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Life wasn’t supposed to be this hard. Stephanie Brown found herself muttering this to herself more and more as the days went on. High school was over and she’d just barely graduated thanks to a couple too many late night patrols, but in spite of the added free time, life was still just as hard, if not harder than it had been before. She constantly ached, her spirit was all but crushed to a bloody pulp and the chiding that her new “partner” seemed intent on doling out was getting grating, to say the least. If there was ever a person to wholly break and crush Stephanie’s spirits, it would be the bastard (in more ways than one) son of Batman, Damian Wayne. The thought of the dark-haired son-of-a-vigilante was enough to suck the last bit of happiness from Steph even on her brightest days, though unfortunately for her this was definitely not one of those days.
It had been an uneventful night in Gotham, a good thing for the citizens but not so much for those protecting the city. A quiet night meant high suspicion – in a town like Gotham, silence was as deadly as any poison. This meant double patrol for those skilled crime fighters that combed the alleyways and rooftops for any sign of hoodlums and crooks, which in turn resulted in exhausted heroes by the time the night drew to a close. Stephanie had taken that night’s patrol on her own, needing the time to clear her mind as well as to help train her senses – senses that were far too clouded at that moment inside Wayne Manor for her to hear the footsteps that had been approaching for some time, or for her to feel that sharp discomfort of someone staring at the back of her head.
She had been in the process of removing her cowl when she heard a noise. Not just any noise, that noise. That noise that he made and grated on her nerves. That… -tt- sound. Why was he there? She spun on her heel, looking back to the youngest Wayne. What was he wearing? Was that pajama pants? She couldn’t think of the last time she’d seen him in anything resembling civilian attire. It was a bit unnerving, seeing him dressed like a normal teenager and not decked out in weaponry from head to foot. “Christ on a cracker, Damian, don’t you know how to knock?” She groaned, tossing her cowl aside onto the too-fluffy surface of her bed, her now-free hands scraping over her scalp to tousle and loosen the blonde strands that had been stuck in place against her scalp for so long.
His facial expression didn’t have to change at all; the sneer was in his voice, coating his words heavily. “Maybe if your door had been shut this would be a non-issue. You weren’t raised in a barn.” Pause. “Or were you?” And so the daily allowance of insults began. Nice and vague with an allusion to livestock, a subtle jab that would be enough to throw her off-balance. It really was a shame that she was such an easy target, Damian often thought. There were so many better candidates for the role of Batgirl than the simpering weakling that stood before him. Why had his father picked her, allowed her to sully the great Bat name? He would have to blame a momentary lapse in judgment, or perhaps a secret love for potbelly pigs.
She rolled her eyes and stepped further into her room, starting to unhook certain choice pieces of her suit – bracers, shin guards, all the armor-plated bits that covered the form fitting suit beneath it. On any other day, she would have waited for him to leave the room before she would even take off her cowl, but she was exhausted and yearned to get out of that overheated, constrictive suit. She knew he’d leave before she came anywhere near getting out of the bodysuit. There was no way he’d stick around once it came to that. “So what, is creeping on chicks ‘part of your training’ now?”
He made a slight noise in the back of his throat. She couldn’t be serious. If he were to be the type to spy on an undressing female, Stephanie Brown would most definitely be nowhere near the list of potential victims. “No, but making sure you’re always aware of your surroundings and keeping you from getting stabbed is. Not that anything short of a broadsword could burrow through all the layers of vascularized adipose tissue.” She rolled her eyes, of course, a typical defense mechanism for the weak, Damian thought. No doubt the action was a primitive way of jump-starting the gears in her rather empty head, trying to think of an adequate comeback, and by his standards she had yet to succeed. “I’d ask when the last time you weighed yourself was, but seeing as how none of our scales seem to be broken at present, I can safely conclude that you have never encountered one.” Another eye-roll, perhaps she was having trouble getting her proverbial motor running? “Maybe I should check the ones at the local marina.”
Grabbing an elastic band from her desk, her hair was whipped up into a sloppy ponytail, exposing the snaps at the back of her neck that hid the top of her suit’s zipper from sight. One of these days, she’d figure out a way to keep the suit’s closure from tearing out her hair, but for now, a ponytail was her solution. “Okay, not that I don’t, you know, love this whole banter thing, but I’m just not in the mood for it right now. Can you just, I don’t know… go away?” It was a rare occasion that Steph didn’t at least give one quick retort, but she was far too drained to care enough to even hear him, much less try to think of some clever variation on ‘Your head looks like a potato’.
Damian didn’t look disappointed by her words. In fact, he didn’t look much of anything as usual. His expression was placid as his eyes watched her with an almost hawk-like intensity, the same way he looked at everything. Her fingers fumbled with the clasps and he couldn’t help but snicker to himself. Only she would have such trouble with such a menial task, and while he enjoyed her floundering, he didn’t enjoy the irritated sounds that came from her mouth. “Shut up. You sound pathetic.” A swift swipe of his hand had the snaps popped in less time than it took his heart to beat a single time. “And no, I won’t go away. This is my father’s house and I will do as I please. Carry on.”
He couldn’t be serious. That was the only thought going through her head. She had tried to remain calm and to get him to leave her alone, but he insisted on pushing her buttons. And unhooking her snaps, literally. It sent a weird feeling coiling through her stomach - something warm and slithering and wholly uncomfortable - a feeling that had her spinning on her heel to confront him, yet she was greeted with an empty doorway. The feeling was gone but it was replaced with something else, a feeling that Stephanie was very familiar with.
Disappointment.