V. Epimetheus
He's twenty in two and a half weeks, and right now, Tim's out with Dick and Tanner at the Gotham Zoo. Good old dependable Uncle Dick. Steph smirks and carefully folds another tee-shirt.
After all those fights she and Tim had about the baby, back when they were so young, she still hadn't been able to say no to Tanner when he was born, and she made Tim understand that if he thought the baby needed a male influence so much, why didn't he help? Steph's fairly sure that Tim gets extra hours in all his days. That's the only possible way he makes all this work.
Stephanie gets a check from Wayne Enterprises every two weeks. It's not a lot, and surely petty change to Bruce, but it keeps Tanner in clothes and stocks their fridge.
She opens the closet to hang up the sundress, and at the back of the dark room is the sharp eggplant of her old cloak. She never could bear to throw it out.
It's not as though she's a bad mother, but she got her GED and forgot about school. She works as a secretary downtown, and she cooks for three at night now. Tim's studying criminal justice at university and comes home just long enough to eat and do boy things with Tanner before he excuses himself for bed. "Bed" of course meaning suiting up and chasing criminals through the streets of Gotham.
About sixty per cent of the time, Stephanie wakes up to Tim's arm flung around her waist as he snuggles into their bed at five or six in the morning. The other forty, he doesn't make it home before she goes to work. She knows that sometimes he has to be at the Cave, or has things to work out with Nightwing, or research to do.
Tim does important things.
Stephanie reaches into the closet and pulls out the plastic wrapped cloak. Her ragged fingernails rip through the plastic, and she's barely thinking as she pulls the cloak from its hanger.
Tim overloads on credits every semester and takes two classes during the summer session. He'll have his bachelor's in another semester, and then he can start working on just enough grad work to get him where he wants to be.
Tanner was so excited about seeing the pandas. He doesn't know that his daddy isn't his daddy. He doesn't know that his daddy is a superhero, or that his "uncle" is neither his uncle nor a civilian. Tim lies smoothly and believably.
Tanner does know how to hurt an attacker and how to avoid bad people already.
And Stephanie loves Tim, and she loves Tanner, and she knows that Tim only does what he feels is expected of him. She knows that he tries to hard.
The feel of the air around her as she swung over Gotham. The feel of her knuckles connecting with the hard suit of an attacker. She can't forget those things.
She thought this was what she was meant to do, mothering. She thought this was what she was supposed to be doing and it all was so easy that she almost believed it.
The cloak is security around her, and she's put on a little weight, but nothing she can't lose after a few nights of crime fighting.
They'll be back from the zoo soon, and Tanner will want to tell her all about the pandas. Tanner loves pandas. Dick will grin and offer to cook for everyone, and Tim will just smile and kiss her. Stephanie will want to scream.
She ought to have left a note, she thinks as she drops out her back window and onto the grass behind her house in the dim early evening light.
Stephanie loves them, but this is what she should be doing.
She does not think about how Tim will explain to Tanner that mommy is gone.