Jason Todd could remember knowing Stephanie Brown for almost as long as he'd been alive for the second time.

She hadn't been there when he'd come out of the Lazarus Pit, or in the days that followed, wandering Europe and murdering his instructors, but he met her the minute he left Gotham City, still seething with anger over the events that had unfolded after he revealed himself to Bruce.

"So you're the one who's been causing all the trouble," the Eggplant Corsair had never caught his attention before that very moment—she'd only been active for a little over a year by that time. A small time crook with a ridiculously petty record and a fondness for playing games with heroes. It was odd that she'd sought him out—he was obviously way out of her weight-class.

"What do you want?" He demanded, wary and angry in equal parts.

She shook her head, tutting at him. "And now I'd have thought Talia would have taught you manners, Jason."

He froze up at the mention of Talia and at the casual knowledge of who he was. "Who are you?'

She'd grinned. "Now isn't that the question of the hour?"

"I'm not in the mood for games."

She grinned at him. "No, but I think you need some anyways."

Now, three years later, his leg in a cast, he glared at her again.

"You better have brought popcorn as well."

"Of course!" Steph pretended to be offended, the plastic bag full of DVDs dangling from her fingers.

"Toss," Jason stretched out his hands, and she threw the bag at him.

Steph went into the kitchen to put the popcorn in the microwave.

He sorted through her selection, only occasionally pausing to mock her taste. "You're a gigantic marshmallow, for an internationally wanted assassin! Do you think the FBI would want to know you like princesses?"

"Stop lying, you love Disney," Steph said idly, sitting down next to him on the couch, offering him the bag. He took a handful of popcorn. "Sorry I ditched you yesterday."

"The brat okay?" Jason said, pretending not to care.

"He's fine. Just a cold. He's already feeling better." Steph pushed her a strand of hair behind her ears, and Jason paused to examine her.

When he'd first met her, she'd claimed to be a former employee of Talia's, which Talia had confirmed later, when Jason had called her up. "Stephanie is hardworking, and very diligent. I understand that she has taken up an interest in the Teen Titans. Don't underestimate her, Jason. She is very dangerous." But in all the years he'd known her, he was still unsure of why Talia had warned him. Steph was cheerful, almost abrasively so at times, and, while competent, not nearly as dangerous as half of the people Jason had trained with over the years.

She was sweet and laughing, with a fondness for practical jokes and small children. She talked him down from his more violent plans, encouraging him to find other methods. He'd egged Titans Tower instead of killing Tim, like he'd planned to. He hadn't known about Steph and Tim at the time, but it made a lot more sense now that he did.

She'd been his friend. She watched shitty movies with him and got incredibly drunk and played ridiculous pranks on the Titans with him. She always refused when he'd asked her to visit him in Gotham, but he'd put that down as one of her quirks. Most people hated Gotham, and honestly, Jason couldn't exactly blame them for that. It was a pretty terrible place.

When he'd gone back to Gotham, intending to talk with Bruce, Steph had grinned at him and told him he wasn't making a mistake. She'd called him once a week, and listened to him bitch and moan about his psychiatrist, or about how much of an ass Bruce was being. She laughed at him when he complained about the state of the public libraries, and sent him new books and movies to watch in care packages that never had the same return address twice.

Stephanie had also never mentioned Damian. Not until she'd broken into his apartment to demand the name of the new Robin, desperately dropping the name. He'd been so surprised he had told her the truth, and hadn't even been able to question her before she'd vanished. He hadn't learned the whys until that night, when Dick had called him to tell him about the encounter.

She didn't like to talk about herself, which was something Jason didn't notice until later. To hear her talk, back in those days, her life began when she became the Corsair. Now, with her secrets at least partially exposed, it seemed to start the day she met Damian.

He'd always assumed that Steph had been a low-level guard, one that Talia had released from her service as a favor, or because of her age. The truth, at least according to Damian and Steph, was clearly more complicated. He wasn't sure if he believed the story that they spun about Talia's jealousy. Talia was protective of Damian, he knew that much, but he doubted that Talia would hurt Damian like that. But he didn't call them on it. Not when he didn't have any proof.

But all of Dick and Babs' investigations continued to turn up nothing except dead ends, while Steph relinquished only a handful of details about her past before she'd entered Talia's employment. Even Damian wasn't sure how long she had worked for Talia—he hadn't met her until she was thirteen, but Babs could trace Amoret back two years further.

They knew that Steph was likely of Irish descent, judging from her nickname for Damian and the fact that she'd told Cass that her mother had sung her an Irish lullaby. They knew her mother and father were both dead, and that Steph had been poor. But Steph's accent roved far and wide, evolving to match that of the people she spent time with. They weren't even sure if Steph was her real name, let alone Stephanie Brown.

She'd been eleven years old and was already an assassin in Talia's employment. Dick and Babs had already floated the idea that Steph might have been raised from birth in the League, before Cass had managed to learn about Steph's parents. Jason hadn't been sure he believed that, even before Cass had justified his skepticism—he found it hard to believe that she would have left, if that was the case. She wasn't like Cass, who had overcome years of conditioning and brainwashing the minute she realized what she had done. Steph had stayed, killing for at least five years.

And yet here she was, sitting on his couch, chatting about Disney movies, keeping him company as he sulked about being benched.

He liked Steph a lot, but that didn't change the fact that she was just a little creepy. He knew she'd done horrible things—she'd admitted to them, at least now that she couldn't hide them. And he'd never seen her falter even once. He'd never seen her look guilty.

Who is Stephanie Brown? That question seemed to be coming up more and more as the months passed, since the truth had come to light.

Their phones both went off at the same time, freezing them in place.

"Of course," Steph said, pulling out her phone. She froze, staring at the screen. "Fuck." She scrambled to her feet. "Sorry Jay, it's all hands on deck tonight!"

"What is it? What happened?" Jason couldn't reach his phone; halfway across the room as it was, and him with a broken leg.

"Arkham breakout. Everyone but the Joker." Steph grabbed the bag which contained her costume and lunged for the bathroom.

"Everyone but?"

"I don't know! That's what the message said! Turn on the news!" Steph's voice was muffled as she changed clothes.

Jason flipped on the television, and sure enough, it was on. He clenched his fist as he watched the footage. Batman was fighting Two-Face on national TV, Robin at his side.

"—and we've just received word that Scarecrow, AKA Johnathan Crane, has just been spotted raiding a chemical lab downtown, let's go to the scene, where Red Robin has been spotted—"

"Steph! Tim's fighting Crane!"

"Fuck," Steph said, exiting the bathroom. She was wearing skintight Kevlar that was completely black. Her mask was a metallic piece that covered her entire nose and mouth. Her hair was braided, and Jason saw the signs of the spike that she braided in it to stop people from grabbing her hair. Her belts were already in place, and he saw the grapple gun in her hand. "Where?"

"Downtown. Check my bag, you'll want to coordinate with other people tonight. And don't worry about Tim. He'll be fine; he's a big boy."

For a second, she hesitated, but she grabbed the communicator that he offered her anyways.

"This is the Corsair, I'm just leaving Hood's location. Where am I needed?"

Crane was always a tricky opponent, and, to make matters worse, he'd had time to prepare. The thick haze of his fear gas was already oozing through the building, and Tim was only counting himself lucky that he'd built up an immunity, because the civilians were panicking. It must be a milder dosage, because no one was turning on each other. Yet. The air tasted sour, and Tim's nose wrinkled as he made his way into the laboratory.

He didn't want to know what Crane had been crafting in these labs before deciding to reveal himself with the explosion—and Tim knew it would have been a decision. Crane had been in the business too long to make mistakes like drawing attention on a night like this if he didn't want it.

He ignored everything else—the screams of the civilians, the whir of the news helicopters, and just focused on Crane. There were dozens of criminals loose tonight, and they couldn't afford to spend too long on any single one of them.

How this had happened was still a question that hadn't been solved. Babs had reported that the security system at Arkham was shut down—everything but the Joker's cell. The aides had been attacked—if anyone had bribed their way into Arkham, they hadn't spared the people whose pockets they had lined. No deaths, but plenty of injuries.

Whoever had done this had planned this deliberately. They'd unleashed serial killers and mass murderers and terrorists upon the city without thought, but had stopped at the Joker. Whoever had done this wanted the Joker contained. Which was smart, Tim had to admit. The Joker was an unpredictable piece in any given plan. But they also weren't afraid that the Joker would get offended that he'd been left out. That was also a risk, when it came to the clown.

Tim needed to be able to sit down, to think. He needed to map this out, to see who would gain what by this chaos. But he didn't have the time to do that. People were going to die, and he had responsibilities. Detective work could come later. Right now, he just had to save people and stop Crane.

Tim pulled out his air filter as he ran up the staircase, and slipped it over his face. A little fear gas wouldn't harm him, but as he got closer to Crane the less predictable the concoctions would get and the less likely Tim would be immune.

Johnathan Crane was waiting for him. The room floor was on fire, explosions peppered the air around him, and Tim had to work to stay alive. Crane had booby-trapped the entire lab, preparing for this.

"What? I don't even equate a visit from the Bat?"

Tim couldn't respond around his air filter, but he rolled his eyes anyway. Once he managed to get close enough, the fight was quick. Crane was a decent fighter, but he mainly depended on his gasses and psychology. And Tim didn't give Crane the chance to get in his head or in his system.

He called it in, and then froze as he heard Steph's voice in his ear.

"This is the Corsair," He shook his head. Comms. She was on the comms. "I'm just leaving the Hood's location. Where am I needed?"

Where did she get the communicator? Babs didn't trust Steph with a communicator. She had a private line to him, and that was it. But Steph was clearly broadcasting on all channels. Had she known them all along? It wouldn't be unprecedented. She'd known who he was, the whole time, back when she had been a villain and he had been a Titan. She knew plenty of things that she'd probably never even considered telling him.

Like slitting the throats of twenty people on camera, and then bowing afterwards.

Did he really know her at all?

Being one of the good guys was weird. The Eggplant Corsair hadn't been a notorious villain, or a very well-known one, at that. Her move to the lighter side of the costumed spectrum had went un-noticed, uncommented on. But the people of Gotham were more aware of their heroes than most other cities. Already people were beginning to know her name, and even though her costumes changed regularly, they still were usually able to recognize her on sight.

The regular criminals of Gotham were taking advantage of the breakout in order to do some normal petty crime. Steph stopped a few minor incidences on her way to the location where the Oracle had directed her—Jane Doe had been spotted in a warehouse, and the Oracle apparently thought Steph was capable of that, at least.

Steph's feet pounded the rooftops as she raced towards the street in question. She had quickly been filtered out of conversation that wasn't addressed to her, which was fine by her. She didn't need to hear everything. Damian talked to her enough, and that was what mattered.

Tim had rounded up Crane, and was hunting Killer Croc in the sewers with Batgirl's help. Steph was alone, but Huntress was poised to help if something went wrong.

Below, on the street, Steph could hear people shout, pointing at her, trying to guess who she was, if she was a hero or one of the escaped villains. She couldn't help but grin as she heard a little girl shout excitedly.

"It's the Eggplant Corsair! She's my favorite!"

Steph laughed to herself. How far she had come since she was sixteen.

Her hair was too short. She'd gone overboard, in trying to reforge her identity. When before it had almost touched her wait, it now was cropped into a pageboy. She winced at the image in the mirror. She hated the way she looked. It felt wrong to see that much of her face; it felt wrong to have so much color.

She wore only a domino mask and an armored bodysuit in bright purple. It was the same shade as Amoret's shroud, but that was the only part of this that was nostalgia. The rest of it was new—there was no connection to the assassin.

But it felt so wrong not to be Amoret.

She swallowed. Amoret was dead. This new identity had to be hers, it had to be something that she made for herself. Talia al Ghul no longer controlled her, no longer pulled her strings—she was free; the cage door had been flung wide open. She could spread her wings and fly.

It was everything she had ever wanted.

Except that it had come at such a cost.

She forced herself not to think about Damian, and instead put on her gloves. She had checked a hundred times, and the Stephanie Brown that she had been was buried. Talia had been thorough; even her footprint records at the hospital she had been born at had been switched out. Stephanie Crystal Brown had been reported dead years ago. Her description matched no missing persons case from Gotham. Her fingerprints had no match on record, her name had no criminal past attached to it.

She glanced at the journal, sitting at the kitchen table. She'd started keeping it only recently, trying to dig into the depths of her memory, to record everything that she had ever done in Talia's service. She was counting her sins. But none of that mattered at that moment, not when she was in costume.

This was a clean start. A new beginning.

She grinned, slowly.

She had met Slade on a job, years back. Talia had killed Amoret, but Steph had managed to reach out to Deathstroke as she adjusted to life in the States. After getting the mercenary to agree to secrecy, he had asked her for a favor.

She was to distract the Titans for a week or two while he prepared to make his move.

Steph was perfectly prepared to do that.

Steph took a deep breath, and looked in the mirror one last time.

She didn't recognize the girl standing there. But then again, maybe that was a good thing.

She put one hand on her hip and displayed her widest grin. "Everyone beware! It's the Eggplant Corsair!"

The night was long, and tough, and by the time that Steph stumbled into her apartment, all she wanted to do was sleep for about a year.

She climbed in through her bedroom window, and saw Tim's costume scattered all over the floor. She grinned, and changed into a lavender turtleneck and a pair of tight black jeans before plodding out into the living area, where she saw that the lights were on.

Tim was watching something on the television as he waited for her. His face was grim as the light flickered across his face.

"Hey," she said, moving in to kiss his cheek.

That was when she saw what was playing on the screen.

The dagger was unfamiliar in her hands, the grip so thin that she felt as if she could break it in half. The blade was as long as her forearm, and sharpened to a point so sharp that Steph didn't dare test it. The sword was at least her own, but the dagger was important.

Her mouth was dry and her heart raced, but she kept her face as blank as possible. She went and stood in the center, and waited for Talia to give the symbol. They all surrounded her, standing with her in silence. They too, showed nothing, even though they knew what was to come.

She stumbled backwards, her gorge rising as the loop continued. "Where did you get that?"

"That's not what you're supposed to say," Tim said quietly, not looking at her.

"I—"

"You're supposed to say it's not real!" Tim turned to her, and he was livid. Steph had never seen him so angry. He was shaking with rage, and, for the first time, Steph was scared of him. He looked as if he was about to attack her, his gaze was so intense and angry. She hadn't noticed that his belt wasn't on the ground with the rest of his costume, but he was wearing it still, slung across his chest like a bandolier.

"I—I—I can't." It had been real. She couldn't lie to Tim. She looked away. He'd known that she was a killer, but she supposed it was different to see on the screen. And knowing she was an assassin wasn't the same as seeing her do that.

On the screen, Steph bowed.

He seemed frozen, paralyzed by her admission. "You did that?"

"Yes." The loop started again.

"It isn't fake?"

"No. I did that." The first kill. His blood had soaked her from head to toe.

"I thought you said you were an assassin!"

"I was an assassin among other things!" Steph threw her arms out wide. "Tim, please."

"You're a monster," Tim said, turning away from her. Steph recoiled.

"Yes," Steph whispered. She'd known this was coming, she reminded herself. She'd known it since she'd come for Damian. She'd known that revealing herself would have this cost, that he'd realize who she really was. He'd stop seeing the smiles and the sweetness, and see the dirt and the anger and the bitterness instead. And she had promised herself that it would be worth it.

And maybe it was, but that didn't stop her from feeling like the world was falling apart around her.

"You just—you cut them down as if they were nothing!"

Steph bit her lip. "Tim, it's complicated—"

"Like hell it is!" Tim whirled to face her. "You're a murderer, and a liar, and you've been lying this whole time! I trusted you!"

"Tim—" Steph tried to take a step towards him, but he pushed her away.

"You used me!"

On the screen, the last person fell over dead, and Steph bowed.

"I never—Tim, you've got to believe me—"

"Get out. I don't want to see you again."

Steph froze. And there it was. Her chest felt too tight—she'd never realized that heartbreak was physical as well. She stopped the tears from welling up. She wouldn't give him that. No one had gotten to see her cry except for Afya, and Afya was dead. She didn't cry anymore.

Steph was a very good liar, even to herself.

She turned around, and left.

Tim slammed the door behind her, locking her out of the apartment that they shared.

It sounded final.

A/N:

Oops? Don't worry, I'm already working on the next chapter. :)

Before you all kill me, I'd just like to point out who Tim has just finished fighting! Things aren't necessarily the way they seem. :))))