Title: Scar Tissue
Author: walutahanga
Rating: PG-13
Disclaimer: Seriously, does anyone read these anymore? *sighs* No these characters are not mine and I make no money from this. This is purely for entertainment.
Summary: A missing scene during War Games.
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When Stephanie wakes, Leslie breathes a sigh of relief. It is a good sign. Until this moment she hadn't been sure that Stephanie would make it.
"Where… where…"
The girl's words are slurred, her thoughts muddled from the post-op sedatives.
"The hospital," Leslie tells her. "You gave us quite a scare."
She wants to shake the girl and extract the promise that she will never, ever pick up a mask again. Instead she pats Stephanie's hand and asks if she wants any visitors before she falls asleep again.
Tears well from Stephanie's eyes, slipping down her face to stain her hair and pillow.
"It's okay, honey," Leslie says, stroking her hair. "You're going to be fine."
"He's not going to want to see me," she says. The words are babbling out, near incoherent in her distress. "He made me give up Robin and I tried to get it back but I screwed up, and god, oh god, I got all those people killed. He's going to be so mad at me…"
Leslie decides that's enough. If the girl carries on like this, she's going to make herself sick. Leslie injects a sedative into the IV line and watches the girl's eyelashes flutter shut, her face calming in repose.
When the figure unfolds from the shadows, Leslie doesn't blink. She does feel a moment of disgust. This is not the time for melodrama or hoarse, whispery voices in the dark. She bends to check Stephanie's IV, ignoring the shadow that ghosts up behind her.
"Will she live?" The voice is so low, she can't identify the speaker. Not Nightwing, surely. He has enough sense to come round the front entrance. And she knows Batman's rasp well enough to know this one is not it. Perhaps it is the former Robin, who had some sweet romance with the Spoiler. Leslie checks the bitterness of her tone.
"Perhaps. It's hard to say."
The form moves about the bed in her peripheral vision.
"Who was it?"
"You don't know?"
"I wasn't there."
Guilt. She can work with guilt, though she wishes it were Batman experiencing it, not this child.
"Black Mask," she says.
He repeats the name, memorising it, and something about the way he stands makes things click together inside her head. She draws a sharp breath, taking a step back.
"Who are you?"
This isn't any of them, not any of the costumed vigilantes she's familiar with. Batman is territorial, and she knows all the criminals who like to fool themselves with a mask and a new name. This man is younger than Nightwing, with dark hair and a firm jaw. He's wearing a red mask that tickles her memory with some half-remembered dread.
He grins at her; it is a hard, savage expression like a panther baring it's teeth.
"Lets just say I'm family."
He moves to the other side of the bed. He reaches out, and Leslie tenses, but all he does is stroke Stephanie's hair back from her face.
"You too, huh?" He says to the girl, almost too soft for Leslie to hear. "He never learns, does he."
"Who are you?" Leslie asks again, unnerved. She wants to head for the door, and security, but she knows he could stop her without even trying.
The man gives her a long, calculating look.
"You disapprove of this," he says. "Don't you."
Leslie's fingers curl into her palms, nails digging in.
"I disapprove of children playing at being heroes," she says flatly. "And adults who encourage them."
He smiles again.
"So make him stop."
She laughs out loud: a harsh, bitter sound.
"How? How am I supposed to stop him when the criminal master-minds of Gotham have tried and failed?"
"Scar him," he says, and his voice is suddenly savage. "Hurt him. Hurt him, Leslie, so that it leaves a scar, and so that he never forgets. Cut off the limb and cauterize the wound so nothing can grow back."
There's a frightening intensity to his words. But there's also a terrible temptation. Leslie finds herself leaning in towards him, to hear him better.
"How?"
The man smiles again, hand drifting down to touch the IV line.
"What are you doing?" Leslie says sharply, voice rising.
"Nothing hurts Batman more than one of his little Robins being hurt. The death of one should do quite nicely."
"Get the hell away from her."
The man laughs. His hand is untangling the IV line so that it lies smooth on the blanket.
"I didn't mean for real. I mean, shit, what do you take me for? The Joker?"
Leslie doesn't answer, because there's a manic edge to this man she doesn't want to push.
"I've worked with the bat, Thompson," he continues. "I know how to fool him. I can make Stephanie disappear and she can be in Africa in three day's time while an identical corpse rots in this hospital's morgue with her name on the tag. I can get you reassigned and you can be nursing a 'Sophie Briar' back to health in her family home in Kenya next week." He tilts his head with a sly smirk. "Think about it."
Leslie looks down at Stephanie's pale face against the pillow. She thinks of children fighting monsters, and costumed freaks with god complexes, and of the opportunities come and gone for children of her own.
She doesn't have to think for long.
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