Chapter Text
Totally Jazzed for College
Week 1: Meet your Roommates
Jazz was going to college.
Jasmine Fenton was going to college!
On a full scholarship, to a premier center for human psychology!
Jazz was going! To! Gotham!
Gotham University, to be precise. (She wouldn’t know yet, but saying “Gotham U” was better than getting people confused with Gotham Area Community College, or “Gak” for short.)
It was a week until Move-in day, and best of all!
Her parents weren’t going to be there!
She could make a first impression on her roommates and classmates without her parents for the first time since - Ever!
Stephanie Brown was reasonably certain something was up with her new roommate.
She was trying very hard to not be weirdly obsessive about it. She had a lot of experience with weirdly obsessive. It sucked. And Steph looked in the mirror, before she moved in, and told herself, she would not be a Bat . She was! A! Normal! College Student!
Sure, she was still a Bat, during Certain Hours , but at Gotham University she was off the clock . Which meant that the Bat paranoia could shove it .
Sure, she still looked into her roommates first. But like, in a normal way. ‘Public social media posts and Googling their hometowns’ kinda normal. Not hacking into the student register like Tim suggested. Definitely not running full background checks like Bruce would.
(Bruce probably already did it, anyway. And if there were any real red flags, he’d say something. She wasn’t going to sweat it.)
Her night job had some serious boundary issues. Which was! Why! She was! Not going! To be weird about it!
So when Jazz Fenton mentioned her parents’ unusual occupation, she just smiled and nodded. Being a third-rate supervillain’s daughter kind of set the bar high on questionable parental career choices, after all.
But it hadn’t stopped there. For one, Jazz's situational awareness was off the charts. No matter how quietly, how carefully, how Bat-like Steph tried to enter the dorm room, she always noticed.
Once, she came back after her patrol, particularly exhausted, and took the window shortcut. That probably wasn’t smart, but old habits die hard, y’know?
Jazz had made eye contact with her as she was halfway into the window. And when Steph made some on the spot excuse about shortcuts to math class, she just. Nodded. At her and went back to studying. (The studying was another Thing. It was syllabus week, who does that?)
And didn’t bring it up again.
Was climbing into fifth-story windows a everywhere thing? Steph could have sworn that was a vigilante thing.
Sarah Germain had known her suitemates for three days and had determined: Her roommate, Jasmine Fenton, was weird .
Like. Not really as weird as Steph, who claimed she was from part of Gotham called Crime Alley? But Steph was a first generation college student and asked questions Sarah thought everyone knew growing up was all.
And Jazz wasn’t weird in the same way as Denise, who was pretty even if she was black and hispanic and slipped into bits of Spanglish and Sarah wasn’t used to that from anyone?
Sarah herself was from a small town that was pretty much all white, so she was doing her best. She’d already apologized for fucking up twice, but at least Denise didn’t seem to hold it against her.
No no no, the weird thing about Jazz was how normal she seemed to be and yet…. wasn’t. White girl, middle class, red hair. But she was twitchy with a capital T about her parents' work, and cringed when introducing herself if she had to repeat her last name. Which wasn’t really a weird or famous last name? But apparently they were “big in their field” and she “didn’t want their work to affect her schooling”.
The field, Jazz reluctantly admitted, was ghost hunting.
Over the rest of the week, Steph seemed to level out a bit but Jazz only got weirder. For one thing, she always had a weird Nerf gun in her backpack. Denise swore it actually glowed green in the dark, but Sarah wasn’t quite sure she believed that. Honestly, as rule-abiding as Jazz seemed to be, it was really weird, a little too close for comfort for the “no weapons in the dorms” rule.
Sarah didn’t even have a pocket knife, like some students did.
Jazzz also just was… tense. All the freaking time. Steph was too at times but went out with some “local friends” occasionally - daily! - and came back calmer, even if she had bags under her eyes and it was only Week One. Sarah wondered if it was a boyfriend, or friends with benefits situation, or something nastier. Meanwhile, Jazz was just. Constantly hyper alert, like waiting for a shoe to drop. Sure, the redhead seemed to get more sleep than Steph, but it was like she was hyper prepared for a school shooter or something.
Sarah hoped they wouldn’t really have to face a school shooter or something. But also, it was week one, and Jazz was already working on projects. Who did homework in the first week of Freshman year? But anyway she said something like “wanting to get it done before she got interrupted” and stuff like that.
Steph just wore lots of purple and was aggressively cheerful and disappeared a lot and fixed their leaking air conditioner with a piece of wood and some duct tape rather than calling the RA. (Denise rolled her eyes, called the RA anyway, and Steph whined about the fine for her “fix”. They had to have a Talk about school property and maintenance and whatnot and Sarah was just. Over it five minutes in and Steph still didn’t seem to get it.)
And then the rest of them found out that, with the exception of their Freshman Seminar, Jazz was in 200 level courses. APPARENTLY her suitemate held the high score in her state’s placement tests, got a near-perfect score on the SATs (“stupid scantrons, they hate…,” Jazz had muttered and refused to clarify the last word, which sounded like 'plasm'? Did she bleed on her test or something?) and had taken like, ten AP courses. Who does that?
Jazz Fenton, that’s who.
Anyway, Sarah was just glad she was in FYS 105 with Denise and not FYS 110 with Steph and Jazz. That might be more weird than she could take.
Jazz was excited for her first class of her Freshman Seminar! She’d already been to her psychology 210 course with Professor Sellerbee but a lot of the students in that were sophomores or juniors, and she wanted to meet more of her fellow freshmen.
Besides, “FYS 110: Identity and Perception: Superheroes, Villians, and Public Opinion” with Professor Gordon was right up her alley. She could probably even rewrite some of last year's papers on Danny - well, Phantom - for the assignments, and have more time to study for her other classes.
“Oh, hi Steph,” Jazz greeted the other girl walking into their common room as she clicked through a bunch of different PDFs. “I’m just going over the reading materials for the Freshman Seminar class tomorrow. You’re taking 110 with me, right?”
“More like the registrar stuck me there without input, but yeah,” Steph said lightly.
Steph muttered something under her breath about a prank. Used to ignoring Danny’s shenanigans with his friends, Jazz noted it for later but let it go.
“Great!” Jazz says, upbeat. “We can walk there together. The syllabus didn’t say if the project is a partnered one, but I’ll set up a Google Doc for notes so we can share those.”
“You’re a lifesaver, Jazz,” Steph grins.
Jazz grinned back. “Thanks!”
Steph was feeling distinctly attacked right now. That was the only explanation for why she walked into this class and saw Barbara freaking Gordon setting up a lecture.
Steph was rapidly revising her hypothesis on who had put her in this class. Tim was a troll, but he learned from the best.
“Hey, Jazz, go get us seats,” she said, handing off her messenger bag before walking up to the desk and crossing her arms.
Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Jazz set up their things in the front row. She was getting less and less surprised by her quirks with each passing day. In front of her, Barbara was barely acknowledging her as she tested the HDMI connection to her laptop. Steph cleared her throat.
Barbara did not so much smirk as lightly quirk her mouth. “Good morning, Stephanie. What a lovely surprise to have you in my class.”
“Cut the shit,” Steph whispered back, exasperated. “This is on purpose, isn’t it.”
“I did tell you I’d be working on campus to be available to mentor you,” Barbara answered mildly. “Being your professor simplifies that relationship.”
“You’d better give me all A’s,” Steph declared. “Because this is definitely harassment.”
“You’ll earn your grade, just like everyone else,” Barbara said, pushing up her glasses. “It’s the family way.”
Steph groaned. “Fine. But I get extra credit for Justice,” she flips her hair and stalks off to her seat.
Jazz looked at her a bit funny when she sat down, but didn’t say anything. Steph was relieved, and let it go.
It wasn’t long into her patrol that she spotted a friend. Steph grappled down onto the roof, dropping smoothly onto the gravel next to the searingly yellow fellow. She grinned at him. “Hey, sunshine boy.”
Duke rolled his eyes under his visor, and threw her an idle wave. “Hey.”
Steph throws her arms up, grabbing her elbow for a languid stretch. “How’s everything the sun touches?”
Duke snorted. “It’s gonna take some getting used to, having someone else on the day shift with me.”
Steph would have to get used to that, too, splitting her shift between the afternoon and night. It was the best fit for her class schedule, but the change of routine was already throwing off her sleep. She suspected she was about to find out if there was some merit to Tim’s sordid love affair with caffeine.
“Aw, that’s not fair,” Steph pouts. “I know for a fact that Robin also has a shift after school, because he refuses to do his homework without stabbing someone first.”
Duke shudders. “Sure, but I try to give the kid a wide berth. The sword is--”
“-- Sword of a lot?” Steph grins.
He holds up his hand for a high five. Steph answers the call. “Nice one. But yeah, I like not having to patch up anyone. Especially me.”
Steph laughs. “Oh, he’s just a little guy. An angry, stabby little guy, but still a little guy. Still got baby fat on his cheeks and everything.”
She remembers when Tim was like that. Thirteen, chubby cheeks, literal pain in the ass. Weirdly obsessive, like his adoptive dad. She’d smashed those cheeks with an actual, literal brick. And then she dated him, which probably said things about her that she wasn’t gonna unpack now. They weren’t together right now, because a lot happened, and Waynes and good communication skills did not go together.
“You’re nuts,” Duke mutters, like he was exempt.
Steph drops down into side lunges, and casually asks, “Anyway, anything interesting come up today? Gotham is almost normal today and it gives me the hives.”
“Not much. There was some weird graffiti down in Old Gotham, but no direct activity yet,” Duke says, pulling up a still from his helmet footage on his gauntlet computer. Steph squints at the graffiti, which was definitely some kind of weird pattern, one that didn’t correspond to any of the gang tags they knew about. Or any cult sigils. Actually, it almost looked like…
She groaned. “Oh no, I think it’s a puzzle. One of the off-brand Riddlers is loose.”
“And you’d know your clues, huh, Purple’s Clues?” Duke teases.
“First of all, this doesn’t look like one of his,” Steph sticks her tongue out at him. “Second of all, why do you think my instinct is to immediately punch anyone who leaves riddles?”
Duke shrugged. “Fair enough.”
“Anyway, we should go sweep Old Gotham and see if there’s a trail of those,” Steph rolls her eyes. “Race ya?”
“You know I move literally at the speed of light, right?” Duke says, amused.
“Yeah, so you’re slow ,” Steph retorts, aiming her grapple. “Last one there has to buy pizza!”
And with a familiar whine, she was off, swinging in the evening. A flash of light behind told Steph that her challenge was accepted, and she grins.
You had to make your fun, sometimes, on the job. Even if she might be out a pizza later.