Chapter 23

Steph's stomach was in knots as Alfred drove her and Tim to school on Monday morning. She knew that Harley had promised to take care of her bullies for her, but Harley hadn't mentioned any progress on that front yet, having slept all day on Saturday after spending the night at the hospital with Clockmaster, and then crashing again on Sunday when she got home from patrol in the early hours of the morning. She had slept even longer than Bruce that afternoon and then spent most of the day in her room, where Steph had heard her murmuring on the phone to Jason each time that she had happened past her closed door.

It was obvious that Harley was missing her husband pretty badly after a few days without him and it had to be stressful, too, to know that her rapist was about to be killed. Even if it was what she wanted, Harley was surely having a lot of old memories stirred up and she not only didn't have Jason at her side, but she was patrolling as Batgirl on top of it.

So Steph hadn't wanted to pester her about progress on the bullying. She figured that Harley would get to it when she could and in the meantime, she and Tim would do their best to stand up against it.

Steph used to think that she was strong enough to handle anything; her father was Cluemaster, for Pete's sake, and her mom was a drug addict. Steph had been frickin' Spoiler, too, and now she was Batgirl. And for the last two years, she'd been able to put up with the jibes about her and Tim's romance or lack thereof, and her social status, and everything else the rich snots could throw at her.

Hell, she usually got a few good verbal jabs back herself and tossed her hair and stuck close to Tim during the school day, and afterwards? Training hard got her aggression and frustration out and patrolling with Batman boosted her self-esteem. She had been doing all right, Steph thought to herself.

Until Friday when they had started going in on her virginity and sexually harassing her, and even though Steph had hated herself for it and wanted to be as coolly unaffected as she pretended to be during the other bouts of bullying, she had ended up paralyzed and trapped by shame. She frowned as the limo drew closer to Gotham Prep and Tim reached over sympathetically to rub her arm.

"I'm here," he said. "We're prepared today, ok?" he said quietly enough that Alfred couldn't hear from the front seat. Because Tim had been paralyzed, too, on Friday and afterwards he felt, if possible, even worse than Steph did over his failure to stand up for her and get their asshole classmates to back off.

He and Steph had had a long heart-to-heart after school on Friday afternoon before joining Bruce and Damian for training. Even though Steph had reassured Tim that he'd been as victimized as she was by the taunting over his own virginity, and while he believed her that she forgave him (although she actually had insisted that there was nothing to forgive), Tim still hated himself for having been so tongue-tied in the moment.

"Batpower," Steph whispered when Alfred pulled up to the school entrance and Tim nodded.

"Bye, Alfred," they said as they exited the car. "Thanks for the ride."

"I shall see you this afternoon," Alfred smiled at them.

Steph and Tim walked side by side to their classroom, Steph swinging on her crutches, and Steph took a deep breath as Tim opened the door and she headed inside. Their teacher Mr. Mendel hadn't arrived yet, Steph noted with an internal groan, and the hissing and murmuring increased as she and Tim made their way to their seats.

They always sat next to each other in the front row; Tim because he was eager to be as close to the teacher as possible so that he could ask questions and soak up information (and correct the teacher's infrequent mistakes) and Steph simply because she wanted to be next to Tim.

"Aw, here's the two little virgins," Brad said, getting up from his seat to hover behind Steph and Tim's chairs.

"Shut up, Brad," Tim said viciously.

"Ooo, you manning up, Drake? Did you pop that cherry this weekend?" Brad teased, bending down to stick his face right between Tim and Steph's heads.

Without a word to Tim, Steph flung her left forearm up and smashed her closed fist into Brad's cheekbone. Hard. Which was definitely not the survival plan that she and Tim had come up with over the weekend.

"You bitch!" Brad snarled, staggering backwards in shock before lunging forward to grab Steph. At least, that was his intention, but Steph hadn't waited for him to advance before jumping up on her good foot and kicking her chair backwards into his knees with her cast covered one. Tim was on his feet a second later but Steph was already pummeling Brad's face with full-on Batgirl force.

Brad was too surprised to react at first but by the time the fourth or fifth blow hit him he tried to throw a punch, but Tim grabbed his arm and twisted it behind him while Steph continued to attack.

"Steph," Tim said in concern as she showed no signs of letting up and Brad started thrashing and kicking to try to throw Tim off of him. Tim could take him, sure. But… this was going way beyond the dozen or so well-worded insults that he and Steph had crafted for their retaliation efforts. Would it compromise their secret identities, he began to nervously wonder, if both he and Steph suddenly demonstrated a remarkable aptitude for hand-to-hand combat?

"Behind you," Tim barked out, because Brad's boy Winston had gotten up and was advancing on Steph.

"Watch the door," Winston snapped at his girlfriend Chloe, who had been Steph's original tormentor on Friday. "We need to teach these bitches a lesson."

Steph whirled to face him, leaving Tim to try to contain Brad without breaking his cover as the unskilled and awkward computer nerd that his classmates all thought that he was. Winston was closing in fast on Steph when he suddenly froze in his tracks.

Steph didn't pause and moved forward to hit him anyway, putting her weight on her broken ankle exactly like she wasn't supposed to. Winston fell backwards but went scrambling towards the classroom door instead of launching himself at Steph.

It wasn't until she saw Chloe nervously bolting away from the door and blocking Winston's approach that Steph turned around. Her jaw fell open as a black-clad man in a ski mask calmly fired Captain Cold's ice gun and froze a solid sheet of ice over the door, paying particular attention to frosting over the window so that no one could see in.

The rest of the Suicide Squad, minus Harley, it appeared, was climbing through the now open classroom window despite the fact that the room was on the second floor of the building. Like Snart, they were dressed in black and wearing ski masks over their faces, although that didn't do much to hide Croc's big lizard feet and snout or Killer Frost's blue skin or Deadshot's wrist magnums and assortment of other guns.

The kids in the class began to scream so Deadshot fired a round of bullets into the ceiling.

"Shut up!" he yelled at them all. Apparently the whimpering and delayed reaction screams weren't a satisfactory level of quiet because he shot the room up again while Killer Frost moved to the front of the class and screamed three times louder.

"Shut. The Fuck. Up!" Frost glared at all of the students. "Stupid punkass rich bitches," she yelled. "When someone shows up with a gun, you do what that motherfucker says."

"Kids today," Killer Croc grumbled, lumbering over to Mr. Mendel's desk and hopping up to sit on top of it. "No respect for bullets."

"And that's why school is in session," Captain Cold drawled. "Because I hear that you little shits need an education." The teenagers, to their credit, hadn't moved since crouching under their desks or on the floor after the second round of bullets, although they were trading nervous teary-eyed glances with each other.

"No phones," Deadshot snapped, seeing some kids trying to call 911 or livestream. "Turn them off, right now." Daria Volokhov apparently didn't turn her phone off fast enough for his liking, because he shot it out of her hand, causing more screams to erupt around the classroom.

"Do. I need. To freeze your damn. mouths. shut." Killer Frost asked in a lethal tone as she began stalking around the classroom grabbing phones from students and tossing them into the trashcan.

"Maybe you should shoot one of them, D, to make an example," Snart said with a smirk.

"No!" Tim burst out, breaking eye contact with Steph to face Captain Cold head on.

"Who the fuck are you?" Snart asked him. "Give me your name, soldier."

"Tim Drake," Tim muttered, clenching his jaw and wondering what the hell Harley was up to.

Because if shooting students up was her plan to get them to back off of Steph, there was going to be hell to pay at the mansion tonight when Bruce found out. Not to mention the fact that the Suicide Squad had just gotten pardoned for their crimes and Tim was pretty sure that drawing blood on their classmates, even if they were bullying assholes, was going to get the gang sent back to Arkham, despite - or because of - their shoddy disguises. So seriously, what the fuck was going on?

Steph was looking more thoughtful than perturbed, although she was still breathing a tiny bit harder than normal from beating the shit out of Brad. Her exertion level had been minimal compared to what she was used to when she sparred with Bruce and Damian and Tim and fought baddies on patrol, but the adrenaline rush of power from standing up to her tormentor had her heart rate pumping in excitement.

"Oh, Tim Drake," Snart said with pleasure. "Come up here," he said, motioning him forward with a finger. "And where is Stephanie Brown?" he asked.

"Here," Steph said, fighting back a smile.

"Ah," Leonard said. "A pleasure to meet you," he said, giving her a gentlemanly bow. "Leonard Snart, at your service. And may I present Floyd Lawton, Waylon Jones, and Louise Lincoln," he said as he gestured to Deadshot, Killer Croc, and Killer Frost, respectively.

"Hi," Steph said, raising an eyebrow. "What are you doing here?" she asked Leonard.

He picked her crutches up and held them out to her before escorting her to stand at the front blackboard next to Tim, which conveniently positioned them safely behind Killer Croc, who nodded at them respectfully over his shoulder before returning his reptilian leer to the other students as he casually swung his legs against the edge of the teacher's desk.

Before Snart could answer Steph, the classroom intercom began blaring as the Headmaster's panicked voice announced, "Code Blue! Code Blue! Everyone inside their classrooms and lock the doors! I repeat -" Floyd rolled his eyes and shot up the speaker, quieting the classroom back to a dim hum of muffled whimpers and tears.

"An excellent question," Snart said approvingly to Steph as if they hadn't been interrupted. "As I was saying, you little shits," he sneered at her classmates, "it has come to our attention that you all are in need of an education."

"What the fuck for?" Winston blustered as Chloe whimpered and tried to get him to shut up.

"You lack Gotham pride," Snart smirked. "I ask you, Deadshot, what happens to Gothamites in this town who disrespect the rogues?"

"They get dead," Floyd replied with an evil grin.

"They get dead," Leonard answered. He clicked his tongue against the roof of his mouth. "Absolutely shocking that your rich-ass parents pay for this pretentious private education and haven't instilled in you that good old Gotham grit that can save your life. Frosty, give us the word of the day."

"Common sense," she spat out. Floyd rolled his eyes.

"That's two words, dumbass," he said.

"Then Snart should have put an 's' on words," she snapped back.

"We distinctly discussed having a word, singular, of the day," Snart frowned. "You were there."

"Then how the fuck did we decide on 'common sense' as the words, plural, if we decided on a word, singular," she snarked at him.

"I didn't vote for common sense," Croc protested. "My choice was 'respect.'"

"That's a lameass word," Frost bitched. "Which is why we didn't pick it."

"Respect is integral to a cohesively functioning society," Croc growled at her. "How the fuck you gonna call that lameass?"

"It's lameass," Frost said, "Because you sound like a whiny little bitch if you say 'you bitches better respect me'," she mocked in a perfect imitation of said whiny bitch's voice. "But if you say, 'you motherfuckin fools ain't got no common sense!' - that don't make you sound like a pussy. Which is why you were outvoted," she said, putting her hand on her hip.

"Respect is one word," Croc snapped. "So if 'common sense' was the winner, how come Snart said word of the day, singular, and not words of the day? Huh?" he asked her triumphantly.

"Because Captain Cold," Frost said, marching up to Snart so she could jab his forehead with her blue finger, "ain't got no. common. sense."

"Oh, my God!" Tim yelled in frustration. "Stop. Please. Shut up."

"Oh, baby boy, you ain't got nothin' to yell about," Frost said sweetly, giving him a wink. "We ain't here to teach you and your girl common sense."

Steph was sure that Tim was going to contradict Frost and say that Steph wasn't his girl. It was an automatic response at this point to all of the teasing that they received from their classmates. But, he didn't. Tim picked up Steph's hand in his and squeezed it while giving Frost a death glare that wasn't yet Dark Knight material, but easily could be in about five years.

Frost cackled and turned back to the cowering and crying students who looked like they couldn't make up their minds if the in-fighting of the Suicide Squad was a positive or a negative factor for their fates.

"Right! Back to business," Deadshot said. "Captain, if you would."

"As we were saying," Snart continued as calmly as if the Suicide Squad hadn't spent the last five minutes bickering like children, "the words of the day are 'common sense.' Now, I ask you spoiled rich children, does it demonstrate common sense to sexually harass the daughter of an Arkham rogue?"

Brad, who was quietly moaning in pain while trying to wipe off his bloody nose, tensed. Winston hissed as Chloe dug her fingers into his shoulder in a panic.

"What, did she go crying to daddy?" said Winston, who apparently possessed not even a shred of common sense. "Stephanie the snitch," he snickered.

"Shut up!" Chloe hissed at him, smacking his shoulder hard.

"What are they gonna do?" Winston laughed, shoving Chloe backwards off of him.

"First of all," Snart said, eyeing Winston up, "Stephanie didn't snitch. She didn't need to. Or did you really think that her daddy wasn't keeping an eye on her," he asked with amusement as Croc chuckled in the background and Chloe got a little paler.

"What'd I tell ya?" Frost said, shrugging. "No common sense. None."

"Someone else snitched to him?" Winston growled, whirling his head around the room to glare at the rest of the students who were trying to fade into the background.

"Boy's never heard of hidden cameras?" Deadshot asked in disgust. "Why does being rich make you so goddamn stupid?" he asked no one in particular.

"Asshole," Deadshot called out to Winston. "Go stand up against the wall."

"Make me," Winston challenged, actually standing up and folding his arms regally across his chest. "You can't kill me," he said pretentiously, secure in the knowledge that his own daddy's money would protect him from all harm. "And your asses are already going straight back to Arkham for this." The words had barely left his mouth before Floyd shot a bullet right in front of his polished oxford shoe.

"Shit!" Winston said, jumping back and not even landing before Floyd's barrage of bullets to the floor continued driving him backwards to the very wall that Floyd had told him to stand against. Winston was breathing hard and looking more than a little frightened by the time his back hit the bulletin board and Floyd grinned and pulled his machine gun off of his back.

"It's time for art class," he said. "Better hold still, sucker," he laughed and immediately started firing, tracing Winston's outline around him with a steady stream of bullets barely an inch away from Winston's trembling body. A wet spot on the front of Winston's pants appeared as he panted in terror, finally losing his bravado and arrogance as Deadshot's steady hands continued shooting.

Croc, Frost, and Cold were laughing themselves silly watching the antics, but Steph and Tim were gripping each other's hands tightly. This was a little much, their eyes said to each other as they exchanged an anxious look.

"Now," Deadshot said when he finished his masterpiece, "where are the other bitches? Chloe? Brad?" he asked and Chloe burst into hysterical tears.

"Please don't hurt me! Don't shoot me!" she screamed. "I didn't mean it."

"Bitch, you totally meant it," Frost said, losing patience and striding forward to haul Chloe to her feet and shove her up against the back wall next to Winston. "And if you hold still, you won't get shot," she said. She grabbed Brad next and slammed him into place beside her.

"Light 'em up, D," she said, retaking her position at the front of the classroom, but Floyd frowned.

"Freeze the girl's hands and feet to the wall," he told Frost to Steph's great relief. Because as much as she hated Chloe, it was evident that the girl had lost control and was crying and flailing around way too much to stay safe, even with Deadshot's sharp shooting. Frost grumbled, but she shot out some ice beams to cuff Chloe's limbs.

"But Brad," Floyd drawled as he snugged his gun back into the crook of his shoulder, "you're on your own, ya punkass bitch."

"Did you bash his face in like that?" Croc asked Steph, turning around to face her as Floyd began shooting again.

"Yeah," she said with a proud little grin. "He started in on us again this morning and I was sick of it. Plus, I mean, he got right in our faces. He was asking for it."

"Nice work, girlie," Croc said with a wink. "Yer old man'll be proud," he said, but Steph lost her smile at that and Tim held her hand a little tighter and clenched his jaw.

"Is there anyone here who hasn't bullied you at all?" Leonard asked Tim and Steph quietly while Floyd kept outlining Brad and Chloe. The two teens looked at each other, thinking.

"Alana doesn't really, I guess," Steph said to Tim, who nodded.

"She hangs around the edges of them, but I think she's trying to avoid being a target herself," he said. "Dillon doesn't either," Tim said, thinking about the school's most gifted lacrosse player, who, surprisingly, was not an ass. "Not that he sticks up for us, but -"

"You know why he doesn't stick up for us," Steph said but Tim gave her a blank look. "He's gay," she whispered in Tim's ear. "They'll come for him."

"Oh!" Tim said, opening his eyes wide. Steph giggled and even amidst the chaos and racket of Deadshot's mayhem, Tim managed to smile back at her. When they looked back over at Snart, he and Croc were smiling at the the two teens fondly.

"Young love," Croc sighed. "I remember when June and I first met, we used to -"

"Hey!" Floyd yelled over to Croc and Snart in the sudden silence as his gun stopped firing. "Any innocents to evict?" Tim and Steph were both blushing furiously at Croc's words but they hadn't let go of each other's hands and Snart gave them a wink as he faced the class again.

"Alana and Dillon, get up here," he called out. The two students looked startled and stood up hesitantly, but once up, Alana went scampering quickly to Steph's side. Dillon walked a little more slowly, eyeing the Suicide Squad suspiciously, but he settled himself against the blackboard next to Alana, folding his arms across his chest and trying to look bored.

"Now, the rest of you have been found guilty of ongoing bullying, so you all got a little lesson coming. Deadshot, if you please," Captain Cold said grandly.

"Can I ask a question?" Dillon said suddenly, raising his hand.

"What's up, kiddo?" Floyd said.

"Can the new-anti bullying policy apply to me and Alana, too?" he asked, looking around to all four members of the Squad. "Because I'm gay and Alana's nice and we'd prefer not to be the new targets."

"Cluemaster's daughter? Your thoughts?" Floyd asked her, cocking his eyebrow up and she nodded as Snart got a proud smile on his face at Dillon's bold statement.

"Yes. Of course," Steph said. "None of us four get bullied or harassed from now on."

"Or next time," Frost said to their classmates with glee, "I'll be freezing fingers and toes off of ya. And not at school, either," she said with a sinister gleam in her eye.

"I've got an awesome idea," Floyd said suddenly. "Frosty, freeze the floor."

"Wait, why?" Tim said but she was already doing it. Floyd came behind the desk to pull the teacher's rolling chair out and he sat down in it after slinging his machine gun over his back. His held up his wrist magnums and grinned.

"Croc, give me a good push out on the ice and I'll shoot around the little brats as I go," Floyd grinned.

"How are you going to be accurate when you're sliding around on the ice?" Tim said in a panic.

"Child, I am Deadshot," Floyd said with pride. "Go!" he yelled at Croc who jumped off of the desk and gave him a mighty push in between the first two rows of desks. Floyd let loose with a holler and a whoop as he shot both guns in a seeming blur of bullets over and around and in between students as his chair circled and spun crazily until it hit the back wall with a bang.

The students were screaming and crying and the smell of shit and piss was in the air but Croc was belly laughing and Frost was cackling while even Snart had an amused smile on his face.

"Is anybody hurt?" Tim asked Steph nervously as they peered around the room without moving from their position of safety.

"I don't think so," she said back. She took a deep breath and let it out slowly as they watched Croc use his large toe claws to steady himself on the ice while walking out to Floyd so he could push him up the second aisle.

"Your dad must really care about you," Alana said to Steph quietly. "To send them here."

"I - I don't know," Steph said in surprised confusion, not willing to reveal that it was Harley who cared and made the plan because yes, in fact, Steph had snitched. "I didn't know he had cameras in here," she ended up saying. "I haven't even talked to him since he's been in Arkham."

"Thank you for calling us up here," Dillon said to Tim and Steph as Deadshot began his second slip-sliding attack and Alana nodded as Tim pulled all four of them down into a crouch behind the teacher's desk. Because this time Deadshot, like a blissful idiot, was hurtling towards the front of the classroom on his approach and Tim really did not trust him enough to not take cover.

"It's so brave you came out just now," Steph said to Dillon who gave her a wry look.

"Not so brave to wait until Deadshot was here to shoot the class up," he said. "Or to hide it and let them go after you so bad because I didn't want to draw attention to myself."

"We would've hid if we could," Tim said pragmatically and Steph giggled and nodded.

"Totally," she said. "Hell, I would've gone back to public school if Bruce had let me. I was popular there," she said wistfully. "And feared," she added with a little smile.

"Why feared?" Alana asked her, her eyes going big.

"Because of my dad," Steph shrugged. "The Suicide Squad is right. Your average, run-of-the-mill broke Gothamite knows who not to mess with. It's only you rich people who think life has no consequences."

"Pretty sure we're starting to learn," Dillon said, his lips quirking up into a little smile as they heard Snart start lecturing the class.

"No one's gonna snitch," he was saying. "Because snitches get what? I can't hear you!"

"Stitches," the class grumbled back at him.

"Louder!" Cold barked. "Snitches get -"

"Their fingers and toes frozen off!" Frost finished for him.

"That, too," Snart said. He looked over the whimpering, pathetic mess of broken rich kids that Deadshot had left crying on the floor. "Shoot their phones up," he said to Floyd, kicking the trashcan over to him, which prompted even more wails from the students as Floyd happily obliterated them before Snart froze the pieces for good measure.

"Now," Leonard said, "we are going to leave here with some hostages," he winked at Steph and ushered her and the three others up as Frost began heading to the window.

"You tell the cops it was Mr. Freeze and three henchmen," he instructed the remaining students as the escapees began climbing outside and starting up the rope ladder that was dangling from the roof to the sound of approaching police sirens.

Tim went happily enough and Steph ditched her crutches and followed him, using her upper body strength and good foot to climb the ladder, but Alana balked and Dillon did, too, when he saw what they were expected to do.

"I'm staying here," Alana said.

"Me, too," said Dillon.

"All right, all right," Snart said. "Two hostages is enough. Way to come out today, man," he said to Dillon, clapping his hand on the boy's shoulder with a meaningful glance before following Tim out the window.

"And don't forget," Deadshot drawled to the rest of the class as he covered the rear. "Daddy Cluemaster is watching." He winked at the students before exiting the window last of all.

Dillon and Alana looked at each other and then looked at their classmates. Alana wrinkled her nose.

"We better open the rest of the windows," she said.

On the roof, Harley was waiting cheerfully at the controls of a helicopter.

"Howdy, kids!" she said as her team clambered aboard with Tim and Steph in tow moments before a barrage of GCPD cruisers came screeching into the school parking lot with sirens blaring.

"Did ya have fun in school today?"