Stephanie Brown was a killer, and she wore it like a brand on her face and carried it like a knot in her chest.
Redemption was a bitter word on her tongue. She was not redeemed, she was not forgiven. There was no balancing of the scales. Her sins were too many, the blood on her hands had seeped into her very skin, letting the whole world know what she was and the things she had done.
She was a killer, a monster, a criminal, an outcast, and she knew it. Everyone knew it. She lived on their fringes, avoiding most of them, tolerated only because she set aside her guns and stopped killing at the request of Cassandra Cain and a dead man.
Bruce Wayne had died, and in his own way, that had let her live again.
She spent her days patrolling Gotham and re-learning how not to kill, beating down criminals with her fists and crude weapons, not seeing the attraction of the fancy gadgets the others used, refusing to brand herself with the symbol of the bat again. She coordinated with Oracle, and carried a communicator in her helmet that allowed her to call for back up—or, far more commonly, to be summoned as backup. She avoided Tim Drake and was avoided by Dick Grayson and Jason Todd.
Cass was the only one who sought her out, and in many ways it was a reversal of their youth. Every time she returned to Gotham she showed up on Steph's doorstep or in Steph's room, having broken open the window, smiling in that way of hers that was a promise.
It was a promise of change, of hope for the future, a statement that Steph was not as dark and ugly and twisted as she knew herself to be, but Cass refused to believe or acknowledge. Stephanie Brown knew she was unforgivable, was too far gone to be saved, but Cassandra Cain was never one to believe that. She still saw Spoiler and Robin when she looked at the Red Hood, and sometimes it was a heavy burden, but most days it was… inspiring.
It made Steph want to be that again.
Bruce had offered her a way out, when she died. He had offered her a pass, a clean slate, a new life. Far away from Gotham.
But she had stayed. Gotham was in her very bones; this city which she had died for, where she was reborn, was so tangled in her very self that to leave it and never return would be like to cut out a part of her very being.
She had stayed.
She had stayed for her mother, she had stayed for Nell—now her foster daughter thanks to Barbara Gordon's machinations—she had stayed for Cassandra Cain, and she had stayed to prove Bruce Wayne right when he said he believed that she could do better, be better, that she could still be a hero despite years of death and destruction left behind in her wake.
Bruce Wayne had died, and only then had Stephanie Brown found herself able to forgive him for all that he had done, and what he had failed to do. Only then had she managed to cut through the complicated web of hatred and been able to remember those moments of kindness and affection, to remember that she had once looked up to him and separate that admiration from the bitter taste of graveyard dirt.
So it was unsurprising that when she saw him standing on her doorstep, the entire world stopped spinning on its axis.
Her first thought was a dream, but she knew better, knew better than maybe anyone that death was not always permanent, and she struggled to breathe, staring at him, standing so innocuously, waiting for her to say something.
"Steph?" Nell called from behind her. "What is it? Who's at the door?"
There were ashes on Steph's tongue and fire in her veins. "No one," she said calmly, knowing her protégé would not be fooled for an instant. "I'm going out." She stepped into the hallway and walked right past Bruce Wayne, heading for the roof.
"Stephanie," he said.
"Not here," she bit out. "Not where she can hear." There was no scenario that he didn't know about Nell; didn't know about Scarlet, the sidekick of a criminal, the girl who would have been Robin. He'd know about Nell's mother, in the hospital, her bills paid for out of Steph's own pocket, he'd have seen Nell's transcripts and paperwork and probably even knew the color of the paint chips she had selected to paint her room.
Fear rose in her throat, suddenly, that he would take Nell, sweep her up into his world the way that he had once swept a little girl with a purple cape, but she reprimanded herself. She had gone in willingly, her heart too large and her fists at the ready, happy to help and wanting to be a part of something.
Nell Little was a part of something already. She had a friend in Damian and a place at Steph's side, and there was no force in the multiverse that could pry Nell away from Steph, not as long as Nell's mother remained in the hospital in that deep and dreamless sleep.
She led Bruce up to the rooftops, and turned her face to the sky, where the Batsignal lit up the clouds. She closed her eyes and took a shuddering breath, trying not to feel like it was that night when she had clawed her way through satin and wood and six inches of dirty to finally find fresh air.
There were questions she should ask, apologies she should make, but she said nothing. She just breathed, her chest heaving like she was fresh out of the grave again, with bloody hands and her throat hoarse from screaming, and waited for him to speak.
Steph knew what she was—she was a patchwork of her own mistakes as well as the hurts he had caused. She had taken all of her own pain and lashed outwards; sometimes at the undeserving but just as often at people who had done nothing to earn her ire or her violence. All the codes she had followed while operating as a crime lord, all the rules she had laid down for herself... it changed nothing.
Spoiler and Robin would have not recognized the Red Hood. Or maybe they would. And that thought hurt even more. The idea that everything she was, was hurtling towards this path, that she was born to be a killer. Only with blood on her hands had she gained what she had wanted her whole life; acceptance, respect, a place in the world.
She was the Red Hood. She was Nell's mentor and Cass's best friend and the black sheep of the black sheep of superheroes. She was feared and respected, if not loved or admired. Her killer still roamed Gotham and her name silenced rooms.
But her heart ached the way it always had, looking at Bruce Wayne, and hoping beyond hopes that he could tell how hard she was trying to fix this—herself, her mistakes, the city even. Failing him was still a terrifying thought, a far worse nightmare than coffins and Lazarus Pits could craft.
"You look better," Bruce finally said, and Steph felt like she was about to be split in two as her old hatred resurged, but so did everything she had felt since they had lost him. How, after all this time, could he still affect her like this? She was no longer a child—she'd had one child of her own, had given it away, and now had another child depending on her, looking up to her—but still he made her this vulnerable, this small.
She looked at him, and saw… Bruce. Comfortable in casual clothing that blended in with the area. He looked the same as he had the last time she had seen him outside of costume.
The last time he had seen her, however, was a whole different story.
She forced herself to speak. "I feel better." She was still angry, she was still violent, her nightmares were still filled with screams, but there was a peace lodged somewhere in the midst of it all; maybe because of her mother, maybe Nell, maybe Cass, but it was there, and it hung like certainty in the air around her.
They stood there, looking at each other for a long, long time. There was too much to say, and yet not enough words. How could they spill out years of history onto this rooftop? These wounds were ancient; some healed, some scabbed over, others still fresh and infected, but Steph was struck by the irrevocable fear that saying anything at all would only rip it all open again, throw her back to those darkest days, push her back to that person she had been.
You can change, Cass's voice reiterated in her ear. You have changed.
What did he see when he looked at her? She wondered, as she met his gaze. His own failures?
"I saw the videos of your protégé," Bruce said, instead of any of the other things she might have expected him to. "She's very good."
Pride swelled in Steph's chest, and she realized what he was trying to do. Common ground, maybe, or even just perhaps sticking to safe topics, never mind that Nell had once been her accomplice, no matter how far Steph had kept her from major criminal activity.
"She is," Steph said, instead of calling him out on it. The tension hummed in the air, but neither of them acknowledged it—neither of them wanted to. Both of them knew that there were so many ways that this conversation could go, and most of those conversations took them down paths that were littered with even more regrets. There was too much history there, Steph thought. To ask even the most innocuous of her burning questions would only open the door to the rest of it—her death, her killings, her return, the Black Mask. She was sure it was the same for him. They were alike in that, neither of them willing to shatter this moment, to shatter this fragile peace.
Steph wasn't even sure if the peace that would shatter would be the peace between the two of them on that rooftop, or the peace that Steph had fought so hard to create with the others.
"When did you get back?" Steph asked softly, instead. "I know Tim—he was saying—"
She had ignored him, as she had ignored Tim Drake for so, so long. She had nearly beaten him to death in her own rage, and she had no right to speak to him, and while he felt differently, he avoided her in turn, the two of them staying so far apart, when once they had been so close. The thought burned in her mind.
"Today," he said, surprising her. "I… I wasn't sure if you would have stayed. I'm glad you did."
The acknowledgement of his farewell to her took the breath from her lungs. "Gotham is my home," she said.
He smiled at her. "I know. It suits us both."
The comparison of the two of them to him nearly broke her, nearly destroyed every ounce of her self-control. But she did not want to fight, or scream. All she wished to do was cry. She had mourned him, she had buried him, she had gone his funeral and ranted at his tombstone. She had died with his secrets scalding her tongue and belief that he was coming for her in her heart, and she had screamed his name as she had clawed her way out of her own grave. He had not come for her either time.
But he had not known, could not have known, and she's managed to make her peace with that part.
And he had come this time.
"Suits all of us," Steph said, avoiding the implications he had made. He can't ever understand her, not really. She doesn't want him to. To understand her was to be her, to have murdered her teachers for their numerous crimes, to have emerged from the Lazarus Pit with liquid fire in her blood, to have died with her eyes wide open.
She would not with that on anyone.
"Cassandra is flying in tonight," he said. "You should come by."
He won't ask her to come for him—maybe he knew he had lost that right, to ask her for anything, but she had also lost the right to ask him for anything, so perhaps, in that, they were even.
"I—I'd like that," she whispered.
I was a child, she didn't say. I trusted you. She had idealized him, believed in him, trusted him, followed him. And she had died under his care, wearing his uniform, fighting in his name, and they both knew that.
He nodded at her. "Nell is probably worried."
She wanted to call him out for leaving so soon, but she wanted to escape as much as he did. The weight of it all was too much. She could see the Black Mask's face every time she closed her eyes, and the questions were fighting her, demanding to be spoken, demanding to be asked.
She would not be the one to break the peace, she thought, biting her tongue. Not tonight. Maybe later.
"She will be," she said. She walked towards the door back to her apartment. She did not look back, knowing he would already be gone, vanished into the night. But she would see him again later, and she knew she would get her answers eventually.