Rooftop World (DC Comics, mostly gen, PG)
Oct. 14th, 2005 10:43 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
browngirlTitle: Rooftop World
Rating: PG
Characters: Spoiler, Nightwing, Robin III. Others mentioned.
Warnings: het-tinged gen, a little cursing
Setting: somewhen between Robin 92 and 98 when Arthur Brown's not home yet.
Dedicated To: All the wonderful people who have betaed for me in the DC Comics fandom, especially![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
brown_betty, who beta-read this till it was worth reading.
Disclaimer: These characters and their settings belong to DC Comics. The Bat-Power-Bars were inspired by an episode of the show Good Eats.
7:20 PM
It looks like it'll be a good night in Gotham. The sunset sky is purple-pink-yellow and clear, the city lights are coming out below, the air smells cool and just a little sour-smoky, and Tim and Nightwing are sparring on a rooftop.
Ball, toe, heel. Steph takes a slow, careful step, pressing her lips tight on the giggle trying to bust free. Tim is so striking a pose, making his cape swirl around him and that "come on" gesture. "Bring it," he tells Nightwing, who's on one foot on the edge of the roof. Showoffs.
"It's brung," Nightwing leaps like he thinks he'll stay in the air. Each step makes Steph's heart pound, glee bubbling in the back of her throat, but she can't make a noise, not yet, not till she's caught them. Nightwing jumps over Tim's first strike and dodges upwards, flipping over Tim by grabbing his shoulder, and Tim twists to knock him off balance; Nightwing laughs, and Tim actually smiles, and they look so smooth together Steph could almost stop and just watch. But every step is more proof that she belongs here, so she grins behind her mask and edges closer, around the corner and into an early shadow. Another step or two and she'll be able to flip right into the middle.
A soft whap! and Steph's cape pulls tight. She glances down to find a batarang pinning one corner of it to the tarcloth. Dammit.
"Hey, Spoiler," Tim calls, not even looking at her as he blocks and dodges Nightwing's billy-clubs. Nightwing turns a feint into a wave as he spins.
"Hey yourselves, Bat-boys," Steph mutters, gripping the batarang gingerly. Why do they have to be so sharp? It takes a couple moments to tug it free; Steph lifts the corner of her cape to check the damage, but doesn't find any holes. Tim threw it just that carefully.
Well, he's got to teach her how to do that. There's no point to being quiet anymore, so Steph tucks the batarang into her thigh holster and pulls her mask up halfway as she watches Tim and Nightwing spin around each other in a swirl of cape and grins and kicks. Tim gets in a good blow, knocking Nightwing backwards; he flips off his hands like it's nothing, and the last time Steph tried that she landed on her head. Of course, the time before she stuck it and landed on her feet. She's getting there.
"Enough," Nightwing says, and "hi," to Steph, his smile bright enough to warm her down to her belly button. Steph smiles back a little guiltily, but then she's only human; she makes sure she's smiling at both of them and glances at Tim nervously, but he's all Robin, arms folded beneath his cape as he watches Nightwing.
Nightwing's all business too, so Steph pulls down her mask and folds her arms to show she's listening. "We have a stakeout tonight," he briefs them, "from 2000 to 2200 or whenever someone shows up, and then I'll take north of the Sprang while you two circle, but do not enter, Robinson Park." As if she's an idiot. Steph nods, rolling her eyes. "But first."
Steph waits. Tim stands there. Nightwing stands there. The breeze twitches Tim's cape, and Gotham honks and beeps below. How long is she supposed to wait? "But what?"
"But first you have to catch me." Nightwing's grin flashes again as he spins and flips off the near side of the roof, and Tim's already chasing him. Steph laughs and runs after them, and as she jumps and fires her grapple the noise and lights of the city rush up to meet her.
7:43 PM
"So, where is this place?" Steph asks Tim, who shrugs as they trot side by side behind Nightwing. Their current path takes them along a main street in Robbinsville, over apartment building roofs, occasionally ducking people's laundry. Frankly, Steph could go for some water, and she hopes they get there, wherever there is, soon.
Nightwing stops for a moment, so they can too. Catching her breath, Steph leans on the side of the roof and looks down to the street; she spots a pudgy guy with a guitar case and a fuzzy beard, just minding his own business. And, coming around the corner, several guys laughing and poking each other, so loudly she can hear them up here. They sound young, and it's hard to see how they're dressed from so far away, but they might be... "Robin?"
Tim looks at her, then down at what she's watching. "What is it?"
"Does that look like trouble to you?" The guys round the corner, and she counts six of them. One points at the guy with the guitar, who stops walking.
"Maybe-- make that yes." The six thugs hoot and shout, egging each other on. The other guy turns, but his guitar makes him too clumsy to have a chance. Steph wants to jump down there, but--
"Come on. Nightwing?" Tim's already crouched on the roof's edge, but he glances back till Nightwing nods. Then he jumps, and Steph has to scramble to keep up with him. Hey, she saw them first!
On the other hand, if she's behind Tim she can watch him. Watch the way his cape blows out as he swings down, the click of his staff nearly lost in the rush of air, the way he yells at just the right time to make the pack look away from the guy they're about to attack, the way he rams his feet right into the upturned face of the rearmost jerk.
They're definitely gang types. Steph misses booting one in the head and manages to land on him instead, but he goes down under her and she doesn't wait for the world to stop moving before she punches him; by the time they hit the ground he's staying down. The others are turning, shouting, and as she rolls to her feet Steph thinks she sees a knife flash at the edge of her vision, but the guy who comes at her doesn't have a weapon, just big fists and a grin that says all he sees is a girl in a cape.
Steph's gonna make him see stars.
He comes straight at her, leaving himself totally open, and looks surprised when she kicks out his knees. She kicks the surprised look right off his face and turns--
--how'd that one get back there? Steph steps back, away from the next guy's long-armed swing, and remembers a second too late the one she just took down. She trips onto her ass and he grins and lunges, both hands out, and then he's gone in a flash of red-green-yellow.
Steph looks over as the guy lands with a thud against the storefront and Tim rolls clear. Behind her two more hit the pavement yelping, and the knife clatters in the street. She looks over her shoulder as she stands up, and there's Nightwing, smiling and zip-stripping the two he took down. Tim just looks quiet as he zip-strips the guy he kicked away from her, and he's already taken care of the first two, so she bends to do the one she tripped over, planting her foot in the middle of his back even though he doesn't look like he's going anywhere. And hey, Steph reminds herself, she took down two of them!
But when she really feels like she won is when Tim looks up at her and gives her one of his little smiles. That makes her grin behind her mask.
The guy with the guitar is still standing there, shaking and greenish with shock. Nightwing puts a hand on his shoulder. "Th-thank you," he stammers, and that opens the floodgates; by the third "I just live around the corner," Nightwing is gently shoving him towards that corner, and Tim's calling in the incident. Steph puts her hands on her hips and rolls her shoulders, working on her breathing as she cools down; after a moment she looks the pile of thugs over to make sure none of them is waking up, but they just lie there, mostly still with occasional groans.
Then Tim nods to her, because she is on the team, and she smiles as she shoots her grapple and follows him up into the red evening sky.
10:10 PM
There's a pigeon walking back and forth across Steph's feet.
Steph has been crouched on the edge of this roof for forty-five minutes, since the Bat-boys came back after they got done searching and bugging the place, some dealer's makeshift warehouse. Tim's to her left. Nightwing's to her right. They're both doing good imitations of gargoyles, though Steph thinks she saw Nightwing twitch once or twice.
Nothing, at all, is going on in the darkened building in front of them. Or in the one beneath them.
The pigeon's claws scratch on the bricks between her feet. It pecks at her boot, and she bites her lip and stays still. It's getting a little easier, because her thighs are going numb.
Forty-six minutes.
So far Steph has: reminded herself of how stupid she'd look if she leaped screaming into the night; wiggled each toe separately inside her boots; run through all the breathing exercises Batman taught her; whispered all the questions she can think of to Tim and Nightwing, and tried to memorize the answers; watched Tim breathe from the corner of her eye; and listened to three or four cars drive past.
Another car goes by honking, at a hallucination or just because it's quiet, and the pattern reminds Steph of a song she's heard at school, and great, now it's stuck in her head. Room-toomatooma-tam room-toomatooma.
Although... Steph thinks of herself dancing to the song, wiggling her hips and stomping her feet to the beat. If she can move in her head maybe it'll help her not move, as long as she remembers not to whistle.
Room-toomatooma-tam room-toomatooma.
Forty-seven--
"Ten more minutes?"
Steph startles, making the pigeon flutter away. She swallows her heart back down, her quads scream as she keeps from teetering off the edge, and it takes her brain way too long to turn Nightwing's quiet voice into words. "Huh?"
"Do you think we should wait ten more minutes? It looks pretty dead down there."
"I think we should, but you two probably want to move." Tim's not quite smiling, his mouth tilted up on one side.
Steph wonders for a moment what the right answer's supposed to be. It's probably safe to admit Tim's right, especially since her thighs just went from stiff to burning. "Yeah, I do."
Nightwing grunts and stretches, and Steph watches, because she has eyes. Tim doesn't stretch so much as bend, forward to unkink his spine and backward in a really nice arch, and Steph watches because he's her boyfriend, and grins, and wiggles her own stiffness out as bouncily as she can.
Tim doesn't seem to notice, again. Nightwing looks like he's going to laugh, but he doesn't. Instead he suggests, "Let's spar," and that works.
"Ok," Steph says, flexing her fingers. "Where?"
"Here," says Nightwing, grin gone crazy, as he picks her right up by her shoulders and shakes her, probably not as hard as he could. Her teeth only rattle a lot.
Okay, then. Swinging her legs up, Steph kicks off his chest, making him grunt and breaking his hold; arching back she can feel herself tip and land a little sideways, harder on her right hand, so she goes with it, springing off into another flip and twisting to land against Tim. He catches her, of course, steadying hands on her waist, and if you didn't know him he'd look calm, but Steph is learning the ways his eyebrows lift under his mask. She laughs and kisses him, through her mask but a kiss is a kiss; Nightwing laughs behind her as she spins to face him with her fists up. "You two are so cute," he says, just standing there looking relaxed.
"Are we?" Steph charges, aiming left and trying to look right, but he dodges right and flips her. Her head spins and the ground's in the wrong place, but she arches into the spin, lands on her feet and wobbles but sticks the landing. Is that Tim behind her? She whirls and kicks and her toes skim his thigh; his fists are up and he's blushing red enough to see even in the dim rooftop light.
There's no way she can take both of them. Steph grins, plants her feet, and holds her head up as they form up back to back. "Bring it."
"It is so brung." Nightwing must do those flips just to be distracting. Tim just grunts and runs at her, still blushing.
Oh, yeah. They're treating her like she can keep up, and she'll sure as hell try. Steph kicks and spins and actually lands a blow on each guy; thinking of Cass, she tries to watch the way they fight together, how they're trying to bracket her. With a timely dodge she nearly makes Nightwing punch Tim, and bites her lip to keep from laughing. Nightwing winces and laughs and grins at her, and Tim's proud little smile is better than a grin. And then Tim whacks her in the shoulder and Nightwing sweeps her knee from under her and down she goes onto the hard gravel roof.
"Ow," Steph gasps, but her chest doesn't hurt nearly enough to keep her from laughing, and they both grab her hands and pull her to her feet. "Again?"
Nightwing shakes his head. "Nah, we should get back to patrol. Besides, there's something I want to show you guys."
10:58 PM
There is, Steph thinks as she breathes carefully, getting over a fear of heights. And then there's training with Nightwing. Von Gruenwald Tower isn't the highest point in Gotham, even if you're insane enough to stand on the knob at the top that only pigeons, Superman, and God usually see, but it's totally high enough.
It doesn't help that the knob is round and only big enough for one booted foot. Nightwing somehow has both his feet on it, while Tim and Steph each have the toes of one foot pressed to the side of it as tightly as they can, and Nightwing's arms around their waists.
There's air beneath Steph's other foot. A whole lot of air, moving past, a nice light breeze that feels like a gale as it tugs on her cape. She's sweating so hard her suit's clammy, and she doesn't feel like she has any kind of grip on Nightwing's slick-suited waist; she'd dig her fingers beneath Tim's belt, but that might unbalance them, so she folds up her fist to keep from grabbing for it At least Tim's breathing is a little faster, too. That makes it a little better, knowing that this scares even Tim, even if he doesn't show it.
Nightwing grins as if this is the best thing ever. "Isn't it gorgeous up here?"
All Steph wants to do is close her eyes till something magically gets her down. So she forces herself to look, and after a few moments it gets easier. The view is gorgeous, the whole city shining before them, the reflections of both riverfronts shimmering. Steph can see One Gotham Center's dome like the top half of a glowing egg, and the beacon atop Wayne Tower blinking steadily, and the lights on all the new towers of glass and steel; she can see moving rivers of car lights running red and white along major streets and, if she turns her head carefully, on Sprang Bridge. She can see the dark patches of the parks, and the yellowish fuzzy glow of residential neighborhoods. From up here, Steph can see all of Gotham, distant and beautiful.
She can also see the ground, way the hell below them, and feel nothing under one of her feet, and the toes of the other cramping against the stone.
"Don't look down," Nightwing says, too cheerfully and too late. He spreads his hand out on her back, and if he moves his fingers any further they'll be on her ass. Doesn't Tim notice at all?
Not that she's going to tell Nightwing to let go, up here. When Steph replies, "It's v- very nice," her teeth chatter, and maybe she should just let herself drop before she dies of embarrassment.
Nightwing squeezes her a little, maybe reassuringly. Maybe not. "You know, you two, this is very romantic. Go on and hold hands."
"You're crazy," Steph tells him, and he laughs. Tim turns his head to look at them with the expressionless blankness that probably means he's plotting Nightwing's painful death, and despite the lack of anything like sanity up here, or maybe because of it, Steph wants to giggle. She would, if she weren't afraid to fucking breathe.
She looks out at the city again to reassure herself, but its shine and glitter is too far away, and her cape jerks against her shoulders as the wind tugs it.
Something touches Steph's wrist. She nearly shudders, but the mental image of herself as street pizza helps her keep still; when she looks it's Tim's hand, and hers unclenches and folds tightly around his almost before she can tell it to.
He squeezes her hand just as hard.
"This is nice, but we'd better get back to work," Nightwing says, with a real sigh. He may have a great smile and a better ass, but he's completely batshit, ha ha. "To get down from here, aim your grapple straight downward, at the railing of one of the observation decks on the tower. Robin, you go first."
Tim nods once, disentangling his hand from Steph's; he shoots and is suddenly just gone. Steph feels like she's falling herself as she watches him fall, bright colors shrinking into the night.
Nightwing's arm tightens a bit more. "See where he is?" His voice is warm and cheery like he's the happy kind of teacher, and Steph's too grateful for the reassurance to manage more than a token resentment, so she just nods. "Go on, aim there. You can make it."
Steph shoots, feels it catch, and tugs on the line; she pries her arm from around Nightwing, fixes her eyes on the fluttering dim yellow of Tim's cape lining, and makes herself jump.
11:38 PM
"Feeling any better?" Tim pitches his voice too low for Nightwing to overhear as he hands Steph a bottle of water, and he holds it still long enough for her to wrap her shaking hand around it. In some ways, he's really the best boyfriend ever.
"Yeah," Steph tells him, managing a grateful smile. She's still shivering with adrenaline, and her stomach wants to be left alone, but she learned when she was pregnant that small sips will, usually, stay down. Tim doesn't put his arm around her, so she won't ask him to, but he sits close enough for their shoulders to touch. When Steph looks behind her their capes are kind of tangled together, which makes her smile.
"At least, after that, fifteen stories feels like nothing," Tim waves a hand at the roof's edge their feet are dangling over. Steph shrugs as carelessly as she can over her shudder.
"I think higher is better, actually," says Nightwing from below them. He's standing on a window ledge.
"You would," Tim retorts. Steph wonders what would happen if she poured some water on him.
"Seriously," Nightwing calls back. "The higher you are, the more time you have to recover from an unplanned fall, shoot a grapple or aim for something soft."
Tim' replies by pouring a big slug of water over the edge of the roof. Nightwing splutters, and Tim jumps up with an actual grin, teeth and all, and runs into the shadows. Nightwing pitches his own bottle up onto the roof and climbs up over the edge, hair dripping above a very silly version of a fierce look, and Steph can't help laughing as she watches them chase each other around; Nightwing tries to tackle Tim, who dodges, and when Steph cheers and claps she realizes her hands've stopped shaking. She doesn't feel sick anymore, and she hasn't puked up the water. Not so bad, all things considered.
Nightwing catches Tim's head under his arm and messes up his hair thoroughly before Tim kicks him enough to get away. Still laughing, he tosses something to Tim as he rolls, and one to Steph; she catches it before she thinks, but then it's not like he's going to throw her a primed grenade or something. It's square and softish, and when she peels the plastic wrapper back she smells like fruit and granola. It's about time her stomach decided she's hungry. When she takes a bite it's like a power bar, except that it actually tastes good.
Tim sits down beside Steph again, brushing his hair down with his bare hand; without all the gel he used to use it falls back into place pretty quickly. He's got his back to the drop, because he's the quiet kind of showoff, and his snack's half gone already. "What's this?" Steph asks, "a Bat-bar?"
Disappointingly, Tim doesn't actually snarf, but he does snicker around his mouthful, and Nightwing laughs as he folds up cross-legged. "Something like that."
There are definite perks to being a Bat. A cool communicator, better grapple equipment, dating Tim and working with other heroes, and now actually yummy power bars. Tim's finished his, and Steph thinks as she takes another bite of feeding him the rest of hers, but he'd probably duck if she tried. Besides, it tastes like enough like granola and apricots that she doesn't really want to share. "It's not a doughnut, but it's pretty good."
"If you want doughnuts, I'm pretty sure there's a Fat-n-Fillin three blocks that way." Nightwing waves northeast as he shovels in the last bite.
"Yeah, you could always drop through the window and liven up someone's slow night." Tim shakes his head, but there's his narrow little smile again.
"That might be fun, next time we're all on patrol together." Nightwing stands up, dusting off his gloves, and they do too. "Give me those. Think I can make that trash bin from here?"
That would be pretty cool. "Yes!" Steph says, as Tim sternly tells him, "no," and Nightwing laughs. "We should probably split up for the night. You're both going home by two, right?"
"If we're not needed." Tim mumbles, sounding about as not so eager to go home as Steph feels.
Nightwing just smirks and reaches for Tim's hair again; Tim dodges under his arm and punches his shoulder lightly enough to be friendly and hard enough to be loud. "Keep it up, you're doing great." Nightwing's grin is wide and proud, and he looks up from Tim to include Steph. "Both of you." He may be crazy but he's also really skilled, and he was the original Robin; his smile makes her nearly as warm all over as one from Tim, and Steph's glad her mask is at the perfect level, showing her grin but hiding her blush.
With a nod and a wave, Nightwing tosses himself backwards off the ledge. Steph watches the faint blue 'v' on his costume as he swoops off into the night. She looks up to see Tim watching Nightwing too, before he looks at her with a thin, dangerous smile. "Let's go, then. North and west?"
Steph's neighborhood is in that direction, across the Gotham River. "You're not sending me home?"
"Not till after patrol." That smile would be a shit-eating grin on anyone else.
Sometimes, life just rocks. Steph grins back, firing her grapple. "Then let's go kick some bad guy ass."
12:30 AM
Gotham seems quiet tonight, relatively speaking, of course. Steph and Tim stop two muggings and a burglary; better yet, they don't run across any suicide attempts, which are often the worst because half the time they get mad at people for trying to save them. Steph's thinking about that with relief, and not letting herself shout "whee!" as she swings after Tim through a block of apartment buildings, when they notice the big guy in the black leather jacket trying to break in at someone's window. Wasn't there something in the paper about a recent rash of break-ins at women's apartments?
They're still pretty far away, so Steph grabs the batarang from her thigh holster and throws it. It bounces off his head, but it makes him drop his tools, which clatter with the batarang to the alley below, and that gives Tim time to get in there.
Till the thug knocks him off the fire escape; Steph's heart sticks in her throat, she can't even shout. Tim can't be down, right?
He lands flat, and when Steph lands he's still not moving. Shit. Her knees don't want to hold her, and she staggers back a step as the creep jumps to the alley. He's got a big grin and a rusty laugh, and he's hers to deal with, no time to check on Tim or for wobbly knees. Steph swallows down her pounding heart and puts her fists up, reminding herself that she's taken down bigger guys.
"Hey, cutie," he says, with a nasty smile like some of her Dad's buddies. He grabs Steph's hood and yanks her towards him. She jerks away, but he's way too strong, and she can't breathe. She's not going to freak out.
The harder they come, right? Steph stops struggling and jumps at him, knee up, and he hauls her in harder than she could have hit him. Her knee thwacks satisfyingly into his balls; he bellows and drops her as he crumples, she hears Tim getting up behind her, and the air tastes wonderful. It's all good.
Take 'em down, zip 'em up. Steph stands on the thug's back to zip-strip him, and he calls her a bitch and flops around till she nearly falls over, so she kicks him in the head. After a few moments of listening to him swear she kicks him again for good measure, and he finally shuts up.
Tim makes a little sound, not much more than a huff, but it's enough to make Steph's stomach drop. She glances back, worried he's going to lecture her again for being too violent, but he's glaring at the guy like he wants to kick him too. All he says, though, is, "you okay?"
"Never better," Steph says, because the rush of relief and the rush of fighting add up to make it true. Tim nods, his mouth a hard line; then he touches her arm quickly, so lightly she barely feels it, and immediately swings away.
What the hell? Steph shrugs, leaves a quick note for the cops, and kicks the perp again for good measure, then swings off after Tim.
She's always following Tim, Steph thinks as she trains her eyes on the yellow flutter of his cape lining and his green tights. They're easy landmarks to watch for as she works to keep up with him. Isn't Robin the sidekick? What does that make her, the sidekick's sidekick? That idea makes her so grumpy she almost doesn't enjoy the rush of wind and the way momentum carries her up as if she really could fly.
Ok, nothing can make her not enjoy that. She's grinning again by the time she plants her feet on the ledge of an office building. Tim turns and looks at her, face as blank as his white lenses, and she wonders what's going on in that head of his, but Steph figures she's not the first girl to wonder that about her boyfriend. Maybe the wind blew her annoyance away, but she can't stop smiling.
And then Tim smiles at her.
At first Steph thinks she's hearing music in her head because she's happy, which is an incredibly cheesy thought, but she's allowed a little cheesiness now and then. But she realizes the sound's drifting up from the street; she looks down to see five or six teenagers on a corner, dancing around a boombox beneath a streetlight. A couple holding hands wander up and join in.
It's a good beat. Steph's having a good night, really. "Let's go down there and dance," she says, more because she thinks it'll make Tim laugh than because she expects he'll want to.
"I don't think costumed vigilantes should do that," Tim says, but he's smiling on both sides of his mouth. "It would ruin the mystique to be seen dancing around like teenagers."
Yeah, as if they're not. "Then let's dance up here." Steph wiggles her butt.
Tim takes a step forward, hand out, looking so worried she has to laugh. "That really isn't safe."
"You're no fun," Steph tells him, and shoots up to the roof. It's only a couple of floors up, so she can still hear the music well enough to dance. Tim follows her, standing with his arms folded under his cape, and she dances in a circle around him, spinning to make her cape flare. Swinging moves her whole body in some ways, and fighting moves her in others, and dancing added to that puts everything in motion.
Tim watches her, and his little smile is back. "I bet you could really cut loose." Steph presses her back to his, the way they sometimes do in a fight. The song's changed to one that's perfect for grinding. "If you ever cut loose."
"Hm." Tim's still imitating a statue, not moving except to watch her over his shoulder and let her see his smile. "Not tonight."
Tim is so... Tim. Steph wiggles harder against him, sliding her shoulders against his and watching his smile get just a little wider, and thinks seriously about peeling up her mask to kiss him.
Then they both hear the shouting.
They rush to the edge of the roof to see the kids arguing with a man who's waving his arms in shooing motions. When he flips them off three of them rush him, two grabbing his arms while one punches him; Steph might like their music and the guy's probably an ass, but she can't let them do that. She swings her feet over the roof's edge, shooting her line as she drops, and she can hear Tim jumping right behind her.
1:37 AM
The breeze swinging her hair around her face, Steph looks across the Gotham River and sighs. She doesn't really want to go home, and even through her glove and his gauntlet Tim's hand is warm in hers. But Nightwing told them 2 AM, and Tim's going to hold her to it. Besides, there's that whole school-in-the-morning thing.
These are the times when Steph wants to be more than just an ordinary girl. "Do you ever wish... no, you probably don't. Never mind."
"Do I wish what?" Tim has his lenses down so she can see his eyes, and she has her mask up, and it's almost like any date. Except for the costumes, rooftops, and ass-kicking.
"Sometimes I wish I was a meta," Steph says, and sighs again. "I mean, I love swinging, but it'd be cool to really fly." Tim makes a tiny little listening noise. "For instance... I bet Superboy doesn't have to go to school. "
She forgot, of course, that Tim knows him; his laugh reminds her. "Actually, he does, and he's really bored with it. And Wonder Girl had a heck of a time finding a new school, after a supervillain destroyed her old one."
"Really?" Steph wouldn't've thought meta kids would have problems like that. That seems so... ordinary. Well, ok, maybe not having a supervillain smash your school up, but still.
"I think you were too busy fighting with Secret to compare teenage superhero notes." Tim says dryly, but he's smirking. She knows he loved it.
So she sticks out her lower lip. "That girl who's a cloud of smoke? She was flirting with you--"
Tim kisses her, probably to shut her up, but Steph leans into it anyway. His cheek is warm against hers, and the breeze is cool around their faces, and for a moment there's nothing but the two of them kissing beneath a wide Gotham sky, the city's grit and glitter behind them and the river rippling in front of them.
Then Tim lets go. One of these days Steph's going to get him to do more than kiss her, but not today. "And to answer the question, no, I don't."
"Don't what? Oh, right." She was supposed to remember something while he kissed her? "I see what you mean."
Tim nods and squeezes her hand. "You'll be all right getting home?"
"Of course I will. I've been trained by the best, right?"
"Yeah," says Tim, his eyes as opaque as if his lenses were hiding them. "Batman."
Oh, that's right. That whole mess must still be bugging him. "I meant Robin," Steph says, with a squeeze and a grin, and that makes him smile again. Tim's smiles aren't very big, but this one goes right up to his eyes.
Then he puts up his lenses, and she pulls down her mask.
1:54 AM
Suburbs are suburbs, but Gotham is still Gotham. Steph is swinging where she can and climbing where she can't, with the occasional somersault because tonight was almost too easy, when she hears a scream cut off and someone cursing. As she listens she remembers to tilt her head, thinking of Tim's explanations, and the next, muffled scream gives her a distance and direction to go in.
In the middle of a local downtown, a guy is dragging a girl towards a parked, running car. He's got one hand over her mouth and one in her hair, and Steph nearly throws herself off the roof at him before she thinks about how Robin would do it. Size up the situation, consider her options. Steph doesn't see anyone else around, and the street is open, nothing but storefronts and streetlights.
Steph sucks her teeth nervously, thinking, Fight!, at the girl; as if she could hear it the girl kicks at the guy's legs, but she's off balance and clearly doesn't know how to do it effectively. He yanks on her hair, and her eyes are wide enough for Steph to see their whites, and that does it. Steph flings herself off the roof.
She nails him with her heel right in the forehead, and he goes down, dragging the girl with him. Steph kicks him in the head to keep him down, and pries his twitching fingers out of the girl's hair till she can yank free and get up. "Wanna press charges?" Steph asks as she rolls the guy over and zip-strips him.
"Wha-what?" The girl is staring at her with those huge eyes. They look dark in this light, probably hazel or brown. "I mean, yeah, yes. Yes I do. He's my date, I mean, he's a jerk. We went on a date, and--"
"You don't have to tell me." Steph pats her shoulder once, reassuringly. The girl's not much older than she is, shaking the way they always say leaves do in books. "It's OK. Do you have a cellphone?"
"No, no, sorry. If I did--"
"It's OK." Steph pats her shoulder again, and remembers how Tim or Nightwing would say it. She doesn't get to do the talking very often. "I'm going to call this in to the police. If you want to press charges, wait for them. And don't let him up no matter what he says." Good, matter of fact, the info the victim needs and nothing she doesn't. Steph zip-strips his legs, pulls out her communicator and calls it in, then turns to go, but a light touch on her shoulder stops her.
The girl has a little, smushed smile beneath her wide, wide eyes. "Miss, um, thank you. "
Steph smiles. "All in a night's work," she says, and hardly needs her jumpline to get off the ground.
2:11 AM
Steph shimmies in through her bedroom window. The house is so quiet that when she holds her breath she can hear her own heart thumping. Her mom must've been called in for the night shift after all.
Still, she should make sure. Stripping out of her costume, she tosses on a T-shirt and tiptoes downstairs, making big steps over the creaky ones. Yup, no Mom. And no nasty surprises named Dad. Just one hungry part-time hero. Steph pokes around in the fridge, tossing some moldy cheese and something in a Baggie that's trying to evolve into a city-ravaging monster.
The leftover pizza's still good, at least; Steph takes it and sits in the upstairs hall window, looking at the city glow. The house feels really small, after the rooftops and sky of Gotham, but Steph can't run around heroing all the time, not yet.
One day Steph won't be a teenager any more, and she'll be able to do this more than a few nights a week; everyone in Gotham's going to know that if they're in trouble Spoiler will come help them. Spoiler or whatever she'll call herself when she's grown up.
Steph thinks about that as she eats, right up until the exhaustion hits like she swung into a wall. But she still does a victory cartwheel down the hallway to her room. Tonight was such a great night; no one even shot at them, and she saved someone on her own, in addition to everything she did with Tim and Nightwing. It's not the first time, but saving someone is never going to stop being a rush.
Being a hero is never going to stop being a rush.
Steph bundles her suit up into a pillowcase and tucks it into her laundry bag, so she won't forget to wash it tomorrow while her mom's out. She ought to take a shower, but she's so tired it feels like her arms will fall off.
So she lets herself lie down, and goes to sleep smiling.
Rating: PG
Characters: Spoiler, Nightwing, Robin III. Others mentioned.
Warnings: het-tinged gen, a little cursing
Setting: somewhen between Robin 92 and 98 when Arthur Brown's not home yet.
Dedicated To: All the wonderful people who have betaed for me in the DC Comics fandom, especially
brown_betty, who beta-read this till it was worth reading. Disclaimer: These characters and their settings belong to DC Comics. The Bat-Power-Bars were inspired by an episode of the show Good Eats.
7:20 PM
It looks like it'll be a good night in Gotham. The sunset sky is purple-pink-yellow and clear, the city lights are coming out below, the air smells cool and just a little sour-smoky, and Tim and Nightwing are sparring on a rooftop.
Ball, toe, heel. Steph takes a slow, careful step, pressing her lips tight on the giggle trying to bust free. Tim is so striking a pose, making his cape swirl around him and that "come on" gesture. "Bring it," he tells Nightwing, who's on one foot on the edge of the roof. Showoffs.
"It's brung," Nightwing leaps like he thinks he'll stay in the air. Each step makes Steph's heart pound, glee bubbling in the back of her throat, but she can't make a noise, not yet, not till she's caught them. Nightwing jumps over Tim's first strike and dodges upwards, flipping over Tim by grabbing his shoulder, and Tim twists to knock him off balance; Nightwing laughs, and Tim actually smiles, and they look so smooth together Steph could almost stop and just watch. But every step is more proof that she belongs here, so she grins behind her mask and edges closer, around the corner and into an early shadow. Another step or two and she'll be able to flip right into the middle.
A soft whap! and Steph's cape pulls tight. She glances down to find a batarang pinning one corner of it to the tarcloth. Dammit.
"Hey, Spoiler," Tim calls, not even looking at her as he blocks and dodges Nightwing's billy-clubs. Nightwing turns a feint into a wave as he spins.
"Hey yourselves, Bat-boys," Steph mutters, gripping the batarang gingerly. Why do they have to be so sharp? It takes a couple moments to tug it free; Steph lifts the corner of her cape to check the damage, but doesn't find any holes. Tim threw it just that carefully.
Well, he's got to teach her how to do that. There's no point to being quiet anymore, so Steph tucks the batarang into her thigh holster and pulls her mask up halfway as she watches Tim and Nightwing spin around each other in a swirl of cape and grins and kicks. Tim gets in a good blow, knocking Nightwing backwards; he flips off his hands like it's nothing, and the last time Steph tried that she landed on her head. Of course, the time before she stuck it and landed on her feet. She's getting there.
"Enough," Nightwing says, and "hi," to Steph, his smile bright enough to warm her down to her belly button. Steph smiles back a little guiltily, but then she's only human; she makes sure she's smiling at both of them and glances at Tim nervously, but he's all Robin, arms folded beneath his cape as he watches Nightwing.
Nightwing's all business too, so Steph pulls down her mask and folds her arms to show she's listening. "We have a stakeout tonight," he briefs them, "from 2000 to 2200 or whenever someone shows up, and then I'll take north of the Sprang while you two circle, but do not enter, Robinson Park." As if she's an idiot. Steph nods, rolling her eyes. "But first."
Steph waits. Tim stands there. Nightwing stands there. The breeze twitches Tim's cape, and Gotham honks and beeps below. How long is she supposed to wait? "But what?"
"But first you have to catch me." Nightwing's grin flashes again as he spins and flips off the near side of the roof, and Tim's already chasing him. Steph laughs and runs after them, and as she jumps and fires her grapple the noise and lights of the city rush up to meet her.
7:43 PM
"So, where is this place?" Steph asks Tim, who shrugs as they trot side by side behind Nightwing. Their current path takes them along a main street in Robbinsville, over apartment building roofs, occasionally ducking people's laundry. Frankly, Steph could go for some water, and she hopes they get there, wherever there is, soon.
Nightwing stops for a moment, so they can too. Catching her breath, Steph leans on the side of the roof and looks down to the street; she spots a pudgy guy with a guitar case and a fuzzy beard, just minding his own business. And, coming around the corner, several guys laughing and poking each other, so loudly she can hear them up here. They sound young, and it's hard to see how they're dressed from so far away, but they might be... "Robin?"
Tim looks at her, then down at what she's watching. "What is it?"
"Does that look like trouble to you?" The guys round the corner, and she counts six of them. One points at the guy with the guitar, who stops walking.
"Maybe-- make that yes." The six thugs hoot and shout, egging each other on. The other guy turns, but his guitar makes him too clumsy to have a chance. Steph wants to jump down there, but--
"Come on. Nightwing?" Tim's already crouched on the roof's edge, but he glances back till Nightwing nods. Then he jumps, and Steph has to scramble to keep up with him. Hey, she saw them first!
On the other hand, if she's behind Tim she can watch him. Watch the way his cape blows out as he swings down, the click of his staff nearly lost in the rush of air, the way he yells at just the right time to make the pack look away from the guy they're about to attack, the way he rams his feet right into the upturned face of the rearmost jerk.
They're definitely gang types. Steph misses booting one in the head and manages to land on him instead, but he goes down under her and she doesn't wait for the world to stop moving before she punches him; by the time they hit the ground he's staying down. The others are turning, shouting, and as she rolls to her feet Steph thinks she sees a knife flash at the edge of her vision, but the guy who comes at her doesn't have a weapon, just big fists and a grin that says all he sees is a girl in a cape.
Steph's gonna make him see stars.
He comes straight at her, leaving himself totally open, and looks surprised when she kicks out his knees. She kicks the surprised look right off his face and turns--
--how'd that one get back there? Steph steps back, away from the next guy's long-armed swing, and remembers a second too late the one she just took down. She trips onto her ass and he grins and lunges, both hands out, and then he's gone in a flash of red-green-yellow.
Steph looks over as the guy lands with a thud against the storefront and Tim rolls clear. Behind her two more hit the pavement yelping, and the knife clatters in the street. She looks over her shoulder as she stands up, and there's Nightwing, smiling and zip-stripping the two he took down. Tim just looks quiet as he zip-strips the guy he kicked away from her, and he's already taken care of the first two, so she bends to do the one she tripped over, planting her foot in the middle of his back even though he doesn't look like he's going anywhere. And hey, Steph reminds herself, she took down two of them!
But when she really feels like she won is when Tim looks up at her and gives her one of his little smiles. That makes her grin behind her mask.
The guy with the guitar is still standing there, shaking and greenish with shock. Nightwing puts a hand on his shoulder. "Th-thank you," he stammers, and that opens the floodgates; by the third "I just live around the corner," Nightwing is gently shoving him towards that corner, and Tim's calling in the incident. Steph puts her hands on her hips and rolls her shoulders, working on her breathing as she cools down; after a moment she looks the pile of thugs over to make sure none of them is waking up, but they just lie there, mostly still with occasional groans.
Then Tim nods to her, because she is on the team, and she smiles as she shoots her grapple and follows him up into the red evening sky.
10:10 PM
There's a pigeon walking back and forth across Steph's feet.
Steph has been crouched on the edge of this roof for forty-five minutes, since the Bat-boys came back after they got done searching and bugging the place, some dealer's makeshift warehouse. Tim's to her left. Nightwing's to her right. They're both doing good imitations of gargoyles, though Steph thinks she saw Nightwing twitch once or twice.
Nothing, at all, is going on in the darkened building in front of them. Or in the one beneath them.
The pigeon's claws scratch on the bricks between her feet. It pecks at her boot, and she bites her lip and stays still. It's getting a little easier, because her thighs are going numb.
Forty-six minutes.
So far Steph has: reminded herself of how stupid she'd look if she leaped screaming into the night; wiggled each toe separately inside her boots; run through all the breathing exercises Batman taught her; whispered all the questions she can think of to Tim and Nightwing, and tried to memorize the answers; watched Tim breathe from the corner of her eye; and listened to three or four cars drive past.
Another car goes by honking, at a hallucination or just because it's quiet, and the pattern reminds Steph of a song she's heard at school, and great, now it's stuck in her head. Room-toomatooma-tam room-toomatooma.
Although... Steph thinks of herself dancing to the song, wiggling her hips and stomping her feet to the beat. If she can move in her head maybe it'll help her not move, as long as she remembers not to whistle.
Room-toomatooma-tam room-toomatooma.
Forty-seven--
"Ten more minutes?"
Steph startles, making the pigeon flutter away. She swallows her heart back down, her quads scream as she keeps from teetering off the edge, and it takes her brain way too long to turn Nightwing's quiet voice into words. "Huh?"
"Do you think we should wait ten more minutes? It looks pretty dead down there."
"I think we should, but you two probably want to move." Tim's not quite smiling, his mouth tilted up on one side.
Steph wonders for a moment what the right answer's supposed to be. It's probably safe to admit Tim's right, especially since her thighs just went from stiff to burning. "Yeah, I do."
Nightwing grunts and stretches, and Steph watches, because she has eyes. Tim doesn't stretch so much as bend, forward to unkink his spine and backward in a really nice arch, and Steph watches because he's her boyfriend, and grins, and wiggles her own stiffness out as bouncily as she can.
Tim doesn't seem to notice, again. Nightwing looks like he's going to laugh, but he doesn't. Instead he suggests, "Let's spar," and that works.
"Ok," Steph says, flexing her fingers. "Where?"
"Here," says Nightwing, grin gone crazy, as he picks her right up by her shoulders and shakes her, probably not as hard as he could. Her teeth only rattle a lot.
Okay, then. Swinging her legs up, Steph kicks off his chest, making him grunt and breaking his hold; arching back she can feel herself tip and land a little sideways, harder on her right hand, so she goes with it, springing off into another flip and twisting to land against Tim. He catches her, of course, steadying hands on her waist, and if you didn't know him he'd look calm, but Steph is learning the ways his eyebrows lift under his mask. She laughs and kisses him, through her mask but a kiss is a kiss; Nightwing laughs behind her as she spins to face him with her fists up. "You two are so cute," he says, just standing there looking relaxed.
"Are we?" Steph charges, aiming left and trying to look right, but he dodges right and flips her. Her head spins and the ground's in the wrong place, but she arches into the spin, lands on her feet and wobbles but sticks the landing. Is that Tim behind her? She whirls and kicks and her toes skim his thigh; his fists are up and he's blushing red enough to see even in the dim rooftop light.
There's no way she can take both of them. Steph grins, plants her feet, and holds her head up as they form up back to back. "Bring it."
"It is so brung." Nightwing must do those flips just to be distracting. Tim just grunts and runs at her, still blushing.
Oh, yeah. They're treating her like she can keep up, and she'll sure as hell try. Steph kicks and spins and actually lands a blow on each guy; thinking of Cass, she tries to watch the way they fight together, how they're trying to bracket her. With a timely dodge she nearly makes Nightwing punch Tim, and bites her lip to keep from laughing. Nightwing winces and laughs and grins at her, and Tim's proud little smile is better than a grin. And then Tim whacks her in the shoulder and Nightwing sweeps her knee from under her and down she goes onto the hard gravel roof.
"Ow," Steph gasps, but her chest doesn't hurt nearly enough to keep her from laughing, and they both grab her hands and pull her to her feet. "Again?"
Nightwing shakes his head. "Nah, we should get back to patrol. Besides, there's something I want to show you guys."
10:58 PM
There is, Steph thinks as she breathes carefully, getting over a fear of heights. And then there's training with Nightwing. Von Gruenwald Tower isn't the highest point in Gotham, even if you're insane enough to stand on the knob at the top that only pigeons, Superman, and God usually see, but it's totally high enough.
It doesn't help that the knob is round and only big enough for one booted foot. Nightwing somehow has both his feet on it, while Tim and Steph each have the toes of one foot pressed to the side of it as tightly as they can, and Nightwing's arms around their waists.
There's air beneath Steph's other foot. A whole lot of air, moving past, a nice light breeze that feels like a gale as it tugs on her cape. She's sweating so hard her suit's clammy, and she doesn't feel like she has any kind of grip on Nightwing's slick-suited waist; she'd dig her fingers beneath Tim's belt, but that might unbalance them, so she folds up her fist to keep from grabbing for it At least Tim's breathing is a little faster, too. That makes it a little better, knowing that this scares even Tim, even if he doesn't show it.
Nightwing grins as if this is the best thing ever. "Isn't it gorgeous up here?"
All Steph wants to do is close her eyes till something magically gets her down. So she forces herself to look, and after a few moments it gets easier. The view is gorgeous, the whole city shining before them, the reflections of both riverfronts shimmering. Steph can see One Gotham Center's dome like the top half of a glowing egg, and the beacon atop Wayne Tower blinking steadily, and the lights on all the new towers of glass and steel; she can see moving rivers of car lights running red and white along major streets and, if she turns her head carefully, on Sprang Bridge. She can see the dark patches of the parks, and the yellowish fuzzy glow of residential neighborhoods. From up here, Steph can see all of Gotham, distant and beautiful.
She can also see the ground, way the hell below them, and feel nothing under one of her feet, and the toes of the other cramping against the stone.
"Don't look down," Nightwing says, too cheerfully and too late. He spreads his hand out on her back, and if he moves his fingers any further they'll be on her ass. Doesn't Tim notice at all?
Not that she's going to tell Nightwing to let go, up here. When Steph replies, "It's v- very nice," her teeth chatter, and maybe she should just let herself drop before she dies of embarrassment.
Nightwing squeezes her a little, maybe reassuringly. Maybe not. "You know, you two, this is very romantic. Go on and hold hands."
"You're crazy," Steph tells him, and he laughs. Tim turns his head to look at them with the expressionless blankness that probably means he's plotting Nightwing's painful death, and despite the lack of anything like sanity up here, or maybe because of it, Steph wants to giggle. She would, if she weren't afraid to fucking breathe.
She looks out at the city again to reassure herself, but its shine and glitter is too far away, and her cape jerks against her shoulders as the wind tugs it.
Something touches Steph's wrist. She nearly shudders, but the mental image of herself as street pizza helps her keep still; when she looks it's Tim's hand, and hers unclenches and folds tightly around his almost before she can tell it to.
He squeezes her hand just as hard.
"This is nice, but we'd better get back to work," Nightwing says, with a real sigh. He may have a great smile and a better ass, but he's completely batshit, ha ha. "To get down from here, aim your grapple straight downward, at the railing of one of the observation decks on the tower. Robin, you go first."
Tim nods once, disentangling his hand from Steph's; he shoots and is suddenly just gone. Steph feels like she's falling herself as she watches him fall, bright colors shrinking into the night.
Nightwing's arm tightens a bit more. "See where he is?" His voice is warm and cheery like he's the happy kind of teacher, and Steph's too grateful for the reassurance to manage more than a token resentment, so she just nods. "Go on, aim there. You can make it."
Steph shoots, feels it catch, and tugs on the line; she pries her arm from around Nightwing, fixes her eyes on the fluttering dim yellow of Tim's cape lining, and makes herself jump.
11:38 PM
"Feeling any better?" Tim pitches his voice too low for Nightwing to overhear as he hands Steph a bottle of water, and he holds it still long enough for her to wrap her shaking hand around it. In some ways, he's really the best boyfriend ever.
"Yeah," Steph tells him, managing a grateful smile. She's still shivering with adrenaline, and her stomach wants to be left alone, but she learned when she was pregnant that small sips will, usually, stay down. Tim doesn't put his arm around her, so she won't ask him to, but he sits close enough for their shoulders to touch. When Steph looks behind her their capes are kind of tangled together, which makes her smile.
"At least, after that, fifteen stories feels like nothing," Tim waves a hand at the roof's edge their feet are dangling over. Steph shrugs as carelessly as she can over her shudder.
"I think higher is better, actually," says Nightwing from below them. He's standing on a window ledge.
"You would," Tim retorts. Steph wonders what would happen if she poured some water on him.
"Seriously," Nightwing calls back. "The higher you are, the more time you have to recover from an unplanned fall, shoot a grapple or aim for something soft."
Tim' replies by pouring a big slug of water over the edge of the roof. Nightwing splutters, and Tim jumps up with an actual grin, teeth and all, and runs into the shadows. Nightwing pitches his own bottle up onto the roof and climbs up over the edge, hair dripping above a very silly version of a fierce look, and Steph can't help laughing as she watches them chase each other around; Nightwing tries to tackle Tim, who dodges, and when Steph cheers and claps she realizes her hands've stopped shaking. She doesn't feel sick anymore, and she hasn't puked up the water. Not so bad, all things considered.
Nightwing catches Tim's head under his arm and messes up his hair thoroughly before Tim kicks him enough to get away. Still laughing, he tosses something to Tim as he rolls, and one to Steph; she catches it before she thinks, but then it's not like he's going to throw her a primed grenade or something. It's square and softish, and when she peels the plastic wrapper back she smells like fruit and granola. It's about time her stomach decided she's hungry. When she takes a bite it's like a power bar, except that it actually tastes good.
Tim sits down beside Steph again, brushing his hair down with his bare hand; without all the gel he used to use it falls back into place pretty quickly. He's got his back to the drop, because he's the quiet kind of showoff, and his snack's half gone already. "What's this?" Steph asks, "a Bat-bar?"
Disappointingly, Tim doesn't actually snarf, but he does snicker around his mouthful, and Nightwing laughs as he folds up cross-legged. "Something like that."
There are definite perks to being a Bat. A cool communicator, better grapple equipment, dating Tim and working with other heroes, and now actually yummy power bars. Tim's finished his, and Steph thinks as she takes another bite of feeding him the rest of hers, but he'd probably duck if she tried. Besides, it tastes like enough like granola and apricots that she doesn't really want to share. "It's not a doughnut, but it's pretty good."
"If you want doughnuts, I'm pretty sure there's a Fat-n-Fillin three blocks that way." Nightwing waves northeast as he shovels in the last bite.
"Yeah, you could always drop through the window and liven up someone's slow night." Tim shakes his head, but there's his narrow little smile again.
"That might be fun, next time we're all on patrol together." Nightwing stands up, dusting off his gloves, and they do too. "Give me those. Think I can make that trash bin from here?"
That would be pretty cool. "Yes!" Steph says, as Tim sternly tells him, "no," and Nightwing laughs. "We should probably split up for the night. You're both going home by two, right?"
"If we're not needed." Tim mumbles, sounding about as not so eager to go home as Steph feels.
Nightwing just smirks and reaches for Tim's hair again; Tim dodges under his arm and punches his shoulder lightly enough to be friendly and hard enough to be loud. "Keep it up, you're doing great." Nightwing's grin is wide and proud, and he looks up from Tim to include Steph. "Both of you." He may be crazy but he's also really skilled, and he was the original Robin; his smile makes her nearly as warm all over as one from Tim, and Steph's glad her mask is at the perfect level, showing her grin but hiding her blush.
With a nod and a wave, Nightwing tosses himself backwards off the ledge. Steph watches the faint blue 'v' on his costume as he swoops off into the night. She looks up to see Tim watching Nightwing too, before he looks at her with a thin, dangerous smile. "Let's go, then. North and west?"
Steph's neighborhood is in that direction, across the Gotham River. "You're not sending me home?"
"Not till after patrol." That smile would be a shit-eating grin on anyone else.
Sometimes, life just rocks. Steph grins back, firing her grapple. "Then let's go kick some bad guy ass."
12:30 AM
Gotham seems quiet tonight, relatively speaking, of course. Steph and Tim stop two muggings and a burglary; better yet, they don't run across any suicide attempts, which are often the worst because half the time they get mad at people for trying to save them. Steph's thinking about that with relief, and not letting herself shout "whee!" as she swings after Tim through a block of apartment buildings, when they notice the big guy in the black leather jacket trying to break in at someone's window. Wasn't there something in the paper about a recent rash of break-ins at women's apartments?
They're still pretty far away, so Steph grabs the batarang from her thigh holster and throws it. It bounces off his head, but it makes him drop his tools, which clatter with the batarang to the alley below, and that gives Tim time to get in there.
Till the thug knocks him off the fire escape; Steph's heart sticks in her throat, she can't even shout. Tim can't be down, right?
He lands flat, and when Steph lands he's still not moving. Shit. Her knees don't want to hold her, and she staggers back a step as the creep jumps to the alley. He's got a big grin and a rusty laugh, and he's hers to deal with, no time to check on Tim or for wobbly knees. Steph swallows down her pounding heart and puts her fists up, reminding herself that she's taken down bigger guys.
"Hey, cutie," he says, with a nasty smile like some of her Dad's buddies. He grabs Steph's hood and yanks her towards him. She jerks away, but he's way too strong, and she can't breathe. She's not going to freak out.
The harder they come, right? Steph stops struggling and jumps at him, knee up, and he hauls her in harder than she could have hit him. Her knee thwacks satisfyingly into his balls; he bellows and drops her as he crumples, she hears Tim getting up behind her, and the air tastes wonderful. It's all good.
Take 'em down, zip 'em up. Steph stands on the thug's back to zip-strip him, and he calls her a bitch and flops around till she nearly falls over, so she kicks him in the head. After a few moments of listening to him swear she kicks him again for good measure, and he finally shuts up.
Tim makes a little sound, not much more than a huff, but it's enough to make Steph's stomach drop. She glances back, worried he's going to lecture her again for being too violent, but he's glaring at the guy like he wants to kick him too. All he says, though, is, "you okay?"
"Never better," Steph says, because the rush of relief and the rush of fighting add up to make it true. Tim nods, his mouth a hard line; then he touches her arm quickly, so lightly she barely feels it, and immediately swings away.
What the hell? Steph shrugs, leaves a quick note for the cops, and kicks the perp again for good measure, then swings off after Tim.
She's always following Tim, Steph thinks as she trains her eyes on the yellow flutter of his cape lining and his green tights. They're easy landmarks to watch for as she works to keep up with him. Isn't Robin the sidekick? What does that make her, the sidekick's sidekick? That idea makes her so grumpy she almost doesn't enjoy the rush of wind and the way momentum carries her up as if she really could fly.
Ok, nothing can make her not enjoy that. She's grinning again by the time she plants her feet on the ledge of an office building. Tim turns and looks at her, face as blank as his white lenses, and she wonders what's going on in that head of his, but Steph figures she's not the first girl to wonder that about her boyfriend. Maybe the wind blew her annoyance away, but she can't stop smiling.
And then Tim smiles at her.
At first Steph thinks she's hearing music in her head because she's happy, which is an incredibly cheesy thought, but she's allowed a little cheesiness now and then. But she realizes the sound's drifting up from the street; she looks down to see five or six teenagers on a corner, dancing around a boombox beneath a streetlight. A couple holding hands wander up and join in.
It's a good beat. Steph's having a good night, really. "Let's go down there and dance," she says, more because she thinks it'll make Tim laugh than because she expects he'll want to.
"I don't think costumed vigilantes should do that," Tim says, but he's smiling on both sides of his mouth. "It would ruin the mystique to be seen dancing around like teenagers."
Yeah, as if they're not. "Then let's dance up here." Steph wiggles her butt.
Tim takes a step forward, hand out, looking so worried she has to laugh. "That really isn't safe."
"You're no fun," Steph tells him, and shoots up to the roof. It's only a couple of floors up, so she can still hear the music well enough to dance. Tim follows her, standing with his arms folded under his cape, and she dances in a circle around him, spinning to make her cape flare. Swinging moves her whole body in some ways, and fighting moves her in others, and dancing added to that puts everything in motion.
Tim watches her, and his little smile is back. "I bet you could really cut loose." Steph presses her back to his, the way they sometimes do in a fight. The song's changed to one that's perfect for grinding. "If you ever cut loose."
"Hm." Tim's still imitating a statue, not moving except to watch her over his shoulder and let her see his smile. "Not tonight."
Tim is so... Tim. Steph wiggles harder against him, sliding her shoulders against his and watching his smile get just a little wider, and thinks seriously about peeling up her mask to kiss him.
Then they both hear the shouting.
They rush to the edge of the roof to see the kids arguing with a man who's waving his arms in shooing motions. When he flips them off three of them rush him, two grabbing his arms while one punches him; Steph might like their music and the guy's probably an ass, but she can't let them do that. She swings her feet over the roof's edge, shooting her line as she drops, and she can hear Tim jumping right behind her.
1:37 AM
The breeze swinging her hair around her face, Steph looks across the Gotham River and sighs. She doesn't really want to go home, and even through her glove and his gauntlet Tim's hand is warm in hers. But Nightwing told them 2 AM, and Tim's going to hold her to it. Besides, there's that whole school-in-the-morning thing.
These are the times when Steph wants to be more than just an ordinary girl. "Do you ever wish... no, you probably don't. Never mind."
"Do I wish what?" Tim has his lenses down so she can see his eyes, and she has her mask up, and it's almost like any date. Except for the costumes, rooftops, and ass-kicking.
"Sometimes I wish I was a meta," Steph says, and sighs again. "I mean, I love swinging, but it'd be cool to really fly." Tim makes a tiny little listening noise. "For instance... I bet Superboy doesn't have to go to school. "
She forgot, of course, that Tim knows him; his laugh reminds her. "Actually, he does, and he's really bored with it. And Wonder Girl had a heck of a time finding a new school, after a supervillain destroyed her old one."
"Really?" Steph wouldn't've thought meta kids would have problems like that. That seems so... ordinary. Well, ok, maybe not having a supervillain smash your school up, but still.
"I think you were too busy fighting with Secret to compare teenage superhero notes." Tim says dryly, but he's smirking. She knows he loved it.
So she sticks out her lower lip. "That girl who's a cloud of smoke? She was flirting with you--"
Tim kisses her, probably to shut her up, but Steph leans into it anyway. His cheek is warm against hers, and the breeze is cool around their faces, and for a moment there's nothing but the two of them kissing beneath a wide Gotham sky, the city's grit and glitter behind them and the river rippling in front of them.
Then Tim lets go. One of these days Steph's going to get him to do more than kiss her, but not today. "And to answer the question, no, I don't."
"Don't what? Oh, right." She was supposed to remember something while he kissed her? "I see what you mean."
Tim nods and squeezes her hand. "You'll be all right getting home?"
"Of course I will. I've been trained by the best, right?"
"Yeah," says Tim, his eyes as opaque as if his lenses were hiding them. "Batman."
Oh, that's right. That whole mess must still be bugging him. "I meant Robin," Steph says, with a squeeze and a grin, and that makes him smile again. Tim's smiles aren't very big, but this one goes right up to his eyes.
Then he puts up his lenses, and she pulls down her mask.
1:54 AM
Suburbs are suburbs, but Gotham is still Gotham. Steph is swinging where she can and climbing where she can't, with the occasional somersault because tonight was almost too easy, when she hears a scream cut off and someone cursing. As she listens she remembers to tilt her head, thinking of Tim's explanations, and the next, muffled scream gives her a distance and direction to go in.
In the middle of a local downtown, a guy is dragging a girl towards a parked, running car. He's got one hand over her mouth and one in her hair, and Steph nearly throws herself off the roof at him before she thinks about how Robin would do it. Size up the situation, consider her options. Steph doesn't see anyone else around, and the street is open, nothing but storefronts and streetlights.
Steph sucks her teeth nervously, thinking, Fight!, at the girl; as if she could hear it the girl kicks at the guy's legs, but she's off balance and clearly doesn't know how to do it effectively. He yanks on her hair, and her eyes are wide enough for Steph to see their whites, and that does it. Steph flings herself off the roof.
She nails him with her heel right in the forehead, and he goes down, dragging the girl with him. Steph kicks him in the head to keep him down, and pries his twitching fingers out of the girl's hair till she can yank free and get up. "Wanna press charges?" Steph asks as she rolls the guy over and zip-strips him.
"Wha-what?" The girl is staring at her with those huge eyes. They look dark in this light, probably hazel or brown. "I mean, yeah, yes. Yes I do. He's my date, I mean, he's a jerk. We went on a date, and--"
"You don't have to tell me." Steph pats her shoulder once, reassuringly. The girl's not much older than she is, shaking the way they always say leaves do in books. "It's OK. Do you have a cellphone?"
"No, no, sorry. If I did--"
"It's OK." Steph pats her shoulder again, and remembers how Tim or Nightwing would say it. She doesn't get to do the talking very often. "I'm going to call this in to the police. If you want to press charges, wait for them. And don't let him up no matter what he says." Good, matter of fact, the info the victim needs and nothing she doesn't. Steph zip-strips his legs, pulls out her communicator and calls it in, then turns to go, but a light touch on her shoulder stops her.
The girl has a little, smushed smile beneath her wide, wide eyes. "Miss, um, thank you. "
Steph smiles. "All in a night's work," she says, and hardly needs her jumpline to get off the ground.
2:11 AM
Steph shimmies in through her bedroom window. The house is so quiet that when she holds her breath she can hear her own heart thumping. Her mom must've been called in for the night shift after all.
Still, she should make sure. Stripping out of her costume, she tosses on a T-shirt and tiptoes downstairs, making big steps over the creaky ones. Yup, no Mom. And no nasty surprises named Dad. Just one hungry part-time hero. Steph pokes around in the fridge, tossing some moldy cheese and something in a Baggie that's trying to evolve into a city-ravaging monster.
The leftover pizza's still good, at least; Steph takes it and sits in the upstairs hall window, looking at the city glow. The house feels really small, after the rooftops and sky of Gotham, but Steph can't run around heroing all the time, not yet.
One day Steph won't be a teenager any more, and she'll be able to do this more than a few nights a week; everyone in Gotham's going to know that if they're in trouble Spoiler will come help them. Spoiler or whatever she'll call herself when she's grown up.
Steph thinks about that as she eats, right up until the exhaustion hits like she swung into a wall. But she still does a victory cartwheel down the hallway to her room. Tonight was such a great night; no one even shot at them, and she saved someone on her own, in addition to everything she did with Tim and Nightwing. It's not the first time, but saving someone is never going to stop being a rush.
Being a hero is never going to stop being a rush.
Steph bundles her suit up into a pillowcase and tucks it into her laundry bag, so she won't forget to wash it tomorrow while her mom's out. She ought to take a shower, but she's so tired it feels like her arms will fall off.
So she lets herself lie down, and goes to sleep smiling.
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Date: 2005-10-14 12:50 pm (UTC)~Also, I love Good Eats.
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Date: 2005-10-16 01:12 pm (UTC)I'm really glad you liked this, and that I did well by Steph. Thank you. :)
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Date: 2005-10-14 02:11 pm (UTC)... I do wonder what happened to the girl Steph saved from being raped. How she handled pressing charges, whether the cops or the judge and the prosecutor gave her a hard time because she was standing there with a zip-stripped perp, or because she was saved by a mask, or because it was date-rape. If her victim threatened her when he got out on bail - I only just thought of what pure hell Gotham's justice system has to be for plaintiffs, judging by the revolving door trip to Arkham for its masked villains.
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Date: 2005-10-16 01:16 pm (UTC)Hooray! That was the question I asked myself, and set out to answer, so thank you for telling me I succeeded.
.. I do wonder what happened to the girl Steph saved from being raped. How she handled pressing charges, whether the cops or the judge and the prosecutor gave her a hard time because she was standing there with a zip-stripped perp, or because she was saved by a mask, or because it was date-rape.
And a darker question. As much as I love the Bats, I wonder sometimes about how much truth there is in the assertion that they help create the very problems they're fighting. Even aside of that, things are never easy for victims of sexual assault, no matter what. There's always people who want to blame the victim. So, I dunno. It might make a good story about Gotham.
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Date: 2005-10-14 05:03 pm (UTC)Only my throat's burning, too, and I think I might cry. *Steph*. *Tim*. *Dick*. STEPH. TIM.
Oh, my babies, you made each other so *happy*.
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Date: 2005-10-16 01:20 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-10-14 07:30 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-10-16 01:21 pm (UTC)And if you want one,
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Date: 2005-10-14 09:25 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-10-16 01:22 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-10-15 12:15 am (UTC)But this is precisely why everyone should love Steph, and it's almost like Dixon but with less grrrl power and more general awesomeness.
But uh, I could be biased.
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Date: 2005-10-16 01:23 pm (UTC)One day I'll write Steph and Cass on the town, and then we'll do grrrl power. :D
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Date: 2005-10-15 04:40 am (UTC)I have a huge weakness for Steph's optimism, and it shines in every paragraph here. She is *so* normal and *so* completely not. It's perfect.
Remind me to squee at length at you at a later time.
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Date: 2005-10-16 01:26 pm (UTC)I'll have to ask you for more details sometime. :D
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Date: 2005-10-16 04:55 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-10-16 01:26 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-10-16 01:43 pm (UTC)it's stories like this that make me so glad I'm in this fandom. It's a funny thing - I'm pretty new to the bat universe and it's stories like this one that give me so much more insight into the characters I'm just now starting to learn. You write beautifully and wow did this story make me want to be a superhero and train with Nightwing (squee!) and Robin (double squee!) and all the rest of it. *Hugs you and your lovely characters*
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Date: 2005-10-17 05:23 am (UTC)I remember about a year ago having this exact same reaction to stories by authors such as
*hugs you back*
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Date: 2005-10-17 09:23 am (UTC)This was so... so perfect, and so *Steph*, that it makes my heart ache, a little.
Which is an entirely good thing, except for the part where I have to remember that they aren't *like* this anymore, and then I want to curse DC with every bone in my body. And possibly, a smitey stick. *nods*
(Er, got a *little* off-topic there. What I meant to say is: you *rock*, and I am definitely interested in doing your request. :D)
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Date: 2005-10-18 10:06 am (UTC)I'm really glad you liked this (and if it inspires art, o happy I shall be)!
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Date: 2005-10-24 06:51 pm (UTC)You did such great things with Steph's POV and how she feels about Tim and Nightwing and being Spoiler. (Your Nightwing was pitch-perfect :) Wonderful scene with the three of them perched at the dizzying height of the building.
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Date: 2005-10-30 09:11 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-01-29 10:04 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-01-07 07:48 pm (UTC)Tim blushing and actually including Steph in sparring is just amazingly adorable. I love how this is just them on patrol and really showing a slice of their lives that happens a lot.
I really think you showed their personalities, especially how they relate to other people, specifically Stephanie. Dick is just bright and cheery and showing maturity while still acting a little crazy and immature, but that sense of him being older never really leaves. Tim's a little reserved, but comes out and has his fun too. And Stephanie just shines through this.
Isn't Robin the sidekick? What does that make her, the sidekick's sidekick? That idea makes her so grumpy she almost doesn't enjoy the rush of wind and the way momentum carries her up as if she really could fly.
Aww Steph love. You're no one's sidekick, I promise.
I love the little trail of succession going on. Nightwing trained by Batman, Tim got some training from Dick (and obviously he's the reason he got into it) and Steph says she got trained by the best being Robin. It's like a stepladder of cute.
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Date: 2007-01-18 10:07 pm (UTC)I've been bad about replying to your comments, for which I apologize. It's because I keep rereading them and not wanting to reply and delete them.