"Where is he Stephanie?"
"Tim." Steph gripped the pages of homework, her hands crinkling them hard enough to tear. Even if her throat hadn't gone beyond dry right then, Stephanie wouldn't have been able to answer him. She couldn't deny it, couldn't think of way to justify why she hadn't said anything before. She dropped the pages; let them fall to the ground as she shook her head.
Tim's face morphed quickly to his own quiet fury and he got off her bed, stepped back like he couldn't stand being even that close to her.
"How could you do this?" He shook his head. "To them, to us!" He pressed a hand to his chest, "To me. You were there, every day, you 'saw' what was happening, what this was 'doing' to everyone, and you just sat on it, all this time!"
"If you'd told me you though he was dead from the start I wouldn't've…"
"If we had 'told' you? Cause that's the requirement for turning in a mass murderer now? For stopping us from wasting months chasing a lie! Do you even know what this city's coming to because of what you've done?!" He swept his hand at her window, from which the usual sounds of shouting and car chases bled in. Then he raked the hand through his long hair, sucking in a breath. "Do you know what my 'family's' coming to?" His breath hitched and when he finally looked back at her, she physically recoiled from the pain she could see in his eyes. "Babs hasn't left in days, Damian doesn't understand what's going on and 'no one' can explain it to him and Dick…" His breathing became haggard and he averted his gaze. "God, you have no 'idea' what you done to Dick. Bruce is going to get himself killed, Cass's 'father' Steph, is going to kill himself. My father." He let out a sound that was frightfully close to a sob.
"Tim." Steph got up off her bed, one of her hands racing for his trembling shoulders.
"And for what?" He swiped her hand away from her, backed more towards the window waving his hands between them. "So you can play out some kind of forbidden spy drama fantasy with a sociopath who'd have slit your throat the first time you met if he'd thought he would have gotten away with it!"
"It's not like that!" Steph's fists were white knuckled at her sides. "It's nothing like that, he's, he's 'helping', if you just let me explain…"
"You can explain tonight in the cave." Tim batted her hand away with a scowl. "To everyone."
"Tonight?" Steph swallowed, once they knew things wouldn't ever be the same, she couldn't tell them, she'd promised Jay she wouldn't. She looked helplessly at Tim. "I can't, just, can't you just give me a little more time, to…"
One of his hands shot out, made a cutting motion to silence her as he walked past her. "You've had enough time Stephanie, be thankful I'm giving you the chance to do this yourself." He picked up the bag he's brought along, slung it across his shoulders without turning his front to her. "You could have come to me with this earlier you know. I would have helped you, because you were supposed to be my friend, and that's how you treat friends," he looked at her over his shoulder, the blue of his eye reflecting the city lights in a pattern that looked almost like fire. "If you dont tell the 'tonight' I will, and I won't be nice about it."
O
O
O
'Jason, they know! Tim saw your handwriting in those books and my homework and. And I'm so sorry Jay, I shoulda known. I'm so, so…" She babbled on, her voice barely understandable though her panic and the ringing in his ears.
"Whoa, calm down there Sunshine. It's okay, you know they had to find out eventually." Jason said, shutting the door behind him to make sure no one wondered into the place, he'd already let the cops know there was something in there, but he'd be long gone before they showed up. "Tell me what happened." If they'd hurt her, if she was even a little bit hurt he was going to rain down every kind of hell on them, starting with the Gotham Gazzete.
'Tim was there when I got home, and he had one of your books and my stupid homework that you kept looking over and he matched the writing,' She swallowed and sniffled on the line. 'And he asked me where you were, not if I knew, just where, and said how everything's getting messed up cause they're too busy focusing on you to take care of things.'
Jason looked back down the way he'd come; felt the stickiness of the blood stuck to bottom of his boots with ever step. So he was their excuse for 'that' fuck up too huh. Just fucking perfect. Heroes, he scoffed lips curling in disgust.
'I gotta tell them tonight.' She sucked in series of shallow breaths. 'Oh God Jay, what am I gonna tell them.'
"Just say whatever you have to." Jason was far enough away now, he pressed his back against a wall and looked up at the night sky, devoid of stars, feeling a pang for the ones that had circles above his head just a few hours ago. If he closed his eyes he could imagine them, the softness of her lap, the feel of her hands in his hair, the smell of vanilla when she'd leaned in so close to him. He'll forget it in time, he knows, but he didn't want to, didn't want this to be the last time he heard her voice like this. "Spin them any story, they'll believe it. You got nothing to worry about."
'Like what?' A thump that signified she'd dropped down, onto her bed or the sofa he didn't know.
Jason huffed at the very idea of her not having anything to say. "You'll figure it out, you're Batgirl remember."
'Yeah, however long that lasts.' She huffed. 'You're the one who told me I wasn't cut out for this life remember.'
"To be fair that was right after you ate my poisoned porridge." Jason knocked his head back against the wall, it felt like that had all happened so long ago, the time spent with her on the outside almost overwriting her visits to his cell at Arkham, the things she'd brought with her to try and engage him in some way. It was the most anyone had done for him in so long and he'd never gotten round to appreciating it. "I was just being an asshole, you're amazing Steph, you know you are. You're bright and you're tough as all hell and whatever happens, you'll come through it fine."
It wasnt enough. There was so much more he wantes to say. So, so much more, but he knew if he did he might not have been able to stop, to fight the urge to go over to her apartment and see her just one more time, so he could have just one more chance to memorize the feel of her, of her voice, her laugh… God he wanted to hear her laugh again, but he couldn't think of anything that would do it right then.
"You know, the Batgirl thing falls though, and I'll bequeath upon you my old Red Hood gear. It'll be great, scourge of the underworld now with vanilla scent."
'I'd be fabulous.' She chuckled softly, and he guessed that was all he was going to get.
Jason held back a sigh, looked back down the path he'd walked from the warehouse. "Can I uh, ask you a favor?"
'Yeah, sure.'
"When you find out, please don't…" He caught himself at the last second, swallowed down the walls and banged his head against the wall again. "…hate me."
'Jay?'
"It's nothing." He said, leaning more of his body weight against the wall, letting himself slide down to sit on the ground. "You gotta go, we'll talk later." He said it like he meant it, like just saying it that way would make it true.
'Yeah.' She said softly, then louder. 'Yeah, okay. Bye Jay.'
"Seeya round Sunshine." He hung up on her before he could do something stupid. Tossed the cellphone as hard as he could, and before it'd even stopped skittering across the ground he drew a gun and emptied the three bullets remaining in the clip into the device, silencing it for good.
"Seeya round." He muttered dragging himself to his feet. He pulled another phone out of his pocket when as he walked out of the alley.
"Need ya to send some intell my way for a job I just picked up."
O
O
O
Despite its size, the cave felt cramped, and it took Steph a minute to realize it was because it had been a long time since they'd been so many of them there at once.
Tim was sitting in the big chair in front of the batcomputer, watching Steph's approach. Dick was buffing some reddish scuffmarks off Jason's case, and Cass and Damian were on the sparring mats while Babs watched from her seat at her own computer set up.
"Hey Steph." Cass waved when Steph got to the main part of the cave, but Steph couldn't wave back, couldn't unwrap her arms from around her middle.
"Just say whatever you have to say." She mumbled under her breath, like that would make it easier to know what it was she had to say, she tried to swallow, but her throat was too dry. They heard the elevator descending from the manor as Cass came to stand by Steph, a deep frown on her face. She rested a finger on her friends shoulder, but Steph shook it off, stepped aside, she couldn't handle any of Cass's kindness right then.
"What's wrong, are you… okay?" Cass asked, though she was able to see damn well that Steph was not, she appreciated the gesture anyway.
She looked over at Tim one more time, silently begging him for more time, but his gaze was cold, impassive, and she turned away quickly her eyes catching on Dick instead, still by the case as he watched the elevator doors whoosh open and Bruce stepped out.
"What's this about?" He asked, already going to the racks holding his equipment to start prepping for another patrol.
"It's…" Steph watched him, looked around at the others Tim had gathered. The only one not there was Alfred, and Steph didn't want to think about why. "Tim, just…"
"No Stephanie." He said, turning around his chair to face everyone else.
"I can't …" She sucked in a breath, felt it catch in her throat and had to struggle a little to make it go to her lungs.
"Steph?" Cass tried to offer comfort again, but again Steph rebuffed her.
"It's about Jay… Jason." She choked the word out an suddenly everyone's eyes were on her, pinning her in place like those little butterflies that had always been on display in her highschool biology classes.
"What about him?" Bruce asked, his body tense, as if he was bracing himself for a car crash.
"He's threatened you?" Damian asked, his eyes drifting over everyone else in the cave. The energy changed almost immediately and they were all exchanging worried glances.
"No!" Stephanie shot down the idea before it could take route even a little, realizing with a pang that felt like a knife entering her chest that this was what Jason had meant by 'say what you need to say'. Say it wasn't her fault, that he had something over her, that she couldn't have told them she's seen him and that they'd believe her.
Even Tim's stoic posture had wavered at Damian's question, and Steph felt her fear tricking away, being replaced by something that really didn't feel any better.
"He never, he never 'threatened' me." Steph fought back a snarl and shook her head at them. "How's that the first thing...!"
"You've found a new lead then?" Bab's asked, already opening up a new tab, ready to begin working. "Tell me what you've got and I'll send…"
"It's not a lead." Tim said, cutting Babs off before he turned his glower back on Stephanie. "Stop stalling and tell them, now."
"I know where he's been." Steph blurted the words out past the weight she felt forcing the air out of her lungs.
"Where?" Bruce demanded, the same time as Dick practically leaped from the little dais surrounding the case to approach her.
"Is he…" Dick began, but words failed him before he's reached her.
"He's okay, I mean compared to what you're all thinking…" He wasn't dead, or in a gutter, or doped up on frenzy, or something worse in some creepy old doctor's basement.
Dick swayed, almost didn't get to a chair before he folded in on himself, burying his face in his hands. "Oh thank god." He breathed out, coming uncomfortably close to making it a sob and melting into the hard chair like it was the softest thing in the world and he hadn't sat down in weeks.
What she'd done to Dick. Steph backed away, from him, from all of them. He looked so tired, they all did. She had seen what her lies had done to them and she'd been too wrapped up in the friendship she was forming to care. They deserved the truth, her part of it at least, for what she'd put them though. Jason deserved to have them know the truth, even if he didn't want to speak to them.
"Where, how did you find him?" Bab's asked, her arms dropping from her keyboard to go limo at her sides.
"At Arkham." Steph admitted, almost turned away but forced herself to look at the as she spoke, unwinding her arms from around her.
"But I searched Arkham, me and Bruce both." Dick said, eyes flickering between Steph and Bruce. "There's not an inch of that place we don't know about anymore, there can't be."
"I found him before you looked." She brushed her hair behind her ears.
"What?" Bab's voice was flat, cold. Cass who'd been hovering around Steph since the conversation began turned her head quickly, surveying the room before she took two steps away from Steph.
Damian began marching up to Steph, but Bruce grabbed the boy's shoulder before he could pass him by.
"Explain, now." And there was the commanding Batman voice they'd all gotten used to throughout the years, only darker, more dangerous. Steph had never been more afraid of him.
"I found him the same night I found the tapes." Steph said, backing away from him, towards the case. "He was in one of those side passages and I…" She her foot bumped against the dais. "I took him to Leslies before I called you."
As one, they moved away from her, even Tim, as if he hadn't been known, and maybe he hadn't, that particular homework assignment really hadn't been that old.
"Then why the hell didn't you tell anyone?" He asked, rising from his seat, stalking towards her.
"Because you were gonna hurt him again!" Steph glared at him, bracing her hands against the cool glass at her back. "He couldn't even sit up on his own, and before I even got to Leslie's, he just stopped breathing, and when she got it started again, he, he had fucking stroke, he's twenty and he had a stroke, cause 'none' of you would help me look for him when he went missing the first time, then you just, just wanted to do exactly the same thing again as soon as you got your hands on him." Stephanie's breaths were coming in shallow gasps and the anxiety building in her chest was almost painful.
"We're going to hurt him?" Tim laughed a mirthless, mocking laugh. "Hurt HIM? He's a murder!"
"So's he." She waved her arm out at Damian, the she looked over at him and her heart sank with the knowledge that she'd thrown a kid under the bus and something inside her shriveled up even as she turned quickly aside from them. "And just the other day Babs, Huntress stabbed a mob boss in the neck, and Catwoman threw Black Mask out of a window, and Cass, you were literally the queen of assassins for a while there." Steph waved her reached out for her friend. "You helped her, why not him? The only person he has is Damian's crazy mother, and you can bet she's not encouraging him to become a fucking pacifist? You know, I asked him once, just once, when he barely even knew me not to kill anyone on this case and he didn't."
"Yet." Bruce growled the word out. "He hasn't killed anyone 'yet'. You think you know him, and yet…"
"I know him better than any of you." Steph's heart neat stopped beating in her chest when she interrupted 'Batman'. She stepped away from the case, leaving her smudgy handprints on the glass. "I know he likes old movies, and music, and he eats 'way' too much junk food, and he's a such a freaking lightweight for his size, you wouldn't believe, and he listened to that one song from the corpse bride at least six times when I got him to watch it, and he's just so, so ridiculous, and easy to tease and …" Stephanie felt the tears trailing down her cheeks, had to pause her rant to wipe them aside with her palms and try to get her breathing under control.
"You think any of that excuses him?" Bruce was drawing nearer to her, cape swishing behind him like the literal wings of something that crawled out of hell, the furious expression on his face making the image even more striking. "'Liking' someone isn't an excuse to paint over everything they've done!"
"Well neither is hating them." He stood on her toes to spit the words out as close to his face as she could, and she would have sworn Bruce flinched. "You know, Bruce." She ignored the tears now, balled her hands into fist at her sides to keep them from striking out. "Jason jokes about 'dying' and getting tossed in the Lazarus Pits, and clawing his way out of his freaking grave, but he has this one scar on his neck he won't even talk about."
"Choose your next words very, very wisely Stephanie." He said, his voice even the way something that had been sanded down paper-thin was sharp.
"When I asked, he just told me to ask 'you'." She thrust a finger out at him, before she was grasping at straws, but going by his reaction alone, she knew she had to be on to something, the way everyone was watching them now, they could see it too. "I kinda thought it was just something from when he was Robin, and it was something embarrassing…" She remembered the way Jason's tensed up when her fingers had brushed the scar at the planetarium, and her hand came up to brush where it would have been on her own neck. "But the Pits take scars away, don't they? And he couldna gotten in before he came back, cause then how would you know? What did you do to him?"
This time Bruce didn't react, didn't so much as twitch a muscle she could see. Cass's reaction spoke for him. She made a soft choking noise and stumbled back a few steps.
Steph backed up too, watched the silence settle him, stretch taught like it was a tangible thing. She shouldn't have brought that up, she realized suddenly. It wasn't the kind of personal thing that you brought up in this kind of argument. She backed away from Bruce, kept going right until she bumped into Tim and the silence broke.
"What did you 'do'?" Babs demanded, wheeling herself quickly to Cass so she could wrap an arm around the girl.
"He was covered in armor; there was no other way to stop him." Bruce said stoically.
"That scar is right by his carotid." Dick said, taking a halting step towards the older man. "Oh my god." He whispered. His hand shot out to brace himself against the back of his chair, then he spoke louder, "Oh my fucking God," His voice was breathy, unsteady. "And I said I wanted him dead after that."
Babs shot him a questioning look and Dick jerked a thumb across his throat.
"You did that?" She pulled Cass closer, her eyes flaring thunderously behind her glasses. "For Joker?"
"It was for 'him'." Bruce was shaking, his knuckles making an odd creaking sound. He looked angry, but like he wanted to look angry. Underneath there were cracks showing, and any second one of those cracks would widen enough for something to peek out. Steph didn't want to see that. If It felt wrong with Dick, she didn't want to see Bruce break, not in any life.
"I think you should go now." Tim said, his hands holding onto her shoulders from behind, he began to steer her out of the cave.
She wished she were angrier, that she would lash out at him that he'd been the one to make her do it. She'd asked him for time, a better shot at explaining that a room full of people, but he's made her do it. He'd made her do it because his family was teetering at the edge and he hadn't wanted to risk them for another night. Now he's made it worse, she'd made it worse. So instead, she nodded mutely, swung a leg over bike and moved sped out like the ghosts of hell were on her tail, just happy to be out of there.
Before she'd even cleared the long wooded road back to the city Steph pulled over, one of her hands snaking out to press against her throat. Had Bruce really… But he wouldn't, Bruce didn't do thinks like that, he knew how dangerous throws like that could be, had drilled it into them all over and over again how far they were expected to keep anything sharp and pointy away from any dangerous parts of their enemies, but then. When had it happened? How had it happened, and, and why?
She wanted to call Jason, ask him about herself, but how could she when he hated her even touching the damned scar?
She didn't know how long she stayed there, on the side of the road, staring of into nothing before the bat signal lit up the sky. For a minute she watched it, then she kicked her bike into gear and sped off towards it, she doubted the rest of them would be getting around to it that night.
O
O
O
"Got called in around seven thirty, we thought it was one of your frenzy massacres, again, but, well you'll see." The commissioner said as he led her down the alley. "Was hoping to get one of your older colleagues for this."
"Family emergency." Steph said, trying to slap in her Batgirl cheer and failing miserably. "Robin stole Red Robin's toothbrush again and man can those boys go at it."
"Maybe we should wait for the others." He clasped a hand on her shoulder, keeping her from entering the building.
"I can take it Commish." Steph said, but mentally braced herself before she opened the door.
The smell of their blood hit her before anything, and then she got sight of the red soaked blue carpet. Red with the blood of at least a dozen people. Steph went in, crouched over one of them with the commissioner at her side.
The bullets had killed them, but there was also more bruises than skin, a compound fracture poking out through someone's skin. Brutal, but despite the sheer number of injuries, she could tell by just the sheer lack of bloody footprints that is had been quick. None of them had been given the chance to run.
"This is a whole other guy." Steph said, licking her lips. "He was mad, real mad, but not in a, you took all my drugs kinda way."
"More like a 'you've stabbed my mother' way, huh?" Detective Gage came in behind them a couple of coffees in his hands, he handed one off the commissioner, who gave him a disbelieving frown. "It's Gotham, right?" His shrug didn't make him seem any less uneasy as he walked out, Steph following the commissioner, following him. "Haven't seen you in a while." He said to Steph, and she smiled turned her head away and remembered when a smile that from him would have made her blush.
"Been busy." She swallowed down the bile rising in her throat and turned away from the bodies.
"Oh, catch the commissioner's mysterious rescuer yet?" The detective asked.
Steph had a mini camera out and was taking pictures of the scene for later. "Nah, we're kinda busy with…"
"You came in here for something, Detective Gage?" The commissioner interrupted her.
"Yeah, one of the crime scene guys bought this of a couple street kids." He held up an evidence bag filled with a piece of broken electronics parts. "Wants to know if he's gonna get reimbursed. Same caliber as our dead pimps here."
"Ugh, waste of a cellphone?" Steph asked leaned in to get a better look at the weirdly familiar mess of wires and plastic.
"Fried it too, we're not getting anything off this." Someone in a navy jumpsuit popped up behind them.
"The call came in around seven thirty?" Steph asked.
"Well seven twenty-six but…"
Steph was gone before he'd finished talking, leaving him to crane his head around the room searching for her.
Outside, she swung her leg over her bike and finished dialing Jason's number.
'The number you have dialed is no longer in service, please…'
She pressed down on the end call button and dialed again. She'd called Jason at seven forty five, which would have been right after 'someone' had called the cops. If it were him, he'd have walked about two blocks before he hung up on her.
'The number you have dialed is…'
'The number…'
She didn't drop her cellphone, she was too well trained for that, but she came close. Steph kicked out her breaks and sped off in the direction of Jason's apartment.
O
O
O
When she got there she wanted to believe it was just like when he'd found that other room, the one he'd called her for.
The door isn't locked when she gets there, Jason wouldn't have just left it open like that if he wasn't home, but her nerves don't settle, they worsen.
His bookshelf was neatly arranged as always, the dried out wreath of flowers she'd given him still hanging off a nail on the side. There was still food in the fridge, enough for a few days at least, but the fancy tea he'd gotten from Talia was gone. So were the knives he'd had displayed above his TV.
The duffle bag was gone from under his bed, but in its place was something roughly the same size.
Steph crouched down and pulled it out, a lot heavier than she'd thought it would be and made harder by the angle she had to reach it from, she wound up rolling it the last of the way out.
A bazooka, no an RPG, a 'real' one, spray-painted in purple and gold that still hadn't fully dried yet. Steph turned it over and a piece of floral patterned paper taped to the side caught her eye.
'You wanted to try your hand at being the rebellious one right? Try it out on Penguin :p'
'Cheers Sunshine'
'-Jason'