A/N: So over on Tumblr, an anon asked me how Steph was involved in the Battle for the Cowl.

One week, several skype conversations, and almost 5k later, I finally have an answer. It's certainly not the complete picture, because I didn't want to drag in everything, because I don't think that's relevant to Steph's story. Assume a lot of stuff is happening off-page with the rest of the family.

As usual, please remember that Steph is not a reliable narrator, and that how she interprets events and how other people interpret events are sometimes rather different.

Writing this was a challenge, because I'm trying to create a bridge between what I've already written, as well as answer some questions. I've talked with a lot of people about how dark this AU is, and how hard it's going to be to set Steph on a path of redemption.

This isn't the story of redemption.

To find redemption, you first need to want to be redeemed.

This is that story.

Bruce Wayne was dead.

Stephanie Brown had scars on her face that Bruce Wayne caused and lungs that emptied of air once she got the phone call. It didn't make sense. She hated him. He had done nothing for her except reject her and stop her and put her down so far that she had ended up six feet under, dying with his secrets on her tongue while wearing the uniform he had given her.

But she still cried when she heard the news.

She was in her apartment, the tiny little corner of the city where she'd been hiding. Hiding from the Bat, from the Oracle, was a pain. It took effort and decoys and long, complicated routes home.

And even then, she knew she was only left alone because of a twisted guilt complex and how Gotham City kept everyone too busy to worry about her enough to try to really stop her.

She sat on her couch and cried and cried and cried, wondering why Bruce Wayne still had this power over her, after all this time.

She hated him.

She was mourning him.

She splashed water on her face and gelled her hair and covered her bruises in makeup. She put on a Kevlar vest and a leather jacket, and slipped on a motorcycle helmet instead of her normal helmet.

She rode her bike to her office, where her intelligence reports were waiting for her.

"Is it true?" Tina asked, looking pale and nervous. Behind her, the other girls gathered, all of them looking terrified as well. Steph bit her lip.

"I'm not sure yet," she lied. Better to keep the panic from spreading. There would be riots, when Arkham heard. When the Joker heard.

Her thoughts turned to Sidonis—no. Now was not the time. She couldn't afford to lose her focus right now. Now that Bruce was gone, she'd have all the time in the world to kill him. She could enact every last twisted fantasy she'd ever had about how she would kill him, and no one could stop her.

She went into her office, and locked the door behind her.

Batgirl—no, Cass—had disappeared; no one knew where she was, although rumors were flying about Batgirl's location. Steph tried to dig up everyone else.

Barbara was coordinating with the Birds of Prey—the Oracle's signal was as strong as ever. But she would have to be scrambling, with Bruce gone and the Justice League in shambles after the Crisis.

Tim Drake had been spotted by paparazzi leaving Wayne Tower—rumors were circulating through the business world that he was filing paperwork to take over leadership of the company. But there had been no spottings of Robin.

Dick Grayson was also missing in action. Steph leaned back, trying to think. Dick Grayson was an unknown, a messy variable. She'd never met him, before. As Steph, she'd listened to Tim talk for ages about his wonderful big brother; as Spoiler she'd heard every single hero she'd ever met gush about Nightwing. And as Robin? He was the one. The legacy she was supposed to live up to, the goal that she could never reach.

Afterwards, in the cell, sitting in there for days on end, seeing no one but Cass and her mother, occasionally broken up by visits from Tim and Bruce and Babs, Dick Grayson had never sought her out. Jason Todd had, out of a perverse curiosity more than anything else, but Dick Grayson, if he had come to see her, had always stayed on the other side of the mirrored glass.

Talia didn't answer Steph's calls, which put Steph further on edge. She threw her phone across the room, running her fingers through her hair. The itch was back. She needed to fight something. But she couldn't. She had to figure out what was going on.

"What are we going to do?" Nell asked her, sitting on her desk, and Steph found herself smiling a dangerous grin.

The world was spiraling out of control. It had already been a week, and there was no Batman sightings. No one was stepping up to the plate.

Stephanie Brown thought of glass cases and gravestones and a Robin symbol in a pool of blood, of the angry snarling of a man telling her to go home.

"I'm going to be Batman," she declared, throwing an arm around Nell's too-narrow shoulders. "What do you say, kid, want to be my Robin?"

The words didn't taste bitter in her mouth. She wondered if that meant she was healing.

It wasn't like she was changing anything up. It hadn't taken long to raid one of the spare Batcaves she remembered knowing about and finding enough basic gear to create a crude Batsuit for herself.

It felt like a cheap Comic-Con knock-off compared to the real thing; the belt was virtually empty, and the holsters she'd attached to it to hold her guns felt crude. The cape was too long, so she'd had to cut it. The boots didn't fit, so she wore her old combat boots.

Nell stayed back in the apartment, sketching out her Robin costume. Steph's crude Bat had enough Kevlar in it to protect her. Steph wasn't risking Nell.

"I could go out as Scarlet," Nell insisted, scrambling to her feet, looking for her goggles.

"Not a chance, kid. Tonight's going to be rough. It's a trial run." Steph slipped on the cowl, and left.

The cowl was so different from the helmet; even more different from the full face mask she'd worn as Spoiler and the domino mask she'd worn as Robin. This was one of Bruce's old cowls, fitted with all sorts of high tech gadgets that she didn't know how to use, and probably couldn't use without a satellite uplink to either the Oracle's network or the Batcave.

And she wasn't going near either of those anytime soon.

It was a normal patrol.

But there was still something different in the way people skirted around her, in the way she held herself, in the way the bad guys screamed when they saw her coming.

She was the Bat.

Things went downhill three days later, in the form of Timothy Jackson Drake.

She didn't know how he'd found her. She was by the rail tracks, looking for signs of a drug cartel that she was tracking.

"Steph!"

His voice was like something out of a dream. It froze her, sticking her feet to the ground.

For a moment, she felt like she was sixteen and stupid again. Like all she wanted was to laugh at him and foil a bad guy's plot and then sit on the swing set and stare at the stars.

But then she turned around.

He wasn't wearing the Robin costume, like she expected. Normally, that calmed her down, helped soothe her rage. But now it made her nervous.

Tim was always good at manipulating people, just like Bruce.

"What are you doing?"

He stuck his hands in his pockets, trying to look casual. "I heard rumors about a new Batman." His eyes looked dark. "One who killed people."

"I'm doing what needs to be done," she snapped. Her patience was already fraying, and he'd barely said a dozen words yet.

He gave her a look she couldn't interpret. "Steph, please. Stop this."

"Why, because you asked me too, all nice and polite, instead of sending Cass in to knock me unconscious and throw me in a cell first? No thanks," she spat, preparing to turn away.

"Steph!" His voice stopped her in her tracks again, and she hated him for that. "I'm sorry. This is all my fault. If I hadn't… you wouldn't…"

Steph threw the first punch before she had even fully processed what he was saying.

"If I hadn't quit as Robin, the Black Mask never would have kidnapped you!" Tim sprawled backwards, but he kept talking. "And then you wouldn't be—"

"This?" Steph slammed her foot against Tim's stomach. "A fucking murderous bitch?"

"Steph," he said, "Please, I can help you. Let me fix this."

"This isn't yours to fix!" She yelled, punching him again. "Want to swoop in and save the day, huh? Want to fucking make me another one of your heroic accomplishments, the fucking damsel in distress, out of her mind because her poor little feminine brain couldn't handle being tortured, is that it?" She kept punching him, over and over again. She didn't stop. She didn't want to. She wasn't sure if she even could.

"Steph, please," he gasped, but Steph was in no mood to listen. She threw him down to the ground and kept hitting him. His face was a mess of blood, and Steph wasn't sure if she was still talking or not.

It didn't matter, because as long as she was hitting him he wasn't talking.

"Stop!"

For a second, Steph thought it was Bruce. She saw the cape fluttering, saw the symbol, saw the cowl, and thought, for a terrible moment, that Bruce Wayne had been alive the whole time, and that she'd fallen for some twisted trick or ploy of his.

Then the reality hit her hard. Cassandra Cain flew through the air, tackling her to the ground. "Stay away from him!" Her voice a growl to rival Bruce's.

"Cass," Tim croaked out. Blood was trickling from his mouth. Cass loosened her grip, straining to check on Tim and hold Steph at the same time.

Steph twisted, and Cass's fingers slipped.

The HUD inside of her cowl told her the exact time.

Steph laughed, dizzy with… something. She didn't know what.

"Guess I'll catch you later then," she said, before throwing herself forward as the 12:15 Eastbound to Bludhaven rushed by.

Her hand caught the rail on the side of the train just barely, and she held on for dear life. She needed… what did she need? Where could she go? What was she going to do?

Withdraw. Recover. Strategize.

Any plans she'd had had gone out the window the minute she'd seen Tim Drake. Any contingencies had shattered when Cassandra Cain had returned, dressed as Batman and ready to fight.

He'd come to her as Tim. She couldn't wrap her head around that. Why would he do such a thing?

She closed her eyes, trying to plan out the train route in her head. When should she jump?

The decision was made for her by a Batarang imbedding itself into her hand. Screaming, she let go, and went falling.

Steph was good at falling.

But not when a furious Cassandra Cain was falling with her, punching and pummeling every part of Steph she could reach.

Cassandra Cain was the best there was; Steph had known this for years now.

But she'd never been on the receiving end of the entirety of Cass's fury.

Cass didn't say a word. She didn't need to. She seized Steph by the cape and threw her, sending her sprawling into the ground.

They were in a tunnel; Steph could feel the rail dig into her side as she tried to roll onto her feet. The train was already a long ways away, the light fading in the distance; another one wouldn't be coming for a while. She was stuck with a very angry Cassandra Cain, and there was no way out.

Cassandra strode forward, each footstep louder than a gunshot to Steph's ears. Somehow, Cass had managed to disarm her of most of her weapons in the initial tumble off the train. She spotted her gun, gleaming faintly in the tunnel lights, towards the edge.

She lunged for it, knowing there was no way she'd ever reach it.

Kick. Steph's nose shattered.

Punch. Steph's couldn't breathe as she doubled over, clutching her stomach.

Throw. Her back collided with a concrete pillar.

She tried to regain her balance, but there was no time. Cassandra Cain had just seen her try to beat her brother to death, and there was no mercy, no gentleness, no regret.

Steph finally was facing a Cassandra Cain she'd be happy to fight, and she didn't stand a snowball's chance in hell.

Finally, Cass paused, breathing heavily, her fingers still curled into a fist, ready to hit Steph again. She held Steph upright by the scruff of her neck, which was good, because Steph's legs were on the verge of giving way.

"Why?" Cass demanded.

Steph panted for breath. She checked the inside of her mouth with her tongue, checking to see if she'd lost any teeth. None. Cassandra Cain was too careful, as always. She still tasted blood, but that was because she'd bitten the inside of her cheek while trying not to yell.

Steph grimaced, preparing for the hit. "Because he said he was sorry. Because he said it was his fault that I'm like this."

Stephanie Brown was not Tim Drake's tragedy. She was not Bruce Wayne's failures.

And it hadn't been until she'd heard Tim Drake apologize that she'd realized that it was true.

Cass's glare deepened. Then she reached into her belt.

"Bruce wanted you to have this."

A pair of sunglasses were jammed onto her face roughly. Steph stilled, confused.

Then an image appeared.

"Hello Stephanie."

Steph cried out, trying to snatch the glasses off. With a fluid movement, Cass was behind her, pinning her arms to her side.

"You. Need. To. See. This." Cass snarled in her ear, and Steph continued to struggle. She didn't want to hear this. She didn't need to know how much Bruce hated her, or worse, how much he pitied her. How all of this could have been avoided if she'd just been a good girl and stayed home like he told her to.

"If you're watching this, I'm dead."

"Fuck you!" She screamed, and she wasn't sure if she was talking to Bruce or to Cass.

Cass kept holding her as the fight slowly died in her. Bruce Wayne's ghost kept talking and Steph fell to pieces.

"I was wrong."

Tears spilled out of her eyes, wet and hot and itchy and heavy, her chest rising and falling in quick bursts as she tried to keep quiet, trying not to make a sound. Crying was one thing, but she would not sob.

"You're right. I failed you. So many times over."

Cass let go of her, and she fell to her knees, screaming. Her voice echoed back to her, ringing in her ears.

"You were always better than I thought you were. Make me proud. Robin."

"Fuck you!" She ripped the glasses off her face, throwing them to the ground and stomping on them.

It had been the end of the message.

And then there was silence.

The two of them stood facing each other, both of them looking down at the shattered remains of Bruce's last message to Stephanie Brown.

Steph's breathing was heavy and uneven. She was pretty sure her ribs were cracked, and she could still taste blood. Her nose hurt like hell, and she needed to reset it.

She smiled, wincing as she prodded her nose gently. "So what happens now?" She asked, not looking at Cass.

"What do you want, Steph?" Cass demanded. She looked smaller, somehow, even though the Batsuit had been tailored for her. She looked like a child in her parent's clothes, and Steph felt laughter bubbling in her chest as she realized that that's exactly what Cass was. It was what all of them were.

Except for her. She had no claim to Bruce or his legacy. She was a dead girl walking, a ghost that wouldn't be laid to rest, a memory gone sour. She was failure and regret personified, walking around, but now the person she was haunting was dead, and how could she handle that?

What was left of her now?

"I don't know," Steph whispered. She sat down with a heavy thud, leaning against the wall of the tunnel. "Except maybe to wake up, and to find someone saving me. I want Black Mask to never have caught me, for Orpheus to never have died, maybe I even wish I'd never been Robin. I want to forget what it felt like to die. I want to forget what graveyard dirt tastes like. I want to un-know how a drill bit feels when it hits bone and how it feels to scream until I choke on my own blood. I want… I want you to have saved me. I thought you were going to. I thought you were coming for me."

Cass was quiet. She always was.

Then she moved, her cape rustling as she walked towards Steph, and sat down beside her.

It was familiar in a way that made Steph's breath hitch and knotted her stomach. It was rooftop tag and laughter, sparring in a room full of training dummies and confessions under the bat signal, it was the two of them. Spoiler and Batgirl, Batgirl and Robin, Steph and Cass.

"I'm sorry," Cass whispered, and Steph felt herself shatter again, tears leaking out of the corner of her eyes. Cass saw them. She always saw too much.

"You can stop this," Cass said. "You can change."

Steph laughed, short and bitter as she swiped at her cheeks. "I have changed, Cass. That's the problem. None of you want… this. You all just miss that girl who died. And I'm not her. Not the way you want me to be."

"Maybe. Maybe you won't… won't ever be the same. But that's okay. You don't have to be." She poked Steph gently. "This isn't all bad," she said softly.

Steph stared at her, incredulous. "Not all bad? I'm a killer, Cass, remember? I just nearly killed Tim!"

"Your girls. You protect them. They wear a badge, with your symbol, sometimes, to show that they're protected. And you helped that girl. Scarlet."

"I made Nell like me."

"She hasn't killed. You don't let her. You protect her."

"She's a kid," Steph protested.

"Some people wouldn't care. Cain didn't," Cass said, and she looked so tired, so broken. "I'm a killer too, remember?"

Steph frowned. "You didn't know what you were doing. You were just a kid, Cass."

Cass's eyes widened slightly. "You didn't… of course you didn't."

And she started to talk. About her mother. About the second fight. About the Lazarus Pit. About Talia. About Deathstroke, and Rose Wilson, and serums that stole her mind and her hands, and enough blood to flood Cass's nightmares. Cass spoke more than Steph had ever heard her say, and it terrified her.

Steph tried to swallow the blood rage that filled her. She knew that Cass wouldn't appreciate Steph's willingness to kill to defend her; wouldn't like that Steph had killed for lesser insults to lesser people.

Staring at Cassandra Cain, Steph realized, for the first time since she'd crawled out of a grave with Cass's name on her lips, that this was her best friend.

She'd thought she'd buried it. She'd thought that the attachment was severed, had died with Robin. Died with a mouth full of blood and eyes that stared straight ahead, dry as the desert, belief in her heart that surely, any second now, the door would open and the nightmare would end.

Steph wasn't sure if she even knew how to hope anymore, not after that.

But looking at Cassandra Cain, both of them too exhausted to hide anything, Steph saw belief.

Cass thought that she could do this.

Somewhere, Steph felt something stir in her chest.

There was a hand being held out, an offer. And for once, it seemed free of cages.

Steph touched her lip, feeling the scar that Bruce had left on her face.

"You say you want to be better than me, but you're just another criminal. Just like your father," Bruce snarled. Her shoulder screamed in pain as he twisted it, on the verge of dislocating it. Steph bit on her lip to prevent herself from crying out. "You're just hurting people to get what you want."

"I always tried to turn you around, and that was wrong." Bruce's face looked so old. She wondered when he had recorded this. "I thought I was helping by trying to hold you back. But I was mistaken. Making you Robin was the best thing I ever did for you. And if I could do it again, I would. With fewer mistakes. You had enormous potential to be a great hero, Stephanie. And I think you still do."

Steph touched the fragments of the glasses that had contained Bruce's last message to her.

"I… how do I do this?" She whispered, and she saw Cass smile for the first time in far too long.

Steph had almost forgotten what Cass looked like when she smiled. It lit up her face, and made her eyes shine, and made the causer of the smile feel like they had done something remarkable. Not because Cass didn't smile, but because of how genuine they were.

Cass held up a gun, and Steph nodded, running her hands through her face.

"No more guns. Right. And no more killing."

"No more hurting Tim," Cass said with a sidelong glance, but Steph felt like there was a bit of forgiveness in the look.

Well. It wasn't Cass's forgiveness that she would really need.

Steph looked down at her hands. They were still covered in gloves, but there was blood on them. Tim's blood. "They're not going to like this." She didn't need to say who they were.

"You never needed them before."

Steph leaned her head back hard enough to thump it against the tunnel wall. She winced. "You're still going to go run those Outsiders, aren't you?"

"Yes. It's… it's what I need. I can do a lot with them."

Steph closed her eyes, and took a deep breath. "Stay in touch, won't you?"

Cass's hand was on her arm, warm and familiar. "Promise."

They took Cass's car, which Cass had managed to call to her with a neat autodrive trick that Babs had come up with. Steph's bike was back where they'd left Tim, and neither of them were in the mood for the rooftops. Some unspoken instinct told them both that it would be too much, too close to the old for them.

"He said he left me an out," Steph whispered. "He said… he said I could leave, if I wanted. There's a program he made, that he left me. I can wipe my slate clean. I could start over, away from all… this."

This being Gotham, Batman, Robin, a grave for a girl who was upright and breathing. This being the Black Mask and blood stained hands and a red helmet.

"But you're not."

Steph glanced out the window.

She saw crumbling buildings and towering skyscrapers. Her girls wandered the streets, and children played too close to the road, and there were too many people armed. Some people refused to look up as the recognizable Batmobile raced by them, but others saw and grinned. Children pointed and waved, laughing and smiling, while shiftier looking people moved further into the shadows, as if thinking that the darkness could protect them.

This city was hers. It was all she knew. Wandering the world, learning how to forge herself into a weapon, had only cemented that. This city was in her blood and bones; without it, she wasn't sure if she was anyone at all.

"No. And then he said he knew I wouldn't. But that I deserved to know I wasn't staying because I had to."

Anger clawed at her, screaming to know why Bruce had never said any of that when he was alive, why the words that she'd needed to hear had to come from a dead man.

She knew why, but that didn't mean that she accepted it or liked it.

Damn that man, for having to die for her to stop hating him so much.

If she ever saw him again, she'd punch him.

Steph let Cass take her to her real apartment; where Nell was waiting for her, with Robin designs drawn on papers and faith that Steph didn't deserve.

"So," Steph said. "Have you decided on a name?"

"I'm the Bat. He always said it was mine," Cass said, like it was that simple. And for Cass, Steph could see it.

"I like it," she said.

"What about you?"

"I'm the Red Hood," Steph said. And it was true. Who else could she be? It was what she had made herself. Her fingers couldn't play piano but they could pull triggers. She wore a helmet instead of a cloak and red instead of eggplant. She'd gone from desperately seeking everyone's approval to spitting in their faces, and had made herself a monster worse than her father.

She was the Red Hood, from beginning to end. There was no other name for what she'd become.

"Not Spoiler?"

"No. Never again. I'm not that. I can't be that." Steph tasted bile and felt her heart speed up.

She was a killer, not a child. There was no room for bloodstained hands in that world, in that name.

Cass looked at her, seeing too much as always. Steph was just grateful that Cass didn't feel the need to say anything. Cass was too good at this, at teasing her out, getting her to admit things that she never would confess to another soul. "What about Scarlet?"

"Nell deserves better than a legacy of failure," Steph said. She deserved better than Steph, she didn't say. Maybe Babs could be convinced to taking in another stray kid.

Cass raised an eyebrow. "Not of failure," she said quietly.

Steph shook her head. "Scarlet's fine. She'll be better than I ever was." She opened the door, and walked out.

In that building was Nell. Steph was going to have to tell her that she'd been wrong, that there was no Robin in her future; that a little boy had already designed a hood and was clinging to the legacy with everything he had.

She started shaking as the events of the past few days washed over her again. Everything was raw and real and too bright. It hurt her head and made her scars ache something fierce.

She wanted nothing more than to shut everything out, to block out the world and ignore all her mistakes just for a few hours.

She wanted… she wanted…

She turned to face Cass again, her hand still on the car door "Actually, can you drop me off somewhere else?"

Crystal Brown didn't expect to hear the doorbell ringing at 3 AM anymore. Her phone, sure, but her doorbell? That sure brought up memories.

She wrapped herself in her robe, and walked towards the door, hiding a yawn behind her hands.

She wasn't living in the apartment that she had shared with Steph. That was still untouched, left to the past, undisturbed. All of Steph's things left exactly as they were, or at least they had been that way before the Red Hood.

No, she lived in a nice penthouse on Bruce's dime nowadays, or in the Manor sometimes.

She opened the door without looking through the peephole, which was usually a terrible idea. She forgot, sometimes, that she had one.

She froze.

Stephanie stood there, battered and bruised, but alive and smiling.

"Hi Mom," Steph whispered. She was wearing a black leather jacket, a grey turtleneck and faded blue jeans. Crystal had to stop herself from counting the scars, trying to see how many new ones there were since the last time she had seen her.

"Stephanie," she said, her voice cracking on the last syllable. She launched herself at her daughter, and Steph caught her in an embrace without a pause.

Steph had grown since she'd died, and that was twistedly wrong. She was taller than Crystal now, so Crystal couldn't hold her the way she used to. Her hair was short, painfully short, and Crystal bit down instinctive comments decrying that decision.

Everything was wrong.

But she was holding her daughter, and her daughter was holding her, and that was a beginning at least.