Disclaimer: I do not own Stephanie Brown, Batman or other counterparts of the DC franchise. I make no profit off of this piece. No copyright infringement intended.

Warning: Mentions of torture and adult themes. Also, I have no beta. And I might be rusty in my writing, so I'm sorry for any awkward bits or slowness in the flow. I apologize for any mistakes you see.

A/N: I don't plan on using this every chapter, with that being said – this story is AU, Canon-divergent. Things we know of Steph before the New 52 or the Rebirth series, will have changes or I am taking major leeway with things that were never explored or explained. As for those who are of South Africa, I used a generator and some guides on how to write accents - thus the strange spelling is from that and not because I made those mistakes without meaning too.

I'm sure I have a few in here.

Multiverse, man.

I don't plan on rushing – nor can I stick to a timeline on updates. I am going to attempt at least twice a month due to a hectic schedule.

Mean time, enjoy.

She died. She knows she did. The way Dr. Leslie looks at her is only some distant proof, but the rest is rather…

Well, conclusive.

She remembers just gasping awake, a sheet covering her when she bolts up, feeling oddly stiff – almost as if she had been smothered; finally getting in a small amount of air. The cold metal of the table below her barely registers, but she's reaching down and tearing off that damn tag that is cutting off circulation to her toe!

She doesn't mean to actually look at what it says – didn't even give a flying fuck. Yet there the words are: her name, her weight, and some random ass series of numbers; a date and time of death. She still flicks the paper, and the string it had been attached via, to some random corner.

Because. Just fuck that.

The florescent lights are overly bright, the edges of her vision are rather dark, but she focuses on the random mad scramble of the doctor backing away from her – her whole body thumping against what sounds to be a metal door. Everything, however, becomes rather – blaringly – clear. There are tools; tools laid out that make her feel like turning over and throwing up. So, she does.

Nothing comes out, and it hurts. Painfully encroaching hurt.

Dry-heaving is a torture all its own, with the stomach and throat burning with a decisive need to expel something out of her. When she can't produce that something, her body decides to cause her pain; so it can wrench something out of her.

Her mind is on the tools. Tools, much like on the tray besides the cold metal bed she's on, whisper from a memory and come to her unbidden – used on her flesh.

"Should have stayed in the kitchen, if you can't tell me something useful, bitch."

Marks, she notes with absent awareness, litter her arms. They're red, angry, some are purple, with white stitch work, crisscrossing, keeping the scraps of flesh together. She doesn't look at the rest of her body to see the evidence when just those – innocent in comparison – bring up flashes of memories of just how they got there. She doesn't really need a reminder, she thinks, because she can feel them in a strange way. Almost as if they're old bruises that haven't faded away, just dulling into the yellow stages that have just a hint of irritation if she presses hard enough. Sweet aches that are horrible, beautiful, reminders that she is not dead.

She's alive.

Her hip is pinching from her half-turned momentum, almost flaring with pulse points of –

A drill is digging into her hip and she can hear him moaning over the buzzing sound of the hardware. Dimly seeing the way he thrusts his hips each time he stabs the drill into some part of her.

"-all you bitches are ever good for."

She gasps, realizing she hadn't been breathing, and she is shaking. Despite the stiffness of her limbs, she feels like she's going to topple over like some of the cheap jello the lunch ladies gave out sometimes. Her stomach churns, staring down at the metal of her table, the white, bleached, linoleum flooring – reflecting with the lights overhead. The whiteness of the walls that make up the square room that barely has room for two living occupants, the table and the array equipment squeezed in here only seem to add to the brightness. God, did they want to blind people in here?

She almost wants to look around, almost, but then something interferes. Goody, save this glutton for punishment, will you?

"Stephanie?"

Oh yeah, the doc.

The pain in her hip easies as she flips around, righting her body – yet she misses that pain. The doctor is no longer against the door, watching her like she is a ghost that is ready to devour her – she wants to crack a zombie joke, but knows that Leslie might not (read: won't) appreciate that. The good doctor is standing by the table, close enough that Stephanie can feel the doc's breath on her cheek, hands up and fingers curled. Digits twitching, opening, clenching, with the need to reach out or do something with those calloused tips. Extremities that have been used to stich, patch, soothe and slap an idiot or two when needed, never idle and hesitant – it almost unnerves the blonde teenager when they hover close, tentative. Steph wasn't quite sure what the doc might want to do to her, though,

Probably a wallop of a slap, if Steph was in a guessing mood.

Which, she isn't.

But the woman is just standing there, silent after calling out her name. White hair, streaking with random bits of gray, was pulled up and back into a bun that was falling apart. Old eyes, kind eyes – looking to cloud with tears – are staring down at Stephanie with equal parts horror, disbelief and happiness. Leslie was never a beauty, for sure, but she was a tough old bird that Stephanie had admired, known since she had been old enough to run away from home since she was five. A lady who didn't put up with a lot of people's shit; with the people who always came into her clinic, it worked for her.

Should she say something?

Steph might have died – uh, did die – but she wasn't so lost as to know that she was usually the girl with a mouth. Two of her biggest flaws: chatterbox disposition and the inability to just stay down. Knows, normally, she'd be spouting off some smart-off retort… Yet, she can't seem to get her throat working. Her esophagus scorches, all the way down her chest and into the pit of her stomach, coiling uncomfortably. Her tongue feels swollen, dirty and heavy – as if she had dirt stuffed into her mouth. Her teeth feel gritty, harsh against her tongue. She parts her lips, but the skin feels taunt, dry and nothing but a subtle breath escapes her.

Her breath stinks, she notes. Unbidden, a joke about something dying in her mouth pops up – but even she is discarding it as if it prickles on her conscious.

Too soon, maybe?

"SAY SOMETHING!" Hands hit the metal table, those fists – Leslie finally found some use for that twitching. Her scream is haggard, a burst of anguish that nearly replaces the dirty feeling on Stephanie's tongue. She is, however, left with a sour taste.

Though the sudden scream was loud, harsh and a surprise – Stephanie didn't flinch. She was startled, but not a single bit of her moved, taking in the hunched shoulders of the older woman now. The inescapable sense of being a voyeur creeps up on her as she recalls never seeing this side of Leslie, use to a strong, not-putting-up-with-your-shit doctor. It brings about unease to see this vulnerability and Stephanie wants to curtain her own face with her long hair, but doesn't seem to have the ability to look away. The tremble in the lines of strong shoulders that have held up the darkest of Gotham's shadows, healing Gotham's hurts - Stephanie looks away, not wanting to see someone who had been a pillar to her fall. Sharp breaths, quick and trembling, fill the space. Leslie's hair, the farce of a bun finally caving, to fall around the doctor's face after the emotional bubble implodes – as if drained and left in a weakened state. Strong, calloused knuckles are white as they grip the metal table – the sides of her hands already bruising with the force she exerted.

Steph forces herself to talk.

"You have weird bedside manner, doc." She wanted the words to come out flippant, easy-going, but they don't. It hurt to say, her gullet felt raw and pinched. Her voice sounded like the proverbial nails on a chalkboard, screeched and haunting. It was more than she wanted to say, she hadn't wanted to say shit, but she needed to for the doc.

For herself.

She almost regrets saying it. A tension tightens in her, glowing hotly as it spreads outward and infects the air. The atmosphere is heavy, stinks with something that nearly makes her gag, but she holds it back in lieu of keeping her eye on the good doctor – and because it would hurt like a bitch.

Leslie's shoulders have drawn together, constricting inwards to her body. White, hoary hair was still obstructing any view of the older woman's face. Steph had the suspicion – fuck that, she knew – that Leslie had been crying. Now, she wasn't and Stephanie couldn't decide if it was a good thing.

Knotting, rigid – everything felt as if there was a subtle trap that could easily be sprung. Steph didn't breath, didn't dare, afraid of whatever button she had her proverbial finger – didn't want to give or take the pressure for whatever the fuck was going to explode in her face. She was far to use to having something sprung on her.

She didn't have a mirror, but she remembers taking a few (a shit ton) of hits to the face.

She almost jumped, felt fucking relieved to know she wasn't that dead to not react, when Leslie did look up at her. The silver at her temples stood out, almost defying gravity in the contrast to the rest of her hair that fell around her shoulders. Wet, tear tracks left their mark on pale, sallow cheeks. The wrinkles around Leslie's sharp, silver-green eyes were wet and the whites of her eyes were bloodshot. Lips red, twisted in a snarl that transformed Leslie's entire face – teeth smashed into her bottom lip, "How?"

The question was hissed, dangerous and Stephanie felt numb – staring into a face that was broken, hurt; utterly dangerous to behold. She didn't... fell much of anything, though, didn't feel a particular grievance for causing such a look on the old gal's face. She felt empty though, gazing back into a face that had been one of the final few when she thought she flat-lined.

No, no, she did flat-line. Can't be forgetting that kind of shit anytime soon.

"HOW?!" The tray was knocked aside, instruments, tools and the table upon which they sat on, went down. The metal gave little dings, the wheels on the table squealed, scrapping sounds of objects sliding across the cheap floor rang in the dim afterglow of the impassioned plea.

A desperate, forlorn plea that stretched, echoing in the sudden silence that followed from both actions.

Something itched in her throat, pressing upwards and out, nearly blocking her airway. Her flesh felt wrong, tainted and sweltering there; she felt a need to reach up, to tear at the dermis. She nearly jumped off the table when cold, clammy hands gripped her own. Brows rising when she realized her hands were at her throat, ready to do just that but for the strong, trembling grip that held her own. Her nails were pinpricks of sharp incisors.

She let go, but the grip on her hands stayed.

Not wanting to think about it, she directed her gaze into those sharp eyes she had seen plenty of times even before her involvement with the Batman. The face no longer twisted, but drawn, jaw clenched and failing to stop the tremble of thin lips. It felt like there was a balance of extremes, swishing back and forth from hot to cold, back again. Steph began to worry if bi-polar disorders were contagious.

Or if dying really was that much of a roller coaster of emotional spewing.

"I don't know." The words hurt, just like the ones before had. They wanted to strangle her with the croak of their appearance, raising hell through her mouth and on her tongue with their reluctance to come forth. Yet, she felt the tension ease, the unyielding force of desperation dissipating from the air and her shoulders went lax.

Leslie's did too.

And Stephanie found herself smooshed, compressed against the body of the strong – deceptively thin – woman. Her, now, trembling body was locked in an embrace that was as fortified as the woman was, had been, when faced with the underbelly of Gotham's poor, sick and weak. A hand pressing down on Stephanie's head, forcing her to bury her face into a cold, sweat-stenched neck. Leslie's nails were cutting into her back, but they were a rather stark welcome compared to the pulsing niggles that took up the rest of her body, persistent reminders of the cause of her death.

"It's a damned miracle." Stephanie mutters out, rasping, lips against Leslie's pulse and with the tardy insight that the itching in her throat is gone – she's crying.

Leslie's form quivers and the both of them are laughing, hollowly, but laughing as they cry.

Africa was different from Gotham – she found that both disheartening and refreshing.

Or rather, Cape Town was rather different than Steph's original impression of Africa. She was use to pictures of the Savannah with wide open plains, tall wheat-colored grass and trees that curled with a flat top, nearly singular with a setting sun and a rock formation with animals herding together in a nearly peaceful, majestic look that the photographer captured.

Nor was it like any of the small villages she had been told about, even had seen pictures of, with the mud and grass of a circular shape, with a roof tipped point. Buildings cloistered close with fire pits and small little trails, spits hanging over the fires to roast whatever the catch of the day was. Baskets being weaved or placed on a woman's head as she carried about fruit or pottery filled with water from a local watering hole. The natives naked besides a few pieces of brightly colored cloth weaved by skilled, practiced hands.

Her history classes hadn't prepared her for anything like this. Suddenly, for someone who felt like they weren't that ignorant, this made her realize how short-sighted she actually was.

A port city on South Africa's southwest coast, Cape Town was on a peninsula just below Table Mountain (jokes for days about that). Boats and docks lined along a harbor, leading way into a bustling, pretty city that had an exotic charm of airiness so different from the heavy air that surrounded Gotham. Roads paved the way through the city and cable cars climbed, circled, to the flat top of the nearby mountain that seemed to cushion against the backside of the budding metropolis, with a chain of that curling inwards to make an extended reach outwards. There were no huts, just houses and rising buildings that did not make quite an impressive height though, Stephanie forgets she shouldn't judge. This isn't Gotham and not much could compare to Gotham's high rises. Still, the architecture and distinguished looks to the buildings were impressive for this part of the world. Steel, iron, concrete – similar like smaller towns that peppered off out of Gotham's main hub of a city, still an urbanized district with its own pretty merit. There was so much greenery that was left untouched, hugging around the mountain arm and spreading outwards from the city, even curling around some of the design in a harmonic display of nature and man-made art.

And she felt like an ignorant schtick because of it.

She was only given a day, a single day, to explore the place and she had designs to possibly see it again. After that, they were moving off with the rest of the missionaries for other parts of Africa to traverse villages and rural pastures that fit more with the pictures she was given of Africa, alternating between jeeps, buses and hummers to travel. There were supplies packaged into a bus, filled with food, water, clothes, medical supplies and tents for whenever they set up.

Leslie had given her books on anatomy, some with medical practices and procedures as she began learning the practicality of being a nurse or a medical assistant to the doctor.

Living in Gotham, one had to know the basics of medical first aid – if not more. Steph also had the added benefit of learning a few things from Alfred, her mother's pill-popping/nursing career and helping Dr. Thompkins in the clinic before her vigilante days, sometimes even after. That gave her an added kick of interest in her anatomy class, an elective that almost seemed borderline requirement due to all the freaks that liked to use Gotham as their home turf.

In this, she was not a master, but she was certainly skilled enough to get some boost in what role she would play.

Browsing through the one of Thompkins's books, she glanced up, feeling eyes on her and espied the driver looking at her through the review mirror. She quirked a brow, infusing as much bitch-please in that one action as possible, but he still stared. Clearing her throat seemed to not dissuade the guy either.

"You gonna make us crash?" Her voice came out sharper than she intended, brows lowering. Her throat no longer hurt, but she had bruises that colored her all over in a lovely mimic of camouflage gone wrong. But he was staring right back and the teen knew well enough why.

After waking up from death, she hadn't been too concerned with her physical appearance (you know, torture and shit) until Thompkins wouldn't stop staring at her. There were a series of tests Stephanie went through; to double check she wasn't really dead any longer. And no, a heartbeat wasn't the only indication of changing her death status.

Side note: she warned Leslie she forever had rights to call the doctor a mad scientist. Young Frankenstein quotes will never end.

Oxygen plays a role in the lively hood of tissue and other functions to make the body a living entity. Sudden death, for instance, would mean there is a lack of air and this has an effect on the massive collection of cells, when deprived of oxygen they can't burn the oxygen – used to create energy. When cells can't get that oxygen, it's called acidosis – generating acid that kills cells and sends toxin to the bloodstream. So one can say bye-bye to blood cells and other tissue formations.

Because of the lack of blood cells, the heart will stop and that means blood stops flowing and clots parts of the body. Known as livor mortis because it's Latin for blueish, and because wherever the clotting happens, usually whatever part of the body is closes to the ground, it makes the surrounding body parts bluish-purple. When Stephanie had woken up, her back was a mess of bluish-purple and so was her feet… yet cleared to a yellow hours after waking up.

That wasn't normal, of course, but neither was waking back up after being dead for nearly a whole day.

There were other stages of death, but one Leslie – and Stephanie felt inclined to agree with – was one of the reasons that Stephanie hadn't remained permanently dead - or so they believed as the only logical reason. The brain is considered a mass of nerves with electrical activity, constantly on going and never halting unless one is truly, truly dead. The monitors that one might find beside their bed, besides the one monitoring one's heart, one of them is administering an electroencephalography test, determining if the neurons of the brain are still firing in order to send commands to organs, like the heart and liver to keep working. According to the machines, Steph died, but there was no other way that Steph being alive now could be possibly if some neurons weren't still possibly active. Perhaps too few that the test never picked them up. Yet were able to pull through and restart Steph's body? It was hard to fully comprehend, but still one of the only working, viable theories both were able to agree on.

Leslie once said something about magic.

Steph was just going with, "I'm a tough bitch who doesn't know when to stay the fuck down."

Both had merit, but neither the other believed was likely.

Going back to the whole oxygen thing, as that also can affect the heart and brain – it also affects the temperature of the body. Without air the body's temperature drops to room temperature as it slowly losses heat from the outside, working inwards to put the body under algor mortis. The flesh and face of the dead person begins to change with lack of air. The face dulls to a yellow, a grey and then to a bluish-black with the jaw falling open and then locking into place with the inability to close and why a lot of people, in ancient civilizations, got away with putting coins or shit as offerings in the mouth of their dead.

The thought almost brings Stephanie to hurl when she recalls the way her mouth felt after her 'reawakening'.

The reason the mouth locks open is because of how the muscle tissue solidifies. Sure, after someone kicks the bucket, the body goes limp but the muscle tissues are beginning to freeze in place. The body is filled with lactic acid waste which threads through the muscles, no longer discharging, and begins locking everything into place. The rigor mortis stage, as it were.

While the flesh, after dying, goes blue and after rigor mortis sets in, the tissues begin to get digested by enzymes, releasing dying cells. The skin begins to get creamy white because of the autolysins of this stage. This correlates to the inner bacteria that, upon death, usually begin to work on internal organs in a process of putrefaction, which normally means that the abdomen swells with bacterial waste and organs would be popping, leaving the body to collapse and dry up – leading to a smell. Ever heard the term, 'something smelled like it died'? There is a reason that term exists, it's a really disgusting, rotten stench of the wastes the body was beginning to be filled up with.

It is because of how her body seemed to – and they checked, they have x-rays to prove this – skip a lot of these steps that had them agreeing to the possible theory that Steph's heart might have given out, but her brain hadn't in order to escape the many symptoms of death. Though Leslie swore up and down that Steph's face blew up and her jaw locked open, she hadn't gotten to see the final aspect of popped organs just before Stephanie woke up.

And Steph wanted to believe that her organs didn't pop and she didn't have shit in her stomach piling up, because that was gross. Just. Fucking. Gross. Ask Leslie, they checked that too.

JUST GROSS!

However, despite how her stint with death didn't take there was one aspect of death that was still very much with Steph and had gained her a large amount of notice. She covered up her eyes as much as possible with sunglasses – was in the works of getting some contacts, but when she was reading it seemed dumb to keep them on.

When dying, the eyes are also affected and is one point of indication that someone is beyond saving, i.e. totally screwed. The eyes normally flatten slightly and turn milky – much like the zombies in a movie where the eyes roll up into the back of the head. However, her eyes are not rolled to the back of her head and were their round, pretty shape.

Like mentioned, Leslie had had a preoccupation with Steph's once vibrant, blue eyes. A mirror provided and bam, she had pale, icy hues that nearly looked white. Almost as if she was a blind person who lost pigmentation in the pupil with the loss of vision and damage to the optic nerves. Steph saw clearly though, no loss of sight – she believed her vision was better than before she bit the proverbial dust.

The driver was a native of South Africa, "You ave stwange eyes, lady." He spoke with his accent tinge, sounding quite gruff and yet beautiful with his words. Not many spoke English better than that, not unless they actually infected the English accent into their words – which a few of the guards and guides of their party could. Stephanie preferred the way the driver spoke and has no qualms admitting it was because she liked the sound of accents. He was lightly tanned, Caucasian in appearance but for the broadness of his nose and the curly, fizz of his closely cropped hair. Likely interracial parentage. His eyes were a pretty hazel, but narrow beneath thick brows of a man who was use to judging people from the shape of his shrewd eyes. A scar littered down his right cheek and into the corner of his lip, the under bite larger and sticking out in comparison to his upper lip that seemed to tuck in. The rest of his body was scarred, no doubt, a tan, leather hunter's hat atop his head and a canvas shirt that had her sweating just looking at it. The guy had large forearms, though she couldn't see his upper arms, she had a strong belief they were also muscled due to the life the guy led if he said he was usually a guard for things like this – had been for the past ten years.

"I like to think they make me otherworldly." Blithely, she intoned with infection of uncaring teenage arrogance – not that hard to do when she was both. She pursued her lips, watching him roll his eyes and turn back to watching the dirt road – several miles out of Cape Town and she was already seeing signs of the Africa she had imagined before Cape Town popped that bubble. The windows were open, letting in a faint breeze that cooled at her flesh – a peaches 'n cream tone, thank you very much. Her body was still littered with bruises, the peaches aspect was just small splotches between the landmarks of yellow, purple and blue. When asked, she and Leslie mostly told the group that she had been an abuse victim and needed to get away for a while.

You know, not that that wasn't entirely untrue, but it was too easily accepted and Stephanie wondered just how often they had seen something like this.

"Stwange contagts you Yanks do." The tone was somewhat scathing, rolled in with a snort and Steph could imagine the scoff he wanted to do, but pressed her lips together to keep her own snort of amusement in. She didn't take offence since she didn't think it was anything on purpose on his end, he told them to call him Mall. He rolled his eyes and Steph was sure she would have won a bet if she had put money down on him being more bemused by the strange trends that teens and Yanks, a term for Americans, do. The way he said certain words did occasionally get her stuck and tickle her funny bone.

"Contacts, yeah." She shrugged one shoulder, willing to go with that one since a lot of people – like that prissy flight attendant before that eight hour nap she took – had been assuming that was what it was. Doc thought it was easier to just go with such a ruse too.

But Mall didn't seem like he was in the mood to talk anymore, glancing to her left at a pointed look from Leslie and Steph decided to go back to remembering where the hip bone was connecting to the thigh bone. She wouldn't tell Leslie it like that though, the woman wasn't pulling her hits on a bruised up teen.

Stephanie nearly believed, because of the dirt roads and the open spaces, that Cape Town would likely be the only major city they stop at. Though it was not the only one of its like, as Leslie gave her books to read up on Africa, there were other similar forms of civilization sporting across Africa. Still, the books were a great addition, though Stephanie had never been a big reader, in learning and knowing where they would be travelling along South Africa; making their way north while zig-zagging across the continent for their journey. She knew that they had planned for a year here, Leslie made it seem as if the trip could have taken longer than that if they sought to do so.

The idea was far too appealing and Stephanie shoved the thought away, for now.

South Africa, basically the whole bottom tip of the continent, is called the Republic of South Africa, stretching along the south Atlantic and to the Indian Ocean with northern neighbors like Namibia, Zimbabwe and Botswana; eastern countries of Swaziland and Mozambique to cushion in the area. As the twenty-fifth largest country in the world by land area it is the twenty-fourth most populous nation with an average of fifty-six million people living within the borders. Eighty percent of the population have Sub-Saharan African ancestry with a diversity of other ethnic groups that speak the Bantu languages – yet the rest of the population consists of European, Asian and multiracial ancestry. A multi-ethnic society that displays a wide variety of cultures, languages and religions. In short, it is a great first stop, as Leslie said. Amongst their party were people who could speak the eleven languages that were recognized within the region and whom have offered to teach Steph.

Effective flirting nature: Activate!

One of the reasons the RSA was the best starting points was that it was one of the few countries in Africa that had never had a coup d'état with regular elections held for a century, though it was not until 1994 that the black majority would seek to recover their rights from the dominate white minority. The evens did play a vital role with the country's recent history and politics with many discriminatory laws beginning to be repealed or abolished from 1990. The laws were still in the works on removing discriminatory legislation, however. There are, at current, political representation in the country's democracy for each ethnic and linguistic group; that plays a role for their little band while they travel.

If tensions were on the rise, especially between whites and blacks then it would be best for the party to avoid those areas due to the amount of violence that would likely break out and needlessly endanger the party - or innocent civilians. There is such a thing as diplomatic immunity, but there are some parties, when trying to make political statements, that might not care that they were from America and not one of the European colonist descendants. Stephanie would be learning to keep her ear to the ground while trying to better understand just how these different structures of economics, politics and social structures could affect their journey. As it stands, the RSA is considered an upper-middle-income economy with their industrial era kicking into gear though poverty and inequality still remains widespread and might end up easing them into what they might see for the rest of their journey.

On a good note, she had already learned at least twenty words in a foreign language! Yay! Her Spanish teacher can suck it.

Probably helped she had to often ask where the bathroom was, too. How to order waffles… and curse words counted, don't listen to Leslie.

Muyexe, a village that reflected most of the places where they would be working, was a poor village in the Limpopo Province in South Africa with a lack of basic services such as water, electricity, proper roads and proper structure housing. Rural landscapes led to a local farming community that was seeing laborious days with barely a tool or tractor to aid in the overall output of crop to what the farmer put into the work. Sometimes even a mule was not able to be provided for when food was scarce and the upkeep for the animal, already in poor conditions, would just ensure the animal dies – possibly too diseased to even eat. Their own group was travelling with another unit that was sending relief to the farmers with the providing of tractors or other agricultural equipment to both help with circulating economy by giving the farmers a helping hand. One of the boys teaching Stephanie one of the Bantu languages was driving the gleaming green machine, though it was not top model, it was a working one with additional supplies added to keep it running for the farmer over the course of a year. It is to the hope of Comprehensive Rural Development Programme, or the CRDP, that the boost will help get basic services to many of the households in the village – in the meantime the bible thumpers will preach god, she, Dr. Thompkins and a variety of others will be providing medical services and others will be staying in the village to teach the local boys and girls.

The crates filled with water, food, clothes and blankets within the many vehicles were already sequestered to a certain quota of filling the needs of the population of the village, which was already recorded via the number of births/death ration - mostly estimations because of poor bookkeeping. Trucks, vans and buses that lined up along the dirt road, progressed to the village with dust kicking up and forcing car windows close. Stephanie stared out of the dusty cloud to the desolate village that looked to be made out of dirt, shanty buildings and garbage. A cluster of the population was already coming out of their homes, waving to the trucks with what Steph could only assume to be of welcome with a midday sun beating down on a mishmash of dark and light flesh, young to old and the breeze tugging on ragged, dirty clothing – if any was worn at all.

It is just one of many, but Stephanie throws herself into the work and the people with a gusto she has always had within her. She buries herself in her studies, in communicating with the villagers and the experience this offers her. She will continue this throughout her journey.

When Stephanie thinks of home she feels oddly empty. She misses it, she does and she has a desire to return one day, but when Leslie puts forth the suggestion of their return after their year in Africa - initially Stephanie puts it to the side, but the thought lingers. When the blonde teen thinks of home, there is a bit of discontent with the idea.

She buries herself in the culture of the villages they visit, instead.

Stephanie runs with the people of various villages, learning how her footwork can launch her from space to space quicker, how she angles her shoulders against the wind can create less resistance – she is bitten with a bug to feel and see how the wind would touch her if she were to travel further East or North. When she climbs the highest point of the trees, using her years of gymnastics to move from branch to branch, learning from the locals that her toes would be her greatest ally in defeating gravity – she wants to climb higher, feeling her breathing get less and less taxing as she heals, as she learns and as she gains a flexibility not offered in any gym.

She learns the veins of the body, how best to stop bleeding from a knife wound or a lion attack. She learns how to shoot little, powerful pistols to the long and deadly shotguns. She encourages a cute, local village boy to teach her how to fish using a spear, to fashion weapons with little to no tools, and endears a few of the elders to teach her ways on how to track.

She remembers tracking her father, how to track others – a tool that has aided her in her earliest crime fighting experience. A skill she had before she began working with Batman and Robin.

She thought she was good, taking lessons from an elderly grandfather she knows is no longer around. She knows the skill, but feels more than happy to refresh. Tracking both humans and animals, the different approaches to determine the number of an opponent's forces, to employ marksmanship, tactics and fieldcraft in order to become the predator. She retrains her brain by repeatedly going on hunting forays with the villagers. She uses the way tracks are positioned to determine which direction her prey is going, to notice how pressure can make one part of the footprint/paw print deeper to best determine intentions. Insight, an empathy or understanding of the prey helps – and that comes with study.

She has had most of her life to understand the crook her father was and those of his ilk, likely part of why she was able to find herself in the thick of things.

She learns to read the signs of an area, to understand their purpose – eating, sleeping or hunting in order to anticipate their needs and wants. To beat the prey to the endgame before they can even reach it themselves. Similar methods can apply to humans, to learn if they know they are being followed or have no idea you're coming. If they feel the threat of your presence in the way they leave their tracks. She learns to see the surroundings through her quarry's eyes to where she is no longer following them, but can predict and cut them off at the pass. Using the tells to read the signs, to identify markers both purposefully made and not so.

She is a natural, it seems.

She helps hunt down wild boars for a feast, creating the hide into a blanket for one of the newborns to chase away the chill of the nights. She learns to best kill animals with mercy, especially as old age grips them or injury cripples them. She makes a waterskin from the bladder of the cow, learning to sew pieces together from cotton hand strung into string or from the tail hairs of mules and horses. She learns to make traps and how to hide them from both the people who seek to raid a village (Stephanie was terrified the first time it had happened, but use to dangers) to the animals that would try to prowl into homes at night. Snares are precious while deadfall traps have come in handy.

Months have passed, but Stephanie has not actively sought to keep count, but she remembers faces, different sunrises and sunsets. The many miles on a road, hours in a tent of comfort or beneath the sun's gaze as she hunts, gathers and tracks with the villagers. It is one of these villages, with the lack of water – where men wear flaps and women are topless- that Stephanie meets someone who can feel the growing wanderlust in her. Embraces Stephanie and all her damage.

It is both scary and beautiful.

When she tells anyone this story, she is going to insist she had been minding her own business. She was not fighting two guys whom had cornered a girl, poachers that felt the thrill of victory from killing whoever once had tusks of ivory, bloody ivory that was barely cleaned from a fresh kill - because what comes next will make her seem crazy.

Stephanie had only noticed the odd tracks; boot prints not the like of any of those travelling with her or those from the village. The tire tracks were easier to spot in the mud, having rained earlier in the day, with mud thrown around and kicked up in a way that no animal ever did. The large tusks were glaring reminders that some people just don't give a shit, barely hidden under a tarp.

She didn't pull the plastic covering off, backtracking instead – she is glad she did. The girl is crying and Stephanie realizes (just as she did before putting on the Spoiler outfit) that her years of fighting, the months of learning from villagers and the guards had more than prepped her to get behind the two men with very little sound.

She is predator and they the prey.

She had a mean right hook that she had before the Bat. He just helped her make it deadlier. The first one goes down with little fuss while the other guy, scrawnier and taller, is sneering and acts like he'll backhand her. She lets him.

It was the only hit she allowed him. So worth it when his eyes widen as she smashes a fist into his solar plexus, using those array of nerves in the pit of his stomach to send a message (anatomy and Dr. Thompkins books making little suggestions on where best to hurt him and how to do it effectively). He looks like he got it, but isn't happy about it. A high kick has his head snapping backwards, a chin already forming a bruise and he goes down for the count with his head hitting a rock on the shore, Stephanie is kind of glad. She is going to make sure he's alive, but only after she takes care of the girl…

But the girl isn't a girl anymore, but an older woman sitting serenely at the edge of the water and her back to it. A large, red dress covers the woman, flowing in the water and dancing with the current, strings slither like baby snakes, dark hair is streaked with gray and flayed about as if in a torrent of wind; volume that doesn't wish to adhere to the laws of physics. Her hair is kept out of her face by a frayed looking red cloth that looks to be made of a similar fabric and shading of her crimson dress. The sun is low, sneaking into evening and the water reflects the light like sparkles behind her.

Stephanie feels enchanted and, yet, spooked as she eyes the woman. The woman's features are cast in shadow because of both the position of the sun and the reflection of the water behind her. Shoulders are slim and nearly peeking out of the neck of the cloth she wears, leaving freckled, caramel skin to be ogled.

The blonde teen shivers, aware that the sense of being spooked is not from just the strange woman herself, but that in the shadow depths there is a pair of milky, blue eyes glowing from it – much like her own. Just without the glow, Stephanie is sure; otherwise Leslie might have told her.

She hopes the doctor would tell her. That would have been an awesome prank at some point.

Otherwise, Stephanie is sure she is freaking out because she is very – very - sure she had been looking at a teenage girl. A girl with dark hair and dark skin, crying her eyes out with similarly dark eyes and a slight mattering of scars on her upper arms.

See Batman, she can notice shit too.

This woman was not whom she had rescued. A look up and down the small river revealed no sign of the girl, though. Just the pointed ends of where the river bends in and out of sight, obscured by mud, rocks and the sparse few trees.

"You want to see much of the wo'ld, Stephanie Bwown. A destiny to fight with a sp'it like yoa's." The woman's laughter tinkles, spreading through Stephanie and makes her insides feel tingly and cold. The old woman tilts her head, those eyes crinkling as if she knows.

Perhaps she does.

"Who are you?" Stephanie asks, the woman spoke English, but heavily accented like many other South African's who could speak English. She does not speak with demand, but caution as she recalls the news – a father who gives away her life to the world, dead or not. A father who doomed her mother with retribution taking a cleaning Crystal Brown from this world. She feels the bitter undertone in her question.

Still, it seemed like an important question.

The woman tilts her head in the opposite direction, much like a bird studying an odd specimen, and Stephanie gets a good view of seeing that wild-mane go all aside; yet staying perfectly like a giant arch that reminds her of Old Lady Hackmore from Earnest Scared Stupid. Stephanie tilts her head the same way, squinting her eyes and believes that, yeah, the woman kind of has that same hunched over build even while sitting, "Kindwed."

Took Stephanie a second, "Huh?" She doesn't bother to hide her befuddlement, but that lady is laughing that same tingling induced laughter as if she expected it.

"You a' meant fo' fight, stwong sp'it of will," the woman raises a hand and is pointing a long, delicate looking finger with a black, elongated fingernail. There are wrinkles in the knuckles, but the rest of the finger looks smooth, "Wanda', leawn and eal."

Silence lends to the ear, but the hand and pointed digit remained focused on Stephanie. She doesn't know about strong will right now, since she feels like she has none to move.

"I am healed; healing is all going on up in here." The blonde teenage waves a hand over herself, looking mostly yellow and pink scar tissue lining her body. The blue and purple gone after so many months, but Stephanie doesn't remember when that was.

The woman shakes her head furiously, the wild hair flaying eagerly and snapping in the air as if each strand was a hissing snake, wiggling in protest at the lightest touch of air, "No, body will eal. Sp'it, soul, need to eal." The woman stops shaking her head and peers at Stephanie with narrowed eyes, "You a't, deepa' - pain added and added with yeaws. Child, small, need to shed pain. You will build yoa' awmo' anew and fage yoozself."

Unbidden, flashes of her father throwing her in a closet come to mind. The screaming of her drug-induced mother, their fights echoing over her own cries. The sharp hungers of pain, the stings of cuts and bruises as lies fall from her lips. Her father's partners reaching for her. Her babysitter touching her. Tim with other girls. The depression and sleeping with Dean. Batman and his words, how she wasn't good enough and how the words echo alongside the voice of her father, of Dean and Tim. She swallows, but it is dry and she licks her lips, feeling how arid they were.

She feels shadows of hands, shame sweeping over her and tearing into her flesh as laughter echoes in her ears. The Birds of Prey, their grudging teaching of her and dropping her, echo Batman's words of how she doesn't have what it takes. The shouts of her gymnastic teacher bellowing how she'll never compare to others, the jeers of slut echoed with her mother's words, before she was sober again. Her own thoughts, always thinking how she wasn't good enough for Robin – Alvin Draper. How he found out everything about her but was never allowed to know him, but she accepted it – believed she just hadn't proven herself to him. Tim's face after she found out who he was, his anger – the way he looked at her when all she did was find out his name and went to see him. The grudging feeling that she was right, she was beneath him and he didn't want someone like her in his life, out of the shadows. Cass, her best friend and biggest support, always punching her lights out to stop her from fighting, admitting – in the end – she didn't think Stephanie was good enough.

She wasn't good enough for a crook like her father, why would anyone else want her?

Stephanie hadn't cried in the months she had been here, helping administer shots, learning tracking, fighting, running, studying medicine and medical procedures from Thompkins and others – not since she woke up alive once more in that small, white, sterile room. Where she let her old life stay, like she was shedding it from her like a second skin.

A lie, because she wrapped it around herself like a fur coat of dead things, hiding deeper in their folds.

A sob wrenched from deep within her, pushed out and piled the shame, the burning anger that suffused itself beneath her skin. Deceit and agony scorching her wounds, both physical and unseen. Her throat hurt anew and she screamed with broken hearted rage, trembling ache; despondent tenderness twisting to bleed back into her ears. It sends her knees to the ground, too much to stay standing. Thin arms wrapped around her, the scent of mulberry, dirt and something uniquely wild surrounded her as tears blurred her vision from the rest of the word. Her own arms found a thin frail body cushioned beneath miles and miles of fabric, clutching.

She felt like she was dying all over again.

Her wounds flared with distress, sharp and the coppery scent of blood filled her nostrils – she was back in that room, Black Mask standing over her; he was surrounded by the shadows. She can make out forms, those of peers, of mentors and figures she had reached for blindly. Amongst them, she sees her own face. Covered in tears, laughing maniacally and twisted in a monstrous image as it sneered down at her, 'You thought you could be someone? We're trash, we're shameful! No one wants us, we don't even like ourself!'

She felt as if she was slammed physically, her chest hurt and pain ran through her nerves to touch every point of her, trying to sweep her away. But then there were arms/ Arms that anchored her, gripping her back fiercely, stopping her from drowning as the words were said to her, as history plays behind her lids, as her own incriminations whisper scathingly in her mind.

"Nginakho, omuhle. Phulukisa, uphulukise futhi ukhale futhi uqale ukuqinisa." The words caught her ear, different from the English of her shadows, the shapes of those whom surround a broken girl who just wanted to be seen, to be loved and be found worthy of something. Love, affection, trust, wonder, but to stop being looked at as if she was lacking, never enough.

I have you, pretty. Heal, heal and cry and begin to strengthen. The language of Zulu, one of the eleven languages spoken in South Africa, one of the languages she was learning and it had never sounded so uplifting. She gasped, gasped like she did when she first awoke after dying and found new life breathed into her lungs.

It was a start.