Ex-Dead Robin, Dead Ex-Robin
by Weaver
Steph tries to avoid the room where the bodies are, even though it's got the comfiest chairs. It's not like the sight of the dead baby ever stops filling her with guilt, but it's easier to deal with when Steph doesn't have to see its body as well.
Most of the dead kids just play happily in the next-door apartment; it's only the baby who trails Steph. It's not old enough to be scared of Jason like the others are. Steph's not sure what they're scared of. He's already killed them. It's not like he can even see them any more.
Half the time he doesn't even see Steph, now. She has to shout his name or move the curtains around or something to get his attention. If it gets any worse she's gonna ask him to put up a sign saying "TALK TO STEPH" right opposite the front door. Or a big poster with her face on it, something like that. Maybe stuck over the door to the kids' bodies, so she doesn't forget and open it.
He remembers her today. "Hey, Girl Robin," he says, opening the front door. Whenever Jason comes home it's like the whole place fills up with energy, crackling and fizzing invisibly. The dead baby wakes up at the sound of the door, and Steph puts her down on the floor to kick. Jason doesn't like her paying attention to the others when he's around.
"You look tired, Wonder," she says, as he comes in. He does, but he also looks … happy, in a way that he doesn't often get to be. The hood is hanging by its hinge from his hand, and his hair's all sweaty and flattened.
When he was dead he never got sweaty. She kind of likes him like that, though.
There's blood on his boots. "Long day," he says. "Long, long fucking day." And he topples backwards, deliberately, onto the sofa, where he lies grinning up at the air and saying nothing else. Steph folds her arms and leans against the wall, waiting. She has to focus to lean against the wall instead of through it, but she's getting better at that, even as it gets harder to stay real.
"You better not be expecting me to peel your boots off and massage your feet," she says, when the silent waiting gets to her. Jason's had much more Bat-training than she ever got. He could probably outwait a rock.
"Wouldn't mind it," he says, still wearing that shit-eating grin. "What else are you for?"
Which stings a bit more than it should, because Steph really hates just drifting around Jason's apartment all day looking after the kids who used to live here. It's like she's a 50s housewife or something, instead of a dead ex-Robin. But there's nowhere else to go. She could always haunt the Manor or her mum's place, she supposes, but her mum doesn't need any more medication than she's already on. And Alfred would probably just give her tea. "Fuck off," she says. "So what's the big grin for?"
Jason doesn't answer. He peels his own boots off, tosses them at the wall beside her head, peels himself up off the sofa – no creaking joints or grunts, not for a bat-kid, just effortless motion – and then heads to the kitchen. Probably after coffee.
Steph misses coffee.
She sits down against the wall, and finds herself staring at the bloodstains on his boots. High, chunky boots, with straps and thick leather and solid heels. As far as he could get from green pixie shoes. How did he get blood that high up his calf? Whose blood is it? She puts her hand through the stain, and it feels … damp, like it's going to come off on her fingers when she takes her hand away. Like it's real.
"It's Joker's," Jason says. He's right behind her. Such a Bat, whatever he says now. Wait, what?
"Joker's? How – okay, I'm not even gonna ask." She pulls her hand back. It still feels like there's blood on her fingers.
Jason smiles, in a hard little way. He's good at 'hard'. "I beat him up." He walks right through her, picks up the boot, and examines the stain carefully. Then he adds, casually, "With a crowbar."
Steph's not – well, okay, she's done some dumb things. But the significance of that, at least, doesn't pass her by. "How'd it feel?"
His little smile turns into a full-strength beam. "Fucking awesome. Oh, Steph, you and I, we've been on the wrong side all along. This is so much simpler. So much better."
His eyes are lit up with excitement, with happiness, with something else that makes Steph cold all over her immaterial body. She doesn't want to listen any more. She wants to point out that she's not exactly on his side, she's just here because nobody else can see or hear her, and because he was nice to her when she was alive and he was dead and she feels she ought to return the favour.
"Sounds like you're enjoying life," she says, instead. He doesn't like her to be argumentative.
"I'm enjoying taking it," he says, dropping the boot. "But I left Joker alive."
Steph thinks of her own battered body, somewhere in a Wayne-funded grave. "How alive?"
Jason's face is smooth and square, and when he turns angry eyes on her she's never seen anything more terrifying, not even when she was alive. "Alive enough."
He picks up the hood, turns it over in his hands a few times, and then tosses it through Steph; it knocks the door to the kids' bodies open, and the dead baby starts crying again.
Steph doesn't pick her up, because it still feels like there's blood on her fingers.