Chapter Text
It was supposed to be a normal patrol. Stephanie finished her homework for the night and headed out. She had gotten to the point where Barbara didn’t feel the need to cover her for every patrol. For the first time since she started out as a vigilante, she was alone.
The first hour was incredibly boring; she was sitting on top of an apartment building in downtown, waiting for something, anything to happen. It wasn’t like Gotham to be this calm, especially at night.
For once, she missed the noise of Babs in her ear or the jokes from Tim. They had just broken up for what felt like the millionth time in the past year, and she couldn’t understand why they still went back to each other. It was getting to the point that she was forgetting why she even dated him in the first place. That was back when she was Spoiler, for the first time, and she had no clue who he even was. Back when he used a fake name, her biggest problem was wanting her dad back in jail because he was being a pain. Ever since she came back from South Africa, he’s been so weird. Maybe even before then, maybe back when Kon died? God, this was all so convoluted to think about. She missed the early days of them, less when it was about them dating. They got each other in a way she had missed dearly.
Man, she even missed Cass’s silence. She was somewhere, fighting with Bruce; Stephanie wished they talked more often than they did. While Cass is insanely quiet on patrol, the moment they got off, she doesn’t stop talking. Stephanie just thinks she’s trying to make up for the years she wasn’t speaking, but she didn’t mind. She loved it.
Just as she let out a yawn, she noticed a man entering the alley across from her with a gun and a young woman. Finally, something for her to do and a quick and easy job. She carefully dropped down and got to the alley to her the man.
“Give me your purse.” He demanded
The young woman looked terrified, “I don't have anything!” she told him in a tone that made Stephanie understand she had told him this before.
“Hey! You wanna see my purse?” Stephanie interrupted, pulling out her bowstaff. While it may be unserious, she really did love coming up with quippy remarks.
Suddenly, the gun was turned to her, but she was ready for that and jumped behind him and grabbed the gun. ‘Go,’ she mouthed to the young woman watching as she ran away. Looking back at the man who pulled out another gun from his pocket, why didn’t she see that he had another gun?
Not a problem for her, easy fix. She threw the gun in her hand to the floor next to her and used her bowstaff to knock the guy off his feet. Once on the floor, she stood over him, ready for a stupid comment, just to see a gun pointed at her and his hand on the trigger.
Jumping over him, she lands back where the other gun is and picks it up to intimidate him. “Not so tough when you’re not the only one with a gun, huh?”
Before she knows it. The second gun was pointed at her, and as a reflex, she pulled the trigger on the stolen gun. She wouldn’t let it happen again. She wouldn’t let her indecision kill her. Never again.
Bang
The noise didn’t shock her as much as she expected. She remembered when she was top of her class at the School of the Night at the range. The motion was familiar to her, reminding her of her time in London. She pulled the trigger 2 more times to be sure, as if the man was just another paper version of the Justice League. By the time the third bullet left the gun, she realized what she’d done.
Time froze. She watched as the body fell in slow motion.
Before his body hit the floor, it hit her; she just killed someone. She waited for the sinking dread to consume her. She waited for the vomit, for a negative emotion. She waited for the giddy feeling of power rushing through her veins to stop.
‘Fuck Fuck Fuck,’ she thought to herself. How was she supposed to get out of this one?
She couldn’t call Bruce because as much as they like to pretend they were not close in any way possible and if she was being honest she was still upset at him. Plus, the whole no-kill rule. Even though technically she wasn’t wearing the bat symbol, she knew that wouldn’t stop Bruce from his condescending look.
Her next thought was Tim, which was also a no-go. They had just broken up, and what was she going to do? Call up her ex, with who she did not end on good terms with and said some pretty nasty things to him during the fight? And tell him she fucking killed someone? He was a rich boy who had never even thought of murdering someone; he was a saint. He believed in the no-kill rule almost as much as Cass did. Speaking of…
Stephanie wanted to call Cass, well, she wanted to call Cass all the time, even about mundane things, but she couldn’t. She would be lying if she said she had gotten over Cass thinking she was too incompetent to wear the bat symbol. Their relationship hasn’t been the best recently, with Stephanie going to college during the day and fighting crime at night, which doesn’t leave much time for hanging out. So clearly, Cass was out of the picture.
Damian was just a kid, and while he was in the league of assassins, Stephanie never wanted to treat him as an adult. He should be having fun at the ripe age of like 11? 12? She never really knew how old that kid was.
Barbara seemed like a good option until she remembered that she was currently with the Birds of Prey, and she didn’t want to ruin Barbara’s mission.
Dick could be a good option? They weren’t very close, so Stephanie crossed him off the list.
Now, Duke could be good; they were decent friends, but he was new, and Stephanie didn’t want him to be pushed aside by Bruce for helping her with this.
That left..
Oh fuck why hadn’t she thought of him first?
Jason Todd was quite literally a murderer and crime lord; there’s no way he could possibly judge her.
Quickly, she moved out of the crime scene and onto a building rooftop. The street was still empty, and the body was growing cold in the shadows of the alleyway. Pulling out her phone, she found his contact and called.
“Pick up pick up pick uppp-” she mumbled into the phone.
“What do you want?” A very irritated Jason on the other line said.
“Um. I’m kinda in a situation,” She hoped she didn’t sound totally lame in the moment.
“And that has to do with me, how?”
“Cool it with the emo act, please. This is pretty serious.”
“That’s a lot of attitude from someone who is currently asking for my help.”
“Jeezzzzz,” she huffed into the phone
“Just get the point, Steph.”
“Can I see you in person? I just. I don’t wanna say this over the phone, and you’re my last option, like seriously my last choice. I went through everyone else, and you are the only one who can help.” She paused. “Please.”
There was silence on the other end.
“With a cherry on top?” she added.
More silence.
“I’ll make you waffles? Alfreds are horrid, and you probably don’t get good food being a like crime lord or whatever it is you do.”
He didn’t reply for a second, and Stephanie was trying to think of anything else she could offer him, and came up short, and finally.
“Fine.” He didn’t sound thrilled, but Stephanie couldn’t care less.
“Thank you, thank you, thank you, oh my god, you have no idea how amazing you are, Jesus Christ, you are amazing!”
“Just shut up. I’ll send you my location.”
“Thank you, Jason!” She said joyfully as he hung up on her again.
—
Jesus Christ. Jason was so far. She was starting to get tired from going basically across town on foot.
She started getting more into the Narrows, she hadn’t lived directly in the Narrows, her mom wanted to be in Conventry only Catholic Church, or some excuse like that. It was… an experience to say the least. It was right next to Arkham, which meant trips to see her dad were always short, but it wasn’t a great place to grow up in. While it was terrible, it held such a special place in her heart because of her childhood. Midtown Gotham wasn’t the best place for a child to grow up in, but look at her, she turned out… okay? Compared to most kids in her neighborhood, she has turned out far better; many went to drugs or crime because that’s all they could do. Stephanie knew that with just one wrong move, she would’ve been just like them, just like her dad, and just down the hall from his jail cell. Suddenly, she remembered that Jason used to live near here too, before he was a robin. Was that just another similarity that Bruce couldn’t get past?
Before she knew it, she was in her old neighborhood. Looking back at her phone, this fucker. He was in her old house. What was Jason doing?
She didn’t recognize the address when she first saw it, but now the address was burned into her mind. Staring at the house in front of her, she saw the roof and wondered how many times she would sit on that roof wishing for something different. Instead of seeing herself, she saw a much older, much ruder, and much rougher mid-20s man sitting right where she used to. She jumped on the roof.
“What the fuck are you playing at, Jason?” She wanted to slap him, but the last time she slapped someone in the Bat-Family, it did not end well…
“Huh?” He looked genuinely confused. Why was he confused? “What are you talking about?”
“Oh, so you just picked this place at random? Real fucking funny. I need you to be serious, not some jackass right now.”
“I just picked a random house nearby, apparently this guy used to work for Red Hood back when it was Joker, and he’s in jail, so this house is empty.”
“Of course he’s in jail. I put him there.” Did he seriously not know? “So you just picked this house at random? Genuinely?”
“Yes? Why?”
“The man who lived here, his name is Arthur Brown-”
“Oh Shit. Steph, I didn’t mean to.”
“It’s whatever now, Ironic even, I guess.” She took a deep breath. “I killed someone.” Just like that, Pandora’s box was open. “I mean okay, so he was gonna shoot this girl, so I stepped in, obviously, and got her away. And he had a gun, so I knocked it out of his hand and thought that was the end of it. But. No. Because apparently this fucker has two guns. Overkill much?” She then realized who she was talking to. “My bad. So I grabbed the original gun to like intimidate him or whatever, I didn’t really plan to use it. Then he didn’t falter, and he aimed at me and was about to pull the trigger, so… I did it first.”
“Well, it was self-defense.”
“I shot him two times after that.”
“Oh.”
“And I don’t feel bad about it.”
“I see why you came to me.”
“Yeah, I mean. If I told Cass this, holy fuck she’d never look at me the same, I can’t. I can’t lose her.”
“And Tim?”
“Oh. Uh. We broke up. It’s.. I.. uh. It’s very complicated. We never had a good start, so obvious we weren’t going to have a good end.”
“I see.”
“How do you justify it? I hate that I don’t hate this feeling. Fuck.” She puts her face in her hands. “I should loathe the fact that I just killed someone, but I…” She looked back up and into the sky. “I used to stare at the sky from here, exact same spot. I used to wish to go away to some magical place, wishing that some prince would sweep me off my feet and I could leave this stupid house and town and my parents and everything.” A broken laugh left her throat. “To think. I’m right back here. Doing exactly what my dad did.”
“Was this guy going to hurt someone?”
“I mean, yes, but that’s such a stupid line of reasoning. We also hurt people, and we also put people in hospitals. At what point does it stop being us, the ‘good guys’?” she put in air quotes. “To be the ‘bad guys’ if I kill people, then I’m no better. What about their families? Fuck. What gives us the right to choose who lives or dies?”
“What gives them the right? To me, they are destroying Gotham with drugs or crime. So what if I kill someone who’s killed hundreds? To me, that’s stopping more violence, more crime, more destruction. Most of those people don’t have families; they destroyed them or made them run away. I thought you, of all people, would understand.”
“Where the hell do you draw the line? If you kill Joker, might as well kill Two-Face, then Scarecrow, then Penguin, at the point just fucking kill Ra’s Al Ghul and Talia.” Her words are more venomous than she intended to be.
“Joker and Two-Face are different…” Jason looked away from her.
“Fuck sorry. I just...” Stephanie was at a loss for words. She hated this. Hated it all.
“Don’t you want to kill Blackmask? Cluemaster?”
“I almost did. I had a fucking gun to his head and I just.” She sounded hysterical. “I couldn’t shoot him. I just. Froze. How? How the hell? What I’m okay with shooting some random ass guy, but the moment it’s someone who actually was going to murder me, who hurt my family and friends. I just. Can’t? It doesn’t make any sense. I should’ve shot him. It would’ve ended everything. I wouldn’t have had to ‘die’...” She felt the tears about to come. “Why couldn’t I kill him?” Her voice was so small. “Why couldn’t I just?”
–
Blackmask’s Hideout- 3 years ago.
She was almost there; she had to get him. She was hiding behind some boxes, trying to think of something–anything that she could do to fix this. She had started this war, and she knew that she had to be the one to end it.
“How insensitive of me…” Fuck he knew where she was. She quickly grabbed the doorframe near him. “Mea Culpa Mazima. Can you ever forgive me, darling?”
She was just about done with all of his weird shit.
“You’re one sick monster!” She said while kicking his face in, it wasn’t her best work, but hey, she was currently bleeding out and trying to stop a gang war at the ripe age of 16.
The fucker had the nerve to reply with, “You have no idea.” She was on top of him, punching him, but was quickly knocked off and rolled to the other side of the room. He was still recovering, so she kicked him once again in the face.
“That hurt!” What an idiot. Of course, it hurt. This was a fight. What the hell did he think they were doing? She didn’t have time to focus on his stupid comments.
“More where that came from!” She didn’t let up; she knew the moment she did it was over for her. She just needed to buy time. Barbara knew where she was, and if he didn’t, she could probably guess. She kicked him back into some boxes, and he coughed up blood. Good sign.
“Ow! Stop it, Honey! You’re killing me!” That was kinda the point, idiot… She was even more confused by his responses because they were just so… odd? “ What’s gotten into you?” His voice was cruel and taunting. It reminded her of her father and Bruce and Tim and Cass and everyone who thought she wasn’t good enough for this. She hit harder and faster, putting all of her might into this. She may not have had the fancy tech that everyone had, but she was trained by the exact same people she knew how to fight. “You’re inspired, girly-girl.” This fucking guy.
She punched him across the face. Why wasn’t he fighting back? What was he playing at?
“If you’d fought that well last time, you wouldn't be in the shape you’re in now!” She knocked him off balance. “What’s the reasoning? Get off on the pain?” Oh my god, she wanted to kill this guy.
“No!” Her voice was rough from exhaustion, “It’s because this time I fully realize my life’s on the line. I finally understand what Batman couldn’t teach me before.” He was finally on the floor. She was leaning over him. “This isn’t a game!”
He went to reach for something on the floor. “Ready to surrender?” She said in a mocking tone.
“You bet.” He was still facing away from her. What kind of idiot did he think she was? Of course, she knew he hid stuff here; it was his lair. “After this one last lesson in crime-fighting. In the future, always assume the villain has several hold-out weapons stashed all over his lair.” His voice was so condescending she could puke. He started to point a gun at her.
She had to hold in a laugh as she quickly grabbed the gun and turned it back onto him. “Not this time~” she said in a sing-song tone. “This time, your murdering career ends forever.” The gun was right at his forehead.
“Oh, my–I’m truly impressed. You’ve got me now, Sheriff. But do you have the sand to actually pull the trigger?”
That made her pause. Could she pull the trigger? Would she be just like her dad? She didn’t want to be a killer; that’s why she became Spoiler, to be everything her dad wasn’t. She didn’t view herself as a hero, far from it. She was just someone who wanted to help people. She just wants to help.
“So, are we just going to sit here all night?” She realized where she was. “You beat me. You’ve got me. Now all you’ve got left to do is pull the trigger, and you save all those lives.” Why was he in support of her killing him? What the hell did he gain?
“Shut up! Shut up! Shut up!” She couldn’t think with his continuous talking. Fuck. What was she supposed to do?
“And everyone I might kill after tonight. All you have to do is decide to chrome judge, jury, and executioner.”
“I could do it.” Her hand tightened around the gun. She knew how to use one. Her dad made sure of that. “I could! Maybe even I should.” She then remembered Tim and Bruce, and Cass. Her grip loosened, and it was no longer directly at his head. “But that would mean ignoring everything Batman has taught me. And I’ve already done too much to betray his trust.” Despite everything, she just wanted to be deemed good in Bruce’s eyes.
Before she knew it, Blackmask swiped the gun away, causing her to fall back; her ears were ringing. “Stupid Bimbo!” She heard and looked up to see him above her, pointing the gun at her. “You sat there, dithering on what to do, and let me rest–get my second wind.” She started to crawl back, thinking of something to do before he shot her. “And here I had such high hopes for you. I was ready to spend days torturing every last ounce of information out of you–learn all of Batman’s secrets.” Of-fucking-course, it was always about Batman. It was then she realized that she had never seen as her own person. She was Cluemaster’s daughter, then Robin’s girlfriend, then Batman’s new kid. It was never just her.
“But you’ve ruined the romance.” Romance? Just what did Blackmask think was happening here? “Now I just want you to get out of my sight.”
She went to turn and run and then–
Bang.
She felt a sharp pain in her left shoulder; at least it wasn’t her dominant hand? Focus on the positives. On the positives.
“There!” A cruel laugh came from behind her. “Get it?” She tried to crawl away, but fell as he started walking closer. “That’s what you should’ve done to me. All the martial arts ninja training in the world doesn't matter a tinker’s damn. He grabbed her and led her down a staircase going down. “The only thing that counts is whether or not you have the will to do what needs to be done.” She was facing the staircase now. Fuck this was it, wasn’t it? “That’s why I win, even though you beat me.”
With a rough kick, she fell down the stairs. Her head was throbbing, and she could feel the wound in her shoulder. Her body ached, she just wanted to lie down forever, but she knew that would be her end.
“Now run along. Get going. I give you back the wretched remains of your life.” Maybe this wasn’t it! But something like this doesn’t from for free. “But only if you do me one last favor. Take a message to Batman for me.” Was she even here for him? She beat him. She fucking won and handed him his ass, and she only one because she has genuine morals. But noooo let's just focus on Bat fucking Man. “Tell him ‘Thank you’ from me.” If she had any more energy, she would’ve punched the shit out of him, but alas, getting shot in the shoulder and fighting for hours on end does that to someone.
“Thank you so much, Batman, for sending such lovely, poorly trained children my way.” Poorly trained? Who the fuck did this guy think he was?
She ran. Ran as fast and far as possible, which in her state, wasn’t far at all. Everything was so loud outside, it was pure chaos. She caused this. It was all her fault. Her vision blurred, and she saw Bruce– no Batman, in front of her. She had to be hallucinating.
“I…” she barely made out as she leaned forward. “I… I tried…” She was too exhausted to cry. “I tried to stop…”
Batman hugged her… yep, definitely a hallucination of him. “It’s all right. Everything’s all right,” said not real Batman
“I just wanted to help,” she said quietly. Then everything went dark.
–
Brown residence– 3 years later
“You were just a kid,” Jason finally says
“We were all just kids, that's like the whole deal with Robin. I knew what I was doing.”
“Yeah, but don’t… don’t expect yourself at 16 to be able to deal with killing someone.”
“Oh, what?” She let out a little laugh. “Gotta be a big kid to commit murder.”
“Have you ever thought of killing him? Blackmask. If you have.. Well, I can relate.”
“Yeah, I know you relate, pretty sure all of Gotham knows you wanna kill Joker.” She thought for a second. “I have… just been too scared, like that was the last line between me and my father. I feel like it’s different for him, though. Blackmask, I mean. He’s like genuinely evil, not a single good bone in his body. He was like vaguely flirting with me while actively trying to kill me. And full offense, but tall, murderous, and vaguely pedophilic isn’t my type. What makes someone deserve to die? The number of people they’ve killed? Because if so, I have news for you, buddy.” The tone of the conversation started to get more humorous as the night went on.
Jason gave her a dirty look, but he was truly offended. “Ha. Ha. I think intentions matter. Like these people don’t care about folks like you and me.”
“Obviously! We’re the ones who are trying to stop them.” She interrupted
“No, not Robin and Spoiler, Jason and Steph. The real people of Gotham are from neighborhoods like this one. They want to ruin it and control it. They hurt Gotham. This city isn’t perfect, but it’s my city. I want it to be a good place.”
Stephanie thought over what he was saying, “I think I understand what you’re saying… I just. I feel like I completely betrayed Bruce.”
“You’re not currently wearing the bat symbol, you’re fine.”
“You know what I mean…”
“Yeah, I do,” he admitted quietly.
They stayed like that. Sitting peacefully on her old roof, watching the sun rise.