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When Dad came back from jail and started plotting Steph stole as much cash from his wallet as she thought he wouldn’t notice missing and walked to the closest Goodwill. She got stretchy blue leggings that clung to her legs in a way she wasn’t used to and a tight-fitting purple turtleneck which shaped her strangely. Vigilantes dress skin-tight, she reminded herself, so she should as well. Never mind how it made her feel.
She got big blue gloves and too-tight stompy boots. She got skater knee pads and a too-big thick belt and a thigh strap meant for cops. She got a roll of fabric and made herself a cape. Steph sewed the Spoiler suit like a second skin, making all the pieces fit in a way she never could.
The first night she went out it wasn’t really a patrol the way everyone knows the Bats do. It was spy on Dad and try not to die while grappling. But on her way home she saw a young woman with a toddler sitting next to a car and Steph couldn’t just ignore them so she bit back a scream as she leapt from a building and messily caught herself with a grapple on the way down.
Their car broke down; they were waiting for a taxi. Steph offered to wait with them. The mother agreed. A few of Steph’s curls had spilled out from under her hood—rookie mistake—and the two-year-old in her lap kept trying to tug on them.
“You’re new, right?” the woman asked after a moment of awkward silence only broken by the kid begging to be up. “I’ve never seen you around. Not many capes up here in general, though.”
“I’m new,” Steph said. “Real new.”
The woman smiled. “Figured,” she said. “You sound young.”
“I’m sixteen,” Steph protested before remembering she’s trying to keep a secret identity. “I mean.”
“Young,” the woman said, kindly. “What’re you calling yourself, then?”
“The Spoiler,” Stephanie said seriously. She had thought long and hard about it.
“And you’re really committed to this whole blue-and-purple look?”
Steph blinked. She looked down at herself. “I like it.”
The woman shrugged. “Maybe either go purple or blue. Not both. They don’t pop enough.”
“Oh,” said Steph.
She laughed. “Don’t worry, kid,” she said. “There’s still time.”
“I’m a girl,” said Stephanie, for the first time. She said it staring at the toddler in her lap, who was focused wholly on sticking his fingers in her belt loops.
“Cool,” said the woman, still kind. “Me too.”
“Me three!” chirped the kid, before bursting into laughter. “Just kidding! My name is Thomas.”
Steph smiled, despite herself. “Hi, Thomas,” she said, watery.
The taxi pulled up just a few minutes later. Steph managed to grapple away on her third attempt. She got home just before Dad did, which gave her a second to change and hide her costume and steal more cash from Dad’s bags around the room. She’s been doing it every day since he’s been home. He gets paid more all the time and doesn’t keep good track of what he’s got so she’s been able to get a hefty stash.
Before they stepped onto the bus, the woman had said “Say thank you to the nice lady” and the kid had said “Thank you nice lady” and then before Steph could say anything they were on the bus and the bus was driving away.
Dad comes home and gets a beer and Mom takes a pill and Steph locks herself in her room and plays music as loud as she can. It’s the summer of 1993. The world’s ending and Stephanie’s a girl and no one good lives in Gotham Heights.
The second time Steph went out as the Spoiler, she hit Robin in the head with a brick.
“My baby,” says Crystal softly. “My baby boy. My son.”
Stephanie looks back at her. There’s nothing she can say.
“It- it hurts me,” says Crystal. “To see you do this.”
Stephanie looks at her.
“I feel like I’ve failed. I feel like I failed you. I must have done something wrong. Was it- your friends at school?”
“No, Mom,” says Stephanie.
“Was it- I know your father wasn’t around like he should have been. You just needed- you didn’t have his influence-”
“No, Mom,” says Stephanie, crying. “It’s not anyone’s fault.”
Crystal is crying, too. “What,” she spits. “Do you- do you have a new name, or something now?”
“Stephanie,” she whispers.
Crystal laughs. “God,” she says. “Where did- did you come up with that on your own?”
Steph nods. Crystal shakes her head. “You can’t even keep the name I gave you,” she says, weeping. “I chose that name.”
“Oh, you can’t say that,” Stephanie shoots back, pissed. “It wasn’t even mine. You gave me someone else’s. It’s my right to pick a new one.” She exhales sharply. “Even if I wasn’t- I’d still change my name. No matter what.”
Crystal closes her eyes. She doesn’t say anything for a long time. Neither does Steph. She’s said her piece.
“I need time,” says Crystal. “I need- I can’t just deal with this all at once.”
“I know,” says Stephanie.
“You- will you wait for me? To think about it?”
“Mom,” says Stephanie.
“Just- irreversible changes,” says Crystal, despairing. “Please, my baby, please. Please. Don’t- don’t get surgery, or take those- those pills-”
“Jesus, Mom,” says Stephanie. She leaves.
She hooks up with a guy from her high school. He makes her swear not to tell anyone. He calls her Junior because only capes know that her name’s Stephanie and isn’t that funny? Isn’t that just goddamn hilarious? She can only be real when she’s hiding her face.
She gives him head in the bathroom at a party she mostly attended because she was bored and he grabs at her hair. She’s never done it before and she doesn’t know if she’s doing it right but he seems to be into it. Dean’s his name, she thinks, but she can’t for the life of her remember his last name. Wilson, maybe. Or White.
It’s really whatever. He gets her off and then disappears, leaving her to clean up the mess on the tiles. She leaves the party, goes home and trades her messy clothes for the Spoiler suit and patrols for the rest of the night.
Robin finds her when she’s not even far from home, still in the Heights, and leaps onto her bike like he always does. Steph swears at him but keeps driving.
“What, no plans on a Friday night?” he shouts into her ear to be heard over the wind.
Steph laughs at him. “Pot, kettle, Rob,” she calls over her shoulder. She only pulls over once she’s made it down the street. “Why’re you all the way up here? You ‘n Batman are usually in Gotham proper.”
Robin shrugs. “Bored,” he says. “Seen anything weird so far tonight?”
“Nope,” says Steph, not thinking about her tongue in someone’s mouth an hour ago. “Totes normal. Nothing crazy.”
“Same here,” Robin agrees. “Just lots of parties.”
“End of summer soon,” Stephanie says. “Everyone’s trying to get their last hurrah.”
“Never really been a party person,” says Robin, like he’s admitting a secret.
Steph snorts. “No shit.”
“What?”
“You’re the poster child for social anxiety, Boy Wonder,” Steph informs him, because he is .
“Wh- I’m Robin!” Robin squawks.
Steph rolls her eyes. “You look terrified every time you have to actually interact with a civilian.”
“I do not!”
There’s a little boy who lives in the back of Steph’s head who is constantly screaming. There’s a little boy who lives in the back of Steph’s head with unkempt blond curls who wants nothing more than to be saved by Batman and Robin.
The first day that Stephanie Brown takes to the rooftops as Robin, the Girl Wonder, the little boy screams louder.
Steph doesn’t tell anyone really until she tells her mom. Well, she tells people, but she never really says the words.
When she first met Robin (discounting the time with the brick) he knew who she was. Junior. In a moment of bravery she told him the name that lived quietly in her head.
Robin had blinked at her. Cocked his head like a bird. “Okay, Stephanie,” he replied easily, like he wasn’t the first person in the world to call her that.
Robin told Batman, he must’ve, and the Spoiler has always been a girl, ‘cause Stephanie wore a training bra under her cheap purple turtleneck and pitched her voice up like she’d been practicing and wore a women’s leotard over her leggings. So really it just felt like an elaborate game every night. And then it felt like an elaborate game during the day because at some point Stephanie stopped feeling like a joke.
Eventually her leggings and turtleneck and leotard and stompy boots and hooded cape felt more like real life than real life. And that’s when Steph realized that she probably wasn’t gonna make it to seventeen.
She does. Barely. But anyway.
She doesn’t really have to tell Robin and Robin tells pretty much everyone else and her secret identity doesn’t have to do anything to prove she’s a woman so Stephanie doesn’t know how to tell people. Not really. It’s hard for her to even say the word trans. She’s not trans. It’s just that she’s a girl.
She said that to Robin once. He rolled his eyes. “I mean, you don’t have to use the word,” he said like this is all incredibly simple, “but you are trans. You fit the definition of the word, dude.”
Steph flipped him off but she thought about that for a long time. She still can’t say it.
She never hooks up with Robin, even when they’re actually really dating. For one thing, she still doesn’t know his real name. For another, she thinks he’s scared of how they would see each other. Which is okay. Steph gets it. He still comes over some nights and they make out like teenagers in love because they kinda are and then they cuddle up and whisper until Steph falls asleep and he’s always gone when she wakes up.
Steph teases him a little. Calls him Boy Virgin and asks if the domino will stay on during sex. She doesn’t push, though.
The first time Steph met Robin (discounting the time with the brick), she was seven years old. When she does the math later in life, Robin would have been around thirteen, but she wasn’t thinking about it then.
“‘Scuse me,” said Robin. “You doing okay?”
“Oh, we’re fine,” Crystal said, but Steph exclaimed, “Robin!” and stared at him in awe.
Robin grinned. “That’s me,” he said. “Sorry to bother. It’s just a little late to be out alone, ‘specially ‘round here.”
“Our car broke,” Steph told him. “Mom called a taxi.”
“Oh, no,” said Robin sympathetically. “Would it be okay if I waited with you?”
“I suppose,” said Crystal hesitantly as Steph cheered.
Robin waited with them until a taxi came and waved through the window at Steph as they drove off. She thought about it for years. Robin helped her.
Then Steph was fourteen and Robin was too and she was sitting on a rooftop in November and he was sitting beside her. She could see her breath when she exhaled. It made her feel cool, like she was smoking a cigarette.
“Look, dude,” said Robin abruptly. “You shouldn’t.”
“Shouldn’t what?” said Steph cheekily, pretending that her hands weren’t shaking.
“The people who care about you will miss you,” he said, like she didn’t know that.
Steph just kept looking at the city below her. Kept kicking her legs back and forth over the edge. “They will,” she agreed. “But I think- I think that would be easier for them.”
“Easier than what?” Robin asked, gently. Steph almost laughed.
She didn’t kill herself. She let Robin walk her down the stairs of the building. He paid for her bus fare so she didn’t have to walk home alone. She never told him her name. A year later, Robin was dead.
Two years later, Stephanie hit Robin in the head with a brick.
She doesn’t tell her mom until after she dies and comes back home. She started E with Leslie because Steph honestly didn’t know if she was ever coming home and she felt that if she didn’t she might die again, after all the work put into keeping her alive.
The first week is hard. The first month is hard. The first year is hard. So is the second.
One time Steph finds her mom with a stash Steph didn’t even know existed and takes it because she said she wanted to get sober and Crystal cries and says well you know it’s because of your whole thing and Steph cries too.
“My baby,” says Crystal softly. “My baby.”
Stephanie looks back at her. There’s nothing she can say.
“It- it hurts me,” says Crystal. “To see you do this.”
Stephanie looks at her.
“I feel like I’ve failed. I feel like I failed you. I must have done something wrong. Was it- your friends at school?”
“No, Mom,” says Stephanie.
“Was it- I know your father wasn’t around like he should have been. You just needed- you didn’t have his influence-”
“No, Mom,” says Stephanie, crying. “It’s not anyone’s fault.”
Crystal is crying, too. “What,” she spits. “Do you- do people call you the Spoiler now? God, that’s you?”
“Yeah,” she whispers.
Crystal laughs. “God,” she says again. “Where did- did you come up with that on your own?”
Steph nods. Crystal shakes her head. She doesn’t say anything for a long time. Neither does Steph. She’s said her piece.
“I need time,” says Crystal. “I need- I can’t just deal with this all at once.”
“I know,” says Stephanie.
“You- will you wait for me? To think about it?”
“Mom,” says Stephanie.
“Just- it’s not safe,” says Crystal, despairing. “Please, my baby, please. Please. Don’t- don’t keep fighting, and don’t- is this still about you being a woman?”
“Jesus, Mom,” says Stephanie. She leaves.
“Steph,” says Robin. He holds a bag out to her.
Steph takes it from him gingerly, like it’s been booby-trapped. “What?”
“It’s fabric and stuff,” he says awkwardly. “Like. For your suit.” Steph looks in the bag. Kevlar. Knee pads. Tall buckled boots that look like they’ll actually fit her.
“I don’t- I don’t need charity,” she tells him, but she keeps looking in the bag. “Not from a rich boy like you.”
“How’d you- I mean, I’m not rich,” says Robin. “What’re you talking about?”
Stephanie laughs at him. “As if, Boy Wonder,” she teases. “You’ve never lived in Gotham proper a day in your life.”
Robin scowls at her. She grins. She keeps running her hands over the thick fabric, like it’ll disappear if she lets go. She thinks about Missus Jones who lives next door and lets Steph use her sewing machine. She’s running patterns in her head.
“Thanks,” she says eventually. “I mean. Thanks.”
“Can’t let you get taken down by your shitty outfit,” Robin snarks, still looking a little peeved that she clocked him as rich, but genuine. Stephanie gives him a smile. “You need any help putting stuff together?”
“Nah,” says Steph. “I like making things myself.”
Robin gets that. She can tell.