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“To free yourselves from my binding circle, there must be truth amongst you and not secrets.”
Spoiler tuned back in at the end of the entity's monologue just in time to hear the most perplexing demand of one of their antagonists.
She glanced to her left, raising an eyebrow under her full-face mask, and Red Hood shrugged minutely in return.
“That's it?” Nightwing questioned suspiciously. “We just have to tell each other our secrets?”
The entity had apparently exhausted their verbal well after almost a quarter hour of rambling, because Nightwing's question was only met with silence.
“Well this should be fast!” Spoiler chirped. “We all know each other as civilians and vigilantes, how many secrets can we have? At least it's just us and not the rest of the Justice League, or civilians, or our archnemeses!”
Her attempt at lightening the mood fell as flat as a crepe.
“Yeah, so if we can't cop out with those secrets, what's left?” Red Robin replied sourly. “The ones a literal family of detectives haven't found out yet, for good reason?”
Hm, well. That was a good point.
“I'll go first,” Red Hood volunteered. “I've been working on opening a garage in Crime Alley.”
“I hacked Candy Crush so I could get past level 532,” Red Robin admitted.
“Tt, skill issue,” Robin judged. Red Robin stuck his tongue out. Batman snagged the back of Robin's cape, holding him back like a scruffed kitten.
“I am learning hiphop to surprise you,” Black Bat spoke up.
“I think this is working!” Nightwing told the others happily. “Look, the forcefield seems to be thinning.”
Spoiler glanced up at the white pulsating light of the forcefield trapping them. It did appear slightly more translucent than before the entity had appeared and begun monologuing.
“I enjoy the colour green slightly more than other colours,” said Batman.
“I went on a mission with the Titans last week,” Nightwing contributed.
“You told me you were resting!” Red Robin accused.
Nightwing looked sheepish. “I just wanted it to be us OG Titans, and I knew if I told you you'd come along.”
RR huffed, crossing his arms. “Well now I'm glad I told you that my Titans were doing a team training exercise last month, not going on vacation to Brazil.”
“I had Babs hack Gotham U last year to change the deadline for a paper I would have missed submitting because of the Mr. Freeze attack,” Spoiler confessed.
“You are still holding much back,” the entity intoned with a suddenness that made Spoiler flinch. “You will not be freed from my barrier unless you are honest about your more harmful secrets.”
“Is it just me or is this barrier squishing us closer together?” Red Hood asked in a mildly curious tone.
“We are definitely a lot closer to each other than before,” Nightwing agreed. “And I don't mean just emotionally.”
“I'd like to argue that this is not bringing us emotionally closer,” Red Robin said, frowning in Nightwing's direction.
“The barrier is still shrinking,” Batman pointed out. “At this rate, we will run out of air in the next ten minutes.”
“Are your secrets really more important than your own and each others' lives?” asked the entity. “You humans and your lack of desire to tell the truth.”
Yeah, none of my secrets are worth dying for—in fact, the biggest are the ones to live for.
“I'm dating Red Hood.”
“I'm in love with Spoiler.”
The two of them stared at each other. The others' bickering stopped with a mildly terrifying silence as every head turned towards the pair.
Red Hood's gloved hand found her own, squeezing reassuringly. She gave him a slight nod in response, then turned to face the others. “We're dating,” they said in unison.
The shrinking space erupted into a cacophony of madness as the Bats attempted to make sense of this new information.
“Wait, wait, look!” Spoiler waved her arms to quiet them down. “It's stopped shrinking!”
“I found a mother cat and her kittens outside of school but I didn't have enough money on me to take them to the vet so I snuck into Hood's closest safehouse and took some of his cash from the bookshelves to pay for their care.”
“I knew I hadn't miscounted!” Red Hood exclaimed, waving his finger at Robin. “You better replace it.”
“Tt. You can afford it.”
“And so can you, little prince,” Hood reminded him.
“I come by your rooms when you're asleep just to make sure you're still there and everything is okay.”
Spoiler was pleasantly surprised by Batman's admission. Maybe he would actually express a full emotion one day.
“I watch you watch them,” Black Bat told him.
Each admission made the forcefield weaken, becoming more and more transparent.
Time to go big and go home, Spoiler thought. She turned to her left.
“I'm pregnant.”
Hood turned to her comically slowly as the barrier finally vanished into the ether.
Behind them, the Bats gulped in lungfuls of fresh, clean air, rejoicing over their freedom and squabbling over the revealed information.
“What?”
“I'm pregnant,” she repeated. “With your child.”
“We're having a baby together?”
Even behind his helmeted modulation, Spoiler could hear the emotion in Hood's voice and tell he was close to tears.
Her mask was starting to feel a little damp, too. She sniffed again, nodding. “I really didn't want to tell you like this; I just found out yesterday. I'm sorry.”
“Baby, no, all that matters is you're okay.”
Hood's warm, comforting arms encircled her, letting her lean into him.
“Hey, B!” He called over the others. “Spoiler and I are leaving now. You busybodies can interrogate us later. Do not interrupt us tonight or I will be shooting first and asking questions later.”
Batman, still in shock at the news that two of his vigilantes were dating and he hadn't a clue, simply nodded and turned back to attempting to corral the rest of his secretive children.
Once they'd made it back to Steph's apartment, stripped their suits off, and enjoyed the luxuries of hot water, peace, and quiet, they curled up on her plush sofa with mugs of tea and leaned into one another.
“How did you find out?” Jason asked, finally breaking the apprehensive silence.
“Quarterly blood test. I'm just grateful I'm the one in charge of running them now so I didn't have to answer any questions. I just can't figure out when it could have happened. We've always been careful.”
Jason hummed in agreement. “Well, nothing is ever 100% guaranteed.”
“I know, it's a shock. I wasn't thinking about kids yet, but I do want to keep this baby and raise it.” Steph kept her eyes on his face, taking in his loving acceptance.
“I do, too. We'll do it together, okay?”
“Together,” she agreed. “I'm done with school now, and if I could survive college and being Spoiler, and you can run an entire underground crime ring, we can manage a baby.”
“Absolutely. And we have all our practice on Damian, after all.”
Steph giggled, curling up into Jason even further. “He is kind of our first kid, isn't he.”
“At least we got him potty trained,” he said dryly. “So that'll be a first.”
“That won't be so bad. It's the older years we'll have to worry about, given our activities.”
“Eh,” Jason sounded unconvinced. “We'll just tell them everything we went through and then they won't want to do anything their parents thought was cool.”
They chuckled together at the thought.
“I'm glad I'm doing this with you.” Steph leaned up to kiss his cheek. “I love you.”
“I love you more.”
“No, I love you more.”
“I love you the most, so there.”
“That's not how it works-hey!” she squealed, laughing as he swept her up in his arms. She was so glad the secret was out and they could plan for all the happiness in their future.
Oh, crap. Their secret was out. The Bats would be breaking down her door sooner or later. At least they hadn't appeared to have heard her last and biggest secret? Maybe there was still time to ease them into the idea of their relationship before springing the new Todd-Brown(? Todd-Wayne-Brown? Brown-Todd-Wayne? Brown-Todd?) on them. Maybe.