The monster wouldn't stop crying. He'd done everything-everything he could have possibly wanted-but he wouldn't stop meowing. It wasn't just one meow every so often, either: the kitten followed him through the cave, trailing a steady stream of high, frantic squeaks.
Damian picked Alfred up by his scruff, scowling.
"What the hell do you want from me? You've been fed. You have a blanket. You're living a privileged life, you ungrateful feline."
"Damian!" Stephanie's voice could just ring through the cave when she wanted it to. He grit his teeth. "Are you abusing your furry child again?"
"Of course I'm no-my furry child? Do you even listen to the things that come out of your mouth, woman?"
"But he is just a baby," Steph chirped, taking the cat from him.
The traitorous wretch arched against her neck, rubbing against her and purring and allowing himself to be held.
"That cat is determined to make a liar of me."
"No," she said with a laugh as the kitten wriggled and purred. "You just need to give him a little more honey and a little less vinegar. Cats don't like it when you yell at them."
"I do not yell at him."
"Really? Do you even listen to the things that come out of your mouth? It's a miracle that Alfie doesn't think that his name is Twice-Damned Harlot."
He'd gotten out practice when it came to living with others. Living with Father and Grayson and Pennyworth had spoiled him, so the transition to being alone once more had been rocky. He talked to the air sometimes, to things that he didn't expect to reply to him. He'd talked to the stars above the ruins at Karnak, to the almost feminine curves of the Cotswolds, to the sea of clouds on Huangshan. It'd become habit, in the year he'd spent wandering, a necessary conversation. It'd kept the loneliness he'd refused to acknowledge at bay.
But now, Stephanie was there to catch him and comment on his behavior.
She'd taken to calling him a crazy cat lady.
He really hated that.
"He needs to learn to use his words, doesn't he?" She asked the cat, scratching his ear.
"Oh," he scoffed, crossing his arms over his chest and using his considerable height to really look down his nose at her. "So it's acceptable when you talk to him, but not when I do it?"
"Tone, D. It's all about the tone that you use." Stephanie gave his head a final pet, then handed Alfred back to him. "Everyone likes to be sweet-talked."
"Take care of the cat, you say. Feed the cat by hand, you say. Sweet-talk the cat, you say. One of these days, you're going to realize how outrageous your demands really are," he groused, though he kept his voice even. Alfred continued to purr, tucked against his neck and shoulder.
"Maybe," she said, with a you-make-me-happy-smile. "Or maybe you'll realize that I've been teaching you important life lessons all these months."
"So you're my mentor now, are you? Finally, you're doing something befitting of your advancing years!"
He hit the volume level that switched Alfred from rumbling warm ball of fur to a vicious entity made entirely of claws. He exercised his vast lexicon of swear words as the cat dug into his chest, yowling.
And Stephanie just laughed.
Damian hadn't thought his decision to let Stephanie stay with him through. He hadn't taken the time to weigh the pros and cons or imagine what living with her would be like. He'd been panicked, fueled by adrenaline and the foolish need to make up for what she had lost. Had he been in his right mind, he would have established rules and boundaries before he'd let her in the door.
But, as always, hindsight was 20/20.
It wasn't that he'd never shared space before, either. True, he'd always had his own room, but Grayson had believed that 'do not disturb me' had been a suggestion, not a warning, and Pennyworth did not conform to the schedules and whims of others. No, Alfred Pennyworth had been the one setting schedules, and adopting his ways was easier than trying to break his habits. Damian understood that living with others was a give and take, and that compromises were necessary.
But living with a woman was different, because women were fascinatingly and infuriatingly weird.
Women required upkeep that he hadn't thought about before. She shaved her legs religiously, though he hadn't strictly seen the need to do so- her suit covered her legs, so it wasn't as if the negligible air drag of un-smooth legs was a problem she had to concern herself with. He watched her put on makeup once, and found himself embarrassingly captivated by the process. It was clearly a ritual-even if she didn't recognize it as such and told him he was being "a psycho creep" again when he pointed it out-and she carried herself differently those rare times that she wore the facepaint of the 21st century woman warrior. He preferred her without it, but couldn't stop staring at her when she had it on.
It was a subtle, effective mask, worn for different reasons. Grayson nor his father couldn't have hoped to explain it to him.
It made him feel like a child, just a little. He couldn't stop himself from asking why sometimes: why are you doing that, why is that important to you, why would you waste your time and resources, what does this accomplish?
The worst part about living with a woman was that it was Stephanie, and he didn't like to be continually reminded that she was a woman. He could divorce himself from the notion that she was something soft when they patrolled together, but then they'd come back to the manor and she would change into a tank-top and shorts and he'd remember that she was a woman all over again.
And it wasn't that he disliked women. In fact, that was the problem right there: he hadn't taken the time to care before, and her continued presence reaffirmed this growing, troublesome like of all the things that made a woman different from a man. He'd fumbled around an explanation to that end, which had made her burst into laughter and tell him that finally, finally his balls had dropped.
No, the physical components of adult maturity had hit him early on. Damian, as self-possessed and controlling as ever, had simply denied himself to entertain the mental aspects of it all.
Because those thoughts, those attractions, had a way of getting away from him.
For his own sanity, he kept his thoughts in the abstract. He liked the womanhood that Stephanie represented, the things that appealed to him on a visceral level. The abstracts, the concepts. Not her in particular.
He liked what she was, what she represented. Damian had always been attracted to strong women, but that had been purely cerebral. He'd been taught to seek equals, so he'd decided early on that a warrior of his calibre was his only clean match. That was his mother's tutelage speaking, which hadn't ever concerned itself with base things like physical attraction. The things that he was categorizing now, the things that he was discovering about himself, were the things that he-that made him-
The things that made his stomach flutter and his heart palpitate, the things that caused his palms to sweat and made something inside inside him say yes, this. I like this.
Deep in his embarrassing thoughts, he liked that Stephanie wasn't built like most of the girls he saw in the street, be them on the corners or on the billboards. It was in vogue to be thin, arms and legs like twigs, pointed breasts and sharp hips meeting in a waspish waist. They looked fragile to him, like children or little boys. It did nothing for him.
But Stephanie was built like anyone else who had survived his father's training regiment: solid and healthy. She had heavy breasts and a little bit of softness in her belly that she had to suck in when she zipped up her suit. She never had to ask for things to be lifted for her, and the tension in the muscles of her thighs when she crouched made his mouth go completely dry. She was not a girl, and hadn't been for some time. She was a woman, and one of healthy stock.
Lord. Healthy stock. Like he was mentally comparing her to a prize horse.
What would Stephanie think, if she could hear his thoughts on the fairer sex?
But then it hit him, with startling clarity, that Stephanie would laugh. She would think that it was funny that he thought of her in barbaric terms, because she was a confident woman who knew better than to think that she would ever be an object to a man. Maybe once upon a time, when she was young and needy and desperate for the approval her father-and his father-had never given her, but she was no longer a child.
And he liked that.
Sometimes, he had trouble thinking of her as an ideal or abstract. Sometimes, he found himself just thinking about her.
He knew that line of thinking was both dangerous and stupid. If he ever chose to pursue...romantic endeavors, it would have to be with someone that saw him as a man, not a child. A woman who respected him as Batman, and who didn't remind him that she'd known him since he'd been a round-cheeked boy. Even if he wanted to-and he didn't, he was certain that he didn't-it wouldn't happen.
Stephanie was a woman, and in her eyes he was not her equal. She would not want him, even if he wanted her (and he didn't; he just liked looking at her and he liked that the cat liked her and he liked that she had slapped his father, once).
It'd frustrated him, so he'd fallen back on old habits. They didn't fight together every night, since they were both capable of working alone and so much distance needed to be covered. When the question of together or apart came up every evening, he found himself choosing apart more and more often. It was a selfish decision, a childish one.
And it almost cost him everything.
When he'd been a child-or at least young-he had wanted to carve out that space at Batman's side. He'd wanted to be his true son, his heir, the one to inherit it all. The money, the name, the glory, the recognition. He'd more than replaced Tim as Robin-he'd surpassed him in every imaginable way, despite not being Bruce Wayne's chosen son.
And now he had it all. All the things that Drake had either given up or passed over, the things that he liked to believe that he'd won fairly. The cave, the legacy, the accouterment. Her.
He had it all. All of his hopes and dreams.
But the cave had too many suits in glass cases, now, and he was half terrified that he would be adding another display case soon.
He'd planted the tracking chip in her suit upgrades, a basic system that monitored her vital signs. It wasn't an elegant thing-just the bare minimum, a way for him to ensure that he would be notified if she ever needed to be saved. In everything, Damian cheated. He didn't have the sense and timing of his predecessors-Father had always known when he was needed, he believed, but then again his memories of the man were illuminated and elevated-so he relied on tech instead.
Gotham being Gotham and Stephanie being Stephanie, it was merely a matter of time before the alarm went off. It surprised him when it did, nonetheless.
There were three levels of alarm. The green one went off if she left city limits, since they'd established that neither would leave without telling the other first. If it went off, it meant that she'd been kidnapped. The yellow one went off if there was a sudden pressure change in the suit, which meant that she was either up high or down deep. If it went off, it meant that she was getting in over her head one way or another. The red one went off if her vital signs were fluctuating.
If it went off, it meant that she was dying.
That glowing red light punched the air from his lungs. The next fifteen minutes were a half-remembered blur of action. He found her in a meatpacking facility, neutralized the men beating her to death-so many of them, so many steel-toed boots coming down again and again-and carried her back to the cave. He'd stripped her down and tried to make sense of what had been ruptured and broken amid all the blood that filled the suit. The suit had saved her, but only just.
Later, Damian couldn't remember if he'd crippled the men or killed them. It hadn't mattered to him, not then. Saving her was all that had motivated him, and he'd been too furious to think, to breathe, to hold himself back. For everything that they'd done to her, he wanted to pay those bastards back double. If they were crippled, good. If they died, better. So long as he didn't know either way, he could not be blamed.
It was touch and go for a while. He wasn't the surgeon that Pennyworth had been, but he'd sufficed. The blood supply on hand hadn't been enough; he hadn't kept the stock fresh ever since his deal, since the day that he'd stopped needing the miracles of modern science. Thankfully, their blood types were compatible and draining himself nearly dry wouldn't kill him. Nothing would.
Her right forearm was broken, already set neatly in a cast. She'd sustained spiral fractures of radius and ulna, which told its own story. Greenstick fractures and compound fractures were more usual; spiral fractures only happened when the bones were twisted. He could see, in his mind's eye, how it'd happened: she'd been grabbed, and she'd fought. Probably tried to kick, knowing her-and her assailant had wrenched her back like a ragdoll.
Twisting. Snapping.
He swore under his breath, moving to her bedside with the kind of slow caution he usually reserved for casing a warehouse packed with thugs. He dropped into a chair beside her bed. Stephanie made soft, semi-conscious noises of pain whenever she shifted, but the drugs took affect and she went still.
Too still for his liking. He dragged his chair closer and curled his fingers against the side of her throat. He kept his touch light, but he could still monitor her pulse and breathing rate. He didn't trust the equipment she was hooked up to, not right at that moment. Damian needed to feel the cycles for himself.
The transfusion had stabilized her, the emergency surgery saved her. All the readouts and soft beeping machines told him this, but he couldn't leave her alone. He was too afraid that the situation would turn if he didn't keep watch. Her life had fallen apart in his absence, so he was unwilling to give up control again. He knew that the thought was an irrational one, but he couldn't stifle it.
Damian lingered in her room for hours after she fell asleep. He wasn't worried about accidentally waking her-he was Batman; he could certainly exit a room without waking a drugged up girl. He just...wasn't terribly inclined to move. He scrutinized Stephanie, frowning without realizing he was doing it.
She was pale from blood loss, her mouth hanging slack. He took her in, Eidetic memory clicking an image that he would not forget. Her nail polish-purple, of course-was chipped. There were a rainbow of bruises on her forearms, fresh violet ones mottled with slowly healing yellowed ones. She hadn't been exaggerating when she'd said she never left the street anymore-the scars of it were spread over her body. He was fascinated by the fine golden hair on her arms, the softness of her skin, the way he could see how the fight had marked her. Between his mother's ministrations and his deal, he'd never scarred.
Damian felt dizzy, though he knew for fact that his body had already replaced the blood that he'd given her. His hands skipped lightly over the bedspread, finding a tangle in her long hair and absentmindedly teasing it apart. He curled the smooth hank of hair over his finger, closing his eyes and smelling it.
He knew that they used the same shampoo, since she technically just stole his. How was it that she smelled different-smelled good? Women were soft. Damian had never been very close to them before, and was only now realizing that they were different. He'd never cared, dismissing the fairer sex to be the weaker and therefore less interesting one. His mother was an exception to that categorization, but she had not been what anyone would call a hands-on mother. He'd been eight years old before they were formally introduced. Touches had been rare. Instead of being a template for womankind for him, she had been sexless. He'd known that other mothers were different, but he had assured himself that his was superior. Powerful.
It was late in life to be learning what a real woman was, but Damian was a quick study when he put his mind to a subject.
"You gonna jus'...sit there and sniff me like a creeper?"
Even though it was a reedy, wandering mumble, Steph's voice startled him out of his thoughts. He blinked rapidly, straightening.
"I wasn't sure if you were breathing, you insipid cow," Damian snapped, moving his hand away and putting a comfortable distance between them again. He busied himself with repacking medical supplies, scowling.
The corner of her mouth turned upwards in a faint, exhausted smirk.
"You came to save me...? Huh. We're even."
"Hardly. You've suffered massive blood loss. You nearly died."
"Man." She breathed in, closing her eyes. "Should've been Catwoman. That...that has to be the fifth life I've gone through."
"Tt. You're graceless and guileless. You're more apt to be Manateewoman."
Steph tried to laugh, but agony twisted up her face and she whimpered instead.
"Broken...?"
"Three ribs, as well as your right arm," he deadpanned. "Go back to sleep. You're burning through your painkillers unnecessarily."
Damian shut the supply box with a businesslike snap, taking her slight bobbing nod as a sign of her agreement. He turned to the door, but not before she reached out her left hand and fisted her fingers in his sleeve. He could have easily pulled away, but it must have taken Herculean effort for her to move in her condition, so he allowed her the touch.
"Thanks, Dami."
He didn't know how to reply to that-sincerity prickled him, begging for reciprocation-so he just nodded curtly.
Her eyes slid shut again, fingers loosening.
He extricated himself, sat, and continued his vigil until dawn.
The next time she came to, Damian was still sitting in the chair beside her bed. Judging by the angle of sunlight coming in through the blinds, she'd been out for a while. A long while. It was sunset, and she'd been jumped barely past eleven o'clock. For all she knew, this wasn't the first sunset that she'd slept through.
"Whumma," Steph croaked, licking her parched lips. He zeroed in on her with those too-blue eyes of his, standing up and moving closer. "Wa...?"
Wordlessly, he held a cup of water with a straw for her, helping her drink.
"Better?"
She nodded.
"You have either the worst luck or the best luck I've ever seen," Damian said, sounding tired and cross. "You were shot clean through the abdomen, but by some miracle your bowels weren't perforated and your abdominal aorta was missed. With the beating you received and the state of your ribs, I'm shocked that you didn't end up with flail chest."
Flail chest? Her head felt fuzzy, opiates taking the edge off. There'd been a lot of flailing. She remembered that much-remembered being picked up, shaken, thrown, hit, kicked. Spat on.
She wrinkled her nose. Another day at the office in Gotham, pretty much.
"What happened to you, Stephanie?" Damian growled, suddenly sounding like a ten year old boy again. Arrogant, demanding, scared.
He looked worried. Really, honestly worried. Geeze, that must have meant that she'd been pretty bad off when he'd found her. Maybe it'd been a good thing that she'd lost consciousness.
"Would you believe a gang war...?" She wheezed a thin laugh. "But I didn't start this one. Scout's honor."
He didn't think that the joke was very funny, obviously.
"You should've called me," he said angrily, hands balling into fists. "I could have prevented this."
"I didn't think it'd be this bad," Steph said. She tried to shake her head, but that was too much movement. "'Sides, you were busy..."
"Not too busy for this," Damian said between clenched teeth. "I am not my father. I will not sacrifice the people who fight under me. You are not expendable. I cannot replace you."
Her shock must have shown on her face, because he quickly followed that with, "Because nobody has your training, and I have neither the time nor the resources to invest in raising a Robin."
She smiled sluggishly, though it made her bruised face ache. "And here I thought you haven't been listening."
"What?" He asked, still rigid and indignant.
"Sweet-talk," she rasped, her painful smile widening. "You're gettin' the hang of it."
"You're benched until further notice. Maybe you'll learn to be more careful," he grumbled, sitting back down and leaning his elbows on the bed. "You're not fit for conversation. Go back to sleep, you twice-damned harlot."
She let herself relax and catch the next gentle swell of medication. She heard the scrape of chair legs on tile as he scooted closer, his warm hand resting against her pulse. She dropped off feeling safe.
Stephanie left the twelve-hour critical window safely. She hadn't fallen or spiked in hours, so he knew that he could leave her for a little bit. Not for long, and not without syncing his cowl to her biosignature readout, but he needed space.
Damian's hands wouldn't stop shaking. Bile soured in the back of his throat. He needed answers. He needed to know how this had happened, who had done it, who to blame.
Barring that, he needed to find something to put his fist through.
It was a beautiful night in Gotham City. Cold and clear, the November air sang with the promise of snow. A smattering of stars were visible even through the light pollution, the streets were clogged with shoppers gearing up for the coming holidays, and Batman was dangling a man over the side of a building with every intention of letting him go.
"Give me one reason why I should let you live," Batman snarled. "Just one. One convincing argument, you piece of filth."
Clancy's face was beet-red and sweaty; he was hyperventilating.
"B-B-" he swallowed, fumbling with his fat, stupid tongue. "Batman doesn't kill?"
"I told you to make a convincing argument. Try again."
"I don't-I don't know what you're talking about, man," Clancy said, holding desperately to his arm. Damian had his hand fisted in his shirtfront and was dangling him over a fifteen-storey drop. The headlights far below were reduced to dimly twinkling pinpricks, as seemingly distant as the stars above. The cool night wind rustled Damian's cloak and lifted Clancy's sweat-soaked hair from his forehead. "You said back off, I backed off!"
"Tt. Men like you don't give up compulsive behavior that quickly. I've been monitoring you for weeks. Do you think that I don't know when I'm being followed, Clancy? I chose not to address the issue, because normally you aren't worth my time. But I know, and you know, that you saw something last night."
The truth of it was, Damian wasn't sure that he had seen anything. Maybe he really had given up the Grey Ghost and stopped stalking Stephanie. Maybe he'd even feel a little bit bad if he ended up dropping him. Maybe.
"I didn't, I-I-"
"TELL ME!" Damian roared, using his voice. "I KNOW YOU FOLLOWED HER, YOU FUCKING COWARD!"
"I'm SORRY!" Clancy wailed, legs kicking wildly. "I was going to-it was just a couple thugs, just-four, maybe five guys, but one of them had a stun stick. I was helping her, and the guy with the stun stick had this collar, and it-it went off like a siren. They all came, all of them, and I couldn't fight that many guys-n-not even for her. The King was there, man, I didn't want to die!"
Clancy Johnson was a troubled man, but a relatively normal one. He had some training and some tech, but his sense of self-preservation was too strong to make him a bat. He'd done what any sane man would have, under the circumstances. He'd left her and ran.
"You should have."
Batman swung him over to solid ground again, dropping him in a graceless heap.
"We're done here. I will only say this once, so listen well. If I ever see you again-if I even think that I see you-I will bring you back here and I will drop you. If, by some bizarre twist of fate, you survive the fall, I will gather up your broken body and I will drop you again. And if I hear that you have told anyone what happened here tonight, I will feed you to the King myself. Now, go. Go, and live out the rest of your miserable little life."
He could smell the sharp, hot scent of urine; Clancy scrambled to get away from him as quickly as possible, not even fully standing before he lurched away.
Batman adjusted his gloves, then made his way to the sewer.
Waylon Jones wasn't one of the ones that had made his fight against the Bats a personal one. To him, the man-thing known as Killer Croc, it'd all been the natural order of things. He hadn't killed because he had a score to settle-not all the time, at least. Sometimes, he killed because he was hungry. Sometimes, he killed to inspire fear and to make all the other mob bosses clear the watering hole. Sometimes, he killed just because he liked it, because he could.
He was higher up on the food chain, and he never let Gotham forget that. He hadn't needed to change when the Bat left his belfry, hadn't felt compelled to switch up his act. No, he'd just gotten bigger, and meaner, and hungrier.
The nature of the beast is to escalate, and the King Croc had earned his crown by feasting.
The smell burned his nostrils when he inhaled, so strong that he could taste it. It was utterly rank, enough to make even him want to gag. He didn't, though, because he was him, but the urge was still there.
To find his nest, Damian had only to follow the rats. Croc had gotten bolder, embracing his bestial nature because it'd been the only thing in his life to do right by him. So, the bits and chunks he left behind were as much negligence as they were a warning to other predators.
This is what will happen to you, said the bloated, half-consumed remains of a naked man. Turn around, said the lower half of a woman, nothing but a severed spine, hips, and one pretty leg. Long live King Croc, said the pile of dead and dying things and refuse that the massive, scaly monster reclined on like a throne.
But Damian was every bit the predator that the King was. He just didn't feel the need to prove it by eating flesh.
Croc's eyes were slightly luminous in the low light, reflecting an eerie green. He blinked one eye, then the other, and took a deep breath.
"Not the Bat," he rumbled, though he sounded more amused than disappointed.
"Yes and no," Damian said, in his own voice. "Better that you think of me as not, as I'm not here to represent the Batman. Not tonight."
Croc gave a laugh that sounded like wet leather slapping on aluminum siding.
"Let me guess. The giiiiiiirlllll."
"Yes," said Damian, and detached his cape. It half floated, half sunk into the fetid murk. "The girl."
"You bats, you's easy. Take a crowbar to one'a ya, and you all get your feathers ruffled. What's it gonna be, kid? Arkham? HA!"
"No, Jones. Batman would have put you in Arkham." He waded into the deeper water. "I'm not Batman."
Croc rolled over. He slid into the water with a gravelly snarl and his eyes disappeared.
Damian had no desire to make this anything but efficient. He found a length of barbed wire spooled around a half-submerged length of city fence; one good yank pulled it free.
When Croc emerged, teeth-first, he was ready. The once-man was twice his height and three times his weight; the math wasn't in his favor, but Damian was a cheater.
Grayson was the one who'd taught him the maneuver that flipped him out of the way and onto Croc's shoulders, but the barbed wire garrote that he wrapped around his thick throat was of his own styling. He stomped between his shoulderblades, hard, and felt something crack.
Croc bellowed until he wrapped the wire around both of his fists, shortening the slack and tightening the noose. The muscles in his arms stood out in hard bands as he pulled, and pulled, and pulled.
"Batman would put you in jail, Jones, but I'm not that kind," he hissed as the wire disappeared into his flesh and Croc gurgled. "I swore not to take human life, but you are nowhere near human. You are a monster, and that makes you free game as far as I'm concerned. I hope that your friends will see you and know that trying to make a point will not work with me. A crowbar isn't as effective as it used to be."
Croc fell forward. He didn't move.
Damian retrieved his cape, shaking it out briskly before putting it back on.
The King is dead, said the corpse of Waylon Jones. Long live the Bat.
"I'd never realized it takes so long for a body to heal," Damian said, sounding bored. "I find myself wondering if you're doing this on purpose, to try my patience."
"Oh, right," Steph said, rolling her eyes. "Because hobbling around for three months and having trouble peeing by myself is totally worth the time off work!"
He made a grumbling noise at the mention of bodily functions, even though he'd been the one to help her from the bed to the bathroom those first couple of weeks. Honestly, Steph was healing remarkably quickly, in no small part due to her inborn stubbornness. She pushed herself harder than any physical therapist would have, because she seriously did not know the meaning of giving up. It never even cropped up as an option, not in her curiously-wired brain.
The weeks she'd spent healing could have been worse. She'd assumed that Damian would have told her to deal with it herself, not having the patience to coddle someone who took the slow lane on the highway to health and happiness. To him, if something broke, you just replaced it. When the Flamingo had put a half dozen bullets in his spine, paralyzing him, his mother had taken him home and given him a new one. He came from a world where body parts were switched out as easily and readily as car parts.
When he'd told her that, Steph had laughed for three straight minutes. Then she'd realized he wasn't joking, and it'd been really awkward for them both.
Ever since his mother had replaced him with a less quarrelsome new sibling, extreme operation hadn't been an option. Even if ringing up Mommy al Ghul for a couple spare ribs had been an option, Steph wouldn't have taken it. She just wasn't that kind of person.
So, healing took time. It was hard, and it was painful, and it meant a fresh batch of scars, but she lived for the tiny triumphs. She was up and walking in ten days, though she couldn't laugh or cough or bend over. She mastered left-handed eating and Wayne-slapping in half that time. Her cast came off after six weeks, and her right arm was starting to get back to normal usage. Steph still ached sometimes, and got winded every once in a while, but it wouldn't be much longer before she'd be back to kicking faces in.
She'd expected Damian to be short with her, uncooperative. She'd been rendered useless as a partner, and no manner of sneering or glaring at her could get her to heal faster.
But he'd surprised her.
Like, a lot.
He'd still patrolled nightly, but he'd checked in every couple of hours. He'd always made sure that she had the basic necessities, whether that meant making them available to her or-gasp-getting them himself. He'd helped her wash her hair, though he'd groused about the length of it and threatened to shave it when she was sleeping. He even got her movies to watch when she was doped up and miserable, though he had strong opinions on why everything about Disney movies was wrong.
He'd been good to her, in his own way. She'd gotten to know him, really know him, and surprised herself at how easy he was to read once you knew his tells.
For example, Steph could tell when Damian was working himself up to say something. She'd usually catch him muttering to himself, or to the cat, and actively avoiding her. He was all about choosing the right timing and controlling to flow of a conversation he wasn't confident about, so she'd learned to give him room and let him come to her.
"Lucius has been giving me hell," he started off, sounding loftily annoyed-but speaking more quickly than he usually did. "I almost resent my father's public legacy, since it causes me no shortage of grief."
"Boo hoo," Steph laughed, scraping the bottom of her cup of yogurt with her spoon. "Being a rich, spoiled brat is sooooo hard."
"Yes, but." His blue eyes flicked away briefly, then back to her. "I've outgrown the age where being just a rich, spoiled brat is acceptable. Apparently, I've been nominated as one of Gotham's most eligible young bachelors. No one thought to inform me of this development."
She licked the back of the spoon, cleaning off any delicious blueberry goodness.
"Ahh. I see how it is. Lucius wants you to get your playboy groove on."
"For lack of a more tasteful description, yes. He's all but demanded that I be seen with a woman at Le Nuit next thought of entertaining some vacuous girl who only wants to discuss her clothing and the nuances of Glee makes me physically ill, so you are coming with me."
Steph almost choked on her spoon.
"What?"
"I'm not interested in shallow little socialites. What will I talk to them about? The only neutral territory of my interests is the cat, and I can only talk about that hellbeast for so long. My only alternative would be to let one of them control the conversation for an entire evening, and I can promise you that blood would be shed."
Okay. So he wanted her to be his beard, since he hated 98% of humanity and could probably be described as batsexual. Most girls would jump at the chance to go to a fancy restaurant with a billionaire footing the bill, but Steph...
She knew where her Stephcialties lie. And high society was not her Stephciality.
"I don't own a dress," she said slowly, scraping the bottom of her yogurt cup again. Anything to keep her hands busy.
He propped his chin on his hand, giving her a dissecting look.
"I know. You own two pairs of jeans and a handful of ratty shirts, all of which should be burned. I can arrange for something for the night."
"I've never been to a super fancy place."
"It doesn't take any great skill to sit and eat food, Stephanie. You like to eat. That much is obvious."
Aaand there was the fat joke. No conversation with Damian was complete without one. She huffed a sigh.
"Fine. But only this once, because I owe you. Next time, you find another Batbeard."
He frowned, but nodded.
"Good. Dinner will be on Saturday, at eight. The reservation has already been set."
Later, she wondered if he'd gotten the idea from Beauty and the Beast.
The dress appeared in her room on Saturday afternoon, folded in a long white box and joined by a note that said This should suffice.
If there was one thing positive about Damian, it was that he had incredible taste. The dress was beautiful: an empire waist and tiered skirt of plum silk and chiffon, a deep v of a neckline and a daringly low scooped back. Steph spread the dress out in her lap, the diaphanous material looking almost like ripples of water. Tiny beads caught the light and winked at her.
It was beautiful, but the thought of wearing it made her suddenly sick to her stomach. It'd show her chest, arms, and back. It'd show everything-all the wounds and scars, old and new. She didn't regret any of them, not when being Batwoman was the one thing she felt she'd done right with her life. But, normal women didn't look the way she did. She could try to cover up what she could with makeup, but she didn't have a snowball's chance in hell of looking like the kind of woman the son of a billionaire industrialist should have hanging off his arm.
He should have gotten something with sleeves and a full back, she thought, feeling helpless. But she couldn't turn him down or say that the dress was anything but beautiful. And it was just one evening. She regularly survived harrowing situations, so she could tough this one out. The Wayne PR machine needed some oiling, and he owed that much to him for taking care of her.
She got dressed early, taking her time. Steph curled her hair and put on make-up. She couldn't help but grin at the fact that there were a pair of matching heels in her closet. The note with them read Just don't break anything.
Steph did have to practice walking the length of her room a couple of times. It'd been a while since she'd worn heels.
But it turned out that Bat-training pretty much prepares you for anything, even walking in four-inch stilettos. She took comfort in the fact that she could slip them off and fight crime with them if need be.
Deciding that this was as good as it was going to get, she joined Damian in the garage.
If a suit made a man, the suit he was wearing made him a stranger. The cut emphasized his broad shoulders, the sunny yellow tie the only splash of color between the black silk of the suit and his neatly combed black hair. He was adjusting his cufflinks, but he looked up at the sound of her heels on the cement.
"You look..." Damian said, trailing off. He couldn't finish the thought.
Wow, she thought sourly. That bad? He can't find anything nice to say at all?
"Acceptable," she finished for him, mimicking his usual flat drawl. He rolled his eyes.
"Yes. You-yes. Acceptable. Almost." He reached into his breast pocket, taking out a string of pearls. She could tell just by looking at them that they were very old. "I never met my grandmother, obvious, so I have no emotional attachment to the things that Martha Wayne left behind. Most of it was given away or auctioned off to charity, but Father insisted on keeping these. There are no women in the family to appreciate gaudy little things, so I thought that you-you might appreciate them instead."
And that? That, Steph didn't know how to react to.
"Allow me," he said, and she carded her loose curls to the side so that he could clasp the necklace. The light graze of his fingertips at the nape of her neck made her stomach do flips worthy of Dick Grayson.
Whoa, girl. Reality check. This is Damian Friggin' Wayne, the guy who tells you that shaving is illogical and calls you and the cat twice-damned harlots. He might be all cleaned up, but he's still the Littlest Psychobat. Back, hormones. Back to the pit whence you came.
"Now you are acceptable," Damian said, sounding pleased with himself.
She traced the cool, even ridges of the pearls. It was a long string, hanging between her breasts even though he'd looped it twice.
"Really pulling out the stops, aren't you?"
"Doing things halfway is not in my nature," he said, straightening his tie. "The paparazzi will find themselves marvelously convinced. Come on, I don't want to be late."
Steph was horrified to find that there was no twelve-and-under portion of the menu. In fact, the menu was missing a lot of things, like pictures and prices and English.
"I don't speak French," she hissed over the top of the menu. "All I know is to stay away from escargot."
"Your loss," Damian said with a negligent shrug. "They're known for their Escargots à la Bourguignonne."
"Do you know why the menu is in French? Because nobody in their right mind would order the Snails in Garlic Butter."
She'd known that fine dining was a little out of her league, but Steph hadn't realized exactly how far. The menu was in French because it was just assumed that the people who ate there were cultured enough to be multilingual. They'd all finished high school. The menu had no prices because it was just assumed that the people who ate there could shell out for just about anything their hearts desired. They'd never eaten peanut butter and Eggo waffles for three weeks solid because that was all that they could afford. The menu had no twelve-and-under section because it was just assumed that the people who ate there had nannies. They'd never zeroed in on the kid's section of a menu because eating out was a luxury, and the cheaper, smaller portions stretched a buck further.
Steph was having a tiny little panic attack. Why had she agreed to this again? One wrong move and this would go from 'positive Wayne facetime' to 'front page humiliation'.
When the waiter came over and asked if they would like some wine, she could have hugged him. Really, she could have.
But ordering wine was a drawn out process, it turned out. Damian took the wine list from the waiter before she could reach for it-she only barely kept herself from blurting out Uh, excuse me, you can't legally be served alcohol and I need that way more than you do.
"What vintage is the Château d'Yquem?" Damian asked, his French as fluid as if it'd been his native language.
"A 1992, sir. An excellent year, if I do say so myself. Would you like to sample it?"
"Mm," he said, and the waiter poured a couple swallows' worth into his glass.
Damian held the stem of the wine glass delicately, holding it up to the light. It looked like he was expertly swirling a glass full of gold. She'd never seen a white wine that richly colored.
But then again, the wine Mom and her had always drank had come from cardboard boxes with plastic spigots. Safeway had always been a solid vintage.
He sniffed the wine thoughtfully, then took a sip.
And then he spit it out in the bucket the waiter was carrying. This, apparently, was proper conduct-the waiter didn't bat an eye.
Nothing made sense.
Nothing.
"The 1992 Château d'Yquem, you said?" Damian asked, still scrutinizing what was left in his glass.
"Yes, Monsieur Wayne. Is it to your taste?"
Steph swore that she could hear the tt that he wanted to make, but didn't.
"Mm," he repeated, blandly. The waiter took this as a yes-she suspected that complete indifference was the approval of the very rich-and nodded.
"I'll fetch you the bottle, sir," he said, taking the barely-used glass.
There were more pieces of china and cutlery at her setting than had ever been on her mother's table, even when it'd been the two of them eating together. There was a bowl, a large plate, a little plate, an even littler plate, three crystal glasses of differing sizes, three forks, two knives, and three spoons. Just for her.
Oh, god. There were choices. There were so many choices, and she had no idea which one to use. Steph had been less nervous when faced with bombs that needed defusing. Picking between the red wire or the green wire was nothing compared to the fork dilemma. If she cut the wrong wire, she didn't have to live with the knowledge and shame.
And she couldn't ask Damian. She knew that she couldn't. It'd embarrass him in front of the waiter.
She picked up the fork closest to her plate with her right hand, careful to wrap her fingers around it. She'd been out of the cast for a month, but that didn't mean the healing process was over. Even with daily physical therapy-and all the stubborn dedication she was famous for-the muscles were weak and stiff.
The fork dropped, clattering loudly on her plate.
The waiter gave her a pointed look, then a thin smile. "Ah, madame, that is not your salad fork. That is your dessert fork."
Why would they put the dessert fork closest to the plate? Dessert came last.
With the way her face was burning, she was sure that she was red and blotchy from embarrassment from her chest to the tips of her ears.
"With what I'm paying, I feel that my companion is entitled to use whichever fork she chooses," Damian said. There was a warning note in his business-calm voice.
"Very good, sir," the waiter replied stiffly, his thin smile stretching further.
Steph stared blankly at her plate, chin tucked. She had to work to keep herself from listing all of the ways that she could make a speedy, silent exit. Dinner wasn't supposed to be a pop quiz for an etiquette class that she'd never taken. Why couldn't Lucius have demanded that Damian be seen eating at a burger shack? Preferably one that didn't have napkins and served their burgers and fries in baskets-no utensils, no plates, no problems.
A burger and a night out fighting crime. She was a simple girl who liked simple things. Was that so wrong?
"Start with the utensil farthest from your plate," Damian instructed, voice low. Her helpless confusion was showing, then. Great. Something new to grind in her face. "Work your way in, using one utensil per course. The salad fork is on your outermost left, followed by the dinner fork and dessert fork. Your soup spoon is on the outermost right, followed by your beverage spoon, dessert spoon, salad knife and dinner knife. Work from the outside in, always."
Stephanie felt dizzy and more than a little bit sick.
"This was such a bad idea."
"No. I don't care what you use. I'm only telling you for future reference."
"No. Seriously. This was such a bad idea. You saw how the waiter was looking at me, right? He's not the only one. That lady, that one over there with a rock on her finger the size of a baby's fist? She just whispered look at that poor thing to her husband." Her chest ached like her ribs had been busted all over again. She hated pity. Absolutely hated it. "I'm a poor thing now."
"Enough."
Damian slammed down his fork, rattling the glasses. She jumped reflexively, her knees hitting the underside of the table.
"Don't make a scene," Steph whispered, hands raised in treaty. It was almost a plea. "I'm sorry, okay? You should've just picked up a high society girl and schmoozed if you really had to make an appearance. I suck at this. I'm sorry. Just don't make a scene."
"I didn't have to come," he said quietly, each word measured carefully. "I lied."
"What?"
His jaw flexed as he clenched his teeth. "I said, I lied to you. Fox requested that I make more appearances, but he did not force me to come here tonight. I merely-I acted upon his suggestion. I came here because the food is excellent. I came here because I wanted to."
Steph giggled, high and nervous. She only laughed like that when she was close to hysterics.
"Why? Why would you-" Her chin trembled, beyond her control, and her voice dipped into a fainter whisper. "-why would you embarrass me like this?"
"That wasn't my intention," he said, looking away.
"You should have known better. I'm not like you. I'm not-Steph Brown isn't anyone. I didn't finish high school, I didn't finish college, I've never held down a job, I've never gone to a restaurant that didn't have a twelve-and-under section of the menu, I've never-" She blinked frantically against the way her eyes were burning. It was a losing battle.
She felt so small. So stupid. How dare he reduce her to this. She'd fought so hard to win her confidence, to prove that she was more than the circumstances she'd been born into-he was always stabbing into that fragile bubble with needles, always trying to pop it in small ways, and now he finally had. He'd won.
"I don't know what a salad fork is for. I mean-salad, I can guess that much, but I don't know which one is which. There's like-there's like five forks, and they all look the same. You saw how that waiter looked at me. I shouldn't be here. He knew it, I know it, and you know it."
"That wasn't the waiter," Damian muttered, gaze fixed at some point past her shoulder. He couldn't even look at her. She was embarrassing him, too. "That was the sommelier."
"What the fuck is a sommelier?" Steph demanded in a hysterical whisper, her voice full of tears. "If you were trying to make a point, I get it. Okay? You win. I'm not cut out to be upper-class. My dad was a crook with mental problems and my mom was a pill-popping enabler. I know where I came from. I'm not ashamed of that, because my mother was a good woman and I've-I'm not a statistic. I'm-"
"Stephanie-" he tried to say, but she was couldn't stop. Awful words kept hemorrhaging out.
"-screw you, Damian, seriously. You might be a psycho, but you're a psycho with culture. Why this place? Why this dress? This dress probably costs more than my mother made in a month, and all it does is show everyone here how scarred up I am. Is that what you wanted? For people to see Damian Wayne humoring some dumb blonde that just looks like damaged goods? Did you think it'd make you seem heroic?"
That got him to look at her. His blue eyes blazed with anger.
Good. Then maybe he would feel as awful as she did.
"That is not what I wanted. That is not anything near what I wanted, and if anyone dares to imply that I will personally ruin any career they would have had."
"I-"
"No. Listen to me. I don't care who your parents were," Damian hissed, his voice wound steely-tight. She could barely hear him over the conversations around them, the polite murmuring punctuated by the bright chimes of silver cutlery on fine china and crystal glasses meeting in toasts. What he had to say was only for her ears, so she had to strain to hear every word. "I don't care how you were raised, or what mistakes you have made. I don't care that you are not accustomed to gifts. I. Do. Not. Care. These facts are inconsequential to me. I want you to have these things because you deserve them-because I want to give them to you. I want for you to not want for anything. You give so much. You care. You deserve to be cared for in return. Frankly, fuck the fucking sommelier. His taste in wines is subpar at best and he is a weasel. I wanted this to be nice for you. Because you're healed, now, and. And I didn't-I didn't know how to do it."
Stephanie was completely speechless. She opened her mouth to say something, to deny that she wasn't worth half of this, to explain that she was just trying to make up for all the stupid, selfish things that she'd done over the years, to apologize for what she'd said, but no words were coming.
Nobody had ever said that to her before.
"That fucking sommelier, and m-my mascara isn't-" Her breath hitched as she tried to stave off the real waterworks. "-it's not waterproof, and I'm going to look worse than I already do, a-and-"
"Shut up! I mean-please. Shut up, please."
"You shut up," she laughed, but it came out a ragged-edged sob. "This was nice. I'm just not good at nice. Nice makes me break out in hives."
"I didn't...that wasn't meant to make you cry," Damian said, sounding half-helpless. "I didn't mean for any of this. Did I misspeak?"
She reached across the table and took his hand, knotting their fingers together tightly. His face slid and swam in her aqueous vision, blurred by candlelight and tears.
"Nah," she said, her voice reduced to a shaky croak. "That was effin' beautiful."
"I meant it," he said, staring down at their tangled-up fingers. "Do you doubt that? Is that why you're crying? Don't be angry. I can do better. Tell me how, and I will."
"No," Steph said, her mascara-gray tears rolling down her cheeks. "I know you mean it. That-that's why I'm crying."
"You make no sense."
"I'm a woman. You'll get used to it."
Damian waved for the check. The poor waitstaff were probably praying for them to leave, so it didn't take long for it to get to their table.
"How was it, sir?" The maître d' asked, peering at Stephanie out of the corner of his eye. She left mascara smudges on the fine linen napkin she was wiping her eyes with, then blew her nose loudly.
"You should fire your sommelier immediately," Damian said loudly as he signed his name. She could almost watch his voice carry through the room, heads tilting toward their table. "His wine choice so insulted and upset my companion, she can barely keep her composure."
"Sir," the waiter said, with the tired flatness of a man who had to deal with spoiled rich children regularly. "I do not see how that can be."
"Oh, no? Please, allow me to explain," Damian said, and now all the chairs in the room seemed to be leaning toward his magnetisim. "He claimed to be serving us a 1992 Château d'Yquem, at a price of three hundred dollars. As I pray you know, the entire 1992 vintage of Château d'Yquem was deemed unworthy of the name and was summarily discarded. We were served a 2009 Ygrec d'Yquem, a wine worth three times less, and told that it was the Château. I have sat here and asked myself, why would he do such a thing? The only thing that I can surmise is that he paired my wine not to my meal, but to what he imagined my taste in women to be. He scoffed at her inability to hold her utensil properly and looked down upon her appearance. This woman," his voice rose, then, boomed. "Is a survivor. This meal was meant to be a celebration, since this is the first time in months that she has been able to hold a fork at all."
That rippled through their sudden audience. People started getting up, abandoning their meals.
"In short, sir, your sommelier is both a boor and a crook. My business associates will hear of this, rest assured. You cannot cheat your patrons, nor can you openly mock a woman because you believe her unfit for your fine establishment." He slipped his pen back into his breast pocket as the maître d' gaped, horrified.
Damian stood and offered Steph his hand. He blazed with Wayne charisma.
She was as speechless as the maître d'. She took his hand, suddenly very okay with being Wayne arm candy.
Because she wasn't just Wayne arm candy. With the way he stood beside her, the way he looked at her, she forgot about her visible scars. Damian Wayne was a man of demanding, exquisite tastes. He did not tolerate anything but the very best, and never had.
And he had taken her there because he'd assumed that everyone would see what he saw, nothing less. They'd insulted her, and he hadn't let that slide. Everyone around them was tittering, women giving her twinkling smiles of approval as two dozen men simultaneously called for their checks.
The maître d' realized at that moment that he had totally fucked up. People were getting up and leaving en masse.
"Sir-Monsieur Wayne, I assure you-"
"Ah-ah-ah!" Damian stopped him, holding up his hand. "La pluie de vos injures n'atteint pas le parapluie de mon indifférence. This beautiful woman has been insulted, sir. You cannot undo that damage. Now please, allow my companion and I to leave and try to salvage what remains of our ruined evening."
As they left, the room broke into applause.
"What did you say to him?" She didn't let go of his arm, even after they were out of sight. "I mean, in French."
He smiled, obviously pleased with himself. "I told him that his spluttering insults did not reach the umbrella of my indifference."
"You're a little bitch in every language," she told him fondly as he helped her into her coat and out to the car. "That was amazing. You know that, right?"
"He belittled you. I could not let that stand unaddressed. I can only hope that he learns from this experience, because if he had been any ruder to you I would have said the same thing while dangling him off the balcony by the crooked lapel of his knock-off Canali jacket."
And he would have, too. Steph knew that.
"Can I...I don't know. Make dessert or something, to make up for this?"
All that bold, startling charisma simmered down, and he was once again a teenage boy with flushed cheeks.
"I think I'd like that, yes."
"Good." Stephanie took a deep, cleansing breath, then let it go. She watched it hang, white and puffy, on the cold winter air. She felt lighter than she had in a very, very long time. "This was nice. We should do it again sometime. Next time, though, we should hit up Chuck E. Cheese's. More age appropriate for us both, don't you think?"
Damian snorted once, then again, then burst out in rare, loud laughter. It startled her-had she ever seen him do that? She found herself laughing with him. They collapsed together in the back of towncar, wiping their teared-up eyes and trading broad, almost shy, grins. The driver just shook his head and started the engine.
"Infinitely more appropriate," he agreed, and took her hand.
"What is it going to be this time?" Damian asked with a long-suffering sigh. "Talking dalmatians? Talking dishes? Talking elephants? Talking crickets? One of these days, you must explain to me why some things talk in these damned 'Disney Classics' and some are kept mute. What is wrong with Pluto? Why is that he is forced to walk on all fours and bark, while Goofy is bipedal and at least has the rough estimation of speech? What is this a-hyuck, which is a sound no dog makes?"
Being Damian, his Goofy imitation was beyond pitch-perfect. Steph grinned at him from the floor, where she was sorting through DVD cases.
"That is so cool. Do it again."
"Absolutely not," he huffed. "And, as usual, you completely missed the point that I was trying to make. Goofy is allowed to speak, and even allowed raise a child as a remarkably inept single father. But Pluto continues to bark and walk on all fours. Who is keeping him there, preventing his evolution? Mickey? Personally, I believe that Mickey Mouse is a tyrant who shows clear nepotism to some and crushes all others below his ridiculously oversized yellow shoe. Why is this not a discussion that is happening? Why is no one fighting for the rights of Pluto, and other parties not allowed voices?"
"You've officially gotten waaaaay too invested. Let me blow your mind a little: Pete is a cat. Where is his tail? Lost in the fifties or something. So dial down the criticism. Not all of this is supposed to be read literally."
"Tt," said Damian, sprawling so that he took up more of the couch. At over six feet tall, he didn't have to try very hard.
"Ha! Found it!" Steph crowed triumphantly, putting the DVD in the player and hurrying to the couch. "Scoot your big butt over, D-man. We're watching the Lion King."
He simply gave her a bored look. "Oh. Talking lions. Grand."
"Shush," she said as the first song started playing. Since he wasn't giving up the couch, she just crawled over him until he was forced back lest he end up with a lap full of Batwoman. To most boys, that would have been an invitation. To someone with Damian's pronounced personal bubble, not so much. "Everyone can talk but the wildebeest."
"And why not them?"
"Because they're meant to be seen as a force of-God, just shut up and watch the opening credits. This shit is iconic, so pay attention."
After the little golden cub had been Simbaaaaa'd and thrust into the sunlight, he sprawled a little bit more toward her area of the couch, but didn't touch her. He got close enough that she could feel his body heat, but a piece of paper could still be put between them.
Steph sighed. She'd forgotten how frustrating teenage boys could be.
But she loved the Lion King. Really, she did. She hummed along with the songs, drawing her knees up and covering her cold toes with her favorite ratty purple blanket. It'd been her blankie, the baby blanket that she'd dragged around for most of her childhood. Even though it was threadbare in places now, she couldn't fathom throwing it away. Besides, Alfred had all but claimed it as his, which was why it had a liberal shag of white and black hair on it.
Steph was nervous, though. She'd picked out this movie for a specific reason. She'd been putting off watching it with Damian for weeks, but the time had finally seemed right. With the way he dissected the movies, truly absorbing them, she'd wanted to see what kind of reaction this one would get.
As the scene approached, she chewed on the edge of her fingernail. The stampede thundered across the 70-inch screen, and Damian went very still.
She watched Damian carefully out of the corner of her eye. She'd seen the Lion King so many times over, she knew the next part by heart-Simba would go to Mufasa's body and realize that his father was dead. Then, he'd be run off from the Pridelands, to wander until the girl he loved called him back and helped him claim his father's territory. There wasn't an American kid alive that didn't know that Mufasa died...except Damian. This twist was totally knew for him. It'd blindsided him. Guilt tugged just below her ribs, but she couldn't have warned him.
His eyes were glued to the screen, brows bunched. His expression was strange, and it took her a second before she realized that it was because it was an expression of empathy, of memory, of reliving something bleak.
He refused to tell anyone how Bruce had died. He would not-and maybe just couldn't-rehash it, no matter how much it frustrated and angered the people around him. Babs had said that he had shown his true colors as a sociopath the night that Batman had died, because despite the loss he hadn't cried. He'd shown nothing at all.
But now, his eyes were shiny-bright with unshed tears. His throat worked, his breathing rapid and shallow. A tear spilled over, streaking down his cheek before he roughly wiped it away with the back of his hand.
Babs hadn't understood. His father's death had ruined him, and he just hadn't been able to express it.
Steph reached over and wove her fingers together with his. She didn't say anything.
"I don't like this movie," he announced, voice thick. "Talking lions-do you still think me a child?"
"Nah," she said, and leaned into him. "Nobody's too old for Disney. And be patient, D. He gets a lion ladyfriend and a happy ending eventually."
He sniffed, rubbing his nose with the back of his free hand.
"I don't care about the mating rituals of lions, and happy endings are unrealistic. Parents should know better than to pollute the minds of their children with fluff and nonsense that leaves them unprepared for real life. This whole thing is juvenile and-"
"Shh," Stephanie interrupted, squeezing his hand. "Listen to the nice talking animals. They're wise. They know things."
He grumbled, but went quiet again. His arm found its way around her waist-but only after several false starts and the kind of hesitance that reminded her that yes, he was still a teenage boy. A teenage boy who had zero experience with the opposite sex, too.
They hadn't expressly said anything one way or another, but after their disastrous not-date it'd been clear to her that he liked her. Maybe loved her, because showing more than mild tolerance to people and things was a big deal for him, and he'd definitely shown that he cared about her. A lot.
And what about her?
Her thoughts were complicated, to say the least.
Steph leaned her head against his shoulder, eyes drifting half-shut. He absentmindedly stroked her knuckles with his thumb, a small but gentle show of affection.
It'd been years since she'd gotten this close to anyone, much less a man. She'd started having sex early on-at the too-tender age of thirteen-and had fizzled out quickly. Her partners had been arbitrarily chosen, teenagers at least four or five years older than her, and some armchair psychologist in her noted that this had probably been an expression of her daddy issues. She'd wanted any man who wanted her, because she'd wanted to be wanted. It'd been desperate and uncomplicated. Maybe other early bloomers enjoyed sex, and more power to them, but she hadn't. It'd been messy and uncomfortable-painful, sometimes-but it'd been the only thing that made her feel accepted. None of her hookups had been interested after her belly had started rounding out, but she hadn't needed them at that point. She'd had Robin, her personal Boy Wonder, her almost-boyfriend and he'd been so good and caring and safe.
Tim had been awkward but protective. He hadn't asked anything of her. He'd been cute and well-meaning, and there'd been no pressure. He'd wanted her, not her body, and she'd loved him for that. Really, truly loved him. She'd wanted to give him everything, once she'd had the baby and lost her pregnancy weight.
But things had happened, and they'd drifted. A part of her had always wondered if it'd been because he'd lost interest in her, or if he had interest in women-or anyone, for that matter-or if he'd just fallen in love with the idea of protecting her. Once she'd proven that she didn't need his protection, that she was capable of being Robin herself, there'd been a disconnect.
And then she'd 'died'. She'd convinced herself that he'd be happy to see her when she came back, that he'd only been angry because she'd replaced him. But all the reunion kisses that she'd imagined when the strangeness of Africa had kept her awake had ended up being stupid dreams.
Screw him, she'd figured. She could do better.
But she hadn't done better. She hadn't done anything. Being Batgirl had consumed her life, and then every connection she made dropped one by one. Detective Gage-her tall, dark detective that had traded her flirt for flirt way back when-had transferred, Cass-her best friend, the Batgirl before her, the girl who'd half convinced her that maybe boys weren't the answer-had taken a position with the new Justice League, Kara-the sweet alien who'd half convinced her that maybe humans weren't the answer-would never stay in Gotham, not for long.
Her options had dried up, and she'd let them. Who'd want a battle-scarred and almost constantly bruised Bat-especially one that the Bats themselves had barely wanted, when they'd been around? Nobody, she'd figured with a grim satisfaction. Nobody would, and that was okay. She didn't have to worry about anyone wanting her for her body, didn't have to worry about anyone wanting her at all. She was the Bat, and that was something powerful and sexless.
But then, Damian had come back and messed everything up by being an adult.
She was afraid that she liked him because there was a big chance that she wouldn't get anyone else. It wouldn't be fair to him or her if she got involved with him just because she was lonely.
Even as the thought crossed her mind, she knew that wasn't the case. When he'd come back, she'd been relieved. When he'd gone into Ivy's bower, she'd been terrified. When he'd shown up pounding on her window because he'd wanted her with him, she'd been touched. When she'd been so sure she'd died for real, his face was the first thing she saw as she came to-and she'd known that she'd be okay, because he was there. When he'd ripped into that French guy in the restaurant, she'd felt...
She'd felt as amazing as Steph Brown as she'd always felt as Batwoman.
He was strong and intelligent and capable of incredible kindness when he didn't think anyone was watching. Damian had more problems than a math book, but she wasn't exactly Little Miss Traveling with Light Baggage. She was older than he was, but eighteen was truly only a number with him. He'd acted like a grown man when he'd ten, and she hadn't let go of the childish energy that kept her buoyant, so...they met at the middle.
He was a bat, and she was a bat, and that kind of made them a thing.
When the credits finally rolled, she glanced at him.
"Still fluff and nonsense?"
"Yes," he said stubbornly. "But...it was a fairly effective allegory. For a film starring talking lions."
"I told you you'd like it," Steph said, pleased. He opened his mouth to argue, but-as usual-she beat him to the punch. In one smooth movement, she straddled his hips, basically sitting in his lap, and kissed him.
That cut off any high-and-mighty observations he had on the subject. When she broke the kiss, he was smiling.
She might have been a little bit in love with him, she realized, even though his kiss was clumsy. He wasn't smirking, wasn't grinning wolfishly, wasn't baring his teeth like he usually did. Smiling, his blue eyes bright.
It hit her then that she'd never seen him really happy. Smug, maybe. Relaxed, sometimes. But never happy. Had anyone kissed him before, even platonically? Ever?
She kissed him again, before the thought could settle and bring tears to her eyes.