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There’s a new kid in five of Steph’s classes this year. She notices him because he’s constantly trying to be unnoticeable, hunching his shoulders and sitting in the back. He’s tiny, emaciated, and pale. Every time someone laughs, he flinches just a little. The attendance sheets say his name is Timothy Drake. It’s a rich people name if Steph’s ever heard one, which makes him even more intriguing.
For the first few days, their only interactions include phrases like, “hi,” and, “can I use that meterstick after you?” During those days she sees him speak six times, four of which are correct answers to a teacher’s question and the other two of which are near-silent apologies. She finagles herself into a seat adjacent to his in all their shared classes except for PE, which doesn’t have a seating chart. That part isn’t too difficult, since Jonas is a year ahead of her and Steph doesn’t really have other friends who want to sit together.
From her nearby vantage point, she can tell he wears concealer on his cheeks despite a criminal lack of acne to conceal. He smiles exactly one time in her presence, and violently flinches when he catches himself doing it. He also has a semi-regular habit of running one hand through his straight black hair.
Steph decides to conduct some very subtle new methods of information retrieval and flops down in the seat next to Tim one afternoon with a scowl. “That guy’s an A-hole with a capital A,” she grumbles at him, pointing to a boy she thinks might be on the baseball team. They’re all in the lab for computer science, but Mr. Jazwick isn’t back from the teachers’ lounge yet. Probably eating a donut and complaining about his students, she thinks.
There’s a pause where Tim seems surprised to be acknowledged before he visibly gathers himself to respond. “Isn’t everyone?” His voice is quiet and a little hoarse, as if he’s recovering from a cold.
Steph snorts. “Well, yeah,” she allows, “but he pinched my butt in the cafeteria two hours ago and made me spill my orange juice. And now he keeps staring at me.” There’s actually still a little orange splotch on her cute white sneakers, and she’s pretty upset about it. Shoes are expensive!
Tim cuts a chilling look over at the guy.
Steph continues rambling, hoping for a better response. “I want to get Jonas to punch him. You know, my actual boyfriend? We got together last May, but he was upstate with his uncle all summer so it feels more like we just started dating when the school year started. So I’m not sure we’re there yet, and I think he might be too much of a wimp to pull it off either way. Thoughts?”
She waits. Tim hesitates again before opening his mouth. “Why don’t you punch them?” There’s a faint tremor in his fingers, she notes. She also knows from personal experience that being treated like glass is the last thing anyone wants, so she doesn’t draw attention to it and keeps the conversation barreling forward.
“Why do you think I signed up for the Kickboxing & Wrestling PE?”
Tim shrugs and runs a hand through his hair. “Put the boys in a funny dilemma?”
Steph snickers, sees him stiffen, and bites down the rest of her laughter. Joker attack, she thinks. Or a really horrible abuse situation. There’s no other reason for laughter of all things to be a trigger. She shoves down an expression of pity and aims for casual.
“Fair enough,” she says. “It is pretty funny to watch them all piss themselves over the choice of punching a girl or getting beat. I’d rather not get another mark on my record for fighting if I can make Jonas do it instead, though.”
Tim runs a hand through his hair again. Steph’s working hypothesis for the moment is that it’s some kind of physical substitute for smiling, since he seems amused. Before she can continue her tirade of complaints against Baseball Jerk or begin ranting about the evils of high school in general with the hope of gathering more data, Mr. Jazwick finally shuffles through the door and immediately begins to drone. They descend into mutual silence for the time being.
That is, they descend into silence until Tim elbows her halfway through the lesson. “What?” She breathes. It’s the first time he’s initiated any communication since she noticed him.
He silently indicates his screen. Rather than the boring spreadsheets they’re supposed to be making, it’s filled with lines and lines of indecipherable code paired with a video feed of Baseball Jerk’s face. It must be from Jerk’s own computer camera, though Steph has no idea how he managed that.
Tim hits a button, and Steph can hear audio suddenly playing from Jerk’s computer across the room. There are loud moans and gross squelching noises as Jerk frantically tries to shut it off. “Is that porn?” Steph whispers with delighted scandal. The class erupts into laughter as Mr. Jazwick turns beet red with either rage or secondhand mortification. Maybe both.
“That’s the best thing I’ve seen all week,” she breathes in awe as both Jerk and Mr. Jazwick try and fail to close the program. “Dude, you’re amazing!”
Tim pulls back and looks away from her wide grin, but his lips seem to twitch a little in amusement and pink dusts his skin in the face of her admiration. “Simple,” he says with a mischievous slant to his eyebrows. “He already had it open incognito.”
“I think I love you,” Steph declares. “Nevermind Jonas, you are my new knight in shining armor.”
Tim full-on blushes.
Forget gathering data, Steph’s new goal is to unlock friend status. Tim is a wicked genius.
…
“I can’t believe they paired us together without any kind of pre-test,” she complains when it’s finally time for their first real spars in Kickboxing & Wrestling several weeks after the start of the class. “Just because I’m the only girl and you’re tiny, how are they supposed to know what our skills are?”
Tim shrugs.
“Round one,” says Ms. Ponstein. “Go.”
Steph glances at Tim and bites her lip. He looks so fragile! Telegraphing the basic punch they learned, she comes at him slow enough not to do any damage.
She’s on the ground in five seconds, head spinning as the ceiling taunts her.
“Sorry!” Tim squeaks, offering a hand.
Steph grabs on and pulls herself up. “Are you kidding?” she says. “That was amazing! Show me how to do that right the crap now!”
“Oh,” Tim runs a hand through his hair. He reaches out, glances up for permission, and then nudges her feet into a wider stance. “Um, start here. Then move this way…”
He leads her through a brilliant combination move using everything they’ve learned so far and not a thing more, though Steph is more than suspicious that his level is much, much higher than her own. Still, he never acts condescending as he teaches.
It’s gonna feel so good when she can finally pound all the jerks who harass her into the cement. She wipes the sweat off her brow with her purple bandana and faces Tim again.
…
When her 15th birthday rolls around in October, Steph puts on her favorite outfit: knee-length purple dress with navy blue Converse knock-offs and a faux leather jacket she thrifted for $6 last May. She wants to look her best, since Jonas is taking her out to dinner in the rustbucket truck he got for himself two months ago.
He’s got a license and everything, Steph internally swoons, since he’s already seventeen. The other girls she talks to in class are always jealous that she’s snagged someone so much more mature than the scrawny, annoying freshman boys.
“You ready, little lady?” Jonas says, holding her hand in his as they walk out of the building.
“You bet I am,” she tells him, swinging their arms back and forth with high-riding giddiness.
“BatBurger, here we come!”
So it’s not the fanciest of locales, but they’re not the fanciest customers either. Steph is perfectly content with her greasy BatBurger and Jokerized fries, anyway.
“Don’t girls usually order, like, a salad or whatever?”
She smacks him on the arm and doesn’t let the comment bother her. Not on her birthday. “Female bodies need real sustenance too, idiot. I’d never survive on plain old rabbit food.”
“Okay, okay, my bad,” he says, arms up in surrender.
They put two straws in a milkshake to split for dessert, and Steph giggles in delight when their noses brush as they both lean down to drink at the same time. “I’ll drive you home,” Jonas says, dreamy and low, and lets her slurp out the bottom bits of shake as the engine rumbles to life.
He walks her up the front step to her crappy apartment building, then somehow manages to keep following all the way up two flights of stairs to kiss her at the threshold of her door.
“Your mom home?” he mumbles.
“Nah,” Steph gasps from her place melted against his chest.
“C’mon,” he says, and together they stumble forward to her room.
“Wait.” Steph pushes weakly against him. “We shouldn’t.”
“Why not?” he grumbles. “We’ve been together for almost six months, Steph! Where’s your sense of adventure?”
She swallows. It’s hard to come up with reasons to wait at the moment when all she wants is his lips back on hers. “I just don’t know if I feel ready.”
At that he leans a little farther away. “You sayin’ you’re too young for this? Because I know a lot of other girls who would jump at the chance if I was on the market.”
“I—no, of course not,” she says, heart pounding. “We’re great together!”
“Right, so if you’re sure of us and you’re not a baby then prove it. You’re fifteen now, that’s old enough for anything you want.”
“Well…” Steph hesitates too long and he dives back in for another kiss. She doesn’t feel great about it, but Jonas is right, she tells herself. Fifteen years old is mature enough. Goodness knows she’s heard other girls talking about it, especially the upperclassmen, and everyone has to start somewhere, right? It’s not like Steph doesn’t feel the need tingling through her bones to get her hands all over him.
They’ve been dating since May. That’s practically married in high school time. This must be how it always is.
She lets him walk her back to the bed and doesn’t push him away.
…
“Ugh,” Steph groans as she falls into her seat at the back of the English room. “I think I’m gonna be sick.”
Tim furrows his brows in concern. “Maybe the flu? Winter’s just started.”
“That or indigestion from whatever was in the cafeteria’s potato salad,” she says, clutching her stomach as another wave of nausea rolls through her. She swallows hard and tries to breathe through it before doing something humiliating like puking all over Mrs. Harris’ floor.
“Steph? You should go to the office; you look really green.”
“Mhm,” she agrees, afraid to open her mouth.
Without another word Tim stands and hauls her up against his shoulder, making the world swim around her. As he ushers her out of the half-full room, she finds herself vaguely surprised by his wiry strength despite the number of times he’s pounded her into a gym mat. Then they pass the sign for the girls’ bathroom and she lurches sideways. Tim holds the door for her as she runs to the toilet and retches until there’s nothing left in her stomach.
“Steph?” she hears from the threshold, and rolls her eyes.
“I’m fine!” she rasps, and staggers out of the stall to pull out a paper towel and wipe her chin. Tim is peering in through a crack as if a boy has never defiled this bathroom before. “Fine!” she says again after she throws the paper towel in the vague direction of the trash.
“Okay,” he says, clearly unbelieving. She’s eternally grateful he doesn’t say anything else as they make their way to the office, since she’s feeling entirely too disgusting to comprehend anything anyway. She sort of dozes against his shoulder while he somehow signs them both out and guides her toward the door, rambling something about calling a cab and walking her home.
“Hey, what the hell?” Someone says loudly. She knows that voice. Steph opens her eyes to see Jonas striding angrily toward them and shivers. Angry Jonas is not fun to deal with. “What are you doing with my girl, loser?”
Annoyance straightens her spine and she speaks before Tim can respond. “My best friend Tim is walking me home because I’m sick, doofus.”
He turns his glare on her. “You invited him over? You’re letting this shrimp be with you?”
“What the heck are you talking about,” she snaps, ignoring the sinking feeling in her gut. Jonas knows her. He would never accuse her of something like that. “I’ve told you about Tim before. We’re friends!”
“You didn’t tell me it was like this!” He gestures aggressively toward where Tim’s arm is still holding her up by the waist. “He’s got his hands all over you.”
“Hey–” Tim starts, but Steph steamrolls right over him.
“He is currently making sure I don’t faceplant on this nasty hallway floor, so get off your high horse, Jonas.” She feels like crying and puking and punching him in his stupid nose.
“Are you blaming me for this? I never thought you were the whore type, Stephanie.”
She chokes. Tim stiffens.
It was one thing to imply it, but this. Steph doesn’t know what to do with this rotting accusation he’s spitting at her feet. He knows her, part of her screams. He knows she wouldn’t cheat!
Doesn’t he?
“Truth hurts, doesn’t it,” Jonas says. “Why don’t you just come with me instead and we can still work this out. I don’t want to let you go so easily, Steph.”
She wavers. They have a good thing going, her and Jonas. He’s strong and hot and sweet when he wants to be, while she loves having someone to chatter at and hold hands with. She allows herself to imagine taking his hand again, like she has a million times before, and letting him lead her away.
The thought of what might come next when she’s this vulnerable makes Steph want to recoil. That, she thinks in a moment of clarity, might be the biggest red flag she’s ever encountered in her life. “Get out of my face, Jonas,” she rasps, eyes dry and voice breaking. “We’re done.”
“What?”
“I’m breaking up with you,” she says, loud and clear. Jonas only pays attention when she’s confident and makes herself heard. He never bothers to listen otherwise. “Leave. Go away so I can puke my guts out in peace.” She nudges Tim, who obligingly carries the two of them the last few feet to the door.
“You are not allowed to break up with me!” Jonas yells.
“Funny,” she says, even though it isn’t at all. “I just did.”
The door closes in Jonas’ face. Steph doesn’t know whether to collapse onto Tim’s shoulder or grit her teeth and soldier on, so she compromises and pukes into the bushes instead.
…
The sky is overcast and the streets are full of brown slush that sludges over her ankles and soaks through the crack in the bottom of her right boot. Steph was hoping the duct tape would hold a little longer, but it finally fell off on the way to the grocery store this morning and her emergency roll ran out yesterday. She grins and bears it as she waves at Nancy’s four-year-old on the stairs and squelches up to unlock her door before she can finally kick them off on the old gritty welcome mat.
It’s Christmas Eve and a tiny plastic tree lights up one of the two windows in her shoebox apartment. Mom is still gone, of course, working herself to the bone, and Dad hasn’t been home for the holidays since he went to jail for the first time six or seven years ago.
She stops to use the bathroom, checks her phone, and bites her lip. Her backpack looms clearly in her mind, the three pregnancy tests burning red like homing beacons in the smallest pocket.
She missed her period in October. Not the weirdest occurrence and she chalked it up to chance and the recent… new experience on her birthday. But then she missed the one after that too, and now she’s eight days late for the third one in a row. Steph doesn’t want to read the writing on the wall, but she can’t stick her head in the sand.
Cautiously, she pulls them out and swallows hard. One to practice, one to test, and one to confirm. She opens an incognito tab on her phone and does a last-minute Google search to make sure she’s not going to mess anything up before heading back to the bathroom. People do this all the time, right? How hard can it be?
The practice comes back negative. Her shoulders loosen.
The next two are both positive.
Steph throws herself onto her bed, staring at those two little red lines in despair. Her breath hitches. What is she going to do now? She doesn’t have any money other than the crumpled ten dollar bill in the bottom of her backpack. Their apartment doesn’t have any extra rooms, either, and Mom’s jobs certainly don’t provide enough spare change for baby supplies. Are her hips even wide enough for a baby to get through?
Abortion runs through her mind, but Steph shudders away from it immediately. My body, my baby, she thinks, and I don’t give up that easily.
Despite the brave words she’s trying to tell herself, a few tears escape down her cheeks. Steph gulps back her panic and swallows her desperation while pulling out her phone. Suffering alone in silence has never been her modus operandi; she needs someone else to fall apart on.
It rings three agonizing times before she hears Tim’s voice on the other end. “Hey, Steph, what’s up?”
That does it. She bursts into tears. “It was just the one time! I didn’t—I didn’t think that was really a thing!”
“What is it, Steph, what’s going on?”
“I didn’t even really want to!”
“Where are you? Are you okay?”
“No,” she gasps. “I’m pregnant.”
There’s a short pause before Tim’s voice returns, confident and maybe slightly out of breath. “I’ll be there in 20 minutes.”
“Isn’t your house at least 45—?”
“20 minutes,” he tells her. “Stay on the phone.”
“Okay.”
Tim bursts in the door panting and pink-cheeked exactly 19 minutes later. For some reason he’s dressed all in black thermals and an expensive camera case is strapped to his hip, but Steph doesn’t have the emotional capacity to question it. He holds her close and tells her it’s all going to be okay and turns on the Charlie Brown Christmas movie when the words and the tears all run out.
It’s the first time she’s seen him without concealer, she notes vaguely, with her head pressed against one of his shoulders. There are thin white scars like spider legs stretching unsettlingly across both his cheekbones. They’d probably be considered ugly and foreboding anywhere but Gotham, but as it is Steph can’t really bring herself to care about Tim’s appearance. Whatever Tim’s hangup is, she’s glad he trusts her with his scars.
Mom finds them cuddled up and asleep on the ratty couch under Steph’s faded comforter, TV still playing, when she gets home. Tim wakes up, which rouses Steph.
“Hey hon,” Mom says, giving them a concerned look. “Everything alright?”
“Yeah,” she mumbles. “Mom, Tim. Tim, this is my mom.” Her eyes are sticky from crying and she’s sure her face looks like a wreck.
“Pleased to meet you,” says Tim, polite and formal as if this was one of his billionaire galas and not Steph’s rundown apartment at 5:30 in the morning. “Um, sorry, I didn’t mean to fall asleep. I can go?”
“Go back to sleep,” Mom says. “I can’t send you out in the Narrows at this time of night. Steph’s told me you’re a good friend, so stay as long as you need.”
Tim seems doubtful, so Steph mumbles an agreement and drags him back down to snuggle. Like heck she is giving up her new teddy bear until she is ready to face another day. She wants to tuck Tim close to her heart and keep him there forever, safe behind her breastbone. If she could manage it at this moment she’d get them joined at the hip.
Tim settles back down and Steph goes back to sleep. The rest of the world can wait a few hours.
…
“Happy Groundhog day,” Steph says.
Mom looks up in surprise. “Steph? Why are you up so late on a school night?” Steph fiddles with her sweater sleeves and looks down. She can’t wait much longer to have this conversation; soon the bump will be obvious, and it’s no secret that she’s been sicker than ever this winter.
“Well you had a short shift and we had to celebrate a national holiday. Punxsutawney Phil would be so disappointed if we didn’t.”
“Steph.” Mom sits down across from her at their tiny kitchen table. The bags under her eyes are big enough to hold Steph's whole life packed up inside them. "What's going on? You've been acting odd for weeks."
Steph takes a shuddering breath. "Remember Jonas?"
"The A-hole you dumped?"
She chokes out a laugh. "Yeah. Him. He talked me into sleeping with him and now... Mom, I'm pregnant. "
There's a long, ringing silence as Steph braces herself. Mom's expression goes through a whole rainbow of emotions she doesn't want to contemplate before settling on a tired sort of resolution. "Oh, honey. I warned you not to do what I did."
"I know." She looks down. Mom had her at seventeen and somehow managed to get her high school diploma anyway five months later. "I didn't really want to, but I didn't say no either. I'm sorry."
"We'll have to make the best of it," Mom tells her, and Steph can see her put her game face on like well-worn battle armor. It hurts to burden her this way, but Steph has nothing else to offer. "This weekend we can go to the clinic across 5th and pick up some pamphlets on abortion."
"What? No!" Steph screeches.
"What do you mean, no?" Mom says, voice uncompromising. "You are fifteen years old and we have no extra income for a baby. And I will tackle both you and the school board if I have to, but you are getting that diploma."
"Listen," she says, drawing on all the practice she's done in the mirror and with Tim for this conversation. "I was an inconvenient baby and you still had me. How can I turn around and give this one up?"
"I didn't even have this option," Mom argues. "Honey, I am eternally grateful to have you but if I'd had access to a free clinic down the street I don't know if you'd have been born or not."
It's like a slap in the face. "You would have given me up?"
Mom turns away. "I couldn't have possibly imagined how hard it would be to have you, but I couldn't possibly imagine how much I would love you either. I don’t regret you, sweetheart, but the timing… I won’t pretend the timing was good for either of us."
Step nods, but her chest feels like wet paper pulling apart. "I can't give up this child, Mom. I can't."
"We can't support it." The words pound like a judge's gavel, ringing through Steph's head and making her eyes water.
"They deserve to have a life, too," she whispers, and the tears spill over.
"C'mere, Hon," Mom stands, hands braced against the table like the world is beating down on her head and she needs all the strength she can muster. She beckons sympathetically and allows Steph to crumple into her as they both move toward the couch.
"We'll go to the clinic this weekend," she says. "They'll be able to tell you your options."
Steph nods and sniffs and holds her Mom tight.
…
The clinic is a squat, concrete square that looks something like a bunker and something like a penitentiary. The tiny parking lot is littered with potholes but thankfully clean of garbage as Steph picks her way through to the door.
“This seems…” Tim trails off when Steph shoots him a look. He’d offered to pay for her appointments at some fancy hospital downtown the second she’d mentioned them, and they’d escalated into a screaming match behind the school dumpsters before he agreed to keep his money out of it. She’d be proud of how far he’s come if she weren’t so annoyed with him over the whole thing.
“It’s fine,” she says, stopping to read the weathered decal on the door. Leslie Thompkins Medical Clinic, it says in simple print. She takes a deep breath, glances once at Tim behind her for strength, and enters into the warm, cramped lobby. Dark, multicolored carpet covers the floor and the whitewashed walls boast a number of spiderwebbed cracks. A few homeless-looking people are sleeping on the occasional padded chair, but there are also several unoccupied metal folding chairs lining the walls. Apparently right after school on a Thursday is not prime time for Crime Alley’s residents to seek out humanitarian medical aid. She walks over to the little reception desk where a young woman in powder blue scrubs sits behind a window.
“First time here?” says the woman. Her name tag reads Angie in dark cursive sharpie and beside it rests a tiny pin of a flag Steph can’t place.
“Yeah,” she says.
“What’re you in for?” Angie isn’t callous, but she certainly isn’t going to be gentle. Steph can appreciate that.
“I need a checkup.” She swallows and rests a hand over her stomach. “I’m about four months pregnant. I’m keeping it,” she adds, in case that wasn’t clear.
Angie nods toward Tim and starts typing away on an old desktop. “Is this the father?”
Steph hears Tim choke behind her—”I’m only fourteen!”—and almost laughs hysterically before she wrestles it down. He’s pretty okay with her occasional laugh at a dirty joke or a funny video, and she’s even gotten him to smile subconsciously once or twice without wincing, but Tim responds the worst to laughter of the hysterical variety.
He’s seemed happier lately, if increasingly tired, and she doesn’t want to mess him up. The night photography and skateboarding he’s taken up are refreshingly constructive hobbies compared to some other things people get up to at her school.
(If Steph is suspicious that photography hasn’t been the only thing he’s gotten up to in his nighttime wanderings as of late, she keeps those thoughts to herself and makes sure to steal him some ice from the cafeteria freezer for his bruised knuckles on particularly bad days.)
“He’s actually just my best friend here for moral support,” she tells Angie. “I’m also looking for information on putting the kiddo up for adoption.”
“Got it,” Angie hands her a few pamphlets as if this situation is 100% normal. Heck, for her, maybe it is. “Age? Any family? Living situation? All information you provide will be used strictly for your medical care and not released to anyone else without your direct permission.”
“I’m fifteen and I live with my Mom, but she couldn’t get off work,” she says, and gives Angie her address and phone number.
“The Doc will be out in a few minutes,” Angie tells them. “Feel free to have a seat.”
This time Tim is the one in the lead as he ushers her to a particularly crack-laden corner where she can collapse into a seat. “Distract me,” she mutters, furiously kneading her sleeves between her fingers. “What was that flag on her shirt for?”
“Taiwan,” Tim says promptly, and launches into a lecture about the details of Taiwanese politics and their relationship with China. He keeps it just interesting enough that Steph can listen without thinking about the reason she’s here.
A door opens and a gray-haired woman with wire glasses and a no-nonsense expression sticks her head out. “Stephanie?”
Tim falls silent. Steph stands and makes it five steps before she caves and turns around. “Come with?” she tries not to beg.
“Absolutely,” Tim tells her, and takes her hand.
…
July 16. Steph will never forget July 16.
Her body feels wrung out and overworked and sore in every possible way. Her head hurts from crying and her hands shake from gripping too hard and her throat is sore from yelling and cursing everything in existence (but particularly Jonas). That’s not even mentioning the numbness of her lower regions that she knows will give way to an excruciating ache as the medication wears off.
And, she realizes as she holds a tiny, red, disgusting little bean of a baby in her arms, it was so, so worth it. There is love filling her up fuller and fuller like a huge inflating balloon. She can barely breathe for all the awe inside her at this tiny little human she created. There’s so much that it might just expand out of her and wrap around her baby girl in a protective embrace. She hopes she can feel just how much her Mama loves her through the heat of her arms and the soft grip of her fingers.
The nurses have already wiped the baby down and wrapped her up and given her a clean bill of health for the moment. It’s practically a miracle, say their expressions, that some impoverished fifteen year old rat with an uneven haircut and no future to speak of managed to create such a perfect little child.
Screw them. This kid is going to be just fine.
“Hey,” Mom says, tenderly tucking in a loose corner of blanket from her seat beside the clinic bed. “Tim wants to know if he’s allowed in again.”
“Sure,” she replies. It scrapes against her lungs. Her face is still wet with sweat and tears and she’s sure she looks an absolute mess, but it’s not like Tim will be expecting anything else.
“I’ll be right outside.”
She nods vaguely and stares down at the baby’s tiny little face and big, big eyes as Mom stands quietly to trade places with Tim. Her heart aches at the thought of giving this baby up even though she knows she’ll have more luck with just about anyone else. She will look at her as long as she possibly can and treasure whatever time she gets.
“Steph?” She glances up to see Tim staring from the doorway. His eyes are wide, camera hanging around his neck, and his sweatpants are just the smallest bit too short to hide the bright green at his ankles. He must have come straight here from the streets with no time to change, but Steph won’t say anything about it if he doesn’t. She gives him a wobbly smile.
“Want to meet her?”
“Yeah.” He walks further into the room to sit in the metal folding chair Mom just abandoned. Steph carefully extends her arms a little, constantly aware of supporting her little neck and head, and watches Tim’s face fill with wonder. “Hey, little lady,” he says.
The baby squirms around in his hold and somehow manages to extract one arm from the tightly swaddled blanket around her. Tim reaches out and gently brushes a fingertip over her miniature knuckles. The baby opens her little fist and grabs on. “Oh,” says Tim with delight, and his face melts into the biggest smile she’s ever seen on it as he shakes his finger up and down. “Nice to meet you too, Miss Brown.”
Steph huffs out a breath that would have been a laugh if she had the energy for one. “As honorary uncle, I think you’re allowed to be on a first name basis.”
His eyes cut to her for a single second before his focus returns to the baby in front of him. “Introduce us, then?”
“Glady.” Steph feels a thrill of nervous excitement to see Tim’s face. “Timothy Drake, meet Jacqueline Brown. Jackie, this is Tim.”
Steph watches as Tim’s jaw opens, closes, and opens again. He draws into himself and his lip wobbles as his eyes take on a watery sheen. Still, he carefully does not move his finger from where Jackie holds it tightly. “After–After me?” he manages after a minute.
With a Herculean effort, Steph extracts one hand and and lays it over the place Tim and Jackie’s fingers connect. “Of course,” she says.
Tim breathes in sharply and two tears run down his cheeks. “Why?”
“Why?” Steph glares at him. Honestly. “Who else was I gonna name her after? Mom got the middle name because no daughter of mine is gonna be burdened with a gross flower for a first name on my watch. Besides, you’re pretty much the best human I know. My other option was to just go for something freakin’ weird to be unique, but I think getting named Ophelia or Nevaeh would just be one more reason to turn to villainy in this hell city.”
“Yeah,” Tim chokes out something approximating a laugh—Holy progress, Batman!—and rubs his cheeks with his sleeve. “We, uh… we wouldn’t want that.” He sniffs loudly.
“Good, glad you agree. Now take our picture already, I’ve only got 4 more hours with this kid until some Metropolis adoption do-gooder shows up, so we need to make them count!” She tries to be upbeat, but her voice cracks in the middle and her daring smile turns into something more like a grimace when it lands on her face.
Tim looks at her for a long minute, both of them tired and teary and a little melancholy, before he reluctantly hands the baby back and shuffles to his feet. “Okay, hold still and say ‘Cheese!’ C’mon, Jackie, look this way.”
They take photo after photo with all combinations of Steph, Tim, and Mom. Jackie stars in every shot, of course. Some of the pictures include tears and hugs and messy emotions, but Tim dutifully captures the whole experience for as long as he can. Half an hour before the child services representative shows up to whisk Jackie away, Tim disappears to do some magic and reappears ten minutes later with an envelope full of snapshots from their day.
He hands her three pictures that he made duplicates of. “For her,” he says. Steph looks down.
In the first picture, Mom is holding Jackie and cooing down at her sleepy form. The rings under her eyes from working all night and sitting for hours at Steph’s side are obvious, but they don’t dull the happiness in her face at all.
The second is a close up shot from behind. Steph’s hair and the side of her face can be seen, but the majority of the photo features Jackie wrapped in her blanket as Steph’s hand tenderly cups her face.
She flips past to the final photo and catches her breath. There she is in all her sweaty, teary, joyful glory holding Jackie to her chest and staring down at her like she’s her entire world. Jackie’s big blue eyes are wide open staring back at her and the two of them look as though they’re having a conversation no one else can hear while the world rushes around them.
It’s perfect. “Thank you,” she warbles.
Tim just reaches out and pulls her into a side hug. Mom comes in on the other side and Steph feels absolutely surrounded by warmth for once in her life. Of course, that’s when Mz. Palacio from child services knocks on the doorframe brusquely and strides in.
The three of them whisper their goodbyes as the woman taps her suspiciously clean ballet flats against the scuffed linoleum floor. Steph clutches Jackie close and has the wild thought that maybe she can still change her mind, gather her up, and run out the front door before Mz. Palacio can catch them. They’d survive somehow on odd jobs and Tim’s couch and everything would be okay.
“I love you,” she whispers one last time before the baby is taken out of her arms and the dream lies shattered at her feet.
“Anything else?” says Mz. Palacio, short but not unkind.
“One more thing.” Steph takes the three pictures from Mom and makes grabby hands until Tim hands her the envelope from the tray on his other side. She shoves the pictures inside and seals it shut, ignoring the sting of a papercut on her lip in her haste.
In careful, block letters the outside reads: Jacqueline Daisy Brown.
She’s already filled the letter inside with the story of herself, Mom, and Tim. It’s packed with as much love as she knows how to give, but hopefully the pictures make it clear if her words can’t.
“Make sure she gets this,” she implores, holding out her heart in her hands. “Whenever she’s old enough to understand it?”
“I will.” Something about the seriousness of Mz. Palacio’s eyes and the hard set to her shoulders make Steph absolutely believe her.
“Thank you.”
Just like that, the most perfect thing she’s ever made is carted out of her life for good.
…
Four months later, Steph and Tim are doing their best to survive Sophomore year when a mass Arkham breakout shakes the city. Tim is absent for days and Steph obsessively watches the news for any mentions of Robin she can find.
Only at school, though. Only when no one else can see.
For the first time in years her Dad has come home, and the last thing she wants to do is make anyone around her suspicious as she walks a tight balance between defiance and fear. She listens and watches and waits.
But watching and waiting was not how she made friends with Tim. Her silence allowed Jonas to take advantage. Steph has grown since then.
Giving up would have meant letting the school flunk her for missed classes and passivity would have let her mom talk her into an abortion.
Now, as Dad shoves Mom around and invites his flunkies in and makes plans to get rich that will hurt innocent people in the process, Steph finds that she can’t be silent anymore. She snarls and quips and accuses. When that doesn’t work she annoys and pranks and even slaps a goon in the face. Still, they don’t leave.
Steph goes quiet and lets them think they’ve broken her in during the day.
At night she dons a purple cape and a homemade mask and takes to the skies.