Archive of Our Own ^beta

“Just for tonight,” Steph stutters out. She feels a little off-kilter. The boy behind the desk is looking her right in the eye, like she really exists.

“Cool.” The guy pecks at a couple of keys on his computer, moves his eyes away from Steph to look over whatever’s listed there. The back of the computer monitor is coated in stickers, most of them cartoonish letters communicating a variety of encouragements. Steph’s drawn to a sticker that says GET IT!!! in huge pink letters.

Appearing more frequently than all the other stickers is one with the now familiar-logo, a little bird’s nest with rainbow-striped eggs. It’s the one stuck to streetlamps leading all the way here.

Steph rips her eyes away from the mass of stickers to glance self-consciously around the lobby. Nobody’s in here; it’s almost two in the morning and the only person Steph’s seen in this building is this boy behind the desk who looks about five years older than her and who smiles at Steph like she’s a real person. 

“If you change your mind,” he says, “we got options.” He holds out a room key. 

Steph takes it, relieved that her hand isn’t shaking as she does so.

“If you need anything else, I’m gonna be here until like six and then someone else is taking over,” the guy says. “My name’s Dick.” 

Steph regards him for a moment, trying to commit his name to memory. As she does so, the guy sort of smiles and says, “Yeah, go ahead. I’ve heard it all.”

“No, I was gonna--” Steph shakes her head. “Just. Thanks. I’m, um, I’m Steph.”

“Cool. Hi, Steph.” Dick gives her a respectful nod, as though he isn’t the first person to ever call her that in real life. “I’m unlocking the door, get to it before it times out.” He presses a button, and something buzzes and the door to Steph’s right unlocks with a clack. 

Steph reaches over and swings the door open, revealing a long hallway with soft green carpet and an overwhelming array of framed photos and art pieces stuck all over the walls. It has hints of the detached type of interior design present in doctors’ offices or whatever, but it seems like it’s loved. Well-lived in.

“Your room’s just a few down on the left,” Dick says, pointing. “I’m gonna send someone with some ice packs to you. Get some good sleep, alright?”

Steph doesn’t trust her voice anymore. She just bobs her head and then slips through the door, letting it click heavily shut behind her.

Disconnected from the lobby now, the hallway is dimmer and warmer. Steph doesn’t hear anything besides the hum of the heating system, and the floor creaking as she begins to creep across the carpet, searching out the room with the number matching her key. 

Her headache is glad that she’s out of the brighter light of the lobby, but her brain is moving too sluggishly for her to really understand the numbers on each of the doors. Maybe that’s something she should’ve mentioned to Dick when he asked if she was injured anywhere he couldn’t see.

Steph passes four doors before she finds hers. The door is painted an Easter-egg hue of green, with little red-chested bids flying around the edges in swooping lines, and Steph almost feels like grinning at them as she unlocks the door and pushes it open. 

The room isn’t more than a dresser, a bed, and a sink in the corner, but it’s unoccupied and the door can lock. Steph shuts the door behind her and locks it, and slings her backpack onto the bed, which is made and has a soft comforter on it. There are a couple of pamphlets on the pillow, probably offering up resources alternative to Robin’s Nest, but Steph doesn’t look at them. She thinks if she tries to make her eyes focus on words her brain will leak out her ears.

With only the light from the streetlamps outside filtering through the blinds, Steph peels her coat off and toes her shoes off as well. Feeling a little more comfortable, she pulls the cord to turn on the lamp on the dresser and finally confronts her reflection in the tiny mirror over the sink. 

Bruises cloud the entire right side of her face, blossoming up from her cheekbone and the line of her jaw, swelling the space between like she’s a squirrel hiding an acorn in the side of her mouth. The long scratch that catches the outside corner of her eye and pulls down over her unbruised cheekbone has stopped bleeding, but Steph still remembers the sight of broken glass glinting as it sliced past her face.

This is why Dick at the front desk hadn’t questioned her, she thinks. Steph hadn’t expected an interrogation as to why she needed a place to stay, but he’d quickly agreed and promised her she was safe and told her that nobody would be let in to see her unless she specifically said it was okay. That was all because Steph looks like…well, she’s certainly looked better, is all.

A knock on the door startles her. Steph jumps, eyes darting around the room to automatically check for anything she would need to hide before anyone comes in, but obviously she doesn’t find anything. The door isn’t opening, either--it’s locked. She’s okay here.

Shaking out some of her nerves, Steph unlocks the door again and opens it just a crack, peeking out. There’s a woman standing there, a few steps back from the door to give Steph space, holding a bundle in her hands.

Steph opens the door a little more. The woman smiles at her, holding out the pile of stuff. She’s around Steph’s height, with short-cropped black hair and a soothing kind of competent demeanor that says she’s been through a lot of things and she knows what she’s doing.

“How we feeling?” 

“Fine,” Steph says, her voice crackling. She clears her throat, and accepts the pile of goods.

The woman cocks her head to the side. The woman is looking at Steph, really looking at her, like Dick had. Her eyes are taking in the extent of Steph’s bruises; she doesn’t seem like a medical professional, but she definitely has some kind of training.

“Your head looks like it got hit pretty hard. S’it okay if I check your eyes?”

Steph nods hesitantly, but can’t help the scowl and flinch she automatically does when the woman shines a penlight into her eyes to look at her pupils. 

“I know, honey,” the woman soothes. “Sucks, huh? Just gotta make sure you aren’t concussed before I let you go to sleep.” She holds up a finger in front of Steph’s eyes, which are still recovering from being flashed with light. “Follow this, I’m gonna move it.”

She moves her finger back and forth. Steph follows it, even though her eyes hate her for it.

“Alright,” she allows. Steph slumps in relief that the tests are over and she seems to have passed. “Doesn’t seem like your concussion’s that bad, but we should double-check in the morning.” She points to the pile of stuff that Steph’s still holding. “I got ice packs. And there’s a towel if you wanna shower, and a toothbrush, n’ some toothpaste. If you need anything else just bother Dick at the front desk and he’ll have me run it over. Cool?”

Steph nods. She looks down at the stack of items.

“Oh, and there’re some socks,” the woman explains, remembering them at the same time that Steph discovers the pair of fluffy purple socks. “Just to be cozy. The bathrooms are at the end of the hall on the left.”

Steph’s eyes are burning.

“Ice for about twenty minutes and then give your skin a break for a while before starting again, okay? I bet you’ll fall asleep before you need to repeat it, but if not just do twenty minutes on, ten minutes off.”

“Okay,” Steph says, the sound barely leaving her at all. 

It’s this woman’s job to be nice to her. Steph just showed up here half an hour ago and there’s no way anyone knows anything about her. Still, it feels real. Nobody’s looked at Steph while talking to or about her for at least a couple weeks now.

“What can I call you, honey?”

“Stephanie,” Steph says, even though giving that name over still feels like she’s leaving herself vulnerable for the worst kind of attack.

The kind streak doesn’t end. The woman gives her another one of those smiles and says, gesturing to herself, “Sweet. I’m Selina, I’m the shift manager tonight. There’s breakfast at seven tomorrow. We gonna see you there?”

Steph nods, willing to agree to whatever Selina’s inviting her to. She’s captivated by having this undivided attention, even though it’s bound to end.

“See you then.” Selina points at the bundle she’s handed over. “Hey, make sure your teeth get brushed, at least.”

She must be able to tell just by looking at Steph that Steph is not going to some communal bathroom in a strange facility to shower right now. Steph feels amusement crinkle at her face, disrupting the frozen expression she’s adopted since leaving home a few hours ago.

“Sleep well, kid.” Selina’s eyes flick over the bruised half of Steph’s face again, and she softens a bit. “Glad you came.”

“Thanks,” Steph says, swallowing a lump in her throat to do so. 

“Goodnight.”

“Night.” Steph steps back and shuts the door, locking it again, her bundle of gifts held securely in the crook of one of her arms.

Only because she promised Selina she would, Steph brushes her teeth at the little sink and splashes water carefully on her face, avoiding areas that might sting. With careful fingers, she extracts her hair from the tie that’s holding it up in a sloppy, half-ruined ponytail, and lets her hair fall down around her shoulders as she stares at herself in the mirror.

The room she’s in is completely still. It’s impersonal, with little decoration and lit with a lamp that makes it feel like a hotel room. Even though this is a liminal space, not really hers, Steph was allowed to lock the door and they gave her fuzzy socks to wear.

Steph puts the socks on and then wraps the ice pack in the towel she was given before easing it onto her face. The cool immediately takes the edge off of the worst of the pain, though the dull ache of cold isn’t exactly pleasant. 

It’s not like she had time to pack a bag full of her best clothing. Steph doesn’t have anything except for what she’s wearing, her laptop, wallet, school notebooks, and thankfully her phone and charger. That’s just what had been in her bag and her coat pockets when she grabbed the two items. She’d barely had time to tie her shoes before jumping out her window and barely making it to the fire escape instead of plummeting five stories to her death.

Steph shivers. It’s either from cold or from making the mistake of thinking about the events of tonight. Either way, she needs to get some sleep. If breakfast’s at seven, she only has about five hours before she needs to be awake. 

Pinning the ice pack between her shoulder and her bruises to free her hands, Steph pulls the covers down and moves the pamphlets out of the way so she can curl up in bed. The ice pack falls out of its spot as she shifts around to reach into her backpack and find her charger, then moves again to plug it into the outlet next to the bed frame so her phone can start to revive itself.

She resituates the ice pack on the pillow so she can rest her face on it. Then Steph eases herself down, pulling the comforter up over her shoulders, and realizes she left the light on.

Steph stares at it, too comforted by the warm glow to care. She lets herself be soothed by the light and the locked door and the soft socks and the ice pack, and slips into uneasy sleep.

In her haze of the previous night, Steph had forgotten to set an alarm on her phone. She finds herself hurrying down the hall in the opposite direction of last night, seeking out any place that could possibly be where breakfast is served, well-aware that she’s half an hour late. 

The bathrooms are to the left, so Steph pivots to go right, finding that this new hallway opens up into a larger room. Emboldened, she heads that way, towards where she can hear chattering voices.

She’s hungry as fuck, so she doesn’t let herself be daunted by the sound of at least fifteen different people talking to each other in a loud hum of activity. Steph reaches the place where the hallway opens up and finds herself in a secondary lobby of sorts, with a couple of couches and a staircase up to the second floor and a corner with a couple of handheld phones, seemingly for anyone to use. There’s a propped-open door in one corner, through which Steph can see the end of a table with several people sitting at it, eating. 

She creeps forward, attempting to get a read on the room before barging in.

From her vantage point, she can see that there are several tables, some more occupied than others, all different sizes and shapes of table as though they’ve been salvaged from different stores at different times. There are a lot more people here than Steph thought; a lot of them are around her age, but some are older and some are much, much younger. A lot of them are chatting like they know each other really well, but then she sees one kid who looks about ten, sitting on his own. Steph decides she wants to sit with him before she can remember that she’s trying to take it slow.

Steph steps into the room, refusing to cower under the eight or nine sets of eyes that land on her immediately, and makes a move for the large table of platters of food, which is set up in a self-serve sort of vibe. She puts some french toast on her plate and finds some cut-up fruit and a cup of orange juice, and then she beelines for the kid’s table and sits down across from him without asking for permission. The way he’s glaring at his full plate, she doubts he’d say yes.

As she sits, the kid looks up at her, startled that someone’s there. His eyes are distrustful, taking in the bruises that look even worse this morning, but they don’t linger before falling back down to his plate.

“I’m Steph,” Steph says. She takes a sip of juice. “Are the other kids losers, or what’s the deal?”

“They’re idiots,” the kid mutters. His eyes dart sullenly to the side. There’s more to the story there that Steph will have to find out later.

“I get you.” Steph cuts into her french toast, pleasantly surprised at how it doesn’t seem to be a thick, dry, cardboard-like artifact of hotel food. “What’s your name?”

“Damian.” He gives her another suspicious glance, before his resolve breaks and he snaps, “If you’re sent to tell me to ‘be nice’ to them, save your breath.”

She doesn’t rise to the bait. She just lifts one eyebrow and says, “I got here like five hours ago. I have no way of knowing if they deserve me sticking up for them.”

Damian narrows his eyes, scrutinizing her expression, though she thinks she sees a new kind of respect from him because of her answer. He hasn’t gotten up and left his seat, either, so Steph thinks she’s getting somewhere.

“What are you, thirteen?” she asks, adding three years onto her guess to butter him up.

It works. Damian puffs his chest out a little, cockiness bringing a little bit of life to his face. “I’m ten,” he announces. He finally picks up his fork, slowly beginning to get to work on his breakfast. At least he’s getting close to spearing something on his fork, instead of trying to do it with telekinesis. 

He and Steph eat. Steph keeps feeling eyes on her, from the other people eating and from the people with lanyards who cycle through the room to keep track of things and the old man who seems to be in charge of the food. She hates the feeling of being stared at, but she knows she’s not being very inconspicuous. If a lot of these people are regulars here, it would make sense that they’re curious about a new person showing up.

She’s getting antsy, though. The longer she sits here, the more she feels like she needs to get the fuck out of the room. 

Damian has been moving a chunk of strawberry around his plate with his fork for a while. His eyes move up and clearly notice the way that Steph’s about to run for the exit, because he says, “If you don’t want to answer questions, you should get medical attention before nine-thirty.”

“Why, what’s at nine-thirty?”

“Selina leaves.” Damian shrugs. “She’s a volunteer. The day-shift doctor is a mandatory reporter.”

Oh. That’s a good bit of information, and an important warning. Now is the time for her to decide whether or not she’s going to tell any of the staff here the truth about what happened. She’d hoped that things would be clearer after food and sleep, but she’s just as conflicted and overwhelmed as she was last night.

It would be laughably easy to put her father back in jail. Though he’s never been arrested for…whatever it’s called when someone does what he did yesterday, he has a gazillion prior convictions and Steph wouldn’t be surprised if there was a warrant out for something else he did, already. If she wanted him gone, she could do it.

Steph feels kind of woozy. She swallows thickly. 

Things have never been this bad before. Usually, her dad’s all about pretending like things are fine, like he hasn’t been gone for eight of the last twelve months. All Steph has to do is show him a report card every few months, preferably with a higher-than-C average, and all he has to do is not commit sadistic crimes and leave clues behind for Batman to follow. The two of them leave each other alone. 

Last night, though, Steph’s dad got home from-- wherever he always is , suddenly furious. He’d been brandishing his phone and screaming about an email he got from the school re: Steph trying as casually as possible to change her name on school records. Things went downhill from there.

She gingerly pokes at her bruises, attempting to gauge if they’ve gotten better or worse. 

Her dad isn’t usually violent, not to her. He’d been drunk--at least, she hopes he had been drunk. It doesn’t make sense, otherwise, how he could be so different from the man who had been misty-eyed and awash with relief upon returning home from his latest stint in jail.

He cares . 

Steph’s bruises feel worse than they were. She presses into them again, feeling numb. 

He cares . She should’ve just asked permission before going behind his back and going by a different name, is all. 

If Steph believed her own bullshit, she would already be back on a bus across town to her apartment building. Something is keeping her here, in Robin’s Nest, eating breakfast with this random kid. 

“Do you require company?”

Shaking herself a little bit, Steph looks back up to Damian, pulled out of her reverie. “What?” 

Damian fidgets with the end of one of his sleeves, his irritated expression now more turned-inwards. He almost seems shy. “If you require accompaniment,” he says haltingly, “I know where the nurse’s office is.”

Steph doesn’t know if she “requires accompaniment,” or whatever, but it might be nice to have someone with her who understands how things work here. Also, sue her, but she wants to know what series of events would lead to an elementary schooler being here, eating breakfast on a school day all by himself, hating a collection of homeless teenagers who all have at least two years on him.

She checks around the room to see where the other kids’ attentions lie--Steph could swear that she’s being monitored. As her eyes move around the different tables, though, she can’t find anyone who’s staring back at her, and the unsatisfying search begins to make her skin crawl. 

“That’d be great,” Steph says before Damian can regret offering. She pokes her fork at him. “So what’s your deal?”

“My deal ?” Damian asks disdainfully. 

“Yeah, what’s your story?”

He’s watching her with undisguised suspicion again. Steph stares blandly back, refusing to be scared off.

“I’ve been suspended from school,” Damian admits. He shoots a deathly glare over Steph’s shoulder, though when Steph turns she doesn’t see who in particular Damian is directing his ire at. “My father believes that if I spend some time here, it will help me learn my lesson.”

Steph’s stomach lurches. She claps a hand over her mouth before she can pretend like she isn’t about to puke.

Damian’s gaze focuses on her like he’s a hawk, searching out vulnerabilities. “You have a head injury,” he states. “Is it making you sick?”

Breathing carefully, trying to keep herself from losing all the breakfast she’s eaten, Steph says, “I don’t think this is from that.”

Her head is echoing the words Damian had said, reverberating them around her skull. What do I have to do to make you learn your lesson? a voice asks in a voice much deeper than Damian’s. Her brain conjures an image of her hands grabbing Damian’s hair and smashing his face into a granite-top counter.

“Let’s go right now,” Steph says, swallowing bile.

“To the nurse?” Damian says. “Fine.”

He stands. Steph follows his lead and tosses the remains of her breakfast into the trash and then the two of them escape the dining room.

It’s not a long way to the nurse’s office. Even so, by the time they get there Steph’s nausea has receded. Being away from the food helps. So does letting Damian’s unfortunate choice of phrasing fall out of her head, and seeing Selina’s welcoming expression when Damian knocks once, loudly, on the open door of the medical office.

“Morning,” Selina greets them. She takes her feet off the desk where she’d propped them and sits up straighter, raising her eyebrows at Steph. “How’re we feeling?”

“Fine,” Steph says. She clears her throat. “Um, could I get another ice pack?”

“For sure.” Selina kicks against the floor, scooting herself in her rolly chair over to the cabinet. “Dami, would you mind telling Dick I’m headed back to Blüdhaven in about fifteen?”

“You can’t text him?” Damian complains.

“I could, but you’re standing right here with nothing to do,” Selina says as she takes an ice pack off the stack in the cabinet and begins to shake it up to activate it. “Your dad said you’re here to help.”

Relief cracks over the crown of Steph’s head. That makes it sound like Damian’s father is involved at this organization, and Damian’s not fleeing some mortal danger.

Damian is less comforted by Selina’s words. He only gets crankier. “I don’t need to know about your personal communications with my father.”

“Go,” Selina says firmly, pointing. It almost sounds stern, but her face is soft and fond as she says it. She and Damian don’t look anything alike, but Steph gets a weird feeling like they’re related. “I’ll take care of your friend.”

Damian pivots on his heel and stalks down the hall. Steph watches him retreat for a few moments, and then looks back at Selina with a bit of a confused smile, willing Selina to explain any of that.

“It’s a miracle you got him to bring you here,” Selina says. She scoots to a different cabinet and pulls out a hand towel, which she wraps around the ice pack before holding it out to Steph.

Steph takes a couple steps into the office, accepting the offering and pressing it up to her face.

“Why?” Steph asks.

“Never seen him talk to anybody who comes in.” Selina finishes her chair’s loop around the office floor by returning to her desk and picking up a to-go cup of iced coffee. 

“Does his dad work here?” Steph asks.

The corner of Selina’s mouth twitches, even though she tries to hide that by taking a sip through her straw. “Not for lack of trying.”

Steph is missing something, and she hates the feeling. Selina isn’t going to give her any answers, and Steph should get out of here before the day-shift doctor shows up.

“Okay. Thanks,” Steph says, indicating the ice pack. “I’m gonna head out, so…”

“You got somewhere to go?” Selina asks, eyes sharpening like Damian’s had earlier.

Something’s going on with these people. There’s some kind of heightened understanding in their eyes and she’s seen it in every interaction she’s had here, and she’s never seen it anywhere else in her life.

Gay people have psychic powers, is what Steph’s brain decides is the answer, and she forgets to fight down her snort of laughter in time.

Selina sets her coffee down. “You don’t have to leave, just yet,” she says. “We have a couple of longer-term rooms available, or we could find you a different overnight place if you don’t like it here.”

“Oh, no--No, sorry. I’m fine,” Steph hurries to correct. Taking a step back, putting herself back in the door frame, she gives Selina a thumbs-up in reassurance. “Thank you for the ice. Hope you, um, have a good trip back to Blüdhaven.”

“Steph,” Selina calls. 

Steph stops immediately. She’d honestly do anything for anyone who calls her that name, at this point. 

“Take care of yourself,” Selina says. She gives Steph a slight nod. The small jerk of her chin feels like a spell of safety on its own. 

Steph gets home safely, still holding the ice pack to her face. As she starts to unlock the door, it swings open in front of her. Her dad’s there, eyes clearer and face unburdened with the horrible anger he’d had last night. 

Arthur says what he thinks her name is, but it’s almost hard for Steph to feel hurt at all because of the sheer relief in his eyes. He reaches out slowly, but his hand approaching the blind spot of her still-swollen eye still makes her wince, cringing from the anticipated strike.

All he does is rest his hand on the back of her neck. He draws her into the apartment like he’s pulling her into an embrace, his hand so heavy on the top of her spine.

“I didn’t mean to hurt you,” he says, his voice distraught, “and then--you ran away, I was trying to apologize. Christ, where were you?”

“I just needed some space,” Steph stammers out. The door is closed behind her, and then Arthur’s hand lands on the top of her head instead, mussing her hair. It’s already unbrushed and loose because she hadn’t been able to convince herself to put it back into a ponytail before facing her father.

“You scared the shit out of me.”

“Sorry,” Steph mostly mouths, barely able to get the word out. 

“I guess I just…” Arthur finally moves his hand back into his own space, presses his palm against his forehead in a sign of being overcome by emotion. “I realize I wasn’t here to teach you better. I had a little too much to drink because I realized how bad I’ve fucked up, if you’ve turned out like this.”

Arthur is doing that thing where he doesn’t quite look at Steph. He’s looking past her face, too overwhelmed by how much he hates looking at her to really focus on any specific details. But his eyes are full of well-intentioned disgust, a kind that feels even worse than the blank, drunken hatred that Steph had seen for the first time last night. Maybe because it makes Steph believe, like she’s always wanted to believe, that if she just makes Arthur stay out of trouble long enough he’ll remember he wants to really be her dad.

Self-consciously, Steph shifts the ice pack, trying to find an angle of it that hasn’t turned lukewarm. 

Arthur’s eyes are immediately drawn to the pack. He reaches out, ignoring the way Steph shies away from his hand again, and he takes a hold of her wrist. He pries her hand away from her cheek to better investigate her bruises.

“We’ll teach you to dodge a punch one of these days, son,” Arthur says with a bit of a forced laugh. He leans closer, eyes narrowing as he examines the boundaries of the injury. It’s poorly-defined because her face had been slammed straight downwards onto the flat surface, not into the corner or an edge, which would have left more distinct markings.

Steph swallows down her words and nods tightly, wanting Arthur to just let go of her arm already.

After a long few seconds, Arthur laughs a little, as though the situation has been fully remedied, and finally lets go of her. “Alright, then. I’ll order us pizza. You still like Luigi’s?”

Steph lets out a long breath as he steps away from her. He goes towards the kitchen, which boasts a wide collection of takeout menus that has been there since Steph was about eight. Several of the restaurants are out of business by now, having disappeared while her father served his various sentences. Neither of them care to pull down the obsolete menus, so the fridge turns into more and more of a dangerous roulette every month.

Luigi’s is still around, though. Steph says, “Sure.” 

Arthur’s trying. Steph had just scared him, maybe, with the abruptness of her name change. 

Steph sits at one of the stools behind the bar of the kitchen counter and the two of them have lunch together. He eventually has to go to work, but even after he’s gone and Steph is alone with the cold pizza, she doesn’t feel as safe as she did two hours ago in a room that wasn’t even hers.

After that horrible first night, things are a little better. Steph is more careful about what her dad finds out. He’s more careful about how much he drinks, too--so the next time she’s getting off a late-night bus in front of Robin’s Nest, a month later, she doesn’t have any attention-grabbing facial bruises that’ll make anyone in the building immediately greenlight her to an overnight room. Her old ones have completely faded and only leave intermittent headaches in their absence.

Really, she doesn’t need an overnight room, this time. Last time had been undeniably scary, and this time Steph had just tried to get out of the apartment because of a panic she couldn’t shake, and her dad had been a little too tipsy to keep control of his anger when she wouldn’t tell him where she was going.

Steph wonders if they’ll turn her away if she admits it’s her fault she’s out on the street this late.

She presses the buzzer on the wall outside of the unassuming building, the buzzer next to the little sticker bearing the familiar logo. Within a second, she hears the camera in the door get activated, and then the door unlocks without the person on the other side asking a single question of her.

They hadn’t asked questions last time, either, but it’s nice that the streak is continuing.

She mindfully reaches out with her left hand, pulling the handle towards her and then ducking around the door to get where it’s warmer. The lobby is warmly lit and windowless, and Steph scoots towards the desk but balks a little when the person at the desk looks up and it’s not Dick sitting there. 

It’s a masked figure--they’re in a tight black suit with a huge jacket layered over top, and their head is covered with an expressionless red helmet. They’re definitely not the same friendly sight that greeted Steph last time.

“What’s up,” they say, nodding at her. Their voice crackles and comes out robotic, artificially altered by their helmet. “Just for tonight, or longer?”

Steph hesitates.

“Just tonight. But. There was, like, an intake last time,” she starts to protest, unsure how she’s gotten to the point where she’s talking to a vigilante about the proper protocol at this safe house. “Shouldn’t you be asking me questions?”

“I’m good.” 

“Don’t you wanna, um, make sure I need to be taking one of your rooms up?”

The figure sits up even more in their seat, somehow--their posture is already so tense, but they manage to make themselves even more imposing even behind a desk and a plastic shield. 

“You wouldn’t be here if you didn’t need a room,” they say. 

Steph winces. “Well, I actually--”

“Your hand’s fucked up.”

Steph doesn’t look down at the aforementioned hand, because she might pass out if she does. “That was--unrelated.”

They reach out and set a key on the counter, scooting it under the plastic barrier between the lobby and the backside of the receptionist’s desk. Their hand is ungloved, showing a strong hand crisscrossed with layered scars. Even the small motion of scooting the key is done with a strange, specific kind of ruthlessness.

Steph watches them for a second longer than necessary, trying to pick up on any defining features. She’s seen this person around before--briefly, on the news, they’ve made appearances adjacent to the vigilante behavior that goes on. Steph regrets not paying closer attention to the pantheon of characters who patrol Gotham at night.

She blinks, and realizes they’re staring back at her, their face covered but their posture implying a high degree of focus. It’s an intensity that’s reminiscent of Damian and Selina’s prescient gazes. Maybe it’s messed up that she’s comforted by it, comforted enough that she decides she needs to explain herself before the person across the desk starts making conclusions about what happened to her hand.

“It was an accident,” she says. 

“Your hand getting fucked up?”

Steph nods. “Yeah.”

“Hell of an accident.”

Steph creeps forward, reaching out with her good hand and picking up the key before the offer can be retracted.

“What’s your name?” they ask.

“Stephanie.”

They press the button on the desk to unlock the door to the hallway. Steph pulls it open, but doesn’t step through yet.

“Did Dick get fired?” Steph asks.

They make a noise that might be a laugh, all distorted by the helmet. “He’s volunteer, or I would totally get rid of him.”

“You’re in charge?”

“In a manner of speaking.” 

She says, “Huh.” She doesn’t say, you dress like a serial killer. 

“Dick’s actually working the medical station tonight, if you miss him that bad.”

“Okay. I don’t.” Steph props the door open with her foot, switching her grip on the door so she doesn’t have to come close to using her right hand. “What’s your name, anyway?”

“Hood.” They lean back in their chair, doing everything in their power to act like they’ve stopped caring about her existence. “See you around, Steph.”

“Sure you will,” Steph says, and lets the door fall shut behind her. As soon as the lock snaps back into place, she stops and tries to figure out what the fuck is really going on here.

The only other trans person at Steph’s entire school had mentioned this place in the most fleeting of ways, leaving most of it to hints and nudges--at the time, Steph had been confused as to why they were keeping it such a secret, but now Steph thinks maybe it’s because it’s run by a full-on murderer who refused to turn Steph away even when she basically asked them to.

Damian wasn’t exactly nice, sure, but Selina and Dick were. They seem like normal people, and it doesn’t make sense why they would volunteer to work at a weird hostel that Hood has set up for kids who have been pushed out of the nest.

Steph puts her feet back in motion, brain swirling with unanswered questions. She’s not caught-up enough to miss the door that’s hers, though, and she unlocks it and pushes inside to find a room mostly similar to the one she’d had last time. 

The comforter is different. It looks like a handmade quilt, actually. There’s a nightstand instead of a dresser, and the lamp has a pink shade instead of a yellow one. Steph drops her backpack off of her shoulder onto the bed and steels herself before making herself look down at her messed-up hand. 

Several of the fingers are swelling, purpling. If she twitches her hand, the fingers still move, but the wave of pain that comes with the motion isn’t worth it at all.

The saliva in her mouth suddenly gets very thick. Sickly warmth presses down on her forehead, scrambling her brain, and Steph blinks back to herself to find that she’s sunk down onto the edge of the bed, and she’s breathing shallowly.

Maybe a bad idea to investigate the injury herself, then. 

When she has a grip on her nerves, Steph goes back out into the hallway and locks her door before heading towards the place she remembers as the nurse’s office. 

She’s here earlier than she was last time. There’s more life happening--she passes a couple of people in the hallway, and she hears conversation happening in the closed-door rooms. People are laughing. Steph remembers the tables at breakfast last time and how everyone had seemed like friends. It’s unclear how many times someone has to show up to be adopted into this inner circle. Damian hasn’t reached that level yet.

Dick’s on the phone when Steph rounds the corner and finds the nurse’s office. He’s dragging his hand through his hair, talking lowly into the receiver of his cell phone. In contrast to the genuine, friendly demeanor that he had last time, he looks serious as hell.

“No, hey. Come in here,” Dick murmurs to whoever’s on the other end of the call. “You shouldn’t be out this late. If you can’t be at home, just--hey, no don’t-- Tim !”

The other person must have hung up. Dick pulls the phone back from his ear and stares at the screen and lets out a harsh sigh of irritation. He flicks this thumb across the screen, starting a text to someone, but then he glances to his left and sees Steph and his demeanor completely changes.

He uncurls his shoulder and gives her a tired smile. He doesn’t seem like he’s faking it; despite how he’s clearly beefing with someone and how fast his smile switches on. Dick has big camp-counselor energy, if Steph’s Boy Scout camp counselors had really, really nice biceps.

“Steph!” he says, like it’s good to see her. 

A lump begins to rise in Steph’s throat, distracted from Dick’s muscles by the fact that he remembered her name. She gives a little wave with her good hand.

“Um, hi.” Steph clears her throat. “Is everything okay?”

“It will be.” Dick’s thumbs have been moving this whole time, she realizes; he’s typing without looking. His eyes dart down and read over the text, and he sends it off before setting his phone on the desk, face-down. “What’s going on? Can I get you something?”

Steph brandishes her injured hand.

Dick’s eyes get a little more sad. He scoots towards her, rolling his chair over to get a closer look at the busted appendage.

“What happened here?” Dick asks, tilting his head to see the hand from a different angle.

“Accident,” Steph says. She clears her throat again, because her voice sounds kind of watery. “It’s--it was stupid. I closed a door on it.”

Dick’s eyes move back up to her face. Now that he’s so much closer, it feels harder to look at him. Steph meets his gaze anyway, her face like stone.

“Must’ve slammed it pretty hard,” Dick says.

Steph nods, refusing to let her composure crack just because someone’s directly looking at her.

Dick smiles sadly, knowingly. “Wanna have a seat? I’ll check to make sure nothing’s broken.”

Steph sits on the little exam bed, crinkling the wax paper covering. It feels like being in the nurse’s office at school, coming in from a brawl at recess. That’s the kind of fun elementary school experience she got when everyone found out her dad was in jail.

Dick’s phone vibrates. Dick doesn’t pick it up. He just pulls open a drawer in the desk and finds empty finger splints and gauze wrappings, which he tosses onto the bed next to Steph before rolling back over towards her.

“Is it okay for me to get in your space a little?” Dick asks, hesitating just out of arm’s reach of her.

Steph bobs her head.

Dick rolls a bit closer. He reaches out, gesturing for Steph to extend her hand, and when she acquiesces he gently takes hold near her wrist so he can move her hand around without bumping any of her swollen fingers.

“I’m gonna move your fingers to make sure none of them are broken. It’s gonna hurt, I’m sorry.” Dick talks her through the entire process. His hands are gentle, which makes up for the fact that Steph has to clamp down on noises of pain as he carefully cycles all her fingers through a range-of-motion test. 

By the time he’s finished testing for breaks, Steph wants to pass out. Dick begins to splint the two fingers that are bad enough to have to be immobilized, and soothingly asks, “What grade’re you in?”

“I’m a junior,” Steph says. Her voice wavers.

“Aw, I have a brother your age.” Dick uses a little metal clip to fasten gauze around the first splint, and then moves on to the next one. 

“‘S that Tim?” Steph asks.

Dick looks up at her suddenly with that hawklike, secret-agent look.

“Sorry,” Steph says. Her hands twitch, and she ducks her chin as she tries to overcome the spike of pain. “I heard a little bit of you, uh, on the phone. Sorry.”

After a long moment, Dick relents a little. “No, you don’t have to be sorry. I was just surprised. Yeah, I was trying to keep him on the phone, he’s been running around n’ I can’t get him to just come crash here.”

Someone knocks on the open door. Before Steph can temper her reaction, she flinches and her hand jumps out of Dick’s hold.

“We’re okay,” Dick says in a low, soft voice. Then he and Steph both look over to their visitor.

Fleetingly, Steph’s worried that it’s going to be another person looking for medical attention who needs it more than her. Instead, though, it’s Hood. They’re even more imposing standing up, filling up a lot of the doorframe. 

“Just me,” Hood says, voice crackling through their helmet. “I’m going.” They toss something; when Dick catches it, it’s a walkie-talkie. “You’re on front-desk until I get back.”

“He’s by Park Row,” Dick says.

Hood nods. They start to leave, but then double back and say, “Hi, Steph.”

“Hi,” Steph says, and then Hood leaves for real. When they’re gone, she asks, “Who’re they looking for?”

“Tim.” Dick shrugs. Slowly, transparently trying not to scare Steph again, Dick reaches out and finishes wrapping up her fingers. 

After about a minute of watching him carefully finish the work, Steph asks, “Don’t you need to be in the lobby?”

“The radio’ll let me know when someone rings the doorbell.” Dick produces another metal clip for the gauze. “No worries.” He takes her wrist between his thumb and pointer finger and turns her palm over, surveying his work. “How’s it feel?”

“Fine,” Steph says.

“You sure?”

“Yeah. Um. Sorry, I could’ve just gone to a clinic.”

“Look at me.”

Steph looks at him.

“I’m glad you’re here,” Dick says. 

Steph stares, unable to think of any response. Her mouth is glued shut, and her eyes are burning.

Dick’s smile is sad again. He rolls back, letting Steph have her personal space. “I’m gonna go get a snack,” he says. “You want something?”

Steph still can’t talk. She doesn’t know what she would say, anyway.

“I’ll grab something for you. Or if you decide you wanna just get some sleep, it’s all good. I’ll be back whatever you decide.” Then Dick gets up and leaves the office, taking both his phone and the walkie-talkie, and leaves Steph on the examination bed feeling very, very fragile.

She’s not really that tired. Last time, she’d been exhausted and wanted nothing more than to crash where no one could get to her. This time, caught off-balance by facing Hood at the front desk, having left her apartment fresh out of a two-sided argument, she’s too wired. And if she’s being honest, she wants to find out more about what the fuck is going on with the people who run this place. Hood’s going out to track Dick’s brother down in the middle of the night because Tim wouldn’t come in on his own. Is Steph going to start being tracked by these people?

So, she’s still sitting there when Dick comes back. He holds out a Clif bar and bottle of water for her, and she accepts them.

Dick sits in the rolling chair again. After Steph’s had some of her snack, he starts chatting. He asks about school, and about her hobbies, and then he starts talking about the gymnastics school he teaches at. He teaches kids, and that explains his camp counselor persona, at least. Steph finds herself laughing at his stories about the eight-year-olds who’ve started doing a bit where whenever they miss a landing, they just hit the ground and pretend to be dead on impact.

“I can see she’s giggling,” Dick continues, irate, “because she’s not an actor but it’s my job to make sure she doesn’t die so I have to run over there like--”

“Hey,” says a now-familiar metallic voice. Steph doesn’t jump as badly this time, and Dick only spares half an annoyed glance to the figure of Hood, which has reappeared in the doorway.

“Oh, you’re back,” Dick says. He chucks the radio back at Hood. “You find him?”

“You tell me,” Hood says, and then moves aside to reveal a much smaller person standing there.

Judging by the relief that swamps Dick, the person must be the elusive Tim. He doesn’t look anything like Dick, except for similar hair color, but there’s a kind of familial resemblance in the way his eyes seem aware of every small detail of the room. He’s wearing a collared shirt under a crewneck like some kind of prep-school uniform catalog model. Despite the heavy bags under his eyes, he looks alert and kind of pissed off. One of his hands is holding a skateboard at his side like he’s really, really leaning into teenage rebellion.

“This is stupid,” Tim says. “I was just gonna go back home--”

“Nuh-uh.” Dick waves Tim forward. “Come in here. I’m checking your ribs. And say hi to Steph.”

Upon being pointed out, Steph flushes red. 

Tim looks kind of pink, too. Probably embarrassed that he’s being lectured by his brother in front of a stranger. “Hi,” he finally says, glancing at Steph through the boy-band bangs hanging into his eyes. 

“Has Dick been holding you hostage?” Hood asks Steph.

“Yes, I’ve been trapped for like two hours,” Steph says. “Seems like you won’t listen to his gymnastics stories anymore.”

Hood’s helmet makes a scraping laughing noise. Tim’s cranky expression melts a little, replaced by a shy, amused tilt to his mouth. 

“That’s because I don’t care,” Hood says. They put a hand on the center of Tim’s back and propel him forward, herding Tim into the office. “Tim doesn’t care either.”

“I care,” Tim says, doing a bad job of sounding like he means it.

“They’re so mean to me,” Dick says, looking to Steph beseechingly, like she’s somehow in charge of this interaction. “You can’t even begin to understand the depths of their cruelty.”

“Sure,” Steph says. Tim’s still looking at her, and her heart’s doing a very embarrassing flutter in her chest because of it. Her words feel a little jumbled and she has to focus to keep them straight. “If you need to, uh--I can move if you need your, um…ribs checked.”

“I can check them,” Tim says, shaking his head. His free hand lifts and self-consciously picks at the front of his crewneck, pulling it out from his chest just a few inches and then releasing it so it’ll sit better. “There’s nothing even wrong. J--Hood’s just trying to mother me.”

“He does that,” Dick says sagely.

Hood flicks the back of Tim’s skull, his finger making a substantial thunk. 

“Ow, what the hell!”

“I’m going back to the front,” Hood says, and he steps back. “Bye, Steph.”

Steph is now no longer sure whether he’s making a big deal out of calling her by name as a joke or out of genuine politeness. She lifts her bandaged hand and waves it clumsily, and hopes she isn’t being made fun of. 

Hood disappears, leaving Tim and Dick in a silent battle of wills, both trying to look more stalwart in their opinion. Steph’s definitely intruding. 

“I can leave if your ribs are fucked up,” Steph offers. 

“They aren’t,” Tim says. He narrows his eyes at his brother, and then his gaze lands back on Steph and it turns into something more friendly. “Thanks, though.”

Dick coughs into his hand. The sound of it is a bit unnatural, but when Steph looks over at him, he’s covered his mouth and is looking between her and Tim innocently. 

Steph definitely feels like she’s being laughed at now. Dick doesn’t appear to have a malicious bone in his body, but Steph needs to be out of the room. She points at Tim’s board and says, “You skate?”

Tim nods. He tilts the board around, holding it with both hands in front of him like a low shield.

“Will you show me?” Steph asks.

Tim brightens. The shadows under his eyes almost disappear now that he looks excited about something. Steph’s heart never had a fucking chance.

“Don’t stay out all night,” Dick warns them.

“Sure,” Tim says, rolling his eyes a little, and then waves for Steph to follow him. 

He leads her down the hallway and through the dining room to a back door. It opens up onto a courtyard with a couple of benches and a medium-sized tree and, crucially, some patches of concrete that are flat enough for a skateboard to roll on. 

It’s late enough at night that it feels rude to talk in the hallway. Once the door closes behind them, though, Tim drops the skateboard onto the pavement with a clatter, noise concerns forgotten. 

Steph looks down at the board. The moonlight is bright enough to illuminate the enclosed courtyard, and the rest of the scene is dimly lit by the light from the dining hall through the glass door. “Can you do tricks?”

“Not a lot of space here, but maybe.” Tim pops up the end of the board by pressing on the opposite end, switching directions so he can avoid the roots of the tree. “Um, don’t judge yet. I haven’t warmed up.”

“Do it right on the first try or I’m leaving,” Steph says. 

To her delight, Tim laughs. He plants a solid foot on the board and kicks off, gliding for only a moment before popping himself and the board off the ground, letting the board roll over itself before slamming back down onto it. He sticks the kickflip and his face lights up again, and then hops off the board, running a few steps and kicking it back up into his hand. 

“Did it,” he announces, like she hasn’t just watched him. “Are my credentials proven?”

“That they are,” Steph says. 

Tim drops the board back down and pushes it towards her with a shove of his foot. “Do you skate?”

“Um, I guess I used to.” Before Steph’s friends turned out to be dipshits in eighth grade. She catches the board with the sole of her shoe and then sets her right foot down on it, testing the grip. “If I fuck my hand up more Dick’ll never forgive you.”

“Don’t fall then, I guess,” Tim tells her, with no hint of sympathy.

Steph grins, though her face is still turned down the ground. “So rude, oh my god.” She kicks off, propelling herself across the courtyard, finding her balance to curve her trajectory around the edge of one of the benches without kneecapping herself. When she has enough speed, she finds the right pressure with the balls of her feet to jump both her and the board off the ground, and she pulls her knees up a little, holding onto the edge of the board with her good hand before letting herself slam into the ground again.

It’s a familiar kind of impact, one that her knees don’t necessarily love but one that reassures her anyway. Her brief smile from right before has strengthened, and she finds that the tense, scared pressure on her shoulders from earlier has lessened as she slows to a stop near Tim and jumps off the board to kick it towards its owner.

“That was good,” Tim says, all earnest. “You were lying.”

“About what?” Steph asks, snorting. “About not having done it in a while? Guess I’m just a prodigy.”

Tim takes a couple steps over to flop down onto the bench, dragging his board over to him with the toe of one of his sneakers. After a moment, Steph perches halfway down the bench from him, not too close. 

“Are your ribs really okay?” Steph asks.

Tim tilts his head. “Did Dick tell you to sneakily interrogate me?”

“If I wanted to be sneaky you wouldn’t even know it was happening.”

“Sure.” Tim’s smile starts to creep back across his face. “Yeah. They’re fine. I just, um, couldn’t be at home, and Dick thinks he’s Sherlock Holmes and he imagines injuries I don’t have.”

It doesn’t seem entirely true. Steph leaves it alone; she’s not close enough to Tim or his family to start being so nosy. 

“What happened to your hand?” Tim asks, which is fair payback considering the questions Steph’s been asking.

She holds it out, admiring the gauze and splints that now weigh it down. “Smashed it in a door.”

“Yikes.” Tim winces in solidarity, but then he undermines that sympathy by saying, “I was worried it was something else. When people get multiple fingers sprained like that it’s usually because they fall onto them wrong.”

Steph lowers her hand and looks over at him.

Tim’s eyes lift too. Now that they’re making eye contact, the two of them suddenly seem very close to each other.

“Doesn’t look like a crush injury, is all,” Tim says, his voice a bit quieter.

I’ll show you a crush injury, Steph should say, and then follow that up with smashing their faces together.

Purposefully, Steph clears her throat and shatters the moment by wrenching her eyes away. Her face feels warm and she wants to hide it in her hands. She moves one of her feet over and rests it on the board, scooting it out from under Tim’s foot towards her. 

“ Now who’s Sherlock Holmes?” she asks.

Tim snorts. “Me. Dick’s just a wannabe.”

“Sure.” Steph pulls the board over. Tim stomps his foot down and pulls it back. 

Idly, they roll the board back and forth for a long time. The conversation drifts to more casual topics, circling around vague discussions that don’t touch on things like families and bodily harm. Steph doesn’t learn anything about Tim’s home life, so she doesn’t let him learn anything about hers either. The fact that they both ended up here, sitting not-using a skateboard at one in the morning, is enough common ground to keep them from getting bored.

Eventually, though, Steph starts yawning. Tim’s words are coming slower and slower as his brain gets tired, too, so when Steph’s eyes start trying to drag themselves closed, she decides it’s time to call it a night.

She stretches out her arms, popping her back from the uncomfortable slump she’d been in. The courtyard has gotten a lot colder, the wind coming sharper, and she vaguely shivers as she gets up to her feet.

“It’s so late,” she mumbles. “It’s a school night.”

“Only losers go to school,” says Tim, which is kind of funny because he’s casually referenced not one, but two biochemists by first and last name in the time they’ve been talking. Steph is getting surer and surer that Tim is a fucking nerd. 

Steph reaches out her good hand. Tim accepts it, his hand curling around hers. His skin is a little chilly, but he has an unexpected number of callouses. Steph manages not to turn bright red again as she pulls him up to his feet.

“It was nice to meet you,” Tim says. He’s roughly her height, maybe a couple inches shorter, but he’s still somehow managing to look up at her through his eyelashes, just shy enough that she doesn’t think he’s doing it on purpose. 

Steph nods, her words leaving her momentarily. “You too.” She gets a grip on herself, ignoring that her mouth feels completely dry as she belatedly releases Tim’s hand. “Are you going to be at breakfast?”

“Probably not. I’m gonna get Hood to drop me off at home.” Tim shrugs, not overly pleased with the development. “He finishes at six.”

“Oh.” Steph tries not to be disappointed. Jesus Christ, she’s being so desperate. She brushes some of her hair out of her face and tucks it behind her ear, wondering if she should just book it for the door and end this. 

Don’t be a coward, she mentally screams. He’s cute!! 

“Could I give you my--” she starts to say, as Tim blurts, “Would you want to--?”

Both of them stop. Steph giggles, which she swears to god she’s never done before, and says, “You go first.”

“I was gonna ask if you wanted to skate sometime,” Tim says. One of his arms has crossed his body and his fingers are scratching at a spot above his opposite elbow. “You’re pretty good.”

“I did one jump,” Steph says, preening under the praise, “but you’re right. Also, hell yes, because I was going to give you my number.”

Tim digs his phone out of his pocket and unlocks it, swiping around for a second before holding it out. Steph takes the device, carefully putting her number in and labeling it STEPH with a little purple heart emoji next to it. 

“You better text,” she says, just barely refraining from threatening him. 

“I will,” Tim promises, and takes the phone back with an amount of reverence that convinces her further. He tilts his head towards the door. “Could I walk you to your room?”

“Very gentlemanly,” Steph says, and the two of them sneak back through the now dead-silent halls, creeping past the door of the nurse’s office without Dick seeing. Tim waves a silent goodbye, which Steph returns, and then she slips inside her room and shuts and locks the door and takes a second to silently scream in victory and she jumps up and down a very respectable two times before calming down and flopping onto the bed, feeling giddier than she’s ever felt.

The cloud that Steph is on floats her all the way through the school day until she gets home that evening. It gets her through a tense reunion with her hungover father, and the cloud softens the landing back in reality-town when Arthur shoves a letter in her face from her mom’s rehab facility that says her mom’s nowhere close to coming home. It’s a testament to how much of an emotional rollercoaster she’s been on in the past day that this new information barely feels like much of a letdown at all. 

It’s kind of good that her mom isn’t returning here, actually. Steph likes to pretend that her mom would be a little more accepting than Arthur, because there’s no physical way Steph could survive if that wasn’t true. If Crystal was here, then the truth would have to come out one way or another. 

“Is that it?” Steph asks, trying to fend off further discussion. She keeps the letter in one hand, refusing to relinquish it. Her dad might just throw it away.

“How was school?” Arthur asks, as though he cares.

“It was fine,” Steph says. She looks up at him. “How was work?”

“Work is fine.”  

“Glad to hear it,” Steph says. 

“I’m going to work, but afterwards, we’re going to talk about what you were out doing last night.”

Steph cringes. 

“You can’t be out in Gotham at night. It’s not safe.”

“I know.”

“You’re making yourself into a target.”

“I know.”

“You aren’t going to be allowed to do that anymore.”

Steph nods. Her dad won’t look her in the eye, even when he makes inflexible, terrifying statements like that, and she tries to deflect the fear by pretending like he’s talking on a bluetooth instead of to her.

He picks up his coat and his keys and leaves with a kiss dropped on Steph’s head.

Steph takes some deep breaths and then goes to her room. She sits down on her bedroom floor with her back to the door, blockading herself in. As her heart rate calms down, she takes her phone out and decides to start doing some very intense research about what’s going on with her new acquaintances.

Steph types dick gymnastics bludhaven, crosses her fingers for no porn results, and presses ‘go’ on her search engine. 

Her luck mostly holds up. There’s a relative lack of explicit results, outside of the Tumblrs she finds dedicated to Dick Grayson, renowned acrobat. His ass is kind of nice, she has to admit, but her main focus is that he’s the kid who got adopted by Bruce Wayne about eleven years ago. This explains why he has the time and money to both teach gymnastics and volunteer at a secret youth shelter. What it doesn’t explain is how Dick got in contact with Hood, and it doesn’t explain who the fuck Tim is. 

Steph spends almost an hour looking through appearances that Bruce Wayne has made with his adoptive children. A few years ago, it was just Dick and a kid named Jason. Jason died--Steph remembers hearing that on the news--and then Bruce adopted Damian. Damian’s just as scowly in a tux as he was in his pajamas, and Steph wants to coo at pictures of him but she needs to stay on track. This confirms Steph’s theory that Damian and Dick are related, though Selina’s nowhere to be found. 

There isn’t even anyone Steph finds that could have been Tim pre-coming out. No publicly-presented daughters who were fawned over on the red carpet. Steph keeps coming up empty, staring at pictures of a teenage Dick with his arm around the shoulders of now-dead Jason Todd, and she only ends up with more questions. 

Why would Bruce Wayne let Damian hang around Robin’s Nest on a school morning, far away from any rich-kid schools? Why would Dick live in Blüdhaven but secretly volunteer at this small Gotham joint, not telling anyone even though people are always criticizing the Waynes for not doing more? For that matter, why wouldn’t Bruce be bragging about his outreach to poor unfortunate souls? 

Steph sets her phone down. She should get some homework done before her dad gets back from work, because who knows where the night will go if he stops at a bar on the way home. She needs time to figure out her next move here, anyway.

The Wayne situation only gets more confusing the second time she hangs out with Tim at the skatepark. He shows up with bruises on his arm that aren’t from skating. Maybe they don’t look out-of-place to the other kids around them, but Steph sees the marks and knows what fingerprint bruises look like.

A little while in, she can see that Tim’s brain is somewhere else. Steph says, “Can we sit for a minute?”

Tim nods and follows her to a spot on the grass. Steph sits and he sits next to her, seeming distant.

It’s not her business, really, what happens at Tim’s house. If Steph wasn’t nosy, she would just keep Tim company and then try to get him to come to Robin’s Nest with her later, to make sure that Bruce’s temper has calmed down. 

But Steph is nosy. She’s been worrying nonstop about the possibility of ten-year-old Damian getting hurt too, and about the sickening suspicion of a scenario wherein Jason’s mysterious death had been something much more violent. Honestly, if Dick Grayson didn’t want her figuring out who he is, he shouldn't have told her exactly where he’s employed.

“Does your dad hurt Damian too?” Steph asks. 

Tim recoils, the distant look on his face replaced in an instant by sheer confusion. “Does my dad… what ?”

Steph feels embarrassment start to rise up her neck. Scrambling to explain, she reaches out and taps Tim’s wrist near his bruises to indicate them. “Your dad did that, right?”

“What the fuck does Damian have to do with it?” Tim asks, though he doesn’t pull his arm away. 

“He’s.” Stumped, she loses her momentum. Steph squints. “I thought you were all brothers.”

Tim’s eyebrows are bunched together as he stares at her. 

“Dick said you’re his brother,” Steph says slowly. “Am I missing something?”

“I--we aren’t,” Tim lets out a laugh, finally understanding. He shakes his head to clear his prior confusion and tilts over, bumping his forehead into her shoulder and then sitting back up. “Shit, is this why you’ve been so worried about me?”

“What?” Steph squeaks. She shoves at his shoulder. “I’m not worried. ”

Tim grins. “You so are.”

Steph does her best to glare at him. “Tell me what the fuck is going on.”

To her surprise, Tim moves his arm out from under hers to take hold of her hand. He laces their fingers together and squeezes, and then gives her a quick glance to check if this development is okay. Steph gives him a squeeze back in confirmation, trying not to be distracted by her heart jackhammering out of her chest.

“Dick’s dad is Bruce Wayne,” Tim says.

“Yes.”

“I’ve been doing an internship at Wayne Enterprises for a while.”

“Okay.”

“Dick’s trying to get Bruce to adopt me because my dad’s always out of the country and Dick’s almost as much of a mom as…I mean, as much as someone like Hood.” 

Steph feels a bit of her panic finally detach from her brain, where it’s been a parasite on her mood since she found out about Dick’s identity. “Thank god.” She rolls her eyes up at the sky. “Thank fucking god your dad’s just some random creep, I was trying to figure out how to off Bruce Wayne --”

“Steph,” Tim says to cut her off. When Steph looks over, he kisses her.

When he pulls back again, Steph feels like she’s been set on fire in the best way. Tim stops with his face just a couple inches from hers and murmurs, “Nobody’s ever offered to kill my boss for me.”

“I’m still out for blood,” Steph promises. 

Tim’s mouth curls up on one side. She closes the space between them again. Tim’s lips are chapped against hers, and she has to fight herself and pull back on the reins, ending the second kiss before the two of them start attracting too much attention from the other skaters.

For a second, the two of them stare at each other, aware that things are definitely irrevocably different now. Steph takes in the flushed look on Tim’s face with satisfaction and leans back, propped on her palm, leaving her other hand in Tim’s.

“D’you wanna go get food?” she asks. 

“Yes, definitely,” Tim says.

It’s like Steph’s in a dream. She floats through the afternoon as she and Tim purposefully blow off their respective homework assignments, and when she gets home that night the apartment is empty and Steph’s free to spin in circles, luxuriating in the way she feels absolutely invincible right now.

Her invulnerability wears off. 

She and Tim are really careful. His parents are usually gone from his house--usually, Drake Manor is empty save for them, so they hang out there most days. But they talk on the phone when they can’t be at each other’s places. Maybe they talk on the phone too often, because that’s how Arthur figures out that something’s going on.

Reflecting on her past mistakes won’t help her right now, though. Steph shakily pulls herself out of the pile she is on the floor of her closet--the irony isn’t lost on her that this is where she’s locked in. Her head hurts really, really bad. 

Things outside the closet are quiet now. If Steph wasn’t crushingly claustrophobic, this would be a safe spot to be while she took stock of what to do next. Her dad used to lock her in here far more often. 

Maybe now she’s strong enough to bust out, but that’s a hard maybe. Right now, she doesn’t even know if she can stand.

She blinks into the darkness, straining her ears to make sure Arthur’s gone. No sound greets her except for distant noises of traffic through the open window of Arthur’s bedroom. She shifts around and pulls her phone out of her hoodie pocket. 

The screen is busted. Shards of glass are missing. She tries to get to her text messages and can’t. All she gets for her troubles is her finger sliced open against a broken edge. The blue light of the screen wavers and dances as her other hand shakes, and a vicious headache begins to icepick away at her temples.

Right. Her concussion is…a thing.

Steph tries to tough it out, but it’s too much. Her hand drops her phone, and it lands face-down. Darkness reclaims the closet, and she’s no closer to getting out of here than she was five minutes ago.

Steph reaches up to the doorknob and rattles it. It turns, because none of the doors inside the apartment have functioning locks, but that doesn’t mean she’s free. Steph kicks at the door, and it only budges a few inches before hitting some barrier with a clatter.

Arthur had spent a significant amount of time dragging some kind of furniture over to blockade the door. It’s the heavy desk or the wardrobe; either way, it takes two or three people to pick it up whenever they have to move it. He’d wanted to make sure that she wouldn’t disappear into Gotham again.

Steph braces her back against the wall and shoves with her feet. She gets about an inch of movement before her dizziness spins and she has to stop and breathe carefully so she doesn’t puke.

“Please let me out,” Steph says to no one when the threat of nausea passes. She’s alone here. She bangs her hands on the door, open-palmed, desperate. “Let me out. Please?”

No noise from the entire apartment. Even her neighbors are silent.

She slams her hands into the door again. It’s then that she processes the wet, sticky warmth on the back of her scalp; she reaches up and her fingers find the edges of a gash.

Don’t puke in here, her brain warns her again. 

Steph shoves her unbloodied hand over her mouth to try and comply with those instructions. 

It’s probably her imagination--Steph’s aware enough to realize that, logically--but the air feels like it’s getting thinner and warmer. Fear leaps up her throat, making it even harder for her to take her next inhale. She’s going to suffocate.

With still-shaking hands, Steph reaches out and presses her hands to the boundaries of the space she’s in. The walls reach her hands far before her elbows are unbent. Above her head, a shelf juts out and keeps her from standing up. This closet is so much smaller now that she’s not twelve years old.

She can’t stay here. She can’t. Steph desperately kicks at the door, shoving with all her strength, but this attempt ends the same way as the first one had.

“Please,” Steph says to no one. Bile and tears both clog her throat.

On the floor, her phone begins to vibrate over and over. Steph pats around on the ground, searching it out and finding it and squinting desperately at the screen, trying to read through the cracks and the way her eyes want to gouge themselves out at the introduction of light.

Her heart soars. She swipes to accept the call, trying at least four times to circumnavigate a missing part of her screen. On the last ring, she succeeds, and wants to scream in triumph.

“Steph?” Tim asks.

Steph presses the phone to her ear and takes a steadying breath to control the relieved tears that are overcoming her. “Hey,” she says, wobbly.

“What happened?” he asks. “Are you okay?”

“Can you come?” Steph whispers.

Tim must hear something in her voice that tells him it’s serious. “Tell me your address,” he says without asking any more questions. 

It’s about ten minutes before Steph hears noises in her apartment. That stretch of time is filled with Steph breathing too fast and shallow, wasting air and trying not to pass out, praying that her dad doesn’t come home. When she hears something click and rattle out by her front door that’s not the sound of her dad’s keys, she almost passes out with a rush of relief.

The front door had definitely been locked, but it swings open anyway. She only hears Tim’s voice, but there are two sets of footsteps that come into the apartment.

“Steph?” Tim calls, his feet rushing through the living room.

Steph doesn’t care who Tim brought with him. She just pounds on the closet door and yells, “In here!”

“Where do-- shit ,” Tim says, having apparently caught sight of the barrier laid in front of the closet door. “Oh my god. Steph? Are you--?”

“Can you get me out?” She tries to shift and her arm presses against the wall of the closet, reminding her that the space is too small and that she’s too big. She swallows more bile, the acid of it tearing up her throat. “Please? It’s--I can’t breathe. ”

“I’ll get this side,” he hears Tim mutter, and the other person with him moves obligingly to one side of the door while Tim gets the other. Then Tim raises his voice again and says, “Steph, we’re gonna push this outwards, will you push from in there?”

“Yeah,” Steph says, and re-braces herself. 

“Okay. Three-two-one,” Tim says, and Steph pushes with all her strength.

The piece of furniture moves almost easily with all three of them working together. It slides out of the way and the closet door swings wide, revealing Steph in her ungainly pile and showing her that Tim’s there, face flushed with panic, and next to him is a girl who looks a couple years older than Tim who Steph’s never seen in her life. 

“Steph, oh my god,” Tim says, and falls to his knees, meeting her on the ground after Steph drags herself out of the closet and into open air. “What happened? Why did--?”

Steph lurches forward and throws her arms around his neck, holding on as tight as she can. Instead of dissolving into tears, like she thought she would, she just feels all vague and hollow, the relief stunning her into near-catatonia.

Slowly, Tim’s hands find rest on her back, one of them patting comfort, the other rubbing in small circles. “How long were you in there?”

Steph presses her nose to the side of his neck and doesn’t find any words to answer him with. Her breaths are still too short, she’s working on it.

“Steph,” Tim says, squeezing her a little to try and get her attention. He’s getting more nervous. “Hey.”

“Head hurt,” says the girl accompanying Tim.

Tim stiffens. “How bad?”

Steph hears the girl crouch down behind Steph, and a hand moves through Steph’s hair to carefully rearrange some of it. Trusting Tim to keep her safe, Steph just lays there limply.

After a moment, the girl says, “Bleeding a lot. Not too deep.”

“Steph, how’d you hit your head?” Tim asks.

Steph doesn’t want to talk about it. Tim’s smart enough to understand exactly what happened here without her opening her mouth. 

Mindfully, she takes a long breath in, still attempting to steady herself, and doesn’t answer.

“Cass and I are gonna help you down to the car, okay?” Tim murmurs. He squeezes Steph again. “Do you need us to lift you, or do you think you can walk?”

Steph lets out a weak exhale. She feels like all of her bones have been pulled out of her body, but she manages to sit back off of Tim’s shoulder and she woozily starts trying to stand up, to little success.

Cass’s hand grabs on underneath Steph’s elbow, and she drags Steph upward with an impressive show of strength. Steph stumbles a step forward before she manages to rest an arm around Cass’s shoulders. Said shoulders are muscular and don’t wobble at all under Steph’s body weight. God, how do all of Tim’s siblings--really, Tim included--have amazing shoulders? Steph needs to start doing more pull-ups.

“Who are you?” Steph asks, because it was never clarified.

“Sister,” Cass says, and points to Tim. 

Right. This is another one of the non-biological siblings that Tim collects and then doesn’t tell Steph about. 

Tim’s hovering, looping around Steph to check on her head injury. While he’s back there, he asks, “Do you want me to pack your backpack? What do you need?”

“I already had it packed before, um, everything. It’s next to my bed in my room.”

Tim darts out of the room, leaving Steph alone with Cass holding her up. Steph doesn’t want to stand in silence, but she doesn’t want to be asked about the events of tonight.

“Are you a Wayne, then?” Steph asks.

Cass shifts underneath Steph’s arm, looking at Steph out of the corner of her eye after she’s adjusted the two of them a bit. She’s wearing a weird semi-tactical outfit like she’s either going to a punk show or just finished infiltrating the Pentagon. “Yes,” she says.

In all of the paparazzi photos that Steph’s collected in her frantic research into what the fuck is going on with Jason Todd, Cass hasn’t appeared once. It’s baffling to Steph how Bruce Wayne has collected so many secret, scary-smart children.

More pressing is the fact that Steph now has two trust fund babies in her home, which is littered with broken glass and old busted furniture and dust. Steph had been too panicked to think about this reality before they got here, but now she just wants to shove them out of her apartment and down some stairs and maybe flash them with a Men in Black device to make them forget about her entirely.

Cass isn’t turning up her nose at anything, but Steph’s still cringing. After a moment, Cass tugs at Steph, and the two of them go out to the front room to meet Tim.

Tim slings Steph’s backpack over one of his shoulders. He’s still in his crisis-response mode, all business, but Steph can see that underneath that, he’s really upset. Seeing Steph and Cass approaching, he schools his expression and clears his throat. “Do you need anything else before we leave?”

Being upright for this long, even though she isn’t supporting herself, is making her head feel very…gelatinous. Steph doesn’t think shaking her head will go very well, so she has to answer aloud. “No, that’s it.”

“Cool. Let’s go.”

Cass basically carries Steph out of the apartment and down the stairs. Steph focuses on keeping her feet moving, putting one foot in front of another, and her mind goes hazy and blank no matter how many times Tim tries to keep her talking.

Steph finds herself leaning over a sink, water rushing over her head, her wet hair clinging to both sides of her face. The water is red when it runs into the bottom of the metal sink, and she stares at it while Selina tilts her head back and forth to clean out the wound that’s on the back of her skull.

“Almost finished,” Selina soothes, voice piercing through the water pooled by Steph’s eardrums. “You’re doing good.”

Steph sputters around water. Tears have been streaming down her face since Selina laid eyes on her and told her things were going to be okay. Even now that Steph’s leaning over the sink and propping herself up with bloodstained hands and her painkillers are kicking in, she’s crying.

“It doesn’t look that bad. No stitches.” Selina’s hand, tipped with long nails, strokes through the hair on the uninjured side of Steph’s head. “It’s okay, honey.” 

When Selina turns the water off, she helps Steph stand back upright without losing her balance. Wet hair flops around Steph’s shoulders, soaking her bloody sweatshirt. 

Selina gives her a soft look, not quite a smile but that makes it all the more reassuring, knowing that she’s not faking anything for Steph’s benefit. She carefully moves Steph’s hair off of her shoulder, peeling wet strands off of her face. 

“You’re a trooper,” Selina tells her. “I mean it.”

Steph smiles, wobbly.

“If you want me to help get you away from that piece of shit who keeps hurting you,” Selina’s eyes gleam, promising violence in a way that should (but doesn’t) surprise and/or alarm Steph, “just say the word. Okay? Think about it.”

Steph shrugs miserably,  “He’s…I dunno. I don’t think I’d,” she hiccups, “be able to really hide. He knows people.”

“I know people, too,” Selina counters.

Steph hunches her shoulders. “Um. If he goes back to jail, we’ll lose our apartment.”

Selina’s resolve to murder someone seems to build. “Can I know who he is?”

Steph shakes her head. Her head feels like a box of marbles being rattled around, so she winces and stops moving it.

“I’ll convince you one of these days, but alright,” Selina relents, “I’ll stop interrogating you. Sorry, sweetheart.” 

Steph sniffles. She wipes her nose with the back of her hand, and Selina hands her a tissue to not be disgusting.

“Let me give you my number,” Selina says. “Just in case you need another pickup sometime. Okay?”

“Okay,” Steph says hesitantly. “My phone’s fucked, but…”

“Here.” Selina crosses to the desk and scribbles down numbers on a post-it. Then she picks up a folded towel from the counter. “Sit down for a minute, I’ll get your hair dried. You look like you’re gonna fall over.”

Relieved to be allowed to sit back down, Steph slumps back onto the plastic bed. She’s been swaying for a while. Selina hands her the post-it note, and Steph shoves it into her pocket. Then Selina starts carefully patting the towel around the area of the wound, soaking up water and residual blood. She pauses a couple of times to swipe tears out from under Steph’s eyes, but that just makes Steph want to cry harder.

Selina works quietly while Steph sits and makes crying noises into the silent office. When Steph’s hair is no longer dripping everywhere, Selina asks, “Can I let Tim in?”

“Um, sure.” Steph wipes at her face, trying to compose herself quickly. Her hands come away completely soaked with tears. “Be honest, I look like a hot mess, right?”

“He’ll only notice the ‘hot’ part,” Selina consoles her. 

Steph laughs, surprised, her cheeks getting very warm. She takes the tissue Selina offers her and hides her face by blowing her nose hard enough to make a honking nose. She groans and presses her hand over her eyes when the pressure makes her headache spike. As she rubs at her sinuses, she says farewell to any further compliments from Selina. It was nice while it lasted, but Steph’s being a snotty crying kid right now and Selina’s definitely old enough to be her mom.

Steph takes a mental baseball bat and starts slamming it against the part of her brain that starts saying that’s hot though. 

“Thank you for helping me,” Steph says, voice all congested and crackly. She scrubs at her cheeks again, wiping away any and all residual tear tracks. 

“Don’t mention it.” Selina reaches over to the desk and pulls the top drawer open. “Do you want a sticker?”

“Fuck yes,” Steph immediately blurts, all shyness forgotten. 

Selina presents Steph with an array of stickers to choose from. While Steph deliberates, Selina opens the door to the nurse’s office and pulls Tim in from the hallway, quietly reminding Tim of how often he’s supposed to wake Steph up to make sure her concussion hasn’t killed her in the night. Steph would feel bad for keeping Tim up, but she’s never really seen him sleep at a normal time of night anyway. He just passes out on her shoulder at random parts of the afternoon and then stays up indefinitely like a vampire.

Cass had had to run after dropping the two of them off. Steph files away “has weird nighttime errands to run” in her collection of Wayne behaviors for her to scrutinize later.

“What sticker are you getting,” Tim asks, suddenly very close to Steph’s side.

Steph leans over and rests her head against his chest, still staring down at where the stickers are spread out on the bed. “Hey,” she says. He rests an arm around her shoulders, reassuring. “Um. Powerpuff Girls.” 

She holds up the one she picked, though she’ll have to get injured again sometime to be back for the Jojo Siwa one. Then she pushes the pile back towards Selina, and says, “Thank you.”

“No problem. The younger kids won’t even look at those.” Selina snorts and scoops the stickers back into her hand, depositing them back in the drawer they came from. “Swear to god no one under fifteen wants them.”

“I’ll be back, then,” Steph promises. 

“Would love to see ya. You don’t have to be injured to say hi.” Selina waves goodbye to her and Tim, picking up her iced coffee and plopping down in her rolling chair. “Have a good night, you two.”

“Thanks,” Steph and Tim chorus, and then Tim walks Steph back towards her room.

Steph lets the two of them in. She’d dropped her backpack off in here on the way to Selina, so she knows that there’s a change of clothes waiting for her. At least, there’s a change of shirt that isn’t bloodstained. She’ll have to sleep in jeans but sometimes that’s just how life is.

“Do you want me to leave while you change?” Tim asks.

Steph doesn’t want to be alone, ever ever again. Playing it cool, she just shrugs one shoulder. “Just turn around.” She pokes his arm. “How long’ve you been binding?”

Tim says, delicately avoiding eye contact, “Not long.”

“Liar. You change too.” Steph turns him around by the shoulders and then stoops to pull her spare sweatshirt out of her backpack. She listens until she hears that Tim’s taking his hoodie off before stripping her own over her head and replacing it with a non-damp, clean one.

Steph spaces out. Maybe it’s the concussion, or maybe she’s just stupid tired, but she turns back a moment before Tim says it’s okay and she sees his back has several scars striped across it, all mismatched, some of them looking like gouges or stab wounds. One is a long, narrow burn, nearly healed but probably fairly severe when it first happened. Several scattered, healing scabs look like a bomb exploded near him. Or like someone threw a bottle and it shattered all over his skin.

Across the ridge of his shoulder blade, there’s a gash held together by tiny stitches. Steph doesn’t know how long it’s been there, or why he didn’t tell her it happened.

She turns her head away almost as soon as she glances, but her brain’s spinning with worry. She knew that Tim didn’t live in a safe home, but most of the things he’s let slip have just implied that his dad is only home for two weeks out of the year.

Tim yanks his shirt back down, covering up all the marks. Steph hasn’t even had a chance to admire his back muscles because her brain has shuddered to a halt, considering all the times she was so focused on her own injuries that Tim was able to hide his.

Steph jerks her head back down at the sweatshirt in her hands. She stretches it as much as it will go so she doesn’t jostle her head while she tugs it on, and the operation is fairly successful. She’s still trying to get her arm through one of the sleeves when Tim asks, “Are we good?”

“We’re good,” Steph says. She’s going to have nightmares about who fucked Tim’s back up so bad, but that’s not something she can act on right now. “How’re the ribs?”

Tim turns around. When he sees she’s just now pulling her top down fully, his face goes scarlet but he manages not to lose his train of thought. That’s progress, sort of, but Steph’s so endeared that it doesn’t matter how flustered Tim gets about the smallest things. “They’re okay,” he says. “I was wondering why I was getting so dizzy. Ha.”

Steph wants to strangle him, but she doesn’t. She just laughs and stands back up fully, leaving her bloody clothes on the ground with her backpack. “That’s horrifying.”

“Thank you.” Tim reaches out and carefully pulls Steph’s hair out from the sweatshirt where it’s still tucked in awkwardly under the neck hem. He lays her hair over her shoulder before self-consciously retracting his hand and wringing it with the other one. “We should get some sleep.”

Steph doesn’t even bother responding. She just takes two steps past Tim and faceplants onto the bed. The motion makes her headache surge again, but it’s too much work to move or wince or groan, so she just takes it stoically.

Tim is still hovering weirdly across the room. Steph doesn’t like being stared at from afar, even if it’s Tim doing it, so she grunts into the pillow, “Get over here.”

“ With you?” Tim asks, kind of squeaky.

Steph rolls over, bumping her shoulder into the wall and making room for him on the twin mattress. Tim walks over and sits down, his feet on the ground. He’s not making any move to get comfortable. He just sits there like an alien, as though he intends to sit there for the next three hours until he needs to shake Steph awake again.

“Jesus, Tim,” Steph says, mouth curving. “I am trying to cuddle with you.”

Tim’s ears are scarlet. “Okay, jeez, you just didn’t say,” he mutters, and tips over and finally comes to rest next to her, carefully lowering himself down without jostling her.

He looks like he’s going to continue to be awkward, as though the two of them have never napped together before. To be fair, their naps are usually spontaneous and take place on a couch and not in a private, locked room, but Steph still thinks he’s being a dork about this.

Steph scoots forward to squish her face into the front of his hoodie. Slowly, she snakes an arm over his waist, pressing her hand to the small of his back, attempting to soak up the warmth he’s giving off. At first, she does it just so that the two of them can fit in the bed, and because she wants Tim to stop lying there like he’s made of cardboard. After she starts holding onto him, though, the same helpless tears she’d shed in Selina’s office start to rise again, burning her throat, and she’s glad her face is hidden as she holds on tighter.

“Thank you for coming,” she mumbles, not sure if he can understand her.

Hearing the tears in her voice, Tim finally unfreezes. He moves one of his legs to rest over top of one of Steph’s, and eases Steph’s head up a little so he can move his arm underneath it. His bicep cushions her ear so she’s not resting against his bony-ass shoulder at such a weird angle. His other hand rests around her waist, his hand hovering for an extra second while he does one of his freak-outs of not knowing where to set it. Eventually, his palm presses to her side, reassuring and earnest. If Steph didn’t feel so sickly, she would be kissing the hell out of him right now.

The room next door surges with muffled laughter that pours through the wall. Steph grew up in a building with paper-thin walls separating apartments, and she’s reassured by the sound. For a long time, she lays still and listens to the muffled hum of conversation happening only a couple feet behind her.

Despite this utter safety, her tears just keep resurging. It happens twice before she gives up on trying to swallow them back down. 

“Sorry,” she eventually gets up the energy to say, a long time later. Her eyes are too heavy to open, and she keeps sinking into brief heavy dozes and then resurfacing when people in the rooms next door on either side start laughing or their music spikes. Steph’s barely awake, and it’s hard to remember how to form the single word.

“For what?” Tim asks, sleepy.

“I’m holding you hostage.” If Steph were in Tim’s position, she knows she would do the exact same thing he’s doing for her, but that doesn’t make her feel any better about forcing him to run across the city and then just lie here while she cries on him. 

She can hear his cranky frown in his voice as he says, “No you aren’t.”

Steph sniffles. She turns her head a little, appreciating the soft fabric of Tim’s rich-boy hoodie as it rubs against her cheek. Under her ear, she can hear Tim’s heartbeat, almost synced with her own as her headache throbs.

Turns out he’s an amazing pillow and all Steph had to do to find that out was get slammed in the back of the head with a beer bottle. Uh, worth it. 

Like this, even her headache can’t keep her from sleeping. Steph lets herself rest.

Steph’s next wakeup is not due to Tim shaking her awake to test whether she’s having a brain bleed. Well, maybe he woke her up during the night and she just doesn’t remember--though Steph feels like if she woke up in the middle of the night sharing a twin bed with Tim she would definitely remember that. 

Instead, she’s roused by the low rumble of someone’s voice across the room from her. Steph turns her face towards her pillow, hiding from the light now streaming in through the blinds, and discovers that Tim’s not even on the bed at all.

She hears the voice again. As she forces one of her eyes open and looks across the room to figure out who’s there, she hears, “--you want me to ask her?”

Tim’s voice responds, “I don’t see how a stranger asking is going to be less intimidating.”

“I’m saying you have options if you don’t want to broach the subject. But this is dangerous. Alright? I don’t agree with the lack of reporting that goes on here.”

“I’ll think about it,” Tim says. He sounds stressed. He’s standing inside the room, peeking out through the cracked door to have his conversation so Steph can’t see who’s there. “You should go before Jason sees you here.”

The name sticks out in Steph’s brain. She listens to it resonate around her skull, and shelves that away for later consideration, too tired to grasp any implications. 

Tim’s conversational partner sighs. “You’re right. Do you want me to call your school?”

More meekly, Tim says, “Yes, please.”

“Tell Steph I hope she’s feeling better soon.”

Steph squints at nothing, trying to figure out who the fuck is talking.

“Okay.” Tim scoots back, moving his hand down the side of the door in preparation to close it. 

“You sure you’re alright?”

Tim nods. He shifts his balance to the other foot, fingers tapping along the edge of the door, finding peeling paint to shred at. “It was just…scary.” He shrugs one shoulder. Steph wishes she could see his face. “I’m not helping enough.”

“It isn’t your responsibility,” the person in the hallway says. “You’re doing a lot already. Just think about talking to her or letting me or Dick do it, alright?”

“Fine. I’ll think about it.” Tim hesitates. “And, um, sorry I couldn’t be there last night.”

Steph feels an icicle of guilt shove itself down into the base of her skull. She’s kept Tim from real plans, not just homework he would’ve avoided regardless.

“There aren’t any leads on the Pavlovich case anyway.” A hand appears through the crack in the door, and it ruffles Tim’s hair. Tim accepts this show of affection without flinching, which means that he trusts whoever this is to put their hands near his face.

It might be rude to barge in on their private conversation, but they’re having it in her room. Summoning her courage, Steph sits up and swings her legs out of bed, not making any particular effort to hide the sound of her footsteps as she crosses the room.

As she nears, Tim jumps and turns to look at her, guilty, saying, “Sorry, did I wake you up?” 

Steph shakes her head gingerly, not aggravating her concussion too much. At the end of the motion, she only wants to puke a little bit. Success! 

“It’s okay,” she mumbles. Then she gets close enough to see through the crack in the door, and finds that she’s standing in front of Bruce Wayne.

She jumps, hurriedly raking her hand through her hair to make it presentable. “Oh! Uh, hi, Mr. Wayne.” She ignores the way that Tim smirks at her for this, and resists the urge to put a palm over Tim’s whole face and shove it away from her. “Good morning. Um, I didn’t realize it was you.”

Bruce smiles at her, non-judgemental. He always seems like such an airhead in interviews, and Steph’s mom used to call him a floozy. But right now, he’s staring right through Steph’s eyes into her whole soul, like he’s a robot designed to do so. Steph’s suddenly viscerally sure that he’s smart as hell. She supposes he would have to be, for Tim to be getting anything out of his internship.

“I should be the one apologizing. I didn’t mean to wake you.” His smile gets even kinder, somehow, even as his interrogating gaze sharpens. She feels like a bug pinned to a collector’s board. “Are you feeling any better?”

Steph cuts her gaze to Tim for a split-second, trying to gauge what’s going on. Clearly, Tim’s told his boss about Steph’s personal life, though she doesn’t know how much. That puts her at a disadvantage here. 

She remembers Damian’s warning about mandatory reporters, and resolves to keep herself in line. Instead of telling any truths, she rubs more sleep from her eyes and returns Bruce’s smile. “I’m feeling a lot better, thanks. I just needed some sleep.”

“Sounds like things got pretty serious yesterday,” Bruce says gently, eyebrows worried. 

“Nah, it’s okay.” Steph doesn’t trust dear old Mr. Wayne not to run directly to the police with anything. Her dad sucks sometimes, but he doesn’t deserve to go back to jail, considering the amazing levels of restraint he’s showing by not breaking into bank vaults anymore. “Thanks for being worried, though.”

“Of course,” Bruce says. He opens his mouth to continue his thought, but then the three of them all hear from the end of the hall, “ Wayne.” 

Steph and Tim both jump. Bruce does not. He turns with his same easy curve of a smile to greet their new companion, who turns out to be Hood. 

Hood is stalking down the hall, broad and imposing and definitely angry. Though Steph was weirded out by him the first time, she finds that she isn't afraid of him now. It helps that Tim just sighs and rolls his eyes--Tim’s as good at sensing threats as Steph is, so if Tim doesn’t think this’ll get violent, then it probably won’t.

Steph remembers how she half-heard, you should go before Jason sees you here. She looks between Hood, all cocky posture and irritated gestures, and Bruce Wayne, with his exasperated smile and unthreatened posture. A billionaire in this kind of place, being approached by a masked vigilante, shouldn’t look so cavalier about this interaction. 

Unless.

Before she can temper her reaction, she reaches out and latches onto Tim’s wrist, digging her fingernails in to communicate that she’s realized something insane.

Hood’s head tracks the movement, but he misinterprets Steph’s show of emotion and holds his hands up, taking himself out of murder-mode. 

“Not mad at you, Steph,” he says. “Just gonna get this asshole out of here.”

Steph nods, mouth staying tightly shut. She chews on the inside of her lip as she watches long-dead Jason Todd grab his dad’s arm and drag him towards the exit.

“Earth to Steph,” Tim says, reminding her that she’s still crushing his arm in a vice-like grip.

Tim has been well-aware of the Jason development, since he’d referenced it to Bruce’s face. Steph’s long been convinced that Tim has some secrets going on in regard to his Wayne Enterprises internship, but this is a whole new level of weird. That is, if Steph’s even right--is it more likely that there are two people named Jason in Gotham, or that Bruce Wayne’s dead kid is a zombie?

Would it be insensitive to ask?

Mindfully letting go of Tim’s arm, Steph settles for asking, “Have you ever seen Hood without his helmet on?”’

Tim turns his head to look at her, a weird blank look on his face. “No, I don’t think so. Why?”

He’s lying to her. Why would he be lying if it wasn’t about his zombie brother?

“...No reason,” Steph relents. There’s probably a good reason why she’s not allowed to know, but she’ll just have to do her own detective work later. Right now, she’s having a hard time remaining standing. “I’m gonna sit.”

Tim accompanies her back to the bed. The two of them sit on the edge of the mattress, both of them staring straight ahead for a little while.

“Leslie’s shift starts in about fifteen minutes,” Tim says.

Steph leans over and rests her head on Tim’s shoulder. “Who the fuck is Leslie?”

Tim snorts. “She’s the morning-shift doctor, she stops by for a couple hours after her clinic closes.”

She must be the one who Damian warned Steph about. There’s no delicate way for Steph to ask this question, so she just goes for it. “Is she gonna call the cops on my dad?”

Humming thoughtfully, Tim eventually settles for shrugging the shoulder that Steph’s leaning on, digging the bony surface up into her face unpleasantly. “I think because you’re not eighteen she has to report something, if you’re hurt bad enough.”

Steph sighs. “Will you help me break out of here, then?”

“Um, no offense, but you really need a doctor to check your head.”

Steph stands up, stumbling a bit under the wave of dizziness that hits, and goes over to her backpack to find a new set of clothes for today. 

“Steph.”

She pulls her sweatshirt and shirt off, chancing a quick look to find that Tim has predictably covered his eyes with his hands.

“Stephanie,” he says with his eyes still covered. Exasperated to pull out her full name, it seems. “Selina said your concussion was pretty bad. I don’t think you should be running around outside.”

Steph says, “Thanks, Mom.” She switches her sleep sweatshirt out for a soft sweater. It’s one that Tim threw at her once in one of his frustrated closet-cleanouts. Tim’s mom bought it for him and Steph had benevolently offered to remove the triggering material from the home because she wears the same size as Tim. It’s the most expensive clothing item Steph’s ever owned.

It’s, like, from Urban Outfitters or something. Steph tries to imagine Janet Drake in a shopping mall, picking out clothes for the son she ignores nine months out of the year, and has to stifle an abrupt laugh. 

“It’s not…I’m not, ugh. Just listen to me.” Tim is not very persuasive, with his face hidden in his hands. “Can I look now?”

“Yes.”

Upon dropping his hands, Tim’s able to retrain his displeased gaze on her directly. “Head trauma is really serious. And Leslie is cool. Hood trusts her, and he’s done way more illegal things than you have. She’s not gonna wreck your life.”

Sitting back on her heels, Steph carefully scrutinizes Tim’s face, looking for dishonesty. He lies about weird things sometimes; she tolerates it because she lies about weird things too. His tics are obvious, at least to her. 

Right now, he’s telling the truth.

“Plus, didn’t you say you have too many unexcused absences? She can write a note for your school.”

Maybe it says something about the state of Steph’s life that she’s still holding onto the advice that a ten-year-old gave her, instead of agreeing to the plan of action offered by MENSA baby Tim Drake. She internally laughs at her hesitation and decides to be brutally honest about it. Tim’s so weird about his pseudo-foster baby brother sometimes.

She pulls out her phone. Thankfully, the extensive damage doesn’t stop her from getting to her camera app. “Damian said she’s a mandatory reporter,” Steph says, and takes a picture of the indignant and upset and self-righteous face Tim makes immediately afterward.

“Why would he--? Hey, delete that!” Tim whines. He stands up from the bed and lunges for her phone.

“I’m concussed, you bitch!” Steph twists out of the way. She’s only a few inches taller than him, but that height advantage plus the concussion excuse is enough to keep control of her phone. “Damian’s right though, isn’t he?”

“He shouldn’t have said that,” Tim mutters darkly. He sits back on his heels, giving up on getting a hold on her phone. “Especially if it was gonna keep you from getting real medical attention.”

“So he should’ve just kept me in the dark?” Steph snaps.

“No! But Leslie’s not gonna force you to say anything!” Tim rubs his face with both hands, exasperated. “Please just come see her. I don’t want your brain to get fucked up.”

The way that concern saturates his tone makes Steph pause. For a moment, it just irritates the fuck out of her, but then she overcomes that bad reflex before she can get angrier at him. 

Steph can lie, cheat, and girlboss her way out of Leslie figuring out who her dad is. She doesn’t want to go back home right now; not after the way her dad had recently returned to old methods of punishment. Even being back in her own bedroom might feel too claustrophobic at this point. But that doesn’t mean she won’t want to go home eventually. When things are calm again.

Tim has also effectively called her out--she needs to get excused from school for real. She’s cute, but not cute enough to get the office aide to keep fudging her attendance record.

“Fine,” Steph huffs, defeated. 

Tim’s shoulders slump with relief. 

“Don’t look at me like that.” Steph uses the top of the dresser to pull herself back up to her feet, riding out the wave of headrush that hits when she straightens her legs. “Oof.”

Somehow, throughout all of their negotiations, Tim failed to mention how absolutely terrifying Leslie is. 

Dr. Thompkins has close-cropped white hair and she’s wearing a very grandma-y sweater under her white coat, but the piercings up her ears and the steely look in her eyes both communicate that she’s no one to fuck with.

She turns to see Steph with Tim at her side, and smiles a small, tight, professional smile. “Good morning,” Leslie greets. “How can I help you?”

“See ya,” Tim says under his breath, and then dips .

“Timothy,” Leslie says imperiously, and Tim stops mid-stride, freezing. “I presume you won’t disappear.”

“Um, I actually have to get to school,” Tim says, lying.

“Your father asked me to do a checkup with you,” Leslie says, in a tone that cannot be argued with.

Tim’s shoulders slump. 

“I’ll see you after I’ve met with your friend,” Leslie says.

Steph tries not to beam too much at being identified as a friend of local gorgeous boy Tim Drake. Tim shoots her a weird look, half-endeared and half-something else.

He looks away from Steph again, moving his head vaguely in the direction of Leslie. “Okay, thanks, Dr. Thompkins,” Tim says, and then zips out of the room like someone’s set the building on fire.

Leslie watches him go, unimpressed. Then she turns her gaze on Steph and says, almost warmly, “Good morning. I’m Dr. Leslie Thompkins. You can call me Leslie or Dr. Thompkins, whichever you like. What’s your name?”

“Stephanie,” Steph says. “Um, Tim said I need to get my brain checked?”

“Nice to meet you,” Leslie says, inclining her head politely. “Let’s check out that brain.”

Once Steph manages to prove that she’s more cooperative than Tim, Leslie gets a bit less frightening. She’s very competent, which over the course of the visit becomes more reassuring than intimidating. Walking Steph through the steps of a neurological exam, making sure nothing in Steph’s brain function is secretly messed up, Leslie is calm and gives clear, achievable instructions so Steph doesn’t have to stress too much.

“How did you sustain this injury?” Leslie asks, when she’s determined that Steph has a pretty serious concussion but nothing that requires more than bed rest. 

Steph smiles blandly, not sure what lie to offer. After a beat of silence that stretches too long, she says, “I got checked into the boards playing hockey.”

“You weren’t wearing a helmet?”

“I was at practice.”

“You should still wear a helmet at practice.”

“Believe me, I definitely will after this.”

“What cut into your head?” Leslie asks, undeterred by the quick exchange. “I’ve never seen that from a skating injury. Almost looks like someone smashed a glass object there.”

Steph does a very bad job of pretending like that wasn’t exactly what happened. She freezes, eyes darting up to Leslie’s, and then clears her throat and recovers. “Huh, that’s interesting. How would you tell that?”

Leslie quirks one eyebrow, unamused by Steph’s bullshit. “Let’s just say I’ve had extensive experience treating that kind of injury.”

Steph makes her face into immobile stone, refusing to give up any other information. 

“Well, if you think of any other details you want to tell me, I’m here to listen.” Leslie looks down at her clipboard, moving on from that line of conversation. “I’ll write an email to your school. Will you be staying here while you recover?”

“Um,” Steph says.

“Red Hood has informed me that you can stay in that room for as long as you need.” Leslie moves over to the computer and wakes it up. Steph can’t see what’s going on on the screen, because looking at the bright surface makes her eyes try to retract into her skull and down her throat, but Leslie explains what she’s doing as she goes. “I’m composing an email to your school. Is Stephanie the name on your school record?”

“No,” Steph says. She averts her eyes while she says her legal name. Besides a follow-up question to confirm the spelling, Leslie doesn’t make a big deal out of it. Steph’s coming around to being obsessed with Leslie right now.

“You’re excused for only the next two days because after that it’s the weekend,” Leslie explains. She clicks around for a few seconds. “If there are any issues, I can give you my card, and Tim also knows how to reach me.”

“Thanks,” Steph says. “Um, do I need to pay you, or…?”

“No, Red Hood covers all of the Nest’s medical costs.” Leslie’s voice approaches. Steph opens her eyes just a slit to see what Leslie wants. The doctor is holding out a packet in Steph’s direction. Steph takes it. “That’s some basics of concussion recovery, mostly for whoever comes and checks on you. Are you alright with me informing Selina, Richard, and Hood about what’s going on so they can keep an eye on you?”

“Sure,” Steph says, after she figures out who Richard is. 

“Excellent.” Then Leslie takes a very specific kind of inhale, adjusting her glasses on her face, and Steph knows immediately that this conversation is going to take an accursed turn. “I have this talk with everyone who comes to stay here, but I think I missed you the first couple times. I’m aware that the Gotham Public School District has a lacking health curriculum, particularly when it comes to LGBTQ students.”

This can’t be happening, Steph thinks. She starts to pray for an act of God to interrupt this before it gets out of hand.

“I’m not going to interrogate you about anything,” Leslie assures, seeing the abject horror on Steph’s face, “but are you sexually active?”

Uninvited, a hot blush lights up Steph’s face. She chides herself to be cool about this. Really, Leslie’s being so much more normal than the health teacher who had done an elaborate metaphorical demonstration that involved putting a basketball sock on a paper towel tube.

“Stephanie?” Leslie asks, gently pulling Steph back to earth. “I’m not your primary physician, so you don’t have to tell me anything. But I’d just like you to have the information you need, particularly if no one else has talked to you about this.”

Steph, thinking she might die if she says anything more than a few words, says, “Um, yes. I mean, no.” Trying to pull her head into her ribcage like a turtle, Steph curls inward and wishes for a bolt of lightning to hit her. “Yes, someone’s talked to me.”

“And no, you aren’t sexually active?”

Steph bobs her head in confirmation, cheeks still aflame. She and Tim have definitely gotten close to…something, but neither of them are anywhere near crossing that bridge yet.

“Alright,” Leslie says, mercifully not making Steph elaborate. “Let me just give you a tiny spiel about it, still, and I’ll hand you a packet and I promise I won’t make you think about this anymore afterwards, okay?”

Her awkwardness acknowledged, Steph lets out a tiny breath of laughter and nods, relaxing her shoulders a little.

True to her word, Leslie keeps it short and sweet. She adds a packet and a pamphlet to Steph’s pile of printouts, and isn’t surprised when Steph refuses to ask follow-up questions. Once Steph’s officially free of her sex ed crash course, Leslie crosses to the door, pulling on the handle to unlock it. 

Steph slides off the bed and takes her papers with her, moving towards the exit.

“It was nice to meet you,” Leslie says.

“You too,” Steph says. “I’ll try to get Tim in here without him throwing a fit.”

“You’d be a miracle worker,” Leslie says, with the exhaustion of a woman who has tried and failed to negotiate with Tim in the past.

Out in the hallway, Steph hears Tim say, cranky, “Are you talking shit about me?”

“I don’t know,” Steph teases, “how about you come find out?”

Tim stalks forward. Steph steps out of his way and pushes him further into the office with a hand in the center of his back, and she ducks out of the way as Leslie swings the door shut. As the door closes, Steph sees Tim turn with a betrayed look on his face, but she just waves at him.

The clicking of the locked door echoes through the hall. For the first time since Steph was locked in the closet earlier, she’s alone. She shivers, less from cold and more from how exposed she feels standing all by herself. 

She can hear conversation down by the dining hall. Steph’s nausea has receded enough for her to be really, really hungry, so she begins to drift that way.

The noise grows in volume as she nears. She’s only halfway across the secondary lobby, dodging around people leaving the dining hall, when it starts to be too much. Her ears start picking up more and more, absorbing more sound than her brain can process, and Steph slows to a stop, diverting her path for the exit. Even sitting out in the broad daylight will be more bearable than hearing ten different conversations competing with each other to be heard.

Steph’s hand is on the handle of the door when a familiar voice pierces through the din and asks, “Stephanie?”

Steph presses two of her fingers into her temple, trying to find a pressure point to relieve her splitting headache. Slowly, she turns and cracks open one eye wide enough to find that she’s been found by Damian.

She shuts her eye again and greets, “Aw, hey Damian. Good to see you again.”

“...You are concussed.”

A spike of laughter in the next room sends Steph clapping her hands over her ears. When she recovers, she creaks open an eye again and gives Damian a bit of a strained smile. “Yeah, kinda.”

“Why are you not resting, then?” Damian asks, irritated.

“Jeez, I’m just hungry.” Steph pries her hands down from the sides of her head. “Isn’t a girl allowed to eat?”

“Where is Drake?” Damian demands. 

“Do I need a chaperone or something?”

Damian scowls, crossing his arms. “He is the one aiding your recovery, is he not? He’s failing in his duties.” 

“I’m in charge of my damn self.” Steph cringes from another surge of noise, wanting to escape anywhere else. 

He notices that she’s in pain. The kid fidgets for a second, twisting one hand in his sweatshirt sleeve. Then he announces, “I will get breakfast for you.”

“You’d do that?” Steph asks, touched.

“It is the most logical option,” Damian says, now actively avoiding looking at her. “Are you capable of going back to your room on your own?”

“I am capable,” Steph says, stopping just short of making fun of his formal tone. “Room five.”

Damian nods curtly, spins on his heel, stalks away without waiting for proof that Steph’s going back to her room. It’s a crying shame that Steph doesn’t have her wits about her enough to ruffle his adorable hair, but maybe there’ll be an opportunity for that later. 

Now relieved of the dread of facing the dining hall, Steph turns and goes back towards the room, her fingertips braced against the wall the whole way to keep her balance. 

Returning to her dark, silent room is a blissful relief. Steph leaves the door unlocked and slumps onto the bed, vaguely in the fetal position, staring at the dim room in front of her face until her eyes unfocus and her brain stops buzzing so angrily.

Damian knocks on the door five minutes later. She suspects he gave her a buffer of extra time to stop being headachey, which is sweet of him. Steph grunts an affirmative response and Damian pushes the door open, brandishing two plates of food.

He shuts the door behind him and approaches Steph, thrusting one plate forward. Steph sits up to accept it.

“Thanks,” she says.

Damian nods awkwardly.

“Wanna sit?” Steph asks. She scoots back so her back is against the headboard, leaving plenty of room for Damian.

He perches at the opposite end of the bed, the plate of food in his lap. 

Carefully, Steph selects a muffin from her plate and begins to extract it from the wrapper. Damian copies her, similarly quiet while the two of them eat, and the silence is only broken when someone knocks on the door and then pushes it open.

Tim’s back.

“What’s up, Tim,” Steph says through her mouthful of poppyseed muffin.

“Nothing--wait, why the fuck is Damian here?”

Damian scowls, his placid and awkward expression souring in an instant, but before he can say anything, Steph steps in. 

“Woah, be nice,” Steph chides Tim. “He’s my friend.”

Surprised, Tim blinks. Then his eyebrows raise in indignation, while Steph sees Damian’s glare turn into something smug and pleased.

“It’s my room,” Steph continues, gesturing with part of the crumbling muffin. “You guys have to be nice, I have a concussion.”

“She has a concussion,” Damian agrees, watching Tim. His face is at such an angle that Steph can’t see if he’s mocking Tim, but based on the hilarious spark of rage on Tim’s face, that’s probably a yes. “Where were you ?”

“Mind your own business,” Tim snaps.

“Tim,” Steph reminds him.

Tim violently rolls his eyes, but he doesn’t say anything else rude. He just steps into the room so he can shut the door and then walks across the room, steps up onto the bed, and walks on the mattress to flop down next to Steph, shoving his legs underneath the space made by her bent knees.

Damian keeps picking apart his muffin wrapper, shredding it into small pieces. After a while, Steph gets tired of listening to two brothers ignore each other, so she asks, “Damian, do you have school today?”

“We have a late start, due to a bank robbery in the neighborhood,” Damian says, without looking over, “which Tim would know if he ever attended school.”

Tim’s mouth falls open, wanting to protest but not having an excuse for himself. 

Steph laughs hard enough to hurt her head, which cuts her amusement off for a moment. Before either of the Wayne kids can turn and worry about her, she stabs a couple fingers into a spot behind her ear to poke at one of the worst sites of her headache and she asks, “Do you two go to the same school?”

“It’s Gotham Academy,” Damian says, now talking to his plate again. “First through twelfth grade are all on the same campus.”

Right, of course they go there. It doesn’t seem like here, at a youth shelter in downtown Gotham, Steph’s friends would be solely made up of prep school kids, but this is where she’s at. She’s expanding her horizons and being open-minded, etcetera. It’s very progressive of her to tolerate rich kids.

Mindfully setting aside her countless memories of relentlessly bullying Gotham Academy kids on social media with her friends, Steph says noncommittally, “That’s cool. Do you like it?”

Tim shrugs, though displeasure shines through his flat expression. Damian had said Tim doesn’t attend very often. Based on that, and on the fact that Tim only hangs out with two or three people besides Steph, Gotham Academy kids are probably everything that Steph thought they were.

Confirming Steph’s theory, Damian seethes, “The student body is entirely moronic.”

Tim’s mouth twists, almost amused before he visibly reminds himself he doesn’t like agreeing with Damian. 

“But you’re going today?” Steph prods.

Damian nods. He sets down the remnants of his muffin wrapper and takes to stabbing a fork through his long-cold scrambled eggs. Clearly, attending school is not a positive thing for him.

Still, she wonders if they know how lucky they are. Steph hates school, too, and she’s no stranger to skipping it, but she doubts that Gotham Academy is as much of a cutthroat wild west as her high school.

Steph and Damian carry most of the conversation. Mostly, it’s Steph talking at Damian, trying to coax more of his adorably grumpy answers out of him, while Tim nods off on Steph’s shoulder at the weirdest possible angle.

After a while, Steph gives up on the illusion that she’s going to finish her breakfast. Her stomach still feels weird from the getting-her-head-bonked thing. Still being very polite, Damian takes her plate from her and leaves the room to return both of their plates to the kitchen, leaving Steph with a sleepy Tim.

“I didn’t know you guys were friends,” Tim mumbles. He shifts, throwing one arm over Steph’s stomach to hug her like a koala bear. 

Steph moves as carefully as she can so she doesn’t jostle Tim, and finally gets to flop her hand onto his hair. She scratches gently at his scalp, and she feels Tim smile against her arm. 

“We’re besties,” Steph says, not disclosing that this is only the second time she and Damian have hung out.

“I thought we were besties,” Tim grumbles.

“No, we’re paramours.”

Tim’s face melts into a smile, seemingly pacified by this. 

After a beat of silence, Steph cards her hand through Tim’s hair again, more gently. “You should go to school today. When Mr. Wayne comes to pick him up.”

“What? No,” Tim protests. He looks up at her, pouting. “I want to stick around. You shouldn’t have to be by yourself.”

“I’ll be okay. I’m just gonna be asleep all day, anyway.”

The arm wrapped around Steph’s middle tightens. “I can be quiet,” Tim promises, serious as a heart attack.

Steph’s hand stutters in his hair, unsure if she said something to upset him. “Yeah, I know. Um, I just don’t want you to be bored, or anything.”

“I won’t be bored,” Tim says. His eyebrows are furrowed, but he’s staring at her side and not at her face anymore. “I brought my backpack with my laptop and everything. I was gonna work while you sleep.”

“If you’re sure…” 

“I can miss school.”

Steph nods. She doesn’t think anyone’s ever insisted this much on hanging out with her, and it feels like she’s sitting in front of a warm candle or something, with the amount of warmth that spreads through her chest. 

Tim finally stops laying there so rigidly. He squeezes her and then relaxes, his cheek smushed against her arm. 

“I’m not going to abandon you when you don’t feel good,” he mutters. It sounds so much more like a solemn vow than a casual statement, and something twists in Steph’s heart. 

The door swings open again before she can address why Tim’s so hung up on this. Steph jumps violently, but it’s only Damian.

“I am leaving,” Damian announces. 

Steph lowers her hand from where she’d instinctively leaped to shield Tim’s head, as though she was driving and threw out an arm to ineffectively protect him in the passenger’s seat of a car. “You scared me,” she says, laughing out the residual panic. “Have fun at school.”

“I will not.”

“Aw, not with that attitude!” Steph gives him a thumbs-up. “You got this!”

Damian heaves an enormous put-upon sigh, hoisting his backpack higher on his back. “Very well. Do not let Drake do a poor job taking care of you.”

“He won’t,” Steph assures him. She kisses the top of Tim’s head with an exaggerated noise, which makes Damian scowl in disgust. “See you later!”

“Goodbye,” Damian says, and steps back out of sight, shutting the door behind him with a near-slam. 

Graciously not drawing attention to the way Steph jolts at the noise, Tim just hums. “You’re better at talking to him than me.”

“I think it’s because I actually try to talk to him.”

“I used to try, too,” Tim says darkly.

Okay, that’s brother drama that Steph isn’t touching with a ten-foot pole today. Steph leaves this discussion for a later date, and instead scoots down on the bed to find a sleep-able position. Things are silent while she and Tim negotiate a possible comfortable position with the two of them in the twin bed. Eventually, they find a solution that is acceptable, despite the fact that Tim is breathing directly into her ear. It tickles.

Her brain hurts, but being so close and quiet with Tim now, all she can think about are all the wounds on his back. Steph taps on Tim’s side, where her hand has landed, and asks quietly, “Are you okay?”

“I’m okay,” Tim says. It doesn’t sound like he’s lying, but she doesn’t know how he couldn’t be. 

Steph wakes up exactly three times during the next sixteen hours: once when Tim sits back down on the bed with lunch he ordered (Steph identifies him as a non-threat and passes out again immediately without eating); and then again when someone knocks on the door loud enough to startle her out of her weird twisting dreams.

The second time, it’s Dick with more food. Dick and Tim team up to bully Steph into actually eating something because all she’s had that day is a muffin, but after she starts eating curly fries and she doesn’t get nauseous, they both leave her to her own devices again. Steph eats a bunch of chicken strips and then passes out again, barely avoiding falling into a container of ranch.

Her third time waking up is in the middle of the night, and no one nearby seems responsible for the disruption. Tim’s conked out and snoring softly, curled up on the bed next to her. Steph blinks, disoriented, at the room around her until she hears a crackling of undistinguishable words from outside her door. It sounds electronic, fuzzy. Steph squints and can’t determine whether it’s Hood speaking through his helmet or someone failing to enunciate over the waves of a handheld radio.

She rolls out of bed, careful not to jostle Tim, and silently creeps over to the door to hear better. 

It’s definitely someone over the radio. It crackles again as someone walks past the door with a light, almost inaudible tread. “--About whatever is happening Sunday night?”

“It’s been quiet,” someone responds in real life, just outside Steph’s door. She can’t tell who it is; she presses her ear closer to the wooden door. “There’s no gimmick with this guy. It’s annoying the fuck out of me.”

“Well, when you’re finished being annoyed, can I get some actual intel?” the person on the radio responds, deadpan. Their voice scrapes, almost hoarse with how rough it sounds. “Why haven’t I heard from Tim?”

Steph’s eyebrows shoot up. She looks over her shoulder at where Tim’s passed out, curled towards the spot that Steph left empty.

“I told you he’s busy, B,” the other voice snaps, fading as it moves further away. “Could you get the fuck off of my private channel now?”

Steph eases the lock open and then twists the doorknob, gingerly sweeping the door open just enough to peek one eye through. 

At the end of the hallway, she sees Hood, sans helmet, pushing through the door back out to the lobby. His hair is dark and curly, and a long scar scrapes up the back of his neck, which is the only visible skin she’s ever seen on him.

He turns to shut the door behind him, irritably clipping the radio to a spot on his belt. Steph’s too busy staring to flinch back in time, and he unmistakably makes eye contact with her.

He’s wearing one of those eye masks that the Robins wear, the ones that only cover a third of their face. His dark hair is streaked with white around his bangs, and several more scars crisscross his jaw. His nose looks as though it’s been broken before. 

Too late to hide at all, Steph jolts back and shuts the door. It’s more of a reflex than a genuine desire to hide, but it immediately makes her look guilty. Steph opens her mouth to silently scream frustration at herself, while her mind reels for any potential outcome to this situation that doesn’t end up with her body being dumped into the ocean.

Quiet footsteps start up in the hall again, treading lightly but undeniably approaching. She still jumps when Hood knocks on the other side of the door. 

Steph isn’t a fucking coward, so she opens the door again and looks up at Hood, keeping her face as un-startled as she can.

“Good evening,” she says.

“Hi, Steph,” Hood responds. He’s impossible to read given the domino mask on his face, so she keeps her guard up. “How’s your head?”

“It has been bonked,” Steph states.

“Heard that.” 

Steph waits for a moment, trying to suss out any potential threat in his posture. It doesn’t look like he’s immediately angry, but he’s carrying at least two guns and a big knife is strapped to his thigh.

“It’s super messed up, up there,” Steph continues, and gives an exaggerated wink. “My short-term memory is pretty fucked at the moment. I certainly don’t have the capacity to gossip with anyone besides Damian and Tim.”

Hood’s mouth quirks up on one side. “You gossip with Damian ?”

Okay, maybe Steph’s getting somewhere with him. 

“He’s a sweetheart,” Steph defends. She hears Tim shifting around behind her, and winces. After her immense sleep feat, she’s not drowsy in the slightest, but she knows Tim needs to get his rest. 

Hood’s still standing there watching her, neither agreeing nor disagreeing with her assessment of Damian.

“Can I watch the front desk with you?” she asks. “I’m bored.”

After regarding her for a moment, he warily responds, “I guess.”

Smiling, Steph picks up the room key from the dresser and goes out into the hallway, locking the door behind her.

Hood stands there while she locks the door, and then starts walking when she does. Steph tries to stay a half-step behind him, wanting to have the option of escape backwards down the hall, but he keeps giving her weird glances and slowing down to match her pace.

Odd choreography aside, they reach the heavy door that leads to the lobby without Steph getting stabbed or shot. Still, her nerves aren’t put at ease; this is made clear when Hood reaches out in front of Steph to grab the door handle and she reels back, throwing her arm up to block her face, because for a split-second she’s seeing a huge hand swinging towards her head.

Steph lowers her arm, sheepishly looking up at Hood, who has stopped still with his hand on the doorknob and is staring back at her.

“My bad,” Hood says.

Steph shakes her head, forgetting how to talk for just a second too long. “It’s okay,” she finally stutters out. “Uh, sorry.”

Hood finishes opening the door, swinging it open much more slowly than is called for, and the two of them enter the lobby. Hood uses a keycard on his belt to unlock a door by the side of the counter, clearing the way for him and Steph to step behind the desk. It’s a cozy little area and there are a number of assault weapons underneath the desk along with eight different pamphlets and a bowl of candy.

Steph pauses, looking from Hood to the guns carefully positioned along the low wall out of sight of the lobby. 

Hood steps around her and sets his radio down on the desk. Then he picks up a water bottle with a bunch of stickers on it and begins to slurp from it.

Steph decides that these aren’t the actions of someone gearing up to kill her, so she cautiously sits down on one of the rolling chairs.

“I didn’t mean to creep on you,” Steph blurts after the room stays silent for too long.

Hood lowers himself into the other chair, giving her a bemused eyebrow-raise. “Uh-huh.”

“I didn’t. You were just being loud on the phone with, um, whoever it was.”

“It was a radio, and it was pretty quiet.”

“Okay,” Steph says, rolling her eyes, growing more confident as Hood doesn’t pull a weapon on her. “Well, sorry I have incredible hearing, then. As if it’s my fault.”

She scoots closer to the desk and starts poking through the piles of pamphlets. There are several different piles of stickers, some of which match the ones adorning the back of the computer monitor. 

“Did you start this place?” she asks, musing over one of the suspiciously-Leslie-esque pamphlets about safe sex.

“Yup.” Hood leans back and throws his heels up onto the desk. One of his hands is holding the big knife from his thigh, but he’s polishing it with a little cloth and Steph’s willing to believe for now that he’s not going to use it on her. 

“Why?”

Hood hums. It’s weird, seeing his face move when he talks. She wonders why he didn’t wear his helmet tonight. “I used to be out running around Gotham all by myself. I could’ve used somewhere safe to go where people wouldn’t ask questions.”

“Right. It definitely feels safe, what with all of your,” she gestures vaguely at his vigilante getup.

Hood’s mouth twitches, betraying his stoic face with a sudden crooked smile. When he smiles, he doesn’t look that much older than Steph is. “You’re still here.”

“You got me there.” Steph turns over a pamphlet and then immediately slams it back over to hide the unpleasant surprise of a full scientific diagram of an erect penis. 

Hood laughs. It’s barely more than an exhale through his nose, but Steph feels satisfied at having gotten that reaction from him. If he’s laughing, he’s probably not planning on killing her to make her keep her secrets.

Hood says, “It’s Gotham. Keeping kids safe means being quiet and carrying a lot of guns.”

That’s fair. Maybe the receptionist at Steph’s high school is packing just as much heat; Steph’s never asked.

“Being quiet, huh? Is that why you kicked out Brucie Wayne?”

Immediately, Steph knows she’s crossed some kind of line as Hood tenses up. Steph can see his grip on his knife increase, and she holds her breath while carefully not expressing how fast her heart has started beating again.

“Steph,” Hood finally says, after a long moment, “you’re asking a lot of questions.”

“I have a curious and beautiful mind,” Steph retorts. 

“Ha. How about you tell me your angle here?”

Steph frowns. She looks over and wishes she could see what was going on behind that domino mask. Hood’s jaw is clenched but based on his whole demeanor, that’s not indicative of anything specific. He probably has major tension issues in general.

“I don’t have an angle,” Steph says. “I’m literally just bored because Tim and Leslie are holding me hostage here until my brain is better.”

Hood keeps watching her, unwavering.

Bristling, Steph gives up on keeping another layer of tact. This guy is too cagey, and she might not get another chance to ask what she’s dying to know. “Are you Jason Todd?”

He stops breathing. Steph realizes the room is completely still for the first time since the two of them have been here, and connects the dots from there. If he wasn’t Jason Todd, he would be calling her an insane person for believing in zombies.

“Jason Todd died,” Hood says, far too late. His voice sounds almost as robotic as it does when he wears his helmet.

She’s pissing off someone who’s more armed than an entire SWAT team. Despite that, though, the way he talks about Jason Todd rings some kind of deep familiarity in Steph’s chest, and she knows to back off immediately.

“Okay,” Steph says, her tone light. “My bad.”

“Why would you think--?” Hood cuts himself off with a growled, “Tim.”

Steph sits upright, twisting fast enough that her head protests with dizziness. “No! He didn’t--no, wait. I just…” Steph waves her hands, trying to calm Hood back down. “It was all me. I just guessed. And now you’re acting like a suspicious motherfucker.”

For a long second, Hood just sits there. If she thought his jaw was clenched before, she doesn’t know what to call it now. It’s like he wants to crack a tooth. 

“I’m not asking because I’m…” Steph snorts, trying very, very hard to keep looking calm and uncaring. “I dunno, like, I’m nosy, but do you honestly think I have anybody to tell? I just wanted to know what the hell was going on around here.” 

Hood stays still. 

Steph adds, a little anxiety entering her voice, “It seemed like there were no strings attached. You realize that’s sketchy as fuck, right?”

The hand holding the huge knife finally shifts, and Steph’s eyes dart to it in terror, but Hood’s just re-sheathing the blade.

Steph lets out a long-stale breath. She offers, “I can forget I asked.”

“Can you,” Hood says tonelessly. 

Steph bobs her head. “Yup, it’s already gone.” She waves a hand past her face, miming tossing the memory into the trash behind her back. “Whoosh. Erased.”

It’s like sitting in the sightline of a stone gargoyle. Hood was laughing earlier, but Steph fucked that up. God, that was so stupid to ask. She could’ve just cornered Tim and tricked him into telling her, but it felt wrong to get that information from anywhere other than Hood. 

“I’m sorry,” Steph says. She can’t take her eyes off of Hood’s hands, braced for the second he snaps and grabs her by the hair and tries to smash her skull in. “I shouldn’t’ve…I’m sorry.”

“For what?” Hood asks. His ramrod posture melts just a bit.

“For…” Steph starts, but then her eyes dart to his face and she sees that a smirk has reappeared on his face, and she realizes he’s teasing her. Steph slumps, letting out a relieved breath along with a tiny laugh. “Haha. You got me.”

“Damn, Steph,” Hood says, “maybe your short-term memory is a little fucked-up.”

“That’s so mean,” Steph says, delighted. She wants to press further, to pull the mood back up to something completely safe, but she’s distracted by a sharp buzzing noise overhead.

“That’s the doorbell,” Hood says, brief amusement segueing into what is clearly a routine for him. He reaches out and clicks something on the computer. Without thinking, Steph tries to see what he’s looking at, but then hisses and averts her eyes at the stabbing pain it shoots through her eyes.

“Oh, shit, sorry,” Hood says, sounding his age. He clears his throat. “I’m just looking at the doorbell cam. Would you hit the button to your left on the wall?”

Steph pries an eye open and spots a red button surrounded by a metal cover built into the wall. She stabs a finger against it, and another buzzer sounds. Across the lobby, Steph hears the front door unlock.

A moment later, a kid slips through the crack in the door and shuts it behind them. They look like they’re at least two or three years younger than Steph, wearing only shorts and a t-shirt. They’re shivering.

Steph is on the other side of the glass from where she usually is. It feels strange, when the kid turns around and they look to Steph first for some kind of guidance, their eyes wide and scared.

Barely thinking twice, Steph puts on a smile and waves. “Hey, welcome,” she says. The kid’s looking at her and not Hood, so Steph keeps going. “Do you want a room for just tonight, or for longer?”

“Tonight,” the kid says, almost a whisper. They’ve drifted forward and come to a stop a few feet away from the edge of the desk, still shaking. In the lobby, the air conditioning isn’t on full blast, but if Steph wasn’t wearing the sweater that Tim gave her she’d be chilly too. 

Steph nods, softening her smile a little, and darts her eyes to Hood. He’s clicking on the keyboard, reaching over into Steph’s space to type with one hand.

“Then we find a room that’s open and has been cleaned since the last person,” Hood says in a bit of an undertone, pointing to a spot on the screen that Steph can’t look directly at. “Room six. The keys are in the top drawer.”

Obliging, Steph pulls the drawer open and finds the right key in a little plastic organizer, like Hood is an arts-and-crafts mom who color-codes all her spools of thread. She picks up the key and slides it towards the kid, who cautiously picks it up.

“I’m Stephanie,” Steph says, remembering to introduce herself. “That’s Red Hood.”

They just blink at her like they’re staring directly into the sun.

Not waiting any longer for a response that likely isn’t coming, Steph moves on. “It’s pretty late, huh? Do you want to go get settled and get some sleep?”

“We can send someone with some warmer clothes, if you need them,” Hood adds.

The kid nods, and finally coaxes themself into talking again. “Yes, please.”

“Okay!” Steph agrees. She points over towards the side door. “I’ll open that for you, but you’ve gotta open it before it locks again, sound good?”

“It’s the button on the desk,” Hood says, pointing it out.

“So many buttons,” Steph mutters, her tired eyes taking an extra moment to locate where he’s indicating. She presses the button, and the kid darts over and pulls the handle of the door at the right time.

They glance back at Steph. She gives them another smile. Then they vanish into the hallway, out of sight.

“Okay, now we radio to the nurse’s office.” Hood pushes the radio over to Steph. “Wanna try it? You just say what room, and what the kid might need.”

Steph picks up the radio, and shoots a short glance at Hood to try and discern why he’s basically training her to work here. His face betrays nothing. 

“Um, who’s on duty?” Steph asks.

“Cass should be,” Hood says.

“Cass works here?” Steph asks, voice lilting up in surprise. Maybe she shouldn’t be shocked by random Waynes popping up anymore. But Cass hadn’t looked that old. Where the hell did she get all that medical knowledge?

Hood raises an eyebrow. “She’s covering for a friend. You know her?”

Steph shrugs. “Kind of.” Because she can keep her own secrets too. Then she clicks the button on the side of the walkie-talkie and says, “Hi, this is Steph to the nurse’s office?”

She lets go of the button. The radio’s silent for a second, then it crackles and Cass’s voice responds, “Go for Cass.”

Steph gathers her thoughts--an increasingly difficult task as her brain gets more fatigued--and then says, “There’s, um, a new person in room six. They need PJs and a toothbrush at least.”

Hood gives her a thumbs-up.

“Okay, got it,” Cass responds, and then Hood takes the radio back.

“You were good at that,” Hood says. It doesn’t feel like flattery; it’s just a blunt assessment. Steph brightens. 

Nobody else comes in to stay, at least not while Steph is sitting there. Hood’s not overly chatty, but he gets easier to talk with the longer Steph tries. She mostly just pokes and prods about specific protocols that the Nest has, trying to keep track of all the intricacies of running this kind of place, but eventually her brain stops working.

She starts emitting more yawns than words. Her vision is a vague smear by the time Hood notices she’s fading, at which point he cuts her off mid-word to say, “Go rest.”

“Hrmph,” Steph complains, rubbing her eyes. Getting to her feet is a monumental task, but she manages it. “Okay. Goodnight.”

“It’s good morning,” Hood says, because it’s nearing four AM now. 

“Fuck off, pedant,” Steph says, and stumbles towards the door back out to the lobby.

She reaches her room again without passing out on the floor. When she gets the door unlocked and slurmps inside, Tim’s still asleep in roughly the same position, peaceful. She barely ever sees him sleep this soundly. She kind of thinks he looks like an angel.

Steph carefully climbs back onto the bed and gets under the covers. As she worms her way closer to press her cheek against where Tim’s hand is resting--the least obtrusive physical reassurance she can think of demanding--her brain gives out completely and she’s gone.

“We have to go,” Tim whispers fervently. He lurches out of Leslie’s office like he’s been held hostage there, his face bright red.

It’s Friday night and Leslie has stopped by the Nest to do a checkup on Steph and a couple other people staying there. Leslie is psychic, apparently, because she’d taken one look at Steph and Tim and had trapped Tim for a brief private conversation after Steph’s checkup.

“Thanks, Dr. Thompkins,” Steph says, while Tim makes his escape.

“Have a good weekend,” Leslie says, almost warmly. 

“You too!” Steph chirps back. She and Tim make a break for it down the hallway. The sight of Tim’s mortified expression keeps sending Steph into more and more uncontrollable giggling.

Tim won’t look Steph in the eye, even as they reach the dining hall. The food served at dinner is mostly prepackaged stuff with some extra snacks--Hood had mentioned something about picking foods that kids could grab and go because some kids don’t stay the night, they just pop in for food and then run back out to stay somewhere else. The grab-and-go kids are less acclimated to this, unlike the kids who like staying for a sit-down breakfast.

“What did she say to you?” Steph asks, still snickering every time Tim avoids her eye.

“You know exactly what she said,” Tim mutters, snatching up a pre-wrapped sandwich. 

Steph has been feeling much more herself today. It’s just been the two of them in that room, and Tim had quickly run out of actual work to do. They hadn’t done anything that warranted the third-degree from Leslie, but…Steph’s never felt like she could trust someone so quickly as Tim. It feels less like Steph trying to match someone’s pace, and more like the two of them…getting to know each other.

Okay, now Steph’s feeling pretty red too. 

“You’re being so funny about this,” Steph teases, to get attention off of herself. She pokes a finger into Tim’s cheek. 

“Shut up,” Tim says. The two of them migrate down the serving table, and Steph snatches up two snack-sized bags of Doritos for both of them. 

There are only a couple other people in the dining room at this time of the evening. By now, Steph is casually familiar with several regulars, and they give her a smile in greeting when they make eye contact. Steph catches a glimpse of the kid who came in last night. 

They give Steph a startled look, a deer in the headlights, but when Steph waves they give a little wave back and then stare down at their sandwich. They aren’t at a table on their own, but they aren’t engaging in conversation either.

“Do you want chocolate milk?” Tim asks.

“Obviously yes,” Steph responds.

“There’s only one left.”

“We can share.”

“Ew,” Tim says.

Steph gives him a look, wondering how Tim got so nervous about mouth germs in the thirty minutes it’s been since they were making out. Tim blushes.

Steph turns all the way back to the table to inspect the full extent of the drink situation, but then her eye snags on something else--a figure ducking through the door that goes to the kitchen. “Is that fucking Nightwing ?”

Tim looks over, but Nightwing’s already gone. “Uh, probably.”

“Probably?”

“He and Hood work together sometimes.”

“Is he cool?”

“I’ve never met him,” Tim says, with that weird blank look back on his face like he’s lying to her.

Weird thing to lie about. Steph narrows her eyes, then makes up her mind. 

“Okay, let’s meet him then.” She picks up another bag of Doritos and then darts towards the door to the kitchen, pulling Tim with her by the hand.

Tim digs in his heels just a little, but not enough to actually stop Steph. She’s seen other people duck into the kitchen to fill up their water bottles with ice, so it’s not like she’s not allowed to stick her head into the kitchen.

She pushes the door open just a crack and hears a furtive conversation happening just around the corner, somewhere beyond the ice machine. To snoop, she steps forward a little and strains her ears. Tim follows close behind.

“--Better be here with an ID or I’m putting you in this oven like Hansel and Gretel.”

“I told you, he’s not leaving hints. Otherwise, I would’ve thought it was Cluemaster--”

A loud clattering startles Steph almost as much as the name Cluemaster. She jumps and turns her head to find Tim has knocked over a cluster of brooms and mops, the handles of which are rattling across the floor. The conversation ceases right away.

Tim drops to pick up the fallen cleaning implements. 

“Hello?” a voice asks. 

Steph gives Tim a look that says great going, butterfingers, and then she strides forward and calls, “Hi, there’s no more choccy milk out there, please help.”

“Steph, wait,” Tim whispers after her, but she ignores him.

Rounding the corner, Steph runs almost directly into a blur of dark blue and black. The two of them bounce off of each other and then Steph reorients herself and finds it’s Nightwing himself.

“Oops!” Steph says, as Nightwing steadies both of them with a hand under Steph’s elbow. While he’s preoccupied with making sure he hasn’t knocked her over, she quickly checks around the rest of the kitchen. 

She’s entered a large prep area, with several stainless steel tables, a huge sink and sanitizing dishwasher, and a door that goes to a walk-in fridge or freezer. Besides Nightwing, she spots Hood and someone who is undeniably Batwoman. The firetruck-red hair is a dead giveaway.

“Oh my god,” Steph says. 

“Nice to meet you,” Nightwing says.

Hood palms the forehead of his helmet.

Batwoman watches Steph with scary eyes, like Steph has come to expect from any and all adults in this building. She looks strong enough to throw Steph across the room. Steph resists the urge to fan herself.

Steph exclaims, “Tim, get in here!”

“Ugh,” Tim says, like he’s too cool to meet heroes, and slouches around the corner. Steph sees his eyes dutifully take in the assemblage of people, and then he tugs at Steph’s arm. He doesn’t look at all surprised to see the additions of Nightwing and Batwoman, not like Steph had been. “Sorry, we didn’t mean to interrupt…”

“No, it’s okay,” Nightwing says. “Chocolate milk, you said?” He swoops over to the large sliding door and unlatches it, pulling it open to reveal a walk-in fridge. “Would you guys mind carrying them out with me?”

Steph and Tim follow Nightwing into the fridge. It’s a testament to how well Steph handled talking to Hood yesterday that she’s not worried she’s going to be shut and locked in here to die.

Behind her back, she hears furtive whispers traded between Hood and Batwoman. The electrical hum of the fridge is too loud for Steph to eavesdrop much. Tim gives Steph a look like he knows exactly what Steph’s trying to hear.

“Here,” Nightwing says, and unceremoniously dumps a twenty-four pack of chocolate milks into Tim’s arms. Tim catches them without flinching, even though Nightwing definitely didn’t pull the momentum on them. Strong as hell, as Steph has come to expect.

“That’s probably enough,” Tim says.

Steph has the distinct feeling that Tim doesn’t want them to be in here right now. She’s never asked him if he’s scared of vigilantes, but he certainly acts like he is.

“Lemme walk you out,” Nightwing offers. “I’ll check what else is running low.” And then he herds Tim and Steph back out to the dining hall with hands on both of their backs, and Steph hears more whispering between Hood and Batwoman as they pass.

Real subtle. 

Back in the dining room, Tim shoves the pack of chocolate milk into the standing cooler, and Steph keeps holding her Doritos, feeling rather vestigial to this entire exercise. 

“Nice to meet you guys,” Nightwing says easily. He flashes a smile.

Steph asks, “Don’t you usually work in Blüdhaven? Is something happening here?”

“Nothing too crazy.” Nightwing’s eyes are completely obscured by the opaque white lenses of his mask, but Steph swears he’s giving Tim a look. She bristles as he addresses Tim instead of her, like she wasn’t the one who asked the question. “We’re just waiting to hear from Batman and Robin so we can get some stuff wrapped up. I’ll be able to get back to ‘Haven once they pull through.”

“Seems like you should be able to do your own work,” Tim says, tone sour.

Steph turns her head to look at him, momentarily caught off-guard. Tim is unapologetic. 

“I guess that’s one perspective,” Nightwing says. 

His bright tone has dimmed. Steph catches the tiny change immediately, and she tenses.

Before either of them can turn this into a real fight and not a playful one, Steph smiles cheesily and slings an arm around Tim’s shoulders. “Sorry, he gets like that when he hasn’t had enough chocolate milk.”

Tim’s shoulders are coiled tight under her arm.

Steph leans in just a little to demand that Nightwing actually look at her, instead of at Tim like he has been this whole time. “Good to meet you. Hope Batman and Robin pull through.”

“Cross your fingers,” Tim says, his smile as cold as his voice. 

Nightwing’s eyebrows raise just a little and then drop, a tic of incredulity. “Right. Anyway, thanks, Stephanie. I’ll see you around.”

He turns and leaves. Steph doesn’t remember having told him her name. She frowns for a moment, wondering if Hood’s been talking shit about her, but then she shakes herself and removes her arm from Tim’s shoulders to elbow him in the side. 

“Ow!”

“What the hell was that about?” Steph asks, trying to sound like she’s hunting for gossip. In reality, she’s rattled--she’s never seen Tim with that icy, sharp expression on his face.

“Let’s talk later,” Tim says under his breath, and pointedly looks at the room behind Steph’s back. She remembers that there are other people here--people who can probably hear everything they’re saying. 

“Fine,” Steph says. She opens the standing cooler again and takes a second chocolate milk. When she turns back, Tim looks distracted, eyes still darting around the room.

He pulls his phone out of his pocket and swipes the screen unlocked, and his eyes flit across what might be an email, a text, or just an empty screen. She watches in real time as his face contorts in a pantomime of realization. “Shit. I forgot I have an internship thing tonight. Bruce is gonna kill me.”

“Do you have to go?” Steph asks, tone neutral.

Tim looks up at her. For the first time all weekend, she doesn’t even have a guess as to what’s going through his head. 

“Yeah,” he says. “I’m sorry. I’ll be back.”

“It’s okay,” Steph says. Her smile doesn’t wobble, she makes sure of it. “Good luck with Mr. Wayne.”

Tim nods, looks down at his phone. Then he gives her half of a smile, darts forward and kisses her cheek, and then runs out the door with his dinner. 

Steph is left feeling unmoored in the room. She feels sick, all of a sudden. Maybe she’s been standing up too long.

“If I drop out of school, could I get a job here?” 

Hood gives her a long, unreadable look, successfully distracted from cleaning the gun that’s partially disassembled on the desk. “Are you going to drop out?”

Steph shrugs. It’s been a long evening of starting to catch up on her missed work that her teachers have emailed her. Things are complicated by the fact that she can’t look at any electronic screens without her brain going into full nuclear meltdown mode. 

“I think you should finish high school at least,” Hood tells her dryly, before returning to his task.

“Ugh.” Steph slumps, sliding halfway off her seat. She’s only bothering Hood again because Tim’s still gone. She doesn’t know if they’re actually fighting or if he’s just stressed, and she’d needed a distraction from that uncertainty.

“Also, most people who help out here aren’t doing it for money.”

“Ugh!” Steph groans. “I can’t believe you wouldn’t give me a job. That’s so messed up.”

“You literally just said you were planning on being Tim’s sugar baby.”

“That doesn’t change the fact that you’re a heartless bitch.”

Hood scoffs, but his reply is cut short when his gaze suddenly darts sideways to the computer.

It’s been showing the doorbell cam all afternoon. Steph can’t look at it directly for long, but she knows that Hood always keeps part of his attention on it, waiting for potential disturbances. Right now, something’s snagging for him.

“What?” Steph asks. “You keep looking at that.”

“This guy’s been hanging around for too long.” Hood squints, examining the live feed. “I think I saw him out there last night.”

Steph frowns. “Is he bothering anyone?”

“He’s bothering me, ” Hood says. “And he’s getting too close.”

With that, Hood clicks the last piece of his gun back into place and stands to holster it. He shoves his way out of the receptionist area and stalks towards the exit without faltering, clearly on his way to kill someone.

Anticipation clenches Steph’s stomach. She braces herself to look at the screen, but when she gets up the courage to do it, the brightness of the display isn’t what hits the hardest.

The man in the doorbell camera is her father.

At Hood’s appearance outside, Arthur backs off from where he’d been examining the doorbell and the front door. He puts his hands up placatingly, smiling easily, and Steph’s stomach burns like she’s just drank half a cup of acid. All the way in here, she can’t hear any of what’s happening. Hood hasn’t pulled his gun out yet. Steph doesn't know if she wants him to.

Arthur shouldn’t have been able to find her here. Steph has felt lightheaded all week, but this is the first time she feels like she’s actually going to pass out for real. The Nest was the only safe place left. 

How long had Arthur been out there, without Steph even seeing? What if she’d left earlier tonight and run right into him?

What if he’d heard someone call her Steph?

Steph shivers. Her hands lift to rub up and down her arms, ineffectively chasing away a chill that isn’t from the air conditioning. 

On the screen, she watches Arthur smile, charming like he used to be on TV. Steph used to watch reruns, before it hurt too much to see what her dad could’ve been, and she saw how easily he talked to the contestants on his show. How easily he could move all the working parts of a big game to his advantage.

He’s doing that now. Arthur inclines his head to Hood, backs up a few steps respectfully, and walks away as though nothing off-putting has happened.

Hood stands there, one hand on his gun, for several seconds before turning and ringing the doorbell.

Steph shakily lays a finger on the button for the locked door. A buzz sounds, followed by a loud clack as Hood pulls the door open and lets himself inside.

He ducks through the door, irritation on his face. He’s shaking his head, muttering something, but Steph can’t hear. She doesn’t think she wants to know what he thinks of her father, anyway.

Judging by the whispered kitchen conversation, Hood knows who Cluemaster was. Giving Hood any information about Steph’s connection to Arthur Brown feels dangerous, given that Hood was able to venture into the city and drag Tim back on a whim, with barely any information. There’s no way Hood wouldn’t think Steph isn’t involved with Cluemaster shit. Like he’ll think it’s just a coincidence that Steph figured out Hood’s secret identity and then a day later, a random has-been villain is snooping around outside Hood’s safe haven.

It all feels too volatile. Steph clenches her jaw to stop her chattering teeth, and she puts on a bland smile when Hood looks at her, refusing to give anything away.

“How’d it go?” she asks calmly.

“He fucked off,” Hood says with a shrug, and then buzzes himself back into the receptionist area.

Tim still isn’t back. Steph’s phone is too fucked up for her to be able to reliably text, so she doesn’t know anything about his ETA, either. But if she keeps sitting next to Hood, Steph’s going to let it slip that her brain is whirring so loudly that she might as well be a ten-year-old laptop running modded Skyrim. 

“Do you want my help with anything?” Steph asks. She crosses her arms, shoving her hands into her armpits to try to warm up. “I think I’m gonna get some sleep.”

Hood raises an eyebrow, but doesn’t question her change of heart. “Nah, not much to do tonight. Catch some Z’s.”

Steph gives him a salute and then stands. A furtive look at the computer screen tells her that the alley is empty, with no Arthur in sight.

“Goodnight,” she says, as Hood opens the door for her and she steps halfway into the hallway. “Wake me up if there’s any crime.”

“Sure, I definitely will,” Hood says, like a liar. 

Steph lets the door fall shut behind her. At the click, she lets her face fall out of its careful calm, and the tremors take over as she hurries down the hall towards her room. 

Her feet fall on the thick carpet, and for the first time Steph feels unease in the silent hallway. It stretches out in front of her like the hallway from The Shining, though instead of twins she half-expects to see her dad at the junction at the end of the hall.

Steph’s hand keeps fumbling with her key, but she jabs enough times that it eventually gets into the lock so she can shove her way inside. Sending a silent apology to her neighbors for the way her door shuts a little too violently, Steph locks herself in and then pitches towards the bed to curl up with the blanket wrapped around her like a shield.

A weird lump in the bed digs into Steph’s shoulder as she sinks into the wrapped quilt. Twisting, Steph extracts the bundle to find that it’s the crewneck Tim was wearing earlier. Thank god. 

Steph yanks it on over her sweater and buries her nose in the collar. 

The past few nights have been a sleepover, basically. In that time, Steph’s gotten used to Tim’s hand on the small of her back, or Tim’s nose whistling softly in her ear as he breathes. Now, it’s just her in a sweatshirt that smells like his laundry detergent, her fingers still twitching with residual anxiety.

Intermittent sirens wail outside the window, along with distant thudding music from a nearby block full of nightclubs and the underlying hum of traffic. Steph jumps at every weird sound, especially the ones right outside her window. Her shoulders ache from how tense she is, gathering the quilt around her shoulders tight enough to hurt her fingers too.

At some point, between one paranoid thought and the next, Steph’s brain turns off. It leaves her in an unsettled haze, little more than a surface-level sleep. At least it means she isn’t actively catastrophizing anymore.

Steph wakes up alone.

After her recent routine of sharing a bed, the feeling is a desolate one. The pillow smells like Tim’s shampoo, and that just makes her more depressed. The gray light filtering through the blinds isn’t a comfort to her this morning, either, no matter how familiar it is.

Heaving a long sigh, Steph turns onto her back and stares at the ceiling, considering her next moves. Now, without the buffer of Tim here, she’s not under the impression that she can just stay at the Nest forever.

Fact: Arthur knows that Steph is here. If he keeps showing up, Hood’s going to shoot him. 

Another fact: Leslie’s note to Steph’s school only excused Steph through Friday. Tomorrow, Steph will need to show her face in class. That’s exactly where Arthur will look for her first, if he’s smart. He might barge into the front office and sign her out of school and she’ll be unable to say no to that, which is totally not the hostile reunion she needs with him.

Conclusion: Steph’s blissful weekend here has come to an end, and it’s time for her to be a big kid and go home and face the consequences of running away.

Steph has no idea how mad Arthur is, or how drunk he’ll be when she gets home, but in the aftermath of one of his fits of rage, he’s usually apologetic. His anger comes from concern and from fear. The more angry he is, the more worried about her he is.

So, she’ll go home now, before lunch time. Her dad might still be hungover, and too slow to catch her if he’s still mad. And if he’s not mad, he’ll appreciate that she came home as soon as her concussion allowed.

Steph extracts herself from bed. The room is a bit cold this early in the morning, and the warm blankets beg Steph to stay, but she bravely stands and shuffles towards her backpack to stuff all of her various items of clothing inside. Throughout the weekend, the zone around her backpack has turned into a mess, but it’s not so bad that she can’t remedy it within a few moments.

She brushes her teeth and pushes her fingers through her hair to comb it. Yesterday morning, she’d braved the showers and so she’s not too greasy, but it’s obvious that she forgot her hairbrush at home. The scabbing at the back of her head has shrunk, but it’s still too tender for her to put her hair up in the ponytail she wants. 

Steph examines the deep bags under her eyes, and the way her cheeks look kind of gaunt despite the weekend of eating fairly well. Her jaw is starting to feel a little prickly, and it’s only because her hair is so blonde that she doesn’t cry about this. Her razor’s at home, so there’s nothing she can do about it anyway.

Tim left some of his stuff. Steph leaves it behind and decides to tell Hood about it as she’s headed out. That’s definitely a brother problem and not Steph’s. 

She keeps Tim’s Gotham Academy crewneck on, though, because if he wants it back he’ll have to actually talk to her about what the hell is going on with Bruce Wayne’s internship program. That’s called leverage.

With everything packed, she shoulders her backpack and puts her shoes on, and slips out of the spot that’s kept her safe all weekend.

Judging by the quiet state of the hallway, Steph thinks it’s sometime before seven. When she passes the nurse’s office, it’s dark and empty, which she’s never seen before. Steph checks the paper schedule posted in a folder on the door and sees that Dick’s supposed to be on duty.

She frowns, but there’s nothing she can do about this absence. Steph just cautiously continues on, her feet carrying her towards the dining hall.

Nobody’s in there, either. Steph blearily checks the clock and finds that everything must be deserted because it’s six in the morning on a Sunday. Maybe that explains why Dick’s not here, too. 

The serving table is empty, but the standing coolers still have some drinks from dinner last night. Steph opens the door and gets a chocolate milk and sadly mourns that she’s going to miss out on the breakfast spread, and then she turns and drifts back through the halls all the way back to the lobby.

Hood is at the front desk. There’s an enormous Dunkin coffee in front of him, but Steph doesn’t know exactly how he plans to drink that through his helmet. 

When she enters the lobby, he kind of jolts and his head turns to her. She suspects he might have been falling asleep.

“Good morning,” Steph says. 

“Hey,” Hood says. His helmet crinkles the sound of his voice. While she watches, he rips the helmet off and reveals sweaty, mussed hair. He doesn’t have a domino mask on. Steph stares at his full face, confirming that this is Jason Todd, looking like he hasn’t slept in a week. 

He takes a long drag on the straw of his coffee, looking miserable.

“Rough night?” Steph asks.

Jason rubs his eyes with black-gloved hands. It’s then that he seems to realize he’s not wearing his mask, because he flinches. Then, Steph sees him decide not to care as he relaxes and gestures with his coffee cup, meeting Steph’s eye again like it doesn’t matter. “An absolutely hellish one. You look like you had the same.”

Steph snorts. “Thanks. I’m sure it wasn’t as exciting as whatever you were out doing.”

“That’s a good thing,” Jason tells her seriously. “Are you headed out?”

“Yeah, I should get home.” Steph hoists one of her backpack straps higher on her shoulder. “Hey, um. Do you know what the fuck Tim’s internship is?”

“His internship?” Jason asks. He squints.

“The Wayne Enterprises one?”

“Oh.” Jason ruffles a hand through his hair, still crunched weirdly by the time spent wearing his helmet. “That. Yeah, it’s sort of a…training thing. He pushed me out of my spot.”

“What?” Steph asks. “Like, he replaced you?”

Jason laughs at that. Steph doesn’t know what’s funny.

“That’s old drama.” Jason takes another long sip. He’s basically drained half the cup in two slurps. “Don’t worry about it.”

“Right.” Steph looks at her shoes, then rallies and gives Jason a smile that she doesn’t feel at all. “Thanks for letting me stay here.”

“You’re welcome back anytime,” Jason says. “Take it easy, Stephanie.”

It’s too early for buses to be running. Steph ends up walking twenty-five blocks to get home.

She climbs up her fire escape and finds her window still open. A semi-risky jump gets her up onto the windowsill. She clambers back inside to find that her apartment is completely silent.

Nothing in her room appears to be out of place. The bed’s unmade, and there are still piles of clothes strewn about, but nothing seems tampered with.

Her dad’s passed out on the couch, which she discovers upon emerging from her bedroom. Sharp glass still glitters on the kitchen floor, left in dark green chunks that crunch under Steph’s shoes. 

She’s heading to the kitchen--for what, she’s not sure, she just feels better after having checked the fridge for potential snacks--when a phone on the coffee table begins to vibrate.

Steph looks over, apprehensive that the noise will rouse her father, but as she surveys the scene, she notices that the phone on the table isn’t the one that he’s had for the last three years. His phone gets little use, because it’s usually locked up in an evidence locker, so there’s no reason for him to replace it.

As it vibrates through the end of the incoming call and goes silent, Steph realizes it’s a burner.

Her father is snoring. Steph flexes her fingers, opening and closing her fists, staring at the phone as the world falls out from under her feet.

Arthur really looked her square in the face and lied through his teeth about having retired from doing high-stakes heists, and she’d believed him. She came back after he could’ve killed her with blunt-force trauma and this is how he repays her.

She’s going to ruin his fucking life.

The phone starts to vibrate again. Steph steps around the couch and snatches the phone up and runs back to her room, keeping her feet light on the vinyl flooring. Her dad doesn’t stop snoring; she can still hear him through the door of her bedroom as she shuts it and flicks the flip phone open.

“Yes,” she says shortly, deepening her voice as far as it will go. She’s impersonated her dad for calls to school before, but the stakes are much, much higher here.

“Full steam ahead for tonight,” says the person on the other end. Steph strains her ears, listening for any kind of clue to their identity. They have a light Gotham accent, and they sound like they smoke eight packs a day, but Steph can’t discern anything else. “Things good on your end?”

“Yeah, yeah,” Steph says, like the question irritates her. She digs her fingernails into her forehead, trying to focus herself while her mind tries to race out of control. “Listen, we need a new place to meet before.”

“Why?” the voice sharpens. “Have you been made?”

“No, god no.” It’s been so long since Steph had a normal conversation with her dad, and she knows she doesn’t have a full grasp on his speech patterns. “I just gotta feeling.” She takes a second to double-check that the snores in the living room haven’t stopped. They continue on unbroken. “You pick, okay? Text me what you choose. I need t’go.”

“Fine. See you at midnight, then.”

“Don’t be late,” Steph threatens.

The line goes dead. Steph lowers the phone from her ear with her blood beginning to rush through her ears, along with the intoxicating feeling of immense relief that that had somehow worked.

A text lights up the tiny screen. Without opening it, Steph can read the whole thing in the preview that pops up--”MEET @2ND AND PRIMROSE.”

She sneaks out of her room again and tiptoes over to set the phone back down on the coffee table. As she’s retreating, barely having taken her hand off the phone, her dad’s eyes open.

Steph freezes as they make eye contact.

“What the fuck are you doing?” her dad mumbles, trying to wrench himself out of sleep. He sits up, and Steph takes several steps back to get out of arm’s reach. 

“Your phone won’t stop buzzing,” Steph says. She points. 

Arthur rolls onto his side to grab the phone, flicking it open and examining the new text, his face contorting in annoyance for a moment. Then he looks up at Steph with the same disgust that he’d directed at her last time he’d seen her.

“You weren’t in school last week,” Arthur tells her, eyes dark.

Steph’s feet are glued to the shitty carpet. Her brain’s working fine--her brain’s working more than fine, if her phone conversation is anything to go off of--but her body has locked up. 

“Felt sick,” Steph finally manages to say. She pries one of her feet off the ground and steps backwards. 

“I see,” her dad says, and looks over Steph’s face with distaste. She cringes. “Where’d you go this weekend?” 

“Out,” Steph says, taking another step towards her room.

Arthur’s shoes find the floor, and it seems like he’s about to stand up. The room is small enough that a few steps would be enough to box Steph in against the wall. He regards her for a long moment. 

“It’s good you’re back,” he finally says.

“Thanks.” 

“Gotham Academy, huh?” he asks. 

Steph looks down at herself, and remembers she stole Tim’s sweatshirt. She crosses her arms over her chest.

Arthur asks, “Is that from your girlfriend?”

Her stomach twisting, Steph scratches her fingernails into her sleeved arm, not hard enough to do any damage but enough to hurt a little bit. Arthur had made it clear that he knows a lot about Steph’s relationship, based on how dumb she was to have a phone conversation about it in the apartment. 

“It’s Tim’s.” She and Tim haven’t had the are we boyfriend and girlfriend talk. At the beginning of the weekend, Steph would have felt okay asking, but now, with Tim being cagey and disappearing on her, she doesn’t know what to think. “He’s my friend.”

“Sounded like a lot more than a friend,” Arthur says. 

Steph rolls her eyes a little and says, “Dad, could you mind your own beeswax?”

“Mind my own beeswax? ” Arthur asks, voice raising. “It’s my beeswax that you keep running around playing pretend! I must’ve screwed up somewhere, huh?”

Wincing, Steph reaches behind her and her hand finds the doorknob to her room.

“This is because of that babysitter, isn’t it? He was the one who turned you into a--”

“I could’ve already told the fuckin’ police,” Steph lashes out. She’s not sure where the words come from. They’re out of her mouth before she can think of a less confrontational way to phrase them. She just needs him to shut up. 

Arthur stops dead, as surprised as she is.

She squares her shoulders. “When you fucked up my face, I mean,” Steph elaborates. “If I wanted to say shit I would’ve. I’m back now. You’re my dad and I love you. Do we have a problem?”

Arthur sits back on the couch. Just like that, the tension has been cut, and his rising annoyance is quelled. Maybe being sober does make a little bit of a difference.

“See you later,” Steph says. “I’m taking a nap.”

“...Sleep well,” Arthur says, bewildered.

Pushing the door open behind her, Steph backs into her room and shuts the door in front of her. She isn’t leaving herself open to attack by turning around. That’s a mistake she’ll only make once.

Steph stands right by the door and listens to what her dad’s going to do with her out of the room. After a brief moment of complete silence, Arthur’s footsteps creak around the living room floor, moving from one side to the other, ending up in the kitchen. They migrate back to the couch, and he stays there. If previous days are any precedent, he’ll fall back asleep until early afternoon.

As quietly as she can, she sinks to the floor and sheds her backpack so she can take some deep breaths. Her brain is spinning. Her shoe digs into her leg where she sits cross-legged, and she viciously rips the shoe off and throws it across the room. Then Tim’s sweatshirt feels too warm, so she removes that, and then the floor feels too hard, so she stands, and--

Steph’s hyperventilating. She grabs onto two fistfuls of hair and yanks, feeling tears burning at her eyes. God. She was so stupid to believe Arthur. And she was so easy to scare off, too--she ran out of the apartment after every fight, let him have free reign of the place. Maybe he’s been using this place as a meetup spot this whole time and she had no idea.

She feels like she’s going to die. Steph sinks onto the edge of her bed and buries her face in her hands, pressing as hard as she can to muffle the sounds of her harsh breathing.

Steph doesn’t know how to calm herself down. It feels like she’s never going to stop breathing this heavily. Already, she’s lightheaded, and if she keeps going like this she’ll pass out. If she goes unconscious in this apartment, will her dad shove her in the closet again? She doesn’t have a functioning phone. She’ll be trapped there until after Arthur’s crime spree is over.

Right. There’s a crime happening tonight. No matter what it is, it’s more important than Steph feeling unstable following a talk with her dad.

Steph takes a full breath. It’s like finding a life raft, and she clings to it and drags herself towards calm.

She knows where and when the meetup is happening. She moved the meetup, and she has time to tell the police. She even has enough time to figure out how to tell someone who can tell Batman.

Hood, Nightwing, and Batwoman had been whispering about Cluemaster. And before that, way before that, Steph had overheard Hood and someone else discussing some kind of criminal activity going down Sunday night. Her intel on this job might be vital to help with this case, which none of them appear to have gotten any leads on.

Okay. Steph can help. Steph can spoil her dad’s fun and get brutal revenge for him misgendering Tim, and she has fifteen hours to do it.

It’s good that she has time to strategize. If she didn’t, she wouldn’t have thought to hide her identity from the police and from Jason. Given Arthur’s appearance outside the Nest last night (and her hasty retreat from the lobby shortly thereafter), she’s aware that their family relation would be easily discovered and put her information under scrutiny.

Steph does what any self-respecting girl should when making a secret identity: after she gets a nap and wakes up to her dad still asleep in the living room, she steals money from his wallet and she goes to the nearest thrift store to get a disguise. 

With her spoils shoved into her backpack, she pulls out one of her school notebooks and waits for a bus that runs near Park Row. She writes two careful notes in purposefully messy handwriting; one for Hood and one for Batman in case she crosses paths with him for some reason. After that, she starts brainstorming codenames so she doesn’t have to just run away when someone asks who she is.

It’s three in the afternoon by the time she’s back in the right neighborhood. She ducks into the bathroom at a gas station she knows is too shitty-looking to check their security camera footage that often, and then she heads to the Nest in costume.

She’s found an oversized purple hoodie without any logos or writing, and the hood is big enough to droop over her eyes and obscure the shape of her torso. To hide her legs, she’d found stompy boots and black cargo pants layered over stretchy yoga pants--in the pocket of the cargo pants, there’s her old taser and pepper spray. Most importantly, she’d found a half-face ski mask that covers her neck, chin, and nose, as well as gloves to hide her nails with chipped polish.

Having a sick outfit puts her nerves at ease a little. This is going to go fine.

Now standing in front of the door, Steph carefully double-checks that the mask is properly covering her lower face, pinching a bit of the fabric and pulling it higher on her nose. Then Steph rings the doorbell, and hears the faint buzz inside the lobby.

Several seconds pass. Steph waits impatiently. She doesn’t think she’s that nervous, but then the door swings open and she flinches away from the sudden noise.

Jason’s there, all suited up, a gun in his hand pointed right at Steph.

She puts her hands up. 

“What do you want?” Jason asks, voice distorted.

Steph mindfully keeps herself from pitching her voice up at all, and she doesn’t lift her chin enough for her eyes to be seen under the edge of her hood. She needs to be unrecognizable--it’s not like she and Jason are besties, but he’s not a dumb guy. And they saw each other this morning. 

“This is for you,” she says, and holds out a crumpled piece of paper in front of her.

Jason pauses. He looks around the alley, checking for a trap. “What is that?”

“There’s something going down tonight, right?” Steph asks. She spends so much time hurting her throat by making her voice sound just a little higher in pitch, and a little less Gotham Narrows in accent. Now, she leans the opposite way, and she’s pretty sure it’s working. She waves the scrap of paper at him. 

Jason lowers his gun and reaches out and snatches the paper. Steph watches as he stiffens, taking in the information written down.

“Who’s your source?” Jason asks.

Steph takes a step back. “Cluemaster.”

“I have no reason to believe you.”

“Okay, then don’t,” Steph shoots back. She backs up a little more. “You can tell Batman you didn’t figure it out in time.”

“No, who the fuck are you, actually?” 

“I’m the Spoiler,” Steph says. It feels amazing to say that, actually--the elation of introducing herself as Stephanie carries over to this new name too. She feels a grin curl onto her face underneath her mask. She picked such a cool fucking name. “I’ll see you later, Hood.”

Then she turns and runs, disappearing into the winding alleys as fast as she can. Hood doesn’t come after her, but she makes it as hard to follow her as she can, just in case.

When she feels like she’s gotten sufficiently far away, Steph finds a hidden spot to take off her sweatshirt and cargo pants and mask and shove them into her backpack. In just stretchy pants and a t-shirt, she walks into a corner store and uses the last of her dad’s stolen cash to buy a burner phone and an energy drink. 

She knows this area fairly well, and doesn’t have to ask for directions to get to the nearest skate park. It’s the first place she thinks of to wait where it won’t be weird for her to be lurking on a Sunday afternoon.

The park is busy. It isn’t the one that Steph and Tim hang out at, but she still feels lonely as she picks a spot at a picnic table and melts into the crowds of people using the concrete skating area. She watches a flock of roller derby girls doing their best to knock each other onto the ground more and more violently, and she slowly gets up the courage to call the police tip line.

The can of Monster she picked out is pretty gross. Steph should’ve gotten the pink flavor instead. Still, she sips it and activates the phone, and then when she sees it’s already four in the afternoon she dials the number. Her teachers made them all memorize all the GCPD hotline numbers back in first grade, and she couldn’t forget them if she wanted to.

“GCPD information line,” the tired voice on the other end of the line says. She sounds exhausted, whoever she is. “This is Officer Gordon. What is the purpose of your call?”

“Um, hi,” Steph stutters. “I have, uh, information. Do you think you could get it to Batman? It’s an emergency.”

Officer Gordon’s voice sharpens. “What kind of emergency?” 

“I don’t know,” Steph admits. “I just know it’s something, uh. Dangerous. Do you remember Cluemaster?”

For a moment, Officer Gordon pauses. Then she asks, “Who is this?”

“Spoiler.”

“Spoiler?”

“Yeah, that’s my name. Can you get in touch with Batman or not?”

“I’m not--kid, I don’t have his damn phone number. He’s a vigilante.”

“Fine, I’ll figure it out myself.”

“Wait!” Officer Gordon exclaims. Steph hesitates, and returns the phone to her ear. “Just--just tell me, and I’ll try to pass it on.”

Steph lets out a relieved breath. “Okay. I know Arthur Brown is meeting someone at 2nd Street and Primrose Avenue at midnight. If he sees a bunch of cop cars out there he won’t show up, though, so I think you should just tell Batman if you can.”

“How did you figure this out?”

“Oh my god, no, you’re breaking up.” Steph makes cartoonish crackling noises with her mouth and then hangs up before Officer Gordon can ask anything else. 

Okay. There’s a chance that police will show up, and that Jason will be there. Steph won’t be completely alone, showing up to ruin the party.

Comforted, she finishes her energy drink, then walks over to introduce herself to the roller skaters.

Eventually, the roller derby girls have to leave. Steph ends up with two of their numbers scrawled on her arm because they invited her to join their league. At least, she thinks so. They might have been giving her their numbers for recreational reasons, but Steph’s willing to take it as an invitation into the sport. 

“Would you like to ride with me?” one of them asks. If Steph’s remembering right, her name is Ariana, and she didn’t bring knee pads despite the enormous scabbed wound on one of her knees. She’d beamed and said proudly that it was a barbed-wire injury, when Steph asked, and had then refused to elaborate. “It’s getting cold outside, here.”

“Are you sure?” Steph hedges, even though she doesn’t have more money for bus fare and she’s starting to shiver. 

Stranger danger is definitely a concern that crosses Steph’s mind, but Ariana’s been nothing but friendly all afternoon, and she’s also five foot nothing. Steph isn’t worried. Maybe that’s hubris, but Steph needs a ride anyway.

“Yeah, come with me,” Ariana says. She jangles her car keys. “Where do you live by?”

“Would you be willing to drop me off a bit uptown?” Steph asks. The meeting spot later tonight is near the financial district, but it would be suspicious to ask to be dropped off up there. “I live near the library.”

The car drive isn’t unpleasant. Ariana’s not necessarily chatty, and Steph is starting to get pretty nervous about what’s going to happen later this evening, so they’re a bit quiet at first. Then they get stuck in a spat of traffic and Steph pulls herself out of her thoughts to make small talk.

“What school do you go to?” Steph asks, as she peers out the window to try and get a glimpse of what the traffic problem is. It’s probably nothing serious, but it also might be another Arkham breakout.

“Gotham Academy,” Ariana says. 

Buildings and a big garbage truck block her view of whatever’s happening up ahead, so she pulls her head back in the window. “Oh, really? Do you like it?”

“I kind of have to like it,” Ariana says. “It’s lucky that I can even go.”

“I guess?” Steph says.

“Scholarship,” Ariana explains.

“Oh, got it. Nice.”

“Thanks.” Ariana clicks her turn signal on. “Where do you go?”

“Narrows.”

“Oh, I used to go there.” Ariana smiles. “I live in Little Odessa.”

“No way! My dad’s apartment is so near there.”

Steph focuses on drawing Ariana out of her shell for a while, both to be polite and to distract Steph from her nerves. Eventually, they get out of the little fit of traffic, and Steph circles back to the whole Gotham Academy conversation.

“So, um,” Steph says, “I meant to ask when you brought up your school. Do you know Tim Drake?”

“Yes, actually,” Ariana says, and gives Steph a guarded look. “Are the two of you friends?”

Steph nods. 

“Figures,” Ariana says.

“Um?” Steph says.

Ariana lets out a tiny sigh. She pushes her hair behind her ear and then drums her fingers on her closed lips for a moment, thinking before speaking. “It’s just a funny coincidence. The two of us…dated for a little while.” 

This is typical Steph luck. Feeling awkwardness threatening to wobble her voice, Steph asks, “How long were you together?”

“About a year. We broke up a few months ago.” Ahead, cars finally start to move again. Ariana eases back onto the gas. 

“Did he…do something?”

“Listen,” Ariana says, with a tiny laugh, “are you two dating? I wouldn’t be angry with you. I’ve moved on.” 

“I don’t know if we’re dating,” Steph hedges. “He’s being…”

“Distant?” Ariana has a knowing glint to her eye.

Steph nods, relieved that Ariana seems to understand what’s going on. “Yeah, god. I don’t know. He’s nice, I really like him. Just, it seems like there’s so much he’s not telling me.”

“He has his secrets, to be sure.” Ariana stops at a red light, bringing the two of them to a halt with barely a jolt. Considering how cutthroat Gotham drivers are in general, Ariana’s being very gentle. “I thought that, well, once he told me that secret, like, he came out, I thought that it would fix things. It only made him…weirder. I don’t know. I never figured it all out.”

“Was he weird about Bruce Wayne while you were together?”

“Jesus Christ,” Ariana says, barking a sharp laugh, “he is so weird about Bruce Wayne.”

Steph cackles. 

“But, I don’t know,” Ariana says, sobering. “It might just be…daddy issues. But we broke up because I couldn’t tell when he was lying and when he wasn’t.” She gets a little quieter. “It got to be too much, after a while. I just didn’t know him anymore.”

Steph regards Ariana for a moment. She kind of wants to be best friends with her.

“Thanks for telling me,” Steph says. “I’ll keep an eye out for his weird secrets.”

“It’s nothing,” Ariana assures her. She scratches her nose. “Seems Timothy has a type.” 

“What?” Steph is nothing like petite, dark-haired, academic-scholarship-holding Ariana.

“You skate, yes?”

Oh, god. Steph covers her face with her hands. Ariana laughs.

Steph kills time for several hours in increasingly banal ways. She goes into the library and reads until her concussion starts trying to kill her. The library closes so she goes into a corner store and wanders the aisles until they kick her out. After all of this, it’s only eleven and she still has a whole goddamn hour.

She should’ve invited Ariana to dinner. The two of them had exchanged numbers so they could hang out sometime, but Steph could totally call her on her burner right now and ask her to come back over to uptown. 

After too much deliberation, Steph determines that this would be impolite behavior. It’s a school night, and inviting someone out after nightfall is a rude thing to do in Gotham.

Resigning herself to her fate of being outside for the next hour, Steph finds a gas station to change back into her costume, and then she starts making her way up to Primrose Avenue. 

It’s mid-autumn, so her mask and hood don’t draw too much attention. Steph keeps moving, and she keeps an eye on the buildings she passes. She’s looking for a target of a place her dad would want to rob, and for the kind of place a heist team would meet up beforehand.

The sidewalks get less and less dense as Steph nears her destination. The traffic rushing by is only people passing through. Most of the buildings she passes look dim and unused, with the work day long over. 

Her feet hurt. She’s also fucking starving. But Steph gets where she wants to be at eleven thirty, and she surveys the block quickly to get a read on the situation.

There are a few banks on this block, and a few tiny corporate coffee shops and one antique store shoved in between the banks. Steph walks a cautious line down the street but isn’t quite sure of where she should start looking. 

It would be easier to see the street if she was up on a roof. She has no idea how people are getting up on roofs, though. Batman and Robin always seem to have an easy time getting up there, but none of the buildings around here have external fire escapes and she doesn’t see any convenient ladders, either. 

A roar of a motorcycle nearby startles Steph out of her roof musings. She steps under the awning of one of the coffee shops, tucking herself into the sheltered doorway and melting out of sight by crouching low, and she watches the motorcycle zip past. 

Whoever’s on the bike is wearing a helmet and a puffy jacket, but Steph definitely sees a flicker of a spandex suit, and there are two short staves sticking out of the top collar of the jacket. Steph’s willing to bet money that that’s Nightwing.

The visual confirmation that she has some kind of backup sends a surge of cool relief down her spine. Steph takes out her burner phone to pretend to be looking at something, and keeps her eyes on the street with a renewed reassurance.

A bus trundles past and stops, exhausted, at the corner diagonal from Steph. When the bus wheezes back into motion and leaves, there’s a man on a bench over there near a payphone. 

Slowly, he stands and drifts towards the gap between two buildings, one large enough for a car to fit through. Steph figures that out when a passing car suddenly turns and sweeps into that alley, brushing past the man from the bus. In surprise, the man turns his face just enough to catch the light. As he does, Steph knows it’s her father.

Arthur’s not turned towards her. Steph slowly stands and then starts walking with quiet feet. She leaves the main sidewalk to do a quick lap around the building nearest her, and emerges around the other side a bit out of breath but with a perfect vantage point of the car and Arthur across the street.

The car is a dark SUV with tinted windows, and one of the passengers has stepped out to have a short conversation. Arthur’s saying something in a low, dangerous voice, and the man in front of him is laughing. Then the man lifts his head and turns sharply, like a hunting dog catching a scent.

Steph’s breath catches. Half the man’s face is melted off, and she can recognize Two-Face even from this distance.

(When the hell did Arthur get into the big leagues? All the newspapers used to say he was a small fry.)

Two-Face isn’t looking at Steph, though. He’s heard something, something that scares him, because he grabs onto Arthur and the two of them get into the car and the door slams shut. It’s then that Steph realizes she has no idea how the fuck she’s supposed to tail a speeding vehicle.

“They’re getting away,” a voice whispers next to Steph’s ear, and before she can quell her reflexes, she’s screaming and swinging an elbow towards the voice as hard as she can.

She brushes someone but doesn’t make contact. Steph whirls and backs up, nearly tripping over her feet, and finds it’s Nightwing.

“What the fuck!” Steph exclaims. Her heart is racing a mile a minute. Behind her, she hears the car screech away from its parking spot.

“I’m here to find out the same thing,” Nightwing says. He raises an eyebrow. One of his hands is holding his motorcycle helmet to his side. “But, rain check. I’m gonna follow Two-Face.”

“Are--?” Steph stops and lowers her voice, both in pitch and tone. “Are Batman and everyone out here?”

“Ah-ah-ah,” Nightwing says, condescendingly wiggling a finger at her. “You don’t get to know about all that.” He turns and runs to his motorcycle, which sits a few yards away. He must have walked up behind her while she stared at her dad.

“Fuck you,” Steph says, but her words are drowned out as he revs his bike to life and takes off with a show-offy lean to one side.

Nightwing zips across the street and disappears after the van. Steph scowls, still feeling the aftermath of the absolute fear she’d felt for a split-second after Nightwing startled the fuck out of her. Once she’s taken a breath to steady herself, though, Steph takes off in a run in the direction she saw Nightwing go.

There’s no way that being on foot will get her anywhere close to what’s happening in time to do anything. Still, it’s either this or sitting on her ass and waiting for other people to figure out what’s going on.

Steph’s boots are almost a half-size too big and they’re turning her feet into hamburger, but she keeps running despite the pain. She sprints four blocks before she has to slow down and catch her breath and get her bearings, which is the point that she realizes with a sinking in her stomach that she has no fucking idea where Two-Face’s car went.

Nightwing is such a dick for this. Steph wipes sweat from her forehead and pants, ignoring the sideways glances from the sparse people passing by.

Screaming sirens start up in the distance. It’s more than one police car, and all the patrol cars involved are starting their sirens at once. It seems like a promising lead. Steph cocks her head to listen closer, and she watches the people around her react with wariness to the sound of an impending emergency.

Barely hiding underneath the sound of sirens, Steph hears an enormous crash. It’s heavy machinery and the crumbling of some kind of structure, and Steph feels a faint tremor under her feet.

The few pedestrians around Steph know to get the fuck away from whatever that is. As they run west, away from the disturbance, Steph does the opposite.

If Steph was worried about losing the trail before, there’s now literally no way she could do that. Gunfire starts up, popping erratically, and Steph follows it as easily as though she’s trying to make her way to the microwave to retrieve a bag of popcorn.

Patrol cars whip past her, the sirens warping as they move farther away. Steph sees a car stop and an officer get out, but Steph summons the last of her sprinting energy to get past before a real barricade can be set up, and she gets ever-closer to the machine-gun fire she’s started hearing.

Then Steph turns a corner, and she sees the SUV her dad had gotten into. 

It’s hard to recognize at first glance, because the front half of it is buried in the side of a building. Broken glass and chunks of brick wall litter the street, and at least four people are using the car as armor as they open fire across the street. As she watches, a few of them scatter. Steph sees Two-Face vanish out of sight.

Steph finds a dumpster to hide behind, though she knows that the dumpster alone might not completely stop a bullet headed her way, but it’s better than nothing, and it’s also near where Nightwing seems to have parked his bike. 

She peeks out and follows the aim of the guns to find the Batmobile parked with one tire up on the curb.

One of the windows is cracked a little, but it’s impossible to see inside. Steph covers her ears reflexively as another round of gunfire breaks out. Too fast for her to see, a bullet skims by the concrete near her, and a skid mark appears. Steph throws herself away from it, hitting the side of a building.

Maybe this was a bad idea.

But she’s here now, and she needs to make sure it turns out how she wants it to. Steph can regret her choices later.

Steph cautiously leans out of her hiding spot again. Across the street, she sees a dark flash and realizes it’s Batman, finally back in sight. He’s a hulking figure as he vaults over the hood of the crashed car, and Steph feels better immediately upon seeing him there. 

Another movement catches her eye. It’s one of the men from the car, keeping low and making a break for it away from Batman, towards the Batmobile. He’s a little unsteady, maybe injured in the crash, so he shouldn’t be hard for Batman to catch.

Steph waits for Batman to spot him, but the guy keeps running unhindered. And as he comes closer, his head turns left and right, surveying the street for danger, and Steph sees that it’s Arthur. 

Good. Fine. Steph’s gonna take him the fuck out.

She takes a deep breath, takes her taser out of her pocket, crosses herself, and then bolts from her hiding spot.

The street is a mess of rubble and it’s much louder out here than it was back in the alley. Steph rounds the corner at the sidewalk, dodging around a newspaper stand and a fire hydrant, and sets her sights on the Batmobile as she hears a gun fire once, then twice.

Arthur spots her immediately. He’s only a few feet from the Batmobile, and he begins to stutter to a stop when he sees her charging at him. 

Steph’s feet beg her to stop moving. They feel swollen and she’s sure she has at least three blisters. But she sprints forward anyway, ignoring the burn of her exhausted lungs, and refuses to let Arthur outrun her.

She gains on him as more gunshots ring out. Arthur tries to fake her out, tries to dodge around obstacles, but Steph stubbornly pushes forward until there’s only a few feet between them, at which point she lunges forward and tackles him with both arms around his middle.

Arthur tips, a surprised shout leaving him, and the two of them topple to the ground like a couple of felled trees. 

Thankfully, Arthur’s the one who takes the brunt of the impact, slamming down face-first, though Steph never really learned how to tackle anyone properly and she loses her pin almost immediately when he drags himself out from under her.

Before he can get to his feet, Steph flings her arm forward and clamps her hand around his ankle. As he spits and hisses and tries to kick her off, she uses her grip to pull herself over and then she stabs the taser in her other hand into the back of his calf and presses the button.

Arthur’s arms and legs both twitch and shudder, and Steph holds the button down a little too long before she releases it and scrambles to her hands and knees. 

The motion sends a nauseating, rippling pain through her entire skeleton, emanating from a spot in her abdomen. Steph hopes to Christ that she didn’t break a rib, but that’s not her main problem right now. Gritting her teeth, she pitches forward and uses a hand to flip Arthur onto his back so she can lay a forearm across his neck and pin him to the pavement.

They’re eye-to-eye now. Arthur blinks several times to clear the haze of pain, and Steph sees the exact moment that he recognizes her. Even the mask and the hood aren’t enough to fool him, not this close up.

She should say something. It should be victorious and vindictive. 

Instead, all she feels is devastated.

“You promised you weren’t doing this anymore,” Steph says, a lump rising in her throat. She presses harder on her dad’s neck, and he makes a choked noise. “You promised. ”

Arthur wheezes. And then he drives his knee upwards into the spot under Steph’s ribcage, right where she’d felt that pain earlier, and her vision goes white.

Her ears ring. Steph forgets to breathe, she forgets how to move, she just falls and feels herself hit the ground on her back. A moment later, something clamps down on her neck and squeezes, and Steph blinks pain away to find that her father has turned the tables.

Her hand is empty. The taser’s gone. Through the pulsing agony in her stomach, Steph reaches up and scrapes fingernails down her dad’s cheek, digging in as deep as she can. He yells but only pushes down harder.

“Dad,” she gasps. Things are getting floaty. She throws her right hand out to pat around and feel for her taser, though she has no hope that she’s going to find it. Her hand brushes rubble, she feels the coarse texture of a brick.

Arthur sneers, the sight distorted by the blood weeping down his lip and jaw from his new scratches. “You little rat. ”

Steph’s feet kick feebly, but they feel so disconnected from her body by now.

He says her deadname, the sound full of poison. His nails dig into the side of her neck. “You’re no son of mine.”

She wraps her fingers around the brick and grins savagely. 

She gasps, “You’re right. I’m your fucking daughter.”

Arthur opens his mouth to retort, but before he can, Steph slams the brick into the side of his head.

He goes down. The hand around her neck spasms before letting go. Steph gathers the remainder of her strength to shove him off of her, and then collapses backwards when she’s sure he’s not moving.

Gunshots still spark through the air down the street. It’s a reminder that even though Steph feels like she’s been in this fight for hours, it’s probably only been a minute or two. 

Get up, her brain urges, all woozy and terrified. 

Steph coughs weakly, trying to get air through her abused throat. When she tries to sit up, that same pain rockets through her side and she has to fall back, completely still. 

“Fuck,” she mutters. She blinks, trying to get her eyes to focus, and drifts one of her hands over to try and determine why she hurts so much. Her fingers find something wet. Gentle prodding only makes it hurt way worse, and Steph lifts her hand to discover that her fingers are painted red.

Holy shit. She’s dying.

Steph pushes off the ground with her elbow, struggling to a sitting position. She manages to get up halfway, but falls back just in time for a figure to hit the ground in front of her, bending their knees to absorb the impact. 

She can’t see who’s running up on her, even though they’re leaning over into her sightlines. Steph flops her arm to the side and finds the brick she held earlier, and she swings it upwards and slams it into their head like she did to Arthur.

The move works almost as well the second time. They careen sideways, knocked out of their crouch. Steph tries to get up, with more vigor this time, as she refuses to let either her father or this new assailant recover.

Steph lurches up to her hands and knees. She sees that the new figure, still there and holding a spot on their head, is Robin.

“Oops,” Steph mumbles. Her brain is trying to leave her skull. “Robin, my bad, dude.”

Robin says, horrified, “ Steph?!”

Okay, what the hell. 

There’s no reason this total stranger should know what her name is. The sheer energy she expends trying to figure this riddle out is too much for her to bear. With another surge of pain from her side, Steph’s arms buckle and she finds herself falling towards the pavement.

Hands catch her shoulders, keeping her up. Steph’s eyelids flutter, not letting her focus on anything in particular, but she’s ninety-percent sure it’s Robin that caught her. It makes more sense than it being Arthur, at least.

“Shit--okay. Spoiler is down,” Robin says. One of his hands moves, and then Steph feels an arm reach around her back, propping her up. “She took out Cluemaster, he’s still unconscious.”

Steph doesn’t know who he’s talking to. Nobody responds to him, that she can hear. She lets her head loll sideways, resting on Robin’s shoulder, and she tries to catch her breath.

“Stay awake,” Robin says. His hand moves from her back to rest on the back of her head. It’s a weirdly familiar gesture, and Steph cringes from it. He gets the hint and stops, and instead says to her, reassuring with words instead of touch, “It’s over. You got him. Put pressure on that wound, okay?”

“Urgh,” Steph moans, and puts her hand over the wound and pushes down. 

“Do you think you can walk?”

“God, no. ” Even if she wasn’t bleeding, her blistered feet are begging for rest.

“Okay.” Robin’s thumb rubs across her shoulder just a little, comforting. “Okay, we’ll give it a minute.”

“Sorry I hit you.”

“That definitely hurt,” Robin agrees, not accepting that apology.

“I won’t do it again. Probably.” Her voice keeps skipping, as her vocal cords refuse to work correctly after being squished so flat. 

“Probably?” Robin’s voice curls with a smile. 

“Don’t try me.” Steph reaches out vaguely for anything to hold onto, and finds a handful of Robin’s cape. She tugs at the fabric. “How’d you know my name?”

“Um,” Robin says, but then he stiffens and Steph clues in enough to realize that there are footsteps approaching. There aren’t any guns firing anymore, meaning she hears the quiet creak of leather boots with thick rubber soles.

“Robin, report,” says a low voice, and Steph raises her head just enough to confirm her terrifying suspicion that it’s Batman.

Batman is about eight feet tall and his cape swishes threateningly around his ankles when he stops in front of the two of them. He crouches, dropping down to roughly eye-level with Robin, a little higher than Steph. Steph’s still slumped over on the Boy Wonder’s shoulder.

“Nightwing and I immobilized Two-Face, and then I saw Spoiler fighting Cluemaster. She took him out, but she’s been shot.” Robin’s report is said unwaveringly. He shifts Steph just a little, and points at her wound, which apparently is a bullet in her torso. “She needs medical attention.”

“Got it,” Batman says. Then he turns his chin just a little, and says to Steph, “What exactly is your angle, here?”

“My angle ?” Steph asks, incredulous.

Batman gestures dismissively at Arthur’s unconscious form. “Hood told me you were here to sabotage Cluemaster, specifically. You’re clearly a civilian. It was reckless to get involved.”

“You could try saying thank you?” Steph says, irritated by the way he’s talking to her. Arthur would’ve gotten away if she hadn’t tackled him. 

“Can we talk about this when she’s not losing blood?” Robin cuts in.

Batman shakes his head once. “Give me a reason why we should trust you.”

“B,” Robin protests, “we can trust her, okay--?”

“What happened to your head?” Batman asks Robin.

“I hit him with a brick,” Steph says, before Robin can lie. “It wasn’t an accident but in hindsight I regret it.”

“Steph, shut up,” Robin hisses.

Steph wants to stab him for using her real name. Not only is it rude, considering she has no idea how he figured it out, but also, the sound of her name makes Batman stiffen. He reaches out and grabs her hood and yanks it off of her head, despite protests from both Robin and Steph.

Now with the cold night wind in her hair, Steph blinks, not even having the energy to glare at this point.

“How did you know about Cluemaster, Stephanie?” Batman asks. His voice sounds different. Maybe more stressed?

Alas, it seems the entire Bat team knows her. This is probably Hood’s fault. Or maybe she irritated Nightwing so much that he doxxed her.

Steph sighs. She avoids Batman’s eye and admits, throat aching, “He’s my dad.”

There’s a pause. Steph hears shouting down the street, and the rev of a motorcycle.

Then Batman says, “Robin, can you get her to the car, or should I?”

“I think I have a traumatic brain injury,” Robin says.

“Shut up, I didn’t even hit you that hard.” Steph’s words are slurring, but she refuses to let this stranger be a drama queen.

Robin’s voice cracks as he says, “ You don’t get to decide that!”

“Right, that’s enough,” Batman says, cutting Robin off. “Steph, I’m going to pick you up.” Batman shifts forward without waiting for her to agree or disagree, and displaces Robin from his supportive spot. Batman lifts her easily, one arm under her knees and one around her shoulders, and stands up straight.

Steph’s head comes to rest against Batman’s chest. She’s been sitting there limply for about ten seconds before she realizes what’s going on. “Wait, what?” she asks. She tries to wiggle around, but both her gunshot wound and Batman’s arms supporting her stop that effort in its tracks. “Ow--wait, where are we going?”

“There’s a clinic near here that won’t ask questions,” Batman says. His voice isn’t so icy-cold and interrogative, now. Something’s changed. Steph doesn’t know what it was. “We’re going to get that bullet out.”

“I’ve grown attached to it,” Steph says. “Can I keep it?”

“I’ll ask,” Batman says. When Steph looks up, she finds that somehow, a smile teases the corner of Batman’s mouth. “Nightwing, do you have this handled?”

Nobody answers him. Steph assumes that Nightwing has died and gone to heaven, and Batman’s just praying and hoping the message gets across. That’s one mode of team communication that Steph’s never tried.

Robin darts ahead of them--he was definitely lying about how hard Steph hit him--and swings open the back door of the Batmobile. Batman stoops and helps Steph lay down on the backseat, and when he steps back, Robin shuts the door. 

Steph winces at the noise of the door slamming shut next to her ear. She hears, muffled, Batman and Robin exchanging words. A little while after that, the door on the other side of the backseat opens and Robin slides into the unoccupied seat.

For a while, the bullet in her side only hurt when she moved, but now it’s a constant high-pitched whine of pain that she can’t ignore. The car starts to move, and Steph is jostled. She clenches her jaw and exhales hard through her nose to stop herself from crying out.

“Hey,” Robin says, voice all low, and he reaches over, offering his hand. “I know it hurts. You’re gonna be okay, though.”

“I’m definitely dying.” Steph takes his hand anyway. He squeezes, and Steph’s blood-loss-addled brain suddenly makes a clear connection. She looks up at Robin and his dumb boy-band bangs and shrieks, voice pitching up an octave, “Tim?!”

Tim’s face has gone white around his mask. She’s suddenly sure it’s him--same as how Jason had been unable to convincingly deny his own identity. These people need to work on their acting skills. 

Taking his hand out of Steph’s, gesturing wildly, he shakes his head too late and insists, “No, I’m not…I don’t know who Tim is--”

“Oh my god,” Steph says. She lurches forward, one hand pressed to her side to keep blood in, and braces herself against the back of the passenger seat to peer closer at Batman. “Holy shit, this is your internship.”

“Steph--”

“You absolute madlad!” Steph yelps. She doesn’t know if she’s angry or thrilled or something else entirely. “I should’ve known when I figured out Hood was Jason, I’m so stupid--”

“What?” Batman demands from the front seat. 

“--How could I have thought that Jason Todd was the weirdest part?” Steph is teetering on the edge of a mental breakdown. “Shit, who else is involved? Surely not my sweet Damian.”

“Um,” Tim says, like he’s about to lie to her.

“What the hell! And Bruce Wayne?”

Tim twitches his head to look at Batman.

“No way.”

“Steph,” Batman says from the front seat, “how long have you known about Jason?”

“It’s been a very long time.” Steph can’t remember for sure. “Could be two, maybe three days.”

“That’s…not too long,” Batman says. He jerks the steering wheel to the side, tossing Steph against the car door, and she unintentionally lets out a pained groan. 

Tim says, nervous, “Hey, watch it,” but is ignored because Batman takes another sharp turn right after that. 

It makes sense that Tim and Ariana had broken up, if Tim’s big secret had been fighting crime with a bo staff. And they’re been together for a whole year. Is Steph going to have to disappear under mysterious circumstances for figuring this out?

Her hand keeps slipping on the side of her sweatshirt. Steph doesn’t look down. If she sees the amount of blood, she’ll lose her tenuous grip on consciousness. She’s no expert, but it feels like they should’ve done first aid before spiriting her away.

Unless they don’t plan on patching her up at all.

Steph asks, more scared than she lets on, “Are you guys gonna throw me in the ocean or something?”

“Excuse me?” Batman asks.

Batman doesn’t kill. At least, that’s what the newspaper coverage has said about him. Steph imagines the bad press of someone finding out about Steph being the first person ever murdered by Batman, all because she found out about his weird bisexual zombie son.

(Well, she’s not sure he’s bisexual. She’s never asked. But he gives a weird amount of love and care to queer kids in Gotham and he also wears a leather-and-spandex suit while he kills people. 

…She might be relying on stereotypes.)

“Steph, keep pressure on that,” Tim reminds her. He reaches over her and lays his hand on top of hers, adding to the weight she’s putting on the wound already.

Steph’s breath hitches. The mask over her nose and mouth is very damp, but she can’t check if she’s sweating or crying. Maybe she’s laughing about her impending death. Whatever it is, she can’t seem to get enough air anymore.

“Hey,” Tim says, voice softer. “It’s going to be okay. We’re almost there.”

“I can keep it a secret,” Steph gasps out. Her free hand latches onto Tim’s wrist. It’s padded with some kind of armor--it’s usually much twiggier than this. “I won’t tell anyone.”

“It’s okay,” Tim soothes.

Steph sways forward. Her head feels too heavy to keep up. “I promise I won’t tell. I just needed…someone to help, and…”

“I get it, I hear you,” Tim says. It sounds like a platitude, but Steph has to believe him. He wraps his arm around her shoulders and he scoots closer to her, and she feels his lips press against her temple. “You’re okay. We’re almost there.”

Steph tilts into him, completely unmoored except for the raw agony in her side and the warmth of Tim’s cheek pressing against hers. Her brain slips into the same haze it went into when her concussion was at its worst, and she doesn’t think she could remember how to talk even if she wanted to.

Distantly, she knows that the car stops, and that the door next to her opens. Steph’s lifted back up, and moved, and set down. At some point, Tim disappears from next to her but she feels a hand in hers instead.

“Stephanie,” someone says, insistent that Steph pay attention. 

Steph blinks irritably, hating that she’s being woken up from her uncomfortable doze. It’s hard to see anything but she swears Leslie is standing over her, the light framing her head like a halo.

“We’re putting you under,” Leslie says. “Count back from ten with me.”

Putting her under what? Steph doesn’t know why Leslie looks so perturbed. Steph grasps for any kind of context, anything to reassure Leslie, and comes up with, “I promise I’ll use a condom every time.”

Then, darkness.

Before Steph even opens her eyes, she can feel someone holding her hand. Their fingers are laced together, and so she already knows whose it is.

She opens her eyes with a faint smile, ready to see Tim slouched on a bed at the Nest with her, probably squinting at his computer screen because he refuses to get his eyes checked. Instead of that familiar scene, though, she finds Tim passed out in a plastic chair, head tipped back, snoring. He’s wearing his Robin costume, with his black mask still on--ah, yes. That’s a development Steph hasn’t fully processed yet.

The room she’s in is mostly white and sterile. One half is curtained off with stiff, pleated, dishwater-blue curtains. Steph flops her head to the other side and finds that she’s hooked to a heart monitor.

“What the hell?” Steph mutters, mostly for her own benefit.

“She lives,” says a voice that definitely isn’t Tim’s. 

Steph flinches, squawks. Dull pain radiates heat from her midsection, and she looks down to find herself in a hospital gown. Beyond the end of her bed, there’s a large, muscular figure squeezed into a chair, face scarred and freckled, black hair streaked with white.

Okay, something weird is going on.

Steph greets her visitor, a bit wary of what news he might be bringing. “Hi.”

“Morning, Steph.” Jason gives her a little salute. “How’re you feeling?”

“Peachy keen,” Steph rasps, though she’s too tired to really know how she’s feeling. Her throat hurts, she knows that. Her head is also aching quite terribly, now that she’s using it to think. 

She starts to pick up fragments of memories from…whenever she was last conscious. Just the fun stuff--Arthur with his hands crushing her throat, Tim pushing down on her bullet wound, the crushing certainty that Batman was going to hide her body somewhere no one would ever see it again. 

She also remembers an important question she had. She clears her throat, and asks, voice hoarse, “Hey, are you bisexual?”

Jason stares at her, eyebrows furrowed, mouth half-open in abject confusion.

“Is that a no?” Steph asks.

“You just woke up from surgery and your question is am I bisexual .”

“I’m not hearing a no. C’mon, it’s for my roster. I keep an Excel spreadsheet.”

Jason rubs his face with one hand, pretending like he’s exhausted by her, but she sees a certain kind of lightness to his glare that wasn’t there last time she saw him chugging coffee to survive. “Jesus. I shoulda guessed right away you were Spoiler. Nobody else is this batshit insane.”

“You love my puckish charms,” Steph says.

“Is that what we’re calling them?” Jason lifts his eyebrows, trying to appear unimpressed, but she’s even more sure now that he’s amused by her. “How’s the pain?”

“It makes me stronger. I crave it.” Steph shifts a bit, trying to determine how bad the pain actually is. Her headache isn’t tooth-grindingly bad, though the site of her bullet wound is starting to throb. She suspects bruising around her neck, given how hard it is to speak, but it’s nothing she can’t handle right now. “Did you really wait here the whole time for me to wake up?”

Jason’s scowl deepens, clearly defensive.

It’s a bit of a surprise, how much that touches Steph’s heart. She’s an only child, and she’s never really had a clear picture of what a family should feel like, but she’s struck with the feeling that Jason’s being a very good big brother.

Tears well in her eyes, coming out of absolutely nowhere.

“What is it?” Jason asks, nervous all of a sudden. “Does something hurt?”

Steph swipes at her cheeks with the back of her hand. Despite the wobble to her lip, she manages to keep her smile up. “Nothing, sorry. Shit. Just…thanks. Nobody’s ever, um, stuck around like this. Like you and Tim did.”

“Of course,” Jason says, like she’s stupid to think they’d abandon her. He eases back into his seat, though he still seems jumpy. After giving her a second to compose herself, he cautiously says, “Your dad’s a dick.”

Steph nods. She’s aware.

“You kicked his ass, though. Tim told us.”

Steph sniffles. She wishes that the fight was as much of a blur as the ride to the hospital had been. The details of smashing her dad’s head open with a brick feel too jagged for her to hold in her mind.

“It’s…I mean.” Jason’s refusing to make eye contact. “It must’ve taken a lot to take him out like that. I just wanted to…y’know, tell you that someone noticed how hard it was.” 

Steph makes a noise that’s both a laugh and a sob. It feels like being yanked out of a pool she’s been drowning in. Without thinking, she pulls her hand free of Tim’s so she can hunch over and hide her face in both palms. 

She hears Jason stand up from his chair with a squeak of plastic. He drifts towards the side of her bed, and then his hand rests on her head and ruffles her hair a little bit.

With another laugh-sob, Steph leans sideways and wraps her arms around his waist, squishing her cheek to a spot right above his hip. “Thanks, Jason.”

He stiffens in surprise at first, but she refuses to let go, so eventually his hand comes back down and resumes patting her head. It’s been such a long time since someone this tall and broad let her hug them without her feeling afraid. 

“What is going on,” she hears from a sleep-grumpy Tim to her right.

“Do you mind?” Steph says. She’s trying to absorb a big-brother hug, which is a new experience for her. It’s kind of like being held by Tim, in the way that it makes Steph feel like she’s going to crumble into pieces if it ends too soon. At Tim’s interruption, Jason has already tried to break away from her, but Steph just tightens her grip. “Where do you think you’re going?”

“...Nowhere,” Jason says.

Steph smiles, and then finally releases Jason after another long second. Jason pats her head again and moves away, managing not to look excruciatingly awkward while he does so. 

“I feel like I’m hallucinating,” Tim says.

“Shut it, Tim,” Jason says.

“You almost killed Dick the last time he tried to hug you.”

Steph turns to look at Tim. Residual drool is still on his face, running out from the corner of his mouth from the weird sleep position he’d chosen, and there’s some kind of ashy rubble streaked across one of his cheekbones. He honestly looks kind of hot. 

“Maybe Dick deserved it.” Jason makes another move towards the exit. “Glad you’re alive, Steph. I’m gonna get Leslie.”

He pushes aside some of the blue curtains and ducks out of sight. Tim watches him go, and Steph watches Tim watch him go.

Tim looks back at Steph, with that dorky mask still on, and Steph doesn’t know where to begin. Her brain short-circuits, and she blurts, “I met Ariana.”

“You--what?” Tim asks. He sits up straighter in his chair, alarm painted in his new rigid posture. “Where did you…Ariana Dzerchenko?” 

Steph didn’t catch her last name, but judging by Tim’s reaction, they’re talking about the same person. She nods and says, “She was really nice. I met her at the skatepark.”

“Why were you at the skatepark? You still have a concussion!”

“In my defense, I was left unsupervised.” Steph gives Tim a pointed look with that, and he slumps with too much guilt for her to feel okay about. “But, she’s my bestie, now. I have her number.” Steph holds out her arm and finds that the skin of her forearm still holds the smudged remnants of the Sharpied phone numbers she’d gotten from the roller derby group. 

Tim emits a disbelieving laugh. “Okay. Alright. I shouldn’t be surprised.”

Steph doesn’t know what that means, but she decides to ignore it. She’s finally figured out what she wants to say to Tim. “She talked about how she stopped being able to tell when you were lying, and that was why you broke up.”

It must hit close to home, because Tim’s face falls. He hugs himself around the waist, gloved hands holding opposite elbows tightly. “Yeah,” he says, voice quieter. “That, and I couldn’t stop her dad from dying.”

“Jesus, Tim,” Steph says, horrified.

“I know,” Tim says, crumbling further, “I’m--”

“ No, I’m not--dude, Tim, ” Steph reaches out and leans too far, pain stabbing through her whole side. Tim looks over at her pained gasp and thankfully moves closer, reaching out to help, so Steph can grab his hand and make him look at her. “I’m not disappointed. I know you probably tried your best. That sounds fucking horrible.”

“It was,” Tim admits, sounding like he’s on the verge of tears as he laughs again. “Holy shit, it sucked so bad.”

“Come up here,” Steph says, because she can’t handle this anymore. They’re too far apart. 

Tim glances over his shoulder, paranoid, but there’s no one there to tell him not to. He stands and tips forward to crawl onto the hospital bed without another moment of hesitation. 

There’s not room for him to lay down next to her, not without hanging off the side of the bed. He settles instead for laying down half-on top of her, on the side where she wasn’t shot, wriggling his way underneath the wires that connect Steph to her IV and heart monitor. 

Once he’s settled, face-planted into her neck with one of his arms thrown over her ribs, Steph’s nerves settle a little again. She takes hold of Tim’s hand and runs her thumb over the weird tactical fabric of his glove, while taking comfort in the feeling of his breath on her bruised neck.

“This is better, you’re right,” Tim mumbles. His lips brush her throat.

That…makes Steph feel things she’s never felt before, but she needs to finish her conversation before she thinks about that too hard. Steph swallows, finding her composure again. “Yeah. I’m always right.” She taps her fingers on his. “I didn’t bring that up to make you feel bad. I just wanted to say, I wasn’t scared off by that. And I’ve always been able to tell when you’re lying, you clown.”

Tim’s crying. Feeling the minute shake to his shoulders all of a sudden, Steph feels like she’s about to follow suit. “I know you can.”

“It kind of sucked when you ditched me on Saturday night.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Well, I understand now you did it for Batman, but…Thanks for apologizing. It’s okay.”

“Okay.” Tim sniffles. Other than that, he’s a completely silent crier. It’s freaking Steph out. With gentle care, he lifts his head to kiss a spot on her jaw, and then he drops his head back down. “So, you know my dark secret, now.”

“You know mine, too,” Steph says. 

Tim turns his head, so his voice is muffled by Steph’s pillow and not her neck when he mumbles, “How long did you know he was Cluemaster?”

“He’s always been Cluemaster,” Steph says. She swallows hard, again, wincing at the painful reminder that he’d wanted to strangle her last night. She feels hot tears start to crowd her vision again, and her hoarse voice gets even rougher as she continues. “I thought he wanted to stay out of jail this time.”

“How long have you been Spoiler?”

“What time is it?”

Tim lifts his head. She sees him blink wet eyes at some corner of the room; Steph realizes too late there’s a clock mounted on the wall. “Ten AM. It’s Monday, you were only out overnight.”

“Oh, cool. So, um…” Steph tries to remember what time her world had upended itself yesterday. “About twenty-four hours. Maybe twenty-five.”

“Okay. Batman’s gonna want to have this conversation with you, but…” Tim lifts his head. His tears have stopped. “You prevented a whole Bank of Gotham robbery with barely any resources and a homemade costume, so, uh. He’s thinking about bringing you onto the team?”

Steph stares.

“Earth to Steph,” Tim says. He sits up a little more, one of his legs draped over hers sliding upwards so his knee rests uncomfortably on her hip. This bed is really too small, and the two of them had shared a twin mattress for the better part of a week. 

“Will I have to become a furry too?” Steph asks, dubious.

Tim bursts into laughter. His smile is so bright, it’s like watching the sun come out. It’s impossible not to kiss him on the mouth.

With their luck, that’s the moment that Leslie pushes the curtains aside and enters the room. Though, Steph must have endeared herself to her, somehow, because Leslie only gets annoyed at Tim for getting blood and dirt all over the sheets with his combat boots. When she looks to Steph to check on how she’s doing, she’s all gentle words and hands.

“Can I have parties?” Steph asks.

“With what friends?” Jason shoots back. He drops her duffel bag onto the bed, which is made with a purple bedspread that he must’ve picked out himself. 

Steph’s mouth falls open in angry delight. “You’re such a dick. As if all your friends aren’t random homeless teenagers.”

Jason holds up a middle finger, because he doesn’t have a comeback for that.

Steph sticks her tongue out at him.

Faint amusement ruining the illusion of his dark glare, Jason looks away from her and uselessly fluffs the pillow at the head of the bed. “Anyway, make yourself at home. And no parties. ”

“Fine,” Steph sighs.

As Jason steps away from the bed and tries to leave the room, dodging around where Steph’s still standing in the doorway, Steph reaches out an arm and catches him around the waist with a hug. He doesn’t tense up as badly this time. Steph’s socializing him to be normal about hugs, one painful embrace at a time. 

His arms settle around her shoulders, only a bit awkward. Steph says, one of her cheeks squished against his chest, “Thank you.”

“Don’t mention it,” Jason says. He pats her head.

Before Steph had even had a chance to worry about what was going to happen to her once she couldn’t pay her dad’s rent, Jason had swooped in and offered a guest room. He’d even gotten righteously indignant when Bruce Wayne had offered to let Steph move into Wayne Manor. The choice had been obvious--Steph prefers this part of Gotham, and she felt immediately at ease in the semi-rundown little apartment Jason took her to. It’s close to her school, and it’s even closer to the Nest. 

Jason must have planned this, though. Steph doesn’t know how long he was preparing, but…the walk-in closet in her room doesn’t have a door. There’s just a little curtain cordoning it off from the room, and she can see spots in the door frame that hint that Jason had only recently ripped the hinges of a door out.

Cass has a room here, too. She doesn’t use it all that often, according to Jason, but Steph’s just thrilled to have cool roommates. Unsurprisingly, Cass is part of the whole Batman thing too, and so Steph’s planning on tricking Cass into imparting some martial arts knowledge to Steph. Steph would ask Damian, who showed up on day two of her hospital stay and refused to leave, but Damian’s not cleared for Robin duty yet because he keeps almost killing people. Steph’s gonna stick with Tim’s hot sister.

“Alright, that’s enough.” Jason pushes her away. Steph’s still extremely entertained by his complete failure to pretend like he’s just as ruthless as the Red Hood. “I gotta go to work. I gave you your keys, right?”

“You threw them violently at my head,” Steph says. 

Self-satisfied, Jason nods. “Good. And I don’t want to know about you having little Timothy over, okay? Just be sure you’re being safe--”

“Holy shit, leave,” Steph says, horrified, and pushes him out into the hallway before he can act any more like her mother. 

Once Steph’s officially on Batman’s roster, she starts doing shifts at the Nest.

It’s not a real written rule, because Bruce is still barred from ever working a shift at the Nest, ever, but Bats who aren’t currently cleared for active patrol shifts usually take night shifts helping Jason out instead. Steph’s still dealing with post-being-shot blues, so the looming threat of training is still only a threat, and so here she is at the front desk, waiting in the lobby for anyone who might need a place to stay.

It’s been a quiet night. Steph’s been sitting alone for a long time, keeping half an eye on the doorbell camera and the rest of her attention on the physics homework she’s been neglecting.

Jason gave her her own radio. It has Jojo Siwa stickers all over it, which are apparently a gift from Selina. It crackles to life for the first time around midnight, with Dick asking if there are any more fruit-by-the-foots in the pantry because he’s bored, followed by Jason snapping at him to shut the fuck up. 

The two of them are still arguing when Steph sees movement on the computer screen, followed by the shy buzz of the doorbell. It’s a kid no older than eleven, a holey sweatshirt dwarfing their frame, and Steph immediately hits the button to let them in.

With a twitch of her fingers, Steph turns off her radio so Dick and Jason’s screaming won’t interrupt this conversation, and she looks up as the kid shyly approaches the desk, looking around with a mix of trepidation and wonder.

When she makes eye contact, the kid walks closer, drawn like a magnet. Steph recognizes the desperate, lonely expression on their face, the craving for any confirmation that they exist. 

“Hey, kiddo,” Steph says, smiling warmly at them, refusing to waver. “I’m Steph. What’s your name?”