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Spoiler Alert
Stephanie could take a punch and brush it off like nobody else. Probably because the subsequent bruise would, quite literally, be gone in a minute or two.
Fell and scraped her knees? Unblemished skin by the time her mom got out the band-aids. Sliced a finger using the scissors to open a taped box? Only bloodstains on the cardboard told the story. Jumped from the swingset and came down wrong on her ankle? She’d be fine and walking home without a limp soon enough.
Crystal Brown always got a pinched look in her eye but never mentioned the oddness of it all. Arthur- well, Stephanie’s dad didn’t exactly pay all that much attention to his daughter, and in hindsight she’d be grateful he probably never even noticed her metahuman ability.
Or else Steph almost certainly would’ve been forced into being someone other than Spoiler.
There were often times Steph took a moment to remind herself other people didn’t brush off injuries the same way she did, and pull her punches accordingly.
The split second of panic when she hit Robin in the face with a brick was not one of those moments.
Even worse, while the sudden attack managed to distract the approaching Batman and give her a chance to escape, Steph ended up running smack dab into Red effing Hood, possibly the only superhero scarier than the Bat himself. And from the way his hands came up to grab Steph’s shoulders and squeeze, she figured he probably didn’t appreciate Robin getting brained by a brick any more than the kid himself did.
Steph whimpered.
It came out small, soft, utterly involuntary. It also got Red Hood to release her faster than one would let go of a burning coal. She blinked underneath her mask, staring as the guy’s snarling expression flickered, half hidden by the shadow of his costume’s hooded cape. After a few more seconds, the snarl vanished behind something still upset, but much more restrained. “B?”
“He’ll live,” Batman answered from the other side of the roof, where he helped a grumbling Robin upright.
The lenses of Hood’s domino mask narrowed in a sharper glare, still staring Steph down. “Lucky for you, pipsqueak,” he growled. “The hell did you do that for?”
Heart still pounding, Steph snapped back, “Forgive me for panicking, asshole! I’m trying to stay under the radar here!”
Hood barked out a laugh. “Sure, that’s what you’re trying to do.”
Steph very firmly told herself hitting him with a brick was very much not an acceptable course of action at the moment. In future, maybe, but not until after she got away from this unfortunate encounter.
...if she got away. Which suddenly seemed much less likely when Batman came up to loom over her as well. Steph tried to inch backwards, closer to the edge of the roof, but when the Bat’s scowl deepened she instinctively froze.
“So,” Robin piped up, one hand gingerly pressed to his cheek and the other gripping the Bat’s cape to hold himself upright, “I think we kinda got off on the wrong foot here.”
Stephanie Brown
Date of Birth: August 11th, 1999
Metahuman Ability: Minor Cellular Regeneration
Steph pulled a face at the paperwork. “Minor? Seriously? It only took me half an hour to get over a broken leg and you call that minor?”
Bruce grunted from the head of the table. “I call that better cover.”
“It’s the same for all of us,” Tim informed her, leaning halfway out of his chair in order to bump their shoulders together. “This way, anyone who hacks the government database to try and look up kids with abilities that match ours, they’ll have a harder time actually making a connection.”
“Hmph.”
Still. She could put up with some minor annoyances in exchange for real superhero training, and getting to practically move into Wayne Manor. Steph didn’t quite know all the details of the conversation Bruce had with her mom the week before, but the end result was a weird sort of shared custody in exchange for help with the drug addiction and not turning Crystal over to the authorities. And, better yet, Arthur Brown lost visitation rights entirely, provided he ever got out of Blackgate again.
Hitting Tim with a brick turned out to be one of the best things Steph had ever done.
Dancing with your Shadows
The darkness felt like her real parent.
Where David Cain struck, the shadows embraced. When hunger dragged her low, the shadows offered comfort. When Cassandra needed to hide, the shadows swelled to provide cover.
When she fled her father, it was into the darkness that she ran.
Many times the light in the sky shrank and grew again before she reached a place where the shadows felt both right and wrong. They hurt, curled protectively around spots where people smaller than Cass liked to hide. They growled, a warning barrier around places where bigger people laughed and cried and shouted. And they sang, when the one her father feared flew overhead.
Cass followed him as the light in the sky shrank again, until it couldn’t be seen at all and the darkness above was complete. On nights like that, Cass almost felt she could float up above everything, away into the void, where neither her father nor anyone else would ever be able to touch her again.
But the shadows didn’t work like that.
So, instead, she watched the one they sang for, and waited for the right moment.
Others flew alongside him, but their colors were brighter, and the shadows danced but did not sing for them. The one with a river across his arms and chest could really, genuinely fly, belonging as much to the sky as the ground below. Another with inner fire within didn’t let any obstacle stand in his path, tearing through bad-people and their cold weapons with practiced ease. Cass had a hard time watching the smallest one, who flickered in and out of minds as fluidly as she did with the shadows, leaving enemies bewildered and making the newest of them laugh, the one who brushed off every strike and fixed herself without effort.
They all followed and were watched over by the one for whom the shadows sang, and every way he moved and stood that Cass could see, he felt love and pride for the others. Soft and warm expressions she only knew from observing strangers, rather than her own father. She first sought him out because she knew David Cain feared him, feared coming to his territory, but that was merely seeking the lesser of two evils. After watching, after learning, she came to a point of wanting.
So when the bad-person with mind and face divided in two set off exploding flames, Cass didn’t hesitate to reach out with her shadows and catch the one for whom they sang. He landed on her rooftop perch with a grunt, and froze, confusion and wariness pouring out of every limb. She hummed to get his attention, lifting one hand to wave, but otherwise didn’t move from her seat on the edge of the wall.
Sounds cluttered together as he spoke at her. Cass wrinkled her nose. More sounds, different, and she turned away, looking back at the burning building across the street. She felt the shadows stir and swirl around his footsteps, and then the one for whom they sang stood next to her, also looking at the place that nearly consumed him. Short, soft sounds fell from his mouth, released with hesitation. Cass hummed again, and traced his symbol with a finger on the grime-stained stone beside her.
They remained there, among the pleased shadows, until the other fliers arrived to demand answers.
Cassandra Wayne
Date of Birth: January 26th, 1998
Metahuman Ability: Advanced Perception
Bruce nodded with approval when he saw the falsified paperwork. “This will work. Vague enough we can apply it to different circumstances.”
“Well, I figured it’d be easier to explain the body-language-reading as a meta ability instead of some insane skill she learned as a kid,” Barbara grinned, holding out a hand to accept the file back. “And you can thank me any time now for backstopping her new identity so well no social workers will come sniffing around.”
“Thank you, Barbara,” Bruce dutifully repeated, before going on, “Would you and your father would like to come have dinner at the Manor this weekend? Cass already likes you, I don’t think she’ll mind meeting him either.”
“Sure, I’ll see when he’s free. Steph is sticking to her like glue, right?”
“Her and Tim both. I think they’re each determined to make sure she doesn’t think of them as younger siblings.”
Barbara snickered. “Well, I’ll wish them good luck with that.”
He grunted, mouth twitching into a smile. “I doubt it’ll last, once J’onn finishes with his session this afternoon. Apparently the agenda for today is the concept of time, including age.”
“She’s still doing okay with the mental downloads?”
“No signs of any strain, yet. Jason’s keeping a close watch just in case-” Bruce’s phone vibrated, and he pulled it out for a quick glance at the lock screen. “-and speaking of whom...”
Waving a hand over her head, Barbara wheeled back around towards her work desk and computer screens. “Go on, you big softie, give all the birds a hug for me, and we’ll see you for dinner soon.”
He aimed one more small smile in her direction before heading out.