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Stephanie Brown never believed in much. Not in God, or the Government, and she certainly didn’t believe in Batman. The only thing she had faith in, in this broken, burning world, was herself.
It goes like this:
She wasn’t born into a world where faith ran thick and heavy through the streets. Gotham was - Gotham was angry, she was spitting with rage and soaked with every chemical that existed, and more. Gotham was hungry, and the children on her streets were no different.
It goes like this:
It starts young, the ache, the hate. Stephanie’s first memory is of blood, her mother’s blood staining the kitchen tiles and her father’s bruised knuckles. Her first memory is of her too small fingers curling around the handle of a kitchen knife, and how it had been too heavy for her to lift.
Stephanie Brown’s first memory is of her mother’s torn scream fading into a whimper, and her unbearable urge to put a knife into her father’s hollow chest. She’s six and she knows what death is, had learned it from Jasmine down the hall who worked at night and never came home. She knows death, and she learns what it is to want -
To look at someone and imagine the life leaving their eyes, imagine their blood drying beneath your fingernails.
It’s her mother who unclenches her fist and carefully takes the knife from her too tiny hands. It’s her mother who whispers to her, her forehead split open and blood slipping down the side of her face, that she’s okay and he was just mad baby, but it’s alright now, he won’t do it again, he won’t.
It wasn’t the first time her mother had lied to her, but it was the first time Stephanie had looked into her eyes and thought, liar.
She’s six and her mother is on her knees on the kitchen floor, scrubbing her blood off the damn tiles, and Stephanie, who never had much faith in anything, loses whatever faith she had left. Because her mother, the woman who had given birth to her, who had cradled her bloody, screaming body and smiled - and wept for her. Because her mother is a liar, and there is nothing in this world worthy of her faith.
She spends the night with her back against her closet wall, fingers curling into her palm, hand aching for the weight of a knife.
(Jason Todd stands over his father’s drunken form with a baseball bat, and he never manages to bring it down. His back aches and the room echoes with the crack of a belt meeting skin.
His mother is curled up in her bed with bruises on her face and the beginnings of track marks on her arm. He knows how this story will end.
He cannot bring down the bat.)
Stephanie never does kill her father. Not when her mother presses herself against the wall, looking more like a feral, cornered animal than a woman. Not when his fists crash against her cheekbone, and she tastes blood. Not when he becomes a villain on top of a monster. Not when -
She never kills her father, and she hates Batman a little. (Because he never saved her, because she is constantly bearing witness to his failures. Because Amara with the long black hair was gutted, her rib cage pulled apart. Because Caleb was only trying to feed his family, desperate and too damn young, and Batman shattered his ribs. Because no matter what he does it’s never enough, and they’re all just grasping at strings and it’s easier to hate someone else.)
Or at least she doesn’t worship him like some people in Gotham do, the rich ones who never truly tasted her fury. Stephanie watches them from behind the cracked TV store windows, their bright smiles and laughter, and she spits on the ground.
The rich of Gotham are something else, and they aren’t hers. Because she may be young, and she’ll probably die young too, but at least Gotham runs through her blood. At least Stephanie could lose herself in the streets and always find her way home. At least Stephanie is cruel, and snarling, and a touch feral, but God she hasn’t forgotten kindness.
She slips the stolen box of tampons to the working girls in the alleys, and takes the offered cigarette. It burns in her lungs, and when she’s running through Gotham’s underbed her laughter stings a little.
Stephanie rolls with her father’s punches and gently brushes her shoulder against her mother’s. She takes medical supplies with a quick hand and gives them to the kids who are worse off, who don’t even have monstrous fathers to call home.
She breaks the nose of the first man to try to grope her, and after she doesn’t flinch when her father puts a bullet in his head. She curses too much, and relishes in the ache in her torn knuckles after a fight. Stephanie is all rough edges and ungentle fury, and she’s fiercely loyal to what’s hers -
Her city, her streets, her people cause they bleed the same and if they don’t help each other then who the hell will?
Stephanie protects it all with bared teeth and bloody knuckles, with a body that’s more akin to a battlefield than a girl. She protects Gotham because the City hums around her, because Gotham has always been soaked in something more and if you listen close enough you can hear her whispers.
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She darts through alleyways and runs her hands along worn stone, fingers catching on etched letters and symbols and scrapes. Each one an echo of someone, I was here. Stephanie Brown didn’t have faith beside anything but herself, because no one had ever saved her, because no one kept their promises so she would have to.
She didn’t have faith in anything besides herself, not even Gotham, because when it came down to it, the City was just like her - Hungry and feral, desperate in a way that survivors are. And it was another thing Stephanie had learned young, desperate people will cut off their own arm to survive, they won’t hesitate to cut you down too.
And Gotham was no different.
So when the time came, and maybe this too was its own sort of inevitability, she slipped on a mask and did what she did best - she fought like the feral thing she was.
(Jason Todd is sixteen and he’s never believed in much beside himself, and his dad. Not Batman, because Batman didn’t save him, but Bruce Wayne. The man who rescued him, who loved him, who stood over him and asked Jason did you kill him?
He was born without security, without the promise of living till tomorrow, and yet in his years as Robin, his years in the Manor with Bruce Wayne’s small smile and Dick Grayson’s echoing laughter, he had almost forgotten what it felt like - to be so uncertain of breathing.
But then his father is there, not by blood but when had that ever fucking mattered, and suddenly Jason is a very small boy beneath a towering man. He runs, he always runs, and he ends up in an empty apartment with a birth certificate that does not read Catherine Todd or any other variation of her name. And maybe blood didn’t matter but if his father doesn’t want him then he has to go, and where else can he run?
(Dick hadn’t picked up when he had called, his fingers shaking and trembling and untouched by blood. His brother, because they were dancing around that word and the way family had always been associated with loss, with a hollowness. His brother hadn’t picked up and so he ran to the first home he knew.)
If Bruce Wayne - If Batman didn’t want him, then who else could beside the lost mother who gave him away? Who could want him without the strings of blood attached?)
Jason Todd runs to Ethiopia and a week later he dies, crawling towards his mother, only in blood, who sold him for a bit of debt. He dies -
He is sixteen and he dies. Gotham sighs when three days later his broken body is lowered into her soil. She wraps her warm fingers around him and welcomes him home. And when, later, due to fate or god or luck, he comes back alive in his grave. When he howls, fingers tearing at satin and wood and dirt, she’ll let him go.
She won’t cling too tightly, burning with the knowledge that one way or another this broken soldier boy will come home to her. They always do.
Meeting Robin isn’t like finding a soulmate, it isn’t like fate or destiny or some grand thing. It’s like this, she breaks his nose with a brick and then he helps her take down her father. It’s like this, Robin finds her address and name and instead of turning her in he gives her better armor and weapons and smiles wide.
It goes like this: She and Robin meet, and something small and untouched by the world sighs within her. Of course it’s you, I’m glad you’re finally here.
Stephanie and Tim have the sort of potential that dies on Gotham’s Streets. They’re on a rooftop, legs dangling off the side and he’s bitching about Batman and she’s rolling her eyes and calling him a furry. Their shoulders are brushing, and she’s covered in bruises and scars and muscles, and she’s never felt stronger, felt safer.
Tim looks over at her, the sun slowly rising in the distance, and even with the domino on she can feel the soft look in his eyes. He’s smiling and so is she, and Stephanie had forgotten what she was about to say.
Their pinkies are interlinked, and under her Bat-made-gloves her hands are unbearably warm.
Stephanie looks at Tim, and they’ve gone quiet, and the sound of the City surrounds them. Cars and shouting and the buzz of life, of Gotham fills her veins. She’s known since she was young that this city was not kind to anyone, oh but did that mean that Gotham had forgotten kindness?
Did that mean they had to?
She could kiss him, but then the worn golden ring on her mother’s hand flashes in her eyes, and so do the white scars that line her hand from where her father had shattered it. Stephanie couldn't shatter him, but she’s learned that love is one of the most dangerous things in this City.
Because her mother had stayed, her sensible, brave mother who pulled a shotgun on the thugs that tried to rob them, stayed with her father even after the years of abuse. Because her mother had married a monster, and she’s lost count of the amount of people she’s known with bruises and a soft look in their eyes because -
He loves me. She says she won’t do it again. It was a onetime thing. He was just angry. It’s okay, I’m okay.
Stephanie stopped counting her dead a long time ago, and she had promised herself after the fifth-sixth-seventh funeral that she would never be them. Let Gotham kill her, let it gut her like Amara or let Batman shatter her ribs, let the City consume her and turn her into a ghost story for the kids. But she would never, ever die because of love, because it had blinded her, because she was willing to take pain for the hint of kindness.
Maybe this City didn’t know kindness, but Stephanie could find her own. She would make it if she had to. But, even if he had pretty eyes and a gentleness that she almost wanted to trust, she was not going to let Tim Drake kill her for a soft kiss.
She looks away, to the streets and the faint flicker of lights in the distance. Life, continuing despite all the tragedies, despite it all. Stephanie tilts back her head and lets out a sigh. They could have been good, but she never could trust good.
Eleven months before Jason Todd returns brutal and vicious and wrong, she stares down at the pink test and her hands shake. Two little lines and her world fades, oh God.
Stephanie is young and in her line of work, even with Batman hovering behind their backs like an avenging angel, every time you patrol there is an expectation that you might not come back. She knows the risks, and she knows exactly why she does it. The dead AmaraLillianDaraFatimaLucasMax and the living JaxMiriamAnalaSarahJade.
She fights because she has too, because she loves her City so much that it hurts, because she loves its people. And Stephanie would gladly lay down her life for this, she would die fighting and be at peace in her last moments.
But the idea of bringing a child into this world makes her want to carve out her heart with a knife.
Because Gotham is hers, but Stephanie would never wish this City on anyone. Because Gotham has never been kind, it’s hers but it crushes innocence and the idea of a girl with her eyes and her father’s laughter, slipping on too small clothes, glitter on her baby fat heavy cheeks, standing on the street corners. The idea of a boy with her gentle waves and messy hair, riddled with bullet holes, a bag of spilled groceries at his still feet, wrong place wrong time.
The idea of a child born into Gotham, born to her too young, too scarred, too tired body is unimaginable.
Stephanie Brown is seventeen and she will never be her father, but she won’t be her mother either. She calls Tim Drake, and he answers.
She’s seventeen when she gives her daughter away, when she presses her into the arms of someone who will take her far from Gotham and its poison-filled streets. Stephanie doesn’t name her in the hospital, or when she wraps her in a bright purple blanket, but secretly she mouths the names - the could-have-been’s.
Stephanie lets water rush over her head, and as steam fills the bathroom, she presses her hand to the still swollen, aching bump. Lila Anne-Marie. Josephina Sarah. Miriam Eliza. And on and on, her fingers dig into stretch mark covered skin and in the cover of the shower, she mourns.
She mourns not for her daughter, because she will live. She will be happy and innocent and young in a way that Gotham children never are. She will never grow up aching and learning how to cover bruises with foundation, learning how her mother looks scattered on the ground and bloody.
Her daughter will live, and she will never set foot in Gotham, she will never know the name of the blood she shares and that - That is the kindest thing Stephanie can do for her daughter.
So she does not mourn for the baby that had been so terribly small in her arms, she mourns for the life that could have been. She mourns for a gentleness she will never know. Stephanie mourns for the girl she could have been, soft edges and kind smiles and so easy to love.
Stephanie mourns for the life that could have been hers if only -
If only things were different.
She never cries for her daughter, for her life and all the unsaid possibilities again. Stephanie Brown, as much as she loathes it, as much as she wants it gone, has Gotham running through her veins. And in this city, you do not have the luxury to stay down when you’ve been hit.
You get up and move on. You survive. She survives.
(He comes back wrong; he comes back howling and burning with Lazarus Green. Jason Todd dies alone and terrified, begging for his father till his last moment because he still believes in Bruce Wayne. He dies and when he comes back Gotham welcomes him home with open arms.
He slips on a red helmet, guns in their holsters and warming his hand, and Jason smiles. He looks out over the city, and somewhere a kid in Robin red is laughing, somewhere a kid is bleeding, and no one is there to save them.
He swings from the building and the City rushes around him, his finger lingers on the trigger of his gun. It’s good to be home, even with blood on your hands.)
Jason Todd comes back wrong, he comes back twisted and distorted and so damn angry. He comes back, but she doesn’t know that yet. All she knows is that her best friend has a cast on his broken arm and a look in his eyes that she can’t decipher.
The Red Hood is cruel, and she had seen the recordings, his laughter when Tim’s arm cracks in two almost sends her into a flashback of her father. He’s not a good person, but he protects Crime Alley with a sort of snarling fierceness that Stephanie knows is because he’s from there, because he’s bled for these streets and now, he’s finally taking something back.
She meets him a month after his attack on the Tower. She’s surrounded by the armed guards of a Human Trafficking Ring, blood trailing down her face, her vision going red. Spoiler calculates and recalculates, and then gives up on calculations.
She swings and relishes in the crack of her knuckles against a face, in the sound of staff against a kneecap, against bone. There are children in cages in the back room, Nightwing is hours away, Batman is off Planet and Robin is down. She’s on her own.
Spoiler bares her teeth beneath her mask, and something inside of her shifts. She’s always been a touch feral, and one of the few lessons both her mother and Batman had taught her echoes in her head - If you have to, fight dirty. Fight vicious and terrible and downright feral. Do whatever you have to do to survive.
Her mother’s calloused hands and steel voice, There is nothing in this world that I will not forgive you for, okay? Just come home to me. Come home.
She straightens her back and abandons any morals she has left. There is no God in this City, and there is nothing merciful in this room.
Spoiler puts up a good fight, more than debilitates a few of the Guards even as their bullets scrape past her. But it’s not enough, sometimes, most times, it’s never enough. She’s losing, she knows she’s losing, they know she’s losing, but Spoiler continues to fight.
If she’s going to die it’ll be fighting, it’ll be for those kids in the backroom and how they deserve a chance for better. It’ll be for this City and her people. It’ll be for the little girl she never really stopped being.
She presses her back against the wall, her ribs definitely cracked and if she lived past this then Stephanie would have more than one scar from bullets just barely grazing her. She watches, eyes darting at the remaining Guards, five with loaded guns and anger in their eyes.
Fuck.
Stephanie shifted her grip on her staff, and with a flick of her wrist it broke apart into two even, heavy parts that settled in each of hands. She bares her bloody teeth, and with the way her mask is cracked they can see the echo of it.
It unnerves them just a little bit, not enough of course, but Stephanie’s willing to bet she can take at least one before the bullets pierce her armor. She readies herself to doge and lunge, her heart racing, beating so quickly it blurs. And then the windows above them shatter.
Glass scatters across this room and before she has time to blink a figure is in the middle of the room, in between her and the Guards. There is barely a moment for her to process the red helmet before Hood is lifting his gun and firing.
Despite there being more guards, and bigger guns, he makes quick work of them. Far easier than she had. Although it’s probably because of his longer ranger weapon, and the fact that he does just blow off their heads and various body parts.
It’s almost over before she realizes it, with only a few scattered rounds from the Guards. Stephanie is still blinking when Red Hood spins around, his gun aimed at her head. She stills, and for a moment the world stills to.
It’s just her and Hood and the gun between them.
Except he doesn’t fire his gun, or shatter her arm like he had Tim. He just keeps staring at her with that damn mask, his gun aimed at her head and unwavering. After a minute, and it’s definitely the pain, and the blood loss, and the shitty fucking night she’s having, because Stephanie snaps.
“If you gonna fucking shoot me you asshole, do it.” Maybe not a good idea to say that to a man who beheaded several Gang Leaders and put their heads in a duffle bag.
Before she can curse herself out, Hood laughs. Stephanie watches with almost wide eyes as Hood throws back his head. He focuses back on her, the gun lowering slightly, “Got to say, you weren’t what I was expecting, kid.” He pauses, tilting his head, and if she was crazier, she would almost say he was smiling under his mask, “Narrows, right?”
She pushes herself off the wall, fingers curl around her weapons, and Stephanie doesn’t let herself flinch. “Born and raised. Crime Alley?”
Hood doesn’t nod, but from the subtle way he moves, she knows she’s hit the target. Something shifts in the air between them, almost unnoticeable but there. Almost something like respect, like recognition. “I got the kids. Fly home before you pass out. Wouldn’t do good for another birdy to be out of service so soon.”
A part of suddenly wants to lunge at him, even though Stephanie knows it’s not a fight she would win. Even if she wasn’t beaten to hell and one hit away from crumbling to the ground. Even if he didn’t have guns and anger and a tendency to use both.
He must see the flicker in her body, the way she tenses, because Hood shifts. Not threatening but ready for a fight, there’s an undercurrent in his body that radiates danger. Stephanie suddenly remembers the recordings, and the way his eye had flashed green in the brief moment that Tim had cracked his domino.
No, this is not a fight she would win.
And - Tim is hers, she would fight for him, and kill for him, and die for him. And maybe Stephanie couldn’t love him properly, maybe she was terrified of falling that way for him because of how much power she was putting in his hands. Maybe she couldn’t love him like that, but she did love him in what way she could.
Hood had hurt him, and if it were anyone else, she would want him dead, but Hood was an Alley kid.
And he was right. He was doing what Batman could never do. He was protecting their people. Because she had seen him from afar, watching over the Working Girls and Street Kids. Because Tim may have been born in Gotham, but he wasn’t truly hers.
He was more than this City, he could be more, he would be more. But people like her and Hood, they were stuck with this, it was all they got, all they could ever have. So maybe Tim was hers, but Hood bled like she did and Stephanie -
This wasn’t a fight she could win, and it wasn’t one she wanted.
She relaxed, in a way that Hood could read, “Take care of them.” Then Stephanie shifted her weight until she found a way to walk that didn’t send her crumbling to her knees.
As she left the warehouse she heard his voice behind her, “See you around Narrows.”
When Tim pulls her aside, his hands frantic and his eyes wide, and tells her that the Red Hood is Jason Todd, Stephanie doesn’t tell him she already knows. She doesn’t tell him that she’s known since the moment Hood spoke, his voice tripping and curling in a way that was born in Gotham’s streets. She doesn’t tell him that she’s known since she did her monthly trip giving away period products and Hood was on a corner, and Sasha had rolled her eyes and said that he was a big softy.
Stephanie doesn’t tell Tim that she’s known since the moment she looked at Hood, and felt in her bones the call, the connection, that way Gotham ran through their blood right alongside their anger and hatred. She doesn’t tell him that of course she knows, how could she not?
(He lets the girl who talks like him, who slips amongst the working girls and alleys of Gotham like she was born there. He lets the girl who’s like him walk away. And as Jason kneels beside hollow eyed kids with bruised wrists he allows himself a single thought -
A coin flips. Head or tails, she dies like me. Angry and alone and useless. Heads or tails. )
It’s the first time she meets Hood, but it isn’t the last. It’s not her fault, they just keep running into each other as the Bats go slightly crazy. Stephanie ends up on the streets, darting over alleys and buildings, in a desperate attempt to escape Tim’s constant planning and Bruce’s brooding. Her blood is rushing and she can almost feel laughter bubbling in her throat.
And then she pauses, wind whipping her hood and hair around, and looks around. Only to realize that she’s passed the Narrows and Downtown, and somehow ended up in Crime Alley. Shit.
Almost as if he read her mind, the gravel shifts behind her. Spoiler twists around only to be met by the Red Hood, his guns holstered, but his body full of tension, of a silent I don’t need weapons to end you. Pleasant.
Spoiler straightens her back, and with Robin charm, she smiles beneath her mask. “How you doing Hood? Been a lot of heads lately, without the rest of the body.”
Hood doesn’t move, but his head tilts slightly. Almost instinctively they shift, slowly circling each other, slowly analyzing the other’s movements with a Bat learned focus. You can’t shake it, she thinks, you can’t shake what made you.
Finally Hood speaks, his voice a mechanized monotone with bits of emotions leaking through, “I thought I made it quite clear that birds weren’t welcome here.”
Tim cracking away at a bag, tossing back his shoulder and wincing as he rolls his arm. Dick’s bruised face and split lip, and that soft, wounded look in his eyes. Bruce’s endless silence. Alfred’s shaking hands, and the drop of spilled tea on the table cloth.
Spoiler rolls her neck, muscles forced to relax. “You did, I got lost.”
She almost winces when Hood stops, he looks at her, long and hard. “ You got lost here ?” And Spoiler can hear everything he isn’t saying. The undercurrent of this is Gotham, your Gotham, and you belong to her streets. You couldn’t get lost if you tried.
She keeps her hands loose and relaxed, her body giving off i-am-not-a-threat in every gentle line. “Well not lost exactly. More like I stopped paying attention and just kind of,” Stephanie pauses, despite the heads and the tower everyone was trying to get Jason home. Might as well see if she could subtly help. “Flew. I learned from the best.”
Hood’s hand clenches at his side, and she watches very carefully. Despite the desperate, almost animal look in his eyes at the mention of Jason, Dick had warned both her and Tim off. His broken voice when he had said that he wasn’t going to trade one sibling for another. But Stephanie was always good at pushing, and she had this feeling Hood wouldn’t kill her. “Wing comes back from Bludhaven every so often. Good to get out together.”
He tenses further but he doesn’t lunge at her. She watches him like he’s a feral animal, or like he’s an angry, drunk man. Stephanie wonders if he can read it in her body language, if he can recognize the constant buzz of careful-not-to-far-don’t-make-him-too-angry-don’t-push, running through her.
Maybe he does because after letting out a hiss Hood pulls back, his hands still curled into heavy fists. “Get out of Crime Alley before I send you back to the Bat in pieces.” She pushed just far enough, it’s time for her to give.
Or she could dig her own grave.
Spoiler slowly walks away, not turning her back on him. She watches Hood carefully and when she’s far enough away, ready to run, she says quietly, “Batman doesn’t kill.” Jason tenses, shifting forward but before he can say anything she cuts him off, “But there is nothing he wouldn’t forgive if it meant his son came back.”
She shifts the grappling hook in her hand, “If you need the Joker dead, kill him and go home. You’ll have a place there.” And then she’s gone, slipping into the shadows as Hood scrambles behind her. There’s a chase for a moment of bright, burning anger, but Hood couldn’t find her. Not when she doesn’t want to be found, not when she’s in Gotham, not when she’s home.
Later that night she’ll find her way back to her old apartment and slip inside. She’ll find her mother on the couch asleep, the tv still droning on. Stephanie will fall to her knees beside her mother, and place her head in her lap like she was still young.
And almost subconsciously her mother’s hands will drift to her hand, brushing through her hair gently and kindly. She closes her eyes, bone tired and aching because of this City, because of the unfairness of it all. She’ll fall asleep, curled up beside her mother, remembering There is nothing in this world that I will not forgive you for, okay? Just come home to me. Come home.
A parent’s love was one of the few untouchable things in this world, and Gotham fostered it well. Gotham made monsters of people, and parents that were a touch mad, a touch too protective, who held love like it was going to be torn from their grasp.
Gotham didn’t make good people, but it made the sort of families that survived brimstone and fire. She just hoped that Jason could see that, because maybe if he made it, she could too.
(You’ll have a place there, the words echo in his head alongside the girl’s, Stephanie’s belief in them. She truly believed that he could come home, that after everything he’s done, everything he could do, he would still have a home. Jason almost laughed at the idea, almost put a bullet in her side.
And then he went back to his shitty apartment that was always too damn quiet, and he wondered. He went back to the apartment that lacked Dick’s terrible 80s movies, and Alfred’s cinnamon rolls, and the faint echo of Bruce’s cologne. He went back to his home, and it had never felt more hollow.
He could go home.
He died, he was replaced.
Dick wouldn’t stop trying to get him home. Bruce’s voice broke the last time they fought. The replacement, Tim had found him and tried to explain, even with the cast still on his arm, that he didn’t have a place in the family, that -
Jason could come home. Stephanie had said he could go home, and she had believed it. There were few things that world weary, hungry kids like them believed in. Not like that. She believed it, she believed -
He falls to his knees, the green surging and dying and surging and dying, he could go home. God, he wants to go home. He was so tired.)
Jason doesn’t come back to the Manor, but judging by the fewer lines on Bruce’s face, and the sudden light in Dick’s eyes, Stephanie has a feeling her words did something. She shrugs, she can’t make Jason come home, she wouldn’t try. But a part of her, the part that should have died on the streets of Gotham but somehow survived, the part that saved her from becoming her mother, burns with hope.
Because if a broken Gotham born child can go through hell and then come home, then maybe she’ll be okay, then maybe she can drag herself into love and light and -
She shakes her head, she was never one to place her hope and faith in something else. Either Jason comes home or he doesn’t, and that would be that. Stephanie, like always, would be there for the aftermath. Whatever that may be.
So she sticks closer to Gotham and the Bats, she presses herself to Tim and laughs at his jokes, countering them with her own sharp words, and she waits. Stephanie waits for something to give.
They meet again and he punches her so hard she tastes blood for days. They meet again and she steps in front of his gun, unafraid and so damn young. She says, head held high and if this is how she dies so be it, I won’t let you kill someone for surviving, just like we did.
And for a moment the green dies down at the sight of her cracked mask and torn hood, blonde strands of hair swaying over her too young eyes. For a moment the world stops at the familiar fire and bared teeth. Hood remembers the files on Spoiler and her brushes with murder, with violence and an anger that was generations inherited.
Hood doesn’t pull the trigger.
They meet over and over again, and slowly Hood stops being as aggressive towards them. The others take and run with it, Tim wreaking havoc on Jason’s systems and playing the My Little Pony Theme Song on repeat until Stephanie quite literally breaks down in laughter. Things are gentler between the second and third Robin after that, not kind, but softer. He doesn’t shoot Dick again, and Nightwing, flying high above them all, even manages a somewhat civil conversation.
(Jason doesn’t talk to Bruce and none of them mention the Joker. They don’t mention the heads or the burnt bodies of human traffickers. They don’t mention the blood soaked warehouse from when Spoiler and Robin were kidnapped and almost sold.
They don’t mention the cinnamon rolls on the counter and how Alfred was smiling for days after. They do not mention the stack of books riddled with annotations left for Babs. There are things they do not mention, as if speaking about it will break this nightmare turned dream.)
They meet over and over again and in some ways things are better, kinder. But the Joker is still alive, and it’s been years since Bruce Wayne has held his son. Stephanie doesn't ever say these things aloud, instead, she watches and waits.
(It’s a million things, a collection of scattered, green-tinted memories and the longing beneath it all. It’s a million things, his homecoming, beautiful and horrific and broken. But the breaking point is Spoiler -
Spoiler on a rooftop, her purple fitting perfectly alongside Robin red. Her laughter rang in the air, and it was enough to make him pause, to stop in the shadows and watch for a moment. Watch as Spoiler knocks shoulders with Robin, watch as Batman hovers in the background, protective and dangerous. Watch as she falls off the roof in a move that has Dick written in every line of her tense body.
Jason watches the three of them, Dick off in Bludhaven and Babs no doubt on the comms, a smile audible in her voice. He watches the three of them and he wants, he wants so badly it hurts. He wants to go home, he wants to be a part of that.
In her moments of lucidity Catherine Todd was a long past saving Catholic and -
Ave Maria, gratia plena, forgive me for what I’ve done. And if there isn’t enough forgiveness left for me, then grant me a little peace. I know it’s not deserved; I know there is no amount of holy water left to clean my soul, but God I am young, and I am so tired.
Ave Maria, gratia plena, you were the mother of a lost cause, of a boy damned before his first breath. Spare me some of your forgiveness, some of your strength to love what is doomed. I have burned my bridges and lost and lost and -
If you cannot forgive me, and in turn cannot teach me how to forgive, then lord, Mary, mother of Jesus, show me how to live despite it all. How did you breathe knowing your son was dead since the moment you held him in your arms, screaming and covered in blood and utterly alive?
How did you live in the midst of the most well-known and eldest tragedy, a mother burying her child?)
(He does not find his answer in the hallowed halls of God, he does not find it in the graveyard with his name on stone and hollow ground beneath. Jason does not find his answer in the rush of adrenaline and the heaviness of iron during a fight. He does not find his answer, and yet the ache does not dull.
Jason is nineteen, and he died at sixteen. There is so much blood on his hands, and anger in his bones, and - He wants to go home, he wants to go home.
Gotham curls around his shaking shoulders, and she is a mother as much as she is death. She sees as much life as she takes, and she cannot help her hunger. She cannot help the blood and violence and how she takes-takes-takes.
It is in her nature to destroy, it is in her desire to see her broken soldier-children go home and live.
So she presses her sharp fingernails into his shoulders, drawing blood, and she whispers into his ear. You know what must be done, and what he can never do. Her fingers will slip to his heart, to the pulsing thing that somehow started again when it should have stopped. He is not a killer, but he is a father.
And a loaded gun will be pressed into his hands, and feather-soft but burning like Ivy’s vines, a kiss will be pressed to his cheek. Do what you must and then go home my child. This doesn’t have to be a tragedy, not if you don’t let it be one. )
A day and a half later Stephanie will hear her mother’s delighted laughter and the crash of a coffee mug. She’ll find, quickly turning brown as it soaks up hot coffee, the morning paper. On the front page in bold black letters it reads THE JOKER FOUND DEAD IN ARKHAM - KILLER UNKNOWN.
And as her mother’s laughs, startled and delighted, and there is a J branded on the skin beneath her left shoulder from two and a half decades ago. As her mother laughs, Stephanie’s lips will curl up in a smile that’s closer to a snarl.
One hour later, a deep purple nail polish drying on her fingernails, her phone will ring. A message from an unknown number, You weren’t entirely wrong, Narrows. And then, two minutes later, Thank you.
Stephanie Brown first meets Jason Todd when he stops by the Manor late one night and finds her drunk on Bruce’s good whiskey, stealing Dick’s hair gel. She blinks, the ground swaying beneath her, her fingers digging into a random table with a probably very old, very expensive vase on it. It wobbles and she freezes, caught in Lazarus Green eyes.
Seriously, what was wrong with rich people?
Jason blinks once, twice. “Do I even want to know?” She likes his voice better now, without all the filters and the hate. It sounds like home.
She tells him so, her words slurring, and he doesn’t quite frown or smile but it’s something in between. His eyes dart to her hand, and she shrugs. Or tries to, she kind of ends up shifting her weight onto the table and freezing again when the vase wobbles. “We got our exam scores back, excelled in all our classes, Tim got like six fives for AP something - smart people classes.”
“So you got wasted?” Jason sounds almost amused. But there’s a hint of envy, or longing, and, and that’s right. He didn’t make it to seventeen.
Stephanie swallows, her fingers tapping against Dick’s ridiculously expensive hair gel that he definitely shouldn’t have left at the Manor. It was too late and she was too drunk for this many emotions and feelings. She’d deal with them later.
She shakes her head and pushes herself off the table. She staggers past Jason, who’s watching her with amused eyes and a tenseness like he’s waiting to catch her when she collapses. Sweet. She makes it to the hallway that leads to Tim’s room and looks over her shoulder.
Jason pauses when their eyes meet, and for a moment the air is thick with something else. Stephanie points at him, “We are going to talk so much shit about weird rich people when I am sober.”
And then she turns but a white plastic bag catches her eyes. Stephanie leans over, almost falls and catches herself smoothly. She stands up, the bag in hand, to see Jason sighing. She chucks the bag at him, and manages to catch him off guard enough that the Walmart bag full of tampon boxes smacks him right in the face.
In the stunned silence Stephanie rolls her eyes, “I am going to be too hungover to deliver those that early in the morning. Hand them out to the - the girls on 15th and 12th, kk?”
Jason stares at her, her hand on her hip and an almost scolding look on her face. He blinks and then laughs, the sort of laughter that shakes your frame. It makes her want to smile. “I was right, you’re just as batshit crazy as the rest of them. You fit in perfectly, Narrows.”
He picks up the bag and gives her one last look. “Don’t somehow get yourself killed.” And then he’s gone, and she still has Dick’s hair gel in her hand.
Tim is gonna be missing an eyebrow in about fifteen minutes.
(Jason comes home early and Stephanie never dies and comes back. Some things change.)
As she stretches out her legs, tossing them into Tim’s lap with a smile, Stephanie is grateful that Cass found her way to them alongside Damian. God knows the Demon Brat would have been a problem if he didn’t come with his extremely deadly bodyguard who also had morals and silent lessons.
Talia had told them in fancy words and exaggerated gestures that Damian was no longer safe in the League, and with her initial plan (Jason) already gone, she had turned to her last resort. Cassandra Cain donned her blades again for the small boy who had his father’s nose and his mother’s eyes, and the burden both their names carried.
It had been a shock on patrol to blink and have a shadowy figure in front of her, a small, sword-toting child claiming to be The Son of the Bat behind her. But Stephanie got over it quickly enough, and boy was it fun to see Jason go all protective over Damian, while also trying his best to bite Cass.
Tim told her, as he stitched up a cut from Damian’s sword before Cass had taken it away, that she was enjoying this situation too much. Stephanie told him, quite kindly, that it had been a stressful few months and she was going to enjoy all the Bat-Drama.
And enjoy she had.
Bruce’s looks of utter love mixed with confusion at Damian’s words and how Cass had a habit of quite literally picking him up every time he tried to stab them. Dick’s happiness at new little sibling, even if Damian kept trying to bite him, and Cass, who had decided he was good after about five minutes, who also kept trying to braid his hair randomly.
Tim’s sleep deprivation and the subtle eye twitch every time he walked into a room full of new, bitey people. (The loving, deadly look in Jason’s eyes as he stood over Damian’s sleeping form. How she had walked in on him and Cass, perched over the boy and unified in their goal protect him at all costs. How she had met their eyes and in that moment they were all one and the same, children who were never quite children, who were taught violence before kindness, who would tear open the world with their sharp teeth before they ever let Damian become them. )
It was nice, it was so nice. So of course it did not last.
A month before -
Cass’s hand pressed to her throat, fingers slipping along the divots and valleys. “Cass.” The slight vibrations beneath those deadly fingers. Stephanie knew how much faith she was putting in Cass, allowing this girl who was silent death, to hold her throat, her life in her hands.
It also served the purpose of letting her feel the vibrations while she watched how Stephanie moved her lips and tongue. She hadn’t realized how easily a language was stolen, but now she was doing everything she could to give it back to Cass.
Cass paused, and then their eyes met. She tried to give off all the encouragement she had. Cass opened her mouth and, “Cu-aa-ss.” Stephanie watched as her eyes widened, as her lips curled up in a smile.
Even in her excitement the fingers, still loosely pressed to her throat, did not once tighten. “Cu-a-ss. Cu-a-ss, Cass!” Cass bounced on the bed, her body radiating a very simple sort of joy.
Stephanie couldn’t help it, she laughed, the corners of her eyes wrinkling. Her fingers pressed into the sides of Cass’s arms. “Yeah, Cass.” She smiled, and nothing hurt, not here in this room with this beautiful girl, “Hi, Cass.”
There was a moment with the two of them just looking at each other and smiling, and then Cass’s eyes sharpened. Her hand slipped off Stephanie’s neck, both of them moving down, her fingers curled into her palm facing her, her thumb and pinky sticking out to the side. Now, she pointed at Stephanie, you.
“My name?” Cass nodded quickly, and Stephanie blinked. She didn’t let the warmy, fuzzy feeling take over. Instead she drew Cass’s hand back up to her throat, to her vocal chords. “Steph. Ss-ttt-ee-ph.”
Cass let her own hand press against her vocal chords and she tried out of the sounds on her tongue. The first few tries were rough, more a loose imitation than an accurate translation. But like everything she quickly picked up on how your tongue was positioned, how your vocal chords vibrated, how much your lips were open.
Stephanie waited patiently, watching as Cass figured out how to speak was something else. Watching her dark eyes shift with a thousand emotions, watching as she moved subconsciously, practically vibrating with joy. She had to resist the urge to tuck that stray strand of dark hair behind her ears.
After a little bit, she couldn't tell you how long she had watched Cass, the girl turned to her with a look of determination on her face. She opened her mouth, and like a hymn, “Ss-tt-ee-ph. Sstephh. Ssteph.”
Cass smiled, beautiful and lovely and proud, and Stephanie smiled back. “Cass and Steph, what a pair we make.”
It’s different with Cass than it is with Tim, not because she isn’t as capable of doing harm. No, Stephanie had never underestimated the deadliness that Cassandra Cain held. The hurricane of a girl she was. It wasn’t even that she was a girl, not really.
The truth was - She was older, and a bit more hungry, a bit more tired. She was older and she had seen so much, there wasn’t much left of her but still Gotham took and took and took. The truth was simple, she loved Cass as much as she loved Tim.
The only difference was this time she had more scars and more grit and more anger-turned-cold. This time Stephanie was utterly terrified, but she wasn’t going to let it stop her. Because maybe Gotham was going to kill her, one way or another, but it was going to get one hell of a fight.
And God help her, Stephanie wanted to kiss this beautiful, deadly girl. And she wanted to love her in the broad daylight and shadows of Gotham. She wanted this girl, she wanted that taste of happiness, of love and light. She wanted and wanted and wanted and -
Let Gotham try to turn her into her mother, try and break her, try and kill her. Stephanie would meet it all with a snarling smile, and she would win.
One week before -
Moana is playing on the far too big TV. Damian is in the first row, lecturing Dick on how to properly take care of chickens and the dangers of the exotic bird trade, Dick’s listening with a smile. Behind them Cass and Tim are signing back and forth rapidly, in some long winded debate about a dress color? She had lost track a while ago.
Instead she curls her feet under a stack of pillows, and presses her head against Cass’s shoulder. As sleep tugs on her she can vaguely hear a familiar voice, a low buzz of Gotham - street and high class. A blanket falls across her.
And as a song plays out, I will carry you here in my heart, you’ll remind me. “You found an odd one B.”
That come what may, I know the way. “She stole my keys the first time we met, reminded me of someone.”
“Jay.”
I am Moana. “I know Old Man, I know.”
Three hours before -
Dick helps her strap into her gear, and she can practically see the light in his eyes behind the domino. Stephanie rolls her eyes, “Go on, say it.”
He practically jumps at the words, “You look so grown up! You’re almost my height, I want to take a picture.”
She shakes her head, “God, you are such a Mom, you know that right?”
Dick only smiles, and smiles, and smiles. He’s practically vibrating out of his skin. Stephanie groans and opens her arms, “Go on.” She barely finishes her sentence before he’s on her, strong arms wrap around her, holding her tightly.
That was one thing about Dick Grayson’s hugs, they always made you feel safe. Safe in a way she had rarely known.
He holds her close, and Stephanie gives in this once and holds him back just as tightly. “I’m not even eighteen yet, still got a few hours.”
Dick steps back, and she misses the warmth, “I know, I know. But I gotta give you a hug before you become an adult and immediately decide I’m not cool anymore.”
Stephanie laughs, “That wouldn’t happen,” His smile brightens, “You were never cool in the first place.” And then she’s darting out of the locker room, laughter trailing after her as Dick chases her.
Five minutes after -
Blood pools beneath her armor, slipping through the plates and seeping into the ground around her. Spoiler stares at the sky, at the dark, slightly green tinted sky of Gotham, and she takes a shuddering breath.
It hurts, like a bullet to her torso that splintered through her bat made armor. It hurts like she’s seven and dying. Spoiler dully hears voices, a low buzz in her ear, the comms that didn’t break. She needs to -
Instinctively she tries to sit up and a scream tears through her throat as the movement jars the metal shards in her torso. Oh shit, that’s not good. She can taste blood in the back of her throat, and her fingers scramble to apply pressure to her chest.
She presses down, and her comm must have turned on because the voices grow loud enough that she can hear them beyond her gritted scream. Spoiler tries to focus, to pull her skin shut and oh god it hurts. She has to, she has to -
“Spoiler! Report, where are you?!” It’s Tim, no Red Robin. Because they’re on patrol and names aren’t allowed.
She swallows hard, choking a little on blood and spit. “Corner of - of,” Her fingers scramble amongst all the blood and a nail slips through the cracks in her armor plate and into one of the entry wounds. It’s more of an agonized moan than a scream, the sound of an injured animal keening.
Spoiler thrashes a little, her back arching slightly, her head pressed into the cold concrete of the warehouse. Her visions blurs and she can still make out Tim, the worry and utter fear in his voice. She has to be strong enough to speak, because he can’t save her if she can’t save herself.
“Corner of Senna Street and Union Way.” The words come out in a blood tinged rush but the flurry of voices sends a rush of relief through her. She did her part, now all she can do is wait. All she can do is -
Fingers press against her pulse point, and Stephanie lazily blinks open her eyes. The world swims with Red, there’s a low murmur. An onslaught of words she can’t make out. Something important had happened, something dangerous, right? But what?
Pain darts up torso and she lets out a low groan, oh right. The bat-armor-piercing bullet, and God, B was gonna have a handful chasing down these weapon makers. Stephanie did not want to be around the Manor when he did, he always got overly broody when one of them got hurt.
“-Spoiler. Hey, Narrows, eyes on me.” It’s almost automatic, the way her eyes snap to the voice, to the only other person who shares the same accent as her - the same slip of the tongue.
Jason, because the mask had somehow disappeared in her daze, is leaning over her. His hands must be the cause of the pain, the pressure keeping her from bleeding out. He still has on his domino, but his hair is a curly mess, the white streak falling across his face. She can make out the white scar stretching out from beneath the black edge of the domino. Stephanie can see the faint green tinge on the edge of his face, courtesy of Gotham’s air.
He looks like home, like a Gotham born boy through and through. She smiles, or tries to, her teeth must be bloody and she must look horrific but Jason’s eyes widen with relief. “Crime Alley.” Or at least she tries to say without choking on her own blood.
Jason takes one wavering breath, and then he’s talking into his comms. “Spoiler is alert and reactive, but she’s losing blood fast. I need the Batmobile now!” That’s right, he had been in the Narrows for some deal. He must have been listening in on the Bat’s comms.
Stephanie smiles, blood and all, and manages a hoarse whisper, “Sap,” His hands dig into her chest, and she’s dying, isn’t she? There’s so much blood she can see some splattered on his cheek. A morbid part of her thinks good, it’s fitting that my blood, our blood should be spilt on this ground. Gotham’s always been hungry.
The part of her that always got back up when she got knocked down, that died with bared teeth and shaking hands, that rose from her would be grave and never looked back, snarls. She had come too far to die, or at least die without a fight. And she never had been in the habit of giving Gotham what she wanted.
She shifts her hand, curling it around Jason’s wrist even as she almost gasps at the effort it requires. “Listen-listening in on us? Knew you cared.”
He smiles, and it fails miserably but it’s okay. It’s okay because Stephanie knows him, because she’s always known him in that bone deep way that no one else could understand. Because maybe Tim and Bruce were Gotham, had her thick in their blood in a way no one could deny, and she would never try, but they weren’t from the streets.
They didn’t know what it was like to be born to nothing but Gotham and her hungry, gaping maw. They didn’t know what it was like to be born to a broken mother who had been you, who had your eyes and your fierce smile before she too broke because Gotham never taught them to bend. They didn’t know what it was like to be the City’s long before you were anyone else's.
They didn’t know what it was like to be hungry, to be so hungry your body turns on itself and slowly kills you in an attempt to continue living.
But Jason knew - He knew because they bleed the same, because they talked and swore the same, because they knew the best deli that never minded the street kids who took the suspiciously nice wrapped sandwiches no one ate. Because they both knew several kids who didn’t make it past six, eight, ten, twelve.
Children who died young and alone and terrified, children they fight for every day.
Jason knew her and she knew him, because they were made of the same stuff. And in the end maybe they didn’t belong to each other, maybe they didn’t belong to anything but their first, hungry mistress. But when it came down to it, they both laughed the same, and maybe that was enough.
Her fingers dig into his pulse point, into the steady beat-beat-beat and Stephanie sighs. If there was anyone that it had to be - to hold her as she went, to be there as she sank into darkness, as her blood stained Gotham’s streets ten years too late. Then she was glad it was him.
She clung to him, to his increasingly panicked voice she could no longer make out, to the pain that was slowly fading from her chest, to the blood that was cooling and congealing beneath her. Stephanie clung to Jason until she couldn’t anymore.
She fought, but like all other things she had known from birth, it wasn’t enough.
Darkness consumed her, and Stephanie falls.
Not yet, oh child of mine, my beautiful broken girl, not yet. What’s done is done, you cannot change what is written.
She’s coding, get the crash cart! Steph, hey Steph I need you with me, please.
I have fought Gods before, you didn’t win then and you won’t win now. But - They are mine, mine to create and mine to take, and I say her time is not done yet.
Clear! Nothing, shit. The bullets hit her lungs, they hit her heart and scattered. The Cave doesn’t have the tech to save her. B -
You can try and take her, it won’t work.
Clark!
What do you need?
The Fortress can save her, please.
Of course.
Just a little longer my sweet blood soaked child, just a little longer and then your body can catch up to your fight. Just a little longer my dear one, and then it’ll all be worth it. I know you’ve suffered. I know I’ve taken from you. I know my love, but I will give you back this time.
Hey Steph, it’s been a week and I’ve read so much information on comas that I’m now a master in them. There’s nothing conclusive on if you can hear, you lost so much blood you were dead for five minutes, any longer and even with the Fortress’s tech you would have suffered irreparable brain damage. Even now - I’m here, okay, I’m here.
The tower’s quiet without you. Cass is there most days, haunting the rooms, staring at your nail polish. It’s - You’re going to live, do you hear me? I survived the worst, and I kept going, and you are going to do the same. It will be hell and you’re gonna hate relearning how to function with the damage, retraining your muscles and learning how to fight again. But you will walk, and you will run and fight. You will survive this, and you will fly again. You just gotta wake up first. I’m waiting, no matter what, I’m waiting.
Do not die, not like this. (Pressure against her palm, letters traced out, fingernails tracing the lines of her palm.)
Hey kid, although you’re eighteen now so I guess - I - I never did wish you happy birthday, I mean you spent it bleeding out so. God, I’m not good at this, I’m not. There wasn’t supposed to be another one, I wasn’t supposed to - I’m sorry, I’m sorry I wasn’t there. I love you Steph, (Lips pressed to her forehead, a tear falling onto her face) Come home soon.
(A scarred, calloused hand, fingers pressed to her pulse point. The smell of Bruce’s fancy cologne, the one that had belonged to his father.)
You gave us all quite the scare Narrows, thought the Old Man was going to go white for a while. But your vitals are improving, and Damian insisted that he felt you squeeze his hand. Then proclaimed that it meant he was the favorite, of course. Yeah, he's something else. Just, come back soon before you give B a heart attack. It would be a really shitty way for him to go. I mean I could make sure he died in a far better way, something grand and big. I’m thinking fireworks but -
“Jay,” The words stop suddenly. Stephanie lazily opens her eyes, fighting the various drugs keeping her down. Jason is there, his hair falling around his ears, a white strand above his eyes, and they’re so damn wide she’s surprised he hasn’t fainted.
Her lips curl up in a weak attempt of a smile, “Stop making death threats.” It’s hoarse and barely there, her voice destroyed from screaming and weeks of no use. But regardless Jason smiles like she’s changed his world.
“Hey, Narrows.” Her eyes widened slightly at the tears glinting in his eyes. He brushes them away and sighs, “You scared the shit out of us kid.”
Stephanie squeezes his hand slightly, and she realizes that their calloused palms fit perfectly together. “Kinda my job.” She looks around the room, her purple hoodie tangling off a chair, forget-me-nots in a pot, Alfred’s lemon tarts on a plate beside water.
She looks back at Jason, “Sneak me Pancakes?”
He laughs, and it’s full of relief, it’s full of something like love. “Never change, kid.” His hand tightens around her own, “Never change, Narrows.”
(Gotham curls around them, possessive and happy and burning. Oh my sweet, bloody children, you’ll find your life here. And if someone tries to take it from you - They’ll be met with blood. As it should be.)