There is a blend of simultaneously fear and simultaneous relief at the idea of something happening downtown when you are Stephanie Brown.
In the relief, there's the fact that you nor any family live in the most absolute downest of towns, and therefore your mother was likely okay. The slight comfort in the fact that you were safe and wouldn't be fighting tooth and nail for your life tonight.
And then there's the fear.
Because everyone you know outside of family is going downtown tonight, and they sent you off to your apartment with the butler.
Then the butler mumbled something about needing to be home to tend to the wounded.
And you ended up alone.
With no chance of knowing what's going on or who is hurt.
And you're not a hero anymore, at least not in shape at this point.
So there's no chance of you helping.
So you stay in your apartment and stand in front of the window like a robot watching smoke rise in the distance and hearing screams break through your windows.
You stand there and you wonder if tonight is the night someone will die.
The screams carried on for hours, no news station was able to report accurately through the thick clouds of smoke.
The people who came out at the edge were in shock.
The one news station who had journeyed into the cloud had not yet come out.
Scarecrow.
Scarecrow and fear gas placed all over downtown Gotham.
Having finally sat on her couch around 2 am, Stephanie stared at the television with the same confusion as those reporting.
How he escaped the asylum no one knew.
Firemen poured into the center of downtown with masks secured, Stephanie thought the urge to scream as flashes of black were seen on the rooftops in the shot.
And then just as suddenly as it had begun, it was over.
The smoke dispersed.
News teams screamed, pointing to the destroyed buildings in the distance.
Scarecrow was shoved in a police van in the background.
Everyone was caught on camera except Tim.
Everyone was in horrible states but visible.
Helping each other out of the battlefield.
She could have screamed.
A crash sounded from her bedroom and she did scream.
Tim Drake, currently positioned upon her bedroom floor had looked worse in his life, but Stephanie Brown had not been present in those moments of his life.
Aside from the injuries resulting from him sort of just throwing himself at her window instead of his normal slick entrance, he had a burn and several cuts up the right side of his body, a portion of his mask melted away and taking the obvious brunt of whatever had burnt the side of his body.
First degree burns, she thanked god there wouldn't be scars.
He had so many other people to go to, she wondered for a second why he went there.
She then decided it was entirely unimportant while he was bleeding out on her floor.
She finally acknowledged the hand reaching limply for her.
Upon tossing It over her shoulder she finally got a better look at his face.
His eyes were swollen.
He looked like shit.
She took the majority of his weight until she had led him to the bed, pushing him down to sitting position on top of it.
"Take off your clothes." She demanded.
He hesitated before beginning to remove the suit but every movement was laborious.
She swallowed her pride and reached for his clothes, beginning to help him undress. He grunted in pain as she peeled the material away from the injured skin with a sickening sound.
She managed to get the top of his clothes off, pushing his back to the bed despite his voice attempting to make a noise that vaguely sounded like her name.
She lifted up his leg and peeled the bottom portion of his costume from his legs, allowing his underwear to remain.
Next, she reached up and peeled the cowl from his face.
If he had enough blood left or wasn't severely burnt he could have been blushing.
She didn't care.
She began the next step, wrapping his arm around her shoulder again and helping him up.
"Steph." His raspy voice managed.
"Hold on, I got you." She replied, leading him across the hall and into her bathroom.
Here she lowered him onto her bathmat, wincing as the white fabric began to be covered in yellow and red stains. She started the tub as he tried again to reach for her.
"I have to change." She informed him. "Give me a second."
She stood in front of her closet for only a second before discarding her pants and throwing a pair of shorts on. Next, she undid her bra, not wanting to bear the idea of cold water sticking to the thick fabric around her breasts. She threw her bra and shirt off in a single motion, grabbing an oversized t-shirt.
Thinking about it for a moment she tried to pick a pair of pajama pants that would fit him, she didn't want him to spend the day in wet boxers after his bath.
She grabbed a pair he had 'lent' her in high school.
Returning to the bathroom she saw that he had fallen onto his burnt side, but thankfully not moved aside from that. He withered in pain on her bathmat as she turned the faucet off, having filled the tub enough.
Next, she lifted him up once more, helping him find a way to the bathroom. He collapsed all at once into the water.
She quickly grabbed his chin to stop his head from lulling into the water.
He forced a pale hand to touch her cheek, barely there.
A solemn smile, she released his chin to remove his hand from her face.
"Steph." He tried again. The pain had subsided slightly from the cool water, but Stephanie nervously watched as it turned a murky red brown in front of her eyes. "Steph, I'm okay." His voice was so hoarse.
"Shh."
"I came to say I'm okay." He stated.
Stephanie ignored him as she grabbed his nose and tilted his head back. He scrunched his face from the pain. She used another hand to dip a plastic cup from a fast food restaurant that was already on the side of the tub into the water.
She poured the water over his face, watching as brown water cascaded off of him.
She repeated this motion again before assessing the situation.
there was no way to scrub the dirt off of him without causing him pain.
She shook her head, dunking the cup under water and pouring it over his shoulder.
His breath sounded labored.
"This is nice." She joked halfheartedly. "Isn't it?"
"This is terrible." He sounded like he smoked eight packs of cigarettes in one go. "I didn't come here for medical care."
"Then go to someone else before you come to me looking the way you do." She shook her head. "You look like you've been in the sun for hours, then somehow managed to get attacked by a wolverine."
"Citizens under the effects of fear gas." He corrected her. "And fire, a lot of fire."
"Are you the worst off?"
"Yes." He admitted.
"So you disappeared right away." She shook her head, pouring another cup over his back as he scrunched up his face.
"For your sake, yes." His back muscles tensed, he hit a word too hard and inhaled awkwardly. "I didn't want you left in the dark. Tam doesn't like when things like this happen."
"Because she has to clean you up?" Stephanie joked.
"Alfred does, she doesn't want to see it."
"Oh." She shook her head, rubbing a large portion of melted rubber stuck to him gently with her hand.
His frown was more pronounce as she made sure to avoid eye contact.
"I think you're good, want help standing again?"
"I think I'll be okay, some of the pain has subsided." Yet when he started to get up it was like watching an old man rising from the floor.
Slow and painful.
She gritted her teeth as he managed to step out of her tub with a long groan.
The air immediately hit his burns against, initiating the pain once more.
Stephanie flew to her cupboard, thanking god she had two rolls of medicinal wrap.
She left him alone after wrapping him to allow him to change into his pajamas, waiting outside of the bathroom door in case anything were to happen.
It took him about twenty minutes to put on a pair of pants.
When he opened the door she was unsurprised to see all of his ankles and half of his legs.
He had gotten a lot taller since they were kids.
He grunted upon seeing her, looking like some sort of mummy going through a growth spurt with the amount of his torso covered in bandages.
Almost immediately he made a beeline for the door.
"Where are you going?" Steph called from the hallway.
"Home." He responded, beginning to open the door.
"Half naked and almost dead?" A rhetorical question, "You're not going home."
"I am going home," he informed her. "I go home like this all the time."
"Yeah, but are you normally alone?" She asked him as he began to walk out of the door, tailing him closely. "You really shouldn't be alone right now. You could have serious complications."
"I highly doubt you'll be able to sense those complications with me sleeping on your couch." He informed her as he began to walk down the hall of her apartment building.
"In my bed then, I don't care, you're not going home." She informed him, charging after him, and grabbing his wrist.
He shot her a confused look as she yanked it and prompted a yelp of pain from him.
"Stephanie, it's okay, I've gone home alone in a worse state."
She wouldn't budge, holding his wrist still. "You don't go home like this when Stephanie Brown is in town." She informed him.
In the history of Tim Drake, there were many things that could not be done.
Saying no to Stephanie Brown and meaning it with all of his heart was one of them.
She looked at him.
Just the way she looked at him, the only way Stephanie ever really looked at him in the early days of their relationship, the good days. The days when it really was a relationship.
When Tam looked at him there was a multitude of different ways to do so; Sexy, fearful, angry, happy, devoted.
For the longest time, all of those paled in comparison to the look of the original Stephanie Brown.
Confident, brave, giving; The only look she ever had for him.
That was the look she gave him now.
His breath lightened and his attempts to pull away faded.
He gave in, for the sake of a memory.
She looked at him with those eyes and he just nodded, like he wasn't truly there.
They started back to back, but the second she fell to sleep he found himself rolling to stare at her back.
He realized why this was a bad idea as the burning pain hit him once more, he flipped back onto his back.
Out of the corner of his eye, she was still visible, peacefully sleeping.
And here he was, being pathetic and looking at her state of peace in her bed.
Still in love with Tam but feeling the crushing weight of Stephanie Brown on his heart.
He grimaced at himself from his back as she began to stir beside him, turning to face him on her side.
Her eyes were still firmly shut.
She's a troublemaker, he told himself.
Her hand reached for something, anything to hold.
An absolute troublemaker, he swore to himself.
Her hand fell on his burnt flesh.
He felt like screaming in pain but couldn't bring himself to.
She adjusted herself closer to him, half of her body on top of his burns.
How fitting.
But he couldn't move her.
His mind screamed to, his skin screamed to, but in that moment Stephanie was an entity made of steel and lead; too heavy to be moved away from him.
But then he saw her face.
And just couldn't even think of it anymore.
"Goodnight, Steph." He sighed in defeat.
He needed to stay away from Stephanie Brown.