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Stephanie tilts her head. She’s seen a lot of strange things in her time as a teenage vigilante, but this- well, it’s not the strangest, but it is pretty fucking weird.
Five obvious out-of-towners, wandering the streets looking for her. She’s already had three locals flag her down and warn her. Looks like trouble, they said. I’m good at trouble, she had shot back, flashing them a smile they couldn’t see.
She trails them for a few blocks. They can’t be professionals- they haven’t even noticed they’ve picked up a tail. If their general vibe wasn’t enough to signal that they’re tourists, the way they’re prowling around the streets of Gotham at two in the morning sure is.
What do some lumberjack wannabes want with the Spoiler?
Steph thinks about calling for backup. Batman and Robin are only a few sectors over. They could be here in ten minutes if they hurried. This isn’t seeming quite Batman-and-Robin level threat, at least not yet.
They didn’t learn even the most basic of Gotham social norms before coming here, and they don’t carry themselves with the natural grace all the really skilled fighters seem to have. She’s good, but she’s not ninja master of stealth like half the people in her fucking family. That they haven’t caught on to her stalking is a point in the incompetence box.
She thinks she can handle this one.
Overconfidence is dangerous, B says- he always says it like he’s thinking, overconfidence got you killed. It drives her crazy, but it’s not like he’s wrong, so she just grits her teeth and ignores the historical precedent to his words. She’s better than she was back then.
She knows the consequences of overconfidence all too well. It was a lesson she paid for, learnt in blood and tears and pain. At the same time, Steph’s never been one to be ruled by her trauma.
(She ignores all the pieces of the puzzle that was her death that don’t implicate her. There’s no use dwelling on the lack of trust, the lack of respect, that she felt like a constant burn under her skin. If it’s not something directly under her control, she can’t do anything about it. Focus on what she can improve on. Ignore other peoples’ shitty white noise.)
Might as well see what they want.
Spoiler drops from above, landing silently in their midst. Well, okay, more like a little to the side of their midst, but that doesn’t sound nearly as cool.
The second they see her is the defining moment. They don’t react with fear or awe or even with anger. It’s a frenzied sort of excitement that falls over their faces when they register the purple suit and white-out eyes. That’s- not great. A chill runs up her spine.
The man levels a shotgun at her head. “The Spoiler,” he says in a thick country twang. Not like the Kents- must be regional differences. Stephanie wishes she had been paying closer attention when Tim was prattling on about accent recognition.
“That’s me!” she says, overly cheery. His finger is on the trigger. Stephanie doesn’t let it faze her.
She was right on the mark about the lumberjack thing. Upon closer inspection, she realizes they are fully decked out in hunting gear, complete with camo vests and ammunition looped in their belts. One dude even has binoculars hanging around his neck. Steph’s ducking and twisting the gun out of his hand before he can press the trigger.
“Dude, did you seriously wear green camouflage to Gotham?” Spoiler laughs, kicking out a leg and catching the man nearest to her dead in the diaphragm. “Do you see much green in Gotham? Learn to match a color scheme, for fucks’ sake. You should have dressed up as homeless guys, that would make you blend right in!”
“Prey doesn’t normally talk back,” one of the men snarls. Prey?
“Think of it as a perk, Travis,” says a man wielding a hunting knife in one hand, a pistol in the other. He’s disturbingly at ease. She thinks he must be the leader- the others glance at him sporadically, as if he’s the one giving the orders.
Travis seems skeptical. “A perk?”
“You don't like the idea of shutting the thing up for good?”
Maybe it should be scaring her, the casual dehumanization, but mostly it’s just pissing her off. These people don’t even live here. What the fuck are they doing?
“And you’re hunting me, why again?” Steph asks, slightly out of breath as she flips to avoid an ax.
“Me and the boys wanted some more exotic game,” he says, teeth gleaming as he grins wildly. “Don’t got the money for a fancy trip to Africa. Did have enough for a bus ticket to Gotham, as it turns out. We figured we’d catch ourselves a city pest.”
“Why couldn’t you hunt Joker? Or, like, Bane? I mean, they would kill you immediately, probably in some new horrifying way that will totally baffle the forensic scientists that get assigned to your corpse, but that would at least be respectable.” Stephanie grunts as one of them lands a hit on her arm.
These guys aren’t necessarily good, but they have the numbers and clearly some experience breathing the shit out of people. The copious amount of weapons doesn’t help. The fight is a lot closer than she’s comfortable with.
It only takes one second for the tide to turn.
A bullet slices clean through her left shoulder. Stephanie bites down the scream, dives in the direction of the nearest dumpster for cover. The stupidest thing happens- she falls wrong.
She falls wrong and she knows she’s fucked up before she even hits the ground. She falls wrong and her wrist snaps, just like that.
It’s loud enough that they can hear it too, if the low chuckles are any indication.
Shit.
Steph scrambles back, an awkward one-handed crab scuttle. The men are closing in on her, weapons drawn, gleeful excitement in their eyes. Too close, too close-
The ax cleaves into her leg, just above the knee, and she shrieks. Fiery agony splits with her leg, pain immediate and red-sharp.
He pulls it out with a wet sucking noise. It didn’t- it didn’t go all the way through, thank fuck, but it still-
Stephanie gags. She can see more of her insides than she’s ever wanted to see. It’s not as viscerally disturbing as the C-section was, but it’s similar enough to pull at the same part of her brain.
Another gunshot, right to the stomach. She shouts, unable to muffle the sound.
One of the men puts his boot over her broken wrist. He waits for her to catch on, to try to jerk away, before he steps down and grinds, her bones shattering under the angle and pressure. Another puts the still-wet ax up to her face. Stephanie stills. The sharp edge digs into her jaw as he uses it to tip her face up.
“That’s enough,” the leader calls. Spoiler vaguely clocks him moving in a little. She’s stuck staring cross-eyed at the ax pressing cold at her throat.
“Gotta finish off the kill,” he says, jerking his head in her direction.
The leader laughs. “Why? We don’t need the body. We ain’t eating her, and no one’s mounting her on the wall, much as I know you’d like to, Jerry.”
“Why, then?” she croaks. “Why?”
The leader seems pleased with her question, striding closer and smiling down at her like she’s a puppy that just did a trick right. Steph just wants to know what all of this hurt is for.
“It’s the thrill,” he says, crouching next to her. “Seeing the light go out in an animal's eye. The way they twitch. The pure raw fear so thick you can feel it in the air.” He cocks his head to the side, smiles a snaky smile. “It’s the best high in the world.”
Stephanie is familiar with all kinds of sick bastards. This is a sadist if she's ever met one. And Steph, well Steph knows sadists. He runs two fingers down her forehead, over her ear. He’s plucking out her comms before she can twist her head away, leaving wet smears on her earlobe. Her own blood, cold and sticking to her hair. His teeth glint white, fang-like, as he watches her expectantly. It’s a trick of the light, but it feels calculated, every inch of him aiming to intimidate.
Not today, asshole. She refuses to give this dollar-store sadist anything. He wants fear? He won’t find it from her.
His expression hardens. He looks like he might push for more of a reaction, but his friends seem to want to ride the adrenaline rush to the next adventure, restless shifting and weapons clenched tight in their hands.
“They’ll be others,” a man says. Others. He wants to hurt more people like- like the raw gape of her leg. Steph swallows around the awfulness, keeping her focus on the leader.
The man in question is watching her right back, darkly intent. His eyes glitter with malice. “I want to watch this one die,” he says evenly. “I’ve earned the right.”
An arm is slung around his shoulder. The leader wrinkles his nose at his drunk friend’s breath. Steph can smell it from here- well, they all reek of alcohol, but the sadist seems sober at least. That’s- probably not a good thing, now that she thinks about it. “You can watch the next one. C’mon, this purple bitch isn’t anything special. Gotham’s teeming with her sort.”
Stephanie breathes through the pain, using the reflexive anger from ‘purple bitch’ to shove herself further away. Her body is pain and fire and nothing else but it is still hers.
No amount of squirming away would help her if they decided to kill her, but Steph’s never been one to give up without a fight. If Death wants her, it’ll have to drag her out kicking and screaming and maybe with a bag over her head for good measure.
The sadist is reluctantly swayed. Steph doesn’t- she doesn’t understand. He’s the leader. He could push. Does he know the dangers of drunken violence? Is there any chance of the group turning on him? It doesn’t matter- she’s in no place to be playing mind games. She can’t even get her voice to work right.
He turns away from her with a frustrated huff, an addict denied his high. Something in her chest releases the moment he takes his cruel eyes off her. Steph is a squirrel thumping onto the forest floor, dropped out of gnashing razor-teeth. She feels like crushed prey. The Big Bad Wolf takes a step back, then another.
“Let’s try for a bird next!” Jerry shouts. She thinks it was Jerry- they all kind of look the same and she is in too much pain to be precise. They holler and whoop, disappearing around the corner.
The sudden emptiness, the lack of a threat beside her own blood coating the alley, it echoes and amplifies everything she’s been pushing down. There’s nothing to focus on besides her own panic and the thick red spurting from her stomach. The gravity of the situation dawns on her.
She has a bullet wound in her shoulder, another in her stomach, an ax wound in her leg, and a shattered wrist to boot. There’s shards of rock and spiky glass embedded in the one hand that’s still functional- that’s typical for a Gotham alley, it’s the least of her concerns, she doesn’t know why she even notices it when there’s the dark glistening meat of her leg to watch instead.
It hits her that they left her here to die.
Steph considers that, bleeding out in a back alley behind a bar that looks like the kind of place her father would frequent, and thinks I think the fuck not. She’s had worse than this. She needs to get up. It’s so hard, fighting past the fire and fuzz of her mind.
There was something else, wasn’t there? Something important. A message, something she has to communicate. Steph racks her brain, fighting the light-headed cloudiness of blood loss.
She remembers what Jerry said and goes cold.
A bird. That could mean Tim or Damian. Fuck, she’s gotta- gotta warn them.
Stephanie tries to haul herself up- she doesn’t even make it to her knees before she’s crashing back down, pressing hands to the wound in her stomach, ignoring the scream of her wrist. The pain wipes out her thoughts- it takes her a few seconds to reboot and remember she’s supposed to be doing something.
The- the lumberjack psychos. Let’s try for a bird next.
She blinks up at the polluted-gray sky. Damian’s with Batman- he’ll be safe, assuming he didn’t go haring off on his own, which would be a very Damian thing to do. Tim is- she doesn’t remember where Tim is. She just knows she has to warn them. She has to warn them all.
How? This would be so much easier if she could contact them with a click of her comm. She can’t feel the cold on her ear anymore, but she can feel the air where her comm should be. She’ll have to find some other way to signal them.
Stephanie slides her non-injured hand away from her stomach, to the barely noticeable bump that should be on her belt. It’s not, and she closes her eyes, cursing her decision to forgo the panic button in favor of the new, not fully tricked-out belt. She has three different kinds of shark repellent and could build a functioning car bomb, but what use is any of that now?
There’s one sewn into her ankle cuff. Unfortunately, it’s on the same leg that looks like Killer Croc took an unusually neat bite out of it. Steph doesn’t think she can move her leg at all- flames lick at her flesh with every twitch. She’ll- she’ll have to sit up to get to the panic button.
A loud groan pushes through gritted teeth as she gets her working hand under her and pushes, arm trembling- pain and blood loss have sapped the physical strength she’s spent so long building up. Stephanie’s torso is off the ground, every muscle in her body desperately working towards being vertical.
She fails. The flop she makes when hitting the ground is pathetic enough that she’s kind of glad no one was around to see it. Damian never would have let it go.
God, he’d never let it go if she actually died thanks to plaid-clad out-of-towners. Bad enough she got bested by them- if she actually gave up the ghost, she’s pretty sure Damian would resurrect her with the sheer force of his derision.
They can’t be having that now, can they?
She exhales hard, gathering her dying strength for a final attempt. It will be a final attempt because she will succeed, not because she plans to give in if she fails. Stephanie Brown doesn’t quit.
Blurry movement out of the corner of her eye has Stephanie tensing, moaning when she tightens her wounds. A small figure scurries out of a shadow. A kid. He must have slipped down the alley while she was occupied with attempting to sit up. How long has he been-
“You’re Spoiler!” the kid breathes, wide-eyed, his small brown hands reaching towards her face. Stephanie tries to jerk away on instinct, but nearly screams as she drives her shoulder wound into the ground. “Sorry, sorry!” he says, yanking his hands back.
She waves him off with her broken wrist. He follows the path of it, doe eyes stretched too-wide. “You’re- you’re hurt,” he says anxiously, taking in her wrist and the pool of blood she may as well be swimming in.
“I’ll be- fine,” Steph says, forcing the words out numb lips. She can’t not reassure the terrified child. She’s not a monster.
He doesn’t look like he believes her though, chewing on his hoodie strings and darting glances at her leg. That one’s probably gnarly. It looked bad enough before, and she doesn’t really want to see what all the trying-to-move has done to it.
She’s had worse than this, but she remembers what dying feels like. Experiencing the life draining out of her in blood and fragments of bone. She relives it even in small injuries, paranoid that she’s losing a piece of her life with every minor slash wound. This is not a minor slash wound.
“I’m gonna get help,” the boy says, face screwed up in determination. Young and full of spirit and energy and God, she can almost remember what that was like.
Good. He shouldn’t be here when- when-
“You do that,” she croaks, closing her eyes. There are so many things she wants to see before she dies, but none of them are in this alley.
She’s not dying, because she absolutely refuses to, she’s just… resting her eyes.
Her mom used to say that, when the high passed and she needed to close out everything around her. Steph hated her for it, just a little. She never got that luxury, never got to cover her ears and ignore the responsibilities that fell to her. Rent. Clothes. Checking the bills to make sure her mom actually paid them. Stopping her father from hurting people.
Stephanie used to roll her mother onto her side every night so she didn’t choke to death on her own vomit. They showed a warning in Health class in the fifth grade, part of the failed D.A.R.E. program. The video stuck with Steph in a way all the dozens of drunk driving ones just didn’t.
She’s used to roll her mom over and now she’s stuck on her back without anyone to roll her, to haul her up, and there’s something in that, but she’s too tired to find it.
Her mind wanders to the kid. What was he doing out at night in Crime Alley anyway? They should- they should look into his parents, make sure everything’s okay at home, make sure he has a home. Steph would figure him at about Damian’s age, a little younger maybe. Too young.
Jesus, the blood loss is making her melancholy.
Like it or not, the kid’s probably her only way out of this mess. Steph pries her eyes open, fixes them at the alley’s entrance, and believes.
It takes an eternity for him to come back. She’s- astonished she’s still conscious, really.
He’s not alone. It makes for a funny sight- The Batman on the tail of some scrawny Alley kid. Robin must be bringing the Batmobile over. Damian’s only allowed to drive the Batmobile in an absolute emergency, a loophole he takes full advantage of. Kid’s probably having- having the time of his life.
Black kevlar cuts across her vision, blots the light out and it should be scary- it’s anything but.
“Spoiler,” B rumbles, pressing a thick chunk of gauze to her stomach. She chokes on the fresh waves of agony that radiates up from it. He doesn’t outwardly react to her pain, mouth set firm in a grim little line. Typical.
She wants to say something snarky back, but finds she can’t open her mouth. That’s- that’s not good. He’s wrapping a bandage tight around her shoulder. Stuffing gauze in the gaping maw of her leg. Then B lifts her as the Batmobile roars into hearing range, carrying her out of the alley. He holds her like he knows he won’t drop her. It’s reassuring, and she hates herself for loving it, for finding comfort in Bruce evacing her.
The slide into air conditioning coincides with her slide into unconsciousness.