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Steph doesn’t know who came up with “Robin” first: if it was Bruce, bumbling with a new son dropped on his doorstep; or if it was Damian, acting on a kid’s impulse to dress up like a traffic light. Maybe it was Alfred.
Whoever came up with it, though, probably didn’t expect Steph to don the red, yellow, and green.
She didn’t either.
When she first debuted as Spoiler, Batman made it a point to say that she shouldn’t be out there fighting crime on the streets. It was a bit of a joke at first, just throwing it in her dad’s face that she wasn’t like him — she was better.
Then it became something more. The more she was out there, the more she saw, the more she heard, the more she did . . . it wasn’t about her dad anymore, or even her. It was about Gotham.
Sometimes she thinks she’s a bit too much like Batman for her own good, especially now.
Jason’s training was canceled. Indefinitely. And, as for Steph, Batman tried to get her to stop. Again.
She thought a lot, a lot about what Tim used to say. About how in a better world, a perfect one, he wouldn’t be Robin. But their world isn’t better, it isn’t perfect, and Batman needed Robin.
Just look at what happened when the last Robin left, he said. Batman’s sulking led to more criminals in the hospital. He got more violent and angry because Robin wasn’t there.
Tim told her about how he tried to get the last Robin, the first one and the one before him, to come back, but failed. How he ended up being Robin.
When Batman told Steph who Robin was — Tim Drake — she didn’t think he ever thought it would trace back to him. But it did, though Steph never really knew Batman as Bruce.
He’s just Batman to her.
Seeing him slumped over at his computer, cowl off and screens bright in his eyes, makes him seem just a bit more human and less like a shadow.
Not that this is the worst she’s seen him. He was much worse, when Tim first—when Joker—when it all started.
She hates that the day she thinks of as “the end” is really the start of what would be her own personal hell if it didn’t affect Tim’s family, too.
Steph watches him from the corner of her eye. It’s getting late. Early, really. Patrol’s a lot longer than it used to be.
“We should be getting back soon,” she says. The sun’s peeking out between buildings now.
“You can go home,” he says.
“Bruce,” Steph admonishes, because using his first name is a lot more effective than anything else, “you need to go home. You still have a family.”
“So do you.”
“I spend time with them,” she counters. “Jason needs you there. So do Damian and Alfred. They want you there.”
He doesn’t respond. Stephanie doesn’t like giving up on people, but sometimes it’s easy to, with Bruce. He makes it hard, like Sisyphus-pushing-up-the-boulder kind of hard, and sometimes it makes her want to turn around and leave.
But she doesn’t. She’s Robin. Red, yellow, green, and all.
“How many times do we have to tell you you’re not responsible for—for what happened to Tim?” she demands. She’s looking at him now, glaring more like it. A strand of hair that didn’t quite fit in her ponytail tickles her face. She ignores it. “Because you’re not. And, yeah, you can’t save everyone. But that’s not your fault.”
Stephanie wants to know if he’s even glancing at her, underneath that cowl, but he’s facing the city. He’s always facing the city. Always on these rooftops, looking out or down. Always viewing Gotham.
“Killing yourself isn’t going to do anyone any good.”
He doesn’t say anything. Doesn’t move.
She doesn’t either.
New York is the city that never sleeps, but Steph thinks that every city is like that. Sure, Gotham has more traffic in the morning after the sun’s risen than before, but it’s always awake. Alive.
Cars rush past on the streets, but from up here, they look like toys. Almost like a train model.
“I . . .” Bruce starts. He closes his mouth, clenches his jaw, and tries again. “I’m sorry. I know I’m not the only one—the only one affected by what happened to him.”
Finding a replacement for “death” and “mourning” is getting tiring, but it’s better than accepting defeat. Because calling Tim dead when he’s not — not really, anyway — is like throwing up a white flag.
“You’re not,” Stephanie agrees.
“I’m going home,” he says, “to my family. You should, too.”
“I am.”
“Good.”
Batman—Bruce—whatever is gone, off to his car and starting the half-underground drive back to Bristol.
Steph inherited Tim’s old bike. It’s bright red, and incredibly conspicuous, but she can’t bring herself to change it to something less stupid. At least it’s not as garish as the car.
She makes it home after her mother wakes up. She’s making breakfast in the kitchen.
“You’re home late,” she frowns.
Steph winces. “I know. Sorry.”
“It’s okay,” Crystal sighs. “You just . . . worry me.”
This is a conversation they have a lot, whether it’s spoken aloud or not.
I know. Sorry.
Steph nods. She’s tired. At least it’s a Saturday and she doesn’t have school. She can rest a bit.
As it turns out, she can sleep for about two and a half hours before Olivia wakes her up.
She makes her breakfast — cereal, nothing particularly special — and eats with her.
Olivia’s cute. Everything about her is small, except for her eyes. They’re big and they’re round and they’re a dark brown. Her hair was lighter as a baby; it’s still blonde, just a bit darker.
For a bit, Olivia would ask half-baked questions about where Tim went, piecing together words as well as a very young child can. Now Steph’s not sure Olivia even remembers him.
She watches Olivia, plays with her, smiles and laughs with her. But she keeps thinking, Tim should be here. He was her closest friend and now she’s not even sure she’ll ever get him back.
Each time she sees him, sees him like that, her goal shifts just a little from saving him to just stopping him. She worries that by the time they have the chance to save him, they’ll be too focused on stopping him and lose him for good.
If, that is, they haven’t already.
Steph doesn’t go over to the manor today, not after what happened early in the morning with Bruce. He needs his space from her, she thinks, after that conversation.
So she spends time with Olivia, and when the window opens she only jumps for a second before waving at Cass as she crawls through and straightens up.
Cass and Olivia get along very well; at first, Cass didn’t trust herself around the toddler, but now they’re close. It’s not that she’s replaced Tim — Steph doesn’t think anyone ever can, especially after putting on Robin’s cape — but she’s another fixture in Olivia’s life that’s not meant to ever go away.
Tim and Cass met briefly, only weeks before everything. And, even then, they weren’t particularly close. Cass spent some time with Huntress, then Duke, then Steph. Tim was there, and they were friends, but they only had about fourteen days together.
Steph thinks they’d be nearly inseparable if Tim had never been captured.
Cass holds Olivia under her armpits, making airplane sounds and moving her around the room. They’re both laughing and Steph smiles from where she is on the floor in front of the couch, momentarily abandoned dolls between her legs.
The peaceful days are nice. Good. But they’re few and far between, and this day barely counts as one. There are times when Steph doesn’t think of Tim, but this is not one of them. She’s glad Cass is here — a friend other than her toddler. But that won’t always be the case.
Steph encounters difficult decisions all the time — split second choices with devastating consequences.
Some of them are easier to handle than others.
Jason is a kind boy: loud and fierce, he does what he thinks is right. And he’s young and dumb and not from Bruce’s world and was introduced to it so recently he feels out of place. He’s probably the closest thing she has to a brother. Or a clone, really.
“Jason, you’re not supposed to be patrolling,” she admonishes. She’s been doing a lot of admonishing since Olivia. “You haven’t even finished your training.”
“Yeah, ‘cause Bruce said so,” he complains. He has a baseball bat in his right hand and a too-big motorbike helmet covering his face. Jason lets out a puff of air harshly, huffing, but looking away from her.
Steph knows from experience that she doesn’t have to push him to get him to talk. He just will.
“I just—I just wanna help,” he grumbles, talking lowly to the ground like it’s a secret or he’s done something wrong. “I can’t go to sleep knowing—knowing he’s out there and so’s Bruce and—I dunno what to do.”
“That’s understandable,” Steph says. “C’mon. Let’s talk.” She holds out her arm and readies her grappling hook. They’re in an alley, one of the ones just outside downtown. Jason hesitates but nuzzles up to her, wrapping his arms around her while she holds on tightly.
His grip tightens when they’re in the air, fingers digging without bringing any pain.
They go up on one of the taller buildings in this area. It’s a good spot. Jason liked it when he was training and would trail Bruce and Tim on patrol. He liked one of the gargoyles; the one with a chip in his tooth.
“Don’t tell Bruce I took you up here,” she says. “He’ll kill me.”
“Don’t tell him I went out,” he replies. “He’ll kill me.”
“Nah,” Steph shakes her head. “He loves you too much.”
“No, he doesn’t. He hasn’t cared since—since Tim.”
Jason rests his chin on his arms, resting on the tops of his bent knees. He stares out at the city, not watching or looking. Just staring.
“Bruce feels like he’s failed as a father,” Steph explains. Strangely enough, she finds herself being able to understand the guy when she starts to see Bruce more than Batman. “He’s afraid of failing you.”
“He didn’t fail Tim,” Jason mumbles.
“He didn’t.” She pauses here, trying to find the right thing to say. “But that doesn’t mean it doesn’t feel that way to him. And since he has you, he’s scared of losing another kid. He doesn’t want to put you in danger.”
“I want to help,” he croaks. Steph can see him blinking furiously, trying to stop the tears from falling. His neck trembles as he swallows, like it’s wearing him out, trying not to cry.
“Running around in a cape in the middle of the night isn’t the only way to help,” she says. She’s talking gently, not being too loud or too quiet. She doesn’t want Jason to think she’s coddling him — which she’s not — or feel like she’s not treating him as an equal. “There are other ways. Other possibilities for you. Bruce doesn’t want to send you to your death.”
And maybe that’s it. Everyone else is scared of the word and the ones related to it — dying, dead, die, died, dies, death. Because it’s like admitting defeat, admitting that Tim is gone. Which he is, Steph realizes. Time is running out and they’re nowhere near figuring out how to get him back, much less heal him.
“Is—Are we gonna get Tim back?” he asks, voice small and wavering. “Ever?”
“I hope we do,” Steph relies earnestly. Even if it’s just his body. He deserves a nice funeral.
Steph takes Jason home. She even tucks him into bed, despite his protests that he’s fine and can do it himself. She just tells him that she wants to tuck him in, so he agrees. Begrudgingly, but he agrees.
Steph goes to the cave and finds Bruce. Before he can ask what she was doing upstairs, she answers it for him.
“I was putting Jason back to bed,” she explains. She told Jason she would have to tell Bruce — no way either of them could get around his security systems — and he had frowned, but agreed. He asked if she could do it without him there (crying had tired him out, tears starting to fall by the time Steph got a good hold on him to go swinging back down to the streets) and she agreed.
“Back?”
“I found him, trying to do patrol on his own.” Bruce doesn’t even blink, but she knows he’s about to respond. So she cuts him off. “I talked to him. He wants to help and he feels useless here when you’re out there. I told him there are other ways to help.”
She pauses, and Bruce doesn’t say anything. He looks so old now, like there’s this thing in his eyes telling her I’ve lived a long, difficult life, and I still don’t know what I’m doing. But I’m here.
“He—he doesn’t think you love him, Bruce,” and Steph didn’t cry before, not with Jason, but now she thinks she might be close. “I mean, fuck. You have to do better than this. You’re not alone anymore so you can’t keep acting like you are!”
She cuts herself off, scared of—of something. She’s not sure what.
Do better, she wants to say. I have Olivia and I’m managing. It hurts, but I’m doing it.
She doesn’t say it, but she wants to. She thinks maybe Bruce knows that.
That’s the last conversation they need to have about that. Sure, looks are given and pushes are shoved, but Bruce shapes up. It’s hard — it is, it really is — but he does it. Steph thinks that maybe, just maybe, she’s a successful Robin. Tim isn’t back, but Bruce is getting there.
And maybe that’s enough for now.
Jason doesn’t sneak out and Bruce picks up less patrols. Batwoman — Kate, that is, spreads her wings a bit and picks up what he can’t. So does Damian, once he comes back for real this time. Steph tries, but she has Olivia and knows her priorities.
And with those priorities come hard decisions.
She’s at home, her mother working a night shift for a friend, and taking care of Olivia who’s caught a stomach bug when she gets an alert that makes her heart jump.
There’s been a Joker sighting, and with him, Tim. But she has to stay home.
Hours later — hours, too long — she’s still awake and waiting for another alert. Anything.
It’s morning when Bruce calls.
“The Joker’s dead,” he says.
“What?”
“He’s dead. Tim killed him.” Bruce says it too evenly, like he’s either practiced for this moment or he’s become so unattached to it. “But we don’t have Tim. He got away.”
“Oh.”
And that’s the real test, isn’t it? To see if the Joker’s brainwashing will last longer than him or if Tim’s truly gone this time.
They’ve come close, so many times, too many times, and now . . . just like every other time, it feels like it’s the last. But this one really is the last.
Steph hears her mom unlock the door and shuffle in on dead feet. Usually, they greet each other, but now Steph just stares down at the hardwood floor while holding up her phone to her ear.
She’s not sure who hangs up, and she barely remembers if either of them said anything more. Steph quietly opens the door to Olivia’s bedroom, the girl sleeping very soundly on her small bed. It helps — to see that she’s okay.
Steph crawls into her own bed and falls asleep faster than she thought she was ever capable of.
When she wakes up, her goal has shifted to finding him — which, she thinks, is a much goal than stopping him.