They pinned her, and Stephanie could feel his knees on the back of her legs. A hand snaked out around her wrist, chilling her.

"Leave us," he commanded. They left, bodies weaving towards the door like cockroaches.

Black Mask guided her down, perched on his knee as if he was Santa Claus and this was the mall. She wouldn't know; she had never been. Stephanie wondered if this was her version of hysterical, thinking about things that didn't matter so she could pretend she couldn't hear his breathing.

She sat stiffly, limbs locked as she tried to present herself as loose, calm, unbothered. Over her shoulder, black eyes glittered.

"You're a very noisy little girl," he told her, leaning back in his seat.

Stephanie bit her lip and said nothing.

"Oh? You have nothing to say?" He waved his hand lazily. "But on camera you spoke for hours, speech after speech after speech."

That wasn't true. She had thrown the lid off Gotham sentiment in one interview. The news just played it over and over, pitching the volume when she called the villains "vermin that plague the people of the city." She remembered the blazing feeling she had had when she spoke the next words: "This is our city, ours, and we have to show we're not afraid of it." Alfred had phoned Bruce and Bruce had nearly gone ballistic, worry tearing off every edge of him. He had shown up at the studio, barely managing to keep up his persona. He breathed deeply once they were in the back of the car.

"I've told you," he had said wearily. "You can't do this. You can't say whatever you want."

"If I don't say it, who will?"

Black Mask lifted his knee, sliding her closer against his waist. Her body felt like tv static, like it had been torn and chewed by a dog and all that was left of her was mush.

"Hm?" he murmured softly, soothingly, like she was much younger than she was and had fallen, scraping her knee. Like she was being comforted and petted instead of being held against her will by a man, a stranger with the smell of blood on his breath. "What were you doing out by yourself, hm?" His arms circled around her, and Stephanie clenched her fists to stave off a shudder. Her dad had never held her like this. He had always shouted at her when she cried. And Bruce—

Hands cupped her chin, fingers deceptively soft, and Stephanie at once remembered the time Batman had done the same thing. Only then his grip was bruising, and she a victim of his frustration. Somehow, that night hadn't seemed as scary as right now.

"Where's your Gotham courage now, girl?"

Tears stung at her eyes. She swallowed. She wasn't going to cry. She wasn't going to cry. She wasn't going to cry.

His hands wrapped around her again and drew her close, rough synthetic cheek against hers in some bastardized form of a cuddle. "I can't have people running their mouths, you see," he said indulgently. "Even if they are rich little brats."

But I'm not, she thought, mind glazing over images like kraft macaroni and eggs half-sale. Her mom on the couch. Her dad throwing a plate. Stringing together shoelaces in the darkness of the closet. Tim sitting on her bicycle, Cass snorting spray cheese, Dick teaching her how to juggle. Bruce—

"I'm going to make you regret it," he whispered into her hair. "I'm going to make your father regret it. I'm going to make this city wail as it has never wailed before."

She stiffened, mind finally catching up. Black Mask felt this, and held her tight, bones against his. But then he loosened his hold, chuckling. He bounced her a couple of times, and her feet jiggled in the air by his dress pants, shoes just barely scraping the floor.

"You're going to have to die," he said after a moment. He drew back and looked into her eyes, grin fierce. "You understand that, don't you?"

Somehow, with the backlight framing her eyelashes, she did.

His hands were in her hair, tangled in her golden locks. He gripped the back of her head and pitched it forward, in the pantomime of a nod. "Good girl," he praised her.

"Good girl."

She snapped.

Stephanie shoved away from him, shriek thrumming beneath her veins. She was awake, she was awake, she was awake.

"Maybe I'll die," she hissed, hands clawing on his grip, nails digging into his skin. "But there will always be another right after me, someone with enough courage for a moment, an instant." She bared her teeth. "And those moments are going to add up, and multiply like the goddamn ants you think we are. And when you feel safe in their fear of you, they're going to break down your door, Roman Sionis."

He stilled. Then he smiled.

There was blood crusted on her upper lip, and she couldn't remember when that happened. They kept saying something about sending a message, and Stephanie didn't know if that was a real thing, if that was a real message, or if that was an excuse to keep doing anything they wanted to her.

But here, right now, they were leaving her alone.

The room almost looked like a hotel, distant and impersonal. Serviceable. None of the men were looking at her.

She didn't know if she would prefer if they looked at her. It might be worse.

She briefly thought about screaming. Screaming and screaming and screaming. But that would end one of two ways. They would shut her up, callused hands against her jaw, blood in her mouth. Or they would simply act like she wasn't screaming, like she didn't even exist. Like the corner she was existing in was a hole, and she only became real when Roman Sionis put his hands on her.

She blinked. There was a white washcloth in front of her face, dripping a bit.

"Wash your face," someone said. Deeper voice. She stared at the washcloth. That voice sighed, then the damp washcloth lifted, brushing across her upper lip. It stung.

Her hands didn't work anymore. She had spent so long clenching them, like clenching her teeth so she wouldn't cry. She didn't want to cry. But now she didn't think she could cry, even if someone asked her to. She was never really good at doing what people asked her to do. That's why she was where she was.

It felt like it had been a long time since she had been outside. She wasn't sure of the time, or how long she had existed within this space. There were no clocks here. Stephanie wasn't sure if she would look at them even if there were.

"We're sending a message," argued that voice with another. "They're going to know, she doesn't need to look like crap. Boss said to clean her up. Yeah," the tone was a little skeptical, a little bitter. But it didn't go on.

Her hair was tugged down. She could see it in the corner of her eye. Last time she had seen it, there was blood in it. It rusted at certain parts, making it look like strawberries.

She was not going to see Barbara again.

That's okay, though, wasn't it.

Stephanie hadn't had a lot of dreams. If it was going to be anyone, at least it was her. The world wouldn't be missing much. Black Mask had given her a choice. Her or Bruce. She chose her. She wasn't that important. She wasn't, no matter what Cass had insisted. It would be okay. Maybe time and space would just continue on like this, where it felt like plastic between her teeth. Every time she blinked it was like the world was whiting out, like a dream.

"I'm going to braid your hair, all right?"

It didn't matter what you did in dreams. You'd wake up and nothing had ever really happened. It didn't matter, so Stephanie leaned into the soft ministrations of the brush. It didn't matter because no one would know, and this voice and hands could keep a secret. They could know that she felt beaten up, like something had crawled inside her soul and chewed it up, two-bit candy stuck underneath a shoe. They could know that she felt awful, that she wasn't connected anymore. That she wasn't really Stephanie, not really. Stephanie was somewhere else, somewhere a long time ago. She was watching the sun set out the window, Alfred setting plates on the table behind her. Or maybe she was Stephanie from long ago, the one who sat on the tiny front step with scabs on her knees, the one who waited.

Waited.

She had done that a lot. She was doing it now, but she wouldn't have to for long. She knew it. She knew it. She knew it.

"I'm very tired."

It was like the words came from someone else, or a corner of the room.

"I know," said that deeper voice, the buzzing of an old-time movie. Mom and she had watched Casablanca every Christmas she didn't work. Stephanie didn't think she would get to do that again.

"You're being really brave. Just a little bit longer."

Waiting.

Waiting.

Waiting.

Waiting. She could do that.

A warped lock peeled in front of her vision, like tassels. Dreadlock.

She reached out to touch it, fingers curling around it.

"I'm very tired."

A cluck of the tongue, a strange sound that she hadn't heard much. "I know," that deep voice said, exasperated but trying its best to be soothing.

She didn't know why it was trying. She wanted it to try, though. Maybe it was the last bit of her that worked, the bit that hadn't floated away. She was tethered here, a yellow balloon, hands on either side of her face, braiding up her hair.

"You just need to hold on a bit longer. We're going to send a message and you need to look—" it cut itself off. "He wants you to look. Well."

Those hands got gentler, one on the back of her head. Cupping it to keep her brains in. But it didn't need to. Balloon girls don't have brains.

"I'm tired." Her voice cracked.

"I know, honey. I know."

She didn't cry. Not even in a dream.

She leaned her head back, feeling warmth behind her temples, and closed her eyes.

It didn't matter in dreams.

"If you had just trained her in the first place, none of this would ever have happened!"

Dick tried not to look up. He was working. None of them had time for this. They had no time. Tim couldn't have forgotten that. He shouldn't have. But he wasn't being Tim right now, he was being some sort of—

Grieving, his mind supplied.

The split part of him, the one still feeling things, was hissing. Why would he be grieving? She's not gone yet. What right did he have to grieve? Now was not the time. They had no time.

Something whistled through the air, slamming against the shelves and setting off an orchestra of crashes and shatterings.

"Your fault! It's YOUR FAULT!"

A wet gasp, but Dick wasn't looking at that. He wasn't listening anymore. He had no time.

"I won't forgive you," Tim's voice cried, the ugly, broken sound that he kept inside of himself, curled tight around his ribs. "I won't forgive you, Bruce. I won't forgive you."

Dick refocused his efforts, mind swept up in one goal. One goal.

He just needed time.

Stephanie, or whoever she was right now, knew something that other people didn't know.

Not even the voice with the gentle hands and dreadlocks knew it. She didn't think it did. If it did, it probably wouldn't tell her to keep being brave. It probably wouldn't let her lean back on it, chest warm against the blood swirling around in her head. She hadn't realized so much blood had been in her head. It was inside of her, wailing and wanting to be let out. She had agreed that it would. It was being let out. It wasn't strawberries, though.

That's partially how she knew.

What day was it?

She couldn't open her eyes. The wet trickle by her ear was whispering, or was that him? It must be. Different hands, different voice. Not dreadlocks.

She wasn't crying. She didn't do that anymore. She had forgotten the last time she had.

She was forgetting a lot.

That's also how she knew.

All the packages in her brain were slipping away, and she couldn't remember anyone besides Dreadlocks and Not Dreadlocks. It was like she had left her body behind, and stepped into the clouds. Nothing made sense, but it didn't hurt. Stephanie didn't mind, as long as it didn't hurt. The numbness was nerve-wrecking, but she knew she wasn't really numb. Just like when she shivered, she knew it wasn't really from cold.

For a moment, a voice (familiar?) echoed in her brain, outlining the symptoms of shock. Fuzzy blue light from the computer screens. Kaleidoscope vision from chairs. Someone strong, almost not even real beside her.

Not even real. It won't be.

Stephanie knew something other people didn't.