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“Why them and not me?”—Pope Francis I
Stephanie Brown was no stranger to prison. As a little girl, age 6 and three quarters, she’d sat in a metal chair, absorbed in the toy she’d brought with her, already familiar enough with the place to not be interested anymore, while her mother talked to her father on the red phone that connected them through the thick barred glass. She didn’t have the phone, so she couldn’t hear her dad, and she was turned away so she couldn’t see him either. She was bored, and really didn’t want to be here. Her dad may have turned out to be some kind of arch criminal, but it was stupid that that meant she had to sit here. He wasn’t even one of the cool ones! Her friends looked pityingly at her about it; the ones she still had at least. Turns out a lot of parents didn’t like their kids playing with the kid of an arch criminal guy in prison. She didn’t want to look at him; but she did kind of miss him, and everything was so long, here and at home and at school, and it was long to wait and long to not see, so when her mom hung up the phone and rose to leave, Stephanie took one quick look back on her way out the door. She only saw his back, framed by the faceless guards. That was one thing about this place—she never could remember the faces of anyone she’d seen here.
Years later, Stephanie found herself entering this prison with—well not her father, no, she’d never claim that—but it was the man who’d helped her deal with her real father, who’d helped her through school, who’d taught her to drive (unwittingly ok but still! She knew how!) and occasionally bandaged her knees when they were scraped up (because it wasn’t usually scraped up from bikes, more like falling off buildings or mouthing off to a guy much bigger than her in the street, who’d definitely got the short end of the stick in that scenario.) When she’d become the, well, protégé or whatever of a cryptic millionaire with a double identity, she’d figured she’d be having to make an appearance back here at the prison, but not like this.
She and Brucie Wayne waltzed right into the prison warden’s office, shook hands, and were offered seats—some of the fancy, cushioned, fake armchair kind, nothing like the metal ones she’d sat backwards in as a kid when her dad was here, so she didn’t have to see him. They talked about prison conditions, reform, programs, money to be donated—and there was a lot of it—and Bruce brought up the names of several of the more high profile cases in residence, the colorful ones who’d been out and about rampaging on the streets as scarecrows and clowns and plants till the Bat had landed them here. Or Robin had.
She looked down at Robin’s knuckles, still a little bruised from the last person she’d sent here.
And the Bat beside her smiled charmingly and it was so fake, but the look of concern in his eyes wasn’t. It had nothing to do with fear, so she couldn’t figure out why he cared whether all the latest treatments were being offered and whether there were books for the prisoners to enjoy and what measures were being taken to help them reintegrate into society when he’d just risked his neck to take them out of it.
As they were leaving though, she couldn’t help casting one glance back at the man behind the glass window they passed. She didn’t really catch his face; but it wasn’t her dad.
“Aren’t you worried someone might recognize you here B?” she asked him wryly under her breath, flippant, like she wasn’t concerned.
“How could they?” He’d muttered back. “I don’t think they know their own faces here, most of the time.”
Well it didn’t matter to her if it didn’t matter to him; but she shuddered as they passed through the gates, and that would have been weird, maybe would have meant something, if she’d stopped to think about it.
There were things she didn’t like to stop to think about ever, though—like algebra. Or paperwork. Stupid boys. Or the time she’d sunk the Batmobile in the river on accident. Consequences weren’t really her thing.
At least until they were, and she was being fired—*fired* from being a Robin, fired from the dynamic duo, fired from being a protege to the man who’d bandaged her scraped knees, like she was a failure, a mistake, someone who couldn’t and wouldn’t and shouldn’t belong, and she was running into the street alone, looking for trouble, because maybe fighting a criminal would make her feel better about herself—
And instead she raised her fist to punch and it froze before the face of a hard-edged girl with the stolen keys to some fancy car jangling in her hand. Her eyes bit into Stephanie’s, and she couldn’t do it, couldn’t move, because the girl was a question she couldn’t give an answer to.
The police were not far behind, and Stephanie, unsanctioned now, un-homed, was not supposed to be out here in the rain fighting people any more than the girl was supposed to be out here stealing cars, so they both ran, only Stephanie was the better trained of the two. She watched from the top of a building as the police carried the car thief off, and left Stephanie behind.
Stephanie found the girl, a week later, in the same prison that had held her father. She sat in a stupid metal chair and picked up the stupid red phone and looked the girl directly in the eyes. She’d intended to crack a joke, to make some snarky remark, to be herself, but herself was being as stupid as the chair and the phone, and sniffed instead.
“What do you want?” the girl growled, and her eyes flashed with something like fear. “How do you know me?”
Stephanie pulled up her purple hoodie, and a flash of recognition crossed the other girl’s face.
Stephanie sat there a minute, knowing from all the times before that that was a minute less she’d have to be here. “I dunno,” she laughed nervously. “I guess I just couldn’t figure it out.”
“Figure—what out?” asked the girl, sharp and confused.
Stephanie gave another half hearted laugh as she shrugged, sounding like she was going to be sick. “Why you, and not me, you know?” she said. She wondered if this would draw the prison guard’s attention, if it would sound as incriminating to them as it felt, but the guards didn’t move. She wondered what they looked like, out of uniform, with faces. “Hey guard dude,” she said, because it almost didn’t matter who he was. He looked the same as whoever had stood there when Stephanie was six years old. “Miss me? It’s just like coming back home huh?”
“What?” The girl’s brown eyes were riddled with anger and confusion. “Listen, what do want with me? Are you here to threaten me? Blackmail me for Big Joe? Make sure I don’t talk?”
“No,” said Stephanie. “Just thought I’d leave you this.” She shoved a package in front of the window. It was one of the kind Bruce had always insisted on distributing, when they’d visited. It was a stupid idea anyways. But she added, “for when you get out.”
Stephanie was wandering aimlessly, maybe back toward her mom’s house where she didn’t really want to go, maybe—no, definitely not toward the manor, where she would not be welcome. Maybe she’d just, you know, go get a burger or something, except she knew these streets and she knew the only place nearby was a McFreaking Bat Burger, and who knew, he might have watchers there or something, the paranoid freak—
Whooo was currently standing in front of her, eyes narrowed under his cowl. “What do you want?” She yelled, and she stopped suddenly, because she sounded just like the girl behind the glass, just like her father.
“You ran from the police the other night,” he said.
“Yeah and?” Stephanie challenged. “So do you when you don’t want to be found.”
“You’ve been running from me, too,” he said, low and deep, but missing the right amount of growl. What was that about?
“Yeah well—“ Stephanie started, but the rest wouldn’t come; it was too hard to think of something snarky to say while she was hanging her head and crying.
The car was nearby—the Batmobile, which had been unsunk—and the Bat walked over to it and opened the door. Stephanie was actually shuffling her foot by this time—she was so pathetic—and the tears were coming hot and fast, and she didn’t look up. She didn’t want to see him. She’d turned to run again in answer, but—why hadn’t he driven away yet, what was stopping him? Turning for one quick look back, she caught his face turned toward her and—he was standing there, door open, like he was waiting for her to get in, only he had taken off his cowl, right here in the street, and it was actually his face, his real face, not the mask looking back at her, wearing an expression that was supposed to be blank but looked suspiciously hopeful —seriously what was that about?
Her feet, the traitors, decided they weren’t going to take her any farther. She stood there frozen in front of him, and then what else was there to do really? She shuffled forward, and got in the car. She defied anyone to deny that stupid plaintive expression.
“I heard you were at the prison,” he said, as they drove away.
“How did you—?” She started to ask, before she remembered he was Batman, and of course he knew.
Bruce chuffed softly, and Stephanie couldn’t tell if it was a chuckle or a sigh. That was probably because he couldn’t tell either—the emotionally constipated jerk. She scrubbed at her eyes, trying to keep her mouth from turning up. She had to keep up some semblance of appearance, for his sake.
But that meant she was looking at her knuckles again, and they weren’t bruised anymore, and she found herself saying things anyways, things like, “I went to see a girl I saw on the street the other night,” and “she got caught and I didn’t” and “hardly seems fair does it B?”
“Fair?” he hummed.
“I mean, she knew me, she knew I was there, why didn’t she pin it on me or something? Why didn’t the cops take me in, I’m—I’m on the lam too?” She choked a little on the last words.
“Stephanie,” Bruce said. “Do you know why I visit Arkham?”
Steph looked up at him. Where was this conversation going? “Enlighten me B.”
He stared at the road ahead of him for a long time, and it was strange to see the same brooding glare Batman wore on Bruce Wayne’s face, without the sharp lines of the cowl. Then he said, slowly and quietly, “I think I owe it to them.”
“For putting them there in the first place?“ she asked, but she already knew that wasn’t the answer.
“Because,” he continued, “I face them every night. And sometimes…”
“They start to look an awful lot like you?” Stephanie finished for him, slowly.
Bruce hummed, then nodded in the dark.
“How did you know?” Stephanie asked. “Where to find me? That I was at the prison?”
“The warden called,” he said.
A dark little chuckle escaped her. “Calling in Batman because he finally recognized me? Worried cause the Cluemaster’s daughter was back or something?”
“He called Bruce Wayne,” he said. “To tell me how happy he was to see my daughter following my footsteps on her own.”
Stephanie snorted a laugh. “He’s not too great with names and faces, I guess, is he?”
Bruce looked at her face in the rear view mirror, looking back at his, and the beginning of a grin was playing at the corner of his mouth, in the same place hers was in the reflection. “No,” he said, “I guess not.”
“B?”
“Hm?”
“So—I know I know I’m fired as Robin and all that—“
“Stephanie—“
“But it’s just, that girl. Her name’s Maria. Martinez. And I told her I’d be back, to you know, provide some kind of entertainment while she wiles away 3-5 years, and well, I was just wondering, if I could go with you. When you go again?” She sat wringing her hands a bit. She’d learned from Tim that sometimes helped with supplications before Bruce. He was a sucker for a vulnerable looking kid.
“You couldn’t get out of it, I don’t think,” Bruce replied. “The warden would ask questions if my daughter never showed up again.”
Stephanie laughed. “Guess you’re right B.” She kicked back in the seat, and enjoyed the rest of the ride home.