tim groans and hides his face. “Okay, yeah, I expected that, but hear me out. Okay? This isn’t me being crazy or being Pit Mad or being unable to move on. I have actual proof, and I just need someone who would… I just need someone who will listen to me.”
She shifts over, placing a hand on his knee. Taking a deep breath, she tries to slide into the easy professionalism they used to have as vigilantes. “Okay, break down the case for me. What do you mean Bruce isn’t dead? He’s been gone for months at this point.”
“Eight months, one week, three days,” he says without skipping a beat.
A good friend would probably start talking about therapy at this point, but she knows he doesn’t need her to shut down his theories. So, she searches his face, and she reaches over to tip his chin up. When his eyes meet hers, almost no green shines through.
“If he’s faking his death, he’s being real thorough,” she says after a second.
“I don’t think he’s faking his death. He’s just not… here.” Tim groans, his hands making some sort of convoluted gesture before he gives up, letting his hands fall back to his lap. “He’s not dead, but he’s not here if that makes sense.”
“I don’t think it does.”
“Okay, okay, I have proof. Look at this.” He leans across her to point at a screen. This time, she looks at the date stamped in the corner, and she recognizes it as the day Bruce died. She bites down on her lip, unsure if she’d dare to look away or not. She wants to be as tough as Tim, as willing to watch the hard things as Tim, but she doesn’t want to watch Bruce die any more than she wanted to live in a life without Bruce.
He still rewinds it, so she watches it unfold on the screen. It comes from the camera on the suit, the one Damian now dons every night. One second, Darkseid points a gun at Bruce’s chest, his eyes a glowing red through the rain. Stephanie wonders if she could see Superman flying in the distance, desperate to save him. She wonders what she was doing at this exact moment, unaware this would be the last time she sees Bruce.
Then, the ray gun gets shot, and the camera flickers once.
Tim pauses it as it flickers. “See?”
“No. Not at all.”
She remembers when Superman toted Batman’s corpse around; those photos haunted every screen she dared to look at. The news reported on it 24/7, everyone in the world trying to understand how Batman —the Batman—could be dead. None of them could take the time to mourn, though, because they needed to help out.
She remembers the funeral, though. She remembers the quiet breakdowns they all seemed to suffer, but in true Batman-Bruce-Wayne style, they all suffered alone. Even Stephanie, who tried her best to break that toxic cycle Bruce seemed to set, couldn’t find it in herself to go seek out the others that day. She wanted to be alone as the world came crumbling down around her because if someone like Bruce could die, what did it mean for the rest of them?
The next day, she stayed in the Manor, and she tried to coax Tim to eat something.
“The camera feed flickered,” Tim explains patiently.
Her skin itches at the condescension, but she tries to remind herself he is hurting. This could be a cry for help. “Well, it just got impacted by the beam, Tim. I think it was going to flicker no matter what.”
“I thought you, or Damian, might say that, so look at this.” He gestures at one of the screens hidden in the rearview mirror, hitting play on another video cued up, and Stephanie looks up just in time to hear the loud bang of a gun and a bullet lodging in Bruce’s chest. She winces, but the screen does not flicker. Instead, she can see how Bruce must’ve staggered back from the impact before forcing himself back into action. The only sign he got shot is the unnerving streak of red at the upper left of the screen.
She swallows hard and looks away. “So it doesn’t always flicker. Maybe Darkseid was using something really bad.”
“Or maybe,” Tim says, the excitement starting to grow in his voice, “he was using something that didn’t kill.”
“But Tim…” She hesitates. There needs to be a better way to phrase this.
Tim looks at her. “Just say it.”
“We buried a body—”
“There are duplicates all the time! Maybe Darkseid found a way to duplicate his body in that moment, but he sent him elsewhere! None of us even thought to check out if there were any signs of displacement!”
“If he was elsewhere, why wouldn’t he have gone home?”
Tim’s eyes seem to glow here, his excitement palpable. “Because what if he isn’t else where? What if he’s in another time?”
+++
Spoiler goes on patrol with Red Hood that night.
In the middle of an argument about time travel, a criminal gets a lucky hit in and sends her reeling with a black eye.
+++
All day, Stephanie tried to convince herself to call out of work tonight. She could avoid the awkward questions. She could avoid the meaningful looks. She could avoid the implication she could be doing something better.
Her teachers already grilled her today. Her AP Psych teacher made her stay after school, and he asked those gentle questions about her home life and her mother. Her AP Bio teacher didn’t say anything outright, but he left the card of the guidance counselor on her desk. Her AP Calc teacher let her take a twenty-minute bathroom break without saying anything.
They all know how this game works in Gotham, though. Kindness gets rewarded with cruelty. Questions get given more questions. Optimism should be crushed firmly under the heel of your boot. Safety belongs to the rich unless your name starts with a B and ends with a Wayne.
She doesn’t call out of work.
“Hey, Leslie!”
Stephanie breezes past her, keeping her head ducked and her hood securely over her face. Judging by the way Leslie doesn’t stop typing and just hums a greeting, Stephanie can count this as a victory.
When she reaches Leslie’s office, she shrugs off her backpack and tucks it in the corner of the clinic. The weight of her textbooks made her feel like she was about to tip over. Even though she tries to keep them in her locker, every teacher announced a test at the end of the week without any mercy.
She already texted Jason (because she can’t text Tim about school things after he just dropped that bomb, and she can’t text Damian about needing to balance her time better because he doesn’t believe in a healthy work-life balance, and she can’t text Cass because Cass always senses if something more is at play) to take her turn on patrol tonight. He texted back a middle-finger emoji and a resounding yes.
She wants to adopt that kid.
Stephanie turns the mirror on Leslie’s desk around, peering into her reflection. She takes a moment to push the unruly tufts of blonde hair back into her ponytail. Then, twisting over the desk, she pulls out a hair clip (which, considering Leslie’s hair isn’t long enough for a hair tie, much less a hair clip, always makes Steph smile) and twists her hair back. She clips her name tag to the hood of her sweatshirt and tries for a professional smile.
The black eye tends to ruin things.
When Jason asked about it, she told him purple was her favorite color, and neither of them said anything more.
In the front of the clinic, she hears Leslie gasp.
“Les?”
“Stephanie. Stephanie. Come here!”
Stephanie sprints out, feeling the way her name tag thumps against her chest in time with her heartbeat, and leaps over the counter. Leslie sits back from the computer, one hand over her mouth and one hand clutching at the fabric over her heart.
Stephanie nudges her out of the way, and she starts reading the email to find out what she needs to punch.
CONGRATULATIONS!
It is our honor to accept Stephanie Brown into our early admission—
“What?” Stephanie whispers to the screen.
Leslie reaches over, grabbing Stephanie’s elbow and getting her to spin around. Her eyes shine with unshed tears, and she looks at Stephanie without seeing the black eye. Instead, her hope fills the air between them. “You got in.”
“I got… what?” She tries to turn around to read the screen.
Leslie doesn’t release her grip. “I knew you could do it.”
“I could… what is happening?” Her breath escapes her in a shaky laugh before she presses her lips together and goes back to reading the email. Her hands tremble on the mouse, sending the cursor through a complicated series of loops and jumps.
It is our honor to accept Stephanie Brown into our early admission program. Out of more than a thousand applicants, we found her to be a stellar example of what Johns Hopkins University is searching for. Classes will begin in late January for the start of spring semester. Our offices will be in contact to help her select her schedule and get ready to join the Johns Hopkins family.
Stephanie reads it.
Then rereads it.
Then rereads it again.
Then, she throws herself back from the computer with the loudest yell she can manage. “I got in! Leslie, I got in!”
“You got in!” Leslie gets up, and Stephanie grabs her hands immediately, spinning her around in a circle, still shouting and cheering and (maybe) crying. Leslie laughs as Stephanie twirls her again. “You’re going to make an old woman dizzy—”
“It doesn’t matter! I’ll be able to cure old age after I finish university!” Because she’s really going. She is actually, honest-to-God going to university, and not only will she be going, but she will be going early because she was just that! Goddamn! Good!
“Yes, you will! You’ve always been a genius, Stephanie Brown!”
“Stephanie Brown, the first Brown to attend college! The first Brown to get out of goddamn Gotham City!” She cheers again before hopping on top of the rolling chair. As it rolls into the desk, she leaps there next, unable to keep her excitement. Her heart thrums, her heart sings, and she thinks she might start sobbing on the spot.
It doesn’t matter that her father became a supervillain.
It doesn’t matter that her mother can’t even look at her.
It doesn’t matter that Bruce never saw her as a real part of the family.
Nothing matters. Not when she can see her whole future unfolding in front of her for the first time, and for the first time, she wants to run to it. She wants to skip down the yellow brick road and watch life give her a victory.
Her dream’s coming true.
“Stephanie, get down from there before you break something!”
“I can never break anything again! I’ve done it!” She jumps on the desk, her Doc Martens—something she saved up to get, insisting the Waynes don’t buy her something with their pity money—scraping the bottom of the wood. She jumps again, laughing, before spinning around and leaping back to the ground. As she bounces around the pharmacy, she starts to drag Leslie around with her.
After a while, Leslie places both hands on her shoulders and leans her forehead against Stephanie’s. “I’m so happy for you.”
“I did it,” she whispers back. As she closes her eyes, she can feel the tears starting to pull at her. They rush down her hot cheeks, and as she swipes at them, they just keep multiplying. “I actually did it.”
“Take the day off work, Steph. You’ve earned it.”
“Leslie,” Stephanie says with a wide grin. “You’re too good to me.”
“And you’re not good enough to yourself.”