Status: Ongoing
Nice to Meet You Too, Sunshine
if you have anxiety, and i have anxiety, then who's driving the car?
After City of Fear, after Scarecrow, he’s nothing. Wondering the streets with his helmet half cracked, looking for the safehouse he never told anyone about, even Slade or Rosie. There’s old uniforms there, old memories that he stored when he first came back to Gotham.
He’s thinking of Dick, his big brother. Barbara, who got fucked over by Joker just as bad. The new kid. Jason doesn’t have surveillance on the new girls, the dark haired and the blonde. They have no connection to him, no old family or replacement. He knows that the blonde girl “died” like him, this time by Black Mask.
Bruce is collecting dead children like he used to collect fancy cars. Jason’s been watching the people who used to mean everything to him for weeks. Barbara, unbroken and unbowed, working with her Birds of Prey. The replacement with his stupid fucking staff. Dick is still stupidly beautiful, flipping from rooftop to rooftop.
Bruce lives alone and fights alone with only Alfred for company. At first, Jason was viciously glad that Bruce is alone, that everyone he used to love has left him. Jason’s better now; he mostly just feels pity.
+++
Jason’s in the manor, after, Bruce totally unaware. Which is just like Bruce, to never think about collateral damage or Jason wanting to go to the first place that was home. It would never occur to him that Jason would come home so soon, break in through the window to his old room.
It’s just how he left it, down to the dirty socks on the floor. Of course, Bruce also has a hard time letting go of things. Jason’ll bet that Alfred comes in here once a week to dust, probably grieves fresh each time. Poor old man.
When Jason hears footsteps he barely has time to get out, dives through the window scraping his face, lands heavily on his left ankle. He’s kind of pissed for more reason than one, layered over the constant rage. Jason had some good stuff in there; books, throwing knives, his guilty teenage porn stash. He figures it’s moot now.
Now he has to decide who to visit first; Dick or Alfred. Maybe he’ll meet the replacement, cripple him a little. He’s sure the whole family will be just thrilled to have him back.
+
Jason, standing at Alfred’s door reaching for the knob, has the sudden memory that Alfred had a heart attack, or something, back before even Dick. Maybe a big surprise isn’t the best idea for the old man. So he heads to Dick instead.
++
Dick’s grown up best of them, he thinks. Got away from Bruce, kept the hero status and the cape. Well. Metaphorically on the cape. Jason watches and waits, perched on a rooftop in Bludhaven looking for the telltale flash of blue stripes.
“Hey, big brother.” Dick almost, almost, stumbles, before rolling easily to his feet. It’s the clearest sign of surprise he’s gonna give.
“Jay?”
“I don’t go by that anymore.” Jay, the kid who flew high and grinning above the streets, is dead.
Dick stiffens, the wide plane of his shoulders nearly at his ears. “Hood, then.”
“Jesus Christ, Dick. I’m not…” He stumbles over his own words, suddenly a baby bird again, first day being a Robin. “It’s just Jason now.”
Dick isn’t facing him, but Jason spent years at someone’s back. He doesn’t need to read faces. Dick’s scared, but he’s happy, too. “So you’re back, little bird?”
Jason clenches his fist, ignoring the hot flash of anger. Little bird. Where the fuck does Dick get off calling him that, when Jason’s got a good couple inches on him? It doesn’t matter, he reminds himself. Doesn’t matter. He’s going to get better, he has to.
“I need a place to stay, Dick.” Not what he was originally planning to say, and not true, but he’s here and Dick is so familiar. Dick is family. Jason’s been fueled by anger for too many years. Right now he’s just tired.
“I know a girl.”
“You know a lot of girls.”
Dick turns, smiling; he was always the pretty one. “This one’s special.”
+
After a few more awkward minutes Dick writes him an address, looking grave. “I’m trusting you, Jason. Don’t make me regret it.” Jason clenches his fist; he’ll never be good enough, always the second-rate Robin. But this angry asshole isn’t him anymore.
“I won’t.” Summoning up what’s left of Robin, he lets his voice go soft and honest. “I promise.” Dick relaxes, salutes, and backflips off the roof. Typical.
Jason makes his slow way down the fire escape instead; his ankle still hurts from jumping out the mansion. His bike is still there, up against a dumpster where he left it. He swings a leg over and takes off.
+++
It takes him a day to find the balls to visit this “special girl” of Dick’s. Jason’s kind of curious what she looks like. Knowing Dick, she’s probably a redhead.
The apartment at the address Dick gave him is in an average Gotham neighborhood, not rich, not poor. Better than where he grew up, anyway. Kids are playing in the street, but it’s getting dark, so one by one they’re called inside.
Jason watches from the rooftops, passing his helmet from hand to hand. When everyone is finally gone he jumps from the rooftop, doing a flip in midair. He can remember copying it from Dick, painstakingly flipping from place to place until it was perfect. Never good enough for Bruce, though.
Jason shakes the thought away, taking Dick’s paper from his pocket and double-checking, again, that he has the right place. The door opens before he can knock.
“Jason?” He takes a step back; it’s not some mystery girl, it’s Stephanie Brown. She’s a white girl, an All-American blonde wearing jean shorts and a green tank. There are thick scars across her chest and shoulders, a thin one through her left eyebrow. She was tortured by Black Mask, he remembers, and feels a pang of understanding sympathy. “Hi, I’m Steph,” she says, waving him inside.
It’s a well-lit, typical college student place, fairy lights everywhere and lots of posters. Looking at her placid, pretty face, he gets the impression that she can be very deceptive. He drops his dufflebag near the door, hearing the thunk of his weapons. They’re the only thing he really needs; he doesn’t have keepsakes and he wears his armor more often than not.
She leans forward to shake, her hand stark white against his dark brown. Already he feels uncomfortable, biting back the urge to run. What is he doing here, trying to earn his place back after all he’s done? The amount of money he has, what he knows, no one’ll ever find him if he runs. But he knows he’ll end up like Bruce, old and alone and bitter, without even Alfred. A fate worse than standing here hating himself, at least.
Steph catches his gaze and holds it; her eyes are very blue and a little distant. He wonders if she’s not quite all there. Unsure what to say, Jason goes for the obvious question. “Where do I sleep?”
She breaks the eye contact, gesturing with a smile at a couch lumpy with pillows. It’s right in front of the main window, looking down at the street just a few steps below. As he watches a woman walks past, scolding her son as she clutches tightly at his hand. “Seems unsafe,” he tells her, tapping lightly at the glass.
“Bulletproof. The frames are made of titanium. People can’t see in from the ground.”
Reassured, he smooths his hand over the nearest pillow, a crocheted monstrosity covered in little bat symbols. “Not bothering to hide, huh?” he asks, turning to where Steph is slipping flip-flops on.
“Why should I? This is my home,” she answers, like it’s so simple. Jason has two safehouses just in this district. None of them are home. “I’m going for a walk,” she finishes. “Want to come?”
“It’s 8:30…”
She shrugs, halfway out the door. “It’s a warm night, nice neighborhood. We’ll be okay.” Jason nods, dropping his helmet on the closet pillow and peeling off a few layers of armor before following her out. She turns when they’re halfway out the door, sighing. “No, stop.”
She tugs the hood away from his face, flips his collar over and pushes his shoulders straight. He makes a mild, affronted noise but doesn’t fight. “What, what’s wrong?”
“You look like you don’t want anyone to notice you.”
“Yeah…” he drawls, giving her a confused smirk.
“Well, you’re giving off such a strong ‘don’t look at me’ vibe that everyone’s eyes will be drawn to you.” He nods obediently. He used to be able to fake normal, before all this, but even then he wasn’t very good at it. He once flipped a classmate over his shoulder when she surprised him. “Okay, Steph.” She nods and continues walking.
The streets are dim, but not dim enough; he can see the devastation he caused, old militia flags tattered in the wind. The guilt comes like a wave. This was his city; look what he’s done to it. He remembers how empty it was, just the criminals he used to fight as Robin.
He’d thought at first that it would feel good, bringing the city that killed him to its knees. But all he felt was that emptiness reflected back in him. The people they pass on the street don’t give him a second glance. He’s sure they’d kill him on the spot if they knew. He hunches his shoulders, feeling watched although there’s barely anyone else.
Steph is humming to herself, walking loosely. She has a springy step that reminds him of Dick’s. He wouldn’t be surprised if she copied it from him; they all want to be Dick, the favorite son. “You’re thinking, like, way too hard,” she announces, not looking at him. They pass a store with boarded up windows, another casualty of the riots he caused.
She stops in front of it, leaning casually against the cracked slats. Her eyes flicker over his face and away, never making contact. Jason was friends with a blind girl, once, back before Bruce. It’s kind of like that with Steph, her gaze never quite holding. “What?” he asks, leaning next to her, uncomfortable with his back open.
“We all know what you did. You were an asshole and you hurt a lot of people,” she says, brutally honest.
He’s reminded of Barbara, staring up at him after he took his mask off. “You used to fight men like Scarecrow. Now you’ve become one,” she’d spat, fierce even while defenseless and surrounded by armed men. The girls in his family never bother with dancing around the truth.
“But we get it, Jason. We forgive you,” she continues, pushing off the wall and heading back towards her apartment. He ignores the bitter fist of guilt in his chest, knowing it’ll turn to anger like everything does.
“People like us don’t get forgiveness,” he spits, catching up to her side and falling into step.
“People like us don’t have the same rules,” she corrects. “We can’t do what we do otherwise.” She turns fast, walking backwards easy as pie. “Do you understand?”
“Yes, mom,” he admits, rolling his eyes. Her sudden grin is striking and beautiful, teeth bright against the red of her lips. Jason falters for just a moment, embarrassed when he realizes it.
“Good boy, Jason.” He blushes and kinda hates himself for it.
+
When they get back to her apartment Steph heads into her room for a few minutes, comes out in her armor with her hair down. “I’m going out on patrol,” she says, tugging her gloves on.
“Should I come?”
“I don’t think so. Not yet.” Jason’s not angry; his request was half-hearted because even he knows he’s not ready yet. Steph gives him a sunny smile, although her eyes are hidden under the lenses of her mask. Honestly, it’s a little easier without the blank stare he now knows is behind it. Jesus, Bruce fucked them up. “I’ll be back in a few hours. Don’t wait up.”
She takes the stairs to the roof, he thinks, or maybe there’s some secret exit. Knowing this family, that’s more likely. Jason kicks off his shoes, lying back on the couch Steph deemed as his. His helmet flickers quietly at his feet, a constant rotation of images that he finds reassuring. He’s spent a lot of nights with just the helmet for company. Eventually he lets himself fall asleep, curled in a protective ball.
+
When Jason wakes up it’s day and Steph’s still not home, but there’s a flower shaped sticky note that reads ‘At school. Alfred’s lasagna in fridge. Eat!’ There’s a little scrawled smiley face that he finds weirdly endearing. He should probably be creeped out that she was in and out without his notice, but they’re Bats. It would be weirder if he could catch her.
When he checks his watch it’s around two, people rushing past on the street and never bothering to look up. That’s what makes it so easy to be a Bat in Gotham; no one ever looks up. He helps himself to a plateful of Alfred’s lasagna, triggering memories that are easy to shove aside in the light of day. He kind of wants to go out, maybe restock from one of his safehouses, but the scar on his face draws too much attention.
He showers instead, feeling very domestic as grime and blood slide off his skin. He jacks off out of habit, thinking of Rosie, his hands on the sharp cut of her hips. When he comes he mutters curses in Spanish, his mother’s language and the one he still thinks in.
Clean and feeling better than he has in a long time, he leaves the bathroom with a towel round his hips and finds Steph in the living room. Her uniform is peeled to the waist, pieces of armor at her feet. She’s wearing a blinding pink sports bra, bruises crawling up her left side and to her neck. The scars underneath don’t rival Jason’s, cause no one’s do, but they’re bad. The rest of the family are scarred, sure, but he and Steph were tortured.
There’s a small mark on her belly, a C-section scar from the pregnancy they’ll probably never talk about. She’s calmly patching up a thin slice on her shoulder, face impassive.
“I thought you had school?” he asks, knowing she’s aware he’s here.
“Something came up.” Finished, she slides the rest of her suit off, standing there in her sports bra and boxer briefs. There are cigarette burns on the insides of her thighs and Jason decides there and then that Black Mask is gonna die screaming.
There’s the familiar ugly anger unfolding in his stomach, fiercely protective. She’s a Bat, so she’s his, cause no one gets to hurt the Bats but him. Steph catches the line of his gaze, abruptly folding in on herself. When she talks it’s almost sing-song, making the hairs on the back of his neck rise. “Things happen, and now they’re gone,” she tells him, bending to put her sweatpants on.
Her hands shake, so faint most people wouldn’t notice. Jason was trained to notice. “Steph.”
“They’re gone,” she says again, firm. “We should get drunk.” It’s blatant change of subject, but he lets it go, more afraid of the void in her than he is willing to push.
“Okay.”
++
Steph’s got top-shelf whiskey, because she’s a Wayne, sort of, and Waynes get only the best. He’s tired and he thinks about the asylum. He never really slept, just had periods where he went away and came back fuzzy, Harley slapping at his face.
He waited down there in the dark for months, alone and scared and suffering. Bruce didn’t even wait a full year before replacing him. He keeps trying to express what it was like to Steph, filled with too much whiskey and too few barriers.
Eventually she just pats his knee, wearing the blank look that still freaks him out a little. “Jason. I get it. I know.” The rest of the family probably forgets about what happened with Black Mask, even seeing her scars as a stark reminder. She handles it better than him, tucking it away somewhere he can’t reach.
Everyone thinks she’s normal, back to the Steph Brown from before, but right now he’s looking at her face and there’s nothing moving behind her eyes. She ties up her hair, turning to show him a smooth patch of skin at the back of her head where hair should be. “Sionis cut a chunk out just for starters,” she says conversationally, letting her hair fall around her shoulders again. “He has it framed in his office.”
“I’m going to kill him,” Jason tells her, drunk enough to be honest. She nods, or at least he thinks she does. That decided, Jason peels up his shirt, showing a scar on his lower back.
“Joker beat me so bad I had to get a new kidney,” he says, remembering pissing blood for a while.
“From who?”
“Deathstroke. He just grew a new one, hand to God.”
“That’s so weird.”
Steph is gleeful, the tone of the conversation lighter. “Yeah,” Jason agrees, thinking fondly of Deathstroke and even more fondly of Ravager.
Steph slips off one of her socks, wiggling not five but four purple painted toes. “He cut off one of my toes and broke all my fingers,” she whispers, conspiratorial.
Jason feels a sick lurch in the pit of his stomach but soldiers on, opening his mouth wide. “Sixteen false teeth and a metal plate in my cheek.”
She laughs finally, leaning towards him with her hands clasped. “That’s awful. Oh my God, we shouldn’t be laughing at this.”
“That’s all we can do, Steph.”
Picking at the purple bandaid on her knee she nods, agreeable. “Yeah. I know.” She looks up, mischievous, more like the girl he’s sure she was before. “I’m definitely laughing that you died still wearing the green panties.” He snorts and shoves at her shoulder, taking another swig as he watches the sun go down over her shoulders.
+
Jason wakes up with a splitting headache and Steph passed out at the kitchen table, fingers curled around the bottle of whiskey. He takes it from her to put away; she mumbles but doesn’t wake.
She’s still half naked and it’s chilly enough that her skin is goosebumped, so he grabs a blanket from her room and drapes it over her shoulders. Hopefully going into her room isn’t some huge invasion of privacy. It’s almost four, so he figures she’s not going on patrol tonight. A night off is probably good for her. He pops an Advil, takes a piss, and goes back to sleep.
Steph’s gone again when he wakes up for good; he gets the feeling this will be a routine. There’s another sticky note, reading, ‘Hungover :( In class, but call if you need me’ Underneath is her number. Jason texts instead, hey, getting her answer when he’s in the kitchen scrounging for cereal.
She uses a lot of emojis, which makes him smile. They make plans for him to pick her up when she gets out of class at 7:30, which leaves him a long day to eat cereal and relax.
+
He gets dressed at 7:00 and grapples over to Gotham U, narrowly avoiding a black shadow perched high above on a gargoyle. It slips off into the night without a whisper. Cassandra, the other new girl, the one who doesn’t speak. The other member of the family who’s killed before. From what he sees before she flits off she’s tiny, probably relies more on speed and skill than the brute strength he can bring. He waves before dropping several stories to the next building, feeling the usual rush of adrenaline that keeps him young.
It’s 7:32 by the time he gets to Gotham U, the sun low in the sky. Steph is waiting on the steps, visible by the glint of her blonde hair. There’s someone with her, a stunning Indian girl who chatters excitedly, her voice rising and falling. He waits for the girl to leave before tossing a stone at Steph, who doesn’t flinch.
“Hey there, kid,” he calls, watching her snort.
“You’re barely two years older than me, dipshit.” She’s looser than he’s seen her, smiling easily. It’s false; as soon as they turn a corner she’s locked up again, flat but not blank. He thinks there are different levels, and this is baseline Steph.
“How was school?”
She shrugs, taking her suit out of her bag and pulling it on with practiced ease. “We’re still rebuilding. It got looted when you sacked the city,” she says, matter of fact but clearly not intending to be hurtful.
“Sorry.”
“We’ll be okay.” She jumps up on the nearest fire escape, climbing fast. He grapples instead, meets her on the roof. She makes a beautiful leap and dive onto the next one, cape fluttering behind her. “Hurry up!” she calls, waving. He grins and chases after.
They get home sweating, Steph bumping his shoulder as they head down the stairs from her roof. “You’ve got good form,” he says, aping Bruce’s rumbling growl. She smiles, pleased, pausing when they step into her living room. He almost runs into her, their armor clicking briefly.
Cassandra is standing there, a black shape against the lights from outside. “Stephanie,” she rasps, voice deeper than Jason would’ve expected.
“Hey, Cass,” Steph answers, flipping the lights on. It really doesn’t make this new Batgirl less creepy. “What’s up?”
Cassandra nods towards him, and he has no doubt she’s reading everything he’s putting off. “Hood.” She tilts her head like she’s listening to something. “Bad.” Jason’s stung, although clearly she has read everything he’s thinking, especially the worst parts.
“No, he’s not,” Steph says, calm even though she’s stepping between Cassandra and him. He’s touched that she’d bother. Bruce sure as hell never did.
“No. No,” Cassandra snaps, shaking her head, frustrated. She makes an annoyed noise before tugging off her mask. Underneath is a pretty Asian girl with a scar through her upper lip and a penetrating stare that reminds him uncomfortably of Bruce. Her hair is cropped close to her head, giving her a streamlined look that Jason is really liking. “Bad…people,” she grits out, clenching her fists.
“Bad people are coming for Jason?” Steph finishes, but Cassandra shakes her head again.
“Bad people…make us…do bad things,” she finally says, and Jason doesn’t really know her but he’s touched by the amount of effort that took. He knows her story. He knows the bad things she’s been made to do.
“Thank you,” he murmurs, watching as she slinks into Steph’s bedroom and doesn’t come out. “Is she…”
“There’s a secret exit,” Steph says, confirming his suspicion that secret exits run in the family.
“Is she always like that?” he asks, taking his helmet off and leaving it on the kitchen table. Steph shrugs, going into her room and returning in a sweater and purple shorts made out of a fabric that he wants to touch. “Patrol?”
“In a few hours.” She turns to grab something and he catches sight of a burn, high enough on her thigh to almost be on her ass. Always observant, she says, “It’s from Sionis.” When she looks back she’s still the Steph he knows, still in control. She lifts the hem of her shorts higher, showing a skull brand.
Jason’s slammed with memories of Joker squealing “Can I keep him?” and then the smell of his flesh burning. By that point he was so hungry it smelled good, once he stopped screaming. Now he carries it with him everywhere, and he touches his face without thinking.
“Sionis did this…third day? I think?” she says, craning her neck to get a good look at it.
“Did he, uh, ever…” Jason can’t get the words out, knowing he has no right to ask but needing to be sure.
“No,” she interrupts, turning fully to stand with hands on hips. “He never touched me like that.” Relieved, Jason nods, but she’s not finished. “He filmed everything and sent it to Batman.”
He’s going to rip Black Mask apart, revel in his blood like he should’ve in Joker’s. “I’m sorry,” he finally says, honest.
“It’s probably good to talk about.” Jason runs his thumb over the scar on his index finger that’s been there so long he doesn’t even remember getting it. He’s never been much for talking and he’s not going to start now. “Anyway, I’m hungry,” she says, brusquely changing the subject. “Let’s go out.”
+++
“You need clothes,” she informs him when they step onto the street, empty enough for a warm night. “You’re obvious.” He has to agree; even without the armor, he still sticks out. “And you smell.” He laughs, but he doesn’t think she notices, attention already on to something else.
There’s a food truck festival going on just a few blocks away, winding down but not closed. Jason never got anything like this, Steph scrounging through her purse for a few dollars to pay for quesadillas. He was on the extreme of both ends of the spectrum, either very rich or very poor. Maybe Steph has Bruce’s money behind her but she doesn’t wave it around like him, not even aware. Jason needs to keep reminding himself that he doesn’t hate Batman anymore.
They finish their food on one of the ugly piers that stretch into the bay, legs dangling over the side. Steph’s watching the waves, chewing slow. Jason’s thinking about Kaldur when she stands, offering a hand to help him up, her eyes looking somewhere over his shoulder.
“We should get ice cream.” It’s a hair too cold for ice cream, but Jason doesn’t argue. They order from a vendor who clearly thinks they’re dating, sending a disapproving glance at Jason’s scars and leather jacket.
Steph, in a sweater and shorts with her hair down, looks so wholesome Jason really does almost feel dirty, although he knows the real Steph is behind that, her humor and blankness. They walk back in companionable silence, Steph licking vanilla ice cream from the tips of her fingers. They halt for a few minutes to stop an assault, so easy it’s near pathetic.
Jason looms over the terrified perp while Steph watches from a distance. The woman they saved is overwhelmingly grateful, thanking them in Spanish after she gets a look at Jason. She’s a sex worker in heels that make Jason’s calves ache just to look at, unharmed except for finger shaped bruises around her wrists.
Her name is Layla, and Jason marks it down in his head for later. People like her aren’t protected by the cops, so he’ll keep an eye out.
“You’re good with people,” Steph observes as they walk away.
“Not really.” People are either afraid or they dislike him, he’s found, and tries not to care.
“The militia was pretty loyal to you,” she says, and Jason thinks of his army, hundreds of them, but they still failed against the Bat because they thought his odds were impossible. Batman wins because nobody believes that anyone would be crazy enough to try the things he does. But Bruce is. Bruce is crazy enough for anything.
Jason shrugs, not wanting to think about them. The militia mostly dispersed after his attack on Gotham, either arrested or paid enough from his leftover accounts that they could disappear. Steph is kind enough to change the subject.
+++
Jason hates the scar, hates that he touches it when he’s nervous, an obvious tell. He hates seeing it in the mirror every morning, the first thing anyone sees. Every time it’s like he’s being burned all over again, on his knees before Joker.
“Oh, you should try makeup,” Steph says over his shoulder, dropping a tube of tattoo concealer in front of him. In a few minutes the scar is gone, and Jason sees…himself, he thinks, for the first time in a while. It isn’t until later that he realizes his foundation is too dark for Steph; she must’ve bought it special.
+++
The next week, when Jason is going to meet Steph at school as usual, he lands on a Clock Tower gargoyle. He’s only there a few seconds before he hears Barbara’s voice right in his ear, nearly killing him all over again.
“Jay.”
He winces, but he’ll allow it; if anyone deserves the privilege, it’s her. “What are you doing in my helmet?”
“Hacking’s sort of my thing now. You know. After.”
He does know; seeing Barbara in a wheelchair was almost worse than the new Robin. Another casualty of Bruce’s war. “Yeah.”
“You can come in,” she offers, and a hatch opens somewhere overhead. He hurt Barbara most of all, when he took over the city. Kidnapping her, shooting close enough to her head that shrapnel cut her cheek, almost killing her father. The guilt comes as a pit, swallowing him up til it’s hard to breathe. He’ll hate himself forever.
“Barb. I can’t.” He can’t even get off this gargoyle, going over images of her face when his army kicked in her door, tossing her wheelchair aside like trash. He makes a choked noise and jumps to a safe rooftop, rolling to crouch. “I can’t, I-”
It’s too soon, she’ll still have scrapes from him, from crawling away on cement and gravel. He took away her mobility and she’s forgiven him, making hush noises through the comms. They grew up together and he used her as a bargaining chip.
“Jason. You can come back another time. Door’s still open.” He hears the hatch slide shut, then her quiet laugh. “Metaphorically.” He nods, knowing she can see it in one of the cameras she has around here. He would know about the cameras; he had to disable them to kidnap her. Hating himself, sick and ashamed, Jason retreats to Steph’s apartment.
+
“So I guess the school thing was off today?” Steph asks when she comes in the door, books tucked under her arm. There are wisps of blonde curls that she blows off her face as she sets her books down, coming over to Jason where he’s curled in a miserable ball on his bed.
“M’sorry,” he mutters, knowing his eyes are red-rimmed and obvious.
“Oracle called.” It was always Barb who kept the family together, the only one of them capable of communication. He shrinks even further, feeling small although he’s 6’3 and broader even than Bruce.
“I hurt her,” he says, clutching at his helmet.
“She’s tough. Probably the toughest of all of us.” Steph folds her legs under herself and watches him, patient. “And Alfred sent over clothes for you. He said that a Wayne should never go without.”
“I’m not a Wayne,” he growls, instinctive.
“You’re being kind of dramatic,” she points out, calm. She’s wearing flip flips today, and he can see the space where her baby toe should be, the skin knotted.
“You never have emotions, how would you know?” he snaps, and she frowns.
“Yes, I do.”
But they’re mostly on the surface, she’s not all there, he thinks, swallowing the words down. “Sorry,” he says instead, regaining control of himself with effort.
“It’s okay. You had a hard day.” She’s standing, long legs and tiny jean shorts. The American Dream.
Jason eyes up the claw marks above her left knee, right over the purple bandaid. “Catwoman?”
“Yeah,” she answers, fond. Jason gets it; it’s hard not to like Catwoman, even when she scratches.
“I almost lost an earlobe to her teeth once,” he reminisces. “It was my twelfth birthday.”
Steph steps away, nodding in agreement. Stretching, she goes up on her toes, muscles in her thighs flexing. “Cass and I are going to a movie tonight. Wanna come?”
“Yeah,” he says, a little surprised how easy it is with her. If this was anyone else, even Barb, they’d still be talking about his feelings or some shit. Steph just smiles.
+
Later, he’s sandwiched between them, watching something with more zombies than sense. One leaps out, slavering, blood dripping down his chin. Bored, Jason looks to Cassandra, who’s watching with rapt attention, chin in hands. She hasn’t moved since they sat down.
He looks to Steph next; she has her feet on the seat in front of her, a far off look on her face as she eats Sno-Cones by the handful. Something explodes on screen and Jason jumps enough that she looks over with a small smile and squeezes his hand once before letting go.
“Scared?” she whispers, leaning in close. Her hair smells like strawberries when it brushes his cheek.
“Nah,” he whispers back, nose briefly touching the shell of her ear. She makes a disagreeing noise and goes back to the movie. He watches her for a few more moments, the upward tip of her nose, the light from the screen flickering against her skin, before he looks away.
+
When they get back to her apartment Steph immediately changes into her suit, slipping on thick pads of armor, brushing her hair out. Jason gets into the sweats that Alfred got, poking at his abs, vaguely worrying he’s losing muscle tone. He hasn’t trained in weeks, not since before the invasion.
“How long will you be out?” When he was Robin, he did it in shifts, six hours a night or whenever there was an emergency.
“A few hours. It’s just a Tuesday night.” She puts her mask on, the plates of armor folding over her face, and looks up at him through white-out lenses. “Go to sleep.”
“Yes, ma’am,” he answers, saluting. She sticks her tongue out and heads up the stairs.
+
Jason’s still awake when she comes back, absorbed in a book. He never let himself read while he was the Knight. Steph comes down the stairs as usual, quiet as a ghost.
“Hey,” he grunts, realizing how tired he is when he looks up and his head swims. Steph doesn’t speak, heading for the kitchen and the whiskey she keeps there. She drinks straight from the bottle, deep gulps that he can hear from his place on the couch. She gags, shakes her head, and sits at the table. “Steph?”
He goes to sit across from her, seeing the fine tremors in her hands. “You okay?” he asks, pressing the catches on her mask that he knows will fold it back.
Underneath she’s gone; he’s not sure what she sees when she looks at him but he doesn’t like it. “Black Mask was at the docks tonight.” She rubs hard at her wrists, not seeming to notice. “He caught me for a couple seconds.”
“Steph…”
“He licked my face,” she hisses, finally breaking but it’s honestly less scary. “He put his hands on me and said I taste even better than he remembers.” Jason is so viscerally angry it feels like a living thing, snarling in his chest. He hasn’t been like this since he crawled his way out of Arkham, vowing to kill Bruce.
He takes a deep breath through his nose, too loud over Steph’s quiet sobs, then reaches a careful hand across the table to touch hers, relieved when she doesn’t snatch it away.
“Steph. Hey.” She looks up, sniffling, more present than he’s ever seen her. “Do you want me to kill him?” There’s a long pause where all he can hear is his heart pounding, knowing that even if she says no he’ll still do it. Finally she nods, fierce; all his favorite girls are warrior women, he’s realized. “Good.”
He’ll do for her what she can’t do without crossing a line he really doesn’t want her to cross. She smiles weakly, going blank again but he’s seen what’s behind it. He squeezes her hand once before letting go.
+
He sleeps all day, unbothered by Steph getting up and going to class. He leaves before she comes home, not wanting her to have second thoughts if she sees him.
Sionis has gotten sloppy in his old age; his men are openly patrolling a warehouse, tempting. Jason’s not so out of practice that taking down eleven armed men is hard, especially now that he doesn’t have to worry about killing them.
He’s always had a hard time with that; he’s a brawler, and he doesn’t know how to hold back. He takes down the last guy and puts him on his knees, gun to his head. “I want a word with your boss, Black Mask. Where is he?” he asks, calm and in control.
“You ain’t gonna kill me. You ain’t gonna kill me!” the thug scoffs, they’re always so sure of themselves when they see the symbol on his chest. He grits his teeth, hating being under Bruce’s mark again and hating even more that that’s Harley’s work talking.
“Do I look like Batman to you? Rethink your answer before I fill you up with lead,” Jason growls, crowding in close. His bulk does most of the work. He can feel his heart throbbing in his ears, escalating as he gets angrier and doesn’t try to push it down.
The thug’s eyes widen. “Downtown! His office! But you ain’t gonna get him! He knows you’re coming, freak!” No, he doesn’t.
Jason rolls his eyes under the helmet, muttering, “Good,” before he shoots the guy point blank. He thinks of it like taking out the trash, thinks of the evil this guy would’ve continued to do. It’s good. He’s still under control.
+
Sionis is hiding out in the busiest part of town, cars blaring four stories below. “Black Mask!” Jason shouts, bursting through the door. He brushes aside henchmen who can barely throw a punch; every blow he lands makes his blood sing. He was made for this.
Black Mask puts up a good fight, sending wave after wave of men who are nothing, they’re nothing, all Jason can feel is the incandescent blaze of his rage. After he’s killed half of Black Mask’s men and maimed the rest, he dangles the bastard out a window.
“Do you know what you did to her?” he screams, half out of his mind with anger. Black Mask’s babbling, promising money, women, drugs, his hands scrambling at Jason’s coat. Sionis put those hands on Steph, he took something bright and beautiful and left a wasteland behind. Jason doesn’t bother letting him answer, drops him out the window limbs flailing. “Say hi to Joker for me,” he calls after, climbing over the frame and landing on Sionis’ chest, the bones crunching like paper.
He’s dead; Jason rips the mask off to make sure. Already there are people gathering around, taking pictures. In Gotham, they don’t waste time with shock. This’ll be all over the news tomorrow. Bruce will probably have a heart attack, his most precious rule broken. Whatever.
Jason grapples back up to Black Mask’s office, finds Steph’s lock of hair; it’s still attached to a chunk of skin and Jason grimaces, holding the frame away from himself, wishing he could’ve hurt Black Mask worse. He leaves through the roof, hearing sirens a few blocks off.
+
He goes to a safehouse before heading back to Steph; he’s too angry to be around anyone else right now. Blood slicks his armor, so he takes that into the shower with him, methodically cleaning til the plates gleam and his heartbeat has slowed. His hands will stop shaking as the adrenaline goes down. He changes into sweats before heading back to Steph, armor and helmet hidden in a dufflebag.
+
He has time to think about what he’s going to say as he walks back, frame dangling from his fingertips. There’s no point in it, really, and he knows that. Steph will see through him and find what she wants.
She’s asleep when he comes in; her bedroom door is cracked which he takes as permission. Usually she keeps it shut. She sleeps on her back, head turned so far it looks uncomfortable. Jason thinks she looks like one of the Disney princesses from his mom’s favorite movies, and is immediately annoyed by the thought. People like him are never in them.
He puts the frame on the nightstand near her head, pulling the blankets further over her shoulders. He’s so much more aware of everything for some reason; the rasp of his calluses against fabric, the shimmering gold of Steph’s hair, her lips parted. It’s probably leftover adrenaline. The sun will be up soon, so he tears himself away as it breaks over the nearest buildings, giving the whole room a warm glow.
Steph wakes up as he’s dropping off, coming out of her room with a blanket around her shoulders. The frame is between her fingers; she looks at it with no expression. “He’s dead,” Jason says, abruptly wide awake.
She gives him a vindictive sliver of a grin that’s more real than anything he’s seen on her face before. “Yeah. Oracle just called.”
“How’s Batman?”
She shrugs the blanket off, uncaring where it lands, and goes to the kitchen to make cereal. “He’s furious.”
“Is he going to…” Jason isn’t sure how to end that sentence. Arrest him? Come over here?
“He said that he understands your reasons but doesn’t approve.” That is so Bruce, cold as hell and always disappointed, Jason a shame to the family. Steph leaves the frame on the table; she won’t look directly at it.
Jason doesn’t know what to say. ‘Congrats, he’s dead and it still hurts?’ ‘You’ll still see his face in your nightmares?’ ‘He died screaming and that’s the best I can give you?’
She’s mechanically eating her cereal, staring out the kitchen window. Jason wants to be comforting but he’s never been good with words. Steph’s locked tight with no way in, no cracks for him to dig his fingers. He’s not sure he wants to. Far as he can tell, Steph keeps everything at a distance. Hopefully this won’t cause a breakdown that he’s really not capable of handling.
She finishes her cereal, pushing the bowl away. “Thank you.” There’s only a vague tremble in her voice. That’s my girl, Jason thinks.
“You’re welcome.” She gives him the barest sliver of a smile, the glint of triumph in her eyes. For now, that’s enough.
+++
At the asylum, Jason was hit, over and over, and sure he learned to take a punch as a kid, his dad was fond of it, but this was. This was different. It restructured his whole face; when he got out of Arkham he didn’t recognize himself. Getting hit doesn’t bother him anymore.
He takes the punch that goes for his jaw and laughs. “Come on, Steph. I thought this was going to be hard.” She narrows her eyes, focusing, throws a solid left hook that’s classic Bruce followed by a leg sweep he knows the Replacement uses often.
When that fails she flips to her feet, gets her thighs round his neck and throws him halfway across the room. He’s more than a little turned on, hoping she doesn’t know. “Jesus, Steph. Where’d you learn that one?” he asks, getting to his feet. His shoulderblades ache where he hit the wall, but of course, he’s had worse. The Joker dislocated his shoulders sixteen times.
“Batwoman,” she answers, scratching at a scar on her neck that spiderwebs thinly onto her jaw. “She took an interest.” He imagines she would; Batwoman has a thing for pretty blondes. “After the…” Steph clears her throat, “After Black Mask. She said I would be prepared next time.”
“Next time?” Steph looks strangely vulnerable, just in her sports bra and shorts, washed out by bright lights.
“Sionis caught me cause I was being cocky. I tried to take on thirty guys at once. They took me down easy. I’m just lucky they didn’t. You know.” Rape her, he finishes in his head, stomach churning. “When they brought me to Black Mask I was so sure Batman was coming. So stubborn. I spit in Sionis’ face and that’s when they tied me down and if I was better-” She’s looking behind him, probably seeing Sionis.
“It wasn’t your fault,” he protests, automatic. “We all get caught.” Some worse than others, him and Steph much worse, but it happens. “Dick even has a GPS tracker under his skin.”
“Next time I’ll be prepared,” she says again, settling into a fighting stance. Jason’s tired, unsettled, thinking about Black Mask’s men and their greedy, grasping hands.
“Can we go eat instead?” he asks, hoping she won’t refuse, throwing herself into her work rather than dwell on the past.
“Yeah, okay.” Small victory achieved, Jason smiles to himself.
He’s thinking of Dick, his big brother. Barbara, who got fucked over by Joker just as bad. The new kid. Jason doesn’t have surveillance on the new girls, the dark haired and the blonde. They have no connection to him, no old family or replacement. He knows that the blonde girl “died” like him, this time by Black Mask.
Bruce is collecting dead children like he used to collect fancy cars. Jason’s been watching the people who used to mean everything to him for weeks. Barbara, unbroken and unbowed, working with her Birds of Prey. The replacement with his stupid fucking staff. Dick is still stupidly beautiful, flipping from rooftop to rooftop.
Bruce lives alone and fights alone with only Alfred for company. At first, Jason was viciously glad that Bruce is alone, that everyone he used to love has left him. Jason’s better now; he mostly just feels pity.
+++
Jason’s in the manor, after, Bruce totally unaware. Which is just like Bruce, to never think about collateral damage or Jason wanting to go to the first place that was home. It would never occur to him that Jason would come home so soon, break in through the window to his old room.
It’s just how he left it, down to the dirty socks on the floor. Of course, Bruce also has a hard time letting go of things. Jason’ll bet that Alfred comes in here once a week to dust, probably grieves fresh each time. Poor old man.
When Jason hears footsteps he barely has time to get out, dives through the window scraping his face, lands heavily on his left ankle. He’s kind of pissed for more reason than one, layered over the constant rage. Jason had some good stuff in there; books, throwing knives, his guilty teenage porn stash. He figures it’s moot now.
Now he has to decide who to visit first; Dick or Alfred. Maybe he’ll meet the replacement, cripple him a little. He’s sure the whole family will be just thrilled to have him back.
+
Jason, standing at Alfred’s door reaching for the knob, has the sudden memory that Alfred had a heart attack, or something, back before even Dick. Maybe a big surprise isn’t the best idea for the old man. So he heads to Dick instead.
++
Dick’s grown up best of them, he thinks. Got away from Bruce, kept the hero status and the cape. Well. Metaphorically on the cape. Jason watches and waits, perched on a rooftop in Bludhaven looking for the telltale flash of blue stripes.
“Hey, big brother.” Dick almost, almost, stumbles, before rolling easily to his feet. It’s the clearest sign of surprise he’s gonna give.
“Jay?”
“I don’t go by that anymore.” Jay, the kid who flew high and grinning above the streets, is dead.
Dick stiffens, the wide plane of his shoulders nearly at his ears. “Hood, then.”
“Jesus Christ, Dick. I’m not…” He stumbles over his own words, suddenly a baby bird again, first day being a Robin. “It’s just Jason now.”
Dick isn’t facing him, but Jason spent years at someone’s back. He doesn’t need to read faces. Dick’s scared, but he’s happy, too. “So you’re back, little bird?”
Jason clenches his fist, ignoring the hot flash of anger. Little bird. Where the fuck does Dick get off calling him that, when Jason’s got a good couple inches on him? It doesn’t matter, he reminds himself. Doesn’t matter. He’s going to get better, he has to.
“I need a place to stay, Dick.” Not what he was originally planning to say, and not true, but he’s here and Dick is so familiar. Dick is family. Jason’s been fueled by anger for too many years. Right now he’s just tired.
“I know a girl.”
“You know a lot of girls.”
Dick turns, smiling; he was always the pretty one. “This one’s special.”
+
After a few more awkward minutes Dick writes him an address, looking grave. “I’m trusting you, Jason. Don’t make me regret it.” Jason clenches his fist; he’ll never be good enough, always the second-rate Robin. But this angry asshole isn’t him anymore.
“I won’t.” Summoning up what’s left of Robin, he lets his voice go soft and honest. “I promise.” Dick relaxes, salutes, and backflips off the roof. Typical.
Jason makes his slow way down the fire escape instead; his ankle still hurts from jumping out the mansion. His bike is still there, up against a dumpster where he left it. He swings a leg over and takes off.
+++
It takes him a day to find the balls to visit this “special girl” of Dick’s. Jason’s kind of curious what she looks like. Knowing Dick, she’s probably a redhead.
The apartment at the address Dick gave him is in an average Gotham neighborhood, not rich, not poor. Better than where he grew up, anyway. Kids are playing in the street, but it’s getting dark, so one by one they’re called inside.
Jason watches from the rooftops, passing his helmet from hand to hand. When everyone is finally gone he jumps from the rooftop, doing a flip in midair. He can remember copying it from Dick, painstakingly flipping from place to place until it was perfect. Never good enough for Bruce, though.
Jason shakes the thought away, taking Dick’s paper from his pocket and double-checking, again, that he has the right place. The door opens before he can knock.
“Jason?” He takes a step back; it’s not some mystery girl, it’s Stephanie Brown. She’s a white girl, an All-American blonde wearing jean shorts and a green tank. There are thick scars across her chest and shoulders, a thin one through her left eyebrow. She was tortured by Black Mask, he remembers, and feels a pang of understanding sympathy. “Hi, I’m Steph,” she says, waving him inside.
It’s a well-lit, typical college student place, fairy lights everywhere and lots of posters. Looking at her placid, pretty face, he gets the impression that she can be very deceptive. He drops his dufflebag near the door, hearing the thunk of his weapons. They’re the only thing he really needs; he doesn’t have keepsakes and he wears his armor more often than not.
She leans forward to shake, her hand stark white against his dark brown. Already he feels uncomfortable, biting back the urge to run. What is he doing here, trying to earn his place back after all he’s done? The amount of money he has, what he knows, no one’ll ever find him if he runs. But he knows he’ll end up like Bruce, old and alone and bitter, without even Alfred. A fate worse than standing here hating himself, at least.
Steph catches his gaze and holds it; her eyes are very blue and a little distant. He wonders if she’s not quite all there. Unsure what to say, Jason goes for the obvious question. “Where do I sleep?”
She breaks the eye contact, gesturing with a smile at a couch lumpy with pillows. It’s right in front of the main window, looking down at the street just a few steps below. As he watches a woman walks past, scolding her son as she clutches tightly at his hand. “Seems unsafe,” he tells her, tapping lightly at the glass.
“Bulletproof. The frames are made of titanium. People can’t see in from the ground.”
Reassured, he smooths his hand over the nearest pillow, a crocheted monstrosity covered in little bat symbols. “Not bothering to hide, huh?” he asks, turning to where Steph is slipping flip-flops on.
“Why should I? This is my home,” she answers, like it’s so simple. Jason has two safehouses just in this district. None of them are home. “I’m going for a walk,” she finishes. “Want to come?”
“It’s 8:30…”
She shrugs, halfway out the door. “It’s a warm night, nice neighborhood. We’ll be okay.” Jason nods, dropping his helmet on the closet pillow and peeling off a few layers of armor before following her out. She turns when they’re halfway out the door, sighing. “No, stop.”
She tugs the hood away from his face, flips his collar over and pushes his shoulders straight. He makes a mild, affronted noise but doesn’t fight. “What, what’s wrong?”
“You look like you don’t want anyone to notice you.”
“Yeah…” he drawls, giving her a confused smirk.
“Well, you’re giving off such a strong ‘don’t look at me’ vibe that everyone’s eyes will be drawn to you.” He nods obediently. He used to be able to fake normal, before all this, but even then he wasn’t very good at it. He once flipped a classmate over his shoulder when she surprised him. “Okay, Steph.” She nods and continues walking.
The streets are dim, but not dim enough; he can see the devastation he caused, old militia flags tattered in the wind. The guilt comes like a wave. This was his city; look what he’s done to it. He remembers how empty it was, just the criminals he used to fight as Robin.
He’d thought at first that it would feel good, bringing the city that killed him to its knees. But all he felt was that emptiness reflected back in him. The people they pass on the street don’t give him a second glance. He’s sure they’d kill him on the spot if they knew. He hunches his shoulders, feeling watched although there’s barely anyone else.
Steph is humming to herself, walking loosely. She has a springy step that reminds him of Dick’s. He wouldn’t be surprised if she copied it from him; they all want to be Dick, the favorite son. “You’re thinking, like, way too hard,” she announces, not looking at him. They pass a store with boarded up windows, another casualty of the riots he caused.
She stops in front of it, leaning casually against the cracked slats. Her eyes flicker over his face and away, never making contact. Jason was friends with a blind girl, once, back before Bruce. It’s kind of like that with Steph, her gaze never quite holding. “What?” he asks, leaning next to her, uncomfortable with his back open.
“We all know what you did. You were an asshole and you hurt a lot of people,” she says, brutally honest.
He’s reminded of Barbara, staring up at him after he took his mask off. “You used to fight men like Scarecrow. Now you’ve become one,” she’d spat, fierce even while defenseless and surrounded by armed men. The girls in his family never bother with dancing around the truth.
“But we get it, Jason. We forgive you,” she continues, pushing off the wall and heading back towards her apartment. He ignores the bitter fist of guilt in his chest, knowing it’ll turn to anger like everything does.
“People like us don’t get forgiveness,” he spits, catching up to her side and falling into step.
“People like us don’t have the same rules,” she corrects. “We can’t do what we do otherwise.” She turns fast, walking backwards easy as pie. “Do you understand?”
“Yes, mom,” he admits, rolling his eyes. Her sudden grin is striking and beautiful, teeth bright against the red of her lips. Jason falters for just a moment, embarrassed when he realizes it.
“Good boy, Jason.” He blushes and kinda hates himself for it.
+
When they get back to her apartment Steph heads into her room for a few minutes, comes out in her armor with her hair down. “I’m going out on patrol,” she says, tugging her gloves on.
“Should I come?”
“I don’t think so. Not yet.” Jason’s not angry; his request was half-hearted because even he knows he’s not ready yet. Steph gives him a sunny smile, although her eyes are hidden under the lenses of her mask. Honestly, it’s a little easier without the blank stare he now knows is behind it. Jesus, Bruce fucked them up. “I’ll be back in a few hours. Don’t wait up.”
She takes the stairs to the roof, he thinks, or maybe there’s some secret exit. Knowing this family, that’s more likely. Jason kicks off his shoes, lying back on the couch Steph deemed as his. His helmet flickers quietly at his feet, a constant rotation of images that he finds reassuring. He’s spent a lot of nights with just the helmet for company. Eventually he lets himself fall asleep, curled in a protective ball.
+
When Jason wakes up it’s day and Steph’s still not home, but there’s a flower shaped sticky note that reads ‘At school. Alfred’s lasagna in fridge. Eat!’ There’s a little scrawled smiley face that he finds weirdly endearing. He should probably be creeped out that she was in and out without his notice, but they’re Bats. It would be weirder if he could catch her.
When he checks his watch it’s around two, people rushing past on the street and never bothering to look up. That’s what makes it so easy to be a Bat in Gotham; no one ever looks up. He helps himself to a plateful of Alfred’s lasagna, triggering memories that are easy to shove aside in the light of day. He kind of wants to go out, maybe restock from one of his safehouses, but the scar on his face draws too much attention.
He showers instead, feeling very domestic as grime and blood slide off his skin. He jacks off out of habit, thinking of Rosie, his hands on the sharp cut of her hips. When he comes he mutters curses in Spanish, his mother’s language and the one he still thinks in.
Clean and feeling better than he has in a long time, he leaves the bathroom with a towel round his hips and finds Steph in the living room. Her uniform is peeled to the waist, pieces of armor at her feet. She’s wearing a blinding pink sports bra, bruises crawling up her left side and to her neck. The scars underneath don’t rival Jason’s, cause no one’s do, but they’re bad. The rest of the family are scarred, sure, but he and Steph were tortured.
There’s a small mark on her belly, a C-section scar from the pregnancy they’ll probably never talk about. She’s calmly patching up a thin slice on her shoulder, face impassive.
“I thought you had school?” he asks, knowing she’s aware he’s here.
“Something came up.” Finished, she slides the rest of her suit off, standing there in her sports bra and boxer briefs. There are cigarette burns on the insides of her thighs and Jason decides there and then that Black Mask is gonna die screaming.
There’s the familiar ugly anger unfolding in his stomach, fiercely protective. She’s a Bat, so she’s his, cause no one gets to hurt the Bats but him. Steph catches the line of his gaze, abruptly folding in on herself. When she talks it’s almost sing-song, making the hairs on the back of his neck rise. “Things happen, and now they’re gone,” she tells him, bending to put her sweatpants on.
Her hands shake, so faint most people wouldn’t notice. Jason was trained to notice. “Steph.”
“They’re gone,” she says again, firm. “We should get drunk.” It’s blatant change of subject, but he lets it go, more afraid of the void in her than he is willing to push.
“Okay.”
++
Steph’s got top-shelf whiskey, because she’s a Wayne, sort of, and Waynes get only the best. He’s tired and he thinks about the asylum. He never really slept, just had periods where he went away and came back fuzzy, Harley slapping at his face.
He waited down there in the dark for months, alone and scared and suffering. Bruce didn’t even wait a full year before replacing him. He keeps trying to express what it was like to Steph, filled with too much whiskey and too few barriers.
Eventually she just pats his knee, wearing the blank look that still freaks him out a little. “Jason. I get it. I know.” The rest of the family probably forgets about what happened with Black Mask, even seeing her scars as a stark reminder. She handles it better than him, tucking it away somewhere he can’t reach.
Everyone thinks she’s normal, back to the Steph Brown from before, but right now he’s looking at her face and there’s nothing moving behind her eyes. She ties up her hair, turning to show him a smooth patch of skin at the back of her head where hair should be. “Sionis cut a chunk out just for starters,” she says conversationally, letting her hair fall around her shoulders again. “He has it framed in his office.”
“I’m going to kill him,” Jason tells her, drunk enough to be honest. She nods, or at least he thinks she does. That decided, Jason peels up his shirt, showing a scar on his lower back.
“Joker beat me so bad I had to get a new kidney,” he says, remembering pissing blood for a while.
“From who?”
“Deathstroke. He just grew a new one, hand to God.”
“That’s so weird.”
Steph is gleeful, the tone of the conversation lighter. “Yeah,” Jason agrees, thinking fondly of Deathstroke and even more fondly of Ravager.
Steph slips off one of her socks, wiggling not five but four purple painted toes. “He cut off one of my toes and broke all my fingers,” she whispers, conspiratorial.
Jason feels a sick lurch in the pit of his stomach but soldiers on, opening his mouth wide. “Sixteen false teeth and a metal plate in my cheek.”
She laughs finally, leaning towards him with her hands clasped. “That’s awful. Oh my God, we shouldn’t be laughing at this.”
“That’s all we can do, Steph.”
Picking at the purple bandaid on her knee she nods, agreeable. “Yeah. I know.” She looks up, mischievous, more like the girl he’s sure she was before. “I’m definitely laughing that you died still wearing the green panties.” He snorts and shoves at her shoulder, taking another swig as he watches the sun go down over her shoulders.
+
Jason wakes up with a splitting headache and Steph passed out at the kitchen table, fingers curled around the bottle of whiskey. He takes it from her to put away; she mumbles but doesn’t wake.
She’s still half naked and it’s chilly enough that her skin is goosebumped, so he grabs a blanket from her room and drapes it over her shoulders. Hopefully going into her room isn’t some huge invasion of privacy. It’s almost four, so he figures she’s not going on patrol tonight. A night off is probably good for her. He pops an Advil, takes a piss, and goes back to sleep.
Steph’s gone again when he wakes up for good; he gets the feeling this will be a routine. There’s another sticky note, reading, ‘Hungover :( In class, but call if you need me’ Underneath is her number. Jason texts instead, hey, getting her answer when he’s in the kitchen scrounging for cereal.
She uses a lot of emojis, which makes him smile. They make plans for him to pick her up when she gets out of class at 7:30, which leaves him a long day to eat cereal and relax.
+
He gets dressed at 7:00 and grapples over to Gotham U, narrowly avoiding a black shadow perched high above on a gargoyle. It slips off into the night without a whisper. Cassandra, the other new girl, the one who doesn’t speak. The other member of the family who’s killed before. From what he sees before she flits off she’s tiny, probably relies more on speed and skill than the brute strength he can bring. He waves before dropping several stories to the next building, feeling the usual rush of adrenaline that keeps him young.
It’s 7:32 by the time he gets to Gotham U, the sun low in the sky. Steph is waiting on the steps, visible by the glint of her blonde hair. There’s someone with her, a stunning Indian girl who chatters excitedly, her voice rising and falling. He waits for the girl to leave before tossing a stone at Steph, who doesn’t flinch.
“Hey there, kid,” he calls, watching her snort.
“You’re barely two years older than me, dipshit.” She’s looser than he’s seen her, smiling easily. It’s false; as soon as they turn a corner she’s locked up again, flat but not blank. He thinks there are different levels, and this is baseline Steph.
“How was school?”
She shrugs, taking her suit out of her bag and pulling it on with practiced ease. “We’re still rebuilding. It got looted when you sacked the city,” she says, matter of fact but clearly not intending to be hurtful.
“Sorry.”
“We’ll be okay.” She jumps up on the nearest fire escape, climbing fast. He grapples instead, meets her on the roof. She makes a beautiful leap and dive onto the next one, cape fluttering behind her. “Hurry up!” she calls, waving. He grins and chases after.
They get home sweating, Steph bumping his shoulder as they head down the stairs from her roof. “You’ve got good form,” he says, aping Bruce’s rumbling growl. She smiles, pleased, pausing when they step into her living room. He almost runs into her, their armor clicking briefly.
Cassandra is standing there, a black shape against the lights from outside. “Stephanie,” she rasps, voice deeper than Jason would’ve expected.
“Hey, Cass,” Steph answers, flipping the lights on. It really doesn’t make this new Batgirl less creepy. “What’s up?”
Cassandra nods towards him, and he has no doubt she’s reading everything he’s putting off. “Hood.” She tilts her head like she’s listening to something. “Bad.” Jason’s stung, although clearly she has read everything he’s thinking, especially the worst parts.
“No, he’s not,” Steph says, calm even though she’s stepping between Cassandra and him. He’s touched that she’d bother. Bruce sure as hell never did.
“No. No,” Cassandra snaps, shaking her head, frustrated. She makes an annoyed noise before tugging off her mask. Underneath is a pretty Asian girl with a scar through her upper lip and a penetrating stare that reminds him uncomfortably of Bruce. Her hair is cropped close to her head, giving her a streamlined look that Jason is really liking. “Bad…people,” she grits out, clenching her fists.
“Bad people are coming for Jason?” Steph finishes, but Cassandra shakes her head again.
“Bad people…make us…do bad things,” she finally says, and Jason doesn’t really know her but he’s touched by the amount of effort that took. He knows her story. He knows the bad things she’s been made to do.
“Thank you,” he murmurs, watching as she slinks into Steph’s bedroom and doesn’t come out. “Is she…”
“There’s a secret exit,” Steph says, confirming his suspicion that secret exits run in the family.
“Is she always like that?” he asks, taking his helmet off and leaving it on the kitchen table. Steph shrugs, going into her room and returning in a sweater and purple shorts made out of a fabric that he wants to touch. “Patrol?”
“In a few hours.” She turns to grab something and he catches sight of a burn, high enough on her thigh to almost be on her ass. Always observant, she says, “It’s from Sionis.” When she looks back she’s still the Steph he knows, still in control. She lifts the hem of her shorts higher, showing a skull brand.
Jason’s slammed with memories of Joker squealing “Can I keep him?” and then the smell of his flesh burning. By that point he was so hungry it smelled good, once he stopped screaming. Now he carries it with him everywhere, and he touches his face without thinking.
“Sionis did this…third day? I think?” she says, craning her neck to get a good look at it.
“Did he, uh, ever…” Jason can’t get the words out, knowing he has no right to ask but needing to be sure.
“No,” she interrupts, turning fully to stand with hands on hips. “He never touched me like that.” Relieved, Jason nods, but she’s not finished. “He filmed everything and sent it to Batman.”
He’s going to rip Black Mask apart, revel in his blood like he should’ve in Joker’s. “I’m sorry,” he finally says, honest.
“It’s probably good to talk about.” Jason runs his thumb over the scar on his index finger that’s been there so long he doesn’t even remember getting it. He’s never been much for talking and he’s not going to start now. “Anyway, I’m hungry,” she says, brusquely changing the subject. “Let’s go out.”
+++
“You need clothes,” she informs him when they step onto the street, empty enough for a warm night. “You’re obvious.” He has to agree; even without the armor, he still sticks out. “And you smell.” He laughs, but he doesn’t think she notices, attention already on to something else.
There’s a food truck festival going on just a few blocks away, winding down but not closed. Jason never got anything like this, Steph scrounging through her purse for a few dollars to pay for quesadillas. He was on the extreme of both ends of the spectrum, either very rich or very poor. Maybe Steph has Bruce’s money behind her but she doesn’t wave it around like him, not even aware. Jason needs to keep reminding himself that he doesn’t hate Batman anymore.
They finish their food on one of the ugly piers that stretch into the bay, legs dangling over the side. Steph’s watching the waves, chewing slow. Jason’s thinking about Kaldur when she stands, offering a hand to help him up, her eyes looking somewhere over his shoulder.
“We should get ice cream.” It’s a hair too cold for ice cream, but Jason doesn’t argue. They order from a vendor who clearly thinks they’re dating, sending a disapproving glance at Jason’s scars and leather jacket.
Steph, in a sweater and shorts with her hair down, looks so wholesome Jason really does almost feel dirty, although he knows the real Steph is behind that, her humor and blankness. They walk back in companionable silence, Steph licking vanilla ice cream from the tips of her fingers. They halt for a few minutes to stop an assault, so easy it’s near pathetic.
Jason looms over the terrified perp while Steph watches from a distance. The woman they saved is overwhelmingly grateful, thanking them in Spanish after she gets a look at Jason. She’s a sex worker in heels that make Jason’s calves ache just to look at, unharmed except for finger shaped bruises around her wrists.
Her name is Layla, and Jason marks it down in his head for later. People like her aren’t protected by the cops, so he’ll keep an eye out.
“You’re good with people,” Steph observes as they walk away.
“Not really.” People are either afraid or they dislike him, he’s found, and tries not to care.
“The militia was pretty loyal to you,” she says, and Jason thinks of his army, hundreds of them, but they still failed against the Bat because they thought his odds were impossible. Batman wins because nobody believes that anyone would be crazy enough to try the things he does. But Bruce is. Bruce is crazy enough for anything.
Jason shrugs, not wanting to think about them. The militia mostly dispersed after his attack on Gotham, either arrested or paid enough from his leftover accounts that they could disappear. Steph is kind enough to change the subject.
+++
Jason hates the scar, hates that he touches it when he’s nervous, an obvious tell. He hates seeing it in the mirror every morning, the first thing anyone sees. Every time it’s like he’s being burned all over again, on his knees before Joker.
“Oh, you should try makeup,” Steph says over his shoulder, dropping a tube of tattoo concealer in front of him. In a few minutes the scar is gone, and Jason sees…himself, he thinks, for the first time in a while. It isn’t until later that he realizes his foundation is too dark for Steph; she must’ve bought it special.
+++
The next week, when Jason is going to meet Steph at school as usual, he lands on a Clock Tower gargoyle. He’s only there a few seconds before he hears Barbara’s voice right in his ear, nearly killing him all over again.
“Jay.”
He winces, but he’ll allow it; if anyone deserves the privilege, it’s her. “What are you doing in my helmet?”
“Hacking’s sort of my thing now. You know. After.”
He does know; seeing Barbara in a wheelchair was almost worse than the new Robin. Another casualty of Bruce’s war. “Yeah.”
“You can come in,” she offers, and a hatch opens somewhere overhead. He hurt Barbara most of all, when he took over the city. Kidnapping her, shooting close enough to her head that shrapnel cut her cheek, almost killing her father. The guilt comes as a pit, swallowing him up til it’s hard to breathe. He’ll hate himself forever.
“Barb. I can’t.” He can’t even get off this gargoyle, going over images of her face when his army kicked in her door, tossing her wheelchair aside like trash. He makes a choked noise and jumps to a safe rooftop, rolling to crouch. “I can’t, I-”
It’s too soon, she’ll still have scrapes from him, from crawling away on cement and gravel. He took away her mobility and she’s forgiven him, making hush noises through the comms. They grew up together and he used her as a bargaining chip.
“Jason. You can come back another time. Door’s still open.” He hears the hatch slide shut, then her quiet laugh. “Metaphorically.” He nods, knowing she can see it in one of the cameras she has around here. He would know about the cameras; he had to disable them to kidnap her. Hating himself, sick and ashamed, Jason retreats to Steph’s apartment.
+
“So I guess the school thing was off today?” Steph asks when she comes in the door, books tucked under her arm. There are wisps of blonde curls that she blows off her face as she sets her books down, coming over to Jason where he’s curled in a miserable ball on his bed.
“M’sorry,” he mutters, knowing his eyes are red-rimmed and obvious.
“Oracle called.” It was always Barb who kept the family together, the only one of them capable of communication. He shrinks even further, feeling small although he’s 6’3 and broader even than Bruce.
“I hurt her,” he says, clutching at his helmet.
“She’s tough. Probably the toughest of all of us.” Steph folds her legs under herself and watches him, patient. “And Alfred sent over clothes for you. He said that a Wayne should never go without.”
“I’m not a Wayne,” he growls, instinctive.
“You’re being kind of dramatic,” she points out, calm. She’s wearing flip flips today, and he can see the space where her baby toe should be, the skin knotted.
“You never have emotions, how would you know?” he snaps, and she frowns.
“Yes, I do.”
But they’re mostly on the surface, she’s not all there, he thinks, swallowing the words down. “Sorry,” he says instead, regaining control of himself with effort.
“It’s okay. You had a hard day.” She’s standing, long legs and tiny jean shorts. The American Dream.
Jason eyes up the claw marks above her left knee, right over the purple bandaid. “Catwoman?”
“Yeah,” she answers, fond. Jason gets it; it’s hard not to like Catwoman, even when she scratches.
“I almost lost an earlobe to her teeth once,” he reminisces. “It was my twelfth birthday.”
Steph steps away, nodding in agreement. Stretching, she goes up on her toes, muscles in her thighs flexing. “Cass and I are going to a movie tonight. Wanna come?”
“Yeah,” he says, a little surprised how easy it is with her. If this was anyone else, even Barb, they’d still be talking about his feelings or some shit. Steph just smiles.
+
Later, he’s sandwiched between them, watching something with more zombies than sense. One leaps out, slavering, blood dripping down his chin. Bored, Jason looks to Cassandra, who’s watching with rapt attention, chin in hands. She hasn’t moved since they sat down.
He looks to Steph next; she has her feet on the seat in front of her, a far off look on her face as she eats Sno-Cones by the handful. Something explodes on screen and Jason jumps enough that she looks over with a small smile and squeezes his hand once before letting go.
“Scared?” she whispers, leaning in close. Her hair smells like strawberries when it brushes his cheek.
“Nah,” he whispers back, nose briefly touching the shell of her ear. She makes a disagreeing noise and goes back to the movie. He watches her for a few more moments, the upward tip of her nose, the light from the screen flickering against her skin, before he looks away.
+
When they get back to her apartment Steph immediately changes into her suit, slipping on thick pads of armor, brushing her hair out. Jason gets into the sweats that Alfred got, poking at his abs, vaguely worrying he’s losing muscle tone. He hasn’t trained in weeks, not since before the invasion.
“How long will you be out?” When he was Robin, he did it in shifts, six hours a night or whenever there was an emergency.
“A few hours. It’s just a Tuesday night.” She puts her mask on, the plates of armor folding over her face, and looks up at him through white-out lenses. “Go to sleep.”
“Yes, ma’am,” he answers, saluting. She sticks her tongue out and heads up the stairs.
+
Jason’s still awake when she comes back, absorbed in a book. He never let himself read while he was the Knight. Steph comes down the stairs as usual, quiet as a ghost.
“Hey,” he grunts, realizing how tired he is when he looks up and his head swims. Steph doesn’t speak, heading for the kitchen and the whiskey she keeps there. She drinks straight from the bottle, deep gulps that he can hear from his place on the couch. She gags, shakes her head, and sits at the table. “Steph?”
He goes to sit across from her, seeing the fine tremors in her hands. “You okay?” he asks, pressing the catches on her mask that he knows will fold it back.
Underneath she’s gone; he’s not sure what she sees when she looks at him but he doesn’t like it. “Black Mask was at the docks tonight.” She rubs hard at her wrists, not seeming to notice. “He caught me for a couple seconds.”
“Steph…”
“He licked my face,” she hisses, finally breaking but it’s honestly less scary. “He put his hands on me and said I taste even better than he remembers.” Jason is so viscerally angry it feels like a living thing, snarling in his chest. He hasn’t been like this since he crawled his way out of Arkham, vowing to kill Bruce.
He takes a deep breath through his nose, too loud over Steph’s quiet sobs, then reaches a careful hand across the table to touch hers, relieved when she doesn’t snatch it away.
“Steph. Hey.” She looks up, sniffling, more present than he’s ever seen her. “Do you want me to kill him?” There’s a long pause where all he can hear is his heart pounding, knowing that even if she says no he’ll still do it. Finally she nods, fierce; all his favorite girls are warrior women, he’s realized. “Good.”
He’ll do for her what she can’t do without crossing a line he really doesn’t want her to cross. She smiles weakly, going blank again but he’s seen what’s behind it. He squeezes her hand once before letting go.
+
He sleeps all day, unbothered by Steph getting up and going to class. He leaves before she comes home, not wanting her to have second thoughts if she sees him.
Sionis has gotten sloppy in his old age; his men are openly patrolling a warehouse, tempting. Jason’s not so out of practice that taking down eleven armed men is hard, especially now that he doesn’t have to worry about killing them.
He’s always had a hard time with that; he’s a brawler, and he doesn’t know how to hold back. He takes down the last guy and puts him on his knees, gun to his head. “I want a word with your boss, Black Mask. Where is he?” he asks, calm and in control.
“You ain’t gonna kill me. You ain’t gonna kill me!” the thug scoffs, they’re always so sure of themselves when they see the symbol on his chest. He grits his teeth, hating being under Bruce’s mark again and hating even more that that’s Harley’s work talking.
“Do I look like Batman to you? Rethink your answer before I fill you up with lead,” Jason growls, crowding in close. His bulk does most of the work. He can feel his heart throbbing in his ears, escalating as he gets angrier and doesn’t try to push it down.
The thug’s eyes widen. “Downtown! His office! But you ain’t gonna get him! He knows you’re coming, freak!” No, he doesn’t.
Jason rolls his eyes under the helmet, muttering, “Good,” before he shoots the guy point blank. He thinks of it like taking out the trash, thinks of the evil this guy would’ve continued to do. It’s good. He’s still under control.
+
Sionis is hiding out in the busiest part of town, cars blaring four stories below. “Black Mask!” Jason shouts, bursting through the door. He brushes aside henchmen who can barely throw a punch; every blow he lands makes his blood sing. He was made for this.
Black Mask puts up a good fight, sending wave after wave of men who are nothing, they’re nothing, all Jason can feel is the incandescent blaze of his rage. After he’s killed half of Black Mask’s men and maimed the rest, he dangles the bastard out a window.
“Do you know what you did to her?” he screams, half out of his mind with anger. Black Mask’s babbling, promising money, women, drugs, his hands scrambling at Jason’s coat. Sionis put those hands on Steph, he took something bright and beautiful and left a wasteland behind. Jason doesn’t bother letting him answer, drops him out the window limbs flailing. “Say hi to Joker for me,” he calls after, climbing over the frame and landing on Sionis’ chest, the bones crunching like paper.
He’s dead; Jason rips the mask off to make sure. Already there are people gathering around, taking pictures. In Gotham, they don’t waste time with shock. This’ll be all over the news tomorrow. Bruce will probably have a heart attack, his most precious rule broken. Whatever.
Jason grapples back up to Black Mask’s office, finds Steph’s lock of hair; it’s still attached to a chunk of skin and Jason grimaces, holding the frame away from himself, wishing he could’ve hurt Black Mask worse. He leaves through the roof, hearing sirens a few blocks off.
+
He goes to a safehouse before heading back to Steph; he’s too angry to be around anyone else right now. Blood slicks his armor, so he takes that into the shower with him, methodically cleaning til the plates gleam and his heartbeat has slowed. His hands will stop shaking as the adrenaline goes down. He changes into sweats before heading back to Steph, armor and helmet hidden in a dufflebag.
+
He has time to think about what he’s going to say as he walks back, frame dangling from his fingertips. There’s no point in it, really, and he knows that. Steph will see through him and find what she wants.
She’s asleep when he comes in; her bedroom door is cracked which he takes as permission. Usually she keeps it shut. She sleeps on her back, head turned so far it looks uncomfortable. Jason thinks she looks like one of the Disney princesses from his mom’s favorite movies, and is immediately annoyed by the thought. People like him are never in them.
He puts the frame on the nightstand near her head, pulling the blankets further over her shoulders. He’s so much more aware of everything for some reason; the rasp of his calluses against fabric, the shimmering gold of Steph’s hair, her lips parted. It’s probably leftover adrenaline. The sun will be up soon, so he tears himself away as it breaks over the nearest buildings, giving the whole room a warm glow.
Steph wakes up as he’s dropping off, coming out of her room with a blanket around her shoulders. The frame is between her fingers; she looks at it with no expression. “He’s dead,” Jason says, abruptly wide awake.
She gives him a vindictive sliver of a grin that’s more real than anything he’s seen on her face before. “Yeah. Oracle just called.”
“How’s Batman?”
She shrugs the blanket off, uncaring where it lands, and goes to the kitchen to make cereal. “He’s furious.”
“Is he going to…” Jason isn’t sure how to end that sentence. Arrest him? Come over here?
“He said that he understands your reasons but doesn’t approve.” That is so Bruce, cold as hell and always disappointed, Jason a shame to the family. Steph leaves the frame on the table; she won’t look directly at it.
Jason doesn’t know what to say. ‘Congrats, he’s dead and it still hurts?’ ‘You’ll still see his face in your nightmares?’ ‘He died screaming and that’s the best I can give you?’
She’s mechanically eating her cereal, staring out the kitchen window. Jason wants to be comforting but he’s never been good with words. Steph’s locked tight with no way in, no cracks for him to dig his fingers. He’s not sure he wants to. Far as he can tell, Steph keeps everything at a distance. Hopefully this won’t cause a breakdown that he’s really not capable of handling.
She finishes her cereal, pushing the bowl away. “Thank you.” There’s only a vague tremble in her voice. That’s my girl, Jason thinks.
“You’re welcome.” She gives him the barest sliver of a smile, the glint of triumph in her eyes. For now, that’s enough.
+++
At the asylum, Jason was hit, over and over, and sure he learned to take a punch as a kid, his dad was fond of it, but this was. This was different. It restructured his whole face; when he got out of Arkham he didn’t recognize himself. Getting hit doesn’t bother him anymore.
He takes the punch that goes for his jaw and laughs. “Come on, Steph. I thought this was going to be hard.” She narrows her eyes, focusing, throws a solid left hook that’s classic Bruce followed by a leg sweep he knows the Replacement uses often.
When that fails she flips to her feet, gets her thighs round his neck and throws him halfway across the room. He’s more than a little turned on, hoping she doesn’t know. “Jesus, Steph. Where’d you learn that one?” he asks, getting to his feet. His shoulderblades ache where he hit the wall, but of course, he’s had worse. The Joker dislocated his shoulders sixteen times.
“Batwoman,” she answers, scratching at a scar on her neck that spiderwebs thinly onto her jaw. “She took an interest.” He imagines she would; Batwoman has a thing for pretty blondes. “After the…” Steph clears her throat, “After Black Mask. She said I would be prepared next time.”
“Next time?” Steph looks strangely vulnerable, just in her sports bra and shorts, washed out by bright lights.
“Sionis caught me cause I was being cocky. I tried to take on thirty guys at once. They took me down easy. I’m just lucky they didn’t. You know.” Rape her, he finishes in his head, stomach churning. “When they brought me to Black Mask I was so sure Batman was coming. So stubborn. I spit in Sionis’ face and that’s when they tied me down and if I was better-” She’s looking behind him, probably seeing Sionis.
“It wasn’t your fault,” he protests, automatic. “We all get caught.” Some worse than others, him and Steph much worse, but it happens. “Dick even has a GPS tracker under his skin.”
“Next time I’ll be prepared,” she says again, settling into a fighting stance. Jason’s tired, unsettled, thinking about Black Mask’s men and their greedy, grasping hands.
“Can we go eat instead?” he asks, hoping she won’t refuse, throwing herself into her work rather than dwell on the past.
“Yeah, okay.” Small victory achieved, Jason smiles to himself.