Chapter Text
He’d been told to stay away from her. Red Hood, the killer. Stephanie Brown, once dead and back with more red than purple.
The kid blinked at her. Once, twice, eyes wide and oddly round. He cocked his head like a bird, skin tone the same even though he’d been upside down for a while now.
“But you were B’s favourite.”
Stephanie scowled at him, spinning her nunchuck back into her utility belt. His eyes traced the motion as he swung gently upside down.
“Look, kid-”
“Don’t call me kid,” he interjects, bristling.
She ignored him. “- what Batman thought doesn’t matter. What matters is that you shouldn’t be out here.” He scowled back at her, mirroring her expression perfectly. With a flourish, he swung down from where he hung. Right side up, he looked even more ridiculous. Bright, traffic light colours and pixie boots. No matter how reinforced they were, the outfit choice was certainly unique.
“Batman doesn’t control me.”
“Never said he did.” She wanted out of this conversation already.
“I’m not inept,” he insisted, ignoring her. His face was twisted in a scowl. Comically exaggerated, she thought, like he was performing. “Everyone keeps fussing for no good reason - I’m presented, not injured.”
Stephanie winced internally, the words striking a chord in her. She remembered saying that word-for-word when she first met Batman, brick in hand and refusing to apologise for hitting him. I’m presented, not injured, she had spat, with all the righteousness of a 13 year old freshly presented alpha. He didn’t hear of it. Fuck that guy.
“There are risks,” she said instead, “with presenting.” She tried to figure out how to word ‘omegas are at higher risk of sexual assault than the other two main secondary genders, and you have presented earlier than 90% of the population which comes with its own risks’ without setting off a tantrum.
Robin scowled harder. “I have scent patches.” His expression turned proud, like he had performed a particularly impressive trick. “And a packer.” The words were said with a smile to accompany it. Come one come all, to witness the Robin show.
Fine. What did she know? She was Red Hood, the big bad, the terrible influence.
He looked young, was the thing. When she had started, she had been 15. Tim had been 16 when she had unwittingly lead him into the life of vigilante with her. She had never known Damian at 8 years old, following Batman like a shadow.
Duke hadn’t been close with her, but he’d been bright and accomplished and secure in his place. Signal, leader of one of the first superhero teams. She’d looked up to him.
Robin was young enough it ached in Stephanie’s heart, somewhere deep deep within.
“Hm.” She hummed. Robin brightened and backflipped, taking it as the agreement it wasn’t. She wasn’t about to correct him.
“Let’s get ice cream,” she told him, instead of saying that she had had scent patches and a cup and it never mattered, not with Ivy’s pollen and Joker venom coursing through her veins. Not with Black Mask who laughed as he injected her with rut inducers and left her in the heated room for hours.
Her wrist glands itched. She clenched her fists, and watched Robin watch her. He didn’t comment on it, just released his comical expression of satisfaction and followed after.
“I don’t want ice cream,” he said as he skipped to catch up to her, two steps for every one of hers. He was tiny. “I just want you to convince Nyx and Aperture that I can fight.” His voice hardened, steel and iron. He wasn’t joking around. Stephanie was surprised, even though she shouldn’t be. She knew his story.
“What makes you think I can convince them?” She didn’t let her tone turn self depreciating. Beside her, Robin doesn’t hesitate. Like a bullet, his words smack her in the face without hesitation.
“Aperture gets a weird look on his face when we mention you,” he tells her. “Nyx just gets quiet. They miss you.” His yellow cape flutters in the wind.
Stephanie’s heart pangs. She doesn’t ask him about B or Cass. He tells her anyway. “B gets angry.”
Of course.
“Whatever,” she says, and buys him vanilla ice cream.
Wheels scraped against the hardwood floor as Tim spun his wheelchair around. Tim was stressing. It wasn’t obvious to anyone who didn’t know him well, but he was. Surrounded by technology, Aperture was in his element, in some definition of it. I miss train surfing, he didn’t say.
Aperture was also fretting. He hated fretting.
“Stop fretting. You look like a duck.”
Saying this, Cass showed him a reel of a duck. It’s feathers were fluffed, and it quacked menacingly. Tim gave her a weak smile. “Thanks, Cass.” He surreptitiously looked at his reflection. He did look like the duck.
“It’s just - they’re so alike.” There was no confusion as to who ‘they’ were.
Cass looked up and gave her his attention, body turned forward. Her muted omega scent permeated the air, a mimicry of comfort that she had witnessed him do so many times. It didn’t work.
Her main scent glands had been ripped out when she was a kid. It was a scientific miracle she was capable of controlling her scent with such accuracy, but that was Cass - the impossible was just Tuesday.
“Stay away,” she told him dully. That was what Steph had told her last time, shaking with anger and covered in blood. Tim didn’t call her out. Sooner or later she’d kick down Steph’s door, but for now she was attempting something new: distancing herself from Steph.
The guilt was probably eating her alive.
Tim nodded and continued his train of thought. “Bruce - well, she and Bruce were close. She was his go to confidante, even when she didn’t want to be. Dick - Dick is -”
Dick was amazing. He was bright and intelligent and had an understanding of Bruce beyond what anyone had achieved, apart from Cass. It was why Cass and Dick got along so well.
“Dick is amazing.” Awe creeps into his voice. The last of the Flying Graysons. Robin. He had run into Tim before his show, already in costume. Watch, he had said. Then the rope snapped. He had wanted to dazzle Dick when Dick moved into the manor. He’d tracked down Zucco instead.
Cass didn’t share his awe, but Tim didn’t mind.
“He reminds me of her.” Something forlorn crept into his tone. “I miss her,” he told Cass, like Steph was still six feet under. Cass kept quiet. She already knew that; she missed Stephanie, too. Stephanie, who told him his photos were cool. Stephanie, who had never ever minded Cass’s inability to grasp emotion in any conventional way.
Tim had been missing her since she’d died.
“I just think you should reach out to Nyx or Aperture.” Dick was still talking. His scent glands itched and he felt oddly warm. “They really miss you, you know.” Red Hood was becoming more and more annoyed. Dick didn’t stop despite the warning bells sounding in his head.
“B misses you too,” he adds. She stops, stills, unclenches her fist. Dick watches her carefully. He knew her well.
Her file: Emotionally sensitive about family background socioeconomic , family history , medical history … Compares herself to her father (alpha, 42, see: Arthur Brown . B’s private notes, separate from the clinical copies: Child psychology books [ reference ] [ reference ] [ reference ] real life accounts [ reference] [ reference ] suggested course of action, encourage self confidence, validation (see: SP237 )
Her file had been extensive. It had everything from her childhood trauma to her favourite ice cream flavour, which was Cookies and Cream.
Dick had read the outcomes of B’s attempts of comfort: failure after failure. The records of the events had made Dick wince - B was not good with people. B thought he was pretty successful. B was not. This was not new, as he had gathered after a few weeks at the manor.
There was a separate file on her, post death and revival. It was lacking in content. Dick made his own mental note. Sensitive about Bruce. Do not mention him ever.
Too late.
Stephanie stayed silent. Dick wished she didn’t. She had been irreverent and talkative before she died, charismatic and charming without meaning to. Coming back had turned her cold. He kicked a foot in front miserably, then kicked the other for completion.
He opened his mouth again. Stephanie turned sharply. She raised her chin, prepared to fight. He bristled, instinctive, but she towered over him. Unwittingly, he shrunk back. What was wrong with him?
“You don’t know anything.” Matter of fact, stilted, and level. “B never trusted me. Nyx looked down on me. Aperture left as soon as possible.” Neither mentioned Cass, Dick had the sense that that was too sore and too recent.
Red Hood’s ice cream cone dripped down, and she gave up on it. Hands by her side, it plopped to the ground, sad. “Go back home and wear some pants.”
Dick wanted to go home. He wanted his parents, and their comforting scent of citrus and cinnamon. Dick didn’t want to go back to the hallowed, cold halls of Wayne Manor, no matter how friendly the people were inside. Dick just wanted to sleep in his parents’ nest. Dick didn’t say this.
“Cass -”
Stephanie lurched forward angrily. Dick tensed. A sudden whine sounded out, and he realised it was from him. They both froze. Stephanie moved first. She knelt down, eye-level. “Fuck,” she said emphatically. “You really should go home.”
Dick was still frozen over his reaction. He wanted her to reassure him, and maybe put a hand on his shoulder. Anything, anything. He couldn’t move. Strangely, he felt a heat prickling. He let out a shaky exhale. Stephanie scooped him up, hand holding his head to her collarbone.
“Don’t worry,” she soothed. “Sorry, I shouldn’t have loomed over you like that.” Dick wanted to apologise, but he fell limp at the contact. His heart pounded - it was so hard to unfreeze from the position. Something in him told him to appease her.
“It’s fine,” he choked out. “It’s whatever.” He lifted his face from where it had been pressed against her collarbone. Stephanie ran a hand up and down his back. Humiliated, Dick tried to fix the situation. “I wasn’t actually scared, I was just faking.” His tone turned light. “How could you scare me?”
A window creaked open. They were inside her safehouse again. Stephanie carried him to a bed. “I - “ he stuttered. Cleared his throat. Heat prickled. “I don’t -” The sudden paroxysm of emotion left him unmoored.
Stephanie looked alarmed. She took her glove off and placed it on his forehead. “You don’t have a fever,” she says. “Fuck.” She was getting agitated, Dick tried to sit up from where she had tangled him in blankets.
“Sorry, sorry,” he said. “Don’t be mad, if you really don’t want to -”
“It’s not that,” she cut in. “You - have you had a proper heat yet?”
“No. It’s meant to happen next week.”
Presentation heat, a few hours of sweatiness and discomfort. An actual heat a few weeks after, when the body has adjusted its new state. That was how it went.
She frowned. “You’re going into heat,” she told him. He blinked. His mind rewired; it made sense.
“But it’s meant to happen next week,” he told her numbly. He winced internally. He sounded like a kid complaining. Time to get in gear , Robin . “That doesn’t make sense, though,” he added. If anything, presenting younger should delay the heat until his body had properly adjusted.
“It doesn’t,” she confirmed. She looked unfazed. Freak occurrence, then. Not outside of the realm of possibility.
“I’ll go,” he says awkwardly. She hesitated. “You don’t have to accompany me,” he said, in an attempt to reverse psychology her. He could tell she could tell what he was doing. It worked anyways.
“That’s stupid,” she says. “I’ll just tell them to come get you.”
Dick perked up. He could feel the effects of the upcoming heat - sweating, body uncomfortably warm, general soreness everywhere, and most damning of all, heightened emotions. “You’re going to contact them?” He winced. She was going to get mad.
He frowned. Why are you worried about her getting mad over this? That’s the heat talking, stop worrying about people pleasing.
“Not sorry,” he added.
She pursed her lips. Stayed silent.
Dick wilted.
“- and he’s picked up the bo staff so quickly,” Tim gushes. Cass stares blankly into his forehead, zoning out. She was a good listener. “I’m just worried,” he continues, “I don’t know how he’ll be affected by - “
The receiver crackled. “Your little Robin’s going into heat.” A pause. The sound of breathing. Cass had jumped into attention as soon as the first word sounded out, and Tim had already rolled over to the screens.
He waited for Stephanie to humorously acknowledge how villainous her choice of words were. Your little Robin , she said, like some cliche supervillain. She was thinking it, Tim knew. She didn’t say anything.
“I - Batgirl is coming,” he said into the receiver, hoping.
Aperture, in his wheelchair. Red Hood, on the other end of the receiver, unwilling to even make an unnecessary comment. The crackling stopped; Steph had deemed the conversation over. Tim waited anyways, watching the screens.
Dick was stopping himself from screaming. He was holding onto his control by the barest of strings, barely preventing himself from scratching and whining like a kid who was going through his first heat. He wasn’t some kid though; he was Robin.
Stephanie hovered beside him, like Bruce would once he heard of this. He barely held back that comparison, biting his cheek and determinedly staying quiet. That would go over well. He wanted B, he ached. A soft noise broke out despite his best efforts and his cheeks burned.
“Steph, I -” He’d watched so many videos of her he felt like he knew her already. He had been curious - who was it that was such a sore point?
His answer: Stephanie Brown, who had bought Damian out of his shell and was somehow Batman’s confidante in things he’d never told anyone else. Stephanie Brown, who had met Tim in the skate boarding park - him skate boarding, her on the way to stop her dad. Stephanie Brown, who had accepted Cass wholly and played mini gold with Duke.
He read all about her life. An alpha who’d gotten pregnant and given away her baby anyways. Her mother had died 2 months after her death. Her father had been Cluemaster. She had no training when she started, and hit Batman in the face with a brick anyways. Talented, the files said. Lashes out and isolates when distressed.
Stephanie Brown, who had died and come back with a white streak in her hair and a kill count beneath her belt.
He knew her. She didn’t know him.
“Cass is coming soon.” Stephanie didn’t acknowledge his plea. She said Cass’s name like acid, like it hurt to say it.
The glass shattered. Dick leapt out of bed. Stephanie spun around, breaking a chair leg off to use as a weapon.
Black fabric covered Dick’s vision. Cass lifted him in her arms, cradling him to her chest. Her suit stank, like she hadn’t washed it for days. She probably hadn’t.
“Steph,” Cass said.
“Batgirl.”
Dick wanted to sob. In Cass’s arms, Dick was as safe as he’d ever felt. He nuzzled his face into her neck, instinctively searching for where an average person’s scent would be the strongest.
Her scars had long since healed, but she’d never be able to scent anyone.
Dick reached up to scratch off his scent patches. He had resisted, but in the face of family, the resistance fell away.
Sandalwood and hints of vanilla permeated the room, citrus notes, from his parents. He scented Cass thoroughly, misery clearing. He wanted his parents. His parents were dead. The dichotomy between his wants and what he could have wounded him.
Cass didn’t scent him back. The perceived rejection split something open in his chest.
Dick let out a soft, hurt sound, it kicked Cass into action, ending the standoff. She tried to coo back, rusty, unpracticed. Something in Dick settled at the awkward sound anyway.
She started moving with him cradled to her chest. The wind was a blessing against his heated skin, but he was slipping, fast and quick.
Wayne Manor. Tim. “Damian’s coming soon,” his voice said. It sounded distant, far away. His heat was in full force now. Heat all over his body, blankets sticking to his skin. “Shh,” someone said, comforting, but Dick was far away.
He whined.
“I want my parents.” He registered the shame at sounding like a child. He didn’t care.
“I know, I’m sorry.” Blankets pressed into him, soft, fluffy. Tim’s beta scent, comforting, then Damian - scent protective and comforting in its familiarity.
“Dick.” B. Dick tried to search for him, pinpoint his voice. He wanted a hug. He felt like a little kid.
“It’s okay, Dickie, we’ve got you.” Relieved, he left out a soft sigh. He pressed his face into someone’s arm. The heat continued.
They all knew presenting at the age of 10 would have complications, and be hard on his body. Something in Tim hurt for Dick even with this knowledge. Ashamedly, he also felt envy.
In the communal nest, Tim had watched Bruce carefully cradle Dick in his arms. Tim hadn’t been able to comfort Dick - he’d been stuck in his wheelchair, unwilling to take up space in the nesting room and potentially disturb Dick.
Cass had stood beside him as they watched Bruce hold Dick, gentle and comforting. She had held herself oddly.
Cass was never coddled - she didn’t allow it. She patrolled through her heat like it had no effect on her. Sometimes Tim couldn’t tell if Cass did things out of reckless suicidality or because she genuinely didn’t feel it. Maybe it was both.
They all knew Dick was special, though. Batman and Robin, the people on the street said. Tim struggled to contain the jealousy. I found Dick first, he didn’t say. Something quieter: I became Aperture for him.
“How was Steph?”
Silence. They sat on a couch eating food after showering. 3rd day of Dick’s heat, Damian was with him right now. Damian loved Dick, just like everyone loved Dick. It was hard to describe the effect Dick had on everyone, because it was unending. They all doted on their youngest.
“Angry.”
Cass struggled to identify emotions. She rolled the word around her tongue, and let it out with some hesitation. “Scared,” she decided, and frowned, because it wasn’t quite right. “I left right after.”
Tim let out a breath, he had watched the footage from Cass’ mask already. Steph, face scarred and more expressionless than Tim had remembered it ever being. Her muscles were more defined than ever, and she was taller. She had come back different.
“I’m going to talk to her.” Cass told him. Cass was going to go beat Steph up and tell her killing was bad, Tim translated. Tim didn’t think it’d work. It wasn’t a matter of whether Steph would understand Cass - Steph knew Cass too well. But Stephanie - brilliant, stubborn Stephanie - never liked to go back on her actions. Tim rested his head on the couch.
Strange, how everything he’d ever wanted was finally real. Stephanie was back, and yet Tim just felt tired.
“Wait until after Dick’s heat,” he says finally, instead of voicing any of his other thoughts. Cass stared at him.
“Duh.”
Dick had snuck out. This wasn’t anything new, but it had been harder than usual. His plan? Hunt down Stephanie Brown. This was slightly easier than sneaking out of Dami’s hug.
Stephanie was sleeping. She probably didn’t get much sleep, as seen by her eyebags. None of them got much sleep, though. Dick didn’t feel too guilty about disturbing her rest.
“Psst,” he said.
A gun pointed at his face, metal cold and unforgiving. It gleamed in the moonlight.
“Robin.”
“Red Hood.”
A tense face off. “How do you know about this safe house?” Dick smiled at her, miming zipping his lips and throwing away the key. It did nothing to endear him to her, and she pressed the gun harder into his forehead. She had a history of violence, even before dying.
Dick was not about to provoke her though. Quite the opposite, in fact.
“I wanted to thank you,” he said, earnest. The gun wavered, lowered. He raised his offering. Cookies and Cream ice cream.
Fresh out of his heat, Dick felt weak limbed and vulnerable and painfully, painfully hopeful.
Stephanie raised an eyebrow at him, guard up, face closed off. “I don’t like this flavour,” she told him.