When Does It Get Better?

A Fan Fiction by MJTR

[[Introduction: I write this story as someone who loves Tim and Stephanie more than almost any other couple in all of comic books. I'm not writing this as payback to any particular writer, character, or anything like that. It's just a story I've recently felt like telling. I've got my own reasons for doing this, ranging from working out stuff in my head to being experimental with material I've never written about before. As I've said before in other stories, everything I write is personal, though this, I'm thinking, will hit that note more than most any other work I've developed. I promise there will be a more conventional story here, but the more conventional story, by necessity, needs to accompany some of the more emotional, free-flowing material.

Regarding my other works- In the loosest sense I'm choosing to tie this back to Angel of the Bat just because I like the thought of most all of my Batman related works coming back to it. But this definitively does not tie in with the events of Da Pacem Domine or Beware the Batman (if I ever get back to it…). This is another slice of timeline that veers off from the main river the rest of this continuity flows through. I think that's it, let's get started.]]

The flight from Gotham to Star City is six and a half hours long, plus whatever it takes to check in and get through security. I had really hoped exhaustion was finally going to claim me for a little bit while I was in the air, but it only did the bare minimum. Tired and cranky was how I left, tired and trying to suppress cranky was how I landed. And with that bad kink in my neck, I really wished I hadn't been too proud to just let Bruce upgrade me to first class. He was spending or losing enough on me already, with the California apartment he owned the whole complex for, and the big chunk of money put away so I could live off the interest. For as much as I used to feel like his least wanted apprentice, I sure could be expensive, the more I thought about it. I wondered if that was how he expressed his love for all of us, or if he was just overly excited for a chance to get me out of his hair. He deserves more of my trust than that, I know he does, but it's hard for me to shake things I've been thinking for a long time.

Aboard the plane, I only took in a little glance at the rest of the people I'd spent the last quarter of a day with. They all looked to be burned out too. Even the toddler across the row from me barely made a peep the entire flight. Maybe that kid had recently become unexpectedly sick of life too. I slid my purse and laptop bag out of the overhead compartment and made for baggage claim. On a different trip, I probably would have embarrassed myself trying to convince the people at the ticket counter I could fit my suitcase into the overhead bin to save some cash. Money didn't come easily to my family when I was growing up, my instinct would have been to just try to push and cram. But checked luggage apparently wasn't something I thought I was above that day. Enough clothes to comfortably cycle through over the course of six months was difficult enough to even get in my dinky suitcase to begin with.

While I waited for the treadmill to start and fork over my stuff, the shrill, upbeat ringtone I'd been meaning to change forever went off. I think the guy in the suit and tie who waited next to me cracked up, I tried my best to ignore him.

Babs: You land OK?

Me: Yeah. Getting suitcase now.

Babs: I'll pull around, see you in around 10?

Me: K

My little home away from home was another half hour outside of Star City in Platinum Flats. Barbara and the Birds of Prey had been operating out of there on and off for a while, Bruce wanted me to be somewhere I could still contact someone in the family if I needed it. I, on the other hand, wanted to get as far away from Gotham as I could manage for a while.

The overstuffed suitcase, eggplant colored like everything I bought when I was fourteen, slowly slipped past me when I wasn't paying attention. After a short chase I messaged Barbara that I'd be outside entrance E. As she'd said, she arrived in a dark green SUV about five minutes later. In spite of everything, that made me crack up a little bit. I was sure there were all kinds of practical reasons for the leader of a team of vigilantes to drive that soccer mom car. It probably got good gas mileage, could transport multiple people to a crime scene inconspicuously, maybe it even had hidden compartments to store weapons in. But no matter what the reason was, that didn't make it any less funny. I waited around the back of the car for a hand getting my big, heavy suitcase into the trunk. After a minute or two the blood rushed to my cheeks in embarrassment. Of course wheelchair-bound Barbara wasn't going to help me lug the stupid thing in. I felt around for the trunk's button, popped it myself, and shoved my luggage inside. Barbara didn't say anything to me until after I climbed into the front seat.

"Hey there," she said. "How was the flight?"

"It was fine. Tried to get some sleep, but you know."

"Sure, sure." Barbara flipped on her turning signal as she approached the last road separating the airport from the city. "Bruce said he set you up at the Riviera right now, is that right?"

I shut my eyes, leaned my head against the window and said, "Yeah."

"Do you… you know, want to talk about?"

I breathed a deep sigh. "Not really."

The whole trip across the country was supposed to get me away from people asking if I wanted to talk about it. And I sincerely hoped that, since Barbara was supposed to have been married by then too, she'd find it in her heart to not press the issue. As she drove me through the urban oasis on the way to my home for the next six months in silence, that hope proved to be well placed.

Bruce reassured me so many times that I was still part of the team that it began to sound suspicious. Cassie asked me all the time how I was feeling and I really couldn't figure out if brutal honesty or lies so obvious she could read them were worse. And my mom—damn it all, I love my mom— but she was so dedicated to being on my side it just made everything hurt worse. I can't tell which of her statements are and always have been true and which ones have just recently been exacerbated. Sometimes she used to tell me she thought he was a flake, but she never really got the chance to see the whole picture. Once in a while she saw some of my cuts and bruises from a bad night out and tried to stage an intervention for teenage abuse. And once or twice since everything went up in smoke, she told me she never thought he was all that good for me. Maybe deep down she was right, but I always thought he just made me want to be a better person.

I shut my eyes, Barbara didn't object, and I still didn't fall asleep. Maybe that was the one true intention of coming to Platinum Flats. I was going to waltz into whatever bourgie apartment Bruce had set me up with, lie down in bed, and do everything in my power to sleep until I made up for all the hours I'd lost.

In college, we had to read Rip Van Winkle by Washington Irving, which was about a man who fell asleep for twenty years, woke up in a totally different world, and just sorta took it in passing. Because the professor wanted to try being hip, she compared him to the Dude from The Big Lebowski. Rip and the Dude probably wouldn't be all that bothered that their fiancé had just suddenly broken up with them after eight years together. If anything, Rip would shrug his shoulders and the Dude would just demand she return that rug he'd contributed to the condo. But I hadn't contributed a rug to the condo, I hadn't really contributed much of anything except myself. And it was painfully obvious at that point how much that was worth. Either way, no matter how much I wanted it, I couldn't fall asleep more than a few measly hours on the best nights and couldn't make myself stop caring.

Whatever sleep I did manage to get was interrupted when the SUV finally came to a halt and Barbara said, "Here we are."

I gazed out the window at two dozen buildings, each filled with six units my parents never could have paid for at any point when I was growing up. Barbara offered me a little envelope with my key in it, which I accepted.

"Don't just mope around all day every day, okay Steph?"

I mustered half of a smile. "Thanks for dropping me off."

Barbara looked like she was going to retort that I wasn't responding to her question, but seemed to drop the matter quickly. "Text me, okay? I'll take you out to lunch, we can hang out when the others don't have my hands full."

"Thanks. And I will."

After another short pause to contemplate, Barbara shifted the car back into drive and left me with the key, my suitcase, and all of my feelings.

There was one thought that dominated all the rest of them, of course there was. It was only one word that occasionally and irregularly beat on the side of my mind. And every time it did I felt just a little bit worse.

Tim. Tim Tim Tim Tim Tim Tim Tim.

How do you go from, "I'm ready to spend the rest of my life with you" to, "Thinking your name hurts me?"