A/N: A present for my dear friend Narfi over on Tumblr, as suggested by Maggie, who told me I'd been to harsh on Bruce lately. So I created this fic, with a version of Bruce that's probably a bit closer to Batman: The Animated Series and Young Justice in terms of parenting ability. Happy Birthday Narfi! I wish I'd been able to include more Dick for you, but, alas, he wasn't cooperating.
The air pollution stained the sky purple at sunset, with streaks of yellows, pinks and reds stirred in as the golden ball of the sun sunk beneath the horizon. The early September breeze was crisp and cool, carrying the first of the autumn leaves with it, and the hint of the winter chill that would come in the months that followed.
Hunched on top of one of the oldest buildings, two figures watched the sunset. One was a man, imposing and tall, crouched down, his cape fluttering in the breeze. A cowl, with blank white eyes, stares impassively at the city below. Beside him was a colorfully clad child—greens and reds and yellows, a short cape and domino mask, steel toed boots and a bright green headband keeping long blonde hair out of her face.
"We should go in," Batman said, as the sun set, plunging the city into darkness. "You have school tomorrow."
Robin grinned, easy and cheerful, fingering the edges of her cape, pulling it close around her to protect herself from the wind. "Okay boss-man," she replied, and the two of them faded into the night, as if they had never been.
Stephanie Brown sat cross-legged across from Alfred Pennyworth and sipped from her mug of hot chocolate in the kitchen of Wayne Manor.
Alfred drank from his own cup of tea and held a red pen in the other hand, correcting her essay. She looked around the kitchen as he did so.
The kitchen was the space in the Manor that was undeniably Alfred's. The man's simplistic tastes had overruled the rest of the Manor's overbearing décor; and yet the whole place had an inexplicably English feel.
Steph ducked her head when Alfred peered up at her, raising an inquisitive eyebrow. "Miss Brown," he said, "Must you abuse to Oxford Coma so? Really, I would have expected you to know better."
She grinned at him impishly. "Gotta give you something to look for, Alfie!" She tossed her hair over her shoulder. "Gotta keep you on your toes!"
"As if Master Bruce's nighttime hobbies haven't done enough of that," the elderly butler clucked softly, but a small smile played at the corners of his lips as he underlined another sentence.
Bruce Wayne looked down on his Robin. She sat on a bench, biting her lip and nervous, babbling, trying to explain herself to him.
"I know I screwed up…" She said, looking as if she half-expected him to kick her.
"Yes, you did," he said—he's never believed in softening his words, of lying to make children feel better. How else can children grow, if not with feedback and criticism? "But you won't make that mistake again, will you?" It's a challenge, a promise, an offer.
Her eyes lit up, and she grinned at him, and he smiled back, because he could. "I won't," she promised, and she pulled off her mask, revealing her midnight blue eyes, which sparkled in the lighting of the cave.
Bruce placed a hand on her shoulder and smiled at her again. She beamed up at him and hugged him, wrapping her narrow arms around his torso, squeezing him tight.
"Thanks," she whispered against his chest, voice almost too soft to hear. "For not being angry." And he could hear the remnants of old fear in her tone—a painful reminder of the childhood that she had been given.
He awkwardly patted her head, not sure how exactly he was supposed to react, painfully aware of Alfred, standing on the staircase, watching the scene that was unfolding.
Stephanie Brown had sewn her first Robin outfit herself—sitting on the floor of her bedroom with roles of craft store cloth and needles clenched in between her teeth. She had sewn Spoiler, she would sew Robin.
Robin was green and yellow and red, a cape and insignia and belt. Robin was balance and hope; Robin was a promise of springtime, of respite from winter's chills. Robin was the smile to even out Batman's glare, the youthful laugh that ignored the growl and the glare.
I can be Robin, Stephanie Brown thought, untangling thread and pricking her fingers until they bled, the red staining the yellow lining of the cape. She dabbed it away with a wet cloth, and wrapped her fingers with band aids to protect them.
I can be Robin, Stephanie Brown thought, looking up at a signal that blazed in the sky.
And she put on the homemade creation and she looked in her mirror, and pushed her hair out of her eyes and placed a mask on her face, and she knew that she had been right all along.
Bruce found that Stephanie Brown was different from the other children he had known and raised.
This shouldn't surprise him—all of them were different, in startling ways—but it did, nevertheless. A part of him associated Steph with Dick, deep down inside of him—she fought similarly, although with less acrobatic talent, and her quips and puns were in the same style, even if she had never met Nightwing. And Bruce found that similarity echoed in Steph's desire for human contact—not just sparring, like Cass, but contact. Hugs, and arms over shoulders, and leaning against him when she got tired after a long patrol. She liked the positive physical contact, and a part of Bruce raged, because he knew who was at fault for Steph's burning need, and a part of Bruce felt that Arkham was too good for that bastard.
But she was just as much Jason as Dick. She had the same, burning anger over injustice that people from her neighborhood suffered. She had the same affinity and longing to protect the people who couldn't protect themselves at all costs. She also needed the words as well as the actions—the positive reinforcement and compliments that Tim and Dick's self-esteems had never required, although they had certainly enjoyed. But Steph, unused to compliments and used to condemnation, flourished under simple phrases, and Bruce wondered how much of that was Steph and how much of that was the fault of the way a poor girl from Crime Alley was treated by the world.
But she was more than just an amalgam of his sons—she was Stephanie in her own right. She was determined and stubborn and angry and kind, hopeful and curious and protective and loyal. She wore a strange yellow and black scarf, sometimes, and bought him one in the same style, but the colors were silver and green. He wore it, sometimes, to make her happy, even if he didn't quite understand its significance and her eyes always lit up when he wore it.
Sometimes, Steph forgot that she had been pregnant, but her dreams never allowed her let go completely.
Sometimes, Steph cried, and doubted, and wondered if she had done the right thing.
But she closed her eyes and whispered to herself, over and over again, until she could believe it again. "I was right."
She was not meant to be a mother, not that young, not that naïve. She was still a child herself, still a teenager, still in school. She could not be a mother, not with her father still haunting her; not with the fear of becoming like him dogging her footsteps.
Perhaps one day, she could be a real mother, not just a pregnant teenager, but those days were far away.
Stephanie Brown had given birth when she was barely fifteen, and had become Robin when she was sixteen. She had never held her baby, and didn't know a thing about the child. She had thrown up every morning and felt the world spin and felt as if she was about to die as the baby came screaming into the world. She had stretch marks on her stomach and her feet still felt too large and sometimes she felt as if she was too small now, shrunken now that she didn't have a baby growing inside of her.
She wore the marks with as much pride as she wore her scars. Let the world judge. She knew who she was, even if it was still someone too young to grow up just yet.
Steph opened the door one day to see a very upset looking pregnant woman waiting on the doorstop of Wayne Manor.
"You're Stephanie Brown, yes?" The woman's voice had just a whiff of an upper class British accent, barely noticeable at all. She had long, wavy dark hair, and dark, intelligent eyes. Stephanie recognized her from the photographs she had found.
"And you're Talia al Ghul, yes?" She stepped aside to allow Talia into the house.
"Correct." Talia looked around the entrance way, something softening around her eyes. "He has changed the décor," she said, so softly, as if it was a secret that Steph was not supposed to hear.
"Should I go get Bruce?" Steph asked, trying not to stare at the baby bump—she remembered how much she had hated it, watching people stare, judging her for the growing bulge.
"Yes," Talia replied, and Steph escorted her to the kitchen to be waited on by Alfred before running to get Bruce from the cave.
At the end of the day, Talia moves in to the Manor, and Steph and Alfred quietly begin to investigate baby-proofing the Bat Cave.
Bruce gave Stephanie a proper costume—Kevlar and metal, steel-toed boots and a utility belt full of tools and tricks. Steph added a headband and a high neck, fastening the clasp of her cape at the hollow of her throat, rich golden lining beneath an emerald, knee length cape.
The scarlet R rested above her left breast, and also on the buckle of her belt. The outfit was beautiful—the colors vivid and the lines crisp and clear, but it is functionality over fashion, and Steph adored it. She sent a picture to Tim, and he replied with a smilie face.
She showed Bruce and Alfred, spreading her arms side. Bruce nodded and smiled, clasping her warmly on the shoulder and calling her "Robin."
Steph wanted to curl up in his approval like a cat in the sunlight, but she just grinned and pecked Batman on the cheek, and they headed out to patrol.
Crisis after Crisis shook the world, and the call kept coming for them to go to war.
Steph went with the Titans, following Donna's lead into battle. She fought monstrosities that were Bruce's fault, she fought monsters and aliens and humans and metas and robots…
And then she fought Darkseid, along with all the League and the Titans.
This fight was a blur—she was bruised, with broken ribs and blood in her eyes, and she had lost sight of most of the others—she fought alongside people she didn't know instead, her utility belt empty and her heart in her throat.
Out of the corner of her eye, she saw that Bruce had a gun—something he had vowed never to do, and he aimed it at Darkseid. Darkseid's omega beams blast out, reaching for Batman.
Suddenly, the world was absolutely silent and still to Stephanie's ears.
Batman crumbled to the ground like a puppet whose strings were cut—there was no dignity, no grace, no control in the act, the exact opposite of everything Bruce had ever taught Stephanie to do when falling from a blow. He hit the ground, hard and fast and final, and did not get up.
And the world spun where Stephanie stood, and she knew, deep down, what had happened, but she refused to admit it.
"Batman!"
Her voice was a stone against a mirror, and the whole world shattered.
She ran to him, dodging everyone and everything, through a battlefield full of heroes and villains alike, and she threw herself at Batman, shaking him, begging him, yelling at him.
He did not wake up, he did not answer her.
A scream choked out of her mouth, and hot, heavy tears stream down her face, itchy and awful, irritating her skin beneath her mask, but she would not remove it—not when the world was watching Batman dead and Robin dying of grief, on a battlefield strewn with corpses.
Warm arms envelop her, but she did not notice who it was that held her. She saw Dick collapse as well, grief written on his face as starkly as graffiti on a wall. Kory and Donna and Wally held him, and Steph did not know who held her—perhaps Kara, or Cassie.
She realized, with a sickening lurch, that she will have to tell Cass and Babs and Jason. She will have to tell Alfred.
Stephanie Brown was nineteen years old, and she did not know what to do, as she held her mentor in the wake of a crisis and the blur of misery.
Damian Wayne was born, and Steph refused to hold him for three solid months. She avoided the Manor, unless she was in Bruce or Cass's direct company, not trusting herself not to fall to pieces if she held a baby.
"Why are you afraid?" Talia asked her, one late night, when Steph was curled up on the couch, half asleep.
"My baby," Steph whispered, tracing patterns onto the rich velvet pillow she was resting her head on. "I never got to hold them. Isn't right."
"You…" Talia's voice was horrified, disbelieving. "You had a child?"
"I gave them up," Steph whispered, tears pouring down her cheeks, and she felt so awful—her child must hate her, just like she hated Arthur, she could have at least tried to raise them…
Talia pulled Steph into a tight hug, pressing Steph's cheek against her collarbone, and let Steph cry. "I am sorry, Stephanie."
The next day, Steph was handed Damian without ceremony, without acclaim, and Steph did not drop him, and nothing changed at all.
Steph quietly burned the envelope that Tim had given her on that day—the one with all the answers about her child.
She did not need to know. She had made her choice.
Talia found Jason, on the streets of Gotham, functionally brain dead and not even recognizing them.
Bruce and Talia fought for weeks, their shouts shaking the Manor doors and echoing down the hallways. Tim and Dick came over, confused, to see the lost Robin, alive again.
"He's alive," Dick whispered, staring at Jason with blue eyes wide and terrified.
"I can't believe it," Tim said, mouth agape.
"Ba," Damian replied, mouth a thin, stern line as he peered at Jason from his position on Steph's hip.
"I agree," Steph said to Damian, mouth puckering slightly into a frown. "Your parents really need to learn to keep it down."
Steph passed Damian into Tim's arms (he froze, terrified) and then went to get Alfred to moderate Talia and Bruce's fight again.
Talia restored Jason's mind and soul by throwing him into the Lazarus Pit, and Bruce could only forgive her because of how Jason rasped "Bruce," and reached for him the moment Talia and Jason walked into the Manor again.
When Stephanie Brown turned seventeen, her birthday present was her picture pasted across every newspaper in Gotham, with the headline reading "BRUCE WAYNE'S SECRET DAUGHTER?"
Steph laughed herself sick and called up Tim to laugh about it with him. When Steph visited Cass that night, on her way to patrol, the two of them laugh as well, Steph elbowing Cass in the ribs and calling her "sis" and Cass pulling Steph's hair and stepping on her foot and teasing her for being caught by the paparazzi.
Bruce did his best to dispel the rumors, but Steph refused to let the press scare her away from the Manor, and so the rumors continued, much to Bruce's annoyance and Alfred's bemusement.
Steph and Cass went shopping together, and they dragged Bruce along with them to carry their bags and to look hopeless. He was very good at both jobs.
"It's humbling," Steph informed Bruce matter-of-factly, draping a JCPennies bag over his arm.
"I can afford better than this," Bruce tried to tell them, "You don't have to shop at department stores."
"That's not the point," Steph informed him, rolling her eyes. "Cass needs clothes that aren't sweat pants but also aren't Gucci or whatever it was that you buy her for the galas. She needs normal people clothes. And that means shopping at the public mall."
"And getting swamped by paparazzi?" Bruce grumbled, glaring at a daring photographer who was trying to hide behind a rack of brightly colored sundresses.
"Not really, but what can you do?" Steph then tripped over her own feet and knocked over said rack, trapping the hapless photographer beneath. "Oops!" She grinned, and high fived Cass subtly.
Bruce sighed, and adjusted the bags he was carrying.
"We are not going into Victoria's Secret," he told them.
"Would I do that to you, Bruce?" Steph gasped, holding a hand over her heart.
Bruce didn't deign to answer that question. He merely raised an eyebrow at her.
"Point. Would I do that to Cass?"
Probably not, Bruce thought, but if Cass was conspiring with Steph on this subject, it would still be within the realm of possibility.
The shopping trip made headlines again, and Clark called Bruce for an interview, but he was laughing so hard he couldn't get the questions out.
Lois interviewed Cass instead, since Bruce was sulking too much to answer any questions by the time Lois wrenched the phone away from her husband.
The article was probably much more interesting that way, anyhow.
Crystal gave Steph permission, over the summer, to go to "summer camp".
Which meant that Steph finally got to go join the Teen Titans.
Steph bounced on the balls of her feet, and hugged Brue and Crystal, and then boarded the train for San Francisco, wondering what would happen to her next.
Donna Troy welcomed her with open arms, and even though some of the younger members resented her for not being Tim, she found her place. She was not Tim—she was not a detective, she was not a leader (yet), but she was Steph, and she made her own role among the Titans, just as she had in the Bat Family and for Robin.
Steph gave Robin to a girl named Carrie Kelley in a white box with a scarlet gauzy bow. She didn't look at Dick as she did it, refusing to make eye contact. She watched Carrie instead, gauging her reaction. Carrie had helped them, during the Battle, and Steph had seen in him something that she had been lacking, as of late.
Carrie stared at the costume beneath the lid of the box—Alfred had helped Steph make it to her measurements and specifications, tailor-made for her fighting style, with enough room left for Carrie to change it as she would chose. Carrie stared at it, and then stared at her.
"You're just… giving it to me?" Carrie demanded, her voice young and disbelieving, tinged with disbelief and joy. Steph smiled at her, barely a ghost of what it had once been, before the Crisis, before Bruce.
"Robin is balance," she told the girl, and maybe she understood, maybe she did not, but she'd figure it out soon enough. "I can't balance Dick. You can." She touched the girl's hair lightly and left.
She had grown up, on that battlefield, during that Crisis. Those scars are different—they have done what even stretch marks and swollen feet and a stomach full of life failed to do, what years of Gotham and back alleys, and over a decade of Arthur Brown's parenting had not done. Stephanie Brown was an adult now, in self as well as paper and government, and that means no more Robin. She had held the role, perhaps a little too long, but now it was time to grow up and leave the nest.
Robin meant change, she thought as she went to find Cass—a new path for them waited in Hong Kong, where Black Bat and Nightwing could take flight together. It was time for the role of Robin to change again.
Stephanie Brown met Dick Grayson on the streets of Gotham, and he did not trust her, and did not like her. He missed Tim, wished for his little brother to be alongside him, instead of this girl, this interloper.
Steph followed him anyway, and pretended not to notice how he resented her presence.
She earned his trust, bit by bit, piece by piece, and slowly, she earned a place in his family, and his blessing to be Robin.
And Stephanie grinned.
Jason was home, and another room filled up in the Manor.
Tim had a room now, too, even if he lived with Jack and Dana most of the time, just like Steph did. Tim might be a civilian, but he was still a part of the family, and Steph approved.
Cass had a room, right next to Steph's, across from Jason's. Dick was on Cass's other side, and Tim and Damian were on each side of Jason.
The Manor filled up, and it slowly began to feel like home, even if all of them had lives outside of it.
The Battle for the Cowl was hardly that at all—none of them wanted it, none of them needed it. Steph tried to convince Cass to take it up; Cass had always wanted it, even if Bruce had always meant for the mantle of the Bat to die with him.
Cass refused, her face pale and gaunt. "Can't," she whispered, tears welling in her eyes.
So Dick became the Bat instead, and Steph stared at herself in the mirror—the Robin who had failed Batman.
Outside of the Manor, however, war raged on the streets. Villains ran rampant and civilians appointed themselves Batman and armed themselves for war.
They all ran through the streets, trying to calm things down, desperate and bleeding and furious that people would take advantage of Batman's death.
"Why won't you be Batman?" Steph asked Cass one night, perching on a rooftop.
"He told me not to be," Cass whispered. "Not yet."
"One day?"
"Maybe."
Stephanie listened to Bruce's message with a bowed head and tears flowing down her cheeks.
"I am proud of you. Robin."
Stephanie Brown wiped away her tears, and buried her mentor in an unmarked grave. She left flowers there, and then went to wear her father was buried—across town, in a different cemetery, in a grave that bore his name.
There were no flowers to leave for that man.
"He was more of a father to me than you ever were," she whispered, and she wished, with all her heart, that she had ever had the courage to actually tell Bruce that.
When a street criminal told her that Robin be a girl, Steph laughed in his face and left him gift wrapped in front of the police station.
When a boy at school did the same, it cut deeper. But Harper Row, mouthy and brave, mechanical genius, gave the boy a verbal smack down that made Steph want to stand up and applaud.
Robin was a girl, and Steph held that close to her heart.
Robin and Batgirl was a duo almost as famous as Batman and Robin.
Oracle completed the triumvirate they formed, whispering information into their ears and giving them advice.
Cass was fast and dangerous, striking before anyone takes notice, taking down dozens of foes in instants. Steph was brighter, gaudier, a distraction and an irritation to the enemy, but still dangerous in her own right.
And afterwards, Cass and Steph would go out for milkshakes and force Bruce to watch famous movies with them, which Cass and Bruce had never seen. Alfred made popcorn with just the right amount of butter and salt, and the three of them curled up on the couch and watched Star Wars and The Princess Bride.
Crystal Brown worried about her daughter being Robin, but Bruce calmed her down and soothed her fears, and she often journeyed to the Manor herself, armed with first aid kits and sitting in the kitchen with Alfred, waiting for their children to come home.
Later, Talia joined them, Damian often at her hip, and Crystal became fond of the other woman—Talia made her feel welcome in the world of heroes and villains, even if Crystal had no role in it.
Jason and Tim sometimes joined them, as the years wore on and the family grew. Jason eventually went to the streets again, but Tim stayed behind, unsure of what his role would be outside of Robin.
And then Bruce died and suddenly Crystal's daughter grew up. Grief clouded her baby girl's eyes and every night Steph dreamed she saved Bruce, and every night Crystal tried to talk to her daughter but Steph shut her out, and fled with Cass to Hong Kong to escape her grief.
Damian wailed when he realized his sisters were gone, and Talia's face was drawn and quiet as she tried to comfort him. Tim followed them, whispering things about Bruce that Crystal didn't understand.
Dick became Batman, and Carrie became Robin, and a girl named Tiffany Fox arrived on the scene of Gotham in a Batgirl costume with a determined gleam in her eyes.
The family grew, even in its grief.
Bruce looked at his family, and he smiled.
Christmas was a wild, tangled, messy affair. Alfred, Crystal, Jason, Helena and Talia had done most of the cooking, while Steph and Selina had shanghaied Leslie and Tim's chemistry experience to assist them in making pies.
Babs was designated for babysitting Damian, while Dinah, Bruce, Renee, Cass and Dick set the table.
The smells of roasted turkey and homemade bread filled the entire Manor, causing plenty of stomachs to grumble.
Cass dumped a bough of holly on the table, and Dick began to place candles in it.
"Why are we even celebrating Christmas?" Kate said, arriving ten minutes late, carrying what appeared to be a casserole of sorts. "Bruce, half of the people here aren't Christian."
"It's a non-religious gift giving holiday that we're holding on December 26," Leslie told Kate, completely straight faced. "Christmas was yesterday. We're not celebrating Christmas."
Kate rolled her eyes.
"We needed an excuse to gather," Dinah said, shrugging. "Stop complaining. Steph made apple pie."
Steph dreamed of Bruce's death every night.
She dreamed, and she couldn't save him. She dreamed, and she could. She dreamed and dreamed, and screamed, and screamed.
Steph was prescribed medication, but they made her sluggish and slowed her reflexes, and she had to keep up with Cass, so they were not an option. She tried to go to therapy, but she couldn't betray Bruce's secret, and she didn't know anyone that she could trust.
She talked to Cass instead, wishing she'd been better, faster, stronger, so she could have protected Bruce, saved Bruce.
They both drown in guilt—Cass felt like she should have been there, Steph should have done better. Tim joins them, and the three of them try to pull each other out of their guilt, but three drowning teenagers can't save each other and themselves at the same time.
They make themselves new costumes, all three of them, and try to sew themselves together.
Red Robin
Nightwing
Black Bat
New names, new costumes, new identities, same broken children.
Bruce was alive.
Steph threw her arms around him, hugging him as tight as she could, crying and laughing and talking so fast that no one could understand what she was saying. Cass was next, throwing herself onto Bruce with a wide, undeniable smile. Dick and Tim and Jason and Talia with Damian in her arms followed, and they clutched at each other, as if afraid to stop for fear that they would shatter once they let go.
Later, Bruce sat with Steph on the roof of a tall, old building, Steph wearing her purple streaked Nightwing costume, and Bruce in his Batsuit.
"I missed you," Steph said, softly.
"I'm sorry, Robin," Batman said, squeezing her shoulder. She smiled at him, wide and forgiving.
"C'mon," She said, getting to her feet. "Let's remind the city what we can do."
They faded into the night, as if they had never been.